Property of a Lady Faire (A Secret Histories Novel) (27 page)

And then we all looked round sharply, as a heavy iron bell began to toll loudly somewhere in the background. The Doormouse’s ears stood straight up, and he clasped his paws together in front of him, almost as though he was praying. His eyes were very wide.

“What is that?” said Molly.

“The cloister bell,” said the Doormouse. “General alarm. Panic stations. Something bad is coming, so run like hell while you’ve still got a chance.”

He sprinted out of his laboratory and into the Showroom, not even glancing back to see if Molly and I were following. I had to run at full pelt just to catch up with him, while Molly pounded determinedly along behind me. The Doormouse shot through the Storeroom and back into his reception area, and then slammed to a halt so suddenly I almost crashed into him. He stood very still, head up and whiskers at a slant. Molly caught up with me, clapped a hand on my shoulder, and leaned heavily on me.

“What?” she said breathlessly. “What the hell . . . is going on?”

“Someone is trying to force their way into my establishment,” said the Doormouse. He was staring down the length of the reception area, his gaze fixed on his front door. “Even though I put up the
Closed
sign! People have no manners these days . . .”

He moved slowly forward, trembling and twitching. I gestured to Molly, and we moved forward on either side of him. The closed front door had a large section of frosted glass, through which I could just make out a single dark shape standing outside. It looked human, and it didn’t seem to be moving. But there was something about the shape . . . like one of those indistinct threatening figures you see in nightmares, full of awful significance. And the iron bell was still tolling mournfully in the background.

“Is this the Door that gives you access to the Nightside?” Molly said quietly to the Doormouse.

“Yes,” he said, staring transfixed at the shape outside his door. “I don’t care who that is. They can’t get in. They can’t! No one could get through all the layers of protection I’ve put in place! It’s just not possible . . .”

There was a loud, harsh sound, like a great pane of glass shattering. Followed by another, and another.

“He’s breaking through my shields!” said the Doormouse, almost hysterically. “Even Walker couldn’t do that!”

“Do you want to run?” said Molly, practical as ever. “Choose a Door and just disappear?”

“I can’t,” whispered the Doormouse. “This is my place. My shop, my home. I won’t be driven out of my own home.”

“You work for the Droods,” I said. “That means you’re protected by the Droods. No one messes with anything that belongs to us. You stand your ground, Mouse. If they want to get to you, they have to get past me first.”

“I find that a perfectly acceptable arrangement,” said the Doormouse.

He reached inside his lab coat, and produced a monocle, a single gleaming lens set in old ivory. He screwed the thing into his left eye, and studied the door before him. And the dark figure standing motionless on the other side. The Doormouse scowled, concentrating, and then he straightened up suddenly, his eyes wide and staring. The monocle fell out, and he caught it absently and tucked it away again.

“Oh hell,” he said miserably. “It’s him.”

“Run?” said Molly.

“No point,” said the Doormouse. “There’s nowhere we could go where he couldn’t find us.”

The front door swung open, quite casually, and in walked a man I’d never met before, and never wanted to. There are people in my line of work, people who operate exclusively in the hidden world, that everyone knows about but no one ever wants to meet in person. Hadleigh Oblivion, the Detective Inspectre, was very definitely one of those people. He stopped just inside the reception area, and smiled politely at the Doormouse and Molly and me. As though he’d just dropped in to see how we were. The front door slowly closed itself behind him. I suddenly realised the iron bell had stopped tolling, as though it had realised there just wasn’t any point any more. The enemy was inside the gates, the wolf in the fold. I looked at Molly.

“I know who that is,” I said.

“So do I,” said Molly.

“This is bad, isn’t it?” I said.

“You have no idea,” said the Doormouse.

“He used to be Walker,” said Molly, staring steadily at Hadleigh. “He used to represent the Authorities, here in the Nightside. All through the Sixties and into the Seventies, Hadleigh Oblivion was The Man. And then something happened . . . that he has never been able to talk about. Something too extreme even for the Nightside. He was never the same afterwards. He went a bit strange, they say, and gave up being Walker to walk his own path. Strange and awful paths, forbidden even in the Nightside.

“And then, they say, Hadleigh went underground. All the way underground. He studied at the Deep School, the Dark Acadamie, the one place you can go to study the true nature of reality. He came back disturbingly powerful, and strangely transfigured. He walks in shadows now, between Life and Death, Light and Dark, Law and Chaos. The Detective Inspectre, who only ever investigates the very worst crimes, where reality itself is under threat.”

