LITMIR.BIZ

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me a coffee.”

      “No.”

      “Get me one.”

      He got out, crossed the road and entered the café. Valkyrie yawned, turned on the radio. An Imelda May song was playing – ‘Big Bad Handsome Man’. Valkyrie started singing along. She’d just got to the bit about his rugged good looks when Skulduggery came crashing out through the café window.

      Valkyrie cursed, slid over to the driver’s seat, started up the car and swerved out on to the road. Skulduggery staggered to his feet, ignoring the shocked looks from the people around him. Doran Purcell and two others – a boy and a girl – stepped out through the broken window behind him, grinning.

      Valkyrie snapped her palm against the air, shattering the glass on the passenger side door. She sped past him and Skulduggery lunged at the car, using the air to take him to the window. He slid in and a stream of sizzling energy took out the wing mirror. Valkyrie cursed again, glanced in the rear-view and saw the three teenagers step into the middle of the road. The girl raised her arm and there was a flash of light and the car flipped and the world tilted and spun, then the car hit the road and flipped forward again. Everything blurred and roared.

      When the world quietened down, the car was on its side and Valkyrie was in the back seat with blood in her mouth. She’d bitten her tongue.

      Skulduggery’s false face came into view. “Are you OK?” he asked, his voice distant.

      She murmured, and nodded. Her clothes had absorbed the multiple impacts.

      “We need to get out,” Skulduggery said. “Move, Valkyrie. Now.”

      She turned over, noticing the pieces of glass embedded in her blood-drenched hand. Just cuts. Painful but not serious. She crawled out through the open door, on to the road. Her head ached. It buzzed. Doran Purcell and his friends were approaching, walking up the middle of the road, laughing to each other. Skulduggery appeared beside her, gun in hand. He fired, and the boys went to run but the girl stopped them. She gazed at the air, which had turned a hazy shade of blue – a protective bubble to keep the bullets out. The girl giggled.

      Skulduggery grabbed Valkyrie, dragged her behind the wreck of the car. She heard him fire again. She made herself sit up. Gunfire and energy blasts in the middle of the day in the middle of the street. She saw the faces of the people as they hid and peeked. She took a deep breath.

      “Valkyrie,” Skulduggery said. “I need you with me.”

      “I’m here,” she said. She risked a glance around the bonnet, then ducked back to avoid an energy stream.

      Skulduggery shook his head. “We need to get away. People are going to get hurt. If we’re gone, they’ll stop attacking.”

      “Can you fly us?”

      “We’d be an easy target in the air. We have to break their line of sight first. Can you run?”

      “I’m fine, I’m good.”

      “Well, OK then.”

      There was a boarded-up bookshop next to them. Skulduggery put his gun away and snapped his palms against empty space. The air rippled and the boards exploded inwards. He clicked his fingers, summoning flame.

      “Ready?” he asked.

      She nodded.

      Skulduggery stepped out, sending twin streams of flame towards Purcell and his friends. The fire swarmed over their force field, unable to get through, but Valkyrie used the distraction to bolt from behind the car to the bookshop, and leaped through into darkness. She tripped over something and almost went sprawling into a bookcase, but managed to keep going. She glanced back. Skulduggery was right behind her.

      Then a stream of energy seared through his chest, lifting him off his feet and he fell, just collapsed on the floor.

      “No!” she screamed, running back to him, grabbing his arm, pulling him after her. “Get up! Get up!”

      “I think I killed him,” said the blonde girl, walking in. “Oopsies.”

      Valkyrie pushed at the air but the girl dodged out of the way and it hit the boy behind her. He flew back and Doran Purcell came at Valkyrie. She used the shadows to fling him against the far wall as hard as she could, aware of the girl’s short bark of excitement.

      Blondie leaped at her. It was a clumsy attack and Valkyrie flipped her to the ground, started throwing down hammer shots. The other slammed into her from behind and they stumbled against the table. She kicked at his leg, stomped on his knee, cracked an elbow into his jaw. He went down and then Doran hit her, a punch swinging in from her blind side. Doran forced her back against the wall, holding her with one hand and punching with the other. She didn’t want to kill him, didn’t want to kill anyone, but Skulduggery was lying on the floor and not moving and so she hit him in the throat with all of her strength. He dropped and she turned, kicked the girl in the face as she tried getting up.

      Valkyrie ran to Skulduggery. She turned him on to his back. His façade had melted away. He wasn’t moving. She tried to lift him, and heard a chuckle from behind her.

      They were on their feet again, and grinning.

      “Did you really,” the girl said, “think it would be that easy?”

      Valkyrie grabbed the shadows but Doran moved faster than she could see, his fist slamming into her side like a truck. She was lifted off her feet, the breath rushing from her lungs, went stumbling into the other boy’s arms. He picked her up, held her over his head and threw her into the bookcase. She hit the shelves and then the ground, books raining down on top of her, and something closed round her ankle and the boy was dragging her across the floor. She whipped shadows at him but they glanced off his force field.

      She kicked at his wrist with her free leg and twisted at the same time, freeing herself and coming to her feet. He turned his head right into her hook, and she caught him on the hinge of the jaw. A sweet, perfect connection that sent him back a few steps, but which should have sent him straight to the ground.

      Doran grabbed her from behind in a bear hug, lifting her into the air. She sent her heels backwards, missing with her left but feeling her right crunch into his knee. He hissed and dropped her and she torqued, sending an elbow up into his chin.

      It should have put him down. It didn’t.

      The other boy punched her. He didn’t know how to punch but there was so much strength behind it that it didn’t matter. The room whirled and Valkyrie felt her backside hit the edge of the table.

      “I like your jacket,” the girl said. “Doran, Sean, get it for me.”

      Doran thundered towards her and Valkyrie did a backward somersault across the table, keeping out of his reach. He shoved the table and it caught her mid-thigh. She cried out and almost went down and he climbed on to it to jump, but she pushed at the air and sent him hurtling across the room.

      Something blurred and the other boy, Sean, hit her again. She fell to her knees and he kicked her and she flipped sideways. When she landed, she would have cried out if her lungs had allowed her to make a sound. Sean walked up and stomped on her back. He did it again and it felt like her whole body was breaking. He flipped her on to her back, unzipped the jacket and yanked it off her. She moaned, turned, tried covering up but Doran’s foot found her side and her ribs smashed. Valkyrie found a breath and screamed.

      Sean threw the jacket to the girl and she put it on. “Oh,” she said, “I like this. Oh, I like it a lot.”

      Valkyrie tried to curl up into a ball but every movement made her scream louder. She wrapped her arms round herself, feeling bits of jagged rib poking through her skin.

      “What’ll we do with her?” Doran asked, a grin in his voice.

      “I don’t care,” said the girl. “Just kick her to death and be done with it.”

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