The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny

TWO Hot Pursuit in a Cold Town

Outside the Dragon’s Mouth, the air was fresh and sharp and full of familiar scents. All kinds of cooking, from all kinds of cultures; blood and sweat and musk blasting out of the dance halls; the lingering reminders of a thousand different kinds of sin. I took a deep breath to clear my head. Getting Lord Screech all the way across the Nightside to the infamous Osterman Gate would have been tricky and dangerous enough at the best of times, but with Walker and all his various people out and about, keeping under the radar was going to be more than usually difficult.

The Osterman Gate is an ancient crystal amulet the size of an elephant, and the only dimensional gateway in the Nightside that leads directly to Shadows Fall; that remarkable little town in the back of beyond where legends go to die, when the world stops believing in them. And now, it seemed, home to the elven Court in exile. Normally, you got to Shadows Fall by the Underground rail system, but Walker’s people would have all the stations staked out by now. Along with the Street of the Gods, the World Beneath, and all the other subterranean routes and hidden paths. Walker was nothing if not thorough. So, unfortunately, all that remained was the most dangerous route of all. The roads.

There are many roads leading in and out of the Nightside, and wise people have nothing at all to do with them. The traffic that roars up and down our streets hardly ever stops, and it’s better that way for everyone. There are cars and trucks, ambulance chasers and motorcycle messengers, horse-drawn equipages and futuristic vehicles that often don’t have wheels or windows or any regard for the rules of the road. Every single one of them in a hell of a hurry to get where it’s going, usually to somewhere even stranger and more dangerous than the Nightside.

Ambulances that run on distilled suffering, ice wagons that carry blocks of frozen holy water, and ghost trams that stop for no man. Articulated vehicles as long as city blocks carrying hazardous and forbidden materials, silent hearses carrying the kind of cargo that has to be fought back into its coffin at regular intervals; and not everything that looks like a car is a car. There are things in the traffic that feed on slower things. Sometimes I look at the main roads, and I don’t see traffic; I see a jungle on wheels.

Which is why no-one with any sense uses the roads unless he absolutely has to.

I don’t own a car. I have my own ways of getting places. But when I do need one, I throw myself on the kindness of strange friends. I got out my phone and called Dead Boy. An old friend and occasional partner in crime, Dead Boy owned a truly magnificent car that had strayed into the Nightside from some future time-line. It could beat up anything on four wheels, and had never even heard of road safety. But after I waited patiently through the dialling chant, all I got was Dead Boy’s usual recorded message.

“Hi. I’m dead. Call back later.”

So I frowned, tapped my foot thoughtfully, and considered who else might be available and up for a little motorised mayhem. It wasn’t a terribly long list, and it didn’t take me long to get to the bottom. I sighed and entered the number for Ms. Fate; the Nightside’s very own transvestite crime-fighter. A man who dressed up as a super-heroine to kick the crap out of bad guys. She’s actually very good at it; and she has a really remarkable car. It’s just that I find her continual bright-eyed girl-guide enthusiasm somewhat trying...

“Hi, John!” she said, her voice rich and warm as always. “In trouble again, are we?”

“How did you know?” I said, a bit suspiciously. “John, my phone is preprogrammed to recognise your voice. It sets off all sorts of warning bells and a siren, because let’s face it, sweetie, you’re always in some kind of trouble.”

“How would you like to drive me and my elven client from one side of the Nightside to the other, all the way to the Osterman Gate, almost certainly fighting off attacks by assorted bad guys from beginning to end, and help prevent a major war into the bargain?”

She laughed. “You always did know how to show a girl a good time. Did you say... elven?”

“Yes. Don’t ask me to explain, or I’ll start to whimper. It’s complicated.”

“My fee just doubled. Shall we say ... twenty per cent of what you’re getting?”

I grinned. “I don’t have any problem with that.”

“Fabulous, darling! I’ll slip a few extra nasty tricks into my utility belt, fire up the Fatemobile, and be with you in two shakes of the best false boobies money can buy.”

There wasn’t anything I felt like saying in response to that, so I shut down my phone. I was about to put it away when it rang. I looked at it for a moment. Sometimes you just have a feeling... I answered the phone, holding it a cautious distance away from my ear.

“This had better not be who I think it is.”

“John, dear boy, this is Walker. You need to stop what you’re doing and go home, right now. This is none of your business.”

“He’s my client,” I said. I didn’t know how Walker knew I was involved with the putative Lord Screech; but then, Walker knows everything. I think that’s actually part of his job description. Along with keeping the peace and enforcing the status quo in the Nightside by any and all means necessary. Either way, he should have known better than to give me orders.

“You can get other clients,” Walker said reasonably. “Walk away, John. I’ve already signed the elf’s death warrant. I’d hate to have to sign another.”

That was Walker for you. He might or might not hate to do it; but he’d do it. Walker was all about getting the job done.

“You know I never let a client down,” I said.

“Of course, dear boy. I’m only keeping you talking so my people can pinpoint your current location... John? What are you doing back at the Dragon’s Mouth?”

There was something in his voice. It might have been concern ; but you can never be sure with Walker.

“I’m fine,” I said. “The client chose the meeting place.”

“Typical elf. He knew what it meant to you. Yet another reason why you shouldn’t trust him. I know you pride yourself on being loyal to your clients, John, but he won’t be loyal to you. He can’t. He’s an elf.”

“The principle still stands,” I said. “I don’t have many, so I have to stick with what I’ve got. We’re off on a little road trip, Walker, off to see the worlds. Try and keep up.”

“This is no joke, John. I’ve been forced to take on some really serious people, to see this through.”

“Send the best you’ve got,” I said. “And I’ll send them home crying for their mothers.”

Walker sighed into my ear, like a parent disappointed by a stubborn child. “You’ve been listening to the elf, haven’t you, John? You know you can’t trust anything an elf says. I am the only one who knows what’s really going on here.”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “If he’s on the opposite side to you, I must be doing the right thing.”

“All these years of butting heads,” said Walker. “And you haven’t learned a damned thing.”

The phone went dead. I looked at it for a moment, to see if anyone else felt like calling and sticking their oar in, then I put the phone away. Of course I knew Lord Screech couldn’t be trusted. He was an elf. But I’d given him my word, and my word was good. I looked up and down the street. Ms. Fate had better get a move on. Walker hadn’t been joking about pinpointing my position through my phone.

There wasn’t anywhere handy I could use as a shelter. The clubs and bars in this part of town were so down-market, the bouncers were outside chucking them in, and they forced you to order your drinks at gunpoint. And there was no way I was going back into the Dragon’s Mouth.

“Is there any particular reason why you’re ignoring me?” said Lord Screech.

“Because I’ll get lied to less that way,” I said, not looking at the elf. “I know all I need to know.”

“Walker was quite right. Never trust anything an elf tells you. We always lie—except when a truth can hurt you more. Or when the truth can be made to serve our best interests over yours. I don’t care about you, or Walker, or any other human, except where you can help or hinder my mission.”

I didn’t ask how he knew it was Walker on the phone.

“If you’re trying to be disarming, it isn’t working,” I said. “And don’t even try to be charming. I’ve got protections against that.”

“Why are you helping me, John Taylor? When you know you should know better?”

I looked at him for the first time. “Because I’m intrigued. And not by the terrible secret you’ve offered as payment, whatever it may or may not turn out to be. I’ve spent my whole life dealing with terrible secrets. No, what intrigues me is why a high-and-mighty elf lord should endanger himself by coming to the Nightside, then beg help from a human. Even one as special as me. So I’ll go along with you, do my best to get you to where you need to be ... and no doubt your true purpose will become clear along the way.”

“I wouldn’t put money on it,” the elf said cheerfully.

Perhaps fortunately, we were interrupted at that point by the approaching roar of a powerful engine. We both looked round and stepped back a little as the Fatemobile surged out of the traffic and slammed to a halt right in front of us. On every side, hardened sinners on their way to infamous dens of iniquity stopped, to get a better look at the Fatemobile. A good twelve feet long and almost as wide, Ms. Fate’s crime-fighting motor car was a magnificent machine, with low, powerful lines in a retro sixties style, complete with tall rear fins, a prominent afterburner, and acres and acres of gleaming chrome. It was a shocking fluorescent pink from bonnet to bumper, and had big fluffy wheels. In fact, it wasn’t so much pink as PINK! And instead of the usual silver winged victory figure on the front radiator, the Fatemobile boasted a silver wee-winged faerie in a basque and suspenders.

Ms. Fate might have heard of taste, but only as something other people had. Boring people.

“I like it!” said Lord Screech.

“You would,” I said.

The heavy driver’s door swung open with a puff of compressed air, and Ms. Fate emerged from her car via a single elegant movement I couldn’t have copied without throwing my whole back out. Tall and leanly muscular, Ms. Fate wore a black leather super-heroine outfit, cut tightly to show off her long legs and false bosoms. Heavy boots and gauntlets, and a proud horned cowl. Her green eyes shone brightly through polarised eye-slits, and her mouth was a brilliant red. Her utility belt was a bright yellow, presumably so she could find it in the dark. She crashed to a halt before me and struck a pose that was only slightly self-mocking.