“You know a lot about him,” I said.

“Know thy enemy,” said Molly.

“But . . . do you really believe all that?”

“No one knows what to believe when it comes to Hadleigh Oblivion,” said Molly. “Except that he is seriously scary. And if I’m saying that . . .”

“We can stop him,” I said. “I mean, come on, you’re Molly Metcalf and I’m Eddie Drood!”

“Eddie, I don’t think you or I could even slow him down, on the best day we ever had.”

“Okay,” I said. “That’s what comes of spending too much time in the Nightside. You start to believe all the weird shit they talk here. Besides, if he only turns up when reality itself is threatened, what the hell is he doing here?”

“I have a horrible suspicion we are about to find out,” said the Doormouse.

“I am still very much in favour of beating a hasty retreat,” said Molly.

“Molly . . .”

“This is Hadleigh Oblivion!”
said Molly.

“No point in running,” the Doormouse said glumly. “Wherever we ran to, he’d already be there, waiting for us. No one escapes the Detective Inspectre. I’d wet myself if this wasn’t a new carpet.”

“Why?” I said, honestly baffled by their reaction. “All right, he’s got a bad rep. I’ve heard some of the things he’s supposed to have been involved in. But what’s so special about him? What can he do?”

“Anything he wants,” said the Doormouse.

I glared at the man still standing patiently before us. “Well?” I said loudly. “Is any of that stuff true?”

“Believe it,” said Hadleigh Oblivion. “I am the man who can’t be stopped, or turned aside. The man who will do whatever is necessary, whatever the cost. It says so on my business cards. I am the Detective Inspectre, Eddie Drood, and you should not have come here.”

He smiled calmly at me, not moving at all, wearing a long black leather coat so dark it seemed to have been made from a piece of the night itself. He had a bone white face, a long mane of jet-black hair, deep-set unblinking eyes, and a coldly cheerful, colourless mouth. He looked as though he was contemplating doing awful things in the name of the Good, and enjoying them. He looked starkly black and white, because there was no room left in him for shades of grey. He gave the impression that wherever he was, that was where he was supposed to be. He appeared surprisingly young, barely into his twenties, though if he’d been Walker in the Sixties, he would have to be in his eighties now.

Power burned in him. I didn’t need my mask to see it.

“What did they do to you, Hadleigh?” said Molly. “Down in the Deep School, in the Dark Acadamie?”

“They opened my eyes,” said Hadleigh Oblivion.

“What are you doing here?” I said bluntly. “What do you want?”

He ignored me, turning the full force of his dark eyes on the Doormouse, who shuddered suddenly.

“Hello, Mouse. Been a while, hasn’t it? Made any more Doors you shouldn’t have?”

The Doormouse looked startled. “How did you know about that?”

“I know everything,” said Hadleigh. “It’s in my job description.”

“Everything?” I said, not even trying to hide my scepticism.

“Well,” Hadleigh said easily, “everything I need to know.”

“Whatever Doors the Doormouse may or may not have made,” I said, “that’s Drood business. And we will deal with it.”

“We?” murmured Hadleigh. “But you have been declared rogue, Eddie Drood. Rejected and repudiated by your family. And you have entered the Nightside illegally, in defiance of long-standing pacts and obligations.”

“No, he hasn’t!” Molly said immediately, ready as always to defend me. “The House of Doors isn’t in the Nightside, not as such. In fact, by walking through that Door into the Doormouse’s establishment, technically speaking you have left the Nightside! So you don’t have any jurisdiction here, do you?”

“That is a technicality,” said Hadleigh. “But let us agree that we are all of us outside the Nightside. It doesn’t matter. Unfortunately for all of you, I have jurisdiction wherever I go.”

“Who gave it to you?” Molly challenged him.

“It was decided where all the things that matter are decided,” said Hadleigh. “In the Courts of the Holy, on the Shimmering Planes. And in the Houses of Pain, in the depths of the Pit.”

None of us had any answer to that. I was beginning to get a very bad feeling about the situation.

“I won’t let you take me back to my family,” I said.

