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  Daemons Are Forever

  ( Secret Histories - 2 )

  Simon R Green

  The Drood family is all that stands between Humanity and all the forces of darkness. They were supposed to protect the world, but ended up ruling it. Eddie Drood discovered the lies at the heart of his family, and brought them down. For his sins, they put him in charge: to run the family, and to redeem it. Eddie feels the need to prove to the world that the Drood family is as strong as it ever was. So he decides to wipe out one of Humanity's greatest enemies, the soul eaters known as the Loathly Ones. But once started on this venture, he discovers that the Loathly Ones are just the forerunners of something far worse; the Many-Angled Ones, the Hungry Gods, descending from a higher dimension to consume every living thing in this world. Eddie Drood has got his work cut out for him . . .

  Daemons Are Forever

  (The second book in the Secret Histories series)

  Simon Green

  Men are mortal; but demons are forever.

  The name’s Bond. Shaman Bond. The very secret agent. Once upon a time, all that stood between the world you know and all the forces of darkness was my family. Made strong and powerful by our golden armour, we fought the monsters on your behalf, keeping you safe. Every member of my family was raised from childhood to fight the good fight, in strictest secrecy. So you would never have to know just how dangerous a world you really lived in.

  I was a field agent, licensed to kick supernatural arse. Your knight in shining armour, keeping the wolves from your door.

  And then I found out it was all a lie. My family didn’t protect the world…we ruled it, from the shadows. And the marvellous golden armour, that made us so much more than human…came at a hidden price too terrible to bear. So I brought my family down. And for my sins, they put me in charge. To run the family, and redeem it.

  My real name is Eddie Drood. I am the world’s last hope. The world … is in a lot of trouble.

  CHAPTER ONE

  A Day in the Life

  The world isn’t what you think it is. Hell, even London isn’t what you think it is. There are monsters around every corner, creatures in every shadow, and more dark conspiracies and secret wars going on than you can shake a really big stick at. You never get to know about this because the Drood family has field agents everywhere, to keep the lid on things and make sure everyone plays nice. When they don’t, we kill them. We don’t believe in second chances; we believe in stamping out fires before they can spread.

  My family has been keeping the world safe for almost two thousand years. We’re very good at it.

  And then I found out the truth behind the lies, and nothing made sense anymore. The last time I visited my nice little flat in London, my home away from home, my life seemed to make some kind of sense. I was an experienced field agent, complete with use name and cover identity, and the marvellous golden armour that made me so much more than human. I went where the family told me to go, and did what I was told, and it never even occurred to me to ask any questions. It was my job to protect the world from whatever dark and nasty forces needed slapping down that week, and I had a good reputation for getting the job done, whatever the complications. I knew who were the good guys, and who were the bad.

  I knew nothing.

  My flat was in Knightsbridge, a comfortable first-floor apartment in a really nice area, where no one knew who I really was. I made enough money to live in style as well as comfort, and no one ever bothered me. That was my life, just a few months ago. Until one day, with no warning, my family declared me rogue for no reason, and I had to go on the run to save my life. Searching for answers, I discovered the terrible truth about my family and the world, and nothing has been the same since.

  Now here I was back in London again, with the wild witch of the woods Molly Metcalf sitting at my side as I drove my new car through the mostly empty streets. It was the early hours of the morning, the sun only just up, the birds were singing their little hearts out, and the air had that expectant, anything-can-happen feel that all big cities have at the beginning of the day. Molly Metcalf, anarchist and terrorist and a whole bunch of other ists that involved making trouble for the powers that be, stretched happily and beat out a rhythm on the dashboard with both hands to accompany the Breed 77 album playing on the car’s sound system. A short and delicate china doll of a woman, with bobbed black hair, huge dark eyes, and big bosoms. She was wearing a black leather catsuit, with a witch knife hanging around her neck on a long silver chain. Molly used to be one of the bad guys; probably still was, depending on how you looked at it. We had a lot of history between us, even tried to kill each other several times, when we ended up on opposite sides of a mission. Now we were an item, and I’d be hard pressed to tell which of us was more surprised.

  Me, I’m just another face in the crowd, trained to blend in without being noticed. And I’ve never ordered a vodka martini shaken not stirred in my life.

  I sent my new car roaring through the streets with a complete disregard for traffic lights, traffic laws, and any and all forms of road etiquette. Though strictly speaking, it wasn’t a new car. I’d had to abandon and destroy my beloved Hirondel during my time on the run, so I prevailed on the family Armourer to provide me with a new set of wheels. I was now driving a lovingly restored 1933 open-topped four-and-a-half-litre Bentley, in racing green with red leather interiors, and an Amherst Villiers supercharger under the long gleaming bonnet. The wind slapped at my hair as we roared along, and I changed gears more than was strictly necessary, just to show off. It was a great green beast of a car, stylish as all hell, and calmly glamorous in that way that modern cars don’t even aspire to anymore. I slammed her into top gear and put my foot down, and the Bentley surged forward like a hunting dog let off the leash. Molly whooped with joy, exhilarating in the speed and acceleration.

