by Derek Landy
He stepped up behind her, reached for the back of her head, and looked into the mirror over the sink at the same time as she did. Her eyes widened. He promised to curse himself later for making such a grievous error.
She whirled, whipping the belt from her trousers as he lunged. The belt wrapped around his wrist and she tugged it, tried to pull him off-balance, but he was already adjusting. He rammed his shoulder into her, driving her through the open doors of the shower. Before she could call for help he kicked her. She wasn’t expecting it. In his experience, fast people rarely expected to encounter someone faster than they were. The toe of his boot sank into her belly and lifted her off her feet, doubling her over and forcing all the air from her lungs. She dropped forward and he cracked his knee into her chin, and caught her as she fell.
He didn’t kill her. Unconscious, she was no longer a threat, and so he saw no point to it. Also, he tried not to do freebies if he could avoid it.
Tesseract moved to the door and listened to the low murmur of uninterrupted conversation – Skulduggery was talking to Davina Marr again. Tesseract stepped out, walked silently to the kitchen. Valkyrie had her back to him. She was making a pot of tea. How very Irish of her.
Even as he crossed the floor, he acknowledged that he had an opportunity to leave her alive, but decided against it. The encounter with Tanith had simply turned out that way. The simple truth was that it was easier and quieter to kill this girl than to subdue her. Tesseract was nothing if not a practical man, and so he went for the spine.
She must have felt the air shift, because she started talking, assuming he was a friend. His fingers closed around her neck, and her body jerked and she made a noise like someone had kicked her in the throat. Then she twisted out of his grip and stumbled to the floor.
“Help!” she barked.
Tesseract narrowed his eyes, looking at the jacket that she was wearing, realising too late the magical properties it must possess. His fingertips had pressed against the collar, not her skin, and the collar had protected her. Another mistake, in a day that was becoming chock-full of them.
Skulduggery Pleasant burst into the kitchen and Tesseract went to meet him head on. He ducked under a punch and slammed an elbow into Skulduggery’s side. He felt the framework under the skeleton’s clothes flex inwards, and then the rewarding crunch of elbow against ribs. Skulduggery staggered away and Erskine came next. He pushed at the air, but Tesseract moved around it. Credit where it was due, Erskine switched to a physical attack without blinking. Not that it was going to do him any good.
Tesseract blocked a punch with his forearm, then smacked Erskine in the mouth and followed him as he stumbled back. Too late, Tesseract saw it was a ruse. Erskine kicked at his leg, and if Tesseract hadn’t managed to move slightly, he was in no doubt that the kick would have smashed his kneecap.
The air shimmered and hit him like God’s own punch. He was thrown across the room, landed on the table and rolled off the other side.
Erskine threw a handful of fire that Tesseract had to sidestep to dodge, and as he did so Valkyrie caught him in the chest with a stream of shadows. He tumbled into the living room. Davina was shackled to a chair, staring at him with wide eyes. She started struggling against her bonds.
Before he could move towards her, Skulduggery and the others barged in behind him. Skulduggery gestured and his gun flew from a coffee table towards his gloved hand. Tesseract flung his knife. The tip of the blade slid through the trigger guard and pinned the gun to the wall.
“Let me free!” Davina yelled.
Tesseract ran at Valkyrie, hurling the coffee table at Skulduggery to distract him. Valkyrie whipped a tendril of shadows at him, but he dived under it, rolled and came up, grabbed her black clothes with both hands and lifted. He slammed her against the wall and then spun her around, throwing her like a rag doll to the window beside them. Her legs smashed through the glass, and he released her and the momentum kept her body turning. Her back hit the edge of the window frame and she rebounded and fell, cracking the shards of glass beneath her. She lay half in, half out of the window, folded over the sill. If it weren’t for those clothes, she’d have been slashed to bloody ribbons.
