For Heaven's Eyes Only

CHAPTER ONE The Prisoner

It was half past November, but I couldn’t sleep.

I wasn’t sure how long I’d been sleeping, but it felt like a long time. As though I’d been hibernating through the winter, wrapped up safe and warm, sleeping soundly and deeply through the dark and the cold. But something wouldn’t let me rest and so here I was, up and about, walking down a long, empty corridor in a silent, empty house.

There was no transition: One moment I was fast asleep; the next I was wandering aimlessly down a cosy-looking corridor with rich carpeting, wood-panelled walls, and great wide windows. I sort of recognised where I was, but I couldn’t put a name to it. Couldn’t even put a name to myself. I had no idea who I was, but strangely it didn’t seem to bother me. I had no memories and no plans. No needs, no worries. Just me walking in an empty place. The setting was familiar, and a slow curiosity led me to study the painted portraits hanging on the walls I passed. The faces were familiar, too, but I couldn’t put a name to any of them. They seemed friendly, supportive, like . . . family. I couldn’t decide whether I felt vaguely comfortable in the silent and empty setting, or obscurely threatened. Or both.

Who was I? What was my name? I stopped and concentrated, scowling till my forehead ached, and eventually something came to me. Drood . . . What was that? Was it even a name? What the hell was a Drood when it was at home? I started forward again, and soon came to the end of the corridor. I turned right, and another long corridor stretched before me. I kept walking. It was something to do while I tried to get my thoughts in order. Was this whole place empty except for me? A standing suit of medieval armour loomed up before me, and, moved by some obscure impulse, I stopped before it. The solid steel was well polished, but it bore all the dents and scrapes and hard knocks of a long working life. Someone had worn this armour in the past, used the gleaming sword and shield that stood propped up beside it, in some long-forgotten conflict. I frowned again. The suit of armour . . . meant something to me. Something special. I leaned in to study it more closely, and only then realised that the whole suit was covered in thick whorls of hoarfrost. I reached out to touch the heavy steel breastplate with a single fingertip, but I couldn’t feel the metal or the ice.

I stepped back and looked around me. The floor, the walls and the ceiling were all covered with layers of frost and crusted ice. Even the huge windows were coated with heavy, fern-patterned hoarfrost. So why didn’t I feel cold? I looked down at myself. I was wearing a plain white T-shirt and generic blue jeans. My arms were bare, but I didn’t even have gooseflesh from the cold. I moved over to the nearest window and rubbed away the frost with my bare forearm. I didn’t feel a thing. I looked out the window, and winter was everywhere. For as far as I could see, great sweeping waves of snow covered the grounds, smooth and untouched by any mark of man or beast. A great billowing ocean of white, stretching off for as far as I could see. No snow fell, though a light grey mist curled and heaved around the base of the house.

Here and there in the rising and falling of the snow were distinct shapes that might have been snow sculptures. Winged horses, gryphons, and a really massive dragon. Very detailed, but utterly still. Scattered across the snowscape like watchful guardians. There was a massive hedge maze, too, all its complicated runs and turns one big pattern when seen from above. White lines and dark shadows. And then I saw something moving inside the maze, something that raged up and down the narrow ways, striking out at the snowy hedgerows with savage strength. It swept this way and that, moving too quickly for me to identify, except to know for a fact that it wasn’t in any way human. There was something bad, something wrong, something horribly monstrous about it, but even as it struck out at the endless white hedgerows around it, it wasn’t able to damage or disturb them. For all its obvious strength and power, it was clearly trapped inside the maze. I watched it prowl up and down and back and forth, never stopping, never able to find an exit. I wondered what it was, and why I was so scared of what would happen if it should ever find a way out.

I looked up at the open sky. A huge moon, full and blue, hung alone in a dark, dark sky with no stars. No stars at all. I backed away from the window, and the blue moonlight fell through the glass, illuminating some of the corridor. For the first time I realised the blue moon was the only light there was. Blue moonlight, shimmering ice and dark shadows filled the corridor, and not a sign of life anywhere. I moved quickly down the corridor, checking each window, but I always saw the same thing. The exact same view, from the exact same angle, never changing no matter how far I walked . . . Which should have been impossible.

I turned and looked back the way I’d come. Although the rich carpeting was crusted with a thick layer of hoarfrost, I hadn’t left a single footprint behind me. No mark, nothing, to show I’d passed this way. I stamped my foot hard, but it didn’t disturb the frost beneath me, and the sound was oddly flat, strangely muffled.

