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a deadline here! Give me the secret! Tell me how to unlock the Lion’s Jaws!”
    The Armourer lay curled up in a ball on the cold stone floor. He ached all over from the beating he’d taken. He spat out a thick mouthful of blood and glared up at his son. Above and behind the two of them stood the Lion’s Jaws, a great stone carving of a lion’s head, complete with mane, perfect in every detail. Twenty feet tall and almost as wide, it towered over them, carved out of a dark blue-veined stone that made the head seem eerily alive. Timothy drew back his foot to kick his father again, and the Armourer flinched despite himself. Timothy laughed breathily.
    “I know I need a brass key, Daddy,” said Timothy. “The key opens the Jaws, but everyone knows that. I need to know how to open the Jaws so I can pass though them safely! Just give me the key and tell me how to use it, and I’ll stop hurting you. Won’t that be nice? Why do you always have to fight me, Daddy? You don’t think I’m enjoying this, do you?”
    “Yes,” said the Armourer.
    Timothy considered the point. “Well, all right, yes; you’ve got me there. I always enjoy punishing things that get in my way. But I promise you, I’d enjoy kicking the crap out of whoever had the key to the Lion’s Jaws. Don’t take this personally, Daddy.”
    “You sure you want to pass through the Jaws?” said the Armourer. Slowly, painfully. “You must know the legend, that only the pure in heart and pure in purpose can pass safely through to the Codex. Anything else, and the Jaws will slam down. And eat you.”
    “Oh, please,” said Timothy. “That’s just family fairy tales, to keep the weak of spirit from trying to do something like this. I am not so easily put off. I want the weapons from the Armageddon Codex, Daddy. I want the Time Hammer and the Juggernaut Jumpsuit. I want Oathbreaker, and Sunwrack, and Winter’s Sorrow. I want to walk up and down in the world and make it dance to my tune.”
    “Why?” said the Armourer.
    “I just want to have some fun,” said Timothy.
    “But these weapons are powerful enough to destroy the whole world!”
    “What could be more fun?” said Timothy. “Oh, the things I will do . . .”
    Except he didn’t, in the end, because the Gray Fox appeared out of nowhere to save the day. As he so often did. He saved the Armourer’s life, that day, although he let Timothy get away. Because the Armourer asked him to. That small piece of kindness had come back to haunt him many times, down the years. As he heard of some new slaughter, with his son’s name attached to it. As Timothy Drood turned himself into Tiger Tim, slowly and deliberately, one cruel decision at a time. Spreading his evil like a plague, laughing delightedly as he walked through rivers of blood. Until finally, he went up against Eddie Drood, and Eddie killed him. Far and far away from home, in the icy wastes of the Antarctic. Eddie said afterward that Tiger Tim had died well, and the Armourer had pretended to believe him.
    Timothy wasn’t there anymore, and neither was the chair he’d been sitting on. The Armourer was surprised to find he was crying. For places and people lost. For things that might have been. He hauled out a handkerchief and dabbed at his face. His hand shook.
    “I always tried to do my best for the family,” he said. “I tried. . . . Doesn’t that count, for something?”
    “Of course it does,” said James.
    The Armourer looked up, and there was the Gray Fox, standing before him, smiling broadly. James Drood, in his prime. Tall and darkly handsome, effortlessly elegant in his expertly tailored tuxedo, wearing his usual sardonic expression. He looked every inch his legend.
    “Come along, Jack,” said James. “No time to be lounging around when there’s important work that needs doing.”
    “Oh James,” said Jack. “I’ve missed you so much.”
    “Of course you have,” said the Gray Fox. “But now, we’re back together. The old