There was the sound of furniture being dragged away from the door, and then after a bit the door unlocked itself. I pushed it open, and we all filed into Truman’s office. Once it might have been luxurious, even impressive, but now it looked like a bolt hole. The place was a mess, and it stank of sweat and fear. Truman was sitting stiffly behind his desk, half a dozen guns set out before him, though he had the sense to keep his hands well away from them. He held his head erect, no doubt braced by implants, to support what he’d done to himself, to his head and his brain. Truman believed in the gains to be made from extensive trepanation, or the making of holes in the skull to allow the brain to expand. So he’d drilled a dozen holes in his skull and then inserted long steel rods deep into his brain. The great steel spikes protruded from his head, radiating in a wide circle connected by a steel hoop, like a metal halo. This was supposed to make him smarter than the average human, but I couldn’t say I’d ever seen any evidence of it. Truman looked pale and drawn, with eyes like a hunted animal. He managed a shaky smile for me and Molly.
“Just when I think things couldn’t possibly get any worse, you two turn up.”
“Tell us what happened,” Molly said flatly. “And then we’ll decide whether your miserable arse is worth saving. What have you done here, Truman?”
“I never wanted to ally Manifest Destiny with the Loathly Ones,” he said, looking at his hands so he wouldn’t have to look at us. “They are everything I hate and despise. But after you destroyed my old organisation, I had to go underground, and my advisors insisted that we needed powerful support if we were to protect ourselves while we rebuilt. And they came to me, the Loathly Ones, and said all the right things, and promised me the world and everything in it, if I would just let them build one of their damned towers here. I knew the risks, can’t say I didn’t, but I was so sure I could control them, use them, and then destroy the tower before they could do anything with it… I was a fool. They infected my people one by one, starting with my advisors, so I only heard what they wanted me to hear. The first I knew something was wrong was when the infected drones suddenly attacked the rest of my people, right here in my own base.” He smiled suddenly, an odd, crooked smile. “They even infected me. Oh yes. One of my oldest friends did it, putting their filthy presence inside me. But I killed him, and then I killed it. Killed it dead. My augmented brain was more than a match for the small, weak thing they put in my head. I ate it, and savoured its dying screams in my mind.”
He actually laughed out loud then, enjoying the memory, and only sobered as he took in the expressions on our faces. “Of course, by then it was too late. My people had been taken over or butchered, my base had been torn apart to provide the final material for their stinking tower. But I shall still have the last laugh! Oh yes! I have a secret weapon, secretly prepared for the day they might rise up against me. The Soul Gun…Only I have the access codes. No one else can get to it, or fire it. Let them activate their tower! I shall activate my Soul Gun, drain all the power out of the Soul of Albion, and use it to banish the Loathly Ones from this world forever!”
He glared around at us triumphantly, but Molly and I were already shaking our heads.
“Won’t work,” I said. “Your trouble is, you never did take the trouble to work out what the Soul of Albion really is. It’s not just a thing, an object you can use. The Soul fell to earth from a higher dimension, just like the Drood Heart. It might even be a splinter that broke off from the Heart during its descent. Strictly speaking, the Soul is a baby crystal intelligence, only centuries old, too young to have developed a full personality. It protects England, because this is what it thinks of as home. You try and drain its power, suck all the life out of it, and it’ll just destroy you and your base, and go back to sleep again.”
“And even if you could make it work,” said Molly, “do you really think one baby crystal could hope to hold back the Invaders, the Many-Angled Ones, the Hungry Gods? You do know that’s what the tower is designed to bring here?”
“No,” said Truman. “No, no… You’re just trying to frighten me…”
“Trust me,” I said. “We’re already scared enough. We have to destroy the tower before the Invaders come through. Where is it?”
An alarm went off, deafeningly loud in the small office. We all jumped. Truman stabbed at the controls on his desktop, and a monitor screen flared into life on the wall, showing Harry Drood and Roger Morningstar moving cautiously through the underground base. They’d finally got here. I had to smile. Harry would so hate coming second.
“Damn,” said Molly. “In all the excitement I’d forgotten about them.”
“I haven’t forgotten about all the Droods they brought with them,” I said. I fixed Truman with a cold stare. “Your Accelerated Men, and your damned Soul Gun, killed hundreds of my family.”