Was I a ghost, haunting this place? Or was this place haunting me? It seemed . . . dead. And why did the only cold I was feeling seem to come from within me, rather than from without?

I called out, “Hello! Anybody there? Anybody?��� No answer. The silence seemed heavier and more oppressive than ever. I shivered abruptly, and not from the cold. It occurred to me that my voice had sounded strangely flat, and I realised it was because my voice hadn’t echoed at all. It should have. One more impossible thing in an impossible place. I breathed heavily, but my breath didn’t steam on the air before me.

I hurried down the corridor, trying every door I came to. None of them would budge; the door handles wouldn’t even turn in my hand, no matter how much strength I used. I beat on each door with my fist, but no one answered. I ran on, rounding another corner, and then I stopped abruptly before a huge grandfather clock. Tall and solid in its ornate oakwood case, it had a wide face and hanging brass weights. It was utterly silent, not a tick or a tock, and after a moment I realised the face didn’t even have any hands. I checked my wristwatch. The digital display was completely blank. Had I come to a place where time had stopped, where there was no time left?

Farther down the corridor I came across a full-length mirror set in a filigreed silver frame, shining bright in the blue moonlight. I stood before the mirror, and it reflected everything in the corridor except me. My heart pounded in my chest, and my breath rasped harshly in my throat. I pressed one hand hard against the cold glass, but the mirror refused to acknowledge any part of me.

I fell back from the mirror and turned to run again, pounding down the corridor, though my feet made no sound at all and I didn’t slip or slide on the icy carpeting as I should have. I threw myself round the next corner, and then came to a sudden halt as I found myself down on the ground floor, in the entrance hall, facing the great double doors that led outside. I stood very still, not even breathing hard, staring at the doors. This was wrong. An upstairs corridor couldn’t connect directly to a downstairs hall without benefit of stairs. But right then I didn’t care. The way out was in front of me, and I’d had enough of this empty house. I ran to the doors and tried the handles, and of course they wouldn’t move. I rattled the handles so hard that it shook the double doors, but they wouldn’t open. I slammed my shoulder against them, again and again, but I couldn’t even feel the impacts on my shoulder. I finally stopped and leaned against the doors, hot tears of frustration burning my eyes. And then a voice behind me said:

“You can’t leave, Eddie. There’s no way out for you. You’re confined here, a prisoner in Drood Hall.”

I spun round, and there, standing in the hall, calm and civilised and immaculate as always, was Walker. The man who ran London’s Nightside in every way that mattered. Dressed like someone Big in the City, smartly and expensively tailored, right down to the bowler hat and the rolled umbrella he was leaning on. A man past his best days, perhaps, but still the ultimate authority figure, with a polite smile and cold, cold eyes. I knew him immediately, and suddenly a whole bunch of my memories came flooding back. I was Eddie Drood, also known as Shaman Bond, the very secret agent. Field agent for that most ancient and powerful family, the Droods; trained from childhood to protect Humanity from all the dark forces that threatened it.

This was my home, Drood Hall. Though I’d never known it so deserted, so abandoned. I remembered a lot of things now, but not how I came to be here, or what the hell was going on. So I struck my most comfortable and assured pose and gave Walker a cold glare of my own.

“A prisoner?” I said. “In my own home? I don’t think so, Walker. And how the hell did you get in? We’re really very particular about who we allow into the Hall.”

“Ah,” said Walker. “Let’s say . . . I am here representing certain powerful and vested interests who have questions they want me to put to you. There are things they want to know about you and your family. The things you’ve done and intend to do. All the secrets you and your family have kept from the world. They want to know . . . everything. Just tell me, Eddie, and all of this will be over. You must realise there’s no point in fighting me, or those I represent. You’re a reasonable man. . . .”

“No, I’m bloody not,” I said. “I’m a Drood field agent, licensed to take names and kick supernatural arse, and being reasonable never gets you anywhere against the forces of evil. I’ve got questions of my own, Walker. Starting with, what’s happened to Drood Hall? And where the hell is everybody? Did I miss a fire drill?”

