From Hell with love sh-4

by Simon R. Green

  "And not just any old dragon," said Luther, craning his head right back. "Not one of those stupid and extremely ugly beasts the elves ride around on. That… is one of the Great Old Beasts of England. That is the Lampton Wyrm."

  "You have got to be kidding," I said. "Really? Who'd be crazy enough to dig that old horror up, and let it loose in the world? Is it tied down? Tell me it's tied down! Tell you what, I'll start running and you try and keep up."

  "Look at the rear left leg," said Luther, entirely unperturbed. "See the nice glowing chain? That's an elf binding. It'll hold, for the duration of the auction. After that, well, they must have some plan in mind."

  "It's times like these when I wish I'd paid more attention in class," I said. "I know we covered Old Beasts, but I'm pretty sure there was a girls' volleyball match going on outside the window that afternoon… The Lampton Wyrm was the one where if you cut it up, the pieces just joined back together again, right? How did they kill it, in the end?"

  "They drowned it. Dug a great pit, filled it full of water, dragged the Wyrm into the pit and held it under till it drowned. Of course it didn't stay dead, but they covered the pit over with a really heavy-duty seal, and locked it in place with really powerful magics. So the Wyrm just kept on waking up and drowning again, over and over, for centuries. Not that I feel in any way sorry for it; the Lampton Wyrm killed thousands of people before it was stopped."

  "I think we can safely say it isn't in a? very good mood, now it's out," I said. "I'm almost sure it's looking right at us and I do wish it wouldn't. How in hell are we supposed to deal with something like that?"

  "Well, here's my plan," said Luther. "It's up on the roof, so let's not go up there. Let us not, in fact, go anywhere near the bloody thing."

  "Good plan," I said. "I really like that plan. I want to marry that plan and have its babies."

  "You're weird," said Luther.

  We looked some more at the Magnificat Hotel. The strange matter sunglasses allowed us to See all four sides at once, in as much detail as we needed. And more and more defences kept popping up, revealing themselves openly, as though defying us to do anything about them.

  "There are dimensional gates attached to all the outer doors," I said. "Preprogrammed to send you Somewhere Else if you open a door without the right passWord."

  "Standard operating procedure, when you're running an auction half the unnatural world would love to gate-crash," murmured Luther. "Crank your Sight up to full, and take a look inside the hotel."

  I concentrated, and the golden shades sent my Sight into overdrive. The outer facade of the Magnificat seemed to leap forward, filling my vision, and then I plunged through and in, looking around the deserted lobby. It was all very fine and luxurious, with no staff anywhere, and no security guards in sight. Presumably the auction people had a lot of faith in their outer defences. I would have. But there were no obvious guardians or booby traps, so I sent my Sight shooting up through the hotel, floor by floor. I spotted the odd group of security guards here and there, oblivious to my mental presence, all of them heavily armed but fairly relaxed. They weren't expecting any real trouble until the auction was up and running. But the sheer number of guards increased steadily as my Sight ascended, until finally I reached the top floor, and the site of the auction.

  The function rooms had all been opened up and combined into one great display area. There were people everywhere, moving back and forth, transporting objects, and getting everything in order. The security guards just stood at their stations and watched them do it. Because the guards were alive, and the auction people weren't. They would probably have looked quite normal to the unaided eye, but Seen through my golden shades, they were quite definitely dead. Zombies. They hefted and carried, they set things in motion, they checked lights and items and cargo manifests, and not one of them had a soul. The did have quite colourful auras, which showed they were being remote-controlled by overseeing minds elsewhere. The Really Old Curiosity Shoppe people never appeared in public, even at their own auctions. All the staff, and even the auctioneer himself, would be dead men walking, remote-controlled from a safe distance through a series of cutouts, so none of the controllers could be identified or tracked down. And given that they were, when you got right down to it, just a bunch of thieves… it was basic common sense.

  They only ever spoke through the mouths of the dead, so even their voices could never be identified.

