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“Hello Valkyrie.”
Valkyrie was missing.
It had been two days since Skulduggery had spoken to her.
Yesterday, he called her to ask if she wanted to come along to Ghastly’s shop while he got another fitting. He had sneakily bought her a whole new set of clothes because he’d noticed she was growing, along with a dress for the Requiem Ball. The order had already been placed. Ghastly gave him a call the other day to tell him it was done.
She hadn’t picked up.
Odd, but nothing alarming. Sometimes she did have a life outside of the one they spent together. A family. Benign friends.
The surprise could wait. He didn’t mind waiting a month even, just as long as he saw her face light up at the new styles and colours and the way she admired herself in the mirror and forced Skulduggery to say something nice.
He called her the next day, and she didn’t pick up.
It was becoming alarming.
He called three times after that and left her a few messages. No response. He called Fletcher, who sounded annoyed.
“I don’t know where she is, but if you see her, tell her I can’t believe she stood me up.”
“Stood you up?”
The sound of a fridge being closed went through the line. Fletcher took a deep gulp of something. “Yeah. I was off in Italy getting pizza. Valkyrie was with Alice and the Reflection. I came back, and she was gone. I ate the pizza with the Reflection instead.”
“And the reflection? Did it-”
“No, sh- it didn’t say anything. Just that Valkyrie was gone.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“She’s stood me up before. She’s not exactly loving. I assumed she got jealous of the reflection or something. Look, she’s probably off brooding somewhere.”
Skulduggery didn’t think so.
Skulduggery had spent a very long night contacting everyone he knew. He’d gone to see the reflection, even.
“Where is Valkyrie?”
It looked at him, bored. “I don’t know.”
“What happened the other night?”
“She just walked out of the house. She didn’t say anything.”
Skulduggery swore. “Okay.”
“You’d probably make fun of me for leaving voice messages. You would probably call me an old man. I am actually remarkably adept at using technology.
“I miss you.”
It had been three days since Skulduggery had spoken to her.
Ghastly and Tanith were getting antsy. Tanith was talking to everyone she knew, asking around for any sign of Valkyrie. Ghastly had gone to see Cassandra Pharos.
He went to see China, who looked at him with a delicate gaze and laughed daintily. “Skulduggery, my dear, she’s a strong girl. She’s probably busy with a new dangerous endeavour.”
“I know it’s not that.”
“Are you really worried?” Skulduggery stayed silent. “Well in that case, do what you do best. Investigate.”
He inclined his head, put on his hat, and left.
He found himself in Haggard, walking around the town. He tapped his collarbone and walked around with slightly bronzed skin, sharp green eyes and red wavy hair.
The Edgley’s house was undisturbed. Skulduggery gently lifted himself up to the windowsill and slid the window open. His polished shoes stepped soundlessly on the carpet.
Nothing was out of place. For a teenage girl’s room, at least. Makeup was sprawled a little everywhere on her dresser, and a laundry basket overflowing with clothes. The bed was unmade, and her lamp light was still turned on. The reflection never messed with the things in the room, except to go to bed when Valkyrie was out at night.
The lamp was still on. Valkyrie had left at night. She had probably not returned since.
Skulduggery began to go through the piles on her table. Letters, appointments, reports and books stacked one on top of each other. Dust had begun to collect on top. Nothing pointed to the need to leave suddenly.
He sifted through the clothes on her bed. He didn’t want to violate her privacy, but the gnawing feeling in him was growing. Valkyrie was a smart girl. She was also a very rational girl. She had confessed everything in her life to Skulduggery. She never did anything without letting him know, or without complaining about it.
If she had been abducted, she would have left some kind of a message, some kind of a clue. Valkyrie was resourceful and quick on her feet.
Something had taken her out of the house urgently, and no one knew. And Skulduggery was seething inside.
His gloved hands hit something hard. He fished out a phone. Valkyrie’s phone.
That was it, then. She had been taken, or left with the intention of returning.
Skulduggery was starting to feel seriously anxious.
“I wish I could get this message to you somehow. There’s so much left unsaid.”
Radio silence. Skulduggery had hit a wall. If his mind wasn’t so occupied, he would have mourned the state of his ego.
Tanith, Ghastly, China and Skulduggery reconvened every day to gather information. It had been four full days, and they had nothing.
“Who else was she in contact with?” Ghastly asked, hands wrapped around a steaming mug of tea.
China sat with her legs crossed, hands placed on her knees. She watched them all calculatingly. Tanith looked at her with more than a little disgust and spoke. “She had us, and Fletcher, and her family of course.”
Scoffing, China leaned forward. “Very useful, Low. Congratulations on stating the absolute obvious.”
