Free Book 1 - The Man With the Golden Torc by Simon R. Green Page B

they had,
crowding forward, ignoring their own safety to protect the Heart. Magicians
unleashed curses and damnations, and scientists fired strange energies from
stranger weapons…and none of it did any good. The bloody shape absorbed our
bullets, and everything else, with equal indifference, pressing slowly but
inexorably towards the Heart. Golden armoured hands that could punch through
walls or shattered steel flailed at the pulpy mass, and it just ignored us. One
armoured man stood defiantly in its path. The scarlet shape sucked him in and
spat him out the other side. He thrashed weakly on the floor, screaming like the
newly damned.
    I grabbed James by the arm and made him look at me. "Call them
off! They’ll listen to you. I’ve got an idea!"
    He looked at me, and then nodded curtly and ordered the family
to disengage. Everyone fell back immediately. They trusted James, where they
almost certainly wouldn’t have trusted me. James looked at me expectantly. I
reached through the armour on my side, drew the portable door from my pocket,
activated it, and tossed it into the path of the bloody shape as it surged
forward, just as I had with the Hyde at the Wulfshead. The portable door slid
neatly into position, sparked and sputtered a few times, and then just lay
there, inert. I’d used it too often. The batteries were dead.
    James was still looking at me. I couldn’t see his face behind
the gleaming golden mask, but I could guess his expression. He’d trusted me, and
I’d let him down. I looked back at the shape. It was almost upon the Heart. I
thought hard, glaring desperately about the Sanctity in search of inspiration,
and then my gaze fell upon the dozen torcs lying discarded on the floor, left
behind when their owners were stripped of flesh to make the bloody shape. I
lurched forward, grabbed a handful of the golden collars, raised my golden fist,
and punched the torcs right through the dark-veined cancerous side of the thing.
I forced them deep into the mass, let go of the torcs, and then tried to pull my
hand out again; but it was stuck.

A terrible coldness, as much of the spirit as the body, crept up
my arm. I think I cried out. And then James was there beside me, pulling at my
trapped arm with all his strength. For a terrifyingly long moment even our
combined strength wasn’t enough, and then my hand jerked out of the bloody mass,
and we both staggered backwards. I yelled aloud the Words that activated the
living armour, the Words we normally only ever subvocalised, and the five torcs
within the bloody shape activated. All at once.
    Inside the cancerous fleshy mass, the torcs did what they were
programmed to do. They identified their owners, or in this case what was left of
them, and encased them in living armour. Golden shards erupted out of the red
and purple shape, slicing it apart. The bloody mass fought back, struggling to
maintain the integrity of the form it had taken, but the torcs’ progress was
inexorable. Once started, their transformation could not be stopped by anyone or
anything. The bloody shape collapsed, and a soundless howl of fury filled all
our heads for a moment as the thing from Outside snapped out of existence, its
hold on our reality broken. Lying on the floor before the Heart, in awful
unnatural attitudes, were five suits of golden armour surrounded by pieces of
bloody meat. I didn’t want to think about what those suits contained.
    The oppressive sense of the invading Presence was gone. The
bells and sirens all snapped off, and a blessed silence filled the Sanctity. One
by one we all armoured down, golden forms giving way to men and women with
shocked, traumatised faces. James clapped me on the shoulder.
    "Well done, Eddie. Good thinking."
    People began slowly filing out of the room. The Heart was safe.
Everyone went back to their normal, everyday duties. Some were in shock; some
had to be helped. Some were openly angry or scared,