Some people say that time slows down as something awful happens. Other people say it happens too fast to think, too fast to realize what's happening. The truth is, the moment passes just like any other moment, and that's part of what makes it so terrible. That's what it was like to watch her fall. It felt casual, like nothing special was happening. Time made no special allowances, took no notice of her crumpling to the floor. How could time not stop? It was so unreal, so untrue, so far away and yet so close to me. Valkyrie Cain was dead.
Earlier that day
"Skulduggery, hurry up! I'm getting old out here!" Valkyrie shouted at me.
I was still in the doorway, checking my revolver one last time. I ran the tips of my finger bones over the bullets. They were cool to the touch, and I liked the feel of the brand names, stamped into the metal. I shut the gun with a click, slid it into my coat, and turned. Valkyrie was leaning against the Bentley, hands in her pockets. Tanith was already inside the car, tapping her fingers impatiently on the window. I closed the front door of my house, and walked around to the driver's side.
Valkyrie slid into the passenger seat, and fastened her seat belt. I did the same, and we were off. We stopped to pick up Ghastly Bespoke, completing our team.
"What's the address again?" I asked Tanith.
Valkyrie answered."250 second street." I nodded and took a sharp turn that I almost missed. Several horns blared, accompanied with the high-pitched squeal of brakes.
Valkyrie sighed. "You always have to have attention, don't you?" I ignored her comment, judging it to be unworthy of a response, and not able to find a suitably witty one.
Looking into the rear view mirror, I noticed that the space between Ghastly and Tanith seemed purposefully empty, as though they were consciously putting space between them. I puzzled this over, as I tried to navigate the confusing web of streets. It was possible they had had a fight, but the space between them didn't seem angry. No, it seemed like space that wasn't wanted, but they put there anyways. Could Tanith and Ghastly be… I suppose it was foolish to think that they wouldn't get together. I knew they had feelings for each other. But our group had always been one of friends, and I had never even thought about changing that. The idea of them being together made me feel vaguely uncomfortable, as though I were forgetting something…
Wrapped in my thoughts, I drove through a stop sign. Valkyrie flung out an arm, grabbing my wrist.
"Skulduggery!" She shouted.
I snapped to attention, swerved to avoid a truck, and then wrenched the wheel to one side, turning the Bentley down a small alley that was a short cut to Second street. Tanith was flung into Ghastly, the carefully maintained space suddenly gone. Meanwhile, Valkyrie slammed into me from the side, crying out indignantly. I reached out a hand and steadied her, her shoulder warm against my bones. I did not look into the backseat.
It wasn't like to me to be such a distracted driver, and I sternly told myself to get my head in the game before I had to fight. Valkyrie straightened herself in her seat, rubbing her chest where the seat belt must have hurt her. Tanith spoke from the back.
"For heaven's sake, Skulduggery, watch the road next time!" I shrugged in acquiescence, and pulled the Bentley up to a large warehouse. Beside the front doors was a bronze plaque that bore the numbers 250.
Valkyrie was the first out of the car, and Tanith was right behind her. Ghastly took his time getting out, and I stayed behind to lock the doors. I joined the other three as they stood, observing the warehouse.
"It looks so…mundane." Valkyrie said. The warehouse did, indeed, look mundane. It might even look innocent, if one did not know that there were three vampires inside, who had killed at least seven people, and were planning on killing more.
I took the lead, walking up the steps that led to the door.
"Please don't tell me we're going to go through the front door." Valkyrie muttered.
"We're going to go in through the front door." Tanith told her. Valkyrie sighed. I pushed open the doors without having to break them down, and led the way inside.
The warehouse had once stored farmer's machines, and some still stood in the shadows, covered in white sheets. The floor was dusty, and the air felt old. I was glad I was the only one in the group that didn't need to breath. My hands waited, ready, at my sides. Valkyrie, Tanith, and Ghastly, were all looking around nervously. There was only one room in the warehouse, that stretched into darkness. The sunlight shining through the glass doors was the only illumination. The ceiling was black, with glints of metal that must have been catwalks…Catwalks. Just as the thought occurred, the vampires dropped from above.
