The Spy Who Haunted Me

  “You smell funny,” I said. I looked at Walker. “Would you like me to . . . ?”

  “No need,” said Walker.

  “Really, I don’t mind. It wouldn’t be any trouble.”

  “It’s only Good Time Georgie,” said Walker. “I could handle Good Time Georgie if I was unconscious.” He smiled easily into Georgie’s reddening face, completely unmoved by the man’s size or presence or anger. “Are you sure you want to do this? Are you really so sure I don’t have my Voice anymore? Would I be here in Strangefellows, without my Voice to protect me? Perhaps you’ve forgotten all the terrible things I’ve done to you down the years. Or made you do to yourself. You’re just a cheap thug, Georgie, whereas I . . . am Walker. Now go away and stop bothering me. Or I will tell you to do something deeply amusing and so extreme that people will still be laughing about it thirty years from now.”

  There wasn’t an ounce of uncertainty in Walker’s voice. He sounded like he meant every word he said and all the ones he was just implying. Good Time Georgie hesitated, his anger draining away in the face of Walker’s calm certainty. Georgie looked around him. A lot of people had stopped what they were doing to see what would happen, but none of them looked like they had any intention of getting involved. This was Walker, after all. Georgie turned abruptly and stalked away. Walker took a sip of his Perrier, little finger extended even more than usual. And everyone went back to what they’d been doing.

  “Awful fellow,” murmured Walker. “I’d have shut him down years ago, but ten more would just spring up in his place. There will always be steady business for those who come here to sin on a restricted budget.”

  “Neatly handled, I thought,” I said.

  “Thank you. I’ve had a lot of practice.”

  “How long do you think you can keep this going before people know for sure you’re bluffing about your Voice?”

  “What makes you think I’m bluffing?” said Walker.

  I didn’t look at him. “Can I just ask . . . You lost your Voice originally in the Lilith War? As in, the biblical Lilith?”

  “Yes.”

  “Forget it. I don’t think I really want to know.”

  “Very wise,” said Walker.

  Behind the bar, the Portable Timeslip made a polite chiming noise to let us know its recharging was complete. The blond barmaid unplugged the pocket watch from what looked like a battery recharger on steroids and slapped the watch down on the wooden bar before Walker with a violence that made both of us wince. Walker smiled politely, tipped his bowler hat to her, and then picked up the watch and turned to me.

  “We have to do this outside,” he said. “Too many built-in protections and defences inside the bar.”

  “To keep creditors from getting in?” I said.

  “I heard that!” said the barmaid.

  “I notice you’re not denying it,” said Walker. “Let’s go, Eddie.”

  Outside the bar, I got my first real look at the Nightside. Walker gave me a few moments to look around and brace myself. The Nightside was everything I’d always thought it would be: loud, sleazy, brightly coloured, and steeped in its own dangerous glamour. It was like standing on a city street in Hell. Harshly coloured lights blazed from the half-open doors of nightclubs that never closed, along with every kind of music that ever made you want to dance till you dropped, till your feet bled and your heart broke. Shops and stores, selling everything you ever dreamed of in your worst nightmares. All sins catered for, every desire encouraged. The pavements were packed with would-be customers hot for pleasures and secrets and knowledge forbidden by the outside world. Beasts and monsters moved openly among them. Anywhere else, I would have had to use my Sight to see so much, so clearly, but this was the Nightside. And this, all this, was just business as usual.

  Everyone knows there’s no law in the Nightside. Just a few overseers like Walker to keep things from getting out of hand. Anything is permitted, everything is for sale. You can buy anything or anyone, do anything or anyone, and no one will stop you or call you to account. Or rescue you when things go bad. A place of casual sin and unchecked appetites, and no one gives a damn because . . . that’s what the Nightside is for. I ached to call up my armour, take my aspect upon me, and bring justice and retribution to the only city where the night never ends.

  “Now you know why we don’t allow Droods in here,” said Walker. “You’re really far too simple and straightforward for a place like this. We do things differently here.”

