Skulduggery Pleasant: Last Stand of Dead Men (67 page)

“Back!” Skulduggery roared. “Everyone back!”

The ball exploded with a deafening crack. The blast lifted Stephanie off her feet and flung her over the railing. Screaming, she started to fall to the city streets far below, but a hand snagged her ankle and she swung to the wall and slammed into it. She hung there, upside down, unable to even blink. The grip on her ankle was tight. Blood rushed to her head.

She was pulled up, and a hand clutched her leg and kept pulling, and now the hands were on her hips, and she was pulled under the railing and back on to the wall. She turned over, shaking, expecting Skulduggery or Dexter, instead finding a Cleaver, just another anonymous Cleaver.

“Thank you,” she gasped.

The Cleaver picked up his scythe and went to help an injured sorcerer, and within moments she couldn’t tell him apart from all the other Cleavers. Rubble littered the walkway. A clunk of the wall was missing, and great clouds of dust rose like smoke. She saw Skulduggery, looking for something. She waved to him, watched him visibly relax and then turn away, getting back to work.

Stephanie got up, went back to the wall. Something hit the merlon beside her, spraying her with chips of rock. A metal dart, buried in the stone, trailing a rope of white energy.

She peered over the edge. More of these darts shot into the wall, fired from the hands of Warlocks in a burst of white. Once attached, the Warlocks secured the other end to the ground, and the rope went taut. Stephanie ducked as a dart skimmed her cheek. She glanced again a moment later, saw dozens of these energy ropes in place. What were they hoping to do – pull the wall down?

Instead, the Warlocks stepped away, and the Wretchlings ran forward. They jumped on to the ropes with their bare feet and they kept running, like overeager tightrope walkers, sprinting up the steep incline like this was a Sunday morning jog.

The shout went out. Bursts of gunfire sent Wretchlings falling, but there seemed to be a limitless supply, and by now the Warlocks were keeping the snipers busy with their energy beams.

Stephanie reached over her shoulder, took hold of the stick. It buzzed lightly in her hand. She took another look at the Wretchlings. They were getting close. A few sorcerers were trying to cut the energy ropes with no success. Others still hit the ropes with their swords, trying to dislodge the dozens of Wretchlings running up each of them. It was no use. And then the Wretchlings were upon them.

One of them scrambled over the wall in front of Stephanie. The first thing to hit her was the stench – rotting meat and putrefaction. The second was his fist – a blistered thing of mismatched knuckles. She used the stick to hit him back in a burst of blue light, then turned to the battlement as another Wretchling crawled up. She jabbed him in the throat and then pushed, forcing him backwards. He screamed and vanished and she turned again, ducked a curved sword that whistled for her head. The Wretchling came forward, slashing wildly, his face contorted with hatred. She blocked clumsily, giving ground, then lunged. But he sidestepped, the hilt of the sword crunching against her head.

She fell, biting her tongue, the world spinning around her, but her mind staying alert enough to curse herself. She rolled, the sword slicing across her side, but unable to get through her jacket. The Wretchling jabbed at her and stabbed at her and finally it occurred to him that maybe he should try going for the part of her that wasn’t swathed in black. Stephanie blocked a slash at her head and swung for his body, but the curved blade parried the stick and took it from her hand. She dived on him, fingers clawing at his face. His flesh was clammy and soft, like ripe fruit. They staggered against the railing and she bit his neck, gagged on the foulness, and jammed her thumb in his eye. He screeched and pulled away and she shoved at the same time and he flipped backwards over the railing, falling to the streets below.

The Wretchlings were everywhere now, their swords clashing with the scythes of the Cleavers. Sorcerers took them on hand to hand when they had to, but ranged magic was preferred. Stephanie wiped her mouth and returned her stick to its place between her shoulder blades, then took the Sceptre from her bag. Black lightning flashed and a Wretchling who was just scrambling over the wall turned to dust, and the wind snatched that dust away in a swirling mass. The Sceptre fired again and again, Wretchlings exploding like 2,000-year-old clay pots being dropped from a great height. Three more Wretchlings, bursting dryly apart, and then from the clouds of dust came a fourth, running straight at her.

He took her off her feet and she lost the Sceptre before she even hit the ground. He kicked her and she rolled, then scrambled, grabbed him, got her legs under her even as he was trying to get free and she stood, heaving him on to her shoulders with a roar, and ran for the battlements. She hit them and he toppled off her and over the top, his scream quickly fading.

Strong fingers grabbed her, turned her towards the hot breath of a Wretchling, who punched at her quickly but ineffectively. She looked down, realised he had a small triangular knife in his fist that was searching for weak points. She grabbed his wrist, held on, feeling the skin shift beneath her grip, but his other hand was on her face, fingers digging into her eyes. She turned away and the fingers came after her. One of them strayed too close to her mouth and she bit down, heard the crunch of bone and felt the spurt of hot blood, and then the Wretchling was wrenched away from her. A sorcerer had him round the throat, was hauling him to the railing. The Wretchling twisted into him, plunged the knife into his gut half a dozen times in less than a second, and the sorcerer stumbled back and the Wretchling pushed him, and he fell screaming to the city below.

Stephanie grabbed her stick, ran at him. The Wretchling blocked her swing and snarled. She spat a mouthful of his own blood back into his face and kicked his knee, and then she slammed her stick into his head. The sigils weren’t glowing any more. It was out of charge. She hit him again and again, knocking him out the old-fashioned way. He collapsed and she fought the urge to throw up.

