I crowded him up against the bar so he had nowhere to go, and then he took a terrible beating from my golden fists. I hit him again and again, but he wouldn’t fall. I beat him horribly, saw his blood fly and heard his bones break; but he wouldn’t cry out and he wouldn’t stop fighting. There were no spikes on my gloves, no extruded blades. I didn’t want to kill him. But in the end, because he wouldn’t give in, I ran out of patience. I moved in close, broke his ribs and his collarbone and then both his arms. And as his arms hung uselessly at his sides, I clubbed him to the ground with blow after blow to the head. His cowl protected him from the worst. At least, I hoped it did.
He made one hell of a good showing, like the hero he was. But he never should have got between a Drood and his prey.
I looked at him, sitting slumped on the floor with his back to the bar, his chin resting on his chest, blood streaming from his crushed nose and mouth. Blood bubbles formed from one nostril, and I hoped a rib hadn’t pierced his lung. He was my friend, but I was too angry, too coldly determined, to be stopped. I’d apologise to him later. I’d care about what I’d done later. I had to have some measure of revenge for what had been done to Harry and Roger. Because I’d left them there to die. Because I hadn’t gone back to rescue them, like I promised. Because I’d never liked them. And because revenge was all that was left. All I could do for them. I had to do something. . . . If you can’t hurt the ones you hate, hurt the ones you can reach.
I looked around at the remaining patrons of the Wulfshead Club, huddled together in tight little groups, staring at me as though I were the monster.
“Go,” I said. “Leave. I’m not here for you.”
They left as fast as they could. Charlatan Joe called pitifully after them, but no one even looked back. They’d seen a Drood in his anger, the monster was loose, and they wanted nothing to do with him. Joe made a small move toward the nearest exit, but I was already there, blocking his way. He cringed back against the bar. I looked over the bar, at the staff hiding there.
“Don’t interfere,” I said.
“No danger of that,” said the nearest bartender. “But you’d better be quick. The management knows what’s happening here. They’ll have already put in a call to the real security people. And you know who they are.”
I nodded. I knew. “The Roaring Boys.”
I turned to face Charlatan Joe, so close now I could reach out and touch him whenever I felt like it. He was so close his breath could have fogged up my mask. He was a pitiful sight: terrified, trembling, his features white and pinched, his eyes huge and rolling like those of a panicked animal. When I placed one golden hand on his shoulder, he cried out sharply and wet himself. The sudden smell of urine was shockingly clear on the still air. His legs started to buckle, and I had to hold his shoulder more firmly to keep him from collapsing.
He’d been my friend for years. We’d known good times together. And I had reduced him to this.
“Who gave you the information about the satanic conspiracy gathering at the Cathedral Hotel?” I said. “And who told you to pass it on to Isabella Metcalf?”
“Oh, God,” Charlatan Joe said miserably. “You know I can’t talk about that. They’d kill me!”
“What do you think I’ll do if you don’t?” I said. “Good Droods, good men, are dead because of you.”
“I didn’t know!” said Joe. “I just did what I was told! That’s what people like me do. I can’t tell you. . . .”
“I can make you tell me,” I said.
“You’re going to beat the information out of me? Torture me? Is that what Droods do these days?”
I’d had enough. I placed the tip of one golden finger in his left ear.
“Talk to me, Joe,” I said. “Or I will send razor-sharp filaments of my armour through your eardrum and into your brain and tear the truth right out of you. You’ll still be alive afterwards, but what’s left inside your head won’t be much use to you.”
I was bluffing, but Charlatan Joe didn’t know that. After everything he’d seen me do, he believed me. He started crying, great, shuddering sobs that racked his whole body. Snot ran out of his nose. I told myself I’d make it up to him later. Shaman Bond would make it up to him. But I think I knew, even then, that some things can never be undone.
