Secret Histories feats (Property of a Lady Faire)

Molly flat out states that she can blow up a building:

“I can always threaten to blow up the whole building,” said Molly.
I looked at her. “For you, restraint is just something other people do, isn’t it?”
She smiled at me dazzlingly. “I have always believed in extremes and excesses. Why settle for less?” -Property of a Lady Faire

Our first description of Laurence Drood:

“Laurence Drood,” I said. “Once the family Armourer. There was an accident, some two hundred years ago, or so. The details of the story are either lost, or blatantly contradictory. Either way, as a result of . . . whatever happened, Laurence now knows everything the family knows. Or has ever known. Including all the very secret things most of the family aren’t even supposed to suspect. And unfortunately, it’s a never-ending process. Every time the family learns something, Laurence knows.”
“How is that even possible?” said Molly.
“We’re the Droods,” I said. “We all do ten impossible things before breakfast, just to get our hearts started. Don’t hit me! Look, Molly . . . I don’t think anyone in my family knows anything for sure where the Drood in Cell 13 is concerned, not after all this time. He knows, of course. But apparently he only tells people what he feels like telling. There are . . . stories, among the higher levels of the family. About people who managed to make their way down here, to ask the Drood in Cell 13 questions. About things they weren’t supposed to know. It seems . . . he uses the things he tells to destroy people.”
“Why would he do that?” said Molly.
“Because he can,” I said. “Because he thinks it’s funny . . . The point is, whatever information comes into Drood Hall, Laurence just soaks it up and stores it away in his amazing altered mind. It’s impossible to hide anything from him. All of which makes him the perfect weapon to use against the Droods. That’s why he asked to be locked away, from the world and the family, and that’s why they went along. Put him down here, in the depths, out of sight and out of mind. It was either that or kill him, and who knows when he might prove useful? Or even necessary. It’s always possible that some small piece of information, forgotten by everyone else, might prove essential to the safety and security of the family. Droods never throw away anything that might prove useful someday.”
“Hang on,” said Molly. “Laurence Drood is over two hundred years old?”
“Well over,” I said. “And he’s spent nearly all of it locked away, down here, in solitary confinement. So if he wasn’t crazy when they locked him in . . .”
“Your family,” said Molly, shaking her head.
“Trust me,” I said. “I know.” -Property of a Lady Faire

It took thirteen attempts for the Drood family to create a cell strong enough to hold Laurence Drood:

“Eddie,” said Molly, after a while, “if Laurence is the Drood in Cell 13, what about the other twelve cells? Are there other secret prisoners down here? Somewhere?”
“Not as far as I know,” I said. “I think it’s more like it took twelve attempts to produce a cell strong enough to hold Laurence Drood.”
“I thought you said he asked to be locked away?”
“He’s been down here a very long time,” I said. “And as I understand it, he has been known to change his mind, on occasion.” -Property of a Lady Faire

Bear in mind that this is the same Drood family who have some of the most powerful defenses in the world, and were able to fix the moon after Grendel Rex carved his face into it. Let the implications of that sink in for a moment. Yeah...

The man himself tells his -real- backstory, in vivid detail:

“Do you know who and what I really am, Eddie Drood? The result of an accident, is that what they’re still saying? Oh no no no . . . the real and secret truth, the sad sad reality is . . . that I did this to myself. I am the author of my own tragedy. The idea was for the family to have its own Living Library, just in case they lost the real thing. Like they did with the Old Library. I was family Armourer back then, all those years ago, and I worked with the Heart to find a way to download all the contents of the family Library into a single human mind. A living repository for all Drood knowledge. Except that the human mind was never meant to contain so much information . . .
“There were six volunteers, including me. I used to remember their names but now I choose not to . . . Anyway, the result of the experiment was three dead, two insane and later dead, and me. Poor poor Laurence . . . Of course, I’m not the only one of my kind, these days. Once word got out that the idea was possible, was in fact doable, all kinds of other organisations had to try. With . . . differing results. You met one, Eddie! Remember the Karma Catechist? You bumped into him in Saint Baphomet’s Hospital, in Harley Street! He knew all there was to know about magical systems, rituals, and forms of power. And much good it did him. He killed himself, you know.”
“Yes, I know,” I said. “I was there when he did it.”
Molly looked at me sharply. “I didn’t know that. You never told me about that.”
“I’ll tell you later,” I said. -Property of a Lady Faire

Laurence explains the nature of an artifact called the Lazarus Stone:

