Live and let Drood

CHAPTER ONE

You think you know where your life is going. You think you ve got everything sorted out. You ve defeated your enemies, saved the world, made peace with your family and gone on holiday with the woman you love. And then you discover what you should have known all along: that it takes only one bad day to turn your life upside down. That there s nothing you can have, nothing you ve earned, nothing you ve paid for with blood and loss and suffering that the world can t take away from you.

I stood before all that remained of my home, Drood Hall, and all I could think of was how it used to look. How it had looked all my life. A huge, sprawling old manor house dating back to the time of the Tudor kings, though much added onto and improved through the centuries. Traditional black-and-white-boarded frontage with heavy leaded-glass windows, proud entrance doors strong enough to hold off an army, and a jutting peaked and gabled roof. Four large wings had been added to accommodate the growing size of the family; it was massive and solid in the old Regency style. So large and solid and significant, it looked like it could take on the whole world and win.

High above the extensive grounds, the wide roof rose and fell like a great grey-tiled sea, complete with sharp-peaked gables, scowling gargoyles that doubled as water spouts and ornamental guttering that had probably seemed like a good idea at the time. Add to that a perky little observatory, extensive landing pads for all the family s more outr flying machines (and, of course, the winged unicorns), and more aliens and antennae than you could shake a gremlin at and it all added up to one very crowded and very useful roof.

I used to spend a lot of my time up on the roof when I was just a kid, enjoying the various comings and goings and getting in everyone s way.

All gone now.

The Hall was a burnt-out ruin. Someone had taken it apart with gunfire and explosives and set fire to what remained. Walls were broken and shattered, blackened and charred from smoke and flames. The upper floors had collapsed in on themselves into one great compressed mass of broken stone and rubble and what fragments remained of the roof. The ground floor looked to be more or less intact, but the windows were all blown out, and the great front doors had been blasted right off their heavy hinges. God alone knew what was left inside.

For all its many bad memories, the Hall had always been home to me. I d always thought it would always be there to go back to when I needed it. To see it like this, brought down by rage and violence and reduced to wreck and ruin, stopped the breath in my throat and the heart in my chest, and put a chill in my soul that I knew would never leave.

I made myself walk slowly forward. Molly was right there at my side, trying to say something comforting, but I couldn t hear her. There was no room left in me for anything except what had been done to my home. The massive front doors that should have been enough to hold off an army had been thrown back onto the floor in the gloom of the hallway. And a single golden-armoured figure lay curled in the doorway, quite still and quite dead, the gleaming metal half-melted and distorted, the arms fused to the torso and the legs fused together, by some unimaginable heat. I hadn t thought there was anything in the world that could do that to Drood armour.

There was no smoke in the air, no heat radiating from the fire-blasted hallway. Whatever had happened here, it had clearly happened sometime before. Days before. So I hadn t missed it by much. The attackers had come here, slaughtered my family, blown up and set fire to my home and then left. All while I was off enjoying myself in the south of France. I stood before the open doorway and I didn t know what to do. What to say. My stomach ached, and even breathing hurt my tightened chest. Molly Metcalf moved in close beside me and slipped an arm tentatively through mine, pressing herself against me. Standing as close to me as she could, to give me what comfort she could.

Why didn t I know? I said numbly.

How could something like this happen and I didn t know? Why didn t anyone reach out to me?

Maybe it all happened too quickly, said Molly. It must have been a surprise attack, to catch your whole family so off guard.

The strength just went out of my legs and I crashed to my knees on the gravel before the doorway. It should have hurt like hell, but I didn t feel a thing. Too taken up with the greater hurt that filled my head and my heart and overwhelmed everything else. I would have liked to cry; I m sure it would have helped if only I could have cried but all I could feel was cold and lost and alone. You never know how much your family means to you until you ve lost them all. Molly crouched at my side, one arm draped across my shoulders. I m sure her words would have helped if I d listened, but there was no room in me for anything but the growing need for rage and revenge. If tears would come, it would have to be later and far from here. After I d done all the terrible things that I would do to my enemy.

I knelt before what was left of my home and my family and shook uncontrollably in the grip of emotions I never thought I d have to feel. Molly put her arms around me and rocked me gently back and forth like a mother with a child.

After a while I became aware that Molly was speaking urgently to me, almost shouting into my ear.

Come on, Eddie. We can t stay here! We have to go! There s always the chance whoever did this might come back, and we can t afford to be here if they do. If your whole family couldn t stand against them, we certainly can t.

I nodded slowly and got to my feet again, with her help. My head was clearing, all the pain and horror and loss pushed aside by a cold and savage need for revenge. I couldn t leave here, not yet. I needed information and weapons. And more than anything I needed some clue to tell me my enemy s name. And then nothing was going to stand in my way. All the awful things I would do to him and anyone who stood alongside him would make my name an abomination on the lips of the world. And I wouldn t give a damn.

I wasn t used to thinking like that, but it seemed to come very easily. I was, after all, a Drood. The Last Drood.

Molly realised she wasn t going to get any sense out of me. She looked at the ruined hall before her and the sheer scale of so much destruction seemed to overwhelm even her for a moment.

What the hell happened here, Eddie? What could have done this?

I don t know, I said. My voice sounded distant and far away. The Chinese tried to nuke us once, back in the sixties, and that got nowhere. No one s struck directly at the Hall for ages. I would have said there was nothing and no one in the world that could get past all our defences and protections. This is all my fault, you know.

What? said Molly, turning immediately to look at me with her large dark eyes.

I should have been here, I said steadily.

I wasn t with my family when the enemy came. If I had been here, maybe I could have done something. Saving the day against impossible odds is what I do. Isn t it?

Stop that, Molly said firmly. Stop that right now, Eddie. What could you have done that your whole family couldn t? If you had been here, odds are you d be lying here dead, too.

I can do something now, I said. I can avenge my family. I can be the Last Drood. I can bring down my enemies in horror and suffering, and make my family name a byword in this world for revenge and retribution.

Okay, said Molly. Someone needs a whole load of stiff drinks, and possibly a nice lie-down in a cool dark room. You re in shock, Eddie. Let s get out of here.

Not yet, I said. I m not finished here yet.

And what if the enemy isn t finished? What if they come back?

Let them, I said. Let them all come. And there was something in my voice that actually made Molly shudder briefly and look away. Anywhen else, that might have bothered me. I looked steadily at what was left of my home. My thoughts kept going round in circles, and returning to the same impossible situation.

How could anyone have got past all of Drood Hall s centuries of layered shields and protections? It s just not possible!

Well, we did, said Molly.

I looked at her. What?

We got in. That time you came back to overthrow the Matriarch and take control of your family.

Well, yes, I said. But we only managed that through my insider knowledge and because we had the Confusulum. Whatever or whoever that annoying alien thing was. And since the Blue Fairy isn t around anymore, I don t see how anyone could acquire another one. But I see what you mean. This was no sneak attack. This was a carefully planned open assault. Which raises even more questions. Look around you, Molly. Look at the grounds. None of the robot gun positions have been activated; they re still sitting in their hidden bunkers under the lawns. And I can t See any trace of the force shields and magical screens that should have slammed into place automatically the moment the Hall came under threat. It s as though the enemy caught my family with all their defences down. Which should have been impossible

Could someone have lowered the shields, from inside? Molly said carefully. Sabotage, in advance of the attack? We never did identify the traitor inside your family, the one who s been working against your interests for so long.

She stopped talking as I shook my head firmly. I wasn t ready to think about that, not just yet. Concentrate on our enemies, I said. Who is there left, who could have done this to us? We stamped out Manifest Destiny, stopped the invasion of the Loathly Ones and the Hungry Gods, wiped out the Immortals and crushed the Great Satanic Conspiracy. I mean, who s left?

Clearly, someone you missed, said Molly. There s always someone.

I thought about it. The Droods are supposed to have made pacts with Heaven and Hell, back in the day, for power and influence and protection, I said. Could this have been the day when all our debts came due?

No, Molly said immediately. I d know.

I managed something like a smile. You worry me sometimes when you say things like that.

She managed a small smile of her own. Can I help it if I m a girl who likes to get around?

I took her hand in mine and squeezed it firmly. Sometimes I forget that I m not alone anymore. That I don t have to do everything myself.

You always were too ready to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders, Eddie. Whatever you decide to do, I ve got your back.

Good to know, I said. Because I m pretty sure this is going to get a lot worse before it gets any better.

