Skulduggery Pleasant: Kingdom of the Wicked

by Derek Landy

  They stood there, the three of them, all friends, in awkward silence.

  “We should get going,” Fletcher said. “I grabbed her just as she was about to take the muffins out of the oven.”

  Valkyrie looked at Myra. “You make muffins?”

  “Not very well,” Myra said. “I used to make them with my mum all the time. It’s such an old person thing to do, isn’t it? Make muffins?” She laughed. “Anyway, it was so good to meet you, Valkyrie.”

  “Good to meet you, too.”

  Myra smiled, and Fletcher gave her that grin that used to make Valkyrie’s heart beat faster, and then they both vanished.

  “Well,” Valkyrie said aloud, “that sucks.”

  lsie O’Brien wasn’t a brave girl. She wasn’t an especially bright girl, or an especially talented girl, and she definitely wasn’t an especially pretty girl. But these things she already knew about herself. These were the honest, inescapable facts that formed the basis of who she was. As for bravery, she’d never given it a second thought. She’d more or less assumed that she’d be the type of person to do the right thing in a bad situation, but here she was, trailing from bad situation to bad situation with no idea what the right thing to do was any more.

  Kitana and Doran certainly didn’t know. They were lost. They were drunk on this power they’d been given. There was no hope for them. She didn’t know if there was any hope for her, either, but she didn’t much care about that. The only person she cared about was Sean, but he was slipping away every day, becoming more like the others.

  “Keep up,” Kitana said, and Elsie dutifully trotted along after them a little faster. All she wanted to do was turn and run. But she didn’t. She kept following, because that’s what she did. She was a follower.

  They got to Doran’s house. His dad was out. His mum was gone, having abandoned the family years ago. Doran never talked about it and Elsie had never asked. Not that he’d have answered her if she had. When Doran was ready, they went inside, into the living room, where his older brother was playing a video game.

  “Hey, Tommy,” said Doran.

  Tommy looked around. His scowl turned nonchalant when he saw Kitana. She had a habit of making guys act differently.

  “Hey,” he said, sitting a little straighter.

  Doran was trying not to grin, and doing a really bad job of it. “What’s the game like? Is it good? Are you good at it? Are you good at playing your little video game?”

  Tommy put the controller on the coffee table and slowly stood up. “What’s this?” he asked. “Acting tough in front of your friends? You weren’t so tough last week when I twisted your arm so much you started crying, were you?”

  Whatever reaction Tommy was expecting, a wider grin was not it.

  “No, I wasn’t,” said Doran. “Wasn’t nearly as tough as I am now, big brother. You want to try that again?”

  Tommy’s eyes flickered to Kitana, then back to Doran. “You really want that? You really want me to embarrass you in front of your girlfriend?”

  “Oh, I’m not his girlfriend,” Kitana said sweetly. “I prefer older men. What age are you, Tommy?”

  “Twenty,” he said, squaring his shoulders.

  “Twenty,” Kitana breathed. “That’s the perfect age for me.”

  Tommy had a grin of his own now, and he looked back at Doran. “Why don’t the rest of you run along? Kitana, you want to hang out for while?”

  “Actually,” said Kitana, “I’d really like to go somewhere private. Maybe go for a drive.”

  Doran laughed so suddenly it was like a gunshot. “Yeah, Tommy,” he said. “Take her for a drive. Take her for a drive in your car. How is your car, anyway? Is it in good shape? Is it roadworthy? Have you seen it lately?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Your car,” Doran said, laughing again. “Have you seen it in, say, the last few minutes?”

  Tommy frowned. “You better not have done anything to it.”

  Doran shrugged. Tommy barged past him on his way to the window. Doran stumbled back against the wall, still laughing.

  Elsie didn’t need to look out of the window to know what Tommy was seeing. He was seeing his prized car – the car he had so lovingly restored – dismantled and in pieces in the driveway. He was seeing the dissected engine and the sheared body and the shredded tyres. He was seeing what it had taken Doran five minutes to accomplish.

  Tommy sagged so quickly he had to grip the windowsill to stay upright. His eyes were wide, his mouth open. He had gone a dangerous shade of pale.