Valkyrie pushed at the air, sending one sprawling. Ghastly had been tackled by another, and Tanith was wasting no time in helping him. That left one unaccounted for…He slammed into me from the side, sending me into the air. I was, after all, just fabric and bones. I twisted, landing face to face with my opponent. Unexpectedly, it was a woman, with wild red hair. It was day, of course, so she was wearing her human skin. That was good. That was expected. Perhaps this would be a straightforward job after all. Wouldn't that be a nice change?
Tanith was now fighting the youngest vampire, who had long blond hair that swung when he jumped. Ghastly was trying to decide who to help, looking from Tanith to Valkyrie. Valkyrie was throwing fire at the third vampire, who was dark-haired. I felt a rush of pride as she used wind and fire together, forcing the vampire back. I taught her that. The woman vampire still hadn't moved, and I was in no hurry to begin the fight. Ghastly decided that helping Tanith would only earn him trouble, so he went to double up on the dark haired vampire, who snarled at them.
As I watched them, the female vampire pounced. Although I was expecting it, I didn't have enough time to turn. Instead I dropped to the floor, letting the vampire jump over me. She landed in a crouch, graceful as a tiger. Even in their human skins, vampires have an unsettling fluidity to their movements, and dangerous speed and strength. She came at me again, hands open and grabbing. I'd seen what those hands could do to arms, the splintering crack of bone. So I stepped aside, caught one of her arms, and spun her to the ground, using her own momentum. Keeping an eye on her, I lifted my head to make sure everyone was doing okay. Ghastly and Valkyrie's combined force had cornered their opponent, who was looking desperate.
Tanith's foe was dedicating half his attention to his fight, and the other half to his family's predicament. Then came the twist that no one expected. He kicked out at Tanith, knocking her to the ground. In the same moment, he reached inside his coat and pulled out a gun. I froze. I've never seen a vampire with a gun before. They simply didn't need them, with their strength and speed. He fired once at me. The bullet grazed the bone of my leg, and I cried out. Sometimes I wished that pain wasn't something that had come with my strange second life.
He fired twice at Valkyrie and Ghastly. Valkyrie, hearing my cry, turned, and stepped into the path of the bullets. There was no time for anything, not even to call out. The bullets tore into her. Her coat was made to protect her from many things, but bullets from eight feet away was not one of them. There were two red bursts of red, and she fell. The force of the bullets pushed her backwards, her head hitting the floor in the sudden silence. Tanith flipped up from the floor, holding her stomach where she'd been kicked, and disarmed the man. I stared at Valkyrie, lying on the floor.
I had seen in perfect clarity where the bullets hit her, and I knew that she was likely already dead. Some small part of me was observing this matter-of-factly, taking into account the size of the pool of blood, and the rate that it was growing, and how still her body was… Most of me was screaming, not even bothering to form words. My body suddenly moved, running across the room towards her. I didn't think about the vampire woman until her cold hands closed around my arm, pulling it out of its socket. I shouted and turned, facing her.
She held my arm in her left hand, the bones rattling against each other, held together by nothing visible. The sight always unnerved me. That was all I was, bones held together by magic, driven by a consciousness. No brain, no heart, no blood. Blood. My mind conjured an image of Valkyrie, lying in a pool of blood. The image made no sense, and then it occurred to me that it was real, that Valkyrie was lying on the floor behind me, dead, or dying, all because…I snarled in frustration, the sound foreign to my ears. I lashed out with my remaining hand. I felt it connect, not with anything solid, but with the pathways in the air, disrupting them, and the tang of magic. The red haired vampire flew backwards, crashed into the wall, fell, and didn't get up.
I turned and ran to Valkyrie. I dropped to my knees in her blood, and turned her over. Her eyes were closed. Her blood blended in with the darkness of her coat, and only the spreading circle of red betrayed how quickly her veins were emptying. I reached out and touched her cheek with the bones of my right hand. My left sleeve hung empty.
