Daemons Are Forever Page 10

  “Then welcome home, Harry,” I said. “And you too, Roger. Come back to the Hall with us and we’ll get you settled in. But get out of hand even once, either of you, and I will knock you down and riverdance on your head.”

  “It’s just tough love,” Harry said to Roger. “You’ll get used to it. It’s the Drood way. How is the dear old Sarjeant-at-Arms, Eddie?”

  “Still running things with an iron fist in an iron glove,” I said, not rising to the bait. “Come along, and bring your swan with you, Harry. Waste not, want not.”

  “Good to be home, Eddie,” said Harry. “Can’t say I’ve ever felt this welcome before. I suppose you and I have that in common, at least. We never were our family’s favourite sons.”

  There were snorting, coughing sounds, and we both looked around. The gryphons had tracked us down at last, and ambled over to check out the newcomers with a good sniffing. Harry tolerated it in a resigned sort of way, and then the gryphons turned to Roger. They didn’t like his smell at all, and growled at him in deep, rumbling voices. One actually snapped at him, and Roger kicked it in the ribs, sending it flying a dozen feet away. I moved quickly to stand between him and the gryphons.

  “Don’t,” I said.

  “Or?” he said.

  It was a blatant challenge, and one I had to meet if I were to have any authority at the Hall. I subvocalised the Words and armoured up in a moment, the silver strange matter flowing over me like a second skin. I made a silver fist, and held it up before Roger’s face. And as he watched, I grew thick silver spikes out of the knuckles. Roger surged forward inhumanly quickly, his fingers like claws, his impossibly wide smile full of teeth like a shark’s. I stood my ground and punched him in the face with all my armoured strength behind it. The blow stopped him dead in his tracks, the sheer force of the impact slamming his head back so hard it would have broken an ordinary man’s neck. Roger staggered backwards, and then quickly recovered his balance. He shook his head slowly and put a hand up to his face. His nose was broken, though no blood flowed. Roger gripped the broken nose with his left hand and snapped it back into place with a painful-sounding click. I winced at the sound, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one.

  “Show-off,” Harry said easily to Roger. “Now behave yourself. I guaranteed your behaviour, remember? You want to make me look bad?”

  “Of course. I’m sorry, Harry.” Roger smiled briefly at me. “It won’t happen again. No hard feelings, I trust?”

  I armoured down and looked at him, and then at Harry. It occurred to me that the two of them might have set this up in advance, just to see what the new armour could do . . . Tricky, underhanded, and just a little paranoid. They were Droods, after all.

  “Let’s go back to the Hall,” said the Armourer. “It’s getting cold out here.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Sons and Lovers

  "It’s good to have you home again, Harry,” said the Armourer. “And your . . . friend. Come with me and I’ll find you someplace to stay. Don’t quite know where I’m going to put you, though. The Hall is so crowded these days you couldn’t swing a cat without taking someone’s eye out.”

  "We could always put them in the dungeons,” I said.

  The Armourer looked at me coldly. "You know very well we don’t have dungeons anymore, Eddie. They were converted into billiards rooms long ago.”

  “You have billiards here?” said Molly, brightening up.

  “Oh, yes,” I said. “They’re very popular. In fact, you have to queue to get in.”

  “One more joke like that, and I’ll rack your balls,” said Molly.

  “What’s wrong with putting me in my father’s old room?” said Harry. “The Matriarch hasn’t got around to reassigning it yet, has she? Thought not. Dear Grandmother always was very sentimental . . . where her son was concerned. And who has a better right to the Gray Fox’s room, than his only legitimate son?”

  “Well, yes . . . I suppose so,” said the Armourer. “Yes, James would approve. Come along with me, Harry, and . . . Roger, and I’ll get you settled in.”

  “See you later, Cousin Eddie,” said Harry.

  “Yes,” I said. “You will.”

