Страница:
The Necropolis serves all the Nightside’s funereal needs. Any religion, any ritual, any requests, no matter how odd or distressing. Cash up front and no questions asked. People paid serious money to ensure that their dearly departed could rest peacefully in their graves, undisturbed and unmolested by any of the many magicians, necromancers, and creatures of the night who might profess an unhealthy interest in the helpless dead. And, of course, to ensure that the dead stayed dead and didn’t turn up unexpectedly to contest the will. In the Nightside, you learn to cover all the bases. I considered the ugly, sprawling building before me. Cathy was being held there somewhere, very much against her will, and if she’d been harmed in any way, someone was going to pay for it in blood and horror.
“Enough travelling,” said Suzie Shooter. “I feel the need to kill someone.”
“Questions first,” I said. “But if anyone doesn’t feel like talking, feel free to encourage them in violent and distressing ways.”
“You know how to show a girl a good time, Taylor.”
“Except, your secretary isn’t in there,” said a calm, quiet, and very familiar voice.
We both looked round sharply and there he was, Razor Eddie, the Punk God of the Straight Razor, standing unnaturally still in the pool of light from a nearby street-lamp. Even though he very definitely hadn’t been there a moment before. Razor Eddie, a painfully thin presence wrapped up in an oversized grey coat held together by accumulated filth and grime. His hollowed face was deathly pale and streaked with grime, dominated by fever-bright eyes and a smile that had absolutely no humour in it. We walked over to him, and the smell hit us. Razor Eddie lived on the streets, slept in doorways, and existed on hand-outs, and he always smelled bad enough to make a sewer rat’s eyes water. I half expected the street-lights to start wilting.
“All right,” said Suzie. “How did you know we’d be here, Eddie?”
“I’m a god,” said Razor Eddie, in his quiet ghostly voice. “I always know what I need to know. Which is how I know exactly where your secretary is being held, John.”
I regarded him thoughtfully. Eddie and I were friends, sort of, but given the kind of pressure Walker was capable of bringing to bear… Eddie nodded slightly, following my thoughts.
“Cautious as ever, John, and quite right, too. But I’m here to help.”
“Why?” I said bluntly.
“Because Walker was foolish enough to try and order me to do his dirty work for him. Like I give a damn what the Authorities want. I go where I will, and do what I must, and no-one gets to stand in my way. No-one tells me what to do. So, your secretary isn’t being held inside the Necropolis building, but rather in their private graveyard. Which is so big they keep it in a private dimension that they sub-let.”
“Who from?” said Suzie.
“Best not to ask,” said Razor Eddie.
I nodded. It made sense. I’d heard that the Necropolis’s extensive private graveyard was kept in a pocket dimension, for security reasons, protected by really heavy-duty magics. Getting in wouldn’t be easy.
“You can’t just crash into the Necropolis and intimidate the staff into giving you access,” said Eddie.
“Want to bet?” said Suzie.
“They know you’re here,” Eddie said patiently. “And they’re already on the phone to Walker, screaming for reinforcements. By the time you’ve smashed your way through that building’s defences, you’ll be hip deep in Walker’s people. And your only real hope for rescuing Cathy is a surprise attack. Fortunately, I can offer an alternative way in.”
His right hand, thin and grey, came out of his pocket, holding a pearl-handled straight razor. He flipped the blade open, and the steel shone supernaturally bright. I could feel Suzie tensing beside me, but she had enough sense not to go for any of her weapons. Eddie flashed her a meaningless smile, turned away, and cut savagely at the empty air. The whole night seemed to shudder as the air split apart, widening and opening up like a wound in the world. And through the opening Razor Eddie had made, I could see another world, another dimension. It was a darker night than ours, and bitter cold air rushed out into our world. I shuddered, and so did Suzie, but I don’t think it was from the cold. Razor Eddie, unaffected, stared calmly through the gap he’d made.
“I didn’t know you could do that,” I said.
“I went back to the Street of the Gods,” said Eddie, putting away his razor. “Got an upgrade. Did you know, John, there’s a new church there, worshipping your image. Unauthorised, I take it? Good. I took care of it for you. Knew you’d want me to. Follow me.”
Poor bastards, I thought, as the Punk God of the Straight Razor stepped through the wide opening, and Suzie and I followed him through, into another world.
The terrible cold hit me like a fist and cut me like a knife, burning in my lungs as I struggled with the thin air. Suzie blew harshly on her cupped hands, flexing her fingers so they’d be free and ready if she had to kill someone in a hurry. Before us, the graveyard seemed to stretch away forever. Row upon row and rank upon rank of massed graves, for as far as the eye could see in any direction, from horizon to horizon. A world of nothing but graves. The Necropolis’s private cemetery lay silently under an entirely different kind of night from the Nightside. It was darker, with an almost palpable gloom, apart from a glowing pearlescent ground mist that curled around our ankles and swirled slowly over the rows of tombstones. There was no moon in the jet-black sky, only vivid streaks of multi-coloured stars, bright and gaudy as a whore’s jewels.
“We’re not in the Nightside any more,” said Eddie. “This is a whole different kind of place. Dark and dangerous and dead. I like it.”
“You would,” said Suzie. “Damn, but it’s cold. I mean, serious cold. I don’t think anything human could survive here for long.”
“Cathy’s here, somewhere,” I said. “Whoever has her had better be taking really good care of her. Or I will make them scream before they die.”
“Hard-core, John,” said Suzie. “And not really you. Leave the rough stuff to me. I’m more experienced.” She looked around her and sniffed loudly to show how unimpressed she was. “The Necropolis could have chosen a more cheerful resting place for the Nightside dead.”
“Perhaps all the alternatives were worse,” I said. “Or more expensive.”
“We didn’t come here to admire the scenery,” said Razor Eddie.
“Damn right,” said Suzie. “Find me someone I can shoot.”
I looked around. There was only the dark, and the graves and the mist. Nothing moved, not a breath of wind anywhere, and the place was utterly silent. The only sounds in the cemetery were those we made ourselves. Razor Eddie’s rasping breathing, the creaking of Suzie’s leathers.
“I don’t see anyone,” I said.
Eddie shrugged slightly. “Nothing lives here. That’s the point. Even the flowers left on the graves are plastic.”
There were headstones of all shapes and sizes, catafalques and mausoleums, statues of weeping angels and penitent cherubs and crouching gargoyles. All kinds of religious symbols, large and small, simple and complex, and a few even I didn’t recognise. All the objects of death, and not one of life.
“I thought there might be at least a few mourners,” said Suzie.
“Not many come here to visit,” said Eddie. “I mean, would you? Now follow me and walk carefully. There are concealed traps here, for the uninvited and the unwary.”
Suzie brightened up a bit. “You mean some of those stone gargoyles might come to life? I could use some target practice.”
“Possibly,” said Razor Eddie. “But mostly I was thinking about bear traps and land mines. The Necropolis takes security very seriously. Stick to the gravel path, and we should be safe enough.”
“I never get to go anywhere nice,” I said, wistfully.
I fired up my gift, hoping that since I was closer to Cathy, it would at least be able to provide me with a direction. My Sight was limited, in this new dimension. There was no hidden world here, no secret lives for me to See; just the dead, lying at peace in their gravesж and mausoleums, like so many silent strangers at the feast. And yet there was a feeling… of being watched, by unseen eyes. I tried to focus in on Cathy, but a strangely familiar shadow still hid her exact position from me. At least I had a direction.
I set off down the gravel path, with Suzie Shooter and Razor Eddie on either side of me. Suzie had her shotgun in her hands, alert for any opportunity to show off what she did best. Eddie strolled along, his hands in his pockets, his unblinking eyes missing nothing, nothing at all. The sound of our feet crunching the gravel was uncomfortably loud, announcing our coming. I watched the shadows between the stone mausoleums, ready for any sudden attack from behind the larger tombstones; but I wasn’t at all ready for what lay in wait for us around an abrupt corner.
They were sitting at a picnic around a pristine white cloth, laid out on a long earth barrow. There was a food hamper, with plates of cucumber sandwiches and sausage rolls and nibbles on sticks, and a bottle of quite decent champagne chilling in an ice bucket. And smiling calmly back at us—Tommy Oblivion, the existential detective, and Sandra Chance, the consulting necromancer. Tommy’s usual New Romantic silks were mostly concealed under a heavy fur coat, but he still managed a certain dated style. He smiled easily at us, showing off a broad, toothy grin in his long, horsey face, and toasted me with a brimming glass of bubbly. Sandra just glared coldly, pale of face and red of hair, wearing nothing but apparently random splashes of dark crimson liquid latex from chin to toe. She looked like a vampire after a really messy meal, and not by accident. Sandra went out of her way to make an impression on people. Supposedly, the liquid latex also contained holy water and other useful protections. The tattoo on her back could make angels vomit and demons hyperventilate. Interestingly enough, she’d had all of the steel piercings in her face and body removed, recently enough that some of the holes were still closing. A simple leather belt, carrying a series of tanned pouches holding the tools of her unpleasant trade, surrounded her waist. She didn’t feel the cold because she thrived in graveyards. Sandra Chance loved the dead—and sometimes even more, if that was what it took to get them to talk.
