Book 1 - The Man With the Golden Torc (6 page)

And besides, even after all the arguments and disagreements, I
still believed in what the family stood for. I still believed in fighting the
good fight.

I turned the car through a long, drawn-out curve, and the Hall
swung into place before me, dominating the scene. A huge sprawling old manor
house, the Hall dated back to Tudor times originally, but had been much added to
down the centuries. The central building still had the traditional
black-and-white boarded frontage, with heavy leaded-glass windows and a jutting
gabled roof. Surrounding it were the four great wings, massive and solid in the
old Regency style, containing some fifteen hundred bedrooms, all of them
currently occupied by family members. Everyone here is a Drood. The roof rose
and fell like a gray tiled sea, complete with gables, gargoyles, and ornamental
guttering. Not forgetting the observatory, the aerie, the landing pad, and more
aerials and antennae than you could shake a gremlin at. There are many rooms in
my family’s mansion, and there’s room for everyone. As long as you toe the line.

The Hall is also a real swine to heat, draughty as all hell in
the winter, and the family doesn’t believe in central heating because they think
it makes you soft. I grew up thinking wearing long underwear half the year was
normal.

And in the Hall’s most secret chambers, my family decides the
fate of the world. Seven days a week, no time off for good behaviour.

This isn’t my family’s first home, of course. The Droods were an
old, old family even back in Tudor times. We moved on and moved up as we grew in
size and status and influence. But the Hall has been our home and centre of
operations for so long now it’s hard to think of us anywhere else. You won’t
find the Hall on any official map, nor will you find any of the routes that lead
to it. I’d felt the many layers of scientific and magical defences sliding aside
to let me pass as I drove down the long graveled drive, rising and falling
before me like a series of shifting veils, and then sealing themselves behind me
again. Someone was watching me from the moment I passed through the stone wall,
and would continue to watch until I left again. Robot guns actually rose up out
of the lawns to track my car at one point before reluctantly burying themselves
again. They were new. But of course, it’s always the defences you can’t see or
sense that will really screw you over. Anyone who comes looking for us,
uninvited and unexpected, risks being killed in any number of increasingly
distressing ways.

The family has always taken its privacy very seriously. When
you’ve been protecting and policing the world for as long as we have, you can’t
help but accumulate serious enemies. The Hall and its extensive grounds are
surrounded and suffused with layer upon layer of protections, including a whole
bunch of scarecrows. We make them out of old enemies. If you listen in on the
right supernatural frequency, you can hear them screaming. Don’t mess with the
Droods. We take it personally. We get mad and we get even.

I brought the Hirondel to a crashing halt right before the front
door, in a swirl and a spray of churned-up gravel, and parked right there just
because I knew I wasn’t supposed to. I turned off the engine, and then sat there
for a while, staring at nothing and tapping my fingertips on the steering wheel,
listening to the cries of the peacocks and the slow ticking of the cooling
engine. I didn’t want to do this. By not leaving the car I was putting off the
moment when I would have to enter my old home and walk back into the cold,
distant embrace of my family. But…sooner or later you have to walk into the
dentist’s surgery and just get it over with.

I slammed the car door loudly, enjoying the echoes, and then
locked it. Not because it was necessary, or even because it would stop whomever
they sent to move it. I just wanted to make it clear to everyone that I didn’t
trust anyone here. The Hall rose up before me like a tidal wave cast in stone.
It looked even bigger than I remembered, up close, and even more forbidding. I
could feel its mass, its centuries of accumulated duty and responsibility,
trying to suck me in like a black hole, but I balked at the front door. I was
supposed to walk straight in and present myself to the Matriarch, as custom and
tradition demanded…but I’ve never been big on doing what I’m supposed to do. And
since I was still more than a bit resentful at being summoned back so abruptly,
I decided that the Matriarch could wait while I went for a little walk.

