Live and Let Drood

my line of work has heard of Crow Lee. He hadn’t joined the Great Satanic Conspiracy because he thought they weren’t extreme enough. He dealt in death curses, human sacrifice, human trafficking, blackmail on a small and large scale…and in slaughter and suffering just for the fun of it. He’d run any number of cults just because he could.
    He worked as a magical assassin for a while, as much for the experience as the money. Killing the rich and the powerful by order. He had mastered necromancy, the magic of murder, and could make the living and the dead do his bidding. These days he worked mostly from the shadows and was often accused of atrocities and abominations…but nothing had ever been proved. Crow Lee, the man who could do anything, anything at all.
    “Why have the Droods never done anything about the Most Evil Man in the World?” said Molly.
    “Because he’s protected,” I said. “And I don’t just mean because he’s made pacts with Hell, though he has. He has connections inside every political party, every religious organisation, and he has powerful friends, or, perhaps more properly, allies, in every circle you can think of. The whole family would have had to go to war against Crow Lee and his people, with no sure knowledge of how it would turn out. He’s been stopped, defeated, many times, by us and others…but he just disappears and turns up somewhere else, as powerful and protected as ever. His front men and his allies go down, but he never does. The decision was made in the family, sometime back, to just let him grow old and die. Because he’s just one man, and the family goes on forever. If we can’t take him down, we can always outlive the bastard. And we’ll settlefor stopping his various schemes until the evil old scrote grows weak and falls apart. At least that was the plan. It would seem he decided to get his retaliation in first.”
    “You’re sure he’s the one?” Molly said carefully. “The one who took remote control of Alpha Red Alpha?”
    “It has to be him! Only he would have the power to do it and the arrogance to get away with it! The moment I heard his name, I knew.…So. Now my enemy has a face and a name. That helps. And so will the Regent of Shadows, one way or another. This informant of yours; you’re sure they can put us in touch with the Regent?”
    “Almost certainly,” said Molly.
    “Good,” I said. “But first, we have to go to Egypt.”

CHAPTER THREE

    There Are Worse Things Than Mummies in the Undiscovered Tombs of Old Egypt
    “E gypt?” said Molly, a bit dangerously. “And just why do we have to go to Egypt so damned urgently? What could there possibly be in Egypt that’s so important we have to go there right now?”
    “Something we need,” I said. “Something that will help me track down my missing family. Something that the Armourer once told me about, in an unguarded moment, in strict confidence…so rare and secret and important that it should only ever be sought after in a real emergency. I’m pretty sure this qualifies.”
    “What, exactly, are we talking about here?” said Molly.
    “A particularly useful item that my family put to one side and hid somewhere very remote and very safe, for just such an occasion as this,” I said. “You have to understand, Molly; my family has plans drawn up for every conceivable emergency that might ever arise.”
    “You’re saying your family even had a plan in place for something like this?”
    “Oh, especially for something like this. Even when everythingseems lost and all hope gone, you can be sure the Droods still have something in hand to fall back on. When a family has been around as long as ours has, we have time to consider all the possibilities. So we always have one last ace up our sleeve to confound our many enemies. A hidden weapon, one last dirty trick, or an unexpected ally waiting in the wings. Or in this case, a very useful item, hidden away.”
    “I might have known,” said Molly. “Your family is too sneaky and underhanded for words. But even assuming this hidden item can help us, why do we have to go to Egypt, of all places?”
    ““Because that’s where it is.”
    “I hate it when you go all cryptic,” said Molly severely. “You’re never more smug than when you’re being cryptic.”
    “The item in question is tucked away safe and secure in Egypt,” I said patiently. “So that even if the entire family was abducted, snatched away, disappeared without