Chapter 178

Ryan had quickly turned back into Deacon Maybury after the Doomsday Machine had been deactivated and the disassembly had begun. Valkyrie was quite unimpressed with Maybury, considering one of his identical brothers, Dafydd, had fallen prey to Foe's Gang, as well as drawing Crasis into the mess for no reason. And the fact he tried to sell a world-ending bomb on the Black-Market-for-Mages. That was pretty awful. She hadn't been there to punch him, but he had been arrested and would be facing legal consequences, and had apparently gone away crying.

Meanwhile, Valkyrie and Dexter went to the Sanctuary with their three prisoners to interview them. Of course, Mercy was immediately put into chains and doctors began the task of how much damage had been done to her brain. They just had to deal with Scapegrace and Crux for now. The rest of her family would be continuing with the New Year Eve problems without them, and there were a lot.

Crux had to be anesthetised to deal with getting him in an interview room, so while he sleepily sat at his interview table on his way to being coherent enough to talk to, Valkyrie and Dexter went to Scapegrace to start.

"Vaurien," Valkyrie said pleasantly. "You're a wanted man."

"I am?" He said blankly, before suddenly puffing his chest out. "I mean, of course I am! I'm the Killer Supreme."

"Multiple attempts at murder, evasion of the law, setting a luxury hot chocolate shop on fire in Wales, bodily assault, and for working for Grievers Down, a place that attempted to rape a minor at the same time of your employment, someone we know you came into contact with at the time. And now this. Do you have anything to say for yourself?" Valkyrie asked sweetly.

He had been grinning proudly until she mentioned Grievers Down, and now he looked ill. "I never tried to – I wouldn't! I mean, I love to kill people, but I'd never do something like that! That's sick."

"Well, that's all well and good, Scapegrace, but right now it looks as if you're getting charged with assailing the escape of and profiting off of a business that attempts to rape minors. That carries a charge of approximately fifty to a hundred years depending on the severity of your involvement."

He looked aghast. "I only worked there that one night! I only volunteered too!"

"Vaurien," she simpered, reaching across the table although they couldn't reach each other. She smiled kindly. "I understand. You're not like that, and I can see how this charge offends you. But you have to understand, there are no reliable sources to validate your side of the story, we only know that you were there. But I can see that you weren't involved in the crimes of Grievers Down."

"You were there," he said defensively. "I only tried to kill you."

"I know, and I believe you, but the Sanctuary don't want to believe you on your word. How about I offer a deal. I'll have that charge taken off if you tell me what led you to know Foe's gang and Crux and all that happened in your time with them. I might even be able to get you a smaller sentence."

He went to nod, and then looked at her suspiciously. "How do I know you'll keep your word?"

"I always keep my word," she said seriously. "If I didn't, no one would trust me, after all."

Scapegrace considered and then agreed. He embellished his story greatly, but Valkyrie narrowed it down to this – he ran into Crux on accident and agreed to help him out of fear for his life when he upset Crux. Crux already knew Foe's gang at this point. Together, they broke into a low-level prison and busted Springheeled Jack who agreed to help Foe's gang as payment for breaking him out. Neither he nor Jack were told what the Doomsday Machine was other than it was a bomb and very important to Foe's gang. He had overheard Foe and Crux talking about a favour, which seemed to be that Foe's gang would only work for Crux if he helped them with getting the Doomsday Machine and key first, so it didn't seem Crux understood what it did either. Of course, upon getting to Nevada and fighting the Dead Men, the ever so brave Scapegrace had found out what the Doomsday Machine really did and cowered in the corner out of fear for his life but certainly did not help from there on out.

"Thank you for telling us all this," she smiled. "I'll talk to the guys up top and have this charge taken off of your record entirely and let them know you were coerced into helping them. That'll soften the blow on you significantly."

He sagged in relief. "Thank you. I don't know what I'd have done if people thought I'd done something like that."

"You're a good man Vaurien. I wish you luck," she said and left the room.

"That was fast," Dexter said, falling into step beside her.

