“You tell them, Eddie,” said Molly. “Be firm.” And then she kissed me hard.
“What was that for?” I said.
“Because you immediately assumed that this was all your fault. It isn’t. Everything bad that’s happening here is down to the uniformed thugs. So let’s go kick their nasty arses. I’m just in the mood to punch people in the face, knock them down, and stamp on their throats.”
“Never knew you when you weren’t,” I said generously.
We sauntered down the hall to the front door, and I yanked it suddenly open, surprising a large burly type in mid-knock. I thrust my face right into his visored helmet and gave him my best You’re in trouble, pal glare. There were several black-uniformed soldiers at my door, and they all backed quickly away, covering Molly and me with their automatic weapons. I stepped outside, with Molly right beside me, and the door quietly shut itself. Which meant all the house’s shields were now back in place and fully armed. If anyone did try to break in, the whole place would go Boom! in a loud and thorough manner. I smiled easily at the soldiers crowded together before me.
“Yes?” I said loudly. “Can I help you? You’re not the armed wing of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, are you?”
“Oh shit,” said the first solider. “It is them!”
“It’s them!” said a second solider.
“I said that!” said the first.
“But it really is them!” said the second. “It’s Eddie Drood and Molly Metcalf!”
“They are why we’re here,” said the first.
“Well, yes,” said the second. “But I really was sort of hoping someone else would find them.”
“This is the correct address,” said the first. “Where the boss said they’d be.”
“I was really hoping they wouldn’t be home,” said a gloomy third voice. “She turns people into things.”
“You are all seriously letting the side down!” said the first. “Pull yourselves together! We have our guns, and we have the drop on them!”
“It won’t help,” said the second.
I looked at Molly. “No one does a decent threat any more. I can remember when armoured thugs had style.”
“You just can’t get the help, these days,” said Molly. “I blame bad toilet training.”
“Hands up!” said the first soldier, jerking his gun at me, his voice probably a little higher-pitched than he intended. “Put your hands in the air, now! Then kneel down, and lie face down on the ground!”
“Yeah, right,” said Molly. “Like that’s going to happen.”
“I really don’t like the way you’ve been treating the people who live on this street,” I said sternly. “There’s no excuse for unnecessary brutality.”
“We know who you are!” said the first soldier. “We know what you are! Your armour doesn’t scare us. We’re prepared. We’ve all been issued specially prepared ammunition!”
“Heard that one before,” I said.
I subvocalised my activating Words, and my golden armour exploded out of my torc and swept over me in a moment, enclosing me from head to toe. The soldiers cried out in shock as a gleaming gold statue appeared before them, the face a featureless golden mask. There’s something about there not being any eyeholes that always puts the wind up people. I raised one golden fist, concentrated, and thick spikes rose from the knuckles. The soldiers fell back several steps despite themselves. And then Molly stepped forward, smiling sweetly, and wrapped herself in a shield of swirling magics, stray energies spitting and sparking on the air. The soldiers fell back even farther. They were right out in the middle of the street now, huddling together for comfort.
One of them panicked and opened fire, and suddenly all the soldiers were firing at once, blasting Molly and me with everything they had. The roar of so many automatic weapons all firing at once was deafening. Bullets slammed into my armour, raking me from head to foot, and I didn’t flinch. I felt no impact, and the armour soaked up all the bullets. With my old armour, the bullets would have ricocheted, going everywhere. The new strange matter armour was more responsible, absorbing all the bullets as fast as they arrived. I wasn’t entirely sure where my armour stored them, or what it did with the bullets afterwards. Did it perhaps crap them out the back later, when I wasn’t looking? I wouldn’t like to leave a trail . . . The soldiers kept firing, and the bullets did me no harm at all; it was like firing into a bottomless golden pool.
Some of the soldiers targeted Molly, and found that even more upsetting. Their bullets turned into pretty butterflies in mid-air, which then flew away. And given the rate at which the automatic weapons were pumping out bullets, it wasn’t long before the sky above us was full of clouds of brightly coloured butterflies, weaving pretty patterns in the air.
The soldiers kept on firing until they ran out of ammunition, and then they just sort of stood there, like they didn’t know what to do. So I stepped forward and punched out the first solider, hitting him so hard in the face that his black visor split neatly in two. He fell backwards, hit the ground hard, and didn’t move again. And while the others were looking at him, Molly stepped forward and kicked the second soldier so hard in the nuts it actually lifted him up into the air for a moment. He hit the ground hard, curled into a ball around his pain, and made high-pitched noises of distress. I was pretty sure he was wearing protective armour down there, because I heard it break. Molly looked at me.
“They have to learn respect.”
“Oh, I’m sure they’re both feeling very respectful,” I said. I looked at the remaining soldiers. “I expect you’d like to surrender now, wouldn’t you?”
And then Molly and I looked round, as more soldiers came running towards us from both ends of the street at once. Dozens of black uniforms, heavily armed and armoured, crashing down the street with grim determination. The soldiers who had been firing on us turned and ran to join the others. Or perhaps to hide behind them. I looked past the approaching soldiers. Both ends of Bayswater Road had been completely sealed off by parked military vehicles and barricades. But I couldn’t see any helicopter gunships, or attack vehicles, of the kind MI 13 had used before. Just black-uniformed cannon fodder. What were they planning?
“Do they really think sealing off the street is going to stop us leaving?” said Molly.
“I think it’s more to keep other people out than to keep us in,” I said. “They don’t want any witnesses for whatever it is they have planned.”
“I don’t like the feel of this,” said Molly, looking back and forth uncertainly. “Something is heading our way, apart from these idiots. Something . . . bad. I can feel it, crawling on my skin. You know what, Eddie? This might be a good time to exercise the better part of valour and leg it through the Merlin Glass. Before the bad thing gets here.”
“You want to leave?” I said. “And miss a good scrap? A chance to beat the stuffing out of a bunch of smug, obnoxious thugs? Are you sickening for something?”
“No,” said Molly, with quiet dignity. “I am just pointing out that MI 13 is showing every indication of having planned all this very thoroughly. They’ve got something else up their sleeves, and I can’t help feeling we would both be a lot better off if we weren’t here when it arrived.”
“Hell,” I said, “it’s come to something if you’re being the voice of reason.” I looked up and down the street. “I can’t See anything unnatural. No sign of any high tech or magical energies. Come on, Molly, this is MI 13 we’re talking about. They couldn’t organise a hand job in a brothel. Their specially prepared ammunition didn’t amount to much, did it?”