From Hell with love sh-4

by Simon R. Green

  The answering voice rolled around inside my head like a long crash of thunder, ancient and powerful, but strangely… wistful.

  Drood… Yes, I know that name. Though it has been long and long since any of that name came to talk with me. I am a dragon, Edwin Drood. Or at least, a dragon's head. Cut off long ago, by the Baron Frankenstein. Left here to rot, as a warning to others. But I am a dragon of the old blood, and we do not die easily. I did not rot. I watched him with my eyes, and I cursed him with my voice, and eventually he had his people cover me over with earth and stone, and I became a hill. And so… I remain, slowly dying, slowly passing from this world of men.

  "All right," I said. "That… is just unfair. I have business with the current occupants of Castle Frankenstein, but after I've dealt with them… Would you like to come home with me? You'd be welcome at Drood Hall, for whatever time you have left."

  I couldn't tell you why I made the offer. I never met a dragon that didn't deserve killing on general principles, like the one at the Magnificat… but I felt sorry for this one. Just left lying here, alone and ignored, fading away down the years… It didn't sit right with me. I know; it's stray dog syndrome with a vengeance, but… the family could learn a lot from talking to a dragon. We don't normally get the chance.

  Home… Yes, Drood. I think I would like that. The world is very quiet here, and empty. I would enjoy having something new to look at.

  "I've noticed that," I said. "Where is everything? What happened to all the inhabitants of the Hidden World?"

  They killed them. Killed them all. From the greatest to the smallest, from the most dangerous to the most insignificant, they wiped them all out. In the space of one long bloody night.

  I didn't have to ask who they were. The Immortals had protected their privacy and their security by destroying everything that surrounded them. Just because they could. And I thought my family was ruthless…

  "I have business with those murderous sons of bitches," I said. "When it's all over, I'll send a message to my people, and we'll see about getting you out from under this hill. Talk to you later."

  Good-bye, Drood. It is a kind offer, and I wish you good fortune. But honesty compels me to inform you that in my experience, no one comes back from Castle Frankenstein.

  I followed the increasingly rough road up the side of dragon hill, and finally came to a halt atop a tall bluff, looking down at the ruins of Castle Frankenstein. Even this close, the illusion was perfect. Just a couple of stumpy stone towers, a few tumbledown walls, crawling ivy and dark shadows; all of it standing starkly against the dark sky. It would have been convincing… but even with my foreknowledge of its true nature, I would have known something was wrong. There was no trace of any of the wildlife that would normally have infested such a ruin. I couldn't See a single life sign anywhere. No rats, no wild dogs or feral cats, not even a single bat. And that… was a real giveaway. I looked the ruins over carefully with my Sight, but couldn't See a single gap or weakness anywhere in the illusion. Which meant I was going to have to do it the hard way.

  I started down the steep crumbling path that led to the Castle, wincing every time I dislodged a few small rocks, but I hadn't got far before I had to stop abruptly. The way was blocked by the Immortals' first line of defence: a simple but incredibly powerful force field. It hung on the air before me, invisible, intangible, but carrying enough energy to fry me on the spot if I so much as touched it with a fingertip. There was a built-in avoidance ward, a basic go away nothing to see here influence, enough to keep out the tourists; but I was concentrating so hard on not making any noise that my Sight only caught it at the last moment. I'm pretty sure my torc would have saved me by automatically armouring up, but that would have set off God alone knew how many alarms. So I stood very still, feeling the cold sweat bead on my face, as I realised how close I'd just come to blowing my whole mission.

  Time to use the Chameleon Codex. I touched a single fingertip to the silver cuff link, muttered the activating Words, and the stored DNA data rushed into my system, rewriting me from within.

  My flesh crawled, surging and rippling all over my body, like a terrible itch I couldn't scratch, and then I swayed on my feet as everything suddenly snapped into place. I held up my hands, turning them back and forth, but in the gloom they looked just the same. Hard to tell with hands, really. I started to call up the Merlin Glass, so I could study my new face in its mirror, but again stopped myself just in time. Just the proximity of such a powerful artefact would undoubtedly trigger its own set of alarms. I had to trust that I was Rafe now, right down to his Immortal DNA.

