Playing with Fire (Skulduggery Pleasant, Book 2) Page 9

  "Well," Valkyrie admitted, "you did warn him."

  "That I did," Skulduggery said, leaving through the door they had come in through.

  A moment later he returned, pushing Scapegrace ahead of him.

  "Hey, steady on!" Scapegrace yelled. "These shackles don't make it easy to walk, you know!"

  Valkyrie looked at him. "You didn't get very far, did you?"

  Scapegrace looked around, at all the still bodies. "Oh good," he said unenthusiastically. "You beat them."

  "Nice try."

  He shrugged. "Forgot Deadfall owned the place, honest."

  "The cellar," Skulduggery said.

  "Behind the bar," Scapegrace grumbled.

  Valkyrie went to the bar and peered over, saw the trapdoor. She nodded at Skulduggery.

  Skulduggery shackled Scapegrace to a pipe that ran along the wall to stop him from shuffling away.

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  Valkyrie opened the trapdoor, and Skulduggery went first. Valkyrie followed him down the wooden steps, closing the trapdoor behind them.

  The cellar was dimly lit and cold. The steps took them down into a badly wallpapered corridor. The carpet was worn, like a trail in a forest. One doorway led off to their right, and another, a little farther up, led off to their left. A small painting hung at an odd angle. It was a painting of a boat in a harbor. It wasn't very good. At the end of the corridor was a living room. Music played. "The End of the World," by the Carpenters.

  Holding his revolver in both hands, Skulduggery took the lead.

  The first room had a single bed and a set of drawers. Skulduggery stepped in, crossed to the bed, and checked under it. Satisfied that the room was empty, he rejoined Valkyrie in the corridor. The second room had a toilet, a sink, and a bathtub. None of these three were particularly clean, and there was nowhere for anyone to hide. They moved on toward the living room.

  There was a lamp, and it was on, but the bulb was fading. The closer they got, the more Valkyrie could see. She could see that the carpet didn't

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  match the wallpaper, and the curtains, which must have been added for aesthetic reasons because there certainly weren't any windows down here, didn't match anything.

  Skulduggery had his back to the corridor wall and was sliding soundlessly closer. Valkyrie did the same thing on the opposite wall, allowing herself a view of the room that Skulduggery couldn't get.

  She saw two old-fashioned heaters, neither of which was turned on. She saw another painting, this time of a ship on a stormy sea. There was an armchair underneath the painting, and a small table beside the armchair. No sign of the Torment, though.

  They stopped moving, and she shook her head at Skulduggery. He nodded and stepped into the living room, sweeping his gun from one corner of the room to the other. He checked behind the armchair. Nothing.

  Valkyrie followed him in. On the other side of the room were a radio, a portable TV with a cracked screen, and the record player that was playing the Carpenters.

  She parted the curtains, which led to nothing more interesting than a wall, and turned to tell

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  Skulduggery that Scapegrace must have somehow warned the Torment, when she saw the old man glaring at her from the ceiling.

  He had long dirty hair and a long dirty beard, and he dropped from the rafters onto Skulduggery and knocked him to the ground. The gun flew from Skulduggery's hand, and the old man grabbed it. Valkyrie threw herself sideways as he fired. The bullet hit the record player and the song cut off.

  Skulduggery twisted and pushed at the air, but the old man was already running along the corridor. Skulduggery scrambled up, then stepped sideways as the old man fired twice more. Skulduggery peeked out to make sure it was clear, then ran after him.

  Valkyrie wasn't entirely certain that her armored clothes could stop a bullet. And what about her head? For the first time, she wished her coat had come with a hood.

  She ran after Skulduggery just as he ducked into the bedroom.

  She got to the bedroom, raised an eyebrow at the opposite wall, which had parted to reveal a stone corridor, and sprinted through the gap. She could just make out Skulduggery ahead of her,

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  moving fast in the darkness. She saw light flare up, saw his silhouette hurling a fireball.

  She ran on, aware that the ground was slanting upward. Her legs were getting tired. Her footsteps on the stone ground were uncomfortably loud in her ears. She couldn't see anything now. It was pitch black. She focused on the energy inside her, then clicked her fingers and caught the spark. The flame grew and flickered in her palm, and she held it at arm's length to light her way. She didn't like the fact that it made her an easy target, but neither did she like the idea of falling into a pit full of metal spikes or something equally nasty.

  And then she came to a junction.

  "Oh come on," she muttered, in between gasps for breath.

  She could go straight, or turn either right or left. She had no idea which direction Skulduggery had taken. She tried to stop herself from imagining lethal traps, or getting lost in a maze of corridors and dying down here, in the darkness and the cold.

  She cursed. She had to turn back. She decided to head up and look around the town, try and find where these tunnels would surface. It was better than standing around being useless, she figured.

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  It was at this exact moment that she heard a rumbling.

  The path from the cellar was closing up. The walls were shifting back together.

  Right, left, or straight ahead. She chose straight ahead, and she ran.

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  Chapter Thirteen

  ROARHAVEN

  THE WALLS WERE moving in, faster and faster. She glanced back as the junction closed up. If she tripped, if she stumbled, the walls on either side of her would shift together with that terrible rumbling noise and squash her into something less than paste.

