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He was a Hyde, but I was a Drood.
I beat him to death with my spiked golden fists. I killed him: for what he was, and what he’d done, and what he intended to do. He went down still fighting, and he died cursing me. I broke his arms and legs, smashed in his ribs, drove my fist deep into his skull. And when it was done and I stood over his body breathing harshly, blood dripping from my spiked hands, I didn’t feel anything. Anything at all. I looked slowly around me. Honey was back on her feet, pressing a handkerchief to her bloody mouth and nose. Her eyes were very wide. For a moment, I didn’t recognise the expression on her face. She was looking at me the same way she’d looked at the Hyde. As though one monster . . . had been replaced by another.
I looked down at the dead Hyde. I’d half expected him to turn back into his original, human form, but he hadn’t. Only the potion, or the plant, or whatever he’d taken, could make that transformation happen.
I armoured down and looked at the others with my naked, human face. I was shaking. Walker looked at me thoughtfully. Peter’s face was blank, empty, as though he didn’t know what to think. Honey came slowly forward to stand before me. Her mouth was swollen, and already dark bruises were rising on her coffee skin.
“It’s all right, Eddie,” she said. “We understand.”
“Do you?” I said. “Maybe you can explain it to me. I never lost it like that before. Never . . . lost control, so completely. You can’t afford to lose control when you wear the golden armour. I never knew . . . I had that much rage and anger within me.”
“We all have a Hyde within us,” said Walker. “Perhaps his presence awoke some of that in us.”
Peter moved around the Hyde with his phone camera, filming the dead body from every angle. When he was finished, he put the phone away and looked at me. “So,” he said. “What do we do with the body?”
“Drop it in the river,” said Honey. “Let the alligators take care of it. Nobody would want to claim it, looking like . . . that.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Where’s Blue? Where’s the Blue Fairy?”
We found his body on the other side of the fire, almost hidden in the darkness at the edge of the firelight. His neck was broken, the head lolling to one side. His eyes were open and staring, and a small trickle of blood had run down from his slack mouth. He looked . . . confused, as though he couldn’t understand how such a thing could have happened to him. I knelt down beside him and closed his eyes.
“Damn,” said Honey, standing behind me. “The Hyde got him.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think so . . . It all happened so fast . . .”
“He was never strong,” said Walker. “Just one blow from the Hyde would have been enough.”
“It’s not as if he’s such a great loss,” said Peter. “Never trust an elf.”
“Shut up,” I said, and something in my voice shut him up immediately. “Leave me alone with him,” I said, not looking back. “Blue and I have private business.”
Walker escorted Peter back to the fire. Honey hovered behind me for a while, but when I wouldn’t look around, she went away too. Let the others think what they liked; the Hyde didn’t do this. He hit Honey, and then I was upon him. He never had a chance to get to anyone else. Someone in the group killed Blue while the others watched me beat the Hyde to death.
Two members of our group gone, both dead of a broken neck. Both sacrificed to a prize that might not even be worth it. But someone thought so; someone in our little group was playing for all the marbles. I let my fingertips drift over Blue’s copper and brass breastplate. All the elven protections had been stripped away. Not an easy thing to do. But even so, the torc should still have protected him. All he had to do was activate it . . . Unless he really was too scared to use it.
I’d brought him out of his retirement. I’d brought him to Drood Hall, found a place for him in the family, in our army. Tempted him with the prospect of a Drood torc, and then was surprised when he couldn’t wait and stole one for himself. He was a friend of sorts of many years; and I’d brought him to this place, and his death. And I didn’t even see it happen.
“Sorry, Blue,” I said quietly. “But you have something that doesn’t belong to you.”
I touched a fingertip to the golden circle around Blue’s throat, and the strange matter of the torc flowed up my hand and my arm and was immediately absorbed by the torc around my neck. Blue’s body would have to go back to his people, to the Fae Court, but he couldn’t be allowed to take the torc with him. Even though it was the only real achievement of his life.
And then I stopped and listened as the Blue Fairy’s voice came to me, clear but faint, as though it had to travel a long way to reach me.
“Hello, Shaman. If you’re hearing this, I’m dead, and you’ve taken the torc back . . . Ah, well; easy come, easy go. I’m leaving this message for you in the torc, just in case. Hope you don’t mind me calling you Shaman. I always knew Shaman Bond better than Eddie Drood. I liked Shaman. He was my friend; I was never sure about Eddie. It must be complicated, having to be two people and live two lives. Perhaps only a half elf could understand . . .
“I just wanted to say: whatever happens, however I die—and I’m assuming I’ve been killed—it’s not your fault. I went into this game with my eyes wide open. Would I have killed you, at the end, to be sure of gaining Alexander King’s prize for the Fae Court and Queen Mab? I don’t know. Shaman Bond was my friend, but I think I could have killed Eddie Drood. You don’t know what the Droods did to me, Shaman. What they made me do.
“So, Shaman: hail and farewell. Win the game, whatever it takes. None of the others can be trusted with the prize. And I hate to be a poor loser, but if you do find out who killed me . . . rip their head off and piss down their neck.”
His laugh faded away and was gone.
I reactivated one of the spells on his breastplate and used it to send his body home, to the Fae Court. I couldn’t leave him here in the dark, alone. He always hated the countryside. I went back to join the others by the fire, and for a long time we just sat and looked at each other, and none of us had anything to say.
CHAPTER SIX
Out of Time
The Norsemen believed that Hel was a place of endless ice and freezing weather; a terrible cold to sear the soul forever The and ever. There are places on this earth that explain why.
This time, there were only four of us for the teleport bracelets to throw across the world. Myself, Honey Lake, Peter King, and Walker. Two missions down, and already two of us were dead. After we solved this new mystery, would there be only three of us left to travel on? Alexander King had said, There can be only one, and it looked like someone in our group was taking that very seriously.
The hot and sweaty woods of Arkansas disappeared, and the next moment we were standing in the middle of a large frozen forest. The fierce cold hit us like a hammer, and we all cried out involuntarily at the shock of it. Harsh dead ground underfoot, tall dark trees with leafless branches all around, and a bitter wind that cut to the bone. I thought Loch Ness was cold, but it was nothing compared to this. Everywhere I looked, I saw nothing but dead trees in a dead land under a harsh gray sky. The sun shone brightly directly overhead, but its warmth couldn’t reach us. The air burned in my lungs with every breath, and my bare face and hands ached horribly.
I shuddered helplessly and hugged myself as tightly as I could to hold in some warmth.
The four of us stumbled over to each other, feet dragging on the uneven and unforgiving frozen ground. We huddled together in a circle to share our warmth, driven by the same brute instinct for survival that makes sheep pack together on the moors. All our teeth were chattering loudly and uncontrollably now, and our breath steamed thickly on the bitter air. Honey made a soft pained sound with every breath she let out. She didn’t even know she was doing it. Peter made low moaning sounds, and while Walker was putting on his best stiff upper lip show, he was shaking and shivering just as badly as the rest of us. We huddled in close, shoulder to shoulder and face-to-face, heads bowed against the fierce chill of the gusting wind. And for a while that was all we did. The cold was simply overwhelming, freezing our thoughts as well as our bodies.