Armageddon Outta Here - The World of Skulduggery Pleasant (22 page)

She snapped her hand against the air. The space rippled and a bookcase was blasted back, but the accountant was already moving. Then Valkyrie clicked her fingers and Ryan yelped when fire suddenly flared in her palm. He tore off his jacket and flung it over her forearm, batting out the flames.

“What the hell are you doing?” she raged, trying to push him back.

“You’re on fire!” he squealed manfully.

She pulled away from him, her hand still ablaze, and then she flung the fire, but the accountant twisted, impossibly fast, and the fireball missed him, exploded against the side of another bookcase. The accountant darted out of sight.

“Oh,” Ryan said.

Valkyrie backed up against him. “If you see an exit,” she whispered, “you run to it. Understand?”

He nodded.

Something moved above them and the accountant dropped down on to Valkyrie. She cried out and Ryan stumbled back, watched as the accountant grabbed her and threw her like she was nothing. Valkyrie disappeared among the stacks.

Ryan spun, and ran. He didn’t know where he was going, but anywhere was better than where he’d just been. The accountant was following, but he had leaped back up so he was off the ground, gliding from bookcase to bookcase, like a hawk chasing a terrified field mouse.

Then Ryan saw it – a green EXIT sign over a fire door. He changed direction, almost tripped over a cowering man who was hiding in the Reference section, and ran on. He was almost at the door when he glanced back over his shoulder, saw the accountant leaping for him. Valkyrie emerged from the stacks and something was happening to her right hand – it was covered in writhing, moving shadows. She whipped her hand and a trail of darkness reached for the accountant, wrapped around his leg. Valkyrie pulled back, hard, and the accountant crunched to the ground.

He snarled, sprang up and turned, and Valkyrie sent a wave of shadows crashing into him. He hit the far wall and that’s all Ryan saw, because Valkyrie was pushing him out through the fire door. The alarm wailed as they emerged into the narrow alley behind the library. With Valkyrie’s hand pressing into his back, Ryan sprinted towards the road. A gleaming black car was parked illegally, like it was waiting for them. It looked old, but a brand-new kind of old.

Valkyrie opened the door, bundled him in the back. She got behind the wheel, leaving the door open. She started the car and the engine roared, and she slipped into the passenger seat and buckled her belt.

“Seatbelt,” she ordered.

Ryan buckled his seatbelt. He looked at the empty driver’s seat. “Does it drive itself?” he asked.

“Don’t be thick,” she replied, looking back at the library. “He just hates it when I drive the Bentley, that’s all.”

The thin man came sprinting out of the library, clutching his hat in one gloved hand. Ryan blinked. The way the sun caught his bald head made it seem almost white, almost like…

Ryan swallowed. It wasn’t the sun. The thin man wasn’t bald.

The thin man was a skeleton.

Ryan screamed as the skeleton jumped in behind the wheel.

“Shut him up, please,” the skeleton said as the car shot forward.

“Shut up, Ryan,” said Valkyrie.

Foe came charging out of the library but the car, the Bentley, was already slicing through traffic. And still Ryan screamed.

“Ryan,” Valkyrie said, “stop that.”

“He’s a skeleton!” Ryan yelled. “Look at him! They killed your friend!”

“No, they didn’t,” said the skeleton. “But they punched me. A lot. And one of them hit me with a desk. Have you ever been hit with a desk, Ryan? It’s sore.”

“I was hit with a desk once,” Valkyrie said.

“Oh, that’s right,” said the skeleton. “It really hurts, doesn’t it?”

“It does.”

Ryan sat in the back seat, petrified. Valkyrie turned to him, sighed, and then gave him the kind of smile usually reserved for idiots, or toddlers, or idiot toddlers.

“Hi,” she said. “I’m Valkyrie Cain. My partner here is Skulduggery Pleasant. We just saved your life. The least you can do is not throw up in our car.”

he skeleton’s jaw moved when he talked, but he had no tongue. He had no lungs, or vocal cords. There was nothing at all to give him a voice, and yet Skulduggery still talked. Good God, did he talk.

“The short version,” he said as they drove, “is that magic exists. Monsters exist. Sorcerers, like myself and Valkyrie, fight to stop other sorcerers, like Foe and his friends, from doing bad things. We’re the heroes, if you really must give us a title. They’re the villains. We try to stay out of the public eye as much as possible. It’s really quite straightforward if you don’t think about it too hard.”

“But I don’t understand,” Ryan whispered.

“That’s the spirit,” Skulduggery said. “We don’t have an awful lot of time, so there are some things you’re just going to have to accept.”

“You’re a skeleton.”

“Like that.”

“But how can you move?”

Valkyrie undid her seatbelt and climbed into the back. “Ryan,” she said when she was settled, “the world is an amazing place. It’s full of wonderful things and fascinating people and deep mysteries just waiting to be uncovered. In order to not annoy me, though, you’ve really got to put all of that to one side and concentrate on what we tell you. He’s a walking skeleton. I wear tight trousers. Do you have any questions so far?”

“Uh, no.”

“Excellent.”

“You can feel safe with us,” Skulduggery said. “We’ve saved the world a few times and we’ve become quite good at it. Really, if I were you, there’s no one else I’d rather be with at a time like this.”

“Skulduggery,” Valkyrie said, “your façade.”

