From Hell With Love: A Secret Histories Novel (48 page)

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Authors: Simon R. Green

BOOK: From Hell With Love: A Secret Histories Novel
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He lunged at me, striking out with a golden fist. I stood my ground, blocked the blow with a raised arm, and then we went head to head, battering each other fiercely with all our unnatural strength. The sound of armour beating on armour was deafening as we slammed each other all over the room, kicking the furniture out of the way, the floor cracking under our stamping feet. But neither of us could hurt the other, for all our strength and fury. The armour protected us. But my armour was strange matter, provided by the other-dimensional entity now known as Ethel. Tiger Tim’s armour derived from the destroyed entity once known as the Heart.
I cut at Tiger Tim with razored fists, and the unnaturally sharp edges opened up long cuts and furrows across his chest. Which should have been impossible. The furrows healed quickly, filling themselves in, so I cut him again, and again, harder each time, gouging deep scars into his
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mask and chest, and they took much longer to heal. I wondered if he was bleeding, inside. I pressed him hard, determined to tear open his armour and drag him right out of it.
We hammered each other back and forth across the lounge, fists rising and falling with inhuman speed, while the others scattered hurriedly to get out of our way. Because we were both so caught up in the fight that we had eyes only for each other. Both of us moving so swiftly it seemed like everyone else was moving in slow motion. If any of them had got in our way, I think either one of us might have swept them aside without thinking, our heads were so full of rage and fury. I would have been sorry afterwards, of course, but right then . . . Timothy Drood seemed to be responsible for all the evils I’d encountered since this all began, and I wanted him dead more than anything else in the world.
I don’t think I’ve ever been that angry before. Because he was a Drood.
Tiger Tim broke off, and backed away. He couldn’t match my strength and speed, and he knew it. He had nothing with which to meet my armour’s versatility. So he picked up heavy furniture and threw it at me. I slapped them away effortlessly, and laughed out loud, full of the exhilaration of my armour. Tiger Tim picked up the heavy couch and brought it sweeping down in an overhead blow. I put up a golden arm to block it, and the couch broke in two across it. We were moving like superhumans now, in a world made of paper, and things just broke when we touched them.
But we never went near the Apocalypse Door. We could both See it clearly now, and neither of us could bear to look at it.
In the end, Tiger Tim broke. He reached out and grabbed Molly, moving so swiftly she didn’t even know what was happening till he had her in his golden arms. She started to struggle, and he crushed her briefly, driving all the breath from her lungs. Her legs sagged, until he was all that was holding her up.
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I stood very still, knowing he could kill her easily before I could reach him.
“Armour down,” said Tiger Tim. “Or I’ll kill the witch. I’ll crack her bones and crush her insides, and then I’ll rip her head right off her shoulders.”
“Don’t hurt her,” I said. “This is between you and me.”
“Knew I’d find a way to hurt you eventually,” said Tiger Tim. “There’s always a way.”
I was thinking furiously, but I couldn’t see any way out. I had no doubt he’d kill her. I was just starting to subvocalise the activating Words that would send my armour back into my torc, when Molly laughed suddenly.
“Come on, Eddie. You know I don’t do the damsel in distress bit.”
Crackling energies surrounded her in a moment, coruscating in vivid flashes and boiling magics, blasting Tiger Tim’s arms away from her. She moved quickly to one side, and yelled at me to get him, but I was already moving. I’d thought I’d been angry before, but it was nothing to the rage that moved me now. Now he’d threatened to kill my Molly again.
I fell upon him with all my strength and speed, my golden hands locking onto his golden throat. He fell backwards, tripped, and measured his length on the lounge floor. I followed him down, my grip on his throat never loosening for a moment. I knelt over him, forcing my hands closed with all my strength. He struggled and kicked and tried to throw me off. He grabbed my wrists with his hands and tried to break my stranglehold, but he couldn’t. I saw my Molly, stabbed through again and again, dying at the hands of Droods maddened because of Timothy Drood. I saw good men and women dying on the grounds of Drood Hall, at the hands of his Accelerated Men. I saw him talking calmly of throwing Humanity to the wolves of Hell. I saw him threatening to kill my Molly, again, right in front of me. And there was no room left in me for anything but the need to kill.
