The Man with the Golden Torc.

by Simon R. Green.

You know what? It's all true. Everything that ever scared you, from conspiracy theories to monsters under the bed to ghosties and ghoulies and long-leggity beasties. The only reason they haven't taken over the world is because my family has always been there to stand in their way. We guard the door, keeping you safe from the big bad wolf, and you never even know our names. Of course, there's a price to be paid. By us, and by you. The name's Bond. Shaman Bond. Well, no; actually that's just my use-name. When your job description involves going one-on-one with creatures of the night on a regular basis, you have to find your humour where you can. My real name is Eddie Drood. Licensed to kick supernatural a.r.s.e. My family is one of the oldest in England, perhaps the oldest, and we've been protecting humanity from the forces of darkness for more centuries than even we care to remember. There are those who say Drood is just a derivation of Druid. The job of a shaman is to protect his tribe from outside threats, and that's what I used to do. I loved my job. Until it all blew up in my face.

CHAPTER ONE.

Everything but a Bunch of Grapes.

I t started out as just another everyday mission. A certain Very Important Politician, whose face and name you'd recognise, had come, very secretly, to Harley Street in London. Home to some of the most expert, and certainly some of the most expensive, specialised medical care in the whole of the civilised world. This politician, let's call him Mr. President, and no not the one you're thinking of, had himself booked into the Hospice of Saint Baphomet under an a.s.sumed name after contracting a supernatural venereal disease during a goodwill tour of Thailand. He was stupid enough to slip his handlers' leash and go looking for a little fun in the backstreet bars of Bangkok, and unlucky enough to end up getting it on with an agent of darkness masquerading as a ladything. As a result of which, Mr. President was now very heavily pregnant with something the very opposite of a love child. I had been ordered to terminate this unnatural pregnancy with extreme prejudice. The offspring was not to be born, or if born, not allowed to run loose in the material world.

I'd been supplied with a gun, and I was expected to use it.

(How did we find out about this? My family knows everything. That's its job. And when you've been fighting the good fight for as many centuries as we have, you can't help but acc.u.mulate an extensive network of sources and informers.) I strolled casually down Harley Street, hiding in plain sight. No one looked twice at me; no one ever does. I've been trained to blend in, to be just another face in the crowd. I was wearing a nicely anonymous three-piece suit, expensive enough to fit in but not stylish enough to draw attention. I strode down Harley Street like I had every right to be there, so everyone else just a.s.sumed I did. It's all about att.i.tude, really. You can fit in anywhere with the right att.i.tude. It helps that I have the kind of face that always reminds you of someone else: average, pleasant, nothing to jog your memory afterwards. An agent's face.

It's all in the training. You too could learn to look like n.o.body in particular, if you wanted to.

It was the lazy end of a summer afternoon in London. Pleasantly warm under a pale blue sky, with just a hint of breeze. Traffic roared by in the background, but the street itself was relatively calm and quiet. There were taxis, squat black London cabs, dropping people off and picking them up, men and women of all nationalities carefully minding their own business. And a large percentage who weren't men or women or anything like it. You'd be surprised how many monsters walk plainly in open sight every day, hidden from mere mortal gaze by only the flimsiest of illusions. But I'm a Drood, and I wear the golden torc around my throat, so I can use the Sight to see everything, for as long as I can stand it.

An elf lord was getting out of a taxi just a few feet away, looking tall and regal in his glowing robes. He had pointed ears, all-black eyes, and a look on his face of utter contempt for all humankind. He paid off the taxi driver with a large denomination note, waving away the change with aristocratic disdain. The driver had better bank that note quickly, before it touched cold iron and turned back into a leaf or something. Elves live to screw over humanity; it's all they've got left.

Up and down the street, ghosts walked in and out of walls that weren't there when they were alive, trapped in their repet.i.tion like insects in amber. Just echoes in time. Demons rode unsuspected on people's backs, their spurred heels dug deep into shoulder and back muscles, whispering into their mount's ears. You could always tell which mounts were listening; their demons were fat and bloated. One man had the beginnings of a halo. He was escorting a friend with stigmata. It's moments like that which give you hope. An alien with gray skin and big black eyes appeared out of nowhere, clutching a London A-Z in a three-fingered hand. Harley Street's reputation stretches farther than you'd think.

