“Sorry,” I said. “Terribly rude, I know, but . . . is that it? Really? That’s your modern armour?”
“They look like toy soldiers,” said the Sarjeant-at-Arms.
He had a point. They did. Covered from head to toe in a dull grey plastic, smooth and featureless, like grown men dipped in liquid plastic and allowed to harden. I kept wanting to look at their feet for the bases they should be standing on. Some of them were holding plastic rifles, the material of the guns blending seamlessly into their plastic hands. Their faces were rough and blurred versions of the features under the plastic, like any toy soldier.
“Go!” Dusk said angrily to his plastic men. “Show them what you can do! A special bonus to the first man to bring me a Drood head!”
The plastic men surged forward inhumanly quickly, followed by more than fifty others from the ranks. The plastic armour stretched smoothly with every movement. Those without guns extruded swords and axes from their plastic hands, with fiercely sharp edges. Some had rifles; some had handguns; some had machine guns, though I still hadn’t worked out what they were going to fire. Plastic bullets? Against Drood armour?
And then . . . it all started to go wrong. The plastic armour began to change, the basic grey flushing with bursts of swirling colours. Dark, angry shades of red and blue and green, feverish purples and sick yellows. Swirling on the surface of the plastic armour like infected oil slicks.
The wearers stumbled to a halt and looked at one another confusedly. Strange bulges and eruptions rose and fell in the armour, the surface bubbling and seething as it burst out in new shapes. Some hunched over; some sprouted wings; some grew extra arms. Shocked and startled voices cried out from inside the armour. Some blossomed into strange new shapes, violent and aggressive and increasingly inhuman, reflecting the thoughts and wishes and inner needs of the wearers. Some became medieval demons, complete with horned heads and cloven hooves and clawed hands. Roger Morningstar had clearly made an impression.
But the changes didn’t stop there. The men inside the armour were screaming now, in pain and horror and anguish, begging for help. Some of them became living gargoyles, twisted and misshapen. Some expanded jerkily, in bursts and spurts, till they were ten, twenty feet tall, wavering uncertainly as they struggled to support their own weight. Others became warped, monstrous things, horribly inhuman, the kind of things that chase us in nightmares. Dusk’s army was crying out in shock and alarm, and beginning to back away, shouting that something had gone wrong. And it had. The changes continued, the plastic armour forming horrid abstract shapes from the depths of the unconscious mind. Things that hurt the human eye to look at, impossible for the conscious mind to deal with.
I knew what was happening. The living superplastic was linked directly to the wearer’s mind through a cybernetic implant. Similar to how Droods operate our armour. But these new armoured men hadn’t had Drood training. In the family, we are taught from an early age how to control what we think about our armour, so we always have full conscious control. These unfortunate men had lost control to their subconscious minds, and were producing shapes from the under-mind, reflecting hidden needs and desires. Monsters from the id. Evil shapes, monstrous forms, nightmare impulses never meant to escape into the waking world. Without the mental discipline drilled into every Drood from childhood, the armour was giving each wearer what he really wanted. . . .
The plastic shapes were constantly changing now, flickering from one thing to another in the blink of an eye, directed by long-buried needs and unacknowledged motivations. Clashing appetites and raw jealousies and sexual hungers ran loose, given form and purpose in the ever-adaptable superplastic. Until finally they turned on one another, the Drood enemy forgotten in their instinctive need to pay off old hurts and envies. No discipline, no direction, just every man for himself. Except that what was left inside the plastic armour wasn’t really men at all.
I turned to the Sarjeant-at-Arms. “I’ve had enough of this. They’re Satanists. Hit them hard, Sarjeant.”
“Like I need you to tell me that,” he said, and charged forward, yelling for his men to follow him. And we did.
