Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth Read online

  “Dear Henry, so good to see you again. You’ve come such a long way, since we last met.”

  Walker raised an elegant eyebrow. “You have the advantage of me, madam. I seem to recognise the voice, but…”

  “Oh Henry, have you forgotten your dear little Fennella Davis so soon?” said Lilith, and Walker actually caught his breath, as though he’d been hit.

  “So…” he said finally. “Lilith. This is what you really look like.”

  Lilith laughed, shaking her head a little coquettishly. “This…is as much of me as human senses can stand. You must remember that the whole Eden thing is just a parable. Really, this body is something I use to walk around in, in your limited world. Once I have refashioned the Nightside into something more suited to my needs and nature, I will bring all of myself here, and I will be glorious indeed.”

  “What are you?” said Walker. “I mean, what are you, really?”

  “I am of the first creation,” said Lilith. “I am what came first, long before this world was. I am also Charles Taylor’s wife and John Taylor’s mother. I am what three foolish boys summoned into the world, unknowingly. Oh dear Henry, am I everything you thought I’d be?”

  “Stand where you are,” said Walker, and his words thundered on the air. He was using the Voice the Authorities had given him, that could not be denied by the living or the dead. “Surrender yourself to me, Lilith, and do no more harm.”

  Lilith laughed at him, and the Voice’s power shattered on the air like cheap glass. “Don’t be silly, Henry. Your Voice was only ever designed to work on the things of this world, and I am so much more than that. Run away, dear Henry, and hide until I come for you. I have a special reward in mind for you. You will worship me, and love me, and I will make you immortal in some more pleasing shape, so that you can sing my praises for all eternity. Won’t that be fun?”

  “I’d rather die,” said Walker.

  Lilith slapped him aside contemptuously, and her slender pale arm hit him like a battering ram. His bones broke under the force of the blow, and blood flew on the air as he flew backwards, crashing into the wall of a half-buried church. He fell to the ground like a broken doll, and the church wall collapsed on top of him. The gods and their worshippers watched the rubble settle, then watched some more, but Walker, who could have called down armies from both Church and State with but a word, did not emerge.

  The god war was over. Everyone had seen the Authorities’ Voice crushed and broken in a moment, his power brushed aside like an annoying insect, and that was enough for them. They knelt and bowed their heads to Lilith, then joined up behind her as she led her army in triumph down the Street of the Gods and out into the Nightside.

  Not long after that, I finally turned up, with Shotgun Suzie, Razor Eddie, and Sandra Chance. The Street was a mess, with ruined buildings to every side, unattended fires sending up thick black smoke that stank of incense, and the dead and the dying lying ignored. The survivors and the walking wounded stumbled this way and that, deep in shock, only left behind because they were too damaged to be of use. It said something for Razor Eddie’s reputation that broken, dazed, and defeated as they were, many of them took one look at Eddie and started running. Rather more unsettlingly, a whole lot more took one look at me and came forward to kneel before me, praising me as Lilith’s son and calling on me for mercy and deliverance.

  “All right,” said Suzie, curling her upper lip. “This is seriously freaking me out.”

  “You’re not alone,” I said. “You! Let go of my leg, right now.”

  “No-one ever kneels to me,” said Suzie. “You there! Yes, you, stop shaking and tell us what the hell happened here.”

  It took a while, but we finally got the story out of them. Lilith had made her triumphant return to the Nightside, and I’d missed it. The shivering wrecks before us made it very clear that Mommie Dearest was looking for me. And not necessarily in a good way. It seemed she had some special purpose in mind for her only begotten child.

  “Tough,” I said. “I don’t happen to feel like obliging her. At least, not yet. When we finally do meet, I want it to be on my terms, on my home ground.”