We’d worked together on a few cases, successfully, if not entirely happily. Sandra only cared about getting results, and to hell with whoever got caught in the crossfire. I liked to think that wasn’t true of me, any more.
“Hello, old thing,” said Tommy Oblivion. “So glad you could join us. And you’ve brought company! How sweet. Do sit down and have a little something with us, and a splash of champers. I think it’s terribly important we all remain civilised in situations like this, don’t you?”
“Want me to shoot him?” said Suzie.
“I’m thinking about it,” I said. “Hello, Tommy. I should have known it was you, with your existential gift, hiding Cathy. Still sticking with the effete image, I see.”
He flapped his long, bony fingers in an affable sort of way. “Stay with what works, that’s what I say.”
“How’s your brother?”
“Still dead. But he says he’s starting to get used to it. And he’s a better private eye now than he ever was while he was alive.”
“I think that’s enough civilities,” I said. “Tell me where Cathy is, or I’ll have Suzie shoot you somewhere really unfortunate.”
“Any violence and you’ll never see her again,” said Sandra. Her voice was deep and vibrant and bitter as cyanide. “You’ll never find Cathy Barrett without our help.”
“Where is she?” I said, and my voice was colder than the night. Tommy and Sandra sat up a little straighter.
“She’s sleeping peacefully,” said Sandra. “In one of these graves. I put a spell on her, then Tommy and I opened up a grave, put her in it, and covered her over again. She’s quite safe, for the time being. All you have to do is turn yourself in to Walker, and Tommy and I will dig her up and return her safely to the Nightside. Of course, the longer she stays underground, the more difficult it will be to wake her from the spell…”
“Of course,” I said. “You’re never happy with a spell unless it’s got a sting in the tail.” I looked at Tommy. “Why are you doing this? Sandra I can understand. I’ve never known her to balk at anything if the price was right. But you… what happened to those principles you used to trumpet so loudly? Cathy’s the only innocent in this whole business.”
His cheeks flushed a little, but he held my gaze steadily. “Needs must when the devil drives, old sport. You’re just too dangerous to be allowed to run loose any more. I saw what you did with Merlin and Nimue, remember? You don’t care about anyone or anything, except getting your own way.”
“No,” said Razor Eddie. “That’s not true.”
We all glanced at him, a little startled. He was so quiet and still it was easy to forget he was there.
“You have to be stopped,” said Tommy, a little more loudly than was necessary. “You’re cold and ruthless and…”
“You got back from the Past months ago,” I said, talking right over him. “Why didn’t you do something before this? Why wait till now?”
“I was keeping my head down, out of sight, while I thought things through,” said Tommy. He was trying hard not to sound defensive. “I put a lot of thought into how best to stop you. It took me a while to admit I couldn’t hope to do it alone. So I came up with this plan, and went to Walker with it, and he put me together with Sandra. Not at all a nice plan, I agree, but you brought it on yourself. Fight fire with fire, and all that. You might say… this was my last test for you, John. One last chance to see what you’re really made of, to see if you care for anyone other than yourself. Prove me wrong about you. Prove to me and to Walker that you’re not the evil we think you are by turning yourself in. And I give you my word that Cathy will be released, entirely unharmed.”
“I can’t,” I said, trying hard to make him hear the need and urgency and honesty in my voice. “My mother Lilith is back, and she’s worse than I’ll ever be. I’m the only one who can stop her from destroying the Nightside.”
“Such arrogance,” said Sandra. “We’ll stop her, after we’ve dealt with you.”
“I could blow your head right off your shoulders,” Suzie Shooter said casually.
“You could try,” said Sandra Chance. The two women smiled at each other easily. Sandra leaned forward to put down her champagne glass, and Suzie moved her shotgun slightly to keep her covered. “I am a necromancer,” said Sandra. “And this is my place of power. With this much death to draw on, even the Punk God of the Straight Razor can’t hope to stand against me. Your presence here was not expected or required, little god. This is nothing to do with you.”
“Yes it is,” said Eddie. “I know what you found in the future, John. I know who you found. I’ve always known.”
I looked at him sharply. I saw him die, in the Timeslip future. I helped him to die. But I never told anyone.
He shrugged easily. “I’m a god, remember?”
“This doesn’t have to end in violence,” Tommy said urgently, sensing the undercurrents. “You know I’m an honourable man, John.”
“You might be,” I said. “But Sandra works for Walker. And Walker… has his own very personal take on honour, when it comes to the Nightside. He’d sacrifice any number of innocents to preserve the Nightside for the Authorities.”
“He was supposed to be here,” said Tommy, frowning slightly. “To reassure you of his good intentions. But unfortunately he was called away. It seems something really unpleasant is happening on the Street of the Gods.”
We all looked at Razor Eddie, who met our gaze a little reproachfully. “Nothing to do with me,” he said.
“Hell with this,” said Sandra Chance, rising to her feet in one smooth feline movement. “It’s time to take care of business.”
“No!” said Tommy, scrambling untidily to his feet. “He has to be given a chance to surrender! You agreed!”
“I lied,” said Sandra. “His existence offends me. He killed the Lamentation.”
“Ah yes,” I said. “Your… what was the term, exactly, I wonder? You never did have much taste in lovers, Sandra. The Lamentation was just a nasty little Power with delusions of godhood, and the world smells better now that it’s gone.”
“It was the Saint of Suffering, and it served a purpose!” Sandra said loudly. “It weeded out the weak and punished the foolish, and I was proud to serve it!”
“Exactly what was your relationship with the Lamentation?” said Tommy Oblivion. His voice was thoughtful and not at all threatening, as his gift manifested subtly on the still air. Tommy could be very persuasive when he chose to be. I don’t know whether Sandra could feel what was happening, but she answered anyway, her cold green eyes locked on mine.
“I used to investigate insurance fraud,” she said. “And a cluster of unexplained suicides brought me to the Church of the Lamentation. We talked, and we… connected. I don’t think it had ever met anyone like me, with my fetish for death.”
“Kindred spirits, who found each other in Hell,” I said softly. “What did you do for the Lamentation, Sandra? What deal did you make with your devil?”
“Your devil, my god,” said Sandra Chance. “I became its Judas Goat, leading the suffering to their Saint, and it taught me the ways of the necromancer. It gave me what I’d always wanted. To lie down with death and rise up wreathed in power.”
“Of course,” said Tommy, “such knowledge usually drives people insane. But you were functionally crazy to begin with.”
“Takes one to know one,” said Sandra. “Now shut up, Tommy, or I’ll do something amusing to you. You’re only here on sufferance.”
“It was my plan!”
“No,” said Sandra. “This was always Walker’s plan.”
“And you never gave a damn, for all the poor bastards you delivered to your nasty lover?” I said. “To die in despair, then linger in horror, bound even after death to the service of the Lamentation?”
“They were weak,” said Sandra. “They gave up. I never broke under the strain, never gave up. I save my help for those who deserve it.”
“Of course you didn’t care,” said Suzie Shooter. “You’re even more heartless than I am. I’m going to enjoy killing you.”
“Enough talk,” said Sandra. “It’s time to dance the dance of life and death, little people. I shall raise all those who lie here because of you—John Taylor, Shotgun Suzie, Razor Eddie. All your victims gathered together in one place, with hate and vengeance burning in their cold, cold hearts. And they will drag you down into the cold wet earth and hold you there in their bony arms until finally… you stop screaming. Don’t say I never did anything for you.”
She raised her arms high in the stance of summoning, and chanted ancient Words of Power. Energies crackled fiercely around her extended fingers… and nothing happened. The energies dissipated harmlessly on the freezing air, unable to come together. Sandra stood there awkwardly for a long moment, then slowly lowered her arms and looked about her, confused.
“The Necropolis graveyard is protected by seriously heavy-duty magics,” said Eddie, in his calm, ghostly voice. “I thought everyone knew that.”
“But the magics were supposed to have been suppressed!” said Sandra. “Walker promised me!”
“That wasn’t the deal!” said Tommy. “I wasn’t told about any of this!”
“You didn’t need to know.”
There was a pleasant chiming sound, a brief shimmering on the air, and there was Walker, standing before us in his neat city suit and old-school tie. He smiled vaguely about him. “This… is a recording. I’m afraid I can’t be here with you, on the grounds it might prove injurious to my health. By now you should have realised that the magics of this place have not been shut down, as promised, Sandra Chance. My apologies for the deception; but it was necessary. You see, this isn’t just a trap for John Taylor; it’s a trap for all of you. Taylor, Shooter, Oblivion, and Chance. I’m afraid you’ve all become far more trouble than you’re worth. And I need to be free to concentrate on the Really Bad Thing that all my best precogs insist is coming. So the decision has been made to dispense with all of you. I have at least extracted a promise from the Authorities that after you’ve all killed each other, or the cemetery has killed you, your bodies will be buried here, free of charge. It’s the least I could do. Good-bye, John. I am sorry it had to come to this. I protected you for as long as I could… but I’ve always known my duty.”
The image of Walker raised his bowler hat in our general direction, then snapped off. There was a long moment of silence.
“We are so screwed,” said Suzie.
I looked at Eddie. “He didn’t know you’d be here. You’re our wild card in this situation.”
“It’s what I do best,” said Eddie.
