“I’m not down here for the good of my health, so I’m going to ask just one more time – which one of you knows where Dusk is?”

She saw them glance at each other, and then one of them, a girl with a shaved head, stepped forward. She pointed at the unconscious Infected on the floor, the one Valkyrie had burned.

“He does,” she said.

Valkyrie’s shoulders sagged. “You’re kidding me.”

“He was talking about it earlier, before we were thrown down here.”

“Did he happen to mention where he was brought?”

“Not that I heard.”

“Anyone? Did he mention it to anyone?”

No one answered. One of them started to growl again.

“Where’s the door?” she asked quickly, before she lost them completely. “The steel door out of here, Moloch told me to find it. Where is it?”

The skinhead’s eyes were once again locked on to her, but she managed to nod her head to the next apartment over.

“OK,” Valkyrie said, preparing herself. “OK.”

The first Infected came at her like a bullet, and she sidestepped and slapped her fist into his back, sending him into the wall behind her. The skinhead girl charged and Valkyrie kicked her knee then kneed her face. She whipped the shadows at the next Infected who came close and sent a wave of darkness into another. She clicked her fingers and threw fireballs and manoeuvred over to the unconscious man.

The moment there was a break in the attacks, she squatted down and lifted him by his collar. She snapped her palms, sending his ragdoll body across the room, knocking down the Infected like bowling pins.

Hands reached for her as she ran after him. The air shimmered and she cleared a path, reaching him and dragging him through the hole in the wall. She glanced over her shoulder and saw the outline of a door in the darkness. Now all she had to do was hold them off until Skulduggery did what he tended to do – arrive in the nick of time.

The unconscious Infected murmured.

“Hey,” she said into his ear. “Moloch wants to know where Dusk is.”

He groaned. She slapped him across the face, hard.

“Where is Dusk? Where were you taken?”

“A castle,” he muttered, as a dark shape came through the hole and collided with her.

They went sprawling in the mess on the floor. She grabbed a chunk of debris and smacked it into the face of her attacker. She rolled, now she was on top, and punched him with her left, and it felt like her hand had broken. She got up and he kicked her legs from under her.

Light flooded the room as the door opened behind her and hands grabbed her. Suddenly she was being hauled out.

“No!” she cried. “That one knows where they are!”