  Her lungs burned like they used to do when she was swimming off Haggard beach. She liked swimming. It was much better than being squashed.

  And then, a light ahead of her, a flickering flame in the hand of Skulduggery Pleasant.

  "It would be a tad redundant," he called out

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  over the rumbling, "to encourage you to hurry up, wouldn't it?"

  She let the fire in her own hand go out and concentrated on sprinting.

  "Whatever you do," he continued loudly, "do not fall over. Falling over, I think, would be the wrong move to make at this moment."

  She was close, close to Skulduggery, close to that wide-open space he was standing in.

  The walls ahead of her shook and rumbled and started to close, and she dove through, hit the floor, and rolled to her feet as the corridor closed behind her and the rumbling stopped. She fell to her knees and sucked in air.

  "Well," Skulduggery said cheerfully. "That was close."

  "Hate ..." she gasped.

  "Yes?"

  "Hate . . . you. . . ."

  "Breathe some more air; the lack of oxygen is making you delirious."

  She got to her feet, but stayed bent over while she controlled her breathing.

  "We'd better be careful," he advised. "The Torment may be old, but he's fast, and he's agile,

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  and he still has my gun."

  "Where . . . are we?"

  "One unsavory aspect of Roar haven's checkered past was an attempt, some years ago, to overthrow the Council of Elders and establish a new Sanctuary here. We're in what was supposed to be the main building."

  Valkyrie saw a switch on the wall and thumbed it. A few lights flickered on overhead. Most of them stayed off.

  Skulduggery let the flame in his hand go out, and they followed the corridor, then turned right and kept going. They walked through small patches of light and larger patches of darkness. The floor was covered in dust.

  He turned his head slightly. She knew him well enough to know when something was wrong.

&
nbsp; "What is it?" she asked.

  "Keep walking," he said quietly. "We're not alone."

  Valkyrie's mouth went dry. She tried to read the air, like Skulduggery was doing, but even on her best day she couldn't sense more than a few feet in any direction. She gave up, and resisted the urge to look around. "Where is he?"

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  "It's not him. I don't know what they are, but there are dozens of them, relatively small, moving as a pack."

  "They might be kittens," she said hopefully.

  "They're stalking us."

  "They might be shy."

  "I don't think it's kittens, Valkyrie."

  "Puppies, then?"

  Something scuttled in the darkness beside them.

  "Keep walking," Skulduggery said.

  There was scuttling behind them now.

  "Eyes straight."

  And then they broke from the shadows ahead, into the light: spiders, black and hairy and bloated, as big as rats, legs tipped with talons.

  "Okay," Skulduggery said. "I think we can stop walking now."

  The spiders emerged from cracks in the wall, moving across the ceiling, clacking as they came. Valkyrie and Skulduggery stood back to back, watching them close in. They each had three eyes, wide and hungry and unblinking.

  "When I count to three," Skulduggery said quietly, "we run, all right?"

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  "All right."

  The spiders clacked as they moved, closing in, drawing in tighter, the clacking becoming a din.

  "In fact," Skulduggery said, "forget about the count. Just run."

  Valkyrie bolted and the spiders attacked.

  She jumped over the spiders in front, landing and kicking out as one of them got too close. It was heavy against her boot, but she didn't wait to see if she had done any damage. She ran on as Skulduggery hurled fireballs.

  They swerved off course when the corridor ahead became alive with hairy, bloated bodies, then ran into a room with a large conference table in its center, the mass behind them quickly growing in size.

  A spider scuttled onto the tabletop and sprang at Valkyrie as she passed. It struck her back and clung on, trying to sink its talons through her coat. Valkyrie yelled out and swung around, stumbling as she did so, rolling and feeling the spider beneath her. She came up and the spider was still holding on. It darted up her shoulder, toward her face, and she saw fangs. She grabbed it, tore it from her, and flung it away.

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  Skulduggery hauled her back, and then she was running again.

  They ran for the double doors ahead, and Skulduggery snapped out his hand and the air rippled and the doors were ripped from their hinges. They sprinted through and kept going, into a room that must have been the foyer. Skulduggery threw a few more fireballs and Valkyrie got to the main door, slammed her shoulder into it, and burst into the warm sunshine.

  The light hit her eyes and blinded her momentarily. She felt Skulduggery beside her, tugging on her sleeve, and she followed him. She could see fine now, she could see the dark lake ahead and blue sky above.

  They stopped running. They heard the spiders, the click-clack of their talons, the frantic scuttling in the doorway, but the spiders were unwilling to leave the darkness for the daylight, and eventually the scuttling went away.

  A few moments passed, and Valkyrie breathed normally and noticed for the first time that Skulduggery was looking at something over her left shoulder.

  "What?" she asked, but he didn't answer.

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  She turned. The Torment was standing there, his long gray hair tangled in his long beard, Skulduggery's gun pointed right at her.

  "Who are you," the Torment said in a voice that hadn't been used in years, "to come after me, to disturb me, after all these years?"

