So I held his gaze with mine, quietly retrieved the portable
door from my pocket, activated it, and flipped the door neatly under the Hyde’s
feet. Boyd had just enough time to look startled before he fell through the new
opening and into the cellars underneath the club. He landed with a satisfyingly
loud crash, followed by a series of low moans. I picked up my portable door and
the floor returned, sealing Boyd in the cellars until someone could be bothered
to go down and rescue him. The bartender nodded his thanks, glad he hadn’t had
to get involved, and the watching crowd gave me a round of applause. Janissary
Jane and I shared a high five, while Charlatan Joe considered me thoughtfully.
"Where did you get your hands on a restricted device like a
portable door, Shaman?"
"Found it on eBay," I said.
Time continued to pass pleasantly, and by the early hours of the
morning I was drifting through a drunken haze and chatting up a giggly sex droid
who’d dropped in from the twenty-third century to do some research for her
dissertation on strange sexual hang-ups of the rich and famous. She was tall and
buxom and one hundred percent artificial, sweetly turned out in a classic little
black dress cut high enough at the back to show off the bar code and copyright
notice stamped on her magnificent left buttock. Her fizzing steel hair was full
of sparking static, her eyes were silver, and she smelled of pure musk. She ran
off a nuclear power cell located in her lower abdomen, which was just a tad
worrying, but then, no one’s perfect.
"So, what brings you to the Wulfshead?" I asked.
"Just playing tourist," she said with a smile so wide even Julia
Roberts couldn’t have matched it. "I’ve got so much more spare time since we
finally got unionised. Let’s hear it for Rossum’s Unionised Robots!"
"Down with the bosses!" I said solemnly. "Work is the curse of
the drinking classes."
"Oh, I love my work," she said, batting her huge eyelashes at
me. "It took more than one man to change my name to Silicon Lily."
And that was when my mobile phone rang. I was not pleased. The
only people who have that number are my family, and I shouldn’t have been
hearing from them so soon after a completed mission. It had to be some kind of
bad news, and almost certainly more mine than theirs. People all around me
scowled at the phone in my hand and gave me significant looks; you’re supposed
to turn off all communication devices before entering the Wulfshead. I hadn’t
thought to, because the family so rarely bothers me when I’m on downtime. I
smiled weakly, shrugged apologetically, blew a quick kiss to the sex droid, and
retired to a more or less private corner to take the call.
"I thought I told you never to call me here," I said coldly.
"Come home," said an unfamiliar voice. "Come home now. You are
needed for a personal briefing on an urgent mission."
And that was it. The phone went dead, and I slowly put it away,
my mind racing. Another mission, already? That was unheard of. I was guaranteed
at least a week between missions. Too much work in the field, and you burn out
fast. The family knows that. And why did I have to go home to be briefed?
Ordinarily they send me my mission brief, and whatever hardware I might need,
via a blind postal drop that I rotate on a regular basis; and then I just go off
and do whatever needs to be done and do my best not to get killed in the
process. Make my report to Penny afterwards, and then go to ground till I’m
needed again. The family and I maintain a civilised distance, and that’s the way
I like it.
I scowled into what remained of my drink. The phone call had
shocked me sober again. I really didn’t want to go home. Back to the Hall,
ancestral home of the extended Drood family. I hadn’t set eyes on the place in
ten years. I left right after my eighteenth birthday, to our mutual relief, and
the family sent me a regular and (fairly) generous stipend guaranteed to
continue as long as I continued to work in the field. If I ever chose to give up
my career as an agent, I could either go home or be hunted down and killed as a
dangerous rogue. That was understood. They allowed me a short leash, but that
was all. I was a Drood.
I left home because I found the weight of family duty and
history more than a little suffocating, and they let me go because they found my
attitude a pain in the arse. I’d kept myself busy, down the years, accepting
assignment after assignment just to avoid having to go home again and submit to
family authority and discipline. I liked the illusion of being my own man.
But when the family calls, you answer, if you know what’s good
for you. I was going home again, damn it to hell.
