by Derek Landy
Omen didn’t shout for help. To shout for help was to lose focus.
Teeth bared, Jenan stepped in. Omen shot both hands down, managed to grab the wrist before the blade reached him. Jenan’s other hand seized Omen’s fleece and Jenan powered forward, slamming Omen into a tree. Omen twisted to one side and pulled and the knife went into the trunk. Omen threw an elbow and then he tackled Jenan, pushing him away from the tree and away from the knife.
They turned and turned again, feet sliding in the leaves and the twigs and the dirt. Jenan snarled and snapped, straining to gain the advantage. Omen knew enough to conserve his energy.
A feint, and Jenan went low, arms encircling both of Omen’s legs, and he lifted. Omen had a brief moment to shift himself higher before he was slammed to the ground. The shock ran up his spine and did its best to empty his lungs, but he’d been expecting it, and now he had the makings of a triangle choke.
Jenan recognised the move. He stalled it, pulled back, protecting himself. Omen abandoned the triangle and swivelled into an arm bar. Almost got it, too, but Jenan had always been good at the technicalities. Omen released it, kicked Jenan away. Got up.
Jenan was breathing heavily through his mouth. He lashed out, his fist crunching, Omen’s head rattling. Swung again. Another strike. Swung again. Another one.
Omen retreated, covering up, wilting under the onslaught. Jenan in control now, asserting his dominance. Threw a kick. Threw another. Now he spun.
Omen stopped faking and grabbed him, picked him up mid-spin, dumped him to the ground on his left shoulder. Jenan crumpled and moaned. Started to get up. Omen threw a kick of his own – low, and to the face. Jenan tumbled back, then lurched up, and fell again under Omen’s fists.
Omen stopped, crouched over him, Jenan’s face a bloody mess. Enough. Look at him. He’d had enough.
He stood. Stepped away.
“Auger,” he said, though he meant to shout. He turned to the trees and tried again. “Auger!”
No response. He turned and Jenan was right there and he stuck the knife in. Omen made a sound.
Omen fell, sliding off the blade on to the ground. Clutched at his belly. All that blood, staining his fleece.
Looked up. Jenan staring down at him, at the mess he’d made, at all that blood. Not in shock, though. In his eyes, something else. Triumph and … happiness.
On the far side of the clearing Omen saw a lion charging through the undergrowth except it wasn’t a lion, it was his brother, and Auger leaped from that side to this, an impossible distance, and Jenan whirled and Auger’s knee hit him and Jenan’s knife was somewhere between them and they went down and rolled and rolled and Auger rolled free and he had a knife sticking out of his chest.
“No!” Omen screamed. “Auger! No!”
Jenan moaned, turned over. Holding his shoulder. Face tight. Started to get up.
Someone, somewhere, calling out for Auger. For Omen.
Omen on his knees. Not able to straighten. Spine curved to keep the wound closed. All that blood.
Eyes on Jenan. Jenan standing. Omen standing, Omen moving, feet clumsy, crashing. Tangle. Curses. Hands in his face. Fingers in eyes. Omen biting.
Punching.
Pounding.
Jenan wasn’t moving any more. Jenan barely breathing.
And then.
His name. Someone shouting his name. He tried to answer, but fell sideways instead. He looked around. Started crawling. Before he reached Auger, his strength left him and he collapsed.
His brother’s eyes were open. Blinking. His arm, outstretched. Omen reached out.
Before their fingers touched, Omen fell into darkness.
China lay beside him. It was a cold night, the fire in the hearth having long faded to glowing embers, but the bed was warm, and the sheets were soft, and his presence was comforting. All through her childhood she’d had trouble sleeping, plagued as she was by the stories her parents would tell her of the Faceless Ones. Once, when reflecting over that day’s sermon, her mother had smiled and asked her, Doesn’t that comfort you, knowing our gods are out there, watching over us, reaching out with unknowable fingers, aching to come home? Doesn’t that make you feel happy?
And China had said, No, Mother, it gives me bad dreams, and her mother’s face had changed in an instant and China had spent the next three days on her knees, praying to the Faceless Ones, begging their forgiveness.
Since that day, she had hidden her fears from her parents and suffered those nightmares in silence – but here, in this bed, by his side, she sank into sleep gratefully, knowing she would surface in the morning, untroubled by half-remembered visions of doom and damnation.
This, she thought, was what happiness was. Love and contentment. At nineteen years old, she had found the love of her life, someone who cared not for her beauty or her status, but who loved her for the jokes she made, and the things she said, and the things she did and wanted to do. He was a kind man, fierce with others but gentle with her. Her parents, were they to learn of this, would do their best to tear them apart, but he offered her something they never did, and so, smiling, with her hand on his back, she fell, once again, asleep.
She woke while it was still dark. Her hand was still on his back, but his back, like the hearth, had lost its heat.
China lay there. Her body was heavy.
His back was cold.
Slowly, she raised her heavy head off the pillow as she moved her heavy hand up to his shoulder. She said his name and he didn’t answer. But he always answered her. He always did.
