Skulduggery Pleasant: Raising Cain

Chapter 127 - A rubbish fight

Chapter 127

"Don't cause a scene," Valkyrie immediately whispered to her family, walking down the steps with her hand in Nadia's.

"Don't arrest them," Nadia whispered back quickly.

Well that made things more difficult, Valkyrie supposed, but she guessed it should have been obvious. She didn't want to put a strain on her relationship by arresting Nadia's parents, especially when she'd just gotten what she wanted in Nadia moving in.

Coming up to Mr Vinay and Mrs Keena as well as their bodyguards, or Valkyrie assumed they were bodyguards, they stopped a few steps away. Mr Vinay opened his mouth to speak, so Valkyrie took her chance.

"Excuse me, Mr Vinay, Mrs Keena, but your animosity isn't welcome at this peaceful meeting. If you wanted to be a part of the vote, you're too late."

"I'm not here to argue," Mr Vinay said bluntly. "Nadia. We're leaving. Get in the car. Now."

Nadia squeezed Valkyrie's hand tightly. "I'm staying in Ireland, Dad. I'm not leaving."

"Nadia, can you please just do this," Mrs Keena pleaded quietly. "We've found a lovely house, and you can have friends visit us, even Valkyrie can visit us, but this country won't be safe much longer."

"I don't care," Nadia said quite calmly. "I'm old enough and smart enough to decide what I want. I want to stay here with Valkyrie. I want to stay in Ireland. This is my home."

"If you don't come with us yourself I will manhandle you into the car," he father threatened. "You don't get a choice in this. You're a child."

Nadia didn't say anything, and Valkyrie took that as it was. "She's not going anywhere. You need to stay away from that bike, and this gang you've found? It needs to disappear. Immediately. We will charge them with assault if they put a hand on any one of us."

The guards didn't make any movement that they gave a crap, and that worried Valkyrie because that meant they didn't care about their authority or themselves. Valkyrie counted quickly and found there was eight guards, as well as the two parents she wasn't allowed to hurt or arrest. There was herself, Nadia, and her three brothers. They could fight the guards, it was just keeping Nadia with them at the same time.

But Valkyrie knew how the law worked. She gave the signal.

Erskine immediately swept four of the guards off their feet and Dexter barrelled into another. Valkyrie was almost punched and had to grab the fist and put herself in front of Nadia to keep a distance, almost throwing herself to the floor in the process. Struggling with the man's strength, she kicked at him and his elbow bent a little as he buckled, and Valkyrie used that to get in close, elbow him in the nose and before he'd finished crying out, she'd kicked him again between the legs and pushed him to the ground. Two others were on her within a second.

Valkyrie took a step back, pushing Nadia further behind her, and snapped forward like a snake and punched the smaller man in the face hard enough to send him straight to the floor. She heard onlookers oohing and getting excited about the mess, but before she could think a moment more, she got punched in the nose herself.

It knocked her back several steps. Pulling in a gasping breath, she staggered forward and smacked away a second fist before slinking an arm around his neck and flipped the two of them to the floor. It wasn't ideal, but Valkyrie's head was spinning and her nose was surely broken. Using her momentum, Valkyrie got a knee up between them and dug it into the guard's stomach, held his dominant hand down and used her other fist to start pounding his face.

She barely got three hits in before she was thrown off of him by one of the others she'd thrown down already but this time she was on the receiving end of the fists. She struggled desperately, wriggling and making it awkward so he couldn't hit her properly when she heard a small war cry and Nadia shoved the massive man hard enough he fell over.