The Man with the Golden Torc sh-1 Page 4

  So I held his gaze with mine, quietly retrieved the portable door from my pocket, activated it, and flipped the door neatly under the Hyde’s feet. Boyd had just enough time to look startled before he fell through the new opening and into the cellars underneath the club. He landed with a satisfyingly loud crash, followed by a series of low moans. I picked up my portable door and the floor returned, sealing Boyd in the cellars until someone could be bothered to go down and rescue him. The bartender nodded his thanks, glad he hadn’t had to get involved, and the watching crowd gave me a round of applause. Janissary Jane and I shared a high five, while Charlatan Joe considered me thoughtfully.

  "Where did you get your hands on a restricted device like a portable door, Shaman?"

  "Found it on eBay," I said.

  Time continued to pass pleasantly, and by the early hours of the morning I was drifting through a drunken haze and chatting up a giggly sex droid who’d dropped in from the twenty-third century to do some research for her dissertation on strange sexual hang-ups of the rich and famous. She was tall and buxom and one hundred percent artificial, sweetly turned out in a classic little black dress cut high enough at the back to show off the bar code and copyright notice stamped on her magnificent left buttock. Her fizzing steel hair was full of sparking static, her eyes were silver, and she smelled of pure musk. She ran off a nuclear power cell located in her lower abdomen, which was just a tad worrying, but then, no one’s perfect.

  "So, what brings you to the Wulfshead?" I asked.

  "Just playing tourist," she said with a smile so wide even Julia Roberts couldn’t have matched it. "I’ve got so much more spare time since we finally got unionised. Let’s hear it for Rossum’s Unionised Robots!"

  "Down with the bosses!" I said solemnly. "Work is the curse of the drinking classes."

  "Oh, I love my work," she said, batting her huge eyelashes at me. "It took more than one man to change my name to Silicon Lily."

  And that was when my mobile phone rang. I was not pleased. The only people who have that number are my family, and I shouldn’t have been hearing from them so soon after a completed mission. It had to be some kind of bad news, and almost certainly more mine than theirs. People all around me scowled at the phone in my hand and gave me significant looks; you’re supposed to turn off all communication devices before entering the Wulfshead. I hadn’t thought to, because the family so rarely bothers me when I’m on downtime. I smiled weakly, shrugged apologetically, blew a quick kiss to the sex droid, and retired to a more or less private corner to take the call.

  "I thought I told you never to call me here," I said coldly.

  "Come home," said an unfamiliar voice. "Come home now. You are needed for a personal briefing on an urgent mission."

  And that was it. The phone went dead, and I slowly put it away, my mind racing. Another mission, already? That was unheard of. I was guaranteed at least a week between missions. Too much work in the field, and you burn out fast. The family knows that. And why did I have to go home to be briefed? Ordinarily they send me my mission brief, and whatever hardware I might need, via a blind postal drop that I rotate on a regular basis; and then I just go off and do whatever needs to be done and do my best not to get killed in the process. Make my report to Penny afterwards, and then go to ground till I’m needed again. The family and I maintain a civilised distance, and that’s the way I like it.

  I scowled into what remained of my drink. The phone call had shocked me sober again. I really didn’t want to go home. Back to the Hall, ancestral home of the extended Drood family. I hadn’t set eyes on the place in ten years. I left right after my eighteenth birthday, to our mutual relief, and the family sent me a regular and (fairly) generous stipend guaranteed to continue as long as I continued to work in the field. If I ever chose to give up my career as an agent, I could either go home or be hunted down and killed as a dangerous rogue. That was understood. They allowed me a short leash, but that was all. I was a Drood.

  I left home because I found the weight of family duty and history more than a little suffocating, and they let me go because they found my attitude a pain in the arse. I’d kept myself busy, down the years, accepting assignment after assignment just to avoid having to go home again and submit to family authority and discipline. I liked the illusion of being my own man.

