“Skulduggery told me once that only he can think of everything, but he doesn’t do it very often because it spoils the surprise.”
This raised a smile on Tanith’s lips. “Then we have thought of everything that we four are capable of thinking of, and we can’t think of anything else. There is absolutely no reason to think that this won’t be as easy as meeting up, handing over the money, getting the skull and saying thank you. This afternoon we take a trip up to Aranmore Farm and Fletcher opens the portal. Then we go in, find Skulduggery and bring him back. Easy as proverbial pie.”
“Unless something goes wrong,” Valkyrie said.
“Well, yes. Unless something goes horribly, dreadfully wrong. Which it usually does of course.”
4
BRING ME THE HEAD OF SKULDUGGERY PLEASANT
Chabon had picked a café on Duke Street for the exchange to take place. Valkyrie and Tanith sat facing the door. Fletcher was beside the window, reading a comic and drinking a Coke and doing his best to look inconspicuous—not an easy feat with that hair. Only Ghastly was absent. His scars were too difficult to conceal from the public for any length of time.
A little after midday, a man with a suitcase entered. He spotted them immediately and approached. He wasn’t what Valkyrie had been expecting. His clothes were casual and he didn’t have a pencil-thin moustache for a start.
“Afternoon, ladies,” he said, smiling politely. “Do you have my payment?”
“Show us the skull,” said Valkyrie.
Chabon put the suitcase on the table and patted it. “You’re not seeing the merchandise until I know you have my payment. That’s how it works. That’s how these things happen.”
Tanith lifted the duffel bag and opened it, allowing Chabon a peek at the money within. She closed it and held it on her lap.
Valkyrie reached for the case, but Chabon grabbed her wrist.
“You’re very eager,” he said, his voice cold. He turned her wrist, eyes narrowing when he got a closer look at the ring. “You’re a Necromancer? I thought you people didn’t even leave the Temple until you were twenty-five.”
She took her hand back. “I dabble,” she said. “Your turn.”
Chabon flattened his palm on the case and the locks sprang open. He raised the lid, enough for Valkyrie and Tanith to see what it contained.
“That’s the Murder Skull?” Tanith asked. “You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“If you’re lying to us…” Valkyrie began.
Chabon shook his head. “Don’t threaten me, girl. I’ve been threatened by professionals. I had this discussion with your vampire friend, and all the facts we established then are still true today. So, unless you’re planning on double-crossing me, and using that fella with the stupid hair by the window, what do you say we conduct our business and part ways? I’ve got a plane to catch.”
Valkyrie glanced at Tanith, who put the duffel bag on the table. Chabon reached in and touched the money.
“It’s all there,” Tanith said.
After a moment, Chabon nodded. “Yes, it is.” He withdrew his hand and stood, taking the bag with him and leaving the case on the table. “Been a pleasure,” he said and they watched him walk out.
Fletcher came over and Valkyrie raised the lid slightly. The case was lined and cushioned, the skull sitting comfortably within. A huge smile suddenly broke across Valkyrie’s face.
They had it. They had it, and in a few hours they’d pass through the portal and get Skulduggery back. All her hard work would pay off and, by the end of the day, her life would be allowed to resume. She closed the case.
“I just want to make sure,” she said and hurried to the door. She stepped out and saw Chabon just as he turned the corner on to Grafton Street.
“Hey!” she roared, a furious look on her face.
Chabon turned. If the skull was the Murder Skull, he would have no need to panic. If it wasn’t…Chabon panicked and broke into a sprint.
“It’s a fake!” she shouted to the others and bolted after Chabon, with Tanith and Fletcher following.
Valkyrie barged into the crowd, fighting to keep Chabon in sight. She leaped over a busker’s coin tray and dodged around a man painted silver. Chabon turned right, into a long, bright lane, the duffel bag swinging wildly.
