Simon Green - Live and let Drood

I heard soft running footsteps up ahead, approaching at speed. I stopped where I was, and Molly reluctantly stopped with me. I didn t need to look back to know the front door had already closed behind us. I could feel it. I stared carefully into the civilised gloom at the end of the corridor and winced, just a bit, as I recognised the half dozen small and slender figures pattering forward to confront Molly and me.

They stopped a cautious distance away to look Molly and me over with their overbright eyes. Six half-starved teenage boys wrapped in the rags and tatters of what had once been expensive school uniforms. The oldest of them couldn t have been more than fourteen. They crouched rather than stood, a pack of wild animals rather than a group of boys. Dangerous animals, fierce and feral. Pale faced, floppy haired, with thin, pinched faces, disturbing smiles and eyes that were so much older than they should have been. They grinned quickly at each other, laughing silently, hefting the sharp and shiny things they held in their hands.

Children? said Molly. They re sending kids out to stop us?

These aren t children, I said steadily.

Or at least they aren t now and haven t been for some time. These, Molly, are the Uptown Razor Boys. The Eton Irregulars. The delinquent toffs who never grew up.

I summoned my full armour about me, and the golden metal gleamed brightly in the gloom. The Eton Irregulars drew a sharp breath, their eyes shining to reflect the new light, and they spread out quickly to form a semicircle before us, staring unblinking at Molly and me. They looked like boys, but they didn t move or hold themselves like anything human. They had given themselves over to older, darker instincts. They were feral things now, and they gloried in it.

Talk to me, Eddie, said Molly quietly but insistently. Who or what are we facing here?

Surprised you never heard of them, I said.

Though perhaps you don t move in the right circles.

Eddie

Thrown out of Eton School, I said. Expelled back in the sixties after being disturbed in the middle of a black magic ceremony designed to call up the Devil. They might have got away with it, but they d already sacrificed two younger boy, in return for power. They should have been more specific in what they asked for. The boys parents were important enough that they were able to get it all hushed up, but it was too late for the boys. The changes had already begun. They ran away from home first chance they got, and by then the parents were probably relieved to see them gone. Look at them, Molly. All these years and they haven t aged a day. They ll never grow up or grow old; they don t feel things anymore and whatever thoughts move in their heads are nothing we would recognise. They have given themselves over to the delights of slaughter. Can you see what they re holding in their hands?

Yes, said Molly. Old-fashioned straight razors.

Immortal killers with a taste for cutting, I said. Courtesy of Hell. Remind you of anyone?

Mr. Stab, said Molly. The uncaught serial killer of Old London Town.

Hell likes to stick with things that work, I said. The Eton Irregulars are the urban legends that serial killers talk about. They exist on the fringes of the hidden world, hiring themselves out to people with no scruples who still have ties to the Old School. The Uptown Razor Boys: bodyguards, assassins, frighteners and occasionally the first line of defence. I think someone at the club knew we were coming.

But why them? said Molly. Why set them against us?

Because they still look like children, I said.

Which makes it that much harder to fight them. Question is: Do they work for the club or Crow Lee himself?

What difference does that make? said Molly.

I don t want to bring the whole might of the Establishment Club down on us, I said. Not while I m the Last Drood. I can t afford to let myself be stopped before I can reach my family and bring them home. But, no, it doesn t really matter. Some things are just too vile to be allowed to continue. Some vermin just need putting down.

Wow, Eddie, said Molly. Hard-core.

The Uptown Razor Boys swept suddenly, savagely forward, heading right for us like the pack of wild things they really were. Half a dozen teenage boys who d thrown away their Futures in return for the hideous strength that drove them and the supernaturally bright blades they brandished. They shouted and hooted gleefully, moving in perfect symmetry, six minds with a single thought. Their eyes glittered in the dim lighting as they circled Molly and me, jumping and leaping and addressing us with high, harsh voices, one after another.

Drood. Thought you were dead. Should be dead. Always meddling in the affairs of your betters. Interfering in things that are none of your concern. Heavenly armour versus infernal blades. Good intentions versus Hell on Earth. Going down, Drood. All the way down.

It s not enough that they ve been made over into hellspawn, Molly said steadily. They re still the worst part of boys. Did you notice they only addressed themselves to you, Eddie? Because they re still scared of girls.

Shut up! Shut up! howled the Eton Irregulars, leaping and capering around us, brandishing their razors fiercely.

Nasty! Nasty thing! Cut you up! Eat you up! Wear your insides as scarves!

The more they speak, said Molly, the less scary they seem. Funny, that.

Take them seriously, I said. They ve killed a lot of good people in their time. Probably people who didn t take them seriously enough.

Drood, said the Uptown Razor Boys, speaking together in one voice. Cut you up. Kill you, and your little bitch, too.

Now, that s just rude, I said.

They surged forward, and I went to meet them with a cold rage in my heart. Because they stood between me and the rescue of my family. They swarmed all over me in a living wave, hitting me from every side at once, cutting and slicing at my head and throat with their shimmering razors. But even these supernatural blades just skidded harmlessly off my golden armour in showers of sparks. Moxton had made his mistake well. The boys cried out like wolves as they cut at me again and again, cried out like thwarted children, but for all their speed and fury they couldn t hurt me. I chose my timing carefully and punched one of the Eton Irregulars in the head with my golden fist. His whole head exploded, showering gore and fragments of bone across the nearby wall. The sheer force of the blow threw the headless body several feet down the hallway. The remaining Eton Irregulars cried out in shock and rage, a savage howl from human mouths. They only had one another. They threw themselves at me like feral cats, hitting me with all their Hell-given strength, as though they could force their blades through my armour.

I grabbed another of them and slammed his face into the nearest wall. His whole head collapsed and shattered under the force of the impact, and when I let go, the headless body just slid limply down the wall, leaving a heavy trail of blood and bone behind. More howls and screams from the remaining Uptown Razor Boys, and behind my featureless golden face mask I was smiling a fierce grin of my own. It felt good to be killing things that needed killing.

One of the Eton Irregulars broke away from me and went for Molly. She was waiting for him. She had a small flat box in her hand, with a single button on the top. She pointed it at the Razor Boy, who snarled savagely at her and went for her throat. Molly pressed the button and the boy just blew apart soundlessly. Every single bit of his flesh exploded in a moment, reduced to nothing more than a thick pink mist in the air, spreading slowly and silently before pattering to the floor in tiny pink droplets. The bones of his skeleton were left behind, left standing in perfect shape for a moment, and then they just clattered to the parquet floor in a neat little pile. All the bones picked perfectly clean, without a single fleck of meat left on them.