I gave her hand a final squeeze, let it go and turned away to look into the open doorway, where the huge and specially reinforced front doors should have been. The empty gap was like an open wound. I moved slowly, steadily, forward, Molly right there at my side. Gravel crunched loudly under our feet in the quiet. The remains of a lone gargoyle lay shattered on the ground before us. As though it had been shot down while flying against our enemies and plummeted to the ground. And maybe it had. I d always been suspicious about the gargoyles. When I was just a kid, sleeping in one of the great communal dormitories along with the other young Droods, I was half-convinced gargoyles would creep down from the roof at night and listen outside our windows, so they could report all our sins and bad intentions to the adults. And maybe they did. Drood Hall is full of secrets. I stopped then and made myself rephrase that. Drood Hall was full of secrets. It was important to remember everything I d lost.

I stepped past the broken remains of the gargoyle, with its shattered face and broken wings, to stand before the open doorway. Something really powerful had blasted both doors right off their hinges and sent them flying a fair distance down the hallway. I could see them lying on the floor, the heavy wood cracked and splintered from some unimaginable impact. And there in the doorway was the half-melted golden figure, the last defender of the entrance hall. The armoured man lay curled into a ball, as though wrapped around his pain. I knelt down beside him, let my fingertips drift gently across the cracked and distorted face mask. The metal was cold to the touch. Cold as death. There was no way to remove the featureless mask, no way of telling who it was inside the armour. Whether it was anyone I knew.

I rose and strode past the dead man into the gloom of the hallway. There were no lights working anywhere, just dark shadows and fire- and smoke-blackened interiors. Loud and dangerous cracking and creaking sounds came from the bulging ceiling overhead, which supported all the weight of the fallen-in upper floors. It could all come down anytime. I knew that. I didn t care. I needed to know what had happened here; needed that more than life itself. It is possible I wasn t entirely sane at that time.

I moved slowly down the dark hallway, through ruin and devastation, and forced myself to be calm and collected, practical and professional. Just from looking around me at the nature of the destruction, I could see they must have used grenades and flamethrowers. No other way to do this much damage in a hurry. Probably some magical and superscience weapons, as well. Someone had been intent on doing a really thorough job here.

I considered all the possibilities as I made my way down the hallway, broken floorboards groaning warnings under my weight. Molly was careful to keep distance between us, to spread the weight out as much as possible. Could there have been sabotage, or even an invasion of the family Armoury our own weapons turned against us? It didn t seem likely. An enemy who d planned such a thorough assault wouldn t have gambled on finding enough weapons here to do the job. They d have brought their own. Could the enemy have teleported inside the Hall if all our shields were down? That would explain how they were able to take all of us by surprise so easily. Maybe even suicide bombers? So many possibilities, so many questions, and no answers anywhere. Molly stepped deftly over the rubble on the floor, looking at everything, touching nothing.

There wasn t any damage out in the grounds, she said, after a while. All the fighting took place indoors. Look at the bullet holes in these walls. And scorch marks from energy blasts, which implies energy weapons or offensive sorceries. Do you suppose there could be any survivors, maybe trapped somewhere in the Hall?

No, I said. We would have fought to the last man rather than let this happen to the Hall. I stopped abruptly, glancing about me, hands clenched into fists at my sides.

But you were right earlier. We can t afford to spend too long here. If all our defences are down, then the shields that hide our presence are down, too. The whole world can see exactly where Drood Hall is, for the first time, and that makes us vulnerable. The vultures will be gathering. They ll descend on us in their hordes to search for loot and overlooked secrets. But I can t leave, Molly. Not yet. I have to know.

Of course you do, said Molly. Every clue the enemy left behind is ammunition we can use to identify and then nail the bastards who did this.

I had to smile at her. There was a time the Droods were your enemies. Not that long ago, you would have been overjoyed by all this. You d have danced on these ruins.

Danced, hell, said Molly. I d have hiked up my skirts and pissed on them, singing hallelujah. But that was then; this is now. Everything changed when I met you. Now an attack on your family is an attack on you. And no one messes with my man and gets away with it.

She struck a witch s pose, and her hands moved through a sinuous series of magical gestures. A slow presence gathered on the air around us and all the hairs stood up on the back of my neck. A sudden cold wind came gusting down the hallway, disturbing the ashes. Molly spoke a single Word, almost too much for human vocal cords to bear, and the echoes of it trembled and shuddered all through the enclosed space.

There, said Molly, relaxing just a little.

I ve put some temporary shields in place: a No See zone over the Hall and serious avoidance spells around the perimeter. Low-level stuff, easily broken by anyone who knows what they re looking for, but enough to buy us some time, so we can make a proper investigation. Where do you want to start, Eddie?

I didn t thank her. It would only have embarrassed her.

I looked up and down the gloomy hallway. It was all so still, so quiet. The only sounds had been our careful footsteps and the quiet shifting noises of broken stone and brickwork. The ceiling made constant ominous noises as the collapsed upper floors settled and pressed down. There was still a little smoke, farther in, curling unhurriedly on the still air, and the odd cloud of soot and ashes drifting this way and that. Molly sneezed explosively, and I jumped despite myself. I looked at her reproachfully, and she stared haughtily down her nose at me, as though she d meant to do it. She raised one hand and snapped her fingers imperiously. A sharp breeze blew in from the open doors and rushed down the hallway, dispersing the smoke and blowing away the soot and ashes. The breeze died away quickly, before it could disturb anything precarious.

Most of the interior walls had been riddled with gunfire and then smashed and burnt and blown apart. There were great holes in the old stonework, and the wood panelling had been almost completely burnt away by fierce heat. It was hard to find anything I recognised. The great statues and important works of art, the wall hangings and the family portraits: gone, all gone. I realised Molly had stopped to look up at the ceiling, and I followed her gaze, checking it quickly for spreading cracks.

No, she said, without looking round. It s just our room was up there, on the top floor. Is it possible?

No, I said. All the upper floors have fallen in on themselves. There s not a few feet of roof left intact anywhere. Everything we had up there is gone.

Everything you had, said Molly. I kept most of my stuff in the woods. Oh, Eddie I m so sorry.

It s just things, I said. You can always get more things. What matters is I still have you.

Forever and a day, my love, said Molly, slipping her arm through mine again and briefly resting her head on my shoulder.

We moved on into the gloom and the shadows. The sounds of our slow progress seemed to move ahead of us, as though to give warning we were coming. All the great paintings that used to line the walls, portraits and scenes of the family by all the great masters, were gone forever. Generations of Droods, great works of art preserved by the family for generations, reduced to ash, and less than ash. Even the frames were destroyed. Someone had swept the walls clean with incandescent fires, probably laughing as they did. I crouched down as I spotted a scrap of canvas caught between two pieces of rubble from a shattered statue. Molly peered over my shoulder.

What is it, sweetie?

I think this was a Botticelli, I said.

Just a few splashes of colour now, crumbling in my hand. I let it drop to the floor, and straightened up again.

Why would the enemy take time out from fighting the Droods to destroy so many important works of art? These paintings were priceless, irreplaceable. Why not take them and sell them?

Because whoever did this was only interested in destruction and revenge, said Molly. I used to be like that. I would have torched every painting in every museum in the world to get back at your family for killing my parents. The Droods have angered a lot of people in their time, Eddie. Sometimes hurting the one you hate can be far more important than profiting from them.

Are you saying we deserved this? That we had it coming? That we brought all this on ourselves?

Of course not! I m just making the point that really angry people often don t stop to think logically.

I liked the paintings, I said. And there were photographs, too, towards the end of the corridor. A whole history of my family. And the only photograph I ever saw of my mother and my father How am I ever going to remember what they looked like, with the only photo destroyed?

I don t have any photos of my parents, said Molly. But I still think of them every day. You ll remember them.

We moved on. All the statues and sculptures had been blown apart or just smashed to pieces. So much concentrated rage I couldn t even tell which piece was which from just looking at the scattered parts, though here and there I d glimpse some familiar detail. The rich carpet that had stretched the whole length of the hallway was gone; just a charred and blackened mess that crunched under our feet.

It was like walking through the tomb of some lost civilisation and trying to re-create its original glory and grandeur from what small broken pieces remained.

This wasn t just the side effects of fighting, I said, finally. It isn t even vandalism, smashing things up for the fun of it. This was the complete destruction of everything we believed in and cared for. They wanted to rip out every memory, every meaning of Drood Hall. To spit in the face of our long tradition, and wipe it from the memory of the world. Our enemy wanted to make sure there would be nothing left to remember us by.

