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Mortal Coil
She ran to her car, but if he was as meticulous as she thought he was, he’d already have sabotaged the engine, so she broke left, running for the tall fence that bordered the east side of the site. She heard quick footsteps behind her and decided to try to lose him in the maze of cargo containers. It was a moonless night, too dark to see much of anything, and she hoped he was finding it as difficult in this gloom as she was. There was a heavy clang, followed by footsteps on metal, and he was moving above her, across the top of the containers, aiming to cut her off before she reached the fence.
Marr doubled back, wishing that she’d had time to grab her gun off the table before she’d made that jump. Magic was all well and good, she often thought, but having a loaded gun in your hand was a reassurance like no other.
She ducked low and crept along, keeping her breathing under control. She couldn’t hear him any more. He was either still up there and not moving, or he was down here, in the muck and the mud and the dark, with her. Possibly sneaking up on her right now. Marr glanced over her shoulder, saw nothing but shadows.
She tried to remember what Tesseract’s chosen discipline was. He was an Adept, she knew that much, but beyond that, his magic was a mystery to her. She hoped it wasn’t the ability to see in the dark. That would be just typical, and it’d fit right in with how her luck had been going these past few months. All she’d wanted to do was go home, for God’s sake. Marr was from Boston, born and raised, and that’s where she wanted to die. Not here, in wet and muddy Ireland.
She got on her belly and crawled through a gap between pallets. She took another look behind her, to make sure he wasn’t reaching out to grab her ankle, and then considered her options. They weren’t great, and they weren’t many, and hiding wasn’t one of them. He’d find her eventually, probably sooner rather than later. She could try the east fence again, or she could go all the way back to the entrance at the south. Heading west was out of the question, seeing as how there was nothing there but acres of flat ground with no cover.
Marr propped herself up on her elbows, the cold wetness seeping through her clothes, and looked straight out in front, due north. There was another fence there, higher than the east side, but it was closer, and at least there were pallets and machinery she could duck behind if she needed to.
She inched forward, out through the gap, coming up on her hunkers. There were a couple of barrels stacked up on top of each other, and she hurried to them. Still no sign of Tesseract.
Running bent over, she came up around a bulldozer and made a mad dash for the next piece of cover. The chain-link fence was maybe twenty strides away. It was tall, as high as a house, taller than she’d remembered, but Marr felt sure she could jump it. She allowed herself a moment to envy the Skeleton Detective and his newfound ability to fly. That would really come in handy right about now. She gauged the distance and felt the currents in the air, reckoning that she’d need a running start to clear the fence successfully.
She looked back, making sure Tesseract wasn’t anywhere nearby. She scanned her surroundings carefully, methodically, pivoting her head slowly, on the alert for the slightest movement. It took her a full second to realise that she was looking straight at him as he ran at her. She couldn’t help it – she gave a short yelp of fright and stumbled back, tripping over her own feet.
Slipping and sliding on the wet ground, Marr scrambled for the fence. She flung her arms wide, hands open and grasping, then pulled the air in around her and lifted herself up, away from the mud. She wasn’t even halfway to the top when she realised she wasn’t going to make it. She managed to steer herself closer and reached out, fingers slipping through the links just as she started to drop. Her body swung into the rattling fence, her fingers burning. She looked down, saw him looking up, silent behind his metal mask. She started climbing, using only her hands. She glanced down. Tesseract was climbing up after her.
God, but he was quick.
It started to rain again, and the droplets soon began to sting against her face. Tesseract was closing the gap between them with alarming speed, his long arms reaching further than hers, and his great muscles hauling his body after her without tiring. As for Marr, her muscles were already complaining, and as she neared the top, they were screaming. Still, better them than her, she reckoned.
Below her, Tesseract had stalled. It looked like he’d snagged that coat of his in the fence somehow. Marr couldn’t spare the time to be smug about it, but she promised herself a smirk when this was all over.
