The cold lead bullet hit the elf lord right between the eyes and
blew the back of his head off. For good measure I shot the dragon in its ugly
head too, and it crashed to the motorway in an ungainly sprawl of flapping
wings. I shot all the elves and all the dragons, all the vicious lords and vile
ladies and their ugly mounts, and they didn’t have the time to fire off a single
arrow at me. I just fired the Colt Repeater again and again and again, and the
bullets just kept coming, and the gun never missed. A triumph of the Armourer’s
art. The dead dragons piled up before me, twitching and shuddering as the last
of their unnatural life leaked out of them, and not a single elf escaped my cold
anger. God bless you, Uncle Jack.
I sat down carefully on the Hirondel’s bonnet and got my breath
back. The arrow in my shoulder still hurt like hell. I had to contact the
family. Get them to send a clean-up crew to remove the dragons and elves before
Joe Public turned up to see them. And then the Matriarch would have to send a
stiff and very formal complaint to the Fae Court, telling them to keep their
arrogant noses out of Drood business, or else. It slowly occurred to me that I’d
been driving for some time while fighting for my life, and I still hadn’t seen
any traffic. Someone had to have arranged for this whole section of the motorway
to be sealed off. To close all the exits and shut down all the CCTV coverage
would take serious clout. How high up was this traitor in the family, that they
could arrange something like this? Yes, I had to get to a safe phone. Tell the
family. About the traitor…
My head was actually nodding, my thoughts fading in and out,
when the car’s alarms went off again. My head jerked up and I slid off the
bonnet and looked around me. A thick fog covered all the motorway behind me, a
dirty gray mist that churned and boiled, with nothing natural about it. I
climbed back into the driving seat, gritting my teeth against the pain, and then
pounded my left arm with my right fist until some sensation returned, so I could
slam the car into first gear. I took off again, and out of the mists behind me
came the phantom fleet.
My first thought was This isn’t fair. Not after everything I’ve
already been through… But I was too tired even to maintain a good sulk, so I
just concentrated on building up some speed. My injured arm shrieked at me as I
raced through the gears, but that was better than the scary numbness. The pain
cleared my head and kept me angry. I was going to have to be sharp, in top form,
to take out the phantom fleet.
They swept down the deserted motorway after me, ghosts of
crashed vehicles driven and possessed by spirits from the vasty deep.
Half-transparent cars and trucks and articulateds, and everything else that ever
came to a nasty end on a motorway. Some looked real as real could be, while
others were just misty shapes, all of them still bearing the damage and burn
marks of their previous ends. Too many to count, they came howling after me in a
vicious pack, their ghostly engines supernaturally loud. Black brimstone smoke
issued from their exhausts, and hellfire burned around their squealing tires.
The phantom fleet, the wild hunt of modern times; hungry for souls.
The lead car drew up alongside me, matching my speed
effortlessly. It was a Hillman Minx from the sixties, the front smashed in, the
long bonnet concertinaed. Through the cracked side windows, I could see the car
was packed to bursting with grinning ghouls and demons and mutant creatures.
They writhed together like maggots infesting a wound, churning and shifting and
pressing their awful faces against the windows to laugh at me. None of the
Hirondel’s weapons would touch these things, because they weren’t really there.
Just memories of vehicles that once were, and the things from beyond that had
repossessed them.
Another car came forward, filling my rearview mirror. Some big
boxy foreign job, driven by a hunched-over demon with huge bulging eyes and a
mouth full of needle teeth. It hit the horn again and again, and the dead car
howled like something in pain. The demon pounded on the steering wheel with its
thorny hands, caught up in the excitement of the chase. And then the ghost car
surged forward, passing through the back of the Hirondel, penetrating my space
with its dead shape. A wave of supernatural cold preceded its progress, freezing
the blood in my veins. The dead car drew level, its ghostly outline superimposed
on mine, and then the demon driver dropped a thorny hand on my shoulder, ghosted
right through my armour, and grabbed hold of my soul. I screamed, just at the
touch of it. The demon pulled, trying to haul my soul out of my body, to be prey
for the pack, for the phantom fleet. Another stolen soul, to drive the engines
of the damned cars.