Laurence stepped back from the bars, folded his arms tightly across his sunken chest, and looked at me curiously. “Well well well . . . It’s been ever such a long time since anyone mentioned that name to me. The Lazarus Stone . . . possibly the single most dangerous individual item in the whole damned world. Yes . . . It’s usually thought to be a small piece of the great stone that was rolled away from Lazarus’ tomb, so Jesus could raise him from the dead. People think the Lazarus Stone can bring loved ones back from the dead, and make them live again. Because people are stupid. All nonsense, of course. Just romantic religious bullshit. A fake exotic history, to conceal the Stone’s far more dangerous nature.
“The Lazarus Stone isn’t actually a stone, and it doesn’t really bring the dead back to life . . . As such. No no no . . . It’s some kind of mechanism, almost certainly alien in origin, and it’s all to do with Time Travel. Supposedly, and I say this because I don’t know anyone who’s actually used the thing successfully . . . Supposedly the Lazarus Stone can reach back through Time, and pluck any person from the Past, just before History says they died. Then bring them forward into the Present Day. So that someone who was dead can live again. This of course rewrites History. Often in unexpected and highly disturbing ways. So it is possible that the Lazarus Stone has been used and I just didn’t notice. No one would, except for the people involved. I wonder if they thought it was worth it, in the end . . . I loathe Time Travel. You put butter in a pocket watch and it’s bound to mess up the works even if it is the very best butter. Our family did possess the Stone briefly, but the Regent of Shadows took it with him when he left.” -Property of a Lady Faire

That charm bracelet Molly keeps on her person? One of the charms turns into a very large golden dragon:

Molly reached down and plucked a single silver shape from the delicate charm bracelet around her left ankle. She stood up, peered around the corner of the machinery, and threw the charm the whole length of the lab. A dragon suddenly appeared inside the Armoury. A massive creature, with a huge golden-scaled body and vast flapping membranous wings. It shrieked harshly, and lowered a horrid horned head on the end of a long snakelike neck. Its clawed feet dug deep furrows in the concrete floor, and a barbed tail lashed back and forth behind it, throwing heavy equipment this way and that. Its eyes glowed blood-red, and its gaping mouth was packed full of large serrated teeth. It was actually very impressive, given that it wasn’t real. As such. -Property of a Lady Faire

A bunch of ridiculous weapons from the Armourer's lab assistants don't even faze it:

The dragon filled all the available space at the far end of the Armoury, its curved back slamming up against the stone ceiling, while its great head swept this way and that to menace everyone in reach. The wings flailed wildly, creating heavy gusting winds to blow away everything that wasn’t actually nailed down. But the lab assistants didn’t stop to gape at the dragon, even for a moment. They took one look at the thing and immediately grabbed the nearest weapon and opened fire. They blasted away at the dragon with guns, energy weapons, magical artefacts and a whole bunch of strange things I didn’t even recognise. The dragon soaked it all up, without taking any damage. -Property of a Lady Faire

Going off this little comment, these charms don't summon real things, as such. They create illusions which, apparently, are capable of interacting with reality:

“I’ll have to go join the dragon, or it’ll disappear the moment the gateway closes. I’ll keep the lab assistants occupied for as long as I can, so you can talk with your uncle. But keep it short, Eddie. It only takes one smarter than average lab rat to shout Illusion! and the game’s over.” -Property of a Lady Faire

Eddie confirms as much himself:

“Now,” said the Armourer, “nice to see you again, Eddie. Where’s Molly?”
“Off with the dragon,” I said. “She has to be close, to keep the illusion going. You did know it was . . . Of course you did.” -Property of a Lady Faire

An entity known as the Red King-- who is almost assuredly the same "Red King" responsible for the Red King's Ruby-- is described by Eddie as having erased an entire group of past-altering people known as the Sceneshifters from history:

I remembered the Red King, and the Sceneshifters. I was the only person still living who could, because I was there when the severed head of the Red King, preserved and controlled against his wishes, finally woke from his dreaming. The Sceneshifters had been this really secret group who moved things around in the background when people weren’t looking. Rewriting History in small telling ways, to achieve their own ends. But small changes accumulate, and the Sceneshifters weren’t always in control of what happened. Apparently, there used to be pyramids in Scotland. A major tourist attraction. But no one remembers them any more.
The Droods knew about the Sceneshifters, but didn’t believe they were important enough or powerful enough to worry about. I met the Sceneshifters when I was on the run from my family, and I was so appalled at what they were up to that I put a bullet through the Red King’s severed head. He woke up from his long dreaming and he woke up mad, and made the Sceneshifters never happened. I was lucky to get out of there alive. And still real. A cautionary tale . . . -Property of a Lady Faire

Apparently Eddie directly remembers this happening, despite everyone else losing their memory of these people as a result of history being changed. Take that for whatever you will.

