Last Stand of Dead Men

by Derek Landy

  “Don’t you want to get back to that world?”

  “What world? What are you talking about?”

  “It’s safer there.”

  “You’re not making any sense.”

  He cocked his head. “Funny. When I first met your uncle, that’s what he said, too.”

  She stepped back. “You’re not Skulduggery. Who are you? This isn’t right. This isn’t how it happened. What’s going on? Who are you? I don’t know you.”

  She turned and ran into a vast library where bookshelves grew like great oaks, stretching towards the ice-blue sky. In the clearing of the forest of books stood China Sorrows.

  “He has anger in him like you have never seen,” said China. “He has hatred in him that you would never dream about. You should have been there during the war, you know. You should have seen him then.”

  Skulduggery emerged from the shadows beside China, his eyeless gaze fixed on Valkyrie. “You asked me what is my nature? It is a dark and twisted thing.”

  Valkyrie tried to focus, but it was hard with the pain in her head and the constant buzzing.

  “Has he corrupted you yet?” Solomon Wreath asked from behind her. She turned, squinting at him through the gloom. “He corrupts everyone he meets. Have you noticed that? Have you noticed how much you’re changing, simply by being around him?”

  The pain jabbed at her and her knees went weak and she fell back into a chair in Bespoke Tailor’s. She looked up and watched Ghastly working at the sewing machine.

  “Did Skulduggery ever tell you about my mother?” he asked without looking up. “She was a Sensitive, did he tell you that? She told me that Skulduggery would take a partner some time in the future, a girl with dark hair and dark eyes. She said there was an enemy you had to fight. A creature of darkness. She said Skulduggery fought by your side for some of it, but … She sensed things more than she saw them, you know? She felt terror, and death, and futility. She felt the world on the edge of destruction, and she sensed evil. Unimaginable evil.”

  “I don’t want to hurt anyone,” Valkyrie said quietly, and sat back. The seatbelt was tight across her chest. Skulduggery always insisted on the seatbelt whenever they were in the Bentley. She looked at him now, sitting beside her, and she took a deep breath. “Are you ready?”

  “I am,” Skulduggery said.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Quite sure.”

  “OK. So I’ll tell you. Here I go. Skulduggery …”

  “Yes, Valkyrie?”

  “I’m … I don’t know how to say this. I …” She swallowed. “I’m—”

  She wanted to say “I’m Darquesse”, but the car was suddenly filled with light and noise and now she was sitting somewhere else, in a hard chair, and her ankles and wrists were held in place, and she opened her eyes and saw the woman sitting in front of her.

  The woman grunted, frowning in surprise. “She’s awake.”

  They were in a barn. It was big. Sunlight streamed in. Old farm machinery was stacked against one side. Valkyrie’s mouth was dry. Her left eye was swollen. She turned her head. Tanith was in a chair beside her, dried blood on her face, and beside Tanith, Donegan Bane. Their hands and feet were shackled, and their eyes were closed. There were people sitting in front of them, too. Sensitives.

  General Mantis walked into Valkyrie’s field of vision. It peered down at her. “I thought she was the only one of them without psychic defences,” it said.

  The woman nodded. “She is. This should be easy. But there’s something … it feels like there’s something in there, in her mind, keeping me out.”

  “Try again,” Mantis said. “She must know where Skulduggery Pleasant has retreated to, and we don’t have time to waste. Go deeper.”

  Valkyrie tried to speak, but she was too tired, and the woman leaned forward and pressed her fingers to Valkyrie’s forehead.

  “It will really be easier on you if you stop resisting,” the woman said quietly. “The more you fight, the more it hurts.”

  “Please,” Valkyrie managed to whisper, “stop. Don’t wake her up.”

  “Don’t wake who up?”

  Tears rolled down Valkyrie’s cheeks. “Please. She’ll kill you all …”

  “It’ll be all right,” said the woman. “Just relax. I’m going to poke around in your head a little more and then it’ll all be over.”

  “No …”

  “Shh,” said the woman. “Everything is going to be all right. I promise.”

