Last Stand of Dead Men

by Derek Landy

  She hit the ground with such force that Stephanie could see the shockwave that threw back Warlocks and Wretchlings and mages alike. Darquesse stood slowly in the clearing, the battlefield suddenly quiet as both sides appraised this new player in the game.

  A Wretchling stepped forward. Darquesse allowed him to approach. His sword glinted in the sunlight. He sprang at her and she killed him. Stephanie didn’t see exactly what she’d done, but it involved a lot of blood and it was over in a flash.

  A Warlock tried next. He raised his arm and she raised hers. His hand lit up and a beam of white energy hit Darquesse’s open palm. He stepped forward, curling his body, putting everything he had into it. Darquesse just stood there. When the beam failed and the Warlock sagged, Darquesse flicked her hand and his body came apart.

  One of the flying Roarhaven mages thought this was hilarious. Stephanie could hear his laughter, the laughter of a fool who saw victory because he was too dumb to recognise defeat. The Warlock’s head came to a rolling stop near Darquesse. She picked it up, threw it. It went straight through the laughing mage’s chest like a cannonball.

  A floating sphere of white energy drifted to Darquesse as she stood there. She observed it, reached out to touch it. Stephanie was pretty sure she saw her smile, and then it exploded so brightly that she had to look away. When she looked back, Darquesse was still standing there.

  Stunned silence. Every moment that passed, Stephanie expected to hear a battle cry, as either the Warlocks or the mages took the fight to Darquesse. But no. No battle cry. In the end it was Darquesse herself who instigated the slaughter.

  Stephanie stepped to the magnifying window just in time to see Darquesse gently sweep her arm to one side, her fingers curling. She suddenly snapped her arm back and a line of Warlocks split apart, limbs twisting in the air. Warlocks and Wretchlings ran at her, then, and she danced through them, ignoring their swords and their magic, her wounds healing even as the blows landed. Her hands were her swords, her fingers her daggers. She moved impossibly fast, spinning and whirling. Bodies and body parts went flying over the heads of the Warlocks and mages who swarmed her. And swarm her they did. Stephanie watched as they piled on top of her, a mountain of men and women. For a moment she thought they might even succeed, but then she heard the screaming, and a moment later the mountain blew apart.

  A Roarhaven mage staggered to his feet in the stillness that followed. He sent a torrent of flames straight into Darquesse’s face. The flames swirled around her, but they were darkening, and when she sent a handful back to him they were black, and they enveloped him and he burned where he stood.

  Stephanie had seen black flames like that before. It wasn’t her memory, it was Valkyrie’s, but she owned it nonetheless, and she knew it as well as if she had been standing in Cassandra’s steam chamber herself. In the vision, it was those black flames that had killed Stephanie’s family.

  Warlocks and mages and Wretchlings alike tried to run, but the unnatural fire leaped from Darquesse’s hands and spread through them like they were dry trees in a forest. She rose up off the ground, her arms outstretched, orchestrating the flames with her fingers. The fire swirled, and surged, and roared, and Wretchlings burst apart before the fire even reached them, their rotten bodies unable to cope with the heat. Warlocks and Roarhaven mages died screaming, and still the black flames spread.

  Stephanie watched, fascinated. “She’s going to kill them all,” she said.

  Vex didn’t say anything, and Stephanie felt something else stirring within her. Behind the fascination, beneath the admiration, there was something else, a feeling, growing more powerful the more she saw.

  It was fear, she realised. It was horror. She was looking at the end of the world, and it was wearing her face.

  very Sanctuary had a Hall of Remembrance. Some were simple affairs, with photographs and portraits of deceased Sanctuary operatives lining the walls. Some were more imaginative, with floating head projections appearing when a certain floor panel was stepped on. The Hall of Remembrance in Roarhaven was as lavish as China was expecting. A large room with a massive wooden pillar in its centre, reaching from floor to ceiling and shaped like a volcano. Upon that pillar were carved hundreds of names.

  Erskine Ravel and Madame Mist were carving even more when China and Skulduggery walked in.

