Live and Let Drood: A Secret Histories Novel (43 page)

“My, my. We have been in the wars, haven’t we? But it’s a good look for you, Drood. You can go now, Major, and take your men with you. Our words are not for your ears. Clean up my gardens and make sure they’re secure, but don’t go too far. Just in case I have need of you again. For executions and the like.”

Major Michaels nodded stiffly, started to leave and then stopped and came back to hand over the Twilight Teardrop to Crow Lee. He then strode out of the room, not looking back, and his soldiers hurried out after him. The door shut itself behind them. Crow Lee held the ruby pendant in the palm of his hand, and it looked so much smaller and less potent in his huge paw. Crow Lee smiled briefly and then closed his great hand around the Twilight Teardrop and crushed it. I expected bright lights to shine out from between his fingers or strange bloodred energies to manifest and fly about the room, but the ruby just cracked and splintered in his grasp, and when he opened his hand, brilliant red fragments fluttered sadly to the floor.

“I’ve never allowed myself to become dependent on such toys,” he said. “So why leave it lying around for someone else to make use of it?” He smiled happily down at Molly, slumped in place before him, dripping blood on his expensive carpet. “Welcome to my pleasure dome, my country retreat, my private world. Everything here is exactly how I want it. Right down to the books on my shelves, bound in the flayed skin of ruined enemies, and the antique furniture, spoils of war from my feuds with…well, I won’t call them my peers. My now-deceased competitors. And did you see my door knocker? Of course you did. Ah, the old blasphemies are the best. Don’t you agree? It’s actually a bit of a strain sometimes, keeping up with what’s required of me as the Most…you know. He would have been my son, you see, the door knocker. If his stupid sow of a mother hadn’t tried to blackmail me. It’s not that I begrudged her the money, you understand. It’s just that I can’t stand ingratitude.

“But before we begin the hard talking, Edwin Drood…A surprise! A little divertissement! Behold!”

He waved one large hand, and the concealing illusion at the side of his chair disappeared, revealing two naked women wrapped in glowing chains, held in place by a cold iron chain that stretched from Crow Lee’s chair to the collars round their throats. They were Isabella and Louisa Metcalf. They both looked like they’d taken hard beatings and hadn’t been fed in some time. Molly looked at her sisters for a long moment.

“No wonder I couldn’t make contact with you,” she said finally. “No wonder no one knew where you were. How the hell did Crow Lee capture you?”

“Oh, I didn’t,” Crow Lee said immediately, leaning back in his chair and clearly enjoying himself. “Your sisters came to me of their own free will, the little darlings. Tell your dear sister the story, my pretties.”

Molly looked at me. “Eddie, stop looking at my sisters while they’re naked.”

“I’m flattered you think I’m in any state to give a damn,” I said.

“It’s the principle of the thing,” she said.

“I can have you both gagged, if you prefer,” said Crow Lee. He’d stopped smiling. We weren’t playing the game the way he wanted. “No? Then behave yourselves. Isabella, tell them why you came to me and begged for my help.”

“I talked with Louisa,” said Isabella, steadily meeting Molly’s cold gaze. “We agreed we needed new help and support if we were to punish the Droods and bring them down. Because you didn’t care anymore, Molly. They killed our parents! And you were living there in the Hall! With one of them!”

“I’m not with them,” said Molly. “I’m just with Eddie.”

“We couldn’t rely on you anymore,” said Isabella. “You’d gone over to the enemy. So we needed a new, powerful ally. Someone who hated the Droods as much as we still did. I remembered you saying you’d worked with Crow Lee in the past, so I used your name to get invited here. Louisa insisted on coming along. She thought it would be fun.”

“And you told him all about Alpha Red Alpha,” I said.

“Oh no,” Crow Lee said easily. “I already knew all about that. I told you:
There is a traitor in your family who serves me very well. Of course, I encouraged Isabella and Louisa to confide in me, to tell me everything they knew about Molly and the Droods and the Hall. And when there was nothing else they could tell me, when I had no more use for them…I took away their magic and chained them up and kept them in my kennels! Just because I could! What fun we’ve had. Haven’t we, girls?”

“Nasty little man,” Louisa said calmly. “He has no manners at all.”

