I concentrated, and my armour glowed and glared like an angry golden flame. Razor-sharp blades rose up out of my armoured arms and legs, thick spikes protruding from my knuckles. My featureless face mask became a savage demonic visage topped with curling horns. Strange exotic weapons burst out of my back on long golden streamers, covering the elves in their ranks, and rose up over my shoulders to threaten Queen Mab on her Ivory Throne. This was the battle form the Deathstalker had taught me to make from the malleable strange armour of my new torc. I didn’t have time to perfect it before the war with the Hungry Gods was over, but I’d spent a lot of time working on it since.
The elves stood very still. This was a new thing, and the elves have always been cautious of change. They don’t know how to react to new things.
“Meet the new boss, even more of a bastard than the old boss,” I said to Queen Mab, my voice amplified to a deafening roar, filling the whole vast chamber. Honey and the others actually flinched away from me, and Queen Mab sat back on her throne.
“You dare to threaten us, in our own court, in our own land?” she said, but she didn’t sound nearly as certain as she had before.
“Why not?” I said. “Who are you?”
“What are you?” whispered the Herald. “What have the Droods become?”
“Shamans,” I said. “Protectors of the tribes of man. Threaten humanity, and you threaten us. Threaten one of us, and the whole family stands ready to go to war. Is that what you want, Queen Mab? War in the Sundered Lands between all of your people and all of mine? To throw away your word and your honour and everything you’ve recovered here in a quest for torcs you couldn’t use and a world you couldn’t live in? Is that what you want?”
“No,” said Queen Mab, slowly and reluctantly. “But speak not to us of honour, Drood. Your family is corrupt, rotten from within, riddled with traitors. We have heard this even here.”
“We’re cleaning house,” I said. “And then let all the worlds tremble and all that lives beware.”
I allowed my armour to return to its usual smooth and gleaming human form, blades and spikes and weapons sinking smoothly back into the golden surface. My devil’s face had become a featureless mask again. Maintaining the battle form took a hell of a lot out of me, so much that I’d never been able to use it in training for more than a few minutes, but of course Queen Mab didn’t know that.
“We’re leaving now,” I said. “We’ve learned what we needed to know. Open the door for us, assist our departure, and then close the door and seal it shut behind us. My people will check, at regular intervals, to make sure it stays closed.”
“Why should we assist you in even the smallest of ways?” said Queen Mab. It was meant to be a threat, but it sounded more like the sullen, sulky tones of a disappointed child.
“Well, put it this way,” I said. “You wouldn’t want us to stick around and spoil the rest of your day, would you?”
“Go,” said Queen Mab.
We sailed the Hope Street back through the green mists, back through the gateway to our own world, and no one tried to stop us. We all cheered as the green mists fell away, dissipating rapidly to reveal a reassuringly normal river and sky. We all took great lungfuls of sharp fresh air, and laughed, and clapped each other on the back. Honey jumped up and down at the wheel, and then poured on the speed, putting as much space as possible between us and the gateway, just in case.
“I don’t believe it!” she said. “You stared down Queen Mab! You went eyeball to eyeball with the Queen Bitch Psycho herself, and she blinked first!”
“I have to say I’m impressed,” said Walker, reclining comfortably in his leather chair again. “To see elves back down, confronted by nothing more than words and nerve, is . . . unprecedented. Were you bluffing, Eddie?”
“I’ll never tell,” I said, letting the breeze flow soothingly over my unarmoured face. It felt good, natural . . . everything the Sundered Lands were not.
“But no, really; how did you get away with it?” said Honey.
I sighed, suddenly tired. “Because the elves . . . are not what they were. They’re finally getting old. Couldn’t you feel it? In the air, in the land, in the ships, and in the buildings? Time is finally catching up with them.”
“But they’re . . . if not immortal, then near as dammit,” said Walker.
“Did you see any children there?” I said. “Any signs of children? The elves are always proud of their rare offspring and never miss a chance to show them off. And we didn’t see a single child anywhere in the whole city. I can’t prove it, but I can feel it in my bones: the elves we saw today are all the elves there are now. I think they stopped breeding completely when they left our world. That’s why they’re so desperate to return. Because they’re dying out in their splendid sterile new land. And it’s a shame.”
“A shame?” said Honey, actually turning around from the steering wheel to look at me.
“Yes,” I said. “Because then . . . there would be one less wonder in the universe.”
Walker nodded slowly. “They are very beautiful. And you can’t have the rose without the thorns.” He stopped suddenly and looked around. “Where’s Peter?”
We searched the boat from stem to stern, but he wasn’t on it. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed it before, but Peter had not returned with the rest of us. We reconvened in the cabin and studied each other soberly as the Hope Street drew steadily closer to the Philadelphia docks.
“Did we leave him behind?” said Honey. “We couldn’t have left him behind in the Elven Lands! We would have noticed!”
“Would we?” I said. “When did you last see him? Did you see him get on board, before we left? I thought he was with us, but I had my mind on other things, like a last-minute attack from a spiteful Elven Queen.”
“Maybe Mab kept him,” said Walker. “As punishment for your insolence to her.” His mouth compressed, and he stood very straight.
