Skulduggery Pleasant: Kingdom of the Wicked (37 page)

Baron Vengeous shackled her hands behind her back, and hauled her to her feet.

lsie stood behind the lamp post and tried to work up the courage to talk to the construction supervisor. Most of the work in the street was already done. The café had a new window, the wrecked car had been taken away, all the damage was being patched up. According to the first news reports this street had seen some kind of gang battle, with people shooting at each other and blowing up cars. Then the reports changed to indicate that someone had been using a flame-thrower and, bizarrely, some kind of “laser beam”. But the latest news cleared up all the confusion, stating that it had merely been a boring old car crash. The eyewitnesses came back on air, apologised for their mistakes and the newsreaders chuckled about it. The important thing was that nobody was hurt, and nobody was suing anybody.

Elsie had listened to all of it and she just knew that Kitana and the others were responsible, and that the people that Xebec had been talking about, the magic cops, were hiding what had really happened.

“Excuse me?”

She turned as two men approached, journalists, one of them holding a camera. The other one glanced around quickly, and gave her a furtive smile. “Were you here?” he asked. “Did you see it? Did you see what really happened?”

She blinked into the camera lens. “Are you from the news?”

“We’re making a documentary,” said the man. “We’re exposing the truth behind the cover-ups. Are you a witness? Would you be willing to tell us what you saw?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I don’t know what... I wasn’t here. Sorry.”

The man looked at her. “Did they get to you, too?”

She frowned, and the cameraman tugged on his colleague’s arm. “Come on, Kenny, let’s go.”

“She knows something.”

“We’ll be seen. Come on.”

The cameraman hurried off. The other man, Kenny, gave her a business card. “If you remember anything,” he said, walking backwards, “call this number.” And then he was gone.

Elsie waited a few moments, then went to the skip by the side of the road and dropped the card in among the debris and broken glass. She took a deep breath, then approached the construction supervisor. “Excuse me,” she said, “I’d like to talk to someone in charge.”

The supervisor smiled at her. “That’d be me.”

“Uh,” she said. “No, I mean... someone who’s really in charge. You know. Of the secret thing.”

“The secret thing?”

She nodded. “With the... stuff.”

He frowned at her. “Were you hit on the head recently, Miss? Maybe we should get a doctor to take a look at you.”

“I’m fine,” Elsie said quickly. “Well, no I’m not, but I just want to help. I know this wasn’t a car crash. And I don’t think it was gangs with laser beams, either. I... I think I might know the people who did this.”

The supervisor looked at her, and gave her another smile. “What’s your name?” he asked.

She told him.

“You know what?” he said. “I think I might call my boss. Do you mind hanging around for a bit?”

“I’ll stay,” she said.

He nodded, stepped away and made a call. Half an hour later, a beautiful black car pulled up and a tall, thin man in a black suit got out. He took off his hat and smiled at her as he shook her hand. He wore gloves.

“Elsie,” he said, “thank you for getting in touch.” He had such a nice voice. Smooth and comforting. “We’ve been looking for you over the past few days. Your mother is worried.”

“I can’t go home,” Elsie said. “Not yet. I just need help.”

“I know you do. My name is Skulduggery Pleasant. Unusual name, I know, but then I’m an unusual person. As are you, it seems.”

“You... you know about the... stuff?”

“If by stuff you mean your powers, yes I do.”

“I just want this whole thing to stop,” she blurted. “Can you do that? Can you take away my powers?”

“We can’t,” he said. “Not yet. But we’re working on it.”

“I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“I know. But your friends do.”

Elsie’s smile was anything but happy. “I don’t think they’re my friends any more. I’ve known Sean since we were kids. Our mums are best friends, so we grew up around each other. I don’t really know Doran. I mean, we’ve been in the same class for years, but I don’t know him well. He’s a bully, and he was arrested last year for assaulting a college student. He got away with it, though. He’s… angry. I think he intimidates everyone. Except Kitana.”

“Tell me about her.”

“She’s always been popular. All the guys do whatever she says. I suppose
everyone
does whatever she says, even me. The only thing we’ve got in common is Sean. If it wasn’t for him, I don’t think she’d even know my name. Kitana is… there’s something wrong with her. Like, even before we got these powers she was always… wrong.”

“And these powers – you all have identical abilities?”

“I think so, yes.”

“What did you do when you got them?”

“What did I do? I don’t know. I suppose I panicked. We were behind the school, mitching off maths. That’s where we went when we were supposed to be in class, behind the sheds out the back. We were all normal. The lads were trying to impress Kitana and I was just sitting there, and then I felt sick. Like, hot and sweaty but also really cold, you know? Like I had the flu or something. And I looked up and the others were the same. We just thought it was a bug. We went home, and we all had the same dream, about Argeddion. I can’t remember much of it, just this man in white and he was giving me something. A gift. I woke up the next morning and... and I just knew. I knew there was power inside me.”

