Live and Let Drood: A Secret Histories Novel (38 page)

They punched and kicked at me, hitting me with every weapon they had, shouting fierce war cries to encourage themselves and one another, falling on me from every side at once…and none of them could touch me. Their various toys just broke and shattered against my armour, and in the limited space of the bus’s aisle they were more a threat to each other than they were to me.

I finally lost my patience and waded into them, slapping weapons out of their hands and striking the gunmen down with swift, efficient punches. I knocked them down and trampled them, bounced them off walls, picked them up and slammed them against the low ceiling. I was careful to control my armour’s strength. I wanted living prisoners capable of answering questions. So while they did their very best to kill me, I didn’t kill a single one of them.

Because I, not my armour, was in control.

Molly was quickly there with me, darting back and forth, smiling happily as she threw shaped curses that made guns blow up in their
owners’ faces and punching in the odd head here and there, for the good of her soul. She whooped loudly as she ducked wild punches, kicked the legs out from under people and trampled them viciously underfoot. She dispensed much-deserved beatings to the ungodly, and loved every moment of it.

I laughed and fought alongside her, and that seemed to upset the gunmen even more. Especially when Diana joined the fight, darting in and out of the many shadows inside the bus, appearing and disappearing with bewildering speed as she dispensed elegant karate blows and fierce savate kicks and the odd elbow to the back of the neck to a victim who didn’t have the sense to hit the floor fast enough. Diana was a graceful, efficient fighter, her tweed skirt swirling about her as she moved with surprising speed for someone her age. And not one of the gunmen was able to point a weapon at her fast enough to save himself.

Eventually, the three of us just ran out of people to hit. We stood together, none of us breathing particularly hard, and looked around us. The inside of the bus was littered with battered and bloodied would-be assassins lying in piles, draped over the seats, gasping for air and staunching bloody mouths and noses and occasionally crying bitter tears. As professional assassins went, this bunch hadn’t travelled far. They never stood a chance, and they knew it. Molly and Diana and I looked hopefully around for someone else we could teach the error of their ways, but everyone kept their heads well down and avoided our eyes, hoping not to be noticed.

“Well, that was fun,” said Diana, adjusting the silk scarf at her throat and brushing herself down. “I was hoping I’d get the chance to see the two of you in action, and I have to say, you’re everything the reports said you were. I’m really quite impressed.”

“Not bad yourself for an old girl,” Molly said grudgingly. “Can all the Regent’s people do what you do, jumping in and out of shadows?”

“Oh yes,” said Diana. “The clue was always in the name. Apparently, the Regent acquired this very useful ability from the Hanged Man’s Clan, back when he was first on the run from his family. I say
acquired
; another version of the story says he stole it, and I wouldn’t put it past
him. The Regent has never had any problem with being…practical about matters of morality. When necessary. The shadow thing is very useful in our line of work. Do keep it to yourselves, my dears.”

“I still want to know who was in charge of all this,” I said loudly. There was a certain amount of stirring among the beaten-down gunmen, but no one said anything.

“Got to be one of these scumbags,” said Molly.

“I don’t think so,” Diana said thoughtfully. “Take a look out the windows.…”

We all leaned over the nearest bodies, which did their best to flinch out of the way, and looked outside. The windows weren’t tinted from the inside, and we had a clear view of the street. The cars and other traffic were all exactly where we’d left them, not moving at all, fixed in place in their frozen moment held outside of time.

“So whoever stopped time is still in here with us,” I said. “Hiding in plain sight and hoping to go undiscovered. I can’t See him anywhere, even through my mask.”

Molly looked slowly and carefully about her, and even hardened assassins avoided her gaze. She scowled. “I’m not Seeing any glamours or illusions, and no dimensional door he could have escaped through.…So he’s definitely still here in the bus with us, the arrogant little scrote.”

“Hell with it,” I said. “I suppose I’ll just have to punch a hole in the petrol tank, set light to the whole bus and watch them all fry.”

“It’s the only way to be sure,” Molly said solemnly.

Diana looked at us sharply and was about to say something when a new voice spoke up suddenly from among the piled-up assassins.

