The Bride Wore Black Leather n-12 Read online

  Dead Boy gave up on the champagne and gave his full attention to the assorted snacks and nibbles laid out before him. He crammed his mouth full of delicate culinary creations and filled his coat pockets, for later. Tall and forever adolescent thin, Dead Boy wore a long, deep, purple greatcoat, over black leather trousers and calf-skin boots. He sported a black rose on his coat lapel, and every now and again his coat would hang open to reveal the bare white torso beneath, marked with cuts, scars, bullet-holes and his Y-shaped autopsy scar. Dead Boy never could resist getting into trouble, and as a result was held together with heavy stitches, staples, and the odd length of black duct tape. His long, pale face had a weary, debauched Pre-Raphaelite look, with burning fever-bright eyes and a sulky mouth with no colour in it. He wore a large, battered, dark floppy hat, crammed down hard over a mess of thick, curly hair. Dead Boy did take a pride in his appearance, but it wasn’t a pride the living could understand.

  “How did you get in?” I asked, honestly interested. “You’re not an immortal. You’re dead.”

  “I got in the same way you did, by intimidating the staff. I come here every year; even after they put a fatwa on me. I don’t give a damn for these immortal arseholes; I’m here for the food and drink. The MEC really puts itself out for the Ball of Forever—nothing but the best for people who’ll come back for centuries. I mean, we are talking delicacies and specialities from all across history! A lot of it supplied by Rick’s Cafe Imaginaire; you know, the place that supplies meals made from extinct and legendary animals. I used to go there a lot, before I was banned. How was I to know it was a dog? It didn’t look like a dog. Anyway, they have all kinds of tasty treats here, including some so appallingly off-centre that most people wouldn’t try them even if you put a gun to their head. Look, larks’ tongues in peanut butter on Ritz crackers. Coneys—baby rabbits ripped from their mother’s breast and skewered. Stuffed baby Morlock . . .”

  “Stuffed with what?” I asked, despite myself.

  “Baby Eloi, probably. Those things over there are moebius mice; they stuff themselves. Crunchy . . . but they don’t half repeat on you. Hmmm . . . T. rex truffles and velociraptor pâté . . . really fast food. And Man’s final revenge on the dinosaurs, I suppose. Hello; what’s this?”

  “Elephant, sir,” said the French maid.

  We both looked at the richly steaming meat laid out across a very long plate. “Is that the trunk?” I said finally. “Please tell me that’s the trunk.”

  “Not even close, sir. That is the elephant’s penis. Soaked in a dozen different herbs and spices, tenderised with meat hammers, and then char-grilled to bring out the flavour. Would sir like me to cut him a slice off the end?”

  “Oh I couldn’t,” I said. “I’d wince with every bite.”

  Dead Boy laughed in my face and had a really big slice, beaming happily. “One of the more annoying problems with being dead is that I can only experience the most extreme sensations. I’m only able to enjoy food and drink at all because of these marvellous little pills I have made for me, by this amazing little Obeah woman I know. You can’t beat graveyard voodoo when it comes to getting you things you’re not supposed to have. She’s called Mother Macabre; though whether that’s her name or her title, I’ve never been sure. Certainly there’s been a Mother Macabre in the Nightside Necropolis for more centuries than I can cope with.” He looked around the Ball. “She can’t be immortal or she’d be here . . . God, this is grand stuff . . . bit chewy, mind. I wonder if they do the balls, as well . . .”

  “You ask,” I said. “I wouldn’t dare.”

  “You on a case here?” he said easily. “I don’t mind helping out. I could use some pocket money. In fact, I could use quite a lot of it.”

  “Never knew you when you couldn’t,” I said. “I’ll let you know.”

  He shrugged, and went back to stuffing his face with elephant. I wandered off into the crowd again.

  Where I met Mistress Mayhem, a tall, lithe, blue-skinned beauty, with a massive frizz of black hair that fell all the way down her back to her very slender waist. Descended, at a great many removes, from the Indian death goddess Kali, she was currently wearing an outfit from the film Avatar, cut to show off as much dark blue flesh as possible. She offered me some glowing green snuff from a chased silver snuff-box, and when I politely declined, she filled both her nostrils with enough of the stuff to blow a normal person’s head right off. She sneezed briefly, in a very ladylike way, and tucked the snuff-box back into her cleavage.

