“Are you sure we’ve come to the right place?” said Molly.
“I suppose…this is as close as the Merlin Glass could get us to the exact coordinates,” I said. “Without setting off Crow Lee’s alarms…I did instruct the Glass to err very much on the side of caution.”
“All right, sat nav,” said Molly. “Make yourself useful. Which way to Crow Lee’s lair?”
“Oh, now you need me!” the sat nav said bitterly. “Well, tough. I don’t feel like it. I’ve just been put through a terrible experience and my nerves are a mess. Call back later and see if I’m home.”
“Give me the proper directions,” I said, “or I’ll open up the Merlin Glass again and see if it can jump us any closer.”
“Bully!” hissed the sat nav. “All right, all right. Let me see.…I’ve got a map here somewhere.…Ah. Yes. Drive straight on, third turn on the left, and then watch for the hidden entrance. Which I shall alert you to the moment I can find the bloody thing. Or maybe not! It all depends on how I feel, and don’t you forget it.”
“See how easy that was?” I said.
“You wait,” said Molly. “That thing will be driving us down a crease in the map before you know it.”
“I heard that!”
“Good!” said Molly.
The sat nav made a loud sarcastic noise and then settled for something that sounded very like teeth grinding together.
I drove carefully down the long leafy lane, in and out dark shadows cast by out-leaning trees, and slowed cautiously as I approached every corner, just in case there might be something lying in wait. But there wasn’t so much as a slow-moving piece of farm machinery. No traffic at all, in fact; not a jogger on a health kick or some exercise fiend hunched over a bicycle. It was as though we had the whole road to ourselves.
“Where is everybody?” I said after a while. “Did the world come to an end during the twenty-four hours we just jumped?”
“Don’t say that!” the sat nav said immediately. “Never give the universe ideas; it can be malevolent enough as it is.”
“You really are paranoid, aren’t you?” said Molly.
“I knew you were going to say that,” muttered the sat nav.
“I think Crow Lee just likes his privacy,” I said. “Probably pays everyone to stay well away from his lair—good word, that, Molly—and use other roads that don’t go anywhere near his place. And if he really does have his own private army, he can probably put the hard word on anyone who doesn’t feel like cooperating. I doubt if Crow Lee’s actually told them he’s the Most Evil Man in the World, but the locals must have got the idea by now. Crow Lee has never been the sort to hide his awful light under a bushel.”
“What is a bushel?” said the sat nav.
“A dry measure containing eight gallons or four pecks,” said Molly, just a bit unexpectedly.
“I’m glad one of us knew that,” I said. “I’d hate for us to be outsmarted by a sat nav.”
“Turn left now!” screamed the sat nav. “Now! Right now!”
I glimpsed the disguised turn just in time and hauled the steering wheel over. The Plymouth Fury turned smoothly into the narrow opening, hardly slowing at all. The new road was only just wide enough for one car to drive down at a time, and I quickly decided that if we met anyone coming our way they’d better be really good at reversing. The road was bounded on both sides by high hedgerows blocking out most of the light. It was as though we’d gone straight from midday to twilight. I made myself relax, unclenching my hands from the wheel.
“Nice driving,” said Molly, staring straight ahead.
“I thought so,” I said.
“Hah!” said the sat nav cuttingly.
“A little advance warning would have been helpful,” I said loudly. “Whatever happened to, In a hundred yards you will come to… ?”
“Not my fault,” the sat nav said with a sniff. “That hidden entrance would have been invisible to your eyes, entirely undetectable. We wouldn’t have found it except for my highly trained sensors. And even I couldn’t see it till I was right on top of it. In fact, I’m not sure that entrance is really there all the time, unless you know where to look.…”
“He stole that idea from the Droods,” I said.
“Well,” said Molly. “At least we can be fairly certain we’ve come to the right place. At last.”
“Oh, ye of little faith,” said the sat nav. “Wait till I’m in charge around here, and then you’ll see some smiting.”
