I nodded slowly and got to my feet again, with her help. My head was clearing, all the pain and horror and loss pushed aside by a cold and savage need for revenge. I couldn t leave here, not yet. I needed information and weapons. And more than anything I needed some clue to tell me my enemy s name. And then nothing was going to stand in my way. All the awful things I would do to him and anyone who stood alongside him would make my name an abomination on the lips of the world. And I wouldn t give a damn.

I wasn t used to thinking like that, but it seemed to come very easily. I was, after all, a Drood. The Last Drood.

Molly realised she wasn t going to get any sense out of me. She looked at the ruined hall before her and the sheer scale of so much destruction seemed to overwhelm even her for a moment.

What the hell happened here, Eddie? What could have done this?

I don t know, I said. My voice sounded distant and far away. The Chinese tried to nuke us once, back in the sixties, and that got nowhere. No one s struck directly at the Hall for ages. I would have said there was nothing and no one in the world that could get past all our defences and protections. This is all my fault, you know.

What? said Molly, turning immediately to look at me with her large dark eyes.

I should have been here, I said steadily.

I wasn t with my family when the enemy came. If I had been here, maybe I could have done something. Saving the day against impossible odds is what I do. Isn t it?

Stop that, Molly said firmly. Stop that right now, Eddie. What could you have done that your whole family couldn t? If you had been here, odds are you d be lying here dead, too.

I can do something now, I said. I can avenge my family. I can be the Last Drood. I can bring down my enemies in horror and suffering, and make my family name a byword in this world for revenge and retribution.