"Valkyrie." I said quietly. She didn't move. I repeated her name, louder. Trying to call her back, no matter how useless it was. No matter how impossible…She opened her eyes.
Her eyes were the color of hot chocolate. How had I never noticed that before? She looked up at me and, impossibly, smiled.
"Skulduggery…" She said, her voice tight and strained. She reach out a hand and brushed my cheekbone. Her hand was warm. I could almost feel like a man again, almost feel like Valkyrie was touching my cheek, rather than my cheekbones. I could almost pretend that when she touched my cheek, it was warm and soft, rather than cold, hard bone.
She held her hand to my cheek, and slowly, I placed my hand on top of hers, lacing my bones in between her warm fingers. The blood around us was still spreading, and I could find no hope inside of me that she would live. I felt it in my empty ribcage, that this was where she would die. I wanted to close my eyes, give myself a moment of blackness, to forget the scene around me. But I had no eyelids, and no eyes to close them over.
"Stephanie." I said quietly. "Valkyrie."
Her smile faded, and a tear rolled down her cheek. I would have given anything to know what she was thinking right then. Her eyes fixed on my empty eye sockets. I stared into the dark brown of her eyes, and watched as they glazed over. The hand she had held against my face was suddenly dead weight. Her last breath blew out of her, and that was all. Valkyrie, Stephanie, she was dead. She was gone, and all the magic in the world could not bring her back to me.
I let her hand fall, and it splashed into the blood. I knelt there for a long time. I stared at her face, at her open eyes, at her slightly parted lips, trying to understand. I wanted to turn away. I wanted to cry for her, let the tears run off of my face and into her blood. She deserved my tears. She deserved… Everything. She deserved everything she'd ever wanted, and everything she'd never have. I stared down at her body, my teeth bared in an eternal smile.
I felt like there was a realization that I was very close to, something I was supposed to understand, but I could not grasp it. It was then that I realized how quiet everything was. I raised my head, and saw that Tanith and Ghastly were watching us. Tanith had tears on her cheeks, and looked simply shocked. Ghastly was holding her hand, and he was watching me apprehensively. Behind them, the three vampires were tied with silver chains, bound to their human forms.
Ghastly was holding my left arm, which he held out to me in silence. I took it, and pushed it sharply against my socket. It reconnected with the rest of my body. I stood, and walked over to the vampires. It was a strange idea that after all we had been through, all the maniacs we had overcome, that Valkyrie would be killed by a vampire with a gun. I was not angry. I was not thinking about revenge. I felt like I was burning, like every inch of me was on fire, and all I wanted was to spread that fire. To make one person in the world understand how I felt.
I focused on the heat in the vampires' body, and summoned a flame in my hand. I spread my fire. Slowly, the flames began to lick across the blonde's skin. He looked up at me, his face showing nothing but fear. Then pain began to creep in, and the vampire screamed. The fire caught at his hair, and from there it spread to the other two vampires. The red haired one had still been unconscious, but she woke when the flames began to blacken her skin.
They at first they pleaded. Then they screamed useless threats. Then the screams were wordless, and I knew they understood how I felt. The screams cut off, one by one, and there was no noise except for sizzling, like bacon on a greased pan, and the sound of bones popping. I walked over to where Valkyrie laid, and picked her up. She was heavy, and her blood ran down my white shirt. I walked out the doors of the warehouse. Tanith and Ghastly did not follow.
I strapped Valkyrie's body into the passenger's seat, then walked around to unlock the driver's side. I began to drive. I drove at random, finally ending up at Stephanie's house. I stared at her body, hanging limp against the seat belt. I felt as though there was something I missed, a thought at the edge of my mind…But then it was gone, and the body was just a body. I unbuckled her, catching her as she slumped. Her. It was no longer a her, but I could not bear to call the body it. I picked her up again, and walked to her front door. I placed her on the doorstep, lying like a rag doll. I stood there for a moment, trying to find something inside of me, something to call sorrow, or anger, or anything. I found nothing but numb.
