The Sarjeant planted the bomb, set the timer, and then led his people safely back home. Another nest destroyed, another tower gone, with no losses or casualties. I started to relax. We’d just had a bad beginning. It looked like we were starting to get the hang of things now. Maybe we could pull this off. I said as much to Molly, and she nodded, smiling. I should have known better.
Callan and the Blue Fairy took their strike force into a small settlement just north of San Francisco. Officially, the Blue Fairy was there as a volunteer to support Callan and watch his back. In practice, I’d had a quiet word with Callan and told him to watch the Blue Fairy. I still wasn’t ready to trust Blue yet.
Their ghoulville had once been an integral part of the Summer of Love in the sixties; a central point for more sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll magic than any reality could comfortably bear. In these more hard-headed, materialistic days, the small town of Lud’s Drum was just a haven for shaggy old hippy types, burnt-out casualties of the drugs war, and a whole industry had grown up devoted to trading on the town’s disreputable past. Only people like us still kept a watchful eye on Lud’s Drum, because dimensional barriers in and around the town had been dangerously weak ever since Timothy Leary dropped a heroic dose of LSD and peyote there and tried to perform a remote exorcism on the Pentagon. As a result, the Loathly Ones took the town with hardly an effort. Lud’s Drum was one of the few places where drones could walk around openly without being suspected. Now Lud’s Drum was a ghoulville, and one of the last remnants of the sixties dream was now a living nightmare.
Callan led his strike force through the harshly lit streets, cutting down drones with cold, almost clinical precision. He didn’t allow himself to be distracted by the crumbling candy-coloured houses, the soft undulating streets, or the endless waves of drones that fell upon his people with vicious, malevolent glee. He cut a path right through them, heading with stern resolve straight for the nearly completed tower in the very centre of the town. Callan might have a smart mouth and an irreverent attitude when dealing with authority figures, but nothing distracted him from his focus when he was out in the field.
The Blue Fairy stuck close to him, guarding Callan’s back with surprising skill and purpose. He didn’t have a sword, or a gun; just a slender wand that he’d produced out of nowhere. Oh, this old thing, he said airily. Been in the family for ages. In the ghoulville he produced a series of small but surprisingly effective magics that kept the drones at arm’s length. It shouldn’t really have surprised me that Blue knew how to fight. He couldn’t have lasted all these years, with the kind of enemies he’d made, without having developed some survival skills.
Callan led his people by example, always pushing forward, not allowing himself to be stopped or even slowed by anything the demons could throw at him. His golden blades rose and fell, and blood flew on the air. Always moving doggedly forward, he brought them closer and closer to the tower through sheer martial expertise and an almost brutal determination. Watching him made me feel proud to be a Drood. This was what we were for; to fight the good fight, to strike down the bad guys, in humanity’s name.
The drones had their glowing swords, and other equally awful weapons, but the Blue Fairy saw to it that they never got close enough to do the Droods any harm. He stabbed the air with his wand, a slender length of bone carved with elven glyphs, and wherever he pointed it, things went wrong for the drones. Over and over again. Blue scowled fiercely as he concentrated, skipping this way and that to ensure he never even came close to being in danger himself, but I got the feeling he was enjoying himself, nonetheless.
He was half elf, after all, with an elf’s ingrained talent for death and destruction.
They made it all the way to the base of the tower before everything went wrong. The tower rose up before them, like a jagged lightning bolt of alien technology and organic components driven into the ground with godly force. Its shape made no sense, as though it had more spatial dimensions than the human mind could cope with, and once again there was a definite sense that the thing was in some way alive and aware, and knew they were there. Callan planted the bomb at the base of the tower, with the Blue Fairy looking over his shoulder, while armoured troops formed a barrier to hold back the swarming drones.
