The man’s hand went to his belly and then he doubled over in pain. Stephanie wished she was closer. If he sprouted fangs she’d hardly be able to see them from here. The man straightened up and arched his spine, and the sounds of his bones cracking echoed through the corridor. Then he reached up and grabbed his hair and pulled his skin off.
Stephanie stifled a gasp. In one fluid movement he had pulled it all off – hair, skin, clothes – and he was pale underneath, and bald, and his eyes were big and black. He moved like a cat, kicking off the remnants of his human form. She didn’t have to be closer to see his fangs, they were big and jagged and hideous, and now she was quite content to be viewing them from a distance. These weren’t the vampires she’d seen on TV; these weren’t sexy people in long coats and sunglasses. These were animals.
She felt Skulduggery’s hand on her shoulder and he pulled her back a fraction, very gently, just before the vampire looked over. It moved away from them, down the corridor, in search of prey.
Stephanie followed Skulduggery to the door, and they passed through and closed it behind them. Skulduggery wasn’t creeping any more, but Stephanie didn’t dare make a sound. He led the way down beneath the gallery, a flame in his hand lighting the steps. It was cold down here. They were in an old corridor now with heavy doors on either side, and they walked until they came to a door with a crest etched into it – a shield and a bear. Skulduggery raised both hands and lowered his head and didn’t move for almost a minute. Then the door clicked and they stepped in.
VAMPIRES
“This is all to do with the Sceptre?” Stephanie asked in a whisper.
“It’s all to do with the Ancients,” Skulduggery answered, “so I’m sure there must be something about the Sceptre in all this. I honestly didn’t expect there to be this much. You don’t have to whisper by the way.”
“There are vampires above us.”
“These chambers are sealed. I broke the locking seal, but the sound seal is still in place. Did you know locking seals have to be dismantled every single time you want to go through, and then crafted again once you leave? I don’t see what’s wrong with a good old-fashioned key. That would certainly keep someone like me out. Well, until I knocked the door down.”
“What’s a sound seal?” Stephanie whispered.
“Hmm? Oh. Even if they were standing outside the door and you were shouting at the top of your voice, they wouldn’t hear you.”
“Ah,” she said, “OK then.” But she still kept her voice low.
They started searching. Some of the books were about the legends of the Ancients, some took a more practical and analytical viewpoint and some were written in a language Stephanie didn’t recognise. A few of the books held nothing but blank pages, yet Skulduggery seemed able to read them, although he said they contained nothing of immediate interest.
She started rooting through a collection of paintings, stacked in frames against the wall. A lot of them showed people holding the Sceptre aloft and looking heroic. The paintings toppled over and she stooped to push them back up. She looked at the painting in front of her, recognising it from the book she had seen in Skulduggery’s car – a man shielding his eyes from a glowing Sceptre as he reached for it. This was the full painting, not the truncated little rectangle on a page. Skulduggery glanced over as Stephanie put the pictures back as she had found them. She approached the suit of armour, noting the shield and bear etched into the breastplate.
“Family crest?” she asked.
“Sorry?” Skulduggery said, looking up. “Oh, yes. We don’t have family names that we can keep, so crests serve as our only link to our ancestors.”
“Do you have a crest?”
He hesitated. “I used to. I don’t any more.”
She turned. “Why not?”
“I abandoned it actually.”
“Why?”
“You ask an awful lot of questions.”
“When I grow up I want to be a detective just like you.”
He looked over and saw her grinning. He laughed. “I suppose you do share my penchant for raising Cain.”
“Raising what now?”
“It’s an old expression. It means to make trouble.”
“Well why can’t you say ‘make trouble’? Why do you always have to use these words that I don’t know?”
“You should read more.”
“I read enough. I should get out more.”
Skulduggery held a small box up to the light, turning it over in his hands and examining it from every angle.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“It’s a puzzle box.”
“Can’t you play with it some other time?”
“The purpose of a puzzle box, its whole raison d’être, is to be solved.”
“What kind of raisin?”
“Raison d’être. It’s French for reason to be.”
“There you go again. Why didn’t you just say reason to be? Why do you have to complicate things?”
“My point is, leaving a puzzle box unsolved is like leaving a song unsung. It may as well cease to exist.”
“There’s a crossword in the paper my dad gets every single day. He starts it, ends up making up nonsensical words to fill in the blanks, and abandons it. I’ll give you every paper we have lying about the house if you put that down and get back to searching.”
“I’ve given up searching.”
She stared at him. “And they say my generation has a short attention span.”
“That painting you were looking at, notice anything strange about it?”
“There were a lot of paintings.”
“The man reaching for the Sceptre.”
“What about it?”
“Did you notice anything unusual about it?”
Stephanie went over to the wall again, moved the frames one by one till she came to the painting he was talking about.
“OK, unusual like how?”
“Describe it to me.”
She moved the others out of the way so she could take a better look. “There’s this man, he’s reaching for the Sceptre, it’s glowing… and that’s it.”
“Nothing strange about him?”
“No, not really…” She frowned. “Well…”
“Yes?”
“The Sceptre’s really bright and he’s got one hand shielding his eyes, but both eyes are wide open.”
“So?”
“So