None of them paid me any attention. I told you; I've been trained.

There are times when I wonder if it might not be nice to live a normal life, with only normal worries and responsibilities, and not have to know all the things I know. Not to have to see all the darkness in the world. To be one of the sheep, and not the shepherd. But, on the other hand, I get to know what's really going on and who the real bad guys are, and I get to kick their nasty a.r.s.es on a regular basis. Which makes up for a lot.

Harley Street is still mostly a long row of Georgian terraces with expensively bland anonymous facades. There are hardly any names on display; either you know where you're going, or you don't belong there. The heavy, secretly reinforced doors only open to buzzers when you know the right words to say, you can't see in through any of the windows, and many of these venerable establishments are guarded and protected in ways you don't even want to think about.

Those were the ones that interested me.

I studied the Hospice of Saint Baphomet from a safe distance while apparently listening to my mobile phone. Wonderful things; the perfect excuse for just standing around with a blank look on your face. There wasn't any point in even approaching the hospice's front door. I could See layer upon layer of seriously hard-core defences set in place. The kind that don't even leave a body to identify. Imagine oversized magical man-traps with really big teeth and a built-in mean streak. The sort of defences you'd expect around a hospital that specialised in weird and awful diseases; the kind you really don't want the rest of the world to know about.

So I decided to break into the building next door to Saint Baphomet's, a smaller and even more specialised practice, Dr. Dee & Sons & Sons. They dealt strictly with exorcisms; very strictly, by all accounts. (Their motto: We Get the h.e.l.l Out.) Their defences were just as strong but more concerned with keeping things in, than keeping people out, on the perfectly logical grounds that only a madman would want to get in. Most people had to be dragged in, kicking and screaming all the way. But then, I'm not most people. I put away my mobile phone and glanced up and down the street, but as always everyone else was far too caught up in their own important business to spare any interest for a n.o.body like me. So I just slipped into the deserted narrow alleyway beside Dr. Dee's and activated my living armour.

Most of the time it lies dormant as a golden circlet around my throat. A torc, in the old language. Invisible to anyone who's not a member of the Drood family or at the very least a seventh son of a seventh son. (There don't seem to be many of those around anymore. I blame family planning.) I subvocalised my activating Words, and the living metal in the torc spread out to cover my whole body, embracing me in a moment from head to toe. It's a warm, refreshing feeling, like pulling on an old familiar coat. As the golden mask covered my head and face, I could see even more clearly, including all the things that are normally hidden from even gifted humans like me. I felt stronger, sharper, more alive, like waking from a pleasant doze into full alertness. I felt like I could take on the whole d.a.m.ned world and make it cry like a baby.

The armour is the secret weapon of the Drood family. It makes our work possible. The armour is given to each of us right after we're born, bonded forever to our nervous systems and our souls, and while we wear the armour we're untouchable, protected from every form of attack, scientific or magical. It also makes us incredibly strong, amazingly fast, and utterly undetectable. Most of the time.

With the armour on I look like a living statue, golden and glorious, with no joints or moving parts and not a weak spot anywhere in its whole smooth, gleaming surface. There aren't even any eye or breathing holes in the golden mask that covers my face. I don't need them. While I wear it, the armour is me. It's a second skin, insulating me from a dangerous world.

Looking through the mask, I could now clearly see the huge demon dog guarding the back door to Dr. Dee's. Night dark, big as a bus, and bulging with muscles, it sprawled across the cobbled square, glaring suspiciously about it with a flat brutal face and flaring h.e.l.lfire eyes. It was gnawing lazily on a human thighbone that still had some meat left on it. More bones lay scattered before the dog, broken open to get at the marrow. I had a fleeting but very real temptation to grab one of the bones, throw it, and shout Fetch! just to see what would happen. But I rose above it. I am, after all, a professional.

