LITMIR.BIZ

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could have said something,” Skulduggery told her.

      “What?”

      “You said I could have said something, once I realised Scarab had been framed. I was agreeing with you.”

      “So why didn’t you?”

      They reached the car. He unlocked it, but they didn’t get in.

      “When the war started,” he said, “I was flesh and blood. I was a father and a husband first, and a soldier second. When Serpine killed my family, killed me, that changed. I came back a soldier. The war was all I had.

      “I didn’t like Esryn Vanguard and I didn’t agree with him. I saw him as a weakening influence that we couldn’t afford to tolerate. If he continued to make his speeches, to try to negotiate with Mevolent, I truly felt we would have lost the war.

      “I found out, a few years later, that Meritorious’s suspicions had been correct. Mevolent planned to accept the peace that Vanguard was preaching then move his people into position and strike against his enemies in one bloody night. I happen to take some comfort from that – the knowledge that what Meritorious did was, essentially, the right thing to do.”

      “So you approved of him ordering the murder of an innocent man?”

      “We were fighting a war,” Skulduggery said. “Harsh decisions had to be made every day. This was one of them.”

      The first raindrops of the night fell. Valkyrie didn’t move.

      “I have done terrible things in my life, Valkyrie. Things that haunt me. Some of those things I had to do. Some…I didn’t. But I did them anyway. For my sins I should have stayed on the other side of that portal, where I belonged. I should have been hunted and tortured until my bones turned to dust. But you came into hell and you brought me back. I may disappoint you, but you have never disappointed me. And you never will.”

      He got in the car. A few seconds later she did too. They drove.

      She slept in the Bentley, seat back and using her coat as a blanket. When she woke, just after dawn, her dream slipped away from her and she sat up.

      “Bad dream?” Skulduggery asked.

      “Was it? I can’t remember.”

      “Sounded like a nightmare from all that muttering. Not that you could be blamed for having nightmares.”

      Valkyrie frowned, the dream too far gone now, dispersing even as she grasped for it. “Don’t know,” she said. “It was an odd one though, I can remember that much. Did I say anything embarrassing?”

      “Nothing that could be used against you.”

      She smiled thinly and looked across the street to the storage facility. “Any movement?”

      “Not yet, but it takes a few minutes for a vampire’s human skin and hair to grow back. He should be out soon, if he’s even in there at all.”

      Valkyrie readjusted her seat. “This is where he’s got his cage set up.”

      “Why did he help you? Vampires aren’t known for being nice.”

      “He hates Dusk. He won’t tell me why, but he hates him. He helped us because we put Dusk in prison. Dusk’s stay didn’t last too long, but Caelan still appreciated it.”

      The door of the facility opened and Caelan stepped out. For a moment Valkyrie didn’t make a sound. She hadn’t realised he was so good-looking. His new skin was so fresh it practically glowed with health and his black hair shone. She watched him walk to a car parked nearby, then stop. He turned his head and looked directly at her. Skulduggery got out and she followed.

      “Be nice,” she muttered as they walked over.

      “I’m always nice,” Skulduggery responded.

      “Don’t point your gun at his head.”

      “Oh,” he said, “that kind of nice.”

      Caelan greeted them with a nod. He didn’t waste time mentioning the obvious – that she had got Skulduggery back. Neither did he waste time looking for an introduction. He just stood there and waited for them to start speaking.

      “I don’t like you,” Skulduggery said.

      “OK,” Caelan said with a single nod.

      “I don’t like vampires as a rule,” Skulduggery continued. “I don’t trust them. I don’t trust you.”

      Valkyrie sighed. “I told you to be nice.”

      “Well, I haven’t shot him yet.”

      She rolled her eyes and said to Caelan, “We need your help finding Dusk.”

      “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t know where to find him even if I wanted to.”

      “But you’d know people who would know, yes?” Skulduggery asked. “Other vampires, like the ones who stormed the Sanctuary last night and slaughtered twenty-nine people. I wonder, were you locked up in your cage the entire night, Caelan? Or did you slip out for a snack?”

      Caelan looked at him slowly. “My cage is time-locked, programmed to open only at dawn.”

      “You’re a vampire with a conscience, is that it?”

      “No, sir,” Caelan said. “I’m a monster, just like you say I am. I lock myself up at night because if I don’t, someone like you will come and hunt me down. And someone like you will eventually find a way to kill me.”

      Valkyrie stepped between them and Caelan’s eyes came back to her. They were as dark as her own. Maybe darker. “Caelan, I know you helped me out with Ghabon, and I know you don’t owe me anything, but we need to find Dusk and stop him.”

      “I keep to myself.”

      “I know.”

      His eyes flickered away, to her shoulder. “I can ask Moloch. But I can’t go alone.”

      “We’ll come with you.”

      He nodded. “I can’t promise that he’ll have anything useful for you, or even that he’ll agree to see us. But really, he’s the only one who might talk to me.”

      “The other vampires don’t like you?” Skulduggery asked. “Why is that?”

      Caelan hesitated. “In our culture it’s forbidden for one vampire to kill another.”

      “You killed another vampire?”

      “Yes, sir. I did.”

      “Why?

      Caelan shrugged. “He had it coming.”

       25 LAST VAMPIRE STANDING

      he tower blocks rose from the cement like dreary canyon walls, oppressive in stature and depressing in structure. Built in the 1960s, most of the towers had been demolished decades later in an attempt to get rid of the drugs and crime that had seeped through, permeating everything. Six of the seven Ballymun Flats had been flattened, the Sheriff Street Flats had been torn down, the Flats at Fatima Mansions redeveloped and replaced. By the time Dublin City Council got round to the Faircourt Flats, however, they had run out of money.

      Towers, thirteen stories high, of tiny apartments stacked side by side. No grass. No trees. One little shop, defaced by graffiti. Rusted shopping trolleys and old mattresses.

      The gleaming Bentley parked beside a burnt-out husk of a car and Skulduggery, Valkyrie and Caelan got out. Skulduggery clicked on the car alarm and they followed Caelan through a rubbish-strewn tunnel, as grey as the sky it was blocking. They emerged on the other side

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