All four walls were covered in book-shelves, packed with oversized leather-bound volumes. No complete Dickens here, or modern literature of our times; it was all Histories of the Club, and its many Members, down all the years of its long existence. Everything they’d ever done, or seen, or been involved in. An invaluable treasury of facts and tactics and secret knowledge, wrestled from the hidden worlds. Including all the stories considered unsuitable for a general audience. All the best tricks of the heroing trade, and all the bitter secret truths. An accumulated body of hard-won knowledge, for new Members to learn from.
Along with all the usual secret histories and volumes of forbidden knowledge. I leaned forward to check out some of the titles and wasn’t impressed. Nothing I hadn’t seen before. The Nightside is lousy with back-street book-stores where you can buy over-priced volumes of forgotten lore, forbidden knowledge, and some of the more obscure cheat codes for the universe. Sucker bait, for the more gullible tourists.
So why had my gift brought me, so insistently, to the Club Reading Room? There was only the one door, the one I’d come in through; and that was barely large enough for two people to walk through, side by side. Even if all the Club’s Membership had been here, how could they have all left, so suddenly? Answer—a hidden door. I raised my Sight again and studied the Reading Room carefully, and quickly found a Door, a dimensional doorway, tucked away in a shadowed corner, standing sideways to reality. So well shielded even my Sight had trouble focusing on it. A Door that could connect one place with any other, or any number of others. How very useful.
I used my gift to take a firm hold on the Door and ease it fully into existence. A perfectly ordinary-looking wooden door, except that it stood alone and unsupported, connected to nothing. Of course the Adventurers Club would have such a Door, so Members from all over the world, or worlds, could appear inside the Club without having to pass through the Nightside. If they were on safari, they wouldn’t necessarily want their prey to know they were coming. I rattled the door-knob, in a hopeful sort of way, but the Door didn’t open. I didn’t really think it would, without the proper security-code words.
This was how the enemy got in, bypassing the Doorman. The front door was for show. This Door was the real entrance to the Adventurers Club, and perhaps its Trojan Horse, too.
I moved over to one of the book-shelves, looking for information on dimensional doors, and as I leaned in close to check a particular title, I heard a soft sound, a quiet whimpering. I pressed my ear up against the books, but the sound didn’t get any louder. I grabbed at the books, pulling them off the shelves and throwing them to the floor. I ran my hands over the bare wooden shelf and quickly found a hidden catch. I tugged at it, and the whole section of shelving swung slowly out, revealing a hiding place beyond. A small bare room, with one Club Member lying on the floor. Eyes closed, knees pulled up to his chest, curled up tight in the foetal position.
I eased slowly and carefully into the concealed room, checking for defences or booby-traps; but there was nothing. What use would the Adventurers Club have for a hidden room? A panic room? I bent over the man on the floor. I knew him. Sebastian Stargrave, the Fractured Protagonist. He had his arms wrapped tightly around himself, tears running jerkily down his cheeks.
I knelt beside him, and said his name, but he didn’t hear me. I tried my name; but that didn’t help either. Something had driven him deep inside himself. Sebastian Stargrave was skinny and fragile at the best of times, with an air of exhausted nobility. He had a pale face, stringy jet-black hair, and eyes like cinders coughed up out of Hell. An air of quiet melancholy hung around him, all the time, like an old and familiar tattered cape. He’d fought in some serious battles, up and down the time-lines, and won quite a few of them. But along the way, he’d lost everything else that mattered. He wore shimmering futuristic golden armour; skin-tight, rising in a tall, stiff collar behind his head. The armour murmured to him constantly, in shifting alien tongues.
A fierce fighter and a fearless warrior, according to many of the accounts of his many lives. A good man to have at your side, or at your back. As long as you caught him on one of his good days. He’d been broken too many times to mend properly. He tended to drift . . . Most Members went out of their way to be polite to him, because he’d been down on his luck for so long. There but for the grace of God . . .
