Book 2 - Daemons Are Forever (51 page)

Victory can feel oh so fine. While it lasts.

Mr. Stab and the Sarjeant-at-Arms led their strike force into the Punjab, in India. A narrow fertile valley surrounded by mountains, supporting a small population; a perfect target for the Loathly Ones. The quiet settlement became a ghoulville and no one noticed. It was, after all, the kind of place where one tribe wouldn’t lower themselves to speak to another, and none of them would speak to outsiders because authority was never to be trusted. They might want you to pay taxes.

When the strike force passed through the Merlin Glass, the ghoulville turned out to be a collection of squat stone houses, half overgrown with slowly stirring vegetation, strangely mutated by the town’s other-dimensional energies. There were cracks in the bare stone ground that seemed to fall away forever, and the light was so bright it seemed to wash all the details out of everything.

It was a scene out of some bare, abstract hell, and Mr. Stab seemed quite at home there.

The drones were waiting again, but this time when they came surging forward to attack the invading force, the crowd seemed to split apart at the last moment, broken in two by an immovable object. They surged around this object, and did their best not to touch it, though they fell on the Sarjeant-at-Arms and the other Droods with all their usual ferocity. But they couldn’t touch Mr. Stab. Something about his no-longer-human nature actively appalled them. They couldn’t bear to be close to him.

So he just walked straight forward into the roiling mob and began killing with an elegant grace, using a long, shiny knife that just appeared in his hand out of nowhere. He walked unopposed through the surging drones and did awful, terrible things to them, and they couldn’t even touch him. Mr. Stab smiled slightly, possibly remembering other times…

The Sarjeant-at-Arms moved quickly in behind Mr. Stab, backing him up, and the strike force followed. The Sarjeant had never been one for swords and blades; he preferred to use the aspect granted him by the family to summon weapons into his waiting hands. All he had to do was gesture in a certain way, and a gun would pop into his hand, fully loaded. And the Sarjeant used these guns to shoot down any drone who showed up with a glowing sword, long before they could get close enough to do any damage. When a gun ran out of bullets, he just tossed it aside and summoned another. The rejected gun would disappear in midair, and there was never any shortage of replacements.

Mr. Stab sliced up the drones, and the Sarjeant mowed them down, and the strike force moved inexorably forward, towards the tower on the horizon. They almost made it look easy. Mr. Stab danced through the slaughter, killing with a touch, the Sarjeant emptied gun after gun, and the armoured Droods struck down anything that came within reach. They soon came to the base of the tower, and more drones appeared from within, bearing an assortment of entirely unfamiliar weapons. The Sarjeant-at-Arms took no chances and shot them all down from a distance. The few that couldn’t be stopped by bullets, protected by strange, glowing armours or energy fields, proved no problem for the smiling Mr. Stab.

The Sarjeant planted the bomb, set the timer, and then led his people safely back home. Another nest destroyed, another tower gone, with no losses or casualties. I started to relax. We’d just had a bad beginning. It looked like we were starting to get the hang of things now. Maybe we could pull this off. I said as much to Molly, and she nodded, smiling. I should have known better.

Callan and the Blue Fairy took their strike force into a small settlement just north of San Francisco. Officially, the Blue Fairy was there as a volunteer to support Callan and watch his back. In practice, I’d had a quiet word with Callan and told him to watch the Blue Fairy. I still wasn’t ready to trust Blue yet.

Their ghoulville had once been an integral part of the Summer of Love in the sixties; a central point for more sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll magic than any reality could comfortably bear. In these more hard-headed, materialistic days, the small town of Lud’s Drum was just a haven for shaggy old hippy types, burnt-out casualties of the drugs war, and a whole industry had grown up devoted to trading on the town’s disreputable past. Only people like us still kept a watchful eye on Lud’s Drum, because dimensional barriers in and around the town had been dangerously weak ever since Timothy Leary dropped a heroic dose of LSD and peyote there and tried to perform a remote exorcism on the Pentagon. As a result, the Loathly Ones took the town with hardly an effort. Lud’s Drum was one of the few places where drones could walk around openly without being suspected. Now Lud’s Drum was a ghoulville, and one of the last remnants of the sixties dream was now a living nightmare.

