Property of a Lady Faire (A Secret Histories Novel) (20 page)

“Yes?” I said loudly. “Can I help you? You’re not the armed wing of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, are you?”

“Oh shit,” said the first solider. “It
is
them!”

“It’s them!” said a second solider.

“I said that!” said the first.

“But it really is
them
!” said the second. “It’s Eddie Drood and Molly Metcalf!”

“They are why we’re here,” said the first.

“Well, yes,” said the second. “But I really was sort of hoping someone else would find them.”

“This is the correct address,” said the first. “Where the boss said they’d be.”

“I was really hoping they wouldn’t be home,” said a gloomy third voice. “She turns people into things.”

“You are all seriously letting the side down!” said the first. “Pull yourselves together! We have our guns, and we have the drop on them!”

“It won’t help,” said the second.

I looked at Molly. “No one does a decent threat any more. I can remember when armoured thugs had style.”

“You just can’t get the help, these days,” said Molly. “I blame bad toilet training.”

“Hands up!” said the first soldier, jerking his gun at me, his voice probably a little higher-pitched than he intended. “Put your hands in the air, now! Then kneel down, and lie face down on the ground!”

“Yeah, right,” said Molly. “Like that’s going to happen.”

“I really don’t like the way you’ve been treating the people who live on this street,” I said sternly. “There’s no excuse for unnecessary brutality.”

“We know who you are!” said the first soldier. “We know what you are! Your armour doesn’t scare us. We’re prepared. We’ve all been issued specially prepared ammunition!”

“Heard that one before,” I said.

I subvocalised my activating Words, and my golden armour exploded out of my torc and swept over me in a moment, enclosing me from head to toe. The soldiers cried out in shock as a gleaming gold statue appeared before them, the face a featureless golden mask. There’s something about there not being any eyeholes that always puts the wind up people. I raised one golden fist, concentrated, and thick spikes rose from the knuckles. The soldiers fell back several steps despite themselves. And then Molly stepped forward, smiling sweetly, and wrapped herself in a shield of swirling magics, stray energies spitting and sparking on the air. The soldiers fell back even farther. They were right out in the middle of the street now, huddling together for comfort.

One of them panicked and opened fire, and suddenly all the soldiers were firing at once, blasting Molly and me with everything they had. The roar of so many automatic weapons all firing at once was deafening. Bullets slammed into my armour, raking me from head to foot, and I didn’t flinch. I felt no impact, and the armour soaked up all the bullets. With my old armour, the bullets would have ricocheted, going everywhere. The new strange matter armour was more responsible, absorbing all the bullets as fast as they arrived. I wasn’t entirely sure where my armour stored them, or what it did with the bullets afterwards. Did it perhaps crap them out the back later, when I wasn’t looking? I wouldn’t like to leave a trail . . . The soldiers kept firing, and the bullets did me no harm at all; it was like firing into a bottomless golden pool.

Some of the soldiers targeted Molly, and found that even more upsetting. Their bullets turned into pretty butterflies in mid-air, which then flew away. And given the rate at which the automatic weapons were pumping out bullets, it wasn’t long before the sky above us was full of clouds of brightly coloured butterflies, weaving pretty patterns in the air.

The soldiers kept on firing until they ran out of ammunition, and then they just sort of stood there, like they didn’t know what to do. So I stepped forward and punched out the first solider, hitting him so hard in the face that his black visor split neatly in two. He fell backwards, hit the ground hard, and didn’t move again. And while the others were looking at him, Molly stepped forward and kicked the second soldier so hard in the nuts it actually lifted him up into the air for a moment. He hit the ground hard, curled into a ball around his pain, and made high-pitched noises of distress. I was pretty sure he was wearing protective armour down there, because I heard it break. Molly looked at me.

“They have to learn respect.”

“Oh, I’m sure they’re both feeling very respectful,” I said. I looked at the remaining soldiers. “I expect you’d like to surrender now, wouldn’t you?”

And then Molly and I looked round, as more soldiers came running towards us from both ends of the street at once. Dozens of black uniforms, heavily armed and armoured, crashing down the street with grim determination. The soldiers who had been firing on us turned and ran to join the others. Or perhaps to hide behind them. I looked past the approaching soldiers. Both ends of Bayswater Road had been completely sealed off by parked military vehicles and barricades. But I couldn’t see any helicopter gunships, or attack vehicles, of the kind MI 13 had used before. Just black-uniformed cannon fodder. What were they planning?

