The Man With The Golden Torc Part 11

We came back from the concrete pens to find Solomon Krieg still standing, surrounded by the bodies of the dead and the fallen. Girl Flower threw herself at him, screaming something obscene in old Welsh. Atomic forces erupted from the golem's scarred forehead, hitting Girl Flower and blowing her apart into a shower of rose petals. They churned and circled in midair, and then transformed, becoming a razor storm of a thousand cutting owls' claws. They hit Solomon Krieg like a deadly hailstorm, ripping and tearing at his pale flesh, but still he stood his ground and would not fall. I might have admired him, if I hadn't hated him so much. (The ovens never grew cold...) The razor storm finally collapsed, exhausted, and I went forward to do battle with the Golem with the Atomic Brain. I needed to punish someone for what had been done here, and he would do. I try hard, but sometimes I'm not a very nice person.

The creatures of the night fell back as I strode through their midst. They recognised the golden armour. Solomon saw me coming and smiled again. His face was hanging in tatters from scratched and scored bone after Girl Flower's attack, and one eye was just an empty red socket, but still he smiled. He didn't bother with his built-in gun or flamethrower. Just stepped forward and threw a punch with all his mechanised strength behind it. I heard the bones in his hand break as his fist glanced harmlessly from my golden mask. I grabbed his arm with both hands before he could draw it back and broke it over my knee like a piece of kindling. Bits of shattered tech flew out of the gaping wound. Solomon Krieg grunted once, but that was all. I let go of his arm and grabbed his head, pulling it down and forward. He fought me with all his legendary strength, but it wasn't enough. Atomic forces sputtered and shimmered on the air as he struggled to put an attack together. I ripped the top of his head right off, tearing along the old scarred fault line on his forehead, and then reached into his head with my other hand and tore his atomic brain out.

I held it in my golden hand for a moment, studying it, that nasty triumph of Cold War technology, and then I dropped it on the ground and stamped on it. The brain shattered into a thousand pieces, and Solomon Krieg's empty body fell twitching to the floor. I walked away, and the creatures of the night fell upon the body, tearing it to pieces in a frenzy of rage and revenge.

And that was when a spatial portal opened in the air before us, and an army of black-uniformed Manifest Destiny soldiers came pouring through, opening fire with automatic weapons the moment they caught sight of us. Bullets ricocheted from my armour, but I couldn't shield everyone. Newly freed prisoners fell screaming and dying all around me. I grew golden spikes on my armoured fists and charged into the midst of the coming soldiers. I struck down men and women as they tried their best to kill me, and they did not rise again. But more and more soldiers were spilling out of the portal, their faces alight with the fury of the true fanatic. I broke necks and heads, and threw men and women through the air with deadly force, but still more of them streamed past me like a river around a single rock.

I fought on. It felt good to be striking them down. Manifest Destiny had betrayed me by not being the hope I'd so desperately needed.

Mr. Stab stepped forward to stand at my side, a long scalpel gleaming thirstily in his hand. Nothing the soldiers did could touch him, and he cut down all who came within his reach with an elegant disdain. Standing in the midst of blood and slaughter, he was in his element at last. Creatures of the night, hurt and weakened as they were, fought fiercely with the black-clad soldiers, and everywhere there was blood and screaming. Step by step we slowed the soldiers' advance, and step by step we drove them back. Perhaps because their fanaticism was no match for our fury. We forced our way forward, over their dead and ours, until finally the surviving soldiers turned and fled back through the spatial portal, and it was shut down from their end.

I stood among the dead, in my blood-spattered armour, and raised one spiked fist in triumph. And all around me the creatures of the night howled their triumph and my name.

Molly yelled my name again and again until finally I lowered my fist and looked at her. "Eddie! We have to get out of here! Truman must have emergency contingency plans for a ma.s.s breakout, and I really don't think we want to be here when he puts them into effect."

