Skulduggery Pleasant

ankle biter

bites a bit bitter

The two of them were walking down an lane that was just alightened by the street lanterns and it was dark. Witches and vampires grinned from the rooftops, huge webs of spiders were stratching between lanterns, scary looking pumpkins and even gibbets were standing in the front gardens as murders were talking to werewolfes.

Skulduggery Pleasant was happy.

The detective weared nothing but a half century old brown pants, in which his gun was resting. The bentley still was in the garage, but he didn´t mind. His bones were clean and his spinal column looked fantastic.

"You know Valkyrie", he said, "I am happy."

"This is what you told me already a dozen times in the last few minutes. You are half naked. It´s Halloween. You had Deathday, some days ago and ..."

An twelve year old boy dressed as an ninja who was walking around with two twilight vampires, an fat bumblebee, a toilet paper mummy and an sheet ghost just came running towards group had just watched the scary looking team and the two cleavers following them.

"Hey, mister", he said. "Thats an nice costume you´ve got there."

"Thanks young man. Wait a hundred years and you´ll look the same!"

Skulduggery hold up his hand for an high five. As the boy hit it, it fell into pieces and the boy run away screaming. His friends laughed.

"Great. Who's the one to help you picking up you´re fingertips? Right, it´s me."

Valkyrie wasn´t happy. She weared her classical stuff that made her look evil, but in Skulduggerys opinion not gruesome enough for an Halloween costume.

"You should have taken the Alice band with the plastic knife in it. I bought it for you and what is the gratitude? You don´t put it on!"

"I hate Halloween", said Valkyrie,"did you know that Skulduggery?"

"This is what you told me already a dozen times in the last few minutes."

"May it is an protest movement against your unbelievable wiry behaviour."

The detective ignored it. He enjoined the childrens looks that said: "Do you see that skeleton guy over there? He´s got amazing elbows!"

"They don´t look at your elbows", Valkyrie said.

"Pessimist!"

"Realist!"

"Ok stop. Thats stupid because point one, my elbows are amazing and point two, we´re not here for behaving like see that house over there?" he asked her, holding up his finger and showing in a direction.

The bumblebee ringed the bell of the scary looking, and minder decorated old house. A women opened the door and pushed him inside just before he was able to rattle down his quotation.

"We´ll have to hurry", Skulduggery said putting his forefinger where it belonged and running towards the old building.

The whole house looked a little like the home of the simpsons. Valkyrie looked through the big front window. In the living room two black haired kids of the family were playing with the bumblebee, the mother looking at them with a smile.

"What's wrong with them, scared they will amuse him to death?", Valkyrie asked her partner who had forgotten to tell her what was going on because of being to busy with telling her how awesome this night was.

"That window is out of euphemism glass. Don´t let your eyes trick by it and remember we are talking about children of the spider living in there. Inside they could already eat him, without us recognizing."

"So why are we still standing here, orating?"

"We should go in there, shouldn´t we?"

"Come on!", she aid pushing him forwards.

Skulduggery went to the door, ringing.

Family Miller, said the wooden name plate. What an obvious sign, Valkyrie thought.

"Are they from Australia?"

Skuduggery nodded.

"That´s bad, isn´t it"

He nodded again.

"Go back one step", he said and she did like he had said.

"Trick or treat,..."

Skulduggery said with an deep voice, as the woman wanted to open the door.

"...feel my feet,..."

He slammed his boney feet against the wooden door. It landed on the woman and nailed her on the ground. Immidiatly she turned into a spider, which legs pressed against Skulduggerys chest.

"...there´s an fatso you won´t eat!"

He snapped his fingers and brought the burning fist down on her. The arachnohumanoid woman screamed out of anger and Skulduggery flew through the air, holding the door like an surfboard. Pieces of the doorway broke away, as the giant spider made its way outside. She brought three of her legs down, piercing the head of an cleaver. It´s scyth fell to the ground. Valkyrie, who had just evaded the leg by centimetres, took it and lifted it up. Her ring went cold and the shadow wrapped scyth blade sliced to a pair of the spiders hairy limbs.

"Humble yourself!" Skulduggery screamed as an burning piece of wood crashed into the spiders torso. She shrieked, then went silent.

