For Heaven's Eyes Only

CHAPTER NINE For a Moment There, I Thought We Might Be in Trouble

Glad as I was to be waving good-bye to the Satanists’ little get-together, of all the places Molly and Isabella might have teleported me to, a Drood Council meeting in the Sanctity . . . wouldn’t even have made my top ten. But still, when the glare of the teleport died down, there Molly and I were, standing right in front of the council table, facing a somewhat startled Sarjeant-at-Arms, the Armourer, Harry and . . . William the Librarian. The Sarjeant went from startled to shocked to a state of utter outrage, where his face went a shade of purple not normally seen in nature. Unless you’re thinking of a baboon’s arse, which mostly I try not to. The Armourer cracked a big smile, and actually dropped me a brief wink. Harry looked at me disapprovingly, but then, he always did. While William . . . considered me thoughtfully, his expression surprisingly cool and collected. He was also a whole lot better dressed than usual, in that he looked like he might actually have dressed himself, for once. The Sarjeant glared at Molly and me.

“Just once, I would appreciate it if you could find the common courtesy to use the bloody door, like everyone else!”

“Boring,” said Molly. “I don’t do ordinary, and I have never been like everyone else.”

“One of your many charms,” I said. “And thanks for the rescue.”

“Rescue?” said the Armourer. “Are we to take it something went wrong with your infiltration of the Satanists’ meeting?”

“Pretty much everything that could go wrong did,” I said.

“Hold it,” said Molly, looking quickly around her. “Where’s Isabella?”

“She was right there with you when you arrived to grab me,” I said. “Was she supposed to appear here with you?”

“Well, I assumed . . . We were both hovering nearby in London Undertowen, waiting for the Satanists’ shields to drop long enough for us to jump in and haul you away. . . . We didn’t bother to discuss things. I suppose she must have decided she wouldn’t be welcome here.” She scowled at the Sarjeant. “Wonder where she could have got that idea.”

“I’m sure she’ll turn up,” I said soothingly. “Whether we like it or not.”

“Yeah, that’s Isabella for you.” Molly beamed at me suddenly. “Hey, I rescued you!”

I sighed. “You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?”

“Never,” Molly said happily.

“He was letting me go, you know.”

She snorted loudly. “That’s what he said. . . .”

“Enough!” said the Sarjeant-at-Arms, slamming one huge fist on the table. “I want your report, Edwin! I want to know everything that happened at the Satanists’ meeting, everything that went wrong, and why a Drood in full armour needed to be rescued!”

There are some things you can’t put off indefinitely, and one of them is the breaking of bad news. I armoured down, and then Molly and I drew up chairs and sat down at the table, and I filled the council in on all that I’d learned in Under Parliament. Including Roger Morningstar’s presence, his important position in the conspiracy, and his explanation of the true nature of the coming Great Sacrifice. No one on the council said anything, but all of them listened intently. They couldn’t keep the emotions out of their faces. They were appalled, disgusted, outraged; but in the end they all showed nothing but a cold determination. Because we are Droods, and we know our duty: to seek out the evil forces that threaten Humanity and put a stop to them. Whatever it takes; whatever it costs us.

“But who’s behind all this?” the Armourer said finally. “Alexandre Dusk was the front man at Lightbringer House, but bad as he is, he’s not top rank and never has been. And while Roger was the main speaker at Under Parliament, there’s no way he could be in charge of the conspiracy. So who’s running things? Who came up with the idea of the Great Sacrifice, and then arranged the necessary threats and pressures to make all the governments of the world go along with it?”

“No one at the meeting knew,” said Molly. “And it wasn’t for lack of trying to find out.”

“I still can’t believe Roger could have betrayed us all,” said Harry. He was trying to sound calm and professional, like everyone else, but his heart wasn’t in it. He took off his wire-rimmed spectacles and rubbed at his forehead tiredly. He was sitting slumped in his chair, as though he’d taken a hit. “He couldn’t do this to us. He wouldn’t! He must be working undercover, trying to bring them down from inside. . . .”

“I’m sorry, Harry,” I said, and I really was. “I don’t think so.”

“You never liked him!” Harry yelled at me, his face flushed with anger and something else. “You were one of those who wanted to split us up because . . . just because he was what he was. . . .”

He stopped, on the edge of tears he refused to shed in front of us. No one said anything. In the end, surprisingly, it was Molly who tried to comfort him.

“I cared for him, too, once. He did have . . . admirable qualities. But we always knew what he was, what he really was. . . .”

“Once a hellspawn,” said the Sarjeant-at-Arms.

“Shut up!” said Harry. “I don’t want to hear it! You didn’t know him! You never even tried to understand him!”

He jumped to his feet, turned his back on us all and stormed out of the Sanctity, slamming the door behind him. We all looked at one another, but there was nothing we could usefully say, so we returned to the more pressing business at hand. Harry would come around. Or he wouldn’t. Either way, we’d deal with it.

“The truly disturbing part of all this is how far and how deep the conspiracy’s control goes,” said the Sarjeant. “All the governments, all the leaders in the world? Not one holdout? How long has this been going on? How could we have missed this?”

“In our defence, we have been rather busy of late,” said the Armourer. “And it is the nature of conspiracies to go unnoticed.”

“The question we have to consider,” said the Sarjeant, scowling harshly, “is how far does the corruption go?”

“Anyone can be bought,” said William, in a surprisingly reasonable voice. “Anyone can be persuaded, bribed, threatened. Even possessed, I suppose, in this case. We are facing an enemy with no restraint and no moral convictions, who will do absolutely anything to get what they want. You can’t trust anyone anymore. . . .”

“Am I going to have to scan the whole family again?” said the Armourer.

“I think we can see Roger as a separate case,” I said. “Given who and what his mother was. And anyway, how could you scan a mind for evil intentions?”

“Hmmm. Yes,” said the Armourer. “Tricky. Not impossible, necessarily, but definitely tricky . . .” And he sat back to think about it.

Sometimes I think my uncle Jack is the scariest Drood of all.

“Roger mentioned a new machine that could directly influence people’s thoughts,” I said. “Apparently they’ve already carried out basic testing, with encouraging results. Roger implied this new machine could quite definitely give people’s minds a good solid nudge in the wanted direction. On a worldwide basis. Do we have anything like that, Uncle Jack?”

“Of course not,” said the Sarjeant-at-Arms. “Or we’d be using it on a daily basis.”

“Can I mention free will and individual freedom?” said William.

“Of course,” said the Sarjeant. “Feel free to mention it, and I’ll feel free to use anything that would prevent a horror like the Great Sacrifice.”

“If the machine really doesn’t exist,” I said, “Roger could have been blowing smoke up their arses to impress the faithful. But if it does . . . could we perhaps come up with something to block the effect: some kind of counterbroadcast?”

“Without knowing what this machine is?” said the Armourer. “Without knowing how it works, or how it does what it does? You want me to set up a counterbroadcast that would cover the whole world? Hmmm. Tricky. I’ll have to think about it.”

I raised my voice to address the rosy red glow suffusing the Sanctity. “Ethel?”

“I’m here, Eddie. I’m glad you got back safely. I could see what was happening in Under Parliament, but I couldn’t reach you. Such a tacky gathering, confusing bad taste with spiritual evil.”

“Can you do anything to stop this?” I said bluntly. “Could you prevent this Great Sacrifice from taking place?”

