Simon Green - From Hell with love

She recognised me immediately, and flung her arms around me. I braced myself for her embrace; she'd never known her own strength. Up close, she smelled of attar of roses, and maybe just a hint of formaldehyde. She released me, and clapped me hard on the shoulder with one heavy oversized hand.

"Shaman, my dear! So long since I have seen you!" Her voice was a rich contralto, full of life. "What are you doing here?"

"Little bit of business," I said solemnly. "You know how it is…"

She laughed easily. "Of course. If there is a profit to be made, or trouble to get into, there you will find Shaman Bond! If you should find yourself in need of an alibi, or someone to stand bail for you…"

"I'll bear you in mind. I see you're not covering up the scars anymore. Or is that just for the Convention?"

"No… I have come out of the living dead closet, my dear. I am who I am. I'm almost fashionable, these days… And more and more I think, the best place to hide is in plain sight."

The Bride and I first met at the Wulfshead Club in London, that well-known gathering place and watering hole for the strange and unnatural. We soon warmed to each other. Shaman Bond is always very sociable because you never know when it might come in handy down the line. We fell into one of those easy friendships where you're always popping in and out of each other's lives. We even worked together on a few cases. Always with me as Shaman Bond; the Bride had no idea I was a Drood. The last job we'd done together had turned out rather messy. We'd been asked to stamp out the Cannibal Priests of Old Compton Street, who worshipped the insides of people, and not in a good way. Still, fire purifies. And even when it doesn't, it's still a damned good way to destroy evidence.

The Bride has been around. She's worked with pretty much every unorthodox organisation there is, including the Droods, but she's always been her own person. She prefers to work with a partner, though given who and what she is, she tends to either wear them out or outlive them. The Bride specialises in the most dangerous of cases, on the grounds that she has so much less to lose than most.

She's a very feminine creature; she works hard at it. Her latest companion was the current Springheel Jack, latest inheritor of the title, and the curse. Apparently she quite literally stumbled over him in the middle of a case, when it was all new and horrible and he didn't understand what was happening to him. So she took him under her wing, showed him the ropes, and the padded handcuffs, and they've been inseparable ever since.

"He's isn't at all put off that I am very much the older woman," she said cheerfully. "And the scars aren't a problem at all. He likes them! And I always was a size queen, so…"

"Hold it right there," I said. "We are rapidly approaching the point of too much information. Where is Jack?"

"Off seeing the sights," she said. "These gatherings aren't for outsiders. They are reserved only for those who have known the benefits, and otherwise, of the Baron's methods. For those who belong dead."

"Got it," I said. "The Spawn of Frankenstein."

"A gathering of all the various creations, creatures and by products of the Baron's admittedly amazing surgical gifts. We like to get together once a year, for self-help groups, companionship, and the pursuit of closure. We all have abandonment issues, after all. We end each meeting by cursing the Baron in his absence, wherever he may be."

"I did hear he was dead…"

The Bride snorted loudly. "He's cheated death so many times they don't even bother screwing the lid down anymore. No, he is still out there, practicing his ungodly arts on those who cannot defend themselves, bringing new and awful life into the world. And hiding from us, his forsaken children."

"What would you do?" I said. "If you ever did track him down?"

"I don't know. Call him Daddy. Have sex with him. Kill him. It's a difficult kind of relationship. Complicated… What would you say, if you came face-to-face with your creator? Ask him why you were made to suffer so much? I think I have a better chance of getting a straight answer out of my creator, than you have from yours."

"Mine might have had better motives," I said.

"But can you be sure?" The Bride chuckled quietly. "I'm afraid I cannot ask you in, Shaman, my dear. You understand how it is."

"Of course," I said. "Family only."

I did take a quick glance through the open door, and the Bride didn't object. There were enough of them to fill the ballroom, standing around like any group, talking and drinking and nibbling dubiously at finger snacks provided by the hotel. Hidden speakers dispensed inoffensive classical music, the only safe bet when those present come from so many times and cultures. There were all kinds on view, from those who could pass for normal, with a little help, to those who never would. Not all of the Baron's children were monsters, but they were all marked by the obsessions of their creator. Everyone in the room had started out dead, and it showed. In the eyes, in the voices, and in their image, which could be disguised but never forgotten.

Some of the more extreme cases displayed their differences openly here, among the only people who would understand. Men and women with two pairs of arms, or legs with too many joints. Gills on the neck, bulbous foreheads, bulging chests that contained specially designed new organs. Feathers, fur and even scales. The Baron had grown more adventurous as his work progressed. They talked easily together, bastard offspring of a bastard science. All they had in common was their scars, and their pain; but sometimes, that was enough.

I looked thoughtfully round the crowded room. Something was nagging at me. Something I'd seen or sensed, but not understood. So I raised my Sight, and looked again. And just like that I saw the one person present who didn't belong in this group. Oh, he had the look down pat. A tall bulky chap, in black leathers with studs and dangling chains, with prominent scars at his wrists, and a ragged line across his bulging forehead. But he had an aura. No one else in the room had an aura. Revenants of whatever kind may have a mind, and even a soul, but they never have an aura. That's reserved for the living, and the Spawn of Frankenstein were the living dead. So whoever this guy was, he definitely wasn't one of the Baron's creations. I pointed him out to the Bride, and explained why, and she swore viciously.

"I should have known! He said all the right things, dropped all of the right names, but the scar on his forehead was just too ragged. The Baron, for all his faults, always did neat work. How dare he! How dare he intrude on such a strictly private gathering? The one place where we can be honest and open, without fear of condemnation… This could put some people's therapy back months! He is probably a reporter, from some squalid little tabloid… I will take his hidden camera and shove it so far up him he'll be able to take photographs through his nostrils!"

And she stalked forward before I could stop her. I had a pretty good idea of who and what he was, and it wasn't any kind of journal ist. I watched from the doorway as the Bride marched right up to the only living man in the ballroom, spun him around and stabbed him hard in the chest with one long bony finger. I winced, but he didn't.

"Who are you, and what are you doing here?" demanded the Bride, towering over the intruder. "You are not one of us!"

The room fell quiet, all the conversations stopped dead. Everyone turned to look at the intruder, and the expressions on their faces would have scared the crap out of anyone else. Death was in the room, cold and angry. The man I'd pointed out realised immediately that there was no point in continuing his pretence, and he smiled easily about him with calm, practiced arrogance.