She stabbed a meaty finger at the back of the room, her heavy underarm swinging ponderously. "In the smoking section, Mr. T. Do us all a favour; get him the hell out of here. He's lowering the bleeding tone something awful."
"Well, naturally," I said.
I waggled my fingers in a good-bye, and she grinned back at me like a shark scenting blood in the water. I turned away, with a certain sense of relief, and moved off into the cavern, drifting deeper into the depths of the Dragon's Mouth. No-one paid me any attention, as they all were sunk deep in their own personal heavens and hells. But one man saw me, and knew me, and came striding daintily out of the smoky mists with his professional smile of greeting fixed firmly in place. No-one knew precisely how old the Host was, or even if he was, technically speaking, human; he'd been with the Dragon's Mouth since it opened, over a century and a half ago. The Host was there to make you feel welcome, to see to your every need, and to see that you got everything that was coming to you. He'd find you somewhere comfortable, help you with the pipe or the pills, or the needle and the tourniquet, whisper suggestions in your ear when you looked to be hesitating, and encourage you to try things you'd never even contemplated before. He'd cuddle you when the shakes were bad, hold your hair back as you vomited, and take you for every penny you had. And when you died in the Dragon's Mouth, his would be the last face you ever saw. Still smiling.
Do I really need to tell you why?
He was currently wearing the very best suit Savile Row had to offer, complete with an old-school tie I was pretty sure he wasn't entitled to wear. He'd painted his face stark white with arsenic; his smiling mouth was crimson with heavy lipstick, and his dark shining eyes never blinked once. His jet-black hair had been slicked down so fiercely it looked painted on, and a small silver ankh hung from his left ear-lobe. His every movement and gesture were elegance personified, and he moved through the world as though everyone in it was merely a supporting player to his star turn.
The Host could get you anything, anything at all. And the worse it was for you, the wider he smiled. The Host was always delighted to be of service. He'd been only too happy to supply me with what I thought I needed, all those years ago. He drifted to a halt before me, bowed ever so politely, and clasped his pale, long-fingered hands together across his sunken chest.
"Well, well," he said, in a happy, breathy voice positively brimming with artificial bonhomie and fake sincerity. "Back again, Mr. Taylor? How nice. We're always happy to welcome back one of our straying sons. What can I get you, Mr. Taylor? Your usual?"
"No," I said. "I'm not here for that. I'm here to meet someone."
His dark red smile widened, just a little. "That's what they all say. Don't be shy, Mr. Taylor; you're amongst friends here. There's nothing to be ashamed of in the Dragon's Mouth. Indulge yourself. It's what we're here for."
"It's not what I'm here for," I said steadily. "I'm here on business. So stand aside."
He didn't move, his unblinking eyes fixed on mine, his gaze full of a malign intensity. "No-one ever leaves the Dragon's Mouth, Mr. Taylor. Not really. They only pop out for a while, then they come back. Who else knows you as well as us; who else can provide you with what you really need? You belong here, Mr. Taylor; you know you do. Come with me. Let me lead you to your old cubicle. It's still here. Nothing's changed. Let me prepare the needle for you and pop up a vein. You never really left; the world outside was just a cruel dream. You've always been here, where you belong."
I laughed right in his face, and he actually fell back a step. "Dream on," I said. "I'm a lot more than I used to be."
The Host rallied almost immediately. "Are you sure I can't offer you a little taste, Mr. Taylor? On the house, of course."
"Don't tempt me," I said.
The Host stepped gracefully to one side, bowing his head, admitting defeat. For the moment.
"Be seeing you, Mr. Taylor."
"Not if I see you first," I said to his elegantly retreating back.
I looked around the chamber, and various significant details loomed up out of the slowly swirling smoke. The old place hadn't changed since I was here last. Hiding from a world that had broken and defeated me, in pretty much every way there was. I hadn't so much lost hope, as thrown it away; because hope hurt too much. The sheer weight of my life had become too much to carry, and I couldn't stand to see my reflection in the eyes of my friends. I'd failed; at everything that mattered and a few things that didn't. So I came here, to the Dragon's Mouth, asking only for pain's ease and forgetfulness. For the one thing drugs could give you that was better than pleasure-the cold, quiet comfort of feeling nothing at all.