“You’re asking me to intervene directly?” said Ethel.

“I don’t like to,” I said. “But with so much at stake . . .”

“The children,” said the Sarjeant-at-Arms. “We have to save the children. We can’t let our pride get in the way of that. I’ll beg if I have to.”

“Right,” said William. “This is more important than us.”

“And that’s precisely why I can’t intervene,” said Ethel. “I’m your guardian angel, not your god. This is your world, your reality. I have given you weapons with which to fight evil. But I won’t fight your fights for you. Or that would be the end of free will for your whole species. I have made a great effort to stay out of your affairs, to be an observer and adviser, for fear of upsetting the natural balance of your reality. I will not save you. You must save yourselves.”

“And if we fail?” said William.

There was a long pause, and then Ethel said, “I will mourn your passing.”

Everyone at the table looked at everyone else, but no one felt like saying anything. I cleared my throat.

“So, how can we best take the fight to these bastards? I’ve had enough of tiptoeing around the conspiracy, gathering information. We know all we need to know. We have to hit these evil little shits hard, before they can set up the necessary conditions for the Great Sacrifice!”

“Know thy enemy,” said William.

“Fine,” I said. “Go do your research in the Old Library. Find out things we can use against them. Sarjeant, how can we hurt them?”

“Give me a target,” said the Sarjeant, “and I’ll throw Droods at them till every single member of the conspiracy is dead. The problem with Satanists is that they can be anyone, anywhere, hiding within respectable institutions, using innocents as human shields.”

“Isabella did a lot of thinking about that,” said Molly. “She said . . . she thought she knew someone who might be able to at least point her in the direction of the conspiracy’s headquarters.”

“Did she mention a name?” I said.

“No. But then, Iz has contacts everywhere.”

“Call her,” I said. “Contact her. Now.”

But before any of us could do anything, Isabella was suddenly right there in the room with us, standing at the end of the table. She was a mental sending, not a physical presence. Her image was vague and unstable, semitransparent, trembling as though bothered by some harsh-blowing aetheric wind.

The Sarjeant slammed his fist on the table again and looked seriously upset.

“How the hell do you keep appearing inside Drood Hall, despite all the defences and protections I have put in place precisely to keep out persons like you?”

Isabella looked at me. “Haven’t you told him yet?”

The Sarjeant looked at me suspiciously. “Told me? Told me what, Eddie?”

“Later,” I said. “Iz, where have you been?”

“Going back and forth in the world, and walking up and down in it,” Isabella said calmly. “Talking to people. Making them talk to me. I found a certain person who was only too willing to tell me what I wanted to hear, after a certain amount of physical persuasion. A charming little rogue called Charlatan Joe.”

“I know him,” I said immediately. “Not sure I’d agree with the description. Joe’s a city slicker, a confidence trickster. A sleazy adventurer who never met a mark he couldn’t shaft. But it’s surprising how often he’s in the right place to overhear things that matter. . . .”

“Exactly,” said Isabella. Her sending shifted and trembled, as seethrough as any ghost for a moment, and her mouth moved with no sound reaching us, until she suddenly snapped back into focus again. “By being somewhere he really shouldn’t have been, while doing something anyone could have told him was a bad idea, dear Joe overheard something so big, so important and so shocking that it scared the crap out of him. So he dropped into a deep hole and pulled it in after him, determined to disappear until what he knew wouldn’t matter anymore. Except I can find anyone when I put my mind to it. And I know more about the darker magics than he ever dreamed of. I found him and made him cry, and after I’d wiped his nose for him he couldn’t wait to tell me everything he knew. To be exact: where the next big meeting of the satanic conspiracy leaders will be taking place. Not the upper echelons, like Alexandre Dusk and Roger Morningstar, but the guys at the very top.

“You haven’t got much time, Molly, Eddie. . . . It’s three hours from now, and they won’t be there for long. According to Charlatan Joe, they’re there to witness the first wide-range test of the mind-influencing machine on a city full of unsuspecting people.”

“Okay, that’s it,” I said. “We have to go right now. A full-on preemptive strike, a whole army of Droods led by all the field agents we can round up at such short notice. Hit the bastards hard when they’re not expecting it, stamp them into the ground, take out the machine and capture all the conspiracy leaders in one go.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” said the Sarjeant-at-Arms. “Three hours . . . Give me one hour, Eddie, to put a strike force together. It’ll have to be a really good size; we can’t know how many ground troops there’ll be, or what kind of weapons they might have. But we can do this. We can stop the conspiracy dead before they even get a chance to start the Great Sacrifice. Where are they, Isabella? Where are they meeting?”

“The setting is a deconsecrated cathedral at Glastonbury,” said Isabella. “Apparently it was turned into a hotel decades ago. It’s been completely refurbished as the Cathedral Hotel; runs business courses, that sort of thing. The conspiracy’s booked the whole hotel under different names, so you don’t have to worry about any innocents being involved.”

“Sounding better all the time,” said the Sarjeant.

“A deconsecrated cathedral,” said the Armourer. “These old-time Satanists do love their traditional touches. For masters of evil they can be surprisingly sentimental about such things.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” said William. “And for the record—I can’t believe I’m being the calm voice of reason here—can I remind you, Eddie, the last times you went head-to-head with the Satanists didn’t go too well, did they? You were run out of Lightbringer House, and you had to be rescued from Under Parliament. You were lucky to get out alive even with your Drood armour. We need to talk about this. And yes, I know that phrase is dripping with irony where I’m concerned, but . . .”

“We don’t have time for academic discussions,” said the Sarjeant. “Three hours, remember? You think; we’ll organise.”

“Don’t worry, William,” I said. “This time we’ll be going in mobhanded, at the head of an army of armoured Droods. Like we did with the Immortals at Castle Frankenstein. The Satanists won’t know what’s hit them till it’s far too late.”

“I still don’t like it,” the Librarian said stubbornly. “Violence is playing their game.”

“Then we’ll have to play it better than them,” said the Sarjeant. “Isabella, what else can you tell us . . . ?”

But she was gone, not even a wisp of presence left at the end of the table. Molly tried to reach her, to regain contact, but couldn’t. She frowned unhappily.

“It’s not like she’s blocking me out; it’s as though she isn’t even there. Something’s wrong.”

“Maybe she thought someone else might be listening in,” I said. “She wouldn’t want to risk giving the game away.”

“Yes,” said Molly. “That makes sense.” But she didn’t sound happy about it.

The Sarjeant hurried off to organise the troops. The Armourer wandered off to go think destructive thoughts in the Armoury. William waited till they were gone, and then took me to one side for a few private words.

“I’ve been feeling a lot better since Ammonia Vom Acht’s . . . intervention,” he said. “My thoughts are clearer than they’ve been in . . . well, I don’t know how long.”

“I had noticed,” I said.

“I wanted to ask you about her. Ammonia.” The Librarian gave me a look I wasn’t sure I understood. “A most remarkable woman.”

“Remarkable,” I said.

“Excellent mind. There was a certain amount of . . . transfer, you see, when she made contact with my thoughts. She really was very impressive.”

“Impressive,” I said.

“So, you see, I was wondering . . .”

“She’s married,” I said.

“Ah. Of course she is.” He nodded slowly. “The best ones always are, aren’t they?”

He strode off, back to the Old Library, and I genuinely didn’t know what to think.

