Merry Christmas, everyone! I hope you're enjoying the holidays with your family. If not, this should suffice as a distraction ;).
Badum-tack.
Badum-tack.
Valkyrie sighed and kept typing. She was slowing down. After a couple of hours of the words fluently appearing on the screen, one after the other, she was taking breaks and found herself staring into space for, presumably, worrying amounts of time. Above her, the ceiling light buzzed, and the white, windowless, décor-less walls, with grey metal desks and filing cabinets, did not help to improve her mood in the slightest.
Badum-tack.
She glared at Skulduggery, who was sitting halfway on the edge of his desk, next to hers. But she kept typing. Stopped typing. Valkyrie sighed again. She had lost her train of thought.
Badum-tack.
Valkyrie looked at him. "Don't you have paperwork to do?"
"No." Skulduggery said and threw the red rubber ball again, making it bounce off the ground, then the wall, and then fly back into his gloved hand.
Badum-tack.
"Let me guess." She said with a nod to the stacks of folders and files piling up on her desk. "I have to write all of these reports now, so you have zilch to do?"
"Pretty much." He agreed.
Badum-tack.
"Can't you go annoy someone else?"
"But then, how would I get the satisfaction of watching you do the tedious work, for once?" Skulduggery posed.
"You never had to write these many pages."
"Well, I never had to prove my alliances." He shrugged, unfazed.
Badum-tack.
"Out of luck." Valkyrie shot back.
Badum-tack.
"Look." Skulduggery held on to the ball, using it to gesticulate around. "If any other Sanctuary comes by and wants to question your integrity, all China needs to do, is have Wayward dump boxes over boxes of reports on them. And then, they can either do all the work of reading them. Or they can leave and shut up." He said, his voice hissing at the last words.
BaDUM-tack.
She sighed, once again. "So, this was your idea."
"It was a communal thought."
"Great. Thanks so much."
Badum-tack.
Valkyrie turned to focus back on her screen with a sullen expression. Just as she did, Skulduggery's phone rang. Hopefully, she looked up, but he glanced at the screen and picked up.
Skulduggery tilted his head, as if he were curious about what the caller was saying. Before Valkyrie could frown at him inquisitively, he took down the phone and turned on the speaker.
On the other line a robotic, unidentifiable voice was speaking, currently giving out an address. "...street, number 5, Dublin." It said. "Your target is Geoffrey Perock, the owner of the villa."
They looked at each other curiously.
"The event will last throughout today and tomorrow." It continued monotonely. "You won't like what you see."
And as sudden as the call had come, it was over. There was a click and the line went dead. A moment later, Skulduggery's phone buzzed with a message. He opened it and showed it to Valkyrie.
It was a photo, sent by a private number, of a man with dark brown, slick hair, a large forehead, and a pudgy nose. He looked to be in his mid-thirties and could have been the most boring business man Valkyrie could think of, yet the look in his eyes still unsettled her somehow.
"Anonymous tip?" Valkyrie guessed hopefully.
"No, that was my old friend Mr. Robot-Toe." Skulduggery replied.
She frowned. "Seriously?"
"Don't be ridiculous, Valkyrie." He said unimpressively and got up from the table to walk to the door.
She rolled her eyes and jumped up to follow along.
"I thought you wanted to go home, after this." Skulduggery mentioned, as they left the bleak room and walked down a small hallway that connected to a larger one, which lead towards the entrance hall of the Sanctuary.
"I wanted to leave the office, most of all." She shrugged.
"You are going to have to get used to it." He replied unimpressively.
She sniffed humorlessly. "And what are you getting used to?"
Skulduggery tilted his head at her, while keeping his gaze on the hallway ahead, in which other mages passed them, nodding to them, or ignoring them. "What do you mean." He asked blandly.
"You're being grumpy."
"I am not." He argued.
"You are. You've got your gloomy voice on."
His head nudged back in offense. "I don't have a 'gloomy' voice."
Valkyrie laughed at him.
Skulduggery glared. "Stop laughing."
"See? Grumpy." Valkyrie nodded convincedly and amusedly.