  But when the family calls, you answer, if you know what’s good for you. I was going home again, damn it to hell.

  In the morning. Tonight, there was Silicon Lily…

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Home Is Where the Heart Is

  The sun had only been up an hour or so when I finally left my comfortable little flat tucked away in an enclosed square in one of the better parts of Knightsbridge. The place cost more in rent every week than the family sent me in a year, but I once did the owner a favour, and now he picks up the tab. And in return I keep very quiet about exactly what the succubus had been doing in that flat before I exorcised her. (Let’s just say I had to burn the bed and scrub down the walls with a mixture of holy water and Lysol.) The brightening sky still had streaks of crimson in it, the birds were singing their little hearts out, the noisy bastards, and the day felt fresh and sharp with the anticipation of things to come.

  I’m not normally a morning person, but it had been a really good night, thanks to Silicon Lily. She’d vanished from my bed in a crackle of discharging tachyons about an hour ago, leaving me with the memory of a wink and a smile and the scent of her perfumed sweat on my sheets. Damn, they know how to live in the twenty-third century. I took a few deep breaths of crisp morning air, yawned abruptly, and brushed vaguely at my blue jeans, white shirt, and battered black leather jacket. Good enough for the family. I don’t normally believe in getting up at the same time as everyone else, people who actually have to earn a living, but I had a long day ahead of me. I unlocked the garage under my flat with a Word and a gesture, and then backed my car out into the cobbled courtyard. I revved the engine and it roared cheerfully, and I had to grin as I thought of heads jerking up off pillows in flats all around the square. I have to get up early, everyone gets up early.

  I swept through the almost empty streets of London, ignoring red lights and speed limits and marvelling at all the empty parking spaces. London just after dawn is a whole different place. A few partygoers were still stumbling home, clutching empty champagne bottles and the occasional traffic cone, and I waved cheerfully to them as I passed. We twilight people have to stick together.

  I was driving my Hirondel sports car, the powder blue convertible model, with the top down, and the wind ruffled my hair affectionately as I headed out of London and aimed for the southwest countryside, going home to meet the family. I’d had hardly any sleep and only a rushed breakfast of milky cereal and burnt toast, but there’s nothing like a night of really good sex to stave off a hangover. I powered down the M4 motorway, through grasslands and open fields and cultivated countryside, enjoying the run. I sang lustily along to the Eurythmics’ Greatest Hits in the CD player, doing harmonies when I couldn’t hit the high notes. That Annie Lennox has got a hell of a range.

  The Hirondel is a 1930s model, perfectly restored, but it also has many modern extras and some extraordinary options, courtesy of the family Armourer. Who firmly believes in every member of the family being prepared for enemy attack at all times. He also believes in doing unto others before they get the chance to do it unto you. As a result of his very talented work, speed cameras can’t see me, my license plate is Corps Diplomatique so the cops don’t bother me, and any car that makes the mistake of getting too close can suddenly find itself experiencing severe engine problems. For those who insist on getting too close, I have fore and aft electronic cannons capable of firing two thousand explosive fléchettes a second, flamethrowers, and an EMP generator. If you ask me, the Armourer’s seen too many spy movies. I prefer to put my faith in driving like a bat out of hell and leaving my enemies behind to eat my exhaust.

  I turned off the M4 near Bristol
, by now crooning along to Leonard Cohen’s I’m Your Man, and quickly left the main roads behind me as I headed deep into the countryside. I drove down increasingly narrow roads until I was well off the beaten track, and the roads became lanes, without even any road markings or cat’s-eyes down the middle. The morning air was sharp and fresh, filled with the scents of recently cut grass and the unmistakable presence of cows. The southwest is dairy country. Small towns gave way to even smaller villages and hamlets until finally the lane I was following just petered out into a dirt track, deeply churned by heavy farm vehicles. I kept going, slower now, following a winding way through dark and brooding woods, golden shafts of sunlight forcing their way through the general gloom like spotlights full of dancing dust motes. I braked sharply to avoid hitting a badger the size of a pig as it wandered across the road, and it actually had the nerve to give me the evil eye before scurrying off into the undergrowth. Deer watched me silently from the sides, their eyes gleaming in the shadows.

