The blade bit deeper, and then stopped, and all at once Dragonclaw was pushing her aside and storming towards Skulduggery. Valkyrie stepped behind him and kicked low, sweeping his feet at the ankles. Dragonclaw yelped and Skulduggery moved, smacking his knee into the Necromancer’s face as he fell. Dragonclaw bounced off Skulduggery’s knee and crumpled to the ground.

Skulduggery squatted beside him, managing to get his hands into the folds of the robe.

“You don’t have his pen,” Valkyrie said.

“No,” Skulduggery admitted. “He never had one. Well done, by the way.”

She nodded, didn’t answer.

He found the keys, and by the time he stood up, the shackles were already off. He uncuffed her and she felt magic flood her body. It was a nice feeling.

He opened the door, looked out, then gestured to her to stay put before going on ahead. She looked at him, her friend, as he sneaked to the corner, and she tried equating that with all the horror stories she’d heard about Vile. He’d saved her life and she’d saved his, and she had felt closer to him than she had to anyone else. If there was one person who would understand her, she had known it would always be him. But now…

Two Necromancers came round the corner and Skulduggery took them out. It was vicious and it was ugly, and neither Necromancer had time to even cry out. Valkyrie joined him, stepping over their unconscious bodies, and they moved on. He was in a bad mood. She knew the feeling.

The doors opened ahead of them before they could react, and six Necromancers came striding through. They didn’t seem particularly surprised to see a teenage girl and a skeleton walking around unsupervised. They stood in a straight line, side by side, the blackness of their robes flowing together so that they looked like a single creature with six heads.

“You think we were going to let you walk out of here?” one of them asked.

Valkyrie and Skulduggery stayed where they were, waiting for them to make a move. The ring on her hand was ready to throw up a wall of shadows to block the strikes she knew were coming.

And then the Necromancers reached into their robes and pulled out sub-machine guns.

“Hell,” was all Skulduggery had time to say before they opened fire.

Valkyrie crossed her arms over her head as bullets slammed into her. She staggered back, winded, her clothes dissipating the impacts. More bullets hit her arms, but she kept them where they were, kept them tight together, not letting any through. Skulduggery was saying something, but she couldn’t hear him over the gunfire, and then she felt him grab her from behind and pull her back round the corner. Out of the firing line, he pushed her against the wall.

“Are you OK?” he asked quickly, his hands checking her for bullet hits. “Are you hurt?”