For Heaven's Eyes Only sh-5

by Simon R. Green

  Molly and Isabella appeared immediately behind me, grabbed me in their arms and teleported me out. And the last thing I heard was Roger Morningstar’s infernal laughter.

  CHAPTER NINE

  For a Moment There, I Thought We Might Be in Trouble

  Glad as I was to be waving good-bye to the Satanists’ little get-together, of all the places Molly and Isabella might have teleported me to, a Drood Council meeting in the Sanctity . . . wouldn’t even have made my top ten. But still, when the glare of the teleport died down, there Molly and I were, standing right in front of the council table, facing a somewhat startled Sarjeant-at-Arms, the Armourer, Harry and . . . William the Librarian. The Sarjeant went from startled to shocked to a state of utter outrage, where his face went a shade of purple not normally seen in nature. Unless you’re thinking of a baboon’s arse, which mostly I try not to. The Armourer cracked a big smile, and actually dropped me a brief wink. Harry looked at me disapprovingly, but then, he always did. While William . . . considered me thoughtfully, his expression surprisingly cool and collected. He was also a whole lot better dressed than usual, in that he looked like he might actually have dressed himself, for once. The Sarjeant glared at Molly and me.

  “Just once, I would appreciate it if you could find the common courtesy to use the bloody door, like everyone else!”

  “Boring,” said Molly. “I don’t do ordinary, and I have never been like everyone else.”

  “One of your many charms,” I said. “And thanks for the rescue.”

  “Rescue?” said the Armourer. “Are we to take it something went wrong with your infiltration of the Satanists’ meeting?”

  “Pretty much everything that could go wrong did,” I said.

  “Hold it,” said Molly, looking quickly around her. “Where’s Isabella?”

  “She was right there with you when you arrived to grab me,” I said. “Was she supposed to appear here with you?”

  “Well, I assumed . . . We were both hovering nearby in London Undertowen, waiting for the Satanists’ shields to drop long enough for us to jump in and haul you away. . . . We didn’t bother to discuss things. I suppose she must have decided she wouldn’t be welcome here.” She scowled at the Sarjeant. “Wonder where she could have got that idea.”

  “I’m sure she’ll turn up,” I said soothingly. “Whether we like it or not.”

  “Yeah, that’s Isabella for you.” Molly beamed at me suddenly. “Hey, I rescued you!”

  I sighed. “You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?”

  “Never,” Molly said happily.

  “He was letting me go, you know.”

  She snorted loudly. “That’s what he said. . . .”

  “Enough!” said the Sarjeant-at-Arms, slamming one huge fist on the table. “I want your report, Edwin! I want to know everything that happened at the Satanists’ meeting, everything that went wrong, and why a Drood in full armour needed to be rescued!”

  There are some things you can’t put off indefinitely, and one of them is the breaking of bad news. I armoured down, and then Molly and I drew up chairs and sat down at the table, and I filled the council in on all that I’d learned in Under Parliament. Including Roger Morningstar’s presence, his important position in the conspiracy, and his explanation of the true nature of the coming Great Sacrifice. No one on the council said anything, but all of them listened intently. They couldn’t keep the emotions out of their faces. They were appalled, disgusted, outraged; but in the end they all showed nothing but a cold determination. Because we are Droods, and we know our duty: to seek out the evil forces that threaten Humanity and put a stop to them. Whatever it takes; whatever it costs us.

  “But who’s behind all this?” the Armourer said finally. “Alexandre Dusk was the front man at Lightbringer House, but bad as he is, he’s not top rank and never has been. And while Roger was the main speaker at Under Parliament, there’s no way he could be in charge of the conspiracy. So who’s running things? Who came up with the idea of the Great Sacrifice, and then arranged the necessary threats and pressures to make all the governments of the world go along with it?”

  “No one at the meeting knew,” said Molly. “And it wasn’t for lack of trying to find out.”

