“I’m not with them,” said Molly. “I’m just with Eddie.”
“We couldn’t rely on you anymore,” said Isabella. “You’d gone over to the enemy. So we needed a new, powerful ally. Someone who hated the Droods as much as we still did. I remembered you saying you’d worked with Crow Lee in the past, so I used your name to get invited here. Louisa insisted on coming along. She thought it would be fun.”
“And you told him all about Alpha Red Alpha,” I said.
“Oh no,” Crow Lee said easily. “I already knew all about that. I told you: There is a traitor in your family who serves me very well. Of course, I encouraged Isabella and Louisa to confide in me, to tell me everything they knew about Molly and the Droods and the Hall. And when there was nothing else they could tell me, when I had no more use for them…I took away their magic and chained them up and kept them in my kennels! Just because I could! What fun we’ve had. Haven’t we, girls?”
“Nasty little man,” Louisa said calmly. “He has no manners at all.”
“I will kill you for this,” Molly said to Crow Lee, and her voice was cold and flat and completely matter-of-fact. Crow Lee leaned forward in his chair, which creaked loudly as his great weight shifted, just so he could laugh right into her bloody face.
“No, you won’t, Molly. I think I’ve enjoyed about as much of the Metcalf sisters as I can stand.”
He waggled his fingers at the ground before him and a great hole opened up—a hole in the world, full of darkness, sucking all the air from the room. Isabella and Louisa didn’t even have time to scream before they were sucked into the hole and gone, nothing left behind but two lengths of severed iron chain dangling from Crow Lee’s chair. Molly was pulled in after them, snatched from my side before I could even react. Crow Lee waved his hand and the hole disappeared. Not a trace left behind, nothing to show it had ever been there. I fell forward, clutching at the carpet with my hands…but there was nothing there, nothing at all.
I crouched there on the floor before Crow Lee, so full of shock and horror and loss and pain I couldn’t move, could barely think. Somehow I kept it all out of my face. Because I knew Crow Lee was watching, looking for tears or despair, for something he could gloat over. And I was damned if I’d give him the satisfaction. I could deny him that, at least. My Molly was gone. It felt like someone had just punched the heart right out of me. All that was left was the cold, hard need for revenge.
When it became clear that I wasn’t going to put on a show for him, Crow Lee rose to his feet and sneered down at me.
“You’ll have to excuse me for a while, little Drood. I do have other business to deal with. Someone important I just have to talk to in the next room. You can talk to Mr. Stab while I’m gone. I’m sure you’ve got so much to say to each other.”
He laughed his happy laugh and strode heavily across the room to the side door and left, not looking back once. I watched him go, watched the door close quietly but firmly behind him and then I slowly turned my aching head to look at Mr. Stab. He met my gaze unflinchingly, even though he must have seen murder in it.
“She was your friend,” I said. “Molly was your friend!”
“Yes,” said Mr. Stab. “She was. It’s better this way, though. We would have had to kill each other eventually, I think.”
“Help me,” I said.
“Why should I do that?” said Mr. Stab.
“Because,” I said, “if you help me to avenge my Molly and help me find my lost family, I give you my word that the Droods will find a way to put an end to your curse that doesn’t involve killing you. Think of the resources at our command! We’ll find a way to undo what you did to yourself.”
“Crow Lee has already promised me that.”
“But which of us do you trust to deliver on their promise?”
“I like what I am,” said Mr. Stab. “I just want to be free of my…limitations. Crow Lee will make me a better monster.”
“That’s what you want?” I said. “What you really want?”
“That’s all that’s left for me to want, after everything I’ve done.”
“All right,” I said. “How about this? You help me, and I promise I won’t kill you for everything you’ve done.”
“Hush, Eddie,” said Mr. Stab. “I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”
He turned his back on me and walked away to stare out the window. I don’t know what it was he was looking at, but I doubt it was the gardens.