I slowed the car right down, making my way cautiously along the narrow winding way. There were too many blind corners, too little good light and far too many dark shadows for my liking. It was like driving out of the day and into the night, with the surety of bad dreams ahead. This was a private road, part of Crow Lee’s private world, and like everything else he owned, he’d put his stamp on it. The dark greenery of the high hedgerows seemed to stir slowly, right on the edge of my vision, only to fall still again the moment I looked at it directly.
We rounded a final long sweeping corner and I hit the brakes hard as the road ended in a set of heavy black iron gates. They blocked the road completely from side to side, and gave every appearance of being very definitely locked. I couldn’t see any chains or padlocks, but I had no doubt there were other, more dangerous, protections in place. I tapped my fingertips thoughtfully on the steering wheel while I considered my next move.
“Have you noticed… ?” said Molly. “All the natural sounds have stopped. The birds aren’t singing here.”
“Do you blame them?” I said. “In a place like this? Do you feel like singing?”
“Don’t you get snappy with me, Eddie Drood!”
“I never get asked to sing,” the sat nav said sadly.
“Well, colour me surprised,” said Molly.
“I do a great Bruce Springsteen!”
“Hush, children,” I said. “Daddy’s thinking.…”
The more I looked over the tall iron gates, the less I liked them. Long, vertical, parallel bars painted black as sin, and overlaid on them a stylised figure of a huge dragon. With great fangs and claws and sweeping wings, its outline stretched across both gates.
“I think we’re looking at the first layer of protection,” I said. “At the first sign of trouble, that dragon shape probably comes to life and goes all flamethrower on whoever’s calling. Or maybe…this was a real dragon once, and Crow Lee trapped it in this form to be his own personal attack dog.”
“No,” Molly said immediately. “I’d See that if it were there. It’s just a gate. Nice workmanship, though.”
“Spend enough time tracking down crazy in the head villains, and you end up thinking like them,” I said. “Those gates do look very thoroughly locked. I suppose I could just reverse, build up some speed, and crash right through them.”
“Don’t you dare!” said the sat nav. “You’ll scratch my paintwork and dent my grille!”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Molly said sweetly.
“Philistines!” howled the sat nav. “There will be a reckoning. Oh yes…”
“The gates are bound to be reinforced,” I said reluctantly. “And this is a loaner from the Regent.…”
I turned off the engine and got out. Molly was quickly out of her seat, too, and we moved forward together to study the tall iron gates, while being very careful to maintain a respectful distance. I raised my Sight and had to fight down the urge to retreat several steps in a hurry. Layer upon layer of protections hung in the air: protective screens and force shields, magic and science combining to create a defence greater than the sum of its parts. They crawled slowly over one another, glowing with the kind of attenuated soft colours you find sliding across the surface of soap bubbles. Only more dangerous. There were enough defensive energies stored in the shields to rule out any thought of defusing them. Get one step wrong and the resulting blast would wipe out half the surrounding countryside.
“Told you,” I said.
Molly gave me a thoughtful look. “It’s really up to you, Eddie. You can stop being Mr. Snotty, or I can punch you somewhere painful.”
“The gates are electrified,” I said, staring straight ahead. “Touch any of those bars and there wouldn’t be enough left of you to bury.”
“I had noticed that, thank you,” said Molly.
“Would you like me to reverse some distance back down the road?” said the sat nav. “Suddenly I don’t feel as safe as I did a moment ago.”
I looked back at the Plymouth Fury. “You can drive yourself?”
“Damn right, I can. In emergencies. Which this is looking more and more like, all the time.”
“You stay where you are,” I said sternly.
Molly peered past the gates at the grounds beyond. “There are two really high stone walls leading off from the gates to surround the grounds. We could climb over…Ah. No, we couldn’t. More protections.”
“Touch any part of those walls, and the built-in destructive energies would scatter you across several counties,” I said. “In fact, don’t even look at them funny.”
Molly scowled. “Why couldn’t he just settle for barbed wire and broken glass, like anyone else?”
