Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
CHAPTER ONE - The Prisoner
CHAPTER TWO - No Place Like Home
CHAPTER THREE - Hell Hath Fury
CHAPTER FOUR - Too Many Secrets for One Family
CHAPTER FIVE - Weapons of Mass Distraction
CHAPTER SIX - Who’s Been Sleeping in My Bed?
CHAPTER SEVEN - The One True Thing
CHAPTER EIGHT - Getting Down with the Damned
CHAPTER NINE - For a Moment There, I Thought We Might Be in Trouble
CHAPTER TEN - The Things We Do for Revenge
CHAPTER ELEVEN - What We Do in Heaven’s Gaze
CHAPTER TWELVE - All That Remains
Teaser chapter
ALSO BY SIMON R. GREEN
THE SECRET HISTORIES NOVELS
The Man with the Golden Torc
Daemons Are Forever
The Spy Who Haunted Me
From Hell with Love
THE DEATHSTALKER SERIES
Twilight of the Empire
Deathstalker
Deathstalker Rebellion
Deathstalker War
Deathstalker Honor
Deathstalker Destiny
Deathstalker Legacy
Deathstalker Return
Deathstalker Coda
THE ADVENTURES OF HAWK & FISHER
Swords of Haven
Guards of Haven
OTHER NOVELS
Blue Moon Rising
Beyond the Blue Moon
Blood and Honor
Down Among the Dead Men
Shadows Fall
Drinking Midnight Wine
ACE BOOKS
THE NIGHTSIDE SERIES
Something from the Nightside
Agents of Light and Darkness
Nightingale’s Lament
Hex and the City
Paths Not Taken
Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth
Hell to Pay
The Unnatural Inquirer
Just Another Judgement Day
The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny
A Hard Day’s Night
GHOST FINDERS NOVELS
Ghost of a Chance
ROC
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First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library,
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First Printing, June 2011
Copyright © Simon R. Green, 2011
All rights reserved
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:
Green, Simon R., 1955 –
For heaven’s eyes only: a secret histories novel/Simon R. Green. p. cm.—(Secret histories; bk. 5)
eISBN : 978-1-101-51547-1
1. Drood, Eddie (Fictitious character)—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6107.R44F67 2011
823’.92—dc22 2011003174
Set in ITC New Baskerville
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CHAPTER ONE
The Prisoner
It was half past November, but I couldn’t sleep.
I wasn’t sure how long I’d been sleeping, but it felt like a long time. As though I’d been hibernating through the winter, wrapped up safe and warm, sleeping soundly and deeply through the dark and the cold. But something wouldn’t let me rest and so here I was, up and about, walking down a long, empty corridor in a silent, empty house.
There was no transition: One moment I was fast asleep; the next I was wandering aimlessly down a cosy-looking corridor with rich carpeting, wood-panelled walls, and great wide windows. I sort of recognised where I was, but I couldn’t put a name to it. Couldn’t even put a name to myself. I had no idea who I was, but strangely it didn’t seem to bother me. I had no memories and no plans. No needs, no worries. Just me walking in an empty place. The setting was familiar, and a slow curiosity led me to study the painted portraits hanging on the walls I passed. The faces were familiar, too, but I couldn’t put a name to any of them. They seemed friendly, supportive, like . . . family. I couldn’t decide whether I felt vaguely comfortable in the silent and empty setting, or obscurely threatened. Or both.
Who was I? What was my name? I stopped and concentrated, scowling till my forehead ached, and eventually something came to me. Drood . . . What was that? Was it even a name? What the hell was a Drood when it was at home? I started forward again, and soon came to the end of the corridor. I turned right, and another long corridor stretched before me. I kept walking. It was something to do while I tried to get my thoughts in order. Was this whole place empty except for me? A standing suit of medieval armour loomed up before me, and, moved by some obscure impulse, I stopped before it. The solid steel was well polished, but it bore all the dents and scrapes and hard knocks of a long working life. Someone had worn this armour in the past, used the gleaming sword and shield that stood propped up beside it, in some long-forgotten conflict. I frowned again. The suit of armour . . . meant something to me. Something special. I leaned in to study it more closely, and only then realised that the whole suit was covered in thick whorls of hoarfrost. I reached out to touch the heavy steel breastplate with a single fingertip, but I couldn’t feel the metal or the ice.