I turned my back on the front door, humming aloud in an
unconcerned sort of way, and strolled past the many arched and stained-glass
windows at the front of the house. I could feel their presence, like the
pressure of so many watching eyes, so I kept my own gaze resolutely straight
ahead. The gravel crunched loudly under my feet as I headed past the east wing,
rounded the corner, and smiled for the first time as I beheld the old family
chapel. Tucked away out of sight and set firmly apart, the chapel was a squat
stone structure with crucifix windows. It looked Saxon but was actually an
eighteenth-century folly. The family had its own chapel inside the Hall now,
pleasant and peaceful and graciously multidenominational, and the old building
had been left to rot. It is currently occupied by the family ghost, Jacob Drood,
cantankerous old goat that he is. He’s my great-great-great-grandfather, I
think. Genealogy never was my strong point.

On the whole, my family discourages ghosts, otherwise we’d be
hip deep in the things. If any do come bleating back to the Hall after being
killed in the field, they get dispatched on to the Hereafter pretty damned
sharply. The family looks strictly forward, never back, and there just isn’t
room in the Hall for anyone to be sentimental. Jacob is allowed to linger on in
the chapel through some technicality I’ve never really understood, mostly
because the few people who do know are just too embarrassed to talk about it.
All families have the odd skeleton in the closet, and ours is Jacob. The family
ostentatiously hasn’t been on speaking terms with him for years, and he couldn’t
care less. Mostly he just sits around in his ghostly underwear, watching the
memories of old television shows on a set with no insides in it. Now and again
he keeps a spectral eye on what the family’s up to, just because he knows he’s
not supposed to.

Jacob and I have always got along fine.

I first found out about him when I was eight. Cousin Georgie
dared me to go peek in the window of the forbidden chapel, and I never could
resist a dare. I was caught (of course) and punished (of course) and told that
the chapel and its occupant were strictly off-limits. After that, I couldn’t
wait to meet him. I just knew we’d be kindred spirits. So I sneaked out that
night and basically ambushed the old ghost in his den. He made a few halfhearted
attempts to scare me off, but his heart wasn’t in it. He’d waited a long time
for the family to throw up another black sheep like him. We quickly warmed to
each other, and after that no one could keep us apart. The family did try, but
Jacob came striding out of the chapel and right into the Matriarch’s private
chambers, and whatever was said there, after that the two of us were left
strictly to ourselves.

Jacob was perhaps the only real friend I had, then. Certainly
the only one I could trust. He encouraged all my early rebellions and was the
only one who was always on my side. He was the one who told me to get out, first
chance I got. He approved of me; said I reminded him of himself as a teenager.
Which was rather worrying, actually.

The chapel looked as squat and ugly as ever; rough stone buried
under thick mats of ivy that stirred and twisted threateningly as I approached
the open front door. Part of Jacob’s early warning system. I patted the ivy and
spoke to it in a friendly fashion, and it relaxed again as it remembered and
recognised my voice. The door was stuck halfway open, as always, and I put my
shoulder to it. The heavy wood scraped loudly across the bare stone floor,
raising a cloud of dust. I coughed and sneezed a few times and peered into the
gloom. Nothing had changed.

The pews were still stacked up against the far wall to make room
for Jacob’s giant black leather reclining chair, and beside it sat an
old-fashioned refrigerator that was somehow always full of ethereal booze. A
massive old television stood before the chair, with real rabbits’ ears piled on
top to help with the reception. Jacob didn’t look around as I approached. He
sprawled bonelessly in his great chair, a gray wispy figure who flickered in and
out as his concentration wavered. He looked older than death, his face a mass of
wrinkles, his bony skull graced with just a few long flyaway hairs. He was
currently wearing faded Bermuda shorts and a T-shirt bearing the legend Ghosts
Do It from Beyond. He chugged down the last of his beer and threw the can away.
It disappeared before it hit the floor. Jacob waved a gray hand jerkily in my
direction, leaving thin trails of ectoplasm on the air.

"Come in, Eddie, come in! And shut the door behind you. The
draughts play havoc with my old bones."

I stood my ground beside his chair, my arms folded across my
chest. "And what bones would those be, you disgusting old revenant?"

He scowled at me from under bushy white eyebrows. "You get to be
as ancient as me, lad, you’ll suffer a few aches and pains too. It’s not easy,
being this old. Or everybody would be doing it."

