Book 1 - The Man With the Golden Torc (40 page)

I threw myself upon the armed men, beat the crap out of them,
and tossed them around the room for a while, until Molly finally stepped in and
stopped me. Not for their sakes, but for mine. She knew I’d feel bad afterwards,
if I killed them. I armoured down and smiled tremulously at her. I’d come so
close to losing her.

"I’m a witch," Molly said slowly, holding my eyes with hers. "I
see things, and remember things, that others can’t. I remember lying on that
floor, dying…and then you rewrote history, changed the world itself, just to
save me. And risked your own life doing it. You couldn’t have been sure the
armour would cover you in time to save you from their guns. Why would you do
that, risk that, to save me?"

"Because I had to," I said.

"Eddie…" she said.

"Molly…" I said.

"Oh, God," said Molly. "Are we having a romantic moment?"

We looked at each other; and it would be hard to say which of us
was more appalled at the thought.

"I’ve made a decision," I said to Molly.

"Good for you," said Molly.

"I’ve decided I don’t want to meet any more rogues," I said.

"Not if they’re going to be like the ones I’ve already met. I
mean, one crazy, one shut-in, and one moral cripple? Is that the kind of future
I’ve got to look forward to if by some miracle I survive the next few days?"

"Probably," said Molly. "If you give up, like they did. They
were all afraid to do anything that mattered. How about you?"

"I’m going home," I said. And just like that, I was certain.
"It’s all that’s left to me. I’m going back to the Hall, and the library, and my
backstabbing family. Because they’re the only ones I can be sure have the
answers I need."

"Good for you!" said Molly. "I’m coming too!"

"No, you’re bloody not," I said. "This is going to be difficult
enough without having to look after you as well."

"I do not need looking after," said Molly, her face clouding up
dangerously.

"You could die in a hundred ways just trying to get onto the
Hall’s grounds," I said, trying hard to sound reasonable. "My family is
protected in ways even I don’t like to think about sometimes."

"If you think I’m going to miss out on an opportunity to stick
it to the Droods where they live, you’ve got another think coming. I’ve dreamed
of revenge like this! Usually after eating cheese. I’m going with you, and you
can’t stop me!"

"Will you please keep the noise down?" growled Janissary Jane.
She sat up slowly, wincing and groaning, and then peered blearily about her,
taking in the unconscious Manifest Destiny soldiers piled up around her. "Must
have been a hell of a party…Shaman? That you? Where the hell am I? And what have
I been doing…? It feels like someone took a dump in my head."

"You were possessed by Archie Leech," I said, helping her to her
feet.

"I drove his spirit out of your body, and then destroyed it. He
won’t be coming back. Ever."

"Leech? That rat turd? He must have sneaked in while my defences
were down. Hold everything; you destroyed him? No offence, Shaman—I mean, well
done and thanks for everything and all that—but I never really saw you as being
in Archie Leech’s league."

"Yeah, well, that’s because he isn’t Shaman Bond," said Molly.
"He’s been fooling us all for years with that mild-mannered reporter shit."

"Molly? You’re here too?" Janissary Jane squeezed her eyes shut
and shook her head slowly. It didn’t seem to help. "Well, if he isn’t Shaman
Bond, who the hell is he?"

"There’s no easy way to say this," I said. "I’m a Drood, Jane.
Eddie Drood, field agent, at your service. Only I’m not an agent for the family
anymore. They made me rogue, so I’m on the run from everyone."

"I go to fight in the hell dimensions for one lousy month, and
the whole world stops making sense while I’m gone." Janissary Jane studied me
suspiciously. "You’re a Drood, Shaman? You? Bloody good disguise…Eddie. You
two-faced little shit. Wait a minute; I’m still catching up here. You’re a
rogue? What did you do?"

"I don’t know. But my family wants me dead. That’s why Archie
came after me." I thought it best to keep the explanations simple for the
moment. And I didn’t think I’d tell her that Archie had targeted her
specifically just to get back at me. I could do that later. From a safe
distance.

"At least you killed the bastard," Janissary Jane growled,
running her hands over herself vaguely, as though checking for signs of recent
interference. "I’ll bet you didn’t even take the time to torture him properly
first, did you? No; I thought not. So, Eddie; why are we all here, who are all
those sleeping beauties, and why are you hanging out with the infamous Molly
Metcalf?"

