From Hell With Love: A Secret Histories Novel

by Simon R. Green

  “I know,” said Molly. “I know.”

  “Anything, for the family.”

  “I know.”

  Some of the remaining Immortals flesh danced, trying to pass themselves off as Droods, but we could always tell. And some tried to surrender, even though they must have known by now that we were taking no prisoners. It didn’t come easy to any of us, to kill the defenceless, but we did it anyway. Because we had to. Because we could never trust them. The Sarjeant-at-Arms came over to join me.

  “You’re holding back, Edwin. This is war. They have to be stamped out. Because they’re not human; they prey on humans. We’re fighting for the safety and security of the human species. For our freedom, from our secret overlords. We can be sentimental later, when the work’s done.”

  “What good does it do us to win?” I said. “If we have to act like Immortals to do it?”

  The Sarjeant shrugged and turned away, and went off to finish his bloody work. I armoured down. Molly moved in close beside me, slipping an arm through mine.

  “You’re a good man, Eddie, in a bad world. The Immortals made themselves into monsters, by their own choice. Look at the Bride, and her people. Made to be monsters, they chose to be people. Think of all the things the Immortals could have done, could have achieved, with all the years and experience and knowledge they acquired. They could have made a Golden Age for all Humanity, but they chose to be teenagers forever, and never grow up. We were their playthings, and they played with us till we broke, because there were always more. I love it that you care, Eddie, but I don’t. You kill monsters because you have to, because they don’t give us any other choice. People can change, but monsters will always be monsters.”

  The hall was quiet now. Droods and Spawn moved slowly around, making sure none of the bodies were faking it by cutting off their heads. The last time I saw so many bodies piled up, it was at Drood Hall, after the incursion by the Accelerated Men. The air was so full of the stench of blood I could taste it in my mouth. The Armourer came over to join me, picking his way carefully through the bodies. He’d armoured down, and was beaming happily.

  “Eddie, there you are! I found these wonderful little people, emerging from their hiding places! Slaves to the Immortals . . . They say they know you.”

  “We are not little people!” said a kobold, peering suddenly out from behind the Armourer. “We are underpeople! Are we free now?”

  “Yes,” I said. “To stay or to go, as you please. Your masters are dead. I’m afraid I had to promise the Castle to the Spawn of Frankenstein . . .”

  “Our tunnels are waiting,” said the kobold. “Still, they’re going to need people, to help them settle in. We can do that. For gold . . . We like gold.”

  “I’m sure we can negotiate a fair agreement between you and the Bride,” said the Armourer, still beaming happily. “It’s a big Castle; I’m sure there’s room for everyone.”

  The Sarjeant-at-Arms came striding over to join us, also armoured down. He was frowning, which is never a good sign.

  “There’s no sign of the Immortal Leader,” he said flatly. “We’ve checked all the bodies, and he’s not there. He could have got out through the teleport ring, before we destroyed it.”

  “The ring,” I said. “He’s gone to Area 52, to get his hands on the Apocalypse Door. I have to go after him.”

  “Me too,” said Molly. “I am never leaving you alone again.”

  “Yes!” said the Armourer. “It is good to see you alive and well, Molly. May I ask, how exactly did you . . .”

  “Later,” I said. “Oh, Uncle Jack . . . While I’m off saving the world one more time, there is something I need you to do for me. There’s something rather special living under the hill, on the road leading up from the Hotel. I promised him he could come back to the Hall, and live with us. Could you take care of that for me?”

  “Of course,” said the Armourer. “No problem. Why are you smiling like that?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Knock Knock Knocking on Heaven’s Door

  “S o,” I said. “Molly and I have to to get to to Area 52, the most heavily shielded and guarded military base in the world, stop Doctor Delirium or Tiger Tim from opening the Apocalypse Door and unleashing all the horrors of Hell upon the world, and also stop the Immortal leader Methuselah from transforming the Door into the Paradise Door, so he can open it and go through to take Heaven by storm.”

  “And give everyone present a good kicking, just on general principles,” said Molly. “And then afterwards, I thought we might have a little light supper, with some of that nice peach brandy you like.”

