Live and Let Drood

everything the reports said you were. I’m really quite impressed.”
    “Not bad yourself for an old girl,” Molly said grudgingly. “Can all the Regent’s people do what you do, jumping in and out of shadows?”
    “Oh yes,” said Diana. “The clue was always in the name. Apparently, the Regent acquired this very useful ability from the Hanged Man’s Clan, back when he was first on the run from his family. I say acquired ; another version of the story says he stole it, and I wouldn’t put it pasthim. The Regent has never had any problem with being…practical about matters of morality. When necessary. The shadow thing is very useful in our line of work. Do keep it to yourselves, my dears.”
    “I still want to know who was in charge of all this,” I said loudly. There was a certain amount of stirring among the beaten-down gunmen, but no one said anything.
    “Got to be one of these scumbags,” said Molly.
    “I don’t think so,” Diana said thoughtfully. “Take a look out the windows.…”
    We all leaned over the nearest bodies, which did their best to flinch out of the way, and looked outside. The windows weren’t tinted from the inside, and we had a clear view of the street. The cars and other traffic were all exactly where we’d left them, not moving at all, fixed in place in their frozen moment held outside of time.
    “So whoever stopped time is still in here with us,” I said. “Hiding in plain sight and hoping to go undiscovered. I can’t See him anywhere, even through my mask.”
    Molly looked slowly and carefully about her, and even hardened assassins avoided her gaze. She scowled. “I’m not Seeing any glamours or illusions, and no dimensional door he could have escaped through.…So he’s definitely still here in the bus with us, the arrogant little scrote.”
    “Hell with it,” I said. “I suppose I’ll just have to punch a hole in the petrol tank, set light to the whole bus and watch them all fry.”
    “It’s the only way to be sure,” Molly said solemnly.
    Diana looked at us sharply and was about to say something when a new voice spoke up suddenly from among the piled-up assassins.
    “All right! All right. Don’t do anything dramatic! I’m right here.…”
    And one of the most battered and bloodied-looking gunmen stood up abruptly. He shook himself briefly, and all his wounds disappeared, his whole shape changing as he became someone else. The hard-faced seasoned gunman was replaced in a moment by a sulky-looking teenage boy of no more than seventeen or eighteen. Wearing distressed jeans and a T-shirt bearing the legend Revenge Is Forever .
    “It’s an Immortal!” said Molly. “A flesh-dancer! No wonder I couldn’t detect his presence!”
    Diana looked at him thoughtfully. “So that’s what they look like. I’d heard they never aged past their teens, but…Eddie, I thought your family killed off all the Immortals when you raided their secret base at Castle Frankenstein.”
    “We got most of them,” I said.
    “Evil, vicious little bastards that they were,” said Molly.
    “But a few did get away,” I said. “Because they just deserted their own kind and ran, like rats deserting a sinking ship.” I walked up to the teenage Immortal, who flinched but didn’t back away. “So,” I said. “I thought the few of you who survived had gone to ground, hiding in squalid little bolt-holes in the armpits of the world. What brought you out of hiding to do something this dumb?”
    “You did,” said the Immortal defiantly. “Your family’s dead and gone, Drood, just like mine! I thought it was finally safe to show my face again, to start up my life again and make the world march to my tune, as it should! And then you turned up, the Last Drood, alone and vulnerable. How could I resist? How could I resist the chance to avenge my murdered family?”
    “One,” I said, “your family spent centuries exploiting and enslaving Humanity, just because you could, hiding behind your ever-changing faces. You tried to wipe out my family when we tried to stop you. Your family deserved everything it got, and then some. And two, a Drood is never vulnerable.”
    “Why a bus?” said Molly. “And why this bunch of underachievers?”
    The Immortal shrugged quickly. “Money was limited. I had to go with what I could afford. I took the Time Distorter with me when I left the castle. All of us took something, just grabbing whatever came to hand.…There was just enough energy left