The Maleficent Seven (From the World of Skulduggery Pleasant) (8 page)

etting to Germany? Simple.

Finding Johann Starke’s house? Easy.

Breaking into said house? Not a problem.

Breaking into said house while remaining undetected? Surprisingly difficult.

Kneeling here on this highly polished floor with his hands up and half a dozen sickle blades aimed at his throat, Dexter Vex wasn’t exactly in the mood to look back over his plan to pick out the flaws, but he knew they were there, and that was the important thing. Hubris, he figured, was a killer.

“Mr Vex,” said Johann Starke, “I have to say, I am as surprised as I am disappointed. I would not have thought a man of your reputation would stoop so low as to engage in robbery.”

“Johann,” Vex said, giving him a smile, “there’s really no need for hostilities. Isn’t there somewhere we can talk?”

“We’re talking right here,” said Johann, “with you and your associates on your knees and very much under arrest.”

They were in a large circular room with glass walls. The sun came in through the trees that bordered the lake and the glare hit Vex right in the eyes. He risked a glance at the others. They were all calm – bemused but calm – with the possible exception of Wilhelm, who seemed to be quietly hyperventilating.

Johann walked between the Rippers that surrounded them. “Did you really think it would be so easy to steal the dagger?”

Vex frowned. “How did you know we were after the dagger?”

“Your associate is not as subtle as she thinks,” Johann said.

“I am
very
subtle,” Aurora responded, sounding offended. Then, “Wait, what do you mean?”

“Not you,” said Johann. “The pretty lady from last night.”

“This pretty lady,” said Vex, “she didn’t give a name, did she?”

“Please, don’t insult my intelligence.”

“There are plenty of things I’d insult before getting to your intelligence, Johann. Your beard for one. It looks like the beards of Fu Manchu and Ming the Merciless mated, and their bizarre mutant offspring crawled on to your face and died on your chin.”

Johann sighed. “A pretty brunette. French – though the accent may have been faked. You sent her here to gather information. Where exactly the dagger was, what security was in place, what safeguards I had set up...”

“That was tricky of me,” Vex murmured. “And when she had all this information?”

Johann shrugged. “She vanished, along with one of my Rippers. He is dead, I expect?”

“Sorry, Johann, I wouldn’t know. I have no idea who you’re talking about. I didn’t send her. I didn’t send anyone. If we were going to rob the dagger, we wouldn’t raise your suspicions by sending someone ahead of us.”

“So you’d just drop in unannounced,” Johann said, “like now.”

Vex shrugged. “OK, you got us. Yeah, we were going to borrow the dagger.”

“Borrow it?”

“Just for a little while. We were going to return it, honest we were. Just as soon as we used it to stop Darquesse.”

“Ah,” said Johann, “this notorious Darquesse person that has the Sensitives so nervous.”

“If she’s as powerful as everyone says she’s going to be, we’re going to need some serious weaponry to put her down. Your dagger is a powerful weapon.”

“And if you needed it so badly, why not go through official channels? Erskine Ravel and Ghastly Bespoke are on the Council of Elders in Ireland – you could have got your friends to ask for it.”

“Ah, now Johann, we both know that would have been a waste of time.”

“But why?” Johann asked, all innocence.

“Because your boss sits on the Supreme Council, and the Supreme Council isn’t all that happy with Ireland at the moment, now is it? So any formal request for the dagger would have been ignored.”

“So instead you decide to steal it?”

“Borrow it.”

“Taking without asking is stealing.”

“But stealing sounds so much worse than borrowing.”

“It does sound bad,” Johann admitted, “but I’m afraid I have no choice. I am a stickler for the rules. Once in custody, maybe we can negotiate with your Council for your release.”

“That’s not going to happen, Johann. Things are kind of tricky right now as far as this international intrigue goes. You don’t trust the Irish Sanctuary, they don’t trust you, everyone has ulterior motives for everything else... I just can’t be part of that. If you arrest us, you can use us as leverage against our friends.”

“And yet you have no choice,” said Johann. “You’re hardly going to resist, are you? You’re hardly going to use violence. Such a thing might be seen as a provocative act between Sanctuaries.”

“The Irish Council didn’t send us.”

“I wish I could believe you. But stockpiling powerful weapons sounds exactly like something Erskine Ravel would do before hostilities boiled over into all-out war.”

“Careful now, Johann. Don’t make this into something it’s not.”

Johann looked at the others. “I am giving you all an opportunity to co-operate,” he said. “Confessing now will go a long way to securing you an early release and a comfortable stay while in our cells. You have this one chance.”