In the morning. Tonight, there was Silicon Lily…
The sun had only been up an hour or so when I finally left my
comfortable little flat tucked away in an enclosed square in one of the better
parts of Knightsbridge. The place cost more in rent every week than the family
sent me in a year, but I once did the owner a favour, and now he picks up the
tab. And in return I keep very quiet about exactly what the succubus had been
doing in that flat before I exorcised her. (Let’s just say I had to burn the bed
and scrub down the walls with a mixture of holy water and Lysol.) The
brightening sky still had streaks of crimson in it, the birds were singing their
little hearts out, the noisy bastards, and the day felt fresh and sharp with the
anticipation of things to come.
I’m not normally a morning person, but it had been a really good
night, thanks to Silicon Lily. She’d vanished from my bed in a crackle of
discharging tachyons about an hour ago, leaving me with the memory of a wink and
a smile and the scent of her perfumed sweat on my sheets. Damn, they know how to
live in the twenty-third century. I took a few deep breaths of crisp morning
air, yawned abruptly, and brushed vaguely at my blue jeans, white shirt, and
battered black leather jacket. Good enough for the family. I don’t normally
believe in getting up at the same time as everyone else, people who actually
have to earn a living, but I had a long day ahead of me. I unlocked the garage
under my flat with a Word and a gesture, and then backed my car out into the
cobbled courtyard. I revved the engine and it roared cheerfully, and I had to
grin as I thought of heads jerking up off pillows in flats all around the
square. I have to get up early, everyone gets up early.
I swept through the almost empty streets of London, ignoring red
lights and speed limits and marvelling at all the empty parking spaces. London
just after dawn is a whole different place. A few partygoers were still
stumbling home, clutching empty champagne bottles and the occasional traffic
cone, and I waved cheerfully to them as I passed. We twilight people have to
stick together.
I was driving my Hirondel sports car, the powder blue
convertible model, with the top down, and the wind ruffled my hair
affectionately as I headed out of London and aimed for the southwest
countryside, going home to meet the family. I’d had hardly any sleep and only a
rushed breakfast of milky cereal and burnt toast, but there’s nothing like a
night of really good sex to stave off a hangover. I powered down the M4
motorway, through grasslands and open fields and cultivated countryside,
enjoying the run. I sang lustily along to the Eurythmics’ Greatest Hits in the
CD player, doing harmonies when I couldn’t hit the high notes. That Annie Lennox
has got a hell of a range.
The Hirondel is a 1930s model, perfectly restored, but it also
has many modern extras and some extraordinary options, courtesy of the family
Armourer. Who firmly believes in every member of the family being prepared for
enemy attack at all times. He also believes in doing unto others before they get
the chance to do it unto you. As a result of his very talented work, speed
cameras can’t see me, my license plate is Corps Diplomatique so the cops don’t
bother me, and any car that makes the mistake of getting too close can suddenly
find itself experiencing severe engine problems. For those who insist on getting
too close, I have fore and aft electronic cannons capable of firing two thousand
explosive fléchettes a second, flamethrowers, and an EMP generator. If you ask
me, the Armourer’s seen too many spy movies. I prefer to put my faith in driving
like a bat out of hell and leaving my enemies behind to eat my exhaust.
I turned off the M4 near Bristol, by now crooning along to
Leonard Cohen’s I’m Your Man, and quickly left the main roads behind me as I
headed deep into the countryside. I drove down increasingly narrow roads until I
was well off the beaten track, and the roads became lanes, without even any road
markings or cat’s-eyes down the middle. The morning air was sharp and fresh,
filled with the scents of recently cut grass and the unmistakable presence of
cows. The southwest is dairy country. Small towns gave way to even smaller
villages and hamlets until finally the lane I was following just petered out
into a dirt track, deeply churned by heavy farm vehicles. I kept going, slower
now, following a winding way through dark and brooding woods, golden shafts of
sunlight forcing their way through the general gloom like spotlights full of
dancing dust motes. I braked sharply to avoid hitting a badger the size of a pig
as it wandered across the road, and it actually had the nerve to give me the
evil eye before scurrying off into the undergrowth. Deer watched me silently
from the sides, their eyes gleaming in the shadows.
