Valkyrie's eyes were sore. The second she opened them, she felt her entire head ache as the muscles inside moved. Her body was no different. Her arms and legs were stiff, having not moved for many hours. Valkyrie didn't even know how many – from the dust lying on the floor beside her, she wasn't entirely sure she wanted to know.
She groaned as she lifted her head, and sat up so that she could see Tanith and Ghastly lying in different places on the floor. Skulduggery was leaning against the metal bars that surrounded them, his head now tilted in her direction.
She glared at him. "What happened?"
He sighed. "Guess."
She didn't stop glaring. "You didn't answer my question."
Skulduggery took off his hat and flicked off some dust off of it. The light played with his skull below. "From the shackles that are connecting your leg to the bars, it'd be logical to presume that you were put in here against your will."
She rolled her eyes and shifted herself so that she could see her legs. As Skulduggery said, her leg was trapped in an iron shackle that was connected to a short chain. Her eyes drifted to Skulduggery's own leg, and she saw the same chains that held her to the cell. She grunted. "And can you presume who put us in here?"
Skulduggery was silent for a moment. When he spoke, it was hollow. "While it wasn't him who physically put us in here, I believe Billy-Ray Sanguine is the cause of this."
Raising an eyebrow, she started to stand. "I don't even want to know what crazy scheme he has this time."
As she was speaking, Ghastly stirred in his sleep and came to. He sat up groggily, his eyes looked tired. He looked at Valkyrie, then at Skulduggery, and then sighed. "I hope you have found a good reason as to why we're like this."
Valkyrie felt dizzy as she stood up, and wobbled on her feet. Skulduggery took a step forward to steady her. He didn't respond to Ghastly.
The movement around her woke Tanith, and she gritted her teeth as she woke up. She observed the metal floor, the thick bars, and themselves in shackles. "I cannot," she muttered, "Catch a break."
Ghastly gave her a wry smile, then turned to Skulduggery and raised an expectant eyebrow. Skulduggery finally had Valkyrie on steady feet. "I was just explaining to Valkyrie, that all of this could be by the works of Sanguine."
The tailor's eyes narrowed, and Tanith frowned. "Why the hell would he want us all in a cage?" She said, an edge to her voice.
A realization hit Valkyrie, and she paled. "Sanguine knows I'm Darquesse, doesn't he?"
Skulduggery looked at her, his hat coming low over his eye sockets. "I told you of this a while ago."
"Well yeah," Valkyrie said, irritated, "but I had forgotten about him."
Skulduggery sighed and turned to Tanith. "That mission you went on," he said slowly, "With the God killers."
Tanith's frown hadn't left her. "Yes?"
"What did you do to the God-Killers after you gained possession of them?"
"I melted them, like I told you."
"But Sanguine had them beforehand, yes?" Skulduggery persisted.
Tanith swallowed. Thickly. "I don't like where this is going, Skul..."
Valkyrie's eyes bulged. "You gave Sanguine the bloody God-Killers?"
Ghastly by now had stood up, and was looking at Tanith. Tanith faltered under the pressuring looks of her friends, and looked at her feet.
Valkyrie was shaking her head. "He knows I'm Darquesse, and he has the God-Killers."
"No he hasn't!" Tanith said, exasperated, "I melted them!"
Ghastly, from his corner of the cell, raised an eyebrow. "And you trusted him with them?"
She paused, not knowing how to respond. Skulduggery sighed and looked at them all. "Well, it looks as If we're in a bit of trouble. We're going to have to get out of here in order to kill him before he uses them on Valkyrie. Or uses them at all."
Valkyrie watched Ghastly turn around and grip one of the metal bars surrounding them, and he tried pulling the bar inwards. He gritted his teeth with the effort, but he got no results. He looked back at Skulduggery and shrugged. "Plan B?"
The hints of a grin formed on Tanith's lips. "That was a pretty sucky plan A."
Valkyrie laughed and Ghastly rolled his eyes, but didn't stop the small smile forming on his face. From the opposite side of the cell, Skulduggery spoke. "Well, a plan is coming to mind, yes." He looked directly at Tanith, and cocked his skull at an amused angle. "And I'm pretty sure you're not going to like it."
Tanith stared at Skulduggery, blinked, and when the realization dawned on her, she groaned.
