Hello! Thank you for all the support so far! I'm glad you are liking it! Enjoy! (This one is much longer!)

Chapter 11

What an amazing plan they had. It truly was. Well, it wasn't so much of a plan than a series of events. Also, all those events were unlikely to happen, much less in that order. So when you look at it that way, it wasn't that much of an amazing plan.

Valkyrie was seething in the front seat of the Bentley. Skulduggery had been talking but had stopped when he had glanced over at her, to see her glaring at him, as though she was a murderous tigress about to go for the kill. Now she was just looking out of the window. A few more minutes later, the car slowed to a stop at the side of the street and she unbuckled her seat belt. Again, she thought about what all the other seventeen year old girls did in their free time. It wasn't this. They didn't go up against stupid, old, evil people who thought it would be a good idea to take over the world. At the moment they were warm in bed, or out at a club.

She got out of the car and walked around the front of the car to the path. They walked in silence, crossing roads, and walking through dirty street, sticking to the shadows like almost all sorcerers had learnt to do to stay out of sight of the non-magical world. She put on a face of calm and blankness, so the passers-by wouldn't be suspicious of the tall, slim man and dark haired girl walking about in the cold in expensive clothes, any more than they needed.

Standing next to Skulduggery on the edge of the pathway, they looked up at the tall building. It was run-down, but proud and tall, positioned a little away from all the other buildings, like it was insulting them and they couldn't bear to be witnessed next to it.

Valkyrie briefly wondered why Fiend had chosen this place to get his Secrets, as he seemed obsessed with. She was about to ask Skulduggery where he thought Fiend would be, when he nudged her elbow, and then pointed to the alleyway to their right. It was faint, but she could see a ladder. Her eyes followed it up and saw there was a wall about a meter high running along whole building, probably to make the building look bigger that it actually was. Where the ladder ended, however, there was a small gap to get onto the roof, proving that the designer new how to get onto a roof from a big, high ladder, without the risk of falling.

"That's where he'll be," Skulduggery said. "OK, so Fiend, hopefully, thinks that we're dead. That gives us the advantage as he doesn't think anyone, let alone us. Now, being as unadventurous as he is, everything would have been set up before hand, and he would just have to turn up and use the Book of Eccentric, say some words and he will, supposedly, be an almighty sorcerer of unimaginable power."

"Supposedly?" Valkyrie asked.

"Ah, you see, I read through a few of our very, very oldest myths, the ones that were written in Irish and mostly spelt wrong. You need first to acknowledge how amazing I really am," he looked at Valkyrie and Valkyrie looked at him. Neither gave in until Valkyrie raised an eyebrow, ever so slowly and pointed out that there was an evil guy about to take over the world.

"Quite so Valkyrie. Well I found out that while you do need to say this lovely long passage, about two pages long, then you also need to do something more. Give an offering."

"I don't follow."

"To put it into teenage language, you know them movies where someone needs to give the gods an offering of a life, in order to get something like eternal life? Like that Pirates of the Caribbean movie you liked?"

"Well, obviously I do. I am a teenager. And how could I forget the hot dudes," she muttered.

"And then," he carried on as if Valkyrie didn't speak, "the evil guy offers up the good guy as the offering, but doesn't realise that that gives the good guy the eternalness. Roughly like that, anyway. Well, in this, after someone reads the passage, you need to give an offering, a part of yourself. In this particular case, blood."

"Oh, my God. Was this farmer guy an emo? Is that why it wants blood? Or was this sorcerer-witch-person a vampire?" Valkyrie questioned, looking at him with wide eyes.

He sighed. "Yes Valkyrie. Yes, of course," then he looked up at the building as if just remembering they were there on a case. "Right here's the plan. I'll go up first, distract him, and you wait on the other side of the building, hiding behind a thing. Then-"

"A thing?" Valkyrie interrupted.

"Yes Valkyrie, a thing. I don't know what's up there to hide behind yet. Now, once I have got him distracted, you come out from behind the thing, grab the book and the Jug and run off with them. Take them to the river, hide the Jug in a bush and run off, and if he is following, he will think your still holding the book and the Jug. I on the other hand will be distracting Fiend at first, then giving a signal, then fighting with Fiend, and then I may be being pushed off of a building. By the way, he is known for pushing people off buildings. I would know. If there is anyone else, maybe some Infected or Hollow Men, then I will fight them, and keep them back. Understood?"

"Not really," Valkyrie replied.

"That's the spirit," Skulduggery said cheerfully.

