Also by Simon R. Green
THE SECRET HISTORIES NOVELS
The Man with the Golden Torc
Daemons Are Forever
The Spy Who Haunted Me
From Hell with Love
For Heaven’s Eyes Only
Live and Let Drood
Casino Infernale
Property of a Lady Faire
From a Drood to a Kill
Dr. DOA
Moonbreaker
THE NIGHTSIDE SERIES
Something from the Nightside
Agents of Light and Darkness
Nightingale’s Lament
Hex and the City
Paths Not Taken
Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth
Hell to Pay
The Unnatural Inquirer
Just Another Judgement Day
The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny
A Hard Day’s Knight
The Bride Wore Black Leather
Tales from the Nightside
THE GHOST FINDERS NOVELS
Ghost of a Chance
Ghost of a Smile
Ghost of a Dream
Spirits from Beyond
Voices from Beyond
Forces from Beyond
THE DEATHSTALKER SERIES
Twilight of the Empire
Deathstalker
Deathstalker Rebellion
Deathstalker War
Deathstalker Honor
Deathstalker Destiny
Deathstalker Legacy
Deathstalker Return
Deathstalker Coda
THE ADVENTURES OF HAWK & FISHER
Swords of Haven
Guards of Haven
OTHER NOVELS
Blue Moon Rising
Beyond the Blue Moon
Blood and Honor
Down Among the Dead Men
Shadows Fall
Drinking Midnight Wine
Once in a Blue Moon
ACE
Published by Berkley
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Copyright © 2018 by Simon R. Green
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Green, Simon R., 1955– author.
Title: Night fall / Simon R. Green.
Description: First edition. | New York : Ace, 2018. | Series: Secret histories ; 12
Identifiers: LCCN 2017050541 | ISBN 9780451476975 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780698407459 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Drood, Eddie (Fictitious character)—Fiction. | Paranormal fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Fantasy / Urban Life. | FICTION / Fantasy / Paranormal. | FICTION / Fantasy / Contemporary. | GSAFD: Fantasy fiction. | Occult fiction.
Classification: LCC PR6107.R44 N53 2018 | DDC 823/.92—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017050541
First Edition: June 2018
Cover art by Paul Young/Artist Partners
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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CONTENTS
Also by Simon R. Green
Title Page
Copyright
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
EPILOGUE
Acknowledgments
About the Author
THE NIGHTSIDE
London has a hidden heart and a secret soul, packed full of sin and shadows. Where gods and monsters go clubbing together, aliens and angels go fist-fighting through alley-ways, and you can find your heart’s desire and your worst nightmare in the eyes of the same woman. Where it’s always night and the dawn never comes, where it’s always three o’clock in the morning and the hour that tries men’s souls. On the packed streets and rain-slick pavements, where hot neon burns bright and gaudy as Hell’s candy, you can rub shoulders with heroes and villains, brighter buccaneers and twilight souls . . . but there’s only one man you can depend on. John Taylor, who started out as a private eye specialising in lost causes, and ended up as Walker, the man who runs the Nightside.
Inasmuch as anyone does, or can.
THE SECRET HISTORIES
For countless generations, the Drood family has guarded Humanity from all the weird things that threaten it. Demons, aliens, secret organisations . . . and the occasional invasion from other worlds and dimensions. Drood agents move between the pages of the history books, doing what needs to be done, never noticed by the people they protect. To help them do this, the Droods have a golden armour that makes them very strong, very fast, and very hard to say no to. They fight secret wars to keep us safe, and ensure we never need to know . . . that sometimes monsters are real. Eddie Drood is the finest field operative the family has ever had. While working under-cover, he uses the name Shaman Bond; because in his line of work you have to take your laughs where you can find them. He walks through the shadows of the world, the ghost in the machine of history.
The very-secret agent.
* * *
• • •
The Droods are all about control, making people do what they’re told for the greater good. The Nightside is all about choice: good and bad and everything in between. The Droods want to make the world behave. The Nightside wants to party.
They were never going to get along.
* * *
• • •
For years almost beyond counting, a strict set of Pacts and Agreements have kept the Droods out of the Nightside.
But that is going to change.
CHAPTER ONE
When the Gods Are Afraid, Be Very Afraid
They say that home is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. The Nightside is where you go when the rest of the world wants to shoot you on sight. Usually with good reason.
