Daemons Are Forever

  The watching Droods nodded, and murmured quietly to each other, hefting their weapons. Mr. Stab was still looking down at the plain, apparently unmoved by what he’d heard. But I liked Harry rather better, for hearing what he’d been through. And I even liked Roger Morningstar a little more, when he put an arm around Harry’s silver shoulders, to comfort him.

  “So,” said Mr. Stab, still not looking around. “The infected humans are drones. And that thing down there is . . . ?”

  “A nest,” I said. “And we’re the exterminators.”

  “Splendid,” said Mr. Stab. “When do we start?”

  Janissary Jane split us up into the arranged squads, with designated team leaders. Every group had some torced Droods, to lead the charge and, hopefully, soak up some of the initial punishment. She gave us a brief refresher talk on tactics, which basically boiled down to Don’t bunch up. Don’t get separated. Kill everything down there that isn’t us and Destroy that thing they’re building before they can get it working. There were no last-minute questions, no discussions or dropouts. We were all ready for action. Molly called up the spell she’d been working on since we got there, and a great wind arose, picked us all up surprisingly gently, and carried us down the side of the cliff to deposit us safely on the Nazca Plain.

  We all started running the moment we hit the ground, heading straight for the towering structure before us. The drones saw us coming and dropped everything to run straight at us, blocking the way with their bodies. Noises came from their distorted mouths, but there was nothing human in the sound. Some had improvised weapons, most just had bare hands, with fingers curled like claws. There was no emotion in their faces, or no emotion we could read, and they bared their teeth like animals. They weren’t even trying to pretend at being human anymore. They saw the armoured forms leading the charge and knew we were Droods.

  More of them came running, from every direction. Men, women, children, even some animals. The Loathly Ones aren’t fussy about what they possess. It’s all flesh to them. But even as our first squads slammed into the first wave of drones, even more came swarming out of the single opening at the base of the towering structure. More and more and more of them, far more than the structure should have been able to contain. Instead of the hundreds of drones we’d been expecting, suddenly there were thousands of them. Maybe hundreds of thousands . . . and still more and more came running and howling out onto the plain from the single opening.

  The fighting had barely begun, and already we were hopelessly outnumbered. But I couldn’t call for a retreat. I’d committed us to this assault. We had to go on, and we had to win, before the Loathly Ones could open their gateway. Our two forces tore into each other, silver fists beating down inhuman faces, but already a terrible sense of hopeless-ness was seeping through me.

  There were just so many of them . . .

  The drones hit us hard, all of them supernaturally strong from the alien energies burning within their stolen, dead, or dying bodies. They threw themselves upon the first torced Droods, trying to bowl them over through sheer force of numbers. When that didn’t work, they clung on to silver arms, clasped silver legs, trying to force them off balance and drag them down. The armoured Droods stood firm, striking about them with their silver fists. Human skulls smashed and splintered under the terrible force of these blows, necks snapped, and heads were torn right off bodies. The armoured Droods broke backs and arms and legs, smashed in chests, and stamped on heads. Blood and guts flew on the air, and ran in streams down gleaming silver armour. Dozens of drones died in the first few moments of the battle, but the sheer mass of numbers soaked up the momentum of our charge, and all too soon we were stopped dead in our tracks. Killing and killing, but making no progress.

  The Droods without armour opened up with the weapons the Armourer had provided. Heavy-duty hand cannon, grenade launchers, and even pointing bones and curse throwers. The drones fell in ranks as the guns raked back and forth, mowing them down, but there were always more drones, pressing forward, forcing their way past the beleaguered armoured Droods. We hit the drones with everything we had, and it wasn’t enough. They didn’t care about the damage they took. They felt no pain or fear or horror. A hundred could die, if it meant one would get through to kill.

