Playing with Fire (Skulduggery Pleasant, Book 2) (12 page)

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Deadfall roared as Skulduggery turned to him. The bar owner strained, the muscles in his neck knotting and his face turning red, and his fists grew and distorted and turned into sledgehammers. Spittle flew as he laughed in triumph.

Across the room, Valkyrie faced off against the pool player. He was rubbing his ear and he moved with a limp. He was squinting at her with one eye.

"I'm gonna murder you," he threatened unimpressively. She still had the eight ball in her hand, so she threw it. It struck the pool player right between the eyes and bounced away. The pool player stood there, a look of puzzlement on his face; then he fell to the floor and went to sleep.

Valkyrie watched Deadfall slam one of those sledgehammer fists into Skulduggery's side, and Skulduggery stumbled back to the wall. Deadfall swung for his head but Skulduggery ducked, and the fist hit the wooden paneling and went through. Deadfall tried pulling it out, but his fist wouldn't budge.

Skulduggery hit him. Hit him again.

Deadfall twisted and turned and swung his other fist. It hit the paneling and stayed stuck.

"Aw no," Deadfall whimpered.

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Skulduggery took careful aim, and punched. Deadfall's head rocked back, and his body slumped against the wall. He would have fallen in a heap were his sledgehammer fists not keeping him upright.

"Skulduggery," Valkyrie said.

Brobding the giant was getting to his feet, and he looked angry.

"Once again," Skulduggery told him, "nothing personal."

Brobding growled, and Skulduggery ran at him and jumped, his body spinning and his right foot snaking out. His kick caught Brobding right on the hinge of the jaw. Skulduggery landed, and Brobding whirled and fell to one knee.

Valkyrie stared at Skulduggery.

"What?" he asked.

"You kicked him," she said. "But you don't
do
those kinds of kicks.
Tanith
does those kinds of kicks."

"You're impressed, aren't you?" He put both hands flat against the side of the pool table and shrugged. "I'm probably your hero."

"Oh shut up."

Brobding the giant looked around. Then the air

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rippled and the pool table shot across the room and crashed into him. The pool table tipped over on impact, the balls flying through the air, and Brobding was sent sprawling. He didn't get up.

"Well," Valkyrie admitted, "you
did
warn him."

"That I did," Skulduggery said, leaving through the door they had come in through.

A moment later he returned, pushing Scapegrace ahead of him.

"Hey, steady on!" Scapegrace yelled. "These shackles don't make it easy to walk, you know!"

Valkyrie looked at him. "You didn't get very far, did you?"

Scapegrace looked around, at all the still bodies. "Oh good," he said unenthusiastically. "You beat them."

"Nice try."

He shrugged. "Forgot Deadfall owned the place, honest."

"The cellar," Skulduggery said.

"Behind the bar," Scapegrace grumbled.

Valkyrie went to the bar and peered over, saw the trapdoor. She nodded at Skulduggery.

Skulduggery shackled Scapegrace to a pipe that ran along the wall to stop him from shuffling away.

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Valkyrie opened the trapdoor, and Skulduggery went first. Valkyrie followed him down the wooden steps, closing the trapdoor behind them.

The cellar was dimly lit and cold. The steps took them down into a badly wallpapered corridor. The carpet was worn, like a trail in a forest. One doorway led off to their right, and another, a little farther up, led off to their left. A small painting hung at an odd angle. It was a painting of a boat in a harbor. It wasn't very good. At the end of the corridor was a living room. Music played. "The End of the World," by the Carpenters.

Holding his revolver in both hands, Skulduggery took the lead.

The first room had a single bed and a set of drawers. Skulduggery stepped in, crossed to the bed, and checked under it. Satisfied that the room was empty, he rejoined Valkyrie in the corridor. The second room had a toilet, a sink, and a bathtub. None of these three were particularly clean, and there was nowhere for anyone to hide. They moved on toward the living room.

There was a lamp, and it was on, but the bulb was fading. The closer they got, the more Valkyrie could see. She could see that the carpet didn't

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match the wallpaper, and the curtains, which must have been added for aesthetic reasons because there certainly weren't any windows down here, didn't match anything.

Skulduggery had his back to the corridor wall and was sliding soundlessly closer. Valkyrie did the same thing on the opposite wall, allowing herself a view of the room that Skulduggery couldn't get.

She saw two old-fashioned heaters, neither of which was turned on. She saw another painting, this time of a ship on a stormy sea. There was an armchair underneath the painting, and a small table beside the armchair. No sign of the Torment, though.

They stopped moving, and she shook her head at Skulduggery. He nodded and stepped into the living room, sweeping his gun from one corner of the room to the other. He checked behind the armchair. Nothing.

Valkyrie followed him in. On the other side of the room were a radio, a portable TV with a cracked screen, and the record player that was playing the Carpenters.

She parted the curtains, which led to nothing more interesting than a wall, and turned to tell

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Skulduggery that Scapegrace must have somehow warned the Torment, when she saw the old man glaring at her from the ceiling.

He had long dirty hair and a long dirty beard, and he dropped from the rafters onto Skulduggery and knocked him to the ground. The gun flew from Skulduggery's hand, and the old man grabbed it. Valkyrie threw herself sideways as he fired. The bullet hit the record player and the song cut off.

Skulduggery twisted and pushed at the air, but the old man was already running along the corridor. Skulduggery scrambled up, then stepped sideways as the old man fired twice more. Skulduggery peeked out to make sure it was clear, then ran after him.