  We’d worked a few cases together, and she’d tried to have me killed a few times. Business as usual, in the Nightside.

  “Weren’t you going out with Jimmy Thunder, last time I saw you?” I said to make conversation.

  “Oh, him! The Norse God for Hire,” said Mayhem. “We are currently not speaking. And anyway, he’s banned from the Ball of Forever for excessive smiting last year. Just as well; he can lower the tone of any gathering simply by being a part of it.”

  My next encounter was with Hadleigh Oblivion. He appeared before me, emerging from the crowd with casual grace, smiling easily, as though he knew something I didn’t. Which, given who and what he was, was probably true. Hadleigh knew a great many things other people didn’t know and wouldn’t want to. He was perhaps the most powerful, and certainly the most influential, of the legendary Oblivion brothers. Tommy Oblivion was the Existential Detective, specialising in cases that may or may not have actually happened. Larry Oblivion was the Dead Detective, the Post-Mortem Private Eye. And Hadleigh . . . was a product of the Deep School, and the current Detective Inspectre, only called in on cases where reality itself was under threat. He was wearing his usual long, black leather coat, dark as a scrap of the night, all the better to show off his stark white face and his mane of jet-black hair. He also had sinister dark eyes and a downright unnerving smile. Hadleigh always gave the impression that wherever he was, that was where he was supposed to be.

  I made a point of nodding easily to him, conspicuously unimpressed. You can’t let people like that know they’ve got to you, or they’ll walk all over you.

  “Something’s going to happen here,” Hadleigh announced, quite casually. “I can feel it in the air, like a thunder-storm drawing closer. I take it you feel it, too?”

  “Oh yes,” I said. “Something like that.” I didn’t feel like mentioning the Anonymous Gentleman’s warning note. It’s important to keep up appearances. “But what could be so important, as to bring you, me, Dead Boy, and Razor Eddie to the same place? Can’t be a coincidence.”

  “Coincidences are the universe’s way of arranging things neatly,” said Hadleigh.

  “Are you immortal?” I said bluntly.

  “Bit early to tell yet,” said Hadleigh. “Whatever this thing is, it had better get a move on. I can’t stop long; I’ve been called in to consult on a case with the London Knights. They actually requested my presence, which is unusual enough that I’ve agreed to go out into London Proper to give them a helping hand.” He fixed me with a cool, considering look. “You know the London Knights. Is it true that King Arthur has returned to them?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Is he everything the legends say?”

  “That and more.”

  “Interesting,” said Hadleigh. “I wonder what he wants with me . . . But consider this; if Arthur Pendragon is back, can Merlin Satanspawn be far behind?”

  “Oh God, I hope not,” I said.

  “Leave Her out of this,” Hadleigh said firmly. I can never tell when he’s joking.

  “You’re Hadleigh Oblivion, aren’t you?” said Charlotte ap Owen excitedly, waving for her camera-man to catch up with her.

  Hadleigh smiled, produced a pale blue rose from out of nowhere, and held it up before Charlotte. He then brought the rose up to his mouth and inhaled steadily. The colour faded out of the petals, and we all watched speechlessly as Hadleigh breathed in the life essence of the flower. One by one, the colourless petals cracked and fel
l apart, falling in grey sprinkles to the floor. Hadleigh smiled and let the dead stem fall from his hand.

  “That’s nothing,” said Dead Boy, passing by. “You should see what I can do with a fart.”

  Hadleigh smiled easily at Charlotte, who looked like she wanted to be sick. She backed away into the crowd, taking Dave the camera-man with her. I gave Hadleigh a hard look.

  “Studying at the Deep School ruined you.”

  “No, it didn’t.”

  “Well, something did.”