He grumbled to himself but did not argue any more. Valkyrie snickered to herself, as they continued their walk to the Bentley, and he continued being grumpy.
They left the Bentley a couple of streets over from the address they had received. It was a wealthy neighborhood, modern townhouses and villas lining the well-maintained streets and little parks around. It was already late, yet young couples were pushing expensive strollers, and older couples wrapped themselves in expensive coats to keep warm in the uncomfortable, wet weather.
The villa of Geoffrey Perock was a tall building made of defined, light stone blocks, with dark shingle roofs. It jutted out from between its neighboring houses on the street, yet had one more floor than any of them, as if it were trying to establish its superiority, while the style of it matched well with the simple tile and brick designs around.
Inside, nothing seemed to be going on. The windows were dark, only a room on the lower floor had its lights on, hinting at their inhabitant. No noise came from inside the thick stone walls.
"I thought, this was an event." Valkyrie commented.
"Maybe, Mr. Robot-Toe was wrong." Skulduggery said.
She threw him a look. "There is no Mr. Robot-Toe."
He shrugged and started walking towards the villa. In front of it, a tiny, straight-lined water path had been created, lit with small lamps inside the metal sidewalls, over which a small, wooden bridge led to the front door.
"Do you just want to ring the bell?" Valkyrie prodded uncertainly as she followed.
Skulduggery shook his head. "We should look at the back first."
She nodded agreeingly, and they turned after the bridge, taking a gravel path around the house, to the garden. Out here, too, it was quiet and empty, no lamps lit the lawn whatsoever, so that Valkyrie could not even make out the garden. However, the closer they came to the back door, the more distinct the sound of voices and music became.
They exchanged a glance. This was an event. The secret kind, and likely not the good kind.
Skulduggery took out his gun and held it behind his leg, and Valkyrie let a bit of energy flow into her hand, until it made her fingertips buzz and crackle lightly. Once they were ready, he reached out and opened the door. They stepped in, glanced around, and froze.
Around them, a party was in full swing. Dozens of people were accumulated in a lavish living room, drinking alcohol and snorting powdered drugs into their noses on glass tables. The music was quiet enough to allow for conversation, and echoed in different styles from other rooms, as the entire house bustled with excitement and intoxicated relaxation.
It would have been simply an overindulging party, if it were not for all the underaged girls.
Valkyrie felt shock and rage churn up in her, her hands automatically crackling with more energy. Young girls had been distributed amongst the guests, none of them could have been older than fifteen. Most of them had a metal collar around their necks, thick metal chains tied them to the furniture or metal rings fastened to the floor. They were all naked or dressed in lingerie, which their underdeveloped bodies barely managed to fill.
Some of them had been freed from their chains so that they could serve the guests with drinks and drugs, while wearing fake smiles or apathetic looks. Some were draped over, and being groped by, men that were decades, maybe centuries older than them. Some were kept in a corner, on their knees, waiting to be called to another hungry guest, intimidated by the guards hovering above them. One was currently being dragged by her chain, to another room.
Before Valkyrie could take in any more of the horror, or puke, or scream, the first people noticed them. Within moments, the guests froze, a sudden stop sweeping into the mass, and quiet settling over it, except for the music that played faintly on, and the oblivious people audible in other rooms.
A second passed in which everything was in perfect standstill, as the guests stared at them in horror, and they returned the gesture.
"Well." Skulduggery then said into the quiet, his voice easily echoing through the full yet motionless room. "You are ALL under arrest."
The moment passed as the air in the room turned hostile with a snap. An armed man made the first move, his hand reaching for a gun on his hip. This was all the excuse Valkyrie needed, and she blasted him with a bolt of lightning before his weapon left its holster. A frenzy broke out, as the partygoers scrambled in every direction. Some made a move for Skulduggery and Valkyrie, others went for their girls, forcefully trying to drag them away. Most bolted for whichever exit their eyes first landed on.
Gunshots rang out in the room as the guards returned fire. Girls shrieked in terror and it echoed across the house adding to the chaos. Skulduggery fired back as he darted for cover. Valkyrie spotted a man beating and dragging a girl simultaneously, and charged right for him, blasting anyone she could along the way. She tackled the abuser as she reached him and delivered a flurry of punches into his jaw.
