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

  “We go on,” I said. “Search the place, top to bottom. There may still be survivors who need our help.”

  “And if whoever did this is still here?”

  “Then so much the worse for them,” I said.

  • • •

  I led the way out of the blood-soaked waiting room. Molly came quickly forward to walk at my side. She didn’t believe in being protected by other people. We moved cautiously through the silent corridors of Uncanny. The whole place had been smashed up, torn apart, in an almost inhuman display of sheer destruction. Almost immediately, we began to find bodies. Men and women lying twisted and broken, alone and in piles. Some had weapons still in their hands; none of them had died easily. They’d been butchered, slaughtered. Broken limbs and smashed-in heads. Bent in two until their spines snapped. Guts torn out, and thrown away. Violence and viciousness, almost for its own sake.

  Whoever did this had to have superhuman strength.

  We moved on, stepping over and around the scattered bodies, carefully checking every open doorway and corridor end, but there was never any sign of whoever was responsible. Just more and more bodies. So many good men and women left to lie where they fell, where they died, often with hands outstretched for help that never came. And blood, so much blood everywhere. The heavy coppery stench was almost overwhelming, so thick on the air I could taste it.

  More and more of the dead were armed, for all the good it had done them. They died defending their territory, and each other.

  “Do you recognise anyone?” said Molly quietly.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “We met a whole bunch of people, the last time we were here, but . . . I wasn’t really paying attention. I thought I had time . . . to get to know everyone. I can’t say anyone so far looks familiar. I don’t see my parents, or the Regent. Or his personal aide—you remember, the Indian woman, Ankani.”

  “Maybe they got away,” said Molly.

  “I’d like to think so,” I said. “But whoever did this was very thorough.”

  “Look,” said Molly, pointing at a huge, burly figure that had been smashed half through a wall and left hanging out of it. “Is that . . . I think they called him the Phantom Berserker, didn’t they?”

  “It’s what’s left of him,” I said.

  I moved in, for a closer look. A massive Viking figure, complete with horned helmet and bear-skin cape, his whole body was broken and bloodied. He looked like he’d gone down fighting. There was blood dripping from his hands. But one side of his head had been completely caved in, and there was a great gaping wound in his chest where his heart used to be.

  “I thought he was supposed to be dead,” said Molly.

  “He is now,” I said, more harshly than I’d meant.

  Molly stopped abruptly, and looked about her. “Shouldn’t there be alarms going off?”

  “Yes,” I said. “There should. There should be all kinds of protections and defences in place, and my armour isn’t picking up any of them. Which suggests . . . someone must have shut all the systems down, to allow this to happen. I’d put my money on an inside job. A traitor, inside the Department.”

  “I never wanted this,” said Molly. “I was mad, I was angry, but I never wanted this . . .”

  “Of course you didn’t,” I said.

  We moved on, through a silent world of blood and bodies and senseless destruction. Doors had been smashed off their hinges, or hung lopsided from splintered frames. Every room and office we looked into had been thoroughly searched, and then trashed.

  “Maybe they were angry from not finding what they were looking for,” said Molly.

  “Could be,” I said. “A lot of the Department people were armed, but I’m not seeing any bullet holes, or scorch marks from energy weapons. As though the invaders just soaked up all the firepower and kept on coming . . .”

  “I’m not picking up even the smallest traces of offensive magics,” said Molly. “Everything we’re seeing here is the result of brute force. As though a whole army went rampaging through the corridors, killing with their bare hands.”

  We moved on, very cautiously now. Looking and listening, and checking for booby-traps, or any other nasty surprise left behind by our unknown enemy. But there wasn’t anything. As though the invaders didn’t care what happened after they left. They were just here to do a job, and kill anyone who got in the way. Unless killing everybody was the job.

  “They can’t all have been killed, can they?” said Molly, as much to break the awful silence as anything. “Some might have got away . . .”