But my soul was linked to my armour, from the moment I was born.
You couldn’t have one without the other. And together they were stronger than
any damned dead thing. The gripping ghostly fingers slipped slowly away, unable
to maintain their hold. I goosed the accelerator, and the Hirondel jumped
forward. The ghost car fell back, the demon howling in outrage at being cheated
out of its rightful prey. Pain surged up in my left arm again, and I embraced
it. It meant I was alive. I forced my left hand forward and hit the emergency
default button on the CD player. The system immediately began broadcasting a
recording of the ritual of exorcism, read by the last pope in the original
Latin. The sonorous words boomed out of the car’s speakers, and the ghost car
was driven right out of the Hirondel. Around and behind me, the phantom fleet
shrieked horribly and fell back. Some were already breaking up under the impact
of the holy words, drifting away in long ghostly streamers. The thick curling
mists reappeared in my rearview mirror, and the phantom fleet vanished back into
them.
I drove on, half dead behind the wheel myself, and for a while I
had the motorway all to myself.
And then, from up ahead, came the Flying Saucerers. And I was so
hurt and tired and generally pissed off that I didn’t even slow down. Let them
come. Let them all come, every damned thing from above and below and in between.
I was on a roll and mad enough to take on the whole bloody world. The Flying
Saucerers are high-level magic users who swan around in flying saucer–shaped
artefacts made up of ionised plasma energies, for reasons best known to
themselves. Personally, I think they just like to show off. They’re the vultures
of the paranormal world, darting down to pick up the spoils of other people’s
battles and carry off whatever isn’t actually nailed down. Which is actually
pretty pathetic behaviour, if you ask me, for a group who claim they’re out to
rule the world.
I peered wearily through my cracked windscreen and scowled at
the saucers shooting through the sky towards me. There had to be a whole fleet
of the bloody things. Twenty, maybe thirty, their wide saucer shapes as
insubstantial as soap bubbles, condensing into weird rainbow colours around the
pilots sitting cross-legged in the centre of the craft. A whole fleet slamming
towards me in broad daylight. Made bold at the prospect of a prize like the Soul
of Albion. And knowing them, they’d waited for everyone else to take a crack at
me, and weaken me, before they tried for the Soul themselves. I could feel my
smile widening into a death’s-head grin under my golden mask. I might be down,
but I wasn’t out. And I had weapons and tactics and dirty tricks I hadn’t even
tried yet.
The Flying Saucerers are dangerous because, like the family,
they take science and magic equally seriously. They embrace both schools of
knowledge, two very different doctrines, and combine them in unnatural and
unexpected ways to produce a whole that is far greater than the sum of its
parts. Like the plasma saucers: science devised, magic driven. They came howling
in, one after the other, targeting computers zeroing in on my car. Energy bolts
cracked and exploded in the road ahead of me, and I threw the Hirondel this way
and that, ducking and dodging as best I could. Fierce energies crackled all
around me, chewing up the road in long ragged runs. One whole grass verge was on
fire, and I had to jump the Hirondel over a wide crevice that opened up in front
of me.
Anywhen else, I would probably have been scared shitless in the
face of so much superior firepower, but after everything I’d already been
through, the saucers were more annoying than anything.
The road blew up, right in front of me. I punched the Hirondel
through the smoke and flames, but the left front wheel dipped into a crack and
snatched the steering wheel out of my hands. The car spun around and around,
spiralling down the motorway at sickening speed, before finally skidding to a
halt. I sat limply in my seat while my spinning head settled, feeling really
grateful I’d had seat belts installed, even though it was a classic car. My
armour had protected me from the sudden deceleration and probably a really nasty
case of whiplash, but I was still pretty dazed. And my wounded arm felt worse
than ever. God alone knew what damage the faerie arrow was doing to my system.
I checked the car over. Smoke was rising from under the bonnet,
which is never a good sign, but everything seemed still to be working. I
considered using the EMP generator, but I was pretty sure the Flying Saucerers
would have shielded their craft against that. I would have. Which just
left…taking out the trash the old-fashioned way.
