Note: Some copying here

Chapter 226

"VALKYRIE!" Valkyrie looked down and saw Dexter and Erskine looking up at her furiously. She turned her head back to Kitana and saw her flying away into the sky out of sight and growled to herself. "GET THE FUCK DOWN HERE!"

Annoyed, Valkyrie slammed her magic down and her knees almost buckled on impact with the floor. Clenching her fists, she stalked over to the men. "I already know."

"Are you fucking serious? This wasn't supposed to go like this!" Dexter growled, getting in her face. "Do you have any idea how many people could have seen you and Kellaway in the sky, blowing up the school? This has to be the most irresponsible, fucked up thing you've ever done. What were you thinking? And don't think I didn't see you almost flying off to fight her in the middle of the bloody open where anyone could have seen."

"I was trying to stop her," she ground out. "It's not like you were helping me."

"We got the other two, we didn't need to blow up the school for her!" He said, stepping back and running his hands over his head irritably. "Do you have any idea of what you've done? The Supreme Council are looking for any reason to start a fucking war, and you blow up a freaking school? What's your problem?"

"I don't have a problem, I was trying to do my job. Maybe I got carried away in trying to stop her, but she was sending energy lasers that could destroy the whole school in every direction, stopping her wasn't exactly easy. I stopped the lasers hitting the main school. What was I meant to do, let her fly up there and melt everyone she wanted? I had to do something!"

Dexter put his hands over his face and Valkyrie looked away, saw a block of melted plastic on the floor and took a running kick at it. It went sailing through the air and into the broken stage at the other side of the room.

The assembly hall was a mess. The roof was almost entirely gone, scorch marks were burnt into all the walls that were still standing, and through the hallway, the nearest sports hall was almost rubble. Most of it had been done by Kitana in her attempt to fry herself and her brothers, and then she'd taken to the air and Valkyrie had followed, Valkyrie trying to grapple her whilst not getting fried, and Kitana trying to fry her and not get hit by Valkyrie.

Dexter was right when he said the whole thing was a mess. She had stopped them from being killed and she had protected as much of the building as she could.

But it was still bad.

.*****.

"What the hell have you idiots done?" Corrival growled in a low voice when they got close enough to hear each other. The Sanctuary was quiet as everyone was at their desks working madly. They had made sure to make themselves scarce for a few hours to make interviewing Seán slightly easier. Obviously, that hadn't helped Corrival. "Sult's been hounding everyone all day and Strom's throwing his weight around. How did you destroy an entire school?"

"It wasn't the whole school," Valkyrie said in monotone. "It was the gym and music area. Most of the rest of the school was fine and no one got killed but one of the supercharged teenagers, and we got the other boy in shackles. That's the best outcome we could have hoped for."

Corrival glared. "You're lucky there's only one left out there. That'll help with the Supreme Council, but they might use this. This could be what does it."

"We'll deal with that when it comes to it. They'll find a reason somewhere but I promise we did what we needed to. She was in the middle of a speech that was obviously going to end in her killing the teacher and then the other students. If we had been more than five minutes later, it would have been a bloodbath."

"I believe you, Cain, the issue is the Supreme Council never will," Corrival said, swung around and marched them down to the interview room.

Ghastly was there already, sitting with Elsie on a bench chatting amicably.

"When did you get here?" Dexter asked him.

"An hour ago," he said, standing. Elsie did the same. "You caused a bit of a mess."

"Let's not talk about it," Dexter said lowly.

"Are you ready Miss Elsie?" Corrival asked.

"Um, I think so."

Valkyrie, Erskine, Dexter and Corrival stepped away into the observation room to watch. Seán was dressed in dark green overalls all Irish Sanctuary prisoners got before they were given their sentence but had been proved of their crimes, hands in cuffs and strapped to the table. His feet were strapped too to be safe, but Valkyrie was sure that now he was without his magic, Seán was no more dangerous than any other angsty, angry teenager her age.

Elsie came in, heavyset with dark makeup she'd gotten a chance to fix and a clean set of black, ripped clothes. She was pretty, though Valkyrie wasn't entirely sure she was personally attracted to so many face piercings. She walked with nervousness into the room and gave Seán a small smile.

"Hey," Elsie said worriedly.

Seán glared at her. "I should have known you'd be here."

"It's okay," Elsie said, as if used to calming furious animals. "Everything's going to be okay now."

