From Hell with Love

CHAPTER EIGHT The Only Good Traitor

The Armoury had come alive again. Blazing bright lights, people running back and forth, lab assistants crowded round every workstation. Everyone was talking at once, when they weren’t shouting, and from the look of it every lab assistant from every shift was back on duty. The Armourer and I appeared through the Merlin Glass, and everyone immediately stopped what they were doing to point a whole series of really nasty-looking weapons at us. I stood very still, while the Armourer beamed happily about him.

“Well done, very good, nice reaction times everyone, but we are not the enemy. We have met the enemy, and he is dead. Now, everyone back to work! I want full reports on all exterior and interior defences, and in particular why most of them didn’t bloody work.”

The weapons disappeared, and the lab assistants went back to shouting at each other and bullying their computers. Some were clearly exhausted from fighting, while others were still yawning from being dragged from their beds. All of them were giving everything they had to the problem of why so many of our defences had failed us in our hour of need. The Armourer moved quickly among them, peering over shoulders and asking pertinent questions, like why had the robot machine guns and the automatic energy weapons been the only systems to kick in? I’d been wondering that myself. There should have been force shields, shaped curses, floating invisible incendiaries, nerve gas clusters and teleport mines . . . The Armourer kept reeling them off, and the answer was always the same. Someone had shut them all down, in advance, inside the Hall. Someone inside the family. No one else had the codes, or access to the security computers. The automatic weaponry had remained on line only because they were controlled by the Armourer’s personal computer.

I found an empty chair, by stealing it from someone else when they weren’t looking, and sank into it. It felt really good to be off my feet. I was aching in all my muscles and some of my bones. My clothes were soaked with sweat, like I’d run a marathon. The armour provides us with strength and speed, but it’s still all down to the man inside. Someone thrust a cup of hot tea into my hands, and was gone before I could ask for a splash of whisky in it. I burned my mouth on the hot liquid, and blew on it for a while. After all I’d seen and been through, I felt like I could sit there forever.

The Armourer didn’t look tired. He raged back and forth, striding up and down the length of the Armoury, driving on his assistants, constantly coming up with different approaches and new leads of inquiry. He hurried from post to post, encouraging and remonstrating, his voice flat and harsh, his eyes cold. Just the thought of a traitor in the family had filled him with a terrible fury. He finally came back to stand before me, scowling furiously.

“A traitor! Inside the family, working against us, leaving us wide open to our enemies! We’ve had rogues gone bad in the past, but never anything like this. Even Zero Tolerance didn’t want to put the family at risk! Once, I would have sworn something like this was impossible, but now, after the Matriarch’s death, and Molly’s, I don’t know what to think. It’s like everything’s been turned upside down. You can’t trust anyone or anything.”

He found another chair and sat down beside me. His back was still straight, but his hands moved uncertainly, unable to settle, and his eyes looked strangely lost.

“This is serious, Eddie. Deadly serious. We could have lost, out there. We could have fallen, and the family could have been wiped out.”

“But we didn’t, and we weren’t,” I said. “Because we’re Droods.”

We sat and watched a steady stream of bodies being carried through the Armoury on stretchers, on their way to the attached hospital wards. Dead Accelerated Men on their way for autopsy and examination. Most of the bodies were in pretty bad shape, withered, desiccated, almost mummified. Others had been struck down and torn apart by golden armour, and those bodies left bloody trails behind them. Some were in pieces, roughly assembled on stretchers; others were just bits and bobs, collected in black plastic garbage bags. A part of me found that entirely suitable. There was no room left in me for mercy, or compassion. If we could have brought the dead men back to life I would have spent all day killing them again, and gloried in it. I shook my head slowly. That wasn’t me. That was the tiredness talking. The stretcher bearers just kept passing before us, more and more of them.

“How many died?” I asked the Armourer. “Do we know yet?”

Somebody immediately thrust a file into the Armourer’s hand, and he leafed through it slowly. “Two thousand, seven hundred and eighteen dead Accelerated Men. We’re having to open up the extra-dimensional arms of the hospital ward, just to hold them all. I’ve ordered every single one of them brought down here, under full security. Who knows what kind of chemical or bacterial agents they might have buried inside them, for one last assault on the unwary? We’ll have no Trojan horses here. I want those bodies rendered down to their smallest parts, and made to give up every secret they have. We need an answer to the Accelerated Men, before they come again.”

I looked up sharply from ˚ my tea. “You think there’ll be another attack? Another invasion?”

“Why do you think I’ve been yelling at everyone to get all the defences back on line? Until they are, we’re vulnerable. The whole family is vulnerable.”

“How many did we lose?” I said. “How many Droods died out there?”

“Two hundred and thirty-eight, so far. Over four hundred more critically injured, and as many again seriously. More figures are coming in all the time. They’re up in the main hospital wards. The living and the dead. I didn’t want our honourable fallen lying beside scum.”

“Accelerated Men,” I said. “I never thought to see their like again.”

“Given the way these new Accelerated Men acted, with almost insane levels of rage and ferocity, it would seem Doctor Delirium has been experimenting with the formula. Improving it . . . Oh yes, I recognised the black and gold uniforms . . .”

I told him what I’d found and what I’d learned, at Doctor Delirium’s last base, and he sat quietly for a while, considering. “Every answer leads to more questions. If Doctor Delirium and Tiger Tim killed off all the people they left behind, presumably as a trial run for the new augmented Drug, where did they find the thousands of new subjects they used to attack us? Doctor Delirium couldn’t have raised an army that size without our noticing. Unless the traitor has been interfering with our records . . . I hate this, Eddie. I really hate it. I look around, at all these familiar faces, and I feel like I don’t know them at all. Any one of them could be the traitor. In an ever-changing world, the only thing everyone could trust, and count on, was the family. And now even that’s been taken away from us.

“I have an answer, as to where this new army might have come from,” I said. “But you’re really not going to like it. What if Doctor Delirium and Tiger Tim have made an alliance with the Immortals?”

“You’re right,” said the Armourer. “It is an answer, and I really don’t like it. As if things weren’t bad enough. I thought you said you saw the Immortals fighting with Doctor Delirium, to get their hands on the Apocalypse Door in Los Angeles?”

“That was then,” I said. “They could have teamed up since, to handle something they couldn’t control on their own. Doctor Delirium provides the genius, the Immortals provide the warm bodies, and Tiger Tim acts as go-between. Maybe the Door was just . . . too scary?”

We were interrupted before we could follow that thought any further, by two young lab assistants bearing a limp form on a stretcher. The man in the black and gold uniform was still alive, and carefully strapped down. He looked about a hundred years old, but there was enough fight left in him to glare viciously in all directions. He cursed us all, impartially, in a dry cracked voice. The two lab assistants smiled cheerfully at the Armourer, and dropped the stretcher on the floor before us. The impact shut off the swearing, for a while.

“Maxwell and Victoria,” the Armourer said heavily. “It would have to be you. My two most successful and irritating students. All right, where did you find him, and why isn’t he dead like all the others?”