Tanith watched the Texan walk in, an unsettling smile playing on his lips. For once, his suit appeared clean, and on his waist was a gun holder. As he approached, she stood up away from the bars, narrowing her eyes. Billy-Ray Sanguine stopped walking a bit in front of the cell, and he took off his sunglasses, revealing the black holes where his eyes should be. "Enjoying the hospitality, love?" He said in that rough voice of his.
She narrowed her eyes further, and didn't respond. Behind her, Ghastly and Valkyrie were asleep. Skulduggery was meditating.
Sanguine raised an eyebrow. "What, really? I even got heatin' put in here n' all."
"Why have you got us like this? For once we haven't actually done anything against you." She said lowly, as not to awake the others.
His smile faded. "What the hell do you think?"
Tanith felt her resent for him grow, but she pushed it away. "Why," She murmured, grinning, "Are we getting jealous now?"
His eyes narrowed a very slightly, but she still noticed. "Me? Jealous of that scarred thing?"
There was nothing more she wanted to do than gorge his eyes out, knowing how badly that would've hurt Ghastly, but she didn't give in. "Why should you be? It's not like he has an advantage over you."
Sanguine frowned. "He doesn't?"
Tanith laughed, but quietly. "If anything, you've got the upper hand. I was engaged to you, for God's sake." She stepped closer to the bars, so that her chest was leaning against them. "That plus you have hair." She watched him raise an eyebrow. "Gorgeous hair. Did I never tell you that?"
"No. No you did not." The edges of his mouth were pointing into a smirk.
"Wow, that's odd. Even for me." She said, her eye lids half closed. The way she smirked, the way her hair fell over her eyes, the way she was leaning against the cell bars... She saw the edges of his mouth were pointing into a smirk.
He slowly put his sunglasses back on, and when they were back covering the places where his eyes should be, she could see her reflection in the glass. "It's odd, now is it? I don't recall you complimentin' me a whole lot."
Tanith bit her lip, and looked ashamed. "I did call you hot sometimes, though, right?"
Sanguine chuckled, and stepped towards her. Her face was half-way through the bars, and her lip was still being bit playfully. Her hands were holding the bars at mid height.
"Perhaps you did," he murmured, that smirk not leaving his face.
She smiled that irresistible smile of hers, and pressed herself even more so into the bars. Her chest was pushed into them, making her breasts look bigger than they actually were. His head moved fractionally down, and she chuckled.
He was close to her now, little more than a hand's length away from her. She closed her eyes slowly and she leaned in, and her lips met his. She felt him kiss her back, and she deepened the kiss. One of her hands reached up to his shirt collar, which she gripped through the bars. His hands found her waist, pressing her into him a little more.
Tanith pulled away, and she looked into those sunglasses of his and grinned. Her other hand, which wasn't gripping his shirt collar, moved downwards. She never took her eyes off his, and from the corners of her eyes she saw his smirk broaden.
Instead of the gripping pressure Sanguine expected on his groin, however, he heard a very small click. A gun, click.
Sanguine's head jerked down, and in his one moment of not focusing, Tanith's leg shot up upwards between the bars, and kicked him violently between the legs. He howled in pain and Tanith whirled back, threw Sanguine's gun to Skulduggery, who had leapt upwards from his sitting position on the floor. Valkyrie and Ghastly jumped up as Skulduggery shot the hinges of the cell open, and they strode out of the cage.
Ghastly darted to Sanguine, who was wheeling around, his teeth gritted in obvious pain. He threw a punch into Sanguine's gut and he yelled out, clutching the area of impact. He was grabbed by the shirt collar and thrown into the same cell that dampened their powers, making any chances for escape impossible.
Valkyrie felt her magic return to her, and it made her fingertips tingle. She grinned at Tanith and Tanith grinned back.
"You've made a big, big mistake, Sanguine. Really huge. Didn't anyone ever tell you?" Skulduggery said lowly.
"Tell me what?" Sanguine spat, trying standing up straighter.
"There is one thing you never put in a trap. If you're smart, if you value your continued existence, if you have any plans of seeing tomorrow there is one thing you never ever put in a trap." Skulduggery said, his voice in a dangerous tone.
Sanguine's glasses had been knocked off in the confrontation, making his feared expression most visible. "Yeah? And what's that?"
From behind the skeleton detective, Tanith and Ghastly glanced at Valkyrie, who had her eyebrow raised at Skulduggery.
Skulduggery raised the gun to Sanguine's head, and said, "One thing you never put in a trap, Sanguine," before pulling the trigger.
"Me."