“No thank you,” I said. “I’ve heard of what goes on in Nightside clubs. Where the drinks may be free, but the cover charge is your soul. Or someone else’s. Where the band never stops playing because the Management have a lifetime contract. Put on the red shoes and dance till you bleed . . .”
“You can be such a stuffed shirt sometimes,” said Molly.
I remembered Walker saying that whatever you end up with in the Shifting Lands could be the result of conscious or subconscious desires. I had to wonder what it said about Molly that we’d ended up here.
An old woman dressed as the Lone Ranger, complete with black silk mask, tottered up to me from out of the crowd and grabbed one of my hands. She held on to it with impressive strength, despite my efforts to pull it free, and cackled loudly.
“Cross my palm with a silver bullet, dearie, and I’ll tell you your future!”
I wrested my hand free of hers with an effort. “Do I look like a tourist?”
“Oh, come on,” she said, dropping me a roguish wink. “Live a little!”
“Not today,” I said.
She spat on the ground between us, turned her back, and tottered away. At the last moment, she turned to glare back at me. “You don’t have a future! He’s coming for you, from the other side of the mirror, and oh he’s so angry! Doctor DOA is coming for you!”
And then she was gone. I looked at Molly.
“Haven’t a clue,” she said.
You hear the damnedest things in the Nightside.
I looked around me, hoping to spot either the Sin Eater or the magician Chandarru, but there was no sign of either contestant. Given how easily Tarot Jones had found us, I didn’t think it would be long before one or the other, or even both, turned up here. But there was nothing in the street to present an obvious threat; it was just another disturbing scene from the Nightside. I really wanted to armour up, if only to keep from catching something nasty . . . but that would attract attention. This might or might not be the real Nightside, but I was pretty sure Droods would still be banned here. And the one thing absolutely guaranteed to bring all the disparate elements of the long night together would be the chance to gang up on a Drood.
Something that might have been a Yeti, with heavy eye makeup and false eyelashes, stomped past, hauling along several naked old men on leather leashes. Half a dozen nuns had hiked up their skirts in order to give a street mime a really good kicking. And a pack of small children tottered past, their bulging oversized heads tattooed with demonic script and their eyes blazing with hellfire. They saw me watching, and chattered among themselves in harsh inhuman voices. I wanted to do . . . something, but I knew there was no point. I couldn’t hope to change anything for the better—not here. Molly patted me comfortingly on the arm.
“Leave it, Eddie. It’s the Nightside.”
And you chose it, I thought, but had the good sense not to say out loud.
“We can’t just stand around here, doing nothing,” Molly said briskly. “That would make us conspicuous, and it’s never a good idea to stand out in the Nightside.”
“I’m almost sure this isn’t the real Nightside,” I said, trying to sound casual.
“It might be,” said Molly. “You’d be surprised how many places are attached to the long night, one way or another.”
“But we haven’t finished playing the Game,” I said. “I don’t think the Powers That Be would let us go anywhere we might escape from. So if this is another fake . . . there might not be anywhere else for us to go. This street could be all there is to this world, this setting.”
“All right,” said Molly. “Maybe I could summon one of my favourite watering holes here, if I put my mind to it. Strangefellows, say; or the Hawk’s Wind Bar and Grill.”
I knew both of those appalling locations by reputation, and suppressed a shudder. “They still wouldn’t be the real deal. And I have a strong feeling that any place here could be full of nasty surprises, courtesy of our subconscious.”
“How right you are,” said Crow Lee.
And there he was, standing before me, grinning unpleasantly. The Most Evil Man in the World, by popular consent. A large, broad-faced, powerfully built man, perfectly at ease in a long white Egyptian gown with gold trimmings. He had a shaven head, dark piercing eyes under bushy black eyebrows, and enough sheer presence for a dozen men. He gave me his best hypnotic stare, and I glared right back at him.
“You’re dead!”
Crow Lee shrugged easily. “You should know, you killed me. But you should also know by now that’s no drawback here. One of you called me back. I wonder who, and why?”
