Live and Let Drood

the built-in destructive energies would scatter you across several counties,” I said. “In fact, don’t even look at them funny.”
    Molly scowled. “Why couldn’t he just settle for barbed wire and broken glass, like anyone else?”
    “Because he’s the Most Evil…”
    “Hell with it,” said Molly. “Let’s go in through the Merlin Glass.This short a jump; the Glass should be able to punch right through the protections.”
    “Given that Crow Lee has to have been contemplating that very possibility for some time,” I said, “I think not. He could interrupt our journey and send us somewhere else. Or just hold us there, trapped between places, forever.”
    “Yeah…” said Molly. “That’s what I’d do. So, how are we going to get in?”
    “Simple,” I said.
    I armoured up, took Molly in my arms and jumped right over the tall iron gates. We soared easily over them, my golden feet coming nowhere near the black iron, and then I dropped down into the wide-open grounds beyond. Behind us, the sat nav called miserably after us.
    “Don’t leave me here on my own! Bastards! I’ll tell the Regent on you!”
    I landed on the far side of the gates, my armoured legs absorbing the impact. Though the landing did drive my feet a good three or four inches into the rich green grass. I straightened up and put Molly down. She immediately stamped away from me, brushing fiercely at her dress, and glared about her, ready for action. I took a good look around, but there was no one there. It appeared we had the grounds all to ourselves. I armoured down and tugged my feet carefully out of the depressions I’d made. Molly glared at me.
    “Next time, a little warning!”
    “You might have said no,” I pointed out reasonably. “And, besides, you’re always telling me I need to be more spontaneous.”
    We took our time looking around us, checking out the pleasant open grounds surrounding Crow Lee’s old-fashioned manor house. Huge lawns, massive flower beds with neatly regimented rows of colour and a whole zoo of hedge sculptures of fantastic animals. Rearing unicorns with flailing hooves and vicious horns, manticores with roaring lions’ heads and stingers on the tails, giant killer apes beating at theirmassive chests, and a huge tyrannosaurus towering over all the others, its great wedge head full of spiky green teeth.
    “Really don’t care for hedge animals,” I said. “They’re not moving now, but they’ve got that look about them…especially the T. rex .”
    “Far too obvious,” said Molly. “Probably just a distraction to keep us from noticing the real threat.”
    “I know a real threat when I see one, and I am looking at one right now,” I said firmly. “I don’t suppose you thought to bring any weed killer?”
    “Why is it always my job to think of things like that?”
    “Because you’re the practical one. Or so you keep telling me.”
    “Look at the size of that greenhouse,” said Molly, pointing off to one side. “What have they got in there—their own private jungle?”
    I looked where she was pointing, and she was right. I’d never seen a greenhouse that big. It was packed full of strange and wondrous plants, thrashing and beating against the insides of the glass panels. Massive flowers with thick pulpy petals that opened and closed as though shouting green threats at us, while thorns like knitting needles stabbed wildly at everything around them. The colours were rich and overpowering, almost hypnotic in their intensity.
    “Let’s not go in there,” I said.
    Molly sniffed. “You never give me flowers.”
    Scattered across the wide-open lawns were any number of large abstract sculptures, all holes and curves and sudden turns. The shapes seemed to shift and change subtly when you weren’t looking at them directly. None of the shapes made any obvious sense, but still somehow gave the impression that they might, if you stared at them long enough. And got close enough…I didn’t think I would.
    Molly and I wandered through the grounds, taking our time. No one had arrived to challenge our right to be there. There was just the one great fountain in the midst of everything: a tall statue of a young woman fashioned from some old dark stone, endlessly screaming, arms outstretched, as though pleading for help that never came. Discoloured water poured from her distorted mouth, falling into a great circularpond full of murky water in which very large fish darted back and forth. Molly