  “This is one hell of a car, Eddie! Where did you steal it?”

  “It used to belong to my uncle Jack,” I yelled back over the roar of the engine. “Back when he was charging around East Europe in the fifties, at the height of the Cold War, stamping out bush fires with extreme prejudice. They say he personally prevented three world wars, and very nearly started one, when he was caught in bed with a politician’s wife. And his mistress. Uncle Jack moved on to faster and flashier cars, of course, but he always had a fondness for this one, and kept it going for years. He customised the hell out of it, of course. As family Armourer, he always had to have the best toys.”

  “Such as?”

  I grinned. I couldn’t help myself. “Bulletproof chassis and windows, silicon-gel-filled tyres so they’ll never go flat, machine guns fore and aft firing explosive flechettes at two thousand rounds a minute…EMP proof, spell proof, curse proof, plus all the usual hidden extras. The operating manual is the size of a phone book. All of us kids used to pore over it in the library, dreaming of the day when we’d be field agents and drive cars just like it. And by the way, don’t try and use the cigarette lighter. Flamethrowers.”

  “Groovy! Let’s try them!”

  “Let’s not. We aren’t supposed to draw attention to ourselves, remember? Wait till we see a traffic warden. Or a street mime.”

  It felt strange to be back in London, driving down familiar streets, after so much had happened. The streets looked just the same, and no doubt the people went about their everyday lives as though nothing had changed; but everything had. The whole world was up for grabs with the family out of the picture, even if no one knew it yet. My family didn’t run the world anymore, and the only reason the world wasn’t tearing itself apart trying to fill the new power vacuum…was that all the other powers that be were waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  “Why are w
e going back to your old flat?” said Molly.

  “I already told you. And if you ask Are we there yet? one more time, I’ll hit the ejector button.”

  “This car doesn’t have an ejector seat.”

  “It might have. You don’t know.”

  “Talk to me, Eddie. You never tell me what you’re thinking.”

  “Hey, I’m not used to this whole being in a relationship bit, okay? When you work as a field agent, you learn pretty fast you can’t trust anyone.”

  “Not even those close to you?” said Molly, studying me solemnly with her huge dark eyes.

  “Especially those. You always know where you are with an enemy; it’s only friends and loved ones who can betray you.” I took a deep breath and stared out through the windshield. “If I’m going to lead the family, and it looks like I’m going to have to, because no one else is up to the job … I have to live at the Hall. If only because there are still far too many members of the family I can’t turn my back on safely. The truth might set you free, but there’s nothing that says you have to be grateful. I need to be on top of things…But if I do have to live in that draughty old pile again, I want some of my favourite things with me. Just a few little things that matter, to make the place at least feel like home.”

  “Never get attached to possessions,” Molly said briskly. “They’re just things, and you can always get more things.”

  “You don’t have a sentimental bone in your body, do you?”

  “If I did, I’d have it surgically removed. I’m always moving on, and I never look back.”

  “Well, yes,” I said. “But you live in a forest. What would you take back to the Hall? Your favourite tree?”

  “You forget, Eddie, I’m a witch. I might decide to bring the whole forest with me.”

  I decided to change the subject, before she set her heart on the idea. You never can tell with witches.

  “So,” I said, as casually as I could manage. “How are you getting on with the family? Everyone treating you all right? What do you think of the mighty and mystical Droods, now that you’ve had a chance to see us up close and personal?”

  “Hard to tell,” said Molly. The music had stopped, I’d slowed the car, and it suddenly seemed very quiet in the Bentley. Molly produced a small silver snuffbox out of midair, snorted a pinch of something green and glowing, sneezed messily, and made the box disappear again. “Most of your family aren’t talking to me. Either because they think I led you astray, or because I’ve thwarted so many of your family’s plans in the past…It’s not like I killed that many of your people…They need to get over it, and move on. That was then, this is now. All right, so I used to practice the black arts, spread insurrection, mutilate aliens, and abduct cattle; I was young! I needed to get things out of my system! That’s no reason to run screaming when I just try to talk to people.”

  “They don’t know you like I do,” I said reassuringly. “Haven’t you made any friends?”

  “Your uncle Jack’s okay,” Molly said reluctantly. “But he’s always busy in the Armoury. And Jacob’s good company. For a ghost. And a dirty old man. But apart from them, it’s all been cold shoulders and nasty, pointed comments just in range of my hearing. A few were really quite unpleasant.”

  I took my eyes off the road just long enough to give her a really serious stare. “Please tell me you didn’t kill them.”

  “Of course not! I turned them into things.”

  “What sort of… things?”

  Molly smiled sweetly. “Remember those pheasants we had last week, that you noted were out of season?”

  I gripped the steering wheel so hard my knuckles went white. “Oh my God. You didn’t…”

  “Of course I didn’t! Lighten up, Eddie! You can be so gullible sometimes. I just turned them all into toads and dumped them in the rock gardens for a while, to let them think things over. They’re fine now. Except for a slight tendency to snap at passing flies.”

