Book 1 - The Man With the Golden Torc (28 page)

And that was when a spatial portal opened in the air before us,
and an army of black-uniformed Manifest Destiny soldiers came pouring through,
opening fire with automatic weapons the moment they caught sight of us. Bullets
ricocheted from my armour, but I couldn’t shield everyone. Newly freed prisoners
fell screaming and dying all around me. I grew golden spikes on my armoured
fists and charged into the midst of the coming soldiers. I struck down men and
women as they tried their best to kill me, and they did not rise again. But more
and more soldiers were spilling out of the portal, their faces alight with the
fury of the true fanatic. I broke necks and heads, and threw men and women
through the air with deadly force, but still more of them streamed past me like
a river around a single rock.

I fought on. It felt good to be striking them down. Manifest
Destiny had betrayed me by not being the hope I’d so desperately needed.

Mr. Stab stepped forward to stand at my side, a long scalpel
gleaming thirstily in his hand. Nothing the soldiers did could touch him, and he
cut down all who came within his reach with an elegant disdain. Standing in the
midst of blood and slaughter, he was in his element at last. Creatures of the
night, hurt and weakened as they were, fought fiercely with the black-clad
soldiers, and everywhere there was blood and screaming. Step by step we slowed
the soldiers’ advance, and step by step we drove them back. Perhaps because
their fanaticism was no match for our fury. We forced our way forward, over
their dead and ours, until finally the surviving soldiers turned and fled back
through the spatial portal, and it was shut down from their end.

I stood among the dead, in my blood-spattered armour, and raised
one spiked fist in triumph. And all around me the creatures of the night howled
their triumph and my name.

Molly yelled my name again and again until finally I lowered my
fist and looked at her. "Eddie! We have to get out of here! Truman must have
emergency contingency plans for a mass breakout, and I really don’t think we
want to be here when he puts them into effect."

I nodded and strode over to her, kicking black-uniformed bodies
aside. Blood and gore dripped thickly from my hands as I made the spikes
disappear. My breathing slowed, and my head cleared. Mr. Stab walked beside me
without a drop of blood on his elegant outfit.

"I know you want Truman dead," said Molly. "I do too. But
there’s no way we can reach him right now."

"Agreed," I said. "His time will come. Any suggestions on what
we do next?"

"I open a spatial portal of my own, and we all get the hell out
of here and scatter into the night."

"Sounds like a plan to me," I said. "Where’s Girl Flower?"

"Oh, she’ll put herself back together again, over the next few
days, in some place where she feels safe." She looked at Mr. Stab. "Can I trust
you to look after Sue? I have to stick with the Drood. We have revenges to
plan."

He inclined his head graciously. "Of course, my dear. She will
be safe with me. You have my word on it."

And strangely enough, I believed him. I didn’t think he’d lie to
Molly. He offered Subway Sue his arm, and she leaned on it gratefully. Molly
opened a spatial portal, and we rushed the surviving prisoners through it as
fast as we could. I kept glancing around, ready for another sneak attack, but it
never came. The great cavern remained as silent as a mass grave. In the end,
only Molly and I were left.

"So now we have two mortal enemies on our trail," I said. "My
family, and Manifest Destiny. This day keeps getting better and better. Is there
anyone left we can trust?"

"Maybe," said Molly. "A few names come to mind. But even if it
was just you and me, I wouldn’t back down or cry off. I will have justice, even
if I have to kill everyone else in the world to get it."

"You know," I said, "you’d have made a good Drood."

"Now you’re just being nasty," she said.

We left through the portal, back up into the cold clean air of
London town.

Molly and I emerged from her portal exactly where I’d asked her
to drop us off: at the Greenwich docks, just down from that grand old sailing
ship, the Cutty Sark. Dawn was breaking, the early morning air deliciously cool
and clear after the unhealthy atmosphere of Manifest Destiny’s holding pens.
Long crimson streaks stained the lightening sky, standing out starkly behind the
tall masts of the Cutty Sark naval museum. I looked up and down the stone wharf,
but the docks were deserted. And quite right too; normal people were tucked up
in bed by now, and I had every intention of catching up with them as soon as
possible. It had been a long day, what with one thing and another.

