by Derek Landy
Valkyrie focused on a shocked face staring at her. Poor Alan, frozen where he stood, probably vowing not to chat up another girl in a coffee shop ever again.
Still trying to get her breath back, Margaret grabbed Valkyrie’s leg, going for the ankle. Trying to find bare skin. There was a commotion, and then two men in luminous yellow jackets were there, pulling Valkyrie and Margaret to their feet. Guards.
Even as the Guard holding Valkyrie was telling everyone to just calm down, Margaret swung an elbow into her cop’s throat and ran, barging through the onlookers.
“I’m really sorry,” Valkyrie said as she turned and drove her knee between the legs of the cop holding her. He doubled over and she let him fall. The crowd parted for her as she hurried to the girl behind the counter. “Where are the security logs? I don’t have time to argue, just tell me where they are.”
“Backroom,” said the girl, her eyes wide. “To your left.”
Valkyrie rushed in, found the monitor hooked up to the CCTV. She clicked her fingers and fried the hard drive. Then she ran out into the street, scanning the faces of the people passing by until she saw Margaret’s scarf by an open door. Obviously a trap.
She crossed the street, passed through the door into what had once been a shop. Now it was just empty, with a ladder and a few tins of paint. There was a sound behind her and she turned. Margaret stepped in, a gun aimed directly at Valkyrie’s head.
“Do not raise your hands,” she said. “Keep them by your sides, away from your face. Those clothes of yours are bulletproof, I take it? Pretty fancy, but I suppose I should have expected that. Only the best for Skulduggery Pleasant’s favourite little pet.”
“Who are you?” Valkyrie asked, backing away slowly.
“You won’t care what my name is when you’re dead. I just want to say that I had planned to do this low-key. You wouldn’t have felt even the tiniest of pinpricks. And the poison? It wouldn’t have hurt. You’d have gone to sleep tonight and just not woken up in the morning. Painless. Subtle. But what happens instead? A fight in a coffee shop in front of dozens of witnesses. And cops! There were even cops!”
Wherever Valkyrie moved, that gun tracked her. “And you’re blaming me for this?”
“Yes, actually, I am. I’m a professional. I fly under the radar. A fight in a coffee shop is not under the radar. I have a reputation to maintain, for God’s sake. If I can’t take care of one teenage girl, what use am I?”
“Funny,” said a voice behind her, “that’s exactly what I was thinking.”
Margaret turned and a blade flashed. She dropped the gun, took a step and crumpled face down. Her last breath escaped her body and then she was completely still.
The woman standing over her wore boots, brown leather trousers and a brown leather waistcoat. She was blonde and pretty and her arms were strong, her shoulders wide. Tanith Low wiped the blood from her sword and smiled. “Hey, Val. Missed you.”
The fallen gun sped towards Valkyrie’s outstretched hand but a man in a suit and sunglasses shot out of the wall, snatching it before it reached her.
Shadows wrapped round Valkyrie’s fist but Billy-Ray Sanguine backed off.
“We’re not here to fight,” Tanith said, hands up. “Well, we are, but not here to fight you. Her, your would-be assassin there, that’s another matter entirely. Although you were pretty much taking care of business without us. Up until the end.”
“You sent me the text,” Valkyrie said.
“What are friends for?”
“You’re not my friend. You’re a Remnant.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m not a good person,” Tanith said. “Well, hold on, no, actually that’s exactly what it means, but that’s no reason why we can’t still be mates. I miss talking to you, Val. I miss all the gossip. How’s Fletcher?”
“What do you want, Tanith?”
“Just to save your life, Val. Some Americans want you dead. Christophe Nocturnal and his funky little church of idiots demanded that this lovely lady be sent after you. Seems they didn’t appreciate you killing their gods.”
“What? That was years ago. They’re just getting around to revenge now?”
Tanith shrugged. “I think they might be lazy.”
“And how did you hear about it?”
