Agents of Light and Darkness

  As always when she wasn’t working, Suzie had let herself go. She was wearing a grubby Cleopatra Jones T-shirt, and a pair of jeans that had been laundered almost to the point of no return. No shoes, no make-up. From the look of her, it had been some time since her last gig. She was overweight, her belly bulging out over her jeans, her long blonde hair was a mess, and she smelled bad. Without taking her eyes off the mayhem on the screen, she took a long pull from her gin bottle, not bothering to take the cigarette out of her mouth first, then offered me the bottle. I took it away from her and put it on the floor, carefully out of her reach.

  “Almost six years since I was last here, Suze,” I said, just loud enough to be heard over the television. “Six years, and the old place hasn’t changed a bit. Still utterly appalling, with a side order of downright disgusting. Garbage from all across the country probably comes here to die. I’ll bet the only reason this building isn’t overrun with rats is that you probably eat them.”

  “They’re good with fries, and a few onions,” said Suzie, not looking round.

  “How can you live like this, Suze?”

  “Practice. And don’t call me Suze. Now sit down and shut up. You’re interrupting a good bit.”

  “God, you’re a slob, Suzie.” I didn’t sit down on the couch. I’d just had my coat cleaned. “Don’t you ever clean up in here?”

  “No. That way I know where everything is. What do you want, Taylor?”

  “Well, apart from world peace, and Gillian Anderson dipped in melted chocolate, I’d like to see some evidence that you’ve been eating sensibly. You can’t live on junk food. When was the last time you had some fresh fruit? What do you do for vitamin C?”

  “Pills, mostly. Isn’t science wonderful? I hate fruit.”

  “I seem to recall you’re not too keen on vegetables either. It’s a wonder to me you haven’t come down with scurvy.”

  Suzie sniggered. “My system would self-destruct if it encountered anything that healthy. I eat soup with vegetables in. Occasionally. That sneaks them past my defences.”

  I kicked an empty ice cream tub out of the way and sighed heavily. “I hate to see you like this, Suzie.”

  “Then don’t look.”

  “Fat and lazy and smug with it. Don’t you have any ambitions?”

  “To die gloriously.” She took a deep drag on her cigarette and sighed luxuriously.

  I sat on the arm of the couch. “I don’t know why I keep coming back here, Suze.”

  “Because we monsters have to stick together.” She finally turned her head to look at me, unsmiling. “Who else would have us?”

  I met her gaze squarely. “You deserve better than this.”

  “Shows how much you know. What do you want, Taylor?”

  “How long have you been lounging around here? Days? Weeks?”

  She shrugged. “I am currently between cases. Bottom’s dropped out of the bounty-hunting business lately.”

  “Most people have a life apart from their work.”

  “I’m not most people. Just as well, really, considering most people depress me unutterably. My work is my life.”

  “Killing people is a life?”

  “Stick to what you’re good at, that’s what I always say. Hell! When I do it, it’s an art form. I wonder if I could get a grant…Shut up and watch the film, Taylor. I hate it when people talk during the good bits.”

  I sat with her and watched quietly for a while. As far as I knew, I was the closest thing Shotgun Suzie had to a friend. She wasn’t much of a one for getting out and meeting people, unless it involved killing them later. She only really came alive when she was working. In between cases, she shut down and vegetated, waiting for her next chance to go out and do the only thing she did well, the thing she was born to do.

  “I worry about you, Suzie.”

  “Don’t.”

  “You need to get out of this dump and get to know people. There are some out there worth knowing.”

  “Men have been known to walk into my life, from time to time.”

  It was my turn to sniff loudly. “They usually leave running.”

  “Not my fault if they can’t keep up.” She shifted her weight on the couch and farted unself-consciously.

  I glared at her. “They usually leave because you made them watch Girl On A Motorcycle one time too many.”

  “That film is a classic!” Suzie said automatically. “Marianne Faithful never looked better. That film is right up there with Easy Rider and Roger Corman’s Hells Angels movies.”