“We found him under a gryphon,” Maxwell said proudly. “It was sitting on him. Apparently it had already eaten its full of intruders, and was just keeping this one around for when it got hungry again.”

“Max got him out from under the gryphon,” said Victoria. “He was very brave.”

“Oh hush, Vicky.”

“You were! You never take enough credit, Max. You’re always talking yourself down, and I won’t have it. You should have seen him in battle . . .”

They were both young, little more than teenagers, and they looked on each other with wide, loving eyes. The Armourer sighed, and stood up.

“Get back to the gryphon. Explain. How did you . . .”

“Oh, it was really terribly easy,” said Maxwell. “We just bribed the gryphon with a good back rub and a few friendly words, and then Vicky distracted him with an awfully sweet dance, while I dragged the Accelerated Man out from under. He wasn’t much to look at, and he smelled really bad, from being under the gryphon, but I could tell he was still alive from the vile things he was saying, so . . .”

“So we knew you’d want to talk to him!” said Victoria. “You’re quite right, Max, he does smell. But then, gryphons do love to roll in dead things, and they’re positively spoilt for choice at the moment.”

“We did think about pushing him into a shower first, before presenting him to you,” said Maxwell. “But we weren’t actually sure how long he’d last . . .”

“So we just tied him down and brought him here!” said Victoria. “Do we win a prize?”

“You should get the prize, Vicky, it was all your idea . . .”

“Oh hush, Max, you’re talking yourself down again! You’re as entitled to a prize as I am!”

“Young love among the lab assistants,” said the Armourer. “The horror, the horror . . . All right the two of you, very well done. There will be gold stars and extra ticks on your next reports. Now go back out and look under some more gryphons. You never know your luck.”

Maxwell and Victoria departed quickly, holding hands. The Armourer glared after them. “I think it’s time we started putting that white powder in their tea again.”

“Given that they clearly only have eyes for each other, it’s a wonder they found anyone,” I said solemnly.

“Probably tripped over him,” sniffed the Armourer.

I levered myself up out of my chair, found a handy surface to put my cup on, and the Armourer and I glared down at the Accelerated Man on his stretcher.

“So,” I said. “Why aren’t you dead?”

“Let me up,” he said. “I’ve got cramps. You can’t keep me tied up like this. I’ve got rights.”

“No you bloody haven’t,” I said briskly. “We are not the law, we are not the government. We are Droods, and you are in deep shit. A lot of good people died this morning, at the hands of you and your kind, so if you like having your organs on the inside, this would be a really good time to start answering questions.”

Give the man his due. In his position, he had to be scared out of his wits, but with the Acceleration Drug already killing him by inches, he must have realised we were his best hope for keeping him going. So he just sniffed loudly, and addressed the air as though we weren’t there.

“All right, all right . . . I was one of the last men through the dimensional door. Last wave in, before the suicide bombers. And I just want to say right now, that no one told the rest of us about that particular addition to the plan. We are mercenary soldiers, not martyrs. Anyway, I got sideswiped by a Drood, had the wind knocked out of me, and hit the ground hard. Next thing I know, I’m under a bloody gryphon. Great big smelly beast. And of course, that was when the Drug ran its course, and the side effects kicked in. All the extra strength ran out of me, and I could feel myself aging. Felt my muscles shrivelling up, my heart slowing down, my lungs straining . . . really bad experience.”

“Of course,” said the Armourer, tapping his chin thoughtfully with one fingertip. “Trapped under the gryphon he couldn’t move, so he couldn’t use up the last of his energies. Basically, he’s just running on borrowed time now.”

“Am I going to die?” said the mercenary.

“Of course you’re going to die, you appalling creature,” said the Armourer. “And quite right too.”

“But,” I said. “The more helpful you are, the harder we’ll try to stave off the results of the Drug. Deal?”

“I hate Droods,” said the mercenary. “Always so bloody reasonable.”

And that was when the Sarjeant-at-Arms appeared. He stamped over to join us, still full of the fury of battle.

“Heard you had a prisoner! That him! Course it is, course it is. Look at the state of him. I’ve buried people that looked less dead than he does. Now, why wasn’t I informed about this? I demand to be a part of the interrogation!”

And he cracked his knuckles eagerly.

“You don’t get to demand anything, Cedric,” the Armourer said coldly. “This is not your job. What the hell are you even doing here? Your job is to protect the Hall, and the family. So get your people together and make sure no one slipped past us and sneaked into the Hall during the confusion. And while you’re at it, I want every acre of our grounds searched thoroughly, to make sure no one’s hiding anywhere.”

“You could help Max and Vicky look under the gryphons,” I said helpfully. “That’s where they found this one. Yes, I know; the gryphons are smelly, disgusting and generally revolting, but someone’s got to do it, and I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather recommend for the job.”

“My people are bringing all the interior defences back on line,” said the Armourer, not giving the Sarjeant a chance to get a word in. “But you need to check that they’re all functioning properly. And determine the state of the outer defences. When you’ve done that, have your people set up regular patrols in the grounds, just in case another dimensional door opens up. We can’t afford to be caught napping again. When you’ve done all that, then you can come back here, and I’ll find something else for you to do.”

“That’s telling him,” said a voice from the floor.

“Shut up, you,” I said.

The Sarjeant had been nodding reluctantly all through the Armourer’s tirade, but now he stopped and fixed him with a cold gaze.

“There is one other thing we need to discuss, Armourer. In case of another attack, and things not going quite so well. We need to discuss the extreme option: Alpha Red Alpha.”

“What?” I said. “What was that? And why have you suddenly gone all pale and thoughtful, Uncle Jack?”

“Alpha Red Alpha is our security strategy of last resort,” the Armourer said slowly. “For use only when all else has failed . . . We have a dimensional door of our own, buried deep under the Hall. Power it up, and the device can rotate the Hall and its immediate environs right out of our world and into another reality. The idea being that we could stay there until the danger was past. Unfortunately, this particular device has never been tested. We might survive the journey, and we might not. And we might be able to get back again, or we might not.” He looked steadily at the Sarjeant. “Put the thought right out of your mind. Things would have to get a bloody sight more serious than this before I would even consider activating Alpha Red Alpha.”

“Am I to take it that this is another of those things that no one thought fit to tell me about, back when I was running this family?” I said.

“You didn’t need to know,” said the Armourer. “No one does.” I had to smile. “You mean it might upset the family, if they learned they were living above such a thing?”

“People panic far too easily,” the Armourer said airily. “I’m almost certain it’s entirely safe, as long as no one goes too near it. Panicking . . . Try working down here every day, surrounded by enthusiastic lab assistants, with too much imagination and no moral compass. You’d wear out your adrenaline gland before the first tea break. Sarjeant. You are still here. Why? Get back out into the grounds! For all we know, the whole open assault could have been just a diversion, to distract us from something else! Move!”

“I want a full transcript of the interrogation,” said the Sarjeant, moving reluctantly away.