He started across the street and Valkyrie followed, falling into step next to him. They parted at the front of the building, needing to twist around each other to get by, Valkyrie going left, Skulduggery right. Once she was in the alleyway, she got a sudden sense of claustrophobia, but she took a deep breath, she told herself to stop being a baby and that she had been in smaller places. She jogged down the side of the two buildings until she reached about midpoint. She looked up and saw the top of the outer building on the roof. She stood beneath it and flexed her fingers. She felt the ways the air connects and then snapped out her palms and caught a gust of wind up to the roof-side. Her hands griped the cold brick and she hauled herself up so she could just see the top of Wane Fiends head.

He was looking away, so she took the advantage and hauled herself up the rest of the way, swinging her legs over and running behind the outer building. She crouched down behind it and sent a text to Ghastly, telling him that both she and Skulduggery were in position and about to attack. He had asked for updates earlier on that day. Her phone buzzed silently and she looked at a text saying, 'Good 2 know. Keep me updated when able. Ravel got his phone back; Tipstaff wants to kill him. Good luck!'

She tucked her phone away, and waited for Skulduggery to start his role in the plan. She didn't move. She didn't want to risk being seen by him, and ruining the small first part of Skulduggery's Great Plan.

"Hello," suddenly said the all too familiar voice of Skulduggery Pleasant. He was a way a way so Valkyrie felt sure she could take a peek at what was going on. Skulduggery stood there, with his hands in his pockets, looking somewhat casual about what was happening. Fiend, however, looked like a startled fish. His mouth was open and his eyes were bulging, plus he had gone a shade whiter.

"Are you OK? You look startled. I think you're in shock," Skulduggery continued. "Is it me? It must be, why else would you be in shock? Is it the way I'm dressed? Or maybe my dashingly good-looks? Perhaps both…" He talked until he saw Fiend coming out of his shocked state. Probably good, Valkyrie thought, because he would have carried on like that for hours.

"How are you still alive? I thought you were dead," he managed at long last.

Skulduggery cocked his head to one side. "I am dead," he said plainly.

Fiend, who seemed to have gotten himself back together at that point, then went into a state of confusion. "No, no, you died, not like the first time, but you died again. You didn't come back out of the house, I was watching. How are you still here?"

"You miss understand me. I am dead. Not like before. I am Skulduggery Pleasant, but I am his… ghost, "he decided after a moment. Not a pause because he didn't know what to say, but a pause for effect. "I don't want to move on you see."

"Why wouldn't you want to do that? Death, as in proper death, must be better that being a walking skeleton. You could move on that way. And now you are a skeleton ghost. That's even worse for you!"

"I'm not moving on. I want to settle what has started."

"And," Fiend said cautiously, "what would that be?"

"Valkyrie died because of you. So did a few others. And now you are trying to claim the Secrets of the lost Jug."

"I didn't kill them!" Skulduggery started to approach, so he took a few steps back, afraid. "Banal and Variance, they did it, they are the killers! I'm innocent. Look at me! I couldn't hurt a thing," he pleaded.

"I don't believe you, Fiend. I think you did it," and then Skulduggery said the code to get ready for the code to attack. "Are the sparrows are about to fly?"

Valkyrie stood. She didn't come into view, but she went around the side. Skulduggery has scared and confused the enemy and was driving him back to the edge. They both knew that Fiend didn't hold any threat on his own, but if he did get the secrets and they happened to make him powerful, if they told him a secret that could be used as a weapon, then they might be in big trouble.

She went into a sprinters starting stance, like athletes do at the start of a running race and got ready, banishing all thoughts from her mind. Every sound seemed to fade completely. She thought Banal and Skulduggery made one final comment to each other, but that wasn't what her mind was looking for, so she barely heard it. And then:

"The sparrows fly south for the winter," Skulduggery said, her mind hearing those words as if they had been shouted in her ear.

She jumped up, and sprinted the hundred odd yards, over to where the book was standing on the pedestal. It may have been the fastest she had run in a long time, as she was a long way away compared to Fiend and Skulduggery. She grabbed the book, but not after hearing Fiend screamed his battle cry and charged. Not strong, Valkyrie reasoned, but very fast. Skulduggery grabbed Fiends coat but Fiend ripped it off, barely slowing.

Skulduggery ran to grab him, and got his hand. They started to scuffle, with knees, elbows and locks. In about five seconds, Banal had dropped the Jug from and Skulduggery rolled them away.

Valkyrie grabbed the jug from the roof surface, just as Skulduggery when flying over her head, over the roof, the roof next-door, and fell down the alley between next-door and two buildings away. She then heard a few smashes and a cat screeching. Valkyrie looked back at Fiend. He looked at her.

With the two objects in hand, she ran to the side of the building, using the air to propel herself, hearing Fiend behind her.

Hehehehe! I love this! I love me to, but this is awesome!

The next chapter will take longer, as the rest of what I have wrote has been on my laptop for almost a year. So I will take some time to write it. But it will be awesome so don't worry!

Reviews make me work faster! =)