Mortal Coil. Derek Landy

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       4

      GRANDER SCALES

      Skulduggery braked, the Bentley swerving to a perfect stop on the slippery road. Valkyrie threw the door open and jumped out. Davina Marr lay in a crumpled heap on the pavement, several bones obviously broken.

      A man landed behind Marr, a big man in a metal mask, and Skulduggery appeared beside Valkyrie, gun in hand.

      “You’re Tesseract,” he said. “You are, aren’t you? Who hired you? Who are you working for?”

      The man, Tesseract, didn’t even look at him. His red eyes were focused on Marr. He moved towards her and Skulduggery stepped into his path. Immediately, Tesseract grabbed the gun, twisting it from Skulduggery’s grip. Skulduggery grabbed the bigger man’s elbow and wrist and wrenched, and the gun fell back into his hand.

      “Get her to the car!” Skulduggery ordered, and Valkyrie grabbed Marr and started dragging her away.

      As they struggled for control of the weapon, Tesseract kicked Skulduggery’s leg and Skulduggery kneed Tesseract’s thigh. They headbutted each other as they locked and counter-locked, using moves Valkyrie had never seen before. She heard the gun click, but their hands were covering it so she couldn’t see what was happening. Finally, Tesseract flipped Skulduggery over his hip, but Skulduggery took the gun with him. He rolled and came up, aiming dead-centre for Tesseract’s chest, and the fight froze.

      Valkyrie shoved Marr into the back seat of the Bentley, and looked back in time to see Tesseract hold out his fist, and slowly open his hand. Six bullets fell to the ground.

      “I thought it was a bit light,” Skulduggery muttered, putting the gun away.

      Valkyrie considered helping, but she’d never even heard of this guy Tesseract, and she knew how dangerous it was to charge into a fight without knowing who your enemy was. Instead, she slipped in behind the wheel of the Bentley.

      The priority here was Marr, and they had her, after all this time. Valkyrie wasn’t about to risk letting her escape again. She put the Bentley in reverse, like she’d done a hundred times before under Skulduggery’s tutelage, then yanked the wheel. The car spun and she put it in first. She sped away from the fight, rounded the corner and kept going. There was no other traffic on the road.

      Valkyrie took another corner a little too sharply, but maintained control. Something moved in the rear-view mirror, and then Skulduggery was flying alongside the car. He nodded to her and she braked and slid over to the passenger side. Skulduggery got in behind the wheel and they took off again.

      She frowned. “Are we not going back for him?”

      “For Tesseract?” Skulduggery said. “Good God, no.”

      “But he’s in shackles, right? You beat him?”

      “I like to think I beat him in a moral sense, in that he’s an assassin and I’m not, but apart from that, no, not really.”

      Valkyrie turned in her seat, looking at the dark street behind them, then settled back. “Who is he?”

      “Assassin for hire, is all I know. I recognised him from his sheer size, and the fact that he wears a metal mask. I’ve never encountered him before. That’s probably a good thing. But let’s not dwell on the new enemy we might have made tonight. Let’s dwell instead on the old enemy we’ve got in the back seat. Hello, Davina. You’re under arrest for multiple counts of murder. You have the right to not much at all, really. Do you have anything to say in your defence?”

      Marr remained unconscious.

      “Splendid,” Skulduggery said happily.

      The Hibernian Cinema stood old and proud and slightly bewildered, like a senior citizen who’d wandered away from his tour group. It had no part in the Dublin that surrounded it. It hadn’t been refurbished or refitted, it didn’t have twenty screens on different floors and it didn’t have banks of concession stands. What it did have were old movie posters on its walls, frayed carpeting, a single stall for popcorn and drinks, and a certain mustiness that agitated long-dormant allergies. The one screen it did possess only ever showed one thing – the black and white image of a brick wall with a door to one side.

      But beyond that screen were corridors of clean white walls and bright lighting, rooms of scientific and mystical equipment, a morgue capable of dissecting a god and a Medical Bay that Valkyrie visited on a worryingly regular basis.

      Kenspeckle Grouse shambled in, dressed in a bathrobe and slippers, what remained of his grey hair sticking up at odd angles. He looked grumpy, but then he always looked grumpy.

      “What,” he said, “do you want?”

      “We have a patient for you,” said Skulduggery, nodding to Davina Marr on the bed beside him.

      Kenspeckle glared at the shackles around her wrists. “Don’t know her,” he said. “Take her to someone else. She’s your prisoner, isn’t she? Take her to one of those Sanctuary doctors, wake them up in the middle of the night.”

      “We can’t do that. This is Davina Marr. She’s the one who destroyed the Sanctuary.”

      Some of the grumpiness vanished from Kenspeckle’s eyes, replaced by a kind of disgusted curiosity. “This is her, then? You finally found her?” He walked closer. “She’s a bit the worse for wear, but I have to admit I’m surprised she’s still alive. Are you getting less ruthless as you get older, Detective?”

      “We didn’t do this to her,” Valkyrie said, not comfortable with where Kenspeckle’s questions were heading. “We saved her, actually. She’d be dead if it wasn’t for Skulduggery.”

      Kenspeckle pulled back one of Marr’s eyelids. “I put that down to your good influence, Valkyrie. But that still doesn’t explain why you haven’t taken her to the authorities. You are, after all, Sanctuary Detectives once again, are you not?”

      “We want to keep this quiet,” Skulduggery said. “Things are too volatile at the moment. If we hand her over to the Cleavers, I doubt she’ll even get a trial. They’ll execute her on the spot.”

      Kenspeckle traced his hands lightly around Marr’s head. “From what I remember, you’ve executed your fair share of guilty people in the past.”

      “I’m not here to argue with you, Professor. The fact is, I don’t believe she was working alone when she decided to destroy the Sanctuary, and I fear that her allies, or her bosses, will try to have her killed before she can name them. I’m fairly confident they’re the ones who hired the assassin.”