I nodded and strode over to her, kicking black-uniformed bodies aside. Blood and gore dripped thickly from my hands as I made the spikes disappear. My breathing slowed, and my head cleared. Mr. Stab walked beside me without a drop of blood on his elegant outfit.

"I know you want Truman dead," said Molly. "I do too. But there's no way we can reach him right now."

"Agreed," I said. "His time will come. Any suggestions on what we do next?"

"I open a spatial portal of my own, and we all get the h.e.l.l out of here and scatter into the night."

"Sounds like a plan to me," I said. "Where's Girl Flower?"

"Oh, she'll put herself back together again, over the next few days, in some place where she feels safe." She looked at Mr. Stab. "Can I trust you to look after Sue? I have to stick with the Drood. We have revenges to plan."

He inclined his head graciously. "Of course, my dear. She will be safe with me. You have my word on it."

And strangely enough, I believed him. I didn't think he'd lie to Molly. He offered Subway Sue his arm, and she leaned on it gratefully. Molly opened a spatial portal, and we rushed the surviving prisoners through it as fast as we could. I kept glancing around, ready for another sneak attack, but it never came. The great cavern remained as silent as a ma.s.s grave. In the end, only Molly and I were left.

"So now we have two mortal enemies on our trail," I said. "My family, and Manifest Destiny. This day keeps getting better and better. Is there anyone left we can trust?"

"Maybe," said Molly. "A few names come to mind. But even if it was just you and me, I wouldn't back down or cry off. I will have justice, even if I have to kill everyone else in the world to get it."

"You know," I said, "you'd have made a good Drood."

"Now you're just being nasty," she said.

We left through the portal, back up into the cold clean air of London town.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

Sleeping with the Enemy M olly and I emerged from her portal exactly where I'd asked her to drop us off: at the Greenwich docks, just down from that grand old sailing ship, the Cutty Sark. Dawn was breaking, the early morning air deliciously cool and clear after the unhealthy atmosphere of Manifest Destiny's holding pens. Long crimson streaks stained the lightening sky, standing out starkly behind the tall masts of the Cutty Sark naval museum. I looked up and down the stone wharf, but the docks were deserted. And quite right too; normal people were tucked up in bed by now, and I had every intention of catching up with them as soon as possible. It had been a long day, what with one thing and another.

"You bring me to the nicest places, Eddie," said Molly. "Can I ask what the h.e.l.l we're doing here, where even fallen angels would fear to tread without armed bodyguards and a written guarantee of safe pa.s.sage?"

"Greenwich is really very civilised these days," I said. "Practically gentrified, in some places. I keep a barge tethered here, with all the comforts and necessities of home. Another of my safe places, when I need somewhere off the beaten track to hide from everyone, even my own family."

"They don't know about this barge?"

"They never asked. My family never cared how I did what I did, as long as I did what I was told. This way."

A few minutes' stroll down the wharf brought us to my barge, the Lucky Lady. Just another among a couple of dozen longboats and barges tied up to the wharf. A fairly inexpensive way to live in an expensive part of London. You get a lot of actors here...The Lucky Lady bobbed heavily in the dark tarry waters, her colours a bright racing red and green, and all her bra.s.swork shining in the amber light of the streetlamps. (I have a little brownie creature who comes around every other week and keeps the old boat spotless in return for my leaving out a bowl of single malt whiskey. I believe in upholding the old traditions. Especially when it means I don't have to get down on my hands and knees with the Duraglit. Hate polishing bra.s.s.) I would have preferred to take Molly back to my nice flat in Knightsbridge, but I didn't dare. My family knew about the flat. At best they'd have agents in place, watching and waiting in case I was stupid enough to show my face. At worst, and much more likely, they'd have already torn the flat apart looking for clues or incriminating doc.u.ments leading to where I was and what I might be doing. I knew the procedure. I'd done it myself often enough. Well, let them look. I never left anything of value in my flat. Or anywhere else, really. A field agent has to be ready to walk away from anything, at a moment's notice, and never look back. We're not allowed to be sentimental or form attachments. Our only roots are in the family. The family sees to that.

