Book 1 - The Man With the Golden Torc (13 page)

I pressed the pedal to the metal so hard my foot ached, and the
Hirondel hammered down the motorway, the engine roaring joyously. More missiles
exploded on either side of me, the blasts rocking the car, but I refused to be
bluffed. They couldn’t afford to just blow up the car, in case they damaged the
Soul. The black helicopters kept up with me easily, taking up formation all
around me. My thoughts were racing, trying to find a way out of this trap, but
mostly I couldn’t help thinking, Why are the bloody Men in Black after me? It
was more than three years since I’d burgled Area 52 on the family’s behalf. And
I took only a few things…Could it be that Mr. President was still mad over the
Harley Street affair and had called in a favour from his American counterpart?
How very small-minded of him. You try to help someone out…

Bullets raked along one side of the Hirondel, punching through
the thick metal, slamming me back and forth in the driving seat, and forcing the
car right across into the other lane. I had to fight the wheel for control, all
the time screaming obscenities at the helicopter pilots. Didn’t they realise the
Hirondel was a classic car, a genuine antique and a work of art in its own
right? You don’t put bullet holes in a work of art! Bloody philistines. Right.
Enough was enough. I was angry now. Who the hell did they think they were
messing with? I hit one of the Armourer’s concealed switches, and a panel
flipped open, revealing a big red button. I pressed my thumb down firmly, and an
electromagnetic pulse radiated out from the car, swatting all six black
helicopters from the sky like the hand of God.

They plummeted clumsily to the ground as all their electrical
systems crashed and fried, and it was a credit to their pilots that only two of
them exploded on impact. Thick black smoke curled up into the pale blue sky as I
hammered on down the motorway, punching the air with one golden fist. I don’t
normally celebrate my kills, but they had got me seriously angry. Killing me was
one thing, stealing the Soul of Albion another; but vandalising a classic like
the Hirondel…Hell was too good for them.

(Do I really need to explain that the car was shielded from its
own EMP pulse? The Armourer’s not an idiot, you know.)

Half a dozen cars came shooting onto the motorway from a side
entrance, and I actually relaxed a little, assuming their presence meant the
attack was over, and normal traffic was resuming. I should have known better. I
noticed almost immediately that each of the cars was a sharp scarlet in colour,
glistening like lipstick, and none of them were any make or model I was familiar
with. There was something odd, something off, about the six scarlet cars as they
crept up behind me. I was still driving the Hirondel flat out, but they had no
trouble catching up. They were all long limousines with old-fashioned high tail
fins, and they moved smoothly up and alongside me, pacing me effortlessly like
hunting cats. For the first time I got a good look at them, close up, and my
skin crawled. The hackles stood up on the back of my neck. I could see the
driver of the car on my right, and the car was being driven by a dead man. He’d
been dead for some time, his gray face shrunken and desiccated, almost that of a
mummy. His shrivelled hands had been nailed to the steering wheel, which moved
by itself.

These weren’t cars. None of them were cars. These were
CARnivores.

I’d read about them, heard about them from other agents, but I
had never seen one close up before, and had never wanted to. CARnivores are
sentient, meat-eating cars with attitude. Some say they came originally from
some other dimension, where cars evolved to replace humans, and some say they
evolved right here, ancient predators who’d learned to look like cars so they
could prey on humans unnoticed. They stalk the motorways, following tired souls
who drive alone in the early hours of the morning. The CARnivores close in, cut
them off from the pack, and then choose a secluded spot and force their prey off
the road. And then they feed…

But what the hell were this many CARnivores doing travelling
together in bright sunlight, in the middle of the day? I supposed even demon
cars could be tempted by a prize like the Soul of Albion. My mission wasn’t a
secret any longer; there was a traitor in the family, and he had sold us all
out.

The CARnivores pressed in on either side, bumping me hard, first
from the left and then from the right. The Hirondel absorbed the impact and just
kept going. Sturdy old car. I could see dead men swaying in their driving seats,
their eyeless heads lolling back and forth. Another CARnivore rammed the
Hirondel from behind, jolting me forward in my seat. Two more bumps, left and
right, harder now. CARnivores like to play with their food. The one on my left
slowly opened its hood, the bloodred steel rising tauntingly to show me a pink
glistening maw within and rows of churning steel teeth. It was hungry, and it
was laughing at me.