“Yes, well, it’s nice to want things,” said the Armourer, waving him away. “And don’t forget to check for tunnels!”

“I’m still down here, you know,” said a voice from the floor. “It’s bad enough I’m dying, but do I have to do it in a cold draft?”

I knelt down beside the mercenary and undid the leather straps, while the Armourer wandered off in search of something. The mercenary wasn’t any threat, just skin and bones and a face like a road map. I’d never seen a man look so old and not be laid out in a coffin. His skin had shrunk right back to the bone, his mouth was just a thin slit, but his eyes were still clear and knowing. It was hard to think he’d been a young and vigorous man, just a few hours before. I checked him over quickly for wounds, but he didn’t seem to have taken any serious damage. His black and gold uniform hung baggily around him, as though it had been meant for a much larger man. The mercenary just let me get on with it, grunting occasionally with pain when I moved him too roughly. I did my best not to care. He was a hired killer, and he would have killed all of us, if he could.

The Armourer came back lugging an oversized metal chair, with cables hanging off it. He let it slam down on the floor, grunting with the effort, and then leaned on it for a moment while he got his breath back. He straightened up slowly, massaging the small of his back with both hands.

“I am too old, too talented and too necessary to be doing heavy lifting,” he said flatly. “If I put my back out again, everyone’s going to suffer. All right, Eddie, help me get him into the chair.”

I looked the chair over. “Are we going to electrocute him?”

“I’d really rather not be electrocuted,” said the voice from the floor.

“Shut up, you,” said the Armourer. “Of course we’re not going to electrocute him, Eddie. Dead men tell no tales, except under very specific conditions. I got this from the hospital ward. It’s a diagnostic chair. Plug him into it, or possibly vice versa, it’s been a while since I did this . . . then we hook the chair up to my computer, and we can see everything that’s happening inside him on these display screens. If he even thinks about lying, alarms will go off all over the shop. The chair should also help stabilise his condition, keep him alive long enough for us to get something useful out of him. Provided I know what I’m doing. I’m almost sure I know what I’m doing.”

“I demand a second opinion,” said the voice from the floor.

We got him into the diagnostic chair easily enough. The dying Accelerated Man hardly had any strength left, but he did his best not to cooperate, for his pride’s sake. I tightened various straps around him, as much to hold him up as hold him in place, while the Armourer attached various sensors. One by one a series of display screens lit up above and around the chair, showing everything from heartbeat and electrolytes to brain activity. The mercenary sniffed loudly.

“Wonderful. Now I can watch myself dying in detail. Hold everything; what are you going to do with those tubes?”

“Nothing you’ll enjoy,” the Armourer said cheerfully. “I’m just going to plug them into you, here and there. I’d look away, if I was you.”

And he proceeded to do quite uncomfortable and intrusive things with the colour-coded tubes, while I looked away and the mercenary protested bitterly. I assumed this was all part of the softening-up process, before we started the interrogation. I’d never been involved with an interrogation before. I have beaten the odd piece of information out of the occasional scumbag in my time, when lives were at stake and there just wasn’t time to be civilised . . . but that had always been in the heat of the moment. I’d never done anything as cold-blooded and premeditated as this promised to be.

“Normally I’d give the patient a local anaesthetic,” said the Armourer, working away briskly. “But one, I don’t have the time. Two, other people need it more than you. And three, you came here to kill my family, so I don’t care.”

“There’s a fine line between interrogation and torture, Uncle Jack,” I said.

“Not if you do it right,” said the Armourer. “Do you really give a damn, Eddie?”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, it matters. We don’t torture, because that’s what they do. We’re supposed to be better than them. We have to be, or they’ve already won.”

“Too late,” said the Armourer. “I’ve started, so I’ll finish. And stop whining, you. Be a big brave mercenary. It wasn’t that bad.”

“Yes, it was! I’m dying, remember?”

“Not anymore,” said the Armourer. “Those tubes I’ve just introduced to various parts of your anatomy are now feeding you a whole series of things that are good for you, and working hard to neutralise the last traces of the Acceleration Drug in your system. Have you stable before you know it.”

“For how long?” said the mercenary.

“For as long as I choose to keep you alive. So, feeling chatty, are you? Splendid. Tell me things I need to know.”

“My name is Dom Langford,” said the ancient man in the chair, with what dignity he had left. “The Drug isn’t in my head anymore. I can think clearly. I’m me again.”

“The chair can only do so much,” said the Armourer. “You’re still dying. The human body was never meant to handle such superhuman stresses. So earn yourself some good karma in the time you’ve got left, by telling us what we need to know.”

“You’ve got a really lousy bedside manner,” said Dom.

“There isn’t time for politeness and false hopes,” said the Armourer. “Talk.”

“I don’t remember much of what I did, when the Drug had me,”

Dom said slowly. “Just . . . horrible, nightmare images. I know I did . . . unforgivable things, and would have done worse if I’d got inside the Hall. But I swear, that wasn’t me. That was the Drug.”

“You killed a lot of good people out there,” I said. A part of me still wanted to be harsh with him, but he looked so small now, so pathetic.

Dom tried to smile. “I’m a mercenary, soldier for hire. Killing’s what I do. But before this, I was always a professional. The Drug changed all that. We were lied to, all of us. No one said the Drug would turn us into monsters. I don’t owe those bastards loyalty anymore. Not after what they did. Ask me anything.”

“Where did Doctor Delirium get so many people to dose with the Acceleration Drug?” said the Armourer. He didn’t sound so harsh, anymore. I think he had been ready to coerce the dying man, if he had to, but Dom Langford was so clearly bitter and betrayed, and so clearly at death’s door, that the Armourer just didn’t have the heart. He fussed over the chair’s controls, trying to make the mercenary as comfortable as possible, for what time he had left. I watched the information on the display screens steady some more, as the tubes delivered painkillers and sedatives. The mercenary seemed to settle a little more easily in the chair.

“Doctor Delirium’s been raising a new mercenary army for years,” said Dom. “Had us set up in several different bases dotted around the world, just waiting, so we’d be ready for the big score when it came. Some of us had been waiting so long we’d begun to wonder if the call would ever come. Or if he just liked having us around, as a status symbol. You’re no one in the mad scientist game, if you haven’t got your own private army. We’d taken his money, so we just lounged around, treated it like a vacation . . . But when the call finally came, it wasn’t like anything we’d expected. We’d be fighting Droods, they said, so we’d need a little extra. Something to make us as good as Droods, maybe even better. That was the first time we heard about the Acceleration Drug. The Doctor made it sound wonderful. We were ˚ all going to be superhuman, and live lifetimes. Should have known it was too good to be true.”

“Who was giving the orders?” I said. “Was it just Doctor Delirium?”

“No. He had his partner with him, by then. A rogue Drood, called Tiger Tim. So full of himself you wouldn’t believe it. But it was the Doctor who betrayed us. None of us ever trusted Tiger Tim; we’d all heard the stories. But the Doctor had always done right by us, till then—good pay, and the best of everything. That all changed . . . He changed, after he acquired that bloody Door.”