If the lane had been empty, Valkyrie would have wrapped a tendril of shadow around his ankles and pitched him forward on to his face. But there were maybe a dozen people wandering by shop windows, and a woman begging for spare change just ahead of her. Out of the corner of her eye, Valkyrie saw Tanith dart into an alcove and run up the side of the building. Valkyrie chased Chabon to the next street, where he glanced up and saw Tanith moving over rooftops to cut him off. He knocked over an old man and ran into the Powerscourt Centre. Valkyrie took the street adjacent, moving parallel to him. Through the windows she saw him crash through the lunch crowd at the restaurant, slowing him down.
She reached South William Street as Chabon staggered out of the Powerscourt Centre. He saw her, cursed and kept running, through Castle Market and straight into the old Victorian building that housed the George’s Street Arcade. She knew she had him. He didn’t have a hope of getting away now.
The stalls were set up down the middle of the arcade, funnelling the shoppers down paths on either side. There were clothes stalls and jewellery stalls and a fortune-teller behind a red curtain. Chabon chose the left path, knocking people out of his way. He stumbled over a box of old paperbacks and Valkyrie piled on the speed and jumped, her knees slamming into his back. He sprawled to the ground and she ignored the startled looks from the people around her. He reached for the fallen bag and she stomped on his hand. He shrieked, kicking, and her feet swept from beneath her. She landed just as he got up, the bag in his uninjured hand, but she grabbed one of the straps and wouldn’t let go, and Chabon remembered too late that she wasn’t alone.
Tanith came flying over Valkyrie and her boot-heel connected with Chabon’s sternum. There was a crack and he went down and rolled a few times before curling up. Valkyrie got to her feet as Fletcher joined them, puffing and panting like someone who hadn’t needed to run anywhere in quite a while.
“Here you go,” Valkyrie said as she pressed the duffel bag into Fletcher’s arms. She smiled at the crowd. “This poor boy got his bag snatched by that nasty man.”
Fletcher glared at her as the crowd applauded, and Tanith picked up Chabon and escorted him away. Valkyrie and Fletcher followed.
“That was unnecessary,” Fletcher seethed.
“If you’d been faster,” she said quietly, “maybe you could have been the hero – but you weren’t, so you’re the innocent victim. Get over it.”
Tanith took Chabon far enough away from passing pedestrians so that they could talk without being overheard. She pressed him back against the wall. He was holding his hand against his chest, obviously in a great deal of pain.
“Where’s the real Murder Skull?” Valkyrie asked, keeping her voice low.
“I gave it to you,” Chabon tried. She prodded his hands and he hissed. “OK! Stop! I had it, I swear I did. When I talked to you on the phone, I had it.”
“So what did you do with it?”
Chabon was looking quite pale. His injury was making him sweat. “There’s a…Look, there’s a rule, in what I do. If you find something that one person is willing to pay for, odds are there’s someone else who’s willing to pay more.”
“You advertised?”
“I didn’t know anyone would be that interested, so yeah, I mentioned it here and there, and someone came to me with a better offer.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
Valkyrie made a fist and crunched it against Chabon’s hands. Tanith struggled to keep him standing upright.
“A woman,” he gasped. “I met with her an hour ago. She paid me triple. I didn’t think you’d ever know. It’s the Murder Skull. What’s so important about it?”
“What did this wom
an look like?” asked Tanith.
“Dark hair. Pretty enough. All business.”
“A name,” Valkyrie said. “A number, address, anything.”
“She called me. Kept her number private. We met in the arrivals area in the airport. She had the money so I gave her the skull. I brought a second one for you lot.”
“You’d better give us something we can use to find her,” Fletcher said, “or I’m teleporting you to the middle of the Sahara and I’m leaving you there.”
Chabon looked at him, like he was gauging whether or not the threat was serious. He obviously decided it was.
“She’s American – Boston by the accent. And she’s got that eye thing – one green eye, one blue.”
“Heterochromia,” Tanith said. “Davina Marr.”
Valkyrie’s stomach dropped. Davina Marr had been brought in by the Irish Sanctuary to assume the role of Prime Detective. Valkyrie had had a few run-ins with her already, and had found her to be ambitious, patronising and ruthless.
“If she bought the skull,” Valkyrie said grimly, “then Thurid Guild has it by now, and he’s going to lock it away to make sure Skulduggery never gets back.”
