Book 1 - The Man With the Golden Torc (4 page)

"If I read everything the family sends me, I’d never get
anything done. And this was a really big bastard."

Penny smiled briefly. "The day you can’t handle a demon dog,
Eddie, we’ll retire you. Now make your report, please. I do have other agents on
my watch, you know."

"Ah, but they don’t worship your very existence like I do."

"Idolatry will get you nowhere. Make your report."

I launched straight into it, fluent and precise with the ease of
long practice. Just the relevant details; the family doesn’t need to know
everything, as long as the mission is completed successfully. I didn’t mention
my brief, unfortunate meeting with the Karma Catechist. But when I got to the
end of my report and sat back in my chair, the very first thing Penny said was
"Tell me about the Karma Catechist." I sighed deeply, but I wasn’t really
surprised. The family knows everything, remember? That’s just the way it is. So
I told Penny what happened, being very careful to emphasise that none of it was
in any way my fault, and at the end she just nodded and broke contact. The
screen went dead, and I stood up, stretching slowly, feeling rather relieved. If
I’d been in any trouble, she would have told me to wait while she kicked it
upstairs.

So, report over, mission concluded. Time to repair to a
civilised hostelry and get utterly rat-arsed.

I left the Internet café, nodding good-bye to Willy, who was
busy sending anonymous hate e-mail to Bill Gates. I shut the door firmly behind
me, and then looked casually up and down the side street to make sure no one was
about. The afternoon was shading into evening now, the shadows growing darker
and deeper. The side street ended in a grimy brick wall, covered with faded
graffiti. I stood before the wall, said certain Words, and a door appeared in
the brickwork before me. A door of solid silver, deeply etched with threats and
warnings in angelic and demonic script, and with absolutely no trace of a
handle. I placed my left hand on the silver, and the door swung open before me.
Try that when your name isn’t on the approved list and the door will bite your
hand right off; but one of the things I like most about the Wulfshead Club is
how jealously it guards its privacy and that of its patrons.

The club isn’t actually in London; you can enter it from any
city in the world, as long as you’re a member in good standing and know the
current passWords. I’m not sure if anyone knows exactly where (or indeed when)
the Wulfshead is really located. Which makes it the best of all possible places
to go when you need to get away from the world and its demands.

I stepped through the door into dazzling light, pounding music,
and the roar of people determined to have a good time, no matter what. The
Wulfshead is very up to the moment, very high-tech. All neon strip lighting and
furniture so modern half the time you can’t even tell what it’s supposed to be.
The walls are giant plasma screens showing dramatic views from around the world,
constantly changing. Every now and again they flash up the bedroom secrets of
famous and important people, covertly recorded by Peeping Toms with access to
far too much technology for their own good. The music slammed and pounded, while
girls in hardly any clothing at all stomped and strutted on the spotlit
miniature stages, dancing their hearts out till the sweat flew from their
flailing bodies, and the bass lines shuddered up through the floor.

The club was crowded, as always, full to the brim with the most
interesting people you’ll find anywhere. The Wulfshead is where all the weird
people go to relax and to enjoy a drink and a chat with their own kind. The
club’s membership includes the supernatural, the superluminal, the
super-scientific, and all the rest of the superhuman crew. It’s a cosmopolitan
mixture, embracing good guys and bad guys and all the strange people in between.
Deals are made, people and others get laid, the odd murder or transformation
occurs, and a good time is had by all. Got a hell of an atmosphere.

The club is neutral ground, by long tradition, but the
occasional brawl is only to be expected. It’s just high spirits. The bartender
keeps order with a steamhammer, and the bouncers are golems, so they can’t be
bribed or intimidated.

I made my way to the long bar at the back of the club: a
gleaming high-tech structure that looked more like a piece of modern art than
anything functional. The club prides itself on having anything you can name on
tap; everything from absinthe to human blood to steaming nitric acid with an LSD
chaser. In fact the choice is so wide that most of us believe the club keeps its
stock in a pocket dimension attached to the bar by a hyperdimensional link. It’s
still best to avoid the house wines, unless you’re already on your third
stomach.

The bar snacks are appalling, but then bar snacks always are.