  I went back to mingling. I listened in on a great many conversations because the immortals were too proud to stop talking even though I was there, but I didn’t learn anything important. Most of it was about who was having whom, and what someone else would do when they found out. Typical party chatter. No-one even mentioned the immortality serum I was supposed to be looking for. Short of grabbing people by their lapels and slamming them up against a wall, I didn’t see how I was going to persuade anyone to talk about it. And I don’t do things like that. Not any more.

  I bumped into the Lord Orlando, fresh from changing sex again. He’d come dressed in a chequered black-and-white Harlequin outfit, complete with a cute little domino mask and heavy stubble showing through his white face make-up. He was still boring for England, talking loudly and relentlessly at anyone who’d stand still long enough, and name-dropping all the famous people he claimed to have slept with, in one sex or another, down the ages. And still going on about how traumatised he was, from being kidnapped and briefly replaced by the Charnel Chimera, a few years back. I got the impression he was mostly upset that no-one could tell the difference between the bloodthirsty monster and the real thing. I could have said many things there, but didn’t. I must be mellowing.

  I pointed him in Bettie Divine’s direction, thus annoying two birds with one stone, and headed towards a couple of people I was actually looking forward to meeting; the Bride, and her current paramour, the latest incarnation of Springheel Jack. The Bride towered over both of us, a good seven feet tall and well fleshed. The Baron Frankenstein had made all his early creations oversized, so he had enough room to fit all the bits in. The Bride’s face was pale and taut, as though stretched by too much plastic surgery, but she’d always looked that way. The Baron might be a creative genius when it came to Life and Death, but his sewing skills left a lot to be desired.

  The Bride had huge dark eyes that didn’t blink often enough, a prominent nose, and lips red as sin itself. She would never be described as beautiful, but she was most definitely attractive, in a spooky, scary kind of way. She wore her long black hair piled up in an Amy Winehouse beehive, and she wasn’t bothering to dye out the white streaks any more. Or using make-up to cover the heavy stitching at her neck and wrists. She wore a flouncy white blouse, cut to show off her magnificent cleavage, midnight blue slacks, and knee-length riding boots with silver spurs. Up close, she smelled of attar of roses with a hint of formaldehyde.

  She crushed my hand in a powerful grip and smiled broadly. We’d never actually met before, but with reputations like ours, we knew of each other. The Bride had a lot of personality and didn’t mind spreading it around.

  “I’m here representing the Spawn of Frankenstein,” she said loudly. “All those dead but definitely not departed creations of the old Baron, bad cess to his soul. I did hear you’d killed him a while back, and I was going to send you a thank-you note; but it turned out to be another other-dimensional duplicate. I hate those. Still, thanks for the effort. It’s the thought that counts.”

  “Happy to do it,” I said, flexing my numbed fingers surreptitiously. The Bride was a big girl and didn’t know her own strength. “One less god of the living scalpel has to be a good thing.”

  “Do you know my new boy-friend?” said the Bride, draping a more than usually long arm across her companion’s shoulders. “He’s the current inheritor of the Springheel Jack inheritance; but don’t hold that against him.”

  We shook hands briefly. I couldn’t help but remember the time when a more than usually virulent Springheel Jack meme had invaded the Nightside through a Timeslip, overwriting everyone it touched and turning them into Springheel Jacks with nothing but bloodshed and slaughter on their minds. Suzie and I had no choice but to go out into the streets, hunt down everyone afflicted, and kill them all. If this Jack knew, he had the grace not to mention it, so I didn’t either.

  He was tall and slim, cool and calm, with a dignified bearing. He was handsome enough, in a sinister sort of way. He wore the traditional long black cape, which swept about him like bat-wings, and an old-fashioned top hat. The look came with the incarnation. He wore it well enough. He had a pale face and ice-cold blue eyes, that were a lot older than they should have been. It was the burden of every Springheel Jack to carry all the experiences of his predecessors.

  “What brings the new Walker to the Ball of Forever?” he said, in a slightly detached voice. “Are we to take it that you’re immortal?”

  “Hardly,” I said. “My title isn’t like yours; I’m just the latest to hold the position. I’m here following a lead in a case, to see where it goes.” I looked thoughtfully at Jack, then at the Bride. “Are either of you immortal, technically speaking?”

