I pulled the car to the side of the road, some distance short of my flat, and stopped. Molly looked at me inquiringly. I quietly pointed out several of the enemy, prevented her from launching an immediate preemptive strike, and persuaded her to sit quietly while I examined the scene more fully, using the Sight. Just like my old collar, my new silver torc allowed me to See much more of the world as it really was, rather than through humanity’s limited senses. The world is a much bigger place than most people realise, full of the strange and the terrible, walking unseen and unsuspected alongside us.
There were a couple of elves, tall and proud and haughty. They live somewhere else now, and only ever turn up in our world when there’s a good chance to screw us over or kick us when we’re down. It’s all they’ve got left, these days. There were aliens; grays and lizardoids and a few things whose shapes made no sense at all. They really do walk among us. Tourists, mostly. If they look like getting out of hand, the family usually just spanks them and sends them home. Ghosts drifted here and there, trapped in repeating loops of time. And there were things walking through walls, or scrambling up them, or hovering in the skies overhead. Far too many of them for it all to be just a coincidence. Word does get around fast in the unnatural community.
I shut down my Sight. You can’t See the world as it really is for too long; the human mind just isn’t equipped to cope. Luckily, none of them could See me, as long as I wore the torc. They had to wait for me to reveal myself… I grinned. It was time to use one of the Bentley’s really special features.
“Eddie, what are you planning?” said Molly.
I smiled at her beatifically. “Brace yourself, sweetie. I’m taking this car up to eleven!”
I pushed the pedal to the floor, let go the clutch, and the Bentley surged forward, its engine howling like a wolf on the hunt. We shot past the hundred mark in a few seconds as I slammed through the gears, and then I hit the hidden switch and threw her into Overdrive. Molly and I were forced back into our seats by the terrible acceleration, and the world blurred around us as we left it behind. The Bentley punched through the walls of the world, and just like that we were somewhere else.
Freed from the everyday restrictions of time and space, the Bentley tore through the dimensions, day and night flickering on and off like a stroboscope. Stars blazed in somewhere else’s night skies, in constellations never seen from Earth. There were strange sounds and incandescent lights, and a city singing in a million inhuman voices. Visions and vistas flickered on and off as we shot through them like a bullet, intangible and unsubstantial, though whether they were the ghosts or we were is probably just a matter of opinion. Molly shrieked and howled with delight, and only the need to concentrate on the steering kept me from joining in. Drunk on speed, crazed on velocity, we hammered through the dimensions until I saw the sign I was looking for and took a sharp right turn back into our reality.
Different worlds Dopplered past us as I slammed on the brakes, and when the Bentley finally shuddered to a halt, we were sitting inside my garage, underneath my flat. I quickly shut down the engine and took my hands off the steering wheel. They were shaking, and not just from the exhilaration. Taking sideways journeys through adjoining dimensions is always dangerous. You can never tell what might notice you, and decide to follow you home. I got out of the car on only slightly unsteady legs and checked the car over carefully, to make sure we hadn’t picked up any unwanted hitchhikers. Paying special attention to the undercarriage.
Molly was already out of the car and dancing around it, punching the air with her fist. “That was fantastic! Let’s do it again! What
was
that?”
“A shortcut,” I said, peering suspiciously under a front bumper.
“You take me on the best rides, Eddie!”
I straightened up, and she threw her arms around me and hugged me. I let her.
“Welcome to my garage,” I said. “It’s small, but pokey. Now come on up and see my flat. Try not to be too underwhelmed. We can’t all live in a forest.”
I studied the door to my flat carefully. Everything seemed normal, nothing out of place, but the door wasn’t locked. I could tell. And I always lock the door behind me when I leave. Secret agents really can’t afford to forget things like that. So I stood a safe distance away from my door and looked at it thoughtfully, while Molly looked at me.
“What’s wrong?”
“Someone’s been here.”
“Your enemies?”
“More likely my family. As soon as I was declared rogue, the Matriarch would have sent a team here to turn my flat over, looking for evidence she could use against me. And my family is never subtle about such things.”