“Because he’s the Most Evil…”
“Hell with it,” said Molly. “Let’s go in through the Merlin Glass. This short a jump; the Glass should be able to punch right through the protections.”
“Given that Crow Lee has to have been contemplating that very possibility for some time,” I said, “I think not. He could interrupt our journey and send us somewhere else. Or just hold us there, trapped between places, forever.”
“Yeah…” said Molly. “That’s what I’d do. So, how are we going to get in?”
“Simple,” I said.
I armoured up, took Molly in my arms and jumped right over the tall iron gates. We soared easily over them, my golden feet coming nowhere near the black iron, and then I dropped down into the wide-open grounds beyond. Behind us, the sat nav called miserably after us.
“Don’t leave me here on my own! Bastards! I’ll tell the Regent on you!”
I landed on the far side of the gates, my armoured legs absorbing the impact. Though the landing did drive my feet a good three or four inches into the rich green grass. I straightened up and put Molly down. She immediately stamped away from me, brushing fiercely at her dress, and glared about her, ready for action. I took a good look around, but there was no one there. It appeared we had the grounds all to ourselves. I armoured down and tugged my feet carefully out of the depressions I’d made. Molly glared at me.
“Next time, a little warning!”
“You might have said no,” I pointed out reasonably. “And, besides, you’re always telling me I need to be more spontaneous.”
We took our time looking around us, checking out the pleasant open grounds surrounding Crow Lee’s old-fashioned manor house. Huge lawns, massive flower beds with neatly regimented rows of colour and a whole zoo of hedge sculptures of fantastic animals. Rearing unicorns with flailing hooves and vicious horns, manticores with roaring lions’ heads and stingers on the tails, giant killer apes beating at their massive chests, and a huge tyrannosaurus towering over all the others, its great wedge head full of spiky green teeth.
“Really don’t care for hedge animals,” I said. “They’re not moving now, but they’ve got that look about them…especially the T. rex.”
“Far too obvious,” said Molly. “Probably just a distraction to keep us from noticing the real threat.”
“I know a real threat when I see one, and I am looking at one right now,” I said firmly. “I don’t suppose you thought to bring any weed killer?”
“Why is it always my job to think of things like that?”
“Because you’re the practical one. Or so you keep telling me.”
“Look at the size of that greenhouse,” said Molly, pointing off to one side. “What have they got in there—their own private jungle?”
I looked where she was pointing, and she was right. I’d never seen a greenhouse that big. It was packed full of strange and wondrous plants, thrashing and beating against the insides of the glass panels. Massive flowers with thick pulpy petals that opened and closed as though shouting green threats at us, while thorns like knitting needles stabbed wildly at everything around them. The colours were rich and overpowering, almost hypnotic in their intensity.
“Let’s not go in there,” I said.
Molly sniffed. “You never give me flowers.”
Scattered across the wide-open lawns were any number of large abstract sculptures, all holes and curves and sudden turns. The shapes seemed to shift and change subtly when you weren’t looking at them directly. None of the shapes made any obvious sense, but still somehow gave the impression that they might, if you stared at them long enough. And got close enough…I didn’t think I would.
Molly and I wandered through the grounds, taking our time. No one had arrived to challenge our right to be there. There was just the one great fountain in the midst of everything: a tall statue of a young woman fashioned from some old dark stone, endlessly screaming, arms outstretched, as though pleading for help that never came. Discoloured water poured from her distorted mouth, falling into a great circular pond full of murky water in which very large fish darted back and forth. Molly and I strolled over to peer into the pond.
“Piranha,” said Molly.
“What else would you expect in a place like this?” I said. “Koi?”
Molly ignored me, leaning forward for a better look. A piranha the size of my fist jumped right up out of the water and flashed through the air, heading straight for Molly’s face with an open mouth stuffed full of jagged teeth. Molly barely had time to react before I armoured up my hand, snatched the flying fish out of midair, and crushed it in my golden gauntlet. It never got anywhere near Molly’s face. Pulped fish guts squeezed between my golden fingers as I ground the nasty thing in my fist, just to make sure, and then I opened my hand and shook off the mess. It fell back into the pond, whose waters became briefly very agitated as the other piranha fought one another over the fresh food. I pulled the armour back into my torc.
