“Experiment, squire, experiment!” shouted the trader, and he turned away to concentrate on his other customers.
One of them had already picked up a small, lacquered box, whose label boasted it could contain an infinity of things. I decided to step back. The customer opened the box, and, of course, it swallowed him right up. The box fell to the ground, and the trader picked it up again, scowling.
“That’s the third this week. I do wish people wouldn’t try things without asking.” He held the box upside down and shook it hard, as though hoping the customer might fall out again.
Tommy and I decided to leave him to it. From some way down the street came a loud crash; the sound of a jet pack returning to earth. There’s one born every minute, and a hell of a lot of them end up in the Nightside.
And then suddenly everyone was running and shouting and screaming. People streamed past me, pushing and shoving each other out of the way. It didn’t take me long to see why; and then I felt like running and screaming myself. Walker had finally lost patience with me. In the growing empty space where the crowd had been, dark shapes were heaving and sliding across the street, flowing like slow dark liquid across the pavement and walls. Dark as midnight, dark as the gaps between the stars, dark as a killer’s thoughts, the huge black shapes spilled silently down the street towards me. Two-dimensional surfaces sliding across the three-dimensional world, changing and expanding their shapes from one deadly form to another. They had hands and claws and barbs, and horribly human faces. Anyone who didn’t get out of their way fast enough was immediately swallowed up and absorbed in the dark depths of their bodies.
“What the hell are they?” asked Tommy, so shocked he actually forgot to sound effete.
“The Shadow Men,” I said, looking around for an escape route, but the shadows had already cut us off, approaching now from all sides at once. “They’re Walker’s enforcers. You can’t fight them, because they’re not really here. That’s just their shadows. They can swallow up anything and take it back to Walker. But you’re never the same after you’ve been in that darkness. If the stories I’ve heard are true… I think I’d rather die than be taken by the Shadow Men.”
“Why didn’t Walker send the Reasonable Men after you?” said Tommy, sounding more than a little desperate. “I could have out-reasoned them.” He tried to hide behind me, but the Shadow Men were coming at us from every direction. “This is not good, Taylor, this is seriously not good. I may have one of my turns. This isn’t fair! I thought Walker always sent the Reasonable Men after people he was upset with!”
“Normally, he does,” I said. “But I killed them all.”
“Impressive,” said Tommy. “But perhaps a little shortsighted. Do something, Taylor! These things really are getting terribly close!”
“Thank you, Tommy, I had noticed. Stop gripping my arm like that, you’re cutting off the circulation. Now try and panic a little less loudly; I’m thinking.”
“Think quicker!”
We were standing alone by then. Everyone else was keeping well back, giving the Shadow Men plenty of room to work in. No-one wanted to get involved, but many were watching interestedly from what they hoped was a safe distance. Quite a few were placing bets. Everyone wanted to see what would happen when the infamous John Taylor went head to head with the appalling Shadow Men.
The dark shapes glided forward, not hurrying, now that they had their prey cornered. They could take on any shape, because they had no texture or substance, but they had a taste for the shapes that terrified. Their faces were blank, heads without eyes that could still see you, like childhood nightmares. Their more abstract shapes were designed to disturb and unsettle. Just looking at them for too long could make you feel sick, right down to your soul. They oozed forward, savouring our helplessness.
“What are they made of?” Tommy asked, as much for the comfort of the sound of his own voice as anything.
“They’re living shadows,” I said. “Anti-life. No-one knows exactly what they are, or how Walker bound them to his will, to serve the Authorities. Most likely rumour is that they came through a Timeslip from a far future, where the sun has gone out and an endless night has fallen over all the Earth. And the Shadow Men are all that live in that terrible dark.”
“I wish I hadn’t asked,” said Tommy. “So? How do we fight them?”
“Actually, I was hoping you’d have some ideas,” I said, glancing quickly around me. “I don’t know anyone who’s ever beaten a Shadow Man.”
“Well try something, dammit!”
