Book 1 - The Man With the Golden Torc (2 page)

(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 passed, 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 séance 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 cluster 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 assassinate 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 assume 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 assume
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 Hell.

I shook dripping black slime from my armoured fists and took a
moment to get my breath back. One good thing about beating the crap out of
demons from Hell 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."

The 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 button. 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 passed 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 pass 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 asset as this. They
wanted the information he held within him, just like everyone else did.

I would have killed him myself, and to hell 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 passwords 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
God’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.