“And here I am, to save the day! Ms. Fate, at your service, rogues, villains, and creatures of the night a speciality. Ask me about my special rates for criminal conspiracies. How are you, John?”

“All the better for seeing you,” I said. “Where’s your cape? I always think you look so more authentic with your cape.”

“In the back seat. I have to take it off when I’m driving; I find it restricts my movements too much.”

Ms. Fate is the real deal. A genuine old-school super-heroine who just happens to be played by a man.

“We really do need to get a move on,” I said. “Walker’s people are already on their way here. So fire up the Pink Pan ther mobile, stomp on the pedal, and it’s everything forward and trust in the Lord all the way to the Osterman Gate. Stop for nothing and no-one, and I hope all your car’s armaments are loaded for bear because we’re going to need them.”

“You know how to sweet-talk a girl,” said Ms. Fate. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your elven friend?”

“This is Lord Screech,” I said. “Only he probably isn’t. Think of him less as my client and more as cargo to be transported. I’d lock him in the boot if I could trust him out of my sight that long.”

“Well,” said Ms. Fate, smiling challengingly at Screech. “An elf. How ... exotic.”

The elf lord gave her a formal bow, with all the trimmings. “Delighted to meet you. You’re a man.”

“Not when I’m on duty,” said Ms. Fate. “Is my secret identity going to be a problem?”

“Not at all,” said Screech, smiling easily. “Like all my kind, I delight in all forms of deceit and disguise, and glory in the joys of transformation. We’ve never understood this human preoccupation with normality. Where’s the fun in that?”

“Definitely time to be going,” I said. “When an elf starts making sense...”

Ms. Fate laughed and snapped her fingers at the Fatemobile. All the doors swung open. Ms. Fate headed for the driving seat. I looked at Screech.

“You want to do rock, scissors, paper to see who rides shotgun?”

“Only people I trust get to sit beside me in the Fatemobile,” said Ms. Fate.

“I’ll get in the back seat,” said Screech.

“Mind my cloak,” said Ms. Fate.

I settled into the passenger seat while Screech folded his long body almost in two to fit through the backdoor. Sitting down, he had to lean forward to keep from banging his head on the roof, and his knees came up to his chin. He still looked insufferably dignified and aristocratic, but that’s elves for you. The Fatemobile’s interior was pretty much as I remembered. Lipstick red leather on all the seats, a high-tech dashboard complete with computer displays and weapons systems, and a steering wheel covered in ermine. A bonsai pine tree perched on the dashboard served as an air freshener. Ms. Fate touched the ignition pad with a leather-clad fingertip, and the whole car trembled eagerly.

“Are there many super-heroes in the Nightside?” said Screech, from between his raised knees.

“We prefer the term costumed adventurers,” said Ms. Fate, running quickly through her car’s warm-up checks. “Pretty much everyone and everything turns up here eventually, and there have always been a few of us, making a stand for justice and revenge and the right to kick six different colours of crap out of the bad guys. I think we do it for the challenge. No-one does villains like the Nightside. Right, John?”

“Archetypes and icons have always felt at home in the Nightside,” I said. “But super-heroes and super-villains are a bit too innocent to do well here. I think we disappoint them, with our endless shades of grey rather than their preferred black-and-white morality. There have always been a few costumed heroes; the Mystery Avenger, the Lady Phantasm, the Cutting Edge ...”

“And the villains?” said the elf, hopefully.

“Again, we tend more towards colourful characters,” I said. “The Painted Ghoul, Jackie Schadenfreude, Penny Dreadful...”

“And remember that awful little poseur, Dr. Delirium?” said Ms. Fate. “Today the Nightside, tomorrow the world?”

“Of course I remember,” I said. “Walker had Suzie and me toss his nasty little arse out of the Nightside. Last I heard, he was sulking somewhere in the Amazon rain forest, swearing vengeance on the world and trying to build his own private army through ads in the back of Soldier of Fortune magazine. This is what comes of uncles leaving you far too much money.”

“You work for Walker?” said Screech.

“Sometimes,” I said. “When he’s not trying to have me killed. It’s complicated. It’s the Nightside.”

“Heads up, people,” said Ms. Fate. “Company’s coming.”

They came marching down the street towards us, and everyone else hurried to get out of their way. Striding arrogantly in perfect formation and perfect lock-step, carrying heavy truncheons and pistols holstered on both their hips, in black-and-gold uniforms with reinforced helmets; Walker’s very own shock-and-awe troopers. I felt obscurely flattered that Walker had sent his own personal heavies to stop me. It showed a certain respect for my capabilities.

Walker’s job was to keep the lid on things, and to do that he could call on support from the Army, the Church, and pretty much anyone else he felt like, along with any number of specialists. But he wasn’t usually one for displays of brute force; he tended more towards dividing and conquering and Let’s you and him fight, He only sent in the shock-and-awe troopers when he absolutely positively felt the need to stamp on everyone in sight, as an object lesson to others. He must see Lord Screech’s Peace Treaty as a threat to the Nightside’s status quo... but still, he shouldn’t have done it. He must have known I’d take it personally.

I did a quick headcount, and came up with thirty heavily armed specimens, heading right for us. Under normal circumstances, sending thirty armed men to take down one elf, one super-heroine, and me might have seemed somewhat excessive ; but as I’ve said before, we don’t do normal in the Nightside. These might well be hard-faced, hard-hearted, hardened soldier types; but in the end they were only military men, and we ... were so much more. They broke into a trot as they spotted the Fatemobile, hefting their truncheons eagerly.

I just knew we weren’t going to get along.

The three of us stepped out of the car and stood together, studying the advancing bully-boys. They all had that look... of men who’d been thrown out of the SAS for excessive brutality ; of men who didn’t know the meaning of the word fear, or self-restraint; of men who would get the job done whatever it took. Idiots with muscle, basically. Training’s all very fab and groovy, but it only works in the sane, everyday world. In the Nightside, we depend more on violent improvisation and downright nasty weirdness.

Someone in the front rank spotted me, and I saw a ripple pass through the ranks as my name worked its way back. They all swapped their truncheons to their left hands, and drew their guns with their right. Heavy, long-barrelled pistols, loaded with dum-dums if they had any sense. I smiled, a little. Walker must have told them about me, but they clearly hadn’t listened. So, time for my party trick. I raised my hands, called on an old well-rehearsed magic, and took all the bullets out of their guns. The bullets fell in streams from my upraised hands, to jump and clatter on the ground at my feet. As tricks go, I couldn’t help feeling it was getting just a bit predictable, but I think people have come to expect it and would be disappointed if I didn’t use it at some point. Sometimes I’m a victim of my own reputation.

The shock-and-awe troopers could tell the guns in their hands were empty by the sudden change in weight, and they holstered them quickly. Without slowing their advance, they transferred their truncheons back to their right hands. A good move. You can’t take bullets out of a stick. I looked behind me, casually, in case there was an obvious exit route, but the street was blocked off by a crowd of fascinated onlookers, taking photos and placing bets. One guy had even taken advantage of the crowd to set up a fast-food stall, selling wriggling things on sticks.

Ms. Fate finished fastening her midnight blue cloak about her shoulders. It suited her. The cape made her look more like an experienced crime-fighter and less like a pervert in a fetish suit. The heavy leather cape swirled about her as she drew a handful of razor-sharp silver shuriken out of her belt. In that moment, she looked every inch the real thing; because she was.

“We could drive off,” I said. “Thus avoiding unnecessary blood and suffering. Just putting it forward as a possibility...”

“Don’t be silly,” said Ms. Fate, making fists inside her gauntlets so that the leather creaked loudly. The knuckles were reinforced with steel caps. “I have my reputation to consider.”

“Sorry,” I said. “Don’t know what came over me. Don’t suppose you’ve got any battle armour built into that costume?”

“Of course not. It slows me down when I’m fighting. You really mustn’t worry about me, John. It’s sweet, but just a touch patronising. Worry about those poor bastards.”

Her right hand whipped forward, with a practised snap of the wrist, and a silver shuriken flashed through the air to bury itself in the nearest trooper’s left tit. It punched right through his body armour and buried itself deep in the pectoral muscle. Blood spurted on the air as the force of the blow slammed him back onto his arse. Well trained, though, he didn’t make a sound as his fellow troopers trampled right over him in their eagerness to get to us.

“Some people would take a hint,” said Ms. Fate. “But I can see we’re going to have to do this the hard way. Up close and personal.”

“Best way,” said Lord Screech.

I looked at him, and couldn’t keep from raising an eye brow. “Are you seriously proposing to involve yourself in a common brawl? I didn’t think your kind lowered themselves to simple fisticuffs and putting the boot in.”

“We don‘t, usually,” said the elf. “But we never miss an opportunity to put mere humans in their place.”

And he and Ms. Fate marched purposefully forward to strike terror into the hearts of the ungodly. I stayed right where I was, considering my options. I’ve never been much of a one for brute force, mainly because I’ve never been very good at it. I had no doubt I’d have to get personally involved at some point, but I thought I’d wait and see what Ms. Fate and Lord Screech had to offer first.