  And people say their lives are complicated.

  I walked forward, into the force field, and it opened up before me, its subtle energies trailing across my bare face like caressing fingers. And then I was through, and moving on, and Castle Frankenstein lay open and defenceless before me.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Assault on Castle Frankenstein I could have just walked up to the main entrance, banged on the door and demanded to be let in, but somehow I just didn't like to. There had to be more than getting into Castle Frankenstein than just having the right face. So I made my approach slowly and cautiously, sticking to the shadows wherever possible. I wasn't used to sneaking up on things without the benefit of my armour to fall back on, if things went seriously wrong in a hurry. The Castle seemed to grow bigger and bigger the closer I got, its vast stone face looming over me, impossibly tall and foreboding. Lights burned fiercely in all the many windows, though here and there unhealthy glows seeped past the outlines of closed shutters. And still, not a sign of a human guard anywhere. Not up on the high crenellated battlements, not peering out of any window, not even standing guard outside the main entrance. Did the Immortals really feel that safe, that secure? I suppose if no one's dared attack you where you live for centuries, you just come to assume no one ever will. Especially if you've got the kind of protections in place that can keep out gods and monsters and Droods. But after the failed attack on Drood Hall, and the rout of the Accelerated Men, they should have been expecting some kind of re sponse, or counterattack… Could they really be that arrogant, that complacent?

  First rule in the field: when events seem too good to be true, they probably are too good to be true.

  Still, the Castle's quite remarkable protections had failed only because I had access to the false Rafe's DNA, and that was a very recent development. Even the best of protections need regular updating. I kept checking around me with my Sight raised, looking for new levels of protection, disguised booby traps, land mines or trapdoors, but there was nothing. It was almost completely dark now, the only light shining down from the Castle's long rows of windows. Which left me plenty of shadows to take advantage of, right up to the Castle itself. But the approach to the main door was sharply illuminated, with harsh white electric light. Presumably backed up by modern surveillance systems, because nobody's that secure. I kept well away from the lit door, and sneaked along the front wall, my shoulder pressed hard against the cold rough stone. I kept my head well down, ducking under each of the lit windows, listening carefully.

  The night was eerily silent, but through the closed windows I could hear conversations, raised voices, laughter. They sounded just like ordinary people, not the evil murdering bastards they were. But I suppose even monsters aren't always monsters, when they're at home. Did they plot to murder my Molly, in one of these bright and cheerful rooms? I had to stop for a moment, as a cold hand closed around my heart, and squeezed. Not now. Not now… I'd mourn my love later, when I had time. I made myself move on, darting from window to window, until finally I came to one where there was no sound at all. I crouched there a while, motionless, until I was sure the room was deserted. And then I held my right hand up before me, and studied the golden ring gleaming on my finger. The Gemini Duplicator. It was time to try out the Armourer's new toy. I pressed hard against the ring with the fingers on either side of it, and just like that there were two of me.
>
  And the duplicate was standing on the other side of the wall, inside the room. I'd spotted that possibility early on, when the Armourer first explained the rings' extended range to me.

  At first, being two of me felt really freaky. All my senses were registering in duplicate, in a weird stereo effect. I was in the light and in the dark, in the cold and in the warm, inside and out. I swayed on two sets of feet, unbalanced in a whole new way, and concentrated fiercely until I could separate out the two sensory streams. I found the trick of it surprisingly quickly; like patting yourself on the head while simultaneously rubbing your stomach. I'd always known that talent would come in handy one day. At first, my consciousness kept switching back and forth from one head to the other, but I soon learned to keep both sets of thoughts going at once, holding one set in the foreground while pushing the other back.

  Still; really freaky.

  I pushed down the outside me and took a good look around the room I was in. (While thinking, Was the one outside the original me, with the one inside a duplicate? Or had the Gemini Duplicator projected me where I needed to be, while generating a duplicate to stay outside? And, where did all the extra mass come from, to make a whole second body?) My heads started to hurt. When this was all over, and I got back to Drood Hall, I was going to have to sit the Armourer down, and ask him a whole bunch of seriously pointed questions.