“How did it make you feel?”

“I didn’t like it. Kitana said it was amazing but... I don’t know. It was like there was a part of me that wasn’t me. It was – what’s the word? Unsettling.”

“So all four of you suddenly had powers,” Skulduggery said. “What did you do?”

Elsie shrugged. “We messed about for a few days. The more we used the powers, the stronger they got. Sean was really excited, he was talking about being superheroes and whatever. Doran called him stupid, he said we should rob all the banks in the country. Kitana said this was going to make her famous. She’d always wanted to be a model or be in the movies or something. It was going to make her a star.”

“What about you? What did you want to use your powers for?”

“I liked Sean’s idea the most,” she mumbled.

“So what happened?”

“I don’t know. We were all getting along great, we were all laughing and trying to decide what to do, and then...”

“Then?”

Elsie hesitated. “There was a bouncer in a nightclub who never let Doran in, because he was underage. Doran was always talking about him, about how he was going to go up one of these nights and kick his teeth in. And that’s what he did. He went up, the bouncer told him he wasn’t getting in, and Doran used his powers. He put the bouncer in hospital. I think he’s still in a critical condition. Doran was laughing when he told us about it.”

“How did Sean and Kitana react?”

“Sean was quiet at first, but Kitana kept asking all these questions, like what did it feel like, stuff like that. You could tell that she was into it, and because she was into it Sean got into it.”

“And that’s how it started.”

“Yeah. Then it really got out of control. They killed Kitana’s ex, they killed this guy who turned up and started telling us about the magic police… they killed Doran’s brother…”

“We need to stop them before they hurt anyone else. Once they’re back to normal, we can deal with whatever we have to deal with. But right now we need to stop them. Can you help us?”

“What do I have to do?”

“Do you have any idea where they are, or what their plans are?”

“They keep moving around, and I don’t even know if they
have
plans. The lads do what Kitana tells them, and Kitana does whatever she feels like.”

“Patrick Xebec was killed because he was a threat, but their real targets have been Kitana’s ex-boyfriend and Doran’s brother. They’re going after people who treated them badly at some stage in their lives. Does Sean have anyone like that?”

“No. Not that I know of. His parents are nice. Doran’s dad is drunk most of the time and Kitana’s parents are never home, but Sean’s whole family is lovely. Sean wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

“His power is corrupting him.”

“But still, he wouldn’t. He’s not like the other two. He’s nice.”

“He’s an accomplice to murder, Elsie. We have to stop him before he makes things any worse for himself. Can you think of anywhere they might go, or any score they might have to settle?”

“I can’t think of anything. I’m really sorry. It doesn’t even make any sense. Kitana didn’t care about her ex. Not really.”

“Then she was just looking for an excuse to hurt someone,” Skulduggery said. “No one is safe from her, Elsie.”

“I don’t know where she is, honestly. The only... the only place I can think of that has people she’d like to hurt would be, you know, our school. You don’t think they’d do anything, do you? We have friends there.”

“I’ll send some people round to keep an eye on the place. If they turn up, we’ll deal with it. In the meantime, I’d like you to accompany me back to a place we call the Sanctuary. It... may not be the safest place in the world, but at least Kitana and the others won’t find you. Will you accompany me?”

Elsie nodded. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

Skulduggery opened the passenger door and she got in, then he slid in the other side. “You might have to adjust the seat,” he said. “The girl who usually sits there is quite tall, and likes everything exactly right.”

Elsie moved the seat forward. “Will she mind?”

“Assuming she’s still alive and she ever gets home, I’m fairly certain I’ll never hear the end of it. Buckle up.”

he Barge rumbled and shook as it moved over Dublin City. Were it not for the fact that her reflection was somewhere down there, Valkyrie would have been perfectly happy to spend hours in this little cell, just filling in the time until she was pulled back to her own dimension. But she didn’t want to leave it there. She didn’t want to abandon it.

The shackles hurt her wrists, but comfort hadn’t been uppermost in Vengeous’s mind when he’d thrown her in here. Vengeous. The last time she’d seen him the Grotesquery was crushing his head, which was, what? Four years ago? She was pretty sure she preferred him with a crushed head. The Vengeous from this reality was every bit as humourless as his alternate self, and every bit as intimidating. He didn’t have his sword any more, though, that cutlass thing. That was one thing to be grateful for, Valkyrie supposed.