I walked right up to the demon dog, and it couldn't see or hear or smell me. Which was just as well, really. I wasn't looking for a fight. Not with anything that big and infernally nasty, anyway. I eased past the dog, careful not to touch it. The armour does have its limitations. I studied the locked back door. Very old, very intricate, very secure. Piece of cake. I reached through my golden side with my golden hand, easy as plunging my hand into water, and took out the Hand of Glory I'd been sent by the family Armourer, just for this mission. The Hand of Glory is a human hand cut off a hanged man right after he's died, and then treated in certain unpleasant ways so that the fingers become candles. Light these candles, in the right way and with the right Words, and the Hand of Glory can open any lock, reveal any secret. The family makes these awful things out of the bodies of our fallen enemies. We do other things with the bodies too, really quite appalling things. Just another reason not to get us mad at you.

I lit the candles and subvocalised the Words, and the demon dog raised its blunt head and sniffed suspiciously at the still air. I froze, and the dog slowly lowered its brutal head again. The lock had already opened itself, so I pushed the door gently inwards. The dog didn't even look around. I eased inside and pulled the door softly shut behind me. It locked itself again, and I relaxed a little. I could probably take a demon dog, with my armour, but I didn't feel like testing that probably unless I absolutely had to. Demon dogs are trained to go for the soul.

I tucked the Hand of Glory away and studied my new surroundings. Dr. Dee's was dark and gloomy, and the bare stone walls of the hallway ran with damp and other fluids. There were rusted iron grilles in the bare stone floor, to carry them away. I headed forward, and it was like walking into a slaughterhouse of the soul. This was a place where bad things happened on a regular basis. A place where really bad things happening was just business as usual.

I moved silently down the long stone hallway, reached the blunt corner at the end, and emerged into a cavernous hall filled with row upon row of boxlike cages, each just big enough to hold one man, or woman, or child. The bars of the cages were solid silver, as were the heavy shackles that held their prisoners secure. The only light came from a great iron brazier at the far end of the hall, glowing bloodred in the gloom around the long-handled instruments of instruction that the brazier was heating. I moved steadily down the narrow central aisle between the two rows of cages, carefully not looking to the left or to the right. There were no innocents here. These were the possessed, h.e.l.l's playthings, brought here to be freed of their burden. One way or another.

Most of them couldn't see me, so they didn't bother to put on an act. But one dark hulking figure raised its mutilated head and stared right at me with eyes that glowed as golden as my armour. It spoke to me, and I shuddered at the sound. Its voice was like an angel with syphilis, like a rose with a cancer, like a bride with teeth in her v.a.g.i.n.a. It promised me things, wonderful awful things, if only I would set it free. I kept on walking. It laughed softly in the darkness behind me, like a small child.

Following the layout I'd memorised earlier, I moved on up a floor into the residential part of the building, where recovering patients were coaxed back to sanity. Everywhere I looked I could see ghost images of hidden defence systems, ready to spring into action at just the hint of an intruder. Only my armour prevented Dr. Dee's security from setting off any number of alarms and retributions. There were cameras everywhere, of course, including infrared, and they were tied into the holy-water sprinkler system, but my armour redefines the word stealth. No one sees me unless I want them to.

Soon enough I came to the wall connecting Dr. Dee's to Saint Baphomet's, and all I had to do was take out the portable door the Armourer had sent me and slap it against the wall. It spread quickly out to form a perfectly normal-looking door complete with bra.s.s handle. I opened it, stepped through into the next building, and then peeled the door off the wall. It shrank quickly back into a small rubbery ball of something far too complicated for me to understand, and I put it back in my pocket. My family has the best toys. All I had to do then was follow the layout of Saint Baphomet's I'd memorised to take me straight to Mr. President's room.

(No, not the one you're thinking of. Definitely not. You must trust me when I tell you these things.) The hospice was all bright lights and walls painted in cheerful colours, but the magical protections were just as strong as Dr. Dee's. There were cameras everywhere, whirring officiously to themselves as they turned back and forth, and motion detectors blinked redly at ankle height. But I was walking unseen, the ghost in the machine. No one sees us-unless we want them to. The air smelt of disinfectant and something rotten not quite buried under expensive flowery scent.

I made my way unchallenged up to the ward on the top floor, where they kept all the really interesting patients, and padded silently down the starkly lit corridor, pausing now and again to peek in through some of the windows in the doors I pa.s.sed, just out of curiosity. Well, wouldn't you? I'd already been briefed on what everyone was in here for, and I just had to take a quick look.

