Moonbreaker

by Simon R. Green

  Also by Simon R. Green

  THE SECRET HISTORIES NOVELS

  The Man with the Golden Torc

  Daemons Are Forever

  The Spy Who Haunted Me

  From Hell with Love

  For Heaven’s Eyes Only

  Live and Let Drood

  Casino Infernale

  Property of a Lady Faire

  From a Drood to a Kill

  Dr. DOA

  THE DEATHSTALKER SERIES

  Twilight of the Empire

  Deathstalker

  Deathstalker Rebellion

  Deathstalker War

  Deathstalker Honor

  Deathstalker Destiny

  Deathstalker Legacy

  Deathstalker Return

  Deathstalker Coda

  THE ADVENTURES OF HAWK & FISHER

  Swords of Haven

  Guards of Haven

  THE NIGHTSIDE SERIES

  Something from the Nightside

  Agents of Light and Darkness

  Nightingale’s Lament

  Hex and the City

  Paths Not Taken

  Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth

  Hell to Pay

  The Unnatural Inquirer

  Just Another Judgement Day

  The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny

  A Hard Day’s Knight

  The Bride Wore Black Leather

  GHOST FINDERS NOVELS

  Ghost of a Chance

  Ghost of a Smile

  Ghost of a Dream

  Spirits from Beyond

  OTHER NOVELS

  Blue Moon Rising

  Beyond the Blue Moon

  Blood and Honor

  Down Among the Dead Men

  Shadows Fall

  Drinking Midnight Wine

  Once in a Blue Moon

  ACE

  Published by Berkley

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2017 by Simon R. Green

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  ACE is a registered trademark and the A colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Green, Simon R., 1955– author.

  Title: Moonbreaker/Simon R. Green.

  Description: First Edition. | New York: ACE, 2017. | Series: Secret histories; 11

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016053300 (print) | LCCN 2017003298 (ebook) | ISBN 9780451476951 (hardback) | ISBN 9780698407435 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Drood, Eddie (Fictitious character)—Fiction. | Paranormal fiction. | BISAC: FICTION/Fantasy/Urban Life. | FICTION/Fantasy/Paranormal. | FICTION/Fantasy/Contemporary. | GSAFD: Fantasy fiction.

  Classification: LCC PR6107.R44 M66 2017 (print) | LCC PR6107.R44 (ebook) | DDC 823/.92—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016053300

  First Edition: June 2017

  Jacket illustration by Paul Young

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Also by Simon R. Green

  Title Page

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  There is a man who strikes from the shadows. Who murders again and again without ever being seen. No one knows who he is or where he comes from. All anyone knows is his nom de mort: Dr DOA. For when somebody definitely and absolutely has to die.

  Some say he’s just an urban legend of the hidden world; a useful explanation for all the murders, suspicious deaths, and convenient accidents that are never properly accounted for. And some say he works for this or that subterranean group, killing people who can’t be touched by any of the usual secret agents. That he’s vengeance for hire, or the ultimate serial killer, or a cover for something much worse. People will say anything if they’re scared enough.

  I know Dr DOA is real. Because I’m one of his victims.

  My name is Eddie Drood, part of that centuries-old family whose business it is to stand between Humanity and all the unnatural forces that threaten it. I worked for years as a Drood field agent, mostly under my cover identity as Shaman Bond, fighting the good fight because someone has to. I really did help save the world on a few occasions, along with my partner, Molly Metcalf, the witch of the wild woods. We did good work, and we were happy together. Until Dr DOA poisoned me, without my even noticing.

  And just like that, my life was over. No cure. No hope. Just a dead man walking.

  So I decided that in the time left to me I would track down Dr DOA and make him pay. For what he’d done to me, and to so many others. With Molly’s help I searched the darkest corners of the hidden world, talking persuasively and sometimes violently with good people and bad, until finally I found him. Or, rather, he found me. He called me back home, to the family Armoury deep under Drood Hall, and there he was, Dr DOA. Edmund Drood: another version of me, from a different family of Droods on another earth.

  We fought, and he ran, using the dimensional engine Alpha Red Alpha to open a doorway back to the earth he came from. I went after him, because I couldn’t let him get away. But it was all a trick. He disappeared back through the Door and slammed it shut. Leaving me trapped with Molly on an Earth we didn’t know, and with no way home.

  For anyone else that would have been the end of the story. But I’m just getting started.

