Skulduggery clicked the chamber back into place. “No running. Not any more. I’m going to stand and fight.”
“So what is your connection? Why do you fear him? What power does he have over you?”
Skulduggery raised the gun and thumbed back the hammer.
Slowly, Tesseract brought his hands up to the straps around his head, his numb fingers clumsily unbuckling the mask. Finally, it came free, and he let if fall, felt the air on his ravaged face. It felt so good. He felt like laughing.
“A dying man’s last request,” he said. “Answer me this. You were killed, yet you came back. Do you know how it happened? Do you know who would be powerful enough to hold back death, true death? Was it Necromancy that brought you back, Skulduggery? Was it Lord Vile?”
Skulduggery’s gloved finger tightened on the trigger, but before the gun fired Tesseract’s legs gave way beneath him once again. He stumbled to the wall, hit it with his shoulder and slid down to the floor. There was no pain, which was nice, because he could feel the rot spreading over his head. When he looked up, Skulduggery was putting his gun away.
“Not going to kill me?” he asked.
“Waste of a bullet.”
“I realise I have no right to ask this, but would you help me outside? It’s almost dawn, and I would like to feel the sun on my face.”
Skulduggery tilted his head slightly. Then he came forward, stooped to wrap Tesseract’s left arm around his neck, and straightened up, lifting Tesseract out of a pool of his own blood.
“The problem with living so long,” Tesseract said, as Skulduggery walked him to the door, “is that we get used to it. We watch the mortals age and wither and die around us, watch the world change and decay… but no matter the hardship or the pain or the sorrow we suffer, we choose to continue living. Out of sheer habit, I think.”
“You’re quite chatty now that I’ve got to know you,” Skulduggery said.
“I have a cat, you know. Back home.”
“I know. You had cat hair on your lapel the day you killed Davina Marr.”
“You don’t miss much, do you? She doesn’t have a name. She is just Cat. She curls up on my chest whenever I sit down, and goes to sleep. I hope she doesn’t miss me. I’m going to miss her.”
They emerged into the cold air of the morning. Dawn had yet to break. Skulduggery found a bench and he let Tesseract sit, facing the stagnant lake, and beyond it, the horizon. Then he sat beside him.
“Is there anything you regret?” Skulduggery asked.
“I regret being mortally wounded just a few minutes ago.”
“Understandable.”
“Apart from that, no. I lived. I killed. My life is my own.”
The rot was seeping through Tesseract’s body. He turned his hand over, but it was probably a good thing he couldn’t see much in this dim light. He felt the flesh bubble, like he was being boiled from the inside out. It was an effort to look up again.
“What about you?” he asked, his words not much more than a mumble. “Regrets?”
“Many,” Skulduggery said.
Tesseract’s breath rattled in his chest. “That’s the good thing about living. You get to make up for past mistakes.”
“Or make brand-new ones.”
Tesseract tried to smile, but didn’t have the strength for it. His head dipped, and Skulduggery reached out to steady him. The sun cracked the horizon, split it with light that spilled through the sky in streaks of orange and deep red.
Also by Derek Landy:
Skulduggery
Pleasant
Skulduggery
Pleasant
PLAYING WITH FIRE
Skulduggery
Pleasant
THE FACELESS ONES
Skulduggery
Pleasant
DARK DAYS
Copyright
First published in hardback in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2010
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
Visit us on the web at www.harpercollins.co.uk
Skulduggery Pleasant rests his weary bones on the web at www.skulduggerypleasant.co.uk
Derek Landy blogs under duress at www.dereklandy.blogspot.com
1
Copyright © Derek Landy 2010
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © AUGUST 2010 ISBN: 978-0-007-41435-2
Derek Landy asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Illuminated letters © Tom Percival 2010
Skulduggery Pleasant™ Derek Landy
SP Logo™ HarperCollinsPublishers
ISBN 978-0-00-732598-6
HarperCollins Children’s Books
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)
Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East – 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W 1A8, Canada
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1 Auckland,
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com
Table of Contents
48PLAN FALLS APART
Cover
Title Page
1 - WREATH’S TASK
2 - THE SMILING DETECTIVE
3 - TESSERACT
4 - GRANDER SCALES
5 - VALKYRIE’S DILEMMA
6 - THE NEW MESSIAH
7 - BLOOD
8 - THE ZOMBIE KING
9 - THE NEW GRAND MAGE
10 - THE BONEBREAKER
11 - THE ROARHAVEN MAGES
12 - KEEPING A STRAIGHT FACE
13 - SUFFERING
14 - DEAD MEN
15 - THE BANSHEE
16 - THE INTERROGATION OF DAVINA MARR
17 - THE JOB
18 - LICKING WOUNDS
19 - CHRISTMAS MORNING AT THE MIDNIGHT HOTEL
20 - ’TIS THE SEASON
21 - NYE
22 - SOUL SEARCHING
23 - THE GRAVE
24 - THE DEAD GIRL
25 - DIRT
26 - THE TRUTH
27 - BACK WITH FINBAR
28 - THE Z-WORD
29 - HER GUARDIAN ANGEL
30 - MEET THE PARENTS
31 - THE FIRST WAVE
32 - SHENANIGANS
33 - THE TWINS
34 - REMNANTS UNLEASHED
35 - SCRUTINOUS
36 - QUIET, PLEASE
37 - ENEMY HANDS
38 - FIGHTING
39 - MURIEL
40 - THE PLAN
41 - THE HEAD IN THE BOX
42 - THE LESSON BEGINS
43 - BY THE SWORD
44 - SIEGE AT THE HIBERNIAN
45 - FRIGHTENING
46 - ACCORDING TO PLAN
47 - STRANGE BEDFELLOWS