The Man with the Golden Torc sh-1 Page 6

  James had always been my favourite member of the family. After my father and my mother were killed, James became the closest thing to a parent I had. He took a sullen, silent, lost, and introverted boy and gave him a reason to live. He found things to interest and challenge me, encouraged my rebellions, and gave me a purpose in learning to fight all the evil people in the world responsible for orphaning so many children. He brought me back out of myself and made it possible for me to be happy again. If I ever had a hero, it was Uncle James. The last of the great adventurers, he went to the good war like a starving man to a feast. He had the most experience, and the most successful missions to his credit, of any member of the family. His use-name was a curse on the lips of the ungodly, and you could stop conversations with it in bars and dives all across the world. They called him the Gray Fox, and he was everything I ever aspired to be.

  He was also the first one to advise me to leave and strike out on my own before the family’s insistence on duty and tradition crushed my spirit. I’ve always believed that the only reason I was ever allowed to operate at such a distance was because Uncle James went to bat for me with the Matriarch. Not that I’ve ever mentioned it, of course. It would only have embarrassed him.

  "It’s good to see you again, Uncle James," I said. "Ten years it’s been, and yet still strangely there’s not even a hint of gray at your temples…"

  "Clean living and heavy drinking," he said easily. "You’ve filled out since I last saw you. It suits you."

  "Do you know why I’ve been summoned back here?" I said bluntly.

  "Haven’t a clue, Eddie. I’m only looking in, in between missions. A soft bed, a good meal, and a wander through the wine cellars before they pack me off again. I’m just back from giving Dr. Delirium a bloody nose in the Amazon jungle, and as soon as I’ve done a little research here, I’m off to sort out the Shadow Boxers of Shanghai. You know how it is; one damned thing after another."

  "I am so jealous," I said, grinning despite myself. "You get all the most glamorous assignments. I’ve never even been allowed out of the country."

  He raised a single eyebrow as he lit a black Russian cigarette with his monogrammed gold lighter. "Now, you know why that is, Eddie. But you do good work. People notice. The more missions you complete successfully, the more trust you’ll earn, and the more leash they’ll give you."

  "But they’ll never take the leash off, will they? I’ll never be free of the family."

  "Why would you want to? You’re part of the most important heritage in the world." James looked me right in the eye, very seriously. "To be born a Drood is a privilege as well as a responsibility. We get to know the truth about the way things really are, and we get to fight the battles that really matter. And if in return we get the best of everything, it’s because we’ve earned it. And all the family has ever asked for is loyalty."

  "We’re born drafted into a war that never ends," I said, meeting his gaze squarely. "And most of us die fighting that war, far from home and family. Some of us never get to know our parents, and some parents never get to know their sons. I know: it’s an honour to serve. But I would have liked to be asked."

  And that was when the general alarm sounded, like every bell and siren in the world going off at once. James and I turned as one and ran back through the library. We charged out into the corridor and almost ran over the Sarjeant-at-Arms as he ran past, a gun in each hand. James grabbed him by the shoulder and hauled him to a halt as family members came running from every direction.

  "It’s the Heart!" yelled the Sarjeant, pulling away and racing off down the corridor. "It’s an attack on the Sanctity!"

  He didn’t need to say any more. James and I were already running full pelt after him. James had a gun in each hand too now. And all I had was my needle gun. I didn’t draw it. I was pretty sure frozen holy water wasn’t going to be enough this time. The Heart was the source of the family’s power. Its stored energies made all our magics and super-sciences possible, including the living armour we all depended on. But the Sanctity, the great chamber that holds the Heart, was the single most heavily defended and protected part of the Hall. It’s supposed to be invulnerable, inviolate. A direct attack on the Hall was rare enough; an attack on the Heart was unprecedented, unthinkable.