There were hanging silk curtains and embroidered standing screens, to provide privacy for those who still cared about such things. Tables and chairs and camp beds, scattered in little clusters. Shadowy grottos and cells cut deep into the dark stone walls. Blood and piss and vomit on the floor. And all around me, men and women and other things, lost in dreams and might-have-beens. Dying, by inches… but I couldn't find it in myself to feel much for any of them. No-one comes to the Dragon's Mouth by chance. Everyone knows what happens here. You have to want it, and choose it, in the same way you'd choose a gun or a noose or the razor's blade.
And I had wanted it so very badly once upon a time.
I shook my head hard. I'm not normally one for dwelling in the past or regretting old mistakes. The tainted smoke curling on the still air was getting to me. I moved forward, making my way carefully between the packed tables and chairs, and stepping over the occasional dim shape on the floor; looking about me for the elf. A few people turned their backs as I passed them. Either they knew me, or they didn't want to know me. I didn't recognise any faces.
Two Hydes were fighting in a pit gouged raggedly from the stone floor. Overmuscled forms, with taut skin and bulging veins, they slammed together again and again, tearing at each other with clawed hands and bared teeth. Blood and sweat coursed down their distorted forms, and they grunted and snarled like beasts, while a few languid spectators roused themselves to lay bets on which Hyde would survive. The dead Hyde would be recycled, so as not to waste any of the drug. Junkies know everything there is to know about making a drug go further.
A cyborg from some future time-line was main-lining a fierce and nasty future drug called Blood. Tech implants protruded from his grey flesh, discharging sudden bursts of static. His eyes glowed golden as they rolled up into his head, and his slack mouth was full of metal teeth. You can fill the future with all the high tech you want, but people will still be people.
A long row of camp beds had been pushed up against one wall, and a dozen or so pretty young things stared sightlessly up into the smoky air, enjoying the complete out-of-the-body experience, courtesy of the banned African drug taduku. Blasted loose from the chains of their bodies, their minds were free to drift into the past or the future or any number of alternate dimensions or realities. Sometimes they came back, and sometimes they didn't. You can probably imagine what happens to the bodies of those who don't come back.
Brother Frank was experimenting with Angel Breath again, the old deep fix, trying to separate out the various levels of his consciousness so he could have conversations with himself. You had to be careful around Brother Frank. He did so love to spike a drink, so to speak.
A huge cage with reinforced iron bars held those who had chosen to indulge in the ancient alien drug known as Revert. A sly and deceitful drug that could throw your evolution into reverse, transforming you into the Neanderthal state, or even further, if you could stand it. In the cage, amongst the heavy, low-browed figures, there were other, even more disturbing shapes.
And, finally, a small and rather furtive group were smoking Martian red weed from hookah pipes. Devotees claim it helps you think in whole new ways. Smoke enough of the stuff, and you can think like a Martian. Smoke too much, and your body will actually turn into a Martian. And then everyone around you will rise up and club you to death because even the
Nightside has its standards.
A couple of soft ghosts wandered through the thick air, hand in hand, looking for anything familiar. They were vague, indistinct, half-transparent, their very existence worn down and eroded by too much travelling in other dimensions. Human once, they had gone too far and seen too much, and now they could no longer remember how to find their way home, or even what home had been like. The details of their faces had grown smooth and doubtful, like the statues of cemetery angels worn down by time and the elements. The smoke ghosts drifted here and there, desperate for a familiar face or an accent, asking in their soft, distant voices of cities and peoples and worlds that no-one had ever heard of.
The patrons of the Dragon's Mouth flapped them away with heavy hands, or ignored them completely. The soft ghosts should have known better than to look for help here, but they were attracted to the altered states of consciousness like moths to a flame. One of them tugged gently at my sleeve, trying to attract my attention, but I shrugged it off. I'd spotted my elf.
