There were shouts now, from all over, and she heard running footsteps, the echoes rebounding along the stone. Valkyrie came to another set of stairs leading up and took them three at a time. There were two Hollow Men at the top. They reached for her, but she slipped by them. She reached a corridor with a window at the end and piled on the speed, hearing someone behind her. Beyond the window was a room, its light spilling through into the darkness. The walls of this room had tapestries. She saw a chandelier. It was the castle’s main hall. Which meant that this wasn’t a window – it was a mirror.
Valkyrie jumped, curling into a ball as she hit the glass. The world fragmented with a crash that filled her head. The main hall was lower than the corridor and she fell through the air, shards of mirror falling with her. She slammed to the floor and rolled, crunching the glass beneath her. She caught a glimpse of Skulduggery and then he was beside her, helping her up, and Ghastly, Fletcher and Shudder were running in.
Somebody cleared his throat. Loudly. They all looked up at the broken mirror. Billy-Ray Sanguine stood in the corridor above them, hands in his pockets. “How is everyone?” he asked. “How’s everyone doin’? We should catch up later, all of us, talk about old times and have a laugh. Can’t do it now, I’m afraid. Bit pressed for time, what with our ultimate masterplan and all.”
“Come down here, Sanguine,” Skulduggery said.
“Why, so you can arrest me?”
“No,” said Ghastly, “so we can kick the hell out of you.”
An elderly man appeared beside Sanguine and Valkyrie knew she was looking at Scarab.
“We have guests?” Scarab asked.
“Yes, we do, Pops,” Sanguine replied. “I’m afraid the girl broke a mirror though.”
“Well, that’s OK,” smiled Scarab. “I don’t believe any of that seven years’ bad luck stuff anyhow. Heck, even if I did, it wouldn’t matter – they’re all going to be dead by tomorrow anyway. Hello there, Detective Pleasant. Been a while.”
“We want Tanith Low and Kenspeckle Grouse returned to us,” Skulduggery said. “And then we want you and the others to give yourselves up.”
Scarab laughed and Sanguine shook his head, amused.
“I like you guys,” Sanguine said. “I do. You know why I like you? Because you’re funny. You look all weird and you say all these silly things. Funny, y’know?”
“You act as if you’re not hopelessly outnumbered,” said Scarab, “which, by the way, you are. You act like you’d stand a chance against the fellas we have with us and all the Hollow Men we’ve been stitching together – which, by the way, you don’t. That’s impressive.”
Sanguine nodded. “That, and I don’t mind sayin’ this because I know it’ll stay in this room, is a beautiful thing.”
It was a psycho double act they were watching – father and son lunatics. But even so, they were talking too much. Skulduggery felt it too.
“I take it you’re not going to surrender,” he said.
“The last time you arrested me,” Scarab responded, all humour gone from his voice, “you locked me away without a trial. If it’s all the same to you, I’m not going to repeat my mistakes. There will be no prison cells this time. There will be no cover-ups. There will be justice.”
“That’s why you had Professor Grouse repair the Desolation Engine? You think setting it off will be justice?”
“Depends who I kill, now doesn’t it?”
Skulduggery tilted his head. “What’s to stop us from putting an end to all of this right now, and kicking the hell out of the both of you while we’re at it?”
Sanguine frowned. “Well, we’re, we’re up so high…” He brightened. “Oh, yeah and we’ve got reinforcements.”
“See,” Scarab said, “we were planning to use the Hollow Men in our grand finale, but seeing as how you found our base here, we’ll just have to improvise a little. So we’re going to head off now and no doubt we’ll meet again to, you know, hit each other or whatever it is people like us do nowadays.”
“It’s still hit each other,” Sanguine told him.
“Well, there you go. You can’t beat the classics.”
“You can try and stop us,” Sanguine said, “but I have a feelin’ you’ll be just a tad busy fending off the army of Hollow Men that are about jump out at you.”
At that, a section of wall opened up and a single Hollow Man stumbled out and stood there. Sanguine pursed his lips. A moment passed.
“Awkward,” he murmured.
Another wall slid open and Hollow Men poured out, dozens of them, and Sanguine clapped his hands in delight and then disappeared from view with his father.
Valkyrie stood beside Skulduggery and Ghastly, and they clicked their fingers and threw balls of fire. The flames caught the skin of the Hollow Men, taking a few seconds to burn through, and ignited the gases within. And still they came, dozens of them, swarming into the hall.
“The Cleavers are on their way,” Skulduggery said, “but we don’t have time for this. Anton, we need them taken down fast.”
Shudder nodded. He closed his eyes and his fists clenched. Then a head pushed through his chest.
Valkyrie stepped back in shock. The head was hazy, like a ghost, and it was Shudder’s head, only different. The hair was longer and it had pointed teeth. It snarled as it pushed its way out. Its shoulders came next, then its arms, then its clawed hands. It was dressed in the same shirt and black jacket as the real Shudder. It stayed where it was for a moment then opened its eyes, which were narrow and black. It saw the Hollow Men, its face contorted with effort and it lunged, trailing a blurred stream of light and darkness from its torso back into Shudder’s chest. It flew to the nearest Hollow Man and slashed, its claws solid enough to rip through the papery skin.
It moved on, the stream that connected it to Shudder lengthening, and it screeched as it went, tearing and ripping through the Hollow Men as they swiped at it. It looped and curled, swooped and whirled, the stream crossing over and under itself. This ghostly Shudder, this gist, was relentless. With each pass its visage became fiercer, and it was no longer so hazy, so transparent. It looked demonic. It looked evil.
Shudder himself grunted. Valkyrie looked at him and saw the sweat on his face, saw the straining muscles on his neck. The stream that flowed from his chest became tight and taut, and the gist screamed in anger as it began to retract. Like a fish on a hook it twisted and writhed, but it could do nothing to stop itself from being pulled back into Shudder’s chest. The last Valkyrie saw of it was a flailing claw.
Shudder took a heavy step back, his face pale, his breathing uneven. The Hollow Men were gone, nothing more than tatters and a foul smell that made her eyes sting again.
“Are you OK?” Valkyrie asked.
“It takes me a few minutes,” Shudder said quietly, “to regain my strength.”
“What was that?” Fletcher asked.
“It’s my gist,” he said. “It’s my anger, my hate, my determination. It’s the strongest part of me, but it needs to be carefully controlled. Gists can’t be allowed too much time out of the host body.”
“Why not?”
Shudder looked at them. “It would take over, and then I’d be reduced to something that lived inside it.”
“Fletcher,” Skulduggery said, “take Anton outside. Wait there for Marr and the Cleavers. Tell them where we are.”
Fletcher nodded, glanced at Valkyrie and disappeared with