“We were hired to protect you,” said Sanguine. “Someone over on Nocturnal’s side, and I ain’t sayin’ who, figured that the skeleton would hunt down whoever killed you, and whoever paid them, and everyone they knew, and probably their dogs and cats too for good measure, and this someone figured it just wasn’t worth the hassle and eventual death. So we were called to swoop in and save your little life. You’re welcome, by the way.”
“But none of that’s important,” Tanith said. “What’s important is that we’re back, Val, you and me. We heard what’s been happening with mortals getting magic. Need any help with that? I’m stronger and faster than I was before, and I was plenty strong and fast back then.”
“You can’t help, Tanith.”
“Sure I can help,” said Tanith. “Just point me at the bad guys.”
“You can’t help because you are a bad guy.”
“One of these days, you’re just going to have to get over that little fact.”
“If you want to come back, then come back. Come back to the Sanctuary, let the doctors figure out a way to cure you. I miss you.”
“I’m right here.”
“No, you’re not. You look like my friend and you sound like my friend but you’re not her. You’re someone else. Do you have any idea what that’s like, to look at a face you know so well and not actually recognise the person behind it? You used to say we were like sisters, Tanith. Prove it. Do this for me. Get cured.”
“There is no cure, Val. There’s no getting the Remnant out. It’s bonded to me now.”
“I miss you. Ghastly misses you.”
Sanguine slung an arm round Tanith’s shoulders. “And he can go on missin’ her. We are, in case you’ve failed to notice, what you might call an item.”
“Billy-Ray,” Tanith said gently, “don’t embarrass yourself.”
Sanguine took his arm away.
Tanith smiled at Valkyrie. “Ghastly is a lovely guy. He is. And if none of this had happened, yeah, we’d probably be together right now. But there’s no point living a life of regrets.”
“He really wants to see you.”
“Tell him I said hi.”
“We should go,” Sanguine said.
“Right. Yes. Val, you might want to send a few Cleavers after Christophe Nocturnal before he sends another assassin after you. Just a thought. Last I heard, he was staying somewhere in Killiney. It was great seeing you again. You look amazing, by the way.”
She held Sanguine’s hand, and they sank down through the ground.
Valkyrie allowed herself a moment, then went back to the door. There were squad cars all over the place, Guards milling around the street and barking orders into walkie-talkies. The poor guy she’d kneed in the groin stood hunched over by an ambulance, and the cop that Margaret had struck stood nearby, glowering.
The Bentley pulled up, and she waited until the cops had stopped admiring it before stepping out and running over. She jumped in.
Skulduggery looked at her, then looked at all the cops. “Your doing?” he asked. She nodded, and he sighed as they pulled away. “OK then, who tried to kill you this time?”
rom one scene of violence and death to another – Valkyrie didn’t know how she managed to be so lucky. The house was cordoned off with official Garda tape, but the men and women in the uniforms who were standing around were not Guards.
Skulduggery led the way up the garden path, talking on the phone as he did so. He was arranging for a squad of Cleavers to comb through Killiney with a Sensitive leading the hunt. He was confident that if Christophe Nocturnal really was staying there, they’d bring him in. Valkyrie was only half listening. She nodded to a mage she knew at the door, and went in through th
e hallway. It was a nice house, small but well maintained. Skulduggery put the phone away and they stepped into the living room.
“My God,” he said.
There were recognisable body parts in the mess, but not many. Valkyrie lunged back out of the door and threw up in the flower bed. When she’d finished, she leaned against the doorframe and closed her eyes. A few moments later, Skulduggery joined her. He was quiet.
He spoke to the other mages, then they both got in the Bentley and Valkyrie wiped her eyes.
“The house belongs to a Gary and Rosemary Delaney,” he said, “both of whom are confirmed to be at work at the moment. They have one son, Michael, eighteen years old. We’re waiting on the test results to get back, but it would appear that Michael is the one in the living room.”
“That’s weird,” Valkyrie said. “I’m crying. Look. I’m crying. I don’t feel like I’m crying but look at my eyes. Those are tears. Why am I crying?”
