His manner was assured, even cocky, but I noticed he still came
to a halt a respectful distance away from me. He smiled and nodded, and I nodded
to him. As far as I could tell, he’d come alone, which worried me. That wasn’t
family policy, when it came to dealing with a rogue. He seemed to be expecting
me to say something, to defend or justify myself, so I just stood there, staring
back at him. Matthew frowned slightly and shot the gleaming white cuffs of his
expensive City outfit.
"I knew you’d come here first, Eddie," he said smugly. "Simple
deduction, old boy. All I had to do was stake the place out and wait."
"Actually, this was my third stop," I said. "Late as always,
Matthew. Why did they choose you for this? Volunteer, did you, to impress the
Matriarch? Or maybe Alex? You’re not still mad at me over her, are you? It was a
long time ago; we were just teenagers."
"Of course I volunteered," Matthew said angrily. "You’re a
disgrace to the family, Eddie. I always said you were no good, and now my
judgement has been vindicated."
"What did they offer you?" I said. "Really; I’m curious. I mean,
you wouldn’t have been my first choice to take down a dangerous and experienced
rogue. You’ve never been any good at the physical side of what we do. The old
ultraviolence…Leaning on stuffed shirts in the City is more your level; putting
the wind up stockbrokers who’ve been caught with their hand in the till."
Matthew glared at me, bright red spots burning on his cheeks.
"Once I’ve proved myself by bringing you in, they’re going to give me all your
territory and responsibilities, old boy, as well as my own. I’ll be the biggest
and best agent in one of the most important cities in the world. The Matriarch
gave me her word, personally."
"She’s using you, Matthew, just like she used me." I felt
suddenly tired, worn down. "She’s setting us both up. Can’t you see that? She’s
ready to throw you away, just to slow me down till more experienced agents can
get here. We can’t trust the Matriarch anymore, Matthew. She’s got her own
agenda now."
Matthew looked at me as though I’d suddenly started speaking in
tongues. "She’s…the Matriarch. Her word is law. We live and die at her pleasure.
That’s the way it’s always been. And you’re just a dirty little traitor!"
I looked around me. There was still no sign of any backup for
Matthew. Maybe he really had been the only one close enough…
"I don’t need any help to take down a traitor like you," said
Matthew.
"I’m not a traitor," I said, taking a step towards him. He stood
his ground.
"You’ve always been a traitor," he said, and his smile was cold
and unpleasant now. "To the spirit of what we do. To the duty and traditions of
the family. You should never have been allowed so much freedom; see what it’s
done to you. A mad dog, running loose, that has to be put down for everybody’s
good."
I studied him for a moment. There was definitely something in
his voice and in his smile…"This isn’t official, is it?" I said finally. "That’s
why you’re here without backup. The family doesn’t know anything about this.
You’re here representing the Matriarch, and no one else. You’re not here to
bring me back alive, are you, Matthew?"
His smiled broadened. "What good would that serve?"
"I never liked you," I said. "You always were teacher’s pet."
We both armoured up, the living metal leaping into place around
us. It was eerie, looking at Matthew in his armour, like a mirror image. I
didn’t know what weapons he might have, but I didn’t think he’d use them, for
fear I’d use mine. They’d make the situation too unpredictable. And besides, we
were both curious. We wanted to do this the hard way, head to head and hand to
hand, just because it had been centuries since anyone had tried that. It was
very rare for two Droods to fight in the gold. We were never allowed to do that
outside of training sessions, because it was unthinkable that Drood should fight
Drood. There were records of such clashes in the library, very old records, but
they were long on flowery words and short on detail. I wanted to do this, and so
did he.
And if we were both doing this for the wrong reasons, there was
no one here to stop us.
We sprang forward, golden hands outstretched. Equally motivated,
equally fierce, equally determined. We slammed together, and the impact of
armour on armour sounded like a great bell ringing in the depths of Hell. We hit
each other hard, throwing punch after punch with all our amplified strength
behind it, not even bothering to defend ourselves. The awful sound reverberated
in the empty street, but neither of us took any hurt. Our armour protected us.
