Secret Histories 10: Dr. DOA (35 page)

“Right!” Molly said brightly. “We can just stop here and wait for the others to join us. I’m sure someone will be able to help you, Eddie. These were all very gifted, very knowledgeable people.”

“Who almost certainly won’t want to kill me in interesting and appalling ways, because I’m a Drood.”

“Don’t worry, sweetie. I’ll protect you.”

*   *   *

We arranged ourselves as best we could on the extremely uncomfortable chairs, and waited. After a while, for want of anything better to do, we fell to discussing old times. It always amazes me how far Molly and I have come, from the people we used to be. The loyal blunt instrument of an ancient family, and a second-generation freedom fighter with a mad on for the whole world.

“Do you miss the old days, Eddie?”

“When we were fighting on different sides?” I said. “And doing our best to kill each other on a regular basis?”

“Not so much that side of things,” said Molly. “I was thinking more about . . . when we were both so sure of what our side was. When you
still had faith that everything you did for your family was always going to be right, and I still had faith in the rightness and necessity of my cause. When we both thought we were changing the world for the better, with everything we did.”

“When you were out to kill every authority figure in the world? Good or bad.”

“I had issues. And anyway, a girl should have ambition.” Molly sighed heavily. “Life was so much easier then, for both of us. When we never had to question anything.”

“Easier isn’t always better,” I said.

“Ignorance can be bliss.”

“It’s still ignorance.”

“We did have some good times, though,” Molly insisted. “Come on; admit it.”

“It was more like a game then,” I said. “But still the kind of game where people could get hurt. And not always the people who should get hurt.”

“You remember it your way; I’ll remember it mine,” said Molly. “As far as I’m concerned, they were all great adventures!”

“Yes,” I said kindly. “I suppose they were.”

Each of us, in his own way, was trying to comfort the other. We sat some more, and waited some more. Talking listlessly about this and that. I shifted uncomfortably on my chair and glanced at my watch.

“Shouldn’t some of your friends have turned up by now?”

“Yes,” said Molly, frowning. “Somebody should have.”

“You want to try contacting them individually, on your special little fairy phone?”

“No,” she said. “They’ll either turn up, or they won’t. You can’t talk these people into anything. They’re not exactly amenable to reason. Bribery, maybe.”

“I could always threaten them with my family,” I said. “That usually works.”

“Not this bunch,” said Molly. “They’ll come in spite of your being a Drood, but only because it’s me that’s asking.”

“Could they have arrived somewhere else?” I said. “Just how big is the Deep Down Pit?”

“Big,” said Molly. “The tunnels go on for miles. That was the point, so that even if our enemies did break in, they’d never be able to find us. The whole Pit is basically one big maze. But this room was always the designated arrival point. You have to enforce a certain discipline, when people are teleporting in and out.”

“But it would be possible for someone to arrive at some other point?” I said.

Molly frowned. “I suppose so. Why?”

“Because I think I just heard someone moving about,” I said quietly. “Right outside that door.”

We both rose silently from our chairs and moved over to stand by the room’s only door. It was so quiet, I could hear Molly breathing. She raised an eyebrow to me, asking if I could still hear anything. I shook my head. I took a careful hold of the door handle, and it turned easily in my grasp; but when I tried to open the door, it was locked. I armoured up and all but tore the door out of its frame as I hauled it open.

Outside, Molly and I moved quickly to stand back to back as we looked up and down the mine tunnel. It was all rough-hewn stone walls and timbered supports, in a tunnel barely wide enough for three men to walk abreast. And a ceiling so low, it made me want to duck my head. Everything looked solid and safe enough, but the only light was what came spilling from the room behind us, and it didn’t have the strength to travel far. Both ends of the tunnel were lost in darkness. Anyone could have been watching us from out of that dark. I listened hard, but all I could hear was my own harsh breathing, and Molly’s. I armoured down. Molly raised one hand and summoned her magical light again. It pushed the darkness back in both directions, but there was still no
sign of anyone. Molly lowered her hand, the light snapped off, and the darkness surged forward again.

There were footprints in the thick layer of dust on the floor. I knelt down to inspect them more closely, and Molly crouched down beside me.

