Live and Let Drood

besides, there were no innocent bystanders on the grounds of Crow Lee’s house.
    Molly shouldered me aside. “How many times do I have to tell you, Eddie Drood, that I am quite capable of looking after myself?”
    She strode deliberately into the hail of bullets. All the soldiers were firing at us now, the roar of automatic weaponry deafening at such close range. Molly had a protective screen firmly in place that gathered up all the bullets that came at her and held them in midair, hovering before her. One by one the soldiers stopped firing, lowered their weapons and just stood there, looking at her in a dazed and demoralised sort of way. Molly snapped her fingers once and all the bullets dropped out of the air to bounce lightly on the grass at her feet.
    And while the mercenary soldiers were coping with that, Molly raised her hands in the stance of summoning, forced out a few really nasty Words, and a great storm wind rose out of nowhere and came sweeping across the open lawns, howling and buffeting and blasting through anything that got in its way. It picked up the soldiers and threw them about like an angry child. They went flying this way and that, tumbling end over end before crashing to earth again some distance away. The roaring wind picked up the abstract sculptures and smashed them against one another, uprooting the smaller hedge creatures and sending them bobbing and tumbling across the lawns. Molly brought her arms down sharply, and the wind broke off abruptly.
    Half a dozen soldiers had dug in, hanging on to the heavier statues. Molly snapped her fingers briskly and lightning bolts stabbed down to incinerate the mercenaries. Black smoke and the smell of roast pork carried across the grounds on a gusting breeze. Molly turned to look at me.
    “Are you going to give me a hard time over killing a few professional soldiers who were quite definitely prepared to kill you and me?”
    “No,” I said.
    “Ah…” said Molly. “You know, I had a response ready for pretty much everything except that. Are you sure you’re not upset?”
    “No,” I said. “They weren’t interested in taking prisoners, and neither am I. Every one of these mercenary bastards gave up all their human rights when they signed on to work for the Most Evil Man in the World. They’re standing between me and the rescue of my lost family. Kill them all and let the Devil sort them out.”
    “This isn’t like you, Eddie,” said Molly.
    “I never had my whole family taken away before,” I said.
    Molly looked like she wanted to say something else, but a whole new army of mercenary soldiers suddenly appeared out of nowhere, just blinking into existence in large groups all around us. Molly and I moved quickly to stand back-to-back. It was the same professional types in the same bluff uniforms, but this time much better armed. They had glowing swords and axes, shining bitterly with dangerous energies; Hands of Glory with sulphur-yellow flames dancing at the end of waxed fingers; even a few elven wands. Though given how gingerly their owners were handling them, the wands clearly hadn’t come with an instruction manual. I almost felt sorry for the poor bastards holding them. Elves live to screw humans over, and they never sell anything they don’t booby-trap first. Their sense of humour…isn’t ours.
    The soldiers carrying glowing axes and swords advanced on me, and I went cheerfully forward to meet them. The heavy blades smashed and shattered against my armour, and the metal pieces stopped glowing before they even hit the grass. I didn’t feel a thing, and my armour wasn’t even scratched. On the few occasions where the blades just rebounded, I snatched the weapons out of their shocked owners’ hands and broke them in two with my golden gauntlets.
    They retreated rapidly, and a soldier stepped forward holding his blazing Hand of Glory out before him. A Hand of Glory can uncover any secret, open any lock, take command of any magic. The soldier tried to use the Hand’s power to take control of my armour away from me and force it back into my torc. To leave me revealed and vulnerable. But mine was a Drood torc, and more than a match for a dead man’shand with candles for fingers. The magic rebounded, all the yellow flames blew out in a moment and the Hand just withered and closed in on itself, forced into a harmless fist. The soldier shook the dead Hand hard a few times, like that was going to help, and then fell quickly back to