“Have I got time to buy a new dress?” said Molly.
Isabella smiled unpleasantly. “You’re going back to your old stomping grounds, Eddie. They’re meeting in London, in the Under Parliament.”
That stopped me dead, and I hugged my knees to my chest while I had a good think. Under Parliament is part of the old Roman catacombs set deep under the Houses of Parliament, the Commons and the Lords. The ancient catacombs are part of an extensive labyrinth of tunnels, caverns and stone galleries that stretch back and forth under the entire city, holding all the secrets and secret people too dark even for that ancient and knowledgeable city, London. The labyrinth itself is known as London Undertowen. And most people cross themselves when they say it.
The Romans built the original catacombs under what was then called Londinium, so they could go down there and do things in private they knew their gods wouldn’t approve of. The Romans believed that if their gods couldn’t see what they were doing, it didn’t count. Very practical people, the Romans.
After the Romans declined and fell and got the hell out of Britain, other people moved in and used the tunnels for their own purposes, extending them as they went along. London Undertowen has been greatly expanded and added to, down the centuries, by many hands, for many reasons. It’s sunk deep in the bedrock, well below the underground trains, and used by all kinds. These days the dark tunnels and galleries are home to everyone from the Sleeping Tygers of Stepney to the Slow Subterraneans. From the Dark Fae to the Night Gaunts to the Sons of the Old Serpent. You can find aliens, kobolds, dream-walkers and downbound souls, and even the deformed children of celebrities and lust demons. Abandoned and forgotten by their parents, they thrive in the dark and the cold and plot terrible revenges on the world that should have been theirs. And no, they don’t ride around on giant albino alligators that were flushed down toilets when they got too big to be pets. That’s only an urban legend. The Lost Children eat alligators, and wear their teeth as crowns on their bulging, misshapen heads.
London Undertowen: home to any who have good reason to prefer the dark to the light. The lost and the fallen, the cursed and the corrupt. Neutral ground for all the groups and individuals who wouldn’t be tolerated anywhere else. The kind who play too rough for the Nightside, or are too sick, or sickening, for the World Beneath. It’s where the underpeople go to hide and scheme and do awful things, far from the sight of man.
Just the place for Satanists to party.
“I’ve been down there a few times,” I said slowly. “The ambience is awful, and the company is worse.”
“Louisa loves it there,” said Isabella.
“She would,” said Molly.
“Is she . . . ?” I said.
“No,” said Isabella. “She’s still excavating the Martian Tombs.”
“Still?” said Molly. “What the hell is she up to there?”
“Last I heard, trying to raise up something that would talk to her.”
“Oh, this can only end badly,” said Molly.
“That’s Louisa for you,” said Isabella.
“Look,” I said firmly, “I am still waiting to hear what makes this so urgent that you had to come bursting in here to interrupt our quality time.”
“The Satanists’ meeting is scheduled for one a.m. tomorrow morning,” said Isabella. “Some three hours from now.”
“The thirteenth hour,” said Molly. “Satanists can be terribly sentimental about some things.”
“Three hours from now?” I said.
“Give or take,” said Isabella. “I’d get moving, if I were you.”
“Just once, I’d like some downtime between emergences,” I said wistfully. “A weekend off in a nice hotel, with room service . . . I need my beauty sleep.”
“Getting old,” said Molly, prodding me somewhere indelicate.
“I’ll meet you both there, in Under Parliament,” said Isabella, averting her gaze from such a blatant display of fondness. She snapped her fingers and disappeared from my bedroom.
“I thought she’d never go,” said Molly. She leaned companionably against me and trailed the fingertips of one hand across my bare chest. “Now, where were we?”
“You never told me that granting you access to the Hall also allowed your sisters access,” I said sternly.
“Do you expect me to tell you everything?” said Molly.
“When it involves Drood security, yes!”
“You can be very stuffy sometimes, Eddie Drood,” said Molly.
She turned abruptly away from me, got up from the bed and gave her full attention to getting dressed, with her back to me.
“I’ve killed the moment, haven’t I?” I said.
