Страница 68 из 99
Archie Leech, serial possessor, occupying another stolen body. Only this time he’d taken someone who mattered to me, no doubt in revenge for what I’d done to him in that cellar under Harley Street. Archie/Jane swaggered forward into Sebastian’s apartment and gri
"You really should have seen that one coming, Sebastian. You got soft, living on your own. Playing at being the gentlemen thief. Got cocky, thinking no one could touch you. You should have realised two Droods were always going to be worth more than one." She turned abruptly back to look down on me and smiled happily. "How do you like my new body, Eddie? I thought I’d slip into something a little more comfortable this time. You know…I hate it when you destroy my bodies before I’m finished with them. Before I’ve squeezed every last bit of fun out of them. So this time I went out of my way to take a friend of yours just to prove that I’ll always be able to hurt you so much more than you can hurt me."
She kicked me in the ribs a couple of times just to make his point. The force of the blows was enough to lift me up off the floor, but I hardly felt them. My hands and my feet were tingling, and my face wasn’t as numb as it had been, but that was all. Molly’s magic was working. My head was clearing fast. I probably could have armoured up, but I didn’t want to risk it, not just yet. Not with so many guns trained on Molly as well as me. So I lay still, watching and listening and biding my time. Molly stayed down beside me, also keeping very still, giving Archie no reason to trank her too.
"What happens now?" she said, her voice carefully calm and nonthreatening.
"I deliver the three of you to Mr. Truman," said Archie. "My current and very generous employer. He can’t wait to get his hands on two Droods and their torcs. I understand he has a whole team of surgeons standing by, ready to take his two new prizes apart one piece at a time, until they find out just what it is about a Drood and his torc that’s so special. A very slow, very painful process, I should think…Maybe Mr. Truman will let me watch, if I ask nicely. Apparently he was very impressed by what three armoured agents were able to do to the very well-trained and expensive army he threw at them. He can’t wait till he’s able to put a torc around the neck of every Manifest Destiny soldier, and then turn them loose on the world. I do so admire a man with ambition…"
"He won’t learn a thing from vivisection," Molly said flatly. "Except to remember what happened to the goose that laid golden eggs."
Archie shrugged with Jane’s shoulders. "I don’t think he cares that much. He just needs someone to take out his rage on. He really is very upset at what those three Droods did to his fine army. You should have heard him! I suggested he just kill Eddie and Sebastian, and then bring them back as zombies. Then he’d have two Droods with torcs who’d do anything he told them to. But apparently that wasn’t enough for him. The Droods have torcs, so he has to have them too. It’s a parity thing. But you shouldn’t feel left out, Molly; I gather he has quite detailed plans for you too. He keeps special torture cells for those of his own people who turn on him."
Strength flooded suddenly through me as Molly’s magics stamped out the last of the drug’s effects. Sensation flooded back through every part of me, and my thoughts were clear and sharp. I looked up at Molly, caught her eye, and mouthed the word Now. She gri
I was already up on my feet, heading for Archie. And thinking desperately on how to stop him without killing or even damaging Janissary Jane. I’d had to kill Archie’s last host body to stop him, but I couldn’t do that here. No more dead i
I grabbed the Kandarian amulet in both my hands. It tried to evade me, twisting this way and that, but at such close quarters there was nowhere for it to go. I closed both my hands around the awful thing, squeezing them tightly shut, and the amulet burned my palms with a cold fiercer than any heat. I subvocalised my activating Words, and the golden armour surged around me in a moment even as Archie finally got her knife free and thrust it at my ribs. The heavy steel blade slammed and shattered against my armour as the living metal flowed over both my hands and what they contained. The Kandarian amulet was now inside my armour with me, sealed off and insulated from the rest of the world. And that was all it took to sever Archie’s co
I rolled away from Archie as he screamed like a damned soul, Jane’s body thrashing and kicking as his possessing spirit lost its hold on her, and she forced him out. Archie had nowhere to go; his original body had been destroyed long ago. I used my Sight and saw Archie’s real shape superimposed over Jane’s, just for a moment. And then his soul fell away from the world, howling horribly, summoned at last to the Hell that had been waiting for him for so long. I turned off my Sight. I didn’t want to See what was waiting for him.
Janissary Jane lay unconscious on the floor, twitching and shuddering. Physically exhausted and in psychic shock, probably. But she’d recover. She was a fighter and had known worse in her time.
The Kandarian amulet writhed inside my enclosing hands like a living thing, burning colder than the fiercest winter. A coldness of the heart, and of the soul. I could feel its presence inside the armour with me, fighting to impose its will on mine. The armour couldn’t protect me while the amulet was inside it. I seemed to a hear a dark inhuman chorus of voices drawing slowly closer: Join us. Join us. Just the sound sickened me, as though something had trailed slime across my mind. I armoured down, and the moment the living metal disappeared from my hands, I threw the nasty thing away from me.
The amulet skidded across the floor and Sebastian snapped out of his apparent stupor, rolled to one side, and snatched it up. He scrambled to his feet, smiling terribly as he clutched his prize to his heart. "You’re not the only one who can play possum, Eddie; I protected myself against all poisons years ago. And now…I have power beyond dreams. Because if you haven’t got the balls to use this, Eddie, I have. I shall enjoy hundreds of bodies, young bodies, and live lifetimes…"
"Throw it away," I said, rising slowly to my feet. "It’ll destroy you."
"Like that fool Archie Leech? I don’t think so. I can control it."
"No one can control it," I said. "It corrupts. That’s what it does. You’ll end up just like Archie, a spiritual rapist."
"I need a new body," said Sebastian. "This one’s getting old. It’s slower, and it lets me down. People like me shouldn’t have to grow old. Not when we enjoy life so much. Appreciate its pleasures and its qualities so much. It isn’t right that someone like me should die just because an old body is wearing out." He smiled at me, and it wasn’t his smile, not anymore. "Maybe I’ll take your body, Eddie, just for a little test drive. See what it can do. And maybe I’ll do awful, awful things with your body, just for the fun of it."