“Absolutely not,” said Molly.
“Then come with me. We can’t talk here. Not in front of civilians.”
She led us down to the end of the platform, while everyone else politely looked away from her, as though her poverty might be catching. Subway Sue stopped before an unobtrusive door marked Maintenance Staff Only, opened the heavy padlock with a frankly filthy brass key, and then led us into an empty cupboard. She pulled the door carefully shut behind us, and then pushed at the far cupboard wall. It slid back jerkily under her urging, revealing a large stone cavern beyond, lit by a single electric light that sprang to life as we entered. And this was where Subway Sue lived.
It was really just a hole, decorated with bits of junk she’d salvaged. There were empty cans and plastic bottles, to hold water. Plastic containers to store bits of food in. And a pile of blankets to sleep on. The place looked like somewhere animals lived. Molly looked around her, openly horrified.
“Sue, what happened? You’re one of the most famous luck vampires in London. I thought you had this great place in the West End, where you lived in comfort and luxury?”
“Everyone thinks that,” said Subway Sue, sitting down heavily on her pile of blankets. “And for a time, it was true. I had the best of luck, stolen from the rich and the powerful, and what I didn’t use myself I sold for enough money to bring me everything I ever wanted. But…I used it all up. And when luck turns against you, it really goes bad. As though there’s some…balance, that must be maintained. How do you think someone as lucky as me got captured by Manifest Destiny in the first place?”
“I did wonder about that,” I said.
“One of my own betrayed me,” said Subway Sue. “Not actually a friend, at least, but someone I knew. He swallowed the lie of Manifest Destiny, and believed everything Truman promised him, the fool. He sneaked up on me, while I was distracted during rush hour, and drained off most of my luck before I knew what was happening. And Truman’s thugs were ready and waiting to hustle me off.”
“What happened to the bastard?” said Molly. “Want me to hunt him down for you?”
“No need,” said Subway Sue. “His extra luck enabled him to escape Truman’s goons when they came looking for him, but he’s been on the run ever since. From them, and his own kind. He’s alone now, for as long as he lives.
“I used up every last bit of luck I had helping us all break free from Truman’s concentration camp. And after I escaped, in my desperation, I made the mistake of trying to drain the luck from an interdimensional traveller passing as human. It felt my touch immediately, and knew me for what I was. It… did something to me, and now my luck is always bad.” She smiled humourlessly. “After all these years of passing as a homeless person so I could get closer to my prey, now I’ve become what I pretended. Payback’s a bitch. What are you doing down here, Molly? I never wanted you to see me like this. What do you want from me?”
“I want to hire you as a tutor for the Drood family,” I said. “Teach them about the real world, and the things they don’t even know they don’t know. You’ll have to live at the Hall, and you’ll have to curb your…inclinations, but the pay will be more than good enough to buy you a whole new life once you leave us.”
“You see,” Molly said to Subway Sue, beaming widely. “Your luck has changed.”
“No,” said Subway Sue. She looked away from us and seemed to shrink in on herself. “Look at me. I’m no use to you like this.”
“Things will be better at the Hall,” I said. “We can fix you up, no matter what’s been done to you. We’ll make a new person out of you.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Subway Sue. “I’ve heard stories of what happens to people who get taken to the Drood family home.”
“Only some of them are true,” I said.
“Trust me,” said Molly. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”
“But what can I offer to the high and mighty Droods?” said Subway Sue. “What can I teach them that they don’t already know?”
“The strategies of survival,” I said. “How you survive, when you’ve lost everything you ever depended on.”
Subway Sue looked at me, and then at Molly. I did my best to smile reassuringly.
“Eddie’s running things at the Hall these days,” said Molly. “Things are different there now.”
“I need to open my family’s eyes to the kind of lives they don’t even know exist,” I said. “Come and be a tutor. Share your experience. Help shape how the Droods see the world.”