Molly said nothing—very loudly. I sighed, rolled regretfully off the side of the bed and wandered round the room, picking up bits of my clothing from where I’d flung them earlier.
“Don’t you dare put those back on,” said Molly, without looking round. “They’ve been through a lot, and little of it good. Dump it all in the laundry basket, and pick out some fresh ones.”
“They were fresh yesterday. . . .”
“That was yesterday!”
We got dressed. Molly chose an impressive backless, shoulderless creation from the pocket dimension she kept in the back of my cupboard. I was never allowed to look into it, which made me suspect she kept other things there as well, apart from dresses, but I never asked. I chose a smart but nondescript three-piece suit, because I was going to have to enter the House of Commons in order to reach Under Parliament, and I didn’t want to stand out. Or be in any way memorable. I put on an old Etonian tie. Might come in handy. I waited until Molly was putting the last touches to her makeup in the dressing table mirror, and then tried a hopefully innocuous question.
It’s hard to keep a relationship going when there’s an argument in the room.
“We’ve got a good three hours until the Satanists’ little bash gets under way. Do we have to leave now?”
“I do,” said Molly. “You can hang around here if you want. I have somewhere to go first.”
“Where?”
“The Wulfshead Club. You are, of course, perfectly free to go and wake up all your council members, and make a full report, and listen to them discuss everything in great detail before finally authorising you to investigate the situation, but I am off. Right now. Things to see, people to do. It’s not that I don’t trust Isabella, you understand, or her fascinating friends and allies . . . but I’ll feel a lot better once I’ve confirmed their information through some friends and allies of my own. And that means a short, sharp visit to the Wulfshead.” She finally turned to look at me. “You can tag along if you like, while I pin people to the wall and ask them pointed questions; just don’t embarrass me. You can usually trust Isabella to tell you the truth, but you can’t always trust her to tell you everything. Forewarned is forearmed, and since we won’t be able to take any weapons into Under Parliament for fear of setting off all their alarms . . .”
“I’ll go as Shaman Bond,” I said, when she finally paused for breath. “He won’t seem out of place, either in the club or London Undertowen. People expect him to turn up anywhere. I’ve put a lot of work into establishing that reputation, for times like this. And people will say things to Shaman that they wouldn’t dream of discussing in front of a Drood.”
“Good,” said Molly, smiling for the first time. “I like Shaman. He’s good company.”
“But he’s me. . . .”
“Not always.”
“I can be good company. . . .”
“Stuffy,” said Molly airily. “Definitely stuffy.”
The Merlin Glass couldn’t take us directly to the infamous Wulfshead Club, semilegendary watering hole for all the really interesting and dangerous people on the fringes of reality . . . because the club’s defences wouldn’t allow it. So instead it dropped us off in a garbage-strewn back alley somewhere in the grubbier part of London’s Soho. Access points to the club are always chang
ing, drifting back and forth across the seedier parts of London. The Wulfshead isn’t actually in the city; in fact, there are those who claim it isn’t even on Earth. As such. But you can access the club from selected very secret locations in every major city in the world. As long as you’re a member in good standing, of course.
The alley was full of uncertain shadows, a flat amber light sprawling across black garbage bags and the nastier sort of litter from the single streetlamp at the mouth of the alley. A cold wind was gusting, picking up a few leaves and playing with them, but not strong enough to move anything else. The tang of fresh urine was sharp in the air. Molly ignored it all, staring intently at one particular part of the bare brick wall that seemed no different from any other. She ignored the obscene graffiti, nodding slowly as her witchy Sight showed her the signs beneath the signs. She said the current passWord, and a great door of solid silver appeared in the wall before us. As though it had always been there, and we hadn’t noticed it till now. The dully gleaming metal was deeply etched with threats and warnings in angelic and demonic script, the disturbing characters sharp and clear, actually painful to merely human eyes. I stepped forward and pressed my left hand flat against the unnervingly warm metal, and the door swung slowly inwards. Attempting entry to the Wulfshead Club is never going to be easy, because if for any reason, good or bad, your name is no longer on the approved list, the door will bite your hand off. One of the many reasons the Wulfshead has never felt the need for a bouncer at the door.