Underneath the protection of my golden armour, I was sweating. I
could feel it running down my face. I was pretty sure the living metal would be
a match for the CARnivores, but it couldn’t do anything to protect the Hirondel.
And I needed the car if I was to get the Soul safely to Stonehenge, still a good
hour’s hard driving away. I could see the effects of the CARnivores’ proximity
already manifesting in the Hirondel. Every part of the car looked older, dimmed,
even shabby. CARnivores could leech the vitality right out of any car, aging it
at an accelerated rate until it malfunctioned or fell apart from metal fatigue.
And then the CARnivores would drive it off the road and feed on the driver and
any passengers. CARnivores exist by draining other cars dry, but even more than
that, they love their human prey.

They’re meat junkies.

The Hirondel had a lot of extra options built in, but at the end
of the day it was still just a car and as vulnerable as any other. And the
CARnivores were getting awfully close. They bumped and barged me from both sides
almost constantly now, jostling me like bullies in a playground, just for the
fun of it. Time to show them who was the eight-hundred-pound gorilla around
here. I let my left hand drift over the Armourer’s special control panel. I
doubted the EMP would work on the CARnivores, even if it had recharged itself
yet; they were too different, too alien, too alive. So I used the rear-mounted
flamethrowers instead. Twin streams of raging fire blasted out of the back of
the Hirondel, and a thick rush of flames enveloped the CARnivore behind me. The
demon car screamed shrilly, thrashing wildly from side to side as it fell back.
The fires had taken hold, and the CARnivore blazed brightly, flames and smoke
leaping up into the sky.

I hit my brakes hard, the Hirondel’s tyres screeching as my
speed dropped by half. The two CARnivores on either side of me shot forward,
caught unawares, and I opened up on them with the electric cannon mounted just
above the front bumper. Pumped out at a thousand rounds a second, explosive
fléchettes raked both cars, chewing up the demon metal. One CARnivore exploded,
flipping end over end down the motorway before finally skidding to a halt. The
other surged back and forth across the lanes, leaking long trails of blood and
oil. I kept tracking it with both cannon until it too exploded, shooting off
over the hard shoulder and embedding itself in the grass verge beyond.

Three down, three to go.

But the other CARnivores had had enough. They slowed right down
and took the next exit, not used to prey who fought back. I swept on, checking
my inventory. The flamethrowers had exhausted most of their fuel, the cannon
were almost out of ammunition, but the EMP was fully recharged and ready to go
again. I rummaged in my glove compartment for my maps. Now that my cover was
blown I needed to get off the motorway as quickly as possible. Use the side
roads and the roundabout routes that an enemy might not know. And I needed to
stop and find a landline phone so I could contact my family, let them know what
was happening. I couldn’t trust my mobile. My enemies might tap into the GPS. In
an almighty cock-up situation like this, I wasn’t too proud to beg for
reinforcements. And then the car’s alarms went off again, and I looked up to see
elf lords flying towards me on their dragon mounts.

I should have expected elves. They’d sell the souls they didn’t
have to get their hands on the Soul of Albion, so they could use it to destroy
the humans who’d driven them from their ancient ancestral holdings. Not through
war or attrition, but just by outbreeding them. The elves hate us, and they
always will, because we won by cheating. I could hear their laughter on the
wind, cold and cruel and capricious.

There were twenty dragons, and none of them were the graceful,
romantic beasts of myth and legend. These were great worms, thirty to forty feet
long, with wet, glistening, segmented bodies, and vast membranous bat wings.
They forced themselves through the sky by brute effort, ugly and inglorious,
their flat faces made up of a ring of dark unblinking eyes surrounding a sucking
mouth like a lamprey’s. Astride their thick necks, on ancient saddles
upholstered in tanned human skin, sat the elf lords and ladies. Beautiful and
magnificent, vicious and vile, human in shape but not in thought, they rode to
the slaughter with laughter on their colourless lips, singing ancient hunting
songs on the glories of suffering and the kill.