  “I am both dead and alive!” the Bride said grandly. “Which means I outrank everyone here. Besides, I’d like to see anyone try to throw us out . . .”

  “While I am an idea that manifests itself through possessing people,” said Springheel Jack. “So I suppose I am immortal, in a serial sort of way.”

  And then everybody at the Ball of Forever stopped talking, and turned their heads to look as news of the latest arrival spread rapidly through the room. I looked around, too, impressed. Even I hadn’t made that much of an impression. A silence fell across the ballroom as King of Skin stood in the doorway, large as life and twice as nasty, swaying on his feet and sniggering to himself, wrapped in all his usual sleazy glory. King of Skin was the only immortal in the Authorities, that quiet background group who run the Nightside, inasmuch as any does or cares to. The group I supposedly now served and took my authority from. King of Skin was potent and powerful, a King in glory when he took his aspect upon him. He could disturb people he hadn’t even met yet. Rumour had it he’d spat on Heaven and Hell because he wouldn’t be bound by anything, even a philosophy. He had the power to undo possibilities and rewrite them in his favour. He could pick out your worst and most private nightmare, simply by looking at you, and make it real. King of Skin was a major-league scumbag, even by Nightside standards; but he could do things for you that no-one else could, or would. So people made a lot of allowances. Lot of that going on, in the Nightside.

  Don’t ask what he really looked like; everyone saw what he wanted them to see. Mostly he projected a sleazy glamour of constantly shifting details, real enough to make you extremely uncomfortable on a very basic level. Everyone was always very polite, wherever he turned up, if they knew what was good for them, and gave him plenty of room. I’d known him for years, usually from a distance, and I still had no idea what he was about or what he wanted. Just another lost soul, more powerful than most, walking the dark streets in search of something even he probably couldn’t name. He was hard to kill though many had tried, and none of us knew the beginning of his story. Because he liked it that way.

  He started forward into the ballroom, swaying and sniggering, grinning nastily in all directions, enjoying the effect he was having on the gathering. Even the most powerful immortals fell back, to give him plenty of room to move in. King of Skin reached out to touch the people he passed, in brusque and brutal inappropriate ways, trailing his fingertips across bare flesh, caressing a face here and a breast there, and no-one said or did anything. I had to wonder what he was doing at the Ball. Was he representing the Authorities? Had he heard about the serum? Or was he here to cause trouble because he could? There were gods here who would turn their gazes aside rather than upset King of Skin because even gods have nightmares, an
d King of Skin wouldn’t hesitate to use them as weapons.

  He knew I was there but ignored me completely, working the crowd in his own nasty way. He would stop here and there, for a moment, to indulge in a few neatly tailored insults, dropping quick references to things no-one else was supposed to know about. He mocked and abused people and laughed in their faces; and they stood there and let him do it because they had no choice. Because the alternatives were worse. People cursed and swore under their breath after he’d moved on, and some even wept bitter tears of rage or affront. Because King of Skin knew things . . . and the best you could hope for was that he wouldn’t tell anyone else.

  No-one ever disputed his right to do these things because he was King of Skin.

  To my surprise, he actually sought out Razor Eddie in his corner. A lot of people started backing away. I mean, you don’t upset the Punk God of the Straight Razor. Not if you like having your organs on the inside. I’ve seen gods and powers come running out of the Street of the Gods, crying their eyes out, because Razor Eddie was on the rampage. But no; King of Skin walked right up to the thin grey presence and sniggered in his face.

  “So, Eddie,” said King of Skin, “when are you going to tell everyone where you really got your pearl-handled straight razor?”

  Razor Eddie looked at him, and the silence lengthened uncomfortably. King of Skin snarled and growled under his breath, and turned abruptly away. And I stopped holding a breath I hadn’t even realised was caught in my throat. It was as though two great racing cars had played chicken, and one had turned aside at the last moment. King of Skin strode up to Dead Boy, who was still making serious inroads on the buffet and sucking his dead fingers noisily. He straightened up as he sensed King of Skin approaching and turned unhurriedly round to face him.