by Derek Landy
Valkyrie walked round the jeep, in no great rush. When they were face to face, Abyssinia gave her another smile.
“Shall we continue?”
“Give me a second,” Valkyrie said, probing her side and closing her eyes in pain. “You broke a couple of ribs.”
“I’ll wait.”
“Thank you,” said Valkyrie, looking up, and twin streams of energy erupted from her eyes and hit Abyssinia in the face.
Abyssinia screamed, tried to turn away, covering her head with her arms, but Valkyrie pushed further, harder, the skin round her eyes sizzling, and Abyssinia’s legs buckled and she was on the ground now with Valkyrie standing over her, pouring everything she had into this final, desperate effort.
Abyssinia kept screaming.
The streams thinned, and sputtered, and Valkyrie cut them off and stumbled against the jeep. She was done. She didn’t have anything more.
Abyssinia lay before her, unmoving. What few strands of silver hair there were left smouldered and smoked.
Valkyrie sank to her knees. She couldn’t even keep herself upright. Her arms were too heavy to lift, her mouth was dry, her stomach was empty and rumbling, and all she wanted to do was sleep for a year. Abyssinia chose that moment to sit up.
Valkyrie didn’t have anything to say. She just watched as charred skin flaked and fell away, revealing the newly regrown skin beneath. She watched as the silver hair sprouted and lengthened.
Abyssinia blinked and smiled at her. “I can see why Skulduggery likes you,” she said.
“Go away,” Valkyrie whispered.
Abyssinia got up. “You tried to kill me,” she said. “You actually tried to kill me. I didn’t think you were capable of such a thing.”
Valkyrie looked up at her. “Can’t let you kill Auger. Just a kid.”
“I don’t want to kill him, Valkyrie. I don’t want to kill anyone. But I have to. For the world to be the way I want it to be, people need to die. That’s not something I’m going to enjoy, but it is something I’ve come to terms with.”
“Please,” Valkyrie said, “don’t make me stand up.”
“You don’t have to. Stay down there. You’ve fought enough.”
Valkyrie grunted. Started to get up.
Abyssinia sighed. “If you try to stop me, I’ll have to kill you.”
Valkyrie didn’t answer until she was standing. When she had the energy, she said, “Can’t let you kill him.”
“Would you prefer me to kill you and then kill him?”
Valkyrie raised her fists. “Let’s be having you.”
“You poor girl,” Abyssinia said, and reached between Valkyrie’s fists to grab her, then launched her through the air.
The road smacked into her and Valkyrie rolled along for a bit before coming to a gasping, painful stop. She tried to get up but couldn’t.
“If I leave you here,” Abyssinia said, “will you let me kill the Darkly boy in peace?”
Valkyrie put both hands flat against the ground, then blew out a deep breath and started to push herself up.
Abyssinia shook her head as she came forward. “I’ll make this quick,” she said. She put a foot on Valkyrie’s back to push her down, then gripped her head.
Someone stepped out in front of them.
“Stop hurting her,” said Auger.
“Run,” Valkyrie moaned.
Abyssinia released her hold on Valkyrie and straightened.
“It’s me,” said Auger. “In case you were wondering. I’m the one they say is going to battle the King of the Darklands.”
“I won’t let you harm my son,” Abyssinia said.
“I understand,” said Auger. “So, if you’re going to kill me, kill me. Leave Valkyrie and everyone else out of it.”
Abyssinia walked up to Auger, noting the blood on his shirt. “You’re injured,” she said.
“I’ve never been shot before.”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t like it.”
“You’re a brave boy,” said Abyssinia. “Coming out here; it’s noble. I wish I didn’t have to do this.”
“I’ll make it easy for you,” Auger said, and threw a right cross that broke his fist when it landed. He howled, staggering back and clutching his hand.
Abyssinia smiled sadly. “I like people who go down fighting,” she said.