  The Armourer led the two of them away across the lawns and towards the Hall. Molly and I watched them go, while the gryphons wandered back to crouch beside us, snorting and growling unhappily. I patted a few heads and tugged a few ears, and they wandered off again, happily enough. It bothered me that they hadn’t been able to predict Harry and Roger’s arrival in advance. Made me wonder what else the hellspawn might be able to hide from us.

  “And this was starting out to be such a good day,” I said finally. “Now Harry’s back, just itching for a chance to stick a knife in my back, and if that weren’t enough he’s brought a half-breed demon with him. I mean, I’m not prejudiced, but . . . dammit, he’s a thing from Hell!” I looked at Molly. “Did you really go out with him?”

  “Not one more word out of you, Eddie,” she said coldly. “Or you will never see me naked again.”

  We went back to my room in the Hall. I felt an urgent need for a little down time. When I decided I was going to have to move back into the Hall, so I could keep a proper eye on things, I had to decide where I was going to stay. My old room was long gone, given over to someone else in the family when I left to be a field agent. (Crying Free! Free at last! all the way.) And it wasn’t like I had any fond measures of the pokey little garret room. Too hot in the summer, too cold in the winter, and every time the wind blew in the night, I had to get out of bed and jam a handkerchief into the gap between the window and the frame to stop it from rattling. (The family has never believed in central heating; makes you soft.)

  Since I was running the family now, I could have just taken any room I fancied. I could have thrown the Matriarch out of her special suite, and no one would have stopped me. But I didn’t have the heart. It would have been cruel . . . to Alistair. You big softy, Molly said later, when I told her, but she was only partly right. Even then, I knew I didn’t want to make an enemy of Martha Drood because I might need her help . . .

  In the end, I just chose one of the better situated rooms in the west wing and booted out the poor beggar who was living there. He in turn picked someone lower down on the food chain and evicted them, and moved into their room. And so it went, for several days, until you couldn’t move in the corridors for people hauling their belongings from one room to another. Presumably the poor bastard at the bottom of the pile ended up moving back into the communal dormitory with the children.

  (There are no guest rooms in the Hall. Only family gets to live in the Hall.)

  Even so, Molly wasn’t especially impressed when she saw where she’d be staying with me. She just couldn’t get her head around the fact that members of the most powerful family in the world only got one room to live in. But that’s what happens when a family’s numbers expand faster than we can build on new wings. Another generation or two and we’ll have to find or build a new home, but no one was ready to talk about that yet.

  I let us into our room, and Molly immediately ran over to the bed and threw herself onto it. She sank half out of sight into the deep goose-feather mattress and sighed blissfully.

  “Still don’t care much for the room, but I do love this bed. I feel like I could sink all the way down to China.”

  “What’s wrong with the room?” I said patiently.

  “Far too much like a hotel room,” Molly said firmly. “All very luxurious, I’m sure, but it has no character. It’s . . . cold, impersonal.”

  I smiled at her. “When did you ever stay in hotels, oh wicked witch of the woods?”

  She wriggled cosily on the bed. “Oh, I get around. You’d be surprised, some of the places I’ve been. And it’s not like I can take my forest everywhere with me . . . Still, I’ll say this for hotels . . . I love room service. You just pick up the phone and they bring you food, every hour of the day and night. I always pig out at hotels. Particularly because
I never stick around to pay the bills . . .”

  “There’s no room service to be had here,” I said sternly. “And you’re expected to clean up your own mess. There are no servants among the Droods, or at least, not as such. We’re all encouraged from an early age to look after ourselves . . . Builds character and self-reliance.”

  “How very worthy,” said Molly. “Let it be clearly understood between us that I do not do worthy. Was this really the best room you could have chosen, out of all those available?”

  “I chose this room because it used to be my parents’,” I said. “Back when I was a child. I can just about remember visiting them here . . . It’s hard to be sure. Memories from that age are never reliable. My mother and father weren’t often here, you see. As field agents they lived outside the Hall.”

  “And you weren’t allowed to live with them?” said Molly, sitting up and propping her back against the wooden headboard.

