He just sprawled there, shaking and shuddering, not even trying to get up. He looked at me piteously, like a child expecting to be punished for something that really wasn’t his fault. I made my golden sunglasses disappear so he could see my face clearly. I wanted him to be able to see just how angry I was.
It was Alan Diment, the current head of MI 13, the British Government’s very own secret spy organisation, dedicated to protecting Queen and Country from unnatural threats. They weren’t very big, or particularly well budgeted, but they tried hard. They handled all the day-to-day supernatural threats that my family, or the Department of Uncanny, were too busy to deal with. Normally they had enough sense not to mess with the Big Guys. And certainly not with established power bases like the Wulfshead Club. A lot of MI 13’s higher-ups were supposed to be Members . . . Which was probably how they’d got access to the plasma screens in the first place.
Alan Diment was a middle-aged, grey little man, as quietly anonymous and nondescript as any professional secret agent should be. I knew him mainly as a courier, passed over for more important things for a whole bunch of good reasons. Diment was blonde and blue-eyed, in a minor aristocratic sort of way, the kind who got into Intelligence because that was what Daddy did. What his family had done, for generations. Only to discover that he wasn’t any good at it.
The last time I encountered Alan Diment, very briefly, it was during the Great Satanic Conspiracy business. Which had turned out to be run by the previous head of MI 13, that treacherous little shit Philip MacAlpine. It also turned out that a lot of the higher echelons of MI 13 had been a part of the Conspiracy, and my family had to hunt them all down and kill them, root and branch. Because some things just can’t be forgiven. Presumably Alan Diment had been one of the few older agents left untouched by the scandal. I had heard they’d put him in charge, but I’d never thought he’d be dumb enough to do something like this.
I grabbed him by the shirtfront, pulled him up off the floor, and slammed him back against the bar. I thrust my face right into his. He didn’t even struggle, just looked back at me with his big, sad eyes. I showed him my golden fist, and his eyes widened even more as I made golden spikes rise out of the knuckles.
“You are in trouble, Alan,” I said. “Real trouble. Tell me what you know. Tell me everything that’s going on here. And this would not be a good time to grow a pair and fall back on your supposed authority.”
“No one’s dead! No one’s hurt!” Diment said quickly. “This was just supposed to be an information-gathering operation! That is what spies do, after all, isn’t it? Look, they made me be head of MI 13. I didn’t want the job; I was looking forward to taking early retirement. But after that stupid Satanic Conspiracy thing wiped out all the top levels of the organisation, I was the only one left who knew how things worked. The only one with any real experience. I’d put the years in, so they gave me an office and a secretary and told me to get on with it. Keep your head down, they said, and don’t make any waves. Just hold the fort until we can find someone more suitable to do the job.
“But . . . the Government had been through its own purge, because of the Conspiracy, and there were a lot of new faces around, settling into positions of power, desperate to make their mark. They were the ones who put the pressure on. They wanted to prove MI 13 was still fit for purpose. That it was still capable of bringing in the bacon . . . I was told I had to do something, come up with some big new idea, to keep them from . . . disposing of me.
“So I talked to a few old friends, chaps I went to school with, who were working for Black Heir. You know, the Government department tasked with clearing up the mess left behind after alien encounters . . . Of course you know. These friends loaned me a few useful bits of alien tech, and I talked some of my people who were Members of the Wulfshead into quietly introducing that alien tech into the plasma screens. Wasn’t difficult . . . The club management may be absolute fiends when it comes to external security, but they never considered there might be a threat from inside their precious club.
“Anyway, I soon had some of my people sitting on the other side of the screens, keeping their eyes and ears open and writing down anything that seemed . . . interesting. I sorted through it all and sent anything that seemed important Upstairs. And that should have been it. But then certain people in positions of power started deliberately releasing the secrets, to do damage to people they disapproved of. I think a lot of that was down to interdepartmental fighting . . .
“They said they were very pleased with me! At first . . . Enough to take the pressure off, for a while, but then they started getting greedy. They didn’t just want the secrets, they wanted the people who knew the secrets. Because they weren’t seen as people any more, just useful assets to be exploited. So the word came down, and it was more than my life was worth to say no. I was told to grab a few useful people from the Wulfshead tonight. They even gave me a shopping list. Take a few, they said, not enough to draw anyone’s attention. But no one expected you to be here. They took one look at you and panicked. Said, ‘Take everyone!’ Make a clean sweep of it, while we can. Before you figured out what was happening and shut it down. I told them it was a bad idea! But they wouldn’t listen . . .”
I turned Alan Diment around with my armoured hand and showed him to the nearest plasma screen.
“You know who I am!” I said loudly. “Give back the people you’ve taken, right now, and I’ll give you back your head of MI 13. With all his important parts still attached.”
There wasn’t even a pause. A voice from the other side of the screen said, “Keep him.”
Diment looked shocked, but not particularly surprised. I sighed inwardly and tried again.
“All right,” I said. “You want to escalate? I can do that. First, you’ve already seen that I can pass through the screen. Don’t make me come there in person and show you just how much damage I can cause to things and people when I’m in a mood. Second, do you really want my family at your throats? Now, and forever?”
There was a long pause, and then all the dark hands on their long black arms whipped back into the plasma screens and were gone. The few people left in the club, who’d managed to fight the hands off, raised their heads and looked slowly about them. And then all the people who’d been taken came flying back through the screens into the club. They poured through in a rush, piling up on the floor. Those still conscious cried out at the impact, but didn’t have enough strength left to make a fuss. No one seemed badly injured; but a lot of them looked like they’d been hit with some heavy-duty sedation. I glared at the dark figures moving uneasily about on the other side of the screens.
“There had better not be anyone missing!” I said sternly. “Not even one. Or I will come and find you.”
Four more bodies came flying through the screens. Interestingly, I didn’t recognise any of them. But apparently someone thought they were important . . . I looked at Alan Diment.
“This was a really bad idea. Don’t ever try it again. Not here, or anywhere else.”
“I wouldn’t,” said Diment. “But someone else might.”
I looked at him thoughtfully. “Who was it, exactly, who pressured you into doing this?”
“The current Government has an awful lot of new people in it,” Diment said carefully. “Obsessed with secrets, and the power having those secrets would bring them . . .”