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“Typical CIA,” said Peter.
We headed deeper into the city, and the evidence of hard fighting became more extreme. Whole buildings blown apart, leaving gaps in street terraces like teeth pulled from a jaw. Those left standing had been gutted by fires left to burn until they died down naturally. We checked inside a few of the safer-looking ruins. Still no bodies. There were long straight cracks in the walls, almost like claw marks, and gaping holes like jagged wounds. There was something . . . off about it all. I’ve seen my share of fighting and the damage it causes, but this was different. The pieces of what had happened here wouldn’t fit together, no matter how I arranged them.
And then we came to a street covered and caked in dried blood. More black than red, the great stain ran the whole length of the street, rising up in long tidal splashes along the sides of buildings, as though a great raging river of blood had swept from one end of the street to the other.
“So much blood . . .” Honey said thoughtfully. “How many people died here?”
“And who killed them?” said Peter, looking quickly about him.
“Still no bodies,” observed Walker, leaning casually on his umbrella and studying the scene with professional interest.
“Maybe something ate all the bodies,” I said. “Monsters, remember? Something’s still here. I can feel it. Watching us.”
“Hope it’s not rats,” Peter said abruptly. “Can’t stand rats. Not too keen on mice, either.”
“Oh, mice are no bother,” I said. “When I was a youngster, part of my duties at Drood Hall was to do a round before breakfast and check all the mousetraps. Then I’d take the filled traps to the toilets and give the little bodies a burial at sea. Used to make quite a ceremony out of it, when I was in the mood.”
“You see?” said Honey. “Weird.” And then she broke off, looking at me thoughtfully. “Eddie, you said earlier there was something very powerful not far from here, sleeping deep under the permafrost. Could it have anything to do with what’s happened here?”
“No,” I said immediately. “First, we buried him over a hundred miles away. And second, if he had even stirred in his sleep, we’d have known about it long before this. If he’d been involved with what happened here, it would have been much worse.”
“How much worse?” said Walker, professionally curious.
“Apocalyptically worse,” I said.
Walker shrugged. “Been there, done that.”
I didn’t challenge him. He probably had. I did once think about visiting the Nightside . . . and then had a nice lie-down with a cold compress on my head till the idea went away.
“Could this . . . thing, person, whatever have had anything to do with the Tunguska Event?” said Peter.
“No,” I said. “My family planted him centuries before that.”
“Something or someone that dangerous,” Honey said accusingly. “And you never told anyone?”
I met her gaze steadily. “It was Drood business. No one else’s. It wasn’t like there was anything you could have done. Then, or now. There’s a lot we don’t tell anyone else. Because if you knew, you’d never sleep well again. Droods guard humanity, in all senses of the word.”
Honey looked like she wanted to argue the point, but she could tell this wasn’t the time. She settled for giving me her best hard look, and then ostentatiously turned her back on me and glared at the blood-soaked street.
“So,” she said. “What were the scientists of X37 trying to achieve? Something to do with unlocking the hidden secrets and potential of human DNA. Potential . . . perhaps that’s the key word. Could they have been trying to produce psychic gifts to order? During the Cold War both sides put a lot of time and money into psychic research, hoping to produce people they could use as weapons.”
“Yeah,” said Peter, sniggering. “I saw that documentary. Trying to produce soldiers who could make goats fall over just by staring at them. Then there was that general of yours who was convinced he could learn to walk through walls if he could only concentrate just right. And let us not forget the whole remote-viewing fiasco . . .”
“We were getting really good results with that, towards the end,” said Honey, still not looking around.
“Yeah,” I said. “I heard. Problem was, you couldn’t keep them out of Pamela Anderson’s bedroom. Or George Michael’s bathroom.”
Honey’s stiff back positively fumed, while Peter and Walker and I exchanged smiles. I didn’t have the heart to tell Honey that the Droods sabotage all such government programmes, as a matter of course. We have the best farseers and psychics in the world, and we’re determined to keep it that way. We didn’t interfere with the fainting goats thing, though. Didn’t need to.
“This city covers a lot of ground,” said Walker. “We could spend whole days just walking up and down in it. And we don’t have days.”
“And I’m still cold and I’m still hungry,” said Peter. We looked at him. He sniffed loudly. “Well, I am.”
“We should have left you in the car,” said Honey.
“There has to be some way we can cut to the chase,” said Walker. And then he gave me a hard look. So did Peter. Honey turned around, just so she could join in.
I sighed and armoured up. The golden armour slipped over me in a moment; immediately I felt sharper, stronger, better able to cope. I hadn’t realised how much the city was affecting me until my armour protected me from its malign influence. Interestingly enough, the armour still fit me like a second skin, with no sign of the bulky fur coat beneath. Interesting, but a thought for another day. I looked around me, focusing my Sight through my featureless golden mask.
At once, the street was full of ghosts. Men and women and children, ru
As though the Devil himself had come to X37 and was standing right behind me.
I sent my Sight soaring up into the harsh gray sky and looked out over the woods, miles and miles away, to where the terrible old thing lay buried, deep and deep under the permafrost. I could feel his presence, like a wound in the world, but he was still sleeping soundly, hopefully till Judgement Day itself. I looked down at the city spread out below me, and my Sight immediately picked up strange emanations blasting up into the sky from one untouched research building only a dozen or so streets away from where we’d stopped. A shuddering, staccato glare of u
I dropped back into my head, shut down my Sight, and sent my armour back into my torc. The cold oppressive gloom of the city weighed down on me again. It was actually harder to think clearly . . . I told the others what I’d seen and pointed out the direction, and we all set off immediately, glad to leave the street of blood behind us.
The atmosphere of the city seemed to change subtly as we closed in on its secret heart. There were shadows everywhere I looked, dark and deep and threatening. The light seemed to be fading, even though the painfully bright sun was still directly overhead. The streets became narrower, closing in on us, and the buildings all leaned inwards, as though the brick and stone walls might bulge forward and engulf us at any moment. There was something in this city that didn’t want to be found. I increased the pace, striding down the increasingly narrow streets with a confidence I wasn’t sure I felt. I’ve always been happiest with menaces I could hit. The sooner we got to the heart of this mess and did something about it, the better.