70
Valkyrie jumped in the car, twisted the key and floored it. The car leaped forward, but the Cadillac still bashed into the back of her. She was thrown about in her seat as the car fishtailed, scraped a tree, ricocheting from one side to the other, the Cadillac behind her straight as an arrow.
Out of the trees her car screamed and now there was the hill, there was just the hill, and then she’d be out, and that’s where she led him and that’s where he followed, so determined to catch her, to kill her, that maybe he didn’t notice, maybe he didn’t care how close they were to the exit. The Cadillac came up on her right and crashed into her in a shriek of tortured metal.
Still they sped on, locked together. Up the hill. Towards the exit.
Cadaverous reached through her window, fingers closing round Valkyrie’s sodden T-shirt. She cursed, tried to break the hold, but he was already pulling her out of the car. Her foot left the accelerator and her hand left the steering wheel and the car turned on its own, flipped, left the ground and rolled through the air as the Cadillac sped on, leaving Valkyrie’s car to crash to the ground behind them.
Now, instead of trying to break free of his hold, Valkyrie held on, desperately keeping her feet off the speeding road.
They were at the top of the hill now, passing the payphone, and Cadaverous braked hard and the Cadillac swerved and skidded to a halt, a stone’s throw from the exit. The engine was turned off.
Sudden silence. Valkyrie let her feet touch the ground. Cadaverous pulled her in close and smiled. His breath was hot, like the breeze.
She grabbed his wrist, tried to twist it. She dug her thumb into his eye. He didn’t even flinch. He laughed at her struggles. He was God here, after all.
But out there, out through that garage-door-sized hole in the cliff face, he was just a man.
Valkyrie managed to pull her T-shirt loose but Cadaverous snarled, grabbed at her again, yanked out a clump of her hair that brought tears to her eyes, but she was free and she was running. She heard him jump out of the Cadillac, heard him run after her, but she was right there, she was so close, just another three steps and she’d be out.
He kicked at her ankles and she hit the ground, biting her tongue, the hard-packed dirt scraping at her skin as she skidded and bounced.
Her elbows, scratched and cut and bleeding, rested on the cement lip of the Midnight Hotel’s garage. It was cold out here, out in the real world. The air was chilled.
Fingers closed round her ankles and dragged her back.
Valkyrie twisted, tried to break free, but he just laughed, swung her a little and let her go. This time, when she hit the ground, she did her best to roll, but she was so tired, so exhausted, that while she managed to come up on one knee, she immediately fell back.
“Are you quite done?” Cadaverous asked, standing between her and the exit.
She spat blood and didn’t answer. She sucked in a deep breath, turned over and got up very, very slowly. She nodded at the battered Cadillac. “Last time someone damaged your car, you went spare.”
“Spare?” Cadaverous said, raising an eyebrow. “Must be an Irishism I haven’t sampled before. I did indeed ‘go spare’, but only because my car is a thing of beauty. The vehicle you see before you isn’t my car. The real Cadillac is parked nearby and is quite safe, I assure you. This is merely the Cadillac I constructed for use in here. They’re almost identical, aren’t they? Almost but not quite. The interior and the grille are different, and the wheels are not—”
Valkyrie held up her hand. “I was just making small talk before you killed me. I really don’t care about your stupid car.”
“How many times do I have to tell you? You’re not going to die before your sister and the skeleton. That would spoil the fun.” He waved his hand, and the boot popped, and slowly opened. “In you go,” he said.
“I’m not getting in there.”
“I could throw you in, if you’d prefer, or you could climb in yourself and maintain some degree of dignity.”
“Dignity’s not going to do me any good stuck in a car boot.”
“Very well,” he said, and walked towards her.
She tried to dodge past him, but he grabbed her easily, his hand closing round the back of her neck. His fingers squeezed so tight she went light-headed, almost didn’t notice him dragging her towards the Cadillac. She got her feet back under her, took her own weight. His grip loosened slightly. Not enough for her to break free, but enough so that she wasn’t going to black out.
