“Right,” said Isabella. “Keeping your heart separate is another ace up the sleeve. I’m a witch, not a goddess.”
“Speak for yourself,” said Molly. “What a ride! Let’s go back up and do it again!”
“Maybe later,” I said. “I think there are some people here who want to talk to us.”
We’d finally reached the lobby of Lightbringer House. It was packed with people. On most occasions, the lobby was probably a wide-open space, light and airy, big enough to impress without being actually intimidating. Just the place to put new arrivals in the right frame of mind. But now it was packed from wall to wall with businessmen and -women in smart power suits, loaded down with all kinds of really heavy-duty weapons, some so big it took two of them to aim the things.
There were security forces, in generic black uniforms, with guns. They all looked very professional. Scattered through the crowd were men and women with magical weapons, everything from pointing bones to glowing blades to Hands of Glory. Hundreds of people, all with weapons trained on Molly and Isabella and me. They had us outnumbered and outgunned, and they knew it. They were smiling: really nasty, unpleasant smiles. They didn’t want to kill us unless they had to. Not right away. They were looking forward to taking us somewhere private and doing awful things to us until we died of them. Maybe even sacrifice us to their lord and master. And then make use of our bodies afterwards. I looked around the lobby, and then laughed right in their faces.
“You know,” I said loudly, “the good thing about killing Satanists is that you never have to feel bad about it afterwards. There’s no such thing as too many dead Satanists.”
I struck a pose and held up an armoured fist. Sharp spikes extruded from the golden knuckles, gleaming brightly. There were a few shocked gasps from the watching crowd. Encouraged, I continued, concentrating on refining my armour, shaping it into a more aggressive form through sheer willpower. I couldn’t hold the changes for long; but they didn’t know that. Rows of thick, solid spikes rose up from my arms and shoulders, and heavy golden spikes jutted from my elbows. I turned slowly, so everyone could get a good look at how nasty Drood armour could be.
Not to be outdone, Molly struck an equally impressing pose beside me. Lightning flashed on the air, slamming down around her again and again, filling the lobby with its sharp actinic glare. Lightning danced around Molly Metcalf and never touched her once. And then it stopped as suddenly as it started, leaving harsh blue-white energies roiling around Molly’s hands, spitting and crackling on the still air.
Isabella stamped one foot down hard on the lobby floor. The heavy marble cracked and shattered under the impact, and a series of ripples spread out from her, distorting the marble floor, rising up in sharp ridges under the Satanists’ feet.
The three of us moved leisurely to stand back-to-back, so between us we could cover the whole lobby. To my right, the lobby ended in massive glass windows, but they were opaque now, to make sure no one outside could see in. I was pretty sure they’d be soundproofed, too. Whatever happened in the lobby stayed in the lobby.
“So,” I said. “Who’s first?”
“I think that would have to be me,” said a familiar voice.
A narrow aisle opened up amid the packed Satanists, and Alexandre Dusk came strolling forward to face me. He looked calm and assured, and perhaps even a little bored: a great man called away from important business to deal with some trivial, minor matter. He stopped a safe distance away from me and gave me his best professional smile.
“You must realise this is over, Drood. You can’t kill us all.”
“Want to bet?” I said cheerfully. “I’m certainly ready to give it a bloody good try.”
A certain ripple of unease ran through the crowd. They may not have encountered Drood armour before, but they’d certainly heard things about it. There was a lot of looking at one another, and a general willingness to let somebody else be the first to start something. Some of them were even trying to hide behind one another. To his credit, Dusk didn’t seem at all impressed. He stood his ground and gave me his best smile.
“We might or might not be able to kill you, Drood. But we can quite definitely kill your companions, the infamous Metcalf sisters.”
“Watch your language, Dusk,” said Molly. “We are not infamous; we are legendary.”
“Right,” said Isabella. “Especially legendary when it comes to taking out the trash. Hands in the air, people; who wants to die first in an interesting and possibly explosive way?”
“I’m bored with turning people into toads,” said Molly. “What’s ickier than toads?”
