Skulduggery – Crow

Anton – Bear

Ghastly – Panda

Dexter – Wolf

Saracen – Weasel

Erskine – Snake

Solomon – Raven

Note - this is written as if before the last chapter, so keep an eye on the timings I have written for your ease of reading :)

Chapter 49

Tanith's POV

Fifteen hours since Valkyrie was kidnapped

"What the hell happened?" She asked Skulduggery, slamming the door into the wall and likely leaving a dent. "She got kidnapped on your watch again!?"

Skulduggery stared at her but made no move. "I'm sorry."

Tanith ground her teeth and said nothing, just started pacing up and down the room. "Where is that damn man?"

She meant Guild and Skulduggery knew it. Elder Crow and Meritorious were at the new Sanctuary getting themselves settled and they didn't yet have internet, phones or any type of signal as it was being set up. Skulduggery told her on the phone he wasn't sure what they knew and didn't. So they were left waiting for Guild so Skulduggery could fill him and herself in.

It must have been ten minutes for the man to show up. Tanith was ready to slice him to itty-bitty stupid pieces. He came in with a frustrated expression and tone of annoyance.

"Pleasant, what do you want?" He asked.

"My partner is missing," he said slowly, standing up. "A fourteen-year-old girl is missing, and it takes you over twenty minutes for you to show your face."

Guild growled. "I am a busy man doing a lot of things. What do you need to get her back?"

"I need Cleavers–"

"No. There aren't enough," Guild said immediately. Tanith stood next to Skulduggery to see his face better. She wanted to see his eyes filled with pain when she stabbed the ever-living shit out of him. "A moving van has already been compromised, you cannot take an already depleted–"

"They took Kenspeckle Grouse also."

"What?" Tanith asked. "Why?"

"Who?" Guild asked quickly.

"A group of Americans raised by various peace groups in the war turned bad. They call themselves Foe's Gang, headed by Vincent Foe. There is also Mercy Charient, Obloquy, a vampire called Samuel and the now deceased Murder Rose was a recent member. Scarab is working with them but for how long I do not know. I do know that he seeks revenge. They stole not only that van but also a Remnant."

Guild was frowning with contempt. "And why, pray tell me, is it that you're here and not sorting this out right this second? Then tell me how that has any relevance to each other?"

Skulduggery sighed in frustration. Tanith wished the others were there to help them, but they were still working out how to get back from England – they'd gone off when Skulduggery and Valkyrie went to Anton's hotel. "They have a massive importance to each other. The van number is registered to a checklist of items. Within that checklist is the Desolation Engine."

"How did they know it was there?" Tanith asked quickly.

"I don't know yet. I couldn't find the original, I had to get the backup. They stole it, I think. And I know that the Engine is disabled before you ask, but that is why they have Grouse," Skulduggery explained.

"Can he fix it?" Guild asked, looking a little more nervous now.

"Yes," Skulduggery said immediately. "I am certain he can, he's a genius, and I'm sure Saracen will back me up. The thing is, I don't think he would want to. Thus the joining of Foe's Gang and Scarab. Thus why they would smuggle him very openly into Ireland via the Midnight hotel. Thus why they got the Remnant to possess Kenspeckle."

There was a moment as they all thought about the catastrophic events that would be happening very shortly due to these events and people getting together. "You need to find them and stop them from making that Engine."

Tanith stamped her foot and turned to Skulduggery. "And Valkyrie?! Why do they need her? Bait?"

"Partly," Skulduggery admitted. "But I also think it is because they need more to bribe the Remnant with. They obviously won't want us to find them, but to use her as a distraction and as a reward for a Remnant…"

Tanith felt herself get very pale. "So possessed Kenspeckle could be torturing Valkyrie right this second? Where are they?"

"I don't know, which is why I need Cleavers to scout out the locations they could be at and cover ground more quickly."

"I've already told you there are none available," Guild said with finality. Oh, she really wanted to stab him.

Skulduggery punched him in the face quicker than Tanith could follow. They left the room, Tanith feeling at least a little satisfied.

