Kitabı oku: «Midnight»
First published in Great Britain by
HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2018
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,
HarperCollins Publishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
The HarperCollins website address is:
www.harpercollins.co.uk
Skulduggery Pleasant rests his weary bones on the web at:
www.skulduggerypleasant.co.uk
Derek Landy blogs under duress at
www.dereklandy.blogspot.com
Text copyright © Derek Landy 2018
Skulduggery Pleasant™ Derek Landy
Skulduggery Pleasant logo™ HarperCollinsPublishers
Skulduggery Pleasant © ™ Derek Landy
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Cover illustration © Tom Percival 2018
Derek Landy asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008284565
Ebook Edition © ISBN: 9780008284602
Version: 2019-04-15
This book is dedicated to Reggie.
What is there left to be said about you, my friend?
You’re smart, and yet wilfully stupid. You’re good-looking, yet kind of ugly. You’ve got wonderful hair, yet you’re always wearing hats.
You’ve saved my life three times now – in contrast to the measly once that I’ve saved yours – and you’ve taught me more about Icelandic cuisine that I ever wanted to know (seriously dude – hákarl? Seriously?), but there is something that I’ve been meaning to tell you for years, but I’ve never found the right opportunity.
Remember that girl, your pen pal, back when we were kids? Remember how you kind of loved her?
That was me. Sorry, dude.
And from the nothing came the everything.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Keep Reading …
The Skulduggery Pleasant series
About the Publisher
1
The old castle stood dark against the star-filled sky, its tall windows empty, its battlements jutting like teeth. Upon those battlements, and indifferent to the cold winds that scoured the mountaintops, stood Wretchlings, monstrous things of scabs and sores whose insides boiled with poisoned blood and decaying meat.
Lying on a blanket on a snow-covered perch 809 metres west and 193 metres up, Skulduggery Pleasant put his right eye socket to the scope of his rifle and adjusted the dial.
He wriggled slightly, settling deeper into the blanket, then went perfectly still. His gloved finger began to slowly squeeze the trigger, and Valkyrie raised her binoculars, training them on the closest Wretchling.
The gun went off with a loud crack that the wind snatched away, but they were so far from the target that it took a few seconds for the bullet to hit.
The Wretchling jerked slightly, and looked down at its chest. A moment later, it started to tremble. The stitches that held it together unravelled, and the Wretchling came undone, its body parts falling, its stolen entrails spilling out, and it collapsed on top of itself, a pile of meat steaming in the cold air.
Skulduggery moved on to the next target and adjusted the scope once more.
“You think they feel pain?” Valkyrie asked.
Skulduggery paused for a moment, and looked at her. “I’m sorry?”
“The Wretchlings,” she said. “Do you think they feel pain?”
“Not really,” he answered, and went back to aiming his rifle.
“But they have brains, right? Fair enough, they might not be thinking great thoughts, but they do still think. And if they think, they might be able to feel. And if their body can feel physically, can’t their minds feel emotionally?”
Skulduggery fired again. Valkyrie didn’t bother looking to see if the bullet hit its target. Of course it did.
“They do have brains,” Skulduggery said. “They’re stolen from the dead, along with the limbs and the internal organs, and they’re twisted and warped and attached to the Wretchling like the parts of a machine – because that’s what they are. They look alive, but it’s all artificial. Are you feeling guilty about what we’re doing?”
“No.” She watched him acquire his next target. “Kind of.”
“They’re just like Hollow Men.” He put his eye socket to the scope.
“But Hollow Men don’t have brains.”
“I don’t have a brain.”
“But Hollow Men can’t think.”
“Believe me, the only thing on a Wretchling’s mind is the messiest way to kill someone.”
Valkyrie looked through the binoculars. “So we kill them first? That’s hardly enlightened, is it?”
“We’re not killing them,” Skulduggery said. “These clever little bullets are designed to dismantle, not destroy.”
He fired, and she watched as the next Wretchling was dismantled. Black blood gushed.
Skulduggery stood. “That’s the last of them,” he said, taking Valkyrie’s hand and pulling her to her feet. He left the sniper rifle on the blanket and she handed him his hat. It was black, like his three-piece suit, like his shirt and tie. Valkyrie was dressed all in black, too – in the armoured clothes made for her years ago by Ghastly Bespoke and the heavy coat with the fur-lined hood she wore over them.
Clouds were moving in from the east, scraping over the jagged peaks of the mountains, blocking out the stars. Below where they stood, the drop disappeared into gloom. The wind nudged Valkyrie, like it wanted to tip her over the edge, send her spinning downwards into the cold emptiness. She felt an almost irresistible urge to take a big step forward.
“Are you OK?” Skulduggery asked.
Her face, numb though it was, had gone quite slack. She fixed it into a smile. “Peachy,” she said, taking off her coat. “Let’s go.”
He wrapped an arm round her waist. “Are you sure you don’t want to try this alone?”
“If I knew I’d be able to fly, no problem,” she said. “But I told my folks I’d be there for roast dinner, and if I plunge to my death before that they’ll just think it’s rude, so …”
They lifted up and drifted beyond the ledge, the world opening up beneath them. Skulduggery redirected the freezing winds so that not a single hair was disturbed on Valkyrie’s head. It was strangely quiet as they flew, surrounded by the howls and shrieks of the mountains but tucked away from it all.
“The thought has occurred to me that maybe you’ll only start flying when you absolutely need to,” Skulduggery said.
“Do not drop me.”
“Indulge me for a moment. The range of your powers is still largely unknown to us, yes? You can fire lightning from your fingertips, you certainly have destructive potential, and you have the burgeoning psychic abilities of at least a Level 4 Sensitive. Plus, you have flown before.”
“Hovering is not flying.”
“I bet if I were to drop you, you’d fly.”