  I sighed heavily. It seemed to me that I’d been doing that a lot more since Molly came into my life.

  “If it helps, most of the family haven’t exactly warmed to me, either,” I admitted.

  “They respect you,” said Molly.

  “Only because they’re afraid of me. I destroyed their precious Heart, source of their wonderful golden armour. The one thing that made them better than everyone else. I proved the Heart was evil and the armour was an abomination, but they hate me even more for making them face the truth. That we’re not the good guys, and haven’t been for centuries. On top of which, they’re all feeling helpless and vulnerable without their armour, defenceless in the face of the family’s many enemies.”

  “You promised them new silver torcs, new armour. Everyone applauded, and cheered you! They did. I was there.”

  “The enthusiasm of the moment…No, if I’m going to lead the family, I have to do it from the front. I have to inspire them to be great again. Have to prove myself with action, not just words and good intentions. Prove myself worthy to lead the family.”

  “Prove it to your family?” said Molly. “Or to yourself?”

  My nice little flat was in Knightsbridge, a very calm and quiet and civilised area, where no one knew who I was, or what I did. They only knew me as Shaman Bond, a man of independent means who kept himself to himself, was never any trouble, and always remembered to put his garbage out on the proper day. So as I drew nearer to my quiet and secluded residential area, it came as something of a surprise to me to see so many people out and about in the streets who didn’t belong there. I spotted spies and agents from a dozen different countries and organisations, all busily pretending to be perfectly ordinary people going about their perfectly ordinary business. But you can’t fool a Drood.

  I slowed the car and took a closer look. The signs were not good. Every approach to my flat had been covered by people who shouldn’t even have known where it was. Word does get around fast in the intelligence community. So I couldn’t just drive up to my flat and park. All kinds of unpleasantness might ensue. I needed to be able to slip into my old place, gather up a few belongings, and get the hell out again, without anyone even knowing I’d ever been there.

  I pulled the car to the side of the road, some distance short of my flat, and stopped. Molly looked at me inquiringly. I quietly pointed out several of the enemy, prevented her from launching an immediate preemptive strike, and persuaded her to sit quietly while I examined the scene more fully, using the Sight. Just like my old collar, my new silver torc allowed me to See much more of the world as it really was, rather than through humanity’s limited senses. The world is a much bigger place than most people realise, full of the strange and the terrible, walking unseen and unsuspected alongside us.

  There were a couple of elves, tall and proud and haughty. They live somewhere else now, and only ever turn up in our world when there’s a good chance to screw us over or kick us when we’re down. It’s all they’ve got left, these days. There were aliens; grays and lizardoids and a few things whose shapes made no sense at all. They really do walk among us. Tourists, mostly. If they look like getting out of hand, the family usually just spanks them and sends them home. Ghosts drifted here and there, trapped in repeating loops of time. And there were things walking through walls, or scrambling up them, or hovering in the skies overhead. Far too many of them for it all to be just a coincidence. Word does get around fast in the unnatural community.

  I shut down my Sight. You can’t See the world as it really is for too long; the human mind just isn’t equipped to cope. Luckily, none of them could See me, as long as I wore the torc. They had to wait for me to reveal myself… I grinned. It was time to use one of the Bentley’s really special features.

  “Eddie, what are you planning?” said Molly.

  I smiled at her beatifically. “Brace yourself, sweetie. I’m taking this car up to eleven!”

  I pushed the pedal to the floor, let go the clutch, and the Bentley surged forward, its engine howling like a
wolf on the hunt. We shot past the hundred mark in a few seconds as I slammed through the gears, and then I hit the hidden switch and threw her into Overdrive. Molly and I were forced back into our seats by the terrible acceleration, and the world blurred around us as we left it behind. The Bentley punched through the walls of the world, and just like that we were somewhere else.

  Freed from the everyday restrictions of time and space, the Bentley tore through the dimensions, day and night flickering on and off like a stroboscope. Stars blazed in somewhere else’s night skies, in constellations never seen from Earth. There were strange sounds and incandescent lights, and a city singing in a million inhuman voices. Visions and vistas flickered on and off as we shot through them like a bullet, intangible and unsubstantial, though whether they were the ghosts or we were is probably just a matter of opinion. Molly shrieked and howled with delight, and only the need to concentrate on the steering kept me from joining in. Drunk on speed, crazed on velocity, we hammered through the dimensions until I saw the sign I was looking for and took a sharp right turn back into our reality.

  Different worlds Dopplered past us as I slammed on the brakes, and when the Bentley finally shuddered to a halt, we were sitting inside my garage, underneath my flat. I quickly shut down the engine and took my hands off the steering wheel. They were shaking, and not just from the exhilaration. Taking sideways journeys through adjoining dimensions is always dangerous. You can never tell what might notice you, and decide to follow you home. I got out of the car on only slightly unsteady legs and checked the car over carefully, to make sure we hadn’t picked up any unwanted hitchhikers. Paying special attention to the undercarriage.

  Molly was already out of the car and dancing around it, punching the air with her fist. “That was fantastic! Let’s do it again! What was that?”