  Doran was doubled over he was laughing so hard. Tommy spun, face contorted with utter, utter hatred. He ran at his younger brother, fist arcing downwards to catch Doran full in the face. Doran fell back, still laughing. Tommy started lashing kicks in, and with every kick Doran would just laugh harder. Tommy straddled him, began raining down punches. Doran howled like he was being tickled.

  Finally, Tommy fell backwards, panting hard, upset and confused as Doran sat up like he hadn’t a care in the world.

  “Oh,” Doran said, wiping the tears from his eyes, “oh man, that was funny. The look on your face. I’m going to remember that for as long as I live.”

  He got to his feet without any hurry. Tommy scrambled up.

  Elsie felt sorry for Tommy. She didn’t like him, she never had. Any time she’d seen him he was beating up Doran, humiliating him in front of everyone out of some need to be seen as strong. Sometimes he beat him up just out of sheer meanness. Tommy wasn’t a nice guy at all, but she felt sorry for him all the same. He didn’t have the first idea what was going on or what he was dealing with.

  Tommy shoved Doran again. “What did you do to my car?”

  “Same thing I’m going to do to you,” said Doran, grabbing him.

  And just like he had pulled apart the body of the car with his bare hands, he pulled apart poor Tommy’s body.

  By the time Doran was done, Sean was so still and so pale he looked dead. Kitana laughed as Elsie hurried from the room. She burst out of the back door and threw up in the garden. Tears ran down her face but her mind was strangely calm. Despite the horror of what she had just witnessed, her thoughts were clear.

  There was a low wall at the other end of the garden. Elsie climbed over it and walked away. She didn’t bother running. It’d be another half an hour before they even noticed she was gone.

  emember that sorcerer who went missing?”

  Valkyrie raised her head off the pillow even as she woke. For a moment she didn’t know where she was, then she recognised the house on Cemetery Road and blinked a few times before croaking out, “Who?”

  “Patrick Xebec,” Skulduggery said, standing in the morning sunlight that streamed in through the window. “The Elemental who went missing. He was passing through Monkstown when he saw those energy streams in the sky. Michael Delaney, the poor chap who was torn apart in his own living room, lived in Woodside. That’s practically next door to Monkstown.”

  Valkyrie sat up, bleary-eyed. “So the lights in the sky have something to do with whoever killed Michael Delaney.”

  “And probably something to do with whoever killed this latest victim.”

  “There’s another one?”

  “In Ballinteer. Wheels up in fifteen.”

  He left the room and Valkyrie sighed, swung her legs out of bed. She took a quick shower, dressed, and Skulduggery had a bowl of cereal waiting for her when she emerged. When she had first visited his house, all those years ago, every room had been a living room. Now she had her own bedroom, there was a bathroom with a huge shower and a kitchen with a fully-stocked fridge. Sometimes she wondered how much money she’d cost him with her insistence on refurbishment, then realised she didn’t much care. Money wasn’t a big deal to someone like Skulduggery.

  By the time they were both in the Bentley, her wits had woken up, too.

  They arrived at the house in Ballinteer. As usual, there were Cleavers disguised as Guards makin
g sure no one got too close. Philomena Random was talking to a news crew that had arrived. By the time Valkyrie got out of the Bentley, the news crew were packing up and heading away without filming a single frame.

  Valkyrie let Skulduggery go inside. She didn’t need to see any more blood. She waited at the door until he came back out.

  “Same killer?” she asked.

  “The method is different but the result’s the same,” he said. “This one was done by hand. The victim was thrown about the place like a rag doll. Plenty of footprints. Sloppy. Angry. Sadistic.”

  “Does that mean we have two killers?”

  “If this murder is connected to the others, then I think we have at least two people working here, maybe more. This has all the hallmarks of a gang urging each other on. Each murder is more savage than the one before. Each time it gets more personal.”

  “Any idea why there’s a car spread out like a jigsaw in the driveway?”

  “None whatsoever.”

  “We have to find the link between the victims,” Valkyrie said. “What was his name?”