“I’m not sure if I can emphasise this enough, but do not drop me.”
“The prospect of imminent death could release you from the mental barriers that are holding you back.”
“It wouldn’t be imminent death, though, would it? You’d catch me. There’s no threat there. You’d save me because saving me is what you do, just like saving you is what I do. The only thing that dropping me would accomplish is to annoy the hell out of me.”
Skulduggery was quiet for a moment.
“Do not drop me,” Valkyrie repeated.
He sighed, and they continued over to the castle, landing beside a pile of Wretchling remains. A sudden gust surrounded them with the stench of putrid meat and human waste. It filled Valkyrie’s nose and mouth and she gagged. As Skulduggery sent the foul air away with a wave of his hand, Valkyrie lunged for the battlements, sure she was going to puke over the side – but she swallowed, managed to keep it down.
“Sometimes I miss having a sense of smell,” Skulduggery said. “Tonight is not one of those times.”
Valkyrie spat, wiped her mouth, and stayed where she was for a moment to recover. She felt sure that she’d once been told the proper names for the different sections of the battlements, but couldn’t for the life of her remember what they were.
The wind whipped her hair in front of her face, so she tied it back into a ponytail, then took a wooden sphere, roughly the size of a golf ball, from her pocket. She gripped the sphere in both hands and twisted in opposite directions, and a transparent bubble rippled outwards, enveloped her and stabilised. The personal cloaking spheres didn’t have nearly the range of their regular-sized versions, but they were just as effective, and a lot handier to carry around.
Skulduggery took out his own cloaking sphere, did the same, and vanished from her sight.
She slipped the sphere back in her pocket and stepped closer to him. Her cloaking bubble mingled with his and suddenly she could see him again.
Sticking by each other’s side, they set off down a set of stone steps, a flurry of snow chasing them into the gloom. Skulduggery held up his hand just before they reached the bottom. A tripwire glinted on the final step.
“Sneaky,” Valkyrie said.
They jumped the last few steps, and the moment before they landed Skulduggery caught her and kept them hovering off the ground.
“Pressure plates,” he said.
“Even sneakier.”
They drifted along the corridor, stopping at the end so that Valkyrie could push open the door. They touched down on the other side, took the next set of stone steps that spiralled downwards, Skulduggery leading the way.
Two guards with sickles on their backs stood at the open windows in the next corridor, their heads covered by black helmets. Rippers. It was freezing in here but they stood with their arms by their sides, as though the cold didn’t bother them, keeping watch on the road leading to the castle.
“Which one do you want?” Skulduggery asked.
Nodding to the nearest Ripper, Valkyrie said, “This one,” in a soft voice, even though she knew that her words wouldn’t travel beyond the bubble that surrounded them.
“Count to ten,” Skulduggery responded, and walked away, vanishing from sight.
Valkyrie moved up behind the Ripper, finished the count and stepped closer. Out of the corner of her eye, the second Ripper disappeared as Skulduggery did the same.
She wrapped her right arm round the Ripper’s throat, grabbed the bicep of her left arm and hooked her hand behind the Ripper’s helmet. His hands came up, trying to free himself. He put a foot to the wall and pushed out, shoving them both backwards. Valkyrie held on, her head down, her eyes closed. She kicked at his leg and dragged him backwards, laying him on the ground as his struggles weakened.
She looked up, watched as the second Ripper fell into view. He hit the floor and stayed there.
When her Ripper was unconscious, she released him and walked to the other end of the corridor. Her cloaking bubble intersected with Skulduggery’s and he appeared before her so suddenly she jumped.
“Sorry,” he said.
She waved his apology away. “I’m sure I scared you just as much as you scared me.”
“Not really.”
She took his hat and threw it out of the window, and was totally unsurprised when a moment later it floated in again and settled back on his head.
“Are you quite finished?” he asked, adjusting it slightly.
“It wouldn’t kill you to admit to being a little startled every now and then,” she said.
“I don’t get startled,” he responded, walking off again. She caught up to him before he left her bubble, and fell into step beside him. “I anticipate and adjust accordingly.”
“You don’t anticipate everything.”
“Of course not. Where would be the fun in that?”
“I’m just saying you shouldn’t feel like you have to keep up this unflappable demeanour around me.”
“Has it occurred to you, after all these years together, that I just might not be flappable?”
“Everyone is flappable, Skulduggery.”
“Not me.”
They came to a door that took them to a tunnel that took them to a room, and in this room they chose an archway that took them to more stairs. Down they went, and down again, until the torches in brackets were replaced by bulbs and the steady thrum of power reverberated through the floor. They avoided large groups of Rippers, passed rooms where white-coated scientists murmured to one another, and kept going until they came to a perspex window overlooking a large laboratory packed with machines that blinked with volatile energy.
Doctor Nye sat on a stool, its back stooped, working on the intricate insides of a rusted device. Nye’s thin limbs looked smaller than when Valkyrie had seen it last, when it had towered over her, its head nearly brushing the ceiling, but she wasn’t altogether surprised. Crengarrions shrank as they got older, and their skin colour tended to lighten. Now it looked, at most, about ten feet tall, and its skin was a delicate ash.
“It looks old,” she murmured. “Good.”
They found the stairs, followed them down, arriving at the double doors that led into Nye’s lab. Two Rippers stood guard.
“I’ve got this one,” Valkyrie said, walking towards the Ripper on the right. She was halfway there when the cloaking sphere started to vibrate in her pocket.
Alarmed, she pulled it out. The two hemispheres were ticking towards each other quickly – much quicker than they should have – counting down to the bubble’s collapse. She tried to twist them back, then struggled to merely keep them in place, but it was no good.
The bubble contracted.
2
Her boots were visible.
Valkyrie crouched before either of the Rippers caught sight of her. There were sigils on the wall – she could see them now. She recognised one of them: a security sigil that attacked Teleporters. She was pretty sure the other one was forcing her cloaking sphere to malfunction.
