Simon R. Green
Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth

   London holds an awful secret close to her heart, like a serpent to her bosom. The Nightside. A dark and corrupt place, a city within a city, where the sun has never shone and never will. In the Nightside you can find gods and monsters and spirits from the vasty deep, if they don’t find you first. Pleasure and horror are always on sale, marked down and only slightly shop-soiled. I was born in the Nightside, some thirty years ago, and someone’s been trying to kill me ever since.
   My name is John Taylor, and I operate as a private investigator. I don’t do divorce work, I don’t solve mysteries, and I wouldn’t know a clue if I fell over one. I find things, no matter how well hidden, though mostly what I seem to find is trouble. My father drank himself to death after discovering my missing mother wasn’t human. The Authorities, those grey faceless men who run things in the Nightside, inasmuch as anyone does, see me as a dangerous rogue element. Mostly they’re right. My clients see me as their last hope, while others see me as a King in waiting; and there are those who would risk anything to kill me because of a prophecy that one day I will destroy the Nightside, and the rest of the world with it.
   Finally, after a trip through Time into past incarnations of the Nightside, I have discovered the truth. The Nightside had been created by my missing mother to be the one place on Earth free from the influence of Heaven or Hell. The only truly free place. Her own allies thrust her out of this reality and into Limbo, because they feared her so much. Now she’s back, and threatening to remake the Nightside in her own terrible image. My mother, Lilith. Adam’s first wife, thrown out of Eden for refusing to accept any authority. She descended into Hell and lay down with demons, and gave birth to all the monsters that have ever plagued this world. Or so they say.
   Lilith. Mommie Dearest.
   All I have to do now is figure out how to stop her, without destroying the Nightside and the whole damned world in the process…

One - Somewhere in the Night

   Strangefellows is said by many and considered by most to be the oldest bar in the world, and therefore has seen pretty much everything in its time. So when Suzie Shooter and I appeared suddenly out of nowhere, looking half-dead in blood-stained and tattered clothing, most of the bar’s patrons didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow, cosmopolitan bastards and general scumbags that they are. Suzie and I leaned heavily on the long, polished wooden bar and spent some time just getting our breath back. We’d been through a lot during our trip through the Past, including being possessed by angels to fight demons from the Pit, so I felt very strongly that we were entitled to a little time out. Alex Morrisey, Strangefellows’ owner, bartender, and general miserable pain in the arse, stood behind the bar putting a lot of effort into cleaning a glass that didn’t need cleaning, while he fixed us both with his familiar unwavering scowl.
   “Why can’t you walk through the door like normal people, Taylor?” he said finally. “You always have to make an entrance, don’t you? And look at the state of you. Don’t either of you dare drip blood over my nice, new, and very expensively cleaned floor. I haven’t seen the natural colour of that floor in more years than I care to remember, and I’m trying to memorise it before it inevitably disappears again. I have got to get some new clientele. When I inherited this place I was promised a nice upmarket bar with a select and discreet group of regular drinkers.”
   “Alex,” I said, “you couldn’t drive this bar upmarket with an electric cattle prod and a branding iron. Now bring me many drinks, all in the same glass, and a bottle of the old mother’s ruin for Suzie.”
   “Two,” said Suzie Shooter. “And don’t bother with a glass.”
   Alex looked at Suzie, and his expression changed abruptly. During our brief stop-off in Arthurian times, Suzie had lost the left side of her face. The flesh had been ripped and torn away; then seared together with fire. Her left eye was gone, the eyelid sealed shut. Suzie glared at Alex with her one remaining cold blue eye, daring him to say anything. Alex’s face tried to show several things at once, then went blank. He gave Suzie his best professional bartender’s polite nod and went to get us our drinks. Suzie had no time for pity or compassion, even from those she considered her friends. Perhaps especially from them.
   But I knew there was more to it than that. Alex and I had seen that face before, on a future incarnation of Suzie, who’d travelled back through Time from a potential future to kill me, right here in this bar. I might have killed that Suzie. I wasn’t sure. Alex came back with a large glass of wormwood brandy for me, and two bottles of gin for Suzie. He scowled disapprovingly as I gulped down the expensive liquor, and tried not to see Suzie sucking gin straight from the bottle like it was mother’s milk.
   “How long have we been gone?” I said finally.
   Alex raised an eyebrow. “About five hours, since you and Tommy Oblivion left here with Eamonn Mitchell, that new client of yours.”
   “Ah,” I said. “It’s been a lot longer for us. Suzie and I have been Time travelling. Back into the various Pasts of the Nightside.”
   “I’ve got no sympathy for you,” said Alex. “Don’t you have enough problems in the here and now, without upsetting people in the Past? Who did you piss off this time? You look like you’ve both been through a meat grinder.”
   “That’s nothing,” said Suzie. “You should see the meat grinder.”
