Daemons Are Forever

Martha looked at him steadily. “Of course. You’re James’s son.”

Harry deliberately turned his back on her and gri

“I’m not sure my mother’s side of the family would approve, but what the Hell… Why not? Can’t let you do this on your own. You never did learn to watch your back properly.”

I wasn’t so sure Roger’s going was a good idea. Basically, he looked like shit. With so much of his magic exhausted on earlier raids, a lot of his glamour was gone, and he looked… more of a man.

Harry made a point of looking down his nose at me. “Well, Eddie, aren’t you coming along on this little jaunt? You know how you love to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, at the very last minute…”

“I’m still needed here,” I said calmly. “Someone’s got to feed you the necessary information, and point you in the right direction. But, if it should all go horribly wrong, I’m your backup.”

“And me,” said Molly, digging me sharply in the ribs with her elbow.

“Of course,” I said, “If you feel you can’t do it without me…”

“We can handle it,” Harry said immediately.

“Damn right, lover,” said Roger Morningstar.

The Merlin Glass locked on to Truman’s new base of operations easily enough; the almost complete tower was dominating the aether. But for some reason the Glass couldn’t seem to show us a view of the base’s interior. Just a field, overlooking Stonehenge, with the ancient Stones looming tall and dramatic against the lowering evening sky. Harry pressed in close beside me, scowling.

“The Stones look to be almost half a mile away; is that really the closest you can get us?”

“This isn’t a nest, as such,” I said. “Not a ghoulville. Just an underground base surrounded by layer upon layer of the best scientific and magical protections money can buy. We wouldn’t even know it was there if the tower wasn’t poking out of it, so to speak. You’ll have to sneak up on them. Unless you’ve changed your mind about going…”

“Of course I haven’t! It’s just… I don’t like this. It feels like a trap.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” I said. “But what kind of trap could Manifest Destiny put together that could hold Harry Drood, Roger Morningstar, and two hundred good men and women in golden armour?”

Harry smiled slightly. “You really suck at the inspirational thing, you know that?” He looked at Roger. “Let’s go, bro.”

“Oh please,” said Roger. “You know I don’t do that macho stuff.”

Harry and Roger led their strike force through the Merlin Glass, and I immediately closed the gateway behind them. Truman was a sneaky bastard, and I wouldn’t put anything past him, including deliberately revealing his tower’s presence as a way of tricking us into opening a gateway he could then take advantage of. But… it all seemed quiet enough. Molly took my arm and hugged it tightly to her side as we watched Harry hiss orders to his strike force to spread out across the open, grassy field, to as not to make a single target. Their golden armour gleamed dully in the sparse evening light. As far as the display screens could tell, they were alone in the field. Everything was still and quiet. And then Roger’s head snapped up and he pointed off into the gloom. And all around the scattered strike force, dark figures appeared from every direction at once, moving at impossible speeds.

The figures were human, but moving supernaturally quickly, impossibly fast, streaking across the open field at a pace even armoured Droods couldn’t have matched. The Droods turned to face them, lifting their weapons, but they almost seemed to be moving in slow motion compared to their attackers. As the figures closed in, their every movement was so fast as to make them just a blur on the display screens. Even their faces were unclear. They were just shapes, flashing through the evening gloom.

They swarmed all over the Droods, attacking and falling back almost before the armoured Droods could react. The attackers didn’t seem to possess any weapons, they just beat repeatedly at the golden armour with their bare hands. When that didn’t work, glowing knives appeared in their hands, and they struck again. And this time Droods went down as glowing blades sliced right through their armour to the men and women beneath. The strike force fell, one by one, unable to match their attackers’ speed even for a moment. Harry called his people back to make a defensive circle, but by the time he’d finished speaking half of them were already dead.

There was a clamour of raised voices in the War Room as everyone tried to come up with an explanation or a theory at once. Communications yelled at intelligence, who yelled at information, who yelled at records…and that was where the answer finally came from. Droods know everything, but sometimes it takes us a while to find it. Turned out there had been a report filed about the possibility of these people, from a file Callan found in Truman’s old deserted underground base. The Accelerated Men. Surgically altered, technologically enhanced, and drugged to the eyeballs, they were fanatics, burning up a lifetime’s energy to feed their u

Giles Deathstalker arrived in the War Room, looking half dead but still determined, and had to be almost physically prevented from going in to help. I decided that. No point in throwing away more lives till we had some idea of what we were facing. Giles watched the display screens with avid interest. I almost expected him to take notes. It seemed he’d finally found something he hadn’t seen before, that he thought he could take back to his future time.

On the field overlooking Stonehenge, Harry’s remaining people had retreated to form a tight ring around Harry and Roger. Standing shoulder to shoulder, they were better able to defend themselves, and pushing their armour’s speed to its limit meant they could take out the occasional Accelerated Man with a vicious sword thrust. When these human lightning bolts crashed to the ground, dead at last, they looked like old men, their faces blasted by a terrible strain. The Droods fought on, still losing a man or woman here or there, the defensive circle slowly shrinking… Until suddenly the Accelerated Men began to stumble and fall, and collapse on the ground. At first I thought Roger had finally got some of his magic working, but it soon became clear that the Accelerated Men had just used up all their lives. They ran themselves to death.

Harry and Roger and the dozen or so remaining Droods looked slowly about them. Piled up around them lay dozens of old men with time-ravaged faces. They could never have been intended to last long. They were just a means to an end; to forcing the Droods back into one easy target. A terrible blast of light slammed aside the darkness, a light so strong and fierce it had presence and impact. The Droods started to scream. Roger clung onto Harry, shouting Words of Power that were almost washed away by the terrible light. And then, just like that, the light snapped off. Evening returned, but all the Droods were gone. Only Harry and Roger were left, clinging to each other. Harry was holding Roger up. The hellspawn was almost out on his feet, exhausted of strength and magic.

Only two men left, to save the world.

The War Room went mad again. It took a bit longer to get the answer this time, but it was no less disturbing when the Armourer finally supplied it. He admitted he was guessing, but it rang true. Truman had set up his new base under Stonehenge in order to seize control of the Soul of Albion, that impossibly powerful scrap of starstuff that fell out of the sky mille