We moved on, out of the hallway and into what remained of the ground floor through ragged spaces where doors or walls should have been, through wreckage and destruction, through what had been my home and refuge from the world moving deeper and deeper into the Hall. Into my past. It didn t get any better. The destroyers had been very thorough. Finally I just stopped, weighed down by guilt and responsibility and the burden of memories. I d spent so much of my younger life trying to escape from Drood Hall and my family and their hold over me, but I d never wanted this. I might have dreamed it a few times, but I never really wanted it. Molly looked at me impatiently.

Where are we, Eddie? I don t recognise anything here.

I don t know, I said. I can t tell. I lived most of my life in this place. I knew all its rooms and corridors, all its nooks and crannies and secret hiding places, like the back of my hand, but now I think we re in one of the open auditoriums where people could come to just sit and think, or drink tea and chat or simply rest their troubled souls for a while. Look at it now.

Sunlight streamed in through holes in the outer wall like slanting spotlights, full of listlessly turning dust motes. Ruin and rubble; shadows and darkness. Not one scrap or stick of furniture left intact. As though the enemy had taken time out from bloodshed and slaughter to go through here with sledgehammers, smashing everything that might have been useful or valuable or just pleasant to look at. Or even just fondly remembered by my family. Who could hate us this much? Even the wooden floor had been torn up and split apart, with jagged splinters sprouting up everywhere, as though some great vicious animal had chewed on it.

What do you see, Eddie? Molly said softly.

I see scorch marks on the walls from energy blasts, I said steadily. And a hell of a lot of bullet holes. A lot of fighting went on here, before they blew the place up and set fire to it. I wonder how much blood there is under all this mess. From all those who fell here I don t see any armoured bodies or enemy dead. Did they take them all with them when they left? I can see the enemy taking their own fallen, so as not to leave any clues as to their identity. But why take the Drood dead? I ve seen only one golden body so far. The place should be littered with them. And why was the armour melted like that? As though it had been hit by a nuclear blast?

Molly didn t say anything. She knew I wasn t talking to her.

I turned and went quickly back the way we d come, hurrying back to the front doorway and the armoured body lying there. I crouched down beside it, studying the gleaming golden surface thoughtfully. It was covered with great spiderwebs of cracks, as though from a series of unimaginable impacts. The golden metal had become scored and distorted in places, touched by some incredible heat. The arms were fused to the torso, the legs fused together. And yet the armour, as a whole, was still intact. They hadn t broken through to reach the man inside. I tapped the blank featureless mask with a single knuckle, and the sound was soft, flat, dead.

Can you override the torc? said Molly. Make the armour withdraw so we can see who this was?

No, I said. Only the wearer has control over his torc. Basic security measure, in case of capture.

Is there any chance he might be alive in there? Trapped, unconscious, maybe? The armour s damaged but it s still in one piece. It might have protected the wearer, preserved him.

No, I said. Thanks for the thought, but no. To damage the armour this thoroughly, the sheer force involved must have been horrific. The impact alone would have I don t even want to think about the condition of the body inside this armour. I leaned in close to stare at my own distorted reflection in the featureless golden mask. Who were you? Did I know you? Did you die bravely? Of course you did. You were a Drood.

We went back inside and I tried another direction. Still looking for something I couldn t put a name to. I knew only that I d know it when I saw it. We rounded a corner and found ourselves facing a tall and very solid-looking door. Somehow still intact, somehow still standing firm and upright in its frame. The walls on either side were gone. Reduced to piles of rubble. I put one hand to the door and it just fell apart, crumbling and falling away, collapsing into sawdust. The doorframe still held its shape. I walked through it, into the room beyond. Most of the outer wall was missing, giving an almost uninterrupted view of the grounds outside. But there was still enough of the room left to stir an unexpected memory. The left-hand wall had shelves full of books with charred and fire-blacked spines. When I touched one, the whole row of books fell in on themselves, disintegrating and falling to the floor.

Eddie, look at this.

I moved over to join Molly. She d found a tall mirror on the right-hand wall. Completely untouched by the destruction all around it. In the mirror I hardly recognised the man standing beside Molly. I ve been trained to be a field agent, trained to blend in anywhere and not be noticed, to look like no one in particular. The man before me looked damaged and angry and dangerous. Anyone sensible would run a mile from such a man. Molly was still a delicate china doll of a woman, with big bosoms, bobbed black hair, huge dark eyes and a mouth as red as sin itself. She looked as beautiful as ever to me, in her own eerie, threatening and subtly disturbing way. Right now she was looking at me as though wondering where I d come from.

I turned away from the reflection to look at Molly. I did my best to smile normally. I know, I said. But it s still me, Molly. You can have your Eddie back when this is all over.

When will it be over, Eddie?

When everyone who had any hand in this is dead, I said.

I looked around the room. Something about it troubled me.

I think I remember being here before when I was just a child. If this is the room I think it is. I would have been very small, maybe four or five years old. I d been brought here to meet my grandfather Arthur. Martha s first husband. I can t remember who brought me here, though. Isn t that odd? I m pretty sure it wasn t Martha. I can remember being brought into this room and meeting Grandfather Arthur, but not who brought me here or why.

Arthur Drood he seemed very old to me then, though he couldn t have been more than fifty or sixty. I remember he poured himself a cup of tea but it was too hot to drink, so he poured some of it into the saucer to cool it and sipped his tea from the saucer. Yes. I thought that was a great trick, and demanded to be allowed to try some. He smiled and offered me the saucer, and I took a sip, but I didn t like it. I pulled a face, and everyone laughed. Who laughed? Who else was in the room with me? Why can t I remember them? As though I m not supposed to, not allowed to

Wait a minute, said Molly. Hold everything. Go previous. I thought you said your grandfather Arthur died back in the fifties. You weren t even born then.

That s right, I said, frowning. He died in 1957, in the Kiev Conspiracy.

What was that? said Molly. Some old Cold War thing? Well before my time. And yours.

I don t know, I said. I was frowning so hard it hurt my forehead. There was something I couldn t quite remember, something just out of my reach. Something important.

I don t know the details of how he died. No one ever told me. It was just 1957, and the Kiev Conspiracy. Why did I never ask more about that? Why did I just accept it? I never used to accept anything they just told me. But I am sure I ve been here, in this room, before.

And then the ceiling came crashing down on us. No warning, not a sound; the ceiling just bulged suddenly out above us and then broke apart, everything coming down on our heads at once. I subvocalised my activating Words and called for my armour, but nothing happened. The armour didn t come. I froze where I was. I couldn t believe it. Molly threw an arm around me and thrust her other hand up at the descending ceiling. She said a very bad Word, and a shimmering protective shield appeared around us. The broken ceiling fell down, hit the shield and fell away, unable to touch us. The whole room shook as the entire ceiling came down in heavy chunks and pieces, followed by parts of the compressed floors above. Molly grabbed my arm and hauled me through the doorframe and out into the corridor. The shield came with us, still protecting us. Safely outside the room, Molly held me close as smoke and dust billowed out of the room after us. The room was filling up with wreckage from above, hammering loudly together as though annoyed it had missed its chance at us.

Molly dismissed the shimmering shield with an impatient wave of her hand and looked at me anxiously.

Eddie? Are you okay? What happened in there?

I raised a trembling hand to the golden torc at my throat. It was still there. It felt warm and alive, just like always. So why hadn t my armour come when I called it?

How long? I said numbly to Molly. How long have I been walking around with a useless torc at my throat? How long have I been naked and defenceless in the face of my enemies?

Eddie, take it easy.

You don t understand! I shouted at her.

I ve never been separated from my armour! It s been with me my whole life, in one form or another. First from the Heart and then from Ethel How can I be a Drood if I don t have my armour?

And just like that I was off and running, ignoring Molly as she called out behind me. I sprinted down rubble-strewn corridors, jumped over piles of collapsed brickwork, ignoring the angry sounds of shifting stonework all around me and heading for the one place in the Hall where I thought I might still find some answers. The one room you could always count on. The Sanctity. The heart of the Hall and of the family. I raced down broken corridors that were little more than death traps of holed floors and collapsed walls, staring straight ahead, thinking of nothing but where I needed to be. Running so hard my leg muscles ached, so fast I could barely get my breath. I could hear Molly running behind me, calling after me, but I didn t look back once. After a while she just concentrated on running and keeping up with me. I like to think it was because she trusted me to know what I was doing.

I ran on, and sometimes I ran through corridors that were there, and sometimes down corridors I remembered that were whole and undamaged. Sometimes I ran through memories of places and people, with ghosts of old friends and enemies. And sometimes I think I ran through rooms and corridors that weren t there anymore. Until finally I came to the Sanctity.

