Scepter of the Ancients

by Derek Landy

  “A little worse than that,” he admitted. “It’s like digging up that grave, taking out the body, rifling through its pockets, and then dancing on the whole thing. It’s a little more than disrespectful.”

  “Then yes,” she said as he walked over, “I can see why you have difficulty keeping friends.”

  Skulduggery waved his hand and every candle in the chamber flickered out. They were plunged into darkness. Stephanie opened the door and peeked out. The corridor was long and silent and empty. She stepped out and Skulduggery followed, closing the door behind them.

  They crept along the corridor, up the stone steps, and out the wood-and-iron door. They moved quickly through the gallery. The corners were the worst, as they were always expecting a vampire to round them just as they approached. They were nearing the main hall when Skulduggery held up his hand.

  Ahead of them, crouching in the middle of the corridor, was a vampire.

  Stephanie stopped breathing. Its back was to them, so they moved backward, careful not to make a sound. They were just turning when Stephanie saw something out of the corner of her eye. She clutched Skulduggery’s arm.

  The other vampire was approaching from the opposite direction.

  They sank behind a marble pillar, trapped. Across from them was an archway leading into another section of the gallery, but Stephanie was pretty sure that even if they made it through without being seen, they’d be cut off. Their only way out was back in the main hall, with the harness, but their chances of making it without being torn to pieces were getting slimmer with every moment. Skulduggery had his powers, and he had his gun, but she knew he didn’t hold out much hope that he’d be able to fend off one of those creatures, let alone two.

  He turned to her, hand raised. One finger, pointing at her, then pointing at the ground. Stay. The same finger, pointing at himself, then pointing at the arch. Go.

  Stephanie’s eyes widened and she shook her head, but now that finger was at his mouth, pressed against his teeth. If he’d had lips, she knew, his finger would be on them. She didn’t want to agree to this—she didn’t want to, but she knew she had no choice.

  He took his gun from his jacket and passed it to her, gave her a nod, then immediately sprang up and lunged for the arch.

  The vampire approaching from behind saw him and broke into a run. The vampire up ahead turned and sprang off its haunches, and Stephanie shrank back as it passed the pillar and took off through the archway, joining the hunt for the intruder.

  The gun was surprisingly heavy in her hand as Stephanie crept out and started running for the main hall. Her footsteps echoed loudly in the dark corridors, but she didn’t care—the only thing going through her mind was the fact that she needed to get out. She took each corner quickly, knowing the threat was behind her, and every time she took a corner, she let herself glance back.

  Empty corridor. Nothing coming for her. Not yet.

  She was approaching the main hall. Just a few more turns and she’d be there. She tucked the gun into her coat—she’d need both hands to strap herself into the harness. She turned the next corner and skidded to a stop.

  No. No, this couldn’t be right.

  She looked up at the blank wall, her eyes wide. This couldn’t be right. This wall should not have been here.

  She’d taken a wrong turn. She’d taken a wrong turn in this stupid gallery, and now she didn’t know where she was. She was lost.

  She turned away from the dead end, wanting to scream at herself in frustration. She hurried back the way she had come, glancing through every arch and doorway she passed, looking for something she recognized. Everything looked the same in the gloom. Why weren’t there any signs? Where were the signs?

  There was an intersecting corridor up ahead. Could that be it? She tried remembering their trail from the hall to the iron door and mentally reversing it. Had they turned at an intersecting corridor? She cursed herself for not paying attention, cursed herself for relying on Skulduggery to lead the way. They must have come from there. Every turn behind her seemed to lead to the dead end, so they must have come from there.

  She was ten paces from the intersecting corridor when the vampire emerged from a small hall up ahead. It saw her instantly. She didn’t even have time to duck down.

  The corridor was ten paces away. The vampire was about thirty paces beyond that. She couldn’t go back. If she went back, she’d be cut off. She had to go forward. She didn’t have a choice.