Valkyrie didn’t have the strength to throw a stone, but she could still throw her thoughts. Using the same pathways Abyssinia had invited her in through earlier, Valkyrie swooped into Abyssinia’s mind and filled the space with images of Auger’s neck being snapped.
The same way Cassandra and Finbar and the others had planted false memories in Darquesse’s mind, so Valkyrie planted a short, unsubtle sequence in Abyssinia’s.
First, she kills Auger. Then she watches his body fall. Then she walks away.
Auger, the real Auger, the one who was still nursing his broken hand, frowned at Abyssinia as she stood there, almost frozen.
But then she turned to Valkyrie, and a smile broke out. “Ohh,” she said. “Ohhh, you sneaky little thing. You almost had me there. You almost did. That was a good effort. For a moment, I believed I was actually watching him die. That was good. So where’d he go? Where’s he hiding?”
Valkyrie frowned. “What?”
Abyssinia walked over. “Auger,” she said loudly, “what’s the point in hiding if I know all I have to do is hurt Valkyrie and you’ll come back out to save her?”
“I’m right here,” Auger said.
Abyssinia sighed, and lobbed a light kick into Valkyrie’s side that jangled her broken ribs.
“Hey!” Auger shouted.
Abyssinia turned. “Auger Darkly! I’m going to count to three and then I’ll have to kill her!”
“She can’t see me,” said Auger. “Valkyrie, what did you do to her? You’ve got to let her see me again. Valkyrie!”
“One!” shouted Abyssinia.
Auger clicked his fingers and threw a fireball. It exploded across Abyssinia’s back and she whirled.
“Where are you?” she said. “Why can’t I … Ohhhh.” She looked back at Valkyrie. “Bravo. You’ve hidden him from me. How on earth did you manage that? You never cease to impress me, you really don’t. It shouldn’t take me long to overcome your little block, but even so …”
Auger threw another fireball. “I’ll lead her away,” he said, backing off.
“Just go,” Valkyrie told him. “Get out of here.”
Auger nodded. “And I’ll take her with me.”
He threw two more fireballs and Abyssinia swatted them out of the air and laughed as she followed him.
Valkyrie tried to remember how she’d healed herself in the cell, just a few hours ago. She tried to remember what she’d felt when she reached into Doctor Whorl’s magic. But the memories were too slippery to hold on to, and her thoughts were too manic. They yipped and barked like a pack of small dogs.
She turned slowly on to her side, and froze. The Nemesis of Greymire was at the end of the pier, and walking this way.
“Let it happen,” said Ghastly, crouching beside her.
Valkyrie ignored him. Carefully, she raised herself up on to one elbow, then brought her legs in. Got her knees under her.
“You don’t have to keep fighting,” Ghastly said. “Abyssinia was right. You can just stop. You know you can. You want to.”
Kneeling now. Taking a breath and holding it, Valkyrie raised her right knee off the ground and planted her foot in its place. That hurt.
“How much longer do you think this can continue?” asked Ghastly. “How much more can you punish yourself? Haven’t you suffered enough?”
“Go away,” Valkyrie muttered.
“Stop fighting. Stop resisting. Stop running. Let the Nemesis reach you. Let her swing that hammer. Just once. Once is all it takes. And then you’ll be at peace. Wouldn’t that be lovely? Wouldn’t you welcome that?”
Valkyrie heaved herself to standing.
Tears sprang to her eyes and she grabbed her side and sobbed with the pain – but she didn’t fall.
Ghastly stood in front of her. “You hate yourself,” he said. “You hate yourself for what you’ve done. Not just to Alice, but to all of them. All the people who have died because you wanted adventure. No excuse will ever be good enough to wash away that sin.”
The Nemesis was getting closer. She dragged the sledgehammer along behind her. It rumbled across the concrete.
“I don’t want to die,” Valkyrie said.
“Yes, you do,” said Ghastly.
She fixed him. With a glare. “I’m not going to die.”
“Yes, you are.”
“You know what? OK then. The Nemesis there, she’s my guilt, is she? Fine.” Valkyrie walked towards her, doing her best to keep her back straight. The Nemesis brought the hammer up into a two-handed grip.
