Book 1 - The Man With the Golden Torc (8 page)

James and I ran on, plunging through corridor after corridor at
breakneck speed, both of us breathing steadily to conserve our wind, as we’d
been trained. More and more members of the family came running from everywhere
to join us, men and women with shocked, strained faces and all kinds of weapons
in their hands. Young and old, fighters and researchers and even duty staff;
people who should never have been needed, given the guaranteed safety of the
Hall.

We were closing in on the Sanctity now, at the very centre of
the Hall. I could feel the hair standing up on the back of my neck. There was a
pressure, a presence, on the air, like the cold shadow of a place where bad
things had happened. Something Big is coming, that’s what old Jacob had said.
Something Big…Something Bad. And it was close now. Very close.

Uncle James and I caught up with the Sarjeant-at-Arms just as he
slammed through the great double doors into the Sanctity, and there was the
Heart: a single huge diamond shining like the sun, so big it filled the massive
chamber the family had built to contain and protect it. A diamond bigger than a
bus, a million facets blazing and shimmering so brightly none of us could bear
to look at it directly. The room was full of its light, and entering the
Sanctity was like diving into ice-cold water. It took your breath away, like a
shock to the soul. The Heart blazed with an otherworldly light, holding and
harnessing the power that made our family’s job possible. A light or an energy,
a science or a magic; even after all the centuries it had been with us, we were
no nearer to understanding it.

The Heart was surrounded by powerful protections. I could feel
them even as I edged into the Sanctity, hammering on the shimmering air. Some of
the family couldn’t even bring themselves to enter the room. But still the bells
and sirens were shrieking, summoning the family to defend the Heart from an
attack by someone or something unbelievably powerful. Only the most terrible of
our enemies would dare launch so blatant an assault. I circled slowly around the
gigantic diamond, one arm raised before my eyes to shield me from its
overwhelming glare. The light seemed to blaze right through my fragile flesh,
like an X-ray. James was there with me, and the Sarjeant-at-Arms, and I sensed
as much as saw other members of the family moving slowly around the Heart,
searching desperately for some sign of the enemy.

I had my needle gun in my hand. I didn’t have a lot of faith in
it, but just its presence made me feel better. I hadn’t armoured up. None of us
had. We were all still thinking in terms of threats to the safety of the Heart.
It never even occurred to us that we might be in danger. This was the Hall, and
we had always been safe here.

I felt something approaching from a direction I could sense but
not name. It was a Presence, something so vast and alien and utterly other that
its terrible nature actually eclipsed and overwhelmed the Heart. It drew closer
and closer, straining to materialise inside the Sanctity, trying to force its
way in from some other dimension of reality. It seemed to be closing in on us
from every direction at once, and just the sense of it was like shit smeared
across my soul. Like a mountain of maggots, or the smile the razor blade leaves
as it slices through a suicide’s wrists. It was almost upon us, and it hated us,
just for being human.

The wood-panelled wall to my left groaned loudly as it bulged
inwards, the old wood stretching impossibly, forced out of shape by some
unnameable pressure from Outside our three-dimensional reality. The floor rose
up at its centre like some monstrous boil, and the ceiling bulged down. All the
walls were crying out now, straining inwards towards the Heart. Something was
forcing its way into the Sanctity, from some higher or lower dimension, from
some place we couldn’t even hope to comprehend. And one by one, all the many
layers of protection the family had set in place around the Heart shattered and
blew apart, like so many cheap firecrackers.

Family magicians were in the room now, crowding around the
Heart, chanting spells and brandishing ancient talismans, trying to set up new
defensive parameters. Family scientists worked right there beside them,
operating esoteric constructions of weird technology, some of which looked like
they’d dragged right in from the testing labs. All kinds of energy fields
crackled on the air, but still the awful Presence surrounded us, descending on
us from everywhere at once.

