The Spy Who Haunted Me

CHAPTER FIVE Hide and Seek

In the forests of the night, there are many worse things than tygers.

The teleport bracelets dropped us right into the heart of dense forest, with night falling fast. Trees stood tall and slender all around us, draped with patchy greenery and hanging vines. The ground beneath my feet was hard and dry; rough brown dirt, cracked and broken. The vegetation grew thicker off to one side, leading down to a slow-moving river with tree trunks rising right out of the muddy waters. The air was blisteringly hot and humid, harsh and heavy in my lungs after the bitter chill of Loch Ness. Sweat sprang out all over me. Off in the distance, beyond the tree line, the sun was going down in shades of orange and crimson. In less than an hour it would be dark, and this far from civilisation it would be very dark indeed. From all around came the sounds of bird and beast and the persistent buzz of insects.

“Wonderful,” the Blue Fairy said bitterly. “An environment even more unpleasant than the last one, though I would have sworn on a stack of grimoires such a thing was impossible. Bloody place is like a blast furnace . . . I can actually feel myself tanning. Are those mosquitoes?”

“Probably,” I said.

“Shit.” The Blue Fairy looked up at the darkening sky. “Why me, Lord; why me? Was I really so bad in my last incarnation? What did I do; stamp on puppies?”

“You’d find something to complain about in Paradise,” I said, amused.

He sniffed loudly. “They wouldn’t let me into that place on a bet.” He looked accusingly around him. “Well, joy; another location I am not equipped to deal with. I am not an outdoors person; if I’d wanted to rough it, I’d have paid someone else to do it for me. Does anyone have any idea where the hell we are now?”

“While you’ve been whining, I’ve been talking to Langley,” said Honey. “They tasked a spy satellite to zero in on my implant, and apparently we’re somewhere in the wilds of Arkansas, not far from the border with Texas. Miles and miles from anywhere civilised, and so far off the beaten track you can’t even see the track from here.”

“Shoot me now and get it over with,” said the Blue Fairy.

“Don’t tempt me,” I said.

“How many miles, exactly, to civilisation?” said Walker, practical as ever.

“Thirty, forty miles to the nearest small town,” said Honey. “Hard to be sure; there aren’t any accurate maps of this region.”

“Let me guess,” said Peter. “Because no one ever comes here, right?”

“Maybe a few trappers, hunters,” said Honey. “Backwoods hermits who like to keep themselves to themselves.”

“Can you hear banjo music?” said the Blue Fairy.

“Shut up,” I said.

Honey set off through the trees, and since she looked like she knew where she was going, the rest of us trailed after her, for want of anything better to do. She stripped off her heavy fur coat, dropped it carelessly on the ground, and walked away from it. The rest of us stepped carefully over and around it. Honey was an agent; there was no telling what kind of dirty tricks she might have left behind with her coat. The Blue Fairy sighed appreciatively.

“Now that’s style, that is. Just drop off a few hundred thousand dollars of coat and keep on walking.” He ripped off his wilting ruff and threw it into the trees with a dramatic gesture.

“I should lose the breastplate while you’re at it,” I said. “It must weigh half a ton, and it’ll only get worse in this heat. You don’t need it now you’ve got a torc to protect you.”

He looked down at the brass and silver breastplate scored with protective runes and shook his head stiffly. “No. I don’t think so. In the things that matter, it’s always best to stick with things you can trust.”

I glanced back to see how the others were doing. Peter King was wandering along, stumbling over the occasional raised root in the ground because his attention was clearly elsewhere. If anything, he looked more out of place in the woods of the American South than he had in the Scottish Highlands. He’d taken off his expensive jacket and slung it over one shoulder and rolled up his sleeves, and his pale bare arms had excited the surrounding insects into a feeding frenzy. Walker hadn’t even made that much of a concession to the heat; he still wore his smart city suit like a knight’s armour. Though he had loosened his old-school tie, just a little. He strolled along amiably, smiling about him and enjoying the scenery as though taking a tour of someone’s private estate.

The vegetation and the trees fell suddenly away as we came to the riverbank. Almost wide enough to qualify as a lake, the muddy waters ran calmly past us, swirling around the mottled trunks of gnarled and knotted trees. Small dark shadows shot this way and that through the waters; beavers, maybe? I’m not really up on wildlife. And I can’t think of beavers without remembering the talking ones in Narnia. I’d make a lousy trapper. We all stood close together on the riverbank for mutual comfort and support in such alien surroundings, and we looked up and down the river. Just more of the same, from one horizon to the next. It was getting darker. The Blue Fairy studied the crap brown waters with a sort of disgusted fascination.

“Do you suppose they have alligators here?”

“Almost certainly,” I said.

“Oh, God . . .”

“I can deal with alligators,” Honey said cheerfully. “I could use a new pair of shoes. Or even luggage.”

Shadows were lengthening, filling the gaps between the trees. The light was going out of the day, and the sky was the dull red of drying blood. Cries from surrounding wildlife were becoming louder, more urgent. Already the gloom was creeping in around us, and I couldn’t see nearly as far as I could when we arrived. I had a strong feeling . . . of being watched.

“Did anyone else see that film The Blair Witch Project?” said Peter.

“I liked it,” said Walker unexpectedly.

“I saw it in the cinema,” said Honey. “All those jerky camera movements made me seasick.”

“I always thought they should have given James Cameron the sequel,” said the Blue Fairy. “Let him do another Aliens. Send a whole company of heavily armed marines into the Blair woods and have them blow away everything that moved. Like to see the Blair Witch deal with that . . .”

“Oh, tell me we’re not here looking for the Blair Witch,” I said. “That was fiction from beginning to end, and to hell with what it said on the Net.”

“No,” said Peter. “Sasquatch, maybe. You know: Bigfoot? Half man, half ape, maybe even the missing link. Often glimpsed, never properly identified.”

“Actually,” Walker murmured, “Sasquatch was a Native American name for a particularly reclusive tribe called the Shy People. The name Bigfoot is more recent, from tracks found in various locations.”

“I’ve seen some photos and a couple of amateur films,” I said. “But nothing even remotely convincing. And there’s hardly anything at all about Bigfoot in the Drood library. Mostly because we were never that interested in them. If they wanted to stay hidden and keep themselves to themselves, that was fine with us.”

“I saw a film on television, when I was just a kid,” Honey said slowly. “About a creature in Arkansas . . . Spooked the hell out of me. The creature lurked around this small town and even terrorised some people, but it was never identified . . . Maybe that’s what we’re here for.”

“Could be,” said Peter. “Maybe Grandfather saw that film too.”

The insects were swarming around us now, clouds of them sweeping in from off the river. We all flapped our hands, trying to swat the damned things, but we might as well have been holding up signs saying, Fresh meat! All the blood you can drink! Since mosquitoes are known to breed around rivers for the express purpose of passing on malaria to people, I was actually considering armouring up in self-protection, when the Blue Fairy spat out half a dozen words in Old Elvish, and every single insect dropped out of the air, stone cold dead. The world seemed to pause, considering, and then all the other insects boiling up off the river decided to go somewhere else. We looked at the Blue Fairy with new respect. He smiled happily.

“Works even better with pests at parties. Look, it’s going to be night very soon now, and not even a Bates Motel to take us in. What was Alexander King thinking of, dropping us in the middle of nowhere? I mean, how are we supposed to find one bloody Sasquatch in God knows how many square miles of wild forest? It could be anywhere, and you can bet good money that if it wants to avoid us, it’s perfectly capable of hiding itself so completely we could walk right past it and not even know it was there! I am not tramping through this godforsaken wilderness dressed like an extra from Shakespeare in Love just in the hope we bump into the damned thing!”

“Easy, Blue,” I said. “You’re hyperventilating.”

“I’m entitled! Do any of us even look like hearty outdoors tracker types?”

“I hate to break this to you,” said Honey, “but our situation is even worse than that. According to Langley, these woods cover hundreds if not thousands of square miles, most of them completely unmapped, except for a single notation: Here Be Deadly Wildlife That Will Bite Your Ass off if You Don’t Pay Attention.”

“I want to go home,” Blue said miserably.

“What . . . kind of deadly wildlife?” said Peter, looking quickly around him.

“Alligators, bears, wolves, wild pig, snakes, you name it,” Honey said cheerfully. “Great hunting grounds. My uncles used to take me hunting when I was younger. Though that seemed to consist mainly of drinking beer, wandering in circles, and telling stories that were entirely unsuitable for my young ears. Either way, I could bring down a full-grown buck with one shot, skin it, and dress it out before I was twelve.”

“How wonderfully primitive,” said the Blue Fairy.

“At least in Scotland we had a loch to look in,” said Walker, sensing things were about to get nasty. “Where are we supposed to start here?”

