Tales of the Hidden World Read online

  Jack was driving one of his favorite cars, his very own lovingly restored 1933 open-topped, four-and-a-half-liter Bentley, in racing green with red leather interiors. Not exactly an inconspicuous car, for a secret agent out in the field. Just smuggling it into East Berlin had been a real pain in the ass. But when it came to holding its own in a car chase, the Bentley had no equal. Jack liked a car he could depend on. The Bentley had a bulletproof chassis and windows, hidden machine guns, front and back, and a whole bunch of other nasty little secrets tucked away about its person, which Jack had designed and installed himself.

  There was a long waiting list at Drood Hall, just to look at the specs.

  Jack sent the Bentley racing up and down the back streets and alleyways, some of them so narrow the sides of the car brushed against the cheap concrete and brickwork. Dark streets under a dark sky, no moon up above, and hardly any working streetlights. Only the Bentley’s headlights, blazing fiercely before him, showed Jack the way through East Berlin. He hung onto the steering wheel with both hands, laughing aloud as the car bounced and jumped. Nothing like a good old-fashioned hot pursuit to get the adrenaline going. He concentrated on the city map he’d memorized and sent the Bentley slamming around sudden corners, hitting the supercharger now and again, when he needed to open up a little more space between him and his pursuers. The sound of so many roaring engines in the confined spaces was almost unnaturally loud in the night, but no one looked out a window to see what was going on. Jack peered ahead into the glare of the headlights. Either the map he’d been given was wrong, or someone had been doing a lot of unauthorized building around here. A whole bunch of turnings he’d been relying on just weren’t there.

  He kept his foot down, gunning the motor. He was heading in the right direction, and that was all that mattered.

  It didn’t help that most of East Berlin looked the same. Dull, faceless, characterless buildings on every side, thrown up in a hurry to hold a subservient population in place. Hardly any lights in the windows, and no one about on the streets. Not at that hour. The only people out and about at this time of the night in East Berlin were agents like him, and the East German secret police following him. The cars behind were catching up, despite everything Jack could do to throw them off, and more and more bullets were slamming into the rear of the Bentley. Jack kept his head well down and grinned across at his companion, curled up in a ball in the passenger seat.

  Greta was a pretty young secretary who worked for the secret police because she liked eating regularly. She’d managed to get word to a Drood representative that she would tell them everything she knew (and it promised to be quite a lot, and worth the knowing) if the Droods would get her safely out of the country. And save her soul from Hell.

  “So,” he said, raising his voice just a bit to be heard over the roar of the car’s engine and the sound of bullets hammering into the rear. “How long have you and your friends been allowing yourselves to become possessed by demons?”

  “It all started out as a game,” she said. “Just a few of us, doing it for fun. For the thrill of it all. We called out to spirits, through the Ouija board, and they came. And then we called out to other things, and they came, too. We let them in, just for a while, and it felt good, so good. With a thing from Hell inside us, we weren’t afraid to do anything. You don’t understand how powerful a feeling that can be, not to have to be afraid . . . And then the demons spoke to us and encouraged us to do things, and we did. I liked being possessed. I liked it so much I let seven demons come inside me, and then I couldn’t get them out. I can feel them, squirming inside me, like barbed wire slicing through my thoughts . . . I’m holding them down for the moment, but every day it feels like there’s less and less of me, and more and more of them. I was told you can help me.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Jack, in his best calm and reassuring voice. “We have people standing ready, who know how to deal with things like this. What about your friends?”

  “What about them?”

  “Well, what happened to the other people who were possessed by demons?”

  “I killed them,” said the little secretary, still curled up in a ball in the passenger seat. “I had to clean up after myself, before I could leave.”

