Skulduggery Pleasant

  “Hi,” Valkyrie said when she picked up. “You’ve heard, then.”

  “Hayley and Tane have just come over,” he said. “Karrik wants us taken in. Sounds like protective custody or something. Myra, too.”

  “Makes sense. Everyone’s going nuts.”

  “So there is definitely a war, then?”

  “Apparently so. You’d probably be better off with us, to be honest. I mean, it wouldn’t be safer, in fact, it’d be a thousand times more dangerous, but you’d be of a lot more use here than there. I mean, that’s if you wanted to get involved, like.”

  “I do,” he said quickly, “and you’re right. But I can’t leave Myra on her own surrounded by sorcerers. She’s only met you and a few others. She hasn’t met the weird ones yet. I’m afraid she’d freak out if I wasn’t there.”

  “Yeah, fair enough.”

  “She said she loves me.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Myra. She said she loves me.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said yup.”

  “Smooth.”

  “We’ve only been going out six months. I mean, I didn’t expect … you know.”

  “Right.”

  “So what do you think I should do?”

  “I’m not sure,” Valkyrie said. “Maybe get your priorities straight?”

  He smiled. “You are a great help.”

  He could practically see her nodding. “Best ex-girlfriend ever. Have to go now. Things are happening.”

  “Aren’t they always? Stay safe.”

  “You too.” He hung up, and went out to the living room.

  Tane was flicking through the TV channels. “Hayley’s helping Myra pack,” he said without looking up. “Or that’s what she claims. She’s probably in there threatening her.”

  “That sounds more like Hayley,” Fletcher agreed. He sat on the armrest. “So what side do you come down on? Australia’s a Cradle of Magic so everyone expects it to side with Ireland, but what about New Zealand?”

  “You got me,” Tane said with a shrug. “We’re on the same page as the Aussies on a lot of things, but this is different. This is about world safety. And let’s face it, the Grand Mages of New Zealand and Australia do not get along.”

  “So I’ve heard. But do you think your Sanctuary would side with the Supreme Council just because of a personal disagreement?”

  “Stupider things have happened.”

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Expecting anyone?” Tane asked, getting to his feet.

  “No,” said Fletcher, “but then I wasn’t expecting you, either. Hold on.”

  Fletcher teleported outside and down the corridor, looking back up to the apartment door. A man stood there, waiting for the door to open.

  “One man,” Fletcher said as he teleported back beside the sofa, “no visible weapons. Looks normal.”

  “That’s the best way for an assassin to look,” Tane said. “I’ll get Hayley, she’ll know what to do. You keep your eye on the door.”

  Tane hurried towards Myra’s bedroom. The man knocked again, then rang the doorbell. Fletcher teleported to the storage locker he rented in New Jersey, grabbed the baseball bat from the rack of weapons, and teleported back to the apartment. He held it in a two-handed grip, ready to swing. Then he turned, looking at the window behind him. A guy knocking on the door could be the distraction, allowing the second assassin to abseil down from the roof and crash through the glass, throwing ninja stars and grenades and things.

  A brown envelope slid under the door.

  Fletcher crouched, teleported to the door, grabbed the envelope, and teleported back. It was addressed to Myra. It looked like an electricity bill. He turned it over. Scrawled on this side was Delivered to us by mistake!

  He crept to the door, pressed his eye to the peephole, just in time to see Myra’s neighbour shuffling back to his own apartment.

  “Who was it?” Myra asked, walking up beside him.

  “Mr Sakamoto,” he said, smiling, “who really isn’t all that scary once you see how slow he moves. Ready to go?”

  Myra said something and his body snapped away from the door and he fell, convulsing. Pain seized his mind. His legs kicked. His arms curled, fingers clutching at nothing, his muscles contracting with each spasm that shot through him. He tried to tell her to run, but his jaw was locked, his tendons straining against his skin. Run. Run. Why wasn’t she running? She was kneeling over him, speaking, but he couldn’t make out the words. Then she stood, put something on the hall table and stepped over him, heading for the kitchen.

