“Why don’t we just kill him?” said Luther.
“You’ve been in LA too long,” I said sternly. “Watching too many cop shows. We’re supposed to be agents, not assassins. Otherwise there’d be no difference between us and the forces we fight. It’s enough that we protect Humanity; we don’t get to bully them. Besides, Doctor Delirium really is a scientific genius, when he can be bothered. We might just need his help some day. Right now he’s a menace, but one day he might be an asset. Droods have to take the long view. So, we spank him and send him home crying. Tell me more about this auction.”
“On the top floor, strictly private, cut off from the rest of the hotel,” said Luther. “One night only, before the hotel officially opens, very definitely By Invitation Only. Lots of armed guards in place, security people everywhere, trespassers will be disappeared. The auction’s being run by the Really Old Curiosity Shoppe people; long established firm, very good reputation. Of a kind. They specialise in acquiring rare and unusual items, with or without their owners’ permission, and then offering them up at their very private auctions for the delectation of interested (and extremely wealthy) parties. No questions, no provenance, and absolutely no guarantees or refunds. But, they can get you things no one else can, things from the Past, Present and Futures. Sometimes things no one ever really thought existed, and a few that just plain shouldn’t.”
“I’ve heard of the company,” I said. “Who runs things, these days?”
Luther shrugged. “No one knows, and the company likes it that way. I suppose it’s possible someone in our family knows, but if they do it’s way above my level.” He looked at me thoughtfully. “You used to run the family. And you’re still part of the Advisory Council. Are you sure you don’t know who these people are?”
It was my turn to shrug. “The family ˚ as a whole knows lots of things, but at any given time we all only know what we need to know.”
“Why are you just a field agent again?” Luther said bluntly.
“I prefer to maintain a comfortable distance from the family,” I said. “Running it will do that to you.”
Luther carefully refolded his map, put it away, produced an oversized colour brochure and handed it to me. “This is an advance copy of the auction catalogue.”
I studied it carefully. Very expensive, stiff laminated paper, lots of colour photographs; images so sharp they seemed to jump right off the page. Which was actually quite disturbing in places, given the nature of the images. No suggested prices, or values, though. Probably came under the heading of If you have to ask, you can’t afford it. I looked at Luther.
“How did you get hold of an advance copy? If they even suspect a Drood knows they’re here . . .”
Luther looked at me pityingly. “This is my territory. I know people, and people who know people.”
“Do any of these people know you’re a Drood?”
“Of course not. I’m Philip Harlowe. Whoever he is.”
I sniffed, and went back to studying the catalogue. Items up for grabs included a formula from thirteenth-century Venice to make your blood undrinkable by vampires; a spell from Old Moore’s grimoire to make ghosts corporeal so you could have sex with them; a wristwatch that could show you the exact time in fifty-two different universes, to make dimension-hopping more exact; a crystal alien skull that when properly provoked would provide you with mental images of all the worlds its owner had visited; and a Word tattooed on the framed and mounted skin of a murdered priest, that when spoken aloud would blow this world apart like a firecracker in a rotten apple. Allegedly.
There were photos of a Martian tripod (some assembly required). a hard-boiled Roc’s egg (double yolk), a Crystal Egg (see what the Curate saw), a Hellfire grenade, an Angel’s tears preserved in aspic, and Baphomet’s Engine of Destruction. Just looking at that last one made my eyes hurt. I handed the catalogue back to Luther.
“We need to take the Word back with us,” I said briskly. “Can’t have something like that running around loose. Besides, the Armourer always says I never bring him back anything fun.”
“I also have a list of some of the Big Names and Major Players who are supposed to be attending the auction,” said Luther.
I gave him another of my hard looks, though he seemed to be developing an immunity. “Any more useful information, or are you planning to keep on doling it out one bit at a time, in case I get overexcited?”
“No,” said Luther. “That’s it.”