“The Apocalypse Door,” I said.

“Yeah. He brought it back from Los Angeles, and within a few hours he was a different man. He abandoned his old base in the rain forest without warning, and suddenly our base was the new centre of operations. And don’t ask me where we were; I haven’t a clue. We were brought in on planes with no windows, and put up in underground barracks. Could have been anywhere; we were never allowed outside. Most of us were glad when the Doctor arrived; extra security meant something to do, at last. But right from the beginning, it felt wrong . . . The Doctor locked himself away in his private office, and wouldn’t talk to anyone. Just sat there, with the Apocalypse Door, talking to it, and listening to what he thought it said to him.”

I looked at the Armourer. “Could the Doctor really be talking to it?”

“We don’t know enough about the Door,” said the Armourer, frowning. “Given what’s supposed to be on the other side of it . . . Who knows?”

“William was supposed to be digging up some more information on the Door,” I said.

“Haven’t heard anything from him . . . Arthur! Front and centre!”

A long gangling type in a messy lab coat nowhere near big enough for him lurched forward out of the crowd, and swayed to a halt in front of the Armourer. He had a broad open face, wide owlish eyes, and a general air of bruised innocence that had no place in the Armoury.

“What have I done now?” he said, in a tone of voice that suggested he’d said that many times before.

“For once, nothing obvious. Arthur, contact the Librarian, in the Old Library, and ask him what he’s turned up about the Apocalypse Door.”

“I already tried, sir, just before the incursion. There was no reply. But that’s not unusual, for the Librarian. Do you want me to try again?”

“Rafe’s probably convinced William to take some rest at last,” I said. “I’ll pop down and have a word with him later.”

The Armourer dismissed Arthur, and we turned back to Dom Langford. He started talking immediately, as though he needed to talk to someone.

“I saw the Apocalypse Door, once. I’d been sent to the Doctor’s private office, with an urgent message. He wasn’t answering his phones again. When I got to the office the door was open, but he wasn’t there. I thought I’d better wait. They wanted an answer to the message. So I went in, and waited. The Apocalypse Door was there, standing upright on its own, right next to the desk. I walked around it; it looked like just an ordinary, everyday wooden door. But . . . the office was hot. Unbearably, unnaturally hot. I could hardly breathe. And it felt like the Door knew I was there. That it was looking at me, watching me with bad intent. I didn’t want to look at it, but I didn’t dare turn my back on it. I started shaking. I was in a cold sweat all over, despite the heat. I edged closer to the Door, and listened. Put my ear right next to the wood. I couldn’t hear anything, but suddenly I was terrified. There was something there in the office with me, some huge awful presence . . .

“I panicked. Turned and ran out of the office, dropping the message on the floor. I’d never panicked on a battlefield, never turned and run in any firefight; but I ran then. I never went back. No one ever said anything. But the Doctor was in there with that Door all the time! No wonder he changed. Being around that Door would change anyone.”

“What about the rogue Drood, Tiger Tim?” I said. “Did you ever see him with the Door?”

“Tiger Tim gave everyone their orders, on the Doctor’s behalf,” said Dom. “Because the Doctor couldn’t be bothered with everyday matters anymore. Tiger Tim more or less took over operations, and we all went along, because he seemed to know what he was doing.”

“And he put together the army that attacked us today?” said the Armourer.

“Took every man the Doctor had, and more,” said Dom. “Word had got out on the circuit, in all the recruiting markets: good pay, and I mean really good pay, and a chance to try out a new drug that would make you superhuman. New men kept turning up all the time. And a lot of them didn’t answer to Doctor Delirium or Tiger Tim. They represented someone else. Someone with really big pockets, to foot the bill for so many mercenaries.

“They didn’t tell us we’d be attacking Drood Hall until the very last moment. And by then we’d taken the Drug, and we didn’t care anymore. We’d fight anyone, kill anyone, do anything . . .

“The things I did, the things we all did . . . That wasn’t us! We were soldiers, professionals, not butchers! Not monsters . . . The Drug turned us into monsters. I don’t remember most of what I did; just enough to make me glad I can’t remember the rest. I’m not like that. I’m not. They poisoned our souls . . .”

His head slammed back against the chair suddenly, and his whole body convulsed, straining against the straps. The display screens were going wild. Dom Langford aged horribly, years gone by in seconds, collapsing in on himself before our eyes, looking desperately at us all the time for help we couldn’t give. The last of his strength had run out. The Armourer rushed back and forth, injecting drugs into the tubes, working the controls of the diagnostic chair, doing everything he could think of to try and save the man who’d been his enemy only minutes before. But there was nothing he could do. Dom Langford died with the face of a man hundreds of years old, his body little more than a hollow shell. He looked at me pleadingly, right up to the moment when the light went out of his eyes. He thought I could save him, because I was a Drood, and Droods can do anything.

I held his hand, at the end, but I don’t know if he could feel it. “We should have taken him to the hospital wards,” the Armourer said finally. “He might have lasted longer there . . .”

“They didn’t have the room, and we didn’t have the time,” I said. “We needed his information. And we didn’t kill him; they did, when they introduced him to the Acceleration Drug. So, are you going to make a scarecrow out of him, like the others?”

“Of course,” said the Armourer. “Waste not, want not.”

But I could tell his heart wasn’t in it. The Armourer gestured for some of his people to take away the chair, with the withered body hanging loosely in the straps.

“I need to ask you something,” I said. “How did the Accelerated Men get their hands on strange matter guns? You told me you only ever made the one, for Uncle James, and you had that destroyed.”

“There was only ever one,” insisted the Armourer. “And I gave it to one of my lab assistants to destroy. Very capable young man. Raphael. Went on to be Librarian, you know. Before William came back, and took over.”

I had a sudden terrible suspicion.

I called up the Merlin Glass, made it form a doorway into the Old Library, and hurled myself through it. I looked around, and there was Rafe, packing ancient and important-looking books into a travelling bag. As though he was preparing to leave, in a hurry. He froze where he was when I appeared through the Glass, and his eyes shot to one side. I followed his gaze, and there was William, ly ing unconscious on the floor in a pool of his own blood. Someone had cracked his head open, from behind. I looked back at Rafe. He hadn’t moved. He watched me silently as I went over to kneel beside William. The old man was still breathing, though his pulse was faint and thready. I straightened up and looked at Rafe, who flinched back despite himself.

“What have you done, Rafe?” I said.

He didn’t move a muscle, studying me carefully. “He shouldn’t have tried to stop me leaving.”

“He was your colleague. He was your friend. He trusted you!”

“He trusted Rafe. And I’m not Rafe. He never mattered to me. He’s not one of us.”

“One of you,” I said, sick to my stomach. “An Immortal.”

“Exactly. If you’re wise, you won’t try to stop me leaving. My work here is done.”

“Over my dead body; traitor.”

“My plan exactly,” said Rafe.

There was a gun in his hand. A large bulky pistol of a kind that sent a chill through me.