“Do they really think sealing off the street is going to stop us leaving?” said Molly.

“I think it’s more to keep other people out than to keep us in,” I said. “They don’t want any witnesses for whatever it is they have planned.”

“I don’t like the feel of this,” said Molly, looking back and forth uncertainly. “Something is heading our way, apart from these idiots. Something . . . bad. I can feel it, crawling on my skin. You know what, Eddie? This might be a good time to exercise the better part of valour and leg it through the Merlin Glass. Before the bad thing gets here.”

“You want to leave?” I said. “And miss a good scrap? A chance to beat the stuffing out of a bunch of smug, obnoxious thugs? Are you sickening for something?”

“No,” said Molly, with quiet dignity. “I am just pointing out that MI 13 is showing every indication of having planned all this very thoroughly. They’ve got something else up their sleeves, and I can’t help feeling we would both be a lot better off if we weren’t here when it arrived.”

“Hell,” I said, “it’s come to something if you’re being the voice of reason.” I looked up and down the street. “I can’t See anything unnatural. No sign of any high tech or magical energies. Come on, Molly, this is MI 13 we’re talking about. They couldn’t organise a hand job in a brothel. Their specially prepared ammunition didn’t amount to much, did it?”

“Oh, go on then,” said Molly. “Mindless violence and extreme behaviour it is. Twist my arm . . .”

The approaching soldiers slowed their pace as they drew near, spreading out to surround us. Molly and I moved unhurriedly to stand back to back. The soldiers formed quickly into ranks, covering us with their automatic weapons and barking orders at us from behind their anonymous black-visored helmets. I turned my golden mask back and forth, and soldiers flinched away from its eyeless gaze. It was one thing to hear all the stories about Drood armour, and quite another to have to face it in the real world. The soldiers in the front ranks tried to back away, but the ones behind were having none of that, and held them there. A few scuffles broke out, until their officers got them back under control.

And Molly and I hadn’t even done anything yet. I just stood there, my spiked golden fists held out before me, while Molly’s magics flickered dangerously around her, full of nasty possibilities. Finally, one of the officers came forward to face me. His uniform had no markings, but there was a silver badge on his helmet, just above the visor. He stopped a more than respectful distance away, his automatic weapon trained on my armoured face. For psychological value, no doubt. His back was stiff, his head held high, and when he finally spoke his voice was sharp and authoritative.

“Eddie Drood, surrender yourself and your woman, and give yourselves over to the authority of MI 13. Do it now, before things get ugly.”

“You’re already ugly,” I said. “I’ve seen how your people handle innocent bystanders.”

“And what’s this
your woman
crap?” Molly said loudly from behind me. “I am Molly Metcalf, wild witch of the woods and a supernatural terrorist in my own right! And a serial transformer of piggy little men who annoy me into squelchy little snot things!”

“She really is,” I said. “I’d back away now and ask for new orders from someone higher up the food chain, if I were in your shoes.”

“I don’t take orders from rogue agents and witches with delusions of grandeur,” snapped the MI 13 officer.

“I do not have delusions!” said Molly very loudly.

“You’ve upset her now,” I said to the officer. “I’d start running if I were you. Not that it’ll do any good, of course . . .”

“We have orders to take both of you in, dead or alive,” said the officer. “Guess which we’d prefer.”

“Why can’t people just be reasonable?” I said plaintively to Molly.

“No good asking me,” said Molly. “I never did get the hang of reasonable.”

I smiled, and shrugged at the officer. “Sorry, but you see how it is. Tell you what—why don’t you and your uniformed bully boys just put down your weapons and surrender to Molly and me? And then we won’t have to do terribly unpleasant things to all of you, that will make the survivors scream when they wake up at the hospital.”

“Survivors,” said Molly. “Always the optimist, Eddie.”

