He looked more demonic than ever. Crimson flames curled around his cloven hooves, and he’d left a trail of burning hoofprints behind him in the expensive rugs and carpets. He carried with him a stench of blood and sulphur and sour milk: the scent of Hell. A circle of buzzing flies surrounded his horned head like a halo.
“Sorry about all that,” he said easily. “Have to let them have their fun now and again.”
“Why?” I said.
He nodded slowly, knowing I wasn’t talking about the crowd. Why am I here? Why am I on Hell’s team? Oh, Eddie, it’s really very simple. When I last went down into Hell, as an emissary for your family, it was made very clear to me in the Houses of Pain that I was persona non grata. For letting the side down, for embracing my human nature over my infernal inheritance, for siding with the Droods. But most of all for showing love and compassion to Harry. That’s not allowed for my kind. I was given a choice: Show which side I was truly on by leading this new Satanist conspiracy, betraying the Droods in general and Harry in particular . . . or be hauled down into Hell again at the first opportunity, dragged screaming and kicking into the Pit, to know torment and horror forever. Not a difficult choice, really.
“And now, the end is nigh. There’s enough power in this place and in these people to allow me to peel that armour right off you. If you won’t see sense and surrender.”
I laughed right into his face. “You could try, hellspawn.”
“The time of the Droods is over. This is Hell’s time, come round at last. You heard what’s coming. You can’t stop it.”
“This isn’t you, Roger,” I said. “Not really. You were with us when we fought the Hungry Gods, and the Accelerated Men, and the Immortals.”
“That was then,” said Roger. “This is now. And this, truly, is me.”
“Do you really think this pathetic bunch of losers and wannabes will ever be a match for my family?”
The crowd made ugly noises, only to fall silent again the moment Roger glanced at them. Roger smiled calmly. “We have something you don’t.”
“Like what?”
“You’ll find out. The whole point of a secret weapon is to keep it secret right up until you finally use it.”
“So,” I said. “What now? Are you really going to try to kill me, cousin?”
“No,” said Roger. “I’m going to let you go.”
“What?” I said.
But my voice was drowned out by the crowd’s. They turned on Roger, yelling and protesting in a hundred voices at once. A Drood, helpless before them? They’d dreamed of an opportunity like this. Some of them had been at Lightbringer House when Alexandre Dusk had let me go, and they weren’t at all happy about my escaping their anger again. But Roger glared about him, not even deigning to speak to them, and where his gaze fell the Satanists grew silent and looked away. And slowly, like a man surrounded by a pack of half-trained dogs, Roger brought them under control again.
“I want you to go back to your family, Edwin, and tell them of your failure.” Roger smiled slowly, letting me see his pointed teeth. “I want you to make your report to the council and tell them everything you learned here.”
“Tell Harry?” I said.
“Tell them all. I want the Droods to know what’s coming, what I’ve put together to send against you. There’s nothing you can do to stop it. Because you’re one oversize and overextended family, while the conspiracy is a worldwide organisation with governments at our beck and call.”
“What should I tell Harry?” I said.
“Tell him . . . it was fun while it lasted.” He made a brusque gesture with one hand. “There. The shields are down. Go. While you still can.”
Molly and Isabella appeared immediately behind me, grabbed me in their arms and teleported me out. And the last thing I heard was Roger Morningstar’s infernal laughter.
CHAPTER NINE
For a Moment There, I Thought We Might Be in Trouble
G
lad as I was to be waving good-bye to the Satanists’ little get-together, of all the places Molly and Isabella might have teleported me to, a Drood Council meeting in the Sanctity . . . wouldn’t even have made my top ten. But still, when the glare of the teleport died down, there Molly and I were, standing right in front of the council table, facing a somewhat startled Sarjeant-at-Arms, the Armourer, Harry and . . . William the Librarian. The Sarjeant went from startled to shocked to a state of utter outrage, where his face went a shade of purple not normally seen in nature. Unless you’re thinking of a baboon’s arse, which mostly I try not to. The Armourer cracked a big smile, and actually dropped me a brief wink. Harry looked at me disapprovingly, but then, he always did. While William . . . considered me thoughtfully, his expression surprisingly cool and collected. He was also a whole lot better dressed than usual, in that he looked like he might actually have dressed himself, for once. The Sarjeant glared at Molly and me.
