Resurrection

  “I … don’t know,” said Omen. “Maybe a … a Signum Linguist? I’ve always liked the languages.”

  Auger looked genuinely surprised. “Really? You?”

  “They’re pretty cool,” Omen said defensively. “You can do anything if you master them, like the Supreme Mage.”

  “Well, yeah,” said Auger, “but it probably took her decades to even get the basics down.” Auger thought about it some more as Omen started to go red, and then he shrugged. “Although, to be honest, if anyone could do it, Omen, it’d be you. You’ve always been able to focus, you know? Better than I ever could.”

  Omen tried not to look astonished as Auger turned back to Jenan. “What about you?”

  “I haven’t decided yet,” Jenan said gruffly. “Ergokinetic, maybe. I don’t know. I’ve got a lot of options. My father says I’m gifted.”

  Auger nodded. “And he should know, right? As a Grand Mage and all, he should know.”

  “Well, of course,” said Jenan, adopting the tone he always adopted when talking about how important his family was. “If there’s anyone who has the undisputed experience to spot a gifted sorcerer, it’s – excuse me.”

  He took out his buzzing phone, and his eyes widened when he read the message.

  Auger shot a quick glance at Omen. “Jenan? You OK there, buddy?”

  “What?” Jenan mumbled, then blinked and pressed his phone into his chest, protecting the screen. “Yes. I’m fine. I have to go.”

  He walked quickly out, barging into Omen without even meaning to. Now the room was empty save for the Darkly boys.

  “What was that about?” Auger asked, keeping his voice low.

  “Don’t know,” said Omen. “Did you see who it was from?”

  Auger frowned. “Who what was from? I’m talking about Jenan coming over like he was about to rip your head off.”

  “Oh,” said Omen. “I’m not sure. He doesn’t really like me.”

  “I know that,” said Auger. “Everyone knows that. But any particular reason he’d want to rip your head off today?”

  “It’s a Wednesday?”

  “Actually, it’s Thursday.”

  “Aw, man,” said Omen, grabbing his bag. “I’m missing maths again. I have to go.”

  Auger laughed and waved him away, but, instead of turning right to go to maths class, Omen turned left, following Jenan as he hurried towards the dorms.

  He managed to stay unseen – largely because Jenan seemed far too preoccupied to check behind him. He watched Jenan go into his room and sneaked towards the door as voices were raised inside. There was movement and Omen flattened himself against the wall, eyes wide, mouth open, nowhere to hide, as Jenan shoved his room-mate out into the corridor.

  “I’m sick!” his room-mate complained, clad in his pyjamas. “The nurse told me to stay in bed!”

  “I need privacy,” Jenan snapped, pushing him further away as Omen slid along the wall behind him, and slipped into the room. It was bigger than his own, even though it only had two beds. Omen dived to the floor, crawled under the first bed and waited.

  Jenan ignored his room-mate’s curses and walked back in, slamming the door after him. Omen held his breath as he watched Jenan’s feet pace up and down. He heard the tapping of a phone, and, a moment later, someone teleported into the room. Omen peered at stylish shoes.

  “Mr Nero,” said Jenan. He sounded nervous. Scared. This made Omen happy. “Good to … good to see you again.”

  “Name’s just Nero. No mister attached.” The Teleporter sounded impatient. Angry, even. “Did anyone notice you sneak off?”

  “No. No chance. What, um, what’s up?”

  A slight silence followed, and Omen risked a peek and saw Jenan blush. He could only imagine the withering look Nero must have been giving him.

  “What’s up?” Nero echoed, starting to walk around the room. “I’ll tell you what’s up. You let a spy into our little meeting, Jenan. Those stupid gold masks of yours could end up costing us everything.”

  Jenan’s voice was suddenly thick, like he desperately needed a glass of water. “They were Mr Lilt’s idea.”

  “Well then, Lilt’s an idiot, and you’re an idiot for going along with it. You need to understand something very simple here. First Wave is only valuable to us if nobody knows about it. Do you get that? Do you?”

  “I get it.”

  “Because I don’t think you do.”

