From Hell With Love: A Secret Histories Novel Read Online Free Page A

his time now plotting grand schemes and revenges against all of civilisation. A little man with lots of money and resources, and serious delusions of grandeur. Always a bad combination.
    He might have become a real problem, if he hadn’t been such a prat.
    His usual modus operandi was to work up some awful new disease in his secret laboratories, and then threaten to unleash them on the world, if all the various governments didn’t agree to pay him off, in rare postage stamps. I suppose once a collector, always a collector. But the Doctor was such a sloppy operator we always managed to find some weak spot in his organisation, and then we’d just squeeze the knowledge we needed out of some poor sod at the bottom of the food chain, get our hands on a specimen of his new disease before he’d even finished testing it . . . and by the time he got around to issuing his threats, we already ˚ had a cure or a vaccine. End of problem. On a few occasions, we have found it necessary to bomb his secret labs, but he always escapes and sets up somewhere else. The Amazon rain forest is a really big place.
    “Who’s the field agent in his area, these days?” said Luther.
    “Conrad Drood,” I said. “Good man, old African hand, very experienced. But he has a lot of ground to cover, and limited resources. And, he has to be very careful every time he ventures into the rain forest area; Timothy Drood’s still in there somewhere.”
    “Tiger Tim?” said Luther. “That crazy bastard? He’s still alive? Why hasn’t someone killed him yet?”
    “Because he’s still a Drood, for all his many faults. And we are notoriously hard to kill. Talk to me about Doctor Delirium. How long has he been here? What do you know, about why he’s here?”
    “Not much,” Luther admitted. “He’s only been in town a few days, holed up in a motel with his mercenaries. Word is, he’s here to attend a very private auction, being held on the top floor of this very hotel, tonight. Before it officially opens. It’s hard to get any real information; my people are using every listening device and surveillance spell at their command, but the Doctor’s defences are first class. But, it seems he’s come all the way here, so far from his heavily protected comfort zone, because he’s desperate to acquire one of the items at this auction. Doctor Delirium wants the Apocalypse Door.”
    “I read that name in your last report,” I said. “There’s no record of such a thing in the Hall Library, or the Old Library. Which would normally suggest it can’t be anything that dangerous, or significant, because if it was we’d have heard about it.”
    “Possibly,” said Luther. “But any use of the word Apocalypse has to be just a bit worrying.”
    “Either way, the Matriarch has decided that Doctor Delirium is not to be allowed to get his hands on this Apocalypse Door, whatever it might turn out to be. We are to put a stop to his efforts, give him and his people a good ˚ kicking, and then send him home with a flea in his ear. If only for being such a bloody nuisance.”
    “Why don’t we just kill him?” said Luther.
    “You’ve been in LA too long,” I said sternly. “Watching too many cop shows. We’re supposed to be agents, not assassins. Otherwise there’d be no difference between us and the forces we fight. It’s enough that we protect Humanity; we don’t get to bully them. Besides, Doctor Delirium really is a scientific genius, when he can be bothered. We might just need his help some day. Right now he’s a menace, but one day he might be an asset. Droods have to take the long view. So, we spank him and send him home crying. Tell me more about this auction.”
    “On the top floor, strictly private, cut off from the rest of the hotel,” said Luther. “One night only, before the hotel officially opens, very definitely By Invitation Only. Lots of armed guards in place, security people everywhere, trespassers will be disappeared. The