“The source for the information was Sir Terrence Ashtree,” said Charlatan Joe, in between crying and gasping for breath. “Big man in the city. He’s part of this new satanic conspiracy. Because it’s good for business. He told me what to say to Isabella Metcalf when she came around. And how to tell it to her in such a way that she wouldn’t remember it until the conspiracy wanted her to remember. Ashtree. He’s your man. He’s the man you want. Not me . . .”
I didn’t ask him whether he’d been paid, or pressured, or even threatened into doing it. It didn’t matter.
I knew Terrence Ashtree. Part of an old business family, all of them leading lights in the establishment. Except that Terrence had never been all that successful in his own right. I didn’t know much about the man himself. That had always been Matthew’s territory, back when he was the main field agent in London, and I mopped up the crumbs that fell from his table. But then Matthew betrayed the family, and was killed by the family, and I became the main London agent. Which I thought was what I’d always wanted. Our dreams betray us by coming true.
I always meant to do a tour of all the big city names, and put the fear of God into them. But I’d barely made a start, only got as far as Ashtree, when the Hungry Gods war kicked off . . . and then there were the Immortals, and I was so busy. . . . City cases, business cases, seemed such small fry compared to the end of the world. Of course, that was before we found out what the bankers were really up to. . . .
Sir Terrence Ashtree, also known as Terry the Toad because of his complete willingness to screw over anybody in pursuit of a deal or because they were in his way. Not that his ruthlessness had ever done him much good, as such. Until recently . . . Word was, Terry the Toad was on the way up, a man to be reckoned with, which, at his middle age, was something of a surprise. Cutthroat business is a young man’s game. I’d been vaguely aware of changes in the city recently, but hadn’t paid it much attention. I hadn’t known about the satanic conspiracy then.
I turned my attention back to Charlatan Joe. He’d almost stopped crying. His eyes were red and puffy, his mouth loose and trembling.
“Where’s Isabella Metcalf right now?” I said.
“I don’t know! I don’t know! I swear, I don’t! The conspiracy has her; everyone knows that . . . but I don’t know anything! They don’t tell people like me things like that. If only so people like you can’t beat it out of people like me.”
He had a point. I stepped away from him, lowering my hand, and he almost collapsed in sheer relief. He smiled and nodded at me, eager to show his gratitude, and I almost wanted to hit him for being so pathetic. For making me feel like such a monster.
“Why?” I said. “Why did a small-time con artist like you get in bed with the Satanists in the first place?”
“For the money,” said Charlatan Joe. “That’s what I do. And the money was really good. . . .”
Yes, I thought. That is what you do, what you’ve always done. The clue is in the name. I always knew what kind of man you were, all those years we were friends. What right have I to feel angry now?
“Vanish,” I said. “Go on; get out of here. Lose yourself somewhere in the great wide world where no one will think to look for you. Until the Droods and the Metcalf sisters finally forgive you.”
“But . . . that could take forever!” said Charlatan Joe.
“Yes,” I said. “But that’s all the mercy I have in me today.”
I took him to the nearest exit. Forced the door open with my armoured strength, so that it opened onto some back alley somewhere. Joe gaped at me.
“That isn’t supposed to be possible,” he said. “No one can open those doors, except the club owners. Everyone knows that.”
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“You’d be surprised what a Drood can do when he’s mad enough,” I said.
Charlatan Joe hurried through the open door, and I forced it shut behind him. I never saw him again.
I took out the Merlin Glass, activated it and opened up a doorway between the club and Drood Hall. Molly came straight through and I shut the Glass down. I didn’t want anyone else to see what I’d done. What I’d become. Molly looked quickly about her as I put the Glass away, taking in the dimly lit club, the wreckage, the bloody, unconscious forms of Bishop Beastly and the Indigo Spirit.
“Well,” she said. “You can always tell where a Drood’s been. . . . Eddie, what happened here?”
“I did,” I said. “You wanted answers, remember?”
Molly came forward to stand before me, and I armoured down. She put a hand to my face, and her fingers came away wet. I hadn’t realised I’d been crying.
