Live and Let Drood

in the Distorter for one last time seizure. So I put together the best wild bunch I could, and came looking for you.” He glared about him. “I should have chosen more carefully. I’ll do better next time.”
    “There isn’t going to be a next time,” said Molly. “I really don’t believe in killing in cold blood, but for an Immortal I’ll make the effort. Some enemies are just too dangerous and too treacherous to be allowed to live. Don’t look at me like that, Eddie. There isn’t a cell that can holda shape-shifter like him, and you know it. And any word of surrender he gave you would be worthless. He’ll never stop coming after you.”
    “It’s not just me! There are lots of us out there!” the Immortal said defiantly. “Not just the few Immortals who escaped your massacre; all the people you ever fought, Drood! Everyone whose lives your family has ever interfered with or tried to stamp out! All your enemies, all the ones with good reason to hate you, come home to roost at last! The word is out…and we’re all coming for you. To wipe out the Last Drood. To take our revenge on you for everything your family did. We’ll never stop coming for you!”
    “Unless we send them a message,” I said, and something in my voice shut him up.
    “What kind of message did you have in mind?” said Diana.
    “I was thinking about sticking his severed head on a spike and leaving it somewhere prominent,” I said.
    “Eddie, you can’t!” said Diana.
    “Pretty sure I can,” I said.
    “Sounds good to me,” said Molly.
    Diana stepped forward to look right into my face. Her gaze was cold, her voice flat. “It’s in your file, Eddie. That you always said you were an agent, not an assassin.”
    “Yes,” I said. “Even now, after everything that’s happened, I still believe that. But sometimes you have to do something bad to prevent something worse. I have to put the fear of Drood into my enemies to keep them off my back while I get my family safely home again. You heard the little shit; they’re all out there, watching, waiting for me to show some sign of weakness. They think if they can drag me down, they can put an end to the Droods forever. And they might just be right. I’m the last hope my lost family has. If his severed head will hold them off, buy me some time…”
    Diana was already shaking her head fiercely. “This isn’t the Eddie Drood I heard so much about. The man whose career I followed for so long. The man I wanted so much to meet…”
    “Oh, my God,” said Molly. “She’s a fan.…”
    “Please, Eddie,” said Diana, staring earnestly into my face mask. “Don’t do this. There are other ways.…”
    “Such as?” said Molly.
    “Hand him over to me,” Diana said steadily. “I’ll deliver him safely to the Regent, and he’ll hand the Immortal over to the Hush Squad. Those telepaths could get answers out of a stone. He’ll tell them everything he knows about everyone he’s met, and what they’re planning.…”
    “No!” said the Immortal. “No! You’re not handing me over to them!”
    He produced an oversized pocket watch from somewhere and cranked the handle quickly. The Time Distorter. He thrust his hand forward, aiming the thing right at me, and a huge blast of time energy shot out of the watch, shimmering in the air with a hundred different possibilities. Like a distorting heat haze generating glimpses of a hundred alternate Futures. The time energies hit my armour and immediately rebounded, unable to get a grip. They blasted right back at the Immortal and sank into him, suffusing his Immortal cell structure with concentrated temporal energies. And just like that, he began to age.
    He became a young man and a middle-aged man and then an old man, all in the space of a few moments. The Immortal raised a shaking wrinkled hand in front of his sunken face and let out a low, sick cry of horror. Because the one thing Immortals can never do is age. They can change their shape to any appearance, young or old, but always with the knowledge that they can change it back again. They can die, but always as a teenager. It’s the way they’re built. Or cursed, depending on how you look at it. Either way, enforced aging was a hideous thing for an Immortal.
    He threw the Time Distorter on the floor and stamped on it, but it didn’t break and it didn’t change the way he looked.
    He glared at me with his old, shrivelled face, and for the first time there was something else in