I said as much to Molly, and she nodded.

"They probably smashed up all your good stuff, just out of spite. I've seen how your family operates. Are you sure there's nothing there they can use to track you? I could find you anywhere, just from holding some object that once belonged to you."

"Not as long as I wear the torc," I said. "My armour shields me from everything."

I handed Molly down onto the deck of my barge, and then stepped lightly down to join her. Molly looked at me thoughtfully.

"Your armour comes from your family. Are you sure they don't have some secret way of finding you through the armour?"

"Positive. That's always been our strength and our weakness. The same armour that makes us so powerful also isolates us from everything else in the world."

"So you're always alone?"

"Yes. That's why so few Droods can cope, out in the world. Away from the all-embracing arms of the family. Come on, it's cold out here. Let's go below."

I opened the hatch and down we went into the sumptuously furnished interior of the Lucky Lady. Wherever I live, I like to live well. I won the barge several years back in a poker game with a down-on-his-luck private detective. Poor b.u.g.g.e.r ended up living in his own office. Served him right for trying to cheat. There's nothing I enjoy more than out-cheating a cheat. I can produce extra aces from places you wouldn't believe.

I bustled around the long living area, lighting the old naval storm lamps and adjusting the wicks, filling the barge's interior with a warm golden glow. Molly oohed and aahed over the luxurious furnishings, and positively cooed over the period details. The Lucky Lady has no modern conveniences, no electricity. The whole point of being on the barge was to be cut off from the modern world. (There is a chemical toilet. And a portable CD player. There's no point in being a fanatic about these things.) Finally we both settled ourselves on the comfortably padded chaise longue, and I relaxed for the first time in what seemed like forever.

"I like your place, Eddie," said Molly, tucking her legs up under her.

"It's so not you. A bit solitary, though."

"That's the point," I said.

She considered me seriously. "I can't imagine what it must be like for you, to live a life so alone...so cut off from everything and everyone. Never able to trust anyone who isn't family."

"Comes with the job," I said. "And after growing up in a hall bursting at the seams with family, I was glad to get away."

"Has there never been...anyone else? Anyone who mattered?"

"No. Never. I can't get too close to anyone without telling them what I do. And the family doesn't allow that. Marriage, even...friendships, only take place at the family's discretion. They have to be approved. Especially for those of us out in the field and open to the world's temptations. From the moment we're born, and they clap the golden torc around our infant throats, we belong to the family, body and soul. I live alone, wherever I live, and though I may invite people in to visit me from time to time, they're never allowed to stay. For their own safety."

"So...no girlfriends? No significant others? No real friends? What kind of a life is that?"

"A life of service, to a greater cause," I said. "That was what I believed. What I'd been taught. How was I to know it was all a lie?"

"Is there anything here to eat and drink?" Molly said, kindly changing the subject. "I could eat, if you had something."

"Of course," I said. "Let me just knock some weevils out of the hardtack."

I set about organising a basic cold meal out of the tins I keep in stock, and opened the bottle of brandy I keep for medical emergencies. Molly busied herself by looking over my collection of CDs and making disparaging comments about my taste in music.

"What is this? No Hawkwind, no Motorhead, not even any Meat Loaf? Just...Judy Collins, Mary Hopkin, and Kate Bush..."

"I like female vocalists," I said, coming in with a tray.

"All right, I'll lend you some of my Within Temptation imports. You'll like them. They're a Dutch band with a magnificent female vocalist. A bit like ABBA on crack."

"Well," I said. "There's something to look forward to."

