From a Drood to A Kill: A Secret Histories Novel Read online

  ALSO BY SIMON R. GREEN

  THE SECRET

  HISTORIES NOVELS

  The Man with the Golden Torc

  Daemons Are Forever

  The Spy Who Haunted Me

  From Hell with Love

  For Heaven’s Eyes Only

  Live and Let Drood

  Casino Infernale

  Property of a Lady Faire

  THE

  DEATHSTALKER SERIES

  Twilight of the Empire

  Deathstalker

  Deathstalker Rebellion

  Deathstalker War

  Deathstalker Honor

  Deathstalker Destiny

  Deathstalker Legacy

  Deathstalker Return

  Deathstalker Coda

  THE ADVENTURES

  OF HAWK & FISHER

  Swords of Haven

  Guards of Haven

  OTHER NOVELS

  Blue Moon Rising

  Beyond the Blue Moon

  Blood and Honor

  Down Among the Dead Men

  Shadows Fall

  Drinking Midnight Wine

  Once in a Blue Moon

  ACE BOOKS

  THE NIGHTSIDE SERIES

  Something from the Nightside

  Agents of Light and Darkness

  Nightingale’s Lament

  Hex and the City

  Paths Not Taken

  Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth

  Hell to Pay

  The Unnatural Inquirer

  Just Another Judgement Day

  The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny

  A Hard Day’s Night

  The Bride Wore Black Leather

  GHOST FINDERS NOVELS

  Ghost of a Chance

  Ghost of a Smile

  Ghost of a Dream

  Spirits from Beyond

  ROC

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014

  USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

  penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  Copyright © Simon R. Green, 2015

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  Green, Simon R., 1955–

  From a drood to a kill: a secret histories novel / Simon R. Green.

  pages cm.—(Secret histories; 9)

  ISBN 978-0-698-18408-4

  1. Drood, Eddie (Fictitious character)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6107.R44F75 2015

  823'.92—dc23 2014048117

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Also by SIMON R. GREEN

  Title Page

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE: It’s All About the Give-and-Take. You Give and I Take.

  CHAPTER TWO: You Do What You Can for People. But It’s Never Going to Be Enough.

  CHAPTER THREE: From Out of the Past

  CHAPTER FOUR: Keeping an Ear on the World

  CHAPTER FIVE: Good-bye, Uncle Jack

  CHAPTER SIX: It’s Not a Proper Wake Until Someone Does Something They Shouldn’t

  CHAPTER SEVEN: A Knight to Remember. And an Owl.

  CHAPTER EIGHT: Going Underworld

  CHAPTER NINE: No One Ever Comes Back to Complain

  CHAPTER TEN: The Rules Are What We Say They Are

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: That’s Not Playing the Game

  This is what you need to know:

  First, there are the Droods. A centuries-old family, dedicated to defending Humanity from all the unnatural forces that threaten this world. My family. The Good Guys—more or less. Then, there are all the other very secret organisations, who deal with things the Droods don’t have time for or don’t feel too bothered about. Groups like the London Knights, the Carnacki Institute, the Soulhunters . . . Good Guys—or good enough. Finally, we have the opposition, hiding in the shadows. The villains, the Bad Guys—only out for themselves and what they can get, and to hell with everyone else. Add to that the monsters, aliens, and general weird shit . . . and we’re talking about the world I know.

  I’m Eddie Drood, field agent for my family. Doing unto others before they do it to you. Except for when I’m undercover; then I’m Shaman Bond, just another face on the scene, keeping his eyes and ears open. Whichever identity I’m using, I usually have a fairly strong grasp on what’s what, and what matters, and whose side I’m on.

  I should have known. Nothing’s ever that simple. This is the case where everything fell apart, the one when everything and everyone that mattered were taken from me. Because no one ever told me about the Powers That Be, and the Big Game. And what I’d have to do to win.

  CHAPTER ONE

  It’s All About the Give-and-Take. You Give and I Take.

  It was a surprisingly pleasant day. Bright summer sunshine, a cloudless blue sky over sweeping grassy lawns, the cries of peacocks and gryphons loud and clear on the still air. Along with the quiet putt-putt of a steam-powered autogyro chugging by overhead. Just another day at Drood Hall, ancestral home of my long-established family, and training ground for those who would protect the world. I stood outside the main entrance door with my lady love at my side. Molly Metcalf—wild witch of the woods, supernatural terrorist, Hawkwind fan . . . and the only one I trust to always have my back. We looked at each other and grinned.

  “Ready?” I said.

  “Always,” said Molly.

  “Once we start,” I said, “we don’t stop. For anything. Until we get to where we’re going.”