Valkyrie stopped right in front of her. “This is what Greymire does to people, isn’t it? Gives them their own private Nemesis to run away from?”
“Yes,” said Ghastly.
“Only they can never escape it, can they? Sooner or later, it catches up to them.”
Ghastly nodded. “And it kills them.”
“And what are you? My conscience?”
“No. I’m just your insanity.”
“Yeah,” Valkyrie said, “I must be nuts, wasting my time with this nonsense. Hey, Nemesis, if you’re going to kill me, then kill me. Otherwise, I’ve got stuff to do.”
The Nemesis raised the hammer high overhead.
“Accept it,” Ghastly murmured.
“I’m standing here, aren’t I?”
The Nemesis of Greymire let the hammer go back a bit further, and then swung it down, straight for the top of Valkyrie’s head.
It was raining harder as the Dark Priests finished anointing Temper with their foul-smelling oils, and they removed the gag from his mouth and Creed came forward.
“All my hopes lie with you, my friend,” Creed said, speaking loudly to be heard over that wind. “What you do here tonight … it humbles me.”
“I’m not doing anything,” Temper said.
“No,” said Creed, resting a hand on Temper’s chest, “you are doing everything.”
“Yeah, that’s not what I meant.”
“Your sacrifice will be noted in the annals of the Church.”
“Tell me something,” Temper said, straining at the bonds that held him. “Just between us. Have you actually worked out what the chances are of me being the Child of the Faceless Ones? We know it’s in my DNA, but it’s been in plenty of people’s DNA, and now they’re all Kith. Have you worked out the odds?”
Creed’s expression didn’t change. “Yes,” he said.
“So you know that it’s pretty unlikely that, when you Activate me, I’m gonna turn into what you’re looking for. What is practically a certainty, though, is that after this I’ll be taken down to your basement and stuck there with all the others. Right?”
“We have to try, Temper. Sooner or later, I will find someone strong enough to withstand the process. If it’s not you, then that simply means we are one step closer to finding the person we’re looking for.”
The bonds were too strong. Temper stopped struggling. “And what if there is no one out there with genes that are strong enough, and you’re lobotomising all these people for nothing?”
Creed smiled gently. “It’s not for nothing, Temper. It’s never for nothing. This process … it gives people hope. You used to understand that.”
“No. I used to believe you. There’s a difference.”
“I will lead you back into the light.”
At Creed’s instruction, the Dark Priests painted familiar sigils across Temper’s chest. Temper knew each and every one of them, as he himself had painted them on the chest of many a willing acolyte who had then gone on to be hidden away somewhere. His past. His dreadful, shameful past that itched away beneath his skin, somewhere he could never scratch.
When it was done, the Dark Priests stepped away, and Creed looked over at Caisson and the old woman.
“The prayers have already been intoned,” he said. “We are now ready to proceed. I must warn you, however – if he is not strong enough to withstand the process, the resulting physical transformation can be … distressing.”
“We are prepared,” the old woman said, a little too eagerly.
Creed bowed. “Then, with your permission …”
The old woman smiled, but Caisson took a sudden step forward.
“Stop,” he said.
Creed paused for a moment. “Is there something wrong?”
“This … isn’t right,” Caisson said. “He’s … You’re torturing him.”
“No,” Creed responded. “No, that isn’t what’s happening.”
“Yes, it is,” said Temper.
The old woman put a hand on Caisson’s arm. “My love,” she said, “we are merely observers.”
Caisson stood up straighter. “No. When I was a prisoner, it was the torturers I understood. They were hurting me because they wanted to, they liked it or they were told to. It was the others I could never understand, the people who passed, who walked by, who looked in. I could see the shock in their eyes, the horror on their faces … but they never did anything. They walked on. They never came back. I’m not … Mr Creed, I’m not walking on. You cannot hurt this man. You cannot hurt anyone. Not any more.”
“My love,” said the old woman. “This man is the enemy.”