"He's easy to manipulate. There was never even an official record of him being at Grievers Down," she smirked at him. She realised, suddenly, that she was taller than him. No just a little shorter, not the same height, but legitimately taller by a few inches. She almost felt unsteady for a moment.

"You alright?" He laughed.

"Yeah. I just realised how short you are and it made me feel better," she grinned, shoving his shoulder.

He scoffed. "You're a brat."

She laughed and they went to check on Crux. He was just about awake now so they went in in hopes of him being more talkative with the drugs addling his mind.

"Hello," Valkyrie said, sitting herself down. Dexter stood behind him, so close his thighs were almost touching Crux's back. Crux blinked slowly at her but his eyes still burned with hatred. "We have a lot to talk about."

"I. Hate. You," he slowly hissed. Now he was still and up close, and Valkyrie's head wasn't spinning like it had been before, she could see the effects of his insanity. He was unwashed, his clothes old and ragged, his hair bald in places and matted in others. Some of his teeth had fallen out and the others looked yellow from being unclean and possibly from something harsh like alcohol, though unlikely to be cigarettes by the colour. He didn't look to be addicted to drugs. He was thin, but still stocky enough to be strong. He had cuts and scrapes all over and his knuckles had been broken for a long time, but that hadn't stopped him from using them and causing more damage.

"I know that. You don't need to like me. But I need to know about the Children of the Spider. Are they in Nevada?"

"I. Fucking. Hate. You," he repeated.

Valkyrie could feel this was going to go nowhere. She'd seen him multiple times since he attacked her and shoved her into a prisoner's cell at the Sanctuary, and it didn't seem there was much use talking to him. "I'll give you one last chance and then a Sensitive will be sent in to search your mind. Is there a group of Spiders in Nevada?"

"I'm going to make you suck my dick," he whispered lowly, and Dexter punched him.

They left him there and a Sensitive was sent in while the drug was working to gather everything they needed. A second had to be brought in to help because his insanity made his mind hard to work on.

Since it would take a while, and Dexter was shamelessly flirting with two ladies in the staffroom – they were both on his lap and he had forgotten all about her – she went outside to call Nadia.

She picked up after a few rings. "Hey Val."

"Hey. How are you doing?"

"Alright," she said. "Laila's down for bedtime. She really struggled. I think she's anxious because her Mama's not here."

"Ah, poor baby," Valkyrie said sympathetically. "Is everything else alright?"

"Yeah, it's great. I have food and water and the telly has some fun stuff on it. I called a few of my friends and they've been telling me about their Christmas'. How's your day been?"

"Insane," she said, walking down the street away from the Sanctuary to avoid the people. "We ran into Foe's gang. Do you remember them? They're the ones that took the Remnant, kidnapped me and Kenspeckle and got those bombs I forgot the names of. Remember?"

"Yeah."

"We only caught the woman, Mercy, and they were working with Remus Crux. Sensitives are with him now. Well, we caught their vampire too but I'm pretty sure they, you know, disposed of him."

"That's kind of messed up. I don't like vampires much but still."

"He was trying to set off a bomb that would destroy the entire world and probably solar system. So, he also was kind of a dick. But that's not the point." She hesitated and then cast the idea aside. She didn't want to talk about her ruined hair at all right now. "So, did your friends say anything fun?"

"No," she said with a weird tone in her voice.

"What?"

"I said 'no'."

"No, I mean, what happened? I can hear something happened."

She was quiet for a moment. "You need to work right now. I'll tell you later."

"They're going to be ages dealing with Crux and we've been stuck here for a while already. And I'm pretty sure Dexter's setting up a foursome for him and Saracen so I can't go back inside. Tell me about it."

Nadia let out a laugh. "Alright. Well, my mum called me. And I answered it."

"Oh," Valkyrie said, stopping and leaning against a low brick wall. There was nothing else around for miles but dead grass and the luminous orange sky from the lights of the city miles away. "What did you talk about?"

