Tanith leaned forward on her elbows, that bright smile back again. “You see? I’ve already had forgeries made, exact copies of these weapons – or as exact as we could get based on a couple of photographs.”
“So we nick each one,” said Jack, “and replace it with a forgery that Sabine here has already charged up with magic? How long will they stay charged?”
“The longest I can charge something for is a little under four days – about ninety hours,” said Sabine.
“Ninety hours,” Tanith repeated. “That gives us plenty of time to operate before anyone realises something’s not right. No one will even know the real weapons have gone missing until we’ve collected all four. It is, if I do say so, a flawless plan where absolutely nothing could possibly go wrong, ever.”
“The other three weapons,” said Dusk. “Where are they?”
“The bow is in Chicago,” Tanith said, “in the hands of mortal gangsters. Should be pretty straightforward, that one. The spear is in Poland, currently in the possession of a mad old hermit living in a cave. And the sword is here in London, and that’s the one we’ll be leaving till last.”
“Whereabouts in London?” Jack asked.
Tanith hesitated for only an eyeblink. “Deep down in the dank recesses of the heavily fortified English Sanctuary. Should be a doddle. Now then, boys and girls, I hope your bags are packed, because we’re off to Germany. Let’s get this party started!”
Tanith jumped up and pumped her fist in the air when she said that. Everyone else just looked at her. But she left the room with an excited grin on her face like she hadn’t even noticed.
Dear God, thought Sabine. She’s nuts.
aracen was late – as usual. This didn’t surprise Dexter Vex. Back when they had been in the Dead Men together, the only times when Saracen Rue wasn’t late was when you needed him to step in and save your life. Not a bad habit to have, all things considered, but every now and then Vex just wished his friend would be a little more organised in the day-to-day running of things.
Everyone else was here, sharing space in the Gulfstream V that was sitting on the airfield, waiting for its one remaining passenger to finally turn up. Frightening Jones sat across from Aurora Jane. Born and raised in Africa, his deep baritone contrasted with Aurora’s Californian lilt as they swapped stories about mutual acquaintances and laughed quietly. Where Frightening was immense and powerful, Aurora was small and fragile, and seemed like a stiff breeze could break her in half. Looks were, of course, deceiving. Vex had seen this little brunette with the heart-shaped face in battle. It was why he’d recruited her, after all.
Why Vex had recruited Wilhelm Scream, however, very much remained a mystery, even to himself. He watched as the young man sat on his own, nervously sipping from a bottle of flavoured water, spilling some on to his shirt and looking dismayed. Tall and lanky and pale with black hair that sat on his head like a dead crow, Wilhelm was not an immediately impressive person. But, unlike some other people who were not immediately impressive when you first met them, Wilhelm didn’t get any more impressive the more you got to know him. In fact, if it were possible, he got a little less impressive as time wore on. Which was actually impressive in itself.
Still, he had his uses. Aside from having a passing knowledge of the language of magic, Wilhelm still had a lot of contacts within the German Sanctuary, of which he used to be a junior Administrator before he was sacked for not being very good at it. So far he had successfully steered them clear of the authorities. Vex’s little group may have been made up of sorcerers from around the world, but this was an entirely unofficial mission they were embarking upon.
Gracious O’Callahan looked back from the cockpit. Not the tallest gentleman Vex had ever known, Gracious made up for his lack of height with cool hair and a relentlessly sunny outlook on things.
“Where’s this eejit got to?” he asked. “If we don’t take off soon, someone will realise we’ve stolen their jet.”
Aurora broke off her conversation with Frightening, and frowned. “This is stolen? We’re in a stolen jet?”
“Not stolen,” said Donegan Bane from the co-pilot’s seat.
“Almost stolen,” Gracious corrected.
“Semi-stolen,” said Donegan.
“Quasi-stolen,” said Gracious.
Aurora’s frown did not turn upside down. “So is it stolen or not?”
Donegan and Gracious hesitated.
“Yes,” they both said together.
Aurora sagged. “Why is it,” she asked, “that every time I’m around you two we end up stealing something big?”