A celebrity chef with his own television show was in to have a tattoo removed the hard way. Seems the tattooist's hand had slipped at just the wrong moment while inking an ancient Chinese phrase, turning a simple invocation for good luck into an open invocation for really bad luck. As a result, the chef's famous West End restaurant had burned down during an outbreak of food poisoning. He'd had explosive diarrhea during his live show, all his best recipes had turned up on the Net, and he'd been struck by lightning seventeen times. In his own kitchen. You don't shift a tattoo like that with just a laser, so they were flaying his back an inch at a time to get rid of it. The famous chef was currently lying facedown on his bed, sobbing like a baby. Next time he'd settle for Mom, or his favourite football team.

Next door to him, a woman was suffering from a severe lack of gravity. The staff had had to strap her to the bed to keep her from floating away. Her long hair streamed upwards. The next room held some poor unfortunate who'd made the mistake of walking into a seance with a really open mind, and now he was possessed by a thousand and one demons. He ricocheted around his room in his straitjacket, screaming in tongues as he bounced off the rubber walls, while the demons fought it out for dominance. They didn't seem to care that they were making a right mess of their host in the process. He really should have gone to Dr. Dee's. You get what you pay for.

The next few rooms held a severed hand that was trying to grow itself a new body; a Time Agent whose latest regeneration had gone terribly wrong, turning him inside out; and a sorry-looking werewolf with mange. Takes all sorts, I suppose.

I peered cautiously around the end of the corridor, and there was Mr. President's room. An armed guard was sitting right outside his door, for the moment concentrating totally on his muscle man magazine. I checked carefully, but that was it. One armed guard. They weren't even trying, really. I walked straight up to the man, and he didn't even know I was there until I squeezed a particular nerve cl.u.s.ter in his neck, and he went straight to sleep. I sat him back in his chair, after moving it away from the door. I peered in through the window, and there was Mr. President, sleeping fitfully on his back, his swollen belly pushing up the bedclothes. Pregnancy can be very tiring, or so I'm told. Mr. President's wife was snoozing in a chair beside his bed. How very understanding and supportive of her.

I reached under my armour for the gun holstered on my hip. The Armourer has supplied me with many different guns down the years, but this one really was rather special. A needle gun with a pressurised gas cylinder that fired slivers of frozen holy water. Very quiet, very efficient.

I didn't bother with the Hand of Glory for the locked door, just kicked it in with one golden foot. It crashed open, and Mr. President sat up in bed and looked right at me. The baby he was hosting must have boosted his senses. He took one look at me in my golden armour and started screaming that I was there to a.s.sa.s.sinate him. I aimed my gun carefully and shot his wife while she was still half up out of her chair. The ice needle hit her square in the jugular vein, entered her bloodstream, and melted down into holy water; and Mr. President's wife convulsed as the demon possessing her was forced out.

She'd been my target all along. The demon had hidden itself inside her while her husband was out playing patty-cake with the ladything, and then waited undetected for Mr. President's baby to be born through a caesarean. The demon could then possess the unnatural baby and a.s.sume a permanent physical form, safe from all attempts at exorcism. Who knows what its plans were after that? My family hadn't felt like waiting around to find out.

We'd all seen The Omen.

The wife went down on all fours, shuddering and convulsing, while her husband looked on, shocked into horrified silence. Black slime burst out of her mouth and nose and ears and even ran down her face as viscous black tears. More and more of the stuff spilled out of her, faster and faster, forming a widening pool of black tarry stuff on the floor before her. And from this dark ectoplasm the demon made itself a new body, its last desperate attempt to a.s.sume a physical form in the material world.

A squat, powerful shape thrust up out of the black pool; first long, muscular arms, then a broad chest and shoulders, and finally a horned head with coal red eyes. I shot it with another holy-water needle, and it howled horribly but kept on growing. Determined little fellow. It pulled itself up out of the black pool, towering above me now. It grew long claws on its hands, and a wide smile split the dark face to show me row upon row of needle teeth. It looked like what it was: vile and evil and terribly strong. I put away my gun and grew thick golden spikes on my armoured fists. Some days you just have to do things the hard way.

