Skulduggery Pleasant: Mortal Cole (22 page)

F
inbar Wrong was curled up in the corner, with the wooden shutters on the windows closed. It was dark, and the place was quiet. Wreath had been forced to break the lock to get into the tattoo parlour. He’d moved quietly through the ground floor, then came upstairs, cane in hand. He didn’t know what use Necromancy would be against a Remnant in its true form, but it was better than nothing.

He’d spotted Finbar the moment he’d stepped in, and he’d been watching the psychic rock back and forward with his
head down for three minutes. Every now and then, Finbar would mutter something. Wreath was now using his cane only to lean on. The Remnant wasn’t here any more.

“Finbar,” Wreath said. He got a mumble in reply. He repeated himself, louder this time, and Finbar looked up.

“Who’s that?” Finbar asked.

“Solomon Wreath. You know me.”

Finbar nodded. “I know you. Yes. You’re a Necromancer.”

“That’s right.”

“What do you want? I’m very…” Finbar stood up and straightened his T-shirt. “I’m very busy.”

“The sign on the door said closed.”

Finbar shook his head. “Never trust a door; they’ll always lie to you. Mr Wreath, I don’t want to be rude to someone as scary as you, but I don’t tattoo Necromancers. It’s a policy I have, that I came up with just there.”

“Finbar, what do you remember about the last few days?”

Finbar frowned. “Why d’you ask? The fact that you asked means there’s something I obviously don’t remember. What is it?”

“What
do
you remember?”

“I remember… I had a vision of something. A person. Dressed all in black.”

“Yes. Do you remember their face?”

“It’s… It’s hazy… Yes. I do.”

“Who was it?” asked Wreath. “Who did you see?”

Finbar’s eyes widened. “I saw
you
.”

“What?”

“I saw you, coming in here and threatening me and… and doing something…”

Wreath sighed. “That was two days ago.”

“It was?”

“You had that vision two days ago, so you sent your wife and child away and waited around to see if I’d turn up.”

“And here you are,” Finbar said dramatically.

“Actually, this is my second visit. I was here two days ago, and I’m here again.”

Finbar frowned. “Did I hit you with a cushion?”

“So you
do
remember. Do you remember anything about what you did afterwards?”

“Why should I tell you?”

“Believe it or not, Finbar, I’m here to help. I think Valkyrie Cain is in danger, and if you can remember what happened to you over the past two days, I hope to be able to stop something bad from happening to her.”

Finbar looked at him, like he was trying to make up his
mind whether to trust him or not. Surprisingly, he decided to give it a go. “I remember this morning,” he said. “Or maybe it was yesterday. I locked the door and came up here. I think I’ve been to the toilet a few times. And had some tea.”

“And before that?”

“I… I, uh… I don’t know, it’s hazy… I think I was in a forest. I woke up, and there were all these trees, and I started walking. I’m not sure. I’ve been having these awful, awful headaches.”

“What forest?”

“Don’t know. I walked out, and someone stopped to give me a lift. I couldn’t see straight. The headaches, you know? I’m seeing… stuff.”

“Visions?”

“Or nightmares. Can’t tell. I think something went wrong. With me. In my head, like.”

Wreath had no way of knowing if the damage the Remnant had done was permanent. Some doors, once opened, can never truly be closed. He looked at this skinny man with the tattoos and the crumpled T-shirt and felt sorry for him.

“What are you seeing?” he asked.

“I really don’t know. It’s too confused. It’s not nice, I’ll tell you that much. What kind of danger?”

“I’m sorry?”

“What kind of danger is Valkyrie in?”

“I don’t know yet. I want to find out more before I tell her, though.”

“You should talk to the Skul-man about it,” said Finbar.

“Yes,” Wreath said. “Maybe I will. Finbar, thanks for your help. And I’m sorry about the headaches.”

“Me too.”

Wreath left him and walked down the stairs, but when he opened the door there was something waiting for him.

N
obody likes zombies.

That was the lesson Valkyrie was learning. They’d been scouring the city, looking for Scapegrace and Thrasher, and everyone they talked to made a face whenever the Z-word was mentioned. Noses were wrinkled in disgust, like the word brought with it a bad smell. Those who knew anything, anything in the slightest, were more than happy to share that information. Nobody clammed up, nobody refused to answer questions, and nobody demanded anything in return. Zombies, it
seemed, were not afforded the same street code as other criminals and killers.

