"The family's spent far too long at war with the supernatural," Alexandra said briskly. "Spending our lives in their countless secret wars just to maintain their precious status quo. The time has come to put an end to all the wars, by winning once and for all. We will wipe out everything that isn't human, isn't natural. No more magics, only dependable, rational science. We'll make the world a cleaner, simpler place. A human world, where human destiny is controlled only by humans."

"No more magic?" said Molly. "No more miracles, no more winged unicorns, no more dancing on moonbeams or laughter in the wild woods?"

"Oh, we'll probably keep a few of you around," said Matthew. "As pets."

"With the Drood family in charge," said Molly.

"Of course," said Alexandra. "No more hiding our light in the shadows, doing good from a distance. We've earned our time in the spotlight. We've been planning this for so long...Only you came so terribly close to derailing everything, Eddie."

"I did?" I said. "How very like me."

"We were the ones who found and reprogrammed the Karma Catechist," said Matthew. "We planned to use his acc.u.mulated knowledge in the coming war. Only the process went wrong...He'd been through so many hands, you see, down the years. So many different groups with their different views and aims. I have to tell you, Eddie, the inside of his head was a real mess. So we slipped the poor fellow into Saint Baphomet's very secretly to be repaired. By certain medical experts sympathetic to the cause of Manifest Destiny."

"And then you came along," said Alexandra. "What were you doing in his room anyway, Eddie? It wasn't part of your mission. You weren't even supposed to be on his floor! But you never could be trusted to just do the job...We couldn't risk what he might have told you about us and our plans. He knew our names, knew everything. And we just knew you wouldn't go along with what we'd all worked so hard to bring about...So we whispered in the Matriarch's ear, told her you deliberately murdered the Karma Catechist because you were a part of Manifest Destiny. It really wasn't that difficult to convince her. You always were the black sheep of the family. A rogue in all but name. We persuaded her that you were a clear and present danger to the family, and Eddie...she signed your death warrant without even hesitating. Terrible old woman."

Matthew grinned broadly. "We always knew the way to power was through her. So we...cultivated her. Fed her paranoia. We might not have been council members, but we were her favourites for years, and she kept nothing from us."

"He never told me anything," I said harshly. "The Karma Catechist. He killed himself first. This...everything that's happened...it was all completely unnecessary. All for nothing."

Alexandra shrugged. "We gave him the poison tooth and programmed him to use it if he felt at all compromised. Perhaps we shouldn't have given him such a hair trigger on the thing. But it doesn't make any difference. You've actually been very useful to us, Eddie. You made such a wonderfully visible scapegoat, holding the family's attention while we quietly put our plans into operation."

"We would have had to destabilise and weaken the family first anyway before we could take control," said Matthew. "But now you've done that for us! You've demoralised the family, taken out most of their heavy hitters, and destroyed the Matriarch by destroying her beloved Alistair. James is dead, Jack is dead-"

"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 h.e.l.l 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. .h.i.t 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 b.a.l.l.s 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 t.i.ts," 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. "d.a.m.n 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 Sanct.i.ty'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 Sanct.i.ty and ran through, pulling the door shut behind us.

And as the door closed, the screaming began.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.

Heart Breaker S tanding there in the Sanct.i.ty, with the door slamming shut behind me, I felt like a vandal breaking into a cathedral. The Heart blazed before me, shining like the sun, so bright I had to force myself to look at it. A single ma.s.sive, magnificent diamond, so big it filled most of the huge chamber my family had built to contain and protect it all those centuries ago. Just standing in the presence of the Heart took my breath away, made me feel small and insignificant in its presence. But I didn't believe that anymore. I knew better now. I glared into the light, refusing to look away or bow my head, even as the simmering light seemed to blaze right through me, seeing everything in my mind and in my soul.

The feeling of awe snapped off just like that. The light was just as bright, the Heart was just as huge, but its presence wasn't overpowering anymore. It was just a really big diamond. I heard Molly make a soft, relaxed sound at my side as she felt the sudden change too, and I started guiltily as I realised I'd forgotten she was even there. The Heart's presence could do that to you. Molly and I advanced slowly on the Heart until we were almost close enough to touch it. The curving side of the diamond rose up before us like a multifaceted cliff face, but there was no trace of our reflections. The light blazing from inside the Heart overpowered everything else. I could feel the light on my skin, crawling slightly, like I had dived into an icy cold pond. And for the first time I got the impression that the Heart knew I was there, knew why I had come, and that it was looking directly at me.

