In fact, the whole corridor was making me feel distinctly uneasy. It was all too bright and cheerful, with not one thing out of place. More like a film set than somewhere people actually lived and worked. Even as I strode along, nodding and smiling to the men and women who nodded and smiled at me, something was making all the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. My flesh crawled. There was a growing sense of threat and menace, unfocused but very real, and very near, as though something might jump out at me at any moment. Walking down that corridor towards the boardroom felt like walking along a tightrope knowing someone was right behind you, waiting for a chance to push you off. Or like walking across a series of trapdoors, any one of which might drop open at any moment, letting you plummet into some awful trap, or perhaps letting you fall and fall forever. . . . My problem is I’ve got far too good an imagination. Well, one of my problems . . .
Still, even my torc was tingling uncomfortably, as though trying to warn me of some imminent danger. The closer I got to the boardroom and the people waiting in it, the more worried I became that not only was I in danger from the building’s many weapons and protections, but I was heading into an area of actual spiritual danger.
I murmured as much to Molly, who nodded vigorously. “Yeah, something about this place is creeping me out big-time, too. Which is weird; it’s usually the other way round. This is a bad place, Eddie. I don’t think these Satanists are using the name for shock value. I think they’re playing this for real. I’d raise my Sight and take a proper look at what’s going on here, but I’m pretty sure it would set off every alarm in the building.”
“Took you long enough to work that out,” said Isabella. “I felt that the moment I got here, which is why I was reduced to checking out papers that happened to be lying around. This is a bad place full of bad people with bad intentions. Can we take that for granted and move on?”
If Isabella was feeling the same sense of threat and danger I was, it didn’t seem to be bothering her much. She led the way right to the closed door of the main boardroom. There were no guards, or at least no obvious ones. I tried the handle on the off chance, but the door was locked.
“Don’t try to force it,” Molly said quickly.
“I know,” I said. “Alarms. I have done this secret-agent thing before, you know. It bothers me there aren’t any guards.”
“They must think their defences are so good they don’t need human guards,” said Isabella. “Either that, or the real guards are invisible and waiting to pounce on us.”
“Really wish you hadn’t said that,” said Molly, looking quickly about her. “I feel naked without my Sight.”
There was a single sign, saying MEETING. ONE P.M. START. NO ADMITTANCE AFTER THE MEETING HAS BEGUN.
“One p.m.,” said Molly. “The thirteenth hour. Satanists are always big on tradition. Probably because their greatest victories are all in the past.”
“We have to get in there,” said Isabella. “Find out what this is all about. I hate not knowing things! Eddie, can you use that golden-finger trick on the lock?”
“Almost certainly,” I said. “But again, I’m guessing the presence of strange matter this close to the movers and shakers would set off every alarm there is. I think we’re better off doing this low-tech.”
I produced a single golden brown skeleton key from my pocket, made from real human bone by the Armourer. (I didn’t ask whose bone. One learns not to ask questions like that around the Armourer.) Molly and Isabella moved quickly to cover me while I worked on the lock, blocking the view of anyone who might happen by. Though this end of the corridor was disturbingly quiet and empty. The skeleton key had the lock open in a moment, and I tucked it away again before carefully turning the handle. Isabella glared at me.
“I want one of those! It’s not fair. You Droods have all the best toys.” I gestured for her to be quiet, and then eased the door open a few inches. I waited, braced for any alarm or attack, but nothing happened. I peered through the narrow gap. The main boardroom was big enough to pass for a meeting hall, and was packed from wall to wall with rows of chairs, every single one of them occupied by rich and powerful and famous people. Names and faces you’d know, along with a whole bunch only people like me are supposed to know about. They were all staring with rapt attention at the man standing on the raised dais before them, commanding the room with fierce authority. Everyone there seemed absolutely fascinated by what they were hearing, hanging on his every word. But there was also something about them that suggested they were scared—either of the man on the dais or of what he was saying. What could he be suggesting? What could be so extreme that it could frighten even hardened Satanists? I pushed the door open a little more, and when no one reacted I squeezed through the gap and stood at the back of the hall, behind the rows of chairs. Molly and Isabella moved quickly in after me, leaving the door ajar, just in case. We stood very still, hardly breathing, but no one looked back. All their attention was fixed on the man on the dais.
