Death Bringer (22 page)

Skulduggery arched his back and darkness burst from his chest in a steady stream, writhing and twisting in the air, collecting on the far side of the room. A shape formed, the stream broke from Skulduggery, and the shape became solid. A tall man, encased head to foot in black armour that shifted and moved on his body. Valkyrie stared.

Lord Vile hadn't been hiding in a cave or an old base somewhere – he'd been hiding within Skulduggery himself.

Melancholia stepped back, her eyes wide with fear. Lord Vile held out his arm and his hand lengthened to a sharp point that flew at her. She cried out, barely managing to deflect the strike. He went at her again, and again, and she stumbled from each attack, her hair in her eyes. The darkness that had been holding Valkyrie down was gone, and she got up, watching Melancholia being stalked like a deer.

“Help me!” Melancholia cried. “You can't let him kill me! Please!”

The Death Bringer, begging for help. The only person who had the power and the intention to kill three billion people, begging for someone to step in and save her. Valkyrie wasn't going to do it. She couldn't do it. She had to let Vile kill her. It was the only way to save all those lives.

“Valkyrie!” Melancholia called. “Please help me!”

And suddenly Valkyrie was running, and she was running straight at Lord Vile, while every part of her mind screamed at her to stop. But her body kept going, it wouldn't listen, and Vile waved his hand and she went flying back through the air. As she spun, she saw shadows grow from beneath Melancholia's robes, and then she felt the air shift around her. Her trajectory changed and she fell against Skulduggery, who staggered slightly as he caught her.

Melancholia's shadows sprang at Lord Vile, whose armour grew tendrils that intercepted each one of them. Melancholia was rising to her feet now, standing just beyond arm's reach of Vile. Their shadows, sharp and jagged, pressed and darted and defended. More grew, and still more, pushing out of their arms and legs and torsos. They started to resemble a pair of weird insects, or crabs maybe, snapping at each other with an ever-increasing array of weapons.

Melancholia was smiling. Her blonde hair was obscuring most of her face, but she was definitely smiling, and now Valkyrie could see why. Her shadows were thickening, getting bigger, and Vile was being pushed back. He wasn't whole, after all. He was merely the
armour
of Lord Vile, Skulduggery's old Necromancer power given sentience. If Skulduggery had been in that armour, the Death Bringer would have met her match. But the armour was empty, and the Death Bringer was realising just how powerful she really was.

The shadows behind Melancholia swooped in through her body and erupted from her chest, slamming into Vile and taking him to the far end of the room. He was thrown with such force he hit the double doors and burst through, splintering the wood and ripping them from their hinges. The shadows retracted, back inside Melancholia, and she turned to Valkyrie and Skulduggery, and smiled.

“You saved my life,” she said, laughing. The darkness moved in around her, and she disappeared just as Vile lunged at her from the shadows. He grabbed nothing but air.

Skulduggery stepped in front of Valkyrie. “Stop right there,” he said.

Lord Vile, the armour, turned towards him.

“I want you gone,” Skulduggery said. “You're a part of me, and I want you gone. I left you behind a long time ago and I have no intention of letting this continue. Your time is up.”

Vile sent a shadow crashing into him.

“Hey!” Valkyrie shouted. “Hey! What the hell are you doing?”

Four spears of shadow rose up over Vile's head, and Valkyrie turned and ran. They shot towards her as she jumped sideways. All but one of the spears missed her. The last one glanced off the back of her jacket and spun her round as she fell.

There were shouts. The barricades had been breached. Sanctuary operatives were storming the Temple. Vile tilted his head, the same way Skulduggery did. Then the shadows swirled and he was gone.

Chapter 32
A Bad Night in Haggard

alkyrie sat hunched over on a fallen headstone, her hands in her pockets and her eyes on the ground. Around her, Cleavers and sorcerers filed in and out of the Temple. They hadn't started bringing the bodies out yet. She didn't want to be here when they did.

She watched Skulduggery talk to them, nodding and pointing, issuing commands. She didn't even understand how any of this was possible. She wanted to travel back in time, back to before she knew the truth. If only she hadn't followed Wreath, left herself open to attack, then Tenebrae would never have had the chance to spoil everything. Skulduggery turned, walked over, and Valkyrie suddenly felt sick, like her insides were rotting away.

“Are you OK?” he asked her.

She nodded.

“Wreath and Craven are unaccounted for – we don't know how many others. We have teams out searching, but I don't like our chances. We'll head back to the Sanctuary, brief the Council.”

“Not me,” Valkyrie said.

“What?”

“Not me, all right? I'm tired, and I'm bruised, and I just want to go home. I don't care about any of this any more. I'm going to let other people save the world this time.”

