“Thank you,” I said.
She glanced back at the old house, which stood silhouetted against the night sky and the stars. “You were wrong, Eddie. It’s not the end of the road. It’s still a home, to the Caretaker. What more proof do you need that there’s still hope?”
I smiled, and nodded. Because she still needed to believe that.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Haunted by the Past
Some of us are haunted by the past, and some of us are hunted by it. Because it’s not just the things we do that define our lives, but also the people whose lives we destroy along the way. Often without even meaning to. But then, no one ever said being the good guy was going to be easy. Or everyone would be doing it.
* * *
“So,” I said to Molly, trying for a confidence and cheerful attitude I really wasn’t feeling, “how do we get to this Deep Down Pit?”
“There is only one way,” said Molly. “When it feels like the whole world wants you dead, it helps to have only the one entrance point to worry about. So we blew up all the entrances to the mine, collapsed the main tunnels, and spread nasty rumours about poison gases, rock falls, and hauntings, to keep people away. We did everything short of putting up a large sign, Entering this mine can cause erectile dysfunction and exploding haemorrhoids. The only way into the Deep Down Pit is by teleport.”
“Like Under the Mountain,” I said.
“Exactly. Some techniques are just classic. Unless you know the correct passWords, you can’t even find the arrival point.”
“You and your friends clearly put a lot of thought into this,” I said. “Along with blind terror and blatant paranoia.”
“We needed to feel safe,” said Molly. “The point is, we’re going to have to try the Merlin Glass again.”
“Just when you think the day can’t get any worse . . . ,” I said.
I took the Glass out and held it up before me. Molly leaned in close, and we both studied the hand mirror carefully. When it wanted, the Glass could look remarkably innocent.
“Do you have any idea why sometimes it works and sometimes it just thumbs its nose at you?” said Molly.
“Pure cussedness,” I said. “I’m sure if only I could listen in on the right frequency, I could hear it sniggering. But I . . . have had enough.” I brought the mirror in close, so my face filled the reflection. I looked more than usually tired and angry, and not at all like someone it would be wise to mess with. “Listen to me, Glass. Either you behave properly this time, or you are going over that cliff edge and into the ocean. Because if I can’t trust you to do what I need, when I need you to do it, then I can’t see a single reason why I should hang on to you.”
“I love it when you get all masterful,” said Molly.
“No you don’t,” I said.
“I was being supportive!”
“Well, assuming that I have just successfully intimidated a Glass made by the most dangerous sorcerer who ever lived, I’m going to need the exact spatial coordinates for the Deep Down Pit’s arrival point.”
“Don’t look at me,” said Molly. “I haven’t got a clue. All I ever needed were the right passWords, and then my teleport spell would lock on and take me there.”
“Okay . . . ,” I said. “That should still work. Concentrate on the passWords, and the Glass will pick them out of your head and do the rest for us.”
“You’re kidding me!” said Molly. “That thing can read minds?” She scowled at the hand mirror suspiciously, and I moved it just a little out of her reach. Molly has always had impulse-control problems.
“Trust me,” I said. “That’s not even in the top ten of the most disturbing things the Merlin Glass can do.”
“Now you tell me . . . ,” said Molly.
She frowned, concentrating on security protocols from years past. When both the good guys and the bad guys wanted her dead, often with good reason. My face in the hand mirror disappeared, replaced by an impenetrable darkness. I frowned and moved the Glass back and forth, but the scene it was showing didn’t change.
“Really don’t like the look of that,” I said.
“What else were you expecting to see?” said Molly. “The depths of an old abandoned mine?”
“This just gets better and better,” I said. “Any shields and protections in place that we need to worry about?”
“No,” said Molly. “We figured they’d just attract attention.”
“But what if one of you has talked since then?” I said. “Or was made to talk?”
“Unlikely. But even so . . . we filled most of the tunnels with booby traps, deadfalls, and really unpleasant surprises. We weren’t there to enjoy scenic walks, after all; just hole up until the heat died down, or people forgot why they were mad at us. Or decided they needed us to do something for them that no one else could.”
“And these booby traps . . .”
“Are probably still in place.”
“Better and better . . .”
“Stop complaining and get on with it,” Molly said ruthlessly.
I shook the hand mirror out to Door size, and the Glass obeyed without any problems or hesitations. As though keen to demonstrate how cooperative it was being. The Door hung on the air before us, still showing nothing but a darkness deeper than the night. It was like looking into the depths between the stars.
“I’m still not sure about this . . . ,” I said.
Molly put a hand on the small of my back and gave me a good hard shove. Sending me stumbling forward, into the dark on the other side of the Door.
* * *
I reached out instinctively with both hands as I left the light behind me, but there was nothing there. Just a hard floor under my feet, and a sharp drop in temperature. I shuddered briefly. The air was stale and dusty. Molly barged into me from behind, and I almost cried out.
“Stay put,” she said while I was still persuading my heart to start beating again. “I want to make sure we’re in the right place.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said with great certainty.