I felt the need to back up my questions with a little authority of my own, and so I subvocalised the activating Words that would call up my armour, the special golden armour that was my family’s greatest secret and most powerful weapon. But to my surprise and shock nothing happened. My hand went to my throat, and the golden torc wasn’t there. I think I cried out then, as though part of my soul had been ripped away. Droods receive their torcs shortly after birth, and are never without them. I clawed at my throat with both hands, but it stayed bare. For a moment I couldn’t breathe, and then I clamped down on my racing thoughts with an iron will. I was a trained field agent, and I was damned if I’d panic in the face of the enemy. Even if I had never felt so helpless in my life, so vulnerable, so . . . unmanned.

For the first time I knew how the rest of my family had felt when I took their torcs away.

I glared at Walker. “How dare you? How dare you steal my torc? And what’s happened to my family? What have you done with them?”

Walker smiled calmly back at me. “I’m here to ask questions, Eddie, not answer them. My current lords and masters require your obedience. Tell me your secrets, Eddie. Every last one of them. And then this nightmare can end.”

I stood my ground and considered him thoughtfully. Losing my temper with Walker would get me nowhere. You can’t run a spiritual cesspool like the Nightside with a reasonable manner and good intent. Walker believed in the iron fist in the iron glove, and had always been a very dangerous man. Certainly I couldn’t hope to intimidate him without my armour. But the day I couldn’t think rings round a soulless functionary like Walker, I’d retire from the field and raise bees. According to the media there’s a shortage these days. . . . I gave Walker my best cocky, crafty grin, the one that says, I know something you don’t know. . . .

“Haven’t seen you since that nasty business with the independent agent,” I said. “So, still keeping the lid on the Nightside, are you? Running back and forth trying to make all those gods and monsters play nicely together?” And then I stopped, and frowned, and looked closely at Walker. “Didn’t someone tell me . . . you’d been killed?”

Walker shrugged. “Comes to us all, in the end. No one gets out of life alive. All that matters here and now is that I serve new masters; and they want information from you. Past cases, victories old and new, everything there is to know about the notorious Drood family.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’ll be the day. So, new lords and masters, is it? And who might they be, exactly?”

“You don’t need to know,” said Walker. “It doesn’t matter; we all have to serve someone, in the end. It’s all right for you to talk to me, Eddie. The secrets we hold in life aren’t important anymore, once we’re dead.”

I stared at him. “Someone really did kill you? I didn’t believe anyone could take down the legendary Walker.”

“I got old,” said Walker, “and perhaps a little careless with someone I trusted. Still, he’ll make a good replacement.”

“And . . . I’m dead?”

“Of course. Don’t you remember the disguised Immortal stabbing you? No? Well, I’m sure it’ll come back to you. You’re probably still in shock.”

“I am not dead! I’m breathing; I can feel my heart pounding. . . . I can’t be dead!”

“You must be,” said Walker. “Or you wouldn’t have come here among dead people.”

A sudden shudder went through me, and I looked quickly about the entrance hall, splashed with deep shadows and blue moonlight.

“There are dead people here?”

“Oh, yes,” said Walker. “Old enemies and older friends: some you may remember, some not. The past is full of strangers with familiar faces. People whose lives you touched in passing, for good or bad. The lives you saved and the lives you ended. And all of them want what I want. Answers. Secrets. Information. You must tell me what I need to know, Eddie. Tell me.”

“I’m damned if I’ll tell you anything!”

“You’ll be damned if you don’t,” Walker said calmly.

I looked past him suddenly, as I glimpsed a familiar face. Standing quietly in the blue moonlight as though he wasn’t sure he ought to be there, a tall, thin figure stared sadly back at me. Wrapped in a long grey coat, with a thick scarf wrapped round his neck to keep out the cold, Coffin Jobe nodded sorrowfully in my direction. Jobe was a necroleptic; he kept falling down dead and then getting over it. We knew each other, but I wouldn’t call us friends. And he certainly had no business in Drood Hall.

He approached me in a reluctant sideways sort of way, and came to a halt beside Walker, who moved away to one side, as though afraid he might catch something. Lot of people felt that way about Coffin Jobe. I always thought it was the coat; it looked like it could start a new plague all on its own.

“Hello, Jobe,” I said. “Is this where you go to when you’re being dead?”

