We descended down bare stone stairwells, in single file, in
silence. Whatever was ahead of us, we could all feel it drawing closer; and it
felt very cold. Molly stuck close to me, her face a rigid mask. Truman breezed
along, happily humming some tune under his breath that made sense only to him.
We finally emerged into a great stone cavern, much of it in
darkness. The air was cold and damp, and the smell reminded me of the sewers. It
was a sick, rotten smell, full of filth and pain and death. Even Mr. Stab
wrinkled his nose. None of us said anything. We all knew we’d come to a bad
place, where bad things happened. All except Truman, who was still humming his
happy tune. He turned on all the lights at once with a grand gesture, and the
cavern’s contents lay illuminated below us. We were standing on a narrow walkway
halfway up the cavern wall, looking down on long rows of cells, each with its
own beaten-down inhabitant. It reminded me of Dr. Dee’s establishment in Harley
Street, except there were no cages here. Only long rows and blocks of concrete
stalls, with bare concrete floors and cold iron gates. No beds or chairs, not
even straw on the concrete floors; just iron grilles to carry away some of the
wastes.
"I didn’t know about this," Molly whispered to me. "I swear I
didn’t know about this."
"Come and see, come and see," Truman said happily, leading us
down from the walkway. We followed him down, and he led us gaily along the
central aisle, proudly showing off the contents of his cells. The first thing he
showed us was a werewolf, in full wolf form. Seven feet from head to tail, with
silver-gray fur, it had been spread-eagled on its back on the concrete floor,
pinned down with silver spikes through all four limbs, like a specimen laid out
on a dissecting board. It whined piteously as we looked in.
"We have to do that," Truman said. "Otherwise the brutes gnaw
off their own limbs to escape. Animals. Still, they’re not here long enough to
suffer much."
All I could see was the basic doggy suffering in the creature’s
trapped eyes. I had no love for werewolves. I’d seen too many of his kind’s
half-eaten kills in small towns and villages. But this…this was no way to treat
even a hated enemy.
Farther down the row, vampires were nailed to the concrete walls
by wooden stakes hammered through their arms and legs. They snapped and snarled
at us feebly, all intelligence driven out of their minds by continuous
suffering. Then there were elf lords, stripped naked of their usual finery,
chained with heavy steel shackles. The cold iron burned their pale flesh
terribly where it touched, charring right down to the bone, but not one of the
elves would do anything but sneer at us when we looked in. They still had their
pride. Gryphons with their eyes cut out whined pitifully in their cells. They
might not be able to see the future anymore, but they all knew what was coming.
There was a unicorn whose wings had been broken, her horn gouged roughly out of
her forehead, her glory much diminished. And a water elemental who’d been frozen
into an icy statue. Her solid eyes were still horribly aware.
Cold-eyed, cold gray lizard men from the silent subterranean
ways under South London; smoke gray gargoyles snatched from the few churches and
cathedrals they still haunted. A clay-skinned bogeyman with both its arms and
legs broken, dragging itself back and forth across the concrete floor. And
something with the stink of the Pit about it. A genuine half-breed, born of a
demon’s lust. A succubus stores semen from a man she sleeps with, and then
changes into its male form, an incubus, and deposits that stolen seed in a
receptive woman. The result: a human body with a demon soul. Half of this world,
and half of the world below. They fight for one side or the other, both and
neither, and they’re not nearly as rare as they ought to be. This half-breed was
held in check by a pentagram etched deeply into the concrete floor.
It inclined its head mockingly to Mr. Stab, as though
acknowledging one of its own kind. It couldn’t speak. Someone had cut out its
tongue, just in case.
Truman looked at me again and again, waiting for me to say
something, but I held myself in check as he showed me horror after horror.
Pretty much everything on display here was evil, or had done evil in their time;
but nothing to match the cold-blooded evil of what had been done to them here.
In my time as a Drood agent, I’d fought and killed many of the things imprisoned
here, but that had always been in the heat of battle and the hottest of blood.
I’d killed but I’d never tortured, never delighted in the agonies of my enemies.
That wasn’t the Drood way. We fought the good fight to keep the world safe, and
we took pride in doing that work well, but this…this was an abomination.