“… today’s generation,” Cadaverous was saying. “No dignity. No self-respect. You don’t work for anything any more. You just expect it all to be handed to you. Dignity is earned. It comes from perseverance.”
Valkyrie managed a laugh. “Your little friend Jeremiah didn’t show much dignity when he died.”
Cadaverous stopped walking for a moment. Before Valkyrie could start to prise his hand away, however, he lunged at the Cadillac, slamming her face into the side.
He held her there, pinned, unable to do anything about it, and then he leaned down.
“Don’t you talk about him that way,” Cadaverous said.
She didn’t want to say anything else. She didn’t want to utter one more word. All she wanted was to stay quiet and let him dump her in the boot. All she wanted was for him to stop hurting her.
Instead, she made herself smile. “He squealed.”
Cadaverous leaned down. “What did you say?”
“When he fell,” she said. “Or, when I let him fall, I mean. He squealed all the way down.”
His eyes positively bulging from his gaunt face, Cadaverous hauled her back, and now all she could see was the Cadillac. The pretty, pretty Cadillac, all dented and bashed and scraped and covered in dust from the chase. The passenger’s side window was rolled up. It was the one part of the car she could see that had yet to sustain any damage.
Then it was hurtling towards her and she closed her eyes and the world crashed and went dark.
71
The Cain girl had gone limp in his hands.
Cadaverous dropped her, disgusted, and she crumpled – less like a human body, more like a sack of human remains. Blood ran freely from the cuts on her face. At least she wasn’t saying anything any more. At least she had shut up now, had stopped spewing all those lies about Jeremiah. Of course she had lied. It wasn’t even her fault. She was a woman. It was in their nature. He had learned this a long, long time ago, had learned it as a child. His mother had been a liar. She had lied to his father so many times that it had reduced the man to nothing. Sharp words were like the blade of an axe – enough swings and they would chop down the tallest of trees.
He took hold of the girl’s ankle, dragged her easily, enjoying the strength his home provided him. His back didn’t spasm when he bent down to pick her up, and his muscles didn’t strain when he lifted her into the trunk. His age didn’t mean anything in here. In here, his energy was limitless.
He shut the trunk, went round to the driver’s side, got in behind the wheel. He paused for a moment, wondering if he’d killed her. He didn’t want her dead just yet. That would spoil his plans.
He focused on looking through her eyes, expecting nothing but darkness. Instead, he saw a red light. The interior of the trunk.
She was conscious again, and she was alive. He wasn’t surprised. She had survived a lot worse than getting her head smashed through a car window. She was tough. It was one of the things he almost respected about her.
He left her to the red light, the steering wheel swimming back into view. Jeremiah hadn’t been tough, not like that. In many ways, in fact, Jeremiah had been weak. Sometimes even petulant.
But he’d been talented, and that had meant a lot. The way he’d worked had been a wonder to behold. Watching Jeremiah, Cadaverous had often been reminded of himself as a young man.
He started the car, made a U-turn, was almost to the payphone when he glanced in the rear-view and saw that the trunk was open.
br />
He braked. Leaped out. Sprinted after Valkyrie Cain as she stumbled for the exit.
She passed through. He felt her leave and it hit him like heartache.
He stopped, right at the doorway. She turned to him. Blood masked her face, ran in rivulets down her throat, mixing with the mud that caked her T-shirt. She stood just out of reach. To grab her, he’d have to step out of his home. He’d be vulnerable there. He’d be strong, and fast, but not this strong, not this fast. One more step and she’d have a chance to stop him.
“I’ll kill them,” he said. “I’ll kill the skeleton first. I’ll tear him apart and burn his bones. I’ll scatter his ashes. Then I’ll kill your sister, your helpless, terrified little sister.”
“You’re going to kill them anyway,” Valkyrie responded, spraying small drops of blood every time her lips moved.
“I have to kill him,” Cadaverous said. “For my own future survival. I can’t have Skulduggery Pleasant running around after I’ve killed the great and terrible Valkyrie Cain. But I don’t have to kill her. I can let her go, so long as you come back inside. I give you my word.”