  “I do,” Jenan insisted. “I get it. Secrecy is—”

  “Everything, Jenan. Secrecy is everything. I’d have thought that you of all people would know this. I’d have thought, out of everyone, that you would be the one person we didn’t have to explain this to. Your father understands the need for secrecy, right?”

  “My … my father?”

  “He’s Grand Mage of the Bulgarian Sanctuary, isn’t he? Grand Mages have to keep secrets. It’s what they do.”

  “Yes,” said Jenan. “Of course.”

  “So this little spy,” Nero said, walking over to the bed and turning, “he obviously didn’t go splat when he was supposed to. Have you found out yet who he is?”

  Jenan hesitated. “Not yet.”

  The feet shifted slightly, and the bed creaked as Nero sat, pinning Omen in place. “I don’t believe this. I’m going to have to go back and tell Lethe that you’re in over your head. Who should take your place, do you think?”

  Jenan’s voice squeaked. If that had happened in class to anyone else, Jenan would have mocked them mercilessly. “N-no, I can still … I can do it. I can.”

  “It doesn’t look like you can. I have to say, Lethe is going to be so disappointed. He wouldn’t shut up about you – can you believe that? Jenan Ispolin is exactly who we need. Jenan Ispolin will change everything.” Nero’s voice was tinged with bitterness. “He’s going to be gutted.”

  Jenan did his best to inject some decisiveness into his voice. “We’ll find him,” he said. “The spy. We’ll find him.”

  “How?”

  “We’ll question them,” Jenan said. “We’ll question them all, every Third Year boy of that height with that hair colour. And I know who we’ll start with.”

  “You have a suspect?”

  “I do,” Jenan said immediately. “Omen Darkly.”

  Nero leaped to his feet, furious. “You let the Chosen One into the goddamn meeting?”

  Omen watched Jenan’s feet stumble back. “No, no! That’s Auger! That’s his brother! Omen Darkly’s nobody, I swear to you! Even if he told anyone, they probably wouldn’t believe him!”

  “What about the Chosen One?” Nero asked. “Would the Chosen One believe him?”

  Jenan swallowed. “Maybe.”

  “Jesus …” Nero said. “Of all the people to let in, of all the goddamn people, you let in Auger Darkly’s brother.”

  “It mightn’t be him,” Jenan said quickly. “It might be someone else. We’ll find out, though. I’ll interrogate him personally.”

  “You’d better, Jenan. A lot of people are depending on you.”

  “You have my word. By my family’s crest.”

  “And if it turns out that it was this Omen Darkly … and if he has told the Chosen One … you know what you have to do, don’t you?”

  There was a hesitation. “Yes. Yes, of course.”

  “You kill him,” Nero said. “You kill them both.”

  Jenan nodded. “Yes. I swear.”

  “We’ll be back in touch, Jenan,” said Nero. “Don’t fail us, you hear me? You really don’t want to fail us.”

  Omen didn’t know why he did it. He wasn’t planning on it, that was for certain. It wasn’t something he’d thought about, lying there under that bed. But the moment he realised Nero was about to leave, he reached out a hand, and his fingertip touched the heel of Nero’s stylish shoe, so that when Nero teleported, he took Omen with him.

  31

  “Where are we?” Valkyrie asked, peering out of the car window. The street was narrow. There w
as graffiti on the walls, none of it any good. She was surprised at this. She hadn’t thought Roarhaven would be tolerant of something so mundane as declarations of lust and crudely drawn genitalia. She’d expected their graffiti standards to be higher.

  “We are where we need to be,” Skulduggery said, coming to a stop and turning off the engine. “Ironfoot Road is close by.”

  They got out and he locked the Bentley. Valkyrie zipped up her jacket against the cold and they started walking. She kept her head down and he kept his façade up, but everyone they passed was too busy with their own problems to notice them.

  They walked for three minutes before coming to a blue door. Valkyrie stood watch while Skulduggery picked the lock. When he was done, he tapped her and they slipped inside. He drew his gun and they crept upstairs to a quiet corridor. They found Melior’s apartment and Skulduggery picked that lock next. When the door was open, he splayed his hand, reading the air, and led the way into the kitchen, where Richard Melior stood with his back to them, watching the window.