“We always return it,” Donegan said, a little defensively. “Maybe not always in one piece, or necessarily to the right person, but return it we do, and so it is not stealing, it is merely borrowing.”
Gracious looked at him. “It’s a little bit stealing.”
“Anyone who leaves a private jet just lying around deserves to have it stolen.”
“It wasn’t lying around,” said Gracious. “It was locked up tight. It took us an hour to dismantle the security system and get inside.”
Donegan looked at him. “You’re not helping.”
Donegan Bane and Gracious O’Callahan – the Monster Hunters. Adventurers, inventors, authors of Monster Hunting for Beginners and its sequels, Monster Hunting for Beginners is Probably Inadvisable and Seriously, Dude, Stop Monster Hunting. Vex had first met the short, powerfully built Irishman and the tall, skinny Englishman when he was tracking a vampire through Hong Kong at the beginning of the nineteenth century. They’d saved his life, he’d saved theirs and the vampire was humanely put down by driving a train over its head. They’d all been firm friends ever since. Well, except for the vampire.
Gracious looked out on to the tarmac. “Here he comes,” he said. “Sauntering, as usual.”
Vex turned, watched his friend climb the steps into the plane. Saracen Rue had put on a little weight since the last time he’d seen him, but otherwise he looked fit and healthy. He wasn’t as tall as Vex, but he had a glint in his eyes and a smile that seemingly no woman could resist.
Vex broke into a smile of his own as they clasped hands and bumped shoulders. “You’re late.”
“Couldn’t be helped,” said Saracen, dumping his bag on one of the tables. “I had a thing with a thing. It got complicated. But it’s over now and here I am, and who do we have here? Bane and O’Callahan, you roguish devils, you. Nervous-looking chap I’ve never seen before, how are you doing? Frightening, don’t get up, my ego couldn’t take it. And Aurora. My one true soul mate. My darling. Remind me, have you and I ever fallen in love?”
Aurora sighed. “No, Saracen, we haven’t.”
“Do you want to change that?”
“What, now?”
“It’s a long plane ride.”
“You don’t even know where we’re going.”
“That’s a good point,” said Saracen. “Dexter, where are we going? What’s the plan? Why am I here?”
“I’ll tell you as soon as we’re airborne,” said Vex, settling into his seat and buckling up. “Captain O’Callahan?”
Gracious nodded, started flicking some switches. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said over the speakers, “welcome aboard this recently liberated Gulfstream V. If I could have your attention for just a few moments, I’d like to go over the safety features of this aircraft. It has an engine, to make us go, and wings, to keep us in the air. There are seatbelts, which won’t do you an awful lot of good if we fly into the side of a mountain.”
The jet began its taxiing to the runway with a sudden lurch, and Gracious chuckled.
“Sorry about that, ladies and gentlemen. I’ve actually never flown one of these before, but I’m sure it’s just like falling off a bike.”
Donegan’s voice came over the speakers now. “I think you mean riding a bike.”
“What did I say?”
“Falling off a bike.”
“What’s the difference?”
“You want me to tell you the difference between riding a bike and falling off one?”
“I just meant that once you’ve flown one plane you can pretty much fly them all. Oh look. Wonder what this button does?”
“Don’t touch it.”
“What does it do?”
“I don’t know, but don’t touch it.”
“It must do something, though.”
“Of course it does something. It wouldn’t be there if it didn’t do something. But since we don’t know what it does, don’t touch it.”
Vex raised an eyebrow at Saracen as they picked up speed. Saracen laughed, opened his mouth to talk...
“I’m going to press it,” said Gracious over the speakers.
“Do not do that,” said Donegan.
“It might be important. It might be the fly button.”
“There is no fly button.”
“On these new jets, how do you know? It might be a button that stops us from blowing up, or crashing.”
“Don’t say crash,” said Donegan, “not when we have passengers.”
“They can’t hear me,” said Gracious. “They can only hear me if I keep this mic button here pressed. I could be calling them all the names under the sun and they wouldn’t have any idea.”
“Still,” said Donegan.