I drew my Colt Repeater, and shot him between the eyes. His bald head snapped back in a flurry of blood, and he crumpled to the pavement and lay still. I shot him twice more, in the chest, just to be on the safe side. None of the people passing by so much as glanced down at the body, even when they had to step over him. I put my Colt away again, and realised Molly was staring at me.
“I thought you’d decided you weren’t going to kill any more . . . ,” she said carefully.
“Some shit I just won’t put up with,” I said. “Even if it does comes from my subconscious. Perhaps especially from there . . .”
“But . . .”
“I won’t kill people. He was just . . . scenery.”
“Quite right,” said Crow Lee, from the pavement. But by the time I’d looked down, he’d disappeared.
And then, quite suddenly, all of the people hurrying up and down the street slammed to an abrupt halt. They stood still and silent for a long moment, and then they all turned their heads to look at me, and Molly. Hellfire burned in all their eyes, infernal flames dancing in their eye sockets. They were all wearing exactly the same smile. As though they were looking forward to something. I didn’t need to look around me to know we were surrounded. Hundreds of men and women, and some that might have been both or neither, were staring at me and Molly . . . with Hell’s eyes and bad intent.
“They’re possessed,” Molly said quietly. “Every damned one of them.”
“I had spotted that, yes,” I said.
“But who could possess that many people all at the same time?”
“Him,” I said, pointing.
The Sin Eater was hanging on the air above us, in his shining white preacher’s suit. Arms outstretched as though crucified, nailed to the night, blood dripping thickly from the stigmata in his wrists and ankles. He smiled down at us, looking very pleased with himself.
“Don’t make a fuss, please,” he said. “There’s no need for this to get unpleasant. Just admit you’re beaten, and it will all be over very quickly. I can’t promise it will be painless, but I can make it quick. You should have known you couldn’t win, not against me. I walk in Heaven’s sight, with Heaven’s strength. I have released all the demons contained within me and sent them out to occupy these passing sinners. My own little army. And since they aren’t really people, but as you have already pointed out, merely animated scraps of scenery . . . the demons can’t do any real damage, or hope to escape my control. I can have them do my bidding and then just call them home again. Where they belong. After they’ve dealt with you two. Why should I get my hands dirty when I already have so many burdens weighing down my poor benighted soul?”
“Just once,” said Molly, “I really would like to meet a villain who doesn’t feel the need to lecture us, or impress us with how clever they’re being.”
“Never happen,” I said. I looked thoughtfully at the Sin Eater. “All . . . of your demons?”
He smiled. “Well, perhaps I kept a few back. To keep me warm inside.”
The possessed army surged forward, lurching and staggering, as though the things inside them were still getting used to their new bodies. Bitter yellow flames rose from their staring eyes, and their hands had clawed fingers. Many of them tore at their ow
n flesh, giggling as they disfigured their helpless hosts. Blood fell from their wounds, to hiss and steam on the pavement. Many of them produced weapons; it was the Nightside, after all.
“Leave it to me,” said Molly. “I’ve got this.”
She stepped forward and carefully pronounced several disturbing Words of Power, but nothing happened. Molly scowled, and tried a whole series of impressive gestures, some of which I’d seen tear the material world apart before . . . But to no avail. She called down the elements, as she had so many times in the past, but nothing answered her. Molly stamped a foot in sheer frustration and looked at me with tears in her eyes.
“They’ve left me nothing!”
A man stepped up to her and pointed a gun at her head. Molly leapt on him, punched him out, and grabbed the gun from his hand as he fell to the ground. A woman with cat’s eyes and long, curving fingernails jumped at her, and Molly shot the woman dead. She shot three more of the nearest possessed before the cat woman hit the ground, and then turned to smile happily at me.
“Now that’s more like it. Good to know there are some things you can still depend on. Oh, don’t look so disapproving, Eddie. None of these people are real! Half of them probably wouldn’t be even if this was the real Nightside!”
“They’re real enough to kill us,” I said. “But I take your point.”
“Definitely stuffy,” said Molly. “What do I see in you?”
