took out his own cloaking sphere, did the same, and vanished from her sight.
She slipped the sphere back in her pocket and stepped closer to him. Her cloaking bubble mingled with his and suddenly she could see him again.
Sticking by each other’s side, they set off down a set of stone steps, a flurry of snow chasing them into the gloom. Skulduggery held up his hand just before they reached the bottom. A tripwire glinted on the final step.
“Sneaky,” Valkyrie said.
They jumped the last few steps, and the moment before they landed Skulduggery caught her and kept them hovering off the ground.
“Pressure plates,” he said.
“Even sneakier.”
They drifted along the corridor, stopping at the end so that Valkyrie could push open the door. They touched down on the other side, took the next set of stone steps that spiralled downwards, Skulduggery leading the way.
Two guards with sickles on their backs stood at the open windows in the next corridor, their heads covered by black helmets. Rippers. It was freezing in here but they stood with their arms by their sides, as though the cold didn’t bother them, keeping watch on the road leading to the castle.
“Which one do you want?” Skulduggery asked.
Nodding to the nearest Ripper, Valkyrie said, “This one,” in a soft voice, even though she knew that her words wouldn’t travel beyond the bubble that surrounded them.
“Count to ten,” Skulduggery responded, and walked away, vanishing from sight.
Valkyrie moved up behind the Ripper, finished the count and stepped closer. Out of the corner of her eye, the second Ripper disappeared as Skulduggery did the same.
She wrapped her right arm round the Ripper’s throat, grabbed the bicep of her left arm and hooked her hand behind the Ripper’s helmet. His hands came up, trying to free himself. He put a foot to the wall and pushed out, shoving them both backwards. Valkyrie held on, her head down, her eyes closed. She kicked at his leg and dragged him backwards, laying him on the ground as his struggles weakened.
She looked up, watched as the second Ripper fell into view. He hit the floor and stayed there.
When her Ripper was unconscious, she released him and walked to the other end of the corridor. Her cloaking bubble intersected with Skulduggery’s and he appeared before her so suddenly she jumped.
“Sorry,” he said.
She waved his apology away. “I’m sure I scared you just as much as you scared me.”
“Not really.”
She took his hat and threw it out of the window, and was totally unsurprised when a moment later it floated in again and settled back on his head.
“Are you quite finished?” he asked, adjusting it slightly.
“It wouldn’t kill you to admit to being a little startled every now and then,” she said.
“I don’t get startled,” he responded, walking off again. She caught up to him before he left her bubble, and fell into step beside him. “I anticipate and adjust accordingly.”
“You don’t anticipate everything.”
“Of course not. Where would be the fun in that?”
“I’m just saying you shouldn’t feel like you have to keep up this unflappable demeanour around me.”
“Has it occurred to you, after all these years together, that I just might not be flappable?”
“Everyone is flappable, Skulduggery.”
“Not me.”
They came to a door that took them to a tunnel that took them to a room, and in this room they chose an archway that took them to more stairs. Down they went, and down again, until the torches in brackets were replaced by bulbs and the steady thrum of power reverberated through the floor. They avoided large groups of Rippers, passed rooms where white-coated scientists murmured to one another, and kept going until they came to a perspex window overlooking a large laboratory packed with machines that blinked with volatile energy.
Doctor Nye sat on a stool, its back stooped, working on the intricate insides of a rusted device. Nye’s thin limbs looked smaller than when Valkyrie had seen it last, when it had towered over her, its head nearly brushing the ceiling, but she wasn’t altogether surprised. Crengarrions shrank as they got older, and their skin colour tended to lighten. Now it looked, at most, about ten feet tall, and its skin was a delicate ash.
“It looks old,” she murmured. “Good.”
They found the stairs, followed them down, arriving at the double doors that led into Nye’s lab. Two Rippers stood guard.
“I’ve got this one,” Valkyrie said, walking towards the Ripper on the right. She was halfway there when the cloaking sphere started to vibrate in her pocket.
Alarmed, she pulled it out. The two hemispheres were ticking towards each other quickly – much quicker than they should have – counting down to the bubble’s collapse. She tried to twist them back, then struggled to merely keep them in place, but it was no good.
The bubble contracted.
Her boots were visible.
Valkyrie crouched before either of the Rippers caught sight of her. There were sigils on the wall – she could see them now. She recognised one of them: a security sigil that attacked Teleporters. She was pretty sure the other one was forcing her cloaking sphere to malfunction.
And it contracted again. Not all the way, just enough to reveal the top of her head. Time was running out.
Keeping low, she pocketed the sphere and hurried over to the Ripper. The bubble contracted again. He heard her footsteps and his hands went to his sickles.
Valkyrie pulled her own weapons – shock sticks, held in place on her back – and launched herself at him. The first stick cracked against his helmet, but he ducked the second, spinning away. Valkyrie’s bubble collapsed completely now, as did Skulduggery’s, and she glimpsed him throwing fire even as her Ripper attacked, sickles blurring.
Valkyrie knew the pattern and countered, slipped to the side and struck the Ripper’s knee, then spun and caught him in the ribs. His clothes absorbed the electrical charge, and he didn’t seem to register the pain.
He left her an opening and she fell for it, committing herself to a swing that she regretted instantly. A sickle blade raked across her belly, would have torn her open were it not for her armoured jacket. He kicked at her ankle, swept her leg, and she hit the ground and somersaulted backwards to her feet, defending all the while. His knee thudded into her cheek and the world tilted.
He leaped at her.
