“Well, pardon me,” Sanguine said, “but how in tarnation is that goin’ to help us fight off a pack of bloodthirsty zombies? You goin’ to throw dictionaries at ‘em or just talk ‘em to death?”
“Mr Shudder said you could use all the help you could get,” Miss Nuncio said rather primly. “Just because I decided not to devote my life to the study of hurting people does not mean I can’t be useful.”
“You’re a pacifist,” Sanguine groaned.
“I’m a realist, sir. And if a pack of bloodthirsty zombies, as you put it, want to eat me, I will defend myself, you can be certain of that.”
“Goin’ to get stuck in a zombie’s throat – that your big plan?”
“Sanguine,” said Valkyrie, “shut up. You’re the only one down here who can’t use any magic, so you really can’t afford to dismiss those who can.”
He looked at her. “I hate you.”
A window broke. Then another. They moved into the common room. There were two windows in here. One was blocked by the bookcase, the other by nothing more than a curtain. A zombie was trying to crawl through the second one. They watched the curtain writhe like it was alive, and then it parted. The zombie was halfway through and it looked up. It growled and reached for them, so Skulduggery shot it.
“Go for the head if you can,” he said. “Burning them works, but it takes a lot longer. Break their legs to slow them down. Don’t let them bite you.”
“I’ve never fought zombies before,” Mr Jib said. “I’ve fought every other kind of creature, but not zombies. Always wanted to, though.”
“Here at the Midnight Hotel,” Shudder said quietly, “we aim to please.”
Two more zombies were struggling through the window and Skulduggery shot them both. The bookcase was shaking now. Another window broke, somewhere at the back of the hotel.
“I’ll take care of it,” Shudder said grimly, and moved out of the common room. The hotel door was being given a pounding.
Sanguine picked up a table and smashed it against a wall. He pulled one of the legs from the resulting mess and threw it to Miss Nuncio, who hefted it in both hands. The second leg he threw to Mr Jib, and the third he kept for himself.
Glaring at Sanguine, Valkyrie clicked her fingers and summoned a flame. Sanguine muttered something and gave her the fourth leg.
“Come on,” Mr Jib called to the zombies outside. “I don’t have all night.”
“Don’t taunt the zombies,” Skulduggery said disapprovingly.
Mr Jib laughed and moved up to the window. “These guys are harmless,” he said. “The stench’ll kill us faster than they will.”
A hand reached in, closed around Mr Jib’s wrist, and he was jerked forward.
“Hey, no, wait,” he said and then he was yanked out through the window before Skulduggery or Valkyrie could reach him. He didn’t even have time to scream.
“Oh my God,” Miss Nuncio said.
“Do you get many of your linguistics sorcerers eaten alive then?” Sanguine asked lazily.
The hotel door burst open, shoving the sofa and the table back, and the zombies came spilling through.
Skulduggery’s gun roared, again and again. Zombies stumbled and fell, and Skulduggery reloaded while Valkyrie hurled fireballs. A flaming zombie came stumbling and Valkyrie cracked the table leg against its head. It hit the ground and tried to get up, but the other zombies trampled over it.
The bookcase toppled and Miss Nuncio was at the window, battering the zombies who were trying to crawl through. One got past Skulduggery and Valkyrie then charged at Sanguine. Sanguine cursed and lost the table leg, and the zombie pushed him back against the wall. Sanguine swung punches to no effect, then his hand closed around its throat. He pushed with all his strength, keeping those biting jaws away from him. He twisted and the zombie was forced up against the wall. The wall crumbled and its head sank through. Sanguine stepped away, leaving the puzzled zombie stuck there.
Skulduggery was out of bullets. He dropped the revolver and curled his hands. The air closed around the nearest zombie and it froze, gurgling slightly, before Skulduggery swept his arms wide and its head flew from its body.
Valkyrie punched a hole through a zombie’s chest with her shadows. It staggered forward and she ducked under it, bringing the shadows back and turning them sharp. They sliced through the zombie’s ankle and it toppled over. She hefted the table leg in both hands and used it like a baseball bat on the next one to get near. It stumbled over its fallen friend and knocked a third one down. They weren’t too bright, these zombies.