“Walker, you supercilious son of a bitch!” said Sandra Chance, actually stamping one bare foot in her outrage.
“I wouldn’t argue with that,” I said. “Ladies and gentlemen, it would appear we have all been declared redundant. Might I suggest it would be in all our best interests to work together, putting aside old quarrels until we’re all safely out of here?”
“Agreed,” said Sandra, two bright red spots burning on her pale cheeks. “But Walker is mine to kill.”
“First things first,” I said. “Where is Cathy?”
“Oh, we put her in the mausoleum right behind us,” said Tommy. “Sleeping peacefully. You didn’t really think I’d stand for her being buried alive, did you? What kind of a person do you think I am?”
“I ought to shoot you both right now, on general principles,” said Suzie.
“Later,” I said firmly.
The mausoleum was a huge stone Victorian edifice, with all the usual Gothic trimmings, plus a whole bunch of decidedly portly cherubs in mourning. The Victorians could get really sentimental about death. Tommy heaved open the door, and when I looked in there was Cathy, lying curled up on the bare stone floor like a sleeping child. She was wearing something fashionable, under a thick fur coat someone had wrapped around her like a blanket. She was actually snoring slightly. Tommy edged nervously past me, leaned over Cathy, and muttered a few Words under his breath. Cathy came awake immediately and sat up, yawning and knuckling at her sleepy eyes. I moved forward into the mausoleum, and Cathy jumped up and ran forward into my arms. I held her very tightly.
“I knew you’d come and find me,” she said, into my shoulder.
“Of course,” I said. “How would I ever run my office without you?”
She finally let go, and I did, too. We went out of the mausoleum and into the night, where Tommy Oblivion and Sandra Chance were standing stiffly a little to one side. Cathy stepped briskly forward, got a good hold on Sandra’s breasts with both hands, then head-butted her in the face. Sandra fell backwards onto her bare arse, blood spurting from her broken nose. Tommy opened his mouth, either to object or explain, and Cathy kicked him square in the nuts. He went down on his knees, tears streaming past his squeezed-shut eyes, with both hands wedged between his thighs. Perhaps to reassure himself that his testicles were actually still attached.
“Messing with the wrong secretary,” said Cathy.
“Nicely done,” I said, and Cathy grinned at me.
“You are a bad influence on the child,” Suzie said solemnly.
Sometime later we all assembled around the earth barrow. Tommy moved around slowly and carefully, packing up the picnic things, while Sandra stood with her back to all of us, sniffing gingerly through the nose she’d reset herself. Suzie glared suspiciously about her, shotgun at the ready. She was convinced Walker wouldn’t have abandoned us here unless he knew there was Something in the cemetery strong and nasty enough to see us all off. She had a point. I turned to Razor Eddie.
“Walker didn’t know you’d be here. And I’m reasonably sure he doesn’t know about your new ability to cut doors into dimensions with that nasty little blade of yours. Take us home, Eddie, so we can express our extreme displeasure to him in person.”
He nodded slightly, and the pearl-handled straight razor gleamed viciously in the starlight as he cut at the air before him, in a movement so fast none of us could follow it. We all braced ourselves, but nothing happened. Eddie frowned and tried again, still to no effect. He slowly lowered his blade and considered the air before him.
“Ah,” he said finally.
“Ah?” I said. “What do you mean, ah? Is there something wrong with your razor, Eddie?”
“No, there’s something wrong with the dimensional barriers.”
“I don’t like the sound of that, Eddie.”
“I’m not too keen on it myself. Someone has strengthened the dimensional barriers, from the outside. No prizes for guessing who.”
Cathy hugged my arm tightly. “How does he know things like that?”
“I find it better not to ask,” I said. “Eddie, I… Eddie, why are you frowning? I really don’t like it when you frown.”
“Something’s… changed,” he said, his voice stark and flat. He looked around him, and we all did the same. The night seemed no different, cold and still and quiet, the graves unmoving and undisturbed under the gaudy starlight. But Eddie was right. Something had changed. We could all feel it, like the tension that precedes the breaking storm.
“You achieved something, with that spell of yours,” Eddie said to Sandra. “It’s still trying to work, undischarged in the cemetery atmosphere. It’s not enough to affect the dead, but…”
“What do you mean, ‘but’?” I said. “You can’t stop there!”
“She’s disturbed Something,” said Razor Eddie. “It’s been asleep a long time, but now it’s waking… and it’s waking angry.”
We moved closer together, staring about us and straining our ears against the silence. The atmosphere in the graveyard was changing. There was a sense of potential on the air, of something about to happen, in this place where nothing was ever supposed to happen. Suzie turned her shotgun this way and that, searching in vain for a target.
“What am I looking for, Eddie?” she said calmly. “What lives in this dimension?”
“I told you. Nothing lives here. That’s the point.”
“Could the dead be rising up after all?” said Tommy.
“It’s not the dead,” Sandra said immediately. “I’d know if it was that.”
“It’s coming,” whispered Razor Eddie.
The ground rose sharply beneath our feet, toppling us this way and that. Headstones collapsed or lurched to one side, and the great mausoleums trembled. My first thought was an earthquake, but all around us the graveyard earth was rising and falling, lifting like an ocean swell. We all scrambled onto our feet again, finding things to cling to for support.
“There were rumours,” said Sandra Chance, “of a Caretaker, set to guard the graves.”
“I never heard of any Caretaker,” said Razor Eddie.
“Yes, well, just because you’re a god doesn’t mean you know everything,” said Sandra.
And that was when the graveyard dirt burst up into the air from between the rows of graves, great fountains of dark wet earth shooting up, high into the chilly air. It rained down all around us, forming itself into rough shapes. Dark, earthy human shapes, with rough arms and legs, and blunt heads with no faces. Golems fashioned out of graveyard dirt. They started towards us, slow and clumsy with the power of earth, closing in on us from every direction at once. The ground grew still again, save for the heavy thudding of legs with no feet.
Suzie opened up with her pump-action shotgun. She hit everything she aimed at, blowing ragged chunks of earth out of the heavy lumbering figures, but it didn’t slow them down. Not even when she blew their heads off. Sandra chanted Words of Power and stabbed at the advancing earth golems with an aboriginal pointing-bone, and none of it did any good at all. Razor Eddie darted forward, moving supernaturally quickly. Several of the earth figures just fell apart, sliced through again and again. But for every golem that fell, a dozen more rose out of the graveyard earth and headed our way with silent, implacable intent.
I heard muttering beside me. Tommy Oblivion was using his gift to try to convince himself he was somewhere else, but it seemed Walker’s dimensional barriers were too strong even for him. Cathy pulled a Kandarian punch dagger from the top of her knee-length boot, and moved to watch my back. She knew her limitations. Sandra was reduced to throwing things from her belt pouches at the approaching golems. None of them did any good.
“I’ll have Walker’s balls for this!” she screamed.
“Join the queue,” I said.
I took out my Club Membership Card. Alex Morrisey gave it to me some time back, when he was in an unusually expansive mood. When properly activated, the magic stored in the Card could transport you right into Strangefellows, from wherever you happened to be at the time. I had perhaps used it more often than Alex had intended, because he was always nagging at me to return it, and yet somehow I kept forgetting on purpose to do so. But once again, the magic in the Card was no match for whatever Walker had done to the dimensional barriers. I turned to Suzie.
“Do you have any grenades?”
“Silly question,” she said. “You think I’d go out half-dressed?”
“Spread some confusion,” I said. “I need some time to concentrate, to raise my gift.”
“You got it,” said Suzie. “Blessed or cursed grenades, do you think?”
“I’d try both.”
“Excellent notion.”
She started lobbing grenades in all directions, and everyone else ducked and put their hands over their ears. The explosions dug great craters out of the ground, and bits of golem, coffin wood, and even body parts rained down all around us. Stone fragments from headstones and mausoleums flew on the air like shrapnel. The golems were shredded and rent, flattened and torn apart. And still more rose, forming themselves out of the torn earth.
I closed my eyes and studied the cemetery through my third eye, my private eye. Without Tommy’s gift interfering, I could See clearly again. And it only took me a moment to find the source of the consciousness animating the earth golems. It was a diffused, widely spread thing, scattered throughout the whole of the cemetery, and beyond. This was the great secret of the Necropolis graveyard. The last line of defence for the helpless dead. This whole world, the earth and the soil of it, was alive and aware, and set to guard. The Caretaker. A living world, to protect a world’s dead.
The Caretaker decided the golems weren’t working, or perhaps it sensed my probings into its nature. All the earth in the cemetery rose before us, in a great tidal wave, and thundered forward like a horizontal avalanche. Enough earth to pulverise and drown and bury us all. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, no way to defend ourselves. But I had finally found the weak spot in Walker’s plan. He’d strengthened the spells containing the cemetery dimension, made very sure that nothing could get out. But it had never occurred to him to stop anything from getting in… I reached out with my gift, and found a place in the Nightside where it was raining really heavily. And then all I had to do was bring the rain to me and let it pour down. The driving rain hit the tidal wave of earth and washed it away. Thick mud swirled around our feet, but its strength and power were gone. The rain kept hammering down, and the Caretaker couldn’t get its earth to hang together long enough to form anything. And while the Caretaker was preoccupied with that, I reached out with my gift again and located the weakest spot in the dimensional barriers containing us. I showed Eddie where it was, and he cut it open with one stroke of his godly razor.
