Book 2 - Daemons Are Forever (22 page)

“I wouldn’t have thought you were the fresh air and wide-open spaces type,” said Penny. “I had you marked down as a town mouse.”

“I prefer it out here,” said Mr. Stab.

“Is the room we’ve given you not comfortable enough?”

“I’ve known many rooms, down the years,” said Mr. Stab. He kept his gaze straight ahead, not looking at Penny. “All pretty much the same. Just places to stay, for a while, before I’m forced to move on again. These days I carry a little notebook, to remind me of where I’m staying and what name I’m currently using. No home for me; not anymore. Just another of the many human things I had to give up, to be what I am. My room here is perfectly adequate. Even luxurious. But no; I’m not comfortable here, in the Hall. I’m not allowed to murder, you see, and I find that very trying. It goes against my nature. It grinds against my soul, until I can’t see anything but blood. And that’s why I spend as much time as possible on your extensive grounds, away from…temptation.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say so much at one time,” said Penny. “You’re a very interesting man, Mr. Stab.”

He looked at her for the first time. “You’re not scared of me?”

“I’m a Drood,” said Penny. “It takes a lot to scare us. And anyway, you’ll be off to South America soon, to fight the Loathly Ones. There’ll be killing enough then to satisfy anyone, even you.”

“It’s not the same,” said Mr. Stab. “I have to murder, to tear the flesh and spill the blood, to see the suffering in their eyes. It’s what I do. It’s all I have.”

“And you always kill women?”

“Yes. Because it’s the only form of intimacy I can ever know now. My punishment and my reward.”

“Is it true…Have you really done all the things they say you have?”

“Oh yes,” said Mr. Stab. “All that, and more. Make no mistake, Penny; I have done terrible things, and gloried in them. I have thrust my arms deep into the guts of horror, and brought them out dripping red up to the elbows. They called me Jack the Ripper, and I was. The things I did, to poor Marie Kelly, in that small shuttered room … I opened her up like a book, and read her secrets. I sent the press a letter, once, and gave them my address. From Hell, it said. And that was just the beginning.”

“And you…
have
to kill? You’re driven to murder?”

“Yes.”

“Then…if you don’t have any choice, it isn’t really your fault, is it?”

“Yes it is, Penny. I killed those six women of my own free will, savouring the agony and terror in their dying eyes, breathing in their last exhalations like the finest wines. And if this particular form of immortality isn’t quite what I thought I was buying with my ceremony of slaughter, it’s the Hell I earned for the evil I did, back in that unseasonably warm autumn of 1888.”

“But you haven’t killed anyone here,” said Penny.

“I gave my word,” said Mr. Stab. “But it won’t last. It never does.”

“This is a new place. You’ve never known anywhere like Drood Hall. All kinds of things are possible here. Even redemption. Come back to the Hall with me. And just maybe … I can show you that you’re stronger than you think you are.”

He looked at her for a long moment. “This can only end badly, Penny.”

“I don’t believe that,” said Penny. “I’ve never believed that.” I watched through the mirror as she casually slipped an arm through his and led him back across the great grassy lawns, to the Hall.

I must have been frowning in my seat on the plane, because Molly dug me in the ribs with her elbow. “What’s up, sweetie? Afraid of flying?”

“No, it’s not that. I was just…thinking.”

“Well stop frowning like that; you’ll get lines. You know, this really is some plane, Eddie. I’ve flown first class on all the best airlines, on faked tickets of course, but never anything to match this. Really comfortable chairs, plenty of leg room…and it hardly seems like we’re moving. I’ll bet the US president doesn’t have it this good, on Air Force One.”

I had to smile at her enthusiasm. I was pretty excited myself. I’d never been allowed out of the country before. Never been on a plane before. I kept looking out the window to make sure it was real. And yet…there was something in the air in the long cabin, an atmosphere of tension and anticipation. Torced and untorced family members sat side by side, not talking much, trying to pretend they were reading the books or magazines they’d brought with them. The Blackhawke’s augmented engines would get us to our destination in under two hours, but that was more than enough time for everyone to think of everything that could go wrong. I was no different. This was the family’s first big military operation since I took control and changed everything. We had to win this one. For all kinds of reasons.