  James and I ran on, plunging through corridor after corridor at breakneck speed, both of us breathing steadily to conserve our wind, as we’d been trained. More and more members of the family came running from everywhere to join us, men and women with shocked, strained faces and all kinds of weapons in their hands. Young and old, fighters and researchers and even duty staff; people who should never have been needed, given the guaranteed safety of the Hall.

  We were closing in on the Sanctity now, at the very centre of the Hall. I could feel the hair standing up on the back of my neck. There was a pressure, a presence, on the air, like the cold shadow of a place where bad things had happened. Something Big is coming, that’s what old Jacob had said. Something Big…Something Bad. And it was close now. Very close.

  Uncle James and I caught up with the Sarjeant-at-Arms just as he slammed through the great double doors into the Sanctity, and there was the Heart: a single huge diamond shining like the sun, so big it filled the massive chamber the family had built to contain and protect it. A diamond bigger than a bus, a million facets blazing and shimmering so brightly none of us could bear to look at it directly. The room was full of its light, and entering the Sanctity was like diving into ice-cold water. It took your breath away, like a shock to the soul. The Heart blazed with an otherworldly light, holding and harnessing the power that made our family’s job possible. A light or an energy, a science or a magic; even after all the centuries it had been with us, we were no nearer to understanding it.

  The Heart was surrounded by powerful protections. I could feel them even as I edged into the Sanctity, hammering on the shimmering air. Some of the family couldn’t even bring themselves to enter the room. But still the bells and sirens were shrieking, summoning the family to defend the Heart from an attack by someone or something unbelievably powerful. Only the most terrible of our enemies would dare launch so blatant an assault. I circled slowly around the gigantic diamond, one arm raised before my eyes to shield me from its overwhelming glare. The light seemed to blaze right through my fragile flesh, like an X-ray. James was there with me, and the Sarjeant-at-Arms, and I sensed as much as saw other members of the family moving slowly around the Heart, searching desperately for some sign of the enemy.

  I had my needle gun in my hand. I didn’t have a lot of faith in it, but just its presence made me feel better. I hadn’t armoured up. None of us had. We were all still thinking in terms of threats to the safety of the Heart. It never even occurred to us that we might be in danger. This was the Hall, and we had always been safe here.

  I felt something approaching from a direction I could sense but not name. It was a Presence, something so vast and alien and utterly other that its terrible nature actually eclipsed and overwhelmed the Heart. It drew closer and closer, straining to materialise inside the Sanctity, trying to force its way in from some other dimension of reality. It seemed to be closing in on us from every direction at once, and just the sense of it was like shit smeared across my soul. Like a mountain of maggots, or the smile the razor blade leaves as it slices through a suicide’s wrists. It was almost upon us, and it hated us, just for being human.

  The wood-panelled wall to my left groaned loudly as it bulged inwards, the old wood stretching impossibly, forced out of shape by some unnameable pressure from Outside our three-dimensional reality. The floor rose up at its centre like some monstrous boil, and the ceiling bulged down. All the walls were crying out now, straining inwards towards the Heart. Something was forcing its way into the Sanctity, from some higher or lower dimension, from some place we couldn’t even hope to comprehend. And one by one, all the many layers of protection the family had set in place around the Heart shattered and blew apart, like so many c
heap firecrackers.

  Family magicians were in the room now, crowding around the Heart, chanting spells and brandishing ancient talismans, trying to set up new defensive parameters. Family scientists worked right there beside them, operating esoteric constructions of weird technology, some of which looked like they’d dragged right in from the testing labs. All kinds of energy fields crackled on the air, but still the awful Presence surrounded us, descending on us from everywhere at once.

  And finally, it broke through. Something was just suddenly there in the room with us; or rather, Nothing was. There was a Gap, an Absence, a horrible Void just hanging on the air before the Heart. I couldn’t see or hear it, but I could feel it on a level that had nothing to do with senses. It was as though some terribly old, perhaps even prehuman part of me recognised it. A great sucking pit of the spirit; a hole in reality itself. It pulsed, like some great malignant heart, and then it reached out and sucked the flesh right off those members of the family nearest it.

