Skulduggery Pleasant: Raising Cain

Chapter 184 - Poor Gracious

Chapter 184

"That was a shitshow," Valkyrie said, a cold compress on her forehead. "We were freaking lucky there."

She got grunts from her team. Wilhelm was still sweating profusely, Tanith stayed unconscious long enough that she was now silently crying in the bathroom texting Valkyrie about how much her breasts hurt as she tried to pump, Nadia was in some state of shock and Gracious was the hero of the day. So yeah, a shitshow.

"At least we have the Spear," Frightening said. He looked regal, as usual, and barely had a bruise. If he changed out of his sweaty shirt, he wouldn't look as if he'd fought a million spiders single handily with a god-weapon at all.

"Only one to go," Nadia said quietly, giving Valkyrie a small smile.

Valkyrie smiled back and picked up Nadia's hand, giving it a squeeze. "Yeah. Nearly done. Then we need to destroy them."

"Um, how are we going to do that, e-exactly," Wilhelm asked quickly.

"Fire," she said, leaning back again and closing her eyes, letting the compress cover them. "A lot of it."

"Like – like a volcano?" He asked.

She shrugged, the ice crunching against itself with the movement. "No. You don't have to deal with that. The Dead Men will deal with it. We destroyed the Sceptre, after all." If throwing it into the deep ocean with as much weight as Anton and Dexter could carry onto the boat counted as 'destroying.' It was likely somewhere several hundred metres, maybe miles, below the surface, floating in the high pressures of the sea where no one with a spec of sense would bother diving. And even if it did end up being washed up, they had covered it in tar along the way to obscure its looks and it had no power sources anymore.

Tanith came out of the bathroom from her shower cross painful breastmilk extraction she didn't want everyone else seeing her crying over – why did people ever have children willingly? – and threw herself down on the sofa next to Aurora, opposite Valkyrie and Nadia. "Holding up?"

"Yeah, just a headache," she said quietly. She lifted the ice to see Tanith. Other than having wet hair she didn't look too drained and didn't have tearstains. "I'll be alright soon. Only a couple hours to get to England. When we're done, you can go straight to your parents if you want."

"I plan to," she nodded. "Hey, Gracious. What was that thing you did?"

"It's called a Flash Bomb Extreme!" He said excitedly. "They've been an absolute pain in the ass to test but they're really good if you get cornered by too many enemies. Unfortunately, not much really defends the user, or their friends, against the blast. Sorry you guys got knocked out by it."

"It's fine," she muttered, glancing out the window. "I was actually thinking. Something like that, but more concentrated, could be really good as a personal weapon for people that can't fight. Like a taser."

Donegan nodded. "We've thought about that, but it's been even harder to make. It's just trying to make them work on only the intended victim. We were thinking it would be good for, like, someone in a home invasion type situation. But people won't use it if it's going to knock out the assailant, their husband and the kids, you know? We made it so they won't harm the user though, we took some of the designs from Kenspeckle's bomb designs. Actually, we've been implementing it into a lot of our inventions."

Valkyrie nodded. "Something like that would be good for Nadia, and for the kid when she's old enough," Valkyrie nodded, giving up on the compress and just passing it to Tanith. "Although it might be fun to get you a taser."

Nadia laughed. "No it wouldn't, I'd end up shooting myself with it!"

"Exactly," Valkyrie snickered.

.*****.

After a quick call to Dexter, they left the plane for good and went to a 'friends' house. It was the early hours of the morning in England and they were in London, hurt, a little desperate, a lot hungry and exhausted. Valkyrie had promised China a text as soon as she was in England to say that she was no longer requiring her jet, but Valkyrie held off. She wanted to wait until dusk. China had made every right move to indicate she was on their side, but Valkyrie had been warned too many times to dare think she couldn't turn at any time. Tanith certainly seemed happy with her choice anyway.

As for the other three weapons... a quick call to Fletcher and they were hidden in one of possibly hundreds of storage facilities around the globe. It was as safe as anywhere considering what they were up against, and it kept them out of the fight. She was asked where they went by a bewildered Wilhelm, but she just told him to shut up because she was too tired to deal with questions.

In any case, they went to that 'friends' house, a doctor called Brennock who was not expecting them and not happy about it.

"What are you doing here?" He snapped.

"Hi, Brennock. I've been told you owe my big brother Dexter a few favours, and we need your help," Valkyrie said, and then forced her way through the door.

Thankfully Brennock agreed to fix their wounds so long as they swore to silence, although it seemed Dexter was slightly mistaken when he said Brennock owed him a favour. Valkyrie didn't think it counted as a favour unless both sides actually knew said favour was owed. But it didn't matter now.

They got healed by the grumpy doctor, and then he tried to explain to Tanith how horrible she was for leaving her baby 'all alone' and 'by itself' when she should be with 'it,' and her one and only job right now should be breastfeeding 'it'. He had acquired a broken nose and two black eyes before quickly choosing to take a nice long walk and not come back until the next day when they'd be gone. Valkyrie was impressed Tanith, Aurora and Frightening had held themselves back that much, because if she'd been told before Brennock had left, she'd have given him a piece of her mind.

At any rate, they didn't care much when they were cooking and eating literally all of his food.

"Did you speak to your friend?" Valkyrie asked Gracious, accepting the plate of fried tomatoes, eggs, mushrooms, and potatoes from Nadia gratefully. She had cooked for all of them already. "Make sure you eat something," Valkyrie told her. Nadia rolled her eyes.

"Yeah, he said there haven't been any recent disturbances inside the Sanctuary," he nodded, incredibly chipper after his sleep.

Valkyrie nodded. "Well, I'd expect that means the Spider's haven't been there, as they seem incapable of doing things quietly. Which means they'll probably be going for the Sword tonight so it all gets pinned on us. They must have worked out our pattern, and it wouldn't have taken them long to organise a group to be in England. I feel like either a lot of them are here so they're not in Ireland before things go down, or they've used the last day coming here from Ireland. Either way, this is going to be hard. This friend of yours – do you think he'll be able to let us in?"

"Not without getting himself arrested. But don't worry, I have a few tricks up my sleeve that I've been working on. You leave it to me."

"Alright then," she said with a disbelieving look, giving Tanith a little smile. "I have to admit, I'm a little nervous. We need to be incredibly stealthy. In and out without making anyone suspicious. It's not going to be easy, and if we get caught, we're going to prison. And Nadia, you're staying out of this one. I have a place for you to go," she said vaguely. Nadia just nodded, knowing that this really wasn't her thing. She wouldn't mind, Valkyrie knew, as she was going to send her to Tanith's parents to wait for her and Tanith. "If anyone has anything they'd rather being doing, now is the time to back out, 'cause we're leaving soon."

No one said anything for a few moments, and then Aurora stood, grabbed Tanith's arm, and pulled her from the room. There was a moment when they all heard Tanith begin to ask Aurora what she needed, and then it was cut off followed with a bang against a wall, followed five seconds later by clothes being thrown away.

Gracious hung his head in disappointment and the rest of them tried very, very hard not to laugh.