Outside, the runway blurred past the windows and Vex’s head was pressed back into his seat.
“Hey,” said Gracious over the tannoy, “you think Aurora has a boyfriend?”
“Probably,” said Donegan.
“I don’t think she does,” said Gracious. “I think she’d have mentioned it. You think she’d go out with me?”
“Probably not.”
“Why not?”
“You’re short.”
“I’m the same height as she is.”
“Yeah, but you look like a hobbit.”
“She might like that.”
“She might like hairy feet?”
“My feet aren’t hairy. They’re masculine. So you think she’d go out with me?”
“Still no.”
The jet lifted off the ground, but over the roar of the engines Gracious kept talking. “Do you think she’d go out with Saracen?”
“Probably.”
“Yeah.” The plane climbed higher. “I would.”
“You’d go out with Saracen?”
“If I was going to date a guy, yeah. Wouldn’t you?”
“Don’t know. I don’t think he’d be my type. You know who I would date? Frightening.”
“Why Frightening?”
“I just think he’d be gentle, you know?”
“Yeah. You wouldn’t date Dexter?”
“I’d be afraid I might cut myself on his abs,” Donegan said, and they laughed until Gracious said, “Oh, wait, this is the mic button,” and then the speakers cut off.
Once the plane had levelled off, Vex stood up. “OK then,” he said, “as you may have guessed, the time has finally come to stop talking about collecting the four God-Killers, and just go do it. I appreciate that it’s pretty short notice, but the opportunity has arisen and we might not get a better one.”
“What has changed?” Frightening asked.
“Up until this point we’ve been waiting for the exact location of the dagger,” said Vex. “We knew Johann Starke had it in his possession, but didn’t know exactly where. Now we do. It’s on display at his house, along with a collection of other undoubtedly priceless trinkets. We have to get to it before he hides it away again. Once we have it, we go after the others.”
“It won’t be easy,” said Aurora.
“Which is why I have you people with me – people I would trust with my life. Apart from you, Wilhelm. No offence.”
Wilhelm shook his head quickly. “No, of course not. I’m just honoured to be part of the team, and I know that if you give me a chance I will prove myself worthy of—”
“Where’s the psychic?” Aurora interrupted. “Or, oh, sorry, the clairvoyant? Last time we were all together the air was filled with his ridiculous ramblings and pretentious claptrap. What was that he said? I feel a great darkness, like unto a cloud upon a starless night. Swear to God I wanted to hit him so hard.”
“Sadly,” Vex said, “Jerry Ordain is no longer with us. He died last year.”
“Oh,” said Aurora. “Oh, now I actually feel mean. Natural causes?”
“Decapitation.”
“So... not too natural, then.”
“Who killed him?” asked Saracen.
“I don’t know,” said Vex. “I looked into it with the time I had, but couldn’t find any leads.”
Aurora raised an eyebrow. “Uh, no offence or anything, Dexter, but what do you know about solving a murder?”
“Quite a lot,” Vex said. “Skulduggery Pleasant didn’t wait for the war to be over to suddenly decide to become a detective, you know. He’d always been one, even when he was a soldier. And Saracen and I were there. We saw him in action. Solving a mystery is fairly straightforward... mostly. You look for clues. Clues come in many forms.”
“Sometimes it’s a footprint,” said Saracen, “sometimes it’s a piece of dirt. Other times it’s a word, or a name, or a reference. Sometimes the reference is obvious, sometimes it’s hidden.”
Vex nodded. “So you take the word or the name or the reference, and if you find more than one, then you put them together, sort them into groups and you find the thing they share. Or you take the piece of dirt, and find where it came from. Or you take the footprint, and find the foot that made it.”
“And that’s how you solve a mystery, is it?” Aurora asked, unimpressed. “Dirt, footprints and references? That’s the grand total of what you’ve learned from Skulduggery?”
“Yes,” said Vex. “And I applied it all to Jerry Ordain’s murder, and found nothing overly suspicious.”
“Apart from the fact that he’d had his head chopped off.”