Moments later, a man grabbed her by the hair and yanked her away. She grabbed for his fingers, tried to pry them away, as he dragged her in between hurried, fleeing pairs of feet. Valkyrie growled and bucked up, twisted and kicked, hitting his knee. The man grunted and tumbled back a couple of steps but did not let go of her hair. Yet she was turned to him now and the second their eyes locked, a bullet passed through his head, and he slumped to the floor. Valkyrie looked to her left and saw Skulduggery running into a hallway after others.
She quickly scanned the room as she got to her feet, the guards lay dead behind her, as did other men, and sadly a few of the girls. Her eyes settled on one of the chained girls by the wall, who was kneeling by a dead girl, crying. The crying girl made eye-contact with Valkyrie and urgently pointed to a door behind her. Valkyrie regained her bearings quickly and went for the door.
As she burst into the room an extra layer of disgust set in. Even more girls were tied up to the walls, facing into them, their backs bleeding from long gashes. The shock took her off-guard, so she was unprepared as a whip struck her chest. A large, fat, shirtless, bald man with a crooked nose had been hiding to the right of the doorframe. He struck at Valkyrie relentlessly.
"Who… the fuck… are you, bitch?!" He growled between swings of his whip. Valkyrie held her arms up defensively and re-focused, as her unarmored clothes did their best to protect her from the lashes, then she spotted her opportunity. When the next strike came she reached out and grabbed the lash in the center.
"I'm your worst nightmare, you sick creep." Valkyrie snarled, and she saw the despair sink into the man's eyes before sending a massive pulse of electricity through the whip. Her eyes followed him down as his skin fried, and he let out a final cry before collapsing as a smoking mass. Stunned gasps came from the girls tied to the walls. Valkyrie moved to free them, but heard more screaming coming from the rest of the house.
"I'll come right back!" She quickly reassured, then turned and left in a jog. The main room was empty when she returned to it. Valkyrie searched for a new target, and her eyes fell on a group of men hauling more girls out of the house into a large garage. She broke towards them, as she sprinted down the hall she could see more clearly the men loading girls into unmarked vans and trucks.
The captors were angrily shouting orders at each other and their quarries. As Valkyrie approached, they quickly closed the doors and flooded into their vehicles. Valkyrie knew she was too far away to do anything, but began charging energy into her arms nonetheless. She pushed herself to run faster, meanwhile the vehicles began to accelerate, and as she reached the garage they were already underway.
"Damnit!" Valkyrie exclaimed and sent all the lightning she could muster in the direction of the fleeing cars. Her magic exploded wildly, sailing out in all directions, none of it reaching her target. As the light from the blast faded, Valkyrie saw the vehicles round a corner and disappear. Cursing the wind, she went back inside.
It was quieter here now, Valkyrie tried to focus her hearing in order to decide where to go next. However, that decision became mute, as a flying, wailing man came out from a hall to the right, landing flat on his face. Skulduggery followed close behind.
"You, Mister Perock are going to answer some questions for us." Skulduggery said intimidatingly. Valkyrie recognized the Geoffrey Perock from the photo they had been sent. All of the rage and disgust that had built up in her over the last few minute found a target in him, and it took a considerable amount of willpower not to disintegrate him where he sat.
"You two have no idea what youre getting into here, youre both as good as dead, you hear me? Good. As. Dead." Perock hissed conceitedly.
"I would be more worried for yourself, if I were you." Skulduggery threatened as he grabbed Perock by the collar and stared him dead in the eye. To Valkyries surprise and disgust, he laughed insanely in response.
"Oh, Im already dead, and my solace is that youll be following shortly behind me." Geoffrey sneered. Before Skulduggery could respond a foam began to seep from Perocks mouth. Valkyrie could hear him choking on it as she approached, more confused than angry now. Far more quickly than Valkyrie would have liked, Geoffrey Perocks body went limp, more foam dripping from his mouth.
Skulduggery threw Perocks body to the floor in contempt, before standing quickly and turning away in exasperation. He and Valkyrie looked at each other, as Skulduggery turned around, a silent message passed between them, they had a new enemy, one they would be both more than happy to destroy. When the moment passed, they turned to free the girls who were still captive throughout the house.
