Live and Let Drood: A Secret Histories Novel

by Simon R. Green

  “So you can kick people while they’re down and take what little they have left?” said Molly.

  “Best time,” said Chapman, regaining some of his confidence. “A chance to loot a place like Drood Hall only comes along once in a generation. If then. The minute we got the word, from a very important gentleman, we were off and running. In fact, he went so far as to say we’d be doing him a favour if we were to strip the place clean from top to bottom. He guaranteed he’d buy everything we brought him. No matter how unique or dangerous the item might be. He has connections everywhere, you see.…Well! Couldn’t turn down an opportunity like that. Could we, sir? And miss, of course. How could we say no?”

  “You should have,” I said. “You really should have.”

  “Yeah,” said Molly. She cracked her knuckles, a sudden loud sound in the quiet, and Chapman actually jumped.

  “You’re facing a Drood in his armour,” I said. “And the wild witch of the woods. Hell, you should be grateful we got to you before the scarecrows did. You have heard of the scarecrows…yes, I thought you might have.”

  “Bollocks to this!” Chapman said abruptly. He turned and ran back past his truck, yelling to his people farther down the line. “Sod this for a game of soldiers! Get them, boys! There’s only two of them! A nice little bonus to whoever brings them down first! And get a bloody move on, before the scarecrows get here!”

  A whole bunch of large, muscular young men appeared out of the cabs of parked trucks and headed straight for us. Most of them hard, cold-eyed thugs, in grubby T-shirts and jeans, the better to show off their gym-sculpted torsos. They advanced steadily on Molly and me, carrying various nasty-looking weapons. Twenty, thirty, forty of them, looking tough and highly motivated. Anyone else would probably have been impressed. Chapman stopped at the far end of his truck and grinned unpleasantly back at me.

  “You’re not the only one with a family business! You Droods aren’t the only ones who can do the hard stuff, if it comes to it. We’re the Road Rats!”

  “Thought you were Plunder, Incorporated,” said Molly.

  “That’s just for appearances! When there’s dirty work to be done we’re still the Road Rats, and no one does it better than us! Right, boys? We don’t take no shit from no one. We do the taking! Boys, peel that arrogant tosser out of his gold shell and pound him into the ground! Whoever takes him down first gets first go at the girl!”

  “Optimistic little soul, isn’t he?” I murmured to Molly.

  “And obnoxious about it,” said Molly. “Girl? Girl? I’ll give him girl…I will make him wish he’d never been born. In fact, I may even make a raggedy-edged hole in the side of his truck and use it to reenact his birth, only in reverse.”

  “Poor bastards,” I said. “They haven’t a clue what’s about to hit them.”

  “I have,” said Molly. “And I’m going to really enjoy it.”

  “Me, too!” I said. “But I want Chapman alive and intact and still able to answer questions at the end of it. He knows who’s behind all this.”

  I looked the Road Rats over as they drew nearer. They looked surprisingly confident. They’d clearly heard enough about Droods to know our reputation, but not enough to take it seriously. A lot of them were carrying energy weapons, both magical and superscientific, presumably looted from some previous site, and they were carrying them like they knew how to use them. Others had really big guns that looked entirely capable of firing a hell of a lot of bullets in a short time. Others had knives and swords and glowy cutting things. With anyone else that would probably have been enough.

  I ran straight at them, gravel flying as I charged down the path at inhuman speed.

  I swept past Chapman in a moment, before he could even give the order to open fire. By the time he did, I was right there in and among his boys. They all opened fire at once, hitting me with everything they had. The bullets just ricocheted harmlessly off my armour. (My old strange-matter armour would have absorbed the bullets; less danger of any damage to innocent bystanders. Not that there were any of those here, of course.) The energy guns opened up, bathing me in a whole series of vicious and otherworldly destructive forces, and not one of them could touch me inside my armour. They glanced harmlessly off or detonated in the air around me. The knives and swords and glowy cutting things broke and shattered against me.

