Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

  “Oh I do,” I assured her. “I do.”

  I put my back against the bar and looked out over the place. Just another night in the oldest bar in the world. Alex’s muscle-bound bouncers, Betty and Lucy Coltrane, were throwing out a bunch of burly masked Mexican wrestlers, and making them cry like little girls in the process. Never mess with the Coltranes. Especially when they’re wearing their ROLLERBALL HELLCAT MUD-WRESTLING CHAMPIONS T-shirts. Not far away, a cyborg with glowing golden eyes ordered another bottle of neat ethanol from Alex, in a strange buzzing voice. He’d dropped in from a possible future via a Timeslip, and was currently trying to mend his left leg with a pair of pliers and a sonic screwdriver someone had left behind in the bar. I was actually pleased to see him. It was good to know that other futures, apart from the terrible devastated future I feared so much, were still possible.

  Not far enough away, half a dozen flower fairies in drooping petal outfits were singing a raucous Victorian drinking song, buzzed up on pollen. Soon they’d start getting nasty, and go looking for a Water Baby to beat up. Coming down the metal stairs into the bar proper was Kid Psychoses, in his tatterdemalion rags, doing his rounds and peddling his appalling wares. The Kid sold brief interludes of mental illness, for people who wanted to go really out of their heads. He once told me he started out selling mental health, but there was no market for it in the Nightside. I could have told him that.

  And the King and Queen of America were passing through, smiling and waving.

  “So,” said Alex, freshening my glass, “what was the Nightside like, in the Past?”

  “Messy,” said Suzie. “In every possible sense of the word.”

  “Kill anyone interesting?”

  “You’d be surprised,” I said. “But a gentleman doesn’t kill and tell. Have you seen Tommy Oblivion recently?”

  “Not since he left here with you earlier. Was I supposed to?”

  Tommy Oblivion, the existential private eye, had gone back into the Past with Suzie and me, but we’d had a falling-out. He accused me of being cold and manipulative and more dangerous than the people I was trying to stop. I had to send him back to the Present. It was either that or kill him, and I’m trying to be one of the good guys, these days. But I had a feeling I might have missed the mark, just a bit. I could remember Tommy appearing in this bar quite suddenly, out of nowhere, some months back when I was working the Nightingale’s Lament case. Back then, he’d threatened to hunt me down and kill me. I’d wondered why, but now I think I knew.

  I sighed and shrugged mentally. Tommy Oblivion could take a number and get in line. There was never any shortage of people trying to kill me, in the Nightside. There was a loud creaking of heavy leathers as Suzie moved in beside me, her back to the bar, gin bottle in hand. It was already half-empty, and she had a cigarette in one corner of her mouth. Smoke curled up slowly past her sealed-shut eye.

  “I’ll find you a spell,” I said. “To repair your face.”

  “I’m thinking of keeping it,” Suzie said calmly. “It’ll help my image as a desperate character and ruthless killer.”

  “Your image doesn’t need any help.”

  “You always know the right things to say, Taylor. But I’ve never cared about being pretty. At least now my outside matches my inside.”

  “Suzie…I won’t have you hurt, because of me.”

  She looked at me coldly. “You start getting protective, Taylor, and I will drop you like a hot elephant turd.”

  “Speaking of really big shits,” said Alex, “Walker was in here a few hours ago, John. Looking for you.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. Walker, that perfect city gent in his smart city suit and bowler hat, represented the Authorities. His word was law in the Nightside, and peopled lived and died and worse at his whim. They say he once made a corpse sit up and answer his questions. He doesn’t approve of me, but he’s thrown some work my way from time to time, when he’s needed a deniable and completely expendable agent. He was mad at me at the moment, but he’d get over it. Or he wouldn’t, in which case one of us would almost certainly end up killing the other.

  “He brought his people in here and had them search the place from top to bottom,” said Alex, sounding distinctly aggrieved. “Hence my need for a thorough and very expensive cleanup crew, just before you dropped in.”

  “You let them search your bar?” I said.

