Book 1 - The Man With the Golden Torc (50 page)

"We keep the world safe," Uncle James said almost pleadingly.
"We protect humanity from all the forces that would destroy them if we weren’t
there."

"You are one of the forces that would destroy us," said Molly.

Uncle James still ignored her, concentrating only on me.
"Someone has to be in charge, Eddie. You can’t trust politicians to do what’s
right, not when it’s always so much easier to do what’s expedient. Do you have
any idea how many wars we’ve prevented, down the centuries, by working behind
the scenes? How many world wars that never happened thanks to us? There have
been times when the family was all that stood between humanity and utter
extinction. Our record may not be perfect, but the world would have been a far
worse place without us."

"You don’t know that," said Molly. "Not for sure. Who can say
what kind of a world we might have made for ourselves if we’d been forced to
make our own mistakes and learn from them?"

"We’ve been a force for good," said Uncle James, holding my gaze
with his.

"Yes," I said. "On the whole, I believe we have. But the
price…is too high. You can’t be just a little bit corrupt, Uncle James. Maybe
that’s why we went from serving and protecting the world to running it."

"Please," he said. "Surrender. Don’t make me kill you, Eddie. We
can still work this out. It’s not too late. I’ll speak for you before the
council. Your grandmother isn’t a monster, Eddie. If she can find a way to save
you, she will. You know she will."

"I can’t let this go on," I said. "Not now that I know. I’m here
to set the world free, Uncle James. To tear off all their shackles and let them
run free. We were meant to be the world’s shepherds, not their jailors. We’ve
become the very thing we were raised to fight. The family must fall for what
it’s done to the world, and to itself; and to me. No more lies, Uncle James. No
more dead babies. No more Droods walking around unknowing in the living skins of
their murdered twins. This should be just between you and me, Uncle James. Will
you let Molly go? If she agreed to just walk away?"

"I’m sorry," he said, and he sounded as though he meant it. "You
know I can’t let her leave, Eddie. Not now that she knows the secret. If she
stands with you, she dies with you. But…if you were to come back into the
family, perhaps something could be arranged…As your wife, she’d be family too."

"Wait just a minute!" said Molly.

"Be quiet, child," said Uncle James. "I’m trying to save your
life. The two of you could never leave the Hall again, Eddie, but you could
still live long, useful, productive lives here."

"Serving the family," I said.

"Yes."

"Work for the Droods?" said Molly. "Screw that shit. I’d rather
die. No offence, Eddie."

"I have to do what’s right," I said. "I have to fight evil
wherever I find it. Just like you taught me, Uncle James."

"Eddie…" he said, taking a step forward.

"I’m sorry."

"So am I." Uncle James sighed heavily, but his voice was calm
and his eyes were so cold as to seem almost disinterested. "Don’t bother
armouring up, Eddie. This gun came from the Armourer, long ago. He made me some
special armour-piercing bullets out of strange matter. They’ll punch right
through your armour. Just like the arrow on the motorway."

"You knew about the ambush all along!" I said, almost surprised
to find I could still feel shocked after so many secrets. "Did you know the
arrow would leave some of itself in my body, poisoning me, killing me by
inches?"

"No!" Uncle James said quickly. "It was supposed to be a clean
kill. They promised me it would be quick, or I would never have agreed. You
weren’t supposed to suffer…You were supposed to die valiantly on the motorway,
facing the family’s fiercest enemies. It seems…I taught you better than I
realised. I am proud of you, Eddie. And I promise it will be a clean kill this
time. For you and your young lady."

"Like hell," said Molly.

All the time Uncle James had been talking so passionately,
concentrating all his attention on me, I’d been quietly aware of Molly
subvocalising Words of power, a trick she’d learned from me, struggling to raise
just enough power to force one good spell through the security measures
suppressing magic in the old library. And now the spell activated, opening one
small spatial portal right beside Uncle James’s hand. It sucked the gun right
out of his grasp and started to pull his arm in too before the security measures
reasserted themselves and shut the portal down. It snapped out of existence, and
Molly almost collapsed, exhausted by the strain. She grabbed at a heavy book
stack to support herself and grinned at me.

