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Chapter 1 – Dysfunctional team
“You want us to work with them?!” Skulduggery shrieked at Meritorious. “You must have gone mad, to even think we could be a… a…. team with the Diablerie!”. Skulduggery Pleasant was almost never short on words, but in this scenario, rage had overtaken him. Had the Grand Mage really lost his mind?
Meritorious was wise enough to stay quiet while the skeleton continued his angry rambling. He was aware that would be the detective’s reaction and wasn’t about to stop it. “Let him think it through and then talk with him”, Meritorious thought.
The other Dead Men – Ghastly Bespoke, Larrikin, Erskine Ravel, Anton Shudder, Dexter Vex and Saracen Rue, were gathered around them and looked distraught. Of course they weren’t fond of the idea of teaming up with a powerful group of assassins, who just a day ago could have killed them on the battle field. They knew damn well that the Diablerie and the Dead Men were more likely to kill each other than to actually defeat the real enemy – Abyssinia.
*
But it seemed they didn’t really have a say in all of this and ten days later they found themselves in an empty field, standing face to face with the Diablerie. While the Dead Men were seven, the members of the Diablerie were only four – Gruesome Krav, Jaron Gallow, Murder Rose and, of course, China Sorrows.
Skulduggery silently looked at them, observing every little detail he could. Krav and Gallow looked similar – both tall and muscular. They wore suits, the skeleton could see that Krav had a knife and Gallow – a gun. Good to know. His gaze flicked to Murder Rose. She was tall with dark hair and black eyes, there was a smug look on her face. He could see that something in this woman wasn’t right. Her eyes gave it away. She looked psychotic, like she was about to slice open the first person who spoke to her. Rose had a dagger, but she wore an oversized jacket and Skulduggery couldn’t be sure if there was some other weapon there. There probably was.
The skeleton then stared at the last member of the Diablerie – the famous China Sorrows. He had seen her before, had talked with her a couple of times before the war. And even after that, he couldn’t help but hold his gaze for a bit longer than necessary. She was beautiful, of course, but there was something else to her. Something that just made you look at her more and more. And so, after a few seconds China felt him looking and locked her beautiful blue eyes with his eye sockets. Skulduggery looked away and decided it was finally time that someone said something.
“None of us really want to be here, that much is obvious, but we have to put aside our personal differences. We have a very dangerous murderer to find and capture”. Murder Rose laughed at that “Oh, what a speech, detective, truly inspiring, really! It’s almost like all our problems disappeared!”, her sarcasm was obvious in her words. Krav and Gallow chuckled.
The skeleton was just about to reply sharply when China opened her mouth to speak “Rose, this is more than enough, thank you. What Mr. Pleasant said is true, after all we are all here for a reason – to destroy a common enemy”. Her voice was like silk, but Skulduggery could feel there was a sharp edge to it – challenge the woman and you would get cut. He nodded after she defended him… Was that really what she did? She just said the obvious to her people, those who wouldn’t listen to him. Anyways.
*
Neither of them wanted to go to the other’s territory, so the figured out they had to find somewhere neutral to do their planning. They settled to a house far away from others. Both Mevolent and Meritorious affirmed it was safe.
They were going to stay there for awhile and so they picked their rooms There weren’t enough and they ended up having two people in each one – Dexter and Saracen, Larrikin was with Anton, Ravel – with Ghastly, Krav and Gallow were together and so were Rose and China. Skulduggery didn’t need sleep, and even if he did, he still didn’t trust those people and would probably lay awake at night.
The skeleton found the situation they were in more than a little ridiculous. For God’s sake, they were eleven well known soldiers in a war and they weren’t even fighting on the same side of that war! And now they were on a mission together to try and find an insane, overpowerful sorceress who had killed so many innocent people (and was also his ex-girlfriend, but that bit would have to stay a secret from the others). And on top of all that, they were literally going to play sleepover together!
That evening they gathered in the dining room, determined to do some planning. The tension in the room could have been cut with a knife. They didn’t even try to work with each other. The Diablerie went to a smaller table in the corner of the room and they all began whispering something. The Dead Men occupied the big dining table in the middle of the room.
“This is not what we’re supposed to be doing!”, whispered Ghastly. “If you’ve got an idea how to communicate with the murder pack over there, I’m open to suggestions”, said Saracen a bit too loudly. Dexter shot him a look as if to silence him. “We’re grown people, we should be able to at least have a conversation on the matter!”, huffed out Anton. At that Skulduggery stood up wordlessly and went over to the Diablerie. The skeleton said something to China, she nodded but Krav shot him a murderous look.
After they were all at the same place, China took out a big map with marks all over it and started talking “These are the places Abyssinia has attacked. We are trying to find a pattern in the way she moves, but so far it just seems chaotic. We are open for suggestions”. After that silence fell over the table once again.
After a couple of hours of muttered suggestions, dead glares and Erskine and Gallow almost killing each other three times, Ghastly said it was probably time to rest. The other nodded their agreement and headed over to their rooms.
Skulduggery was left alone in the deserted dining room. He looked at the notes they’ve taken and the map and decided he should rest for a bit too.
He got out of the house and looked around. There wasn’t anything interesting to see (especially in the darkness), only fields and a cliff that didn’t seem high enough to actually do any real harm to anyone. He headed over to it, but stopped a few meters before his destination. It was pitch black outside, but the skeleton could still make out the petite figure of a woman, sitting on the edge. China Sorrows.
She had probably sensed him; she was a soldier in a war after all. And so, he decided to go up to her, there certainly wasn’t anything better to do right now.