Frightening didn’t say anything. Aurora remained unresponsive. Saracen looked bored. Only Wilhelm seemed like he was considering the offer. Vex raised an eyebrow at him.

“I don’t do well in confined spaces,” Wilhelm said weakly.

“You don’t do well in open spaces either,” Aurora reminded him.

Wilhelm shook his head. “I’m not cut out for prison. Look at me. They’d eat me alive in there. I’ve seen gaol cells where you have to go to the toilet in front of other people. I can’t do that. I have a shy bladder and anxious bowels.”

“Wilhelm,” said Johann, “what happened to you, my friend? You were once one of Deutschland’s brightest stars.”

“You told me I was rubbish when you fired me.”

“Was that you? Oh. Well still, it is disappointing to see you associating with a criminal rabble.”

“Now Johann,” said Saracen, “let’s not resort to name-calling. Who knows where that would lead? Why, in the heat of the moment I might be forced to remind you of some things you did in your wild and crazy youth, and then where would we be? One of us would be red-faced and embarrassed, and one of us would be me.”

Johann narrowed his eyes. “I know just the gaol cell for you, Mr Rue. I think you’ll really like it.”

“Maybe later. Right now, though, we have a job to do.”

“You are going nowhere. We have you, we have your colleagues, there is nothing—”

Vex laughed, and Johann returned his attention to him.

“Something is funny?”

“Something is funny, yes,” said Vex. “How many of the Dead Men were there, Johann? At any one time, how many of us were there?”

Johann took a moment before answering. “Seven,” he said.

“That’s right. Seven. A good number for any group of people, I’ve always thought. The Seven Samurai. The Magnificent Seven. Seven Dwarves.”

“Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,” Saracen added.

“Exactly,” said Vex. “Seven of them. And seven Dead Men. So why would you think that when it came time to lead my own little group of warriors, I’d only have five?”

“Very well,” said Johann, “so there are two more at large. We will find them and—”

“You don’t have to find them,” Frightening said. “They’ve found you.”

Johann frowned, then noticed the little red dots that were circling his chest. He stiffened.

“Did I tell you how much I love your glass walls?” Vex asked. “Because I really, really love them.”

“You would not dare give the order,” said Johann.

“It’s not my order to give,” said Vex. “They’ll take the shot if they think the mission’s compromised. We’re free agents, Johann, like I said. We’re not sanctioned by any Sanctuary. Killing you would be no act of war – it would be the simple removal of an obstacle. So, we’re going to walk out of here, because this mysterious woman has just changed everything for us. Up till now, I thought we had the luxury of time – obviously I was wrong. So you’re going to let us go, Johann, and then you’re going to take your dagger and hide it away in the deepest, darkest vault you can find, and when Darquesse turns up, you can hand it over to us and beg us to save you.”

One of the red dots was now on the tip of Johann’s nose.

“Stand down,” Johann said, and the Rippers put away their sickles. Vex and the others stood up.

“Thanks awfully,” said Vex. “We’d stay and chat, we really would, but apparently we’re in a race, and we’re already behind.”

retty cold air in Chicago, and that’s no mistake. London could be cold, too, could be freezing, but London didn’t have buildings as tall as Chicago’s.

Jack stood on the tallest he could find, his toes curled, toenails digging into the concrete to keep the winds from just blowing him off like a leaf from a tree. He pictured himself falling lightly, tossed and turned by that wind that was rushing around him, caught in its currents, ebbs and flows. He might even look graceful, falling like that. Course, he wouldn’t be looking quite so graceful when he hit the ground. Not nearly so graceful as a leaf from a tree, coming to a gentle stop on the pavement – or sidewalk, as they called it here. Nope, if Jack were snatched from this rooftop and fell all that way, no matter how gracefully he was falling or not, as the case may be, he’d still end up a splatted smear of red across grey.

Wouldn’t that be something, though? To go from who he was, what he was, whatever he was, to just the essence of him. At his essence, what was he? Blood and bone and cartilage and flesh. That’s how he’d end up, down there, after the fall. Blood and bone and cartilage and flesh all mushed together. The bones pulverised. The flesh burst. The cartilage crushed. The blood... everywhere.

What would they say, when he was gone? Would they pick at his remains, run them through a sieve of some sort to try and figure out what manner of creature he had been? Would they mourn the extinction of a species? Was he even a species? Does one specimen make a species?

One thing he knew – no one would mourn for him, for plain old Springheeled Jack. He had no friends to tell stories about him once he was gone, no family to remember him fondly. What legacy was he leaving behind? Dead bodies? There weren’t even any of those – not after he was done with them. Bloke’s got to eat, after all. He’d lived hundreds of years and all he had to show for it was a list nobody would ever compile of people who went out one evening and never returned home. He was leaving voids in his wake, patches of empty space where the missing people should have been. That was it. The grand total of his many years.