He turned as Skulduggery rushed him, a snarl behind that impassive skull. Tesseract dodged a punch and swung into him, throwing him over his hip to the ground. He heard a finger click, and Erskine sent flames bursting across his back. Tesseract stumbled, but Skulduggery was already on his feet. His coat on fire and his skin burning, Tesseract caught Skulduggery’s fist in his hand, his fingertips curling around the glove, making the bones underneath tremor. Skulduggery cried out as they snapped apart. Tesseract’s power could only be transmitted through his fingertips, so when his knuckles broke Skulduggery’s jaw, it wasn’t magic that did it, it was a combination of pure strength, the right angle, and a happy piece of luck.
Skulduggery went down, just as a wall of air slammed into Tesseract and sent him hurtling over the couch. He ripped off his fiery coat and turned to meet Erskine’s charge, saw the Elemental’s hands pushing down by his sides, and knew what was coming next. He grabbed a floor lamp with both hands, and as the air shimmered and Erskine shot towards him, he swung the lamp like a baseball bat. It splintered on impact, catching Erskine perfectly and sending him crashing to the ground.
And then a kick came from nowhere, right into his face, and Tesseract tripped over the broken coffee table and went sprawling. Tanith Low dropped from the ceiling. He should have killed her. He should have killed her when he had the chance.
She jumped at him, aiming to finish the fight with another kick to the head. Tesseract raised an arm to block it, but she flipped over him. He rolled sideways, avoiding the foot stomp, and got up in time to block the next attack and give himself some room. He had never been one for talking during a fight, but he would have loved to ask her a question right now. Once she’d regained consciousness, had she run immediately to help her friends, or had she done the smart thing and delayed for a moment, long enough to call for reinforcements?
Tesseract darted forward, catching her off guard, the heel of his palm striking her in the chest. He tried to follow it up with a grab, but she demonstrated a most impressive aerial cartwheel and got away from him. She backed off, and his eyes flickered behind her and saw where she was headed. Her coat lay over a chair, and upon that chair lay her sword. She ran for it.
Tesseract wrapped an arm around the music system that was on a shelf beside him. He yanked it free of the wires and cables and hurled it across the room. Tanith grabbed her sword and turned and the music system hit her square in the face. She twisted as she fell, and the system clattered to the ground beside her.
If she had taken a moment to make that call, he knew she would undoubtedly have called Fletcher Renn, told him to bring help. Tesseract strode to where Davina Marr struggled.
“No,” said Davina, real fear in her eyes. “Not like this. At least let me stand up. Please, not like this.”
He would have liked to grant her wish, but the Teleporter would have gone to either Ghastly Bespoke or China Sorrows – most likely the former. The question then became, if Fletcher had been alerted, how long would it take him to find Ghastly? Thirty seconds? A minute? Tesseract just didn’t have the time to waste.
He placed his hand on Davina’s chest and her breastbone shook and the ribs splintered inwards, piercing her heart. She died with her eyes open.
Tesseract turned, and a heavy fist caught him in the hinge of the jaw, right where his flesh met the mask. If Ghastly Bespoke hurt his hand with the punch, he gave no sign as he pressed forward.
Tesseract absorbed the punches, swung one of his own that Ghastly swayed away from. Three jabs rocked the mask against his face, then Ghastly went low, working the body. He surprised Tesseract with a kick that buckled his leg. Tesseract went down, but was helped back up again with an uppercut to the chin.
Fletcher Renn was across the room, carefully lifting Valkyrie down from the s
hattered window. The moment she was clear of the glass, they both vanished. A moment later, Fletcher was back, alone. Eye blink by eye blink, he disappeared with Skulduggery, Tanith and Erskine.
Tesseract had worked out Ghastly’s rhythm by now, and dodged three more jabs before responding with a punch that sank into the muscle in the boxer’s right side. Ghastly fell back, gasping for air, eyes suddenly wide. A good punch would do that to you, Tesseract knew. A good punch did more than deliver hurt – it disrupted an offensive, shook a fighter. Ghastly was shaken. He wasn’t expecting a punch that fast, that hard. Tesseract could tell by the way he was circling that Ghastly was wary now, and unsure.
Fletcher appeared. “You ready?” he asked. Ghastly kept his eyes on Tesseract and didn’t answer. “Ghastly. You ready to go?”
