Skulduggery Pleasant: Kingdom of the Wicked (61 page)

“Violent,” she murmured. “So very violent.” She looked over at Lord Vile as he got to his feet. “We make a good team, you and I. We should do this again. Maybe go after Argeddion when he gets back, finish this once and for all. What do you say?”

Vile, as usual, stood there and said nothing. His fingers tapped against his leg, that same fast rhythm that Skulduggery had been tapping for the past few days, like it was a song he couldn’t get out of his head. Annoying, now that she thought of it.

And now that he was still, the subtle movement of his armour became apparent, pulsing slightly to the irregular beat. Darquesse narrowed her eyes. Skulduggery Pleasant was a cunning adversary. He’d have foreseen a time when Darquesse would return, and he knew she’d never give him the chance to talk her down again. He needed a weapon against her, a weapon that he would have had to keep secret from Valkyrie.

That finger-tapping was no meaningless tic. It was a psychological trigger that he’d embedded in his subconscious. It may have been Lord Vile standing before her, but it was Skulduggery underneath, and he was using the rhythm to break free of the more murderous part of his nature.

Whatever he was planning, Darquesse couldn’t let it happen.

She studied Vile’s armour, saw how it moved. She looked closer, deeper, saw how Necromancy inhabited it. The armour was a living thing, though not a living thing with any degree of sentience. Magic lived in it, and magic was alive, and so the very nature of the armour was transformed as a result. She saw it and understood it, and once she was ready, she focused her mind and called to it.

Vile inclined his head, and stopped tapping his leg.

She called again, more forcefully this time, and the armour reacted, straining against Vile’s command. Black droplets of shadow splashed to the ground and Vile struggled, the armour turning solid again, solid and sharp. Darquesse ducked a swipe at her throat. She moved in but he was fast, grabbing her and twisting and smashing her head through the wall. He pulled her on to his hip and flipped her. The world tilted and the floor spun into her face. She started to laugh as Vile knelt on her back. This was
fun
.

She threw him back with a simple pulse of energy and she called to his armour and it flowed to her hand, collecting into a spinning ball of shadow and substance.

The last of it dripped from Skulduggery and he fell sideways, barely managing to support himself against the wall.

“Sorry,” said Darquesse, the ball still spinning. “I know you were planning something sneaky, but I quite like it out here and I have no intention of returning to the dark corners of my mind.”

“Give me Valkyrie back,” said Skulduggery, his voice weak.

“No. And don’t think you can charm your way through to her. No more touching stories on how much you mean to each other. She wants me out here. She wants me in charge. She’s enjoying this.”

Skulduggery took a moment, then straightened up. “You can’t kill me,” he said.

Darquesse laughed, held out her hand to prove him wrong, then hesitated.

“You might want to,” said Skulduggery, “but you can’t. That’s Valkyrie’s influence.”

She dropped her hand on to her hip. “It’s an influence that’s fading. Her voice grows fainter every minute. Another day of this and I think we’ll come to an agreement, her and I, and then we will truly be one.”

“You’re not going to have a day. You’re not even going to have another minute.”

“Ah,” said Darquesse, “this is the moment where you unveil your secret weapon, is it? Come on, then, don’t keep me in suspense. What are you waiting for?”

“Them.”

Darquesse sensed Argeddion before she heard his footsteps, and turned as he came in. Walden D’Essai followed after him, his face pale and his eyes wide. Magic boiled in his veins, and she knew Argeddion had shared with him their true name.

Argeddion looked at the carnage with dismay.

“You didn’t have to kill the children,” he said.

“But I did,” she answered, “the same way I have to kill you.”

Even as she said it, though, she knew she couldn’t. Killing Kitana and the others had released their power to flow back into him. He was far beyond even her now.

“Why do you hurt people?” Argeddion asked. “We talked about the things I would show you. If you had just turned your back on violence, the secrets of the universe could have been yours.”

He waved his hand gently and Darquesse turned, eyebrows rising, as Kitana got to her feet, her head in one piece. Without magic inside her she was an unexceptional individual, suddenly terrified and empty. Doran stirred, and started to get up as Sean’s head appeared by his body and reattached itself.

“You resurrected the dead,” said Darquesse. “
That
is impressive.”

“And that is only the beginning of my power,” Argeddion replied. “Today the world changes. Today the human race moves on.”

Darquesse grinned. “Cool.”

Argeddion shook his head. “I’m sorry, Darquesse, but we have to leave you behind. I don’t know why you are the way you are but... oh, my dear child. You could have been the best of us.”

“Uh,” Walden said. “Will someone please tell me what is going on?”

Skulduggery leaned against the Accelerator, fingers tapping that annoying rhythm once more against the skin. “You’re here to change the world, Walden. He wants to bring magic to the masses.”

Walden looked at Argeddion. “Is that what you meant by making your world a better place?”

“A new age approaches,” Argeddion said, smiling gently.

Walden stared at him. “Are you insane?”

Argeddion blinked. “I’m sorry?”

“Giving magic to mortals? Have you ever
met
any mortals? They’d kill each other!”

“No,” Argeddion said. “My experiments are complete. Thanks to Kitana and Sean and Doran, I know the dangerous levels. Mankind will be elevated to a new plane of existence.”

“I’ve lived in a world dominated by magic. The strong rule. The weak are oppressed and kept down in the gutter.”