I undid my seat belt, forced open the door, and half crawled,
half fell out of the car. I levered myself upright by leaning most of my weight
on the car door, and the heavy metal crumpled under the strain of my golden
fingers. I winced. That was going to be hell to beat out later. I stood up,
straight and tall, using all the armour’s support, and strode off down the
motorway towards the approaching saucers. The first dropped towards me and
opened up a strafing run with its energy weapons. And I drew my Colt Repeater
and shot the Flying Saucerer in the head. He’d protected his craft against EMPs,
energy weapons, and magic attacks, but he’d never expected to face a simple cold
lead bullet. Guided by the gun’s unnatural nature, the bullet punched through
all the pilot’s shields and blew his head apart before he even knew what was
happening. The saucer dropped like a stone, skidded across the motorway, leaving
deep scars in the road behind it, and finally exploded in a rainbow of
dissipating energies. I turned slowly, and then shot every other Flying Saucerer
out of the sky, one at a time. Even the ones that turned and ran.
I aimed my last bullet very carefully, and the Colt shot the
pilot in the gut. His saucer came down in swoops and rolls and finally crashed
just a few yards away from me. The saucer shape flickered on and off, colours
whorling around and around its surface like an oily film, and then the shape
collapsed, no longer held together by the pilot’s will. And all that was left
was a surprisingly ordinary-looking man lying crumpled on the verge, soaked in
blood and curled around his wound.
I walked over to him, grabbed him by the shoulder, and slammed
him over onto his back. He cried out miserably at the pain, and then cried out
again in shock and horror as he saw the golden armoured form standing over him.
I’d overridden the stealth function. I wanted him to see me. The whole of the
front of his tunic was soaked in his blood. I placed one armoured foot on his
stomach, just lightly. Not pressing, not yet. He lay very still, looking up at
me with wide, frightened eyes. Like a deer brought down at the end of the chase.
"Talk," I said. "And I’ll let you call for help."
"I can’t…"
"Talk. You don’t have to die here. You don’t have to die slowly
and horribly…"
"What do you want to know?"
I’m pretty sure I was bluffing. Pretty sure. But the Drood
reputation goes a long way. I pressed my foot down a little, and he yelled,
blood spurting from his mouth.
"What the hell do you think I want to know?" I said.
"All right, all right! Jesus, take it easy, man. Fight’s over,
okay? Look; we just wanted the Soul of Albion, you know? We got directions, all
the details, everything we needed on where to find you, and a guarantee that no
one would come to help you. The information came from…inside the Drood family.
Don’t hurt me! I’m telling the truth, I swear I am! We got the word from someone
high up in the family. I don’t know why, exactly; I’m not high enough in the
organisation to be trusted with information like that. I’m just a pilot!"
I considered this, while the pilot lay very still under my
armoured foot. He was breathing heavily, sweat soaking his colourless face. Too
terrified to lie. Someone in my family wanted me dead, wanted it badly enough to
sacrifice the Soul of Albion itself…Why? I’m not that important. I looked down
at the pilot, ready to question him some more, but he was dead. I couldn’t bring
myself to feel bad about it. He would have seen me dead without a second
thought.
I went back to the Hirondel. It was scorched and blackened from
fire and smoke, riddled with bullet holes, and most of the paint was gone from
the bonnet…but she still seemed basically intact. Much like me, really. I leaned
in through the open door and retrieved the Soul’s lead-lined container. So much
death and destruction over such a small thing. I opened the box to check it was
okay, and the Soul wasn’t there. Lying in the red plush velvet was a simple
homing device broadcasting my location to one and all. I took it out and crushed
it in my golden fist.
I’d never had the Soul of Albion. Somewhere along the line,
someone had worked a switch. And the only way that could have happened…was with
the Matriarch’s sanction. She would have known immediately if anything had
happened to the Soul. And if she knew about the homing device, she knew about
everything. It all made sense now. Only the Matriarch could have arranged for
this much motorway to be sealed off and be sure of clearing up all the mess
afterwards. The Matriarch had sent me off on a wild-goose chase, sent me out
here to die. My own grandmother had thrown me to the wolves. But why? Why would
she do that?