  “I could eat,” I said wistfully. “Seems like ages since I had the chance to sit down and tuck in. But, needs must when the Devil’s peering over your shoulder and sniggering. The Merlin Glass can’t take us directly into Area 52; the place has far too many shields and protections. But I think I’ve persuaded it to drop us off close to a main entrance. So, let’s to it. Busy, busy, busy, and never a moment to rest.”

  “You can’t just run off and leave me to deal with transporting a dragon’s head the size of a mountain!” said the Armourer, just a bit shrilly.

  “Of course I can,” I said. ˚ “Watch me.”

  I moved over to one side with Molly, while the Sarjeant-at-Arms did his best to restrain the Armourer. We both knew he’d cope; this was just his little way of telling me not to take him for granted. I summoned up the Merlin Glass, and instructed it to show me the hidden entrance it had found for Area 52. But when I looked into the hand mirror, all I could see was an endless vista of snow and ice, without a single structure or a living thing for as far as the eye could see. I gave the mirror a good hard shake, but the view didn’t change. At least it wasn’t an aerial view this time. Either the base was invisible behind its shields, or it was underground, or this was just as close to the entrance as the Glass could get us. I shrugged, and commanded the Merlin Glass to open a doorway.

  It leapt out of my hand, and then hung on the air before me, growing rapidly in size until it was big enough for Molly and me to walk through. And then the door opened, connecting here with there, and brilliant light shone out, throwing back the darkness of the German night. I had to look away for a moment, dazzled, and then shuddered suddenly as a bitter cold wind came howling out of the doorway, shot through with snow and ice crystals. Molly squeezed in close beside me, and with our eyes narrowed against the Antarctic light, we stepped through the doorway.

  The terrible cold stopped me dead in my tracks, piercing my flesh and sinking into my bones. The wind cut me like a knife, and my lungs filled with razor blades as I tried to breathe the frozen air. Snow swirled around me, driven this way and that by the blustering wind. I armoured up, and cried out in relief inside my golden mask as my armour shielded me from the bitter cold. It took me a moment to stop shaking and clear my head, and then I looked quickly around for Molly. Who was quite happy, inside a personal shield so powerful I could actually see it shimmering on the air around her. She stood hands on hips, looking about her with an infectious grin.

  “Isn’t this the most spectacular thing you’ve ever seen, Eddie?” She had a point. We’d come a long way from the grim surroundings of Castle Frankenstein. The sky was a sharp, almost painful blue, and the sun burned like a demon’s eye. Snow fields stretched away for miles, rising and falling, capped to one side by a jagged range of snow-covered mountains. The heavy winds lifted sudden clouds of snow off the mountain peaks and threw them this way and that. Not a single living thing moved anywhere on the icy panorama, for as far as the eye could see. For all its snow and ice and cold, the Antarctic was really just another desert.

  Molly stretched slowly, as unselfconscious as any cat, grinning widely. “Now this is more like it! There’s a whole load of local magic here for me to draw on, and replenish my batteries. Pretty much untapped, as far as I can tell. I guess not many people get out this far.”

  “Most people have got more sense,” I said.
“What are you picking up from the Hidden World?”

  “Oh, there’s lots going on round here, but nothing to do with people, or Area 52.”

  I raised my Sight and looked around me, and discovered the empty Antarctic scene was anything but. Huge semitransparent snakes the size of subway trains writhed and curled slowly through the snow deep below us, vast blind creatures following their own unknowable instincts. The sky above us was full of wind-walkers, air elementals the size of blue whales, swimming languidly through the coruscating aurora, far too big to take any notice of the tiny mortals watching from below. And off in the distance, standing inhumanly still on the horizon: dim and vaguely humanlike shapes. Hundreds of them, just standing, and watching. There was something vague and insubstantial about them, as though they weren’t totally solid or completely real. Images out of Time, perhaps, from the Past or even the Future. There have always been legends of another tribe of Man, another species, waiting patiently in the empty places of the world, ready to come forward and take over, should Humanity fail. Our replacement, if things should go very wrong.