“I don’t know,” said Jobe. “I never remember where I’ve been once I’m alive again. There are rules, apparently. But I don’t think I’ve ever been here before. In fact, I’m getting the distinct feeling I shouldn’t be here. Of course, I get that feeling in a lot of places when I’m being alive. . . .” He looked at me accusingly. “I liked you better when you were being Shaman Bond. I always knew where I was with Shaman. Just another face on the scene, another chancer, like me. Not important at all. But it turned out you were a Drood all along. Laughing at us from behind your Shaman Bond mask.”

“No,” I said. “That’s not how it was, Jobe. . . .”

But he was already gone, disappeared in a moment, back in the land of the living again.

A door opened to one side, and out of his private office stepped the Drood family’s Sarjeant-at-Arms. The previous Sarjeant, who’d died so very bravely on the Damnation Way, buying the rest of us time to escape. Big and muscular and brutal, exactly as I remembered him, with half his face still a mass of scars from where my girlfriend, Molly Metcalf, wished a plague of rats on him. He’d deserved worse. He stood beside Walker and looked at me coldly, his gaze as inflexible and judgemental as always.

“You were a thug and a bully when you were alive, Sarjeant,” I said. “And it would appear death hasn’t mellowed you.”

“You never did understand duty, Edwin,” said the Sarjeant. “You should never have been allowed to run the family. You took away our torcs. You made us weak.”

“The family had become corrupt,” I said. “Drifted too far from who and what we were supposed to be. I did what I had to do to save the family from itself.”

“By destroying its Heart.”

“The Heart was rotten. It lied to us. I was the only one left who cared about what the family was supposed to stand for. What did you ever care about, except disciplining those weaker than yourself?”

“You never understood duty,” said the Sarjeant-at-Arms. “The family has to be strong to do the things it has to do. I tried to make you strong by beating the weakness and rebellion out of you.”

“Weakness?” I said. “You mean things like compassion, and honour, and doing the right thing?”

“Yes,” said the Sarjeant. “Everything the family does is right, because we’re Droods. Nothing else matters.”

“We’re supposed to protect Humanity, not rule them!”

“Sheep need shepherds,” said the Sarjeant. “And a little culling now and then, to improve the stock.”

I strode right up to him and punched him in the face. But my hand passed straight through him, as though he were only a vision or a ghost. I snatched my hand back, and the Sarjeant looked at me almost sadly.

“Good punch, Edwin. Just like I taught you. But that won’t help you here. You can’t fight us. You can’t stop us. Tell us what we want to know. Tell us all your secrets. It’s the only way you’ll ever be free of this place.”

“You’re not the Sarjeant-at-Arms,” I said. “He’d die before he betrayed a single Drood secret to an outsider.”

“You can’t escape us,” said Walker.

“Yeah?” I said. “Kiss my arse.”

I sprinted past him, up the stairway and onto the next floor. Only the next floor wasn’t there; instead I stumbled to a halt inside the War Room, the nerve centre of the family, where all the really important decisions are made: looking after the hundreds of field agents out in the world, stamping out supernatural brush fires and slapping down the bad guys. Brown-trousering the ungodly, as my uncle James liked to put it. The War Room was usually packed with people at their work, full of sound and fury; but now it was deserted, silent. All the workstations were empty, the computer monitors and the scrying balls left unattended. All the lights were out on the great world map, and all of the clock faces, showing the time in every country in the world, were blank, without hands. Time had stopped here, too.

The work surfaces were layered with frost, and the communication systems were thickly coated with ice. (Part of me wondered where the blue moonlight was coming from to illuminate the War Room, but I’d made a conscious decision to worry only about those things that mattered immediately.) I wrote my name with my fingertip on the frost covering one monitor screen, but I couldn’t feel the cold of the ice. I looked up sharply, as one by one the monitor screens on the walls that should have shown trouble spots across the world turned themselves on, and vaguely familiar faces appeared on the screens, looking down at me, watching me with cold, angry, judgemental eyes. When I looked at any face directly it vanished, reappearing when I looked somewhere else. I was surrounded by a sea of faces, grim and condemning, but none of them could face me directly. I looked quickly back and forth, but all I could do was catch glimpses of my accusers out of the corners of my eyes. Glimpses of cold, scowling faces watching me with bad intent.

I almost jumped out of my skin when I suddenly realised there was someone in the War Room with me. I spun round, putting my back against the nearest workstation, and there facing me was the Blue Fairy. Half elf, thief, traitor . . . sometimes a friend, and sometimes not. That’s often how it is, out in the field. He looked very smart, almost fashionable, in his own ratty way; but his face was ravaged by time and far too much good living. He looked at me and shook his head sadly.