  I concentrated on the room I was in. It was cheerfully lit with perfectly modern electric lighting, comfortably appointed, and no one was home. I padded quickly over to the door, eased it open a little, and listened. A few people were coming and going, talking quietly. I waited till they were gone, gave it a few more moments just in case, and then opened the door and slipped out into the main hall.

  Pretty impressive, at first look. Old style Baronial, all eighteenth-century features carefully preserved, parquet flooring and exposed stone walls, and a really high ceiling with half a dozen cut glass and diamond chandeliers. Probably draughty as hell, and a pain to heat in the winter. I grew up in Drood Hall; I know about these things. I thought wearing long underwear most of the year round was normal. I hurried over to the main door, and then hesitated, and studied it thoughtfully. Fashioned from a single huge slab of some dark wood, reinforced with steel bands, but… no hidden surprises that I could See. Just a perfectly ordinary brass lock, and two sets of heavy bolts, top and bottom. The bolts weren't even in place, and when I checked, the door wasn't even locked. Arrogant, complacent, and stupid… Some people deserve everything that's coming to them. I pulled open the heavy door, and there I was, waiting for me.

  Freaky, weird and very disturbing. My consciousness ricocheted back and forth between my heads, me seeing me seeing me, and the only coherent thought I could manage was, Is that really what I look like? I concentrated, bearing down hard, and then it occurred to the me looking in from outside that I had to be the original because I was still wearing the Gemini Duplicator ring. I held up my hand to prove it, and the me standing inside held up my hand. We both had rings. I decided enough was enough, and both of me squeezed my fingers against the ring. And just like that there was only me, standing in the open doorway. Air rushed in to fill the vacuum where the other me had been standing just a moment before, like an explosion in reverse. I rocked on my feet, struggling to reconcile two sets of memories from the same period, but it all came together surprisingly easily. I hurried forward, and closed the door quietly behind me.

  I put my back to the door and scowled at the long empty hall stretching away before me. My skin crawled in anticipation of sudden alarms, but there was nothing. I couldn't quite believe how easy they were making this for me. Powerful protective shields are all very well, but you can't beat the human touch when it comes to spot ting intruders. In the end I just shrugged, and allowed myself to breathe a little more easily. I might not be able to call up my armour here, but my torc's basic nature should still be enough to hide me from any and all inner surveillance systems. The Immortals might or might not have had systems in place to detect the presence of old torcs, but I was betting they didn't have anything that could deal with the new strange matter torcs. The Immortals might have infiltrated the Droods, but they didn't understand Ethel.

  Nobody did.

  I pulled up my collar a little, to hide the torc from a casual glance, and strode down the long hall like I was thinking of renting it out. When penetrating an enemy stronghold, confidence is everything. Look like you belong there, and no one will challenge you. So far, Castle Frankenstein was everything it should be: old stonework, marvellously carved and ornate; standing suits of armour, burnished to within an inch of their lives; elegant medieval tapestries and hanging cloths; and rows of dark frowning portraits. Old Frankensteins or old Immortals, I didn't know or give a damn. It was all very Gothic, apart from the electric light chandeliers and the hidden central heating, the benefits of which I was currently enjoying after so long in the cold, cold night.

  The Castle so far reminded me a lot of Drood Hall. Of long and not forgotten history, held over into the modern day. The Immortals were as old as we were, and the two of us had a lot more in common than I liked to admit. Two ancient families, their present still dominated by their past, who never threw anything away. The Immortals were the one thing we'd always feared the most, our darkest nightmare: the Anti-Droods. Everything we could have been, if not for our role as shamans, defenders of the Human tribe. Be sure your nightmares will find you out…

  I stopped, some distance down the hall, and looked thoughtfully about me. It had just occurred to me that everything in the hall was perfectly clean, polished, and waxed… For all the Gothic look, there wasn't a cobweb in sight. And I had to wonder about that. Surely the Immortals wouldn't allow humble cleaning staff to enter their secret sanctorum? Who could they trust, to come in and do for them? They couldn't employ the local townspeople as servants; like everyone else, the locals had been programmed to see Castle Frankenstein as nothing more than ancient ruins. And surely the great and secret masters of the world wouldn't lower themselves to get out the bucket and mop and do it themselves?