We attacked our food with good appet.i.te. Molly wolfed hers down, to my quiet approval. I can't stand people who pick at their food. Afterwards we sat together with the brandy warming in our bellies, companionably close, still too buzzed from the day's adrenaline to sleep just yet. So we talked about old times, old cases, where we'd always been on different sides and doing our best to kill each other, as often as not. There are some things you can only talk about with old enemies. Because you had to be there, to understand.

The case of the millennium upgrade was a cla.s.sic foul-up of almost legendary proportions. My family got word that a rather eminent German scientist was about to defect from Vril Power Inc., in Munich, and had come to London to sell the fruits of his research to the highest bidder. That put it in my territory, so I was sent in to make sure that his work went to someone the family approved of. Or to shut the scientist down, with extreme prejudice, if he didn't feel like cooperating.

We don't normally get that excited over industrial espionage, but Herr Doktor Herman Koenig worked at the cutting edge of the computerhuman mind interface and had apparently developed a means of direct contact between human thought and computer capacities. Theoretically, this could result in a combination of the two capable of producing a whole far greater than the sum of its parts. An awful lot of people were prepared to pay an awful lot of money for exclusive rights to such a process, so it was up to me to ensure that only the right sort of person got their hands on it. Or make sure no one did. My family can be very dog in the manger about some things.

Doktor Koenig had set up a makeshift laboratory in a disused government think tank in the old Bradbury Building, just down from Centre Point. Breaking in was child's play. I was used to the kind of security that throws a demon from h.e.l.l at you if you get it wrong. Electronic locks and motion detectors aren't really in the same league. Herr Doktor hadn't even sh.e.l.led out for some armed guards, the cheap b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Really, some people deserve everything that happens to them.

I let myself into the Bradbury Building lobby a good three hours before the auction was due to start and made my way easily up through the quiet building. Everyone else had gone home, oblivious to the drama to come. I armoured up and trotted easily up the forty-four flights of stairs to the doktor's floor. (Never trust an elevator.) I didn't expect any serious opposition on this case.

I didn't know Molly Metcalf was already in the building.

She'd arrived on the roof via a shielded teleport spell, let herself in, and worked her way down. She was there to protect Doktor Koenig from outside interference. Not because she understood anything about the implications of the computerhuman mind interface, or would have approved of it if she had, but because she believed pa.s.sionately in the right of people to improve themselves by any means possible and thus help free the world from Drood control.

Right, Molly said at this point. Computers baffle me. I can just about work my e-mail, and that's it. Though I do enjoy surfing dodgy p.o.r.n sites.

So; we both burst into the doktor's lab at the same moment, scaring the h.e.l.l out of the guy, and then stopped short to glare at each other. I knew Molly by reputation, and of course she recognised the golden armour at once. We both struck out at each other with every weapon we had, unleashing energies and forces that would have been immediately fatal to anyone but us. Doktor Koenig cried out hysterically in German and tried to protect his precious equipment with his own body. The whole thing escalated very quickly...and we brought the house down. The Bradbury Building just crumbled and fell apart under the impact of the forces we unleashed, and the whole place collapsed into ruin and rubble. Molly and I came out of it entirely unscathed, of course, but Herr Doktor Koenig was gone, and all his equipment with him. He got blamed for the explosion, but it was still hardly my finest hour. Certain people in my family were very scathing.

And that was how I first met the wild witch Molly Metcalf.

The last mission we b.u.t.ted heads on was the case of the Pendragon reborn. It seemed like every precog and medium in the country worth her salt was excitedly reporting the return of the Pendragon: that Arthur had been reincarnated and would soon start to remember who he really was. And so the race was on to find him, with all sides ready to claim him as their own.

And brainwash the poor sod to their particular cause, Molly interrupted.

Well, quite, I said.

Anyway, my family always has the best information, and the Pendragon reborn was quickly identified as one Paul Anderson, a young advertising executive based in Devon. As it turned out, the only Drood agent in that area was still incapacitated after a very unfortunate incident involving one of the local powers, Joan the Wad, so I was sent down to fill in on the grounds that I was the only field agent not currently working in a case. The family couldn't teleport me there in case such a magic was detected and gave away our interest. So I had to take the train down from London to Devon, and it's a h.e.l.l of a long journey.