  “Why did you shoot me, six years ago?” I didn’t know I was going to ask that until I said it.

  “I had paper on you,” said Suzie. “Serious paper, backed by serious money.”

  “You knew that paper was false. The whole thing was a setup. You had to know that…but you shot me anyway. Why?”

  “You were leaving,” she said quietly. “How else could I stop you?”

  “Oh, Suze…”

  “Why do you think you were only wounded? You know I never miss. If I’d wanted you dead, you’d be dead.”

  “Why was it so important for you to stop me leaving?”

  She finally turned to look at me. “Because you belong here. Because…even monsters need to feel they’re not alone. Look, what do you want here, Taylor? You’re interrupting a classic.”

  “Bruce Lee again?” I said, just to tease her. And because I knew I’d got as much honesty out of her as both of us could stand.

  “Don’t show your ignorance. This is Jackie Chan.”

  “There’s a difference?”

  “Blasphemer. Jackie’s got some great moves, but Bruce Lee is God.”

  “Speaking of whom,” I said casually, “I have a case I could use some help on.”

  Suzie sat up and gave me her full attention for the first time. “You have a case involving Bruce Lee?”

  “No. God. There are angels in the Nightside.”

  Suzie shrugged and gave her attention back to the television screen. “About time. Maybe they’ll clean the place up.”

  “Maybe. But there’s a distinct possibility there might not be much left of the place by the time they’d finished with it. They’re looking for the Unholy Grail. I’ve got a client who wants me to find it first. Thought you might like to help. The money really is extremely good.”

  Suzie produced a remote control from somewhere underneath her and put the film on hold. Jackie froze in mid kick. Suzie looked at me. “How good?”

  “I’m offering fifty thousand, out of my fee. You get twenty-five up front, and the rest when the job’s done.”

  Suzie considered, her face impassive. “Is the job very dangerous? Will I have to kill lots of people?”

  “Odds are…yes and yes.”

  She smiled. “Then I’m in.”

  And that was it. Suzie didn’t really care about the money; she never did. She just went through the motions, so people wouldn’t think they could take advantage of her. With her, it was always the job that mattered, the challenge. The only feelings of self-worth she had came from testing herself against forces that could destroy her. I took the money out of the envelope Jude had given me, peeled off half, and dropped it onto the couch beside her. She nodded, but made no move to pick it up. She didn’t have a safe, or even a strongbox, on the unanswerable grounds that no-one was going to be stupid enough to steal from her. There were less painful ways to commit suicide. She turned off the television, stubbed out the last half inch of her cigarette on the leather couch, flicked it away, then fixed me with a steady stare.

  “You have my full attention. Angels…and an Unholy Grail. Kinky. Bit out of our usual territory. Would silver work against angels?”

  “Not even if you loaded it into a bazooka. You could probably strap an angel to a backpack nuke and set it off, and he wouldn’t even blink. Angels are major hard-core.”

  Suzie looked at me for a long moment. It was always hard to tell what she was thinking, behind the cold ma
sk she used for a face. “You religious, Taylor?”

  I shrugged. “Hard not to be, in the Nightside. If only because there are no atheists in foxholes. I’m pretty sure there is a God, a Creator. I just don’t think he cares about us. I don’t think we matter to him. You?”

  “I used to tell people I was a lapsed agnostic,” she said easily. “Now I tell them I’m a born-again heretic. I hung out with this bunch of Kali worshippers for a while, but they said I was too hard-core, the wimps. Mostly…I believe in guns, knives, and things that go bang. All of which we’re probably going to need if we’re going after the Unholy Grail. I take it there will be competition?”

  “Lots and lots. So you don’t have any problems, about going up against angels or devils?”

  She smiled coldly. “Just give me something to aim at and leave the rest to me.” She frowned thoughtfully. “There was a weapon I heard of once…The Speaking Gun. Created specifically to kill angels. The Collector tried to bribe me with it one time, to get into my pants…”

  “I think we’ll save that for a last resort,” I said, diplomatically.

