Armageddon Outta Here - The World of Skulduggery Pleasant Read Online Free PDF Page B

of silver. Apart from the Dracula costume he wore, he looked, Gordon realised, exactly like his author photo from twenty years ago. The crowd fell into a deep and respectful hush.
    “Horror,” Fawkes said, casting his gaze down upon the room. He had a deep, musical quality to his voice that made him sound like an English Vincent Price. “Fear. Dread. These are the commodities in which we trade. In return for the devotion of our readers, we conjure for them the stuff of nightmares.”
    He paused, allowing his words to permeate the air. A tad melodramatic, but Gordon didn’t mind melodrama every now and then – just as long as it didn’t get too pretentious.
    “We are the dark guardians of the soul,” Fawkes continued. “The new millennium is a mere twelve years away, and we stand between Scylla and Charybdis to hold back the tide of apathy and indifference that threatens, even now, to engulf us all. We offer glimpses into madness, we bring their hands close to the black fires of terror… and then we guide them, safely, back to the light. Ours is a noble calling.
    “Where once we would have sat round the campfire telling our stories, now we sit at our typewriters or our word processors. The world is our campfire now – but while you may think we have banished our demons with our modern technologies, with our VCRs and our CD players and our MTV, they still lurk, out there, in the dark. And we are their hunters.”
    He bowed his head and the ballroom erupted in applause. Gordon clapped his webbed hands along with everyone else, glad that he was wearing a fish-mask so no one could see him cringe.
    Fawkes motioned for silence. “And here we are, gathered together on this most special of nights. A lot of you have been here before. A lot of you already stand within the inner circle. You know the secrets. You have reaped the rewards.”
    A low murmur rippled through Fawkes’s audience. People were nodding and smiling softly.
    “But others are here tonight for the very first time,” Fawkes continued. “They stand on the cusp of enlightenment. They stand on the edge of wonder. We have seven uninitiated writers among us, writers who have proven their worth, who are ready to be welcomed into our… family.”
    Fawkes chuckled at the word, and the guests laughed along with him. Gordon didn’t know what the hell he was talking about any more.
    “But all that is still to be revealed,” said Fawkes. “For now, eat, drink, talk, laugh… be merry. And give me a hip hip hooray for horror. Hip hip…”
    “Hooray!”
    They did that three times in all, and Gordon could only blink at the sudden shift in tone.
    Fawkes gave a wave, everyone clapped, and the lights came back on. A few moments later, Fawkes made his entrance into the ballroom and the string quartet started up again.
    Skulduggery looked at Gordon. “The man’s an idiot.”
    Gordon nodded. “He does seem to be idiotic.”
    “I never liked his books. Maybe he’s improved with age, but his early work is derivative with definite signs of pretention. And look, he’s coming this way. This will be a wonderful opportunity for me to make like the character I’ve come as, and disappear.”
    Skulduggery moved backwards into the crowd, and by the time Gordon shifted his position to look around, he was gone.
    The mask was ridiculous. He seized it with both hands, squeezed and pulled, and only managed to shift the eyeholes around to his ear. Now he couldn’t see anything.
    “Help,” he said. He reached out and heard a crash.
Another tray of drinks bites the dust
. He stepped back, bumped into someone, heard the unmistakable intake of breath that accompanies a well-dressed lady spilling wine down the front of her dress. “Terribly sorry,” Gordon said, spinning quickly, hitting someone else and getting a muffled curse in response.
    Suddenly there was a steadying grip on his arms, and he heard Susan DeWick say, “Hold on there, Fishface. You’re leaving a trail of