"There you go, Eddie! Level playing field. Now kick his
self-righteous, hypocritical arse!"

Uncle James looked at his empty gun hand as though he couldn’t
quite believe it, and then he looked at me. I smiled, and suddenly so did he.
That old familiar devil-take-the-hindmost grin.

"All right, Eddie. Let’s do it. Show me how much you’ve
learned."

"You always were a big drama queen, Uncle James," I said.

We armoured up, the living golden metal enclosing both of us in
a moment. The terrible pain in my left side was immediately muted, and I didn’t
realise how bad it had got until it wasn’t there anymore. The golden armour made
me strong and powerful again. My dead brother made me strong…but I couldn’t
think about that now. I had to concentrate everything I had on Uncle James, or
he would kill me. He was, after all, the most proficient and deadly field agent
the family had ever produced.

But he’d never had to face someone like me. A semi-rogue who’d
learned all his best tricks outside the family. Tempered in the fires of two
appalling days, made stronger than ever before by what I’d had to do to survive.
And Uncle James didn’t have my outrage, my anger, my righteous cause. No; he’d
never met a Drood like me.

We circled each other slowly, warily, gleaming golden and
glorious in the muted light of the old library. I didn’t know what weapons he
might have under his armour, but the odds were he wouldn’t dare use them, for
fear of damaging the old library. Just a few sparks in the wrong place could
cause a terrible fire…And all I had left was the Colt Repeater, its everyday
bullets useless against his armour. So it all came down to him and me, one to
one, man to man.

I grew heavy spikes on the knuckles of my golden hands. Uncle
James grew long slender blades out of his golden hands. The edges looked very
sharp. I’d never known a Drood who could do that with his armour before, but the
Gray Fox always was the best of us. Champion of a thousand undisputed victories
against the forces of evil. He knew tricks no one else did, learned the hard way
in thirty years of fighting in dirty secret wars. Deep down…I knew I couldn’t
beat him. But I had to try. If only to buy Molly a chance to escape and take the
truth with her. Uncle James stood between us and the only exit, the painting’s
frame that led back into the main library. So I had to drive him back, drive him
away, fight him to a standstill; die on my feet if that was what it took to buy
Molly her chance.

My one advantage over the Gray Fox: I was already dying. So I
had nothing to lose.

I surged forward, driven by all the supernatural strength and
speed my armour could produce, and still Uncle James was ready for me. He
sidestepped gracefully, and his right-hand sword came sweeping around, the
supernaturally sharp edge slicing right through the armour over my right side.
My armour healed itself immediately, closing the cut, but I wasn’t so lucky.
Pain flared across my ribs, and I could feel thick blood coursing down my right
side under my armour. I’d never felt that before. I charged Uncle James again
and again, knowing my only hope was to get in close and grapple with him, and
every time he avoided me like a toreador with a bull, his impossibly sharp
blades cutting through my golden armour again and again, cutting me, hurting me,
slowing me down through accumulated shock and blood loss. The Gray Fox circled
me, staying carefully out of my reach, watching for the first sign of weakness
so he could move in for the kill.

So I gave him a sign. I pretended to stumble, almost going down
on one knee, and he came gliding in for the kill, smooth as any dancer. Only to
find me waiting for him. I lunged forward, forcing him backwards, off balance.
He quickly got his feet back under him again and straightened up, but by that
time I had both my hands around his throat, my golden fingers pressing down on
his golden throat. I concentrated and grew sharp barbs on the insides of my
fingers, digging them deep into the living metal around his neck. And Uncle
James couldn’t grab my wrists to force my hands away without giving up his
swords.

He drew back his right arm and slammed his right sword forward
with all his armour’s strength behind it. The golden blade punched right through
the armour over my left side, through me, and out my back. The pain was
horrific. I cried out, and there was blood in my mouth. It coursed down my chin,
under my golden mask. I almost passed out. I probably would have if I hadn’t
been so angry.