Subway Sue smiled briefly, but didn’t look convinced. “You and your family have been hunting me and my kind for centuries. Hunting us down like vermin, for the sin of being what we are. You have the blood of my family and my friends on your armoured hands, Drood. And you want me to work for you? I’m not that bad off.”
“Yes, you are, dear,” Molly said kindly. “You must believe me when I tell you I’ll see you safe, at the Hall. I don’t know if you can trust the whole family, but you can trust Eddie. He’s taken his family by the scruff of the neck, and seriously shaken up the way they do things. He wants to change the way they think, and see the world, and that’s why I suggested you as one of his outside tutors. You won’t be alone there. We’re going after Mr. Stab next.”
“Oh wonderful,” said Subway Sue. “That’s supposed to make me feel safe? But… anywhere has to be better than here. You have no idea how much you miss plumbing till you don’t have it anymore. And I do owe you, Edwin, for helping free me from Truman. You do know he’s reorganised, at a new location?”
“Nothing specific,” I said. “Do you know where we can find him?”
“I hear rumours, that’s all… He’s supposed to have a new secret underground base, outside London, in a place of ancient power. You should have killed him when you had the chance, Drood.”
“I’ll try harder next time,” I said. “You ready to go?”
“Hell, yes. It’s not like I’ve got anything to keep me here, is it? Or anything I want to take with me.”
I did the business with Merlin’s Glass, and pushed her through the opening into the Armoury, where Uncle Jack was waiting. He glared through the gateway at me.
“Eddie! Wait just a damned minute!”
“Sorry, Uncle Jack! No time! Catch you later!”
And then I shut the Glass down, cutting him off before he could come up with lots of good reasons why I couldn’t keep lumbering him with the job of looking after my new tutors. Molly looked at me.
“What do you suppose that was about?”
“Nothing that can’t wait till we get back,” I said airily. “Now for Mr. Stab.”
“I wish you wouldn’t pull faces like that, Eddie. I’m sure they’re not good for you.”
“I am taking a hell of a risk on your say-so,” I said. “If anything goes wrong, once we’ve got him back to the Hall…”
“It will all be my fault; yes, we’ve established that. Look, Eddie, I know how dangerous he is. I know that better than anyone. But I’ll be there to keep a very stern eye on him, and…well, just how much damage can he do, in a house full of Droods? Even his old magic is hardly a match for Drood armour. I need you to trust me on this, Eddie.”
“I do trust you,” I said. “I just don’t trust him. But if this is so important to you…”
“It is,” said Molly. “I need to believe that people can change. Even the worst of us.”
“All right,” I said. “Where do you think we should look first, for the most notorious uncaught serial killer of Old London Town?”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” said Molly. “And I think we should start with the Order of Beyond.”
“You have got to be kidding,” I said. “You mean that place down Grafton Way, where possessed people sit around and spout gibberish at each other? What would Mr. Stab be doing in a place like that?”
“Listening,” said Molly. “He thinks if he listens long enough, he might learn some an
cient secret or knowledge he could use to alter the conditions of his immortality.”
“To cure him?”
“Or make him a better killer.”
“You are not filling me with confidence about this, Molly.”
“Let’s go.”
“Before or after we have a rush of sense to the head?”
“Oh hush. Be a good boy and I’ll buy you a nice dinner afterwards.”
“I am so easily bribed.”
Merlin’s Glass took us straight to Grafton Way, in one of the older, more traditional parts of the West End. You can find all sorts in that area: embassies for the smaller countries, company houses, literary agencies…And the Order of Beyond, located in the middle of an ordinary, unassuming terraced row, with nothing to mark its presence but a simple brass plaque on the wall, giving the name of the place and the stern admonition No Revenants, Reincarnations, or Repo Men. I hit the buzzer, and when a cold voice from the intercom demanded my name and business, I just said Shaman Bond, and after a pause the door clicked open. My cover identity has a long and carefully established reputation for turning up anywhere, and for being basically harmless. Just another face on the scene, with a keen interest in anything illegal, immoral, or unnatural. Shaman Bond was a chancer, a small-time operator, and nothing at all like Eddie Drood. Which was what I liked most about him.
