"Then why are you h.o.a.rding them for yourselves?" snapped Molly.
"Why aren"t they in a museum so everyone can enjoy them? Back the h.e.l.l off, or I"ll create a china jigsaw like you"ve never seen!"
"We"re backing, we"re backing!" cried the Droods. "Barbarian! Philistine!"
They all got out of our way in a hurry. Molly and I picked up the display case and carried it across the room, and the Droods scattered before us, crying out piteously for us to be more careful. I smashed a hole in the wall and stepped through, and Molly dragged the case into position to block the hole. We laughed, secure in the knowledge that the Droods would spend ages carefully moving the case aside so as not to risk damaging the contents.
More Droods in the corridor beyond. And these at least had seen some training. They held themselves well, all ten of them, fanning out so as not to bunch up and make an easy target. I didn"t waste time talking to them. I concentrated, applying what I"d learned from James, and grew supernaturally sharp claws on my golden hands. First thing a field agent learns is that any trick is a fair trick if it means you win and they lose. I took them down, one by one, fighting hand to hand, up close and personal. My claws ripped through their armour, and they cried out in shock as well as pain. Their flesh was torn, and they bled inside their armour, and that had never happened before. Some just turned and ran. The rest fell back, scattering, and Molly and I went straight through them.
A few saw Molly as an easier target. They went for her, reaching out with their golden hands, and she laughed in their featureless faces. She conjured up a howling storm wind that bellowed down the narrow corridor, picking them up and carrying them away, tumbling helplessly end over end like discarded toys the whole length of the corridor.
The remaining Droods all tackled me at once, knocking me off balance, and then piling on top of me as I crashed to the floor, trying to pin me down with the sheer weight of armoured bodies. Good tactic. Probably would have worked against anyone who wasn"t field trained and used to thinking around corners. I cracked open the floor beneath us with one sharp blow from a golden elbow, and our combined weight collapsed the floor. A great hole opened up and we all fell through, the other Droods kicking and screaming and grabbing at each other all the way down into the room below. I of course just grabbed the side of the hole with one hand and pulled myself up and out. The Droods below were so inexperienced it probably wouldn"t even occur to them that they could use the armoured power of their legs to jump back up again. Or at least not until Molly and I had already moved on.
The next room was a trap.
I recognised the place the moment I entered it. The room was called Time Out, and it was full of ornate clocks and timepieces from across the centuries, covering all four walls with everything from water clocks to atomic devices. I never did like Time Out; always struck me as a sinister place, when I was young. Full of the ticking of a million mad clocks. In this room time itself could be slowed down, extended. A day could pa.s.s in here between the tick and tock of a clock outside. Time Out was originally put together back in the nineteenth century to make possible the observation of certain delicate scientific and magical experiments, but these days it was mostly used by students reviewing and cramming for an imminent exam.
I knew something was wrong before I was halfway across the room. All the heavy ticks and tocks around me had taken on a strange dying fall, and the air was thick as syrup. I looked back at Molly, still stuck in the hole in the wall I"d made, her movements little more than a snail"s pace. There was nothing wrong with her. It was the room. Time was slowing down, trapping me in the room like an insect in amber. Like a prisoner in a cell with invisible, intangible bars. I could cross the room in a few seconds only to find that days had pa.s.sed outside it, and the whole family waiting to meet me.
I raised my Sight, and the air seemed to shimmer around me, thick with slowly congealing forces. It wasn"t something I could fight with my armour. All its strength and speed meant nothing next to the inexorable power of time. From all around me came the slowing remorseless ticking of the million mad clocks, nailing me down, pinning me in place like an insect on display, transfixed on a spike.
I lashed out at the grandfather clock next to me, and the heavy wooden case exploded under the impact. I ripped out the chains and the pendulum and threw them aside, and the great old clock was silenced. And time"s growing hold on me seemed to hesitate...I grabbed up a seventeenth century carriage clock and crushed it in my golden hand, and cogs and pinwheels flew out of it. Time"s hold slipped away from me just a little. I could feel it. I laughed aloud and rampaged round the room, smashing all the clocks, destroying everything I could lay my hands on, until Molly was suddenly striding across the room towards me, demanding to know what the h.e.l.l I was doing. She hadn"t noticed anything. I stopped, breathing hard, and looked around me. The room was a mess. And time moved normally on its way, ticking and tocking along as though nothing had happened. I shook my head at Molly and headed for the far wall. No point in trying to explain. There wasn"t enough time.
