Derek Landy - Dark Days

He stood there for two hours. The dust kicked up and got into his eyes. He looked around for something to kill, then quelled the urge. The entrance to the underground prison was within spitting distance, and killing something while the guards were still watching was probably a bad idea. Besides, Scarab’s magic hadn’t returned to him yet, so even if there were something in this desert worth killing, he might not have been able to manage it.

A shape came through the shimmer of the heat haze, solidifying into a black, air-conditioned automobile. It pulled up and a man got out slowly. It took Scarab a moment to recognise him.

“Why the hell didn’t you break me out?” Scarab growled. His voice depressed him. In the open air, away from the confines of the prison, even his growl sounded old and frail.

The man shrugged. “I was kind of hopin’ you’d die in there, to be honest. You sure you didn’t? You look pretty dead. Smell dead, too.”

“I’m staying alive long enough to do what has to be done.”

The other man nodded. “I figured you’d be wantin’ revenge. Eachan Meritorious is dead though. Nefarian Serpine killed him. Few others’ve been killed since you were put away, too.”

Scarab narrowed his eyes. “Skulduggery Pleasant?”

“Missin’. Couple of Faceless Ones came through their little portal ten, maybe eleven months ago. They were forced back, but they dragged the skeleton with ’em.”

“I miss all the fun things,” Scarab said without humour.

“His friends have been lookin’ for him ever since. You want my opinion, he’s dead. For good, this time. You might get lucky though. They might find him, bring him back. Then you can kill him.”

“What about Guild?”

A bright, white-toothed smile. “He’s the new Grand Mage in Ireland. He’s a prime target for you.”

Scarab felt a tingle, a slight buzz in his bones, and his heart quickened. It was the sensation of magic returning to him after all this time of being kept locked away. He kept the elation out of his dry, croaky voice. “No. It’s not just him. It’s all of them. I’m going to make them all pay. Their world is going to crumble for what they did to me.”

“You got a plan, I take it?”

“I’m going to destroy the Sanctuary.”

The man took off his sunglasses and cleaned them. “You goin’ to need some help with that?”

Scarab looked at him suspiciously. “I’ve got nothing to pay you with, and there’s no profit in revenge.”

“This would be a freebie, old man. And I know some people who might be interested in gettin’ involved. We’ve all got scores to settle in Ireland.” Billy-Ray Sanguine put his sunglasses back on, covering up the black holes where his eyes had once been. “I’m thinkin’ of one li’l lady in particular.”

he missed him.

She missed his voice, and his humour, and his warm arrogance, and those moments in his company when she realised that this was when she came alive – finally living, by the side of a dead man.

For eleven months he had been gone and for almost a year Valkyrie had been searching for his original skull, to use as a tool to reopen the portal and get him back. She slept when she had to and ate when she needed to. She let the search consume her. Time spent with her parents grew less and less. She’d been to Germany, and France, and Russia. She had kicked down rotten doors and run through darkened streets. She had followed the clues, just like he’d taught her, and now, finally, she was close.

Skulduggery had once told her that the head he now wore was not his actual head – he had won it in a poker game. He said his real head had been stolen, while he slept, by little goblin things that had run off with it in the night. At the time he hadn’t gone into any further detail, but he had filled in the blanks later on.

Twenty years ago, a small church in the middle of the Irish countryside was being plagued by what appeared to be a poltergeist. The angry spirit was causing havoc, terrifying the locals and driving away the police when they came to investigate. Skulduggery was called in by an old friend and he arrived, wrapped in his scarf with his hat pulled low.

The first thing he learned was that the culprit wasn’t a poltergeist. The second thing he discovered was that it was most likely a type of goblin, and there were probably more than one. The third thing he unearthed was that the church, as small and as spartan as it was, had a solid gold cross set up behind the altar, and if there was one thing goblins loved, it was gold.

“Actually, if there’s one thing that goblins love,” Skulduggery had said, “it’s eating babies, but gold comes in a close second.”

The goblins were trying to frighten everyone away long enough so that they could pry the cross loose and make off with it. Skulduggery set up camp and waited. To pass the time, he sank into a meditative state, to be roused whenever anyone got too close to the church.

The first night the goblins came and he leaped out, screaming and throwing fireballs, scaring them witless. The second night they crept up, whispering among themselves to bolster their courage, and he appeared behind them and roared curse words and they ran off once again, crying in fear. But the third night they surprised him, and instead of sneaking up to the church, they sneaked up on him and grabbed his head while he was deep in a meditative trance. By the time he had figured out what was going on, they had disappeared, and Skulduggery had nowhere to put his hat.

Now wearing a head that was not his own, Skulduggery’s investigations had revealed that the goblins later ran foul of a sorcerer named Larks, who had stolen their paltry possessions and sold them on. The investigation ended there, as other events began to call for Skulduggery’s attention. He had always planned to get back to it, but never did, and so the rest was up to Valkyrie.

The skull, she had learned, was bought by a woman as a surprise, and somewhat unsettling, wedding gift for the man she was to marry. The woman had then used the skull to beat that man to a bloody and pulpy death after she found him stealing from her. The murder inquiry was undertaken by “mortal” police – Valkyrie hated that expression – and so the skull had been logged as evidence. Now known as the Murder Skull, it had found its way on to the black market, and changed hands four times before a sorcerer named Umbra sensed the traces of magic within. Umbra had acquired it and within a year it came into the possession of Thames Chabon, notorious wheeler, unscrupulous dealer, and all-round shady character. As far as anyone knew, Chabon still had the skull. It had taken considerable effort to even get in touch with him, and Valkyrie had been forced to use quite unorthodox means to do so.

The unorthodox means stood by the side of the quiet street, hands in pockets. His name was Caelan. He had been maybe nineteen, twenty years old when he’d died. He was tall, his hair was black, and his cheekbones were narrow slashes against his skin. He glanced at Valkyrie as she approached, then looked away quickly. It was close to nightfall. He was probably getting hungry. Vampires had a tendency to do that.