Death Bringer (40 page)

She opened her good eye, saw Vile coming for her. His shoulder slammed into her belly, his arm encircled her, and they hurtled downwards. She blinked. The vision in her bad eye turned from nothing to blurry to perfect. Better than her right eye, in fact. To compensate, she sharpened that eye as well, and then returned her attention to her current predicament. She tried to look down at what they were flying towards but the wind was blowing her hair in the way. She wrapped her legs around Vile's waist, grabbed him where she could, and flipped, so that now she was the pilot forcing
him
down. And now that her hair was out of the way, she could see what they were heading towards. O'Connell Street, in the middle of Dublin.

“Oh,” she said, and then they crashed.

Chapter 59
Hero and Villain

arquesse lay there in the broken road, looking up at the suddenly starless sky in the last few moments of life, and she managed a shaky laugh. Her body was smashed. Her lungs were burst and her heart wasn't beating. Her limbs were twisted, her spine was pulverised, her head was cracked open. She could feel her brain starting to swell, so that was the first thing she healed. She wouldn't be able to do much thinking without her brain.

It was somewhere between four and five on a Monday morning. She healed her spine and raised her head, looked around. No civilians were standing there, staring with open mouths. Pity. She'd have liked to have seen their faces when she stood up after a fall like that.

Lord Vile lay a few feet away. He wasn't moving.

Darquesse repaired her internal organs, restarted her heart and drew air into her newly re-formed lungs. Next came her limbs. Her bones made cracking sounds as they realigned and knitted back together. She reached behind her head, made sure her hair didn't get trapped in the fissure that healed in her skull. Her ruptured skin closed over. A lot of her blood covered the ground, so she made more, and stood up.

Headlights swept in and she turned. A taxi slowed to a stop, and the driver got out. He looked at her, looked at Vile, looked at the churned-up road. He didn't ask any questions, he just stood there like he was waiting for an explanation. She didn't like that. She didn't like him. She stepped forward to tear him in two and then Vile grabbed her jacket from behind, lifted her off her feet and slammed her through the bonnet of the car.

Her face crunched into the engine block, and he hauled her out before she even knew what was happening, and hurled her through the window of a Burger King. She hit a table and flipped sideways to the floor, coming to a stop in the dark as an alarm started up, so loud that it pierced the world. She got to her hands and knees, spitting blood, and the shadows snaked out, seized her wrists, and she flew back out through the broken window, hitting the ruined taxi, denting the passenger-side door. Above the alarm, she heard the driver screaming as he ran away, and then Vile reached down, closed his fingers around her throat.

Her held her off the ground with his left hand and hit her with his right. His fist was a block of stone, showing her explosions of bright light every time it connected. She needed to stop him before he punched her brain out through her skull. She'd done that once. It was funnier when it happened to other people.

She took hold of his left wrist with both her hands, and squeezed. Vile's head tilted. He reinforced the armour on his forearm, but Darquesse just squeezed harder. Finally, he had to release his grip, and she smacked him under the chin. He hurtled backwards off his feet and she launched herself into the air, smashed into him, flying low. The street whipped by underneath. She got a hand around his throat and dipped, smashed the back of his head into the steps that led up to Eason's bookshop. The steps cracked under the impact and Darquesse smashed his head down again, and again. A pillar of darkness erupted from his chest like a piston, throwing her to the pavement. He stood and she waved an arm.

The energy that enveloped him would have turned rock to dust, but all it did to Vile was send him staggering to the metal shutter covering the shop window. The shutter melted, the glass shattered and another alarm rang out. Darquesse leaped to the top of the steps and barged into him, taking them both through the window into the shop.

The shadows converged, tried to wrap around her hands and feet. Darquesse snarled, cutting through them with her fingernails. She gagged suddenly, saw blood, took a moment to work out that her throat had been slashed. She healed it and saw Vile, conducting the shadows like an orchestra. She blurred to him, threw him back against the wall, spilling books and breaking shelves. She was on him again, holding him above her as she launched upwards. She smashed him through the ceiling into the floor above, smashed through into the floor above that, and the floor above that. There he broke free, elbowed her, impaled her cheek with the spike that grew from that elbow, and wrenched it out. She spat blood on to the eye-slit in his mask and he tried to push her away, but she grabbed him, spun, and hurled him to the line of windows overlooking the street. He smashed through and she saw the night swoop down and catch him.

She was breathing hard, covered in dust and blood and plaster. She was sweating, too, and starving. All this energy, all this magic, being used on someone who seemed to be just as tough as she was. Maybe even tougher. She healed her face and walked to the windows. Vile hovered in mid-air, looking at her. His armour was spiked, ready for round two.

Below, sirens wailed and blue lights flashed. Above, a police helicopter sped towards them, searchlight probing the streets. Darquesse smiled.

She ran for the window, jumped and took flight, the wind in her hair again. She flew up, away from Vile, towards the helicopter. She ducked the searchlight, coming around low, but before she could punch through the underside, Vile had his arms around her and was pulling her away. They tumbled out of the sky. For a moment it looked like they might smash into the fire engine speeding across O'Connell Bridge, but Vile changed their trajectory and they hit the water, went deep into the Liffey, and Vile lost his grip.

Darquesse powered through the dark river, Vile right behind, reaching out. He snagged her foot and she veered up, broke the surface, trying to shake him. He twisted in mid-air, threw her like a baseball. It was almost fun, the speed at which she was thrown. Another window smashed to smithereens around her. She hit a railing, tumbled down some stairs, came to rest against a shelf, comics falling on top of her. She saw a sign that said Forbidden Planet. A comic shop. How fitting.