We all surged forward, glorious in our gleaming golden armour, and slammed into the front ranks of the enemy. The plastic shapes didn’t stand a chance against our strange-matter weapons. The men and women beyond them had weapons of all kinds, scientific and magical, most of it strictly forbidden. And none of it was worth a damn against Drood armour. When the bullets and energy blasts and attack magics broke and shattered and ran harmlessly away from our armour, their confidence broke. They had no discipline, had no idea what to do; they’d been told to expect a weakened, demoralised enemy, and they’d believed it, the fools. We moved swiftly among them, striking them down with spiked gloved fists and golden swords and axes. Bones broke and shattered, flesh pulped and blood flew on the air. We had no mercy in us. Not for them. Not after what they’d done, and what they planned to do. We were fighting to save a whole generation of children from slaughter and horror. We struck the Satanists down and trampled them underfoot in our eagerness to get to the next target, a wild and vicious exhilaration in our hearts.
We were born to fight evil, but we rarely get our hands on the real thing.
We slammed through the enemy ranks, and they shattered and fell apart before us. Some fought; most turned to run; none escaped. The Sarjeant saw to that. He sent his people off to surround the enemy and block their escape routes, driving them back to their deaths. Some threw down their weapons, tried to surrender, begged and cried for their lives. But we had no time for that. They gave up every right to civilised treatment when they joined the Satanists. They had sworn their lives and souls to evil, given up everything that made them human.
You can’t simply join the Satanists. You have to buy your way in with blood and murder, horror and the suffering of innocents. You have to do things from which there can be no coming back, no chance of atonement or redemption. You don’t just sell your soul; you spit on it and throw it away.
They belonged to Hell, and that’s where we sent them.
I moved steadily through the ranks of the enemy, smashing in chests and crushing skulls, moved by an implacable cold rage. I have always thought of myself as an agent, not an assassin, but if ever I have felt justified in what I do and what I am, it was on that day. Some evils are so great all you can do is stamp them out to keep them from contaminating Humanity. But even as I fought I never lost control, because it wasn’t enough to just strike down the rank and file. Dusk was still out there somewhere. And if he got to the mind-influencing machine . . . I fought on through the ranks, my spiked golden fists rising and falling tirelessly while blood ran endlessly down my armour . . . heading for the Cathedral Hotel.
Molly was right there with me, grabbing Satanists by their shirt-fronts, hauling them in close and screaming, “Where’s my sister? Where’s Isabella? What have you done with her?” right into their faces. But no one even knew what she was talking about, so she threw them aside and moved on, searching for someone who would know. Now and again someone would make the mistake of attacking her, and Molly would strike them down with some swift and nasty magic and keep going.
I’d almost reached the far edge of the conflict when Harry suddenly ran past me, leaving the fighting behind and heading for the hotel. The Sarjeant yelled angrily after him, thinking he was abandoning the battle, but I knew where he was going. I hadn’t seen Roger Morningstar anywhere in the ranks of the army, which meant that if he was here he was inside the hotel. Harry was going to find him. So I went after him. The fight was already won; it didn’t need either of us. And if Roger was there, I wanted to be there when he met Harry.
I burst into the hotel lobby almost on Harry’s heels. It looked bright and open, modern and efficient, and completely deserted. Harry spun round, ready to fight, and I quickly stopped and raised my hands to show they were empty.
“I’m not here to stop you, Harry. I’m here to help.”
<
br /> His featureless golden mask looked back at me. “Why would you do that, Eddie?”
“Because I don’t want to believe that Roger is totally lost to us.”
“You never liked him.”
“He never liked me. So what? He’s family.”
Harry shook his head slowly. “I don’t want you here. This is private.”
“Roger’s not going to be here alone,” I said, lowering my hands. “He’ll have guards. Protections. Layers of security. You’re going to need someone to watch your back, or you’ll never get to him.”
Harry nodded stiffly, reluctantly, and then we both broke off and looked around sharply, as we heard rapidly approaching footsteps. We moved quickly together, side by side, and a whole bunch of heavily armed security guards came running in from a side corridor. They all had automatic weapons, and they all opened up on Harry and me the moment they saw us. We stood our ground, not flinching in the least at the roar of automatic fire, and our armour soaked up every single bullet. The sheer impact would have knocked over a horse, but we didn’t budge an inch. More guards arrived, firing strange-energy weapons. Violent forces crawled and crackled all over our armour, trying to force a way in. They failed and fell away.