The demon surged forward, lashing out at me with a clawed hand. Sparks flew as the claws skittered harmlessly across my armoured chest. I punched the demon in the head, and thick chunks of black ectoplasm flew away as my spiked knuckles ripped through its pseudoflesh. I hit it again and again, beating it down and driving it back, while all its strongest blows slipped harmlessly off my armoured form. I grabbed hold of one flailing black arm, braced myself, and ripped it right off. The demon howled and its body just started falling apart, unable to maintain itself in the face of such punishment. The dark form collapsed into thick pools of stinking, rotting ectoplasm, and the demon fell screaming back into h.e.l.l.

I shook dripping black slime from my armoured fists and took a moment to get my breath back. One good thing about beating the c.r.a.p out of demons from h.e.l.l is that you don't have to feel the slightest bit guilty afterwards.

I looked around for Mr. President. He was out of his bed and cowering in the farthest corner of the room. He saw me look at him and whimpered feebly. I took out my needle gun and shot him too. The holy water would ensure that whatever was finally taken out of him would be stillborn and no threat to anyone. He gasped, his eyes widening as he felt the changes happening within him. He looked away then and cursed me feebly, but I was used to that.

"Did you really think you could hide this from us, Mr. President?" I said. "Next time, forget your pride and come to us first. Or better yet, stay away from the ladythings."

CHAPTER TWO.

Alarms and Excursions and Getting the h.e.l.l out of Dodge T he demon's manifesting had set off all kind of alarms. Sirens, flashing lights, the works. I paused just long enough to check that Mr. President's wife was okay (unconscious, covered in black ectoplasmic gunk, but basically okay, poor cow), and then I slammed the door open and charged out into the corridor. The sirens were deafening, and the lights flared rapidly in time to the raucous electronic noise. Whatever happened to pleasant-sounding alarms, with bells? Ambulances are just the same. And fire engines. I think about things like that. It worries me sometimes. The moment I appeared in the corridor, concealed gun ports opened up in both walls, and heavy-duty gun barrels slammed out. I started running.

All the guns opened up at once, the roar physically painful at such close quarters, and the muzzle flare was dazzling. The heavy rate of fire chewed up the opposite walls behind me as I raced down the corridor. My armour was still in full stealth mode, so the guns couldn't track me. As far as the security cameras were concerned, the corridor was empty; but the operators knew somebody had to be there, because they'd seen the door open. So they just opened up with everything they had and hoped for the best. The gun barrels swept back and forth, keeping up a murderous rate of fire, but even the occasional lucky hit just ricocheted off my armour. I didn't even feel the impact.

I rounded the far corner just in time for a heavy steel grille to slam down from the ceiling, blocking my way. I didn't slow, hitting the grille with my shoulder, only to lurch to a sudden halt as the heavy steel buckled but held. I grabbed the grille with both golden hands and tore it apart like so much lace, the steel squealing loudly as it sheared apart. I forced my way through the opening and raced down the next corridor. The armour makes me supernaturally strong, when I need to be. Wonderful stuff, this living metal. I'd left the guns and the sirens behind me, but now I could hear running footsteps and raised angry voices closing in on me from all directions. Time to hide out in another room and let the hue and cry run past me.

I ran down the stairs to the next floor, chose a door at random, forced the lock with one push of an armoured hand, and slipped into the darkened room, closing the door carefully behind me. The room was pleasantly quiet, and I stood very still in the gloom, listening as a whole group of people ran past the door, first from one direction and then the other. There was a lot of confused shouting, and I smiled behind my golden mask. First rule of a good agent: always keep them guessing. All I had to do now was wait for things to calm down a little, and then I'd just ease out of here and walk past the security forces in full stealth mode, and they'd never even know I was there. The room's light snapped on, and I spun around, startled. The room's patient was sitting bolt upright in bed and staring straight at me.

Which wasn't supposed to be possible. All right, Mr. President saw me, but that was only because he had a demon in him. Twice in one night was unprecedented. I moved quickly over to the bed, raising one golden fist in warning, and the patient took his hand away from the call b.u.t.ton. I stopped abruptly as I finally recognised the patient. Behind my golden mask, I was gaping. No wonder he was able to see me. The man in the bed was the Karma Catechist.

