'I was in Anaheim,' I said, at least partly in self-defence to stop him talking for a while. 'That's right on the other side of Los Ange les. I didn't even get a sniff of anything glamorous. Now, if you don't mind, I have some serious brooding to be getting on with.'
'Oh sure, don't mind me! Keep your seat belt on, help yourself to the complimentary peanuts, and if we hit any turbulence try and get some of it in the bag provided.'
He finally shut up so he could concentrate on his takeoff, and I leafed listlessly through the in-flight magazine, the Drood Times. We have our own monthly magazine, never distributed outside the family. In fact, all copies self-destruct if anyone without Drood DNA even touches the cover. The current issue's headline was THE MATRIARCH'S BACK! AND THIS TIME IT'S PERSONAL! READ OUR BIG NEW INTERVIEW FOR ALL HER PLANS FOR A NEW AND IMPROVED FAMILY, EXTENSIONS TO DROOD HALL, AND HOW TO KEEP EXPLOSIONS IN THE ARMOURY TO AN ABSOLUTE MINIMUM. The Drood Times is rather like one of those long chatty letters people include with their Christmas cards, filling you in on all the latest news and gossip concerning people you really don't know or care about.
The magazine is bright and cheerful and almost unbearably glossy, contains no adverts, and yet still seems to go on forever. The Droods are a really big family, and the sheer amount of news, gossip, cheerful chatter and character assassination results in a monthly issue big enough to stun an attacking bear. I do flick through it, on occasion. We all do. If only to see if we're in it. There's nothing like living together in one big Hall to get on everyone's nerves; and if nothing else, the extremely lengthy letter columns do allow us to let off steam safely. I tend not to appear in the magazine much; except as a Bad Example.
Even when I was running the family.
I put the magazine to one side, and stared glumly out the window. We were already out and over the sea. I tried out a few excuses for size, but none of them seemed especially convincing, so in the end I just gave up and settled for my usual explanation: Look, shit happens, okay?
The pilot had been instructed to fly me straight home to Drood Hall, so I could make my report… but I overruled him. I wasn't ready to talk to anyone, just yet. So I broke into the cockpit, and told him he could either land at Heathrow in London or I could punch him twenty or thirty times in the head. Given my reputation, he believed me, which was just as well, because I meant it. And I think he was just a little thrilled to have an excuse to disregard the Matriarch's orders for once, even if only by proxy.
We have our own private landing area at Heathrow, as at all major airports across the world. We have agreements in place with all major governments, organisations and significant individuals the world over. They let us do what we want, and we promise to leave them alone. No one ever says anything, but if questions do get asked, they're usually slammed down with the magic words National Security. On the unanswerable grounds that it's Droods who keep nations secure. It helps that our Blackhawke jets can't be filmed or photographed. One really fanatical plane-spotter did get uncomfortably close a few years back, so we just put him in charge of airport security. Turning poachers into gamekeepers is an old trick.
I told Iain that he could give my excuses to the Matriarch, or not, as he wished, but that I'd report in at the Hall when I was good and ready, and not before. He said he thought he'd take the long way home, round both poles, so he wouldn't have to touch down at the Hall until after I'd decided to show up. Potentially bright lad, I thought.
I took a taxi back to my new flat in Kensington. The traditional black London taxicab made a nice change from its LA equivalent. A little ganja-smoking voodoo fetishist goes a long way. The driver here did try to be chatty, but I wore him down with a series of low growls. In revenge he turned his music on high, and it was The Carpenters Greatest Hits all across London, the bastard. I slumped in the back of the cab, tired in body and spirit. I really needed some downtime, before I had to face my family again. The mission had gone quite spectacularly wrong. I should have reported in right away. But… it was only Doctor Delirium. How important could it be?