“I will kill you for this,” Molly said to Crow Lee, and her voice was cold and flat and completely matter-of-fact. Crow Lee leaned forward in his chair, which creaked loudly as his great weight shifted, just so he could laugh right into her bloody face.

“No, you won’t, Molly. I think I’ve enjoyed about as much of the Metcalf sisters as I can stand.”

He waggled his fingers at the ground before him and a great hole opened up—a hole in the world, full of darkness, sucking all the air from the room. Isabella and Louisa didn’t even have time to scream before they were sucked into the hole and gone, nothing left behind but two lengths of severed iron chain dangling from Crow Lee’s chair. Molly was pulled in after them, snatched from my side before I could even react. Crow Lee waved his hand and the hole disappeared. Not a trace left behind, nothing to show it had ever been there. I fell forward, clutching at the carpet with my hands…but there was nothing there, nothing at all.

I crouched there on the floor before Crow Lee, so full of shock and horror and loss and pain I couldn’t move, could barely think. Somehow I kept it all out of my face. Because I knew Crow Lee was watching, looking for tears or despair, for something he could gloat over. And I was damned if I’d give him the satisfaction. I could deny him that, at least. My Molly was gone. It felt like someone had just punched the heart right out of me. All that was left was the cold, hard need for revenge.

When it became clear that I wasn’t going to put on a show for him, Crow Lee rose to his feet and sneered down at me.

“You’ll have to excuse me for a while, little Drood. I do have other business to deal with. Someone important I just have to talk to in the next room. You can talk to Mr. Stab while I’m gone. I’m sure you’ve got so much to say to each other.”

He laughed his happy laugh and strode heavily across the room to the side door and left, not looking back once. I watched him go, watched the door close quietly but firmly behind him and then I slowly turned my aching head to look at Mr. Stab. He met my gaze unflinchingly, even though he must have seen murder in it.

“She was your friend,” I said. “Molly was your friend!”

“Yes,” said Mr. Stab. “She was. It’s better this way, though. We would have had to kill each other eventually, I think.”

“Help me,” I said.

“Why should I do that?” said Mr. Stab.

“Because,” I said, “if you help me to avenge my Molly and help me find my lost family, I give you my word that the Droods will find a way to put an end to your curse that doesn’t involve killing you. Think of the resources at our command! We’ll find a way to undo what you did to yourself.”

“Crow Lee has already promised me that.”

“But which of us do you trust to deliver on their promise?”

“I like what I am,” said Mr. Stab. “I just want to be free of my…limitations. Crow Lee will make me a better monster.”

“That’s what you want?” I said. “What you really want?”

“That’s all that’s left for me to want, after everything I’ve done.”

“All right,” I said. “How about this? You help me, and I promise I won’t kill you for everything you’ve done.”

“Hush, Eddie,” said Mr. Stab. “I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”

He turned his back on me and walked away to stare out the window. I don’t know what it was he was looking at, but I doubt it was the gardens.

I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t believe Molly was really gone. Not just like that. I couldn’t go after her with the Merlin Glass, because only Crow Lee knew where he’d sent her. Even if I did find a way to turn
the tables, he’d die before he told me, rather than let me win. I had to believe Molly was still alive somewhere…out there.…But for now, all that was left to me was survival and revenge. If I could just concentrate on that…maybe I wouldn’t feel the pain so much. I looked over at Mr. Stab, still standing stiff-backed at the window. I reached carefully into the pocket dimension where I kept the Merlin Glass. The soldiers could search me as much as they liked, but only I had access to the pocket. This time I wasn’t interested in the Glass. I couldn’t risk jumping through the Glass in the middle of Crow Lee’s many protections. And I wasn’t interested in escaping, anyway. No, I was after something small, so small that hopefully Crow Lee wouldn’t detect it. Something the Armourer Patrick had given me.

The hearing aid.

Just a little blob of flesh-coloured plastic with some really clever electronics hidden inside. I eased it out of my pocket, palmed it, and then snuck it into my right ear. I glanced quickly at Mr. Stab, but he didn’t seem to be paying any attention to me. I surreptitiously adjusted the tuning on the hearing aid, and immediately I could hear everything Crow Lee was saying in the adjoining room. He was addressing someone else, in his usual arrogant and condescending way, but whomever he was speaking to would have none of it and responded entirely in kind. There was something about the second voice that I found sort of familiar, though I couldn’t place it. I concentrated on what they were saying.

