Armageddon Outta Here - The World of Skulduggery Pleasant. Derek Landy

was making it difficult. Fawkes stumbled and flailed, and his elbow whacked against Gordon’s chin. Gordon cried out and dropped to his knees, cradling his face. Fawkes stood over him, too out of breath to say anything. Ignoring the pain in his chin, Gordon lunged at Fawkes’s leg, wrapping his hands round the left knee.

      Gordon held on as Fawkes cursed and staggered back. He weathered the storm of slaps that fell upon his head. One of them clipped his ear – it really hurt – but he didn’t let go. Fawkes turned, tried to pull his leg free. Gordon’s grip slipped a little, but his fingers tightened again like a vice round Fawkes’s ankle. He was dragged a few centimetres across the floor every time Fawkes took a step.

      “Let go of me!” Fawkes screeched.

      “No,” Gordon gasped.

      Fawkes overbalanced and fell and, like a ninja, except slower and with less co-ordination, Gordon crawled on top of him. He was sweating badly now. The suit was way too hot to fight in. Fawkes struggled, tried to turn over on to his back to push him off, but Gordon let his body go limp, and he lay on top of him.

      Fawkes’s breath came in ragged wheezes. “You may …” wheeze, wheeze, “think you’ve …” wheeze, “won, but …” wheeze, “you’ll never,” really long wheeze, “escape.”

      Gordon focused all his attention on staying as heavy as possible, and gasped. “Your time is …” gasp, “over, you …” gasp, “you utter …” gasp, “utter nutball.”

      “Ar …” wheeze, “ … gento will …” wheeze, “tear your soul into …” wheeze, “tiny little bits.”

      “Your friend is …” gasped Gordon, “already in handcuffs …” gasp, “and your reign of …” gasp, “terror is at an …” gasp, “end.”

      Fawkes shook his head fiercely. Gordon nodded insistently. They lay there like that for some time.

      When Skulduggery Pleasant and Susan DeWick found them eight minutes later, Gordon was sitting astride Fawkes like an oddly dressed cowboy riding an exhausted and flattened-out horse.

      The Cleavers arrived to take Argento into custody, and a pair of Sensitives talked to the main body of guests, convincing them they’d had a nice, if slightly boring, night, and that nothing unusual had happened.

      The writers who knew the intricate details of Fawkes’s deal could not be dealt with in the same manner, so they were instead threatened with terrible and gruesome deaths if they spoke a word of this to anyone. According to Skulduggery, threats worked just as well as psychics.

      Sebastian Fawkes was released, since an unexplained disappearance would not have gone unnoticed in the mainstream media. His next book, however, failed to reach a receptive audience. The follow-up barely punctured the Top Twenty Bestseller list. After he appeared, uninvited and drunk, on Wogan, a light-entertainment talk show broadcast by the BBC, his publishers quietly dropped him, and nobody much cared.

      Gordon asked that Susan DeWick’s memory of the night be left intact. Skulduggery granted this request. Gordon and Susan were entangled romantically for three months afterwards before she fell for a struggling young actor and he fell for a supermodel. They remained close friends until Gordon’s sudden and unexpected death years later. Her book Stirrings at Norfolk, the first true horror novel to win the Booker Prize, was dedicated to him. It said, simply, To Fishface.

      Gordon was to go on to document, in hi,s way, the darker realities of life of which the normal person is not aware. He wrote stories to shock, entertain, thrill and traumatise, and he regretted not one moment of it. His participation in real-life adventures was not quite so prolific (that role would, of course, eventually go to his niece), but he did accompany Skulduggery Pleasant on at least one more case, solving the mystery of the Phantom Killer at Darkenholme House. But that … is another story.

      It’s also not very interesting. The butler did it.

      

      ith the shadows wrapped around him and the sliver of light falling dramatically over his eyes, the evil sorcerer Scaramouch Van Dreg stood in the dungeon and watched his captive with predatory amusement.

      The dungeon was dark and damp and dank, and the chains that bound the skeleton detective were big and thick and heavy. They shackled the bones of his wrists to the stone floor, forcing him to kneel.

      Scaramouch liked that. The great detective, the living skeleton who had foiled plan after plan, scheme after scheme, was now forced to look up at Scaramouch. Like he had always been meant to. Like everyone had always been meant to.

      The detective, his dark blue suit burnt and torn and muddy, hadn’t said anything for almost an hour. In fact, he hadn’t moved for almost an hour. Scaramouch had been standing in the shadows, gloating, for a little over fifteen minutes, but he wasn’t entirely sure that his captive had noticed.

      He shifted his weight noisily, but the detective still did not acknowledge his presence.

      Scaramouch frowned. There was very little point in going through all this if his efforts weren’t rewarded with due and proper attention.

      He brought himself up to his full height, which wasn’t very high, and sucked in his belly, which was substantial. He gathered his cloak and stepped forward, gazing down at the top of the detective’s skull with the pitiless gaze he had practised for hours.

      “Skulduggery Pleasant,” he sneered. “Finally, you are within my grasp.”

      The detective shifted slightly, and muttered something.

      Good God. Was he asleep?

      Scaramouch cleared his throat and gave the detective a little kick. The detective jerked awake and looked around for a moment, then looked up with those empty eye sockets.

      “Oh,” he said, like he had just met a casual acquaintance on the street, “hello.”

      Unsure how to counter this unexpected approach to being a captive, Scaramouch decided to replay the sneer.

      “Skulduggery Pleasant,” he repeated. “Finally, you are within my grasp.”

      “It does appear so,” Pleasant agreed, nodding. “And in a dungeon, no less. How brilliantly postmodern of you.”

      “You have interfered in my plans for the last time,” Scaramouch continued. “Unfortunately for you, you will not live to regret your mistake.”

      Pleasant tilted his head curiously. “Scaramouch? Scaramouch Van Dreg? Is that you?”

      Scaramouch smiled nastily. “Oh, yes. You have fallen into the clutches of your deadliest enemy.”

      “What are you doing here?”

      Scaramouch’s smile faltered. “What?”

      “How are you mixed up in all this?”

      “How am I …? What do you mean? This is my plot.”

      “You’re plotting to use the Crystal of the Saints to bring the Faceless Ones back into our reality?”

      Scaramouch frowned. “What? No. What do the Faceless Ones have to do with this? I don’t want the Faceless Ones back, I don’t even worship them. No, this plot is for me, to gain absolute power.”

      “Then … you’re not in league with Rancid Fines or Christophe Nocturnal?”

      “I’ve never even met Rancid