Molly and I stepped quickly through the opening into dazzlingly bright light, pounding music, aggressively modernistic furniture and more good times and hard living than can usually be crammed into such limited time and space. The joint was jumping, and the place was packed. Let the good times roll, and the Devil take the hindmost. I eased my way through the crowd, Molly at my side, smiling and nodding. A lot of people smiled and nodded back; Shaman Bond and Molly Metcalf were familiar faces on the scene. Giant plasma screens covered the walls, showing intimate secrets of the rich and famous, while impossibly pretty girls wearing hardly any clothing danced madly on spotlit stages, and a group of seriously high bright young things danced on the ceiling.
Molly and I took up casual but watchful positions leaning against the bar at the far end of the club. They’ll serve you anything you ask for at the Wulfshead, from an atomic cocktail with a strontium 90 Perrier chaser, to a bracing glass of medicinal absinthe with a little parasol in it. I’ve seen people order drinks so volatile they had to be served in depleted uranium cups, and alcohol so potent it was served by a miniature tap-dancing pink elephant. Though admittedly, the night I saw that I’d had a few. . . . I ordered my usual bottle of Beck’s, and a Buck’s Fizz for Molly. She thinks the orange juice makes it healthy. There are always a dozen or so bartenders stationed up and down the length of the bar, all with the same face. I’ve never asked.
The usual crowd was in. Larry Oblivion, the dead detective, looking to make useful contacts and touting for business. He was drinking neat formaldehyde, with a crème de violette chaser to take the edge off his breath. He was quite happy to tell Molly that he didn’t know anything about a new satanic conspiracy, and didn’t want to. Having been murdered by his ex-partner, and then brought back to life as a zombie, he had more reason than most to be careful about the state of his soul. There’s nothing like having died to make you very thoughtful about the afterlife.
A fat, middle-aged and disturbingly hearty fellow in a Hawaiian shirt and grubby shorts waved cheerfully to Molly. He was drinking from a whiskey bottle with a nipple on the end, and scratching himself in an entirely too unself-conscious way. Molly moved over to join him, and I followed after. Neither of us wanted to get too close to him. He leered at Molly, and nodded briskly to me.
“Hail fellows well met, and all that crap. Trash, sir, at your service. It’s not my given name, you understand; I chose it. It’s real, it’s romantic, it’s . . . me. Trash: child prodigy, eccentric dancer, and necromancer-in-waiting to the court of St. James, the bastards. I understand you’re hot on the trail of a new satanic conspiracy. . . . Whatever happened to the old one, I wonder? People can’t be bothered to look after their conspiracies anymore. In my young day, you could expect a decent conspiracy to give you a good run for your money; be something you could hand down to your children and grandchildren. Not that I’ve ever been cursed with such. I would love to be of assistance, Molly, dear, but these days if it isn’t directly concerned with death and dying, I’m really not interested. Sex and death, you see; it’s all down to sex and death. Or if it isn’t, I don’t want to know. I could ask some recently departed if they know anything, but frankly I wouldn’t trust anything they have to say. The dead have their own strange ideas about what’s real and what isn’t. Either that, or they have a really weird sense of humour, and lie a lot. And they always have their own agenda.”
We moved on, leaving Trash to chat up an emo ghoul with far too many piercings. I spotted Jeremy Diego wistfully waving a folded banknote in the air as he tried to attract a bartender’s attention. Some people can’t get served. Jeremy was a ghost finder from the Carnacki Institute, and it showed in his prematurely aged face and otherworldly eyes. A short and stocky chap in a battered suit and a jaunty fedora, and what appeared to be half his breakfast all down his front. He seemed pleased enough to see me, and nodded politely to Molly, but as always, if it didn’t involve ghosts, he didn’t have a clue.
