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It inclined its head mockingly to Mr. Stab, as though acknowledging one of its own kind. It couldn’t speak. Someone had cut out its tongue, just in case.
Truman looked at me again and again, waiting for me to say something, but I held myself in check as he showed me horror after horror. Pretty much everything on display here was evil, or had done evil in their time; but nothing to match the cold-blooded evil of what had been done to them here. In my time as a Drood agent, I’d fought and killed many of the things imprisoned here, but that had always been in the heat of battle and the hottest of blood. I’d killed but I’d never tortured, never delighted in the agonies of my enemies. That wasn’t the Drood way. We fought the good fight to keep the world safe, and we took pride in doing that work well, but this…this was an abomination.
The last captive, in the last cell, was Subway Sue. Her ragged clothes were tattered and torn, and there was blood on them and on her face. Someone had beaten the crap out of her. She’d been blindfolded and shackled to the wall of her concrete pen. Molly moved in close to the bars, her face terribly cold, her eyes dangerously angry. I looked at Truman.
"This," he said proudly, "is just today’s batch. Arrogant magical creatures who prey on humanity, overpowered by the science and stealth of specially trained soldiers. My people are very busy these days, hunting these vermin down and bringing them here for elimination. We can’t kill in public, of course; that would draw too much attention. It’s better this magical filth don’t know we’re out there, on their trail…I wish we could take the time to deal with them properly, give them the kind of death they deserve. Make them suffer as they’ve made humanity suffer. But we can’t take the risk. So we bring them in until the cells are full, and then we kill them humanely and give their bodies to the cleansing flames. It’s a very efficient operation. The ovens never grow cold. Solomon sees to that. One by one, creature by creature, we’re wi
"There’s only one monster here," said Mr. Stab. "And for once it isn’t me. Is there, by any chance, a cell here with my name on it?"
"Not as long as you support the cause," said Truman, and he actually dropped Mr. Stab a roguish wink.
"I know this woman," said Molly, still staring through the cold iron bars at Subway Sue. "She’s my friend."
"She’s a leech," Truman said briskly. "Stealing good fortune from i
Molly spun around and glared at him. "She’s my friend!"
Truman wagged a finger at her like she was a recalcitrant child. "Don’t look at me like that, little witch. Remember your place. We allow you to use your u
"That’s the problem with tu
"Sue; it’s me, Molly. What do you suppose are the chances of all the locks on all these cells falling open, all at once?"
"Not good," said Sue through cracked and swollen lips. "As long as these cold iron bars hold my magic in check."
Molly looked at me. I grabbed the steel bars with one golden hand and ripped them right out of their concrete setting. Molly gestured once, and Sue’s shackles fell away from her. Sue stood up, stretched painfully, and pulled away her blindfold.
"Bingo," she said softly. And every lock on every cell fell open, all at once.
Truman looked at me, gaping blankly, as I crumpled the steel bars into a ball, and then dropped it heavily on the ground before him.
"You’ll never replace my family," I said. "You think too small. And too nasty."
He turned and ran, yelling for Solomon Krieg to hold us back while he went for reinforcements. The Golem with the Atomic Brain moved quickly to block the way while his master scrambled up the steps to the walkway. All around us creatures were lurching and spilling out of their pens, free at last. Sirens were blaring in the distance. Molly and Girl Flower helped Subway Sue stumble out of her cell, while Mr. Stab and I faced up to Solomon Krieg.
The artificial creature smiled for the first time, and there was no humour in it, only a terrible satisfaction that at last he would get to do what he was made to do. He raised one hand, and a gun muzzle poked out of a slit in his wrist. He sprayed Mr. Stab and then me with machine gun fire but couldn’t hurt either of us. Bullets ricocheted harmlessly off my armoured chest and seemed to pass through Mr. Stab as though he was nothing but smoke. Krieg turned his aim on the three women, but I moved quickly to shield them. Krieg raised his other hand, and a hidden flamethrower in his other arm bathed my armour in liquid fire. The heat was so terrible that even Mr. Stab flinched back, but I felt nothing.
Solomon Krieg shut off his flames and frowned deeply, as though concentrating on some difficult problem. Fat sparks of static electricity appeared spontaneously around his head, like a halo of electric flies. They spat and crackled, growing fiercer and more powerful, and then struck out at Mr. Stab like a hammer blow of unleashed energies. The blast picked him up and threw him twenty feet or more before slamming him into a concrete wall with devastating force. The whole wall crumbled into ruin under the impact, burying Mr. Stab under a pile of rubble. Solomon Krieg, the Golem with the Atomic Brain. He turned to me and I braced myself. Once I would have trusted my armour to protect me even from such an attack as this, but after the incident with the elf lord’s arrow, I wasn’t as confident as I once was. I still stood my ground. I was all that stood between the three women and Krieg’s atomic blast.
And that was when the escaped prisoners fell upon Krieg like a pack of howling wolves. Humans and inhumans, demons and creatures of the night, they fell upon their common foe and sought to drag him down through sheer weight of numbers. Claws and fangs tore his colourless flesh, but no blood flowed. Krieg swayed under their attack but did not fall. He lashed out with his machine-driven arms, throwing dead and broken bodies this way and that with appalling strength, not yielding an inch. More prisoners came ru
While Krieg was safely preoccupied, I hurried over to search the rubble for Mr. Stab, but he was already rising to his feet, entirely unhurt, fussily brushing dust from his coat and opera cloak. He stooped down to retrieve his top hat and placed it on his head at a jaunty angle. He might be the worst serial killer in history, but the man had style. He looked around him at the block of concrete pens and shook his head firmly.
"No. I will not stand for this. I am no stranger to the joys of suffering and slaughter, Edwin, but this…There are some things a gentleman just doesn’t do."
And he went with me among the cells, helping release those who couldn’t free themselves. The werewolves and the vampires and the like. It went against the grain for me to free such vicious and deadly creatures, after years of hunting them down and killing them, but I couldn’t leave them here. For the ovens. As Mr. Stab said: some things are just beyond the pale.
We left the demon half-breed where he was, of course. We weren’t stupid.