Tall, dark and compelling, he strode confidently back and forth on the dais. In his expensively tailored suit, he looked and sounded a lot like one of those well-rehearsed motivational speakers, working his way through a series of points and positions on his way to the bit where we all get rich. He smiled a lot, showing perfect teeth, and his regular handsome features had that slightly stretched look of subtle plastic surgeries. His hair was suspiciously jet-black for a man well into his forties. But his voice was rich and sure and utterly compelling, holding his audience in the palm of his hand. I leaned in close to Molly and Isabella and murmured in their ears.
“Either of you know this guy?”
“The face is familiar,” said Molly, frowning.
“So it should be,” said Isabella. “That is the one and only Alexandre Dusk. Big man in computers. A millionaire before he was twenty, and a billionaire before he was twenty-one. No one knows how rich he is now, but when he talks, governments listen. If they know what’s good for them. But . . . he hasn’t been seen in public for years. People have to put up millions just to ask him questions over the phone. Most have to settle for an e-mail. So what the hell is he doing here, in person?”
“If you’d belt up and let us listen, we might find out,” said Molly.
So we shut up and listened. Dusk could talk, though he sounded more like a politician than some self-made computer geek. He spoke well and fluently, pinning his audience to their seats. He was selling them a vision. He’d clearly already been talking for some time, getting his audience worked up. They really wanted what he was selling. Dusk prowled back and forth before them, his voice rising and rising as he gestured with increasing assurance. And when I realised what he was talking about, I was fascinated, too, even as a slow, cold horror crept over me.
“The Droods have removed themselves from the game,” said Alexandre Dusk. “They’re effectively leaderless now, and fighting among themselves. They may have marvellous new armour, but they don’t know what to do with it. They are yesterday’s men; we are the future. The Immortals are a dead end. Most of them are gone, the few survivors scattered and on the run. The Droods did us a favour there by removing the one organised and influential force that might have been able to stand against us. Right now, every government and leader in the world is looking for a chance to struggle out from under the Droods’ oppressive heel, looking to seize the chance to think and act for themselves. They want to be powers in their own right, and they’ll listen to anyone who can show them a new way. And that’s going to be us.”
“You see?” Molly murmured in my ear. “You set the governments of the world free, for the first time in history, and the first thing they do is plot to stab you in the back.”
“Of course,” said Isabella. “They’re politicians.”
“No good deed goes unpunished,” I said.
“This is our time, come round again!” said Dusk. It is our duty to take advantage of this situation, all this marvellous chaos and confusion, and take the reins of power for ourselves, as it was always meant we should. But not by replacing these governments and leaders. We’ve tried that, and it’s never worked. The sheep always rebel when they realise they’re headed for the slaughterhouse. No, my friends, we’ve always made better kingmakers than kings. The power behind the throne. Harder to detect, harder to fight, harder to find out what our true agendas are until it’s far too late. You can get much more done when you’re not in the public eye, and there’s no one to be horrified by the methods we use. And it’s always good to have a leader around to use as a fall guy if it all goes wrong and we have to make a swift exit by the back door.
“So we have become the latest generation of advisers, political consultants, focus groups, lobbyists, personal assistants. . . . We are the people who really decide what gets done. And now that the politicians have come to rely on us, now that they’re ready to listen to anything we have to say as long as it keeps them in power . . . it’s time for the Great Sacrifice. The final willing degradation of Humanity, a spiritual crime so great it will damn all their souls and give our lord Satan his final victory over mankind. Then we will dispose of the leaders and take their place as kings of the new Earth!”
The crowd went mad. They rose to their feet, shouting and screaming, pounding their hands together, almost out of their minds with excitement and anticipation. The whole room was full of a wild, vicious, malignant hysteria.