“How about worms?” said Isabella. “They make such a satisfyingly squishy sound when you tread on them.”
“Locusts are good,” said Molly. “They go crunch!”
“You talk a good fight,” said Dusk. “But we have the numbers. And the weapons, and the magics, and all the powers of darkness. Armour off, Drood, and let us take you prisoner. Or you can watch us pull your little friends down, and kill them by inches right in front of you.”
“You’d kill them anyway,” I said. “You’re Satanists, and so by definition your word is worthless. But you won’t kill them, Dusk.”
“Really? Why not?”
“You really want Louisa Metcalf mad at you?” I said.
Another ripple ran through the crowd. They’d all heard of Louisa Metcalf. A general feeling of unease was making itself apparent in the crowd. They’d thought this was going to be easy. I don’t think any of them had ever been in a real fight before. Some were backing away; some were lowering their weapons and looking around for the exits. The confidence was oozing out of them. I had to fight an impulse to shout, Boo! just to see how many would faint or wet themselves.
Dusk must have realised what was happening. His voice cracked like a whip. “A witch is just a witch, and a Drood is only as strong as his armour! We . . . are so much more. We are the blessed children of the dark.”
“A few of you, maybe,” I said. “Most of your people look like they’re up way past their bedtime.”
Dusk shrugged. “You simply can’t get good followers these days. But there’s enough of us here to get the job done. Surrender now, and we’ll hold you somewhere secure till we can contact your family and make a deal. I’m sure they’ve got something we’d like that we can swap you and the witches for. I don’t want to have to kill you, not when you’re worth so much more to us as bargaining chips.”
I considered him thoughtfully. “Droods don’t surrender. You must know that. You’re stalling; buying time to hit us with some big secret weapon. You really think you can take us?”
“Anything will break, if you hit it hard enough and often enough,” said Dusk.
“It’s going to get messy,” I said. “Loud and messy. You ready to draw that much attention from outside?”
“The building is very thoroughly shielded,” said Dusk, confirming my suspicions. “I could sacrifice a busload of blind orphans in here, and no one outside would see or hear a thing. Don’t think we can’t hurt you inside that armour, Drood. We know all there is to know about hurting people.”
I had to laugh. “Droods have been honing their fighting skills for centuries. You’re amateur night.”
Dusk looked me over thoughtfully. “So which Drood are you, exactly?”
“Any Drood is every Drood,” I said.
“You think we fear the Droods?”
“You do if you’ve got any sense.”
A wild-eyed young man ran suddenly forward out of the crowd, screaming at the top of his lungs and wielding a long glowing sword. He brought the blade swinging round in a vicious arc, moving almost too fast to see. It hit me on the side of the neck and shattered into a dozen pieces. The young Satanist stood there with only the hilt in his hand. I leaned forward a little, so he could see his own reflection in my featureless golden mask.
“Run,” I said.
He sprinted back into the crowd and disappeared. I l
ooked at Dusk, who shrugged.
“There’s always one.”
“There’ll be one fewer if he tries that again,” I said.
“I’m curious,” said Dusk. “Why didn’t you kill him?”
“Because I kill only when I have to,” I said. “That’s the difference between us.”
“Oh, I think we’re a lot closer than you care to admit,” said Dusk. “We’re both quite capable of doing whatever we consider . . . necessary. And you can’t stop us.”
“I wear the Drood armour,” I said. “You can’t stop me.”
“Oh, please,” said Dusk. “There’s nothing about you that couldn’t be cured with the right kind of can opener.”
“And there’s nothing about all the people in this lobby that a good kicking couldn’t help to put right,” I said. “Shall we get started?” I looked about me, and people actually fell back. “I mean, come on! Worshipping the Devil? When has that ever been a good idea? I put it all down to poor toilet training, myself.”
Dusk looked at Molly and Isabella. “Since your companion seems impervious to good sense, have you anything useful to say?”
“Fuck off and die,” said Molly.
“Apparently not,” said Dusk.