  “Got it,” said Molly. “We keep going, no matter what.” She looked at me carefully. “Are we really going to do this? Take on the most powerful family in the world, on their own home ground?”

  “Isn’t that what you always wanted?” I said.

  “Hell yes! But are you sure this is what you want?”

  “Hell yes,” I said.

  Her grin widened. “Your family isn’t going to know what’s hit them.”

  “Let’s do it,” I said.

  “Love to,” said Molly.

  I subvocalised my activating Words, and golden armour flowed out from the torc around my neck, covering me in a moment from head to toe in unbreakable, unstoppable strange matter. My family’s greatest secret weapon. I felt strong and fast and fully alive, as though I’d just woken up from the long doze of ordinary living. Molly struck a sorcerous pose and was immediately surrounded by coruscating wild magics, spit
ting and sparking as they discharged on the air. The knight in armour and the wicked witch, determined not to be denied any longer. I raised a golden foot, kicked in the entrance doors, and the two of us slammed into Drood Hall.

  Alarms and bells and sirens broke out everywhere all at once, and men and women froze in place along the whole length of the entrance hall, caught off guard. No one ever invades Drood Hall, home to the most feared and respected family in the world. It just doesn’t happen. So they simply stood and stared, like rabbits caught in the headlights of an oncoming car, while Molly and I strode on. Two unstoppable forces for the price of one. A few of my family started forward to try to intercept us; some ran away; but most just stood and stared blankly, waiting for someone to tell them what to do.

  A handful of security guards finally appeared, charging down the hallway, yelling for everyone else to get out of their way, and armouring up as they came. I didn’t slow down, just hit them head on. Some I shouldered aside; others I knocked down and walked right over. They might have been armoured like me, but I was the one with the field training and experience. More armoured guards burst out of side doors. Molly called up vicious storm winds, and they blasted up and down the long entrance hall, picking Droods up and throwing them this way and that. Most of the family either grabbed for something secure to hold on to or ran for their lives. They didn’t armour up or reach for weapons. I was seriously unimpressed. It was clear to me that the family needed to run more practise drills so everyone would know what to do when the impossible happened right in front of them. If this had been a real invasion, by outside forces, we would have been in serious trouble.

  An armoured Drood blocked my way, reaching for me with golden hands. I hit him hard, slamming my shoulder into his chest. There was a loud clang of colliding metals as he was thrown backwards. I back-elbowed another in the side of the head, and swept the feet out from under a third. And kept going. I wasn’t worried about hurting them while they were in their armour, but hopefully I’d knocked the breath out of them and bought us some time. Molly danced happily along at my side, throwing fireworks and concussion spells in all directions, just to keep everyone on their toes.

  “Has anyone ever got this far inside before?” she asked.

  “It has happened,” I replied. “But we don’t like to talk about it. Might give people ideas.”

  Molly was still sending Droods tumbling this way and that with her roaring storm winds. And perhaps enjoying herself just a little too much. Not everyone was armoured. I shot her a hard look from behind my featureless golden mask, realised that wasn’t going to help much, and raised my voice to be heard clearly over the howling sirens and alarm bells.

  “Take it easy, Molly! These people are family!”

  “I know,” said Molly.

  “My family!”

  “Not mine.”

  “They could be,” I said. “One day.”

  “You say that like it’s a good thing.”

  “Molly . . .”

  “Sometimes you want too much, Eddie,” said Molly. Not even looking at me. We pressed on, into the heart of Drood Hall.

  * * *

  The Serjeant-at-Arms appeared suddenly before us, wearing his traditional formal outfit of stark black and white. He would have looked very like a traditional old-fashioned butler if it hadn’t been for the two extremely nasty-looking guns in his hands. The Serjeant is the first hard line of defence against any hostile intruders, and I was pleasantly surprised that we’d got this far before he turned up to stop us. He immediately recognised both Molly and me, but the guns he had trained on us didn’t waver at all. I knew he’d have no hesitation in shooting if he thought it necessary. But I also knew he was so confident in his own abilities, it would never even occur to him that he needed to armour up to protect himself.

  So I gave the nod to Molly, and she jabbed a specially prepared aboriginal pointing bone at the Serjeant. And just like that, he was gone. Teleported right out of the Hall and onto the grounds outside. Quite a long way off, to be exact—on the far side of the ornamental lake. By the time he could make his way back to the Hall, this should all be over. One way or another. Molly looked at the pointing bone in her hand. The sheer strain of what it had been asked to do had charred and cracked it from end to end. It’s not easy, making a Drood go somewhere he doesn’t want to go. Molly shrugged, tossed the bone aside, and we moved on.