  “Thomas Purcell. Tommy. Twenty years old. Apprentice electrician. Mother absent, father works the nightshift, isn’t home from work yet. Younger brother Doran, seventeen.”

  “Maybe he could help us,” Valkyrie said. “If Tommy had any enemies, anyone who’d want to hurt him, his brother ought to know, right?”

  “Maybe. That is if his brother is in any fit state to talk.”

  “Is he here?”

  “Geoffrey’s talking to him in the garage. See if he can be of any help. I’ll take a look around outside.”

  Valkyrie nodded, walked to the garage and looked in. Geoffrey Scrutinous was sitting on a crate talking to a boy dressed in baggy jeans and a hoody. Geoffrey’s hair was its usual wild and frizzy self, but he looked exhausted. These last few weeks had seen him rushing all around the country, convincing people they hadn’t seen what they thought they’d seen.

  “You can feel yourself calming down,” Geoffrey said. “You’re calm and you’re clear. Oh, hello, Valkyrie. Valkyrie Cain, this is Doran Purcell. Doran lost his brother today.”

  “I’m very sorry,” Valkyrie said.

  Doran looked up at her. Geoffrey’s routine had worked wonders. Doran looked remarkably calm.

  “It’s OK,” he said. “Thank you.”

  “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

  Doran smiled. “You’re my age. What are you doing, acting the detective?”

  “I just want to talk to you, see if you can help us find out who did this terrible thing.”

  “Right,” said Doran. “Terrible. Yeah. Sure, ask away.”

  “Thank you. Do you know who might have wanted to hurt your brother?”

  Doran nodded. “Oh, yeah. Yeah, I got a good idea. Everyone who ever met him.”

  Valkyrie blinked. “I’m sorry?”

  “My brother was a tool. He was a bully. He’d bully whoever he could get away with bullying. He had loads of enemies. Everyone wanted to hurt him. I’m telling you, there’ll be a load of happy people today once this gets out.”

  “Are you happy, Doran?”

  “Me? No. He may have been a bully but he was still my brother.”

  “Did he ever bully you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That must have been tough.”

  A shrug.

  “Do you know who did this?”

  “No. I got home late last night, came in the back door, went straight up to bed.”

  “Do you have any suspects?”

  “Like I said, he had lots of enemies. Could have been anyone.” A sliver of a smile played across his mouth, so quick Valkyrie wasn’t sure she’d actually seen it. “You know who it could have been?” he asked, leaning forward. “Mark Boyle. He was Tommy’s best friend, ever since they were little. Boyle was as bad as Tommy. They might have had an argument about something, and it got out of hand.”

  “It got out of hand?” Valkyrie said doubtfully. “Doran, have you actually seen your brother’s body?”

  “What there is left of it, yeah.”

  “And how do you think Mark Boyle would have done that?”

  “I dunno. Knife? Maybe a chainsaw.”

  “That’s a possibility,” Valkyrie said. “Listen, will you be OK here for a moment? I’ll have to start a search for Mark Boyle. If he’s running, we’ll have to act fast.”

  “Go get him,” Doran said.

  Valkyrie walked out, approached Skulduggery.

  “I think we have our killer,” she said quietly.

  Skulduggery’s false eyes flickered over her shoulder, looking back at Doran.

  “He might be in shock,” Valkyrie said, “so I might be reading this completely wrong, but he’s practically dancing with joy now that his brother’s dead. He also smells of soap.”

  “He’d need to have a shower to wash off all that blood,” Skulduggery murmured. “Then it’s another one of Argeddion’s infections, you think?”

  “Only this time the mortal with the magic is a psychopath.”

  “It was bound to happen. We can’t take him down here. Someone that powerful, it’d be too unpredictable in a public place. We need to get him isolated.”

  “What’ll we do?”

  “Let him go, and follow him. Hopefully, he’ll lead us to his accomplices. We’ll assemble a team, take them all down at once, and no one needs to get hurt.”

  “What a lovely plan.”

  “Thank you.”

  “How likely is it to actually work?”

  “With our luck? Not very.”

  Three hours later, her arms were folded and her brow was furrowed. “I hate this car.”

  Skulduggery dropped into a lower gear. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “It’s orange.”