“Why are we still talking?” I said. “Are we waiting for your marvellous secret weapon to make its appearance? Or has one of its wheels come off?”
“No,” said Dusk. “I’m curious. I’ve never met a Drood before. Don’t know anyone who has. You’re the urban legends of the invisible world. How did you come to be here? How did you know I was going to be here today? Which of my people betrayed us?”
I had to smile behind my mask. I could have told him it was all down to chance, but he wouldn’t have believed it.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” I said, to sow a little mischief.
“At least my power is my own,” said Dusk. “How does it feel, knowing that your only power comes from your armour? That you can have power over the world only by sealing yourself off from it? We glory in our power, and know sensations you can only dream of.”
“It’s not the armour,” I said. “It’s never the armour. It’s the Drood inside it. And to attack one of us is to attack the whole family. Are you really ready to declare open war on the Droods?”
There was a long pause. He was actually thinking about it. I really wasn’t sure what he would do next. He had the numbers and the weapons . . . but he wasn’t sure. I was still a Drood in my armour, and Molly and Isabella both had reputations for blood and mayhem. It would be a brave bookie who’d set the odds on this one. I was ready to fight if I had to, but I was really hoping I wouldn’t have to.
“Let them go,” Dusk said finally. “It’s not as if they know anything important. Run back to your family, Drood. Tell them their time is almost over.”
He gestured with his left hand, and his people obeyed him immediately, falling back to open up a narrow aisle between us and the lobby entrance. Molly and Isabella and I moved slowly but steadily over to the doors, not dropping our guard for a moment. Molly pushed the doors open, and she and Isabella slipped quickly out onto the street beyond. I paused to look back at the watching crowd.
“You did a lot of damage while you were here, Drood,” said Dusk. “There will be a reckoning.”
“Send the bill to Drood Hall,” I said. “And we’ll all take turns officially ignoring it.”
I left the lobby, and the doors slammed shut behind me. There was the sound of a great many locks slamming shut. I quickly armoured down, before any passersby could notice, and then Molly and Isabella and I strode perfectly normally down the street, away from Lightbringer House. It felt good to be back in the real world again, in the natural sunshine and the easy calm of everyday life. I could feel my muscles slowly unbunching as I was finally able to relax. That had all been a lot closer than I cared to think about.
“I could have taken him,” Isabella said suddenly.
“We could have taken him,” said Molly.
“You want to go back in and try?” I said. “I’ll hold your coats.”
“Not right now,” said Isabella.
“Maybe later,” said Molly. “There were an awful lot of them, weren’t there?”
“I counted three Hands of Glory, several death charms and something that looked very like a monkey’s paw,” I said. “Drood armour’s good, but it does have its limits.”
“If we hadn’t been there,” Molly said slowly, “and if you hadn’t had to worry about us, would you have fought them anyway, and to hell with the consequences?”
“No,” I said. “The important thing was to get out of there alive with the information we gathered. My family doesn’t know anything about this, and they need to know. I’m more concerned about you now. They’ve seen your faces; they know who you are. They’ll never stop coming after you. I think you both need to come back to Drood Hall with me. You’ll be safe there. My family doesn’t take any shit from jumped-up Devil worshippers.”
“Put myself in the hands of the Droods?” said Isabella. “I don’t think so!”
“Then what will you do?” said Molly.
“I have my own leads to follow,” said Isabella. “This was my case, and my business, long before you stuck your noses in.”
“And if they do come after you?” I said.
Isabella smiled briefly. “I could always go spend some time with Louisa.”
She strode off down the street, head held high, not looking back. People moved quickly to get out of her way.
“Well,” said Molly. “That was . . . interesting. Whose great idea was this, anyway?”
“Yours,” I said.
“Why do you listen to me?” said Molly. “I wouldn’t.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Too Many Secrets for One Family
Back at Drood Hall, I walked into the Sanctity to find the ruling council already assembled and waiting for me. Somehow, I’m always the last to arrive. I’d like to take the credit and say I do it deliberately, so I can make a big entrance and be sure everybody’s attention is fixed on me . . . but the truth is that no matter how hard I try, they’re always there first. I sometimes think they must all get together secretly beforehand and agree to actually start the meeting ten minutes earlier, so they can all look at me disapprovingly for being late again. But, truth be told, I’m always late. For everything. It’s a gift.