I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t believe Molly was really gone. Not just like that. I couldn’t go after her with the Merlin Glass, because only Crow Lee knew where he’d sent her. Even if I did find a way to turn the tables, he’d die before he told me, rather than let me win. I had to believe Molly was still alive somewhere…out there.…But for now, all that was left to me was survival and revenge. If I could just concentrate on that…maybe I wouldn’t feel the pain so much. I looked over at Mr. Stab, still standing stiff-backed at the window. I reached carefully into the pocket dimension where I kept the Merlin Glass. The soldiers could search me as much as they liked, but only I had access to the pocket. This time I wasn’t interested in the Glass. I couldn’t risk jumping through the Glass in the middle of Crow Lee’s many protections. And I wasn’t interested in escaping, anyway. No, I was after something small, so small that hopefully Crow Lee wouldn’t detect it. Something the Armourer Patrick had given me.
The hearing aid.
Just a little blob of flesh-coloured plastic with some really clever electronics hidden inside. I eased it out of my pocket, palmed it, and then snuck it into my right ear. I glanced quickly at Mr. Stab, but he didn’t seem to be paying any attention to me. I surreptitiously adjusted the tuning on the hearing aid, and immediately I could hear everything Crow Lee was saying in the adjoining room. He was addressing someone else, in his usual arrogant and condescending way, but whomever he was speaking to would have none of it and responded entirely in kind. There was something about the second voice that I found sort of familiar, though I couldn’t place it. I concentrated on what they were saying.
“…I have always been well served by traitors,” said Crow Lee.
“I’m not just any traitor,” said the second voice. “I am the worm at the heart of the Droods, the viper they have nursed at their bosom. Do you really think I’d bow down to the likes of you?”
“You will if you know what’s good for you,” Crow Lee said complacently. “I am the power here.”
“And I am a Drood. The First Drood! I am older than your power, little magician. I have lived lifetimes and seen civilisations rise and fall.”
“But you’re not a Drood anymore, are you? You don’t have your armour…though Eddie does. Isn’t that odd?”
“Odder than you realise,” said the traitor. “He shouldn’t be able to access his armour with the other-dimensional intruder dismissed along with the Hall. We’re going to have to make Eddie tell us where he got his armour from.”
“We?” said Crow Lee, lazily. “What’s in it for me?”
“I will have his armour. I want it. And then you’ll have a Drood in full armour as your ally. I want that armour!”
“Well, you can’t have it,” said Crow Lee. “I’m going to strip it off Eddie and then destroy it. Then the Droods really will be gone from this world.…Of course, I might decide to keep it for myself. You know how much I enjoy playing with new toys.…Where did you get that?”
“From the Armageddon Codex,” said the traitor. “Where all the Droods’ forbidden weapons are kept. I took it with me before I left the Hall, before it was sent away. It wasn’t difficult. I was there when they built the Codex. I helped design the locking systems. Who has a better right to this weapon than I?”
“What better weapon for a traitor,” said Crow Lee, “than Oath Breaker?”
I couldn’t help but react to that, at the thought of one of our most dangerous weapons in the hands of a traitor. I must have made some kind of noise, because Mr. S
tab turned around and looked at me. I held myself very still, and he went back to looking out the window.
“You have nothing that can stand against me as long as I hold Oath Breaker,” said the traitor.
“Don’t be too sure of that,” Crow Lee said steadily. “You’d be surprised at some of the Objects of Power I’ve acquired here and there. But this is no time to be falling out, when we’ve achieved so much together! Let us think of our partnership as a balance of power and move on. Come with me, into the study. I want to see Eddie brought down by another Drood.”
I quickly eased the hearing aid out of my ear and slipped it back into my pocket dimension. And then I did my best to look surprised when Crow Lee strode back in with the traitor Drood at his side. I didn’t recognise him at all. He was a very ordinary-looking man, nothing remarkable about him at all. He did look sort of familiar, but I couldn’t place him. It’s a big family, the Droods.
“You don’t know me, do you?” said the traitor. “Even though we’ve spoken many times in passing. But then, that’s the point. I’m never anyone important or significant, and I don’t stand out. I’m always just there in the background, perhaps some useful functionary, just another Drood doing a necessary job…poisoning the wells in the quiet of the night. Adrian Drood, at the moment. Not my real name, of course. But then, I’ve had so many names and identities down the centuries.”
