Simon Green - For Heaven's Eyes Only

“You came close,” I said steadily. “But not close enough. We didn’t come here to fight evil men; we came here to rescue your prisoners. We didn’t come here to punish you for what you’ve done, but to prevent the Great Sacrifice and save a generation of children. It isn’t what you do, Phil; it’s why you do it.”

“You keep telling yourself that, Eddie,” said MacAlpine, smiling easily. “And try to remember which particular road is paved with good intentions.”

“That really was you in Limbo, wasn’t it?” I said. “That’s why I was able to hit you, when I couldn’t touch anyone else there.”

“Oh, yes,” said MacAlpine. “That was me. Once we discovered how vulnerable you were, I couldn’t resist taking a shot at you. A chance to know all your secrets . . . It would have made this all so much easier.”

“How did you get Walker to represent scum like you?” I said. “He spent most of his life shutting down operations like yours.”

“Walker?” said MacAlpine. “You saw Walker in there? I did hear he was dead. . . .”

And while he was thinking about that, I broke free from my guards with a few old and very unpleasant tricks every Drood learns from an early age. Both of them went crying and moaning to the floor, and I sprinted for the doorway. A great cry went up from the assembled Satanists as they rose up from their seats and scrambled after me. I could hear MacAlpine yelling at them, driving them on. I got to the door, hauled it open, stepped out into the corridor and then turned and stopped there, inside the doorway, and smiled nastily at the approaching Satanists. They all quickly stumbled to a halt, holding back. I was a Drood, after all. Even with so many of them and only the one of me, none of them wanted to go first. In fact, they all seemed very keen for someone else to have the honour of going first.

“What do you think you can achieve, Eddie?” said MacAlpine from the stage. “One unarmed Drood against an army of us?”

“This is the only way out of here,” I said loudly, so they could all hear me and understand. “This is the only exit, and I’m guarding it. Because there might still be some teleport gates my family missed, and I can’t risk your getting to them before my family gets here. So you’re going to have to get through me to get away, and as long as I’m standing in the doorway, you can come at me only a few at a time. So all I have to do is hold you here until the rest of my family turns up. They can’t be that far away; I heard fighting. And once they arrive and see what you’ve done to me . . . Oh, the things they’ll do to you . . .”

“Will somebody please shoot this arrogant little turd?” said MacAlpine.

“Guns won’t work in here,” said Alexandre Dusk.

MacAlpine looked at him. “What?”

“No guns, no weapons, no magics! It’s all part of the defences you had me put in place to keep out the Droods! You said you wanted every possibility covered!”

“Well . . . lower the protections!”

“I can’t! Not like that! It’ll take two, maybe three hours. . . .”

“You’re an idiot, Dusk.” MacAlpine looked back at me. “You can’t stand against us all, Eddie! Without your armour, you’re only one man.”

“One very specially trained man,” I said. “One Drood is a match for any number of amateur-night bottom-feeding scum like you.”

“We’ll drag you down and tear you apart!”

“What we do in Heaven’s name has Heaven’s strength,” I said carefully. “I might have strayed from the path, but I think I’ve found a way back. I choose to stand in Heaven’s gaze again, and pay in blood for what I did in blood. I think . . . when you know you’re going to die anyway, it’s all about being able to look God in the eye. I know you’ll drag me down eventually; enough jackals can always pull down a lion. . . . But all I have to do is hold you here long enough and then my family will avenge me. By slaughtering every one of you. Not for revenge or even for justice. But to make sure none of you can ever harm Humanity again. So here I stand. One last chance for atonement. And you’re right, Phil; I do have so much to atone for.”

Alexandre Dusk had come down from the stage. He pushed his way through the crowd to address me, though he was careful to maintain a safe and respectful distance.

“Don’t talk about God and Heaven here, Drood. They have no place in Schloss Shreck, not after all the awful things we’ve done. This is our place, our game, our rules. Were you perhaps expecting some great beam of light to shine down from above, and empower you, because you stand against us? ‘My strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure’? It doesn’t work that way, Drood.”

“Never thought it did,” I said. “I don’t expect anything. Except to stand and fight, and hold you here, for as long as I can.”

“If you stay we’ll kill you,” said Alexandre Dusk.

“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” I said.

And I drew the Colt repeater from my back holster and shot Dusk in the head. He fell backwards, blood flying in the air as he crashed into the Satanists behind him. They fell back, making loud shocked noises, and Dusk was dead before he hit the floor. The crowd fell quiet, looking on with startled, disturbed eyes. They looked at the body and then back at me. I smiled easily at them.

“I got caught without my gun earlier on this case,” I said. “So I made a point of bringing it with me this time. Had a hunch it might come in handy. And as long as I’m standing here, on the other side of the door, it works fine. You didn’t think I was just going to stand here, did you?”

“Take him down!” yelled MacAlpine from the stage, his voice almost hysterical with rage and frustration.

“This is a Colt repeater,” I said. “Never misses, never needs reloading. Usually. But with all the protections on this place, it’s probably only a gun. With a handful of bullets. Which means I can kill only a limited number of people. So come on! Who’s willing to die so others can have the honour of dragging me down?”

I kept trying to reach out to the Sarjeant-at-Arms through my torc, to tell him where I was, and to get a bit of a move on. But if he could hear me, I couldn’t hear him. So it was down to me: one man against a horde of Satanists. I looked about me, and they all stared silently back with sullen, snarling faces and hot, hateful eyes. As long as I was careful to stay in the doorway and not let them draw me forward, they could come at me only a few at a time, and none of them wanted to be the first to die. Even though MacAlpine was yelling himself hoarse up on the stage, screaming at them to do something, no one did. A few actually yelled back at him, saying that if he was so damned keen, he should come down there and try something himself.

And then even these few voices fell silent as Alexandre Dusk sat up. A few drops of blood rolled down his face from the great wound in his forehead, and then stopped. He rose slowly to his feet, brushed himself down and then turned to smile at me. A very cold, very knowing smile.

“Witches aren’t the only ones with the good sense to hide their hearts somewhere safe,” he said. “Like Phil told you: I’m old-school, and I know all the old tricks.”

He came straight at me, and I shot him in the chest. He staggered but kept on coming, and I had no choice but to keep on shooting. I used up every bullet in the gun, and he wouldn’t go down again. He stopped and smiled at me.

“So,” said MacAlpine from the stage. “One man, without a gun.”

“One Drood,” I said, tossing the empty gun behind me. “And you bottom-feeding scumbags shall not pass.”

They came at me then, rushing past the smiling Alexandre Dusk, hands outstretched like claws in their eagerness to get at me. There were a hell of a lot of them, and some of them looked to be really big bastards, but I’d been right: As long as I held my position, they could come at me only two or three at a time. I struck them down with hard, pitiless, practiced moves before they could even lay a hand on me. They crashed to the floor, and those behind trampled right over them to get to me. Their faces were flushed and distorted with rage; they were desperate to drag me down and get away before the rest of my family arrived. But in the end they were amateurs, facing one very well-trained Drood.