Property of a Lady Faire: A Secret Histories Novel Read online

  I took out the Merlin Glass, shook it till it was the size of a Door, and then gave it the correct Space Time coordinates and threw it off the edge of the roof. The Glass fell away into the moonlight, an open Door full of the bright lights of London. I took a deep breath and jumped off the roof after it.

  I heard a roar of frustrated buzzing voices rush by behind me, but I didn’t look back at the fire escape. Some things you just don’t want to see. I went hurtling down, gathering speed all the time, the ground rushing up to greet me. Cool evening air battered at my face and tugged at my clothes. The fall would be more than enough to kill any ordinary man. Good thing I was a Drood. I subvocalised the activating Words, and the golden armour contained in the torc at my throat rushed out to cover me from head to toe in a moment.

  I could hear flapping heavy wings behind me, as dark things launched themselves in pursuit, but I was concentrating on the open Door falling away before me. The added weight of my armour sent me hurtling down faster than ever, and it was the easiest thing in the world to catch up with the falling Merlin Glass and plunge right through it, without even brushing against the sides. The Door slammed shut the moment I was through, cutting off the last angry screams from my pursuers.

  • • •

  And I crashed back to earth in a dark and deserted back alley in London’s old Soho. I hit the ground at appalling speed, but my armoured legs absorbed most of the impact. I stayed where I was for a moment, crouched on one knee in the crater I’d blasted out of the alley floor, getting my breathing back under control. It never ceases to amaze me, all the things I can do in my armour. I muttered the Words, and the golden strange matter flowed back into my torc. I straightened, adjusted my clothing, and grabbed the hand mirror–sized Merlin Glass out of mid-air, where it had been hovering above me. I slipped it carefully back into its hidden pocket, and only then looked around me.

  After the bright moonlight of the Vatican, it felt something of a step down to be standing in the grimy amber light of a London street lamp, interrupted now and then by the flickering glare of malfunctioning neon signs. I was back in Soho, all right. For someone whose job description genuinely is globe-trotting secret agent, it’s astonishing how often I end up hanging around in grimy back alleys in the seedier parts of civilisation.

  The never-ending roar of London’s traffic blasted by at the far end of the alleyway. All rushing shapes and blaring horns. The alley itself was dark and foul and smelled of appalling things. Quite definitely including fresh urine. Assorted garbage lay in scattered heaps, troubled only by rats with really strong stomachs. The stained brick walls were covered with the usual overlapping graffiti: Dagon Has Risen! Cthulhu Has Bad Dreams. And, more worryingly, Eye Can See You. And there, standing right at the end of the alley, sticking to the shadows because that was where he felt most at home: Harry Fabulous. He stepped forward, just a little, and nodded jerkily, doing his best to look like he was pleased to see me.

  “Nice of you to drop in, Eddie. You Droods do love to make an entrance.”

  “Stick to what you’re good at; that’s what I always say. Why am I here, Harry?”

  “Good of you to get here so quickly,” he said, avoiding the question. “Here, let me show you into the Wulfshead.”

  He moved quickly over to the left-hand wall, being very careful where he put his feet, and muttered certain secret Words. A massive silver door appeared in the brick wall, as though the silver had shouldered the brickwork aside for being less important, or less real. The door was big enough to drive an elephant through, and it shone with its own dull light, painting the wall opposite with a shifting, uncertain glow. The solid silver door was deeply carved and etched with a great many threats and warnings, in angelic and demonic script. The Wulfshead Club doesn’t discriminate. There was no bell, no knocker, not even a handle. It isn’t meant to be easy to get in. Harry placed the palm of his left hand flat against the silver, and after a moment that stretched on just a bit longer than was comfortable, the door swung slowly back before him. He snatched his hand back and smiled weakly at me. There were beads of sweat on his face. I wasn’t surprised. If your name isn’t on the approved guest list, the door will bite your hand right off.