“Just once, I would appreciate it if you could find the common courtesy to use the bloody door, like everyone else!”
“Boring,” said Molly. “I don’t do ordinary, and I have never been like everyone else.”
“One of your many charms,” I said. “And thanks for the rescue.”
“Rescue?” said the Armourer. “Are we to take it something went wrong with your infiltration of the Satanists’ meeting?”
“Pretty much everything that could go wrong did,” I said.
“Hold it,” said Molly, looking quickly around her. “Where’s Isabella?”
“She was right there with you when you arrived to grab me,” I said. “Was she supposed to appear here with you?”
“Well, I assumed . . . We were both hovering nearby in London Undertowen, waiting for the Satanists’ shields to drop long enough for us to jump in and haul you away. . . . We didn’t bother to discuss things. I suppose she must have decided she wouldn’t be welcome here.” She scowled at the Sarjeant. “Wonder where she could have got that idea.”
“I’m sure she’ll turn up,” I said soothingly. “Whether we like it or not.”
“Yeah, that’s Isabella for you.” Molly beamed at me suddenly. “Hey, I rescued you!”
I sighed. “You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?”
“Never,” Molly said happily.
“He was letting me go, you know.”
She snorted loudly. “That’s what he
said
. . . .”
“Enough!” said the Sarjeant-at-Arms, slamming one huge fist on the table. “I want your report, Edwin! I want to know everything that happened at the Satanists’ meeting, everything that went wrong, and why a Drood in full armour needed to be rescued!”
There are some things you can’t put off indefinitely, and one of them is the breaking of bad news. I armoured down, and then Molly and I drew up chairs and sat down at the table, and I filled the council in on all that I’d learned in Under Parliament. Including Roger Morningstar’s presence, his important position in the conspiracy, and his explanation of the true nature of the coming Great Sacrifice. No one on the council said anything, but all of them listened intently. They couldn’t keep the emotions out of their faces. They were appalled, disgusted, outraged; but in the end they all showed nothing but a cold determination. Because we are Droods, and we know our duty: to seek out the evil forces that threaten Humanity and put a stop to them. Whatever it takes; whatever it costs us.
“But who’s behind all this?” the Armourer said finally. “Alexandre Dusk was the front man at Lightbringer House, but bad as he is, he’s not top rank and never has been. And while Roger was the main speaker at Under Parliament, there’s no way he could be in charge of the conspiracy. So who’s running things? Who came up with the idea of the Great Sacrifice, and then arranged the necessary threats and pressures to make all the governments of the world go along with it?”
“No one at the meeting knew,” said Molly. “And it wasn’t for lack of trying to find out.”
“I still can’t believe Roger could have betrayed us all,” said Harry. He was trying to sound calm and professional, like everyone else, but his heart wasn’t in it. He took off his wire-rimmed spectacles and rubbed at his forehead tiredly. He was sitting slumped in his chair, as though he’d taken a hit. “He couldn’t do this to us. He wouldn’t! He must be working undercover, trying to bring them down from inside. . . .”
“I’m sorry, Harry,” I said, and I really was. “I don’t think so.”
“You never liked him!” Harry yelled at me, his face flushed with anger and something else. “You were one of those who wanted to split us up because . . . just because he was what he was. . . .”
He stopped, on the edge of tears he refused to shed in front of us. No one said anything. In the end, surprisingly, it was Molly who tried to comfort him.
“I cared for him, too, once. He did have . . . admirable qualities. But we always knew what he was, what he really was. . . .”
“Once a hellspawn,” said the Sarjeant-at-Arms.
“Shut up!” said Harry. “I don’t want to hear it! You didn’t know him! You never even tried to understand him!”
He jumped to his feet, turned his back on us all and stormed out of the Sanctity, slamming the door behind him. We all looked at one another, but there was nothing we could usefully say, so we returned to the more pressing business at hand. Harry would come around. Or he wouldn’t. Either way, we’d deal with it.