Everyone looked at me.

“Don’t look at me,” I said. “There’s lots of stories about the Sasquatch, mostly of personal one-on-one encounters, but it’s all very vague. There have been some edgy confrontations, but there’s no recorded incident of a Sasquatch ever killing or even attacking a man. Mostly they’re supposed to be . . . shy and diffident creatures.”

“Shy and diffident; great,” said the Blue Fairy. “Shy and diffident I can live with.”

“And no Drood has ever bothered to track down the truth?” said Walker.

I gave him a hard look. “We have a whole world to watch over and protect, often from the likes of you.”

If Walker was bothered by my hard look, he hid it well. “I’m surprised no one’s ever tried to catch or trap a Sasquatch,” he said thoughtfully. “Especially given the locals are undoubtedly all experienced hunting and trapping types. Why would they allow a dangerous and potentially exploitable creature to just roam around their backyard, unchecked?”

“If I’m remembering what I saw on the television right,” said Honey, “they tried tracking it with dogs once. Pedigreed hunting hounds from all over the county. But the moment the dogs got a scent of what they were after, they tucked their tails between their legs, backed away, and tried to hide behind each other. They didn’t want anything to do with what they were smelling. Their owners took a lesson from that, and maybe we should too.”

“But it’s never killed anyone,” I said. “So why is everyone so scared of it?”

“Maybe it’s a Neanderthal,” Peter said suddenly. “Cut off from the world in one of the last great wildernesses on earth, the last of its kind . . .”

“Maybe,” I said. “But . . . Alexander King warned us off from disturbing the Yeti, so why is it okay for us to go bother the Sasquatch?”

“Clearly he knows something that we don’t,” said the Blue Fairy.

“I think you can count on that,” said Peter.

“Hold everything,” said Honey. “Langley’s just told me something very interesting. These teleport bracelets we’re wearing were preprogrammed to bring us here, to a particular location, at an exact moment in time. Well, the bracelets brought us to Arkansas safely, but Langley says we’re missing a whole day. They say it’s been twenty-six hours since they were last able to locate me.”

We all looked at each other, and then at the alien mechanisms clamped immovably about our wrists.

“Alexander must have expected us to take somewhat longer with Nessie,” I said finally.

“But why drop us here and now?” said the Blue Fairy plaintively.

“It’s almost night! It’s already dark enough I can barely see my hand in front of my face. How are we supposed to find anything in this? Has anyone even got a flashlight?”

“You should sit down, put your head between your knees, and breathe steadily for a while,” Walker said kindly.

“If these bracelets were preprogrammed to bring us right here, right now, Alexander must have had a reason,” I said. “Maybe this . . . is Sasquatch territory. This is where one of the creatures is to be found. In which case all we have to do is sit tight and wait for one to come along.”

“We must make a fire,” Honey said firmly. “Before it gets really dark. Perhaps the light will attract the Sasquatch.”

“Katt was right,” growled the Blue Fairy. “This is so amateur night. Just sit around and hope one of the rarest creatures in the world will just happen to wander by, when we all know the clock is ticking? I know, I know, go with the flow, don’t make waves . . . Does anyone actually know how to make a fire? I think it involves rubbing two Boy Scouts together.”

“In your dreams,” I said.

“I was a Scout,” said Walker unexpectedly. We all looked at him, but that was all he had to say on the subject.

“I’ll bet he had some really weird badges,” muttered the Blue Fairy.

In the end, we moved a comfortable distance away from the river and gathered some wood and some moss, and Honey made us a fire with brisk efficiency and the use of a CIA monogrammed cigarette lighter. By then it really was night, and the dark was full and heavy. The light from the fire didn’t travel far. The air was still uncomfortably humid, but the temperature was dropping fast. We sat in a circle around the fire, staring into the leaping flames. Gnarled twigs and branches stirred and popped as the flames consumed them, and after a while most of us stopped jumping at the sudden noises. Up above, the sky seemed to fall away forever, full of stars, but with only a bare sliver of a new moon. From all around came the sound of various beasts going about their brutal business, though none of them ever entered the circle of firelight.

It turned out that for all his moaning, the Blue Fairy was the best provided of all of us. His padded jerkin had faerie pockets: sub-space larders from which he produced drinking cups, bottled water, tea bags, milk and sugar, and even a small pot to boil the water in. The pot had pretty blue flowers on it and the legend A Present from Lyonesse. The essentials, Blue said just a bit smugly, for any journey. The only food he had was elf bread, which the rest of us politely declined. That stuff would give an elephant the runs, and it would stop for months afterwards to remember. Honey asked Blue if he had any coffee, and he took a certain amount of pleasure in telling her no.

We sat around the fire drinking tea from an assortment of ill-matched cups. Mine bore the legend World’s Best Motherfucker. While the water was boiling to make us a second cup, Honey produced a large knife from somewhere and slipped off into the darkness. Her white cat-suited figure glimmered briefly here and there in the darkness like a ghost that couldn’t make up its mind whether or not to materialise. There was a certain amount of crashing about, followed by some loud splashing, and then Honey returned triumphantly with a large dead beaver she’d caught and killed on the riverbank. She skinned and prepared the thing with expert skill, and soon enough there was meat roasting on pointed sticks over the fire. It actually smelled pretty good. One beaver doesn’t go all that far between five people, and the taste was . . . interesting, but we were all hungry, and no one turned up their nose. Walker ate his with great enthusiasm and actually licked the grease from his fingers when he’d finished. The Blue Fairy started to smirk.

“Don’t,” Honey said sternly. “I have already worked out every possible permutation of any joke involving the words eat and beaver. Also, I have a gun, and I will shoot you.”

“Listen to all the noise out in the woods,” I said, tactfully changing the subject. “It’s like every living thing out there is killing, eating, and humping each other. Not necessarily in that order. And possibly simultaneously.”

“This is what the wild sounds like, city boy,” said Honey.

“You should hear what the Nightside sounds like,” said Walker. “Where the really wild things go to screw each other over. We have the best nightclubs, the greatest shows, the music never stops, you can dance till your feet bleed, and Cinderella never gets to go home.”

“You know, Walker,” said the Blue Fairy. “You disturb the shit out of me.”

“Thank you,” said Walker.

We sat around the fire, and the night passed slowly. If anything it got even darker. The heat of the day slipped away, and we all ended up crowding as close to the flames as we could. The dancing firelight painted our faces with ever-changing shadows, sometimes suggesting unexpected revelations of character. Every now and again we’d hear something large and heavy crashing through the woods, but nothing ever entered our circle of firelight. To begin with we jumped at every sound, but it never came to anything, and after a while we just stopped bothering. It was cold, we were tired, and you can drink only so much tea. Peter kept almost nodding off, and then jerking up his head with a start. Finally, the Blue Fairy stirred uncomfortably.

“I really need to go to the toilet,” he said miserably.

“Thank you for sharing that with us,” I said. “Go do it in the river. That’s what it’s for.”

“But it’s dark out there! There are . . . things. Hungry-sounding things, hiding in the dark. I don’t want to go on my own.”

“Well, I’m not going to hold your hand,” said Peter. “Or anything else, for that matter.”

“Be brave, little soldier,” said Honey.

“What have you got to be scared of?” I said. “You’re wearing a torc, remember?”

He gave me a look, and then lurched to his feet and shuffled off into the darkness. We could follow his progress from the muffled curses and the occasional banging into trees that didn’t get out of his way fast enough. Finally, there came a distant splashing.

“I think he’s found the river,” Walker said solemnly.

“Oh, good,” said Honey.

“If the Sasquatch was going to be attracted by the firelight, I think he would have turned up by now,” I said.

“Patience,” said Honey. “Hunting is all about patience. And blowing something’s head off with a really big gun, naturally.”

“No wonder you ended up in the CIA,” said Peter.

Walker winced. “Perhaps we should decide in advance what we’re going to do with the Sasquatch when it finally does deign to put in an appearance. Capture it on Peter’s phone camera?”

“I really would like to shoot it,” said Honey. “Have it stuffed and mounted . . . I’ve got just the place for it in my apartment. Or maybe use it as a throw rug.”

“That might be all right if it is just some kind of unknown ape,” I said tactfully. “But what if it does turn out to be a Neanderthal or some kind of missing link? Maybe even the last of its kind?”

“What would you do with it, if it did turn out to be half human?” said Walker. “Put it in a zoo, or give it the vote? No, Eddie, you had the right idea with Nessie. It would be a sin to make such a creature extinct, but at the same time it’s far better off left alone. It doesn’t need to be made a target for hunters or conservationists. We’ll take its photo and then leave it to its own devices, safe in the wilderness.”

“Right,” I said. “This is its home. We’re the intruders here.”

