Skulduggery Pleasant: Raising Cain

Chapter 71 - What's the cost?

Skulduggery – Crow

Anton – Bear

Ghastly – Panda

Dexter – Wolf

Saracen – Weasel

Erskine – Snake

Solomon – Raven

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Chapter 71

Their game plan had been simple – use a massive distraction, helped by Fletcher in the countryside, to gather all the Remnants.

To be fair to Crow, he'd orchestrated it perfectly. The Remnants worked out where they were, decided the placement wasn't dodgy, and all inhabited bodies of all descriptions came to meet them. Hundreds and thousands, perhaps even a hundred-thousand, Remnant-people showed up, and they had to trust it was all of them.

They created a fight, got it so the Remnants were attempting to crush Crow in the middle to see if they could pull him apart, separate him, to make him go into a rage – into Lord Vile, though they never said it.

That part went well also. They expected the attempt to get Crow angry. It didn't work. Fletcher teleported them to MacGillycuddy's Reeks without being possessed, and Snake was already there and turned on the Receptacle without a hitch.

Then the Remnants started screaming. They started lashing out. And they struck in a way they hadn't anticipated.

Valkyrie used her shadows to protect herself, wrapping them tightly around her body with Fletcher next to her, protecting him and herself from the desperate Remnants. Her arms shook and one of her eardrums were bleeding from a punch to the side of the head, but even through the mayhem and the somehow working shield, she still heard Crow scream.

She opened a little peephole in the shield and looked – Crow had an arm extended towards Raven who was passed out and Remnant free on the ground. Another Remnant-man had Raven by the throat and a knife to his temple, threatening to kill the Necromancer. Whatever he was saying was getting to Crow, and his bony hand was shaking.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, shit," Valkyrie muttered, getting the gun out the back of her trousers – not Wolf's, that was gone and lost forever – and wondered what to do.

"What is it?"

"They have Solomon," she said quickly. "I have to help or he'll die."

"You said if you leave me they'll possess me and I could break them out!" Fletcher said in outrage. "You can't just leave and ruin everything we've done! So many people have died already!"

"And so will Solomon if I do nothing!"

"It doesn't matter if he dies so long as those Remnants don't get free!" Fletcher shouted in her good ear. She turned and glared at him nastily. "If I get possessed we're all fucked and you know it! And I can't teleport out without risking bringing one of those things with me! If a Remnant possesses me, I bet they'd kill Solomon first!"

She felt the panic bubble in her and looked back at them. Remnants were shooting and swirling around Crow, all being slowly sucked away but still trying their hardest to destroy him first. She couldn't even see Raven or the Remnant-man anymore, and she couldn't let Raven die! He was meant to be with Crow and make him happy!

She turned and shot Fletcher.

He went down like a sack of flour and Valkyrie made a beeline for Raven and Crow, hoping like hell she could do what she wanted.

She kept the gun close and barged right into the Remnants, who tried to claw at her and hold on. The Receptacle was just at its peak and hundreds were going at once but still there were more around them, and they needed to get the last Remnant's out of the bodies if they wanted them all gone. It was this unknown man or Raven, and she knew what she needed most.

She felt her mouth get pried by the creatures but the machine was too strong and sucked them away before they could possess her, and she finally saw the possessed man, fully black in his veins, eye, mouth, even his hair, as the Remnant strained the keep control. It was playing with Crow and Raven, playing with killing Raven, and she knew what to do.

She shot three times, and on the last shot, the Remnant used its strength to jerk its hand out and stab the unconscious Raven in the neck. She screamed as the possessed man, Remnant as well, fell and died from her bullets. Crow roared and dove through the last of the Remnants and grabbed Raven, holding a hand over the wound and being careful not to pull the blade out as they both knew that would kill him– if he wasn't already dead.

Valkyrie felt suddenly weak and fell to the floor in a slump. How many people had she killed that night? Killed in her own skin, with her own conscience? She watched as the last Remnants were sucked into the Receptacle and Snake came outside and gave them the thumbs up. They were gone. What was the cost? What had they lost today?

The Sanctuary came barely twenty minutes later with Saracen at the head, running straight for them through the sea of bodies. Cleavers started moving the people and mages started setting up a stage and littering beer cans and spraying alcohol everywhere, getting out gas canisters and spraying gas, not enough to be harmful, but enough to keep everyone asleep, and staging it so people thought they'd been at an event.

She watched, even as Snake greeted them worriedly, and him and Weasel helped pry Crow off Raven and get him on a stretcher to the hospital. With a start, Valkyrie started crying as the shock really took over and the three men looked at her.

She pointed at Fletcher.

He was the next to go, and she truly hoped he'd make it. She didn't even want to ask. She didn't want to know. Weasel picked her up and they slowly made their way to the van that was, miraculously, where they'd left it, looking familiar, smelling exactly as it always did, and they sat her gently in the back.

She must have drifted off to sleep, because she woke up in Wolf's arms back at the mansion and he gave her a small, tired smile.

"Solomon?" She asked.

"He'll be at Kenspeckle's by now," Wolf said softly. "Get some rest. You need it."