“You expect me to trust you?”
“I have never broken my word,” Cadaverous told her. “I do not intend to start now.”
“Everything you say is a lie.”
Cadaverous shrugged. “You can believe that, if you wish. If it makes you feel better. If it lets you walk away. But, if you do walk away, then I will definitely kill her. If you leave, you will be cutting your own sister’s throat.”
“If you hurt her, I swear to you I’ll kill you.”
“Maybe you will. But that won’t bring her back to life. And I can stay in here a mighty long time.”
Valkyrie raised a hand to her head, as if she was just noticing her injuries. She looked at her hand, looked at the blood that covered it, and her legs gave out and she stumbled backwards, collapsed.
Cadaverous fought the urge to lunge at her during this moment of weakness. Even with her magic cut off, she was a formidable opponent, and he couldn’t be sure that she wasn’t faking this vulnerability in an attempt to draw him out. So he stayed where he was, watching her as she got to her hands and knees.
“We both know you’re not going to run away,” he told her. “It’s not in your nature. You’re going to exchange your life for your sister’s, so let us forgo the pretence and get it over with. Midnight is almost upon us.”
She stood. She looked genuinely unsteady, and her face – what little he could see of her skin beneath all that blood and dried muck – was startlingly pale. He began to think that maybe she wasn’t faking it, after all.
He took a step over the border, into the real world.
Valkyrie used her dirty T-shirt to wipe some of the blood off her face. Her cuts were still bleeding, though, forging new rivers that dripped into her eyes, off her nose, off her chin. She was blinking rapidly, half blind, two steps away. Just two steps.
Cadaverous reached for her and saw a grin start to form and he jumped back over the border, safe in the world in which he was all-powerful.
And Valkyrie laughed so hard she doubled over. “You’re such a coward!” she cried. “You’re such a typical little bully! Scurrying back to your safe place!”
Cadaverous felt that old anger rising up. She was starting to sound like the rest of them now.
“You’re big and strong when you’re on home turf, aren’t you?” she said, taunting him in that way they did, where their words needled into his mind, prised away his control. “But the moment you step out into the real world you realise how small you are. How pathetic.”
“Shut your mouth,” Cadaverous snarled.
“How insignificant.”
“I’ll kill her,” he said, walking back to his car. “Your sister is going to die and it’s your fault. You could have saved her, but you were too busy showing off.”
“Jeremiah died screaming!”
Cadaverous spun. “You shut your lying mouth!”
“He took after you,” Valkyrie said, a snarl of her own on her face. “He talked tough and then it all fell apart. He begged me to help him. When he was about to fall. He begged me to help. He was crying. Know what else he said? He said, ‘Please, Mr Gant, please save me.’ How pathetic is that, huh? And then I let him go, and he fell, screaming, begging, with your name on his lips.”
His fists were clenched. His muscles knotted. “I know what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to get me to lose control.”
“No. I’m trying to get you to be a man.”
A screech rose from somewhere within. “Who are you to question me?”
Valkyrie shrugged. An innocent, insouciant little shrug. “No one,” she said. “I’m just a girl. Just a weak, helpless little girl. I don’t even have my magic to defend myself with. But who are you? You’re a big, full-grown man. And you’re too scared to come and get me. You killed, what, a dozen women back when you were a serial killer? And how many people have you killed since you discovered magic? Do you even remember? I suppose it doesn’t matter, because obviously none of them, not a one, ever challenged you. Not one of them was in a position to fight back. And then you meet someone like me, someone who is going to fight back, and you’re too scared to come and get me.”
He looked at her, and his fists unclenched, and he chuckled. She frowned.
“You’ve overplayed your hand, my dear,” he said. “It was close. It was. You almost got me. Male pride is a surprisingly fragile thing, especially when a weak, helpless little girl like you is poking at it. But, of course, you’re not a weak and helpless little girl, are you? You’re dangerous, and you have a history of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. So forgive me, Valkyrie, if I’m not prepared to play your little game tonight.” The Cadillac’s door opened as he walked over to it.