I smashed through the wall as though it was cardboard and stepped through into the corridor beyond. My feet shot out from under me, and suddenly I was plummeting the length of the hallway, scrabbling frantically for handholds on the walls as they rushed past me. Someone had changed the direction of gravity so that the wall at the far end of the long hallway was now the floor, and the two walls just the sides of a really long drop. I fell all the way to the bottom, tumbling helplessly, until the far wall came flying up towards me like a flyswatter. I tucked myself up into a ball, got my feet underneath me, and used my armoured legs to soak up the impact as I hit.
Luckily, it was a really solid wall. Old stone, thick and st.u.r.dy. I hit hard, and the stone cracked from top to bottom, but it held. I took a moment to get my breath back. The hallway stretched endlessly above me, the walls like mountainsides. I could see Molly way above me, looking out of the hole I"d made in the wall, peering anxiously down at me. I yelled at her to stay put. I thought hard as my heart rate slowed reluctantly back to something like normal. The family had to know the fall alone wouldn"t be enough to kill me. This was just another delaying tactic. It was all they had.
I forced myself out of the broken stone wall, damaging it still further, and looked up at Molly. "Stay put! I"ll climb up to you!"
"I could retrieve you with my magic!" she yelled back. "Maybe even undo the gravity inversion!"
She really did look a long way off. Maybe someone was messing about with s.p.a.ce here, as well as gravity. Or were they connected anyway? It was a long time since my old science cla.s.ses.
"No!" I yelled back. "Don"t do anything! Your magic could set off the Hall"s inner defences!"
"You mean this isn"t-"
"h.e.l.l, no! This is just some crafty little b.u.g.g.e.r showing off his lateral thinking."
I punched a hole in the left-hand wall that used to be the floor, carefully pulled my golden hand back out again, and then made another hole. I kept on punching holes until I had enough hand-and footholds to get started, and then I climbed up the wall, heading back to Molly. I picked up speed as I got the hang of it and got a rhythm going, and soon I was scuttling up the wall like a giant spider. ( I winced as the thought occurred to me, and I pushed it firmly away.) I soon reached the hole in the wall where Molly was waiting, and she helped pull me back through. We both looked down at the long drop below us, and the wall opposite.
"Now what?" said Molly.
"When in doubt, use brute force and ignorance," I said. "Climb on my back."
She gave me hard look but finally did so, holding on tightly as I walked back across the room we"d just come through. Then I took a good run up to get some speed going, jumped through the hole and across the gap, and smashed through the far wall into the room opposite. Molly jumped down from me, slapping dust and splinters from her hair and shoulders.
"I don"t want to have to do that again, ever," she said firmly. "Next time, I"ll fly us across."
I looked at her. "I didn"t know you could fly."
"Lot of things you don"t know about me. You should see what I can do with a Ping-Pong ball."
I looked around the room and once again I recognised it. I always thought of the long narrow chamber as the souvenir room. It was crammed full of old trophies and mementos and a whole bunch of basically interesting old stuff that my various ancestors had brought back from their travels around the world. Books and maps, objects and artefacts, and some odd and obscure items that presumably meant something to someone once but whose stories were now lost and forgotten. To a young Drood like me, they were all wonderfully interesting and fascinating, with their hints of a much bigger world outside the Hall. I spent a lot of time here as a child, leafing through the books and playing with the pieces. At least partly because I knew I wasn"t supposed to. I was still fond of a lot of the exhibits, so I was careful not to break anything else as I made my way across the room. I pointed out a few of my favourites to Molly.
"That"s the skull of a vodyanoi from pre-Soviet Russia. Those are genuine Thuggee strangling cords from the Hindu Kush. That lumpy-looking hairy thing is a badly stuffed Chupacabras from Chile. Which if anything smells worse dead than it does when it"s alive. And all the intricate carvings in that cabinet are scrimshaw carved from the bones of a great white whale."
"You should charge admittance to the Hall," said Molly. "You could make a fortune out of the summer trade."
The door ahead of us slammed open and my grandmother Martha Drood, the family Matriarch herself, strode into the room to face me, accompanied as always by her consort, Alistair. I stopped abruptly, facing them, and they stopped where they were, maintaining a cautious distance. Molly moved in close beside me, rea.s.suring and supporting me with her presence. I was glad she was there. Even after all that had happened, after all that I"d discovered...Martha was still the Matriarch, the will and authority of the Droods. And once I would have died rather than fail her.
The Matriarch wasn"t wearing her armour. Of course not. That might have come across as an admission of weakness, and Martha"s arrogance would never allow her to see me as a serious threat. Not even after all I"d done. For a rogue to triumph against the will of the family was unthinkable.
