Skulduggery – Crow

Anton – Bear

Ghastly – Panda

Dexter – Wolf

Saracen – Weasel

Erskine – Snake

Solomon – Raven

Chapter 38

"Valkyrie?" Fletcher asked.

Valkyrie sighed and looked over at him. "What do you need?"

He glanced at the floor and back to her. "I just wanted to say I'm sorry. For teleporting you somewhere different to what I said, and for keep asking you out and saying stuff when you said not to."

She smiled at him, relieved. "Thank you. I appreciate that."

He smiled back lightly. "I didn't mean to upset you. I was talking to Saracen last night – he said that I might have scared or upset you doing that. I mean, I don't think you were scared, nothing seems to scare you, but I sort of saw that you could have been." He shrugged embarrassedly. "I'm just sorry. I wasn't thinking it through."

Valkyrie put her book down and smiled at him properly. "And this has nothing to do with the shouts and screams I heard yesterday?"

"Err," he laughed nervously. "You heard that?"

"Yep. So did most of Asia."

"Oh. Err, well, Dexter told me to tell Skulduggery what I did. Since he's in charge of me or whatever now."

"Oh. I didn't know he was home last night."

"Um, yeah, that's what I was asked to do. Skulduggery wants to see you downstairs."

"Oh," Valkyrie said, taking a deep breath. Taking Tanith's phone, she sent a quick text to Nadia explaining what she was doing and hid it under the pillow. "Where is he?"

Valkyrie was sent to the dining room where everyone but Fletcher and herself was sat. Fletcher wasn't invited, but Valkyrie took her usual seat.

"Hi," she said, looking around the faces. They were all serious. Finally, she looked up at Crow. In front of him was her phone but she avoided looking at it. "What's happening?"

He cleared his throat. "Valkyrie, we had a talk last night."

"I might have heard some of that."

"And this morning we resumed. Our family have asked–" Valkyrie noticed Tanith smile a little at the casual inclusion of herself in their family "–that I lift your punishment. As it is, you have done roughly two months punishment of the four I gave you. I do know you have been using the house phone as well as Tanith's. I also know you have left the property on one visit to Nadia. And that you have been watching television in the day and evening. But, despite the fact you were left with relatively little supervision and what you were left with was more immature than yourself–"

"Hey!" Weasel frowned at him.

"Despite that, you have acted responsibly and better than I have."

Valkyrie nodded. She wasn't going to pretend it wasn't true.

"You're academic learning, which I thought was going to the wayside, has gotten so much better in some subjects you are up to a year ahead of the material you would be doing in school. Although you have left your dance and swimming clubs, you have kept up with your dance and all other physical training despite having no reason to do it. You have helped around the house. You have been gracious. You have been mostly obedient, and for you, it is as good as fully obedient. I really expected you to be out the doors immediately. You proved me wrong."

"I know."

He nodded and slid Valkyrie's phone over the table to her. She pulled it to her and left it on the table in front of her.

"I think you've had enough punishment. But I understand that you might not want to return to work with me. I have not acted… I have been intentionally ignoring you for weeks because I was upset, and you did not deserve my anger or upset over something so insignificant. You did nothing wrong, it was me who had trust issues, not you who could not be trusted. I apologise."

Valkyrie grinned. "It's okay."

He tilted his head. "It is okay?"

"Yes."

He hesitated. "Okay."

"So how are you?"

"I'm fine… I'm wonderful. I just completed a case on child kidnaps. No children were harmed."

"Not even mentally?"

He hesitated some more. "No?"

"Emotionally?"

"...No?"

"Unlike me when you punished me and didn't speak to me for weeks? Like when I was attacked by the Diablerie all by myself and you never said a single fucking word to me?"

He slumped. "I really am sorry Valkyrie. I thought I was doing the right thing."

"Of course you do."

"I did. I don't think that now."

"You can prove you mean it if you want."

He went to agree, and then asked the others to leave. When they were gone, she continued. "You need to work out whatever's going on with… this. You need to not only stop treating me differently but also work out the source of the problem. You need to work out what is going on with Solomon. You need to make yourself better. Even if it takes years of trying and a lot of heartache, you need to do this."

He sighed and rubbed a hand over his skull. "I know," he said quietly. "But every time I think about it I get so angry. I just want it to stop but I don't know where it will lead me."

