Live and Let Drood: A Secret Histories Novel

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

  I stopped and looked about me in frustration. “This would have broken Uncle Jack’s heart,” I said finally. “To see his precious Armoury stripped bare…”

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

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know what to think anymore. Hello. What’s this?”

  I knelt down beside a workstation. Something had caught my eye, but I wasn’t sure what. It turned out to be a small black blob on the floor. Molly crouched down beside me, looked at the blob and then looked at me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Tell me you heard that, too.”

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

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

  “Result! This is more like it, Eddie!”

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

  Molly sniffed airily but wasted no time in pressing the Glass into my hands. I accepted it cautiously and looked it over. The Glass had been created for the Drood family by Merlin Satanspawn, way back in the day, and it had many useful properties. But it had been very badly damaged during the Drood assault on the Immortals at Castle Shreck, to the point where it didn’t work at all anymore. The reflective surface had been cracked from side to side, and given that a whole lot of people thought there might be something or even someone trapped within the reflection, I made a point of handing the damaged mirror over to the Armourer first chance I got, with strict instructions to drop it somewhere secure, like a black hole, if he couldn’t mend the thing and make it safe to use. Frankly, I’d never expected to see the thing again.

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

  “I didn’t know the Merlin Glass could speak,” Molly said doubtfully. “Let alone call out to you.”

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

  “You said the mirror was cracked. Now it isn’t. Could it have repaired itself?”

  “Who knows?” I said. “I don’t think anyone in the family knows for sure anymore why Merlin gave the Glass to us in the first place. Or what it was supposed to do. I never did get around to reading all the instructions Uncle Jack wrote out for me. I have to say…I don’t think the Armourer did this. I mean, he’s good, yes, but he’s no Merlin Satanspawn.”

  I hefted the hand mirror thoughtfully, turning it back and forth and checking every detail. Something about it didn’t look right, didn’t feel right. I’d held it often enough, used it often enough, to know that the weight and heft of it in my hand now was subtly, unnervingly different. Wrong. I said as much to Molly.

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

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

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

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

  “The design has changed,” I said. “But I couldn’t tell you how.”

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

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

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

  Molly looked at me sharply. “You don’t really think the enemy could have got into that. Do you?”

  “I don’t know what to think anymore,” I said. “But given that we are talking about weapons so powerful my family locked them away, only to be used when reality itself is under threat…”

  “We should take a look,” said Molly.

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

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

  “I don’t have the key.”

  “Who needs a key when you have me?”

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

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

  “The Jaws are still firmly closed. No one’s even tried to open them. And if you could See the layers upon layers of protections laid down on this thing, you wouldn’t try to open it, either. This is some seriously strong shit, Eddie. If the enemy had tried to force their way in, or even just meddle with the seals, all that would be left of them would be a series of greasy stains on the floor here.”

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

  “Yes, but we can’t get to them, either!” said Molly. “The weapons of the Codex are lost forever! No more Oath Breaker, Winter’s Sorrow, the Time Hammer and the Juggernaut Jumpsuit! The most powerful weapons in the world…Just think what we could have done with them!”

  “Exactly,” I said. “The mood I’m in, I couldn’t be trusted with them. I would blow the world apart, if that was the only way of taking my enemy down. No. It’s better this way. With the Armourer…gone, no one can get to them. I think the world will be just that little bit safer, with the Armageddon Codex locked away forever. It’s enough…that our enemies don’t have them.”

  Molly pouted. “You’re just no fun sometimes.…”

  I patted the Lion’s Jaws fondly with one hand, and then a sudden blast of energy threw me backwards. Molly caught me before I could fall, while a great Voice said Eddie! Eddie! Eddie! Molly moved quickly to stand between me and the Lion’s Jaws, shielding me with her body, her hands surrounded by flaring energies. And then she stopped and lowered her sputtering hands, as a vision appeared before us. A middle-aged man in a white lab coat, looking seriously at both of us. A message from out of the Past. I could tell at once that it was just a recording; the vision was dim, fading in and out and ragged round the edges…but when it spoke, the Voice was perfectly clear. By touching the Lion’s Jaws with a Drood hand, I’d triggered a hidden message from the Armourer. My heart actually leapt for a moment at the thought that finally someone was going to tell me what had happened here. And then I looked again, at the man in the lab coat, and I realised it wasn’t going to be that simple.

  The man before me was clearly the Armourer, but it wasn’t my uncle Jack. It was my uncle James.

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

  He looked a very different man as the Armourer. His lab coat was impeccably white and clean, which was more than Uncle Jack had ever managed, but James looked tired and stooped. He looked…older. More weighed down by long service and hard grind and responsibilities he could never trust to anyone else. His hair, which had always been proudly jet-black for as long as I had known him, was mostly grey now. His eyes were deep set, and heavy lines had been driven deep into his face. This Uncle James had known hard times, and it showed. He seemed to look straight at me as he spoke, and his manner was harsh and strained, as though he knew he didn’t have much time left.

  “Eddie, you’re here at last. About time, boy. I’m leaving this message for you because…there’s no one else. Listen to me, Eddie, for once in your life. We have been betrayed by one of our own. The Hall’s defences are down, the Hall is under siege and the family is under attack. Our ancient enemies have finally brought us down. Avenge us! The Immortals can’t be allowed to get away with this!”

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

  “The Matriarch Penelope is dead, along with her husband, Nicholas. Jack is out there somewhere, organising what defences we have left. He always was the best field agent this family ever produced. I’ve sent my lab assistants out to back him up, armed with whatever we had lying around, but the odds are I’ll never see them or Jack again. They took our armour away from us, Eddie. Sabotaged us from within. I can’t even activate the self-destruct systems for the Armoury. I’ve destroyed the key to the Lion’s Jaws; I can do that much. At least now they’ll never get their hands on the Forbidden Weapons. But they’ll probably get everything else.”

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

  The image disappeared abruptly, and a cold deathly silence fell across the Armoury. Tears burnt my eyes. He wasn’t my uncle James, but he was close enough. His words tore at my heart. Why wasn’t I there when they needed me? I realised Molly was all but jumping up and down at my side, and turned to look at her.

  “What?”

  “Don’t you get it, Eddie? This wasn’t your family! This isn’t your Hall! This is some other Drood Hall, from some other dimension! And that means your family and your Hall are Somewhere Else, probably s
afe and alive!”

  “I had worked that out for myself,” I said. “So many of the details in what he said were wrong.…No wonder the entrance to the Armoury wasn’t where it should have been.”

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

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

  “I didn’t know them,” said Molly, practical as ever. “Concentrate on what matters, Eddie!”

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

  Molly shook her head in exasperation. “Sometimes I really don’t understand you, Eddie. All this time we’ve been grieving, under the belief that everyone you knew was dead. Now you find out they’re still alive.…Don’t you feel anything?”

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

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

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