  “I still can’t believe Roger could have betrayed us all,” said Harry. He was trying to sound calm and professional, like everyone else, but his heart wasn’t in it. He took off his wire-rimmed spectacles and rubbed at his forehead tiredly. He was sitting slumped in his chair, as though he’d taken a hit. “He couldn’t do this to us. He wouldn’t! He must be working undercover, trying to bring them down from inside. . . .”

  “I’m sorry, Harry,” I said, and I really was. “I don’t think so.”

  “You never liked him!” Harry yelled at me, his face flushed with anger and something else. “You were one of those who wanted to split us up because . . . just because he was what he was. . . .”

  He stopped, on the edge of tears he refused to shed in front of us. No one said anything. In the end, surprisingly, it was Molly who tried to comfort him.

  “I cared for him, too, once. He did have . . . admirable qualities. But we always knew what he was, what he really was. . . .”

  “Once a hellspawn,” said the Sarjeant-at-Arms.

  “Shut up!” said Harry. “I don’t want to hear it! You didn’t know him! You never even tried to understand him!”

  He jumped to his feet, turned his back on us all and stormed out of the Sanctity, slamming the door behind him. We all looked at one another, but there was nothing we could usefully say, so we returned to the more pressing business at hand. Harry would come around. Or he wouldn’t. Either way, we’d deal with it.

  “The truly disturbing part of all this is how far and how deep the conspiracy’s control goes,” said the Sarjeant. “All the governments, all the leaders in the world? Not one holdout? How long has this been going on? How could we have missed this?”

  “In our defence, we have been rather busy of late,” said the Armourer. “And it is the nature of conspiracies to go unnoticed.”

  “The question we have to consider,” said the Sarjeant, scowling harshly, “is how far does the corruption go?”

  “Anyone can be bought,” said William, in a surprisingly reasonable voice. “Anyone can be persuaded, bribed, threatened. Even possessed, I suppose, in this case. We are facing an enemy with no restraint and no moral convictions, who will do absolutely anything to get what they want. You can’t trust anyone anymore. . . .”

  “Am I going to have to scan the whole family again?” said the Armourer.

  “I think we can see Roger as a separate case,” I said. “Given who and what his mother was. And anyway, how could you scan a mind for evil intentions?”

  “Hmmm. Yes,” said the Armourer. “Tricky. Not impossible, necessarily, but definitely tricky . . .” And he sat back to think about it.

  Sometimes I think my uncle Jack is the scariest Drood of all.

  “Roger mentioned a new machine that could directly influence people’s thoughts,” I said. “Apparently they’ve already carried out basic testing, with encouraging results. Roger implied this new machine could quite definitely give people’s minds a good solid nudge in the wanted direction. On a worldwide basis. Do we have anything like that, Uncle Jack?”

  “Of course not,” said the Sarjeant-at-Arms. “Or we’d be using it on a daily basis.”

  “Can I mention free will and individual freedom?” said William.

  “Of course,” said the Sarjeant. “Feel free to mention it, and I’ll feel free to use anything that would prevent a horror like the Great Sacrifice.”

  “If the machine really doesn’t exist,” I said, “Roger could have been blowing smoke up their arses to impress the faithful. But if it does . . . could we perhaps come up with something to block the effect: some kind of counterbroadcast?”

  “Without knowing what this machine is?” said the Armourer. “Without knowing how it wo
rks, or how it does what it does? You want me to set up a counterbroadcast that would cover the whole world? Hmmm. Tricky. I’ll have to think about it.”

  I raised my voice to address the rosy red glow suffusing the Sanctity. “Ethel?”

  “I’m here, Eddie. I’m glad you got back safely. I could see what was happening in Under Parliament, but I couldn’t reach you. Such a tacky gathering, confusing bad taste with spiritual evil.”

  “Can you do anything to stop this?” I said bluntly. “Could you prevent this Great Sacrifice from taking place?”

  “You’re asking me to intervene directly?” said Ethel.

  “I don’t like to,” I said. “But with so much at stake . . .”

  “The children,” said the Sarjeant-at-Arms. “We have to save the children. We can’t let our pride get in the way of that. I’ll beg if I have to.”