  “No,” Valkyrie said, “you don’t understand … you don’t understand …”

  The headache started again and she closed her eyes, wincing, the pain in her head coming in rapid beats, like a knife on a chopping board. She looked up, realised she was in her kitchen back in Haggard. Clarabelle was hunched over something on the table. No, not something. Someone. Valkyrie moved round. Clarabelle’s lips were black, and she had a scalpel in her hand that she was using to chop up Kenspeckle Grouse’s fingers like they were carrots. There was no blood, though, and Kenspeckle didn’t seem to mind.

  “Valkyrie,” he said, smiling at her, “I haven’t seen you in weeks. Staying out of trouble?”

  “Not really,” she said, frowning.

  “Nor did I expect you to.”

  “What are you doing in my house? What if my parents come home? Professor … I think I’m in trouble. There’s something wrong, but I can’t remember what it is. It’s important, though. It’s … Professor, doesn’t that hurt?”

  Kenspeckle gave a little laugh. “Don’t you worry about me, Valkyrie. I’m tougher than I look.” With the last of Kenspeckle’s fingers cut into thin slices, Clarabelle reached for a bigger scalpel, and started slicing his hand. Kenspeckle watched her work, smiling in appreciation of a job well done, then looked back at Valkyrie. “So what has he dragged you into this time?”

  “Skulduggery doesn’t drag me anywhere,” Valkyrie said, immediately defensive. Then she felt bad. She shouldn’t be cross with Kenspeckle. He was dead, after all. “We’re at war,” she explained. “The other Sanctuaries, they want to take over. There was a … a battle. They won. I think I was … I might have been captured. But Skulduggery got away.”

  Kenspeckle’s eyes flickered to someone standing beside Valkyrie. She realised Skulduggery had been there all along.

  “Do you not feel one iota of responsibility?” Kenspeckle asked him. “She could have been killed. Yet again, while out with you, she could have been killed. Would you have felt anything then? Do you remember ever actually having a heart, or were you born dead?”

  Skulduggery’s façade flowed over his skull, but instead of imitation flesh it was blackest shadow. “The world is a dangerous place,” he said. “In order for people like you to live in relative safety, there need to be people like me.”

  “Killers, you mean.”

  An arm draped itself round Valkyrie’s shoulders while she looked at Skulduggery standing there. “Don’t worry, sweetie,” Davina Marr whispered in her ear. “I know what it is. All those hormones raging, you have all these conflicting emotions … You had a crush on him before he was pulled into hell, didn’t you? You can tell me. It’s sad and pathetic and highly amusing, but I promise I won’t laugh.”

  Valkyrie went to shove Marr away from her, but it was Fletcher she pushed.

  “You look at Skulduggery and that’s who you model yourself on,” he said. “He’s brave, you’re brave. He’s cold, you’re cold. He’s ruthless, you’re ruthless. Well done, Val, you share the emotional range of a dead man.”

  She turned back to Skulduggery. The others were gone now. All that remained of Kenspeckle were chopped-up bits of dried flesh. Skulduggery looked at her with his black skull.

  “You’re a bad influence on me,” she said.

  “I never claimed otherwise.”

  They’d spoken those words before. This conversation was a rerun. It wasn’t real. None of it was real. She wasn’t in her house. She was in a … a barn … She’d been ca
ptured and there was someone in her head.

  Valkyrie walked out into the hall. It was suddenly dark outside. “Hello?” she said loudly. “I know you’re here. I can feel your frustration.”

  She opened the front door and stepped out into the middle of the battle she’d been taken from. It was quiet, and everyone moved slowly, like time was crawling. She walked through them until she found the woman who had been sitting opposite her in the barn.

  “You’re in my head,” said Valkyrie.

  The woman frowned. “You’re not supposed to be able to see me.”

  A bullet moved lazily through the air. Valkyrie checked its trajectory. It wasn’t going to hit anyone. She examined a fist striking a face, watched the spittle erupt from the distorted mouth with agonising slowness.

  “You want to know where Skulduggery is,” she said. “I don’t know where he is. I can’t help you. You’d better leave me alone.”

  The woman nodded. “And I will. I just have to make sure you’re telling the truth.”

