Live and let Drood sh-6 Read online

  Forever and a day, my love, said Molly, slipping her arm through mine again and briefly resting her head on my shoulder.

  We moved on into the gloom and the shadows. The sounds of our slow progress seemed to move ahead of us, as though to give warning we were coming. All the great paintings that used to line the walls, portraits and scenes of the family by all the great masters, were gone forever. Generations of Droods, great works of art preserved by the family for generations, reduced to ash, and less than ash. Even the frames were destroyed. Someone had swept the walls clean with incandescent fires, probably laughing as they did. I crouched down as I spotted a scrap of canvas caught between two pieces of rubble from a shattered statue. Molly peered over my shoulder.

  What is it, sweetie?

  I think this was a Botticelli, I said.

  Just a few splashes of colour now, crumbling in my hand. I let it drop to the floor, and straightened up again.

  Why would the enemy take time out from fighting the Droods to destroy so many important works of art? These paintings were priceless, irreplaceable. Why not take them and sell them?

  Because whoever did this was only interested in destruction and revenge, said Molly. I used to be like that. I would have torched every painting in every museum in the world to get back at your family for killing my parents. The Droods have angered a lot of people in their time, Eddie. Sometimes hurting the one you hate can be far more important than profiting from them.

  Are you saying we deserved this? That we had it coming? That we brought all this on ourselves?

  Of course not! I m just making the point that really angry people often don t stop to think logically.

  I liked the paintings, I said. And there were photographs, too, towards the end of the corridor. A whole history of my family. And the only photograph I ever saw of my mother and my father How am I ever going to remember what they looked like, with the only photo destroyed?

  I don t have any photos of my parents, said Molly. But I still think of them every day. You ll remember them.

  We moved on. All the statues and sculptures had been blown apart or just smashed to pieces. So much concentrated rage I couldn t even tell which piece was which from just looking at the scattered parts, though here and there I d glimpse some familiar detail. The rich carpet that had stretched the whole length of the hallway was gone; just a charred and blackened mess that crunched under our feet.

  It was like walking through the tomb of some lost civilisation and trying to re-create its original glory and grandeur from what small broken pieces remained.

  This wasn t just the side effects of fighting, I said, finally. It isn t even vandalism, smashing things up for the fun of it. This was the complete destruction of everything we believed in and cared for. They wanted to rip out every memory, every meaning of Drood Hall. To spit in the face of our long tradition, and wipe it from the memory of the world. Our enemy wanted to make sure there would be nothing left to remember us by.

  We moved on, out of the hallway and into what remained of the ground floor through ragged spaces where doors or walls should have been, through wreckage and destruction, through what had been my home and refuge from the world moving deeper and deeper into the Hall. Into my past. It didn t get any better. The destroyers had been very thorough. Finally I just stopped, weighed down by guilt and responsibility and the burden of memories. I d spent so much of my younger life trying to escape from Drood Hall and my family and their hold over me, but I d never wanted this. I might have dreamed it a few times, but I never really wanted it. Molly looked at me impatiently.

  Where are we, Eddie? I don t recognise anything here.

  I don t know, I said. I can t tell. I lived most of my life in this place. I knew all its rooms and corridors, all its nooks and crannies and secret hiding places, like the back of my hand, but now I think we re in one of the open auditoriums where people could come to just sit and think, or drink tea and chat or simply rest their troubled souls for a while. Look at it now.

  Sunlight streamed in through holes in the outer wall like slanting spotlights, full of listlessly turning dust motes. Ruin and rubble; shadows and darkness. Not one scrap or stick of furniture left intact. As though the enemy had taken time out from bloodshed and slaughter to go through here with sledgehammers, smashing everything that might have been useful or valuable or just pleasant to look at. Or even just fondly remembered by my family. Who could hate us this much? Even the wooden floor had been torn up and split apart, with jagged splinters sprouting up everywhere, as though some great vicious animal had chewed on it.

  What do you see, Eddie? Molly said softly.