A living legend, the Karma Catechist knew all there was to know about magic systems, rituals, and forms of power. He was the living embodiment of every mystic source, every forbidden book, every obscure and secret treatise on how to do terrible things to other people in seven easy steps. He'd been designed that way while still in the womb, shaped by terrible wills, his form and function and fate decided in advance by powerful sorceries and arcane mathematics. He knew it all, from the Kaballah to the Necronomicon, from the Book of Judas to the Herod Canticles. Every spell, every working, every concept.

My family had been trying to get their hands on him for years, but no one had set eyes on him for decades. He'd been pa.s.sed back and forth by every group that ever dreamed of power, stolen and abducted and traded, because no one group could hold on to him for long. The problem was, he knew too much; and you had to know the right questions to get the answers you needed. A living encyclopedia of appalling knowledge, but no index. And now he was in my grasp. If I could just get him out of here with me...No. Too much trouble. His very nature would interfere with my armour's stealth mode. He'd get me noticed, slow me down...No; I'd just pa.s.s on word that he was here and let the family decide what to do next.

If it was up to me, I'd hit Harley Street with a tactical nuke, just to be sure of getting him. There is such a thing as too much knowledge. The Karma Catechist knew a hundred ways to end the world or disrupt reality itself. But the family would never sanction a hit on such a valuable a.s.set as this. They wanted the information he held within him, just like everyone else did.

I would have killed him myself, and to h.e.l.l with the consequences, but...he didn't look so terrible, close up. He was just a small, middle-aged man who'd already lost most of his hair. He had a soft, kind face, vague eyes, and a diffident smile. He was wearing old-fashioned striped pajamas, with the jacket drooping open to reveal a tuft of white chest hair. He looked tired and sad and very vulnerable. It was easy to feel sorry for him; he hadn't had much of a life, and hardly any of it his own choice. It wasn't his fault he was a living doomsday device.

"Don't hurt me," he said, looking at me with almost childlike detachment.

"Hush," I said. "You just keep quiet, and I'll be on my way in a minute. What are you in here for, anyway?"

"Because I can't keep quiet," he said sadly. "I've been conditioned, reprogrammed, my working parameters altered; and it all went horribly wrong. Now if anyone asks me a question, I have to answer them, whether they know the right pa.s.swords or not. I've become a security risk." His eyes widened suddenly, alarm filling his face. "They'll know I talked to you! They'll think you asked me about what's coming! I won't tell you! I won't!"

He gritted his teeth, and I heard a distinct crunch. He convulsed, his back arching up from the bed, his eyes bulging from their sockets, and then he was limp and still, his last breath a small sad sigh. I checked for a pulse in his neck, but he was definitely gone. A poison tooth, for G.o.d's sake. I thought they went out in the sixties. A man had just killed himself in front of me, and I had no idea why. I don't know what he thought I might ask him. The guilty flee where no man pursueth, and all that.

It occurred to me then that a whole lot of people were going to be really upset that such a valuable resource as the Karma Catechist was dead because of me. Maybe I wouldn't mention this particular incident in my mission report, after all.

I listened carefully at the door; the sirens were still wailing their little electronic hearts out, but the angry footsteps seemed to have departed. I eased the door open and slipped out into the corridor. More guns thrust out of the walls, opening up immediately when they saw the door move. I sprinted down the corridor, my armour giving me supernatural speed, running laughing through the bullets like so much rain.

I reached the end of the corridor and jumped down the stairs to the next floor, sailing through the air from top to bottom in one go. My armoured legs bent to absorb the impact as I landed, and I couldn't help grinning. Sometimes my job is just so d.a.m.ned cool. I sprinted down the next corridor, moving so fast now the guns in the walls didn't have time to react. I reached the end and then skidded to a halt at the top of the next stairway. A whole company of heavily armed and armoured security guards were already halfway up the stairs. I turned and ran back the way I came. I could have fought my way through them. They wouldn't have known what hit them till it was too late. I could have killed them all without breaking a sweat, but that's not what I do. I'm an agent, not an a.s.sa.s.sin. Those guards weren't the real bad guys here. Just hired help. Probably didn't even know what went on, up on the restricted top floors. Probably thought Saint Baphomet's was just another hospital for rich weirdos.