  "The security guards are all local boys," Luther's voice murmured in my ear. "Familiar faces, no one special. Guns and muscle, from off the rack. You can hire thousands just like these. Only here to place themselves between the more valuable items and any possibility of damage, even if the poor fools don't know it. Hmmm. That's odd. I can't seem to See any of the auction items clearly. Can you?"

  "No," I said, after a moment. "Every time I concentrate on a specific item, it goes all blurry. Which means they're hidden behind stealth screens. Really powerful screens, if our Sight can't punch through. We can't even be sure the Apocalypse Door is in place yet."

  "It's there somewhere," said Luther. "Or Doctor Delirium wouldn't have committed himself to a personal appearance… Wait a minute. Hold everything. Something's happening on the floor below."

  I pulled my Sight down a floor to match his, just in time to see Doctor Delirium and his troops appear through a dimensional door. It wasn't much of a door, just a by the numbers rip in space and time, forced open through brute force and energy, but it succeeded where a more sophisticated gateway might not have. The Magnificat's defences were targeted at a much better class of intruder. This attack was so basic it sneaked in under the radar. The Doctor hurried through, followed by twenty or thirty heavily armed and armoured men from his own special fighting force. You could always recognise members of Doctor Delirium's private army, because he made them all wear his own special black and gold uniforms. They looked like escapees from a production of The Pirates of Penzance, if the costume lady had been on crack that week. Still, they established a perimeter and took up positions like they knew what they were doing, and they held their guns like they knew how to use them. A mercenary is still a mercenary, even if he is dressed like a dick.

  The floor's security guards were no problem. A nerve gas grenade had preceded Doctor Delirium through the dimensional door, and the guards went down almost immediately, without managing a single warning shot. Presumably the Doctor had protected his people against the gas in advance. The man was a genius with chemicals, when he could be bothered.

  "This is why the Doctor wasn't worried about being outbid on the Apocalypse Door," said Luther. "The sneaky bastard's come early, to grab it for himself. Why is he so keen on this item, Eddie? Getting the Really Old Curiosity Shoppe people mad at you is never a good idea, if you like having your organs on the inside. They have a bad temper, a long reach, and they bear grudges for generations. What is this Apocalypse Door, that Doctor Delirium's ready to risk everything to get his hands on it?"

  "The clue's probably in the question," I said. "I'm guessing the Door is a lot more Apocalyptic than we've given it credit for. And the Doctor wants it because… he's not getting any younger. All his great plans have come to nothing, mostly thanks to us, and his name has become a joke. He's a delusional scientific mastermind, but he gets no respect. He's fed up being laughed at, he's mad as hell and he's not going to take it anymore."

  "Midlife crisis, in other words," said Luther.

  "Exactly. He has a scheme to rule the world, and all he needs to make it work is the Apocalypse Door."

  "A real scheme?" said Luther. "One that would actually work?"

  "Yeah," I said. "And if my arse had teeth it could play the banjo. A real plan? Come on, this is Doctor Delirium we're talking about."

  "Even an idiot can get lucky, if he has a powerful enough weapon," said Luther.

  "There is that," I said. "Hello, there he goes, up the back stairs to the top floor, and the auction site. At least he's got enough sense to let his tr
oops lead the way…"

  The black-and-gold-clad mercenaries moved silently up the back stairs, moving with calm and sinister grace. They'd clearly rehearsed this. One man went ahead holding up a Hand of Glory, its dark magics defusing the few security spells in the stairway. Another soldier shut down the electronic surveillance systems with a small localised EMP. The Doctor gave every indication of actually having thought things through. Either that, or he'd hired someone who knew what he was doing. I knew which way I'd bet. The Doctor's troops reached the top of the stairwell, and the man in the lead started packing plastique against the closed door. Doctor Delirium really wanted his Door. And didn't care who got hurt in the process.

  I sighed heavily, and told my torc to? pull back its extension. The golden sunglasses ran quickly down my cheek, and back into the torc. The world seemed very grey, and very empty, without the Sight. I looked at Luther.