Valkyrie wasn't entirely certain that her armored clothes could stop a bullet. And what about her head? For the first time, she wished her coat had come with a hood.

She ran after Skulduggery just as he ducked into the bedroom.

She got to the bedroom, raised an eyebrow at the opposite wall, which had parted to reveal a stone corridor, and sprinted through the gap. She could just make out Skulduggery ahead of her,

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moving fast in the darkness. She saw light flare up, saw his silhouette hurling a fireball.

She ran on, aware that the ground was slanting upward. Her legs were getting tired. Her footsteps on the stone ground were uncomfortably loud in her ears. She couldn't see anything now. It was pitch black. She focused on the energy inside her, then clicked her fingers and caught the spark. The flame grew and flickered in her palm, and she held it at arm's length to light her way. She didn't like the fact that it made her an easy target, but neither did she like the idea of falling into a pit full of metal spikes or something equally nasty.

And then she came to a junction.

"Oh come on," she muttered, in between gasps for breath.

She could go straight, or turn either right or left. She had no idea which direction Skulduggery had taken. She tried to stop herself from imagining lethal traps, or getting lost in a maze of corridors and dying down here, in the darkness and the cold.

She cursed. She had to turn back. She decided to head up and look around the town, try and find where these tunnels would surface. It was better than standing around being useless, she figured.

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It was at this exact moment that she heard a rumbling.

The path from the cellar was closing up. The walls were shifting back together.

Right, left, or straight ahead. She chose straight ahead, and she
ran.

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Chapter Thirteen

ROARHAVEN

THE WALLS WERE moving in, faster and faster. She glanced back as the junction closed up. If she tripped, if she stumbled, the walls on either side of her would shift together with that terrible rumbling noise and squash her into something less than paste.

Her lungs burned like they used to do when she was swimming off Haggard beach. She liked swimming. It was much better than being squashed.

And then, a light ahead of her, a flickering flame in the hand of Skulduggery Pleasant.

"It would be a tad redundant," he called out

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over the rumbling, "to encourage you to hurry up, wouldn't it?"

She let the fire in her own hand go out and concentrated on sprinting.

"Whatever you do," he continued loudly, "do not fall over. Falling over, I think, would be the wrong move to make at this moment."

She was close, close to Skulduggery, close to that wide-open space he was standing in.

The walls ahead of her shook and rumbled and started to close, and she dove through, hit the floor, and rolled to her feet as the corridor closed behind her and the rumbling stopped. She fell to her knees and sucked in air.

"Well," Skulduggery said cheerfully. "That was close."

"Hate ..." she gasped.

"Yes?"

"Hate . . . you. . . ."

"Breathe some more air; the lack of oxygen is making you delirious."

She got to her feet, but stayed bent over while she controlled her breathing.

"We'd better be careful," he advised. "The Torment may be old, but he's fast, and he's agile,

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and he still has my gun."

"Where . . . are we?"

"One unsavory aspect of Roar haven's checkered past was an attempt, some years ago, to overthrow the Council of Elders and establish a new Sanctuary here. We're in what was supposed to be the main building."

Valkyrie saw a switch on the wall and thumbed it. A few lights flickered on overhead. Most of them stayed off.

Skulduggery let the flame in his hand go out, and they followed the corridor, then turned right and kept going. They walked through small patches of light and larger patches of darkness. The floor was covered in dust.

He turned his head slightly. She knew him well enough to know when something was wrong.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Keep walking," he said quietly. "We're not alone."

Valkyrie's mouth went dry. She tried to read the air, like Skulduggery was doing, but even on her best day she couldn't sense more than a few feet in any direction. She gave up, and resisted the urge to look around. "Where is he?"

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"It's not him. I don't know what they are, but there are dozens of them, relatively small, moving as a pack."

"They might be kittens," she said hopefully.

"They're stalking us."

"They might be shy."

"I don't think it's kittens, Valkyrie."

"Puppies, then?"

Something scuttled in the darkness beside them.

"Keep walking," Skulduggery said.

There was scuttling behind them now.

"Eyes straight."

And then they broke from the shadows ahead, into the light: spiders, black and hairy and bloated, as big as rats, legs tipped with talons.

"Okay," Skulduggery said. "I think we can stop walking now."

The spiders emerged from cracks in the wall, moving across the ceiling, clacking as they came. Valkyrie and Skulduggery stood back to back, watching them close in. They each had three eyes, wide and hungry and unblinking.

"When I count to three," Skulduggery said quietly, "we run, all right?"

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"All right."

The spiders clacked as they moved, closing in, drawing in tighter, the clacking becoming a din.

"In fact," Skulduggery said, "forget about the count. Just run."

Valkyrie bolted and the spiders attacked.

She jumped over the spiders in front, landing and kicking out as one of them got too close. It was heavy against her boot, but she didn't wait to see if she had done any damage. She ran on as Skulduggery hurled fireballs.

They swerved off course when the corridor ahead became alive with hairy, bloated bodies, then ran into a room with a large conference table in its center, the mass behind them quickly growing in size.

A spider scuttled onto the tabletop and sprang at Valkyrie as she passed. It struck her back and clung on, trying to sink its talons through her coat. Valkyrie yelled out and swung around, stumbling as she did so, rolling and feeling the spider beneath her. She came up and the spider was still holding on. It darted up her shoulder, toward her face, and she saw fangs. She grabbed it, tore it from her, and flung it away.