I stepped back and looked around me. The floor, the walls and the ceiling were all covered with layers of frost and crusted ice. Even the huge windows were coated with heavy, fern-patterned hoarfrost. So why didn’t I feel cold? I looked down at myself. I wa
s wearing a plain white T-shirt and generic blue jeans. My arms were bare, but I didn’t even have gooseflesh from the cold. I moved over to the nearest window and rubbed away the frost with my bare forearm. I didn’t feel a thing. I looked out the window, and winter was everywhere. For as far as I could see, great sweeping waves of snow covered the grounds, smooth and untouched by any mark of man or beast. A great billowing ocean of white, stretching off for as far as I could see. No snow fell, though a light grey mist curled and heaved around the base of the house.
Here and there in the rising and falling of the snow were distinct shapes that might have been snow sculptures. Winged horses, gryphons, and a really massive dragon. Very detailed, but utterly still. Scattered across the snowscape like watchful guardians. There was a massive hedge maze, too, all its complicated runs and turns one big pattern when seen from above. White lines and dark shadows. And then I saw something moving inside the maze, something that raged up and down the narrow ways, striking out at the snowy hedgerows with savage strength. It swept this way and that, moving too quickly for me to identify, except to know for a fact that it wasn’t in any way human. There was something bad, something wrong, something horribly monstrous about it, but even as it struck out at the endless white hedgerows around it, it wasn’t able to damage or disturb them. For all its obvious strength and power, it was clearly trapped inside the maze. I watched it prowl up and down and back and forth, never stopping, never able to find an exit. I wondered what it was, and why I was so scared of what would happen if it should ever find a way out.
I looked up at the open sky. A huge moon, full and blue, hung alone in a dark, dark sky with no stars. No stars at all. I backed away from the window, and the blue moonlight fell through the glass, illuminating some of the corridor. For the first time I realised the blue moon was the only light there was. Blue moonlight, shimmering ice and dark shadows filled the corridor, and not a sign of life anywhere. I moved quickly down the corridor, checking each window, but I always saw the same thing. The exact same view, from the exact same angle, never changing no matter how far I walked . . . Which should have been impossible.
I turned and looked back the way I’d come. Although the rich carpeting was crusted with a thick layer of hoarfrost, I hadn’t left a single footprint behind me. No mark, nothing, to show I’d passed this way. I stamped my foot hard, but it didn’t disturb the frost beneath me, and the sound was oddly flat, strangely muffled.
Was I a ghost, haunting this place? Or was this place haunting me? It seemed . . . dead. And why did the only cold I was feeling seem to come from within me, rather than from without?
I called out, “Hello! Anybody there? Anybody?��� No answer. The silence seemed heavier and more oppressive than ever. I shivered abruptly, and not from the cold. It occurred to me that my voice had sounded strangely flat, and I realised it was because my voice hadn’t echoed at all. It should have. One more impossible thing in an impossible place. I breathed heavily, but my breath didn’t steam on the air before me.
I hurried down the corridor, trying every door I came to. None of them would budge; the door handles wouldn’t even turn in my hand, no matter how much strength I used. I beat on each door with my fist, but no one answered. I ran on, rounding another corner, and then I stopped abruptly before a huge grandfather clock. Tall and solid in its ornate oakwood case, it had a wide face and hanging brass weights. It was utterly silent, not a tick or a tock, and after a moment I realised the face didn’t even have any hands. I checked my wristwatch. The digital display was completely blank. Had I come to a place where time had stopped, where there was no time left?
Farther down the corridor I came across a full-length mirror set in a filigreed silver frame, shining bright in the blue moonlight. I stood before the mirror, and it reflected everything in the corridor except me. My heart pounded in my chest, and my breath rasped harshly in my throat. I pressed one hand hard against the cold glass, but the mirror refused to acknowledge any part of me.
I fell back from the mirror and turned to run again, pounding down the corridor, though my feet made no sound at all and I didn’t slip or slide on the icy carpeting as I should have. I threw myself round the next corner, and then came to a sudden halt as I found myself down on the ground floor, in the entrance hall, facing the great double doors that led outside. I stood very still, not even breathing hard, staring at the doors. This was wrong. An upstairs corridor couldn’t connect directly to a downstairs hall without benefit of stairs. But right then I didn’t care. The way out was in front of me, and I’d had enough of this empty house. I ran to the doors and tried the handles, and of course they wouldn’t move. I rattled the handles so hard that it shook the double doors, but they wouldn’t open. I slammed my shoulder against them, again and again, but I couldn’t even feel the impacts on my shoulder. I finally stopped and leaned against the doors, hot tears of frustration burning my eyes. And then a voice behind me said:
“You can’t leave, Eddie. There’s no way out for you. You’re confined here, a prisoner in Drood Hall.”
