“Typical Drood,” said MacAlpine. “Always ready to believe the best of people. I thought I’d had it when you burst in and found me with Isabella, but I always could think on my feet. And you couldn’t believe a small man like me could put one over on a big man like you.”
“I couldn’t believe you’d sink this low,” I said.
“How does it feel?” he said. “To be alone and helpless, naked without your armour, among your worst enemies? How does it feel to know that all the things we did to Isabella Metcalf are nothing compared to what we’re going to do to you?”
I said nothing. Why give him the satisfaction? MacAlpine laughed in my face and walked down the main aisle to take his place on the stage, the guards hustling me along behind him. MacAlpine nodded to Alexandre Dusk, who moved aside to let MacAlpine take centre stage. The guards held me securely to one side, where everyone could get a good look at me. There was no booing or taunts; they looked at me with hot, greedy eyes. MacAlpine smiled out over the assembled Satanists, and then grinned happily at me.
“Yes,” he said. “I am the leader of the new satanist conspiracy. I put it all together, arranged the Great Sacrifice and led you poor old Droods around by the nose. You never saw this one coming, did you? Even when you found me tormenting poor Isabella, you couldn’t believe what you were seeing. You believed everything I told you, even though it must have been clear I was making it all up as I went along.”
He looked out over the auditorium, at his people hanging on his every word. “Let the Droods have Schloss Shreck! Let them waste their time wading through all the defences and booby traps we set in place! We don’t need this castle anymore. I’ve already given the orders to activate the influence machine, powered by dear Ammonia’s amazing brain. What was that, Eddie? Did you want to say something? No? Then shut up and listen. You’ll find this both interesting and informative.” He turned back to the audience. We’ll leave here through the teleport gates, taking the machine and its room with us, and then we’ll seal all the entrances to the Timeless Moment. Leave the Droods locked in here. What could be a better revenge? While out in the world we shall set the Great Sacrifice in motion and watch and laugh as the adult populations of the Earth slaughter their own children and damn themselves forever. And then we shall break down the doors of Hell, and our lord Satan shall rise up with all his fallen, and we shall be made kings of the Earth!
“We can always come back here when we feel the need for fresh meat to torment. Why should the Droods miss out on Hell on Earth?”
He broke off then, because I couldn’t keep the grin off my face any longer. The guards forced my arms up painfully behind my back, but I laughed at them, and at Philip MacAlpine, and all the sheeplike faces in the auditorium.
“Typical MacAlpine,” I said loudly. “Too busy boasting about the things you’re planning to do to concentrate on the job at hand. We’ve already found Ammonia Vom Acht and freed her from the machine, and smashed all the teleport gates. My family is coming here, and you’re not going anywhere. You’re trapped in here with us.”
There was commotion then amongst the assembled Satanists; famous men and women jumped to their feet, shouting and arguing, yelling to MacAlpine to do something. He turned away to talk quietly with Alexandre Dusk, and then turned back to stare and shout his people down.
“It doesn’t matter!” he said. “The influence machine was never necessary; it was something to give us an edge! We don’t need it. What we’ve set in motion in the world can’t be stopped now. The Great Sacrifice will go ahead anyway, as planned. And I doubt very much that the Droods have found all our teleport gates. However, I do think that before we take our leave, we should take time out for a little entertainment, and express our displeasure at this poor, helpless Drood in our midst. Because I think we’ve all had quite enough of his meddling and interference in our affairs!”
The audience cheered. They liked the sound of that.
“Oh, come on,” I said. “You know you’re dying to tell me. How did a little nobody like you end up leader of the satanic conspiracy?”
“Because of you, Eddie,” said MacAlpine. This is all your fault. None of it would have happened if it hadn’t been for you. I was happy in my job, away from the field, coasting along. I’d had a good career, if somewhat unappreciated, and was actually looking forward to an early retirement. Go down to the coast, somewhere quiet, grow roses . . . And then you ruined all that by screwing up what was left of my career and humiliating me in front of my bosses! You made me look old and useless, and that . . . kicked me awake. Made me realise that my life wasn’t over until I said it was over, and that if I wanted to be great I’d have to make myself great.