   She belched and farted, then went back to sucking on her bottle.
   “I don’t suppose you thought to bring me back a present?” said Alex.
   “Of course not,” I said. “I told you; we were in the Past, not the Present.”
   “You’re so sharp you’ll cut yourself one of these days,” said Alex.
   I persuaded Suzie to put down her gin bottle long enough to make use of the rechargeable clothing spell Alex always keeps at hand behind the counter. A few Words of Power followed by a couple of quick passes with an aboriginal pointing-bone, and our clothes were immediately clean and repaired. Our bodies remained battered and bloody and exhausted, but it was a start. The spell was standard equipment in all Nightside bars and hostelries, where the general joie de vivre could be very hard on the appearance. Suzie and I admired ourselves in the long mirror behind the bar.
   I looked like myself again, if just a little more world-weary around the eyes. Tall, dark, and handsome in the right kind of light, wrapped in a long white trench coat. I like to think I look like someone you could trust, if not take home to meet the parents. Suzie Shooter, also known as Shotgun Suzie, and Oh Christ it’s her, run! looked as cold and dangerous and downright scary as she always did. A tall blonde in her late twenties, but with a lot of mileage on the clock, standing stiff-backed and arrogant in black motorcycle leathers, lavishly adorned with steel chains and studs, a pump-action shotgun holstered on her back, and two bandoliers of bullets criss-crossing her substantial chest. Knee-length black leather boots with steel-capped toes completed the distressing picture. She had a strong-boned face, a mouth that rarely smiled, and a gaze older than the world. She’d shot me in the back once, but it was only a cry for attention.
   (Alex was dressed all in black, as usual, even down to the designer shades and snazzy black beret perched on the back of his head to hide a spreading bald patch. He was in his late twenties but looked ten years older. Running a bar in the Nightside will do that to you.)
   “So,” said Suzie, returning to her gin bottle, “what do we do now, Taylor?”
   “We put together an army,” I said, “Of every Power and Being and major player in the whole damned Nightside, and turn them into a force I can throw at Lilith’s throat. I’ll use my gift to track down wherever she’s hiding herself, and then… we do whatever we have to, to destroy her. Because that’s all there is left, now.”
   “Even though she’s your mother?”
   “She was never my mother,” I said. “Not in any way that mattered.”
   Suzie considered me thoughtfully. “Even with an army to back us up, we could still lay waste to most of the Nightside, fighting to bring her down.”
   “She’ll destroy it anyway, if we don’t do something. I’ve Seen what will happen if we don’t stop her, and anything would be better than that.”
   I didn’t look at her scarred face. I didn’t think of her half-dead, half-mad, come back through Time to kill me, with the awful Speaking Gun grafted where her right forearm should have been.
   “What if the others don’t want to get involved?”
   “I’ll make them want to.”
   “And end up just like your mother?”
   I sighed, and looked into my empty glass. “I’m tired, Suzie. I want… I need for this to be over.”
   “It should be one hell of a battle.” Shotgun Suzie ran one thumb caressingly over her bandoliers of bullets. “I can’t wait.”
   I smiled at her fondly. “I’ll bet you even take that shotgun to bed with you, don’t you?”
   She looked at me with her cold, calm expression. “Someday, you just might find out. My love.”
   She blew me a kiss, then returned all her attention to her bottle of gin. Alex looked at me with a mixture of awe, horror, and utter astonishment, and seized the opportunity for a quiet chat while Suzie was preoccupied. He pulled me aside and lowered his voice to a whisper.
   “Did I just hear right, John? My love? Am I to take it you and the psycho bounty hunter from Hell are now an item?”
   “Looks like it,” I said. “I’m as shocked and surprised as you are. Maybe I should have checked the wording in my Personals Ad more carefully.”
   “But… Suzie? I mean, ten out of ten for courage, yes, but… she’s crazy!”
   I had to smile. “You think anyone sane would hook up with me?”
   Alex considered the matter. “Well, there is that, yes. Good point. But John… her face…”
   “I know,” I said quietly. “It happened in the Past. There was nothing I could do.”
   “John, she’s one step closer to becoming the future Suzie who tried to kill you. Shouldn’t we tell her about that?”
   “I already know,” said Suzie. I hadn’t heard her approach, and from the way Alex jumped, he hadn’t either.
   She was gracious enough not to smile. “I’ve known for some time. You can’t keep secrets long in the Nightside, especially when they include bad news. You should know that, John. Don’t worry about it. I never worry about the future. Mostly because I don’t believe I’m going to live to see it. It’s a very liberating attitude. Worry about the present me, John.”
   “Oh I do,” I assured her. “I do.”