The shock-and-awe troopers clearly didn’t take a costumed super-heroine seriously, right up to the moment she hit their advancing front line like a grenade. She punched out one man, back-elbowed another in the throat, swung around and took out two more with a sweeping karate kick. Shocked cries of pain and horror filled the night as she waded right into the troopers, breaking heads and noses, beating them up and knocking them down, and making it all look easy. The troopers quickly rallied, striking out viciously with their truncheons, but somehow Ms. Fate was never where they thought she should be, and they did more damage to each other than they did to her.

Ms. Fate had trained long and hard to be a costumed crime-fighter, and it showed.

Lord Screech, on the other hand, was every inch the magnificent amateur; a man who never practised because he didn’t need to. He seemed simply to stroll into the mayhem, and men started dropping to the blood-stained ground. He moved languidly, gracefully, through the confused pack of armed men, and every time his hand shot out, there was the sound of breaking bone and cartilage, and blood flew everywhere. He moved so quickly none of the shock-and-awe troopers could even touch him.

I sat on the bonnet of the Fatemobile, cheering my colleagues on but not so loudly as to draw unwelcome attention to myself. Screech and Ms. Fate didn’t seem to need my help. Until a new pack of troopers, twice the size of the original, came racing round the corner, and charged forward to join the fight. I sighed. Given that Walker was every inch a product of the old public school system, he seemed to have great difficulty in grasping the concept of playing fair.

Screech and Ms. Fate moved quickly to stand back-to-back, surrounded by broken and bloodied figures crawling painfully about on the street. They could have run back to the safety of the Fatemobile, but that wasn’t their style. Ms. Fate was breathing hard, the leather over her fake breasts rising and falling, but her gloved hands were full of shuriken, and her cowled head was proudly erect. Screech wasn’t even breathing hard. He flicked drops of blood from the tips of his elegant fingers and glared arrogantly at the approaching troopers. But there had to be a good sixty armed men heading right for them, and the odds weren’t good.

So I got up off the bonnet, walked casually forward to join Screech and Ms. Fate, waited till the charging troopers were almost upon us, then used a variation on my bullet-removing trick to rip all the fillings, crowns and bridgework right out of their mouths. The troopers skidded to a halt, clutching at ruined, bloody mouths, making quite distressing and pitiful sounds of pain and horror. Screech and Ms. Fate looked at me inquiringly. I explained what I’d just done, and Ms. Fate got the giggles. Screech nodded approvingly, as though I was a rather backwards pupil who’d finally done something right. I stepped forward, and cleared my throat loudly to get the troopers’ attention.

“Yes,” I said cheerfully. “That was me. Now, be good little shock-and-awe troopers and trot off back to Walker, or I’ll show you another disappearing trick, involving your testicles and a series of buckets.”

They looked at each other, put away their various weapons, and trudged off to tell Walker I’d been mean to them. And probably to ask if he knew a good dentist. They looked rather sullen and sulky, as though we hadn’t played the game by refusing to be helpless victims.

“Spoil-sport,” said Ms. Fate, her breathing almost back to normal. “I was just getting warmed up.”

“That was a really nasty trick, Mr. Taylor,” said Screech. “Almost worthy of an elf.”

“Let’s get back to the car,” I said. “We need to remove ourselves from the vicinity, at speed, before Walker decides to send someone or something really dangerous after us. Those poor fools were just a shot across the bows, to get our attention.”

“And,” said Ms. Fate, “now he knows what car you’re using. So much for the element of surprise.”

We all piled back into the Fatemobile, Ms. Fate detaching her cloak and tossing it onto the back seat, where it enveloped Lord Screech. Ms. Fate slapped at various controls, the automatic seat belts did themselves up, and she gripped the ermine-covered steering wheel with her gloved hands.

“Atomic batteries to power, turbines to speed!” she yelled joyously, and slammed her foot down.

The Fatemobile peeled out so fast it took a minute for its shadow to catch up, and bullied its way into the streaming traffic through sheer bravado and force of character. The acceleration pressed me back into my seat, and the sudden turns clanged my eye-balls together. Screech finally freed himself from the folds of Ms. Fate’s cape and leaned forward.

“Atomic batteries? Is she joking?”

“Who can tell?” I said. “This is the Nightside. We do things differently here.”

“You humans and your toys,” said Screech. “I think I’ll take a little nap. Wake me up when we get to the Gate.”

We shot through the Nightside at breath-taking speed, overtaking most things, intimidating others, and shouldering aside anything that didn’t get out of the way fast enough. The Fatemobile might look like a contender for Top Gear’s Most Effeminate Car of the Year Award, but it moved like a guided missile, and had enough built-in weapons systems to more than punch its weight. Ms. Fate wasn’t above using the front-mounted machine-guns to clear the way ahead if she recognised anyone she disapproved of, and she tossed a concussion grenade through the open window of a taxi-cab when the driver was rude to her. He must have been new. Anyone else would have had more sense. Or at least sense enough to maintain a safe distance. The various bars and clubs all merged into one long blur as we streaked past them, the neon signs a long multi-coloured smear. The Fatemobile’s motor roared like a beast unleashed, and there wasn’t a thing on the road that could match us.

It wasn’t until we were directed off the main road and onto the side routes that our real troubles began.

Walker had set up roadblocks at all the major intersections leading to the Osterman Gate, heavy fortifications topped with barbed wire, leaving only narrow gaps for the traffic to file through. Every barricade was manned with heavily armed and armoured shock-and-awe troopers. Only Walker would have dared interfere with the flow of traffic through the Nightside, and even he couldn’t hope to keep it up for long without risking open mayhem and madness; but it did what it was supposed to do. It forced us off the main roads and onto the lesser-known and lesser-travelled routes. Roads that took you through the darker territories, where the really wild things lived.

Ms. Fate was quickly lost and disorientated. You can’t rely on a sat-nav in a place where directions can be a matter of choice, and reality rewrites itself when you’re not looking. I concentrated on the Osterman Gate, keeping its location fixed in my mind, even as the roads twisted and turned before us. We were in the dog latitudes now, in the raw and savage parts of the Nightside that most tourists never see. Where you can find all manner of terrible things, if they don’t find you first. The traffic was just as heavy, though maybe a little faster and better armed, and Ms. Fate swore constantly under her breath as she fought to keep up with everything else. I guided her through back routes and hidden paths, forced this way and that by blocked-off exits, but always edging closer to our goal. Walker might have his traps and his barricades, and his spies on every street-corner; but I was born in the Nightside, and no-one knows its streets better than I.

We were heading through Chow Down, where we put the seriously extreme ethnic restaurants (cuisine red in tooth and claw), when Ms. Fate glanced in her rear-view mirror and made a clucking noise of disappointment.

“Take a look behind, John; we seem to have acquired unwanted suitors. Really uncouth types.”

I turned around in my seat and looked behind me. Screech gave every indication of being fast asleep, his mouth hanging slightly open. I looked past him, through the rear window, and winced. Walker had put Hell’s Neanderthals on our tail. Now, that was just mean. There were twenty of the massive, hairy creatures, riding souped-up, stripped-down, chopper motorcycles. Great muscular specimens of another kind of human, brought to the Nightside from the ancient past via some travelling Timeslip, and put to work by anyone who needed brawn untroubled by much brain. Hell’s Neanderthals were always ready to do security, body-guarding, or menace for hire, for anyone with hard cash to offer.

They wore long, flapping coats made from the tanned skins of enemies they’d defeated. And eaten. They wore Nazi helmets, lots of trashy jewellery, and a curious mixture of all the major religious symbols. They also wore lengths of steel chain wrapped around their bulky torsos, to use as flails in close combat. Their leaders had swords sheathed on their backs, and I knew from experience that they would be brutal jagged butcher’s blades. Hell’s Neanderthals don’t do subtlety.

They moved up fast behind us, their outriders lashing out with steel-tipped boots at anyone who got too close. I could hear the pack-leaders hooting and howling at each other in their prehuman language, and something in those brutal, primitive sounds made all the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I must have made some kind of noise myself, because Screech’s eyes snapped open. He turned languorously to look out the rear window and pulled a face.

“And I thought humans were ugly ... Nature can be very cruel to some people. Any chance we can outrun these evolutionary disasters?”

“Not in this traffic,” said Ms. Fate. “It’s so tightly packed I can’t build up any speed, while those motor-bikes are weaving through the vehicles behind us. It’s times like this I wish I’d invested in that air-to-surface missile system I saw in Motors of Mass Destruction magazine. Find me an open road, John, and those creepy bastards can eat my radioactive dust, but as it is ... Prepare for boarding, chaps. And do try to keep them from chipping the paint-work ...”

“Give me a rundown on the car’s defences,” I said. “What have you got that’s new and nasty?”

“Not a lot, I’m afraid. The machine-guns, of course, but only at the front ... The grenade launchers and the nerve-gas dispensers really need refilling; you know how expensive they are to maintain ... And a few other bits and bobs, but that’s basically it. I’m a street fighter, John; I don’t really do that whole death from afar thing. I’ve always prided myself on being an old-fashioned hands-on sort of girl, dispensing personal beatings to bad guys.”

“Isn’t there anything you can do?” I said.

“Oh sure! I’ll put on some Evanescence; that should put us in the right mood.”

As the music blasted from the in-car speakers, I remembered why I only ever called on Ms. Fate for transport when there was no-one else available.