“Eddie, dear boy, what are you doing here, pursued by the dead, at the mercy of old friends and enemies? So much bitterness and unpleasantness, and all for a few secrets that probably never mattered that much, even when we were alive.” He looked about him. “Terrible place, no sense of style. Tell them what they want to know, Eddie, and then we can both get the hell out of here. I don’t like this place. Don’t like being dead, for that matter. When I first discovered what being dead was like, I cried and I cried and I cried. . . .”

“There has to be a way out of here,” I said. “Help me. I helped you. . . .”

“Did you, Eddie? Did you really? Yes, you rescued me from the depths of depression and disgrace, gave me new life and purpose . . . but did you think I’d be grateful? You should have left me as I was: a broken man, dying by inches and not giving a damn. You woke me up, gave me hope . . . just so I could die anyway a few years later in one of your stupid spy games. You should have left me as I was. It would have been kinder.”

“You always did make bad decisions, Edwin,” said another familiar voice.

And out of the deep, dark shadows of the War Room came my grandmother, Martha Drood, Matriarch of the family. She stood tall and stiff and proud before me in her neat grey twinset and pearls. Looking at me with her cold eyes and colder face. No sign of the awful wound that killed her in her own bed, soaking the whole front of her in blood. She looked me up and down and sniffed briefly. Another familiar sound. It tore at my heart. I hadn’t realised I’d missed it so much.

“You ran away from the Hall to be a field agent, and what good did that do you? All because you didn’t have the discipline to buckle down and do what you were told, like everyone else. I was grooming you to take a high position in the family, but you turned your back on us. You were always such a disappointment to me, Edwin.”

“I avenged your murder,” I said steadily. “I caught your killer, the Immortal disguised as your husband, Alistair. I killed him for you, Grandmother.”

“I’m still dead,” she said. “All because you weren’t paying attention. Too caught up with your new girlfriend. I never approved of her.”

“You never approved of me, Edwin,” said Alistair Drood, stepping forward to stand beside Martha. “You were responsible for my death too. I was only trying to do the right thing and protect my wife. You watched me burn in hellfire, and did nothing to save me. Tell them what they want to know, Edwin. Let your grandmother and me know peace, and rest at last.”

“Tell them,” said Martha Drood. “Tell them everything, Edwin.”

“Tell them,” said the Blue Fairy. “Or we’ll never leave you alone.”

“None of your deaths were my fault!” I yelled at them, and then I turned and ran out of the War Room.

And straight into the Armoury, even though it was located in a whole other wing of Drood Hall. I looked quickly behind me, but no one had followed. I moved slowly forward, checking every dark shadow for a new accusing face. The huge stone chamber seemed strange and unsettling, far too quiet without the usual hustle and bustle of the Armourer and his lab assistants. Always busy working on new weapons and devices of appalling destruction. Or raising hell and getting themselves into trouble for the fun of it. It isn’t a successful day in the Armoury unless someone’s been transformed into something distressing, or exploded, or committed some brave new crime against nature. But the workstations were empty, and the weapons-testing ground was unnaturally quiet. I moved quickly through the Armoury, looking for something I could use as a weapon. There were always nasty destructive things lying about in the Armoury. But the few dark shapes I could make out were welded to surfaces by the extreme cold, buried under thick layers of ice. I tried to pry a few of them loose, but no amount of effort would budge them. I beat at the crusted ice with my fist, but couldn’t even crack or splinter it.

A sound behind me spun me round, hands up to defend myself, half expecting Uncle Jack, the Armourer. But instead it was my uncle James. The greatest field agent the family ever produced: the legendary Grey Fox. Dead, because of me. He stood there smiling, tall and dark and handsome in his splendid tuxedo. Every inch the master spy I never was. Looking just as he had before I got him killed.

“No,” I said. “Please. No. Not you, Uncle James. I can’t stand it. . . .”

“Relax,” said Uncle James. “It’s all right, Eddie. I forgave you long ago.”

For a long moment, I couldn’t say anything. Uncles James nodded understandingly.

“It’s good to see you again, Eddie. I understood why you did what you did, even when I was alive. Ah, the things we do for the family . . . I don’t hold grudges. You see things a lot more clearly once you’re dead. You did for the family what I should have done long before.”

