Skulduggery Pleasant: Last Stand of Dead Men (20 page)

The tattoo parlour was empty apart from a skinny man reclining in a dentist’s chair, eyes closed and listening to the music. His bare arms were inked and his lip was pierced. He had a short purple Mohawk – new – and wore a faded Sesame Street T-shirt.

“Hi there,” said Laken Cross, and he watched Finbar Wrong jerk upright and almost tumble out of the chair.

“Hello!” Finbar said, doing his best to recover. “Hi, how are you? Sorry about that. Catching up on some sleep, y’know?” He turned down the music. “Something I can help you with?”

Laken Cross nodded to the photographs of tattooed limbs and torsos stuck on the wall. “I’d like a tattoo, please.”

“Right you are,” said Finbar. “Anything special in mind?”

“Something dramatic. Provided you have the time …?”

Finbar smiled. “I got nothing but time. Any other day, this place’d be buzzing, and my kid would be wandering around, bumping into things. But today’s a slow day.”

“Your kid’s not around?”

“Nope,” said Finbar. “Himself and Sharon, that’s me wife, took off for the day. Sharon does that sometimes. She’ll say she’s leaving me and she’ll pack her bags and call her mother and out she’ll go, but that’s just her way of being funny. Not being blessed with a natural wit, she has to resort to pranks. She says I’m not respecting her rights as an evolved being. I like to point out that she’s been a member of three cults so far, each one stupider than the one before, and when she was in the last one she kept trying to ritually sacrifice me to her UFO supergods. I told her that doesn’t sound like the work of an evolved being. I told her that sounds like the work of a loon.”

“Hence the prank,” Laken Cross said.

“Exactly. So, have you decided on a design or an image, maybe some words …?”

“Like I said, something dramatic. Something fantastic, you know? I like horror and science fiction and things like that.”

“Right,” said Finbar. “Well, I’m sure we can come up with something. Would you like some tea? I’ve got some lovely herbal tea.”

“Sure,” said Laken Cross. “I’d love some tea.”

In the corner of the room there was a sink and a cupboard and a kettle, and Finbar clicked the kettle on while he searched around for some mugs.

“Do you like horror movies?” Laken Cross asked. “I love them, personally. You know what might be cool? Have you seen that movie with Michael Ironside? The one where he stares at the guy for ages and the guy’s head explodes? That’d be cool.”

“You want a tattoo of an exploding head?”

“Maybe just before the head explodes. God, I love that movie. I love stuff with psychics and things. You believe in psychics?”

Finbar placed two mismatched mugs on the side table, and filled them with boiling water. “Psychics?” he said. “Naw. Not really. I’m rooted firmly in reality, me. I believe in things I can see and touch. Like tax returns and … tyre treads.”

“Tyre treads,” said Laken Cross. “Yeah, OK, I’ll admit that believing in tyre treads is a lot easier than believing in people with psychic powers. Have you ever thought about it, though? Thought about what it’d be like to be able to read minds or see into the future?”

“Can’t say that I have,” said Finbar, walking over and holding out the mug, his fingers gripping the rim. It was an old A-Team mug, chipped and cracked. When Laken Cross slipped his fingers through the handle and lifted it from Finbar’s hand, he thought for a moment the handle would snap off. He lifted the mug to his mouth, inhaled. Finbar took his own mug and walked over to the window, sipping as he went. He stood there, looking out.

“I’d love to be a psychic,” said Laken Cross.

“Wouldn’t say it’s all it’s cracked up to be,” said Finbar. “Bet there’d be a lot of thoughts a psychic would wish he’d never heard, or futures he wished he’d never seen. Just think how something like that could damage a mind.”

“You might be right.”

Finbar shrugged his thin shoulders. “What do I know? I just draw on people for a living. But I’d say, if psychics were real, it’d be a risky business. Hazardous to the health, y’know? What if you saw something so terrible, so awful, that your mind just kinda … switched off?”

“Like if you were forced to see it?” Laken Cross asked. “Like if something had, I don’t know, taken you over?”

Finbar stiffened. “Maybe,” he said. “Like I said, what do I know?” He turned. “But let’s say that did happen. Some poor sap, some psychic, is temporarily taken over by an evil entity, and this evil entity forces him to look at things that’d snap his mind ordinarily … but then what happens when that evil entity leaves him?”

Laken Cross cradled his mug in his hands. “I don’t know,” he said. “The psychic might not be a psychic any more. Could’ve been short-circuited.”

“Exactly,” Finbar said. “Short-circuited, and no use to anybody.”

Laken Cross put the mug on the nearest table, and reached for the gun tucked under his shirt.

“And then,” Finbar continued, “what if ever so slowly, bit by bit, those powers returned to him?”

Laken Cross paused, and left the gun where it was. “So he was a psychic again?”

Finbar nodded. “Not as powerful as he was, maybe. Well, not at first. It’d take a few months to get back to that level. But pretty soon he’d be able to read a few thoughts, and see a few futures. Might even be able to see a future where someone comes to kill him.”

“Now why would anybody want to kill him?” asked Laken Cross, speaking slowly.

“Just being careful, I suppose. He was once a powerful psychic. That’s a risk in anyone’s book. So they send someone to kill him. Not a soldier. Not one of their usual people. Their usual people wouldn’t be prepared to do something like that. No, they’d have to … what’s the word? Outsource. They’d have to hire someone. A mercenary or a hitman. A killer.”

“And the psychic,” said Laken Cross, “he’d have seen this?”

“Yes he would,” said Finbar. “He’d have seen enough to know to cancel appointments for that day, and to send his wife and kid to her mother’s. He’d have seen enough to wait around for those footsteps on the stairs and, when the killer walked in, he’d have handed him a poisoned mug of tea.”

