Property of a Lady Faire (A Secret Histories Novel) (11 page)

“We are going to try talking first,” I said firmly. “If communications break down, then we move on to more distressing measures of persuasion.”

“Wimp,” said Molly.

“The Regent didn’t just decide to kill your parents on his own,” I said carefully. “Someone ordered him to do it. Some specific person, inside my family, condemned your parents to death, for reasons of their own.”

“The Matriarch,” said Molly.

“Not necessarily,” I said. “There have always been advisers and Councils and powers behind the throne, in the Droods. Not to mention wheels within wheels, and departments that don’t officially exist. In a family as big as mine there’s room for pretty much everything. And the Droods have a long history of using outside agents to do the really dirty and deniable stuff.”

Molly shot me a look. “So whoever made the decision, and gave the Regent his orders, might still be a person of importance in your family? And not necessarily one of the obvious ones?”

“Could be,” I said.

“I will have my revenge on someone,” said Molly.

“It could be any number of people!” I said. “That’s the point! That’s why we need to talk to the Regent, to get the full story. He was just the weapon; someone else pointed him at your parents.”

“They’re just as guilty,” said Molly.

“I know,” I said. “I’m just trying to say . . . it’s complicated.”

“You want it to be complicated, so I won’t kill your grandfather,” said Molly. “I’ll listen, if he’s ready to talk. I want to know everything. But what if he doesn’t want to talk?”

“I won’t let you kill him,” I said carefully. “I can’t let you do that. But I think we are quite definitely entitled to intimidate the hell out of him, should it prove necessary.”

“You think it won’t?” said Molly.

“He sent us to Trammell Island, expecting the truth to come out,” I said. “He wanted us to know. He just couldn’t bring himself to tell us in person. Now we know . . . I think he’ll tell us the rest. I think he wants to.”

“But if he doesn’t?” insisted Molly.

“Look, we can’t hurt him anyway!” I said. “He’s got Kayleigh’s Eye, remember? As long as he’s wearing that amulet he’s invulnerable to all forms of attack. And that very definitely includes your magic, and my armour.”

Molly started to say something, and then stopped, and looked at me. “What, or who, is Kayleigh? Do you know?”

“Beats the hell out of me,” I said. “I’ve heard of it, because . . . well, I’ve at least heard of most things. Comes with the job, and the territory. But I haven’t a clue where the Eye comes from.”

“God, demon, alien?” said Molly.

“Almost certainly in there somewhere,” I said.

“I can always threaten to blow up the whole building,” said Molly.

I looked at her. “For you, restraint is just something other people do, isn’t it?”

She smiled at me dazzlingly. “I have always believed in extremes and excesses. Why settle for less?”

I took the Merlin Glass out again, and muttered the proper activating words to establish communication with the Department of Uncanny. Molly clapped a hand on my arm.

“Hold it! Are you really going to tell them we’re coming? And throw away the whole element-of-surprise bit?”

“We need to be sure he’s at home,” I said. “I don’t want to turn up there and find him gone. I don’t think he’d make us chase him, but . . . I think his first reactions will tell us a lot about how this is going to go.”

“Good point,” said Molly. “Go on, then. Get on with it.”

But when I looked into the hand mirror, no one was there. No reflection, no contact; the Glass was just full of an endless, buzzing static. Which was . . . unusual. I lowered the Glass, and looked at Molly.

“That’s never happened before.”

“Could they be blocking us?” said Molly. “If the Regent has decided he’s not going to talk to us, and that as far as he’s concerned we’re now both persona non grata . . . the whole Department could be hiding behind heavy-duty security shields.”

“The Regent wouldn’t hide behind his own people,” I said. “At the very least, he’d have left us a message. Some kind of explanation. No . . . Something’s wrong at Uncanny. Get ready. We’re going through.”

I had the Merlin Glass lock onto the Department’s coordinates, and it jumped out of my hand, growing rapidly in size to make a door big enough to walk through. I led the way, with Molly treading close on my heels, leaving Drood Hall and its grounds behind.

