The young man rose slowly to his feet and glared around him with deep-set, haunted eyes. He looked half-starved, his face all hollows and shadows. He wore a battered black leather jacket over ragged jeans, and his bare feet were caked with filth and grime. The young man’s terrible gaze finally found John at the bar, and he stabbed an accusing finger at him.
“John Taylor! It’s all your fault!”
“Possibly,” said John, entirely unmoved by the new-comer’s arrival or his accusation. “What am I supposed to have done this time?”
“You murdered the world,” said the young man.
He lunged forward, an open straight razor suddenly in his hand. The long steel blade flashed supernaturally bright as it leapt for John’s throat. John grabbed hold of the young man’s wrist at the last moment, then twisted it until he cried out and was forced to drop the razor. The young man hauled himself free and fell back, still glaring at John, who didn’t allow himself to appear in the least disturbed. He watched the young man carefully, and when the new-comer went to snatch up the razor again, John threw his drink in the young man’s face, blinding him.
“That’s enough!” John said sharply. “We don’t have to do this. Tell me what the problem is. Maybe I can do something to help.”
The young man shook his head fiercely, drops of water flying in all directions, his terrible gaze fixed on John again.
“You’ve already done too much.”
He produced a glowing knife from inside his jacket. The serrated blade shone with a nasty, unhealthy light, the essence of poison given shape and form and a cutting edge. He closed with John again, cutting and hacking viciously. John ducked and dodged, the knife always getting closer, until finally he had no choice but to grab the young man’s arm again and turn it suddenly around, so he impaled himself on his own blade. He cried out once, in shock and outrage rather than pain, and fell backwards. Blood soaked the front of his jacket. The glowing blade disappeared. John knelt beside the dying man.
“It didn’t have to come to this,” John said. “Why wouldn’t you listen to me? Who are you?”
One hand came up to grab John’s lapel and pull his face down to the dying man’s. He smiled horribly, his teeth slick with blood. “My name is Henry. Just like you planned.”
“I don’t understand,” said John. “I don’t know you.”
Henry struggled to force out his last words, spitting them into John’s face.
“I came all the way back from the future. The future you made! The time of ruins and monsters and the death of Humanity. You thought you’d avoided that timeline, made it impossible for those things to happen. You should have known better. The war is coming, and what you’ll do to end it will make that future inevitable. I had to stop you . . . Damn you, Father. It’s all your fault . . .”
His hand fell away from John’s lapel and dropped to the floor, and just like that, the young man stopped breathing. Hate still seemed to glare from his unseeing eyes. John didn’t know what to think, what to feel. He’d been meaning to tell Suzie that if they did have a son, he wanted to call him Henry, after the previous Walker. John reached out with a steady hand and gently closed the young man’s staring eyes. This couldn’t be his son. His future son. He couldn’t have just killed his own child, who hadn’t even been born yet. He’d been through so much, lost so much; he couldn’t have lost the one thing that gave him hope. John looked away. The straight razor was still lying on the floor next to the body. He picked it up, and studied the familiar pearl handle. And then he got to his feet, to show the razor to Alex.
Because he had to do something practical or go mad.
Behind him, the bar’s patrons went back to minding their own business, drinking and laughing and talking, as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Because this was Strangefellows, after all.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” said Alex. “I’m not the one who tried to kill you.”
“I thought you had shields in place, to keep out undesirables!”
“Are you kidding? That’s all we ever get in this place. What have you got there?”
“One of Razor Eddie’s weapons,” said John. “Only the Punk God of the Straight Razor carries a blade like this.”
“How could anyone take a blade away from Razor Eddie?” said Alex. “I can’t think of anyone I’d back against him.”
“Unless he was dead . . .” said John.
Alex lowered his sun-glasses so he could stare over them at John. “Do you know something I don’t?”
“More than you could possibly imagine,” said John. Because some burdens can’t be shared.
“You want me to have Betty and Lucy throw the body out?” said Alex. “There’s bound to be something in the alley that will eat it.”
“No!” said John, then stopped himself until he was sure he was in control of his voice. “No. I want the body treated with respect.”
“You had no choice, John,” Alex said carefully. “He would have killed you. Do you have any idea why . . . ?”
“I didn’t know him,” said John. Quietly, and bitterly. He turned to look back at the dead man and found that the body was gone. Not even a drop of blood on the floor to show where it had been. John glared around the bar. “Who moved the body?”
A chorus of voices rose up quickly, reacting to the anger in John Taylor’s voice, protesting that they hadn’t touched the body and hadn’t seen anyone who had. Because nobody wanted Walker mad at them. John looked at his hand and found that the straight razor had disappeared too.
“I hate Time-travel events,” he said. “You always end up with more questions than answers.”
“At least this one cleaned up after itself,” said Alex. “What did he say to you, right at the end?”
“That the world and everything in it will be destroyed,” said John. “Because of something I will do.”
“Oh come on!” said Alex. “Even you couldn’t bring about the end of the world, all on your own!”