  The thing on the hall table. He could see the edge of it. It was black plastic or metal, with two little silver points. A taser.

  He tried to teleport. Of course he couldn’t. No one could use magic, not with that much residual electricity running through them. He gave a grunt that sounded like a gag, and heaved himself on to his stomach. He started crawling. He could hear her now. He could hear the rattle of cutlery as she searched for something.

  He crawled for the bedroom.

  He heard her curse. She’d found the muffins in the bin. She was not happy.

  He crawled faster.

  He got to the bedroom. Tane Aiavao lay face down on the carpet, a knife lodged in his skull. Hayley Skirmish sat against the far wall, her throat cut.

  Fletcher nudged the door shut, swung himself round to place his feet against it, and he lay back and tried to regain control of his body.

  The handle turned, and Myra pushed and Fletcher pushed back.

  “This is silly,” she said from the other side. “Fletcher, you’re delaying the inevitable. Come on. Open up.”

  He would have come up with a witty retort, but it was at that moment he realised his bladder had loosened.

  “I-I’ve w-wet myself,” he said through chattering teeth.

  “That’s normal,” Myra told him. “You’re lucky that’s all you did. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “Why’re you … why …”

  The door shuddered violently. “Why am I doing this?” she said. “Because I’ve been paid to do it. It’s my job.”

  Fletcher’s teeth were chattering so hard he bit his tongue and tasted blood. “You s-said you … loved me.”

  “Yeah,” she answered, “and you didn’t say it back, you creep!”

  She started kicking the door. He could hear it splintering from the other side.

  “S-sorry,” he called. “I … I l-love you, too.”

  She laughed. “Bit late, yeh flamin’ drongo.”

  That wasn’t nearly as cute as it once was.

  Fletcher’s fingers opened and closed. His whole body ached and buzzed, but it was slowly coming back under his control. He looked around for something, a weapon, and reached out for Tane’s wrist, started pulling his body closer.

  Myra was really making a racket with all that kicking. “You’re annoying me now,” she said. “You hear me, Fletch? Now I’m annoyed. Let me in. Let me in right now.”

  When Tane’s body was close enough, Fletcher’s hand curled round the handle of the knife. He tried pulling it free, but it was lodged deep in the skull.

  “If you’re hoping to have an Excalibur moment with that knife,” Myra said, taking a rest from the kicking, “you can forget it. It’s not going to happen. And that was my favourite blade, too.”

  Fletcher strained a little more before giving up, and then his eyes flickered to Hayley, all the way across the room. Somewhere on her corpse, there was a gun.

  The door heaved violently and Fletcher cursed, his knees buckling against it, and Myra was lunging in, kitchen knife in her hand. He kicked out, slamming the door, catching her halfway through, jamming her against the doorframe.

  “Ow!” she yelled, her free hand pressing against her forehead. Blood trickled. “Look what you did! I’m bleeding!”

  Fletcher put all his strength into his legs as she did her best to push the door open further.

&n
bsp; She slipped in a bit more and then fell towards him and he rolled, the point of the knife hitting the carpet. He sprang awkwardly to his feet and wobbled backwards on to the bed, and Myra scrambled up and jumped on top of him. He got a pillow between them, the knife slashing through to the goose feathers. He rolled again, pushing her off the side, then rolled the other way, falling to the ground beside Hayley. He found the gun tucked into her waistband and he stood, whirled, and Myra froze.

  The sunlight glinted off the kitchen knife, raised as it was to stab downwards.

  His hand was trembling so badly he feared he might drop the gun.

  Myra smiled. “Look at you,” she said. “The tough guy.”

  “Stay back,” he warned.

  She gave a laugh. “Fletch, sweetheart, have you ever fired one of those before? Do you know that there’s a safety you have to flick? Do you know how to chamber the first round? It’s not just a case of pulling the trigger, darling. It’s a lot more complicated than that.”

  “Stay back or I’ll—”

  “Have you seen your hair, by the way? It looks amazing. Even more spiky than usual. Being electrocuted really suits you.”

  “Back off. Back off now.”