Over the next hour, the Sarjeant-at-Arms ran himself ragged all over Drood Hall, gathering up volunteers from every section and department, putting together a small army of more than a hundred Droods for his strike force. It was all I could do to keep up with him. Give the man his due: He’s good at his job. And if there’s a big fight on, there’s no one else in the family you’d rather follow into danger and sudden death, because you know he’ll move Heaven and Earth not only to get the job done, but to bring you back safely as well. All Droods are trained to fight from an early age, but few ever realistically expect to see action. Recent events—in the Hungry Gods war, and with the Accelerated Men attack—had changed all that. A lot of previously purely academic Droods had had to go out and fight, and much to everyone’s surprise they found they had a taste for direct intervention. So when the Sarjeant went looking for volunteers, he found them everywhere.

He assembled his strike force on the grounds outside the Hall and put them through their paces to see who was actually up to the job. He strode up and down, barking orders, watching closely as Droods duelled in their armour. I stood well back and let him get on with it. The Sarjeant had always been better at the military side of things than I ever had.

We had nine active field agents: all that had been present in the Hall, reporting in from completed missions. They should have been resting, recovering, but once they heard what the job was, we couldn’t keep them out. A dozen more were on their way in, but the odds were it would all be over before they could get here. We also had five ex – field agents retired from active duty for various physical and psychological reasons. They were just as determined not to be left out. They had things to prove, to the family and themselves. One of them was Callan.

“My deputy can run the War Room till I get back,” he said defiantly, standing beside me as we watched the Sarjeant run the strike force.

“You don’t have to do this, Callan,” I said.

“Yes, I do.” Callan stared out at the organised mayhem before him, so he wouldn’t have to look at me. “Last time I was out in the field, I had my torc ripped right off me by that bastard traitor the Blue Fairy. You have no idea what that felt like. I haven’t left the Hall since, even after Ethel gave me a new torc. I need to get out there, beat some Satanist brains in, prove to myself that I can still do this. That I’m still a Drood. Or I’ll end up back in my room again, refusing to come out, afraid of everything. I can’t go back to that, Eddie. I won’t go back to that. I’m going with you. You need the numbers. And besides . . . I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

“You’ve always got a bad feeling about everything,” I said. “That’s why we put you in charge of the War Room.”

“I went out to fight the Accelerated Men,” said Callan. “Along with everyone else. I’m not like you, Eddie. I never enjoyed the violence of being a field agent. But I enjoyed it well enough that day. Sometimes . . . it does you good to strike back at the world that’s hurt you.”

And he went off to get involved in the mayhem.

We’d also found twelve retired field agents, the youngest being fifty-two, the oldest sixty-four. They all looked older than their years; life in the field does that to you. Most field agents don’t live long enough to retire; the great game chews most of us up long before that. So for these old men to still be around meant they had proved themselves very hard to kill. I had a hunch that could come in handy.

Everyone in the strike force was a volunteer; not one pressed or pressured man. News of the nature of the Great Sacrifice had spread quickly through the Hall, and the general feeling of outrage was so thick in the air you could practically taste it. So there was no shortage of people willing and eager to go and fight the Satanists, to prevent such an obscenity from taking place. And yet . . . even though I would be going out with over a hundred armoured Droods to back me up, I still had a terrible cold, sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. As though I’d missed something—something important, even obvious . . .

On top of that, the last time I’d led an army of Droods out against an enemy, against the Loathly Ones on the Nazca Plains . . . it had all gone horribly wrong. We’d been ambushed, taken by surprise, outnumbered by hidden forces, and a lot of good men and women died badly that day. I went out at the head of an army, but all I brought home were body bags. . . .

Still, this time I had an ace in the hole. The Merlin Glass. It could drop us right on the Satanists, appearing out of nowhere, without warning. As long as I left it open, I’d always have a way out. If it was needed. If everything went wrong again.

At the last moment, Molly and Harry came out of the Hall to join us. I had wondered where she’d been. The two of them had clearly been talking together, because they were almost comfortable in each other’s company. Molly moved in close beside me, linked her arm through mine and leaned her head against my shoulder. She’d been talking with Harry about the time she and Roger were lovers, long ago. I knew that, and she knew that I knew. And we both knew this wasn’t the time to be concentrating on the past.

“I’m going with you,” said Harry, in a way that made it very clear there was no point in arguing with him. “Roger’s going to be there.”

“Probably,” I said. “You really think you can talk him out of this? Bring him back to the side of the angels?”

“Before you left Under Parliament,” said Harry, looking out across the grounds so he wouldn’t have to look at me, “before Roger let you go . . . you said you asked him if there was anything he wanted to say to me. Any message. He could have said any number of things: told me it was all over, told me he never really loved me, told me to go to Hell. . . . But he didn’t. I can still reach him; I know I can. . . . So I have to go, Eddie. I have to try.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “But don’t get in the way once the killing starts. This is war. And given what’s at stake . . .”

“I know,” said Harry.

The Sarjeant-at-Arms finally called a halt to his martial exercises, assembled his army before him and took the opportunity to bore the arses off them with what he probably thought was an inspirational speech. I looked the Droods over, and was quietly pleased with what I saw. They looked like soldiers ready to go into battle. They looked like an army. I put up with as much of the Sarjeant’s speech as I could stand, and then took out the Merlin Glass and activated it. The Sarjeant stopped talking as he realised no one was listening to him any longer. I shook the Glass out to full size, and then opened it up even further, pushing it to a greater size than I’d ever attempted before, finally ending up with a gateway some twenty feet square. I hadn’t been sure that would work, but it seemed stable enough.

I looked through the opening, and there was the Cathedral Hotel, right where the coordinates said it should be. A large building, clearly much rebuilt, with a slick modern facade. The sign said simply, CATHEDRAL HOTEL. Four stars. The only remaining vestige of the building’s original nature was an old bell tower stuck right on the end, presumably retained as a historical touch. Something for the tourists to take photographs of.

A massive car park sprawled out before the hotel, with neatly marked bays but only a handful of parked cars. No one about, no signs of Satanists anywhere. The whole place was quiet and peaceful on a warm sunny day. So far, so good. I decided it was time for a quick inspirational speech of my own. I turned to address the Drood army, and they looked at me expectantly.

“You look like you’re ready for a fight,” I said. “Good. I’ll lead you through the Merlin Glass. No armour—not yet. We don’t want to freak any innocent passersby. Straight across the car park and into the hotel. Armour up then. The Satanists have block-booked the hotel, to ensure their privacy. So once you’re in there, if they’re not clearly hotel staff, stamp them into the ground. No warnings, no mercy. They won’t be taking prisoners and neither will we. Except for their leaders: Alexandre Dusk, Roger Morningstar and anyone with them. Take them alive, if you can. We have questions.”

“Kill them if they stand; kill them if they run,” the Sarjeant said bluntly. “Don’t hold back. For everything these bastards have done, and everything they plan to do . . . death is the only answer, the only justice.”

“The mind-influencing machine should be on the premises somewhere,” I said. “Take it intact, if you can. Just to make the Armourer’s day. But if it looks like someone’s trying to run it, kill them and smash the machine. Your armour should protect you from all outside influences, but we’re not taking any chances on this mission. All right, that’s it. Good hunting.”

