LITMIR.BIZ

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laughed bitterly. “You’re walking into a world run by a race of evil gods. And for what? If Skulduggery isn’t dead, he’s insane. One glance at a Faceless One is enough to drive you nuts. He’s been there for almost a year, Val. How many glances do you think he’s had?”

      “You don’t know him. He’s alive and he’s waiting for me.”

      “We’re taking a big risk here, aren’t we? Like, a major risk? We’re opening a door to a universe of unspeakable evils and hoping they don’t notice. Is Skulduggery worth it if this goes wrong?”

      “If you’re not going to help,” Valkyrie said, “I can’t make you. But if you are, then shut up. None of us would be here if it wasn’t for him, and he wouldn’t leave any of us over there. Not even you.”

      They reached the farmhouse and froze. A Sanctuary agent ambled by inside, sipping a mug of tea. He frowned, and turned, and seemed surprised to find three people staring in at him through the gaping hole in the wall.

      “Um,” he said.

      Valkyrie snapped her palm. The air rippled and the sorcerer went skidding across the floor. She stepped inside, using her ring to gather the shadows in the house and bring them crashing down on his head. He didn’t get up.

      China and Fletcher joined her, and they moved to the hole in the opposite wall, the one that opened up to the yard beyond. Across the yard, standing amid the rusted farm machinery, was the second sorcerer. He saw them and his hand dug into his jacket for his phone.

      Fletcher vanished and reappeared instantly next to the mage. He put his hand on the man’s shoulder and then they were both gone. A moment later Fletcher was back, standing right in front of Valkyrie. She was about to ask where he had put the Sanctuary agent when she heard a terrified yell, and the agent dropped from the sky and hit the ground hard. He moaned, then stopped moving.

      Fletcher pulled Valkyrie towards him, and before she could protest he kissed her. She stiffened in his arms, but as his right thumb brushed her cheek, she relaxed into him. Her belly did flips. And then the kiss was over.

      “If we’re going to go through with this,” he said gruffly, “then hurry it up. It’s not everyday I send someone into hell.”

      China made a circle on the ground and Fletcher knelt in it, holding the skull in both hands. She carved protective symbols around him. If something did come out of the portal uninvited, she explained, these symbols would at least give Fletcher enough time to close it before he died. He didn’t look comforted, but he didn’t say anything.

      She activated the symbols and red smoke drifted from them, swirling with the black smoke that rose from the circle. The smoke formed a column that grew more violent as it twisted into the sky.

      Fletcher knew what to do this time. Eleven months ago, forced to open the portal, he had to learn as he went. He had to use the Isthmus Anchor – back then it was the Grotesquery, today it was the skull – without sufficient preparation and he said it was like tearing open his insides. Today, from the glimpses Valkyrie caught through the smoke, he had everything under control. He looked determined. Angry, but determined.

      A yellow light appeared, like a flattened sun, the edges boiling with flame. It grew wider.

      China took Valkyrie’s arm, leaning in close to be heard over the roar of the column of smoke. “You have one hour,” she shouted. “In exactly one hour that gate will open again. You’d better be ready – with or without him.”

      “I’m not leaving him there,” Valkyrie shouted back. “You just make sure Fletcher’s still here when it’s time for us to come home.”

      China looked at her, her blue eyes bright, and she hugged Valkyrie. “Thank you for doing this,” China said into Valkyrie’s ear.

      China stepped away and Valkyrie turned to the portal. It was taller than she was now. She licked her lips and walked forward. The wind whipped her hair and she could feel the gravitational pull, eager to welcome her. Valkyrie hesitated and then ran, straight into the yellow.

       8 CALLING DIBS

      pringheeled Jack missed London. He missed its rooftops and its towers and its parapets. He missed the way he could dance, high above it all, watching the people pass below him. He missed the way Londoners sounded as he killed them – like they were offended that anyone would even dare.

      Jack hadn’t been home in over a year. They were hunting him there. He’d tried Paris, he’d tried Berlin, and he’d liked them well enough, but he knew he was homesick when he realised the only people he was killing were English tourists. That had sent him into a spiral of depression that lasted months. Finally, in an effort to confront this problem, he had made a list of everyone he viewed as being responsible for his exile, and he marvelled at the way the depression quickly turned to anger. Every name on that list worked for various Sanctuaries around the world, and suddenly Jack’s mission was clear.

       Destroy the Sanctuaries.

       And now here he was, serendipity be praised, back in Dublin, working with two men he had never expected to share the same space with again, Billy-Ray Sanguine and Dusk. But since Sanguine was no longer palling around with those Faceless Ones nutters, and since his fight with Dusk hadn’t been personal to begin with, Jack was willing to forgive and forget. They were all working towards the same goal after all – revenge on those who had wronged them.

       “I want Tanith Low,” he said to that other bloke, Scapegrace, while they were lounging about in the castle.

       Scapegrace looked up, startled that anyone was talking to him. “I’m sorry?”

       “Tanith Low,” Jack repeated. “Her of the brown leather and the singing sword. I want to be the one to get her.”

       “Oh,” Scapegrace said.

       “In a way, you know, she’s responsible for me bein’ hunted. She arrested me – put me in that cell where Sanguine found me. If I hadn’t agreed to help him in return for freedom, I’d never have been hunted in the first place.”

       “Right,” Scapegrace said.

       “What about you then?”

       “Me?”

       “Who do you want revenge on?”

       “Oh, uh, Valkyrie Cain.”

       “She’s a popular one to get revenge on. What age is she, fifteen? Fifteen years old and already four people want to kill her.”

       “Well,” Scapegrace said, leaning forward, like he was confiding, “she’s responsible for foiling my plans, you see.”

       “That so?”

       “Oh, yes. I’m an artist. I make murder into art. That’s kind of what I do – that’s my whole thing. And she has repeatedly stopped me from doing that. Also, one time, she beat me up when I was already really badly injured.”

       “A fifteen-year-old girl beat you up?”

       “When I was badly injured, yes. And she was fourteen at the time.”

       “Well, I suppose in the right environment, Elemental magic is hard to defend against.”

       “Oh, she didn’t use any magic.”

       “So she just…beat you up then?”

       “When I was injured, yes.”

       “How

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