Tanith rose to her feet, glanced at Skulduggery, and thought better. Ghastly glared at the woman. “China, please.”
“Someone we don’t know. Someone she would’ve wanted to keep away from us.”
Skulduggery's head lifted sharply. “Valkyrie kept nothing from me.”
“She’s a teenage girl,” China drawled. “They all have their secrets.”
Tanith mumbled under her breath. “Sounds like someone knows something.”
Skulduggery straightened up. “China,” he said warningly.
“Well… there is that dreadful vampire.”
“Caelan?”
“That’s it.”
Tanith shook her head. “No way. Val never would’ve kept something like that from me. We’re practically sisters.”
Skulduggery tried very hard to not get angry. “Okay. It’s a lead.” And he got up, ignoring the two women who were beginning to argue.
Caelan? Truth be told, Skulduggery had his doubts. He knew the appeal was there for Valkyrie. She was young and bold and it seemed like that kind of thing she’d do. He didn’t approve, of course, but it was her business. One learns the best by making mistakes, he supposed.
Finding Caelan was the easy part. A quick call told him that he’d been spotted, bleeding heavily, and stumbled into Shudder’s hotel the other night. He’d not left since.
Skulduggery waited for Shudder in front of the hotel, glancing at his watch to make sure he had the right time. “Skulduggery.”
“Anton. Where is he?”
Shudder’s eyes glinted. “Straight to business.” He arched an eyebrow. “Room 208.”
Skulduggery nodded at him and moved into the hotel. Four staircases later, and he was knocking on door 208.
“Caelan. Open the door.” Someone shuffled behind the door. Skulduggery rapped again. “Open up.”
A minute passed. Two minutes. He tapped his feet impatiently. “Valkyrie’s missing. I know you know where she is.” Something crashed beyond the threshold. A loud groan sounded. “Caelan. I’m coming in.”
Tension rippled along Skulduggery, and the pent-up anger was released all at once as he grabbed onto the air and thrust it towards the door. The reinforced door exploded outwards. Skulduggery stepped smartly through the newly-made hole.
Caelan was curled up on the floor, bloodshot eyes snapped wide open and hands curled up in his hair. He was even paler than normal, white as a sheet. Blood red lips whispered the same phrase again and again. “I failed. I failed. I failed.”
“How did you fail?”
Caelan’s eyes met Skulduggery’s gaze. He said nothing.
“Caelan, what happened to Valkyrie?” His voice was steel, but the vampire shuddered violently and began chanting again.
Skulduggery flexed his fingers. He gripped the air around him and picked up Caelan like a straw doll. He walked up to him, suspended in the air, and grabbed Caelan’s face. He brought his face up close. “Where is she?” He asked, punctuating every word.
Caelan shook his head and trembled in the air. Skulduggery swore and dropped him to the ground. Caelan sobbed on the ground uncontrollably.
Fury boiled within him, and Skulduggery pulled out his gun and empted the magazine at the vampire. They hit him uselessly. He strode towards him and grabbed Caelan by the collar, and lifted him up, and then slammed him into the wall to the left. Caelan gasped and his hands flew towards his neck as he slid back onto the floor. Skulduggery slammed his heels into Caelan’s gut, and his fists into his skull. Caelan kept repeating the mantra, unresponsive.
“Where is she?” Skulduggery roared.
“I failed,” Caelan said, eyes glimmering.
Skulduggery’s fingers dipped into a pocket in his suit, and pulled out a tiny vial of salt water. Caelan’s pupils dilated at the sight.
Voice deadly low, Skulduggery spoke. “Tell me where Valkyrie is, or I promise that ‘I failed’ are the last words you ever speak.”
Still slumped against the wall, Caelan didn’t look up. “She was outside her house. A blonde girl was hurting her. I tried to stop it-” His voice hitched. “But then the shadows took them and they went.”
Shadow walking.
Blonde? Melancholia.
Skulduggery dusted off his suit and walked out, leaving Caelan sobbing behind him.
Shudder watched him as he left. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
Skulduggery said nothing, got in his Bentley, and drove off.
“I’d probably tell you that you are the most extraordinary person I’ve ever met. So full of life and wit, and the only person who could truly keep up with me. I’d tell you that I’d kill everyone on the planet for you. That life is brighter when you’re in it.”
Skulduggery hated himself. He should have dealt with things in the Temple when he first knew things were brewing. He was about to kill Wreath. His foot pressed on the pedal more forcefully, and he sped across Ireland.
The Temple stood forebodingly. An ugly, wretched building that was suited to the ugly, wretched people that lived in it. The doors were closed, and there seemed to be no activity inside.