The great double doors had been smashed open and were hanging drunkenly, scarred and broken, from the heavy brass hinges. There should have been guards, Drood security; there should have been powerful protections in place. But they were just doors leading into a room. I stood there before them for a while, bent over and breathing harshly, trying to force some air back into my straining lungs. My back and my legs ached and sweat dripped down from my face. I could hear Molly catching up, but I didn t look back. I straightened myself up through sheer force of will and strode forward into the Sanctity, slamming the doors back out of my way with both hands. I didn t even feel the impact.

Inside the great open chamber, the walls stood upright and untouched and the ceiling was free from signs of assault or damage. The marble floor was dusty but unmarked. As though the enemy had never come here. But still the damage had been done. The great auditorium was empty, deserted; just a room. There was no trace of the marvellous rose red light that usually suffused the chamber when Ethel was manifesting her presence. The light that could soothe and rejuvenate the most hard-used spirit. Ethel, the other-dimensional entity I d brought to the Hall to replace the corrupt Heart to be a new source of power for the Drood family. A source of new, strange matter armour.

Ethel! I said her name as loudly as I could, so harshly I hurt my throat. My voice echoed in the great open chamber and then died reluctantly away. There was no response. Ethel? I said, and even to me my voice sounded like that of a small child asking for its mother. I stood alone in the Sanctity and no one answered me. I heard Molly behind me, at the door, but I didn t look around.

If she was anywhere, anywhere in the Hall, she d hear and answer you, said Molly. You know that. She s gone, Eddie. Gone, like everyone else.

If she were anywhere in the world, she d hear me, I said. No wonder my armour s gone.

I can t believe there is anyone or anything in this world that could destroy or even damage an other-dimensional entity like Ethel, said Molly, moving cautiously forward to stand beside me, careful not to touch me. Except perhaps another other-dimensional entity, and what are the odds of that?

They could have driven her away, I said. I felt empty. Forced her back out of this world. With all the Droods dead, what reason would she have to stay? And if she s gone, so is the source of our armour. No more Drood armour, forever. Perhaps that s why she chose to leave so our enemies couldn t force or coerce her into giving them her strange matter. Maybe that s why we ve only seen one armoured corpse. Because she took the rest of her strange matter with her when she left. After all, the Droods were dead.

Then why have you still got your torc? said Molly.

My hand rose to touch the golden collar at my throat again, and then I shook my head slowly. So many questions; so few answers. How can I be a Drood, the Last Drood, without my armour?

You still have your knowledge and your training, said Molly, practical as ever. She moved forward so she could look me in the face. I know you re going through a lot, Eddie, but if you don t snap out if this fast and start acting like yourself again, I am going to slap you a good one and it will hurt.

A smile twitched at the corner of my mouth. You would, too. Wouldn t you?

Damn right I would, Molly said briskly. You still have all your experience, all your old contacts there s still a lot you can do in the world. Though getting your hands on some really big guns probably wouldn t hurt, either. Is there any chance you could get us into the family Armoury? See if anything useful got left behind?

Of course, I said. Large parts of the Hall have always been underground. And heavily shielded and protected. If only to protect the rest of the family from what they did down there. The attackers might not have known about the underground installations or how to access them. Maybe they survived intact.

And maybe there are survivors down there, said Molly.

You ve always been such an optimist, I said. One of the things I ve always admired most about you.

So we went down.

I started with the War Room. It lay underneath the North Wing, or what was left of it. Access was only possible through a heavily reinforced steel door. I found the door easily enough underneath the shattered ground floor. The door was still intact, but it was standing partly open. The facial-recognition computers and retina-scan mechanisms had all been smashed. Very thoroughly. Not a good sign. I eased through the gap between the steel door and its frame and started down the very basic stairway beyond, carved out of the right-hand wall itself. Molly stuck close behind me. There was no railing, and only a intimidatingly deep and dark drop on the other side. Most of the overhead electric lights weren t working, and those that did flickered unreliably.

Molly and I descended the steep stairway, pressing our shoulders against the stone wall to keep us away from the long drop. Getting to the War Room wasn t meant to be easy. I wasn t sensing any of the usual force shields and magical screens that should have protected the area from unwanted visitors. Usually they felt like static crawling all over my skin, like unseen eyes watching your back with bad intent. I felt nothing, nothing at all. I looked briefly out over the long drop, and nothing looked back.

There was no sign of any of the goblins who usually stood watch over the stairway, peering out from their comfortable niches in the stone wall. All their little caverns were empty, with not a trace remaining to show they d ever been inhabited. No bodies. No sign of any struggle. But as we went down into the dark, spatters of dried blood began to appear on the steps below us. And all over the stone wall. By the time we got to the bottom, dried blood was splashed everywhere.

At the entrance to the War Room, the electric hand scanners had been torn out and smashed, the pieces and fragments lying scattered all over the floor. And the entire entrance door was just gone. I made Molly stand back while I stepped cautiously into the War Room. There was supposed to be a real live gorgon sitting just inside the door, doing penance for a very old crime against the family, ready to do something nasty and petrifying to anybody who dared enter the War Room without permission but there was no trace of the gorgon anywhere. Just a few scattered stone pieces on the floor that might have been a shattered human statue or two. I gave Molly the all clear, and she shot straight past me into the War Room, glaring fiercely about her. She hates being left out of things.

The War Room was a vast auditorium carved out of the solid bedrock underneath the Hall. All four walls were covered with massive state-of-the-art display screens showing every country in the world. But whereas normally they would have been covered with different-coloured lights showing what was happening in the world and what we were doing about it, now the screens were dead and blank and silent. The whole system was down.

I followed Molly into the War Room, looking dazedly about me while she darted from one workstation to the next, looking for something she could use. The whole room was empty, deserted, silent; the computers had all been broken open and torn apart. The scrying spheres had been smashed and cracked, all the tables and chairs had been overturned and everything useful or important had been very thoroughly trashed. There were no bullet holes here, no signs of energy-weapon fire, but there was a hell of a lot of blood splashed over everything and pooled on the bare stone floor.

A lot of people had died down here, but there wasn t a single body to be seen anywhere. Drood or otherwise.

Molly and I checked out the workstations methodically until we found one computer that was in somewhat better condition than the others. We couldn t get it working, so Molly just zapped the thing with some kind of spell to make it give up the last thing it had been working on. I ve never understood how she gets magic to work on scientific things, and I have enough sense not to ask. I m sure the answer would only upset me. The computer s last memory appeared on a cracked monitor screen. It showed Droods jumping up from their workstations, startled, as someone opened fire on them. Bodies were thrown this way and that, blasted right out of their workstations. Blood flew on the air and bodies crashed to the floor. There were shouts and screams. None of the Droods armoured up. There was just bloodshed and slaughter, and computer stations exploding as they were raked with gunfire. And then the computer shut down and the monitor went blank.

Molly called the last few images back to the monitor screen, goosing the thing with magical sparks when it tried to cut out on her.

Look at this, Eddie. According to what this screen is reluctantly showing us all the Hall s weapon systems and defences were off-line. Shut down before the attack. This has to be sabotage, Eddie; the work of the traitor inside the family. I m sorry; I know you don t want to hear this, but it s the only way this could have happened.

Callan was in charge here, I said. I didn t see him on the screen. I can t believe all the defence systems could have gone off-line at once without his noticing. Unless someone arranged for him to be distracted. Called away. So he wouldn t be here when this went down. I looked around the silent, deserted War Room. Still no bodies. You saw my family die on that screen. So why isn t there a single Drood body anywhere in this room?

Maybe they took your family away as prisoners, said Molly. Ethel was gone, so they didn t have their armour. Maybe your family just did the sensible thing and surrendered?

I suppose that s possible, I said. Droods stripped of their armour would have been in shock, especially after an attack like this. Some of them might have been captured.

So some of your family could still be alive somewhere! said Molly.

Why would our enemies want prisoners, if they hate us so much?

Don t be naive, sweetie. For information. Droods know things no one else does. Everyone knows that.

They could have got far more information from the computers, I said. And our enemies went out of their way to destroy them. No. The whole point of this was to destroy the Droods forever. To take us completely off the board.

You can hope, though, can t you?

We always say about the bad guys: If you don t have the body, they re probably not really dead. Maybe that works for the good guys, too. If there are any survivors, Molly, if there are any members of my family left alive anywhere I will find them.

