From Hell With Love: A Secret Histories Novel (44 page)

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Authors: Simon R. Green

BOOK: From Hell With Love: A Secret Histories Novel
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“I’m thinking!”
I pulled out the Merlin Glass. It nestled comfortably into my armoured hand, still showing a snowy scene very different from the one before me, and still subtly urging me on. I weighed the Glass in my hand, and then stepped forward and slapped it hard against the force shield. The Glass hung in midair, shaking and shuddering, and then it grew suddenly in size to a doorway, breaking through the shield by making itself part of the shield. I took Molly by the hand and led her through, and then the doorway slammed shut behind us and the Merlin Glass shot back into my hand, like an obedient dog. I put it away, and set off again, with Molly just a few steps behind me.
“You’re so sharp you’ll cut yourself one of these days,” she said finally.
“I’m sure you’d have thought of it,” I said generously. “Eventually.”
We headed on across the great plateau of snow and ice, stopping occasionally so I could take out the Merlin Glass and use it like a compass, to make sure were still heading in the right direction. Still no sign of Area 52, or anything like an entrance. We’d been walking for almost an hour now, though I had to check my armour’s internal clock to be sure. With so few real landmarks, it was hard to be sure of space or time. I was growing dangerously tired. I’d done so much today, and there was still so much more to do. And then I stopped suddenly, and looked sharply about me. Molly hovered beside me, her eyes bright and alert.
“You feel it too,” she said. “We’re not alone. I can’t See anything, but I can feel it, in my bones and in my water. Something else is here with us, and it knows we’re here. It’s watching us.”
“Guard dog,” I said flatly. “Has to be. If you had a secret base set up here, you’d invest in a guard dog or two, wouldn’t you? But what kind of creature could survive on its own, in this environment? Without my armour and your protections, we’d have been dead within minutes of arriving. So whatever it is . . . would have to be seriously tough and nasty, able to survive where nothing else could. Feel free to disagree with me, Molly, because I am starting to depress myself . . .”
“Wendigo?” said Molly, looking quickly about her. “Giant polar bears? Didn’t Superman have some of those guarding his secret fortress in one of those films? Or did I just dream that?”
“I did once send a Russian werewolf here,” I said thoughtfully.
“You’ve lived, haven’t you, Eddie?”
And that was when the robot guard dog erupted from under the snow right in front of me, a huge steel shape with glowing red eyes, snapping steel teeth and flailing steel claws. It hit me hard in the chest, throwing me backwards, and I had to struggle to keep my feet under me. It was bigger than me, and heavier, a huge steel hound with moving parts showing clearly through its latticeworked steel hide. It clung to me, scrabbling at my shoulders with its fore-paws, whilst its lower paws came up to claw at my belly, trying to disembowel me. Steel claws scrabbled uselessly against my golden armour, while steel teeth shattered and broke on my golden throat. I grabbed the guard dog by the forearms, and forced the snapping steel jaws away from my face.
Molly darted back and forth around me, trying for a clear shot, and yelling what she thought was helpful advice. I concentrated on forcing the killer robot dog away from me, until finally it hung helplessly in my grasp, the lower legs still scrabbling for something to attack. And then I tore the dog apart, first limb from limb, and then piece by piece, until there wasn’t enough left of it to function. It lay scattered across the snow, just so many intricate steel parts and glimmering tech, still moving and twitching as the last of its energy ran out. The red glowing eyes took a long time to fade away. I knelt down and studied the mess thoughtfully, while Molly floated at my side.
“This wasn’t just some stupid robot,” I said finally. “There was definitely intelligence at work. Primitive AI. I should have tried to communicate with it.”
“Like what?” said Molly. “Down boy? Stop trying to kill me? Good dog?”
“How long was it lying here, under the snow?” I said. “Waiting patiently in the dark, for months or maybe even years . . . For something, anything, to come along? And when someone does turn up, all its programming will allow it to do, is attack. Was it lonely, do you think? Poor thing. Poor doggie.”
