All four walls of the War Room, tall and broad as they are, are covered with state-of-the-art display screens showing every country in the world, including a few that aren’t supposed to exist, but unfortunately do. All of them dotted with variously coloured lights to indicate trouble spots, ongoing missions, certain individuals on the family’s “of interest” list, and the current locations of every Drood field agent, active or not. The War Room was currently packed to bursting with family members of every rank and station, crowding round the workstations, darting back and forth with urgent messages, and shouting at one another with a complete lack of professional calm and composure. Much of the activity and commotion seemed to be gathered around the communication systems and the far-seeing stations. The family has raised remote viewing to something of an art form, using every kind of high tech and old magic the Armourer and his staff could come up with; but I’d never seen it reduce the War Room to such sheer chaos before. A chill ran down my spine. To panic the family this thoroughly, the emergency had to be something really special.
As I looked around I realised the Armourer wasn’t the only familiar face in the War Room. Cousin Harry was there, bent over a comm screen and peering intently through his wire-rimmed spectacles. He was discussing the situation with the Sarjeant-at-Arms, who was only half listening as he leafed through a thick handful of urgent memos, more of which were constantly being handed him by hurrying messengers. Both of them were so focussed on the situation they’d apparently forgotten how much they hated having to work together. And the head of the War Room, Callan Drood, stood at the conference table, reading through one important report after another and barking out a series of orders. And yet for all the deafening noise and hurried motion, there was a sense that things were being done. The family trained hard for emergencies, so that everyone would know what to do when the time came. Except me. I still hadn’t a clue what I was doing there. And then Molly emerged from the crowd and hurried over to join me. She gave me a quick hug to show all was forgiven, if not actually forgotten, and then she stepped back to look at me with real concern in her face.
“Tell me later,” she said. “Tell me everything later. Because you need to concentrate on what’s happening right now.”
“What is happening?” I said plaintively. “Why is everyone running around like their backsides are on fire?”
“The Satanist conspirators have launched their campaign,” said Molly. “Come with me; I’ll get you to Callan, and he can bring you up-to-date.”
She took me by the arm and led me to the conference table by the quickest route, which basically involved intimidating everyone else into getting out of our way. Molly’s always been very good at that. Callan looked up as I arrived and actually seemed glad to see me. Which wasn’t like him. He gestured sharply for his people to stand back and give us some room, and beckoned for me to stand next to him, so we wouldn’t have to shout to be heard over the general bedlam.
“It all started half an hour ago,” he said flatly. Came out of bloody nowhere. The comm stations began picking up television broadcasts from every country in the world. Government leaders, individual leaders, religious leaders . . . all preempting television time to make a special announcement. Often during prime time, which doesn’t come cheap. You can look at the recordings later, if you want, but they’re all singing the same tune: all of them talking a lot, but not actually saying much. Talking about the great future that’s coming for everyone, and not the usual pie-in-the-sky stuff. They’re talking about good times for all by the end of this year . . . as a direct result of the Great Sacrifice that the people of every country are going to make. No details as yet, not even a hint as to who or what is going to have to be sacrificed. Perhaps the conspiracy hasn’t told the leaders yet.
“Anyway, all the speeches sounded remarkably similar, once we’d translated them from the original languages. Almost as though they’d been written by the same person. And for all we know, they were. . . . You have to understand, Eddie; this is unprecedented. This kind of agreement and cooperation, from every country in the world, regardless of politics or religion . . . simply doesn’t happen. Even we couldn’t arrange something like this without years of planning, a hell of a budget and a whole lot of assassination threats. . . . It’s hard to believe the conspiracy could have this much influence over so many important people. . . . Hell, we didn’t even know the conspiracy existed this time last year. All right, we’ve been a bit busy, what with the Hungry Gods and the bloody Immortals, but even so . . . Could these bastards really have this much
control
over so many different kinds of government? I’d like to think most of them don’t actually know who and what they’re dealing with, but these are politicians we’re talking about, after all. . . . I have to wonder if it would make any difference if they did. . . . You should never have let them out from under our control, Eddie! The world was a lot safer when we still had our boot on their necks!”