And finally, it broke through. Something was just suddenly there
in the room with us; or rather, Nothing was. There was a Gap, an Absence, a
horrible Void just hanging on the air before the Heart. I couldn’t see or hear
it, but I could feel it on a level that had nothing to do with senses. It was as
though some terribly old, perhaps even prehuman part of me recognised it. A
great sucking pit of the spirit; a hole in reality itself. It pulsed, like some
great malignant heart, and then it reached out and sucked the flesh right off
those members of the family nearest it.

We lost a dozen men and women in a moment, meat and blood torn
from their bones, whole organs flying through the air and into the Void to make
it a body, to give it shape and form in this world. The bloody pulp of organs
and muscles slammed together, flesh slapping upon flesh, building a body whose
shape made no sense, to house and hold the awful thing that had forced its way
in from Outside. Bloody bones lay scattered across the floor, unwanted, along
with a dozen golden torcs. People were puking and retching everywhere, even as
they backed away.

"Armour up!" James yelled. "Everyone! Now!"

We all subvocalised the Words, and living armour encased us,
glorious and golden, sealing us off from the pull of the Void. For the first
time I felt sane and human again, able to think clearly, my spirit no longer
soiled by the presence of the thing before us. Where the Void had been, a huge
new thing had taken shape. It looked like it was made out of cancers, like
sickness and death made solid and vicious. It was scarlet and purple with
bulging dark veins, and it glistened wetly. Uneven rows of human eyes stared
unblinkingly out of a pulpy mass that might have been meant as a face. It rose
up to the bowed ceiling, big as ten men, limbs of a sort radiating from its
central mass, but its shape and dimensions and attributes made no sense at all.
I felt its attention turn away from the family, towards the Heart, and I sensed
a terrible emotion in the shape that might have been rage, or hunger, or a need
to violate. It moved towards the Heart, surging forward like a snail, and the
great diamond’s light seemed to flicker and diminish, just from the thing’s
proximity.

"Stop it!" James yelled. "Don’t let it touch the Heart!"

The Sarjeant-at-Arms had already opened fire, blazing away with
both guns at once. James strode forward, pouring bullets into the bloody shape
from close range, and I was right there with him, firing my needle gun. Everyone
else in the Sanctity opened fire on the mass with whatever weapons they had,
crowding forward, ignoring their own safety to protect the Heart. Magicians
unleashed curses and damnations, and scientists fired strange energies from
stranger weapons…and none of it did any good. The bloody shape absorbed our
bullets, and everything else, with equal indifference, pressing slowly but
inexorably towards the Heart. Golden armoured hands that could punch through
walls or shattered steel flailed at the pulpy mass, and it just ignored us. One
armoured man stood defiantly in its path. The scarlet shape sucked him in and
spat him out the other side. He thrashed weakly on the floor, screaming like the
newly damned.

I grabbed James by the arm and made him look at me. "Call them
off! They’ll listen to you. I’ve got an idea!"

He looked at me, and then nodded curtly and ordered the family
to disengage. Everyone fell back immediately. They trusted James, where they
almost certainly wouldn’t have trusted me. James looked at me expectantly. I
reached through the armour on my side, drew the portable door from my pocket,
activated it, and tossed it into the path of the bloody shape as it surged
forward, just as I had with the Hyde at the Wulfshead. The portable door slid
neatly into position, sparked and sputtered a few times, and then just lay
there, inert. I’d used it too often. The batteries were dead.

James was still looking at me. I couldn’t see his face behind
the gleaming golden mask, but I could guess his expression. He’d trusted me, and
I’d let him down. I looked back at the shape. It was almost upon the Heart. I
thought hard, glaring desperately about the Sanctity in search of inspiration,
and then my gaze fell upon the dozen torcs lying discarded on the floor, left
behind when their owners were stripped of flesh to make the bloody shape. I
lurched forward, grabbed a handful of the golden collars, raised my golden fist,
and punched the torcs right through the dark-veined cancerous side of the thing.
I forced them deep into the mass, let go of the torcs, and then tried to pull my
hand out again; but it was stuck.

