“I just know it’s all going to be very complicated,” I said. “And that they’re going to find some way to blame it on me.”
Molly grinned at me. “Welcome home.”
I grinned at her. “Good to be back. Let’s go and upset some people.”
“Let’s,” said Molly.
CHAPTER THREE
All My Family’s Sins Returned
The grounds in front of Drood Hall were packed with members of my family, running around like chickens in search of their lopped-off heads. It looked like a garden party after someone had spiked the fruit punch with adrenaline. In fact, there were so many people charging back and forth and getting in one another’s way, shouting and cursing and arguing heatedly, that no one even noticed me appearing out of nowhere. Along with the notorious and highly scary Molly Metcalf. Most people usually notice that. On some occasions, it has been known to make certain members of my family turn pale, cross themselves, and run for their lives.
But here and now, everyone’s attention was entirely taken up with the Hall. It didn’t appear to be doing anything out of the ordinary, just sitting there, staring serenely back at us. My first thought was that there’d been a fire or an explosion, or that the Armourer’s lab assistants had come up with something more than usually scary. But everything seemed as it should be. The windows were unbroken, the lights were all on, and the roof was still in one piece. But for some reason my family members were still swarming back and forth in front of the Hall, apparently out of their minds with rage and frustration. I considered the situation for a while, and then turned to Molly.
“At the very least, our unauthorized arrival should have set off any number of security alarms. We are actually here, aren’t we?”
Molly punched me in the arm. “Feels like it.”
“Ow!” I said.
She looked at me with sudden horror. “Oh, Eddie, I’m so sorry!”
“Relax,” I said. “I haven’t turned fragile just because I’m dying.”
I took a quick look around the grounds but couldn’t spot anything obviously threatening. The wide and carefully maintained lawns stretched away under a pale blue sky in late afternoon, entirely untroubled by attackers or invaders. Flowers bloomed, birds were singing their little hearts out, and off in the distance swans drifted peacefully on the artificial lake. Closer to hand, a group of peacocks and gryphons had settled down amicably together to enjoy the general chaos.
“At least there aren’t any tanks,” said Molly.
“On the whole, I think I’d feel happier if there were,” I said. “You know where you are with tanks.”
“We’d better ask someone what’s going on,” said Molly. “I just know we’re going to get called on to save the day, again.”
I sighed heavily. “I am getting really tired of all these emergencies, with never a chance to get my breath. They’re interfering with what matters.”
Molly sneaked a glance at me out of the corner of her eye, and kept her voice carefully casual. “You okay, Eddie?”
“Just tired,” I said. “I’d like to take some time out for a sit-down, but I can’t. Because if I do, I’m not sure I’d ever find the strength to get up again. I have to keep going, Molly. I still have things to do that need doing.”
I strode forward, with Molly hurrying along at my side, right into the midst of the seriously agitated Droods, and still no one noticed us. The sight of so many of my family making an exhibition of themselves was starting to worry me. We’re trained from childhood to respond to emergencies or enemy action with practiced tactics and calm resolve. We’re drilled constantly, so we always know what to do in response to pretty much anything. We are not supposed to give way to mass panic or lose the plot so spectacularly.
“This must be something to do with the Emergency Evacuation Alert that Edmund arranged,” I said finally. “To clear everyone out of the Armoury so he could have it all to himself.”
“Could he have tricked the whole family into evacuating?” said Molly. And then she sniggered quietly.
I looked at her reproachfully. “It’s really not that funny a word after you’re twelve, Molly.”
“Oh, it is. A bit.”
“Maybe just a bit,” I said. “Anyway, if Edmund has managed to arrange it so he’s the only one left inside the Hall, what’s he up to? What’s he planning now?”
“That’s probably why everyone’s so . . . upset,” said Molly. “The not knowing. At least with everyone out in the grounds, getting a good cardiovascular workout, we can be sure Edmund’s not busy poisoning more Droods. Be grateful for that.”
