"You’ve really thought this through," I said.
"Hell," said Molly. "It’s what I’d do. Now hang on. Our only real hope is to lose these bastards."
A black car emerged from a side alley and lurched out onto the street ahead of us. It spun around on squealing wheels and came charging straight at us. We were blocked in by cars on either side, with no room to manoeuvre. I could have jumped off. The armour would have protected me. But that would have left Molly on her own…I was still trying to figure out what to do when Molly revved the engine for all it was worth and aimed the bike right at the gleaming radiator of the approaching black car. I could hear her chanting something, but the rushing wind ripped her words away. The black car loomed up before us, close enough that I could see the driver laughing at us, and then, at the very last moment, the Vincent rose up into the air and sailed right over the top of the black car. We landed behind the car with only the faintest of bumps and kept on going. I looked back just in time to see the Manifest Destiny car smash into another black car that had been following right behind us. The two cars slammed together, head to head, and then blew apart with a satisfying large explosion.
I turned back and hugged Molly tightly so I could yell in her ear. "I didn’t know the bike could do that!"
"It can’t! But I can. Though not very often, so you’d better hope that doesn’t happen again."
I sent up some more prayers to St. Christopher.
Molly swung the bike around a sharp corner, and then hit the brakes so hard it would have knocked all the breath out of me if I hadn’t been wearing my armour. The street ahead of us was completely empty, cleared of all traffic and pedestrians. The only people who could have arranged that so quickly were my family. And sure enough, there they were. I looked over Molly’s shoulder and saw what she had already spotted. Halfway down the street three golden figures stood like statues, the morning light gleaming brightly on their armour.
I was actually a little flattered. Three field agents, just to bring me in. I had no doubt they could do it. So I put the Colt Repeater away and hit the stud on my reverse watch. God bless you, Uncle Jack. Time rewound itself, spinning the world back thirty seconds, so that once again Molly and I were just approaching the corner. As Molly started to turn, I yelled urgently into her ear, and she brought the bike to a skidding halt, the back wheel sliding back and forth as it locked. We both bailed off the bike, and she said the Words that turned it back into a silver charm. I armoured down, and we both disappeared into the nearest side alley.
The three golden field agents were already sprinting towards us, but a dozen black cars came screeching around the corner. They saw the field agents and drove their armoured cars right at them, the fools. Molly and I watched from the shadows of the side alley as the first car reached the first agent. He just stood his ground, and then slammed his golden fist down onto the black car’s bonnet at the very last moment. The whole front of the car compacted, ramming into the ground, the back came up, and the car somersaulted over the agent’s head before crashing to the ground behind him.
The second agent launched himself through the windscreen of the next car, killed everyone inside, and burst out the back of the car and onto the bonnet of the car following. The third agent picked up one armoured car and used it to hit another. Black cars screeched to a halt, and men spilled out, firing all kinds of weapons. Soon the whole street was full of men in golden armour doing terrible things to men of ill will.
Made me feel proud to be a Drood.
"Time we were going," I said quietly to Molly.
"Damn, your people are good," she said.
We sneaked quietly away, just two more terrified pedestrians fleeing the carnage. I suddenly realised there was blood on Molly’s face. It was dripping from her nose and spilling down her chin from her mouth. She dabbed at it with a small silk square from up her sleeve, but all she succeeded in doing was moving the blood around. I stopped her and took out my own handkerchief. Molly stood quietly and allowed me to mop the blood from her face.
"What happened?" I said. "Were you hit? Did a bullet get you?"
"No," said Molly. "I did this to myself. I told you: spatial portals are serious magic. They take a lot out of me. And then, what I did with the bike, on top of that…Magic always has to be paid for, one way or another. That’s why rituals and preparation are so important; they raise the energies necessary to power the spells I use. So I don’t have to draw on the energies of my own body. And I have been doing a lot of quick and dirty magics for you just lately, Eddie."
"I’m sorry," I said. "I didn’t know. Didn’t realise what I was asking of you. Don’t think I don’t appreciate it. There. You look better now."
"Thanks."
"That’s okay. I couldn’t have you drawing attention to us, could I?"
"You are such a gentleman." She looked at me. "You look…pretty shit yourself, Eddie. How’s the arm?"
"Worse without the armour."
"The poison’s spreading, isn’t it?"
"Yes. The pain’s moved beyond my shoulder and into my chest as well. Are we far from your next rogue agent?"
"Not too far. I was heading in the right general direction all along. We can walk it from here."
"Good. Let’s go see the Mole in his hole."
"Funny you should say that," said Molly.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Home Alone
I wasn’t keen on going back down into the Underground train system again, but Molly insisted. It did seem to me that every time I’d gone underground recently, bad things had happened to me. But then, above ground hadn’t been that safe either. Molly and I walked back the way we’d come, heading for Blackfriars station, and it was like walking through a war zone. Crashed cars, shops on fire, damage and wreckage everywhere. People stumbled around, dazed and confused, crying and clinging to each other. And bodies, in the road or dragged out onto the pavement from burnt-out premises, sometimes decently draped with a coat, more often not. I felt stunned, sickened. This wasn’t supposed to happen. In all the secret wars I ever fought, I never once let them spill over into the real world. I never, ever let civilians get hurt.