“Because you know that somebody did that,” Skulduggery said. “Somebody, a human, not an animal, purposefully ripped that boy apart. You’re crying because you can’t understand how anyone could do such a thing.”
She took a deep breath and let it out. “You didn’t spend long in there.”
“I got what I needed.”
She looked at him. “You know who did it?”
“No. But I have enough information to start narrowing it down. So do you.”
“I just glanced in.”
“And what did you learn?”
“Skulduggery, please, I’m really not in the mood for this.”
“Which is why it’s important.”
Valkyrie sighed. “The whole place was covered in blood. There were pieces of him everywhere.”
“How was he killed?”
“Ripped apart, like you said.”
“But how, Valkyrie? Claws? Was he ripped apart by the killer’s bare hands?”
She pictured the scene and shook her head. “No. There were no footprints in the blood. If there had been someone in there, physically attacking him, there’d be footprints. There’d probably be drops of blood leaving the house, too. I didn’t see any.”
“What does that tell us?”
“Whoever killed him did it remotely. From a distance of more than two or three metres, I’d say.”
“Very good.”
“Apart from all the blood, the room was tidy. No signs of a struggle. There was no scorching, either.”
“Why does that matter?”
“If he was killed with an energy blast, you’d expect it to go through him and out the other side to get a result like that.”
“Then that’s not how he was killed.”
“The killer could have a power like Baron Vengeous. You told me about that friend of yours. Vengeous just looked at him and his whole body ruptured.”
“It shares similarities, yes. But there are a dozen ways to kill someone like that.”
She hunted around in her pocket, came out with some chewing gum that she popped in her mouth to get rid of the horrible taste. “Can we leave this to someone else? We have enough to be dealing with, and there are other detectives. Let’s give this case to them.”
Skulduggery considered it. “We do have a heavy workload.”
“Hell yeah, we do. We should be concentrating on Argeddion, pouring all our energy into that. Forget this horrible murder and forget people trying to kill me and forget Tanith hooking up with Billy-Ray bloody Sanguine … Let’s just solve a problem. Summer starts next Saturday, so we have until then to figure out what’s going on. Let’s get this thing solved and put it away and forget about it, and then move on to the next.”
“Sounds like a lovely idea.”
“That’s because it is. And we let the Cleavers arrest Nocturnal and deal with him. I know his people want me dead, but I really don’t want to have to deal with religious fanatics today.”
“Understandable. Then how about we return to the Sanctuary, open some files, and do a little research on the names that Nadir gave us?”
She made a face. “Research?”
“It’s the bedrock of any investigation.”
“Isn’t that punching?”
“It’s the bedrock of most investigations.”
“Most?”
“Some. Listen, we’re doing research and that’s that.”
“Blood-splattered crime scenes and musty old filing cabinets,” she said. “My life is beyond glamorous.”
They got back to Roarhaven and Valkyrie trudged after Skulduggery on their way to the Magical Hall of Mystical Cabinets, which she insisted on calling the file room, mainly because it annoyed Skulduggery. They walked down the steps, turned the corner, and a man in a black suit was standing there.
“Name, please,” he said, holding up a hand. He was big and strong with a Newcastle accent, one of Quintin Strom’s heavies.
Skulduggery tilted his head. “I’m sorry?”
“Name, please,” the heavy repeated. “I have a list of people authorised to pass beyond this point. What are your names?”
Valkyrie frowned. “We always pass beyond this point. We’re allowed to pass beyond this point.”
The man nodded. “And so long as your names are on my list, you are free to do so again.”
Skulduggery took a moment to observe him, then spoke. “I have to say, without any sense of false modesty, that I am a unique and distinctive person. Look at me. I’m a skeleton in an exquisitely tailored suit. I would even go so far as to say that I am somewhat famous in the circles in which you, Valkyrie and I all move. So the question do you know who I am, which I could ask, is immediately made moot. Of course you know who I am. I’m me. And of course you know who Valkyrie is. She is she. Neither of us knows who you are, but we seem quite comfortable with the lapse.”