  By now, word of my arrival had spread up and down the Street of the Gods, and a mob of ragged people formed around us, half out of their minds with fear and anger, crying out Blasphemer! and Drag him down! and Take him to Lilith! Suzie and Eddie and Sandra moved in close beside me, but the mob didn’t even see them. There were hundreds of them now, with more coming, faces twisted with hate and loathing, reaching out for me with clawed hands. They surged forward from all sides, and before I could say anything, Suzie opened up with her pump-action shotgun, blowing great holes in the advancing ranks. They kept coming. Razor Eddie cut a bloody path through them, moving too fast for the human eye to follow. Then Sandra Chance raised the bodies of the fallen dead to attack the living, and that was too much for the mob. The crowd broke apart and quickly dispersed, scattering in all directions, leaving the dead and dying behind. I couldn’t feel angry at them. None of this was their fault, really. It was just that my mother made such a powerful impression on people. Suzie lowered her shotgun and reloaded. Eddie reappeared at my side, his razor dripping blood. Sandra let the dead lie down again. A shivering acolyte in an Aztec feathered headdress approached her timidly.

  “If you can raise the dead, could you perhaps…?”

  “Sorry, no,” said Sandra Chance. “Raising dead gods is beyond me. Besides, if he stays dead, he probably wasn’t much of a god to begin with, was he?”

  The acolyte burst into tears, and we left him sitting there on the shattered steps of what had once been his temple.

  “Ms. Tact,” said Suzie, to Sandra.

  “You’d know,” said Sandra.

  “Where’s Walker?” said Eddie. “I don’t see a body anywhere, and you know what they say in the Nightside—if you don’t see a body, they’re almost certainly not dead.”

  “I think I can help you there,” said a sad-eyed priest. “You’ll find him over there, under what’s left of my church.”

  We thanked him and approached the remains of what might once have been a pretty impressive edifice. Half of it was still on fire, burning sullenly in the still night air. In the end, we had to dig through a pile of rubble, hauling it away brick by brick, to uncover Walker. His suit was tattered and torn and soaked with blood, but he still opened his eyes the moment I leaned over him. He even managed a small smile.

  “John,” he said faintly. “Late, as usual. I’ve been having a few words with your mother.”

  “So I see,” I said. “You can’t get on with anyone, can you?”

  We dug him out, and sat him up with his back against a wall. He never made a sound the whole time. Suzie checked him over with brisk efficiency. Suzie knows a lot about wounds, from both ends. Eventually she stood back and nodded to me.

  “He’s damaged, but he’ll live.”

  “Oh good,” said Walker. “For a while there, I was almost worried.”

  “You should be,” said Sandra Chance. “You trapped us all in the cemetery dimension and left us there to die. We had an agreement, and you broke it. No-one does that to me and lives.”

  “You can’t kill him now,” I said.

  “Why not?” said Sandra, turning the full force of her cold, angry gaze upon me. I looked back at her steadily.

  “Because he was my father’s friend. Because I don’t kill in cold blood. And because I have a use for him.”

  “Practical as ever, John,” said Walker.

  Sandra frowned. “This plan. Will he like it?”

  “Almost definitely not.”

  “Then I’ll wait,” said Sandra Chance.

  I crouched down before Walker so I could look right into his face. “She’s back,” I said. “Lilith. My mother. Back to tear down the Nightside and replace it with something that will have no room in it for Humanity. And if I try to stop her, just maybe she’ll bring down the whole world. I can’t do this al
one, Walker. I need your help.”

  He smiled briefly. “We’re finally on the same wavelength. Pity it took such dire straits to bring us together.”

  “Don’t kid yourself,” I said. “All we have in common is a mutual enemy.”

  “Yes. Someone who’s worse than either of us.”

  “You should know,” I said. “You brought her here, through the Babalon Working. You, and the Collector, and my father.”

  “Ah,” said Walker. “So you worked it out, finally. I was beginning to think you were a bit slow. You’ll have all the support I can raise from the Authorities, but it’ll take more than an army of warm bodies and everyday magics to stop Lilith.”