“Turn this boat around. We have to go back. We can’t leave him there.”
“We can’t go back,” I said. “The elves sealed the doorway behind us, remember? That was the deal.”
“We don’t know he’s there,” said Honey. “He could have disappeared anywhere . . .”
“And he has his teleport bracelet,” I said. “He could just turn up at the next location.”
“If it still works in the Sundered Lands,” said Walker. “We have to go back! There are other ways, other entrances! We can’t leave him in their hands!”
“No!” I said with such force that both of them looked at me sharply. I made myself sound calm and reasonable. “If they’ve got Peter, and that’s if—we don’t know—they’ll be waiting for us. He’ll be the bait in a trap. We’d have to force our way in past strongly defended doorways, and that would take all the resources and most of the manpower of the Drood family. It would mean war between the Fae and the Droods, with the fate of all humanity hanging in the balance. I won’t risk that . . . on an if.”
“What else could have happened to Peter?” said Honey.
I looked at her steadily. “You could have killed him. Or Walker. While my attention was distracted. Stuck a knife between his ribs and tipped him over the side. In the thick green mists, no one would have seen or suspected anything.”
“How can you say that?” said Honey.
“Someone killed Katt and Blue,” I said. “And may have tried to kill Walker back in Tunguska. If he’s to be believed.”
“You could have killed the others,” said Walker. He sounded quite reasonable, not at all accusing. “You could have killed Peter. You’re a Drood. That’s what Droods do.”
“Any one of us could be the killer,” I said. “There can be only one to return for the prize, remember? And we all want that prize so very badly.”
For a long while, no one said anything. The Philadelphia docks were looming up before us. Walker stirred suddenly.
“What are we going to tell his grandfather?”
“
Alexander King set the rules for his precious game,” said Honey. “And he was the one who pushed his grandson into the game in the first place.”
“I shall miss Peter,” said Walker. “Or at any rate, I shall miss his exceedingly useful phone camera. I mean, without it, we have no direct proof of what happened to the USS Eldridge.”
“Then it’s just as well I had the foresight to pick Peter’s pocket on our way back to the boat,” I said, holding up the phone camera.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Blood and Horror
It all went bad so quickly.
We arrived at our last destination in a blaze of bright sunshine to the sound of happy laughter. We were standing in the middle of a crowded main street, surrounded by people strolling back and It forth, chatting pleasantly to each other and paying the three of us no attention at all. Which was . . . odd. The air was hot and dry, and the people passing by stirred up low clouds of dust from the sidewalks. But everyone seemed to be in a good mood and well under the influence of the holiday spirit. Walker and Honey and I waited for a while to see if Peter might teleport in to join us, but he didn’t.
“Very well,” Walker said finally. “Where are we this time?”
Honey indicated a large sign on the other side of the street, and we all studied it in silence. Underneath a bright and cheerful cartoon of a Gray alien leaning out the top of a flying saucer was the oversized greeting WELCOME TO ROSWELL! THE UFO TOWN!
“Oh, no,” said Walker.
“The first person to use phrases like Out of this world, or Far out! gets a severe slapping,” said Honey.
“Oh, come on,” I said. “This is it? Really? The climax and finale of the great game? Bloody Roswell? It’s a joke! There’s no mystery here, and never was; just a tall tale that got out of control. My family has been monitoring alien visitors to this world for hundreds of years; if anything had actually happened here, I’d know about it.”
“There must be something here worth investigating, or Alexander King wouldn’t have sent us,” said Honey just a bit doubtfully.
“Interesting,” murmured Walker. “We appeared here out of nowhere, right in the middle of a busy shopping centre, but so far no one has batted an eye. In fact, no one is paying us any attention at all, except to walk around us. So either this particular crowd has a lot on its mind, or . . .”
“Or what?” said Honey.
“Damned if I know,” said Walker. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say someone was running an avoidance field . . .”
“No one knew we were coming here,” said Honey.
“Alexander King knew,” I said. “Maybe he’s trying to help.”
“He never helped before,” said Walker. “What could there be in Roswell that the Independent Agent thought we might finally need assistance?”
“Roswell,” I said disgustedly. “When my family finds out I was here, they’ll laugh themselves sick.”
“I take it we all know the basis of the legend?” said Honey. “In 1947, just outside the small town of Roswell, New Mexico, a farmer found strange metallic objects scattered across his field. He couldn’t identify them, so he notified the authorities. On July 8, the local air force base informed the local newspaper that they were the remains of a crashed flying saucer. The local radio station wasted no time in spreading the news to an excited world . . . at which point the air force slammed on the brakes and went into reverse. Swore blind it was just the remains of a crashed weather balloon. End of story.”
“Except,” I said, not to be left out, “thirty years later, people started saying it was all a cover-up. The air force admitted the weather balloon stuff was a lie, but all the explanations they’ve come up with since have proved equally flawed. All of which had probably nothing to do with flying saucers and a hell of a lot more to do with the fact that the 509th Bomb Group was stationed just outside Roswell: the only bombing command authorised to carry nuclear bombs at that time. Hardly surprising they didn’t want the world’s attention anywhere near them. Especially if they were carrying out missions the public weren’t supposed to know about.”