She pulled him gently towards her, and turned him on to his back. His arm fell limply, as if it had no bones. His chest was still – it did not rise and it did not fall. His eyes were open, and looked to the ceiling. He did not see her. But he always saw her. He always did.
A low, guttural sound twisted up from her belly and burned through her chest and emerged from her lips, a sound of pain not yet comprehended, the beginnings of loss and despair and utter helplessness and it would not stop and she wanted to hold him and shake him, but her body moved away instead, her knees rising to her chest, her hands in her hair, her eyes on his great unmoving form, and the sound turned to a wail that turned to a scream that turned to a roar of pain and unfathomable emptiness and
China woke, her body stiff, the sheets wrapped around her, staring at the empty side of the bed.
Her bed. Her apartment. Her High Sanctuary.
She was here. Now. She wasn’t nineteen any more. She wasn’t in that little hut on the mountainside. It was a dream. Just a bad dream.
China sat up. Took a deep breath. She hadn’t dreamed about that night in a long time. She had refused to even think about it. It was the stress of everything, piling in on top of her, that was dredging up all of these bad memories. She’d have one of her Sensitives take care of it in the morning, to scrub the nightmares from her mind. But why wait? She reached for the phone, and froze.
There was someone standing at the foot of the bed.
It was an old woman. Hunched. China couldn’t see her face but she could feel her eyes on her.
China met those eyes.
“We found each other after all these years,” said Solace, “and now he’s been taken away from me and I’m never getting him back. All that time I was trapped in that tower, my mind numbed by that infernal music box, there was always a part of me that knew he was out there and that, given a chance, he would find me. That hope kept me alive through the loneliness. Through the madness of that place.”
She wasn’t really here. A sliver of moonlight came through from the window and the old woman didn’t cast a shadow.
“Caisson’s was the only love I have ever known,” Solace continued, “and you knew that. Yet you still betrayed him, and you put me in that tower so I couldn’t help him.”
“I loved him, too,” China said carefully. “I raised him. But I did what I did to protect you.”
She could feel the old woman’s sneer. “You’re twi
sted,” Solace said. “Your heart is blackened and sour. You betrayed Caisson and you put me in that tower and then you chose to forget about us both. You buried us as memories, and on our graves you built an empire.”
The old woman leaned forward. “Power is the only thing you care about, the only thing you love, and I’m going to take it all away from you. Every last bit of it. Sleep well, Mother. I’ll see you soon.”
She stepped back and faded to moonlight, and China was alone again.
Lily’s scooter ran out of petrol ten kilometres from the portal, so Sebastian abandoned it in the dust and started walking.
Lily wouldn’t be happy. None of them would be happy, since he’d failed and everything, but Lily especially wouldn’t be happy. She loved that scooter. She’d made him promise to bring it back. Just another way in which he’d screwed up. Just one more reason for people to hate him.
He was maybe four kilometres to the portal when he realised he’d forgotten his hat.
“Damn,” he said. It was quiet. That word was the only thing he could hear. So he said it again. “Damn.” A bit louder, that time. He opened his mouth wider. “Damn.”
He raised his head to shout at the red sky and the heavens beyond.
Darquesse hovered there.
Sebastian froze.
The desiccated corpse watched him. It held his hat.
“Please help us,” Sebastian said. “Please help me. We need you. We need you to come back and we need you not to kill us. You were tricked in order to make you leave. We had to do that. You understand, don’t you?”
The corpse offered no reply.
“But the world faces a threat no one is ready for,” Sebastian continued. “You are the most powerful being we know. You are an impossible being, in the same way the Faceless Ones are impossible. But we think – I think – that you can be on our side. I think you have a spark of humanity inside you. Even now, even after everything you did back on my world, even after you thought you’d destroyed us all … You’re still one of us, Darquesse. We need you.”
The corpse floated down. Its feet sank gently into the dirt before him.
Sebastian cleared his throat and puffed out his chest. “Or you can kill me,” he said. “If all you’re going to do is come back and finish what you started, if all you’re going to do is wipe us out, then you may as well just kill me now. Just get it over with.”
He took a breath and held it as he winced, waiting to be turned to dust with a click of the fingers.
But the corpse didn’t click its fingers. It looked at him, with its dried-out eyes sitting in their sunken sockets, as if it was considering his proposal.
Then those eyes cleared, and colour came back to the skin as the body regrew the meat on its bones and radiance rippled through its black hair. The corpse took a breath and became a person, tall and strong, and wearing a peculiarly dispassionate version of Valkyrie Cain’s face.
It was a sunny day.
Valkyrie took that to be a good sign. After everything that had happened, after all the hardship and pain and loss and guilt, today was the day when it could all turn around. She was going to get good news today, news that would spur her on in her adventures.
For that’s what they were. Gallivanting around the world with Skulduggery, fighting bad guys, saving lives, doing magic, flying, dealing with people from alternate dimensions … if all that wasn’t adventuring, she didn’t know what was.
