It's cold outside.
Valkyrie Cain is just outside of the sanctuary, sitting on the hard ground, back supported by the concrete wall, looking over at the lake and all the kind of different trees that surround it, there are leaves on the ground, there is not even one tree that survived the forceful wind that comes all winters.
She likes the cold. Makes her feel less numb.
There is a spider on the nearest tree to her.
It's about the size of Valkyrie's hand, fingers as long as its thin and hairy legs. It walks confidently, quickly crawling down the tree towards the ground like it has a purpose.
Maybe it wants to frighten her, get her away of its territory.
"I could kill you," Valkyrie warns. "Fry you."
The spider follows its journey. Valkyrie narrows her eyes as she watches the spider walk to the girl's boot, clambering over her buckles and laces towards the tip of her toes. She wonders wheter the tiny animal understands what it's walking on, a thing that could easily squash it.
The spider stays there. It's perched on the tip of the girl's boot, perfectly content after the long track to the top.
Valkyrie stares at it for a long time, just watching it exist.
She doesn't think she can do it, living life like before Darquesse, like before she killed all that unknown and known people, like before she killed her sister.
She doesn't remember how she did it before, how she used to turn off and on the switch whenever she wanted to. Skulduggery had taught that to her a long time ago. There's a switch inside everyone's minds and when you have to do bad things, when you don't have time to think what the moral thing would be, when it's you or them, you need to turn that switch on because there are people depending on you. You can't hesitate or someone could die. It's you or them. And it's always going to be us. Has to be us.
Now, it only works sometimes.
She has to prepare for it and concentrate. Before, it was like blinking, came natural to her. But she needs to be ready. She won't be able to stand watching someone else she knows die, won't let it happen again.
Her phone rings.
She shakes her head and leans it against the wall while answering the phone, it's Skulduggery Pleasant.
He's meeting her at the Bentley in 5 minutes. They have a new case.
She closes her eyes for a few seconds,she doesn't want to get up, she feels safe when she is close to the ground, sitting, laying down, crouched. Doesn't matter.
The girl looks at the spider again. It is still there. She doesn't want to disturb it. It seems peaceful on the tip of her boot.
Valkyrie sighs. She moves her boot from left to right and the spider sways with it, unbothered.
"I'll fuck you up, you know," Valkyrie tells the spider on her boot. "That what you want? I could make it a good death, you'll never see it coming. Well I think you have like a million eyes or something, maybe you'll see it coming. Maybe dying it's painful no matter how you die. Who knows right? It's not like the people I know had painless deaths."
The spider doesn't react.
Her phone rings againg, the five minutes she had have passed away.
She doesn't pick up, let's it ring until it stops. Then she reaches out and brushes the spider off her boot before standing up.
"Duty's calling. We'll talk another time," she walks away.
. . .
An hour later they are parked in the middle of a forest within eyesight of the 3 story house of Malnan Gili. It looks like nobody lives in there anymore
The house looks unkempt, blending with the surroundings, a dull gray and soaring roof with some parts reclaimed by nature. All the windows in all the floors are mortared except the two ones that are at both sides of the front door.
The door is open.
"Get ready," Skulduggery says while getting his gun.
Valkyrie tries to turn on the switch.
The girl wonders whether he was expecting them or if the door is simply broken, after all, the inside of the house looks rather unkempt too.
They walk into a living room, there's a sofa with a messy blanket over it and the tv is playing a football match. There is definitely someone living there.
To their left is a staircase leading to nowhere because it's mortared too at what should be the entrance to the second floor. In front of them there's a large table, it has plates piled up one above the other, Valkyrie gags at the sight, there are flies flying over them.
They advance forward past the table till they reach the next room, it's a kitchen. There is someone on a wheelchair making food with their back to them.
Skulduggery glances at Valkyrie and the girl shrugs. He points the gun to them.
"I think you should do the dishes after eating that," the skeleton says after a moment.
There is a high pitched scream in the house.
...
The person turns out to be Malnan Gili and he's nothing but trouble. The guy is batshit crazy. He likes to say bible verses and he wants to play with them.
Skulduggery is mad, his gun is still pointed at Malnan, waiting for the guy to give him a reason to shoot.
His patience is wearing thin but Malnan Gili sits calmly on his wheelchair with his arms crossed and insist that he'll only give them information if they play a game.
"I like seeing blood," is all he says when Skulduggery asks him what kind of game he wants to play.
The girl knows that that's why he is getting angry.
Blood means that only Valkyrie can play. That there's nothing Skulduggery can do to switch places. That he has to watch while his friend suffers.
"For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement," Malnan says unswervingly, like he is repeating something he says all the time, hell he probably is repeating something he says all the time, he just said that he likes to see blood after all.
"What's that even supossed to mean?" Skulduggery ask, he is looming over the guy, but he doesn't seem fazed by it, neither does he care about the gun pointing at him. He is just sat there relaxed. He knows what he is doing.
Skulduggery hasn't said much about who this guy is supposed to be, the girl knows that he is the only one left alive that knows where their target, Recob Bocer, is.
