The great double doors had been smashed open and were hanging drunkenly, scarred and broken, from the heavy brass hinges. There should have been guards, Drood security; there should have been powerful protections in place. But they were just doors leading into a room. I stood there before them for a while, bent over and breathing harshly, trying to force some air back into my straining lungs. My back and my legs ached and sweat dripped down from my face. I could hear Molly catching up, but I didn t look back. I straightened myself up through sheer force of will and strode forward into the Sanctity, slamming the doors back out of my way with both hands. I didn t even feel the impact.
Inside the great open chamber, the walls stood upright and untouched and the ceiling was free from signs of assault or damage. The marble floor was dusty but unmarked. As though the enemy had never come here. But still the damage had been done. The great auditorium was empty, deserted; just a room. There was no trace of the marvellous rose red light that usually suffused the chamber when Ethel was manifesting her presence. The light that could soothe and rejuvenate the most hard-used spirit. Ethel, the other-dimensional entity I d brought to the Hall to replace the corrupt Heart to be a new source of power for the Drood family. A source of new, strange matter armour.
Ethel! I said her name as loudly as I could, so harshly I hurt my throat. My voice echoed in the great open chamber and then died reluctantly away. There was no response. Ethel? I said, and even to me my voice sounded like that of a small child asking for its mother. I stood alone in the Sanctity and no one answered me. I heard Molly behind me, at the door, but I didn t look around.
If she was anywhere, anywhere in the Hall, she d hear and answer you, said Molly. You know that. She s gone, Eddie. Gone, like everyone else.
If she were anywhere in the world, she d hear me, I said. No wonder my armour s gone.
I can t believe there is anyone or anything in this world that could destroy or even damage an other-dimensional entity like Ethel, said Molly, moving cautiously forward to stand beside me, careful not to touch me. Except perhaps another other-dimensional entity, and what are the odds of that?
They could have driven her away, I said. I felt empty. Forced her back out of this world. With all the Droods dead, what reason would she have to stay? And if she s gone, so is the source of our armour. No more Drood armour, forever. Perhaps that s why she chose to leave so our enemies couldn t force or coerce her into giving them her strange matter. Maybe that s why we ve only seen one armoured corpse. Because she took the rest of her strange matter with her when she left. After all, the Droods were dead.
Then why have you still got your torc? said Molly.
My hand rose to touch the golden collar at my throat again, and then I shook my head slowly. So many questions; so few answers. How can I be a Drood, the Last Drood, without my armour?
You still have your knowledge and your training, said Molly, practical as ever. She moved forward so she could look me in the face. I know you re going through a lot, Eddie, but if you don t snap out if this fast and start acting like yourself again, I am going to slap you a good one and it will hurt.
A smile twitched at the corner of my mouth. You would, too. Wouldn t you?
Damn right I would, Molly said briskly. You still have all your experience, all your old contacts there s still a lot you can do in the world. Though getting your hands on some really big guns probably wouldn t hurt, either. Is there any chance you could get us into the family Armoury? See if anything useful got left behind?
Of course, I said. Large parts of the Hall have always been underground. And heavily shielded and protected. If only to protect the rest of the family from what they did down there. The attackers might not have known about the underground installations or how to access them. Maybe they survived intact.
And maybe there are survivors down there, said Molly.
You ve always been such an optimist, I said. One of the things I ve always admired most about you.
So we went down.
I started with the War Room. It lay underneath the North Wing, or what was left of it. Access was only possible through a heavily reinforced steel door. I found the door easily enough underneath the shattered ground floor. The door was still intact, but it was standing partly open. The facial-recognition computers and retina-scan mechanisms had all been smashed. Very thoroughly. Not a good sign. I eased through the gap between the steel door and its frame and started down the very basic stairway beyond, carved out of the right-hand wall itself. Molly stuck close behind me. There was no railing, and only a intimidatingly deep and dark drop on the other side. Most of the overhead electric lights weren t working, and those that did flickered unreliably.
Molly and I descended the steep stairway, pressing our shoulders against the stone wall to keep us away from the long drop. Getting to the War Room wasn t meant to be easy. I wasn t sensing any of the usual force shields and magical screens that should have protected the area from unwanted visitors. Usually they felt like static crawling all over my skin, like unseen eyes watching your back with bad intent. I felt nothing, nothing at all. I looked briefly out over the long drop, and nothing looked back.
There was no sign of any of the goblins who usually stood watch over the stairway, peering out from their comfortable niches in the stone wall. All their little caverns were empty, with not a trace remaining to show they d ever been inhabited. No bodies. No sign of any struggle. But as we went down into the dark, spatters of dried blood began to appear on the steps below us. And all over the stone wall. By the time we got to the bottom, dried blood was splashed everywhere.
At the entrance to the War Room, the electric hand scanners had been torn out and smashed, the pieces and fragments lying scattered all over the floor. And the entire entrance door was just gone. I made Molly stand back while I stepped cautiously into the War Room. There was supposed to be a real live gorgon sitting just inside the door, doing penance for a very old crime against the family, ready to do something nasty and petrifying to anybody who dared enter the War Room without permission but there was no trace of the gorgon anywhere. Just a few scattered stone pieces on the floor that might have been a shattered human statue or two. I gave Molly the all clear, and she shot straight past me into the War Room, glaring fiercely about her. She hates being left out of things.
The War Room was a vast auditorium carved out of the solid bedrock underneath the Hall. All four walls were covered with massive state-of-the-art display screens showing every country in the world. But whereas normally they would have been covered with different-coloured lights showing what was happening in the world and what we were doing about it, now the screens were dead and blank and silent. The whole system was down.
I followed Molly into the War Room, looking dazedly about me while she darted from one workstation to the next, looking for something she could use. The whole room was empty, deserted, silent; the computers had all been broken open and torn apart. The scrying spheres had been smashed and cracked, all the tables and chairs had been overturned and everything useful or important had been very thoroughly trashed. There were no bullet holes here, no signs of energy-weapon fire, but there was a hell of a lot of blood splashed over everything and pooled on the bare stone floor.
A lot of people had died down here, but there wasn t a single body to be seen anywhere. Drood or otherwise.
Molly and I checked out the workstations methodically until we found one computer that was in somewhat better condition than the others. We couldn t get it working, so Molly just zapped the thing with some kind of spell to make it give up the last thing it had been working on. I ve never understood how she gets magic to work on scientific things, and I have enough sense not to ask. I m sure the answer would only upset me. The computer s last memory appeared on a cracked monitor screen. It showed Droods jumping up from their workstations, startled, as someone opened fire on them. Bodies were thrown this way and that, blasted right out of their workstations. Blood flew on the air and bodies crashed to the floor. There were shouts and screams. None of the Droods armoured up. There was just bloodshed and slaughter, and computer stations exploding as they were raked with gunfire. And then the computer shut down and the monitor went blank.