“So I used my old contacts to make a new life for myself, and let my ambitions run wild. I had access to all kinds of information at MI-13, and I used it to hunt down the last vestiges of the old satanic conspiracy. There were still quite a few of them around, deep underground, waiting for someone to provide them with a new vision. Britain’s ruling classes have always had a dark side. . . . And so over the past few years, while you and your precious family were busy with the Hungry Gods and the Immortals, I quietly used the contacts I’d made through a long and mostly successful career to put like-minded people together. It was actually remarkably easy to assemble a new satanic conspiracy; I’ve always known people on every side of the fence. All part of doing business in the spy trade. Of course, I had help. Alexandre Dusk was the last of the old-school Satanists, and a bit wary until I explained my remarkable new scheme to him. And then he couldn’t get on board fast enough. He was happy to be the public face of the new conspiracy, while I put everything together beside the scenes. Until I was ready to launch my revenge on a world that never properly appreciated or rewarded me, despite everything I’d done to protect it.”
“Molly was right,” I said, when he finally paused for breath. “It’s always the sad, embittered little men you have to watch out for. . . . I think counselling would probably have helped.”
He glared down from the stage at me. “You don’t get it, do you? Everything you and your fellow Droods have been put through was done at my command. Planned, designed to push you to the edge, provoke you into more and more extreme reactions, to drive you step by step out of the Light and into the Dark. Everything we did was intended to provoke increasingly extreme reactions from you, until you . . . were as bad as us. Look back at everything you’ve done since you started fighting us, Eddie; were you ever so vicious, so violent before? I think that’s what’s pleased me so much about all this: watching the prim and proper Droods become another bunch of thugs.”
I remembered Molly saying, You can’t fight evil with evil methods. Fighting evil is supposed to bring out the best in us, not the worst. And I remembered all the things I’d done to the Indigo Spirit and to Charlatan Joe, two of my oldest friends . . . all in the name of revenge.
“You see?” said MacAlpine. “You’ve all done questionable things in your quest to stop us. You’ve used torture and intimidation; you’ve killed people to make yourselves feel better. You’ve demeaned yourselves, Drood. Oh, we went to a lot of trouble to work out schemes best suited to bring out your dark side. . . . And do you know why, Eddie? Because only those who stand in Heaven’s gaze have Heaven’s strength, and can hope to stand against the forces of Darkness. And you and your family aren’t qualified anymore.”
“You came close,” I said steadily. “But not close enough. We didn’t come here to fight evil men; we came here to rescue your prisoners. We didn’t come here to punish you for what you’ve done, but to prevent the Great Sacrifice and save a generation of children. It isn’t what you do, Phil; it’s why you do it.”
“You keep telling yourself that, Eddie,” said MacAlpine, smiling easily. “And try to remember which particular road is paved with good intentions.”
“That really was you in Limbo, wasn’t it?” I said. “That’s why I was able to hit you, when I couldn’t touch anyone e
lse there.”
“Oh, yes,” said MacAlpine. “That was me. Once we discovered how vulnerable you were, I couldn’t resist taking a shot at you. A chance to know all your secrets . . . It would have made this all so much easier.”
“How did you get Walker to represent scum like you?” I said. “He spent most of his life shutting down operations like yours.”
“Walker?” said MacAlpine. “You saw Walker in there? I did hear he was dead. . . .”
And while he was thinking about that, I broke free from my guards with a few old and very unpleasant tricks every Drood learns from an early age. Both of them went crying and moaning to the floor, and I sprinted for the doorway. A great cry went up from the assembled Satanists as they rose up from their seats and scrambled after me. I could hear MacAlpine yelling at them, driving them on. I got to the door, hauled it open, stepped out into the corridor and then turned and stopped there, inside the doorway, and smiled nastily at the approaching Satanists. They all quickly stumbled to a halt, holding back. I was a Drood, after all. Even with so many of them and only the one of me, none of them wanted to go first. In fact, they all seemed very keen for someone else to have the honour of going first.