The family wouldn't even spring for a first-cla.s.s ticket.

But I got to Paul Anderson first, explained the situation as best I could, showed him my armour to prove I wasn't crazy, and persuaded him to come back to the Hall with me, for further testing. Just to make sure he was the real deal. (You'd be amazed how many pretenders to the throne turn up every century. And don't even get me started about the b.l.o.o.d.y Fisher King.) Paul was actually rather relieved. Apparently he'd been having recurring and very vivid dreams of knights in armour clashing bloodily on heaving battlefields, which was a bit disturbing for a young advertising executive with prospects.

And then Molly turned up. Yelled for Paul to get the h.e.l.l away from me, called me a liar and a fascist stooge to my face, and then backed Paul up against the wall of his own living room while she hit him with all her best arguments. I argued my corner just as fiercely, and soon Molly and I were shouting right into each other's faces. Unfortunately, all we succeeded in doing was confusing the c.r.a.p out of Paul, who yelled for both of us to get out of his house and his life and never come back. Molly wasn't used to being out-shouted, so she lashed out at Paul with one of her best resolution spells, forcing his inherited core personality to the surface.

And that was when it all went to h.e.l.l in a handcart.

The spell hit something inside Paul Anderson, expanded out of all control, and blew up the cottage we were standing in. At first I really thought Molly and I had done it again, but when the smoke cleared the three of us were all standing safe and sound in the ruins of the cottage. Me in my armour, Molly inside her protective shield, and Paul Anderson in blackened and tattered clothing but with a whole new look on his face. Molly seized the moment to attack me, determined that the Droods would not control and influence this Pendragon reborn. I fought back, of course, and while the two of us were distracted, the new Pendragon just walked away, into the night.

The first hint Molly and I got that something had gone terribly wrong was when the forest on the hill behind the cottage exploded. We stopped trying to kill each other and looked around, and for as far as I could see the whole horizon was on fire, as century-old trees burned brightly against the night sky. The flames leapt up high, fierce and malevolent, driven by more than natural forces. Molly and I agreed to a very temporary truce and went up the hill to see what the h.e.l.l was going on. I'll never forget my first sight of the man who had been Paul Anderson, transformed and transfigured, standing laughing in the flames, untouched by the terrible heat, chanting ancient and awful spells in a forgotten tongue.

Turned out the precogs and mediums had only got it half right, as usual. Paul Anderson was a Pendragon reborn, all right, but not Arthur. Paul was Mordred, son of Arthur, back again to spread his malice in the world.

Molly and I approached him cautiously. We both knew who he was, who he had to be. I was already thinking seriously about calling in reinforcements. If Mordred had come into his full power, he was way out of my league. Fortunately, Molly's spell had brought him back prematurely, and he was still pretty confused. Or he'd never have launched such a basic attack spell at my armour. The armour reflected the spell right back at him and blew his as yet unprotected human form to pieces. Nothing left of him but b.l.o.o.d.y gobbets, spread over a wide area.

Molly disappeared while I was organising a force to deal with the forest fire.

And the family were really scathing about this one.

That was pretty much the pattern, down the years. Molly and I would show up to claim some important person or prize, always on different sides of every argument, more than ready to kill each other to prevent the other from getting away with the prize or the person. Sometimes I won, sometimes she did, but I'd say honours were about even, on the whole. I can't say I ever really hated her, and I was relieved to discover she felt the same way. It was only ever business for both of us; just the job, nothing personal. Except in a strange way I guess it became personal. There's nothing like repeatedly trying to kill someone to really get to know them, and admire them. To appreciate their qualities.

"How many people have you killed, Eddie?" Molly said finally, hugging her knees to her chest.