  I slammed into the midst of the Road Rats, slapping the energy weapons out of their hands, crushing their guns in my golden hands and lashing out at everyone within reach. I punched in faces, cracked heads and sent hard young thugs staggering backwards, desperately gasping for breath, because I’d caught them with a crafty back elbow under the sternum. I knocked them down and trampled them underfoot, and it felt good, so good. To be striking down my enemies.

  A lot of them just turned and ran rather than face me.

  Others produced new, heavy-duty magical weapons. One thrust a Hand of Glory at me, only to cry out as the Hand’s malign influence was reflected straight back at him and all the fingers rotted and fell off. Another of them had an aboriginal pointing bone. He pointed it at me and the bone exploded, filling his hand with sharp bony shrapnel. One of them even had an elven wand, but when he pointed it hopefully in my direction, the wand took one look at my armour and faded quietly away, disappearing out of the Road Rat’s hand rather than get involved.

  Lesser weapons took their turn and destructive forces and energies blazed and howled around me, none of them able to touch me.

  I kept moving, pressing forward, throwing nasty young thugs this way and that, breaking bones and smashing heads, raining savage blows on my enemies and loving every moment of it. I could hear bones breaking, see blood flying, and the screams of horror and suffering brought joy to my heart and a smile to my lips behind my featureless golden mask. They were no match for me, and they knew it. The drive was packed with horrified young thugs running for the gates. I took my time with those who didn’t, doing a good and thorough job on them. It felt so good to have an enemy I could get my hands on at last. They might not be the ones responsible for the destruction of the Hall and the loss of my family, but they were there. They’d do.

  In the end, I just ran out of people to hit. I stood alone in the middle of the drive, surrounded by the wounded and the unconscious. Blood dripped thickly from my heavy golden gauntlets. Molly was standing to one side, looking at me. It had all happened so quickly, she hadn’t had a chance to get involved. I didn’t recognise the expression on her face, but I didn’t like it. I looked round sharply at the sudden roaring of an engine behind me. Chapman had fired up one of the trucks farther down the line. He pulled it out of the queue, revved the engine and drove the truck straight at me.

  I stood where I was, to give him a sporting chance. The oversized rig loomed up before me, growing larger and larger, as he gunned the accelerator for all it was worth. I could see Chapman’s pale, determined face glaring at me through the windshield. At the last moment I turned and showed him my golden shoulder. The truck smashed right into me. The grillwork collapsed under my shoulder. I’d dug my heels into the gravel, but even so the sheer impact pushed me backwards, my heels leaving deep furrows in the ground. I didn’t feel a thing inside the armour. The truck skidded to a halt despite itself, the engine still roaring, until I drove a golden fist right through the collapsed grillwork and smashed the engine.

  A sudden silence fell across the grounds. I carefully withdrew my arm, stepped around to the side of the cab, ripped the door right off and threw it away. I beckoned to Chapman to get out. He dropped down onto the ground and stood shaking before me. His face was bloody from where it had smashed against the windshield, for all the inflated airbag had been able to do to protect him. He looked at me with wild, shocked, startled eyes.

  “What are you?” he said, in a cracked, almost hysterical voice. “You’re not human! Look what you did to my boys! Look what you did to my truck! Nothing human could have done that!”

  “Yes,” said Molly, coming for
ward to join us. “How do you feel about that, Eddie? About what you did to his boys?”

  I looked around me at the broken, bloodied bodies. “They had it coming. I didn’t kill any of them.”

  “Oh, well, then,” said Molly. “That makes it all right, then.”

  I frowned behind my mask. “What are you so upset about? I’ve seen you do far worse in your time!”

  “Yes, but that’s me. Not you.”

  “Are you defending these scumbags? After what they came here to do? What they would have done to you?”

  “No,” said Molly. “They had it coming. Deserved everything they got. I’m just interested in how you feel about what you did. Because I am reminded of what you did in another place. In the Wulfshead, not so long ago.”

  “I didn’t lose control here,” I said. “I didn’t…Oh, hell. It’s the armour, Molly. It’s affecting me.”

  “Is it?” said Molly. “Or is that what you want to think?”