"Perhaps it isn't the about Solomon or the situation," Valkyrie suggested. "Maybe you're angry at yourself. And that makes you not want to face these problems."

He stood, and they went in for a hug. They held each other tightly and Valkyrie felt her life just go right. It was all better with Crow in it.

"Come on," he said, standing back. "I found a case I thought you might like."

"What is it?"

"You'll see," he said.

.*****.

"'It'll be fun,' he said," Valkyrie panted out. "It's fucking not."

She threw herself on the floor and the vampire shot overhead, using its claws to throw itself around to face her. She scrambled up and summoned a fireball, throwing it immediately into its face, but it just shook the fire off. It gave Valkyrie just a moment to start running though, and when the vampire was on her tail she used the air to push herself onto the top of the building again.

The vampire jumped after her, but she was ready, shooting it back with purple electricity. That shook it but simply not enough. She rushed forwards and punched its nose, making it roar, and then kicked its chest, pushing it off the edge of the building.

She looked over at Crow. He had a vampire problem of his own, one was shot dead at his feet but the other one was rushing to attack him every few moments and Crow was casually pushing it back with wind every time. It looked really, really angry. Crow was on a database, trying to find out what an escaped convict had been trying to find. It was taking a really, really long time.

Before the vampire had even touched the ground below, Valkyrie set off in the other direction, jumping from small-town roof to roof, listening to the vampire run alongside her on the ground. She cursed in her head, hoping none of the little houses had security cameras.

She almost screamed in frustration when she saw the sea – it was way further away than she thought. There was nothing she could do though and had to use her air manipulation skills to launch herself as far as she could, and she flew through the air onto the road ahead, putting several metres between herself and the monster behind her. There were just the rocks now. She pushed herself despite her badly burning legs, jumping from rock to rock, the vampire getting more and more dangerously close. It got her then. Its claw hooked her coat and she was pulled to a halt. It took a moment to lick its lips and Valkyrie put her hands on its chest and pushed.

It cried out as it hit the sea below them and Valkyrie let out a sigh of relief. She jogged back to Crow and found he had killed the second vampire and was reading something on the computer. He wasn't on the roof itself – there was a roof extension, a box with double doors they had broken into. Three vampires had shown up, but they had yet to find out why.

"What did you find?" Valkyrie asked, stepping into the office.

"I think he was looking at the information of his daughter," Crow said quietly, reading the screen. "This database is illegal in itself, so we need to find the owner, but we know who that is at least. It's the same as the records in the Sanctuary, but on a database like this it is obviously more dangerous. Already a criminal has found it and read it through, so obviously more people have for him to know about it, and who knows what they know that should be top security. I did try to find information on some things, like where Meritorious lives, but it doesn't have that."

"At least there's that. Do you think he's going to visit his daughter then?"

Crow shook his head and turned off the database, yanking some important looking wires apart. "In the seventies, Boris Morgans was a drug dealer. He got high on his stock one day with friends and they all abused his then seventeen-year-old. When he came to, he found all his friends had left him messages telling how much they enjoyed the party and his daughter black, blue and tied to the radiator. He hid her in the basement for three days before her mother blasted the door down and got her free. They came to us, the Dead Men. They stayed with us for a week while we tracked him down. He killed a few people on the way to escaping so he was put in for a hundred and sixty years or so."

"That's horrible," Valkyrie said, looking over at the ocean. "And now he's escaped. Is he seeking revenge then?"

He sighed. "To be honest, I have no idea." He jumped off the side of the building and Valkyrie followed. They got in the car some streets away and then he spoke again. "He could be trying to apologise. His therapist, who handed his files over to the Sanctuary when it was reported he had escaped, claimed he had days where he was lucid and regretful and spent hours crying he hurt his child, that he begged and fitted he wanted to see her and make it right. And other days he was taken over by grief and wanted to punish her. So he could have escaped in either mood and be spending the time after in the other. We just can't know."

"So, not only is he likely on drugs right now, he's additionally insane without them. Sounds like a great time," Valkyrie said, sighing. "Does the daughter live close?"

"No, she moved to France to help her grandparents some years ago," Crow recalled. "She kept us updated. She was a nice girl, I remember. Her mother wasn't the best lady either, but she did try. Last I heard, she was dating a nice man down the street from her so with any hope, we can capture her father without her ever knowing and not put her on any type of setback."

Valkyrie nodded determinedly.