 
   I put my back against the bar and looked out over the place. Just another night in the oldest bar in the world. Alex’s muscle-bound bouncers, Betty and Lucy Coltrane, were throwing out a bunch of burly masked Mexican wrestlers, and making them cry like little girls in the process. Never mess with the Coltranes. Especially when they’re wearing their ROLLERBALL HELLCAT MUD-WRESTLING CHAMPIONS T-shirts. Not far away, a cyborg with glowing golden eyes ordered another bottle of neat ethanol from Alex, in a strange buzzing voice. He’d dropped in from a possible future via a Timeslip, and was currently trying to mend his left leg with a pair of pliers and a sonic screwdriver someone had left behind in the bar. I was actually pleased to see him. It was good to know that other futures, apart from the terrible devastated future I feared so much, were still possible.
   Not far enough away, half a dozen flower fairies in drooping petal outfits were singing a raucous Victorian drinking song, buzzed up on pollen. Soon they’d start getting nasty, and go looking for a Water Baby to beat up. Coming down the metal stairs into the bar proper was Kid Psychoses, in his tatterdemalion rags, doing his rounds and peddling his appalling wares. The Kid sold brief interludes of mental illness, for people who wanted to go really out of their heads. He once told me he started out selling mental health, but there was no market for it in the Nightside. I could have told him that.
   And the King and Queen of America were passing through, smiling and waving.
   “So,” said Alex, freshening my glass, “what was the Nightside like, in the Past?”
   “Messy,” said Suzie. “In every possible sense of the word.”
   “Kill anyone interesting?”
   “You’d be surprised,” I said. “But a gentleman doesn’t kill and tell. Have you seen Tommy Oblivion recently?”
   “Not since he left here with you earlier. Was I supposed to?”
   Tommy Oblivion, the existential private eye, had gone back into the Past with Suzie and me, but we’d had a falling-out. He accused me of being cold and manipulative and more dangerous than the people I was trying to stop. I had to send him back to the Present. It was either that or kill him, and I’m trying to be one of the good guys, these days. But I had a feeling I might have missed the mark, just a bit. I could remember Tommy appearing in this bar quite suddenly, out of nowhere, some months back when I was working the Nightingale’s Lament case. Back then, he’d threatened to hunt me down and kill me. I’d wondered why, but now I think I knew.
   I sighed and shrugged mentally. Tommy Oblivion could take a number and get in line. There was never any shortage of people trying to kill me, in the Nightside. There was a loud creaking of heavy leathers as Suzie moved in beside me, her back to the bar, gin bottle in hand. It was already half-empty, and she had a cigarette in one corner of her mouth. Smoke curled up slowly past her sealed-shut eye.
   “I’ll find you a spell,” I said. “To repair your face.”
   “I’m thinking of keeping it,” Suzie said calmly. “It’ll help my image as a desperate character and ruthless killer.”
   “Your image doesn’t need any help.”
   “You always know the right things to say, Taylor. But I’ve never cared about being pretty. At least now my outside matches my inside.”
   “Suzie… I won’t have you hurt, because of me.”
   She looked at me coldly. “You start getting protective, Taylor, and I will drop you like a hot elephant turd.”
   “Speaking of really big shits,” said Alex, “Walker was in here a few hours ago, John. Looking for you.”
   I didn’t like the sound of that. Walker, that perfect city gent in his smart city suit and bowler hat, represented the Authorities. His word was law in the Nightside, and peopled lived and died and worse at his whim. They say he once made a corpse sit up and answer his questions. He doesn’t approve of me, but he’s thrown some work my way from time to time, when he’s needed a deniable and completely expendable agent. He was mad at me at the moment, but he’d get over it. Or he wouldn’t, in which case one of us would almost certainly end up killing the other.
   “He brought his people in here and had them search the place from top to bottom,” said Alex, sounding distinctly aggrieved. “Hence my need for a thorough and very expensive cleanup crew, just before you dropped in.”
   “You let them search your bar?” I said.
   Alex must have heard the surprise in my voice, because he had the grace to look a little ashamed. “Hey, he brought a lot of people with him, all right? Serious people with serious weaponry. Some of whom are still missing, presumed eaten. I warned them not to go down into the cellars.”
   I shook my head. Walker must be getting really desperate to lay hands on me if he was prepared to raid a bar protected by Merlin Satanspawn. Merlin had been buried in the cellars under the bar, after the fall of Camelot; but being dead doesn’t necessarily keep you from being a major player in the Nightside. I wouldn’t go down into those cellars with a gun at my back.
   “I have to go take a piss,” I announced. “I’ve been holding it in for over two thousand years, and my back teeth are floating.”
   “Thank you for sharing that with us,” said Alex. “Try and keep some of it off the floor this time.”