“You soppy sentimental thing,” said Honey. “How did someone as softhearted as you end up a Drood field agent?”

I glared at her. “I failed the compassion test for the CIA. They found I had some.”

“Children, children,” murmured Walker. “We shouldn’t take the possible threat posed to us by the creature too lightly. There have been accounts of violent behaviour . . . It might not want to stand still and pose for the camera. A certain amount of caution is advisable.”

I thought about the Colt Repeater holstered under my jacket. The gun that never missed and never ran out of bullets. Whatever the Sasquatch might turn out to be, I was pretty sure I could put it down with the Colt, if I had to. To protect myself or the others. But I really didn’t want to kill it. We were supposed to be here for information, not trophies. So I didn’t tell the others about my gun.

We all heard the Blue Fairy returning from the river, scrambling through the woods with more determination than skill. He burst into the circle of firelight, took a moment to get his breath back, and then sank heavily down beside me and stretched out his slightly shaking hands to the flames.

“I hope you remembered to wash them afterwards,” I said.

He smiled briefly. “You would not believe how many animals there are out there who have absolutely no idea of the concept of privacy. I could see their eyes gleaming all around me. And I’ve never been able to go if there’s anybody watching.”

“Shouldn’t have drunk so much tea,” said Honey.

“Still, while I had . . . time on my hands, I was able to do some thinking,” said the Blue Fairy, ostentatiously ignoring Honey. “And I think . . . I may be able to track and locate the Sasquatch.”

We all sat up straight and looked at him, and he smiled triumphantly, happy to be the centre of attention.

“It’s part of elf nature,” he said. “To be aware of out-of-the-ordinary things. To sense all the magical, unnatural creatures in this boringly material world. Their nature calls out to ours, like one nearly extinct species to another. My range is . . . somewhat limited, since I’m only half-elf, but still, if the Sasquatch should come anywhere near us, I should know almost immediately.”

“That’s a lot of shoulds,” said Peter. “I still don’t like the idea of just sitting around, waiting for something to happen. We’ve already lost twenty-six hours. Grandfather could be dead by now, for all we know.”

“Do you have a better idea?” said Walker. His voice was calm and steady, but it had all the impact of a slap in the face. “No? Neither do I. So we sit, and we wait.”

Time passed, very slowly. No one felt much like talking, and I couldn’t have drunk another cup of tea if you’d put a gun to my head. So we sat, and waited, and listened to the night. In the wild, in the dark, time seems to crawl, and it was very dark now. I know about patience. I’ve sat my share of stakeouts. But in the city there’s always something to look at, to hold your attention. Here there was just the fire, and the dark, and five people not talking to each other. I fed branches to the fire every now and again, just for something to do, but the light never seemed to press any farther out against the dark. There was a definite chill to the air that the fire did little to keep out.

It didn’t take long to run out of firewood, and the dawn was still some way off. I didn’t think the fire would last that long, and I really didn’t like the idea of sitting in the dark, watching the last embers die out. Some of the Blue Fairy’s uneasy feelings had rubbed off on me. I had no fear of the night, but . . . I was used to well-lit city streets, with the cheerful amber glare of overhead lamps pushing back the night. This heavy oppressive dark, full of strange sounds and unknown dangers, was getting on my nerves. It felt like there could be anything out there in the dark; anything at all.

We all kept looking hopefully at the Blue Fairy, who grew increasingly twitchy and finally scrambled to his feet and yelled at us.

“Stop looking at me! I’ll tell you the moment I feel anything, all right?”

After a moment he sat down again, staring sulkily into the flames.

“I’ve just had a thought,” said Peter, sitting up straight.

“Good for you,” said the Blue Fairy. “Had to happen eventually.”

“No, listen! When I filmed Nessie on my state-of-the-art camera, the submersible was still broadcasting its siren mating call! It should still be audible on the recording. If I was to play it back now, perhaps the song would bring the Sasquatch to us!”

We all considered the idea, but in the end Walker shook his head. “The mating call was filtered through the communications console so it would only attract really large creatures, remember? So unless you want to be humped to death by an oversized alligator . . .”

“Ah,” said Peter. “Yes.”

“Nice try, though,” I said. I reached for another branch to throw on the fire and found there weren’t any. “Damn.”

“We’ll have to go out into the woods and get some more firewood,” said Honey.

“What’s this we bullshit, kemo sabe?” said the Blue Fairy.

“I’ll go.” Honey stood up, and then looked at me. “How about it, sailor? Care to keep a girl company?”

“Your father wasted his money on that finishing school, didn’t he?” I got to my feet. “Let’s do it.”

“Sure,” said Honey. “And afterwards, we can gather some wood.”

“Hormones are a terrible thing,” said the Blue Fairy.

I followed Honey out of the firelight as she headed for the river. She strode off into the darkness as though it was no big thing at all. And maybe for her it wasn’t. Away from the fire, my eyes adjusted to the gloom, but not by much. I could sense as much as see the trees and managed to avoid most of them. As soon as we were out of earshot of the others, Honey stopped and turned to face me. I wasn’t surprised. She couldn’t have made it more obvious she wanted to speak privately with me if she’d announced it through a loudspeaker. Honey clicked her CIA lighter, and a heavy wavering flame shot up some six inches, providing just enough glow to illuminate our features.

“Thanks for taking the hint,” she said, her voice professionally low and discreet. “I just wanted to thank you properly for saving my life back at Loch Ness. I really thought the game was over when all my systems crashed and the water started flooding in. And I really would have hated to die in that bright yellow coffin. So tacky.”

“No problem,” I said. “It’s what Droods do.”

Even in the wavering light, I saw her raise an eyebrow. “It’s not all that Droods do. You’ve never approved of people like me.”

I shrugged. “You would have done the same for me.”

She smiled briefly. “No, I probably wouldn’t. This is supposed to be a contest, remember? I’m here to win this game, whatever it takes.”

“Of course,” I said. “You’re CIA.”

We shared a smile. Since you spend most of your time in the spy game getting lied to by all and sundry, these occasional moments of real honesty between allies or enemies are always something to be treasured. And it’s not often you can talk freely with someone who understands. Molly tries, bless her, but she’s never been an agent. A free spirit, a rogue operative, and a spiritual anarchist, yes, but never an agent. She didn’t have the experience to really comprehend the compromised ethics and dubious deals even a Drood field agent has to make sometimes to get the job done. We protect humanity, but it’s best they never learn how. They wouldn’t approve of some of our methods.

God knows I don’t, sometimes. I do try to be a good person, but now and again the job just won’t let you.

“That armour of yours was even more impressive than I’d imagined,” said Honey. “Is there anything it can’t do?”

“Like I’d tell you,” I said cheerfully.

Honey looked at me thoughtfully. “Shame about what happened to poor Katt.”

“Yes,” I said. “That was a shame. Such an unfortunate accident.”

“Yes,” said Honey. “Did you kill her, Eddie?”

“No,” I said. “I was busy with the monster, remember? I take it you don’t think it was an accident?”

Honey snorted loudly. “Hardly. Six experienced field agents in one place, competing for the biggest prize in the world, and one of them suddenly turns up dead? She could have died of a heart attack while being hit by a meteorite, and I’d still have suspected foul play. I was planning on killing her myself at some point. I was convinced she’d sabotaged my submersible. But now . . . I’m not so sure. And to kill her off this early in the game, when we could still have made good use of her talents? That’s . . . cold. Someone in this group is playing hardball, and for once it isn’t me. You understand why I immediately thought it might be you?”

“Of course,” I said. “I’m a Drood. Still, I suppose it’s almost a compliment, from a CIA operative. How did you get into the spy business?”

“Oh, I’m third-generation spook,” she said easily. “Both my grandfathers worked for the OSS during the war, and most of my uncles ended up in the CIA. A couple of aunties as well. My family has been destabilising countries and executing bad guys for generations. And doing a little good along the way, when we could.”

“So, are you people really responsible for all the evil in the world?” I said.

“Not really. We try, but we just don’t have the manpower. We protect our own interests, just like every other spy organisation, by undertaking all the dirty, necessary, unpleasant tasks that the people, bless their timid little hearts, don’t need to know about. The spying game is not for the faint of heart, Drood. You know that.”

“My family doesn’t deal in politics,” I said carefully. “Or at least, we try very hard not to. We defend everyone, whether we approve of them or not. And usually from the kind of threats you Company types are too busy, or ill equipped, to handle. Don’t ever think we’re the same, Honey. We might be in the same game, but we’re playing for different reasons.”

“There’s nothing I’ve done that you haven’t done,” said Honey. “There’s probably more blood on your armoured hands than on mine.”

“It’s not what you do,” I said. “It’s why you do it.”

“I do it for America.”

“I do it for all humanity.”