I strode through the Merlin Glass, Molly at my side, Harry and the Sarjeant all but treading on my heels. The Drood army filed through after us. In a few moments we were all through the Glass and spreading out across the empty car park. And that was when it all changed. The calm and quiet scene before us disappeared, gone in a moment, swept away like the illusion it always was. Between us and the hotel stood a massive army, thousands of heavily armed Satanists, with Alexandre Dusk standing at their head . . . smiling complacently at me.

“It’s a trap!” yelled the Sarjeant. “Defend the Glass! It’s our way home!”

But when we all turned to look, the Merlin Glass was only a twenty-foot-square mirror reflecting our shocked faces. I tried half a dozen different control Words, but the Glass was just a glass. The Satanists had blocked it again, like they had in Under Parliament. I was getting really tired of that. I turned to Molly.

“It was all false information, designed to lure us into a trap. Could Isabella have been turned? Could she have been one of them all along?”

“No!” Molly said immediately. “She couldn’t hide something like that from me. She never had any time for Satanists. They must have captured her. No wonder we saw only a sending in the Sanctity. It was an illusion, never her at all. What have you done with my sister, Dusk, you Satanist scumbag?”

Alexandre Dusk smiled easily at Molly and me. He looked very relaxed, very at his ease, as though he were out to enjoy the sunny day, not standing at the head of an army ten times the size of mine. He nodded easily to me, the condescending bastard.

“Why do you think Roger let you go?” he said, in an infuriatingly reasonable tone of voice. We knew Molly and Isabella were still hanging around, waiting for a chance to jump in and rescue you, so we made that possible. When they teleported you out, we were waiting, and it was a simple task for a few of our more accomplished sorcerers to reach in and grab Isabella and materialise her in one of our places of power. She never even saw it coming. And while she is a very talented young lady, we have some very powerful people of our own these days. People who can tell which way the wind is blowing.

“Then all we had to do was send you the image of her, and have her say our words with her mouth. Present you with an urgent deadline so you didn’t have time to think about it, and an opportunity too good to resist. So you’d charge right in, Eddie, like you always do. And here we all are! Ah . . . so many Droods in one place. Unprecedented! So many torcs for us to take from your dead bodies and make our own.”

“Yeah, right,” I said. “Like that’s going to happen.”

Dusk’s smile didn’t falter in the least. “I’m really looking forward to this, Eddie. There are still those in the world waiting for you to save them from us; I shall make a point of sending a severed Drood’s head to each and every one of them, to stamp out that last trace of hope.”

“Arrogant little prick,” I said. “You’re facing an army of Droods. A sane man would be running by now. Not that it would do any good.”

“One hundred and seven Droods, by my count,” said Dusk, still entirely unruffled, and I was beginning to wonder why. “Whereas I have one thousand three hundred highly motivated men and women, armed with all the very latest weapons. Your precious and much-vaunted armour is a thing of the past. You are yesterday’s men. We are cutting-edge.”

I had to smile. “You didn’t keep up with the memos, did you? We’ve upgraded.”

Dusk made an annoyed, frustrated gesture, upset that we weren’t properly impressed and taking his threats seriously. “You’re all going to die, Droods! And your pathetic antiquated morality with you!”

“Not going to happen,” said the Sarjeant-at-Arms briskly. “A battle can go either way; any good soldier knows that. But even if you should destroy all of us, it wouldn’t make any difference. Whatever happens, the family goes on. Droods maintain.”

“You don’t know what you’re facing,” said Dusk, his voice cold though his face was flushed. He wasn’t finding this as much fun as he’d thought he would. He kept giving us the right feed lines, and we kept refusing our cues. We were supposed to realise we were already beaten and shiver in our shoes, try to surrender, maybe even beg for mercy so he could laugh in our faces as he turned us down. We shouldn’t only be staring defiantly back at him and laughing in his face. He gestured at the ranks and ranks lined up behind him. “Allow me to present our very latest acquisition, courtesy of one of those brilliant minds we abducted from the Supernatural Arms Faire. We have our own armour now. Modern armour. He really was ready to present Drood-equivalent armour at the fair this year, only we got to him first. Step forward, boys.”

A dozen men stepped forward to show themselves off. At least, I assumed they were men. It was hard to tell.

“This new armour is state-of-the-art living superplastic, pre-programmed to follow direct instructions from its wearer via a cybernetic mind-link,” Dusk said proudly. “Indestructible, endlessly adaptable, capable of taking on any shape or function the mind of the wearer can conceive. A thousand weapons in one, combined with an absolute defence. Every wearer an army in his own right.”

And then he stopped, because there was a certain amount of quiet sniggering going on in the Drood ranks. Dusk glared back and forth.

“Sorry,” I said. “Terribly rude, I know, but . . . is that it? Really? That’s your modern armour?”

“They look like toy soldiers,” said the Sarjeant-at-Arms.

He had a point. They did. Covered from head to toe in a dull grey plastic, smooth and featureless, like grown men dipped in liquid plastic and allowed to harden. I kept wanting to look at their feet for the bases they should be standing on. Some of them were holding plastic rifles, the material of the guns blending seamlessly into their plastic hands. Their faces were rough and blurred versions of the features under the plastic, like any toy soldier.

“Go!” Dusk said angrily to his plastic men. “Show them what you can do! A special bonus to the first man to bring me a Drood head!”

The plastic men surged forward inhumanly quickly, followed by more than fifty others from the ranks. The plastic armour stretched smoothly with every movement. Those without guns extruded swords and axes from their plastic hands, with fiercely sharp edges. Some had rifles; some had handguns; some had machine guns, though I still hadn’t worked out what they were going to fire. Plastic bullets? Against Drood armour?

And then . . . it all started to go wrong. The plastic armour began to change, the basic grey flushing with bursts of swirling colours. Dark, angry shades of red and blue and green, feverish purples and sick yellows. Swirling on the surface of the plastic armour like infected oil slicks.

The wearers stumbled to a halt and looked at one another confusedly. Strange bulges and eruptions rose and fell in the armour, the surface bubbling and seething as it burst out in new shapes. Some hunched over; some sprouted wings; some grew extra arms. Shocked and startled voices cried out from inside the armour. Some blossomed into strange new shapes, violent and aggressive and increasingly inhuman, reflecting the thoughts and wishes and inner needs of the wearers. Some became medieval demons, complete with horned heads and cloven hooves and clawed hands. Roger Morningstar had clearly made an impression.

But the changes didn’t stop there. The men inside the armour were screaming now, in pain and horror and anguish, begging for help. Some of them became living gargoyles, twisted and misshapen. Some expanded jerkily, in bursts and spurts, till they were ten, twenty feet tall, wavering uncertainly as they struggled to support their own weight. Others became warped, monstrous things, horribly inhuman, the kind of things that chase us in nightmares. Dusk’s army was crying out in shock and alarm, and beginning to back away, shouting that something had gone wrong. And it had. The changes continued, the plastic armour forming horrid abstract shapes from the depths of the unconscious mind. Things that hurt the human eye to look at, impossible for the conscious mind to deal with.

I knew what was happening. The living superplastic was linked directly to the wearer’s mind through a cybernetic implant. Similar to how Droods operate our armour. But these new armoured men hadn’t had Drood training. In the family, we are taught from an early age how to control what we think about our armour, so we always have full conscious control. These unfortunate men had lost control to their subconscious minds, and were producing shapes from the under-mind, reflecting hidden needs and desires. Monsters from the id. Evil shapes, monstrous forms, nightmare impulses never meant to escape into the waking world. Without the mental discipline drilled into every Drood from childhood, the armour was giving each wearer what he really wanted. . . .