  She shrugged. “So, where do we start?”

  “Well, I thought we’d go and have a word with the Demon Lordz.”

  “Those gangsta wannabes? I have seen puppies in toilet paper commercials that were more threatening than that bunch of poseurs.”

  “There’s more to them than meets the eye.”

  She sniffed. “There would have to be.”

  I stood up. Time to get the show on the road. “Grab what you need, and let’s get moving, Suzie. Above and Below have already tried to lean on me. I’m pretty sure we’re working against the clock on this one.”

  Suzie lurched ungracefully to her feet and stomped out of the room, heading for her bedroom. I waited patiently while she threw things about, looking for what she wanted. When she came back, she looked like Shotgun Suzie again. The grubby T-shirt and faded jeans were gone, replaced by gleaming black leather jacket, trousers and knee-high boots, generously adorned with steel chains and studs. She wore two bandoliers of bullets across her impressive chest, and the hilt of her favourite pump-action shotgun peered over her right shoulder from its holster on her back. A dozen assorted grenades hung from her belt. She’d even brushed her hair and slapped on some make-up. She looked sharp and deadly and very alive. Suzie Shooter was on the job, heading into deadly peril, and she couldn’t have been any happier.

  “Damn,” I said. “Clark Kent becomes Superman.”

  “Big Boy Scout,” she sneered. “Who’s our client on this one, Taylor?”

  “The Vatican. So watch your language. You ready?”

  “Does the Pope shit in the woods? I was born ready.”

  I made a mental note to keep her well away from Jude, and led the way out. It was a good day for someone else to die.

  FOUR

  Demons, Nazis, and Other Undesirables

  We went uptown. The nastiest, scariest, sleaziest joints are always uptown. Where the beautiful people go, to act out their inner ugliness in private places. Uptown, where the neon becomes more stylised and the come-ons are more subtle. Where the best food and the best wine and the best drugs, and all the very best music can be yours, for a price. Which is sometimes money and sometimes self-respect, and nearly always your soul, in the end. Uptown, you can see everybody on the way up, and everyone on the way down. Birds of a feather groom together.

  Walking the rain-slick streets under hot neon, with Suzie at my side like a barely restrained attack dog, it quickly became clear that there really were a lot fewer people about than usual. Just the thought of visiting angels, from Above or Below, had been enough to scare a lot of familiar faces into lying low for a while. But there were still crowds of people out and about, hurrying along temptation’s rows, avoiding eye contact, lips wet with anticipation. On their way to business or pleasures they couldn’t or wouldn’t put off, even for the threat of Judgement Day.

  Now and again, certain individuals would spot Suzie Shooter coming down the street towards them, and they would quickly and quietly disappear, slipping into convenient side streets and alleyways. Others would hide in doorways or deep shadows, shoulders hunched, heads down, hoping not to be noticed. A few actually stepped off the pavement and out into the road, to be sure of giving her plenty of room. A dangerous act in itself. It was never wise to get too close to any of the endless traffic that roared through the Nightside. Not everything that looked like a car was a car. And some of them were hungry.

  When you go uptown, into neatly laid-out squares with tree-lined streets and ornate old-fashioned lamp-posts, passing increasingly expensive establishments with pretence to class and sophistication, you move among a much higher class of scumbag. There are restaurants where you have to book months in advance just to be sneered at by a waiter. Huge department stores, selling every bright and gaudy useless luxury the covetous heart could desire. Wine cellars, dispensing beverages older than civilisation that madden and inflame and bestow terrible insights. Weapon shops and influence peddlers, and quiet parlours where destinies can be adjusted and reputations restored. And, of course, all the hottest brand names and the very latest fads. Love for sale, or at least for rent, and vengeance guaranteed.

  And nightclubs like you wouldn’t believe.