We all ran through the opening, while Eddie strained to keep it open. Then we were all back in the Nightside, and the opening slammed shut behind us. We stood together, soaking wet and smeared with mud, breathing hard. I looked around me. I’d been half-expecting a crowd of Walker’s people, set to stand and watch in case we found a way out, but there was no-one. Either Walker hadn’t expected any of us to get out… or his people were needed somewhere else. Sandra said he’d been called away, to deal with trouble on the Street of the Gods… Could Lilith be making her move at last?
Sandra stomped wetly towards me, and I raised an eyebrow. “Relax, Taylor,” she said curtly. “You saved my life, and I always pay my debts. Walker has to be shown the error of his ways. I can help. Of course, once that’s over…”
Cathy fixed Sandra with a thoughtful eye, and the consulting necromancer winced despite herself. Cathy smiled sweetly. “Leave my boss alone, bitch.”
“Play nicely, children,” I said. “We have to go to the Street of the Gods. I think the shit is finally hitting the fan. Tommy, escort Cathy back to Strangefellows, and stay there with her. And don’t argue. Neither of you has the firepower for what we’re going to be facing. Lock and load, people; we have a Biblical myth to take down.”
Three -
Playtime’s Over, Children
“Enough travelling,” said Suzie Shooter. “I feel the need to kill someone.”
“Questions first,” I said. “But if anyone doesn’t feel like talking, feel free to encourage them in violent and distressing ways.”
“You know how to show a girl a good time, Taylor.”
“Except, your secretary isn’t in there,” said a calm, quiet, and very familiar voice.
We both looked round sharply and there he was, Razor Eddie, the Punk God of the Straight Razor, standing unnaturally still in the pool of light from a nearby street-lamp. Even though he very definitely hadn’t been there a moment before. Razor Eddie, a painfully thin presence wrapped up in an oversized grey coat held together by accumulated filth and grime. His hollowed face was deathly pale and streaked with grime, dominated by fever-bright eyes and a smile that had absolutely no humour in it. We walked over to him, and the smell hit us. Razor Eddie lived on the streets, slept in doorways, and existed on hand-outs, and he always smelled bad enough to make a sewer rat’s eyes water. I half expected the street-lights to start wilting.
“All right,” said Suzie. “How did you know we’d be here, Eddie?”
“I’m a god,” said Razor Eddie, in his quiet ghostly voice. “I always know what I need to know. Which is how I know exactly where your secretary is being held, John.”
I regarded him thoughtfully. Eddie and I were friends, sort of, but given the kind of pressure Walker was capable of bringing to bear… Eddie nodded slightly, following my thoughts.
“Cautious as ever, John, and quite right, too. But I’m here to help.”
“Why?” I said bluntly.
“Because Walker was foolish enough to try and order me to do his dirty work for him. Like I give a damn what the Authorities want. I go where I will, and do what I must, and no-one gets to stand in my way. No-one tells me what to do. So, your secretary isn’t being held inside the Necropolis building, but rather in their private graveyard. Which is so big they keep it in a private dimension that they sub-let.”
“Who from?” said Suzie.
“Best not to ask,” said Razor Eddie.
I nodded. It made sense. I’d heard that the Necropolis’s extensive private graveyard was kept in a pocket dimension, for security reasons, protected by really heavy-duty magics. Getting in wouldn’t be easy.
“You can’t just crash into the Necropolis and intimidate the staff into giving you access,” said Eddie.
“Want to bet?” said Suzie.
“They know you’re here,” Eddie said patiently. “And they’re already on the phone to Walker, screaming for reinforcements. By the time you’ve smashed your way through that building’s defences, you’ll be hip deep in Walker’s people. And your only real hope for rescuing Cathy is a surprise attack. Fortunately, I can offer an alternative way in.”
His right hand, thin and grey, came out of his pocket, holding a pearl-handled straight razor. He flipped the blade open, and the steel shone supernaturally bright. I could feel Suzie tensing beside me, but she had enough sense not to go for any of her weapons. Eddie flashed her a meaningless smile, turned away, and cut savagely at the empty air. The whole night seemed to shudder as the air split apart, widening and opening up like a wound in the world. And through the opening Razor Eddie had made, I could see another world, another dimension. It was a darker night than ours, and bitter cold air rushed out into our world. I shuddered, and so did Suzie, but I don’t think it was from the cold. Razor Eddie, unaffected, stared calmly through the gap he’d made.
“I didn’t know you could do that,” I said.
“I went back to the Street of the Gods,” said Eddie, putting away his razor. “Got an upgrade. Did you know, John, there’s a new church there, worshipping your image. Unauthorised, I take it? Good. I took care of it for you. Knew you’d want me to. Follow me.”
Poor bastards, I thought, as the Punk God of the Straight Razor stepped through the wide opening, and Suzie and I followed him through, into another world.
The terrible cold hit me like a fist and cut me like a knife, burning in my lungs as I struggled with the thin air. Suzie blew harshly on her cupped hands, flexing her fingers so they’d be free and ready if she had to kill someone in a hurry. Before us, the graveyard seemed to stretch away forever. Row upon row and rank upon rank of massed graves, for as far as the eye could see in any direction, from horizon to horizon. A world of nothing but graves. The Necropolis’s private cemetery lay silently under an entirely different kind of night from the Nightside. It was darker, with an almost palpable gloom, apart from a glowing pearlescent ground mist that curled around our ankles and swirled slowly over the rows of tombstones. There was no moon in the jet-black sky, only vivid streaks of multi-coloured stars, bright and gaudy as a whore’s jewels.
“We’re not in the Nightside any more,” said Eddie. “This is a whole different kind of place. Dark and dangerous and dead. I like it.”
“You would,” said Suzie. “Damn, but it’s cold. I mean, serious cold. I don’t think anything human could survive here for long.”
“Cathy’s here, somewhere,” I said. “Whoever has her had better be taking really good care of her. Or I will make them scream before they die.”
“Hard-core, John,” said Suzie. “And not really you. Leave the rough stuff to me. I’m more experienced.” She looked around her and sniffed loudly to show how unimpressed she was. “The Necropolis could have chosen a more cheerful resting place for the Nightside dead.”
“Perhaps all the alternatives were worse,” I said. “Or more expensive.”
“We didn’t come here to admire the scenery,” said Razor Eddie.
“Damn right,” said Suzie. “Find me someone I can shoot.”
I looked around. There was only the dark, and the graves and the mist. Nothing moved, not a breath of wind anywhere, and the place was utterly silent. The only sounds in the cemetery were those we made ourselves. Razor Eddie’s rasping breathing, the creaking of Suzie’s leathers.
“I don’t see anyone,” I said.
Eddie shrugged slightly. “Nothing lives here. That’s the point. Even the flowers left on the graves are plastic.”
There were headstones of all shapes and sizes, catafalques and mausoleums, statues of weeping angels and penitent cherubs and crouching gargoyles. All kinds of religious symbols, large and small, simple and complex, and a few even I didn’t recognise. All the objects of death, and not one of life.
“I thought there might be at least a few mourners,” said Suzie.
“Not many come here to visit,” said Eddie. “I mean, would you? Now follow me and walk carefully. There are concealed traps here, for the uninvited and the unwary.”
Suzie brightened up a bit. “You mean some of those stone gargoyles might come to life? I could use some target practice.”
“Possibly,” said Razor Eddie. “But mostly I was thinking about bear traps and land mines. The Necropolis takes security very seriously. Stick to the gravel path, and we should be safe enough.”
“I never get to go anywhere nice,” I said, wistfully.
I fired up my gift, hoping that since I was closer to Cathy, it would at least be able to provide me with a direction. My Sight was limited, in this new dimension. There was no hidden world here, no secret lives for me to See; just the dead, lying at peace in their gravesж and mausoleums, like so many silent strangers at the feast. And yet there was a feeling… of being watched, by unseen eyes. I tried to focus in on Cathy, but a strangely familiar shadow still hid her exact position from me. At least I had a direction.
I set off down the gravel path, with Suzie Shooter and Razor Eddie on either side of me. Suzie had her shotgun in her hands, alert for any opportunity to show off what she did best. Eddie strolled along, his hands in his pockets, his unblinking eyes missing nothing, nothing at all. The sound of our feet crunching the gravel was uncomfortably loud, announcing our coming. I watched the shadows between the stone mausoleums, ready for any sudden attack from behind the larger tombstones; but I wasn’t at all ready for what lay in wait for us around an abrupt corner.