“So what do we do?” asked Fletcher.
“We steal it,” said Valkyrie.
5
THE REVENGERS’ CLUB
It was raining. Again.
Scarab didn’t like Ireland. Every great misfortune in his life had happened here. Every major defeat. Even though he had done his time in an American prison, he’d been arrested here in Ireland – and it had been raining then too.
The castle was cold and there were draughts everywhere. Most of the doors had recently been blocked off, sealing away the dungeons and various unsavoury places. They were still accessible through the many secret passages, but it was proving quite difficult to get around. Also the plumbing was terrible. The cell that had been his home for two centuries had kept him alive, kept him nourished, kept his body clean and his muscles from atrophying. For 200 years he had not even needed to visit a bathroom. Where did all the waste go? Was there any waste to begin with? He didn’t know and no one had come around to tell him.
And now, suddenly, he had to eat and wash and visit the bathroom at worryingly frequent intervals, and the toilet wouldn’t flush. He’d searched for another bathroom and had quickly got lost. He had stumbled around in the dark for half an hour before finding his way back to where he started.
“Where have you been?” Billy-Ray asked, hurrying by. “They’re here.” He disappeared into the next room.
Scarab shuffled to the door and heard Billy-Ray welcoming their guests. Scarab’s bladder was still full, and he wondered if he had time to find a potted plant or something. Not that a place like this would have a potted plant.
“You’re wonderin’ why I called you here,” he heard Billy-Ray say. “You’re lookin’ at the guy sittin’ next to you and you’re goin’, hey, don’t I hate that guy? Didn’t that guy try to kill me once? The fact is, yeah, we all probably tried to kill each other a few times over the years, but y’know what? So did plenty of other people.
“And that, gentlemen, is why we’re here. That is the bond we share. This is our common affliction and so it provides us with our common goal. I got someone I want to introduce. You may have heard of him. He’s the man who killed Esryn Vanguard. Boys, I’d like you to meet the man, the legend, Dreylan Scarab!”
Scarab straightened up and walked in, keeping his steps purposeful and strong.
Four men sat at a table, with Billy-Ray taking the fifth seat. Scarab strode forward but didn’t sit. He knew each of the men, though they’d never met. His son’s descriptions were more than adequate.
Remus Crux was the ex-Sanctuary Detective, now a raving lunatic who didn’t bother washing. He was a recent convert to the Faceless Ones, according to Billy-Ray, and he’d developed a murderous fixation on the girl called Valkyrie Cain after she’d killed a couple of his Dark Gods with the Sceptre of the Ancients. Scarab had always believed the Sceptre to be a fairytale, and he’d never had much time for the Faceless Ones. He’d agreed to Crux’s inclusion, however, because while having a madman on board was a risk, sometimes risk was all you had.
The dark-haired man beside Crux was pale and dressed in black. Cain, a girl who was sounding more and more like a real and viable threat, had cut a slash across Dusk’s face with Billy-Ray’s straight razor, scarring him for life. Vampires were known for their grudges. Dusk was another unpredictable entity, for a vampire was more creature than man. But for sheer physical power he was an asset that could not be discounted.
Sitting across from Dusk was the self-proclaimed Terror of London, Springheeled Jack. His lanky frame curled into the chair, one knee drawn up to his chest. His suit was old and ragged, and his top hat was perched at an unsteady angle on his head. Hardened fingernails drummed a slow rhythm on the tabletop. Scarab didn’t know what manner of monster this was, but he knew that Jack had been driven out of England and was being hunted across Europe. Scarab liked people that had nowhere else to turn. Those were people he could rely on.
The fourth member of this little society, this Revengers’ Club, was the one about whom they knew the least. Billy-Ray had informed Scarab that this man claimed to be a killer beyond compare, who had suffered at the hands of the skeleton detective and his partner, but that was all they knew about the mysterious and deadly Vaurien Scapegrace.
Scarab stood at the head of the table and summoned all the dreadful authority he could muster.
