Nazca Plains . . . it had all gone horribly wrong. We’d been ambushed, taken by surprise, outnumbered by hidden forces, and a lot of good men and women died badly that day. I went out at the head of an army, but all I brought home were body bags. . . .
Still, this time I had an ace in the hole. The Merlin Glass. It could drop us right on the Satanists, appearing out of nowhere, without warning. As long as I left it open, I’d always have a way out. If it was needed. If everything went wrong again.
At the last moment, Molly and Harry came out of the Hall to join us. I had wondered where she’d been. The two of them had clearly been talking together, because they were almost comfortable in each other’s company. Molly moved in close beside me, linked her arm through mine and leaned her head against my shoulder. She’d been talking with Harry about the time she and Roger were lovers, long ago. I knew that, and she knew that I knew. And we both knew this wasn’t the time to be concentrating on the past.
“I’m going with you,” said Harry, in a way that made it very clear there was no point in arguing with him. “Roger’s going to be there.”
“Probably,” I said. “You really think you can talk him out of this? Bring him back to the side of the angels?”
“Before you left Under Parliament,” said Harry, looking out across the grounds so he wouldn’t have to look at me, “before Roger let you go . . . you said you asked him if there was anything he wanted to say to me. Any message. He could have said any number of things: told me it was all over, told me he never really loved me, told me to go to Hell. . . . But he didn’t. I can still reach him; I know I can. . . . So I have to go, Eddie. I have to try.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “But don’t get in the way once the killing starts. This is war. And given what’s at stake . . .”
“I know,” said Harry.
The Sarjeant-at-Arms finally called a halt to his martial exercises, assembled his army before him and took the opportunity to bore the arses off them with what he probably thought was an inspirational speech. I looked the Droods over, and was quietly pleased with what I saw. They looked like soldiers ready to go into battle. They looked like an army. I put up with as much of the Sarjeant’s speech as I could stand, and then took out the Merlin Glass and activated it. The Sarjeant stopped talking as he realised no one was listening to him any longer. I shook the Glass out to full size, and then opened it up even further, pushing it to a greater size than I’d ever attempted before, finally ending up with a gateway some twenty feet square. I hadn’t been sure that would work, but it seemed stable enough.
I looked through the opening, and there was the Cathedral Hotel, right where the coordinates said it should be. A large building, clearly much rebuilt, with a slick modern facade. The sign said simply, CATHEDRAL HOTEL. Four stars. The only remaining vestige of the building’s original nature was an old bell tower stuck right on the end, presumably retained as a historical touch. Something for the tourists to take photographs of.
A massive car park sprawled out before the hotel, with neatly marked bays but only a handful of parked cars. No one about, no signs of Satanists anywhere. The whole place was quiet and peaceful on a warm sunny day. So far, so good. I decided it was time for a quick inspirational speech of my own. I turned to address the Drood army, and they looked at me expectantly.
“You look like you’re ready for a fight,” I said. “Good. I’ll lead you through the Merlin Glass. No armour—not yet. We don’t want to freak any innocent passersby. Straight across the car park and into the hotel. Armour up then. The Satanists have block-booked the hotel, to ensure their privacy. So once you’re in there, if they’re not clearly hotel staff, stamp them into the ground. No warnings, no mercy. They won’t be taking prisoners and neither will we. Except for their leaders: Alexandre Dusk, Roger Morningstar and anyone with them. Take them alive, if you can. We have questions.”
“Kill them if they stand; kill them if they run,” the Sarjeant said bluntly. “Don’t hold back. For everything these bastards have done, and everything they plan to do . . . death is the only answer, the only justice.”
“The mind-influencing machine should be on the premises somewhere,” I said. “Take it intact, if you can. Just to make the Armourer’s day. But if it looks like someone’s trying to run it, kill them and smash the machine. Your armour should protect you from all outside influences, but we’re not taking any chances on this mission. All right, that’s it. Good hunting.”
