“Skulduggery,” she murmured.
“—need you to focus. Did you look at them? The things that came out of the gateway, did you look at them?”
Her own voice was distant. “Glimpsed,” she said.
She was pulled to her feet. She could hear more now. She could see others, trying to stand. China. Ghastly. She saw the Necromancers, attacking the last of the Hollow Men as they struggled to their clumsy feet.
She saw a boy, Fletcher Renn, crawling out of the column of smoke. A man, who looked like the shockwave had thrown him from the circle, saw Fletcher and reached for him.
Fletcher disappeared, instantly reappearing a short distance away. The man, Gallow, lunged, and once again Fletcher vanished and reappeared nearby. Gallow was furious, and Fletcher closed his eyes and concentrated, and this time, when he teleported, he didn’t come back.
Now that Fletcher wasn’t keeping it open, the bright yellow ring that hung in mid-air started to shrink. Valkyrie watched it until it disappeared.
“Valkyrie,” Skulduggery barked. “I need you to snap out of it, you understand me? Valkyrie Cain, I need you with me.”
She looked at him, and her thoughts sharpened, and she nodded. “Yes.”
“You’re with me?”
They sharpened and became clear. “Yes. Yes, I’m with you. The gate’s closed.”
“Some of them got out. I counted three. We need the Sceptre now.”
She nodded, and she was just about to get it when Krav came staggering around the corner. He ignored them completely and staggered on, Bliss striding after him.
“Leave me alone!” Krav shouted. He was bruised and bleeding, and the tattoo on his inner arm was pulsing with a red glow.
The pressure popped in her ears and Valkyrie winced. Goosebumps rippled across her flesh and she felt her heart slamming against her chest. She was scared. She was suddenly and incredibly terrified.
Skulduggery grabbed her and pulled her down. “Don’t look at it,” she heard him say.
For a moment, there was nothing.
She saw it out of the corner of her eye. Passing behind the trees, five times as tall, a towering, changing beast, a trick of the light, an abstract thing of unbelievable angles. She looked away, but she could still see it, in her mind. It had burned its way through. It was an idea, or the hint of an idea, or the memory of something she’d never known, or the shadow of all of these things, their inverted reflection, on a still lake at night.
It couldn’t be real. It had no substance. It had no weight. It had mass, but behind the mass there was no depth. How could it be real? It made no sense. It couldn’t be real and it made no sense.
She tried to look again at this being of fractured angles and broken reason, but her head wouldn’t turn. It was impossibility made manifest, the formless given form, and it stalked across the landscape accompanied not by thunderous footfall, but by the whisper of a thousand dead languages and the muted cry of carrion birds.
There was a rush, and she heard Krav scream. The pressure popped again in her ears and she blinked. Her eyes gradually focused.
The creature of madness was gone. Gruesome Krav was standing with his shoulders slumped and his head down. He was perfectly still, though his hair whipped in the wind. Whipped and fell.
His hair fell gently out, strand by strand, and his head tilted upwards in time for Valkyrie to see his face melting. The nose and the ears were the first to go, sinking back into the skin. The lips congealed, sealing the mouth, and the eyes turned to liquid and dripped from the sockets down either cheek, like tears. The eyelids closed and ran into each other. The Faceless Ones had taken their first vessel.
Bliss ran at it, but Krav, or the Faceless One that had once been Krav, just held out its hand.
Bliss’s run faltered. He doubled over, and Valkyrie could see the look of pain on his face, and something else too. Surprise. A man like Bliss wasn’t used to feeling pain.
The Faceless One raised its arm, and Bliss was lifted off the ground.
The Faceless One curled its hand, and Bliss’s body twisted into bits of pulverised bone and shredded flesh.
Her stomach lurching violently, Valkyrie watched him die.
Skulduggery grabbed her and pushed her back into the farmhouse. “Sceptre,” he called, as he ran towards the Faceless One.
Mr Bliss was dead.
Bile rose in her throat and she lunged to the corner, throwing up.
“They’re here, aren’t they?” Paddy asked.
She retched and spat and wiped her mouth. “Three of them,” she said.
He nodded. “I’ll get you your magic stick.”
He hurried to the bag. Valkyrie’s knees were weak. Her face was cold.
“If I die,” she said, “but we win, will you find my parents and tell them I’m sorry I put them through this, and that I love them?”
“You have nothing to worry about,” Paddy said as he walked over, holding out the Sceptre. His eyes flickered to something behind her and she frowned, turned, saw nothing, and she turned back as Paddy swung the Sceptre into her face.
Valkyrie hit the wall and staggered. Paddy swung the Sceptre again and she managed to raise her arm to block it, but his fist came at her and her head snapped back and she fell.
She heard Tanith curse and looked up, lights dancing in front of her eyes. Tanith reached out to grab her sword, but Paddy smashed the Sceptre on to her hand. Tanith screamed and Paddy got behind her, wrapped his arm around her throat and hauled her off the chair. She tried to struggle, but she was much too weak, and after a few seconds, Paddy let her collapse.
Valkyrie’s consciousness rattled against darkness and light, and the side of her face was wet. She clicked her fingers, but nothing happened.
“I’d forgotten what it was like,” Paddy said, almost to himself. He put the Sceptre on the table. “The struggle, I mean. Usually, it’s quiet. It would have been quiet for you, but you wear those enchanted clothes. My blade wouldn’t have pierced them.” He had a knife in his hand. “It’ll pierce your throat though. Or your eyes.”
Valkyrie licked her lips and tasted blood.
“You killed the Teleporters,” she said, pushing herself up off the ground.
“I did.”
“You’re Batu.”
He pulled up his sleeve as he walked over to her, showing her the mark on the inside of his forearm. “I am.”
Valkyrie stayed where she was, waited for him to get close, and then she flexed her fingers and splayed her hand, but she couldn’t feel the air, couldn’t feel where it connected, and Paddy, Batu, ran the blade along her hand and she cried out.
“Stupid girl,” he said, slashing at her neck. She stepped back and tripped, fell and rolled. She clicked her fingers and nothing happened. Batu rushed her and she barely managed to duck under him.
“You’re one of them,” she said, staying just out of