"It was bad, Val. She was quiet at first and just asked me how I was and I just said I was okay and she said she was the same. I asked about family and how her Christmas had been in India and she asked about mine. I said it was great. I sort of told her that I was in America with you right now and she asked if it was a holiday, and I said no, it was for your work. She got really quiet, so I just said that I had been on holiday for my birthday though and it had been great. She asked about it and I said about some of the stuff we did and she gave me a belated happy birthday, and Val, it was really nice."

"I'm glad," Valkyrie smiled.

"But then she asked what I got for my birthday and that she and Dad got me some presents too for when they saw me next. I didn't want to say anything about us getting engaged so I said about the car and she just freaked out. She just started saying how irresponsible I was and that I couldn't even drive and that I couldn't accept such an expensive gift from you and how I was going to afford the insurance and that she wasn't paying it for me. It turned into a fight."

"Oh, baby."

"She just wouldn't stop going on about how much she thinks I'm being stupid. She called me uneducated, Val. Un. Ed. Ucted. How dare she?!"

"That was horrible," Valkyrie agreed.

"It went on for a while and then I asked her, and I didn't shout either, why she was saying all these things and why she even called me in the first place. She just went really quiet and said that she missed me and wanted me to visit. So I called her a manipulative, narcissistic bitch and told her that I only wanted to see her when she started treating me like an adult and a human being. Then she just hung up on me."

"Ah, honey, I'm sorry she was so horrible," Valkyrie said. "At least you got to call her a bitch and told her how she should be treating you first."

"I guess. I still felt like shit afterwards. Laila ended up waking up because of me getting too loud and she wouldn't calm down and we cried together for a while. She fell back to sleep after a while and I called Charlotte."

"Well, that's good. Me and you can go out just us when this is finished. Just because times are crazy doesn't mean we can't enjoy ourselves a little."

"I'd like that," her voice said, a smile in it. "Thank you for talking with me. I love you."

"I love you too. Don't stress too much, I'll be back in a few hours now. Try to get some sleep until then."

"Alright. See you soon, sweetie."

.*****.

Three Sensitives had been used to get all the information Crux had in his mind. It wouldn't have been so many people except it was incredibly hard for them to stay in his insane mind for too long and had to take turns traversing through his memories.

It had also taken three hours, in which time Valkyrie had been exceptionally bored and Dexter had been exceptionally busy – he looked knackered, hair dishevelled, a button from his shirt had fallen off somewhere and he glugged down a bottle of water as they went over to see the Sensitives. She had wanted to be disgusted at his blatant disregard of embarrassment, but instead, she just snickered.

"Vex," a man greeted them, standing to shake his hand. "Detective Cain," he said, shaking hers. It was sweaty. "Take a seat, please." Around the meeting room was this man in a suit, themselves, the three Sensitives, and one other woman in a suit who did not stand. "This is quite unexpected. This is my colleague, Jennafer Anacreontic, she's here on behalf of the Elders."

"Crux must have known something pretty important," Valkyrie commented blandly. She kept her face carefully blank and hard. This was a game of power. Dexter stretched out, casual as ever, arm draped over the empty seat beside himself. Despite his relaxed posture, there was a mean look in his eye that belayed any sense of unawareness – Dexter Vex was a Dead Man.

"Yes," the man said. "Ah, I am Theodor Crest. I am the Supervisor of Criminal Information and Admissions here at the Las Vegas Sanctuary. These are my three Sensitives that worked with the criminal in custody, Mr Lark, Miss Hargu, and Mrs Santiago."

"Nice to meet you all," Valkyrie said. "I'd like to get to the information at hand. There's a lot of work to do tonight."

"Of course," Mr Crest gushed. "Miss Hargu, if you will…"

Miss Hargu nodded once. "Crux has been working with multiple criminals since his turn to insanity in Ireland. He has worked with several Children of the Spider, some assassins, and, most recently, Foe's gang. He was involved in breaking out the known criminal Springheeled Jack from an English prison alongside Foe's gang and Scapegrace, whom he recently met and recruited."

"Do you know which Children of the Spider? What assassins? Who did he meet in Ireland, England and in America? Also, I wasn't aware there was a break in at any English prison, when did this happen?"