So I armoured down too. Just to show my contempt.
"h.e.l.lo, Grandmother," I said. "Alistair. How did you know where to find me?"
Alistair smirked. "Intercepting your path wasn"t exactly difficult, Edwin. All we had to do was follow the wreckage and destruction, draw a straight line to the Sanct.i.ty, and then get here ahead of you."
"You always were very direct, even as a child," said the Matriarch.
"That"s why I chose this room, for our...little chat. The number of times I had to send someone to drag you out of here because you weren"t where you were supposed to be...You always were such a disappointment to me, Edwin."
Molly looked at me. "It"s your family, Edwin. How do you want to handle this?"
"Very carefully," I said. "My grandmother wouldn"t be in here, facing me without serious backup, unless she was confident she had some really nasty cards to play."
"This is the Drood Matriarch?" said Molly. "Well, colour me impressed. The queen b.i.t.c.h of the family that runs the whole world. Hatchet-faced old cow, isn"t she?"
The Matriarch ignored her, fixing me with her cold gaze. "Where is James?" she said harshly. "What did you do to James?"
"I...killed him, Grandmother," I said.
She cried out briefly then; a lost, devastated sound. She crumpled as though I"d hit her and might have fallen if Alistair hadn"t been there to hold her up. She pressed her face against his chest, eyes squeezed shut to keep the tears from falling. Alistair glared at me over her bent head. I wanted to see her suffer for what she"d done to me, to all of us, even to Uncle James, but in the end it was disturbing and even sad to see such a legendary facade crack and fall apart right in front of me. I"d never seen her show any honest emotion in public before.
"You killed my son," she said finally, pushing herself away from Alistair. "My son...your uncle...He was the best of us! How could you, Edwin?"
"You sent him to his death, Grandmother," I said steadily. "Just like you tried to send me to mine on the motorway. Remember?"
I stepped forward to confront her with all the other things I had to say, but to my surprise Alistair stepped forward to face me, putting himself between his wife and the rogue who threatened her. He stood tall and proud, doing his best to stare me down, and for the first time, he actually looked like a Drood.
"Get out of my way, Alistair," I said.
"No." His voice was high but steady. He had no authority, no power, and he knew it, but in his refusal to remove himself from the line of fire, he had a kind of dignity at last. "I won"t let you hurt her anymore."
"I don"t want to hurt her," I said almost tiredly. "I don"t want to hurt anyone. That"s not why I came back. But I have something important to do and not much time to do it in. Take her out of here, Alistair."
"No. This ends here."
"I have Oath Breaker," I said. "And Molly has Torc Cutter. Even the Gray Fox couldn"t stand against that."
"You used Torc Cutter on your own uncle?" Alistair looked at me with horror. "Dear G.o.d; what have you become, Edwin?"
"I don"t know," I said honestly. "Awake, perhaps, to all the lies and betrayals...It"s time to cut the rotten heart out of the family."
"I have a weapon too," Alistair said abruptly, and just like that there was an old-fashioned pistol in his right hand. It would have looked primitive, even pathetic, if I hadn"t recognised it. If I hadn"t known it for what it was. Alistair nodded grimly, seeing the knowledge in my face. Even Martha was shaken out of her grief by the sight of the gun.
"Alistair! Wherever did you get that? You can"t use it! I forbid it!"
"I"ll do whatever I have to to protect you, Martha." Alistair was looking at me, but the gun was trained steadily on Molly. "You stand very still, Edwin. Or I"ll hurt your woman, just as you"ve hurt mine. I know none of you ever really thought of me as one of the family. Never thought I had it in me to fight the good fight like the rest of you. But I love this family and all it stands for, just as I"ve always loved you, Martha. And this is where I prove it."
"Please, Alistair," said Martha, trying for a calm and reasonable voice.
"Put away the gun. Let me handle this."
"How can you love the family?" I said to Alistair. "Knowing what you do about the Heart? About the price we pay to be what we are?"
He frowned, suddenly uncertain. "Martha? What"s he talking about?"
I looked at Martha. "He doesn"t know, does he, Grandmother? You never told him. Never told him why he can"t ever wear the golden torc."
"He"s not part of the council," she said dully. "He never needed to know, so I never told him. It would have been...cruel. You always were too softhearted, Alistair."
"Not here, not now," he said. "Not when he dares to threaten you and the whole family. You do know what this gun is, don"t you, Edwin? Of course you do. Why don"t you tell your little witch friend what it is?"