He handed me the paper, and I ran my eyes quickly down the list of names. I then resisted the urge to whistle, or indeed curse loudly. A whole lot of Very Important Personages, Complete Bastards and not a few Powers and Dominions. Not one of them the kind of people even Droods like to cross without heavy weaponry and serious backup.
Jerusalem Stark, the Knight Apostate, heretic and blasphemer. Used to be one of the London Knights, until he had a crisis of faith. Now he carries his dead love’s heart in a silver cage on his belt, right next to the sword he used to kill the Man who would be King. Then there was Prince Gaylord the Damned, Nuncio to the Court of King Artur, of Sinister Albion. Aunt Sally Darque, current Witch of Endor, and banned from every coven and gathering in Europe after that nasty affair at the Danse Academy in the German Black Forest. Three Dukes of Hell, attending via the possessed; two living Saints (stigmata permitting); and a Name I didn’t even want to think out loud, in case He heard me.
“What the hell does Doctor Delirium think he’s doing, mixing with people like this?” I said. “He is not in their class. Nowhere near. He must know that. Hell, he won’t even get through the first round of bidding . . .”
“There’s no way we could hope to infiltrate the auction with so many Major Players around,” said Luther. “That’s why I thought we should get here early, find a nice hiding place, wait for Doctor Delirium to show up, and then put the grab on him before he even enters the hotel. That way he doesn’t even get within spitting distance of the Apocalypse Door. Whatever that might turn out to be.”
“Strike your enemy down from behind, when he’s not looking,” I said cheerfully. “That’s the Drood way. Though I think we’ll be better off hiding inside the hotel . . . That way we can sneak onto the top floor, grab the Word and the Apocalypse Door, and anything else worth acquiring, before we go home.”
“What if the auction people find out it was us?” Luther said carefully. “I have to live in this town, remember? And if they catch us actually burgling their items, there could be major firepower, curses for everyone, and blood and slaughter all over the shop.”
“Well, let’s not let that happen, then,” I said.
We both looked the Magnificat Hotel over very carefully. To the everyday eye, it looked like just another really ugly, tasteless expensive building. But Luther and I are Droods, and when we choose, we can See the world as it is, and not as most people think it is. We both concentrated, and the torcs around our throats extended long filaments of strange matter, that shot up the sides of our faces to form really quite stylish golden sunglasses over our eyes. And through these special lenses we Saw the Magnificat as it really was—in every awful detail.
Major security defences surrounded the hotel on every side, roiling and spitting on the air in tight little bundles of spite and malevolence. Force fields, magic screens, avoidance spells and Move along nothing to see here influences. Floating curses, proximity mindwipes, soul scramblers, and bottle demons lying buried under the hotel patio like so many red-eyed trap-door spiders. Screaming ghosts with terrible teeth and claws, just waiting to be unleashed, and a whole bunch of really nasty transformation spells just waiting to be activated. All kinds of nastiness, spreading out from the hotel in overlapping layers of appalling vileness. And up on the roof of the hotel . . .
“Oh bloody hell,” I said. “Luther, do you See what I See, up on the roof? Is that what I think it is? It is, isn’t it? They’ve only got a bloody dragon up there!”
“And not just any old dragon,” sa
id Luther, craning his head right back. “Not one of those stupid and extremely ugly beasts the elves ride around on. That . . . is one of the Great Old Beasts of England. That is the Lampton Wyrm.”
“You have got to be kidding,” I said. “Really? Who’d be crazy enough to dig that old horror up, and let it loose in the world? Is it tied down? Tell me it’s tied down! Tell you what, I’ll start running and you try and keep up.”
“Look at the rear left leg,” said Luther, entirely unperturbed. “See the nice glowing chain? That’s an elf binding. It’ll hold, for the duration of the auction. After that, well, they must have some plan in mind.”
“It’s times like these when I wish I’d paid more attention in class,” I said. “I know we covered Old Beasts, but I’m pretty sure there was a girls’ volleyball match going on outside the window that afternoon . . . The Lampton Wyrm was the one where if you cut it up, the pieces just joined back together again, right? How did they kill it, in the end?”
