Chapter 18
That night, they went to Vile’s lair. Another cemetery.
“You Necromancers are a creative lot aren’t you?” Jay said to Valkyrie who proceeded to glare at her.
Something between a giggle and a whimper escaped from Fletcher’s throat. Both girls looked at him.
“Nervous Fletch?” Jay asked, raising her eyebrows teasingly.
“How can you be so calm about this? Does everyone notice that we are going up against the biggest, baddest bad guys of all time? I mean, seriously, we’re going to die.”
Jay laughed, her voice ringing out in the quiet night.
“Fletch, I have full faith in Valkyrie and Skulduggery and honestly, how bad can it be that we are going to die. It’s can’t be worse than being alive.”
Skulduggery tilted his head to the left and stared at Jay.
“You’re an interesting girl, you know that?”
Jay grinned. Eleven Cleavers pulled up silently behind them.
“Okay, time to go in.”
So they did. The entrance was a large tomb that a rich family had probably commissioned. Inside, there was a single coffin that lay raised on a pedestal in the center of the room. Right behind it, so that was impossible to see unless you walked all the way around the coffin, was a trapdoor. Skulduggery gestured to the trap door and Jay stepped forward. She put her hand on the rotting wood and started to feel around. Last time, she hadn’t felt the magic so now she was going to look at it. She sent a pulse of blue magic through the wood. It lit up everywhere; there were no pockets where the magic had been absorbed. She nodded and lifted the door, sending another pulse through the ground on the steps. A few places had not blue light. She pointed to one and shook her head. Everyone understood and started to walk down, avoiding the dark spots at all cost. She did it three more times as they walked down a long corridor.
“Where’s Vile?” Valkyrie asked and Jay pointed straight ahead so they continued to walk.
The corridor had few more traps and a couple warning sigils that Jay was able to bypass by muffling them with her magic. The corridor was long and by the time they made it to the end, she was looking quite pale and had started to lean, ever so slightly, on one of the Cleavers. She pointed through the door.
“He’s there,” she whispered. Everyone nodded.
“You stay here,” Skulduggery said but Jay shook her head and stood up tall.
“I can still fight, not with magic but that was never the plan. I’m going in.”
Skulduggery looked at her for a very long time and then shrugged. Then, doing what he did best, Skulduggery broke down the door and dove into the room. His hands were blazing as he released two continuous streams of pure fire at a slightly startled Vile. He recovered quickly, though and had a shield of darkness up before either of the jet streams could hit him. Jay saw a tendril of darkness snake over to the wall and before she could stop it, it pressed a symbol there. “Blah, Blah, Blah” by Kesha started to play and a few Hollow Men burst into the room, followed by about a hundred more. The room was actually quite spacious, with only one thing in it; the chair that Vile had been sitting on. That was almost immediately used as a weapon by one of the Cleavers who threw it a Vile. Vile tore it apart with the shadows and it showered Cleavers with splinters. One got a relatively big piece on the head but it didn’t even seem to notice. They were attacking in wave after wave and though no one had died yet, nobody had gotten a good strike at him either. Tanith, slashed at the shadows that flew at her and ran up the wall, dodging attacks there and hacking away at the top of Vile’s head. Jay was spending more time focusing on the Hollow Men. She had managed to push them back to the door so that she would only have to fight two or three at a time but she couldn’t hold them off forever. She actually doubted that she would be able to hold them off for much longer without help but everyone else was preoccupied with Vile. Fletcher was teleporting around the room like crazy, firing bullet after bullet at Vile, all of which were immediately absorbed by the armor and spit back at him but Fletcher was already across the room firing from there. Finally, Vile got annoyed and ignored the rest of the attacks, focusing on Fletcher alone. He shot twenty arrows of darkness at him and they all hit him right before he teleported. Across the room, Fletcher fell into a heap on the floor, blood pooling around him.
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