Live and Let Drood

were doing? Battles in the hidden world are supposed to stay hidden from the everyday world! You don’t squabble in front of the children; everyone knows that!”
    “Look around you,” said Molly.
    It took me only a moment to see what she meant. There was traffic all around us; cars and taxis, white vans and cycle couriers…but not one of them was moving. Time had stopped around us. The drive-by and its intended victims were all caught in a single frozen moment, held between the tick and tock of the world’s clock. So the shootingcould take place without anyone noticing, until time started up again. The bus would be gone, and all that remained would be the bullet-ridden corpses of the victims. Just another mystery in the busy heart of London. Probably put it down to gangs.
    “A drive-by shooting,” I growled. “I hate them. I mean, come on. Is there anything more cowardly than a drive-by? Drive up at speed, spray bullets in every direction, hope you hit the right target among all the innocent bystanders and then run away. I want the creeps behind this, Molly. I want to explain to them the error of their ways. Let’s take a look inside the bus.”
    “Let’s,” said Molly. “I feel we should have words with these scumbags.”
    “Harsh words,” I said.
    We walked along the side of the big red double-decker bus. The windows remained darkly tinted and very firmly closed. Not a sound or a movement from inside. I came to the cab door, well above the ground, reached up with one golden hand, and casually tore out the whole door and threw it aside. The sound of rending metal was very loud in the quiet, followed by an equally loud reverberating clang as the door hit the ground. A massive gun barrel protruded from inside the cab, aimed directly into my face mask. I didn’t give the gun’s owner time to fire, just grabbed the long barrel and jerked the whole thing right out of his hands. There was a howl of pain and upset from inside the cab, from the gun’s owner, who hadn’t let go of his gun fast enough.
    I looked the gun over. Cheap Kalashnikov knock-off piece of shit. The assassin’s gun of choice when he hasn’t enough money for anything decent. I broke the thing in two and threw the pieces aside. Cheap guns and a drive-by shooting on a London double-decker didn’t really tie in with the sophistication of time control. Devices like that are hard to find, and they never come cheap. I peered into the cab, but there was no one at the wheel. The driver had retreated into the bus’s gloomy interior and was hidden among his fellow would-be assassins.
    “It’s not like we’ve any shortage of enemies,” Molly said behind me. “But I can’t think of anyone dumb enough to organise such a low-rentattack on us. I say we board the bus and bounce people off the walls until someone feels like telling us what’s going on here.”
    “Sounds like a plan to me,” I said.
    “And me,” said Diana, stepping elegantly out of a nearby shadow. She didn’t look in the least troubled or disturbed by what had just happened. Molly and I both made a point of not jumping even a little bit when she reappeared, just on general principle.
    “Regent of Shadows,” said Molly. “Much suddenly becomes clear. I take it you’re one of his Special Agents?”
    “Of course,” said Diana. “One of his first, in fact. We go way back, the Regent and me. You think he’d entrust your safety to just anyone? I am rather annoyed at the crudity of the attack, though. I’m used to better, quite frankly. Fiendish master plans and complicated death traps; that’s more my sort of thing. I say we go inside the bus and kick bottom!”
    “All right!” said Molly. “I’m starting to like you.…”
    “So pleased,” said Diana.
    I hauled myself up into the driver’s cab, looked into the gloomy interior and was immediately met with the roar of a heavy electronic cannon, one of those customised jobs that can pump out thousands of explosive fléchettes a second. Being a sporting sort, I braced myself and just stood there and took it. The bullets slammed into me like a solid mass, and the whole front of the bus, behind me, just disintegrated, blown away by the sheer concentrated firepower. My armour wasn’t bothered in the least.
    The problem with this particular kind of gun is that by its very nature it goes through a hell of a lot of bullets really quickly. The gun fell silent abruptly, and someone said, “ Oh, shit .” I stepped