   I headed for the toilets at the back of the bar. Without making a big thing of it, people moved slowly but deliberately out of my way. Partly because of my carefully maintained reputation, but mostly because bad things had a habit of happening to and around me, and wise people kept a safe distance. I pushed open the door with the stylised male genitals painted on it, and headed for the row of stalls. I’ve never been one for urinals. Far too easy to be ambushed. I took a quick glance around me, breathing through my mouth to avoid the worst of the smell, but it seemed I had the place to myself. The small, dimly lit stone chamber looked as disgusting as ever. I don’t think Alex ever cleans the place; he just fumigates it now and again with a flamethrower. The bare stone walls dripped with condensation, and the floor was wet with a whole bunch of liquids that had nothing to do with condensation. The graffiti hadn’t improved either. Someone had daubed the Yellow Sign on one wall, and beside it someone had painted Gods do it in mysterious ways. Next to the row of stalls, someone else had written For a good time, knock on any door.
   I entered the first stall, and locked the door securely behind me. I then unzipped and attended to business, letting out a long sigh of relief. First rule of the private eye—always go when you can, because you never know when you might have to stand stakeout. On the wall above the toilet, someone had written What are you looking up here for? Ashamed? I smiled, shook off the last few drops and put it away, then stood very still. I hadn’t heard or seen anything, but somehow I knew I wasn’t alone in the stall any more. In the Nightside, you either develop survival instincts fast, or you don’t develop past childhood. I started to reach for one of the little surprises I keep in my coat pockets for occasions like this, then stopped as something small and hard pressed into my back, directly above the kidney.
   “There’s something small and hard pressing into my back,” I said. “And I’m really hoping it’s a gun.”
   “Heh-heh-heh,” said a soft breathy voice behind me. “I can always rely on you for a little quip, Mr. Taylor. Helps the business go down so much more smoothly. Yes, it is a gun, and quite a special gun, I’ll have you know. An energy pistol from some cyborg’s future that I acquired just for this occasion. Heh-heh. So don’t even try your little trick of removing the bullets from my gun. Because it hasn’t got any.”
   “Sneaky Pete,” I said, grimacing. “Bounty hunter, sneak thief, and all-around scumbag. How did you get past that locked door?”
   “I didn’t, Mr. Taylor. I was already hiding in the next stall. Heh-heh. Sneaked over the partition while you were… occupied. Heh. You know no-one ever sees me coming, Mr. Taylor. I have trained with ninjas. I am a thing of mists and shadows.”
   “You’re a sneaky little bastard,” I said firmly. “And lower than a worm’s tit. What do you want with me, Pete?”
   “Why, you of course, Mr. Taylor. There is an awful lot of money being offered for your head, not necessarily attached to your body, and I mean to collect it. Oh yes. Now, we can either walk out of here together, nice and easy with not a word to your companions, to where I have transport waiting… or I can carry you out. Or at least, part of you. Heh-heh. Your choice, Mr. Taylor.”
   “You mind if I flush first?” I said.
   “Always ready with a cheerful quip! I do so enjoy doing business with a fellow professional. Makes it all so much more civilised. Heh-heh. Be my guest, Mr. Taylor. But carefully, yes?”
   I leaned forward slowly and flushed the toilet. And while Sneaky Pete’s attention was fixed on what I was doing with my hands, I fired up the spell I normally use for taking bullets out of guns, took all of the water flushing through the toilet and dumped the lot of it in Sneaky Pete’s lungs. The thing pressing into my back disappeared abruptly as he fell backwards, making horrible gurgling noises. I spun round, ready to grab the energy gun, but his hands were empty. There never had been a gun, just a finger poking me in the back. Sneaky Pete. He sat down on the floor abruptly, water spilling out of his mouth, scrabbling frantically with his empty hands. I considered him for a moment. Bounty hunter. Sneak thief. Peeping Tom and blackmailer. He might not have killed me himself, but he would have handed me over to be killed without a second thought… I sighed, placed my foot against his chest and pushed hard. Water gushed out of him, and after a series of really nasty choking noises, he started breathing again.
   I let him live. I didn’t like to think I was getting soft, but… maybe I needed to convince myself that I wasn’t my mother’s son.
   I left the toilets and returned to the bar. I gave Alex Morrisey my best hard look. “I just had a run-in with Sneaky Pete in the toilet, and not in a good way. Is there perhaps something you haven’t got around to telling me yet?”
   “Ah,” said Alex. “Yes, there’s been a whole lot of bounty hunters in and out of here recently. Apparently the rich and very well connected families of the thirteen Reasonable Men you killed, for perfectly good reasons I’m sure, have got together and placed a truly impressive bounty on your head.”
   “How much?” said Suzie. I looked at her, and she shrugged. “Sorry. Force of habit.”
   I was about to say something sharp when fortunately my mobile phone rang. I answered it with my usual “What?”
   “Taylor,” said Walker, in his smooth and very civilised voice. “So glad you’ve returned safely from your little trip into the Past.”
   “Walker,” I said. “Word does get around fast, doesn’t it? I didn’t think you knew my private number.”