The plastic shapes were constantly changing now, flickering from one thing to another in the blink of an eye, directed by long-buried needs and unacknowledged motivations. Clashing appetites and raw jealousies and sexual hungers ran loose, given form and purpose in the ever-adaptable superplastic. Until finally they turned on one another, the Drood enemy forgotten in their instinctive need to pay off old hurts and envies. No discipline, no direction, just every man for himself. Except that what was left inside the plastic armour wasn’t really men at all.

I turned to the Sarjeant-at-Arms. “I’ve had enough of this. They’re Satanists. Hit them hard, Sarjeant.”

“Like I need you to tell me that,” he said, and charged forward, yelling for his men to follow him. And we did.

We all surged forward, glorious in our gleaming golden armour, and slammed into the front ranks of the enemy. The plastic shapes didn’t stand a chance against our strange-matter weapons. The men and women beyond them had weapons of all kinds, scientific and magical, most of it strictly forbidden. And none of it was worth a damn against Drood armour. When the bullets and energy blasts and attack magics broke and shattered and ran harmlessly away from our armour, their confidence broke. They had no discipline, had no idea what to do; they’d been told to expect a weakened, demoralised enemy, and they’d believed it, the fools. We moved swiftly among them, striking them down with spiked gloved fists and golden swords and axes. Bones broke and shattered, flesh pulped and blood flew on the air. We had no mercy in us. Not for them. Not after what they’d done, and what they planned to do. We were fighting to save a whole generation of children from slaughter and horror. We struck the Satanists down and trampled them underfoot in our eagerness to get to the next target, a wild and vicious exhilaration in our hearts.

We were born to fight evil, but we rarely get our hands on the real thing.

We slammed through the enemy ranks, and they shattered and fell apart before us. Some fought; most turned to run; none escaped. The Sarjeant saw to that. He sent his people off to surround the enemy and block their escape routes, driving them back to their deaths. Some threw down their weapons, tried to surrender, begged and cried for their lives. But we had no time for that. They gave up every right to civilised treatment when they joined the Satanists. They had sworn their lives and souls to evil, given up everything that made them human.

You can’t simply join the Satanists. You have to buy your way in with blood and murder, horror and the suffering of innocents. You have to do things from which there can be no coming back, no chance of atonement or redemption. You don’t just sell your soul; you spit on it and throw it away.

They belonged to Hell, and that’s where we sent them.

I moved steadily through the ranks of the enemy, smashing in chests and crushing skulls, moved by an implacable cold rage. I have always thought of myself as an agent, not an assassin, but if ever I have felt justified in what I do and what I am, it was on that day. Some evils are so great all you can do is stamp them out to keep them from contaminating Humanity. But even as I fought I never lost control, because it wasn’t enough to just strike down the rank and file. Dusk was still out there somewhere. And if he got to the mind-influencing machine . . . I fought on through the ranks, my spiked golden fists rising and falling tirelessly while blood ran endlessly down my armour . . . heading for the Cathedral Hotel.

Molly was right there with me, grabbing Satanists by their shirt-fronts, hauling them in close and screaming, “Where’s my sister? Where’s Isabella? What have you done with her?” right into their faces. But no one even knew what she was talking about, so she threw them aside and moved on, searching for someone who would know. Now and again someone would make the mistake of attacking her, and Molly would strike them down with some swift and nasty magic and keep going.

I’d almost reached the far edge of the conflict when Harry suddenly ran past me, leaving the fighting behind and heading for the hotel. The Sarjeant yelled angrily after him, thinking he was abandoning the battle, but I knew where he was going. I hadn’t seen Roger Morningstar anywhere in the ranks of the army, which meant that if he was here he was inside the hotel. Harry was going to find him. So I went after him. The fight was already won; it didn’t need either of us. And if Roger was there, I wanted to be there when he met Harry.

I burst into the hotel lobby almost on Harry’s heels. It looked bright and open, modern and efficient, and completely deserted. Harry spun round, ready to fight, and I quickly stopped and raised my hands to show they were empty.

“I’m not here to stop you, Harry. I’m here to help.”

His featureless golden mask looked back at me. “Why would you do that, Eddie?”

“Because I don’t want to believe that Roger is totally lost to us.”

“You never liked him.”

“He never liked me. So what? He’s family.”

Harry shook his head slowly. “I don’t want you here. This is private.”

“Roger’s not going to be here alone,” I said, lowering my hands. “He’ll have guards. Protections. Layers of security. You’re going to need someone to watch your back, or you’ll never get to him.”

Harry nodded stiffly, reluctantly, and then we both broke off and looked around sharply, as we heard rapidly approaching footsteps. We moved quickly together, side by side, and a whole bunch of heavily armed security guards came running in from a side corridor. They all had automatic weapons, and they all opened up on Harry and me the moment they saw us. We stood our ground, not flinching in the least at the roar of automatic fire, and our armour soaked up every single bullet. The sheer impact would have knocked over a horse, but we didn’t budge an inch. More guards arrived, firing strange-energy weapons. Violent forces crawled and crackled all over our armour, trying to force a way in. They failed and fell away.

Harry and I waited to be sure they’d thrown everything they had at us, and then we strode purposefully forward. Heavy blades erupted out of Harry’s hands, while terrible spikes rose up from his arms and shoulders. He moved among the security guards like a living scythe, cutting down everyone who stood before him. I grew a long golden sword from one hand and moved alongside him, hacking and cutting. There was no room for mercy in either of us. All I had to do was think of the Great Sacrifice and mountains of dead children, and my heart was a cold and terrible thing.

It didn’t take long. It was a slaughter, not a battle. Soon enough, the lobby was full of bodies and soaked in blood. More blood ran down our gleaming armour in streams, to pool around our feet.

“Well,” said Harry. “I think we can safely assume they know we’re here. Let’s go introduce ourselves.”

He strode down the corridor the guards had come from, and I went with him. The corridor led to another corridor, and then we stopped again. There was a low, ominous growling from somewhere up ahead.

“Oh, bloody hell,” I said. “They’ve summoned up a demon dog. I hate those.”

“Any way round it?” said Harry.

“Beats me,” I said. “I don’t see any side corridors. But whatever that is, it has to be here to guard something. Or someone. So we have to go through it. . . . Okay, I’ll handle it. You go on. Find Roger.”

“Getting cocky, Eddie? No Drood’s ever managed to take down a demon dog on his own before.”

“You haven’t been keeping up with my reports, have you, Harry? I took one down at Lightbringer House.”

“I did read your report; you had Molly and Isabella there to help you.”

“You read my reports?” I said. “I’m flattered. Look, I can keep the thing at bay while you go talk with Roger. That’s what matters.”

“I can’t let you do that.”

“Yes, you can. You can’t stand me, remember?”

“Oh, yes. There is that. Anything for the family?”

“For family, Harry.”

