Skulduggery Pleasant: Books 1 - 12. Derek Landy

green. From here they could see the golf clubhouse, but they were far enough away so that Dusk wouldn’t recognise the car. Once they saw anything suspicious, the Bentley would be able to speed down the narrow road and they’d be able to intercept the vampire before he even got close to the reunion. It was a good plan.

      The moon was full and bright. Tanith checked her watch. The lunar eclipse was three hours away. Plenty of time to get what they needed to get and do what they needed to do. Hopefully.

      Something hit the Bentley and the car shook. Tanith grabbed her sword and leaped out. Skulduggery was out the other side, gun in hand. An old man stood in the silver moonlight and looked at them. Tanith had never seen him before. He didn’t look like one of the Infected. She started to relax.

      “You lied to me,” the old man said.

      “You wanted to see the girl die,” Skulduggery responded. “You got what you wanted.” He wasn’t putting his gun away. Tanith knew who it was now. She gripped her sword tighter.

      The Torment’s eyes were fierce. “It was a sham. I knew there was something wrong, but I had been in that cellar for so long I couldn’t see it. It was a reflection, wasn’t it? You did something to a reflection, improved it, so that it would fool me. You cheated.”

      “We don’t have time for this. We’ve got a busy night ahead of us.”

      “Oh, yes,” the Torment said with a smile. “You do.”

      He opened his mouth wide and a jet of black hit Skulduggery and knocked him back. Tanith tried to move away, but he turned to her and the stream of darkness struck her with such force it knocked her off her feet. She rolled, keeping her mouth and eyes shut. She heard the black stuff, whatever it was, splatter on the ground beside her. It was inky and foul-smelling, but it had substance and when she pulled it off her it came away in thick strips.

      She opened her eyes, saw the Torment wipe his mouth and grin. She pulled away another strip of black, threw it down, where it joined the pool. And then the pool started to shift. It moved in on itself, bunched up and thickened and grew legs.

      Lots of legs.

      “Oh, hell,” Tanith muttered as the black stuff formed into spiders and the spiders clacked.

      Skulduggery clicked his fingers and hurled twin fireballs into the lake of scuttling blackness that was filling the ground before them.

      Tanith’s sword was out, slicing at the spiders as they leaped for her. The blade cut through their hard bodies and dark green blood splashed on to her tunic. She felt something on her leg and swatted at it, and another spider leaped on to her shoulder. She slammed the sword hilt into it and stepped back, stood on another spider that squished underfoot and she slipped. The ground went away and she was falling then she hit something solid and flipped over as she tumbled down the bluff.

      Tanith rolled through long grass, burst through it to level ground, realised she was on the putting green. A few spiders had joined her for the trip and she looked up as they leaped for her. She fell back again, flicking her wrist, the sword-blade catching the moonlight. One of the spiders squealed. Tanith grunted with satisfaction.

      She looked up at the bluff, to where the Bentley was parked, saw a wave of darkness blacker than the night spilling over and coming down towards her. Hundreds of spider legs clacking against stone and earth.

      “I’ve got this,” Skulduggery said from beside her right shoulder. She hadn’t even heard him join her.

      He stepped forward and raised his arms, like he was welcoming the wave of eight-legged killers. Tanith watched his fingers curl slightly as he took hold of some invisible thing, and then, ever so slowly, he moved his hands clockwise. The long grass swayed in the sudden breeze.

      And then Skulduggery struck, his fingers tightening, his hands moving over each other in wide circles, and the spiders were lifted high off the ground. They spun in a whirlwind, more and more of them getting sucked in.

      Tanith’s sword dealt with the few that the whirlwind didn’t trap, and then she stepped back and marvelled at Skulduggery’s control. His hands moved faster and faster, in tighter and tighter circles, and the whirlwind narrowed and became a mass of churning black bodies. Then Skulduggery twisted his hands and the whirlwind folded in on itself, and the night was filled with terrible cracking sounds. Green blood, thick and heavy, spurted into the warm air.

      Skulduggery dropped his hands and the mangled bodies of the spiders fell to the putting green.

      “We have to get to Valkyrie,” he said, turning towards the golf club. Tanith went to follow him, but stopped when he stopped.

      The Torment was standing between them and the clubhouse, and the inky substance filled his eyes and rolled down his cheeks like tears. It ran from his nostrils and his ears and his mouth, and spread over his skin, in through his hair and his beard, covering his clothes and spreading further. His arms jerked, his hands becoming talons, and his shoes split as his legs grew and the blackness covered him completely. He arched his back and lifted his arms, and two pairs of giant spider legs burst from his torso, flexed and touched down. His limbs kept growing, and his body lifted off the ground as a third eye opened on his forehead and blinked.

      He stopped growing. His eight legs clacked and his mouth was open wide and showing teeth. The Torment-spider looked down at them and chattered.

      

      alkyrie walked from the party and went downstairs, passed the trophy cabinet and the golfing Wall of Fame, and as she approached the doors she saw someone standing just outside. The doors were glass, with stainless-steel handles, and the car park outside was supposed to be lit up – but right now it was in darkness. The lights must have shorted out.

      The man wasn’t moving. She could see his outline but not his features.

      Valkyrie slowed. She could feel his eyes on her. The closer she got, the more she could see. There were others out there with him, just standing there in the gloom. She stopped, looked at him through the glass.

      The man reached for the handle and rattled the door, but it wouldn’t open. This time of night, it was controlled by the door release button on the inside. If someone wanted to get in, they had to talk into the intercom, get a member of staff to come down and open the door. Dusk pressed his face against the glass door and looked at her. She could see his scar quite clearly.

      She heard a window break somewhere else on the ground floor and she turned and ran back to the stairs, taking them three at a time. She burst into the function room, assailed by the music and the noise. She looked around for some way to secure the door, but there was nothing. There was no lock. She could barricade it, but how long would that last? And what would she tell everyone in here? What would she tell her parents? And where the hell was Skulduggery?

      There had to be a way. Valkyrie needed to stop people from getting hurt, and she needed to do so without alerting anyone to the fact that they were in danger. She opened the door a crack.

      The lights were out and the Infected were climbing the stairs. It was her they wanted. They’d ignore everyone else if they thought they could get her.

      Valkyrie slipped out, making sure the door closed behind her and the people on the stairs saw her then bolted for the staircase, heading up to the top floor. Footsteps behind her, running, and she reached the top floor and glanced around quickly, getting her bearings.

      Her adrenaline was pumping. The air shifted and she felt someone almost upon her. She ducked down and spun, bringing her right arm around in a wide arc to slam into the Infected man’s back and send him flipping over her straightened leg. Another grabbed at her, and she batted the arms away and snapped her elbow into his