They were sitting at a picnic around a pristine white cloth, laid out on a long earth barrow. There was a food hamper, with plates of cucumber sandwiches and sausage rolls and nibbles on sticks, and a bottle of quite decent champagne chilling in an ice bucket. And smiling calmly back at us—Tommy Oblivion, the existential detective, and Sandra Chance, the consulting necromancer. Tommy’s usual New Romantic silks were mostly concealed under a heavy fur coat, but he still managed a certain dated style. He smiled easily at us, showing off a broad, toothy grin in his long, horsey face, and toasted me with a brimming glass of bubbly. Sandra just glared coldly, pale of face and red of hair, wearing nothing but apparently random splashes of dark crimson liquid latex from chin to toe. She looked like a vampire after a really messy meal, and not by accident. Sandra went out of her way to make an impression on people. Supposedly, the liquid latex also contained holy water and other useful protections. The tattoo on her back could make angels vomit and demons hyperventilate. Interestingly enough, she’d had all of the steel piercings in her face and body removed, recently enough that some of the holes were still closing. A simple leather belt, carrying a series of tanned pouches holding the tools of her unpleasant trade, surrounded her waist. She didn’t feel the cold because she thrived in graveyards. Sandra Chance loved the dead—and sometimes even more, if that was what it took to get them to talk.
We’d worked together on a few cases, successfully, if not entirely happily. Sandra only cared about getting results, and to hell with whoever got caught in the crossfire. I liked to think that wasn’t true of me, any more.
“Hello, old thing,” said Tommy Oblivion. “So glad you could join us. And you’ve brought company! How sweet. Do sit down and have a little something with us, and a splash of champers. I think it’s terribly important we all remain civilised in situations like this, don’t you?”
“Want me to shoot him?” said Suzie.
“I’m thinking about it,” I said. “Hello, Tommy. I should have known it was you, with your existential gift, hiding Cathy. Still sticking with the effete image, I see.”
He flapped his long, bony fingers in an affable sort of way. “Stay with what works, that’s what I say.”
“How’s your brother?”
“Still dead. But he says he’s starting to get used to it. And he’s a better private eye now than he ever was while he was alive.”
“I think that’s enough civilities,” I said. “Tell me where Cathy is, or I’ll have Suzie shoot you somewhere really unfortunate.”
“Any violence and you’ll never see her again,” said Sandra. Her voice was deep and vibrant and bitter as cyanide. “You’ll never find Cathy Barrett without our help.”
“Where is she?” I said, and my voice was colder than the night. Tommy and Sandra sat up a little straighter.
“She’s sleeping peacefully,” said Sandra. “In one of these graves. I put a spell on her, then Tommy and I opened up a grave, put her in it, and covered her over again. She’s quite safe, for the time being. All you have to do is turn yourself in to Walker, and Tommy and I will dig her up and return her safely to the Nightside. Of course, the longer she stays underground, the more difficult it will be to wake her from the spell…”
“Of course,” I said. “You’re never happy with a spell unless it’s got a sting in the tail.” I looked at Tommy. “Why are you doing this? Sandra I can understand. I’ve never known her to balk at anything if the price was right. But you… what happened to those principles you used to trumpet so loudly? Cathy’s the only innocent in this whole business.”
His cheeks flushed a little, but he held my gaze steadily. “Needs must when the devil drives, old sport. You’re just too dangerous to be allowed to run loose any more. I saw what you did with Merlin and Nimue, remember? You don’t care about anyone or anything, except getting your own way.”
“No,” said Razor Eddie. “That’s not true.”
We all glanced at him, a little startled. He was so quiet and still it was easy to forget he was there.
“You have to be stopped,” said Tommy, a little more loudly than was necessary. “You’re cold and ruthless and…”
“You got back from the Past months ago,” I said, talking right over him. “Why didn’t you do something before this? Why wait till now?”
“I was keeping my head down, out of sight, while I thought things through,” said Tommy. He was trying hard not to sound defensive. “I put a lot of thought into how best to stop you. It took me a while to admit I couldn’t hope to do it alone. So I came up with this plan, and went to Walker with it, and he put me together with Sandra. Not at all a nice plan, I agree, but you brought it on yourself. Fight fire with fire, and all that. You might say… this was my last test for you, John. One last chance to see what you’re really made of, to see if you care for anyone other than yourself. Prove me wrong about you. Prove to me and to Walker that you’re not the evil we think you are by turning yourself in. And I give you my word that Cathy will be released, entirely unharmed.”
“I can’t,” I said, trying hard to make him hear the need and urgency and honesty in my voice. “My mother Lilith is back, and she’s worse than I’ll ever be. I’m the only one who can stop her from destroying the Nightside.”
“Such arrogance,” said Sandra. “We’ll stop her, after we’ve dealt with you.”
“I could blow your head right off your shoulders,” Suzie Shooter said casually.
“You could try,” said Sandra Chance. The two women smiled at each other easily. Sandra leaned forward to put down her champagne glass, and Suzie moved her shotgun slightly to keep her covered. “I am a necromancer,” said Sandra. “And this is my place of power. With this much death to draw on, even the Punk God of the Straight Razor can’t hope to stand against me. Your presence here was not expected or required, little god. This is nothing to do with you.”
“Yes it is,” said Eddie. “I know what you found in the future, John. I know who you found. I’ve always known.”
I looked at him sharply. I saw him die, in the Timeslip future. I helped him to die. But I never told anyone.
He shrugged easily. “I’m a god, remember?”
“This doesn’t have to end in violence,” Tommy said urgently, sensing the undercurrents. “You know I’m an honourable man, John.”
“You might be,” I said. “But Sandra works for Walker. And Walker… has his own very personal take on honour, when it comes to the Nightside. He’d sacrifice any number of innocents to preserve the Nightside for the Authorities.”
“He was supposed to be here,” said Tommy, frowning slightly. “To reassure you of his good intentions. But unfortunately he was called away. It seems something really unpleasant is happening on the Street of the Gods.”
We all looked at Razor Eddie, who met our gaze a little reproachfully. “Nothing to do with me,” he said.
“Hell with this,” said Sandra Chance, rising to her feet in one smooth feline movement. “It’s time to take care of business.”
“No!” said Tommy, scrambling untidily to his feet. “He has to be given a chance to surrender! You agreed!”
“I lied,” said Sandra. “His existence offends me. He killed the Lamentation.”
“Ah yes,” I said. “Your… what was the term, exactly, I wonder? You never did have much taste in lovers, Sandra. The Lamentation was just a nasty little Power with delusions of godhood, and the world smells better now that it’s gone.”
“It was the Saint of Suffering, and it served a purpose!” Sandra said loudly. “It weeded out the weak and punished the foolish, and I was proud to serve it!”
“Exactly what was your relationship with the Lamentation?” said Tommy Oblivion. His voice was thoughtful and not at all threatening, as his gift manifested subtly on the still air. Tommy could be very persuasive when he chose to be. I don’t know whether Sandra could feel what was happening, but she answered anyway, her cold green eyes locked on mine.
“I used to investigate insurance fraud,” she said. “And a cluster of unexplained suicides brought me to the Church of the Lamentation. We talked, and we… connected. I don’t think it had ever met anyone like me, with my fetish for death.”
“Kindred spirits, who found each other in Hell,” I said softly. “What did you do for the Lamentation, Sandra? What deal did you make with your devil?”
“Your devil, my god,” said Sandra Chance. “I became its Judas Goat, leading the suffering to their Saint, and it taught me the ways of the necromancer. It gave me what I’d always wanted. To lie down with death and rise up wreathed in power.”
“Of course,” said Tommy, “such knowledge usually drives people insane. But you were functionally crazy to begin with.”
“Takes one to know one,” said Sandra. “Now shut up, Tommy, or I’ll do something amusing to you. You’re only here on sufferance.”
“It was my plan!”
“No,” said Sandra. “This was always Walker’s plan.”
“And you never gave a damn, for all the poor bastards you delivered to your nasty lover?” I said. “To die in despair, then linger in horror, bound even after death to the service of the Lamentation?”
“They were weak,” said Sandra. “They gave up. I never broke under the strain, never gave up. I save my help for those who deserve it.”
“Of course you didn’t care,” said Suzie Shooter. “You’re even more heartless than I am. I’m going to enjoy killing you.”
“Enough talk,” said Sandra. “It’s time to dance the dance of life and death, little people. I shall raise all those who lie here because of you—John Taylor, Shotgun Suzie, Razor Eddie. All your victims gathered together in one place, with hate and vengeance burning in their cold, cold hearts. And they will drag you down into the cold wet earth and hold you there in their bony arms until finally… you stop screaming. Don’t say I never did anything for you.”
She raised her arms high in the stance of summoning, and chanted ancient Words of Power. Energies crackled fiercely around her extended fingers… and nothing happened. The energies dissipated harmlessly on the freezing air, unable to come together. Sandra stood there awkwardly for a long moment, then slowly lowered her arms and looked about her, confused.
“The Necropolis graveyard is protected by seriously heavy-duty magics,” said Eddie, in his calm, ghostly voice. “I thought everyone knew that.”
“But the magics were supposed to have been suppressed!” said Sandra. “Walker promised me!”
“That wasn’t the deal!” said Tommy. “I wasn’t told about any of this!”
“You didn’t need to know.”
There was a pleasant chiming sound, a brief shimmering on the air, and there was Walker, standing before us in his neat city suit and old-school tie. He smiled vaguely about him. “This… is a recording. I’m afraid I can’t be here with you, on the grounds it might prove injurious to my health. By now you should have realised that the magics of this place have not been shut down, as promised, Sandra Chance. My apologies for the deception; but it was necessary. You see, this isn’t just a trap for John Taylor; it’s a trap for all of you. Taylor, Shooter, Oblivion, and Chance. I’m afraid you’ve all become far more trouble than you’re worth. And I need to be free to concentrate on the Really Bad Thing that all my best precogs insist is coming. So the decision has been made to dispense with all of you. I have at least extracted a promise from the Authorities that after you’ve all killed each other, or the cemetery has killed you, your bodies will be buried here, free of charge. It’s the least I could do. Good-bye, John. I am sorry it had to come to this. I protected you for as long as I could… but I’ve always known my duty.”