“They drowned it. Dug a great pit, filled it full of water, dragged the Wyrm into the pit and held it under till it drowned. Of course it didn’t stay dead, but they covered the pit over with a really heavy-duty seal, and locked it in place with really powerful magics. So the Wyrm just kept on waking up and drowning again, over and over, for centuries. Not that I feel in any way sorry for it; the Lampton Wyrm killed thousands of people before it was stopped.”
“I think we can safely say it isn’t in a ˚ very good mood, now it’s out,” I said. “I’m almost sure it’s looking right at us and I do wish it wouldn’t. How in hell are we supposed to deal with something like that?”
“Well, here’s my plan,” said Luther. “It’s up on the roof, so let’s not go up there. Let us not, in fact, go anywhere near the bloody thing.”
“Good plan,” I said. “I really like that plan. I want to marry that plan and have its babies.”
“You’re weird,” said Luther.
We looked some more at the Magnificat Hotel. The strange matter sunglasses allowed us to See all four sides at once, in as much detail as we needed. And more and more defences kept popping up, revealing themselves openly, as though defying us to do anything about them.
“There are dimensional gates attached to all the outer doors,” I said. “Preprogrammed to send you Somewhere Else if you open a door without the right passWord.”
“Standard operating procedure, when you’re running an auction half the unnatural world would love to gate-crash,” murmured Luther. “Crank your Sight up to full, and take a look inside the hotel.”
I concentrated, and the golden shades sent my Sight into overdrive. The outer façade of the Magnificat seemed to leap forward, filling my vision, and then I plunged through and in, looking around the deserted lobby. It was all very fine and luxurious, with no staff anywhere, and no security guards in sight. Presumably the auction people had a lot of faith in their outer defences. I would have. But there were no obvious guardians or booby traps, so I sent my Sight shooting up through the hotel, floor by floor. I spotted the odd group of security guards here and there, oblivious to my mental presence, all of them heavily armed but fairly relaxed. They weren’t expecting any real trouble until the auction was up and running. But the sheer number of guards increased steadily as my Sight ascended, until finally I reached the top floor, and the site of the auction.
The function rooms had all been opened up and combined into one great display area. There were people everywhere, moving back and forth, transporting objects, and getting everything in order. The security guards just stood at their stations and watched them do it. Because the guards were alive, and the auction people weren’t. They would probably have looked quite normal to the unaided eye, but Seen through my golden shades, they were quite definitely dead. Zombies. They hefted and carried, they set things in motion, they checked lights and items and cargo manifests, and not one of them had a soul. The did have quite colourful auras, which showed they were being remote-controlled by overseeing minds elsewhere. The Really Old Curiosity Shoppe people never appeared in public, even at their own auctions. All the staff, and even the auctioneer himself, would be dead men walking, remote-controlled from a safe distance through a series of cutouts, so none of the controllers could be identified or tracked down. And given that they were, when you got right down to it, just a bunch of thieves . . . it was basic common sense.
They only ever spoke through the mouths of the dead, so even their voices could never be identified.
“The security guards are all local boys,” Luther’s voice murmured in my ear. “Familiar faces, no one special. Guns and muscle, from off the rack. You can hire thousands just like these. Only here to place themselves between the more valuable items and any possibility of damage, even if the poor fools don’t know it. Hmmm. That’s odd. I can’t seem to See any of the auction items clearly. Can you?”
“No,” I said, after a moment. “Every time I concentrate on a specific item, it goes all blurry. Which means they’re hidden behind stealth screens. Really powerful screens, if our Sight can’t punch through. We can’t even be sure the Apocalypse Door is in place yet.”
“It’s there somewhere,” said Luther. “Or Doctor Delirium wouldn’t have committed himself to a personal appearance . . . Wait a minute. Hold everything. Something’s happening on the floor below.”