  “But a nice shade.”

  “It’s horrible. It’s an Orange-mobile. We’re driving around in an Orange-mobile trying to be inconspicuous.”

  “We are being inconspicuous,” Skulduggery said. “The Bentley, while the height of good taste in and of itself, is not suited to tailing somebody. This car, with its thoroughly unexceptional bodywork and engine capacity, blends in with the other cars on the road.”

  “Blends in?” Valkyrie repeated, looking around them. “Do you see any other orange cars out there? Do you? I don’t. This doesn’t blend in, it sticks out.”

  “And yet instantly fades from memory.”

  “I doubt it’ll fade from my memory,” she grumbled.

  “Has Doran Purcell noticed us yet? No, he hasn’t. Do you know why? Because the people he passes are not pointing at a beautiful black Bentley as it follows him slowly up the street. You should learn to appreciate the unexceptional, Valkyrie.”

  “But why does the unexceptional have to be such an awful colour?”

  He shrugged. “It amuses me.”

  Doran Purcell walked into a café, and the Orange-mobile pulled in to the side of the road.

  “I could do with some coffee,” Valkyrie murmured.

  “He might be meeting someone in there.”

  “I’ll check,” she said, reaching for the door handle.

  “He knows you,” Skulduggery said. A fresh face covered his head. “He doesn’t know me. Stay here.”

  “Get me a coffee.”

  “No.”

  “Get me one.”

  He got out, crossed the road and entered the café. Valkyrie yawned, turned on the radio. An Imelda May song was playing – ‘Big Bad Handsome Man’. Valkyrie started singing along. She’d just got to the bit about his rugged good looks when Skulduggery came crashing out through the café window.

  Valkyrie cursed, slid over to the driver’s seat, started up the car and swerved out on to the road. Skulduggery staggered to his feet, ignoring the shocked looks from the people around him. Doran Purcell and two others – a boy and a girl – stepped out through the broken window behind him, grinning.

  Valkyrie snapped h
er palm against the air, shattering the glass on the passenger side door. She sped past him and Skulduggery lunged at the car, using the air to take him to the window. He slid in and a stream of sizzling energy took out the wing mirror. Valkyrie cursed again, glanced in the rear-view and saw the three teenagers step into the middle of the road. The girl raised her arm and there was a flash of light and the car flipped and the world tilted and spun, then the car hit the road and flipped forward again. Everything blurred and roared.

  When the world quietened down, the car was on its side and Valkyrie was in the back seat with blood in her mouth. She’d bitten her tongue.

  Skulduggery’s false face came into view. “Are you OK?” he asked, his voice distant.

  She murmured, and nodded. Her clothes had absorbed the multiple impacts.

  “We need to get out,” Skulduggery said. “Move, Valkyrie. Now.”

  She turned over, noticing the pieces of glass embedded in her blood-drenched hand. Just cuts. Painful but not serious. She crawled out through the open door, on to the road. Her head ached. It buzzed. Doran Purcell and his friends were approaching, walking up the middle of the road, laughing to each other. Skulduggery appeared beside her, gun in hand. He fired, and the boys went to run but the girl stopped them. She gazed at the air, which had turned a hazy shade of blue – a protective bubble to keep the bullets out. The girl giggled.

  Skulduggery grabbed Valkyrie, dragged her behind the wreck of the car. She heard him fire again. She made herself sit up. Gunfire and energy blasts in the middle of the day in the middle of the street. She saw the faces of the people as they hid and peeked. She took a deep breath.

  “Valkyrie,” Skulduggery said. “I need you with me.”

  “I’m here,” she said. She risked a glance around the bonnet, then ducked back to avoid an energy stream.

  Skulduggery shook his head. “We need to get away. People are going to get hurt. If we’re gone, they’ll stop attacking.”

  “Can you fly us?”

  “We’d be an easy target in the air. We have to break their line of sight first. Can you run?”

  “I’m fine, I’m good.”

  “Well, OK then.”

  There was a boarded-up bookshop next to them. Skulduggery put his gun away and snapped his palms against empty space. The air rippled and the boards exploded inwards. He clicked his fingers, summoning flame.