We strode down the corridor together, took the sharp left turn, and found it wasn’t a demon dog after all. The whole of the corridor before us had been changed, transformed, possessed by a spirit out of Hell. The corridor was alive, its every surface organic, fleshy, corrupt. Like the living throat that had replaced the elevator shaft back at Lightbringer House. The walls were flesh: scarlet and purple meat, with dark rotting patches and networks of heavy, pulsing veins. The floor was a long, rippling, shocking pink tongue, slick with digestive juices. The whole of the ceiling was one long elongated eye, watching us unblinkingly with mad, fascinated intent. Huge, jagged teeth protruded from the meat of the walls in regular rows; and as we watched, they began to revolve slowly, like a meat grinder, or a living chain saw. The whole thing stank of blood and sulphur and sour milk; it was alive and it was hungry and it was waiting for us. I looked at Harry.

“After you.”

“It’s only meat and teeth,” said Harry. “You really think that could get through our armour?”

“That . . . is a demon out of Hell,” I said. “A major power and a major presence, to be able to overwrite our reality so completely. I have absolutely no idea what that thing could do to our armour.”

“It was put there to stop our getting to Roger,” said Harry.

“Almost certainly,” I said. “Still, when in doubt, cheat. If we can’t go through it, maybe we can go around it.”

I turned away from the possessed corridor and punched a hole through the ordinary wall next to me. My golden fist slammed through it with no problem at all. I pulled my hand back, and broken bricks and brick dust fell to the floor. I hit the wall again and again, making an opening big enough to step through, but when I stopped to look, all I could see on the other side was the possessed corridor, looking back at me.

“Damn,” I said. “It’s written over the whole hotel, mapping itself to every corridor at once. It’s everywhere it needs to be, all at the same time. Whichever way we go to try to reach Roger, this thing will always be there to block our way.”

“You understood all that from looking through one hole?” said Harry.

“Of course not. I accessed my armour’s sensors.”

“We should have brought an exorcist with us.”

“Well, next time we’ll know, won’t we?” I said. “You can’t think of everything when you’re in a hurry. Why don’t you wish for a tactical nuke as well, while you’re at it?”

“Don’t get tetchy,” said Harry. “Let me try something.”

He concentrated and brought both his arms together before him. Swift ripples ran along his golden armour, which then shifted and fused together, forming itself into a huge machine gun. The kind you see in action movies when the hero wants to bring down a whole house at once. I moved quickly to get out of the way, and Harry opened fire on the possessed corridor. Strange-matter bullets exploded from the long golden barrel with incredible speed and fury, chewing up the demonic flesh of the floor and walls. Purple meat exploded under the impact, dark blood spattering everywhere, and sustained firepower ripped the long pink tongue apart from one end to the other. Something screamed horribly: a vast, harsh and utterly malignant sound. Harry shifted his aim, tearing the corridor apart and devastating the elongated eye from end to end. The long split pupil exploded, and thick fluids rained down into the churned-up flesh of the corridor. Harry stopped firing, and the gun sank back into his armour again. And as he stood there, considering his work and finding it good, every single strange-matter bullet he’d fired jerked free of the demonic meat and flew back to him, to be absorbed into his armour.

“All right,” I said. “That’s impressive. Terribly destructive, but neat with it. I didn’t know our armour could do that.”

“I’ve been practicing,” said Harry. “Roger gave me the idea. His favourite film was always The Wild Bunch. I don’t know how many times he’s made me watch it with him.”

“The fiend,” I said.

And then we both broke off and stared blankly as the ripped and torn-up flesh of the possessed corridor repaired itself, rebuilding and reestablishing itself, demonic flesh fusing back together until the corridor looked exactly as it had before. Rotting walls, pulsing tongue, watching eye.

“Damn,” said Harry.

“Well, quite,” I said. “Major demonic presence . . .”

“Now what do we do? Send out for a tanker full of holy water?”

“Take too long,” I said. “Let me think. This is more Molly’s territory than mine.” I thought hard. This had to be a delaying tactic, to hold us off while Roger and Dusk got the hell out of Dodge, probably taking the mind-influencing machine with them. We had to find a way through. . . . A thought occurred to me.

“Are you religious, Harry?”

“What? Not as such . . . not in any organised way. Hard to find an organised church that wants anything to do with the likes of Roger and me. You?”

“In my own way. We know Heaven and Hell are real; the family has regular dealings with them. But we don’t know much about either; only enough to know we don’t want to know more.”

“How is this helping us?” said Harry. “What do you want me to do, shape my armour into a big golden crucifix?”

“Might come in handy if we come up against a nest of vampires,” I said. “But no, I have something else in mind. And you’re really not going to like it, Harry.”

“What else is new?”

“How brave are you feeling?” I said. “And how much do you really love Roger?”

“What kind of a question is that?” said Harry angrily.

“A relevant one. You’re not here for duty or vengeance, like me. Or even to fight Satanists. You’re here to find, and hopefully rescue, the hellspawn Roger Morningstar. You’re the only one who came here just for him. Because you love him. And there’s no place for love in any place possessed by Hell. So I think you should armour down and walk into that corridor, and trust to your love to protect you.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Maybe. But I think it’ll work. If you’re up for it.”

“I knew it,” said Harry. “You want to get rid of me!”

“You’re here for Roger! That’s what matters to you! So is he your love true or not? Because if he isn’t, this is where you get to find out the hard way. If he is, Hell itself won’t be able to stand in your way.”

“Love conquers all?” said Harry. “Aren’t you a little old to be believing in that?”

“I believe in evil because I’ve seen it,” I said. “And I believe in good because I’ve seen it. And I believe in love. My Molly went into Limbo, into the shadow of death itself, to find me and bring me back. Do you dare do less for your love? Whenever Hell intrudes on Earth, Heaven is also there. What we do in Heaven’s gaze has Heaven’s strength.”

“You are so full of it,” said Harry. He looked down the possessed corridor standing between him and Roger. He looked back at me. “You really want me to do this?”

“I’ll be right there with you,” I said.

“I’m not sure I believe in this,” said Harry. “So you’d better believe enough for both of us.”

He armoured down, and so did I; and then he walked slowly forward into the living corridor, an ordinary-looking man, in his smart suit and wire-rimmed spectacles, with a face trying hard to be brave and determined. I walked behind him, but he didn’t look back once. He walked steadily forward into the foul and stinking air and the bloodred light. His foot came down on the thick, pulpy tongue that had replaced the floor, and it shrank back from him. Where Harry’s foot came down it was suddenly ordinary corridor floor again. He didn’t hesitate, or look down after the first incredulous glance; he kept walking forward . . . and Hell retreated before him. The tongue fell back, and the rotting flesh of the walls retracted in sudden jerks, revealing patches of ordinary wall. Jagged teeth fell out of the walls, disappearing before they hit the floor.

About halfway down the corridor, the decaying flesh still on the walls bunched up, thickened and threw itself at Harry, trying to engulf him; but it couldn’t reach him. It dissipated and fell apart, made mist and dust and less than dust. Harry walked down the corridor, all the way to the end, with me right behind him. And when he finally stopped and turned around and looked back the way he’d come, there was nothing left to show that Hell had ever had a place on Earth there.

Harry looked at me. He was trying to smile, but he was too shaken. I was trembling a bit myself.

“I wasn’t altogether sure that would work,” I said.

“Now you tell me.” Harry took a deep breath and let it out. “I . . . am going to have to consider the implications of what just happened. And when I get to Roger, maybe I’ll sing him a quick chorus of ‘The Power of Love.’ Roger always did love Frankie Goes to Hollywood.”

