“Hell with that,” said Harry. He folded his arms, tapped one foot on the floor and thought hard. “As Eddie is entirely too fond of saying, when in doubt, cheat. Or at least improvise with style. If I were to armour up and smash a hole in the floor . . . maybe I could excavate a tunnel and burrow past the conspiracy—Why are you shaking your head, Roger?”
“Because the hotel’s protections are still in place,” said Roger. “And I daren’t let them fall, even for a moment. We are sitting inside a bubble around and above and below. . . . Nice idea, though.”
They sat together side by side, happy in each other’s company. Waiting.
“I used to love walking with you through the Hall grounds,” said Roger. “All those endless lawns, and the woods, and the lake . . . I missed out on all that, growing up apart from the family. I felt at peace there. Like maybe I could belong, if I tried hard enough . . .”
“When did you first go rogue?” said Harry. “Turn against us, the Droods, Humanity?”
“Before Eddie was attacked and stabbed,” said Roger. “How else do you think that disguised Immortal got into the Hall so easily?”
“Were you happy as a Satanist?”
“Actually, yes,” said Roger. “It’s a very self-indulgent lifestyle. You really do get to do everything you ever wanted, indulge every sin, wallow in every pleasure, satisfy every need. . . . But self-indulgence gets very boring after a while. Because if you can do
And then he broke off, leaned forward and looked at the display screens. Harry looked, too, and all the colour drained from his face.
“They’re here,” said Roger.
“How many of them?” said Harry.
“All of them.”
“Dear God . . .” Harry’s face was white with shock now. “I didn’t know there could be an army that big. Men and monsters and . . . Eddie! Listen to me! Don’t come! You wouldn’t stand a chance!”
“No one ever realises how powerful Hell can be, until it’s too late,” said Roger.
“What are we going to do?” said Harry. “We can’t fight that!”
“I was never planning on fighting,” said Roger. “I was planning on hiding out here long enough for the army to get bored and leave.”
“Eddie could still come,” said Harry, slowly recovering some of his composure. “There’s still the forbidden weapons in the Armageddon Codex.”
“Yes,” said Roger. “Do you see Alexandre Dusk out there any where?”
Harry looked hard, moving from screen to screen. “No.”
“Oh, good,” said Roger. “For a moment I thought we might be in trouble.”
And that was when all the machines exploded at once. The conspiracy had found it couldn’t override the passwords and protections, so they hit the self-destruct. The blast filled the War Room’s display screen, and for a long time all we could see was smoke, slowly clearing, to reveal rubble and wreckage and blazing fires. I saw Harry, on his hands and knees in his golden armour, digging frantically through the rubble. He hauled heavy pieces of broken machinery aside as though they were nothing, until finally he uncovered what was left of Roger Morningstar. The hellspawn was a mess. The man who had defied Hell itself for the man he loved had been torn apart by the explosion. Both his legs were missing, and his torso and half his face were burned and blackened by flames. Only one eye was still open; the other was seared shut. Somehow, he clung to life with more than human energy. He looked up at Harry with his one eye, and managed something like a smile with scorched and blackened lips.
Harry made a space amid the rubble and sat down beside Roger, holding his body in his arms. He said Roger’s name several times. And then Roger closed his eye, blood bubbled briefly at his mouth and he stopped breathing.
Harry armoured down. He was only a man now, sitting amid destruction, holding his dead love in his arms.
“No,” he said. “You can’t be dead. I fought my way through Hell to be here, scared off a demon with my love for you; you can’t be dead! It isn’t fair! God damn you! God, this isn’t fair!”
There were sounds from outside, people and perhaps things not people, digging their way through the rubble, trying to get in, to get to Harry. He laid Roger’s dead body down and smiled briefly, bitterly.
“You won’t get me,” he said. “Anything for the family.”
He raised one golden hand, grew a blade out of it and stabbed himself cleanly through the heart.
CHAPTER TEN
The Things We Do for Revenge
The display screen went blank. And in the War Room at Drood Hall, there was a long, terrible silence. I looked slowly around me. Molly, Callan and the Sarjeant-at-Arms had joined me in time for the end. In time to see Roger and Harry die. Everyone in the War Room was shocked, stunned. Death in the field was nothing new to Droods; but we don’t usually get to see our own murdered in cold blood right in front of us. And I think we were all perhaps a little more than usually upset because Roger and Harry had died so very bravely, serving the family, even though most of us had never particularly liked or trusted either of them. Some of the comm technicians were quietly holding and comforting one another. A few of the far-seers were crying quietly. Nobody seemed to know what to do or say.
“Ethel?” I said.
“I’m here, Eddie,” said the calm, quiet voice from out of nowhere. “I’m sorry. They’re gone. I can’t See what’s happening there anymore. There are powerful shields in place. There’s nothing I can do.”
I turned to the Sarjeant-at-Arms standing beside me. “Raise your army. Raise the whole damned family, if that’s what it takes. We’re going back.”
“There’s no point,” said the Sarjeant. “Roger and Harry are dead, Eddie. There’s nothing any of us can do for them.”
“They’ll have taken Harry’s torc,” said Callan. One of his hands rose unconsciously to the torc at his throat, replacement for the one ripped off him by the Blue Fairy, to reassure himself it was still there.
“We have to go back!” I said. “We have to make those bastards pay!”
“Eddie,” said Molly, moving in close beside me. “You’re shouting.”
“We are not going back,” said the Sarjeant, his voice very cold and very steady. That’s what they want, Eddie. Given the size of the conspiracy’s army they could have taken Harry and Roger alive, if they’d wanted to. They could have found a way. Hell, they could have entered the hotel in force and overwhelmed them. They could have taken the two of them prisoner, held them for ransom, threatened them to put pressure on us. . . . But instead they blew up the room, quite deliberately, knowing we were watching, to make us so mad we’d go charging back in, and to hell with how outnumbered we were. And then . . . they would slaughter us, Eddie. We’re not prepared for all-out war, not yet, and they are.
“Give me time, Eddie. Give me time to raise a properly trained and equipped army, with some of the nastier forbidden weapons from the Armageddon Codex, and I will set that army against anything the conspiracy can put up. But we’re not ready. Not now.”
“They won’t wait,” I said. I felt numb and cold, and my voice seemed to be coming from a long way away. “As soon as they realise we’re not taking the bait, they’ll leave.”
“We’ll find them,” said the Sarjeant. “And then we’ll take the fight to them.” He looked at the empty display screen. “They died well. Like men. Like Droods. I was wrong about them.”
“We have to do something,” I said. “We left them there on their own. We have to do something!”
“You do something,” said Callan. “But do it somewhere else. I have a War Room to run.”
He moved off among his people, murmuring reassuring words and occasional sarcasm, ordering fresh pots of tea and more Jaffa Cakes, and quietly but firmly encouraging everyone back to work. The technicians turned back to their comm stations, the far-seers to their scrying pools, and the War Room went back to watching the world again.
