From Hell with love sh-4

by Simon R. Green

  Methuselah shrugged. "There's just no pleasing some people."

  "Nasty little man," said Tiger Tim.

  I moved as close to the Apocalypse Door as the Doctor would allow, and studied it thoughtfully. Tiger Tim tried to join me, but Molly moved quickly to block his way. Methuselah stayed where he was, watching us all calmly. Up close, the Door's presence was disturbing. It seemed more real, more there, than the rest of us… I could feel the Door watching me, studying me as I studied it. I started to raise my Sight, and then stopped. I didn't want to See what lay beyond the Apocalypse Door.

  The teleport chain lying in a circle around the Door looked familiar. I'd seen that crystal tech before, and there was nothing human about it. Doctor Delirium might claim he invented it, but his genius was with germs. More likely he'd adapted the ring from some alien leftover.

  The Apocalypse Door dominated the room, just by being there. Like a ticking bomb, or a murderer with a fresh blade in his hand.

  "Where is everybody?" I said, looking in particular at Tiger Tim. "Where are your scientists and soldiers, the mercenaries and the security guards? Why haven't I seen a single living soul in this entire base, apart from you three?"

  Methuselah smiled. "You didn't really? think we'd share this sublime moment with anyone else, do you?"

  "We cleaned house," said Tiger Tim. "Just like in the Amazon, only not as messy. We didn't need anybody else, anymore. They'd only have got in the way."

  "Really quite a subtle organism," said Doctor Delirium. "I released it into the base's air supply, and it ate them all up. Flesh and bone and even their clothing. Hungry little bug, and very industrious. The Door gave me the idea. Of course, I took pains to inoculate myself and Tiger Tim in advance, just in case any of the bug happened to hang around after it was supposed to have dispersed."

  "And I don't need any inoculation," said Methuselah. "I am an Immortal and a flesh dancer; after all these years my immune system produces white blood cells like wrecking balls. Though I have to say, given that there could still be a few traces of the nasty thing floating about, for all your protestations, Doctor, I'm surprised you and the witch are still here, Drood."

  "I have my torc," I said.

  "And I'm Molly Metcalf. The most powerful witch you'll ever meet."

  "Witch," murmured Tiger Tim. "Not quite the word I had in mind…"

  "Don't push your luck, Timothy," I said.

  Molly went back to glaring at Doctor Delirium. "You killed everyone here? Your own people?"

  "Why not?" said Tiger Tim. "We didn't need them anymore, and who knows, they might have tried to stop us opening the Door."

  "They never cared about me," said Doctor Delirium. "All they ever cared about was my money! They weren't loyal. Mercenaries are never loyal; I've always known that. And they would have died anyway, after I opened the Door." He giggled suddenly, a shockingly childlike sound. "Maybe I'll see them again, running and leaping among the hordes of the damned… I don't care. They were just people. And what have people ever done, but laugh at me? Do you hear anyone laughing now?"

  Molly looked at me. "Total bugfuck weirdo, and nasty with it."

  "Was there ever any doubt?" I looked at Methuselah. "What about the other Elders, the ones who believed in you? Aren't you going to wait, just in case any of them turn up? It's always possible we missed a few."

  "No more waiting," said Methuselah. "I never was big on sharing. I was the first Immortal, so I suppose it's only fitting that I should be the last. And the first again, to transcend this appallingly limited world. I shall become glorious, and know pleasures beyond belief."

  "Another loony tune," said Molly. "I'm starting to feel like the only sensible one here, and I'm not used to that."

  Methuselah ignored her, staring out at the virtual view. "I suppose I'll be sorry to say good-bye. For all its many problems and imperfections, it has been a pleasant enough world, I suppose. You mayflies don't appreciate it.

  "The things I've seen, since the Heart made me Immortal, all those centuries ago. The wild boars and hairy mammoths running wild in the primordial forests of Olde Englande. The pyramids up beyond Hadrian's Wall, (although the Sceneshifters made them never happened, the bastards.) I danced at Louis' Court at Versailles, sat with the first Queen Elizabeth, laughing at a production of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, complete with fireworks. I've talked with Genghis Khan, Hitler and Pol Pot. All of them surprisingly good company. Though they all had a taste for peasant's food. I've met great poets and painters, actors and authors, and lent most of them money. I've seen wonders and marvels, abominations and atrocities, and applauded them all. I never fought in a war, but I've profited from most of them. They all had their moments, as spectacle, if nothing else."