   “I know everyone’s number. Comes with the job.”
   “I am not going to come in and give myself up to you and the Authorities. I have important things to do.”
   “Oh, I think you will, Taylor.”
   There was something in his voice… “What have you done, Walker?”
   “Only what you have forced me to do, to get your attention. I have reluctantly given the order for your delightful young secretary Cathy Barrett to be kidnapped. By now she will be in safe hands, being held somewhere very secure. Turn yourself in peacefully, and you have my word that she will be freed unharmed. But if you insist on making life difficult for me by continuing to defy me in this manner… Well, I’m afraid I can’t answer for the young lady’s continued well-being.”
   “You bastard.”
   “I only do what I have to, John. You know that.”
   “If anything happens to Cathy…”
   “That’s entirely up to you, isn’t it? I regret to inform you that the people entrusted with this kidnapping bear you a considerable amount of ill will. The longer you take to come to a decision, the more likely it is they’ll vent their spleen on her. And much as I might regret that… the situation is out of my hands. I have my orders, and my duty. Whatever happens…”
   I hung up on him. He had nothing else to say worth listening to. He was only keeping the conversation going in the hope his people would be able to track my location through my phone. I explained the situation to Suzie and Alex.
   “I can’t turn myself in,” I said. “I have to be free to operate if I’m going to stop Lilith. The whole Nightside’s at risk, and maybe the world, too. But I won’t, I can’t, abandon Cathy.”
   “Of course not,” said Suzie. “She’s your secretary.”
   “Your friend,” said Alex.
   “My daughter,” I said. “In every way that matters.”
   “Then we must go and get her,” said Suzie. “We can’t give in to threats like this. If people thought we could be pressured into doing things, they’d take advantage. So go on, Taylor. Do your thing.”
   I raised my gift, my single supernatural inheritance from my inhuman mother, and opened up my Sight. And through my third eye, my private eye, I looked out over the Nightside, searching for Cathy. I can find anyone, or anything, if I look hard enough. I don’t like to use my gift too often, because when I do I blaze so brightly in the dark that I am easy to see. And then my Enemies send agents to kill me. But for the moment, I was too mad to care.
   The Nightside spread out below me, naked to my Sight, and I looked down upon it like an angry god. Streets and squares and places within places, with people and things not at all people coming and going. Bars and clubs and more private establishments flashed past beneath my searching inner eye, houses and warehouses and lock-ups and dungeons, and no sign of Cathy anywhere. The Fae sparked briefly in the shadows, and the Awful Folk moved unhurriedly on their unguessable missions, invisible to the material world. I could feel Cathy’s presence now, all alone somewhere in the night, but I couldn’t seem to pin her down. I concentrated till my head ached, but finally I was forced to settle for a general location. Something or someone was blocking my gift, obscuring my Sight, and that was a new thing to me. I shut down my gift, and carefully re-established my mental shields. You can’t have an open mind in the Nightside. You never know what might walk in.
   “She’s somewhere near the Necropolis,” I said. “But I can’t be more specific than that.”
   Suzie raised an eyebrow. “That’s… unusual.”
   I nodded shortly. “Stands to reason Walker wouldn’t chose just anybody to hide Cathy from me.”
   “But Walker knows about your gift,” said Alex. “He must know you’ll come looking for her. It has to be a trap.”
   “Of course it’s a trap,” I said. “But I’ve been walking in and out of traps all my life. So, first Suzie and I will rescue Cathy, after making it clear to her kidnappers that getting involved in my business was a really bad idea, then… I will go walking up and down in the Nightside, and raise an army big enough to give even Walker nightmares.”
   “One thing first,” said Suzie.
   “Yes?” I said.
   “Do up your flies, Taylor.”

Two - And Dead Men Rise Up Never

   Getting out of Strangefellows wasn’t going to be easy. Knowing Walker, it was a safe bet that all of the bar’s known and suspected exits were being watched by his people, heavily armed with guns, bombs, and spells of mass destruction. It was what I would have done. I said as much to Alex Morrisey, and he scowled even more fiercely than usual.
   “I know I’m going to regret this,” he said heavily, “but there is one way out of this bar I can guarantee Walker doesn’t know about. Because no-one does, except me. My family have run this place for generations, and given the weird shit and appalling trouble Strangefellows tends to attract, we’ve always appreciated the need for a swift, sudden, and surreptitious exit. So we’ve carefully maintained a centuries-old hidden exit, for use by us in the direst of emergencies, when it’s all gone to Hell in a handcart. Understand me, Taylor—the only reason I’m prepared to reveal it to you now is because I don’t want Walker’s people crashing back in here looking for you, wrecking the place again. The quicker you’re out of here, the sooner we can all breathe easily.”
   “Understood, Alex,” I said. “This isn’t about friendship. It’s just business.”