And it contracted again. Not all the way, just enough to reveal the top of her head. Time was running out.
Keeping low, she pocketed the sphere and hurried over to the Ripper. The bubble contracted again. He heard her footsteps and his hands went to his sickles.
Valkyrie pulled her own weapons – shock sticks, held in place on her back – and launched herself at him. The first stick cracked against his helmet, but he ducked the second, spinning away. Valkyrie’s bubble collapsed completely now, as did Skulduggery’s, and she glimpsed him throwing fire even as her Ripper attacked, sickles blurring.
Valkyrie knew the pattern and countered, slipped to the side and struck the Ripper’s knee, then spun and caught him in the ribs. His clothes absorbed the electrical charge, and he didn’t seem to register the pain.
He left her an opening and she fell for it, committing herself to a swing that she regretted instantly. A sickle blade raked across her belly, would have torn her open were it not for her armoured jacket. He kicked at her ankle, swept her leg, and she hit the ground and somersaulted backwards to her feet, defending all the while. His knee thudded into her cheek and the world tilted.
He leaped at her. She dropped the stick in her right hand and white lightning burst from her fingers, striking him in the chest and blasting him head over heels. He rolled and came up, his jacket smoking.
Valkyrie picked up the fallen stick, placed it end to end with the other one. They attached and she twisted, the staff lengthening, and when the Ripper ran at her she whacked it into his leg, then spun and cracked it against his head. He fell back and she followed, the staff striking him once, twice, and then a twirling third time. He dropped one of his sickles.
She went to finish him off and he dodged, dodged again, dodged faster than she could strike. He jumped over to the wall and rebounded, flipping over her head. She whirled but he was too close, and he grabbed the staff and pulled her into a headbutt that would have broken her nose had she not lowered her head. Even so, bright lights flashed, and she felt the staff being wrenched from her grip as she went staggering.
The Ripper let the staff drop, and swung his remaining sickle towards her neck. She raised an arm, her armoured clothes saving her once again, and snatched the weapon away. It fell, clattering against the stones.
Valkyrie ducked low and powered forward, grabbing him round the waist. Snarling, she lifted him off his feet and slammed him against the wall, then seized his helmet, searching for the twin releases, and tore it from his head. The Ripper fell back, blinking, and she swung the helmet into his jaw and he went down, and she hit him again and again until she figured that was probably enough.
She dropped the helmet and got her breath back.
“You got his helmet off,” Skulduggery said, standing over the motionless form of the second Ripper. “How did you manage that?”
She shrugged. “I adapted accordingly. Come on. We have a doctor’s appointment.”
3
She pushed open the double doors and Doctor Nye waved a long-fingered hand.
“Do not disturb me,” it said in that familiar high whisper. “I left strict orders not to be—”
It looked up then, and its small eyes widened and its wide mouth opened as it got to its feet, the stool crashing to the ground behind it.
Skulduggery held his gun low, by his hip. “The moment you set off an alarm, I will shoot you. I feel we ought to be clear on that from the very beginning.”
Nye stopped moving backwards, and raised its arms. “I have no weapons.”
Up close, Valkyrie could see that the threads that had once sewn Nye’s mouth and eyes shut were still there, poking out of its skin. She walked forward. “You act like you’re not pleased to see us, Doctor. That hurts my feelings. I thought we’d bonded that time you autopsied me.”
“The years have been good to you,” Skulduggery said, coming round the table. “I mean, you’ve obviously shrunk, but apart from that you look great. How have you been spending your time? The last I heard, you’d escaped from Ironpoint Gaol. Who was it that broke you out? Eliza Scorn?”
“How is Eliza?” Valkyrie asked. “Any word?”
“I haven’t seen Eliza Scorn in years,” Nye said. “I was not the only one she freed. There were others.”
“But she set you up here,” said Skulduggery. “You’d lost everything when we imprisoned you. We made sure of it. She helped you.”
Nye licked its lips. Its tongue was small and pink. “She could see the importance of my work.”
Valkyrie picked up a scalpel and walked over slowly. “Excavating the soul,” she said. “How’s that going for you? Found it yet?”
“I believe I have,” said Nye.
“So what next? Now that you’ve found where it hides, what are you going to do with it?”
“Finding the soul was only the first step. Now I follow it to where it leads. I’m not hurting anyone. I’m not experimenting on anyone. You can search the castle. I have no patients here.”
“No?” Valkyrie asked. “You don’t have anyone strapped to a table somewhere, their ribcage open, their organs on a nearby tray while they look around, hallucinating friends and family come to rescue them? No? Well, I have to say that’s an improvement. You’re practically reformed. Skulduggery?”
“You’re quite sure there is no one being tortured, Doctor?” Skulduggery asked. “Maybe having their skin peeled off? I heard about one experiment you ran during the war where you decapitated prisoners and then kept their heads alive in jars.”
Nye backed up. “What do you want?”
“You’re under arrest,” Skulduggery said. “You’re going back to Ironpoint.”
“We’ll be sure to request a smaller cell this time,” Valkyrie said. “Something snug.”
“Or you can make it easy on yourself,” Skulduggery said. “You can tell us where Abyssinia is.”
Incredibly, Nye paled even further.
“Wow,” said Valkyrie, “your poker face sucks, dude. That means we get to bypass the bit where you tell us you don’t know what we’re talking about – and we threaten you and you eventually break – and go straight to the part where you answer our questions. So where is she?”
“I do not know.”
