Tales From the Nightside

  There were doors on either side of the hallway, leading to very private rooms, for very private passions. I considered them thoughtfully. It might make me feel better, to kick the doors in and see what was going on behind them. It might make me feel . . . something. But then a Voice came to me, through some hidden speaker, saying This way. Walk straight ahead. Come into my parlour, Dead Boy, and we’ll talk. I’ve been waiting for you.

  A calm, confident, female Voice. Didn’t sound like my Mother Macabre. I walked on, into the belly of the beast, into the trap that had been prepared for me. And the cold in my dead heart was the cold of dark and righteous anger.

  • • •

  Didn’t take me long to come to the door at the end of the hall. It was standing just a little open, invitingly. I slammed right through it, almost taking the door off its hinges, and there she was, in her parlour. Mother Macabre’s sweet little home away from home was more than comfortable, full of every luxury and indulgence you could think of and some you never even dreamed of. Tables full of drinks, bowls full of pills and powders, toys and trinkets to suit the most jaded sexual palates—decadence on display. All for the Bright Young Things . . . as they sat in chairs, or sprawled on couches, or lay giggling happily on the deep pile carpet. Young ladies and gentlemen from rich and powerful and well-connected families, still young enough to believe money could buy you satisfaction, or at the very least enough pleasure to convince you that you were happy. Spending Daddy’s money and influence on the very latest thing, the newest kick, on something dark and dangerous enough to make them feel they were important, after all. They stared at me with blank eyes and meaningless smiles, and limited curiosity. And the dozen or so naked men and women, standing around the parlour to serve the young people’s every need or whim, were all quite obviously dead. Well preserved, even pleasant to the eye; but you only had to look into their faces to know there was no-one home. They weren’t dead like me; they were only animated bodies, moved by some other’s will.

  I wasn’t interested in them. I fixed my gaze on the parlour’s mistress, proud and disdainful on her raised throne, like a spider at the heart of her web. Mother Macabre, sitting at her ease on a throne made of human skulls. Bone so old it had faded past yellow ivory into dirty brown, stained here and there with old, dried blood. There was a cushion on the seat, of course. Tradition and style and making the right kind of impression are all very well, but comfort is what matters.

  Mother Macabre looked as she always had: a withered old black crone, in tattered ethnic clothes. Deep-sunk eyes and a wide smile to show off the missing teeth. Very authentic. But I didn’t believe that any more. I concentrated, looking at her with the eyes of the dead because the dead can see many things that are hidden from the living. And just like that, the illusion snapped off. And underneath the glamour she was just an ordinary middle-aged black business woman, neat and tidy in a smart business suit, her well-manicured hands folded calmly in her lap.

  “Took you long enough to work it out,” she said. “Mistress Macabre is just a trade name. Handed down through the generations, along with the trade and the look because that’s what people want when they do business with a voodoo witch. There were many Mother Macabres before me, and no doubt there will be many more after. It’s a very profitable trade. Because there will always be a need for women like us. But . . . this is the real me. You should feel flattered, Dead Boy. Not many are privileged to see the real me.”

  “Flattered,” I said. “Yes. That’s how I feel, all right. Tell me. Who did I really make a deal with?”

  “And you’ve worked that out, too! Well done, Dead Boy. Yes; I’m afraid your memories of what happened after you died are as much a fake as anything else. You thought you made a deal with one of the voodoo loa, Mistress Erzulie; but everything you saw and experienced came from me. A show I put on, to distract you while I did the many vile and nasty things necessary to raise you from the dead. It was all an illusion, another mask. Just me. It’s always been me.”

  “Why?” I said.

  And there must have been something in my voice because everyone in the parlour stopped smiling and looked at me. Even Mother Macabre on her throne of skulls took a moment before she answered me. I fixed her with my unblinking eyes, and she actually squirmed uncomfortably on her throne.

