of the family.
And then suddenly they all let go of me and backed away. I almost fell without their fierce hands to hold me up. I stood swaying in the doorway, peering at my enemy with my one good eye, and then, dazed as I was, I heard the pounding of golden feet on the marble floor behind me. The Satanists were backing away into the auditorium now, yelling at one another. I watched them numbly, half-blind and half-dead, while Philip MacAlpine screamed instructions from the stage, trying to rally his people. I managed a small smile then. I was having a little trouble accepting the fact that I was still alive, but you couldn’t be dead and still hurt this much. I slowly realised that MacAlpine had descended from the stage and was ploughing through his own people to get to me.
“You’ve spoiled it all!” he screamed at me. “You always have to spoil everything! You’ve destroyed my career and my life and my wonderful plan, but I’ll still see you dead!”
He lunged forward, a small ceremonial dagger in his hand, reaching for my heart. I vaguely remembered something like that happening before, back in the Hall, so I waited till the last moment, till he was almost upon me, and then I spit a mouthful of my blood into his eyes. He cried out, staggering to a halt, suddenly blinded and confused. And it was the easiest thing in the world for me to step forward and take the knife away from him. I could barely feel the smooth bone handle in my swollen hand. MacAlpine fell back into the crowd, fighting his own people as he tried to get away from me. I slowly opened my hand and let the knife fall to the floor. It wasn’t like I had enough strength left to use it. I was amazed I was still on my feet. So I stood there and watched the upper echelons of the new satanic conspiracy panic and scream at one another, while from behind me came the sound of my family racing to my rescue.
Golden figures were suddenly all around me, and golden hands held me up, supporting my weight. The relief was so great I almost cried. More golden figures streamed past me into the auditorium, and the Satanists scrambled back through the raked seating, fighting one another in their desperate need to get away. Blank golden faces loomed up before me. I really didn’t like the way my reflection looked in those golden masks. I heard the Armourer’s voice.
“Dear God . . . Eddie, my boy, what have they done to you?”
One figure armoured down, and there was the familiar face of my uncle Jack, filled with shock and horror and rage at what he saw. His strong engineer’s hands took hold of me and supported me. I tried to smile at him, and blood ran down my chin from my ruined mouth.
“They have a clicker,” I said, speaking as clearly as I could. “Like yours. Took my armour away. But I still fought them.”
“Of course you did,” said Uncle Jack. “You’re a Drood.”
He produced his own clicker and snapped it before me. My armour flowed out of my torc and encased me from head to toe in a moment. I sighed blessedly as all the pain washed away, soothed by the armour. I felt strong and sharp again. My armour couldn’t heal me, but it could hold me up. I took a deep breath and straightened up. My head was clear again. I looked quickly round the auditorium.
“Close the door,” I said. “And set a guard outside. No one leaves this room.”
The Armourer gestured urgently, and half a dozen Droods went back out into the corridor and shut the door firmly. The Sarjeant-at-Arms came over to stand before me.
“We’ve evacuated all the surviving prisoners back to the Hall. William’s there with Ammonia, and Molly’s there with her sister. Everyone else in the castle is dead. All the Nazi clones, all the Satanists—though we lost some good people doing it. Their names will be remembered.”
“I see you got your armour back,” I said.
“You didn’t think I’d invent something as important as the clicker and not have something to overrule it if necessary, did you?” said the Armourer.
“Did you get all of the teleport gateways?” I said. “Are you sure you didn’t miss any hidden ones?”
“We’ve got people checking,” said the Armourer. “But, Eddie, listen, I have to tell you—”
“No,” I said. “This is more important. This room contains the upper echelons of the conspiracy, and their leader. Philip MacAlpine.”
“Never liked him,” said the Sarjeant, after a pause. “Good at his job, but never for the right reasons.”
The Armourer shook his head slowly. “He did good work with James and me. But his heart was never in it.”
The Sarjeant-at-Arms looked out over the quiet crowd of Satanists, who were cowed by the presence of so many Droods in their armour. There were still a lot of defiant faces, but none of them was stupid enough to try anything. The Sarjeant nodded once.
“This is the last of them. We have to deal with them, here and now.”
“Deal with them?” I said.
The Sarjeant turned his featureless mask back to me. “Kill them, Eddie. Kill every single one of them. Do you have a problem with that?”
“No,” I said. “They have to die. Not for justice, or revenge, or even for the awful thing they planned to do. But because if we let them live, they’d try to do it again. That or something worse. They have to die here, and their dreams and plans and bad intentions with them. No mercy. Not for them.”
“Couldn’t agree more,” said the Sarjeant-at-Arms.
He used his gift to call two heavy machine guns into his hands, and then he walked towards the waiting Satanists and opened fire on them. He moved the guns smoothly back and forth, cutting the Satanists down in rows, and stepped calmly over the dead bodies of the fallen to get at the next. Most tried to run, but the golden figures were there to stop them, striking them down with cold armoured fists. There was screaming, pushing and shoving, people trying to use one another as human shields. Cries for mercy, promising to do anything we wanted, make any reparations we wanted, inform on all their contacts, do anything for their lives . . . but mostly they screamed. None of us had anything to say to them. How could they hope to be forgiven, to be shown mercy, after what they’d done and planned to do? Let them go to God, and see if he had any mercy for them.
They had to die, because it was our duty to make sure they could never harm anyone again.
It didn’t take all that long. The Sarjeant-at-Arms’ guns finally fell silent, and only Droods were left standing. A few armoured figures moved carefully among the fallen bodies, but there were no merely wounded. The Sarjeant was very efficient. He looked round him at all the bodies lying slumped and piled across one another and nodded once, contemplating a job well-done. The guns disappeared from his hands. And then we all turned to look at the only two people left standing in the room who weren’t us. Philip MacAlpine and Alexandre Dusk stood together on the stage, looking defiantly back at us. I started toward them, and the Sarjeant and the Armourer came with me. MacAlpine looked quickly around, but there was nowhere for him to go. Alexandre Dusk smiled smugly at me. The bullet wound in his forehead was almost completely healed. He lifted his hands, and dark energies spit and swirled around them.
“I have my power, and I have my shields,” he said. “You can’t kill me, and you can’t stop me.”
“Wrong,” said the Armourer. He raised his clicker, snapped it once, and the magics surrounding Dusk’s hands disappeared. He looked at his hands dumbly for a moment, and then looked back at us. The Armourer smiled. “There are all kinds of clickers. Eddie, would you care to . . . ?”
I stepped forward and jumped up onto the stage. MacAlpine backed quickly away, but Dusk was still too stunned to move. He opened his mouth to say something, and I grew a long golden sword from my right hand and cut off his head. The body slumped to the stage, gouting blood. The head fell to the stage, rolled over the edge and ended up at the Sarjeant’s feet. The mouth was still moving, until the Sarjeant stamped on it. And that was the end of Alexandre Dusk.
I looked at Philip MacAlpine and he snarled back at me. “You can’t have me!” he said, his voice high and ragged. “I don’t care what you’ve got. I made a deal! It was promised to me that nothing in the world can harm me.”
“Hell always lies,” I said. “Except when a truth can hurt you more. You should know how deals with the Devil always work out.”
“I can’t be harmed! My own people tried to kill me in a hundred different ways, hoping to replace me as leader. I have drunk poison, soaked up bullets, laughed at curses! Nothing can touch me anymore. Your armour is worthless against me.”
“Yeah, right,” said the Sarjeant, behind me. He strode forward across the stage and launched a golden fist at MacAlpine’s head with enough force to tear it clean off the man’s shoulders. Except suddenly, impossibly,