  I see scorch marks on the walls from energy blasts, I said steadily. And a hell of a lot of bullet holes. A lot of fighting went on here, before they blew the place up and set fire to it. I wonder how much blood there is under all this mess. From all those who fell here I don t see any armoured bodies or enemy dead. Did they take them all with them when they left? I can see the enemy taking their own fallen, so as not to leave any clues as to their identity. But why take the Drood dead? I ve seen only one golden body so far. The place should be littered with them. And why was the armour melted like that? As though it had been hit by a nuclear blast?

  Molly didn t say anything. She knew I wasn t talking to her.

  I turned and went quickly back the way we d come, hurrying back to the front doorway and the armoured body lying there. I crouched down beside it, studying the gleaming golden surface thoughtfully. It was covered with great spiderwebs of cracks, as though from a series of unimaginable impacts. The golden metal had become scored and distorted in places, touched by some incredible heat. The arms were fused to the torso, the legs fused together. And yet the armour, as a whole, was still intact. They hadn t broken through to reach the man inside. I tapped the blank featureless mask with a single knuckle, and the sound was soft, flat, dead.

  Can you override the torc? said Molly. Make the armour withdraw so we can see who this was?

  No, I said. Only the wearer has control over his torc. Basic security measure, in case of capture.

  Is there any chance he might be alive in there? Trapped, unconscious, maybe? The armour s damaged but it s still in one piece. It might have protected the wearer, preserved him.

  No, I said. Thanks for the thought, but no. To damage the armour this thoroughly, the sheer force involved must have been horrific. The impact alone would have I don t even want to think about the condition of the body inside this armour. I leaned in close to stare at my own distorted reflection in the featureless golden mask. Who were you? Did I know you? Did you die bravely? Of course you did. You were a Drood.

  We went back inside and I tried another direction. Still looking for something I couldn t put a name to. I knew only that I d know it when I saw it. We rounded a corner and found ourselves facing a tall and very solid-looking door. Somehow still intact, somehow still standing firm and upright in its frame. The walls on either side were gone. Reduced to piles of rubble. I put one hand to the door and it just fell apart, crumbling and falling away, collapsing into sawdust. The doorframe still held its shape. I walked through it, into the room beyond. Most of the outer wall was missing, giving an almost uninterrupted view of the grounds outside. But there was still enough of the room left to stir an unexpected memory. The left-hand wall had shelves full of books with charred and fire-blacked spines. When I touched one, the whole row of books fell in on themselves, disintegrating and falling to the floor.

  Eddie, look at this.

  I moved over to join Molly. She d found a tall mirror on the right-hand wall. Completely untouched by the destruction all around it. In the mirror I hardly recognised the man standing beside Molly. I ve been trained to be a field agent, trained to blend in anywhere and not be noticed, to look like no one in particular. The man before me looked damaged and angry and dangerous. Anyone sensible would run a mile from such a man. Molly was still a delicate china doll of a woman, with big bosoms, bobbed
black hair, huge dark eyes and a mouth as red as sin itself. She looked as beautiful as ever to me, in her own eerie, threatening and subtly disturbing way. Right now she was looking at me as though wondering where I d come from.

  I turned away from the reflection to look at Molly. I did my best to smile normally. I know, I said. But it s still me, Molly. You can have your Eddie back when this is all over.

  When will it be over, Eddie?

  When everyone who had any hand in this is dead, I said.

  I looked around the room. Something about it troubled me.

  I think I remember being here before when I was just a child. If this is the room I think it is. I would have been very small, maybe four or five years old. I d been brought here to meet my grandfather Arthur. Martha s first husband. I can t remember who brought me here, though. Isn t that odd? I m pretty sure it wasn t Martha. I can remember being brought into this room and meeting Grandfather Arthur, but not who brought me here or why.

