“But you never wanted any of those things, Roger,” said Harry.
I wasn’t so sure about that, but I said nothing and stayed where I was. I wanted to see how this was going to work out. The forces of Hell had retreated before Harry’s conviction; that had to mean something. And I . . . had faith in Harry and Roger.
Roger looked at the simple device in his hand, and then back at Harry. He held the clicker up and all my stomach muscles tightened, and then Roger opened his hand and let the clicker fall to the floor. He stepped on it hard, and I heard it break and breathed a lot more easily.
“How about that?” said Roger. He seemed honestly shaken. “I couldn’t do it. I thought I could, but I couldn’t. I thought I wanted power, and prestige, and to take my revenge on a world that’s always rejected me . . . but in the end, all I wanted was the only thing I’ve ever really wanted. And that’s you, Harry.”
He moved forward, and Harry took him in his arms, and they stood together, holding each other.
“I do so love a happy ending,” I said after a while. “If Molly was here, she’d be in tears. Really. You’re not listening, are you?”
They finally turned to face me, standing casually arm in arm. Harry was smiling broadly, while Roger favoured me with a small, only slightly sardonic smile.
“Thank you for not interfering,” he said. “Now do me a favour and get Harry out of here. Get back to Drood Hall with the rest of your people. While you still can.”
“I’m not going without you,” Harry said immediately.
“You don’t get it,” said Roger. “This is still a trap for all of you. The army outside was only the beginning—expendable troops to hold your attention. And a chance to try out their precious new plastic armour. The real army is on its way. Thousands of them, armed with powerful new weapons. Strong enough to blow the armour right off you. They will kill you all and tear the torcs from your agonised corpses. The only reason they aren’t already here is because they wanted to watch you fighting, see what you’re capable of. Now that they know, they’ll be here any minute. So you have to go now. I’ll shut down the blocks on the Merlin Glass, and you can retreat back to Drood Hall.”
“Come with us,” said Harry.
“I’m sorry,” said Roger, and I could see he meant it. “I can’t. Someone has to stay here with the machines, prevent the conspiracy from reestablishing the blocks and shutting down the Glass again. My superiors already know I’m not going to be what they wanted me to be.” He glanced at the display screens. “They’re watching now. Everyone watches everyone in the conspiracy. They know by now that I’ve betrayed them. By choosing you, Harry, I’ve signed my own death warrant. So you have to go; you have to live, or everything I’ve done will have been for nothing.”
“I’m not going,” Harry said stubbornly. “I’m staying here with you. Eddie, go tell the Droods what’s happening, and get them all safely home. Then put together a real army and come back here and save the day.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” I said.
“You’re not ready to face the army that’s coming!” said Roger. “They have weapons beyond your worst nightmares! Harry, you have to go!”
“You think I’d leave you here to die alone?” said Harry.
“I’m going,” I said. “I have to get my people out of here. Harry, link your torc to the Drood War Room, so it can broadcast real-time images of what’s happening here. Hold the fort, boys; I’ll be back with reinforcements before you know it.”
“Of course you will,” said Harry. “That’s what you do, Eddie.”
I ran back through the hotel corridors as fast as my armoured strength could drive me. The walls blurred, the floor cracked and shattered under the pounding of my feet, and the world became just so many smearing colours until I burst out of the hotel and into the car park and slammed on the brakes. The Sarjeant-at-Arms looked up sharply as I seemed to materialise right in front of him. I had to pause for a moment to get my breath back, and the Sarjeant gestured easily at the dead bodies piled around him, broken and bloody.
“All dead,” he said. “Poor bastards never stood a chance. Good training for the troops, though.”
“They were expendable,” I said. “The real army’s on its way.”
I ran quickly through the situation, and the Sarjeant got the implications immediately. We both looked at the Merlin Glass, and a sharp sense of relief ran through me as I saw a clear view of Drood Hall and its grounds on the other side of the mirror.
“Get everyone back to the Hall,” I said. “Then make me an army so big it won’t matter what the conspiracy is sending.”
“For Harry and Roger?” said the Sarjeant.
“They’re Droods,” I said.
“Of course they are,” said the Sarjeant. “Anything for family.”
He rounded his people up and drove them through the Merlin Glass with barked orders and harsh language. I waited right till the end, hoping I’d come up with some last-minute desperate plan, but I didn’t. Sometimes there isn’t anything you can do. Molly stayed with me, and in the end I had to go, because she wouldn’t go without me. We passed through the Merlin Glass, and I shut it down so nothing could follow us through.
I ran through the Hall to the War Room, leaving raising the army to the Sarjeant. I needed to see what was happening with Harry and Roger. When I got there, they already had the transmissions from Harry’s torc up on the biggest display screen. We could see them in the hotel function room, hear every word they said, but there was nothing we could do to help. We could only watch, and wait for the Sarjeant to tell us the army was ready.
Harry Drood and Roger Morningstar sat quietly together, watching their own display screens showing endless scenes of an empty car park. They seemed easy, comfortable in each other’s company.
