Skulduggery Pleasant. Derek Landy

       8

      Cadaverous Gant was of the opinion that this world was not worth saving.

      It was peopled with savages who revelled in their own ignorance, who splashed about in the mud and the mire like children. This was a Truth he had glimpsed even before his Great Awakening, a Truth that had stained his hands red, that had left bodies in his wake, and it was a Truth that would rend flesh and shatter bones for years to come. Cadaverous would be there to see it happen. This he had been promised.

      Sorcerers called them mortals. Cadaverous preferred to call them what they were: cattle. Dead-eyed and unthinking. Bags of meat and fountains of blood, unimaginative animals awaiting slaughter. In the end, they all sounded the same. They all wept the same tears, prayed to the same gods, offered the same feeble entreaties. And they all died the same. Every single one of them.

      And there had been many. The methods he had used may have varied, but the deaths were identical. Once they’d got past the terror, once they’d realised their fate was inevitable, they were still surprised by the very act of dying, as if they hadn’t truly believed it could happen to them.

      In his mortal youth, he had gloried in the hunt. They ran, screaming and sobbing, the perfect prey, and he pursued, calm and determined, the perfect predator. When his muscles were strong and his legs were quick, their deaths were explosions of brutal violence. When his muscles weakened and his legs grew tired, their deaths were splendid blueprints of meticulous planning. His house was his weapon, his traps mere extensions of his will.

      And then his heart attack, and the voice, the woman’s voice, that whispered to him and led him to his Great Awakening.

       Charles. Charles, open your eyes. Open your eyes, Charles. You are mine. You will come to me.

      And so he left his mortal life behind and opened his eyes to the lights of the operating room and the sounds of the machines and the doctors and the nurses and the clink of scalpels on trays and the squeak of the wheels of gurneys and the faraway voices and the chatter and that soft whispering in his mind that said, Charles, welcome back, we have work to do.

      She had brought him magic in those moments of death. He was an old man, but his magic made him new again. He was strong, and quick, with a new appetite for killing and a new mission. The war they were to bring about. The things they were to do.

      There had been missteps. There had been failures. He had suffered defeat and suffered loss. The boy he had mentored, the boy to whom he had bequeathed his knowledge and his insight and his philosophy, who had grown to be a man of sterling character and dark potential, had been delivered a meaningless death at the hands of a mewling, pathetic young woman, a woman just like all the others except for that crackling, cackling power that she held in her fingertips.

      Cadaverous had wanted immediate vengeance, but the voice in his head commanded him to wait. Soon, she said. Soon you will have her life in your hands. Free me, and you will have both your reward and your revenge.

      And it was almost here.

      He stood on the clifftop, looking out to sea, the cold wind snagging at his coat. The others stood beside him but not with him. He was apart from them. He was special.

      “I can’t see it,” said Nero. His voice had adopted the annoying whine that irritated Cadaverous so much.

      “Of course you can’t,” Smoke said. “It’s got a cloaking shield around it.”

      “But if I can’t see it then I can’t teleport on to it, can I?”

      “You can and you will,” said Lethe. “We know exactly where it’ll be in three minutes, so, in three minutes’ time, you’re going to teleport out there.” He pointed directly in front of them. “It’s perfectly safe.”

      “What if you’re wrong?” Nero asked.

      “We’re not. We have its schedule.”

      Nero hugged himself against the cold. “What if the schedule’s wrong? We’re going to be teleporting into empty space.”

      “It won’t be empty.”

      “But what if it is?”

      “Then you’ll start falling, and you’ll teleport yourself to safety.”

      Nero’s eyes narrowed. “Wait, what? No one’s coming with me?”

      “It’s too risky.”

      “You just said it was safe.”

      “It is safe. But it’s too risky for all of us to go at once. You go, confirm it’s there, then come back for us.”

      “Sounds pretty easy to me,” Razzia said, nodding with confidence.

      “OK,” said Nero, “so what if it is there, but I ’port right into the middle of a group of Cleavers?”

      “Then extricate yourself from the situation,” Smoke said, like he was talking to a four-year-old.

      Nero shook his head. “Everyone here seems to have this idea that I’m just a mode of transport. Listen to me: I’m not a car, OK? I’m not a car or a train or a plane. I’m a person. Teleporting somewhere blind is a sure way to get myself killed.”

      “Trust in the plan,” said Lethe.

      “If I get caught or get killed, there is no plan,” Nero countered. “I want someone to come with me.”

      Razzia stuck her hand in the air. “I’ll go with him!”

      “Not her,” Nero said immediately.

      Razzia frowned. “Why not me? What’s wrong with me?”

      Nero looked around for help. With none forthcoming, he swallowed thickly. “Uh … you’re just … You’re not very stealthy.”

      “Bull dust! I take off these heels and I barely make a sound when I walk. My feet are tiny. Look at them. It’s amazing I don’t fall over more often.”

      “Well, it’s not really the stealth that’s the problem,” Nero said. “You just, in certain circumstances, you tend to go a little … crazy.”

      Her eyes narrowed.