The armed men in front of me stopped firing and fell back to let someone else through. He was carrying a massive armament known in the trade as Puff the Magic Dragon. He was a big man, and he still had to strain to carry the thing and point it in my general direction. He opened fire, and the long barrel pumped out five thousand explosive rounds a second. The sheer pressure of so many bullets slamming into me at once actually pushed me backwards. My strange matter was absorbing every single bullet and suppressing every explosion, but the sheer impact pressed me back like a fire hose. Until I dug my golden heels in. The wooden boards shattered underneath me, and my golden feet dug deep into the hard, stony ground. My backward momentum slowed and then stopped, my golden feet leaving long, deep grooves in the ground. I held my position, leaning slightly forward into the thundering fire, like a swimmer breasting the tide. And then, step by step, I forced my way forward against the pressure of the bullets. They hammered into me, raking across my chest and gut and then up to my head, but none of them could touch me. Until finally I stood right before the man and his gun, close enough that he could see his white, wide-eyed face reflected in my featureless golden mask. And then I ripped Puff the Magic Dragon out of his nerveless hands, broke it over my knee and crumpled the two pieces into junk with my armoured hands.
“Run,” I said. And he did.
I looked around, and Molly stepped out from behind a particularly sturdy booth. Even a Metcalf sister has enough sense to hide from that dragon. A man with an automatic rifle stepped out from a booth opposite and opened fire on her. I didn’t even have time to react. Molly stuck out one hand, and the bullets turned into butterflies in midair long before they reached her. Pretty pink butterflies, like animated scraps of sugar floss. But Molly had been through a lot recently, and her magic resources had to be running low. And the man didn’t seem to be running out of bullets. They inched steadily closer towards her before turning into butterflies and flying away. I left it as long as I could, for Molly’s pride’s sake, but in the end I couldn’t stand it anymore. So I picked up the nearest booth and hit the man with it. He disappeared from sight without a sound. Molly lowered her hand, breathed heavily for a moment and then glared at me.
“I could have taken him!”
“Of course you could,” I said. “I got impatient.”
A man stepped out from behind another booth and pointed one of the cloned monkey’s paws at us. He said the activating Words, and all its fingers fell off. The man threw what was left on the ground and stamped on it, then realised Molly and I were still watching him, at which point he quickly removed himself from the vicinity. That’s what you get for buying cheap knockoffs.
I looked around, but the walkways were deserted. The fair was almost empty. The crowds had seen what Drood armour and one really annoyed witch could do, and had lost all faith in the weapons the Supernatural Arms Faire had to offer. A great roar of engines overhead made me look up, and there was the vertical-takeoff plane hovering directly overhead. Huge and sleek and shiny, it must have manoeuvred into position while I was distracted, its noisy approach covered by the sound of gunfire. It rotated slowly overhead, held up by the massive down-draught of its engines. The pounding air slammed against my armour, blowing up great clouds of dust and dirt to blind me. Molly had already retreated to shelter, and sent a brisk wind my way to disperse the clouds.
The plane’s targeting system finally locked onto me, and it opened up with every weapon it had. Heavy machine-gun fire sprayed across me, followed by two supersonic missiles. My mask shut down again as the world disappeared in fire and noise. When I could see again, I was standing in a large open space, with all the surrounding stalls and booths blown apart or blown away. Quite a few more were on fire. Molly was standing some distance away, protected inside one of her special protective fields. But I didn’t know how long she could keep that going, so I ran forward and jumped up into the air, propelled by the powerful strength of my armoured legs. I think the VTO pilot guessed what I was up to at the last moment, because the plane started to rise, but I was already there.
I grabbed onto the undercarriage with one extended golden hand, the fingers closing hard, sinking deep into the metal. I hung there for a moment beneath the plane, and then pulled myself up so I could get a good grip with my other hand. I hauled myself up onto the wing and stood up. The massive VTO engines roared deafeningly, trying to maintain balance as I strode along the wing, heading for the cockpit. I could see the pilot staring out at me unbelievingly. I grabbed the cockpit roof and tore it away, the steel shrieking as it ripped and buckled under my grasp. The pilot panicked and hit the ejection button. He shot up past me, his chair leaving a trail of flames behind it that washed briefly and ineffectually over my armour.
