Still, what a ride . . .
I saw the Armourer facing off against the remote-controlled tank, and headed over to back him up. A great, hulking steel monster, the tank roared towards my uncle, who stood his ground and let it come. The tank fired shell after shell at him, each one dead on target, exploding against his armour without driving him back an inch. When the smoke from the explosions cleared, he was still standing where he had been, though some of where he had been standing wasn’t there anymore. I could tell from the way he was posing, arms folded easily across his chest, that the Armourer was enjoying himself. It might have been thirty years since he’d seen action in the field, but he was still every inch a Drood agent. Besides, all those years working in the Armoury had probably made him rather blasé about being blown up. The Armourer waited until the tank was almost on top of him, and then he leaned forward, ducked underneath and lifted the whole front of the tank up off the ground. Its tracks turned helplessly, unable to get a grip. The Armourer walked slowly forward, step by step, raising the tank up and up until it tipped over onto its back. It hit hard, and a series of things went bang inside it. Streams of black smoke billowed out of cracks in its sides, along with bursts of flame from electrical fires.
I went to stand beside the Armourer, and Molly came tripping up to join us. She threw her arms around me and hugged me as best she could through my armour. I held her carefully, mindful of my armour’s strength.
“How could you tell which was me?” I said.
“Your armour is quite different from everyone else’s,” she said, leaning against my chest. “You don’t realise how much you change it subconsciously these days.”
I looked at my uncle, in his basic old-fashioned skintight golden armour, and he nodded his featureless head. “She’s right, Eddie. Your armour has an almost medieval affect. Like some Arthurian knight. I guess the Drood is in the details, these days.”
A great shadow fell over us. The giant Japanese robot was up and on its feet and looming over us. Fifty feet tall, broad chest, massive arms and legs, hundreds of tons of steel and all the latest technology. The chest opened up to reveal row upon row of energy weapons, the squat barrels sparking and crackling with discharging energies. The face had been painted to resemble some old-time Japanese demon, and the eyes flashed fiercely. The giant robot raised its arms slowly and menacingly. It stepped forward, tripped over its own feet and fell flat on its face. The impact shook the ground like an earthquake. Molly and the Armourer and I watched it closely, but it didn’t move again.
“Told you,” said the Armourer.
We headed back to what was left of the Supernatural Arms Faire.
Those people who hadn’t been able to leave or escape, or didn’t want to abandon their stalls or merchandise, stood around in small groups for comfort and mutual support. They regarded us with suspicious eyes as we walked past, but said nothing, not wanting to draw attention to themselves. More than half the stalls and booths and tents had been destroyed or ruined, and the whole place was a mess. Fires burned here and there, and smoke drifted this way and that on the gusting wind. The Bloodred Guard appeared out of the ruins and spread out to stand before us. We stopped and bowed politely. The head monk sighed and turned to his fellow guards.
“Knock it off, guys. We are way out of our league. Everyone stand down and see what you can do to help the injured. There are still people here who need our help. If that’s okay with you, Drood?”
“Carry on,” said my uncle Jack. “But don’t let anyone go. There will be questions.”
“These people need doctors, not interrogators,” said the monk.
“They’ll get help,” I said. “We’re the good guys.”
“Yeah, right,” said the monk.
He and his fellow guards turned away to do what needed doing. There was a general air of we’re not being paid enough to fight Droods, which was only reasonable.
The Supernatural Arms Faire was now officially over. Half of it was in ruins, the other half was still on fire, and there was no one left to sell anything to. A good day’s work, I thought. Except there was no trace of the Satanists anywhere, or the people they’d kidnapped. We were going to have to do something about that.
“I’ll call in the family,” said the Armourer. “Medics first, and then support teams to Hoover up everything that’s left. Can’t have so many good weapons going to waste, after all.”
“Boys and their toys,” said Molly.
I handed the Armourer the Merlin Glass, and he opened it up to make contact with Drood Hall. I armoured down and walked off with Molly, shivering hard as the mountain cold hit me again.
“So much for a day off, and a nice little holiday,” said Molly.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “I had a good time. Didn’t you have a good time?”
“Well, yes,” said Molly. “But that’s not the point! The satanic creeps got away with it again! Worked their plans right in front of us, and then disappeared, laughing, leaving us to clean up the mess. I am getting really tired of being caught on the back foot all the time, Eddie. I want to know what they’re planning. I want to know what the Great Sacrifice is. And I want to take the fight to them, instead of always being one bloody step behind!”
“Exactly,” I said. “We have got to get into the game fast, or the game could be over before we even get a kick of the ball.”
CHAPTER SIX
Who’s Been Sleeping in My Bed?
Like all proper missions, the next one started with a stop off at the Armoury, that heavily shielded cavern underneath the Hall, where the Armourer and his devil’s assortment of highly motivated and only technically mentally disturbed lab assistants labour night and day to provide the Drood family with all the guns, gadgets and assorted weird shit that field agents need to carry out their missions successfully. Not the safest of places to visit, but where’s the fun in safe, anyway? Certainly there’s always something interesting going on in the Armoury.
