“Mr Wreath, today you have prevented me from doing my duty.”

“On the contrary, I have prevented you from exacting your revenge.”

“Which amounts to the same thing. I won’t forget this.”

“I don’t expect you to,” said Wreath, but Pleasant had already turned his back on him.

That night they rested their horses by a stream and didn’t talk a whole lot.

Pleasant sat by himself, looking out into the darkness. To say he had a peculiar anger would of course be something of an understatement, but a peculiar anger it was, as it wasn’t the sort any normal folk could understand. It was a slow-burning heat, capable of firing up at a whim, but never in any danger of puttering out. It kept him. It sustained him. Maybe there was even a part of him that was glad Serpine had wormed his way free.

As long as the man who’d killed him and his family was alive, somewhere out there across the dark plain, Pleasant had a reason to fight, a reason to keep putting one foot in front of the other. But kill the killer, and what was left? Something cold and uncertain. Could be he hung on to what he had – his hate, his anger, his job – because hanging on was all he had. The war was coming to an end. His time as a soldier was coming to an end.

What then? Was there something else out there, something he had yet to discover, that could keep him going when he’d used up everything else? Some thing or some person that would give him a purpose again, that would light a different kind of fire within him?

Most likely, he didn’t know. He probably didn’t care to think that far ahead.

The Dead Men slept. But not Skulduggery Pleasant.

No, Skulduggery Pleasant just hung on, waiting.

Because it was all he had.

The Horror Writers’ Halloween Ball

ell may well be other people,” Gordon Edgley muttered as they entered the ballroom, “but if you’re looking for an everlasting purgatory of snide remarks and bitter snipes, look no further than other writers.”

The costumed guests mingled and laughed, sipped champagne and wine and plucked tasty but pointless canapés from the trays of passing waiters. A string quartet played from the darkened gallery, as if they’d been shunted to one side to make room in the light for the chosen few. And the chosen few they really were; invitations to Sebastian Fawkes’s parties were rarer than an honest coin in a politician’s pocket.

That wasn’t a bad line, actually, Gordon realised. Needed work, but it had potential.

“Invitations to these parties are rarer than an honest coin in a politician’s pocket,” Gordon said to his companion, and waited for the response. When none came, he frowned, stored the line away and vowed to play around with it later.