  Bright, cheerful light spilled out through the door and into the alley. Harry hurried in, and I moved quickly to follow him. It only took me a moment to realise I wasn’t in the Wulfshead. Instead, the door had let us into a small business office. All very basic—just a table and two chairs. No windows, no decorations; a door behind us and another door on the other side of the room. I had a very definite sense of being observed. I turned to look thoughtfully at Harry, and he backed quickly away, holding his hands out before him.

  “It’s all right, Eddie! Really! That far door leads into the club proper—I promise you!”

  “What are we doing here, Harry?” I said, and he actually flinched away from something in my voice.

  “This is one of the private offices used by the club’s management. For when they . . . want to keep an eye on things. It’s just somewhere private, where we can discuss the management’s current . . . problem.”

  “And why are you speaking for them, Harry?”

  “Because they’re not stupid enough to reveal themselves to a Drood. And because I owe them,” Harry said flatly. His words gave him a certain amount of courage, and he did his best to look at me defiantly. “They didn’t want you in particular, and the Drood family in general, knowing who they are. You’d only take advantage . . . And anyway, if you did know who they were, I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t approve.”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me,” I said. “My family doesn’t approve of most people. And nearly always with good reason. So why are the management asking for my help? What could be so bad?”

  If anything, Harry seemed even more jumpy now. He looked quickly around him, at the bare walls and the closed doors, and edged a little closer.

  “Are you sure you’ve finished your business with the Vatican, Eddie? No loose ends that might turn up to . . . distract you?”

  “It’s all done,” I said firmly. “And that is all I am going to say on the matter.”

  Harry Fabulous didn’t need to know that I had broken into the Vatican not to steal something but to make them a present. I had taken in with me a single significant volume of forbidden lore, and deposited it in a certain place on a certain shelf, in the Vatican’s Very Secret Library. This particular copy, an almost exact copy of the book already in place there, had been compiled by the Drood Librarian. Just a few small changes, overseen by the family. I replaced one with the other, and took the original out with me. Because there were certain things in the original that we didn’t want the Church to know about. It would only have upset them and kept them up nights. Vatican Security might know someone had been poking around, but they wouldn’t know who, or why. Which added up to a completely successful mission in my book.

  Harry still didn’t look at all happy. “I just hope no one saw you arrive out of nowhere.”

  “Come on, Harry,” I said. “That was old Soho. One of the few bits they haven’t got around to gentrifying yet. You could set fire to a giant Wicker Man stuffed full of merchant bankers, and no one would give a damn. In fact, they’d probably applaud.”

  “I hate to put it this bluntly, but I’m going to because the management insisted,” said Harry. “You can only enter the Wulfshead Club as Shaman Bond. The management can’t allow Eddie Drood to set foot on the premises. Not after what happened the last time he was here. Apparently, it took ages to get all the bloodstains out.”

  “Understood,” I said shortly.

  The last time I’d had reason to come to the club as a Drood, it had been during the Great Satanic Conspiracy. I’d forced my way in, in my armour, because I didn’t want Shaman Bond associated with what I was about to do. What I had to do. I needed answers to some questions, very urgently, and I didn’t have the time to be patient or reasonable. So I just beat them out of the man. And
a few good people who got in the way. I looked thoughtfully at Harry.

  “How long has the club’s management known that Shaman Bond is a cover identity for Eddie Drood?”

  “I find it best not to ask them questions,” said Harry. “Are you sure you don’t know who they are?”

  “I’m sure my family could find out,” I said. “If we ever really wanted to know. But they’re not important enough. For now.”

  Harry sighed, and sat down on one of the chairs. He looked tired. I pulled up the other chair, sat down facing him, and then looked at him expectantly.

  “There’s trouble at the Wulfshead Club,” said Harry. “We need you—that is, we need Shaman Bond—to ask questions quietly and discreetly, among the club’s clientele. Because secrets are leaking out of the club. Things said in confidence here have started turning up in the outside world. Which is supposed to be impossible. The club management guarantee that whatever happens in the Wulfshead stays in the Wulfshead. You can say anything, do anything, and no one will ever know. That’s why people like you and I come here. But now, secrets are getting out, and often appearing where they can do the most damage to everyone involved.”

