Live and Let Drood: A Secret Histories Novel Read online

  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.

  There was no sign of any of the goblins who usually stood watch over the stairway, peering out from their comfortable niches in the stone wall. All their little caverns were empty, with not a trace remaining to show they’d ever been inhabited. No bodies. No sign of any struggle. But as we went down into the dark, spatters of dried blood began to appear on the steps below us. And all over the stone wall. By the time we got to the bottom, dried blood was splashed everywhere.

  At the entrance to the War Room, the electric hand scanners had been torn out and smashed, the pieces and fragments lying scattered all over the floor. And the entire entrance door was just…gone. I made Molly stand back while I stepped cautiously into the War Room. There was supposed to be a real live gorgon sitting just inside the door, doing penance for a very old crime against the family, ready to do something nasty and petrifying to anybody who dared enter the War Room without permission…but there was no trace of the gorgon anywhere. Just a few scattered stone pieces on the floor that might have been a shattered human statue or two. I gave Molly the all clear, and she shot straight past me into the War Room, glaring fiercely about her. She hates being left out of things.

  The War Room was a vast auditorium carved out of the solid bedrock underneath the Hall. All four walls were covered with massive state-of-the-art display screens showing every country in the world. But whereas normally they would have been covered with different-coloured lights showing what was happening in the world and what we were doing about it, now the screens were dead and blank and silent. The whole system was down.

  I followed Molly into the War Room, looking dazedly about me while she darted from one workstation to the next, looking for something she could use. The whole room was empty, deserted, silent; the computers had all been broken open and torn apart. The scrying spheres had been smashed and cracked, all the tables and chairs had been overturned and everything useful or important had been very thoroughly trashed. There were no bullet holes here, no signs of energy-weapon fire, but there was a hell of a lot of blood splashed over everything and pooled on the bare stone floor.

  A lot of people had died down here, but there wasn’t a single body to be seen anywhere. Drood or otherwise.

  Molly and I checked out the workstations methodically until we found one computer that was in somewhat better conditio
n than the others. We couldn’t get it working, so Molly just zapped the thing with some kind of spell to make it give up the last thing it had been working on. I’ve never understood how she gets magic to work on scientific things, and I have enough sense not to ask. I’m sure the answer would only upset me. The computer’s last memory appeared on a cracked monitor screen. It showed Droods jumping up from their workstations, startled, as someone opened fire on them. Bodies were thrown this way and that, blasted right out of their workstations. Blood flew on the air and bodies crashed to the floor. There were shouts and screams. None of the Droods armoured up. There was just bloodshed and slaughter, and computer stations exploding as they were raked with gunfire. And then the computer shut down and the monitor went blank.

  Molly called the last few images back to the monitor screen, goosing the thing with magical sparks when it tried to cut out on her.

  “Look at this, Eddie. According to what this screen is reluctantly showing us…all the Hall’s weapon systems and defences were off-line. Shut down before the attack. This has to be sabotage, Eddie; the work of the traitor inside the family. I’m sorry; I know you don’t want to hear this, but it’s the only way this could have happened.”

  “Callan was in charge here,” I said. “I didn’t see him on the screen. I can’t believe all the defence systems could have gone off-line at once without his noticing. Unless…someone arranged for him to be distracted. Called away. So he wouldn’t be here when this went down.” I looked around the silent, deserted War Room. “Still no bodies. You saw my family die on that screen. So why isn’t there a single Drood body anywhere in this room?”

  “Maybe they took your family away as prisoners,” said Molly. “Ethel was gone, so they didn’t have their armour.…Maybe your family just did the sensible thing and surrendered?”

  “I suppose that’s…possible,” I said. “Droods stripped of their armour would have been in shock, especially after an attack like this. Some of them might have been captured.”

  “So some of your family could still be alive somewhere!” said Molly.

  “Why would our enemies want prisoners, if they hate us so much?”

  “Don’t be naive, sweetie. For information. Droods know things no one else does. Everyone knows that.”

  “They could have got far more information from the computers,” I said. “And our enemies went out of their way to destroy them. No. The whole point of this…was to destroy the Droods forever. To take us completely off the board.”

  “You can hope, though, can’t you?”

  “We always say about the bad guys: If you don’t have the body, they’re probably not really dead. Maybe that works for the good guys, too. If there are any survivors, Molly, if there are any members of my family left alive anywhere…I will find them.”

  We went back up and worked our way through the fallen Hall to what was left of the South Wing. To the Operations Room, a high-tech centre set up to oversee all the Hall’s defences and protect the family from…things like this. Once again the door was standing open, revealing a reasonably-sized room full of computer systems and workstations…usually run by a cadre of specially trained technicians, under the head of ops, Howard. He wasn’t there. Neither was anyone else. Everything in the room had been smashed to pieces with great thoroughness. Someone wanted to make sure that not one of these systems could ever be repaired or re-created. No way of telling whether anyone here had known the defences were off-line until it was far too late. There was a hell of a lot of blood, but no bodies.

