Casino Infernale

T
HE
S
ECRET
H
ISTORIES
N
OVELS

The Man with the Golden Torc

Daemons Are Forever

The Spy Who Haunted Me

From Hell with Love

For Heaven’s Eyes Only

Live and Let Drood

T
HE
D
EATHSTALKER
S
ERIES

Twilight of the Empire

Deathstalker

Deathstalker Rebellion

Deathstalker War

Deathstalker Honor

Deathstalker Destiny

Deathstalker Legacy

Deathstalker Return

Deathstalker Coda

T
HE
A
DVENTURES OF
H
AWK &
F
ISHER

Swords of Haven

Guards of Haven

O
THER
N
OVELS

Blue Moon Rising

Beyond the Blue Moon

Blood and Honor

Down Among the Dead Men

Shadows Fall

Drinking Midnight Wine

A
CE
B
OOKS

THE NIGHTSIDE SERIES

Something from the Nightside

Agents of Light and Darkness

Nightingale’s Lament

Hex and the City

Paths Not Taken

Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth

Hell to Pay

The Unnatural Inquirer

Just Another Judgement Day

The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny

A Hard Day’s Knight

The Bride Wore Black Leather

G
HOST
F
INDERS
N
OVELS

Ghost of a Chance

Ghost of a Smile

Ghost of a Dream

A Secret Histories Novel

Simon R. Green

A ROC BOOK

Published by the Penguin Group

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New York, New York 10014, USA

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First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library,

a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Copyright © Simon R. Green, 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

Green, Simon R., 1955–

Casino Infernale: a Secret Histories novel/Simon R. Green.

p. cm.—(Secret histories; bk. 7)

ISBN 978-1-101-60705-3

1. Drood, Eddie (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Fantasy fiction. I. Title.

PR6107.R44C37 2013

823'.92—dc23 2012046031

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

T
he name’s Bond. Shaman Bond. The very secret agent.

They all know my name, in the back streets of London, in the shadowy places where shadowy people do all the things the everyday world isn’t supposed to lust after. Shaman Bond is a face on the scene—a character, a chancer, always au fait with the very latest in sin and diversion. Always up for a little deviltry, with a taste for the illegal and the unnatural. Shaman Bond can turn up anywhere, and no one will ever be surprised. Because his type are ten a penny in the hidden life, the secret world. Not a bad man, necessarily, but always around when the bad stuff is kicking off. Sometimes he does good things, when he thinks no one’s noticing. Sometimes he’ll help out in a con or a sting, especially if they’re designed to show the real Bad Guys the error of their ways. But really, he’s just . . . around. A part of the scene. He hangs out at all the right places, with all the wrong people, smiling his crocodile smile.

The name is Eddie Drood, and only the older members of my family call me Edwin.

My family exists to stand between Humanity and all the hidden horrors that threaten it. We fight the monsters so you don’t have to know they really exist. We’ve been doing it for centuries, and I’ve been trained to the work since I was a child. I’m a Drood field agent, searching out the nastier secrets of the clandestine world, and doing whatever it takes to keep the lid on. To keep the everyday world safe. I’m an agent, not an assassin. Though I have killed more than my fair share in my time. They all needed killing, but in the early hours of the morning, when the dawn seems farthest away . . . that doesn’t help. When I’m out working in the field, my name is Shaman Bond. A pleasant and personable mask for me to hide behind. So people will tell him all the things Eddie Drood needs to know.

He’s a nice enough guy. Just a shame he isn’t real. Merely a cover story. So why do I feel so much realer being him than I do when I have to be me?

When I’m with my family, I’m Eddie Drood. When I’m out in the world, I’m Shaman Bond. But now that I’ve left my family because they told me one lie too many, and gone to work for the Department of the Uncanny, who am I now?

Who am I, really?

They Break Horses, Don’t They?

I
’d go to the end of the world for you. I suppose we’ve all said that, or something like it, to the one we love. Only I really did do that, once. I should have known that the end of the world is where the lies run out, and the truth returns. And while the truth may satisfy, it’s never going to be as comforting as a treasured lie.

•   •   •

Scotland has almost eight hundred offshore islands, though fewer than a hundred are populated. Trammell Island is the most northern, way out past the Orkneys and the Shetlands, just a jutting rock set in dark and deathly cold waters, where no one goes any more. Or at least, no one with any sense. Not a big island; you could walk round the perimeter in less than an hour. Trammell Island has a beach, a cliff face, and an ugly stone hill with a single building at its summit. Monkton Manse. The house at the end of the world. Originally a monastery many centuries ago; then a rich man’s holiday home; now nothing more than a deserted property, an abandoned folly. Empty and silent, holding within dust and shadows and bad memories, and one last terrible secret.

Trammell Island: a long way from anywhere, and soon to be the end of more than one person’s world.

I stood at the very top of the cliff face, as close to the edge as I could get. Dry, cracked earth crumbled and fell away under my weight, dribbling streams of dirt down the sheer rocky face and into the crashing waters far below. I looked down at the heavy swelling waves as they pounded the narrow pebbled beach and broke against the outcropping rocks. Night-dark waters, cold enough to kill anyone unfortunate enough to end up in them, they threw great clouds of frothing spume into the air as the waves fell back, frustrated, from the inhospitable shore.

