hands pressed against him, gathered the purple vapor in his fists. Bliss was blasted backward through the air, into a group of shelves at the far side of the room. He didn't get up.
Serpine turned back to Stephanie.
'Sorry for the interruption,' he said as he picked her up. His hands gripped the lapels of her coat, and he lifted her off her feet, looking up at her as he spoke. Her right leg dangled uselessly, and that pain was all she felt. 'How did you do it? How did you get so close without the Scepter alerting me? Some magic I don't know about?'
Stephanie didn't answer.
'Miss Cain, I know you're trying to hide it, but I can see the fear in your eyes. You don't want to die today, do you? Of course you don't. You have your whole life ahead of you. If only you'd kept out of all this, if only you'd left the death of your uncle alone, you wouldn't be here right now.
'Your uncle was a very stubborn man. If he had just given me the key when I asked, you wouldn't be in this predicament. He delayed my plans, you see, caused a lot of unnecessary stress and bother. A lot of people are dead now because of him.'
Stephanie's face twisted. 'Don't you dare blame my uncle for the people you've killed!'
'I didn't want this. I didn't want conflict. I just wanted to eliminate the Elders and take the Book. Do you see how simple that would have been? Instead, I had to wade through a river of corpses. Those deaths are on your uncle's head.'
Stephanie's hatred became a cold thing in her center.
'But you don't have to join them, Miss Cain. You can survive this. You can live. I see something in you. I think you'd like the new world that's coming.'
'I wouldn't bet on it,' Stephanie said quietly.
Serpine smiled patiently and leaned his face in close to her. 'You can survive ... if you tell me how you got so close without the Scepter alerting me.'
With no weapons left, Stephanie spat on him.
He sighed and threw her against a pillar. She smacked into it, and her body twisted and she dropped onto her back.
Her eyes wouldn't focus. The pain was far away. She heard his voice as if there was a wall separating them.
'No matter. I am about to make slaves of the entire population of this planet, and then there will be no more secrets. There will be no magic hidden from me. And when the Faceless Ones return, this world will be remade as a place of splendid darkness.'
He passed her, a vague shape in the corner of her eye. She had to get up. She had to snap out of this.
The pain. The pain from her broken leg — she had to let it in. It was nothing more than a sensation now — she had to allow it to flood her.
She focused on her leg.
It was throbbing, the pain spiking, and with each new height it reached, her mind sharpened a little more. Then the pain came at her, cascaded over her with its full force, and she had to bite her lip to stop from crying out.
She looked up. Serpine was approaching the Book.
She gripped the edge of a countertop and pulled herself up onto her good leg. She grabbed the first thing she saw — a glass vial with green liquid — and she threw it. It hit Serpine in the back and it shattered, and the liquid turned to vapor and dissipated into the air.
He spun, angry.
'You, my dear, have proven yourself to be far too troublesome for your own good.' He raised his red hand, and from somewhere behind her the Scepter began singing again.
And then Skulduggery dropped through the ceiling, landing in a heap next to Serpine. The detective looked around.
'Ah,' he said. 'I'm back.'
'You are,' Serpine said, and Skulduggery looked up and saw him.
Serpine lashed a kick into Skulduggery's side and Skulduggery grunted. He tried to get up, but Serpine batted his hands away and grabbed his skull. He drove his knee into the side of Skulduggery's head, and Skulduggery sprawled onto his back.
Serpine looked over to Stephanie and then to the ground behind her and she turned, saw the Scepter. She lunged for it, but a purple tendril wrapped itself around her waist and she was yanked back onto her broken leg. She cried out as the pain shot through her.
Serpine whipped the tendril to the Scepter, pulled it into his left hand, and whirled, the crystal flashing with a black light that streaked toward Skulduggery. The detective dived as a whole section of the wall behind him turned to dust. Skulduggery drew his gun and fired, hitting Serpine in the chest.
'Still with that little toy of yours,' Serpine said, amused and unharmed. 'How quaint.'
Skulduggery circled him. Serpine held the Scepter down by his side.
'You'll be stopped,' Skulduggery said. 'You've always been stopped.'
'Oh, my old foe, but this is different. Those days are gone. Who is there to rise up against me?
Who is left? Remember when you were a man? A real man, I mean, not this mockery I see before me. Do you remember what it was like? You had an army on your side, you had people willing to fight and die for your cause. We wanted to bring the Faceless Ones back, to worship them as the gods that they are. You wanted to keep them out, so that this infestation of humanity, this celebration of the mundane, might be allowed to live and thrive.
Well, they've lived, and they've thrived, and now their time is up.'
Skulduggery's finger tightened on the trigger. Black blood sprayed from Serpine's chest, and the wound instantly healed. Serpine laughed.
'You have caused me so much trouble over the years, Detective, it's almost a shame that I have to end it.'
Skulduggery cocked his head. 'You're surrendering?'
'I'm going to miss this,' Serpine said. 'If it makes it any easier, you can think of your imminent demise as a good thing. I don't think you'll much like the world once my lords and masters remake it.'
'So how are you going to kill me?' Skulduggery asked, dropping his gun and holding his arms out. 'With your toy? Or one of these new tricks you've learned?'
Serpine smiled.
'I have been expanding my repertoire. So good of you to notice.'
'And I see you've been playing around with necromancy again.'
'Indeed. My very own pet Cleaver. Every home should have one.'
'He's a tricky fellow to put down,' Skulduggery said. 'I tried everything I know — he just kept getting back up.'
Serpine laughed. 'There's an old Necromancer saying: 'You can't kill what's already dead.''
Skulduggery cocked his head. 'He's a zombie?'
'Oh no, I wouldn't associate myself with those wretched things. He can repair, replenish, heal.
A difficult process to master, but I am nothing if not accomplished.'
'Of course,' Skulduggery said, something new in his voice. 'The medical equipment in the warehouse. The Cleaver was a test run, to see if the process worked. Then you did it to yourself.'
'Ah, the great detective finally figures something out.'
'Bells and whistles aside, Nefarian, he's nothing but a zombie. And so are you.'
Serpine shook his head. 'Your last words are pathetic insults? I was hoping for more.
Something profound, perhaps. Maybe a poem.' He raised the Scepter. 'It will be a slightly less strange world without you; I just want you to know that.'
Stephanie screamed his name as Skulduggery dived. Serpine laughed and the Scepter sent out its bolt of black lightning, but Skulduggery had seized the Book of Names and held it as a shield.
The black lightning hit the Book, which disappeared in a cloud of dust.
'No!' Serpine screamed. 'No!'
Stephanie stared as the Book that the Elders couldn't destroy sifted through Skulduggery's fingers. He charged