“You’re the Original Traitor,” I said. “The one who’s undermined and betrayed us over and over. Why?”
“Because the family has moved away from what I intended it to be,” Adrian said calmly. “I was the very first Drood. I was there when the Heart first fell to Earth. I made the original pact with the Heart for power and armour. I made the Droods possible! Everything they are came from me! I set us up to be shamans and protectors, shepherds to Humanity…but it was never meant that the sheep should forget their place.
“The family forced me out of power because I wouldn’t go along with their changes. Exiled me, made me the first rogue Drood. So I disappeared, went away, walked up and down the world, hugging my rage and hatred to my cold, cold heart. I spent a lot of time with the Immortals, a family much like mine. I gave their leader the idea for immortality, having begged it from the Heart for myself as part of the deal I made. Centuries later I returned to the Droods. Killed some small nonentity and took over his identity. The Immortals showed me how to do that.
“And ever since I have always been there, hiding in plain sight in the background, doing my best to nudge and persuade the family back to what it should be. Just a quiet, influential voice advising and guiding those in positions of power. And removing those who got in my way. Those who wouldn’t listen. Nothing like a good accident to stir things up and move people around.”
“You killed the Matriarch Sarah,” I said. “So my grandmother Martha could take over.”
“So I did! Pushed her down a flight of stairs. And then stamped on the back of her neck when she didn’t have the decency to die straight away. I have always been well served by accidents.”
“Why the hell did you bring the Loathly Ones into this world?” I said. “Did you know what you were doing?”
“Of course. The Droods have always needed someone or something worthy to fight, to keep them sharp. To keep them the warriors I always meant them to be. I could see the War wasn’t going to last much longer, and I wanted to be sure there’d be a new villain in place afterwards. Who could have foreseen the Cold War? I was having such fun then, running endless agents and intrigues back and forth across the world…that I quite forgot about the Loathly Ones. The Droods really were getting soft by your time, Eddie. I never intended my family to be peace-loving shepherds.”
“Why ally yourself with Crow Lee?” I said.
“Because I’ve finally grown tired of the Droods,” said the Original Traitor. “Your wiping out the Immortals was the last straw. I always had more in common with them than my own family. I finally realised that the Droods were never going to be what I wanted them to be. And if I couldn’t have them, why should anyone else? But now I think I’ve answered enough of your questions, Eddie. It’s time for you to answer some of mine. Starting with: Where did you get your armour? I can tell it isn’t the strange-matter armour you got from Ethel, but it can’t be the old style, with the Heart destroyed. So where did it come from?”
“I found it in the hedge Maze,” I said. “It’s Moxton’s Mistake.”
Adrian Drood’s face actually went pale for a moment. “You fool…Do you know what you’ve done? I put that abomination in the Maze! Do you know what you’ve let loose on the world?”
“A weapon,” I said. “To use against you.”
And I reached into my pocket dimension and brought out the other little gift from Armourer Patrick: the skeleton key that could unlock anything. I jammed it right up against my torc, and the power in the key fought the power holding my armour inside my torc. The bone key turned slowly, relentlessly, in my grasp, and then snapped round in a complete circle. And just like that, my armour came to me. It surged out of the torc, covering me in a moment, cutting me off from my pain and injuries and weakness, making me strong and secure again. I rose to my feet to confront Crow Lee and Adrian Drood, and they both fell back before me. Mr. Stab studied me thoughtfully from the window but made no move to intervene.
“Now,” I said, to my enemies before me. “For all you’ve done. For all the pain you’ve caused me and so many others, now…it’s time for me to get my hands bloody.”
“I have an answer to your armour,” Crow Lee said steadily. He held up his huge hand, and in it was the Hand of Glory made from a monkey’s paw. Bloodred flames rose steadily from the candlewick fingers. Crow Lee nodded, satisfied. “I never throw anything useful away, and I always know where everything is.”