  Myra laughed. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, this is mean. This is very mean. I’m playing with you, Fletch. I’m messing with you.” She switched her grip on the knife, held it in front of her now, and took a step towards him. “Do you really think I left a loaded pistol in here for you to grab?”

  “Stop. Don’t move.”

  “I didn’t want to use it myself because of the noise, but I wasn’t just going to ignore it. There are no bullets in that gun, Fletcher.”

  “You’re lying.”

  She took another step. “Pull the trigger. Go on. I dare you. Here. I’ll give you an easy target.”

  She leaned forward, like she was going to press her head to the gun, and then her hand flashed and he felt the blade slicing through his side and sliding off a rib. He pulled the trigger and it went off, hitting nothing but floor as they crashed against the wall, struggling for the knife. It was still in him. She was trying to pull it out and he was trying to keep it where it was. Her head crunched into his face, and she pulled the knife free. He pushed her away, ran for the window, fired at it, the gun deafening and the glass breaking, and Myra came after him, but he jumped, and then he was outside, and falling, the world tilting around him and the street rushing to meet him.

  is phone buzzed, the screen lighting up with a one-word message. Regis slipped an old playing card into the book to keep his place and left it on the bed as he stood. He went to his bag, took out a long-bladed dagger and secured it in the sheath along his forearm. He rolled his sleeve down to cover it.

  He left the room. Metric was already waiting, and fell into step behind Regis as he made for the landing. The hotel was filled with the kind of quiet that was more than just the absence of sound. It was the deliberate absence of sound. It was the hotel holding its breath.

  Anton Shudder was an impressively intimidating man. Blessed with the uncanny ability to make everything he wore look like funeral wear, he was tall, with a face carved from flint, and short dark hair flecked with grey. Shudder’s hair used to be long. In the file Regis had been given, it was long. Regis wondered if the trip to the barber had anything to do with the increasing tensions between Sanctuaries. Long hair was easier to grab hold of in a fight, after all. Was Shudder preparing for battle? Did he know what was about to happen? Did he know that for the last eleven days every room in his hotel had been occupied by sorcerers sent by the Supreme Council?

  Did he have any idea that right now, right at this second, he was surrounded by enemies?

  The sorcerer who moved up behind Shudder was young – somewhere around one hundred years, maybe. Too young to have fought Mevolent, too young to really understand that in war, sometimes you have to do bad things for good reasons. When he took the gun from his jacket, his hand was shaking. He raised it, and Regis saw that it was already cocked. Now all he had to do was pull the trigger, shoot Shudder through the back of the head and it’d all be over.

  And then it all went wrong.

  Regis could see it happening, almost in slow motion. The young sorcerer didn’t mess up. Not really. Shudder’s first clue that something was about to happen came when the man in front of him casually stepped to one side – out of the path of the bullet should it blast straight through Shudder and continue on. Shudder’s second clue came from the young sorcerer himself, but it was a forgivable mistake. Right before his finger tightened on the trigger, the young sorcerer took a little breath and held it.

  Shudder ducked and spun, one arm swinging behind him as the gun went off. He trapped the gun arm, killed the young sorcerer with a punch to the throat and spun again, the gun somehow in his hand. He fired and shot the man who had stepped out of the way. He fired again and shot the woman who reached for her own gun. Doors opened throughout the hotel and sorcerers poured out. Shudder pressed a hand to the wall and a ripple flowed through the wallpaper. Guns were aimed, triggers pulled and hammers fell, but no more shots rang out.

  “He’s done something to the guns,” Regis said, taking his dagger from its sheath.

  A stream of energy scarred the wall as Shudder dived to one side. He came up and shoved a sorcerer into another, dodged a knife and cracked the gun in his hand off the knife-wielder’s temple. Someone grabbed him, lifted him off his feet, but Shudder’s heels crunched into kneecaps and there was a howl and he was dropped. A fireball narrowly missed him. He punched and punched again, dodged left and threw someone into someone else. Regis pushed his way through the sorcerers who were supposed to be working as a team and failing miserably, and his hand snapped at the air. Shudder flew backwards, hit the railing and tumbled over it.