“Yeah,” came the grudging reply.
Fletcher nodded. He took Skulduggery’s gun down from the wall, tossing the knife away. He teleported to the chair and picked up Tanith’s sword, then Skulduggery’s hat, and then he appeared at Ghastly’s elbow. They both vanished.
Tesseract let his fists uncurl. His back was burnt, the skin bloody and charred, but his mission had been a success. He found himself hoping that his Roarhaven employers would hire him to kill Skulduggery and the others. He’d quite like to finish this.
18
LICKING WOUNDS
Valkyrie lay in a tub of cold mud, its healing properties working on the damage Tesseract had inflicted on her back. A curtain separated her from the others. Skulduggery was on the bed to her right, mumbling instructions while he waited for his jaw to set. His hand, she had seen, was wrapped in gauze until his bones realigned. Ravel was to her left, healing up from his smashed ribs. Across the room, behind another curtain, was Tanith. Her jaw had been broken, her cheek shattered, nose crushed and four teeth had been knocked out. It was taking Kenspeckle Grouse a little longer to heal her.
Valkyrie lay in the tub and listened to the conversation go on around her.
“One man?” Kenspeckle was saying. “One man did all this?”
“We weren’t ready,” Ghastly said, and she could hear the quiet anger in his voice. “I should have gone with them. Should have been there at the start.”
“Then who would Fletcher have gone to for help?” Kenspeckle asked. “No, Ghastly, I think it’s just as well they had you as back-up. The man who did this, Tesseract. He wouldn’t happen to be Russian, would he?”
“That’s him,” she heard Fletcher say. “You know him?”
“I’ve read reports of some people he’s killed. He’s a bonebreaker – he can break bones with the gentlest of touches. Highly unusual ability, but extremely effective. I daresay, actually, that he’d be the only person in the world who would be assured of killing Detective Pleasant here, if he so desired.”
Skulduggery murmured something that sounded like, “Your bedside manner is dreadful.”
“I thought I told you not to talk.”
Skulduggery grunted.
“Tesseract could kill him?” Valkyrie asked, sitting up.
“Oh, yes,” came Kenspeckle’s answer, “and quite easily, too. We’ve seen how my grumpiest of patients can survive being dismembered, but it has long been my theory that if there isn’t a large enough section of him that remains intact, his consciousness would dissipate. Just drift away. Tesseract has the ability to splinter an entire skeleton. I doubt there’d be anything left of the detective to think with.”
Valkyrie lay back in the mud. She had come to regard Skulduggery as unkillable – mainly because he was already dead. She didn’t like the idea of someone utterly destroying him.
She heard Ravel get off the bed to her left, and saw his shadow under the curtain as he moved to join the others.
“Mr Ravel,” Kenspeckle said sharply, “I must insist that you allow yourself time to heal.”
“I’m fine, Professor,” Ravel responded. He groaned slightly, and Valkyrie heard the rustle of fabric. He was putting on his shirt. “I need to report this to Corrival. The upside is that we caught Davina Marr, which shows the Councils around the world that we can take care of our own messes. I don’t think we should mention that Tesseract was the one to kill her though.”
Skulduggery murmured something that could have been, “Agreed.”
“We’ll say she died resisting arrest, or she took her own life or something. Leave it with me. I’ll take care of it.”
“And what about Tesseract?” Fletcher asked. “He’s still out there.”
“His job is done,” Ghastly said. “Unless he has another target, he’ll slip away like he’s always done.”
Skulduggery murmured something that nobody understood. He made a few grunts that sounded like threats, and then Kenspeckle’s voice moved closer to Valkyrie.
“Fine,” Kenspeckle said. “I’ll remove the bandage, but if your jaw falls off, you’re going to the back of the queue.”
Everyone waited a moment.
“OK,” Kenspeckle said. “Open your mouth. Close it. Move it side to side. Very well, you can speak.”
“Thank you,” Skulduggery said. “Ghastly’s right – Tesseract is probably gone already. And with him, any hope we have of finding out who his employers were.”