I pulled my Sight down a floor to match his, just in time to see Doctor Delirium and his troops appear through a dimensional door. It wasn’t much of a door, just a by the numbers rip in space and time, forced open through brute force and energy, but it succeeded where a more sophisticated gateway might not have. The Magnificat’s defences were targeted at a much better class of intruder. This attack was so basic it sneaked in under the radar. The Doctor hurried through, followed by twenty or thirty heavily armed and armoured men from his own special fighting force. You could always recognise members of Doctor Delirium’s private army, because he made them all wear his own special black and gold uniforms. They looked like escapees from a production of The Pirates of Penzance, if the costume lady had been on crack that week. Still, they established a perimeter and took up positions like they knew what they were doing, and they held their guns like they knew how to use them. A mercenary is still a mercenary, even if he is dressed like a dick.
The floor’s security guards were no problem. A nerve gas grenade had preceded Doctor Delirium through the dimensional door, and the guards went down almost immediately, without managing a single warning shot. Presumably the Doctor had protected his people against the gas in advance. The man was a genius with chemicals, when he could be bothered.
“This is why the Doctor wasn’t worried about being outbid on the Apocalypse Door,” said Luther. “The sneaky bastard’s come early, to grab it for himself. Why is he so keen on this item, Eddie? Getting the Really Old Curiosity Shoppe people mad at you is never a good idea, if you like having your organs on the inside. They have a bad temper, a long reach, and they bear grudges for generations. What is this Apocalypse Door, that Doctor Delirium’s ready to risk everything to get his hands on it?”
“The clue’s probably in the question,” I said. “I’m guessing the Door is a lot more Apocalyptic than we’ve given it credit for. And the Doctor wants it because . . . he’s not getting any younger. All his great plans have come to nothing, mostly thanks to us, and his name has become a joke. He’s a delusional scientific mastermind, but he gets no respect. He’s fed up being laughed at, he’s mad as hell and he’s not going to take it anymore.”
“Midlife crisis, in other words,” said Luther.
“Exactly. He has a scheme to rule the world, and all he needs to make it work is the Apocalypse Door.”
“A real scheme?” said Luther. “One that would actually work?”
“Yeah,” I said. “And if my arse had teeth it could play the banjo. A real plan? Come on, this is Doctor Delirium we’re talking about.”
“Even an idiot can get lucky, if he has a power
ful enough weapon,” said Luther.
“There is that,” I said. “Hello, there he goes, up the back stairs to the top floor, and the auction site. At least he’s got enough sense to let his troops lead the way . . .”
The black-and-gold-clad mercenaries moved silently up the back stairs, moving with calm and sinister grace. They’d clearly rehearsed this. One man went ahead holding up a Hand of Glory, its dark magics defusing the few security spells in the stairway. Another soldier shut down the electronic surveillance systems with a small localised EMP. The Doctor gave every indication of actually having thought things through. Either that, or he’d hired someone who knew what he was doing. I knew which way I’d bet. The Doctor’s troops reached the top of the stairwell, and the man in the lead started packing plastique against the closed door. Doctor Delirium really wanted his Door. And didn’t care who got hurt in the process.
I sighed heavily, and told my torc to ˚ pull back its extension. The golden sunglasses ran quickly down my cheek, and back into the torc. The world seemed very grey, and very empty, without the Sight. I looked at Luther.
“We’re going to have to get personally involved,” I said. “A hands-on practical intervention, with no holds barred. If the Apocalypse Door really is as powerful as the Doctor clearly believes it to be . . . he can’t be allowed to have it.”
“Unfortunately, I have to agree,” said Luther. “It’s time to armour up and smite the ungodly with vim and vigour. But Eddie, please, let’s try and keep the collateral damage down to a minimum. I have to live in this town.”
“You suit yourself,” I said. “Personally, I plan to beat the shit out of anyone that doesn’t run away fast enough, throw the Doctor and his troops back through their own dimensional door, grab the Apocalypse Door and then leg it for the nearest horizon.”