The image of Walker raised his bowler hat in our general direction, then snapped off. There was a long moment of silence.
“We are so screwed,” said Suzie.
I looked at Eddie. “He didn’t know you’d be here. You’re our wild card in this situation.”
“It’s what I do best,” said Eddie.
“Walker, you supercilious son of a bitch!” said Sandra Chance, actually stamping one bare foot in her outrage.
“I wouldn’t argue with that,” I said. “Ladies and gentlemen, it would appear we have all been declared redundant. Might I suggest it would be in all our best interests to work together, putting aside old quarrels until we’re all safely out of here?”
“Agreed,” said Sandra, two bright red spots burning on her pale cheeks. “But Walker is mine to kill.”
“First things first,” I said. “Where is Cathy?”
“Oh, we put her in the mausoleum right behind us,” said Tommy. “Sleeping peacefully. You didn’t really think I’d stand for her being buried alive, did you? What kind of a person do you think I am?”
“I ought to shoot you both right now, on general principles,” said Suzie.
“Later,” I said firmly.
The mausoleum was a huge stone Victorian edifice, with all the usual Gothic trimmings, plus a whole bunch of decidedly portly cherubs in mourning. The Victorians could get really sentimental about death. Tommy heaved open the door, and when I looked in there was Cathy, lying curled up on the bare stone floor like a sleeping child. She was wearing something fashionable, under a thick fur coat someone had wrapped around her like a blanket. She was actually snoring slightly. Tommy edged nervously past me, leaned over Cathy, and muttered a few Words under his breath. Cathy came awake immediately and sat up, yawning and knuckling at her sleepy eyes. I moved forward into the mausoleum, and Cathy jumped up and ran forward into my arms. I held her very tightly.
“I knew you’d come and find me,” she said, into my shoulder.
“Of course,” I said. “How would I ever run my office without you?”
She finally let go, and I did, too. We went out of the mausoleum and into the night, where Tommy Oblivion and Sandra Chance were standing stiffly a little to one side. Cathy stepped briskly forward, got a good hold on Sandra’s breasts with both hands, then head-butted her in the face. Sandra fell backwards onto her bare arse, blood spurting from her broken nose. Tommy opened his mouth, either to object or explain, and Cathy kicked him square in the nuts. He went down on his knees, tears streaming past his squeezed-shut eyes, with both hands wedged between his thighs. Perhaps to reassure himself that his testicles were actually still attached.
“Messing with the wrong secretary,” said Cathy.
“Nicely done,” I said, and Cathy grinned at me.
“You are a bad influence on the child,” Suzie said solemnly.
Sometime later we all assembled around the earth barrow. Tommy moved around slowly and carefully, packing up the picnic things, while Sandra stood with her back to all of us, sniffing gingerly through the nose she’d reset herself. Suzie glared suspiciously about her, shotgun at the ready. She was convinced Walker wouldn’t have abandoned us here unless he knew there was Something in the cemetery strong and nasty enough to see us all off. She had a point. I turned to Razor Eddie.
“Walker didn’t know you’d be here. And I’m reasonably sure he doesn’t know about your new ability to cut doors into dimensions with that nasty little blade of yours. Take us home, Eddie, so we can express our extreme displeasure to him in person.”
He nodded slightly, and the pearl-handled straight razor gleamed viciously in the starlight as he cut at the air before him, in a movement so fast none of us could follow it. We all braced ourselves, but nothing happened. Eddie frowned and tried again, still to no effect. He slowly lowered his blade and considered the air before him.
“Ah,” he said finally.
“Ah?” I said. “What do you mean, ah? Is there something wrong with your razor, Eddie?”
“No, there’s something wrong with the dimensional barriers.”
“I don’t like the sound of that, Eddie.”
“I’m not too keen on it myself. Someone has strengthened the dimensional barriers, from the outside. No prizes for guessing who.”
Cathy hugged my arm tightly. “How does he know things like that?”
“I find it better not to ask,” I said. “Eddie, I… Eddie, why are you frowning? I really don’t like it when you frown.”
“Something’s… changed,” he said, his voice stark and flat. He looked around him, and we all did the same. The night seemed no different, cold and still and quiet, the graves unmoving and undisturbed under the gaudy starlight. But Eddie was right. Something had changed. We could all feel it, like the tension that precedes the breaking storm.
“You achieved something, with that spell of yours,” Eddie said to Sandra. “It’s still trying to work, undischarged in the cemetery atmosphere. It’s not enough to affect the dead, but…”
“What do you mean, ‘but’?” I said. “You can’t stop there!”
“She’s disturbed Something,” said Razor Eddie. “It’s been asleep a long time, but now it’s waking… and it’s waking angry.”
We moved closer together, staring about us and straining our ears against the silence. The atmosphere in the graveyard was changing. There was a sense of potential on the air, of something about to happen, in this place where nothing was ever supposed to happen. Suzie turned her shotgun this way and that, searching in vain for a target.
“What am I looking for, Eddie?” she said calmly. “What lives in this dimension?”
“I told you. Nothing lives here. That’s the point.”
“Could the dead be rising up after all?” said Tommy.
“It’s not the dead,” Sandra said immediately. “I’d know if it was that.”
“It’s coming,” whispered Razor Eddie.
The ground rose sharply beneath our feet, toppling us this way and that. Headstones collapsed or lurched to one side, and the great mausoleums trembled. My first thought was an earthquake, but all around us the graveyard earth was rising and falling, lifting like an ocean swell. We all scrambled onto our feet again, finding things to cling to for support.
“There were rumours,” said Sandra Chance, “of a Caretaker, set to guard the graves.”
“I never heard of any Caretaker,” said Razor Eddie.
“Yes, well, just because you’re a god doesn’t mean you know everything,” said Sandra.
And that was when the graveyard dirt burst up into the air from between the rows of graves, great fountains of dark wet earth shooting up, high into the chilly air. It rained down all around us, forming itself into rough shapes. Dark, earthy human shapes, with rough arms and legs, and blunt heads with no faces. Golems fashioned out of graveyard dirt. They started towards us, slow and clumsy with the power of earth, closing in on us from every direction at once. The ground grew still again, save for the heavy thudding of legs with no feet.
Suzie opened up with her pump-action shotgun. She hit everything she aimed at, blowing ragged chunks of earth out of the heavy lumbering figures, but it didn’t slow them down. Not even when she blew their heads off. Sandra chanted Words of Power and stabbed at the advancing earth golems with an aboriginal pointing-bone, and none of it did any good at all. Razor Eddie darted forward, moving supernaturally quickly. Several of the earth figures just fell apart, sliced through again and again. But for every golem that fell, a dozen more rose out of the graveyard earth and headed our way with silent, implacable intent.
I heard muttering beside me. Tommy Oblivion was using his gift to try to convince himself he was somewhere else, but it seemed Walker’s dimensional barriers were too strong even for him. Cathy pulled a Kandarian punch dagger from the top of her knee-length boot, and moved to watch my back. She knew her limitations. Sandra was reduced to throwing things from her belt pouches at the approaching golems. None of them did any good.
“I’ll have Walker’s balls for this!” she screamed.
“Join the queue,” I said.
I took out my Club Membership Card. Alex Morrisey gave it to me some time back, when he was in an unusually expansive mood. When properly activated, the magic stored in the Card could transport you right into Strangefellows, from wherever you happened to be at the time. I had perhaps used it more often than Alex had intended, because he was always nagging at me to return it, and yet somehow I kept forgetting on purpose to do so. But once again, the magic in the Card was no match for whatever Walker had done to the dimensional barriers. I turned to Suzie.
“Do you have any grenades?”
“Silly question,” she said. “You think I’d go out half-dressed?”
“Spread some confusion,” I said. “I need some time to concentrate, to raise my gift.”
“You got it,” said Suzie. “Blessed or cursed grenades, do you think?”
“I’d try both.”
“Excellent notion.”
She started lobbing grenades in all directions, and everyone else ducked and put their hands over their ears. The explosions dug great craters out of the ground, and bits of golem, coffin wood, and even body parts rained down all around us. Stone fragments from headstones and mausoleums flew on the air like shrapnel. The golems were shredded and rent, flattened and torn apart. And still more rose, forming themselves out of the torn earth.
I closed my eyes and studied the cemetery through my third eye, my private eye. Without Tommy’s gift interfering, I could See clearly again. And it only took me a moment to find the source of the consciousness animating the earth golems. It was a diffused, widely spread thing, scattered throughout the whole of the cemetery, and beyond. This was the great secret of the Necropolis graveyard. The last line of defence for the helpless dead. This whole world, the earth and the soil of it, was alive and aware, and set to guard. The Caretaker. A living world, to protect a world’s dead.