  “I have a few old friends and allies in mind,” I said. “And a plan I can practically guarantee no-one’s going to like.” I turned to Suzie. “Take Sandra and Eddie and get Walker back to Strangefellows. Alex can fix him up, but make sure he doesn’t try to put it on my tab. Then you wait there, till I get back.”

  “Hell with that,” Suzie said immediately. “Wherever you’re going, you’ll need me to watch your back.”

  “Not this time,” I said gently. “I need you with the others. You’re the only one I can trust. And besides…I don’t want you to see some of the things I might have to do.”

  She smiled briefly. “You pick the damnedest times to worry about my feelings, John.”

  “Somebody has to,” I said.

  FOUR

  Not Fade Away

  How do you take down an army of ex-gods? Well, when the living can’t help you, start with the dead. I left the Street of the Gods by one of the less-travelled exits and made my way through the crowded streets of the Nightside, heading for Uptown, where they keep all the really weird clubs. I was looking for Dead Boy, and I didn’t have a lot of time. Given the sheer size and scope of the Nightside, it would take even Lilith and her army quite a while to make any real impression, but the news would start to spread soon enough. Bad news always does.

  The night air was crisp and clear, the pavements were slick from a recent rain, and the scene was jumping, like always. There might be rumours of riot and mayhem and imminent apocalypse, but that was simply business as usual in the Nightside. Especially at weekends. And yet…I sensed a growing jittery feeling among people I passed, a sense of nervous anticipation, even if no-one seemed too sure about what. I fought down an urge to hurry, not wanting to attract attention to myself. I had time. Even with Walker taken out of the picture, the Authorities would still be able to throw whole armies into Lilith’s path, armed with guns and blades and magics and all the usual nasty surprises. They’d slow her down. For a while.

  People around me kept glancing up at the night sky, as though half-expecting the stars to have changed position, or the oversized full moon to have turned bloodred. Something new and dangerous had come into the Nightside, and they could all sense it, like cattle approaching a slaughterhouse. Everyone seemed sharper and almost spookily alert, and the intensity of the night moved up another notch.

  Striding back and forth outside the ever-welcoming doors of disreputable clubs, the barkers hawked their wares with a new urgency, while on every street corner the come-ons from the scarlet lips of the twilight daughters was a little bit more aggressive. Tides of people surged this way and that, the casual stroll giving way to the determined march, as though the punters were afraid that what they were looking for might not be there when they got there. A new Special Edition of the Nightside’s only daily paper, the Night Times, was just hitting the streets, and people crowded round the news vendors, almost snatching the papers out of their hands, then chattering animatedly over the heavy black headlines. I had no doubt that Lilith had made the front page, and probably most of the other pages, too. I needed to get my plan up and running before everything started falling apart. And for that, I needed Dead Boy.

  It wasn’t hard to find the lap-dancing club where he was working as a bouncer. Bit of a come-down, for the Nightside’s most eminent vigilante, dark avenger, and first line of defence against the legions of the dead, but presumably there were fringe benefits. I stopped before the club and studied it carefully from what I hoped was a safe distance. The flashing neon sign over the gaping door spelled out the club’s name, NOT FADE AWAY, in colours so bright and garish they practically stabbed into my eyes. To either side were neon figures of dancing girls, jiggling eternally from one uncomfortable-looking position to another, back and forth, back and forth. A grubby window held photographs of the glamorous girls one could hope to find inside the club, though experience led me to believe the girls actually on display would look nothing like the photos.

  The barker lounging by the door inhabited a brightly coloured check coat, with a revolving bow tie and a grin so fixed it bordered on the unnatural. He’d started out life as a ventriloquist’s dummy, and never really got over it. Seeing my interest he fixed me with his brightly shining eyes and launched into his spiel.

  “They’re dead, they’re naked, and they dance!”

  I fixed him with my best cold stare. “Do I look like a tourist?”