  “You can’t have sin without victims,” I said. “Who cares for them?”

  “And you do take things so very personally . . . Everyone who comes to the Nightside knows what to expect, Eddie. There are no innocents here.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  He sighed briefly. “There are some who do what they can. And that’s more than most of those who come here are entitled to.”

  “How do you stand it?” I said. “Working in a moral cesspit like this?”

  “It’s my job,” said Walker. “And I’m very good at it. Now, time we were going.”

  His hands worked expertly on the pocket watch, and the darkness within leapt up and out, forming a great dark blanket above us. It slammed down like a flyswatter, and I didn’t even have time to react before suddenly we were somewhere else.

  The interior of Place Gloria looked just as I remembered it. Tacky, gaudily coloured reminders from the decade that taste disowned. I looked quickly about me while Walker put his pocket watch away, but everything was still and silent. I knew this room; it was where we’d all stood together at the start of the game, when we’d still thought we had a fair chance of winning. I caught Walker considering me thoughtfully and made myself unclench my fists.

  “I don’t think we should just go charging through the rooms at random,” murmured Walker, “in the hope of just running into Alexander and Peter . . . There are bound to be protections, alarms; probably even booby traps for the unwary and those in a hurry.”

  “Searching this place thoroughly could take forever,” I said. “I’ve a better idea. Make a lot of noise and make them come to us.”

  I drew my Colt Repeater, the gun that doesn’t need to be aimed and never runs out of ammunition, and I fired it again and again, calmly and coldly destroying everything of value in the room. Anything that looked important, or expensive, or hard to replace. Ancient china blew apart, glasses and mirrors shattered, and the room was full of vengeful thunder. Photos of Alexander’s old cases and triumphs jumped off the walls, precious memories destroyed in moments. The photos showed him posing with the great and the good, the famous and the infamous. Smiling faces, blown away. I shot holes in objects of historical significance and artistic merit, and I didn’t give a damn. I destroyed antique furnishings and modern furniture and stamped the pieces under my feet as I raged around the room. The continual roar of the gun in the confined space was almost unbearable.

  Some things had their own protections. An oversized clock whose hands swept steadily backwards faded away before my bullets could reach it. An ancient black runesword mounted on the wall began to sing menacingly in no human language. My bullets couldn’t touch it, so I moved on. And a huge stone hand in an impenetrable glass case gave me the finger. I didn’t care. There were still many good things left to destroy.

  It did occur to me that I was probably destroying or at least vandalising important relics of spy history, but none of that mattered. Not with Honey’s blood still drying on my clothes, from where I’d held her close as she died. Not with the Blue Fairy’s death message still fresh in my mind. And not while Alexander and Peter still lived.

  I finally ran out of things to shoot and slowly lowered the Colt Repeater. It felt heavy in my hand. The echoes from the continuous gunfire died away, and Walker removed his hands from his ears. The room was destroyed, bits and pieces everywhere, but no one came to investigate.

  “Odd,” said Walker, entirely unmoved by the destruction all around him. “No
alarms? No bells or sirens or those annoying flashing lights that always give me a headache? And no attempt to protect most of the items? Try this in the Collector’s warehouse, and the security robots would be picking up bits of you for weeks afterward. I think we have to assume that Alexander and Peter know we’re here and have no intention of exposing themselves to danger . . . Which is understandable. If I was out here after me, I wouldn’t show myself either. You know, this could be a trap.”

  “I don’t care,” I said.

  “Don’t care was made to care,” said an angry, familiar voice.

  I looked around sharply, and there they were, the three of them, standing in a tense threatening row on the other side of the room. Coffin Jobe, the Dancing Fool, and Strange Chloe. My three fellow conspirators from the raid on the Tower of London. It all seemed so long ago now . . . a different world. But here they were now, and they were clearly not on my side. Coffin Jobe, the necroleptic, who died and came back to life so frequently he saw the world so much more clearly than the rest of us. The Dancing Fool, who created his own martial art based on Scottish sword dancing, and won every fight because he knew what you were going to do even before you did. Déjà fu. And Strange Chloe, the Goth’s Goth, with her black and white markings tattooed on her face, who could make anything in the world disappear if she just hated it enough. And she had a lot of hate in her.