“I’m just going to warn you that we’ve been looking for Abyssinia for almost seven months. Do you hear me? Seven months. And we haven’t found her, or the flying prison she’s commandeered, or any of her little anti-Sanctuary friends. We’re both extremely annoyed about this. Our patience has worn thin, Doctor. When we found out that she paid a visit to this charming castle no less than two days ago … Well, I’m not going to lie: I cried a little. Tears of happiness. And when we learned that you were working here? It was like all my birthdays had come at once. Not only do I get to see my old friend Doctor Nye, but Doctor Nye gets to help us in our search, and tell us where Abyssinia has gone.”
“I promise you, I do not know.”
“Then why was she here?” Skulduggery asked.
“If … if I tell you, you must let me go.”
“OK.”
“I think you are lying.”
“Of course I’m lying. You’re going back to prison, Doctor. The only choice you’ve got is the size of your cell.”
Nye hesitated, then sagged. “It was not a thing she was looking for. It was a person. His name is Caisson.”
“And who is Caisson?”
“Abyssinia said he is her son.”
“I see,” Skulduggery said, taking a moment. “Does he work here? Is he a scientist or manual labour?”
Nye hesitated.
Valkyrie folded her arms. “He was a patient, wasn’t he? You may not be experimenting on anyone right now, but up until two days ago you were.”
“When I came here, this facility had already been running for decades,” Nye said. “I was brought in to replace a scientist who had gone missing. My instructions were clear: I was to continue the work of my predecessor. On my initial tour, I was shown the room in which Caisson was being kept – but I was not the one who worked on him.”
“How long had the experiments been going on for?”
“As far as I am aware, for as long as this facility has been operational.”
“Which is?”
“Sixty years.”
Valkyrie frowned. “He’s been experimented on for sixty years?”
“No,” said Nye. “He was experimented on here for sixty years. I do not know where he was before this.”
“What else do you know about him?” Skulduggery asked.
“Nothing. Experimenting on Caisson was not my job.”
“So who did the work?”
“An associate. Doctor Quidnunc.”
“Is he in today?” Valkyrie asked.
“I have not seen him in a week, since Caisson was removed from this facility.”
“Caisson was removed a week ago?” Valkyrie said. “So when Abyssinia came for him, he was already gone? Why was he moved?”
“I do not know for certain,” said Nye, “but I imagine somebody learned that Abyssinia was drawing close and we were told to evacuate as a result. Caisson was the first to be moved.”
“Then why are you still here?”
“I, and a handful of other scientists, refused to leave. I can only speak for myself, but my work had reached a critical stage and I could not possibly depart.”
“Abyssinia wouldn’t have been happy that her son wasn’t here,” Skulduggery said.
“She was not,” said Nye. “She killed many Rippers.”
“Did you tell her where he was moved to?”
“I did not, and do not, possess that information.”
“Who took him?”
“I do not know. A small team of people. The owner of this facility sent them.”
“Which brings us back to Eliza Scorn.”
Nye shook its head. “Eliza Scorn does not own this facility. As far as I know, she was merely obeying orders when she delivered me here.”
“Then who’s your employer?”
“I am afraid I do not know.”
“You’re working for someone and you don’t even know who it is?”
“What does it matter?” Nye asked. “My work is important and needs resources. I do not care who provides them.”
Valkyrie sighed. “What about Abyssinia? Did she say anything that could lead us to her? Remember, you really want to make us happy.”
“She provided no such information.”
“Did you tell her about Quidnunc and his experiments?” Skulduggery asked.
“Yes.”
“Did you tell her where she could find the good doctor?”
“I do not know where he is.”
“Then how are you still alive?” Skulduggery asked. “You don’t know anything helpful, you worked in the same facility where her son was being experimented on … Why didn’t she kill you, Doctor?”
“Because I did to her the same thing as I am doing to you,” Nye responded.
“And what is that?”
“Delaying you.”
The shadows converged and twisted and from the darkness stepped a woman in a black cloak, her face covered by a cloth mask so that only her eyes were visible.
Skulduggery raised his gun and the woman’s cloak lashed out, and Skulduggery ducked and fired. The cloak absorbed the bullets and whipped again, slicing through the table to get to him. Skulduggery jerked to the side, his hand filling with flame, but the cloak twisted back, covering him – and when it whipped away, Skulduggery was gone.
The woman turned to Valkyrie, but Valkyrie had already moved behind Nye and was buckling its legs. It dropped to its knees and she gripped its throat, keeping her eyes on the newcomer.
“Have to admit,” Valkyrie said, “that was pretty cool, even for a Necromancer. But, if you try anything like that on me, I will fry the stick insect here.”
The woman in black didn’t respond. Her cloak coiled around her.
“You would not kill me,” said Nye, its voice a little garbled. Its skin felt oily in her grip.
“I wouldn’t want to kill you,” Valkyrie corrected him. “I wouldn’t want to kill anyone. But, if your awesome bodyguard tries to kill me, I’ll kill you faster than your beady little eyes can blink.”
Nye made a small sound, like a laugh. “Then it seems that we have reached an impasse.”
“Not at all,” said Valkyrie. “An impasse implies that we’re evenly matched. But we all know that’s not true.” She glanced at the woman in black. “I dabbled with Necromancy. Did you know that? Solomon Wreath taught me a few things. So I know that you can shadow-walk. That’s what you did with Skulduggery, right? But I also know that the range for shadow-walking is limited – so he’s already on his way back here and he’s coming mighty fast. We only have a few seconds before he bursts through these doors, and when that happens … it’s not going to be pretty. All I have to do is wait, because time is on my side. But for you the clock is ticking. Can you hear that? The tick-tock in your head?”
“I am not going back to Ironpoint,” said Nye. “I only have a few years left in my life. I will not spend them in a cell. Whisper – kill her.”
“Whisper – wait,” Valkyrie said, tightening her grip. “Why is it always killing, huh? Why is it always fighting? Why is violence always the default position?”
Nye held up a hand to Whisper, even though the woman had not moved. “You offer an alternative?” it asked.
