Secret Histories 10: Dr. DOA (12 page)

“You couldn’t see him when he was here in the Hall, right under your noses!” Molly said angrily. “If Eddie hadn’t collapsed, and if I hadn’t insisted on a complete medical check, you’d never have known Dr DOA was ever here!”

There was a pause as everyone took it in turns not to look at one another. I like to think they were feeling guilty, rather than just caught out.

“All of our security protocols are being overhauled,” said the Sarjeant. “All protections and defences are being seriously upgraded as we speak.”

“After the horse has sneaked in and out,” I said.

“Have you found any trace of Dr DOA yet?” said Molly.

“No,” said the Sarjeant. “No sign he ever set foot inside the Hall. Which is . . . disturbing. Before today, I would have said that was impossible.”

“Your parents are currently in London, Eddie,” said the Matriarch. “Putting together a new Department of Uncanny, under their leadership. We are endeavouring to contact them, to tell them what’s happened. So they can come back. They will be here waiting for you, when you return.”

It was nice of her to say
when
, instead of
if
.

“I’ll turn the Library upside down if that’s what it takes to find some cure, some answer!” said William. “There has to be something in the records! Nothing is ever really new. Everything comes from somewhere. The poison must have been used before, must have been developed and tested . . . If the family has ever encountered it, there’ll be a record somewhere. And I will find it!”

“There’s always the Pook,” Molly said suddenly.

There was a long pause as we all thought about the strange rogue presence that sometimes appeared in the Old Library. That old spirit, which sometimes makes itself known as a giant white rabbit. Terribly powerful and sometimes worryingly terrible in its aspect.

“We still don’t know exactly what the Pook is,” the Matriarch said carefully.

“Or what its true intentions are,” said the Sarjeant. “We know it followed William home from the asylum. Which doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence that it is what it appears to be.”

“Whatever that is,” said the Matriarch.

“I trust him,” said the Librarian.

“You would,” said the Matriarch.

I looked to Ammonia. “You’ve spent time inside William’s head. You’ve seen the Pook through his eyes. What do you think?”

“It’s an old power,” Ammonia said slowly. “Older than the Droods. It scares me. I think the Pook, or what we see of it, is only what it allows us to see. The tip of the iceberg. The smile on the face of the tiger.”

“I will ask the Pook if he can help you, Eddie,” said William. “But whether he’ll answer . . .”

“What are things coming to?” I said. “When my best bet for survival would seem to be an invisible giant white rabbit that might or might not actually exist?”

“Yes, well,” said the Librarian, “that’s the Drood life for you.”

“I am receiving constant updates on your condition from Dr Mary, Eddie,” said the Matriarch. “Representing all the medical teams. I’ve got every department in the family working on this. There’s always a chance someone will come up with something. We have a wide range of your blood and tissue samples, taken while you were unconscious.”

“Good,” I said. “Because you’re not getting any more. Hate needles.”

“I will reach out to the telepathic community,” said Ammonia. “Have them search for Dr DOA. For any knowledge of where he is,
who he is, and, more importantly, who hired him. After all, Dr DOA is just the weapon, not the killer.”

I liked what she was saying, but it still came as something of a surprise. I hadn’t even known there was a community of telepaths. Beyond a certain point, telepaths tend to be solitary creatures, for their own mental protection. To keep the world’s voices outside their heads. They go their own way, like cats, highly individual and fiercely independent.

“We don’t congregate,” said Ammonia, “but we do communicate. We don’t need to meet in person, because we’re never more than a thought away.”

“Could Dr DOA be a telepath?” said Molly. “Could that be how he hides from people, and how he passed unnoticed inside the Hall? Because he can make people not see he’s there?”

“Our psychics would have detected his presence,” said the Sarjeant.

“Not necessarily,” said Ammonia. “Not if he was a high-functioning telepath. There was a time I would have said it was impossible for any telepath that powerful to appear out of nowhere and not be noticed, but that was before Eddie found the artificially created telepath working at Lark Hill. The world is always moving on, leaving the rest of us to play catch-up. Not every telepath wants to be known . . .”