  "We're going to have to get personally involved," I said. "A hands-on practical intervention, with no holds barred. If the Apocalypse Door really is as powerful as the Doctor clearly believes it to be… he can't be allowed to have it."

  "Unfortunately, I have to agree," said Luther. "It's time to armour up and smite the ungodly with vim and vigour. But Eddie, please, let's try and keep the collateral damage down to a minimum. I have to live in this town."

  "You suit yourself," I said. "Personally, I plan to beat the shit out of anyone that doesn't run away fast enough, throw the Doctor and his troops back through their own dimensional door, grab the Apocalypse Door and then leg it for the nearest horizon."

  "A workable plan," said Luther. "And at least this way, we don't have to face the bloody dragon."

  I subvocalised my activating Words, and my golden armour leapt out of my torc, insulating me from the world in a moment. I flexed my arms and breathed deeply, feeling strong and sure and more than ready to kick the arse of Evil and make it cry like a baby. Luther armoured up beside me, his golden form blazing brightly in the LA sun. For a moment he looked like the Oscar statue come to dangerous and vicious life, and then the armour shifted and stirred about his body, the strange matter flowing into new shapes and forms as he concentrated. The torc provides a basic suit of armour, like a second skin, and for centuries that was good enough for the Droods; but then a soldier from the distant future showed us how to reshape and personalise our armour, the better to strike terror into our enemies and suit our individual needs and capabilities. It takes a lot of concentration to make a new shape, and hold it, but we're learning by doing.

  Given the shape of Luther's armour, it was clear he'd spent entirely too much time watching old Transformers cartoons. His armour was large and bulky, padded out with gun emplacements that might or might not actually do anything. I was ready to bet good money that his armour would revert to standard the moment the mayhem started, and he needed all his concentration for the fight. I still kept to the basic shape, just jazzing it up a little here and there. I favour the old knightly style, with hints of greaves and a breastplate. I still kept the featureless golden face mask. Nothing like a blank eyeless face to freak out the bad guys.

  "So," said Luther. "A traditionalist. This is the city of the future, Eddie. Only the very best will do here. Try and keep up."

  "Funny," I said. "I was about to say the same to you."

  "Oh shit," said Luther, abruptly.

  Once again, he was staring up at the top of the hotel. I craned back my head and followed his gaze. Another dimensional doorway had opened up, hovering in the sky above the roof of the Magnificat. And this time, it was very much the real deal. A state-of-the-art, all-the-bells-and-whistles gateway; a perfect circle some hundred feet in diameter, with edges so sharply defined you could almost hear the air splitting as it hit them. I caught just a glimpse of a whole different sky through the circle, before it dropped down over the chained dragon. The Lampton Wyrm looked up, startled, its hideous gargoyle head rising up and up on its long neck, and the circle just sucked the dragon up off the roof and into itself. The circle then collapsed and disappeared, taking the dragon with it. All that remained on the roof was a short length of glowing chain.

  "Happy as I am to see the dragon gone," I said, "I find myself seriously disturbed. That… had to take a hell of a lot of power. Which means… someone else has come early to the auction."

  "Why does everything have to be so complicated?" said Luther, wistfully.

  The dimensional gateway returned, just as large and twice as impressive, and a whole army of armed and armoured men fell out of it onto the hotel roof. They were all dressed in basic leathers and body armour, with no identifying patches or tags. They moved quickly to rehearsed positions on the roof, while a core group set up explosive charges.

  "So, the Doctor goes in through the backdoor, and this bunch goes in through the roof," said Luther. "Should be interesting… Any idea who these new boys are, Eddie?"

  "Not a clue. No one should have been able to organise an operation this extensive without our knowing something in advance. I shall have some serious words with the family pre-cogs when I get back."

  "The new boys aren't local," said Luther. "Do we assume they are also here for the Apocalypse Door?"

  "Would seem likely," I said. "Though I really hate the idea that there are two sets of people who know more about it than we do."