“If he even remembers,” Ravel said. “They could have dazzled him the same way they dazzled Marr.”
The curtain by Valkyrie’s tub parted, and Kenspeckle came through. He motioned her to lean forward, and checked her spine.
“I don’t think so,” Skulduggery said. “You wouldn’t take the chance of double-crossing someone like Tesseract, not unless you planned to kill him. And we all know that’s not exactly an easy thing to do.”
“So he’s collected his payment and gone,” Ghastly said. “And Marr is dead, and her co-conspirators are safe. Where does that leave us?”
“Your back is healed and the swelling is going down,” Kenspeckle said to Valkyrie. “There’s a robe by the chair.”
She nodded her thanks and waited until he had left before climbing out of the tub. She listened to the conversation as it developed into an argument for and against Roarhaven’s involvement. She put on the robe, feeling it squelch against the mud covering her, and slipped her feet into the slippers. She was a little stiff as she walked through the curtain.
“The fact is,” Skulduggery said, “we have nothing. No clues, no evidence. The only thing we know is that one of the people involved has the power to cloud memories. That’s all.”
Valkyrie looked at him. “Did we lose this one?”
“Of course not. We just didn’t win it.”
Ravel grabbed his coat. “I have to go. Grand Mage Deuce needs to know what we know.”
“We don’t know an awful lot,” Skulduggery said.
“Then it’s going to be a short meeting.”
Skulduggery and Valkyrie drove back to Haggard in glum silence. It was dark again – they’d spent practically an entire day recovering from their injuries. Valkyrie’s parents were undoubtedly asleep by now, which meant she had missed her chance to spend Christmas Eve with them, and this put her in an even worse mood than before. That heartless, soulless reflection had been there instead, smiling its fake smile. She sank into her seat and glowered.
“How are you?” Skulduggery asked.
“Fine,” she muttered.
“You don’t sound fine.”
“I’m as fine as could be expected then, for someone who was in a fight in which one guy beat four of us at the same time, and then got away.”
“We were the ones who fled, actually.”
“You didn’t have to point that out. I could have done without you pointing that out. He killed Marr with a touch. We’d probably all be dead if he’d been paid to kill us.”
“That’s a possibility.”
“I don’t like the fact that there’s someone out there who can do that.”
“We’re not unstoppable, you know,” said Skulduggery.
“Sometimes we
are.”
“Not tonight.”
“No, not tonight. I’m glad she’s dead. That’s probably really horrible, isn’t it? But I am. I’m glad Marr is dead.”
“She killed a lot of people.”
“Is that it, then? Is it over?”
“It appears to be. For now. Are you going to tell me what else is upsetting you?”
“What? Nothing.” He cocked his head and she rolled her eyes. “Fine. I missed Christmas Eve with my parents. Happy? This is my last Christmas Eve as an only child, and I wanted to bask in my parents’ love one final time.”
He sounded amused. “They’re not going to stop loving you just because you have a new brother or sister.”
“You don’t understand. When I was seven, Mum bought me a rabbit, Mister Fluffy. For two weeks, Dad paid more attention to that rabbit than he did to me. He played with it, he took it on walks, he practically tucked it in at night. And that was a rabbit. Imagine what he’s going to be like with a baby.”
“But after those two weeks, once the novelty wore off, he was back to normal, wasn’t he?”
“I don’t think it was because the novelty wore off. I think it was because he stood on Mister Fluffy.”
“Pardon?”
Valkyrie sighed, her head lolling back on the seat. “He stepped on it. Squished it. Squashed it. Killed it. Cut it down in its prime. It kicked the bucket, turned up its toes, shuffled off this mortal coil. It was… an ex-rabbit.”
“He’s a dangerous man, your father.”
“The baby better learn to dodge.”
The windshield wipers activated, and Valkyrie looked out at the swirling snow caught in the headlights.
“That’s pretty,” she said. She lowered the window and stuck her head out, getting a freezing blast full in the face. She brought her head back in, slightly dazed.
“Fun?” Skulduggery asked.