I wondered what I was going to do, about Penny and Mr. Stab.
It’s always the bad boy that makes a girl’s heart beat that little bit faster
.

As if I didn’t have enough to worry about.

By the time we’d crossed the South American continent and descended over the Nazca Plain, we’d all got over the novelty of flying in a plane, and were more than ready for a little action. Molly had trouble getting her head around the fact that because the torcs made us invisible to all forms of detection, it meant the planes we travelled in were essentially invisible too. There wasn’t a radar installation or spy satellite anywhere that could detect our presence, even for a moment.

“Look, trust me,” I said finally. “No one knows we’re here, no one knows we’re coming. Compared to us, stealth bombers are painted bright pink, with big neon signs on them saying,
Hello, sailor; come and get me
! Our only worry is avoiding other aircraft, because we won’t show up on their radar. We’re staying well above all the usual commercial flight paths, but there’s always the chance of bumping into some secret military job, or even the occasional UFO.”

“Hold everything,” said Molly. “UFOs, as in flying saucers? Close encounters of the extremely unlikely kind, where they stick things up your bottom? Really?”

“Not as such,” I said. “But there are a hundred and thirty-seven different alien species currently running around on Planet Earth that we know of. Most of them we keep in line through various long-established treaties and agreements; others we just step on hard now and again, to remind them not to make waves. But there are always a few Unidentified Objects zipping through the stratosphere, on their own inscrutable business, and they can be a damned nuisance sometimes.”

“Real aliens…” said Molly. “That is so cool!”

I had to smile. “You don’t have any trouble that we’re on our way to slap down a bunch of soul-eating demons, but the thought of aliens gets you all excited?”

“That’s different,” Molly said stubbornly. “I just don’t tend to bump into aliens in my line of work. All I know is magic. Vampires, werewolves, ghouls, and necromancers, no problems. Deal with them every day. But most of what I know of aliens comes from Ridley Scott’s
Alien
and John Carpenter’s
The Thing
. Tell me that is not representative of most aliens, please. There must be some like ET?”

“Would you rather have the truth, or a comforting lie?” I said.

“Oh, shut up. Are we nearly there yet?”

We landed at a private airfield, far away from anywhere civilised that might ask awkward questions about things like passports and visas. The family owns or leases such places in countries all over the world, for just such occasions as this. (Through a series of concealing false names and cutouts, of course.) We all filed off the Blackhawkes, and the heat hit us like a hammer. The sun was directly overhead in a cloudless sky, and my skin actually smarted just from the impact of the sudden heat. I armoured up immediately, in the interests of self-preservation. The family didn’t need a strike force leader with sunstroke. All the other torced Droods immediately followed suit, leaving the rest of the strike force looking distinctly mutinous. Molly worked a quick but subtle magic, and after that it was always shade wherever they happened to be standing.

Mr. Stab, Roger Morningstar, and Janissary Jane didn’t seem to notice the heat at all. They’d endured much worse, in their time.

I had a quick chat with the guy running the airfield for us, an old rogue with a dark, wrinkled face who’d served the family well and loyally for many years. And would continue to do so, as long as the money kept coming. My armour didn’t throw him at all; he’d seen it before. Though he did compliment me on my new colour scheme. I asked him what he knew about the unusual business down on the Nazca Plain, and he told me what he could, in excellent English.

It seemed foreigners had been coming to the plain in small groups for several months now. All nationalities, all types, but not the usual tourists. These were strange people, even for foreigners, talking and acting oddly, though he found it hard to be specific about what bothered him about them.
As though they were always thinking of something else
, was the best he could manage. They bought many things in the surrounding towns, and always paid cash. The local merchants loved them, and hoped they’d stay forever. When I pressed him on what these strangers had been buying, he said mostly technology, off-the-shelf stuff and special orders, and an extraordinary amount of livestock. All kinds. Presumably for slaughtering, since none of the foreigners professed any interest in farming, and they bought far more than they could ever hope to eat.

I thanked him and slipped him a little extra for his trouble, just to cement friendly relations. I didn’t need to worry that he might talk about us; he knew better than to talk about Drood business. He’d helped bury the previous airfield owner after he got a bit too talkative. No one betrays the Droods and lives to boast of it.

