Death Bringer by Derek Landy Read Free Book Online

blank. She reached the wall and vanished, and was suddenly inside the cottage with them.
    Skulduggery’s hand closed around Valkyrie’s wrist. “Don’t move,” he whispered. “Don’t look at her.”
    Fighting the urge to run, Valkyrie stayed where she was and kept her eyes down. The Jitter Girl flickered into her peripheral vision. Her heart thundered in her chest like hoof beats. The Jitter Girl paused, maybe to examine the porcelain figures on the sideboard. Valkyrie’s hair was wet. Her jeans were damp and her top was sticking to her. She was aware of all of this as she stood perfectly still. One of the Jitter Girl’s sisters moved slowly by the window.
    The Jitter Girl passed behind Valkyrie, out of her line of sight. Valkyrie had never wanted to turn round so much in her life. Goosebumps rippled her flesh.
    There was a mirror on the wall. Valkyrie could see Skulduggery and herself reflected on the edge of the glass. Her mouth was dry. In the mirror, she saw a pale hand slowly reaching for her own.
    Skulduggery grabbed her, twisted her away, the air rushing as they hurtled through the broken window without finesse. They landed in the mud and scrambled up, a Jitter Girl on either side. The Girls grew as they came forward. Every flash made them bigger, made them older, made their hair paler and wilder. Their faces changed, from pretty and blank to contorted and tortured. Lines appeared on smooth skin. Mouths opened, lips cracked and white teeth became yellow, became brown, became blackened, and still they came forward.
    Skulduggery’s gun went off, again and again, the bullets passing through the flickering creatures. Valkyrie hurled fire, threw shadows, but the Jitter Girls, all three of them now, advanced impervious.
    Skulduggery was yanked from Valkyrie’s side. One of them had him, her fingers pressing into his clothes, sliding between his ribs. He screamed.
    Valkyrie lunged for him, but slipped, splashing down in mud and muck, her hair in her eyes, calling his name. And then one of them was right in front of her, standing over her, her hand pressed against Valkyrie’s forehead, pressed into her skin. Valkyrie screamed as the fingers melted into her skull, poked through her brain. White daggers of blinding light seared across her mind. Her body seized up and her jaw locked. She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t think. Images played in darkness as the little girl-monster wriggled her fingers. Images and memories, sensations and emotions, mixing up, matching up, latching on to each other, splitting off from each other, and still the little girl-monster played, curious, sifting through the insides of Valkyrie’s mind like she was looking for something, searching for someone, and she found it, found it waiting, found it watching. Found it ready.
    Valkyrie went away, and Darquesse wrapped her hand around the little girl-monster’s wrist and she crushed it as she pulled the fingers from her mind.
    Darquesse stood, still holding on to the wrist. The Jitter Girl screeched and contorted and jittered, but her arm remained in Darquesse’s grip. Darquesse watched her, fascinated. She poured magic out through her fingers and the little girl-monster returned to her normal size and screamed. It was like no human scream. It was like no animal scream. It was the scream of a creature who had never felt the need to scream before. It was new, and raw, a freshly born thing of exquisite agony and sudden, overwhelming fear.
    Darquesse dropped her. Another was coming, jittering across the mud, eager to play, and there was so much magic in Darquesse’s veins, broiling and coiling and boiling inside her, that she just had to share it. The power leaped from her hand in a twisting, turning stream, crossed the distance between them and washed over the Jitter Girl, taking her off her feet. Unable to escape the flow, the little girl-monster squirmed and kicked and