“You’ve heard of the things I’ve done,” he said. They looked at him without speaking. “You’ve heard of the people I’ve killed. Most of these stories are true. I have killed and laughed and killed again. As have all of you.
“Gentlemen, we are a dying breed. A hundred years from now, people like us will be taken down before we’ve done anything wrong. We will be put in prison for the thoughts we think and the things we feel. We are the last of the truly great and the truly free. And they want to take that away from us.
“Sanguine was talking to you about a bond we share, a burning desire that lights within us all. We are free men, and to be free we must reject the rules and the laws that do not define us and do not apply to us. We must strike against our enemies, bring them down and grind them beneath our boots.”
“I am here because I am curious,” Dusk said. He spoke calmly, without effort or emotion. “Why should I help you?”
“I busted you out of prison for this,” Billy-Ray said. “You owe me, vampire.”
“I owed Baron Vengeous,” Dusk said. “But to you, I owe nothing. So I ask again – why should I help you? Why should I help any of you? I don’t think everyone here can be trusted anyway. Seated at this very table is someone who saved the life of Valkyrie Cain, after all.”
Springheeled Jack smiled. His teeth were narrow and sharp and many. “I stopped you from killin’ her cos I didn’t like you lot lyin’ to me, and I didn’t like your boss. The chance to mess up your plans, therefore, was too sweet to resist. Tell me, you still sore from that hidin’ I gave you?”
Dusk met his eyes. “If we were to meet on equal ground, I’d tear you to bloody, quivering pieces. Here for instance.”
“It ain’t even night yet,” Jack grinned. “You sure you can be let off your leash so early?”
Dusk launched himself across the table and Jack laughed and rose to meet him. They crashed to the ground, knocking Scapegrace out of his chair. They flipped and rolled and went at each other again, snarling deep in their throats.
“Quit it!” Scarab roared and the scuffle broke. He pressed on before they had a chance to resume. “We’re fighting ourselves? That’s how you want this to go? This is an opportunity to shake the world to its foundations, and you want to kill each other? Let me tell you – and I’m speaking from experience here – there are always more deserving people out there to kill.
“This is our opportunity to strike back against our enemies. W
e have a chance to succeed where everyone else has failed. We’ve seen those failures. We’ve seen where people like Mevolent and Serpine have gone wrong, and we have learned from their mistakes.”
“I nearly killed Valkyrie Cain last night,” Crux announced.
They all stared at him.
“You what?” said Billy-Ray.
“My hands,” Crux said, “around her throat. Squeezing. I could see fear in her eyes. Real fear. Almost had her.”
Dusk turned to him. “You know where she lives?”
Crux nodded. “Can’t get there now though. Saw a lot of mages marking symbols around the town. Got a perimeter there now. Can’t get in without alerting the Cleavers. Don’t like the Cleavers.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Billy-Ray snarled. “We could’ve gone in, got her, torn her to pieces—”
“I kill Cain,” Crux said, pointing a finger back at himself. “Me. Not you, not the vampire, not the idiot.”
Scapegrace frowned. “Who’s the idiot?”
“She killed the Dark Gods,” Crux continued, “but they will rise again.”
Scarab could see the anger growing in Billy-Ray and Dusk. He could use his own knowledge of the language of magic to bypass this magical perimeter, but in doing so he’d lose most of his team before they’d even started on his mission. He needed them to stay thirsty for revenge. He spoke quickly to calm the situation. “Mr Crux, if you want the Faceless Ones to return, you’ve got to make it happen. And the first thing we do is get rid of the opposition. And we have a plan to do just that.”
Dusk took his eyes off Crux. “You have a plan,” he said.
“Yes, it is my plan,” Scarab said, “but it belongs to all of us. We’re going to steal the Desolation Engine.”
Three of the men smiled. One of them looked confused.
“What’s a Desolation Engine?” asked Scapegrace.
“It’s a bomb,” Billy-Ray said. “There’s no big explosion or loud bang, just the instant disintegration of every single thing in its radius. It all turns to dust. So we’re goin’ to steal it an’ we’re goin’ to use it to destroy the Sanctuary.”