"Yes, Eddie," said Molly. "You know I hate to be left out of things."
"That...is a Salem Special," I said. "It"s a witch killer. It shoots flames summoned up from h.e.l.l itself. Or so the records say. No one"s used the awful thing in centuries." I glared at Alistair. "I can"t believe you"re even thinking of using a Salem Special. You put your soul at risk just by handling it."
"It"ll stop you, and that"s all that matters," he said. He smiled briefly, nervously. "Fight fire with fire, eh? Oh, I know it won"t hurt you, Eddie. You"ll get your armour up in time to protect you. But it"ll do terrible things to your pretty girlfriend...So you"re going to stand very still, Edwin, until the rest of the family get here, take your weapons away, and put you under arrest. Or I"ll burn your woman alive before your eyes."
"Don"t be a fool, Alistair!" snapped the Matriarch, some of her old authority returning. "You"re not a field agent! I protected you from all that!"
"I never asked you to protect me, Martha."
"He"ll kill you!"
"You never did have any faith in me," said Alistair. "But this is where I prove you all wrong. You thought you could stop him with your authority, thought you could intimidate him into just giving up. I never believed that. He was never intimidated by authority in his life. But look at him now. Look at him! Afraid to move a muscle because of me!"
He took his eyes off me to glare at her, and that was all I needed. In the moment when he was distracted, I whipped Oath Breaker out from under my belt, and brought it around in a swift arc. He started to turn back, raising the Salem Special, but the long ironwood staff undid the binding seals on the ancient pistol, and it exploded, all its stored h.e.l.lfire bursting out at once. Supernaturally bright flames consumed Alistair"s hand and arm, burning the meat down to the bone in seconds. The stench of brimstone and burnt flesh filled the air. Alistair fell back, howling and shrieking. He flapped his arm wildly, as though he could shake off the flames. What remained of his right hand fell away as the h.e.l.lfire consumed the small connecting bones in his wrist. It fell to the floor, still wrapped around what was left of the Salem Special.
Alistair screamed horribly as the flames leapt up to take hold of his right shoulder. Martha beat at the flames with her bare hands, crying out at the pain but still trying to help. I armoured up and moved quickly forward to smother the flames with my golden hands, but even though the flames couldn"t burn me, I couldn"t beat them out. In the end Molly stepped forward and reeled off some Latin, and all the flames disappeared in a moment. Alistair"s cries fell away to shocked moans, and he sat down suddenly on the floor, looking dully at what little was left of his right arm. Martha sat there with him, holding him in her arms, trying to comfort him. I armoured down and looked at Molly.
"Those were h.e.l.lfires...How did you-"
"Please," she said. "Remember who you"re talking to."
Alistair"s moans stopped as he finally, mercifully, pa.s.sed out. Less than half of his upper right arm remained, charred down to the blackened bone. It would have to be removed; it would never heal. Martha rocked him back and forth, crooning to him like a sleeping child. She was crying. I"d never seen her cry before. I tried to feel sorry for Alistair, but this was what he would have done to my Molly if I hadn"t stopped him.
"Martha..." I said.
"Don"t. Don"t pretend you care, you unnatural child."
"So many tears," I said. "For Uncle James, for Alistair. But how many tears would you have shed over my death, Grandmother, if I had died on that motorway? Or if Uncle James had killed me like you ordered? Did you cry over my twin brother when he was sacrificed to the Heart? He was your grandson too. How did you choose between us? Flip a coin, perhaps? Or did you just leave it up to the Heart so you wouldn"t have to feel accountable?"
But she wasn"t listening. All she cared about was her Alistair and what I"d done to him. Molly gently pulled me away.
"We have to go, Eddie. Others will be coming. You know that."
I let her lead the way to the far end of the room. I always thought that in the end the traitor within the family would turn out to be Alistair. Because he never was one of us, really. I wanted it to be him. But in the end...he fought well and valiantly to protect the woman he loved from my anger. I admired him. The poor d.a.m.ned fool. I didn"t need to smash through the far wall. Just opened the door and stepped through into the next room, leaving Martha and Alistair behind.