The officer stepped back, and gestured sharply to a nearby soldier, who stepped smartly forward out of the ranks and aimed a rocket launcher directly at me. I started to say something, and he fired the thing at me, at point-blank range. The shell shot across the few yards separating us at incredible speed, the sound of its rocket blast almost overpowering. The sensors in my mask kicked in immediately, speeding up my sight and reflexes till the world and everything in it seemed to be moving in slow motion. I grabbed the shell out of mid-air and cradled it in my arms, hugging it to my chest. It exploded almost immediately, and my armour soaked up every bit of it. There wasn’t even a shock wave to affect the soldiers around me. I’m considerate like that, sometimes. I’d crouched a little, to be sure of smothering the blast, and when I straightened up again, the soldiers made low, shocked sounds as they saw that my armour was entirely unmarked and unaffected.

The officer gestured quickly again, and another soldier came forward, this time armed with a flame-thrower. The fuel tank had all kinds of magical symbols scrawled across it, so I assumed the flames had been specially treated. Given the effect of the specially prepared ammunition earlier, I decided not to be impressed. So I just stood there, my arms casually folded, and let the soldier get on with it. He bathed my armour in a blast of roaring flames, sweeping the jet back and forth across me, and I didn’t even feel warm.

Good to be a Drood.

The soldier gave up, turned the flame off, and stomped back into the ranks, where some of his friends patted him consolingly on the shoulder. There then followed something of a pause, as the officer quietly debated with his troops over what to do next. I don’t think they’d expected there to be a
next
. There was even more discussion going on in the ranks at the back, most of it of a somewhat dispirited nature.

“You might have warned me about the flames,” said Molly, behind me. “I mean, yes, I have been to Hell and back and there isn’t a fire on this world that could actually get to me, but a warning would still have been the polite thing to do.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I was thinking . . . whoever sent these herberts out to annoy us must not have known much about Drood armour, or your magics. And given that this is MI 13, who have tangled with us before, to their cost . . . you’d expect them to know better.”

I broke off, as Molly started chanting behind me. I could feel magical energies tingling on my armoured back. There then followed a series of explosions, and a whole bunch of screams, and then it all went quiet again. The soldiers in front of me looked past me and Molly, saw what she had just done, and appeared very upset. Several ripped off their helmets so they could be suddenly and violently sick.

“Well?” I said.

“Fine, thank you,” Molly said cheerfully.

“You’re being extreme again, aren’t you?” I said.

“They started it,” said Molly. “I believe in getting my overreaction in first.”

“I have a strong feeling,” I said thoughtfully, “that this—all of this—is just a distraction. Expendable foot soldiers, never expected to actually bring us in or take us down. They’re just . . . something to keep us occupied until the really heavy shit turns up.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” said Molly. “I wonder whose it is . . . Who’s in charge of MI 13 these days?”

“Officially, Alan Diment,” I said. “But he made it clear to me, back at the Wulfshead, that he’s not much more than a figurehead. Being steered and pressured by people higher up.”

“I think we should find those people and give them a good talking-to,” said Molly.

“Sounds like a plan to me,” I said. “Hello . . . something new is coming our way.”

Molly came round to stand beside me as the ranks of soldiers parted to allow Alan Diment to approach us. He still looked like a minor civil servant, out for an afternoon walk and not at all happy about it. He kept his back straight and his head high, but he still gave the impression that he should be waving a large white flag. He passed through the soldiers, and stopped a very respectful distance away from me and Molly. He looked from me to Molly and back again, and when he finally spoke he sounded scared but determined.

“You know I didn’t want any of this,” he said. “None of it was my idea. I’d have known better.”

“But you’re here,” I said. “Why is MI 13 so determined to take us down, dead or alive?”

“Because you destroyed our operation at the Wulfshead Club,” said Diment. “And embarrassed my current lords and masters. You’ve made them lose face in the Intelligence community, and made them seem weak and useless to the Government that funds them. You must have known my masters would be just waiting for a chance to get back at you, and you gave them the perfect opportunity when you invaded the Department of Uncanny and slaughtered everyone there. What were you thinking? Did you really believe you could get away with that, just because of who you are? Every organisation in the hidden world is after you. Because if you’d turn on Uncanny, and your own grandfather . . . Well, nobody’s safe. The word is, whoever takes you down gets a free pass from the Droods. And everyone wants that. Your family is really disappointed in you, Eddie. You let the side down by getting caught. Now the British Government wants you. And you too, Molly; don’t feel left out. Both of you have been declared fair game. And MI 13 got here first.”