I strode through the Merlin Glass, Molly at my side, Harry and the Sarjeant all but treading on my heels. The Drood army filed through after us. In a few moments we were all through the Glass and spreading out across the empty car park. And that was when it all changed. The calm and quiet scene before us disappeared, gone in a moment, swept away like the illusion it always was. Between us and the hotel stood a massive army, thousands of heavily armed Satanists, with Alexandre Dusk standing at their head . . . smiling complacently at me.
“It’s a trap!” yelled the Sarjeant. “Defend the Glass! It’s our way home!”
But when we all turned to look, the Merlin Glass was only a twenty-foot-square mirror reflecting our shocked faces. I tried half a dozen different control Words, but the Glass was just a glass. The Satanists had blocked it again, like they had in Under Parliament. I was getting really tired of that. I turned to Molly.
“It was all false information, designed to lure us into a trap. Could Isabella have been turned? Could she have been one of them all along?”
“No!” Molly said immediately. “She couldn’t hide something like that from me. She never had any time for Satanists. They must have captured her. No wonder we saw only a sending in the Sanctity. It was an illusion, never her at all. What have you done with my sister, Dusk, you Satanist scumbag?”
Alexandre Dusk smiled easily at Molly and me. He looked very relaxed, very at his ease, as though he were out to enjoy the sunny day, not standing at the head of an army ten times the size of mine. He nodded easily to me, the condescending bastard.
“Why do you think Roger let you go?” he said, in an infuriatingly reasonable tone of voice. We knew Molly and Isabella were still hanging around, waiting for a chance to jump in and rescue you, so we made that possible. When they teleported you out, we were waiting, and it was a simple task for a few of our more accomplished sorcerers to reach in and grab Isabella and materialise her in one of our places of power. She never even saw it coming. And while she is a very talented young lady, we have some very powerful people of our own these days. People who can tell which way the wind is blowing.
“Then all we had to do was send you the image of her, and have her say our words with her mouth. Present you with an urgent deadline so you didn’t have time to think about it, and an opportunity too good to resist. So you’d charge right in, Eddie, like you always do. And here we all are! Ah . . . so many Droods in one place. Unprecedented! So many torcs for us to take from your dead bodies and make our own.”
“Yeah, right,” I said. “Like that’s going to happen.”
Dusk’s smile didn’t falter in the least. “I’m really looking forward to this, Eddie. There are still those in the world waiting for you to save them from us; I shall make a point of sending a severed Drood’s head to each and every one of them, to stamp out that last trace of hope.”
“Arrogant little prick,” I said. “You’re facing an army of Droods. A sane man would be running by now. Not that it would do any good.”
“One hundred and seven Droods, by my count,” said Dusk, still entirely unruffled, and I was beginning to wonder why. “Whereas I have one thousand three hundred highly motivated men and women, armed with all the very latest weapons. Your precious and much-vaunted armour is a thing of the past. You are yesterday’s men. We are cutting-edge.”
I had to smile. “You didn’t keep up with the memos, did you? We’ve upgraded.”
Dusk made an annoyed, frustrated gesture, upset that we weren’t properly impressed and taking his threats seriously. “You’re all going to die, Droods! And your pathetic antiquated morality with you!”
“Not going to happen,” said the Sarjeant-at-Arms briskly. “A battle can go either way; any good soldier knows that. But even if you should destroy all of us, it wouldn’t make any difference. Whatever happens, the family goes on. Droods maintain.”
“You don’t know what you’re facing,” said Dusk, his voice cold though his face was flushed. He wasn’t finding this as much fun as he’d thought he would. He kept giving us the right feed lines, and we kept refusing our cues. We were supposed to realise we were already beaten and shiver in our shoes, try to surrender, maybe even beg for mercy so he could laugh in our faces as he turned us down. We shouldn’t only be staring defiantly back at him and laughing in his face. He gestured at the ranks and ranks lined up behind him. “Allow me to present our very latest