The last captive, in the last cell, was Subway Sue. Her ragged
clothes were tattered and torn, and there was blood on them and on her face.
Someone had beaten the crap out of her. She’d been blindfolded and shackled to
the wall of her concrete pen. Molly moved in close to the bars, her face
terribly cold, her eyes dangerously angry. I looked at Truman.
"This," he said proudly, "is just today’s batch. Arrogant
magical creatures who prey on humanity, overpowered by the science and stealth
of specially trained soldiers. My people are very busy these days, hunting these
vermin down and bringing them here for elimination. We can’t kill in public, of
course; that would draw too much attention. It’s better this magical filth don’t
know we’re out there, on their trail…I wish we could take the time to deal with
them properly, give them the kind of death they deserve. Make them suffer as
they’ve made humanity suffer. But we can’t take the risk. So we bring them in
until the cells are full, and then we kill them humanely and give their bodies
to the cleansing flames. It’s a very efficient operation. The ovens never grow
cold. Solomon sees to that. One by one, creature by creature, we’re winning our
world back from the monsters who infect it."
"There’s only one monster here," said Mr. Stab. "And for once it
isn’t me. Is there, by any chance, a cell here with my name on it?"
"Not as long as you support the cause," said Truman, and he
actually dropped Mr. Stab a roguish wink.
"I know this woman," said Molly, still staring through the cold
iron bars at Subway Sue. "She’s my friend."
"She’s a leech," Truman said briskly. "Stealing good fortune
from innocent men and women, and selling it to those who don’t deserve it. Just
another magical parasite on the human race."
Molly spun around and glared at him. "She’s my friend!"
Truman wagged a finger at her like she was a recalcitrant child.
"Don’t look at me like that, little witch. Remember your place. We allow you to
use your unnatural gifts on our behalf, and in return you get to be part of the
only organisation with a real chance of bringing down the Droods you hate so
much. Obey me, and you will be well rewarded in the world that’s coming. There
will be room for you and your kind in the new order, but only as long as you
remember your place."
"That’s the problem with tunnel vision," said Molly. "All I
could see was the destruction of the Droods you promised. So when I listened to
your recruitment speech, all I heard was what I wanted to hear. But you’ve
opened my eyes at last, Truman." She turned back to the cell.
"Sue; it’s me, Molly. What do you suppose are the chances of all
the locks on all these cells falling open, all at once?"
"Not good," said Sue through cracked and swollen lips. "As long
as these cold iron bars hold my magic in check."
Molly looked at me. I grabbed the steel bars with one golden
hand and ripped them right out of their concrete setting. Molly gestured once,
and Sue’s shackles fell away from her. Sue stood up, stretched painfully, and
pulled away her blindfold.
"Bingo," she said softly. And every lock on every cell fell
open, all at once.
Truman looked at me, gaping blankly, as I crumpled the steel
bars into a ball, and then dropped it heavily on the ground before him.
"You’ll never replace my family," I said. "You think too small.
And too nasty."
He turned and ran, yelling for Solomon Krieg to hold us back
while he went for reinforcements. The Golem with the Atomic Brain moved quickly
to block the way while his master scrambled up the steps to the walkway. All
around us creatures were lurching and spilling out of their pens, free at last.
Sirens were blaring in the distance. Molly and Girl Flower helped Subway Sue
stumble out of her cell, while Mr. Stab and I faced up to Solomon Krieg.
The artificial creature smiled for the first time, and there was
no humour in it, only a terrible satisfaction that at last he would get to do
what he was made to do. He raised one hand, and a gun muzzle poked out of a slit
in his wrist. He sprayed Mr. Stab and then me with machine gun fire but couldn’t
hurt either of us. Bullets ricocheted harmlessly off my armoured chest and
seemed to pass through Mr. Stab as though he was nothing but smoke. Krieg turned
his aim on the three women, but I moved quickly to shield them. Krieg raised his
other hand, and a hidden flamethrower in his other arm bathed my armour in
liquid fire. The heat was so terrible that even Mr. Stab flinched back, but I
felt nothing.