A motorcycle’s roar contended fiercely with the music as a Hell’s Neanderthal pulled up alongside. He matched his bike’s speed to the car’s and grinned nastily at me through my side window, showing off brutal yellow fangs. He came in really close, reaching for the length of steel chain wrapped around his barrel chest, and I slammed open the side-door with all my strength behind it. The door rammed into the Neanderthal, and he suddenly disappeared sideways as his bike overturned, leaving him hooting loudly in surprise and pain as the road came up terribly fast to meet him. I looked back as he shot back down the road under his bike, in a shower of sparks and spurting blood, then his cries were cut off as his own people rode right over him. They came howling after us, waving their steel chains in circles above their heads.

One of them pressed in close, right on the Fatemobile’s bumper, and Ms. Fate slammed on the brakes. The other bikers sped past us, caught by surprise, but the rider behind couldn’t react quickly enough, and his front wheel connected with the rear bumper. The bike kicked and dug in, and threw the Neanderthal violently forward over the handle-bars and onto the car’s boot. He clung fiercely to one of the pink tail fins, his bandy legs dangling behind in the slip-stream, then he pulled himself forward and up onto the roof, hooting and howling wildly. A jagged steel blade punched down through the roof, the long blade narrowly missing Screech. The elf grabbed the blade with one bare hand and snapped it off, leaving the Neanderthal nothing but the hilt. He jumped forward onto the bonnet, whirled around, and showed us his blocky teeth in a nasty grin. And while he was busy feeling proud of himself, Ms. Fate hit the brakes hard again, and the rather-surprised-looking Neanderthal was thrown tit over arse off the bonnet and onto the road, where we ran over him.

Up ahead, the other Hell’s Neanderthals had turned themselves around and were now roaring back, weaving in and out of the approaching traffic while waving their various weapons in the air. Ms. Fate opened up with the forward-mounted machine-guns and mowed them down. The night was full of the sounds of gunfire, and the road was full of blazing motor-bikes and dead Neanderthals. Eventually, Ms. Fate ran out of targets, so she shut the guns down and cruised on in quiet satisfaction.

“What depressingly stupid creatures,” she said, after a while.

“Evolution is wasted on some people,” Screech said solemnly.

“Oh ... shit,” said Ms. Fate.

“What? What?” I said.

I looked back again; even more Hell’s Neanderthals were coming. Walker must have press-ganged every rogue Neanderthal in the Nightside. I counted forty before I gave up, and more were joining the chase all the time. I was beginning to grow somewhat annoyed with Walker. Time to show him what I could do when I really got annoyed and put my mind to it. I concentrated, firing up my special gift. My inner eye slowly opened, my third eye, my private eye; and my gift made clear to me all the things that could go wrong with a motorcycle. And then it was the easiest thing in the world to reach out, find what was nearly wrong with each motorcycle, and push them all over the edge.

Some bikes crashed, some exploded, and quite a few went up in balls of flame, burning fiercely bright against the night. Neanderthal bikers were thrown through the air, roasted with their machines, or blown apart into scattered pieces quickly churned up by the passing traffic. In a few moments the whole pack was gone, nothing left behind but bits and pieces of wrecked machines and ruined riders. I sank back into my seat, closing my eyes. Using my gift so widely really took it out of me.

“Hardcore, John,” said Ms. Fate. I couldn’t tell from her voice whether she approved or not, and I didn’t feel like looking at her.

“Turn the music down,” I said. “I’ve got a headache.”

I don’t like to use my ability too often. It takes a mental and a physical toll, and sometimes a spiritual one, too. I don’t like to think of myself as a killer, just a man who does what’s necessary, and I only ever act in self-defence ... But sometimes the Nightside doesn’t care what you want. And so you do what you have to, and live with it afterwards as best you can.

I don’t like to use my gift too often because the candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long; and I do blaze so very brightly when I send my mind out, into the night. I can’t use it too often without killing myself by inches. And I have relied on my gift so very often these past few years. There are days when it feels like I’m only held together with duct tape and will-power.

But some days you don’t have a choice. Ms. Fate needed directions, and I was way past the point where I could do it from memory. So I fired up my gift again and sent my mind soaring up out of my body, to look down upon the Nightside from above, and See the whole dirty mess stretched out below me. Walker’s roadblocks and barricades showed clearly in the night, and I sent Ms. Fate running this way and that to avoid them. We were making progress, but the Osterman Gate was still a long way off.

My head ached abominably, and my chest felt like it was full of razor blades. There was blood in my mouth, filling faster than I could spit it into a handkerchief. More blood dripped from my nose and seeped out from under my eyelids. It was getting hard to think clearly. I shut down my Sight, closed my inner eye, and slumped in my seat. I knew better than to push myself so hard, but the job decides what’s necessary, not me.

Whatever Lord Screech had to tell me, it had better be worth it. Or I would drag his nasty arse right back to Walker and dump him at his feet.

Ms. Fate was darting glances at me, clearly concerned, but she knew better than to say anything. She understood the price we have to pay to be the kind of people we have chosen to be. (I saw him naked once, in a sauna. He had scar tissue like you wouldn’t believe.) If Lord Screech was aware of what his precious mission was doing to me, he kept it to himself. He just looked out the windows, admiring the scenery and smiling happily to himself, occasionally singing along to the music in the car. Figures he’d like Amy Winehouse.

I was half dozing when I suddenly realised we were slowing, and my head snapped up as we eased to a halt. Ms. Fate was leaning forward, peering over the steering wheel at the road ahead. I sat up straight and looked, too, but I couldn’t see anything immediately threatening.

“What is it?” said Screech. “Why have we stopped?”

“It’s the traffic,” said Ms. Fate. “Where’s it all gone?”

She had a point. We were on a minor road, in a distinctly shabby area, but even so, there should have been more than the mere trickle of cars slipping past us. The pavements were empty, too, hardly a tourist or a punter to be seen anywhere. When this happens in the Nightside, it can mean only one thing. Something really bad is about to occur, and people with any sense have removed themselves from the vicinity until it’s all safely over.

“It’s Walker,” I said. “He must have shut down the side streets to block us in.”

“What do we do?” said Screech.

“Get ready,” I said. “Something’s coming.”

The werewolves came out of nowhere, dozens of them, streaming out of the side streets, racing down the main road, bursting out of the clubs and bars on either side of us. Huge, bestial shapes, with long, hairy bodies that were still vaguely, disturbingly, human. Muzzles full of teeth, and hands and feet tipped with vicious claws. Inhuman muscles bulged along their lupine frames. They were ahead and behind and all around us even as I realised what was happening. The first ones to reach us swarmed all over the Fatemobile, and it shook and juddered under their weight.

“Move move move!” I yelled, and Ms. Fate put the hammer down. The Fatemobile squealed off down the road, accelerating wildly. Some of the wolves fell off, but others clung to the roof, sinking their claws deep into the metal to hold them in place. The rest of the pack came running after us, inhuman strength driving their speed well past natural limits. The Fatemobile went faster, and so did they. Claw tips punched through the roof above me, as the werewolves fought to gain enough purchase to rip the roof open like a tin can and get at the meat inside. Ms. Fate yelled something entirely unladylike at them, and sent the Fatemobile swerving dangerously back and forth, trying to shake them off. They clung on, pounding their great fists on the metal, howling the joy of the hunt to the oversized Moon above.

More werewolves were running along beside us, easily matching our speed, occasionally reaching out mockingly to trail their claws down the side of the car. That made a sound like screeching, like screaming. The whole pack caught up with us in a few moments, surrounding the car and forcing us to drive in a straight line.

The werewolves stuck close to the car, sometimes leaping right over it in the sheer joy of the chase. Dark red tongues lolled from elongated muzzles, and great toothy grins showed on every side. They could have stopped us anytime, but wolves live for the chase. They were playing with us now, and we all knew it. One jumped up onto the front bonnet, sat down on the pink metal, and laughed soundlessly at us. Ms. Fate slammed on the brakes, and he rolled suddenly backwards, somersaulting twice before falling off the front of the car and being crushed under the weight of the on-coming Fatemobile. I looked out the back mirror, just in time to see him rise, and pull his broken body back together, and come running after us again.

“Do you have any silver bullets for your guns?” I asked Ms. Fate.

She shook her head quickly. “Maybe a dozen silver shuriken left in my belt. Don’t suppose you’ve got a silver dagger?”

“Not on me,” I said.

“Don’t even ask,” said Screech.

A whole bunch of werewolves threw themselves in front of the Fatemobile, and we screeched to a halt as they grabbed the front wheels and the undercarriage, forcing the car to a stop. The pack was running in circles around us by then, jumping and leaping and howling beneath the huge Moon. Long, jagged rents appeared in the car’s roof as the wolves above us went to work. One wolf reared up beside Lord Screech, and punched the side window. The reinforced glass shattered, leaving a jagged hole through which a huge hairy hand came clawing, reaching for the elf, who calmly grabbed the hairy arm with both his slender hands, and broke the arm in three places with quick, efficient moves. The werewolf yelped piteously, and snatched its arm back. Screech kicked the side-door open and left the car so quickly he was little more than a blur. He grabbed the nearest werewolf, lifted it off the ground and turned it over, and broke its back across his knee. He threw the broken body aside, tore out another wolf’s throat with his bare hand, then grabbed another and used it as a club to beat other wolves.

