Simon Green: Daemons Are Forever

Enemies without, enemies within. As if I didn’t have enough problems.

The Hall has been home to the Drood family for generations. Even though, officially, it doesn’t exist. You won’t find it on any map, and you can’t get to it by any ordinary route. The Hall stands alone, apart from the world, and it likes it that way. Don’t come looking for us or something really nasty will happen to you; we’re protected by sciences and magic and nightmares worse than both. The family has always taken its privacy and its security very seriously.

Especially after the Chinese tried to nuke us, back in the sixties. Just because we protect the world, it doesn’t mean the world is always grateful.

The Hall has raised, nurtured, and indoctrinated Droods for centuries. Trained us relentlessly to fight the good fight, and taught us everything we needed to know about the world except how to live in it. Most Droods never leave the Hall all their lives. Only approved field agents get to go out into the world and walk up and down in it, fighting our endless, secret, invisible wars, and smiting the ungodly till they cry like babies. The Hall is mother and father to us all; the Hall is family. I ran away first chance I got, and never looked back. Now, for my many sins, I was home again. Ostensibly to run the family in its hour of need, and redeem its soul from the evil ways it had fallen into, down the long centuries. When we moved from protecting humanity to running it.

The Hall stands alone in the middle of its extensive grounds, brooding jealously over its idyllic domain. I drove the Bentley down the long winding gravel path, and machine guns rose silently up out of hidden emplacements on either side of the road and followed us as we passed before sinking grudgingly back down beneath the grass again. Sprinklers spread their gentle haze across the sweeping lawns, and wandering peacocks called out their welcomes and warnings. Gryphons patrolled the grounds, their gazes fixed firmly on the near future, the perfect guardians and watchdogs. When they weren’t looking for something really foul and smelly to roll around in. I could sense force shields and magical screens snapping on and off ahead and behind us, as the Hall security systems recognised Molly and me, and let us pass. No one gets in uninvited.

I slowed the Bentley down so Molly could enjoy the hedge mazes and the flower gardens, and the swans floating serenely on the lake. I liked showing off my home to her, even though she always went out of her way to seem unimpressed. And besides, I was in no hurry to get back to the Hall, and all the work and responsibilities that awaited me there. Why do you think I ran away in the first place?

The Hall loomed up before us, dominating the horizon, the guardian at the gates of reality. The long-standing abode of the Drood family, and humanity’s last defence against the forces of darkness. It’s a miserable old dump, truth be told, draughty as hell and entirely innocent of modern innovations like central heating. I grew up thinking wearing long underwear from September to April was normal. The Hall is a huge sprawling old pile of a manor house, knocked up in Tudor times and much added to down the centuries. Currently home to some three thousand souls, all of them Droods. You can marry into the family, but not out of it. We’re like the Mafia; once in, never out. Unless you want to wake up with a unicorn’s head in bed next to you.

I slammed the Bentley to a halt in a spray of flying gravel and parked right outside the Hall’s front door, mostly because I knew I wasn’t supposed to. Start as you mean to go on, that’s what I always say. Molly jumped out over the closed side door while I was still turning off the engine, and I scrambled out after her before she could start any trouble. If anyone was going to start any trouble, I wanted it to be me. First impressions are so important. We’d hardly made it through the front door and into the vestibule before a mob of angry family members descended upon us. It appeared they’d been waiting for some time to have a determined word in my ear, and they weren’t prepared to take No, Not now , or even Go to hell as an answer. They all started shouting questions and demands the moment they clapped eyes on me, constantly raising their voices to be heard, and actually pushing and shoving at each other in their eagerness to get to me first.

Which was almost unheard of, in the disciplined, tightly structured, and almost feudal system that our family has followed for centuries. It seemed when I challenged authority and got away with it, I unleashed a flood tide of repressed resentments. The family wanted change, and it wanted it now, but unfortunately it couldn’t agree on just what should be changed, and how. Molly and I stood close together with our backs pressed up against the closed front door, as everyone in the crowd did their best to outshout each other. The din was appalling, and the faces before me were strained and ugly with anger, impatience and determination.

I did my best to concentrate, trying to sort out some of what they were going on about. Some had questions about the new family policy, others wanted to know when they were going to get the new silver torcs, and a lot of them wanted to denounce other people as being against progress, or in favour of the wrong kind of progress, or just guilty of the sin of not agreeing with the speaker’s ideas. Some of the questions and demands were just flat-out impossible, no doubt designed to embarrass me and make me look indecisive in front of the family. Did I mention I have enemies inside the family? Hard-core traditionalists and surviving members of the Zero Tolerance faction, still mad as hell that their little putsch hadn’t succeeded, and determined to sabotage and undermine me.

Hell hath no fury like a Drood with a grudge.

I did try to be polite, and answer the questions of those nearest me, but no one could hear me in the general bedlam of voices. And no one in the crowd was willing to quieten down in favour of someone else. It’s times like this I wish my armour was equipped with pepper sprays. Or water cannon. In the end I looked at Molly, and she grinned mischievously. She muttered a few Words and made a sharp gesture, and suddenly everyone in the angry mob was entirely naked and wondering where the cold breeze was coming from. The bedlam died quickly away to a shocked silence, followed by a few squeaks and squeals as a hundred or so naked Droods did their best to cover themselves with their hands or hide behind each other. Molly glared about her, her smile entirely unpleasant.

“Right; everyone pay attention and stay quiet, or I’ll send you where I sent your clothes. And your clothes aren’t coming back. Or at least, not in any condition where you could hope to wear them again. Ye gods and little fishes, look at the state of you. Living proof that most people look better with their clothes on. Now be good little naked people and run away terribly quickly, before I decide to do something really amusing to you. Probably involving Möbius strips and your lower intestines.”

I never saw so many people disappear so quickly, or so many entirely unattractive arses. I looked at Molly, and she smiled sweetly.

“You see—you just have to know how to talk to people.”

“You haven’t even heard of diplomacy, have you?”

“No. And aren’t you glad?”

“Well, yes.”

And that was when the Sarjeant-at-Arms finally deigned to make an appearance. He was supposed to be guarding the front door; that was his job, to be the first and last face any outsider ever sees if they come through the front door without an invitation. The Sarjeant is in charge of Hall security and family discipline, which means he gets to hit people a lot; and he’s never happier than when he’s found an excuse to really lay the law down. He made my life hell when I was a child, beating me till the blood flew for the smallest infringement of the rules; and when I finally came back to the Hall to put the family in order, one of the first things I did was to beat the crap out of him. And then he had the nerve to say he only did it to toughen me up and prepare me for the world outside. He actually said he was proud of me, before he lapsed into unconsciousness. I’ll never forgive him for that.