“Oh, please! Isn’t that what terrorists say? Our terrible methods are justified by our glorious intentions?” Honey looked as though she was about to spit. “Who put you Droods in charge? Who do you answer to? Is there anyone in this world with the power to say, Stop, too far, too much? You get to decide what’s best for us, and we don’t get any say in the matter. You’re everything the Company exists to fight; everything America was founded to overcome.”

“You see?” I said. “It always comes down to politics with you. Droods have to take a larger view. And we’re harsher on ourselves than anyone else could ever be.”

“Don’t make your inability to choose a side some kind of moral high ground!” Honey said fiercely. “Everyone has to choose a side and fight for what they believe in! Think what your people and mine could accomplish, working together, with your armour. With a weapon like that at our disposal, we could sweep this world clean of everyone who threatens our way of life.”

“You’d use it against anyone who didn’t think like you,” I said. “Or anyone who didn’t want the things you wanted. That’s why the Droods stay separate. We protect you all, and we try very hard not to judge. We’re shepherds, not policemen.”

“Your only loyalty is to your family,” said Honey. “Everyone knows that. Some of us have greater loyalties. I have sworn to fight and if need be die in defence of my country, and I meant it.” She grinned suddenly. “Which is why I’ll probably have to kill you at some point, Drood. Access to the Independent Agent’s treasure trove of information might finally make us your equal.”

“Please,” I said. “Call me Eddie. It really is in our best interests to work together on this. And besides, you couldn’t kill me on the best day you ever had.”

“I do so love a challenge,” said Honey, and we both laughed.

“You’re everything I hoped a Drood would be,” she said finally. “You get disappointed so often in this game . . . but you’re the real deal, Eddie. I’ll enjoy working with you, for as long as it lasts.”

I liked Honey. So sure of herself and her motivations. I hadn’t been sure of anything since I found out my family’s history was based on a lie. I didn’t think Honey would appreciate being told that the only reason my family doesn’t rule the world is because it can’t be bothered. We have more important things to worry about, like the Hungry Gods. I fight the good fight against all the many enemies of humanity because that’s what I was brought up to do. Trained from the earliest age to be loyal only to the family, because only the family stands between humanity and all the forces of evil. I still believe that. Mostly.

My Molly didn’t have much time for the Droods, even after fighting alongside us during the Hungry Gods War. Power corrupts, she was prone to say darkly, and your family has become so very powerful, Eddie . . . I think perhaps that’s why I didn’t fight to stay on as leader of the family. I didn’t like what it was doing to me.

“We don’t appeared to have gathered much wood,” I said. “They’ll be wondering what we’re doing out here.”

“Of course they will,” said Honey. “They’re agents.”

We gathered as much firewood as we could carry and headed back to the light of the fire.

“I think everyone in our group should tell a story,” I said abruptly. “Something about themselves and the work they’ve done. We need to get to know one another. A bonding exercise, if you will, and a revealing one. Firstly, because it will help us work together as a team, and secondly, because it might make it that little bit more difficult for us to kill each other.”

“Oh, Eddie . . .” said Honey. “Always so ready to look for the best in people. It’s a wonder to me you’ve survived this long.”

Back at the fire, we dumped our armfuls of wood on the ground so everyone could see them, but it didn’t fool anyone. They knew we’d been talking. So I sat down by the fire and looked around the group with my best authoritative stare.

“We need to talk,” I said. “All of us. We’re still mostly strangers to each other, and strangers can’t function as a team. I think everyone here should tell a story. Something meaningful and significant from your life. Could be your weirdest adventure, your greatest triumph, or failure. Anything, as long as it matters to you. Something . . . to help us know you.”

“What brought this on?” said the Blue Fairy. “I don’t do therapy groups.”

“We were talking about who might have killed poor Lethal Harmony from Kathmandu,” said Honey, settling herself comfortably down by the fire. “Eddie seems to think he can prevent future deaths by having us all bare our souls to each other.”

“How quaint,” said the Blue Fairy. “You always were the sentimental sort, Eddie.”

“Agents don’t have souls,” said Peter. “Everyone knows that.”

“Have you got anything better to do while we wait for the Sasquatch to show up?” I said.

“Good point,” said Walker. “One more cup of this inferior tea and I’ll piss tannin. So, who goes first?”

We all looked at each other, and then Honey shrugged easily. “Oh, hell; I might as well get the ball rolling. Don’t we all love a good spooky story by firelight?”

“I was sent to Cuba a few years back. And please; no jokes about making Castro’s beard fall out. We’ve given up on that. I was there, extremely unofficially, to investigate some rather unsavoury rumours that had drifted into Miami concerning the working practices at a new and suspiciously productive factory set up in the hills of Cuba, far away from anywhere civilised. Never mind how I got onto the island; that’s still classified. I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you all and firebomb the whole area, just in case. Anyway, rumour had it that the reason these factories were so productive was because the managers were using zombie labour for their workforce. The idea had a lot going for it: the raised dead could work twenty-four hours a day till they wore out, and you could always make more.

“The factory turned out to be surrounded with all kinds of security protections, scientific and magical. Far more than you’d expect for any business operation. Ugly place: all rough stone walls, electrified fences, and more floating curses than you could shake a grisgris at. I slipped in easily enough and made my way to the factory floor. Sometimes I think that’s the best part of this job—skulking around in the shadows, being places you’re not supposed to be, and watching people who don’t even suspect they’re being observed. I should have been a voyeur, like Momma wanted.

“Turned out the rumours were almost right. The entire workforce were dead, but they weren’t zombies. They were patchwork men. Frankenstein creatures, pieces stitched together to make new forms, and all of them with clear lobotomy scars on their foreheads. A workforce that could easily be controlled, would never tire, and didn’t need paying.

“I found an office and ransacked their records. The various body parts had come from executed prisoners and dissidents: the political opposition, artists, homosexuals. The usual. Anyone the current regime didn’t approve of. Executed secretly, and then brought back to life to labour for the State, forever. I wasn’t going to put up with that. So I crashed all their computers, planted some explosives where they’d do the most good, and burned the whole place down. I waited outside and shot everyone who escaped the flames. Neatness always counts. I suppose I should have interrogated a few people, got the details on how they did it, but just the sight of those poor bastards on the factory floor, alive and not alive, suffering forever . . . No. Not on my watch.”

“A nice story,” I said after it was clear she’d finished. “But with just a few gaps in it. If you’re going to tell a story, Honey, you really should tell all of it.”

“Really?” said Honey. Her voice was light, but her eyes were cold. “I wasn’t aware the Droods even knew about this mission.”

“We didn’t,” I said. “But it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out why you were sent to Cuba. Zombie slave labour is nothing new. Some countries have been using zombies for centuries. But the raised dead wear out quickly and fall apart, no matter how many preservatives you pump into them, and they need a lot of overseeing. But patchwork men; that’s new. Cutting-edge science, especially if you add computer implants to the subjugated brains. I can think of a whole bunch of American industrialists who would just love to get their hands on a process like that. No more unions, no more relying on illegal aliens . . . and no more back talk. Your orders must have been pretty clear: find out if the rumours were real, and if so, how it was done. Then steal the details and bring them back. Only you couldn’t bring yourself to do that, could you, Honey? Not after you’d seen the suffering involved. So you disobeyed orders . . . and did the right thing. You soppy sentimental idealist, you.”

Honey smiled dazzlingly. “Don’t tell my superiors. They think the Cubans blew up the factory rather than have its secrets stolen.”

“You can trust us,” said the Blue Fairy.

“It would never have worked anyway,” said Peter. “Too much public resistance to the idea.”

“Not if no one ever finds out,” said Walker. “I’ve seen worse practices in the Nightside.”

We waited, but he had nothing more to say. So Peter told his story next.

“Most of my work in industrial espionage is actually pretty boring and everyday. Watching and listening, spending hours in front of a computer searching for patterns and trends, trying to second-guess your opponents even as they’re second-guessing you, and always looking to spot someone useful on the other side who might be persuaded to jump ship, with just the right amount of encouragement. In the old days it was all bribes, honey traps, and blackmail, but everything has to be legal and aboveboard now. Boring; but I have seen a few . . . unusual cases. Perhaps because of my family name. I’ve always tried to play down my connections to the legendary Independent Agent, partly because I needed to prove to everyone that I could make it on my own but mostly because I can’t stand the old bastard. But people will talk . . .

“I was hired to investigate a new firm that had just entered the tricky field of GM foods. There’s been a lot of public resistance to genetically modified crops and animals, especially since the tabloids dubbed it Frankenfood. A very hard public sell, but lots and lots of money just waiting for the first company to crack the market. This new company didn’t seem to be working on anything particularly new or outrageous, but rumours were spreading of some quite extraordinary advances in certain areas where every other company had failed. So I was sent in, extremely undercover, to have a little look around.