I spun round, and there, standing in the hall, calm and civilised and immaculate as always, was Walker. The man who ran London’s Nightside in every way that mattered. Dressed like someone Big in the City, smartly and expensively tailored, right down to the bowler hat and the rolled umbrella he was leaning on. A man past his best days, perhaps, but still the ultimate authority figure, with a polite smile and cold, cold eyes. I knew him immediately, and suddenly a whole bunch of my memories came flooding back. I was Eddie Drood, also known as Shaman Bond, the very secret agent. Field agent for that most ancient and powerful family, the Droods; trained from childhood to protect Humanity from all the dark forces that threatened it.
This was my home, Drood Hall. Though I’d never known it so deserted, so abandoned. I remembered a lot of things now, but not how I came to be here, or what the hell was going on. So I struck my most comfortable and assured pose and gave Walker a cold glare of my own.
“A prisoner?” I said. “In my own home? I don’t think so, Walker. And how the hell did you get in? We’re really very particular about who we allow into the Hall.”
“Ah,” said Walker. “Let’s say . . . I am here representing certain powerful and vested interests who have questions they want me to put to you. There are things they want to know about you and your family. The things you’ve done and intend to do. All the secrets you and your family have kept from the world. They want to know . . . everything. Just tell me, Eddie, and all of this will be over. You must realise there’s no point in fighting me, or those I represent. You’re a reasonable man. . . .”
“No, I’m bloody not,” I said. “I’m a Drood field agent, licensed to take names and kick supernatural arse, and being reasonable never gets you anywhere against the forces of evil. I’ve got questions of my own, Walker. Starting with, what’s happened to Drood Hall? And where the hell is everybody? Did I miss a fire drill?”
I felt the need to back up my questions with a little authority of my own, and so I subvocalised the activating Words that would call up my armour, the special golden armour that was my family’s greatest secret and most powerful weapon. But to my surprise and shock nothing happened. My hand went to my throat, and the golden torc wasn’t there. I think I cried out then, as though part of my soul had been ripped away. Droods receive their torcs shortly after birth, and are never without them. I clawed at my throat with both hands, but it stayed bare. For a moment I couldn’t breathe, and then I clamped down on my racing thoughts with an iron will. I was a trained field agent, and I was damned if I’d panic in the face of the enemy. Even if I had never felt so helpless in my life, so vulnerable, so . . . unmanned.
For the first time I knew how the rest of my family had felt when I took their torcs away.
I glared at Walker. “How dare you? How dare you steal my torc? And what’s happened to my family? What have you done with them?”
Walker smiled calmly back at me. “I’m h
ere to ask questions, Eddie, not answer them. My current lords and masters require your obedience. Tell me your secrets, Eddie. Every last one of them. And then this nightmare can end.”
I stood my ground and considered him thoughtfully. Losing my temper with Walker would get me nowhere. You can’t run a spiritual cesspool like the Nightside with a reasonable manner and good intent. Walker believed in the iron fist in the iron glove, and had always been a very dangerous man. Certainly I couldn’t hope to intimidate him without my armour. But the day I couldn’t think rings round a soulless functionary like Walker, I’d retire from the field and raise bees. According to the media there’s a shortage these days. . . . I gave Walker my best cocky, crafty grin, the one that says, I know something you don’t know. . . .
“Haven’t seen you since that nasty business with the independent agent,” I said. “So, still keeping the lid on the Nightside, are you? Running back and forth trying to make all those gods and monsters play nicely together?” And then I stopped, and frowned, and looked closely at Walker. “Didn’t someone tell me . . . you’d been killed?”
Walker shrugged. “Comes to us all, in the end. No one gets out of life alive. All that matters here and now is that I serve new masters; and they want information from you. Past cases, victories old and new, everything there is to know about the notorious Drood family.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’ll be the day. So, new lords and masters, is it? And who might they be, exactly?”
“You don’t need to know,” said Walker. “It doesn’t matter; we all have to serve someone, in the end. It’s all right for you to talk to me, Eddie. The secrets we hold in life aren’t important anymore, once we’re dead.”