Book 1 - The Man With the Golden Torc (17 page)

As my eyes adjusted to the flaring lights and colours, I began
to recognise faces in the roiling throng: celebrities, footballers, politicians,
even a few respectable businessmen from the City that dear prudish Matthew would
probably have been horrified to discover in a place like this. I filed the faces
away in my memory, for future thought. And perhaps a little blackmail, if money
became tight.

The walking wardrobe returned with the four founding members of
the Chelsea Lovers. They strolled with almost supernatural grace through the
heaving crowds, which opened before them and closed after them without once
stopping or even slowing what they were doing. The four founders walked on air,
masters of their own space, touching nothing but each other. Their hands
wandered constantly over each other’s bare flesh. They sank slowly down to hover
before me, and the bouncer went back to his door. The four original Chelsea
Lovers: Dave and Annie, Stuart and Lenny. Two men and two women, but far beyond
anything so human now; instead they were as alien and other as anything I ever
encountered from another dimension. They had to be in their late sixties, but
they still had the smooth bodies of twenty-year-olds. Perfect as statues, lean
and hungry, burning with unnatural energies, sustained by an endless appetite
that had nothing to do with food.

They looked much as they must have done when they first met in
Chelsea, back in the swinging sixties, when London swung like a pendulum. Two
young couples, then, out on the town and hungry for new experiences. They found
something, or it found them, and they were never the same afterwards. They
started their first club in a little place just off Carnaby Street, and what
they did there shocked even the most hardened souls of the permissive
generation. The Chelsea Lovers hadn’t seen daylight since. They moved from
location to location, known only to those in the know, travelling the secret
subterranean routes beneath the city streets, flitting silently through the
shadows of the undertown, with its ancient Roman arches, where all the bad
things congregate, for fun and profit. Nothing ever touched the Chelsea Lovers.
Even then, they were far too dangerous.

They stood before me, skin like chalk, eyes like pissholes in
the snow. Colourless flyaway hair, purple lips, and endless smiles that meant
nothing, nothing at all. They were entirely naked, untouched by piercings or
tattoos or any such trappings. Such lesser things were not for them. Just
hanging on the air before me, silent and inviting, they were still the most
blatantly sexual things I had ever seen. They had all the impact of the first
nude photos you ever saw, the first object of desire, the first boy or girl you
ever wanted, and the first you ever lost. I wanted them and I was afraid of
them, and God alone knows what I would have done if my torc hadn’t been there to
protect me from the worst of their influence.

I knew the four names, but not which was who. I don’t think
anyone does anymore. Perhaps not even them. One of the women spoke to me. Her
voice sounded like she had ice in her veins and a fever in her head.

"What do you want here? What’s your pleasure?"

I had to clear my throat before I could speak, and even then my
voice wasn’t as steady as I would have liked. "I need to consult your computers.
I need information, the kind only you might possess."

"What do you offer in payment?" said one of the men. His voice
was calm, cheerful, confidential, and about as human as a spider scuttling
across your arm. "Information in return, perhaps; or money, or your seed? You’d
be surprised what we could make from your seed, freely given."

"Information," I said quickly. My mouth was very dry, and my
legs were shaking. "First, a secret location used by a Drood field agent, on the
outskirts of London." And I gave them the address of the garage I’d just
abandoned. "Second, the name of the Drood field agent who’s just been declared
rogue and is on the run here in London: Edwin Drood."

All four of them actually shivered with delight at the prospect
of getting their hands on a new rogue Drood, the first in years. They rose and
fell on the air, laughing silently, their chalk white skin shimmering brightly.
If they could seduce and corrupt the rogue to their cause, they would have
access to secrets and information no one else had. They commanded me to follow
them and floated off towards the centre of the room, descending slowly until
they walked on the bodies that moved unstoppably beneath them. I struggled after
them, my feet slipping and sliding on the sweat-covered bodies. I stared
straight ahead. You can’t keep glancing down and apologising. And finally, in
the exact centre of the cavernous room, the four founding Chelsea Lovers
impersonally levered people out of the way to reveal a large puckered orifice in
the floor. They gestured, and it dilated open, revealing only darkness and a
sudden pungent smell on the air, like supercharged cinnamon. One by one the four
of them floated down into what lay below the floor, disappearing into darkness,
until only I was left hesitating on the rim. In the end, I just shrugged and
jumped in after them. This was what I’d come for, after all.