“Took me almost a month to weasel my way into the right people’s confidence, but people who’ve achieved something really big are always desperate to talk to someone, and who better than their new best friend? It turned out the genetic manipulation hadn’t been confined to the food; it had been extended to the workforce as well. They were manufactured, grown, right there in the sublevels under the factory. You can see why Honey’s story reminded me of this one . . . Accelerated human clones, with added X-factor. Alien genetic material, to be exact, bought on the black market. You can buy anything these days if you know where to look.

“These human-alien hybrids looked pretty normal to the casual glance . . . but mentally they were sharper, faster, and they could convince you of anything. Anything at all. Something about the voices, or maybe pheromones or telepathy . . . I never did get the details. But these people really could sell freezers to Eskimos, or morals to a politician. They could make you change your mind, your sexuality, or your religion, just like that. They were gearing up for a truly massive sales campaign to shift their new product . . . a cheap and tasty snack just packed with trace alien DNA. And since you are what you eat, eventually . . .

“Who knows what’s really in our food, these days?

“Like our delightful little friend from the CIA, I disapproved, so I blew up the factory and killed everyone involved. Very definitely involving my new best friends, who were far too blasé about what they were planning. A shame, but you can’t make an omelette without bashing in the heads of a whole bunch of eggs. I made it look like an accident from which I barely escaped with my life. And with just enough computer files to convince my superiors that there was nothing worth following up. Shame, really. I was in for a really big bonus if I’d brought home the goods.”

“Would I be right in assuming that not everyone who worked in that factory knew what was going on?” said the Blue Fairy. “That there were in fact quite a few innocent and entirely human workers there when you blew up the factory?”

Peter shrugged. “I try not to think about that too much. This is a human world, and I intend for it to stay that way.”

“Well,” said the Blue Fairy after a pause. “It seems there’s no doubt you really are Alexander King’s grandson. My turn now, I think.”

“Nothing so everyday as factories or big business or unnatural working practices. You think so small, people. The world is a bigger place than you imagine; bigger than you can imagine. It contains wonders and marvels, monsters and terrors. Back in the day, when I was young and virile and a major player in my own right, I was . . . well, hired isn’t quite the right word. More properly, I was press-ganged by the Droods into cleaning up a particularly awkward problem that they preferred to handle at a safe and very deniable distance. Just in case it all went horribly wrong.

“You’ve seen the stories in the news about the occasional whale who becomes confused, gets lost, and ends up swimming along the River Thames, right into the heart of London? Of course you have. Well, something much larger and decidedly less kiddie friendly was making a nuisance of itself in the Thames. To be exact, a kraken had risen up from the depths, taken a wrong turn, and was threatening to block the Thames with its massive bulk and disturbingly long tentacles. Big things, kraken. Also very dim and even harder to argue with. Especially when you’re trying to hide the bloody thing from public gaze.

“There wasn’t a hope in hell of persuading it to turn around and go back, and there wasn’t time to come up with an elegant or even particularly nice solution. So I used the Hiring Hall to call together every ghoul operating in and around London, provided them all with knives and forks, and told them to get stuck in. All the sushi you can eat, provided you eat every last bit of it.

“And they did. Ghouls will eat anything.”

“I may never eat calamari again,” said Walker. He didn’t look especially disturbed, but then he never did. “My turn, I believe. A tale of the Nightside, then, where it’s always dark. Always three o’clock in the morning, and the hour that tries men’s souls. Except . . . someone wanted to change all that. There’s always someone planning to smuggle sunlight into the Nightside; usually one of the more extreme religious groups who believe evil can only flourish in the dark. Idiots. There’s nothing darker than the deepest recesses of the human heart.

“Apparently this particular group believed that if only bright healthy sunshine could be hauled into the Nightside, by brute force if necessary, then suddenly everyone there would have an abrupt change of heart and start playing nicely together. Save me from well-meaning idealists; they do more harm than all the monsters . . .

“Anyway, my illustrious lords and masters the Authorities very definitely preferred the Nightside the way it was, turning out a regular profit for them. So I was very firmly instructed to put a stop to this nefarious scheme by any and all means necessary. Didn’t take me long to track down the man funding the operation. People are always ready to tell me things when I ask in just the right tone of voice. The instigator of this illuminating scheme turned out to be a failed businessman, failed politician, failed . . . well, everything, really. But still convinced that he had a destiny and a right to change the world for the better, according to his beliefs.

“He found religion in jail, and once he was out found a whole bunch of followers, as his kind usually does. Somehow he got his hands on a grimoire, Quite Appallingly Powerful Spells for Dummies, and somehow again managed to smuggle it into the Nightside. Which is not unlike a terrorist smuggling a backpack nuke into an armoury. Actually, I think I would have preferred a backpack nuke. I know how to deal with those.

“I found the man and his nasty little book easily enough, because that’s what I do. Or rather, that’s what I’ve trained my people to do for me. I’ve always believed in delegating the hard work, and then strolling on stage at the end to take all the bows. I confronted the troublemaker in what he thought was his secret lair and did my best to explain to him why what he was planning was in fact a Very Bad Thing and wouldn’t achieve what he wanted anyway, but he wouldn’t listen. People who hear strong inner voices telling them to Do Good very rarely listen to anyone else. Because if their inner voices could be argued with and proved wrong, well, then they wouldn’t be special anymore, would they? You’ll have to kill me to stop me, he said with just a little bit of froth at the corners of his mouth. And I don’t think you’ve got it in you to kill a good man in cold blood; a man who’s only doing what is right.

“He was wrong, of course. I know my duty. I did what was necessary, and he died with a rather surprised look on his face. He really should have known better. You don’t get to lay down the law in a place like the Nightside unless you’re prepared to be even colder and more focused than anyone else in that corrupt place.”

All of us looked at Walker, and he looked calmly back. It’s always the quiet ones you have to watch out for.

“Well,” I said, and everyone turned to look at me. “My turn. A tale of the Droods. And the messes we have to clean up.”

“A few years back, I was called in to investigate a strange collection of murders in one of the most quiet and law-abiding suburbs of London. Strange, in that although the same person was identified as the killer in each of the seven cases, that individual always had an unbreakable alibi for each and every killing. At the exact time the victims were dying horribly, the woman identified by dozens of witnesses as the killer was out in public somewhere else, surrounded by friends and caught very clearly on surveillance cameras. Even though there was all kinds of forensic evidence linking the woman to the murders, there was no way in hell she could have done it. Unless she was twins. Which she wasn’t. First thing I checked.

“The police couldn’t do a thing. So I took over.

“I learned all there was to know; read all the files, checked all the evidence, ruled out clones . . . and then watched the woman from a safe distance, steeping myself in her boring, suburban, everyday life. A quiet, reserved lady of a certain age, with a nice house and a nice life and not an enemy in the world. One ex-husband, with whom she got on fine. No children. A boring but worthy job, and no hidden life at all. No dark secrets, and certainly no reason to savagely kill and dismember seven people. The only odd thing in her file, so mild it hardly qualified as odd, was that for a short period earlier that year, she’d attended meditation classes.

“When I looked into that, I finally turned up something interesting which wasn’t in the files. She’d left the meditation group because it wasn’t doing anything for her, but she moved on from one group to another, searching for . . . something. And ended up as part of a very quiet, very under-the-radar . . . really quite extreme group that specialised in exploring the deepest, darkest recesses of the human mind. Extreme beliefs, extreme practices, and just occasionally . . . extreme results. God alone knows how such a quiet little soul ended up in that group. Maybe someone thought it was funny.

“If so, the joke was on them, because my timid little miss took to these new disciplines like a duck to water. At first, it was hard to get anyone in the group to talk to me, but it’s amazing how persuasive I can be when I’ve someone by the balls with an armoured hand. Turned out the group threw her out because they were scared of her. Scared of what she was achieving. She’d gone deeper into her mind than any of the others had managed. And when she came back . . . she brought something with her.

“Do I really need to tell you that all the murder victims had been members of the group?

“I confronted the woman in her nice little house. Showed her my armour, calmed her down, and explained who and what I was. Told her that I was there to help her if I could. But she had to be honest with me. She burst into tears then, but they were tears of relief. It might have been my reassuring manner or my impressive armour, but I think she’d been desperate to tell someone. Someone who’d believe her.

“The group she’d worked with had been all about identifying and confronting one’s own inner demons so they could be controlled or exorcised. But something went wrong. She went deep into her mind, into the dark places most of us don’t even want to admit exist, and came face-to-face with all the foul, selfish impulses of the id: all the monsters of the mind. She brought them up into the light and expelled them from her, horrified that someone as nice as her could have such terrible things within her. But once freed from the confines of her mind, the expelled darkness took on shape and form in the material world.