“My name is Grim. I am the bodyguard to—”
“The point I am making, Mr Grim, is that since you know who we are, and since you know what our role is in this Sanctuary, then you are either impeding our progress because you have been ordered, specifically, to keep us out, or because you have taken it upon yourself to do so. Which is it?”
“You’re not—”
“Never mind, I don’t really care. Move aside.”
Grim puffed out his chest. “By order of the Supreme Council, no one gets by here without—”
“The Supreme Council has no jurisdiction in this country.”
“You’ll have to take that up with them. I just do what I’m told.”
“Oh, good,” Skulduggery said, “that’ll make this much easier. Move aside.”
He went to walk past and Grim moved directly into his path. “You’re not getting through.”
“I actually think we are.”
“I’m giving you this one and only warning.”
“How nice of you,” said Skulduggery. “By the way, the sparrow flies south for winter.”
Grim frowned, opened his mouth to form a question and Skulduggery swung his hand up, catching him in the side of the jaw with his palm. Grim went down like a sack of rocks.
“Do you think we’ll get into trouble for that?” Valkyrie asked.
“I might,” Skulduggery said, walking on. “You probably won’t, unless there’s a new accessory-to-slapping law that I don’t know about.”
“What are they doing acting as security men?”
“I don’t know, but I doubt Ravel approved this.”
There was a man talking to Tipstaff as they approached, and when he caught sight of them, he shook Tipstaff’s hand and walked over. Tipstaff, for his part, looked unimpressed.
“Mr Pleasant,” the man said in an American accent, hurrying over to shake Skulduggery’s hand. “I am such a huge – forgive me for saying this – a huge, huge admirer of yours. I’ve followed all of your cases, scoured the archives. Huge, huge admirer. Oh, heavens, sorry, my name. I’m Bernard Sult. I’m one of the Junior Administrators at the American Sanctuary. And Miss Cain, very lovely
to meet you. We all owe you a gigantic debt of gratitude for the service you’ve done in a few short years. Thank you, Miss Cain. Thank you.”
Valkyrie shook his hand. “Sure,” she said. “No problem.”
“No problem!” Sult repeated, almost spluttering the words as he laughed. “No problem, she says! Defeating Serpine and Vengeous and the Diablerie, defeating gods, recapturing the Remnants …! No problem to Valkyrie Cain, maybe, but for the rest of us, it would have been a great big problem indeed!”
He laughed again, had to wipe his eyes he was laughing so hard. Valkyrie glanced at Skulduggery and he shrugged.
“You’re here with the Supreme Council, then,” Skulduggery said, walking on. Sult kept up with them. “We met one of your friends back there. He didn’t want to let us by.”
Sult looked horrified. “He tried to stop you?”
“He definitely tried. You might want to check on him when you have a spare minute.”
“Well,” said Sult, “I must apologise most profusely if he offended you in any way. Some of our people, they’re so eager to make a good impression that, well, sometimes they’re a little too stringent with the rules.”
“And what rules would they be, Bernard? As far as I’m aware, you and your associates have no duties whatsoever in this Sanctuary.”
“You’re absolutely right,” Sult said, nodding. “But we were just talking with your Cleaver commander about lending a hand if a hand was needed, all in a very unofficial capacity, you understand. Could I ask, was the gentleman who interrupted you from the English Sanctuary?”
“Indeed he was. A Mr Grim.”
“Ah, the bodyguard. That explains it. We had different briefings. I can assure you that such a misunderstanding will not happen again. You have my word. It’s all very embarrassing.”
Now that Sult was focusing on Skulduggery, Valkyrie gave him a quick once-over. Looked to be in his thirties. Dark hair, cut short and neat. Nice suit, tasteful tie. Shiny shoes. Gold wedding ring. Apart from that, there was nothing distinctive about him at all.