The Caretaker decided the golems weren’t working, or perhaps it sensed my probings into its nature. All the earth in the cemetery rose before us, in a great tidal wave, and thundered forward like a horizontal avalanche. Enough earth to pulverise and drown and bury us all. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, no way to defend ourselves. But I had finally found the weak spot in Walker’s plan. He’d strengthened the spells containing the cemetery dimension, made very sure that nothing could get out. But it had never occurred to him to stop anything from getting in… I reached out with my gift, and found a place in the Nightside where it was raining really heavily. And then all I had to do was bring the rain to me and let it pour down. The driving rain hit the tidal wave of earth and washed it away. Thick mud swirled around our feet, but its strength and power were gone. The rain kept hammering down, and the Caretaker couldn’t get its earth to hang together long enough to form anything. And while the Caretaker was preoccupied with that, I reached out with my gift again and located the weakest spot in the dimensional barriers containing us. I showed Eddie where it was, and he cut it open with one stroke of his godly razor.
We all ran through the opening, while Eddie strained to keep it open. Then we were all back in the Nightside, and the opening slammed shut behind us. We stood together, soaking wet and smeared with mud, breathing hard. I looked around me. I’d been half-expecting a crowd of Walker’s people, set to stand and watch in case we found a way out, but there was no-one. Either Walker hadn’t expected any of us to get out… or his people were needed somewhere else. Sandra said he’d been called away, to deal with trouble on the Street of the Gods… Could Lilith be making her move at last?
Sandra stomped wetly towards me, and I raised an eyebrow. “Relax, Taylor,” she said curtly. “You saved my life, and I always pay my debts. Walker has to be shown the error of his ways. I can help. Of course, once that’s over…”
Cathy fixed Sandra with a thoughtful eye, and the consulting necromancer winced despite herself. Cathy smiled sweetly. “Leave my boss alone, bitch.”
“Play nicely, children,” I said. “We have to go to the Street of the Gods. I think the shit is finally hitting the fan. Tommy, escort Cathy back to Strangefellows, and stay there with her. And don’t argue. Neither of you has the firepower for what we’re going to be facing. Lock and load, people; we have a Biblical myth to take down.”
Three -
Playtime’s Over, Children
I wasn’t there at the time, but the survivors told me what happened.
It was just another day on the Street of the Gods. That magical, mercurial, and entirely separate place where you can worship whatever you want, or whatever wants you. There are Beings and Powers and Forces, things unknown and things unknowable, and it’s all strictly buyer beware. Religion is big business in the Nightside, and on the Street of the Gods you can find something to fit anyone’s taste, no matter how bizarre or extreme. Of course, the most popular faiths have the biggest churches and the most magnificent temples, and the best positions on the Street, while everyone else fights it out in a Darwinian struggle for cash, congregations, and more commanding positions. Some gods are very old, some are very rich, and some don’t even last long enough to pass around the collection plate.
Gods come and go, faiths rise and fall, but the Street of the Gods goes on forever.
Gargoyles crouched high up on cathedral walls, studying the worshippers below with sardonic eyes, chatting and gossiping and passing round a thick hand-rolled. Strange forms walked openly up and down the Street, going about their unguessable business. Wisps and phantoms floated here and there, troubled by every passing breeze—old gods worn so thin they weren’t even memories any more. There were paper lanterns and human candles, burning braziers and bright gaudy neon. Living lightning bolts chased each other up and down the Street. Rival gangs chanted dogma at each other from the safety of their church vestries, and here and there mad-eyed zealots practised curses and damnations on hated enemies. Some of the more fashionable gods strolled up and down the Street in their most dazzling aspects, out and about to see and be seen. And Harlequin danced, in his stark chequered outfit and black domino mask, spinning and pirouetting as he always had, for as long as anyone could remember, on and on, dance without end. Under candlelight, corpselight, and flashing neon, Harlequin danced.
It had to be said—the Street of the Gods had known better days. Just recently, Razor Eddie had lost his temper in the Street and done something extremely distressing, as a result of which some gods had been observed running out of the Street screaming and crying their eyes out. Walker’s people were still coaxing them out of bars and gutters and cardboard boxes. On the Street, people were clearing up the wreckage and taking estimates for rebuilding. Churches were surrounded by scaffolding, or held together by glowing bands of pure faith, while those beyond saving were bulldozed flat by remote-controlled juggernauts. The barkers were out in force, drumming up new business, and there were more tourists about than ever. (They do so love a disaster, especially when it’s somewhere picturesque.) Some worshippers were still wandering around in a daze, wondering whether their deities would ever return.
Just another day on the Street of the Gods, then—until dead angels began dropping out of the night sky. They fell gracelessly and landed hard, with broken wings and stupid, startled faces, like birds who have flown into the windows of high-rise buildings. They lay on the ground, not moving, creatures of light and darkness, like a child’s discarded toys. Everyone regarded the dead angels with awe and some timidity. And then they looked up, the worshippers and the worshipped, to see a greater dark miracle in the starry night sky.
A moonbeam extended lazily down into the Street of the Gods, shimmering silver starstuff, splendid and coldly beautiful, just like the great and awful personage who sailed slowly down it like an ethereal moving stairway, smiling and waving to the crowds below. Lilith had been planning her return for some time, and she did so love to make an entrance.
Inhumanly tall, perfectly formed, and supernaturally feminine, with a skin so pale it was the very antithesis of colour, and hair and eyes and lips blacker than the night, she looked like some screen goddess from the days of silent film. Her face was sharp and pointed, with a prominent bone structure and a hawk nose. Her mouth was thin-lipped and far too wide, and her eyes held a fire that could burn through anything. She was not pretty, but she was beautiful almost beyond bearing. She was naked, but there was nothing vulnerable about her.
Her presence filled the air, like the roar of massed cannon announcing the start of war, or a choir singing obscenities in a cathedral, like the first scream of being born or the last scream of the dying. No-one could look away. And many a lesser god or goddess knelt and bowed, recognising the real thing when they saw it, come at last to the Street of the Gods. There was a halo round Lilith’s head, though it was more a presence than a light. Lilith could be very traditional, when she chose. She stepped down off the moonbeam into the Street of the Gods, and smiled about her.
“Hello, everyone,” she said, in a voice rich and sweet as poisoned honey. “I’m Lilith, and I’m back. Did you miss me?”
She walked openly in glory through the night, and everyone fell back before her. The great and small alike bowed their heads, unable to meet her gaze. The ground shook and cracked apart beneath the thunder of her tread. Even the biggest and most ornate cathedral seemed suddenly shabby, next to her. She kicked dead angels out of her way with a perfect pale foot, not even looking down, and her dark mouth made a small moue of annoyance.
“Such simple, stupid things,” she said. “Neither Heaven nor Hell can stand against me here, in the place I made to be free of both.”
Some tourists made the mistake of pressing forward, with their cameras and camcorders. Lilith just looked at them, and they died screaming, with nothing left to mark their presence save agonised shadows, blasted into the brickwork of the buildings behind them.
Lilith stopped abruptly and looked about her, then called in a commanding voice for all the gods to leave their churches and present themselves before her. She called for them by name and by nature, in a language no-one spoke any more. A language so old it couldn’t even be recognised as words, only sounds, concepts from an ur-language so ancient as to be beyond civilised comprehension.
And out of the churches and temples and dark hidden places they came, the Beings and Power and Forces who had called themselves gods for so long. Out came Bloody Blades and Soror Marium, the Carrion in Tears and the Devil’s Bride, Molly Widdershins, Abomination Inc, the Incarnate and the Engineer. And more and more, the human and the humanoid and the abhuman, the monsters and the magical, the scared and the profane. And some who hadn’t left the dark and secret places under their churches for centuries, unseen by generations of their worshippers, who, having finally seen the awful things they’d prayed to for so long, would never do so again. And last of all, Harlequin stopped dancing and came forward to kneel before Lilith.
“My masters and my mistresses,” he said, in a calm, cold, and utterly hopeless voice. “The revels now are ended.”
The watching crowd grew loudly agitated, crying out in awe and shock and wonder at the unexpected sights before them. They argued amongst themselves as to what it all meant, and zealots struck out at those nearest with fists and harsh words. No-one likes to admit they may have backed a losing horse. The quicker-thinking in the crowd were already kneeling and crying out praises to Lilith. The prophesiers of doom, those persistent grey creatures with their hand-made signs saying the end is nigh seemed most put out. They hadn’t seen this coming. Lilith smiled at them.
“You are all redundant now. I am the End you have been waiting for.”
More shadows, blasted into crumbling brickwork, more fading echoes of startled screams.
Lilith looked unhurriedly about her, considering the various divine forms gathered before her, in all their shapes and incarnations, and they all flinched a little under that thoughtful gaze, even if they didn’t remember why. She made them feel nervous, unworthy, on some deep and primal level. As though she knew something they had tried very hard to forget, or, if never known, had somehow always suspected.
“I am Lilith,” she said finally. “First wife to Adam, thrown out of Eden for refusing to acknowledge any authority but mine own. I descended into Hell and lay down with demons, and gave birth to monsters. All my marvellous children—the first to be invited to dwell in my Nightside. You are all my children, or descendants of my children. You are not gods, and never were. It takes more than worship to make you divine. I made you to be splendid and free, but you have grown small and limited down the many years, seduced by worship and acclaim, allowed yourselves to be shaped and enslaved by the imaginations of humanity. Well, playtime is over now, children. I am back, in the place I made for us, and it’s time to go to work. I’ve been away too long, and there is much to be put right.
