It was an attack of quite staggering proportions. Bullets came flying at us from every direction, a storm so heavy and concentrated you could almost see it. Gunfire chewed up the walls on either side of us, and pockmarked the closed elevator doors from top to bottom. The roar was deafening, and smoke curled thickly on the air. Luther and I stood our ground as gunfire raked across our armour without doing the slightest damage. We didn’t even rock on our feet from the impact, and the armour just swallowed up the bullets. Behind my golden mask, I was grinning. There’s something really quite psychologically devastating about a foe who just stands there and allows himself to be shot, so Luther and I struck arrogant poses and made the most of it.
They tried explosives and nerve gas grenades, and neither of them affected us in the least. You’d think they would’ve known better; I mean, they had to know we were Droods. This kind of low-level assault was almost an insult. The only way to win a fight with a Drood is to not be there when we turn up.
The gunfire died away in spurts and coughs, and a slow awful silence settled across the top floor. Armed and armoured guards peered at us with big eyes from behind various places of cover. There was a lot of looking at each other, and general shrugging. I could just make out the podgy figure of Doctor Delirium, peering out from behind the protective shield of some auction item. The shield glowed dully, like a silver smear on the air, hiding the nature of the item. It might have been the Apocalypse Door. It was big enough.
I moved forward, and again they opened up with every gun they had. I just walked right into the hail of bullets, not slowed or bothered in the least. Luther was right there with me. I had to say; I’d thought most of the soldiers would have had an attack of common sense and started running by now. That’s the normal reaction to Droods in their armour. I looked at Luther, nodded quickly, and we both surged forward, into the gunfire. In a moment we were in and among the armed men and
˚
throwing them this way and that. They flew screaming through the air, tossed half the length of the room. Luther took the mystery group, and I dealt with Doctor Delirium’s mercenaries. I was moving so quickly now I must have been just a golden blur to them, as I struck them down with my golden fists, for having the sheer nerve to try and kill me.
It took me longer than I thought to clear the floor, due to the sheer press of bodies. I had to force my way through a crowd of armed soldiers, knocking them down and throwing them aside. Some clung to my arms and neck, trying to drag me down through sheer weight of numbers. It took time to shrug and peel them all off, or slam them against the nearest wall. I wasn’t trying to kill anyone, but they were, after all, killers for pay, hired thugs with uniforms. But eventually I ran out of people to hit, and looked around for Doctor Delirium. He was standing beside his auction item, crowing triumphantly. Somehow, he’d broken through the protective shield.
It looked like just an ordinary door: a tall wooden oblong with no handles, or knocker. Ancient and unfamiliar runes had been carved around its edges. It stood upright on its own, entirely unsupported. And there was something about it . . . Like the feeling you get when you stare into an abyss, and know that death is only one small step away. It was the Apocalypse Door, and just the sight of it chilled the blood in my heart. There was something
beyond
that Door, and it wanted out, in the worst way. Doctor Delirium ran his podgy hands over it, crooning in delight.
His crude dimensional door opened and swallowed up both him and the Apocalypse Door in a moment. Those of his men left behind, and still conscious, made a run for it. I had no time for them. I was trying to come to terms with the knowledge that for the first time in his life, Doctor Delirium was now a Major Player. And almost certainly in over his head.
The mystery group’s soldiers hadn’t given up, even with their prize gone. They were still firing everything they had. Luther raged among them, slapping guns out of hands, and striking the soldiers down with rough efficiency. I didn’t have the patience for that, so I just picked up the nearest pieces of furniture and threw them at the thugs like missiles. Tables and chairs flew through the air, and struck down whole groups of men like the wrath of God.
A few kept moving, dodging from one piece of cover to another, sniping at me with more exotic weapons. They had science things and magic things, and even a few unfamiliar objects that might have been both or neither. They kept trying one thing after another, looking for anything that might pierce my armour. The fools. One of them actually produced a collapsible bazooka. He loaded up a silver shell wrapped in mistletoe, and fired it at me. I felt like showing off, so I just stood my ground and caught the shell in my arms. Didn’t even knock me backwards. I hugged the shell to my chest, and my armour absorbed the whole of the blast as it exploded. When the smoke cleared, I was still standing there, completely untouched. The soldier looked like he was going to burst into tears. He threw the bazooka down, and stamped on it.