* * *
• • •
The Nightside; it’s one hell of a town. The jig is up and the hammer is down. Where it’s always the hour of the wolf, and you should never look back for fear of what might be gaining on you. From Rats’ Alley, where homeless monsters and forgotten heroes live in cardboard shelters and beg for spare change; to the Adventurers Club, where legends from all over Space and Time come to the long night to hunt the really big game . . . The Nightside is where you go to find everything you ever dreamed of, to save your soul or damn it. Your soul, or someone else’s
.
* * *
• • •
You get to Strangefellows, the oldest drinking hole, conversation pit, and scumbag attractor in the history of mankind, by walking down streets where hot neon burns like souls on fire, then slipping furtively down a side alley that isn’t always there.
The wall that blocks off the end of the alley has a single door, a flat slab of steel set flush into the grimy brickwork, with no bell or handle. If you’re the right sort, the door will open for you; and if you aren’t, it’s open to bribes. Above the door a small but dignified neon sign spells out the name of the place in ancient Sanskrit. Strangefellows has never felt the need to advertise.
Beyond the door lies an entrance foyer that doesn’t even try to appear welcoming. The furniture usually looks like it’s been recently used in hand-to-hand combat, apart from where people are slumped across it, doing their best to sleep off some of the hangover before they have to head out again into the unforgiving night. The precious Persian rugs are soaked with old blood and other less reputable stains. The walls are covered in obscene murals, by any number of Old Masters. The air is heavy with the smell of excitement, opportunity, and all the more dangerous kinds of sex. Music beats on the air like the heart-beat of a possessed teenager, calling you on. And if you’ve got this far, you probably feel like you’ve come home.
A metal stairway leads down into the bar itself, so everyone can hear you arrive. (It’s not paranoia when people really do want to hunt you down and stick your head on a spike.) And in the wide stone-walled pit at the bottom of the stairs, the bar’s patrons gather to drink and carouse, plot their angry schemes against an uncaring world, and slip a knife between the ribs of their best friend.
The atmosphere in Strangefellows can best be described as determinedly non-judgemental. Anyone can get in, though getting out can sometimes be a problem. The sign at the bottom of the stairs reads ABANDON ALL HOPE. Anywhere else, this would be a joke. To get to the long wooden bar at the far end of the room, you have to respectfully negotiate a maze of tightly packed tables and chairs, cheerfully mismatched because they’re always being smashed in some dispute or another. Strangefellows is a boisterous kind of place, and its clientele wouldn’t have it any other way.
* * *
• • •
On the night when it all began, John Taylor was leaning on the bar chatting with Strangefellows’ owner, bartender, and celebrated pain in the arse, Alex Morrisey. John was in his late thirties and in pretty good shape considering the perilous nature of his chosen career. Back when he was the Nightside’s only private eye, he used to wear a heavy white trench-coat because it helped to reassure his clients if he looked the part: the last of the knights-errant, in tarnished white armour. Now he was Walker and needed everyone to believe he was the man in charge, he wore a perfectly cut suit of neutral grey, a rich burgundy waistcoat, and a bowler hat. Partly in tribute to his former best enemy and mentor, the previous Walker, but mostly because that particular look had always represented authority in the Nightside.
John Taylor, a good man in a bad place. Because someone had to be.
Alex Morrisey, on the other hand, was born in a bad mood and probably punched the doctor. Now heading reluctantly into his late thirties, Alex was tall, pale, and malevolently moody. He acted like the whole world was out to get him because he honestly believed it was. His permanent scowl had etched a deep notch above his nose, and on the rare occasions when he did smile, it usually meant someone was about to have a really bad day. He always wore black, in one style or another, topped off with designer sun-glasses and a snazzy black beret tilted at a rakish angle. To hide the fact that he was prematurely bald. Proof, if proof was needed, he was prone to saying bitterly, that God hated him personally. People who knew Alex thought that was only to be expected. Wiser customers counted their change carefully and avoided the bar-snacks.
“It’s surprisingly quiet tonight,” said John Taylor. “Perhaps I can get some important lounging around done without being interrupted, for a change.”
“Want to try one of our special offers?” said Alex. “I’m offering very reasonable rates on some glowing champagne, from the Holy Order of Saint Strontium. Complete with a depleted uranium swizzle-stick. Or there’s the Timothy Leary Special, for people who want to get really out of their minds.”
John gave Alex a hard look. “Are you trying to kill me? Is there a new bounty on my head that I haven’t heard about?”
“Of course not!” said Alex. “I don’t want you dead. Not till you’ve settled your bar bill.”
John glanced around the bar. “It is unusually quiet . . . I mean, yes it’s noisy as all hell, and the general ambience is just short of distressing, but that’s just business as usual. No one’s tried to open a gateway to Hell, or entice me into a conspiracy all evening.”
