Simon Green - From Hell with love

There were photos of a Martian tripod (some assembly required). a hard-boiled Roc's egg (double yolk), a Crystal Egg (see what the Curate saw), a Hellfire grenade, an Angel's tears preserved in aspic, and Baphomet's Engine of Destruction. Just looking at that last one made my eyes hurt. I handed the catalogue back to Luther.

"We need to take the Word back with us," I said briskly. "Can't have something like that running around loose. Besides, the Armourer always says I never bring him back anything fun."

"I also have a list of some of the Big Names and Major Players who are supposed to be attending the auction," said Luther.

I gave him another of my hard looks, though he seemed to be developing an immunity. "Any more useful information, or are you planning to keep on doling it out one bit at a time, in case I get overexcited?"

"No," said Luther. "That's it."

He handed me the paper, and I ran my eyes quickly down the list of names. I then resisted the urge to whistle, or indeed curse loudly. A whole lot of Very Important Personages, Complete Bastards and not a few Powers and Dominions. Not one of them the kind of people even Droods like to cross without heavy weaponry and serious backup.

Jerusalem Stark, the Knight Apostate, heretic and blasphemer. Used to be one of the London Knights, until he had a crisis of faith. Now he carries his dead love's heart in a silver cage on his belt, right next to the sword he used to kill the Man who would be King. Then there was Prince Gaylord the Damned, Nuncio to the Court of King Artur, of Sinister Albion. Aunt Sally Darque, current Witch of Endor, and banned from every coven and gathering in Europe after that nasty affair at the Danse Academy in the German Black Forest. Three Dukes of Hell, attending via the possessed; two living Saints (stigmata permitting); and a Name I didn't even want to think out loud, in case He heard me.

"What the hell does Doctor Delirium think he's doing, mixing with people like this?" I said. "He is not in their class. Nowhere near. He must know that. Hell, he won't even get through the first round of bidding…"

"There's no way we could hope to infiltrate the auction with so many Major Players around," said Luther. "That's why I thought we should get here early, find a nice hiding place, wait for Doctor Delirium to show up, and then put the grab on him before he even enters the hotel. That way he doesn't even get within spitting distance of the Apocalypse Door. Whatever that might turn out to be."

"Strike your enemy down from behind, when he's not looking," I said cheerfully. "That's the Drood way. Though I think we'll be better off hiding inside the hotel… That way we can sneak onto the top floor, grab the Word and the Apocalypse Door, and anything else worth acquiring, before we go home."

"What if the auction people find out it was us?" Luther said carefully. "I have to live in this town, remember? And if they catch us actually burgling their items, there could be major firepower, curses for everyone, and blood and slaughter all over the shop."

"Well, let's not let that happen, then," I said.

We both looked the Magnificat Hotel over very carefully. To the everyday eye, it looked like just another really ugly, tasteless expensive building. But Luther and I are Droods, and when we choose, we can See the world as it is, and not as most people think it is. We both concentrated, and the torcs around our throats extended long filaments of strange matter, that shot up the sides of our faces to form really quite stylish golden sunglasses over our eyes. And through these special lenses we Saw the Magnificat as it really was-in every awful detail.

Major security defences surrounded the hotel on every side, roiling and spitting on the air in tight little bundles of spite and malevolence. Force fields, magic screens, avoidance spells and Move along nothing to see here influences. Floating curses, proximity mindwipes, soul scramblers, and bottle demons lying buried under the hotel patio like so many red-eyed trap-door spiders. Screaming ghosts with terrible teeth and claws, just waiting to be unleashed, and a whole bunch of really nasty transformation spells just waiting to be activated. All kinds of nastiness, spreading out from the hotel in overlapping layers of appalling vileness. And up on the roof of the hotel…

"Oh bloody hell," I said. "Luther, do you See what I See, up on the roof? Is that what I think it is? It is, isn't it? They've only got a bloody dragon up there!"

"And not just any old dragon," said Luther, craning his head right back. "Not one of those stupid and extremely ugly beasts the elves ride around on. That… is one of the Great Old Beasts of England. That is the Lampton Wyrm."

"You have got to be kidding," I said. "Really? Who'd be crazy enough to dig that old horror up, and let it loose in the world? Is it tied down? Tell me it's tied down! Tell you what, I'll start running and you try and keep up."

"Look at the rear left leg," said Luther, entirely unperturbed. "See the nice glowing chain? That's an elf binding. It'll hold, for the duration of the auction. After that, well, they must have some plan in mind."

"It's times like these when I wish I'd paid more attention in class," I said. "I know we covered Old Beasts, but I'm pretty sure there was a girls' volleyball match going on outside the window that afternoon… The Lampton Wyrm was the one where if you cut it up, the pieces just joined back together again, right? How did they kill it, in the end?"

"They drowned it. Dug a great pit, filled it full of water, dragged the Wyrm into the pit and held it under till it drowned. Of course it didn't stay dead, but they covered the pit over with a really heavy-duty seal, and locked it in place with really powerful magics. So the Wyrm just kept on waking up and drowning again, over and over, for centuries. Not that I feel in any way sorry for it; the Lampton Wyrm killed thousands of people before it was stopped."

"I think we can safely say it isn't in a? very good mood, now it's out," I said. "I'm almost sure it's looking right at us and I do wish it wouldn't. How in hell are we supposed to deal with something like that?"

"Well, here's my plan," said Luther. "It's up on the roof, so let's not go up there. Let us not, in fact, go anywhere near the bloody thing."

"Good plan," I said. "I really like that plan. I want to marry that plan and have its babies."

"You're weird," said Luther.

We looked some more at the Magnificat Hotel. The strange matter sunglasses allowed us to See all four sides at once, in as much detail as we needed. And more and more defences kept popping up, revealing themselves openly, as though defying us to do anything about them.

"There are dimensional gates attached to all the outer doors," I said. "Preprogrammed to send you Somewhere Else if you open a door without the right passWord."

"Standard operating procedure, when you're running an auction half the unnatural world would love to gate-crash," murmured Luther. "Crank your Sight up to full, and take a look inside the hotel."

I concentrated, and the golden shades sent my Sight into overdrive. The outer facade of the Magnificat seemed to leap forward, filling my vision, and then I plunged through and in, looking around the deserted lobby. It was all very fine and luxurious, with no staff anywhere, and no security guards in sight. Presumably the auction people had a lot of faith in their outer defences. I would have. But there were no obvious guardians or booby traps, so I sent my Sight shooting up through the hotel, floor by floor. I spotted the odd group of security guards here and there, oblivious to my mental presence, all of them heavily armed but fairly relaxed. They weren't expecting any real trouble until the auction was up and running. But the sheer number of guards increased steadily as my Sight ascended, until finally I reached the top floor, and the site of the auction.