Second to last chapter guys! Enjoy!


Valkyrie and Skulduggery sat, side by side in a standard Sanctuary replacement car.

"It doesn't make sense," Valkyrie found herself muttering "We went to the house because that was the administrator's address. But when we questioned him, he said the address was wrong – he lives four streets down. And we cross examined the handwriting of the note – it wasn't his. And now when we do find the real owner of the house, it's in my name. It just doesn't make sense."

"He's in on it." Skulduggery said bluntly.

"The administrator's the traitor?"

"Yep."

"How can you be so sure?"
"He just walked out of the Sanctuary door." Valkyrie turned her head back to face the front and stared. Skulduggery was right. It was exactly seven o'clock, the administrator had just walked out of the Sanctuary doors, and was getting in his car. Valkyrie suddenly felt incredibly stupid. How could she have missed it? Then she glared. The bastard had had something to do with kidnapping her daughter, taking her back to that underground complex. How dare he.

'I know a few torture techniques if you'd like me to share them,' Darquesse said in a dark voice. Valkyrie nodded, thinking her own dark thoughts about the pain she would put him in the first chance she had.

The engine to his car started up and then he pulled out onto the road, driving away at a completely normal pace as a completely normal person would do. A few seconds later, Skulduggery started their car, and began to follow him. A few cars behind, so he wouldn't notice, they stayed on his tail to the outskirts of Dublin and watched as he turned a corner and parked. They missed the corner – deliberately – and parked further along the street, the engine shutting down silently.

Valkyrie got out of the car, gun in hand, heart pounding. They crept to the corner and watched from the shadows as the administrator got out of his own car and brushed himself off with a deep breath, turning to face a plain brown door. He paused for a moment, and then noticed someone moving in the shadows on the path next to the door, and stiffened, as did Valkyrie when the newcomer revealed himself, a smirk on his face, sunglasses gleaming, flicking a razor in his hand. Billy-ray Sanguine.

"Mr Sanguine." The administrator nodded briskly.

"How are you on this fine Irish evenin'?" Sanguine asked brightly.

"I'm not here to talk about health, Mr Sanguine. I have an appointment with the boss. I didn't realise he had a new doorman." Sanguine smirked.

"Oh I ain't no doorman sunshine. You've done a great job, you really have, and big boss sure appreciates it – he wanted me to tell you that. Couldn't have been possible without you. But you're a loose end. And we can't have that now, can we?" All too late the administrator realised what was happening, Sanguine had dashed forwards like a snake, one arm around the administrator's shoulders, the other slicing the razor blade across his neck in a clean swift swipe. Valkyrie's breath hitched. She'd seen the aftermath of hundreds of murders, even (unfortunately) been forced to kill people herself, but as she watched the body slump to the floor, blood pooling from the open wound across the administrator's throat, she was again reminded how brutally horrible murder was.

Sanguine wiped his blade clean on the back of the man's shirt and flexed his arms before stepping over the body and casually knocking on the door. It opened for him instantly, and he stepped inside. After a brief moment, Skulduggery and Valkyrie followed him.

Valkyrie tried to avoid looking at the body as they stepped over it to get to the door. Skulduggery drew his gun, and knocked. The door opened and a pair of red eyes stared out at them. Skulduggery raised his gun and pointed it straight at the doorman's face. Amazingly, the doorman just blinked, and then stepped aside to let them in.

'You do know you're not going to walk out of here alive, don't you?' Darquesse said, almost sounding worried 'This is the most obvious trap I've ever seen! They're prepared for you, they're ready for you. This is it, Val, you know that don't you?' Yeah, yeah she knew that.

They stepped in, past the doorman who was watching them, red eyes gleaming. No other part of the man or creature could be seen – not even an outline of the body, just the eyes.

"Get outside," Skulduggery growled quietly. The doorman blinked, and then did as he was told. Even outside, the shadows seemed to move with him. A necromancer? Skulduggery closed the door on him quietly. The doorman would probably still be watching the door with those blood red eyes. Valkyrie involuntarily shivered. It was like being a child again – scared of the bogeyman under the bed.

Skulduggery tilted his head towards the long corridor they had just entered, and Valkyrie shook off the feeling, walking with him silently. The layout was similar to the first house. It was dark, with no lights and only a few rooms, none of which were boarded up this time, but none held anything important or of value, and a hole in the middle of the floor. Instead of a trapdoor (if that was even real – Valkyrie couldn't remember whether the knock-out dugs she'd been injected with had taken effect by that time), it was a staircase, leading down as if to a basement, although she had the feeling it probably went much further down.

All she could hear was her own breathing. Inhaling, exhaling, inhaling, exhaling, again and again. The staircase went on. She vaguely noticed that it was made of wood. But it was very sturdy. It wasn't just an abandoned staircase, it had been well taken care of. She guessed that if there was light, the staircase would have been very grand. Designed to impress.

Every footstep was like plunging into an abyss of darkness. Only when her foot connected with the next step did she feel remotely safe, but then it was time to step down again, and the feeling repeated itself. The only consolations she had were that Skulduggery was beside her, and her daughters were safe at home.