  “How long has this been going on?” I said. I was honestly shocked. Wulfshead security was supposed to be second to none.

  “Almost three weeks now,” said Harry. “The management thought they could handle it themselves at first. But it seems they can’t. So they found me, to find you. They want you to discover exactly how the club’s privacy is being compromised, and why, and who’s behind it. And then they want you to put a stop to it.”

  “But why me, of all people?” I said, honestly curious. “I mean, given the mess I made the last time I was here?”

  “That was a Drood,” said Harry. “You expect things like that from Droods. The management wants Shaman Bond. Because he is a regular here, and knows everyone. And everyone knows him.”

  I frowned. “They think this is an inside job?”

  “Has to be,” said Harry. “Someone here is telling tales out of school. We need you to find out who.”

  “What do I get out of it?”

  “I have been instructed to tell you,” Harry said carefully, “whatever you want. The club’s management agree to owe you a favour. You personally, that is; not your family. There are limits. It will be a personal favour to you, that you can call in at any time.”

  “Sounds good to me,” I said cheerfully. “But you do realise I won’t be able to keep this from my family?”

  “Understood,” said Harry. “The management merely asks that you be . . . discreet in how much you tell them.”

  “Understood,” I said. A thought occurred to me. “If the club’s management is so concerned about what’s going on, why haven’t they called in their own security big guns? The Roaring Boys?”

  Harry winced. “Because you don’t use a nuke to crack a walnut. The Roaring Boys . . . do tend to favour a scorched-earth policy. You can do this, Eddie. People will talk to Shaman Bond, where they wouldn’t talk to anyone else. Because they think he’s one of them.”

  He got up abruptly, strode over to the opposite door, and pulled it open. Savagely bright lights and disturbingly loud music blasted in from the club beyond. I rose unhurriedly and strolled to the door. Wild drinks and wilder music, just like always. I stepped through the door into the club, then stopped and looked back as I realised Harry Fabulous had stayed in the office.

  “You not joining me, Harry?”

  “Best not,” he said. “I don’t need the temptation. Can’t afford to risk it these days.”

  “What did you do, Harry?” I said.

  He smiled briefly. “Let’s just say I met someone who was better at the art of the big con than I was.”

  He shut the door firmly in my face, and I moved on, into the Wulfshead Club.

  • • •

  The joint was jumping—loud and colourful and packed with all the usual unusual suspects. People coming and going, along with a few individuals who weren’t in any way people, talking in small groups or muttering in corners or crowding together at the long bar. Winding down after a long day, or night; or gathering the courage of their convictions before they went out to do appalling things in the world. Some were plotting cons, or jobs, or glorious insurrection; others were just letting their hair down in convivial company. Lots of loud, blaring music. Apparently tonight was Let’s Celebrate Sixties Film Music Night. I recognised the theme from the original version of The Italian Job: “We Are the Self-Preservation Society.” A lot of people were singing along.

  I strolled easily through the packed crowd, smiling and nodding, and being smiled at and nodded to. Shaman Bond has a carefully cultivated reputation for being part of the Scene: a well-known face, always around, always just turning up . . . always on the lookout for a little profitable trouble to get into. No one was surprised to see Shaman Bond at the Wulfshead, because no one was ever surprised to see him anywhere. I clapped my hand on a few shoulders, kissed a few cheeks, and kept moving.

  Everywhere I looked, people were drinking and dancing and making deals. Laughing and shouting in the hot, sweaty atmosphere, the bright lights shining in their eyes and in their minds. Bright primary colours blasted down from above, constantly changing, while the walls were covered with giant flat plasma screens showing ever-changing views from secret locations around the world. Many of which didn’t officially exist. Scenes from underground bunkers and secret laboratories, the hidden lairs of the Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny. And even interesting peeks into the bedrooms of the rich and famous. (Along with other, less salubrious locations.) Lots and lots of well-known faces, doing all sorts of things that would do their public image no good at all.