“Poor doggie?” said Molly. “It would have quite happily ripped us apart, and probably pissed machine oil on our bits and pieces afterwards. Honestly, Eddie, you can get sentimental about the strangest things.”
I stood up. “I’m surprised there aren’t more of the things. Who bets all their money on a single guard dog?”
Molly shrugged. “Too expensive, probably. Did you see that tech? Alien derived. I’m betting they found the original and then reverse engineered it into a guard dog.”
“Poor doggie,” I said. “When this is all over, I think I’ll come back and collect up the pieces. The Armourer will have a great time putting it back together again. He’s always wanted a pet that didn’t die easily.”
Molly rolled her eyes at the heavens. “Look—all of this is just slowing us down. We have to move faster than this!”
“All right,” I said patiently. “What have you got in mind?”
“Oh right, put the pressure on me! Leave it to me to come up with something to save the day!” She scowled heavily. “There’s any number of magics I could use here, or at least tap into, but I can’t help feeling I’m going to need every nasty spell I’ve got, once we’re inside Area 52. That business at Castle Frankenstein took a lot out of me, and I’m nowhere near back to full strength.”
“What about what happened at the Hall?” I said carefully. “Are you fully recovered from that?”
“It’s sweet that you worry about me, Eddie, but stop it or I will slap you. I’m fine. Really. In fact, I can’t wait to get this all over and done with, so I can get you back to our bedroom and show you just how fine I am.”
I grinned. “You do know how to motivate a man.” And then I broke off and looked sharply around. “Hold everything; I think it’s time for round two.”
A mist formed around us, grey tendrils coalescing out of the cold air, thickening into a grey sea of churning, roiling mists, that cut us off completely from the rest of the world. Sounds became increasingly distant and diffuse, as though we were underwater. Or as though the world was drifting farther and farther away. Molly and I moved instinctively to stand back to back, searching about us for some sign of an enemy. The thick grey fog had an unnatural chill to it, that made me shudder even inside my armour.
“Unnatural,” I said, just to show I was keeping up.
“Very,” said Molly. “Look! You see that?”
I did. Dark shapes were moving in the fog, circling slowly, keep ing their distance for the moment. Their movements were awkward, strange, not human, for all their basically human shape. I tried counting them, but the number always came out different, as though they were fading in and out. Over a dozen, certainly, maybe twenty. There was something horribly abstract about them; their details kept changing, like the menacing shapes we see in dreams, or just briefly out of the corner of an eye. My skin crawled under my armour, and sweat ran down my face. I could hear Molly breathing heavily behind me, feel her back shaking where it pressed against mine. The shapes circled faster and faster, closing in on us from every direction at once.
I struck out at the first dark shape to come within reach, but my spiked golden fist shot right through without touching anything. I stumbled forward, caught off balance. And the shape grabbed me by the shoulders with two dark hands, lifted me up and threw me a good thirty feet. I shot through the air, tumbling ungracefully, and then hit the packed snow hard, half burying myself. I lay still for a moment, getting my breath back. I hadn’t expected that. I wasn’t used to being physically dismissed that easily. I shook my head hard, rolled over onto my side, and forced myself up onto my feet again. My armour had protected me, but I was still shaken. But then I saw Molly, blazing brightly in the fog, surrounded by fast-moving dark shapes, and that was all I needed to get moving again. I charged forward, ploughing through the snow at speed, sending it flying left and right in sudden flurries.
Molly threw spitting fiery magics at the dark shapes, attacks so powerful they crackled and roiled on the freezing air, but none of it did any good. Magics powerful enough to crack open mountains passed through the shapes without affecting them in the least, as though they weren’t really present in our world. Except when they chose to be. Molly’s magics were keeping the things at bay, for the moment, but they were pressing in closer all the time. Snow exploded several feet beyond the shapes as the magics passed harmlessly through, blasting out deep craters and leaving them full of steaming water.