  Regis hurried over, looked down to the ground floor as sorcerers charged down the stairs. They knew they were on borrowed time. If Shudder were allowed to use his magic, it would all be over.

  A German sorcerer went at him with a short sword. Shudder took it from him and used him as a shield against another energy stream. The German shrieked and collapsed. Shudder cut the fingers from the Energy-Thrower’s hand. He whirled as the sorcerers tried surrounding him, taking the fight to them instead of waiting for his enemy to get into position. Regis nodded to Metric, who vaulted over the railing and landed in the middle of the crowd. They cleared a space for him and he straightened up. Shudder lunged, the sword slicing through Metric’s shirt, but leaving his skin without a scratch.

  Shudder took a step backwards. Metric flexed his fingers. The sorcerers around the circle calmed down. Metric would take care of it. Metric would crush him between his—

  Metric stepped in and Shudder’s sword plunged into his eye. Metric screamed and fell to one knee and Shudder left the sword there, already turning to the next opponent, smashing teeth with his fist.

  Regis jumped, using the air to steer his course as he fell. Shudder moved at the last moment, so instead of the blade coming down diagonally into his neck, it embedded in his shoulder. Shudder went down, Regis on top, still holding the dagger. He twisted the handle and Shudder grabbed his wrist, turning into him. Regis powered forward. They crashed into the coffee table and went sprawling. Regis got a knee in the face. He tasted blood. Shudder got to his feet and stumbled. An energy stream caught him in the side and he gasped, hit the wall and slid against it.

  “Finish him,” Regis ordered. “Do it now.”

  Energy crackled, but the wall behind Shudder opened and he fell through it. Regis ran forward, but the wall resealed, the secret escape route vanishing.

  Immediately the sorcerers ran for the doors. He heard a shout from outside. They’d spotted him, and were giving chase.

  He turned to find Ashione standing over Metric’s dead body. “That’s the problem with strength,” she said. “Makes you think even your squishy parts are invulnerable.”

  “Were you two close?” Regis asked,
wiping blood from his lip.

  “Fifty years ago, he said he loved me. Could never stand the man. The most boring individual I’ve ever had the misfortune to know.” She looked up. “So this went well.”

  Regis sighed. “This was not meant to be my responsibility. Glass was supposed to oversee this, or Saber. What do I know about ambushing someone?”

  “You know plenty,” said Ashione.

  “That’s on the battlefield. This is a hotel, and I know nothing about ambushing someone in a hotel.”

  “Apparently not,” Ashione muttered.

  “What was that? A note of insolence, was it?”

  “Not from me, Chief. Never from me.”

  Regis grunted, and Ashione grinned at him.

  The door opened. A mage hurried in. “Shudder, sir. He’s gone.”

  Regis groaned. “Of course he is. OK, get everyone ready. I want this place emptied in five minutes. And keep searching, for God’s sake. General Mantis is going to skin me alive when it gets here.”

  usic played. As Laken Cross climbed the stairs into the tattoo parlour, he worked to identify the song. He’d been to a lot of places in his lifetime, been around the world and back again, and he’d heard a lot of music. This one reminded him of nights spent in Irish pubs – the old Irish pubs, where there’d be a trad band playing every night and everyone would take their turn to sing. ‘The Rocky Road to Dublin’, that was it, by The Dubliners. Many a good night was had in those pubs, Laken Cross remembered. But that was years ago now. Back when his American accent made him exotic to the locals.

  The tattoo parlour was empty apart from a skinny man reclining in a dentist’s chair, eyes closed and listening to the music. His bare arms were inked and his lip was pierced. He had a short purple Mohawk – new – and wore a faded Sesame Street T-shirt.

  “Hi there,” said Laken Cross, and he watched Finbar Wrong jerk upright and almost tumble out of the chair.

  “Hello!” Finbar said, doing his best to recover. “Hi, how are you? Sorry about that. Catching up on some sleep, y’know?” He turned down the music. “Something I can help you with?”