I armoured up, and once again altered its configuration to suit the situation. My golden gloves morphed into two oversized machine guns, and I opened up on the ranks of possessed before me, mowing them down. Without hesitation or mercy. The golden guns fired strange matter bullets, and even the possessed had no defence against them. Their bodies blew apart in messy explosions, thrown this way and that by the impacts, and bodies hit the pavement faster than the crowd could advance on me. I turned around in a slow circle, raking my guns back and forth, shooting everything I could see. Molly moved quickly to keep behind me, picking off the odd target herself, just to keep busy. I could hear her laughing.
“Hardcore, Eddie! This is more like it!”
They’re not real, I told myself. I’m just destroying scenery.
But when I’d finally finished, and ran out of possessed people to shoot, the dead bodies piled up around me still looked real enough. With their gaping wounds and shredded flesh and so much blood, pooling thickly. Some of the bodies were still twitching, as though the demons within were still trying to manipulate them, but they were all clearly dead, and one by one they stopped moving. I let my guns turn back into gloves and then called out to the strange matter bullets to return. They ripped themselves free of the bodies, and shot back through the air to sink into my armour. I wasn’t leaving any strange matter behind for someone else to get their hands on.
With their hosts fallen, destroyed past the point of usefulness, the demons abandoned the bodies. They rose up, like so many blood-coloured ghosts or spectres, and streaked through the air to re-enter the hanging body of the Sin Eater. His face twisted and grimaced as his hellish children came home, but whether from pain or pleasure I couldn’t tell. I was genuinely shocked that there were so many of them, contained within one man, who still claimed to serve the Good.
I walked over to him. Molly hung back. I looked up at the cruciform figure, hanging on the air above me. He stared down coldly.
“You haven’t won,” he said. “I haven’t even started yet.”
“You have to stop this,” I said steadily. “Now. While you still can. Before it’s too late.”
“It was too late long ago,” said the Sin Eater. “Don’t you think I know that? So many demons; it’s like I’m full of razor wire, scraping against my soul . . . What I’ve done to myself, for what seemed like good reasons at the time . . . Fight fire with hellfire . . . I’m damned. I know that. Unless I can win this Game, and have all my sins forgiven. Or at least, adjusted. It won’t bother me to kill you, to sacrifice two more innocents for my holy cause. Especially since you aren’t really innocents, are you? A Drood and a witch? I’ve no doubt you deserve everything that’s coming to you. So there’s some comfort in that. I’ll just be sending you where you were bound to end up anyway.”
The ground in front of me cracked open, and I stepped quickly back. A jagged split shot across the street, from side to side. And it was only then that I realised all the traffic on the road had disappeared. Not needed any more to set the scene. A deep crevice opened up, full of blood and fire and heaving molten lava. With darks shadows moving in it. The Sin Eater laughed briefly.
“There you are, Drood! An express route to Hell, just for you and your little witch!”
Terrible things came crawling up out of the flames and the lava, hauling themselves out of the crevice. Awful distorted shapes, sickening to look at. Sins given shape and form, sculpted in flesh and blood and bone. Foul things from out of the Pit, all of them smiling with anticipation as they headed for me, and for Molly. She moved quickly forward to stand beside me.
“They aren’t the real thing,” she said.
“You’d know,” I said.
“And if they’re not really hellspawn . . .”
“Then they’re just more scenery.”
My gloves became guns again, and I opened fire. The demons looked startled, even shocked, as my strange matter bullets tore into them and blew them apart. The sheer firepower I generated stopped them in their tracks, and then drove them back. I wasn’t sure I was really hurting them, but I was causing more damage to their material forms than they could hope to repair. I raked my guns up and down the length of the crevice, forcing the creatures back into the flames. Molly danced delightedly beside me, whooping and howling with glee. The Sin Eater cried out in frustration. I finally stopped, lowered my guns, and looked down into the crevice. Foul things stared back at me, unwilling to leave the flames, afraid to face me.
“I’m not afraid of you,” I said to them. “Whether you’re real or not.”
