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
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?
Like 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
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
One particular lab assistant, naked but for a lab coat unfortunately not buttoned up at the front, was sitting inside a chalk-drawn mandala on the bare floor, playing an electric bass with all kinds of weird tech plugged into it. I knew him of old. Eric was convinced he could make his bass guitar generate a chord so powerful it would make everyone who heard it crap themselves simultaneously. Psychologically effective and physically distressing at the same time. He hadn’t had much success so far. The best he’d been able to produce was a chord that acted as a mild but effective laxative. So every morning Eric went to the family hospital wards to play a short recital. Which, I understand, was always very well received by the patients.
A rather fierce young lady in a blood-spattered lab coat was walking up and down before a row of large, warty toads wired securely in place along a wooden plank. She was holding what looked like a souped-up soup ladle with many wires hanging off it, and every time she pointed the thing at a toad, the toad exploded. Messily. None of the other toads reacted. In fact, they all seemed quite resigned about it. Drugs will do that to you. Just say no. Especially to lab assistants with a funny look in their eyes.
“Ah!” the Armourer said happily. “I was wondering when Charlotte was finally going to get the kinks out of her protein exploder. Very efficient . . . The toads are all clones, of course, to avoid running out of test subjects.”
“Why toads?” I said.
The Armourer shrugged. “Nobody likes toads. If it were kittens . . .”
“Don’t go there,” said Molly. “Just don’t.”
“Of course, it’s all pretty basic for the moment,” said the Armourer. “Simply point and die. But once Charlotte gets the fine-tuning right, she’ll be able to blast the warts right off their backsides!”
“And when exactly would that come in handy?” I said.
“Early days yet, Eddie, early days . . .”
A rather upset-looking young man was being led away by the hand by a rather resigned-looking young woman. He’d somehow ended up with both eyeballs in one socket, and he was not being a brave bunny about it. I got the impression from the look on the young woman’s face that this wasn’t the first time she’d had to do something like this.
Molly picked up a small brass box covered in pretty flashing lights, from the top of a computer console. The Armourer almost jumped out of his skin.
“Don’t touch that!”
“Why, what is it?” said Molly, hanging onto the box even more firmly.
