Skulduggery Pleasant: Kingdom of the Wicked (26 page)

“Oh, Master!” the idiot wailed, clutching the jar to his bosom. “I’m so sorry! Are you OK? Oh, Master, please speak to me! Please say something!”

“I will,” Scapegrace growled, “as soon as you shut up.”

Thrasher was practically weeping with joy. “Oh, thank heavens. Oh, thank heavens.”

“Find somewhere else to put me,” Scapegrace said, “as far away from you as possible.”

Thrasher looked around, eventually deciding on a room in the back of the Medical Bay. There was an area that was curtained off, but beside that was a table. He put the jar there, and then plodded off, probably to cry. Scapegrace bobbed around a bit before coming to a stop. The curtain wasn’t pulled over all the way, and he could see a patient lying on a bed, his midsection wrapped in bandages and soaked in mud. He was wearing sunglasses indoors. Even before he turned his head Scapegrace knew who he was.

Billy-Ray Sanguine looked at him without expression, so Scapegrace returned the favour. He wasn’t going to be intimidated by the man who’d killed him. He was beyond that now. He’d changed. Grown. He was the Zombie King, and who was Sanguine? Just some annoying American with a stubble-covered jawline and good muscle tone. So what? At least Scapegrace had
eyes
, and one of them even worked.

He looked right at Sanguine and Sanguine looked right at him. Neither man looked away. It was a matter of pride now. It had become something more than a mere staring contest. Now it was about dominance. It was about superiority. It was about strength. And Scapegrace was damned if he was going to be the one to look away first. Although he did feel that wearing sunglasses was technically cheating.

Moving slowly, Sanguine sat up. Pressing an arm to his bandages, he got off the bed. He groaned slightly with the effort, pulled the curtain open wider, and walked the few paces to the table. Scapegrace’s mind churned with possible insults and comebacks. The first words out of Sanguine’s mouth were going to be nasty, he knew that much.

Sanguine leaned down and they looked at each other, face to face. Then Sanguine tapped the glass with his finger. “Ugly little critter, ain’t ya?”

“Takes one to know one,” Scapegrace retorted triumphantly, and Sanguine screamed and leaped back, hit the bed and fell backwards over it, collapsing into a heap on the other side.

Scapegrace stared.

Nye and Thrasher rushed in and immediately went to Sanguine’s aid. They picked him up and laid him back on the bed. He was obviously in a great deal of pain.

“What happened?” Nye asked, checking the bandages. “I told you no movement.”

Sanguine pointed. “You got a head in a jar.”

“So?”

“It spoke to me!”

“What did you think it was going to do, shake your hand? You could have pulled your stitches. You must remain still while you heal. I explained this to you.”

Sanguine grabbed Nye’s coat, pulled the creature in close. “Why,” he said through gritted teeth, “is there a goddamn head in a jar talkin’ to me?”

“You talked to me first,” Scapegrace pointed out.

Sanguine lay back. “Somebody shut it up. It’s freakin’ me out.”

“It’s your own fault,” Scapegrace said.

“On principle alone, I refuse to have a conversation with a decapitated head.”

“You’re the one who killed me!”

Sanguine looked around. “I make it a point of rememberin’ who and how I killed, and I ain’t never chopped someone’s head off.”

“My head was on when you killed me. I am Vaurien Scapegrace.”

“I’m happy for you.”

“You murdered me and your father turned me into the walking dead!”

Sanguine frowned. “Hey, I remember you now. You’re that guy...”

“Yes.”

“The idiot.”

“What? No.”

“You’re the moron who pretended he was an assassin, and then you lost control of your own zombies.”

“I didn’t lose control of them,” Scapegrace said. “They lost control of me.”

Thrasher stepped forward. “He’s the Zombie King now.”

“Good God,” Sanguine said. “It’s another one. How many of these things do you have here?”

“Two too many,” Nye said absently.

“Well, at least this one has his head on. But how do you stand the smell?”

Nye pressed its fingers against Sanguine’s stomach. “I don’t have a nose. Does this hurt?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

“Why is
he
here?” Scapegrace asked. “The last I heard, this man was wanted for a variety of crimes. At the very least he killed
me
.”

Nye looked up. “You and I have a deal, zombie. You give me what I want, and I give you what you want. I have the same sort of deal with Mr Sanguine here. I expect discretion from all my patients.”

“I think we should flush him down the toilet,” Sanguine said.

“Don’t you dare!” Thrasher screeched, jumping in front of the jar so that now all Scapegrace could see was the way the back of his trousers sagged.

“Oh, God,” Sanguine said, disgust in his voice. “Is that his intestine? It is, ain’t it? Look at it swingin’ there. For God’s sake, man, put it away. That’s disgustin’.”

Scapegrace closed his eyes in embarrassment.

“I am who I am,” Thrasher proclaimed proudly.

“Hey, you go fly your freak flag high, but you just tuck that little bit of yourself back in so you don’t scar no minds. Have some dignity.”

Thrasher turned away dramatically, hands on his hips, and his little piece of shrivelled intestine slapped against Scapegrace’s jar. “You don’t tell me what to do. Only Master Scapegrace, the Zombie King, can order me around.”

“Put it away, Thrasher,” Scapegrace said.

Thrasher blinked down at him. “Sir?”

“Tuck it in, you idiot.”

Thrasher’s lower lip quivered, and he rushed out of the room. Scapegrace sighed, and looked at Sanguine and Nye as the doctor finished its inspection.