  “No. All Drood children are raised here, in the dormitories. So they can be properly trained and indoctrinated. Loyalty is to the family, not our parents.”

  “Harry wasn’t raised here,” Molly said thoughtfully.

  “No. Which gives you some idea of how much the Matriarch disapproved of Uncle James marrying without permission, to an unsuitable woman. Anyone else would have been declared rogue.”

  “I like the furnishings and fittings,” said Molly, tactfully changing the subject. “Everything in here’s an antique, but in splendid condition. Hey, if there aren’t any servants here, who polishes all the wood and brass?”

  “We take turns, when we’re young,” I said. “Character building, remember? I hated it. I can still remember my hands going numb from the cold as I cleaned the outside windows in the depths of winter, because the water in the bucket always went cold before you were finished. And don’t even get me started about trying to scrub brass with Duraglit when your fingers have all gone numb . . . Bugger character building. All it taught me was never to own anything made of brass, and be sure to tip my window cleaners very generously.”

  “Feel free to vent, Eddie,” said Molly. “Don’t hold anything back.”

  “At least I talk about my past,” I said pointedly.

  “Oh look,” said Molly. “I’m changing the subject again. I like the television. That is one seriously big fuckoff widescreen television. And five speakers, for surround sound . . . Cool.”

  “Only the best for the family,” I said. “But I wouldn’t have thought you watched much television, in the woods.”

  “I’m a witch, not a barbarian. I like the cooking shows . . . Love Masterchef. I suppose you watch the sci-fi channels?”

  “No,” I said. “I like to leave my work behind when I relax. I prefer the comedy channels.”

  Molly hugged her knees to her chest and looked at me thoughtfully.

  “What are we doing here, Eddie? Why are we hiding out in your room?”

  “Not hiding,” I said. “It’s just . . . sometimes it all gets a bit too much for me, and then I need to get away from it all. I took on running this family because I had to. But . . . I don’t know what I’m doing. I lived alone for ten years, and never had to worry about anyone but myself. Now I have all these people depending on me, and looking to me for answers and decisions that will shape the rest of their lives . . . I don’t want to let them down.”

  “They let you down,” said Molly.

  “They’re still keeping secrets from me,” I said. “Harry’s only the latest. And he’s all I needed; a rival pretender for the throne.”

  “He hates you because he believes you killed his father,” said Molly. “He doesn’t know I killed James Drood.”

  “No one can ever know that! It’s one thing for me to kill him in a duel. I’m family. But you’re an outsider; they’d kill you on the spot if they even suspected. And me too, for hiding the truth, and daring to care more about you than the family.”

  Molly smiled at me. “Every now and again, you remind me of why I fell for you so hard. Come over here and sit down beside me.”

  I sat down on the bed, by her side, and we put our arms around each other and snuggled close, and for a long time we didn’t want to say anything.

  “You are allowed to hold me when you’re feeling down, you know,” said Molly. “It’s allowed, when you’re in a relationship.”

  “So we are definitely in one of those relationship things, are we?” I said.

  “Yeah. It sneaked up on me when I wasn’t looking. You can squeeze my boobies, if you like.”

  “Good to know.”

  “Roger and I were never close,” she said, not looking at me. “And we weren’t together long. I was just at the time in a girl’s life when she really feels like being mistreated by someone big and rough. Even though you know it’s bound to end in tears.”

  "And did it?”

  “Oh, yes. I caught him in bed with my best friend. And her brother. Something of an eye-opener . . . I set the bed on fire while they were all still in it, and walked out on him. I’m pretty sure I never really loved him. It was just . . . one of those things, you know?”

  “I once had a brief relationship with a sex android from the twenty-third century,” I said. “Damn, but we’ve known some interesting times, haven’t we?”

  We laughed together quietly. Our bodies moved easily against each other. I never really felt at home the way I did in Molly’s arms. Like I’d finally found out where I was supposed to be.

  “Never leave me,” I said suddenly.