“Dear Eddie,” murmured Hadleigh. “Always so single-minded. That’s not why I’m here. It has been brought to my attention that you and the witch are looking to gain possession of that most unpleasant of Mysteries, the Lazarus Stone. And that is a threat to reality itself. Because it can rewrite and undo History. No man or woman was ever supposed to have such power. It always ends badly. You can’t be allowed to have it, Eddie Drood.”

“I don’t want it for myself,” I said.

“Doesn’t matter,” said Hadleigh. “No one can be allowed to possess the Lazarus Stone.”

“What about the Lady Faire?” said Molly.

“She never wanted to use it,” said Hadleigh. “So it was safe enough with her.”

“You don’t understand why I need it!” I said.

“I don’t care,” said Hadleigh. “No man or woman can be trusted with the Lazarus Stone.”

“Not even you?” said Molly.

“I would only want it to destroy it,” said Hadleigh. “Now, you must come with me, Eddie Drood.”

“So you can hand me over to the Authorities?” I said. “You think my family will stand for that? Rogue or no rogue?”

“I haven’t served the Authorities in a long time,” said Hadleigh. “You must come with me, to the Deep School.”

And something in the way he said that, and something in the way Molly reacted, sent a cold chill racing down my spine.

“Why?” I said. “Because your people have always wanted to get their hands on a Drood torc? On Drood armour?”

“No, Eddie,” said Hadleigh, still smiling that cold, calm smile. “Because we have always wanted to get our hands on a Drood. We have so much to learn—from your flesh, your armour, and your mind. Your history and your secrets. Your education is about to begin, Eddie. I can’t promise you’ll enjoy it, but it will . . . open your eyes. The Dark Acadamie will make a new man out of you.”

“Well, there’s a kind offer,” I said, fighting to keep my voice calm and conversational. “But I think I’m going to have to decline. I don’t have the time right now.”

“You don’t have a choice,” said Hadleigh.

I gave him my best cold smile. “I think you’ll find I do, Hadleigh. I always have a choice. That’s what being a Drood is all about. Now, you’re worrying my girlfriend and terrorising the Doormouse, and I won’t stand for that. I think you should leave here, now. While you still can.”

“Oh, Eddie,” said Hadleigh. “What fun we’re going to have, breaking you.”

I armoured up, my golden strange matter encasing me in a moment. The Doormouse yelped and fell back several steps, looking quickly around for something to hide behind. Molly laughed out loud, shot Hadleigh the finger, and moved quickly to one side to give me room to work. I walked slowly towards Hadleigh, and the carpeted floor shook and shuddered under the weight of my armoured tread. Hadleigh looked into my featureless golden mask and didn’t budge an inch. He raised one milk white hand, and snapped his fingers imperiously. I stopped, and braced myself, but nothing happened. Hadleigh looked startled. He snapped his fingers again, the sound of it loud and forceful in the quiet, but still nothing happened. Molly laughed mockingly, behind me.

“How very odd,” said Hadleigh. “That should have forced your armour back into your torc and put it to sleep. It worked on Droods before . . .”

I grinned broadly behind my mask. A sudden new shot of confidence rushed through me, as I realised Hadleigh wasn’t up to date. He didn’t know about the new Drood armour. Didn’t know about Ethel, and her other-dimensional strange matter. Which meant he wasn’t infallible after all. Which was good to know. I started towards him again.

Hadleigh thrust out an open hand, and it felt like I’d crashed into an invisible wall, stopping me dead in my tracks. I strained against it, with all the strength my armour could provide, but I couldn’t move an inch closer to the Detective Inspectre. I stopped trying, and looked at him. He was frowning with effort. I extruded a long, gleaming sword from my golden hand, concentrating on the edge until it was the sharpest thing I could imagine, and then swung it with both hands. The golden blade sheared clean through the invisible barrier, and there was the sound of a great glass pane shattering. I grinned again behind my faceless mask, and pulled the sword back into my hand. I raised one golden fist and showed it to Hadleigh. And then I raised thick golden spikes out of the knuckles and walked towards him.

He thrust out his hand again, scowling with concentration, and it was like being struck in the chest by a mountain. It stopped me dead again, and it was all I could do to stay upright. Hadleigh thrust his hand at me, and this time my whole armour boomed, like a struck gong. I looked down at myself, and to my utter astonishment I saw long, slow ripples move across the surface of my armour. The kind you get when you throw a pebble into a pond. The ripples rose and fell in the surface of my armour, radiating out and then back again, until finally . . . they settled down, and disappeared. The surface of my armour was still again.