“Her shape and form.

“It’s called a tulpa. A spirit made flesh, a doppelgänger that embraces all the impulses we normally control. And this tulpa went out into the city to happily do all the appalling things the woman had ever dreamed of but would never have admitted even to herself. Avenging every slight, every perceived fault, and indulging its endless appetite for blood and slaughter.

“I called in a few favours, mastered a few new tricks, and tracked the tulpa half across London and back. It ran before me, spitting and cursing, lashing out at anyone who got in its way. But I was always right there on its trail, closing in all the time, preventing it from doing any real damage or horror, and finally it did the only thing it could. It went home. I crashed through the front door of the nice little house only minutes behind it and found the woman standing over the tulpa’s unconscious body. She’d hit it over the head with a vase of flowers.

“They really did look exactly the same. The woman came to me and nestled into my arms, sobbing like a small child, desperate for me to tell her that the horror was finally over. Except it couldn’t be as long as the tulpa existed. It had to die. The woman didn’t protest. But . . . she couldn’t do it herself. Not to something that looked so like her. She begged me to do it for her. Kill the tulpa and set her free, at last.

“She really was very good. She would have fooled anyone else. But you can’t work in this business for as long as I have and not be able to tell the difference between a human being and a spirit form. The woman was unconscious on the floor; the thing with the tearstained face looking up at me so beseechingly was the tulpa. Begging me to kill its original, so it could run free at last.

“I killed the woman. Because I knew the one thing the tulpa didn’t. Once freed, there was no way of putting a tulpa back into its host. It would just go on, killing and killing forever, until it was stopped in the only way a tulpa can be stopped. By destroying the host that birthed it.

“I killed the woman quickly and efficiently. She never woke up. And the tulpa faded away into nothing, screaming its rage to the last. I like to think of myself as an agent, not an assassin. But sometimes, that’s the job.”

When I finished, they were all looking at me in a new way. I wasn’t sure I liked it. But I’d told that particular story for a reason. They needed to understand what I would do if I had to.

“Well, Eddie,” said the Blue Fairy. “That was pretty . . . hardcore. Didn’t know you had it in you.”

“Of course he does,” said Walker. “He’s a Drood.”

“You did what you had to,” said Honey. “Like you said, it’s the job.”

“Sometimes,” I said.

“Stories like that are why I decided to specialise in industrial espionage,” said Peter.

We sat around the campfire, staring into the flames rather than look at each other. The storytelling hadn’t gone as well as I’d hoped, and I wasn’t sure what I’d learned from them. That we were all hard, focused professionals, quite capable of making harsh necessary decisions when we had to? That we were all potential killers? That any one of us was capable of stabbing any other in the back to be sure of getting Alexander King’s prize? I already knew that. I was a little relieved that all the stories had demonstrated a certain amount of moral responsibility. Or at least an awareness of it.

Least of all Peter’s, surprisingly enough. Though maybe that was just big business for you.

“You know,” the Blue Fairy said suddenly, “even though we all work, or have worked, for different masters . . . we all operate in the same greater, magical world. Maybe that’s why Alexander King chose us rather than . . . better-known names. It’s not even as though we’re complete strangers to each other. I know you, Eddie, and I even worked with Walker once, on that Heir to the Throne business.”

“Which you took a very solemn oath not to discuss with anyone,” Walker said coldly.

“I’m not discussing it! I’m just mentioning it to make a point! Do you know anyone here, Walker?”

“I know Honey Lake,” he said, just a bit surprisingly.

“What was the CIA doing in the Nightside?” I said.

“Meddling,” said Walker.

“Nothing that need concern the Droods,” Honey said quickly.

We all looked at Peter, but he just shrugged. “I’ve heard of the CIA, and the Droods, and the Nightside, but that’s about it. I never needed or wanted to be part of your greater, magical world, Blue. I wanted a life as far from Grandfather’s as possible. But . . . he was a spy, and I’m a spy. Maybe it is in the blood.” He looked around the fire, studying all of us thoughtfully. “Why did you become spies? Or agents, if you prefer?”

“For me, it was the family business,” I said. “I was filled full of duty and responsibility from my school days on. Indoctrination starts early in the Droods. I was raised to fight the good fight, to be a soldier in a war with no end. There were many ways you could choose to serve humanity, but doing anything outside the family was never an option. I found a way to leave the Hall and be a fairly independent field agent, but I never left the family. I am a Drood, for all my many sins, and always will be. We exist to protect humanity, and once you find out just how many things it needs protecting from that the rest of you couldn’t hope to cope with . . . it’s hard to turn your back on it.”

“Yes,” said Walker. “Duty and responsibility. Stern taskmasters, but not without their rewards. Someone has to stand their ground against all the forces that would drag the world down. Someone has to crack the whip and keep the lid on things. And I’ve always been very good at that.”

“I wouldn’t know duty and responsibility if I fell over them in the gutter,” said the Blue Fairy. “I play the game for thrills and money and any pretty young things I might encounter along the way. I am an agent for the sheer damned glamour of it. Once you discover just how big and marvellous and strange the world really is, how could you not want to wade in it up to your hips?”

“For me it has always been about serving my country,” Honey said firmly. “Doing the dirty, necessary jobs because someone has to.”

“Money,” Peter said flatly. “For me it’s always been show me the money. I take a certain pride in my successes, in a job well done, but if I could find anything that paid better I’d change occupations so fast it would make your head spin. There’s no glamour in industrial espionage, no good guys or bad guys. Just varying amounts of greed, deceit, and betrayal.”

There didn’t seem much to say about that, so I turned to the Blue Fairy. “When you were a major player, who did you work for, apart from my family?”

He shrugged. “Anyone who could meet my price or had an intriguing case. I always was a sucker for a pretty face with a sob story . . . I was a regular at the Hiring Hall for many years. Had my own stall for a while. Go anywhere, do anyone . . . But nothing lasts, particularly not in this business. Soon enough they want to be rescued by a younger agent with less mileage on the clock; someone whose glamour isn’t quite so faded.”

And then he broke off and sat up straight. He cocked his head slightly to one side, as though listening to something only he could hear.

“It’s out there,” the Blue Fairy said quietly. “In the dark. Watching us.”

We all looked around us, trying not to be too obvious about it, but the dark held its secrets to itself. But gradually, bit by bit, the shrieking and shouting from the local wildlife died away, birds and beasts going to ground in the presence of something more dangerous than themselves. The night seemed suddenly larger and more threatening. A tense, brittle silence, as though everything in the world was holding its breath to see what would happen next. The only sound left was the quiet crackling of the fire. Almost without realising it, the five of us stood up and formed a circle around the fire, standing shoulder to shoulder staring out into the night so nothing could come at us undetected. The Blue Fairy stood to my left, almost quivering with eagerness.

“Are you sure about this?” said Peter. “I can’t see a damned thing.”

“Oh, sure,” said Honey. “The whole forest has fallen quiet just because it can’t wait to hear your next story.”

“It’s out there,” said Blue. “I can feel its presence like a weight on the world, a disturbance in the night. But . . . I can’t tell what it is. It’s natural and unnatural, both at the same time. Strange . . .”

“Is it human or animal?” said Walker, practical as ever.

“It has elements of both,” said Blue. “But if I was pressed, I think I’d say neither . . .”

“Is it dangerous?” said Honey.

“Oh, yes,” said Blue. “I can smell fresh blood on it.”

“As long as it doesn’t turn out to be some kind of ape or missing link,” said Peter, his voice just a little too loud and carrying for my liking. “Probably end up throwing its poop at us.”

“It’s not an ape!” Blue snapped, not looking around. “Nothing so ordinary . . . Something about this creature puts my teeth on edge. Just making mental contact with it makes me want to wash my soul out with soap.”

“But all the descriptions of Sasquatch agree on a large, hairy, manlike figure,” said Honey. “If not actually an ape, at least some kind of protohuman.”

“No,” the Blue Fairy said flatly. “Not an ape. Not human. Nothing like that. In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if this is a Sasquatch at all. Perhaps this is something else, something different . . . and that’s why Alexander King sent us here instead of to the more usual Bigfoot locations.”

“Okay,” I said. “No one make any sudden moves. We don’t want to frighten it off after waiting so long for it to put in an appearance. If it retreats into the dark, we might never find it again.”

“Quite,” said Walker. “Last thing we want is to go rushing off into the dark after it. Only too easy to split us up and pick us off one at a time.”

“Are you worried about the Sasquatch, or one of us?” said Peter.

“Come on, Blue,” I said. “We need information. What can you tell us about this creature?”

“It’s not natural,” the Blue Fairy said doggedly. “I can feel the wrongness in it, like teeth gnawing on my instincts. There’s a basic wrongness to it, an instability . . . Yes! That’s it! The damn thing’s a shape-shifter. Sometimes one thing, sometimes another. Sometimes human, sometimes something else.”