"Call Elder Bespoke and tell him to sent a cleaning team," the detective said, throwing a mobile phone to the remaining cleaver.

Even if all the children around them were laughing and clapping to the great show, an huge arachnoid that wasn´t out of plastic shouldn´t rest on the streets.

Then they looked through the window again. The two kids sat on the ground, tickling the bumblebee.

"Does tickling mean what I think", Valkyrie asked.

"Exactly what you think", he answered the moment the laughs turned into screams.

"You´ll take the window and I´ll go through the door", he said, sprinting away.

"Why do I have to … ah bugger it!", she said. She throw herself trough the window and found herself hanging in a web. The boy crawled towards her, shaking his tiny mouthparts.

"He musnt´t bite you", she heared Skulduggery screaming, who just fought the older giant legged girl, "he´s an redback!"

Then she heared an noise and he was outside.

"This fatso would have given a great meal", the boy, she estimated as two years younger, whispered in her ear, "but your taste will even that."

"Thank you for this nice compliment", Valkyrie joked," but did your mommy never tell you not to play with the food?"

He screwed up his eight eyes and was just about injecting his venom into her venes, as he was hit by a golden candelabrum. The moment he lost his concentration, Valkyrie sliced herself out of the strings and stood on the ground again. The boy jumped towards her, but she was able to duck. The moment he flew over her, she sent a kick in the air, that made him hit the ceiling. Plaster and dust rained down on her.

"We just wanted to scare him a little", the girl said.

"So your fangs just sliced into him by mistake?"Skulduggery asked.

"He looked like a bumblebee!"

"OK, you may be humaneating monster but you´re taste of humor is much better than your taste of food", the detective said, placing a bullet in her abdomen.

"Making it public is not that clever you know", she laughed as dozens of spiders crawled out of her mouth walking towards the costumed kids that watched them. Skulduggery bodychecked her with the extra help of an air breeze. He turned her half around and her forehead hit a pylon. She lost her consciousness.

Skulduggery, unsure if he was lucky or not, runned towards the children.

"The spiders! Watch out for the spiders."

They just kept on laughing.

Skulduggery started an pirouette, that turned out into a mini hurricane with air stripes hanging out of it. With his hat he thought, this all would have worked so much nicer.

The spiders were pulled back by the air, right up to the detctive. Then the air pillar started to burn hot blue. All of the spiders went to ash, that got scattered by the air.

Skullduggery turned around and walked into the house and being a man of honor, he decided to take the door, even if the way through the hole or the broken window would have been shorter.

Connor Miller was a poor husband. As he had entered his car after finishing his work he was sure that his wife had already prepared the dinner. Nobody likes to come home late at Halloween and see his family laying consciousless in the front garden, watched by two figures and his house half destroyed.

He parked his car next to the garage and wanted to get out already, as one of them turned around, recognizing him, making a move with his fingers and letting the rest of its motor oil land on him with a splat.

"I would better not try to mutate", Valkyrie said to him with her nicest voice, snaping on a flame.

"You don´t have any idea of what you´ve done, detectives. He was my son and he was the Messiah of our religion!", the man screamed with tears in his eyes.

"Ah, you´ll get over it. I was a Messiah, once, and Valkyrie here, was one, too."

"I´ll come along with that,"Valkyrie said, lifting shoulders.

"You will pay for what you´ve done Cain and Pleasant, you will suffer! Your children will suffer and your parnets will suffer. We´ll let inhuman pain flow through you and you will..."

Skullduggery and Valkyrie didn´t hear the rest off his frightening threat, cause they we´re already walking away, in the direction they came from.

"Another religion that hates us and wants to see us dead, how impressive."

"Did we do the right thing?", Valkyrie asked, "they were children."

"Children that tried injecting venom inside your body and making your head burst lika a balloon."

"In that point of view, its justifiable."

"What are we going to do now?", she just wanted to ask him, as she saw a mob of people walking towards them. Two mummys leaded the group.

"The Mummy King welcomes you, Valkyrie Cain.", Scapegrace spoke to her trough an megaphone. Then he turned around to the mob. "Are you ready for some undead punches?"

The crowds screams woke up the whole housing estate.

"This is gonna be fun", Valkyrie said, as the first row has already been fallen.