And found myself suddenly in a brightly lit, high-tech
environment that was the complete antithesis of everything above. It was a
circular room barely twenty feet in diameter, crowded with all the latest
computer equipment. But the computers had burst open, their silicon contents
spilling out like fruiting bodies, spreading themselves up the walls and across
the ceiling like silver ivy, even dropping down in encrustations like silicon
stalactites. The computers here were living things, growing things, fuelled by
the sexual energies from above. Self-centred, self-perpetuating. The
air-conditioning gusted like heavy breathing, and the monitor screens all around
me could have been eyes or mouths or other orifices. The four Chelsea Lovers
stood together in the middle of it all, looking at me expectantly.

"Word is, there’s a traitor inside the Drood family," I said. "I
want to know everything you know about that."

They nodded in eerie unison, and one of them ran a hand
caressingly over a computer console. It was a slow, sensuous lover’s touch. I
could feel beads of sweat popping out on my forehead. Normal people weren’t
supposed to be exposed to things like the Chelsea Lovers. Just their presence
was toxic to ordinary humans. The computers hummed thoughtfully to themselves.
The Chelsea Lovers stood together, in the same stance, even breathing in unison.
Their eyes didn’t blink as they considered me. I could feel a presence, a
pressure, forming in the room. A desire, a need, a physical imperative…

"What’s it all for?" I said abruptly. "I mean, all of this. The
Chelsea Lovers. The Kit Kat Club. The sex magic and the computers. What’s the
point of it all?"

"Apocalypse," said one of the women, and they all smiled a
little more widely. "The real sexual revolution, come at last. We want to turn
the whole world on. Using sex magic, computer magic, ritual and passion,
instinct and logic, flesh and silicon bonded together in unthought-of ways, to
work a tidal change in reality itself. We will make the whole world sexual.
Fetishize everything in it, the living and unliving, suffusing the whole world
with a passion and an appetite that will never end. A great joyous sexual
apocalypse, the climax of history. The biggest bang of all. Endless sensation,
endless pleasure…And we shall all worship the new flesh, forever and ever and
ever…"

She broke off as a face appeared on all the monitor screens at
once. The computers had discovered the identity of the new rogue Drood, and it
was me. My face was on every wall, with my real name beneath it. The family had
released my true identity to the world. The Chelsea Lovers turned as one to
orientate themselves on me. They weren’t smiling anymore. They each thrust one
hand out at me, and sex hit me like a fist. I cried out, convulsing helplessly
as passion burned in me like a fever, like the nightmares you have when your
temperature rises and your blood boils in your brain. I wanted to go to them, on
my hands and knees if necessary, and worship their flesh with my own. I would
have begged, would have died, for their lightest touch, for the pleasure of
their favour.

But there was still just enough Drood training and pride left in
me to hold them off, just enough for me to be able to subvocalise the Words, and
my armour flashed around me, golden and glorious, sealing me off from all
attack. I staggered backwards, suddenly myself again, like a man who lurches
back from the very edge of a cliff. The Chelsea Lovers cried out in one awful
voice, full of rage at the sight of Drood armour. I jumped up, the strength of
my legs amplified by my armour, and I went soaring up through the orifice and
back into the Kit Kat Club above.