  Arthur Drood he seemed very old to me then, though he couldn t have been more than fifty or sixty. I remember he poured himself a cup of tea but it was too hot to drink, so he poured some of it into the saucer to cool it and sipped his tea from the saucer. Yes. I thought that was a great trick, and demanded to be allowed to try some. He smiled and offered me the saucer, and I took a sip, but I didn t like it. I pulled a face, and everyone laughed. Who laughed? Who else was in the room with me? Why can t I remember them? As though I m not supposed to, not allowed to

  Wait a minute, said Molly. Hold everything. Go previous. I thought you said your grandfather Arthur died back in the fifties. You weren t even born then.

  That s right, I said, frowning. He died in 1957, in the Kiev Conspiracy.

  What was that? said Molly. Some old Cold War thing? Well before my time. And yours.

  I don t know, I said. I was frowning so hard it hurt my forehead. There was something I couldn t quite remember, something just out of my reach. Something important.

  I don t know the details of how he died. No one ever told me. It was just 1957, and the Kiev Conspiracy. Why did I never ask more about that? Why did I just accept it? I never used to accept anything they just told me. But I am sure I ve been here, in this room, before.

  And then the ceiling came crashing down on us. No warning, not a sound; the ceiling just bulged suddenly out above us and then broke apart, everything coming down on our heads at once. I subvocalised my activating Words and called for my armour, but nothing happened. The armour didn t come. I froze where I was. I couldn t believe it. Molly threw an arm around me and thrust her other hand up at the descending ceiling. She said a very bad Word, and a shimmering protective shield appeared around us. The broken ceiling fell down, hit the shield and fell away, unable to touch us. The whole room shook as the entire ceiling came down in heavy chunks and pieces, followed by parts of the compressed floors above. Molly grabbed my arm and hauled me through the doorframe and out into the corridor. The shield came with us, still protecting us. Safely outside the room, Molly held me close as smoke and dust billowed out of the room after us. The room was filling up with wreckage from above, hammering loudly together as though annoyed it had missed its chance at us.

  Molly dismissed the shimmering shield with an impatient wave of her hand and looked at me anxiously.

  Eddie? Are you okay? What happened in there?

  I raised a trembling hand to the golden torc at my throat. It was still there. It felt warm and alive, just like always. So why hadn t my armour come when I called it?

  How long? I said numbly to Molly. How long have I been walking around with a useless torc at my throat? How long have I been naked and defenceless in the face of my enemies?

  Eddie, take it easy.

  You don t understand! I shouted at her.

  I ve never been separated from my armour! It s been with me my whole life, in one form or another. First from the Heart and then from Ethel How can I be a Drood if I don t have my armour?

  And just like that I was off and running, ignoring Molly as she called out behind me. I sprinted down rubble-strewn corridors, jumped over piles of collapsed brickwork, ignoring the angry sounds of shifting stonework all around me and heading for the one place in the Hall where I thought I might still find some answers. The one room you could always count on. The Sanctity. The heart of the Hall and of the family. I raced down broken corridors that were little more than death traps of holed floors and collapsed walls, staring straight ahead, thinking of nothing but where I needed to be. Running so hard my leg muscles ached, so fast I could barely get my breath. I could hear Molly running behind me, calling after me, but I didn t look back once. After a while she just concentrated on running and keeping up with me. I like to think it was because she trusted me to know what I was doing.

  I ran on, and sometimes I ran through corridors that were there, and sometimes down corridors I remembered that were whole and undamaged. Sometimes I ran through memories of places and people, with ghosts of old friends and enemies. And sometimes I think I ran through rooms and corridors that weren t there anymore. Until finally I came to the Sanctity.

  The great double doors had been smashed open and were hanging drunkenly, scarred and broken, from the heavy brass hinges. There should have been guards, Drood security; there should have been powerful protections in place. But they were just doors leading into a room. I stood there before them for a while, bent over and breathing harshly, trying to force some air back into my straining lungs. My back and my legs ached and sweat dripped down from my face. I could hear Molly catching up, but I didn t look back. I straightened myself up through sheer force of will and strode forward into the Sanctity, slamming the doors back out of my way with both hands. I didn t even feel the impact.