"How can you have aches and pains? You’re dead. You don’t have
an actual body anymore."

"That’s right! Rub it in! Just because I’m dead, it doesn’t mean
I don’t have feelings. The way the family treats me these days makes me spin in
my grave."

"You were cremated, Jacob."

"All right, I’ll turn in my urn!" He shut down his ghostly
television set with a snap of his fingers and finally turned to smile at me.
"Damn, it’s good to have you back, lad. None of the current generation have the
spunk to come out and talk to me. How long has it been, Eddie? I lose track in
here…"

"Ten years," I said.

He nodded slowly. "You’ve filled out nicely, lad. Good outfit,
rotten attitude, and you look like you could punch your weight. A credit to my
teachings. But what the hell are you doing back here, Eddie? You did the one
thing even I couldn’t do; you escaped."

"The family called me home," I said, trying hard to keep my
voice light and unconcerned. "I was kind of hoping you might know why."

Jacob sniffed and settled back in his reclining chair. The ghost
of a pipe appeared in his hand, and he sucked thoughtfully on the stem,
releasing thick puffs of ectoplasm that drifted up to the cobwebbed ceiling.
"Not much point in asking me, lad. The family’s been keeping me even more at
arm’s length than usual, of late. Of course, that doesn’t stop me from keeping a
watchful eye on them…" He grinned nastily at me. "You want all the latest
gossip, Eddie lad? You want to know who’s having who, who messed up in the field
again, and who came back stoned out of her mind and crashed the autogyro on the
roof landing pad?"

"Tell me everything," I said. "I think I need to know
everything."

Jacob waved his pipe away, and it disintegrated into drifting
streams of ectoplasm. He sat up straight in his chair and fixed me with a steady
gaze, his ancient eyes pinning me where I stood. "To start with, there’s a new
faction in the family. Gaining a lot of support, especially among the
youngsters. Basically, it boils down to a Let’s get them before they get us
strategy. This new faction is talking very loudly about the virtues of
preemptive strikes and a zero tolerance for all identified bad guys. No more
dealing with problems as they arise; stick it to the bad guys with extreme
prejudice, whether we can prove anything or not."

"If we were to declare open war," I said slowly, "our enemies
would just band together for protection against a common threat, and we’d be
vastly outnumbered. We’ve survived as long as we have only because we understand
the virtues of divide and conquer."

Jacob shrugged. "Youngsters today; no patience. No taking the
long view. It’s all instant gratification now. I blame MTV and video games. So
far, older and wiser heads in the family are keeping the new faction firmly in
its place, but everyone’s talking about it…Also, your cousin William’s been
stirring things, just so he can get plenty of good footage for the documentary
he’s been making about the family. Though God alone knows who he thinks is going
to see it. Could be a big hit, mind, with all those people who watched The
Osbournes. Meet the Droods: an even more dysfunctional family, only far more
dangerous…

"The Matriarch’s stepped up security around the Hall. Again. You
probably noticed the extra measures on your way in. Of course, they can’t keep
me out. It’s hard to keep secrets from the dead. We’re natural voyeurs. Shall we
take a look at what our beloved leader is up to at the moment?"

He snapped his fingers at the empty television set before him,
and the old episode of Dark Shadows that had been running with the sound off was
replaced by an impressively sharp image of the family Matriarch in her study,
talking with her husband, Alistair. He was pacing up and down, looking
distinctly worried, while she sat straight-backed in her chair, all icy calm and
dignity.

"He’ll be here soon," said Alistair. "What are we going to tell
him?"

"We’ll tell him what he needs to know, and no more," said the
Matriarch. "That’s always been the family way."

"But if he even suspects…"

"He won’t."

"We could tell him the truth." Alistair stopped pacing and
looked directly at the Matriarch. "We could appeal to his better nature. To his
duty, to his love of the family…"

The Matriarch sniffed loudly. "Don’t be a fool. He’s far too
dangerous. I have determined what needs to be done, and that’s all there is to
it. I have always understood what’s best for the family. Wait…Someone’s
listening in! Is that you, Jacob?"