“Give me Quidnunc, and I’ll let you go before Skulduggery gets back.”
“I do not know where Quidnunc is,” Nye said. “But I do know one thing that could possibly lead you to him.”
“Did you tell this one thing to Abyssinia?”
“I did.”
“So we’d be playing catch-up.”
“Yes.”
Valkyrie considered her options, of which there were none. “OK,” she said. “Deal.”
“First, you must release me.”
“I don’t trust you enough to release you, Doctor.”
“Then you had better make a decision before the Skeleton Detective gets here, Miss Cain. Time is ticking away.”
Valkyrie almost smiled. She took her hand from Nye’s throat and stepped back as it stood. It turned, looking down at her, as Whisper came up behind it. Her cloak swirled around them both.
“Quidnunc suffers from liquefactive necrosis,” Nye said, and the shadows convulsed and Valkyrie was left alone.
“Huh,” she said.
The doors burst open and Skulduggery stormed in, gun in one hand and fire in the other. “Where are they?” he demanded.
“Gone,” said Valkyrie. “You just missed them.”
Skulduggery stood there for a moment, then shook the flames from his hand and slipped the gun back under his jacket. “That’s annoying,” he said. “Are you OK?”
She shrugged. “Grand. Quidnunc has, um, liquid active necrosis.”
“Do you mean liquefactive necrosis?”
“Let’s say that I do. What is it?”
“A form of organic rot that Mevolent had weaponised during the war.”
“That the same thing Tesseract had? So Quidnunc wears a mask, like him?”
“Perhaps,” Skulduggery said. “In any case, he will need the same serums that kept Tesseract alive, and those serums are hard to come by. If we find who makes them, we’ll find Quidnunc.”
“Cool. Although Nye told Abyssinia, y’know, about the liquid factor thing.”
“Liquefactive necrosis.”
“He told her about that, too.”
“Then we have no time to waste,” Skulduggery said, stalking to the door. He spun round. “Unless you’re hungry. Are you hungry? You haven’t eaten since noon.”
“I’m pretty hungry, yeah.”
“Then we’ll stop for pizza,” Skulduggery said, and marched out.
4
Education, Omen Darkly mused as he examined the test he’d just got back, may not have been the area in which he was destined to excel.
While Corrival Academy was indeed a school for sorcerers, that didn’t mean all the lessons were about throwing fireballs or shooting streams of energy out of your hands/eyes/mouth – although there was a fair bit of that stuff.
Mostly it was sitting at desks, reading textbooks and scribbling answers – pretty much the same experience Omen had had when he’d gone to a mortal school, back in Galway. A lot of the time, in fact, things at Corrival were worse. Because there were more subjects to cover – Omen not only had to study history and science, but also mortal history and mortal science – the school day was longer. PE wasn’t just about combat training and self-defence, as tough as those things could be – it was also about picking a sport and playing it, magic not allowed. Students were taught to be the best sorcerer they could be, but they were also taught how to live, behave and thrive in the mortal world. Which meant more work, more tests, and more opportunities to fall short.
Omen folded the test paper, hiding the big red E from view. It wasn’t that big a deal. It had been a difficult test – everyone said so, even the smarter kids. What chance did he have, really, when even the smarter kids were finding it tricky? Sure, they still technically passed, as did just about everyone else in his class, but he wasn’t a big believer in grades anyway. He preferred to get his education out there, on the streets. Where it mattered.
Omen chewed his lip. That said, his parents were probably going to kill him if they found out.
He stuffed the test paper down into his bag. That was one of the good things about Corrival being a boarding school, he supposed – less exposure to disapproving parental figures. Of course, there was a pretty fair chance that they wouldn’t actually care about a failed test. Omen had, quite by accident, cultivated a relationship with his folks that depended entirely on their low expectations. He sidled along in the background of their lives while their focus was on his twin brother, Auger – the subject of an actual prophecy, destined to face the King of the Darklands in a battle to save the world. In order to aid him in this battle, Auger had been born strong, fast and smart – not to mention naturally talented, extremely hard-working, courageous, decent, resourceful, charming, funny, tall and good-looking. Because being good-looking was obviously a vital quality in any self-respecting Chosen One.
Omen had missed out on being the Chosen One by virtue of being born second, so he didn’t possess any of Auger’s attributes. What he did have, however, was a plucky demeanour and a never-say-die attitude – but he didn’t really have them, either.
Life was one bitter disappointment after another. Sure, there had been glimmers of hope along the way. His best friend was pretty cool, for a start, and seven months ago he’d helped Skulduggery Pleasant and Valkyrie Cain stop an ancient evil from being reborn. Well, sort of.
No, he had helped. He had been right there, sharing in the adventure. He’d come away with the bruises to prove it. The problem was that the ancient evil hadn’t actually been stopped. Abyssinia, after all, had succeeded in coming back to life. Taking this into account, he supposed that meant he had helped Skulduggery and Valkyrie fail in their mission. Which may have explained why they hadn’t called on him since.
What made things worse was that word of his involvement hadn’t spread through the school like he’d expected. A few people knew a little of what happened, but it was as if his fellow students couldn’t be bothered to spread cool rumours about him. There were no whispers in the corridor as he passed, no wide-eyed stares, no clusters of girls giggling whenever he smiled. After a brief spell as an adventurer, he was returning to being that insignificant little speck of a boy he’d always been.
Unless he did something about it.
His stomach in knots, Omen went over what he was going to say once more in his head. He’d practised this conversation again and again, planning for all possible contingencies. A part of him wondered about the grade he would have got in the test if he’d devoted as much time to it as he had to rehearsing how he’d ask out Axelia Lukt, but he easily swatted such thoughts from his mind. He had more important things to worry about.
Axelia sat in the common room, chatting and laughing with her friends. She was so nice, so smart, so pretty, and she had the loveliest accent and the happiest laugh Omen had ever heard. He could have listened to her laugh all day, as weird as that would have been.