“The truly disturbing part of all this is how far and how deep the conspiracy’s control goes,” said the Sarjeant. “All the governments, all the leaders in the world? Not one holdout? How long has this been going on? How could we have missed this?”
“In our defence, we have been rather busy of late,” said the Armourer. “And it is the nature of conspiracies to go unnoticed.”
“The question we have to consider,” said the Sarjeant, scowling harshly, “is how far does the corruption go?”
“Anyone can be bought,” said William, in a surprisingly reasonable voice. “Anyone can be persuaded, bribed, threatened. Even possessed, I suppose, in this case. We are facing an enemy with no restraint and no moral convictions, who will do absolutely anything to get what they want. You can’t trust anyone anymore. . . .”
“Am I going to have to scan the whole family again?” said the Armourer.
“I think we can see Roger as a separate case,” I said. “Given who and what his mother was. And anyway, how could you scan a mind for evil intentions?”
“Hmmm. Yes,” said the Armourer. “Tricky. Not impossible, necessarily, but definitely tricky . . .” And he sat back to think about it.
Sometimes I think my uncle Jack is the scariest Drood of all.
“Roger mentioned a new machine that could directly influence people’s thoughts,” I said. “Apparently they’ve already carried out basic testing, with encouraging results. Roger implied this new machine could quite definitely give people’s minds a good solid nudge in the wanted direction. On a worldwide basis. Do we have anything like that, Uncle Jack?”
“Of course not,” said the Sarjeant-at-Arms. “Or we’d be using it on a daily basis.”
“Can I mention free will and individual freedom?” said William.
“Of course,” said the Sarjeant. “Feel free to mention it, and I’ll feel free to use anything that would prevent a horror like the Great Sacrifice.”
“If the machine really doesn’t exist,” I said, “Roger could have been blowing smoke up their arses to impress the faithful. But if it does . . . could we perhaps come up with something to block the effect: some kind of counterbroadcast?”
“Without knowing what this machine is?” said the Armourer. “Without knowing how it works, or how it does what it does? You want me to set up a counterbroadcast that would cover the whole world? Hmmm. Tricky. I’ll have to think about it.”
I raised my voice to address the rosy red glow suffusing the Sanctity. “Ethel?”
“I’m here, Eddie. I’m glad you got back safely. I could see what was happening in Under Parliament, but I couldn’t reach you. Such a tacky gathering, confusing bad taste with spiritual evil.”
“Can you do anything to stop this?” I said bluntly. “Could you prevent this Great Sacrifice from taking place?”
“You’re asking me to intervene directly?” said Ethel.
“I don’t like to,” I said. “But with so much at stake . . .”
“The children,” said the Sarjeant-at-Arms. “We have to save the children. We can’t let our pride get in the way of that. I’ll beg if I have to.”
“Right,” said William. “This is more important than us.”
“And that’s precisely why I can’t intervene,” said Ethel. “I’m your guardian angel, not your god. This is your world, your reality. I have given you weapons with which to fight evil. But I won’t fight your fights for you. Or that would be the end of free will for your whole species. I have made a great effort to stay out of your affairs, to be an observer and adviser, for fear of upsetting the natural balance of your reality. I will not save you. You must save yourselves.”
“And if we fail?” said William.
There was a long pause, and then Ethel said, “I will mourn your passing.”
Everyone at the table looked at everyone else, but no one felt like saying anything. I cleared my throat.
“So, how can we best take the fight to these bastards? I’ve had enough of tiptoeing around the conspiracy, gathering information. We know all we need to know. We have to hit these evil little shits hard, before they can set up the necessary conditions for the Great Sacrifice!”
“Know thy enemy,” said William.
“Fine,” I said. “Go do your research in the Old Library. Find out things we can use against them. Sarjeant, how can we hurt them?”
“Give me a target,” said the Sarjeant, “and I’ll throw Droods at them till every single member of the conspiracy is dead. The problem with Satanists is that they can be anyone, anywhere, hiding within respectable institutions, using innocents as human shields.”
“Isabella did a lot of thinking about that,” said Molly. “She said . . . she thought she knew someone who might be able to at least point her in the direction of the conspiracy’s headquarters.”