Skulduggery put the phone away and they stepped into the living room. “My God,” he said.
There were recognisable body parts in the mess, but not many. Valkyrie lunged back out of the door and threw up in the flower bed. When she’d finished, she leaned against the doorframe and closed her eyes. A few moments later, Skulduggery joined her. He was quiet.
He spoke to the other mages, then they both got in the Bentley and Valkyrie wiped her eyes.
“The house belongs to a Gary and Rosemary Delaney,” he said, “both of whom are confirmed to be at work at the moment. They have one son, Michael, eighteen years old. We’re waiting on the test results to get back, but it would appear that Michael is the one in the living room.”
“That’s weird,” Valkyrie said. “I’m crying. Look. I’m crying. I don’t feel like I’m crying but look at my eyes. Those are tears. Why am I crying?”
“Because you know that somebody did that,” Skulduggery said. “Somebody, a human, not an animal, purposefully ripped that boy apart. You’re crying because you can’t understand how anyone could do such a thing.”
She took a deep breath and let it out. “You didn’t spend long in there.”
“I got what I needed.”
She looked at him. “You know who did it?”
“No. But I have enough information to start narrowing it down. So do you.”
“I just glanced in.”
“And what did you learn?”
“Skulduggery, please, I’m really not in the mood for this.”
“Which is why it’s important.”
Valkyrie sighed. “The whole place was covered in blood. There were pieces of him everywhere.”
“How was he killed?”
“Ripped apart, like you said.”
“But how, Valkyrie? Claws? Was he ripped apart by the killer’s bare hands?”
She pictured the scene and shook her head. “No. There were no footprints in the blood. If there had been someone in there, physically attacking him, there’d be footprints. There’d probably be drops of blood leaving the house, too. I didn’t see any.”
“What does that tell us?”
“Whoever killed him did it remotely. From a distance of more than two or three metres, I’d say.”
“Very good.”
“Apart from all the blood, the room was tidy. No signs of a struggle. There was no scorching, either.”
“Why does that matter?”
“If he was killed with an energy blast, you’d expect it to go through him and out the other side to get a result like that.”
“Then that’s not how he was killed.”
“The killer could have a power like Baron Vengeous. You told me about that friend of yours. Vengeous just looked at him and his whole body ruptured.”
“It shares similarities, yes. But there are a dozen ways to kill someone like that.”