Skulduggery – Crow
Anton – Bear
Ghastly – Panda
Dexter – Wolf
Saracen – Weasel
Erskine – Snake
Solomon – Raven
Chapter 54
After the jealous wave of Crow not balancing his time, Valkyrie and Crow came up with a nice deal where Valkyrie went on once less case a week so that Crow and Raven could spend time together. And that one day, or duration of a case if it was a big one, she would spend on school work so she didn't get behind and have to spend days out without wanting to in order to catch up. It was a nice agreement since Valkyrie could see an excited and happy Crow instead of an angry man holding onto the past. It made Valkyrie wonder if some of that anger at Serpine had been for the man causing him to lose a lifelong friendship as well as the obvious murdering of loved ones. Plus she could choose the day and if a weekend fitted the schedule of criminal activity, she could spend time with Nadia.
So they spent the weeks like that – days working him harmony with Crow, evenings with family and nights with Nadia, or rather, her phone. And the late nights with… Nadia in her mind. And Nadia often knew it. They hadn't quite progressed to talking about it with each other but were instead playing a game of knowing what the other was doing whilst never saying it. It was exhilarating and Valkyrie felt herself get more excited in their relationship for each night instead of just for the next time seeing each other – though she was still excited to spend time with her of course. She was getting more comfortable with the idea of moving forwards but honestly knew she was too embarrassed to dare say anything yet.
That was her boundary, she had decided. When she wasn't embarrassed about the idea anymore, she was ready to move forward. Nadia was the usual confident and calm and didn't push Valkyrie at all, except maybe with the pictures. Still no real nakedness, but more than Valkyrie needed to imagine. She was certainly enjoying playing with Valkyrie like that.
Valkyrie's fifteenth birthday passed in a flurry of cards, presents and a theatre performance she saw with Nadia, and then Nadia's sixteenth birthday passed two months later even quicker, and then Christmas with the massive Christmas tree they tepeed on Christmas morning for the hell of it. That had turned into wrapping each other in toilet rolls and opening presents as Mummies.
It was the New Year party, snowy and cold, that the mess began.
Valkyrie hadn't been there, just Wolf and Weasel, but they had called and Fletcher teleported Valkyrie and Crow over. He left quickly, barely saving himself from being decapitated.
"What's going on?" Valkyrie shouted over the noise and then got her answer when a vampire flew into a man and ripped his neck out. "They're using the serum!"
"Good, they're more vulnerable!" Crow shouted, shooting one in the face. "Try to arrest any not covered in blood or murdering, the rest can be killed."
Valkyrie nodded to herself and jumped into the fray, clicking fire into her hands and throwing it at one whose hair caught fire. The vampire screamed and ran at Valkyrie wildly, letting her know the young woman was a new vampire who'd been told that all a vampire wanted is to kill and drink blood, making her very easy to trick with her own fighting skills. As expected, when the female vampire got to her, Valkyrie flipped the girl over her hip and as she was covered in the blood of her victims, she stomped on her face twice and the girl's nose must have broken and busted in badly. She stopped moving.
Another one pounced on Valkyrie's back immediately and very nearly bit her – Valkyrie had been experimenting with purple energy with Wolf though and charged her whole body, the purple electric jumping on her skin. The vampire convulsed but it only made him hold her tighter and Valkyrie couldn't push him off, even when she body slammed him to the floor. She stopped the magic but it did nothing for his grip which was now locked tightly.
She rolled over and pulled herself onto her knees, the man clinging on and hissing in her ear, his dribble dripping on the floor. She flipped and his arms flew off her when she landed on him the second time, and she quickly stood and nearly hit him in the face before she was tackled by Wolf and a vampire flew over their heads.
"We need to get this finished!" Wolf shouted, throwing his magic at someone and then standing. Valkyrie scrambled up and kicked someone in the face.
"How many are here?" She shouted to him.
"At least a hundred! All are using serum!"
Fuck, fuck, fuck – "Why?" Valkyrie screeched.
"What?"
"Why are they using serum?"
Wolf punched a male vampire so hard they were instantly knocked out and looked at her. "You're the detective!"
