Chapter 53 - The Death Bringer Rises

Chapter 53
The Death Bringer Rises

hey had come when they’d heard Gordon shouting for help. Skulduggery had leaped over fallen bodies, Valkyrie right behind him. They burst into the ballroom. All around them, the guests lay on the floor, silent and unmoving.

The ring was so cold on Valkyrie’s finger that it almost burned. “They’re dead,” she whispered.

“They just fell,” Gordon said, from the far side of the room. His eyes were wide, his voice hollow. “They were standing and talking and laughing and then they… they stiffened, and breathed out, and fell.”

Valkyrie frowned. “Melancholia?”

“She’s not dead,” Skulduggery murmured, and then his head tilted to the people around them. “Which means neither are they.”

“What?”

“She sucked their lives from them, drank those lives in, used them to make her stronger. If we can get to her before she wastes that strength, we can force her to return those lives to their owners.”

“That’ll work?”

Skulduggery raised his hands, fingers flexing. “In theory.”

Valkyrie’s breath became a cloud in the air. “What are you doing?”

“Cooling things down,” Skulduggery said. “Their life forces won’t do them a whole lot of good if we allow their brains to die. You have a change of clothes, I expect?”

She hugged herself as the temperature plummeted. Particles of frost began to glisten on the faces around her. “In the Bentley.”

He threw her the keys. “You might want to hurry.”

She nodded, backed off, turned and ran.

There was a commotion. Rippers had run in from outside, congregating at the door to the basement. Valkyrie ran past, out of the house, kicking off her shoes and unlocking the Bentley with a beep. The boot opened and she grabbed her trousers from her bag, pulled them on under her dress, buckled them, pulled on her socks and boots. She searched for the zip on her dress, cursing, yanking the whole thing round her body till she found it. She whipped the dress off, stuffed it into the trunk, couldn’t find her T-shirt so she just grabbed her jacket, put it on as she ran back to the house. It was freezing in there, so cold it actually made her hesitate. She zipped up her jacket as Skulduggery walked from the room beside her, and he joined her as she ran for the basement.

They passed three bloodied bodies, and Skulduggery went first down the steps. Dead Necromancers and Rippers covered the floor like a carpet. The White Cleaver stood half-crouched, his back to the wall, his scythe swinging. The remaining Rippers had him surrounded.

“A girl,” Skulduggery said, ignoring the Cleaver situation as he started turning over bodies, “blonde, scars on her face. Is she here?”

The Rippers didn’t answer.