Simon Green - From Hell with love

The Armoury never changes much. A long series of interconnected stone chambers, with high arching ceilings, packed with scientific equipment, magical apparatus, and more weird shit than you could shake a Hand of Glory at. The air-conditioning system gurgles loudly to itself, when it feels like working. Multicoloured wiring, following a colour code nobody really understands, lies tacked haphazardly across the walls, you have to be really careful where you step, and there's always something seriously dangerous, unpleasant or suddenly explosive going on in the testing area.

But this was four o'clock in the morning, and the place was practically deserted. The Armourer sat me down in his favourite chair, and bustled around making us both a nice cup of tea. Always good for what ails you, he said briskly. He always felt better when he was doing something practical. He used proper tea leaves, from an old tea caddy with the willow pattern on the sides, and got out the good china, and a silver tea strainer presented to us by Queen Victoria. Because this wasn't an occasion for a tea bag in a plastic mug, and find your own milk and sugar. I just sat in the chair and let him get on with it. The moment I sat down, all my strength seemed to run right out of me.

I looked vaguely round the Armoury. Most of the lights had been turned off, giving the deserted labs a calm, reflective ambience. A few lab assistants were still working quietly, here and there. They should have been tucked up in bed at this ungodly early hour of the morning, but there are always a few night owls. They tapped away at computer keyboards, or scribbled frantically on oversized writing pads, lost in their own little worlds. One of them appeared to have a halo, but I decided not to mention it.

They probably didn't even know what had just happened in the Hall. They didn't know what had happened to the Matriarch, and my Molly.

The Armourer served me tea, with honey and lemon. I sipped at the tea automatically. It tasted good, soothing.

"No jaffa cakes, I'm afraid," said the Armourer, pulling up a chair and sitting down opposite me. "Damn lab assistants go through them like locusts. I've got half a packet of chocolate hobnobs around here somewhere, if you'd like… Ah. Well. Maybe later, eh?"

We sat quietly together for a while, drinking our tea, thinking… doing our best to come to terms with so much having happened so quickly, in such a short time. Both our worlds, overturned and destroyed, in just a few hours. Uncle Jack had lost his mother, I had lost my Molly, and just maybe the Droods had lost their innocence. Trained all their life to serve the good, they had been made to do an evil thing, and some of them might never get over it. We all have monsters within us, but most of us never have to see what happens when they get loose. Droods are taught from an early age to roll with the punches, to take what punishment you have to, to get things done, to carry on the? family business and mourn your losses later. But this… was hard.

"You never knew your Aunt Clara, did you, Eddie?" Uncle Jack said finally. His voice was calm, quiet, reflective. "My wife. She died when you were still a baby. Blood vessel just popped, in her brain. Dead before she hit the floor. It happens like that, sometimes. We're Droods, with every advantage, but we still get sick and die sometimes, just like everyone else. She was always so full of life… my Clara. I left the field to come back here. There was nothing I could do for her, but I still had a young son to raise. I never left the Hall again."

"You never talk about your son, Uncle Jack," I said.

"He let himself down," the Armourer said flatly. "He let all of us down. Not all sons turn out as well as you, Eddie. If his mother hadn't died… if I'd been around more when he was younger, instead of running around half of Eastern Europe stamping out political bushfires… Kipling was right. If is the cruellest word. The point is, don't bury yourself in work, like I did. You're still young. You can still find someone else."

"Not like Molly," I said.

"Well, no," said the Armourer.

We sat, and drank our tea, and thought some more. The tea soothed my throat, if not my heart.

"So," the Armourer said. "That… was the notorious Isabella Metcalf. Impressive."

"You know her?" I said.

"Well, of her. The female Indiana Jones of the supernatural world. Always looking for answers in strange places, digging up things any sane person would let lie. She always has to know, and to hell with the consequences. Not for any particular end, or purpose; knowledge has always been its own reward, with Isabella. She's petitioned me a dozen times for access to the Old Library. Had to turn her down, of course. She's not family."

There was another long pause, the Armourer making it clear with long looks from under his bushy white eyebrows that he was waiting for me to contribute something to the conversation. So I told him what I'd discovered about the Immortals, and their possible infiltration of our family. He took it surprisingly well; no furious outbursts, no insistence that such a thing couldn't be possible. He just leant back in his chair, sipping slowly from his cup, while his expression grew colder and colder, and his eyes became positively arctic. I'd never seen him look so dangerous. When I'd finished, draining my cup of tea to sooth my raw throat, he nodded slowly several times.

"Zero Tolerance and Manifest Destiny was bad enough," he said finally. "They might have been traitors, but at least they were family. These are outsiders! I feel like I've been violated. How long has this been going on?"

"Who knows?" I said. "Given who and what they are, it could be decades or even centuries."

"That maddened mob didn't just happen," said the Armourer. "Someone messed with their heads, used them to do the dirty work, to hurt them as well as you. Makes me sick."

"Have you ever heard of the Immortals before, Uncle Jack?"

"Vague rumours, down the years. Stories… of the men who live forever. Always kingmakers rather than kings, always the power behind the throne; because kings and thrones come and go, but the Immortals go on forever. If there's never any obvious villain to blame, blame the Immortals. I never paid much attention to the stories. There are always stories, in our line of work. The Immortals are… the urban legends of the supernatural field."

He scowled into his cup, brooding, and I left him alone to think through the implications. It's not every day your whole worldview gets overturned. I looked around the Armoury. The handful of lab assistants were still working quietly, or sitting staring off into space, contemplating the creation of awful and appalling things to throw at the family's enemies. Our lab assistants are always at their most dangerous when they're thinking. Word of the Matriarch's death hadn't got down here yet. Or Molly's. We keep the Armoury isolated from the rest of the Hall for many good reasons. But eventually word would get down here, and I wanted to be long gone before that happened.

The Armourer started talking again, but not about the Immortals.

"I never really thought my mother would ever die. She'd always been there, so I thought she always would. I thought she'd go on forever, too stubborn to give in to anything as small as death. I'm all that's left of the main line now. Father, mother, brother, sister… all gone."

"Do you think it's possible the family is responsible for the murder of my parents?" I said bluntly.

"James and I looked into their deaths, the moment we heard what had happened," said the Armourer. "We questioned everyone we could get our hands on, and we weren't polite about it, either. If anyone had known anything, they would have told us, after what we did, and threatened to do. We were both a little crazy, after losing Emily. And Charles too, of course. We both liked Charles. But Emily… was always special to us. She was the best of us. She could have been a greater field agent than me, or James. But she met your father, and then she had you, and after that she semiretired from the field, only working on information-gathering missions, with your father. Do you remember much about your parents, Eddie?"