Callan set the timer, stood up, and nodded to the Blue Fairy, and then every single member of the strike force stiffened suddenly and crashed to the ground, and lay still. No warning, no obvious reason, no drone with a new weapon. Just two hundred armoured Droods lying motionless on the ground. I couldn’t even tell whether they were dead or alive. Callan glared about him, sweeping his golden blades this way and that. And then the Blue Fairy elegantly tapped Callan on the shoulder with his wand, and Callan fell to his knees.
“Sorry, old thing,” said the Blue Fairy. “But I never was very good at playing with others. And you have something I need.”
We all watched helplessly as Blue put his wand to Callan’s neck, and then somehow . . . whipped the torc away from Callan. His mouth stretched wide in a scream, but no sound came out of it. He was still kneeling, but now he was just a man again, ripped from his armour. The Blue Fairy looked at the torc in his hand, turning it back and forth, and then he looked out of the display screen right at us, smiling almost sadly.
“I know, Eddie,” he said. “You trusted me. Which was very nice, and all that, but this torc will buy me entry into the Fae Court. I told you; in the end, it’s always about family. And never, ever, trust an elf. We always have an agenda.”
He turned sideways, and kept on turning, until he had disappeared from sight. All the Droods snapped back to life again, save for Callan, who collapsed, twitching on the ground. The drones surged forward.
Somehow the Droods got Callan out of there. They battled their way out of Lud’s Drum, with the drones making them fight for every yard. And all the time the bomb was ticking. They came streaming back through the Merlin Glass, carrying an unconscious Callan, and I slammed the doorway shut just as the bomb went off. There was a moment of light so bright I could feel it, and the whole War Room shook, but the gateway closed in time to protect us. Lud’s Drum was gone, and with it the nest and its tower.
They took Callan away to the infirmary. Shock, they said. God knows what having his torc ripped from him felt like. I asked Strange if the elves could make the torc work for them, and he said, What are elves? Which didn’t exactly help matters. We would be revenged on the Blue Fairy later. No one steals from the Droods and lives to boast of it.
After all that drama, everything else went pretty much as planned. The strike forces went into ghoulville after ghoulville, using the tactics we’d developed, and nest after nest was destroyed, along with their towers. The Armourer’s bombs never failed, and we didn’t lose one more Drood to the drones. No more nasty surprises, no more appalling new weapons, just Droods doing their job, making the world safe. The hours trudged slowly by, with golden figures constantly coming and going through the Merlin Glass. The drones still fought savagely, making us work for every victory. But still, step by step, we were winning. Fresh men and women came forward to replace those Droods exhausted by too many raids, and the work went on. The whole family was ready to fight, if need be. The infirmary coped well. Overall, losses were actually less than expected and planned for. We actually had the end in sight when it all went to rat shit again.
A communications officer stood up abruptly to shout his new information to the Matriarch, and the whole War Room went quiet to hear it.
“It’s Truman!” he shouted. “All this time he’s had Loathly One drones in his new underground base, building a tower, hidden behind his protective screens! It must be almost complete, because its presence just punched right through the screens! It’s so powerful Truman can’t hide it any longer. It’s almost ready to open a door and bring the Invaders through! This has all been for nothing!”
“Be calm, man!” snapped the Matriarch. “I will not have emotional displays in my War Room. Someone sit that
man down and get him a strong cup of tea. Edwin, which of our major players are still capable of leading a strike force?”
I checked. The Sarjeant-at-Arms and Mr. Stab were still clearing out a nest in northern China. Callan was still in the infirmary. And Giles Deathstalker, having personally led over thirty missions, was lying on a cot right beside Callan, too exhausted to go on, though he’d never admit it. That just left Harry, and Roger Morningstar. They were catching a quick break between missions, and awing the younger Droods with exaggerated tales of their exploits. I had them brought back to the War Room and explained the situation. Harry looked very much like he wanted to spit.
“Just once, I’d like things to go the way they’re supposed to.”
“Are you up for this?” I said.