They set off to France immediately, trying to get ahead of Morgans who they believed to be on a boat. They had already contacted some other detectives at the Sanctuary and Valkyrie had got to speak to them. They had been sent away from the docks – Crow got the tip-off from a kind-of-criminal he wouldn't talk about, not the same detectives watching the docks – to look at the man owning the database. They arrived in France with time to spare thanks to the jet they took and ran immediately to get a cab over to Roche-sur-Yon where the daughter lives.

They bunked down in the main street they expected Morgans travel through, picking up a drink for Valkyrie on the way.

"I hate this," Valkyrie complained, before gasping and getting her phone out.

'How are you? Guess where I am?' She sent to Nadia.

"I know. But at least it's pretty here. And you can talk to Nadia. How is she by the way? You saw her recently," he stated.

Valkyrie nodded. "We got dinner with Wolf, Tanith and Fletcher. He still hasn't got that I'm dating her, but he apologised this morning. And yeah, she's good. Very happy to see me. I think she's looking forward to the Sanctuary party. Have you got a date for that by the way?"

Crow looked at her. "Valkyrie, I don't date."

"You could date."

"Maybe I don't want to."

"But maybe you should."

"But maybe I don't like anybody."

"But maybe you're not looking hard enough."

"But maybe I just hate everyone."

"But maybe you need to let it go."

"But maybe I don't want to."

Valkyrie looked at him and he put his head in his hands. Valkyrie looked over the street while he tried not to think about it and thought it over. "Crow, I want to be just like you when I'm older."

He groaned. "What?"

"I mean it. I want to be as strong and as loyal and as smart as you are. But you need to get rid of this anger because you are hurting yourself and holding yourself back. I would appreciate that. I sort of have life plans and that sort of anger will mess them up, so you know," she shrugged. "Tick tock."

He didn't say anything back, they just looked out the car until they saw a terrified man in a van speed past them. They drove after it in their rental car and Crow sped past it, slowing down and forcing the can to a stop. Inside, the man was shouting and screaming, and there was a bang.

"Shit," Valkyrie swore and jumped out the car before they had come to a complete halt.

She saw the man was looking in horror at his stomach, blood seeping from it where he had been shot from behind. A man came out of his house across the street. "Call the police, he's been shot!" She shouted. He nodded. Thank goodness he could speak English.

She went to pull open the back and the doors were thrown open in her face. She fell back on her arse, holding her suddenly bleeding nose.

Valkyrie heard Crow begin running down the street after the escapee and she pulled herself to her feet and looked in the back of the van. There was a gun he had dropped, a bottle filled with pee and a sandwich wrapper.

Valkyrie jumped in, grabbed the gun, put it in the back of her trousers and ran off after Crow and Morgans. She found them brawling in an alleyway and got the gun out and pointed it at Morgans. "Put your hands on the ground!"

Morgans growled and fought with Crow harder to get away. "Shut the fuck up!"

At least she knew he was in angry mode. "Put your hands on the ground or I'll shoot!"

The man threw himself off Crow and they squared off. "Tell your bitch to fuck off," Morgans said.

Crow crooked his head. "I'll ask you kindly not to talk about my daughter like that to her face."

Morgans, a thin, dark-skinned man with dreadlocks and a lot of tattoos, gave Crow an incredulous look. "Really? Daughter? I might not be the best dad but what the fuck dude? How'd that," he said, pointing a slack finger at Crow, "make all that?!"

Crow sighed and used the wind to knock the man back into the wall. He hit it with a thud and fell to his hands and knees. Valkyrie and Crow blocked the man in.

"Boris Morgans, you are under arrest for holding a mortal hostage, illegally going over the border, attempted murder and breaking out of prison," Crow said. "Now, are we going to do this the nice way or the hard way?"

He let out a hollow laugh. "Is that what you asked her Mama?"

Crow kicked him in the face and he blacked out.

"He was a nice man," Valkyrie grinned, putting the safe on and the gun in the back of her trousers again.

"You're only meant to do that when you have a shirt to cover it," Crow said, referring to the gun and hauling a handcuffed Morgans over his shoulder. Sirens wailed in the distance.

"I don't have anywhere else for it."

"You're not meant to have one, that's the point. Now hurry up."

Aww, they're friends again! And guess what happened to me? I got engaged! So you know I'm so excited Valkyrie will be doing the same in five chapters or so haha! :)