I looked at all the gaudy neon signs surrounding us, and muttered a few Words of Power under my breath. Immediately every sign flared up simultaneously, the bright letters and shapes blazing fiercely against the night. The signs sparked and buzzed loudly, the sheer force of the light driving back the dark like a Technicolor dawn, but it didn’t even slow the advance of the Shadow Men. One by one the signs overloaded, exploding or sputtering out in showers of sparks, shutting down all the length of the street. And the night that returned was even darker than before.
I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out three salamander eggs I’d been saving for a rainy day. I threw them at the nearest Shadow Men, and they exploded like incendiaries, blazing up with incandescent light and heat. The Shadow Men rolled right over them, swallowing them up in a second.
I breathed deeply, trying to steady myself, and looked at Tommy.
“I have an idea,” he said, reluctantly. By now he was standing so close to me he was practically pushing me over. “But I have to say, it is rather … risky.”
“Do it,” I said. “I’m not going into those Shadows alive.”
Tommy frowned, concentrating, and I could feel his gift activating, as though suddenly there was a third person standing there with us. The Shadow Men were all around us now, almost close enough to touch us. I could feel my heart hammering in my chest, and I could hardly get my breath. Tommy spoke slowly, thoughtfully, as though saying the words aloud made them certain, incontrovertible.
“I deal in probabilities. In the nature of shifting reality. I persuade the world to see things my way. And since there is a small but very real chance that we could have got to Time Tower Square
before the Shadow Men could find us … I believe that is what really happened.”
And in the blink of an eye, we were somewhere else. The dark street was gone, replaced by the quiet cul-de-sac that was Time Tower Square
. Tommy let out his breath in a long, shuddering sigh.
“That’s it. We are here. All previous possibilities are now redundant, never happened.”
His gift shut down, like a dangerous animal reluctantly going to sleep. I looked carefully around me, but all the shadows in the Square were only shadows. A few people were strolling up and down, intent on their own business. They hadn’t noticed anything, because there had been nothing to notice. We’d always been there. I looked respectfully at Tommy Oblivion.
“You can persuade reality itself to go along with your wishes? That’s one hell of a gift you’ve got there, Tommy. Why aren’t you running things in the Nightside?”
“Because using my gift that way diminishes me,” Tommy said tiredly. “Every time I use it, the less real I become. Less certain, less anchored in reality. Use the gift too much, and I’d become too unlikely, too impossible to exist.”
It was clear from his voice that he didn’t intend to discuss the matter any further, so I turned away and studied the Time Tower. It didn’t look like much, just a squat stone structure of maybe three storeys, brooding ominously over a backwater square. The few people passing by gave it plenty of room, though. The Tower had serious layers of protection to ensure that only Old Father Time had control over Time travel. It was said by some, and believed by many, that you could blow up the whole world and the Time Tower would still be standing there, unaffected. Most people couldn’t even find the place if they approached it thinking bad thoughts.
Just an old sto
ne building, with no windows and only the one, anonymous, door. But the last time I’d been here, during the angel war, I’d seen an angel crucified against the stone wall of the Tower, with dozens of cold iron nails hammered through its arms and legs, and its severed wings lying on the ground beneath it. They play for keeps in the Nightside, and especially in Time Tower Square
.
I’d never traveled purposefully in Time before. Just the thought of what I was planning to do unnerved me, but I had to do it. More and more I was convinced that all the answers to all my questions could be found at the very beginning of the Nightside, in that moment when it was created by my missing mother, for reasons of her own. My mother, who might or might not be that Biblical myth known as Lilith. I only had her word for it, after all. I needed to know, to be sure.
The only thing I did know for sure, concerning my mother, was that she had been banished from the Nightside once before, long and long ago, thrown out of reality and into Limbo for centuries. Maybe I could learn how to do that again. I was sure I could learn all kinds of things by observing how and why my mother created the Nightside, all those millennia ago. If I could persuade Old Father Time to send me all the way back to that fateful moment, there had to be all kinds of useful information there, and maybe even weapons I could use against my mother. There had to be. I had to stop her bringing about that awful future I’d seen in the Timeslip, the future where I destroyed the Nightside and maybe all the world, too, because of who my mother was.