"If I hear one more person use that word…" Molly said ominously.

"You mutilate a few cattle, abduct a few aliens, and you get a
reputation…"

"Let us please not go there," I said quickly. "Jane, Molly and I
are working together for the moment. On matters of mutual interest."

"Like what?" said Janissary Jane. "What could you two possibly
have in common?"

"We’re going back to his old family home to take names and kick
arse," Molly said happily. "And possibly burn the place to the ground while
we’re at it."

"You’re not much of a one for keeping secrets, are you?" I said.

"You want to break into the Hall?" said Janissary Jane. "Better
you than me. I’ve been to hell and back so many times they made me up a special
visa, and I still wouldn’t go anywhere near the Hall. You couldn’t bust through
their defences with a tactical nuke. The Chinese tried, in ’sixty-four."

"Nineteen sixty-five, actually," I said.

"Shut up, Eddie; I’m on a roll," said Janissary Jane. "The point
is, the Hall has serious defences. A hundred different ways to kill your
intruder, all of them quite spectacularly vicious and nasty."

"Indeed," I said. "Spot on, in fact."

"So what you need," said Janissary Jane, "is a skeleton key."

Molly and I looked at each other. "What?" I said.

"You need something to get you through the Hall’s defences
without them kicking off on you. Something that’ll let you sneak through."

"No, hold everything," I said. "There’s no such thing. The whole
point to my family’s many and varied protections is that there are no weak
points, no possibilities for overrides. My family has spent generations
designing and improving on their defences, including multiple redundancies and a
quite appalling attention to increasingly nasty details. It has to be that way,
or our enemies would have wiped us all out long ago. We have a lot of enemies."

And then I broke off as a new wave of pain shot through me. It
stabbed through my shoulder as though I’d just been shot again, a pain so bad it
made me cry out despite myself, and then it slammed down through the whole of my
left side. It hurt so bad I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. I staggered and
would have fallen if Molly and Janissary Jane hadn’t been there to grab me from
both sides.

"Shaman? What is it? Molly, what’s wrong with him?"

"Elf lord shot him with an arrow made of strange matter," said
Molly.

"The stuff’s still in his system, poisoning him. Eddie, can you
hear me? Eddie?"

"I’m all right," I said, or thought I said.

"Jesus, he looks bad," said Janissary Jane. "Should we get him
to a healer? I know some good people, ask no questions…"

"It wouldn’t help," Molly said flatly.

"Oh," Janissary Jane said quietly. "Like that, is it?" And after
a moment, she said, "Bloody elves. Vicious little turds. Okay, strange
matter…Nasty stuff, yes; other dimensional…Really bad mojo, when you can get
your hands on it, which mostly you can’t. Never dealt with the stuff myself, but
I know a man who has. Word is, he can even supply it direct from the source on
occasion."

I forced strength back into my legs until they straightened and
could hold me up again, and then I forced my head up to look at Janissary Jane.
"Who?" I said.

"I think you need to lie down, Shaman. I mean, Eddie."

"Haven’t got the time. I’ll lie down when I’m dead." I breathed
deeply, fighting down the pain and pushing it away through sheer force of will.
I gently eased my arms out of Molly’s and Janissary Jane’s grips, and they
immediately stepped back to give me some room, keeping a watchful eye on me. I
could feel cold sweat drying on my face, but my thoughts were clear again.
"Jane, who do you know that knows about strange matter?"

"The Blue Fairy."

"What?" said Molly. "Him? The man’s a major-league piss artist!
Never met a bottle of booze he didn’t like!"

"I saw him sober once," I said. "He looked awful."

Janissary Jane sighed loudly. "You of all people should know
enough to look past the surface. You do know why he’s called the Blue Fairy,
don’t you?"

"Well, yes," I said. "Because he’s gay."

"No! I mean, yes, he’s gay, but that’s not where the name
originally came from. It’s because he’s half elf."

"Oh, come on!" said Molly. "Are we talking about the same guy?
That useless little tit who’s always sponging drinks at the Wulfshead?"

