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

  Everyone stood very still, looking around, and then a whole bunch of dark hands burst out of every plasma screen at once, on the end of rapidly elongating dark, rubbery arms. The hands shot forward with incredible speed, grabbed the nearest people, and dragged them bodily towards the plasma screens, struggle as they might.

  The dark hands clamped onto arms and shoulders with inhuman strength. Sometimes that was enough, if the victims had been caught off guard and off balance. The victims were dragged over to the screens, and then into and through them, all in a moment. If the victims fought back, then the hands would just hold them in place long enough for their arms to whip round and round them, wrapping them in dark, unrelenting coils. And then the arms would retract, dragging the still struggling victims through the plasma screens to whatever awaited them on the other side. People everywhere screamed and swore and fired their weapons wildly, and none of it did any good at all.

  Of course, the kind of people you get at the Wulfshead Club often aren’t the type to depend on weapons. Many were powerful enough or crafty enough to put up a fight on their own.

  Monkton Farley ducked back and forth, hiding behind other people, using them as shields while he put his great mind to the problem of how to shut down the screens. He was already assembling an impressive bit of tech from various things he dug out of his pockets.

  Ellen de Gustibus grabbed the nearest dark arm as it shot past her, held it firmly in place with both of her hands, and then took a large bite out of it. It bucked and jerked spasmodically as Ellen chewed her way through it. There wasn’t any blood that I could see.

  Waterloo Lillian stabbed an aboriginal bone at a dark hand as it went for him, and the hand just withered and fell apart. The attached arm disintegrated into dust. But even as Lillian whooped loudly in triumph, another dark arm looped itself quickly around him from behind. Half a dozen coils were enough to pin his arms to his sides, and then they squeezed hard, crushing all the breath out of him. The bone fell from Lillian’s nerveless fingers, and his mascaraed eyes rolled up in his head. The arm dragged him off to the nearest screen.

  Jumping Jack Flashman had already discovered he couldn’t get out of the club. The main security shields were still in place. So he just went teleporting back and forth around the interior, appearing and disappearing before the hands or arms could get a grip on him. One dark arm did whip around him, but he was gone again before it could tighten. The next time he reappeared, though, a dark hand was waiting for him, hanging on the air. It formed itself into a fist and punched him hard in the side of the head the moment he appeared. The arm caught his unconscious body before it could hit the ground, looped around him, and hauled him away.

  Whoever was in control on the other side of the plasma screens, it was clear they were no longer content just to take secrets. With their presence blown, they were taking the people who knew the secrets. And even with all this mayhem going on around me, I still couldn’t help wondering . . . who could be brave enough, or stupid enough, or just plain desperate enough to make enemies of the club management? And all the friends and families and organisations attached to the people they’d taken? Even my family would hesitate to make so many significant dangerous enemies at once.

  It wouldn’t stop them, but they’d definitely think about it first.

  A dark hand on the end of a rapidly lengthening arm came flying directly at me, only to slam to a halt at the very last moment. It hung quivering on the air, just a few inches short of my face, and then turned away, in search of another victim. I put a hand to my throat, where my torc was tingling wildly. The hand had detected the torc and turned away rather than antagonise the Droods. Which was . . . interesting. I looked quickly around, and then sent another trickle of golden strange matter down my arm, under my sleeve, to form an armoured glove over my right hand. I needed to do something before I was left standing alone in an empty club.

  A dark hand flew past me. I grabbed it out of mid-air and crushed it with my golden glove. I felt bones crack and break in my grasp; and when I let the hand go, it whipped quickly back inside the nearest screen. Through my golden spectacles I watched it go, and saw vague figures moving agitatedly back and forth on the other side of the screen. One of them was clutching his hand to his chest, as though it was injured. And another figure . . . was quite definitely giving orders to the others. I punched the screen before me with my golden hand, and instead of cracking or breaking, the screen just let my armoured hand pass right through, into the place behind.

  I concentrated hard, and my armour connected with the screen’s operating systems, infiltrating their command structures. And then it seemed like the easiest thing in the world for me to reach all the way through the screen and grab the figure who’d been giving all the orders. I took a firm hold and hauled him back through the screen and into the Wulfshead Club. I threw him to the floor and stood over him . . . and was quietly astonished to discover that I knew him.

  He just sprawled there, shaking and shuddering, not even trying to get up. He looked at me piteously, like a child expecting to be punished for something that really wasn’t his fault. I made my golden sunglasses disappear so he could see my face clearly. I wanted him to be able to see just how angry I was.

  It was Alan Diment, the current head of MI 13, the British Government’s very own secret spy organisation, dedicated to protecting Queen and Country from unnatural threats. They weren’t very big, or particularly well budgeted, but they tried hard. They handled all the day-to-day supernatural threats that my family, or the Department of Uncanny, were too busy to deal with. Normally they had enough sense not to mess with the Big Guys. And certainly not with established power bases like the Wulfshead Club. A lot of MI 13’s higher-ups were supposed to be Members . . . Which was probably how they’d got access to the plasma screens in the first place.