  “And this is how you go about it?” Valkyrie asked. “Stringing together a bunch of memories to get me to open up?”

  “It works.”

  “Not on me.”

  “Why is that?”

  “You don’t want to know.” Valkyrie ducked her head under a sword and moved past a falling man with all the time in the world. She got closer to the Sensitive. “You’d better leave. She’s coming.”

  “Who is?”

  “My bad mood.”

  The Sensitive smiled. “I’m going to have to push a bit deeper now, OK? I apologise in advance for anything embarrassing I might uncover.”

  “Is that part of it?” Valkyrie asked. “Do you use a person’s embarrassment and shame against them? That doesn’t really seem fair.”

  The woman shrugged. “Exposing uncomfortable truths breaks down the biggest walls. You should save yourself the trauma. Just let me in.”

  “It’s not up to me.”

  “Then who is it up to?”

  “Me,” said Darquesse.

  Valkyrie opened her eyes. The Sensitive opposite her sat ramrod straight, her eyelids fluttering, her mouth open. Her nose was bleeding.

  It was dark outside. The barn was empty apart from Valkyrie, Tanith and Donegan and the three psychics who were trying to break into their minds.

  “Release me,” Valkyrie said.

  The Sensitive moaned, then shifted forward and fell to her knees. She took a key from her pocket, undid the ankle restraints first, then the wrist shackles. Magic flooded Valkyrie’s body and she stood up. The Sensitive whimpered. Valkyrie could see into her mind. It was such a fragile thing. Easily broken.

  “Release my friends,” she said, and the Sensitive scampered over to Tanith to do just that.

  Valkyrie went to Tanith’s psychic, wrapped an arm round his throat and tightened. By the time he withdrew from Tanith’s mind, he was already sliding into unconsciousness. Valkyrie let him fall and did the same thing to the psychic opposite Donegan, even as Tanith was standing on shaky legs.

  “What the hell just happened?” she murmured.

  Valkyrie didn’t answer. She waited until Donegan was free, and then ordered the Sensitive to stand. Blood was now running from the woman’s ears. It would have been so easy to reach a little further into her mind and wrench everything sideways.

  Do it.

  Instead, Valkyrie moved behind her, strangled her until she went limp.

  Donegan blinked. “Is this real? Are we really out of our shackles?”

  “It’s real,” said Valkyrie, struggling to get her thoughts in order, struggling to push her bad mood down. “We have to get out of here. Either of you have your phone?”

  Donegan searched his pockets, scowled and shook his head. Tanith went searching through the barn, found her coat and sword on a bench nearby, but no phones. Valkyrie took the Sensitive’s phone as Donegan limped to the door and took a peek outside. “We’re not getting out this way,” he said.

  Tanith walked up the wall, the wood groaning slightly under her weight. She disappeared into the gloom beyond the rafters.

  “I think we can get out here,” she said after a moment. “I’ll need something to prise a few boards loose, though.”

  Valkyrie went to the workbench, found a crowbar and used the air to send it drifting upwards. Tanith’s hand emerged from the shadows, took the crowbar and vanished with it. There was a scraping from up above, and a creak and a snap, and a broken board bounced off the rafters and fell. Donegan caught it before it hit the ground, and laid it carefully to one side.

  Tanith dropped, crouching, to the thickest rafter. “Come on up,” she said.

  Donegan looked at Valkyrie. “Do you mind?”

  “Not at all,” she said, and the air rushed in and Donegan shot upwards like he’d been fired from a cannon. Tanith caught his arm before he started to drop back down again, and pulled him up the rest of the way. Moving carefully, he stood on the rafter, hands out to steady himself. Tanith clasped her hands and boosted him up into the gloom. Valkyrie heard him climbing, and then Tanith nodded to her. One more rush of air and then she, too, was being pulled up on to the rafter.

  Now that she was up here, she could see the narrow gap that Tanith had made in the roof. Donegan was reaching down to her. Valkyrie stepped on Tanith’s clasped hands and straightened, and Donegan pulled her through. Outside, the stars glittered coldly.