“Oh, Eddie, what have you done?”
“Bad things,” I said. “Necessary things.”
“You did this to them? I thought they were your friends.”
“I’m not always a very good friend. Comes with the job.”
“Eddie,” said Molly, “this isn’t like you. I don’t like you like this.”
I looked at her, a sudden anger flushing my face. “I did this for you! You want your sister back, don’t you?”
“I want my Eddie back!”
“When it’s over,” I said. “I’ll be back when it’s over. Until then . . . it’s all about the conspiracy. I will do what I have to do to stop them. To save Humanity. To save the children.”
“You can’t fight evil with evil methods,” said Molly. “I should know. Fighting evil is supposed to bring out the best in us, not the worst.”
I managed a small smile. “Shouldn’t we be on opposite sides of this argument? Shouldn’t I be lecturing you on excessive behaviour?”
She came into my arms and hugged me tightly, and I hugged her back like a drowning man clinging to a straw. Molly finally pushed me away.
“We’ve been through a lot,” she said. “We need drinks. We need really big drinks.” She leaned over the bar and scowled down at the hiding bartenders. “You! Serial face! I want the finest wines in creation, all mixed together in one bloody big glass, shaken not stirred, with two curly-wurly straws.”
The bartender she was addressing shrugged helplessly. “If it were up to me, you could have one of everything, on the house, with a little parasol. But when the electromagnetic pulse went off, it shut down all the machinery. Management keeps all the booze in a pocket dimension attached to the bar, and with the systems down we can’t reach it. We can’t serve anything until management turns up and hits the reset button.”
“I hate you,” said Molly.
To take her mind off that, I filled her in on everything I’d learned from Charlatan Joe. It didn’t take long.
“That’s it?” said Molly. “Just one name? What about Isabella? Where are they holding her?”
“He said he didn’t know anything about that,” I said.
“And you believed him?”
“After what I did to him? Yes. You can’t make people tell you what they don’t know.”
“I can come bloody close,” Molly growled. “I can’t believe you let the little creep go.”
“We’ve got a new name,” I said. “A new lead, a new way into the conspiracy. Terry the Toad was an important member of the business establishment, even before he joined the conspiracy. Odds are he knows all kinds of important things. And names. Want to go have a word with him?”
“Try to stop me,” said Molly.
And then her head snapped round as she tried to look in every direction at once. “Did you feel that? What the hell was that? The whole atmosphere in this place changed. The temperature’s dropped; something’s sucking all the energy out of the room. . . . Something’s coming. Something bad.”
“The Wulfhead’s security,” I said. “The Roaring Boys.”
“Oh, shit,” said Molly. “Eddie, get the Glass working. Get it working right now, because I really don’t want to be here when they arrive. Even I have enough sense to be scared of the Roaring Boys.”
I already had the Merlin Glass out and activated. “I’m pretty sure I could take them,” I said. “But I think I’ve probably done enough damage here for one day.”
“This is no time to be getting cocky, Eddie! Get us the hell out of here!”
I opened a door between the club and a certain office deep in the city, and we both stepped quickly through into the outer office of Sir Terrence Ashtree. A terrible roaring sound filled the club on the other side of the mirror, wild and awful and full of fury, as something awful downloaded into the Wulfshead. I shut down the Glass. It almost seemed to fight me for a moment, as though something were trying to force it open from the other side; but the connection was quickly broken, and the Glass was only a hand mirror again. I put it away and joined Molly in checking out where we’d arrived.
My family would make apologies to the Wulfshead management. And they would accept, because we all have to do business together sometime.
We’d arrived in Ashtree’s outer office: fairly old, maybe even Victorian originally, with lots of heavy wood panelling on the walls, and really quite ugly furniture. The only modern touch was the highly efficient computer on the secretary’s desk. There was no one around. It was all very peaceful and quiet, and therefore worrying.
“I’ve been here before,” I said to Molly. “I’m sure Sir Terrence will remember me. Still . . . this is odd.”