“Bang, you’re dead,” said a familiar cold voice.
Tommy and I both looked round sharply as Suzie Shooter stepped unhurriedly forward out of a concealing shadow. My old friend Suzie, also known as Shotgun Suzie and Oh Christ it’s her, run. The most deadly and efficient bounty hunter in the Nightside, and certainly the most pitiless. She’d track a bounty all the way down to Hell itself if the money was right. She looked icily impressive, as always, a tall blonde Valkyrie in black motorcycle leathers, heavily adorned with steel chains and studs, complete with knee-length boots with steel-capped toes, and two bandoliers of bullets criss-crossing her impressive chest. Grenades dangled from her belt. Her face was striking rather than pretty, with a strong bone structure and a determined jaw, and the coldest blue eyes I ever saw. She kept her long hair back out of her face with a leather band, fashioned from the skin of the first man she ever killed.
She was covering us both with her pump-action shotgun, and I didn’t like her smile.
“Hello, Suzie,” I said. “You’re looking very fit. Been busy?”
“You know how it is,” said Suzie. “So many people that need killing, and so little time.” She lowered her shotgun. “You’re getting soft, Taylor. Was a time I wouldn’t have been able to sneak up on you like that.”
“I’ve been somewhat preoccupied,” I said, trying for dignity. “Killed anyone interesting recently?”
She shrugged easily and slipped her shotgun over her shoulder and into the holster hanging down her back. “No-one that matters. There’s a lot of hysteria around. People saying the End Times are coming, like we haven’t heard that before. But it’s definitely good for business. Lot of people out there determined to pay off old scores while they’ve still got the chance. I’ve been looking for you, Taylor.”
“Oh yes?” I said. Suzie might be an old friend, but it wasn’t always wise to drop your guard around her. She only separated her business and private lives when it suited her. Five years ago I ran away from the Nightside, away from all the troubles and unanswered questions of my life, and I left with a bullet in my back from Suzie’s gun.
“I’ve been hearing rumours about you,” Suzie said lazily. “Disquieting rumours. About you and your mother, and what’s going to happen now she’s revealed herself at last… I went to Strangefellows, but you’d already been and gone. I could tell you’d been there; they were still clearing up the wreckage. So I asked around, and after bruising my knuckles a few times, I learned you were planning a trip through Time. So I came here and waited. I’ve decided that if you’re determined to do this incredibly risky and stupid thing, you’re going to need serious backup. And they don’t come any more serious than me.”
“True,” I said. “But this isn’t for a client or a case, Suzie. This is personal.”
“So no money, then. Ah, what the hell. I owe you one, Taylor.”
Tommy’s ears pricked up, sensing gossip. “Really? How intriguing … Do tell.”
“Don’t go there,” I said.
Suzie drew her shotgun in a blur of motion and stuck both barrels up Tommy’s nose. “Right.”
“Of course,” said Tommy, standing very still. “None of my business, I’m sure.”
Suzie put her shotgun away again. “I don’t normally do warnings. I must be mellowing.”
“It had to happen eventually,” I said.
“Everyone’s so touchy these days,” said Tommy, fingering his nose gingerly.
“Who is this person?” said Suzie.
“This is Tommy Oblivion, the existential detective,” I said. “He’s coming along. He has a very useful gift. Don’t break him.”
The two of them studied each other dubiously. I looked at Suzie, and the cold hand that had gripped my heart the moment I set eyes on her squeezed a little more tightly. The last time I saw Suzie Shooter, it had been a version of her from the future. The bad future I encountered in the Timeslip. The future Suzie had been terribly injured, and rebuilt by my Enemies to be an engine of destruction. A weapon they sent back through Time to kill me, before I could do whatever terrible thing it was that would lead to their destroyed future. And the awful thing was, that future Suzie had volunteered for everything that had been done to her. Looking at her now, so whole and hale and hearty, so alive … I couldn’t bear to think of her being hurt and used in such a way. Not because of me.