Jack adjusted his top hat and launched himself from the rooftop, the bright lights of the street blurring below him into streams of red and yellow, eclipsed by a broad expanse of darkness as the next building came to a stop beneath his feet. He danced up, as high as he could go, threw himself back and flipped, arms out and legs together, falling like a crucifix. He watched himself in the windows as he fell, then curled his body beneath him, and struck out, his feet slamming into the side of the building, propelling himself across the gap to the building on the other side. Fingers digging into the concrete, he stayed there for a moment, his eyes closed, listening to the pulse of the city. He could clean up in a place like Chicago. All these tall buildings. He could run and jump and spin and dance and kill and eat and live out his life here. Safe. Secure. Anonymous. And then he could die of old age and boredom, if the world hadn’t been destroyed by then.

Jack climbed to the top and sat on the edge, feet dangling.

What was the point, though? What was the point of living for all that time if you’d nothing to show for it? What was the point of living for all those years if you’d no one to share them with? Jack had never been one for self-delusion. He was aware of the facts of the matter, and the facts of the matter were that he was a hideous, hideous monster whom no one could ever love, and he was going to go through the rest of his physical existence alone. Simple as that. As simple and inescapable as that.

When he was a younger creature, he hadn’t worried about such things. He was a thing-about-town, cock of the walk, the Terror of London. He’d seen it all, done most of it, and what he hadn’t done he’d seen, so at least he knew what he was talking about. Back then, he hadn’t thought he’d ever reach the stage where he’d be perched on the side of a building feeling sorry for himself. But that’s youth. Youth’s stupid.

Jack wasn’t one for self-delusion, and neither was he one for denial. There was another fact of another matter, and it had been skirting the edges of his thoughts for a few days now. He hadn’t wanted to put it into words because he had wanted, foolishly, to retain some sort of personal dignity. But now he didn’t have a choice.

Like a schoolboy with his first crush, Jack reckoned that the little thief and confidence trickster Sabine was the best thing to ever happen in this wicked world, of which he had grown so tired and bored. Sabine was his spark. She was his light, his warmth. Her face made him smile, her smile made him giddy. When he was around her, all he wanted to do was look at her. When he wasn’t around her, all he wanted to do was talk about her. It was embarrassing. Humiliating, even. He’d have been angry with her if he didn’t fancy her so bloody much.

That morning, he’d found himself daydreaming. He had imagined an entire conversation where she had laughed at his jokes and hadn’t flinched at his touch. Ridiculous, childish daydreams, that nevertheless made him feel so nice, and so warm, and so hopeful. Sick, the whole affair was. Sick and wrong. He was a monster, and monsters didn’t have crushes on pretty girls. Thirty years old, he reckoned she was. Thirty years old, pretty as a picture. She had a pretty laugh, too. It lilted, like birdsong. It sounded especially pretty when she was laughing at something funny he had said in his daydream.

Jack stood, scowling at the city. Listen to him. Listen to the thoughts in his head. Was this any way for a grown monster to behave, especially one who had a job to do? That’s what he should be focusing on, not some random little skirt he’d taken a passing fancy to.

He slipped through the window that had been left open for him. Standing next to the door, hearing the voices on the other side, he did his best to smooth down his hair. Adopting a heavy-lidded nonchalance, Jack opened the door and sauntered in.

“Jackie Earl is the man who has the bow,” Tanith was saying to the others from her place at the head of the table. She glanced at him, but didn’t stop talking. “He’s been running organised crime in the city for almost fifteen years now, ever since he usurped the previous crime boss and his gang. Some of them were killed the old-fashioned way − bullet to the head, knife to the gut, garrotte to the throat... but some were found with arrows sticking out of them. Mr Earl may not be a sorcerer, but he knows power when he holds it in his hands.”

“So what makes the bow a God-Killer?” asked Sabine. What a question. What a wonderfully incisive question that had been, and no mistake. And then she added, “Does every arrow kill?” just to prove how sharp her mind was.

“That,” Tanith said, nodding, “and the fact that the arrow never misses.”

“Rarely misses,” Sanguine corrected.

Tanith sighed. “Fine. Rarely misses. It won’t turn a corner, but it’ll swerve a little in order to hit what you’re aiming at. That makes the bow the most dangerous of these weapons – you don’t even have to get up close.”

Jack had to say something. Sabine was the first one to ask a question so he
had
to say something now. If Dusk got in there before him, or Annis, he’d lose that connection. So he took his eyes off Sabine long enough to look at Tanith, and he said, “This Earl bloke, he’s obviously not shy about usin’ the bow should he need to. Makes him dangerous.”