Callan led his strike force through the harshly lit streets, cutting down drones with cold, almost clinical precision. He didn’t allow himself to be distracted by the crumbling candy-coloured houses, the soft undulating streets, or the endless waves of drones that fell upon his people with vicious, malevolent glee. He cut a path right through them, heading with stern resolve straight for the nearly completed tower in the very centre of the town. Callan might have a smart mouth and an irreverent attitude when dealing with authority figures, but nothing distracted him from his focus when he was out in the field.

The Blue Fairy stuck close to him, guarding Callan’s back with surprising skill and purpose. He didn’t have a sword, or a gun; just a slender wand that he’d produced out of nowhere.
Oh, this old thing
, he said airily.
Been in the family for ages
. In the ghoulville he produced a series of small but surprisingly effective magics that kept the drones at arm’s length. It shouldn’t really have surprised me that Blue knew how to fight. He couldn’t have lasted all these years, with the kind of enemies he’d made, without having developed some survival skills.

Callan led his people by example, always pushing forward, not allowing himself to be stopped or even slowed by anything the demons could throw at him. His golden blades rose and fell, and blood flew on the air. Always moving doggedly forward, he brought them closer and closer to the tower through sheer martial expertise and an almost brutal determination. Watching him made me feel proud to be a Drood. This was what we were for; to fight the good fight, to strike down the bad guys, in humanity’s name.

The drones had their glowing swords, and other equally awful weapons, but the Blue Fairy saw to it that they never got close enough to do the Droods any harm. He stabbed the air with his wand, a slender length of bone carved with elven glyphs, and wherever he pointed it, things went wrong for the drones. Over and over again. Blue scowled fiercely as he concentrated, skipping this way and that to ensure he never even came close to being in danger himself, but I got the feeling he was enjoying himself, nonetheless.

He was half elf, after all, with an elf’s ingrained talent for death and destruction.

They made it all the way to the base of the tower before everything went wrong. The tower rose up before them, like a jagged lightning bolt of alien technology and organic components driven into the ground with godly force. Its shape made no sense, as though it had more spatial dimensions than the human mind could cope with, and once again there was a definite sense that the thing was in some way alive and aware, and knew they were there. Callan planted the bomb at the base of the tower, with the Blue Fairy looking over his shoulder, while armoured troops formed a barrier to hold back the swarming drones.

Callan set the timer, stood up, and nodded to the Blue Fairy, and then every single member of the strike force stiffened suddenly and crashed to the ground, and lay still. No warning, no obvious reason, no drone with a new weapon. Just two hundred armoured Droods lying motionless on the ground. I couldn’t even tell whether they were dead or alive. Callan glared about him, sweeping his golden blades this way and that. And then the Blue Fairy elegantly tapped Callan on the shoulder with his wand, and Callan fell to his knees.

“Sorry, old thing,” said the Blue Fairy. “But I never was very good at playing with others. And you have something I need.”

We all watched helplessly as Blue put his wand to Callan’s neck, and then somehow…whipped the torc away from Callan. His mouth stretched wide in a scream, but no sound came out of it. He was still kneeling, but now he was just a man again, ripped from his armour. The Blue Fairy looked at the torc in his hand, turning it back and forth, and then he looked out of the display screen right at us, smiling almost sadly.

“I know, Eddie,” he said. “You trusted me. Which was very nice, and all that, but this torc will buy me entry into the Fae Court. I told you; in the end, it’s always about family. And never, ever, trust an elf. We always have an agenda.”

He turned sideways, and kept on turning, until he had disappeared from sight. All the Droods snapped back to life again, save for Callan, who collapsed, twitching on the ground. The drones surged forward.

Somehow the Droods got Callan out of there. They battled their way out of Lud’s Drum, with the drones making them fight for every yard. And all the time the bomb was ticking. They came streaming back through the Merlin Glass, carrying an unconscious Callan, and I slammed the doorway shut just as the bomb went off. There was a moment of light so bright I could feel it, and the whole War Room shook, but the gateway closed in time to protect us. Lud’s Drum was gone, and with it the nest and its tower.

