Book 2 - Daemons Are Forever Read Online Free PDF Page B

Bentley down the long winding gravel path, and machine guns rose silently up out of hidden emplacements on either side of the road and followed us as we passed before sinking grudgingly back down beneath the grass again. Sprinklers spread their gentle haze across the sweeping lawns, and wandering peacocks called out their welcomes and warnings. Gryphons patrolled the grounds, their gazes fixed firmly on the near future, the perfect guardians and watchdogs. When they weren’t looking for something really foul and smelly to roll around in. I could sense force shields and magical screens snapping on and off ahead and behind us, as the Hall security systems recognised Molly and me, and let us pass. No one gets in uninvited.
    I slowed the Bentley down so Molly could enjoy the hedge mazes and the flower gardens, and the swans floating serenely on the lake. I liked showing off my home to her, even though she always went out of her way to seem unimpressed. And besides, I was in no hurry to get back to the Hall, and all the work and responsibilities that awaited me there. Why do you think I ran away in the first place?
    The Hall loomed up before us, dominating the horizon, the guardian at the gates of reality. The long-standing abode of the Drood family, and humanity’s last defence against the forces of darkness. It’s a miserable old dump, truth be told, draughty as hell and entirely innocent of modern innovations like central heating. I grew up thinking wearing long underwear from September to April was normal. The Hall is a huge sprawling old pile of a manor house, knocked up in Tudor times and much added to down the centuries. Currently home to some three thousand souls, all of them Droods. You can marry into the family, but not out of it. We’re like the Mafia; once in, never out. Unless you want to wake up with a unicorn’s head in bed next to you.
    I slammed the Bentley to a halt in a spray of flying gravel and parked right outside the Hall’s front door, mostly because I knew I wasn’t supposed to. Start as you mean to go on, that’s what I always say. Molly jumped out over the closed side door while I was still turning off the engine, and I scrambled out after her before she could start any trouble. If anyone was going to start any trouble, I wanted it to be me. First impressions are so important. We’d hardly made it through the front door and into the vestibule before a mob of angry family members descended upon us. It appeared they’d been waiting for some time to have a determined word in my ear, and they weren’t prepared to take
No, Not now
, or even
Go to hell
as an answer. They all started shouting questions and demands the moment they clapped eyes on me, constantly raising their voices to be heard, and actually pushing and shoving at each other in their eagerness to get to me first.
    Which was almost unheard of, in the disciplined, tightly structured, and almost feudal system that our family has followed for centuries. It seemed when I challenged authority and got away with it, I unleashed a flood tide of repressed resentments. The family wanted change, and it wanted it now, but unfortunately it couldn’t agree on just what should be changed, and how. Molly and I stood close together with our backs pressed up against the closed front door, as everyone in the crowd did their best to outshout each other. The din was appalling, and the faces before me were strained and ugly with anger, impatience and determination.
    I did my best to concentrate, trying to sort out some of what they were going on about. Some had questions about the new family policy, others wanted to know when they were going to get the new silver torcs, and a lot of them wanted to denounce other people as being against progress, or in favour of the wrong kind of progress, or just guilty of the sin of not agreeing with the speaker’s ideas. Some of the questions and demands were just flat-out impossible, no doubt designed to embarrass me and