“All right! All right. Don’t do anything dramatic! I’m right here.…”

And one of the most battered and bloodied-looking gunmen stood up abruptly. He shook himself briefly, and all his wounds disappeared, his whole shape changing as he became someone else. The hard-faced seasoned gunman was replaced in a moment by a sulky-looking teenage boy of no more than seventeen or eighteen. Wearing distressed jeans and a T-shirt bearing the legend
Revenge Is Forever
.

“It’s an Immortal!” said Molly. “A flesh-dancer! No wonder I couldn’t detect his presence!”

Diana looked at him thoughtfully. “So that’s what they look like. I’d heard they never aged past their teens, but…Eddie, I thought your family killed off all the Immortals when you raided their secret base at Castle Frankenstein.”

“We got most of them,” I said.

“Evil, vicious little bastards that they were,” said Molly.

“But a few did get away,” I said. “Because they just deserted their own kind and ran, like rats deserting a sinking ship.” I walked up to the teenage Immortal, who flinched but didn’t back away. “So,” I said. “I thought the few of you who survived had gone to ground, hiding in squalid little bolt-holes in the armpits of the world. What brought you out of hiding to do something this dumb?”

“You did,” said the Immortal defiantly. “Your family’s dead and gone, Drood, just like mine! I thought it was finally safe to show my face again, to start up my life again and make the world march to my tune, as it should! And then you turned up, the Last Drood, alone and vulnerable. How could I resist? How could I resist the chance to avenge my murdered family?”

“One,” I said, “your family spent centuries exploiting and enslaving Humanity, just because you could, hiding behind your ever-changing faces. You tried to wipe out my family when we tried to stop you. Your family deserved everything it got, and then some. And two, a Drood is never vulnerable.”

“Why a bus?” said Molly. “And why this bunch of underachievers?”

The Immortal shrugged quickly. “Money was limited. I had to go with what I could afford. I took the Time Distorter with me when I left the castle. All of us took something, just grabbing whatever came to hand.…There was just enough energy left in the Distorter for one last time seizure. So I put together the best wild bunch I could, and came looking for you.” He glared about him. “I should have chosen more carefully. I’ll do better next time.”

“There isn’t going to be a next time,” said Molly. “I really don’t believe in killing in cold blood, but for an Immortal I’ll make the effort. Some enemies are just too dangerous and too treacherous to be allowed to live. Don’t look at me like that, Eddie. There isn’t a cell that can hold
a shape-shifter like him, and you know it. And any word of surrender he gave you would be worthless. He’ll never stop coming after you.”

“It’s not just me! There are lots of us out there!” the Immortal said defiantly. “Not just the few Immortals who escaped your massacre; all the people you ever fought, Drood! Everyone whose lives your family has ever interfered with or tried to stamp out! All your enemies, all the ones with good reason to hate you, come home to roost at last! The word is out…and we’re all coming for you. To wipe out the Last Drood. To take our revenge on you for everything your family did. We’ll never stop coming for you!”

“Unless we send them a message,” I said, and something in my voice shut him up.

“What kind of message did you have in mind?” said Diana.

“I was thinking about sticking his severed head on a spike and leaving it somewhere prominent,” I said.

“Eddie, you can’t!” said Diana.

“Pretty sure I can,” I said.

“Sounds good to me,” said Molly.

Diana stepped forward to look right into my face. Her gaze was cold, her voice flat. “It’s in your file, Eddie. That you always said you were an agent, not an assassin.”

“Yes,” I said. “Even now, after everything that’s happened, I still believe that. But sometimes you have to do something bad to prevent something worse. I have to put the fear of Drood into my enemies to keep them off my back while I get my family safely home again. You heard the little shit; they’re all out there, watching, waiting for me to show some sign of weakness. They think if they can drag me down, they can put an end to the Droods forever. And they might just be right. I’m the last hope my lost family has. If his severed head will hold them off, buy me some time…”

Diana was already shaking her head fiercely. “This isn’t the Eddie Drood I heard so much about. The man whose career I followed for so long. The man I wanted so much to meet…”

“Oh, my God,” said Molly. “She’s a fan.…”

“Please, Eddie,” said Diana, staring earnestly into my face mask. “Don’t do this. There are other ways.…”

“Such as?” said Molly.