“I am,” I said. “But if the whole family is out here . . . that means Edmund has uninterrupted access to all our weapons and computer files, not to mention all the nasty little secrets we prefer to keep to ourselves.”
“Oh, go on,” said Molly. “Mention them. Pretend I’m not here.” And then she stopped and looked at me sharply. “Eddie, your Armoury has its own self-destruct mechanism, to keep it from falling into enemy hands. By any chance does your Hall have a self-destruct? Something Edmund could get to?”
“No,” I said. “But we do have Alpha Red Alpha. What if Edmund’s been trying to get past the Armourer’s protocols, so he can use the mechanism to move the Hall into another dimension?”
“More to the point, why is your entire family out here instead of inside, trying to stop him?” said Molly.
“Good question,” I conceded. “We need to find out what’s been going on in our absence.”
We looked around, but no one seemed interested in staying in one spot long enough to answer any questions.
“Want me to knock someone down and sit on them?” said Molly. “So you can ask them things?”
“Let’s start at the top,” I said. “With the Matriarch.”
“Of course,” said Molly. “Because she’s always such fun to talk to.”
“You’re only saying that because you’ve met her.”
We strode determinedly through the crowd, who moved aside to let us pass without even knowing they were doing it. As any field agent can tell you, it’s all in the walk. Act like you know what you’re doing, and most people will just assume you do. As we drew nearer the Hall, I was finally able to make out a faint shimmer on the air, like a heat-haze. It surrounded the whole building, right up to the roof, with its slanting ocean of grey tiles, observatories, gargoyles, and landing pads. Several steam-powered autogyros, and half a dozen teenage-girl Droods riding winged unicorns, were buzzing back and forth over the roof, trying to find a way in past the shimmering barrier. A flying saucer with brilliant colours flaring round its rim came howling down out of the clouds and slammed straight into the field, its operators trusting speed and brute force to do the job. The saucer bounced off and wobbled away, leaking all the colours of the rainbow.
“It has to be some kind of energy field,” said Molly. “Edmund has locked your whole family out.”
“Looks like it,” I said.
Several Droods in full armour had lined up in front of the Hall and were trying to punch their way through the shimmering haze. Golden fists slammed into the barrier with inhuman strength, and brief bursts of energy flared up around each contact, but it appeared even Ethel’s strange matter wasn’t powerful enough to break through.
Maxwell and Victoria, the family Armourer, had their heads together, disputing animatedly as they raised and discarded one brilliant idea after another. They looked impressive enough in their immaculately starched white lab coats, but it was patently obvious they weren’t getting anywhere. They were so caught up in their raised voices and waving of hands, they just nodded quickly as I approached and carried right on arguing. In their own exasperating lovey-dovey way. I stopped for a moment to listen in.
“How is he generating a force shield that powerful?” Maxwell said loudly. “I mean, we don�
�t have anything that could put up a shield around the entire Hall that quickly. Not that I haven’t thought about it, of course . . .”
“Of course you have, dear,” said Victoria. “You think of everything. He must have got to the Shield.”
“But that hasn’t been used since the Chinese tried to nuke us back in ’Sixty-Six.”
“’Sixty-Seven, dear.”
“Whenever it was!” Maxwell paused and smirked proudly. “They won’t try that again. Not after what we sent them in return. Anyway, the Shield is produced by Alpha Red Alpha, and no one knows how to operate that but us.”
“Well, that’s not strictly true, dear. We almost know how to operate it . . .”
“You were getting very close last month, Vicki. I’m sure I felt the Hall shudder.”
I sensed Molly stirring impatiently at my side. We moved on, leaving the Armourer behind.
“It’s Edmund,” I said.
“If he could have disappeared the Hall by now, he would have,” said Molly. “And he must know a force shield won’t keep your family out for long. He’s just using it to buy himself time, to do something else.” She looked at me thoughtfully. “What would you do, if that were you in there?”