Laken Cross arched an eyebrow. “Poisoned?”

“I’m afraid so. A poison that’d take a few minutes to make itself known, but once it did? Game over, I’m afraid.”

Laken Cross looked at the mug. “You poisoned that?”

“You shouldn’t have come to kill me, Mr Cross.”

Laken Cross laughed, and he took out his gun. “Then it’s a good thing I didn’t drink from it, isn’t it?”

He levelled the gun at Finbar’s belly and Finbar shook his head. “You didn’t hear me right. I didn’t say a
mug of poisoned tea
. I said a
poisoned mug of tea
. It was the handle I poisoned.”

The gun fell from Laken Cross’s numb fingers, and the room tilted and blurred and the floor rose up to hit him. He tried to speak, but couldn’t move his mouth.

“I saw the future where you killed me,” Finbar was saying. “I saw you walk up here and shoot me and kill my customer. Then Sharon ran in and what did you do? You killed her, too. Then you stood over me and you shot me twice in the head, the consummate professional that you are. In that future, you left my kid an orphan. You took away his parents. What kind of man would do that to a child? I was an orphan. I lost my parents when I was three. You think I’d be OK with you doing that to my kid? You think I’d just sit around and let that happen?”

Drool leaked from Laken Cross’s parted lips. He couldn’t even swallow.

“Laken Cross, you are an evil man,” said Finbar. “You are an evil man for coming here to kill me and you’re an evil man for forcing me to do what I’ve had to do. I hope you burn in whatever hell you believe in.”

he shield had been activated. All around the coast of Ireland, 14,271 hidden sigils had lit up, sending out an invisible field of energy that merged together and spread upwards. Skirmishes flared around the country as cells of foreign sorcerers struck and then melted away into the civilian population. Meanwhile, cells of Irish sorcerers targeted vulnerable points around the world, sowing chaos and confusion into what was already a chaotic and confusing situation.

And all of this happened over the course of one night, so that when Valkyrie woke and listened to Skulduggery’s message on her phone, there was really no escaping it.

They were at war.

She got up and brushed her teeth. Outside the window, birds sang. It was a beautiful day. From the bathroom, she could look right down to the pier. The water sparkled. There was a sigil down there, glowing gently, safe from prying eyes, and although she couldn’t see it, the shield crossed the bay from the pier to the tip of the far peninsula, and carried on from there. A small boat came in, passed through the shield and went to dock. If any sorcerers had been in that boat, their central nervous system would have already shut down and they’d have fallen into a coma, from which only Doctor Nye could bring them round. She watched the boat dock. It was such a nice morning, such a normal morning, for the first morning of the war.

She took a shower, dressed in shorts and a light T-shirt, and went downstairs. Her mother’s voice drifted from the kitchen, accompanied by another, slightly higher-pitched voice with a certain tremulous edge to it. Valkyrie sighed, then stuck on a polite smile and walked in.

“Hi, Beryl,” she said. “Morning, Mum.”

“Morning, sleepyhead,” her mother said, cup of coffee in her hand. Beryl sat across the table from her, her cup of tea untouched.

“Good morning, Stephanie,” Beryl said. She was wearing a summer frock today. It made her look softer, somehow.

“Steph’nie!” Alice said, running over. Valkyrie scooped her up and smothered her with kisses, and Alice giggled until Valkyrie set her down again.

Beryl’s smile, which had never managed to get above brittle, was replaced with a concerned frown. “Oh, dear, Stephanie. Are you lifting weights?”

Suddenly Valkyrie wished she was wearing something with longer sleeves. “Nope,” she said, taking a carton of juice from the fridge. “Just exercising. Swimming. Keeping fit.”

Beryl looked over at Valkyrie’s mum, shaking her head. “What do you think, Melissa? It’s not very ladylike to have bigger muscles than most boys your age, is it?”

“Now let’s not get carried away, Beryl. She’s got strong arms, but she’s not a bodybuilder. And I would have loved to have arms like Stephanie’s when I was her age. We’re very proud of how healthy she is.”

Valkyrie patted her mother’s head as she passed behind her. “Thanks, Mum.”

Beryl erupted into tears.

Valkyrie stared. Her mum stared. They looked at each other, then went back to staring.

“Uh,” her mum said, “what are you doing …?”

“Sorry,” said Beryl, pulling a wrinkled tissue from her handbag, “I’m sorry. Oh, this is dreadful. Look at me. I’m a mess.” She laughed, but it wasn’t very convincing, because she was still crying.

Alice waddled over to her, and patted her leg. Then she whacked it, and waddled off.

“Such a violent child,” Beryl sniffed.

“Is everything OK?” Valkyrie asked, wondering when would be an appropriate time to pour the orange juice into a glass.

Beryl blew her nose. “Everything’s fine, Stephanie. It’s just … seeing how you two are together just …”

“We make you cry?”

Beryl smiled sadly. “Yes. I suppose you do. You’re friends. You joke and laugh with each other, and Desmond’s the same. I don’t … I don’t have that with the twins.”

“Oh,” said Valkyrie, and nudged her mother.

“Oh,” said her mother. Then, after a moment, she said, “So how
are
the twins?”

“Oh, you know,” said Beryl. “They’re at that awkward age.”

“They’re twenty-one.”

“It’s an awkward twenty-one, though. They used to be so close. They’d go everywhere together, they’d finish each other’s sentences … Or they’d try to. They rarely got it right. Most of the time they’d realise halfway through that they were both talking about two entirely different things. But lately … I don’t know. Over the past few months we’ve barely
seen
Carol. She stays in her room all day. And Crystal … Crystal refuses to even speak to her. She says Carol’s changed. She says there’s something wrong with her.”