  “Where did that come from?” said Molly.

  “I don’t know. I just need to hear you say it. Say it for me, Molly.”

  “I will never leave you, Eddie. I’ll always be with you, forever and ever and ever. Now you say it.”

  “I will love you every day of my life, Molly Metcalf, and after I die, if you’re not there in Heaven with me, I will go down to Hell to join you. Because Heaven wouldn’t be Heaven without you.”

  “You smooth-talking devil, Eddie Drood.”

  Some time later, when I’d got my second wind, I got dressed again and opened the bag I’d brought back from my London flat. I set about distributing my few possessions around the room. It didn’t take long. A row of CDs on one shelf, my favourite books lined up on another. In alphabetical order, of course. I’m very strict about things like that. And some favourite clothes that didn’t even come close to filling the massive mahogany wardrobe. I looked at Molly, who was attacking her tousled hair in the mirror.

  “Don’t you have any clothes you want to hang up? Women always have clothes. And shoes . . . and things.”

  She shrugged easily. “Whenever I get bored, I just magic up a new outfit. I only have to see something I like, and I can duplicate it with a thought. I never paid for a new outfit in my life, and they always fit perfectly. I’ve been recycling the same material for years.”

  I hope you take time out to wash it now and again, I thought, but had enough sense not to say out loud.

  I stepped back and looked at my possessions scattered around the room. They looked . . . sort of lost. They were present-day, transitory things, in a room that had been here before I was born and would still be here after I was gone. There weren’t any of my parents’ old possessions still here. They would have been thrown out or redistributed long ago, when the next occupant moved in. The family has never encouraged sentiment. We aren’t supposed to care about possessions, because only the family is important. Look forward, never back. And never get too attached to anything or anyone, because the enemy will use that against you.

  They don’t tell you the enemy sometimes includes the family.

  “Don’t you want to bring anything here from your old place?” I said to Molly.

  She shrugged lazily. “I have my magical iPod, full of my favourite music. Endless capacity, no batteries to run down, and it can pick up any tune from any period. It can even sing harmonies with me on karaoke nights. But that’s it, really. I’ve never c
ared much about things . . . You can always get more things . . . With my magic I’ve raised beg, borrow, and steal to an art form.”

  “So,” I said. “What do you think of the infamous Drood family home, now you’ve been here for a while? Is it everything you thought it would be?”

  “All that and more,” said Molly. “It’s certainly . . . impressive.”

  “You don’t like it,” I said, and was surprised at how disappointed I sounded.

  “Don’t be upset, sweetie,” said Molly. She came over and slipped an arm around my waist. “It just isn’t me, that’s all. I feel . . . shut in, oppressed, all the time I’m inside. I’m the spirit of the wild woods, remember? I need . . . nature, and open space, and room to breathe! Not all this dead wood and cold stone . . .”

  “You don’t mind hotels . . .”

  “Only because I know I can walk out of them whenever I feel like it. I’m stuck here, with you. Not that I don’t want to be with you, I do, I do, but . . .”

  “We do have extensive grounds,” I said. “You could walk in them all day and all night, and still not see everything there is to see. And you know I wouldn’t want to keep you here if you were unhappy.”

  “Of course I know that, Eddie!” She kissed me quickly. “This is coming out all wrong . . . I want to be with you, and you have to be here. I know that.”

  “We won’t always have to be here. As soon as the new Council’s ready to take over running things, I will demote myself to field agent and be out of here so fast that anyone watching will end up with whiplash.”

  “But how long will that take, Eddie?”

  “I don’t know. It’ll take . . . as long as it takes. Molly . . .”

  “Hush. It’s all right. We’ll work something out.”

  “Yes,” I said. “We will.”

  And all the time I was holding her, I was thinking, If she couldn’t stay here . . . If she left, would I go with her? And leave my family to tear itself apart? Risk the whole future of humanity, because I left my job unfinished? Would I damn the world, to be with her? Would I do that? Could I do that?