  “I don’t have time for this,” I said. I turned my featureless gold mask to Chapman, and he scrunched up his face as though he wanted to cry. “Pick up your boys and leave here, Road Rat. And don’t ever come back. If you meet any more of your kind along the way, tell them what happened here. Show them what I did to your boys. Because if I have to do this again, I’ll make a real example out of the next bunch.”

  “Don’t think you’ve stopped me,” said Chapman defiantly. “We’re a big organisation. A big family. I’ll set an army against you, if I have to. You can’t stop an army, just the two of you.”

  “He doesn’t know us very well, does he?” said Molly.

  “And there’s still the scarecrows,” I said.

  “We’ve got weapons for things like that!” said Chapman. “There’s all kinds of good stuff waiting in the Hall, and we’re not giving up on it!”

  “No one steals from my family and lives to boast of it,” I said. “I stand between the Hall and all who would violate it.”

  “And, for all my many reservations, I stand beside him,” said Molly.

  “Thank you, dear,” I said.

  “You’re with him,” said Chapman. “And they’re with me!”

  I looked beyond him at a small army of Road Rats hurrying up the drive towards us. Dozens of them, with more weapons and magically charged things. They must have been kept in reserve until Chapman could work out the lay of the land and call them. They all looked pretty annoyed at what I’d done to their fellow Rats.

  I looked at Molly. “Since I am clearly far too violent to be trusted with this encounter, perhaps you’d like to…”

  “Love to,” said Molly.

  She reached down and pulled up her dress just enough to reveal the gold charm bracelet around her ankle. And for a moment, I actually felt sorry for what was about to hit the Road Rats army. I’d seen Molly pull charms off that bracelet before and make highly destructive use of them. Everything from a Vincent motorbike to a full-sized dragon. Molly pulled one delicately carved charm off the bracelet and held it up for everyone to see. It was a charming little silver monkey. Chapman looked from Molly to me and back again. He couldn’t work out why we were both smiling.

  Molly threw the charm onto the ground before her. There was a puff of dark smoke (for purely dramatic reasons), and when it cleared, the drive now held a massive, monstrous killer ape. A good fifty feet tall, and muscular with it, the ape roared once and then charged down the drive at the advancing Road Rats. It was in and among them before they could get their wits together enough to run, and then the huge ape set about them, picking them up, crushing them and throwing them away. Beating them into the ground with huge fists and trampling them underfoot. Punching them so hard they travelled twenty feet and more through the air before they hit the ground. Road Rats tumbled end over end through the air, making piteous noises of distress. Before plummeting to earth with enough impact to make even me wince. The huge ape charged back and forth, doing horrible things to Road Rats and enjoying itself immensely.

  It was all over quickly. The ape looked around at the piled-up broken bodies and sniffed loudly, in a satisfied kind of way.

  “All right! All right!” said Chapman, miserably. “Call it off! We surrender!”

  Molly snapped her fingers, the ape disappeared and a small silver charm reappeared in her hand. She delicately reattached the charm to her ankle bracelet and smiled sweetly at me.

  “A big ape, throwing his weight around,” I said. “Were you by any chance making a comment there, Molly?”

  “Perish the thought, sweetie.”

  I looked around me. There were bodies everywhere, scattered across the grounds. Some moving, some not. It was all very calm and peaceful, apart from some quiet moaning and whimpering here and there. The threat was over. I forced my armour back into my torc. I could remember the savage satisfaction I’d taken in reducing the Road Rats to bloody ruin, but it seemed like something that happened a long time ago, to somebody else. I looked at Chapman. He was crying.

  “You brought it on yourself,” I said. “I gave you every chance to walk away.”

  “What am I going to say to their mums and dads?” said Chapman.

  “Don’t mess with the Droods,” I said. “Pick up your boys and get out of here. You make the place look untidy.”

  “If we’d known the place was this well protected, we wouldn’t have come here,” Chapman said bitterly. “We were promised the Hall would be empty and abandoned.”

  “Spread the word,” I said. “Drood Hall and its grounds are still protected. Be grateful you didn’t get to meet the scarecrows.”