A sullen glow appeared on the air next to me, surrounding Molly’s upraised hand. A dim, anaemic glow, not much more than the last gasp of a dying firefly. But enough to show the strain on Molly’s face as she dredged up the last scraps of magic left in her.
“Impressive,” I said solemnly. Because the last thing she needed was me being considerate.
“Oh shut up,” she said. “Make the most of it; it won’t last.”
She held her hand up as high as it would go, to spread the dim glow around, but it didn’t have the strength to travel far. I was just able to make out a medium-sized room, with a bare floor, rough stone walls, and a disturbingly low ceiling. Some uncomfortable-looking furniture, two tall standing cupboards, and some abandoned workstations with dusty papers still scattered across them. A stained and curling poster, still clinging stubbornly to one wall, proclaimed, Smash the system. Any system. Heavy shadows surrounded Molly’s flickering light as though the room didn’t want to be seen too clearly. I turned to the Merlin Glass behind me, and it immediately shrank back down and shot forward to nestle into my hand. I put it away.
“As safe houses go, this had better be very safe,” I said.
“Don’t start,” said Molly.
“Come on; it’s not exactly luxurious, is it?”
“It’s a hideout, not a holiday home. And it’s been abandoned for years. What were you expecting—a rocket base inside a hollowed-out volcano?”
“Just once, it would be nice,” I said wistfully. “What was this, originally?”
“Some kind of storeroom, back when this was a working mine,” said Molly. “All we cared about was that it was a long way from the surface.”
I avoided looking at the low ceiling, because I really didn’t want to think about the tons of rock pressing down above
us. I moved carefully forward, doing my best not to trip over anything. Not sure what I was looking for, or even if there was anything worth looking for, but trying to show a polite interest. Molly opened one of the cupboards and rooted energetically through the packed shelves, picking things up and throwing them aside, while the light around her upraised hand rose and fell as her concentration wavered.
“What are you looking for?” I said.
“Something I left here,” said Molly, not even glancing back at me. “A little insurance, in case I ever had to come back. I’ve left useful bits and pieces scattered across abandoned hiding places all over the world . . . Ah! Yes!”
She turned around, grinning broadly, and held up a very familiar-looking blood-red stone.
“A vampire jewel!” Molly said triumphantly. “Told you I’d seen one before.”
“So you did,” I said. “But what use is that going to be? If you’re planning to drain some life energy out of me, I feel I should remind you there’s a hole in my bucket.”
“It’s all right, sweetie; I haven’t forgotten why we’re here. I left some magics stored in this jewel, in case I ever needed a recharge in a hurry.”
She closed her hand tightly around the crimson stone, and her other hand blazed with a sudden fierce light. Enough to fill the whole room. Molly whooped loudly, while I had to turn my head away.
“All right, I’m impressed! Now dial it down; you’re blinding me!”
She reduced the light to a bearable level, still smirking, and pocketed the vampire jewel while I took another look at our surroundings. They hadn’t improved. Still resolutely cheap and shabby, like the kind of boarding house where you just know the water is always going to be cold. And that there will always be something lurking at the bottom of the communal toilet bowl. But I did spot a light switch on the wall beside me. I reached out and threw the switch, and a single hanging light bulb came on, dispensing a surprisingly warm and comfortable glow. Molly and I looked at it, and then at each other. She dismissed her magical light and lowered her hand.
“Have you got your own generator down here?” I said.
“Well, yes, we used to,” she said. “But I can’t believe it’s still working after all these years.”
“Unless someone’s been maintaining it,” I said.
We both nodded slowly as the same thought came to us. I lowered my voice before I spoke again, and Molly moved in close.
“Could there still be somebody here?” I said.
“There shouldn’t be,” said Molly. “We all abandoned this dump the moment we had our own places. It was only ever intended as a stopgap, because we’d pissed off too many people. There’s nothing like being trapped in a confined space alongside people you’ve got hardly anything in common with, to make you truly desperate to get the hell away from them, first chance you get.”
“And there you have summed up my entire relationship with my family,” I said.
“But we always swore we’d never tell anyone else about this place,” said Molly. “In case we ever needed it again.”
“You told me,” I said.
“Because I had to!”
“Exactly,” I said. “Very old saying: Three people can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.”
“And not always then, in our line of work,” said Molly.
“Precisely,” I said. “Could one of your old associates have come back here? Or sent someone? Does everything in this room look as it should?”
Molly peered around her, taking her time. “It seems . . . just as grim and nasty and soul-destroyingly depressing as it always did. But then, needs must, when the Devil dogs your heels . . .”
There was no sign anyone had been here before us. A thick layer of dust lay over everything, apart from the floor. Which was surprisingly clean. And when I opened up the second cupboard, the shelves were packed with food and drink. In modern packaging, with current sell-by dates. Nothing particularly tempting; mostly generic health foods. High in nutrition, low on taste sensations. Bottled water, not even sparkling. All of it easy to prepare, and long-lasting. Enough to keep one person going for quite a while . . .