“Hand him over to me,” Diana said steadily. “I’ll deliver him safely to the Regent, and he’ll hand the Immortal over to the Hush Squad. Those telepaths could get answers out of a stone. He’ll tell them everything he knows about everyone he’s met, and what they’re planning.…”

“No!” said the Immortal. “No! You’re not handing me over to them!”

He produced an oversized pocket watch from somewhere and cranked the handle quickly. The Time Distorter. He thrust his hand forward, aiming the thing right at me, and a huge blast of time energy shot out of the watch, shimmering in the air with a hundred different possibilities. Like a distorting heat haze generating glimpses of a hundred alternate Futures. The time energies hit my armour and immediately rebounded, unable to get a grip. They blasted right back at the Immortal and sank into him, suffusing his Immortal cell structure with concentrated temporal energies. And just like that, he began to age.

He became a young man and a middle-aged man and then an old man, all in the space of a few moments. The Immortal raised a shaking wrinkled hand in front of his sunken face and let out a low, sick cry of horror. Because the one thing Immortals can never do is age. They can change their shape to any appearance, young or old, but always with the knowledge that they can change it back again. They can die, but always as a teenager. It’s the way they’re built. Or cursed, depending on how you look at it. Either way, enforced aging was a hideous thing for an Immortal.

He threw the Time Distorter on the floor and stamped on it, but it didn’t break and it didn’t change the way he looked.

He glared at me with his old, shrivelled face, and for the first time there was something else in his eyes apart from hatred. He turned away, grabbed the nearest gun, put it to his head and pulled the trigger. The whole back of his head blew away, spattering across the window. His body slumped to the floor and lay still. The gunmen stared at him
silently. Some of them had blood and brains on them, but none of them wanted to be noticed just then.

“This is the second time that’s happened to me today,” I said. “I wish I could say I’m getting used to it.”

“Damned fool!” said Diana. “They wouldn’t have hurt him at Hush; that’s the whole point.…” She broke off, unable to continue.

“He didn’t want to betray his family,” I said. “I can understand that.”

“He knew something he didn’t want us to know,” said Molly. “Probably something really unpleasant that the rest of your enemies are planning, Eddie. Something really bad, to be worth dying over.”

“What do we do now?” said Diana.

“We cut off the Immortal’s head and stick it on a spike and leave it somewhere prominent,” I said. “Or, at least, what’s left of his head. Waste not, want not.”

“You’re serious,” said Diana, looking at me like she’d never seen me before. “You’re really serious.”

“Of course,” said Molly. “You heard the scumbag; something bad is coming. We need to send them a hard message, now more than ever. Throw a real scare into them. They won’t know he shot himself.”

Diana shook her head slowly. “I’d forgotten how cold Droods can be.”

She turned her back on Molly and me, walked into a shadow and was gone.

Molly looked out the side windows of the bus. “Traffic’s started up again. The Time Distorter must have broken when it went up against your armour.”

“The Immortal threw his pocket watch on the floor,” I said. “But…I don’t see it anywhere.”

“I’ll bet you Diana took it with her,” said Molly. “You heard Patrick in the Armoury: The Regent’s agents are always picking up useful items and taking them home.”

“The Regent will send more agents to look after this lot,” I said, glaring about me at the assorted gunmen. “So stay put, all of you. Don’t make me come after you.”

There was much general nodding and mutterings of complete agreement.

“We need to get out of here,” said Molly. “Before someone official turns up and starts asking questions. I’m really not in the mood to deal with official questions.”

“Right,” I said. I looked at the dead Immortal. “You know, I’m really not in the mood to do the whole severed-head thing. I’m just not angry enough anymore. Let his body send the message.”

Molly glared quickly about her. “All right, everyone. Listen up! Do not take this as a sign that we’re getting soft! None of you are to leave this bus until the nice agents from the Regent of Shadows arrive to take care of you! Anyone tries to do a runner, we will find out and we will track you down and perform acts of massive unpleasantness on you! Any questions?”