"The break-in was kept quiet but was told to all Sanctuaries, so you'll have to talk to your Elders about that for more information. In America, he has only been in contact with Foe's gang," Mr Lark said. He was obviously trying hard to keep the emotion off his face but when Valkyrie looked at him his mask faltered and his hatred for her shone through. "He's only been here for five days."

"Where was he staying?"

"New places each night. He's insane, though, so even he didn't know some of his locations. We've written down places we think he's been from what we saw in his mind."

"That's still enough," Valkyrie nodded. "What else of note?"

"Only a lot of criminals and a body count. It's not high," Mr Lark said, picking up a piece of paper in front of him. "Seven men and eight women. One teenage girl and a dog. Six counts of setting buildings on fire. For the most part, he seems to wander from place to place finding people who hate the Dead Men. He's incredibly vindictive and angry against you."

"We know. He's attacked me multiple times," Valkyrie said.

"His thoughts," Miss Hargu took over, "have become more violent the longer he's been insane. He has a single-track mind in trying to kill you and doesn't listen to anything else. He helped Foe's gang in exchange for having them help him hunt the Dead Men but didn't have any understanding or real thoughts about the Doomsday Machine even though Foe's gang did mention it to him several times. If it isn't to do with you lot, he doesn't entertain the thought."

"That's worrying," Dexter said with a frown.

"He's crazy," Miss Hargu shrugged. "We've written a list of the assassins and other criminals we could identify, as well as some names he knew that we didn't. I don't know if they're all criminals or just those he interacted with."

"May I have it?" Valkyrie asked.

"Ah," Mr Crest sat up and gave her a piece of paper. She looked down it and did see a few Children of the Spider names Erskine had told her about but there were only a few.

"You've missed out information," she stated. "I know for a fact he's been in contact with Tesseract, a Russian assassin, and the Spider's Torment and Madam Mist. They were working together to storm the Irish Necromancer Temple this summer just gone. There were multiple witnesses, not all of them Dead Men. I know that would have been in his memory."

The Sensitives were silent. Anacreontic, the important woman in the suit, spoke up. "Insane people can forget significant things, Detective. It may be Crux forgot this encounter."

"It wasn't an encounter," she smiled. "It was an arranged attack. He is working with them. I'd like to point out now that the American Sanctuary has agreed to be utterly forthcoming in its information as an apology for your own wrong information that resulted in myself and Saracen Rue being tortured, and a minor and infant being kidnapped by a criminal organisation. We all know there was inside help, and this is our agreement. I will have no problem calling my Elders and yours if you don't comply with your own terms."

There was a long silence and Anacreontic soured. "We are not at liberty to be entirely forthcoming."

"You are and you shall be. Otherwise, you'll be breaking an international agreement."

"Let's not be hasty!" Mr Crest said loudly with a panicked smile. "I'm sure this can be cleared up! Wasn't there any more information on the Spiders?"

The Sensitives were still quiet but had deer in the headlights looks on their faces.

"Right." Valkyrie stood. "I'll be calling Meritorious."

"Detective, there's no need!"

"I think there is. You're withholding information on a night none of us have time for it. We have intel there are Spiders near to here and if Crux is working with them, you can imagine they can't be up to anything good. Say what you want about them in Ireland, but you can't seriously think Crux and Foe's gang working with the Spiders can be good news for anyone, can you? Now, are you going to talk, or do I have to make you?"

The woman just took her papers and stacked them more neatly in front of her so Valkyrie pulled her phone out and dialled Meritorious' number. He didn't answer on the first ring, but he did after a few more. "Cain."

"Grand Mage, I'm with some Sensitives and representatives of the American Sanctuary in Las Vegas. They're refusing to give me information from Remus Crux's memories, who we have in custody here. I am under the impression they must give us everything they know as per the Dead Men contract."

"That's right," he said, clearly heard by the whole table. "Can I talk with the representative please?"

Valkyrie turned the phone to the woman and she began to talk only to get verbally smashed down by the Grand Mage. It took some time and politics and some frustrations on all their ends, but after a long, long time, the five Americans turned on some high-security signals and spoke to them properly.

