My one advantage over the Gray Fox: I was already dying. So I had nothing to lose.
I surged forward, driven by all the supernatural strength and speed my armour could produce, and still Uncle James was ready for me. He sidestepped gracefully, and his right-hand sword came sweeping around, the supernaturally sharp edge slicing right through the armour over my right side. My armour healed itself immediately, closing the cut, but I wasn’t so lucky. Pain flared across my ribs, and I could feel thick blood coursing down my right side under my armour. I’d never felt that before. I charged Uncle James again and again, knowing my only hope was to get in close and grapple with him, and every time he avoided me like a toreador with a bull, his impossibly sharp blades cutting through my golden armour again and again, cutting me, hurting me, slowing me down through accumulated shock and blood loss. The Gray Fox circled me, staying carefully out of my reach, watching for the first sign of weakness so he could move in for the kill.
So I gave him a sign. I pretended to stumble, almost going down on one knee, and he came gliding in for the kill, smooth as any dancer. Only to find me waiting for him. I lunged forward, forcing him backwards, off balance. He quickly got his feet back under him again and straightened up, but by that time I had both my hands around his throat, my golden fingers pressing down on his golden throat. I concentrated and grew sharp barbs on the insides of my fingers, digging them deep into the living metal around his neck. And Uncle James couldn’t grab my wrists to force my hands away without giving up his swords.
He drew back his right arm and slammed his right sword forward with all his armour’s strength behind it. The golden blade punched right through the armour over my left side, through me, and out my back. The pain was horrific. I cried out, and there was blood in my mouth. It coursed down my chin, under my golden mask. I almost passed out. I probably would have if I hadn’t been so angry.
I clung onto his throat with both hands, searching desperately for some last trick I could use against him; and that was when I remembered how I’d once fused both my golden hands together to contain and seal off Archie Leech’s Kandarian amulet. If I could fuse my armour together, why not mine and Uncle James’s? Just for a moment. Just long enough to do what I had to do. I concentrated, focusing all my willpower, sweat running down my face under my mask, and the living metal around his throat yielded to my greater will, my greater fury. His armour fused with mine, and suddenly my bare hands were around his bare throat, and I bore down hard.
He struggled fiercely, not understanding what was happening, throwing me this way and that by sheer brute strength, but I wouldn’t let go. He pulled his right hand back, jerking the sword blade out of me, and I cried out again as I felt things break and tear within me, but still I wouldn’t let go. Not even when he ran me through again, and again, sinking the blade deep in my guts and twisting it back and forth.
He was weakening fast, but so was I, and God alone knows what might have happened if not for Molly.
We’d been so caught up in ourselves, fighting face to golden face, that we’d both lost track of Molly Metcalf. She came up behind Uncle James in his blind spot, and she had Torc Cutter in her hands. She jammed the ugly shears up against the back of his neck, yelled the activating Words, and cut through his golden armour, right where his collar should be. Uncle James screamed once, like a soul newly damned to Hell, and then his armour disappeared all in a moment, and his whole body went limp in my hands. It took me a moment to realise what had happened, and a moment more to armour down and unclench my hands from around his throat, but finally I let go, and his body fell to the floor and did not move again. I sat down suddenly beside him, my legs just giving way. I hurt so bad I could hardly breathe. There was blood all over me. My uncle James was dead. I wanted to hold him in my arms, tell him I was sorry, but my arms wouldn’t work. I would have cried, but somehow…I was just too tired. Too deathly tired.
Molly crouched down beside me and put her arm across my shoulders. "I had to do it," she said. "He could still have won. And he would have killed you, Eddie."
"Of course he would," I said. "He was the Gray Fox. He was the best. He knew the mission always comes first."
"I killed him," said Molly. "So you wouldn’t have to."
"I know," I said. "That was kind of you. But…he was my dad, in every way that mattered. The one Drood I always loved and admired. The man I most wanted to be."
I cried then, and Molly did her best to comfort me. After a while she retrieved Oath Breaker from where I’d left it and hauled me back up onto my feet so she could half lead, half carry me out of the old library, back through the painting, into the main library again. Blood poured down my sides with every movement, my face was slick with sweat, and my hands hung numbly at my side. Away from the old library’s magic suppressor field, she was able to run a whole bunch of healing spells over me, but though she closed my wounds and stopped the bleeding, I couldn’t say I felt any better.
"It’s the strange matter in you," she said finally, frowning. "It’s interfering with my magics. I’ve stabilised you, but that’s about all I can do for you."
"That’s all right," I said, smiling at her. It didn’t feel like much of a smile, but I did my best. "It doesn’t matter, Molly. I’m dying anyway. And none of that three or four days shit, either. Just…hold me together long enough for me to do what I need to do."
"What can we do?" Molly said desperately. "Against something like the Heart?"
"You have Torc Cutter, and I have Oath Breaker," I said. "I’m going to destroy the Heart, and bring the whole damned family down."
"Because they betrayed you," said Molly.
"Because they lied," I said. "They lied to all of us. About who we are and what we are. We were never the heroes of our story. All along, we were the real bad guys."
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
A Family at War
There was only one way to fatally weaken the family. To break their hold on the world. Take away the power that made them strong, made them untouchable: their glorious golden armour. And the only way to do that was to destroy the source of the armour: the Heart. Only a few days ago I would have found that unthinkable; hell, I’d risked my life to defend the damned thing from outside attack. But step by painful step I had been driven to this place, this moment, forced to turn away from everything I’d been taught and brought up to believe in. All that was left to me now was to destroy the one thing I was raised to revere and protect above all others. The rotten, corrupt, lying Heart of the Droods.
Life’s a bitch sometimes.
I hefted Oath Breaker in my hand. Just a stick, really; a long wooden cane carved with symbols I couldn’t even read. It didn’t look like much, to destroy an invader from another dimension and bring an end to centuries of lies. But as with so many other things where my family was concerned, appearances were deceiving. I only had to glance at Oath Breaker with my Sight to see a power so great, so terrible, I had to look away or it would blast the eyes from my head. Oath Breaker was ancient and awful, made when the world was young specifically to undo things that could not be allowed to exist. There were stories that said Oath Breaker had thrown down cities and continents in its time, and killed old gods so thoroughly that no one even remembered their names anymore.
It occurred to me that by destroying the source of the family’s armour, I might be signing my own death warrant. And that of everyone else in my family. I’d seen Torc Cutter kill my uncle James by severing his collar. It could be that no Drood would survive if I took their armour away. But I’d come too far now to even consider turning back. The family that had bowed down to the Heart’s murderous demands for so long, that had chosen to rule humanity instead of protect it, that had embraced the ruthless aims of Zero Tolerance…was not a family I recognised anymore. All that was left to me was to save the family’s honour or put it out of its misery forever.