Playing With Fire

Chapter Thirteen ROARHAVEN

THE WALLS WERE moving in, faster and faster. She glanced back as the junction closed up. If she tripped, if she stumbled, the walls on either side of her would shift together with that terrible rumbling noise and squash her into something less than paste.

Her lungs burned like they used to do when she was swimming off Haggard beach. She liked swimming. It was much better than being squashed.

And then, a light ahead of her, a flickering flame in the hand of Skulduggery Pleasant.

"It would be a tad redundant," he called out over the rumbling, "to encourage you to hurry up, wouldn't it?"

She let the fire in her own hand go out and concentrated on sprinting.

"Whatever you do," he continued loudly, "do not fall over. Falling over, I think, would be the wrong move to make at this moment."

She was close, close to Skulduggery, close to that wide-open space he was standing in.

The walls ahead of her shook and rumbled and started to close, and she dove through, hit the floor, and rolled to her feet as the corridor closed behind her and the rumbling stopped. She fell to her knees and sucked in air.

"Well," Skulduggery said cheerfully. "That was close."

"Hate ..." she gasped.

"Yes?"

"Hate . . . you. . . ."

"Breathe some more air; the lack of oxygen is making you delirious."

She got to her feet, but stayed bent over while she controlled her breathing.

"We'd better be careful," he advised. "The Torment may be old, but he's fast, and he's agile,

and he still has my gun."

"Where . . . are we?"

"One unsavory aspect of Roar haven's checkered past was an attempt, some years ago, to overthrow the Council of Elders and establish a new Sanctuary here. We're in what was supposed to be the main building."

Valkyrie saw a switch on the wall and thumbed it. A few lights flickered on overhead.

Most of them stayed off.

Skulduggery let the flame in his hand go out, and they followed the corridor, then turned right and kept going. They walked through small patches of light and larger patches of darkness. The floor was covered in dust.

He turned his head slightly. She knew him well enough to know when something was wrong.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Keep walking," he said quietly. "We're not alone."

Valkyrie's mouth went dry. She tried to read the air, like Skulduggery was doing, but even on her best day she couldn't sense more than a few feet in any direction. She gave up, and resisted the urge to look around. "Where is he?"

"It's not him. I don't know what they are, but there are dozens of them, relatively small, moving as a pack."

"They might be kittens," she said hopefully.

"They're stalking us."

"They might be shy."

"I don't think it's kittens, Valkyrie."

"Puppies, then?"

Something scuttled in the darkness beside them.

"Keep walking," Skulduggery said.

There was scuttling behind them now.

"Eyes straight."

And then they broke from the shadows ahead, into the light: spiders, black and hairy and bloated, as big as rats, legs tipped with talons.

"Okay," Skulduggery said. "I think we can stop walking now."

The spiders emerged from cracks in the wall, moving across the ceiling, clacking as they came. Valkyrie and Skulduggery stood back to back, watching them close in. They each had three eyes, wide and hungry and unblinking.

"When I count to three," Skulduggery said quietly, "we run, all right?"

"All right."

The spiders clacked as they moved, closing in, drawing in tighter, the clacking becoming a din.

"In fact," Skulduggery said, "forget about the count. Just run."

Valkyrie bolted and the spiders attacked.

She jumped over the spiders in front, landing and kicking out as one of them got too close.

It was heavy against her boot, but she didn't wait to see if she had done any damage. She ran on as Skulduggery hurled fireballs.

They swerved off course when the corridor ahead became alive with hairy, bloated bodies, then ran into a room with a large conference table in its center, the mass behind them quickly growing in size.

A spider scuttled onto the tabletop and sprang at Valkyrie as she passed. It struck her back and clung on, trying to sink its talons through her coat. Valkyrie yelled out and swung around, stumbling as she did so, rolling and feeling the spider beneath her. She came up and the spider was still holding on. It darted up her shoulder, toward her face, and she saw fangs. She grabbed it, tore it from her, and flung it away.

Skulduggery hauled her back, and then she was running again.

They ran for the double doors ahead, and Skulduggery snapped out his hand and the air rippled and the doors were ripped from their hinges. They sprinted through and kept going, into a room that must have been the foyer. Skulduggery threw a few more fireballs and Valkyrie got to the main door, slammed her shoulder into it, and burst into the warm sunshine.

The light hit her eyes and blinded her momentarily. She felt Skulduggery beside her, tugging on her sleeve, and she followed him. She could see fine now, she could see the dark lake ahead and blue sky above.

They stopped running. They heard the spiders, the click-clack of their talons, the frantic scuttling in the doorway, but the spiders were unwilling to leave the darkness for the daylight, and eventually the scuttling went away.

A few moments passed, and Valkyrie breathed normally and noticed for the first time that Skulduggery was looking at something over her left shoulder.

"What?" she asked, but he didn't answer.

She turned. The Torment was standing there, his long gray hair tangled in his long beard, Skulduggery's gun pointed right at her.

"Who are you," the Torment said in a voice that hadn't been used in years, "to come after me, to disturb me, after all these years?"

"We're here on Sanctuary business," Skulduggery said. "We're detectives."

"She's a child," the Torment said. "And you're a dead man."

"Technically speaking, you may well be right, but we are more than we appear. We believe you have information that may aid us in an investigation."

"You say that as if I am obligated to help you," the old man responded, the gun not wavering. "What do I care for your investigations? What do I care for detecting, and Sanctuary business? I hate the Sanctuary, and the Council of Elders, and I loathe all they stand for. We are sorcerers. We should not be hiding from the mortals, we should be ruling them."

"We need to find out how to stop the Grotesquery," Valkyrie said. "If it opens the portal and lets the Faceless Ones back in, everyone suffers, not just — "

"The child is addressing me," the Torment said. "Make her stop."

Valkyrie narrowed her eyes but shut up.

Skulduggery tilted his head. "What she says is true. You had no love for Mevolent when he was alive, and I'm sure you have no wish to see the Faceless Ones return. If you help us, there might be something we can do to help you."

The Torment laughed. "Favors? You wish to trade favors?"

"If that will make you help us, yes."

The Torment frowned suddenly and looked at Valkyrie. "You. Child. You have tainted blood in your veins. I can taste it from here."

She said nothing.

"You're connected to them, aren't you? The Ancients? I despise the Ancients as much as I despise the Faceless Ones, you know. If either race were to return, they would rule it all."

"The Ancients were the good guys," Valkyrie said.

The Torment scowled. "Power is power. Sorcerers have the power to run the world — the only reason we don't is weakness of leadership. But if the Ancients were to return, do you really think they'd make the same mistake? Beings of such power have no place on this Earth. I had hoped the last of your kind had died out."

"Sorry to disappoint."

The Torment looked back to Skulduggery. "This information, dead man, must be worth a lot to you. And this favor you are promising — this, too, would be equally substantial?"

"I suppose it would be."

The Torment smiled, and it wasn't a pleasant sight. "What do you need?"

"We need to know where Baron Vengeous has been keeping the Grotesquery since his imprisonment, and we need to know how he plans to raise it."

"I have the information you seek."

"What do you want in return?"

"My needs are modest," the Torment said. "I would like you to kill the child."