Omen stood up, took a deep breath, and walked over.
He bumped into October Klein and mumbled an apology, turned round and went back to his corner.
He took another deep breath, and another. And another. He went light-headed, and collapsed back into his chair.
When he felt certain he wasn’t going to faint or fall over, he got back to his feet. Focusing on breathing normally, he made his way across the common room without bumping into anyone, and was about to open his mouth when a firm hand gripped his elbow and steered him away.
“Hey,” said Auger, all smiles today. “How’d you get on in the test?”
“Um,” said Omen.
Auger nodded and then, in that casual tone he always used when he was hiding something, said, “That’s cool, that’s cool. Hey, have you seen Mahala around?”
“I saw her right before breakfast,” said Omen. “Everything all right?”
Auger’s voice dipped. “Yeah, yeah, just, when you saw her, did you notice anything different about her? Anything unusual?”
“Like what?”
Auger shrugged. “Like was she acting any different? Was she talking any different? Did she have glowing green eyes? Did she appear confused …?”
“It’s funny,” said Omen, “out of everything you just said, it was the glowing green eyes thing that stood out.”
“She’s, kind of, slightly possessed right now,” Auger said. “If you see her again, let me know. Stay away from her, but let me know.”
“You need any help? I could help.”
“No, really, it’s fine. I’ve got Kase. We’ll sort it out. If it gets too much for us, though, I promise I’ll give you the nod.”
“Sure,” said Omen. “That sounds good.”
“Anyway, sorry for interrupting. You looked like you were talking with Axelia.” He steered Omen back, depositing him in front of the most beautiful girl in the school and her friends.
“Hey, girls,” he said.
“Hi, Auger,” they chorused.
Auger nodded to Omen, and walked quickly away, and Omen froze.
Axelia looked at him and smiled. “Hi, Omen.”
“Hi,” he said. His mouth was suddenly so ridiculously dry. “Could I talk to you for a moment?” he managed to say. “Maybe go for a short walk?”
Axelia’s friends widened their eyes, like Omen had just dumped a dead bird at their feet, but Axelia had the grace to keep her smile.
“Sure,” she said.
Omen smiled back and they walked out of the room side by side. This was good. She hadn’t yet said the word no, and neither had she laughed at him. If he could keep that going, he was in with a chance.
“What do you think of all those refugees?” she asked as they walked.
“Yeah,” Omen said. “Aw, it’s really … It really makes you think, doesn’t it? Like, who … who are they?”
“Um, we know who they are.”
“Well, yes, but what I’m asking is … uh …”
“You haven’t heard about them, have you?”
“I’m not really sure what you’re talking about, no.”
Her beautiful blue eyes widened a little in surprise. “You didn’t hear about the portal that opened up yesterday, right outside the city walls? It’s literally just over the west wall, Omen. It’s been on the Network all day. It’s all anyone is talking about.”
“A portal to where?”
“To the dimension where Mevolent still rules.”
“Seriously?”
“How have you missed this?”
“I really don’t know.”
“We spent all of last class talking about it. You were there.”
“I was daydreaming. And there are people coming through?”
“Thousands of them, all mortals.”
“Do we know why?”
“They’re slaves over there. Wouldn’t you want to get away from that if you could? I mean, it’s Mevolent.”
Omen nodded. “He’s pretty bad, all right. Do you think he’ll come after them?”
Axelia hugged herself. “I don’t want to think about that. We got rid of our Mevolent – we shouldn’t have to deal with someone else’s. Anyway, that’s all I know. You really should start paying attention in class, Omen. Especially after the result you got in the test.”
“You, um, you know about that?”
“I sit behind you. I saw your mark. Sorry.”
“But I’m not the only one who failed, right? Like, there were a few of us. That was a hard test.”
“Was it?”
“Not for you, maybe, because you’re really smart and stuff. But for us ordinary people it was hard.”
“I’m not that smart.”
“Yes, you are,” Omen said. “You’re dead brainy.”
She laughed. “What did you want to talk about, Omen?”
They stopped walking. There was no one around. It was all suddenly very still and very quiet. Omen nodded again. He was aware of how much he was nodding. It was a lot.
“Well,” he said, trying his best to keep his head still, “in the last few months, um, I’m really glad about how we’ve become friends. You know, with our little jokes and things.”
Axelia’s brow furrowed a smidge. “We have little jokes?”
“Yes. Don’t we? The little jokes? The little …” his mouth was dry again, “jokes? That we have. You don’t notice them?”
“I’m afraid not, Omen.”
His laugh sounded panicked. “That’s OK. It’s not important. Basically, what I wanted to say was: we’re friends. Aren’t we?”
“Of course.”
“And that’s so good,” he said, both hands covering his heart. “It’s so good to have friends. Real friends, you know? And I, I think you’re great. I think you’re funny, and smart, and, like, so cool.”
“Aww, thank you.”
“You’re way cooler than me.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You so are.”
“You’re cool, too.”
“Well, I’m not, but thank you for saying so.” He laughed, and so did she. This was going well. Omen felt the time was right for the part he’d rehearsed in the mirror. “I’m really glad you’re my friend – that means so much to me, you have no idea. And I don’t want to ruin that, I really don’t, and what I’m about to say … well, it’s risky. But I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t at least try.”
Axelia nodded. “OK.”
“You’re probably going to say no,” he said, veering away from his script. “And that’s fine. Saying no is absolutely fine. It’s expected, actually. I’d be, to be honest, I’d be stunned if you said, you know … yes. So I realise that that’s not going to happen. So please, please don’t feel bad. The last thing I want is to make you feel bad.”
“Thank you, Omen.”
He laughed, even as the pit in his stomach opened wider. “No problem,” he said. “But, again, I have to, you know, at least try.”
