Hello! =

Chapter 9

Skulduggery snapped his head in her direction, a move that would have pulled almost all the muscles in her neck if she tried it.

"Valkyrie! You're alive. But… how'd you give him the slip?" he asked.

She walked up to the cage door, feeling her expression change to show the horror and sickness of what had happened.

When she had been there, he raised the gun, and she screamed. But then he smiled and said "Oh, this isn't for you," and moved the gun, he raised it to the top of his neck and aimed it up, as if into the sky, and shot.

The bullet would have gone through his neck, ripped through the back of his mouth, and torn through the muscle and flesh there, hitting the brain and going through it. The bullet would have fracture the skull, after passing through the brain like a knife, and killing him almost immediately.

When she had recovered from the shock of what she had been to slow to look away from, she had walked back over to the body, using the shadows to search for the gun. When the shadows sent it skidding to her foot, she picked it up and made her slow descent down the stairs. On the way she had faintly remembered the missed call and had stopped outside the door to put the phone back away.

When she told Skulduggery this, without so much detail, he listened intently, and didn't interrupt. When she finished, he stood there for a while, and she asked him her first question, bringing him out of his little zone.

"Why would he do that? I mean, I know that he wouldn't want to be hunted down and shot by you, but he wouldn't have been. You're in this cage. He had the gun," she said. "You couldn't have killed him."

"I'm not too sure. I mean, what an enigmatic thing to do," Skulduggery said mystified. "But that's not on the top of our problems. Firstly, we need to stop this Wane Fiend, and in that, we will stop him from getting whatever these Secrets are. The rest will follow," he said, picking up his hat.

"Um, Skulduggery?"

"Yes Valkyrie?"

"You're still in the cage."

He looked around. "Oh yes. It seems I am. Go to that pad over there on the wall. What does it say?"

She looked at it. There were a few buttons, all encrusted with filth. Above that was a laminated sheet, and she took it down, spat on it and wiped away the dust and blackened filth. It was, as she had thought, a grid saying what each of the buttons was for.

"The first says, 'Lights', the second says, 'Electrocute'," she looked down the list, until she came to the bottom where it said, 'Open doors'. "Ah, here it is. Should I press it?"

"Might as well," came Skulduggery's voice behind her. She pressed it and all the doors screeched open.

Grinning, she walked over to get the strange man chained to the wall out of his cage, but as she walked passed Skulduggery, he wrapped his bony arms around her, giving her a hug. She hugged him back, leaning her head against his rip bones. He was cold, and she could feel the hard shape of the holstered gun next to her forehead, but she didn't mind.

"What's this for?" she said with a light smile in her voice. He let her go and stood back.

"I thought you were dead. I thought that you were actually dead."

She smiled. "I'm not dead. Banal's dead. That guy over there," she gestured towards the man with a knife in his chest," he's dead. You're dead. But I'm not dead."

Skulduggery shook his head and said, "And, yet again, you take all seriousness out of the conversation. I'm trying to have a moment here, and you go off grinning and telling me who is and isn't dead," he said it with his head cocked at one angle, and she knew he was grinning. She walked into the other man's cage with a laugh.

Valkyrie sat on one of the chairs in the medical bay, watching two of the doctors try and fix the man called C. She had been sent in there to help them, because he kept on kicking up a fuss, making it impossible to heal him. When she had walked into the room she'd had to save Doctor Nye from him, even though it was very amusing. She had seen many of the doctors and patents laughing at it.

She had been sitting there, on that plastic chair, for quite a while, but had spent a bit of time questioning C. He had said an awful lot, but failed to give her more than a few useless facts. She had been told that he would be treated for his insanity later on.

Talking to Skulduggery through text for at least an hour had been her only way of amusement as he always wrote things as though he was saying them, making it ridiculous and difficult to understand, but he had suddenly stopped. Someone walked up behind her, grabbed her shoulder and made her cry out, just as she was about to call him.

It was Skulduggery. Hitting his arm she said, "What the hell? That was unnecessary."

"Maybe, but the look on your face was incredibly amusing to see."

"So why are you her then?" she asked, glaring at him.

"I've arranged to have Variance in the interrogation room. He should be there by the time we get there," he said, and started to walk.

She matched his stride and asked, "What exactly are you hoping to get out of him this time? Have you even done anything about the cat yet?"

"As a matter of fact, yes. It shall be my secret weapon against him. After, you can keep her if you like."