   “Damn right,” said Alex. He beckoned for Suzie and me to join him behind the bar. “I wouldn’t want people to get the idea that I was going soft. That I could be taken advantage of.”
   “Perish the thought,” I said.
   “There is… one small drawback,” said Alex.
   “I knew it,” Suzie said immediately. “I knew there had to be a catch. We don’t have to go out through the sewers, do we? I’m really not in the mood to wrestle alligators again.”
   “Even worse,” said Alex. “We have to go down into the cellars.”
   Suzie and I both stopped short and looked at each other. Strangefellows’s cellars were infamous even in the Nightside; they were so dangerous and generally disturbing that most sane and sensible people wouldn’t enter them voluntarily without the holy hand grenade of St. Antioch in one hand and a tactical nuke in the other. Merlin Satanspawn was buried in the cellars, and he really didn’t care for visitors. Alex was the only one who went down there on a regular basis, and even he sometimes came back up pale and twitching.
   “I’ve got a better idea,” said Suzie. “Let’s go out the front door and fight our way through Walker’s people.”
   “He could have a whole army out there,” I said.
   “Somehow that doesn’t bother me nearly as much as it did a few minutes ago,” said Suzie. “I could handle an army.”
   “Well, yes, you probably could, in the right mood,” I said. “But we can’t rescue Cathy if Walker knows we’re coming. We need to stay under the radar, keep him off-balance. Lead the way, Alex.”
   “Have I got time to go to confession first?” said Suzie.
   “You leave that priest alone,” I said firmly. “He still hasn’t got over your last visit.”
   Alex produced an old-fashioned storm lantern from underneath the bar, lit the wick with a muttered Word, and then hauled open the trap-door set in the floor behind the bar. It came up easily, without the slightest creak from the old brass hinges, revealing smooth stone steps leading down into pitch-darkness. Suzie and I both leaned over and had a good look, but the light from the bar didn’t penetrate past the first few steps. Suzie had her shotgun out and at the ready. Alex sniffed loudly.
   “This is an ancient family secret I’m entrusting you with. Whatever you see down there, or think you see, it’s private. And don’t show me up in front of my ancestors, or I’ll never live it down.”
   He led the way down the steps, holding the lantern out before him. Its pale amber light didn’t travel far into the dark. Suzie and I followed him, sticking as close as possible. The steps continued down for rather longer than was comfortable, and the roar of voices from the bar was soon left behind. The air became increasingly close and clammy, and the surrounding darkness had a watchful feel.
   “There’s no electricity down here,” said Alex, after a while. His voice sounded small and flat, without the faintest trace of an echo, even though I could all but feel a vast space opening up around us, “Something down here interferes with all the regular means of power supply.”
   “Don’t you mean someone?” said Suzie.
   “I try really hard not to think about things like that,” said Alex.
   The stone steps finally gave out onto a packed-dirt floor. The bare earth was hard and dry and utterly unyielding under my feet. A blue-white glow began to manifest around us, unconnected to the storm lantern or any other obvious source. It rapidly became clear we were standing at the beginnings of a great stone cavern, a vast open space with roughly worked bare stone walls and an uncomfortably low ceiling. I felt like crouching, even though there was plenty of headroom. And there before us, stretching out into the gloomy distance, hundreds of graves set in neat rows, low mounds of earth in the floor, with simple, unadorned headstones. There were no crosses anywhere.
   “My ancestors,” said Alex, in a soft, reflective, quietly bitter voice. “We all end up here, under the bar we give our lives to. Whether we want to or not. Merlin’s indentured servants, bound to Strangefellows by his will, down all the many centuries. And yes, I know everyone else who dies in the Nightside is supposed to have their funerals handled by the Necropolis, by order of the Authorities, but Merlin’s never given a damn for any authority other than his own. Besides, I think we all feel safer here, under his protection, than any earthly authority’s. One day I’ll be laid to rest here. No flowers by request, and if anyone tries to sing a hymn, you have my permission to defenestrate the bastard.”
   “How many graves are there?” I said.
   “Not as many as you’d think,” said Alex. He put his lantern down on the bottom step and glowered around him. “We all tend to be long-lived. If we don’t get killed horribly somewhere along the way. Only useful thing we inherited from our appalling ancestor.”
   He started out across the cavern floor. Despite the limited lighting, he was still wearing his sunglasses. Style had never been a sometime thing with Alex Morrisey. Suzie and I followed, trying to look in all directions at once. We passed by great barrels of beer and casks of wine, and bottles of rare and vicious vintage, laid out respectfully in a wine rack that looked even older than its contents. There were no cobwebs, and not even a speck of dust anywhere. And somehow I knew it wasn’t because Alex was handy with a feather duster.