“It is me in there, for all practical purposes,” I said. “And some of the things I’ve thought about doing to the Hall when my family’s really pissed me off really don’t bear thinking about.”
We passed by a whole bunch of Armourer’s lab assistants. Bright young things with amazing scientific knowledge, they were all famous for their worrying lack of scruples and no self-preservation instincts worth the mentioning. They clustered together in their scorched and chemically stained lab coats, arguing furiously as they tried to assemble something useful out of whatever bits and pieces they happened to have in their pockets when they were forced to leave the Armoury. They hadn’t come up with anything particularly impressive as yet, but I wouldn’t put it past them. The lab assistants specialise in surprises. Usually loud and destructive ones.
The robot dog, Scraps.2, was trying to dig a tunnel under the edge of the shimmering field. He’d already amassed quite a pile of dirt behind him, as his steel paws dug deep into the earth. As I approached, he looked up, turned around, and sat down heavily so he could fix me and Molly with his glowing red eyes.
“About time you two turned up,” he growled. “See if you can talk some sense into these idiots. They’re not listening to me. Just because I’m a dog! My cybernetic brain could out-think all of them put together! If I felt like it.”
I looked at his tunnel. It went down quite a way, but he didn’t seem to be making any progress forward.
“Are you getting anywhere?” I said politely.
Scraps.2 shrugged cheerfully, a disquieting process in a robot dog. “Too early to tell. It doesn’t matter. I like digging.”
“Have you got a bone buried here, by any chance?” said Molly.
He fixed her with a cold stare. “I’m artificial, remember? What could I do with a bone, except possibly carbon-date it? Though I do seem to remember burying an intruder around here somewhere. He’s probably ready to talk by now.”
We left him to it and went back to threading our way through the crowds of overexcited Droods. It occurred to me that the last time I’d seen this many of my family out in the grounds at one time, it had been for my uncle Jack’s funeral. Not a good omen. I finally spotted the Matriarch, standing with the Sarjeant-at-Arms. Short and stocky with buzz-cut blonde hair, the Matriarch looked more the authority figure than ever, in her three-piece Harris Tweed suit and two strings of pearls. Her new image reminded me uncannily of the previous Matriarch, my grandmother Martha, who’d tried so hard to have me killed. Which in turn made me think of the dead Martha I’d talked to in the Other Hall. No one else has a family life like mine. I pulled my wandering thoughts together and headed straight for the Matriarch.
The Sarjeant-at-Arms looked just as he always did: a muscle-bound thug in an old-fashioned butler’s uniform.
The two of them were talking quietly but urgently together. Droods kept running up to them with fresh information, and were sent away with new instructions just as quickly. Maggie had never been one for dithering, even in her previous position as head gardener. The Matriarch and the Sarjeant were so taken up with their own business they didn’t even notice I was there, until I planted myself right in front of them and announced myself loudly. Molly chimed in too, just as loudly, to make it clear she wasn’t being left out of anything. The Matriarch and the Sarjeant looked at us sharply. They both started to talk at once and then stopped, as though they weren’t sure how to react to me. And then they took in Molly standing beside me, and actually relaxed a little. Which was a whole new response for them where Molly was concerned.
“Where have you been all this time, Eddie?” the Matriarch said sternly.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I said. “What is going on here?”
The Sarjeant, glowering coldly at Molly, broke in before the Matriarch could answer. “How were you able to teleport into the grounds, past all our security defences?”
“Don’t blame me,” said Molly. “I didn’t do it.”
“Who did, then?” demanded the Sarjeant.
“It’s complicated,” I said.
“I insist on knowing!” said the Sarjeant.
“An alien Grey did it, who wasn’t really a Grey from another reality,” I said. “There, Sarjeant. Are you any happier for knowing that? Didn’t think so.”
“He told you it was complicated,” said Molly.