  “Why?” said Mother Macabre. “Because I needed someone to experiment on! Didn’t matter who. Could have been you, could have been anyone. I was starting out in the Mother Macabre trade. I inherited it from my mother—after I killed her. She was so old-fashioned, couldn’t see the potential in the business I saw . . . Anyway, I had all these marvellous ideas for new pills and potions, but I needed someone to test them on before I introduced them to a wider audience. I needed someone young and strong and vital, new to the Nightside, without friends or protectors. I picked you out entirely at random and paid to have you killed. And then I brought you back again, to be my test subject. You took everything I gave you, every new drug and concoction I came up with, and never once questioned any of it. And because it was my lore that brought you back, your body had no secrets from me. I’ve studied you, from a safe distance, for all these years . . . And oh the things I’ve learned from you! You have no idea how much money you’ve made me, down the years!”

  “All the things I’ve been, and done,” I said. “And all along I was nothing but your lab rat.”

  “Actually, no,” said Mother Macabre. “You’re a lot more than I ever intended you to be. I was just interested to see what would happen when I trapped a living soul inside a dead body, but you have made yourself into the legendary, infamous Dead Boy! You should be proud of what you’ve achieved!”

  “Proud,” I said. “Yes. That’s what I’m feeling, right now.”

  Mother Macabre looked at me uncertainly, unable to read my dead face or my dead voice. “You really shouldn’t take it personally, Dead Boy. It was only ever . . . business.”

  “It was my life!” I said loudly.

  She smiled. “It wasn’t as though you were doing anything important with it.”

  “All the things I could have done,” I said. “All the people I might have been; and you took them away from me.”

  “None of them would have been as important, or as interesting, as Dead Boy.” Mother Macabre sank back on her throne as though she were getting tired, or bored, with the conversation. “What does your life, or your death, matter, where there were fortunes to be made? I had a business to run! It’s all about the pleasures of the flesh, you see. Control them, and you have control over the living and the dead.” She looked fondly at the young people scattered around her parlour. “My lovely ladies and gentlemen. I give them what they think they want and take everything they have. And when they die . . . I raise them again, to serve me. The dead always make the best servants. No back-talk, no days off. And the dead make the very best lovers because they can go forever . . .”

  She gestured to a naked man and a naked woman, and they came forward to caress her face and neck with their cool, dead hands. She smiled happily.

  “They feel nothing. The only pleasure is mine. But then, I never was big on sharing. I knew you were coming after me, Dead Boy. Knew it the moment you killed poor old Krauss. I could have had you destroyed anywhere along the way; but I wanted to have you here, so I could watch it happen right in front of me. I have the right to destroy you because I made you. You belong to me. You always have. And after you’ve gone, I’ll make another Dead Boy.”

  She snapped her fingers, and every dead man and woman in the parlour turned their head to look at me. And then they started forward, cold and implacable as death itself. All of them just as strong as me, and as capable of taking punishment. They reached for me with their dead hands, and the young ladies and gentlemen laughed and pointed, enjoying the show. I looked around me. The way to the only door was blocked, and I was clearly outnumbered. So, when in doubt, cheat.

  I reached into my pocket and took out the jade fire a
mulet I’d taken from its previous owner. I said the right Words and set fire to all the dead men and women. They burst into bright green flames, burning with a fierce heat that consumed their flesh in moments. They kept coming as long as they could, reaching out blindly through the flames, bumping into the furnishings and fittings and setting them alight, too. They even set fire to the clothes of the Bright Young Things. Most of them just sat where they were, watching as the flames ate them up, and laughing. Giggling happily as they died, as stupidly as they’d lived.

  Mother Macabre ran for the door the moment her servants started burning, but I was there before her. I took her in my dead arms and held her to me, almost tenderly. She beat at me with her fists, but I couldn’t feel them, and she wasn’t strong enough to do me any damage. I held her with all my dead strength, and she couldn’t get away. The whole parlour was on fire now, burning the living and the dead alike, and the air was full of thick black smoke.

