Chapter 220

They arrived at the house in Ballinteer. There were a handful, only four, of Cleaver's disguised as police, making sure no one got too close. Philomena Random, a Sensitive that could make people believe anything she said, was talking to a news crew. By the time Valkyrie had stepped out of the Bentley, the news was packing up and heading away without filming a single frame.

Valkyrie let Skulduggery go inside alone, her stomach queasy at the idea of re-seeing what she had before. She waited at the door until he came out.

"Same killer?"

"The method is different but the result's the same," he said. "This one was done by hand. The victim was thrown about the place like a rag doll. Plenty of footprints. Sloppy. Angry. Sadistic."

"So we can be sure we have more than one killer."

"If this murder is connected to the others, then I think we have at least two killers working here, maybe more. This has all the hallmarks of a gang urging each other on. Each murder is more savage than the one before. Each time it gets more personal."

"Any idea why there's a car dismantled and spread out of the driveway?"

"None whatsoever."

"We need to find the link between the victims," Valkyrie said. "What was his name?"

"Thomas Purcell. Tommy. Twenty years old. Apprentice electrician. Mother absent, father works nightshifts, isn't home from work yet. Younger brother Doran, seventeen."

"Maybe he could help us," she suggested. "If Tommy had any enemies, anyone he was having trouble with, his brother likely knows."

"Maybe. That is if his brother is in any state to talk."

"Is he here?"

"Geoffrey's talking to him in the garage. See if he can be of any help. I'll take a look around outside."

Valkyrie nodded before going to the garage and looking in. Geoffrey Scrutinous was sitting on a crate talking to a boy dressed in baggy jeans and a hoody. Geoffrey's hair was its usual wild and frizzy self, but he looked exhausted. She knew he was just as overworked as everyone else, rushing all over the country to stop people from noticing magical activities. Geoffrey's job was one of the most important of all.

"You can feel yourself calming down," Geoffrey said. "You're calm and you're clear. Oh, hello, Valkyrie. Valkyrie Cain, this is Doran Purcell. Doran lost his brother today."

"I'm very sorry," she said.

Doran looked up at her. Geoffrey's routine had worked wonders. Doran looked remarkably calm.

"It's okay. Thank you."

"Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?"

Doran smiled. "You're my age. What are you doing, acting the detective?"

"I just want to talk to you and see if you can help us find out who did this terrible thing."

"Right," said Doran. "Terrible. Yeah. Sure, ask away."

"Thank you. Do you know who might have wanted to hurt your brother?"

Doran nodded. "Oh, yeah. Yeah, I got a good idea. Everyone who ever met him."

Valkyrie blinked. "I'm sorry?"

"My brother was a cunt. He was a bully. He'd bully whoever he could get away with bullying. He had loads of enemies. Everyone wanted to hurt him. I'm telling you, they'll be a load of happy people today once this gets out."

"Are you happy Doran?"

"Me? No. He may have been a bully but he was still my brother."

"Did he ever bully you?"

"Yeah."

"That must have been tough."

A shrug.

"Do you know who did this?"

"No. I got home from school, came in the back door and went straight up to bed."

"Do you have any suspects?"

"Like I said, he had lots of enemies. Could have been anyone." A sliver of a smile played across his mouth and disappeared. "You know who it could have been?" He asked, leaning forward. "Mark Boyle. He was Tommy's best friend, ever since they were little. Mark was as bad as Tommy. They might have had an argument about something and it got out of hand."

Valkyrie nodded. "Alright, well listen, I need to begin searching for Mark then. Would you be alright here for a moment?"

"Go get him," Doran shrugged.

Valkyrie smiled and thanked him, and approached Skulduggery.

"I think we have our killer," she whispered quietly, facing away from the street so no one would see and panic.

Skulduggery's false eyes flicked over her shoulder to Doran.

"He might be in shock," she said, "so I might be reading this completely wrong, but he's practically dancing with joy that his brother's dead. And he seemed really happy about suggesting it was his brothers' friend that did this. Both his brother and the brothers' friend bullied him so I think he wants to set him up. And he smells of fresh soap."