We went back up and worked our way through the fallen Hall to what was left of the South Wing. To the Operations Room, a high-tech centre set up to oversee all the Hall s defences and protect the family from things like this. Once again the door was standing open, revealing a reasonably-sized room full of computer systems and workstations usually run by a cadre of specially trained technicians, under the head of ops, Howard. He wasn t there. Neither was anyone else. Everything in the room had been smashed to pieces with great thoroughness. Someone wanted to make sure that not one of these systems could ever be repaired or re-created. No way of telling whether anyone here had known the defences were off-line until it was far too late. There was a hell of a lot of blood, but no bodies.

I made my way carefully through the wreckage, looking for something to give me hope. Molly stuck close beside me, watching my back and comforting me with her presence. And at the very back of the room we found the little surprise the enemy had left for us, or for anyone else who came looking, to find. Twelve roughly severed heads set on spikes. Six male, six female. From the expressions on their faces, none of them had died well. Some were still silently screaming for help that never came. I studied the faces carefully but I didn t recognise any of them. I can t say whether that made it easier or harder to bear. I knelt down and closed the wildly staring eyes, one set at a time. Because I had to do something. There were no torcs at any of the raggedly cut necks.

The smell was pretty bad.

Did you know any of them? said Molly.

No, I said. But then, it s a big family. You can t know everyone. Howard isn t here.

Why leave the heads like this? said Molly.

As a warning to anyone who came looking? Or just to mark their territory, the bastards?

It s a sign of contempt, I said. To tell everyone that the Droods are nothing to be feared anymore. Well, they got that wrong. I m still here. I will find who did this. I will kill them all, and they will die hard and die bloody. And for that I m going to need weapons.

And so we went down again, into the family Armoury, set deep and deep beneath the West Wing. Except when I cleared the rubble away from the floor that should have held the entrance to the Armoury approach it wasn t there. I stared down at the bare dusty floorboards, which had clearly never been disturbed, and then looked around to make sure I was in the right room. But even with all the damage and destruction, I had no doubt I was in the right place. The entrance should have been here, but it wasn t and clearly never had been. I didn t know what to think.

The Armoury has always been in the same place ever since the family set it down below the Hall, centuries ago. Right down in the bedrock under the West Wing, as far away from the family as they could get, to protect the rest of us from the weapons development and explosives testing that went on every day, and the inevitable unexpected side effects produced by lab assistants with a whole lot of scientific curiosity and not nearly enough self-preservation instincts. Impossible.

I had to search through three other rooms to find a trapdoor in the floor that to my certain knowledge hadn t been there before. I kicked the last of the rubble aside, leaned over the steel-banded wooden square and studied it thoughtfully for a long moment, ignoring the threatening creaks and groans from the ceiling overhead. Molly stirred uneasily at my side.

This room is trying to tell us something, Eddie, and I m pretty sure Get the hell out of here while you still can would be a fairly accurate translation.

Hell with that, I said. It s taken long enough, but I think I ve finally found a clue. There s no way I could be wrong about how you get down into the family Armoury. I ve been sneaking down there to pester Uncle Jack since I was ten years old.

Maybe they made a new entrance while you were gone, said Molly, moving quickly sideways to avoid a stream of dust falling from the ceiling. Maybe they blew up the old one.

I haven t been gone that long, I said.

You couldn t rush a major change like that through the Works Committee in less than a twelve-month. You don t know what bureaucracy is until you ve been part of a family that s been around for centuries.

But the trapdoor is intact, said Molly. Which would suggest

Yes, I said. It would.

I grabbed the heavy iron ring set into the top of the wooden trapdoor and hauled it open with an effort. It started to slam backwards onto the floor, and Molly and I grabbed it at the last moment and lowered it carefully down. More dust was falling in thick streams from the ceiling, and I was getting a strong feeling that one good slam might be enough to bring the whole thing down. Once, I wouldn t have given a damn, but not having my armour was making me cautious. The trapdoor opening revealed an unfamiliar set of stone steps leading down into gloom. Old, scuffed steps, polished smooth by much hard use. The stairs had clearly been there a long time. I led the way down, with Molly treading close on my heels and peering over my shoulder. I was just as fascinated as she was. We were in new territory now, and for the first time I began to wonder if things really were as they appeared to be.

The stairs gave entrance to the Armoury, which looked exactly as I remembered it. The family had set up its Armoury in what used to be, centuries earlier, the old wine cellars. The heavy, specially reinforced blast-proof door was intact, but once again it hung partway open. I squeezed through the gap between the door and the frame, with Molly pressing so close behind me that she was breathing heavily down my neck.

The lights flickered on as we entered the Armoury proper. It s really just a long series of interconnected stone chambers with bare plastered walls, curved ceilings high above, and mile upon mile of multicoloured wiring tacked carelessly into place across the walls, crisscrossing in patterns that may or may not have meant something to somebody at some time. All the overhead fluorescent lights were working, but I realised immediately that I couldn t hear the usual strained sounds of the air-conditioning. The air was stale, but there was no smell of smoke or sign of fire damage.

I don t see any signs of a firefight, said Molly, looking quickly about her. No bullet holes, no energy burns or anything more extreme to suggest the people here fought back

No, I said. But there has been a hell of a lot of looting. Look at all the gaps. I m not seeing half the things I should be seeing. No computers, no weapons. Even the shooting range is empty. It s all so quiet. I don t think I ve ever heard the Armoury this quiet before. There was always something going on; Uncle Jack or his assistants working on some new way to blow themselves and everybody else up. It s eerie.

I walked slowly between deserted workstations and abandoned testing grounds that should have been full of loud noises and general excitement as Uncle Jack s technicians happily risked their own lives and others testing appalling new weapons of mass disturbance. Nothing had been destroyed in the Armoury, unlike in the War Room or the Operations Room, but the enemy had stripped the place clean. They hadn t been interested in precious pieces of art that would have sold for millions, but state-of-the-art weapons? Those were different. I checked everywhere, but there were no golden-armoured bodies, no heads on spikes, not even a splash of dried blood. A few things had been overturned here and there, but no signs of any struggle. Which was just wrong. No matter what the odds or the threats, Uncle Jack and his lab rats would have fought to the last to keep the Armoury out of the hands of our enemies. Hell, Uncle Jack would have blown the whole place up before he d risk letting Drood weapons fall into the wrong hands. So why didn t he?

I stopped and looked about me in frustration. This would have broken Uncle Jack s heart, I said finally.

To see his precious Armoury stripped bare

Molly nodded understandingly. The Armoury was always his pride and joy. Eddie, the information in his head would have made him invaluable. Do you think?

I don t know, I said. I don t know what to think anymore. Hello. What s this?

I knelt down beside a workstation. Something had caught my eye, but I wasn t sure what. It turned out to be a small black blob on the floor. Molly crouched down beside me, looked at the blob and then looked at me.

All right; I ll bite. What s so significant about a small black blobby thing? What is it?

It s a portable door, I said. Uncle Jack used to hand them out like travel-sickness pills to every agent going out in the field. Just slap one of these against any flat surface, and hey, presto! Instant door!

So why did he stop handing them out? said Molly, instantly cautious.

Something about unacceptable side effects, I said, weighing the blob in my hand. And if the Armourer thought they were unacceptable This must have been overlooked.

Take it anyway, said Molly. We re going to need all the help we can get.

Damn right, I m taking it, I said. I slipped the thing into my pocket, straightened up and looked around me. It s useful, but it s not a weapon. I want something that goes bang! in a horribly destructive and disturbing way.

And then my head snapped round suddenly as a Voice said Eddie! I looked back and forth, but there was no one else in the Armoury. I looked at Molly.

Tell me you heard that, too.

Of course I heard it! Someone said your name in a seriously spooky way. But I scanned the whole place before we came in here, and I am telling you we re the only ones here. No other life signs anywhere, and that includes lab specimens. So who Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I m getting something.

She moved slowly between the empty workstations, turning her head back and forth, scowling fiercely as she searched for something she could sense but not see. I was concentrating on the Voice. It had definitely sounded familiar but I couldn t place it. I knew I d heard someone call me by my name in just that tone of voice before, but Molly stopped suddenly before a pile of junk on the floor and cried out triumphantly. She knelt down and stuck both hands into the pile before I could stop her, and pulled out the Merlin Glass. She jumped up to show it to me, brandishing the small silver-backed hand mirror.

Result! This is more like it, Eddie!

Could you please stop waving it around so heartily, I said carefully. That is a very powerful and very dangerous object, and this is the Armoury, after all. The Glass was worrying enough as it was, before it got broken in Castle Shreck, and God alone knows what state it s in now after Uncle Jack s been tinkering with it.

