Valkyrie stepped between them and Caelan’s eyes came back to her. They were as dark as her own. Maybe darker. “Caelan, I know you helped me out with Ghabon, and I know you don’t owe me anything, but we need to find Dusk and stop him.”

“I keep to myself.”

“I know.”

His eyes flickered away, to her shoulder. “I can ask Moloch. But I can’t go alone.”

“We’ll come with you.”

He nodded. “I can’t promise that he’ll have anything useful for you, or even that he’ll agree to see us. But really, he’s the only one who might talk to me.”

“The other vampires don’t like you?” Skulduggery asked. “Why is that?”

Caelan hesitated. “In our culture it’s forbidden for one vampire to kill another.”

“You killed another vampire?”

“Yes, sir. I did.”

“Why?

Caelan shrugged. “He had it coming.”

25 LAST VAMPIRE STANDING

25
LAST VAMPIRE STANDING

The tower blocks rose from the cement like dreary canyon walls, oppressive in stature and depressing in structure. Built in the 1960s, most of the towers had been demolished decades later in an attempt to get rid of the drugs and crime that had seeped through, permeating everything. Six of the seven Ballymun Flats had been flattened, the Sheriff Street Flats had been torn down, the Flats at Fatima Mansions redeveloped and replaced. By the time Dublin City Council got round to the Faircourt Flats, however, they had run out of money.

Towers, thirteen stories high, of tiny apartments stacked side by side. No grass. No trees. One little shop, defaced by graffiti. Rusted shopping trolleys and old mattresses.

The gleaming Bentley parked beside a burnt-out husk of a car and Skulduggery, Valkyrie and Caelan got out. Skulduggery clicked on the car alarm and they followed Caelan through a rubbish-strewn tunnel, as grey as the sky it was blocking. They emerged on the other side and walked across a concrete square to a stairwell that stank of human waste. They passed no one.

The elevator was broken and the climb to the top burned the muscles of Valkyrie’s legs. Skulduggery and Caelan didn’t even notice it.

Still they passed no one.

They reached the top, where every second door was paint-flecked steel, with the locks and the bolts on the outside. Heavy bars criss-crossed the windows.

Caelan hammered his fist against one of the steel doors and they waited. There was the click of a lock being undone on the other side and the door cracked open. A young woman looked out. She was pale and sweating, her eyes red-rimmed and jittery.

“We’re here to see Moloch,” Caelan said and the woman licked her lips, glanced behind her and slipped out. Valkyrie watched her hurry away, arms wrapped around herself.