“Right,” Skulduggery said, and got out of the car. He walked up to the doors and banged on them.
“Melancholia St Clair. Come and submit yourself to questioning.”
Silence hung in the air, and then:
“With what authority?”
Skulduggery sighed. “Mine.”
The voice said something very rude, and then silence fell back in the yard again. Skulduggery kicked the door, and the lock clanged a little. He funnelled air into the keyhole and yanked his hands apart. The lock burst open, and the door swung inwards.
Two men stood at the entrance, shadows swirling around them. Swatting his hand to the left, they both crashed into the wall. Skulduggery didn’t even look at them.
Five more hooded figures spilt in from the corridors. He clicked his fingers and threw fire at their feet, and then gathered wind up and fanned the flames. The fire licked up the necromancers' clothes. Absently, he pushed past them, ignoring the way the fire was charring his suit. Three people came down the corridor he was striding through. He shot them in the knees and batted them away with the air. Waves of sorcerers came at him, but his sights were fixed on one person. Blood dripped down his bones. Smoke was making it difficult to see.
Finally, he made it to the main meeting room. Wreath stood in the middle, frame relaxed and an annoyed expression on his face.
“Skulduggery, whilst it’s usually a pleasure to see you, I must say, wiping out our disciples is not making me delight in your presence right now.”
Skulduggery walked up to him and jammed the muzzle of his gun under Wreath’s chin. To his credit, Wreath seemed unperturbed. “I promise you, I’ve done nothing wrong,” he said, a little sarcastically.
“Where’s Melancholia?”
“Ah, you know I can’t divulge Temple secrets to an outsider.” Skulduggery forced the gun up even further, and Wreath chuckled nervously. He threw up his hands. “She’s probably with Craven, resting.”
Skulduggery pushed him away and made a start for the medical rooms.
“Why?” Wreath asked.
“She knows where Valkyrie is.”
“I’d tell you that you make life worth living, and more bearable just by being in it. I’d tell you that I’ve never met someone so strong and full of potential. I wish I could tell you all this.”
The medical corridor was dank and dark, like everything in the Temple. Mould grew on the ceiling and moss lined the walls. It was musty and wet and everything Valkyrie hated. She always complained about the air quality in the Temple. “I don’t get why they don’t open a bloody window every once in a while. I get they’ve got this emo image, but a girl’s gotta breathe, for God’s sake.”
There were five doors running on both sides of the corridor. Nine were now blown open. The tenth door, right at the end, slammed open. Craven, red in the face, bellowed down the passage.
“What the hell are you doing?” He yelled.
Skulduggery trained his gun between the man’s eyes. “Move.”
Craven’s legs seemed to be shaking, but he stood his ground. “No,” he said, pathetically.
Skulduggery cocked his head and shot him in the leg. Craven fell to a knee and cried out. “Move,” Skulduggery warned.
“Don’t… touch… Melancholia.” He struggled back onto his legs and slammed the door shut. “Go away, skeleton. You won’t win against her.”
“I said, move,” and he shot him between the eyes. Craven crumpled to the floor. Blood leaked lazily onto the stone ground.
Skulduggery stepped over the body and opened the door.
The room was dark, save for a single bare light bulb. It lit up the end of someone’s robe. There, in the shadows, sat Melancholia on a bed, hooked up to some kind of machine that was steadily beeping. Her face was sallow and grey. Sweat shined on her upper lip.
“Detective.”
“Where is Valkyrie, Melancholia.”
The girl laughed. “Dead,” she said, and a smile crept across her face.
Skulduggery gripped his gun tighter. “No.”
“Yes, skeleton, she’s dead.” She grinned, savagely. “I went to visit her. I took her somewhere remote. I cut her up. Slashed her to ribbons. To an inch of her life.”
Skulduggery stayed silent.
“You want to know the best bit? She begged. That audacious little rat, thinking she was so much better than me. Younger, more stupid, more incapable. The so-called ‘Death Bringer’ was at my feet, begging for her life.”
He grasped onto the air around him, and forced it at her neck. It pushed against her skin. She gasped. The machine clattered to the floor.
“Begging to live, to stay away from her little sister, her parents. She was lying there, crying and crying, and I cut her deep and then she stopped.”
Skulduggery thrust the heel of his hand forward and air solidified and squeezed. Melancholia grappled with her own neck, skin white. “Dead, detective. Valkyrie Cain is dead.”
No. Valkyrie wasn’t dead. She was- larger than life, brighter than the sun, so young with such a long life ahead of her. She wasn’t dead.