  Inside the great open chamber, the walls stood upright and untouched and the ceiling was free from signs of assault or damage. The marble floor was dusty but unmarked. As though the enemy had never come here. But still the damage had been done. The great auditorium was empty, deserted; just a room. There was no trace of the marvellous rose red light that usually suffused the chamber when Ethel was manifesting her presence. The light that could soothe and rejuvenate the most hard-used spirit. Ethel, the other-dimensional entity I d brought to the Hall to replace the corrupt Heart to be a new source of power for the Drood family. A source of new, strange matter armour.

  Ethel! I said her name as loudly as I could, so harshly I hurt my throat. My voice echoed in the great open chamber and then died reluctantly away. There was no response. Ethel? I said, and even to me my voice sounded like that of a small child asking for its mother. I stood alone in the Sanctity and no one answered me. I heard Molly behind me, at the door, but I didn t look around.

  If she was anywhere, anywhere in the Hall, she d hear and answer you, said Molly. You know that. She s gone, Eddie. Gone, like everyone else.

  If she were anywhere in the world, she d hear me, I said. No wonder my armour s gone.

  I can t believe there is anyone or anything in this world that could destroy or even damage an other-dimensional entity like Ethel, said Molly, moving cautiously forward to stand beside me, careful not to touch me. Except perhaps another other-dimensional entity, and what are the odds of that?

  They could have driven her away, I said. I felt empty. Forced her back out of this world. With all the Droods dead, what reason would she have to stay? And if she s gone, so is the source of our armour. No more Drood armour, forever. Perhaps that s why she chose to leave so our enemies couldn t force or coerce her into giving them her strange matter. Maybe that s why we ve only seen one armoured corpse. Because she took the rest of her strange matter with her when she left. After all, the Droods were dead.

  Then why have you still got your torc? said Molly.

  My hand rose to touch the golden collar at my throat again, and then I shook my head slowly. So many questions; so few answers. How can I be a Drood, the Last Drood, without my armour?

  You still have
your knowledge and your training, said Molly, practical as ever. She moved forward so she could look me in the face. I know you re going through a lot, Eddie, but if you don t snap out if this fast and start acting like yourself again, I am going to slap you a good one and it will hurt.

  A smile twitched at the corner of my mouth. You would, too. Wouldn t you?

  Damn right I would, Molly said briskly. You still have all your experience, all your old contacts there s still a lot you can do in the world. Though getting your hands on some really big guns probably wouldn t hurt, either. Is there any chance you could get us into the family Armoury? See if anything useful got left behind?

  Of course, I said. Large parts of the Hall have always been underground. And heavily shielded and protected. If only to protect the rest of the family from what they did down there. The attackers might not have known about the underground installations or how to access them. Maybe they survived intact.

  And maybe there are survivors down there, said Molly.

  You ve always been such an optimist, I said. One of the things I ve always admired most about you.

  So we went down.

  I started with the War Room. It lay underneath the North Wing, or what was left of it. Access was only possible through a heavily reinforced steel door. I found the door easily enough underneath the shattered ground floor. The door was still intact, but it was standing partly open. The facial-recognition computers and retina-scan mechanisms had all been smashed. Very thoroughly. Not a good sign. I eased through the gap between the steel door and its frame and started down the very basic stairway beyond, carved out of the right-hand wall itself. Molly stuck close behind me. There was no railing, and only a intimidatingly deep and dark drop on the other side. Most of the overhead electric lights weren t working, and those that did flickered unreliably.

  Molly and I descended the steep stairway, pressing our shoulders against the stone wall to keep us away from the long drop. Getting to the War Room wasn t meant to be easy. I wasn t sensing any of the usual force shields and magical screens that should have protected the area from unwanted visitors. Usually they felt like static crawling all over my skin, like unseen eyes watching your back with bad intent. I felt nothing, nothing at all. I looked briefly out over the long drop, and nothing looked back.