John didn’t say anything. Alex looked at his empty glass.
“You want a refill? On the house?”
John managed a small smile. “The end of the world really must be coming if you’re offering free drinks.”
“Get out of my bar,” said Alex, not unkindly. “If there’s a problem, do something about it. That’s your job, Walker.”
John nodded and moved off through the crowd, and everyone moved back to give him room, without actually looking like they were. John didn’t notice. He was too busy remembering the future he’d once encountered in a Timeslip: one of those arbitrary doorways that open up in the Nightside, to give glimpses of things that were and may be. He’d spent some time in the future world his son had claimed to come from. An awful place, all ruins and rubble, where monsters and abominations lurched through deserted streets in search of the last few surviving humans. A world where civilisation had been torn down, and only the insects thrived. He’d been told that was down to him, but he’d thought he’d done everything necessary to make sure that terrible future could never happen. Now he had to wonder if he’d done enough. Or if his whole life had been for nothing.
What war had Henry been talking about? There was nothing serious happening in the Nightside. He would have heard. What could he be about to do, that his own future son had fought his way back through Time to try to stop him? A cold hand closed around John’s heart as he remembered the future version of his wife, Suzie, who’d also come back through Time to try to kill him, to prevent the awful future she’d known. Merlin had ripped the Speaking Gun grafted onto her right elbow right off her, in a spray of arterial blood, and she’d disappeared back to the future. John had been so sure he’d saved his Suzie from having to become that person. But now . . .
He wondered what, if anything, he would tell her the next time he saw her.
* * *
&nb
sp; • • •
John had just reached the entrance lobby when his phone rang inside his jacket. He thought about turning it off because he already had enough to worry about, but he couldn’t. He was still Walker, with Walker’s responsibilities. He took out his phone. It was playing the theme from the old Twilight Zone television series because when John found a joke he liked, he tended to stick with it. He checked for caller ID, but nothing was showing. Which was not unusual in the Nightside, where most people preferred not to admit anything. He answered the call anyway because anyone who knew his private number knew better than to bother him for anything less than a real or unreal emergency.
“This is Walker,” he said. “What do you want?”
The voice that answered was as cold and implacable as rocks grinding together. “This is the Lord of Thorns. You must go to the Street of the Gods.”
“Why?” said John.
“Because something has happened.”
It was turning out to be a night full of surprises. Not least because John hadn’t thought the Lord of Thorns would ever do anything so ordinary as use a phone.
“Why would you care what happens on the Street of the Gods?” said John. “I thought you were above such things. Literally.”
“Who else would I talk to? Who else could I have anything in common with?”
John supposed he had a point. “All right,” he said resignedly. “What’s happened on the Street of the Gods, that I need to get involved?”
“The beginning of the end,” said the Lord of Thorns.
“The end of what?”
“Everything.”
The phone went dead. John scowled as he put the phone away. Now he had to go.
* * *
• • •
Outside Strangefellows, the air felt hot and close, and the cobbles were slick and shining from recent rain. John looked up, but the storm had passed on, and the dark vault of the sky was packed with stars in unknown constellations. Some spun madly, like celestial Catherine wheels, throwing off comets like multi-coloured sparks, while the full moon, so much larger and closer than it had any right to be, looked down on the Nightside like a great watchful eye. Suggesting that the Nightside wasn’t necessarily where or even when everyone thought it was. John tried not to let that bother him. The longest night of all was full of mysteries that were never going to be answered to anyone’s satisfaction.
He glanced casually up and down the alley-way, to make sure he wasn’t being observed, then retrieved his gold pocket-watch. He’d inherited the watch from the previous Walker, and it remained one of his most useful secrets. The watch contained a portable Timeslip, allowing him to jump directly from one part of the Nightside to another. Which, given the frankly dangerous nature of much of the transport in the long night, was just as well. The streets were full of things that only looked like cars and trucks, many of which were known to run right over slower-moving vehicles. The taxis ate their passengers as often as not, the buses frequently came unstuck in Space and Time, and the horse and carriages were really expensive. Most people walked. Or ran.
John did a lot of footwork in his time as a private eye, and got through a lot of shoes. Now he was Walker, the one sane voice in a crazy place and the only authority everyone would listen to, he needed to be on the spot and on top of things as quickly as possible. He opened the gold watch, and the darkness inside leapt out to engulf him. When it fell away again, he was where he needed to be.
* * *
• • •
The Street of the Gods is aggressively weird, even for the Nightside. On this strange and thankfully very separate Street, you can find anything and everything that people have ever worshipped. All the gods that ever were or may be, all the beings and entities and anthropomorphic representations, crammed together in row upon row of churches, temples, sacred places, and eldritch grottos. Towering spires stand next to golden minarets, and do their best not to notice the dark and dangerous edifices on the opposite side of the Street, into which not one ray of light has ever entered. Pilgrims and penitents come to the Street of the Gods from all over the worlds, searching for the kind of answers that can’t be found anywhere else. No one ever actually says Believer beware, but it is strongly implied. On the Street of the Gods, prayers are heard and answered.