Listen to the wind blow
Watch the sun rise
Run in the shadows
Damn your love, damn your lies
And if you don't love me now
You will never love me again
I can still hear you saying
You would never break the chain
And if you don't love me now
You will never love me again
I can still hear you saying
You would never break the chain
Listen to the wind blow
Down comes the night
Run in the shadows
Damn your love, damn your lies
Break the silence
Damn the dark, damn the light
And if you don't love me now
You will never love me again
I can still hear you saying
You would never break the chain
Chain, keep us together
Run in the shadows
Chain, keep us together
Running in the shadows
Chain, keep us together
Run in the shadows
- "The Chain", Fleetwood Mac (1977)
When they entered her reception room, China had her eyes closed. The room took up the entire top floor of the central tower of the High Sanctuary. Marble pillars reached up to the rounded roof over several floors, making every one of their steps echo loudly through the hall.
China was sat on her chair in the center, her two Cleavers standing perfectly still behind her, facing the door, two more lining the entrance. In a circle around her chair, symbols had been edged into the wooden flooring, electrocuting, and frying, and shooting, and stunning anyone that dared to come too close.
The symbols were by no means inconspicuous, had been filled in with pure titanium, and so they stayed a good step away from them. The room echoed lightly, the sound bouncing off the high walls and marble pillars as if it were a fancy cave. That way, everyone always had to speak up respectfully, to make their voice be heard.
The chair itself was large, and wooden, and padded with red velvet. And finally, in a lonely, purple, velvet chair, Riordan Wayward sat at a distance, typing on his phone and listening in on bits of the conversation he deemed notable.
It was all a bit much.
They stopped before the symbols and waited. Valkryie knew, China was currently accessing the 'Whispers'; a system made of symbols all over and around town, supplying her with information about the people living within it. Since Skulduggery had explained them to her, Valkyrie often found herself wondering, how much of her reports were already familiar to China, before she even handed them in.
China opened her eyes and looked at them. Her gaze sharpened on their blood-covered clothes and the bad moods written on their stances.
"Twenty-two dead, in Dublin today." She said coolly. "Including six children. Judging by your get-up, I will assume you were involved in this mass-waste of human life?"
"We were." Skulduggery replied matter-of-factly.
An aloof brow lifted on her perfect face. "You now have one, and I mean one chance to tell me, what on earth happened."
Skulduggery cleared his non-existent throat. "We received a robo-call earlier today, telling us to check on an address. We followed the clue and found a private property that was holding... a party."
"A party!?" Valkyrie prodded in disbelief.
He ignored her. "The building was sound-proof, whereas we did not know what we were walking into, until we were already... in it."
"In what, exactly?" China asked snidely.
"Well... we haven't had a chance to interview the witnesses." Skulduggery tried hesitantly. "But... judging by the looks of it... there is a human-trafficking ring inside the magical world.
China blinked, as the coldness fell from her face. "Excuse me?"
"A trafficking ring!" Valkyrie repeated outragedly. "In the magical world! There were naked, underaged girls, chained up by their necks, China! They had torture chambers to whip them!"
She looked back and forth between them. "How large was this... 'party'?"
"Round two hundred guests, I would estimate." Skulduggery replied, as Valkyrie did her best to calm down. "This was a well-established group of people. When we tried to capture the owner of the villa, he died..."
"Died, how?"
He raised a shoulder. "Could have been suicide, could have been a hit. Either way, he was protecting information that goes further than this one event."
"So, what you are saying, is that there are many more of these places in Ireland." China followed impatiently.
He nodded. "Most likely."
She breathed out and looked like she was about to rub her face furiously, but she just leaned back, and her eyes blurred thoughtfully for a moment. Then, China sat up again, even straighter. "Find these locations, and do so quietly. I want the people who are responsible, alive. And I want to know where these girls are coming from, and who on earth would dare to abduct Mages in the middle of a globalized world, right under our noses!"
They nodded in agreement.
She waved them away irritably. "Now, leave me."