“Nice reaction time,” said Molly, stepping carefully back from the pool.
“I thought so,” I said modestly.
“I would have stopped it in time,” said Molly. “I was never in any real danger. But it’s nice to know you’re paying attention.”
“Anytime,” I said.
And then, because we’d looked at everything else, we turned and looked across the great open lawns at Crow Lee’s manor house. It looked very nice. A pleasant and peaceful old-fashioned stone house with a half-timbered front and a sloping grey-tiled roof. Ivy on the walls; flowers round the door. The kind of thing you see on jigsaw-puzzle box covers. It looked cosy and comfortable, the only slightly off note being the closed curtains at every window, so you couldn’t see in. The front door was very firmly closed.
“I can’t believe the Most Evil Man in the World lives in a cosy nook like this,” I said finally. “Are you sure we’re not looking at some kind of illusion?”
Molly shook her head immediately. “I already checked it out with my Sight. It’s just a house. I can’t See inside, though; there are some heavy-duty privacy spells in place. Hello. I spy movement.”
From every side, dark figures were appearing out of nowhere. Armed guards came running across the lawns at us, from every direction at once. Professional-looking mercenary soldiers in bluff uni-forms, all of them very heavily armed. They moved quickly to surround us, cutting us off from any possible exit. I had to smile. Like we had any intention of going anywhere…
“Fun time!” I said loudly.
“That’s usually my line,” said Molly.
The mercenary soldiers took up their positions in silence, levelling weapons on us from every side. They didn’t call out to us to stand still or raise our hands or surrender. Which sort of suggested they weren’t that
interested in taking prisoners. There were a hell of a lot of them, armed to the teeth, clearly expecting a fight. So it seemed a shame to disappoint them.…I armoured up, the golden metal flowing all over me in a moment. My armour glowed brightly in the early-evening light, and there were startled gasps and muttered blasphemies all around me. Some of the younger soldiers just froze where they were, eyes wide and mouths slack, as they got their first good look at a Drood in his armour. But others pressed forward, guns at the ready, so I went swiftly forward to meet them. Molly was right there with me, sorcerous energies spitting and crackling in the air around her fists.
“If they had any sense, they’d run,” I said loudly. “Even a professional soldier should have more sense than to go up against Drood armour.”
“They don’t look all that impressed,” said Molly.
“They’re about to be,” I said. “Suddenly and violently and all over the place.”
The soldiers looked at me and at Molly, and decided Molly was the easier target because she didn’t have any armour. They all opened fire at once, the roar of gunfire shockingly loud in the quiet. I moved automatically to stand between Molly and the soldiers, and the bullets ricocheted harmlessly away from my armour, flying this way and that, making some soldiers duck frantically, and chewing up a nearby hedge sculpture of a giant boar. Its curving tusks were shot away in a moment, and its shaggy head just exploded. It did occur to me that if I’d been wearing my usual strange-matter armour, it would have absorbed all the bullets rather than let them prove a danger to innocent bystanders. But I was wearing Moxton’s Mistake, and the rogue armour didn’t care. And, besides, there were no innocent bystanders on the grounds of Crow Lee’s house.
Molly shouldered me aside. “How many times do I have to tell you, Eddie Drood, that I am quite capable of looking after myself?”
She strode deliberately into the hail of bullets. All the soldiers were firing at us now, the roar of automatic weaponry deafening at such close range. Molly had a protective screen firmly in place that gathered up all the bullets that came at her and held them in midair, hovering before her. One by one the soldiers stopped firing, lowered their weapons and just stood there, looking at her in a dazed and demoralised sort of way. Molly snapped her fingers once and all the bullets dropped out of the air to bounce lightly on the grass at her feet.
Live and Let Drood: A Secret Histories Novel Page 31