“We’ll see Hell’s army when they teleport in,” said Roger. “Actually, it’ll be pretty hard to miss them.”
“Thousands of them?” said Harry. “Really?”
“Oh, yes. No shortage of soldiers in the satanic conspiracy. It does tend to attract people who like obeying orders. And killing people.”
“With terrible new weapons? More powerful than Drood armour?”
“Unfortunately, yes. It had to happen eventually. The Droods couldn’t stay cutting-edge forever.”
“Can’t you . . . do something, with your infernal powers?”
“No,” said Roger. “Everything I had was stripped from me the moment I chose to side with you and embrace my human heritage.”
“I still have my armour,” said Harry.
“It won’t help you,” said Roger. “The army that’s coming will strip it off you like an old coat. I told you: They’ve been planning this for a long time.”
“Isn’t there anything we can do?” said Harry.
“The hotel still has all its protections, provided by these machines,” said Roger. “And as long as I’m here to keep changing the passwords, they can’t override the defences from outside. If we can hold them off long enough, maybe Eddie will get here with reinforcements. Though he’d have to bring the whole family with him, and every weapon in the Armoury. I hope you’re listening to this, Eddie.”
“So we do have a chance?” said Harry.
“No,” said Roger. “I was being optimistic. It’s a human thing.”
Harry thought for a while. “The conspiracy can’t stay here long—not with an army that big. They’d be noticed by the authorities.”
“Harry, dear, they own the authorities,” said Roger. “They could perform a mass slaughter of the innocents, right here, with flamethrowers, and it would all be covered up.”
Harry made a brief frustrated sound. “Talk to me, Roger. What have your leaders promised the world governments to get them to go along with the Great Sacrifice?”
“What Hell always promises: power. And the indulgence of secret needs and pleasures. Everything you think you want. They have been promised they will be kings of the world t
o come. The fools.”
“So,” said Harry, “answer me this, at least. Who are the leaders of this new satanic conspiracy? Who’s in charge?”
“Just one man, really,” said Roger. “And it’s a name you’d know. And, I think, one that would surprise you. It’s always the little men, the quietly resentful, secretly ambitious little men you have to look out for. But I can’t say his name. Not even now. I’m under a geas, a compulsion laid down by Hell itself, never to use his name outside the conspiracy.”
“I’d know the name . . .” Harry said thoughtfully. “It’s not a Drood, is it?”
“No,” said Roger. “That much I can say.”
Harry looked about him. “Can’t say I feel very secure in here. Couldn’t we barricade the room?”
“Yes, if you like,” said Roger.
“You think that would help?”
“No. But it’s something we could do while we’re waiting.”
“Hell with that,” said Harry. He folded his arms, tapped one foot on the floor and thought hard. “As Eddie is entirely too fond of saying, when in doubt, cheat. Or at least improvise with style. If I were to armour up and smash a hole in the floor . . . maybe I could excavate a tunnel and burrow past the conspiracy—Why are you shaking your head, Roger?”
“Because the hotel’s protections are still in place,” said Roger. “And I daren’t let them fall, even for a moment. We are sitting inside a bubble around and above and below. . . . Nice idea, though.”
They sat together side by side, happy in each other’s company. Waiting.
“I used to love walking with you through the Hall grounds,” said Roger. “All those endless lawns, and the woods, and the lake . . . I missed out on all that, growing up apart from the family. I felt at peace there. Like maybe I could belong, if I tried hard enough . . .”
“When did you first go rogue?” said Harry. “Turn against us, the Droods, Humanity?”
“Before Eddie was attacked and stabbed,” said Roger. “How else do you think that disguised Immortal got into the Hall so easily?”
“Were you happy as a Satanist?”
“Actually, yes,” said Roger. “It’s a very self-indulgent lifestyle. You really do get to do everything you ever wanted, indulge every sin, wallow in every pleasure, satisfy every need. . . . But self-indulgence gets very boring after a while. Because if you can do anything, then nothing really matters anymore. It’s all so . . . superficial.”
And then he broke off, leaned forward and looked at the display screens. Harry looked, too, and all the colour drained from his face.
“They’re here,” said Roger.
“How many of them?” said Harry.
“All of them.”
“Dear God . . .” Harry’s face was white with shock now. “I didn’t know there could be an army that big. Men and monsters and . . . Eddie! Listen to me! Don’t come! You wouldn’t stand a chance!”
“No one ever realises how powerful Hell can be, until it’s too late,” said Roger.
“What are we going to do?” said Harry. “We can’t fight that!”
“I was never planning on fighting,” said Roger. “I was planning on hiding out here long enough for the army to get bored and leave.”
“Eddie could still come,” said Harry, slowly recovering some of his composure. “There’s still the forbidden weapons in the Armageddon Codex.”
“Yes,” said Roger. “Do you see Alexandre Dusk out there any where?”
Harry looked hard, moving from screen to screen. “No.”
“Oh, good,” said Roger. “For a moment I thought we might be in trouble.”