  Alan Diment was a middle-aged, grey little man, as quietly anonymous and nondescript as any professional secret agent should be. I knew him mainly as a courier, passed over for more important things for a whole bunch of good reasons. Diment was blonde and blue-eyed, in a minor aristocratic sort of way, the kind who got into Intelligence because that was what Daddy did. What his family had done, for generations. Only to discover that he wasn’t any good at it.

  The last time I encountered Alan Diment, very briefly, it was during the Great Satanic Conspiracy business. Which had turned out to be run by the previous head of MI 13, that treacherous little shit Philip MacAlpine. It also turned out that a lot of the higher echelons of MI 13 had been a part of the Conspiracy, and my family had to hunt them all down and kill them, root and branch. Because some things just can’t be forgiven. Presumably Alan Diment had been one of the few older agents left untouched by the scandal. I had heard they’d put him in charge, but I’d never thought he’d be dumb enough to do something like this.

  I grabbed him by the shirtfront, pulled him up off the floor, and slammed him back against the bar. I thrust my face right into his. He didn’t even struggle, just looked back at me with his big, sad eyes. I showed him my golden fist, and his eyes widened even more as I made golden spikes rise out of the knuckles.

  “You are in trouble, Alan,” I said. “Real trouble. Tell me what you know. Tell me everything that’s going on here. And this would not be a good time to grow a pair and fall back on your supposed authority.”

  “No one’s dead! No one’s hurt!” Diment said quickly. “This was just supposed to be an information-gathering operation! That is what spies do, after all, isn’t it? Look, they made me be head of MI 13. I didn’t want the job; I was looking forward to taking early retirement. But after that stupid Satanic Conspiracy thing wiped out all the top levels of the organisation, I was the only one left who knew how things worked. The only one with any real experience. I’d put the years in, so they gave me an office and a secretary and told me to get on with it. Keep your head down, they said, and don’t make any waves. Just hold the fort until we can find someone more suitable to
do the job.

  “But . . . the Government had been through its own purge, because of the Conspiracy, and there were a lot of new faces around, settling into positions of power, desperate to make their mark. They were the ones who put the pressure on. They wanted to prove MI 13 was still fit for purpose. That it was still capable of bringing in the bacon . . . I was told I had to do something, come up with some big new idea, to keep them from . . . disposing of me.

  “So I talked to a few old friends, chaps I went to school with, who were working for Black Heir. You know, the Government department tasked with clearing up the mess left behind after alien encounters . . . Of course you know. These friends loaned me a few useful bits of alien tech, and I talked some of my people who were Members of the Wulfshead into quietly introducing that alien tech into the plasma screens. Wasn’t difficult . . . The club management may be absolute fiends when it comes to external security, but they never considered there might be a threat from inside their precious club.

  “Anyway, I soon had some of my people sitting on the other side of the screens, keeping their eyes and ears open and writing down anything that seemed . . . interesting. I sorted through it all and sent anything that seemed important Upstairs. And that should have been it. But then certain people in positions of power started deliberately releasing the secrets, to do damage to people they disapproved of. I think a lot of that was down to interdepartmental fighting . . .

  “They said they were very pleased with me! At first . . . Enough to take the pressure off, for a while, but then they started getting greedy. They didn’t just want the secrets, they wanted the people who knew the secrets. Because they weren’t seen as people any more, just useful assets to be exploited. So the word came down, and it was more than my life was worth to say no. I was told to grab a few useful people from the Wulfshead tonight. They even gave me a shopping list. Take a few, they said, not enough to draw anyone’s attention. But no one expected you to be here. They took one look at you and panicked. Said, ‘Take everyone!’ Make a clean sweep of it, while we can. Before you figured out what was happening and shut it down. I told them it was a bad idea! But they wouldn’t listen . . .”

  I turned Alan Diment around with my armoured hand and showed him to the nearest plasma screen.

  “You know who I am!” I said loudly. “Give back the people you’ve taken, right now, and I’ll give you back your head of MI 13. With all his important parts still attached.”

  There wasn’t even a pause. A voice from the other side of the screen said, “Keep him.”

  Diment looked shocked, but not particularly surprised. I sighed inwardly and tried again.

  “All right,” I said. “You want to escalate? I can do that. First, you’ve already seen that I can pass through the screen. Don’t make me come there in person and show you just how much damage I can cause to things and people when I’m in a mood. Second, do you really want my family at your throats? Now, and forever?”

  There was a long pause, and then all the dark hands on their long black arms whipped back into the plasma screens and were gone. The few people left in the club, who’d managed to fight the hands off, raised their heads and looked slowly about them. And then all the people who’d been taken came flying back through the screens into the club. They poured through in a rush, piling up on the floor. Those still conscious cried out at the impact, but didn’t have enough strength left to make a fuss. No one seemed badly injured; but a lot of them looked like they’d been hit with some heavy-duty sedation. I glared at the dark figures moving uneasily about on the other side of the screens.

  “There had better not be anyone missing!” I said sternly. “Not even one. Or I will come and find you.”