I concentrated on my armour, moulding it with my will, and my fingers became impossibly sharp, cutting through the armour round his throat. I forced my hands through the gap I’d opened up, and my bare hands closed around his bare throat. I throttled him to death, inside his own armour.
After a while, I realised he wasn’t breathing, wasn’t moving. I pulled back my hands, releasing my hold on his armour, and it disappeared back into his torc. Tiger Tim stared blankly upwards, seeing nothing. There was a little froth around his distorted mouth. I knelt over him for a while, getting my breath back, and then I extruded a blade from one hand and cut his head off. So I could take the torc back to my family, where it belonged.
Doctor Delirium cried out as blood flooded across the lounge floor. He wasn’t used to bloodshed. He always did his killing from a safe distance. Methuselah allowed himself a mild moue of distaste. I looked at Timothy’s severed head, and wondered what I should tell his father. I would have brought his son back alive, if things had gone differently. I’m almost sure I would have. Though whether that would have been a kindness, in the end . . . I could tell the Armourer that his son had died fighting bravely. Or that Tiger Tim had somehow got away, and was still out there, somewhere. But I’d never been able to lie to my Uncle Jack.
I armoured down, and rose slowly to my feet. I felt horribly weary; bone deep, soul deep. Molly came over and held me carefully, as though I was fragile, and might break. She understood what I was feeling; she understood about family. But she also knew there was still work to be done, so she let me go and stood at my side. I looked at Doctor Delirium, still half hidden behind his Door. He flinched away from my gaze, but I just stood where I was, and beckoned for him to come out.
“You don’t dare touch me!” he said, his voice high and shrill. His eyes kept going to Tiger Tim’s headless body, and then jerking away. “You’d better not even get too close! I’ve infected myself with every deadly disease known to man, and several I made up specially. I’m the universal carrier, for everything from typhoid to Ebola, from the black death to green monkey fever. Doesn’t affect me at all, but all I have to do is concentrate in a certain way, and my pores will sweat poison, releasing all the deadly germs into the air!”
I looked at Molly. “Does that even sound likely to you?”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Molly. She strode right over to Doctor Delirium. “I have been to Heaven and Hell and back again, and walked on alien worlds. You really think you’ve got anything that can touch me?”
As she moved in close the Doctor suddenly whipped out a spray aerosol and blasted its contents right into her face. Molly fell back a step, wiping at her face with a hand, while the Doctor crowed triumphantly.
“That was the Acceleration Drug! Full strength, with all the wonderful new extra ingredients! And you breathed it in! It’s running through your system now, speeding you up, faster and faster till it burns you up from the inside out! You’ll live a whole lifetime in just a few minutes, and I’ll watch you die of old age right in front of me!”
Molly swept the last few tears from her eyes. Doctor Delirium fell suddenly silent as he realised she was laughing.
“You need to get out and about more,” she said cheerfully. “I’m Molly Metcalf! I take nastier stuff than that for fun!”
“Don’t laugh at me,” whispered Doctor Delirium. “Don’t you laugh at me!”
Molly reached out and grabbed him by an ear. She hauled him out from behind the Door and walked him back to me. I looked at her, and she let go of his ear.
“Don’t be afraid, Doctor,” I said. “I think there’s been enough killing. It doesn’t always have to end in blood. Forget the Door, and its voices. They lied. It’s what they do. Give up on your revenge; what did it ever get you, except a life on your own? Come back with me to Drood Hall. Put your genius to work for us. Use our labs to create all those cures you used to believe in. Be the good man you originally wanted to be, before Methuselah gave you money, and made you into the kind of man he wanted you to be. Come with me, Doctor. It’s not too late.”
“I won’t give up the Door,” said Doctor Delirium. “It’s mine. It’s my revenge on you all. I can’t give that up. It’s all I’ve got.” He looked at Molly, and his face was utterly empty. “You shouldn’t have laughed at me.”