Her foot didn't connect with the next step, and for a moment she thought she was falling, maybe to her death, before her foot found the floor. She stumbled slightly, and then stood straight. Skulduggery said nothing. The mockery would come later.

There was a line of light coming from underneath a metal door. Skulduggery reached it to, gloved hand closing on the handle, and opened it slowly, just a crack. He paused for a moment, looking through, and then opened it carefully. The corridor before them was empty. Not a guard in sight.

"This is possibly the worst executed trap we've ever walking in on," Skulduggery muttered to himself, stepping through into the corridor. Valkyrie followed him, nodding. The corridor was lit dimly, probably whoever was down here didn't hurt their eyes walking in from a pitch black room. Piping ran along one side of the ceiling, a black circular bolt holding it to the wall on the first corner. A white old fashioned security camera was installed on the wall opposite the piping. Skulduggery held up his hand and then slowly closed his fist. The camera make a snapping sound, and then crumbled. 'Nice use of air,' Darquesse muttered, sounding unwillingly impressed. 'Remind me to try that on a head or two when I get out.'

'You're not getting out', Valkyrie thought in response.

'You're going to die in here Valkyrie, and I'm going to take over when you do.'

'Thanks for that image.'

'You're welcome.' Valkyrie hunched her shoulders slightly and then shook herself off.

They moved over and stood below the piping. There were only two options, left or right. Valkyrie peered around the corner, and then froze at the sound of voices coming from the left. The right was clear, not a single guard. In the distance on the left, a small part of another corridor could be seen, with four guards patrolling along it.

"There's guards on the left," she whispered to Skulduggery.

"Which means they don't want us to go there," Skulduggery muttered. "We should go there. How many guards are there?"

"I saw four. There might be more though."

"Right, let's go then." He took the lead, sticking to the edge of the wall, piping running above his head. As they got closer, Skulduggery taking out another old fashioned security camera, the guards looked more and more like cleavers, except equipped with guns instead of scythes, and with slightly different looking material as their uniforms, as if someone had tried to mimic the cleavers and their result had only slightly differed. Valkyrie only hoped the material wasn't magic proof – otherwise taking them out might be more difficult. Shooting them would make noise, advertise their whereabouts, and if their clothing was protective it wouldn't do anything anyway.

The guards were coming back up on their patrol again. It was now or never.

Skulduggery was the first to move, dashing out and landing a right hook. Valkyrie was close behind, smacking the gun out of the guard's hands and kicking his private area. He buckled with a groan, but Valkyrie had already moved, landing an elbow into the back of his neck and moving onto the next guard who had raised his gun to shoot her. She kicked his legs out from under him, throwing her hands out and pulling at the air. She dragged him towards her across the floor like a bullet and landed a punch to his face and then his stomach. He didn't try to get up again. Valkyrie heard a grunt behind her and turned to look. Skulduggery had taken the last one down. They both stood.

"Come on," he said, hurrying past her "it's only a matter of time before someone comes down here and finds them." Valkyrie nodded and followed him, keeping up, adrenaline pumping through her veins. They crossed another corridor, took out another two guards and moved on. Valkyrie almost ran straight past the next corridor, not even noticing it, but then she paused sure something had caught her eye, and moved back quickly.

"Skulduggery," she called in a whisper, and he came back to her. In front of them no more than two meters away, was a metal door. There was a sign attached to the front of it. CONTROL ROOM.

"Was that what they were guarding?"

"Looks like it," Skulduggery nodded "Come on." They moved forwards silently, and Skulduggery gripped the handle, opening the door slightly. Through the crack Valkyrie could see a vast set of computer screens and half of a large black chair. There was definitely someone sat in it, but Valkyrie couldn't see anything of them.

Skulduggery opened the door silently, gun raised and stepped into the room, moving towards the chair. Valkyrie stepped in behind him, trying not to breathe in case the sound alerted the person in the chair, her own gun raised. She glanced to the computer screens – they looked like security surveillance, monitoring each room and corridor, even where the doorman had been, and outside, where the doorman no longer stood, and all that could be seen was the body of the administrator, still undiscovered by the wider world. They moved closer until the barrel of Skulduggery's gun was pointing right at the back of it.

"Put your hands in the air and turn around," he growled. The door behind them slammed shut. Valkyrie whirled around, prepared to shoot, and saw Billy-ray Sanguine standing by the door, grinning to himself, eyeless sockets like deep pits as he pocketed his sunglasses and flicked his razor in his hand.

"Well," the voice from the chair said, and Valkyrie turned her head back to them to watch as the chair turned around slowly like the villain out of a James Bond film. She was almost surprised that the voice was female.

The chair turned, and the person grinned, dark hair falling over her face, watching with deep brown eyes as Valkyrie froze in shock and then began to tremble.

"Welcome," the person said, leaning back in her chair, "it's good to see you again, Steph." Valkyrie could barely open her mouth as she found herself involuntarily turning away from Billy-ray Sanguine to stare at the person they'd been looking for, the choreographer for the whole thing, the villain, the number 1 Bad Guy. The world seemed to crumble away around her. She let out a choked whisper.

"Alice."