Skulduggery Pleasant: Last Stand of Dead Men (34 page)

“I understand you have fully recovered.”

Fletcher touched his stomach reflexively. “Raring to go.”

“Good. You will begin immediately. The gentlemen beside you are Gracious O’Callahan and Donegan Bane, the Monster Hunters,” she said. “You may have heard of them or read the books. By their own account, they are quite famous in certain circles.”

Gracious and Donegan smiled at him.

Mist tapped a long finger once on the photograph before her. “This woman’s name is Zona. She is, among other things, an expert at constructing shields from sigil magic. Likewise, her knowledge can also be used to
dismantle
our shield from the outside. We cannot afford to let this happen. It has come to our attention that she is due to be transported from the Mexican Sanctuary within the hour. By our estimation, Zona will be outside and vulnerable for no longer than ten seconds. The three of you will therefore intercept, retrieve her, and bring her back here.”

“You’ve been to the Mexican Sanctuary before?” Donegan asked him.

Fletcher nodded. “I’ve been to most Sanctuaries. I can get us there. Will she have anyone with her?”

“A security detail,” said Mist. “Bodyguards – Cleavers and mages.”

Fletcher frowned. “And we only have ten seconds?”

“From the Sanctuary entrance to the car will take approximately ten seconds at a fast walk.”

“And there’s just us? Just the three of us?”

“You’re not going there to engage in a battle,” said Mist. “Three should be more than adequate.”

Fletcher looked at the two men beside him, and Donegan smiled. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ve done things like this before. We’ll be fine.”

Gracious nodded. “Probably.”

Fletcher teleported them to a rooftop in Mexico City, where they took turns with the binoculars. Gracious complained about the effects the sun would have on his delicate skin, so Fletcher teleported away for a few seconds, arriving back with a parasol that Gracious happily accepted. And then they waited.

The Mexican Sanctuary was a two-storey, flat-roofed building with an enclosed, high-walled yard. Beneath the surface, it continued downwards for many levels, but for anyone on street level it was just like all the other sun-baked buildings in the neighbourhood. No guards, no obvious security, nothing to draw the eye.

“So you’re a natural, then?” Donegan asked, the binoculars fixed to his eyes.

Fletcher looked round. “Sorry?”

“A natural,” Donegan said. “You didn’t need any training to teleport?”

Fletcher gave a little shrug. “I needed training to control it, to be able to do it properly, but yeah, I just started one day, before I knew anything about magic or sorcerers or any of this. The first time I did it was the day my mother died. I wanted to get away, I was running out of the hospital and then, suddenly, I was at home.”

“That must have been quite a shock,” Gracious said.

“I didn’t know what had happened. The next day I had all these theories, like I just didn’t remember running home, or I’d blocked it out because of my mum. Then, a few weeks later, it happened again. The only Teleporter I’d ever heard of was Nightcrawler – you know him?”

Gracious nodded. “Kurt Wagner, from
X-Men
.”

“Exactly,” said Fletcher. “So I read all the comics, then watched a few science-fiction movies and TV shows for research. You know, like
Dragon Ball Z
,
Heroes
, things like that. But I stopped after I watched
The Fly
. I didn’t teleport for two weeks after I saw that.”

Gracious winced. “I can understand.”

“And a few months later I met Valkyrie and Skulduggery and some lunatic used me to bring the Faceless Ones back. And now here I am, in Mexico City, with the Monster Hunters.”

“I love stories with happy endings,” said Gracious.

Donegan straightened. “We have movement,” he said, and passed the binoculars to Fletcher.

Fletcher adjusted the focus slightly, saw the Sanctuary door opening, saw the Cleavers lead the security detail out. Beside him, Gracious and Donegan bent their knees and raised their fists. Fletcher took a deep breath, waited until he glimpsed a big enough gap in the group, right beside Zona, then he dropped the binoculars, grabbed the Monster Hunters—

—and then they were down there, in the middle of the security detail, and Gracious was throwing punches and Donegan was throwing energy blasts and everyone was moving and shouting and Zona looked around, her eyes wide, and Fletcher grabbed her and—

—now he was in Roarhaven, in the Sanctuary, but a Cleaver and a mage had grabbed on to Zona at the last moment, and they were turning towards Fletcher even as—

—they plummeted down the side of the tallest peak in the Alps, freezing wind biting into Fletcher’s face, tumbling and rolling all together with Fletcher waiting for the mage to lose his grip and let go of Zona’s arm and—

—now there was just the Cleaver to get rid of as they fell
upwards
, their momentum taking them into the air above a peaceful meadow in Yorkshire before gravity found them again and they started dipping down, the Cleaver’s scythe swinging for Fletcher’s throat—

—through the Auckland rain and Fletcher ducked and threw himself on Zona and they hit the hard ground and rolled—

—across the Sanctuary floor and Fletcher released his hold and he was—

—back in the Alps and falling again, the mage far below him—

—right beside him, and Fletcher grabbed him with his left hand and—

—held on as the Yorkshire countryside flipped him around and he reached out with his right and—

—grabbed the Cleaver and—

—dumped them both on the heads of the security detail as he fell between them, and Gracious whirled, pulled him to his feet and Donegan grabbed him—

—and they stood over Zona as she stopped rolling across the floor in Roarhaven.

Cleavers came forward and shackled Zona, who was too stunned to even object, and led her away. Fletcher brushed the snow from his hair as he walked out into the corridor, Donegan and Gracious on either side of him.

“We make a good team,” said Donegan.

“We do,” said Gracious.