“Oh, yes,” he said, and his gloved fingers tapped his collarbones. A face flowed up, covering his skull with skin and hair and features. He smiled at a lady in a car they passed and she frowned at him.

“He can only wear a face for half an hour every day,” Valkyrie whispered to Ryan. “So he tends to overdo it on the sociable front.”

“But all that went on in a library,” Ryan said, finally confident enough to form a complete sentence without gibbering. “It’s going to be all over the news.”

“Actually,” Valkyrie responded, “it’s not. We have people for that sort of thing. Sometime within the next hour a very nice man called Geoffrey is going to convince everyone who witnessed that fight that they didn’t see what they thought they saw. He’s kind of a Public Relations officer, in a way – making sure the civilian world doesn’t notice the rest of us as we go about our business.”

Skulduggery glanced at Ryan over his shoulder. The face he wore was dark-haired and sallow-skinned. “Some people, like Geoffrey, find they are suited to non-combative roles. He’s what we call a Sensitive – someone with psychic abilities. Some Sensitives read minds, some see the future – Geoffrey just makes you believe whatever he tells you. Another Sensitive was a man called Deacon Maybury. Which is where you come in.”

“I’ve never heard of him,” Ryan said.

“Of course not,” said Valkyrie. “I hadn’t, either, up until a few days ago. I’d heard of his brother, Davit, who died. There were sextuplets, apparently. Six identical Mayburys. Only four now, though.”

“This Deacon Maybury, he’s dead, too?”

Skulduggery turned the Bentley off the busy road, down a quieter street. “Deacon was a Sensitive who worked for the Sanctuary – where we work. Sometimes we arrest criminals for whom there is no redemption. If they’re susceptible, it’s possible to enter their mind and insert a new personality. It’s always been a controversial procedure, and it only works if the criminal’s will is weak, but the old personality would be subdued, the new one would have a life and a history and memories, and the criminal would get a chance at a normal life. Inserting new personalities was Deacon’s job.”

“But he got bored,” Valkyrie said. “We spoke to people who knew him. He wanted adventure and excitement. He wanted money and power. So he fell in with the wrong crowd – Foe and his gang.”

Skulduggery nodded. “A very bad lot. Vincent Foe was a mercenary during the war. I won’t tell you what war, I don’t want to complicate things. Mercy Charient is, for all intents and purposes, a serial killer. Obloquy, I doubt you’ll disagree, is something of a moron – but a savage moron. And then there’s Samuel.”

Valkyrie made a face. “Bloody vampires.”

Ryan sat forward. “That was a vampire? That guy who looked like an accountant?”

“We don’t talk about vampires,” Skulduggery warned.

“But it was daytime. How could he have been out during the—”

“We don’t talk about vampires!” Valkyrie said sharply.

Ryan shrank back. “Sorry,” he said.

“Don’t worry about it,” Skulduggery told him. “Valkyrie used to date a vampire, that’s all.”

“We didn’t
date
,” Valkyrie said immediately.

Skulduggery held up a hand. “I’m not judging.”

Valkyrie scowled, and looked back at Ryan. “Anyway, Deacon Maybury fell in with Foe’s gang, and Foe’s gang are nuts. Some people want to take over the world. Some people want to change the world. Foe and his mates want to destroy the world.” She shook her head. “They’re idiots.”

“Nihilists,” Skulduggery corrected.

“Idiots,” Valkyrie repeated. “There’s something called a Doomsday Machine, Ryan. Yes, I know how that sounds. And, yes, it is as stupid as it appears. Some genius went ahead and built a bomb that could blow up the planet. He said he built it so that if the Faceless Ones ever returned, we could kill ourselves and kill them at the same time so that they could never travel to and infect other realities.”

Ryan frowned. “Faceless Ones?”

“Don’t complicate things,” Skulduggery said.

“Yeah, sorry Ryan,” said Valkyrie. “Anyway, that’s why it exists. So it was sitting there, existing, not harming anyone, and then a few years ago it was stolen. Foe and his gang stole it and hid it – which wouldn’t be an easy thing to do because the Machine is bigger than a house.”

“Why did they hide it?” Ryan asked. “Why not just set if off?”

“Because they didn’t have the key,” Skulduggery said. “They spent the next few years searching for it. That’s when Deacon joined them. They finally found it, nine days ago. But Deacon had no intention of activating the Machine. He hid the key, shaped like a clasp, to sell to the highest bidder.”

“But Foe’s gang caught up with him before the auction could take place,” Valkyrie said. “They chased him and he accidentally fell into a wood chipper.”

Ryan winced.

“Yeah,” said Valkyrie.

“So now Foe is hunting for the key,” Skulduggery said. “Their hunt led them to the library, and our hunt led us to them. And both hunts have led to you, Ryan.”

Ryan looked at his hand. “But the key’s gone. It crumbled when I held it. It’s just dust now.”

“The key wasn’t what you held,” Skulduggery said. “It’s the imprint it left on your skin. I’ve got good news and bad news for you, Ryan. The bad news is that you’re the only one in the world who can activate the Doomsday Machine, and Foe and his gang are never going to stop coming after you. The good news is that with myself and Valkyrie protecting you, you stand a very good chance of emerging from this relatively unscathed.”

Valkyrie looked at the back of Skulduggery’s head. “You said they’d probably try to cut his hand off.”

“I said relatively,” Skulduggery reminded her.