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Chandra made the mistake of trying to talk kindly to these hyperventilating vultures and was immediately shouted down by a dozen competing voices. Some of them even grabbed at his silk sleeves and tried to drag him off in a dozen different directions at once. So I made a point of throwing all my pamphlets on the ground and stamping on them, and when I had the pamphleteers attention, I fixed them all with a hard stare. They fell back as one, struck suddenly dumb. It’s amazing what you can achieve with a good hard stare when you’ve got a reputation like mine. But by now more pamphleteers had arrived, scenting blood in the water, and filled the silence with their own shouts.
“I saw them first! They’re mine!”
“Don’t listen to him! Only I can bring you to Enlightenment!”
“You? You couldn’t even spell Enlightenment! I offer a tenfold path to true transcendence!”
“Ten? Ten? I can do it in eight!”
“Seven!”
“Four!”
“Dagon shall rise again!”
It got nasty after that. They fell on each other, pamphlets thrown to the winds, fluttering on the air like particularly gaudy autumn leaves. Fists were brandished, shins were kicked, and there was a lot of close grappling and unnecessary biting. I strolled off and left them to it, and Chandra hurried after me.
The Street of the Gods was being its usual strange and unnatural self, with weird shit on every corner and more manifestations than you could shake a crucible at. Chandra enjoyed the sights, like any other tourist on his first grand tour, but every now and again he’d catch himself as he remembered he wasn’t supposed to approve of things like this. Organised religions are always jealous of the up-and-comers. But there was a lot to look at and enjoy. Self-appointed saints with neon halos looked disapprovingly on other-dimensional entities playing croquet with the heads of heretics, while rival congregations shouted rap sermons at each other from the safety of their church doors.
And a long line of sad furry animals followed a large scruffy bear as he trudged down the Street, holding up a crucifix to which was nailed a small green frog.
I pointed out some of the more interesting faiths and beliefs to Chandra as they presented themselves, at least partly in the spirit of self-defence. It pays to watch your back in the Street of the Gods. You never knew when some of the more aggressive Ideas will sneak up behind you and mug your subconscious. But there are many sights to be seen in the Street of the Gods, and I enjoyed showing them off to Chandra. It was all so new to him. The glamour rubs off fast after you’ve cleaned a fallen god’s blood off your shoes, as he’s viciously ejected from his temple to make way for someone more popular.
I showed him the Church of the Blood Red God—a tall Gothic structure with spiked towers and barbed parapets, a gloomy crimson edifice made entirely out of blood. Blood and nothing but blood, gallons of the stuff shaped and held in place entirely by the will of the Blood Red God. Impressive to look at, though up close it smelled pretty bad. Attracted flies like you wouldn’t believe. The God’s disciples provide the blood, mostly voluntarily.
“And what, precisely, does the Blood Red God get out of all this?” said Chandra suspiciously. “Apart from a church that smells like a slaughterhouse?”
“Well,” I said. “He feeds off his flock, transmutes the blood in his own divine body, then feeds the supercharged blood back to his devotees, a few drops at a time. Their worship makes him a God, and they get to feel divine, for a time. Do I really need to tell you that the process is addictive and that it burns out the human system pretty damn quickly? Not that it matters. There’s a believer born every minute.”
“But...that means he’s nothing more than a glorified leech! Feeding off his followers!”
“I could say something very cynical and cutting here about the nature of most organised religions,” I said. “But the Street says it all, really.”
Chandra sniffed loudly. “What does he look like, this Blood Red God?”
“Good question,” I said. “No-one knows. Like many of the Beings on the Street, he rarely walks abroad in person. Probably because if their flocks ever got a good look at what they were actually worshipping, they’d go off the whole idea. However, the Blood Red God has been known to send out humanoid figures composed entirely of blood to take care of day-to-day business. Some of the more adventurous vampires like to sneak up behind and stick straws in them.”
“Show me something else,” said Chandra. “Before I projectile vomit every meal I’ve eaten in the last three months.”
“Well,” I said. “If you’re looking for something more spiritual . . . over there we have the Hall of Entropy. A dour-looking place for a congregation of real gloomy buggers. They believe that since the whole universe is winding down, and everything that lives is going to die, it’s up to us to evolve into a higher order of Being and get the hell out of here in search of a better class of universe. They offer courses in how to become a higher order of Being. Very expensive courses.”
“Ah,” said Chandra. “And have any of these people ever actually transcended?”
“Funnily enough, no,” I said sadly. “According to the people who run the courses, it’s because the students aren’t trying hard enough. Or because they haven’t taken enough courses. There’s a pool running on the Street as to how long it will take before the students wise up and rebel, and tear the whole place apart. Probably only to find that the organisation’s leaders have already absconded with all the cash. In search of a better universe, presumably.”
“Why is everyone staying well away from that one?” said Chandra, pointing entirely unselfconsciously. “Even the tourists are taking their photos from the other side of the Street.”
