Honey was frowning. “I never heard of Grendel Rex before this. And I certainly never read about any such takeover in the history books.”
“We wiped all trace of him from history,” I said. “Destroyed every account, burned every book and manuscript, shut up everyone who tried to talk. We could do that, in those days. Only myth and legend remained, and we could live with that. Scrubbing the moon clean was a bit more difficult, but we managed.
“Do you understand now? Why I’m so reluctant to do something that might reawaken the Unforgiven God and let him loose on the world again?”
“Hell,” said Peter. “If the Tunguska Event didn’t wake him . . .” He paused. “Or was it supposed to, and failed?”
“A lot of my family wondered about that,” I said. “But . . . he slept on. Our ancestors did good work. That’s what gives me the confidence to try this. But . . . if I accidentally break the bonds that hold him, he will rise up. And perhaps this time not even the efforts of all the Droods and all our allies and all our weapons would be enough to put him down again.”
“Oh, come on!” said Honey. “Get over yourself, Drood! The world’s come a long way since the eleventh century. We have access to weapons and resources unheard of in those days. I speak for the CIA: we’ve put down living gods before in our time.”
Walker looked at her, and then at me. “Eddie, what is the worst that could happen if he did rise again?”
“He’d finish what he started,” I said. “Subjugate all humanity, reshape the continents according to his whim, absorb the souls of every living thing into himself, and leave us just enough of our minds to love and worship him. Hell on earth, forever and ever and ever. That’s what could happen, if I get this wrong.”
“Well,” said Walker. “Try not to do that, then.”
The bedlam in the street outside was growing louder all the time. Screams and howls that had as much of the beast in them as anything human. They came from all sides, surrounding the building. We were under siege by the reawakened ghosts of old horrors. The room seemed colder than ever; a spiritual cold, a bleakness of the soul. The shadows were very dark, like holes that could swallow you up, or down which you could fall forever. They moved sometimes, when you weren’t looking at them directly. The room was changing all the time in small, subtle ways. Growing larger or smaller or deeper, while the corners seemed to have too many angles.
I could feel my breathing coming fast and hard. I could feel my pulse racing and a vein throbbing almost painfully in my temple. I’ve been scared before; being a Drood doesn’t make you immune to pain or death or failure . . . but this was different. A different kind of fear: primal, almost pure. We were surrounded by nightmares crossed over into the waking world and closing in. Despite myself I remembered running from things in dreams: unspeakable, unbearable, implacable things that I could only escape from by waking up. And I couldn’t wake up from this.
Anything can happen in dreams; in bad dreams. The dead can walk again and say unforgivable things. Physical shapes lose their integrity, become uncertain, their edges loose and slippery, no longer tied down to shapes you can cope with. I could feel a whimper building in the back of my throat. Honey had a hand at her mouth, gnawing on a knuckle. Walker had his back against a wall, lashing his umbrella back and forth before him like a sword. Peter’s bulging eyes were darting this way and that, anticipating the coming of something awful that always seemed to be coming from somewhere else.
Soon we’d start to see each other as nightmares. Maybe even attack each other, because you couldn’t trust anything or anyone in a dream. Shadows were rising up everywhere, taking on unnerving shapes rich with terrible personal significance. The floor beneath my feet was soft and spongy, and the walls were leaning inward, slumping forward like tired old men. Cracks in the walls took on the shape of human faces, smiling at what was to come.
Heavy hands slammed against the closed laboratory door. It shook in its frame, the wood bulging unnaturally under the force of the blows. Dreadful voices from outside, crying, Let us in! Let us in! I armoured up, but it didn’t help. Even that couldn’t protect me from the unleashed power of my own nightmares. I grabbed the nearest piece of heavy equipment and hauled it over to the door to make a barricade, but the solid metal turned soft and putrid and fell apart in my armoured hands. I couldn’t depend on anything anymore.
That’s the real horror of nightmares.