  We lost a dozen men and women in a moment, meat and blood torn from their bones, whole organs flying through the air and into the Void to make it a body, to give it shape and form in this world. The bloody pulp of organs and muscles slammed together, flesh slapping upon flesh, building a body whose shape made no sense, to house and hold the awful thing that had forced its way in from Outside. Bloody bones lay scattered across the floor, unwanted, along with a dozen golden torcs. People were puking and retching everywhere, even as they backed away.

  "Armour up!" James yelled. "Everyone! Now!"

  We all subvocalised the Words, and living armour encased us, glorious and golden, sealing us off from the pull of the Void. For the first time I felt sane and human again, able to think clearly, my spirit no longer soiled by the presence of the thing before us. Where the Void had been, a huge new thing had taken shape. It looked like it was made out of cancers, like sickness and death made solid and vicious. It was scarlet and purple with bulging dark veins, and it glistened wetly. Uneven rows of human eyes stared unblinkingly out of a pulpy mass that might have been meant as a face. It rose up to the bowed ceiling, big as ten men, limbs of a sort radiating from its central mass, but its shape and dimensions and attributes made no sense at all. I felt its attention turn away from the family, towards the Heart, and I sensed a terrible emotion in the shape that might have been rage, or hunger, or a need to violate. It moved towards the Heart, surging forward like a snail, and the great diamond’s light seemed to flicker and diminish, just from the thing’s proximity.

  "Stop it!" James yelled. "Don’t let it touch the Heart!"

  The Sarjeant-at-Arms had already opened fire, blazing away with both guns at once. James strode forward, pouring bullets into the bloody shape from close range, and I was right there with him, firing my needle gun. Everyone else in the Sanctity opened fire on the mass with whatever weapons they had, crowding forward, ignoring their own safety to protect the Heart. Magicians unleashed curses and damnations, and scientists fired strange energies from stranger weapons…and none of it did any good. The bloody shape absorbed our bullets, and everything else, with equal indifference, pressing slowly but inexorably towards the Heart. Golden armoured hands that could punch through walls or shattered steel flailed at the pulpy mass, and it just ignored us. One armoured man stood defiantly in its path. The scarlet shape sucked him in and spat him out the other side. He thrashed weakly on the floor, screaming like the newly damned.

  I grabbed James by the arm and made him look at me. "Call them off! They’ll listen to you. I’ve got an idea!"

  He looked at me, and then nodded curtly and ordered the family to disengage. Everyone fell back immediately. They trusted James, where they almost certainly wouldn’t have trusted me. James looked at me expectantly. I reached through the armour on my side, drew the portable door from my pocket, activated it, and tossed it into the path of the bloody shape as it surged forward, just as I had with the Hyde at the Wulfshead. The portable door slid neatly into position, sparked and sputtered a few times, and then just lay there, inert. I’d used it too often. The batteries were dead.

  James was still looking at me. I couldn’t see his face behind the gleaming golden mask, but I could guess his expression. He’d trusted me, and I’d let him down. I looked back at the shape. It was almost upon the Heart. I thought hard, glaring desperately about the Sanctity in search of inspiration, and then my gaze fell upon the dozen torcs lying discarded on the floor, left behind when their owners were stripped of flesh to make the bloody shape. I lurched forward, grabbed a handful of the golden collars, raised my golden fist, and punched the torcs right through the dark-veined cancerous side of the thing. I forced them deep into the mass, let go of the torcs, and then tried to pull my hand out again; but it was stuck.

  A terrible coldness, as much of the spirit as the body, crept up my arm. I think I cried out. And then James was there beside me, pulling at my trapped arm with all his strength. For a terrifyingly long moment even our combined strength wasn’t enough, and then my hand jerked out of the bloody mass, and we both staggered backwards. I yelled aloud the Words that activated the living armour, the Words we normally only ever subvocalised, and the five torcs within the bloody shape activated. All at once.

