Read Online Live and Let Drood: A Secret Histories Novel by Simon R. Green - Free Book Online

limited control over Alpha Red Alpha in the first place. And on top of that, who knows what kind of Earth they were rotated into? Could be somewhere even worse than a jungle full of nasty killer plants. My family could be fighting for their lives right now, right here, somewhere else…even as we speak.”
    “Easy, Eddie,” Molly said immediately. “Take it easy. We can’t worry about every possibility. It’s just as likely they arrived in some paradise world and they aren’t in any hurry to come home. For all we know, theycould all be sprawling on a nice beach somewhere, working on their tans and sipping cold drinks. We can’t know anything for sure, so let’s concentrate on what we can do. We are your family’s only hope, Eddie. We owe it to them to think it through and not just rush into things.”
    “The wild witch of the woods, her own bad self, Molly Metcalf, preaching patience and self-restraint,” I said, smiling. “Maybe I am in some other world, after all. You’re right, as always. I’m not going to give up hope, not after just getting it back again. They’re out there somewhere and I will find them and bring them home. But we have to start with: Who could have done this to them?”
    “Run through the usual unusual suspects,” said Molly. “Have there been attacks on the Hall before? And, no, I don’t mean the bloody Chinese nuke back in the sixties that your family won’t stop talking about, which leads me to suspect they got a damned sight closer than your family is willing to admit.”
    “Breathe, Molly. Breathe. There were a whole series of attacks on the Hall just before I met you. This awful cancer creature broke into the Sanctity and attacked the Heart. Killed several Droods before we drove it off. We never did find out who sent it, or why; or who was behind the other, earlier attacks. I’d pretty much decided it was down to the traitor in the family, the original traitor who brought in the Loathly Ones, back in World War II. And who’s been working against us in secret ever since.”
    “If there is a traitor inside the Hall, he probably disappeared along with everyone else,” said Molly. “So I doubt this is down to him.”
    “There is something else,” I said slowly. “When I was in the Winter Hall, when I thought I was dead…I asked Walker,
If this is a place of the dead, why haven’t I seen my parents?
And Walker said to me,
Whatever makes you think they’re dead?”
    “I know,” said Molly. “I remember. But one thing at a time, Eddie. Yes?”
    “It’s just…If my parents could be alive, so could yours.”
    “Yes, Eddie. I know. And we will talk about this later. But first things have to come first. So what do you want to do first?”
    I looked out over the wide-open grounds of Drood Hall, the green grassy lawns and the lake and the hedge Maze in the distance. It was all so quiet, so peaceful. It didn’t seem possible there could have been so much death and suffering so close at hand in such a peaceful setting.
    “The Drood grounds contain a marvellous selection of wildlife,” I said. “Natural and supernatural, the living and the dead, and lots and lots of really wild things. Why don’t we go and ask them what they saw?”

CHAPTER TWO

When the Droods Are Away
    Y ou don’t realise how much you miss a thing until it’s gone. The grounds were almost unnaturally quiet as Molly and I strode across the wide-reaching lawns. Where were the peacocks that always strutted so grandly and noisily in front of the Hall? Where were the gryphons, who should have been the first to sound the alarm because they were psychic and could see a short distance into the Future? (Given how ugly the things were, and how much they loved to roll in dead things and then come up to you and rub affectionately against your new suit, I’d be hard-pressed to name any other good reason to keep them around.) (All right, I like them, but it’s already been established that I’m weird.) If the