A big zombie rushed her and wrapped its arms around her. Its mouth was on her shoulder, trying to bite through. The table leg fell from Valkyrie’s hand as she was taken off her feet and carried backwards. She hit the wall beside the door to the kitchen, and the big zombie tried to take a bite out of her face. She raised her arms sharply, loosening its hold on her, and dropped to the ground. It moaned something, pitiful and disappointed, and she pushed at the air and launched it away from her.
She got up and Sanguine came crashing into her. They both went sprawling into the kitchen, the zombie who had thrown him following them in.
Valkyrie was the first up. She grabbed a massive meat cleaver from the worktop and hurled it. The back of the cleaver smacked into the zombie’s head and bounced off. She hurled another knife and this time it was the handle that hit. Sanguine stood, fixed his sunglasses, looked around for his straight razor and saw the zombie reaching for him. He yelped and ducked, but it grabbed his jacket.
Valkyrie ran up behind it, whacking a frying pan into the back of its knee. It went down and Sanguine pushed the hand that had grabbed him into the wall. The wall solidified and the zombie moaned, trapped there.
Valkyrie and Sanguine stepped away, well out of its reach, and looked at each other, and for a moment it was merely in appreciation of a job well done. And then it turned to something else.
Sanguine swung a punch and Valkyrie ducked under it and thrust her shoulder into his gut. He grunted and fell back, but grabbed her as he went, throwing her to the floor. She rolled and hit the wall as he stooped for the straight razor, but a flick of her hand sent it spinning away from him. He growled and kicked her as she lay there. She folded her body around the kick and lashed out with one of her own, catching him in the side of the knee. He yelled as he went down. She got up and jumped over him, but he snagged her ankle and she fell.
Valkyrie rolled and came up and Sanguine sprang at her. She tried flipping him over her hip, but he was too big and too heavy. She turned into him and his hands gripped her throat. Her elbow shot up between his arms and found his chin. His head rocketed back and his mouth hung open and his grip loosened. She punched a fistful of shadows into his chest and Sanguine was flung backwards. He hit the wall and dropped to the floor. The trapped zombie reached out for him, but it was just too far away. It moaned again.
Valkyrie heard Miss Nuncio scream and she ran out of the kitchen.
31
BILLY-RAY
Sanguine lay there for a bit, waiting for his brain to kick back into gear.
Moving slowly, he picked himself up. He figured two, maybe three ribs were broken, thanks to the girl and that damned ring of hers. He tried not to dwell on the fact that he’d had his hands around her throat, but had failed to kill her. He was already angry enough as it was.
He found his razor beneath the stove. His ribs bit into his side when he bent to retrieve it, but when it was in his hand again, he felt better.
He left the kitchen, stepping over the bodies of zombies. He made sure the girl and the skeleton were otherwise occupied, then hurried to the back of the hotel. A zombie reared up before him, but he shoved it back against the wall. The wall crumbled and he pushed the zombie halfway through and the wall grew solid around it. This was what his magic was reduced to – the magical equivalent of opening a door, but being unable to pass through it. He snarled and continued on. Speaking of doors…
Anton Shudder had been busy holding off the zombies at the back of the hotel. He was on his knees on the floor, head down, exhausted, and all around him were pieces of the dead.
“Did we do it?” Shudder asked weakly.
Sanguine approached without speaking and kicked Shudder in the face. The kick lifted Shudder off his knees and threw him backwards. Sanguine howled and clutched his ribs. Every move he made sent bullets of hot pain ricocheting around his body. Gritting his teeth, Sanguine staggered over, dropped to his knees and searched for the key.
32
THINGS GET WORSE
Skulduggery took a long splinter of wood from the ruined table and impaled the last zombie’s head with it. He looked across the room at Valkyrie. Between them was a sea of body parts. Some of it moaned and some of it writhed, but most of it lay still and didn’t make much of a fuss.