  Inside the cancerous fleshy mass, the torcs did what they were programmed to do. They identified their owners, or in this case what was left of them, and encased them in living armour. Golden shards erupted out of the red and purple shape, slicing it apart. The bloody mass fought back, struggling to maintain the integrity of the form it had taken, but the torcs’ progress was inexorable. Once started, their transformation could not be stopped by anyone or anything. The bloody shape collapsed, and a soundless howl of fury filled all our heads for a moment as the thing from Outside snapped out of existence, its hold on our reality broken. Lying on the floor before the Heart, in awful unnatural attitudes, were five suits of golden armour surrounded by pieces of bloody meat. I didn’t want to think about what those suits contained.

  The oppressive sense of the invading Presence was gone. The bells and sirens all snapped off, and a blessed silence filled the Sanctity. One by one we all armoured down, golden forms giving way to men and women with shocked, traumatised faces. James clapped me on the shoulder.

  "Well done, Eddie. Good thinking."

  People began slowly filing out of the room. The Heart was safe. Everyone went back to their normal, everyday duties. Some were in shock; some had to be helped. Some were openly angry or scared, because the Hall was no longer the safe place it always been before. Some were crying over the loss of friends or loved ones. You couldn’t blame them. Most of the family never see fieldwork, never see any kind of action, never see the blood and suffering and death that lies at the heart of what the Droods do and are. There’d be a lot of sleeping pills and bad dreams in the four wings tonight.

  The Sarjeant-at-Arms had already collared a few of the harder-hearted souls and set them to work, and the clearing up had begun. He didn’t even look at me. I might have just saved the day, and the Heart, and maybe the whole family, but he still didn’t trust me. And none of the others congratulated me as they left. Most didn’t even look at me. None of them wanted to be seen talking to me, didn’t even want to get too close to the man who’d turned his back on family tradition and responsibility, in case some of my independence rubbed off on them. James made a point of standing next to me, his hand still on my shoulder.

  Everyone respected the Gray Fox.

  Finally, we left the Sanctity together and went out into the corridor. Away from the stench of spilled blood and meat and guts, the old familiar smells of wood and polish and fresh flowers was immediately restorative. I breathed deeply, and my head cleared. The ancient, solid walls, with their sense of long history and service, were actually reassuring for once.

  "This assault is unprecedented," said James. He kept his voice low as we walked, but it still held a cold anger that was disturbingly near the surface. "Not only did
something just hammer its way through the Hall’s defences, and the Heart’s; it actually killed Droods! Right here in the midst of the family! That’s never happened before. We’re supposed to be safe here, protected from all threats and dangers."

  "This has never happened before?" I said. "I mean, ever?"

  James looked at me for a long moment, as though deciding just how much he trusted me. "There have been two previous attacks on the Heart," he said finally, in a voice so low I had to strain to hear it. "No one was hurt, and neither of them got this close, but still…"

  "Jesus…No wonder the Matriarch’s been busy punching up the Hall’s defences…"

  James looked at me oddly. "How did you know that, Eddie?"

  "I had a word with old Jacob. He doesn’t miss much."

  "Oh, yes. Of course. You always were fond of that disgusting old reprobate. You must understand, Eddie…the Hall has been inviolate ever since we first moved in here. No one’s ever been able to crack our defences, let alone actually threaten the Heart. There can only be one answer…an inside man. A traitor in the family, giving up the secrets of our protections."

  I was so shocked I actually stopped in my tracks and stared at him with my mouth hanging open. Members of the family had left in the past or been declared rogue and forced out, but no one had ever turned traitor, working from within to betray us to our enemies…It was unthinkable.

  "Is that why everyone’s been so conspicuously giving me the cold shoulder?" I said eventually. "Is that why I’ve been called back?"

  "I don’t know, Eddie. The Matriarch…hasn’t been taking me into her confidence like she used to. So…watch your back, while you’re here. Paranoia breeds suspicion. Because if the family can’t identify their traitor, they might just choose one…"