Skulduggery Pleasant: Hell Breaks Loose

Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Italy, 1703 Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Keep Reading … The Skulduggery Pleasant series About the Publisher Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Contents Italy, 1703 Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Keep Reading … The Skulduggery Pleasant series About the Publisher Guide Cover Contents Title page First published in the United Kingdom by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2023 Published in this ebook edition in 2023 HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd, 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk HarperCollinsPublishers Macken House, 39/40 Mayor Street Upper Dublin 1, D01 C9W8, Ireland Text copyright © Derek Landy 2023 Skulduggery Pleasant™ Derek Landy Skulduggery Pleasant logo™ HarperCollinsPublishers Cover illustration copyright © Matt Taylor 2023 Cover design copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2023 Derek Landy asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. Source ISBN: 9780008585730 Ebook Edition © March 2023 ISBN: 9780008585747 Version: 2023-03-09 This book is dedicated to the thing with the long arms and the crooked smile standing behind you The psychic sat on a rock at the edge of camp, his legs folded beneath him, his hands resting on his knees, his eyes closed and his mind open. It was his task to remain alert while the others slept in their tents and in their blankets, safe under his protection. Sentries were not required when you had a Sensitive in your merry band of killers, trained to detect the mind of an enemy moving into range. But in order to detect such a mind, in order to read its thoughts – dark with malicious intent or otherwise – those thoughts needed to flicker within the grey folds of an actual physical brain. Skulduggery Pleasant possessed no such thing. His brain had been burned from his skull, along with his eyes and his tongue and his hair and his skin and all the flesh and the muscle beneath. How he moved, how he spoke, how he thought were matters of mystery that not even he, with his vast intellect, had been able to ascertain. Maybe when the war was over, when Mevolent was defeated and the threat had abated, he could devote his time to uncovering the secret of his continued existence, but for now he had devoted his full attention to the fight. Skulduggery emerged from the darkness without making a sound. He walked up to the psychic, sitting there with his legs folded and his eyes closed and his mind open, and clobbered him about the head with a heavy stick. Once the Sensitive was nothing more than an unresponsive heap, Skulduggery motioned for the others to advance. As he and the others moved forward, stepping over damp twigs and ducking under the thin branches of olive trees, Ghastly Bespoke couldn’t help but be impressed. In the thirteen years since Skulduggery had lost his family and died himself, he had been sinking steadily deeper into a pit of violent nihilism. His humour had become as sharp as the sword he wore on his hip, and as pointed as the lucky knife he often used to cut the throats of sentries and Sensitives. The fact that here he had chosen the relatively benign option of a quick bludgeoning in place of a slit throat indicated to Ghastly that his best friend was perhaps finally ready to climb out of the pit and rejoin his fellow Dead Men in the relative brightness of a moonlit night in Tuscany. “I’m proud of you,” Ghastly whispered when he was near enough. “I am unable to find my lucky knife,” Skulduggery whispered back. “I put it in my lucky sheath and hung it from my lucky belt, but it must have fallen off on the way here.” “That would seem to me unlucky,” said Ghastly. “I have tremendous fondness for that knife. Remember when I killed that goblin with it?” “A delightful moment, indeed. You still have your sword, though.” Skulduggery grunted and tapped the hilt. “If I try to cut a throat with this, I would take the whole head off. Widow’s Lament is a fine sword, no doubt, but its home is on the battlefield. That is where it sings. My lucky knife had its own song, and it was quieter but no less sweet, like a whisper in a storm.” Ghastly didn’t like Skulduggery talking about the songs his blades sang. It was discomfiting. “All still asleep,” Saracen Rue said softly, nodding to the camp as he crept up to them. “The first Teleporter’s in the tent closest to the fire, sleeping on his belly with his head turned away from the opening. The second one is in the tent on the far side.” “I shall dispatch the first one,”