“The word is,” he said, peering at us owlishly over the drink I’d bought him, “things are stirring in the afterworlds. Very powerful things. An awful lot of our psychics are looking into the future and coming back with spiritual shell shock. Something Bad is heading our way. Can’t get any of them to agree on what it might be, but then, that’s psychics for you. The one thing you can be sure of is that when we do find out what it is, we’re really not going to like it. Mark my word, young Shaman, there’ll be tears before bedtime. . . .”
And then there was Monkton Farley, the famous consulting detective, leaning very casually against the bar in his immaculately cut suit, elegant cuffs and brightly polished brogues. He had the usual small crowd of admirers set out before him, listening eagerly to his tale of the Case of the Unnatural Progression. Luckily he’d almost finished, because we’d never get anything out of him until he had. We waited for the crowd to finish applauding, and then pushed our way through to the front. He looked down his long nose at me, over his flute of pink champagne, but had better sense than to try that with Molly, and so gave her a wintry smile.
“Satanic conspiracy?” he drawled, in that aristocratic tone I knew for a fact he wasn’t entitled to. “Haven’t heard a thing. Been very busy, you know. Nothing succeeds like success, and all that. Only just got back from the wilds of rural Somerset. God, I despise the countryside. It’s so . . . uncivilised.”
Molly and I split up after that, so we could cover more ground. I worked the club with my usual practiced charm, asking a discreet question or two here and there, and reading between the lines of what I was told; but when I joined up with Molly again neither of us had much to show for our efforts. There was a general feeling among the club regulars that there was definitely Something in the air, but no one knew anything for sure. And when I did come right out with it, and asked if anyone had heard anything about a new satanic conspiracy, most people laughed at me. A satanic conspiracy? Oh, my dear, that’s so last century. . . .
And then, while Molly and I were refreshing ourselves with several new drinks, I spotted a familiar if somewhat unexpected face. Philip MacAlpine was one of the old-time spies, who spent his whole adult life in the treacherous trenches of espionage and double-dealing. He was supposed to have done good work with my uncle James and uncle Jack back in the day, but now, at the end of his career, he was only a minor functionary at MI-13, helping to keep the lid on things the public wasn’t supposed to know about. He’d tried to kill me on more than one occasion, but I did my best not to take it perso
nally.
He was looking old and tired, so I decided to cheer him up with my company. He took one look at me advancing on him and tried to run. But I’d already sent Molly ahead of me to block his way. He looked back and forth, and his shoulders slumped. I smiled at him, and he grunted back. Anyone would have thought he wasn’t pleased to see me.
“Not pleased to see me, Philip?” I said brightly.
“I used to have a career!” he snapped. “I used to have prospects, and an office with a window! And then you happened to me.”
“Shouldn’t have tried to kill me then,” I said reasonably.
“I shouldn’t have failed,” said MacAlpine, pouting. “I told them there was no point in trying to go head-to-head with a Drood field agent, but no; no one ever listens to me. Even though I’ve got more field experience than half my superiors put together, these days. The departments aren’t what they were. I used to swan around Eastern Europe in a cool car, with all the latest weaponry, making trouble in all the right places . . . and now I have to fill in forms in triplicate just to go to the toilet. I blame the end of the Cold War. They knew how to play the game. . . . Now it’s all fanatics and religious head cases with no sense of humour, who wouldn’t understand the rules of the game if you tattooed them on their foreheads.”
“I heard you’d found a new niche for yourself at MI-13,” said Molly. “Cracking down on unregistered aliens from other dimensions . . .”
“MI-13 is still a force to be reckoned with,” MacAlpine said quickly. “Droods don’t have all the answers. There’s still plenty for us to do.”
I nodded, only half listening to what he was saying. A strange sense of déjà vu was raising all the hairs on the back of my neck. The last time I’d talked with Philip MacAlpine, it had been at the Winter Hall, in Limbo. I still remembered that conversation, but he didn’t, because he wasn’t really there. Or was he? It was hard to be sure about anything that had happened in that strange other place. I wondered, if I were to remind him of what he said there, would he remember? I decided it was better not to ask. I cut into his ramblings about how his life hadn’t worked out the way it should have, and fixed him with a hard stare.