I drew the blade and held it out before me. Julien looked at it for a long moment, his eyes full of the golden glow of the sword. I would have let him hold it if he’d asked because of who and what he was; but he didn’t.
“No,” he said finally. “I’m not worthy.”
“Hell with that,” I said. “You’re a lot worthier than me, and I’m holding the bloody thing.”
“Put it away,” he said, and I did. He sighed heavily. “It is tempting; but a man should know his limitations. And not test himself. You need to know more about the sword you bear, John; and you can’t learn it here. You’re going to have to leave the Nightside, go out into London Proper, and speak with the London Knights.”
“That was the plan, before I got interrupted,” I said. “The whole replacing-Walker thing will have to wait till I get back.”
I was expecting an argument, but Julien nodded slowly. “I understand. It’s not an easy thing, to bear a legend like Excalibur. The London Knights ... are an interesting group. You could learn a lot from them. And, possibly, they might learn a few things from you. If you don’t kill each other first. I did work with them a few times, back in the day. Though they’ve changed a lot since Victoria sat on the Throne.”
“Could I get a letter of introduction from you?” I said. “Saying, This is a good man, despite everything you may have heard, done a lot of good things, please don’t kill him?”
“Ah,” said Julien. “I have to admit that the knights and I aren’t exactly on speaking terms these days. They don’t approve of me since I took up residence in the Nightside. They think I’ve fallen from the straight and narrow path, and I think they’re a bunch of arrogant, stuck-up prigs. But they do know their stuff. They are the last defenders of Camelot, after all.”
“No offence, Julien,” I said, “but I think I’ll pass on the letter.”
Julien looked at me seriously. “Watch yourself, John. The London Knights have done a lot of good in the world but strictly on their own terms. They see things very much in black and white, and have no time for any of the shades of grey.”
“Then I’ll just have to educate them,” I said cheerfully.
He sighed. “It’s all going to end in tears. I know it.”
THREE
The Memory That Bears the Gun Smoke’s Traces
I might be going back to the real world, but no-one said I had to feel good about it. London Proper never did feel like home to me. Home is where monsters dwell; home is where someone tries to kill you every day; home ... is where you belong. I’ve always known I belong in the shadows, along with all the other shades of grey.
But, in my business you go where the job takes you. So I headed for Whitechapel Underground Rail Station, with Suzie Shooter striding silently along beside me. She stared straight ahead, her face cold and composed and very dangerous, as always, and perhaps only I could recognise how much stress she was under. Suzie’s never been very demonstrative, except when she’s shooting people. It took her a long time to get on speaking terms with her emotions, and she still wasn’t sure what to do with some of them. And now here I was heading off into danger, into a part of my life she’d never known or shared, and I couldn’t let her come with me. I couldn’t, for all kinds of reasons. She wouldn’t lower herself to argue, and she had more pride than to sneak along after me, so she settled for escorting me to the station, to make sure no-one messed with me along the way. I didn’t say anything. How could I? I was always proud to have her walk beside me.
Everyone took one look at her face and gave us even more room than usual.
There are those who say Whitechapel was the first Underground railway station to be built in the Nightside, back in Victorian times, linking us to its duplicate in London Proper. Do I really need to tell you why they chose Whitechapel? The man currently known as Mr. Stab, the immortal uncaught serial killer of Old London Town, stuck a knife deep into the heart of the city, and while the blood was washed away long ago, the psychic wound remains. Back before the Underground, it was all hidden doors and secret gateways, and certain rather unpleasant methods provided by very private members-only clubs. Though there have always been weak spots in London Proper, places where anyone could take a wrong turn, walk down the wrong street, and end up in the night that never ends. Sin always finds a way.
“So,” Suzie said abruptly, still staring straight ahead, “Walker’s dead, and now you’re in charge. Didn’t see that one coming.”
“How about this,” I said, as casually as I could. “You’re going to need something to keep you occupied while I’m away. So I hereby deputise you to keep the peace while I’m gone. You can be Walker till I come back. Be tough but fair, and try not to shoot too many people.”