“You think they left a booby trap behind?”
“No. I’d See a trap. More likely they just trashed the place, to leave a message. It’s what I would have done, when I was a field agent.”
I took a deep breath, pushed the door open, and went in. They’d trashed my home, and been very thorough about it. All the furniture had been overturned, where it hadn’t been smashed. They’d torn up the carpeting to lever up the floorboards. My possessions had been tossed all over the place, all the drawers pulled out and emptied, their contents scattered everywhere. My computer had been torn apart to get at the hard drive, and the monitor had been smashed.
They’d even ripped the posters off the wall and torn them up.
Every room was the same. Nothing had been spared. They’d even dragged the covers off my bed and cut open the mattress, to search inside it. And on the bedroom wall, above the headboard, someone had spray-painted the word
traitor.
The word hit me like a punch in the gut. A cold fist closed around my heart, and it was all I could do to get my breath. Molly came in beside me and saw the word on the wall. She slipped an arm through mine and hugged it to her side.
“Oh, Eddie, I’m so sorry. I’m sure this was a lovely place before…”
“I was never a traitor,” I said. I didn’t recognise my own voice. “I was the only one who stayed true to what the family was supposed to be.”
“I know, Eddie. Come away.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “It’s all right.”
It wasn’t, but I let her lead me away.
Back in the living room, I looked around me, trying to make some sense of the mess. They hadn’t actually broken much. Probably didn’t have the time.
“They really did a job on you,” said Molly. She was trying hard not to step on things, but it was impossible. I loved her for making the effort, though.
“It’s what I expected,” I said. “I did worse, in my time, when I was a field agent. Turning over some villain’s lair in the search for clues, or evidence. Or just because I could. It was all part of the game, then. But…cosmic payback’s a bitch. Do you believe in karma, Molly?”
“My karma ran over my dogma,” Molly said briskly. “Didn’t you think to put any protections around your home?”
I snorted. “Tons of the bloody things. You’d have a better chance of breaking into Bill Gates’s private porn stash. But nothing my family couldn’t get through. I never thought I’d need to protect myself against my own family.”
Molly frowned. “Wouldn’t the neighbours have heard something, and called the police?”
“No one ever hears a Drood at work,” I said. “Or if they do, we make them forget it.”
“For their own good, of course.”
“Mostly, yes. Oh, I see; you were being ironic. Sorry. I’m not always very good at picking up on that.”
“You and your whole family,” muttered Molly.
“What?”
“Nothing…What do you suppose they were looking for here?”
“The usual,” I said. “Objects of Power, unauthorised grimoires and forbidden texts, information I shouldn’t have had access to … maybe even records of payments from outside the family. Anything they could use to condemn, pressure, or blackmail me. My family has always preferred to negotiate from a position of strength. Fools… As though I’d leave anything that important just lying around here, for anyone to find…”
“Right,” said Molly, smiling mischievously. “Where do you keep your really secret stuff, Eddie? Your embarrassing photos of yourself as a kid, your old teenage crush love letters, and your own personal naughty films? Any particular favourites you might want to bring along with you? I can be very broad-minded…”
“I don’t have any of those things,” I said with some dignity.
Molly sighed and shook her head. “For a secret agent, you’ve led a very sheltered life. Not to worry, Eddie. I’ll be your porn.”
I smiled. “And they say romantic banter is dead.” It didn’t take me long to gather up the few things I wanted to take with me. Some battered old Bruin Bear and the Sea Goat books that were my favourites when I was a kid. A framed photo of my parents, taken just before they went off to die on one last mission for the family. Molly studied the photo curiously.
“They look so young,” she said finally. “Not even as old as we are now. Much the same age as my parents, when they were murdered by the Droods.”
“We have so much in common,” I said, dropping the photo into a carrier bag along with the books. “I promise you; I will find out the truth about what really happened to your parents, and mine.”
“If you like,” said Molly. “I told you; I don’t believe in looking back.”