"He can’t be half elf," I said. "Elves never breed outside their
own kind. It’s their strongest taboo, utterly forbidden."

"There’s always a few who move to a different drummer," said
Janissary Jane. "The elves have a special name for those who indulge outside the
permitted gene pool. They call them perverts."

Molly smirked. "You mean they’re humosexuals?"

"Please," I said. "Let us not go there."

"The point," Janissary Jane said firmly, "is that the Blue Fairy
has some elf abilities and even a few direct contacts within the Fae. I would be
prepared to bet you good money that he was the one who supplied your elf lord
with the strange matter to make his arrow. So he might be the man to go to for a
cure. Certainly he knows more about strange matter than anyone else I know."

"All right," I said. I was feeling better, for the moment. "Any
idea of where he’s hiding out at the moment? He left his old place after the
unfortunate incident with the kobold in Leicester Square. Though what they ever
saw in each other…"

"He moved around a lot after that," said Janissary Jane. "And he
went downhill rapidly. He didn’t want any of his old friends to see what he’d
been reduced to."

"Hell, we wouldn’t have cared," said Molly.

"No, you probably wouldn’t," said Janissary Jane. "But he did.
The point is, I know where to find him. I throw him the odd commission, now and
again, for old times’ sake. If you want, I can take you right to him."

"I want," I said. "But we can’t go gallivanting across London in
plain sight, not while Manifest Destiny are after me. That’s who the sleeping
beauties belong to, by the way."

"You’ve got them mad at you as well?" said Janissary Jane. "Good
for you! You continue to rise in my estimation, Eddie. Can’t stand these
amateur-night wannabe soldiers, in their pretty new uniforms. They give real
mercenaries a bad name. Probably crap their pants and then run a mile if you
dropped them into a real war zone, crying for their mommies all the way."

"Could we at least make an effort to stick to the subject?" I
said just a little plaintively. "The point is, it’s not safe for Molly and me to
travel openly across London, and she’s all out of spatial portals."

"Well, how did I get here?" Janissary Jane said reasonably. "How
did the Manifest Destiny arseholes get here? They must have had transport,
right?"

We all moved over to the shattered window and looked out. Down
in the street below were three large black cars, parked in a row, that looked
very familiar to me. I couldn’t help but grin.

"Perfect," said Molly. "Look, they even have tinted windows, so
no one can see in! No one’s going to pay any attention to just another Manifest
Destiny car out on patrol."

"All right," I said. "Let’s go and give the Blue Fairy his
wake-up call."

Molly insisted we take a little time to leave a suitably
insulting message for whoever came to retrieve the unconscious Manifest Destiny
soldiers. So she and Janissary Jane pulled down all the soldiers’ trousers and
underwear, commenting in loud and very unfair ways as they went along, and
arranged the unconscious men in an erotic daisy chain. Then they stood back to
admire their work and giggled a lot. Never let them give you to the women.

"I’d love to see them try to explain this to their superior
officers when they turn up," Molly said happily, and Janissary Jane nodded
solemnly.

While they were busy, I had my own ideas for a little useful
mischief. I picked up Sebastian’s stylised Edwardian telephone and phoned home.
As always, they picked up on the first ring, and a familiar voice answered. One
I’d never expected to talk to again.

"Hello, Penny," I said. "Guess who?"

There was a sharp intake of breath at the other end, and then
Penny’s well-trained professionalism quickly reasserted itself. "Hello, Eddie.
Where are you calling from?"

"Trace the line," I said. "By the time you can get here, I’ll be
long gone. But you’ll still find something interesting waiting for you here. Now
put me through to the Matriarch."

"You know I can’t do that, Eddie. You’ve been officially
declared rogue. I’m sure it’s all a terrible mistake. Tell me where you are, and
I’ll send someone to pick you up."

"I want to talk to the Matriarch."

"She doesn’t want to talk to you, Eddie."

"Of course she does. That’s why she’s listening in right now.
Talk to me, Grandmother, and I’ll tell you about Sebastian."

"I’m here, Edwin," said Martha Drood. I could hear the
difference on the line as she went to secure mode. She knew we were about to
discuss things that Penny wasn’t cleared to know. Even though Penny was
officially cleared to know everything.