  “You have to let me go!” shrieked Mother Macabre. “If we stay here, we’ll both die! This fire’s enough to destroy even you!”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing,” I said. “I’m tired. I want to rest. It will be worth it, to die here, as long as I can be sure I’m taking you with me. Thanks to you, I can’t feel any of the things the living feel; but dead as I am, I can still feel some things, even without your special pills. I’m watching you die, Mother Macabre, and that feels . . . so fine.”

  “I can make you new pills, new potions!” Mother Macabre said desperately. “I can make you feel all the things you felt before!”

  “Perhaps. But what have I got that’s worth living for?”

  And then we both looked round, as a series of explosions shook the front of the building. There was the sound of energy weapons firing, and repeated sounds of something large and heavy and very determined crashing through the walls between us, heading right for us. And I began to smile. I looked at the door, still holding firmly on to the fiercely struggling Mother Macabre; and my futuristic car came smashing through the door and into the parlour, bringing half the wall with her. She slammed to a halt before me, her gleaming steel-and-silver body entirely untouched by all the destruction she’d wrought. And as I watched, smiling . . . as Mother Macabre watched with wide-stretched eyes and mouth . . . my car rose and transmogrified, taking on a whole new shape, until my Sil stood before me. A tall, buxom woman, in a classic little black dress, cut just high enough at the hip to show off the bar-code and copyright notice stamped on her magnificent left buttock. Her frizzy steel hair was full of sparking static, and her eyes were silver, but she was still every inch a woman. My woman.

  “Nothing to live for, sweetie?” said Sil. “What about me?”

  “You were listening in,” I said, just a bit reproachfully.

  “You were taking too long,” said Sil. “I became . . . concerned. You always go over the top when you go too far into the dark. You forget there are other feelings, other pleasures, than revenge.”

  “Of course,” I said. “You’re quite right. You always were my better half. I never needed pills to feel the way I feel about you.”

  “What the hell is that?” said Mother Macabre, staring at Sil with horrified fascination.

  “I am a sex droid from the twenty-third century,” Sil said proudly. “With full trans-morph capabilities!” She shot me a smouldering look. “I have always loved my job. It took more than one man to change my name to Silicon Lily. But I never met anyone like you, my sweet Dead Boy. And I won’t let you die with her. She isn’t worth it.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “You’re always right. You’re worth living for, inasmuch as I can. But . . . I can’t go on, I can’t just walk out of here and let her get away with what she did to me.”

  “You don’t have to,” said Sil.

  She raised one hand and morphed it into a glowing energy weapon. She shot Mother Macabre in the face and blew her head apart. I let go of the headless body, and it crumpled to the floor, still twitching. I swept blood and brains from my face and shoulder with one hand, then nodded briefly to Sil. She’s always been able to do the things I can’t do. She swept forward, discarding her human shape, melting into a wave of metallic silver that swept right over me. She wrapped herself around me like a suit of armour, covering me from head to foot. Embracing me, and protecting me, all at once. And, together, we walked out of the burning building.

  • • •

  Outside, Walker was waiting for us, watching the building burn. He barely twitched an eyebrow as Sil peeled herself off me and resumed her human shape. She stood beside me as Silicon Lily, while I nodded politely to Walker. He tipped his bowler hat to both of us.

  “Mother Macabre was getting a little too big for her boots,” Walker said easily. “But I couldn’t go after her, because of her . . . connections. So I pointed you at her. Well done, Dead Boy. Excellent work.”

  “How long have you known?” I said. “How long have you known the truth about me, and Krauss, and Mother Macabre?”

  “I know everything,” said Walker. “Remember?”

  He smiled again, very politely, and walked off. Sil and I turned away, to watch the Voodoo Lounge burn.

  “What am I going to do now, for my special pills and potions?” I said.

  “There’s always someone,” said Sil. “This is the Nightside.”

  “True,” I said. “If you’re going to be damned, this is a pretty good place for it.” I looked at her for a long moment. “Even with my pills, it takes more than an everyday woman to light the fires in my dead flesh.”