A cold wind blew savagely in from the north, bitter enough to have come all the way from the North Pole. Which wasn’t that far off, truth be told. I hunched my shoulders inside my heavy, padded greatcoat, thrust my gloved hands deep into my pockets, and wished I’d worn a hat like everyone suggested. I hate hats. Never found one I looked good in. I shuddered despite myself as the cold sank into my bones and Molly Metcalf thrust an arm through mine and snuggled up against me. She was wearing a long sheepskin coat with stylishly fringed sleeves, and a bobbly woollen hat pulled down over her ears. She looked like a traveller on her way to protest against something fashionably despicable.

It’s hard to know what to wear when you’re visiting the island at the end of the world.

Molly looked down at the bleak, empty shore and the raging waters, and smiled brightly at me.

“You take me to the nicest places, Eddie.”

“Easy on the name,” I said. “As far as everyone we’re going to meet here is concerned, I’m just Shaman Bond. General bad boy about town. No one we’ll be meeting would be at all happy to meet a Drood.”

“Not many are,” said Molly. “Your family might protect the world, but no one ever said the world would thank you for it. Especially given some of the tactics you use. Hey, speaking of names, I looked up Trammell in the dictionary before we left London. It’s an old Scottish name for a burial shroud. Very fitting.”

“So it is,” I said. “More importantly, it also means an impediment to function, or a shackle for a horse.”

“Smugness is very unattractive in a man,” said Molly.

“Always go for the complete
Oxford English Dictionary
,” I said. “Never settle for the lesser.”

“You’ve got a dictionary built into your armour, haven’t you?” said Molly accusingly.

“Look at those gulls,” I said. “The only birds that will come out this far, pursuing the fishing boats. And even they’ve got more sense than to come anywhere near Trammell Island. Just black smudges on a grey sky . . . with the saddest cries in the world. There are those who say that seagulls cry for the sins of Humanity. And that if we ever get our act together, they’ll be able to stop crying.”

“You’re in a mood,” said Molly. “Don’t you dare try to out-gloom me. I’m the only one here entitled to indulge in deep dark existential brooding. This is my past we’re visiting.”

“Never look back,” I said wisely. “All you’ll ever see are lost opportunities creeping up on you with bad intent.”

“You don’t have a sentimental bone in your body, do you?” said Molly.

“If I did, I’d have it surgically removed. Sentiment just gets in the way of seeing things clearly.”

“Sometimes . . . that can be a good thing.”

I looked at Molly, but she’d already let go my arm and turned away from the cliff edge to look steadily at the single great building at the top of the hill. Monkton Manse. An ugly building, with an ugly past. Once upon a time it was a monastery, founded by a heretic offshoot of the monks of Saint Columba. Long abandoned now, left to fall into ruin and decay. In the 1920s it was rebuilt and refurbished to resemble an old English country manor house complete with pointed gables, a slanting grey-tiled roof, protruding leaded-glass windows in a mock Tudor frontage, and a really big oaken front door. Large and solid and blocky, grim and forbidding; built to withstand Time and the bitter elements. Even though no one had lived in Monkton Manse since the late twenties, it still looked ready for visitors. In a dark and threatening sort of way.

Monkton Manse looked like it should be on the front cover of some old paperback Gothic romance, with just the one light showing in a window.

“Looks to me like the setting for some old Agatha Christie murder mystery,” said Molly.

“You know I’ve always preferred Ngaio Marsh,” I said. “She cheats less in the denouement.”

“This house was the last meeting place for the old White Horse Faction,” said Molly. “My parents’ old group. Supernatural terrorists, or ecological freedom fighters, depending on who you listen to. I was here with them ten years ago, when they planned their last great adventure. Before your family had them all killed.”

“And so, you went to war with my family,” I said. “Now here we are together, you and I. Who would have thought . . .”

“The house doesn’t look at all how I remember it,” said Molly, frowning. “I thought it would look . . . brighter. Happier.”

“Given the house’s downright disturbing history, that was never on the cards,” I said. “I have to ask, Molly: Given that the old White Horse Faction had their roots in English countryside Leveller traditions . . . what the hell were they doing all the way out here?”

“My parents chose this location,” Molly said sternly, “because it was as far from England as they could get. Because it was one of the few places in this world where they could be sure they were free from spying eyes, very definitely including the Droods. This whole Island lies inside a natural, or perhaps more properly unnatural, mystical null. No one can see in. Trammell Island is invisible to crystal balls, remote viewing, and spy satellites. Not at all easy to get to, but worth the effort. The perfect place to plot the overthrow of all the sanctimonious, two-faced, hypocritical Powers That Be.”

“We’re talking about my family again, aren’t we?” I said. “The Droods are like the dentist: a necessary evil. Because all the other options are worse.”

“Eddie,” said Molly. “Sorry, I mean Shaman. . . . Why are you still holding the Merlin Glass in your hand? Are you anticipating a hurried exit?”

