Simon Green - The Man with the Golden Torc

"I didn’t know about this," Molly whispered to me. "I swear I didn’t know about this."

"Come and see, come and see," Truman said happily, leading us down from the walkway. We followed him down, and he led us gaily along the central aisle, proudly showing off the contents of his cells. The first thing he showed us was a werewolf, in full wolf form. Seven feet from head to tail, with silver-gray fur, it had been spread-eagled on its back on the concrete floor, pinned down with silver spikes through all four limbs, like a specimen laid out on a dissecting board. It whined piteously as we looked in.

"We have to do that," Truman said. "Otherwise the brutes gnaw off their own limbs to escape. Animals. Still, they’re not here long enough to suffer much."

All I could see was the basic doggy suffering in the creature’s trapped eyes. I had no love for werewolves. I’d seen too many of his kind’s half-eaten kills in small towns and villages. But this…this was no way to treat even a hated enemy.

Farther down the row, vampires were nailed to the concrete walls by wooden stakes hammered through their arms and legs. They snapped and snarled at us feebly, all intelligence driven out of their minds by continuous suffering. Then there were elf lords, stripped naked of their usual finery, chained with heavy steel shackles. The cold iron burned their pale flesh terribly where it touched, charring right down to the bone, but not one of the elves would do anything but sneer at us when we looked in. They still had their pride. Gryphons with their eyes cut out whined pitifully in their cells. They might not be able to see the future anymore, but they all knew what was coming. There was a unicorn whose wings had been broken, her horn gouged roughly out of her forehead, her glory much diminished. And a water elemental who’d been frozen into an icy statue. Her solid eyes were still horribly aware.

Cold-eyed, cold gray lizard men from the silent subterranean ways under South London; smoke gray gargoyles snatched from the few churches and cathedrals they still haunted. A clay-skinned bogeyman with both its arms and legs broken, dragging itself back and forth across the concrete floor. And something with the stink of the Pit about it. A genuine half-breed, born of a demon’s lust. A succubus stores semen from a man she sleeps with, and then changes into its male form, an incubus, and deposits that stolen seed in a receptive woman. The result: a human body with a demon soul. Half of this world, and half of the world below. They fight for one side or the other, both and neither, and they’re not nearly as rare as they ought to be. This half-breed was held in check by a pentagram etched deeply into the concrete floor.

It inclined its head mockingly to Mr. Stab, as though acknowledging one of its own kind. It couldn’t speak. Someone had cut out its tongue, just in case.

Truman looked at me again and again, waiting for me to say something, but I held myself in check as he showed me horror after horror. Pretty much everything on display here was evil, or had done evil in their time; but nothing to match the cold-blooded evil of what had been done to them here. In my time as a Drood agent, I’d fought and killed many of the things imprisoned here, but that had always been in the heat of battle and the hottest of blood. I’d killed but I’d never tortured, never delighted in the agonies of my enemies. That wasn’t the Drood way. We fought the good fight to keep the world safe, and we took pride in doing that work well, but this…this was an abomination.

The last captive, in the last cell, was Subway Sue. Her ragged clothes were tattered and torn, and there was blood on them and on her face. Someone had beaten the crap out of her. She’d been blindfolded and shackled to the wall of her concrete pen. Molly moved in close to the bars, her face terribly cold, her eyes dangerously angry. I looked at Truman.

"This," he said proudly, "is just today’s batch. Arrogant magical creatures who prey on humanity, overpowered by the science and stealth of specially trained soldiers. My people are very busy these days, hunting these vermin down and bringing them here for elimination. We can’t kill in public, of course; that would draw too much attention. It’s better this magical filth don’t know we’re out there, on their trail…I wish we could take the time to deal with them properly, give them the kind of death they deserve. Make them suffer as they’ve made humanity suffer. But we can’t take the risk. So we bring them in until the cells are full, and then we kill them humanely and give their bodies to the cleansing flames. It’s a very efficient operation. The ovens never grow cold. Solomon sees to that. One by one, creature by creature, we’re winning our world back from the monsters who infect it."

"There’s only one monster here," said Mr. Stab. "And for once it isn’t me. Is there, by any chance, a cell here with my name on it?"

"Not as long as you support the cause," said Truman, and he actually dropped Mr. Stab a roguish wink.

"I know this woman," said Molly, still staring through the cold iron bars at Subway Sue. "She’s my friend."

"She’s a leech," Truman said briskly. "Stealing good fortune from innocent men and women, and selling it to those who don’t deserve it. Just another magical parasite on the human race."

Molly spun around and glared at him. "She’s my friend!"

Truman wagged a finger at her like she was a recalcitrant child. "Don’t look at me like that, little witch. Remember your place. We allow you to use your unnatural gifts on our behalf, and in return you get to be part of the only organisation with a real chance of bringing down the Droods you hate so much. Obey me, and you will be well rewarded in the world that’s coming. There will be room for you and your kind in the new order, but only as long as you remember your place."

"That’s the problem with tunnel vision," said Molly. "All I could see was the destruction of the Droods you promised. So when I listened to your recruitment speech, all I heard was what I wanted to hear. But you’ve opened my eyes at last, Truman." She turned back to the cell.

"Sue; it’s me, Molly. What do you suppose are the chances of all the locks on all these cells falling open, all at once?"

"Not good," said Sue through cracked and swollen lips. "As long as these cold iron bars hold my magic in check."

Molly looked at me. I grabbed the steel bars with one golden hand and ripped them right out of their concrete setting. Molly gestured once, and Sue’s shackles fell away from her. Sue stood up, stretched painfully, and pulled away her blindfold.

"Bingo," she said softly. And every lock on every cell fell open, all at once.

Truman looked at me, gaping blankly, as I crumpled the steel bars into a ball, and then dropped it heavily on the ground before him.

"You’ll never replace my family," I said. "You think too small. And too nasty."

He turned and ran, yelling for Solomon Krieg to hold us back while he went for reinforcements. The Golem with the Atomic Brain moved quickly to block the way while his master scrambled up the steps to the walkway. All around us creatures were lurching and spilling out of their pens, free at last. Sirens were blaring in the distance. Molly and Girl Flower helped Subway Sue stumble out of her cell, while Mr. Stab and I faced up to Solomon Krieg.

The artificial creature smiled for the first time, and there was no humour in it, only a terrible satisfaction that at last he would get to do what he was made to do. He raised one hand, and a gun muzzle poked out of a slit in his wrist. He sprayed Mr. Stab and then me with machine gun fire but couldn’t hurt either of us. Bullets ricocheted harmlessly off my armoured chest and seemed to pass through Mr. Stab as though he was nothing but smoke. Krieg turned his aim on the three women, but I moved quickly to shield them. Krieg raised his other hand, and a hidden flamethrower in his other arm bathed my armour in liquid fire. The heat was so terrible that even Mr. Stab flinched back, but I felt nothing.