  Alex must have heard the surprise in my voice, because he had the grace to look a little ashamed. “Hey, he brought a lot of people with him, all right? Serious people with serious weaponry. Some of whom are still missing, presumed eaten. I warned them not to go down into the cellars.”

  I shook my head. Walker must be getting really desperate to lay hands on me if he was prepared to raid a bar protected by Merlin Satanspawn. Merlin had been buried in the cellars under the bar, after the fall of Camelot; but being dead doesn’t necessarily keep you from being a major player in the Nightside. I wouldn’t go down into those cellars with a gun at my back.

  “I have to go take a piss,” I announced. “I’ve been holding it in for over two thousand years, and my back teeth are floating.”

  “Thank you for sharing that with us,” said Alex. “Try and keep some of it off the floor this time.”

  I headed for the toilets at the back of the bar. Without making a big thing of it, people moved slowly but deliberately out of my way. Partly because of my carefully maintained reputation, but mostly because bad things had a habit of happening to and around me, and wise people kept a safe distance. I pushed open the door with the stylised male genitals painted on it, and headed for the row of stalls. I’ve never been one for urinals. Far too easy to be ambushed. I took a quick glance around me, breathing through my mouth to avoid the worst of the smell, but it seemed I had the place to myself. The small, dimly lit stone chamber looked as disgusting as ever. I don’t think Alex ever cleans the place; he just fumigates it now and again with a flamethrower. The bare stone walls dripped with condensation, and the floor was wet with a whole bunch of liquids that had nothing to do with condensation. The graffiti hadn’t improved either. Someone had daubed the Yellow Sign on one wall, and beside it someone had painted Gods do it in mysterious ways. Next to the row of stalls, someone else had written For a good time, knock on any door.

  I entered the first stall, and locked the door securely behind me. I then unzipped and attended to business, letting out a long sigh of relief. First rule of the private eye—always go when you can, because you never know when you might have to stand stakeout. On the wall above the toilet, someone had written What are you looking up here for? Ashamed? I smiled, shook off the last few drops and put it away, then stood very still. I hadn’t heard or seen anything, but somehow I knew I wasn’t alone in the stall any more. In the Nightside, you either develop survival instincts fast, or you don’t develop past childhood. I started to reach for one of the little surprises I keep in my coat pockets for occasions like this, then stopped as something small and hard pressed into my back, directly above the kidney.

  “There’s something small and hard pressing into my back,” I said. “And I’m really hoping it’s a gun.”

  “Heh-heh-heh,” said a soft breathy voice behind me. “I can always rely on you for a little quip, Mr. Taylor. Helps the business go down so much more smoothly. Yes, it is a gun, and quite a special gun, I’ll have you know. An energy pistol from some cyborg’s future that I acquired just for this occasion. Heh-heh. So don’t even try your little trick of removing the bullets from my gun. Because it hasn’t got any.”

  “Sneaky Pete,” I said, grimacing. “Bounty hunter, sneak thief, and all-around scumbag. How did you get past that locked door?”

  “I didn’t, Mr. Taylor. I was already hiding in the next stall. Heh-heh. Sneaked over the partition while you were…occupied. Heh. You know no-one ever sees me coming, Mr. Taylor. I have trained with ninjas. I am a thing of mists and shadows.”

  “You’re a sneaky little bastard,??
? I said firmly. “And lower than a worm’s tit. What do you want with me, Pete?”

  “Why, you of course, Mr. Taylor. There is an awful lot of money being offered for your head, not necessarily attached to your body, and I mean to collect it. Oh yes. Now, we can either walk out of here together, nice and easy with not a word to your companions, to where I have transport waiting…or I can carry you out. Or at least, part of you. Heh-heh. Your choice, Mr. Taylor.”

  “You mind if I flush first?” I said.

  “Always ready with a cheerful quip! I do so enjoy doing business with a fellow professional. Makes it all so much more civilised. Heh-heh. Be my guest, Mr. Taylor. But carefully, yes?”