She turned her cold gaze on me. “You give me the nicest presents, John.”
“You can’t come with me, Suzie.”
“You’re going back into the outside world, the London of guns and gangs and knives in the back. You need me.”
“I’m all grown-up now, Suzie. I can cope. And I know how to fit in; you’ve lost that knack if you ever had it. I need to do my work under the radar, so I won’t be recognised or bothered by any of the outer world’s authorities. Official, or supernatural. Or, indeed, by any of the various enemies from my past who might still wish me ill.”
“You’re trying to reason with me,” said Suzie. “You know I don’t do reasonable.”
“I still know how to fake being normal, Suzie. You don’t.”
“I haven’t been back to the real world since I first found my way here,” said Suzie. “Fifteen years old, on the run from everyone and everything. My dead brother’s blood still wet on my hands. Don’t know why I waited so long ... I should have killed him the first time he forced himself on me. You’re right, John. I wouldn’t know what to do in that world any more. I prefer it here, where I can be the monster I always knew I was.”
I stopped, and she stopped with me. I looked her right in the eye, and held her cold gaze with my own.
“He was the monster, Suzie. You did what people are supposed to do: you killed the monster. Now say good-bye and let me go.”
“If they kill you ... I will go out into London Proper, kill them all, and burn the city down.”
I smiled. “You say the sweetest things, Suzie.”
We hugged each other, right there in the middle of the street, ignoring the people who hurried past. Suzie still had problems with public displays of affection, but again, probably only I could have known that. She kissed me briefly, then turned and strode away. She kept her head up and her back straight, and she didn’t look back once. Her way of being brave. I watched her till she was out of sight, then I entered Whitechapel Station, and descended into the Underground.
The cream-tiled corridors and tunnels were packed with men and women and other things, coming and going, intent on searching out all those pleasures that were bad for them. They didn’t talk to each other and made a point of looking straight ahead, not wanting to be distracted or diverted from their chosen paths. Without quite seeming to, everyone gave me plenty of room to move. Having a good, or more properly bad, reputation does have its benefits. I was going to have to learn how to get results without that where I was going. The John Taylor who’d lived in London Proper five years earlier had been a much smaller man.
I hurried down the escalators, ignoring the sweet-talking ads on the walls, and headed for the Outer Line. The usual beggars and buskers were out and about, singing and dancing for their supper. A ghost of a nun sang “Ave Maria,” accompanying herself with hand signals for the deaf. Three zombies with skin as grey as their shabby suits performed a careful soft-shoe routine that never ever stopped. Half a dozen clones made up a one-man band, and something from a Black Lagoon crooned old calypso songs as he tended his sushi stall. Recent graffiti on the walls included the Yellow Sign, the Voorish Sign, and an official sign saying all familiars must be carried on the escalators.
Down on the platfo
rm, the destinations board offered SHADOWS FALL, HACELDAMA, HAVEN, and WHITECHAPEL. The platform was half-full, with all the usual unusual types. A bunch of cheerful teenage girls in public-school outfits were kicking the crap out of a bunch of thugs in bowler hats, heavy eye make-up, and padded cod-pieces. While a circle of City business types in smart City suits with blue woad daubed thickly on their faces steadily ignored the unpleasantness by immersing themselves in the City pages of the Night Times. And a large ambulatory plant thing was taking an unhealthy interest in a tree nymph. She was a pretty little thing, all gleaming bark and leaves in her hair, and I did consider getting involved—until the nymph decided she’d had enough and kneed the plant thing right in the nuts.
I looked away and found myself facing a knight in dark armour. He was standing at the far end of the platform, unnaturally still, looking right at me. His armoured suit was made up of large black scales, moving slowly against each other and sliding over one another in places. Satanic markings had been daubed on his breast-plate, in what looked like dried blood. His squat steel helm covered his entire head, with only a Y-shaped slot in the centre for his eyes and mouth. He carried a sword like a butcher’s blade on one hip and a spike-headed mace on the other. I’d seen his type before. He was one of the knights in armour King Artur had brought with him to the Nightside, from Sinister Albion. A world where Merlin Satanspawn embraced his father’s work, corrupted Arthur, and made a dark and terrible world for him to rule.