Another soldier stepped up, and stabbed an Aboriginal pointing bone at me. Now those are pretty serious magic; a shaman who knows what he’s doing can kill you with a bad thought, throw your soul into the Dreaming, even rewrite reality itself on a small scale. Fortunately, most of that kind of magic has been lost, or forgotten. And this guy really hadn’t done his homework. The bone’s spell hit my armour, rebounded, and blasted the guy right out of existence.
Another armed thug, with more courage than sense, stepped forward and showed me the glowing metal glove on his hand. It looked a lot like the old Roman cestus, nasty things used in the Arenas by gladiators who liked to get in close and personal with their victims. This particular glove had been soaked in really nasty magics; it left long blazing trails on the air when it moved, as though just its existence stained reality. The poor fool using the glove clearly didn’t know that just wearing the thing was more than enough to kill him.
Luther finished mopping up and stepped forward to face the boxer. The soldier struck a classic pose, and then lunged forward and punched Luther right in the throat. The glowing glove actually shrieked in rage and triumph as it slammed through the air, and then the awful sound was cut off abruptly as the glove hit Luther’s golden throat . . . and was immediately swallowed up by the armour. It sucked the glowing glove right off the man’s hand, absorbed it and made it nothing, nothing at all.
The soldier fainted dead away at Luther’s feet. Though that was probably mostly due to the toxic radiations the glove had been giving off. I considered Luther thoughtfully.
“You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?”
“Oh yes. Really. You have no idea.”
We looked around us, taking our time. The long room was littered with unconscious bodies, and a dozen or so surrendered men, on their knees with their hands on their heads, looking very much like they wished they were somewhere else. There were a few dead men, which was a shame, but they should have known better than to attack Droods. I started rehearsing the questions I was going to ask, starting with
What do you know about the Apocalypse Door?
And that was when a dimensional gateway appeared above our heads, sucked up all the soldiers in a moment, the living and the dead, and then slammed shut again. I looked at Luther.
“You know, that is getting really bloody annoying.”
“Couldn’t agree more if you bribed me.”
The dimensional gateway opened up again, and the Lampton Wyrm dropped out of it. The dragon was back from wherever the gate had taken it, and it clearly hadn’t enjoyed the trip. It filled more than half the floor, fifty feet long from snout to tail, its great membranous wings unfurling angrily. Its ugly head rose up on its long neck and slammed against the ceiling. Streams of broken plas ter and ceiling tiles rained down around it. The dragon’s spiked tail lashed back and forth, destroying everything it touched, and sending shielded auction items flying through the air. Clawed feet dug deep furrows in the carpeted floor. The Wyrm snatched up one of the more intact remote control zombies from the floor, chewed on it for a moment, and then spat the bits out. The dragon roared angrily, and the ghastly sound shook the whole floor.
It smelled really bad—of blood and carrion, brine and seaweed, and an atavistic stench of ancient lizard.
I really would have liked to turn and run, but that option wasn’t open to me. If the Lampton Wyrm broke free of the Magnificat and went on a rampage in Los Angeles, they’d be cleaning up the dead bodies for weeks. The Wyrm was one of the Great Old Beasts, a living god or devil, and though it was much reduced by time and age, there was still nothing in human science that could stop it. You could drop a nuke on it, and the Wyrm would just laugh at you from the depths of the atomic fires, as the mushroom cloud formed overhead.
“We’ve got to contain it,” I said to Luther.
“Ten out of ten for ambition, Eddie, but this is the Lampton Wyrm we’re talking about!” said Luther. “You can’t hurt it, you can’t kill it, and I’m not even sure our armour can protect us!”
“Get ahold of yourself, Luther! You’re a Drood! It’s easy to be brave when you’re facing something you know your armour can protect you against; it’s times like this that we get to show what we’re made of.”
“By getting killed, dismembered and eaten? Not necessarily in that order?”