Lethal Harmony of Kathmandu and the Blue Fairy walked through the closed door as though it wasn’t there. I backed away. They looked at me accusingly, heads lolling limply on their broken necks. Honey saw them too. She opened fire with her shimmering crystal weapon. The energy blast shot right through the figures and blew up the door behind them. And then the weapon wilted and twisted in Honey’s hands, curling and coiling slowly and deliberately like a snake. Honey threw it away from her in horror.
Katt and Blue turned into my mother and my father and advanced slowly on me. They didn’t look like zombies, or the living dead, or two people who’d been in their graves for most of my life. They looked just the way they always did, when I thought of them: the way they looked in the last photograph taken, before they went off on the mission that killed them. Except they weren’t smiling now. I backed away, and they came after me. They didn’t say anything. They didn’t have to. They looked accusing, disappointed, damning.
“No!” I yelled so loudly it hurt my throat. “My parents wouldn’t think that of me! They know better! They wouldn’t do this! You’re not them! ”
And in the face of my certainty, they faded softly and silently away.
Honey grabbed my golden arm with a shaking hand. “How did you do that?” she said shrilly.
“I have worse things than that on my conscience,” I said.
“Then do something!” shouted Walker. “Before the worse things show up!”
Peter was spinning around and around now, convinced there was something sneaking up on him from behind, no matter which way he looked. Walker began to shrink, in sudden jerks and shudders, until he was just a child again, swamped in a man’s suit. He tried to say something but couldn’t get the words out, and he began to cry helplessly. Honey dropped down abruptly, sinking into a floor that had taken on the consistency of quicksand, sucking her down in slow, purposeful gulps. I grabbed her arm and tried to haul her out, but the drag of the quicksand was too great. I pulled harder, and Honey screamed in agony.
“Let go, Eddie! You’ll pull my shoulder out of my socket before it’ll let me go! You have to risk waking your sleeping god! Nothing could be worse than this. At least he’s real!”
And so I let her go. Turned my back on them all, drew on the power of my torc and my armour, and made contact with Grendel Rex, the Unforgiven God. The devil in his cold dark Hel, deep and deep under the permafrost.
Finding him was easier than I expected. My mind shot across the miles separating us in a moment, my Sight drawn like a magnet by the bond we shared. Of family. My vision sank down into the frozen earth, and immediately I was hit by the impact of his ancient presence, huge and forbidding and still impossibly powerful. I felt like a scuba diver, swimming through the cold night of the ocean and coming unexpectedly upon a blue whale or a giant squid. I felt so small, overwhelmed by the sheer size and scale of him. Just a mote in his eye.
I carefully reached out and touched his power. It was like sticking a drinking straw into an ocean or dipping a bucket into a bottomless well. The power surged into me, rich and raging, all I needed and more. And one great eye slowly opened in the dark and looked at me.
Well, now. Who disturbs me at this time?
I stopped where I was, absolutely frozen by fear. “I’m Edwin Drood,” I said finally. “Just . . . doing my job. Trying to save humanity from destruction.”
So the sheep still have their shepherds. Why come to me, the old pariah, for help?
“Because what I’m doing is important and necessary. Because I’ve nowhere else to go. And bec
ause . . . I’m family.”
Ah, yes. Of course. Anything for the family. What is this threat you fear so much that you’re prepared to make a deal with the devil?
I started to explain, but he pushed effortlessly past my defences and took what he needed from my mind.
Yes. I see. Very well, little Drood. Take what you need.
I should have just taken the energy and left, but I had to know. “What did Grigor see in the depths of our DNA? What could he have seen to terrify him so completely? Do you know?”
Perhaps. Here is the truth, for those that have the strength to hear it.
We can all be gods, or devils. We can all shine like the stars. We were never meant to stay human. We’re just the chrysalis from which something greater can emerge. I think perhaps your Grigor caught a glimpse of what we really are, and could be, and he couldn’t cope. There is so much more to reality than man and woman, gods and devils. So much more.