“It is interesting how the legend has continued to change and mutate down the years,” said Walker. “Everything from crashed UFOs with alien bodies scattered all over the mesa, to alien autopsy films, to a really screwed-up First Contact. The last version I heard talked about was the direct downloading of an alien consciousness from a higher dimension. Absurd.”
“Oh, sure,” I said. “Utterly absurd.”
“I saw that alien autopsy film,” said Honey. “Never saw anything so obviously fake-looking in my life.”
“Right,” I said. “Alien autopsies don’t look anything like that.”
Walker and Honey looked at me for a long moment.
“Moving on,” said Walker, turning to Honey. “You’d know, if anyone, what’s going on here, so . . . What’s going on here?”
“Not a damned thing, as far as I know,” said Honey. “Though admittedly, if anything really important was under way here, it would all be discussed on a much higher level than I have access to. I know what I need to know, but I don’t need to know everything. On the other hand . . . you’re right, Eddie. People like us . . . If there was anything to the legend, we’d have heard something . . .”
“So why are we here?” I said. “What mystery are we supposed to investigate?”
“Beats the hell out of me,” said Honey.
“Why don’t you use that frankly rather disturbing computer implant in your head and phone home?” said Walker. “Ask your higher echelons at Langley if anything of interest has happened here recently.”
Honey’s face went blank for a moment, and then she scowled heavily. “The signal’s jammed. Again . . . I can’t get through. Eddie?”
I reached out to my family through my torc . . . and there was nobody there.
“You too?” said Honey. “Cut off again? That shouldn’t be possible.”
“Can’t be a coincidence,” I said. “Someone here doesn’t want us talking with anyone outside Roswell. Someone . . . or something.”
“Maybe something’s due to happen here,” said Honey. “Something important or significant, and somebody doesn’t want to risk us calling in reinforcements.”
“The nearest Drood field agent is in Texas,” I said. “Do your people have anyone useful any closer than that?”
“Not that I know of. Besides, this would be FBI business, and the Company has never got on well with the Bureau.”
“Why don’t you try Peter’s mobile phone?” Walker said reasonably. “See if it’s just the two of you who’ve been jammed, or whether it’s more general.”
I tried Peter’s phone. Couldn’t get a signal. We walked down the street till we found a public pay phone and tried that. Nothing but dead air; not even a hiss of static. I put the phone back, and we looked at one another.
“I would be willing to wager good money that the whole town is like this,” said Walker. “Someone (or something; yes, Eddie) has gone to great lengths to isolate Roswell from the outside world. So why hasn’t anyone else here noticed? Why has no one raised a fuss?”
“Look around you,” said Honey. “Roswell is a tourist town. Most of these people are tourists. Probably haven’t a clue anything unusual is going on.”
“And the local people?” said Walker.
“That’s what makes this interesting,” I said. “They might be keeping quiet so as not to scare off the tourists, or . . . Actually, I don’t have an or. Something’s definitely happening here, and we need to investigate.”
“I don’t know . . .” Honey looked around her, her face cold and thoughtful. “What if all of this . . . is just a distraction? The Independent Agent sent us here to solve the mystery of Roswell. We go back without that specific information, we could forfeit the prize. And I have come too far, and been through too much, to miss out on that now.”
“She has a point,” Walker said to me reluctantly. “We’re here for a
specific purpose, and nothing can be allowed to interfere with that. Alexander King’s hoarded secrets are of vital importance to the world. They must not be allowed to fall into the wrong hands.”
“He chose the time and place of our arrival,” I said. “So what’s happening here, or about to happen, must be significant.” And then I stopped dead as I suddenly made a connection. “They’re all significant! All five locations we’ve been to! Remember the photos and trophies we saw back at Place Gloria? All scenes of the Independent Agent’s most important cases? We’ve been following in his footprints all along! He’s been here before us!”
Honey and Walker both nodded quickly. “So,” said Walker, “are we reliving his past triumphs? Or making up for his greatest failures? Is that the point of the game? That only the agent who could get to the truth where he failed would be worthy to replace him and have access to his treasure?”
“Let’s take a look around,” said Honey. “Get the lay of the land. See what’s really going on here.”
“Okay,” I said. “Hey! Let’s follow that gaudily painted minivan with the four kids and the oversized dog. They look like they’d know a mystery when they saw it.”
“You really do get on my tits sometimes, Eddie,” said Honey.
Roswell, not surprisingly, was something of a tourist trap. Far too many of the shops and stores we passed were dedicated to off loading overpriced UFO junk on gullible tourists, all of it linked to one or the other of the many prevailing Roswell myths. And the happy families swarming through the packed streets ate it all up with spoons. One man sold three-foot-tall balloons shaped like cartoonish Gray aliens. A man and a woman in Reptiloid costumes handed out leaflets headed Impeach David Icke! Plugging their new book, apparently. A towering statue of a Gray alien bestowed a fatuous smile on passersby and blessed them with a peace sign. (Boy, had they got that one wrong. I wouldn’t turn my back on a Gray unless I had my armour on.) Someone had graffitied the base of the statue, ET was a fink!