“You know what I mean. I couldn’t see how his death was linked to the four weapons. The place was ransacked. The TV was stolen. Judging by the state of the place, it was a gang of thugs. The only neat thing about it was Jerry’s head. It was a blade that did it, a sword of some kind.”
All eyes flickered to Frightening.
“It wasn’t me,” he said, annoyed. “What, just because I use a sword, suddenly I’m a suspect? OK, I didn’t exactly like the man. I thought he was a fraud and a charlatan and not a very good psychic. But I didn’t kill him. Besides, I have an alibi. Probably. When did he die?”
“Halloween.”
“I have no alibi,” Frightening said miserably.
Wilhelm piped up from the corner seat. “He died last year and you didn’t tell us? Why didn’t you tell us? We could have all been targets.”
“First of all,” said Vex, “his murder might not have had anything to do with this mission. From what I’ve heard of Jerry since his death, he had a habit of making enemies. He’d given out a string of predictions the previous year to some very powerful and very dangerous individuals, of which exactly none came true. Statistically, that is quite incredible. Secondly, last year you had nothing to do with any of this, Wilhelm. Even if there had been a death squad after us, you wouldn’t have been touched.”
“I just want it known,” said Frightening, “that I did not kill Jerry Ordain.”
“I didn’t either,” said Aurora. “Although I wanted to.”
“If his murder was in relation to this mission,” said Saracen, “then what does that mean?”
“It means someone is out there and they don’t want us to get our hands on the God-Killers,” said Vex. “If this is true, we’ll undoubtedly come across them over the next few days.”
“Oh God,” Wilhelm said.
Aurora turned to him. “I’m sorry, I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”
“My fault,” said Vex. “Aurora Jane, this is Wilhelm Scream. Wilhelm, this is Aurora and everyone.”
“Hi, Wilhelm,” Aurora said, smiling. “I just want to check – are you going to be complaining every minute we’re on the job, or are you going to man up any time over the next few hours?”
Wilhelm went a little paler, and sank so far back into his seat he looked like he was trying to pass through it.
“Wilhelm is a good guy,” Vex said. “He might not have the experience the rest of us have, but what he lacks in combat skills he more than makes up for in... Anyway, welcome aboard, Wilhelm. Our first stop is Germany. Tomorrow night we sneak in and grab the dagger.”
“Why not tonight?” Frightening asked.
“Tonight Johann Starke is having a party to show off his collection. Security will be tightened and there’ll be guests everywhere. Only the very foolish or the very reckless would try to steal the dagger tonight.”
arkness cracked and light spilled, and then Tanith was stepping out from the wall into Johann Starke’s house. A four-piece orchestra played in the next room. Lots of chatter, sprinkled through with light laughter. No alarms. No cries. So far so good.
“I could go straight for the dagger,” Sanguine said quietly. “Why the hell not? I’m here, ain’t I? Save you the trouble of the play-acting.”
Tanith unzipped her jumpsuit and let it fall to the ground. She stepped out of it, slipping her feet into high heels as she rested the delicate strap of her handbag on one shoulder. Her dress was red and tight and her hair was brown and straight. She caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror and liked what she saw.
“Starke’s security system would alert every Ripper in the area,” she told him. “You don’t want that, do you? It’ll be fine. I’ll mingle, I’ll charm, I’ll get the dagger and replace it with the forgery. You just be waiting to pick me up.”
“Do you even speak German?” he asked, scooping up the jumpsuit and being careful not to let any dust near her outfit.
“I have a few words,” she said.
“Any of them not swear words?”
“Nein. Trust me, all right? Now, do I look amazing?”
“You always look amazing. Kiss for good luck?”
“Don’t want to smudge my make-up,” she said, and walked to the door. She painted an easy smile on her face. The first person she saw was a man dressed completely in black with a visored helmet and two sickles strapped to his back. A Ripper. He walked by, ignoring her completely. She took a moment to calm down, nodded to an elderly couple and then at a man with dark hair and turned like she’d forgotten something. She stepped back into the room. Sanguine hadn’t left yet. He frowned at her.