Simon Green - For Heaven's Eyes Only

“I’m sure we could have coped without your help,” said Harry. “But . . . something else has happened. It would appear that a small country town in the southwest of England has been attacked by the Satanist conspiracy.”

“It could be the first part of their Great Sacrifice,” said Callan. “The news isn’t officially out yet. British authorities have slapped a D Notice on the whole affair. On the grounds of national security. Though God knows how long that will last in this electronic day and age . . .”

“But what’s happened, exactly?” I said. “What have the Satanists done?”

“The town of Little Stoke has vanished,” said Harry. “The whole population is just . . . gone.”

“It all happened so quickly,” said Molly. “I was killing some time down here, waiting for you. . . .”

“And pestering the life out of me,” said Callan.

“Shut up, Callan,” said Molly. “It must have happened pretty much instantaneously. Not a word of warning or a cry for help. There was this . . . massive energy surge that set off every alarm in the War Room, and by the time we’d zeroed in on the exact location, it was all over. There have been no communications in or out of where Little Stoke used to be, ever since.”

“We knew about it before the authorities,” said Harry. “But then, we’re Droods. We know everything. That’s our job.”

“Don’t you have a job you should be doing?” Callan said pointedly. “This is my War Room; I’ll do the briefings. Make yourself useful. Get me some tea. Milk, two sugars.”

Harry drifted away from the conference table as though he’d remembered somewhere he’d meant to be. Callan glared after him.

“And some Jaffa Cakes!” He sniffed loudly and turned his attention back to me. “Irritating little tit. Thinks he’s such a big deal because his dad was your uncle James. I could put together a brigade of the Grey Fox’s various bastards. . . . Anyway, as soon as we were sure something bad really had happened, we hacked into a CIA satellite orbiting over the area, and this is what we got. . . .”

He pushed his way through a crowd of messengers shifting impatiently from foot to foot with important-looking messages in their hands, opening up a path by sheer angry presence, and stopped before one particular display screen locked onto a set of coordinates in southwest England. Callan gestured angrily at the screen.

“See that black spot, that circle of impenetrable darkness exactly five miles in diameter . . . ? That’s where the small town of Little Stoke used to be. No light gets in or out, no communications in or out. Just . . . that.”

“What is it?” I said. “Oh, hell, it’s not a black hole, is it?”

“Of course it’s not a black hole!” snapped Callan. “Or the sheer gravitational pull would have sucked the whole country in by now. Am I the only one who paid attention during science lessons?”

“Probably,” I said. “You always were a science geek.”

“Science geeks are in!” Callan said defiantly. “Look at all those CSI television shows. Geek chic!”

“Boys, boys,” murmured Molly. “If we could concentrate on the matter at hand . . .”

“Ah . . . yes,” said Callan. “Little Stoke. Population under eight thousand. Nothing important or significant about any of them, as far as we can tell. Even the local history is particularly dull. But after the energy surge that caught our attention, and before the darkness set in . . . the entire population of Little Stoke vanished. Eight thousand men, women and children . . . all gone in a moment. The town buildings are still there, under the darkness. Don’t ask me how.”

“Look at the location,” I said. “Little Stoke is only up the road from the far more important and significant town of Bradford-on-Avon. Could the Satanists have been after that, and . . . missed?”

“I don’t think so,” said Callan. “Even they wouldn’t have the stones to attack that town. Not given who lives there.”

“I’ve been there,” Molly said brightly. “They do a lovely cream tea. . . .”

“Really?” said Callan. “How very nice. Now shut up; grown-ups are talking. No, Eddie, Little Stoke was quite definitely the target. The black circle covers the town’s boundaries exactly. What lies there now . . . is a little bit of Hell on Earth.”

I gave him a hard look. “How can you be so sure about what’s going on underneath all that darkness?”

Callan gave me a pitying look. “We’re not dependent on other people’s spy satellites; we’ve got the best far-seers in the business working right here in this room. They’ve been keeping an eye on everything that’s happened through their scrying pools and crystal balls. Come with me.”

He led Molly and me into the heart of the communications section. A harried-looking young man stood in Callan’s way and refused to move.

“We’ve been monitoring world communications for mentions of what’s happened in Little Stoke,” he said urgently. “And after the first flurry of rumours it’s all gone very quiet. No one’s talking about it, because word’s come down from on high that they’re not to talk about it. And there’s no sign at all that the British authorities are intending to do anything.”

“Well, that’s why we’re here,” I said. “Keep listening.”

We moved on, into the far-seeing section. The Armourer was there, building something complicated from the disassembled scraps of several important-looking machines. He nodded brusquely to us, intent on his work.

“They say modern technology won’t mix with traditional magics. I say they will, if you bang them together hard enough. Give me time, and I’ll give you something that will show you everything that’s happening inside that darkness. In high definition, with surround sound.”

Callan ignored him, peering over the shoulder of a fey young woman who was staring intently into her scrying pool, or magic mirror: an impossibly flat extrusion of compressed silver ectoplasm spread out on the bench before her. Images came and went in the pool too quickly for me to follow.

“You need the gift to be able to See the world through a magic mirror,” said Callan. “I specialised in far-seeing before I became a field agent. . . . Still got my crystal ball somewhere . . . Ah. Yes! There . . . Focus, Amelia, focus. . . .”

He squeezed the shoulder of the far-seer, adding his strength to hers, and they both concentrated. Just like that, I could See what they Saw in the scrying pool. A street, a perfectly normal small-town street. The buildings were all intact, though there were no people anywhere. But there was something subtly wrong about the image. It took me a moment to realise that the scene was too still, too sharp, too perfect.

“This is a cover image,” said Callan. “Meant to deflect anyone who did get a look in. It’s not safe to look underneath, not yet. We found that out the hard way. All the people are quite definitely gone . . . snatched away in a moment, kidnapped by unknown forces. But more than that, the whole area inside the town has been . . . changed. Horribly altered. Outside the five-mile radius of the dark circle, everything remains normal, as it should be. The world goes on, untouched, unaffected. But inside Little Stoke . . . We’ve had to put in a whole series of filters and safeguards to protect the far-seers. When they first broke through the circle and got a good look at what was happening, we lost nine good men and women almost immediately. They went mad from what they saw. But . . . I think we’re ready to try again, yes?”

The young woman, Amelia, nodded stiffly. The Armourer looked up sharply.

“I wouldn’t, Callan! Wait till I’m finished here, and I can give you some real protection. . . .”