Skulduggery – Crow
Anton – Bear
Ghastly – Panda
Dexter – Wolf
Saracen – Weasel
Erskine – Snake
Solomon – Raven
Corrival – Pa
Chapter 103
Valkyrie stayed till four in the morning at Nadia's house, quietly laughing, eating and joking with her girlfriend until Nadia looked as if she were about to fall asleep. Nadia had helped her out the window and blew her a kiss as Valkyrie ran away. It was sad leaving her because for those nine hours she had stayed in Nadia's house – she'd stayed a long while – everything else had disappeared. No killers. Raven wasn't missing. Snake wasn't having panic attacks. Crow cared. And best of all, she was a normal girl with a normal life eating snacks and not scared of anything.
At least she fell straight to sleep when she got home.
That sleep was a strange one. She had some weird dream where she couldn't escape a maze and ended up getting to the middle and realising she could have used magic all along to fly and frustrated herself so much in the dream she woke herself up, just to remember she couldn't use that magic at all and got even more frustrated that she had woken herself from her dream with lies.
Rubbing her face, she checked her phone and realised she had to get up anyway. She took her time at first, getting a shower and cutting her toenails, before nodding to herself and deciding it was time to get moving and find Raven even if she wasn't happy with Crow. Raven had done nothing wrong and needed help, so she would do just that.
"Hey Val," Wolf said as soon as she came in.
"Hi," she smiled. The others, that being Tanith, Panda, Snake and Weasel, were eating their breakfast. Wolf looked as tired as her and just as serious. At least they were on the same page. Tanith seemed to be engaged in an eating competition with Snake though if she knew about it was a mystery. Snake was definitely trying to keep up. "Have you heard from Crow?"
"Nothing," Wolf said, tapping the table and leaning back in his chair. "As soon as you're ready I thought me, you and Saracen could go visit The Old Mill and go from there."
"So we're following Crow's footprints now?" Valkyrie asked moodily.
"Yeah, this might not be the time, but I get the feeling Crow's been captured," Weasel said. "I know we're being anti-Skul and all that, but we probably shouldn't let him be pulled apart either."
Valkyrie sagged. "He got captured."
"I don't know!" Weasel said quickly. "Me being confident something happened and my magic saying something happened are similar feelings, so if this is just my past experience of him getting captured getting in the way, I'm sorry, but that's what it looked like from my point of view."
"Let's be honest, he probably got captured," Wolf said and the others nodded.
"I think he enjoys it," Valkyrie muttered. "I also think I told him something like this would happen if he went off alone and oh no, here we are with nothing while he's gone by himself and got captured god knows were. Whatever will he do stuck in a cage being tortured while knowing this is his fault? Hopefully regret it."
"If he's being tortured in a cage I imagine he's trying not to feel anything," Tanith said with all her wisdom and looking for all the world as if they were talking about having tea rather than their friend being double killed. "And Val, you need to eat some fruit."
"Really?" Valkyrie asked.
"Yes, really. You need energy," Tanith said again as if nothing else in the world mattered.
"Is that you or the medicine you take in the morning talking?"
"The medicine," she replied. "Inside I am really angry and I'd probably be throwing my plate at the wall by now, but the medicine is mellowing me out really well."
Valkyrie shook her head but grabbed some of the melon Bear had prepared before going to the hotel that morning to go with her cereal – but not in it, she wasn't getting pregnancy cravings, although that would have been a twist – and glad in a way that she and Wolf were keeping what happened in the basement place a secret. Tanith would not have coped well with the news.
She ate her breakfast with half an appetite and half an hour later she, Wolf, Weasel and Snake where in the car and off to The Old Mill. Snake wasn't meant to come but had insisted he couldn't be left out of their group any longer. So it was her and the Idiots. Together at last.
"Right, before you two start arguing," Wolf said, looking in the mirror at Weasel and Snake like a disapproving dad, "we need to have a talk. Our mission today is to find Skulduggery. If the day goes well, we can spend the evening getting him back and the night getting Solomon."
"Unless the day is really good and Skulduggery isn't captured," Snake nodded.
"Yes, but that's unlikely," Wolf conceded. "If the day goes bad, and let's be honest it probably will, we'll be spending today looking for clues to find Crow and hopefully find where that is, and then I'll have the Sanctuary, Anton and Corrival get ready. Corrival will keep tabs and make sure all goes well in the event the Sanctuary doesn't send help when we find enemies, or more likely, in case something stops us from contacting him, he'll be able to do something about it. Do we understand?"
"Yes sir!" The three others said.
"Good! Now we'll listen to these sick beats like the cool kids and feel hip!" Wolf grinned and turned on the radio.
Valkyrie laughed but Wolf did put on some good songs and by the time they got to where The Old Mill supposedly was, they were all screaming the lyrics and speeding at horrifically illegal speeds. Grinning, they checked their concealed weapons in the car – the Idiots had no problem giving Valkyrie knives and a gun, especially since they knew something had happened the day before and they wanted her safe because why wouldn't they.
They exited the car and looked around. They were in the west of Ireland, though much further south than the fish market and a bit further inland. Valkyrie didn't know the exact location, but it hardly mattered.
"See that building over there?" Wolf said, looking at a tower not so far from them. "That's it. Under that is The Old Mill."
"How do you know?" Valkyrie asked.
"I asked some friends at the Sanctuary while you were out last night," he revealed. "I might have used Saracen to get us in. Saracen, you have a date with a guy call Jerad."
"I won't go," he nodded.
"I know, but I said you would so he'd tell me where it is. He used to work for a gang that once used this place as a hideout, so he was able to tell me the way around. That was a few years ago now, about forty, but I doubt the layout has changed."
"Unlikely," Weasel said.