The plane lurched back and forth, its balance gone without the pilot to adjust the engines. The nose turned down, and the plane plummeted back to earth, heading straight for the fair. There were still a lot of people down there, stumbling lost and confused up and down the walkways. I couldn’t let the VTO plane crash into the fair and kill them all. So I rode the plane down, leaning back and shifting my weight this way and that to guide its descent. The armour gave me the feel of the plane almost immediately, and a shift of my armoured weight at exactly the right times was all it took to steer it in the right direction. I rode the plane all the way down, over the fair and on into the valley, and then I jumped away at the last moment. I landed easily, my armoured legs soaking up the impact, and the VTO plane hit the valley floor hard and skidded along for some time in a billow of smoke before finally skidding to a halt in a shower of sparks. No fire, no explosion, nothing. I shook my head and ran back to the fair.
Still, what a ride . . .
I saw the Armourer facing off against the remote-controlled tank, and headed over to back him up. A great, hulking steel monster, the tank roared towards my uncle, who stood his ground and let it come. The tank fired shell after shell at him, each one dead on target, exploding against his armour without driving him back an inch. When the smoke from the explosions cleared, he was still standing where he had been, though some of where he had been standing wasn’t there anymore. I could tell from the way he was posing, arms folded easily across his chest, that the Armourer was enjoying himself. It might have been thirty years since he’d seen action in the field, but he was still every inch a Drood agent. Besides, all those years working in the Armoury had probably made him rather blasé about being blown up. The Armourer waited until the tank was almost on top of him, and then he leaned forward, ducked underneath and lifted the whole front of the tank up off the ground. Its tracks turned helplessly, unable to get a grip. The Armourer walked slowly forward, step by step, raising the tank up and up until it tipped over onto its back. It hit hard, and a series of things went
bang
inside it. Streams of black smoke billowed out of cracks in its sides, along with bursts of flame from electrical fires.
I went to stand beside the Armourer, and Molly came tripping up to join us. She threw her arms around me and hugged me as best she could through my armour. I held her carefully, mindful of my armour’s strength.
“How could you tell which was me?” I said.
“Your armour is quite different from everyone else’s,” she said, leaning against my chest. “You don’t realise how much you change it subconsciously these days.”
I looked at my uncle, in his basic old-fashioned skintight golden armour, and he nodded his featureless head. “She’s right, Eddie. Your armour has an almost medieval affect. Like some Arthurian knight. I guess the Drood is in the details, these days.”
A great shadow fell over us. The giant Japanese robot was up and on its feet and looming over us. Fifty feet tall, broad chest, massive arms and legs, hundreds of tons of steel and all the latest technology. The chest opened up to reveal row upon row of energy weapons, the squat barrels sparking and crackling with discharging energies. The face had been painted to resemble some old-time Japanese demon, and the eyes flashed fiercely. The giant robot raised its arms slowly and menacingly. It stepped forward, tripped over its own feet and fell flat on its face. The impact shook the ground like an earthquake. Molly and the Armourer and I watched it closely, but it didn’t move again.
“Told you,” said the Armourer.
We headed back to what was left of the Supernatural Arms Faire.
Those people who hadn’t been able to leave or escape, or didn’t want to abandon their stalls or merchandise, stood around in small groups for comfort and mutual support. They regarded us with suspicious eyes as we walked past, but said nothing, not wanting to draw attention to themselves. More than half the stalls and booths and tents had been destroyed or ruined, and the whole place was a mess. Fires burned here and there, and smoke drifted this way and that on the gusting wind. The Bloodred Guard appeared out of the ruins and spread out to stand before us. We stopped and bowed politely. The head monk sighed and turned to his fellow guards.
