Simon Green - Live and let Drood

You think you know where your life is going. You think you ve got everything sorted out. You ve defeated your enemies, saved the world, made peace with your family and gone on holiday with the woman you love. And then you discover what you should have known all along: that it takes only one bad day to turn your life upside down. That there s nothing you can have, nothing you ve earned, nothing you ve paid for with blood and loss and suffering that the world can t take away from you.

I stood before all that remained of my home, Drood Hall, and all I could think of was how it used to look. How it had looked all my life. A huge, sprawling old manor house dating back to the time of the Tudor kings, though much added onto and improved through the centuries. Traditional black-and-white-boarded frontage with heavy leaded-glass windows, proud entrance doors strong enough to hold off an army, and a jutting peaked and gabled roof. Four large wings had been added to accommodate the growing size of the family; it was massive and solid in the old Regency style. So large and solid and significant, it looked like it could take on the whole world and win.

High above the extensive grounds, the wide roof rose and fell like a great grey-tiled sea, complete with sharp-peaked gables, scowling gargoyles that doubled as water spouts and ornamental guttering that had probably seemed like a good idea at the time. Add to that a perky little observatory, extensive landing pads for all the family s more outr flying machines (and, of course, the winged unicorns), and more aliens and antennae than you could shake a gremlin at and it all added up to one very crowded and very useful roof.

I used to spend a lot of my time up on the roof when I was just a kid, enjoying the various comings and goings and getting in everyone s way.

All gone now.

The Hall was a burnt-out ruin. Someone had taken it apart with gunfire and explosives and set fire to what remained. Walls were broken and shattered, blackened and charred from smoke and flames. The upper floors had collapsed in on themselves into one great compressed mass of broken stone and rubble and what fragments remained of the roof. The ground floor looked to be more or less intact, but the windows were all blown out, and the great front doors had been blasted right off their heavy hinges. God alone knew what was left inside.

For all its many bad memories, the Hall had always been home to me. I d always thought it would always be there to go back to when I needed it. To see it like this, brought down by rage and violence and reduced to wreck and ruin, stopped the breath in my throat and the heart in my chest, and put a chill in my soul that I knew would never leave.

I made myself walk slowly forward. Molly was right there at my side, trying to say something comforting, but I couldn t hear her. There was no room left in me for anything except what had been done to my home. The massive front doors that should have been enough to hold off an army had been thrown back onto the floor in the gloom of the hallway. And a single golden-armoured figure lay curled in the doorway, quite still and quite dead, the gleaming metal half-melted and distorted, the arms fused to the torso and the legs fused together, by some unimaginable heat. I hadn t thought there was anything in the world that could do that to Drood armour.

There was no smoke in the air, no heat radiating from the fire-blasted hallway. Whatever had happened here, it had clearly happened sometime before. Days before. So I hadn t missed it by much. The attackers had come here, slaughtered my family, blown up and set fire to my home and then left. All while I was off enjoying myself in the south of France. I stood before the open doorway and I didn t know what to do. What to say. My stomach ached, and even breathing hurt my tightened chest. Molly Metcalf moved in close beside me and slipped an arm tentatively through mine, pressing herself against me. Standing as close to me as she could, to give me what comfort she could.

Why didn t I know? I said numbly.

How could something like this happen and I didn t know? Why didn t anyone reach out to me?

Maybe it all happened too quickly, said Molly. It must have been a surprise attack, to catch your whole family so off guard.

The strength just went out of my legs and I crashed to my knees on the gravel before the doorway. It should have hurt like hell, but I didn t feel a thing. Too taken up with the greater hurt that filled my head and my heart and overwhelmed everything else. I would have liked to cry; I m sure it would have helped if only I could have cried but all I could feel was cold and lost and alone. You never know how much your family means to you until you ve lost them all. Molly crouched at my side, one arm draped across my shoulders. I m sure her words would have helped if I d listened, but there was no room in me for anything but the growing need for rage and revenge. If tears would come, it would have to be later and far from here. After I d done all the terrible things that I would do to my enemy.

I knelt before what was left of my home and my family and shook uncontrollably in the grip of emotions I never thought I d have to feel. Molly put her arms around me and rocked me gently back and forth like a mother with a child.

After a while I became aware that Molly was speaking urgently to me, almost shouting into my ear.

Come on, Eddie. We can t stay here! We have to go! There s always the chance whoever did this might come back, and we can t afford to be here if they do. If your whole family couldn t stand against them, we certainly can t.

I nodded slowly and got to my feet again, with her help. My head was clearing, all the pain and horror and loss pushed aside by a cold and savage need for revenge. I couldn t leave here, not yet. I needed information and weapons. And more than anything I needed some clue to tell me my enemy s name. And then nothing was going to stand in my way. All the awful things I would do to him and anyone who stood alongside him would make my name an abomination on the lips of the world. And I wouldn t give a damn.

I wasn t used to thinking like that, but it seemed to come very easily. I was, after all, a Drood. The Last Drood.

Molly realised she wasn t going to get any sense out of me. She looked at the ruined hall before her and the sheer scale of so much destruction seemed to overwhelm even her for a moment.

What the hell happened here, Eddie? What could have done this?

I don t know, I said. My voice sounded distant and far away. The Chinese tried to nuke us once, back in the sixties, and that got nowhere. No one s struck directly at the Hall for ages. I would have said there was nothing and no one in the world that could get past all our defences and protections. This is all my fault, you know.

What? said Molly, turning immediately to look at me with her large dark eyes.

I should have been here, I said steadily.

I wasn t with my family when the enemy came. If I had been here, maybe I could have done something. Saving the day against impossible odds is what I do. Isn t it?

Stop that, Molly said firmly. Stop that right now, Eddie. What could you have done that your whole family couldn t? If you had been here, odds are you d be lying here dead, too.

I can do something now, I said. I can avenge my family. I can be the Last Drood. I can bring down my enemies in horror and suffering, and make my family name a byword in this world for revenge and retribution.

Okay, said Molly. Someone needs a whole load of stiff drinks, and possibly a nice lie-down in a cool dark room. You re in shock, Eddie. Let s get out of here.