“What do you think you can achieve, Eddie?” said MacAlpine from the stage. “One unarmed Drood against an army of us?”
“This is the only way out of here,” I said loudly, so they could all hear me and understand. “This is the only exit, and I’m guarding it. Because there might still be some teleport gates my family missed, and I can’t risk your getting to them before my family gets here. So you’re going to have to get through me to get away, and as long as I’m standing in the doorway, you can come at me only a few at a time. So all I have to do is hold you here until the rest of my family turns up. They can’t be that far away; I heard fighting. And once they arrive and see what you’ve done to me . . . Oh, the things they’ll do to you . . .”
“Will somebody please shoot this arrogant little turd?” said MacAlpine.
“Guns won’t work in here,” said Alexandre Dusk.
MacAlpine looked at him. “What?”
“No guns, no weapons, no magics! It’s all part of the defences you had me put in place to keep out the Droods! You said you wanted every possibility covered!”
“Well . . . lower the protections!”
“I can’t! Not like that! It’ll take two, maybe three hours. . . .”
“You’re an idiot, Dusk.” MacAlpine looked back at me. “You can’t stand against us all, Eddie! Without your armour, you’re only one man.”
“One very specially trained man,” I said. “One Drood is a match for any number of amateur-night bottom-feeding scum like you.”
“We’ll drag you down and tear you apart!”
“What we do in Heaven’s name has Heaven’s strength,” I said carefully. “I might have strayed from the path, but I think I’ve found a way back. I choose to stand in Heaven’s gaze again, and pay in blood for what I did in blood. I think . . . when you know you’re going to die anyway, it’s all about being able to look God in the eye. I know you’ll drag me down eventually; enough jackals can always pull down a lion. . . . But all I have to do is hold you here long enough and then my family will avenge me. By slaughtering every one of you. Not for revenge or even for justice. But to make sure none of you can ever harm Humanity again. So here I stand. One last chance for atonement. And you’re right, Phil; I do have so much to atone for.”
Alexandre Dusk had come down from the stage. He pushed his way through the crowd to address me, though he was careful to maintain a safe and respectful distance.
“Don’t talk about God and Heaven here, Drood. They have no place in Schloss Shreck, not after all the awful things we’ve done. This is our place, our game, our rules. Were you perhaps expecting some great beam of light to shine down from above, and empower you, because you stand against us? ‘My strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure’? It doesn’t work that way, Drood.”
“Never thought it did,” I said. “I don’t expect anything. Except to stand and fight, and hold you here, for as long as I can.”
“If you stay we’ll kill you,” said Alexandre Dusk.
“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” I said.
And I drew the Colt repeater from my back holster and shot Dusk in the head. He fell backwards, blood flying in the air as he crashed into the Satanists behind him. They fell back, making loud shocked noises, and Dusk was dead before he hit the floor. The crowd fell quiet, looking on with startled, disturbed eyes. They looked at the body and then back at me. I smiled easily at them.
“I got caught without my gun earlier on this case,” I said. “So I made a point of bringing it with me this time. Had a hunch it might come in handy. And as long as I’m standing here, on the other side of the door, it works fine. You didn’t think I was just going to stand here, did you?”
“Take him down!” yelled MacAlpine from the stage, his voice almost hysterical with rage and frustration.
“This is a Colt repeater,” I said. “Never misses, never needs reloading. Usually. But with all the protections on this place, it’s probably only a gun. With a handful of bullets. Which means I can kill only a limited number of people. So come on! Who’s willing to die so others can have the honour of dragging me down?”
I kept trying to reach out to the Sarjeant-at-Arms through my torc, to tell him where I was, and to get a bit of a move on. But if he could hear me, I couldn’t hear him. So it was down to me: one man against a horde of Satanists. I looked about me, and they all stared silently back with sullen, snarling faces and hot, hateful eyes. As long as I was careful to stay in the doorway and not let them draw me forward, they could come at me only a few at a time, and none of them wanted to be the first to die. Even though MacAlpine was yelling himself hoarse up on the stage, screaming at them to do something, no one did. A few actually yelled back at him, saying that if he was so damned keen, he should come down there and try something himself.