She looked up. Vile stood at the top of the stairs.

“We should really stop throwing each other through windows,” she told him. She reached up to the counter, pulled herself to her feet. “You know what the funny thing is? I actually don't care any more if you kill Melancholia. Isn't that funny? In fact, if you'd be agreeable, maybe we could pop back for a moment and I'll kill her myself. What do you say?”

He stood there, a dark shape, unmoving.

A shard of glass had managed to sneak into her belly, between her trousers and jacket. She gripped it with two fingers and pulled it out slowly. It was much longer than she'd expected. When it was out, she dropped it and pulled another shard from her forehead. “So that's a no, then, is it? Pity.”

He walked down the steps.

“Does that mean you've changed your mind?” she asked. “Don't you
want
to kill the Death Bringer? What about me? Do you want to kill me? I'm going to kill the world, after all. This might be your only chance to stop me.”

He reached the bottom and just stood there, looking at her.

“I'm only going to get stronger,” she said, “and you know it. This is your only chance. No? You're not going to take it?” She laughed. “I'm disappointed. I've heard so much about the great Lord Vile, and now look at him. He's not even going to kill his enemy when she's right in front of him. What do I have to do? How do I provoke such a scary, scary man like you into doing what needs to be done? Do I go out there and kill someone? What about those cops? Do you need me to kill those cops? I'd like another go at that helicopter, actually. I'd like to see it crash and burn. Or maybe something else. What else could I do, I wonder?”

“Valkyrie,” Lord Vile said. His voice was a whisper.

Darquesse smiled. “
I'm
Valkyrie. Whatever you've got to say to her, you can say to me. What was it Skulduggery said earlier? I'm her bad mood.”

That whisper again. “Let her out.”

“But I'm not repressing her. I know you understand this. I
am
Valkyrie. I'm just embracing my potential. If my conscience never reasserted itself, I'd stay like this for ever. Just like you'd stay like
that
, Skulduggery.”

Vile tilted his head. Then his hands went to his mask and she heard the clasps open, one by one. Shadows leaked, dissipating in the air. He pulled the mask away, revealing the gleaming skull beneath.

“I wouldn't stay like this,” Skulduggery said. “I like being me.”

Darquesse smiled. “Do you really? Do you really like carrying around all that shame and guilt? I doubt it. I bet you
anything
that being Lord Vile was the most fun you've had in years.”

“You'd be wrong.”

“I think you're fibbing.”

He let the chest plate fall. Beneath it, his shirt was rumpled, and his bow tie was askew. “The most fun I've had recently was St Patrick's Day last year. You remember it?”

Darquesse frowned. “Did we
do
anything on St Patrick's Day?”

He continued to strip the armour away. “We were on a stake-out. It was you, me and Fletcher. For the first hour, he wouldn't shut up. Then you started insulting him.”

“Oh,” Darquesse said. “I remember.”

“It was five hours with the three of us stuck in a room, and then another four hours with just the two of us, after Fletcher couldn't take it any more.”

Darquesse laughed. “I've never seen him sulk so
hard
.”

“That was a good day for me,” Skulduggery said. “I didn't have to hit anyone. I didn't have to shoot anyone. I just sat around and talked to my good friend and partner, Valkyrie Cain.”

“And insulted her boyfriend,” Darquesse grinned.

“Indeed.”

Valkyrie shrugged. “Ex-boyfriend now, of course.”

“Fletcher was always going to be your ex-boyfriend, from the moment you met him. He's just finally caught up with where he's supposed to be.”

“What a nice way of looking at it.”

The last bit of Skulduggery's armour joined the pile. “Maybe you should share that with him the next time you see him.”

“Maybe.” She looked round at the shattered glass and the mess. “I'm tired.”

“I don't blame you.”

“People saw us. That taxi driver. He saw me.”

“That's what people like Scrutinous are for.”

“I'm me again, by the way.”

“I know.”

Valkyrie let out a deep breath. “Did you see what I did? I was practically dead and I healed myself. How did I do that? I don't even know what kind of magic it was. It certainly wasn't Elemental, and it was like no Adept discipline I've ever heard of. It didn't follow any of the rules.”

“I don't know, Valkyrie.”

“I wonder what else I can do?” she said, and heat rose in her face. “I mean… I don't
want
to know. I don't want anything like that to happen again, I just…”

“I know,” Skulduggery said. “You're just wondering.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Exactly. It was… amazing. I was flying, for God's sake. Me. On my own. I was doing all these incredible things…”

Skulduggery held his hand over the armour, and the various sections melted into each other. He picked up what was left. “Power is intoxicating.”

“That's a good word for it.”

“And like any intoxicant, it's also addictive.”

She fell silent.

They climbed the stairs and stepped out through the window. Dawn was on its way. Valkyrie took out her phone to check the time. It fell to pieces the moment it left her pocket.

“Huh,” she said. “I think I need a more impact-resistant phone.”

Skulduggery took out his. “Three missed calls, all from Ghastly.”

“At least he's alive.”

Skulduggery wrapped one arm around her waist, and they rose up off the pavement. “Thanks to you,” he said.

They flew over the city, the wind gently boosting them. The flashing lights and the sirens faded and Valkyrie looked to the approaching horizon, fighting the voice in her head. She used to love it when Skulduggery would take her into the air. The pure sensation of flying used to make her smile so, so wide. But now she wanted to pull away, to flatten out and go like a rocket. She wanted to do it herself. She wanted to feel that level of power again.

Soon
, the voice in her head told her.
Soon.