“…I have always been well served by traitors,” said Crow Lee.

“I’m not just any traitor,” said the second voice. “I am the worm at the heart of the Droods, the viper they have nursed at their bosom. Do you really think I’d bow down to the likes of you?”

“You will if you know what’s good for you,” Crow Lee said complacently. “I am the power here.”

“And I am a Drood. The First Drood! I am older than your power, little magician. I have lived lifetimes and seen civilisations rise and fall.”

“But you’re not a Drood anymore, are you? You don’t have your armour…though Eddie does. Isn’t that odd?”

“Odder than you realise,” said the traitor. “He shouldn’t be able to access his armour with the other-dimensional intruder dismissed along with the Hall. We’re going to have to make Eddie tell us where he got his armour from.”

“We?” said Crow Lee, lazily. “What’s in it for me?”

“I will have his armour. I want it. And then you’ll have a Drood in full armour as your ally. I want that armour!”

“Well, you can’t have it,” said Crow Lee. “I’m going to strip it off Eddie and then destroy it. Then the Droods really will be gone from this world.…Of course, I might decide to keep it for myself. You know how much I enjoy playing with new toys.…Where did you get that?”

“From the Armageddon Codex,” said the traitor. “Where all the Droods’ forbidden weapons are kept. I took it with me before I left the Hall, before it was sent away. It wasn’t difficult. I was there when they built the Codex. I helped design the locking systems. Who has a better right to this weapon than I?”

“What better weapon for a traitor,” said Crow Lee, “than Oath Breaker?”

I couldn’t help but react to that, at the thought of one of our most dangerous weapons in the hands of a traitor. I must have made some kind of noise, because Mr. Stab turned around and looked at me. I held myself very still, and he went back to looking out the window.

“You have nothing that can stand against me as long as I hold Oath Breaker,” said the traitor.

“Don’t be too sure of that,” Crow Lee said steadily. “You’d be surprised at some of the Objects of Power I’ve acquired here and there. But this is no time to be falling out, when we’ve achieved so much together! Let us think of our partnership as a balance of power and move on. Come with me, into the study. I want to see Eddie brought down by another Drood.”

I quickly eased the hearing aid out of my ear and slipped it back into my pocket dimension. And then I did my best to look surprised when Crow Lee strode back in with the traitor Drood at his side. I didn’t recognise him at all. He was a very ordinary-looking man, nothing
remarkable about him at all. He did look sort of familiar, but I couldn’t place him. It’s a big family, the Droods.

“You don’t know me, do you?” said the traitor. “Even though we’ve spoken many times in passing. But then, that’s the point. I’m never anyone important or significant, and I don’t stand out. I’m always just there in the background, perhaps some useful functionary, just another Drood doing a necessary job…poisoning the wells in the quiet of the night. Adrian Drood, at the moment. Not my real name, of course. But then, I’ve had so many names and identities down the centuries.”

“You’re the Original Traitor,” I said. “The one who’s undermined and betrayed us over and over. Why?”

“Because the family has moved away from what I intended it to be,” Adrian said calmly. “I was the very first Drood. I was there when the Heart first fell to Earth. I made the original pact with the Heart for power and armour. I made the Droods possible! Everything they are came from me! I set us up to be shamans and protectors, shepherds to Humanity…but it was never meant that the sheep should forget their place.

“The family forced me out of power because I wouldn’t go along with their changes. Exiled me, made me the first rogue Drood. So I disappeared, went away, walked up and down the world, hugging my rage and hatred to my cold, cold heart. I spent a lot of time with the Immortals, a family much like mine. I gave their leader the idea for immortality, having begged it from the Heart for myself as part of the deal I made. Centuries later I returned to the Droods. Killed some small nonentity and took over his identity. The Immortals showed me how to do that.

“And ever since I have always been there, hiding in plain sight in the background, doing my best to nudge and persuade the family back to what it should be. Just a quiet, influential voice advising and guiding those in positions of power. And removing those who got in my way. Those who wouldn’t listen. Nothing like a good accident to stir things up and move people around.”