And now here he was, curled up in a ball on the floor, whimpering to himself. What could have done this to him? I took hold of his armoured arm and hauled him back up onto his feet, trying hard to sound comforting and supportive. I didn’t like the feel of his armour. It seemed to suck all the warmth out of my hands. And no matter how close I got to the armour, I still couldn’t understand what it was saying. The muttered words seemed to hover on the edge of meaning. Or maybe the armour was just as crazy as he was.
I held Sebastian Stargrave up and walked him round the room. He didn’t seem to weigh much; like a starved child. His eyes were huge and shocked, barely taking in where he was or who was talking to him.
“Where are they, Sebastian?” I said. “Come on, you know me. John Taylor. You can talk to me. Where are all the other Adventurers?”
“They didn’t want me,” Sebastian said finally, his words distant but clear. “They came and took everyone else, but they didn’t want me. So they left me behind. I would have gone with them! I would!”
“Who, Sebastian? Who didn’t want you?”
“The angels!”
We looked at each other for a long moment.
“They were beautiful,” he said. “And they shone so brightly. They said they loved us, and they were so glorious . . . how could we say no to them? I wanted to go with them, to go with the others, through the Door to the marvellous place they showed us. They showed us Heaven; but they wouldn’t take me. They didn’t want anything to do with me. My armour keeps saying it protected me; but who wants to be protected from Paradise?”
“Angels,” I said. “Really?”
He couldn’t answer me. Couldn’t even tell me how he’d ended up in the hidden room. I patted him comfortingly on his armoured shoulder and let him lean on me, while I thought hard. It wasn’t unknown for angels to appear in the Nightside, from Heaven and Hell. I was here the last time they appeared, in force, to fight a war over possession of the Unholy Grail; the cup Judas drank from at the Last Supper. An object of such great power, both sides were ready to destroy the whole Nightside to gain control of it. Or at the very least, keep it out of the opposition’s hands. Luckily, I was able to defuse the Unholy Grail, and they all went home again, leaving us poor mortals to clean up the mess.
“All right,” I said finally to Sebastian. “I’m sending you to Strangefellows. You’ll be safe there, while I sort this mess out.”
He nodded quickly, almost pathetically grateful. I got him to unlock the Door, using the Club’s security words, and I ordered it to open onto Strangefellows. It swung back before us, and the raucous noise of a party still in full swing burst into the Reading Room. I yelled to Alex through the open Door.
“I’m sending you Sebastian Stargrave!” I said loudly. “Look after him! Keep him safe and protect him!”
“Who from?” said Alex.
“Everyone!” I said.
“Oh, it’s like that, is it?” said Alex. “Like I haven’t got enough to do . . . Do I look like a nanny?”
“There’s money in it!”
“Okay. Fair enough. Send him through.”
I bundled Sebastian through the Door, and Alex sent Dead Boy and Razor Eddie forward to collect him. I’d back them against pretty much anyone. Even angels would fear to enter Strangefellows without first sending in someone waving a white flag. I shut the Door firmly and looked thoughtfully about me.
If the Door had been the departure point for the missing Club Membership, it hadn’t been a simple abduction. The Adventurers couldn’t all have been taken at once, by force; they would have had to file through the Door, slowly and patiently, a few at
a time. They would have had to go willingly. From what Sebastian said, it sounded like they’d been enchanted . . . Hypnotised and overwhelmed. And angels wouldn’t have bothered with that. You did what they said, or you ended up as a pillar of salt. No. Whatever Sebastian had seen, it wasn’t angels.