Another example of Molly changing bullets into butterflies mid-flight:

Some of the soldiers targeted Molly, and found that even more upsetting. Their bullets turned into pretty butterflies in mid-air, which then flew away. And given the rate at which the automatic weapons were pumping out bullets, it wasn’t long before the sky above us was full of clouds of brightly coloured butterflies, weaving pretty patterns in the air. -Property of a Lady Faire

Molly kicks a man in the groin so hard that the impact briefly lifts him in the air, and also smashes armor underneath his clothing:

And while the others were looking at him, Molly stepped forward and kicked the second soldier so hard in the nuts it actually lifted him up into the air for a moment. He hit the ground hard, curled into a ball around his pain, and made high-pitched noises of distress. I was pretty sure he was wearing protective armour down there, because I heard it break. Molly looked at me.
“They have to learn respect.”
“Oh, I’m sure they’re both feeling very respectful,” I said. -Property of a Lady Faire

Molly kills a group of soldiers with a series of explosions just because she feels like it:

I broke off, as Molly started chanting behind me. I could feel magical energies tingling on my armoured back. There then followed a series of explosions, and a whole bunch of screams, and then it all went quiet again. The soldiers in front of me looked past me and Molly, saw what she had just done, and appeared very upset. Several ripped off their helmets so they could be suddenly and violently sick.
“Well?” I said.
“Fine, thank you,” Molly said cheerfully. -Property of a Lady Faire

I'm keeping this here because, among other reasons, the implications are worth a few dozen "what the fuck"s:

“Sorry,” I said. “Just thinking out loud and trying not to panic . . . Given everything that you and I have already tackled, from Hungry Gods to a worldwide Satanic Conspiracy, what could MI 13 be bringing to the table on a Government department budget? Hold everything . . . Do you See those energies bleeding out from the edges of the Gateway?”
“Are you asking me, or is this just another . . . ?”
“Do you See them?”
“Yes! What are they?”
“Tachyons. Time particles . . . We’re looking at a Time Gate! A transfer point, connecting one period in Time with another. Bringing something here, from the Past or the Future.”
“Now that’s just cheating,” Molly said briskly. “And just a tiny bit alarming on any number of levels . . .” -Property of a Lady Faire

The protections around Ultima Thule are so powerful that a door capable of transporting someone past all of them would most likely need to be powered by the energy of an exploding star:

“Every Door is a possibility, a chance to be Somewhere Else, to travel through all the places there are . . . all the worlds of if and maybe. A never-ending exploration into the works of God . . . No, my dear Molly, I am content as I am. Except for when Droods come into my life and mess it up, big time. You can’t go directly to Ultima Thule, Eddie Drood! Even I couldn’t make you a Door that would sneak you through that many layers of protection.” He stopped abruptly, and thought about it. “Well, actually I could, but you’d probably have to blow up a sun to generate enough energy to power it. And you said you didn’t want to be noticed.” -Property of a Lady Faire

For the record, this statement comes from the Doormouse, a being who literally makes his living by building doors and gateways to other universes. Just something to think about.

Hadleigh Oblivion appears, smashing through all of the Doormouse's layers of protection as he does. Layers which are noted to be so powerful that even Walker couldn't turn them aside:

“I don’t care who that is. They can’t get in. They can’t! No one could get through all the layers of protection I’ve put in place! It’s just not possible . . .”
There was a loud, harsh sound, like a great pane of glass shattering. Followed by another, and another.
“He’s breaking through my shields!” said the Doormouse, almost hysterically. “Even Walker couldn’t do that!”
“Do you want to run?” said Molly, practical as ever. “Choose a Door and just disappear?”
“I can’t,” whispered the Doormouse. “This is my place. My shop, my home. I won’t be driven out of my own home.”
“You work for the Droods,” I said. “That means you’re protected by the Droods. No one messes with anything that belongs to us. You stand your ground, Mouse. If they want to get to you, they have to get past me first.”
“I find that a perfectly acceptable arrangement,” said the Doormouse.
He reached inside his lab coat, and produced a monocle, a single gleaming lens set in old ivory. He screwed the thing into his left eye, and studied the door before him. And the dark figure standing motionless on the other side. The Doormouse scowled, concentrating, and then he straightened up suddenly, his eyes wide and staring. The monocle fell out, and he caught it absently and tucked it away again.
“Oh hell,” he said miserably. “It’s him.”
“Run?” said Molly.
“No point,” said the Doormouse. “There’s nowhere we could go where he couldn’t find us.”
The front door swung open, quite casually, and in walked a man I’d never met before, and never wanted to. There are people in my line of work, people who operate exclusively in the hidden world, that everyone knows about but no one ever wants to meet in person. Hadleigh Oblivion, the Detective Inspectre, was very definitely one of those people. He stopped just inside the reception area, and smiled politely at the Doormouse and Molly and me. As though he’d just dropped in to see how we were. The front door slowly closed itself behind him. I suddenly realised the iron bell had stopped tolling, as though it had realised there just wasn’t any point any more. The enemy was inside the gates, the wolf in the fold. I looked at Molly.
“I know who that is,” I said.
“So do I,” said Molly.
“This is bad, isn’t it?” I said.
“You have no idea,” said the Doormouse. -Property of a Lady Faire