“Listen, I know you've been through a lot, but—”

“Enough,” she corrected, standing up. “I've been through
enough
. In the last few days, I was slashed half to death, I was healed by a monster who once dissected me, I was betrayed and attacked by Solomon Wreath, who I thought was my friend, and then… you.”

“Valkyrie…”

“There is absolutely nothing you can say to make this better, so don't even try.”

“You've got to understand—”

“I don't want to talk to you,” she said, and walked away.

She could have called Fletcher, but she really didn't want to come up with a lie to tell him that would explain her mood. She got a lift into the centre of town from one of the sorcerers she knew, and hopped on a bus. She sat with her arms folded, leaning her head against the cool window. The bus would go over a bump and she'd rock slightly. She didn't think of anything. She just looked at the seat in front and let the bus take her to Haggard.

She got off and cut through the small park, walked through darkness instead of the brightly lit Main Street. She didn't want to talk to anyone. All she wanted to do was pick up her baby sister and hug her.

The lights were off in her house, and there were no cars in the driveway, so Valkyrie let herself in the front door. Her family wasn't in. She went up to her room, but her reflection wasn't there. Frowning, she took out her phone, dialled a number and waited.

The call was answered, and she heard her own voice say, “Hello?”

“It's me,” Valkyrie said. “Where are you? Where is everyone?”

“We're at the hospital,” the reflection said.

Alarm pulsed through Valkyrie like electricity and she gripped the phone tighter. “What? What happened? Is it Alice? Is something wrong?”

“It's not Alice,” the reflection said calmly. “It's your mother. She was mugged this afternoon.”

Valkyrie went cold. “Mugged? By who? By a mortal?”

“Yes. It happened on Main Street. Everyone's saying it was a stupid place to mug someone. No one ever gets mugged in Haggard. It's too small. He hit her. She's fine, but she was brought to hospital to make sure. So we're all in here.”

“Is she hurt?”

“She has a bruise on her cheek.”

Valkyrie stood in the middle of her room, trying to make sense of this. “Who did it?” she asked. She was surprised at how soft her voice sounded.

“I only heard his last name. Moore. He's not from Haggard. His car broke down, the Guards said. Dad was in the pharmacy paying, and Mum was standing outside with Alice in the pram and Moore ran up, grabbed her handbag. She pulled it back, he hit her in the face, took the bag and ran right into Dad. Dad threw him through the pharmacy window. The ambulance people put on a few bandages and handed him over to the Guards.”

“He's still here, then? In Haggard?”

“As far as I know. They rang Dad—”

“Stop calling him that.”

“Sorry. They rang your father and told him they were charging Moore with assault and battery. They still have him in the police station.”

Valkyrie stood very still, the phone to her ear. Her body was numb.

“Are you still there?” the reflection asked. “I have to go. Your father's waiting.”

“You should have called me.”

“They tell you to turn your phone off when you're in the hospital building.”

“The moment you heard about it, you should have called me.”

“I was never given those instructions.”

“You should have assumed.”

“It's not for me to assume anything. As you keep reminding me, I'm not real. I have no thoughts of my own. I only do what I'm told.”

“Then
do
what you're told. From this moment on, tell me
immediately
if anything bad ever happens to my family.”

“Very well. What are you going to do?”

“What do you mean?”

“Now. What are you going to do now?”

“What do you think I'm going to do?”

“I think you're very, very angry. I think you're going to break into the police station and hurt the man who hurt your mother.”

Valkyrie didn't say anything. She hung up the phone, and left the house.

Running was an odd sensation. It was like she was hovering above, watching her body move of its own accord. She watched herself run through the narrow lanes of Haggard, keeping away from the bigger streets and roads, keeping away from people. She passed in and out of shadows, in and out of sight, a wraith in black with murder in mind.

The police station was well lit. Valkyrie approached it from the side, dropping from the high wall into the car park. No one around. Not many cars. She avoided the security camera and ran to the nearest window. Suddenly she was no longer floating above – she was sucked back into her own head, and she felt how cold she was, how the rage burned like ice in her belly. Tendrils of darkness slithered between the window and its frame, and she twisted her hand and the tendrils snapped the lock and the window popped open. She used the air to boost herself up, then climbed into a bright bathroom that smelled of disinfectant.

She went to the door, listened for a moment. Somewhere, phones rang. Somewhere, people talked.

She stepped into the corridor. It wasn't a big building, and Valkyrie figured the cells would be as far away from the main entrance as possible, so she turned right. She rounded the corner and ducked into a room, an interview room by the look of it, to avoid a passing cop. She waited until his footsteps receded before she emerged and continued on. She came to three cream-coloured steel doors with glass partitions. The first two cells were empty. There was a man lying on a bed in the third.