"You bring me to the nicest places, Eddie," said Molly. "Can I
ask what the hell we’re doing here, where even fallen angels would fear to tread
without armed bodyguards and a written guarantee of safe passage?"

"Greenwich is really very civilised these days," I said.
"Practically gentrified, in some places. I keep a barge tethered here, with all
the comforts and necessities of home. Another of my safe places, when I need
somewhere off the beaten track to hide from everyone, even my own family."

"They don’t know about this barge?"

"They never asked. My family never cared how I did what I did,
as long as I did what I was told. This way."

A few minutes’ stroll down the wharf brought us to my barge, the
Lucky Lady. Just another among a couple of dozen longboats and barges tied up to
the wharf. A fairly inexpensive way to live in an expensive part of London. You
get a lot of actors here…The Lucky Lady bobbed heavily in the dark tarry waters,
her colours a bright racing red and green, and all her brasswork shining in the
amber light of the streetlamps. (I have a little brownie creature who comes
around every other week and keeps the old boat spotless in return for my leaving
out a bowl of single malt whiskey. I believe in upholding the old traditions.
Especially when it means I don’t have to get down on my hands and knees with the
Duraglit. Hate polishing brass.)

I would have preferred to take Molly back to my nice flat in
Knightsbridge, but I didn’t dare. My family knew about the flat. At best they’d
have agents in place, watching and waiting in case I was stupid enough to show
my face. At worst, and much more likely, they’d have already torn the flat apart
looking for clues or incriminating documents leading to where I was and what I
might be doing. I knew the procedure. I’d done it myself often enough. Well, let
them look. I never left anything of value in my flat. Or anywhere else, really.
A field agent has to be ready to walk away from anything, at a moment’s notice,
and never look back. We’re not allowed to be sentimental or form attachments.
Our only roots are in the family. The family sees to that.

I said as much to Molly, and she nodded.

"They probably smashed up all your good stuff, just out of
spite. I’ve seen how your family operates. Are you sure there’s nothing there
they can use to track you? I could find you anywhere, just from holding some
object that once belonged to you."

"Not as long as I wear the torc," I said. "My armour shields me
from everything."

I handed Molly down onto the deck of my barge, and then stepped
lightly down to join her. Molly looked at me thoughtfully.

"Your armour comes from your family. Are you sure they don’t
have some secret way of finding you through the armour?"

"Positive. That’s always been our strength and our weakness. The
same armour that makes us so powerful also isolates us from everything else in
the world."

"So you’re always alone?"

"Yes. That’s why so few Droods can cope, out in the world. Away
from the all-embracing arms of the family. Come on, it’s cold out here. Let’s go
below."

I opened the hatch and down we went into the sumptuously
furnished interior of the Lucky Lady. Wherever I live, I like to live well. I
won the barge several years back in a poker game with a down-on-his-luck private
detective. Poor bugger ended up living in his own office. Served him right for
trying to cheat. There’s nothing I enjoy more than out-cheating a cheat. I can
produce extra aces from places you wouldn’t believe.

I bustled around the long living area, lighting the old naval
storm lamps and adjusting the wicks, filling the barge’s interior with a warm
golden glow. Molly oohed and aahed over the luxurious furnishings, and
positively cooed over the period details. The Lucky Lady has no modern
conveniences, no electricity. The whole point of being on the barge was to be
cut off from the modern world. (There is a chemical toilet. And a portable CD
player. There’s no point in being a fanatic about these things.) Finally we both
settled ourselves on the comfortably padded chaise longue, and I relaxed for the
first time in what seemed like forever.

"I like your place, Eddie," said Molly, tucking her legs up
under her.

"It’s so not you. A bit solitary, though."

"That’s the point," I said.

She considered me seriously. "I can’t imagine what it must be
like for you, to live a life so alone…so cut off from everything and everyone.
Never able to trust anyone who isn’t family."