  I couldn’t help wondering whether someone whose secret life had been spied on, and perhaps revealed, might not have decided on some appropriate revenge.

  I headed for the long high-tech bar at the far end of the club, a nightmare Art Deco structure of gleaming steel and glass, with computer-assisted access to more kinds of booze than most people even know exist. You want a Wolfsbane cocktail, with a silver parasol in it? Or perhaps angel’s tears, with a depleted uranium swizzle stick? Or perhaps you desire a deep purple liqueur distilled from a kind of moss found only on Mars? Then it’s no wonder you’ve come to the Wulfshead Club.

  It is said by many and believed by even more that the club management keep their bar stock securely locked away in a pocket dimension only tangentially connected to the bar. Because the bar staff are afraid of it.

  I eased my way through the crowd, being pleasant and friendly to all the right people, because it’s never wise to start a fight you can’t be sure of winning. I caught the nearest barman’s eye and ordered my usual bottle of Beck’s. It arrived almost immediately, ice cold, with little drops of water beading on the glass. I nodded familiarly to the barman. His face was familiar, but it was hard to tell whether we’d ever actually met before—on account of there being a dozen or so barmen moving up and down the long bar, all of them with exactly the same face. Because they were clones. It’s a lot easier to be sure of the honesty of your staff if you grow them all in vats.

  I put my back against the bar and looked around me. Just Shaman Bond, chilling out, soaking up the atmosphere. Fitting in, letting myself become part of the crowd and part of the scene, so people would just accept my presence. So I could take advantage of them. I felt a little alone, even in the midst of so many, being there without my partner and my love, the wild witch Molly Metcalf. But I couldn’t call her to come and join me, because it was widely known, in places like this, that Molly Metcalf was currently stepping out with a Drood.

  I couldn’t ask her to help out on the Vatican job either. Because while I could get in without being noticed, Molly’s presence would have set off even more security alarms than my Drood armour. Molly had done many impressive and destructive things in her time, to the detriment of organised religions. And as a result, they all real
ly disapproved of her. That’s what you get for boasting you’ve been to Heaven and Hell and everywhere in between.

  I studied the crowd carefully, taking my time. You can find all sorts at the Wulfshead—if they don’t find you first. I made no move to approach anyone specific, or join in any conversation. Not yet. I just kept my ears and eyes open: seeing who was in tonight, and who they were with; who wasn’t there but perhaps should have been; and who was getting involved with things and people they would quite definitely come to regret in the morning. Love and lust, or things very like them, hung heavily on the hot and sweaty air. Temptation comes as standard at the Wulfshead. No wonder Harry Fabulous was hiding. I tilted my head surreptitiously this way and that, listening in on the latest gossip. Who was out, who was having who, who’d died, and who was responsible.

  There was a lot of talk about what was going on with the Shadow Banks, just recently. Those secret underground financial institutions that funded a lot of the bigger supernatural crimes, and criminals, on the quiet. Something significant had happened, after the last Casino Infernale in France, because the Shadow Banks had stopped loaning money. To anyone. Which was . . . unheard of. A lot of people in the Wulfshead were very unhappy about this. Can’t do the crimes if you don’t have the funding. Everyone knew that. There was a lot of talk, but no one knew anything for certain.

  I could have told them. How I broke the bank at Casino Infernale . . . But I didn’t. Because that was down to Eddie Drood. And still the conversations rose and fell . . .

  Have you heard about the Great Game this year? They say it’s going to be bigger than ever . . . I hear the man in Cell 13 is finally getting out . . . I heard the Lady Faire has just sent out invitations to attend her annual Ball, for all past and present friends and lovers. Is she handling everything herself? I wouldn’t be at all surprised . . . I hear it’s all kicking off in the Nightside, with the return of the Celestial Children . . . I hear, I hear . . .