I looked down. She was right. I still had the looking glass in my hand. I honestly hadn’t realised. Not much to look at, at first glance. Just a simple hand mirror with a silver frame and handle. A gift to my family from the old Arthurian sorcerer himself, Merlin Satanspawn. The Glass could show you anything, anywhere, and then take you there through a dimensional short cut. It could do other things, too; some of them very disturbing.

“Is that the original Merlin Glass?” said Molly. “Or is it the one we found in the Other Hall—the other-dimensional duplicate that replaced Drood Hall for a time?”

“Other people don’t have conversations like this,” I said. I hefted the Merlin Glass in my hand. “The original mirror was broken during our attack on the Satanic Conspirators hiding out in Schloss Shreck, in the Timeless Moment. The Armourer did his best to repair the Glass, but even his skills are no match for that old devil Merlin. So, my uncle Jack got out the second Merlin Glass, from the Other Hall, so he could compare the two. He put the mirrors down on his work-bench, side by side, and they just . . . slid together and merged into one. So I guess this is both. And no, I don’t know why I’m holding on to it. Except . . . that I really don’t like this island.”

Molly sniffed loudly. “We could have come here through the dimensional gate in my wild woods.”

“We don’t want anyone else knowing that way exists,” I said firmly. “You’re only safe in those woods because no one else knows how to get into them. And I need there to be somewhere I can be sure you’re safe when I’m not around.

“I can look after myself,” said Molly. “But you are a sweetie for saying it.”

“Boyfriend brownie points?”

“Well, a tick in the plus column, at least,” said Molly. She looked past the great hulking house. “There’s an old fairy circle, out behind the Manse. A Fae Gate. The elves used to use it as a stepping-off point on their way to places beyond this world. I don’t think anyone knows why. Elves don’t talk to humans if they can help it.”

“You must show it to me, after we’ve completed our mission here,” I said. “It might explain how all the old Columbian monks came to disappear, so suddenly and completely.”

“You always were big on doing your homework before a mission,” said Molly. “Go on; lecture me. You know you love it. But keep it concise, or I’ll heckle you and throw things.”

I took a moment to stuff the Merlin Glass into my pocket. I keep a pocket dimension there, for storing weapons and dangerous objects, and things I don’t want other people to detect.

“There are a lot of stories about what the heretic monks of Saint Columba got up to here, in their monastery on Trammell Island,” I said. “Most of them not suitable for everyday company, or those of a nervous disposition. They established their monastery here precisely because the Island existed in a mystical null zone, and they didn’t want anyone to see what they were doing.”

“You know, of course,” said Molly. “Droods know everything.”

“Not this time,” I said. “The monks just vanished, overnight. A supply boat turned up one morning to find the monastery completely deserted. No monks, no signs of a struggle or violence of any kind. Just the monastery, standing silent and empty with its front door wide open. The monks had no boat of their own, no known way off the Island. A single severed human hand was found, in the hallway, with one finger pointing at the open front door. Not a drop of blood anywhere. Interestingly enough, nothing inside the monastery had been disturbed, but every single book in the monastery’s extensive and infamous library . . . was missing. Nothing left but empty shelves. So we never did find out what they were up to here . . . but given how things turned out, I doubt it was anything pleasant.”

“The monks could have left through the Fae Gate,” said Molly, “if they thought their enemies were closing in on them.”

“Some of my ancestors explored that possibility,” I said. “They were quite positive no one had activated the Gate in years. Trammell Island has a long history of dark secrets, and sudden disappearances. People came here to do things they didn’t want the rest of the world to know about.”

“I escaped through the Fae Gate,” said Molly. “It opened onto the wild woods, and then closed again, so I could be safe.”

“What?” I said. “Escaped? Escaped from what, Molly?”

“I don’t know,” she said, frowning. She looked suddenly confused, disoriented. “I don’t remember. And I didn’t even realise there was anything to remember, until just now.”

She shuddered heavily, and not from the cold. Her eyes were fey and distant, her mouth pulled into a tight grimace.

“The others will be here soon,” I said. Just to be saying something.

“Let’s get inside the house,” said Molly. “I don’t like it out here. This whole island gives me the creeps.”

•   •   •

We headed towards Monkton Manse, Molly clinging tightly to my arm again. I was disturbed, because it wasn’t like Molly to be scared of anyone or anything. More usually, it was the other way round. The huge manor house loomed over us as we approached—dark and foreboding. Evening was falling fast on Trammell Island, and there were no lights on anywhere in the house. The dark windows seemed to study us like so many thoughtful eyes, planning and plotting. At least there weren’t any gargoyles. I’ve never liked gargoyles. We stopped before the massive oak door, which was, of course, very firmly closed and locked.

“I suppose you know all about the house, as well?” said Molly, trying to keep her voice light.

“Of course,” I said. “And no—there isn’t a key under the flowerpot. Why don’t you do a quick search for security spells, and hidden defences, while I regale you with the horrible history of Monkton Manse?”

“Way ahead of you,” said Molly, rubbing her chin with a single gloved knuckle as she concentrated.