  I’m not sure whether I find that comforting or not.

  But even with my Sight I still couldn’t make out any sign of Area 52, or the entrance we were supposed to be near. Really well shielded. So I lowered my Sight, and breathed a little more easily. (You can’t See too much of the world as it really is, for too long. It wears you out.) The Merlin Glass had disappeared, immediately after dropping us here, as though ashamed. I called it back out, and it slipped almost apologetically back into my hand. I told it to show me the way to Area 52’s entrance, and the mirror immediately presented me a whole new view of unbroken snow and ice. I swept the Glass back and forth, and it tugged insistently in my hand in one particular direction, like a hound on a scent. So I set off into the snow and the cold, following the mirror, and Molly moved happily along beside me, merrily singing an old song called

  “Eskimo Nell.”

  I ploughed through the deep snow, my armoured legs sinking in deep with every step, until finally I was trudging along in a low trench of my own making. The weight of my armour pulled me down, but its strength enabled me to blast right through the packed snow as though it wasn’t even there. Brief flurries of snow shot up into the air, flying left and right, as I stomped and kicked through the snow, forcing my way through by sheer brute force. Common sense told me that Doctor Delirium and Tiger Tim wouldn’t do anything with the Apocalypse Door until Methuselah showed up, and we had to be close on the Immortal’s trail. But I wasn’t sure I believed common sense. There was a feeling in the air, in the atmosphere, a sense of imminence. Of something terrible and implacable and horribly irreversible, getting ready to happen.

  The Door. The Apocalpyse Door. I shall break the bolts and shatter the locks, and unleash Hell upon the Earth, and the dead shall outnumber the living, and the damned shall take their vengeance on the innocents . . .

  Molly floated serenely along beside me, hovering a good foot or so above the snow on the ground, hardly exerting herself at all as she just drifted along. Every now and again I made a point of flinging some snow in her direction, but somehow she was never there when it arrived. At least she’d stopped singing that damned song. I’m sure she made up some of the verses herself.

  After a while it occurred to me to reshape my armoured feet into snowshoes, even if they did look rather like golden waffles. They spread my weight more easily and allowed me to walk on top of the snow. I made much better speed, with far less effort. Molly said nothing, in a loud sort of way.

  The landscape didn’t seem to change much, as we pressed on. The jagged mountains took up half the horizon now, rising high into the fierce blue sky, sunlight reflecting painfully bright from their snowy sides. The snow fields rose and fell before us, and brief flurries of snow still blew this way and that, never really amounting to anything. Every now and again I’d stop and raise my Sight, hoping for some glimpse of Area 52 in the distance, or at least its entrance, but the base remained stubbornly elusive. Strange energies flared up and collapsed, dancing on the high mountain peaks, but never to any purpose or effect I could understand. And sometimes I’d See strange creatures scurrying in the distance, or burrowing deep in the snow. Some had shapes so abstract I wasn’t sure whether they were real or not, or just manifestations of some unknown phenomenon. As we drew closer to one particular mountain, I Saw within it an entire city, engulfed and entombed by millennia of snow and ice. Huge and alien, made up of monstrous shapes and weirdly made structures that my mind tried to grasp, and failed. They were too big, too strange, and possessed far too many angles for any truly solid shape. Nothing human had gone into the making of this ancient monstrous city, never meant for human eyes or sensibilities. I had no idea at all of what kind of creature could have lived in it, without going utterly mad.

  I hadn’t realised I’d stopped to stare at it, until Molly moved in close beside me, and waved a hand in front of my mask.

  “We really don’t have time for sightseeing, Eddie.”

  “I know! I know, but . . . look at it. I’ve never seen anything like that. Ugly as sin and twice as old. When we’re finished with Area 52, and assuming we and the world are still around, we have got to come back here. Get the family archaeologists on the job.”

  “I wouldn’t,” said Molly. “You might wake what’s in there.”