I rounded a sharp corner, and the track ended abruptly in a high
stone wall buried under centuries’ growth of creeping ivy. Anyone else would
have slammed on their anchors and prayed for their souls, but I just kept going.
The stone wall loomed up before me, terribly solid and unforgiving, filling my
view, and then I was upon it and through it, the illusion dissipating harmlessly
around me, trailing wisps of ghostly stonework across my face like chilly
fingertips.
(To a Drood, it’s an illusion. To everyone else, it’s a solid
stone wall. And if you crash into it, don’t come crying to us. Serves you right
for trying to find us.)
Bright sunlight splashed over the car as I left the illusion
behind me and followed the long gravel path between two long rows of elm trees
and on into the extensive grounds of the Hall. There were perfectly laid out
lawns, expertly trimmed and long enough to land a plane on. Sprinklers tossed
their liquid bounty around, filling the summer air with a moist haze. Beyond the
lawns there were hedge mazes and flower gardens, ornamental fountains in the
grand Victorian style with water gushing tastefully from classical statues, and
even our own lake with swans drifting on it.
As I approached the Hall, peacocks paraded across the manicured
lawns, announcing my arrival with their harsh and raucous cries. An old wishing
well stood to one side, its red roof rusting and flaking away. We filled it in
with concrete for getting too cocky. Winged unicorns grazed outside the
adjoining stables, tossing their noble heads at me, their coats so perfect a
white they seemed almost to glow. Watchful gryphons patrolled around the Hall,
keeping an eye on the near future, ready for any attack. The perfect guardians
and watchdogs. Unfortunately, they only eat carrion, and they like to roll in it
first, so no one ever pets them and they are never allowed inside.
My family home has always been colourful as all hell. The
waterfall feature has an undine in it, the old chapel has a ghost (though my
family isn’t on speaking terms with it), and there are occasionally faeries at
the bottom of our garden. Though if you’re wise you’ll give them plenty of
space.
The Hall loomed up before me like a dentist’s appointment; it
might be necessary, but you just know it’s all going to end in tears. My
feelings on seeing the old homestead again after so long were so mixed I didn’t
even know where to start. Everywhere I looked, familiar sights leapt to my eyes,
assaulting me with nostalgia for times past, when the world seemed so much
simpler. This was the place of my childhood, my formative years. I remembered
sailing across the lake in a boat made of cobwebs and sealing magics under the
kind of blue sky and brilliant sun you only get in memories of childhood
summers. I remembered being four years old, chasing the peacocks on my stubby
legs and crying because I couldn’t catch them. I remembered dancing on the roof
in elfin boots, and flying on the unicorns, and…just lying on the lawns with a
good book, dozing through endless summer afternoons…
I also remembered endless lessons in crowded schoolrooms,
endless harsh discipline and cold courtesy, and the silent sullen resistance of
my teenage years as I stubbornly refused to be led and moulded and dictated to.
The never-ending arguments with increasingly senior members of the family over
the way my life should go, and the terrible feeling of being crushed and limited
by their rigid expectations of who and what a Drood should be. My need to be my
own man, in a family where that could never be permitted. In the end I didn’t so
much leave as run away, and to the Matriarch’s credit, she let me go.
I remembered the beatings, the angry raised voices, and, worse,
the cutting cold words of disappointment. The withholding of treats and
privileges and affection, until I learned to do without them, just to spite the
family. I learned to be self-sufficient the hard way. You temper a sword by
beating the crap out of the steel; and I have one hell of a temper.
Now I’d been summoned back, without explanation or warning, and
a cold knot of warning and paranoia twisted in the pit of my stomach. Nothing
good could come of this. Nothing good for me, anyway. Part of me wanted to just
crash the car to a halt, turn it around, and drive back out. Just keep driving
and driving, leave England, and lose myself in the darker parts of the world,
forget I ever was a Drood. But I couldn’t do that. The family wouldn’t forget.
They would declare me rogue, apostate, security risk, and they would never stop
until they had hunted me down.