The pressure in her ears was back to normal, and while her heart was beating fast, it was no longer threatening to break free of her chest. When she was sure she wasn’t going to throw up, she followed at a safe distance. There wasn’t a whole lot she could do against a Faceless One, except maybe distract it by dying loudly. If it started to torture Skulduggery again, she’d just have to watch. She didn’t much like that idea.

She was still clutching Skulduggery’s right arm. It was in one piece, fingers and all, and it clacked slightly as she moved.

The Faceless One dragged itself up the steps and Valkyrie crouched in case it happened to glance back. It didn’t of course. Faceless Ones were not the type to “glance”. For a start, they didn’t even have eyes. Valkyrie waited until it was gone from sight and crept forward. She had a niggling suspicion why Batu’s body was still being used – maybe torture was more satisfying when conducted in human form. She climbed the stairs slowly, peeking up to see Skulduggery backing away from the Faceless One as it neared.

“I knew she wasn’t real,” Skulduggery was saying. “It’s all part of some new trick, isn’t it?”

He grunted and rose into the air, and suddenly his body locked out straight. Valkyrie watched in horror as an unseen force began separating his bones from each other, centimetre by centimetre. The sounds of his pain started low, then twisted, and he threw his head back and screamed in abject agony as his jaw was slowly pulled from his skull.

Valkyrie bolted into the circle, her Necromancer ring grabbing the shadows and curling them around the Faceless One’s left ankle. She kept running and yanked the shadows with all her strength, but the shadows went taut and her legs flew from under her and she crashed to the ground. The Faceless One hadn’t budged. Its blank head turned, and it let Skulduggery drop to a groaning heap. Valkyrie threw his remaining arm to him as she got up.

The Faceless One observed her without moving. She’d experienced this reaction before, eleven months ago. It was China’s theory that the Faceless Ones could detect the blood in her veins, the blood of the Last of the Ancients. Valkyrie didn’t know if that was the genuine reason, but she took every advantage she could find. She snapped her palms and the air rippled and slammed into the ruined body before her. The rags it wore fluttered in the violent gust, but the body stayed still.

The ring was cold on her finger and it drank in the death this city had seen. She focused the shadows and hurled them at her enemy. A spear of darkness flew into the torso cavity and tore out through the back. The Faceless One staggered and looked down at itself.