The next room was huge, all gleaming white tiles on the walls and hygienically clean surfaces packed full of a.s.sorted computers and other advanced technology in an hermetically controlled environment. A whole room full of machines just to monitor and regulate conditions inside the Sanct.i.ty. They protected the Heart from all outside influences and protected those who lived in the Hall from the various disruptive energies and dangerous forces that emanated from the Heart. Normally there"d be half a hundred technicians scattered across the ma.s.sive room, carefully tending the equipment and making constant small but necessary changes and adjustments to the Sanct.i.ty"s delicate balance...but the place was deserted. Presumably they"d been evacuated once it was clear I was coming here. I threaded my way through the bulky machinery, heading for the door at the other end of the room. Beyond that door lay the Sanct.i.ty, and the Heart, and my revenge.
Molly and I were almost there when the door suddenly opened and Matthew and Alexandra stepped through. I stopped abruptly, and Molly moved in close beside me again. Matthew looked sharp and smooth as always, the family"s blue-eyed boy in his immaculate Armani suit. He smiled dazzlingly at me. Alexandra"s smile was cold, and so were her eyes. I nodded briefly to them both, doing my best to look entirely unimpressed.
"Matthew," I said. "I should have known you"d turn up. You never could bear to miss out on anything important. But I honestly can"t say I was expecting to see you again, Alex."
"You of all people should know I don"t give up that easily." Alexandra"s voice was sharp and pointed. "And you really should have expected to see Matty and me here together, at the last. But then you never were very quick at figuring out what was really going on, were you?"
I frowned first at her, then at Matthew. There was something about their smiles, their easy confidence, their air of I know something you don"t know. I"d missed something. And I couldn"t afford to make mistakes, not when I was this close to the Heart and its destruction...What could I have missed? Neither Matthew nor Alexandra was wearing the armour, even though they both had good reason to see me as a threat. Something significant was happening here. I could feel it. They had to be planning something...I risked a quick glance with my Sight. Both Matthew and Alexandra were carrying concealed weapons radiating enormous amounts of power, but so were Molly and I. I checked the room around us. No b.o.o.by traps, no hidden a.s.sa.s.sins. Just Matthew and Alexandra, with their cold calculating smiles. I looked straight at Alexandra.
"What did you do to the Armourer, Alex?"
She shrugged easily. "You didn"t really think you could take me out that easily, did you? I maintain a constantly updated protection against all forms of poison. Basic security measure. And he really should have known better than to turn his back on me...But he"d got old and soft, like so many of the family today. We"re going to change all that."
And with that we, the penny finally dropped. "You, and Matthew...you"re part of the Zero Tolerance faction! The hard-core family fanatics who want to change everything! Kill all the bad guys, and to h.e.l.l with the consequences!"
"Yes," said Matthew. "That"s us. Only we prefer to call ourselves Manifest Destiny."
I must have made a shocked sound. Their smiles widened, and Molly grabbed on to my good arm and hung on tightly. Perhaps she thought I"d attack them. I was too stunned. Matthew and Alexandra laughed at the expressions on our faces.
"Truman only thinks he runs things," Alexandra said lightly. "But he"s just our front, our public face, so the rest of the world won"t realise that the Droods are actually bankrolling and running Manifest Destiny for our own reasons. Won"t realise until it"s far too late."
"But...you fought their troops," I said to Matthew. "I saw you, in London..."
He shrugged. "A necessary deception. And occasionally the troops have to be put in their place. It keeps Truman from getting too uppity if we slap him down hard now and again."
"Working behind the scenes has always been the Drood way," said Alexandra. "Kingmakers rather than kings. Zero Tolerance is the only way forward for the Droods, Eddie. The family"s got very old-fashioned, very set in its ways, and far too complacent. Too content with the way things are in the world...Most of the younger generations follow us now, impatient to change the world for the better instead of risking their lives just to maintain the status quo. And after all, why should they? Look around you. The status quo sucks. It"s time we take the lead, stamp out all the bad guys once and for all, and make a better world for everyone."
"But who gets to decide what"s better?" I said. "The Droods? Manifest Destiny? You?"
"The family will decide," said Matthew. "And who better? We"re the only ones who know what"s really going on in the world."
"I thought you of all people would understand, Eddie," said Alexandra. "You were always the great rebel...the renowned freethinker of the family. You opened my eyes. Showed me there was more to life than just duty and responsibility. After you left, I waited and waited for you to do...something. But you settled for being just another field agent. Such a disappointment."
"Funny, Alex," I said. "That"s just what I was thinking about you. I thought you were smarter than this. Matthew; he"s always been out for himself, but you...You"ve become the very thing this family has always stood against. Just another would-be dictator with delusions of grandeur."
"Oh, they"re not delusions," said Matthew. "Not anymore. We have followers, weapons, and far-reaching plans. It is our time, our destiny. Tomorrow belongs to us."