He was hurting them, but he wasn’t killing them. They healed almost immediately and came at him again. And the moment he slowed down, they would be all over him.

A werewolf hauled open the driver’s seat so quickly he ripped it right off its hinges. Ms. Fate’s hand snapped forward, and a silver shuriken sprouted suddenly from the wolf’s left eye. He howled horribly and fell backwards, turning half-human again as the pain maddened his mind and he lost control. Ms. Fate stepped quickly out of the car, a shuriken in each hand, and dared the werewolves to come to her. They prowled back and forth before her, showing her their teeth, wary of the silver; waiting for her to drop her guard for just one moment.

A wolf pulled open the door next to me, hauled me right out of my seat, and threw me into the road. I curled up instinctively and hit the ground rolling, but the impact was still enough to knock the breath right out of me. The werewolf loomed over me, snapping its long jaws mockingly. Up close, it smelled really bad, a harsh, rank mixture of musk and blood and wet dog. And then it must have got something of my scent, because it hesitated, and lowered its wedge-shaped head for another sniff. Because of circumstances not easily explained, I have some diluted werewolf blood in me. Not enough to make me were, but enough to accelerate the healing process. The werewolf could smell it on me; and while he was trying to figure that out, I punched him in the throat, hard enough to feel cartilage crack and break under my knuckles. The werewolf fell back, fighting frantically for breath as it scrabbled helplessly on the ground. I rose painfully to my feet and kicked him hard in the balls and in the head, to give him something else to think about.

I looked about me. Werewolves were swarming all over the Fatemobile, tearing bits off it and pissing on the roof, but the reinforced armoured frame was still keeping them out. One of the tail fins had been bent right over, and long runnels of pink paint had been torn away all down one side. One wolf grabbed at the silver figure on the radiator, then howled miserably as his hand caught fire.

Ms. Fate was still spinning and kicking and lashing out with the silver shuriken in her hands, but she was getting tired, and the werewolves surrounding her weren’t. Screech danced and pirouetted gracefully through the heart of the mayhem, but for every wolf his elven strength put down, more rose up to take its place. He was strong and he was magical; but he wasn’t silver. Ms. Fate and Lord Screech were fighting well and fiercely, but the odds were stacked against them.

Which meant, as usual, that it was all down to me.

People say that werewolves only fear silver, but that’s not strictly true. There’s one thing they fear even more, because it rules their lives. I concentrated again, raised my gift, and reached out to the oversized Moon that hangs over the Nightside. It took me only a moment to find the right ultraviolet frequency in the moonlight and change it subtly; and just like that, the whole damned pack howled and shrieked as the change raged through them, stripping them of tooth and claw and fur ... and suddenly the street was full of naked men and women, running for their lives. Except for those who didn’t react fast enough and got the crap kicked out of them by Ms. Fate and Lord Screech.

They soon ran out of victims and returned to the car. Ms. Fate wept bitter tears of rage and frustration as she saw what had been done to her beloved Fatemobile.

“Look what they’ve done to my precious! One door gone, windows smashed, the paint-work ruined ... Bastards! I’ll have their hides for this!”

“Bad doggies,” I said tiredly, and slid slowly back into my shotgun seat. Ms. Fate and Screech looked at me, then at each other, and got back into the car without saying anything. For all the damage it had taken, the Fatemobile started up the first time, and we roared off down the empty street.

We caught up with a few fleeing naked figures, and Ms. Fate made a point of swerving to run them down.

I dozed some more, half dreaming, as the car made its way steadily through half-deserted streets. Apparently our reputation preceded us. I woke up only when we eased to a halt again. I looked around quickly, but the quiet side street was entirely free of Neanderthals, werewolves, or anything else obviously dangerous. Ms. Fate tapped her fingertips thoughtfully on the steering wheel, looking straight ahead. She seemed to be considering something. She turned to look at me, then stopped, and clucked in a motherly way. She produced a tissue from her utility belt and mopped some of the blood from my face.

“You look like shit, John,” she said. “This isn’t doing you any good. Tell me it’s not as bad as it looks.”

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” I said.

“Very good! Now try saying it like you mean it. I never knew using your gift screwed you up this badly.”

“It’s not something I advertise,” I said.

“Should I call Suzie Shooter?”

“Don’t you dare! She’d turn this whole area into a blood-bath.” I looked around me. “Where are we, exactly?”

“I was wondering that,” said Screech, from the back seat. “I am in a bit of a hurry, you know.”

“If he says, Are we there yet? feel free to hit him with something large and spiky,” I said. “Why have we stopped again?”

“Because we’ve come to the edge of a different territory,” said Ms. Fate. “This whole area is currently under the rule of a new Mr. Big, name of Dr. Fell. If we try to cross without advance permission, we’ll have to fight our way through his army as well as Walker’s.”

I scowled, struggling to concentrate. My head was pounding. “I didn’t think there were any Mr. Bigs left, after the Walking Man paid his grand visit to the Boys Club. I thought he wiped them all out.”

“Not everyone was there that night,” said Ms. Fate. “The few that survived the Walking Man massacre wasted no time in taking over the old territories and expanding their influence. Dr. Fell is still very much alive and running this whole area like his own private kingdom. I’m surprised Walker hasn’t sent someone around to slap him down.”

“Walker has always believed in dealing with the devil you know,” I said tiredly. “Sometimes literally ... As long as this Dr. Fell sticks to his own territory and doesn’t make waves, Walker will do business with him.” I frowned. “Dr. Fell ... The name rings a bell, but I can’t place him. Was a time I knew all the major scumbags in town ... Talk to me, Ms. Fate. Tell me things.”

“He wasn’t really anyone, until the Walking Man wiped out most of the competition,” said Ms. Fate. “Just one more freak with a nasty gift and an itch for power. No-one seems to know who or what he was before he came to the Nightside, but since he came to power here, he’s made a name for himself for ruthless efficiency, money laundering on a grand scale, and general weirdness. They say he can See through the eyes of all those who work for him, so he always knows what’s going on throughout his territory. All the lesser scumbags pay tribute to him, to be allowed to operate here. And anyone who passes through has to pay a toll to him personally. Now, I could just put my foot down, drive like the devil, and hope he’s got nothing fast enough to catch us ... but there are stories. And I don’t think me or my lovely car are in any condition to fight a running battle if it all goes wrong. It might be ... expedient just to stroll into his presence, give him the money, and avoid a lot of unpleasantness.”

“This Dr. Fell worries you,” I said. “What makes him so different?”

“Dr. Fell is seriously weird,” said Ms. Fate. “Even for the Nightside. I would have taken him down myself, just on general principles ... but there is that whole private-army thing he’s got going. A girl should know her limitations.”

“I don’t pay tolls,” I said. “Normally. But I think you’ve got the right of it. None of us are in any shape to fight off armies. So, we go in politely, act diplomatically, and see if we can sweet-talk the scumbag. Screech, you’d better stay in the car.”

“I am deeply hurt by your insinuation,” said the elf. “I can be diplomatic if I have to be. I am an emissary, after all.”

“All right, you can come in with us,” I said. “But don’t kill anybody. Unless I start something first.”

“Well, really,” said Screech. “What do you think I am, a barbarian?”

“No,” I said. “You’re an elf. Which is worse.” I looked at Ms. Fate. “Same to you, only less so. I’ve no doubt we’re going to see some distressing things in Dr. Fell’s court, but patience and dignity at all times. We can always go back and give him a good arse kicking some other time.”

“I have had ... disagreements with some of Dr. Fell’s people, in the past,” Ms. Fate said carefully. “Really quite vicious and bloody disagreements, on occasion.”

“Oh, this is going to go really well,” I said.

We drove a short distance until we came to what was obviously Dr. Fell’s place of power. We all got out of the Fatemobile, and I took a long thoughtful look at it while Ms. Fate activated what was left of the car’s security systems. From the outside, Dr. Fell’s court looked like just another shabby night-club, with boarded-up windows and a really quite understated neon sign—The Penitent. The whole place could have used a lick of paint and quite possibly a tetanus injection. The only signs of life were the bouncers outside the firmly closed front doors, two huge golems in oversized tuxedos. They looked very professional and quite staggeringly dangerous. The only sure way to take down a stone golem is with a road drill.

The fresh air had revived me, or the werewolf blood in me was kicking in, and I actually felt half-way human as I headed for the club entrance. I was in the mood to spoil someone’s day, and the bouncers would do as well as anyone. Their heads turned slowly in unison, accompanied by low, grinding sounds. I nodded to them briskly, and they stared silently back with their empty stone faces.

“John Taylor and friends, here to speak with Dr. Fell,” I said. “And don’t give me any crap about appointments or I’ll make you targets for every pigeon in the Nightside.”

“There aren’t any pigeons in the Nightside, John,” said Ms. Fate. “Something eats them.”

“Yes,” I said patiently, “I knew that, but very probably they didn‘t, until you told them. Now I have to come up with a whole new threat.”

“Ah,” said Ms. Fate. “Shutting up now.”

“You’re not on the list,” the stone golems said in unison, in low, grating voices.

“I rarely am,” I said. “But I think you’ll find Dr. Fell will want to see me anyway.”

The two blocky heads turned slowly to look at each other; there was a silent conference, then two empty faces ground back to look at me.