I closed her eyes, and turned to walk back to the Bentley. Then a thought occurred to me. I walked along the side of her house. Stephanie's window was on the second floor. I gestured, and a gust of wind pushed it open. Then I pushed at the air, and I rose up, stepping through the window. Valkyrie was sitting on her bed. The sight hit me like a hammer in my chest. She turned, and looked at me.
"I felt her die." She said. Then I realized that it was the reflection. Valkyrie's reflection, who took her place at school. It was supposed to be at school!
"What are you doing here?" I asked it. The reflection stood.
"I felt Valkyrie die, and I knew you would come here." I stared at it. Reflections were supposed to follow orders, not make decisions on their own. The fact that it had decided to come back to meet me was disturbing.
"Why?" I asked finally, not specifying what I was asking. The reflection brushed back her hair, a movement that copied Valkyrie's. I kept reminding myself that it was a reflection, not Valkyrie.
"I thought you might want to talk to me." I shook my head. It was too confusing, seeing her. Seeing this thing that looked like her. Sounded like her. She shrugged.
"Would you like me to go back into the mirror?" I nodded wordlessly. She opened the wardrobe, and stepped into the mirror. She stood there expectantly. I watched, expecting her to disappear. She spoke to me from the mirror.
"Touch the glass." She said. I stared. She put her hand up and laid it against the inside of the mirror, as though it were a window pane. Her dark brown eyes watched me. Slowly, cautiously, I put my hand against hers, feeling only the cool glass of the mirror.
And then there were images in my head, memories. Stephanie's memories. Valkyrie's memories. I saw her mother, tucking her in. I saw her father, singing an Elvis song. I saw her friends at school, and I saw myself. I watched myself fight. I watched myself teach. I watched myself from Valkyrie's eyes, and I could feel love. Valkyrie loved me, and this simple knowledge filled me with peace. And then the reflection dissolved. The mirror was just a mirror, and my reflection was my reflection. My empty eye sockets were wide, and my teeth smiled. Disturbed by the image, I turned away. I laid on her bed, and stared at the ceiling. The room felt like her. You could tell who lived here because of the casual messiness, the crammed bookshelves, the CDs along the wall.
She was gone, then. I put my hands over my eyes, and peered through the white bones. She was dead. I could hear her parents moving around downstairs, cheerfully clueless. I wanted to apologize to them. I wanted to apologize to Stephanie. I wanted so many things. In the end, I jumped out the window, and went to pick up Tanith and Ghastly.
Two weeks later
I stood in front of her grave. The grass hadn't grown over it yet, and it was the only fresh grave in the cemetery. Stephanie Edgley, read the grave. I had my false face on, and it felt rubbery against the bone of my skull. Looking around, I saw no one else, so I let it crumble away. I had attended the funeral, watched them lower her into the ground. I had heard her friends from school speak about her, heard her parents talk about what she was like as a child. I made no speech, and though I drew a number of odd looks, nobody asked me any questions. Nobody knew I had known her. Even though I had known her better than anybody.
Now I stood in front of her grave alone, hat pulled down over my eyes, the wind cold on my bare skull.
"Valkyrie?" I said out loud. The wind took my words away before I could hear them. "I feel really stupid right now, so you'd better be able to hear me." There was no response, but I continued. "If you're happy where you are, then I hope you stay there. But if you're ever unhappy, or you need me, I'll be here. Waiting. I promise that I will never forget your name, Valkyrie Cain. I promise that I will whisper that name every time I stop another bad guy, and I'll think of what you would have said if you'd have been there. Rest in peace, Valkyrie. But if that doesn't suit you, my door is open. No matter what form you've taken."
My voice fell over the graveyard, and for a moment I thought I could hear her laughter. But it was only inside the empty space of my head. My words were useless. I brought out my left hand from behind my back. It held three white roses, that matched the color of my bones. I laid them on the dirt of the grave. Then I brought out my right hand, which held three dark red roses. They matched the color of her blood. I laid them between the white roses, and thought of our hands together. The thin bones of my fingers went unconsciously to my cheek, where I had felt the warmth of her living fingers.
I turned quietly, and walked away.