Miss Nuncio was dead. She had been holding four of them back and had slipped in the gore. The zombies had descended on her, biting off chunks as she struggled and screamed, cursing them in twenty different languages before falling silent. The only good thing about her death was that there wasn’t enough left of her to come back to life.
Valkyrie was covered in blood. Her arms were so tired she couldn’t lift them, and her legs were so tired it was all she could do to stand without falling over.
“I’m going to check on Anton,” Skulduggery said and left the room.
Every chair or sofa or seat in the place was in pieces. There was nowhere to sit down. Dragging her heavy feet, Valkyrie crossed the common room, heading for the chair behind the reception desk. All she wanted in this world was a shower and a lie-down. That, she reasoned, wasn’t too much to ask.
She got to the reception area and two more zombies barged in. Valkyrie dropped back and clicked her fingers, summoning a flame into her hand. She was about to call for help, but stopped when she saw who it was.
Vaurien Scapegrace glared at her, and the middle-aged zombie beside him did his best to look annoyed.
“My arch-enemy,” Scapegrace snarled.
Valkyrie frowned. “Me?”
“You may have killed my savage brethren,” he continued, “but you’re facing the Killer Supreme now, and I’m new and improved.”
“Scapegrace, I’m really tired.”
“I don’t feel pain,” Scapegrace said, ignoring her, “I don’t feel pity and I don’t feel…” He hesitated. “Bad. I won’t feel bad, I mean, about killing you, which is what’s going to happen very, very soon indeed.”
“Do you want to, like, go away and rehearse that a little more?”
“How dare you speak to the Killer Supreme in such a manner!” the middle-aged zombie screeched in a sudden and dramatic fury.
“Listen to me,” she said to them, “you don’t want to be involved in this. Scapegrace, look at what they’ve done to you, for God’s sake. They’ve turned you into a monster.”
“I’ve always been a monster,” Scapegrace told her, “but now, finally, my physical form reflects my inner darkness.”
“You smell terrible.”
“That’s the smell of evil.”
“It’s like rancid meat and bad eggs.”
“Evil,” Scapegrace insisted.
“Where are they holding Tanith and the Professor?” she asked. “You have a chance to help us end this. Maybe we can help you – maybe there’s a cure for…being a zombie.”
“We don’t need a cure,” the other zombie said.
“That’s right,” Scapegrace nodded.
“We’re happy the way we are.”
“Happy with the power,” Scapegrace clarified.
“Very happy, just the two of us, and there’s nothing wrong with us either. It’s very natural in fact. Nothing to be ashamed of—”
“Thrasher,” said Scapegrace, “shut up.”
“Okey-dokey.”
“We are not going to betray our Master,” Scapegrace said. “I joined the Vengeance Brigade for one reason and one—”
“I’m sorry?”
“You’re sorry what?”
“The Vengeance Brigade? That’s what you’re calling it?”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“It’s…Nothing. It’s grand. Sanguine called it the Revengers’ Club, that’s all.”
“Club sounds stupid,” Scapegrace said defensively. “Brigade sounds better.”
“Actually,” said Thrasher, “a brigade usually consists of two to five army regiments, so maybe it isn’t really that accurate.”
Scapegrace glowered. “But the Vengeance Regiment doesn’t have the same ring to it.”
“Well, that wouldn’t be accurate either,” Thrasher told him, “seeing as how a regiment is composed of a number of battalions. It could be the Vengeance Battalion, I suppose, but really a battalion usually has around a thousand soldiers in it, and there aren’t a thousand people in your group.”
“How about the Vengeance Squad?” suggested Valkyrie.
“That might work,” Thrasher nodded.
“I prefer Brigade,” Scapegrace snapped. “And now I’ve lost my train of thought.”
“You were about to tell me where Tanith and the Professor are being held,” said Valkyrie.
“No,” Scapegrace said, “I’m pretty sure I was about to start killing you.”
“Don’t even try it.”
“I’ve dreamed about nothing else for the last two years.”
“You need better things to dream about.”
“Valkyrie Cain, welcome to death.”
“That is such a stupid thing to say.”