  A quiet, subtle sound caught my attention, and I looked sharply round. And there behind me was a short, squat creature, almost as broad as it was tall, wearing simple blue overalls, with a bucket and mop… slowly but thoroughly cleaning up the trail of scuffed muddy footprints I'd left behind me. (I couldn't believe I'd done that. Footprints? I was far too used to my armour looking after me.) I recognised what the cleaner was; I'd seen his people at work, in and around London. This was a kobold, one of the underfolk, from under the ground. Ancient inhabitants of the Hidden World, like Pixies, Brownies, Trolls. Mostly gone now, to other more hospitable realities, like the Elves. But the kobolds I'd encountered before had been proud, hardworking creatures, always paid the best rates because they were the only ones brave enough to do the really hard work. So what was a kobold doing here, working as a cleaner for the Immortals?

  I strolled back to the creature, smiling on it in what I hoped was a friendly and not at all threatening way. It looked up from its work, but didn't stop, slowly and methodically removing all traces of my presence. Up close, it looked more like a Neanderthal than anything else: brutal but still basically humanoid, heavy browed and heavy boned, with a wide face, no chin, and sharp crafty eyes. It nodded briefly to me.

  "You shouldn't be here," it said, in a low growling voice. "Come to take on the Immortals, in their own place of power, have you? Be welcome, fool. Try to die well, with honour."

  "I'm a Drood," I said calmly. "Other people do the dying."

  The kobold looked at me sharply. "Then you should know better than to be here. You might stand a better chance than most, but you're still a damned fool to break into Castle Frankenstein. And a doomed one. Doomed… No one can beat the Immortals. They go on forever, because they can."

  "Everything comes to an end eventually," I said, with a confidence I wasn't entirely sure I felt. "You're a kobold, aren't you? What a
re you doing here, working for the Immortals?"

  "Kobold. Yes. Very old people. We were here before the Immortals. Before this Castle. We were miners, then. Digging deep, deep under the earth. Left to ourselves, and liked it that way. We stayed on after so many of the other underfolk left, because no one bothered us, down in the depths of the earth. There was still a lot of gold left, and we like gold. They built a Castle above us, and we didn't care. Until he came. The one everyone talks about. The Frankenstein, the living god of the scalpel. He discovered us, brought us up into the light, made us his servants. And after he left the Immortals moved in, and they made us their slaves. Put these yokes upon us."

  He lifted his head to show me the cold iron collar around his throat, etched with runes. He was careful not to touch it.

  "The Immortals own us now. Generations of kobolds have been born in this cold stone tomb, never to know the comforts of the dark, and the earth, the mines and the gold. Once there were thousands of us, then hundreds, now less than one hundred. We do not belong in this world. And we were never meant to be slaves."

  "I can rip that yoke right off you," I said. "If you want."

  "No you can't. The yoke will kill me, rather than let me go. The Immortals never let go of anything they own."

  "Then I will bring down the Immortals," I said. "And make them free you. All of you."

  "Why should you?" said the kobold. "Why should you give a damn about the underfolk? You're human."

  "Because I'm a Drood," I said. "And that's what Droods do."

  The kobold leaned forward, fixing me with its cold, bright eyes. "Kill them all, Drood. They've earned it."

  I walked the whole length of the hall, looking vaguely around for a map of some kind, or a floor plan of the Castle. Preferably something set out neatly on a wall, with YOU ARE HERE, and all the important areas clearly marked. But of course, there was nothing like that. The people who lived here didn't need a map, and they actively discouraged tourists. I had no idea of what I was looking for, and where I should be going; that's what happens when you plan a mission in a hurry. All my thoughts had centred around how I was going to get in, and not enough about what I'd do afterwards. We should have got more specific information out of Rafe, but I was too impatient. Now I was here, I wanted information, which meant records, which meant computers. While I was standing at the foot of a long sweeping set of stairs, at the end of the hall, looking vaguely around in search of inspiration, a side door opened, and out came a teenager with long floppy hair, in sweatshirt, jeans and trainers. He stopped abruptly, and looked at me.