“Then it can wait,” the Matriarch said shortly. “Molly, can you teleport us inside the Hall?”
Molly turned to look thoughtfully at the shimmering energy barrier surrounding the Hall. We all watched her carefully while she considered the matter. Molly possessed a highly developed witchy Sight, and could See many things that are hidden from the rest of us.
“No,” Molly finally decided. “That isn’t just a force shield; it’s an actual dimensional barrier. You’d have to step outside of this reality and into another, and then reappear inside the shield. I don’t have enough magics left in me to do anything like that. To be honest, I can’t see you breaking through that shield with anything less than a transcendental battering ram or a very specialised dimensional Door. Which I also don’t have.”
The Sarjeant-at-Arms actually looked a little relieved to learn there were some things even Molly Metcalf couldn’t do. But while it might have made him feel safer where the Hall was concerned, it didn’t help us with our current problem. The Matriarch glared at the Sarjeant and then back at the Hall. Molly looked from one to the other.
“Why do you need my help to get inside your own Hall? Don’t you have emergency tunnels or something, for emergencies like this?”
“We have all kinds of secret ways in and out of the Hall, for all kinds of emergencies,” said the Matriarch. “But this particular energy field is blocking all of them. Which I was assured was impossible! We suspect this whole situation is Alpha Red Alpha’s doing.”
“It is,” said Molly. “I recognise some of the energies involved, and no, you don’t get to ask how. The answer would only upset you.”
“It’s time we dismantled that damn machine,” said the Matriarch. “It’s always been more trouble than it’s worth.”
“I wouldn’t disagree with that,” I said. “But I’m not convinced even our Armoury has anything that could do the job. And given all the horrible possibilities involved if we damage the machine, I think we’d be better off opening the Lion’s Jaws as wide as possible, and just cramming the whole thing in. Put it out of temptation’s reach for everything but the direst of emergencies.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” said the Sarjeant.
“Sounds like a lot of hard work to me,” said Molly. “Why not just open up a bottom
less hole and drop the bloody thing in?”
“Because the first rule of this family has always been, Never get rid of anything you might have a need for some day,” I said. I fixed the Matriarch with my best hard stare. “Now tell me what’s been happening. How did the entire family end up locked out of its own home?”
“We were tricked into leaving the Hall by a fake Emergency Evacuation,” said the Matriarch. “Why is Molly making that face?”
“Never mind her,” I said.
“Once we were all outside and discovered there was no emergency, we found we’d been locked out as well as fooled,” said the Matriarch.
“You all just went along with the mass exit?” said Molly. “No one thought to check whether it was the real deal?”
“The whole point of the Emergency Evacuation Event,” the Sarjeant said sternly, “is that if you’re hearing it, shit has already hit the fan so hard it’s broken the fan. Get out now, the alarm says, while you still have a slim chance of survival. To my knowledge, this alarm has only been sounded three times in the family’s entire history.”
“Who had the authority to sound it?” I said.
“I thought I was the only one who could give the order,” said the Matriarch. “But as the Sarjeant said, when you hear that alarm you don’t stop to ask questions. You just race for the nearest exit and hope you reach it before whatever terrible thing it is catches up with you. How the alarm was sounded without my explicit authorization is just one of the many questions I will be pursuing once I get back inside. Someone is going to suffer for this, and I am not being metaphorical.”
Molly and I looked at each other. No one had mentioned Edmund yet.
“Do you have any idea who might be responsible?” I said to the Matriarch.
“You are,” she said. “Or, at least, someone who looked just like you.”
She took a moment to control her temper. This involved glaring down at her sensible shoes while breathing deeply. The Sarjeant, on the other hand, flushed an unhealthy shade of purple while his muscles bulged with frustrated rage. I understood how they felt. The Hall is more than just where we live; it’s where we belong, where we’re supposed to be. Being locked out of the Hall was like being exiled from your own country. The Sarjeant scowled at me accusingly.
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