The vicar stepped forward and peered at what was on the other side of the Glass. His eyes were wide with simple wonder, and he smiled like a child.
“It’s real . . .” he said. “I can feel the wind blowing through, smell the grass. . . . What is this?”
“Your ticket home,” I said. “Gather your flock together, and let’s get the flock out of here. Molly and I will be right behind you.”
The vicar nodded quickly, rounded up his people and drove them through the Merlin Glass with encouragement, discipline and the occasional burst of harsh language. There’s no one like a vicar when it comes to organising people. He chivvied them from one side, inspired them from another and drove the rest through the Glass like a collie dog with a flock of sheep. A lot of people were nervous about the Glass and didn’t want to be rushed, but no one wanted to be left behind. I made several circuits of the hall as they filed through, checking for weak spots and the sound of anything breaking in. But it wasn’t until the last few survivors were queuing up that something large and bulky smashed the door in.
There was no warning. One moment the door was securely closed, and the next it was flying across the hall, blasted right off its hinges. The broken bolts flew through the air like shrapnel. Something dark and twisted filled the doorway, light glowing from sickly yellow eyes. I stepped quickly forward, armouring up as I went, and punched it in the head. I put all my strength into the blow, and I felt bone shatter under the impact. My golden hand drove on deep into its misshapen head. And something inside the head closed around my fist and held it there. I struggled to pull my hand free and couldn’t. Arms with too many joints unfolded from the creature’s sides, and clawed hands slammed against my armour, scrabbling against the strange matter as they tried to force their way in.
Since I couldn’t pull my hand out, I steadied myself and pushed it deeper in, until it burst out the back of the creature’s head. It squealed once, a high tremolo that pained my ears, and thick purple blood jetted from the back of the head. I put my other hand on its face, golden fingers thrusting deep into the yellow eyes, braced myself and yanked the other hand out. Then I shoved the creature hard on the chest, driving it backwards, and moved forward to fill the doorway, so nothing could get past me. Outside, the circle of normality was gone. The stone’s protection had retreated right back to the walls of the Old Market Hall, and soon it wouldn’t even reach them. I yelled for Molly to get the last of the survivors through the Glass.
Something smashed a hole in the roof and dropped down into the Hall. It hit the floor hard, old floorboards shattering under its weight, and then it turned on the last few survivors. Molly hit it with a lightning bolt, and the dark-haired creature burst into flames. It ran round and round in circles, the flames leaping higher and higher as the thing screamed in a disturbingly human way. Something else thrust up through the floorboards, sending splinters flying in all directions. It was white and wet and segmented, springing up out of the hole it’d made like a malignant, alien jack-in-the-box. Molly threw a fireball at it, and the blunt head snapped round and caught the fireball in its clacking multipart mouth. The flames didn’t seem to bother it in the least. Molly advanced on the thing, throwing shaped curses at it, and the segmented horror cracked and shattered under the impact of her Words, spouting a thick, creamy blood. I didn’t dare leave the doorway to help. A lot of things were heading my way, all of them really bad, and while the sight of my armour was giving them pause for the moment, I had no idea how long that would last. They’d seen the collapse of the protective field, and they wanted in.
“How many left?” I yelled to Molly. “How many more to go?”
“Last ones going through right now!” she yelled back. “It’s just you and me! Leave the doorway and let’s blow this joint! Eddie! Eddie . . . why are you still there?”
“Because you can’t see what I’m seeing,” I said steadily. “There’s a whole army of really unpleasant things out here, and I’m all that’s stopping them from storming the Hall. I can’t go. You go, Molly. Go through the Glass, and then shut it down from your side. So none of this madness can follow you through to infect the sane and normal world.”
“Hell with that,” said Molly. “I’m not leaving you! I’ll never leave you. I went all the way to Limbo to bring you back and I’m damned if I’ll give up on you now.”
By this time she was standing right beside me, looking out. She made a shocked, disgusted sound. I nodded.
“Nasty, aren’t they? And dangerous with it. We can’t risk their getting through the Merlin Glass.”
“Are you suggesting we shut the Glass now?” said Molly. “You are, aren’t you? You’re prepared to sacrifice both our lives to save a bunch of nobodies. Because they’re innocents.”
“It’s the job,” I said.
“That’s why I love you,” said Molly. “Because you’re the one true thing in my life.”
“No,” I said. “Together we’re one true thing. Hold everything.”
“What now?” said Molly.
“I mean, hold on; I have an idea.”
“I love it!” Molly said immediately. “It’s a wonderful idea and I want to have its babies. What is it?”
“If we can’t go to the Merlin Glass, we’ll bring the Glass to us.”
I concentrated, reaching out to the Glass through my armour. And the Glass surged forward and enveloped Molly and me in the doorway I’d opened; and then we were standing on the grassy hill outside town. Through the doorway I could see horrible things charging into the Hall, and I slammed the Glass shut in their awful faces. And finally it was over.