I was heading straight for him when someone moved abruptly forward to block my way. I stopped short, because it was either that or walk right over him, then paused to consider the man before me. I knew who he was almost at once, though the years had not been kind. Carnaby Jones, the Wide-Eyed Boy, infamous dandy and free spirit of the old King's Road, had fallen far from what he once was. His T-shirt and jeans were clean enough, but he looked as if someone else had dressed him. His old muscular frame was gone, the flesh sunk right back to the bone, and his skin was a dull, unhealthy yellow. The skull showed clearly behind the taut skin of his face, his deep-set eyes were lost and murky, and his thin-lipped smile held all the malice in the world. He smelled bad.
I could still remember when the Wide-Eyed Boy had been the best and bravest.
"What do you want, Carnaby?" I asked politely.
He sniggered loudly. "No time for old friends, John? Nothing to say to the old friend you abandoned and left behind? The one who brought you here, and taught you the ropes, and introduced you to pleasures you never knew existed?"
"I forgave you for that long ago," I said. "We're both different people now. Is that a tinge of purple I see in your eye-balls, Carnaby? Been injecting through the tear ducts because you've run out of veins? How could you have fallen so far?"
"Practice," he said, his grin widening to show rotten teeth. "You're looking good, John. Really. Very… healthy. What made you think you could just walk back in here and stroll amongst us with your nose in the air? You owe me, John. You know you do."
"You want me to take you out of here, I'll do it," I said. "You want help, I'll get you the best there is."
"I don't want anything from you! Except to see you pay for what you did."
"What did I do, Carnaby?" I said patiently. "You broke the rules, John! You got out! No-one's supposed to get out of here. That's the point."
"I had help," I said. "Take my hand, Carnaby. Really. I mean it. The only one keeping you here is you."
He looked at me sideways, still smiling his unpleasant smile. "You got out, and now you're a big man in the Nightside. Oh yes, the news trickles down, even to places like this. Word is you're a rich man, too. So how about a little something, for an old friend? How about a hand-out, how about the shirt off your back, how about everything you've got!"
He was spitting the words out now, his whole wrecked body shaking with years of pent-up, carefully rehearsed spite and hatred. I sensed old Mother Connell stirring behind her table, and raised one hand to stop her. Because once upon a time the Wide-Eyed Boy really had been a friend of mine, had really had it in him to be the very best of us. Drugs don't just destroy who you are; they destroy all the people you might have been.
So I stepped forward, grabbed his bony head firmly with both hands, and held his gaze with my own. He tried to break away, but there was no strength left in him. He tried to look away, but I had him. I concentrated, and he cried out miserably as all the old scabs on his forearms broke open, and dark liquids oozed out and trickled down his arms. Everything he'd ever taken, every last nasty drop of it, ran out of him, and he cried like a baby at the loss of it. When I was finished I let him go, and he fell in a heap before me.
"There," I said. "You're clean. Free as a bird. So you can leave, or you can stay; it's all up to you. And don't say I never did anything for you."
I left him there and headed for the elf.
He was sitting alone at a small table, smoking opium through a hollowed-out human thigh-bone. Just because he could. There was a circle of open space around him, despite the crowded conditions of the Dragon's Mouth, because even the kind of people who habituated a place like this didn't want anything to do with an elf.
Long and long ago, humans and elves lived together on the Earth, sharing its wonders and resources. But we never got on. There were battles and wars and horrible slaughters, and in the end we won by cheating; we outbred the pointy eared bastards. They gave up and left our world, walking sideways from the sun, moving their whole race to another world, another reality. The Sundered Lands. The few elves you see walking the world today are rogues, outlaws, remittance men. They live to screw us over because that's all they've got.
This particular elf watched me approach and lazily blew a perfect smoke ring at me. Followed by half a dozen increasingly complex smoke shapes, culminating in a great ship perched on a rising wave, complete with billowing sails and shaking rigging. But he was only showing off, so I ignored it. I pulled up a chair and sat down opposite him, careful to keep the whole of the table between us.
