She felt rough hands on her and then she was hauled off her knees and thrown against the wall. A fist crunched into her ribs and she cried out. Something crashed into the side of her head and she went stumbling, tripping over a discarded chair and falling painfully to the hard ground.
Her eyes wouldn’t open. She tried crawling away, but her ankle was grabbed and she was pulled back. She knocked her chin against the floor and tasted blood. She turned over, lashing out a kick at knee-height. Her boot hit the Hollow Man’s leg and it was soft, but there was no knee to break. The grip on her ankle was released and she covered up, waiting in the darkness for the next blow. It found its way above her raised knees and below her elbows, dropping straight down on to her belly, and the breath left her. She tried to roll over, but those hands were on her again, those coarse, clumsy fingers, and she was yanked to her feet and sent stumbling blindly. Her hip struck something, the edge of the table, and Valkyrie folded and sank to her knees.
Her eyes opened a crack. All she could see was a blurred murkiness. She closed them. She couldn’t breathe. She heard the whispering of papery skin behind her and she launched herself backwards. She collided with the Hollow Man, but she’d misjudged the angle and she felt it stagger but not fall. She tucked her head in as she rolled, came up in a crouch, her stomach muscles still not allowing her to straighten. She felt tears on her face and tasted blood and vomit.
She moved, staying low, stepping away from the Hollow Man’s footsteps. Her hands were held out in front and she concentrated on feeling the air against her skin. Immediately, she felt the draughts, the heat from the furnace pushing through the room, rising up through the gap from which she had fallen. She stood on something and nearly tripped. The bellows maybe. The furnace was behind her. A blast of heat, uncomfortable on her back.
The air shifted and she felt the Hollow Man’s movements, felt it lurching through the streams of clogging warmth, disrupting them as it came. It was close and unsubtle, coming head-on, and she used the air, drawing it in to her and then pushing, hard. It collided with the Hollow Man and drove it back, out of her sensory range. She heard it crash against the table.
Valkyrie rubbed her eyes before attempting to open them. They still stung, but it was bearable. The tears turned everything to a blur. She wiped her face with her sleeve and blinked rapidly. The Hollow Man came into focus. It was on the ground, crawling towards her, its own sewing needle sticking out of its lower back. Its legs were already half-deflated, the green gas slowly escaping through the puncture wound.
Valkyrie stepped sideways to avoid its grab. She went to the chair, righted it and sat with a groan. She worked at getting her breathing under control as she watched the Hollow Man change direction and crawl over. By the time she was taking deep breaths again and her eyes had stopped watering, the Hollow Man’s flat, outstretched fingers were centimetres away from her foot. It had stopped moving.
Valkyrie stood and spat, trying to get rid of the foul taste in her mouth. She crossed to the door and opened it, making sure there was no one around, and eased out. As she hurried down the flame-licked corridor, she felt the pain, but ignored it, just like she ignored the part of herself that wanted to hunker down and cry. She focused on the other part, the part that revelled in her triumph. Another fight that she’d won. Another battle where she hadn’t died.
She moved through the junction and found stairs leading up. She listened for a few seconds, made sure no one was going to surprise her, and ascended. The stairs curled around a thick column of stone like a vine around a sapling. Valkyrie reached the top and kept moving in what she decided was a southerly direction. She came to a corner and Billy-Ray Sanguine rounded it.
He looked at her for a moment, a little surprised, like he couldn’t quite place her, and then that white-toothed grin came, but by then she was running the other way. She heard him laugh as she barrelled through a door.
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