  “Right,” said William. “This is more important than us.”

  “And that’s precisely why I can’t intervene,” said Ethel. “I’m your guardian angel, not your god. This is your world, your reality. I have given you weapons with which to fight evil. But I won’t fight your fights for you. Or that would be the end of free will for your whole species. I have made a great effort to stay out of your affairs, to be an observer and adviser, for fear of upsetting the natural balance of your reality. I will not save you. You must save yourselves.”

  “And if we fail?” said William.

  There was a long pause, and then Ethel said, “I will mourn your passing.”

  Everyone at the table looked at everyone else, but no one felt like saying anything. I cleared my throat.

  “So, how can we best take the fight to these bastards? I’ve had enough of tiptoeing around the conspiracy, gathering information. We know all we need to know. We have to hit these evil little shits hard, before they can set up the necessary conditions for the Great Sacrifice!”

  “Know thy enemy,” said William.

  “Fine,” I said. “Go do your research in the Old Library. Find out things we can use against them. Sarjeant, how can we hurt them?”

  “Give me a target,” said the Sarjeant, “and I’ll throw Droods at them till every single member of the conspiracy is dead. The problem with Satanists is that they can be anyone, anywhere, hiding within respectable institutions, using innocents as human shields.”

  “Isabella did a lot of thinking about that,” said Molly. “She said . . . she thought she knew someone who might be able to at least point her in the direction of the conspiracy’s headquarters.”

  “Did she mention a name?” I said.

  “No. But then, Iz has contacts everywhere.”

  “Call her,” I said. “Contact her. Now.”

  But before any of us could do anything, Isabella was suddenly right there in the room with us, standing at the end of the table. She was a mental sending, not a physical presence. Her image was vague and unstable, semitransparent, trembling as though bothered by some harsh-blowing aetheric wind.

  The Sarjeant slammed his fist on the table again and looked seriously upset.

  “How the hell do you keep appearing inside Drood Hall, despite all the defences and protections I have put in place precisely to keep out persons like you?”

  Isabella looked at me. “Haven’t you told him yet?”

  The Sarjeant looked at me suspiciously. “Told me? Told me what, Eddie?”

  “Later,” I said. “Iz, where have you been?”

  “Going back and forth in the world, and walking up and down in it,” Isabella said calmly. “Talking to people. Making them talk to me. I found a certain person who was only too willing to tell me what I wanted to hear, after a certain amount of physical persuasion. A charming little rogue called Charlatan Joe.”

  “I know him,” I said immediately. “Not sure I’d agree with the description. Joe’s a city slicker, a confidence trickster. A sleazy adventurer who never met a mark he couldn’t shaft. But it’s surprising how often he’s in the right place to overhear things that matter. . . .”

  “Exactly,” said Isabella. Her sending shifted and trembled, as seethrough as any ghost for a moment, and her mouth moved with no sound reaching us, until she suddenly snapped back into focus again. “By being somewhere he really shouldn’t have been, while doing something anyone could have told him was a bad idea, dear Joe overheard something so big, so important and so shocking that it scared the crap out of him. So he dropped into a deep hole and pulled it in after him, determined to disappear until what he knew wouldn’t matter anymore. Except I can find anyone when I put my mind to it. And I know more about the darker magics than he ever dreamed of. I found him and made him cry, and after I’d wiped his nose for him he couldn’t wait to tell me everything he knew. To be exact: where the next big meeting of the satanic conspiracy leaders will be taking place. Not the upper echelons, like Alexandre Dusk and Roger Morningstar, but the guys at the very top.

  “You haven’t got much time, Molly, Eddie. . . . It’s three hours from now, and they won’t be there for long. According to Charlatan Joe, they’re there to witness the first wide-range test of the mind-influencing machine on a city full of unsuspecting people.”