“He’s not my enemy. He has never harmed me. He has never harmed you, either.”
The old woman scowled. “They have all harmed me.”
Caisson detached himself from her grip. “No,” he said. “They haven’t. You want that to be true because then your hatred can be everlasting. But it is not true. China Sorrows put you in that tower. It is China’s sin, and hers alone.”
“They allowed it to happen,” the old woman said. “They allowed her to keep me there, to numb my mind with that infernal contraption.”
Caisson held her face in his hands. “You say that, but nobody knew where you were. You have rage inside you, as I have. But we’ve got to focus that rage on the people who deserve it.”
She brushed his hands away. “Do you see me? Do you see how old I am? Do you see what they have made me?”
“My love—”
“No!” she roared. “You do not love me! You cannot! I used to be beautiful! I used to be magnificent! They took that away from me! They took my youth away from me! They took you away from me!”
Temper saw it out of the corner of his eye – a figure, climbing up on to the platform. One of the Dark Priests saw it as well and the figure whirled, the tip of a spear ripping across his throat, and then the spear was darting through the rain and it passed right through Caisson’s chest.
The figure leaped backwards off the platform and disappeared, and the old woman screamed as Caisson fell to his knees.
The Darkly kid – the tubby one, not the Chosen one – bundled up his jacket and pressed it to the gunshot wound in Razzia’s belly. “You’re going to be OK,” he said as the blood immediately started to soak through.
Razzia looked up at him. Her position, lying on the ground like this, gave her a new perspective on things. First and foremost, all those cranes on the pier. They looked even more impressive from down here.
The second being the Darkly kid. He was doing his very best to save her life, even though they were on opposite sides, and he must have been worried sick about his brother.
“We’ll get you to a doctor,” he said. “You’re going to be fine. Stay with me. Just stay with me.”
“You’re weird,” Razzia said weakly. “You realise we’re … enemies, right?”
He shook his head. “I don’t have enemies.”
“That Jenan kid hates you.”
“Apart from Jenan, I don’t have enemies, and you’re just a person who’s been hurt. Do you have any way to call M
r Nero? He could teleport you to a hospital or something.”
“No hospital.”
“I really think you should go to a hospital, though. I mean, I have first-aid training, but …”
She smiled. “I’m a goner. There’s no coming back from this.”
“Does it … does it hurt?”
“Naw,” she said. “It’s fine.”
He nodded. “Good.”
She laughed a little. “Of course it bloody hurts, you dingbat. Doesn’t it look like it hurts? Look at all that blood. That amount of blood doesn’t leak out of a person without there being some pain involved and a great big hole that’s not supposed to be there.”
“Oh,” said the Darkly kid. “Sorry.”
Her pets squirmed listlessly in her arms. That was the worst bit. She didn’t mind the thought of dying. She’d always known it’d happen sooner or later, and she’d done way too many stupid things to ever think she’d have a quiet death. But Hansel and Gretel didn’t deserve to die with her.
“You have any pets, mate?” she asked.
The Darkly kid shook his head.
“Want some?”
“We’re not allowed to have pets in Corrival,” he said, “and my parents aren’t too keen on animals.”
She coughed up some blood. He did his best to wipe it off her chin.
“Cheers,” she said.
He nodded.
“But with these pets no one even has to know you have them,” she said. “They’re very good at hiding.”
“What are they? Mice, or something?”
“Naw, not mice. Parasitic Murder Tentacles, or Murdacles, for short.”
“Are they … are they the things that come out of your hands?”
“Yep.”
“No, thank you.”
“Aw, Murdacles make great pets, though. They each have their own little personality. And they’re great for grabbing a tinnie that’s on the other side of the room or, like, killing people.”
“I don’t drink, and I don’t want to kill anyone.”
“Not yet, no, but I’m pretty sure both of those things’ll change the older you get.”
She heard footsteps. Running footsteps. The Darkly kid looked up, but she didn’t have the energy to turn her head so she just waited as they got closer.
