Who did?”
“My friends.”
Stephanie couldn’t help herself – she had to look around.
“And where are your friends now?” Skulduggery asked.
Rhadaman shrugged. “Close by. They don’t wander off too far. There were loads of them around after the various battles, and I found a group and adopted them. They don’t say a whole lot.”
Stephanie picked up a faint whiff in the air. “Hollow Men?”
“I’ve given them names,” Rhadaman told her. “And I’ve dressed them in clothes. I’ve called them after my friends, the ones Darquesse killed. I think they like having names, not that they’d ever show it.”
“Hollow Men don’t like anything,” Stephanie responded. “They don’t think. They don’t feel.”
“Reflections aren’t supposed to feel, either,” Rhadaman said. “But you say you do. What makes you any different to them?”
“Because I’m a real person.”
“Or you just think you are.”
“If you surrender,” Skulduggery said, “I promise we’ll take your friends in and treat them well. Once the effects of the Accelerator wear off, they’ll be returned to you. Do we have a deal?”
“You know what they do enjoy?” Rhadaman asked, as if he hadn’t even heard Skulduggery. “They enjoy beating people to a pulp. They enjoy watching the blood splatter. They love the feel of bones breaking beneath their fists. That’s what my friends enjoy. That’s what will make them happy.”
“You don’t want to do this,” Skulduggery said.
Rhadaman smiled, curled his lip and gave a short shriek of a whistle.
Skulduggery flicked his wrist as he ran at Rhadaman, sending the Sceptre flying into Stephanie’s hands. Rhadaman caught him, threw him and leaped after him, and before she could run to help, the Hollow Men came at her, stumbling through a mountain of cereal boxes. Hollow Men dressed in clothes, ridiculous in badly-fitting suits, ludicrous in flowing floral dresses.
Black lightning flashed from the crystal set into the Sceptre, turning three of them to dust without even a sound. Lightning flashed again, and again, but they kept coming, and there were more Hollow Men behind her, and they were closing in. They had that knack. They were slow and clumsy and stupid, but it was when they were underestimated that they were at their most dangerous.
Stephanie darted right, clearing a path for herself, ducking under the heavy hands that reached for her. She led them down a narrow aisle, big heavy freezers on both sides, turned to them and backed away as they gave lurching chase. Numbers mean nothing if the enemy can be corralled. Skulduggery had taught her that. It’s all about choosing where to fight.
The black crystal spat crackling energy. If it could kill insane gods whose very appearance drove people mad, then artificial beings with skin of leathery paper and not one brain cell between them didn’t stand much of a chance. They exploded into dust that drifted to the floor and was trodden on by their unthinking brethren. They didn’t stop. Of course they didn’t. They didn’t know fear. They had no sense of self. They were poor imitations of life, much like Stephanie herself had been. Once upon a time.
But now Valkyrie Cain was gone, and Stephanie Edgley was all that was left.
From elsewhere in the supermarket, she heard a crash as Skulduggery fought Rhadaman. She wasn’t worried. He could take care of himself.
The shadows moved beside her and a fist came down on her arm. Her fingers sprang open and the Sceptre went spinning beneath an overturned shelf. Stephanie ducked back, cursing. Her only other weapon was the carved shock stick across her back, which had a limited charge and was useless against anything without a nervous system. She ran by a shelf of microwaves and blenders, past pots and pans. She grabbed a stainless-steel ladle that felt unsurprisingly unsatisfying in her hand, and immediately dropped it when she saw the one remaining box of kitchen knives. She dragged it from the shelf, threw it straight into the face of the nearest Hollow Man. The box fell, knives scattering across the floor.
Stephanie snatched up the two biggest ones and swung, the blades slicing through the Hollow Man’s neck. Green gas billowed like air from a punctured tyre. Even as she ran on, she could taste the sting of the gas in the back of her throat.
Two Hollow Men ahead of her, one in a shirt and tie and no trousers and the other in a silk dressing gown.
She dropped to her knees, sliding between them, cutting into their legs as she passed, and even as they were starting to deflate she was already on her feet again, stabbing the filleting knife into the chest of a Hollow Man wearing pyjamas. She spun away from the blast of gas, coughing, her eyes filling with tears. Something blurred in front of her and she hacked at it, shoved it away, her vision worsening, her lungs burning. Her stomach roiled. She tasted bile. She slipped on something. Fell. Lost one of the knives.
A hand grabbed her hair, pulled her back and she cried out. She tried slashing at it with the second knife, but the blade got tangled in her jacket and then it too was lost. She reached up, dug her nails into rough skin, tried to tear through. Her hair was released. Something crunched into her face. The world flashed and spun. She was hit again. She covered up, her arm doing its best to soak up the heavy punches, her head rattling with each impact. If she’d had magic, she’d have set the Hollow Man on fire by now or sent her shadows in to tear it apart. But she didn’t have magic. She didn’t have such a luxury to fall back on, to get her out of trouble. She wasn’t Valkyrie Cain. She didn’t need magic.
Stephanie brought her knees in and spun on her back. The Hollow Man loomed over her, little more than a black shape. Its fist came down on to her belly like a wrecking ball, would have emptied her lungs were it not for her armoured clothes. She braced her feet against its legs and pushed herself back out of range, rolling backwards into a crouch, the Hollow Man stumbling slightly. She plunged her hand into the display stand next to her, scrabbling for a weapon, fingers curling round a mop. The Hollow Man came at her and Stephanie rose, swinging the mop like a baseball bat.
She missed wooden mops. Wooden mops had a little weight to them – whereas the plastic one in her hands merely bounced lightly off the Hollow Man’s head.
She flipped it, drove the other end into its mouth, pushed until she’d sent it staggering and then she let go, turned and ran back the way she’d come. Her eyes were clearing. She no longer wanted to puke. A Hollow Man turned to her and she dodged round it, tripped and fell and saw the Sceptre. She threw herself forward, plunged her hand under the fallen shelf, her fingers closing round its reassuring weight. The Hollow Man reached for her. She turned it to dust.
She got up, disintegrated the next one, and the one after that. Three more trundled into view and she dispatched them with equal ease. Then the only sounds in the place were coming from Skulduggery.
She hurried back to the open area, in time to see Rhadaman pull Skulduggery’s arm from its socket.
Skulduggery screamed as his bones clattered to the floor. A blast of energy took him off his feet, and Rhadaman closed in, ready to deliver the killing blow.
“Freeze!” Stephanie yelled, the Sceptre aimed right at his chest.
He looked at her and laughed. “That