She was going to enjoy it again. From this day on, she’d meet each new challenge with a grin. If she grinned enough, she was quite sure she could keep the bad thoughts away. There was no amount of guilt, no amount of self-loathing, no amount of pain that couldn’t be kept at bay with a grin and a witty line. And the music box. The music box helped. She fell asleep to the music box every night now, and woke fresh, and calm, and ready for the challenge.
Things were good. Corrival Academy was on its half-term break, so she was spending more time with Militsa. She was enjoying her new training regime with Panthea. Alice was still crying and her parents didn’t know what to do, but the necronaut suit was working out well, and Valkyrie had pretty much decided to keep it. She had made a hefty – anonymous – donation to the museum, and one of these days she’d talk to the people in charge and confess her little crime, and she was confident that they’d understand – especially if she offered to make another hefty donation right then and there.
Yep, today was the day she got back control over her own life, and it started here, with this conversation.
Dusk was waiting for her, standing on the same rooftop in the Fangs where she’d met Caisson.
“Thanks for coming,” she said.
He didn’t react to that. He just looked at her. “Are you sure you want to know this?”
She smiled. “I’m sure. Whatever it is can’t be any worse than what I’ve been through already. So come on – what did you see in my blood?”
He looked away, over the rooftops. “I had only been a vampire eight years when I came upon a door,” he said. “It was in the middle of the countryside and I was starving for blood. When a vampire is that hungry, he can sense living creatures nearby. It’s like hearing a gurgling stream.”
Valkyrie liked the way he talked.
“The door was wooden, and set into the ground, secured with a metal lock. I had very little strength, but I managed to prise the door open just enough to slip through, into the darkness. Wooden steps led me to a single, vast room. Filled with people. They were naked, and staring straight ahead, and they didn’t move.
“I thought, at first, that it was a mirage brought upon by my hunger, but no. These people were real, and they were here. I grabbed the closest, and sank my teeth into his neck.” Dusk shivered slightly. “His blood was … different. There was a power in it. A potency. I didn’t like it. It tasted … sour. So I moved on to the next, and the next, and the next, and they all had this taste. This power. It made me sick. It almost killed me.”
“And what does this have to do with me?” Valkyrie asked.
He turned to look at her. “When I drank from you, I tasted that same power, but magnified. The power they held in their blood was nothing compared to yours. They were echoes. You were the song.”
“I’m not sure I—”
“I learned later who they were,” Dusk continued, “and I learned who put them down there. A man I believe you have had dealings with. Damocles Creed.”
Valkyrie looked at him and said nothing.
“Those people were what is known as Kith,” Dusk said. “When I drank from you, I knew. The legends are wrong, Valkyrie. You are not descended from the Last of the Ancients. You are descended from their enemies. You have their power and you have their blood. You are a Faceless One.”
He stood up on the ledge and turned to her. “I’m sorry,” he said, stepping backwards and leaving her alone.
He’s dead.
She’s cool.
Evil doesn’t stand a chance.
Read the first book in the bestselling
SKULDUGGERY PLEASANT series!
Meet Skulduggery Pleasant: detective, magician, warrior.
“A debut that brings a much-needed twist to the mystery/fantasy genre with its wisecracking detective hero” The New York Times
He’s dead.
She’s cool.
Evil doesn’t stand a chance.
Read the second book in the bestselling
SKULDUGGERY PLEASANT series!
Vengeous. Dusk. Sanguine. Three of the deadliest killers alive are in town to resurrect an unstoppable creature of horrifying power … And only Skulduggery and Valkyrie stand in their way.
He’s dead.
She’s cool.
Evil doesn’t stand a chance.
Read the third book in the bestselling
SKULDUGGERY PLEASANT series!
You’ve seen it all before: some bad guy wants to bring about the end of the world. A few people get hurt, sure, but everything’s all ri
ght in the end. Well … not this time.
He’s dead.
She’s deadly.
The bad guys don’t stand a chance.
Read the fourth book in the bestselling
SKULDUGGERY PLEASANT series …
Skulduggery is gone, sucked into a parallel dimension.
There is no official plan to save him.
But Valkyrie’s never had much time for plans …
He’s dead.
She’s deadly.
The bad guys don’t stand a chance.
Read the fifth book in the bestselling
SKULDUGGERY PLEASANT series …
With Valkyrie struggling to protect her dark secret, Skulduggery and the gang are more vulnerable than ever, just as a plague of body-snatching Remnants are released upon the world …
He’s dead.
She’s deadly.
The bad guys don’t stand a chance.
Read the sixth book in the bestselling
SKULDUGGERY PLEASANT series …
The Death Bringer has risen. Skulduggery and Valkyrie have seven days to uncover the Necromancers’ secret before it’s too late. The clock is ticking. Lord Vile is loose. And after this one nothing will ever be the same again.
He’s dead.
She’s deadly.
The bad guys don’t stand a chance.
Read the seventh book in the bestselling
SKULDUGGERY PLEASANT series …
Magic is a disease. Across the land, normal people are suddenly developing wild and unstable powers. Wielding the magic of the gods, they’re set to tea the city apart, unless someone stands up to them.
For Skulduggery and Valkyrie, it’s going to be another one of those days …