“Clues!” she said happily. “I love it when there’re clues!”

“I’m seeing more than one shoe size here,” I said. “So, more than one person. Some prints appear to be a lot older than others . . .” I stood up slowly, grimacing at sudden pains in my back and thighs. I must have made a sound, because Molly put out a hand to help me. I let her.

“Lots of footprints here, Molly. For a supposedly abandoned meeting place. You’d better brace yourself.”

She batted her eyelids at me flirtatiously. “Why? What did you have in mind?”

“I’m about to put my mask on,” I said patiently. “And I don’t want you beating me up again.”

“I should hit you more often,” said Molly. “You’re not usually this considerate.”

“Don’t get used to it.”

I masked my face, carefully checked with Molly to make sure she wasn’t freaking out, ignored the face she pulled at me, and boosted my senses. I peered into the darkness at both ends of the tunnel, using infrared and ultraviolet, but the empty mine shaft just stretched away into the distance. I focused on my hearing, and all kinds of sounds came clearly to me, from all directions. From above and beyond, as well as in adjoining tunnels. None of what I was hearing sounded in any way human, but things were definitely moving around, in the deep-down tunnels. The slow, steady tread of something impossibly heavy, every footfall crashing down like a jackhammer. Low insect chitterings like a swarming tide of cockroaches. And something that might have been a huge worm, squeezing through a mine shaft that was only just big enough. It’s amazing the images your mind can produce to explain the
sounds you hear, in a dark tunnel miles underground, far away from sunlight and sanity.

I tried to tune out everything but human sounds, and found I couldn’t. It required a skill at fine-tuning that was simply beyond me. I made a mental note to put in some practice later. You never know what you’re going to need out in the field. I shut down my enhanced senses, sent the golden face mask back into my torc, and turned to Molly.

“There’re a lot of things down here with us that aren’t in any way people. And not good things, from the sound of it. Was it always like this?”

“I have no idea what it’s like now,” said Molly. “I haven’t been down here in ages.”

Which wasn’t, I couldn’t help but notice, exactly an answer to my question.

And then we both fell back, as a wild other-earthly light blasted suddenly out of a side tunnel I would have sworn wasn’t there just a moment before. A dark human figure came drifting down the tunnel towards us, half-hidden in the dazzle. It was a woman, advancing steadily along the new passageway, her every movement invested with intimidating purpose. A woman with murder on her mind. You learn to recognise things like that, working in the field. If you want to keep on working in the field.

Molly and I stood together, and stood our ground. Facing the light and ready for anything, we thought.

The woman with a killer’s eyes finally stepped out of the light and into our tunnel, as though emerging out of a dream and into reality. The entrance disappeared behind her, cutting off the other-worldly light. Molly made a soft, almost shocked sound of recognition. The new arrival was tall and gaunt and no longer young. She would have been good-looking if her face hadn’t been deeply carved with harsh lines of pain and loss, rage and resolve. She wore long robes of stark black and white, perhaps chosen to match her pale face and night-
dark hair. Her thin-lipped mouth was stretched in a mirthless grin, and she had a cold, dangerous presence, backed up by those dark fanatic’s eyes. She looked only at me, ignoring Molly.

“Eddie Drood,” the woman said in a voice like a knife cutting into flesh. “You’re mine at last. I will kill you for what your family did.”

“Angelica?” said Molly.

“Not now, Molly. I’m working.”

“Hold everything,” said Molly. “You know her, Eddie? You know Angelica Wilde, the Fury?”

“We’ve met,” I said. “Though not what you’d call personally. There was a time the Fury worked alongside my family. In common cause, against common enemies. I was there when she took down the Cannibal Colonels. I was in the background, but I was there.”

“So you know what she is,” said Molly.

“Only what I read in the files,” I said. I looked to Angelica, to see if she wanted to interrupt, but she seemed content to just glare her hatred at me for the moment, so I went on. “A long time ago, Angelica Wilde went to Greece and slept overnight in an old tomb. She had a vision, and came out of that tomb blessed with ancient power. People called her the Fury after that, because of who she was and what she did. Like the old-time relentless pursuers of sinners, she tracked down bad guys the law couldn’t touch, and handed out her ideas of justice. Give me that old-time religion . . . She did good work. Until it all went wrong.”

