The Bride Wore Black Leather

  “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised the news is out,” I said. “Nothing travels faster in the Nightside than bad news.”

  “Did you really murder the Great Victorian Adventurer?” said Alex. “Tell me you didn’t, John; tell me this is all some terrible mistake.”

  “It’s all some terrible mistake,” I said. “Really. I did kill him, but . . .”

  “John! How could you?”

  “He asked me to do it! He was dying anyway; and it was the only way to save a whole hospital full of innocents.”

  “You killed Julien Advent!”

  “It wasn’t like that!”

  I did my best to explain about the Sun King, and what he meant to do, and the power he put into Julien . . . but I could tell it sounded unlikely, even for the kind of cases I usually get involved in. I could tell Alex was having trouble believing it. I wanted to say You had to be there . . . “The official story is that you murdered Julien Advent in cold blood,” said Alex. “Though no-one seems too sure why. I know you were always jealous of him, John, but . . .”

  “You really think I’m capable of something like that?” I said.

  “You’ve done worse,” said Alex. And I had no answer to that.

  “It’s like the whole Nightside wants you dead,” said Alex. “The Authorities, or what’s left of them, are really mad at you. First, you let King of Skin die, right in front of you; and now you’ve murdered Julien Advent? They think you’ve gone rogue, and possibly feral . . .”

  “How big a reward have they put on my head?” I asked, honestly curious.

  “Big enough to tempt anyone,” said Alex. “If I didn’t have a bar to run . . .”

  “I can’t believe I chose you as my best man,” I said.

  “You don’t really think you’re still getting married tomorrow, do you?” said Alex, incredulously. “The only church service you’re likely to be attending in the near future involves a big hole in the ground and a priest trying to find something positive to say about you.”

  “Alex,” I said. “What am I going to do?”

  “You can’t come here,” Alex said immediately. “It’s the first place they’d look. And I’ve only just got the place cleared up after the last fight you started. Maybe . . . you should leave the Nightside. Go hide out in London Proper, until things calm down a bit. You could always claim sanctuary at Castle Inconnu, with the London Knights. They owe you, after that business with Excalibur. And they’re far enough outside the Nightside they might not be tainted by the Sun King’s influence. If that really is what’s behind all this . . .”

  And then his voice dropped away suddenly, as someone else snatched the phone from him. A cold ghostly voice came clearly to me, more than usually animated with furious emotions.

  “Julien Advent was my friend!” said Razor Eddie. “And a better man than you or I will ever be. And you killed him. I know where you are, Taylor. I’m coming for you. And I will soak my razor in your blood.”

  His voice cut off as Alex wrestled the phone away from him. I could hear them shouting at each other, then Alex’s voice returned.

  “Get the hell out of my bar, Eddie, or I will have Betty and Lucy frog-march you out, then hose you down with something seriously disinfectant! God, you stink . . . You still there, John? He’s gone. Disappeared right in front of me, leaving only his stench behind. A smell so strong it feels like it wants to make friends with you and follow you home. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so angry before . . . It seems like a lot more people admire Julien Advent dead than were ever prepared to say so while he was still alive. John, have you talked to Suzie yet?”

  “I don’t want her involved,” I said immediately. “She’d kill anyone to protect me.”

  “Yeah,” said Alex. “But would she kill everyone?”

  “Probably,” I said.

  “Suddenly, I have cold chills all over me.”

  “I have to find the Sun King,” I said. “Stop him, kill him . . . But how the hell am I supposed to do that when it seems like all my old friends and enemies are out on the streets looking to stop and kill me?”

  “I suppose you could hide out here, for a while,” said Alex. “In the cellars under the bar. Given that both Merlin Satanspawn and Arthur Pendragon were both buried down there for centuries, undetected, it seems likely there’s enough power left behind to hide you . . .”

  “Thanks, Alex,” I said, and I meant it. “But the way the Sun King’s got everyone stirred up, I don’t think all of Strangefellows’ protections put together could keep them out if they did track me there. The whole world could turn up at your door, baying for my blood. I wouldn’t want to bring that down on you.”