Skulduggery’s arms dropped to his sides. Melancholia slumped back onto the bed, hands rubbing the sore skin gently.
And then-
Skulduggery picked her up easily and smashed her into the wall. She choked, eyes rolling back into her head. Blood dribbled down her chin. Skulduggery roared and smashed her against the stone walls again and again as the girl screamed, bones breaking against the rock.
“I’m sorry,” Melancholia sobbed. “I’m sorry I didn’t mean to-” She slammed back into the wall again. Skulduggery rounded in on her. She looked up through his eye socket, petrified. Every bone in his body was still. “I didn’t mean to kill her,” she blubbered. “I was only supposed to cut her up, teach her a lesson, show her who the real Death Bringer is-”
Skulduggery smashed his knee under her chin. Her jaw shattered. Desperately, she tried to gather shadows around her and sent them towards him. Skulduggery shifted the air and they were knocked back. His fist cracked into her cheekbone. Melancholia slammed backwards again, screaming and crying.
Even with her jaw broken, she forced out apologies on repeat. Her face was swelling up and her eyes were bloodshot.
Fury raged and her screams became white noise as he kept beating her.
Finally, he stepped away. She looked moments away from losing consciousness. “You stole Valkyrie from me,” he whispered.
Melancholia stared back at him. She couldn’t speak anymore. She couldn’t move. She could only watch as he mechanically dropped the magazine onto the floor, put in a new one and pulled the slide back. It clicked.
Her eyes watched as he thumbed the hammer. Her eyes watched helplessly as he pointed it between her eyes, and they watched as he pulled the trigger.
Melancholia slumped on the bed. Blood poured from her head. Steady hands turned the safety back on. Skulduggery glanced once more at the girl, and then turned away and left.
“But I can’t tell you this. I should have told you this. You deserved to hear how much you were needed, wanted… loved.”
Skulduggery found her in a field.
It was raining.
She lay among the grass, hair plastered to her scalp. Every inch of her skin was sliced up, blood crusting over the open wounds. The grass around her was stained red, and the rain bled red into the soil. Her skin was pale and her hair was a shimmery black.
Skulduggery crouched next to her, and held her hand. She was cold and stiff, but he held her anyway, closing each of her fingers around his hand. Mud and dirt smeared onto his bones, and water glinted on him.
Valkyrie lay dead in the grass. Cut up into ribbons, alone. In the dirt and the mud and among the worms.
She had died here, by herself, alone and scared.
If Skulduggery had any tears left, he would have cried.
Instead, his hands gently slid under her knees and under her back, and he picked her up carefully and held her close to his chest. He tucked her face into him, and bowed his shoulders.
The rain dripped through his bones.
“And I want you to know that no matter what happens, I will always carry your memory with me. I’ll keep your family and town safe, I’ll keep your friends safe, and I’ll keep safe, like you should’ve been kept safe. I’m sorry.”
Valkyrie was buried with a beautiful gravestone, with the words, ‘Sister, daughter, hero, partner and life-long friend,’ engraved in the stone.
The service was small and intimate and yet it seemed like the whole magical community was there. Bouquets that Valkyrie would have no doubt hated and tears shed that she no doubt would’ve mocked were laid down as the service went on. Tanith and Ghastly left together, tapping him on the shoulder. China was the last to leave. She was dressed in a black pencil skirt and a black blouse and a delicate white gold necklace. Her eyes were red and her lips were pursed. A beautiful, tasteful bunch of flowers was laid down on the grave. Silently, she kissed Skulduggery on the cheek and left.
The man stood at the gravestone by himself. “I had a new set of clothes for you,” he began.
“They were a deep, almost black, green. There was another one, blood red, and a new dress for the Requiem Ball. We were going to match. We were going to look stunning.”
He stood, silent, for a minute. “I don’t have lots to say. For someone who always has a great deal of things to talk on and on about, I have to admit, I’m feeling quite humbled.
“But I’ve always been humbled with you. No one could match your strength or your humour or your wit. Not even me. You’ve taught me a great deal, Valkyrie. I was going to stay with you until I died. I was going to give my life for you. I wanted to give you so much.
“But I wish I could’ve given you what you needed. A responsible, capable friend and shoulder to lean on. A protector. I should’ve been there.
“I got revenge for you. It was ugly and brutal and everything you would’ve wanted for Melancholia, I imagine. I’m sorry you couldn’t do it yourself.”
He crouched down at her grave, and placed his forehead against the cool stone. “I miss you. And I love you Valkyrie. You were like my daughter, and my best friend.”
He stood up. “I love you so much.” He put his hat back on. “I’ll see you soon.”
“I love you, and will always miss you.”