“You don’t have to come along, Suzie,” I said, abruptly. “This one is going to be dangerous. More so than anything you’ve ever faced. And there really isn’t any money involved…”
“Not everything is about money,” said Suzie. “You need me, Taylor. You know you do.”
“The odds are stacked against us…”
“Cool,” said Suzie. “You always know how to give a girl a good time, Taylor.”
I looked at her for a long moment. “You do know I would stand between you and all harm, don’t you, Suzie?”
She stirred uncomfortably. “What brought that on? You start getting sentimental, and I’ll shoot you myself. You need to be razor-sharp and dangerous for Time travel.”
I nodded. Suzie wasn’t very good at emotions, for good reasons. So I had to be strong for both of us. And there and then I swore to myself that I would die before I let her become the terrible thing I’d seen from the future. I nodded briskly to her and changed the subject.
“Did you ever find that elusive bounty of yours, Big Butcher Hogg?”
Suzie grinned unpleasantly. “I got a good price for his head. And an even better price for his heart, lungs, and kidneys.”
Tommy looked at me. “Is she joking?”
“I find it better not to ask,” I said.
“It’s a good thing I’m here,” said Suzie, glaring disparagingly at Tommy. “I heard you nearly got your head handed to you on your last case. See what happens when you try to get the job done without me? I mean—Sinner, Madman, and Pretty Poison as your backup? What the hell were you thinking?”
I shrugged. “I needed someone scary, and you weren’t around.”
She sniffed loudly. “Is it true about your mother? That she’s Lilith?”
“Looks that way.”
“I had to look her up,” Suzie admitted. “I only knew the name from an old Genesis song. I hate it when the world starts going Old Testament on my arse; those guys are hard-core.” She looked like she was about to say something else, then shook her head sharply. “Come on, we need to get moving. If I can track you here, you can bet your enemies will, too. T
here’s a lot of people in the Nightside who want you dead, Taylor. Even more than usual.”
“Anyone interesting?” I said.
Suzie started counting them off on her fingers. “First up, we have Sandra Chance, the consulting necromancer. She’s mad at you because you destroyed that revolting old Power, the Lamentation, on your last case. (And when you’ve got the time, I’d really like to know how you did that. The Lamentation was seriously creepy.) Anyway, it seems she had some kind of relationship with it, and she’s sworn a blood oath against you.”
“Bad news there, old thing,” said Tommy. “You’re not even safe in your grave, when that demented little filly is out to get you.”
“Shut up,” I said. I find a little effete goes a long way.
“Then,” said Suzie, glaring at Tommy, “there are all the very well connected families of the thirteen Reasonable Men you killed. These grieving families have been putting out some serious paper on you, backed up by very serious money. Enough to tempt every bounty hunter in the Nightside. The families want you dead, and they aren’t at all fussy about the details. They did try to hire me.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“I was busy,” said Suzie.
“But for the right money you’d take me down?”
Suzie smiled briefly. “For the right price I’d take God down. But I’d have to be paid a hell of a lot to go up against you, Taylor.”
“Well,” I said. “That’s reassuring. Who else is after me?”
“Walker, for the Authorities, but then you probably already know that.”
I nodded. “He sent the Shadow Men after me.”
It was Suzie’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “You defeated the Shadow Men?”
“Not as such,” I said. “We ran away.”
“Finally getting smart in your old age,” said Suzie. “I wouldn’t go up against the Shadow Men for all the gold in Walker’s fillings. In fact, a trip through Time is probably the safest thing you could do right now. Even Walker has no power over Old Father Time.” She glanced disparagingly at Tommy again. “You sure you want to drag him along with us, Taylor?”