I shrugged. The question didn't make me feel uncomfortable, as such. It just wasn't anything I ever thought about. "I stopped counting years ago. You?"

"Surprisingly few, all things considered. It's a big thing to kill someone. You don't just kill who they are, but everyone they might have become, and everything they might have done."

"Sometimes that's the point," I said. It was important to me that she understood. That I was an agent, not an a.s.sa.s.sin. "I like to think I've only ever killed in self-defence, or to protect the world. To prevent future suffering or killing. But in the end...my job was just to do whatever my family told me to do. And I did, because I trusted them. If they told me someone needed killing, I always a.s.sumed they must have a good reason. In my defence, I would say that mostly they were right, and obviously so. I have killed some really evil b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, in my time. I could give you names..."

"I probably already know them," said Molly. "You have quite a reputation, Eddie."

"Yes. I was proud of it, once. But not just as a killer, I hope?"

"Well...mostly. You never were the subtlest of agents, Eddie."

"Lot you know," I said airily. "Most of the jobs I did, I was in and out and never left a trace. That's the mark of a good agent: to get the job done, and no one ever knows you were there."

"If you say so," said Molly, smiling. "But...did you never question any of your orders? Any of your a.s.signments?"

"Why should I? They were my family. We were all raised to fight the good fight, to protect the world, to see ourselves as heroes in the greatest game of all. Family was the one thing you could depend on, in an untrustworthy world. So I killed the people they told me to. And if sometimes I wasn't happy about what I did...I learned to live with it."

"That's why you live alone," said Molly. "Apart from family, who could hope to understand the things we do?"

We sat quietly for a while, listening to Enya sing on the portable CD player. From outside came the low murmur of the wind, the sounds of the water and the wharf, and the distant rumble of city traffic. A whole world going on, just as always, not knowing that everything had changed. But that...was for tomorrow. I could feel my body slowly relaxing, winding down from a day I thought would never end.

"So," Molly said finally. "What do we do next? What can we do next?"

"I don't know," I said honestly. "I've learned a lot I didn't know, but not the one thing I needed to know. Why my family threw me to the wolves. Why I've been declared rogue from a family I served faithfully all my life. Why my own grandmother is so determined to see me dead. I must have done something, but I'm d.a.m.ned if I know what. I mean, I know now why my family have hung on to power for so long. I know what the Drood family business really is. But it's not like I knew or even suspected any of this before today."

"Have you considered contacting other members of your family who've gone rogue?" Molly said suddenly. "Would you like to? I mean, if nothing else, they should be able to give you some solid hints on how to hide from your family, how to survive on your own, out in the world."

I thought about that. I still had a definite distaste for the word rogue, even though I was one now. There had always been rogues, throughout family history. Certain individuals who threw off family authority and ran away into the world. Or had been driven out, for good reason. Their names were struck from the family genealogy, and no one was permitted to mention them, ever again. Even now, back in the Hall, someone was removing all traces of my existence, and everyone who ever knew me would be instructed never to use my name again. Even my uncle Jack and my uncle James would go along. For the family. Rogues were worse than treacherous; they were an embarra.s.sment. And so they spent their lives hiding in deep cover, to avoid being hunted down and killed.

"The only rogue I've ever known," I said slowly, "was the b.l.o.o.d.y Man, Arnold Drood. Evil little s.h.i.t. You know what he did? With the children? I can't believe how he was able to hide it for so long...Anyway, the family told me what he'd done and where he was hiding, and I went straight there and killed him." A horrid thought struck me, and I looked anxiously at Molly. "They told me...but was it really true? Did I kill an innocent man?"

"No," Molly said quickly, patting me comfortingly on the arm. "Relax, Eddie. He really did do all the awful things everyone said he did. Your family weren't the only ones on the b.l.o.o.d.y Man's trail. But only one of you could get to him despite his armour." She considered me thoughtfully for a moment. "How did you manage to kill him, Eddie?"