“You made a good point, about who hired Dr DOA,” said the Sarjeant. “There has to be a clue in that. Who wants Eddie dead that badly? Why him, of all of us, and why now? Why not go after someone more important in the family, while he had the chance? He could have taken out any number of us . . . Hell, he could have poisoned us all!”

“Maybe one poisoning was all he could manage without being noticed,” said Molly. “Anything more might have attracted attention, revealed his presence. Maybe even caught Ethel’s attention. That’s a point . . . Why didn’t she detect his presence?”

“Good question,” said the Matriarch. “Perhaps you should ask her.”

“Haven’t you asked her?” I said.

The Matriarch made a point of moving on. “Everyone here has
been checked; we’re all free of the poison. The entire family is currently undergoing tests, just in case. And all agents out in the field are being called in, the moment they’ve completed their missions. On the off chance Dr DOA might be targeting field operatives.”

“The question remains,” said the Sarjeant. “Who wants Eddie dead so badly? You’ve made your share of enemies, Eddie; it comes with the job and the territory. But I would have said the truly dangerous ones were all dead.”

“They are, as far as I know,” I said. “The kind of cases I get, you can’t afford to leave any of the really bad guys alive. Or the bad stuff will just start happening again. That’s one of the reasons why I decided I wasn’t going to kill any more. Too much blood on my hands.”

“The family has never asked you to do anything that wasn’t necessary,” said the Sarjeant. “Nothing that any member of the family shouldn’t be prepared to do. For the greater good.”

“But the family didn’t do it,” I said. “I did. And sometimes, when I look back . . . all I can see are the ghosts lined up behind me.”

The Matriarch leaned suddenly forward across her table, fixing me with her cool, implacable gaze. “I give you my word, Eddie. The family will not rest until everyone involved in your murder is caught and punished. No one does this to a Drood and gets away with it.”

“Are you doing this for me?” I said. “Or to protect the family’s reputation?”

“Yes,” said the Matriarch. She sat back in her chair again and regarded me thoughtfully. “Where will you begin your search?”

“The Sarjeant’s right,” I said. “The answer must lie somewhere in my past. Some case I worked, some mission left unfinished, some enemy I didn’t kill that I should have. Or perhaps someone I did kill that I shouldn’t have. I’ll have to think about it.”

“In the meantime,” said Molly, “we go looking for answers. Talk to people who know things. The Wulfshead Club is always the best place to start.”

“Do I really need to tell you to be discreet?” said the Matriarch. “It wouldn’t be good for our reputation if people discovered an assassin was able to poison one of us inside our own Hall.”

“It wouldn’t be good for people to know a Drood can be killed,” said the Sarjeant. “The protection our armour gives us is one of our most important weapons.”

“We know how to be discreet,” I said.

“It’s just that normally we don’t bother,” said Molly.

“True,” I said. “But just for you, Maggie, for the family, we’ll give it a shot.”

“If necessary,” said the Sarjeant, “I will avenge you, Eddie. Personally. I will find your killer and pour his heart’s blood on your resting place.”

Everyone nodded sternly in agreement. Looking around the Chapel, I could see genuine anger and resolve in all their faces. I was touched to see how upset everyone was on my behalf.

“I never knew you cared,” I said.

“We’re your family,” said the Matriarch. “You’ve done so much for us; we have to do this for you.”

*   *   *

There was some more talk, but it just went round and round without getting anywhere. So I stood up and said I was leaving. Molly was immediately out of her chair and on her feet beside me. The Matriarch and her Council fell silent, and then one by one, they wished me luck and said good-bye. Trying hard not to sound like it was for the last time.

I left the Chapel with Molly, closed the door firmly, and strode off into the grounds again. Every time I left my family, it felt like a weight coming off my shoulders. And I was carrying enough burdens as it was. Right now they might mean well, but I always remember which road is paved with good intentions. I walked for a while, though I went nowhere in particular, just putting some distance between me and the Hall. Molly glanced up at the leaden skies.

“Looks like it might snow soon.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas. Hell of a present I got this year.”

“We’ll just have to find the receipt,” said Molly. “So you can give it back.”

We shared a smile. We had to keep it light, or we’d both go crazy.