“I’ve always had a soft spot for ‘Welcome to the Pleasuredome,’”I said. “Great video.”

Harry looked at me. “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you, Eddie?”

“You have no idea,” I said cheerfully.

“You really think Heaven’s watching?” said Harry.

“Maybe.”

“Well, I didn’t do this for Heaven. I did it for Roger.”

“Then let’s go tell him,” I said.

We started off, and then Harry stopped abruptly and looked at me. “What would you have done if it hadn’t worked?”

“Oh, I’m sure I’d have thought of something else. . . .”

“I could have died!”

“Every plan has its drawbacks, Harry.”

“I hate you.”

“Careful,” I said. “You never know who may be listening.”

We moved on, deeper into the building. Harry seemed to know where he was going, so I followed him. And soon enough we reached the conspiracy’s control centre. It was a function room at the back of the hotel, right next to the old bell tower, presumably chosen because it was closest to the last remnant of the deconsecrated cathedral. The door was not only not locked or guarded; it was standing half-open so those inside could get a breath of fresh air on such a hot, sunny day. Harry and I armoured up and strode right in, and there was Roger Morningstar, looking perfectly human, along with half a dozen assistants, and two armed guards having a quiet sit-down on a smoke break. They were all watching what was happening outside on a series of large display screens. It was pretty obvious the fight was over. The Sarjeant-at-Arms was directing moppingup operations on the few surviving Satanists in the car park.

Roger looked round suddenly and saw Harry and me. He nodded slowly. His assistants and the two guards looked round. The guards went for their guns, and Harry and I killed them quickly. The assistants bolted out the back door, and I let them go. I could have caught them, but I’d had enough of killing. Let the Sarjeant deal with them. They weren’t what we’d come here for. Harry advanced on Roger. I stayed back by the doorway.

“You did come,” Roger said to Harry. “I wondered if you would. Hello, Harry.”

“Hello, Roger,” said Harry. “I think we need to have a serious talk about where our relationship is going.”

Roger looked at me, and I looked back. I wasn’t ready to leave Harry and Roger on their own together, not yet. Roger got up from his chair before the display screens to stand before Harry. The two men looked at each other for a long moment.

“I’ve missed you, Harry,” said Roger.

“I’ve missed you, Roger. Now tell me what the hell this has all been about.”

“A test,” said Roger. “I’m afraid, in the end, this has all been about me. I knew you’d come here with the Drood army, and so did my superiors. This is my final test of my loyalty to Hell. I have to kill you, Harry, here and now, to prove to them and to me that the emotions of this world no longer have any hold over me. That my only allegiance is to the forces of Hell.” He held up one hand to show off a small device. “Our new weapon designers made this for me. A simple toy, based on something the Armourer once used. A clicker that can temporarily force Drood armour back into its torc, against the wearer’s wishes. Leaving the wearer helpless and vulnerable. All I have to do is use this and then kill you, Harry. And you, too, Eddie; I wouldn’t want you to feel left out. And then . . . I will finally have proved which side I’m on. I will be made one of the generals of Hell, and when the Gates of Hell are finally thrown open, and all the damned come forth to tread the Earth and all its peoples under our cloven hooves, I shall be a prince of the Earth and have dominion over mankind. Everything I ever wanted, in return for killing you, Harry. It’s not much of a choice, is it?”

“But you never wanted any of those things, Roger,” said Harry.

I wasn’t so sure about that, but I said nothing and stayed where I was. I wanted to see how this was going to work out. The forces of Hell had retreated before Harry’s conviction; that had to mean something. And I . . . had faith in Harry and Roger.

Roger looked at the simple device in his hand, and then back at Harry. He held the clicker up and all my stomach muscles tightened, and then Roger opened his hand and let the clicker fall to the floor. He stepped on it hard, and I heard it break and breathed a lot more easily.

“How about that?” said Roger. He seemed honestly shaken. “I couldn’t do it. I thought I could, but I couldn’t. I thought I wanted power, and prestige, and to take my revenge on a world that’s always rejected me . . . but in the end, all I wanted was the only thing I’ve ever really wanted. And that’s you, Harry.”

He moved forward, and Harry took him in his arms, and they stood together, holding each other.

“I do so love a happy ending,” I said after a while. “If Molly was here, she’d be in tears. Really. You’re not listening, are you?”

They finally turned to face me, standing casually arm in arm. Harry was smiling broadly, while Roger favoured me with a small, only slightly sardonic smile.

“Thank you for not interfering,” he said. “Now do me a favour and get Harry out of here. Get back to Drood Hall with the rest of your people. While you still can.”

“I’m not going without you,” Harry said immediately.

“You don’t get it,” said Roger. “This is still a trap for all of you. The army outside was only the beginning—expendable troops to hold your attention. And a chance to try out their precious new plastic armour. The real army is on its way. Thousands of them, armed with powerful new weapons. Strong enough to blow the armour right off you. They will kill you all and tear the torcs from your agonised corpses. The only reason they aren’t already here is because they wanted to watch you fighting, see what you’re capable of. Now that they know, they’ll be here any minute. So you have to go now. I’ll shut down the blocks on the Merlin Glass, and you can retreat back to Drood Hall.”

“Come with us,” said Harry.

“I’m sorry,” said Roger, and I could see he meant it. “I can’t. Someone has to stay here with the machines, prevent the conspiracy from reestablishing the blocks and shutting down the Glass again. My superiors already know I’m not going to be what they wanted me to be.” He glanced at the display screens. “They’re watching now. Everyone watches everyone in the conspiracy. They know by now that I’ve betrayed them. By choosing you, Harry, I’ve signed my own death warrant. So you have to go; you have to live, or everything I’ve done will have been for nothing.”

“I’m not going,” Harry said stubbornly. “I’m staying here with you. Eddie, go tell the Droods what’s happening, and get them all safely home. Then put together a real army and come back here and save the day.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” I said.

“You’re not ready to face the army that’s coming!” said Roger. “They have weapons beyond your worst nightmares! Harry, you have to go!”

“You think I’d leave you here to die alone?” said Harry.

“I’m going,” I said. “I have to get my people out of here. Harry, link your torc to the Drood War Room, so it can broadcast real-time images of what’s happening here. Hold the fort, boys; I’ll be back with reinforcements before you know it.”

“Of course you will,” said Harry. “That’s what you do, Eddie.”

I ran back through the hotel corridors as fast as my armoured strength could drive me. The walls blurred, the floor cracked and shattered under the pounding of my feet, and the world became just so many smearing colours until I burst out of the hotel and into the car park and slammed on the brakes. The Sarjeant-at-Arms looked up sharply as I seemed to materialise right in front of him. I had to pause for a moment to get my breath back, and the Sarjeant gestured easily at the dead bodies piled around him, broken and bloody.

“All dead,” he said. “Poor bastards never stood a chance. Good training for the troops, though.”

“They were expendable,” I said. “The real army’s on its way.”

I ran quickly through the situation, and the Sarjeant got the implications immediately. We both looked at the Merlin Glass, and a sharp sense of relief ran through me as I saw a clear view of Drood Hall and its grounds on the other side of the mirror.

“Get everyone back to the Hall,” I said. “Then make me an army so big it won’t matter what the conspiracy is sending.”

“For Harry and Roger?” said the Sarjeant.

“They’re Droods,” I said.

“Of course they are,” said the Sarjeant. “Anything for family.”