Janissary Jane got the expeditionary force sorted out into squads and loaded onto the fleet of jeeps the owner had provided, and we set off on the long, hard journey to the Nazca Plains. There was no scenery and no road, just an endless jolting ride across a sullen, empty desert under a baking sun. The trip seemed to last forever, but finally we came to a halt at the base of a cliff overlooking the plain. We disembarked from the jeeps, did a certain amount of stretching and stamping our feet, and then we climbed the steep rise all the way to the top and looked out over the plain. Callan Drood was waiting for us there, looking very sunburned, and extremely pissed off that we hadn’t brought any cold drinks with us. Molly conjured him up an iced bottle of Pepsi, and he drank it so fast he gave himself a headache.

I looked down at what the Loathly Ones were doing on the Nazca Plain. From this height they looked like ants, swarming around and over the huge structure that rose up from the heavily lined and grooved stone plain like a single alien skyscraper. It had to be three hundred feet tall now, a strange and unearthly mixture of styles and materials. Its shape made no sense at all. My mind couldn’t seem to cope with the unexpected dimensions and distortions. Just looking at it made my eyes hurt. Callan came forward to join me.

“It’s better if you look at it for just a few moments at a time. I’m pretty sure we’re looking at something that exists in more than three spatial dimensions, and what we see is only our minds trying to make sense of it. Don’t ask me what the hell it is, or what it’s for, but the Loathly Ones are all over it, all day and all night, inside and out. There’s a single opening at the base, and a lot of what goes in never comes out again. I get the feeling it’s almost finished. The pace of work has accelerated in the last twelve hours, like they’re fighting a deadline. Where are my cold drinks? I was promised cold drinks. And I’d better get a torc out of this. I’ve spent weeks out here, dodging the bastards’ patrols. Very heavily armed patrols, I might add. They kill anyone who gets too close, even clearly harmless tourists, whether they’ve seen anything or not.”

I gestured for him to shut up, and he did. My silver mask allowed me to zoom in on the towering edifice down on the plain, so I could study details as though I was right on top of them. The alien structure struck me as much as a machine as a building, designed to do … something, but the more I looked, the less sense it made. It didn’t take me long to discover what they’d been doing with so much livestock. The Loathly Ones had incorporated bits of them into the structure. Parts of the tower were clearly technological, even if I couldn’t identify it, but other parts were just as clearly organic. Living flesh, whole organs, bloody guts and connective tissues, even entire brains and heads. All alive, maintained as part of the functioning structure. I’d never seen anything like it before, and I’ve seen my share of alien and other-dimensional technology.

Janissary Jane came forward to stand on my other side, and I described what I was seeing to her. She nodded slowly.

“I have seen…something like this, before. It’s not a hellgate. Not as such. But it’s definitely a gateway of some kind.”

“So they’re planning to open a door to somewhere else,” said Molly, joining us to show she wasn’t going to be left out of things. “Maybe they’ve heard you declared war on them, Eddie, and they’re running for home while they’ve still got the chance.”

“A nice thought, but no,” I said. “They were building this long before I took control of the family.”

“And I don’t think this was designed just to open a gateway to Outside,” Janissary Jane said slowly. “It looks more like it’s designed to summon…something, from Outside, and bring it through into our world.”

“Reinforcements?” said Molly. “More Loathly Ones?”

“No,” said Janissary Jane. “With the power this thing uses, it would have to be something more powerful…something far worse than the Loathly Ones.”

“Something worse?” said Callan. “What could be worse than soul-eating demons?”

“Stick around,” I said. “If we don’t shut this thing down before they can open their gateway, you might just find out.”

“I want to go home,” said Callan. “I hate it here.” Molly produced another iced bottle of Pepsi for him, and he wandered off to kick moodily at the unyielding ground.

We all took turns to peer over the edge of the cliff and study the movements of the tiny figures scurrying around down below. There were hundreds of them, men and women and even some children, scrambling all over the huge structure with no regard for their own safety. Heat haze muddied the air between us and them, even with the help of the silver masks, but the extreme temperatures didn’t seem to bother the Loathly Ones at all.