I called on my gift, and forced my inner eye open again. Even though the excessive use was burning up my resources. I peered through my third eye, to See the recent Past again. Immediately, the Reading Room was packed full of Adventurers, milling cheerfully before the open Door. I tried to look through it; but all I could see was an endless dark. The ghostly images of the Adventurers all looked the same; wide-eyed, with vague, happy smiles. Enchanted, mesmerised, by the vague forms that moved among them. Definitely not angels; I would have had no trouble Seeing them. In fact, the Sight would probably have burned the eyes right out of my head. No; these figures were hidden from me behind some kind of glamour. They ushered the Adventurers through the Door, hurrying them along, and not to any kind of Paradise.
What the hell could be powerful enough to overcome so many hardened and experienced Adventurers? Men and women who’d faced a thousand psychic attacks in a thousand undeclared wars? And could therefore be expected to have powerful mental shields in place as a matter of course? What kind of monsters was I dealing with here?
I thought hard, on what I knew for sure. Something, or more properly a number of Somethings, had found their way into the Adventurers Club through its hidden Door. They then enchanted and overpowered the Membership and led them away. Except for poor Sebastian Stargrave, who was either too broken to be of any use or protected by his armour. But who wanted the Adventurers? And for what?
I only had one trick left. One last permutation of my gift. I gathered up my thoughts and sent them flying up out of my head, through the ceilings of the Club and on up through the roof, into the night sky. I shot up and up, high above the many roofs of Clubland, where the stars whirled around me in the night like so many flaring Catherine wheels, and brightly coloured comets shot back and forth, zigzagging this way and that, shouting and laughing and crying out to each other in simple high spirits. The full moon roared with a great Voice, saying things I couldn’t understand. Massive shapes flapped slowly by, big enough to block out whole sections of the night sky.
My mind moved slowly on the spiritual winds, looking in every direction at once. Down below, all kinds of traffic roared back and forth, and from this high, it was clear only some of them were vehicles. People swarmed along the streets, burning all kinds of guilty colours. But I wasn’t looking for people. I set my gift searching for the presence of the vague monsters that had stolen away the Adventurers. And, surprisingly, they hadn’t gone far.
A little way up the road, in fact, to another Club. I drifted slowly down, descending unseen towards this new Club. It wasn’t one I knew. I didn’t like the feel of it. It felt . . . like descending through bloody waters, towards hungry sharks. And then I slammed to a halt as something stopped me dead, hanging in the air above the new Club. This far and no further, said the Club. You don’t belong here. I didn’t try to push it. Something about the place made my head hurt and my skin crawl, sickening me to my stomach. Even though my body was far away, my mind was interpreting a spiritual threat in ways I could understand. This new Club was physically and spiritually dangerous. And the stolen Adventurers were somewhere inside it.
I fell back into my body, in the Reading Room, and cried out in shock and relief as I wrapped myself in warm flesh again. I lay spread-eagled on my back, breathing hard, getting my head back together again. All I had to do now was force my way into a well-guarded and protected Club, face down Something, or indeed any number of Somethings, all of them strong enough to overpower an army of experienced heroes, and bring the poor lost sheep home again. I sighed. I might as well make a start. It wasn’t going to get any easier.
THREE
It’s amazing how often it happens that even when you know where you want to go, it’s really hard to get there. I knew where the missing Adventurers were now—up the street from the Adventurers Club. But getting there turned out to be a real pain in the behind.
I started with the dimensional Door, in the Reading Room. Since Sebastian Stargrave had given me the Door’s activating words, I assumed that would give me access to its workings. In particular, to the spatial coordinates used by the Adventurers’ abductors. That way, I could step directly from the interior of this Club to the next, in hot pursuit, and surprise everyone. But the Door wouldn’t cooperate, remaining firmly and unhelpfully closed. Even when I tried kicking it. I hauled my gift forward again and tried to use it to find the correct command words that would force the Door to do what it was damn well told. But all that got me was a pounding headache, and a distinct feeling the Door was laughing at me. I should have known any door inside the Adventurers Club would have its own shields and protections. Which only made it all the more remarkable that Someone or Something had found a way past them. I put my gift back in its mental box, and my headache subsided. But I could smell blood again. Freshly spilled blood, and lots of it. Which did not bode well for the missing Adventurers.