The reception area turned out to be deliberately blank and anonymous, with no clue as to what lay in wait below. Bare walls, bare floor, and a very professional receptionist sitting behind a very simple reception desk. The receptionist seemed typical enough, with the usual blankly attractive face, eyes of pure ice, and a smile that meant nothing at all. The kind who lived and died by her appointments book, and who wouldn’t make an exception for anyone, even if you set her heavily lacquered hair on fire. I just knew we weren’t going to get along. Molly and I strode over to the desk as though we were slumming it just by being there, and planted ourselves directly before the receptionist. She ignored us, of course, giving all her attention to the papers spread out before her, to properly put us in our place. So I leaned over, grabbed all her papers and threw them up into the air, smiling easily into her horrified face as the papers fluttered down around us.
“Hi,” I said. “Shaman Bond, at your service. The very dangerous person standing beside me is Molly Metcalf, the rightly legendary wild witch of the woods. She has expressed an interest in seeing what goes on at the Order of Beyond, and since I’m far too scared of her to say no, I said I was sure you’d let her in.”
“Because if you don’t, I will take names and kick arse,” Molly said cheerfully.
The receptionist struggled to regain her calm. “Do you have a reservation?”
“No,” said Molly. “I’m going to thoroughly enjoy it. Starting with you, if you don’t get a move on.”
I saw the receptionist reach for an alarm button under the desk and I wagged a warning finger in her face. “Molly Metcalf? Turns people into things? Has a very nasty sense of humour… Is any of this ringing any bells?”
“Go right down,” said the receptionist. “Never wanted this job anyway.”
She moved her hand across to press another button under her desk, and a large trapdoor opened on the floor on the other side of the room, rising slowly and silently of its own accord. Molly and I wandered over to it and looked down. A long stone stairway fell down before us, leading deep into the earth. There was a strong smell of blood and brimstone, and a distant murmur of voices. I insisted on leading the way down, and Molly made me pay for that by crowding my back all the way. The trapdoor slammed shut behind us with a loud, solid, and very final-sounding thud. The bare stone walls beaded with water like sweat, and the air grew hot and close as we descended. I could feel presences below, like heavy weights pressing down on the world and making it cry out. We were going into a bad place, where bad things waited.
Finally, the stone steps curved suddenly round to one side and deposited us into a great natural stone cavern, deep beneath the street. The stone floor stretched away in all directions, covered with blue-chalked pentacles, circles of salt, and rows of squat solid cages made of steel and silver and brass. All designed to safely hold and contain the poor possessed creatures who were the whole reason and purpose of the Order of Beyond. There were men and women and even children, trapped like animals. Some sat and talked calmly, reasonably, arguing that they really didn’t belong in a place like this. Others howled and raged and threw themselves at the cages that held them prisoner, beating at the solid bars with hands that felt no pain. And others just sat and watched sullenly, hatefully, with unblinking eyes, waiting for someone to make a mistake.
Sitting before every possessed prisoner was a member of the order, coaxing and cajoling the possessor into speaking to them. It usually didn’t take much. The possessors do love to talk, to tease and threaten and horrify the listener with lies, half-truths, and terrible facts.
No one in the Order of Beyond was interested in helping any of these people. They didn’t give a damn for the victims. They just wanted to listen, and record everything they heard. There were microphones everywhere, and the most sophisticated recording equipment, and a whole bunch of scribes with pen and paper, to set down what was said by those voices that couldn’t be recorded because technology wouldn’t accept their existence. And sitting comfortably all around, listening intently, were the invited guests, the very well-paying clientele of the Order of Beyond. Who came hoping to hear bits of forbidden knowledge, or hints of the secrets of Heaven and Hell. The Order of Beyond sent full transcripts of everything heard to an extensive mailing list, for an extortionate fee, of course, but there was nothing like being there in person, to hear it for yourself. And just maybe to get the jump on everyone else.
