Simon Green - The Bride Wore Black Leather

I comforted myself with the memory of the Sun King’s face as I threw black pepper in his eyes; and again, when Julien booted him in the ’nads. Thinking he could impress me with all that living-god crap. I’ve fought my way up and down the Street of the Gods more than once. And I looked forward to seeing his face again, when I finally tracked him down and took my own sweet time killing him. It had been a long long time since I’d felt this angry, and I hugged that cold comfort to my heart. I would see the Sun King die in agony and horror for what he’d made me do to Julien. Not that Julien would have approved or even wanted such a revenge taken, on his behalf; but then, he always was a better man than me.

Revenge is simply justice with teeth.

I slowly straightened up and looked around me. I still couldn’t breathe without hurting, but my vision had cleared, and my thoughts were finally racing faster than my heart. I couldn’t stay here. It was enough out of the way to give me time to consider what to do next, but with so many on my trail, someone would find me soon, if only by accident. So I raised my gift and used it to find a way into the cemetery dimension attached to the Necropolis. We bury our dead in a very separate pocket dimension, only loosely attached to the Nightside. Because when we put our dead to rest, we prefer them to stay that way and not come back and bother us. It seemed to me that the cemetery’s many protections and defensive magics might well be enough to hide my presence. And, of course, most people have enough sense to stay out of the cemetery. It’s not a good place; it’s meant for the dead, not visitors.

I focused my gift, found one of the drifting places where the cemetery dimension occasionally overlaps with the Nightside, and concentrated hard. A door that hadn’t been there before, and never would be again, appeared in the alley wall opposite me. I held the door in place with my gift and pushed it open with an effort of will. Beyond the door was only darkness. I walked gratefully forward into it, and the door closed behind me.

The cold got to me first, hitting me hard and cutting me like a knife. It rattled in my lungs like razor blades, and sucked all the warmth right out of me. I hugged myself tightly and stamped my feet hard. The graveyard stretched endlessly away before me, a whole world of the dead. The Nightside has been burying its reluctantly departed in this very private place for centuries. Row upon row, rank upon rank, graves and their headstones, for as far as the eye could see in any direction.

It was a different kind of night from the Nightside, darker, with an almost palpable gloom. A thick pearlescent ground fog curled slowly around my ankles, almost deliberately. Like some great grey cat making itself known, not necessarily affectionately. Up in the black black sky, there was no moon, only a few long smears of multi-coloured stars, gaudy as a cheap ring on a tart’s finger.

Headstones everywhere, of stone and marble, steel and porcelain, according to the fashion of the day, with lengthy inscriptions or none at all. Catafalques and mausoleums, simple or ornate, decadent or utilitarian. Some with cold neon, some without. Statues of weeping angels and shifty-looking cherubs, while crouching gargoyles leered down from the tops of monuments, guarding family repositories. And everywhere you looked, all kinds of religious symbols. Ancient and modern, sacred and profane; and some from religions no-one even remembers any more.

I moved slowly forward, careful to keep to the officially designated gravel paths, laid out for those stubborn few who insisted on visiting people who wouldn’t have been buried here if they’d wanted visitors. One of the main reasons for being interred in this very isolated location is to make sure your grave won’t be disturbed or interfered with. So outside the gravel paths, you wander at your own peril. In our cemetery, the helpless dead are defended: by land mines, booby-traps, invisible floating curses, and other less obvious but even nastier forms of security and preservation.

The cemetery was full of shadows and a grim silence. Enforced peace and solitude hung heavily over the still scene. Even the crunching of my feet on gravel seemed strangely subdued and muffled. I stopped and sat down on a nearby headstone, so I could think. Then I thought to get up and take a look at the stone’s inscription. It read NOT DEAD ONLY SLEEPING. And since this was still the Nightside, I moved along and sat down on another stone with a less worrying inscription. Because you can’t be too careful.

No-one had followed me; no-one had found me. I was alone.

I got out my mobile phone and called Alex Morrisey at Strangefellows. While reflecting that it was a good thing I’d recently upgraded my service, to cover all the pocket dimensions and hidden worlds of the Nightside. Alex answered the phone immediately, as though he’d been waiting for my call. His voice came through clearly, and there didn’t seem to be any noise in the background. Which was odd, for Strangefellows.

“John!” said Alex. “Where are you?”

“Think I’ll keep that to myself, for the moment,” I said. “Does sound rather quiet, at your end. Would I be right in thinking my stag do is over?”

“Are you kidding?” said Alex. “Most of the people who were here are now out on the streets looking for you, and not in a good way. Turned out a lot of them were great admirers of Julien Advent, on the quiet. And the reward money the Authorities have put up for you is the biggest anyone’s ever heard of! They want your head, John, preferably in a box.”

“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised the news is out,” I said. “Nothing travels faster in the Nightside than bad news.”

“Did you really murder the Great Victorian Adventurer?” said Alex. “Tell me you didn’t, John; tell me this is all some terrible mistake.”

“It’s all some terrible mistake,” I said. “Really. I did kill him, but . . .”

“John! How could you?”

“He asked me to do it! He was dying anyway; and it was the only way to save a whole hospital full of innocents.”

“You killed Julien Advent!”

“It wasn’t like that!”

I did my best to explain about the Sun King, and what he meant to do, and the power he put into Julien . . . but I could tell it sounded unlikely, even for the kind of cases I usually get involved in. I could tell Alex was having trouble believing it. I wanted to say You had to be there . . . “The official story is that you murdered Julien Advent in cold blood,” said Alex. “Though no-one seems too sure why. I know you were always jealous of him, John, but . . .”

“You really think I’m capable of something like that?” I said.

“You’ve done worse,” said Alex. And I had no answer to that.

“It’s like the whole Nightside wants you dead,” said Alex. “The Authorities, or what’s left of them, are really mad at you. First, you let King of Skin die, right in front of you; and now you’ve murdered Julien Advent? They think you’ve gone rogue, and possibly feral . . .”

“How big a reward have they put on my head?” I asked, honestly curious.

“Big enough to tempt anyone,” said Alex. “If I didn’t have a bar to run . . .”

“I can’t believe I chose you as my best man,” I said.

“You don’t really think you’re still getting married tomorrow, do you?” said Alex, incredulously. “The only church service you’re likely to be attending in the near future involves a big hole in the ground and a priest trying to find something positive to say about you.”

“Alex,” I said. “What am I going to do?”

“You can’t come here,” Alex said immediately. “It’s the first place they’d look. And I’ve only just got the place cleared up after the last fight you started. Maybe . . . you should leave the Nightside. Go hide out in London Proper, until things calm down a bit. You could always claim sanctuary at Castle Inconnu, with the London Knights. They owe you, after that business with Excalibur. And they’re far enough outside the Nightside they might not be tainted by the Sun King’s influence. If that really is what’s behind all this . . .”