He is wanted for hate crimes and the modus operandi of Recob Bocer is the same one as all these crimes that had been happening. They started about a year ago, but it has taken all this time for the sanctuary to figure out that the deaths are linked. They are all gay men and they all died in the same way, after a long torture session where all the extremities of their bodies were cut off. He is well known for doing this kind of things during the war. The killer would begin on the fingers and then he would continue on the toes until he would start cutting limbs, feet, hands, legs, arms, everything until the only part of the person left would be the trunk and the head and when he was satisfied with the job done he would leave them to bleed out. He would spend all the time he needed to make sure that the victim wouldn't die until he wanted to.
That's probably why there is a lot of time between the victims deaths.
Still, that doesn't explain why they took so long to call them to work on the case.
Malnan and Recob used to work together but parted ways when Malnan got injured, Valkyrie wonders if that's what made him end up on a wheelchair.
"In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace. Are you going to give me blood then?" Malnan ask with a smile and moves his head slightly to look at Valkyrie.
Skulduggery stays silent next to her, his gun hasn't moved an inch yet, he must be thinking on a way out of this situation.
They guy must know that she used to be Darquesse. He seems to want to make her pay for everything she has done. The girl agrees with Malnan, she should pay, torture her, make her feel the same thing she made feel to the people that died. She should suffer but never be killed. She deserves to stay alive, she deserves to carry the burden of having killed so many people, she needs to saves lifes too, maybe when she gets to the point that she has saved more people than killed she'll forgive herself.
She should agree to play the game, the man probably just wants to slice her somewhere or cut her a finger or something, she can take it. She should take it. She's been throught worse. She's been looking for something that would make her feel alive again, pain is better that numbness. It's a good time as any to start the path of redeeming herself.
They can always fix her back at the sanctuary.
"Or I could shoot you and you could just tell us where your friend is," Skulduggery says while taking a step forward. His voice low and dark deprived of emotion.
The man huffs out a breath of laughter. "Do you really think that's gonna work on me skeleton? I was the best at torturing and threatening people. Shoot me and I'll be quiet forever. I know how these things go."
The girl clenches her fists, she should be hitting him already. Keeps trying to turn on the switch.
If she would have the switch on she knows she would be hitting him with all she's got by now, pulling out an answer out of him.
Skulduggery would help her too, back then before she had left for America she knows that skulduggery would have started beating him first but not these days. He is mostly quiet now and doesn't jump so easily into action.
Valkyrie wonders sometimes if they had become bad detectives. Each one with secrets that none of them will tell the other one.
She should try to fix that.
She should try to fix a lot of things.
She knows they would go until the end for each other, that will never change, but he is mostly quiet now, like he doesn't know what to say around her, his words always calculated, jokes followed by a silence because he doesn't know how she will react, it's almost like he's trying to figure out if she is the same girl he used to know.
She's not. Skulduggery has changed too.
But people change all the time, it's normal, they just need to get to know each other again.
She grits her teeth. "Tell me what I have to do," the girl says confidently, it is as good time as any.
Skulduggery has lowered the gun and it's looking directly at her now. Valkyrie looks back at him. "It's okay," she tells him reassuringly with a nod, she'll be fine.
After a few seconds of a silent conversation, Skulduggery nods back at her. She turns to looks at Malnan, his lips are curled into a smile, his chin is lifted high and gives her a cocky wink.
He inclines forward and stretches his arm towards Skulduggery, "Can I have your gun?"
He cockes his head to the side while looking at him, there is no way he'll let him have his gun. "How do I know you won't shoot us?"
Malnan rubs at his nose and stays quiet for a couple seconds and then settles down, ducking down deeper into his wheelchair. "You do it then, pull out all the bullets from your Smith and Wesson except for one and make the cylinder spun, give the gun to the girl to let her shoot herself," he is smiling, a crooked smile that shows his yellowish teeth.
She takes the gun from Skulduggery before he can react, he's not even holding the gun tight, she has made her mind.
She can take a shot, even Skulduggery has shoot her before, she'll be fine. It's not like she doesn't deserve this.
The girl pulls out the cylinder and starts to empty the bullets one by one, her fingers precise, and when she gets to the last one she looks at Skulduggery.
He hasn't moved. His chin is dropped to his chest, gazing at the floor and his fingers are curled into a fist.
Valkyrie knows he must be thinking of the time he did the exact thing to her. He apologized but she knows that it still haunts him. He would have killed her without hesitation if the bullet would have been in the right place.
She takes the last bullet out and brings it to his lips and kisses it, ready to feel pain. She puts the bullet back in one of the chambers and makes the cylinder spun, she knows that if she lets it stop rotating there are more chances that the bullet won't hit her.
She locks the cylinder back in before it stops.
"Aim to the head, you know how to play right?" Malnan reminds her making direct eye contact with her. He is smiling still, eager to watch blood.
"Of course, I'm not stupid," she tells him while still looking at him in the eyes. Well, she wasn't expecting that, she doesn't deserve to die, that would be easy, but she won't back down from a challenge. They need the information after all.
"Good girl."
She lifts her arm and aims to her head, the look of defiant still on her face, looking back at Malnan. She thumbs back the hammer and after a second, pulls the trigger.