  Skulduggery walked right up to him without making a sound and pressed his gun into the back of Melior’s head.

  “Not an inch,” Skulduggery said.

  Without turning, without looking over his shoulder, Melior said, “I’m … I’m very glad you came.”

  “You should be glad I haven’t pulled the trigger.”

  “I’m glad about that, too.”

  “Turn.”

  Melior turned, saw Valkyrie and tried to smile. “Hello.”

  “If you even think about blasting us again,” she said, “we’ll hit you until you’re nothing but a puddle of mess on the floor.”

  “I understand. And I’m really sorry about that. If you’re in any pain, I can help you.”

  “I’m fine,” she replied irritably. “We have doctors who specialise in healing people.”

  “Take a seat, Doctor,” Skulduggery said. “I want you where we can keep an eye on you.”

  Melior nodded, and sat in the chair Skulduggery pulled out for him. He didn’t object when the shackles were produced. Valkyrie turned on her aura-vision for this next part – she wanted to see what happened when they were put on – but she noticed something as Skulduggery moved in. Like most auras she’d seen, Melior’s was orange, but it was a slightly different shade. She didn’t know what that meant, didn’t know if it meant anything, and then the shackles snapped on and Melior’s power dampened, and the aura shrivelled away until Valkyrie could barely see it.

  She switched off the aura-vision. She was really going to have to find a better name for it. “What were you looking at?” she asked.

  “Sorry?”

  “You were looking down at the street. At what?”

  “Oh,” he said, “no, I wasn’t looking at anything. I was waiting for you. You came through the window the first time we met and for some reason I thought you’d come through the window again. I never expected you to come through the door.”

  “Doors are for people with no imagination,” she conceded, “but we like to mix it up a bit around here.”

  Skulduggery sat opposite Melior and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “You’ve got a lot to tell us,” he said.

  “I do. Anything you want to know.”

  “Let’s start from the top,” Valkyrie said. “What is the anti-Sanctuary? What’s it really called?”

  “It’s not called anything,” said Melior. “It’s easier to hide something when it doesn’t have a name, I guess. The anti-Sanctuary, that’s as good a name as any. They’ve been working away behind the scenes for hundreds of years. Assassinations. Disappearances. They’ve orchestrated wars to get their agenda just a little bit further along the line. I know what you’re thinking. I thought it, too. How could it even exist? How could an organisation like this be responsible for centuries of murder and upheaval and yet no one knows anything about them? But that’s why they mostly recruit Neoterics. They’re looking for outsiders, sorcerers with no links to the Sanctuaries. They’re careful. They’re unbelievably, impossibly careful to not leave any fingerprints that’d lead people like you back to them. Or they were, at least. Their endgame is in sight. They’re coming out of the shadows.”

  “What do they want?”

  “War,” said Melior. “A proper, full-scale war, at the end of which the mortals will be our slaves. They want sorcerers to rule the world.”

  “Who’s in charge?” she asked. “Smoke? Lethe?”

  “Smoke’s a lackey. He doesn’t have one original thought in his head. Lethe’s different. He’s smarter. Very talented, very dangerous, very cunning. I’ve never seen him lose a fight. He plays with them at first, lets them think they’ve got the upper hand … I think he does it because he’s bored.”

  “Why does he wear the suit?” Valkyrie asked.

  “I don’t know, but I’ve never seen him without it.”

  “What about the Teleporter?”

  “Nero,” said Melior. “An arrogant little creep. In love with himself. Don’t know much about him. Don’t know much about most of them, to be honest.”

  “The guy who slowed time …”

  “Ah,” said Melior, “Destrier. He’s not really part of the team, as far as I can tell. He helps out, but he’s got his own thing going on. I get the feeling an arrangement has been reached there. They call what he does temporal manipulation.”

  “Last person I saw doing that was a serial killer.”

  “He’s a weird one, I can tell you that. I’ve seen him talking to himself – practically the only person he does talk to. I’ve certainly never spoken to him.

