Skulduggery Pleasant: Books 1 - 12. Derek Landy

new world that’s coming.”

      “I wouldn’t bet on it,” Stephanie said quietly.

      Serpine smiled patiently and leaned his face in close to her. “You can survive… if you tell me how you got so close without the Sceptre alerting me.”

      With no weapons left, Stephanie spat on him. He sighed and threw her against a pillar. She smacked into it and her body twisted and she dropped on to her back.

      Her eyes wouldn’t focus. The pain was far away. She heard his voice like there was a wall separating them.

      “No matter. I am about to make slaves of the entire population of this planet, and then there will be no more secrets. There will be no magic hidden from me. And when the Faceless Ones return, this world will be remade as a place of splendid darkness.”

      He passed her, a vague shape in the corner of her eye. She had to get up. She had to snap out of this. The pain. The pain from her broken leg, she had to let it in. It was nothing more than a sensation now – she had to allow it to flood her.

      She focused on her leg. It was throbbing, the pain spiking, and with each new height it reached her mind sharpened a little more. Then the pain came at her, cascaded over her with its full force, and she had to bite her lip to stop from crying out.

      She looked up. Serpine was approaching the Book. Stephanie gripped the edge of a table-top and pulled herself up on to her good leg. She grabbed the first thing she saw – a glass vial filled with green liquid – and threw it. It hit Serpine in the back and shattered, and the liquid turned to vapour and dissipated into the air. He spun round, angry.

      “You, my dear, have proven yourself to be far too troublesome for your own good.” He raised his red hand.

      He raised his red hand, and from somewhere behind her she heard the Sceptre singing again. And then Skulduggery dropped through the ceiling, landing in a heap next to Serpine. The detective looked around.

      “Ah,” he said. “I’m back.”

      “You are,” Serpine said, and Skulduggery looked up and saw him.

      Serpine lashed a kick into Skulduggery’s side and Skulduggery grunted. He tried to get up, but Serpine batted his hands away and grabbed his skull. He drove his knee into the side of Skulduggery’s head and Skulduggery sprawled on to his back.

      Serpine looked over to Stephanie and then to the ground behind her and she turned, saw the Sceptre. She lunged for it but a purple tendril wrapped itself around her waist and she was yanked back on to her broken leg. She cried out as the pain shot through her.

      Serpine whipped the tendril to the Sceptre, yanked it into his left hand and whirled, the crystal flashing with a black light that streaked towards Skulduggery. The detective dived as a whole section of the wall behind him turned to dust. Skulduggery drew his gun and fired, hitting Serpine in the chest.

      “Still with that little toy of yours,” Serpine said, amused and unharmed. “How quaint.”

      Skulduggery circled him. Serpine held the Sceptre down by his side. “You’ll be stopped,” Skulduggery said. “You’ve always been stopped.”

      “Oh, my old foe, but this is different. Those days are gone. Who is there to rise up against me? Who is left? Remember when you were a man? A real man, I mean, not this mockery I see before me. Do you remember what it was like? You had an army on your side, you had people willing to fight and die for your cause. We wanted to bring the Faceless Ones back, to worship them as the gods that they are. You wanted to keep them out, so that this infestation of humanity, this celebration of the mundane, might be allowed to live and thrive. Well, they’ve lived, and they’ve thrived, and now their time is up.”

      Skulduggery’s finger tightened on the trigger. Black blood sprayed from Serpine’s chest, and the wound instantly healed. Serpine laughed.

      “You have caused me so much trouble over the years, detective, it’s almost a shame that I have to end it.”

      Skulduggery cocked his head. “You’re surrendering?”

      “I’m going to miss this,” Serpine said. “If it makes it any easier, you can think of your imminent demise as a good thing. I don’t think you’ll much like the world once my lords and masters remake it.”

      “So how are you going to kill me?” Skulduggery asked, dropping his gun and holding his arms out. “With your toy? Or one of these new tricks you’ve learned?”

      Serpine smiled. “I have been expanding my repertoire. So good of you to notice.”

      “And I see you’ve been playing around with necromancy again.”

      “Indeed. My very own pet Cleaver. Every home should have one.”

      “He’s a tricky fellow to put down,” Skulduggery said. “I tried everything I know – he just kept getting back up.”

      Serpine laughed. “There’s an old Necromancer saying – you can’t kill what’s already dead.”

      Skulduggery cocked his head. “He’s a zombie?”

      “Oh, no, I wouldn’t associate myself with those wretched things. He can repair, replenish, heal. A difficult process to master, but I am nothing if not accomplished.”

      “Of course,” Skulduggery said, something new in his voice. “The medical equipment in the warehouse. The Cleaver was a test-run, to see if the process worked. Then you did it to yourself.”

      “Ah, the great detective finally figures something out.”

      “Bells and whistles aside, Nefarian, he’s nothing but a zombie. And so are you.”

      Serpine shook his head. “Your last words are pathetic insults? I was hoping for more. Something profound, perhaps. Maybe a poem.” He raised the Sceptre. “It will be a slightly less strange world without you, I just want you to know that.”

      Stephanie screamed his name as Skulduggery dived. Serpine laughed and the Sceptre sent out its bolt of black lightning but Skulduggery had seized the Book of Names and held it as a shield.

      The black lightning hit the Book and it disappeared in a cloud of dust.

      “NO!” Serpine screamed. “NO!”

      Stephanie stared as the Book that the Elders couldn’t destroy sifted through Skulduggery’s fingers. He charged through the cloud, slamming into Serpine. The Sceptre fell and rolled away. Serpine’s hands closed around Skulduggery’s neck, forcing his head back.

      “You ruined it!” he hissed. “You ruined it all, you pathetic creature!”

      Skulduggery slammed a fist into Serpine’s face and batted the hands away. He stepped in with a jab that rocked the sorcerer’s head. Serpine blasted Skulduggery with purple vapour and Skulduggery was flung off his feet.

      He landed on his side and rolled, coming up to his knees as Serpine whipped a tendril out for the Sceptre. It sped towards him but Skulduggery pushed outwards at the air, breaking the tendril and knocking the Sceptre off course.

      Skulduggery gathered flame in his fist and threw it at Serpine, who barely managed to deflect it. It exploded on the wall behind him and Serpine hissed again, stumbling away before being launched backwards as the air rippled around him. He hit the wall and stayed there, high off the ground, held up by Skulduggery’s outstretched hand from across the room.

      “I’ll destroy you,” he snarled, his emerald eyes blazing with hatred. “I destroyed you once. I will do it again!”

      He struggled to raise his right arm. Skulduggery pressed against him harder, drawing on his last reserves. But Serpine refused to be beaten. The fingers of his red hand pointed at Skulduggery.

      “Die,” Serpine whispered.

      Skulduggery