  “Do you mind coming back later?” Ravel asked without turning. He was wearing his Elder robes. “There are quite a few names we have to add to the list of fallen sorcerers. Once we’re done here, we can talk.”

  “There won’t be any talking,” said Skulduggery.

  “Ah, I see,” he said, “I wondered which one of us would be the first to move against the other.” He put down the carving tool, scanned the pillar, and pressed a name. A full-body image of Anton Shudder appeared to his left. He pressed another name, and Ghastly Bespoke appeared. Their images were so solid that China half expected them to start moving and talking.

  “Pretty good, aren’t they?” said Ravel. “Very lifelike. Some of them aren’t so good, some of the conversions from old photos and paintings haven’t worked out so well, but all in all I’m happy with what we’ve done to honour their memories.” He paused. “The moment the first mage stepped out of the Accelerator, I should have sent him to kill you.”

  “But you didn’t,” said Skulduggery.

  “No I didn’t. Too distracted. You must think we’re going to win, then, right? If you expected me to move against you at any moment, the battle must be tipping in our favour. Is it?”

  “With these boosted sorcerers of yours,” Skulduggery said, “maybe.”

  “Good,” said Ravel. “Good. Bloody Warlocks, eh? Why couldn’t they have just attacked Dublin like I’d planned?”

  Skulduggery’s voice was cold. “You killed Ghastly and Anton for nothing.”

  Ravel gazed back at him, and didn’t say anything for a bit. When he did finally speak, he sounded so incredibly sad. “You don’t understand any of this. That’s the worst thing. You, all of you, you think I’m another Serpine or Scarab. You don’t see that what I’ve done is necessary. You don’t believe me? Turn on the damn TV. Look what the mortals are doing to themselves. Look at what they’ve done to the world. They’re bleeding the planet dry. They’re poisoning the air, the land and the sea, and they know exactly what they’re doing, but their politicians are so corrupt and compromised that nothing is being done to stop it. They focus, again and again, on the little things that divide them and not the big things that unite them. They need to be governed. We need to step out of the shadows and take control. In the long run, they’ll be happier.”

  “They’ll be slaves.”

  “You keep on using that word,” Ravel said, getting angry. “You keep on using it. I’ve never used that word. None of us have, because that’s not what we’re after. We don’t want to rule. We need to govern.”

  “That’s not our job.”

  “It should be. Think of what could have been avoided if someone like me had done this a long time ago. There would be no extremism. No fundamentalism. No terrorism. No hate crimes. People could be whatever they wanted to be, and as long as they didn’t hurt anyone else, they could live in peace and happiness. But we had to stay out of sight, didn’t we? Let them decide their own fates. We policed our own people and we trusted the mortals to do the same. We succeeded. We beat Mevolent. We beat his Generals. But the mortals? They failed. So they’ve had their chance. Now we take over.”

  “No, Erskine,” said Skulduggery. “We don’t. When the Warlocks are beaten, we’ll return to how things were before.”

  Ravel shook his head. “It’s too late for that. Who’s running the Sanctuaries now? My people. Shoot me. Kill me. It makes no difference. It’s bigger than me now. It’s bigger than you, bigger than all of us. The revolution cannot be stopped.”

  “There may be people like you running the Sanctuaries, but the Sanctuaries themselves are made up of people like me. The only way your plan would have
worked is if the Warlocks attacked the mortals. Then the sorcerers would have united and taken them down in full view of the world’s media. But the Warlocks are about to fall – thanks to your own sorcerers.”

  Ravel smiled. “You’re so smart. So, so smart. And yet even you can overlook the obvious. The Warlocks were just one option. Kitana and Sean and Doran? They were another. You see, all we need is a threat. All we need is someone big enough and powerful enough to burn mortal cities to the ground. And now we have that, with Valkyrie.”

  Skulduggery remained very, very still.

  “Darquesse is in all the visions now,” Ravel continued. “All the Sensitives are seeing her, clear as day. I was told about it last night. The girl with the Sceptre, that must be Valkyrie’s reflection, am I right? You’d said it had evolved. I had no idea quite how much. Impressive.”