I looked out the taxi window, and the familiar London streets rolled past. Places I knew, locations I remembered, all of them looking safe and secure. And all the ordinary people, going about their ordinary business, with no idea of who and what they shared their world with. I could have raised my Sight, and looked on the world as it really was, but I didn't. Sometimes I just liked to pretend that this was it, that this was all there was. At least I have the privilege of choice. These people, with their everyday jobs and ordinary lives, keeping the machinery of the world turning, were my responsibility. My job, to stand between them and the dangers they didn't even know existed. As Droods, we're encouraged to see the world's populations as our children, who must be protected. And if we do our job right, they'll never have to know their nightmares are real.
Until the day they finally grow up enough that we can trust them with our knowledge. And then we'll all get together and kick the Bad Things right off our world. On that far future day, we'll all be Droods.
When I gave up the leadership of the family, and went back to being just a field agent again, I left the Hall and returned to London. But I didn't feel like going back to my old place in Knightsbridge. Too many bad memories, from the time when I'd been falsely declared rogue, and the whole family turned on me. They'd trashed my flat, looking for secrets or stolen goods or any evidence they could use against me, but really just as an excuse to take their anger out on me. Someone spray painted the word Traitor! all across one wall. So I didn't go back.
My nice new flat in Kensington was big, open and very comfortable. The family coughed up for all the best fittings and furnishings, as a way of saying sorry. My new place is not easy to get to, at the end of a cul-de-sac, and I have seen to it that it is very well defended. Against everyone and everything; very definitely including members of my family.? Though I hadn't actually got around to telling them that. I thought I'd just let it come as a nice surprise. Besides, they definitely wouldn't approve of some of the nasty, vile and downright unpleasant things I'd put in place to make my new home safe and secure. Right down to the smallest detail. It's not everyone who's got a banshee for an alarm bell.
I also have a preprogrammed poltergeist in residence; it clears things up while I'm out, does the dirty dishes, deals with the laundry and even disposes of the garbage for me. My girlfriend Molly Metcalf gave it to me as a moving-in present. She's very thoughtful about things like that. Though I did have to have words with her later, after I discovered she'd set the poltergeist to remove from my collection all the CDs that she didn't approve of.
How can anyone not like Abba?
Once home, I took a while to just walk around the flat, checking all the defences were in place, and none of the booby traps had been triggered. I sorted through the post and checked my e-mails, opened some windows to let the fresh air in, and retrieved the Merlin Glass from its hiding place. These days, I keep my very special hand mirror in a subspace pocket dimension, tied to my torc. Only I can reach in and retrieve the Glass; even if you could detect the subspace pocket, which you can't. I called to the Glass, and immediately it appeared in my right hand, looking innocently normal and ordinary. Just a standard old-fashioned hand mirror with a silver backing. But Merlin Satanspawn never made an ordinary or an innocent thing in his life. I said the proper activating Words, and the Glass shook itself back and forth, growing quickly in size, until finally it jumped out of my hand and made itself into a Door, right in front of me. Through this new opening I could see Molly's wildwoods, the hidden place she lived in when she couldn't be with me.
Through the Merlin Glass I could see rank upon rank of huge trees, falling away before me, heavy with foliage of so bright a green it practically glowed, interspersed with shady glens and tumbling waterfalls. Dust motes danced in long golden shafts of light. Fresh air gusted through the doorway, carrying with it rich scents of grass and greenery and living things. I stepped through the Glass into the forest, and the doorway closed behind me.
The wildwoods stretched off into the distance in every direction I looked. Massive trees with huge trunks, so tall you could crane your neck right back and still not see the tops of them. Bustling untamed vegetation, that had never known the touch of axe or saw, sprang up everywhere. These were old woods, ancient woods, from primordial times when we all lived in the forest, because the forest was all there was. The air was full of sound; of birds and beasts and insects. These were the woods of Olde Englande, when forests stretched unbroken from coast to coast, and bears and boars and wolves roamed freely, along with other rarer creatures that have long since dropped out of history and into legend. I have seen kelpies and bogles and fenendrees in this place; and they have seen me. Other shapes moved warily among the trees, maintaining a safe distance; large dark shapes that studied me with bright unblinking eyes from the deepest of the shadows. I can come to this place only because Molly loves me; the wild things of the woods are still a long way from trusting me. They were only ever comfortable around me when Molly was there too.
