Live and Let Drood

and if you don’t have the proper clearances…at best, they won’t open. Rumour has it that if you so much as put your hand in the Lion’s Jaws and you’re not pure of heart, the Jaws will bite your hand right off. The Armourer had assured me that this was just a story to keep young Droods from messing with the thing for a dare, but I wasn’t sure I believed him. The Lion’s Jaws always looked hungry.
    “You want to try opening it?” said Molly, who knew no fear.
    “I don’t have the key.”
    “Who needs a key when you have me?”
    “No, Molly,” I said very firmly. “I’m not doing anything that might upset it without the Armourer present. He’s the only one who knows the correct Words to access the Codex. I just need you to use your magics to make sure no one’s pressured him into opening it. Make sure the Jaws are still closed and the seals haven’t been compromised. You can do that, can’t you?”
    Molly sniffed loudly and gave me a withering glare, which wasn’t actually an answer. She struck a witchy pose, ran her hands through a series of smooth mystical gestures, and muttered meaningfully under her breath. I’m pretty sure a lot of it was just for show, to make a point, but I had enough sense not to ask. Molly stopped abruptly and shook her head firmly.
    “The Jaws are still firmly closed. No one’s even tried to open them. And if you could See the layers upon layers of protections laid down on this thing, you wouldn’t try to open it, either. This is some seriouslystrong shit, Eddie. If the enemy had tried to force their way in, or even just meddle with the seals, all that would be left of them would be a series of greasy stains on the floor here.”
    “Good to know,” I said. “All that matters is that the Armageddon Codex is secure.”
    “Yes, but we can’t get to them, either!” said Molly. “The weapons of the Codex are lost forever! No more Oath Breaker, Winter’s Sorrow, the Time Hammer and the Juggernaut Jumpsuit! The most powerful weapons in the world…Just think what we could have done with them!”
    “Exactly,” I said. “The mood I’m in, I couldn’t be trusted with them. I would blow the world apart, if that was the only way of taking my enemy down. No. It’s better this way. With the Armourer…gone, no one can get to them. I think the world will be just that little bit safer, with the Armageddon Codex locked away forever. It’s enough…that our enemies don’t have them.”
    Molly pouted. “You’re just no fun sometimes.…”
    I patted the Lion’s Jaws fondly with one hand, and then a sudden blast of energy threw me backwards. Molly caught me before I could fall, while a great Voice said Eddie! Eddie! Eddie! Molly moved quickly to stand between me and the Lion’s Jaws, shielding me with her body, her hands surrounded by flaring energies. And then she stopped and lowered her sputtering hands, as a vision appeared before us. A middle-aged man in a white lab coat, looking seriously at both of us. A message from out of the Past. I could tell at once that it was just a recording; the vision was dim, fading in and out and ragged round the edges…but when it spoke, the Voice was perfectly clear. By touching the Lion’s Jaws with a Drood hand, I’d triggered a hidden message from the Armourer. My heart actually leapt for a moment at the thought that finally someone was going to tell me what had happened here. And then I looked again, at the man in the lab coat, and I realised it wasn’t going to be that simple.
    The man before me was clearly the Armourer, but it wasn’t my uncle Jack. It was my uncle James.
    At first I almost didn’t recognise him. Uncle James had always beenthe finest field agent the Droods ever produced. So successful he’d created his own legend apart from the family. In good places and bad, in villains’ hideouts and disreputable bars, at the highest levels and in filthy back alleyways, they all knew his name: the Grey Fox. Tall and dark and handsome and always smartly dressed, my uncle James walked up and down the hidden world, writing the secret histories that the rest of the world is better off not knowing about. Keeping the world safe, one day at a time. The best of the best. Until he turned against what the family was supposed to represent and stand for, and Molly and I had to kill him. My favourite uncle, James had been almost a father to me. But he would have killed me in that last vicious duel if Molly hadn’t got to