A terrible coldness, as much of the spirit as the body, crept up
my arm. I think I cried out. And then James was there beside me, pulling at my
trapped arm with all his strength. For a terrifyingly long moment even our
combined strength wasn’t enough, and then my hand jerked out of the bloody mass,
and we both staggered backwards. I yelled aloud the Words that activated the
living armour, the Words we normally only ever subvocalised, and the five torcs
within the bloody shape activated. All at once.

Inside the cancerous fleshy mass, the torcs did what they were
programmed to do. They identified their owners, or in this case what was left of
them, and encased them in living armour. Golden shards erupted out of the red
and purple shape, slicing it apart. The bloody mass fought back, struggling to
maintain the integrity of the form it had taken, but the torcs’ progress was
inexorable. Once started, their transformation could not be stopped by anyone or
anything. The bloody shape collapsed, and a soundless howl of fury filled all
our heads for a moment as the thing from Outside snapped out of existence, its
hold on our reality broken. Lying on the floor before the Heart, in awful
unnatural attitudes, were five suits of golden armour surrounded by pieces of
bloody meat. I didn’t want to think about what those suits contained.

The oppressive sense of the invading Presence was gone. The
bells and sirens all snapped off, and a blessed silence filled the Sanctity. One
by one we all armoured down, golden forms giving way to men and women with
shocked, traumatised faces. James clapped me on the shoulder.

"Well done, Eddie. Good thinking."

People began slowly filing out of the room. The Heart was safe.
Everyone went back to their normal, everyday duties. Some were in shock; some
had to be helped. Some were openly angry or scared, because the Hall was no
longer the safe place it always been before. Some were crying over the loss of
friends or loved ones. You couldn’t blame them. Most of the family never see
fieldwork, never see any kind of action, never see the blood and suffering and
death that lies at the heart of what the Droods do and are. There’d be a lot of
sleeping pills and bad dreams in the four wings tonight.

The Sarjeant-at-Arms had already collared a few of the
harder-hearted souls and set them to work, and the clearing up had begun. He
didn’t even look at me. I might have just saved the day, and the Heart, and
maybe the whole family, but he still didn’t trust me. And none of the others
congratulated me as they left. Most didn’t even look at me. None of them wanted
to be seen talking to me, didn’t even want to get too close to the man who’d
turned his back on family tradition and responsibility, in case some of my
independence rubbed off on them. James made a point of standing next to me, his
hand still on my shoulder.

Everyone respected the Gray Fox.

Finally, we left the Sanctity together and went out into the
corridor. Away from the stench of spilled blood and meat and guts, the old
familiar smells of wood and polish and fresh flowers was immediately
restorative. I breathed deeply, and my head cleared. The ancient, solid walls,
with their sense of long history and service, were actually reassuring for once.

"This assault is unprecedented," said James. He kept his voice
low as we walked, but it still held a cold anger that was disturbingly near the
surface. "Not only did something just hammer its way through the Hall’s
defences, and the Heart’s; it actually killed Droods! Right here in the midst of
the family! That’s never happened before. We’re supposed to be safe here,
protected from all threats and dangers."

"This has never happened before?" I said. "I mean, ever?"

James looked at me for a long moment, as though deciding just
how much he trusted me. "There have been two previous attacks on the Heart," he
said finally, in a voice so low I had to strain to hear it. "No one was hurt,
and neither of them got this close, but still…"

"Jesus…No wonder the Matriarch’s been busy punching up the
Hall’s defences…"

James looked at me oddly. "How did you know that, Eddie?"

"I had a word with old Jacob. He doesn’t miss much."

"Oh, yes. Of course. You always were fond of that disgusting old
reprobate. You must understand, Eddie…the Hall has been inviolate ever since we
first moved in here. No one’s ever been able to crack our defences, let alone
actually threaten the Heart. There can only be one answer…an inside man. A
traitor in the family, giving up the secrets of our protections."

I was so shocked I actually stopped in my tracks and stared at
him with my mouth hanging open. Members of the family had left in the past or
been declared rogue and forced out, but no one had ever turned traitor, working
from within to betray us to our enemies…It was unthinkable.