He shrugged. "It’s a bit long in the arm, but it’s good for heavy lifting. And they’ve been wearing out so quickly recently…"

I took a deliberate step forward. He didn’t budge. "Stand aside, Archie," I said. "My mission’s completed. No need for this to get nasty."

"You worry about the bodies I wear," he said, smiling with his stolen mouth. "That’s always been your weakness."

"Step aside," I said. "Or I’ll damage you."

"Not a chance in hell. I’ve always wanted to kill a Drood."

He opened fire with a machine pistol, spraying me with bullets. They ricocheted away from my armoured chest and face, and I walked right into the hail of bullets and slapped the gun out of his hand. He cut at me with a glowing dagger, but the spells enchancing its edge still weren’t enough to do more than raise a shower of sparks as the blade skidded across my throat. I grabbed for the amulet around Archie’s neck, but at the last moment my hand slipped aside. The amulet had serious protections.

Archie punched me in the head with all his body’s strength behind it. I heard the knuckles break. I didn’t even flinch. I grabbed his shoulders and threw him against the nearest wall. He hit hard enough to crack the plaster and slam all the breath out of him. I started past him, hoping it was over, but he surged to his feet again, drawing dangerously on his body’s reserves, one hand full of plastique explosive. He slapped it against my armoured chest, and it stuck fast. He laughed hoarsely as I tried to pull the sticky stuff off, but it wouldn’t budge. Archie held up the detonator before me, brandishing it mockingly.

There was enough plastique on my chest to blow out most of this floor. My armour would withstand it…but the blast radius would almost certainly take out half of Saint Baphomet’s underpinnings and bring all the upper floors crashing down. Hundreds dead, maybe more, most of them probably innocents. Archie didn’t care; he’d just jump to another body. Hundreds could die, if it meant he could boast of killing a Drood. He didn’t care. But I did.

I grabbed Archie by the shoulders again and pulled him to me, slamming his chest against mine with the plastique crushed between us. He struggled fiercely, but I held him easily with one golden arm. He cried out in a pettish fury as he realised what I intended, and then my free hand closed over his and activated the detonator.

My mask darkened briefly to protect my eyes from the glare of the explosion and my ears from the blast, and when I could see and hear again, I was surrounded by smoke and rubble and small bloody gobbets of what had been Archie Leech’s stolen body. My armour and his body had absorbed most of the explosion, and the walls around me looked scarred but still solid. The hospice would stand. Archie was gone, of course, his soul wafted away to his next bolthole, along with the amulet. I had no doubt I’d see them both again, some day.

Once again, there was the sound of a hell of a lot of running feet, approaching fast from above. The security guards here were nothing if not persistent. I took the portable door out of my pocket and slapped it against the floor, where it immediately became a nice new trapdoor. I opened it, dropped through into the basement, and then pulled the portable door away from what was now my ceiling. Let them search the rubble for my body while I calmly and quietly made my way up the back stairs and walked right past them to the nearest exit.

This proved to be the back door, and I slipped silently out into the back square, where Dr. Dee’s dog from Hell was lying in wait for me. Next door’s alarms and excursions had clearly attracted its attention. It was growling steadily, like a long rumble of thunder, up close and threatening, and its huge jaws opened, revealing more teeth than seemed physically possible. It glared at the door that had just opened before it, but still it couldn’t see or hear or smell me…So I just held the door open and let the demon dog charge straight past me and on into the hospice. Where no doubt the security guards would think of something to do to keep it occupied. I do my best, but I’m really not a very nice person sometimes. I closed the door quietly behind the demon dog and strolled away.

I powered down my armour, and in a moment it was just a golden collar around my throat. And I was just a man again, with a man’s limitations. Sometimes, that’s a relief. I left the side alley and walked unhurriedly out into Harley Street. The same people were walking up and down, with no idea that the whole history of the world had just been changed behind their backs. None of them paid me any attention. I was my old anonymous self again. No one ever sees a Drood’s face, just occasionally the golden armour. It’s enough that the world is protected; they don’t need to know by whom.

They might not approve of some of our methods.

CHAPTER THREE

Chilling at the Wulfshead

I disappeared down into the Underground, mixing in with the crowds, and took the next train to Tottenham Court Road station. I joined the army of people bustling up and down Oxford Street, just another face among many, and browsed shop windows until I was sure I hadn’t been followed. Because when you work for the Drood family, the rest of the world usually is out to get you. I headed down into Soho. The city’s gentrified the hell out of what used to be the last truly wild part of London, but there’s still plenty of sin, sleaze, and secrets to be found there, if you know where to look.

Just a little off the beaten track, down a side street that never gets any sunlight, lies my very favourite Internet café. It’s a part of the Electronic Village chain, but I like it because it’s open twenty-four hours a day, serving twilight people like me. The single window in the shopfront is whitewashed over, and the neon sign above the door hasn’t worked in years. The people who come here like their privacy while they do strange, illegal, and possibly unnatural things with their computers. I entered the café and stopped just inside the doorway to let my eyes adjust to the gloom. There were chairs and tables and computers and absolutely nothing else. The surprisingly large area had an air of quiet reverence not unlike that of a church. The customers sat huddled over their glowing screens, deaf and dumb to those around them. The only sounds in the room were the swift tapping of keys and the quiet chirping of working machines.

The café’s manager came forward to greet me. Willy Fleagal was a tall gangling sort, with bifocals, a high forehead, and a ponytail, wearing a T-shirt saying Information Wants to Be Free ™. He gave me a big smile and a limp handshake. He knew me as a regular customer, with special privileges guaranteed by the chain’s owners, but that was all he knew. I’ve dropped him the occasional hint that I might be an investigative journalist, chasing the corporate bad guys, and he loved that.

"Wow, hello again, Mr. Bond," he said, trying hard for cheerfulness but not quite making it. Willy was a conspiracy theory freak of long standing, and therefore tended towards depression, misery, and gloom as natural default positions. "Always a pleasure to see you in here, man. Are you sure you weren’t followed? Of course you are, course you are." He produced a handheld scanner and checked my clothing for any planted bugs. All part of the service, for Willy.

"You seem busy enough, Willy," I said. "Turned up anything juicy recently?"

He nodded quickly and lowered his voice as he filled me in on the latest conspiracy gossip. Most of which I already knew, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him. His watery eyes glowed behind the bifocals as he solemnly assured me that the British royal family is actually descended from ancient lizard gods who had their awful genesis in the German Black Forest; that the U.S. Pentagon actually has a secret sixth side invisible to all but the chosen few, where all the really important decisions are made; and that a certain Hollywood actress is actually a shape-changing alien, which is why she can put on and take off weight so easily while never seeming to age. That last one was new to me, and I made a mental note to check it out later. The family knows of four shape-changing alien species currently busy on our world, and part of the agreement is that they’re supposed to stay out of the public eye.