Simon Green - The Bride Wore Black Leather

I smiled, unpleasantly. I’d been waiting for something over-confident or arrogant enough to try it on. I needed to make an example of some poor damned fool, so everyone else could see I was still dangerous, and spread the word that I should be left strictly alone. So when the dark shape rose before me, spreading out its over-long arms to fill the tunnel, I already had a salamander ball in my hand, palmed from an inside pocket when no-one was looking. I triggered the pasty white ball and threw it into the dark, featureless face; and the salamander ball exploded in a fierce vicious light that filled the underpass from end to end. Everyone cried out in pain and shock as the incandescent glare overloaded their eyes temporarily. I, of course, had my eyes squeezed tightly shut, with an arm raised over them, just in case. When the light faded enough for me to see again, the dark shape was gone, blown apart into tiny dark fragments that spiralled on the air like midnight confetti. I walked straight through them, and they swung madly on the air to get out of my way. It’s nice to be respected.

I have known people to get really snotty about salamander balls, saying they’re expensive, you don’t get much bang for your buck, and they’re a bit on the small side. But as I always point out, you only get two to a salamander.

I kept walking, not looking back or even glancing about me, and everyone else pressed themselves against the sides of the tunnels. If there were any enemies or bounty hunters down in the underpass with me, none of them bothered me. And when I finally walked up the steps and out into the open night air again, I was only half a dozen blocks down from Blaiston Street.

I had to stop for a while and lean against a handy shop-window while I got my breath back. (The shop was called Hope, and it was shut. That’s all you need to know about the Nightside, right there.) I looked at my reflection and hardly recognised the gaunt and drawn face that stared back. Blood was streaming thickly from my nose, as though it had been hit, and I could taste the bad coppery stuff in my mouth. I spat hard to clear my mouth, and the crimson stuff ran slowly down the shop-window. I was tired, bone-deep tired, and when I fumbled a handkerchief out of my pocket, I could hardly feel it. My fingertips were dangerously numb. Somehow, I managed to pinch the bridge of my nose till the bleeding stopped, and spat more blood across the window-glass till I ran out. I mopped roughly at my face and stuffed the handkerchief back into my pocket. A slow, hot pain pulsed behind my eyes. I had to sort this case out soon, while I still could. Overusing my gift was causing me serious physical and maybe even neurological damage. I could feel it. And God alone knew what it was doing to my soul. I’d never had to use my gift so often before.

I finally pushed myself away from the blood-streaked window, straightened my back, and raised my head through an act of sheer will-power, and headed determinedly for Blaiston Street. I was deathly tired, every muscle ached, and I still couldn’t feel my fingertips. And I would have killed for a deep-crust pizza and a whole bunch of drinks to wash it down with. Not really in my best condition to face a threat that could mean the end of the Nightside, forever.

Some days, you can’t get a break.

Didn’t take me long to get to Blaiston Street. A nowhere street in a nowhere place, the really bad end of town. It made the area outside Green Henge wall seem like a petting zoo. I could feel the property values plummeting the closer I got, and the people looked less furtive and more feral. Though none of them did more than watch me carefully from a safe distance. Even down here, they’d heard of me.

Blaiston Street was a ragged collection of shabby buildings in a shabby setting. Where every single street-light had been smashed because the inhabitants felt more at home in the dark. Filth and garbage piled up everywhere, left to sit in festering heaps. Rats crouched here and there, not even bothering to look away as I strode past them. Every wall was covered in obscene graffiti, rough and brutal stuff, like dogs pissing to mark their territory. Kicked-in doors, boarded-up windows, dark doorways and darker alley mouths. Only two long rows of ancient, battered tenements, neglected and despised, by those within and those without.

Blaiston Street is where you go when nobody cares, not even you.

Not many people about. Normally, you’d expect a street like this to be teeming with the lost and the desperate, like maggots in an open wound. But the street stretched away before me, completely deserted, still and silent. As though they’d known I was coming and wanted to be well out of the way before the trouble started. Reasonable enough. They’d emerge afterwards, to rob the bodies or eat them. There were definitely unseen eyes following me as I strolled unhurriedly down the middle of the empty road as though I didn’t have a care in the world. I could feel the watchers even if I never saw them.

Didn’t take me long to find the right house. Years had gone by, but I’d never forget that house-front. It wasn’t the original house, of course; I’d destroyed that nasty thing long ago, for disguising itself as a house so it could prey on people. It called to the homeless and the hopeless, with a voice they couldn’t resist, lured them inside, then ate them all up. Suzie and I rescued Cathy from it. No; this . . . was a cheap copy. The previous Walker had discovered traces of damaged alien tissue left behind and had the stuff studied and cultivated, so he could make his own living house trap. I don’t know why he wanted it; to feed people he disapproved of, probably.

The first copy was destroyed during the Lilith War; I don’t know how many generations beyond the original this one was. It sat there, squatting in place, looking like a house and stinking the place up. No-one was ever so homeless or so desperate they’d want to venture inside this house. I sat down on the cold stone steps before the front door, put my back to the house, and waited.

It felt like sitting with my back to a giant freezer with the door left open. A cold bad enough to chill the soul as well as the body. There was a constant sense of being watched—by something that would hurt me if it could. I didn’t care. Didn’t even look back at it. I had too many bad memories of the original house. And of a woman named Joanna, who turned out not to be a woman, any more than the house was a house. Poor Joanna. I could have loved her if she’d been real.

Some people you shouldn’t remember. If only because the Nightside can find so many ways to hurt and haunt you . . . For a moment, there, I had to wonder if maybe the Sun King might not be right about the Nightside after all . . . And then there was the roar of a mighty motor, and Cathy turned up, taking the far corner on two wheels, racing down Blaiston Street in an old MINI Cooper, complete with bright Union Jack colours. The “Self-preservation Society” song blasted out of the open windows. I should never have brought her that DVD. Cathy brought the MINI to a squealing halt right in front of me, and the passenger door jumped open of its own accord. I got up off the steps and hurried over, clambered into the passenger seat, and Cathy had the car off and away before the door could even shut itself again. I looked for a seat belt, and, of course, there wasn’t one. You can take authenticity too far. I clung to the dash-board with both hands and braced both feet against the floor, to hold myself firmly in place in my seat. Cathy drove us out of the area at great speed and headed towards the main flow of traffic like a shark scenting blood in the water. She darted a glance at me and grinned fiercely.

“Just like old times!” she said loudly. “You were right; we owed it to ourselves to have one last adventure together, before the old firm closes down!”