She clambered over the top, pausing a moment to estimate how high up she was, and then let herself fall. The street rushed towards her, and as she prepared to use the air to slow her descent, she glanced at Tesseract. In an instant she saw that he hadn’t stalled, but had been cutting through the links with a knife.
As she passed him on her way down, he reached through the fence and grabbed her arm. Her body jerked and twisted. She cried out and he held her for a moment, then let her fall. She tumbled head over heels to the street below. Her shoulder hit the pavement first and shattered, and her head smacked against the concrete. Marr lay there, waiting for Tesseract to jump down and finish the job. And then a familiar car came screeching around the corner, and she blacked out.
A man landed behind Marr, a big man in a metal mask, and Skulduggery appeared beside Valkyrie, gun in hand.
“You’re Tesseract,” he said. “You are, aren’t you? Who hired you? Who are you working for?”
The man, Tesseract, didn’t even look at him. His red eyes were focused on Marr. He moved towards her and Skulduggery stepped into his path. Immediately, Tesseract grabbed the gun, twisting it from Skulduggery’s grip. Skulduggery grabbed the bigger man’s elbow and wrist and wrenched, and the gun fell back into his hand.
“Get her to the car!” Skulduggery ordered, and Valkyrie grabbed Marr and started dragging her away.
As they struggled for control of the weapon, Tesseract kicked Skulduggery’s leg and Skulduggery kneed Tesseract’s thigh. They headbutted each other as they locked and counter-locked, using moves Valkyrie had never seen before. She heard the gun click, but their hands were covering it so she couldn’t see what was happening. Finally, Tesseract flipped Skulduggery over his hip, but Skulduggery took the gun with him. He rolled and came up, aiming dead-centre for Tesseract’s chest, and the fight froze.
Valkyrie shoved Marr into the back seat of the Bentley, and looked back in time to see Tesseract hold out his fist, and slowly open his hand. Six bullets fell to the ground.
“I thought it was a bit light,” Skulduggery muttered, putting the gun away.
Valkyrie considered helping, but she’d never even heard of this guy Tesseract, and she knew how dangerous it was to charge into a fight without knowing who your enemy was. Instead, she slipped in behind the wheel of the Bentley.
The priority here was Marr, and they had her, after all this time. Valkyrie wasn’t about to risk letting her escape again. She put the Bentley in reverse, like she’d done a hundred times before under Skulduggery’s tutelage, then yanked the wheel. The car spun and she put it in first. She sped away from the fight, rounded the corner and kept going. There was no other traffic on the road.
Valkyrie took another corner a little too sharply, but maintained control. Something moved in the rear-view mirror, and then Skulduggery was flying alongside the car. He nodded to her and she braked and slid over to the passenger side. Skulduggery got in behind the wheel and they took off again.
She frowned. “Are we not going back for him?”
“For Tesseract?” Skulduggery said. “Good God, no.”
“But he’s in shackles, right? You beat him?”
“I like to think I beat him in a moral sense, in that he’s an assassin and I’m not, but apart from that, no, not really.”
Valkyrie turned in her seat, looking at the dark street behind them, then settled back. “Who is he?”
“Assassin for hire, is all I know. I recognised him from his sheer size, and the fact that he wears a metal mask. I’ve never encountered him before. That’s probably a good thing. But let’s not dwell on the new enemy we might have made tonight. Let’s dwell instead on the old enemy we’ve got in the back seat. Hello, Davina. You’re under arrest for multiple counts of murder. You have the right to not much at all, really. Do you have anything to say in your defence?”
Marr remained unconscious.
“Splendid,” Skulduggery said happily.
The Hibernian Cinema stood old and proud and slightly bewildered, like a senior citizen who’d wandered away from his tour group. It had no part in the Dublin that surrounded it. It hadn’t been refurbished or refitted, it didn’t have twenty screens on different floors and it didn’t have banks of concession stands. What it did have were old movie posters on its walls, frayed carpeting, a single stall for popcorn and drinks, and a certain mustiness that agitated long-dormant allergies. The one screen it did possess only ever showed one thing – the black and white image of a brick wall with a door to one side.