  She bolted. The vampire kicked off and bounded toward her. It was going to cover the thirty paces faster than she would cover the ten. They ran straight at each other, and the vampire leaped. Stephanie dropped and slid beneath it, feeling the rushing air as it passed overhead. She came out of the slide on her feet and twisted her body, then sprinted down the intersecting corridor. This was it.

  She recognized the statue. Only a few more turns.

  She heard the vampire behind her. Every corner she turned cost her precious moments, but the vampire just leaped to the outer wall and sprang diagonally to the wall beyond the corner.

  It was closing the distance between them.

  Stephanie burst through the doors to the main hall, and Skulduggery was there, launching himself at the vampire as it reached for her. They crashed backward and tumbled.

  “Get out of here!” Skulduggery shouted, kicking the vampire away and scrambling to his feet.

  Stephanie grabbed the harness and hit the control button. Her arms were almost jerked out of their sockets as the harness withdrew. She rose to the skylight too fast, and when the harness hit the top, she lost her grip. She managed to get one hand around the edge of the skylight as her body swung wildly.

  Her other hand found a grip, and she gritted her teeth and pulled herself up. Her head and shoulders emerged into the night air, and she climbed up the rest of the way to tumble out onto the roof. Fighting to catch her breath, she immediately went back to the skylight and looked down, just in time to see the vampire leap.

  She cried out and fell backward as the vampire burst through the closed section of the skylight, showering her with glass. It hit the roof in a crouch. Stephanie didn’t even have time to get to her feet before it dived at her.

  She turned away, and its claws raked across her coat but didn’t penetrate the material, although the impact slammed her to the roof again. The vampire overshot but spun as soon as it landed, snarling. Its fangs dripped with saliva, and its eyes locked onto hers.

  For a moment, neither of them made a move; then Stephanie slowly got to her hands and knees. The vampire hissed, but she didn’t break eye contact.

  She got her feet beneath her, and now she was hunkering. The vampire was waiting for her to make a sudden move. The gun was in her pocket, but she didn’t go for it.

  She moved slowly. She kept her eyes open, didn’t blink, didn’t do anything that might give it an excuse to resume its attack. Her knees straightened, though she stayed bent over. She took her first step, to her left. The vampire moved with her.

  Its eyes blazed with sheer animal ferocity. All it wanted to do was rip her apart. All it wanted was her complete and utter annihilation. She forced herself to keep calm.

  “Easy, boy,” she said softly, and the vampire snapped at the air. Its claws clicked against themselves. Even though they hadn’t pierced her coat, her back was throbbing in pain. She knew that if it hadn’t been for whatever material this coat was made from, that single swipe would have killed her.

  The vampire began moving toward her. The moment Stephanie started to back away, the vampire’s hackles raised. She froze. If it leaped from that distance, it would be on her before she knew what was happening. It kept coming, slowly stalking its prey.

  The second skylight exploded, and then everything was happening too fast.

  The vampire broke its eye lock and lunged, but Stephanie was already moving, twisting to the side as the claws lacerated the space where she had just been. The other vampire was on the roof and closing i
n, and Stephanie sprinted for the edge of the building and jumped.

  Her legs hit branches, and she flipped over and was crashing headlong into the tree and falling. She smacked from one branch to the next, each impact spinning her and making her cry out. She hit a branch with her ribs and the breath rushed out of her and still she was falling, then the impacts went away and for a moment it was just her and the sound of rushing air, and then the ground slammed into her from behind.

  Stephanie lay on the grass, trying to breathe. She could see the tree, she could see the gallery, she could see the sky. Something was falling toward her. Two things, two figures, dropping from the edge of the building. The vampires hit the ground and came at her.

  The window to her left shattered, and the security alarm pierced the night. Skulduggery landed in front of her. He thrust his hand out and the air shimmered and he caught one of the vampires, sending it hurtling back. The second one kept coming and Skulduggery threw fire at it, but it leaped, cleared the flame, and landed with both feet on Skulduggery’s chest. They went down, and Stephanie’s body started obeying her again. She got up, still struggling to breathe. The vampire swiped, and Skulduggery’s shirt parted and he cried out in pain.

