Live and Let Drood

again and again, hurting and pounding me even through my dissolving armour, I kept going. Taking everything he could throw at me, because nothing mattered, nothing else mattered except getting to him.
    And finally I stood there, right before him, half my armour gone and more falling away, and I snatched the monkey’s paw right out of Crow Lee’s hand. The tiny withered thing twisted and writhed inside my grasp, and I shook it hard until all its candles blew out. And then I threw the nasty thing on the floor and stamped on it hard with my golden foot two, three times. Crushing it with all my armour’s strength.I heard the little bones crack and break. And my armour reformed around me, smooth and untouched.
    “Mr. Stab!” screamed Crow Lee. “Time for you to do your duty! You shall have everything I promised you! Everything! Just stop the Drood!”
    I turned unhurriedly to look at Mr. Stab as he moved slowly forward from the window, a long blade suddenly in his hand, glowing bright.
    “I can reach you inside your armour,” said Mr. Stab. “My blade can cut anything; that’s part of what was given to me. And you know you can’t hurt me. You tried to kill me before, after I killed Penny. Cut my head right off…and I just put it back on again. You can’t stop me, Eddie, because nothing can. That’s what I bought all those years ago in the dark slums and back alleys of Whitechapel. Part of me wants to say, ‘I’m sorry it’s come to this.’ But I’m not, not really. This is what I was born to do. Anything else was just a dream.”
    And then we both stopped and looked around, as the sound of a roaring car engine drew rapidly closer. There were loud crashing noises of things breaking, shouts and screams and all the sounds of destruction, as something drove right through people and objects at speed. And then the scarlet-and-white Plymouth Fury crashed through the wall and the window, punching through the solid structure like it was nothing, to roar into the room and pounce on Mr. Stab. Ran him down and ran him over, and then screeched to a halt, leaving Mr. Stab pinned helplessly under the weight of the car.
    “I knew you were in trouble!” said the sat nav’s strident female voice from inside the car. “I could sense it. I’ve got really powerful sensors. I’ve been looking in all along, waiting for my moment. You didn’t think the Regent would give you just any old car, did you? I’m the Scarlet Lady, one of the Regent of Shadows’s best undercover agents! I…am your backup! What do you want me to do?”
    “Just…hold Mr. Stab down for now,” I said.
    “No problem!” said the car. Mr. Stab struggled wildly underneath the Plymouth Fury and even tipped it back and forth, but with no leverage he couldn’t throw it off. “Victorian values, my shiny red arse,” said the car.
    I looked at Crow Lee. “Don’t run,” I said. And something in my voice made him flinch. “Stay right where you are. I’ll get to you. Once I’ve finished with the traitor.”
    I gave Adrian Drood my full attention. He stood his ground, staring defiantly back at me.
    “All these years,” I said, “killing your own flesh and blood, so you could replace them…undermining and destroying your own family from within.”
    “Why not?” said Adrian. “It was mine to destroy. Mine to do with as I pleased. I made it! I made the Droods possible!”
    “But we moved on,” I said. “We became something better and greater than you ever intended. We became something you never even conceived! With your limited, barbarian mind…All the years you’ve lived, and you’ve learned nothing! And when you finally realised we would never sink to become what you wanted, that we’d never settle for being something so small, you threw a temper tantrum like a threatened child, and ran away to Crow Lee to get rid of us. You petty, spiteful little turd.”
    “You let me down,” said Adrian. “You disappointed me. Every damned one of you. It doesn’t matter. I can always start again. Make a new family.”
    “Without the Heart?” I said. “Without Ethel? You have no armour.”
    “Then I suppose I’ll just have to take yours,” said Adrian. He lifted his hand, and in it was the monkey’s paw made over into a Hand of Glory. The bloodred flames were burning steadily again. He laughed briefly at me. “You didn’t really think you could destroy something as powerful as this just by stamping on it? It was easy for me to call it