"Keep Bell? Skulduggery, I hate cats. They smell, and get fur everywhere, and get in your way, breed like gremlins, and plot against you and the world," she matter-of-factly said. "One day, we might be fighting a war against cats. Forget mass murderous serial killers. We'll be fighting hairballs."

"Define 'mass murderous serial killers' please."

"Serpine, Mevolent, Hitler. The general lot," she replied.

"Oh, Ok then."

She waved her hand, as if get rid of the thoughts she was having. "But that's not the point. What's the cat got to do with anything? What's so important about it?"

"Don't worry. You'll understand. And if you don't then I'll tell you later."

"Can't you just tell me please?"

"No. Because that would ruin the surprise, now wouldn't it?" he said, right before turning around the corner to the interrogation rooms. There was a man outside one of them, and he took Skulduggery a little way down the hall to discuss something, probably something stealthy, and secret, and something she will not like. Nevertheless, she left them there to discuss, and only raised an eyebrow as he walked back, alone and opened the door.

She walked in after him, but instead of sitting down, she stood by the door. Skulduggery sat, put his elbows on the table and entwined his fingers. He looked at Variance. Variance looked at him. They watched each other for a few moments.

"What do you want this time?" Variance asked, breaking the silence.

"We need to know where it was you were going to conduct the getting of these Secrets, say you get hold to the Jug," Skulduggery said plainly.

"Don't know," he said, smiling.

"That's the worst, most obvious lie I've heard in a long time. And I've heard some really bad lies," Skulduggery replied.

"That's because it is a lie, and I wanted it to come across that way. It's supposed to mean, 'Yes, of course I know. But I'm not going to tell you'."

"We went through this last time. You know the rules."

"I'm not going to tell you."

"Valkyrie open the door. They know what to do," Skulduggery said.

She arched he eyebrow but did as he said. Nothing happened for a moment, and then the man came in, shutting the doors behind him. He was holding a cardboard box. Was he really going to do what she thought he was about to do?

The man placed the box on the table, just in front of Skulduggery. He stood back respectfully as Skulduggery opened the box. He put his hand in and brought out the cat.

Bell, as it happened, was one of the most fluffy, ugly cats she had ever seen. She looked like she'd run into a brick wall, and then been electrocuted. She had a brown-yellow coat, which looked awfully like sick. Disgusting creature, she thought.

"Do what we say," Skulduggery said, "or I'll kill the cat."

Variance faltered and then smiled and frowned at the same time. "You wouldn't kill a child. Why kill a kitten?"

"To get what I want, that's why," he replied in a serious voice, taking his gun out.

Variance lost the smile completely. The Detectives could almost see the gears working in his head. Tell them, cats safe. Don't tell them, cat dies. Obviously, he really did love the hairball, because he suddenly bursts out with:

"Its on a roof top! I can write down the address if you want. Just don't hurt Belly. Please," he begged eyes wide. What a weirdo, Valkyrie thought.

"Thank you," Skulduggery said, putting the gun away. The other man got some paper and a pen out of a pocket and handed it to the prisoner. He wrote down an address and handed over the paper. The man took it and gave it to Skulduggery. "Good, good," he said, and put the cat in the box by the scruff of the neck. He got up and left, the other man holding the box, and both the man and Valkyrie followed him out.

Valkyrie followed Skulduggery down the hall, but the other man walked away with the box into another room.

"Skulduggery?"

"Yes Valkyrie?"

"You wouldn't have really shot the kitten would you?" Valkyrie asked him, frowning.

"I thought you hated cats?"

"I do," she said defensively. "But it would have made a really big mess, and, really, what a waste of a bullet, and… and…" she faulted.

"Whoa. That's an extensive list you have there," Skulduggery said, patronising her.

She hit his arm, hard. "Shut up. Where is this roof anyway?"

"Well, usually, roof tops are up high and-"

"Oh, my God. Skulduggery Pleasant, if you don't give me a straight answer right now I'll kill you."

"It's not far from here, I promise," he paused for a moment. "And you do realise that I'm already dead, right? So you couldn't have actually killed me…"

"I'd have hurt you, then," she snapped.

"Oh, OK then," Skulduggery said as they left through the Sanctuary's main door.

= I'm not sure about the interrogation part, but I couldn't think of anything else. Lets be honest, he is probably really insane anyway, with very little brain cells to start with, so whatever!

Guess the ending! =