  "But you never got your hands dirty," I said. "Never the hero or even the villain, just a voyeur."

  "Do you interfere in a dog fight?" said Methuselah. "Or intervene in a war between two anthills? I've seen it all, done it all, and I'm bored. Time to move on, to trade up, to leave this grubby world behind in search of fresh new pleasures and indulgences."

  "Were you ever at Camelot?" Molly said suddenly. "Did you ever visit the Court of King Arthur? I've always been fascinated by that period."

  "No," said Methuselah. "By the time I realised just how important Arthur was going to be, Merlin had already got his claws into him. And relatively young as I was then, I still had enough sense not to get up against Merlin Satanspawn. I did get to meet Mordred, though. Very ambitious, in a single-minded sort of way. Completely dominated by his mother, of course."

  "You wasted your life," I said, and the harshness in my voice brought his head jerking round. "All the things you could have done, all the things you might have achieved… and you wasted your years, your lifetimes, because you didn't know what to do with them. No great causes, no great achievements, because you didn't have it in you. You could have made a better world, you could have been greater than Arthur and Merlin, built a Camelot that would have endured for centuries, but all you cared about was yourself. You could have led Humanity out of the darkness, but you couldn't be bothered. And when you're finally gone, you'll leave nothing behind but a bad taste in the mouth of history."

  I turned back to Doctor Delirium. "Give it up, Doctor. You've been lied to and used, all along. Timothy Drood is here to betray you, just as he betrayed his own family. He has his own plans for the Apocalypse Door. So does Methuselah."

  The Doctor sneered at me. "Yes, well, you would say that, wouldn't you?"

  "Oh Eddie," Tiger Tim said sadly. "Always putting your faith in the truth, when a lie can be so much more liberating."

  "And you can wipe that smug smile off your face, Timothy," I said. "I'm taking you back to the family to stand trial at Drood Hall for all the evils you've done."

  Tiger Tim laughed softly. "Dear Daddy got to you, didn't he? Asked you to go easy on me… Sentimental old fool. You're not taking me anywhere."

  "I have the armour," I said. "And you don't."

  "Funny you should say that," said Tiger Tim. "You'll never guess what I found, locked away in the vaults of Castle Frankenstein." And he opened the top of his shirt to show me the golden torc around his neck. "I don't know how the Immortals got their hands on this originally. Perhaps an Immortal murdered and replaced a Drood, and took the torc… Or maybe the old Baron himself cut it off one of his victims… Don't suppose we'll ever know. The point is, this torc had been locked away inside a box inside a vault, under the wrong description. No one even knew it was there, until I came across it quite by accident, while looking for something else. Isn't that always the way? I took the torc for my own, because I just knew the Immortals wouldn't appreciate it. And it settled around my throat quite happily, like it was coming home, like it belonged there."

  "You might have asked," Methuselah said reproachfully.

  "No I couldn't. You might have said no. I didn't want to put you in an awkward position. And besides, who has a better right to it, tha
n me?"

  "Knew I should have killed you when I had the chance," said Methuselah.

  "You never had the chance," said Tiger Tim. He looked at me and smiled suddenly, a happy, anticipatory smile. "I haven't had a chance to try out my new torc; been a bit busy, you know how it is. And I was just a bit concerned that your armour might be able to detect mine, once I put it on. But now, all bets are off. We've come to the end of the line, Eddie, where it's just you and me, armour to armour, man to man. To the death."

  "Wouldn't have it any other way," I said.

  He armoured up, and so did I. And just like that there were two gleaming golden figures in the room, facing off against each other. Doctor Delirium cried out, and hid behind the Apocalypse Door, peering round the edge with wide eyes and an uncertain mouth. Methuselah fell gracefully back to a safe distance; and Molly moved quickly out of our way to give us room to fight. Her eyes were shining as she urged me on. It must have looked like a fair match and a fair fight, but I knew different.