He gave her a set of files quickly and told her they were going to a possible location they could be at. Tanith didn't so much as hear the name, she was in some state of panic and fury, manic about finding her sister before she was tortured to death by a man she loved and respected. She'd barely been saved from her last kidnapping and torture and now this?! Tanith was ready to rip Foe's Gang and Kenspeckle apart to get to her baby sister.

.*****.

Five hours later – twenty hours total since Valkyrie was kidnapped

"Tanith," Saracen said, coming up behind her. Tanith turned to see her friend and old flame. He looked too serious and too tired. "No luck up north?"

"Nothing," she said bitterly. "They've had her for nearly a full twenty-four hours and I don't know where else to go."

Saracen sighed and pulled her into a hug Tanith gratefully accepted. She was just too tired. Her baby sister was too young. She had thought all she had to worry about was Valkyrie having sex or maybe getting stupidly drunk, not torturous possessed doctors!

"Come on," he said gently, pulling back. "We'll find her. Now I'm here we might get there faster, right?"

Tanith wasn't too convinced, knowing how many things Saracen could miss, but nodded. "It's something," she said, and they drove down to meet the others. It was lucky Saracen was in good athletic shape because he probably wouldn't have stayed on her bike the way she was driving otherwise.

Shaking the thoughts away, they went directly to Skulduggery, who had the other Dead Men around him talking in quick, frustrated tones in the Sanctuary parking lot. Getting closer, Tanith realised the other person they were talking to wasn't Fletcher but actually Guild – the Dead Men's size had blocked the short, balding man from her view.

She sighed.

"Low, you better have news," Guild told her when he saw her walking to them.

"Nothing," she said. "And last I heard, you didn't care she was gone."

"I don't," he said scathingly. "I care that a bomb said to be big enough to blow up a fifth of this county is currently being fixed. I'm sorry if I put millions of lives in front of one girl who will be saved in the process."

Tanith nearly, nearly spat on him when he got up in her face, but Saracen put a hand on her arm and wisely took over. "I have a few ideas."

The idea was to look in a certain areas Saracen had an 'idea' about. He wasn't sure if they, that being all or one, were right or had something to do with Valkyrie or Kenspeckle at all but it was a feeling and all they had at the moment. Skulduggery had even called a contact to double check the Hibernian Cinema in case he had missed something and they were travelling to meet them at the place Saracen was having ideas about.

They left quickly.

.*****.

Valkyrie's POV

Six hours later – twenty-five hours since Valkyrie was kidnapped

Three hours since the END of the of the previous chapter

Valkyrie sucked in a long, stuttering breath, letting it go quickly and breathing in again, too tired and in too much pain to fill her lungs, to scream anymore.

Possessed Kenspeckle never stopped talking.

She stared at her legs, her head lolling down without meaning too. She couldn't hold it up.

Her skin was so white, almost corpse white. Other than the specks of fresh, red blood. Other than the splattered, dried, hours old blood. Other than the long, rusted nails.

She'd been sick too but that was on the floor. She could see the mess mixed with the blood. There were all shades of blood on the floor, the occasional flick of skin with it. Her hair too, slashed off in places.

"And what's this?" Possessed Kenspeckle said, his voice loud against the drip, drip, drip of the hose he'd just attached to a tap somewhere. There was the sound of fabric, then his laugh as he walked over to her, the hose dragging behind him. He picked her chin up and she looked at him.

He had the same blade she'd taken from Sanguine.

"Now what is a good girl like you doing with a cursed blade like this?"

.*****.

Tanith's POV

Same time, elsewhere

Skulduggery, Tanith, Ghastly and Dexter stopped outside the biggest and last place Saracen had an 'idea' about. Their last hope. Tanith was so tired she didn't even have the energy to panic about it.

"Out," Skulduggery said. They got out. They followed him. Even her sword was feeling too heavy on her hip, she had no chance of using it. The others had slept on the ride.

"Are we splitting up?" Tanith asked, using her foot to throw the old, half-broken door open.

"Yes," Skulduggery said.

"Pleasant!" Wreath said, coming up behind them. Tanith didn't turn to look at him, and neither did the others, just began searching with a single-minded ruthlessness. She saw his shadow as he came in and joined in their search without talking. Good.