  “It looks like they all stood their ground, defending their positions, and died doing it,” I said. “Brave and honourable, to the last. My grandfather chose good people. But they had weapons! They must have taken down a hell of a lot of their attackers! So where are the enemy bodies?”

  “Presumably the enemy picked up their dead and wounded and took them with them when they left,” said Molly. “To make sure no one could identify who they were. But . . . who could be powerful enough to do something like this, Eddie? Who is there left that’s got an army big enough to massacre everyone in Uncanny? I mean . . . we’ve wiped out most of the major bad guys, and their organisations, in the past few years. Who is there left, who could do this?”

  “Good question,” I said. “Makes me wonder . . . did we miss someone?”

  I stopped, and looked at her seriously.

  “You can never tell where an attack will come from . . . I was at the Wulfshead Club earlier, remember? I’d been called in to help, because they were under attack from MI 13.”

  “What?” said Molly. “Those useless X-Files wannabes? I’m amazed they had the nerve. No, hold on, wait a minute . . . MI 13 couldn’t have done this. They’re an officially sanctioned Government organisation, just like the Department of Uncanny. Unless some kind of departmental civil war has broken out.”

  “No,” I said. “That doesn’t feel right. MI 13 lost most of its higher-ups, and its direction, during the Satanic Conspiracy. It’s just a ghost of its former self. They were only spying on the Wulfshead Club to pick up gossip they could use as leverage, to get back in the game.”

  “All right,” said Molly, “How about this? Maybe some part of your grandfather’s murderous past finally came back to haunt him. Who knows how many other people he killed on your family’s orders?”

  I wanted to say executed, not murdered, but it wasn’t the time.

  • • •

  We moved on, climbing over piled-up bodies, splashing through thick pools of blood. Most of it wasn’t even tacky yet. Whatever had happened here, we hadn’t missed it by much. I checked every room we passed, peering in through smashed-in doors. Computers had been ripped apart, safes torn right out of walls, their doors yanked clean off, and papers scattered everywhere. Someone had been looking for something . . . The entire Department of Uncanny had been systematically gutted. Everyone killed, everything destroyed, nothing spared. It was like walking through the ruins of a good man’s dream.

  It reminded me of how I’d felt when I walked through the devastated ruins of the Other Hall, home to the other-dimensional Droods, slaughtered by some unknown enemy. I never did find out who. But this was different. I could do something about this.

  “Where are we going?” Molly said abruptly. “I mean, are we heading anywhere in particular?”

  “We’re going to the Regent’s office,” I said.

  “You think there’s a chance he might still be alive?” Molly said carefully.

  “There’s always a chance,” I said. “He could have barricaded himself in, and as long as he had Kayleigh’s Eye . . . But no, I don’t really expect to find him alive. Not when everyone else is dead. He wouldn’t have run away, hidden away, and abandoned his people. Even though that would have been the sensible thing to do. He was the Regent of Shadows, and a legend in his own right. But he might have left us a message, something to tell us what the hell happened here.”

  Molly lo
oked quickly around her. “Are you sure this is the right way? All these corridors look the same to me.”

  “I remember the way,” I said. “Drood field agents are trained to remember things like that.”

  “Smugness is very unattractive in a man,” said Molly.

  We looked at each other, and tried to smile, but in this stinking abattoir it was hard to feel anything but horror and loss. The need to lash out at someone, anyone, was almost overpowering. I needed a name, an identity, for the bastards that had done this. So I could track them down and punish every damned one of them. And the bloodbath they had made here would be nothing compared to what I would do to them.

  When I wore the golden armour, I felt stronger, faster, smarter. More alive . . . But it also meant my emotions were bigger, and ran deeper, for good and bad. Right then, I didn’t care. I would do what I would do, and worry about the morality of it later.

  “This wasn’t an attack, or even an invasion,” I said. “This was a massacre. These people weren’t killed because they got in the way; their deaths were an end in themselves.”

  “How can you be sure of that?” said Molly.

