From Hell With Love: A Secret Histories Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

Not one of them the kind of people even Droods like to cross without heavy weaponry and serious backup.
    Jerusalem Stark, the Knight Apostate, heretic and blasphemer. Used to be one of the London Knights, until he had a crisis of faith. Now he carries his dead love’s heart in a silver cage on his belt, right next to the sword he used to kill the Man who would be King. Then there was Prince Gaylord the Damned, Nuncio to the Court of King Artur, of Sinister Albion. Aunt Sally Darque, current Witch of Endor, and banned from every coven and gathering in Europe after that nasty affair at the Danse Academy in the German Black Forest. Three Dukes of Hell, attending via the possessed; two living Saints (stigmata permitting); and a Name I didn’t even want to think out loud, in case He heard me.
    “What the hell does Doctor Delirium think he’s doing, mixing with people like this?” I said. “He is not in their class. Nowhere near. He must know that. Hell, he won’t even get through the first round of bidding . . .”
    “There’s no way we could hope to infiltrate the auction with so many Major Players around,” said Luther. “That’s why I thought we should get here early, find a nice hiding place, wait for Doctor Delirium to show up, and then put the grab on him before he even enters the hotel. That way he doesn’t even get within spitting distance of the Apocalypse Door. Whatever that might turn out to be.”
    “Strike your enemy down from behind, when he’s not looking,” I said cheerfully. “That’s the Drood way. Though I think we’ll be better off hiding inside the hotel . . . That way we can sneak onto the top floor, grab the Word and the Apocalypse Door, and anything else worth acquiring, before we go home.”
    “What if the auction people find out it was us?” Luther said carefully. “I have to live in this town, remember? And if they catch us actually burgling their items, there could be major firepower, curses for everyone, and blood and slaughter all over the shop.”
    “Well, let’s not let that happen, then,” I said.
    We both looked the Magnificat Hotel over very carefully. To the everyday eye, it looked like just another really ugly, tasteless expensive building. But Luther and I are Droods, and when we choose, we can See the world as it is, and not as most people think it is. We both concentrated, and the torcs around our throats extended long filaments of strange matter, that shot up the sides of our faces to form really quite stylish golden sunglasses over our eyes. And through these special lenses we Saw the Magnificat as it really was—in every awful detail.
    Major security defences surrounded the hotel on every side, roiling and spitting on the air in tight little bundles of spite and malevolence. Force fields, magic screens, avoidance spells and Move along nothing to see here influences. Floating curses, proximity mindwipes, soul scramblers, and bottle demons lying buried under the hotel patio like so many red-eyed trap-door spiders. Screaming ghosts with terrible teeth and claws, just waiting to be unleashed, and a whole bunch of really nasty transformation spells just waiting to be activated. All kinds of nastiness, spreading out from the hotel in overlapping layers of appalling vileness. And up on the roof of the hotel . . .
    “Oh bloody hell,” I said. “Luther, do you See what I See, up on the roof? Is that what I think it is? It is, isn’t it? They’ve only got a bloody dragon up there!”
    “And not just any old dragon,” said Luther, craning his head right back. “Not one of those stupid and extremely ugly beasts the elves ride around on. That . . . is one of the Great Old Beasts of England. That is the Lampton Wyrm.”
    “You have got to be kidding,” I said. “Really? Who’d be crazy enough to dig that old horror up, and let it loose in the world? Is it tied down? Tell me it’s tied down! Tell you what, I’ll start running and you try and keep up.”
    “Look at