“Strength will cease to be an issue—”

“Strength is always an issue, you fool! There will always be the strong and there will always be the weak! And you want me to help you? You want me to help you use magic to destroy your own world? No. I won’t do it. Return me to mine.”

“Magic is mankind’s birthright, Argeddion. I don’t understand why you can’t see that.”

“Argeddion is your name,” Walden said, “not mine. I’m still me. I’m still Walden D’Essai. I live at eighteen Mount Temple Place and I love Greta Dapple. I’m not going to change just because I can. Look at the people you’ve hurt. Look at the pain you’ve caused. You say magic is our birthright? I’ve studied magic my entire life and I’ve come to the conclusion that it was never meant for us. It’s an accident we have it.”

“No. No. Magic is a beautiful—”

“It’s dangerous! It’s too dangerous!”

“You can’t mean that.” Argeddion took hold of Walden’s arm, tried dragging him to the dais. “Please. Come along. We’ll make the world—”

“Let go of me!” Walden shouted, shoving Argeddion back. Darquesse watched as the two men scuffled, Walden’s hands tightening round Argeddion’s throat. She saw the anger in them, and Argeddion pushed him back and Walden just kept coming and here it was, Argeddion’s animal instinct, blossoming across his mind and his temper flared and Walden burned to ashes in his hands.

Argeddion staggered back in shock. Darquesse’s grin grew wider.

“No,” said Argeddion as the ashes settled. “No. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean it. What have I done?”

If Darquesse were to ever have a chance of killing him, it was now, while he was too distraught to think straight. She stepped towards him.

Skulduggery’s fingers drummed against the Accelerator, faster and faster, chasing that rhythm, that irregular beat that he repeated, looped, again and again.

Incessantly.

Argeddion looked at him and Darquesse stopped her approach, caught out. Annoyed, she turned.

“I have to ask,” she said. “What are you doing? That tapping, that’s your big plan? How is that supposed to defeat the both of us?”

“You have the power of gods,” Skulduggery murmured, “but you’re not gods. Not yet. Your thoughts are human thoughts. Your minds may be expanding, but how you think is still a human process – for the moment, anyway.”

She noticed that there were sigils on the walls, but they were simple things, made to generate light but not energy.

Then the sigils started to pulse with the rhythm. And they got faster, starting pulsing on their own, faster and faster and brighter and brighter and Darquesse frowned, and laughed, and opened her mouth to speak and

alkyrie woke on the floor. She looked at the ceiling while she tried figuring out what the hell was going on.

There were voices. People. Ghastly stepped over her. “She’s awake,” she heard him say.

There were more people. The Sanctuary was no longer empty. The mages had returned. Skulduggery knelt by her.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

She looked at him a while before she spoke. “What did you do?”

“I had the lights orchestrated to interfere with the electrical activity in the human brain. Basically, I induced a seizure in both of you.”

“But... I’m not epileptic.”

“You don’t have to be. All that’s required is the right sequence at the right speed.”

He helped her up. Argeddion was sitting against the wall, eyes open but not looking at anything. Cassandra Pharos and two other Sensitives were kneeling around him. Someone else, too, a man she recognised. Deacon Maybury.

“You’ve been tapping that rhythm for days,” she whispered.

Skulduggery nodded. “I had to drive it into my subconscious so that Vile wouldn’t be able to resist using it. Ever since I thought we might require Darquesse, I knew I needed some way to stop her afterwards, something she wouldn’t expect.”

“She’ll be expecting it for next time,” said Valkyrie. “You won’t be able to get away with this twice.”

“Next time I’ll have figured out how to keep her away from you for good.”

“And if that doesn’t work, we always have the Cube.” She stood straighter, strength returning to her legs. “What are they doing to Argeddion?”

“Imprisoning him doesn’t solve the problem,” Skulduggery said, speaking louder now, “it just delays the inevitable. I wanted a solution. The only way I’ll be happy is if Argeddion is no longer a danger to anyone, and the only way that would happen is if Argeddion went away and never came back.”

“Is that what they’re doing? Planting an idea in his mind before he wakes up?”

“Not quite. Deacon owed us a favour and I decided to call it in. He’s helping Cassandra and the others to hide Argeddion. They’re building up walls around that personality, shutting him off from the rest of Walden D’Essai.”

“They’re rewriting his personality?”

“Hopefully not. Hopefully they’ll only rewrite his identity – they’ll keep his personality as intact as they can. He’ll be given a new name, a mortal name, and all memory of magic will be wiped.”

“Can they do that?”

“I don’t know. But working together, they stand a good chance.” He looked at her. “Are you feeling better yet?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I am.”

“Good. There are some people we need to talk to.”

She followed him into the corridor, where Kitana stood with Doran and Sean, surrounded by Cleavers.

Sean was the first to see her. His eyes were red with tears. “I’m very sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry for all the horrible things I did. I’m sorry for all the people I hurt and the danger I put you all in.”

Valkyrie walked towards him.

“I don’t know what happened to me when I had the magic,” he continued, blubbing a little. “I don’t know why I did the things I did, or why I didn’t stop Kitana. But I followed her, because I’m weak and stupid and she was pretty.” Through his tears, he laughed. “Can you imagine that? I almost killed you because Kitana was pretty. How pathetic am I?”

Valkyrie murmured, waited until he was angled just right and then brought her hand up, caught him on the jaw. He crashed to the ground.

Kitana looked worried, but she covered it with a hesitant sneer. “So that’s it? You’re going to use your magic against us now that we have none?”