“You know,” Molly said carefully, “we don’t have to do this alone. I mean, just this once it might be better to work with your family. Use its resources. Have other field agents do the actual legwork while you stay here at the Hall and orchestrate things. So you’d never be far from help.”

“No,” I said immediately. “I told you, no hospital bed for me. I need to be out of here, doing something. I need to keep myself occupied. It keeps me from thinking too much. And anyway, we do have to do this for ourselves. Run our own separate investigation into what’s really going on. Because it’s always possible someone in my family might be behind this. That would explain how I could be poisoned inside Drood Hall despite all the security, and why no one noticed anything.”

“You mean Dr DOA might still be here, inside the Hall somewhere?” Molly could hardly get her breath, she was so angry. “Someone in your family could be helping him, hiding him?”

“I have to wonder,” I said. “Wonder why he chose the one poison my family couldn’t cure. And I also have to wonder just how high up in the family his orders might have come from. It wouldn’t be the first time my own Matriarch wanted me dead.”

Molly lost it, big-time. She shrieked out loud—a raw, painful sound, of fury and despair. She spun round and hit me with a blast of concentrated magic, trying to cure the poison and save my life through sheer force of will. She hit me with one spell after another, chanting and gesturing, her face twisted with a wild desperation, her voice harsh and strained. Her whole body shook as she summoned up powerful and dangerous forces. The nearby gryphons ran for cover, just before lightning
bolts stabbed down out of an empty sky, blasting great charred chunks out of the lawns. They slammed down again and again, never quite touching me or Molly. Curling and coalescing, unnatural energies formed around Molly, staining the air like inky blots. I stood very still.

My torc tingled painfully at my throat, but my armour didn’t appear. It didn’t feel threatened. It could tell Molly was just trying to help. I stared at Molly, feeling the danger she was putting herself in for me, and knew it was all for nothing. I couldn’t detect any change in me. Molly had called up some truly terrible forces, but they couldn’t seem to reach whatever it was Dr DOA had put inside me. The thing that was killing me.

It all stopped. The lightning strikes disappeared, and the summoned energies quickly dissipated. Molly stood slumped before me, trembling, exhausted. The oppressive atmosphere cleared. There was none of the usual peace and calm that follows a storm, because nothing had changed; nothing had been resolved. The gryphons came slowly slinking back. Followed by a brief rain of dead frogs. Just the universe, quietly correcting an imbalance.

“There’s nothing I can do,” Molly said dully. “Your torc is blocking my magics. Take it off, Eddie. You have to take it off, or I can’t do anything.”

“No, dear,” said Ethel. “He can’t do that.”

There was none of the rose-red glow that normally accompanied her presence. None of the usual sense of well-being. Just her voice, coming out of nowhere and sounding perhaps a little quieter, a little more distant.

“Hello, Ethel,” I said. “I was wondering when you’d show up.”

“Why can’t he take his torc off?” Molly said angrily. “What good is it doing him?”

“It’s all that’s keeping him alive,” said Ethel. “The torc is fighting the poison inch by inch, moment by moment. If Eddie should remove his torc, or have it removed, he will die. Quickly, and horribly.”

“He’s definitely going to die?” said Molly.

“Yes,” said Ethel.

“Then why aren’t you doing something?” said Molly, grief and despair making her voice almost inhumanly harsh.

“Hush, love,” I said. “Hush . . . Ethel, there are some things you can do for me. I need you to sever all links between me and my family handler, Kate. In fact, it might be best if there was no direct contact between me and my family, unless I instigate it. In case I find it necessary to do things my family might need to plausibly deny.”

“It’s done,” said Ethel. “You’ll be able to phone home in an emergency, through your torc, but as far as your family is concerned, you’re currently ex-directory.”

“Kate will be upset,” said Molly.

“She’ll get over it,” I said.

“Ethel,” said Molly.

“Yes, Molly.”

“Please . . . There must be something you can do. Something. You helped him the last time he was poisoned.”

“I’m sorry,” said Ethel. “I really am, but that was different. There’s nothing I can do this time. The poison’s progress is so advanced that no cure is possible. I can’t save you, Eddie. I would have to rewrite your whole existence, and the physical laws of your reality are really very restrictive. Just trying to use that much power would force me out of your dimension. And your family still needs me, Eddie.”