• • •

I expected to arrive in London, in the shadow of Big Ben, overlooking the Department of Uncanny’s hidden entrance. Instead, Molly and I arrived inside the Department itself, in the waiting room, which shouldn’t have been possible. Normally you have to pass through all kinds of shields and protections.

The smell hit me first. The unpleasant coppery smell of freshly spilled blood. The Merlin Glass shrank back down without having to be told, diving back into my pocket. I barely noticed. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

The last time Molly and I had been here, the waiting room had been a cheerful, cosy place. Flowers in vases, pleasant paintings on brightly painted walls, even a deep shag pile carpet. But now, the whole place had been trashed. The flower vases had been smashed, the paintings ripped from the walls and reduced to shreds and tatters, and all the furniture torn to pieces. And there was blood everywhere, splashed across the walls and soaked into the carpet. No bodies, just blood. It looked like a bomb had gone off in an abattoir.

I armoured up, the golden strange matter flowing over me in a moment, encasing me from head to toe. Molly gestured sharply, and scintillating magics swirled around her, protecting her from all the dangers in the world. I studied the waiting room through my golden mask, using the expanded senses it provided, everything from infrared to ultraviolet. But whoever was responsible for all this madness didn’t leave a single clue behind. Everything was still, and quiet. I looked at Molly, and she shook her head quickly.

“I’m not picking up a damned thing,” she said. “No magical workings, no sorcerous radiations . . . Could it have been a bomb?”

“No chemical traces on the air,” I said. “This looks more like . . . brute force. So much blood, but no bodies . . .”

“Someone got here before us,” said Molly. “And it looks like they were even angrier than me. What do you think, Eddie?”

“We go on,” I said. “Search the place, top to bottom. There may still be survivors who need our help.”

“And if whoever did this is still here?”

“Then so much the worse for them,” I said.

• • •

I led the way out of the blood-soaked waiting room. Molly came quickly forward to walk at my side. She didn’t believe in being protected by other people. We moved cautiously through the silent corridors of Uncanny. The whole place had been smashed up, torn apart, in an almost inhuman display of sheer destruction. Almost immediately, we began to find bodies. Men and women lying twisted and broken, alone and in piles. Some had weapons still in their hands; none of them had died easily. They’d been butchered, slaughtered. Broken limbs and smashed-in heads. Bent in two until their spines snapped. Guts torn out, and thrown away. Violence and viciousness, almost for its own sake.

Whoever did this had to have superhuman strength.

We moved on, stepping over and around the scattered bodies, carefully checking every open doorway and corridor end, but there was never any sign of whoever was responsible. Just more and more bodies. So many good men and women left to lie where they fell, where they died, often with hands outstretched for help that never came. And blood, so much blood everywhere. The heavy coppery stench was almost overwhelming, so thick on the air I could taste it.

More and more of the dead were armed, for all the good it had done them. They died defending their territory, and each other.

“Do you recognise anyone?” said Molly quietly.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “We met a whole bunch of people, the last time we were here, but . . . I wasn’t really paying attention. I thought I had time . . . to get to know everyone. I can’t say anyone so far looks familiar. I don’t see my parents, or the Regent. Or his personal aide—you remember, the Indian woman, Ankani.”

“Maybe they got away,” said Molly.

“I’d like to think so,” I said. “But whoever did this was very thorough.”

“Look,” said Molly, pointing at a huge, burly figure that had been smashed half through a wall and left hanging out of it. “Is that . . . I think they called him the Phantom Berserker, didn’t they?”

“It’s what’s left of him,” I said.

I moved in, for a closer look. A massive Viking figure, complete with horned helmet and bear-skin cape, his whole body was broken and bloodied. He looked like he’d gone down fighting. There was blood dripping from his hands. But one side of his head had been completely caved in, and there was a great gaping wound in his chest where his heart used to be.

“I thought he was supposed to be dead,” said Molly.

“He is now,” I said, more harshly than I’d meant.

Molly stopped abruptly, and looked about her. “Shouldn’t there be alarms going off?”

“Yes,” I said. “There should. There should be all kinds of protections and defences in place, and my armour isn’t picking up any of them. Which suggests . . . someone must have shut all the systems down, to allow this to happen. I’d put my money on an inside job. A traitor, inside the Department.”