  All our plans and tactics disappeared, replaced by a brute struggle to survive. The squads were overrun or forced apart, and it was everyone for themselves. Most of the unarmoured Droods were dragged down and slaughtered in the first few minutes, overwhelmed by the sheer numbers, by drones who ran uncaring into the face of their weapons. Droods died screaming under flailing fists, hands like claws, and stabbing, clubbing weapons. I could hear them all around me, their human screams mixed in with the inhuman howling of the drones.

  And then, impossibly, even the armoured Droods began to fall, as the drones brought strange and unnatural weapons out of the towering structure. Some armoured Droods just disappeared, teleported God knew where whenever one drone pointed a shimmering piece of tech at them. Some Droods fell victim to howling energy blades that ghosted right through the silver armour to cut up the flesh inside. And one corpse with radiation burns and glowing eyes stamped through the chaos, somehow unsaying the Words that activated the armour, so that it just disappeared back into the collar, leaving the owner dazed and helpless and vulnerable.

  Mr. Stab appeared out of nowhere and cut that drone’s throat with a long shining scalpel.

  I ended up fighting side by side, and then back to back, with Molly Metcalf. Drones came at us from every direction, sometimes with weapons and sometimes without. I fired my Colt Repeater again and again, picking off drone after drone with my gun that never missed and never ran out of bullets, but soon they were too close, vaulting over the bodies of the fallen to get at me. I put the gun away, grew silver spikes on my gleaming fists, and waded into them with all the terrible strength and speed my armour gave me. I struck them down, and they fell broken and bloody before me. I ripped the faces from their heads, smashed their skulls, broke their bones, and stamped them underfoot when they fell. I picked them up and used them as living flails with which to beat the enemy. Blood and gore streamed down my gleaming armour, unable to find a hold. I stamped and spun, striking out with impossible speed. I formed my silver hands into cutting blades and thrust and hacked, butchering everything that came within reach. And still there seemed no end to them.

  They beat at me with their hands, and their weapons, and none of them could touch me. But the drones with the terrible weapons were drawing slowly, inexorably, closer.

  Molly was hitting them with every offensive magic she knew, chanting and cursing at the top of her voice. Drones were transformed into helpless things, and trampled underfoot. Sometimes their shapes just collapsed, and then ran away like muddy water. She called down lightning bolts from the sky, called up fire from sudden cracks in the hard ground, called storm winds to blow them away. Strange forces crackled on the air before her, incinerating anything that came too close. But her voice was cracking from the strain, and I knew she wouldn’t be able to keep this up for long. Magic takes its toll, and even her hoarded energies wouldn’t last long at this rate.

  I looked around during a brief lull in the fighting. I could hear Molly coughing and hacking painfully behind me. All my unarmored Droods were down, dead. Slaughtered, for all their fine training. About a dozen armoured Droods were still fighting, striding slowly through the chaos, striking down their enemies. Islands in a sea of death. Janissary Jane had been right all along. I didn’t need warriors. I needed an army.

  Mr. Stab strode elegantly through the madness, no blood staining his fine clothes. He cut and slashed with almost inhuman grace and precision, killing everything that came within reach, and none of the drones could touch him. He was protected by forces far worse than theirs. He stalked the battlefield like a harsh Victorian god of war, smiling a terrible, happy smile, completely at home in Hell.

  Roger Morningstar fought side by side with an armour
ed form I could only assume was Harry. Fierce flames burned all around them, consuming every drone they touched. Roger was smiling too. Harry fought well, with short, controlled, brutal movements, striking down the drones with almost clinical precision. Like it was just a job he happened to be extremely good at.

  And Janissary Jane cut a bloody path through the roiling crowds with her infamous old sword, unstoppable in her cold and terrible fury. The greatest demon killer who ever lived.

  She fought her way over to join Molly and me. I was wringing with sweat inside my armour, exhausted and running on fumes. My arms ached from so much effort, and my back was killing me. The armour can perform wonders, but I have to work it. And yet still I fought on, determined not to fall for as long as Molly needed me. Reduced to that, and no more. Janissary Jane yelled into my silver mask.