"h.e.l.lo, Eddie," said the Heart. Its voice was warm and friendly, male and female, and it seemed to come from everywhere at once. "Normally I take great pains to maintain a suitably spiritual and refined atmosphere in here, manipulating the emotions of all who come before me, so as to keep everyone in a properly respectful att.i.tude. But there's no point with you, is there? You know my little secret, and you came here for the truth. Poor boy. As if your little mind could contain or appreciate all my truths."

"You can talk?" I said. A bit obvious, I know, but I was honestly shocked. The Heart had never spoken to any Drood that I knew of, not since it made the original bargain with my Druid ancestors.

"Are you really so surprised to find that I'm a living, thinking thing?" said the Heart. "Not all intelligence is based in meat."

"Did you really come here from another dimension?" said Molly, just to make it clear she wasn't being left out of anything.

"From a higher dimension," said the Heart. "What can I say; I always did have a thing for slumming."

"Why have you never spoken before?" I said.

"I have," said the Heart. "But only to the ruling Matriarch of your tribe. By long tradition, each Matriarch has to agree to continue our long-standing bargain. Bind her family to me, body and soul. And in return, I grant you all just a little of my power. I speak to you only now, Eddie, because you carry Oath Breaker. Nasty little thing. I've been trying to persuade your family to get rid of it for generations."

"Because it could destroy you," said Molly.

"Of course," said the Heart.

"Why did you come here?" I said harshly. I was so close to answers now, I could barely stand it. I wanted to know everything. I'd come so far, lost so much, and I could feel Death herself tapping on my shoulder as the strange matter moved through me...but whatever happened here, I was to determined to know the truth at last. "You were on the run, weren't you? Being chased across the dimensions by something that scared you. So what did you do, that you had to download yourself into this small, primitive dimension?"

"I was just having a little fun," said the Heart. Its voice had changed subtly. It still sounded warm and friendly and ingratiating, but underneath it sounded like it enjoyed pulling the wings off flies, or stamping on b.u.t.terflies, just because it could. "I like to play. And if sometimes I play a little too roughly and break my toys, well...there are always more toys."

"Toys?" I said. "Is that all we are to you?"

"What else could you be? Such limited, short-lived things; you flicker in and out so fast I can hardly keep track of you. I have lived for millennia!"

"And you can't think of anything better to do than play with toys?" said Molly.

"To be loved and worshipped and obeyed without question," said the Heart happily. "What could be more important than that?"

"And if your toys ever dare to rebel?" I said.

"Then I crush them," said the Heart. "Toys must know their place. That's why I allowed you in here, Eddie. I made you what you are. I gave you the gift of my golden collar, and you wore it for years like the good little doggie you are. But it's still my collar."

The torc around my neck burned icy cold as the golden living metal swept over and around me in a moment, even though I hadn't called it. The armour enclosed me like a prison cell, insulating me from the world and holding me helpless within. I said the activating Words again and again, but nothing happened. I strained my arms and legs against the encasing metal, but the armour held me still. I wasn't in control anymore. The Heart was. I was just a gleaming golden puppet now, with a man trapped inside it.

"Kill the woman," the Heart said happily, greedily, and the armour moved to obey, advancing on Molly despite everything I could do to stop it.

Molly called out to me as the armour closed in on her, but she couldn't hear my answer. And since the Heart took up most of the s.p.a.ce in the Sanct.i.ty, there wasn't really anywhere for her to go. She backed away around the perimeter of the great chamber, trying to keep a safe distance between her and the advancing armour. There were two exits out of the Sanct.i.ty, but she had to know the armour would be upon her before she could even open a door. I was screaming the activating Words now, and screaming at Molly to get away, but none of it got past the featureless golden mask that covered my face.

Molly realised she couldn't reach me and stood her ground. Her face became calm and coldly resolved. She conjured up a roaring storm wind that came howling in out of nowhere, sweeping the air before it like a battering ram. It tried to pick me up and blow me away, but my armour grew heavy spikes out of the bottom of its golden feet and anch.o.r.ed itself to the wooden floor. The wind battered harmlessly against my golden exterior, failed to find any purchase, and dropped away to nothing. The armour took a step forward.

Molly conjured up handfuls of h.e.l.lfire and threw them at me. Flames from the deepest part of the Pit, designed to sear both body and soul, and still they couldn't touch me through the golden armour. The flames scoured and blackened the floor around me, and the air shimmered in a vicious heat haze, but I felt nothing. The armour took a step forward.