"Stop that," Molly said quietly. "None of this was your fault. Manifest Destiny is responsible for what happened here, the bastards."
"We let them chase us," I said.
"What was the alternative? Stand our ground and die quickly, if we were lucky? I don’t think so. You can’t allow yourself to be taken, Eddie. You can’t let Manifest Destiny get their hands on a weapon like your armour. And besides, you have to stay free because you know the truth. You have a responsibility to do something, to stop Manifest Destiny and your family from running the world like their own private preserve. You’re the only hope these people have."
"Then they’re in serious trouble," I said after a while.
"That’s better," said Molly. "Don’t let the bastards grind you down, Eddie."
The entrance to Blackfriars station was crammed with people, refugees hiding out from the mayhem on the streets. They were all gabbling and yelling at each other, but it was clear none of them had a clue as to what was really going on. Molly and I eased our way through the crowds on the stairs and down towards the escalators. I had been concerned that Manifest Destiny or my family might still have agents down in the stations, watching for us, but in a crowd this size Molly and I were just two more people. Even the stalled escalators were full of shocked and baffled people, some of them crying, some of them comforting or being comforted. None of them understood what was happening, only that something much bigger and nastier than them had intruded on their peaceful, everyday lives. The very thing I’d spent my life fighting to prevent.
I felt like I’d failed them, and that mattered much more to me than failing my family ever had.
Down on the crowded platform, Molly and I unobtrusively made our way over to a soft-drinks vending machine with an OUT OF ORDER sign on it. We glanced around to make sure no one was watch
ing, and then I pulled the vending machine forward. The machine moved smoothly and easily to show the hidden door in the wall behind it. I had to smile. There are a great many hidden doors down in the London Underground, many of them concealed behind OUT OF ORDER vending machines. It’s a secret sign, for those in the know. That’s why so many of these machines are always, apparently, out of order. The doors lead to all kinds of interesting places that the general public are much better off not knowing about. Molly muttered a few words at the concealed door in the wall, and it swung smoothly open before us. Molly and I slipped through into the darkness beyond, and the door quietly shut itself behind us.
Molly summoned up a handful of witchfire, and the shimmering silvery light spat and crackled around her upheld hand. A dark, dank tunnel stretched away before us, showing curving brick walls and a low ceiling sloping steadily down into the earth. Molly’s witchlight didn’t penetrate far into the gloom, and the shadows were very dark.
"Is that glimmer really the best you can do?" I said.
"No. But this is as much as I’m prepared to risk. This isn’t a place where you want to attract undue attention."
"Where exactly are we going? Tell me we’re not going down into the sewers again."
"We’re not going down into the sewers again."
"Oh, joy."
"You’re starting to get on my tits, Drood. This tunnel will lead us down into the systems beneath the train system. Places left over and abandoned by the railways. Old stations that no one goes to anymore, discontinued lines, workings that were never completed. That sort of thing."
I nodded. I knew where we were, and where we were headed; I just wanted to show Molly that I was back to myself again. I could hear the roar of trains passing by not that far away. The sound faded as Molly and I headed down the sloping tunnel and into the dark.
"So," I said after a while. "What do we do if we run into trolls?"
"I plan on running. Try to keep up."
"Someone told me they’re getting ready to swarm again."
"Happens every five years, regular as clockwork. The trolls overpopulate the tunnels, exhaust the food supply, and eventually the sheer pressure of numbers and hunger forces them up towards the light, and people. So every few years the bounty hunters get to make good money by going down into the tunnels and culling the herd back to an acceptable number."
"I don’t see why we don’t just wipe the ugly bastards out," I said.
"Oh, we can’t do that," said Molly. "Every species performs a function in nature, even if we can’t see what it is. Wipe out the trolls, and something much worse might step forward to fill the gap. Better the ugly bastards you know than the ones you don’t."
We moved from one tunnel to another, and then another, always heading down, deeper into the earth. The air became hot and sweaty, almost humid. We splashed through pools of stagnant water on the floor, and more dripped from the ceiling. Fungi flourished in the hothouse atmosphere, sprouting in thick white clumps where the wall met the floor and scattered in puffy fleshy masses on the ceiling. Huge mats of green and blue moss covered the walls, two to three inches deep, stretching away for as far as I could see. Long slow ripples moved across the surface of the moss, as though it was disturbed by our presence.
"There are those who say if you eat or smoke the moss, it will grant you visions of things unseen and other worlds," said Molly.
"I don’t need moss for that," I said. "That’s business as usual for me. Have you noticed…there aren’t any rats down here? Anywhere."
"Yes," said Molly. "I had noticed. The trolls must have eaten them all. And if they’ve been reduced to eating rats, it can only be because they’ve already eaten everything else. They must be really close to swarming."
"Maybe we could come back and see the Mole some other time," I said.