The dark shapes swarmed around Molly, reaching out with dark hands to drag her down, but they couldn’t touch her either. Her protective shields flared up viciously whenever dark hands came near her, and the shapes fell back, thwarted. But Molly’s shields were only powerful enough when she gave them her full concentration, when she was facing the shapes attacking her. Which meant she had to keep turning, circling, twisting sharply this way and that, frustrating one attack after another, never able to relax her concentration for a moment. The dark shapes were packed around her now, crowding in, reaching out with dark eager hands.
I slammed into them at full speed, sending some of them flying. I lashed about me with my golden fists, but they were quickly gone again, as insubstantial as the fog that thickened around us. I flailed about me, desperate to drive them back from Molly, and then one of the shapes grabbed me from behind, lifted me up and threw me thirty feet in the other direction. I turned over and over in midair, trying desperately to get my feet under me, and then I hit the packed snow hard, much harder than before.
I had to dig my way out, throwing great handfuls of snow in all directions, and then went charging back again. I wasn’t hurt; hell, after that fall into the Amazon rain forest, I didn’t think any fall would ever worry me again. But I was angry, and worried, because every time I was thrown away it left Molly to fight on her own.
I couldn’t let her be hurt again. I’d die before I let her be hurt again.
This time I thought it through. I slowed to a fast walk as I approached the crowd of jostling shapes, and when one turned to face me I thrust out one arm, tantalisingly, and when the shape grabbed it I grinned inside my mask. Because that meant the shape had made itself solid. I punched it hard in the face with my other hand, and my golden fist sank deep into its head. I pulled my hand out, and it was like pulling back toffee, with streamers of dark stuff following my hand. The shape fell apart, slumping into a dark sticky mess at my feet.
The other shapes forgot about Molly, and turned on me. They hit me from all sides at once, their fists very real and very solid, hammering me with a terrible unnatural strength. I hit back, but they were never where my fists were. I staggered back and forth in the snow, lashing about me but never connecting, while they beat me viciously with a strength and ferocity I’d never encountered before. I spun round and round, keeping my shoulders hunched and my head well down, because I could feel every blow, inside my armour. I had no doubt it was still protecting me; those dark shapes would have beaten me to a pulp in a minute without it. But I’d never been hit so hard before, and there were so many of them . . . and there was nothing I could do to protect myself. I had to wonder if the strange matter of my armour had finally met its match, and if it might actually split and crack and break open under such a relentless assault, such never-ending punishment.
I raised my head for a moment, and saw Molly hovering desperately on the outer edge of the dark shapes.
“I can’t call up enough power to hurt them, without dropping my shields!” she cried out to me.
“Don’t do it!” I yelled back immediately. “That’s what they want!”
Their attack intensified, heavy fists crashing into me from all sides at once, and I was driven down onto one knee. I could feel blood trickling down my face under my mask, feel its bad copper taste in my mouth. I don’t think I cried out, but as I reared up again, flailing savagely about me, I saw the shimmer on the air disappear from around Molly, as she dropped her shields. Immediately, all the dark shapes spun around, ready to go for her. But I realised that I could see Molly more clearly than before. The mists were thinner where she was, away from the shapes. And the dark shapes had only appeared after the fog materialised . . .
“It’s the fog!” I yelled to Molly. “Disperse the fog! That’s what gives them a hold on this world!”
Even as a dozen of the dark shapes fell upon her, Molly raised both hands and blasted the fog with a sheet of blisteringly hot flames. The fog was blown away in a moment, consumed by the intense heat, and along with the fog went all of the dark shapes. The air was clear and distinct and utterly empty, and Molly and I were left alone on the snowy prospect.
I sat down hard. I couldn’t tell how badly hurt I was without lowering my armour, and I wasn’t about to do that and expose myself to the cold. I hurt all over, but it didn’t feel like anything was broken. I flexed my fingers and my toes, and tried to probe my ribs through my armour, but had to stop that because it hurt too much. Molly came crashing through the deep snow to join me. She wasn’t hovering anymore, from which I deduced that the fight had taken a lot out of her too. I forced myself up onto my feet again. We stood facing each other, like two fighters fresh out of the ring, trying to hide how hurt we were.

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