  And then the Bentley was suddenly slammed to one side, right across the road and into the far wall, as a hidden gun emplacement opened up. The heavy bullets hammered all along the length of the car, and Jack had to fight the steering wheel for control. The Bentley bounced back off the wall, hardly damaged by the impact, and swerved back and forth across the road. Jack laughed out loud and kept going, hitting the supercharger for all it was worth. He’d designed the Bentley to be a tank, unstoppable. But when he looked around at his passenger, to say something cheerful and reassuring, he found the gun emplacement must have been specially designed, too. Its unusually heavy bullets had punched right through the Bentley’s reinforced side, leaving a long series of jagged holes. In the car and in the passenger. The little secretary sat slumped in her seat, almost torn in half. Blood soaked her whole side of the car. She was dead. With that much damage, she had to be. But she still turned her head around to look at Jack and smile at him with bloody teeth.

  Jack checked the road ahead was clear and looked back at her. Demons from Hell looked back at him through her unblinking eyes.

  “Get us out of here,” said the secretary, with her dead mouth. “Get us back to Drood Hall, and we will teach you all the secrets of Hell.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Jack. “We know all we need to know about the Pit.”

  He hit a large red button set into the dashboard and filled the car with a blast of exorcist radiations. A bit basic, a bit down and dirty, but it did the job. The secretary’s body shook and shuddered, horrible screams emerging from her slack mouth, and then she was still. The car stank of blood and brimstone, the stench of Hell. Jack reached across, opened the opposite door, and pushed the body out. It hit the ground hard, in a flail of limbs, and was quickly left behind. The door shut itself, and Jack drove on.

  He tried to feel sorry for the poor little secretary, but he hadn’t known her long enough. Nobody told her to play with fire.

  Jack drove on through the empty East Berlin night, roaring through the deserted streets. No one was chasing him anymore. They’d all stopped to check the body. Jack hoped they’d be properly appreciative that he’d cleaned up for them, but he rather doubted it. He drove on, heading for Checkpoint Charlie and home, and he never looked back once.

  Jack went walking in solitary silence, on the gray dusty surface of the Moon, surrounded by mountains and craters, snug and secure inside his golden armor. The dimensional Door had dropped him off exactly where he was supposed to be. He was there to retrieve Professor Cavor’s last mooncraft, crash-landed back in Victorian times, so its presence wouldn’t embarrass the Americans when they landed their ship in a few years’ time. Jack took his time, looking around him, grinning broadly behind his featureless mask. Enjoying the magnificent scenery by Earthlight.

  He found the crashed vehicle easily enough, right where it was supposed to be. He peered through the porthole at the mummified body inside, and then dragged the craft back to the Door, great clouds of dust billowing up around him, and then falling slowly back again. He forced the craft through the expanded Door, and then turned away, and walked back across the gray land to one particular crater, mentioned in Cavor’s last communication. He found the stone stairway, cut into the interior side of the crater, and proceded carefully down the rough steps, following them around and around and down and down, until finally he came to the abandoned ruins of the Selenite city. They were all long gone, of course. All that remained of Selenite civilization was rot and ruin. He walked cautiously on through the great stone galleries, past massive crystal installations, feeling very small against the sheer scale of the surrounding structures. He had hoped to find some last remnants of their un
earthly science, but everything he touched crumbled to dust under his golden fingers.

  He’d got there too late. Millennia too late.

  The Armourer stirred restlessly in his chair. He had a strong feeling he should be somewhere else, doing something else, but he couldn’t think what. He seemed to have spent most of his life feeling that way. When he was out in the field, he couldn’t wait to get home. When he was stuck in the hall, he quickly got bored. And when he finally left the field and settled down in the Armory . . . he pined for the adventures he’d left behind.

  Which might well be why he so often went truant, on a little walkabout, to places he knew he shouldn’t be. Places like the Nightside, where he knew the family wouldn’t come looking for him. It was only small disobediences like that, he often thought, that kept him sane.