  I rounded a sharp corner, and the track ended abruptly in a high stone wall buried under centuries’ growth of creeping ivy. Anyone else would have slammed on their anchors and prayed for their souls, but I just kept going. The stone wall loomed up before me, terribly solid and unforgiving, filling my view, and then I was upon it and through it, the illusion dissipating harmlessly around me, trailing wisps of ghostly stonework across my face like chilly fingertips.

  (To a Drood, it’s an illusion. To everyone else, it’s a solid stone wall. And if you crash into it, don’t come crying to us. Serves you right for trying to find us.)

  Bright sunlight splashed over the car as I left the illusion behind me and followed the long gravel path between two long rows of elm trees and on into the extensive grounds of the Hall. There were perfectly laid out lawns, expertly trimmed and long enough to land a plane on. Sprinklers tossed their liquid bounty around, filling the summer air with a moist haze. Beyond the lawns there were hedge mazes and flower gardens, ornamental fountains in the grand Victorian style with water gushing tastefully from classical statues, and even our own lake with swans drifting on it.

  As I approached the Hall, peacocks paraded across the manicured lawns, announcing my arrival with their harsh and raucous cries. An old wishing well stood to one side, its red roof rusting and flaking away. We filled it in with concrete for getting too cocky. Winged unicorns grazed outside the adjoining stables, tossing their noble heads at me, their coats so perfect a white they seemed almost to glow. Watchful gryphons patrolled around the Hall, keeping an eye on the near future, ready for any attack. The perfect guardians and watchdogs. Unfortunately, they only eat carrion, and they like to roll in it first, so no one ever pets them and they are never allowed inside.

  My family home has always been colourful as all hell. The waterfall feature has an undine in it, the old chapel has a ghost (though my family isn’t on speaking terms with it), and there are occasionally faeries at the bottom of our garden. Though if you’re wise you’ll give them plenty of space.

  The Hall loomed up before me like a dentist’s appointment; it might be necessary, but you just know it’s all going to end in tears. My feelings on seeing the old homestead again after so long were so mixed I didn’t even know where to start. Everywhere I looked, familiar sights leapt to my eyes, assaulting me with nostalgia for times past, when the world seemed so much simpler. This was the place of my childhood, my formative years. I remembered sailing across the lake in a boat made of cobwebs and sealing magics under the kind of blue sky and brilliant sun you only get in memories of childhood summers. I remembered being four years old, chasing the peacocks on my stubby legs and crying because I couldn’t catch them. I remembered dancing on the roof in elfin boots, and flying on the unicorns, and…just lying on the lawns with a good book, dozing through endless summer afternoons…

  I also remembered endless lessons in crowded schoolrooms, endless harsh discipline and cold courtesy, and the silent sullen resistance of my teenage years as I stubbornly refused to be led and moulded and dictated to. The never-ending arguments with increasingly senior members of the family over the way my life should go, and the terrible feeling of being crushed and limited by their rigid expectations of who and what a Drood should be. My need to be my own man, in a family where that could never be permitted. In the end I didn’t so much leave as run away, and to the Matriarch’s credit, she let me go.

  I remembered the beatings, the angry raised voices, and, worse, the cutting cold words of disappointment. The withholding of treats and privileges and affection, until I learned to do without them, just to spite the family. I learned to be self-sufficient the hard way. You temper a sword by beating the crap out of the steel; and I have one hell of a temper.