  “It’s the tower!” she shouted over the roar of battle. “Something’s happening! I can feel it! I think the gateway’s opening!”

  I clubbed down the nearest drones and turned to look. She was right. I could feel it too. A great light was shining out of the single opening, and more sprang from a hundred openings in the jagged sides of the huge structure. The air distorted and rippled all around it, and it was nothing to do with heat haze. I could sense if not see the gateway opening behind the tower, a great and growing circle, like a black sun . . . and on the other side of that opening . . . Something unbearably huge and awful and terribly aware. Pressing inexorably against the weakening barrier that was the only thing keeping it out of our small and terribly vulnerable world. Something so big I couldn’t even grasp the shape or nature of it. Like God walking angry in the world . . .

  Whatever the Loathly Ones had summoned, it was here, waiting for the gateway to fully open, and then it would come through and do horrible, unspeakable things to us. Just because it could.

  Something far worse than the Loathly Ones could ever hope to be.

  I looked quickly around me. I counted ten armoured Droods still standing. I called to them through the armour.

  “Get to the base of the structure! Everyone grab a part of it and bring the bloody thing down!”

  I turned to Molly. She was swaying on her feet, blood running from her nose and mouth, and even leaving bloody tear tracks on her cheeks. Her body was breaking down under the strains she was putting on it, to channel her desperate magics. She looked at me, trying to work her mouth, but her eyes were vague. I yelled her name, grabbed her shoulder with my silver hand, and squeezed till she winced. Comprehension came back into her face.

  “We have to get to the base of the structure, quickly! Molly! Can you clear us a path?”

  “I’m tired, Eddie. So tired . . .”

  “Can you do it?”

  She glared at me. “Yes! Yes, I can do it! I’m Molly Metcalf, dammit. But you’d better be right about this, Eddie . . .”

  She thrust one arm in the direction of the towering structure, and just like that every drone between us and it exploded into bloody gob-bets. I made a mental note never to get Molly really mad at me, grabbed her arm, and we ran for the tower down the narrow aisle she’d opened. Aisles had opened up between all the other armoured Droods and the tower, and they were running too. We raced across the cracked stone ground, while the drones recovered their senses and ran to fill the gaps. We smashed them out of the way, knocked them over, and ran them down, racing for the tower. We all got to the base of the huge structure, and I yelled for all the armoured Droods to grab onto anything that looked substantial or load-bearing. Molly and Janissary Jane, Mr. Stab and Roger Morningstar worked hard to keep the drones back, as we all took hold of the tower and ripped its underpinnings out.

  For a long moment nothing happened. The tower was huge, and there were only eleven of us . . . but we were Droods, and we had the incredible strength of the armour on our side. We ripped the support right out from under the tower, and brought the bloody thing down.

  It roared and screamed like a living thing, and explosions ran through its shape like a string of firecrackers. New lights shone from a thousand new openings, while cracks ran up and down the exterior. Shudders ran through the whole height and width of it, and pieces started falling away. It swayed upon its crippled base, and then, slowly, the whole great length of it nodded forward and fell, stretching out across the great stone plain. Slamming down like the hand of God.

  The gateway closed. Gone, just like that, and with it all traces of the terrible thing on the other side. The tower almost leisurely measured its length along the plain, and shattered into a million pieces as it hit. Most of the drones were crushed underneath it, and the few who survived turned and ran in a hundred directions. I let them go. I was busy hanging onto Molly, who was protecting us all with a simple force field, using the last of her strength.

  When it was finally over, only fifteen of us were left standing. Molly clung on to me, trembling in every limb, and I held her to me, only our shared strength keeping us on our feet. Roger Morningstar was holding Harry. Janissary Jane was on the radio to Callan and his people, left behind on the cliff, yelling for him to bring down transport for us. We had to gather up our fallen and get them out of here before the authorities arrived. The nine Droods dropped their armour; they all looked dazed and shell-shocked. Mr. Stab stared around him at the massed heaps of the dead, and smiled.