“I never wanted this,” said Molly. “I was mad, I was angry, but I never wanted this . . .”

“Of course you didn’t,” I said.

We moved on, through a silent world of blood and bodies and senseless destruction. Doors had been smashed off their hinges, or hung lopsided from splintered frames. Every room and office we looked into had been thoroughly searched, and then trashed.

“Maybe they were angry from not finding what they were looking for,” said Molly.

“Could be,” I said. “A lot of the Department people were armed, but I’m not seeing any bullet holes, or scorch marks from energy weapons. As though the invaders just soaked up all the firepower and kept on coming . . .”

“I’m not picking up even the smallest traces of offensive magics,” said Molly. “Everything we’re seeing here is the result of brute force. As though a whole army went rampaging through the corridors, killing with their bare hands.”

We moved on, very cautiously now. Looking and listening, and checking for booby-traps, or any other nasty surprise left behind by our unknown enemy. But there wasn’t anything. As though the invaders didn’t care what happened after they left. They were just here to do a job, and kill anyone who got in the way. Unless killing everybody
was
the job.

“They can’t all have been killed, can they?” said Molly, as much to break the awful silence as anything. “Some might have got away . . .”

“It looks like they all stood their ground, defending their positions, and died doing it,” I said. “Brave and honourable, to the last. My grandfather chose good people. But they had weapons! They must have taken down a hell of a lot of their attackers! So where are the enemy bodies?”

“Presumably the enemy picked up their dead and wounded and took them with them when they left,” said Molly. “To make sure no one could identify who they were. But . . . who could be powerful enough to do something like this, Eddie? Who is there left that’s got an army big enough to massacre everyone in Uncanny? I mean . . . we’ve wiped out most of the major bad guys, and their organisations, in the past few years. Who is there left, who could do this?”

“Good question,” I said. “Makes me wonder . . . did we miss someone?”

I stopped, and looked at her seriously.

“You can never tell where an attack will come from . . . I was at the Wulfshead Club earlier, remember? I’d been called in to help, because they were under attack from MI 13.”

“What?”
said Molly. “Those useless
X-Files
wannabes? I’m amazed they had the nerve. No, hold on, wait a minute . . . MI 13 couldn’t have done this. They’re an officially sanctioned Government organisation, just like the Department of Uncanny. Unless some kind of departmental civil war has broken out.”

“No,” I said. “That doesn’t feel right. MI 13 lost most of its higher-ups, and its direction, during the Satanic Conspiracy. It’s just a ghost of its former self. They were only spying on the Wulfshead Club to pick up gossip they could use as leverage, to get back in the game.”

“All right,” said Molly, “How about this? Maybe some part of your grandfather’s murderous past finally came back to haunt him. Who knows how many other people he killed on your family’s orders?”

I wanted to say
executed,
not murdered, but it wasn’t the time.

• • •

We moved on, climbing over piled-up bodies, splashing through thick pools of blood. Most of it wasn’t even tacky yet. Whatever had happened here, we hadn’t missed it by much. I checked every room we passed, peering in through smashed-in doors. Computers had been ripped apart, safes torn right out of walls, their doors yanked clean off, and papers scattered everywhere. Someone had been looking for something . . . The entire Department of Uncanny had been systematically gutted. Everyone killed, everything destroyed, nothing spared. It was like walking through the ruins of a good man’s dream.

It reminded me of how I’d felt when I walked through the devastated ruins of the Other Hall, home to the other-dimensional Droods, slaughtered by some unknown enemy. I never did find out who. But this was different. I could do something about this.

“Where are we going?” Molly said abruptly. “I mean, are we heading anywhere in particular?”

“We’re going to the Regent’s office,” I said.

“You think there’s a chance he might still be alive?” Molly said carefully.

“There’s always a chance,” I said. “He could have barricaded himself in, and as long as he had Kayleigh’s Eye . . . But no, I don’t really expect to find him alive. Not when everyone else is dead. He wouldn’t have run away, hidden away, and abandoned his people. Even though that would have been the sensible thing to do. He was the Regent of Shadows, and a legend in his own right. But he might have left us a message, something to tell us what the hell happened here.”