“Of course.”
“So … um … The thing I was wondering was maybe, and, not expecting a yes to this at all, in the slightest, but the thing I was wondering was maybe you would, um, like to, you know …”
“Yes.”
His heart burst into fireworks in his chest. “Yes?” he repeated, laughing. “Really?”
Axelia reached out, touched his arm, a look of grave concern on her face. “What? No, I was just … I said ‘yes?’”
His laughter died instantly. “Right.”
“I didn’t say ‘yes’,” she said, “I said ‘yes?’, you know? Although it may have come out as ‘yes’, without the question mark after it. I’m sorry, Omen, English is not my first language.”
“You’re really good at it.”
“Thank you.”
“You know so many words.”
“I interrupted you,” she said. “I’m sorry. Please say what you need to say.”
Omen chewed his lip and nodded. “Uh-huh,” he said. “Right. Uh … I think we both know how it’s going to go, though, don’t we? I think we … I think we do.”
“Probably,” Axelia said. “We could stop, if you like?”
Omen nodded, doing his best to consider it even though his brain appeared to be broken. Then he shook his head. “Actually, I feel I have to try. If I don’t at least say the words, then … then it’ll be hanging over me. Are you OK with that?”
“Of course. Go ahead.”
He forced a laugh. “Hey, Axelia, will you go out with me?”
“No,” she said sadly.
His world crashed down and he said, “Yeah.”
“I do like you,” she said, “and I don’t want to say ‘as a friend’, but …”
“As a friend,” Omen said, and nodded again. “That’s fine. I expected it, I really did. I hope this doesn’t make things weird between us. Does it?”
“Of course not.”
“Because it means a lot to me that we’re friends.”
“I know. It means a lot to me, too.”
“Well, um … I suppose I’ll see you around.”
“I suppose so.” Axelia smiled, gave his arm a squeeze, and walked away. Omen went round the corner, sat on a bench and was sad.
5
They came through, three abreast, the adults laden down with bulging bags and the children clutching raggedy dolls and carved wooden animals. Their footsteps were heavy, their shoulders stooped, their spines curved with exhaustion.
They weren’t too tired to look scared, however. Their eyes flickered over everything, trying to spot the differences between this reality and theirs, but avoided the gaze of Valkyrie or anyone who stood watching. This was a battered people. All they wanted was to stop walking, to lay down their packs, to get some sense of a journey completed, but that wasn’t about to happen just yet. As they came through the portal, the doorway sliced from their universe to this one, they were directed to follow a trail of flags to the makeshift town of tents that had sprung up along the outside of Roarhaven’s west wall. Shrinking away from the grey-suited Cleavers on either side, the mortals trudged onwards in a broad, unbroken line.
“Thirteen thousand in thirty-six hours,” Skulduggery said.
“What are we going to do with them?” Valkyrie asked. “China wouldn’t send them back to their own reality, would she? We send them back and Mevolent’s army will either execute them or use them as slaves. Maybe they could stay in Roarhaven. There are plenty of uninhabited districts. Loads of empty houses.”
“Roarhaven is a city for sorcerers,” Skulduggery said. “I don’t know how welcoming its citizens would be to mortal families moving in beside them.”
“What’s wrong with them moving in? We’re supposed to live in peace, aren’t we? That’s why Sanctuaries exist.”
“Roarhaven has a Sanctuary,” Skulduggery pointed out. “It isn’t itself a Sanctuary.”
“I don’t think we have a choice,” she said. “It’s not like we can send them to live in Dublin or London or anything. They’re mortals, but they’re not like our mortals. They’ve lived their entire lives in a reality ruled by sorcerers.”
Skulduggery nodded. “It would definitely require a period of adjustment.”
“I think China’s going to do the right thing. She knows she has to set an example as the Supreme Mage, so I reckon she’ll hand over all those empty houses to these nice people from Dimension X.”
“That’s not what it’s called.”
“We can’t call it the Leibniz Universe. It’s boring, and nobody knows who Leibniz is.”
“He was a German philosopher and physicist back in the late seventeenth—”
“Exactly,” said Valkyrie. “No one’s ever heard of him. And I think I should be the one to name it because I’m the one who discovered it.”
“You didn’t discover it.”
“Well, OK, maybe not discovered it, but I found it.”
“It wasn’t lost, Valkyrie. It had billions of people living in it.”
“And I found them, too.”
He shook his head. “Silas Nadir shunted you over there. By your rationale, he should be the one naming it.”
“He’s a serial killer. He’d pick a stupid name.”
Temper Fray walked through the portal, saw Skulduggery and Valkyrie and immediately started over. One of the Cleavers moved to block his way, but he flashed his City Guard badge and the Cleaver backed down.
“What did you find out?” Skulduggery asked.
Temper frowned. “No hug?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Skulduggery. “Valkyrie, hug him.”
“I’m hugging him with my mind.”
“You two are weird,” Temper said. “It’s telling that I get back from a twelve-hour trip to an alternate dimension and you two are the strangest things I’ve seen all morning. How was your little jaunt to the mountains, by the way? Meet anyone interesting? And by interesting I mean anyone tall, green and ugly?”
“Not quite so tall or so green any more,” Valkyrie said, “but Nye is still as ugly as I remember. We chatted, yes. We have a lead, a man named Quidnunc.”
“Never heard of him.”
“Neither have we,” Skulduggery said. “We’re hoping once we get to him, he’ll lead us to Abyssinia and then we’ll be able to stop her from doing whatever it is she’s planning on doing.”
“You still haven’t found out what that is, huh?”
“Not even close,” Skulduggery said, “but I’ve known her a long time, and, whatever her master plan is, it will not be good news for the rest of us.”
Temper frowned, and looked at Valkyrie. “Is he downplaying it?”