  Moving slowly, she crawled to the edge and looked down. Mantis had taken over an old farmhouse. The enemy were everywhere, sitting round campfires, chatting and laughing and slapping each other’s backs. They weren’t bad people. She knew they weren’t. Their laughter wasn’t cruel. They were just soldiers who needed to let off a little steam after a battle. The more Valkyrie listened, the more their joviality sounded forced, like they were trying to drown out their own doubts over what had just happened.

  She crawled back, joining Tanith and Donegan on the other side of the roof, where things were quiet and dark. A sentry patrolled below them. Before Valkyrie could stop her, Tanith dropped on to him. She didn’t know if he were dead or just unconscious, but he didn’t make a sound. Linking arms with Donegan, she used the air to lower them from the roof. They landed silently, and followed Tanith through the trees.

  When they were far enough away, Valkyrie took the stolen phone from her jacket.

  “No,” Donegan said quickly. “We can’t use that. They’ll be able to pinpoint where the call is picked up. We’d lead them right to Skulduggery and the others.”

  Valkyrie muttered a curse, went to drop the phone, but she stopped. A message was flashing. “There’s something on the Global Link,” she said. “The subject is ‘Roarhaven Compromised’.”

  Donegan frowned, took the phone off her, tapped it a few times. Valkyrie and Tanith stood beside him. An image filled the screen – Ghastly and Ravel and Shudder facing off against Mist and the Children of the Spider. Donegan tapped the screen again, and the footage began to play.

  tephanie’s parents had understood.

  She’d had a speech rehearsed. It had been impassioned yet sensible, sincere yet witty, and it had made some very valid points on the importance of taking a year out to decide what she wanted to do with her life. The colleges and universities weren’t going anywhere, after all, so why rush into anything?

  It had been a great speech, and she hadn’t needed one word of it.

  So here she was, on a Wednesday afternoon in the middle of October, alone in the house and wondering what to do with the rest of her day. Wondering what to do with the rest of her year, come to that.

  She climbed the stairs, humming a Rhianna song. She walked into her bedroom and went suddenly cold, like a hand of ice had seized her heart. There was a cloaking sphere on her desk. Then she noticed Valkyrie, sitting on the bed with her head down.

  Stephanie stared at her for a moment. Here she was again, here to take back everything Stephanie loved.

  “
Ghastly’s dead,” Valkyrie said in a broken voice.

  Stephanie frowned. “What?”

  “Ravel killed him. Shudder, too. Ravel betrayed them, he …”

  “What do you mean dead? Like, really dead?”

  Valkyrie nodded.

  Stephanie felt something. What was that? Sadness? She’d liked Ghastly, or at least she’d liked Valkyrie’s memories of him. She wondered if she’d miss him.

  “You look terrible,” she said.

  Valkyrie did look bad. She looked exhausted, like she could do with a sleep and a long shower. “It’s all going wrong,” she muttered. “They fell into our trap. We had them. We were going to beat them. Then … I don’t know. There were more of them. We were all split up. I was with Tanith and Donegan.”

  “You’re not with Skulduggery?” Stephanie asked.

  Valkyrie shook her head. “We were captured. They had a psychic digging around in my brain. I’ve been hearing …” She faltered, but Stephanie knew.

  “Darquesse,” she said.

  Valkyrie nodded. “She’s talking to me. Right now, she’s talking to me. I’m doing my best to ignore her, but …”

  Valkyrie grimaced, and Stephanie knew that Darquesse had just said something.

  “Where are Donegan and Tanith now?” she asked.

  Valkyrie gave a quick shrug. “Donegan said we should split up. We’re going to meet tomorrow. I’m so tired. I need to sleep.” She looked up. “Where is everyone?”

  “Dad had to go into work,” said Stephanie. “Mum and Alice are over in Beryl’s. Beryl and Fergus are worried about Carol. They say she’s become very withdrawn lately. She won’t even spend time with Crystal.”

  “Right,” said Valkyrie, barely even listening to details about her own life, details she should be caring about. Instead, she just stood up and took off her jacket. If ever Stephanie had harboured doubts over what she had to do, they vanished then and there.