  Stephanie wrapped both arms around the vampire’s neck and pulled back. It hissed and flailed, and she stumbled back to avoid its claws. Skulduggery sat up and pressed his hand against the vampire. The vampire shot backward as if it had been fired from a cannon. It hit the wall of the building with a sickening thwack and fell to the ground and didn’t get up. Stephanie grabbed Skulduggery’s arm and dragged him to his feet, and they ran for the car.

  Thirteen

  THE RED RIGHT HAND

  HOW ARE YOU?”

  Stephanie shrugged and managed not to wince. She handed the gun back to Skulduggery. Her entire body ached. “I’m good,” she lied.

  Skulduggery glanced at her as he drove. “Are you hurt? Are you injured?”

  “No, just a bruise or two. I’m fine, really. You don’t have to worry about me.”

  “Stephanie, you jumped off a building.”

  “Yes, but the branches broke my fall. Every one of them.”

  “And how were the branches?”

  “A lot unlike pillows.”

  “You could have been killed.”

  “But I wasn’t.”

  “But you could have been.”

  “But I wasn’t.”

  “I’m not denying that you make a good point, but the fact is you could have been. I’ve already lost a dear friend to all this, and I don’t want that to happen again.”

  She looked at him. “Are you saying you’d be very upset if I died?”

  “Very is such a strong word. …”

  “Well, if you teach me some magic, maybe I won’t get hurt as badly next time.”

  “You said you weren’t hurt.”

  “Are you kidding? I jumped off a building—of course I’m hurt.”

  “Stephanie—”

  “Yes, Skulduggery?”

  “You can be really annoying at times.”

  “I know. So where are we going?”

  “We’re going to at least find the doorway to the caves. Then we’ll concentrate on finding the key to open it.”

  Half an hour later they arrived at Gordon’s estate. Stephanie climbed stiffly out of the Canary Car and followed Skulduggery inside.

  The cellar was chilly and dark, and the single bulb hanging amid cobwebs wasn’t doing its job very well. Countless years’ worth of junk was collecting dust down here, and from somewhere in the dark corners came the occasional scuffle of rats. Stephanie wasn’t scared of rats, as a rule, but she wasn’t too keen on them either, so she stayed away from the corners.

  Skulduggery had no such qualms. He examined the walls, scanning the surfaces as he moved sideways along them. Now and then he’d tap the wall, mutter to himself, and move on.

  “Is this the same as the way into the Sanctuary?” she asked. “Are you looking for a secret passageway?”

  “You watch too many haunted-house movies,” he said.

  “But are you looking for a secret passageway?”

  “Yes,” he admitted. “But that’s just a coincidence.”

  She pulled up the sleeve of her coat, revealing an ugly bruise on her arm, and covered it up again before Skulduggery glanced over.

  “Did Gordon build the passage?” she asked.

  “No, it was included in the original designs. A few hundred years ago, this was a sorcerer’s house.”

  “And he built a secret passageway to the caves? I thought you said the caves were a death trap for sorcerers.”

  “I did say that, yes.”

  “So why did he build himself a shortcut? Was he a stupid sorcerer?”

  “No, he just wasn’t a very nice one. He used to drag his enemies down there and leave them to whatever creatures were hungriest.”

  “What a charming history. I can see why my uncle bought the place.”

  “Aha.”

  Stephanie moved closer. Skulduggery’s hand was flat against the wall. He moved it, and she could see a slight indentation, almost invisible to the naked eye.

  “That’s the lock?”

  “Yes. This is one of those good old-fashioned key-required locks—the kind a spell won’t open. Damn it.”

  “Can you break it?”

  “I could break it, but then it wouldn’t work, and we couldn’t get the door open.”

  “I meant break through it.”