“Yes,” said Rafe. “The gun that fires strange matter bullets. This is the actual original, that the Armourer made for the Grey Fox. The one he trusted me to destroy. Of course, I couldn’t do that. Far too useful. And I have a sentimental attachment, to anything that can kill Droods. I got this to my people, and they used it as a template, to make more. Though it took our scientists years to work out its secrets. The Armourer does good work. He really does have a first-class mind, for someone who isn’t an Immortal. Step aside, Eddie. You don’t have to die here. Just disappear back through your useful little toy, and you can come back again for poor William when I’m gone. And you’ll never see me again.”

“I’ve faced a far better man than you, with that gun,” I said. “And I’m still here.”

“Oh, Eddie,” said Rafe. “You never met a man like me. I’m an Immortal.”

“And I’m a Drood. Anything, for the family. Remember?”

I was ready to jump him. I knew the odds weren’t good, knew that even if I could get my armour up in time, the strange matter bullets would punch right through it, but I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t let Rafe get away with it. I just couldn’t. I was bracing myself for the jump when Ethel suddenly materialised in the Old Library. A fierce red glare filled the air—a heavy overwhelming presence, like a never-ending clap of thunder. Rafe cowered away from it, and then cried out and threw his gun away, steam rising from his hand where the gun had burned it. The red glare concentrated around the gun, and it faded away to nothing.

How dare you! said Ethel, her voice so large it roared inside my head. It must have been worse for Rafe; he clapped both hands to his ears, as though he could keep it out. You stole my substance from me, my very existence in this world! You took it by force!

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” said Rafe.

Sorry isn’t enough! Give back your torc. You are not worthy of it. There was a pause, and then Ethel spoke again, in her usual tone of voice. Eddie, this is rather odd. I can’t take his torc, because he doesn’t have one. That thing around his neck is a fake.

“He’s not a real Drood,” I said. “He just looks like one.”

Rafe turned to run, and immediately I was upon him. I clubbed him to the ground with a single blow, and he hit the floor hard. I kicked him in the ribs, and all the breath went out of him. I kicked him again, just because it felt so good. Rafe cried out, and curled around his pain. I reached down, grabbed his shirt front, and pulled him up so I could stick my face right into his.

“Where’s Rafe? What happened to the real Rafe?”

“You’ll never know,” said Rafe. His voice was sharp and defiant, but he couldn’t meet my gaze.

“Search the Hall, Ethel,” I said. “See if you can find any more of these bastards with the false torcs. If you do, tell the Sarjeant; let him deal with them. Go.”

The harsh red glare shut off in a second, and the usual calm golden glow of the Old Library returned. I let go of Rafe, and he slumped back onto the floor.

“You’re too late,” he said. “They’re all gone.”

“Well,” I said. “You would say that, wouldn’t you?”

Rafe suddenly stopped being all beaten and broken, and lunged forward across the Library floor. He knelt over William’s unconscious form, pulled the head back and pressed a knife against the Librarian’s throat. I’d started after him, but stopped abruptly as I saw a thin trail of blood trickle down William’s throat, as the knife’s edge just parted the skin.

“Get out of here, Eddie,” said Rafe, smiling again. “And tell everyone else to stay out, until I’m safely gone. Or you’ll have no Librarians left at all.”

“I can’t let you go, Rafe,” I said steadily. “Or whoever you really are. You’re a clear and present danger to the whole family.”

“I’ll kill him!”

“He’d understand. Anything, for the family.”

We looked at each other, both of us ready to do what we had to; and then Rafe looked round sharply. He saw something, and shrank back horrified, the knife falling away from William’s throat. Rafe’s face was horribly pale, his eyes focused on something so terrible, something so bad he had no thought for anything else. He scrambled backwards away from William, making low whimpering noises.

I looked where Rafe was looking, and couldn’t see a damned thing. Just the books on the shelves, and the steady golden glow of Library light. Rafe’s back slammed up against a stack, and he cried out miserably when he realised he couldn’t retreat any farther. His wide eyes were locked on something, and he was making a high whining noise now. I moved forward, to put myself between Rafe and William, but Rafe no longer cared about either of us. He threw his knife away, and made pitiful, childish go-away motions with his hands. I raised my Sight and looked hard, but I still couldn’t See anything.

“Can’t you see?” said Rafe, in a harsh, strained voice. “Can’t you see

that? It’s coming for me! Do something! Don’t let it get me!” I could feel all the hackles rising on the back of my neck, in response to the stark terror in Rafe’s voice. He was definitely seeing something, and given what the sight of it was doing to him, I was glad I couldn’t see what he was seeing. I moved cautiously forward, grabbed up the knife from the floor, and Rafe scrabbled quickly behind me, putting me between him and whatever he saw coming for him. William had been convinced there was Something living down here in the Old Library with him; Something that watched him, or watched over him. Rafe clutched at me like a frightened, desperate child.

“Don’t let it get me,” he said, in a small broken voice. “Please. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

“Come with me,” I said. “I’ll get you out of here. But you give me any trouble, and I’ll just walk away and leave you here.”

“Yes. Anything. Please; I can’t stand it . . .”

I stood up straight, and addressed the space before us. “I am Edwin Drood. I speak for the family. Who’s there?” There was no response. The light didn’t flicker, and the shadows were just shadows. I still couldn’t See anything. Rafe stopped whimpering suddenly, the sound cut off in his throat. I looked back, and saw him turn his head slowly, as though watching Something move across the Library and then disappear behind the stacks. He collapsed, shuddering with relief.

“What was it?” I said. “What did you see?”

Rafe shook his head. He didn’t want to say, as though just naming or describing it might be enough to summon it back. Finally, he whispered one word.

“White . . .”

I left him sitting huddled up against a stack, clutching his knees to his chest, looking around with wide, shocked eyes. I used the Merlin Glass to summon medical help for William. A doctor in a blood-smeared white coat came through, and examined William quickly but thoroughly. He ran gentle fingers over William’s broken head, while shooting me an accusing glance.

“I do have other patients to attend to, you know. Other people who need my help. This is nothing serious. Bad, but fixable. Upstairs, we’re so packed we’re running triage, sorting out the save-able from the hopeless. The Librarian can wait.”

“No he can’t,” I said flatly. “You give William top priority. He knows things no one else in the family knows. Take him up to the hospital wards through the Glass, and make sure he gets to the front of the queue. Don’t make me come looking for you.”

The doctor sighed. “Go ahead, bully me! That’s what I’m here for.” He called through the open Merlin Glass for stretcher bearers, and then peered across at Rafe, still shuddering and staring. “Want me to take a look at that one too? Though I’m pretty sure I can diagnose shock from here.”

“He stays with me,” I said. I wasn’t ready to say we had an Immortal in the family. Not just yet.