“Go right in,” they said together. “Dr. Fell will have words with you, and your friends.”

“Wonderful,” Ms. Fate said brightly. “Doesn’t sound at all intimidating.”

Lord Screech sniffed loudly, stepped forward, and thrust a single long finger deep into the blank stone face of the nearest golem. With a few quick gestures, he etched long, sweeping furrows into the stone, giving the golem a nice happy face. He gave the other golem a sad face, then stepped back to regard his handiwork. He nodded, satisfied.

“Never take sass from the hired help.”

“Can’t take you anywhere,” I said.

“Dr. Fell really isn’t going to like that,” said Ms. Fate.

“Good,” I said. “Now, when we get in there, stick close to me, don’t pee in the potted plants, and act civilised. If anyone’s going to start anything, it’s going to be me, and I really don’t like to be upstaged.”

I led the way forward, and the dull grey entrance doors slowly swung open before us. Above the doors, the neon sign had changed to read Suffer for Your Sins. Nice touch, I thought. Beyond the entrance doors lay a sparse and spartan lobby with cracked plaster walls and a grubby wooden floor. On the far side of the lobby was another set of double doors, apparently made of solid brass. I walked right up to them, but they didn’t open on their own. I gave them an experimental push, and they swung slowly backwards, a few inches at a time, their hidden counterweights utterly silent. A bright light flared in the widening gap between, too painful to look at directly. I couldn’t see a thing through it, so I waited for the gap to widen enough, then marched forward with all the confidence in the world. And a complete willingness to look down my nose at anyone who wasn’t actually a member of a major pantheon.

Ms. Fate strode proudly beside me, like the renowned crime-fighter she was, and Lord Screech ... was Lord Screech.

The moment we passed through the doors, the light sank back to a bearable level, and Dr. Fell’s curious court was revealed before us. It looked like a circus, seen from the other side. A dark carousel of strange delights and twisted grotesques, candy-coloured clowns with painted-on leers, and malformed supermodels with a strange, wounded glamour. Cold-faced men in smart leisure suits sat stiffly in oversized chairs, surrounded by pretty boys and hard-faced girls in all the more extreme fashions of decades past. All of this was set against a selection of colour schemes that were shockingly bright and almost painfully clashing.

There was no music, no background entertainment; only a constant buzz of whispered conversation.

Every face turned to look at us, but though the whispers continued, no-one had anything to say to us. They looked us over with blank, expressionless faces, staring like so many dead people, as though all the life and passion and independence had been beaten or intimidated out of everyone present. Many of them held champagne glasses in their hands, but no-one seemed to be drinking. They all looked like they’d been standing in Dr. Fell’s court forever and might stand there forever more. They weren’t his courtiers, or his acolytes, or even his army; they were his, to do with as he would.

Here and there, light flared up suddenly in this pair of eyes or that, and I remembered that Dr. Fell was supposed to be able to See through them. So I smiled cheerfully about me, determined to give him a good show. I heard the heavy brass doors close behind me, but I didn’t look back.

Ms. Fate struck a super-heroine pose at my side, her leather fists resting on her black-clad hips, just above the utility belt. Her dark cloak swirled slowly, dramatically, about her. It was a tribute to her reputation and her sheer presence that she didn’t look in any way camp or amusing. The dried werewolf blood spattered across her leathers probably helped. Lord Screech struck a carelessly elegant pose on my other side, his bored expression suggesting he was slumming just by being there, and everyone present should feel honoured that he had deigned to stop off on his way to somewhere far more interesting. Typical elf, in other words.

And I ... stood straight and tall in my white trench coat, and let everyone get a good look at me. I was John Taylor, and that should be enough for anyone.

Dr. Fell’s foot-soldiers bothered me. I’d spotted them right away. Every crime boss and Mr. Big had them; young men with a lean and hungry look, eager to advance in the organisation by demonstrating just how much more vicious and extreme they were than their colleagues. Attack dogs, with good suits that couldn’t quite hide the bulges of holstered guns and other weapons. There were quite a few of them, lined up casually in the crowd between me and their boss. Nothing I hadn’t seen before, and even wiped the floor with on occasion ... but these were different. It was in their eyes ... He was in their eyes.

Supermodel types moved listlessly through the packed crowd, sporting garish little numbers and strangely styled gowns, offering trays of drinks and nibbles and the very latest chemical delights. They were all pretty as a picture, criss-crossing the room in simple patterns, moving in perfect unison, like flocking birds. They smiled widely, all the time, the only smiles in that place of whispers and staring eyes; but smiles too perfect and unwavering to be real. Sometimes guests would reach out to caress or slap their perfect bodies, and sometimes a girl would be pulled down to sit on someone’s lap, and the smiles looked even more unreal.

This was Dr. Fell’s carnival court, just so many living dolls for him to play with.

The man himself sat above them all, on the traditional raised dais, posed stiffly on a chair fashioned from human bones bound together with strips of mummified human muscle and tendon. Supplied, no doubt, by his many deceased victims. In a faded mourning suit, Dr. Fell was a tall, thin presence, with dull grey skin and a hideously mutilated face. Half a dozen naked women stood in a semicircle behind his hideous chair, all of them malformed or abnormal in various unpleasant ways. Missing parts, twisted limbs, gouged-out eyes. You only had to look at them to know they’d been made, not born, that way. They were the way they were because it amused Dr. Fell that they should be. Some of them held knives, some held guns, and some held nasty-looking magical weapons. All of them possessed a strange dark glamour and a dangerous attraction. Dr. Fell’s personal body-guards and assassins.

I was beginning to remember where I’d heard his name before; and I didn’t think we were going to get on.

Dr. Fell had burned out his own eyes with a white-hot crucifix. Now his scorched and shrivelled eyelids were sealed together under two great cross-shaped scars. He came to the Nightside as a rogue vicar and gave up his eyes in search of a greater Vision. Whatever he Saw, it changed his allegiance completely. Rumour had it he’d looked into a mirror ... And the man who’d come here to rage against the darkness ended up embracing it. He wore a crown of thorns, pressed down hard onto his forehead, and rivulets of dried blood ran down his sunken cheeks.

All the time I was considering Dr. Fell, he studied me through the eyes of his people.

I started forward and an aisle opened up, a narrow passage through the crowd to lead me right to Dr. Fell. Ms. Fate and Lord Screech strode along beside me, but Dr. Fell only had eyes for me. A hand reached out from the crowd to tug at Ms. Fate’s cape. She punched the man out without even looking round. He made no sound as he fell, and no-one else showed any reaction. A hunchbacked girl lurched forward into the aisle, blocking our way, and we had to stop or run over her. She was bent almost in two by the gnarled mass that ran the length of her spine, clearly visible thanks to her backless dress. She raised her head as high as she could, to smile at Screech.

“You’re so beautiful,” she said, in a voice like a little girl’s.

Screech smiled upon her. “Yes,” he said. “I am. You, however, are not a natural hunchback. This was done to you. Why?”

“Because it amused Dr. Fell,” she said. “There is no greater purpose, no greater reward. He looks upon us with his divine Sight, and we become what he Sees, what we truly are. He says it is only fitting that our exteriors match our interiors. He lets us be ... what we really are.”

“Typical human bullshit,” Screech said briskly. “You’re like this because he can’t bear to be the only monster here. And that is not acceptable to me.”

He took the young woman by the shoulders and shook her hard. She convulsed in his grip and cried out as the bones in her back snapped and cracked loudly, rearranging and restoring themselves. The hunch sank down into her flesh and was gone, all in a moment. Screech let go of the woman and she straightened up, slowly and disbelievingly, until she stood straight and tall before us all. She looked at Screech with awe and wonder and naked gratitude in her eyes, but he just waved her away. The chorus of whispers around us rose briefly, then fell back to its usual disturbing background noise. I looked at Screech, and he shrugged.

“I can’t abide small cruelties,” he said, to no-one in particular. “Only the greatest sins are worthy of indulgence.”

He sounded as arrogant as ever, but I liked him rather better in that moment. Not that I’d ever tell him.

A hulking figure appeared suddenly before us, blocking the narrow aisle. He wore a ruffled silk shirt over knee-length shorts, and his face was painted like a debauched clown. Rattles and dollies and clutches of blood-stained children’s finger bones hung from his belt. Two ugly horns thrust up out of his forehead. He opened his mouth to speak, but Screech cut him off.

“You, on the other hand, aren’t nearly ugly enough for what you really are. In fact, your entire existence offends my aesthetic sensibilities.”

He snapped his fingers crisply, and the man exploded. Bits of flesh and bone flew over a distressingly large area, spattering the clothes of pretty much everyone in the crowd. Interestingly, although many of them pulled disgusted faces and made appalled sounds, not one of them fell back by so much as a single step; and though the general whispering rose up loudly on every side, no-one protested. I wondered if they could. Ms. Fate looked at Lord Screech.

“Nice trick. You couldn’t have used it on the werewolves?”

“Only works on people,” said Screech. “The wolves are too far from baseline Humanity to be affected.”

“Leaving aside why you’d want a spell that only worked on people ... do you think you could teach me that trick?”

“Not if you want to remain human. Though I can’t think why anyone would want to. You are such small and limited things.”

