Simon Green - The Man with the Golden Torc

"You be polite," she growled. "He wouldn’t believe it if it came from me. The Manx Cat has power I invested in it long ago. It can restore a lot of the energies I’ve been using up recently. Though it’ll take a while."

I turned my attention back to Sebastian, who didn’t seem in the least put out by Molly’s actions. "How have you stayed hidden from the family for so long?" I said. "Hell, how did you stay hidden from me?"

"Oh, I’m pretty sure the family has always known roughly where I am," he said easily. "But they know better than to rock the boat. You see, some years ago I took the precaution of leaving certain very detailed information packets with a number of journalists, and other interested parties, all over the world. In well-sealed caskets, set to open automatically in the event of my death. Even our family couldn’t be sure they’d got all of them, so they leave me alone. In fact, they’d do well to ensure that nothing ever happens to me…"

"How very…practical," I said. "But you could still die in an accident. What then?"

He shrugged. "If I’m dead, I won’t care. I’m sure the family will think of something. They always do." He looked at me thoughtfully. "I really don’t think I can help you, Eddie. Whatever it is you want, I can’t supply it. The family is very upset with you, and I don’t care to get caught in the middle. I look out only for myself these days. And before you ask, no, I have no idea why you were made rogue. I have no contact with anyone inside the family. I don’t even speak to the other rogues. You’re just wasting both our time by being here."

"Then why did you agree to see me?" I said, feeling a slow hot anger build within me. "I don’t have time to waste."

He sneered at me. "I always wondered if you’d be the one they sent to kill me. If they ever did find a way to dismantle my little safeguards. You killed poor Arnold, after all, and you did live just up the road from me."

"How did you kill the Bloody Man, Eddie?" said Molly. "I mean, I thought the armour made all you Droods invulnerable."

"Only when we’re wearing it," I said. "I staked him out, learned his routine, and then shot him through the head from a safe distance using a rifle with a telescopic sight. He never knew I was there, never got the chance to armour up. Very effective; if not especially honourable. But I was a lot younger then, and he was the Bloody Man. You don’t take chances with a man like that."

Sebastian smiled. "Funny you should say that, Edwin."

There was a sudden sting in my neck even as I heard the window glass beside me shatter. I started to turn. I thought, I’ve been shot. And then my legs were buckling, and I sank very slowly to my knees. I put my hand up to my neck, and it seemed to take forever to get there. Sound slowed, and my vision blurred, as though I was underwater. My numbing fingers found a feathered dart in the side of my neck, just above the torc, and I pulled it out with the last of my strength. Tranquilizer dart, I thought, and the words seemed to echo around and around inside my head. I tried to call up my armour, but my thoughts were already too dulled to concentrate on the activating Words. I slumped to the floor, hitting it in a boneless heap, and I didn’t even feel the impact.

This all happened in a few seconds. Molly threw herself down beside me, below the shattered window, out of the line of sight of any more darts. She put her hands on either side of my face and muttered urgently under her breath. I could feel her touch when I couldn’t feel anything else, and then I felt subtle magics flowing into me, fighting off the effects of the tranquilizer. My body was still numb, still helpless, but my thoughts slowly began to clear. Molly glared up at Sebastian.

"You bastard! You sold us out!"

"Of course," he said smoothly, giving all his attention to the adjusting of a cuff. "It’s what I do. Rest assured, I got a very good price. For both of you. A certain Mr. Truman of Manifest Destiny was very pleased to learn exactly where and when he could be sure of finding you. I was on the phone to him the moment I stopped talking to you. And then all I had to do was keep you entertained here until his people could get into position."

The door burst in, and a dozen armed men streamed into the apartment, all of them in familiar black uniforms. They looked quickly around to make sure the place was secure, their guns constantly trained on Molly and me. She stayed very still. I twitched my fingers ever so slightly. Molly’s magics were fighting off the drug, but only very slowly. I looked at the guns and wondered why the soldiers weren’t already shooting. I would have. One of the men knelt down beside me, checked the sluggish pulse in my neck, and then stood up again, satisfied. He yelled out the open door, and his group commander sauntered in. And if I hadn’t been so tranked, I would have yelled out in shock and anger.

I knew the group commander. She wore battered old army fatigues still stiff with dried black blood from fighting in a hell dimension. She wore her black hair cropped short, so enemies couldn’t grab at it during close combat. Her scarred face was no longer pretty, and her bare muscular arms were scarred too. I knew all these things about her because I knew her. She was Janissary Jane, an old friend and colleague to Molly and to me. Except it wasn’t her. Not really. Around her neck she wore a Kandarian amulet on a chain, and that meant this was really my old adversary Archie Leech.

Archie Leech, serial possessor, occupying another stolen body. Only this time he’d taken someone who mattered to me, no doubt in revenge for what I’d done to him in that cellar under Harley Street. Archie/Jane swaggered forward into Sebastian’s apartment and grinned down at me, proudly waggling the gun she’d used to shoot me. And then she shot Sebastian in the neck with another tranquilizer dart. Sebastian crashed to the floor, thrashed awkwardly for a moment, and then was still, an almost comical look of shock on his face. I would have laughed if I could. The betrayer betrayed. Archie strolled over to him, his exaggerated masculine movements out of place in Jane’s body.

"You really should have seen that one coming, Sebastian. You got soft, living on your own. Playing at being the gentlemen thief. Got cocky, thinking no one could touch you. You should have realised two Droods were always going to be worth more than one." She turned abruptly back to look down on me and smiled happily. "How do you like my new body, Eddie? I thought I’d slip into something a little more comfortable this time. You know…I hate it when you destroy my bodies before I’m finished with them. Before I’ve squeezed every last bit of fun out of them. So this time I went out of my way to take a friend of yours just to prove that I’ll always be able to hurt you so much more than you can hurt me."

She kicked me in the ribs a couple of times just to make his point. The force of the blows was enough to lift me up off the floor, but I hardly felt them. My hands and my feet were tingling, and my face wasn’t as numb as it had been, but that was all. Molly’s magic was working. My head was clearing fast. I probably could have armoured up, but I didn’t want to risk it, not just yet. Not with so many guns trained on Molly as well as me. So I lay still, watching and listening and biding my time. Molly stayed down beside me, also keeping very still, giving Archie no reason to trank her too.

"What happens now?" she said, her voice carefully calm and nonthreatening.

"I deliver the three of you to Mr. Truman," said Archie. "My current and very generous employer. He can’t wait to get his hands on two Droods and their torcs. I understand he has a whole team of surgeons standing by, ready to take his two new prizes apart one piece at a time, until they find out just what it is about a Drood and his torc that’s so special. A very slow, very painful process, I should think…Maybe Mr. Truman will let me watch, if I ask nicely. Apparently he was very impressed by what three armoured agents were able to do to the very well-trained and expensive army he threw at them. He can’t wait till he’s able to put a torc around the neck of every Manifest Destiny soldier, and then turn them loose on the world. I do so admire a man with ambition…"