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We came back from the concrete pens to find Solomon Krieg still standing, surrounded by the bodies of the dead and the fallen. Girl Flower threw herself at him, screaming something obscene in old Welsh. Atomic forces erupted from the golem’s scarred forehead, hitting Girl Flower and blowing her apart into a shower of rose petals. They churned and circled in midair, and then transformed, becoming a razor storm of a thousand cutting owls’ claws. They hit Solomon Krieg like a deadly hailstorm, ripping and tearing at his pale flesh, but still he stood his ground and would not fall. I might have admired him, if I hadn’t hated him so much. (The ovens never grew cold…) The razor storm finally collapsed, exhausted, and I went forward to do battle with the Golem with the Atomic Brain. I needed to punish someone for what had been done here, and he would do. I try hard, but sometimes I’m not a very nice person.
The creatures of the night fell back as I strode through their midst. They recognised the golden armour. Solomon saw me coming and smiled again. His face was hanging in tatters from scratched and scored bone after Girl Flower’s attack, and one eye was just an empty red socket, but still he smiled. He didn’t bother with his built-in gun or flamethrower. Just stepped forward and threw a punch with all his mechanised strength behind it. I heard the bones in his hand break as his fist glanced harmlessly from my golden mask. I grabbed his arm with both hands before he could draw it back and broke it over my knee like a piece of kindling. Bits of shattered tech flew out of the gaping wound. Solomon Krieg grunted once, but that was all. I let go of his arm and grabbed his head, pulling it down and forward. He fought me with all his legendary strength, but it wasn’t enough. Atomic forces sputtered and shimmered on the air as he struggled to put an attack together. I ripped the top of his head right off, tearing along the old scarred fault line on his forehead, and then reached into his head with my other hand and tore his atomic brain out.
I held it in my golden hand for a moment, studying it, that nasty triumph of Cold War technology, and then I dropped it on the ground and stamped on it. The brain shattered into a thousand pieces, and Solomon Krieg’s empty body fell twitching to the floor. I walked away, and the creatures of the night fell upon the body, tearing it to pieces in a frenzy of rage and revenge.
And that was when a spatial portal opened in the air before us, and an army of black-uniformed Manifest Destiny soldiers came pouring through, opening fire with automatic weapons the moment they caught sight of us. Bullets ricocheted from my armour, but I couldn’t shield everyone. Newly freed prisoners fell screaming and dying all around me. I grew golden spikes on my armoured fists and charged into the midst of the coming soldiers. I struck down men and women as they tried their best to kill me, and they did not rise again. But more and more soldiers were spilling out of the portal, their faces alight with the fury of the true fanatic. I broke necks and heads, and threw men and women through the air with deadly force, but still more of them streamed past me like a river around a single rock.
I fought on. It felt good to be striking them down. Manifest Destiny had betrayed me by not being the hope I’d so desperately needed.
Mr. Stab stepped forward to stand at my side, a long scalpel gleaming thirstily in his hand. Nothing the soldiers did could touch him, and he cut down all who came within his reach with an elegant disdain. Standing in the midst of blood and slaughter, he was in his element at last. Creatures of the night, hurt and weakened as they were, fought fiercely with the black-clad soldiers, and everywhere there was blood and screaming. Step by step we slowed the soldiers’ advance, and step by step we drove them back. Perhaps because their fanaticism was no match for our fury. We forced our way forward, over their dead and ours, until finally the surviving soldiers turned and fled back through the spatial portal, and it was shut down from their end.
I stood among the dead, in my blood-spattered armour, and raised one spiked fist in triumph. And all around me the creatures of the night howled their triumph and my name.
Molly yelled my name again and again until finally I lowered my fist and looked at her. "Eddie! We have to get out of here! Truman must have emergency contingency plans for a mass breakout, and I really don’t think we want to be here when he puts them into effect."
I nodded and strode over to her, kicking black-uniformed bodies aside. Blood and gore dripped thickly from my hands as I made the spikes disappear. My breathing slowed, and my head cleared. Mr. Stab walked beside me without a drop of blood on his elegant outfit.
"I know you want Truman dead," said Molly. "I do too. But there’s no way we can reach him right now."
"Agreed," I said. "His time will come. Any suggestions on what we do next?"
"I open a spatial portal of my own, and we all get the hell out of here and scatter into the night."
"Sounds like a plan to me," I said. "Where’s Girl Flower?"
"Oh, she’ll put herself back together again, over the next few days, in some place where she feels safe." She looked at Mr. Stab. "Can I trust you to look after Sue? I have to stick with the Drood. We have revenges to plan."
He inclined his head graciously. "Of course, my dear. She will be safe with me. You have my word on it."
And strangely enough, I believed him. I didn’t think he’d lie to Molly. He offered Subway Sue his arm, and she leaned on it gratefully. Molly opened a spatial portal, and we rushed the surviving prisoners through it as fast as we could. I kept glancing around, ready for another sneak attack, but it never came. The great cavern remained as silent as a mass grave. In the end, only Molly and I were left.
"So now we have two mortal enemies on our trail," I said. "My family, and Manifest Destiny. This day keeps getting better and better. Is there anyone left we can trust?"
"Maybe," said Molly. "A few names come to mind. But even if it was just you and me, I wouldn’t back down or cry off. I will have justice, even if I have to kill everyone else in the world to get it."
"You know," I said, "you’d have made a good Drood."
"Now you’re just being nasty," she said.
We left through the portal, back up into the cold clean air of London town.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Sleeping with the Enemy
Molly and I emerged from her portal exactly where I’d asked her to drop us off: at the Greenwich docks, just down from that grand old sailing ship, the Cutty Sark. Dawn was breaking, the early morning air deliciously cool and clear after the unhealthy atmosphere of Manifest Destiny’s holding pens. Long crimson streaks stained the lightening sky, standing out starkly behind the tall masts of the Cutty Sark naval museum. I looked up and down the stone wharf, but the docks were deserted. And quite right too; normal people were tucked up in bed by now, and I had every intention of catching up with them as soon as possible. It had been a long day, what with one thing and another.
"You bring me to the nicest places, Eddie," said Molly. "Can I ask what the hell we’re doing here, where even fallen angels would fear to tread without armed bodyguards and a written guarantee of safe passage?"
"Greenwich is really very civilised these days," I said. "Practically gentrified, in some places. I keep a barge tethered here, with all the comforts and necessities of home. Another of my safe places, when I need somewhere off the beaten track to hide from everyone, even my own family."
"They don’t know about this barge?"
"They never asked. My family never cared how I did what I did, as long as I did what I was told. This way."