Luther gave every appearance of being severely shaken. He’d spent too long in a town where he was always going to be the baddest thing in it. I kept my voice clear and calm, whilst at the same time being very careful not to make any sudden movement that might attract the dragon’s attention.
“It’s been stopped before, remember? The Lampton family sealed it in a pit and drowned it. Does this place have a swimming pool?”
“Well, yes, but I don’t see how we’re going to drag the dragon down to it, hold it under and build a cover over it, without being reduced to small bloody gobbets in the process! We have to get out of here, and call for the cavalry!”
“We are the cavalry! Get a grip!”
“Sorry,” said Luther, after a moment. “I’ve got a thing about dragons.”
“Well,” I said. “Who hasn’t? Let’s try the basics first. Hit it from two different sides, and tear it to pieces. If we can reduce it to small enough parts, and keep them from recombining . . .”
“There’s that ambition again. But, for want of anything better . . .” We hit the Lampton Wyrm from both sides at once, moving as fast as our armour could power us. I hit the dragon hard in its hideous head, my golden fist plunging deep through flesh and bone and into the brain beneath. I grabbed a handful of brains, yanked them out through the hole I’d made, and threw them on the floor. The massive head wound had already healed by the time I turned back. I grabbed great handfuls of dragon flesh, tearing them away by brute force, digging deep wounds in its sides, but they all healed in seconds.
Luther jumped on its back and punched viciously into the dragon’s spine, to no better effect. And all the time the dragon was heaving and thrashing around, trying to reach us with its claws. The head swept back and forth on its long neck, snapping viciously again and again, while I used all my armour’s speed to dodge it.
I ducked in under one carelessly wide swing, grabbed one of the dull green arms, and ripped it right out of its socket. The dragon screamed so loudly it hurt my ears, even inside the armour. The arm convulsed in my grip, still trying to get at me with its claws, and then suddenly it withered, and collapsed into dust. The dragon had grown itself a new arm. It lashed out
˚
at me. The claws skittered across my golden chest, raising a great shower of sparks. The claws couldn’t penetrate the armour, but the sheer impact blasted me off my feet, sending me flying halfway across the room.
I hit hard, and stayed on my hands and knees for a moment, getting my breath back. Luther was still riding the dragon’s back, hanging on grimly as it bucked and twisted. And then the Wyrm rolled suddenly over onto its side, pinning Luther to the floor with its great weight. With no leverage, he couldn’t use his armour’s strength to escape. I forced myself up onto my feet, charged forward and punched the dragon in the head again. My fist plunged into and through its right eye, and the dragon screamed like a soul newly damned to Hell. But when I pulled my fist out again, dripping with gore and pus and eyeball fluid, a new eye filled the bloody socket immediately. The Lampton Wyrm: the Beast that couldn’t die.
Its jaws surged forward and closed over my left arm. The dragon’s teeth broke and shattered as they ground against my armour, but they continually reformed, trying to gnaw their way through. The dragon swept its great head back and forth, shaking me like a dog shakes a rat. I grew golden spikes on my other hand, and pounded the dragon’s head again and again, but it wouldn’t release me. Luther had seized the opportunity to pull himself out from under, and he attacked its ribs, smashing them over and over again. The dragon’s jaws gaped wide with pain, and I staggered backwards.
And then the dragon’s jaws opened really wide, and it surged forward and swallowed me whole.
For a moment there was just darkness, and a sense of pressure from all sides. I couldn’t even tell which way was up. I was battered from all sides, as a series of muscular contractions tried to force me down the dragon’s throat and into its stomach. I concentrated and razor sharp blades shot out from every surface on my armour, digging deep into the throat muscles and holding me in place. The dragon screamed again, and it was even more painful hearing it from inside the throat. I lashed out with my bladed arms, opening up a long gaping wound in the side of the throat. Light flooded in, and two golden hands from outside quickly grabbed the sides of the wound and kept it from closing. Luther was on the job. I retracted my blades and forced myself out through the gap, and then Luther and I quickly retreated as the dragon thrashed back and forth, smashing everything in the room in its pain and fury.