“I hadn’t heard anyone was here,” said Molly, frowning. “But then, I haven’t heard anything from most of these people in a long time. Even when we were hiding out together, we kept to ourselves, mostly. Minded our own business. All we ever had in common was our Cause.”
I nodded to the poster on the wall. “Smash the System?”
“It’s a dirty job,” said Molly, “but someone’s got to do it.”
“Okay,” I said. “I think you need to come clean with me, Molly. Who exactly are these old friends of yours that you’ve been so very careful not to name?”
“Because I knew you wouldn’t approve of them! And most of them were never friends; just colleagues. People with a common cause against common enemies. Like your family.”
“I need names, Molly. I need to know who or what we might be dealing with here.”
“All right! The Ghostly Gunman, the Fury, the Damned . . . people like that.”
“Wonderful,” I said. “Terrific! A hitman, a supernatural terrorist, and a complete bloody psychopath! These are the people you’ve called back to help me?”
“When your friends can’t help you, who is there left to turn to, except your enemies?” said Molly.
I had to smile, just a little. “All right, that does sound familiar. From the time we first got together, when I was on the run from my family.”
“You don’t have to trust these people,” said Molly. “I don’t trust most of them. But some were friends, and some were allies. We learned to stand up for one another, because the whole world was at our back and at our throats. You don’t forget connections like that.” She stopped, and scowled at the food and drink in the open cupboard. “This can’t be one of us. I would have heard!”
“You know what?” I said. “Whoever it is, it’s none of our business. If someone wants to hide out here, I say fine. We’re not here for them.”
“Right!” Molly said brightly. “We can just stop here and wait for the others to join us. I’m sure someone will be able to help you, Eddie. These were all very gifted, very knowledgeable people.”
“Who almost certainly won’t want to kill me in interesting and appalling ways, because I’m a Drood.”
“Don’t worry, sweetie. I’ll protect you.”
* * *
We arranged ourselves as best we could on the extremely uncomfortable chairs, and waited. After a while, for want of anything better to do, we fell to discussing old times. It always amazes me how far Molly and I have come, from the people we used to be. The loyal blunt instrument of an ancient family, and a second-generation freedom fighter with a mad on for the whole world.
“Do you miss the old days, Eddie?”
“When we were fighting on different sides?” I said. “And doing our best to kill each other on a regular basis?”
“Not so much that side of things,” said Molly. “I was thinking more about . . . when we were both so sure of what our side was. When you still had faith that everything you did for your family was always going to be right, and I still had faith in the rightness and necessity of my cause. When we both thought we were changing the world for the better, with everything we did.”
“When you were out to kill every authority figure in the world? Good or bad.”
“I had issues. And anyway, a girl should have ambition.” Molly sighed heavily. “Life was so much easier then, for both of us. When we never had to question anything.”
“Easier isn’t always better,” I said.
“Ignorance can be bliss.”
“It’s still ignorance.”
“We did have some good times, though,” Molly insisted. “Come on; admit it.”
“It was more like a game then,”
I said. “But still the kind of game where people could get hurt. And not always the people who should get hurt.”
“You remember it your way; I’ll remember it mine,” said Molly. “As far as I’m concerned, they were all great adventures!”
“Yes,” I said kindly. “I suppose they were.”
Each of us, in his own way, was trying to comfort the other. We sat some more, and waited some more. Talking listlessly about this and that. I shifted uncomfortably on my chair and glanced at my watch.
“Shouldn’t some of your friends have turned up by now?”
“Yes,” said Molly, frowning. “Somebody should have.”
“You want to try contacting them individually, on your special little fairy phone?”
“No,” she said. “They’ll either turn up, or they won’t. You can’t talk these people into anything. They’re not exactly amenable to reason. Bribery, maybe.”
“I could always threaten them with my family,” I said. “That usually works.”
“Not this bunch,” said Molly. “They’ll come in spite of your being a Drood, but only because it’s me that’s asking.”
“Could they have arrived somewhere else?” I said. “Just how big is the Deep Down Pit?”
“Big,” said Molly. “The tunnels go on for miles. That was the point, so that even if our enemies did break in, they’d never be able to find us. The whole Pit is basically one big maze. But this room was always the designated arrival point. You have to enforce a certain discipline, when people are teleporting in and out.”
“But it would be possible for someone to arrive at some other point?” I said.
Molly frowned. “I suppose so. Why?”
“Because I think I just heard someone moving about,” I said quietly. “Right outside that door.”
We both rose silently from our chairs and moved over to stand by the room’s only door. It was so quiet, I could hear Molly breathing. She raised an eyebrow to me, asking if I could still hear anything. I shook my head. I took a careful hold of the door handle, and it turned easily in my grasp; but when I tried to open the door, it was locked. I armoured up and all but tore the door out of its frame as I hauled it open.
Secret Histories 10: Dr. DOA Page 30
