“You can’t,” Valkyrie responded. “I may not be able to do magic, but my clothes are armoured. Yours aren’t. Everyone stay here. I’ll see if I can talk our way out.”

She got out, closing the door behind her. The road was narrow, with trees on either side. Quiet. She stood in front of the minivan. Her shadow stretched before her, joining the darkness ahead.

The motorbikes were coming back. They stopped just out of reach of the minivan’s headlights, and the engines cut off. A moment later, Foe and Samuel stepped into view, and her heartbeat quickened once more. Samuel was sweating. His hands were clenched. He was coming down off his serum. He was a hair’s breadth away from turning.

“If things had gone differently,” said Foe, “we’d just take the Sceptre. That’s all we want, after all. Anyone else who wants the Sceptre also wants your sister so they can kill her and take control of it. But we have no intention of taking control of it. Darquesse doesn’t want to use it. She just doesn’t want anyone else to use it. So, as I said, if things had gone differently, we would have asked for the Sceptre, and ridden off into the night. But things didn’t go differently. Things went exactly as they went.”

Samuel walked to the edge of the light, and vanished into the darkness.

“Obloquy is dead,” Foe continued. “That’s not your fault. Darquesse did that, and Obloquy was fine with it. But Mercy … Mercy was killed to protect you. And I have to say, I have to say it, I kind of had a soft spot for Mercy. Call me an old romantic if you want, but I had dreams of dying with her. There’d be blood and screaming and fire and pain, and we’d be there … together.”

Foe passed into Valkyrie’s shadow, and was lost to sight.

“But I can’t have that now,” he said. “Because of you. And so, even though we’re just here for the Sceptre, and we have strict orders not to kill you, we’re going to anyway. We’re going to kill everyone with you, too. We’re going to kill your family. Your mammy and your daddy and your little baby sister. We’re going to beat you to a pulp, we’re going to make you scream and cry and beg, and we’re going to kill them in front of you. Then we’ll take the Sceptre and throw it in a ditch somewhere.” He emerged into the light. “That sound good to you?”

“Dexter Vex is with me,” Valkyrie said.

Foe nodded. “We’ll kill him, too.”