“Why are you here?” I said. “Are you a prisoner in this place, like me?”

“No. I was called here, like the others. But unlike most of them, I’m on your side.”

“Do you think I should tell Walker what he wants to know?” I said. “Tell him all my secrets, and those of the family?”

“Of course not,” said Uncle James. “Walker always was too ready to bow down to authority, or to anyone with a public-school accent. Tell him to go to hell, Eddie.”

I had to grin. Death had not mellowed Uncle James. “Do you know whom Walker’s working for? Who it is who wants my secrets?”

Uncle James frowned. “It’s hard to be sure of anything here. Hardly anyone or anything is necessarily what they appear to be.”

“Even you?” I said.

He shrugged easily. “Hard to tell. I think I’m me, but then I would, wouldn’t I?”

I put out my hand to him, but when he went to shake it, our fingers drifted through one another.

“Am I a ghost?” I said. “Give it to me straight; I can take it.”

“Not even close,” snapped another familiar voice. “You shouldn’t be here, boy.”

And suddenly standing next to my uncle James was Jacob Drood, the family ghost. He wore a battered Hawaiian shirt over grubby shorts, looking older than death itself. His face was a mass of wrinkles, his big, bony skull graced with a few flyaway hairs. But his eyes were as sharp and fierce as ever. He nodded brusquely to Uncle James, and then fixed me with his glare. “I’m the only ghost here, Eddie; but I can’t help you. There are rules even the dead have to obey. Perhaps especially the dead.”

I studied him carefully. He looked more solid and more real than anyone else I’d met in this empty Hall. “Are you really here, Jacob?”

“Yes. But not everyone else is.” He looked at Uncle James, who smiled easily back. Jacob sniffed loudly and glared about him before piercing me with his sharp gaze again. “Someone’s running a game on you, Eddie. Even I can’t tell who the players are, for sure. You need to get out of here, boy. You don’t belong here. Bad things are on their way, attracted by the light.”

“The blue moonlight?”

“Your light, boy! Get out of here! Run, while you still can!”

I looked at Uncle James, and he nodded quickly. That was enough for me. I turned and ran back through the Armoury, and almost immediately found myself in the Sanctity, the great open chamber that served as a meeting place for the ruling council of the family. Once it was home to the Heart, the huge other-dimensional diamond that gave the family its power, and its original armour. As long as we fed it the souls of our children. I put a stop to that and destroyed the Heart, and now the Sanctity was only a room. But there was no trace of the rose red glow that usually suffused the chamber, the physical manifestation of the other-dimensional traveller called Ethel, who came to the Hall to replace the Heart and supply our new armour. The good angel I’d found to replace the bad. Except that angels always have their own agenda, and don’t always give a damn for merely human concerns. . . .

The Sanctity felt cold and desolate without Ethel’s comforting glow. I called out to her, but no one answered. I nodded quietly to myself. One final proof that this place wasn’t, couldn’t be, the real Drood Hall. No one could have kept Ethel from answering me in the real Hall.

“Always running, Eddie,” said yet another familiar voice. “Never staying in one place long enough to take responsibility for your actions.”

I took my time turning around, and there was Penny Drood, tall and slender in her usual white sweater and slacks. She looked at me with cold, desperate eyes.

“You let him kill me. That old monster from old London town. My blood is on your hands. You must make amends, Eddie. Tell Walker what he needs to know.”

“I did warn you about Mr. Stab,” I said. “I told you what he was, but you were so sure you knew better.”

“You’ve always got an answer, haven’t you, Eddie?” said Alexander King, the independent agent, stepping forward to stand beside Penny. “Typical Drood. Always ready to blame the bad things in the world on someone else.”

“In your case, I was right,” I said. “Nasty old man, squatting on your stolen secrets, guarding your hoard like a dragon in its cave. Yes, I killed you. Do it again in a minute. After everything you were responsible for, you deserved your death.”

“Tell them what they want to know,” said King. “You can’t keep anything from Walker or those he serves. They have all the power here. They know where all the bodies are buried.”