The great eye slowly closed, like an eclipse moving across the face of the sun. I’m tired. It’s not time to wake up yet. Tell the family . . . I’ll be seeing them.
I ran, holding myself together through sheer force of will. The power I’d taken burned inside me, demanding release. Already it was consuming me from within. If I didn’t let it loose soon, it would consume me. I left the permafrost behind, my mind streaking over the frozen forest, and the city loomed up before me like a bug on a windshield. The streets were full of unspeakable things. Buildings rose and fell or melted into each other. A tidal wave of screaming faces swept down a street like so many possessed and terrified masks.
The sun was a giant face, screaming with rage. Grigor’s face.
I called up all the power I’d taken and bent it to my will. I held it in one hand, spitting and fizzing like a million lightning bolts, and then I threw it at the city. A great cry went up from the milling streets of rage and defiance and soul-deep horror, but I was riding the lightning with my mind. I slammed it down into the dark heart of X37 and drove the nightmares out; up and out, into the sun with Grigor’s face. For a moment I held all the writhing horror of X37 in one place, every last bit of Grigor’s revenge . . . and then I sent it away. Threw it in the one direction it could never return from.
Into the past.
I watched with godlike eyes as the compressed psychic energy shot back through time, screaming and howling all the way, until finally it couldn’t hold itself together any longer and it exploded into nothingness over the empty plain of Tunguska, on 7:17 a.m., June 30, 1908.
I woke up back inside my own head, lying on the laboratory floor. The power was gone, and I didn’t feel like a god anymore. I was exhausted, I hurt all over, and my eyes felt like they’d been sand-papered. I sat up slowly, wincing all the way. I wasn’t wearing my armour anymore. I looked around me. The floor was hard and certain beneath me, the walls were just walls, and the building and the street outside were silent again. X37 was no longer haunted by the ghosts of its own atrocities.
The floor had spat Honey out. She was sitting on a chair, shaken and trembling, but already bringing herself back under control. Walker was himself again, calm and collected and giving all his attention to adjusting his cuffs. Peter was trying very hard to look as though nothing had happened. I rose slowly to my feet, and they all turned to look at me.
I told them what had happened and what I’d done. I didn’t tell them what Grendel Rex had said concerning human DNA. He was a devil, and devils always lie. Except when the truth can hurt you more.
“So, you’re the cause of what happened in 1908?” said Peter. “You’re responsible for the Tunguska Event?”
“A Drood did it,” said Honey. “I should have known.”
“Proving it to my grandfather is going to be a tad difficult, though,” said Peter.
“Are you kidding?” I said. “You can’t hide something like this! Psychics and telepaths across the world will have been deafened by what I just did. You won’t be able to stop them talking about it, though my family will undoubtedly try. Luckily only the four of us know the details, and I think it’s better we keep it that way.”
“Or the Droods will come and make us forget, like they did over Grendel Rex?” said Honey.
“Yes,” I said.
“Just another reason why we don’t let you people operate in the Nightside,” murmured Walker. “Only I am allowed to be that arbitrary.”
“Can we please go out and find a food store now?” said Peter. “There must be some canned goods here somewhere. If I was any hungrier, my stomach would leap up my throat and eat my head.”
“You know, I think I’d pay good money to see that,” said Honey.
We left the laboratory and the building and set off through the deserted streets. I hung back a bit, considering the others thoughtfully while they were still relatively open and vulnerable. Peter interested me the most. I’d never seen him really scared before. In fact, for all his youth and inexperience with the greater world, he’d taken the Loch Ness monster and the Hyde pretty much in his stride. He was interested, even impressed, but when the time came for action he didn’t hesitate, just got stuck in with the rest of us. Rather more than you’d expect from a man whose only experience of spycraft was in industrial espionage.
So; he was Alexander King’s grandson, after all.
