Live and Let Drood

hid in my secret pocket. Out of harm’s way. It occurred to me that if the Glass was that scared, then I ought to be, too. But I just didn’t have the time.
    The office itself was small and cramped and drab; just a close, windowless room with Heather the secretary sitting quietly at her desk, leafing through some paperwork. She looked up, startled, as Molly and I appeared out of nowhere, right in front of her, and she actually gaped for just a moment at the sight of a Drood in his armour. Which is one of the helpful things Drood armour is psychologically designed to do.
    Heather herself was a calm, professional-looking sort, pretty in a pleasantly blond, curly-haired sort of way. She wore a white blouse over a navy skirt and had a really big silver ankh hanging round her neck. Anyone else would have seen her as sweet and harmless, just another secretary. Which was, of course, the point. I knew better, but I was still caught off guard when Heather threw off her surprise in a moment, pulled a really big gun out of nowhere and opened fire on me. The damned thing—some kind of energy weapon I didn’t even recognise—was so big she needed both hands to aim it. She just blasted away without even saying a word to me or Molly, and the energy blast hit me right in the centre of my golden chest. The impact was enough to send me staggering back a step. I dug in my heels, regained my balance, while Heather fired at me again and again, the energy beams vividly bright in the enclosed space, leaving shimmering trails of Cherenkov radiation hanging on the air behind them. I leaned forward into the energy fire and advanced slowly and deliberately into the concussion blasts. My armour soaked up the deadly energies and the impacts with increasing ease. It was like wading forward against a strong chest-high tide, but it took me only a few steps to reach the desk, sweep it out of my way with one blow and then snatch the energy gun right out of Heather’s hands. I crumpled it easily in my golden gauntlets, and all the little lightsflashing on the weapon went out. I dropped the scrunched-up mess to the floor, and it dented the floor when it hit.
    Out of nowhere Heather produced an aboriginal pointing bone. Molly slapped it out of her hand. The bone flew away across the office. Heather grabbed Molly’s wrist and flipped her right over with a swift judo move. Molly barely had time to get out a surprised obscenity before she was flying through the air, upside down, and heading for the nearest wall. She managed to turn enough to take most of the impact on her shoulder, but the impact was still hard enough to knock all the breath out of her. She slid slowly down the wall, her eyes half-closed and her mouth slack.
    I advanced on Heather. She snapped her fingers and the pointing bone reappeared in her hand. The bone was old cold brown, steeped in time and accumulated power. She stabbed the nasty thing at me, and the whole front of my golden armour reverberated like a struck gong, and I slammed to a halt as though I’d just been hit in the chest by an invisible battering ram. To my utter astonishment, circular fingernail cracks radiated across my golden chest, a whole series of widening rings like ripples on a pond. I froze for a moment and then the cracks healed themselves, vanishing away as the golden metal re-formed. Heather froze when she saw that, and that was all the time I needed to surge forward and snatch the pointing bone out of her hand. I must have hurt Heather’s fingers when I did, but she didn’t make a sound. I crushed the bone in my armoured grasp. The bone cracked loudly and then collapsed in on itself. I opened my golden hand, and only dust and a few very small bone fragments fell out.
    While I was busy showing off, Heather turned away and retrieved something else from her overturned desk. It turned out to be a shillelagh, a huge gnarled club made from black oak and decorated with all kinds of carved runes and sigils. Given the size and weight of the thing, I was frankly astonished Heather could even heft it. She came straight at me, and when I went to take the club from her, she avoided me expertly and hit me really hard around the head and shoulders. My armour made loud booming noises of distress with every hit, and whileI couldn’t feel the impact, the sheer ferocity of her attack drove me back several steps.
    She flailed away at me as though the shillelagh was weightless to her, hitting me from this side and from