Natasha Chang waved her piece of secret tech around, almost aimlessly, as though wafting clouds of bug spray on the night air, but wherever she pointed the thing, generic men would just softly and silently vanish away. Gone, disappeared, banished out of existence. I had no idea whether they were dead or not, but given Natasha Chang’s reputation, I had my suspicions. She laughed like a child as she stepped daintily over dead bodies, making men disappear forever.
Dead Boy just hit everyone who came within reach. He advanced happily into the ranks of the generic men, lashing out with the terrible strength of his dead arms. Flesh and bone broke under his blows, but he felt nothing, nothing at all. Hands grabbed at him from every side, fastening on to the deep purple greatcoat, but all their strength put together wasn’t enough to stop him, or even slow him down. He punched heads and smashed faces, broke arms and backs and necks, striking everyone down who came at him, hammering generic men to the ground and then happily trampling them into the bloody dirt. They couldn’t hurt him, and they couldn’t frighten him, because the worst possible thing had already happened to him, years before.
Bruin Bear and the Sea Goat brought up the rear. And when the generic men would push past the rest of us, hoping to attack us from the rear, they came face to face with the Bear, and stopped dead in their tracks. Because they had never seen anything like him before. They bowed their heads and bent their knees to him, and adored him. Because he was that sort of Bear. And they had waited all their lives to meet someone like him, without ever knowing it. The Bear moved slowly, steadily forward, smiling on them all, patting them on their lowered heads with his fuzzy paw. The Sea Goat stuck close behind him, watching carefully, but his shillelagh was never needed.
Finally, I fought my way up a grassy slope to reach the Casino Infernale hotel. The generic men fought ever more desperately, but they couldn’t stop me. I reached the front door to the lobby, and Molly was immediately there at my side. I kicked the door in, and the two of us burst into the deserted lobby. I spun around and locked the door, and my uncle Jack was right there to set his back against the locked door and defy anyone to get past him. To buy Molly and me time to find the Shadow Bank’s head-quarters. Because they would have to kill him to get past him, and there weren’t many good enough to take down Jack Drood.
But, it did rather put the pressure on me, to get a move on.
I armoured down, and Molly and I leaned on each other for a moment, to get our breath back. Killing is hard work, slaughter even more so.
“All right,” Molly said finally. “What do we do now? That hopefully doesn’t involve any actual effort, or even strenuous movement.”
I looked around the lobby. The place was completely deserted, and eerily quiet. “Well,” I said. “I was hoping to ask a member of the staff for directions, but . . .”
“They probably grabbed the petty cash and ran for their lives the moment it became clear everything was going tits up,” said Molly. “I would have. I did check there weren’t any people present, before I brought the hotel here. I do think these things through! Because I know you worry about things like that. . . . What are we looking for, exactly?”
“Computers,” I said. “Records of financial transactions, details on all their clients. Everything the generic people need to run the Shadow Bank. They’ve got to be here somewhere. . . .”
“It’s a hell of a big hotel,” said Molly. “We haven’t got time to search it top to bottom.”
“Ah!” I said. “Where is the one place we went that drove the people in charge here absolutely batshit?”
“Parris’ private office!” said Molly. “And since I’ve already been there, I have enough coordinates for a personal teleport!”
“Do you have enough magic left for that?” I said carefully. “Only I’d hate for only part of us to make it there. . . . Wouldn’t it be easier to find a dimensional door and use that?”
Molly looked at me pityingly. “Would you trust one, right now? Or even the elevators?”
“Good point,” I said. “Almost certainly booby-trapped. It’s what I’d do. But, are you sure you’ve got enough magic. . . .”
“Shut up, and let me concentrate,” said Molly. She scowled deeply. Beads of sweat popped out on her forehead. She snapped her fingers, and just like that, we were in Parris’ private office.
We’d only just arrived when Molly cried out and grabbed on to me to stop herself from falling. I held her up, and glared about me, but there was no obvious threat anywhere.
“What is it, Molly?”
“A null!” said Molly. “There’s a major null operating here! Ripped the last of the magic right out of me. Bastards!”
“Hold on, Molly,” I said.
I subvocalised my activating Words, and my armour slammed into place around me. Because there isn’t a null big enough anywhere to keep a Drood from his armour. I glared about me through my golden mask, with all its augmented vision, and it took me only a moment to track down the null generator. I could See it clearly, hidden behind a wall. I lowered Molly carefully onto the nearest chair, behind the desk, and hurried over to the wall. I ripped it apart with my golden hands, and wood and plaster flew in all directions. The generator stretched all along the wall, a thin layer of unfamiliar high tech, with moving parts and glittering lights. I plunged both hands into the exposed machinery and tore it apart, piece by piece, glancing back over my shoulder to see what effect I was having. Molly remained slumped in her chair, her face worryingly slack, until I finally found the right piece to destroy. And then all the lights in the wall went out and Molly sat bolt upright, smiling widely with relief.
“Oh, that is so much better!” she said loudly. “That’s it. I’m back. I hadn’t realised how low I was running till I didn’t have anything left to keep me going.” She grinned at me. “I knew there had to be a reason why I kept you around.”
I armoured down, and went back to join her at the desk. Molly quickly used her magic to override the desk’s security systems, and the built-in computer immediately showed her where the hidden switch was. She hit it, and the whole wall behind her slid smoothly to one side, revealing a huge open area beyond, packed full of computers and high-tech equipment.
“We were so close, all along, and never knew it,” said Molly.
“We weren’t completely ourselves then,” I said consolingly.
“Bloody well are now,” growled Molly. “Come on, let’s go take a look around, and see what trouble we can cause.”
“That’s always worked for me,” I said.
We moved cautiously forward into the computer room. A large, gleaming white hall, full of rows of massive machines, towering above us, falling away in every direction. We wandered between rows of machines I didn’t even recognise, let alone understand, like children who had ventured into adult territory for the first time. It was hard not to be overawed by the sheer scale of things. . . . but, we had been to the Martian Tombs.
“I think . . . we are looking at the financial records and dealings of every suspect organisation in the world,” I said. “Probably a lot of political stuff, too, the kind of things most of us are never supposed to know about. The Shadow Bank couldn’t do what it needs to do if it didn’t have political support . . . all the secret deals, the hidden agreements, all the bribes and blackmail of the private world. All here. Makes the actual Crow Lee Inheritance look small. . . .”