“Ah,” I said. “That is the Church of Sacrifice. Its priests have an unnerving tendency to rush out of their church without warning, grab anyone handy, or anyone who doesn’t run away fast enough, and drag them into their church to sacrifice to their god. Usually singing psalms very loudly, to drown out the screams and objections. Their god, who has no name but I think we can all take a pretty good guess at his nature, sucks up the souls and shares the life energy with its followers. No-one on the Street objects, as such. They think he adds colour and character to the Street. And besides, he helps keep the tourists moving. The Church’s worshippers wear masks at all times. Because if any of them do get identified, everyone else kills them. Just on general principles.”
“This whole Street is a disgrace!” said Chandra, rather more loudly than I was comfortable with. “None of these Beings are gods! Powerful creatures, yes, but not gods! Nothing worthy of worship. In fact,” he said, his voice suddenly thoughtful. “Many would seem to me to qualify as monsters . . .”
“Let us not go there,” I said quickly. “We really don’t want to start anything. We’re here to stop the Walking Man.”
“But I’m right, aren’t I?” insisted Chandra.
“Well, yes, quite probably,” I said. “But it’s still not something you want to actually announce out loud unless you like having your testicles expand suddenly and violently, then blow up in slow motion. Some of the gods here have very old-fashioned ideas when it comes to smiting unbelievers.”
“You think that will stop the Walking Man?” said Chandra.
“No. But then, his god is bigger than everyone else’s god.”
“I am a khalsa,” said Chandra. “I do not believe . . . that this Walking Man can do anything that I cannot.”
“You can believe anything you like, on the Street of the Gods,” I said. “But that doesn’t necessarily make it true.”
There was the sudden sound of loud and angry confrontation, from further down the Street. I started running again, with Chandra pounding along behind me. He was in better shape than I, but he was carrying more weight, so I kept a comfortable lead. I felt a very definite need to encounter situations or Beings before Chandra did. He had a disturbing tendency to say exactly what he was thinking, and that can get you into a whole lot of trouble on the Street of the Gods.
Lots of other people were running right alongside me, including a whole bunch of tourists with their cameras at the ready. We do love our free entertainment in the Nightside, especially if it promises to be dramatic, violent, and quite spectacularly bloody. And given that this involved the Walking Man, it promised to be all three. He was standing quite calmly in the middle of the Street, his long duster hanging open to reveal the guns still holstered on his belt. He was surrounded by proponents of a whole bunch of belief systems, singing the praises of their gods and denouncing the Walking Man as a heretic, an unbeliever, or worse still, a fake prophet. Even more were shouting insults from the safety of their church doors. And yet, nobody wanted to get too close to him. Even the fiercest of believers, the most fanatical wide-eyed extremists, could sense the power and the threat of the Walking Man. Even standing still, he was more frightening and more dangerous than any of the Beings on the Street of the Gods.
You just knew it.
I pushed my way through the crowd surrounding the Walking Man, and most people only gave me a quick glance before getting out of my way. Probably because they were curious to see what I was going to do. My name moved swiftly through the crowd, along with a sense of Now we’re going to see something . . . Chandra Singh stuck close behind me. I was huffing and puffing from the run, and he wasn’t even out of breath. And then the Walking Man opened his mouth to speak, and everyone fell silent.
“You aren’t gods,” he said, in a calm but still loud and carrying voice. “You’re spiritual con men, confidence tricksters offering false faith and false hope. Is there a greater sin?”
“Even false hope is better than none,” I said. “Especially in a place like the Nightside.” Everyone around me fell back to what they clearly hoped was a safe distance. The Walking Man looked at me, and I met his gaze firmly. I needed to get him talking, try to reason with him, before the horror I sensed hanging on the air erupted into bloody murder. There had to be a way to reach him. Before all hell broke lose.
The Walking Man did me the politeness of considering my words for a moment, then shook his head. “No. All of... this is just a distraction from the true God, the real God, and a real state of grace. God is God, and none of these pretenders can be allowed to continue in their offences. There’s no room for mercy when souls are at stake.”
“What are you going to do?” I said bluntly. “Fight your way into all the churches and temples, drag the gods out into the Street, and shoot them all in the head? Even if you could do that, which I rather doubt, there are so many of them, you’d still be at it years from now.”
“I have faith,” said the Walking Man. “And faith can move mountains, never mind a false Church or two.” He stopped and glared across the Street at a grimy stone edifice. “I mean, come on, look at that. The Temple of the Unspeakable Abomination. Who in their right mind would want to worship that?”
“Someone looking for an unfair advantage, probably,” I said. “It’s all about the deals you can make on the Street of the Gods. Faith is currency here, with valuable prizes to be won by the faithful. You can win good fortune, bad cess to your enemies, transformation or immortality, and everything in between, if you make the right kind of deal with the Being of your choice. Though the price will almost certainly be your soul, or someone else’s. And I don’t see that you’re in any position to protest. You made a deal, didn’t you? To put your humanity behind you and become the Walking Man?”