  I leaned forward slowly and flushed the toilet. And while Sneaky Pete’s attention was fixed on what I was doing with my hands, I fired up the spell I normally use for taking bullets out of guns, took all of the water flushing through the toilet and dumped the lot of it in Sneaky Pete’s lungs. The thing pressing into my back disappeared abruptly as he fell backwards, making horrible gurgling noises. I spun round, ready to grab the energy gun, but his hands were empty. There never had been a gun, just a finger poking me in the back. Sneaky Pete. He sat down on the floor abruptly, water spilling out of his mouth, scrabbling frantically with his empty hands. I considered him for a moment. Bounty hunter. Sneak thief. Peeping Tom and blackmailer. He might not have killed me himself, but he would have handed me over to be killed without a second thought…I sighed, placed my foot against his chest and pushed hard. Water gushed out of him, and after a series of really nasty choking noises, he started breathing again.

  I let him live. I didn’t like to think I was getting soft, but…maybe I needed to convince myself that I wasn’t my mother’s son.

  I left the toilets and returned to the bar. I gave Alex Morrisey my best hard look. “I just had a run-in with Sneaky Pete in the toilet, and not in a good way. Is there perhaps something you haven’t got around to telling me yet?”

  “Ah,” said Alex. “Yes, there’s been a whole lot of bounty hunters in and out of here recently. Apparently the rich and very well connected families of the thirteen Reasonable Men you killed, for perfectly good reasons I’m sure, have got together and placed a truly impressive bounty on your head.”

  “How much?” said Suzie. I looked at her, and she shrugged. “Sorry. Force of habit.”

  I was about to say something sharp when fortunately my mobile phone rang. I answered it with my usual “What?”

  “Taylor,” said Walker, in his smooth and very civilised voice. “So glad you’ve returned safely from your little trip into the Past.”

  “Walker,” I said. “Word does get around fast, doesn’t it? I didn’t think you knew my private number.”

  “I know everyone’s number. Comes with the job.”

  “I am not going to come in and give myself up to you and the Authorities. I have important things to do.”

  “Oh, I think you will, Taylor.”

  There was something in his voice…“What have you done, Walker?”

  “Only what you have forced me to do, to get your attention. I have reluctantly given the order for your delightful young secretary Cathy Barrett to be kidnapped. By now she will be in safe hands, being held somewhere very secure. Turn yourself in peacefully, and you have my word that she will be freed unharmed. But if you insist on making life difficult for me by continuing to defy me in this manner…Well, I’m afraid I can’t answer for the young lady’s continued well-being.”

  “You bastard.”

  “I only do what I have to, John. You know that.”

  “If anything happens to Cathy…”

  “That’s entirely up to you, isn’t it? I regret to inform you that the people entrusted with this kidnapping bear you a considerable amount of ill will. The longer you take to come to a decision, the more likely it is they’ll vent their spleen on her. And much as I might regret that…the situation is out of my hands. I have my orders, and my duty. Whatever happens…”

  I hung up on him. He had nothing else to say worth listening to. He was only keeping the conversation going in the hope his people would be able to track my location through my phone. I explained the situation to Suzie and Alex.

  “I can’t turn myself in,” I said. “I have to be free to operate if I’m going to stop Lilith. The whole Nightside’s at risk, and maybe the world, too. But I won’t, I can’t, abandon Cathy.”

  “Of course not,” said Suzie. “She’s your secretary.”

  “Your friend,” said Alex.

  “My daughter,” I said. “In every way that matters.”

  “Then we must go and get her,” said Suzie. “We can’t give in to threats like this. If people thought we could be pressured into doing things, they’d take advantage. So go on, Taylor. Do your thing.”

  I raised my gift, my single supernatural inheritance from my inhuman mother, and opened up my Sight. And through my third eye, my private eye, I looked out over the Nightside, searching for Cathy. I can find anyone, or anything, if I look hard enough. I don’t like to use my gift too often, because when I do I blaze so brightly in the dark that I am easy to see. And then my Enemies send agents to kill me. But for the moment, I was too mad to care.