  Now I’d been summoned back, without explanation or warning, and a cold knot of warning and paranoia twisted in the pit of my stomach. Nothing good could come of this. Nothing good for me, anyway. Part of me wanted to just crash the car to a halt, turn it around, and drive back out. Just keep driving and driving, leave England, and lose myself in the darker parts of the world, forget I ever was a Drood. But I couldn’t do that. The family wouldn’t forget. They would declare me rogue, apostate, security risk, and they would never stop until they had hunted me down.

  And besides, even after all the arguments and disagreements, I still believed in what the family stood for. I still believed in fighting the good fight.

  I turned the car through a long, drawn-out curve, and the Hall swung into place before me, dominating the scene. A huge sprawling old manor house, the Hall dated back to Tudor times originally, but had been much added to down the centuries. The central building still had the traditional black-and-white boarded frontage, with heavy leaded-glass windows and a jutting gabled roof. Surrounding it were the four great wings, massive and solid in the old Regency style, containing some fifteen hundred bedrooms, all of them currently occupied by family members. Everyone here is a Drood. The roof rose and fell like a gray tiled sea, complete with gables, gargoyles, and ornamental guttering. Not forgetting the observatory, the aerie, the landing pad, and more aerials and antennae than you could shake a gremlin at. There are many rooms in my family’s mansion, and there’s room for everyone. As long as you toe the line.

  The Hall is also a real swine to heat, draughty as all hell in the winter, and the family doesn’t believe in central heating because they think it makes you soft. I grew up thinking wearing long underwear half the year was normal.

  And in the Hall’s most secret chambers, my family decides the fate of the world. Seven days a week, no time off for good behaviour.

  This isn’t my family’s first home, of course. The Droods were an old, old family even back in Tudor times. We moved on and moved up as we grew in size and status and influence. But the Hall has been our home and centre of operations for so long now it’s hard to think of us anywhere else. You won’t find the Hall on any official map, nor will you find any of the routes that lead to it. I’d felt the many layers of scientific and magical defences sliding aside to let me pass as I drove down the long graveled drive, rising and falling before me like a series of shifting veils, and then sealing themselves behind me again. Someone was watching me from the moment I passed through the stone wall, and would continue to watch until I left again. Robot guns actually rose up out of the lawns to track my car at one point before reluctantly burying themselves again. They were new. But of course, it’s always the defences you can’t see or sense that will really screw you over. Anyone who comes looking for us, uninvited and unexpected, risks being killed in any number of increasingly distressing ways.

  The family has always taken its privacy very seriously. When you’ve been protecting and policing the world for as long as we have, you can’t help but accumulate serious enemies. The Hall and its extensive grounds are surrounded and suffused with layer upon layer of protections, including a whole bunch of scarecrows. We make them out of old enemies. If you listen in on the right supernatural frequ
ency, you can hear them screaming. Don’t mess with the Droods. We take it personally. We get mad and we get even.

  I brought the Hirondel to a crashing halt right before the front door, in a swirl and a spray of churned-up gravel, and parked right there just because I knew I wasn’t supposed to. I turned off the engine, and then sat there for a while, staring at nothing and tapping my fingertips on the steering wheel, listening to the cries of the peacocks and the slow ticking of the cooling engine. I didn’t want to do this. By not leaving the car I was putting off the moment when I would have to enter my old home and walk back into the cold, distant embrace of my family. But…sooner or later you have to walk into the dentist’s surgery and just get it over with.

  I slammed the car door loudly, enjoying the echoes, and then locked it. Not because it was necessary, or even because it would stop whomever they sent to move it. I just wanted to make it clear to everyone that I didn’t trust anyone here. The Hall rose up before me like a tidal wave cast in stone. It looked even bigger than I remembered, up close, and even more forbidding. I could feel its mass, its centuries of accumulated duty and responsibility, trying to suck me in like a black hole, but I balked at the front door. I was supposed to walk straight in and present myself to the Matriarch, as custom and tradition demanded…but I’ve never been big on doing what I’m supposed to do. And since I was still more than a bit resentful at being summoned back so abruptly, I decided that the Matriarch could wait while I went for a little walk.