“You should think about joining us, Fletcher. It’s not a bad life, being a Monster Hunter.”

Fletcher laughed. “I don’t know anything about hunting monsters.”

“Easy to learn,” said Gracious, “but how are you at drawing?”

“I’m sorry?”

“We’re authors, too,” Donegan said, “and we’ve been trying to get into the picture-book market. We have this idea for a
Where’s Wally
type thing, except in ours, you’d have to find the one living person hiding in among all the dismembered corpses while the chainsaw-wielding killer hunts him down. You know, for kids.”

“We’re going to call it
Save the Survivor
,” Gracious said. “So what do you think?”

“Uh,” said Fletcher, “isn’t that a bit … disturbing?”

Gracious frowned. “Is it?”

“I don’t think so,” said Donegan.

“Yes,” Fletcher said, “I think it’s a little bit disturbing. I think it might give children nightmares.”

“It doesn’t give me nightmares,” Gracious said, “and people are always saying how childish I am.”

“That’s true, they are,” Donegan said, nodding.

They turned the corner, saw Madame Mist walking with Syc and Portia, their hands free of shackles, and Gracious pulled his gun and Donegan’s hands lit up.

“What the hell is going on?” Gracious snarled.

Even through the veil, Fletcher could feel Mist’s glare.

“You point your gun at me, Monster Hunter?” she said. “I am an Elder. Such an act could see you executed.”

“I’m sure Gracious doesn’t mean anything by it,” Donegan said, energy crackling between his fingers. “I’m sure he’s just wondering what the hell you think you’re doing setting those murderers free.”

“I do not have to explain myself to the likes of you,” Mist said. Behind her, Portia was smiling while Syc looked bored. All three of them moved towards the door, but Donegan stepped into their path.

“Grand Mage Ravel ordered their incarceration,” he said.

“And I am ordering their release,” replied Mist. “What’s done is done. They cannot bring back Bernard Sult, they cannot erase their crime, but they can make up for their mistake. They seek redemption. Who are you to deny them that?”

“You didn’t clear this with Ravel,” said Gracious.

Madame Mist shrugged her slender shoulders. “He is still out of reach, I am afraid. And we cannot wait. We have potential allies waiting to be brought in, but they won’t wait long.”

“We’ll go get them,” said Donegan. “Tell Fletcher where they are and we’ll bring them back.”

“These allies distrust Teleporters, as they distrust all sorcerers.”

Gracious frowned. “What kind of allies are they?”

“Children of the Spider,” said Mist. “Two of them, both old and powerful. The Terror and the Scourge. You would not be able to bring them in. They’d see you and kill you and be lost to us.”

“We’re Monster Hunters,” said Donegan. “Hunting monsters is what we do.”

Madame Mist turned her head ever so slightly. “Monsters? Do you view all Children of the Spider as monsters?”

Gracious shrugged. “Only the ones who turn into great big monster spiders.”

“We’re wasting time,” Portia said. “You will either let us by, or attack your own Elder and be executed for treason. Which will it be?”

For a moment, it looked like Gracious and Donegan were going to go for the second option, but then Donegan lowered his hand, and Gracious holstered his gun. Madame Mist walked on like nothing had happened. Portia followed after, a smirk on her face, and Syc hissed as he passed.

Donegan waited till they were gone, then swung round to Gracious.

“He hissed at me.”

“He hissed at you.”

“Should I hiss back?”

“It’s a bit late.”

“He could still hear.”

“Not unless you run after him.”

“Do you think I should?”

“Probably not.”

“I think I should.”

“It’d be a bit weird.”

“You might be right.” Donegan pursed his lips, then shook his fist at the doorway.

“That showed him,” said Gracious.

Donegan nodded. “He’ll think twice about hissing at me again.” He turned to Fletcher. “So,
Save the Survivor
. You in or out?”

“Uh,” said Fletcher, “I can’t draw.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that too much,” Gracious whispered to him. “We can’t write. But don’t tell anyone. It’s a secret.”

hina woke to the sound of a door being kicked in.

She rolled over, hit the light switch and then slid off the bed. Even as the bulbs were brightening, she was pulling on her silk bathrobe and tying the sash securely at her waist. She grabbed her handbag, looped it over her head so the strap hung diagonally across her chest. It wouldn’t take them long to figure out that she’d charmed the businessman down the hall into swapping rooms with her.

She ran to the spiral staircase, got to the suite’s upper level just as the door burst open. An instant later, there was a bright flash and a yell of pain. If they didn’t think she’d have set a few booby traps, they had no one to blame but themselves.

She knew them, of course.
Know your enemies
, her grandmother had always said. She’d identified them by the second day of their pursuit. The leader was Vincent Foe, an Energy-Thrower, nihilist and thug. Mercy Charient was his psychotic second-in-command, another Energy-Thrower, but one who preferred to emit the energy stream from her mouth instead of her hands. Less controlled, but more damaging. The big one was Obloquy, a Sensitive specialising in inflicting pain. And the vampire was called Samuel.

If she’d still had her accounts, if Eliza Scorn had not frozen her assets, China could have bid higher than whoever had paid him, solved this problem with the swipe of a credit card.

As it was, she would just have to keep running.

She emerged on to the balcony, pressed herself back against the right side, and tapped the sigils on her thighs. Immediately she felt the strength flooding her leg muscles. She bolted to the other side, jumped to the edge and sprang to the balcony across the gap. Her bare feet slapped down and she kept going, jumping to the edge and then springing again to the next one. She landed, deactivated the sigils before the magic damaged her muscles, opened the balcony doors and slipped inside.