The old place looked as it always did, when Molly and I wandered in the next day. All very different from the cold, silent, deserted place I’d seen in the Winter Hall. In what might or might not have been Limbo. Despite Molly’s well-meant reassurances, I hadn’t forgotten a single thing about my time in that place: what I’d seen and heard, and what people had said to me. I’d checked with the family’s researchers; Walker was quite definitely dead. Had been for some time. So who was it who came to me in the Winter Hall, wearing Walker’s face, to tell me my parents might not be dead after all? A question . . . for another time. I had a mission to prepare for.
I found the familiar loud and violent circumstances of the Armoury strangely comforting as Molly and I followed the Armourer past the packed workstations and smoke-wreathed testing grounds. The lab assistants were all hard at work, creating appalling and distressing weapons for my family to throw at our enemies and damn all their underhanded schemes. Guns roared, swords glowed and things went suddenly bang! with all their usual nasty efficiency; and an oversize eyeball with big, flapping bat wings went fluttering down the main aisle, pursued by an assistant with a really big butterfly net.
The Armourer stalked through his territory like Daddy come home to see what the kids have been getting up to in his absence. He peered over shoulders, made useful suggestions and cutting remarks, and yelled right into people’s faces when they weren’t following the proper safety protocols. Which was a bit much, coming from him. I still remember the time he showed us his new handgun that fired black holes, and it took four of us to wrestle him to the ground and take it away from him before he could demonstrate it.
Uncle Jack was always convinced the lab assistants started slacking, or practicing their own self-destructive forms of one-upmanship, the moment he wasn’t around to watch over them; but they all seemed as absorbed and homicidally inclined as always. One of them was wearing a T-shirt with the message Blow It All Up and Ask Questions Later.
One particular lab assistant, naked but f
or a lab coat unfortunately not buttoned up at the front, was sitting inside a chalk-drawn mandala on the bare floor, playing an electric bass with all kinds of weird tech plugged into it. I knew him of old. Eric was convinced he could make his bass guitar generate a chord so powerful it would make everyone who heard it crap themselves simultaneously. Psychologically effective and physically distressing at the same time. He hadn’t had much success so far. The best he’d been able to produce was a chord that acted as a mild but effective laxative. So every morning Eric went to the family hospital wards to play a short recital. Which, I understand, was always very well received by the patients.
A rather fierce young lady in a blood-spattered lab coat was walking up and down before a row of large, warty toads wired securely in place along a wooden plank. She was holding what looked like a souped-up soup ladle with many wires hanging off it, and every time she pointed the thing at a toad, the toad exploded. Messily. None of the other toads reacted. In fact, they all seemed quite resigned about it. Drugs will do that to you. Just say no. Especially to lab assistants with a funny look in their eyes.
“Ah!” the Armourer said happily. “I was wondering when Charlotte was finally going to get the kinks out of her protein exploder. Very efficient . . . The toads are all clones, of course, to avoid running out of test subjects.”
“Why toads?” I said.
The Armourer shrugged. “Nobody likes toads. If it were kittens . . .”
“Don’t go there,” said Molly. “Just don’t.”
“Of course, it’s all pretty basic for the moment,” said the Armourer. “Simply point and die. But once Charlotte gets the fine-tuning right, she’ll be able to blast the warts right off their backsides!”
“And when exactly would that come in handy?” I said.
“Early days yet, Eddie, early days . . .”
A rather upset-looking young man was being led away by the hand by a rather resigned-looking young woman. He’d somehow ended up with both eyeballs in one socket, and he was not being a brave bunny about it. I got the impression from the look on the young woman’s face that this wasn’t the first time she’d had to do something like this.
Molly picked up a small brass box covered in pretty flashing lights, from the top of a computer console. The Armourer almost jumped out of his skin.
“Don’t touch that!”
“Why, what is it?” said Molly, hanging onto the box even more firmly.
The Armourer snatched the box away from her, looked at it and then shook it fiercely. Nothing happened, so he put it back on the console.
“Odd,” he said. “It should have reversed your polarity. I’ll have to work on it.”
“You hit him,” Molly said to me. “You’re closer.”
“I wouldn’t dare,” I said.
“I’ve got something for you, Molly,” the Armourer said quickly. “Come and take a look at this little beauty.”
He scrabbled among the assorted tech and junk cluttering up his worktable, tossed aside a pistol with five barrels and a fluffy gonk with an evil stare, and finally held up a golden crown: a simple circle of gold, with an intricate golden lattice containing dozens of brightly shimmering crystals. He offered the crown to Molly, and she looked it over while being very careful not to touch it. The Armourer preened proudly.
“Very nice,” Molly said finally. “Expensive, but vulgar, vaguely Celtic in design, but aesthetically pleasing from every angle. What am I supposed to do with it?”
“You put it on your head!” said the Armourer. “It’ll protect you from every known form of psychic attack, and make damn sure Ammonia Vom Acht can’t prise any useful secrets out of your pretty little head.”
Molly looked at him coldly. “I am supposed to put something you made on my head, and trust that my brains won’t start leaking out of my ears?”