  “Because there aren’t any wounded,” I said. “Every single man and woman here was finished off before the killers moved on. And the sheer ferocity of the attack . . . No bullet holes, no explosions, no high tech or magics, not even any knife marks . . . This was all brute strength and savagery. I can’t even tell whether this was an attack force or just one wildly powerful individual.”

  “Judging from the state of the bodies, I’d say animal,” said Molly. “Or people acting like animals . . . Werewolf pack, perhaps?”

  “The Department would have been prepared for something as obvious as that,” I said. “They’d have had silver bullets, shaped curses . . . they could have fought off something that straight forward. No, this is different. This is something new.”

  • • •

  Finally we came to the Regent’s office. The door had been torn right out of its frame, and lay face down on the corridor floor. I made Molly stay back and wait while I checked out the surroundings through my mask. I couldn’t See or hear anything. No booby-traps, no hidden devices . . . as though whoever had done this didn’t care what happened afterwards, or who came looking. More fool them.

  I stepped warily into the office, with Molly crowding my back. It looked much as I remembered, more like a retired gentleman’s study than an office where important decisions were made every day. A comfortable setting, cosy and cheerful, with richly polished wood-panelled walls. Bookshelves full of well-thumbed paperbacks, rather than leather-clad first editions. But now . . . most of the wood panels were cracked, or smashed in. Shelves broken, books thrown everywhere. The tall grandfather clock that had stood by the door had been overturned, its clockwork guts spilled across the carpet. The single virtual window had been smashed, and now showed nothing at all. And all the drawers in the Regent’s desk had been pulled out, the contents scattered everywhere.

  The Regent of Shadows was still sitting behind his desk. My grandfather, Arthur Drood. Sitting upright, with his head tilted back, staring up at the ceiling with sightless eyes. And only a massive hole in his chest to show where his heart should have been.

  It wasn’t just his heart they’d taken. I could still remember the Regent showing me the ancient amulet known as Kayleigh’s Eye, grafted onto his chest, apparently fused to the skin. The amulet had contained a huge golden eye that seemed to stare at me knowingly. A very potent device, from Somewhere Else, that should have been able to defend the Regent from any attack. Except it hadn’t.

  My grandfather looked . . . almost like himself. A man of average height, a little on the skinny side, well-preserved for a man of his age. Wearing a scruffy old tweed suit with leather patches on the elbows. He had iron grey hair, a military moustache, and pale blue eyes. His face was slack, and empty, the whole front of his clothes soaked in blood. His shirtfront had been ripped open, to get at his chest, and the Eye. I moved slowly forward to stand over him, and then I armoured down. The stench of death and freshly spilled blood was almost overwhelming without the armour to shield me. But I needed to see this with my own eyes, not just as an armoured Drood. Molly looked quickly around her.

  “Are you sure that’s wise, Eddie? Really?”

  “We’re alone here,” I said, not looking at her. “No one else left in the building.”

  Molly stood facing the Regent’s body. It was hard to tell from her face what she was thinking. “How is this even possible?” she said finally. “No one could touch the Regent of Shadows while he had Kayleigh’s Eye. I put a lot of thought into how I was going to get past the Eye’s protection so I could get to him.”

  “The Eye isn’t in the building any more,” I said. “My armour would have picked up its emanations.”

  “Do you think that . . . is what they came here looking for?”

  “No,” I said. “They tore this place apart in their search, when everyone knew the Regent had the Eye. I think taking the amulet was just a bonus.”

  I stood looking at the dead man, not knowing what to do. I’d only just found my grandfather, after so many years of believing him dead, and now I’d lost him again. Someone had taken him away from me. Molly came over to stand beside me, trying to comfort me with her presence.

  “This isn’t the revenge I wanted,” she said.

  “I would never have let you hurt him,” I said.

  “I know. I just wanted answers, that’s all. And now it looks like I’ll never get them.”

  I dropped a hand on the Regent’s shoulder, just to say good-bye. And then I stepped quickly back, startled, as the corpse sat up straight and turned its head to look at me. The dead, staring eyes fixed on me, holding me in place.