“I know them,” a notoriously tight-lipped sorcerer named Tarr had said. “One of them talks big and the other one agrees with everything he says. They the two you’re looking for? Yeah, I know them. They’re living out of a refrigerated truck that’s got two flat tyres. It’s parked a couple of streets over.”

They found the truck where Tarr said it would be. As they approached, they saw two men walking towards them from the other direction. When the men saw them, they stopped, spun, and proceeded to slip and slide on the icy pavement in a manic effort to get away. Skulduggery and Valkyrie strolled up to them.

“Hello, Vaurien,” Skulduggery said.

Spinning around again, and barely managing to stay on his feet, Scapegrace glared. “Why are you after us? We haven’t done anything wrong.”

“You’re zombies.”

“But we haven’t killed anyone.”

“Yes you have.”

“
Recently.
We haven’t killed anyone
recently.
”

“You told Tesseract where Skulduggery’s house was,” Valkyrie said.

Scapegrace shook his head. “No we didn’t.”

“Six sorcerers were killed in a Dublin bar,” said Skulduggery, “three nights ago. The one witness we found who would talk said that a big man in a metal mask took them apart, and afterwards he spoke with a pathetic little zombie who cowered and wailed. That was you, am I right?”

“No,” Scapegrace said. He pointed at Thrasher, who was grabbing a lamp post and pulling himself up off the ground. “It was him.”

“Oh,” Thrasher said.

“We’ve let you wander around,” Skulduggery said, “because we reasoned you’re not that big a threat. We didn’t think you’d be too eager to recruit more members, not after your little horde went crazy the last time. But now you have proven yourselves to be a nuisance the world could do without.”

“Spare my master!” Thrasher wailed. “End my life, but leave my master alone! I beg of you!”

“I agree with him,” Scapegrace said.

Thrasher jumped between Skulduggery and Scapegrace. “Master, run! I’ll hold them off!”

“You couldn’t hold off a sneeze,” Scapegrace muttered.

“But I’ll die trying!”

Thrasher lunged at Skulduggery, who pushed him towards Valkyrie, who stepped sideways and tripped him as he passed.

“OK,” Scapegrace said nervously, “how about a deal?”

Skulduggery took out his gun. “What could you possibly offer us?”

“Information.”

“About what?”

“About things. Things on the street. Secret things. Dark things.”

“Such as?”

“Well, I… I don’t know any right
now.
I mean, we’d have to go undercover for you. We’d be your spies, going places you could never go.”

“I don’t really think you’d be very good at that,” said Skulduggery.

“OK, OK then, how about you making us your back-up? You could have a secret army of zombies—”

“There are only two of you.”

“You could have a secret zombie duo as your back-up, ready at any moment to respond to your call. We could be part of your team, saving the world, beating the bad guys…”

“I think you’d probably betray us. Or just be useless.”

“We wouldn’t be, I promise.” Scapegrace looked like he was going to start crying. “Please. You can’t kill me.”

Skulduggery raised the gun. “You’re already dead.”

“Not really. Not properly dead. I can still do things. I can still think.”

“You won’t even know what’s happened.”

“But… but I want to stay. I’m sorry, all right? I’m sorry for all the bad things I’ve done. Valkyrie, I’m sorry for trying to kill you all those times. Please, don’t let him… don’t let him do this.”

He looked at her with his dull eyes, his burnt face slack and rotting, and for a moment he reminded her of a dead dog by the side of the road. “Skulduggery,” she said, “we can’t kill him.”

Skulduggery’s gun-hand didn’t waver. “And why not?”

“Look at him. It would be different if he was attacking us, but… he’s not.”

Scapegrace held up his hands. “See? I’m not attacking anyone. And neither is Thrasher. Are you, Thrasher?”

Thrasher sat up. “I think I bit off a piece of my tongue.”

“We don’t want to hurt anyone,” Scapegrace said. “We just want to be normal again. I want to live. I want be alive.”

Skulduggery lowered the gun, but didn’t put it away. “Impossible.”

“No, not impossible. There’s a doctor who can help us. Kenspeckle Grouse.”

“And why do you think Kenspeckle can help you?”