I nodded and smiled at old friends and familiar faces as I eased
my way through the press of bodies. They know me only as Shaman Bond; just
another face on the scene. None of them even suspected I might be a Drood, and I
was determined to keep it that way. We protect the world, but no one ever said
we were popular. I ordered a chilled bottle of Beck’s from the bar and looked
around me. To my left, Charlatan Joe was holding forth to a select group, and I
wandered over to listen. Joe was a city slicker and confidence trickster; a
shark on legs in an Armani suit. Listening more or less patiently to his
boasting and preening was another familiar face: Janissary Jane. She nodded
briskly to me as I joined the group. Her army fatigues were stiff with black
blood, and up close she smelled of smoke and brimstone.

"Just back from the battlefield?" I said, raising my voice to be
heard above the din. "Where did you end up this time?"

Jane shrugged, gulping her whiskey straight from the bottle. She
wore her black hair cropped short so no one could grab it during a fight, and if
her scarred face had ever been pretty, that was a long time ago. She was a good
drinking companion, as long as you kept her off the gin. Gin made her maudlin,
and then she tended to shoot people.

"Some demon war, in another dimension," she said finally. "Some
damned fool necromancer opened up a hellgate, and the call went out for all good
mercenaries to rally to the flag. Pay was good, but I’d have gone anyway, for
the fight. Hate bloody demons."

"Who doesn’t?" said the Indigo Spirit, splendid as always in his
midnight blue leathers, cape, and mask, sipping his Manhattan cocktail with his
little finger carefully extended. "Damned things are worse than cockroaches."

I raised my bottle to him briefly. "Good to see you again,
Indigo. How goes the war on crime? Killed any interesting supervillains
recently?"

"Just the usual scum, dear boy. Nothing wrong with them that two
bullets in the head won’t cure. I have to say the current breed of diabolical
masterminds and deadly fiends is really very disappointing…No style, do you see;
no sense of occasion. Sometimes it’s hardly worth dressing up in the outfit. I
mean, is it really too much trouble for a villain to at least wear a domino mask
in his secret lair?"

Charlatan Joe had given up on his story now, since no one was
listening, and sipped sulkily at his port and lemon. Beside him, the Blue Fairy
was pissed as a fart, bemoaning the approaches of middle age and complaining
that his wand didn’t work as well as it used to.

"So," I said, loud enough to drown out the Blue Fairy, "what’s
the latest gossip, people?"

There’s always someone trying to take over the world, or blow it
up, or make it A Better Place; all equally dangerous and disturbed.

"Dr. Delirium is up to something nasty again," said the Indigo
Spirit.

"Swanning around in the depths of the Amazon jungle. Thinks he’s
so big, just because he has his own private army. The only reason he’s got an
army is because his uncle left it to him."

"Right," said Janissary Jane, gesturing a little too wildly with
her whiskey bottle. "Never trust private soldiers. Nice uniforms, but no real
guts. No fire in their bellies. If they can’t outnumber you ten to one, they
don’t want to know. Delirium tried to get me to sign up a few years back, but of
course I said no. The pay offer was really lousy."

"Delirium," said Charlatan Joe. "Isn’t he the one who collects
new plagues, and then threatens to turn them loose on the civilised world,
unless he’s paid off?"

"That’s the one," I said. "Always wants to be paid off in rare
postage stamps. I guess once a collector, always a collector."

"There’s a rumour going around that one of the Old Ones is
slowly waking from its long sleep under the Arctic Circle," said Charlatan Joe.
"And that’s why the polar ice pack is melting so much faster than it should be."

Janissary Jane sniffed loudly. "Every time there’s a blip in the
weather, someone thinks the Old Ones are coming back. Not gonna happen. They’ve
been asleep so long now you couldn’t wake one up if you stuffed a nuke up its
backside and detonated it."

"I did hear that the troll problem’s getting worse in the
Underground train tunnels," said the Indigo Spirit. "Nasty things; all teeth and
appetite and no manners. Word is, they could be getting close to swarming
again."

Janissary Jane brightened. "Always good money to be made during
a cull. I’ll contact my agent, see if anyone’s hiring. The city better not have
tendered it out to Group Forty-two again; those bastards always want to see the
heads as proof of kill. Last time I came up out of the Underground like Santa
Claus with a sack full of goodies."