  CHAPTER ONE

  When Your Back’s against the Wall, When Everything Looks Lost, Find Someone to Take It Out On

  It wasn’t my family’s Armoury, but it looked enough like the one I knew to send a chill down my spine. The same long series of stone cellars, with colour-coded wiring tacked haphazardly to the walls. But here the workstations were abandoned, the firing ranges were empty, and wreckage and rubble lay everywhere. The Armourer and his white-coated lab assistants, who should have been running wild with out-of-control experiments and weapons that endangered the lives of everyone around them, were gone—long gone. Slaughtered by the Droods’ many enemies, after my other self shut down the Hall’s protections and sabotaged its defences. The Armoury was still and silent now, its many wonders trashed or looted. Like some ancient burial chamber despoiled by grave-robbers who could never hope to appreciate the treasures they carried away or left trampled underfoot.

  The only sounds disturbing the graveyard quiet came from Molly. Her language started out bad and quickly escalated, as she swept her hands back and forth through the empty space where the dimensional gateway had been just a few moments before. She was trying to find some trace of it with her magics, so she could call it back and force it open, but she wasn’t getting anywhere. />
  “Molly,” I said thoughtfully.

  “What? I’m busy!”

  “Look what’s back.”

  She turned around, and there was Alpha Red Alpha, towering over us. The great dimensional engine itself. Molly glared at it.

  “That wasn’t there a moment ago.”

  “I know.”

  “So what was it doing? Hiding from us?”

  I shrugged. “That’s Alpha Red Alpha for you.”

  I looked carefully at the massive and never fully understood mechanism, designed to be the Droods’ last line of defence. So that if the Hall ever found itself faced with a threat that couldn’t be stopped, the engine would translate the whole building into another dimension, another earth, where it could safely remain until the threat was over and the Hall could be brought back again.

  Either the family here never got a chance to use it, or Edmund did something to it.

  Alpha Red Alpha: a gigantic hour-glass shape immersed inside a frozen waterfall of gleaming crystal, shot through with sprawling circuits, like ragged veins. It was hard to make sense of, hard even to look at, as though it existed in more than three dimensions . . . And if there were any controls, I couldn’t make them out. Only my uncle Jack, when he was Armourer, really understood Alpha Red Alpha.

  “Can your magics get us home, Molly?” I said. I was pretty sure I already knew the answer, but I needed to hear her say it.

  “Not a hope in hell!” Molly scowled at Alpha Red Alpha as though she was seriously considering giving it a good kicking, just on general principle. “I don’t even know where home is from here! You can’t navigate all the different Earths and all their different histories without being really sure of the exact Space/Time coordinates involved.”

  “And there’s no trace left of the dimensional Door we came through?”

  “No.” Molly’s shoulders slumped, and she suddenly looked tired and worn-down. We’d put a lot of effort into chasing Edmund, and it was catching up with both of us. “Edmund must have locked the Door from his side, using the other Alpha Red Alpha.” She looked at me sharply. “If he’s smart enough to operate it, why can’t you?”

  “Because he’s spent ages learning how to work it,” I said.

  “If he could figure it out . . .”

  “I don’t have enough time,” I said.

  Molly nodded reluctantly. “Does this machine look the same to you as the one in our world?”

  “Hard to tell,” I said. “Just looking at the damn thing hurts my eyes. It’s . . . different, but I couldn’t tell you how. I am sure it wasn’t standing here the last time we visited this Armoury.”

  “Edmund must have moved it,” said Molly. “So he could set his trap.”

  “How?” I said. “Look at the size of it! You couldn’t shift something this big with a power loader and a stick of dynamite!”

  “I don’t know,” said Molly. “And don’t you snap at me, Eddie Drood! Edmund’s just another version of you, which means really this is all your fault!”

  “Somehow I knew it would be,” I said.

  We shared a quick smile, and went back to studying the dimensional engine. It stared silently back at us, giving away nothing.

  “Edmund must have been coming and going between the two Earths for some time,” I said. “But how could he have used my Hall’s Alpha Red Alpha without the Armourer or his staff noticing?”

  “That still leaves the Merlin Glass,” said Molly.

  “Without my noticing?” I said. Molly started to bristle again, and I realised we were dangerously close to another argument we couldn’t afford, so I changed the subject. “We have to get back to our world, Molly. My whole family is in danger from Edmund as long as he’s running around our Hall, unsuspected.”

  Molly leaned in suddenly and kissed me.

  “What was that for?” I said.

  “Because that is just so typical of you, Eddie—thinking of others, instead of yourself. We have to get back because you’re running out of time.”

  “Trust me,” I said. “I hadn’t forgotten.”

  “Any chance there might be a manual for Alpha Red Alpha in the Library?” said Molly.

  “Unlikely,” I said. “My uncle Jack was the only one who ever had any control over the machine. Max and Victoria like to say they do, now they’re Armourer, but that always sounded like whistling in the dark to me. They’re probably still trying to make sense of whatever notes Jack left behind. And he only ever partly understood how the damn thing operates, anyway.”