Shadows crept into the lock and smashed it from within, and Valkyrie was walking into the cell before Moore had even lifted his head from the thin pillow. The door closed behind her.

He looked at her. He was in his early twenties, skinny, with a bad haircut and a cleft in his chin. A plaster covered a thin cut along his cheek. His left forearm was bandaged. He stood up, still looking at her, frowning now. She reached a hand towards the camera, up high in the corner of the cell, and sent a dart of shadow into the lens. Moore stepped back.

“What was that? What the hell
was
that? Who are you?”

She stepped closer, hands by her sides, shoulders relaxed. Inside she was cold. There was a block of ice inside her. The voice spoke to her.

Kill him.

When she was close enough, she swung her right hand up, fingers splayed and palm open, twisting into the strike. She caught him on the hinge of the jaw and he crashed back against the wall. A power-slap, Skulduggery called it. As powerful as a punch, without the risk of broken knuckles. One of the new weapons in her arsenal, ever since Tanith went bad. Valkyrie watched Moore try to stand up straight. His legs gave out and he fell back. His mouth was hanging open and his eyes were clouded. She waited while he shook his head and his eyes refocused. He looked at her and she watched his anger build.

Moore sprang from the wall. She let him grab her, let him pull her in, and she fired an elbow into his face two, three times. He let go, but she didn't, she latched on, kept firing those elbows, driving him back, never letting go of him. He tried to shout, but she hit him in the neck and he gagged. She didn't give him a chance to throw a punch of his own, didn't give him a chance to push her away. She was all over him, elbows and headbutts. In between his sudden yelps of pain she heard someone snarling, realised it was coming from her. She didn't stop. She had blood on her face and it wasn't her blood and she didn't stop. This man had attacked her mother. This man had attacked her
mother
.

Kill him.

He was on the floor now and she was on top of him, her hands tightening round his throat. His strength was gone. His efforts to dislodge her, to break the stranglehold, were useless. He was weak and she was strong. The coldness inside her was burning. She was talking to him, her words scraping through gritted teeth, but she couldn't hear what she was saying.

His hands fluttered uselessly around her arms. His eyes were rolling back. Blood and spittle flew from his mouth. He was turning purple.

Kill him
, the voice in her head whispered.

She dug her fingertips in even tighter. This must have been how Melancholia felt when she held Valkyrie's life in her hands. It was power, pure power, pure and beautiful. It filled her, energised her, mixed with her rage and made her smile, just like Melancholia had smiled.

Valkyrie frowned, saw her hands around his throat, saw Moore's life about to leave him. Her hands sprang open and she staggered to her feet. He turned on to his side, coughing and sucking in great gasps of air.

The voice was gone now. Banished from her mind. She suddenly felt queasy, like she was going to vomit.

Moore dragged himself away from her, towards the far wall. Valkyrie's hands were shaking. Her legs were trembling. Her head pounded.

“If I ever see you in this town again,” she said to him, “I'll come back for you and I won't stop. Stay away from this town. Stay away from my mother. Or I swear to God, I will kill you.”

He curled up and she left the cell. She retraced her steps, squirmed out through the window, barely getting outside before she threw up. Her legs were liquid, wouldn't support her weight. The cops were going to find her out here. She realised she was crying.

A shadow fell over her, blocking the moonlight. Caelan reached down, took her into his arms like she weighed nothing, and carried her into the darkness.

In her back garden, she watched him and he watched her. The night was warm. The sounds of the waves drifted over the wall.

“You've been following me,” she said.

The shadows draped themselves over his sharp features. He didn't say anything. Didn't deny it.

“You've been doing that a lot, haven't you? Following me. Watching me.”

“Looking out for you,” he said. “But only at night. Only when you're vulnerable.”

Valkyrie shook her head. “That isn't right,” she said. “You shouldn't do that to people. You shouldn't watch them. I don't want you to do it any more.”

“I need to make sure you're safe.”

“I don't need your protection.”

He didn't respond to that. Instead, he asked, “Did you kill him?”

She hesitated. “No.”

“Did you want to?”

“Yes.”

“You sound ashamed. You shouldn't be. You have darkness in your heart, as do I.”

“That's not true.”

“Of course it is. It's a part of who you are. You can't fight it.”

She heard a car. “They're back,” she said. “You have to go.”

“I'm not leaving you.”

“I don't want you watching me or my family.”

“You better hurry, they're almost in the house.”

She gave him one last look, then hurried through the back door and ran up the stairs, and she heard the front door open and her mother's voice. She went to the window, looked out. She couldn't see Caelan out there, but Valkyrie knew that he was.