He glared at me, all the casual humour gone from his face, and when he spoke his voice was flat and calm and very dangerous. “Don’t press me, John Taylor. And don’t you dare compare me to the debauched fools and heretics of this corrupt and corrupting place. I serve the real deal, the one true God.”
“That’s what they all say here,” I said easily, refusing to be intimidated.
“But my god has made me strong enough to destroy all their gods,” said the Walking Man.
“Is that who you serve?” I said. “A god of blood and murder?”
He smiled suddenly, and I realised I hadn’t even touched his faith and conviction. “I am the wrath of God. I punish the guilty. Because someone has to.”
Chandra Singh pushed in beside me, positively quivering with eagerness to join the debate. He still thought we were only talking.
“I have no interest or affection for this place, but still, everyone has the right to worship who or what they please, in their own way,” he said earnestly. “There are many paths to enlightenment, and none of us are fit to judge them. Do you intend to kill me, for worshipping my god in a way that is different to yours?”
“I don’t know,” said the Walking Man, with breath-taking casualness. “I haven’t decided yet.”
“You would kill me?” said Chandra Singh.
The Walking Man shrugged easily. “Only if you get in my way. You’re not guilty. Merely deluded. Ah well, time to get to work.”
He drew both his pistols and opened fire on the Temple of the Unspeakable Abomination. The crowd scattered to give him room, keeping their heads well down. I stood my ground, and Chandra stood his ground beside me. Under normal circumstances I would have done the sensible thing and run like hell with the rest of them, but somehow I just couldn’t while Chandra was with me. Never hang around with heroes; they’ll always get you killed. The pistols’ bullets hammered away at the front of the temple, punching holes clean through the wall and exploding the ancient stonework. There was a power in those guns and those bullets that the temple was no match for.
Cracks spread jaggedly across the entire front of the temple, then the whole front wall exploded outwards, as the Unspeakable Abomination showed itself for the first time in centuries, to see who was knocking so loudly on its door. Dozens of loathsome tentacles burst out into the street, dozens of feet long and bigger around than the average car, all of them lined with hundreds of vicious suckers packed full of rotating knifelike teeth. The flesh of the tentacles was a sick and leprous grey, as much metallic as organic, an impossibly flexible living metal that dripped corrosive slime. More and more tentacles slammed through the disintegrating front of the temple, as the Unspeakable Abomination rose up from the depths of its night-dark caverns far beneath the Street of the Gods, determined to have its revenge on whoever had dared disturb its sleep of centuries.
The tentacles lashed back and forth, grabbing everything within reach and crushing it to rubble or pulp. People died screaming as the tentacles shot after them faster than they could run. Men and women were snatched and slammed against the ground or the nearest buildings. Razor-packed suckers ate greedily into yielding flesh, and blood and other fluids ran down the Street in thickening streams. The temple was gone now. All that remained was a nest of long, thrashing tentacles killing everyone within reach. And finally, deep in the heart of the tentacles, there rose up a burning three-lobed eye, almost the size of the temple itself, staring unblinkingly on the death and destruction it was causing and finding it good.
Beings of all shapes and sizes and natures came charging out of their churches and temples to face this new threat to the Street of the Gods, for whatever threatened the security and business of the Street was a threat to them all. The Walking Man might have intimidated them, but this was one of their own, and no-one would take you seriously on the Street if you let your neighbour intimidate you. So gods and icons and avatars spilled out on to the Street, and magics and sciences and strange energies spit and crackled on the air. Tentacles writhed and caught fire, exploded and cracked apart, and a choking, noxious smell filled the a
ir as thick black blood spilled. But there were always more tentacles to replace those that were destroyed. Fanatical worshippers rushed in to cut and hack at the tentacles with blessed swords and axes, urged on by their priests, only to see the metal of their weapons break and shatter against the unyielding unearthly flesh of the Unspeakable Abomination.
The three-lobed burning eye looked on god and follower alike and found them all equally hateful in its gaze.
The tentacles churned out from the ruins of the temple, growing longer and thicker. They snatched up gods and squeezed them till their heads exploded, or pounded them against their own churches like a child having a temper tantrum with its toys. They slammed down on whole congregations, crushing them under their writhing weight until nothing was left but red pulp. The Abomination was awakening from its long sleep and remembering the joys of slaughter and destruction and the sweet taste of blood and suffering.
Chandra Singh strode steadily forward, his long, curved sword glowing almost unbearably bright in the gloom of the Street. Some of the lesser Beings actually flinched away from its light and fell back to give Chandra room to work. He cut savagely at the nearest tentacle, and the shining blade sank deep into the metallic flesh. Steaming black blood spurted, hissing and spitting on the ground, but though the tentacle reached for Chandra, it couldn’t touch him. He gripped his sword in both hands, raised it high above his head, and brought it sweeping down in a mighty blow that sheared clean through the tentacle. The severed end flapped and flopped on the Street, curling and uncurling aimlessly. The stump retreated, spurting blood. Chandra went after it, his gaze fixed on the three-lobed eye.