  Four more bodies came flying through the screens. Interestingly, I didn’t recognise any of them. But apparently someone thought they were important . . . I looked at Alan Diment.

  “This was a really bad idea. Don’t ever try it again. Not here, or anywhere else.”

  “I wouldn’t,” said Diment. “But someone else might.”

  I looked at him thoughtfully. “Who was it, exactly, who pressured you into doing this?”

  “The current Government has an awful lot of new people in it,” Diment said carefully. “Obsessed with secrets, and the power having those secrets would bring them . . .”

  “Names,” I said.

  “Sorry,” said Diment sadly. “You might kill me for not talking, but they definitely would, if I did.”

  I nodded, turned him around, and booted him back through the nearest plasma screen. It swallowed him up in a moment, and then every screen in the club went blank, shut down from the other side. I had no doubt that by the time the club’s management had the screens up and running again, all ties to the other side would have been cut. Not a trace left behind, to point the finger at anyone.

  People were getting to their feet now, and looking at each other and the blank plasma screens with equal confusion. Whatever they’d seen on the other side, and whatever had been done to them, they clearly didn’t remember. I discreetly made my golden hand disappear, and then moved through the crowd, checking that everyone was all right. Ellen de Gustibus was leaning heavily on Monkton Farley, exhausted. He comforted her as best he could. He understood all there was to know about people, except how to be one. I gave him bonus marks for trying. Jumping Jack Flashman left through the nearest exit, the moment someone discovered they were working again. And the Painted Ghoul . . . just brushed himself down, briskly. As though this kind of thing happened to him all the time. And for all I knew, it did.

  “Light my cigarette, lover,” said Waterloo Lillian, and I did, though I had to hold his hand steady with my other hand while I did it.

  “You all right?” I said.

  “As close as I get,” he said, smiling briefly. “Do you understand what just happened here?”

  “Me?” I said. “No, I’m just passing through.”

  I spotted Harry Fabulous, slouching in the open doorway at the far end of the club, and excused myself. I wandered casually over, to have a quiet word. Harry half retreated into the shadows of the door, preferring not to be noticed or recognised by the clientele. He needn’t have worried; everyone else was far too concerned with their own problems.

  “I have been authorised to thank you,” said Harry Fabulous. “The club’s management are . . . reasonably happy with the way things have turned out. They wish me to assure you that they can take things from here. And do whatever may be necessary to ensure this never happens again.”

  “I’ll still be having a word with my family,” I said. “We’ll sort out whoever it is in the current Government who’s been getting ideas above their station. Can’t have politicians messing around with things that really matter. One of us will have a quiet word with the Prime Minister. It’s been a while since we made a PM cry, and wet himself.” I gave Harry a firm look. “Remind your masters they owe me a favour. A big one.”

  “That was the agreement,” Harry said steadily.

  “So,” I said, “can I take it I am no longer banned from the Wulfshead Club?”

  “Shaman Bond never was,” Harry said carefully. “But Eddie Drood still is. Because a lot of the clientele here would rise up and do their level best to strike him down, first time they saw him.”

  “I get that a lot,” I said.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Where There’s a Will,

  There’s a Complication

  Harry Fabulous made a point of escorting me to a particular back door, which he assured me would open directly onto the grounds of my family home, Drood Hall. I let him do it, because I was intrigued to see if the Wulfshead management really could bring that off. My family has always taken its personal security very seriously (especially after the Chinese Communists tried to nuke the Hall, back in the sixties) and I’d always been assured it was impossible for anyone to teleport directly onto Drood property. Just by offering to do it, the Wulfshead management were making a point
. See how powerful we are, they were saying. See what we can do, that no one else can.

  And sure enough, Harry opened an apparently unremarkable door at the very rear of the club, and bright sunlight spilled through the opening, pushing back the close, smoky air inside. I looked through the door, and there were the wide-open grounds leading up to Drood Hall. I looked the door over carefully, and then turned my gaze on Harry Fabulous, who did his best to bear up under it.

  “I think my family will take this intrusion very seriously,” I said. “This is simply not allowed, Harry. Tell the club management to rip this door out and destroy it.”

  Harry shrugged helplessly. “I’ll tell them, Eddie, but they won’t listen to me. You know that.”

  “They won’t be listening to you, Harry. They’ll be listening to me. I don’t mind helping them out, in an emergency, but putting my family’s security at risk is something else. You tell them either they shut this door permanently, or I will come back here with some of the more unpleasant members of my family, and we will shut down the Wulfshead Club, permanently. Suddenly and violently and with extreme prejudice.”

  “They didn’t have to tell you about the door,” Harry said carefully. “This isn’t a threat; it’s a peace offering. You should consider where they got the door from and who else might have one just like it. And no, I don’t know, so there’s absolutely no point in threatening me.”

  I considered the point, nodded, and stepped through the door. Immediately, I was back home, in the middle of the family grounds, brilliant green lawns stretching away in every direction, under a blazing blue sky. I heard the club door shut firmly behind me, and when I glanced back over my shoulder, it was gone. Not a trace left to show it had ever been there. Very well, Wulfshead management; message received and understood.