She nodded and ducked so Wolf could punch a massive vampire with bloodshot eyes in the nose. "Why are they here?"
Wolf kicked the vampire into another and they got distracted ripping each other apart, giving the two a chance to run off before they were remembered. "I don't know Cub, the party was fine, we were only halfway through the countdown when they attacked."
"I don't think it matters when in the countdown they attacked!" Valkyrie snarled as she used her flip knife – not the Sanguine one that possessed Kenspeckle had used on her months ago, that had been destroyed – to stab one covered in blood and brains in the eye. "Just why!"
"I don't know!" Wolf said, pulling a fire alarm to turn on the sprinklers. There was a sudden shout of shock as the frozen cold water splashed down. "I haven't seen a leader."
Valkyrie nodded and they barrelled into the back dance room, each tackling a person to the ground – Wolf had Samuel, Valkyrie had Mercy.
"Oh," Valkyrie sneered down at the woman. "You."
The lady sneered back and they began grappling on the floor, rolling and twisting, Valkyrie getting an elbow to the face but then holding the arm in place and biting the woman's forearm as hard as possible. Mercy screamed and kneed Valkyrie between the legs and Valkyrie let her go quickly.
Mercy stood and backed away from Valkyrie. Valkyrie scrambled up. "Why are you attacking here?" She shouted.
"We can't get to the Sanctuary," she snarled. "All that security was too much for Samuel's new vampire babies, so we came for the next best thing."
"The party?" Valkyrie asked, looking around quickly. Mercy ran off, and Valkyrie let her, finally seeing the plan.
The Desolation Engine.
She remembered now – she hadn't before. When the Remnant infested Kenspeckle had tortured her, he had talked and talked and talked, so much Valkyrie had forgotten in the whirlwind of pain and fear. He said he had made the Desolation Engine, the bomb the Dead Men had retrieved before it had been set off at the games by the suicidal Foe's Gang. They had barely gotten it and deactivated it. But he had made a second, or rather, had fixed an original before Valkyrie had woken, the one that had been taken before she had woken and had only heard about. It had been hidden away by them, she guessed, until this moment.
She had just been so distracted by what he was doing and the emotional recovery after she hasn't so much as thought of what he had said.
Thurid Guild was holding the Desolation Engine and it was red and bubbling. If Guild let it go, or it was forced from his hands, it would go off and destroy everything for miles around them.
"Guild!" She shouted, pushing into a vampire and stabbing it in the face twice and once in the neck to get it down. "Don't let go of that bomb!"
"I won't!" He snarled, staring at it with horror. "Cain! Get my wife and daughter and leave! Get the teleporter!"
Valkyrie looked over from slamming a very young, maybe fifteen-year-old, vampire into the ground and shackled him to a doorknob. She took out her phone and hid behind a table and called Fletcher. It rang almost to the end and then he picked up.
"Valkyrie, I'm kind of–"
"There's a bomb I need your help!" She shouted through the phone.
"Just a moment–"
"NOW!" She screamed, and then had to suddenly fight off a vampire, an older, more experienced one, and accidentally used her phone to smash his head in – the only thing that broke was her phone. He snarled and batted her over the table with a strong swipe of his hand and Valkyrie shouted as she was thrown roughly away. Suddenly the alarms went off but Valkyrie had no time to wonder what that one was for as that vampire threw the whole table at her.
She rolled over the floor quickly, feeling like a child as she did, and then used her elemental magic to throw a fireball at him as she shuffled back on her butt. He batted that away too and Valkyrie used her necromancy to slice him but it had almost no power to it and she felt her heart jump as the panic began and he bared his teeth and –
Another vampire suddenly barrelled into him, the two of them going down in a tangle of fangs and limbs. Valkyrie didn't so much as look again, she just got up and ran, looking for Crow or Wolf.
She found Crow in the hallway with Fletcher who was incredibly pale and had a severely bleeding nose.
"What happened to him?" She asked quickly.
"Anti-teleportation wards," Crow answered. "He got in but it gave him a shock. He won't be able to get back out."