“It’s just the calm before the storm,” Alex said wisely.
John raised an eyebrow. “Have you heard something?”
“No, that’s just the voice of experience.”
“Pour me another glass of Ponce de Leon sparkling water,” said John. “With an adrenaline chaser.”
He put his back to the bar while Alex poured, taking in the sights. There was a lot to be said about Strangefellows, most of it offensive and bordering on the obscene, but it was never boring.
Alex slammed John’s drink down on the bartop, with a little extra emphasis to make it clear he didn’t approve of non-alcoholics, and John turned back to accept it. The magician’s top hat standing upside down on the bar rocked briefly from side to side, and a human hand emerged, brandishing an empty martini glass. Alex refilled it, and hand and glass disappeared back inside the top hat. Alex shook his head.
“That rabbit really was mad at him.”
“He should have known better than to play Find the Lady with a Pookah,” said John. “Though he has been in there for some time now . . . Maybe we should try to get him out.”
“You leave him be,” Alex said firmly. “He says he feels a lot safer where he is.”
John nodded and turned away. It was just another long night in Strangefellows. A group of minor Norse deities was playing poker with Tarot cards, which meant the supernatural weather was going to be more than usually troubled for a while. And certain unfortunate individuals were about to discover their previously fixed destinies were now up for grabs. Sitting opposite each other at a nearby table, the bar’s muscle-bound bouncers, Betty and Lucy Coltrane, were engaged in a flex off, while they waited for someone to get drunk enough or dumb enough to start something. The Coltranes were always ready to put a stop to something, usually with broad grins and excessive violence. One of the more glamorous of Baron Frankenstein’s creations, in a black leather bustier that contrasted nicely with her dead white skin, was taking advantage of open-mike night to murder the old standard “Anyone Who Had a Heart.”
Hecate’s Handmaidens, a coven of apprentice witches out on a hen night, were dancing upside down on the ceiling and singing a very rude song about broomsticks. Something from a Black Lagoon was muscling its way between the packed tables, looking for signatures on its petition to save the Amazonian Rain Forests. Two Men in Black were crying into their gin-and-tonics because no one took them seriously any longer; and a handsome Time Agent in a World War II greatcoat was arm-wrestling with the Nightside’s very own costumed super-heroine, Ms Fate. She was winning.
Just the usual crowd, enjoying a night out.
“I haven’t seen Suzie in a while,” said Alex, and John nodded.
“She’s off in the border-lands, taking care of some last bounty-hunter business. While she still can.”
“How long before the baby’s due?” said Alex, spitting into a glass before polishing it with a dirty rag.
“About five weeks,” said John.
“And you let her go off chasing dangerous fugitives?”
Joh
n gave Alex a look. “This is Shotgun Suzie we’re talking about. The nearest thing to sudden death on two legs you’re ever likely to meet in this life. Besides, do you really think I could stop her?”
“Any idea yet whether it’s going to be a boy or a girl?” said Alex, just a bit too casually.
John grinned. “Leaving it a bit late to get your bet down, aren’t you?”
Alex shrugged. “The longer I leave it, the better the odds. Though given some of the unnatural forces the pair of you have been exposed to on some of your cases, I could probably get really good odds on how human it’s going to be.”
“Suzie was very firm that she didn’t want to know,” said John. “And after she shot that hole in the hospital wall, the staff stopped trying to persuade her. I’m hoping for a boy, but . . .”
They were interrupted by some frankly unpleasant sounds from farther down the bar. Alex’s pet vulture, Agatha, was squatting on her perch by the old-fashioned cash register, brooding over the night-dark egg she’d laid some months previously. The egg had grown steadily until now it was bigger than the vulture, but there was still no sign of its being ready to hatch. People who had studied the egg closely all ended up saying the same thing: My God, it’s full of stars . . . The vulture rubbed her vicious beak against the gleaming black surface of the egg and made some more of what she fondly considered to be maternal sounds.
“Why did you choose a vulture for a pet, Alex?” said John.
“Suits my personality.”
“And why name the obnoxious thing after your ex-wife?”
“You’ve met her,” said Alex.
“I take your point,” said John.
A vicious crack of lightning blinded everyone for a moment. Wild electricity stabbed down from ceiling to floor, crackling loudly and raising everyone’s hairs before shutting off abruptly. When everyone could see clearly again, a young man was crouching in an open space in the middle of the room. People stood up everywhere to get a better look at the man who’d ridden the lightning in from some other place.