And then even these few voices fell silent as Alexandre Dusk sat up. A few drops of blood rolled down his face from the great wound in his forehead, and then stopped. He rose slowly to his feet, brushed himself down and then turned to smile at me. A very cold, very knowing smile.
“Witches aren’t the only ones with the good sense to hide their hearts somewhere safe,” he said. “Like Phil told you: I’m old-school, and I know all the old tricks.”
He came straight at me, and I shot him in the chest. He staggered but kept on coming, and I had no choice but to keep on shooting. I used up every bullet in the gun, and he wouldn’t go down again. He stopped and smiled at me.
“So,” said MacAlpine from the stage. “One man, without a gun.”
“One Drood,” I said, tossing the empty gun behind me. “And you bottom-feeding scumbags shall not pass.”
They came at me then, rushing past the smiling Alexandre Dusk, hands outstretched like claws in their eagerness to get at me. There were a hell of a lot of them, and some of them looked to be really big bastards, but I’d been right: As long as I held my position, they could come at me only two or three at a time. I struck them down with hard, pitiless, practiced moves before they could even lay a hand on me. They crashed to the floor, and those behind trampled right over them to get to me. Their faces were flushed and distorted with rage; they were desperate to drag me down and get away before the rest of my family arrived. But in the end they were amateurs, facing one very well-trained Drood.
I hit them hard and I hit them often, and I hit them with practised skill, not wasting a single movement or using the least bit more energy than I had to. I was in this for the long run. It felt good; it felt really good to punch a Satanist in the face or the throat, to break their ribs and smash their kneecaps, to feel my fists jar on bone and send blood flying. All I had to do was think of the cells, and the prisoners I’d found there. But I was still careful to pace myself. I held my ground, let them get in on
e another’s way and enjoyed the opportunity to dispense some very basic justice to some very bad people.
Of course, that didn’t last long. First my hands hurt, and then they began to bleed. I’d got too used to fighting inside my armour. My fists jarred every time I hit bone, and my hands and arms began to ache. I was getting short of breath, and despite myself I was starting to slow down. Then my legs and back began to hurt, because I was constantly moving and couldn’t stop even for a moment. Sweat ran down my face, stinging my eyes and leaving salt on my lips. And my lungs began to labour, because I couldn’t stop to get my breath.
I fought on, and still they came at me, an endless tide of cruel, vicious faces, flying fists, clawed hands and improvised weapons. Blunt instruments, stiletto heels, even keys jammed between the fingers of a fist. They kept coming at me, scrambling over the bodies of their own fallen to get at me, and I stood my ground and would not back away. Inevitably, the attacks started getting through. Because in the end I was only one man, against so many. They hit me and cut me, desperate to hurt me and drag me down. And all I could do was stand my ground and take it.
Because of Harry and Roger, left to face their enemies and their deaths alone, because I couldn’t get reinforcements to them in time. Because of the Indigo Spirit and Charlatan Joe, my old friends, and what I’d done to them in the name of a good cause. And all I could think was, Payback’s a bitch.
I was deadly tired now, every movement a struggle, every blow an effort. Blood ran down my face and dripped from my nose. I’d never taken a beating like it. Didn’t know you could take a beating like it and still stay on your feet. The things we do for guilt’s sake . . . And while I might finally be standing in Heaven’s gaze, I certainly didn’t feel any stronger. My muscles ached; my hands blazed with agony every time I hit someone; my lungs strained with the effort of sucking in air. I felt like shit. More and more of the blows were getting through, and fewer and fewer of mine were doing real damage. Fists jarred against the bones of my face, slammed into my ribs, hammered against a defending arm. Sharp edges cut at me, darting in and out. And still, somehow, I held my ground. Though the floor at my feet was getting slippery with my blood.
For Heaven's Eyes Only Page 41