"Got some new videos in, if any of you are interested," said
Charlatan Joe. "I know this guy who knows this guy who claims his television set
is receiving transmissions from the future. He’s selling best-of compilations on
VHS and DVD, and I can get my hands on some for a really reasonable price…"

"I wouldn’t," I said. "I’ve seen that tape. Just a bunch of guys
in weird clothes, showing their bums to the camera and giggling a lot.
Technology is just wasted on some people."

So we drank and talked and drank some more, and the evening
passed pleasantly enough. Charlatan Joe put it all on his tab, since he was
still flush from his latest sting. Janissary Jane tried to chat up some guy in
chain mail, and then shot him in the arse when he turned his back on her. The
Indigo Spirit offered to show me his secret cave, but I politely declined. The
Blue Fairy passed out cold and lay snoring on the floor at our feet. "Don’t step
on him," Charlatan Joe said wisely, "Or it’ll rain for forty days and forty
nights."

At some point, the conversation got around to the latest
sightings of the infamous Drood family and their golden agents, and I shut up
and paid attention. Never know when you might learn something useful. There are
always sightings of my family at work, most of them apocryphal or wishful
thinking. If a Drood agent’s done his job properly, no one but the victims
should even know he was there. But we’re a bit like crop circles and cattle
mutilations; we get blamed for all kind of things that are nothing at all to do
with us. The current sightings included action in Moscow, Las Vegas, and Venice.
That last one was particularly nasty; no one seemed to know precisely what
happened, but the city was fishing bodies out of the canals for hours
afterwards. I made a mental note to check up on that one, though it sounded
rather sloppy for us.

My family gets a lot of credit (or blame) for things we haven’t
actually done, but we never confirm or deny anything. It’s enough that the world
is protected; they don’t need to know family business. Besides, it’s all good
for the reputation.

The company is usually good at the Wulfshead, but there’s always
one in every crowd. A large figure loomed suddenly over us, brandishing a pint
of lager and insisting on joining our conversation. He had to be seven feet
tall, with shoulders to match, in a battered oversized biker’s jacket and
scuffed leather trousers. This, it turned out, was Boyd, Bodyguard to the Stars.
A newcomer to the Wulfshead, young and strong and stupid enough to believe the
club’s rules didn’t apply to him. He was obviously a Hyde, using a distillation
of Dr. Jekyll’s old formula. Potent enough to keep him big and brutal while
diluted enough that he was able to maintain control.

He just talked right over us, insisting on telling us all about
his new job as bodyguard to a major Hollywood actress. Who, if Boyd was to be
believed, couldn’t do a thing without him there to supervise it. He also dropped
heavy hints that he’d sampled her famous body when he wasn’t guarding it.

"Really?" said the Indigo Spirit. "I always thought she was a
Friend of Dorothy."

"Don’t know if I’d go that far," I said. "But if they were
shorthanded, she’d probably help out."

Boyd glared at me. "That’s just tabloid trash. Gossip and spite.
She’s all woman, and I should know. Right?"

He glared around at all of us, but I must not have looked
convinced enough, because Boyd decided he needed to push me about a bit, just to
show he wasn’t to be contradicted. He jabbed me hard in the chest with one large
finger, and I looked at him thoughtfully as he raised his voice to me.

He was twice my size and more, most of it muscle. I could have
taken him easily if I armoured up, but I couldn’t do that. Strict family rule:
the armour is only ever to be used for family business. More important, the
armour would have given away to everyone that I was a Drood, and then I’d never
be able to come back here again. I liked being just Shaman Bond, and I wasn’t
about to give it up.

The bartender was already looking meaningfully in our direction,
getting ready to intervene, and I really did consider letting him handle it. For
about a second or two. But I didn’t spend most of my life being trained to fight
the good fight just so I could let a mere Hyde push me around. Besides, if I let
him get away with this, I’d never be able to drink here in peace again. Even the
weird and terminally strange have their pecking order. Still, given that Boyd
was a Hyde and more than twice my size, I sure as hell wasn’t going to fight
fair.