  I made my way carefully through the wreckage, looking for something to give me hope. Molly stuck close beside me, watching my back and comforting me with her presence. And at the very back of the room we found the little surprise the enemy had left for us, or for anyone else who came looking, to find. Twelve roughly severed heads set on spikes. Six male, six female. From the expressions on their faces, none of them had died well. Some were still silently screaming for help that never came. I studied the faces carefully but I didn’t recognise any of them. I can’t say whether that made it easier or harder to bear. I knelt down and closed the wildly staring eyes, one set at a time. Because I had to do something. There were no torcs at any of the raggedly cut necks.

  The smell was pretty bad.

  “Did you know any of them?” said Molly.

  “No,” I said. “But then, it’s a big family. You can’t know everyone. Howard isn’t here.”

  “Why leave the heads like this?” said Molly. “As a warning to anyone who came looking? Or just to mark their territory, the bastards?”

  “It’s a sign of contempt,” I said. “To tell everyone that the Droods are nothing to be feared anymore. Well, they got that wrong. I’m still here. I will find who did this. I will kill them all, and they will die hard and die bloody. And for that I’m going to need weapons.”

  And so we went down again, into the family Armoury, set deep and deep beneath the West Wing. Except when I cleared the rubble away from the floor that should have held the entrance to the Armoury approach…it wasn’t there. I stared down at the bare dusty floorboards, which had clearly never been disturbed, and then looked around to make sure I was in the right room. But even with all the damage and destruction, I had no doubt I was in the right place. The entrance should have been here, but it wasn’t and clearly never had been. I didn’t know what to think.

  The Armoury has always been in the same place ever since the family set it down below the Hall, centuries ago. Right down in the bedrock under the West Wing, as far away from the family as they could get, to protect the rest of us from the weapons development and explosives testing that went on every day, and the inevitable unexpected side effects produced by lab assistants with a whole lot of scientific curiosity and not nearly enough self-preservation instincts. Impossible.

  I had to search through three other rooms to find a trapdoor in the floor that to my certain knowledge hadn’t been there before. I kicked the last of the rubble aside, leaned over the steel-banded wooden square and studied it thoughtfully for a long moment, ignoring the threatening creaks and groans from the ceiling overhead. Molly stirred uneasily at my side.

  “This room is trying to tell us something, Eddie, and I’m pretty sure Get the hell out of here while you still can would be a fairly accurate translation.”

  “Hell with that,” I said. “It’s taken long enough, but I think I’ve finally found a clue. There’s no way I could be wrong about how you get down into the family Armoury. I’ve been sneaking down there to pester Uncle Jack since I was ten years old.”

  “Maybe they made a new entrance while you were gone,” said Molly, moving quickly sideways to avoid a stream of dust falling from the ceiling. “Maybe they blew up the old one.”

  “I haven’t been gone that long,” I said. “You couldn’t rush a major change like that through the Works Committee in less than a twelve-month. You don’t know what bureaucracy is until you’ve been part of a family that’s been around for centuries.”

  “But the trapdoor is intact,” said Molly. “Which would suggest…”

  “Yes,” I said. “It would.”

  I grabbed the heavy iron ring set into the top of the wooden trapdoor and hauled it open with an effort. It started to slam backwards onto the floor, and Molly and I grabbed it at the last moment and lowered it carefully down. More dust was falling in thick streams from the ceiling, and I was getting a strong feeling that one good slam might be enough to bring the whole thing down. Once, I wouldn’t have given a damn, but not having my armour was making me cautious. The trapdoor opening revealed an unfamiliar set of stone steps leading down into gloom. Old, scuffed steps, polished smooth by much hard use. The stairs had clearly been there a long time. I led the way down, with Molly treading close on my heels and peering over my shoulder. I was just as fascinated as she was. We were in new territory now, and for the first time I began to wonder if things really were as they appeared to be.

  The stairs gave
entrance to the Armoury, which looked exactly as I remembered it. The family had set up its Armoury in what used to be, centuries earlier, the old wine cellars. The heavy, specially reinforced blast-proof door was intact, but once again it hung partway open. I squeezed through the gap between the door and the frame, with Molly pressing so close behind me that she was breathing heavily down my neck.

  The lights flickered on as we entered the Armoury proper. It’s really just a long series of interconnected stone chambers with bare plastered walls, curved ceilings high above, and mile upon mile of multicoloured wiring tacked carelessly into place across the walls, crisscrossing in patterns that may or may not have meant something to somebody at some time. All the overhead fluorescent lights were working, but I realised immediately that I couldn’t hear the usual strained sounds of the air-conditioning. The air was stale, but there was no smell of smoke or sign of fire damage.

  “I don’t see any signs of a firefight,” said Molly, looking quickly about her. “No bullet holes, no energy burns or anything more extreme to suggest the people here fought back…”

  “No,” I said. “But there has been a hell of a lot of looting. Look at all the gaps.…I’m not seeing half the things I should be seeing. No computers, no weapons. Even the shooting range is empty. It’s all so quiet.…I don’t think I’ve ever heard the Armoury this quiet before. There was always something going on; Uncle Jack or his assistants working on some new way to blow themselves and everybody else up. It’s eerie.…”