  It had been different, at first. When he had a family of his own. A wife and a child. Both of them gone now. He brought Natasha back to the Hall so they could be together, but it didn’t last. All too soon she was taken from him and he was left alone, with nothing left but his job, and his duty. There had been . . . affairs, dalliances, down the years. Mostly with pretty young lab assistants, with daddy issues. The Armourer smiled, briefly. James might be the one with the reputation as a lady-killer, but Jack had done all right for himself. In his own quiet way. And he hadn’t always been alone. He’d had a dog once. Until it exploded. Poor little Scraps.

  Jack remembered his wife, Natasha. He met her in Moscow while he was working a mission there, alongside the resident Drood agent. So long ago now . . .

  He punched a masked man in the face, kneed him briskly in the nuts, and then threw him off the edge of the building. The masked man screamed all the way down, but Jack was already moving on to his next target. There had to be twenty or more of the enemy, clattering over the steeply sloping tiled roof, with only Jack and Natasha to stand against them. The Moscow field agent, Erin Drood, was down below, defusing the bomb. Jack ducked a flailing fist and punched the masked man savagely in the side. He felt ribs break under his fist. He knocked the man down, and then braced himself as he turned and found another masked man pointing a gun at his head. Natasha stepped in and kicked the man’s legs out from under him, with one broad sweep of her leg. She waited till he hit the roof, hard, and then stamped on his hand till he let go of the gun. And then she stamped on his head. Jack and Natasha exchanged a grin and moved on to new targets. Slipping and sliding across the steep uneven roof, far above the Moscow streets.

  The masked men called themselves the Children of Vodyanoi. A small but very determined group that wanted to make mankind over into something better. The Russian authorities thought they were just another suppressed religious sect, but Drood intelligence knew better. Which was why Jack had been sent to help the resident field agent, Erin Drood, stop the Children of Vodyanoi, before they did something that couldn’t be undone. Natasha was their local contact, but she insisted on getting involved. And seeing her fight overwhelming odds with just spiked brass knuckles and a cheerful smile, Jack was glad she was there. He couldn’t armor up for fear of setting off the bomb, so he was having to rely on old Drood fighting techniques. He thought he was doing okay. The Children of Vodyanoi all had the strength of fanatics, but they hadn’t a clue how to fight on a professional level.

  Jack and Natasha fought their way from one side of the roof to the other, and when they finally stopped and looked back, there was no one else left standing. Jack and Natasha leaned on each other, companionably, breathing hard.

  “Explain to me again, please,” Natasha said finally. “Just what the hell these idiots thought they were doing?”

  “They wanted to transform Humanity,” said Jack. “Make us all superhuman. Using alien DNA stripped from the dead crew of a crashed starship. Unfortunately, they didn’t know the DNA acted like a virus. It infected them and changed their thinking, so they would want to infect others. With alien DNA programmed to override any other DNA, so we would end up like them. Invasion and colonization, by proxy.”

  Natasha looked around the roof, counting quietly. “This is it. This is all of them. A very small group.”

  “Then all that’s left is to burn the bodies,” said Jack. “With these very special incendiaries provided by the family Armourer. Burns right down to the genetic level, or so I’m told.”

  “What about the bomb?” said Natasha.

  “I defused that ages ago,” said a cheerful voice behind them. “I just enjoyed watching you fight.”

  “Piss off, Erin,” said Jack. “Just for that, you can carry the bomb out of here.”

  Erin laughed and disappeared. Jack and Natasha looked at each other.

  “Is there any chance that you or I could be infected with alien DNA?” said Natasha. “After all, we did come into close contact with those idiots. Briefly.”

  “The injections we took earlier will protect us,” said Jack. “My family has antidotes for everything.”

  “I’d still feel safer if you were to look me over,” said Natasha. “Personally.”

  Jack grinned. “I can do that.”

  They weren’t supposed to fall in love, but they did anyway. Jack brought Natasha back to Drood Hall and married her. Natasha became pregnant within a year and gave birth to a fine baby boy. And they were so happy together . . . for a while.