  The Nightside spread out below me, naked to my Sight, and I looked down upon it like an angry god. Streets and squares and places within places, with people and things not at all people coming and going. Bars and clubs and more private establishments flashed past beneath my searching inner eye, houses and warehouses and lock-ups and dungeons, and no sign of Cathy anywhere. The Fae sparked briefly in the shadows, and the Awful Folk moved unhurriedly on their unguessable missions, invisible to the material world. I could feel Cathy’s presence now, all alone somewhere in the night, but I couldn’t seem to pin her down. I concentrated till my head ached, but finally I was forced to settle for a general location. Something or someone was blocking my gift, obscuring my Sight, and that was a new thing to me. I shut down my gift, and carefully re-established my mental shields. You can’t have an open mind in the Nightside. You never know what might walk in.

  “She’s somewhere near the Necropolis,” I said. “But I can’t be more specific than that.”

  Suzie raised an eyebrow. “That’s…unusual.”

  I nodded shortly. “Stands to reason Walker wouldn’t chose just anybody to hide Cathy from me.”

  “But Walker knows about your gift,” said Alex. “He must know you’ll come looking for her. It has to be a trap.”

  “Of course it’s a trap,” I said. “But I’ve been walking in and out of traps all my life. So, first Suzie and I will rescue Cathy, after making it clear to her kidnappers that getting involved in my business was a really bad idea, then…I will go walking up and down in the Nightside, and raise an army big enough to give even Walker nightmares.”

  “One thing first,” said Suzie.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “Do up your flies, Taylor.”

  TWO

  And Dead Men Rise Up Never

  Getting out of Strangefellows wasn’t going to be easy. Knowing Walker, it was a safe bet that all of the bar’s known and suspected exits were being watched by his people, heavily armed with guns, bombs, and spells of mass destruction. It was what I would have done. I said as much to Alex Morrisey, and he scowled even more fiercely than usual.

  “I know I’m going to regret this,” he said heavily, “but there is one way out of this bar I can guarantee Walker doesn’t know about. Because no-one does, except me. My family have run this place for generations, and given the weird shit and appalling trouble Strangefellows tends to attract, we’ve always appreciated the need for a swift, sudden, and surreptitious exit. So we’ve carefully maintained a centuries-old hidden exit, for use by us in the direst of emergencies, when it’s all gone to Hell in a handcart. Understand me, Taylor—the only reason I’m prepared to reveal it to you now is because I don’t want Walker’s people crashing back in here looking for you
, wrecking the place again. The quicker you’re out of here, the sooner we can all breathe easily.”

  “Understood, Alex,” I said. “This isn’t about friendship. It’s just business.”

  “Damn right,” said Alex. He beckoned for Suzie and me to join him behind the bar. “I wouldn’t want people to get the idea that I was going soft. That I could be taken advantage of.”

  “Perish the thought,” I said.

  “There is…one small drawback,” said Alex.

  “I knew it,” Suzie said immediately. “I knew there had to be a catch. We don’t have to go out through the sewers, do we? I’m really not in the mood to wrestle alligators again.”

  “Even worse,” said Alex. “We have to go down into the cellars.”

  Suzie and I both stopped short and looked at each other. Strangefellows’s cellars were infamous even in the Nightside; they were so dangerous and generally disturbing that most sane and sensible people wouldn’t enter them voluntarily without the holy hand grenade of St. Antioch in one hand and a tactical nuke in the other. Merlin Satanspawn was buried in the cellars, and he really didn’t care for visitors. Alex was the only one who went down there on a regular basis, and even he sometimes came back up pale and twitching.

  “I’ve got a better idea,” said Suzie. “Let’s go out the front door and fight our way through Walker’s people.”

  “He could have a whole army out there,” I said.

  “Somehow that doesn’t bother me nearly as much as it did a few minutes ago,” said Suzie. “I could handle an army.”

  “Well, yes, you probably could, in the right mood,” I said. “But we can’t rescue Cathy if Walker knows we’re coming. We need to stay under the radar, keep him off-balance. Lead the way, Alex.”