And these days nobody glares at me too much when I walk in late with Molly Metcalf on my arm, because Molly glares right back at them. And it’s never a good idea to upset someone who can turn you into something small and squishy with warts on your warts by looking at you in a Certain Way. I, of course, do not have to worry about this happening to me, because I have learned the magic words, Yes, dear.
They were all there, sitting round the great table in the middle of the Sanctity. The ruling council of the Droods, self-appointed on the run after the Matriarch’s murder, because someone had to keep the wheels turning while the family got on with its job. Family politics come and go, but duty and responsibility go on forever. My uncle Jack, the Armourer, was sitting at the head of the table in his usual lab coat, fresh that day but already marked with scorch marks and chemical burns, over a grubby T-shirt bearing the legend, Give Me a Lever and a Place to Stand, and I’ll Beat the World into Submission. The Sarjeant-at-Arms sat stiffly in his chair, back straight and head erect, big and muscular in his black suit and spotless white shirt, like a bouncer who’d muscular in his black suit and spotless white shirt, like a bouncer who’d taken over the nightclub. A thug and a bully and proud of it, the Sarjeant was a very busy man who could still find the time to be disappointed in me.
William the Librarian sat slumped in his chair, wearing a battered dressing gown that must have had a pattern on it once upon a time, and a pair of sloppy bunny slippers. It was immediately clear that he wasn’t wearing anything under the dressing gown, and even before I reached the table, the Armourer had to tell the Librarian to ke
ep the damn thing closed. There was something about the bunny slippers that disturbed me. They were white, and most bunny slippers are pink. In fact, I was pretty sure that the last time I’d seen them, they had been pink. But now they were white. Which felt like it should mean something . . . that I should remember something . . . but the memory remained elusive, so I let it go.
And finally there was cousin Harry, looking more like a defrocked accountant than ever in his neat grey suit and wire-rimmed spectacles. Quiet, clever, dangerous cousin Harry. And his partner, Roger Morningstar. Who, by long tradition, was not allowed to actually sit at the main table with the council. Because although he had much to contribute, he was only half Drood. And so, like my Molly, he could attend council meetings, but not sit at the table. The two of them had to sit on separate chairs a respectable distance away. Petty, I know, but that’s tradition for you. When a family’s been around as long as the Droods, you acquire a lot of traditions along the way, rather like barnacles on a ship. It’s the long-held traditions like this one that make me wonder whether we’re getting a bit too inbred.
Molly always got her own back by bringing a really massive bag of popcorn to every council meeting and crunching the stuff loudly during the boring bits. Roger sat loosely in his chair, calm and entirely at his ease, and we all did our best not to notice that his half-demonic presence was still potent enough to set fire to the chair he was sitting on. Little grey streams of smoke drifted up into the air, and I hoped someone had reminded Ethel to turn off the sprinklers.
Ethel, as our very own other-dimensional friend insisted we call it, manifested in the Sanctity as a pleasant rose red glow. Bathing in that ruddy glare was enough to calm the spirit and ease the heart. Didn’t stop us all from arguing, though.
I sat down in my assigned place at the far end of the table and immediately launched into my tale of what had gone down at Lightbringer House. Only to be as immediately stopped by the Sarjeant-at-Arms. Meetings have to have agendas, in his world, and that meant my late-arriving news would have to wait until we’d dealt with existing business first. All the others went along, because the Sarjeant was quite capable of outstubborning us all when it came to matters of precedence. So I sank down in my chair and sulked, with my arms folded tightly across my chest, while he worked his way through the business of the day. It wasn’t easy feeling sullen and thoroughly pissed off under Ethel’s soothing red glow, but then, I’ve had a lot of practice. When it comes to trying your patience, my family could make Mother Teresa drink vodka straight from the bottle while drop-kicking a leper.