  “Okay, that’s it,” I said. “We have to go right now. A full-on preemptive strike, a whole army of Droods led by all the field agents we can round up at such short notice. Hit the bastards hard when they’re not expecting it, stamp them into the ground, take out the machine and capture all the conspiracy leaders in one go.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me,” said the Sarjeant-at-Arms. “Three hours . . . Give me one hour, Eddie, to put a strike force together. It’ll have to be a really good size; we can’t know how many ground troops there’ll be, or what kind of weapons they might have. But we can do this. We can stop the conspiracy dead before they even get a chance to start the Great Sacrifice. Where are they, Isabella? Where are they meeting?”

  “The setting is a deconsecrated cathedral at Glastonbury,” said Isabella. “Apparently it was turned into a hotel decades ago. It’s been completely refurbished as the Cathedral Hotel; runs business courses, that sort of thing. The conspiracy’s booked the whole hotel under different names, so you don’t have to worry about any innocents being involved.”

  “Sounding better all the time,” said the Sarjeant.

  “A deconsecrated cathedral,” said the Armourer. “These old-time Satanists do love their traditional touches. For masters of evil they can be surprisingly sentimental about such things.”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” said William. “And for the record—I can’t believe I’m being the calm voice of reason here—can I remind you, Eddie, the last times you went head-to-head with the Satanists didn’t go too well, did they? You were run out of Lightbringer House, and you had to be rescued from Under Parliament. You were lucky to get out alive even with your Drood armour. We need to talk about this. And yes, I know that phrase is dripping with irony where I’m concerned, but . . .”

  “We don’t have time for academic discussions,” said the Sarjeant. “Three hours, remember? You think; we’ll organise.”

  “Don’t worry, William,” I said. “This time we’ll be going in mobhanded, at the head of an army of armoured Droods. Like we did with the Immortals at Castle Frankenstein. The Satanists won’t know what’s hit them till it’s far too late.”

  “I still don’t like it,” the Librarian said stubbornly. “Violence is playing their game.”

  “Then we’ll have to play it better than them,” said the Sarjeant. “Isabella, what else can you tell us . . . ?”

  But she was gone, not even a wisp of presence left at the end of the table. Molly tried to reach her, to regain contact, but couldn’t. She frowned unhappily.

  “It’s not like she’s blocking me out; it’s as though she isn’t even there. Something’s wrong.”

  “Maybe she thought someone else might be listening in,” I said. “She wouldn’t want to risk giving the game away.”

>   “Yes,” said Molly. “That makes sense.” But she didn’t sound happy about it.

  The Sarjeant hurried off to organise the troops. The Armourer wandered off to go think destructive thoughts in the Armoury. William waited till they were gone, and then took me to one side for a few private words.

  “I’ve been feeling a lot better since Ammonia Vom Acht’s . . . intervention,” he said. “My thoughts are clearer than they’ve been in . . . well, I don’t know how long.”

  “I had noticed,” I said.

  “I wanted to ask you about her. Ammonia.” The Librarian gave me a look I wasn’t sure I understood. “A most remarkable woman.”

  “Remarkable,” I said.

  “Excellent mind. There was a certain amount of . . . transfer, you see, when she made contact with my thoughts. She really was very impressive.”

  “Impressive,” I said.

  “So, you see, I was wondering . . .”

  “She’s married,” I said.

  “Ah. Of course she is.” He nodded slowly. “The best ones always are, aren’t they?”

  He strode off, back to the Old Library, and I genuinely didn’t know what to think.

  Over the next hour, the Sarjeant-at-Arms ran himself ragged all over Drood Hall, gathering up volunteers from every section and department, putting together a small army of more than a hundred Droods for his strike force. It was all I could do to keep up with him. Give the man his due: He’s good at his job. And if there’s a big fight on, there’s no one else in the family you’d rather follow into danger and sudden death, because you know he’ll move Heaven and Earth not only to get the job done, but to bring you back safely as well. All Droods are trained to fight from an early age, but few ever realistically expect to see action. Recent events—in the Hungry Gods war, and with the Accelerated Men attack—had changed all that. A lot of previously purely academic Droods had had to go out and fight, and much to everyone’s surprise they found they had a taste for direct intervention. So when the Sarjeant went looking for volunteers, he found them everywhere.