I looked at Molly and Isabella. “Is he serious? Are they serious?”
“Sounds like it,” said Isabella.
“What the hell is this Great Sacrifice?” said Molly. “Whom are they planning on sacrificing?”
Isabella glared at the howling crowd, her upper lip curled. “Look at them. Typical Satanists. The little men, the cheats and bullies who’d never rise to the top through their own abilities. They want to be king of Shit Heap, and take their revenge on the world and all those people who stand between them and the things they want, the things they think they deserve. The secret plotters and the backstabbers . . . They want power because at heart they’re cowards, afraid of everyone who has power over them.”
“The worst evil always comes out of small people,” said Molly. “Small-minded, small-souled, vicious little turds.”
“Satanists,” I said. “I do get it, Molly, really.”
And then the whole boardroom went quiet, and we looked up to find everyone in the crowd had turned around and was staring at us. Dusk pointed a dramatic finger in our direction.
“Intruders! Strike them down in Satan’s name!”
“Damn,” I said. “Ladies, I think it is time we took our leave.”
“Try to keep up,” said Isabella, already halfway out the door.
Molly and I were right on her heels. I slammed the door shut behind us and crushed the lock with an armoured hand. It wouldn’t hold off the crowd for long, but it should buy us some time. I spun round, and then swore dispassionately as a demon dog came pounding down the corridor towards us. I have encountered such things before, but this had to be the biggest I’d ever seen: a great mountain of night-black flesh almost filling the corridor from wall to wall, its hunched back brushed against the ceiling. The whole corridor shuddered under the thunder of its approach, great clawed paws slamming against the floor. Isabella glared at me.
“I told you not to come here! It must have smelled your torc!”
“Oh, sure,” I said. “Put all the blame on me.”
“I’d run, if there were anywhere to run,” said Molly.
“Oh, ye of little faith,” I said, stepping forward to face the demon dog.
It was almost upon us now, great slabs of muscle moving smoothly under its dark hide. It had a flat, brutal face, with flaring hellfire eyes and a wide slash of mouth packed with more vicious serrated teeth than seemed physically possible. It snorted and grunted hungrily as it ran, and already it was close enough that I could smell the blood and brimstone on its breath.
It came straight at me like a runaway train, lifting its ugly head to howl its fury: a terrible, primitive sound, all hate and rage and spite for everything that lived. A disturbingly human sound, rather than anything animal, because a demon dog only looks like a dog. I armoured up, the golden strange matter covering me from head to toe in a moment. And like that I felt stronger, faster, sharper, like coming fully awake after dozing all day. I never feel more alive than when I’m wearing the family armour, boosted far beyond human limitations, to defend Humanity from all the things that threaten us. But even as I moved forward to face the demon dog, I wasn’t actually sure any of that would be enough to stop several tons of advancing demon dog.
They’re not real, not natural. They’re physical constructs: made, not born, in special labs, created to be strong enough to hold and contain a demon out of Hell. A muscular machine possessed by a demon, trained to go for the soul. Fortunately, the shape itself limits what a demon can do. Because they’re possessing a dog’s shape, they’re limited by the natural laws of this world to take on the nature of a dog. Which means they’re vicious as hell, but not terribly bright. They fight and attack like an animal, with no thought of strategy.
Still bloody strong and hideously powerful, though.
So I ran straight at the demon dog and punched it right in its ugly face. My golden fist sank deep into its night-dark forehead, piercing the flesh and cracking the heavy bone beneath. The demon dog howled with pain and shock, skidding to a halt as it pushed me ahead of it. Molly and Isabella scattered to get out of its way, pressing their backs against the corridor walls we as passed them. I held my balance till we both came to a halt, and then ripped my armoured hand out of its head. Dark, steaming blood ran down the demon dog’s face, briefly catching fire as it passed over the flaring eyes. It growled deep in its chest and swung its head back and forth, throwing the blood off. Where the dark blood hit the walls, the surface blistered and bubbled. The wound was already healing, the dark flesh knitting back together.