They took William away, still unconscious, and I took Rafe back to the Armoury. He clung to me like a child. I told the Armourer everything that had happened, and he looked at Rafe with cold, angry eyes. He pulled Rafe away from me and thrust him into the diagnostic chair, tightening the restraining straps around him with almost brutal efficiency. He then attached all the sensors, checked the display screens, and put the tubes in place. Rafe jumped and flinched a few times, but didn’t say anything. Away from the Old Library, he was quickly regaining his old composure and self-control. He looked at the Armourer and me with a cold and thoughtful gaze. The Armourer finished his work, stepped back to look at the display screens, and then scowled fiercely.

“Wait a minute, that can’t be right . . .” He checked all the connections again, fiddled with a few things, and even gave his computer a warning slap; but when he checked the display screens again he still didn’t like what he saw. “These readings . . . they’re just wrong. They’re barely human. Half of what I’m looking at makes no sense, and the other half . . . Whatever the Immortals are, Eddie, they’re a long way from anything we’d call human.”

“Of course,” said Rafe, sitting calmly and at ease in the diagnostic chair, as though he’d chosen to sit there. “We’re better than human. We don’t have your . . . limitations.”

He had all of his poise and arrogance back, the same superior attitude he’d shown me with his knife at William’s throat. He surreptitiously tested the restraining straps, and smiled slowly.

“A diagnostic chair,” he said easily. “One of the few things that might actually hold me. You can’t tie down an Immortal with ropes and chains. But, it’ll take me a while to break free from this, so off you go, Eddie; ask me your questions. I might answer them. I might even tell you the truth.”

“You even look like you’re trying to escape,” said the Armourer, “and I will have the chair do really quite appalling things to your central nervous system.”

“So you’re the Drood torturer, now?” said Rafe. I knew that wasn’t really his name, but it was hard to think of him as anyone else, even when the look on his face had nothing to do with the young Librarian I’d thought I’d known. He sneered at the Armourer. “I don’t think so. You Droods don’t have it in you to be really ruthless. Not like us.”

The Armourer punched Rafe in the face. A sudden, vicious blow, with all of the Armourer’s strength behind it. I heard Rafe’s nose break, and saw blood fly on the air as the force of the blow whipped

Rafe’s head around. The Armourer studied Rafe calmly. He wasn’t even breathing hard. Rafe sat stunned in the chair, blood coursing down his face. I didn’t know which of us was more startled by what had just happened: Rafe or me. I’d never seen my Uncle Jack do anything like that before. Certainly not with a defenceless prisoner. Rafe looked at me.

“Are you going to just stand there, and let him do that?”

“Sure,” I said. “I might even join in. I like William.”

“We all like William,” said the Armourer.

And he hit Rafe again, right in the eye. It was a hard, solid blow, and the sound was loud and unpleasant. People around us hesitated, decided quickly it was none of their business, and got on with their work. Rafe strained briefly against his bonds, breathing hard.

“I can keep this up all day,” said the Armourer. “You can’t. Traitor.”

“I am not a traitor,” Rafe said thickly. He spat out a mouthful of blood. “I’m not a Drood. I never was. I’m an Immortal. You can’t treat me this way.”

“People forget I used to be a field agent,” the Armourer said easily. “And those who do know, prefer to forget the kind of things field agents had to do, in that coldest of wars. Hard men, for hard times. We were men, in those days, making hard necessary decisions, to do hard necessary things, to keep the world safe. I haven’t been that man for some time, but I still remember how to get things done.”

“What happened to the original Rafe?” I asked the man in the chair.

He spat out some more blood. “Removed and replaced, long ago.”

“How long ago?”

He smiled. “Before you came back. You never met the real Rafe.”

“Is he dead?”

“Of course,” said the Immortal, smiling easily. “We detest loose ends. Never leave anything behind that might come back to haunt you.”

He shook his head sharply, back and forth, back and forth, and then the Armourer and I fell back a step as flesh rippled all across Rafe’s face. The cheekbones rose and fell, the chin lengthened and the nose narrowed, and just like that, a whole new face stared back at us. Completely different features, with an unbroken nose and an unsmashed mouth, fierce green eyes that shone with a cold intelligence. A whole new person was sitting in the diagnostic chair, staring at us with unbridled arrogance.

It was the face of a teenager, with ancient eyes.

“All of us can do this,” said the young man who used to be Rafe. Eerily, he was still using Rafe’s familiar voice. “All of us Immortals. See, Armourer: no broken nose, no blood. You don’t scare me, because you can’t hurt me.”

“Don’t put money on it,” said the Armourer. “I’ve spent twenty years in this place, learning how to damage people in new and inventive ways. About time I got my hands dirty again.”

Probably only someone who knew the Armourer as well as I did would have been disturbed as I was. Uncle Jack had played up to the mercenary, Dom Langford, to put him in the right frame of mind. But the Armourer wasn’t playing a role anymore. He was deadly serious. And I . . . didn’t know what to think. The thing in the chair was seriously freaking me out. It was one thing for the display screens to imply he wasn’t human, and quite another to see it demonstrated right in front of you.

“Talk,” I said. “Tell us everything you know.”

“Or?” said Rafe.

“Or I’ll take you back down to the Old Library,” I said. “Lock you in, and leave you alone with whatever it is that doesn’t like you.”

The Armourer looked at me. “William was right? There really is Something living down there?”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “Big time. We’re going to have to do something about that, when we’ve got a spare minute. Though when I say we, I mean someone a damned sight braver than I am.”

The teenager squirmed unhappily in the chair, the tubes clattering quietly around him. He was breathing hard, and he didn’t look nearly as certain as he had. The Armourer glanced at the display screens.

“He’s not faking it. If I’m reading the screens right, he’s seriously traumatised . . . What the hell did you see down there, Eddie?”

“Ask me later,” I said. I leaned in close, to glare right into Rafe’s face. “What’s your name? Your real name?”

He smirked. “Call me Legion, for we are many.”

“You want another slap?” said the Armourer. “This is taking too long, Eddie.” He held up a hypodermic needle big enough to frighten a horse, and shot a thin stream of clear fluid out the tip. “I have truth right here, in liquid form. I don’t care what the screens say, he’s close enough to human for this to work. Slide the needle past his eyeball and into the forebrain, and he’ll tell us things he doesn’t even know he knows. Of course, a certain amount of brain damage is inevitable. So, Rafe, tell us what we need to know. And the first time you don’t answer, or the screens tell me you’re lying, in goes the needle. I don’t care how many doses I have to deliver. You can’t have too much truth, can you?”

“All right, all right!” Rafe took a moment to compose himself, and then fixed me with his cold arrogant gaze. “It doesn’t matter what I tell you. It won’t help. We’re always ten steps ahead of you. I’ve been plundering the Old Library of useful items ever since you rediscovered it. I was put in here, years ago, to work as an assistant in the Armoury. To get a good look at new weapons before they were put into the field, so we’d be ready for them. Pure luck put me in charge of the Library—all of the Droods’ secret knowledge, under my control! And then, the Old Library, with all its forgotten secrets and treasures . . .”

“How long did you work for me?” said ˚ the Armourer. “Did I ever know the real Rafe?”