"So," said the elf, in a voice like a cat drowning in cream and loving every minute of it, "here you are. Lilith's son."
"Actually," I said, "I take more after my father. I'm John Taylor."
"Of course. And you can address me as Lord Screech, Pale Prince of Owls."
"But that's not your real name."
"Of course not. To know the true name of a thing is to have power over it. But for the purpose of this transaction, Lord Screech will do."
"Because the owls are not what they seem?"
"Quite."
I looked him over. Screech was inhumanly tall and almost impossibly slender, with the usual slit-pupilled cat's eyes and sharp, pointed ears. His skin glowed like fine porcelain, so pale as to be almost colourless, and his quick smile showed pointed teeth behind the rose pink lips. He wore long oriental robes of a shimmering metallic green, complete with a stiff high collar that rose behind his head, and his long white hair had been swept up in tufts on either side of his elongated skull, like an owl's. I was tempted to make a Flock of Seagulls joke, but he wouldn't have got it.
And besides, it would have dated me.
"Why ask for me?" I said, directly.
"You have a reputation for arrogance, style, and occasional viciousness," said Screech. "You might almost have been an elf."
"Now you're just being nasty," I said. "And why meet here, of all places?"
"Because I do so love to watch humans degrade themselves," Screech said easily. "Throwing their lives away for such pitiful rewards. No elf would ever lower himself to anything as small as this; even our sins have to be magnificent."
"Tell me what you want," I said. "Or I'm out of here."
"Always so impatient," said Screech, laying aside his bone pipe. "Always in such a hurry. Comes of being mortal, I suppose. Very well, Mr. Taylor, I shall talk, and you will listen, which is of course the proper state of affairs between elf and human. I am presently passing through the Nightside on a matter of importance. It is imperative I complete my journey without being stopped or in any way detained along the way. I am an emissary between the two warring factions of Faerie."
"Hold everything," I said, leaning forward despite myself. "Go back, go previous; run that by me again. The Fae are at war with each other? When did that happen? And why haven't we heard about it?"
"Because it's none of your business."
"It is now," I said. "Or
you wouldn't need my help."
"Life is imperfect," said Screech.
"All right; why pass through the Nightside at all?"
"Because this appalling locality is the nearest thing we have to neutral territory. I can see I'm going to have to fill you in on a few of the background details. How very tedious. In the beginning, long before human history began and we were all myths and legends… Queen Mab ruled over the Fae, and she was mighty and magnificent and terrible to behold in her glory. Under her rule we spread and prospered; but it didn't last. How could someone of such a magnitude as Mab have foreseen the rise of the vermin called Man? She underestimated you, and lost the war, and was deposed, by Oberon and Titania.
"They dragged her off her Throne and threw her down into Hell; and there she stayed for many centuries, while Oberon and Titania ruled the Fae in her place, in the Sundered Lands. But Mab got out; and after so long in the Houses of Pain, her vengeance was terrible to behold. She cast Oberon and Titania down, to take her place in Hell, and re-established herself as the one true rightful ruler of the Fae. Or as many of us as were left after she'd finished purging the unfaithful.
"But then Oberon and Titania fought their way out of Hell and took up residence in Shadows Fall, in the land under the hill, and have since amassed a mighty power of rebellious elves, determined to take back the Sundered Lands by force of arms. Aren't families embarrassing when you have to explain them to strangers?
"Anyway, civil wars are always costly, in all too many ways, and both sides have been persuaded to step back from the brink. For the moment. I have been acting as emissary between the two rival Courts, and after much… discussion, we have a Peace Treaty. It won't last-such things never do-but hopefully it will buy us time for more reasonable voices to make themselves heard. Or perhaps some public-spirited person will assassinate one or other of the Courts. I need you, John Taylor, to find me a safe way across the Nightside, from this distressing location to the furthest boundary, and the Osterman Gate. Where I might finally take my leave of this… human world, in favour of some more civilised reality.
The Good,the Bad and the Uncanny n-10 Page 2