“I have been here for some time, watching and learning. I walked among you, and you knew me not. You’ve been playing at being gods for so long you’ve forgotten you were ever anything else. But you owe your existence and loyalty to me. Your lives are mine, to do with as I please.”
The Beings and Forces and Powers looked at each other, stirring uneasily. It was all happening so fast. One minute they were being worshipped as divine, and the next… Some of them were beginning to remember. Some shook their heads in hopeless denial, even as tears ran down their faces. Some didn’t take at all kindly to being reminded of their true origins and obligations, and shouted defiance. And quite a large number were distinctly resentful at finding out they weren’t gods at all and never had been. The watching worshippers retreated to what they hoped was a safe distance, and let the gods argue it out amongst themselves. The argument was getting quite noisy, if not actually raucous, when Lilith silenced them all with a single sharp gesture.
It was just another day on the Street of the Gods. That magical, mercurial, and entirely separate place where you can worship whatever you want, or whatever wants you. There are Beings and Powers and Forces, things unknown and things unknowable, and it’s all strictly buyer beware. Religion is big business in the Nightside, and on the Street of the Gods you can find something to fit anyone’s taste, no matter how bizarre or extreme. Of course, the most popular faiths have the biggest churches and the most magnificent temples, and the best positions on the Street, while everyone else fights it out in a Darwinian struggle for cash, congregations, and more commanding positions. Some gods are very old, some are very rich, and some don’t even last long enough to pass around the collection plate.
Gods come and go, faiths rise and fall, but the Street of the Gods goes on forever.
Gargoyles crouched high up on cathedral walls, studying the worshippers below with sardonic eyes, chatting and gossiping and passing round a thick hand-rolled. Strange forms walked openly up and down the Street, going about their unguessable business. Wisps and phantoms floated here and there, troubled by every passing breeze—old gods worn so thin they weren’t even memories any more. There were paper lanterns and human candles, burning braziers and bright gaudy neon. Living lightning bolts chased each other up and down the Street. Rival gangs chanted dogma at each other from the safety of their church vestries, and here and there mad-eyed zealots practised curses and damnations on hated enemies. Some of the more fashionable gods strolled up and down the Street in their most dazzling aspects, out and about to see and be seen. And Harlequin danced, in his stark chequered outfit and black domino mask, spinning and pirouetting as he always had, for as long as anyone could remember, on and on, dance without end. Under candlelight, corpselight, and flashing neon, Harlequin danced.
It had to be said—the Street of the Gods had known better days. Just recently, Razor Eddie had lost his temper in the Street and done something extremely distressing, as a result of which some gods had been observed running out of the Street screaming and crying their eyes out. Walker’s people were still coaxing them out of bars and gutters and cardboard boxes. On the Street, people were clearing up the wreckage and taking estimates for rebuilding. Churches were surrounded by scaffolding, or held together by glowing bands of pure faith, while those beyond saving were bulldozed flat by remote-controlled juggernauts. The barkers were out in force, drumming up new business, and there were more tourists about than ever. (They do so love a disaster, especially when it’s somewhere picturesque.) Some worshippers were still wandering around in a daze, wondering whether their deities would ever return.
Just another day on the Street of the Gods, then—until dead angels began dropping out of the night sky. They fell gracelessly and landed hard, with broken wings and stupid, startled faces, like birds who have flown into the windows of high-rise buildings. They lay on the ground, not moving, creatures of light and darkness, like a child’s discarded toys. Everyone regarded the dead angels with awe and some timidity. And then they looked up, the worshippers and the worshipped, to see a greater dark miracle in the starry night sky.
A moonbeam extended lazily down into the Street of the Gods, shimmering silver starstuff, splendid and coldly beautiful, just like the great and awful personage who sailed slowly down it like an ethereal moving stairway, smiling and waving to the crowds below. Lilith had been planning her return for some time, and she did so love to make an entrance.
Inhumanly tall, perfectly formed, and supernaturally feminine, with a skin so pale it was the very antithesis of colour, and hair and eyes and lips blacker than the night, she looked like some screen goddess from the days of silent film. Her face was sharp and pointed, with a prominent bone structure and a hawk nose. Her mouth was thin-lipped and far too wide, and her eyes held a fire that could burn through anything. She was not pretty, but she was beautiful almost beyond bearing. She was naked, but there was nothing vulnerable about her.
Her presence filled the air, like the roar of massed cannon announcing the start of war, or a choir singing obscenities in a cathedral, like the first scream of being born or the last scream of the dying. No-one could look away. And many a lesser god or goddess knelt and bowed, recognising the real thing when they saw it, come at last to the Street of the Gods. There was a halo round Lilith’s head, though it was more a presence than a light. Lilith could be very traditional, when she chose. She stepped down off the moonbeam into the Street of the Gods, and smiled about her.
“Hello, everyone,” she said, in a voice rich and sweet as poisoned honey. “I’m Lilith, and I’m back. Did you miss me?”
She walked openly in glory through the night, and everyone fell back before her. The great and small alike bowed their heads, unable to meet her gaze. The ground shook and cracked apart beneath the thunder of her tread. Even the biggest and most ornate cathedral seemed suddenly shabby, next to her. She kicked dead angels out of her way with a perfect pale foot, not even looking down, and her dark mouth made a small moue of annoyance.
“Such simple, stupid things,” she said. “Neither Heaven nor Hell can stand against me here, in the place I made to be free of both.”
Some tourists made the mistake of pressing forward, with their cameras and camcorders. Lilith just looked at them, and they died screaming, with nothing left to mark their presence save agonised shadows, blasted into the brickwork of the buildings behind them.
Lilith stopped abruptly and looked about her, then called in a commanding voice for all the gods to leave their churches and present themselves before her. She called for them by name and by nature, in a language no-one spoke any more. A language so old it couldn’t even be recognised as words, only sounds, concepts from an ur-language so ancient as to be beyond civilised comprehension.
And out of the churches and temples and dark hidden places they came, the Beings and Power and Forces who had called themselves gods for so long. Out came Bloody Blades and Soror Marium, the Carrion in Tears and the Devil’s Bride, Molly Widdershins, Abomination Inc, the Incarnate and the Engineer. And more and more, the human and the humanoid and the abhuman, the monsters and the magical, the scared and the profane. And some who hadn’t left the dark and secret places under their churches for centuries, unseen by generations of their worshippers, who, having finally seen the awful things they’d prayed to for so long, would never do so again. And last of all, Harlequin stopped dancing and came forward to kneel before Lilith.
“My masters and my mistresses,” he said, in a calm, cold, and utterly hopeless voice. “The revels now are ended.”
The watching crowd grew loudly agitated, crying out in awe and shock and wonder at the unexpected sights before them. They argued amongst themselves as to what it all meant, and zealots struck out at those nearest with fists and harsh words. No-one likes to admit they may have backed a losing horse. The quicker-thinking in the crowd were already kneeling and crying out praises to Lilith. The prophesiers of doom, those persistent grey creatures with their hand-made signs saying the end is nigh seemed most put out. They hadn’t seen this coming. Lilith smiled at them.
“You are all redundant now. I am the End you have been waiting for.”
More shadows, blasted into crumbling brickwork, more fading echoes of startled screams.
Lilith looked unhurriedly about her, considering the various divine forms gathered before her, in all their shapes and incarnations, and they all flinched a little under that thoughtful gaze, even if they didn’t remember why. She made them feel nervous, unworthy, on some deep and primal level. As though she knew something they had tried very hard to forget, or, if never known, had somehow always suspected.
“I am Lilith,” she said finally. “First wife to Adam, thrown out of Eden for refusing to acknowledge any authority but mine own. I descended into Hell and lay down with demons, and gave birth to monsters. All my marvellous children—the first to be invited to dwell in my Nightside. You are all my children, or descendants of my children. You are not gods, and never were. It takes more than worship to make you divine. I made you to be splendid and free, but you have grown small and limited down the many years, seduced by worship and acclaim, allowed yourselves to be shaped and enslaved by the imaginations of humanity. Well, playtime is over now, children. I am back, in the place I made for us, and it’s time to go to work. I’ve been away too long, and there is much to be put right.
“I have been here for some time, watching and learning. I walked among you, and you knew me not. You’ve been playing at being gods for so long you’ve forgotten you were ever anything else. But you owe your existence and loyalty to me. Your lives are mine, to do with as I please.”
The Beings and Forces and Powers looked at each other, stirring uneasily. It was all happening so fast. One minute they were being worshipped as divine, and the next… Some of them were beginning to remember. Some shook their heads in hopeless denial, even as tears ran down their faces. Some didn’t take at all kindly to being reminded of their true origins and obligations, and shouted defiance. And quite a large number were distinctly resentful at finding out they weren’t gods at all and never had been. The watching worshippers retreated to what they hoped was a safe distance, and let the gods argue it out amongst themselves. The argument was getting quite noisy, if not actually raucous, when Lilith silenced them all with a single sharp gesture.