"You killed him? You killed the Armourer?" I said to Alexandra, shocked, and she winced at what she heard in my voice.
"He was in the way," she said. "He should have retired long ago."
"I’ll see you burn in Hell for that," I said, and my voice was cold enough to throw both of them for a moment.
"You always were a sentimental soul," said Alexandra.
"Right now there’s a power vacuum at the heart of the family," said Matthew. "And who better to step into the breach than the Matriarch’s acknowledged favourites? Especially when we have such a large and determined popular following within the family?"
"The council won’t know what’s hit it," said Alexandra. "Until it’s far, far too late."
"Do you know about the Heart?" I said. "The bargain that was made and the price we’re still paying for our armour and our power?"
"Oh, that," said Matthew. "The Matriarch told us all about it long ago. She didn’t believe in keeping secrets from her beloved favourites. It was a bit of an eye-opener, I’ll admit, but as Lexxy said, there’s no room for sentimentality in a family that’s going places. We have a world to put to rights. What are a few lives in the face of that? It’s just…the way things are."
"You can’t take the moral high ground with innocent blood on your hands," I said.
"Watch us," said Alexandra.
"Or not, as you please," said Matthew. "It’s really up to you, Eddie. Surrender to us and serve Manifest Destiny (after a suitable amount of brainwashing and reprogramming, of course), or die right here and now."
I laughed in his face. "The Armourer opened the Armageddon Codex for me. I have Oath Breaker."
Alexandra and Matthew looked at each other sharply, their confidence shaken for the first time. This hadn’t been part of their plan. But they still didn’t believe they could fail after coming this far, and they stared at me haughtily.
"That wooden stick is the mighty and legendary Oath Breaker?" said Matthew. "I don’t think so."
"You wouldn’t have the balls to use Oath Breaker," said Alexandra.
"It’s too big, too powerful, for a little man like you."
"We have weapons," said Matthew. "Real weapons. Terrible weapons! And the will to use them."
Alexandra held up her right hand, and suddenly there was a long scalpel in it, shining supernaturally bright. "This is Dissector, the ultimate scalpel created by the ultimate surgeon, Baron Von Frankenstein. It can cut through anything, neat as you like. It can cut you open and reduce you to your component parts with just a thought. You even touch that nasty old staff, Eddie, and I’ll take your hand off at the wrist. Or maybe I’ll just cut your little witch’s throat."
"You’re really starting to get on my tits," said Molly.
"You always were a vindictive soul, Alex," I said.
"And I have Dominator," said Matthew, more than a little grandly. He snapped his fingers imperiously, and a laurel wreath fashioned from pure silver appeared on his head. "With this, my thoughts become your thoughts, my wishes become your wishes. I’ll enjoy seeing you kneel to me, Eddie."
"Really?" I said. "I always heard your tastes went the other way."
"Surrender or die," Alexandra said sharply. "No more talking. Your precious uncle Jack isn’t here to save you with his Safe Words this time."
Matthew chuckled nastily. A halo of psychic energies was already forming around his head.
I concentrated on Alexandra, trying to reach her with the sincerity in my voice. "Don’t do this, Alex. For old times’ sake…for what we used to be to each other…You mustn’t do this. It’s not worthy of you or the family."
"What do you know about the family?" she said flatly. "You haven’t been a part of it in ten years. I don’t know that you ever were, really. Always had to go your own way, live your own life, leaving the rest of us to struggle on under the yoke…until we found our own way out. And how can you talk about the family being worthy, when you know the secret of the Heart? The deal with the Devil our ancestors made so long ago? We’re not what we thought we were, Eddie. Never were. It was all a lie. Manifest Destiny is the only truth."
"You can’t use forbidden weapons, forbidden methods, to save the world," I said. "You’ll destroy it, trying to make it over into what you want it to be."
"So what?" she said. "What has the world ever done for us except lie to us? Better to die free than to live a lie one day longer. We’re going to make the world make sense, whether it wants to or not, whatever the price. This is our time, our destiny, and nothing can stop us."
"Wrong, as usual," said a familiar voice behind me.
We all looked around sharply, and there behind us was the Armourer, Uncle Jack himself, standing swaying on his own two feet. He wore a simple breastplate of an unfamiliar crimson metal over his lab coat. Caked blood had dried all down one side of his face from a vicious scalp wound on his bald pate. He nodded briefly to me and Molly, and then grinned nastily at Matthew and Alexandra. And as they stood there gaping at him, he spoke two Safe Words in a language I didn’t even recognise, and Dissector vanished from Alexandra’s hand as Dominator vanished from Matthew’s brow. They both jumped, startled, and looked at the Armourer with wide, wild eyes.
"I thought you were dead!" Alexandra said loudly. "Damn you, why aren’t you dead?"
The Armourer sniffed loudly. "I was a field agent for twenty years, remember? I don’t die that easily, girl."
"We have other weapons," said Matthew too loudly. "There’s a whole army on its way here, armed to the teeth!"
"See this breastplate?" said the Armourer. "This is the Juggernaut Jumpsuit. Yes, that one, from the Codex. Bring on your weapons and your army. It won’t do you any good. Eddie, you go on, boy. You’ve got work to do."
"Listen," said Alexandra. "Hear those running feet? That’s our reinforcements. Dozens of them. You can’t stop us all, old man."
And that was when the ghost of old Jacob Drood appeared. Out of his chapel at last, for the first time he looked truly frightening. We all shrank back from him as he manifested on the air before us in a rush of air cold as death itself. He didn’t look like a grumpy old ancestor anymore; he looked like what he was: a dead man hanging on to existence through a terrible act of will. A stark, spectral figure, more a presence than a person, his face was all hollows and shadows, his eyes burning with unearthly fires. Just looking at him froze the blood in my veins and closed a cold hand around my heart. We were in the presence of death now, stark and awful and utterly unrelenting.
Time for me to take a hand, said the ghost of old Jacob, in a harsh and terrible voice that resonated inside my head. This is what I’ve been waiting for all these years. Even though I often forgot for years at a time, still I hung on, just for this. Bring on your army, Matthew and Alexandra, and I will show them all the awful things I’ve learned to do since I died. He looked at me, and I flinched away despite myself. Go to the Heart, Eddie. That’s where all the answers are. And do…what you have to do.
Jacob and the Armourer headed towards Matthew and Alexandra, and they backed quickly away, leaving open the way to the Sanctity’s door. Molly and I hurried forward. A door to our right burst open, and a whole crowd of armoured Droods rushed in. They saw the Armourer and the terrible ghost of old Jacob, and they stumbled to a halt. Molly and I opened the door to the Sanctity and ran through, pulling the door shut behind us.