He slouched in his chair but with a confident air. Valkyrie was almost tempted to ask someone to step in immediately. "Really? Are you going to force them to let me go?"

"They only want to help you."

He laughed. It was a nasty laugh. "Does it look like I'm being helped? I'm in handcuffs. I was put in a jail cell."

"Seán, you have to know what you were doing was wrong."

"You're such a coward."

"Please just–"

"Please just," he mimicked. "Do you have any idea how fucking annoying your voice sounds, you ignorant cow? You look like a cow as well, did I ever tell you that? Fat and ugly with no use to anyone but to be used until you're slaughtered. I couldn't stand it when you smiled at me. I wanted to vomit."

The door opened and Seán shut up. Ghastly walked in and Valkyrie began to grin, remembering how he always defended her growing up.

Seán gathered his feet under himself as well as he could and looked at his hands as Ghastly pulled a chair over, letting it drag on the floor. He sat across from him.

"Now then," Ghastly said in the smoothest, softest, quietest speaking voice he had, "you want to talk about ugly, Seán?"

Seán swallowed.

"There are those who have said over the years that I myself am ugly. What do you think?"

Seán gave the slightest of terrified shrugs.

Ghastly leant forward. "Am I ugly, Seán?"

"You… you have scars."

"And do they make me ugly?"

"I don't… I…"

"Well?"

"No. They don't make you ugly."

"So am I not ugly? Am I handsome?"

Seán nodded quickly.

"Am I the most handsome man in the world?"

"Yes."

"Just as I suspected," Ghastly said to Elsie, "this guy doesn't know what the hell he's talking about."

A small smile flickered on Elsie's lips and Ghastly looked back at Seán, his face hardening again.

"She's trying to help you, you idiot. She asked to come in here, to talk to you, to try and get through to you. Because no one else wants to help. You hear an army of people outside this door, begging to be allowed to help you?"

"N-No."

"No. Exactly. Because there isn't one. But Elsie wanted to try, and this is how you repay her? She told us you were a good guy, Seán. That you were decent. Not like Doran. Doran was a psycho. And not like Kitana. She's… she's something else. Elsie told us that you just got carried away a little. The power went to your head. Is that what happened?"

"Yes."

"Did the power go to your head, Seán?"

"Yes."

"Is that why you killed those people?"

"I'm – I didn't…"

"You also killed a few of ours, outside the school. And another sorcerer, a man named Patrick Xebec. He had a wife, did you know that? I bet you didn't. And you killed him."

"No," said Seán. "I didn't. I didn't kill anyone."

"Where's Kitana, Seán?"

"I don't – I don't know."

"Where is she staying?"

"I don't know, I swear.

"Then where were you staying?"

Seán hesitated. "Please… I don't want to–"

Ghastly slammed his fist on the table and Seán flinched. "You don't have your magic in here, Seán. In here, you're just an ordinary boy. You're an ordinary boy in a lot of trouble. It's over for you. You're caught. You've got to help yourself as much as you can because no one apart from Elsie cares about you. Where were you staying?"

Seán swallowed thickly. "A friend's house," he said. "His name's Morgan Ruigrok."

"Don't make up names, Seán."

"He isn't," Elsie piped up quickly, coming to the boy's defence. "I know him. His whole families got weird names. I know where he lives."

Ghastly nodded. "Well, okay then. This is a good start." He got up, walked to the door.

Seán's eyes widened. "Wait! Am I going to get a lawyer?"

Ghastly opened the door and didn't look back. "We have people who can read your mind. Why the hell would we need lawyers?"

Valkyrie, Erskine, Dexter and Corrival met Ghastly and Elsie in the hallway. Valkyrie exchanged some information with Elsie before spotting Strom in the distance and nudging Erskine. Noticing the storm coming their way, Ghastly wrapped an arm around Elsie's shoulders and started leading her away, and the other Dead Men and Valkyrie left Corrival to deal with the problem that was Strom alone.

I know I skipped the fight but, okay, consider that, basically, like, I was just doing this thing, and I got distracted and essentially it's not my fault okay. Blame past me. Not current me.

xQueenValx: Aww thank you for coming back, and sorry school been so annoying, only a few more months and it's over for summer. Hang in there!

FandomWritingBae: I'll send this to you separately so you have a chance of seeing this, but thank you so much for enjoying my writing! I love writing this series and am thinking about it almost constantly even when I am not publishing, I write a sentence most days until the creative juices flow well enough for me to just write and get out a few chapters! :D