Molly sniffed airily but wasted no time in pressing the Glass into my hands. I accepted it cautiously and looked it over. The Glass had been created for the Drood family by Merlin Satanspawn, way back in the day, and it had many useful properties. But it had been very badly damaged during the Drood assault on the Immortals at Castle Shreck, to the point where it didn t work at all anymore. The reflective surface had been cracked from side to side, and given that a whole lot of people thought there might be something or even someone trapped within the reflection, I made a point of handing the damaged mirror over to the Armourer first chance I got, with strict instructions to drop it somewhere secure, like a black hole, if he couldn t mend the thing and make it safe to use. Frankly, I d never expected to see the thing again.

But here it was, back in my hand. And completely uncracked. The Glass was clear and unmarked, as though it had never seen any damage at all.

I didn t know the Merlin Glass could speak, Molly said doubtfully. Let alone call out to you.

Maybe it never had anything to say before, I said. But this is a magical instrument, after all, made by Merlin himself.

You said the mirror was cracked. Now it isn t. Could it have repaired itself?

Who knows? I said. I don t think anyone in the family knows for sure anymore why Merlin gave the Glass to us in the first place. Or what it was supposed to do. I never did get around to reading all the instructions Uncle Jack wrote out for me. I have to say I don t think the Armourer did this. I mean, he s good, yes, but he s no Merlin Satanspawn.

I hefted the hand mirror thoughtfully, turning it back and forth and checking every detail. Something about it didn t look right, didn t feel right. I d held it often enough, used it often enough, to know that the weight and heft of it in my hand now was subtly, unnervingly different. Wrong. I said as much to Molly.

Are you sure? she said immediately. I mean, it has been repaired. There are bound to be some differences.

It s not that. I ve handled the bloody thing often enough to know that something s not right about it! It s never something you just take for granted; with an artefact this powerful, it s like juggling a live hand grenade every time you use it.

I turned the hand mirror over and studied the design on the back. The silver scrollwork was definitely different. I showed it to Molly, and she traced the raised edges with a fingertip.

There s some kind of inscription worked into the design, but I m damned if I can make head or tail of it, she said finally. Not Celtic, not Sumerian not Kandarian or Enochian It is vaguely familiar, but I can t get my head around it.

The design has changed, I said. But I couldn t tell you how.

Put it away for now, said Molly. It s enough that we ve got it and the enemy missed it. We re here to look for weapons. Remember?

I slipped the Merlin Glass into the special pocket dimension I keep in one of my jacket pockets. I always like to have somewhere secure about me to store dangerous things. If only so I can get at them quickly in an emergency and throw them at other people. I breathed a little more easily with the Merlin Glass safely stored away, and looked at Molly.

Speaking of horribly powerful things that the world is undoubtedly better off without I ve been thinking about the Forbidden Weapons. I need to be sure they re still secure within the Armageddon Codex.

Molly looked at me sharply. You don t really think the enemy could have got into that. Do you?

I don t know what to think anymore, I said. But given that we are talking about weapons so powerful my family locked them away, only to be used when reality itself is under threat

We should take a look, said Molly.

So I led the way, to the very far end of the Armoury, to the final and very off-limits stone chamber. The Armageddon Codex is kept in a very private, very separate pocket dimension, for maximum security. To get to it you have to pass through the Lion s Jaws a giant stone carving of a lion s snarling head, complete with mane, perfect in every detail. Not stylised in any way, it looks like the real thing, only some twenty feet tall and almost as wide. The Lion s Jaws are carved out of a dark, blue-veined stone, so long ago that no one now remembers who did the work. It s a lion to the life; the eyes seem to glare, the mouth seems to snarl and the whole thing seems ready to lunge forward at any moment and have your head off. To open the Codex, you have to pass through the Jaws, and if you don t have the proper clearances at best, they won t open. Rumour has it that if you so much as put your hand in the Lion s Jaws and you re not pure of heart, the Jaws will bite your hand right off. The Armourer had assured me that this was just a story to keep young Droods from messing with the thing for a dare, but I wasn t sure I believed him. The Lion s Jaws always looked hungry.

You want to try opening it? said Molly, who knew no fear.

I don t have the key.

Who needs a key when you have me?

No, Molly, I said very firmly. I m not doing anything that might upset it without the Armourer present. He s the only one who knows the correct Words to access the Codex. I just need you to use your magics to make sure no one s pressured him into opening it. Make sure the Jaws are still closed and the seals haven t been compromised. You can do that, can t you?

Molly sniffed loudly and gave me a withering glare, which wasn t actually an answer. She struck a witchy pose, ran her hands through a series of smooth mystical gestures, and muttered meaningfully under her breath. I m pretty sure a lot of it was just for show, to make a point, but I had enough sense not to ask. Molly stopped abruptly and shook her head firmly.

The Jaws are still firmly closed. No one s even tried to open them. And if you could See the layers upon layers of protections laid down on this thing, you wouldn t try to open it, either. This is some seriously strong shit, Eddie. If the enemy had tried to force their way in, or even just meddle with the seals, all that would be left of them would be a series of greasy stains on the floor here.

Good to know, I said. All that matters is that the Armageddon Codex is secure.

Yes, but we can t get to them, either! said Molly. The weapons of the Codex are lost forever! No more Oath Breaker, Winter s Sorrow, the Time Hammer and the Juggernaut Jumpsuit! The most powerful weapons in the world Just think what we could have done with them!

Exactly, I said. The mood I m in, I couldn t be trusted with them. I would blow the world apart, if that was the only way of taking my enemy down. No. It s better this way. With the Armourer gone, no one can get to them. I think the world will be just that little bit safer, with the Armageddon Codex locked away forever. It s enough that our enemies don t have them.

Molly pouted. You re just no fun sometimes.

I patted the Lion s Jaws fondly with one hand, and then a sudden blast of energy threw me backwards. Molly caught me before I could fall, while a great Voice said Eddie! Eddie! Eddie! Molly moved quickly to stand between me and the Lion s Jaws, shielding me with her body, her hands surrounded by flaring energies. And then she stopped and lowered her sputtering hands, as a vision appeared before us. A middle-aged man in a white lab coat, looking seriously at both of us. A message from out of the Past. I could tell at once that it was just a recording; the vision was dim, fading in and out and ragged round the edges but when it spoke, the Voice was perfectly clear. By touching the Lion s Jaws with a Drood hand, I d triggered a hidden message from the Armourer. My heart actually leapt for a moment at the thought that finally someone was going to tell me what had happened here. And then I looked again, at the man in the lab coat, and I realised it wasn t going to be that simple.

The man before me was clearly the Armourer, but it wasn t my uncle Jack. It was my uncle James.

At first I almost didn t recognise him. Uncle James had always been the finest field agent the Droods ever produced. So successful he d created his own legend apart from the family. In good places and bad, in villains hideouts and disreputable bars, at the highest levels and in filthy back alleyways, they all knew his name: the Grey Fox. Tall and dark and handsome and always smartly dressed, my uncle James walked up and down the hidden world, writing the secret histories that the rest of the world is better off not knowing about. Keeping the world safe, one day at a time. The best of the best. Until he turned against what the family was supposed to represent and stand for, and Molly and I had to kill him. My favourite uncle, James had been almost a father to me. But he would have killed me in that last vicious duel if Molly hadn t got to him first with the Torc Cutter.

He looked a very different man as the Armourer. His lab coat was impeccably white and clean, which was more than Uncle Jack had ever managed, but James looked tired and stooped. He looked older. More weighed down by long service and hard grind and responsibilities he could never trust to anyone else. His hair, which had always been proudly jet-black for as long as I had known him, was mostly grey now. His eyes were deep set, and heavy lines had been driven deep into his face. This Uncle James had known hard times, and it showed. He seemed to look straight at me as he spoke, and his manner was harsh and strained, as though he knew he didn t have much time left.

Eddie, you re here at last. About time, boy. I m leaving this message for you because there s no one else. Listen to me, Eddie, for once in your life. We have been betrayed by one of our own. The Hall s defences are down, the Hall is under siege and the family is under attack. Our ancient enemies have finally brought us down. Avenge us! The Immortals can t be allowed to get away with this!

Molly started to say something when he used that name, but I shushed her fiercely. I needed to concentrate on what Uncle James was trying to tell me.