The same Doormouse, who has stated that he has built doorways to Heaven, Hell and everywhere in-between, says that there is no place you can escape from Hadleigh Oblivion:

“I am still very much in favour of beating a hasty retreat,” said Molly.
“Molly . . .”
“This is Hadleigh Oblivion!” said Molly.
“No point in running,” the Doormouse said glumly. “Wherever we ran to, he’d already be there, waiting for us. No one escapes the Detective Inspectre. I’d wet myself if this wasn’t a new carpet.” -Property of a Lady Faire

Ethel hears and contacts Eddie while he's in another world. (an alternate dimension, in this case)

I raised my head and called out.
“Ethel! Please! You made this armour; help me use it to save the woman I love! Please, Ethel, I need to do this! For her!”
And from a world away, her voice came to me, quiet but distinct.
Oh, all right. Just this once. -Property of a Lady Faire

Dead Boy bites off a werewolf's nose:

Sergei noticed that being a really big wolf just wasn’t cutting it, and so he shrank back to human shape again. He glared sullenly about him, and then spotted Dead Boy.
He strode right up to Dead Boy, and started to say something aggressive, only to break off as Dead Boy grabbed him by the throat with one pale hand, pulled him close till they were face-to-face, and then bit off Sergei’s nose. The werewolf howled, struggled free of Dead Boy’s grip, and fell back several steps, both hands clasped over the part of his face where his nose used to be. Blood pumped thickly between his fingers. Dead Boy chewed carefully, considering the taste, and then smiled slowly. Sergei regarded him with wide eyes, and then lowered his hands to reveal a regrown nose. Dead Boy looked at him thoughtfully, and Sergei ran back to his big brother. Gregor growled at Dead Boy, who smiled happily back.
“I love Russian food!” he said loudly. -Property of a Lady Faire

I'm not sure why, but this seems important:

Next up on my radar was the Lady Alice Underground. Everyone had heard of her. An elderly but not in any way frail dowager dressed in dull black Victorian mourning clothes, the Lady Alice was an explorer of the Underverse. Those spatial dimensions that exist beneath our own, populated exclusively by symbols and icons and archetypes. -Property of a Lady Faire

The Lady Faire's presence "pumps out pheromones on an industrial scale", allowing her to directly affect the unconscious mind:

I concentrated on my torc, and immediately a tendril of golden armour shot up my neck to form a mask under my security mask. And just like that, I could See the Lady Faire so much more clearly.
No one else could tell, but I could See her pumping out pheromones on an industrial scale. Musk, mating signals, bypassing the conscious mind to appeal directly to the unconscious, affecting people on the most basic, fundamental level. No wonder I’d been having so much trouble thinking clearly. I breathed deeply through my hidden golden mask, and felt my head clear as though a cold wind was rushing through it. -Property of a Lady Faire

(Eddie being able to shut this out with his torc is also a feat for him, FYI)

Those blood red men from before are apparently immune to the Lady Faire's influence:

The Lady Faire sniffed loudly. “Dangerous . . . They’re only men.”
She stepped forward and smiled at the blood-red men, hitting them with the full force of her presence. Even standing behind her, I could feel some of it. Incredibly, the blood-red men didn’t. They just stood their ground and stared right back at her. Entirely unmoved, and unaffected. The Lady Faire fell back a step, and looked at me, actually shocked. I don’t think she’d ever encountered such a situation before. She looked . . . lost. As though the world had suddenly stopped making sense to her. I moved carefully forward, to put myself between her and the blood-red men. And she was so shocked, she let me do it. -Property of a Lady Faire

Laurence Drood appears at the Ballroom, disguised as James Drood:

And then a man came walking through the crowd towards us, wearing James Drood’s face. The blood-red men fell back, to open up a wide aisle for him to walk through. The closer he got, the less like Uncle James he looked, though the face stayed the same. He didn’t move like James, or act like him. The face . . . was just another mask, in a Ballroom full of masks. And yet . . . there was something familiar about this man. I did know him from somewhere. He walked right up to me, ignoring Molly standing at my side, and stopped right in front of me.
“You’re not James Drood,” I said roughly. “Nothing like him. Who are you, really?”
The face flickered and disappeared, like the illusion it was, and standing before me was Laurence Drood. The Drood from Cell 13, free at last. He laughed softly at the look of surprise on my face.
“Oh, come on,” he said. “I can’t believe you didn’t guess it was me all along. I mean, who else was there? Who had better reason than me to want the Lazarus Stone?”
“How did you get out?” I said numbly.
“I could have left any time,” said Laurence. “I know everything the family knows, remember? How could they build any jail that could hold me? I just never had a reason to leave before.” -Property of a Lady Faire

As of the climax of the novel, Laurence now has Kayleigh's Eye fused to his chest, with all of the protection that entails:

He suddenly pulled open the front of his shirt, to show me Kayleigh’s Eye, fused to the flesh of his chest. A great glowing amulet, with a golden alien eye set in its centre. Staring at me unblinkingly. Just as it had once stared at me from my grandfather’s chest. Tears stung my eyes, but I wouldn’t let them fall. Not in front of the enemy. -Property of a Lady Faire

All of those blood red men are clones of Laurence Drood, each of them bearing a lesser extent of the immortality gifted to him by Kayleigh's Eye:bearing

“I had the lab assistant take a sample of my DNA down to the Armoury, where he used it to make a whole bunch of adult clones. To serve me directly, to walk about in the world on my behalf, so I could experience the world through them. They were designed to be mindless, you see, just blank slates with nothing inside their heads but me. I controlled them all, my mind in their bodies. I was, after all, used to thinking about a lot of things at once. I sent my clones out into the world in my place, to make the world frightened of me.
“The lab assistant had his own assembly line running there, tucked away in the deepest recesses of the Armoury, and no one ever noticed. You’d be amazed at what goes on in the Armoury every day that never gets officially noticed. Or perhaps amazed isn’t the right word. Horrified—that’s closer.
“I sent my clone army to the Department of Uncanny, where my very own suborned traitor let them in. You can always find someone . . . and I used one clone’s hands to tear Kayleigh’s Eye out of your grandfather’s chest, Eddie. To make me invulnerable and untouchable. And my clones too, to a lesser degree, because of the spiritual distance . . . or something. Injure and damage them all you like, but they’ll always bounce back. As you’ve no doubt noticed. Aren’t they splendid?” He leaned forward, conspiratorially. “That’s why the masks, of course. Because they’ve all got my face. Bit of a giveaway there . . .” -Property of a Lady Faire

Description of the Lazarus Stone:

She reached carefully into an unobtrusive pocket on her tuxedo jacket, and brought out a small shiny object. Everyone in the Ballroom leaned forward for a better look. They just couldn’t help themselves. I did too, and was disappointed to discover that the legendary and much-sought-after Lazarus Stone . . . was just a small sphere of unimpressive alien tech. Nothing glamorous or impressive about it. A pockmarked ball of some unfamiliar metal, two or maybe three inches in diameter. Except, the more I looked at it, the more it seemed to me that there was something . . . slippery about it. Something that made the Lazarus Stone strangely hard to look at, hard to pin down in any of its details. As though it had too many spatial dimensions for this world. Perhaps because it had been made by a species with far more than human senses, or less limitation in their thinking. All I knew was that just looking at the Stone made my head hurt. -Property of a Lady Faire

Unlike with the Regent of Shadows, Kayleigh's Eye does not protect Laurence Drood from feeling pain. Moreover, due to them all being of the same mind, whatever pain he feels is shared by his many clones:

But what interested me was that all around the great ice cavern of the Ballroom, all the blood-red men had clapped their hands to their crimson masks. They had felt in their eyes what Laurence had felt in his. Slaved to his will, what he experienced, they experienced. And while Laurence might have Kayleigh’s Eye fused to his chest, like my grandfather the Regent . . . it didn’t protect Laurence as well as it had protected the Regent. My grandfather had been immune to all pain and damage; Laurence just repaired himself. As long as he felt pain, he was vulnerable. And through him the blood-red men . . . -Property of a Lady Faire

Through what are assuredly telepathic means, Ammonia Vom Acht can kill people just by looking at them:

Some of them turned on Ammonia Vom Acht, seeing her as an easier target. She just looked at them, and they all fell dead. You don’t mess with the world’s most powerful telepath. -Property of a Lady Faire