The unstoppable force meeting the immovable object. I barely felt the impact of
his fists, and I’m certain he didn’t feel mine. All we were doing was wearing
each other out. We wrestled clumsily for a while, chest to chest, neither of us
able to gain an advantage.
Finally I tripped him up, and while he was down I kicked him so
hard in the ribs he skidded several yards down the street. I ran after him, and
while he was still scrambling to his feet, I grabbed him with both hands, picked
him up, and threw him at the nearest building. He crashed halfway through the
wall, held in place for a moment while dislodged bricks rained down on his
armour. He pulled himself free with hardly an effort, and the wall collapsed
behind him. He launched himself at me, completely unfazed, and we slammed
together again.
We couldn’t hurt each other. Matthew pushed me away, reached
out, and grabbed the steel pole of a streetlight. He yanked it up out of its
concrete setting, the jagged end trailing wires and sparks. He wound up and
swung the steel pole like a bat, and I couldn’t move quickly enough to avoid it.
The heavy steel smashed into my ribs, lifted me up off my feet, and sent me
flying through the air. I hit the ground hard several yards away, rolling over
and over, and was immediately up on my feet again, unhurt, not even breathing
hard.
We went to it again, raging up and down the street, smashing
everything we came in contact with except each other. We hit out with everything
we could lay our hands on, punched each other through walls, demolishing the
street from one end to the other. Buildings collapsed, glass shattered, and
fires broke out, and we didn’t even notice. We fought like gods, trampling
heedlessly through the paper and cardboard world of mere mortals.
Finally we ran out of room and came to the barricade set up at
the end of the street. Behind a row of steel posts strung with barbed wire, half
a dozen police stood watching from behind their parked cars. Behind them, a
crowd of curious onlookers, drawn by the noise. They all watched in dumbstruck
horror as Matthew and I went at it hammer and tongs right in front of them, so
caught up in the righteous anger of what we were doing that we didn’t give a
damn about the armour being seen in public.
The police and the onlookers scattered as Matthew and I crashed
into and through the barrier, the barbed wire snapping instantly, as
insubstantial as fog to our armoured strength. We were outside the exclusion
zone now, where everyone could see us, and the screams brought me back to
myself. I tried to back off, but Matthew was too far gone now to stop. He picked
up one of the police cars as though it weighed nothing and threw it at me. I
ducked, and it sailed past me to crash into a storefront. I grabbed a nearby
parked car and threw it at Matthew. He stood his ground, and the front half of
the car concertinaed as it smashed against his immovable form. It exploded
suddenly into an expanding orange fireball. The closer buildings caught alight,
and the air shimmered from the intense heat. And Matthew came walking out of the
heart of the fireball, brushing blazing wreckage away from him, entirely unhurt.
People were running now, screaming hysterically, and the police were on their
radios yelling in unmanned voices for armed backup.
I looked at Matthew, in his gold, and the hairs stood up on the
back of my neck. Was this how people had seen me? This terrible, inhuman thing?
While I stood there, frozen by insight, Matthew picked up
another car and smashed it down on top of me, catching me off balance and
throwing me to the ground. He leaned on the car with all his strength, trying to
pin me down, but I just pushed back, and the metal of the car tore like tissue
paper under our armoured strength. I rose up through the wreckage of the car,
and we threw the broken pieces aside to get at each other again. People were
still screaming in the background. They sounded like animals, maddened by
something they couldn’t comprehend. The fire was spreading. It occurred to me
that the family were going to have a hell of a time hushing this one up.
Matthew charged straight at me. I waited till the last moment,
and then sidestepped. He stumbled past me, off balance, one arm out to brace
himself against the wall ahead of him. I took out my portable door and slapped
it against the brickwork, and he fell through the new opening into the interior
of the building. I ripped the door away, trapping him inside. And then I used my
armour’s strength to pull the whole damned building down on top of him.
Ton after ton of brick and stone and concrete and steel came
thundering down, piling up on top of Matthew. The ground shook with the impact,
and the street filled with smoke. I waited a while, tensed and ready, but
nothing happened except for the great pile of rubble slowly settling. I snapped
my golden fingers at dear defeated Matthew. The armour would have protected him
even from this, but he’d still be a long while digging himself out. By which
time I fully intended to be long gone.