  Molly looked at me sharply. “How can your people not understand how it works, when you invented it?”

  “Alpha Red Alpha was reverse-engineered from alien tech,” I said patiently. “Like most Drood weapons and devices. That’s why we’re always a step ahead of everyone else.”

  “I thought it was because you had the best scientific brains!”

  “We do,” I said. “That’s how we’re able to reverse-engineer alien tech so successfully. We have come up with some amazing things on our own; science and the supernatural are our playthings. But we are all of us standing on the shoulders of giants. Sometimes alien giants.”

  “Hold it,” said Molly. “I thought Black Heir was in charge of clearing up after alien incursions and salvaging all the tech that gets left behind?”

  “It is,” I said. “But Black Heir answers to my family. It makes sure we always get the good stuff. And, in return, we keep everyone else off its back.”

  “How does any of this help us now?” said Molly.

  “It doesn’t,” I said. “But it has given me an idea . . .” I armoured up my right hand and extended it towards the dimensional engine. “You know how I use my armour to hack computers and make them do what I want? I’m hoping I might be able to do the same with Alpha Red Alpha. Enough to get us back home, at least.”

  “Go for it,” said Molly. “I stand ready to applaud, jump up and down, and whoop with joy.”

  Golden tendrils eased out from my fingertips, only to stop well short of the machine’s crystalline surface. They wavered uncertainly on the air and then snapped back into my glove. I looked at my hand, and even shook it a few times, as though that might persuade the armour to cooperate, but nothing happened. I let the golden strange matter disappear back into the torc around my throat.

  “Okay,” said Molly. “What just happened there?”

  “Apparently, Alpha Red Alpha is so . . . different, my armour couldn’t make any sense of it,” I said slowly. “In fact, if I didn’t know better—and I’m not sure that I do—I’d say my armour was afraid of it.”

  “Your torc has picked one hell of a time to have performance issues,” said Molly. “So, there’s nothing we can do? We’re trapped here?”

  “Lost and alone, in a world without Droods,” I said.

  She sniffed. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  We each managed a small smile.

  “I refuse to give up,” said Molly. “It’s not in my nature. What else can we do?”

  “First,” I said, “we go exploring. Take a walk through the Hall and get a good look at where we are and what we’ve got to work with. There might be something we can use to get us home.”

  “Hark!” said Molly, cupping one hand to her ear. “Is that the sound of whistling in the dark I just heard? Eddie, we need to get the hell out of here, and make our way to the Nightside! You can get anywhere from the Nightside.”

  “That’s assuming this world has one,” I said.

  “Every world has a Nightside,” said Molly.

  “Now, there’s a horrifying thought,” I said. “But even so, it could be very different from the one we know.”

  “The whole point of the long night is that you can find anything there,” Molly said briskly. “Particularly if it’s something the rest of the wor
ld doesn’t approve of.” She paused and looked at me seriously. “How are you feeling, Eddie?”

  I knew what she was really asking: How much time did I think I had left? And how much longer would I still be able to fight my corner?

  “I’m angry enough to keep going,” I said steadily. “Edmund screwed up. He should have killed me immediately. In fact, I have to wonder why he didn’t.”

  “Because he couldn’t,” said Molly. “You’re a better fighter than him, and he’s always known it. That’s why he poisoned you and ran away.”

  “I will get us home,” I said. “And I will find him and make him pay. Whatever it takes.”

  “That’s more like it,” said Molly. “That’s my Eddie.”

  She hugged me hard, and I let her do it. Because it was important for one of us to have faith in me.

  • • •

  After a while, we moved off through the unfamiliar Armoury. It didn’t take long to confirm what I’d already suspected—the whole place had been picked clean. Not a weapon or useful device to be found anywhere. Everything was covered in thick layers of dust, from the smashed and abandoned computer stations to the deserted weapons galleries. Tangled wiring hung down from the walls in thick clumps, as though someone had tried to tear it down. Walking through the silent Armoury was like moving through a tomb: a place of the dead, abandoned to Time. Where only the past had any meaning.

  “There’s really nothing left,” I said finally. “My family is just history here.”

  “Hold it together, Eddie,” said Molly. “There’s still work to be done.”

  Everything looked much as I remembered it from my last visit. There were gaps everywhere from where things had been taken, but no signs of actual fighting. The war had been lost up above, in the Hall, where the Droods made their final stand and were slaughtered, to the last man, woman, and child . . . Afterwards, the triumphant killers went storming through the Hall, looking for loot, and finally ended up down here. I hoped the Armourer was dead before that happened. He would have hated to see what the barbarians had done.

  “Could there be . . . hidden caches somewhere?” Molly said hopefully. “Weapons or other things that only the Armourer would know about?”