“Not like I have much of a choice, is it?” said Harry. “Okay, put together a strike force out of the best we’ve got that are still on their feet, and I’ll lead it in.” He looked drawn and tired, but his back was still straight and his eyes were still sharp. He dug Roger in the ribs with his elbow. “Who would have thought it, eh? Family pariah Harry Drood, stepping up to save the day. Would you have bet on that, Grandmother?”
Martha looked at him steadily. “Of course. You’re James’s son.”
Harry deliberately turned his back on her and grinned at Roger. “How about it, love? You up for one last mission, to save the world?”
“I’m not sure my mother’s side of the family would approve, but what the Hell . . . Why not? Can’t let you do this on your own. You never did learn to watch your back properly.”
I wasn’t so sure Roger’s going was a good idea. Basically, he looked like shit. With so much of his magic exhausted on earlier raids, a lot of his glamour was gone, and he looked . . . more of a man.
Harry made a point of looking down his nose at me. “Well, Eddie, aren’t you coming along on this little jaunt? You know how you love to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, at the very last minute . . .”
“I’m still needed here,” I said calmly. “Someone’s got to feed you the necessary information, and point you in the right direction. But, if it should all go horribly wrong, I’m your backup.”
“And me,” said Molly, digging me sharply in the ribs with her elbow.
“Of course,” I said, “If you feel you can’t do it without me . . .”
“We can handle it,” Harry said immediately.
“Damn right, lover,” said Roger Morningstar.
The Merlin Glass locked on to Truman’s new base of operations easily enough; the almost complete tower was dominating the aether. But for some reason the Glass couldn’t seem to show us a view of the base’s interior. Just a field, overlooking Stonehenge, with the ancient Stones looming tall and dramatic against the lowering evening sky. Harry pressed in close beside me, scowling.
“The Stones look to be almost half a mile away; is that really the closest you can get us?”
“This isn’t a nest, as such,” I said. “Not a ghoulville. Just an underground base surrounded by layer upon layer of the best scientific and magical protections money can buy. We wouldn’t even know it was there if the tower wasn’t poking out of it, so to speak. You’ll have to sneak up on them. Unless you’ve changed your mind about going . . .”
“Of course I haven’t! It’s just . . . I don’t like this. It feels like a trap.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” I said. “But what kind of trap could Manifest Destiny put together that could hold Harry Drood, Roger Morningstar, and two hundred good men and women in golden armour?”
Harry smiled slightly. “You really suck at the inspirational thing, you know that?” He looked at Roger. “Let’s go, bro.”
“Oh please,” said Roger. “You know I don’t do that macho stuff.”
Harry and Roger led their strike force through the Merlin Glass, and I immediately closed the gateway behind them. Truman was a sneaky bastard, and I wouldn’t put anything past him, including deliberately revealing his tower’s presence as a way of tricking us into opening a gateway he could then take advantage of. But . . . it all seemed quiet enough. Molly took my arm and hugged it tightly to her side as we watched Harry hiss orders to his strike force to spread out across the open, grassy field, to as not to make a single target. Their golden armour gleamed dully in the sparse evening light. As far as the display screens could tell, they were alone in the field. Everything was still and quiet. And then Roger’s head snapped up and he pointed off into the gloom. And all around the scattered strike force, dark figures appeared from every direction at once, moving at impossible speeds.
The figures were human, but moving supernaturally quickly, impossibly fast, streaking across the open field at a pace even armoured Droods couldn’t have matched. The Droods turned to face them, lifting their weapons, but they almost seemed to be moving in slow motion compared to their attackers. As the figures closed in, their every movement was so fast as to make them just a blur on the display screens. Even their faces were unclear. They were just shapes, flashing through the evening gloom.