“Oh, I think I’ll let you work that out for yourself. The Old Library . . . I’ve been systematically removing anything that even mentioned the Immortals, their history and practices, along with anything else we didn’t want you to know about. When I’d finished with that, I started removing any books we didn’t have: unique editions, original manuscripts and folios, that sort of thing. It wasn’t difficult to keep William from noticing; he’s always been easily distractible. Any time he did spot a missing volume, I just blamed Zero Tolerance fanatics. I did slip a few in Truman’s direction, for Manifest Destiny, so I could point the finger if necessary, but never anything important. We were quite happy for him to keep you busy, but we never trusted him. He could have been dangerous, if only his viewpoint hadn’t been so terribly limited. I also removed certain Books of Power, that were weapons in their own right. You can never have too many weapons, and besides, you wouldn’t have appreciated them.”

“Having established that you’re a thief as well as a traitor,” I said, “let’s get to the important stuff. Have the Immortals joined forces with Doctor Delirium and Tiger Tim, to exploit the Apocalypse Door?”

Rafe hesitated. The Armourer leaned in, and showed him the horse needle.

“Of course we’re working together! We’re big, big enough to take in anybody, to get what we want. We would have taken the Door for ourselves, in Los Angeles, if you hadn’t interfered. But we always look forward, never back. So we made a deal, with Doctor Delirium and the rogue Drood, offering them our resources in return for access to the Door.”

“What do you want with the Apocalypse Door?” I said. “Are you really going to risk the Doctor opening it?”

“It’s more complicated than that,” said Rafe. “You have to understand; there were only ever twenty-three original Immortals. The man who first made contact with the Heart, and his immediate family and friends. Though there have of course been many long-lived offspring, down the years. Immortals can’t breed with each other, so children can only ever be half-breeds. You’d recognise the names of some of them. Important people, movers and shakers. We can be anybody we want to be. We’ve been a lot of famous people, down the centuries. Kings and kingmakers, philosophers and generals, heroes and villains, great artists and celebrities. Sometimes for power and glory, sometimes to protect ourselves, but mostly just for the fun of it. We do so hate to be bored. The Immortals are everywhere, ensuring that the world goes the way we want it to go. We’re on both sides of every argument, every conflict, every war. Sometimes for profit, mostly just to watch you dance to our tune.

“Of the twenty-three original Immortals, only nine remain. We can die. We were made Immortal, not invulnerable. But we are a large family, larger by far than you Droods. Thousands of offspring to serve the Elders, who serve the Leader, the man originally touched by the Heart. Oh yes; he’s still with us. And even more serve us throughout the world, knowingly and unknowingly. We own the world. We own you. We’re your worst nightmare; an organised extended family of Anti-Droods. The real secret rulers of Humanity. You Droods only thought you ran the world. We just let you handle all the dull, boring bits. You worked for us, and never knew it.”

“All right,” I said steadily. “What’s changed? Why are you ready to reveal yourselves, over the Apocalypse Door?”

“I told you, it’s complicated,” Rafe said sullenly. “The Elders now believe that immortality isn’t necessarily all it’s cracked up to be. Are they, in fact, missing out on something? As in, the greater experiences and possibilities of an afterlife? Don’t look at me like that. Don’t be so limited in your thinking. They’ve lived for centuries. They’ve exhausted all the pleasures of this world, and now they lust after new adventures in the next world. Heaven. Paradise.

Why settle for anything less? But, they’re afraid of Hell. After all the things they’ve done. They believe the Apocalypse Door can be . . . turned. Reversed. Made over, into a Paradise Door. So they can open it and go straight through into Heaven. After Doctor Delirium and Tiger Tim have served their purposes, we’ll take the Door away from them, turn it around, and then all the Elders will go through into Paradise, and explore all the pleasures that may be found there.”

He smiled at the Armourer, in a silly sort of way. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. You slipped me a dose of your truth drug, didn’t you?”

“Right into the main feed tube,” said the Armourer. “You were so busy boasting you never even noticed.”

“Bastard.”

“Keep talking,” I said. “What happens to the Immortals, after the Elders pass on?”

“Well, to start with, everyone else moves up one place. Promotions all round! The eldest remaining offspring will take control, and the Immortals go on. Forever and ever and ever. We may not be technically immortal, like the Leader and the Elders, but we still live many lifetimes. Some of us are quite keen for the Elders to go through the Door, so we can take over and run things the way we think they ought to be run. It’s our time now, and we’ll make the world jump . . .”

“Don’t you want to go to Paradise?” I said.

Rafe sniffed loudly. “The Elders might believe in the Door; the rest of us have more sense. They’re old and tired, they’ve lost their appetite for life. We want to make the world dance to our tune, and eat it all up with spoons. Oh, the plans we have . . . You’re really not going to like them.”

He giggled happily.

The Armourer and I moved away from the Immortal in his chair, so we could talk quietly together. As a Drood, you learn to believe ten impossible things before breakfast, and have a plan ready to deal with them by lunchtime. But this . . . was a bit much.

“Is this even possible?” I said to the Armourer.

“Storming Heaven, and forcing your way in?” said the Armourer.

“I doubt it. Theologically flawed, at best. But who knows what living for thousands of years has done to these people’s minds? The point is, if they believe it, they could open the Apocalypse Door and let loose all the hordes of Hell, while thinking they were doing something else entirely.”

“I can still hear you, you know,” said Rafe. “The Elders dictate policy, and leave us poor bastards to carry it out. The Door is a supremely powerful artefact, and that’s all that really matters. We will master it, as we have mastered everything else that has come into our possession. We will uncover its true nature and capabilities, and use it to make us even more powerful. Because that’s what we do. If the Elders disappear through it—fine. After they’ve gone, we’ll use the Door to blackmail everyone. The governments of the world will do anything, give us anything, as long as we promise not to open the Door.”

“I thought you already ran the world,” I said.

“Indirectly,” said Rafe. “The Elders always believed in keeping to the shadows, lest the world discover just how few of them there were. They ruled by pulling strings; a lot of us youngsters yearn to be more hands on. And get our hands dirty.”

He giggled again, while I looked at the Armourer.

“How much more do you think we can get out of him?”

“Don’t look at me,” said the Armourer. “I haven’t used this truth stuff since nineteen sixty-two. I’m surprised it still works. I was just bluffing, to put him in the right frame of mind. It’ll take me a couple of days to whip up another batch. And I’ve no idea what repeated use might do to him. He could tell us everything he knows, from his childhood on, or his brains could start leaking out his ears. Not that I care, after everything he’s done. Arrogant little shit. But, I’d ask your questions now, if I were you. While he’s still feeling talkative.”

I turned back to Rafe. “What other traitors are there, inside the Droods?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” said Rafe, grinning widely. “Lots and lots . . . Probably. Not just Immortals, either. We’re not the only ones who understood the advantages of having a man on the inside . . .”

“That could be merely an opinion,” murmured the Armourer.

“Just because he believes it’s true, doesn’t mean it is. I can’t believed we’re riddled with traitors and informers. I’m sure we’d have noticed . . .”