And he went for her, lunging forward with a knife in his hand. Molly snapped her fingers hard, and Doctor Delirium disappeared. A very warty green and yellow toad fell to the floor, and crouched there, looking around in a bemused kind of way. Molly nudged it with her foot, and it hardly reacted.
“He can go back to the Amazon rain forest,” Molly said briskly. “Where he’ll feel right at home.” She came over to join me, and prodded me in the chest with one finger. “Offering to take Tiger Tim back for trial? Offering the Doctor a job at the Hall? After everything they’ve done, and meant to do? You’re getting soft, Eddie.”
“There’s been enough killing,” I said. “I’m sick of it. I saw you die, and I have avenged you. But I never want to feel this way again.”
“I know,” said Molly. “I know. My knight in shining armour.” She caressed my face with one hand, and her touch was very gentle.
“How very sentimental,” said Methuselah. “You should have dealt with me first, you know. I always was the most dangerous.”
And when Molly and I turned to look at him, he was gone. And so was the Apocalypse Door in its teleport ring. Molly pointed abruptly at the virtual view on the wall, and there he was, standing in the snow and ice, one hand resting possessively on the Door.
“Oh shit,” said Molly.
“Can’t take your eyes off the bastard for a second,” I said. “Quick, Molly, teleport us after him before he can open the Door.”
“How?” said Molly. “I’ve no idea where that is! It’s just a view from a hidden camera; what we’re looking at could be just outside the base, or somewhere miles from here! I can’t jump blind!”
“Oh shit,” I said.
“The Glass!” Molly said quickly. “Remember how it got us through the invisible force shield?”
I grinned. “I always said you were the smart one.”
I called up the Merlin Glass and slapped it flat against the virtual view. The hand mirror clattered fiercely against the image, and then grew suddenly in size to make a doorway. The Glass was apparently a great believer in lateral thinking. Which I would have found worrying if I’d had the time, but I didn’t. I could feel the freezing cold rushing through the open door. I grabbed Molly by the hand, and we rushed through the door, back into the freezing Antarctic air.
I armoured up, and Molly raised her shields. I couldn’t help noticing they didn’t look as strong and certain as they had before. The Apocalypse Door was standing firmly upright, in a circle of steaming melted snow. Methuselah stood before the Door, holding up the awful Hand of Glory he’d made from the severed hand of an angel. The dead white skin glowed fiercely, brighter than the sun itself, and as the Immortal chanted something in a tongue so old I didn’t even recognise it, the candles made from the Hand’s fingers ignited one by one. Somehow I found the time to wonder whether that was the language the Immortal had originally spoken, when he bargained with the Heart for eternal life.
“Where the hell did the Hand come from?” said Molly. “He didn’t have it before. I would have noticed.”
“He must have a subspace pocket, like me,” I said.
“Oh, I want one of those . . .”
Methuselah let go of the Hand and backed away, and the brightly shining Hand hung on the air before the Door. Its fingers moved slowly, flexing through a series of mystical gestures, significant and compelling. It hurt just to watch them, as though they were moving through more than three dimensions.
“He’s preprogrammed the bloody thing!” said Molly. “All he has to do now is say the right Words, and it’s all over! From the Apocalypse Door to the Paradise Door, in a series of easy gestures. I think I’ll believe that when I see it, but . . . Look; you take the Immortal, I’ll take the Hand. I don’t care what it’s made from, it’s magic, and that puts it in my territory. If it’s magic, I can work my will on it. That’s what being a witch is all about.”
“Who are you trying to convince?” I said. “You or me? Just how much magic do you have left, after everything you’ve done?”
“Enough! Now be a good boy, and go hit the Immortal.”
“Love to.”
Molly charged forward, skipping lightly over the snow as though she was playing hopscotch. She grabbed the gesturing Hand of Glory with both of her hands, and tried to stop the fingers from moving. When that failed, she tried to pull the Hand away from the Door, but it wouldn’t budge so much as an inch. So she forced one of her hands inside the Hand, and arm-wrestled it. The brightly glowing Hand slammed shut, crushing Molly’s hand inside it. I heard the bones crack and break, saw blood fly on the air; but although Molly’s whole body convulsed, she never made a sound.

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