“Except for when we didn’t,” I said. “Two world wars and an endless cold war; I don’t call that being in control. I have to believe that some good will come from giving Humanity their freedom. Or what’s the point of going on?”
“No one was at all clear about what this Great Sacrifice might involve,” said Molly, tactfully easing us onto a new subject. “Either their leaders think their people aren’t ready to be told yet, or their new lords and masters haven’t told them yet.”
“When we lost control of the world’s politicians, it was inevitable that someone would move in to take our place,” murmured Harry, casually joining us at the conference table. “So you could say this is all your fault, Eddie.”
“That’s what you say, Harry,” I said. “But then, that’s what you always say, isn’t it? Learn a new tune; that one’s getting old. Now, I can see this is all distinctly worrying, but why was I called here in such a rush? What’s the emergency?”
“I’m sure we could have coped without your help,” said Harry. “But . . . something else has happened. It would appear that a small country town in the southwest of England has been attacked by the Satanist conspiracy.”
“It could be the first part of their Great Sacrifice,” said Callan. “The news isn’t officially out yet. British authorities have slapped a D Notice on the whole affair. On the grounds of national security. Though God knows how long that will last in this electronic day and age . . .”
“But what’s happened, exactly?” I said. “What have the Satanists done?”
“The town of Little Stoke has vanished,” said Harry. “The whole population is just . . . gone.”
“It all happened so quickly,” said Molly. “I was killing some time down here, waiting for you. . . .”
“And pestering the life out of me,” said Callan.
“Shut up, Callan,” said Molly. “It must have happened pretty much instantaneously. Not a word of warning or a cry for help. There was this . . . massive energy surge that set off every alarm in the War Room, and by the time we’d zeroed in on the exact location, it was all over. There have been no communications in or out of where Little Stoke used to be, ever since.”
“We knew about it before the authorities,” said Harry. “But then, we’re Droods. We know everything. That’s our job.”
“Don’t you have a job you should be doing?” Callan said pointedly. “This is my War Room; I’ll do the briefings. Make yourself useful. Get me some tea. Milk, two sugars.”
Harry drifted away from the conference table as though he’d remembered somewhere he’d meant to be. Callan glared after him.
“And some Jaffa Cakes!” He sniffed loudly and turned his attention back to me. “Irritating little tit. Thinks he’s such a big deal because his dad was your uncle James. I could put together a brigade of the Grey Fox’s various bastards. . . . Anyway, as soon as we were sure something bad really had happened, we hacked into a CIA satellite orbiting over the area, and this is what we got. . . .”
He pushed his way through a crowd of messengers shifting impatiently from foot to foot with important-looking messages in their hands, opening up a path by sheer angry presence, and stopped before one particular display screen locked onto a set of coordinates in southwest England. Callan gestured angrily at the screen.
“See that black spot, that circle of impenetrable darkness exactly five miles in diameter . . . ? That’s where the small town of Little Stoke used to be. No light gets in or out, no communications in or out. Just . . . that.”
“What is it?” I said. “Oh, hell, it’s not a black hole, is it?”
“Of course it’s not a black hole!” snapped Callan. “Or the sheer gravitational pull would have sucked the whole country in by now. Am I the only one who paid attention during science lessons?”
“Probably,” I said. “You always were a science geek.”
“Science geeks are in!” Callan said defiantly. “Look at all those CSI television shows. Geek chic!”
“Boys, boys,” murmured Molly. “If we could concentrate on the matter at hand . . .”
“Ah . . . yes,” said Callan. “Little Stoke. Population under eight thousand. Nothing important or significant about any of them, as far as we can tell. Even the local history is particularly dull. But after the energy surge that caught our attention, and before the darkness set in . . . the entire population of Little Stoke vanished. Eight thousand men, women and children . . . all gone in a moment. The town buildings are still there, under the darkness. Don’t ask me how.”
“Look at the location,” I said. “Little Stoke is only up the road from the far more important and significant town of Bradford-on-Avon. Could the Satanists have been after that, and . . . missed?”
“I don’t think so,” said Callan. “Even they wouldn’t have the stones to attack that town. Not given who lives there.”