  “Good thing I’m not an everyday woman, then,” said Silicon Lily. “I am a pleasure droid; and I do love my work! And it’s good to know I can even raise the dead . . .”

  “How can I love you?” I said. “When I don’t have a heart any more?”

  “I don’t have a heart either,” said Sil. “Doesn’t matter. Love comes from the soul.”

  “Do we have souls?” I said.

  She put her arms around me. “What do you think?”

  It’s not easy, having a sex life when you’re dead. But it is possible.

  “How do you feel?” said Sil.

  “I feel . . . good,” I said.

  THE BIG GAME

  ONE

  The Nightside.

  The secret, sour, magical heart of London, hidden away from the sane and sensible everyday world. Where it’s always night, always three o’clock in the morning; and while it sometimes feels like the sun must rise eventually, after so many terrible things have happened in the shadows . . . still, the dawn never comes. The Nightside, where hot neon burns on every side, bright and colourful as hell’s candy, and the come-ons never end. Where saints and sinners go fist-fighting down alleyways; where souls aren’t so much sold as bartered, or thrown away with joyous abandon; where gods and monsters step out together, and love can bloom in the oddest of places. In the Nightside, everything is for sale, everything is up for grabs, and you can find everything you ever dreamed of. If it doesn’t find you first.

  Why would good men come to such a place?

  • • •

  I’m John Taylor, private investigator. I have a gift for finding things. I’ve never thought of myself as a good man. I always tell my clients in advance, in the end, all I can ever really find for them is the truth. Living with it is up to them. I can solve mysteries, point out murderers, and now and again I get to save the world. But I don’t do divorce work, and I don’t fix relationships. I know my limitations.

  I was drinking wormwood brandy in Strangefellows, the oldest bar in the world. Coming down, after a particularly vexing case. My white trench coat stood to attention beside my table, in a private booth at the back of the bar. If I’m going to be a private investigator, I like to look the part. And the image does help distract people from who and what I really am. I am, after all, one of the Nightside’s better-known legends.

  My father drank himself to death after finding out his wi
fe wasn’t human. My mother turned out to be a Biblical Myth; from that part of the Old Testament where God gets really angry. I have fought angels and demons, wrestled with Heaven and Hell; and while there is blood on my hands, it’s mostly blood I can be proud of. I help people because there was no-one there to help me, when I needed it. I don’t give up, and I don’t give in, and I don’t do comforting lies.

  Case in point; the case I’d just finished. My client hired me to find his missing wife, gone for over a year. He’d tried all the usual agencies, and all the official channels, before finally finding his way to the Nightside. Because when you’ve tried everything else, including prayer, and nothing’s worked, there’s always me. It didn’t take me long to find the missing wife. She’d come to the Nightside looking for the one thing she needed that she couldn’t get anywhere else. A one hundred per cent sex change. A mystical, not surgical, transformation into a real man.

  He left the Nightside and went back into London Proper; where he became my client’s best friend. Because he still loved him, and wanted to be with him, but as a man not a woman. A friend, not a wife. They got on great, without sex there to distract them. However, the client wasn’t too pleased to learn the truth, about his wife and his best friend.

  The husband killed the closest friend he’d ever had; and then sat down beside the body and put a bullet in his own head.

  The truth? Overrated, if you ask me.

  So there I was, hanging out in Strangefellows, drinking wormwood brandy straight from the bottle and telling myself none of it was my fault. And congratulating myself on getting paid in advance. Wormwood brandy isn’t the smoothest of drinks; but there’s no denying it gets the job done. I do most of my solitary drinking in Strangefellows. Not because it’s peaceful, because it isn’t, but because people there leave me alone. No matter how crowded or boisterous things get, no-one bothers me. Sometimes it’s easier to be alone, in the middle of a crowd. And if you’re into people watching, the weirdest and wildest people show up at the oldest bar in the world. That’s what it’s for.