"You’re really quite chicken for a Drood, aren’t you?"
"Cautious," I said. "I prefer the word cautious."
"Look; the authorities are bound to have sent bounty hunters down here by now."
"Yes," I said, stopping. "I think I’ve found one."
We both knelt down to study the wreckage of what had once been a human body. It lay on its back in a pool of blood that had already dried enough to be tacky to the touch. Its leather armour had been torn to ribbons, and the chest had been smashed in, to get at the meat beneath. The arms and legs had been torn off, with only the gnawed bones remaining, lying scattered on the stone floor. The face had been eaten away right down to the bone, leaving empty eye sockets and grinning blood-smeared teeth.
"Any idea who it might have been?" I said. The state of the body didn’t bother me. I’ve seen lots of bodies.
"No," said Molly, scowling. "The only bounty hunter I know is Janissary Jane, and that isn’t her armour."
"You know Jane?" I said, surprised.
"We’ve worked a few cases together. I keep telling you, Eddie: the world isn’t as neatly divided into black and white as your family wanted you to believe."
I picked up a machine pistol lying abandoned not far from the body and examined it closely. "Doesn’t look like she got a shot off. But…where are the rest of the weapons? I can’t believe any bounty hunter would go after trolls with just the one gun."
We looked around, but there was nothing else on or around the body. Molly and I looked at each other.
"They couldn’t have taken them," said Molly.
"Why not?"
"Trolls are just animals! They don’t use tools or weapons."
"Animals evolve," I said. "Particularly under pressure from outside forces. Trolls who’ve learned to use weapons; now, that is seriously scary."
"We need to get moving," said Molly, rising to her feet and looking quickly about her. "Get in to see the Mole and get out again before the trolls swarm."
"Relax," I said. "They can’t touch us. I’ve got my armour, and you’ve got your magic."
"Your armour might protect you from direct attack, but a whole swarm of trolls could knock you on your arse, carry you away to their deep larders, and just keep you there till you had to come out of your armour. And then…" We both looked at the half-eaten bounty hunter.
"There’s a limit to what I can do with my magic now," Molly said reluctantly. "I’ve used up most of my stored resources. Anything big would wipe me out."
"You couldn’t have mentioned that before we came down here?" I said.
We both looked around sharply. There were sounds in the darkness around us. Molly waved her witchfire back and forth, illuminating the dark mouths of tunnel openings ahead and behind us. From not far away came high-pitched hootings and howlings, and the slow sharp sound of claws and talons scraping against stone. We looked quickly up and down the tunnel, but the many overlapping echoes made it impossible to tell from which direction any sound was coming. Molly and I stood back to back, breathing heavily. And then from behind us, from back the way we’d come, there was the growing sound of heavy feet on the move, of heavy bodies thundering down the tunnel towards us. Molly sprinted off into the darkness ahead, and I was right behind her.
The deeper we went, the shabbier the tunnels became. The old brick walls began to crack and fall apart. Fungi and moss flourished, hiding human workings under rounded organic shapes. Tunnel openings were interspersed with rough holes smashed through the ancient stonework, dark gaps raw as wounds. Things moved in the darkness, hissing at us as we passed. Molly and I ran on, pushing ourselves as hard as we could, not even glancing into the openings, and behind us came the thunder of the trolls, drawing steadily closer.
I could have armoured up and left them behind in a moment, but trolls were sensitive to magic. They could have tracked my armour easily, even in complete darkness. Even the small magic of the witchfire was a calculated risk.
"How much further to the Mole?" I said between panting breaths.
"I’m…not exactly sure," said Molly.
"What?"
"Hey, it’s been a long time sin
ce I was last down here! And I may have got a bit…turned around."
Without slowing my pace at all, I reached inside my jacket and brought out the emergency compass the Armourer had given me back at the Hall.
"I know which way is north," said Molly. "And it really isn’t helping."
"This particular compass is supposed to show me the best way out of any emergency situation," I said, trying to hold the thing steady as I ran. The compass needle flicked back and forth and then settled on northeast just as a new tunnel opening appeared in that direction. The needle moved to point right at the opening. "This way!" I said.
"Your family always has the best toys," said Molly, and we plunged into the new tunnel without slowing.
We ran on, following the needle from tunnel to tunnel. The hootings and howlings came from all around us now. The tunnels finally ended in a natural stone chamber complete with jagged stalactites and stalagmites. Strange mineral traces in the walls picked up the witchfire and glowed brightly, pushing back the dark. The compass needle swung back and forth, as though confused, and I stumbled to a halt while I waited for it to make up its mind. Molly leaned on me, fighting for breath. I wasn’t much better off. My arm and shoulder were killing me.
"We’re in trouble," said Molly.
"No, really?" I said. "You do surprise me. Show us the way to the Mole, you useless piece of crap!" And I slapped the compass a few times, to show it I meant business.
"No," Molly said. "I mean, I don’t recognise this place at all. I’ve never been here on any of my previous trips to the Mole’s lair. Are you sure that thing is reliable?"
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