  “This is a last message for you, Eddie,” said the corpse, in a soft, breathy voice. Little more than air disturbing dead vocal cords. Just a warning, left in a dead man’s throat. “I know you and Molly have no reason to trust me after all I’ve kept from you, but I had no choice. I was trying to protect you. From the sins of the past, and the enemies of the future. You see, I didn’t just kill for the Droods. I did other things for them too, trying to earn my way back into the family. Now it’s too late for me to make a full explanation, or an atonement.

  “My Department is under attack. Someone, or something, has got in. Which can only mean some traitor has betrayed us all. Shut down the security protections, and left us defenceless. There’s a whole army inside this building. My people are doing what they can to hold them off, but they don’t have enough weapons. Never thought they’d be needed, here. I wanted to go out and fight them, but Ankani locked me in. For my own protection, she said. I can hear my people screaming, hear them dying. I can hear the killers drawing nearer, heading my way.

  “So, this is good-bye, Eddie. I wish I’d had more time, to get to know you better. Time to just . . . sit down together, and talk. But you always think there’ll be more time, for things like that, until suddenly there isn’t. I would have liked to tell you and Molly . . . everything. But a lot of it wasn’t mine to tell.”

  The corpse turned its dead gaze away from me, and looked at the gap where the door had been.

  “This isn’t the end I saw for myself, but I can’t say it comes as any surprise. Agents rarely die in their sleep. Be sure your sins will find you out . . . I hope they don’t think I’m going to beg for my life. I will sit here, with my faithful old gun, and see how many of them I can take with me. Before they drag me down. I wonder if I’ll know them, when they break down my door. Whether I’ll recognise the face of my killer . . .

  “I don’t know where Charles and Emily are, Eddie. They’re not here. They never made contact again, after they left Casino Infernale. Find them, Eddie. Find the traitor inside Uncanny. Find the people who did this. Avenge all these . . . good people.”

  And then the corpse gave up its ghost, and was still and silent again. The last words my grandfather
would ever say to me had reached their end.

  “He only spoke to you,” said Molly.

  “He knew I’d come,” I said. “He knew I’d want to avenge him.”

  “Why should I help the man who murdered my parents?” said Molly.

  “Because this isn’t all about you,” I said. “It’s about my parents, and avenging all the people who died here. Men and women who just wanted to do good in the world. I can’t do this without you, Molly.”

  She nodded, slowly. “Where do we start?”

  “Damned if I know,” I said.

  And then we both stood very still, as the phone started ringing. The sudden sound was almost unbearably loud in the quiet. I checked the Regent’s desk, but the phone wasn’t there. In the end I had to get down on my hands and knees, and I found it on the floor. It had been smashed to pieces. The ringing wasn’t coming from the phone. So I got up again and addressed the office at large.

  “Hello? Eddie Drood speaking. Who is this?”

  The ringing stopped, and a Voice spoke out of nowhere. Something in that Voice was enough to make both Molly and me wince. Like fingernails scraping down the blackboards of our souls.

  “I destroyed the Department of Uncanny,” said the Voice. “And everyone in it. Because they got in my way. They didn’t have what I was looking for, so you’re going to find it for me.”

  “And why would I do that?” I said.

  “Because I have your parents,” said the Voice. “Dear Charles and Emily. Your father and mother are in my keeping. Quite safe, for the moment, but I will kill them slowly and horribly if you don’t do what I want you to do. I knew you’d come here, Eddie. Good little Drood that you are. And the wild witch herself, Molly Metcalf! I couldn’t hope for better helpers.”

  “What do you want?” I said. “And who are you?”

  “I want the Lazarus Stone,” said the Voice. “You’re going to find it for me, and bring it to me. Without alerting anyone else in the Drood family. If you talk to anyone, I’ll know, and I’ll kill Charles and Emily. I will know when you have the Stone, and then I’ll contact you and tell you where and how to make the delivery. Let’s hope you’re as good as your reputations, Eddie Drood and Molly Metcalf.”