  Friends of a kind. Colleagues, certainly. All of them with good cause to want me dead. Life’s like that, sometimes.

  “Guys,” I said. “This really isn’t a good time. Could we do this some other time?”

  “What’s the matter, Eddie?” said the Dancing Fool. His voice was harsh, vicious. “Forgotten all about us, had you? The three friends you betrayed and left helpless for the authorities in the Tower of London? The colleagues you stabbed in the back and then left to rot? If Alexander King hadn’t stepped in to rescue us, we’d still be behind bars!”

  “Alexander?” I said. “Damn, how long has he been watching me . . . ?”

  “Get over yourself, Shaman!” said Strange Chloe. “This isn’t about you! It’s about us!”

  “Only Shaman isn’t your real name, is it?” said the Dancing Fool. “Not even close.”

  “Drood,” said Coffin Jobe in his gray, deathly voice. “Bad enough that you betrayed us, Shaman . . . But you’re a Drood too?”

  “You have to admit,” said Walker, “this is an excellent defence stratagem. Making you fight your way through your own colleagues to get to him. Alexander King made his legend by always being one step ahead of everyone else . . . It’s almost an honour to see such talent at work.”

  None of us were listening to him.

  “I saved your lives!” I said to all three of them. “Big Aus was planning to kill all of us once he’d got his hands on what he was really after. You didn’t seriously buy into that nonsense about the ravens, did you? He was after the Crown Jewels!”

  “Yeah, right,” said Strange Chloe. “And my arse plays the banjo. You’d say anything to save your own skin, wouldn’t you?”

  “I thought you were my friend, Shaman,” said Coffin Jobe. “And now you’re a Drood?”

  “How could you turn out to be one of them?” said Strange Chloe. “The professional killjoys, the bullies and spoilsports, dedicated to taking all the fun out of life! You pretended to be one of us when you were really one of them . . . Well, here’s where you get yours, Drood.”

  “Alexander brought us here so we could take our revenge on you,” said the Dancing Fool. “He knew you’d try to smash in here to steal the prize you couldn’t win honestly. Typical Drood. And we all jumped at the chance for a little justified payback!”

  “You don’t know what’s going on here,” I said as steadily and calmly as I could. “He’s using you, just like Big Aus. You’re only here as another way to hurt me, by making me fight my way through my friends to get to him.”

  “This isn’t about you!” Strange Chloe shouted, all but stamping her foot. “Not everything is about you just because you’re a bloody Drood!”

  “This is,” I said, and something in my voice stopped her. I looked at the three of them and felt more tired than anything. “Do you really think you can stop me?” I said. “I’m a Drood, with a Drood’s armour and a Drood’s training. You know what that means.”

  The three of them looked at each other, uneasy for the first time. They knew what a Drood can do.

  “Always wanted a chance to show what I could do against a Drood,” the Dancing Fool said finally.

  “Always wanted a chance to stick it to a Drood, the way they’ve always stuck it to me,” said Strange Chloe.

  “I thought you were my friend, Shaman,” said Coffin Jobe. “Friends are all I’ve got left . . .”

  I could see the confidence growing in them as they talked themselves into it. The Dancing Fool was actually smiling.

  “When word gets out I’ve taken down a Drood . . . I’ll be able to double my fees,” he said.

  “And have my family come after you?” I said. “You never were the brightest button in the box, Nigel.”

  Coffin Jobe and Strange Chloe turned their heads to look at the Dancing Fool.

  “Nigel?” said Coffin Jobe.

  “That’s your name?” said Strange Chloe. “You real name? Bloody Nigel?”

  The Dancing Fool glared at me, so angry he could barely speak. “You bastard,” he said finally. “You promised you’d never tell.”