  “That would work if the door was in the same place as the lock, but things are rarely that straightforward.”

  “So we need the key.”

  “We need the key.”

  “I don’t suppose we’ll find it on one of Gordon’s key chains.”

  “Indeed. This is not a regular key we’re looking for.”

  “We don’t have to solve a puzzle to get to it, do we?”

  “We may.”

  She groaned. “How come nothing’s ever simple?”

  “Every solution to every problem is simple. It’s the distance between the two where the mystery lies.”

  They turned off the light and climbed the stairs out of the dank mustiness of the cellar. They walked into the living room, and a man in a suit—a suit that looked almost Victorian in design—turned to them.

  He had black hair and thin lips, and his right hand, which was skinless, glistened with blood and wet muscle. Before Stephanie could even register her surprise, Skulduggery was pulling the gun from his jacket. The man moved as gunshots filled the room, stepping to one side and waving his right hand.

  She didn’t know what he did, but it worked, and no bullets hit him.

  “Run!” Skulduggery said, pushing her out of the room.

  She stumbled and something moved beside her, and she turned as another man came at her. There was something wrong with him—something wrong with his skin, with his features: they didn’t look real, they looked almost papery. She tried to hit it, whatever it was, but it was like hitting a bag of air. A fist swung at her, but unlike its body, the fist was heavy and solid, and it snapped her head back. She staggered and it reached for her, but then Skulduggery was there, hurling it away.

  Three more of them came through the front door. Stephanie ran to the stairs, Skulduggery covering her escape. Halfway up, she looked back as the man in the suit strolled into the hall. She shouted a warning and Skulduggery turned to face him, but it was too late. Purple vapor gathered in the man’s left palm, and he released it in a stream that flowed into Skulduggery and arced out behind him and above, flowing back into the man’s other hand, forming a circle. Skulduggery dropped to his knees, trying to raise the gun but unable to hold it, and it fell to the floor.

  “Take him,” the man said, cutting off the purple stream. Skulduggery sagged, and three of the paper men grabbed him, started dragging him out of the house. The man motioned to the fourth. “You, kill the girl.”

  And he walked out.


  Stephanie sprinted to the landing, the papery thing clumping up the stairs behind her. She ran to Gordon’s dark study, slammed the door, and pushed over one of the bookcases. It toppled and crashed, and books spilled across the floor.

  The door opened an inch and hit the bookcase. Heavy fists started to pound on it from the other side.

  She went to the window, opened it, and looked down. Even if she made the drop without breaking her legs, she’d land right in front of the man with the red hand. She backed off, looked around for a weapon.

  The bookcase slowly scraped across the floor. The door was opening wider.

  Stephanie turned, moved behind the desk, and hid. The pounding continued. She peered out. She could see a papery arm now, reaching around. Then a shoulder, and a head. She ducked back into hiding.

  One last heave, and the door was open wide enough for the thing to step over the fallen bookcase. Stephanie stopped breathing.

  She peeked out. It crossed to the window and leaned out, hands on the sill.

  Stephanie rose and launched herself forward. It heard her and tried to turn, but she slammed into it. Its heavy hands slipped off the sill and dragged it through the window, and Stephanie reached down, grabbed its lower leg, and hauled. The thing tried to turn, tried to reach back through the window, but it was too late, and out it went with a faint rustle of paper.

  It landed in a heap, and she saw the man in the suit glare up at her. He waved his arm, and she threw herself away from the window as the air turned purple and the window exploded. Glass shards rained down on her back, but they didn’t tear through the coat.

  She lay where she was, hands over her head, until she heard a car start up. Then she got up, glass and splinters of wood falling from her, and reached the window just in time to see a silver car leave the estate. They’d left her, obviously deciding it wasn’t worth the effort to make sure she was dead.

  She pulled the crumpled business card from her pocket, got out her phone, and dialed the number. The call was picked up almost immediately. She spoke urgently.

  “I need help. They’ve taken Skulduggery.”