Skulduggery Pleasant: Last Stand of Dead Men (78 page)

BOOK: Skulduggery Pleasant: Last Stand of Dead Men

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He lit a small bonfire at the back of his building, and every few minutes he’d add something else to the flames as he stood there. It occurred to him that he was watching his career go up in smoke. He was OK with that. He had reached a point that so few journalists reach, and he’d found himself with a choice to make – reveal the truth and watch the world change, or hide it forever, and let the world continue to spin.

Before the battle at Roarhaven, he’d wanted to change the world. The people deserved to know, he reckoned. The story needed to be told.

But should a story be told simply because it’s there? Should a truth be revealed simply because it’s uncovered? He’d taken it upon himself to expose this hidden culture of magic and he hadn’t looked any further than that. But now he knew. If these sorcerers were forced to go public, people would get hurt. People would die. Normal people would rise up with their guns and tanks and bombs, and sorcerers would fight back with their energy beams and fireballs, and more people like Patrick Slattery would die.

Slattery had had a wife. Kenny didn’t even know her name. He’d never spoken to Slattery about anything other than the story. Slattery’s wife would never know what happened to her husband, and that burned through Kenny’s soul. There was nothing he could do about that.

But there
was
something he
could
do about Valkyrie Cain. Over the last year, he’d got to know her, in a way. She’d been a normal girl, plucked from her ordinary life, thrust into a world of magic and death and terror. She had fought the forces of darkness and she hadn’t asked for rewards, or recognition, or parades in her honour. She had fought because she was a good person, a decent person, a hero, and she had died a hero’s death in a blinding flash of light.

That was all Kenny had needed to see. That was all he could stand. He’d found a car and he’d fled, leaving the fighting in the rear-view mirror. If the world was going to be overrun by terrifying, powerful beings like that Charivari, Kenny wanted to be with his own people when it all went down.

He got home. Watched the news. Waited. Slept. Waited again.

And then he figured that Charivari had been stopped, that the world had been saved, that Valkyrie Cain’s sacrifice had not been in vain.

He knew, then, that his career was over, and he only had one more thing to do before he quit being a journalist forever. Valkyrie Cain was a hero, and those closest to her deserved to know that.

When the last bit of evidence was burned, he got in his car and he drove out of Dublin City. He got where he needed to go and he sat there for two hours. Finally, he lifted the package from the passenger seat and got out. Stomach churning, he crossed the quiet road, walked up to the front door and knocked. He waited. He resisted the urge to turn and run and forget about this, and he waited. Finally, the door opened.

“Hi,” Desmond Edgley said. “Can I help you?”

First published in hardback in Great Britain by HarperCollins
Children’s Books
2013

HarperCollins
Children’s Books
is a division of HarperCollins
Publishers Ltd

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Visit Skulduggery Pleasant at

www.skulduggerypleasant.co.uk

Derek Landy blogs under duress at

www.dereklandy.blogspot.com

Jacket illustration by Tom Percival Jacket design © HarperCollins
Publishers Ltd

Illuminated letters © Tom Percival 2012

Skulduggery Pleasant™ Derek Landy

Skulduggery Pleasant Logo™ HarperCollins
Publishers

Derek Landy asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007489206

Ebook Edition ISBN: 9780007489244

Version: 2013-07-25

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