Hey guys!

I hope that this chapter lives up to your expectations! It's kinda short, but I've been waiting for pratically the entire fic to write that last bit. Lots of love my loyal reviewers xx

-RBTD

Valkyrie watched, horrified, as Frost slowly yawned, exposing short, sharp teeth that were jagged like a shark's. Shark teeth. Teeth built for killing, for ripping, for decimating. Oh God. Oh God, how she wished for Avarice now.

He looked at her, grinning his horrible teeth glistening and his bright blue eyes sparkling, even in the faint light. Then he shuddered, and his face dropped to his chest, and when he looked up again the angles of his face were sharper, unnaturally sharp, his nose like a knife, his cheekbones like swords.

He was drawing it out. He was drawing it out because he knew there was nothing she could do.

"Oh, screw it," he muttered suddenly, and in one swift motion lifted his hand and pressed his skin, and it melted like butter and ran down his body until it culminated into a puddle on the floor.

And Valkyrie couldn't help it, she really couldn't. She screamed.

His face was the same dimensions, the same angles, but it was wrong, all wrong. He shimmered and shifted, and the only solid thing about him seemed to be those eyes and those teeth. That's all he was. Eyes and teeth and terrifying blurriness.

He smiled. "Hello Valkyrie." His voice was smooth, smoother even than Skulduggery's.

She spat at him.

His face contorted in disgust.

"What the hell are you?" she screamed at him. "First Avarice, being a Doppelgänger thing that's impossible to kill, now this! What the hell are you people?"

His undefined lips pulled back further, exposing black gums, and it occurred to her that maybe it wasn't such a hot idea to yell at the monster.

"I am a spirit. I am eternal. I have been around since the dawn of time. I am something that gives your worst nightmares something to scream about."

"You are incredibly pretentious. How long did it take you to come up with that little speech? I need answers. What are you?"

She felt something behind her, and a shadow slipped from the ceiling like a cat. And a voice, a voice as soft and sweet as sugar laced with poison.

"Oh, yes. He's quite the enigma, isn't he? Quite the little puzzle, our Jack Frost."

It was the Leech. Avarice's younger sister. Fox. Valkyrie didn't know what the hell she was supposed to do now. She was outnumbered two to one by a... a whatever 'Jack fucking Frost' was and a woman who could steal Valkyrie's magic with a single touch.

Not the best situation.

Frost came closer, a twisted sort of smile on his black lips, his mouth parted to reveal his shark teeth, and bloody claws rapidly extending from his fingertips as he drew nearer.

"I'm going to savor your death, brat," he hissed. "You've caused the boss and I a lot of trouble over the past few days, but it looks like your luck is running out."

Valkyrie put up her fists and snarled. "One more step and you'll find out just how lucky I can be."

Frost's mouth stretched wider in a grin, a grin that covered nearly half of his blurred-out face. A coarse, racous laugh rattled from his frame, like a hyena, or a scary talking doll.

Then there was a whoosh of air, and a shadow slipped past, and Fox stood between the beast that was Jack Frost and Valkyrie.

Frost's mouth turned down in a confused frown. "What are you doing, you idiot? Let me kill the child."

"Not a bloody chance," Fox said flatly, and as Frost looked on, paralysed for the moment with disbelief, she addressed a stunned Valkyrie.

"I suggest," she said, without taking her eyes of Frost, "you run."