Simon Green - Property of a Lady Faire

It reminded me of how I’d felt when I walked through the devastated ruins of the Other Hall, home to the other-dimensional Droods, slaughtered by some unknown enemy. I never did find out who. But this was different. I could do something about this.

“Where are we going?” Molly said abruptly. “I mean, are we heading anywhere in particular?”

“We’re going to the Regent’s office,” I said.

“You think there’s a chance he might still be alive?” Molly said carefully.

“There’s always a chance,” I said. “He could have barricaded himself in, and as long as he had Kayleigh’s Eye . . . But no, I don’t really expect to find him alive. Not when everyone else is dead. He wouldn’t have run away, hidden away, and abandoned his people. Even though that would have been the sensible thing to do. He was the Regent of Shadows, and a legend in his own right. But he might have left us a message, something to tell us what the hell happened here.”

Molly looked quickly around her. “Are you sure this is the right way? All these corridors look the same to me.”

“I remember the way,” I said. “Drood field agents are trained to remember things like that.”

“Smugness is very unattractive in a man,” said Molly.

We looked at each other, and tried to smile, but in this stinking abattoir it was hard to feel anything but horror and loss. The need to lash out at someone, anyone, was almost overpowering. I needed a name, an identity, for the bastards that had done this. So I could track them down and punish every damned one of them. And the bloodbath they had made here would be nothing compared to what I would do to them.

When I wore the golden armour, I felt stronger, faster, smarter. More alive . . . But it also meant my emotions were bigger, and ran deeper, for good and bad. Right then, I didn’t care. I would do what I would do, and worry about the morality of it later.

“This wasn’t an attack, or even an invasion,” I said. “This was a massacre. These people weren’t killed because they got in the way; their deaths were an end in themselves.”

“How can you be sure of that?” said Molly.

“Because there aren’t any wounded,” I said. “Every single man and woman here was finished off before the killers moved on. And the sheer ferocity of the attack . . . No bullet holes, no explosions, no high tech or magics, not even any knife marks . . . This was all brute strength and savagery. I can’t even tell whether this was an attack force or just one wildly powerful individual.”

“Judging from the state of the bodies, I’d say animal,” said Molly. “Or people acting like animals . . . Werewolf pack, perhaps?”

“The Department would have been prepared for something as obvious as that,” I said. “They’d have had silver bullets, shaped curses . . . they could have fought off something that straight forward. No, this is different. This is something new.”

• • •

Finally we came to the Regent’s office. The door had been torn right out of its frame, and lay face down on the corridor floor. I made Molly stay back and wait while I checked out the surroundings through my mask. I couldn’t See or hear anything. No booby-traps, no hidden devices . . . as though whoever had done this didn’t care what happened afterwards, or who came looking. More fool them.

I stepped warily into the office, with Molly crowding my back. It looked much as I remembered, more like a retired gentleman’s study than an office where important decisions were made every day. A comfortable setting, cosy and cheerful, with richly polished wood-panelled walls. Bookshelves full of well-thumbed paperbacks, rather than leather-clad first editions. But now . . . most of the wood panels were cracked, or smashed in. Shelves broken, books thrown everywhere. The tall grandfather clock that had stood by the door had been overturned, its clockwork guts spilled across the carpet. The single virtual window had been smashed, and now showed nothing at all. And all the drawers in the Regent’s desk had been pulled out, the contents scattered everywhere.

The Regent of Shadows was still sitting behind his desk. My grandfather, Arthur Drood. Sitting upright, with his head tilted back, staring up at the ceiling with sightless eyes. And only a massive hole in his chest to show where his heart should have been.

It wasn’t just his heart they’d taken. I could still remember the Regent showing me the ancient amulet known as Kayleigh’s Eye, grafted onto his chest, apparently fused to the skin. The amulet had contained a huge golden eye that seemed to stare at me knowingly. A very potent device, from Somewhere Else, that should have been able to defend the Regent from any attack. Except it hadn’t.

My grandfather looked . . . almost like himself. A man of average height, a little on the skinny side, well-preserved for a man of his age. Wearing a scruffy old tweed suit with leather patches on the elbows. He had iron grey hair, a military moustache, and pale blue eyes. His face was slack, and empty, the whole front of his clothes soaked in blood. His shirtfront had been ripped open, to get at his chest, and the Eye. I moved slowly forward to stand over him, and then I armoured down. The stench of death and freshly spilled blood was almost overwhelming without the armour to shield me. But I needed to see this with my own eyes, not just as an armoured Drood. Molly looked quickly around her.

“Are you sure that’s wise, Eddie? Really?”

“We’re alone here,” I said, not looking at her. “No one else left in the building.”

Molly stood facing the Regent’s body. It was hard to tell from her face what she was thinking. “How is this even possible?” she said finally. “No one could touch the Regent of Shadows while he had Kayleigh’s Eye. I put a lot of thought into how I was going to get past the Eye’s protection so I could get to him.”

“The Eye isn’t in the building any more,” I said. “My armour would have picked up its emanations.”

“Do you think that . . . is what they came here looking for?”

“No,” I said. “They tore this place apart in their search, when everyone knew the Regent had the Eye. I think taking the amulet was just a bonus.”

I stood looking at the dead man, not knowing what to do. I’d only just found my grandfather, after so many years of believing him dead, and now I’d lost him again. Someone had taken him away from me. Molly came over to stand beside me, trying to comfort me with her presence.

“This isn’t the revenge I wanted,” she said.

“I would never have let you hurt him,” I said.

“I know. I just wanted answers, that’s all. And now it looks like I’ll never get them.”

I dropped a hand on the Regent’s shoulder, just to say good-bye. And then I stepped quickly back, startled, as the corpse sat up straight and turned its head to look at me. The dead, staring eyes fixed on me, holding me in place.

“This is a last message for you, Eddie,” said the corpse, in a soft, breathy voice. Little more than air disturbing dead vocal cords. Just a warning, left in a dead man’s throat. “I know you and Molly have no reason to trust me after all I’ve kept from you, but I had no choice. I was trying to protect you. From the sins of the past, and the enemies of the future. You see, I didn’t just kill for the Droods. I did other things for them too, trying to earn my way back into the family. Now it’s too late for me to make a full explanation, or an atonement.

“My Department is under attack. Someone, or something, has got in. Which can only mean some traitor has betrayed us all. Shut down the security protections, and left us defenceless. There’s a whole army inside this building. My people are doing what they can to hold them off, but they don’t have enough weapons. Never thought they’d be needed, here. I wanted to go out and fight them, but Ankani locked me in. For my own protection, she said. I can hear my people screaming, hear them dying. I can hear the killers drawing nearer, heading my way.