"He'd need to have had a shower to wash off all that blood," Skulduggery murmured. "Then it's another of the strange mortals for sure. If there are others he's working with, he can tell us."

"Yeah, except this mortal seems like a sociopath."

"It was going to happen eventually. We can't try to arrest him here, his powers are too violent and he's too unpredictable in a public space. We need to get him isolated."

"So let him go and follow him?"

"Exactly."

.*****.

Valkyrie sighed as Skulduggery pulled up outside of the coffee shop Doran had just gone into. She asked him to get a coffee while he was in there, which he said he'd do and sat back. The very second he closed the rental car door, her phone rang.

"S'up," she greeted.

"Valkyrie, we have something," Corrival said on the other end.

"To do with the mortals?"

"Something else," he said. "I want you to come in for a meeting as soon as you can. We're getting Kenspeckle in to help but know there's been a disturbance at the Sanctuary. Also, the others will be home soon."

It took a moment for her to understand his broken code but realised he must have meant Tanith, Erskine and Dexter. Why he was using code was beyond her but it made some sense considering the Supreme Council barely let him sleep let alone talk alone.

"Sure, thanks for telling me. I'll come in soon I suppose. We're on a lead for three murderers right now so–" Skulduggery suddenly got thrown into the street through the coffee shop window "–and Skulduggery just got sent through a window. See you soon Pa."

She hung up immediately and jumped into the driver's seat. She turned on the car and swerved out into the road. Skulduggery staggered to his feet. Doran and two others, a boy and a girl, stepped out through the broken window behind him, grinning.

She reached over and pushed the car door open and Skulduggery jumped through, and she immediately hit the gas. A stream of sizzling energy took out the wing mirror. She swore and looked into the rear-view mirror right as a ball of energy hit the back of the car and sent it spinning.

Her head rang and she heard Skulduggery saying her name, telling her to move, as blood dripped up her face. They were upside down. She had bitten her tongue.

Some sense slowly came back to her and she forced herself to get out of the car, digging glass further into her cut hands as she struggled.

Doran Purcell and his friends were approaching, walking up the middle of the road, laughing to each other. Skulduggery appeared besides her, gun in hand. He fired and the boys went to run but the girl stopped them. The air in front of her had turned a hazy shade of blue – a protective bubble to keep the bullets out. The girl giggled.

Both of them jumped behind the totalled, upside down car as the boys threw energy beams at them, and Skulduggery shot at them again.

"We need to leave," Skulduggery said to her lowly. "If we're gone they'll stop attacking. There are too many people here to fight."

Valkyrie nodded. "Should we fly?"

"We're too easy of a target in the air. We need to run."

"I'm ready."

Skulduggery nodded once, holstered his gun and snapped his palm out to the window of a bookshop parallel to them. The air rippled and the glass smashed. He clicked his fingers, summoning flames.

She gave him a nod and Skulduggery stepped out, sending twin flames towards Purcell and his friends. The fire swarmed over their force field, unable to get through, and Valkyrie used their lack of sight to dash across the road and jump through the window. She tripped on something and almost went headfirst into a bookcase but kept herself up and running. She glanced back. Skulduggery was right behind her.

Then a stream of energy seared through his chest, lifting him off his feet and he fell. Collapsed on the floor.

"No!" She screamed, running back to him, grabbing his arm, pulling him after her. "Get up! Get up!"

"I think I killed him," the blonde girl said, walking in. "Oops."

Valkyrie narrowed her eyes and stood to her full height. She towered over the five-foot, four inch girl by a full foot, and she was easily six and four inches taller than the boys individually. And significantly broader. The boys still had their male teenage testosterone muscle, giving them some strength but she was still much more muscular than them. They were normal teenage boys. The boy that wasn't Doran had a little bit of weight to him that would make him more difficult if only for him being physically heavier for her to overpower. But other than that… they were normal non-magic kids. With superpowers.