But beyond that screen were corridors of clean white walls and bright lighting, rooms of scientific and mystical equipment, a morgue capable of dissecting a god and a Medical Bay that Valkyrie visited on a worryingly regular basis.
Kenspeckle Grouse shambled in, dressed in a bathrobe and slippers, what remained of his grey hair sticking up at odd angles. He looked grumpy, but then he always looked grumpy.
“What,” he said, “do you want?”
“We have a patient for you,” said Skulduggery, nodding to Davina Marr on the bed beside him.
Kenspeckle glared at the shackles around her wrists. “Don’t know her,” he said. “Take her to someone else. She’s your prisoner, isn’t she? Take her to one of those Sanctuary doctors, wake them up in the middle of the night.”
“We can’t do that. This is Davina Marr. She’s the one who destroyed the Sanctuary.”
Some of the grumpiness vanished from Kenspeckle’s eyes, replaced by a kind of disgusted curiosity. “This is her, then? You finally found her?” He walked closer. “She’s a bit the worse for wear, but I have to admit I’m surprised she’s still alive. Are you getting less ruthless as you get older, Detective?”
“We didn’t do this to her,” Valkyrie said, not comfortable with where Kenspeckle’s questions were heading. “We saved her, actually. She’d be dead if it wasn’t for Skulduggery.”
Kenspeckle pulled back one of Marr’s eyelids. “I put that down to your good influence, Valkyrie. But that still doesn’t explain why you haven’t taken her to the authorities. You are, after all, Sanctuary Detectives once again, are you not?”
“We want to keep this quiet,” Skulduggery said. “Things are too volatile at the moment. If we hand her over to the Cleavers, I doubt she’ll even get a trial. They’ll execute her on the spot.”
Kenspeckle traced his hands lightly around Marr’s head. “From what I remember, you’ve executed your fair share of guilty people in the past.”
“I’m not here to argue with you, Professor. The fact is, I don’t believe she was working alone when she decided to destroy the Sanctuary, and I fear that her allies, or her bosses, will try to have her killed before she can name them. I’m fairly confident they’re the ones who hired the assassin.”
“Ah,” Kenspeckle said, “so it’s not mercy that stays your hand – it’s a grander scale of ruthlessness.”
Skulduggery cocked his head. “This woman is responsible for the deaths of fifty people, but there are others who also share that responsibility. They’re all going to pay.”
“Well,” Kenspeckle said, “justice can wait, can it not? Your prisoner has a serious head injury. She’s staying with me until she’s out of danger. It should be a few hours. A day at the most.”
“She’s going to need someone to stand guard over her.”
“You think she poses a threat? She’ll be unconscious until I say otherwise.”
“And what if the assassin comes looking for her?”
“First he’d have to know who she’s with, then where to find me, and lastly he’d have to get past my defences, for which he’d need an army. Leave me now. I’ll get in touch when she’s strong enough to answer your questions.”
With nothing left for them to do, they walked back to the Bentley. Valkyrie buckled her seatbelt as they pulled out on to the road. Skulduggery was using the façade again. Ghastly Bespoke’s façade gave him his own face every time, minus the scars, but Skulduggery hadn’t been able to decide on one look, so China made it so that his façade changed every time. Same cheekbones, same jaw, but all the rest was brand-new.
“Could you drop me off at Gordon’s?” Valkyrie asked.
Skulduggery raised an eyebrow – a newly acquired skill. “You don’t want to go home to Haggard?”
“It’s not that, it’s just that I haven’t been to Gordon’s in a while, and it’s nearly Christmas. Around this time every year when I was a kid, we’d go up there, to his big house. I loved that part of Christmas, because, finally, someone would talk to me like I was a person, you know? A grown-up person, not a child. That’s what I loved about him the most.”
“Ah, there it is,” Skulduggery said, and nodded.
“Sorry?”