Scapegrace ran at her and Valkyrie threw the ball of fire she’d been holding for the past few minutes. Scapegrace was instantly enveloped in flame. He wheeled around, screaming.
“Master Scapegrace!” Thrasher yelled, horrified.
Valkyrie frowned. “I thought he couldn’t feel pain.”
Scapegrace immediately stopped screaming and running about. He just stood there and continued to burn.
“You’re burning quite easily,” she said. “Is that a zombie thing or something?”
“He has been using an awful lot of skin creams lately,” Thrasher mused. “Maybe the mixture is especially flammable.”
Valkyrie waved her hand and the fire went out.
“You haven’t seen the last of me,” Scapegrace said without enthusiasm, as he turned and walked out of the hotel, leaving a trail of smoke behind him. Thrasher gave her a parting growl and quickly followed the trail out of the door.
The aroma of charred flesh forced Valkyrie to go looking for Skulduggery. She found him in the back room, helping Shudder to his feet. The walls were decorated with bits of zombie.
“Shudder did this?” she said, stunned at the sheer violence of what she saw. “Alone? Without a weapon?”
“Technically,” Skulduggery said, “Anton is a weapon. Or at least his gist is.”
“What’s a gist?”
“It’s the bad part of me,” Shudder said, speaking like every word was painful. “When I need it, I let it come out. Every time I do, however, it takes me a little longer to recover.” He frowned. “Sanguine was here. He came in and…” He grasped his sleeve and yanked it up. There was a metal band on his forearm, and hanging from it was a short link of a cut chain. “He has the key.”
Valkyrie followed Skulduggery up the two flights of stairs. They got to the twenty-fourth room. The door was closed and the key was in the lock.
“He has it,” Skulduggery said.
“How do you know? He might still be in there.”
Skulduggery shook his head. “He didn’t set one foot inside that room. He opened the door less than a centimetre and the nearest Remnant was sucked into the Soul Catcher. If he’d stepped in, they’d have swarmed him and then they’d have swarmed the hotel. After that, they’d have gone on and swarmed the country. We failed.”
“So now what?”
“Now we find Scarab’s castle before Kenspeckle repai
rs the Desolation Engine. I know someone who might be able to help us – it’s a long shot, but what isn’t these days? We’ve run out of options.” Skulduggery turned the key until they heard the lock clicking into place, then he withdrew it. “And we kick the living daylights out of anyone who stands in our way.”
33
POSSESSED
Scarab released the Remnant, then quickly stepped back and shut the door. He went to the next room, where Billy-Ray had set up the monitor, and watched Professor Grouse. He could see the anger in his face as the Remnant, little more than a sliver of shadow, flitted about from corner to corner. The Professor knew what was coming, but he didn’t cry out or start to plead. Scarab respected that.
Once it had satisfied its curiosity about its surroundings, the Remnant turned its attention to the old man chained to the wall. The Professor kept his eyes on the Remnant as it darted in and out of his line of sight. It came close and the Professor jerked away instinctively. It was playing with him.
It whipped by him again and the Professor cursed at it. Then it struck. It darted to his open mouth and the Professor’s eyes widened in panic as the Remnant forced its way down. His throat bulged, then the bulge moved and disappeared. Kenspeckle Grouse went limp.
Billy-Ray shook his head. “Hate those things,” he muttered.
Scarab walked back into the room and Professor Grouse looked up.
“You know why you’re here,” Scarab said. “We went to a whole lot of trouble to get you out of that room you were stuck in. If you do what we want, we’ll release you after. If you don’t, we’ll put you back where we found you and collect one of your brethren. I’m sure the next one we bring here will welcome a chance for freedom. What do you say?”
“I don’t trust you,” Grouse said in a voice that picked over the words like a carrion bird picking at meat. The Remnant inside him was unused to speaking aloud.
“Well,” said Scarab, “I don’t trust you either. But we are in a situation where we can help each other. As you know by now, we’re hoping that the old man you’re wearing like a bad suit has the all the knowledge and know-how we need. Does he?”