“What’s a little danger to people like us?” Tanith responded, smiling. “Besides, we can deal with it. He sends one of
yours
to the hospital, you send one of
his
to the morgue.
That’s
the Chicago way.”

Jack and the others stared at her blankly.

“Oh, come on,” she said. “I can’t be the only one.”

Sanguine patted her shoulder. “It’s OK, honeybee. I get the reference.”

“We’re the only two? Seriously? OK, after all this is over, we’re having a movie night, and you all have to come.”

Dusk’s lip pulled back slightly. “I don’t do movie nights.”

“Fine,” Tanith said, “whatever. The rest of you. Bring your popcorn.”

“We should probably get back to the job,” Sanguine said.

“Right,” said Tanith, “yeah.” She put the forged bow on the table. “Sabine, can you work your mojo?”

Sabine took the weapon and closed her eyes, and her hands started to glow as she infused the thing with magic. Jack could have watched that all night.

“Jackie Earl is hidden away in his own private compound,” said Tanith, “guarded by security cameras, alarm systems and armed sentries.”

And another chance arose for Jack to impress Sabine. “Mortal sentries?” he asked.

“Mostly,” Tanith said. “He has a sorcerer on his staff, named Kaiven. A Necromancer.”

Jack made a face at Sabine. “Never liked them,” he said, but Sabine’s eyes were still closed so she totally missed it.

Tanith shrugged. “Ever since the Death Bringer failed to usher in the Passage, Necromancers around the world have either retreated into the safety of their Temples or left the Order and struck out on their own. From what I’ve heard, Kaiven offered his services to Earl and Earl gladly took him up on it.”

“So he has a Necromancer working for him,” Sabine said, opening her eyes and cutting straight through to the heart of the matter as usual. She handed the bow back to Tanith, who nodded approvingly. “Anyone else we should know about?”

“Nope,” said Tanith. “Not a one. Nothing.”

“Honey...” said Sanguine.

“Oh, yes, thank you, nearly forgot. We’ve heard he
may
have a vampire, too.”

Jack noticed Sabine going pale. Annis just kept chewing her hair. Only Dusk spoke.

“I cannot be a part of this.”

“Let’s not make any rash decisions,” Tanith said.

“Vampires are forbidden from killing other vampires. It is our most sacred code.”

“You don’t have to kill him,” Sanguine said. “You can just injure him a little. Cut off his arms and legs or something.”

Dusk stood. “You can retrieve the bow without my involvement. Contact me when you’re done.” He walked out.

Jack couldn’t resist. “So Dusk is missin’ out on
this
job because of his principles,” he said, “and he missed out on the
last
one because he’s rationin’ out his serum to keep his bitey side down durin’ the night... So what good is our little vampire to us
at all
, may I ask?”

“He provides moral support,” Tanith muttered, then she sat up straighter. “But that’s fine. We can’t let anything delay us. We have a little under sixty-five hours before the dagger loses its charge and Johann Starke realises he’s been robbed, so we are sticking to our timetable no matter what. I’m going after the bow. Billy-Ray is going to take care of Kaiven.”

“What about Sabine?” Jack asked. “I think she’s proven herself to be a valuable member of this team and I think she should be treated as such.”

Tanith frowned at him. “Uh, yeah, OK. Anyway, Sabine, you and Jack are going to run interference.”

“Us?” said Sabine.

Jack’s heart leaped. “We could do that,” he said, struggling to keep the excitement from his voice.

Tanith looked to Annis then. “And Annis... Annis is going to take down the vampire. Think you can handle that, Annis?”

Annis pulled a long grey hair from her mouth. “I’ve never eaten a vampire before,” she said.

Tanith grinned. “That’s the spirit. We move out now.”

“I’ll make my own way there,” announced Jack, and walked quickly from the room.

He slipped out of the window and leaped from building to building, trying to get rid of the smile on his face. Partnered with Sabine. It was almost too good to be true. It would have been foolish to read too much into it, but since he had a few miles to cover it was a good enough way to spend the time as any. So what did it mean? Did it mean that Tanith could see the partnership potential already? Could everyone see that? Did they look at Jack and look at Sabine and think to themselves,
Yep, those two are meant for each other
? It was like the Skeleton Detective and the Cain girl. People looked at them and said,
Now
that’s
a team
. Would they say the same about Sabine and Jack? The thought sent shivers of excitement through him as he ran and jumped and dived. They’d be just like Skulduggery Pleasant and Valkyrie Cain, then, but with added kissing.