Molly looked around and grinned briefly as I moved in to cover her back, and then we both went to work, cutting off heads and smashing in skulls with grim joy and great efficiency. The blood-red men should have learned to keep their distance from us, but something drove them on to attack us anyway.
“Where the hell have you been?” Molly said loudly. “As if I couldn’t guess. So what does the Lady Faire look like, in the flesh? Does she have both sets of bits?”
“I have no idea,” I said, wrapping myself in my armour and striking down blood-red men with vim and vigour. “She never undid a button while I was with her. All we did was talk.”
“Did she tell you where the Lazarus Stone is?”
“No.”
“Then maybe you should have undone some of her buttons,” said Molly.
It’s amazing how much damage you can do to people, with spiked armoured fists and a blazing energy sword. It was also amazing, and not a little disturbing, how fast the blood-red men could come back from so much damage. I scowled, under my featureless golden mask, thinking hard. There had to be a way to stop them . . .
The last of the security people were still fighting, well and bravely, but they were vastly outnumbered by blood-red men. The security staff had been forced into small defensive clumps, scattered across the Ballroom, firing bullets and poisoned needles and the occasional energy blast. But the blood-red men were still pouring in through all the doors, leaping across the bodies of their own fallen to get at the security people. Blood spread thickly across the ice cavern floor.
The mood of the watching guests quickly turned against the blood-red men. They shouted and jeered and threw things, and when it became clear that wasn’t going to stop the slaughter of the security people, many of the guests decided it was time to do something.
Some guests tried to teleport out, only to look shocked and startled when they discovered they couldn’t, because someone had reinstalled the anti-teleport shields. Some tried to run, only to find there was nowhere to run to. All the doors were full of blood-red men. Some tried to impress the masked invaders with their names and status, only to find the blood-red men didn’t give a damn. And some of the guests fought fiercely, just because it was in their nature.
Dead Boy got stuck right in, wading into the fighting where it was fiercest, beating up blood-red men with his unfeeling fists, and happily ripping arms out of their sockets with his unnatural strength. His deep purple greatcoat flapped around him as he received and handed out appalling punishment. Dead Boy was almost as hard to stop as the ones he fought. But in the end they came at him from every side at once, piled on top of him, and just dragged him down by sheer weight of numbers. He went down still fighting, and continued to struggle even under a weight of bodies that would have held down an enraged rhino.
The Bride fought with more than human strength, breaking bones and smashing in skulls with effortless ease, while Springheel Jack guarded her back with two nasty-looking straight razors. The Bride tore blood-red men limb from limb, and Springheel Jack cut them up like joints of meat. Until finally they too fell under the weight of so many attackers, and disappeared from view.
Jimmy Thunder struck his enemies down with Mjolnir, and whoever the hammer hit did not rise again. Even the blood-red men were no match for that mighty and ancient weapon. The Norse godling strode through the chaos with contemptuous ease, sending broken bodies crashing to the floor, singing some old Norse song on the joys of blood and slaughter. But in the end, the blood-red men found his weakness. They ganged up on the costumed adventurer Ms. Fate, despite all her fighting skills, and beat her savagely. Jimmy lost his temper and threw his hammer at them. Mjolnir flashed through the air, and just the impact of its arrival killed half the blood-red men, but then the hammer dropped to the floor and lay there. Jimmy called desperately for it to return to his hand, but either the hammer didn’t hear him or it had forgotten how. The blood-red men hit Jimmy Thunder from every side at once, and eventually they pulled him down. For all his strength and fury.
Most of the other guests didn’t last long. And when they saw the blood-red men tear the Living Shroud apart, unravelling and scattering its rags and tatters until there was nothing left . . . they surrendered. The Lady Alice Underground sat down and put her hands on her head. The Last of Leng retreated to a corner and crouched there, snarling. Everyone else put their hands in the air, or ostentatiously dropped their weapons to the floor. Surprisingly, the Replicated Meme of Saint Sebastian hadn’t got involved at all. They just stood together by a far wall, watching silently from behind their impenetrable metal masks.
Molly and I stood back to back in the middle of the room, not actually surrendering but no longer fighting. There just didn’t seem any point. We were surrounded by rank upon rank of blood-red men. A dozen or more came forward, encircling the Lady Faire and urging her on. She didn’t appear to be hurt, but there was no doubt she was no longer in charge. She went where the blood-red men indicated for her to go. She strode along with her head in the air, projecting icy dignity. She shot me a cold and angry look, as though I’d betrayed her by not fighting to the death. Molly made her blazing sword disappear, and I armoured down, to keep her company. Fighting against the odds had taken us as far as it was going to. All that remained now was to stand down and see what happened next.
The Ballroom was still and quiet, with blood-red men in control everywhere. I couldn’t see a single white-uniformed security person still standing. I hoped they weren’t all dead. They’d fought well. I realised I was still wearing the white face mask of the Head of Security. I peeled it off and threw it away, along with the comm earpiece. Voices rose on every side from among the guests, as some of them recognised me. Or at least the torc at my throat. The voices died quickly away again as the blood-red men stirred dangerously. The guests were split up into small groups, surrounded by silently watching blood-red men. The Ball was over; it remained to be seen what would replace it.
To discover what this had all been about.
“Really don’t like the odds here, Eddie,” Molly murmured. “Please tell me you’ve got something up your sleeve.”
“Just my arm,” I said quietly. “On the bright side, I think we’re finally about to find out who’s been running the blood-red men all this time. The villain behind the Voice. Hopefully, we’re about to get some answers to a whole lot of questions. You know how bad guys love to boast.”
“He’s going to make a speech, isn’t he?” Molly said gloomily. “I hate speeches.”
“Even when I make them?”
“Especially when you make them!”
“Oh, that hurts,” I said.
And then a man came walking through the crowd towards us, wearing James Drood’s face. The blood-red men fell back, to open up a wide aisle for him to walk through. The closer he got, the less like Uncle James he looked, though the face stayed the same. He didn’t move like James, or act like him. The face . . . was just another mask, in a Ballroom full of masks. And yet . . . there was something familiar about this man. I did know him from somewhere. He walked right up to me, ignoring Molly standing at my side, and stopped right in front of me.
“You’re not James Drood,” I said roughly. “Nothing like him. Who are you, really?”
The face flickered and disappeared, like the illusion it was, and standing before me was Laurence Drood. The Drood from Cell 13, free at last. He laughed softly at the look of surprise on my face.