Harry and I waited to be sure they’d thrown everything they had at us, and then we strode purposefully forward. Heavy blades erupted out of Harry’s hands, while terrible spikes rose up from his arms and shoulders. He moved among the security guards like a living scythe, cutting down everyone who stood before him. I grew a long golden sword from one hand and moved alongside him, hacking and cutting. There was no room for mercy in either of us. All I had to do was think of the Great Sacrifice and mountains of dead children, and my heart was a cold and terrible thing.
It didn’t take long. It was a slaughter, not a battle. Soon enough, the lobby was full of bodies and soaked in blood. More blood ran down our gleaming armour in streams, to pool around our feet.
“Well,” said Harry. “I think we can safely assume they know we’re here. Let’s go introduce ourselves.”
He strode down the corridor the guards had come from, and I went with him. The corridor led to another corridor, and then we stopped again. There was a low, ominous growling from somewhere up ahead.
“Oh, bloody hell,” I said. “They’ve summoned up a demon dog. I hate those.”
“Any way round it?” said Harry.
“Beats me,” I said. “I don’t see any side corridors. But whatever that is, it has to be here to guard something. Or someone. So we have to go through it. . . . Okay, I’ll handle it. You go on. Find Roger.”
“Getting cocky, Eddie? No Drood’s ever managed to take down a demon dog on his own before.”
“You haven’t been keeping up with my reports, have you, Harry? I took one down at Lightbringer House.”
“I did read your report; you had Molly and Isabella there to help you.”
“You read my reports?” I said. “I’m flattered. Look, I can keep the thing at bay while you go talk with Roger. That’s what matters.”
“I can’t let you do that.”
“Yes, you can. You can’t stand me, remember?”
“Oh, yes. There is that. Anything for the family?”
“For family, Harry.”
We strode down the corridor together, took the sharp left turn, and found it wasn’t a demon dog after all. The whole of the corridor before us had been changed, transformed, possessed by a spirit out of Hell. The corridor was alive, its every surface organic, fleshy, corrupt. Like the living throat that had replaced the elevator shaft back at Lightbringer House. The walls were flesh: scarlet and purple meat, with dark rotting patches and networks of heavy, pulsing veins. The floor was a long, rippling, shocking pink tongue, slick with digestive juices. The whole of the ceiling was one long elongated eye, watching us unblinkingly with mad, fascinated intent. Huge, jagged teeth protruded from the meat of the walls in regular rows; and as we watched, they began to revolve slowly, like a meat grinder, or a living chain saw. The whole thing stank of blood and sulphur and sour milk; it was alive and it was hungry and it was waiting for us. I looked at Harry.
“After you.”
“It’s only meat and teeth,” said Harry. “You really think that could get through our armour?”
“That . . . is a demon out of Hell,” I said. “A major power and a major presence, to be able to overwrite our reality so completely. I have absolutely no idea what that thing could do to our armour.”
“It was put there to stop our getting to Roger,” said Harry.
“Almost certainly,” I said. “Still, when in doubt, cheat. If we can’t go through it, maybe we can go around it.”
I turned away from the possessed corridor and punched a hole through the ordinary wall next to me. My golden fist slammed through it with no problem at all. I pulled my hand back, and broken bricks and brick dust fell to the floor. I hit the wall again and again, making an opening big enough to step through, but when I stopped to look, all I could see on the other side was the possessed corridor, looking back at me.
“Damn,” I said. “It’s written over the whole hotel, mapping itself to every corridor at once. It’s everywhere it needs to be, all at the same time. Whichever way we go to try to reach Roger, this thing will always be there to block our way.”
“You understood all that from looking through one hole?” said Harry.
“Of course not. I accessed my armour’s sensors.”
“We should have brought an exorcist with us.”