“Dreylan Scarab talked about him. He said he was the best in the world. If anyone can help us, he can. Do you know him? Do you think he would help us? Could you set up an appointment?”

“You really want to change?”

“Yes. God, yes. I hate being like this. I just want another chance.”

“Please,” Thrasher said. “It’s Christmas.”

“He has a point,” said Valkyrie.

Skulduggery looked at her. “
‘It’s Christmas’
is not an argument. It’s not a reason. It’s just a statement of the obvious.”

“But this
is
the season of forgiveness.”

Skulduggery holstered his gun. “Fine. You want us to take these two to Professor Grouse, we’ll take them. If he can’t do anything for them, we destroy their brains. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“I’m not sure I like that,” Scapegrace murmured.

Valkyrie smiled. “I don’t care.”

*    *    *

Thrasher yelped in anguish as a piece of his ear was cut off. Kenspeckle muttered something, probably telling him not to be a baby, as he carefully laid the piece of ear on a Petri dish. Valkyrie stood outside, looking in through the transparent door.

Kenspeckle turned to Scapegrace. “Sit up on the bed,” he ordered, his voice coming through the speaker on the corridor wall. Scapegrace did what he was told, but as the scalpel moved towards his left ear, the ear fell off. Scapegrace looked embarrassed. Kenspeckle examined the ear.

“Is this glue?”

Scapegrace nodded, a little sheepishly.

“And these small holes here – piercings?”

“Staples.”

Kenspeckle sighed, put the ear on a second Petri dish, and left the room. The door slid shut behind him. He joined Valkyrie.

“Well?” she asked. “Can you cure them?”

“I don’t know yet. Theoretically, yes. Zombies were an accident – much like champagne and penicillin, but much less welcome. Necromancers weren’t working on a way to turn people into shambling pieces of unintelligent rot—”

“Hey,” said Scapegrace from the other room.

“—they were trying to return the dead to full life. This is as
far as they got. Not complete and utter failure, but look at them – they’re not exactly a roaring success either.”

“I resent that,” Scapegrace said.

“The question is, can I take what the Necromancers have done and go further? Can I complete the resurrection with my own brand of science-magic? That’s what intrigues me. Then there are all the variables. Can I reverse the decomposition? Can I return the body to its natural state? Can I reverse brain death?”

“My brain isn’t dead,” Scapegrace said angrily. “It’s sleeping.”

“All together, a fascinating proposition. Thank you for bringing it to my attention, Valkyrie.”

“My pleasure. I’d keep this door locked, though, if I were you.”

“I intend to.”

Scapegrace jumped off the bed, looking startled. “What? What was that? I’ve got to stay in the same room as
him?
”

Thrasher did his best not to look wounded.

“This will not do,” Scapegrace insisted. “We are not prisoners, we are guests. And as such, I demand separate rooms.”

“You are my patients,” Kenspeckle said, “and you will do
what I tell you. Mr Scapegrace, how much time had passed from the moment you were brought back as a zombie to the moment you infected Gerald here?”

“His name is Thrasher.”

“I refuse to call him that. How long, Mr Scapegrace?”

“I don’t know,” Scapegrace scowled. “Two hours, maybe three.” He jabbed a finger at Thrasher. “And you – don’t get used to being called that ridiculous name.”

Thrasher hung his head.

“Three hours,” Kenspeckle murmured.

“Why is that important?” Valkyrie asked.

“It very possibly isn’t important in the slightest, but as usual I have my theories, and now seems to be an excellent time to test them.”

Scapegrace stalked up to the door. “Concentrate on curing me, OK? That’s the only reason we came to you. That’s your only purpose. Drop everything and focus on bringing me back to life.”

Valkyrie raised an eyebrow at him. “Before anything important falls off?”

Scapegrace glared, and Thrasher cleared his throat and looked down at his shoes.

“And what about you?” Kenspeckle asked, glancing at
Valkyrie. “How are you going to spend the rest of the day, while I conduct tests on dead people? Are you going to be fighting? Running? Chasing?”

“Dancing,” she said with a smile. “I’m going to be dancing.”

H
e could still her blood. He ran his tongue over his lips, liking the way it electrified his whole body. It was as if he had a pulse again, a working heart that beat in his chest. It was as if he was alive.