   “It occurs to me,” I said carefully, “that there’s no sign anywhere of the people Walker insisted on sending down here. Not any bodies. Not even any bits of bodies.”
   “I know,” said Alex. “Worrying, isn’t it?”
   We stopped again, to consider a grave set some distance away from the others. Just another low mound of earth, but with no headstone or marker. Instead, there was a massive silver crucifix, pressing down the length of the earth mound. The silver was pitted and corroded.
   “Presumably put there in the hope it would hold him in his grave and keep him from straying,” said Alex. “They should have known better. You couldn’t keep Merlin Satanspawn down if you put St. Paul’s Cathedral on top of his grave.”
   “You have to wonder exactly what’s in there,” I said. “After all these centuries.”
   “You wonder,” said Suzie. “I like to sleep soundly at night.”
   “Just bones?” I said. “No different from anyone else’s?”
   “No,” said Alex. “I think, if you dragged away the crucifix and dug him up… he’d look exactly like he did the day he was buried. Untouched by time or the grave. And he’d open his eyes and smile at you, and tell you to cover him up again. He was the Devil’s son after all, the Antichrist in person, even if he did refuse the honour to make his own path. You really think the world is finished with him yet? Or vice versa? No… the bastard’s still hoping some poor damned fool will find his missing heart and return it to him. Then he’ll rise out of that grave and go forth to do awful things in the Nightside… and no-one will be able to stop him.”
   “God, you’re fun to be around, Alex,” I said.
   We moved on, giving the grave plenty of room. The blue-white light moved with us, cold and intense, and our shadows seemed far too big to be ours. The darkness and the silence pressed in around us. Finally, we came to a bare and undistinguished-looking door, set flush into the stone wall. A gleaming copper latch, inscribed with blocky Druidic symbols, held it shut. I reached out a hand to the latch, then snatched it quickly back again. Some inner voice was shouting loudly that it would be a very bad idea for anyone but Alex to touch it. He smiled at me tiredly.
   “This door will open out onto anywhere you want, within a one-mile radius of the bar,” he said. “Announce your destination out loud, and I’ll send you on your way. But be really sure of where you want to go, because once you’re through the door, that’s it. It’s a one-way door.”
   “Who put it here?” said Suzie.
   “Who do you think?” said Alex.
   “You mean this door’s been here for fifteen hundred years?” I said.
   Alex shrugged. “Maybe longer. This is the oldest bar in the world, after all. Now get the hell out of here. I’ve got customers waiting upstairs with my money burning a hole in their pockets.”
   “Thank you, Alex,” I said. “You didn’t have to do this.”
   “What the hell,” said Alex. “You’re family. In every way that matters.”
   We smiled briefly at each other, then looked away. We’ve never been very good at saying the things that matter.
   “Where do we want to go to?” said Suzie, probably not even noticing the undercurrents. She’d never been very good at emotions, even hers. “You can bet Walker’s people will be guarding all the approaches to the Necropolis.”
   “Not if we go directly there,” I said.
   “Not possible,” Alex said immediately. “I told you, nothing over a mile radius.”
   I grinned. “I was thinking of paying the Doormouse a visit.”
   Suzie winced visibly. “Do we have to? I mean, he’s so damned… cute. I don’t do cute.”
   “Brace yourself,” I said kindly. “It’ll be over before you know it.”
   I announced our destination in a loud, clear voice, and Alex hit the latch and pulled the door open, revealing a typical Nightside street. People and other things bustled briskly back and forth, and the gaudy Technicolor neon pushed back the gloom of the cellar. I strode forward into the welcoming night, with Suzie right behind me, and Alex slammed the door shut.
 
   To the crowds in the street, we must have seemed to appear suddenly out of nowhere, but that was nothing new in the Nightside, so no-one noticed, or if they did, no-one gave a damn. They were all intent on pursuing their own pleasures and damnations. The twilight daughters catcalled to prospective customers from the street corners, sticking out their breasts and batting kohl-stained eyes. Club barkers cried their wares to the more unsuspecting tourists, and the traffic on the road roared past without ever, ever stopping.
   I hurried down the rain-slick pavement, noting without surprise that some people were already muttering my name and Suzie’s into mobile phones. Must be a really good price on my head. And there was the Doormouse’s shop, right ahead. It was set between a new establishment called the Bazaar of the Bizarre and a music emporium that specialised in rare vinyl LPs from alternate dimensions. I paused despite myself to check out the latest specials in the window. There was a Rolling Stones album with Marianne Faithfull as the lead singer, a Pink Floyd debut LP where they were fronted by Arthur Brown, and a live double album of Janis Joplin, from her gigs as an overweight, middle-aged lounge singer in Las Vegas. I wasn’t tempted. Not at those prices.