  We strode quickly through open halls and wide corridors, blasting our way through what little opposition there was. They say you can’t go home again, but you can if you carry a big enough stick. The alarms and bells and sirens were deafeningly loud, yet I could still hear armoured feet hammering on polished wooden floors as people headed towards us from all directions. But so far we were still keeping well ahead of them.

  The Hall’s interior security systems kicked in automatically once we passed a certain point, and all the doors ahead and around us slammed shut and locked themselves to try to contain the problem. With anyone else, that might actually have worked. Molly snapped her fingers at each door we came to, and it leapt open to let us pass. Until the anti-magic protocols activated and that stopped working. So instead I just lowered my armoured shoulder again and hit each closed door like a battering ram, smashing my way through. The heavy wood cracked and broke apart; sometimes the entire door was thrown right off its hinges. The world can be a very fragile place when you’re wearing Drood armour.

  Concealed trap-doors suddenly fell away in the floor before us, revealing dark, bottomless depths. I knew where they were, so I just stepped around them. Molly walked straight forward across the open spaces, not even deigning to look down, defying gravity as she defied everything else that argued with her. The trap-doors closed behind us with quiet, defeated sounds.

  “I have to say, I was expecting your family to put up more of a showing,” said Molly. “Something more impressive, like energy weapons or force shields . . . high explosives. That sort of thing.”

  “My family will be very reluctant to use anything that destructive inside the Hall,” I said. “For fear of damaging all the expensive paintings and sculptures we’ve accumulated down the centuries. Tribute from a grateful and rather scared world. That’s what I was counting on. Luckily I don’t have that problem. I’ve never liked the Hall.”

  “Even though it’s where you were brought up?”

  “Especially because it’s where I was brought up.”

  I said that very loudly, for the benefit of anyone who might be listening and still planning on stopping us. I wanted them to believe I didn’t care how much damage I did. And to be fair, Molly probably really didn’t. But I was being careful to do no more damage than I had to—to the Hall, and to my family. Because while I might be mad at them right now, I still had to live with them afterwards. I’d put a lot of thought into this particular home invasion, and it was all about the shock and awe, and moving too quickly for any serious confrontations.

  Half a dozen armoured Droods turned up with at least some idea of how to fight and a willingness to get stuck in. Good for them. But I was a trained field agent, with many years of hard experience and all kinds of nasty tricks tucked up my armoured sleeves. I knocked them down and kicked them around, and Molly hit them with eldritch lightnings if they tried to get up. They ended up scattered the length of the corridor, wondering what hit them and whether it was ever going to stop. Poor bastards. They never stood a chance. Which was just as well. Because I would have damaged them if I’d had to. No one was going to stop me this time.

  * * *

  The farther into the Hall Molly and I penetrated, the faster we moved. By the time we approached the centre of the Hall and its hidden core, the Sanctity, we were both running at full pelt. I wanted to leave my family well behind, so there wouldn’t be any . . . accidents. I was trying to make it clear to everyone that I was here for a purpose, and determined to get to where I was going
. That I had no intention of being stopped . . . and that it really would be better for everyone if they just got the hell out of my way and let me get on with it.

  Finally, we rounded a corner and there was the Sanctity, straight ahead of us. At the far end of a long stone corridor. The heart of the Hall, where all the decisions that matter are made. I slowed my pace to a determined stroll, and Molly drifted dangerously along beside me. No more smiles. This was serious business. I felt a sudden harsh tingling in my throat. I’d been expecting that. It was a standard defence, designed to deal with any Droods who went mad or rogue, by taking their armour away from them and pushing it back into their torc.

  “Ethel?” I said, subvocalising so only she could hear me.

  The warm and friendly voice of the Droods’ very own other-dimensional patron and protector came clearly to me, inside my head.

  “You know, I really should just shut you down, Eddie. That’s what everyone else is shouting at me to do and I do wish they wouldn’t. Tell me you have a really good reason for causing this much commotion.”

  “I have a really good reason.”

  “Really? Cross your heart?”

  “Trust me.”

  “You know I do. But you don’t make it easy.”

  “I know,” I said. “But I do make it fun.”

  “Yes, you do. I’m looking forward to hearing what this is all about. Hint, hint.”

  “You’ll enjoy it,” I said.

  “I’d better.”

  The tingling around my throat went away, and I relaxed, just a little. I’d been fairly confident I could convince Ethel—but it’s hard to be sure of anything when you’re dealing with an other-dimensional entity.

  The way to the great double doors that were the only access to the Sanctity was blocked by two very large armoured guards who stood their ground. They showed no intention of moving or of being moved. I slowed to a casual stroll, with Molly close at my side. She gestured impressively at them, trying to teleport them away, as she had with the Serjeant-at-Arms. But without the pointing bone she hadn’t a hope of moving two Droods in their armour. She scowled, and stuck out her lower lip sulkily.