“You mean it’s a werewolf?” said Walker.

“Damn,” said Honey. “And me without my silver bullets. Did any of you ever wonder why the Lone Ranger only ever used silver bullets? I always felt Tonto knew more than he was telling . . .”

“If we could stick to the point, please,” said Walker.

“It’s not a werewolf,” said Blue. “I know what they feel like. This isn’t any kind of were.”

“If it is a shape-shifter,” Walker said thoughtfully, “that might explain why it’s never been successfully tracked or identified. At the end of its . . . hunt, it would just turn back into a man again and disappear back into its community with no one the wiser.”

“No . . . no!” said the Blue Fairy, practically talking over Walker in his excitement. “I’ve had this feeling before! I know what this is. That thing out there is a Hyde! Not some poor sad bastard bitten or cursed to be were, but a man chemically changed, transformed into something more and less than a man. I can almost smell the chemicals in him this close.”

“Rather you than me,” said Peter.

“I shall slap you in a minute,” said Walker. “And it will hurt. Pay attention.”

“What’s so impressive about a Hyde?” I said. “I’ve seen dozens of them working as bodyguards or thugs for hire. Oversized muscle freaks usually, and drama queens to a man.”

“The diluted serums that Harry Fabulous and his kind hawk around the Wulfshead Club aren’t a patch on the real thing,” said Blue. “The effects from those potions are as much psychological as physical. No one’s ever been able to duplicate Henry Jekyll’s original formula. The one to let loose all the evil in a man. Some mysterious impurity in the original salts . . .”

“Yes,” said Walker. “Even Jekyll couldn’t re-create his original dose. That was why he lost control over the change and Hyde kept reemerging even without the formula. Perhaps . . . there’s some plant or flower or vegetable growing naturally here that contains the original impurity. Local people would eat it, unknowing, and then succumb to its effects. Then either the affected ones go off into the woods on their own, to make sure they won’t hurt anyone . . . or more likely the community recognises the signs and drives the afflicted one out into the wilderness until it’s safe for them to return.”

“That’s why Grandfather sent us here,” said Peter. “The mystery of this creature solved; not a Bigfoot but a Hyde. Of course, we’ve still got to catch the thing on camera as proof.”

All our heads swivelled around as we heard something moving out in the dark. It was circling us, slowly and unhurriedly, making no effort to conceal its movements now. It wanted us to know it was there. It moved around us in a complete circle, always careful to stay just out of the firelight, as though it had already taken our measure and decided we were no threat to it. And then it stopped, and the heavy silence of the night returned. What could be so scary that every single beast and bird in the wood was afraid to draw its attention?

“It’s right in front of me,” the Blue Fairy said quietly. “Watching me.”

I strained my ears against the quiet, and gradually I made out a low, harsh breathing, more beast than man.

“This can’t be a Hyde,” I said. “Not the real thing. Jekyll was quite clear in his diaries. Edward Hyde was all the evil in a man, made physically manifest. Driven by instinct, ruled by his id, unconcerned with consequences or conscience. A thing of wants and needs and no self-control. A man with the mark of the beast upon him. Nothing but rage and lust and hate and the need to kill.”

“Like your tulpa?” said Peter.

“Worse,” said Blue. “Much worse.”

“Eddie has a point,” said Walker. “If this is a Hyde, why hasn’t he attacked us?”

“Let him try,” said Honey. “I’ll kick his nasty ass for him.”

“You’re missing the point,” I said. “Sasquatches don’t kill. There’s never been a recorded incident of a Sasquatch killing a man. Not here, not anywhere.”

“But if I remember what I saw on television correctly, this creature did terrorise a house full of people,” said Honey.

“And this far out in the woods, what chance would he get to kill people?” said Walker. “If he did make his way back to his home-town, the people there would shoot him on sight. Hydes may be brutal, but they’re not stupid. He’d know he was safe out here in the wilds, satisfying his violence on the wildlife.”

“Then why hasn’t he attacked us?” said Honey.

“Because he’s enjoying this,” said Blue.

“We’ve got to lure him forward, into the light,” I said quietly. “We need to see exactly what we’re dealing with.”

The Blue Fairy looked at me for the first time. “You want to get up close and personal with a full-blown Hyde? Pure evil in human form? Well, you know best, I’m sure. You’re a Drood; you know everything. You go right ahead. I’ll be several miles away, running for the horizon at speed.”

“Where’s your pride?” I said just a bit tetchily.

“Where’s your common sense?” said the Blue Fairy.

“We wear the torc,” I said patiently. “Nothing can harm us.”

“You keep believing that,” said the Blue Fairy. “I’ll put my faith in a good pair of running shoes.”

“Unfortunately, I have to side with the Drood on this,” said Peter. “We have to supply proof of what this creature is, and while I have my state-of-the-art phone camera at the ready, to get a good picture I need the thing to step forward into the light. In fact, I’d really like to get some before and after shots, and maybe even some film of the actual transformation.”

I hated to agree with the annoying little twerp, but he had a point. “I could armour up, drag him in, and hold him down,” I said. “Hydes may be big and brutal, but they’re still just flesh and blood. My armour should be able to handle him.”

“You armour up and he’ll run,” said the Blue Fairy. “And you’ll never catch him in the dark.”

“I’m still not too happy about letting that thing get too close,” said Walker. “Hydes live to kill.”

“I know an industrial spy we can hide behind,” said Honey.

A sound came to us from out of the dark. It might have been a growl, or a chuckle. Something about the sound made my hairs stand on end. No man ever made a sound like that, nor any kind of beast. There was a touch of Hell itself in that sound, and the Hyde knew it and gloried in it.

“Well,” said Walker. “I was hoping to save the last vestiges of my Voice for a real emergency, but . . .” He stepped forward and addressed the dark directly in front of the Blue Fairy. “You. Come here.”

I shuddered at the sound of his Voice. I think we all did. It was Walker’s legendary Voice that could not be argued with or disobeyed. Some say it contained vestiges of the original Voice. The one that said, Let there be light. I didn’t like to believe that. It would have opened too many questions as to just where Walker got his Voice from . . . The dark itself seemed to hesitate, as though struggling, and then the Hyde came lurching forward into the firelight, drawn forth against his will like a dog on a leash or a fish on a hook. He lurched forward another step, fighting every inch of the way, hating us all, but still he came and stood before us.

He was clearly a man, but just as clearly something more and less. He was taller than any of us but seemed shorter because he was so stooped over. His great overmuscled back rose up into a hump, and his square bony head thrust out at the level of his chest. He glared at us all with bloodshot eyes from under heavy protruding brows. Long ragged jet black hair hung down around a fierce, ugly face full of every sin man ever contemplated. His clothes were rags, torn and tattered and soaked with blood not his own. His huge hands were thickly crusted with dried blood, like horrid gloves reaching up to his elbows. Elsewhere his skin was flushed, stretched taut, full of pulsing blood. His eyes were deep set, watchful, crafty, and he smiled a cold happy smile, full of all the evil in the world.

Just to look at him was enough to make you want to kill him. Just the sight of him filled me with disgust, hatred, loathing: a basic primordial need to attack and destroy something that shouldn’t exist in this world. Something too horrid to be borne, an abomination on the earth. Standing before us, he was all the forbidden needs and impulses of man made flesh and blood and bone and let loose in the world. All the worst actions that a man could conceive of without conscience or compassion or any fear of consequences. All the most evil men in the world, and there have been so very many of them, were just glimpses of the Hyde within.

I could feel my torc burning coldly around my throat as though trying to protect me from the contamination of the creature’s presence.

Almost instinctively, the five of us had moved to form a circle around the Hyde, like hunters with a prey too dangerous to be allowed to escape, though none of us wanted to get too close. I could see the same confused expressions of fear and loathing in the faces of the others, see their hands clenched into fists, twitching and jerking, wanting to reach for weapons. Or maybe just to kill the awful thing with their bare hands. I knew what they were feeling, because I felt just the same.

The Hyde stood very still, half crouching like an animal, his eyes darting back and forth though his head never moved, searching out which of us was the weakest and most vulnerable. The one it would be most fun to torment. His crafty eyes finally settled on Honey, the only woman in our company, and her dark coffee face went stiff and taut under the impact of his loathsome gaze.

“Pretty pretty,” said the Hyde in a voice smooth as silk, sweet as cyanide. “So good of you to come visit me in my backyard kingdom. I like you. You look good enough to eat.”

“Shut your filthy mouth,” said Honey. Her voice wasn’t as firm as usual. She couldn’t hide the revulsion she felt.

“Change back,” Walker said to the Hyde. “Become human again.”