  He sneered and moved away from the door, waving me in. I passed him by with as much dignity as was possible under the circumstances. Inside the lap-dancing club, someone tried to take my coat, and I punched him out. Start as you mean to go on…The transition from chilly night to sweltering lounge was abrupt, and I stopped inside the main area to get my bearings. The management kept the lights down to a comforting gloom, partly to give the punters a sense of privacy, but mostly so you wouldn’t get too good a look at the rest of the clientele. The air was thick with all kinds of smoke, and rank with the stink of sweat and desire and desperation. There were ratty-looking tables and chairs for the scattered audience, and cheap plywood booths at the back for more private encounters. The customers were mostly men, mostly human, their eyes fixed hungrily on the four separate spotlighted stages where the dancers swayed back and forth to the over-amplified music.

  There were girls, up on the stages and in and among the audience, showing off what they’d got and what they could do, all of them naked, all of them dead. The spirits of departed women, condemned to wander the Earth for this reason or that, lap-dancing for the living. Some seemed completely real and solid, while others were only wisps of smoke or mist, tinted all of the colours of the rainbow by the coloured gels rotating in front of the stage lights. Most of the girls drifted from one state to the other and back again, as they stamped and spun and shook their breasts, pumping their hips and curling around the steel poles on the stages, all the time favouring the nearest customers with wide smiles that meant nothing, nothing at all. Ghostly girls, the dancing dead—the ultimate look but don’t touch.

  There was a tacky-looking bar set to one side, and leaning up against it, the legendary Dead Boy himself. Technically speaking, he wasn’t old enough to be in a club like this. Dead Boy was seventeen, and had been for some thirty years, ever since he was murdered—clubbed down in the street for his credit cards and mobile phone. He came back from the dead, after making a deal with someone he still preferred not to name, and took a terrible vengeance on his killers, only to find that his deal made it impossible for him to go to his rest afterwards. And so he walks the Nightside, forever young, forever damned, his spirit possessing his own dead body, doing good deeds in the hope that eventually he’ll accumulate enough goodwill in Heaven to break the terms of the deal he made.

  He was tall and adolescent thin, wrapped in a dark purple greatcoat, over black leather trousers and tall calfskin boots. He wore a black rose on one lapel and a large floppy black hat perched on the back of his head. His coat hung open, revealing a corpse-pale torso held together with stitches and staples and duct tape. He doesn’t feel pain any more, but he can still take damage. If I looked closely I could see the bullet hole in his forehead that he’d filled in with builder’s putty.

  His long white face had a weary, debauched look, with burning fever-bright eyes and a pouting
sulky mouth with no colour in it. He had experimented with makeup, but mostly he just couldn’t be bothered. Long dark hair fell to his shoulders in oiled ringlets. He looked calm, casual, even bored. He was drinking whiskey straight from the bottle and eating Neapolitan ice cream straight from the tub. He nodded easily as I came over to join him.

  “Hello, Taylor,” he said indistinctly, around a mouthful of ice cream. “Pardon my indulgence, but when you’re dead you have to take your pleasures where you can find them. I’d offer you a drink, but I’ve only got the one bottle. And don’t order anything from the bar—their prices are appalling, and the drinks are worse.”

  I nodded. I already knew that. I’d been here once before, working a case, and had allowed myself to be persuaded to order what passed for champagne. It tasted like cherry cola. Nothing was what it seemed here. Even the waitress had an Adam’s apple.

  “So you’re the bouncer?” I said, leaning easily back against the bar beside him.

  “I run security here,” he corrected me. “I keep an eye on things. Most of the punters take one look at me, and know better than to start anything.”

  “I thought you had a steady gig, body-guarding that singer, Rossignol?”

  He shrugged. “She’s off touring Europe. And I…prefer not to leave the Nightside. This job’s just temporary, until I can scare something else up. Even the dead have to earn a living. Hence the girls here.”

  I nodded. The Nightside accumulates more than its fair share of ghosts and revenants, one way and another, and they all have to go somewhere.

  “Where do the girls go, when they’re not working?” I asked.