I shook the Merlin Glass down to normal size and put it away, and armoured down. A gusting breeze swept past me, smelling of grass and earth and flowers. I’d never smelt anything so deliciously normal. I sat down suddenly as the last of my strength went out of me. I hadn’t realised I’d been running on adrenaline for so long. Molly sat down beside me and cuddled up against me.
We were sitting on top of a pretty steep hill, looking down at the great dark circle where Little Stoke used to be. The rescued survivors were sitting or standing in small groups on the hillside below us, talking animatedly about what they’d been through. Several were lying on their backs on the grass, staring up at the perfectly normal sky with ecstatic faces. Happy to be in a world that made sense again. The vicar sat not far away from us, running his hands through the thick, tufty grass as though he’d never seen anything so wonderful.
And as Molly and I looked down the hillside at the dark circle, it suddenly began to shrink. It fell in upon itself, the sides rushing in faster and faster, until finally the whole thing collapsed and disappeared. The town was back, or at least the buildings were, looking for the most part untouched and untransformed. Made me wonder how much of what we’d experienced inside the town had been “real” in any sense.
“Such a bad place had to be inherently unstable,” said Molly. “It was always going to collapse in on itself, eventually. That was probably what the conspiracy intended all along. Leave nothing behind to show what they’d done. Only the Arimathea stone prevented that from happening: the one true thing in all that chaos. Once we removed that . . .”
“Excuse me,” said the vicar, moving diffidently forward to join us. “But can you tell me what just happened?”
“Sorry,” I said. “I could tell you, but then I’d have to excommunicate you. All details are classified. National security. You know how it is.”
“Ah,” said the vicar. “Yes . . .”
He turned away to round up the survivors and lead them off. Though hopefully not straight down into the returned town buildings. I wanted my family to check the place over thoroughly before we let people back in. No telling how much psychic contamination remained. . . . The survivors made it clear to the vicar that they weren’t ready to be moved yet. They were talking excitedly among themselves. Already the worst of their memories were fading. The untrained human mind isn’t equipped to deal
with such things. Soon enough they’d be arguing over what they’d seen, or thought they’d seen, or experienced. In the end . . . all they’d be left with were some bad dreams.
Hopefully.
“They’re going to talk, some of them,” said Molly. “I would.”
“Let them,” I said. “See who believes them. With the dark circle gone and the buildings returned, they have no proof, no evidence. The rest of the townspeople are still missing . . . but the usual authorities will never find them.”
“You think they’re dead, don’t you?” said Molly.
“It seems likely,” I said. “The family will do everything it can to find them, but . . . the conspiracy is too far ahead of us. By the time we catch up . . . it’ll be too late for the poor people of Little Stoke.”
“What if the survivors go to the media?” said Molly.
“Let them,” I said. “It is, after all, a very cynical and disbelieving world. They might get a briefly bestselling paperback out of it, maybe a television movie, but that’s it. The best we can do for them . . . is make sure this never happens again. Ethel? Can you hear me now?”
“Of course,” her voice said, right in my ear. “I’m receiving all kinds of fascinating recorded information from your torc. Come home now, Eddie, Molly. You need some rest, both of you.”
“Rest,” I said. “That does sound good.”
“Time for bed,” said Molly.
“She said rest.”
“Eventually,” said Molly.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Getting Down with the Damned
There’s a lot to be said for saying to hell with it all and hiding in your bedroom until everything’s calmed down again. Molly and I stepped through the Merlin Glass directly into my room at Drood Hall. Partly because we were both exhausted and running on fumes, but mostly because neither of us was T in the mood to make a formal report to the Drood Council. I barely had time to shut down the Glass and put it away before Molly was sprawled on her back on my bed, stretching luxuriously as she sank slowly into the deep goose-feather mattress. I dropped down beside her, groaning out loud as my muscles were finally able to relax. We lay there side by side for a long time, snuggled together, enjoying the luxury of not having to worry about anything for a while. It felt good to be back in my own room, among familiar things, with no more duties or responsibilities.
“I like it here,” said Molly, after a while.
“Really?” I said, after another while. “I thought you preferred your own private woods.”
“It’s nice there, too,” said Molly. “But mostly . . . I like it wherever you are.” She turned her head on the pillow to look at me. “Are you sure someone from your family isn’t going to come charging in here, demanding we make a full report on everything that happened inside the dark circle?”
“Ethel will have told them that I’m back,” I said calmly. “But she’ll also have told them that I am more than ready to punch out anyone who pesters me, and then Riverdance on their head. And no one would even think of barging into another Drood’s room. It isn’t done. When you’ve got this many people all living together under one roof, privacy is nonnegotiable. They wouldn’t even knock unless there was a major emergency. We’re safe. Anyway, Ethel has all the readings and information my armour picked up and stored in my torc. She’ll have passed that on to the Armourer.”
“I didn’t know your armour could do that,” said Molly.
“The old armour couldn’t,” I said. “This new strange-matter armour is far more sophisticated. We’re still learning all the things it can do. The Armourer keeps bugging Ethel for an operator’s manual, but she says it’s important we learn these things for ourselves. Enough about my family, sweetie. Let them take care of the world for a while, while we take care of each other.”
Molly smiled. “Help me with this zipper, would you?”