They took Callan away to the infirmary. Shock, they said. God knows what having his torc ripped from him felt like. I asked Strange if the elves could make the torc work for them, and he said,
What are elves
? Which didn’t exactly help matters. We would be revenged on the Blue Fairy later. No one steals from the Droods and lives to boast of it.

After all that drama, everything else went pretty much as planned. The strike forces went into ghoulville after ghoulville, using the tactics we’d developed, and nest after nest was destroyed, along with their towers. The Armourer’s bombs never failed, and we didn’t lose one more Drood to the drones. No more nasty surprises, no more appalling new weapons, just Droods doing their job, making the world safe. The hours trudged slowly by, with golden figures constantly coming and going through the Merlin Glass. The drones still fought savagely, making us work for every victory. But still, step by step, we were winning. Fresh men and women came forward to replace those Droods exhausted by too many raids, and the work went on. The whole family was ready to fight, if need be. The infirmary coped well. Overall, losses were actually less than expected and planned for. We actually had the end in sight when it all went to rat shit again.

A communications officer stood up abruptly to shout his new information to the Matriarch, and the whole War Room went quiet to hear it.

“It’s Truman!” he shouted. “All this time he’s had Loathly One drones in his new underground base, building a tower, hidden behind his protective screens! It must be almost complete, because its presence just punched right through the screens! It’s so powerful Truman can’t hide it any longer. It’s almost ready to open a door and bring the Invaders through! This has all been for nothing!”

“Be calm, man!” snapped the Matriarch. “I will not have emotional displays in my War Room. Someone sit that man down and get him a strong cup of tea. Edwin, which of our major players are still capable of leading a strike force?”

I checked. The Sarjeant-at-Arms and Mr. Stab were still clearing out a nest in northern China. Callan was still in the infirmary. And Giles Deathstalker, having personally led over thirty missions, was lying on a cot right beside Callan, too exhausted to go on, though he’d never admit it. That just left Harry, and Roger Morningstar. They were catching a quick break between missions, and awing the younger Droods with exaggerated tales of their exploits. I had them brought back to the War Room and explained the situation. Harry looked very much like he wanted to spit.

“Just once, I’d like things to go the way they’re supposed to.”

“Are you up for this?” I said.

“Not like I have much of a choice, is it?” said Harry. “Okay, put together a strike force out of the best we’ve got that are still on their feet, and I’ll lead it in.” He looked drawn and tired, but his back was still straight and his eyes were still sharp. He dug Roger in the ribs with his elbow. “Who would have thought it, eh? Family pariah Harry Drood, stepping up to save the day. Would you have bet on that, Grandmother?”

Martha looked at him steadily. “Of course. You’re James’s son.”

Harry deliberately turned his back on her and grinned at Roger. “How about it, love? You up for one last mission, to save the world?”

“I’m not sure my mother’s side of the family would approve, but what the Hell… Why not? Can’t let you do this on your own. You never did learn to watch your back properly.”

I wasn’t so sure Roger’s going was a good idea. Basically, he looked like shit. With so much of his magic exhausted on earlier raids, a lot of his glamour was gone, and he looked… more of a man.

Harry made a point of looking down his nose at me. “Well, Eddie, aren’t you coming along on this little jaunt? You know how you love to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, at the very last minute…”

“I’m still needed here,” I said calmly. “Someone’s got to feed you the necessary information, and point you in the right direction. But, if it should all go horribly wrong, I’m your backup.”

“And me,” said Molly, digging me sharply in the ribs with her elbow.

“Of course,” I said, “If you feel you can’t do it without me…”

“We can handle it,” Harry said immediately.

“Damn right, lover,” said Roger Morningstar.

The Merlin Glass locked on to Truman’s new base of operations easily enough; the almost complete tower was dominating the aether. But for some reason the Glass couldn’t seem to show us a view of the base’s interior. Just a field, overlooking Stonehenge, with the ancient Stones looming tall and dramatic against the lowering evening sky. Harry pressed in close beside me, scowling.