  “Does this mean I’m reinvested as best man?” said Alex.

  “Don’t lose the ring,” I said.

  I broke the connection and sat on my tombstone for a while, hefting the phone in one hand while my mind chased in all directions at once. The phone rang. It was Suzie. Her voice sounded cool and calm as always.

  “I’ve heard,” she said. “Did you really kill Julien Advent in cold blood?”

  “Of course not!” I said. “How could you even think that of me?”

  “It didn’t sound like you,” said Suzie.

  “I killed him at his own request, to save a whole bunch of innocents from being killed.”

  “That sounds like Advent,” said Suzie. “Where are you, John?”

  “You’d better stay out of this, Suzie. I can handle it.”

  “Of course you can. Where are you, John?”

  It was the second time she’d asked, and something in her voice made all the hackles rise up on the back of my neck. “Why do you want to know, Suzie?”

  “Because the Authorities have hired me to track you down,” said Shotgun Suzie. “My biggest bounty ever.”

  “And you said yes?”

  “It’s a really big reward,” said Suzie. “Biggest I’ve ever been offered. And it is what I do best. It’s a matter of professional pride, John. I can’t let anyone else get to you first.”

  “And you never bring your bounties back alive,” I said.

  I cut her off and shut down the phone, just in case. It wasn’t like I wanted to talk to anyone anyway. I simply sat there, staring at nothing, trying not to think, trying not to feel. Because it felt like someone had punched my heart out. I’d never felt so alone.

  I rocked back and forth, hugging myself tightly to keep from falling apart. Tears burned my eyes, but I was damned if I’d give in to them. Instead, I clung to the rage within me, warming my heart on its heat. I had to stop the Sun King. To save the Nightside and avenge Julien Advent. I would stop him, then put him down, in the worst and messiest way I could think of. And after that, the whole damned Nightside and everyone in it could go straight to Hell, for all I cared.

  I looked up sharply. There was a new presence on the air, a new power forcing its way into the cemetery dimension. Something was coming my way, cutting its way through Space and Time to get to me, and I knew who it was, who it had to be. Light burst suddenly into the cemetery gloom, bright neon glare from the Nightside, falling through a narrow gap that split the air before me from top to bottom. The gap stretched wide, forced apart by one man’s unstoppable will; and through that hole came Razor Eddie, the Punk God of the Straight Razor. His feet crunched loudly on the gravel before me, and the gap slammed shut behind him, cutting off the light. Razor Eddie, a grey presence in a filthy coat, with dark eyes and a haunted face, holding his pearl-handled straight razor out before him. The steel blade shone supernaturally bright. Eddie moved slowly towards me, cold and implacable as an avenging angel, and it seemed to me I’d never seen him look so angry, so . . . emotional, before. I never knew he had it in him.

  I got up from the headstone, unhurriedly, and waited for him to come to me. I can honestly say it never even occurred to me to run, to use my gift to get away, even though that would have been the sane thing to do. He stopped at the very edge of the g
ravel path and stared at me as though he’d never seen me before. He hefted the shining razor; and it occurred to me that the razor’s magics shouldn’t work here, in the face of so many defensive magics. Instead, it glared more fiercely than I’d ever seen before. Fuelled by the rage of the god who held it. Eddie held it up, so I could get a good look at the killing thing.

  “I am a god,” he said, in his ghostly whispering voice. “People tend to forget that the Punk God of the Straight Razor isn’t just a title. I take my power with me, wherever I go. I exist to protect the innocent and punish the guilty. I have never allowed anything to get in my way.”

  “You won’t even give an old friend the benefit of the doubt?” I said, standing very still.

  “The friend I thought I had, the man I thought I knew, would never have murdered Julien Advent in cold blood.”

  “I didn’t!”

  “Liar.” Razor Eddie smiled at me slowly. “What a long, strange road it’s been, John. Sometimes friends, sometimes allies, sometimes enemies. Typical enough, I suppose, for the Nightside. And now here we are, ready to go head to head, like in the prophecy . . . You should have listened, John. Dagon is never wrong about these things.” His smile slowly widened into a cold and remorseless thing. “All these years we’ve danced the dance, circling around each other . . . You must have known it would come to this, eventually. You must have wondered, which one of us would win, in a fight to the death?”