  “Then there’s Memphis. He’s got this thing about Elvis. Apparently, he met him once, when he was a kid. But he’s dangerous. His power manifested as some form of hyper-agility. I’ve seen him flip around like a trapeze artist without the trapeze. He used to have a sister, but Lethe killed her. As far as I know, Memphis doesn’t hold a grudge.”

  “Who’s the Australian?” Valkyrie asked.

  “Razzia. She’s completely off the rails. I never know what she’s going to do from one moment to the next. She’s got a creature living in her arm, a parasite of some sort. I’ve asked several times to examine it, but she hasn’t let me get close.”

  “Tell us about Smoke,” Skulduggery said.

  “All I know about him is what he can do. I’ve seen him touch people – not even skin-on-skin contact, but through their coat sleeves – and they’re corrupted. Ordinary, decent people turned into psychopathic versions of themselves. I’ve seen it go on for weeks – every two days, Smoke just taps them and it starts all over again. I’ve seen people under his influence kill their entire families and laugh while they do it.”

  “We’ll stop him,” said Skulduggery. “We’ll stop all of them. Anyone else we should know about?”

  “There are others, though they come and go. But that’s the main group.”

  Skulduggery leaned back in his chair. “I’ve read a bit about you, Doctor. Your power manifested in medical school, didn’t it? Up until that moment you had no idea magic existed.”

  “That is correct,” Melior said, nodding. “I did some haphazard research after it happened, managed to talk to a proper sorcerer and had my eyes opened. After that, I met Savant and fell in love, and … well, never looked back.”

  “And then Parthenios Lilt talked to you.”

  Melior’s face soured. “Yes. He’d heard about me and came to interview me, to run some tests … The term Neoteric was actually my suggestion. We became friends, or so I thought. This was back in the 1960s. Savant and I were living in San Francisco, because where else would you be living in the sixties? Parthenios introduced us to his friends – mostly other Neoterics. For a while, it was fun – we even had our own bowling team, as lame as that sounds now and, in fact, back then. But then we met more of his friends. People like Bubba Moon. Have you heard of him?”

  “We have,” said Skulduggery.

  “That’s when the a
larm bells really started to ring. This was an insane man sitting at the table with us, talking about the tyranny of mortals, about how we should rise up against them and join with the being who lives beyond our reality.”

  “We met him,” Valkyrie said. “The being beyond our reality, I mean. His name was Balerosh.”

  Melior blinked. “Moon was telling the truth? He exists?”

  Valkyrie shrugged. “Not any more.”

  “Anyway,” Melior said after a moment, “I didn’t like the way things were going, and I wanted nothing more to do with any of them. Savant took a little longer to come to the same conclusion, but then he sees the good in everyone. His power is knowledge; he absorbs vast quantities of information at a glance, but he’s also a pacifist. He’s never hurt a soul in his life. I fell in love with him because of that quality, but it also meant that he couldn’t understand the destructive urge that I could see in the people around us.”

  “But you understood it,” Skulduggery said.

  “I did. When I was a kid, I hurt people. It’s why I became a doctor, to make up for the pain I’d caused. So yeah, I understood it.”

  “What happened then?”

  “Nothing,” said Melior. “For a long time, nothing. We moved around a bit – it’s very hard to stay working in a hospital when you don’t age. We learned to forge new certificates with each passing decade. Eventually, we went back to my hometown, to Baltimore. More time passed. We hadn’t even thought of Parthenios or any of them in forty years.”

  “Where’s your husband now, Doctor?”

  “They have him. Parthenios Lilt and three others broke into our apartment, beat me half to death and took him away. I went to the Sanctuary, but they didn’t do anything. Two months later, I woke up to find Lethe standing over my bed. He told me who he was with, said they’d kill Savant unless I joined them.”

  “When was this?”

  “Five years ago.”

  Valkyrie frowned. “Savant’s been gone five years?”

  “Every so often, I’ll get a voice message telling me he loves me, telling me to be strong …” Melior’s voice cracked.