“When it comes to who’s got the best toys,” I said, “always bet on the Droods.”
I started towards him, and he thrust the monkey’s hand at me while shouting some particularly nasty Words. The influence from the monkey’s hand hit me hard, like walking into an invisible wall, but still I pressed forward, all the power in my armour driving me on. Thinking of what Crow Lee had done to my family. Of what he’d ordered Major Michaels to do to my Molly. Thinking of my hands around Crow Lee’s throat. My golden armour began to seethe and boil, and then to melt and run away, falling off in large golden clumps of semiliquid metal. But I kept going. Even as the monkey’s power hit me again and again, hurting and pounding me even through my dissolving armour, I kept going. Taking everything he could throw at me, because nothing mattered, nothing else mattered except getting to him.
And finally I stood there, right before him, half my armour gone and more falling away, and I snatched the monkey’s paw right out of Crow Lee’s hand. The tiny withered thing twisted and writhed inside my grasp, and I shook it hard until all its candles blew out. And then I threw the nasty thing on the floor and stamped on it hard with my golden foot two, three times. Crushing it with all my armour’s strength. I heard the little bones crack and break. And my armour reformed around me, smooth and untouched.
“Mr. Stab!” screamed Crow Lee. “Time for you to do your duty! You shall have everything I promised you! Everything! Just stop the Drood!”
I turned unhurriedly to look at Mr. Stab as he moved slowly forward from the window, a long blade suddenly in his hand, glowing bright.
“I can reach you inside your armour,” said Mr. Stab. “My blade can cut anything; that’s part of what was given to me. And you know you can’t hurt me. You tried to kill me before, after I killed Penny. Cut my head right off…and I just put it back on again. You can’t stop me, Eddie, because nothing can. That’s what I bought all those years ago in the dark slums and back alleys of Whitechapel. Part of me wants to say, ‘I’m sorry it’s come to this.’ But I’m not, not really. This is what I was born to do. Anything else was just a dream.”
And then we both stopped and looked around, as the sound
of a roaring car engine drew rapidly closer. There were loud crashing noises of things breaking, shouts and screams and all the sounds of destruction, as something drove right through people and objects at speed. And then the scarlet-and-white Plymouth Fury crashed through the wall and the window, punching through the solid structure like it was nothing, to roar into the room and pounce on Mr. Stab. Ran him down and ran him over, and then screeched to a halt, leaving Mr. Stab pinned helplessly under the weight of the car.
“I knew you were in trouble!” said the sat nav’s strident female voice from inside the car. “I could sense it. I’ve got really powerful sensors. I’ve been looking in all along, waiting for my moment. You didn’t think the Regent would give you just any old car, did you? I’m the Scarlet Lady, one of the Regent of Shadows’s best undercover agents! I…am your backup! What do you want me to do?”
“Just…hold Mr. Stab down for now,” I said.
“No problem!” said the car. Mr. Stab struggled wildly underneath the Plymouth Fury and even tipped it back and forth, but with no leverage he couldn’t throw it off. “Victorian values, my shiny red arse,” said the car.
I looked at Crow Lee. “Don’t run,” I said. And something in my voice made him flinch. “Stay right where you are. I’ll get to you. Once I’ve finished with the traitor.”
I gave Adrian Drood my full attention. He stood his ground, staring defiantly back at me.
“All these years,” I said, “killing your own flesh and blood, so you could replace them…undermining and destroying your own family from within.”
“Why not?” said Adrian. “It was mine to destroy. Mine to do with as I pleased. I made it! I made the Droods possible!”
“But we moved on,” I said. “We became something better and greater than you ever intended. We became something you never even conceived! With your limited, barbarian mind…All the years you’ve lived, and you’ve learned nothing! And when you finally realised we would never sink to become what you wanted, that we’d never settle for being something so small, you threw a temper tantrum like a threatened child, and ran away to Crow Lee to get rid of us. You petty, spiteful little turd.”
Live and Let Drood: A Secret Histories Novel Page 34