  Harry let go of Roger and limped over to confront me. Behind the impassive silver mask, his voice was cold and harsh.

  “We stopped the gateway opening. We brought down the tower and killed most of the Loathly Ones. But was it worth it, Eddie? Look at how few of us are left! Everyone else is dead! This was a debacle, a disaster. We’ve never lost this many family in a single operation in the whole history of our family! All so you could play the hero, one more time. When we get back, I’ll make sure everyone knows this was all your fault!”

  “Of course you will, Harry,” I said tiredly. “That’s what you do. Go running to the Matriarch, like the good little toady you are. See what good it does you.”

  “If you hadn’t taken away everyone’s torcs, most of those people would still be alive!”

  “Yes. You’re probably right there.”

  “You should have given everyone new torcs. Not just the ones you trusted to support you.”

  I didn’t say anything. What could I say? He was right.

  Harry turned his back on me and walked away. Molly finally let go of me and pulled something out of a hidden pocket.

  “I found this, in the wreckage of the tower. It’s so full of potential magic, it all but shouted at me. You recognise it?”

  I turned it over and over slowly in my hands. It was an amulet of some kind, deeply etched with Kandarian symbols. I could only translate one word.

  “Invaders,” I said.

  “Wonderful,” said Molly. “The Martians are coming.”

  “No,” I said, too tired even to smile. “I’m pretty sure this was part of the summoning spell. An invocation, to bring through . . . whatever that was we stopped. Except . . . this is very definitely plural. Invaders . . . Not just one.”

  “I may puke,” said Molly. “All we went through, just to stop one . . . what?”

  “Something from Outside,” I said. “An invasion force, of something far worse than soul-eaters. Move over. I think I want to puke too.”

  “Invaders,” said Molly. “Called by the Loathly Ones. Does that mean . . . more nests, more towers, somewhere else in the world?”

  “Almost certainly,” I said. “Maybe in every country in the world. This was just the beginning.”

  “God, you can be a real pain in the arse sometimes,” said Molly.

  “Comes with the job,” I said. “Let’s go home.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Family Matters

  We came home in the Blackhawkes. Those wonderful, sleek, and silent planes. Nothing wrong with them. Completely untouched. But they seemed so terribly empty, carrying just the few of us home. With only eleven torce
d Droods left, we had to spread ourselves out across the planes, so we could fly undetected through foreign airspaces, above a world that didn’t even know what we’d saved it from. None of the other Droods would even look at me as we climbed aboard our separate planes. Molly sat beside me all the way back, holding my hand, talking softly to me, but I couldn’t tell you a single thing she said. All I could think of . . . was what we were carrying in the cargo holds of the planes. All the dead Droods.

  The news went ahead of us. Bad news always does. When the Blackhawkes finally touched down on the landing field behind the Hall, it seemed like the whole family had come out to watch. And when I and the terribly few survivors of my first disastrous mission descended from the planes, we did so to utter silence. To ranks of shocked faces and condemning eyes. I could have fobbed them off, told them there’d be an official statement later. Could have walked right through them and gone inside. But I didn’t. I stood and waited with everyone else, as the bodies were unloaded from the cargo holds.

  We hadn’t been able to recover them all. Most of the bodies on the plain were either crushed into pulp by the falling tower, or so messed up from the fighting we couldn’t tell who was who, or what was what. Some had been reduced to just bits and pieces. So we just brought back the heads. We spent hours under the hot sun, digging through the wreckage and sorting through the carnage, the blood and the offal, and the stench, but in the end we brought less than half of the family home. The watching crowd made soft, shocked noises as the first bodies appeared. They’d never seen so many dead Droods before. No one had. Such a tragedy, such a loss of life in one operation, was unprecedented. Some people cried out at the sight of familiar faces, broken and disfigured and smeared with dried blood. Some people made to rush forward, but the Sarjeant-at-Arms was there with his people, to keep order. Family dignity must be maintained at all times.