  "We're here on Sanctuary business," Skulduggery said. "We're detectives."

  "She's a child," the Torment said. "And you're a dead man."

  "Technically speaking, you may well be right, but we are more than we appear. We believe you have information that may aid us in an investigation."

  "You say that as if I am obligated to help you," the old man responded, the gun not wavering. "What do I care for your investigations? What do I care for detecting, and Sanctuary business? I hate the Sanctuary, and the Council of Elders, and I loathe all they stand for. We are sorcerers. We should not be hiding from the mortals, we should be ruling them."

  "We need to find out how to stop the Grotesquery," Valkyrie said. "If it opens the portal and lets the Faceless Ones back in, everyone suffers, not just-- "

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  "The child is addressing me," the Torment said. "Make her stop."

  Valkyrie narrowed her eyes but shut up.

  Skulduggery tilted his head. "What she says is true. You had no love for Mevolent when he was alive, and I'm sure you have no wish to see the Faceless Ones return. If you help us, there might be something we can do to help you."

  The Torment laughed. "Favors? You wish to trade favors?"

  "If that will make you help us, yes."

  The Torment frowned suddenly and looked at Valkyrie. "You. Child. You have tainted blood in your veins. I can taste it from here."

  She said nothing.

  "You're connected to them, aren't you? The Ancients? I despise the Ancients as much as I despise the Faceless Ones, you know. If either race were to return, they would rule it all."

  "The Ancients were the good guys," Valkyrie said.

  The Torment scowled. "Power is power. Sorcerers have the power to run the world-- the only reason we don't is weakness of leadership. But if the Ancients were to return, do you really think

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  they'd make the same mistake? Beings of such power have no place on this Earth. I had hoped the last of your kind had died out."

  "Sorry to disappoint."

  The Torment looked back to Skulduggery. "This information, dead man, must be worth a lot to you. And this favor you are promising-- this, too, would be equally substantial?"

  "I suppose it would be."

  The Torment smiled, and it wasn't a pleasant sight. "What do you need?"

  "We need to know where Baron Vengeous has been keeping the Grotesquery since his imprisonment, and we need to know how he plans to raise it."

  "I have the information you seek."

  "What do you want in return?"

  "My needs are modest," the Torment said. "I would like you to kill the child."

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  Chapter Fourteen

  SPRINGING JACK

  JACK COULDN'T SPRING.

  Even if he could-- even if this cell, with its narrow bed and its toilet and its sink, was big enough-- he still wouldn't have been able to spring. The cell was bound, and dampened his powers.

  Springheeled Jack sat on his bed and contemplated life without springing.

  He also contemplated life without killing, which was twisting him up inside, without his favorite foods, without dancing about on rooftops, and without everything he loved.

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  They'd throw away the key, he knew they would. The English Council, once they finally got the chance to put him away, wouldn't be lenient. His trial would be over in a flash, and he'd be looking at hundreds of years in prison.

  Jack lay down, resting his forearm over his eyes to block out that dreadful artificial light. No more open sky for him. No more stars. No more moon.

  "You're uglier than I remember."

  Jack catapulted off the bed. A man was standing in the cell, leaning against the wall and grinning.

  "Sanguine," Jack said, his own mouth twisting. "Come 'ere to gloat, 'ave you? I'd like to say I'm surprised, but naw, that kinda behavior is what I've come to expect from you."

  "Jack, my old friend, your words, they sting."

  "You're no friend of mine," Jack said.

  Sanguine shrugged. "We may have had our differences over the years, but the way I see it, that's all behind us now. I'm here to help you. I'm here to get you out.
"

  He tapped the cracked wall. Loose chips crumbled and fell, trailing dust.

  Jack frowned. "What gives?"

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  "I just want you to do a little favor for me, is all."

  "Don't much like the idea of doin' you a favor."

  "You'd prefer to sit in a cell for the rest of your life?"

  Jack didn't answer.

  "Just a little favor. Somethin' you'd enjoy, actually. I want you to cause some trouble."

  "Why?"

  "Never you mind. Think you'd be able to help me?"

  "Depends. What kind of trouble?"

  "Oh, nothin' much. Just want you to kill some folks."

  Jack couldn't help it. He smiled. "Yeah?"

  "Easy as pie, for someone of your talents. You agree to do this, I take you with me right now and we scoot on outta here."

  "Killin', eh?"

  "An' lots of it."

  "And that's all? Once I do it, we're even? 'Cause I know who you've worked for in the past, Tex, an' I ain't gonna start workin' for the Faceless Ones or nothin'."

  "Did I mention the Faceless Ones? No I did not."

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  "It's got nothin' to do with them?" "Cross my heart and hope to die. So, you in?" Jack put on his coat and picked up his battered top hat. "Let's go."

  Chapter Fifteen

  POINT-BLANK

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  BRACING HIS LEFT HAND against the wall and gripping the chain with his right, Scapegrace heaved.

  The pipe was begging to give. He could feel it. He could hear it. Every other pipe in the place would have broken by now-- he should know, he'd had them installed. Just his luck that the skeleton would shackle him to the only secure pipe in the building.