  Timothy Drood had the old armour, and I had the new.

  I raised up a golden fist, and grew a set of heavy spikes from the knuckles. And then I concentrated, and extruded razor-sharp blades all the way up my arms to my shoulders. I reshaped my mask into a grinning devil face, complete with curling horns. Tiger Tim stood very still. He didn't know how to make his armour do any of those things. In fact, he'd been away from the family so long he probably didn't even know such things were possible now. I wondered if he was afraid, biting his lip behind his featureless golden mask. I hoped so. I was too angry to be afraid.

  He lunged at me, striking out with a golden fist. I stood my ground, blocked the blow with a raised arm, and then we went head to head, battering each other fiercely with all our unnatural strength. The sound of armour beating on armour was deafening as we slammed each other all over the room, kicking the furniture out of the way, the floor cracking under our stamping feet. But neither of us could hurt the other, for all our strength and fury. The armour protected us. But my armour was strange matter, provided by the other-dimensional entity now known as Ethel. Tiger Tim's armour derived from the destroyed entity once known as the Heart.

  I cut at Tiger Tim with razored fists, and the unnaturally sharp edges opened up long cuts and furrows across his chest. Which should have been impossible. The furrows healed quickly, filling themselves in, so I cut him again, and again, harder each time, gouging deep scars into his? mask and chest, and they took much longer to heal. I wondered if he was bleeding, inside. I pressed him hard, determined to tear open his armour and drag him right out of it.

  We hammered each other back and forth across the lounge, fists rising and falling with inhuman speed, while the others scattered hurriedly to get out of our way. Because we were both so caught up in the fight that we had eyes only for each other. Both of us moving so swiftly it seemed like everyone else was moving in slow motion. If any of them had got in our way, I think either one of us might have swept them aside without thinking, our heads were so full of rage and fury. I would have been sorry afterwards, of course, but right then… Timothy Drood seemed to be responsible for all the evils I'd encountered since this all began, and I wanted him dead more than anything else in the world.

  I don't think I've ever been that angry before. Because he was a Drood.

  Tiger Tim broke off, and backed away. He couldn't match my strength and speed, and he knew it. He had nothing with which to meet my armour's versatility. So he picked up heavy furniture and threw it at me. I slapped them away effortlessly, and laughed out loud, full of the exhilaration of my armour. Tiger Tim picked up the heavy couch and brought it sweeping down in an overhead blow. I put up a golden arm to block it, and the couch broke in two across it. We were moving like superhumans now, in a world made of paper, and things just broke when we touched them.

  But we never went near the Apocalypse Door. We could both See it clearly now, and neither of us could bear to look at it.

  In the end, Tiger Tim broke. He reached out and grabbed Molly, moving so swiftly she didn't even know what was happening till he had her in his golden arms. She started to struggle, and he crushed her briefly, driving all the breath from her lungs. Her legs sagged, until he was all that was holding her up.? I stood very still, knowing he could kill her easily before I could reach him.

  "Armour down," said Tiger Tim. "Or I'll kill the witch. I'll crack her bones and crush her insides, and then I'll rip her head right off her shoulders."

  "Don't hurt her," I said. "This is between you and me."

  "Knew I'd find a way to hurt you eventually," said Tiger Tim. "There's always a way."

  I was thinking furiously, but I couldn't see any way out. I had no doubt he'd kill her. I was just starting to subvocalise the activating Words that would send my armour back into my torc, when Molly laughed suddenly.

  "Come on, Eddie. You know I don't do the damsel in distress bit."

  Crackling energies surrounded her in a moment, coruscating in vivid flashes and boiling magics, blasting Tiger Tim's arms away from her. She moved quickly to one side, and yelled at me to get him, but I was already moving. I'd thought I'd been angry before, but it was nothing to the rage that moved me now. Now he'd threatened to kill my Molly again.

