Walker.”
“Perhaps,” said Walker. “But I was always so much more than just a man with a commanding Voice. I have always known a great many unpleasant ways to make people tell me what I need to know.”
I believed that. I backed slowly away as Walker advanced on me. I was thinking hard, looking all around me, trying hard to call up any information I had about the Hall that Walker couldn’t possibly know. Something I could use against him. The painted portraits on the walls caught my attention. The images were moving, changing, faces with crazy eyes and distorted expressions. Becoming nightmare images, glimpses into Hell, as though all my ancestors were trapped and damned and suffering. I turned my head away, refusing to believe that.
Matthew and Alexandra appeared again, walking down the long hall towards me.
“Go on,” said Alexandra. “Kill us again. You know you want to. But you can’t. Tell Walker what he wants to know.”
“I didn’t kill either of you,” I said, and then stopped and stared at them both as that thought struck home. I hadn’t killed them; Jacob had. But these two hadn’t known that, so they couldn’t be who they appeared to be. Jacob and Uncle James had both said not everyone in this Hall was who or what they appeared to be. . . .
“You’re not real,” I said firmly. “I don’t believe in you.”
I glared at Matthew and Alexandra, and they faded away in the face of my certainty. I turned and looked at Walker.
“Just you and me now, Walker. Or perhaps it always was. If you are Walker.”
He considered me thoughtfully, as we stood facing each other. Two men in an empty hall, the prisoner and his inquisitor. Walker sighed briefly, and adjusted one spotless cuff.
“There’s nowhere you can go, Eddie. And I have all the time in the world to break your will and learn what I need to know. Everyone talks, eventually.”
“Use your Voice,” I said. “Go on. But you can’t, can you? Because you’re not really Walker. And this isn’t Drood Hall. Is anything here real? Is anyone? Or is this all just a clash of wills between me and whoever you really are? You can’t get anything out of me unless I offer it freely, and I’ll never do that.”
“Never is a long time,” said Walker. “I can walk out of here, go about my business, and come back whenever I please. Might be a few days, or a few years, maybe even a few centuries. Or perhaps I’ll stay away until you’re so desperate for another human voice, for human contact, that you’ll beg me to come back. Beg to tell me everything you know, to relieve the awful solitude. Hell isn’t other people, Eddie. Hell is an empty house, forever and ever and ever.”
“And I will always defy you,” I said. “Forever and a day. Remember the Drood oath: ‘Anything for the family.’ We mean it, Walker. That’s what makes us strong, not our armour.”
“Anything for the family?” said Walker. “I think I believe you, Eddie. Ah, well.” He tipped his bowler hat to me and started to turn away.
“Hold it,” I said. “Are you really Walker? Are you really dead? Am I?”
He smiled vaguely. “Who can say, in a place like this?”
“If I am dead,” I said, “and this is a place of the dead . . . why haven’t I seen my parents?”
“Charles and Emily?” said Walker. “Whatever makes you think they’re dead?”
He opened the doors, stepped through them, and was gone. I started after him, and then stopped short as a great blaze of pure white light swelled up before me. And out of that light stepped Molly: my sweet, wild witch, Molly Metcalf. She smiled widely at me, rushed forward, and threw her arms around me, holding me tight, so tight I thought she’d never let me go. I held her just as tightly, even as a terrible sadness stabbed my heart like a knife.
“Oh, Molly,” I said finally. “How did you die? Who killed you, to send you here?”
She let go of me immediately, and pushed me back so she could stare into my eyes. “I’m not dead, sweetie. Neither are you. Though you came bloody close.”
“So this isn’t Drood Hall? Or some cold place in Hell?”
“Not even close,” said Molly. “This is Limbo. And I am here to take you home.”
She embraced me again, and the light blazed up, and finally I felt warm again.
CHAPTER TWO
No Place Like Home
And I woke up safe in my Molly’s arms, bursting back into consciousness like a swimmer rising up from the depths and breaking the surface of the sea. I was back in the real Hall, back in the real Sanctity, basking in Ethel’s rose red glow, sitting up on the floor beside Molly, surrounded by my family. The Armourer was there, my uncle Jack, a middle-aged man in a stained lab coat, looking shocked and concerned but trying to hide it. The Sarjeant-at-Arms, big and brutal and permanently angry. My cousin Harry, slick and supercilious in his neat grey suit and wire-rimmed glasses. And my other cousin, Roger Morningstar, the half-breed hellspawn, dark and sardonic in his Armani suit. And Molly. My sweet, wild witch and free spirit, a delicate china doll with big bosoms, bobbed black hair, and a mouth red as sin. My own true love, for my sins.
She looked intently into my eyes, trying to keep the anxiety out of her smile, one arm round my shoulders, the other hand patting my chest comfortingly. I managed a shaky smile for her, and we leaned forward so our foreheads touched, resting against each other. I felt safe and happy, and so damned alive I might burst apart into clouds of sheer joie de vivre at any moment. Brief shivers and shudders came and went, and I was breathing hard, but the cold was slowly seeping out of me, replaced by Molly’s warmth and the uncomplicated comfort of Ethel’s rose red light.
I was home again.
I remembered everything now. Remembered the Immortal bursting into the Sanctity, disguised as Molly’s sister Isabella. A transformation so perfect it even fooled the Hall’s many layers of defences. I remembered the Immortal stabbing me. How the knife felt as it sank into my flesh and pierced my heart. Remembered the pain and the blood, and falling, and dying . . . I clutched at my chest, and fresh blood ran down my wrist as I crushed the torn shirtfront with my hand. The whole of my shirt was soaked in blood. But when I pushed the material aside, the skin underneath was undamaged. I ran my fingers over my chest, searching for the deep wound I remembered, but it was completely healed. I felt fine. I looked at Molly.
“It’s all right, Eddie,” she said, reassuring me with her eyes and her smile as well as her words. “You’re fine. Everything’s fine now.”
“Look at this shirt,” I said numbly. “Ruined. And it was my favourite shirt, too.”
“I never liked it,” said Molly.
“You never said. . . . All right. I’m back. Now, what the hell just happened?”
The Armourer moved in and offered me his hand. I grabbed onto it, and he hauled me to my feet. My legs threatened to shake for a moment, and then steadied. Molly stood close beside me, in case I needed her. The Armourer looked me over closely, and then pulled me into his arms and hugged me fiercely.
“I thought we’d lost you, Eddie; I really did. And I couldn’t bear the thought of your being dead. I’ve lost too many already.”
I hugged him back, awkwardly. We’ve never been a touchy-feely family. He let go of me abruptly and stood back, in control again.
“Do you remember what happened, Eddie? While you were . . . gone?”
“I was in Drood Hall,” I said slowly, “but it wasn’t the real Hall. It was a cold, empty place . . . full of dead people. Walker was there, and Grandmother, and Uncle James.”
“A near-death experience?” said Harry. “How very fashionable.”
He shut up as the Armourer glared at him. “Fascinating,” Uncle Jack said briskly. “I’ve always wanted to record one of those. What did James have to say to you? Did he forgive you?”
“We forgave each other,” I said.
“You weren’t really dead, as such,” Molly said quickly. “Your spirit was in Limbo. And not everyone you encountered there was necessarily who or what they appeared to be. And Walker almost definitely wasn’t Walker.”