They swarmed all over the Droods, attacking and falling back almost before the armoured Droods could react. The attackers didn’t seem to possess any weapons, they just beat repeatedly at the golden armour with their bare hands. When that didn’t work, glowing knives appeared in their hands, and they struck again. And this time Droods went down as glowing blades sliced right through their armour to the men and women beneath. The strike force fell, one by one, unable to match their attackers’ speed even for a moment. Harry called his people back to make a defensive circle, but by the time he’d finished speaking half of them were already dead.
There was a clamour of raised voices in the War Room as everyone tried to come up with an explanation or a theory at once. Communications yelled at intelligence, who yelled at information, who yelled at records . . . and that was where the answer finally came from. Droods know everything, but sometimes it takes us a while to find it. Turned out there had been a report filed about the possibility of these people, from a file Callan found in Truman’s old deserted underground base. The Accelerated Men. Surgically altered, technologically enhanced, and drugged to the eyeballs, they were fanatics, burning up a lifetime’s energy to feed their unnatural speed. Dying to be fast. But then, Manifest Destiny has never been short of fanatics.
Giles Deathstalker arrived in the War Room, looking half dead but still determined, and had to be almost physically prevented from going in to help. I decided that. No point in throwing away more lives till we had some idea of what we were facing. Giles watched the display screens with avid interest. I almost expected him to take notes. It seemed he’d finally found something he hadn’t seen before, that he thought he could take back to his future time.
On the field overlooking Stonehenge, Harry’s remaining people had retreated to form a tight ring around Harry and Roger. Standing shoulder to shoulder, they were better able to defend themselves, and pushing their armour’s speed to its limit meant they could take out the occasional Accelerated Man with a vicious sword thrust. When these human lightning bolts crashed to the ground, dead at last, they looked like old men, their faces blasted by a terrible strain. The Droods fought on, still losing a man or woman here or there, the defensive circle slowly shrinking . . . Until suddenly the Accelerated Men began to stumble and fall, and collapse on the ground. At first I thought Roger had finally got some of his magic working, but it soon became clear that the Accelerated Men had just used up all their lives. They ran themselves to death.
Harry and Roger and the dozen or so remaining Droods looked slowly about them. Piled up around them lay dozens of old men with time-ravaged faces. They could never have been intended to last long. They were just a means to an end; to forcing the Droods back into one easy target. A terrible blast of light slammed aside the darkness, a light so strong and fierce it had presence and impact. The Droods started to scream. Roger clung onto Harry, shouting Words of Power that were almos
t washed away by the terrible light. And then, just like that, the light snapped off. Evening returned, but all the Droods were gone. Only Harry and Roger were left, clinging to each other. Harry was holding Roger up. The hellspawn was almost out on his feet, exhausted of strength and magic.
Only two men left, to save the world.
The War Room went mad again. It took a bit longer to get the answer this time, but it was no less disturbing when the Armourer finally supplied it. He admitted he was guessing, but it rang true. Truman had set up his new base under Stonehenge in order to seize control of the Soul of Albion, that impossibly powerful scrap of starstuff that fell out of the sky millennia ago. Truman had taken it for his own and used Loathly One technology to turn it into a weapon, a Soul Gun. He’d found a way to release its energy in short bursts, and anything bathed in the angry light of the Soul was banished, blasted right out of this reality.
The Droods we’d lost wouldn’t be coming back.
Harry and Roger were calling desperately for help. It slowly went quiet in the War Room as everyone looked to the Matriarch, and then to me, for orders. Martha stood very still, wringing her hands together, staring at the display screens. I thought hard. And while I was thinking, the Soul Gun fired again.
Roger must have sensed it coming, because he straightened up abruptly and pushed Harry behind him. The terrible light flared up, destroying the night, an illumination so overpowering it was beyond colour; something you experienced with your mind and soul rather than your eyes. But Roger stood up to the light and faced it down, standing between the light and the man he loved, defying the light of the Soul Gun with every last thing he had in him. The Soul Gun blazed, and Roger met its awful power with unflinching will.
Daemons Are Forever Page 41