“Well, next time we’ll know, won’t we?” I said. “You can’t think of everything when you’re in a hurry. Why don’t you wish for a tactical nuke as well, while you’re at it?”
“Don’t get tetchy,” said Harry. “Let me try something.”
He concentrated and brought both his arms together before him. Swift ripples ran along his golden armour, which then shifted and fused together, forming itself into a huge machine gun. The kind you see in action movies when the hero wants to bring down a whole house at once. I moved quickly to get out of the way, and Harry opened fire on the possessed corridor. Strange-matter bullets exploded from the long golden barrel with incredible speed and fury, chewing up the demonic flesh of the floor and walls. Purple meat exploded under the impact, dark blood spattering everywhere, and sustained firepower ripped the long pink tongue apart from one end to the other. Something screamed horribly: a vast, harsh and utterly malignant sound. Harry shifted his aim, tearing the corridor apart and devastating the elongated eye from end to end. The long split pupil exploded, and thick fluids rained down into the churned-up flesh of the corridor. Harry stopped firing, and the gun sank back into his armour again. And as he stood there, considering his work and finding it good, every single strange-matter bullet he’d fired jerked free of the demonic meat and flew back to him, to be absorbed into his armour.
“All right,” I said. “That’s impressive. Terribly destructive, but neat with it. I didn’t know our armour could do that.”
“I’ve been practicing,” said Harry. “Roger gave me the idea. His favourite film was always The Wild Bunch. I don’t know how many times he’s made me watch it with him.”
“The fiend,” I said.
And then we both broke off and stared blankly as the ripped and torn-up flesh of the possessed corridor repaired itself, rebuilding and reestablishing itself, demonic flesh fusing back together until the corridor looked exactly as it had before. Rotting walls, pulsing tongue, watching eye.
“Damn,” said Harry.
“Well, quite,” I said. “Major demonic presence . . .”
“Now what do we do? Send out for a tanker full of holy water?”
“Take too long,” I said. “Let me think. This is more Molly’s territory than mine.” I thought hard. This had to be a delaying tactic, to hold us off while Roger and Dusk got the hell out of Dodge, probably taking the mind-influencing machine with them. We had to find a way through. . . . A thought occur
red to me.
“Are you religious, Harry?”
“What? Not as such . . . not in any organised way. Hard to find an organised church that wants anything to do with the likes of Roger and me. You?”
“In my own way. We know Heaven and Hell are real; the family has regular dealings with them. But we don’t know much about either; only enough to know we don’t want to know more.”
“How is this helping us?” said Harry. “What do you want me to do, shape my armour into a big golden crucifix?”
“Might come in handy if we come up against a nest of vampires,” I said. “But no, I have something else in mind. And you’re really not going to like it, Harry.”
“What else is new?”
“How brave are you feeling?” I said. “And how much do you really love Roger?”
“What kind of a question is that?” said Harry angrily.
“A relevant one. You’re not here for duty or vengeance, like me. Or even to fight Satanists. You’re here to find, and hopefully rescue, the hellspawn Roger Morningstar. You’re the only one who came here just for him. Because you love him. And there’s no place for love in any place possessed by Hell. So I think you should armour down and walk into that corridor, and trust to your love to protect you.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Maybe. But I think it’ll work. If you’re up for it.”
“I knew it,” said Harry. “You want to get rid of me!”
“You’re here for Roger! That’s what matters to you! So is he your love true or not? Because if he isn’t, this is where you get to find out the hard way. If he is, Hell itself won’t be able to stand in your way.”
“Love conquers all?” said Harry. “Aren’t you a little old to be believing in that?”
“I believe in evil because I’ve seen it,” I said. “And I believe in good because I’ve seen it. And I believe in love. My Molly went into Limbo, into the shadow of death itself, to find me and bring me back. Do you dare do less for your love? Whenever Hell intrudes on Earth, Heaven is also there. What we do in Heaven’s gaze has Heaven’s strength.”
For Heaven's Eyes Only Page 31
