“Because I’m about to tell you to.”
“Two hundred years of loneliness has cracked your mind, old man. I’m not going to kill these people. I’m not going to kill myself. I’m only going to kill you.”
“You’ll kill me, you’ll kill these people, but you won’t kill yourself. I had the Professor make sure of that. The bomb’s designed to spare your life and your life alone. I wouldn’t let go of it just yet, by the way. That’s when it’ll detonate.”
“What are you talking about? It’s not even armed.”
“Once it’s been in your hand for more than ten seconds, Grand Mage, it arms itself.”
Guild frowned and glanced down at the bomb in his hand. The liquid was red, churning and bubbling against the glass. Guild’s heart sank into the chasm that his chest had become.
“Eighty thousand people,” Scarab continued, “live on air. Rebroadcast around the world as the moment that changed everything. And the Grand Mage of the Irish Council of Elders is going to be the one held responsible. It’s just … perfect, don’t you think?”
“You’re insane,” Guild said. “I’ll have it deactivated. I’ll—”
“You’ll walk out on to that football field,” Scarab said, “and you’ll drop the Desolation Engine. And all around you 80,000 people will be disintegrated.”
“Why?”
The crowd roared again.
“I never liked Nefarian Serpine,” Scarab said as if he hadn’t heard Guild’s question. “Vengeous was a good man. I never got to meet Lord Vile, but I couldn’t stand Serpine. Couldn’t see why Mevolent put so much faith in him. But credit where it’s due – he knew how to get to people. That’s how he killed Skulduggery Pleasant. Went after the family, you know? Made him so mad, so full of rage, he didn’t stand a chance. Rage clouds the mind. Vengeance can make you blind. Which is why you have to wait, and choose your moment carefully. Timing, as they say, is everything.”
“And this is your moment?” Guild snarled. “All I have to do is press this spider against you and this will be the last moment you ever have.”
“My last moment’s coming, don’t you worry. But no, you miss my point. Serpine knew how to get to people. The family is an effective way of doing this. I’m going to reach into my coat now. If I were you, I wouldn’t kill me just yet.”
Moving slowly, Scarab took a phone from his coat.
“You might have to shield the screen from the light,” he said as he pressed some buttons – “it’s kind of hard to see the picture.”
He held it out. Guild swallowed, hurriedly put the spider back in his pocket and took the phone from Scarab. He angled it out of the glare of the dull sun and saw what he knew he would see – his wife and daughter, bound and gagged.
“They’re OK,” Scarab said, looking back at the football game. “Unharmed. And they’re going to stay that way too, if you do what I tell you.”
“Let them go,” Guild said, all breath gone from his body.
“Billy-Ray’s with them right now and they’re all watching TV. As soon as you drop the Engine, he’ll release them. We got no reason to kill them, Grand Mage. Your family never did anything bad to us.”
“I’m not going to kill these people.”
“Yes, you are.”
“You’re insane.”
“You’ve said that. Guild, you don’t like these people, these mortals. From what I’ve heard, you never did. It’s time to break the rules, Grand Mage.”
“I won’t do it.”
“You are not only going to do it, but you’re going to do it in the next three minutes or Billy-Ray will kill your wife and daughter.”
“This isn’t revenge. These people never did anything to you. You don’t have to do this. You don’t even want to do this. You want to make me pay, fine, make me pay. Not them. Not my family.”
“It’s all part of the same plan. With 80,000 deaths, every Sanctuary around the world will be shown just how vulnerable they are. The Sanctuaries should’ve been disbanded after the war with Mevolent ended. We didn’t need you Elders setting up your fancy Councils, electing yourselves to positions of authority over the rest of us. I don’t like people telling me what to do. I got a problem with it, point of fact. A system like that, well, it’s open to all kinds of abuse. Miscarriages of justice as it were. Your system failed me and I got put in prison for killing someone I never killed, and because of that, you’re going to go to prison for the murder of 80,000 helpless mortals. Let’s see how you like spending the rest of your life alone in a cell. Grand Mage, you have about two minutes to walk to the middle of the field there. I think it’s about time you started walking.”
Guild had no breath to form words and Scarab was already looking back at the game. Guild stood, the Desolation Engine heavy in his hand. He thought he could feel it pulsing with a low and terrible life, but he dismissed the idea. The bomb wasn’t alive. It had no consciousness, no sentience. It was not an object of evil – it was simply an object. The man who set it off, however, now he would be evil.
There was a gap between where he stood and the tunnel where the officials entered and exited. He could slip through and walk on to the pitch before anyone could even try to stop him. He looked back at Scarab. The old man wasn’t even smiling any more. He was calm in the face of impending death. Of course he was. This was what he’d been waiting 200 years for.
Guild stepped down from the seats, his eyes fixed on the ground ahead. He didn’t want to look up and see the tens of thousands of faces around him. He wished he could block out the noise – the cheering, the chanting, the thunder of living people – and yet if he’d had the option, he didn’t know if he would. He was a man who was about to commit one of the single most monstrous acts the world had ever seen. Shouldn’t he suffer for it? Shouldn’t he invite that pain in at the earliest opportunity?
He realised his feet were still moving, that he was getting closer to the officials’ tunnel, closer to the cameras and the football field, and still no ideas were coming to him. If he didn’t think of something now, immediately, in a few seconds he would find himself either committing mass murder or sentencing his own family to death.
“Grand Mage,” said a smooth voice in his ear, “could I have a word with you?”
Skulduggery Pleasant took his arm, the bones of his fingers digging into Guild’s elbow like a vice, and suddenly Guild was in the officials’ tunnel, walking through to where it intersected with the main utility tunnel that ran beneath the terraces. He pulled his arm free and turned, sudden panic setting in. Pleasant stood there, his scarf concealing his jaw, his hat pulled low and his gun levelled straight at Guild’s gut.
“Sanguine has my family,” Guild said. “You have to let me do this.”
“Give me the Engine.”
“It’ll detonate when I let go. Where’s Fletcher Renn?