That’s parallel dimensions for you. For every heaven, a hell; and for every Golden Age, a kick in the teeth.
The dark knight seemed to be displaying more than usual interest in me, but when I turned to face him squarely, he turned away and gave all his attention to the departures board. I shrugged mentally and put it down to paranoia. Lot of that about, in the Nightside.
A growing roar, a blast wave of displaced air, and the train burst out of the tunnel-mouth, screaming to a halt beside the platform. A long, featureless, silver bullet, pulling windowless carriages because you really didn’t want to see some of the places the train had to pass through on its way from the Nightside to the outer world. The doors hissed open, I stepped into a carriage, and everyone else in the carriage got up and hurried out onto the platform. Not so much a mark of respect; more that they didn’t want to be round when the trouble started. I settled myself comfortably on the battered red-leather seat, the door hissed shut, and the train set off smoothly.
The journey itself was remarkably quiet and peaceful; nothing tried to break in from outside, nothing tried to block the tracks, and there wasn’t even much of the usual strange noises and threatening voices. Perhaps because this wasn’t one of the busy lines. People are always queuing up and even fighting each other to get into the Nightside, but only a few ever go home again. For all kinds of reasons.
When the train finally ground to a halt at London Proper, I took a deep breath, stood up, and walked steadily out onto the platform. It was, of course, quite empty. No-one else left the train. The door behind me hissed shut, and the train went away. I walked slowly down the empty platform. The air was still and stale, and the sound of my footsteps didn’t echo far, as though the sound didn’t have quite enough energy to make the effort. The walls were utterly bare, no posters or adverts, no graffiti. The whole place had the feel of a stage-set that was only rarely used.
The blank wall stretched away before me, with no sign of an exit anywhere. I finally stopped before a courtesy phone, set on the wall inside a dusty glass shield. I picked up the phone. There was no dial tone. I said London Proper and put the phone down again. I stepped back, and the wall before me split slowly in two, pulling itself apart in a series of grinding juddering movements until a long, narrow tunnel fell away before me. Its inner walls were dark red, like an opened wound, and the sourceless light was dim and smoky, smelling of corrupt perfumes and crushed flowers. I walked steadily forward, and mists swirled round my ankles like disturbed waters. Faint voices and snatches of strange music faded in and out, like so many competing radio signals. Far and far away, a cloister bell tolled sadly.
I burst out the other end of the tunnel, and immediately, I was standing on an ordinary, everyday platform, while perfectly normal people hurried past me. None of them seemed to notice that I’d arrived in their midst out of nowhere. I glanced behind me, and the wall was just a wall, with nothing to show it had ever been anything else. Which was as it should be. I joined the crush and followed the crowd down the platform, heading out and up into the real world above.
I left Whitechapel Station and stepped hesitantly out into a London I hadn’t seen in years. The real world seemed almost defiantly grey after the relentless sound and fury and garish neon of the Nightside. Everywhere I looked, the street and the people were all remarkably ordinary. And the traffic thundering up and down the road was only cars and buses, taxis and messengers on bicycles, and lumbering delivery trucks. They even stopped for the traffic lights and pedestrian crossings. Mostly.
It was early evening, still quite light, and I wasn’t used to that. I felt ... exposed, and vulnerable, now that I no longer had any shadows to hide in. I stared up at the cloudy grey sky and tried to remember when I’d last seen the sun. I wasn’t impressed. Sunlight’s overrated if you ask me.
Everything felt different. The pace felt slower, with none of the familiar sense of danger and opportunity, none of the Nightside’s constant pressure to be going somewhere, to do something unwise and probably unnatural. London Proper did have its own bustle and air of excitement, like every big city, but it was strictly amateur hour compared to the Nightside.