I erupted back into that fleshy, cavernous place, and people
fell back from me, shouting and screaming. I had broken the mood, or the Chelsea
Lovers had. I ran for the door, and all at once, in answer to some unheard
signal, everyone in the room surged forward to attack me. Blows and kicks came
from every direction, though I couldn’t feel them through the armour, and naked
people grabbed at my arms and legs, trying to pull me down. I ran on, kicking
and pushing people out of the way, and none of them could slow or stop me. They
clutched at me with endless hands and crowded in before me, blocking the way to
the door with their bare bodies. I focused on just moving forward, not striking
out, though every instinct yelled in me to fight. With my armour’s strength I
could kill these people, and I didn’t want to do that. Unlike some of my family,
I still believed in (mostly) innocent bystanders.

I could see the door, up ahead. The huge bouncer came forward to
stop me, his huge hands opening and closing eagerly. I hit him once, and he fell
backwards, blood flying on the air, to be trampled underfoot by the packed
crowds still pressing forward. Strange forces crackled on the air around me, sex
magic and computer energies from the room below, crawling over my armour, trying
to force a way in. There were screaming faces all around me now, desperate
people clutching at me, wrapping their arms around my legs, reaching down from
the ceiling to clatter their hands uselessly against my golden head. Naked men
and women crawled all over me, slowing me down by sheer weight and press of
bodies.

I reached through my armoured side and drew my needle gun. I
still had it. Strictly speaking, I should have handed it in to the Armourer, but
what with one thing and another I never got around to it. There were only a few
needles left. I aimed the gun at the nearest wall and shot a holy-water ice
needle into the nearest pulsing vein. The whole room convulsed, like a great
fleshy earthquake. Everywhere, naked men and women were falling away from me,
clutching at their heads, crying out in shock and horror. They forgot all about
me as the room shook, and I ran for the door.

I pulled the door wide open, and daylight poured in. More
screams, as much fear as anger. I looked back. The whole place was convulsing
now, with great cracks opening up in the drying-out walls. People dropped out of
midair as the magics fell apart, no longer sustained by the endless orgy. Men
and women cried and howled and hit out at each other. I’d broken the mood. I
nodded, satisfied. I might not have learned anything useful here, but at least
the word would go out: that even though I no longer had the support of my
family, I was still a force to be reckoned with.

So I went back down into the Underground and took the Tube to
Leicester Square station. No one wanted to sit next to me in the carriage; in
fact, people actually got up to move farther away from me. It took me a while to
realise I still stank of musk from the Kit Kat Club. Still, several women did
smile at me. And a couple of men. I finally emerged from the station and
wandered up St. Martin’s Lane. The evening was drawing on now, and people were
out on the town in happily chattering groups. No one paid me any attention, so I
guessed the musk was wearing off in the open air. It felt good to be safely
anonymous again.

St. Martin’s Lane is in a nice enough area; all theatres and
restaurants, pleasant stores and businesses. All very civilised, in fact. I
followed the curving street around till I came to the next address on my list:
the very secret home and lair of the Sceneshifters. Probably the most dangerous
group on the scene, in their own small way. And so tricky to deal with that I’d
never been allowed to have any direct contact with them, even though they were
quite definitely on my patch. The Sceneshifters were the exclusive
responsibility of a special group within the family; and I had been instructed
very firmly to keep my distance.

But, things change.

Essentially, the Sceneshifters work behind the scenes of
reality, changing small details here and there, to turn the state of the world
to their advantage. There are members of the Drood family whose full-time job it
is to detect these changes and put them back the way they were. We assume we’re
winning, on the grounds that the Sceneshifters don’t actually rule the world
yet. As far as we can tell…

From the outside, their address looked like just another
building, part of a fairly modern row with bright white stone and oversized
windows, but there was something about the place…something that raised the
hackles on your neck and made you disinclined to linger. People passing by
increased their pace and averted their eyes without even realising they were
doing it. I stood before the main entrance, scowling thoughtfully. A field agent
learns to depend on his instincts, and every instinct I had was yelling at me to
get the hell away from this awful place. Just standing there, I felt…uneasy,
disturbed, in peril of both body and soul. As though if I went inside, I might
see things I couldn’t stand to see, learn things I didn’t want to know. Even
with the torc around my throat, shielding me from outside influence, it still
took all my willpower to hold my ground.