I do kill, when I have to. But mostly I don't have to. So I don't.

I found the elevators, forced the protesting doors open with my armoured hands, and jumped down the empty shaft. I dropped all the way to the bottom, one golden hand tightly gripping the steel cable to guide my descent. Fat sparks from the cable filled the shaft's gloom like fireworks. I hit the bottom of the shaft with one h.e.l.l of a bang and didn't feel a thing. I forced the elevator doors open, stepped out into the lobby...and there was Saint Baphomet's head of security, waiting for me. I'd been hoping I wouldn't run into him ever since I saw his name in the mission briefing. We had history.

I allowed myself a few mental curses. Not out loud, of course. That might be taken as a sign of weakness, and the Droods are never weak. It's all about att.i.tude, remember?

So I ostentatiously relaxed and nodded casually to the head of security. I knew who it was, who it had to be, even though the face and body were new to me. This was my old adversary Archie Leech, breaking in a new body, big and muscular and loaded down with weapons. I only recognised him by the Kandarian amulet hanging around his throat. An ugly lump of carved stone, relic of a race wiped out millennia ago and quite rightly too, it allowed Archie to jump his soul from one body to another at will. Rumour had it he always kept a dozen or so in reserve in some kind of suspended animation, just in case the one he was wearing took too much damage to continue.

Archie was a serial possessor, a spiritual rapist, and he never gave a d.a.m.n what happened to his bodies after he abandoned them. I tried to, but it wasn't always possible. I'd killed Archie before, when I absolutely had to, but it had never taken. I don't know what he looked like originally. I suppose it's possible even he doesn't remember anymore, after so many faces. He scowled at me, seeing me clearly thanks to his d.a.m.ned amulet. Three times in one night...I was starting to feel just a bit conspicuous.

"This place is off-limits to everyone," Archie said flatly. "Even to the high-and-mighty Droods."

I had to smile behind my golden mask. "Nowhere is off-limits to us, Archie. You know that."

"Why here, Drood? Aren't even hospitals safe from you and your kind?"

"That's rich, coming from you, Archie. When have you ever cared about putting innocents at risk? Droods go where we have to, to do what we have to do. That's a new look for you, isn't it, Archie? All big and brutal and steroid abuse. You usually like them younger...and prettier."

He shrugged. "It's a bit long in the arm, but it's good for heavy lifting. And they've been wearing out so quickly recently..."

I took a deliberate step forward. He didn't budge. "Stand aside, Archie," I said. "My mission's completed. No need for this to get nasty."

"You worry about the bodies I wear," he said, smiling with his stolen mouth. "That's always been your weakness."

"Step aside," I said. "Or I'll damage you."

"Not a chance in h.e.l.l. I've always wanted to kill a Drood."

He opened fire with a machine pistol, spraying me with bullets. They ricocheted away from my armoured chest and face, and I walked right into the hail of bullets and slapped the gun out of his hand. He cut at me with a glowing dagger, but the spells enchancing its edge still weren't enough to do more than raise a shower of sparks as the blade skidded across my throat. I grabbed for the amulet around Archie's neck, but at the last moment my hand slipped aside. The amulet had serious protections.

Archie punched me in the head with all his body's strength behind it. I heard the knuckles break. I didn't even flinch. I grabbed his shoulders and threw him against the nearest wall. He hit hard enough to crack the plaster and slam all the breath out of him. I started past him, hoping it was over, but he surged to his feet again, drawing dangerously on his body's reserves, one hand full of plastique explosive. He slapped it against my armoured chest, and it stuck fast. He laughed hoa.r.s.ely as I tried to pull the sticky stuff off, but it wouldn't budge. Archie held up the detonator before me, brandishing it mockingly.

There was enough plastique on my chest to blow out most of this floor. My armour would withstand it...but the blast radius would almost certainly take out half of Saint Baphomet's underpinnings and bring all the upper floors crashing down. Hundreds dead, maybe more, most of them probably innocents. Archie didn't care; he'd just jump to another body. Hundreds could die, if it meant he could boast of killing a Drood. He didn't care. But I did.