“Still kicked your arse in the last war,” said Ms. Fate.

“Children, children,” I murmured. “You’re not at home now ...”

“John Taylor,” said Dr. Fell, and everything stopped. The whispering cut off sharply, and his dry, dusty voice seemed to echo unpleasantly in the new silence. He leaned forward slightly, and I couldn’t tell if the soft, creaking sounds came from him or his awful chair. “Approach me, John Taylor. We have so much to talk about.”

“We do?” I said, not moving.

“We are both men of vision. Men of power, and of destiny. Fate brought you to me, John Taylor.”

“No,” I said. “A Fatemobile.”

I strode forward to stand at the base of the raised dais. Ms. Fate and Lord Screech had to hurry to keep up with me. I’d had enough of Dr. Fell and his corrupt court, and I wanted this over and done with. Up close, he looked like a museum exhibit. A preserved specimen of something really nasty, only kept around to remind us of past mistakes. He smelled faintly of burned meat, as though some part of his scarred face was still burning. He smiled slowly at me, ignoring my companions. I didn’t smile back.

“Dr. Fell,” I said flatly. “Not at all pleased to meet you. Sorry if it’s taken me a while to get around to you, but you know how it is ... Things to see, people to do, and complete and utter scumbags to put in their place. Busy, busy, busy.”

“Calm, polite, and diplomatic, remember?” Ms. Fate murmured in my ear. “We’re here to beg a favour unless you want to start a war.”

“Haven’t decided yet,” I said. I looked Dr. Fell over, unhurriedly. “So, from rogue vicar to crime lord. I don’t know why you people keep coming here; you must know it isn’t good for you.”

“I came here to test my faith,” said Dr. Fell, apparently undisturbed by any of the things I’d said to him. “And I fell from my high station. Sometimes it feels like I’m still falling and always will be.”

“I never know what to say when people say things like that to me,” I said. “So, moving right along ... I will be passing through your territory. I thought it only right and proper to pop in and tell you.”

“You wish to beg my permission and pay tribute?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t do the begging thing, and I don’t have any loose change on me. I’m just here to be polite.”

“You come into my court, into my domain, you speak roughly to me, and you bring with you a deviant and an elf,” said Dr. Fell, his dry, scratchy voice entirely without emotion. “You mock me, Lilith’s son.”

“Why does everyone keep going on about Mommie Dearest?” I said. “All right, my mother’s a Biblical myth, and she nearly killed everyone in the Nightside, but can we please all get over that and move on? I have achieved a great deal in my own right, you know.”

“We are aware of your sins,” said Dr. Fell. His pursed, dried-up mouth moved in something that might have been a smile. “Did you really think we would allow one such as you ... to travel unmolested in our territory? Sinner ...”

“If there’s a sinner here, I’m looking at him,” I said. “The more I see of you and your people and your operation, the more I think you need shutting down with extreme prejudice. I will get around to you, but it doesn’t have to be now. Look the other way while I pass through your territory, and you can live to intimidate the impressionable another day.”

“Which part of Let’s not piss off the complete and utter loony because he’s got his own private army did you have trouble grasping?” Ms. Fate hissed in my ear. “If this is your idea of diplomacy, you should write the Diplomatic Mail Order School and demand your money back.”

“I had hoped for more from you,” said Dr. Fell. “We are both men of vision, Mr. Taylor, men who have learned to See the world for what it is rather than what most people would have it be. I had hoped, after all this time, to find a kindred soul ... but no matter.” He turned his head slightly, so that his blind eyes fixed on Ms. Fate. “You can be reconstructed, deviant, returned to what you were meant to be. You shall earn redemption here, through long and painful penance. But the elf ... is an abomination. It has no soul. Destroy it.”

Without warning or outcry, the whole crowd fell on us, arms outstretched, hands like claws. And every one of them had someone else looking out of their eyes. Ms. Fate threw down some pellets she’d unobtrusively palmed from her belt, and great clouds of choking black smoke billowed up, confusing our attackers. Lord Screech flexed his long fingers like a piano player about to attempt a difficult piece, then stabbed his left forefinger at one attacker after another. Men and women exploded, or melted and ran like candle wax, or burst into flames. People died as fast as the elf could point, but still they fought their way through the smoke to get to us.

Because they belonged to Dr. Fell, who cared for nothing but that his will be enforced. When rogue vicars go bad, they go all the way.

I was tired, my head hurt, and I could still taste blood in my mouth, but I needed my gift again. If only so I could stop Screech killing people who might yet be salvaged. So I concentrated, forced open my reluctant inner eye, and fixed my Sight on Dr Fell. Everyone has a secret fault, a hidden weakness, a spiritual Achilles’ heel, and it didn’t take long to find Dr. Fell’s. I reached out in a direction I sensed as much as Saw, and found the mirror that Dr. Fell had stored there; the original mirror he’d looked into, with his new Sight. I brought the mirror to his court, and placed it right beside him, a tall, standing mirror in a simple wooden frame. Dr. Fell’s head turned slowly, almost reluctantly, to face the mirror; then he screamed shrilly as he Saw again the thing that had made him burn out his own eyes and banish the mirror rather than See it again. He stood up sharply, the bone chair falling backwards as he faced his reflection. Everyone in the court stood very still, watching him with their own eyes.

I could see Dr. Fell’s reflection looking back at him, and it took me a moment to realise what was different about it. The Dr. Fell in the mirror still had his eyes. And as we all watched, the reflected image reached out of the mirror and grabbed Dr. Fell. He shrieked horribly as the long arms wrapped around him, and he kicked and struggled with all his strength as the reflection dragged him slowly, lovingly, into the mirror. In a moment he was gone, his screams suddenly shut off, and all that remained on the raised marble dais was an overturned chair and a mirror—with no-one reflected in it.

All around, men and women shook their heads tentatively, as though to assure themselves there was no longer anybody else in there with them. Some looked scared, some delighted; most looked lost, as though they no longer knew what to do without someone else to tell them. The six naked body-guards sat together on the dais, hugging each other and crying. Some of the foot-soldiers looked at me angrily through Ms. Fate’s slowly dispersing smoke. A few even started forward, but I waggled a finger at them, and they stopped. Lord Screech sniggered beside me.

“It’s over,” I said loudly. “Go home. Get your lives back. But ... if I hear any nonsense about reinstating the tolls and the tribute, I will come back and find a mirror big enough to hold every damned one of you.”

No-one tried to stop us as we left.

We were all the way through what used to be Dr. Fell’s territory and out the other side before the flying carpets came after us. Walker had picked up our trail. A whole fleet of the things came swooping down, brightly coloured, rippling fluidly as their riders steered them expertly in and out of the traffic that once more filled the road. The carpets could have flown right over them, but where was the fun in that? Riders fly carpets because they’re dangerous, and even in the midst of an important mission, they couldn’t resist a chance to show off their skills. This bunch were so cocky they weren’t even wearing helmets.

They crouched proudly on their flapping carpets, riding the updrafts, holding all kinds of weapons. It appeared Walker wasn’t interested in simply stopping us any more.

Ms. Fate put the pedal to the metal, and the Fatemobile leapt forward as though it had been goosed, but the carpets shot after us at impossible speed. And since they were entirely magical, their riders weren’t even bothered by the slip-stream. They shot in and out of the traffic lanes, weaving in and out of the paths of the slower-moving vehicles, closing in on us with loud hunting cries.

The first few pressed in close behind us, and bullets rico cheted from the Fatemobile’s reinforced pink exterior. Two riders swept down low to cut at our tyres with long, curved scimitars, only to recoil, baffled by the fluffy wheels. They fell back as they lost concentration, and slipped in behind us. Ms. Fate snapped a toggle on the dashboard, and the Fatemobile’s afterburner roared into life. A jet of flame incinerated both carpets in a moment, and the burning riders fell screaming to the road, swiftly put out of their misery by the following traffic. I looked at Ms. Fate.

“Hardcore.”

“No-one messes with my ride,” she sniffed. “And can I just point out that you will be paying for all repairs out of what the elf’s paying you?”

I thought of what the elf was paying me. “You’ll get your fair share,” I said. “Though you may have to take it in kind.”

Ms. Fate looked at me suspiciously, then concentrated on her driving. The afterburner had given us an extra burst of speed, but the carpets were already catching up, and more gunfire raked the rear of the car, which shuddered under the impact. Somebody back there had a really big gun.

A carpet rider spotted a gap in the traffic and shot forward to fly alongside. He grinned at me through my window and produced a gun. Ms. Fate tapped the brake, and he shot on ahead for a moment. While he was busy controlling his speed, I lowered my window, reached out, and grabbed a trailing thread I’d spotted hanging from the rear of the carpet. I pulled on the thread until I had a decent length, then lassoed it around a handy lamp-post. The thread spun around the steel post often enough to hold it firm, and I gave the signal to Ms. Fate. She accelerated, and the carpet poured on the speed to keep up with us; the rider didn’t notice that his carpet was unravelling until there wasn’t enough left under his feet to support him, and he crashed to the road with a very satisfying look of surprise on his face. And was immediately run over by a horse and cart.