I walked forward, across the crevice, defying the fall. I walked across the wide gap as though it wasn’t there, and didn’t even feel the heat from the flames. The demons flinched back from me, cringing away from my act of faith. The crevice slammed shut, shutting off the light from the leaping flames in a moment. And every strange matter bullet I’d fired returned to my armour.
The Sin Eater glared down at me, his face full of rage and fear and desperation.
“Take him!” he said loudly. “All you demons within; I give him to you! Possess the Drood!”
They oozed out of his flesh, seeping through his white suit like so much congealed blood, forming into twisted demonic shapes in mid-air. More and more of them boiled out of the Sin Eater to hang on the night, before and around him, snarling and hissing, but not one of them moved forward to possess me. They preferred to stay where they were, forming a protective barrier around their host. He raged and roared at them, ordering them to obey his instructions, but they wouldn’t. They waited for me to come to them. So I walked slowly, steadily forward, until I was standing directly before the Sin Eater. He was breathing hard now, his ragged voice silenced by sheer frustration. The demons stared silently at me.
“You think your precious armour will protect you, Drood?” said the Sin Eater. “After everything you’ve done?”
I thought about it, and then armoured down. The demons murmured uneasily among themselves. I stood there before them, in nothing but my bare flesh, and stared steadily back at them. Real or not, they still scared the crap out of me, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me. They looked away from me, unwilling to meet my gaze. I turned to the Sin Eater and held his gaze with my own.
“I have faith in me,” I said. “Because my uncle Jack had faith in me. And I have always valued his opinion and his judgement. While I may not always be sure about me, I have no doubt he was a good man. I have done my duty, to my fam
ily and to Humanity. And to the cause I have always believed in, to be a shepherd to the world. I have fought the good fight, and done my best not to stain my honour too much in the process. I have tried to do the right thing, even in the worst situations. Judge me, you demons. If you dare.”
And one by one they turned away and forced themselves back into the Sin Eater. Even as he raged and ranted, cursing and screaming at them. They ignored him, choosing to go home, where they felt safe. Where they belonged. And as he finally realised that, the Sin Eater fell silent.
Molly moved in beside me. “Hardcore, Eddie,” she said respectfully.
The Sin Eater looked down on me, his eyes full of spite and desperation. “You can’t stop me! I have Hell’s strength on my side!”
“Shouldn’t that be Heaven’s strength?” I said. “For someone who claims to walk in Heaven’s sight?”
The Sin Eater tried to say something and couldn’t. Caught and held by an insight he couldn’t deny any longer. Caught in the terrible contradiction of the life he’d made for himself. The demons within sensed him wavering and tried to seize control. His face writhed and contorted, as other faces tried to take its place. Hellfire shot up from his staring eyes, and disappeared just as quickly. He shouted, and screamed, and spoke in tongues. A blasphemous halo of buzzing flies formed around his head . . . but only for a moment, before they fell silent and dropped dying to the ground. As the Sin Eater fought the forces within him. One last battle—to be the man he’d always meant to be. His own face re-emerged, and the demons fell quiet. Cowed, for now. The Sin Eater looked down on me.
“It was all my doing. All my fault. Everything . . . I take full responsibility for all my actions. For my pride, and arrogance. All my sins. I was such a fool . . . such a damned fool.”
His eyes closed and he collapsed, falling out of the night sky like a wounded bird. He hit the ground hard and lay still. I hurried forward to kneel beside him. I called his name, but he didn’t respond. His eyes were open, but they saw nothing. He’d gone inside, to face his demons, and now he was trapped in his own thoughts, struggling to resolve his contradictions. I wondered how long it would be, before he came out again, if he ever did. Molly knelt down beside me and pressed the barrel of her gun against the Sin Eater’s head. I grabbed her wrist, and forced the gun aside. Molly fought me for a moment, and then pulled her hand free. We stood up, facing each other. For a moment I thought she would aim the gun at me, but she didn’t.
From a Drood to A Kill: A Secret Histories Novel Page 37