"Look," Mr Crest said nervously, having worked up a sweat by then and lost his tie. "I should not be telling you this. This hasn't even gotten back to our Elders. But we believe there's been a breach of ethics."

"What do you mean?" Valkyrie said seriously.

He wet his lips and glanced at Anacreontic, who was angry but didn't raise any complaints. "Someone a part of the American Sanctuary, we don't know who or even which one, was the spy that gave up information on your mission last month resulting in Mr Rue and yourself being tortured. But it's not what you think. We had some idea of a corrupt individual already, but Crux's memories told us everything except who it was. Mr Sorry, the man who tortured you. He had double-crossed Grievers and was meant to torture you to find out if there really a chance of war or if you were making everything up about the Spiders in Ireland."

"Someone ordered for me to be tortured," she stated. "From the American Sanctuary. They must have paid a lot to get Mr Sorry to double-cross Grievers."

"Yes. But not on our Elders orders or on record, as far as we know. We believe it's someone who personally wanted to know and got in contact with Mr Sorry. They must have known he was employed by Grievers. From what we can tell from our interviews with Samuel Grievers himself, which are entirely off the record, someone in the Sanctuary fed him information of the Dead Men storming his building. He sent Mr Sorry to torture you for information he wanted to know about your Sanctuary, however, Mr Sorry was also working for someone in our Sanctuary asking about Children of the Spider."

"I follow."

"Crux is in contact with the Spiders in America, and they are very angry at being double-crossed by Mr Sorry from Crux's memory, even though it was technically Grievers that was double-crossed. However, if this information got out that someone in the Sanctuary is corrupt, it could cause us massive problems and possibly panic from the public. Which is why we didn't want to tell you."

"Okay," Valkyrie said, taking a moment to think. "So we're certain there is a corrupt person who had me tortured for information. That is bad news for the Dead Men since they obviously hate us, and for you because of my age. I see why you don't want that getting out."

"Only ourselves in the room and a select few others know this information. In fact, they don't even know what Crux knows yet, we haven't had time to tell them," he admitted. Beads of sweat ran down his face. "Please know we are trying to flush this person out. But we have many Sanctuaries, and this takes time."

"I appreciate that, but even off-record this is going to cause you issues," she said, giving him and Anacreontic serious looks. "Corruption or not, this Sanctuary ordered for a child to be tortured. Can you tell me more about what Crux knows about the Spiders?"

Their meeting lasted hours, going way into the night. The information Valkyrie found out was massive. She had to bring out her notebook and write it all down to remember it all – locations, dates, people. Unfortunately, they didn't lie when they said Crux had a one-track mind and didn't focus on much outside of his own agenda, but still. The most important was the location of the group of Spiders on the edge of Nevada bordering Utah, which even the American's hadn't previously known, although they admitted they had a slight idea but it was not investigated due to not wanting to draw them out of their nest. A lot of names, a lot of plans and information. Some of it had already happened, such as the attack on the Irish Sanctuary in which Crux had tried to be involved in but was replaced in favour of having Skulduggery do the honours of blowing them up. The information debunked a lot of what the other Sanctuaries were trying to claim was happening, especially surrounding the Dead Men and motives of the Sanctuary.

But what did that matter? This was off the record. Never to be spoken of again. It was bittersweet, hearing American officials saying this but knowing that they'd never admit it again. The Dead Men were brutish soldiers, their Sanctuary was incompetent, and they were trying to stir up rumours for attention and nothing more. That's all that would be said after this.

For now, though, they had a lot to work on. Mr Sorry, the Spiders Den, all sorts of names. She'd have to go through it all.

"What's your plan?" Mr Crest asked her as she and Dexter stood to leave.

"Go to the Spiders and see what they have to say," she said with a wry smile. "I'd appreciate you not getting involved if we cause a ruckus. Considering we never had this conversation and you don't believe the Spiders are guilty, I'm sure that won't be a problem, hmm?"

Progress, people, progress! Hopefully, we will be completed before three-hundred chapters ;)