Molly and I stood cautiously at the bottom of the stone steps, letting our eyes adjust to the dim lighting, the rise and fall of harsh overlapping voices, and the stench of hate and fear and things that shouldn’t be allowed in our supposedly sane and rational world. Not all the voices sounded human, though they came from human lips.
There is a river in Hell, made up of the tears of suicides. Tears are wine, among the damned.
Beware the Many-Angled Ones, the Hyperbreed! Beware the Black Sun and what incubates inside it! Beware the howling that never ends, and the teeth that rend men’s souls! Even death is no escape from what lies waiting, in the worlds beyond the worlds!
They watch you from the other side of your mirrors, only pretending to be your reflection, waiting and biding their time. And then, in the dead of night, they come out while you’re sleeping, grab you, and force you back into the other side of the mirror, so they can take your place, and do terrible things in your name. Just because they look like you, it doesn’t mean they are you.
Blood shall rain down, and offal, and the great Beast that is Babalon shall come again, and all Hell shall rise up with her, and…
The Celestials are coming to judge us all, in their million-mile-long spaceships, and we shall be as ants before them…
Please, I don’t want to be here, I shouldn’t be here, there’s something running up and down inside me, and it hurts it hurts it hurts…
You can hear broadcasts from Heaven and Hell every day, on certain designated frequencies. To hear a recording, phone any of these numbers…
“Okay,” said Molly. “Most of this is bullshit, and I should know.”
“I wish you wouldn’t say things like that,” I said. “I find it very disturbing to be constantly reminded that I’m in love with the original girlfriend from Hell.”
Molly shrugged. “You can’t be a witch of any standing unless you’re prepared to make deals with both sides. And I have to tell you, Eddie, that which side is which depends very much on where you’re standing.” She studied the shadowy figures in their various cages and sniffed loudly. “People pay good money to listen to this shit? I half expected one of them to start spouting pea soup, yelling, Your mother knits socks i
n Hell! Demons lie. It’s what they do.”
“Except when a truth can hurt you more,” I said.
And then a grossly fat man with a purple birthmark covering half his face called me by name. My real name, not my cover identity. In the great babble of voices I was pretty sure it had gone unnoticed, for now, but I moved quickly over to the silver-barred cage before he could use the name again. My torc would keep the recording devices from picking up anything concerning me, but I didn’t want to draw anyone’s attention. I needed to be just Shaman Bond, here. The possessed man was entirely naked, with strange designs daubed all over his dead white skin in dried blood and shit and vomit. He giggled softly and patted his fat hands against the bars of his cage, so I could see he’d bitten off all his fingers. His unblinking eyes were full of blood, and when he spoke his voice was like a child gargling with razor blades, like your best friend telling you he’s slept with your wife, like a cancer growth would if it had vocal cords.
“Edwin Drood, sweet prince of a ruined family, we meet again. Do you remember me? We spoke once before, in the cellars under Dr. Dee’s House of Exorcism. I promised you the world and everything in it, and you turned me down. Too good to listen to the likes of me. But here you are now, searching for wisdom in the strangest of places. Shall I tell you what you need to know, sweet Drood?”
“You don’t know anything I need to know,” I said.
“But I do, I do! Nothing is hidden, from Heaven or Hell. You seek the undying killer, the saint of slaughter, Mr. Stab. And I know where he is.”
“And you’ll tell us, for a price?” said Molly, standing close beside me, as though to protect me. “What are we supposed to do, break you out of here? I don’t think so.”
“No charge, no charge at all, little witch,” crooned the awful presence behind the fat man’s unblinking eyes. “Because getting what you want won’t make you happy, or free, or wise. You humans make your own way to Hell, with every step you take. And so I give you Mr. Stab. My very own poisoned chalice, a gift from Hell to clutch to your family’s bosom.”
Daemons Are Forever sh-2 Page 14