“I have my power, and I have my shields,” he said. “You can’t kill me, and you can’t stop me.”
“Wrong,” said the Armourer. He raised his clicker, snapped it once, and the magics surrounding Dusk’s hands disappeared. He looked at his hands dumbly for a moment, and then looked back at us. The Armourer smiled. “There are all kinds of clickers. Eddie, would you care to . . . ?”
I stepped forward and jumped up onto the stage. MacAlpine backed quickly away, but Dusk was still too stunned to move. He opened his mouth to say something, and I grew a long golden sword from my right hand and cut off his head. The body slumped to the stage, gouting blood. The head fell to the stage, rolled over the edge and ended up at the Sarjeant’s feet. The mouth was still moving, until the Sarjeant stamped on it. And that was the end of Alexandre Dusk.
I looked at Philip MacAlpine and he snarled back at me. “You can’t have me!” he said, his voice high and ragged. “I don’t care what you’ve got. I made a deal! It was promised to me that nothing in the world can harm me.”
“Hell always lies,” I said. “Except when a truth can hurt you more. You should know how deals with the Devil always work out.”
“I can’t be harmed! My own people tried to kill me in a hundred different ways, hoping to replace me as leader. I have drunk poison, soaked up bullets, laughed at curses! Nothing can touch me anymore. Your armour is worthless against me.”
“Yeah, right,” said the Sarjeant, behind me. He strode forward across the stage and launched a golden fist at MacAlpine’s head with enough force to tear it clean off the man’s shoulders. Except suddenly, impossibly, MacAlpine’s hand came up to intercept it. The golden fist slammed harmlessly into MacAlpine’s palm, stopped dead. And while everyone watched, MacAlpine closed his hand hard and crushed the serjeant’s hand inside his armour. He couldn’t break the golden strange matter, but he could destroy the hand inside it. We all heard the bones break and shatter. The Sarjeant grunted once. MacAlpine let go, and the Sarjeant fell back a step, nursing his injured hand to his chest. He didn’t cry out.
The Armourer looked at MacAlpine thoughtfully. “I wonder what a golden ax would do to his neck?”
“Don’t,” I said. “He really is protected. Sarjeant, have all the wounded been evacuated? Is there anyone else left in the castle?”
“All gone,” said the Sarjeant.
“Then let’s get the hell out of Schloss Shreck, and leave MacAlpine here. Sealed inside the Timeless Moment forever.”
“Ah,” said the Armourer. “We have a slight problem there. As I tried to tell you . . .”
I looked at him. “What?”
“When we smashed the teleport systems, we accidentally set off a self-destruct mechanism,” said the Armourer. “Designed to seal off the Timeless Moment so nothing could get in or out. One last dog-in-the-manger stratagem . . . We found the destruct mechanism, but its workings are protected by powerful shields. We can’t get at it. The best we can do is keep resetting the timer every sixty seconds. There’s a Drood doing that right now. The trouble is . . . the self-destruct mechanism is so powerful it’s affecting Alpha Red Alpha. Basically, if the destruct mechanism goes off, our machine will be destroyed, too. And Alpha Red Alpha takes a lot more than sixty seconds to fire up. We’d be stuck in here forever. Which means . . .”
“One of us has to stay here,” said the Sarjeant. “To keep resetting the timer until after the Hall has safely gone.”
Some days, the hits just keep on coming.
“I’ll stay,” the Sarjeant said. “I know my duty. My job is to protect the family.”
“No,” I said. “It has to be me.”
“Why?” said the Armourer. “Why does it always have to be you, Eddie?”
“Because I led us in here,” I said. “I know my duty. Anything for the family. Take me to the self-destruct mechanism, Uncle Jack. Sarjeant, get everyone else out of here.”
“Fair enough,” said the Sarjeant.
“No!” said MacAlpine. “You’re not going anywhere!”
He surged forward, his hands reaching for my throat. I whipped out the Merlin Glass, activated it and slapped it over MacAlpine. And the Glass sent him away.
“Where did you send him?” said the Sarjeant.
“Back to the cryogenic chambers,” I said. “To play with the other monsters.”
“The Glass!” said the Sarjeant. “You could wait till the last minute, then use it to transport you to the Hall just as we’re leaving!”
“No,” said the Armourer. “I’ve shut down the shields here, but the castle’s main protections still hold. They won’t let the Glass transfer anything out of the castle. I’m sorry, Eddie, if that’s what you were counting on. . . .”
“I wasn’t,” I said. “But we can use it to jump to the mechanism, can’t we?”
“Of course,” he said. “Take the family home, Sarjeant. Prepare Alpha Red Alpha. As soon as I return, we’re leaving.”
The Merlin Glass followed the Armourer’s instructions and delivered the two of us to a small back room full of strange old-fashioned equipment: great bulky stuff, with lots of vacuum tubes and heavy wiring. One large grey box was ticking down the seconds. The armoured Drood standing next to it hit the reset button, and the timer returned to counting down the minute. The Armourer gave the Drood his marching orders, and sent him back to the Sarjeant through the Glass. Which left him and me and the box.
“Don’t ask me what it is, or how it interferes with Alpha Red Alpha,” said the Armourer. “The people who worked here originally let their minds run in some pretty strange directions. I could spend months here taking things apart. . . . But we haven’t got months.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I know what to do. Time for you to go, Uncle Jack.”
He armoured down to show me his face. He looked like someone grieving at a funeral. “It isn’t fair, Eddie. You’ve done so much for the family. . . . I’m an old man. I should stay.”
“No,” I said immediately. “They need you to work Alpha Red Alpha. And besides, you’re far too valuable to the family. What would the Droods do without their Armourer? Someone has to do this. And I need to do it.”
“Why?”
“Penance,” I said. “And no, you don’t get to ask what for.”
“You were always my favourite nephew,” said the Armourer. “I don’t . . . I don’t know what to say to you, Eddie.”
“Say good-bye to Molly for me,” I said. “Make sure she knows how much I always loved her.”
“She knows,” said Uncle Jack. “Eddie . . .”
“Yes?” I hit the reset button.
“I have to take the Merlin Glass with me. It’s no use to you here, and it’s far too valuable to the family to leave behind.”
“Of course,” I said. “Molly will be able to use it to help Alpha Red Alpha get you home safely.”
I handed the Glass over. The Armourer took it reluctantly.
“It was the best toy you ever gave me, Uncle Jack,” I said.
He looked like he desperately wanted to say something, but couldn’t. So we shook hands, very formally.
“You did good, Eddie,” he said. “You’re a credit to the family. You will be remembered.”
“Then make sure they remember the real me,” I said.
The Armourer nodded quickly, activated the Merlin Glass, stepped through it and was gone. I finally got to see what that looked like, as an observer, and it was every bit as freaky and disturbing as people said it was. And I was left alone in Schloss Shreck. Castle Horror.
I pulled up a chair and sat down beside the stubbornly counting self-destruct mechanism. I wondered how I’d know when the Hall was gone. . . . Best give it an hour, and then . . . What we do in Heaven’s gaze matters most. And one time pays for all.