I clung onto his throat with both hands, searching desperately
for some last trick I could use against him; and that was when I remembered how
I’d once fused both my golden hands together to contain and seal off Archie
Leech’s Kandarian amulet. If I could fuse my armour together, why not mine and
Uncle James’s? Just for a moment. Just long enough to do what I had to do. I
concentrated, focusing all my willpower, sweat running down my face under my
mask, and the living metal around his throat yielded to my greater will, my
greater fury. His armour fused with mine, and suddenly my bare hands were around
his bare throat, and I bore down hard.

He struggled fiercely, not understanding what was happening,
throwing me this way and that by sheer brute strength, but I wouldn’t let go. He
pulled his right hand back, jerking the sword blade out of me, and I cried out
again as I felt things break and tear within me, but still I wouldn’t let go.
Not even when he ran me through again, and again, sinking the blade deep in my
guts and twisting it back and forth.

He was weakening fast, but so was I, and God alone knows what
might have happened if not for Molly.

We’d been so caught up in ourselves, fighting face to golden
face, that we’d both lost track of Molly Metcalf. She came up behind Uncle James
in his blind spot, and she had Torc Cutter in her hands. She jammed the ugly
shears up against the back of his neck, yelled the activating Words, and cut
through his golden armour, right where his collar should be. Uncle James
screamed once, like a soul newly damned to Hell, and then his armour disappeared
all in a moment, and his whole body went limp in my hands. It took me a moment
to realise what had happened, and a moment more to armour down and unclench my
hands from around his throat, but finally I let go, and his body fell to the
floor and did not move again. I sat down suddenly beside him, my legs just
giving way. I hurt so bad I could hardly breathe. There was blood all over me.
My uncle James was dead. I wanted to hold him in my arms, tell him I was sorry,
but my arms wouldn’t work. I would have cried, but somehow…I was just too tired.
Too deathly tired.

Molly crouched down beside me and put her arm across my
shoulders. "I had to do it," she said. "He could still have won. And he would
have killed you, Eddie."

"Of course he would," I said. "He was the Gray Fox. He was the
best. He knew the mission always comes first."

"I killed him," said Molly. "So you wouldn’t have to."

"I know," I said. "That was kind of you. But…he was my dad, in
every way that mattered. The one Drood I always loved and admired. The man I
most wanted to be."

I cried then, and Molly did her best to comfort me. After a
while she retrieved Oath Breaker from where I’d left it and hauled me back up
onto my feet so she could half lead, half carry me out of the old library, back
through the painting, into the main library again. Blood poured down my sides
with every movement, my face was slick with sweat, and my hands hung numbly at
my side. Away from the old library’s magic suppressor field, she was able to run
a whole bunch of healing spells over me, but though she closed my wounds and
stopped the bleeding, I couldn’t say I felt any better.

"It’s the strange matter in you," she said finally, frowning.
"It’s interfering with my magics. I’ve stabilised you, but that’s about all I
can do for you."

"That’s all right," I said, smiling at her. It didn’t feel like
much of a smile, but I did my best. "It doesn’t matter, Molly. I’m dying anyway.
And none of that three or four days shit, either. Just…hold me together long
enough for me to do what I need to do."

"What can we do?" Molly said desperately. "Against something
like the Heart?"

"You have Torc Cutter, and I have Oath Breaker," I said. "I’m
going to destroy the Heart, and bring the whole damned family down."

"Because they betrayed you," said Molly.

"Because they lied," I said. "They lied to all of us. About who
we are and what we are. We were never the heroes of our story. All along, we
were the real bad guys."

There was only one way to fatally weaken the family. To break
their hold on the world. Take away the power that made them strong, made them
untouchable: their glorious golden armour. And the only way to do that was to
destroy the source of the armour: the Heart. Only a few days ago I would have
found that unthinkable; hell, I’d risked my life to defend the damned thing from
outside attack. But step by painful step I had been driven to this place, this
moment, forced to turn away from everything I’d been taught and brought up to
believe in. All that was left to me now was to destroy the one thing I was
raised to revere and protect above all others. The rotten, corrupt, lying Heart
of the Droods.