Suddenly the entire great chamber of the Sanctity was full of people crowding in around me. Matthew and Alexandra Drood, who did their best to have me killed in the name of Zero Tolerance, and died trying to stop me from saving the family. And more faces, and more: all the men and women who’d died at my hands, or because of me, because I was an agent of the Droods. All the bad guys, and those who thought they were good guys but chose a bad cause to follow, and all those in between. All the Accelerated Men, who died trying to storm Drood Hall and kill the family. All the teenage Immortals, who died trying to rule Humanity, or because they planned to unleash the forces of Hell by opening the Apocalypse Door. All those I’d fought to save the world from. I hadn’t realised there were so many of them. Hundreds of dead men and women surrounding me with cold, pitiless eyes, many of them with their death wounds still fresh and bloody. I stood my ground, glaring around me, refusing to accept the guilt they were trying to impose on me.

“There isn’t one of you here who didn’t deserve your death,” I said. “I did my duty. To the family, and to Humanity. You all needed killing.”

And one by one they faded away, unable to face the certainty in my gaze.

“Harsh words, Eddie,” said one final familiar voice. “Hard and harsh, even cold-blooded. I always knew you were an agent, but I never knew you were such a successful assassin.”

Philip MacAlpine of MI-13 stood before me, middle-aged and rumpled, but still every inch the professional spy.

I glared right back at him. “What the hell are you doing here? Did someone in your own department finally shoot you in the back?”

He grinned. “Wouldn’t you like to know? You must allow me my little secrets, even if you can’t be allowed to hang onto yours. It’s your own fault, Eddie; you shouldn’t have led such an interesting life. Or acquired so many fascinating secrets. You must have known you couldn’t hang onto them forever. You mustn’t be greedy, Eddie. You must be a good boy and learn to share. Tell Walker what you know. Or you can tell me, if that’s easier.”

I laughed in his face. “Yeah, right. That’ll be the day. At least Walker has some integrity in him. You sold your soul long ago, to any number of masters. I wouldn’t give you the time of day.”

“How very hurtful,” murmured Philip. “We’re not really so different, Eddie. Both of us secret agents, operating in the shadows because we don’t belong in the light. You served an ancient family with its own hidden agenda, while I was a blunt instrument for government policy. Doing all the hard and dirty things that needed to be done to hold the world together. And perhaps manage a few good deeds along the way, when we could.”

“The difference between us is that I took the bigger view,” I said. “I never let politics get in the way of what needed to be done. I protected Humanity from those who would prey on it. Which, as often as not, turned out to be politicians.”

“We don’t all have that luxury,” said Philip. “Must be nice to look down on us like gods and decide what’s best for us, while the rest of us scrabble around in the gutter, getting our hands dirty from all the rotten little jobs you can’t be bothered with. You can make as big a mess as you like, with your marvellous golden armour, stepping in to save the day and then disappearing, leaving the rest of us to clean up after you. Well, now all your sins have come home to roost, Eddie. You’ve upset a lot of very important persons, and now that you’re . . . vulnerable, they’re determined to wring you dry. They want everything you know, and they will get it, sooner or later. You’re a prisoner here, with no armour and no family to protect you. You’re on your own, Eddie, facing a legion of tormentors.”

“And if I don’t feel like talking?” I said.

“It’s the only way you’ll ever get out of here,” said Philip. “Wouldn’t you like to be free of all this? Free to lie down and rest, and be at peace at last?”

“Peace is overrated,” I said. “And why should I want to leave? This is my home, isn’t it? My family home, Drood Hall. Needs a bit of cleaning up, got to fix the boiler, and there’re a whole bunch of gate-crashers I have to give the bum’s rush to. . . .”

Philip scowled at me. “You are in the hands of your enemies, Eddie. You can’t stop them. They are endless, they are multitudes, they are legion. They will be at your back and at your throat and they will never stop coming for you, forever and ever and ever. By hook or by crook, they’ll tear every secret you know out of you, even the ones you didn’t know you knew, and they will laugh at your screams as they do it.”

“Over my dead body,” I said.

I punched him in the face. I meant it as a gesture of defiance, expecting my clenched fist to pass straight through him, but it collided with solid flesh and bone. I heard his nose break, and saw blood fly from his pulped mouth, and it felt good, so good. Philip fell backwards, crying out in shock and pain. I laughed out loud as I strode past him and out of the Sanctity. For the first time, I felt like I was getting a handle on the situation.

The moment I left the Sanctity I was back in the entrance hall again, approaching the firmly closed doors. Walker was still there, smiling easily at me, leaning on his rolled umbrella. He stood between me and the doors, blocking my way. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.