He rounded his people up and drove them through the Merlin Glass with barked orders and harsh language. I waited right till the end, hoping I’d come up with some last-minute desperate plan, but I didn’t. Sometimes there isn’t anything you can do. Molly stayed with me, and in the end I had to go, because she wouldn’t go without me. We passed through the Merlin Glass, and I shut it down so nothing could follow us through.

I ran through the Hall to the War Room, leaving raising the army to the Sarjeant. I needed to see what was happening with Harry and Roger. When I got there, they already had the transmissions from Harry’s torc up on the biggest display screen. We could see them in the hotel function room, hear every word they said, but there was nothing we could do to help. We could only watch, and wait for the Sarjeant to tell us the army was ready.

Harry Drood and Roger Morningstar sat quietly together, watching their own display screens showing endless scenes of an empty car park. They seemed easy, comfortable in each other’s company.

“We’ll see Hell’s army when they teleport in,” said Roger. “Actually, it’ll be pretty hard to miss them.”

“Thousands of them?” said Harry. “Really?”

“Oh, yes. No shortage of soldiers in the satanic conspiracy. It does tend to attract people who like obeying orders. And killing people.”

“With terrible new weapons? More powerful than Drood armour?”

“Unfortunately, yes. It had to happen eventually. The Droods couldn’t stay cutting-edge forever.”

“Can’t you . . . do something, with your infernal powers?”

“No,” said Roger. “Everything I had was stripped from me the moment I chose to side with you and embrace my human heritage.”

“I still have my armour,” said Harry.

“It won’t help you,” said Roger. “The army that’s coming will strip it off you like an old coat. I told you: They’ve been planning this for a long time.”

“Isn’t there anything we can do?” said Harry.

“The hotel still has all its protections, provided by these machines,” said Roger. “And as long as I’m here to keep changing the passwords, they can’t override the defences from outside. If we can hold them off long enough, maybe Eddie will get here with reinforcements. Though he’d have to bring the whole family with him, and every weapon in the Armoury. I hope you’re listening to this, Eddie.”

“So we do have a chance?” said Harry.

“No,” said Roger. “I was being optimistic. It’s a human thing.”

Harry thought for a while. “The conspiracy can’t stay here long—not with an army that big. They’d be noticed by the authorities.”

“Harry, dear, they own the authorities,” said Roger. “They could perform a mass slaughter of the innocents, right here, with flamethrowers, and it would all be covered up.”

Harry made a brief frustrated sound. “Talk to me, Roger. What have your leaders promised the world governments to get them to go along with the Great Sacrifice?”

“What Hell always promises: power. And the indulgence of secret needs and pleasures. Everything you think you want. They have been promised they will be kings of the world to come. The fools.”

“So,” said Harry, “answer me this, at least. Who are the leaders of this new satanic conspiracy? Who’s in charge?”

“Just one man, really,” said Roger. “And it’s a name you’d know. And, I think, one that would surprise you. It’s always the little men, the quietly resentful, secretly ambitious little men you have to look out for. But I can’t say his name. Not even now. I’m under a geas, a compulsion laid down by Hell itself, never to use his name outside the conspiracy.”

“I’d know the name . . .” Harry said thoughtfully. “It’s not a Drood, is it?”

“No,” said Roger. “That much I can say.”

Harry looked about him. “Can’t say I feel very secure in here. Couldn’t we barricade the room?”

“Yes, if you like,” said Roger.

“You think that would help?”

“No. But it’s something we could do while we’re waiting.”

“Hell with that,” said Harry. He folded his arms, tapped one foot on the floor and thought hard. “As Eddie is entirely too fond of saying, when in doubt, cheat. Or at least improvise with style. If I were to armour up and smash a hole in the floor . . . maybe I could excavate a tunnel and burrow past the conspiracy—Why are you shaking your head, Roger?”

“Because the hotel’s protections are still in place,” said Roger. “And I daren’t let them fall, even for a moment. We are sitting inside a bubble around and above and below. . . . Nice idea, though.”

They sat together side by side, happy in each other’s company. Waiting.

“I used to love walking with you through the Hall grounds,” said Roger. “All those endless lawns, and the woods, and the lake . . . I missed out on all that, growing up apart from the family. I felt at peace there. Like maybe I could belong, if I tried hard enough . . .”

“When did you first go rogue?” said Harry. “Turn against us, the Droods, Humanity?”

“Before Eddie was attacked and stabbed,” said Roger. “How else do you think that disguised Immortal got into the Hall so easily?”

“Were you happy as a Satanist?”

“Actually, yes,” said Roger. “It’s a very self-indulgent lifestyle. You really do get to do everything you ever wanted, indulge every sin, wallow in every pleasure, satisfy every need. . . . But self-indulgence gets very boring after a while. Because if you can do anything, then nothing really matters anymore. It’s all so . . . superficial.”

And then he broke off, leaned forward and looked at the display screens. Harry looked, too, and all the colour drained from his face.

“They’re here,” said Roger.

“How many of them?” said Harry.

“All of them.”

“Dear God . . .” Harry’s face was white with shock now. “I didn’t know there could be an army that big. Men and monsters and . . . Eddie! Listen to me! Don’t come! You wouldn’t stand a chance!”

“No one ever realises how powerful Hell can be, until it’s too late,” said Roger.

“What are we going to do?” said Harry. “We can’t fight that!”

“I was never planning on fighting,” said Roger. “I was planning on hiding out here long enough for the army to get bored and leave.”

“Eddie could still come,” said Harry, slowly recovering some of his composure. “There’s still the forbidden weapons in the Armageddon Codex.”

“Yes,” said Roger. “Do you see Alexandre Dusk out there any where?”

Harry looked hard, moving from screen to screen. “No.”

“Oh, good,” said Roger. “For a moment I thought we might be in trouble.”

And that was when all the machines exploded at once. The conspiracy had found it couldn’t override the passwords and protections, so they hit the self-destruct. The blast filled the War Room’s display screen, and for a long time all we could see was smoke, slowly clearing, to reveal rubble and wreckage and blazing fires. I saw Harry, on his hands and knees in his golden armour, digging frantically through the rubble. He hauled heavy pieces of broken machinery aside as though they were nothing, until finally he uncovered what was left of Roger Morningstar. The hellspawn was a mess. The man who had defied Hell itself for the man he loved had been torn apart by the explosion. Both his legs were missing, and his torso and half his face were burned and blackened by flames. Only one eye was still open; the other was seared shut. Somehow, he clung to life with more than human energy. He looked up at Harry with his one eye, and managed something like a smile with scorched and blackened lips.

Harry made a space amid the rubble and sat down beside Roger, holding his body in his arms. He said Roger’s name several times. And then Roger closed his eye, blood bubbled briefly at his mouth and he stopped breathing.

Harry armoured down. He was only a man now, sitting amid destruction, holding his dead love in his arms.

“No,” he said. “You can’t be dead. I fought my way through Hell to be here, scared off a demon with my love for you; you can’t be dead! It isn’t fair! God damn you! God, this isn’t fair!”

There were sounds from outside, people and perhaps things not people, digging their way through the rubble, trying to get in, to get to Harry. He laid Roger’s dead body down and smiled briefly, bitterly.

“You won’t get me,” he said. “Anything for the family.”

He raised one golden hand, grew a blade out of it and stabbed himself cleanly through the heart.