And that was when all the machines exploded at once. The conspiracy had found it couldn’t override the passwords and protections, so they hit the self-destruct. The blast filled the War Room’s display screen, and for a long time all we could see was smoke, slowly clearing, to reveal rubble and wreckage and blazing fires. I saw Harry, on his hands and knees in his golden armour, digging frantically through the rubble. He hauled heavy pieces of broken machinery aside as though they were nothing, until finally he uncovered what was left of Roger Morningstar. The hellspawn was a mess. The man who had defied Hell itself for the man he loved had been torn apart by the explosion. Both his legs were missing, and his torso and half his face were burned and blackened by flames. Only one eye was still open; the other was seared shut. Somehow, he clung to life with more than human energy. He looked up at Harry with his one eye, and managed something like a smile with scorched and blackened lips.
Harry made a space amid the rubble and sat down beside Roger, holding his body in his arms. He said Roger’s name several times. And then Roger closed his eye, blood bubbled briefly at his mouth and he stopped breathing.
Harry armoured down. He was only a man now, sitting amid destruction, holding his dead love in his arms.
“No,” he said. “You can’t be dead. I fought my way through Hell to be here, scared off a demon with my love for you; you can’t be dead! It isn’t fair! God damn you! God, this isn’t fair!”
There were sounds from outside, people and perhaps things not people, digging their way through the rubble, trying to get in, to get to Harry. He laid Roger’s dead body down and smiled briefly, bitterly.
“You won’t get me,” he said. “Anything for the family.”
He raised one golden hand, grew a blade out of it and stabbed himself cleanly through the heart.
CHAPTER TEN
The Things We Do for Revenge
The display screen went blank. And in the War Room at Drood Hall, there was a long, terrible silence. I looked slowly around me. Molly, Callan and the Sarjeant-at-Arms had joined me in time for the end. In time to see Roger and Harry die. Everyone in the War Room was shocked, stunned. Death in the field was nothing new to Droods; but we don’t usually get to see our own murdered in cold blood right in front of us. And I think we were all perhaps a little more than usually upset because Roger and Harry had died so very bravely, serving the family, even though most of us had never particularly liked or trusted either of them. Some of the comm technicians were quietly holding and comforting one another. A few of the far-seers were crying quietly. Nobody seemed to know what to do or say.
“Ethel?” I said.
“I’m here, Eddie,” said the calm, quiet voice from out of nowhere. “I’m sorry. They’re gone. I can’t See what’s happening there anymore. There are powerful shields in place. There’s nothing I can do.”
I turned to the Sarjeant-at-Arms standing beside me. “Raise your army. Raise the whole damned family, if that’s what it takes. We’re going back.”
“There’s no point,” said the Sarjeant. “Roger and Harry are dead, Eddie. There’s nothing any of us can do for them.”
“They’ll have taken Harry’s torc,” said Callan. One of his hands rose unconsciously to the torc at his throat, replacement for the one ripped off him by the Blue Fairy, to reassure himself it was still there.
“We have to go back!” I said. “We have to make those bastards pay!”
“Eddie,” said Molly, moving in close beside me. “You’re shouting.”
“We are not going back,” said the Sarjeant, his voice very cold and very steady. That’s what they want, Eddie. Given the size of the conspiracy’s army they could have taken Harry and Roger alive, if they’d wanted to. They could have found a way. Hell, they could have entered the hotel in force and overwhelmed them. They could have taken the two of them prisoner, held them for ransom, threatened them to put pressure on us. . . . But instead they blew up the room, quite deliberately, knowing we were watching, to make us so mad we’d go charging back in, and to hell with how outnumbered we were. And then . . . they would slaughter us, Eddie. We’re not prepared for all-out war, not yet, and they are.
“Give me time, Eddie. Give me time to raise a properly trained and equipped army, with some of the nastier forbidden weapons from the Armageddon Codex, and I will set that army against anything
the conspiracy can put up. But we’re not ready. Not now.”
“They won’t wait,” I said. I felt numb and cold, and my voice seemed to be coming from a long way away. “As soon as they realise we’re not taking the bait, they’ll leave.”
“We’ll find them,” said the Sarjeant. “And then we’ll take the fight to them.” He looked at the empty display screen. “They died well. Like men. Like Droods. I was wrong about them.”
“We have to do something,” I said. “We left them there on their own. We have to do something!”
“You do something,” said Callan. “But do it somewhere else. I have a War Room to run.”
He moved off among his people, murmuring reassuring words and occasional sarcasm, ordering fresh pots of tea and more Jaffa Cakes, and quietly but firmly encouraging everyone back to work. The technicians turned back to their comm stations, the far-seers to their scrying pools, and the War Room went back to watching the world again.
“Isabella Metcalf’s information was false,” the Sarjeant-at-Arms said carefully. “Designed to lead us into a trap.”
“The conspiracy has her,” I said. “They snatched her right out of her own teleport, just as we left Under Parliament.”
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