  “No,” I said. “I can honestly say, the thought never crossed my mind.”

  “Liar,” said Eddie, almost fondly.

  “Eddie,” I said. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Yes, I do,” he said. “For Julien Advent. Who never once approved of me, and quite right, too.”

  He launched himself at me while he was still speaking, an old trick, but I was ready for that; and we went fighting up and down the gravel path, through the cold grey silence of the cemetery. And the fog swirled around us like the disturbed waters where sharks are circling with bad intent.

  I knew I couldn’t face his razor, so I kept falling back before it, dodging and ducking where necessary. The brightly shining blade sliced clean through the top of a headstone, when I put it between myself and Eddie; and the blade hacked off the top corner in a moment, cutting through solid stone like it was paper. I kept moving, darting this way and that, trying to stay alive long enough to come up with some kind of strategy. He wasn’t even trying, yet. He was playing with me. So, when in doubt, raise the stakes. I stepped deliberately off the gravel path, into and among the graves, daring Eddie to follow. I could See the hidden dangers, but he couldn’t, for all his Punk Godness. He didn’t even hesitate. He stepped off the gravel path and straight onto a land mine.

  The explosion was deafeningly loud on the quiet, and a great cloud of pulverised stone and earth filled the air. Bits of gravel rained down like shrapnel. And Razor Eddie came walking forward out of the dust cloud, like a wolf out of hiding. Untouched and unscathed, like the murderous force he was. I kept backing away, and he kept coming after me; and the ground between us erupted, as a rock golem, a clumsy, misshapen thing, twelve feet tall and more, with a featureless face and huge fists like mauls, rose out of the dark earth between us to confront him. It went for Razor Eddie, and he moved so quickly he was only a blur. His razor flashed like lightning, sparking on the air, everywhere at once. And when Razor Eddie stopped moving, the rock golem was gone, leaving only piles of scattered rock pieces to show where it had been. Very small, finely cut rock pieces. Razor Eddie smiled at me, and a cold hand clutched my heart.

  I retreated further into the cemetery, being very careful where I put my feet, hiding among the looming mausoleums and family crypts. Razor Eddie came after me, cutting his way through a forest of tombstones and carving the sad faces off sculpted angels because they got in his way. I was still thinking furiously. I could have killed him. I’m pretty sure I could have found a way to kill him. Eddie had his razor, but I had all kinds of weapons, and a lifetime’s supply of dirty tricks. But he was still my friend, in his own strange, cold way, and I didn’t want to kill him. So I did what I always do, when I’m backed into a corner—improvise with extreme prejudice.

  I goaded him into rushing me. “Getting old, Eddie! Getting soft and slow. Getting past it!”

  He rushed forward as I finally stood my ground. And at the last moment I whipped off my white trench coat and threw it over Razor Eddie. It wrapped itself around him as he crashed to a halt, blinded and confused, fighting the coat’s enveloping folds and getting nowhere. Now, my coat has enough nasty magics and awful protections built into it that it could probably have won the fight on its own; but to be on the safe side, I picked up a chunk of stone that Eddie had sliced off a tombstone, and hit him over the head with it.

  Eddie slumped to his knees, but he didn’t stop struggling, so I hit him again, putting all my strength and weight into it. The impact jarred my hand and arm painfully, and Eddie fell forward onto the ground between the graves and lay still. I took my coat back off him, and put it back on again.

  “Don’t try and kid me you’re dead,” I said finally. “I might have rattled your brains a bit, Mr. high-and-mighty Punk God of the knife with attachment for getting stones out of horses’ hooves, but you don’t get taken out of the game that easily.”

  I kicked his straight razor away from him, and his head came up immediately, to fix me with a cold dark glare. Blood ran thickly down the side of his face.

  “Leave that alone!” he said. “Damn you, John. You only won by cheating, and you know it!”

  “You always were a bad loser, Eddie,” I said. “The operative word is won. So I suggest you take a nice little rest until you’ve got all your marbles together again. Don’t try and follow me. Or I might have to do something more permanent to you.”