  Natasha died some two years after Timothy was born. Nothing special, or out of the ordinary, her kidneys just stopped working, and she died while the Drood doctors were still trying to figure out why. Things like that happen, even to Droods. By the time Jack got back from his latest mission, it was all over. He stood looking down at her grave, holding his confused young son by the hand, and swore he would never leave the Hall again. Because he hadn’t been there for his wife and son when they needed him. He would stay, because his son needed him.

  Though of course by then, it was already too late.

  Jack took up a position in the Armory. He’d always been fascinated by the weapons and devices he’d been supplied with as a field agent, and had come up with a few useful things himself. He was a bit old to be a lab assistant, but the Armory was happy to have someone with firsthand experience of how their various creations actually operated under field conditions. Jack just wanted something to occupy his mind. To keep him from thinking about the happy life he used to have.

  He trained under the previous Armourer, his aunt Eloise, sister to the Matriarch. Eloise had been Armourer for decades. She was a real terror, working everyone hard, always shouting and swearing and carrying on, not prepared to let anyone get away with anything. Or take the credit for anything she could take the credit for. And God help you if you didn’t keep all your paperwork strictly up-to-date. Jack wasn’t sure anyone actually liked her, but everyone did good work under her unwavering glare. They didn’t dare do anything else.

  Eloise was a great believer in weaponizing unnatural forces, an idea that had been all the rage back in the 1920s and 1930s. But definitely starting to feel a bit old hat by the time Jack joined the Armory. He tried to steer the work in a more scientific direction, but Eloise would have none of it. She was getting old and slow and past it, but wouldn’t admit it. The quality of the work coming out of the Armory started to suffer, though Eloise made sure the blame fell everywhere except with her. Until she blew herself up. Jack was then promoted to Armourer. So he could put in place all the changes he’d been advocating for so long. Things improved immediately.

  Did she fall or was she pushed? The Armourer smiled. He’d never tell. Anything, for the family.

  He looked at the chair opposite him, and smiled at Natasha. She smiled sweetly back at him. She was sitting very straight and upright, as she always did, with her hands folded neatly in her lap. Still wearing her usual long black leather coat and her knee-length boots. Long, dark hair fell out from under her fur cap. She sighed and shook her head.

  “What
are you still doing here, Jack? This was only ever supposed to be a temporary position.”

  “I came back to the Hall to look after Timothy,” said Jack. “So he wouldn’t be alone. I did mean to leave here, move on, as soon as he was old enough to look after himself. But everyone knows how that worked out. After he went rogue, I didn’t want to leave the hall and the family. They were very supportive. And they were all I had left.”

  “You should have gone back out into the world again,” said Natasha. “Back where you belonged.”

  “I was busy,” said the Armourer. “There was always so much work to do. And besides, if you weren’t in the world, I wasn’t interested in it anymore.”

  “So you stayed here and got old,” said Natasha.

  “Yes,” said the Armourer. “I miss you so much, Natasha.”

  “I know. Why didn’t you marry again?”

  “Because I never felt about anyone else, the way I felt about you.”

  The Armourer looked away, thinking, remembering, and when he looked back, she wasn’t there anymore. And neither was the chair she’d been sitting on.

  Timothy Drood . . . His son, his only child. Not like his brother, James, who had so many children by so many women, out in the field. You can’t go tomcatting around like James did and not expect there to be consequences. James produced so many illegitimate half-Droods they formed their own organization, the Gray Bastards. The Armourer tried to keep in touch with as many of them as he could, because they were his nephews and nieces, after all. But there were just so many of them. All determined to go their own way and make a name for themselves, like their illustrious father. So many of them died, trying to prove themselves worthy of the family name. Like Harry, and Roger, and . . .

  If the Armourer had a son now, he supposed it would have to be his nephew, Eddie. A good man, a better field agent, and a credit to his family. Eddie Drood, the man responsible for the death of the Armourer’s beloved brother, James, and his estranged son, Timothy. There was no one in the family the Armourer felt closer to than Eddie, but there was no denying that closeness came with a cost.