“I’ve been there,” Molly said brightly. “They do a lovely cream tea. . . .”
“Really?” said Callan. “How very nice. Now shut up; grown-ups are talking. No, Eddie, Little Stoke was quite definitely the target. The black circle covers the town’s boundaries exactly. What lies there now . . . is a little bit of Hell on Earth.”
I gave him a hard look. “How can you be so sure about what’s going on underneath all that darkness?”
Callan gave me a pitying look. “We’re not dependent on other people’s spy satellites; we’ve got the best far-seers in the business working right here in this room. They’ve been keeping an eye on everything that’s happened through their scrying pools and crystal balls. Come with me.”
He led Molly and me into the heart of the communications section. A harried-looking young man stood in Callan’s way and refused to move.
“We’ve been monitoring world communications for mentions of what’s happened in Little Stoke,” he said urgently. “And after the first flurry of rumours it’s all gone very quiet. No one’s talking about it, because word’s come down from on high that they’re not to talk about it. And there’s no sign at all that the British authorities are intending to do anything.”
“Well, that’s why we’re here,” I said. “Keep listening.”
We moved on, into the far-seeing section. The Armourer was there, building something complicated from the disassembled scraps of several important-looking machines. He nodded brusquely to us, intent on his work.
“They say modern technology won’t mix with traditional magics. I say they will, if you bang them together hard enough. Give me time, and I’ll give you something that will show you everything that’s happening inside that darkness. In high definition, with surround sound.”
Callan ignored him, peering over the shoulder of a fey young woman who was staring intently into her scrying pool, or magic mirror: an impossibly flat extrusion of compressed silver ectoplasm spread out on the bench before her. Images came and went in the pool too quickly for me to follow.
“You need the gift to be able to See the world through a magic mirror,” said Callan. “I specialised in far-seeing before I became a field agent. . . . Still got my crystal ball somewhere . . . Ah. Yes! There . . . Focus, Amelia, focus. . . .”
He squeezed the shoulder of the far-seer, adding his strength to hers, and they both concentrated. Just like that, I could See what they Saw in the scrying pool. A street, a perfectly normal small-town street. The buildings were all intact, though there were no people anywhere. But there was something subtly
wrong
about the image. It took me a moment to realise that the scene was too still, too sharp, too perfect.
“This is a cover image,” said Callan. “Meant to deflect anyone who did get a look in. It’s not safe to look underneath, not yet. We found that out the hard way. All the people are quite definitely gone . . . snatched away in a moment, kidnapped by unknown forces. But more than that, the whole area inside the town has been . . . changed. Horribly altered. Outside the five-mile radius of the dark circle, everything remains normal, as it should be. The world goes on, untouched, unaffected. But inside Little Stoke . . . We’ve had to put in a whole series of filters and safeguards to protect the far-seers. When they first broke through the circle and got a good look at what was happening, we lost nine good men and women almost immediately. They went mad from what they saw. But . . . I think we’re ready to try again, yes?”
The young woman, Amelia, nodded stiffly. The Armourer looked up sharply.
“I wouldn’t, Callan! Wait till I’m finished here, and I can give you some real protection. . . .”
“We don’t have time!” snapped Callan. “Go for it, Amelia.”
He beckoned forward a dozen other far-seers who’d been waiting nearby, and they all crowded in around Amelia. Linked together, that many far-seers should be able to See through anything. We’ve always had the best remote viewers in the world. The problem’s been to keep them out of the bedrooms of the rich and famous. They leaned in together, shoulder-to-shoulder, peering intently into the scrying pool. And then Amelia’s head exploded. Her skull shattered, blown outwards as though someone had buried a grenade inside her brain. Bone fragments and spatters of pink and grey meat shot across the scrying pool, and her headless body slumped forward, spouting blood in thick jets. Two more far-seers screamed shrilly as their eyes exploded, splashing the others with thick, viscous, bloody fluids. Another far-seer reached up and tore his own eyes out so he wouldn’t have to See what he was Seeing. Two more spontaneously combusted, burning fiercely with thick yellow sulphurous flames. They didn’t move; just stood where they were, burning right down to the bone. Another far-seer started laughing and couldn’t stop.