   The frosted-glass doors hissed open as I entered the Doormouse’s excellent establishment. Then I had to go back out again and drag Suzie Shooter in. Inside, it was all very high-tech, with rows of computers and towering stacks of futuristic technology, most of which I couldn’t even identify, let alone hope to understand. The Doormouse had very good contacts and an uncanny eye for a bargain. But what he did best… was doors. He came bustling forward to meet us, a cheerful six-foot-tall roughly humanoid mouse, with dark chocolate fur under a pristine white lab coat, complete with pocket protector. He had a long muzzle with twitching whiskers, but his kind eyes were entirely human. He lurched to a halt before us, clapped his paws together, and chattered pleasantly in a high-pitched but perfectly clear voice.
   “Welcome, welcome, sir and lady, to my humble establishment! Am I correct in thinking I am in the presence of two of the Nightside’s most noted celebrities? John Taylor and Shotgun Suzie, no less! My, my, what a day! I know, I know, you weren’t expecting all this technology, were you? No-one ever does. You hear the name Doormouse, and immediately your thoughts go all rustic, but I, sir and lady, am a Town Mouse! And proud of it! Now, what can I do for you? I have doors for everyone, to everywhere, and all points between. And all at very reasonable prices! So, just state your travelling needs, and I shall rush to satisfy them! Why is she growling at me?”
   “Don’t mind her,” I said. “She’s being herself. Are you the only mouse in the Nightside? That is…”
   “I quite grasp your meaning, sir. There were others, once, but they all moved away to a small town in the countryside. Wimps. I am the only one of my kind currently residing here.”
   “Good,” said Suzie. “I was beginning to think I’d have to start putting bigger traps down.”
   “I need a door,” I said, loudly. “One that will take us directly to the Necropolis. Is that going to be a problem?”
   “Oh no, sir, not at all,” said the Doormouse, edging just a little further away from Suzie. “I always keep a number of the more common destination doors in stock, ready for sale. Both inside and outside the Nightside. This way if you please, sir and… lady…”
   He scurried away deeper into his shop, with Suzie and me in close pursuit, to a showroom full of doors standing upright on end, apparently entirely unsupported. Neat handwritten labels announced the destination they opened onto. Shadows Fall, Hy Breasil, Hyperborea, Carcosa. Together with a whole series of doors that would take you practically anywhere inside the Nightside. But it was two other doors that caught my attention, standing a little off to one side. They were labelled simply Heaven and Hell. They looked no different than any of the others—simple waxed and polished wood, each with a gleaming brass handle.
   “Ah yes,” said the Doormouse, easing chummily in beside me. “Everyone notices those.”
   “Can they really take you where it says they go?” I said.
   “That is a matter of some debate,” the Doormouse admitted, crinkling his muzzle. “The theory’s sound, and the mathematics quite clear. Certainly no-one who’s gone through has ever come back to complain…”
   “Let us talk of other things,” I said.
   “Yes, let’s,” said the Doormouse.
   He led us past other doors, some labelled in languages and ideographs even I couldn’t identify. And I’ve been around. We finally came to a door labelled Necropolis. The Doormouse patted it affectionately with one padded paw.
   “I always keep this one charged up and at the ready for people who need to visit the Necropolis for a sad occasion. Much more dignified than fighting the traffic in a black Rolls Royce. This door will deliver you and the… lady, to right outside the main entrance.”
   “Not inside?” I said sharply.
   “She’s started growling again,” said the Doormouse. “No, no, sir. Never inside! My doors lead only to exterior locations. If word got out that I was willing to provide access to the interiors of buildings, thus circumventing all usual security measures, you can be sure the Authorities would send Walker to shut me down. With prejudice. Now, sir, let us talk of the price.”
   We haggled for a while, and he drove a really hard bargain for a mouse. We finally settled for an only moderately painful extortionate sum, which I paid with gold from the traveller’s pouch Old Father Time had given me, when I travelled back in Time. The pouch was seemingly bottomless, and I’m pretty sure Time meant for me to give it back to him when I returned, but I fully intended to hang on to it until it was wrestled from my grasp. The Doormouse opened the door with a flourish, and Suzie and I stepped through into another part of the Nightside.
 
   The Necropolis looked just as I remembered it; big, dark, and supernaturally ugly. I’d been here not long ago, with Dead Boy, to clean up an incursion by Primal demons. Which meant that technically speaking the Necropolis staff still owed me a favour. How much weight that had, when set against Walker’s publicly stated disapproval, remained to be seen.
   The Necropolis itself was a huge towering edifice of old brick and stone, with no windows anywhere and a long, gabled roof. The various owners had been adding exteriors to it for years, in a clashing variety of styles, and yet the building maintained a traditional aspect of gloom and depression. The one and only front door was a massive slab of solid steel, rimmed with silver, covered with deeply etched runes and sigils and a whole bunch of nasty words in dead languages. Two huge chimneys at the back pumped out thick black smoke from the on-site crematorium.