He smiled spitefully at me. “I only wish it could have been more. You brought me to this, brought me so low I had to ally myself with alien scum! Everything that’s happened here is your fault, Drood!”
“Oh, shut up, you wimp,” said Molly, and the sheer distaste in her voice stopped him like a slap in the face. She moved around beside the desk, found the general address, and called Harry and Roger by name. They both looked up, startled, and Molly grinned as she gave them directions to join us in Truman’s office.
“Excuse me,” Giles Deathstalker said quietly, “but what is that thing on his head?”
“Cutting-edge technology,” I said solemnly.
Giles raised an eyebrow. “In my day we find it more useful to put the technology inside the head. Mind you, we also find it useful to shoot overambitious idiots like this on sight.”
Harry and Roger finally found their way to Truman’s office and barged right in without knocking. Harry looked at me and sniffed loudly.
“Might have known you’d find a way to be here for the end, and grab all the glory for yourself.”
“That’s right,” I said. “Because I’m so like you, Harry.”
“Boys, boys,” said Molly. “Put them away or I’ll cut them off. We are on something of a deadline here… Truman’s going to take us to the tower.”
“You do know he’s infected?” said Roger.
“I used to be,” Truman said haughtily. “I destroyed it with my augmented brain.”
“Actually, no,” said Roger, looking thoughtfully at Truman. “With my amazing demon X-ray vision, I can See it’s still in there. Hell, I can practically smell it, it’s so advanced. It just let you think you’d destroyed it, so it could grow and influence you undetected. Sorry. There’s never any cure, once you’re infected.”
“Never?” said Molly.
“Not a chance in Hell,” said Roger, still looking at Truman.
Truman started to say something, and then stopped. He looked distracted, as though listening to some inner voice. And then he looked at us, looking at him, and his face firmed.
“Kill me,” he said. “I will die a human being, and myself; not some damned alien thing. Kill me!”
“Glad to,” said Roger Morningstar.
He leaned over the desk, grabbed the steel halo connecting Truman’s implanted spikes, and ripped it away. Truman screamed piteously, in pain and shock. Roger grabbed the spikes and pulled them, out one by one. They came out in sudden jerks, inch by inch, under his demonic strength, accompanied by gouting blood and bits of brain, and the sound of cracking, splintering bone. Truman was screaming constantly by now, an almost animal-like sound, his arms flailing helplessly, but none of us moved forward to stop Roger. I wanted to look away, but I made myself watch it all as punishment. By the time it was over, Truman was slumped forward over his desk, his head torn apart, twitching slowly as the last of his life went out of him. Roger studied the last spike closely, as though it might hold secrets, then just shrugged and tossed it aside.
Harry glared at him. “There was no need for it to be that brutal!”
“Oh, no need,” said Roger. “But it was fun.” He smiled at me. “You can’t tell us you never dreamed of doing that, Eddie.”
“No,” I said. “I never dreamed of doing anything like that, hellspawn.”
“Oh well,” said Roger. “No point crying over spilled brains.”
“I could kill the hellspawn for you, if you like,” said Mr. Stab.
He might have been discussing the weather. Roger started to say something, looked at Mr. Stab, and thought better of it.
“Thanks for the thought,” I said. “But no.”
“We have to get to the tower,” said Molly, her voice cold and focused. “It’s not far. I can feel its presence with my magics.”
“Then lead the way,” I said.
We followed Molly through the maze of steel corridors, and down into the deepest part of the underground bunker, until we were in a great steel-walled chamber directly under the standing Stones of Stonehenge. And there it was, sunk deep into a pit hollowed out of the bare earth; tall and complex and unnaturally shaped, the last tower of the Loathly Ones. There wasn’t room to build it high, so they’d sunk it deep. We could only see the top twenty feet or so, a jagged structure of alien technology combined with flesh and blood. Metal and crystal seamlessly fused with living parts. We all circled slowly around the exposed top of the tower, our feet sinking into the wet earth. This close, there was no doubt the thing was alive, in its own awful way. It was alive and it was aware. It knew we were there…and it didn’t care. It was complete and it was activated, We’d arrived too late.