“How many Immortals are there, posing as Droods!” I said to Rafe. “I want names!”

“I don’t know! None of us know! We’re all only ever told what we need to know, just like your field agents.” He studied the Armourer, with something of his old cold arrogance back in his face. “Basic security measure. You can’t be made to tell what you really don’t know.”

“Did you kill my mother?” said the Armourer. “Are you responsible, for the murder of the Matriarch?”

“Were you responsible for the death of my Molly?” I said. “Or Sebastian, back during the Hungry Gods War?”

He tried to shrug, inside the restraint of the straps. “Not me personally, but yes . . . that was all down to us. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know. Not my mission. I was just told to take advantage of the chaos, grab as much as possible, and then get the hell out of Dodge before my cover was blown.”

“Molly,” I said. “Tell me about what happened, to Molly.”

“Ah yes,” said Rafe, smiling unpleasantly. “They did tell me about that. We wanted to see what Doctor Delirium’s addition to the Acceleration Drug would do to the Droods, on its own. So one of us dropped a little into the air-conditioning system. It’s amaz ing what people will do, what they’re capable of, if you give them just a little push in the right direction. Even goody little two-shoes Droods can be made to run wild, if you push the right chemical buttons in their brains. Shame it didn’t last longer . . . but then, you can’t have everything.”

“You killed my Molly,” I said, leaning in close. “You Immortals. I will kill you all, for that. I will cut you down and trample you underfoot, and make you extinct.”

Rafe looked at me, but though he met my gaze steadily enough, he had nothing to say. The Armourer took me by the elbow, and pulled me gently away so he could talk to the Immortal.

“How were you able to masquerade as Droods?” he said bluntly. “How could you pretend to have torcs, and armour?”

“Because we did, for a long time,” said Rafe. “The Heart remembered the Immortals, and indulged us. I think we amused it. We’ve been inside the Droods, working both for and against you, for centuries now. Of course, that all changed after the Heart was destroyed. A definite setback there, thanks to you, Eddie. Who knew one man could make so much trouble for everyone?”

“It’s a gift,” I said. “But flattery will get you nowhere. What did you do, after Ethel gave the family new torcs and new armour?”

“We learned to fake it,” Rafe said easily. “We’ve had centuries to learn how to hide in plain sight. Our scientists produced new torcs, good enough to hide us from Ethel, unless she looked really closely, and why should she? We made it easier on ourselves by only substituting Droods who would probably never be called on to armour up.”

“But we’re a family,” I said. “We’re all so close, living on top of each other in the Hall. How could you fool everybody? How could we not notice?”

“Because we’ve been doing this forever, and we’re really good at it. We can fool anyone, because deep down you want to be fooled. You don’t want to believe that the high and mighty Droods could ever be infiltrated, and played for fools. It’s not difficult to replace a Drood. Just catch one on their own, pose as someone they trust, then abduct and kill them, and replace them before anyone even knows they’re missing. And taking on a new face, even a whole new body, is never a problem. We’re flesh dancers. Shape-changers. Just one of the many arcane abilities we’ve acquired down the centuries. We can look like anyone . . . and we do! We can be your friend, your mother, your child . . . you’ll trust us right up to the point we stick the knife in, and twist it. Look around you. Anyone could be an Immortal. And if we live a little too long, and people start noticing, we can always fake our own death and come back as our own bastard offspring. Always lots of Drood bastards turning up . . .”

“Like Harry, and Roger,” said the Armourer, frowning.

“Exactly!” said Rafe. “Isn’t paranoia wonderful? A game for the whole family!”

“You’re everything we exist to fight,” said the Armourer. “Heartless, soulless, all the evil in the world in one place.”

“Evil is such a subjective term,” said Rafe, yawning widely. “So . . . situational. Immortals see the long game. Compared to us, all Humanity, and yes that includes you Droods as well, are just . . . mayflies. Come and gone in a moment. You’re just there to be used, because after all, you’re not around long enough to make any real difference in the world.” He stretched slowly, within the chair’s restraints. “I’ve had enough of this. My superior flesh has metabolised your stupid drug. I don’t need to justify myself, to the likes of you.”

I drew my Colt Repeater from its holster, and pointed it at Rafe’s face. “Tell me where the Headquarters of the Immortals is located. Tell me where to find you. Or I swear I’ll shoot you in the head. Right here, right now.”

Rafe looked at me, and saw I was completely serious. He tried to shrink back in the chair away from my gun, but the chair wouldn’t let him. I centred my aim on his left eye.

The Armourer cleared his throat. “I don’t think we should kill him, Eddie. Not when there’s still a lot more we could get out of him.”

“Nothing else matters,” I said. “Except this. Did you think I was joking, Rafe, when I said I’d kill you all? After what you did to my grandmother, and my Molly?”

Rafe looked past me at the Armourer. “You can’t just stand by, and let him shoot me in cold blood!”

“There’s nothing cold about my blood,” I said. “All I have to do is think about my Molly, and how she died, and my blood is blazing hot. Where do I find the Immortals? Where are Doctor Delirium and Tiger Tim and the Apocalypse Door?”

Rafe couldn’t meet my gaze, so he concentrated on the Armourer. “You’re a Drood. This isn’t what Droods do! Stop him!”

“Most Droods don’t do things like this,” said the Armourer. “That’s why we have field agents. He’s all yours, Eddie.”

“Is it any easier to die, having known centuries?” I said. “Or is it harder, knowing you could have had centuries more? You have so much more to lose than us mere mortals . . .”

“All right, all right!” said Rafe. There was sweat on his face, for the first time. “I’ll tell you, but only because it won’t do you any good. You can’t get in. No one can get in, who isn’t an Immortal.”

“Tell me anyway,” I said.

“We live in Castle Frankenstein,” said Rafe. “The real one, the original thirteenth-century fortress, set atop a great hill overlooking the River Rhine. The Baron Georg Frankenstein killed a dragon there, in fifteen thirty-one. These days, another castle stands in for the original; they’ve made it over into a hotel for tourists who love the legend, and the films. We took over the original facilities at the end of the nineteenth century, after the infamous Baron Viktor von Frankenstein went on the run. He was never one of us; we just liked the irony. The Baron hasn’t been seen since, but various of his offspring and his creations keep turning up, looking for knowledge, or revenge, or closure. The hotel takes them in, gives them the grand tour, and sends them on their way. No one ever bothers us. I told you. No one can get in, unless you’re one of us.”

I made him give us an exact location, and the Armourer checked his computer. He nodded briefly.

“Any more questions?” said Rafe.

“No,” I said. And I shot him in the left eye. His head slammed back against the chair. He kicked once, and then slumped in the restraints, and was still. I shot him twice more in the head, because I wanted to be sure. Above the chair, the display screens went out, one by one.

“For Rafe,” I said. “The real Rafe.” I looked at the Armourer. “See that this piece of shit is cremated. And then scatter the ashes in the grounds, just in case.”