  “Sorry, Nigel,” I said. “But needs must when the Devil’s in the driving seat. And it’s not as if you’re a genuine martial arts master, either. Hell, you’re not even Scottish! You just added a minor talent for precognition to some moves you picked up watching Bruce Lee movies. Whereas I . . . really am a Drood. I’m here to kill the Independent Agent, for good reason. If you knew half the things he’s done, you’d help me do it. Don’t let him screw you over like he did me. I will walk right through you to get to him.”

  “Typical Drood,” said Strange Chloe. “Think you can talk your way out of anything. Well, Nigel here may not be the real deal, but I bloody well am. I’m going to hate you right out of the world, Drood; I’m going to stare you down until there’s not one little bit of you left to remind me how much I hate you.”

  “Friends of yours?” murmured Walker. I’d forgotten he was there.

  “Sometimes,” I said. “More like colleagues. People I work with on occasion. You know how it is . . .”

  “Only too well,” said Walker.

  “Do you know who everyone is?” I said. “I could introduce you . . .”

  “No need,” said Walker. “I know them all by name or deed or reputation.” He studied them with his calm, cold gaze, and they all shifted uneasily. “Small-time operatives with minor talents. Their kind are always turning up in the Nightside, looking to make a reputation for themselves. They don’t usually last long. Most of them end up like this, crying into their beer because the big boys play too roughly.”

  “You bastard,” said Strange Chloe. “I’ll show you who’s small-time!”

  “You stay out of this, Walker,” said the Dancing Fool, stabbing a finger at him. “Our business is with the Drood. Don’t get involved, if you know what’s good for you.”

  “And if I do choose to get involved?” said Walker, smiling just a little.

  Strange Chloe sneered at him. “You don’t have your Voice anymore. Everyone knows that.”

  “And without the Voice, you’re just another killjoy in a suit,” said the Dancing Fool. “So stay out of it.”

  “Whatever you say, Nigel,” murmured Walker.

  “Guys, please, don’t do this,” I said. “Don’t make me do this. I’ve already lost three colleagues to Alexander King; I don’t want to lose any more.”

  “See, we were never friends,” said the Dancing Fool. “Just colleagues.”

  “Then why are you so upset over the thought of being betrayed?” said Walker.

  “Shut up! Shut
up, Walker! You don’t scare me anymore!” The Dancing Fool’s face was dangerously red with rage. “Without your Voice you’re no better than us . . .”

  “I don’t have my Voice,” said Walker. “But I do have other things.”

  “Oh, please,” said Strange Chloe. “I could put you through a wall with my eyelashes.”

  “Chloe,” I said. “You don’t want to do this. I’m the one who persuaded you out of that grubby one-room flat, found you work, found you friends.”

  “You didn’t do it for me,” she said. Her voice was flat, cold, emotionless. “It’s all shit. Everything. Just like I always said. Why should you have been any different? Everyone lies.”

  “That’s the Goth talking,” I said. “I liked you better when you were a punk. You had more energy. And the pink mohawk suited you.”

  “Bastard,” said Strange Chloe.

  “You were a punk?” said Coffin Jobe.

  “Shut up, Jobe.”

  “We all have our secrets,” I said. “Get over yourself, Chloe. This is more important than your hurt feelings.”

  “Nothing is more important than my feelings,” said Strange Chloe.

  She stepped forward and glared at me. I could feel power building around her. I hastily subvocalised my activating Words and armoured up. Coffin Jobe and the Dancing Fool gaped at me; they’d never seen a Drood take on his armour before. Not many have and lived to tell of it. Strange Chloe didn’t care. Her rage seethed and crackled on the air between us as she took another step forward. The impact of her gaze hit me like a fist. That was her gift and her power and her curse: to make anything disappear that dared not to love her. Strange Chloe’s stare slammed against my armour, terrible energies filling the space between us as she concentrated, the unyielding power of her fury straining to find some hold, some purchase, against the impenetrable, more than normal certainty of my strange matter armour. I took a step forward, towards her, and her face became almost inhuman in its concentrated rage.