The Cain girl had gone limp in his hands.
Cadaverous dropped her, disgusted, and she crumpled – less like a human body, more like a sack of human remains. Blood ran freely from the cuts on her face. At least she wasn’t saying anything any more. At least she had shut up now, had stopped spewing all those lies about Jeremiah. Of course she had lied. It wasn’t even her fault. She was a woman. It was in their nature. He had learned this a long, long time ago, had learned it as a child. His mother had been a liar. She had lied to his father so many times that it had reduced the man to nothing. Sharp words were like the blade of an axe – enough swings and they would chop down the tallest of trees.
He took hold of the girl’s ankle, dragged her easily, enjoying the strength his home provided him. His back didn’t spasm when he bent down to pick her up, and his muscles didn’t strain when he lifted her into the trunk. His age didn’t mean anything in here. In here, his energy was limitless.
He shut the trunk, went round to the driver’s side, got in behind the wheel. He paused for a moment, wondering if he’d killed her. He didn’t want her dead just yet. That would spoil his plans.
He focused on looking through her eyes, expecting nothing but darkness. Instead, he saw a red light. The interior of the trunk.
She was conscious again, and she was alive. He wasn’t surprised. She had survived a lot worse than getting her head smashed through a car window. She was tough. It was one of the things he almost respected about her.
He left her to the red light, the steering wheel swimming back into view. Jeremiah hadn’t been tough, not like that. In many ways, in fact, Jeremiah had been weak. Sometimes even petulant.
But he’d been talented, and that had meant a lot. The way he’d worked had been a wonder to behold. Watching Jeremiah, Cadaverous had often been reminded of himself as a young man.
He started the car, made a U-turn, was almost to the payphone when he glanced in the rear-view and saw that the trunk was open.
He braked. Leaped out. Sprinted after Valkyrie Cain as she stumbled for the exit.
She passed through. He felt her leave and it hit him like heartache.
He stopped, right at the doorway. She turned to him. Blood masked her face, ran in rivulets down her throat, mixing with the mud that caked her T-shirt. She stood just out of reach. To grab her, he’d have to step out of his home. He’d be vulnerable there. He’d be strong, and fast, but not this strong, not this fast. One more step and she’d have a chance to stop him.
“I’ll kill them,” he said. “I’ll kill the skeleton first. I’ll tear him apart and burn his bones. I’ll scatter his ashes. Then I’ll kill your sister, your helpless, terrified little sister.”
“You’re going to kill them anyway,” Valkyrie responded, spraying small drops of blood every time her lips moved.
“I have to kill him,” Cadaverous said. “For my own future survival. I can’t have Skulduggery Pleasant running around after I’ve killed the great and terrible Valkyrie Cain. But I don’t have to kill her. I can let her go, so long as you come back inside. I give you my word.”
“You expect me to trust you?”
“I have never broken my word,” Cadaverous told her. “I do not intend to start now.”
“Everything you say is a lie.”
Cadaverous shrugged. “You can believe that, if you wish. If it makes you feel better. If it lets you walk away. But, if you do walk away, then I will definitely kill her. If you leave, you will be cutting your own sister’s throat.”
“If you hurt her, I swear to you I’ll kill you.”
“Maybe you will. But that won’t bring her back to life. And I can stay in here a mighty long time.”
Valkyrie raised a hand to her head, as if she was just noticing her injuries. She looked at her hand, looked at the blood that covered it, and her legs gave out and she stumbled backwards, collapsed.
Cadaverous fought the urge to lunge at her during this moment of weakness. Even with her magic cut off, she was a formidable opponent, and he couldn’t be sure that she wasn’t faking this vulnerability in an attempt to draw him out. So he stayed where he was, watching her as she got to her hands and knees.
“We both know you’re not going to run away,” he told her. “It’s not in your nature. You’re going to exchange your life for your sister’s, so let us forgo the pretence and get it over with. Midnight is almost upon us.”
She stood. She looked genuinely unsteady, and her face – what little he could see of her skin beneath all that blood and dried muck – was startlingly pale. He began to think that maybe she wasn’t faking it, after all.
He took a step over the border, into the real world.
Valkyrie used her dirty T-shirt to wipe some of the blood off her face. Her cuts were still bleeding, though, forging new rivers that dripped into her eyes, off her nose, off her chin. She was blinking rapidly, half blind, two steps away. Just two steps.
Cadaverous reached for her and saw a grin start to form and he jumped back over the border, safe in the world in which he was all-powerful.
And Valkyrie laughed so hard she doubled over. “You’re such a coward!” she cried. “You’re such a typical little bully! Scurrying back to your safe place!”
Cadaverous felt that old anger rising up. She was starting to sound like the rest of them now.
“You’re big and strong when you’re on home turf, aren’t you?” she said, taunting him in that way they did, where their words needled into his mind, prised away his control. “But the moment you step out into the real world you realise how small you are. How pathetic.”
“Shut your mouth,” Cadaverous snarled.
“How insignificant.”
“I’ll kill her,” he said, walking back to his car. “Your sister is going to die and it’s your fault. You could have saved her, but you were too busy showing off.”
“Jeremiah died screaming!”
Cadaverous spun. “You shut your lying mouth!”
“He took after you,” Valkyrie said, a snarl of her own on her face. “He talked tough and then it all fell apart. He begged me to help him. When he was about to fall. He begged me to help. He was crying. Know what else he said? He said, ‘Please, Mr Gant, please save me.’ How pathetic is that, huh? And then I let him go, and he fell, screaming, begging, with your name on his lips.”
His fists were clenched. His muscles knotted. “I know what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to get me to lose control.”
“No. I’m trying to get you to be a man.”
A screech rose from somewhere within. “Who are you to question me?”
Valkyrie shrugged. An innocent, insouciant little shrug. “No one,” she said. “I’m just a girl. Just a weak, helpless little girl. I don’t even have my magic to defend myself with. But who are you? You’re a big, full-grown man. And you’re too scared to come and get me. You killed, what, a dozen women back when you were a serial killer? And how many people have you killed since you discovered magic? Do you even remember? I suppose it doesn’t matter, because obviously none of them, not a one, ever challenged you. Not one of them was in a position to fight back. And then you meet someone like me, someone who is going to fight back, and you’re too scared to come and get me.”
He looked at her, and his fists unclenched, and he chuckled. She frowned.
“You’ve overplayed your hand, my dear,” he said. “It was close. It was. You almost got me. Male pride is a surprisingly fragile thing, especially when a weak, helpless little girl like you is poking at it. But, of course, you’re not a weak and helpless little girl, are you? You’re dangerous, and you have a history of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. So forgive me, Valkyrie, if I’m not prepared to play your little game tonight.” The Cadillac’s door opened as he walked over to it.
“Coward!” she shouted at him.
He glanced at the moon, then back at her. “You have ten minutes, and then the skeleton and your sister die. Who’s the coward now, Valkyrie?”