She didn't have the right to kill them or potentially give them brain damage, but she did throw a beam of her own energy at them, hitting Doran in the stomach. He yelled out painfully and jigged like he'd been electrocuted before falling on his backside. The other boy gaped for a moment before sending a beam of energy at her which she stepped out the way off before sending a much lower powerful shot at him, sending him flying back from the sting. She girl barked a laugh of excitement and threw herself at Valkyrie.

Growling, Valkyrie easily flipped the short girl to the floor and started sending hammer shots at her. Her powers may have been too much to send at non-mortals and minors, but she was more than allowed to beat them.

The chubbier boy, who in actuality wasn't that chubby, just heavier, jumped on her back and they stumbled into a table. She kicked at his leg, stomped on his knee, cracked an elbow into his jaw. He went down and Doran stood in his place, his face blotchy with fury. She hadn't seen someone as angry as him in a long time, perhaps ever, and even she had to admit it was intimidating.

He hit her, a punch swinging from her blind side. Doran forced his way towards her and she relented some steps before her back suddenly felt the wall. He threw his body forward and held her back with one hand and punched her with the other. She didn't want to kill him, or kill anyone, but she could see Skulduggery on the floor beyond Doran unmoving so she hit him in the throat with all her strength. He gagged and dropped. She turned and kicked the girl in the face with all her anger as she tried to stand up.

Taking a deep, steadying breath, Valkyrie surged to Skulduggery. She turned him on his back. His facade had melted away, he wasn't moving and when she went to move him, she heard a chuckle from behind her.

"Did you really," the girl said, "think it would be that easy?"

She whipped around but Doran moved faster than she could see, his fist slamming into her side like a truck. She was lifted off her feet, the breath rushing from her lungs, and went stumbling into the larger boys' arms. He picked her up with ease, held her over his head and threw her into the bookcase. She hit a shelf and then the ground, books raining down on top of her, and something grabbed her ankle. The boy was dragging her across the floor. She tried to throw her magic at him but he had a force field now. And it deflected her magic.

Growling, she kicked at his hand with her free leg and escaped his grasp. He turned his head into her right hook, and she caught him on the hinge of his jaw. It should have sent him to the ground. He barely stumbled.

Her eyes wide at the comprehension of how strong these teenagers were, and Doran grabbed her in a bear hug from behind, lifting her in the air. She kicked him with her steel sole shoes in the knees and he grunted and let her go. She elbowed him exactly at the hump of his nose. He cried out in pain again but didn't go down. She'd taken out men three times his size and a hundred times his strength and skill with that move. He only cried out.

The other boy was back again and he punched her. He didn't know how to punch but he put so much strength behind it, it didn't matter. The room whirled and Valkyrie felt the back of her thighs against a desk.

"I like your jacket," the girl said. "Doran, Seán, get it for me."

Doran thundered towards her and Valkyrie jumped over the table to stay away from him. He pushed it into her and she grunted at the pain. He climbed onto it to jump on her and she sent in flying with a shove from her magic.

Something blurred and the other boy, Seán, hit her again. She fell to her knees and he kicked her with more strength than he had any right to, sending her flipping. He kicked her again and it felt like her whole body was breaking. She tried to take in a raking breath as Seán crouched down, unzipped her jacket and yanked it off of her.

Thinking it wasn't worth continuing the fight, she groaned and tried to lie on her side, but Doran's foot found her side and smashed her ribs. Valkyrie found a breath and screamed.

Seán threw the jacket to the girl and she put it on. "Oh," she said, "I like this. Oh, I like it a lot."

Valkyrie tried to curl up into a ball, but every movement made her scream louder. Smashed bits of bone were sticking into her lungs, threatening to pierce through. She wrapped her arms around herself protectively, feeling the little jagged bits of rib poking through her skin.

"What'll we do with her?" Doran asked with a grin.

"I don't care," said the girl. "Just kick her to death and be done with it."

The jacket has been taken, I repeat, the jacket has been taken.

Remus Crux: We haven't even gotten to LSotDM! Though yeah, in a backstabbing way, this just make up for it. Tyren is gonna be mad af.