  I looked at Molly, and then back at the frozen city. “Ah . . . You mean that’s . . . Hmm. I think I’ll ask the Armourer if he’s got any of those thermonukes left.”

  Maybe half an hour later, I walked right into an invisible force shield, bounced off, and fell backwards onto my arse in the snow. Molly laughed so hard she hurt herself, and ended up curled into a ball, turning slowly in midair. I got to my feet with as much dignity as I could muster, and prodded the air with a golden fingertip. I could feel the shield but not see it, even with my Sight. And it didn’t take me long to figure out that the field extended a long way in every direction, presumably surrounding Area 52 completely. The shield was entirely scientific in nature, as far as I could tell. My Sight wasn’t showing me any magics, and when Molly finally got her giggles under control, she confirmed it. She did blast the shield a few times, with various nasty spells, just to please me, but everything she threw at the shield just slid off. Magic and science really don’t get on. Most of the time they just pretend the other doesn’t exist.

  So, when in doubt, hit it. I retracted my snowshoes, planted my golden feet firmly in the heavy snow, reared back and hit the invisible force shield with all my strength. I gave it everything I had, everything the armour had, and the force shield didn’t react in the least. I hit it again and again, summoning up all the strength in my armour and delivering it through one heavy golden fist, and the shield began to resonate, like a struck gong. Great ripples spread out across the snow, digging themselves deeper and deeper with every blow, until finally . . . I just stopped. I wasn’t tired, and my hand didn’t hurt, but it was clear I wasn’t getting anywhere. I growled and shook my head, and took a moment to get my breath back.

  “Very therapeutic, I’m sure,” Molly said kindly. “But that was never going to work. Also, I feel I have to point out that such a blatant attack on the shield is almost certainly going to tell everyone in Area 52 that we’re here.”

  “They know we’re here,” I said. “Methuselah will have told them by now. But if my armour can’t break this shield, and your magics can’t even touch it, how the hell are we going to get through?”

  “We could tunnel under it,” Molly said brightly. “Or rather you could; I don’t do manual labour.”

  “You don’t even do dusting,” I said. I looked thoughtfully at where the field should be. “Has to be a way in . . . We didn’t come all this way just to be stopped by a stupid force shield.”

  “Right,” said Molly. “So do something, Eddie!”

  “I’m thinking!”

  I pulled out the Merlin Glass. It nestled comfor
tably into my armoured hand, still showing a snowy scene very different from the one before me, and still subtly urging me on. I weighed the Glass in my hand, and then stepped forward and slapped it hard against the force shield. The Glass hung in midair, shaking and shuddering, and then it grew suddenly in size to a doorway, breaking through the shield by making itself part of the shield. I took Molly by the hand and led her through, and then the doorway slammed shut behind us and the Merlin Glass shot back into my hand, like an obedient dog. I put it away, and set off again, with Molly just a few steps behind me.

  “You’re so sharp you’ll cut yourself one of these days,” she said finally.

  “I’m sure you’d have thought of it,” I said generously. “Eventually.”

  We headed on across the great plateau of snow and ice, stopping occasionally so I could take out the Merlin Glass and use it like a compass, to make sure were still heading in the right direction. Still no sign of Area 52, or anything like an entrance. We’d been walking for almost an hour now, though I had to check my armour’s internal clock to be sure. With so few real landmarks, it was hard to be sure of space or time. I was growing dangerously tired. I’d done so much today, and there was still so much more to do. And then I stopped suddenly, and looked sharply about me. Molly hovered beside me, her eyes bright and alert.

  “You feel it too,” she said. “We’re not alone. I can’t See anything, but I can feel it, in my bones and in my water. Something else is here with us, and it knows we’re here. It’s watching us.”

  “Guard dog,” I said flatly. “Has to be. If you had a secret base set up here, you’d invest in a guard dog or two, wouldn’t you? But what kind of creature could survive on its own, in this environment? Without my armour and your protections, we’d have been dead within minutes of arriving. So whatever it is . . . would have to be seriously tough and nasty, able to survive where nothing else could. Feel free to disagree with me, Molly, because I am starting to depress myself . . .”