His featureless golden mask looked back at me. “Why would you do that, Eddie?”
“Because I don’t want to believe that Roger is totally lost to us.”
“You never liked him.”
“He never liked me. So what? He’s family.”
Harry shook his head slowly. “I don’t want you here. This is private.”
“Roger’s not going to be here alone,” I said, lowering my hands. “He’ll have guards. Protections. Layers of security. You’re going to need someone to watch your back, or you’ll never get to him.”
Harry nodded stiffly, reluctantly, and then we both broke off and looked around sharply, as we heard rapidly approaching footsteps. We moved quickly together, side by side, and a whole bunch of heavily armed security guards came running in from a side corridor. They all had automatic weapons, and they all opened up on Harry and me the moment they saw us. We stood our ground, not flinching in the least at the roar of automatic fire, and our armour soaked up every single bullet. The sheer impact would have knocked over a horse, but we didn’t budge an inch. More guards arrived, firing strange-energy weapons. Violent forces crawled and crackled all over our armour, trying to force a way in. They failed and fell away.
Harry and I waited to be sure they’d thrown everything they had at us, and then we strode purposefully forward. Heavy blades erupted out of Harry’s hands, while terrible spikes rose up from his arms and shoulders. He moved among the security guards like a living scythe, cutting down everyone who stood before him. I grew a long golden sword from one hand and moved alongside him, hacking and cutting. There was no room for mercy in either of us. All I had to do was think of the Great Sacrifice and mountains of dead children, and my heart was a cold and terrible thing.
It didn’t take long. It was a slaughter, not a battle. Soon enough, the lobby was full of bodies and soaked in blood. More blood ran down our gleaming armour in streams, to pool around our feet.
“Well,” said Harry. “I think we can safely assume they know we’re here. Let’s go introduce ourselves.”
He strode down the corridor the guards had come from, and I went with him. The corridor led to another corridor, and then we stopped again. There was a low, ominous growling from somewhere up ahead.
“Oh, bloody hell,” I said. “They’ve summoned up a demon dog. I hate those.”
“Any way round it?” said Harry.
“Beats me,” I said. “I don’t see any side corridors. But whatever that is, it has to be here to guard something. Or someone. So we have to go through it. . . . Okay, I’ll handle it. You go on. Find Roger.”
“Getting cocky, Eddie? No Drood’s ever managed to take down a demon dog on his own before.”
“You haven’t been keeping up with my reports, have you, Harry? I took one down at Lightbringer House.”
“I did read your report; you had Molly and Isabella there to help you.”
“You read my reports?” I said. “I’m flattered. Look, I can keep the thing at bay while you go talk with Roger. That’s what matters.”
“I can’t let you do that.”
“Yes, you can. You can’t stand me, remember?”
“Oh, yes. There is that. Anything for the family?”
“For family, Harry.”
We strode down the corridor together, took the sharp left turn, and found it wasn’t a demon dog after all. The whole of the corridor before us had been changed, transformed, possessed by a spirit out of Hell. The corridor was alive, its every surface organic, fleshy, corrupt. Like the living throat that had replaced the elevator shaft back at Lightbringer House. The walls were flesh: scarlet and purple meat, with dark rotting patches and networks of heavy, pulsing veins. The floor was a long, rippling, shocking pink tongue, slick with digestive juices. The whole of the ceiling was one long elongated eye, watching us unblinkingly with mad, fascinated intent. Huge, jagged teeth protruded from the meat of the walls in regular rows; and as we watched, they began to revolve slowly, like a meat grinder, or a living chain saw. The whole thing stank of blood and sulphur and sour milk; it was alive and it was hungry and it was waiting for us. I looked at Harry.
“After you.”
“It’s only meat and teeth,” said Harry. “You really think that could get through our armour?”
“That . . . is a demon out of Hell,” I said. “A major power and a major presence, to be able to overwrite our reality so completely. I have absolutely no idea what that thing could do to our armour.”
“It was put there to stop our getting to Roger,” said Harry.
“Almost certainly,” I said. “Still, when in doubt, cheat. If we can’t go through it, maybe we can go around it.”
I turned away from the possessed corridor and punched a hole through the ordinary wall next to me. My golden fist slammed through it with no problem at all. I pulled my hand back, and broken bricks and brick dust fell to the floor. I hit the wall again and again, making an opening big enough to step through, but when I stopped to look, all I could see on the other side was the possessed corridor, looking back at me.
“Damn,” I said. “It’s written over the whole hotel, mapping itself to every corridor at once. It’s everywhere it needs to be, all at the same time. Whichever way we go to try to reach Roger, this thing will always be there to block our way.”
“You understood all that from looking through one hole?” said Harry.
“Of course not. I accessed my armour’s sensors.”
“We should have brought an exorcist with us.”
“Well, next time we’ll know, won’t we?” I said. “You can’t think of everything when you’re in a hurry. Why don’t you wish for a tactical nuke as well, while you’re at it?”
“Don’t get tetchy,” said Harry. “Let me try something.”
He concentrated and brought both his arms together before him. Swift ripples ran along his golden armour, which then shifted and fused together, forming itself into a huge machine gun. The kind you see in action movies when the hero wants to bring down a whole house at once. I moved quickly to get out of the way, and Harry opened fire on the possessed corridor. Strange-matter bullets exploded from the long golden barrel with incredible speed and fury, chewing up the demonic flesh of the floor and walls. Purple meat exploded under the impact, dark blood spattering everywhere, and sustained firepower ripped the long pink tongue apart from one end to the other. Something screamed horribly: a vast, harsh and utterly malignant sound. Harry shifted his aim, tearing the corridor apart and devastating the elongated eye from end to end. The long split pupil exploded, and thick fluids rained down into the churned-up flesh of the corridor. Harry stopped firing, and the gun sank back into his armour again. And as he stood there, considering his work and finding it good, every single strange-matter bullet he’d fired jerked free of the demonic meat and flew back to him, to be absorbed into his armour.
“All right,” I said. “That’s impressive. Terribly destructive, but neat with it. I didn’t know our armour could do that.”
“I’ve been practicing,” said Harry. “Roger gave me the idea. His favourite film was always
“The fiend,” I said.
And then we both broke off and stared blankly as the ripped and torn-up flesh of the possessed corridor repaired itself, rebuilding and reestablishing itself, demonic flesh fusing back together until the corridor looked exactly as it had before. Rotting walls, pulsing tongue, watching eye.
“
“Well, quite,” I said. “
“Now what do we do? Send out for a tanker full of holy water?”
“Take too long,” I said. “Let me think. This is more Molly’s territory than mine.” I thought hard. This had to be a delaying tactic, to hold us off while Roger and Dusk got the hell out of Dodge, probably taking the mind- influencing machine with them. We had to find a way through. . . . A thought occurred to me.
“Are you religious, Harry?”
“What? Not as such . . . not in any organised way. Hard to find an organised church that wants anything to do with the likes of Roger and me. You?”
“In my own way. We know Heaven and Hell are real; the family has regular dealings with them. But we don’t know much about either; only enough to know we don’t want to know more.”
“How is this helping us?” said Harry. “What do you want me to do, shape my armour into a big golden