“I think he’s downplaying it.”
Temper nodded. “There’s definitely some downplaying going on. Come on, Skulduggery – you had a thing with her. There’s no need to be embarrassed.”
“I’m not embarrassed.”
“She’s a very good-looking lady – you know, once she grew her body back and all. I’ve always found that ex-girlfriends with bodies are better than ex-girlfriends who are just internal organs locked away in a box somewhere. But I’m old-fashioned like that.”
Skulduggery sighed. “Can we stop talking about this?”
“We can,” Temper said, “once you accept that there is no shame in dating a murderous psychic who sucks the life out of people. No shame at all.”
“Thank you, Temper.”
“There’s a bit of shame in losing her to someone like Lord Vile, though. I mean, that dude was evil.”
“Are you finished?”
Temper grinned. “Not even close. But for right now? Yeah, I’m finished.”
“Thank you,” said Skulduggery. “We just got back into the country a few hours ago and we were going to follow up on this Quidnunc person, but decided to take a little detour here instead. Correct me if I’m wrong, Temper, but this portal wasn’t here when we left, was it?”
“It was not,” Temper said, and clapped his hands. “OK then, first things first: that is one messed-up reality they have back there. Seriously. Why anyone would venture into it, I have no idea.”
“You ventured,” Valkyrie said.
“I’m a City Guard now – I have my orders.”
“I heard you volunteered.”
“It’s a portal to another dimension,” Temper said. “What, am I not gonna go through? Anyway, there are thousands of people lining up on the other side of that thing. More coming every hour. With anyone else, I’d be expecting a stampede, but these folks are just so beaten down I doubt they could muster the energy to panic.”
“Did you see any of Mevolent’s men?” Skulduggery asked.
Temper shook his head. “Not a one.”
“We were told there’s a device that’s sustaining the portal. Is that true?”
Temper scratched his jaw. “Never seen anything like it. It’s a metal box, roughly the size of a car battery, with all these sigils carved into it. I don’t know if the device did it all, or if a Shunter opened the rift and this device is just keeping it open. I don’t know how it works, and no one knows how to shut it down, but then I guess the sorcerers in the Leibniz Universe have gadgets we don’t understand yet.”
“We’re calling it Dimension X now,” Valkyrie told him.
“No, we’re not,” Skulduggery said quickly. “Have you spoken to the people? Have they said anything about the Resistance?”
“They won’t talk to me,” Temper answered. “You’ve got to understand, these folks are almost as afraid of the Resistance as they are of Mevolent’s army. To them, all sorcerers are super-powered psychopaths who topple buildings on to innocent mortals.”
“Then hopefully we can show them a new, warmer kind of sorcerer,” Skulduggery said, as a child dropped her doll. He stepped forward, using the air to lift the doll into his hand, and presented it to the little girl. She looked up at him and screamed, and her parents pulled her away.
“Sometimes I forget that being a skeleton is unusual,” Skulduggery murmured. He tossed the doll to the girl’s father and returned to Valkyrie’s side. “Do you have any idea what the best course of action might be?” he asked Temper.
“For me, the best course of action is a shower and bed,” Temper answered. “For the situation, I’d send a squadron of Cleavers through to make sure the mortals are protected while they wait. I heard stories of bandits closing in.”
“As far as we know, China’s not sending any Cleavers,” said Valkyrie.
Temper sighed. “Then maybe you could talk to her? She’s got a soft spot for you, Val, everyone knows that.”
“If we could actually get in to speak to her, maybe,” Valkyrie replied. “But we’ve been trying to arrange a meeting with China for weeks, to discuss our progress – or lack of progress – in this Abyssinia situation, and all we hear is how busy she is.”
Temper chewed his bottom lip for a moment. “Those refugees are easy targets. They need someone to keep them safe.” He sighed. “I guess the shower can wait.”
Valkyrie raised an eyebrow. “You’re going back through?”
“Looks like it.”
“Can’t you send some of your City Guard friends through instead?”
Temper smiled. “I’ve been a Roarhaven cop for five months, and in that time I have discovered that the City Guards are not friendly people. Commander Hoc has changed things since you were in charge, Skulduggery. We report only to him, and he reports only to the Supreme Mage. My colleagues don’t trust me – probably because they see me talking to the two of you so regularly.”
“They think you’re our spy,” Skulduggery said.
“Yes, they do.”
“Good thing you’re our spy, then.”
“It certainly keeps things simple.” Temper looked back towards the portal. “Either of you want to join me?”
Valkyrie held up her hands. “I have things to do today, and bad memories of that place. Thanks, but I think I’ll stay in this dimension.”
“You mentioned bandits …” Skulduggery said.
Temper nodded. “Bands of them.”
“Bands of bandits. That doesn’t sound good.”
“It really doesn’t.”
Skulduggery looked at Valkyrie.
“Good God,” she said, “you don’t have to ask me for permission to go play with your friends.”
“It’s just there are bandits,” Skulduggery said. “I like bandits. There’s no guilt involved when you hit them.”
“When have you ever felt guilty about hitting anyone? Go. Battle bandits. Have fun. I’ll make a few calls, see if anyone can help us track down the guy who makes Quidnunc’s serum.” She held out her hand. “Keys.”
Skulduggery tilted his head. “Sorry?”
“Car keys. You drove us here, remember?”
“But … can’t you get a taxi?”
“Back home? That’d cost a fortune.”
“Have Fletcher take you.”
“It’s a school day, and Fletcher’s busy being a teacher. Come on. Keys.”
He hesitated, then handed them over. “The Bentley is a special car.”
“I’m not going to crash it. I’m going to make a copy of the key, by the way. Just so you know.”
“Drive very slowly. Especially round corners. And along straight roads.”
“Can you please trust me?”
“I trust you with my life,” Skulduggery said. “Just not necessarily my car.”
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