Skulduggery Pleasant_ Death Bringer - Derek Landy [88]
She went to the door, listened for a moment. Somewhere, phones rang. Somewhere, people talked.
She stepped into the corridor. It wasn’t a big building, and Valkyrie figured the cells would be as far away from the main entrance as possible, so she turned right. She rounded the corner and ducked into a room, an interview room by the look of it, to avoid a passing cop. She waited until his footsteps receded before she emerged and continued on. She came to three cream-coloured steel doors with glass partitions. The first two cells were empty. There was a man lying on a bed in the third.
Shadows crept into the lock and smashed it from within, and Valkyrie was walking into the cell before Moore had even lifted his head from the thin pillow. The door closed behind her.
He looked at her. He was in his early twenties, skinny, with a bad haircut and a cleft in his chin. A plaster covered a thin cut along his cheek. His left forearm was bandaged. He stood up, still looking at her, frowning now. She reached a hand towards the camera, up high in the corner of the cell, and sent a dart of shadow into the lens. Moore stepped back.
“What was that? What the hell was that? Who are you?”
She stepped closer, hands by her sides, shoulders relaxed. Inside she was cold. There was a block of ice inside her. The voice spoke to her.
Kill him.
When she was close enough, she swung her right hand up, fingers splayed and palm open, twisting into the strike. She caught him on the hinge of the jaw and he crashed back against the wall. A power-slap, Skulduggery called it. As powerful as a punch, without the risk of broken knuckles. One of the new weapons in her arsenal, ever since Tanith went bad. Valkyrie watched Moore try to stand up straight. His legs gave out and he fell back. His mouth was hanging open and his eyes were clouded. She waited while he shook his head and his eyes refocused. He looked at her and she watched his anger build.
Moore sprang from the wall. She let him grab her, let him pull her in, and she fired an elbow into his face two, three times. He let go, but she didn’t, she latched on, kept firing those elbows, driving him back, never letting go of him. He tried to shout, but she hit him in the neck and he gagged. She didn’t give him a chance to throw a punch of his own, didn’t give him a chance to push her away. She was all over him, elbows and headbutts. In between his sudden yelps of pain she heard someone snarling, realised it was coming from her. She didn’t stop. She had blood on her face and it wasn’t her blood and she didn’t stop. This man had attacked her mother. This man had attacked her mother.
Kill him.
He was on the floor now and she was on top of him, her hands tightening round his throat. His strength was gone. His efforts to dislodge her, to break the stranglehold, were useless. He was weak and she was strong. The coldness inside her was burning. She was talking to him, her words scraping through gritted teeth, but she couldn’t hear what she was saying.
His hands fluttered uselessly around her arms. His eyes were rolling back. Blood and spittle flew from his mouth. He was turning purple.
Kill him, the voice in her head whispered.
She dug her fingertips in even tighter. This must have been how Melancholia felt when she held Valkyrie’s life in her hands. It was power, pure power, pure and beautiful. It filled her, energised her, mixed with her rage and made her smile, just like Melancholia had smiled.
Valkyrie frowned, saw her hands around his throat, saw Moore’s life about to leave him. Her hands sprang open and she staggered to her feet. He turned on to his side, coughing and sucking in great gasps of air.
The voice was gone now. Banished