Monsters appeared out of nowhere to block my path. Huge, awful creatures, with armoured hides and lashing barbed tentacles and wide snapping mouths full of razor teeth. But the armour walked right through the illusions to get to Molly. She backed away, dismissing the illusions with a wave of her hand, and conjured up a bottomless pit between her and me. The effort brought beads of sweat to her face. The armour leaped easily over the gap to stand before her, propelled by the unnatural strength of its armoured legs. Molly called up a shimmering screen of pure magic to stand between her and me. It snapped and crackled on the air, supported by her iron will. The armour placed a single golden hand against the screen and pushed slowly, remorselessly, with all the armour's boundless strength behind it.

Until the screen shattered and broke and disappeared, and Molly fell back, crying out in shock and pain. Because in the end Molly was human, and the armour wasn't.

Molly was clearly exhausted now, all her inner resources drained. She stumbled backwards, away from me, clinging to the wall for support, and the armour went after her. Its deadly golden hands stretched out towards her, and there wasn't a d.a.m.ned thing I could do to stop it.

"Eddie," said Molly, in a voice trying hard to be calm and steady, "I hope you can hear me in there. I know this...isn't you. I've done all I can. It's up to you to stop the armour now. But if you can't...I want you to know I understand. I understand it won't be you, doing it. So don't blame yourself. Just...find a way to make the Heart pay. Good-bye, Eddie. My one true love."

I couldn't even answer her.

I'd exhausted all my strength, fighting helplessly inside the armour. Setting my human strength against its inhuman power. I couldn't move any part of me except as the armour moved me. It was like having my hand disobey me, pick up a weapon, and commit murder, while I could only watch and scream helplessly at it to stop. It didn't help that so much stress had weakened my defences, and the strange matter had flooded into all of my body now. I could feel it pulsing within me. The pain was sickening, and I was so weak I would probably have fallen if the armour hadn't been holding me up. I was so tired. I'd fought for so long, refusing to give in, and all for nothing.

And then a little voice at the back of my head said, Then stop fighting, you idiot. The voice didn't sound anything like mine. It didn't sound like the Heart's, either. So I took a gamble and stopped fighting.

I let the weakness flood through me, taking all the strength from my arms and legs. I stopped resisting and let the strange matter do what it would. I gave up...and the armour lurched to a sudden halt. Its golden hands stopped a few inches short of Molly's throat, and then slowly and ponderously the armour sank to its knees before her. Because the torc was linked to me, body and soul, and even the Heart couldn't break that link. The armour is only ever as strong as the man within, and this man...had nothing left. The golden living metal rippled over my skin, struggling to obey the Heart's orders, but it was overridden by my stubborn weakness, backed by the strange matter's presence in my body. A small amount of control came back to me, and I slowly forced the golden metal away from my face so Molly could see and hear me. She crouched down before me, and I think she could see death in my face. She started to cry.

"Sorry, Molly," I said. "But this is as far as I go. We always knew I probably wouldn't get to see the end of the story...The strange matter's all through me now. Only one thing left you can do for me now. Quickly, before the Heart finds a way to force control of the armour away from me, take Torc Cutter and cut the torc around my neck. That destroys the armour. It won't be able to hurt you. Then take Oath Breaker and smash that smug talking diamond into a million pieces."

"I can't do that, Eddie! It'll kill you!"

"I'm dying anyway! Do it, Molly. Please. Protect yourself. At least this way...my death will have some meaning. Some purpose."

"Eddie..."

"If you love me, kill me. Because I'd rather die than see you hurt."

"I wish things could have been different."

"Me too. Good-bye, Molly. My one true love."

I lowered my golden head, showing her my neck. Already my movements were getting stiff as the Heart fought to regain control. Molly produced the ugly black shears and set them against the side of my golden neck. Somewhere in the background, the Heart was shouting orders, but neither of us was listening. Molly forced the shears together, and the black blades cut through my torc. My golden armour disappeared in a moment, and the two halves of my golden collar fell to the floor.

And I laughed out loud as new strength flooded through me.

I rose to my feet, still laughing, and lifted Molly up with me as she stared blankly into my face. She started to laugh herself from sheer relief. I took her in my arms and held her close, and she held me, and I felt strong and well and at peace at last. Molly and I clung on to each other for what seemed like forever, and it felt good, so good to be alive. Finally we let go and stood back and looked into each other's faces.

"Eddie, you're alive..."

"I know! Isn't it great?"

"How...Eddie, there's a collar around your throat. And it's silver."