  “Valkyrie won’t be used by you to—”

  “Skulduggery, come on, don’t be ridiculous. Valkyrie’s gone. You don’t get to tell me what she will or will not do. And you can forget about any self-righteous anger on your part. You protected her. You knew what she was, what she would become, and you hid her from us. You allowed her to blossom, and because of that, now she’s the one we’ll need to kill.”

  “You won’t be killing her,” said Skulduggery, taking off his hat. “You won’t be doing anything.”

  Ravel undid the clasp, and let his robe fall. Underneath he was wearing a suit that Ghastly Bespoke had probably made for him. “So what’s it going to be?” he asked. “Bullet to the head, or are you going to beat me to death?”

  “I don’t know,” said Skulduggery, walking towards him. “I’m just going to see what happens.”

  Skulduggery lunged and Ravel slipped by him, kicking his leg out and grabbing him when he stumbled. He threw Skulduggery against the pillar, and every carved name that Skulduggery brushed against brought a still figure into the Hall.

  China lost sight of Madame Mist in the sudden crowd. As Skulduggery and Ravel fought, more and more dead sorcerers were appearing. China moved around them, searching for the woman in black. Her elbow passed through the arm of a mage she had once known, without any sensation at all. These images may have looked solid, but they had no more substance than a hologram. And then Madame Mist burst through, hands curled into claws.

  China staggered back, trying to fend her off, but Mist’s strength was astonishing. She caught China with a backhand that took her off her feet and sent her sliding along the floor, through the legs of a half-dozen dead mages. As she slid, she glimpsed Skulduggery and Ravel, hanging on to each other and trading elbows and hammerfists.

  She got up, tapped the sigils on her arms and flung them wide, catching Mist with a wave of energy that sent her stumbling. The sigil on her palm lighting up, China rushed in, but Mist knocked her hand away and so China slammed into her. They hit the floor, separated, and once again China lost sight of her. Then the images started to fade, and one by one they began to disappear. China saw Mist, out of the corner of her eye, coming for her.

  She knocked her fists together, lighting up the sigils on her knuckles. Strength flooded her body and, when Mist reached for her, China grabbed her wrist and twisted, locking Mist’s arm straight and forcing her to her knees. The sleeve of Mist’s dress bunched up near her shoulder, exposing the pale skin of her arm, and with her free hand, China struck the back of the elbow. Mist shrieked and the elbow shattered and shards of bone ruptured the skin. But instead of a spray of blood there was a swarm of spiders. They were already on China’s hand, moving quickly up her arm. China pulled away, snagging Mist’s veil and taking it with her. The woman’s face was pale, her lips dry and cracked. Tiny spiders moved beneath her skin.

  Mist turned her head and black spiders started crawling from her nostrils and her ears and squeezing out from behind her staring eyes. She opened her mouth, vomited out more of them, the torrent hitting China in the chest. China slipped and fell and covered her face with her hands, but the spiders were already there, trying to get past her tightly-pressed lips, scuttling over her screwed-shut eyes. They were in her hair, in her clothes, crawling all over her, and still they came, the weight pressing down.

  She couldn’t see and couldn’t breathe. She tore handfuls of spiders away from her face, but it was like clawing at a landslide. She tried to get up, squashing them beneath her, but slipped on the mess and fell again, grunting on impact, her lips parting slightly.

  And then the spiders were in her mouth.

  She kept her teeth locked together, but they were there, filling her cheeks, surging down her throat, and she was choking now, and going to die.

  The least she could do was take Mist with her.

  Her hand went to her chest, her middle finger pressing through her clothes to the point of her sternum. She traced it down, following the tattoo that she could feel glowing to life, as all of her other tattoos started glowing also. The tattoo swerved left and her finger followed, then swirled, and cut across, and she felt the heat rise from within her. And, as she finished tracing the symbol she had cut into her own skin so long ago, the heat burst from her.

  It incinerated her clothes, her shoes, the scant make-up on her face and the light polish on her nails. And it incinerated the spiders, too – burned them all, outside and in, turned them to ash and turned the ash to vapour. She opened her eyes and her mouth and sucked in air that turned superheated and scorched her throat and lungs. She stood, the ground melting beneath her bare feet. She looked at her arms, looked down at herself. She glowed. Her body was a furnace. She could feel her eyes starting to boil.