But though his words cracked on the night with all the authority of a man used to being obeyed, it wasn’t enough. They were just words. He’d used up all his Voice. The Hyde laughed soundlessly at him.

“What’s your name?” I said. He looked at me, and the force of his gaze was like a backhand across the face.

“Names,” he said. “Why, sir, does plague have a name? Does rape or torture, cancer or senility have a name or identity? I am what I am, and I glory in it. I’ll trample you all beneath my feet, rip the flesh off your bones, and stick my dick in all the holes I make.”

“Your name,” I said. “Tell me your name.”

“You mean, who I was, good sir? Forget him. He doesn’t matter. He never did. But I matter. I will do terrible things until the world sickens from my very presence. I will wade in blood and offal and sing happy songs, and I will make children from every woman I meet, because I am a very potent nightmare. I will people this land with Hydes, remake this rotten world in my awful image, and love every minute of it. My name? Edward Hyde, at your service, sir, and this is Hell nor am I out of it. The old jokes are always the best, are they not?”

His smile was very broad now, and I hated him more than I had ever hated anyone.

“How does it feel?” said Peter, fighting to keep his voice steady. “How does it feel, to be Hyde?”

The Hyde studied him curiously, and Peter actually flinched. “I am this thunder, this lightning,” said the Hyde. “I teach you this: man is something to be overcome. I . . . am the tumour in the brain, and the wind that uproots trees, and the thing that hides under your bed at night. And I love it. It is a glorious thing to be free of fear, to be the thing that everyone else fears. Oh, my dear sirs and madam, you have no idea how good this feels . . . to throw away the constraints of man and all the chains society binds us with to hold us down. To be free at last, because the only real freedom is the freedom to do anything . . .” He laughed soundlessly again. “I am everything you’ve ever wanted to be but didn’t dare admit to yourself. I will do what I will do, and none of you can stop me. And when they finally find what’s left of your bodies and see what I’ve done to them . . . they’ll cry and puke and scream their minds away.”

He broke off because Honey’s shimmering crystal weapon was suddenly in her hands. Her lips had pulled back in a deadly smile like a death’s-head grin. The Hyde giggled suddenly: a harsh, high-pitched, soul-destroying sound. And then he surged forward impossibly quickly, just a blur in the firelight. He slapped the weapon contemptuously out of Honey’s hand and threw her to the ground with a single vicious backhand slap. Blood from her mouth and nose flew on the air. She hit the ground hard.

Walker was pulling an Aboriginal pointing bone from his waistcoat pocket. Peter was drawing a large handgun from a concealed holster. The Blue Fairy was chanting a curse at the Hyde, old elf magic . . . but his voice was a deep slow crawl. Because I had armoured up the moment the Hyde started moving, my golden armour sealing me in and insulating me from the almost subliminal effects of the Hyde’s presence, I could think clearly now, no longer blinded by the impact of his foul nature.

I still hated him just as much.

I surged forward to meet the Hyde, my armour moving me so fast the world slowed to a crawl. Even so, he sensed me coming and turned away from Honey to face me. Which was what I wanted. I fell upon him, my fists slamming into him like golden hammers. Blood flew from the Hyde’s face as I turned it into pulp. I felt as much as heard bones in his face and skull break and splinter. The Hyde didn’t give an inch. He struck at me with fists like mauls, but the force of his blows merely smashed his hands against my unyielding armour. He had the strength of his terrible condition and the conviction to fight without restraint, but in the end he was still mostly a man, and the armour made me so much more than that.

He was a Hyde, but I was a Drood.

I beat him to death with my spiked golden fists. I killed him: for what he was, and what he’d done, and what he intended to do. He went down still fighting, and he died cursing me. I broke his arms and legs, smashed in his ribs, drove my fist deep into his skull. And when it was done and I stood over his body breathing harshly, blood dripping from my spiked hands, I didn’t feel anything. Anything at all. I looked slowly around me. Honey was back on her feet, pressing a handkerchief to her bloody mouth and nose. Her eyes were very wide. For a moment, I didn’t recognise the expression on her face. She was looking at me the same way she’d looked at the Hyde. As though one monster . . . had been replaced by another.

I looked down at the dead Hyde. I’d half expected him to turn back into his original, human form, but he hadn’t. Only the potion, or the plant, or whatever he’d taken, could make that transformation happen.

I armoured down and looked at the others with my naked, human face. I was shaking. Walker looked at me thoughtfully. Peter’s face was blank, empty, as though he didn’t know what to think. Honey came slowly forward to stand before me. Her mouth was swollen, and already dark bruises were rising on her coffee skin.

“It’s all right, Eddie,” she said. “We understand.”

“Do you?” I said. “Maybe you can explain it to me. I never lost it like that before. Never . . . lost control, so completely. You can’t afford to lose control when you wear the golden armour. I never knew . . . I had that much rage and anger within me.”

“We all have a Hyde within us,” said Walker. “Perhaps his presence awoke some of that in us.”

Peter moved around the Hyde with his phone camera, filming the dead body from every angle. When he was finished, he put the phone away and looked at me. “So,” he said. “What do we do with the body?”

“Drop it in the river,” said Honey. “Let the alligators take care of it. Nobody would want to claim it, looking like . . . that.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Where’s Blue? Where’s the Blue Fairy?”

We found his body on the other side of the fire, almost hidden in the darkness at the edge of the firelight. His neck was broken, the head lolling to one side. His eyes were open and staring, and a small trickle of blood had run down from his slack mouth. He looked . . . confused, as though he couldn’t understand how such a thing could have happened to him. I knelt down beside him and closed his eyes.

“Damn,” said Honey, standing behind me. “The Hyde got him.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t think so . . . It all happened so fast . . .”

“He was never strong,” said Walker. “Just one blow from the Hyde would have been enough.”

“It’s not as if he’s such a great loss,” said Peter. “Never trust an elf.”

“Shut up,” I said, and something in my voice shut him up immediately. “Leave me alone with him,” I said, not looking back. “Blue and I have private business.”

Walker escorted Peter back to the fire. Honey hovered behind me for a while, but when I wouldn’t look around, she went away too. Let the others think what they liked; the Hyde didn’t do this. He hit Honey, and then I was upon him. He never had a chance to get to anyone else. Someone in the group killed Blue while the others watched me beat the Hyde to death.

Two members of our group gone, both dead of a broken neck. Both sacrificed to a prize that might not even be worth it. But someone thought so; someone in our little group was playing for all the marbles. I let my fingertips drift over Blue’s copper and brass breastplate. All the elven protections had been stripped away. Not an easy thing to do. But even so, the torc should still have protected him. All he had to do was activate it . . . Unless he really was too scared to use it.

I’d brought him out of his retirement. I’d brought him to Drood Hall, found a place for him in the family, in our army. Tempted him with the prospect of a Drood torc, and then was surprised when he couldn’t wait and stole one for himself. He was a friend of sorts of many years; and I’d brought him to this place, and his death. And I didn’t even see it happen.

“Sorry, Blue,” I said quietly. “But you have something that doesn’t belong to you.”

I touched a fingertip to the golden circle around Blue’s throat, and the strange matter of the torc flowed up my hand and my arm and was immediately absorbed by the torc around my neck. Blue’s body would have to go back to his people, to the Fae Court, but he couldn’t be allowed to take the torc with him. Even though it was the only real achievement of his life.

And then I stopped and listened as the Blue Fairy’s voice came to me, clear but faint, as though it had to travel a long way to reach me.

“Hello, Shaman. If you’re hearing this, I’m dead, and you’ve taken the torc back . . . Ah, well; easy come, easy go. I’m leaving this message for you in the torc, just in case. Hope you don’t mind me calling you Shaman. I always knew Shaman Bond better than Eddie Drood. I liked Shaman. He was my friend; I was never sure about Eddie. It must be complicated, having to be two people and live two lives. Perhaps only a half elf could understand . . .

“I just wanted to say: whatever happens, however I die—and I’m assuming I’ve been killed—it’s not your fault. I went into this game with my eyes wide open. Would I have killed you, at the end, to be sure of gaining Alexander King’s prize for the Fae Court and Queen Mab? I don’t know. Shaman Bond was my friend, but I think I could have killed Eddie Drood. You don’t know what the Droods did to me, Shaman. What they made me do.

“So, Shaman: hail and farewell. Win the game, whatever it takes. None of the others can be trusted with the prize. And I hate to be a poor loser, but if you do find out who killed me . . . rip their head off and piss down their neck.”

His laugh faded away and was gone.

I reactivated one of the spells on his breastplate and used it to send his body home, to the Fae Court. I couldn’t leave him here in the dark, alone. He always hated the countryside. I went back to join the others by the fire, and for a long time we just sat and looked at each other, and none of us had anything to say.