  I fell upon him with all my strength and speed, my golden hands locking onto his golden throat. He fell backwards, tripped, and measured his length on the lounge floor. I followed him down, my grip on his throat never loosening for a moment. I knelt over him, forcing my hands closed with all my strength. He struggled and kicked and tried to throw me off. He grabbed my wrists with his hands and tried to break my stranglehold, but he couldn't. I saw my Molly, stabbed through again and again, dying at the hands of Droods maddened because of Timothy Drood. I saw good men and women dying on the grounds of Drood Hall, at the hands of his Accelerated Men. I saw him talking calmly of throwing Humanity to the wolves of Hell. I saw him threatening to kill my Molly, again, right in front of me. And there was no room left in me for anything but the need to kill.

  I concentrated on my armour, moulding it with my will, and my fingers became impossibly sharp, cutting through the armour round his throat. I forced my hands through the gap I'd opened up, and my bare hands closed around his bare throat. I throttled him to death, inside his own armour.

  After a while, I realised he wasn't breathing, wasn't moving. I pulled back my hands, releasing my hold on his armour, and it disappeared back into his torc. Tiger Tim stared blankly upwards, seeing nothing. There was a little froth around his distorted mouth. I knelt over him for a while, getting my breath back, and then I extruded a blade from one hand and cut his head off. So I could take the torc back to my family, where it belonged.

  Doctor Delirium cried out as blood flooded across the lounge floor. He wasn't used to bloodshed. He always did his killing from a safe distance. Methuselah allowed himself a mild moue of distaste. I looked at Timothy's severed head, and wondered what I should tell his father. I would have brought his son back alive, if things had gone differently. I'm almost sure I would have. Though whether that would have been a kindness, in the end… I could tell the Armourer that his son had died fighting bravely. Or that Tiger Tim had somehow got away, and was still out there, somewhere. But I'd never been able to lie to my Uncle Jack.

  I armoured down, and rose slowly to my feet. I felt horribly weary; bone deep, soul deep. Molly came over and held me carefully, as though I was fragile, and might break. She understood what I was feeling; she understood about family. But she also knew there was still work to be done, so she let me go and stood at my side. I looked at Doctor Delirium, still half hidden behind his Door. He flinched away from my gaze, but I just stood where I was, and beckoned for him to come out.

  "You don't dare touch me!" he said, his voice high and shrill. His eyes kept going to Tiger Tim's headless body, and then jerking away. "You'd better not even get too close! I've infected myself with every deadly disease known to man, and several I made up spe
cially. I'm the universal carrier, for everything from typhoid to Ebola, from the black death to green monkey fever. Doesn't affect me at all, but all I have to do is concentrate in a certain way, and my pores will sweat poison, releasing all the deadly germs into the air!"

  I looked at Molly. "Does that even sound likely to you?"

  "Doesn't matter," said Molly. She strode right over to Doctor Delirium. "I have been to Heaven and Hell and back again, and walked on alien worlds. You really think you've got anything that can touch me?"

  As she moved in close the Doctor suddenly whipped out a spray aerosol and blasted its contents right into her face. Molly fell back a step, wiping at her face with a hand, while the Doctor crowed triumphantly.

  "That was the Acceleration Drug! Full strength, with all the wonderful new extra ingredients! And you breathed it in! It's running through your system now, speeding you up, faster and faster till it burns you up from the inside out! You'll live a whole lifetime in just a few minutes, and I'll watch you die of old age right in front of me!"

  Molly swept the last few tears from her eyes. Doctor Delirium fell suddenly silent as he realised she was laughing.

  "You need to get out and about more," she said cheerfully. "I'm Molly Metcalf! I take nastier stuff than that for fun!"

  "Don't laugh at me," whispered Doctor Delirium. "Don't you laugh at me!"

  Molly reached out and grabbed him by an ear. She hauled him out from behind the Door and walked him back to me. I looked at her, and she let go of his ear.

  "Don't be afraid, Doctor," I said. "I think there's been enough killing. It doesn't always have to end in blood. Forget the Door, and its voices. They lied. It's what they do. Give up on your revenge; what did it ever get you, except a life on your own? Come back with me to Drood Hall. Put your genius to work for us. Use our labs to create all those cures you used to believe in. Be the good man you originally wanted to be, before Methuselah gave you money, and made you into the kind of man he wanted you to be. Come with me, Doctor. It's not too late."