Solomon Krieg shut off his flames and frowned deeply, as though
concentrating on some difficult problem. Fat sparks of static electricity
appeared spontaneously around his head, like a halo of electric flies. They spat
and crackled, growing fiercer and more powerful, and then struck out at Mr. Stab
like a hammer blow of unleashed energies. The blast picked him up and threw him
twenty feet or more before slamming him into a concrete wall with devastating
force. The whole wall crumbled into ruin under the impact, burying Mr. Stab
under a pile of rubble. Solomon Krieg, the Golem with the Atomic Brain. He
turned to me and I braced myself. Once I would have trusted my armour to protect
me even from such an attack as this, but after the incident with the elf lord’s
arrow, I wasn’t as confident as I once was. I still stood my ground. I was all
that stood between the three women and Krieg’s atomic blast.
And that was when the escaped prisoners fell upon Krieg like a
pack of howling wolves. Humans and inhumans, demons and creatures of the night,
they fell upon their common foe and sought to drag him down through sheer weight
of numbers. Claws and fangs tore his colourless flesh, but no blood flowed.
Krieg swayed under their attack but did not fall. He lashed out with his
machine-driven arms, throwing dead and broken bodies this way and that with
appalling strength, not yielding an inch. More prisoners came running from every
direction, desperate for a chance to drag down their hated jailer and
executioner.
While Krieg was safely preoccupied, I hurried over to search the
rubble for Mr. Stab, but he was already rising to his feet, entirely unhurt,
fussily brushing dust from his coat and opera cloak. He stooped down to retrieve
his top hat and placed it on his head at a jaunty angle. He might be the worst
serial killer in history, but the man had style. He looked around him at the
block of concrete pens and shook his head firmly.
"No. I will not stand for this. I am no stranger to the joys of
suffering and slaughter, Edwin, but this…There are some things a gentleman just
doesn’t do."
And he went with me among the cells, helping release those who
couldn’t free themselves. The werewolves and the vampires and the like. It went
against the grain for me to free such vicious and deadly creatures, after years
of hunting them down and killing them, but I couldn’t leave them here. For the
ovens. As Mr. Stab said: some things are just beyond the pale.
We left the demon half-breed where he was, of course. We weren’t
stupid.
We came back from the concrete pens to find Solomon Krieg still
standing, surrounded by the bodies of the dead and the fallen. Girl Flower threw
herself at him, screaming something obscene in old Welsh. Atomic forces erupted
from the golem’s scarred forehead, hitting Girl Flower and blowing her apart
into a shower of rose petals. They churned and circled in midair, and then
transformed, becoming a razor storm of a thousand cutting owls’ claws. They hit
Solomon Krieg like a deadly hailstorm, ripping and tearing at his pale flesh,
but still he stood his ground and would not fall. I might have admired him, if I
hadn’t hated him so much. (The ovens never grew cold…) The razor storm finally
collapsed, exhausted, and I went forward to do battle with the Golem with the
Atomic Brain. I needed to punish someone for what had been done here, and he
would do. I try hard, but sometimes I’m not a very nice person.
The creatures of the night fell back as I strode through their
midst. They recognised the golden armour. Solomon saw me coming and smiled
again. His face was hanging in tatters from scratched and scored bone after Girl
Flower’s attack, and one eye was just an empty red socket, but still he smiled.
He didn’t bother with his built-in gun or flamethrower. Just stepped forward and
threw a punch with all his mechanised strength behind it. I heard the bones in
his hand break as his fist glanced harmlessly from my golden mask. I grabbed his
arm with both hands before he could draw it back and broke it over my knee like
a piece of kindling. Bits of shattered tech flew out of the gaping wound.
Solomon Krieg grunted once, but that was all. I let go of his arm and grabbed
his head, pulling it down and forward. He fought me with all his legendary
strength, but it wasn’t enough. Atomic forces sputtered and shimmered on the air
as he struggled to put an attack together. I ripped the top of his head right
off, tearing along the old scarred fault line on his forehead, and then reached
into his head with my other hand and tore his atomic brain out.
I held it in my golden hand for a moment, studying it, that
nasty triumph of Cold War technology, and then I dropped it on the ground and
stamped on it. The brain shattered into a thousand pieces, and Solomon Krieg’s
empty body fell twitching to the floor. I walked away, and the creatures of the
night fell upon the body, tearing it to pieces in a frenzy of rage and revenge.