Powerful beings and unknowable creatures parade openly on the Street, sometimes stopping to chat with their worshippers and pose for selfies. There are glories and wonders, penances and punishments, premonitions of doom and good news for all. The tourists eat it up with spoons, especially when gods come together to dispute points of theology, compare the weekly take, or argue over who performed the best miracles recently. Though it’s a wise tourist who knows to start running before the smiting starts.
The smallest and least important of the gods huddle together in cheap accommodations at the bottom, and the various churches and meeting-places become gradually grander and more impressive as one progresses up the Street. It’s all about location. Some of the more important temples and cathedrals are so huge they contain entire worlds within them, while others present such an enigmatic or abstract appearance, their priests have to hang around outside so they can lead people in. Wherever you look, doors are always open, ready to admit new worshippers, though getting out again with a full wallet and your soul still attached might prove a little more difficult. In this place, gods walk like gun-slingers.
Normally, if such a word can be used with regard to the Street of the Gods, you would expect the night air to be full of chants and songs, the practiced patter of supernatural confidence tricksters and the half-hysterical come-ons from shills and barkers, competing to lure in any wavering passers-by; for their own good, of course. Bells toll and voices summon, and choirs send up a joyous noise to drown out the screams of more or less willing sacrificial victims. Wide-eyed prophets struggle to outshout one another over which particular End is Nigh, and up and down the Street of the Gods, crowds of worshippers and tourists and seekers after truth chatter happily and boast about the things they’ve seen, like bird-watchers ticking off names on their list.
The noise is rarely short of deafening, with no room for the small, quiet voice of conscience.
But when John Taylor appeared on the Street of the Gods, the first thing that struck him was the hush. All around him, and for as far as he could see, all the places of worship stood empty and abandoned, their doors left hanging open, as though no one cared any more.
Worshippers and tourists were milling back and forth, frightened and confused. The priests in gaudy robes had no words of wisdom for their flocks, abandoned by the beings they served. Even the prophets of doom had been struck silent, huddling together like lost children. John made his way through the dumb-struck crowds, doing his best to look assured and in charge, dispensing calm words and reassuring counsel as he went. But while people were more than ready to pluck at his sleeve or ask him the same things over and over again, none of them had anything useful to tell him about what had happened.
The Street of the Gods had seen turf wars, miracles and damnations, and all manner of exhibitionist supernatural behaviour on a daily basis, but never before had the gods taken to their heels en masse, deserting their churches and their followers.
John finally spotted a familiar face and forced his way through the crowds to join him. Dead Boy was lounging in the open doorway of the Church of Rotwang, god of automatons, regarding the general chaos with a broad grin. Dead Boy was seventeen. He’d been seventeen for more than forty years now, ever since he was mugged and murdered on a Nightside street for the spare change in his pockets. He made a deal he still wasn’t prepared to talk about to come back from the dead, so he could hunt down his killers and avenge himself on them. And after everything he did to them with his cold, dead hands, they were probably glad to escape into death.
It was only afterwards that Dead Boy discovered he sh
ould have read the small print. There was nothing in the agreement he made about being allowed to lie down again afterwards. And so he continued, a returned spirit possessing his own corpse, a ghost that couldn’t die in a body that wouldn’t rot. He was philosophical about it, on the whole.
Tall and adolescent thin, Dead Boy wore a long, deep-purple coat over black leather trousers and shining calf-skin boots, and a large floppy hat crammed down on his dark, curly hair. He sported a black rose in his lapel, which had to be replaced on a regular basis because he was prone to snacking on them. His long, pale face had a debauched, pre-Raphaelite look, with burning fever-bright eyes and a disturbing smile. He deliberately left his long coat hanging open so he could show off the Y-shaped autopsy scar on his torso, along with various other wounds that would never heal. He stitched up the worst ones himself, plugged the bullet-holes with builder’s putty, and occasionally resorted to lengths of black duct tape to hold everything together.
John was surprised to see Dead Boy on the Street of the Gods, since it was widely known he didn’t worship anyone but himself. John nodded gravely to him, and Dead Boy grinned cheerfully.
“Hello, John. Welcome to the Street of Runaway Gods.”
“Do you know what happened here?” said John.
“I know the what, if not the why. The Street of the Gods shut itself down, just a few hours ago. Everyone on the Street, priests and worshippers and gawkers alike, all found themselves suddenly and unceremoniously dumped outside. And when they tried to get back in, all the ways that normally gave access to the Street of the Gods suddenly didn’t go there any more. At which point there were a great many raised voices, and not a little gnashing of teeth and tears before bedtime. I just happened to be passing, so I joined the gathering throng, ready for a spot of free entertainment, and just like that, all the entrances suddenly opened up again. The flocks surged back in, crying out for answers and reassurances, only to find that their gods had done a bunk.”
Night Fall Page 2