She pushed aside a dead Cleaver and pulled the Sceptre from beneath his body, then returned to the battlements. There weren’t as many ropes as before. As she watched, one of them went from white to grey, and then it faded altogether. The handful of Wretchlings who were halfway up fell, howling, to the ground. The other ropes started to fade. There were no more Wretchlings climbing them.

When the last rope had faded, the Warlocks retreated, and a cheer went up along the wall. Victory.

Stephanie took a look at the dead and the dying. She looked at lifeless sorcerers and lifeless Wretchlings and still Cleavers, and the damage done by all that white energy. Her hip bled from where that knife had nicked her. Her right shoulder was on fire – torn muscles from when she’d lifted that Wretchling. She tasted blood. Some of it was her own. Some of it wasn’t.

The Warlocks’ first attack and they’d repelled it. Victory indeed.

She was assigned a room with a bed and a shower. She washed, groaning with aches and pains, and when she was done she went down for something to eat. Skulduggery came to see her as she sat alone. Stephanie looked up, but didn’t say anything, waited for him to start.

“I heard you saved a few lives,” he said.

“That’s what we do, isn’t it?”

“It’s what myself and Valkyrie do. You kill defenceless girls.”

She nodded. “I’m not arguing with you any more.”

“I’m sorry?”

She took another bite, chewed and swallowed. “I get that you hate me. Of course you hate me. I’ve done horrible things. Not as many horrible things as Valkyrie, but still … But that’s not why you hate me. You hate me because I’m not her. And it’s fine, if you want to continue like that. Then whenever you hear that I’ve done something good or nice, you can pretend to be surprised, because everyone knows you think I’m nothing but the evil version of Valkyrie.

“But I’m not the evil version of Valkyrie.
Valkyrie
is the evil version of Valkyrie. And now that I’m real, now that I’m a real person, I’m not going to hurt any more innocent people. Can she say the same?”

“I’m going to get her back.”

“How? You have no idea, do you? You’re terrified that the next time you see her you’ll have to kill her, because you’ll have no other choice. So you can say all the mean things you want. It doesn’t bother me. You’re just scared.”

Skulduggery’s head tilted, and he looked at her for the longest time before turning, and walking away.

She woke to shouts and sat up in the dark, her hand finding the Sceptre and holding it out in front of her. The shouts continued and she threw back the covers, jammed her feet into her boots. She searched around for her jacket, pulled it on, made sure the stick was in place. As she walked to the door, she pulled the bag over one shoulder. She stepped out, saw four figures walking up the street towards her, and she went cold.

Wraiths.

orrible freaky things came through the darkness and the Dark and Stormy Knight pulled on his mask and prepared for battle. There were screams in the distance, and flashes of light and gunfire. Then more screams.

The Dark and Stormy Knight would not scream. The Dark and Stormy Knight was this city’s protector. Was it the one it needed? No. But it was the one it deserved.

He crept out from hiding, approaching one of these sinister figures from behind, and then he leaped, wrapping an arm round the figure’s throat.

Even as he applied the stranglehold, he could feel the terrible heat from the figure’s skin seeping through the thin fabric of his skintight top. But he ignored the pain and tightened his hold. Pain meant nothing. Pain was transitory. Pain would fade. Only justice was forever. Justice and a little bit of this pain. Oh, this pain. Oh, this hot, hot pain, pushing everything else from his mind. But only a few more seconds. He just needed to hang on for a few more seconds.

The Dark and Stormy Knight released the stranglehold and staggered away, yelping as he shook his arm to cool it down. The figure turned to him slowly, as if it had just noticed him.

“Back-up!” he screeched. “Where is my back-up?”

The Village Idiot thundered into view, head down and arms out, yelling a war cry. He crunched into the figure from behind and folded like a cheap accordion. Useless. Then Grandmaster Ping arrived.

“Ping!” said the Dark and Stormy Knight. “You go low, I go high!”

“I have a new strategy,” Ping called out. “Run away.”

And that’s just what Grandmaster Ping did.

The Dark and Stormy Knight stared at him as he vanished into the shadows, then the figure obstructed his view and he stepped back, cornered. His mouth was suddenly dry. All his dreams, all his stupid ideas about being a hero, about being one of the good guys, none of it meant anything. He’d failed. He was a joke. They were right to laugh. He pulled the mask away. If he was going to die, he was going to die as Vaurien Scapegrace, a proud man in a proud woman’s body, not as some pathetic joke.

The figure reached for him and a golden stream of energy hit it, sent it staggering. Sheriff Dacanay and another man strode towards them. The other man fired again, hitting the figure in the chest, driving it back, and then Dacanay raised his hand and a stream of purple energy burrowed a hole through the figure’s head. It keeled over and didn’t get up.

Scapegrace let out the breath he’d been holding, his legs almost collapsing beneath him.

“Interesting,” Dacanay said, standing over the figure’s body. “You can hurt it, but I can kill it.”

His companion nodded. “Must be something to do with the power level of your energy. I’ll spread the word.”

He took off, and Dacanay looked at Scapegrace. “You again. It might be best if you stayed indoors tonight. We got a wraith infestation to deal with and we can’t afford to have civilians running around. It’s a sure-fire way to get yourself killed.”

Scapegrace nodded quickly. “OK.”

“You might want to pick up your boyfriend while you’re at it.”

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

“Well, whatever he is, he can’t just lie around on the street like that. It’s a public safety issue.”