  “I will find you!”

  “No you won’t,” I said. “Good-bye, Eddie.”

  I used my gift to find the tear he’d made in Space and Time with his razor, to let himself into the cemetery dimension. It was still there. I could See it clearly, hanging on the air over the gravel path. The wounds Razor Eddie makes in the world take time to heal. I moved quickly back between the graves and onto the path, pushed the sides of the gap apart, and squeezed up my eyes against the bright flare of light that fell through into the grey cemetery world. I looked back, just in time to see Razor Eddie stretch out one hand and the straight razor fly through the air to slap into his palm. Definitely time to be going. I stepped through the gap and back into the Nightside, letting the tear close behind me. I used my gift to find a way to close and seal it permanently, so he couldn’t come straight after me, and only then looked around to see where I’d ended up. I was pretty much where I’d expected, in the street outside the Necropolis itself. Ugly great building; a hulking brick monument to our continuing fascination with death.

  I didn’t hear the car coming, but long years of experience surviving in the Nightside made me look round suddenly. And there, coming straight at me at speed, was the great shining silver bullet of Dead Boy’s futuristic car. I didn’t hear it approach because it had no wheels, floating serenely on super-scientific energy fields, and an engine that barely murmured at the best of times. I threw myself out of its way, and the car’s front bumper hit me a glancing blow as it shot past. The impact sent me sprawling, rolling over and over. I hit hard and took my time coming to a stop; afterwards I lay there, gasping for breath. My hip hurt like hell, but I didn’t think it was broken. And while I lay there, trying to get my thoughts back together again, the car swung smoothly round at the end of the street, moved unhurriedly back towards me, and stopped a respectful distance away. The driver’s door swung smoothly open, and Dead Boy lurched out, resplendent in his purple greatcoat with a black rose at the lapel. He sauntered down the street towards me, his face completely relaxed and utterly remorseless.

  “My car has the best tracking systems in the world,” he said easily. “She kne
w where you were going to reappear before you did. I’ve been parked at the end of this street for ages, waiting for you to turn up. Killer.”

  “It wasn’t like that!” I said, forcing myself up onto one knee, and checking myself over for damages.

  “Oh please,” said Dead Boy. “Don’t embarrass yourself. I’ve heard the story of how Advent died too many times, from people I have every reason to trust. Julien Advent was a good man. He taught me about honour. He believed in me even though I was dead. He was always there for me . . . Even when you ran away from the Nightside and hid out in London Proper for all those years. He never abandoned me! He taught me how to live again!”

  “I didn’t murder him,” I said, somehow clambering up onto my feet again. It had been a long day. I stood swaying before him, meeting his unwavering gaze with my own. “After all we’ve been through, after all the things we’ve faced together; can’t you trust me?”

  “You?” said Dead Boy, and tired as I was, I had to admit he had a point.

  He moved suddenly forward, crossing the intervening space between us in a moment. He took two good handfuls of my coat lapels and held me easily in the air with his unnatural strength. My feet kicked helplessly a good yard above the ground. I grabbed his wrists with my hands, but it was like gripping cold steel. I wrestled against his grip, but couldn’t break it. I let go, and punched him in the side of the head, with as much strength as the awkward angle would allow. I hurt my hand, but I didn’t hurt him.

  He laughed at me. “Come on, John; you know better than that. I don’t feel pain. I don’t feel anything unless I take my special pills. But I think I will feel something when I kill you. I will feel something when I avenge Julien Advent.”

  “He never could stand you,” I said.

  He threw my against the wall behind me, on the other side of the street. I hit hard; and the world went away for a while. When it came back, I was lying in the middle of the road. My face hurt like hell, and blood was dripping from my mouth and nose. Dead Boy had been busy while I was away. I looked carefully around me, without raising my head. Dead Boy was standing over me, looking down the street towards his futuristic car. I was already recovering, but he didn’t know that. He didn’t know about the werewolf blood. He couldn’t know how quickly I could put myself back together again. Dead Boy laughed softly and looked down at me.