The Matriarch Penelope is dead, along with her husband, Nicholas. Jack is out there somewhere, organising what defences we have left. He always was the best field agent this family ever produced. I ve sent my lab assistants out to back him up, armed with whatever we had lying around, but the odds are I ll never see them or Jack again. They took our armour away from us, Eddie. Sabotaged us from within. I can t even activate the self-destruct systems for the Armoury. I ve destroyed the key to the Lion s Jaws; I can do that much. At least now they ll never get their hands on the Forbidden Weapons. But they ll probably get everything else.

He stopped for a moment and then smiled at me. All these years in the Armoury, producing weapon after weapon for the family to use to bring down the world s enemies and in the end it s one of our own that s brought about our ending. There s no way out for me. All that s left is to die fighting and deny the Immortals as much as I can. I don t know where you are right now, Eddie. We tried for so long to find you and bring you home. We should never have driven you out, driven you away. I don t know where you ve gone to ground, but you must have dug yourself a really deep hole if even the Heart can t find you. Listen to me, Eddie. Please. If you re listening to this, odds are you re the only one of us to survive. The Last Drood. The Immortals have made it very clear they re not interested in taking prisoners. Just bodies, for dissection. I m asking you, begging you, to forget the Past, forget everything that came between us, and do whatever you have to do to avenge the family and bring down our enemies: the Immortals. Don t let those bastards win.

The image disappeared abruptly, and a cold deathly silence fell across the Armoury. Tears burnt my eyes. He wasn t my uncle James, but he was close enough. His words tore at my heart. Why wasn t I there when they needed me? I realised Molly was all but jumping up and down at my side, and turned to look at her.

What?

Don t you get it, Eddie? This wasn t your family! This isn t your Hall! This is some other Drood Hall, from some other dimension! And that means your family and your Hall are Somewhere Else, probably safe and alive!

I had worked that out for myself, I said.

So many of the details in what he said were wrong. No wonder the entrance to the Armoury wasn t where it should have been.

Is that all you ve got to say? Your family is still alive! All this happened to some other family!

They were still Droods, I said. And that was still my uncle James. I may never have known the Droods who lived in this Hall, but they looked a lot like people I did know.

I didn t know them, said Molly, practical as ever. Concentrate on what matters, Eddie!

Yes, I said. My family is still alive somewhere. Finding them and bringing them home has to take precedence. Vengeance can wait.

Molly shook her head in exasperation. Sometimes I really don t understand you, Eddie. All this time we ve been grieving, under the belief that everyone you knew was dead. Now you find out they re still alive. Don t you feel anything?

I laughed then, grabbed her in my arms and whirled her around, roaring my happiness so loud it hurt my throat. Molly whooped and cheered in my arms, tilting back her head to yell out loud along with me, then hugging me so tight I could barely breathe. After a while we both calmed down and I put her down again, and we leaned tiredly on each other till we got our breath back. I grinned at Molly.

This is still very sad, I said. A whole other family of Droods has been butchered and their Hall destroyed. But that can wait. My family is out there somewhere, and it s up to me to track them down.

Such a different family, said Molly. So many differences in such a short message. They had a whole different history from you. But what is their Hall doing here, in our world?

It all comes down to the dimensional engine, Alpha Red Alpha, I said. Has to. That damned machine was created to be used only as a last-ditch defence. To save the Hall in a time of crisis, by rotating it out of this dimension, this Earth, and dropping it down in some other dimension, some other Earth, where it could wait safely until the threat here was over. The Armourer, our Armourer, told me that the first and only time it was used before, the Hall ended up materialising in some utterly alien Earth, surrounded by a whole jungle of vicious killer plants. They were lucky to get back alive. That s why Alpha Red Alpha was never used again, until I persuaded my family to wake it up, to give us access to Castle Shreck in the Timeless Moment. What s happened here has to be the result of our using Alpha Red Alpha.

Okay, hold the lecture. I get it, said Molly.

How about this: Someone found a way to override the machine from outside, and use it to send the Hall somewhere else. And this Hall, this other Hall, was rotated here to take its place. It was vulnerable because all its shields were down! Whoever s behind this must have seen it as the perfect way to get rid of your family and cover up what they d done! No one would even think your family was missing, with this ruined Hall to look at. Even you wouldn t have known if you hadn t accidentally activated that recording.

At least Uncle James was still alive in that family, I said. We didn t kill him there. Maybe because we never met in that world? It was good to see him, to hear his voice again.

Life is too short to sweat the small shit, Molly said briskly. Given a potentially infinite number of other dimensions, an infinite number of choices and outcomes is always going to be possible. If it comforts you to think of that two-faced, treacherous bastard being still alive somewhere else, feel free to do so. After everything that man did and would have done to you, I don t give a rat s arse. We re all alive, we re all dead and everything in between, on the Wheels of If and Maybe.

Strangely, I don t feel at all comforted, I said. You re weird sometimes, Molly.

She shrugged. Just trying to be helpful.

So, I said. Questions Where is my family now? And who was responsible for their abduction? And if they are trapped in some other place, how can I find and rescue them and bring them home? We need information, Molly. And where better to find that than in a library?

Molly laughed and clapped her hands together. Or, more exactly, an old library! The secret, carefully hidden and very thoroughly protected Old Library! Do you suppose this family even knows it exists? Your family didn t until you found it for them.

Let s go take a look, I said.

We found the official Drood Library easily enough and exactly where it should be, but there wasn t much left of it. The door had been broken in, and all the shelves were empty. Ransacked, stripped clean. The Immortals had done their best to torch the place when they left, but the flames hadn t taken much of a hold. Molly and I walked between smoke-blackened and half-charred wooden stacks, with the blackened and twisted remains of unwanted books left lying here and there on the floor. But finally, right at the far end of the library, there it was: hanging untouched on the wall, protected by ancient and unsuspected defences, a very old painting of the Old Library. I let go of a breath I hadn t realised I d been holding as I saw the flames hadn t even touched the portrait.

There is an especially hot place in Hell for people who burn books, said Molly.

You d know, I said generously.

It was a good-sized painting, eight feet high and maybe five feet wide, the bright and vivid colours seeming to glow in the gloom of the burnt-out library. Centuries old, artist unknown, the portrait depicted a view of the fabled Old Library. The original repository of all Drood knowledge, long thought lost or even destroyed until I found it. I took a key out of a special inside pocket. A key my uncle Jack had given me.

Will that key fit this portrait? said Molly.

There are differences between this world and ours, after all.

Only one way to find out, I said. If they key doesn t work, there s always the Merlin Glass.

Not too sure about that, either, sniffed Molly.

You want a slap, girl? I ve got one right here in my pocket.

Molly batted her eyelashes at me. Later, sweetie You know I ve got to be in the right mood for a spanking.

I laughed despite myself and leaned forward to study the silver scallops that lined the rigid steel frame enclosing the portrait. And sure enough, there it was: a very small keyhole hidden in the details of the silver scrollwork. I eased the key into the lock, turned it carefully and then relaxed as I felt the mechanism turn. I pulled out the key, and just like that the painting before us was no longer canvas and paint and a work of art, but an actual view. A doorway into the Old Library.

It was dark and gloomy in there, with not a light to be seen anywhere. This Hall s family had never found their Old Library. Molly conjured up some witchlight, a cheerful golden glow that surrounded her hand as she held it up. The light shined out into the Old Library, challenging the shadows and pushing back the gloom before us. I stepped carefully over the frame of the portrait and into the Old Library. Molly was right there with me, holding her glowing hand high above her head. The air was cold and stale but perfectly breathable. The old protections had preserved the place perfectly. Clearly, though, no one had been here in ages.

I called out, anyway, to William the Librarian and his assistant Ioreth. Because you never knew My voice seemed a very small and weak thing in such a huge and silent place. There wasn t even much of an echo; the sound was soaked up by the rows and rows of book-packed shelving, stretching away for as far as I could see into the general gloom. There was no reply I even called out to Pook, but no one answered. I think I was actually a little bit relieved at that.

One of these days, said Molly, just a bit tartly, you are going to have to tell me the whole story about this Pook thing.

I m not sure I know the whole story, I said. Or that I want to.

This setting feels longtime empty, said Molly.

Look at the dust everywhere just like when we found the original Old Library. What, exactly, are we looking for here, Eddie?

Maybe that, I said, pointing. Look

Not far from where we were standing, an old-fashioned brass reading stand was set up, supporting a single large leather-bound volume, its pages open to one particular place. Just waiting to be read. I took a good look around and then approached the reading stand cautiously. Molly stuck close behind, all but treading on my heels. The book looked as though it had been deliberately set out and arranged. (I was reminded of Alice in Wonderland, and wondered if I should look for a sign saying READ ME. As a kid, I never liked Alice. Far too spooky.) I leaned in close to study the open pages, careful not to touch anything. I read for some time, fascinated. I could feel Molly hovering impatiently behind me.