“Knock it off, guys. We are way out of our league. Everyone stand down and see what you can do to help the injured. There are still people here who need our help. If that’s okay with you, Drood?”
“Carry on,” said my uncle Jack. “But don’t let anyone go. There will be questions.”
“These people need doctors, not interrogators,” said the monk.
“They’ll get help,” I said. “We’re the good guys.”
“Yeah, right,” said the monk.
He and his fellow guards turned away to do what needed doing. There was a general air of
we’re not being paid enough to fight Droods,
which was only reasonable.
The Supernatural Arms Faire was now officially over. Half of it was in ruins, the other half was still on fire, and there was no one left to sell anything to. A good day’s work, I thought. Except there was no trace of the Satanists anywhere, or the people they’d kidnapped. We were going to have to do something about that.
“I’ll call in the family,” said the Armourer. “Medics first, and then support teams to Hoover up everything that’s left. Can’t have so many good weapons going to waste, after all.”
“Boys and their toys,” said Molly.
I handed the Armourer the Merlin Glass, and he opened it up to make contact with Drood Hall. I armoured down and walked off with Molly, shivering hard as the mountain cold hit me again.
“So much for a day off, and a nice little holiday,” said Molly.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “I had a good time. Didn’t you have a good time?”
“Well, yes,” said Molly. “But that’s not the point! The satanic creeps got away with it again! Worked their plans right in front of us, and then disappeared, laughing, leaving us to clean up the mess. I am getting really tired of being caught on the back foot all the time, Eddie. I want to know what they’re planning. I want to know what the Great Sacrifice is. And I want to take the fight to them, instead of always being one bloody step behind!”
“Exactly,” I said. “We have got to get into the game fast, or the game could be over before we even get a kick of the ball.”
CHAPTER SIX
Who’s Been Sleeping in My Bed?
L
ike all proper missions, the next one started with a stop off at the Armoury, that heavily shielded cavern underneath the Hall, where the Armourer and his devil’s assortment of highly motivated and only technically mentally disturbed lab assistants labour night and day to provide the Drood family with all the guns, gadgets and assorted weird shit that field agents need to carry out their missions successfully. Not the safest of places to visit, but where’s the fun in safe, anyway? Certainly there’s always something interesting going on in the Armoury.
The old place looked as it always did, when Molly and I wandered in the next day. All very different from the cold, silent, deserted place I’d seen in the Winter Hall. In what might or might not have been Limbo. Despite Molly’s well-meant reassurances, I hadn’t forgotten a single thing about my time in that place: what I’d seen and heard, and what people had said to me. I’d checked with the family’s researchers; Walker was quite definitely dead. Had been for some time. So who was it who came to me in the Winter Hall, wearing Walker’s face, to tell me my parents might not be dead after all? A question . . . for another time. I had a mission to prepare for.
I found the familiar loud and violent circumstances of the Armoury strangely comforting as Molly and I followed the Armourer past the packed workstations and smoke-wreathed testing grounds. The lab assistants were all hard at work, creating appalling and distressing weapons for my family to throw at our enemies and damn all their underhanded schemes. Guns roared, swords glowed and things went suddenly
bang!
with all their usual nasty efficiency; and an oversize eyeball with big, flapping bat wings went fluttering down the main aisle, pursued by an assistant with a really big butterfly net.
The Armourer stalked through his territory like Daddy come home to see what the kids have been getting up to in his absence. He peered over shoulders, made useful suggestions and cutting remarks, and yelled right into people’s faces when they weren’t following the proper safety protocols. Which was a bit much, coming from him. I still remember the time he showed us his new handgun that fired black holes, and it took four of us to wrestle him to the ground and take it away from him before he could demonstrate it.
Uncle Jack was always convinced the lab assistants started slacking, or practicing their own self-destructive forms of one-upmanship, the moment he wasn’t around to watch over them; but they all seemed as absorbed and homicidally inclined as always. One of them was wearing a T-shirt with the message
Blow It All Up and Ask Questions Later.