“That, right there. That story you just told. That little excerpt from your life. That’s the most annoying thing about Christmas. Everyone has these little stories about what Christmas means to them. You don’t get that at any other time of the year. You don’t get people telling you what Easter means to them, or St Patrick’s Day. But everyone opens up at Christmas time.”
“Wow,” Valkyrie said. “I never noticed before, but you’re a grouch.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You’re a Grinch.”
“I am neither a Grinch nor a grouch. I like Christmas as much as the next person, so long as the next person is as unsentimental as I am.”
“Sentimental’s nice.”
“You hate sentimental.”
“But not at Christmas. At Christmas, sentimental is a perfectly fine thing to be. It is allowed. In moderation, naturally. I don’t want anyone, you know, being sentimental around me, but in principle I have no problem with … uh …”
“What? What’s wrong?”
“Um, the façade …”
Skulduggery tilted his head, and the left side of his face drooped down off his skull, looking like melted rubber.
“I think something’s going a bit wonky,” said Valkyrie.
Skulduggery felt his ear flapping against his lapel and took hold of his face with one hand and hoisted it back up again. He gathered a thick fold around his forehead, trying his best to manoeuvre an eye back into its socket. “This is a tad undignified,” he murmured. “Do please tell me if we’re about to crash into something.”
“Maybe you should let me drive.”
“I saw how you drove a few hours ago. I’m not letting you behind the wheel of this car ever again.” His voice was muffled because his lips were sliding down his jaw. “Do I look better now?”
“Oh, much.”
He did his best to keep his nose in one place.
“So will I pick you up from Gordon’s once your lapse into sentimentality is over? We have that meeting to go to, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“How could I have forgotten?” she asked dryly. “I’ve been looking forward to this incredibly boring meeting for days, I really and truly have, oh boy oh boy.”
“You appear to have found a new level of sarcasm,” Skulduggery nodded. “Impressive.”
“And no, you don’t have to pick me up. I’ll get Fletcher to pop by. Of course, if you change your mind and decide I don’t have to go to this incredibly boring meeting, I can take my time about it all, and really get the sentimentality out of my system for good.”
“And deprive you of your chance to be there? I actually think you’ll be surprised by how interesting it all is.”
“I actually think I’d be very surprised.”
“But we’ll be electing a new Grand Mage. This is history in the making, Valkyrie.”
“And how long do you think the new Grand Mage will last before he’s either murdered or imprisoned?”
“You’re too young to be so cynical.”
“I’m not cynical. I just happen to remember the last four years. You give me one good reason why I should go. One good reason why I would be even remotely interested in attending.”
“Erskine Ravel will be there.”
“Well, OK then.”
Skulduggery laughed, and let go of his face. After a dangerous quiver, it settled down and stopped misbehaving, apart from the ear that was slowly drifting towards his chin.
“You’ve discovered your true name,” he said.
“Yes,” Valkyrie responded.
“And your true name is Darquesse.”
“That’s right.”
“And Darquesse is the sorcerer that all the psychics are having visions about – the one who’s going to destroy the world.”
“Correct.”
“So you’re going to destroy the world.”
“It looks like it.”
“And when did you discover all this?”
“About five months ago.”
“And you’re only telling me about it now?”
“Gordon, it’s taken me this long to stop freaking out about it. I need your help.”
Gordon began to pace the room. It was a big room, lined with bookcases and Gothic paintings. An oil portrait of a semi-clothed Gordon, his body rippling with muscles he had never possessed when he was alive, hung over the vast fireplace, glaring down at all who passed like a great and terrible god. Even though this house and the land around it had been left to Valkyrie, she still couldn’t bring herself to take the painting down. It was far too amusing.
“Do you realise what this means for you?” Gordon asked, as his slow pacing took him towards the corner of the room. “A sorcerer who knows their own true name has access to power other sorcerers can only dream about.”