But it was useful to know he had his limits. The nightmares had shattered his self-control, reduced him to hysterics. Perhaps because they were so clearly outside of his control. In fact . . . when it came to fighting the Loch Ness monster and the Hyde, he’d taken the first opportunity to fall back and let the rest of us do the hard work while he filmed it all with his precious camera phone.
Whatever happened, I had to get my hands on that phone.
Walker fell back to walk with me, and we talked quietly together. He deliberately slowed our pace, allowing some distance to develop between us and Honey and Peter.
“While you were gone,” he said, quietly and entirely matter-of-fact, “someone tried to kill me. Even in the midst of all that was happening. With so much madness running loose it’s hard to be sure, but someone quite definitely tried to remove my head from my shoulders from behind. Would have succeeded with anyone else, but fortunately my years in the Nightside have made me very hard to kill.”
“Even with the Authorities gone?” I said.
“Especially now they’re gone. I’m protected in ways you can’t imagine. But the point is, we now know who killed Lethal Harmony and the Blue Fairy. It has to be either Honey or Peter.”
“Always assuming,” I said, “that you’re telling the truth.”
“Ah,” said Walker. “There is that, yes.”
“None of us can be trusted,” I said. “We’re all agents.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
All at Sea
There was sun and light and warmth, and after the bitter cold There of Tunguska and X37 it felt like very heaven itself. All four of us cried out in relief as the teleport bracelets delivered us to our new destination in the sun. And the first thing we all did was tear off our heavy fur coats and drop them in a pile on the ground before us. Hats and gloves and everything else that reminded us of X37 followed as fast as we could rip them off, and when the pile was complete we all gave it a good kicking, just on general principles. And only then did we take the time to look around and see where we were.
We’d been dropped off in a neat little side street looking out over the docks of some major city. Ships everywhere: mostly navy, but some commercial, some tourist, and some fishing boats. American navy: big, impressive ships, longer than some roads, equipped with the very latest technology and the very biggest guns. Crew members swarmed over the huge decks like ants serving their queen. Not, therefore, a good place to be four strangers strolling around asking questions . . . I moved down to the end of the side street and looked out over blue-green waters without a trace of a swell under a pale blue sky with not a cloud to be seen. The sun was high in the sky, fat and
friendly and deliciously warm. Seagulls rode the thermals, their distant voices raucous and mocking.
“I’m back in contact with Langley,” Honey announced, one hand pressed to the side of her head. Though how that helped with a brain implant, I wouldn’t know. She frowned, almost wincing. “There’s a lot of shouting going on. Apparently they took it pretty damned personally when I fell off the edge of the planet and they couldn’t locate me anymore. They’ve had three different spy satellites tasked to do nothing but look for me ever since. They were concerned. Which I’d think was very sweet of them, if they’d just stop shouting at me . . . Ah; it seems we are currently in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.”
“How long have we been off their radar?” I said.
“Three days, seven hours,” said Honey. “I’m being asked a lot of questions.”
“Who cares,” said Peter. “I smell food!”
“What kind?” said Walker.
“I don’t care; I’m going to eat it.” Peter glared about him, sniffing the air like a bloodhound on a trail. He plunged forward into the main street, following his nose, and all we could do was hurry after him.
“I will admit to feeling a bit peckish myself,” said Walker, striding along with a military gait. “Are there any noted restaurants in Philadelphia?”
“Oh, bound to be,” I said cheerfully. “Sailors like their food. And booze, and tattoo parlours and—”
“Langley is demanding to know exactly where we were and what we’ve been doing,” said Honey, striding along beside me like a tall dark goddess in her blazing white jumpsuit. “They were under the impression there wasn’t anywhere they couldn’t follow me with their brand-new toys, the poor babies.”
“Don’t tell them anything,” Walker said immediately. “Not . . . just yet. There might come a time when we need confidential information to bargain with.”
“Why would I wish to bargain with my own superiors?” said Honey just a bit coldly.