  The new arrivals blew a hole right through the roof with a shaped charge, dropped a bunch of ropes through, and rappelled down into the top floor. And at pretty much the same time, Doctor Delirium's plastique charge blew the stairwell door clean off its hinges, and they all charged through into the auction site. Both sides took one look at the other, and opened up with all guns blazing. Bullets filled the air, mowing down the auction's security guards in a moment. The remote-control zombies were punched this way and that by the impact of the bullets, staggering back and forth, with dust and bone fragments erupting from their bullet-riddled bodies. One by one they went down as their legs were blasted out from under them, and they lay thrashing or crawling on the floor, ignored by both sides.

  The two sets of soldiers dug in at opposite ends of the auction room, using overturned furniture and the shielded auction items for shelter. The firefight was doing a lot of structural damage, but there weren't many bodies yet. Both sides were clearly professionals. The shooting gradually died down to occasional suppressional fire, as both sides considered what to do next. A remote control zombie rose up on one elbow, and denounced both sides with its dead voice. There was a single shot, and its head exploded.

  "So much for our original plan," said Luther. "What do we do now?"

  "We go in," I said. "We bestow beatings on one and all, take the guns away from both sides, and shut this nonsense down before it starts attracting attention. Then I will grab the Apocalypse Door and it's head for the horizon time."

  "Shouldn't we take some prisoners, ask some questions?" said Luther.

  "If you must," I said.

  "I feel I should remind you, there are two private armies in there, going head to head with extensive firepower, explosives and nerve gas grenades," said Luther. "You really want to just charge right in?"

  "Two armies; one for each of us."

  Luther shook his head slowly. "There is such a thing as overconfidence, even for a Drood."

  "First problem," I said. "Our armour should get us through the hotel's outer defences okay, but we are going to set off all kinds of alarms… The last thing we need is for the two sides to discover who's coming, and team up against us."

  "Worry not," said Luther. "I've got a basic can opener and alarm-suppressor that the Armourer sent through, just the other day. For testing. He thought I might find a use for it, given that LA has so many secrets to hide, and so many different ways of hiding them. It should open up the force shields and the magic screens, while shutting down the alarms. Notice my emphasis on the word should."

  "The Armourer has always believed in the triumph of optimism over experience," I said solem
nly. "It's not that his wonderful gadgets don't work; it's just that they will insist on working in unex pected ways. But you can't complain, or he sulks. All right; let's do it."

  "Lock and load," said Luther. "And God help the guilty."

  "Native," I said sadly. "Definitely native."

  We moved forward, two golden statues striding across the plaza towards the Magnificat Hotel. No one noticed a thing; we were both in full stealth mode, our torcs transmitting telepathic You can't see me! commands to all the passersby. Luther pulled something that still looked half finished from inside his armour and pointed it at the hotel. Looking through my golden mask I could clearly See the hotel shields split and break and vanish, dismissed almost casually by the Armourer's new toy. Luther and I kept going, the last remnants of the more stubborn shields clinging and dragging at our armour as we strode through them. They broke and fell away like cobwebs, thrown off by the sheer power inherent in the armour. Shaped curses and proximity mines detonated harmlessly, and howling ghosts burst like soap bubbles as we marched right through them. Spirit bottles shattered under the patio, releasing their demons, and they reared up to grasp at our golden legs. We just kept going, dragging them along with us, and they soon broke up and fell apart, too fragile to last long outside their bottles. Defence magics shattered and spattered against our golden chests in rainbow bursts of dispersing energies.

  I kicked in the front door, shattered glass falling like hail on my shoulders, and led the way into the lobby. Two armed guards opened up on us with automatic weaponry. The bullets stitched across the front of our armour, which absorbed all the impact and then swallowed up the bullets. We worry about ricochets, these days. This rather upset the guards, who turned to run. I picked up the nearest table and threw it at them, and it slammed the two guards against the far wall like a flyswatter. Luther looked at me.

  "Now that's not fair. I never got to do anything."