  “But the Hall’s a ruin!” Chapman said wildly. “Look at it! What’s left inside might as well do someone some good! It’s no use to anyone just sitting there! All right, all right. I’m going.”

  “Not quite yet,” I said. “I still want to know who sent you here. Who made you all these promises? Who knew the Hall was a ruin, and provided you with a bloody sat nav?”

  “Crow Lee,” said Chapman. “It was Crow Lee, the bastard. He swore this would be an easy one, quick in and out, no problems. He lied.”

  “Well, that’s what you do,” said Molly, “when you’re the Most Evil Man in the World.”

  But Chapman was already walking away, calling out to his less-damaged boys to help load the others into the back of the trucks. I was a bit relieved to see I hadn’t done quite as much damage to them as I’d imagined. Molly looked at me thoughtfully.

  “There were an awful lot of the little shits, and I have no sympathy for them. But…”

  “Yes,” I said. “But. I am an agent, not an assassin. I do what’s necessary to take control of a situation. I was never that…bloodthirsty before, when I put on my armour. Moxton’s Mistake was in my head. I couldn’t hear it, but it was there.”

  “Can you learn to control it?” said Molly.

  “I’ll learn,” I said. “I have to. Because I really can’t do the job without it. Not if Crow Lee’s involved.”

  We walked back up the drive to the wrecked and burnt-out Hall. Knowing it wasn’t my Hall really didn’t help much. It was still Drood Hall. Part of me was listening to the trucks revving up and departing my grounds at speed, but I was thinking more about Crow Lee. The Beast. The Devil’s Own. The Most Evil Man in the World—and there’s a lot of competition. Everyone in my line of work has heard of Crow Lee. He hadn’t joined the Great Satanic Conspiracy because he thought they weren’t extreme enough. He dealt in death curses, human sacrifice, human trafficking, blackmail on a small and large scale…and in slaughter and suffering just for the fun of it. He’d run any number of cults just because he could.

  He worked as a magical assassin for a while, as much for the experience as the money. Killing the rich and the powerful by order. He had mastered necromancy, the magic of murder, and could make the living and the dead do his bidding. These days he worked mostly from the shadows and was often accused of atrocities and abominations…but nothing had ever been pro
ved. Crow Lee, the man who could do anything, anything at all.

  “Why have the Droods never done anything about the Most Evil Man in the World?” said Molly.

  “Because he’s protected,” I said. “And I don’t just mean because he’s made pacts with Hell, though he has. He has connections inside every political party, every religious organisation, and he has powerful friends, or, perhaps more properly, allies, in every circle you can think of. The whole family would have had to go to war against Crow Lee and his people, with no sure knowledge of how it would turn out. He’s been stopped, defeated, many times, by us and others…but he just disappears and turns up somewhere else, as powerful and protected as ever. His front men and his allies go down, but he never does. The decision was made in the family, sometime back, to just let him grow old and die. Because he’s just one man, and the family goes on forever. If we can’t take him down, we can always outlive the bastard. And we’ll settle for stopping his various schemes until the evil old scrote grows weak and falls apart. At least that was the plan. It would seem he decided to get his retaliation in first.”

  “You’re sure he’s the one?” Molly said carefully. “The one who took remote control of Alpha Red Alpha?”

  “It has to be him! Only he would have the power to do it and the arrogance to get away with it! The moment I heard his name, I knew.…So. Now my enemy has a face and a name. That helps. And so will the Regent of Shadows, one way or another. This informant of yours; you’re sure they can put us in touch with the Regent?”

  “Almost certainly,” said Molly.

  “Good,” I said. “But first, we have to go to Egypt.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  There Are Worse Things Than Mummies in the Undiscovered Tombs of Old Egypt

  “Egypt?” said Molly, a bit dangerously. “And just why do we have to go to Egypt so damned urgently? What could there possibly be in Egypt that’s so important we have to go there right now?”

  “Something we need,” I said. “Something that will help me track down my missing family. Something that the Armourer once told me about, in an unguarded moment, in strict confidence…so rare and secret and important that it should only ever be sought after in a real emergency. I’m pretty sure this qualifies.”