“That was a long time ago!” said the Armourer. “I wish people would stop going on about it. . . . Look, put the bloody thing on so I can fine-tune the settings to your personal aura. It has been very thoroughly tested, you know. What do you want, a guarantee in writing?”
Molly stuck her lower lip out and looked at me. “Why doesn’t he have to wear one?”
“Because I have a torc,” I said patiently. “And psychic protection comes standard. Please put the crown on, Molly, or I’ll have to go without you. You go up against Ammonia Vom Acht with an unprotected mind and she’ll rip your thoughts open and gut them like a fish, with one look.”
Molly sniffed loudly, snatched the crown out of the Armourer’s hands and lowered it gingerly onto her head. The Armourer ran his fingertips lightly over the various crystals, humming something he fondly imagined had a tune, until he had them all blinking and flickering at the same rate. He then grunted in a satisfied sort of way and stepped back. Molly immediately demanded a mirror to see how she looked. I held the Merlin Glass up before her so she could study her new look in the reflection.
“This really isn’t me, Eddie. I do not do the fairy-princess look. People will snigger at me.”
“No one would dare,” I assured her.
“Ammonia won’t think I’m . . . scared of her, will she, wearing protective headgear in her presence?”
“It won’t even occur to her that you wouldn’t be scared,” said the Armourer. “Anyone with half a working brain in her head would have enough sense to be scared shitless of Ammonia Vom Acht. The most powerful telepathic mind in the world today . . . Well, human mind, anyway. If you were to enter her presence unprotected, even for a moment, she could read every thought you ever had, or make you think you were someone else and always had been, or plant secret hidden commands for future behaviour so deep in your subconscious even other telepaths wouldn’t know they were there. Until it was far too late. Or, even worse . . . she might think of something funny to do to you. Ammonia’s sense of humour isn’t what you’d call normal.”
Molly scowled unhappily, but left the crown where it was. I thought it did make her look a bit like a fairy princess. I liked it. I looked expectantly at the Armourer.
“Well, Uncle Jack? Don’t I get any new toys before I set out on this extremely dangerous mission?”
“None of my guns or gadgets would do you any good against Ammonia Vom Acht,” said the Armourer. “In fact, they’d only give you a false sense of security. Trust to your torc to protect you, and try not to antagonise her. You will anyway, but she might appreciate the effort.”
“That’s all the advice you’ve got for me?”
“Please don’t kill her. She might be annoying, but she’s very useful. We might need her help again someday.”
I frowned. “Why would I want to kill her?”
“You haven’t met her yet.”
I waited, but he had nothing else to say. So I nodded good-bye, and he nodded vaguely and hurried off to show his lab assistants what they were doing wrong. I hefted the Merlin Glass in my hand, thinking hard. Molly looked at me.
“Ready to go, Eddie?”
“I don’t know if ready is quite the right word,” I said. “But I can’t seem to come up with a good enough reason to put it off, so . . .”
“Aren’t you going to armour up first?” said Molly. “You don’t want Ammonia seeing your face; or would she be able to read your identity anyway?”
“No, the torc will protect me at all levels,” I said, trying hard to sound calm and confident. “But it doesn’t matter if she sees my face, or yours. She won’t know me as Shaman Bond, because he doesn’t move in her kind of circles. Ammonia . . . doesn’t get out much. People come to her.”
“She might not know you,” said Molly. “But you know her; don’t you?”
“I know of her; everyone in the secret-agent business does. And she’ll probably know you by reputation.”
Molly smiled smugly. “Lot of people know my reputation.”
“And you say that like it’s a good thing. . . .”
“You want a slap?”
I activated the M
erlin Glass, and we watched our reflections disappear from the hand mirror as the Glass sought out Ammonia Vom Acht’s location. The image flickered uncertainly for some time, struggling past her various protections, until finally an image appeared in the Glass: a rather distant image of an isolated cottage somewhere down in Cornwall. I tried to get the Glass to zoom in for a closer look, but this was as close as it could get. I sort of got the feeling that the Glass was afraid to get any closer. Which was . . . interesting. The cottage didn’t look particularly threatening.
“The Glass is detecting really heavy-duty protections,” I said. “We’ll have to go through as is, and walk the rest of the way. And hope we don’t set off any psychic land mines. Doesn’t look too far. Weather looks nice. My torc and your crown should protect us.”
“And if they don’t?” said Molly.
“Then we improvise. Suddenly and violently and all over the place. That’s what field agents do!”
“Don’t you raise your voice to me, Edwin Drood!” said Molly. “Just because we’re off to visit the witch in her gingerbread cottage. I have a really bad feeling about this. . . .”
“Situation entirely normal,” I said.
It turned out that the greatest and most dangerous telepath of our time had chosen to live in a pretty little cottage down on the Cornish coast, on top of a hill looking out over the sea. Miles from anywhere, with acres of desolate-looking landscape between her and the nearest town or village. Molly and I stepped through the Merlin Glass and emerged onto the very edge of the cliff top. Two more steps and we’d have both been grabbing handfuls of fresh air as we plummeted towards the crashing sea. I couldn’t really see that as a coincidence.