Two carpets descended from above, and landed on the Fatemobile’s roof. Lord Screech kicked open the rear door and swung lithely out. He steadied himself on the door rim with one hand, reached up, seized an ankle with his other hand, and threw the guy off into the traffic. Screech then pulled himself up onto the roof Ms. Fate hit another toggle on her high-tech dashboard, and the whole roof became transparent. I didn’t know it could do that. Lord Screech had acquired a long, blazing sword from somewhere. The remaining carpet rider looked like he’d rather be anywhere else, but he met the elf with a long blade of his own. The two of them duelled back and forth across the roof while Ms. Fate sent the car sweeping rapidly back and forth from one lane to the next. More carpets closed in, heading for the car’s roof. Screech ran his opponent through with a casually elegant thrust, kicked the dying man off the roof, and loudly challenged all comers to come and do something about their murdered colleague.

One of the carpet riders took the sensible approach and opened up on the elf with a machine-gun. But somehow none of the bullets could find Lord Screech. He laughed in the rider’s face, extended a single finger, and the rider’s carpet caught fire. He was still alive when his length of burning cloth hit the road; but the on-coming traffic took care of that.

There were still dozens of carpets coming up behind us and closing in fast.

I had no choice but to raise my gift again. It was like trying to lift a murderously heavy weight that got heavier with every attempt, but I did it. I reached out with my gift, searching for the spell that kept the carpets flying; only to find there was no individual magic involved, but rather a complex web of spells that would take me ages to understand and undo. So instead, I did what I should have done at the beginning, and used my gift to find the nearest Timeslip that could transport us directly to the far side of the Nightside and the Osterman Gate. I’d put off doing it because there were so many dangers involved. Timeslips don’t always go where you think they do; the time differentials are so complex you could come out the other end days or even weeks in the future. Worse still, there are all kinds of things that live inside Timeslips and prey on those who pass through. Only damned fools, certain extreme sportsmen, and truly desperate people ever enter a Timeslip by choice; but I needed this road trip to end, and end soon, before my gift burned me up completely.

I yelled a warning to Ms. Fate at the wheel, and Lord Screech on the roof, concentrated all my remaining strength; and a Timeslip opened up before us. Nothing subtle or complex about this one, only a great rip in space and time, and a huge glowing tunnel for Ms. Fate to steer into. The Fatemobile roared forward into the savage rotating energies, and, just like that, the Nightside and the pursuing carpets were gone, and we were hurtling down a shimmering corridor with no beginning and no end. Screech swung down from the roof and dropped into the back seat. Even elves have enough sense to be cautious when it comes to Timeslips. Great bells were ringing all around us, voices screeched and howled, and from somewhere came the sound of huge engines straining, fighting to hold back some incomprehensible threat.

And then the Fatemobile shot out the other end of the Timeslip, and Ms. Fate swore harshly and slammed on all the brakes. The car screeched to a halt, stopping only a few yards short of the massive barricade blocking the street before us. It rocked to a complete halt, amidst the unpleasant smell of scorched fluffy tyres, while I glared through the cracked windscreen at the man standing so elegantly before us. He raised his bowler hat to us, politely and entirely without irony, and smiled complacently.

“Nice try, John,” said Walker. “Everyone out, please. End of the line.”

Ms. Fate looked at me, but I shook my head tiredly. No point in fighting any more. We’d done all we could. The three of us stepped out of the Fatemobile. The car looked like it had been through hell, but it had held together and got us here safely. I patted the scarred pink bonnet fondly, as if it were a horse that had run a good race. Ms. Fate, Lord Screech, and I formed a stubborn silent line before the Fatemobile, and waited for Walker to come to us. As always, he gave every appearance of being the perfect city gent, in a neat suit, complete with bowler hat and umbrella. Only those of us who found it necessary to deal with him on a regular basis knew exactly how devious and deadly he could be. A hundred or more of his shock-and-awe troopers were lined up by the barricade, covering us with their guns.

“Any ideas?” said Ms. Fate. “I’m feeling rather out of my depth, and distinctly outgunned.”

“Relax,” said Lord Screech. “They’re only human. Except possibly Walker; we’ve never been too sure about him.”

“He’s human,” I said. “The best and the worst of us, wrapped up in one underhanded package.”

“Ah, John,” Walker murmured. “You know me so well.”

“You could have taken us at any time,” I said, too tired even to be properly outraged. “You let us exhaust ourselves fighting your proxies, waiting for me to be dumb enough to use a Timeslip, all of which you’d interfered with to deliver us here. Of course. It’s what I would have done.” I looked at Screech. “If you’ve got any explodos left in your finger, feel free ...”

“If I did, I wouldn’t be foolish enough to use it on Walker,” said the elf. “He’s protected.”

“Can we at least try talking reasonably?” I said to Walker. “I know the odds are against it, but we have been able to find common ground in the past.”

“That’s right, John,” said Ms. Fate. “You talk reasonably to Walker, and I’ll be right behind you. So I can use you as a human shield when the shooting starts.”

Lord Screech stepped forward, suddenly seeming more arrogant, noble, and inhuman than ever. All the troopers’ guns moved to follow him. Walker leaned on his umbrella and gave Screech his full attention.

“Hold hard and stand amazed,” said the elf, in a carrying, sonorous voice. “I hold all answers here, and it is I who must bar confusion. Let it be known by all that I am not Lord Screech, Pale Prince of Owls, but yet still an elf of great renown and vital importance.”

“You’re not who you claimed to be?” said Walker. “Really, you do amaze me. An elf who lies—who would have thought it? I don’t give a damn who you really are; just give me the damned Peace Treaty. Or we can take it from your cold dead fingers, if you prefer. Guess which I’d enjoy most?”

I looked at Screech. “Who are you? And why do I know I’m not going to like the answer?”

“Maybe you’re psychic,” said the elf, with a smile and a wink.

His glamour disappeared like a cut-off song, and the whole world seemed to shake and reassemble itself, as Lord Screech gave way to the real elf, and his true form. I think we all gaped, just a little. In place of the typically tall and slender Lord Screech, we were now faced with an elf almost twice as tall as any of us, but bent over by a hunched back that pulled one shoulder down and forward, ending in a withered arm and a clawed hand. The rest of his form was smooth and supple as a dancer, but his hair was grey, his flesh was the colour of old bone, and two elegant horns thrust up from his heavy brow. He wore a pelt of some animal fur that blended into his own hairy torso, and his legs ended in cloven hooves. He was noble and elegant and almost unbearably inhuman. He grinned widely, his deep-set eyes full of mischief.

“Of course,” I said. “I should have known. The only elf that is not perfect. Puck.”

“Indeed,” he said, in a cold, lilting voice. “Who else but I, that wild rover of the speckled night, could pass freely between two elven Courts and yet pay allegiance to none? Loved by both, trusted by neither, able to speak and hear the things no other elf could be suffered to know? I am Puck, that merry wanderer of the Nightside, and I have led you all in a sweet and merry dance, to suit mine own purposes. I do not have the Peace Treaty, Lord Walker. I never did. Another elf has it, one of lesser renown but great craft, and he has passed quietly and unobserved through the Nightside, hidden and protected behind a most powerful glamour, while I have been so very visible, alongside the infamous John Taylor, holding your attention all this while. That other elf has now gone through the Osterman Gate with the Peace Treaty, and my part in this game is done. Be a good loser, good Walker.”

Walker considered this for a long moment, while I reminded myself, yet again, Never trust an elf.

“I could still have you shot,” said Walker. “If only on general principles.”

“You could try,” said Puck. “But even if you did somehow succeed, you would but provide the one common cause that could unite all elves to go to war with the Nightside. I may not be perfect, but I am still royal; and an insult done to me is an insult to all the Fae.”

“Oh, get out of here,” said Walker, smiling just a little. “Before I run you all in for loitering with intent.”

He turned his back and strode away, waving at his troopers to accompany him. I felt like shouting after them as to who was going to dismantle their bloody big barricade; but I thought I’d pushed my luck enough for one day. I turned to Puck.

“I really don’t like elves,” I said.

“You’re not supposed to,” said Puck. “Merely marvel at our cunning and be dazzled by our brilliance.”

“You want a slap?” I said.

“Never trust an elf,” said Ms. Fate. “They always have their own agenda.”

“Well, quite,” said Puck.

“That’s it,” said Ms. Fate. “I am out of here. I let my lovely car be ruined because of you! I risked my life for you!”

“Of course,” said Puck. “That’s what humans are for.”

I really thought I was going to have to stand between them, for a moment. Ms. Fate glared at me.

“I’ll be waiting for my cut of your fee. And the next time you need a ride, call somebody else.”

She stomped back to the Fatemobile, threw herself through the space where the door used to be to slip behind the steering wheel, fired up the engines, and roared away. I considered Puck thoughtfully.

“So,” I said. “Here we are. Mission accomplished, more or less. Now tell me what you promised I need to know.”

“Something bad is coming to the Nightside,” said Puck, and there was something in his eyes, in his voice. If he hadn’t been an elf, I would have said he was afraid. “Something very old, and very powerful. You’ll know the name when I say it, but in this at least, trust me when I tell you that it is not what you think it is, and never was. You must find it and make it yours, John Taylor. Or everything you have done will have been for nothing.”

“Why?” I said. “What’s coming? What is it, damn you?”

He leaned forward, to whisper the name.

“Excalibur.”