“Odd?” Molly said immediately. “How odd?”
“This is the outer office, where the secretary makes you wait till Terry the Toad is ready to see you,” I said. “And like all bosses’ secretaries, she’s there to guard his privacy and her territory like an attack dog. So . . . where is she?”
We both looked at the empty desk. The computer was turned off; everything was neat and tidy, not even a half-finished cup of coffee.
“Let’s go see if Terry the Toad is in,” said Molly. “Since we’ve come all this way.”
“Yes,” I said. “Let’s do that. I’m sure we’ve got lots to talk about.”
The heavy door that led into Ashtree’s very private office wasn’t locked. I tried the handle carefully, mindful of booby traps, but it turned easily in my hand. I slammed the door all the way open with my shoulder, and Molly and I strode in. Ashtree was sitting quietly behind his desk, a tired old man in a crumpled suit, his face drawn, haggard. He didn’t so much as flinch when Molly and I made our entrance. He nodded to both of us slowly.
“I’ve been waiting for someone,” he said. “I knew somebody would come eventually. But I can’t say I recognise either of you.”
“Edwin Drood,” I said. “And Molly Metcalf.”
“Ah. Yes. Isabella’s sister. Please come in; make yourselves comfortable. I have so many things to say to you.”
I had a good look round his office, but there didn’t seem to be any hidden assassins crouching in the corners, so I pulled out a chair for Molly and then dropped easily into one beside her. Ashtree didn’t move at all, looking us over with tired curiosity.
“Edwin . . . Yes. I do remember you. . . . I was actually pleased to see you, you know. I never did get on with Matthew.”
“Not many did,” I said. “Do you know why we’re here?”
Of course. I’m surprised it’s taken you this long. I left a clear enough trail. I’m glad you’re here, so I can get this over with. I never wanted any of this, you know. It was . . . I’d struggled so long, trying to be the success in business I was supposed to be, even though I never had any taste for it. . . . But it was what my family wanted, so I went along. . . . You’d know all about that, Edwin. But I never got anywhere that mattered, or achieved anything of note, no matter how hard I tried. So when this new satanic conspiracy came looking for me, head-hunted me . . . I jumped at the chance. You do know about the . . . Of cou
rse you do. I didn’t think they were real, you see. . . . I mean, who believes in satanic conspiracies in this day and age? I thought it was like the old Hellfire Club, a chance to dress up and play games. . . .
Suddenly everything I touched was golden. I was the big man in the city my family had always wanted me to be. I had everything I’d ever wanted. I was happy, you see. Such a long time since I’d been happy . . . So when they told me to pass some information on to Charlatan Joe, I thought . . . Why not? Who’s Isabella Metcalf to me? I had to do it in a certain way, using some rather unpleasant magics, but . . . it was all playing the game; you see? I should have known better. Nothing’s ever simple or straightforward in the conspiracy. It’s all plans within plans, traps within traps. . . .
I was there when the conspiracy kidnapped Isabella. Snatched her right out of her own teleport spell. They have very powerful people working for them. She put up one hell of a fight. I was impressed. But the conspiracy people had all kinds of weapons and dirty tricks at their command, and they . . . wore her down. And when she was helpless, stripped of all her magics, they . . . did things to her. They hurt her horribly, broke her spirit, defiled and abused her . . . and laughed while they did it. They let me watch. It was their idea of a reward. They thought I’d enjoy it.
It sickened me.
“I couldn’t wait to get out of there. I thought I was a hard man, up for anything . . . but to my surprise, it seems there was a good man inside all along, struggling to get out. There was a line I wouldn’t cross. I couldn’t help Isabella, but I couldn’t stand by and watch. They saw the weakness in me; they knew I wasn’t one of them anymore. So I came here to wait for whoever found me first. I could have run, could have hidden, but . . . I think I need to be punished for what I’ve done.”
For Heaven's Eyes Only sh-5 Page 34
