Read Book 1 - The Man With the Golden Torc for Free Online Page A

should know. Right?"
    He glared around at all of us, but I must not have looked
convinced enough, because Boyd decided he needed to push me about a bit, just to
show he wasn’t to be contradicted. He jabbed me hard in the chest with one large
finger, and I looked at him thoughtfully as he raised his voice to me.
    He was twice my size and more, most of it muscle. I could have
taken him easily if I armoured up, but I couldn’t do that. Strict family rule:
the armour is only ever to be used for family business. More important, the
armour would have given away to everyone that I was a Drood, and then I’d never
be able to come back here again. I liked being just Shaman Bond, and I wasn’t
about to give it up.
    The bartender was already looking meaningfully in our direction,
getting ready to intervene, and I really did consider letting him handle it. For
about a second or two. But I didn’t spend most of my life being trained to fight
the good fight just so I could let a mere Hyde push me around. Besides, if I let
him get away with this, I’d never be able to drink here in peace again. Even the
weird and terminally strange have their pecking order. Still, given that Boyd
was a Hyde and more than twice my size, I sure as hell wasn’t going to fight
fair.
    So I held his gaze with mine, quietly retrieved the portable
door from my pocket, activated it, and flipped the door neatly under the Hyde’s
feet. Boyd had just enough time to look startled before he fell through the new
opening and into the cellars underneath the club. He landed with a satisfyingly
loud crash, followed by a series of low moans. I picked up my portable door and
the floor returned, sealing Boyd in the cellars until someone could be bothered
to go down and rescue him. The bartender nodded his thanks, glad he hadn’t had
to get involved, and the watching crowd gave me a round of applause. Janissary
Jane and I shared a high five, while Charlatan Joe considered me thoughtfully.
    "Where did you get your hands on a restricted device like a
portable door, Shaman?"
    "Found it on eBay," I said.
     
    Time continued to pass pleasantly, and by the early hours of the
morning I was drifting through a drunken haze and chatting up a giggly sex droid
who’d dropped in from the twenty-third century to do some research for her
dissertation on strange sexual hang-ups of the rich and famous. She was tall and
buxom and one hundred percent artificial, sweetly turned out in a classic little
black dress cut high enough at the back to show off the bar code and copyright
notice stamped on her magnificent left buttock. Her fizzing steel hair was full
of sparking static, her eyes were silver, and she smelled of pure musk. She ran
off a nuclear power cell located in her lower abdomen, which was just a tad
worrying, but then, no one’s perfect.
    "So, what brings you to the Wulfshead?" I asked.
    "Just playing tourist," she said with a smile so wide even Julia
Roberts couldn’t have matched it. "I’ve got so much more spare time since we
finally got unionised. Let’s hear it for Rossum’s Unionised Robots!"
    "Down with the bosses!" I said solemnly. "Work is the curse of
the drinking classes."
    "Oh, I love my work," she said, batting her huge eyelashes at
me. "It took more than one man to change my name to Silicon Lily."
    And that was when my mobile phone rang. I was not pleased. The
only people who have that number are my family, and I shouldn’t have been
hearing from them so soon after a completed mission. It had to be some kind of
bad news, and almost certainly more mine than theirs. People all around me
scowled at the phone in my hand and gave me significant looks; you’re supposed
to turn off all communication devices before entering the Wulfshead. I hadn’t
thought to, because the family so rarely bothers me when I’m on downtime. I
smiled weakly, shrugged apologetically, blew a quick kiss to the sex droid, and
retired to a more