I took one of the abandoned police cars. The officers had
retreated so quickly they’d actually left the keys in the ignition. I drove off,
armouring down as I went, turning down a side street as I heard the approaching
sirens of fire engines and police cars. I wasn’t in the mood for any more
confrontations. Soon enough I was back in the main flow of London traffic,
driving calmly and carefully, and no one looked at me twice. No one ever looks
at a police car unless they have to. I stopped the car as soon as I could and
walked away from it. Once again Shaman Bond was just another face in the crowd,
no one special, nothing to look at. My cover identity was the only real
protection I had left. No one in the family knew my use-name. They’d never
asked. Never cared.
I headed for the Underground again. For better or worse, there
was only one person I could go to now for help and answers. The one person the
Matriarch would be sure I’d never approach. The wild witch Molly Metcalf. She
shouldn’t be too angry at seeing me again. It had been months since we last
tried to kill each other.
You know, sometimes I swear the whole universe runs on irony.
You hear a lot of stories about Molly Metcalf. How she once
frightened a ghost out of the house it was haunting. How she abducts aliens in
order to run strange experiments on them. How she once called up the Devil
himself, just to tell him an endless stream of knock-knock jokes. The most
disturbing thing about these stories is that far too many of them are true. But
that’s the wild witch Molly Metcalf for you: free spirit of anarchy, Hawkwind
fan, and queen of all the wild places. Enemy to the Drood family and everything
they stand for.
Somehow I just knew this meeting wasn’t going to go smoothly.
But there I was, on the run in London and hiding in the smoke,
sticking to the darker and nastier back streets because I couldn’t afford to be
seen by old friends or enemies. Using the secret shortcuts and subterranean ways
that normal people never get to know about. Heading reluctantly towards the one
remaining person who might be able to find me a way out of the mess I was in. My
oldest and fiercest enemy, my opposite in every way: Molly Metcalf. Sweet,
petite, and overwhelmingly feminine, Molly specialised in forbidden old magics,
applied with much passion and not a little lateral thinking.
She once changed the magnetic patterns of force over London,
just so that all the migrating birds would have to pass over the Houses of
Parliament and crap on them. She once worked a subtle magic on certain bed fleas
and venereal crabs, making them her eyes and ears so that she could spy on the
very important personages who patronised a brothel that specialised in the rich
and famous. As a result she learned many interesting things, and blackmailed her
victims ruthlessly. As much for the fun of it as the money. One of her victims
had to stand up in Parliament and recite the whole of "I’m a little teapot,
here’s my spout," during the prime minister’s question time, before she’d let
him off the hook. Given who it was, I quite approved of that one…
And of course there was the time she bribed a group of
disgruntled earth elementals into causing massive earthquakes in the bedrock
beneath the British mainland. Apparently she wanted to split the United Kingdom
into three separate island states: England and Wales and Scotland. I only just
stopped that one in time. And she was an enthusiastic part of the Arcadia
Project, a gathering of top-rank magicians dedicated to changing the rules of
reality itself, to bring about a new world constructed a lot more to their
liking. Fortunately for the world and reality, magicians have the biggest egos
outside of show business and rarely play well with each other. Half of them
ended up turning the other half into various kinds of livestock, and Molly lost
her temper and called down a plague of frogs on the lot of them.
People were clearing frogs out of their gutters all over London
for weeks after that.
Molly Metcalf resisted authority; any authority. She also hated
my guts, with good reason. We’d been on opposite sides of a dozen missions, with
me standing for order and her for chaos. We’d come close to killing each other
several times, and neither of us had failed for want of trying. If I went to her
in my armour, wearing the golden face she had every reason to hate, she’d attack
me on sight. My only chance to get close to her was as Shaman Bond. Molly knew
Shaman, in a friendly if distant way, as just another face on the scene. We’d
even had the odd drink together, as part of my cover. I planned to use that, to
get a foot in her door.