  The Nightside has the best nightclubs, hot spots, and watering holes in the world. The doors never close, the music keeps on playing, and the excitement never ends. Nowhere is the scene more now, the girls more glamorous, the setting more decadent, or the shadows more dangerous. These are places where they eat the unwary alive, but that’s always been part of the attraction. The Blue Parrot, The Hanging Man, Caliban’s Cavern, and Pagan Place. Once past the ominous doormen and the reinforced doors, there’s every kind of music on the menu, including some live acts you would have sworn were dead. Robert Johnson, still playing the blues with weary fingers, to pay off the lien on his soul. Glenn Miller and his big band sound, still calling Pennsylvania 6-500. (The Collector had Miller on ice for a long time, but was leasing him out now, in return for a consideration best not discussed in public.) Buddy Holly, hitting his guitar like it might fight back, headlining the Rock & Roll Sky-Diving All-Stars. And the Lizard King himself, on tour from Shadows Fall, that small town in the back of beyond where legends go to die when the world stops believing in them. Plus a whole bunch of Elvises, John Lennons, and Jimi Hendrixes, of varying authenticity. You paid your money and you took your choices.

  Suzie and I were on our way to The Pit. A relatively new concern, recommended for the seriously discerning pleasure-seeker. An extremely private place, for those in whom pleasure and pain combine to form a whole far greater than the sum of its parts. Where caressing hands had sharpened fingernails, and every kiss left a little blood in the mouth. The Pit, not surprisingly, was underground. From the street up, the place was just another restaurant, specialising in meals made from extinct animals. To get to The Pit, you had to go down a long set of dirty stone steps, to an alley well below street level. No flashing neon here, no dazzling come-ons. You either knew what you were looking for, and where to find it, or you weren’t the kind of patron The Pit wanted to attract. It was the kind of place where if you had to ask the price of something, you couldn’t afford it. I’d been there once before, to rescue a succubus who wanted out of her contract. It all got rather messy and unpleasant, but that’s life for you. In the Nightside.

  Suzie and I walked down the alley, ignoring the long queue. A few of those we passed scowled and muttered, but no-one said anything. Suzie and I are well-known faces, and our reputations went before us. A few people produced camcorders, just in case there was trouble. The solid steel door that was the only entry into The Pit was guarded by two of the Demon Lordz, scowling menacingly at one and all, their muscular arms folded across their heavy chests.

  At first glance, the Lordz looked like just another street gang. Both wore dark, polished leathers, fashionably scruffy, and heavy wit
h metal studs and hanging chains. They wore bright tribal colours on their faces, gaudy daubs on skin so black it glistened blue. They wore strap-on devil’s horns on their foreheads, and when they smiled or scowled they showed teeth filed to sharp points. But there was something more about them, in their unnatural stillness, in the boiling air of menace they projected, that showed they were so much more than just another set of gangsta wannabes. Certainly none of the punters waiting patiently to get in even thought about trying to jump the queue. They were mostly rich kids, in all the latest fetish gear, whose parents could probably buy and sell The Pit out of petty cash, but none of that mattered here. It wasn’t who you were, but who you knew, that got you in.

  Suzie studied the two Lordz standing guard before the firmly closed door and scowled ominously as they refused even to notice our presence. She tended to take such slights personally. She looked around the alley, then sneered impartially at the Lordz and the queue.

  “You know all the best places to bring a girl, Taylor. I just know I’m going to have to disinfect my boots later. Do we have anything resembling a plan?”

  “Oh, I thought we’d just barge our way in, insult all the right people, and kick the crap out of anyone who annoys us.”

  Suzie smiled briefly. “My kind of party.”

  I walked right up to the Lordz, radiating confidence. Suzie stuck close beside me, still scowling. Some of the queue decided that they’d try another club. The doormen finally deigned to acknowledge our existence. They were trying hard to look cool and aloof, and not quite bringing it off. The clenched fists gave it away. The one on the left looked down on me from his full six feet four.