  Madame Mist was struggling to stand. Dismayed at the loss of so many of her spiders. Clutching her ruined arm. So pale and so frightened. China reached out with both hands, clamping her fingers round Mist’s shoulders. Mist tried to scream, but she was dead before she could make a sound. China let her go and she crumbled, a smoking, charred, blackened thing, not even recognisable as a corpse.

  China allowed herself a single moment of satisfaction, of something approaching smugness, and turned and saw Skulduggery looking at her.

  “What have you done?” he asked.

  She could barely hear him over the roar in her ears. Ravel was on his knees, his hands shackled behind his back.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry for what I did to you. I’m sorry for what I did to your family.”

  He shook his head. “Turn it off. Whatever you’re doing, deactivate it.”

  She gave him a smile. She wondered how it looked through the heat haze. “There is no off switch, I’m afraid. And don’t come any closer. Nothing can withstand its power. I added this tattoo once I learned that you had returned from the dead. It was Mevolent’s idea, actually. A last resort. He helped me craft it. If ever you had found out what I had done, and you’d got your hands on me, I was to use this to kill both of us.”

  “That’s insane.”

  “Not really. Burning myself alive from the inside was a far less scary thought than what you’d do to me.”

  “China—”

  “Shut up, Skulduggery. You talk too much, has anyone ever told you that? Shut up and listen. I’m sorry for the part I played in the murder of your child and the woman you loved. I neither deserve nor expect your forgiveness. I don’t even want it.” Her mouth was dry. It was getting harder to speak. “I deserve this. I deserve the pain that’s going to arrive, any second now.”

  “I’ll get you to a doctor.”

  “It won’t do any good.”

  “Then we’ll bind you.”

  “With what? I’ll melt any shackles that get close.”

  “For God’s sake, there has to be something I can do. I can’t just watch you die in front of me.”

  “Turn away and you won’t have to.”

  “No!” he roared, then stepped back, standing straight. “No,” he said again, calmer this time. “You did terrible things hundreds of years ago. So did I. I’m no hypocrite. I can’t hate you
any more than I can hate myself.”

  She laughed despite the pain that was building. “Skulduggery, darling, you do hate yourself.”

  “Nonsense,” he said. “I love myself. I think I’m hilarious. And you’re not going to die.”

  “Do you know why I like you, you dear, sweet man? Because, while you may not have ever loved me, you have never bored me, either. That’s a rare quality, and one which I have always found most … attractive.”

  “I need you, China.”

  “How I have longed to hear those words …”

  “I need you to help me get Valkyrie back.”

  “… followed by those. I wish I had more time to think of something suitably pithy to leave you with but, unfortunately, the pain is becoming quite distracting. Goodbye, Skulduggery.”

  Of course, even on the brink of death, things still refused to go her way. Darquesse walked into the Hall, successfully stealing China’s big moment away from her. China almost laughed.

  “Valkyrie—” Skulduggery started, and was lifted off his feet by an invisible hand and slammed back against the far wall.

  China’s eyesight was failing, so she couldn’t be sure, but for some reason Darquesse seemed to be dressed like a Bride of Blood Tears as she walked up to Ravel.

  “You killed my friend,” Darquesse said with Valkyrie’s voice.

  “Yes I did,” said Ravel, standing. “I didn’t want to have to do it, but a change had to be made and I—”

  “He was your friend, too,” Darquesse interrupted. “But you killed him.”

  “Look at you,” he said. “Look at your power. Look at the things you’ve done. Why should you have to live in a world run by mortals? Why should any of us? We’re stronger than them. We’re better than them. Join us, Darquesse. You’re one of us.”

  China’s insides were cooking themselves. Her strength was almost used up. It was all she could do to stay standing. And her eyes, her pale blue eyes, her beautiful pale blue eyes, were already sizzling in their sockets. But even so, she could see the look on the face of Darquesse.