The real difference between the Nightside and London Proper was attitude. In the Nightside, it’s all out and open and in-your-face. From magic to super-science, from the supernatural to the other-dimensional. You can sink yourself into it all, like soaking in a hot bath full of blood. In London Proper, in what we like to think of as the real world, such things are hidden. Behind the scenes, or behind the scenery. You won’t even know it’s there unless you have the Sight; and most don’t. You have to go looking for the hidden world, and even then you probably won’t find it if it doesn’t want to be found.
I knew I should go straight to Oxford Street, and the London Knights’ secret headquarters ... but it had been a long time since I’d been back, and nostalgia can be a harsh mistress. I felt a need, almost a hunger, to see my old haunts again, to go back to that small grubby place where I had lived and worked, and tried so hard to be normal. So I hopped on a bus, one of the old reliable red London double-deckers, and travelled back into my past.
I got off the bus at a stop no-one else seemed interested in and strolled down the grim, shabby streets to where my office used to be. The whole area looked even grubbier and seedier than I remembered, though I wouldn’t have thought that was possible. Narrow streets and crumbling tenements, smashed windows and kicked-in doors. Broken people in worn-out clothes, hurrying along with their heads lowered so they wouldn’t have to look anyone in the eye. A cold wind gusting down deserted alleyways, and shadows everywhere because someone had been using the street-lamps for target practice.
Homeless people sitting bundled up in doorways, drinking forgetfulness straight from the can or the bottle. Soot-stained brickwork, darkened by generations of passing traffic. Posters slapped one on top of the other, messages from the past, advertising things long gone, faded and water-stained. When I finally got to the old building that housed my small office, most of the windows were boarded up. There were a few lights on, in the surrounding buildings. People too stubborn to leave, or with nowhere else to go. Rubbish in the gutters, and worse in the alley mouths. And what street lighting there was seemed faded and stained.
I was surprised my old office building was still there. I’d been half-convinced, half-hoping, it would have been torn down by then. The place had been officially condemned even while I was still living in it. I stopped on the opposite side of the street and looked it over.
No lights, no signs of life. People had given up on it, like rats deserting a sinking ship. The front door was hanging open, hinges creaking loudly on the quiet, as the gusting wind gave the door a shove, now and again, to remind it who was boss. I stood there for a while, studying the gloom beyond the door, but I was putting off the moment, and I knew it.
I looked round the deserted street one last time, then walked briskly across the road, pushed the front door all the way open, and strode into the dark and empty lobby. It was dark because someone had smashed the single naked light bulb. The place stank of stale piss. And yet, the place couldn’t just be abandoned, or the local homeless would have moved in and claimed it for their own. No light, no heating, no signs of occupation; so why had the front door been left so conveniently open? An invitation—or a trap?
I smiled despite myself. Looked like this might turn out to be interesting after all.
I made my way up the narrow wooden stairway to the next floor. The steps complained loudly under my weight, as they always had. The tenants liked it that way, to give warning that visitors were coming. I paused at the top to look about me, my eyes already adjusting to the gloom; but there was no sign anyone had been here in ages. I moved along the landing, checking the open office doors along the way. Old memories of old faces, neighbours who were never anything more than that. Cheap and nasty offices that had been home to a defrocked accountant and a struck-off dentist, dark and empty now, cleaned out long ago, with no sign left to show anyone had ever used them.
My office was still there, exactly where I’d left it. The door stood quietly ajar, with just enough of the old flaking sign to make out the words TAYLOR INVESTIGATIONS. The bullet-hole in the frosted-glass window was still there, too. I should have had it repaired, but it made such a great conversation piece. Clients like a hint of danger when they hire a private eye. I pushed the door all the way open with the tip of one finger, and the hinges complained loudly in the quiet. I took a deep breath, bracing myself against something I couldn’t quite name; but all I smelled was dust and rot, so I walked right in.