“You’re lucky,” it said. “But if you move off this bed again, I’ll snip every last one of your stitches myself.”

It walked to the door, and Sanguine frowned after it. “Hey, you just gonna leave this head talkin’ to me? Hey, Nye, at least turn it so that it’s lookin’ the other way or somethin’!”

But Nye was already gone. Sanguine glowered, and lay back.

Minutes ticked by. Finally, he looked over. “So what happened?”

“What happened when?”

“I mean how’d you lose your head?”

“I didn’t lose my head,” said Scapegrace. “I lost my body.”

“How’d you lose your body, then?”

“The White Cleaver cut it off.”

Sanguine nodded, and it went quiet again. Then he said, “Wanna play I spy?”

Scapegrace would have shrugged if he’d had shoulders. “Sure,” he said.

ow much do you know about Roarhaven?”

Valkyrie and Skulduggery sat in the mountain facility’s living room, around the large table with Lament, Plight, Lenka and Kalvin on the other side.

Skulduggery sat back, hands clasped over where his belly would have been, tapping his fingertips together. “The very fact that you ask us that leads me to believe there is something important that we
don’t
know about Roarhaven. Valkyrie will tell you what we
do
know.”

“Uh, OK,” said Valkyrie, doing her best to remember. “Most magical communities establish themselves in towns or cities and kind of blend in and go unnoticed. But the people of Roarhaven built up their town in the middle of nowhere. They isolated themselves on purpose, and because of that their hostility towards normal people grew. They didn’t agree with official Sanctuary policies – they believed sorcerers should be ruling the world, not hiding in it. So they hatched a plot to destroy the Sanctuary and steal control.”

“And what was the plot?” Lament asked.

“No idea.”

Skulduggery looked at her. “I told you this.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Yes, I did. I told you about the bomb that didn’t go off and the failed coup and the arrests.”

“Oh,” she said. “Yeah, that sounds familiar.”

Skulduggery sighed.

“The coup was only the start of it,” Lament said. “From what we’ve gathered, the Roarhaven mages had much bigger plans. Did you know that since the war with Mevolent ended, hundreds of sorcerers from all over the world have gone missing?”

“Sorcerers go missing all the time,” Skulduggery pointed out. “
You
went missing, after all.”

“Very true,” said Lament, “but we didn’t meet with representatives from Roarhaven right before we disappeared.”

Skulduggery’s chin tilted downwards. “So what happened to these missing sorcerers?”

“We don’t know,” said Plight. “This is just another sliver of information we picked up about that town and its people. They had big plans, and I doubt those plans have been abandoned. After all, they got what they wanted, didn’t they? The Sanctuary is now in Roarhaven.”

“But that wasn’t because of a coup,” Valkyrie pointed out. “That was because Davina Marr destroyed the old Sanctuary. The Elders chose to move there.”

Plight shrugged. “We’ve been tucked away for thirty years, we don’t know the ins and outs of the situation. But however it happened, it happened. The Sanctuary is now in Roarhaven, and so is the Accelerator.”

Lament sat forward. “Scientists talk. We share ideas and discoveries and theories. I would never have been able to build something like the Tempest or the Cube without talking through aspects of it with other people far more intelligent than I.

“As an extension of that, scientists love to gossip. I heard about a colleague of an old friend of mine. This colleague, a man named Rote, was working on a project so secret he wouldn’t tell anyone what it was. But he discussed aspects of it with different people to get their advice and input. Purely by chance, some of these people got together, started talking about Rote and his odd questions. They each had a different piece of the puzzle, but when they put them together, it began to take shape. The project he was working on, the Accelerator, appeared to be a machine capable of boosting magic, amplifying it to an incredible degree.”

“It may even correspond with Argeddion’s own discoveries about the source of magic,” Kalvin said. “Maybe Rote found a way to channel that power, to draw it out and use it.”

“Unfortunately,” said Lament, “we don’t know enough to come to any definite conclusions.”

“What were they going to use it for?” Valkyrie asked.

“A hostile takeover. Every sorcerer around the world would get this massive boost of power, enough to turn bullets into dust and missiles into rainbows. Mortal civilisation would be overrun within weeks. Then the Accelerator would be shut down, power levels would return to normal, but the world would be completely different. Sorcerers would be the dominant race.”

“I’ve seen what that’s like,” Valkyrie said. “It’s not fun.”

“And this Accelerator exists?” Skulduggery asked.

“I think so,” said Lament. “And I think it’s hidden somewhere in Roarhaven. Even if it’s half finished, we could work on it, bring it online.”

“Why?”

“Because it doesn’t have to be used for its original intention,” said Lament. “It could be altered, used to charge the Cube indefinitely. Skulduggery, you were talking about increasing the Cube’s power by two or three times? The Accelerator would increase it a hundredfold, and we wouldn’t even need the Tempest hooked up to it. Argeddion would never wake up, never escape. And if this Darquesse really is as powerful as everyone thinks she will be, she can be held in a Cube alongside him. We’re talking about a maximum security prison strong enough to hold
gods
.”

“In that case,” Skulduggery said, standing up, “I think it’s time I made a phone call.”

Valkyrie followed him to an empty room. His phone was in his hand but he didn’t dial.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“About what? The idea? I think it’s great.”

“What do you think of building a prison that could hold you? This isn’t theoretical any more – if we go down this road, it’s a reality. We’ll be building a Cube for you, Valkyrie.”

She shrugged. “That’s what we want, isn’t it?”

He folded his arms. “Are you really going to stand there and tell me this whole thing doesn’t scare you?”