Simon Green - The Man with the Golden Torc

"I never knew," she said. "Never even suspected…"

"You know nothing about me," said Mr. Stab.

He stood at the far end of the table, tall and proud like a typical Victorian patriarch, his chin held high and his eyes alight with a terrible regard. "You know nothing about what drives me to do the things I do. Once women fascinated me, and then they horrified me. Teasers, liars, betrayers. I took a proud vengeance upon them, hurting them as I had been hurt, and gained much in return…But now the only intimacy I can ever know is with my victims. That moment when their eyes meet mine, that little sigh as the blade penetrates…is all I have, now. When I was just beginning, when everyone called me Jack, I had no way of knowing that the immortality I bought would be as an immortal killing machine. Driven to kill and kill, and never know peace or rest. I go on and on, in a world that makes less and less sense to me, and all that is left to me is to take what pleasure I can, from my endless work…"

"You can’t kill him, Eddie," Molly said quietly. "You can’t. Not even your armour could undo what he did to himself."

"What about your magic?" I said.

"Don’t ask me that, Eddie. He has been my friend. He has done…good things, because I asked him to."

"Enough to make up for this? And all the other stashes we don’t know about?"

"Don’t ask me that. Not here."

Girl Flower floated prettily around the room, bending over withered shoulders to stare into corrupt faces, humming a happy song to herself.

"You shouldn’t let this get to you, darlings. All living things have their roots in dead things. It’s the way of the world." She slipped a hand inside her dress and frowned prettily for a moment, and when she brought her hand out again it was piled high with seeds. She walked up and down both sides of the long table, dropping a few seeds into the gaping mouths and empty eye sockets of every corpse. "Let new life bloom," she said. "It’s nature’s way."

Mr. Stab looked at her, and Girl Flower smiled happily back at him, entirely unafraid. And the man who was once called Jack by a whole horrified city nodded slowly.

"Perhaps I’ll come back, in some future time," he said. "To see what strange new life has blossomed here."

I didn’t kill him. As an agent in the field, you learn that sometimes you have to settle for little victories.

Mr. Stab sealed up his private place, and we moved on through the sewers until finally we came at last to Manifest Destiny’s hidden domain, their underground kingdom. I’d come a long way in search of a credible resistance to my family’s newly exposed tyranny, and they had better not disappoint me. I needed them to be something I could depend on in this treacherously changing world. I needed them to be a weapon I could throw at the family who’d betrayed me. The entrance point was a huge circular portal of solid steel set flush with the old brick wall. Four very large and muscular men stood before the portal, wearing stark black uniforms with discreet silver piping and covering us with heavy automatic weapons as we approached.

"Cold iron," said Molly, indicating the portal. "Keeps magic out. They’re very security conscious."

Mr. Stab sniffed loudly. "It would take more than that to keep me out, if I wanted in."

"Oh, get over your bad self," said Girl Flower, and Mr. Stab surprised us all with a brief bark of laughter.

I armoured up as we approached the armed guards. I wasn’t ready yet to trust Manifest Destiny with the secret of my Shaman Bond identity. The guards were visibly impressed at the sight of my armour, gleaming golden in the gloom, and they quickly got on their radios to check for instructions from someone higher up. Whatever they heard through their earpieces clearly impressed them even more, and then they couldn’t open the portal fast enough for me. I strode up to them as though I expected such treatment as my right, and they fell back, raising their weapons in salute. All except for one, still blocking the way but not looking especially happy about it.

He smiled nervously at my featureless golden mask, his eyes darting back and forth. The lack of eyes on the mask really throws people. The guard swallowed hard. "Your pardon, sir, Sir Drood, but…We have orders to admit you and the witch Molly Metcalf, but no one said anything about your…companions. Perhaps they could wait here while you—"

"No," I said. "I don’t think so. This is Girl Flower and Mr. Stab. Upset them at your peril."

"Get out of my way or I’ll fillet you," said Mr. Stab in his most cold and sepulchral voice. The watching guards retreated even farther, one of them making small squeaking noises. The guard before us looked like he’d like to make some noises of his own. I gestured for him to lead us in, and he nodded jerkily. Molly extinguished her witchfire, and the four of us strode into Manifest Destiny’s most secret headquarters as though we were thinking of buying the place. Of course Girl Flower had to spoil the moment by giggling.

A short tunnel led into a vast chamber whose walls and high ceiling were covered entirely with gleaming steel. Presumably originally added to protect against the effects of atomic blast, but useful now to keep magic at bay. No wonder my family had never suspected their existence. You couldn’t hope to scry or remote view through this much cold iron. The guard led us on through more gleaming steel corridors and chambers, and everything bristled with urgent efficiency. There were banks of computers and monitor screens, maps and clocks and operations tables, and any amount of cutting-edge communications equipment. It reminded me of the Drood War Room, on a somewhat smaller scale. And everywhere there were tall and splendid men and women in their black uniforms, sitting at workstations or crowded around tables or just striding back and forth with important messages. The men were all perfect masculine specimens, glowing with health and vitality and purpose. Perfect soldiers. The women were tall and lithe, and just as heavily armed as the men. Valkyries, warrior women. They all nodded respectfully to me as I passed. A few nodded familiarly to Molly. None of them so much as looked directly at Mr. Stab or Girl Flower. I glanced across at Molly. She didn’t seem very happy.

"Have you ever been here before?" I asked quietly.

"No. I was never important enough to be invited here. And I have to say…it isn’t what I thought it would be. I don’t like the feel of this place…"

The guide led us on and on, through endless branching corridors, escorting us deeper and deeper into this unexpected labyrinth far below the streets of London. A steel maze, with the head of Manifest Destiny at its unknown heart.

"What do you know about this man we’re going to see?" I said quietly to Molly.

"Not much," she said just as quietly. "His name is Truman. Never met him. Don’t know anyone who has. You should feel honoured, Eddie."

"Oh, I do," I said. "Really. You have no idea. How did you hook up with these people in the first place?"

"I was recruited four years ago," said Molly. "By Solomon Krieg."

"Now him I have heard of," I said. "The Golem with the Atomic Brain, right? A Cold War attempt at combining magic and science, to produce a Cold War supersoldier. Deadly in his time, and a legend in those secret wars the public never get to hear about; but last I heard, he’d been retired from the field."

"He was," Molly said. "Over ten years ago. His old masters didn’t need him anymore, but he couldn’t be allowed to run loose, so they sent him down here to guard the bunkers. Word is, they locked him in here and then changed all the combinations, just in case. Manifest Destiny found him when they moved in, still standing guard, and Truman took him in and gave him a new purpose. The Golem with the Atomic Brain has a new cause and a new faith, and he’d die for Truman. You can’t buy loyalty like that.