She might just kill him for the point of it. She didn't give a fuck anymore. She'd fucking kill anyone standing in her way. She noticed she was feeling particularly violent and stopped herself from shoving Dexter out her way right before she did it. He wasn't even in her way, she was just too angry.

"I don't feel any new deaths," Wreath said into the quiet. He did go through to another room with some sort of purpose though, and Tanith followed without comment, Skulduggery coming up behind her. He went over to a wall looked it over.

Tanith looked at him. She hadn't been to sleep in over thirty hours and didn't bother looking over the same wall he was, just looked blankly with her tired mind. He pointed his cane up and shadows whirled up, slamming into a glass thing in the wall and breaking it.

Skulduggery wrapped an arm around her and he used his magic to propel them up and into the hole. The other three came into the room and Ghastly got them to the same place several paces behind them, just as Scarab came around the corner with a tired expression of his own.

"Pleasant," he said with boredom. "You finally found us. But I'm afraid I'm the only one left."

"Where's Valkyrie and Kenspeckle?" Skulduggery asked, pointing his gun at the man's head. "If she isn't alive I'll–"

"Quite frankly, skeleton, I don't care what you'd do to me," Scarab said, turning and walking away. "But I need to sit down for it."

Skulduggery kept his gun out but followed the man through the halls to wherever they were going. "Tell me where they are."

"I cannot remember," Scarab said. "And neither do I know if they are alive before you ask. As soon as the Desolation Engine was fixed by the good doctor, Foe's group of young ninny-narcissists left, bomb and all. We only had a short-term relationship you see. I merely trust them to cause damage from here on out. But I get too far ahead of myself," he said, sitting on a chair by a fire. Something or other had been welded or fixed in the room quite recently. There was flecks of metal and the smell of the process thick in the air. "See, if you put that gun down I might just tell you what they're doing. It's not like you can stop them after all."

Skulduggery didn't. Tanith felt herself wobble a little and leaned into Ghastly for support and felt a hand on her lower back, giving her little tingles. Tiredness did strange things to her.

"You'll tell us where Valkyrie is or else take us to her," Dexter growled.

"Now, now," Scarab said in his scratchy, elderly voice. "I've already said that part. See, once we got here, we made a deal with the Remnant, which you know about, and whom we had possess the doctor. In exchange for fixing the Engine, we gave him the girl. And in exchange for leaving him free, he wouldn't modify the bomb to blow up before our plan was complete. Once he did everything Foe asked, quite a few hours ago now, he was let free."

"Where to?" Ghastly asked quickly.

"I don't know," Scarab said, taking a glug from his drink on the table. "I don't care. I'm going to die soon, so what does it matter to me? He could still be there, or he could be long gone just like Foe and his band of idiots."

Skulduggery gave Dexter his gun and left the room. Tanith followed.

He stood with his hands out and checked the air. He was still for several, long, long minutes. There was a clicking somewhere suddenly and Tanith looked around distractedly. Not knowing what to do, she opened the door she was next to, where the sound was coming from. It was the boiler room, and the old water tank was clicking away as it was used.

"They're here," she declared and snapped back to reality a little. She slammed the door closed and heard a scuffle start with Scarab as they shackled him to a pipe or something. "The water's running so they're here."

Skulduggery took off at a run suddenly and the others took off after him. They ran all over the building and Tanith had no idea if the skeleton had any idea where they were going but they found staircase after staircase and they kept going down until finally, finally, they found a corridor he thought acceptable.

Stopping, Skulduggery picked up the soul catcher he'd taken from the Sanctuary. Tanith already knew the plan.

They crept agonisingly slowly to the door, crowding around it as they heard the sound of the water, previously off, turn back on. It sprayed on something, Valkyrie, and made an awful sound hitting her flesh. Skulduggery held up three fingers, but Tanith was done. She ripped the door open and ran in.

She threw up.

Bad, bad things have happened here.

Double bad things, actually, as I'm not certain I can post tomorrow due to travelling south to housesit for my grandparents, so I may be too busy. I will also be busy Thursday and Friday and Saturday, so who know's when the next one is but I will try super hard to keep it to each day like I am! :)