"Comes with the job," I said. "And after growing up in a hall
bursting at the seams with family, I was glad to get away."

"Has there never been…anyone else? Anyone who mattered?"

"No. Never. I can’t get too close to anyone without telling them
what I do. And the family doesn’t allow that. Marriage, even…friendships, only
take place at the family’s discretion. They have to be approved. Especially for
those of us out in the field and open to the world’s temptations. From the
moment we’re born, and they clap the golden torc around our infant throats, we
belong to the family, body and soul. I live alone, wherever I live, and though I
may invite people in to visit me from time to time, they’re never allowed to
stay. For their own safety."

"So…no girlfriends? No significant others? No real friends? What
kind of a life is that?"

"A life of service, to a greater cause," I said. "That was what
I believed. What I’d been taught. How was I to know it was all a lie?"

"Is there anything here to eat and drink?" Molly said, kindly
changing the subject. "I could eat, if you had something."

"Of course," I said. "Let me just knock some weevils out of the
hardtack."

I set about organising a basic cold meal out of the tins I keep
in stock, and opened the bottle of brandy I keep for medical emergencies. Molly
busied herself by looking over my collection of CDs and making disparaging
comments about my taste in music.

"What is this? No Hawkwind, no Motörhead, not even any Meat
Loaf? Just…Judy Collins, Mary Hopkin, and Kate Bush…"

"I like female vocalists," I said, coming in with a tray.

"All right, I’ll lend you some of my Within Temptation imports.
You’ll like them. They’re a Dutch band with a magnificent female vocalist. A bit
like ABBA on crack."

"Well," I said. "There’s something to look forward to."

We attacked our food with good appetite. Molly wolfed hers down,
to my quiet approval. I can’t stand people who pick at their food. Afterwards we
sat together with the brandy warming in our bellies, companionably close, still
too buzzed from the day’s adrenaline to sleep just yet. So we talked about old
times, old cases, where we’d always been on different sides and doing our best
to kill each other, as often as not. There are some things you can only talk
about with old enemies. Because you had to be there, to understand.

The case of the millennium upgrade was a classic foul-up of
almost legendary proportions. My family got word that a rather eminent German
scientist was about to defect from Vril Power Inc., in Munich, and had come to
London to sell the fruits of his research to the highest bidder. That put it in
my territory, so I was sent in to make sure that his work went to someone the
family approved of. Or to shut the scientist down, with extreme prejudice, if he
didn’t feel like cooperating.

We don’t normally get that excited over industrial espionage,
but Herr Doktor Herman Koenig worked at the cutting edge of the computer–human
mind interface and had apparently developed a means of direct contact between
human thought and computer capacities. Theoretically, this could result in a
combination of the two capable of producing a whole far greater than the sum of
its parts. An awful lot of people were prepared to pay an awful lot of money for
exclusive rights to such a process, so it was up to me to ensure that only the
right sort of person got their hands on it. Or make sure no one did. My family
can be very dog in the manger about some things.

Doktor Koenig had set up a makeshift laboratory in a disused
government think tank in the old Bradbury Building, just down from Centre Point.
Breaking in was child’s play. I was used to the kind of security that throws a
demon from Hell at you if you get it wrong. Electronic locks and motion
detectors aren’t really in the same league. Herr Doktor hadn’t even shelled out
for some armed guards, the cheap bastard. Really, some people deserve everything
that happens to them.

I let myself into the Bradbury Building lobby a good three hours
before the auction was due to start and made my way easily up through the quiet
building. Everyone else had gone home, oblivious to the drama to come. I
armoured up and trotted easily up the forty-four flights of stairs to the
doktor’s floor. (Never trust an elevator.) I didn’t expect any serious
opposition on this case.

I didn’t know Molly Metcalf was already in the building.

She’d arrived on the roof via a shielded teleport spell, let
herself in, and worked her way down. She was there to protect Doktor Koenig from
outside interference. Not because she understood anything about the implications
of the computer–human mind interface, or would have approved of it if she had,
but because she believed passionately in the right of people to improve
themselves by any means possible and thus help free the world from Drood
control.