Quite a while later, Molly and I were drowsing quietly, lying naked on top of the sheets, entwined in each other’s arms and legs, when Isabella Metcalf appeared very suddenly out of nowhere to stand at the foot of the bed. I was half-asleep, and half-convinced I was dreaming, until Molly sat up abruptly and said something very rude. I realised there actually was someone else in the room and sat bolt upright, moving instinctively to put my body between Molly and the intruder. She slapped me on the shoulder and pushed me firmly to one side.
“Sweet of you, dear, but a bit patronising. I am quite capable of defending myself.”
“What is your sister doing in my bedroom?” I said loudly. “Does she have any idea of what time it is and oh shit I’m naked.”
“Never mind that . . .” said Isabella.
“I do mind!” I said loudly. “Did you invite her here, Molly?” And then a thought occurred to me, and I looked thoughtfully from Molly to Isabella. “Oh . . . is this about a threesome?”
“Not why I’m here,” said Isabella, very definitely.
Molly elbowed me in the ribs. “In your dreams, stud.”
“Then I still want to know what she’s doing here while we’ve got no clothes on,” I said firmly.
“Oh, don’t be so conservative, Eddie,” said Molly, leaning back against the headboard quite unself-consciously. “Being naked is nothing to a witch. I’ve danced skyclad among the standing stones of Stonehenge, and in the snows of the Himalayas, and up and down Wall Street under a full moon. It comes with the territory.”
“Not with my territory it doesn’t,” I said. “I am not big on sharing.” I wanted to grab a pillow and hide certain parts of me behind it, but I knew they’d laugh at me. So I sat up straight, pulled in my stomach and did my best to hang on to what was left of my dignity. And still almost lost it when Molly scratched at her left tit reflectively.
“Calm down, Eddie,” said Isabella. “I’ve seen it all before.”
“Not mine, you haven’t,” I said. “We are now going to change the subject. How is it you keep getting in and out of Drood Hall so easily, despite all of our more than state-of-the-art defences and protections expressly designed to keep out people like you?”
Isbaella sniggered. “When you let Molly in, you let all of us in. The Metcalf sisters come as a package deal. One for all, all against the world.”
“You mean Louisa could turn up here anytime, without warning?” I said. “Oh, bloody hell . . . Someone’s going to have to break the news to the Sarjeant-at-Arms, and please, God, let it not be me.”
“Why are you here, Iz?” said Molly.
Isabella folded her arms across her chest, and her bloodred biker leathers creaked loudly. She gave us both a severe look. “I am here to report what I’ve discovered about the new Satanist conspiracy. And no, it couldn’t wait. This is important and significant stuff, and urgent with it. I’ve been talking with certain friends and associates, along with others who owe me money and favours, and I have learned something you need to know, right now.”
“Iz has contacts on every side of the fence,” Molly said proudly. “She knows people in places most people don’t even want to admit exist. They tell her things. If they know what’s good for them.”
“People . . .” I said dubiously. “What kind of people are we talking about here? I’m not going to place much trust in information that comes from anonymous sources. And neither will my family. I need names, Isabella.”
She sighed loudly, in a put-upon kind of way. “Oh, very well, if you’re going to be stuffy about it . . . John Taylor, from the Nightside. Razor Eddie, punk god of the straight razor. A ghost called Ash, from Shadows Fall. Jimmy Thunder, god for hire. The Grey Eidolon, the Lord of Thorns, and the Regent of Shadows.”
“Don’t mention that last one around here, dear,” said Molly. “I never knew a man to be so thoroughly persona non grata. Droods really know how to bear a grudge.”
“Centuries of practice,” I said proudly.
“I trust you find some of those names acceptable?” said Isabella.
“Oh, sure,” I said. “I’ve wor
ked with most of them at one time or another. Not the most reputable bunch, or the most tightly wrapped, but they usually know what they’re talking about.”
Molly looked at me. “I thought Droods weren’t allowed in the Nightside?”
“We’re not,” I said.
“Then how . . . ?”
“Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.”
“You want a slap?”
“The important thing,” Isabella said loudly, “is that all of them agree on one thing: where you need to go next. It seems that most of the higher echelons in the conspiracy will be attending a very important meeting very soon now. Alexandre Dusk won’t be there, but there is to be a special surprise guest who will have a good deal to say about the details of this Great Sacrifice they’re planning.”
“Okay,” I said. “That is pretty important. But I still don’t see why you had to bring it straight to my bedroom! Why couldn’t this have waited till the morning, so we could have discussed it with the full council?”
“Because I don’t trust them,” said Isabella.
“Why not?”
“Because they’re Droods!”
“Ah,” I said. “Fair enough.”
“I’m not entirely sure I trust you,” said Isabella. “Even if Molly does vouch for you.”
I turned to smile at Molly. “You do? That is so sweet of you.” “Well,” said Molly, “I am the sweet one.”
“Young people in love,” said Isabella. “The horror, the horror . . .”
I gave her my best serious stare. “All right, where do we have to go to crash this vital satanic get-together? Am I going to have to dress up formal?”