Already a gateway was forming, an opening to another place. I couldn’t see or hear it, but I could feel it on some deeper, primal level: like a great eye watching me, like a wound in the world, like a door into Hell. Like a great cold wind blowing right at me from a direction I couldn’t name, chilling me down to the soul. Slowly I became aware of sounds too. I don’t think I was hearing them with my ears. Voices; howling, screaming, laughing, coupled with the sounds of tearing flesh and great siege engines slamming together forever. All the sounds of Hell on earth.
Molly grabbed me by the arm and shook me fiercely, and I came to myself again. Harry and Roger and Giles and even Mr. Stab were still staring wide-eyed and entranced at the forming gateway, as strange energies swirled and coalesced around the tower.
“We’ve got to do something!” said Molly. “The gateway’s opening! They’re coming!”
“I guess Jacob and Jay never got through after all,” I said numbly.
“Eddie …!”
“I know,” I said. “I know.” I looked at her. “How do you feel, Molly?”
“I’m still me,” she said, meeting my gaze squarely. “But I don’t know for how much longer.”
“Then let’s do it,” I said. I reached into my jacket pocket and brought out Janissary Jane’s weapon of last resort, the Deplorable End. It still didn’t look like much.
“Do we have the right to destroy our whole universe, just to wipe out the Hungry Gods?” said Molly.
“Hell no,” said Roger unexpectedly. He’d torn his attention away from the tower and was now looking at the thing squatting on my palm. “Is that what I think it is? Eddie, you can’t use it. Not while there’s still a chance, any chance…”
I had to smile. “A demon who still believes in hope. Now I’ve seen everything.”
“I believe in him,” said Roger, looking at Harry. “I have to hope… that we can find a way to be together. Not even a half demon is automatically damned for all time. You have to save the world, Eddie, so we can have a place to grow old in.”
“If the Hungry Gods come through, they’ll destroy this world and everything in it,” said Molly. “And then move on, from world to world, until there isn’t a living thing left anywhere. That’s what they do. Cosmic locusts.”
“I have no intention of destroying this universe, or this world,” I said. “I never did. I think… I’ll wait till the gateway has opened enough, and then I’ll go through it into their universe, their world; and blow it all to shit before they can come through.”
“You’re not going in there alone,” Molly said immediately. “You’ll need my magics just to survive in their world long enough to press the button. I won’t let you die alone.”
“Molly…”
“What reason have I got to live without you?” said Molly. “What reason have I got to live, as I am?”
“And you’re going to need me,” said Giles Deathstalker. He had Harry and Mr. Stab by the arms, pulling them away from the tower. They were both shaking their heads, coming to themselves again. Giles looked at me calmly. “You’ll need me to help you survive and operate in an alien environment. You’re not used to that. I am.”
“Fine by me,” said Harry, blinking his eyes hard, careful not to look directly at the tower. “Roger and I and Mr. Stab will stay here, and…guard the situation.”
“Quite right,” said Mr. Stab. “I know my limitations.” He nodded briefly to me. “You, of course, are a Drood, and therefore have no limitations. Everyone knows that.”
I looked at Giles. “I didn’t bring you here, across thousands of years, just so you could die fighting for someone else’s cause.”
He shrugged easily. “I am a warrior. Fighting is what I do. And besides, this is about family as well as saving humanity. You took me in, made me feel like one of you. I never knew that before. Never really had a family, before. You taught me the worth of duty and honour and responsibility. You have shown me what it really is to be a man. To be a Drood, and a Deathstalker. So I will fight, and if need be die, for what you gave me. Anything, for the family.”
Roger looked around sharply, glaring at the tower. “It knows we’re planning something. It’s just put out some kind of call, or alarm…summoning something.”
We all looked around sharply as, from back inside the bunker, we heard something moving. The sound of bodies rising up, and slow dragging feet…and I just knew what it had to be. All the dead bodies in Truman’s base, raised up by the tower’s power, and summoned to defend it in its time of need. The dead, called to strike down the living. I grinned at Harry.
“Looks like you’re going to have to guard the situation after all. Hold your ground, keep those things back, for as long as you can. Just in case the three of us can find a way to come home. You never know.”