What? What? said Molly, when she couldn t stand the suspense one moment longer. What the hell is it?

It s about the Maze, I said. This is a history of the Drood family hedge Maze.

Maze? said Molly. What bloody Maze?

I finished reading, shuddered briefly and then made myself smile condescendingly as I turned back to Molly. Partly so she wouldn t get too upset, and also because I knew that particular smile drove her crazy.

This book tells you all you need to know, and some things you d be better off not knowing, about the massive hedge Maze standing in the Drood grounds, I said with exaggerated patience. It covers half an acre. You must have noticed it.

Don t you get snotty with me, Eddie. I know where you re ticklish. All right, you ve got a Maze! Big deal! Whoop-de-do! What makes it so special?

The hedge Maze is one of the great mysteries of the Drood family, I said, carefully not looking back at the open book. I still hadn t decided whether it was a gift or a trap. One of those disturbing bits of family history that just fell between the cracks and disappeared. The hedge Maze was put in place a long time ago, so long ago that no one now remembers who had it designed and constructed. Or why. There are indications the knowledge was deliberately suppressed at some point. All we know for sure is that the Maze was constructed to contain something really nasty. Too powerful for us to destroy, something so bad it could only be imprisoned

What could be so powerful that even your family couldn t destroy it? said Molly.

Good question, I said. No one alive today knows the answer.

And you think this evil thing is still trapped inside the Maze?

Oh, I m pretty sure it s still in there. Every now and again the family takes someone they really don t like and throws them in the Maze to see what happens. None of them ever come out again. And don t look at me like that. If you knew the kind of people I m talking about, you d be first in line to kick their arses through the Maze entrance. And when I had my near-death experience just recently When I was wandering inside the Winter Hall, I looked out the top-floor window and saw something moving inside the Maze, raging back and forth, still trying to break out, after all this time.

I am being very patient, said Molly. Look! This is me being very patient! But if you don t tell me why this is suddenly so important

Relax, I said. It s the book. It describes exactly what we put inside the Maze and why. And I think it s something we can use. I looked around the rows of silent stacks, holding dark shadows between them, and at the greater gloom that surrounded them, beyond the reach of Molly s witchlight. Was Pook out there, perhaps? Being helpful? But it s not something I feel comfortable talking about in a place like this.

But what is it? said Molly. What are we talking about?

Moxton s Mistake, I said.

Something moved out beyond the light. A cold breeze blew suddenly through the Old Library, disturbing air that hadn t been breathed in centuries. Molly shuddered despite herself.

Okay, I can take a hint, she said. Let s get the hell out of here.

There was the sound of something moving out in the dark. Something large and heavy.

Try the Merlin Glass, Molly said quickly.

We ve got to give it a trial run sometime, and this is looking more and more like a really good time. Get us out of here, Eddie.

Cross your fingers, I said. And anything else handy.

I took the Glass out of its subspace pocket and subvocalised the activating Words, praying they were the right ones for this Glass. Something in the dark said my name in a not-human voice. All the hairs on the back of my neck went up, and Molly grabbed my arm with both hands. The Merlin Glass glowed with a sudden fierce light, coming alive in my hand, as though eager to be used. I shook the hand mirror out till it was the size of a door and it automatically locked on to the coordinates I had in mind. Bright sunlight from the Drood grounds shone through the new doorway, pushing back the dark of the Old Library. Molly snuffed out her witchlight, and together we stepped quickly through the Glass, out of the Old Library and into the open air of the Hall grounds.

I shut the Glass down immediately, shook it back to hand-mirror size and put it away. And then I just stood there, looking out over the extensive grassy lawns, breathing in the sweet and pure open air. Molly stood there with me, both of us quite happy not to talk about whatever it was that had just spooked us. Sometimes you just know you re in a bad place. After a while we went for a walk across the lawns, taking our time. Without actually discussing it, we both kept our backs to the ruined Hall. It was easier that way. It might not have been my family, my Hall, but they were still Droods, and I had known people very like them. I would avenge their deaths. After I d rescued my family. I couldn t risk losing them twice. Molly turned her head abruptly to look at me.

Eddie, I have to wonder What happened to the other Eddie? Their Eddie? I don t think he was there when the Hall was attacked.

Seems like he was declared rogue, I said.

Much like me. Only I met you and came back. He never did. He might not even know this has happened yet.

How terrible, said Molly. An Eddie Drood out there in the world, all on his own. An Eddie who never met me.

Yes, I said. How terrible.

We shared a smile and kept on walking. There was still something we needed to do, but we weren t ready to do it just yet.

Or, I said, he could be where we are right now; standing in the grounds of his world, wondering what the hell happened to his Hall. There could be nothing but a bloody big hole in the ground where his Hall used to be.

Or, said Molly, there might be another Hall. A third Hall, rotated into place to replace his

Please, I said. Let s not complicate this more than we have to. Instead let s talk about who could be responsible for all this. Our enemy. It isn t the Immortals here; I was there when we wiped them out. The Spawn of Frankenstein occupy their castle now, and the few survivors are on the run, keeping their heads well down and hoping not to be noticed. No way any of them could be responsible for… this. But who is powerful enough to seize control of Alpha Red Alpha from a distance and use it against us? And strong enough that once it started happening, my family couldn t wrestle control away from him and stop it from happening?

I have another question, said Molly, determined to be difficult, as always. Once your family realised what had happened, that they d been rotated out of our world and dumped somewhere else, why didn t the Armourer just fire up Alpha Red Alpha again and bring everyone home?

I ve been wondering that, I said.

It could be that controlling the machine from a distance was enough to damage it. Or at the very least, scramble its coordinates. The Armourer would have more sense than to just activate the machine at random, over and over again, hoping to get home. Remember the alien Earth the first experimenters ended up in? Uncle Jack was very open about the fact that he had only limited control over Alpha Red Alpha in the first place. And on top of that, who knows what kind of Earth they were rotated into? Could be somewhere even worse than a jungle full of nasty killer plants. My family could be fighting for their lives right now, right here, somewhere else even as we speak.

Easy, Eddie, Molly said immediately. Take it easy. We can t worry about every possibility. It s just as likely they arrived in some paradise world and they aren t in any hurry to come home. For all we know, they could all be sprawling on a nice beach somewhere, working on their tans and sipping cold drinks. We can t know anything for sure, so let s concentrate on what we can do. We are your family s only hope, Eddie. We owe it to them to think it through and not just rush into things.

The wild witch of the woods, her own bad self, Molly Metcalf, preaching patience and self-restraint, I said, smiling. Maybe I am in some other world, after all. You re right, as always. I m not going to give up hope, not after just getting it back again. They re out there somewhere and I will find them and bring them home. But we have to start with: Who could have done this to them?

Run through the usual unusual suspects, said Molly. Have there been attacks on the Hall before? And, no, I don t mean the bloody Chinese nuke back in the sixties that your family won t stop talking about, which leads me to suspect they got a damned sight closer than your family is willing to admit.

Breathe, Molly. Breathe. There were a whole series of attacks on the Hall just before I met you. This awful cancer creature broke into the Sanctity and attacked the Heart. Killed several Droods before we drove it off. We never did find out who sent it, or why; or who was behind the other, earlier attacks. I d pretty much decided it was down to the traitor in the family, the original traitor who brought in the Loathly Ones, back in World War II. And who s been working against us in secret ever since.

If there is a traitor inside the Hall, he probably disappeared along with everyone else, said Molly. So I doubt this is down to him.

There is something else, I said slowly. When I was in the Winter Hall, when I thought I was dead I asked Walker, If this is a place of the dead, why haven t I seen my parents? And Walker said to me, Whatever makes you think they re dead?

I know, said Molly. I remember. But one thing at a time, Eddie. Yes?

It s just If my parents could be alive, so could yours.

Yes, Eddie. I know. And we will talk about this later. But first things have to come first. So what do you want to do first?

I looked out over the wide-open grounds of Drood Hall, the green grassy lawns and the lake and the hedge Maze in the distance. It was all so quiet, so peaceful. It didn t seem possible there could have been so much death and suffering so close at hand in such a peaceful setting.

The Drood grounds contain a marvellous selection of wildlife, I said. Natural and supernatural, the living and the dead, and lots and lots of really wild things. Why don t we go and ask them what they saw?