I grabbed Archie by the shoulders again and pulled him to me, slamming his chest against mine with the plastique crushed between us. He struggled fiercely, but I held him easily with one golden arm. He cried out in a pettish fury as he realised what I intended, and then my free hand closed over his and activated the detonator.

My mask darkened briefly to protect my eyes from the glare of the explosion and my ears from the blast, and when I could see and hear again, I was surrounded by smoke and rubble and small b.l.o.o.d.y gobbets of what had been Archie Leech's stolen body. My armour and his body had absorbed most of the explosion, and the walls around me looked scarred but still solid. The hospice would stand. Archie was gone, of course, his soul wafted away to his next bolthole, along with the amulet. I had no doubt I'd see them both again, some day.

Once again, there was the sound of a h.e.l.l of a lot of running feet, approaching fast from above. The security guards here were nothing if not persistent. I took the portable door out of my pocket and slapped it against the floor, where it immediately became a nice new trapdoor. I opened it, dropped through into the bas.e.m.e.nt, and then pulled the portable door away from what was now my ceiling. Let them search the rubble for my body while I calmly and quietly made my way up the back stairs and walked right past them to the nearest exit.

This proved to be the back door, and I slipped silently out into the back square, where Dr. Dee's dog from h.e.l.l was lying in wait for me. Next door's alarms and excursions had clearly attracted its attention. It was growling steadily, like a long rumble of thunder, up close and threatening, and its huge jaws opened, revealing more teeth than seemed physically possible. It glared at the door that had just opened before it, but still it couldn't see or hear or smell me...So I just held the door open and let the demon dog charge straight past me and on into the hospice. Where no doubt the security guards would think of something to do to keep it occupied. I do my best, but I'm really not a very nice person sometimes. I closed the door quietly behind the demon dog and strolled away.

I powered down my armour, and in a moment it was just a golden collar around my throat. And I was just a man again, with a man's limitations. Sometimes, that's a relief. I left the side alley and walked unhurriedly out into Harley Street. The same people were walking up and down, with no idea that the whole history of the world had just been changed behind their backs. None of them paid me any attention. I was my old anonymous self again. No one ever sees a Drood's face, just occasionally the golden armour. It's enough that the world is protected; they don't need to know by whom.

They might not approve of some of our methods.

CHAPTER THREE.

Chilling at the Wulfshead I disappeared down into the Underground, mixing in with the crowds, and took the next train to Tottenham Court Road station. I joined the army of people bustling up and down Oxford Street, just another face among many, and browsed shop windows until I was sure I hadn't been followed. Because when you work for the Drood family, the rest of the world usually is out to get you. I headed down into Soho. The city's gentrified the h.e.l.l out of what used to be the last truly wild part of London, but there's still plenty of sin, sleaze, and secrets to be found there, if you know where to look.

Just a little off the beaten track, down a side street that never gets any sunlight, lies my very favourite Internet cafe. It's a part of the Electronic Village chain, but I like it because it's open twenty-four hours a day, serving twilight people like me. The single window in the shopfront is whitewashed over, and the neon sign above the door hasn't worked in years. The people who come here like their privacy while they do strange, illegal, and possibly unnatural things with their computers. I entered the cafe and stopped just inside the doorway to let my eyes adjust to the gloom. There were chairs and tables and computers and absolutely nothing else. The surprisingly large area had an air of quiet reverence not unlike that of a church. The customers sat huddled over their glowing screens, deaf and dumb to those around them. The only sounds in the room were the swift tapping of keys and the quiet chirping of working machines.

The cafe's manager came forward to greet me. w.i.l.l.y Fleagal was a tall gangling sort, with bifocals, a high forehead, and a ponytail, wearing a T-shirt saying Information Wants to Be Free . He gave me a big smile and a limp handshake. He knew me as a regular customer, with special privileges guaranteed by the chain's owners, but that was all he knew. I've dropped him the occasional hint that I might be an investigative journalist, chasing the corporate bad guys, and he loved that.