Simon Green - For Heaven's Eyes Only

“We do have other field agents in the family,” said the Sarjeant. “You don’t have to do this, Edwin.”

“I’m the only field agent who’s right here, right now, with experience operating inside ghoulvilles,” I said. “Who else is there?”

The Sarjeant-at-Arms looked at Callan, who shrugged uncomfortably. “We have five field agents currently operating in England, but none of them could get back to the Hall inside three or four hours.”

“And even then, you’d still have to wait for the Armourer to find a way into the dark circle,” I said. “Whereas I . . . have the Merlin Glass.”

“Hold hard,” said the Armourer, looking up from his work. “There’s always the chance that if you use the Glass to open a door between here and there, what’s inside the town might burst through into Drood Hall!”

“I would never let that happen,” said Ethel, a touch haughtily. “I guarantee the integrity of Drood Hall against any and all threats. Trust me. I’m a doctor.”

“I still think you should rest, Eddie,” said the Armourer. “Let me design something to protect you, give you an edge. . . .”

“There isn’t time, Uncle Jack,” I said. “We have to sort this mess out before it starts spreading.”

“You’re right,” said the Armourer. “Get us all the information you can. And, Molly, don’t let him do anything too dumb in there.”

“Damn right,” said Molly.

“I don’t have anything useful to offer you,” said the Armourer. “And this bloody thing is taking a lot longer than I thought it would. . . . Remember your armour is equipped to study your surroundings and record everything it encounters. Knowledge can be ammunition in a situation like this. So bring back as much data as you can.”

I looked at him for a moment. “Do you have anything, any weapon that could do what the Satanists did in Little Stoke?”

“No,” said the Armourer. “Not a damned thing. Not even in the Armageddon Codex. What has been done in that town is a crime against reality itself.”

“How long before you could come up with some kind of defence?” said the Sarjeant.

“Depends on what kind of information Eddie brings back,” said the Armourer. “So let’s stop wasting his time with unnecessary chatter. Eddie, go.”

“Got it, Uncle Jack,” I said. But I still hesitated and looked at Molly. “You’ve seen what’s happening in the town. There’s no guarantee that Drood armour will be enough to protect me. And you don’t even have that.”

“I have been to Heaven and Hell and Limbo,” said Molly. “And a whole bunch of other really extreme places not even dreamt of in your limited philosophies. I can survive this.”

“Of course you can,” I said. “I’d bet on you against the whole damned universe.”

“You say the sweetest things sometimes,” said Molly.

I activated the Merlin Glass and opened up a doorway into what remained of Little Stoke, while everyone else retreated to what they hoped was a safe distance. A lot of people hid behind things. Like that would make any difference. A series of violent images swept across the full-size Glass, flashing by so fast I couldn’t keep up with them. Stars and flames and blindingly bright lights; dark, monstrous shapes rearing up to look in my direction; the whole physical world grown hideously soft and leprous; all of it under a sky the colour of dried blood. I looked away for a moment, to rest my eyes, and found Harry hadn’t retreated with the others.

“You don’t have to do this, Eddie.”

“Yes, I do, Harry,” I said. “It’s the job.”

He nodded briefly. I turned to Molly, who was peering into the Merlin Glass, fascinated.

“You ready, girl?”

“I came out of the womb ready.”

“I can believe that. Probably demanding a stiff drink and a harsh word with the midwife. Let’s do this, before one of us gets a rush of common sense to the head.”

“When has that ever happened?”

We laughed briefly, I armoured up and we both stepped through the Merlin Glass. Out of the sane and sensible world into a place where reality had been broken. With malice aforethought, the bastards.

Stepping into what was left of Little Stoke was like being clubbed around the head with a baseball bat soaked in LSD. Everything was wrong, different, corrupted . . . and constantly changing. The ground surged and rocked under my feet, rising and falling like a ship at sea. I glared about me, but it was hard to see anything clearly through the disturbed air. My armour was doing its best to protect and insulate me from my surroundings, swiftly adapting to cope with this new, ever-changing world. I could actually feel my armour straining as it thickened and improved itself, moment by moment. My second skin was under constant assault from a world that hated it.

Gravity came and went, fluctuating wildly, so that I felt light as air one moment, and as though I had a mountain on my back the next. Nothing was constant or dependable. Except my armour. It pushed back at the world, refusing to be affected or altered in any part, and I stood straight and tall under a bloody sky, safe and solid and untouched by anything Little Stoke could throw at me.

I looked around for Molly and found she was standing right beside me, but now floating quite happily in midair. She stood on nothing, defying the uncertain ground, surrounded by a shimmering field of unnatural forces. She looked down at me and I nodded briefly. She gave me a thumbs-up, and I went back to studying the surroundings. It was hard to get a hold on anything. Whichever way I looked, nothing made sense. Directions seemed to snap back and forth, so that left and right changed places or swirled around, and even up and down weren’t always where I thought they should be. Little Stoke did remind me of a ghoulville, as I’d expected; but this town was worse, much worse. Someone had studied ghoulvilles, and learned from them, improved on them. The sheer psychic pressure of not being able to depend on anything was almost overwhelming. All I could feel was loss, and horror, and growing hysteria. My sanity was taking a real beating. Part of me wanted to fall to the ground, curl up in a foetal ball and pray for it all to go away. But I couldn’t do that. I was a Drood, and I had a job to do.

I looked up. “Molly, is this Hell?”

“Not even close,” she said flatly. “Hell is worse. This is chaos. Hell has purpose.”

“You’d know,” I said. “Hello, War Room? Hello? Callan? Edith? Can anyone hear me? Anyone?”

“Well?” said Molly, after a moment.

“Apparently not,” I said. “I’m reaching out through my armour, but no one’s answering. We’re on our own, Molly.”

“Best way,” she said briskly. “We know what we’re doing.”

“Since when?”

“Hush, lover; think positive. Okay, this is a seriously nasty place. I’m not sure we’re even on Earth anymore.”

“Technically, I suppose we’re not,” I said. “Local conditions have been . . . rewritten.”

“I’m not picking up any traces of major magical workings,” said Molly. “You couldn’t do something this big without leaving serious handprints all over everything.”

I remembered the Armourer’s advice, and had my armour probe and investigate my immediate surroundings. I concentrated in a certain way, and the armour’s findings appeared on the inside of my mask, floating before my eyes. All kinds of readings and graphs and scales, half of which meant nothing to me. My uncle Jack is the scientist. It’s all I can do to program my TiVo. But . . .

“No radiation,” I said to Molly. “No toxins, none of the usual dangerous energies . . . Everything else . . . doesn’t make sense. I’ve never encountered anything quite like this.”