His image began to fade away, and Valkyrie cleared her throat loudly. Gordon stopped and swung round, pacing back the way he had come. Immediately, he became solid again. The Echo Stone which housed his consciousness sat in its cradle on the coffee table, glowing with a soothing blue light.
“I don’t care about any of that,” she said. “I saw one of these visions, OK? I saw a burning city and injured friends and I saw Darquesse – I saw me – kill my own parents.”
“Now, just wait a second. From what you’ve told me about Cassandra Pharos’s vision, your future self and Darquesse seem to be two distinctly separate entities.”
“That’s just because at no time in that vision was I ever seen hurting anyone. We saw fragments of what’s going to happen. We saw Darquesse, me, as a figure in the distance, fighting and killing and murdering, and then we saw me, my future self, close up, feeling pretty bad about it all, which was nice of her, but she’s undoubtedly a little fruitloops. Listen, it’s taken a while for me to look at this and be logical about it, but obviously someone finds out what my true name is, and they use it to control me.”
“Then you’re going to have to seal your name,” Gordon said.
“Do you know how I can do that?”
“No,” he admitted. “I wrote about magic, but as you are aware, I never had the aptitude for it. Something like that, sealing your true name, is knowledge only a certain breed of sorcerer would have.”
“I can’t ask Skulduggery,” Valkyrie said quietly. “I don’t want him to know.”
Gordon stopped pacing, and looked at her kindly. “He would understand, Valkyrie. Skulduggery has been through an awful lot.”
“If he’s so understanding, how come you still won’t let me tell him you exist?”
“Well,” Gordon said huffily, “that’s different. That was never about him or anyone else. It was always about me, and my insecurities.”
“Which you are now cured of, right?”
He hesitated. “In theory …”
“So you’d be fine with me telling Skulduggery that I talk to you on a regular basis?”
Gordon licked his lips. “I don’t think that now is the perfect time for that. You have a lot on your plate, and I think I can be of more use to you without the distraction of other people.”
“You’re scared.”
“I’m not scared, I’m cautious. I don’t know how my friends would react. I am not actually Gordon Edgley after all – I am merely a recording of his personality.”
“But …?” Valkyrie raised her eyebrows.
“But,” he said quickly, “that doesn’t mean I’m not a person in my own right, with my own identity and value.”
“Very good,” she smiled. “You’ve been working on it.”
“I have a lot of time for self-affirmation while I’m sitting in that little blue crystal, waiting for you to drop by.”
“Is that your subtle way of telling me I should call round more?”
“I practically cease to exist when you’re not here,” Gordon said. “There’s nothing subtle about it.”
The alarm on Valkyrie’s phone beeped once. “Fletcher will be here soon,” she said, picking up the Echo Stone and its cradle. “We better get you back.”
Gordon followed as she led the way out of the living room and up the stairs. “The big meeting is this afternoon, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” she scowled. “Even after everything that’s been happening, with everything that’s hanging over me, I still have to waste my time at this stupid thing. Skulduggery says it’s important to see how this kind of politics works.”
“You’re lucky,” Gordon said wistfully. “I would have loved to have been invited to something like that when I was alive.”
“It’s going to be a bunch of people talking about what we’re going to do about setting up a new Sanctuary. What do I have to contribute to that?”
“I don’t know. A general air of grumpiness?”
“Now that I can do.”
They passed into the study, but instead of following her through the hidden doorway to the secret room where he kept the most valued pieces of his collection, Gordon went to a small bookshelf beside the window. “And how is Fletcher these days?”
“He’s grand.”
“Has he met your parents?”
Valkyrie frowned. “No. And he’s not going to.”
“You don’t think they’d approve?” Gordon asked as he scanned the books.
“I think they’d start asking all kinds of awkward questions. And I don’t think they’d like the fact that my boyfriend is older than me.”
“He’s eighteen, you’re sixteen,” Gordon said. “That’s not drastically older.”
“If I need to tell them, I will. Right now, Skulduggery has taken responsibility for asking every single awkward question that my parents could ever possibly ask, so you needn’t worry.”