• • •
In the end, I had no choice but to leave the Adventurers Club through the front door. With my back straight and my head held high, as though that was what I’d meant to do all along. When working a case, it’s always best to at least look like you know what you’re doing. I said something calm and comforting and basically misleading to the Doorman as I passed, so he wouldn’t worry. And then I hurried off up the street before he could think of any questions to ask me. People on the street saw something in my face and gave me even more room than usual.
It was only a short walk, a few minutes. So short that I did wonder why the mysterious abductors hadn’t just marched their enchanted victims out the front door and up the street to the new club. Rather than risk using a Door that had to be left behind; a major clue in itself, and something that might point directly to the new club if anyone could get at its stored destinations. But then, the abductors would have had to get past the Doorman; and I very much doubted he would have seen them as angels. Enchantment might not have worked on a were sabre-tooth tiger; and you really wouldn’t want to find that out the hard way . . . The abductors didn’t want to be seen, or recognised, by anyone. And it was always possible they needed to get the Adventurers away as quickly as possible, to buy them time to do something to their victims.
• • •
I stood outside the new club, both hands thrust deep into the pockets of my trench coat, rocking back and forth on my heels as I looked the place over. I didn’t like the new building. It felt . . . wrong. This used to be the location for the Suicide Club. If the world had grown too much for you, and the Nightside no longer distracted you, then you could always depend on the happy smiling girls and boys of the Suicide Club to be there for you. Ready to see you on your way with a nice poisoned cup of tea, to somewhere hopefully better. No money required—the Suicide Club was a registered charity. Supposedly. I always suspected there was more to it than that; but no-one ever hired me to find out what.
The place wasn’t as popular as you might have thought. The Nightside is, after all, one of the few locations in this world where you can be sure of coming face-to-face with representatives of Heaven and Hell on a regular basis. And there’s nothing like an upfront and in-your-face encounter with the true nature of the Afterlife to make you very determined to avoid it for as long as possible. The Suicide Club was there for those who had seen it all, done it all, and were either very bored or completely burned-out.
But now the Suicide Club building was gone. Replaced entirely by the new arrival. Clubland embodies evolution in action, with the strong stamping out the weak. Sometimes literally. The old façade of dignified, gleaming marble had been replaced by a huge glowering display of purple-grey stone. Bulging out into the street, blunt and discoloured, like a bruised forehead. With a single, unmar
ked, and unremarkable door. The new club didn’t even seem to have a name; just a single letter, carved in jagged deep cuts into the stone above the door.
V
I scowled, thinking hard. V for what? V could stand for any number of things in the Nightside, which has been known to stand for pretty much anything in its time. Or could it be the Roman numeral, for five? Five what? Thinking about that didn’t get me anywhere, so I looked the place over some more. The rough stonework stared back at me, giving away nothing. No windows, no hot neon, no come-ons at all . . . not at all what you’d expect in Clubland. Nothing to suggest what kind of club this was or what kind of people it was intended for. Interestingly, none of the people passing by paid the new club any attention at all. They didn’t even glance at it, just kept their heads down and hurried on past. As though they were scared of it, scared even of drawing its attention.
Odd behaviour for the Nightside, where people thrive on variety and anything new. Nothing draws a crowd faster than the promise of a new pleasure, or a new variation on an old sin. There’s always someone desperate to be first to try something out and report back on how it felt. I’d assumed people were giving me plenty of room because of who I was, not where I was. But it wasn’t me, it was the club. People actually flinched away from the rough stone façade as they passed. As though they knew something I didn’t. Or, more likely, sensed something. No-one has more sensitive antennae than a Nightside regular. I glared at the front of the new club. I couldn’t feel, or sense, a damned thing.
I looked at the new club, and the stone front looked back, like a blank, mad, unseeing eye.