I rescued a dozen or so of my favourite CDs from the mess on the floor. (Molly drew the line at any of my Enya albums, which I thought was a bit mean. I don’t object to her playing her Iron Maiden in the car.) And that…was that. I looked around, but there wasn’t anything else I wanted to take with me. I looked down at the carrier bag. Not much to show, for ten years in one place. Not much to show, for a life.
“I did have some good times here,” I said.
“Yeah, right,” said Molly. “I’ll bet you were a real party animal at weekends.”
“No,” I said. “I hardly ever brought people back here. Because people only knew me as Shaman Bond, and this was the only place I could be Eddie Drood. The family discourages field agents from having close friends, or anything else. Close associations might dilute our loyalty to the family. And you can’t ever be really close to anyone, when the life you share is a lie. Agents in the field live solitary lives, because we have to. Because when you care for someone, you don’t want to endanger them.”
“And your family encouraged this?” said Molly.
“Of course. They wanted the family to be the most important thing in our lives, so we might never be tempted to turn away from them. I had more freedom than most, and I still toed the family line…right up to the point where they turned on me. I had friends…but I could never tell them anything that mattered. I had lovers, but never loves. It wasn’t allowed. All I had…was the work.”
“If you start getting maudlin on me,” Molly said firmly, “I will slap you, and it will hurt. I told you; never look back. All you ever see are mistakes, failures, and missed opportunities. Concentrate on the here and now! You’re running your family, you have all the best toys to play with, and you have me! What more could mortal man desire?”
“My Enya CDs.”
“One slap, on its way.”
We both laughed. I took her in my arms and held her close. She nuzzled her face into my shoulder and rubbed my back with her hands. I bent my head over hers and breathed deeply the perfume from her hair. I felt…like I could have stayed there forever. But I had things to do.
“My world used to be so simple,” I said. “I knew who I was, and what I was, and what I was supposed to do with my life.”
“No,” said Molly, not raising her head from my shoulder. “You only thought you did. Welcome to the real world, Eddie. Hateful place, isn’t it?”
“No,” I said. “It has you in it.”
We left the flat and made our way down into the enclosed courtyard below, and then stopped as we realised the wrought-iron gates were standing wide open. I looked out into the street, and a whole army of heavily armed and armoured men looked right back at me. Molly moved in close beside me. Two black attack helicopters filled the early morning with their clamour as they manoeuvred into position overhead. I lifted my head and squared my shoulders. First rule of a field agent; never show fear. I sauntered over to the open gates for a better look.
There had to be at least fifty armed men, anonymous in body armour and dark-visored helmets, every one of them pointing their oversized guns right at me. Automatic weapons, too; top of the line. They weren’t taking any chances. I looked up and down the street. They’d blocked off both ends with armoured vehicles. Frightened faces peered out from closed windows, up and down the street. You didn’t expect scenes like this in civilised Knightsbridge.
One armoured figure moved forward to face me, still careful to maintain a safe distance. He pushed his visor up just enough to get an electric bullhorn under it.
“Edwin Drood, Molly Metcalf; you are ordered to surrender yourselves. Failure to do so will be met with all necessary force.”
I looked at Molly. “So, how do you want to play this?”
She smiled sweetly. “Oh, the usual, I think. Extreme violence and unpleasantness, visited upon one and all, suddenly and horribly and all over the place.”
“My kind of woman,” I said.
“
Surrender or die
!” said the spokesman through his bullhorn.
“Do you mind?” I said witheringly. “We’re talking, here. We’ll get to you in a moment.” I turned back to Molly. “I’m a bit reluctant to go head-to-head with them here. Right out in the open, surrounded by innocent bystanders.”
Molly shrugged. “They chose the setting. We could make a run for the Bentley, I suppose, and shortcut our way out of this…but I don’t do the running thing.”
“Same here,” I said. “It does so tend to give the wrong impression. These scumbags need to be reminded of what it means to challenge a Drood.”
“And the wild witch of the woods, darling.”
“Of course, my dear.”
“
If you don’t surrender right this minute
…”
I had to laugh. “He doesn’t know us very well, does he? Who do you think they are?”