“I’ll never talk,” I said. “You of all people should understand. My secrets don’t belong only to me; they belong to the family. Our secrets keep people safe, keep people alive, help protect them from people like you and your secret lords and masters. I wouldn’t let my family down while I was alive, and I’m damned if I’ll do it now. Droods stand between Humanity and their enemies, alive or dead.”

“I have my Voice,” said Walker. “The Voice that commands and cannot be disobeyed. I could make you tell me.”

“No, you couldn’t,” I said. “Because if you could, you would have done it by now. You can’t con a con man, Walker.”

“Perhaps,” said Walker. “But I was always so much more than just a man with a commanding Voice. I have always known a great many unpleasant ways to make people tell me what I need to know.”

I believed that. I backed slowly away as Walker advanced on me. I was thinking hard, looking all around me, trying hard to call up any information I had about the Hall that Walker couldn’t possibly know. Something I could use against him. The painted portraits on the walls caught my attention. The images were moving, changing, faces with crazy eyes and distorted expressions. Becoming nightmare images, glimpses into Hell, as though all my ancestors were trapped and damned and suffering. I turned my head away, refusing to believe that.

Matthew and Alexandra appeared again, walking down the long hall towards me.

“Go on,” said Alexandra. “Kill us again. You know you want to. But you can’t. Tell Walker what he wants to know.”

“I didn’t kill either of you,” I said, and then stopped and stared at them both as that thought struck home. I hadn’t killed them; Jacob had. But these two hadn’t known that, so they couldn’t be who they appeared to be. Jacob and Uncle James had both said not everyone in this Hall was who or what they appeared to be. . . .

“You’re not real,” I said firmly. “I don’t believe in you.”

I glared at Matthew and Alexandra, and they faded away in the face of my certainty. I turned and looked at Walker.

“Just you and me now, Walker. Or perhaps it always was. If you are Walker.”

He considered me thoughtfully, as we stood facing each other. Two men in an empty hall, the prisoner and his inquisitor. Walker sighed briefly, and adjusted one spotless cuff.

“There’s nowhere you can go, Eddie. And I have all the time in the world to break your will and learn what I need to know. Everyone talks, eventually.”

“Use your Voice,” I said. “Go on. But you can’t, can you? Because you’re not really Walker. And this isn’t Drood Hall. Is anything here real? Is anyone? Or is this all just a clash of wills between me and whoever you really are? You can’t get anything out of me unless I offer it freely, and I’ll never do that.”

“Never is a long time,” said Walker. “I can walk out of here, go about my business, and come back whenever I please. Might be a few days, or a few years, maybe even a few centuries. Or perhaps I’ll stay away until you’re so desperate for another human voice, for human contact, that you’ll beg me to come back. Beg to tell me everything you know, to relieve the awful solitude. Hell isn’t other people, Eddie. Hell is an empty house, forever and ever and ever.”

“And I will always defy you,” I said. “Forever and a day. Remember the Drood oath: ‘Anything for the family.’ We mean it, Walker. That’s what makes us strong, not our armour.”

“Anything for the family?” said Walker. “I think I believe you, Eddie. Ah, well.” He tipped his bowler hat to me and started to turn away.

“Hold it,” I said. “Are you really Walker? Are you really dead? Am I?”

He smiled vaguely. “Who can say, in a place like this?”

“If I am dead,” I said, “and this is a place of the dead . . . why haven’t I seen my parents?”

“Charles and Emily?” said Walker. “Whatever makes you think they’re dead?”

He opened the doors, stepped through them, and was gone. I started after him, and then stopped short as a great blaze of pure white light swelled up before me. And out of that light stepped Molly: my sweet, wild witch, Molly Metcalf. She smiled widely at me, rushed forward, and threw her arms around me, holding me tight, so tight I thought she’d never let me go. I held her just as tightly, even as a terrible sadness stabbed my heart like a knife.

“Oh, Molly,” I said finally. “How did you die? Who killed you, to send you here?”

She let go of me immediately, and pushed me back so she could stare into my eyes. “I’m not dead, sweetie. Neither are you. Though you came bloody close.”

“So this isn’t Drood Hall? Or some cold place in Hell?”

“Not even close,” said Molly. “This is Limbo. And I am here to take you home.”

She embraced me again, and the light blazed up, and finally I felt warm again.