“But Angelica used to be one of my closest friends!” said Molly. She couldn’t seem to decide which of us she wanted to glare at more. “She brought me here, to the Deep Down Pit, when we’d both made the world too hot for us.” She stepped forward, putting herself between me and the Fury, and forcing Angelica to look at her. “I never knew you knew Eddie!”

“Only professionally,” I said, wondering just how I’d been put on the defensive.

Angelica Wilde ignored me now, her cold gaze fixed on Molly.
“Don’t wait for any more of the old gang, Molly. No one else is coming. Nobody trusts you any more. You betrayed the Cause. The Droods murdered your parents, and you ended up sleeping with one!”

“Life is complicated,” said Molly. “Love, even more so. If you hate Eddie so much, and I’m still waiting to hear why, exactly, why did you answer my call? You and I, we haven’t been that close in years.”

“I’m not here for you!” said Angelica. Her mad gaze snapped back to me. “I’m here for the Drood. Who do you think has been organizing all the attacks on him? I sent them! I possessed the Manichean Monk, and Jack a Napes, and the Demon Demoiselle. I filled them with the Fury, took control of them, and sent them to kill you, Eddie Drood!” She laughed at the look on my face. An ugly sound, full of bitter satisfaction. “I watched you fight them, through their eyes; heard them scream as they died . . . and I laughed and laughed. I didn’t just make you kill again, Drood; I made you kill innocents.”

For a moment I couldn’t speak, honestly shocked. “Why? Why would you do that? I barely know you!”

“A chance to kill a weakened, vulnerable Drood? To make your relatives suffer, as they made me suffer? I jumped at the chance!”

“Why?”

“Your family murdered my husband!”

Molly looked at me. “Okay, lost again. I never even knew she was married.”

“Armin del Santos,” I said.

“Yes,” said Angelica, “you remember that name, Drood. The only truly good man I ever knew. Honest, honourable, and completely dedicated to the Cause, so your relatives killed him. Just because they could. It’s time for you to die, Eddie; to pay for your family’s sins.”

She struck a mystical pose, and magical energies snapped into place around her. Molly quickly struck her own pose, surrounding herself with crackling magics. I didn’t armour up; I didn’t want to escalate things. Or attract attention to myself. The two women glared into each
other’s faces, making subtle adjustments in their stances and gestures. Barely restrained forces seethed in the narrow tunnel. Two equally matched, equally dangerous women met each other’s gaze unflinchingly. Neither of them prepared to back down; both ready to fight to the death over me.

I didn’t feel the least bit flattered.

The Fury turned her glare on me and gestured sharply. Dozens of snakes rose up out of the unbroken stone floor, writhing and coiling. Some big enough to crush a man, others small enough to have really nasty neurotoxins in their poison. I grabbed Molly by the arm and hauled her back, out of range. She didn’t even look at me. I armoured up, and Angelica’s face became even colder.

She stabbed a long finger at me, and the snakes surged forward. Shooting across the stone floor with incredible speed, launching themselves at me before I could even react. The largest specimens wrapped themselves around my legs, while others shot up my armoured frame and snapped into place around my waist and back, my neck and head. They seethed all over me, clamping down like the grip of death itself. And all the time dozens of smaller snakes butted their blunt heads against my armour, striking again and again with fanged mouths.

If I’d been scared of snakes, it would probably have been fairly upsetting, but I’ve never been bothered by them. Spiders, now, that might have been different. And it wasn’t like the snakes could get through my armour. They could crush and constrict all they liked; I barely felt their presence. The ones trying to bite me were lucky they hadn’t broken their fangs. I’d already studied the snakes carefully through my mask to make sure they weren’t illusions or magical constructs, but they gave every appearance of being just snakes, compelled by the Fury’s will. So I just pulled them off me, a few at a time, and threw them as far as I could down the tunnel.

“Eddie, what are you doing?” Molly said from a cautious distance behind me. “Kill the damned things!”

“No,” I said. “It’s not their fault.”

“You always choose the oddest times to get sentimental, Eddie,” said Molly.