Skulduggery Pleasant: Books 1 - 12. Derek Landy

      Skulduggery’s head tilted. “We’re transporting you because you requested it.”

      Guild laughed bitterly. “What is this nonsense? No, I didn’t.”

      “I spoke to Detective Marr. She said you asked for us.”

      “Why would I ask for you two? I don’t like you. I certainly have no wish to spend my last few moments outside of a prison cell with you.”

      They turned the corner and a man passed them wearing a raincoat with the hood pulled up. Valkyrie glimpsed his face.

      “Myron?” she said, but he didn’t turn.

      “Myron Stray?” Skulduggery asked her.

      “I’m pretty sure,” Valkyrie said.

      “It can’t be,” Guild said as they watched the man walk on. “The only people allowed past the Cleavers are people on the list – and Stray would never be on the list.”

      “I’m fairly certain that was him,” Valkyrie insisted.

      “Myron,” Skulduggery called loudly.

      Detective Pennant rounded the far corner, heard Skulduggery’s call and intercepted the man in the raincoat, yanking down the hood. Myron Stray had trails of dried blood around his ears and his mouth was tightly shut, even as his eyes bulged wildly.

      “He’s punctured his eardrums,” Skulduggery said.

      Valkyrie frowned. “Why?”

      “Because someone told him to.”

      Stray jerked away from Pennant’s grip and his hand came out of his pocket. Pennant saw the Desolation Engine with its churning red liquid and he immediately backed off.

      “He’s being controlled,” Skulduggery said. “Run!” he roared. “Evacuate the building!”

      Valkyrie could see the tears in Stray’s eyes and the bomb went off. It exploded with a soft whump. The liquid turned to a ball of red energy and the energy expanded. It seared the flesh from Stray’s bones and boiled his blood to steam. It travelled across his body, his bones turning to ash. The ground he had been standing on was now a carpet of dust. Pennant tried to run, but he was far too slow. He didn’t even have time to scream.

      Skulduggery wrapped an arm around Valkyrie’s waist – with his other he gripped Guild – and they rose off the ground and flew. They flew through the corridor, whipping by startled sorcerers who saw what was coming, but were powerless to escape. Valkyrie watched the walls crumble and the people die, and still the ball of energy grew and chased them, faster than they could possibly move.

      When the walls crumbled, the ceiling caved in and Skulduggery took them upwards. They veered to avoid falling masonry and the ball of energy found Guild and he screamed as his trailing leg disintegrated. They rose through darkness with his screams, then they burst into brightness and rain, and still they rose, and the ball of energy reached its peak and retracted.

      They landed on a rooftop. Guild had passed out, the stump of his leg cauterised by the very energy that had wounded him. Skulduggery laid him down and joined Valkyrie at the edge. The Waxworks Museum cracked and tumbled into the chasm of dust. They watched the Bentley topple and crunch down below street level, the ground opening up to swallow it. The building they were standing on shook, but stayed solid. And then the rumbling was over, and there were only the clouds of dust and car alarms.

      

      little over thirty-two hours later, Valkyrie climbed through her bedroom window. The reflection stepped into the mirror and she absorbed its memories. She got dressed in the clothes it had been wearing and went downstairs. She made her mother a cup of tea and sat at the kitchen table and watched her father demonstrate the new baby seat he’d bought for the car. She did her best to smile at his antics.

      The Sanctuary was gone. Destroyed. Twenty-nine sorcerers and twenty-one Cleavers had been killed. Davina Marr was missing and every surviving agent was hunting for her.

      They’d questioned Scarab in his prison cell and he denied all knowledge. He claimed he had never been in contact with Marr. She was not part of his plan. He enjoyed the fact that such destruction was brought down by one of the Sanctuary’s own agents.

      Skulduggery didn’t know why Marr had done what she did, but he knew how. The Desolation Engine that had been recovered at the castle had never been handed over to be deactivated. Marr had kept it and then given it to Myron Stray. She had made sure his name was on the list so that he could enter the Sanctuary without incident, and she had done her best to make sure that Skulduggery and Valkyrie were there also. Using Stray’s true name, she had commanded him to burst his own eardrums so that he couldn’t hear orders that would conflict with hers. Skulduggery theorised that she would have instructed him to keep his mouth shut and warn nobody of what he was about to do. She ordered him to do everything but be unafraid, and so Myron Stray had walked into the Sanctuary fully aware of what he was about to do, but completely unable to prevent it.

      As far as the rest of the country knew, the old Waxworks Museum had collapsed all by itself, and it was a miracle that nobody was hurt. The truth had no place in the newspapers. The dead were mourned privately and quietly, the rubble was cleared and the giant hole was filled in. In a few more days, Skulduggery had told her, there would be no sign that the Sanctuary had ever existed there.

      Valkyrie went upstairs, pulled on shorts and a vest and went to bed early with the rain gently tapping the window. Within five minutes she was asleep.

      

      he nightmare woke her.

      She sat up and slowly swung her legs out of bed. It was cold and her room was dark. The house was quiet. It was the middle of the night. Her nightmare clung to her with its smoky tendrils, clouding her mind, and she became aware of a low whispering in the room.

      The dream whisperer Cassandra had given her lay on the shelf where she’d left it, and it was talking to Valkyrie in hushed tones that seemed to reach right inside her mind, bringing the nightmare back to her as a headache began to pound against her temples.

      And now, finally, she could see it. At last, she could remember what had been plaguing her ever since she heard the name two days ago.

      The whisperer kept whispering and Valkyrie saw her nightmare again in her mind. She saw Serpine and his glittering emerald eyes. She saw the fight in the Repository three years earlier, when he’d gone up against Skulduggery. The Book of Names had fallen and she’d glanced at it. She’d seen her own given name of Stephanie Edgley and her taken name of Valkyrie Cain. And, in the last column, the final thing she’d glimpsed that she was only now remembering …

      She shouldn’t have been surprised, of course. She had felt it within her, even before she knew of magic, that part of her that was descended from the god-killer. The Last of the Ancients had been powerful and mighty, and he had hurled the Sceptre deep into the earth – but there was no forgetting the fact that he was also a murderer. After he had killed his gods, he had murdered his brethren.

      For now Valkyrie remembered where she had seen that name before. In the Book of Names, in that final column. Next to Stephanie Edgley, next to Valkyrie Cain. Her true name. The only name that ever really mattered.