They came straight at me, moving so fast they were over me and
then behind me before I even had time to react. They swooped around, the hunting
pack in full cry, and the lords and ladies threw lightning bolts at me with
their bare hands. The bolts exploded in the road ahead of me, blasting out
craters and cracking the surface. I put my foot down and kept going, swerving
the car back and forth to avoid the larger holes. The dragons pounded through
the air above and beside me, taking their time, enjoying the hunt. Seeing how
close they could get to the car, without actually touching it. The continuous
explosions of the lightning bolts were deafening, and the flaring lights were
bright enough to dazzle me momentarily, even through the armour’s protection. I
could hear the Hirondel’s engine straining. I tried to think what I had that
could reach the elves and their dragons, safe up in the sky. A lightning bolt
hit the bonnet of the Hirondel, blasting all the paint away in a moment, and the
car slammed this way and that under the impact, swerving blindly across the lane
divider and back again. Only the armoured strength in my hands kept the steering
wheel under control, even as the wheel itself crumpled slowly out of shape.

A dragon and its rider came flying straight at me, only a few
feet above the road. I wondered at first if he was planning to ram me, but then
I saw him fitting an arrow to his bow, and I smiled. An arrow against my armour.
Yeah, right. I reached for the switch to activate the electric cannon and blow
him out of my way. The elf lord loosed his arrow. And while I was still reaching
for the switch, the arrow punched right through my windshield and through my
glorious golden armour, and buried itself in my left shoulder. I slammed back in
my seat, crying out in shock and pain, and actually let go of the wheel for a
moment to grab at the arrow shaft with both hands. It wouldn’t budge. The car
skidded across the lanes. I tugged at the arrow again, crying out in agony, but
I couldn’t move it. The extra pain cleared my head like a shock of cold water in
the face, and I grabbed the steering wheel and brought the Hirondel under
control again.

I was panting harshly, and sweat poured down my face under my
golden mask. I could feel blood coursing down my arm and chest, under my armour.
Every movement, every breath, brought me a new pulse of pain. I gritted my teeth
until my jaws ached. I was still in shock, and not just from the pain. My armour
was invulnerable. Impregnable. Everyone knew that. The strength of the living
armour was the strength of the family. It made our work possible, because none
of our enemies could touch us while we wore the living metal. Only, the silver
shaft sticking out of my shoulder was a pretty convincing argument to the
contrary. Trust the elves to find a way to hurt us. The pain beat in my head,
interfering with my thoughts, and it took all my self-control to push it aside
and concentrate. There had to be a way out of this. I couldn’t surrender the
Soul of Albion. And anyway, I was damned if I’d be beaten by a bunch of snotty,
arrogant elves.

I kept driving, foot hard down, blinking sweat out of my eyes.
I’d lost all feeling in my left arm, and it hung limply at my side. I studied
the arrow shaft protruding from my armoured shoulder. It was a strange silvery
metal, glowing faintly. God alone knew from what far dimension the elves had
plundered it, desperate to find the one thing that would pierce Drood armour. I
looked up and around. The dragons were still keeping up with me, flailing their
vast wings into a blur, even though the Hirondel was pushing its top speed. I
couldn’t outrun them, couldn’t shake them off. So I stamped both feet down on
brake and clutch and brought the car to a screeching halt, leaving long smoking
trails of burned rubber behind me. The dragons and their riders swept on, caught
off guard, but quickly circled around to come back at me again. Some of them
were already stringing arrows to their bows.

I forced the bullet-holed door open and stumbled out of the car,
crying out despite myself as every new jolt of movement brought me fresh pain. I
strode out into the middle of the road, facing the oncoming dragons, my left arm
useless at my side. I could see the elves’ faces now, their cold, cruel smiles.
They were laughing at me. I reached through my golden armour with my golden hand
and drew the Colt Repeater from its holster. There was blood on it from my
shoulder wound, and I shook a few drops off. I aimed the Colt at the nearest
dragon rider, and the gun took care of the rest.