"So we just need to get in the door and from there we go down to the dungeon, have a look around, liberate anyone we can, and leave. Understand?"
"Understood."
They trekked for half an hour over to the tower, and the door itself wasn't hard to find with a man like Weasel on their side, but without him, she knew they could have searched for a week on foot and never have found it. Weasel frowned at it and gave it a small push and the whole door slowly fell back until it crashed straight down onto its back and lay there.
"Dead as a doornail," Snake whispered and they walked over it, guns out, into the tunnel.
The place was full of dust, and although Snake lit a flame, it felt as if the stone absorbed the light. They found a staircase and followed it down quickly, finding the door below had been blown off its hinges and left where it was.
"Someone already attacked here," Weasel said suddenly.
"No shit," Valkyrie muttered, almost slipping on bullet shells.
"A group of trained soldiers. With a machine gun," he said, and shone a tiny keychain flashlight into a room where they caught a glimpse of a machine gun that looked to have been exploded and abandoned. That had obviously been on the side of whoever had been there first. He stood up straight a moment later. "Everyone's gone."
"Even prisoners?" Wolf asked, standing up too but not putting away his weapons.
Weasel hesitated. "I'm not sure. But there are no enemies. Guaranteed."
Valkyrie tutted as she put her gun away. "I was having fun with that," she said and gave Snake a smile when she saw his look of relief. "Come on, let's check the dungeon."
Said dungeon had magic dampening on it, but that shouldn't have been able to affect Weasel's magic from above so they were safe, and with Weasel's keychain flashlight, they could also see a small circle of stone in front of them wherever they pointed. It was actually so boring looking through one cell at a time, Wolf spent the time calling Pa and telling him what The Old Mill looked like while the other three looked for clues and any prisoners.
Valkyrie picked up a bullet or two and found a necklace she took also, as well as a bullet with blood on for analysis and a jacket. It was probably useless, but perhaps they would be able to identify the owners and know who they were up against. Unfortunately, forensics weren't too big of a thing in the magic world up until the last twenty or so years, but it had some potential.
They had to move debris from some areas to look into cells just in case someone was in there as they couldn't be too sure considering Weasel couldn't detect for certain if any prisoners were down there. In the meantime, Valkyrie and Erskine worked out what happened – a group of soldiers between four and eight members had been the captors. One man had entered and attempted to take them out, only to be overwhelmed in one corner and ultimately surrendered. They believed at that point the whole group decided to move.
An hour into the investigation, three Cleavers turned up to help them. They had to go up so the Cleavers could find the hidden entrance, and within a few minutes they had scouted the upper area for anything they might want and then helped in the dungeon. As expected, it was only in the last row of cells they finally found something tangible.
In one cell was a hat, Bespoke made and obviously Crow's. Valkyrie picked it up with a sigh, somewhere between tired and irritated, and put it on her head. The cell opposite held half a broken cane. Raven's.
"They were here," Wolf concluded. "It wasn't a trap then. Not that I doubted your detecting skills."
"And the ones that got them left these on purpose," Valkyrie continued tiredly. "They want us to know they were here and aren't any more. We need to work out where they went. I'm also concerned that there doesn't seem to be any blood or bodies. It isn't like Skul not to take someone down on his way."
"You're right," Weasel agreed, nodding. "The problem is that I don't trust Skulduggery to act predictably anymore. I mean, he's never been predictable, but we could assume what he wanted even if he did it unexpectedly. I don't know if Skulduggery would have really tried if he didn't think he could win and get Solomon out."
"You think he's purposefully staying captured?"
"I think they might be manipulating Skulduggery to keep him controllable and they knew it would work from the first moment they captured Solomon," Weasel clarified. "And I know for a fact it'll continue to work."
"Fuck," Valkyrie said, rubbing her face. "Could that mean they'll be able to get Crow to do things? Tell them information and stuff to keep Raven safe."
Wolf nodded. "That sounds about right."
"Right, well, let's just find them faster then," Valkyrie said, feeling the irritation, however irrational, building up. "Any ideas on where they went?"
Weasel shook his head. "I didn't detect another entrance."
"Or just in general?"
"Nothing Cub," he sighed. "Sorry."
She sagged. "Okay. Well, they must have gone somewhere, so let's have a look."
They did, but even after three hours of searching up and down every inch of every cell, the floor, the ceiling for secrets, and all over the mud and grass on the surface, they didn't find any direction they went in. Wolf recalled an American Sanctuary having a series of passages under and around it that could only be opened or activated by signals drawn into the user's skin, and they had to leave with the assumption that was what had happened, or something equally sneaky. It was very common in old builds such as this. It was frustrating, but a start.
"Stupid skeleton," Valkyrie sighed when she sat back in the car. She threw his hat on the passenger floor. She hoped it got muddy.
"Cheer up, Cub," Wolf said, patting her shoulder. "We know they're together at least, and we know a little about the people we're up against. It wasn't a loss."
Valkyrie sat there tapping her finger as they pulled away from the road and began driving. "God, let's just get some food and then I can think more," Valkyrie told them, and they all agreed.
Stupid smell-eton. I hope you all feel the hate we're meant to be feeling towards him, but God, if you knew what I just wrote in the future, you'd explode! I won't tease you like last time though haha.
Lonelygirl702: Didn't forget this time, whoop! Aww thank you for the compliments, I'm glad you like it/hate him so much. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have Tanith go mad now I've said it, it's been making me giddy in my brain so I'm pretty happy with it. I plan on doing more with Nadia, Fletcher and the Toxic Twins, but when you get to the chapters I've written for the future, you'll understand why it's taking time. Still, I think I've set it up for more downtime stuff like family and Fletcher and cute Valia times. Of course, I still have to deal with Myra, but that's all figured out, you trust in me! :)