“Coward!” she shouted at him.
He glanced at the moon, then back at her. “You have ten minutes, and then the skeleton and your sister die. Who’s the coward now, Valkyrie?”
72
He left her there, drenched in blood and impotent, and drove through the woodland, through the town and across the bridge. He stopped outside the house and walked up the steps to the front door. A calmness had settled over him. She’d either follow him and he’d kill her, or she wouldn’t and he’d kill her sister. Either way he’d win. Either way he’d beaten her.
The house whispered to him when he entered, welcoming him back. He patted the table as he passed. The floorboards creaked and he smiled. The ceiling groaned.
He paused, swapping his sight for Valkyrie’s. It was dark where she was. He watched her hands pulling apart weeds and branches. She was looking for something. Her movements desperate. Good.
The living room swam back into view and suddenly Abyssinia was in front of him, her hands clamped on to either side of his head.
But he just laughed.
“You think you can drain my life force?” he asked. “You think that’s even possible in my own home?” He gripped her by the throat. “I am God here.”
He hurled her through the wall, the wood splintering, and she crashed into the hidden room beyond. Skulduggery Pleasant, wearing a false face and holding Alice with his left arm, ignored her as she rolled to a stop at his feet, and raised his gun. Six bullets hit Cadaverous. Three to the chest and three to the head. None of them pierced the skin. None of them made Cadaverous so much as flinch.
There was an odd ripple around Alice’s head.
“What a nice thought,” Cadaverous said. “Using the air to protect her delicate ears from all that gunfire. Not that she’s going to need her hearing. She won’t exactly be getting any older after tonight.”
Pleasant put the gun away. “At the risk of stating the obvious,” he said, “she is only a child. You don’t have to kill her.”
“Valkyrie must learn that there is a cost to shirking one’s responsibilities.”
“She got away, then.”
“I??
?m sure she’ll be back,” Cadaverous said. “She wouldn’t just abandon the two of you, would she? I doubt she’d be able to live with herself afterwards.”
“So what do you propose we do now?” Skulduggery asked. “Wait for her to arrive?”
“No. I want to inflict pain. Put the child down and come forward.”
Pleasant hesitated, then looked at the little girl. “You’re going to have to be brave now, OK? Can you do that? I’m going to put you down and I want you to stay as far back as you can.”
The little girl nodded her delightful little head.
Cadaverous smiled. “Are all children so well-behaved? This whole time, she hasn’t cried or complained once. A lot of grown-ups I know could learn a lesson from her.”
Pleasant put the girl down and she wandered off to the back wall.
“So obedient,” Cadaverous said, and the table crashed into him from behind.
He stumbled slightly, and laughed, and Pleasant waved his arms again and the armchair lifted off the floor and flew at him. It knocked him back a few steps, but only made him laugh louder.
“You can’t do it,” he explained, adjusting his tie. “You can’t beat me in here. Don’t you understand? You boast so much about how intelligent you are, but sometimes I truly do doubt it.”
A fireball hit him, exploded across his face, and when he wiped it away Pleasant was on him, hands grasping either side of his head, thumbs digging into his eyes. Cadaverous ignored it all, and pressed his hand against Pleasant’s shirt, felt the material, stiff yet soft, precisely what was required of a shirt that gave the illusion of a flesh-and-blood body beneath. But of course there was no flesh-and-blood body beneath, and Cadaverous sank his fingers in, gripping the ribcage. Pleasant gasped, tried to pull back, but Cadaverous raised him off his feet and threw him across the room. He hit the wall pleasingly, dropped and came back up.
“Ow,” the skeleton said, brushing dust from his lapel. Cadaverous had to hand it to him – he had style.
Pleasant darted in. Cadaverous went to bat him away, but the skeleton did something, some fancy move that Cadaverous had never seen before, and suddenly he was behind him and Cadaverous’s head was in his hands again and Pleasant wrenched it to the side.