"Fuck," Valkyrie said. "Guild has the Desolation Engine."
"But we destroyed–"
"He made a second one, I didn't remember until I saw it," Valkyrie explained quickly, leading them through the slowly growing layer of vampire bodies on the ground. They all had blood on from killing each other and the fighting guests, so every move risked them slipping and it was so very easy to die when you were pinned to the floor so she was very careful. She heard Fletcher swear and throw up and Crow jumped out the way and let him fall. He joined Valkyrie in seeing Guild instead. "Can you get some shackles off if I cover you?"
"Yes," he said, seeing Guild's little girl. He got out his set of lock picks and got to work, they were too complicated for Valkyrie. She looked around, but Wolf had killed almost all of them and the Cleavers were rounding up the living and injured guests to make it easier. It still didn't help their predicament.
"What should I do?" She asked, looking around.
"Call the Grand Mage," Crow asked. "Get someone who can defuse the bomb."
"It can't be," Valkyrie ground out. "I remember Kenspeckle – possessed Kenspeckle – talking about it, he made it modified. It was meant to be the one they used at the football game but the Remnant made them the other way around for its amusement. They had to use the original design and send it ahead. This one will only detonate when it leaves Guild's hands. And he has to let go of it eventually."
The girl let out a whine and started to cry. Her mother started to coo to her, trying to calm her down and Valkyrie got extremely guilty for being too open about the situation around her. She was just a little girl.
She thought about the situation quickly and knew what to do. "Crow, I need your phone."
"Left pocket."
She got his phone out and quickly found Kenspeckle's number. They had seen each other several, brief times since he was possessed and herself tortured, but never for her own treatment and never for long. It made her too anxious. But this was more than her, this was a ten-year-old kid that was sobbing because her daddy was going to kill her and there was nothing he could even do about it.
It rang out and Valkyrie called a second time, which was picked up on the first ring. "Hello?" Said Civet.
"Civet, it's Valkyrie Cain!" She said. "I need Kenspeckle to come to the Sanctuary New Year party in the K Club Hotel in Kildare."
"Oh! Let me get him – Doctor! It's Valkyrie on the phone, it's an emergency!"
"Is she alright?" She heard Stentor say in the background.
"I'm fine," she said.
"She says she's fine," Civet relayed to his husband. "Doctor, there–"
"I heard you the first time!" Kenspeckle said briskly, snatching up the phone. "Valkyrie, how can I help you?"
"The Desolation Engine – I forgot it even happened until I saw it, there's a second one, I completely forgot, the Remnant made you make it with modifications, it's about to go off!"
"What do you need me to do?" He said after a moment's silence.
"Can you deactivate it? I don't remember anything about a time addition, just when it leaves Guild's hands."
"Elder Guild has the bomb?"
"Yes, his wife and kids here too. There were loads of vampires too but we got them."
"Vampires?" He said in a slightly higher voice. Then he coughed quickly. "It's no matter, I will be there as soon as I can. Just do not let anyone touch that bomb. Have everyone in a nine-mile radius evacuate. I just need to collect some things."
"Thank you," Valkyrie said, taking a breath. She let it out and continued, feeling like something was coming off her chest. "I mean that. Thank you for helping. This wasn't your fault or your problem."
He sighed as well. "No, my dear. I may have been forced into making a second bomb, but I made the original and that made it possible. You have no reason to apologise in asking for my assistance. I owe you very much for what you have been through because of me. And don't try to tell me otherwise, I may have been forced but it was still my body and that is enough that I feel responsible. Please allow me to make up for even a small amount of that pain."
Valkyrie nodded, biting her lip harshly. "Thank you Kenspeckle. I'll see you soon."
As soon as he got there, she ran at him and gave him a hug, almost reducing the grumpy man to tears.
Awwwwwwww! It made me so happy to write that! Sorry I haven't been consistant by the way, I had to deal with the kitchen ceiling deciding to rain, but it's all okay now! Hopeuflly I can get back to a chapter a day. A little love in the form of a follow or a simple smily face review will go a long way today :) Thank you for reading
