Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth Page 8

  Dead Boy gave me a pitying look. “They’re always working. That’s the point. It’s not like they ever get tired…”

  “What do the girls get out of this? The money can’t be that good.”

  “It isn’t. But a clever girl can make a lot from tips, and the management guarantees to keep the girls safe from necromancers, plus all the other unsavoury types who use the energies of the departed to fuel their magics. And of course all the girls hope to hook an appreciative customer, turn him into a regular, and milk him for all he’s worth.”

  I looked out over the widely spread audience. “Anyone interesting in tonight?”

  “A few names, a few faces, no-one you’d know and no-one worth noting. Though we do have several diminutive professors, who claim they’re here researching modern slang. They loved it when I told them this club was licensed to dispense spirits…”

  I smiled dutifully. Dead Boy shrugged and took a good slug from his bottle. It was nearly empty.

  I watched the ghost girls dance. Putting off the moment when I’d have to tell Dead Boy why I was there. They were currently spinning and gyrating to an old Duran Duran number, “Girls on Film,” and being ghosts they were all supernaturally beautiful, impossible lithe, and utterly glamorous. They danced with implacable grace, stamping their bare feet and jiggling their oversized breasts, rising from the stages to slide and sweep through the smoky air. Those in and among the audience drifted around and sometimes even through the customers, giving them a thrill they wouldn’t find anywhere else. And why not? The steel poles were the only truly solid things on those stages.

  “Don’t get tempted,” said Dead Boy, putting down his empty bottle and scraped-clean ice cream tub. “It’s all just a glamour. You wouldn’t want to see what they really look like when they drop their illusions between sets. Unfortunately, being dead I always see them as they really are, which takes a lot of the fun out of this job.”

  One girl swayed deliciously down from her stage, seemingly completely solid, until she extended one finger to a chosen customer, and he breathed it in, inhaling it like cigar smoke. The girl’s hand unravelled, disappearing into his mouth and nostrils, until he couldn’t take any more, and let it all back out again in coughs and snorts. The girl giggled as her hand reassembled. Up on one of the stages, a girl suddenly caught fire but kept dancing, unconsumed.

  “An old flame of mine,” Dead Boy said solemnly.

  There are quite a few clubs in Uptown that cater to the various forms of death fetish, from mummification to premature burial, and some places that would freak out even hard-core Goths; clubs like Peaceful Repose, where you can try out being dead for a while to see what it feels like. Or the brothel where you can pay to have sex with female vampires, ghouls, and zombies. There are always those who like their meat cold, with the taste of formaldehyde on their lips…

  I said as much to Dead Boy, who only showed any interest when I got to the brothel. He actually got out a notebook and pencil for the address.

  “Trust me,” I said firmly. “You really don’t want to go there. You’ll end up with worms.”

  And then one of the ghost dancers caught my attention, as she beckoned coyly to a customer and led him, half-walking and half-swaying, across the gloomy club to one of the private booths at the rear. The customer was tall and skinny, with a furtive air about him. The two of them disappeared into a booth and shut the door firmly behind them. I turned to Dead Boy.

  “All right, what’s the point of that? I mean, if she’s not solid enough to touch…”

  “Love always finds a way,” said Dead Boy. “Instead of an exchange of fluids, an exchange of energies. All purely consensual, of course. The ghost girl absorbs a little of the customer’s life energy, which I’m told feels very nice, and she becomes a little more solid, so she can…take care of him. A benefit to both sides. The more life energies a girl collects, the more solid and real she can become. Theoretically, she could even become alive again…Sometimes the girls go too far and drain the customer dry. Then we end up with a really pissed off customer ghost haunting the place and acting up dead cranky. Management keeps an exorcism service on speed dial for just such occurrences…”

  The door to the private booth opened, and the customer came out again. He hadn’t been in there long. And when he’d gone in he’d been skinny as a whip, but now he was noticeably overweight, with an extensive bulging belly. Dead Boy cursed briefly and pushed himself away from the bar.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “The bastard’s a soul thief,” Dead Boy said curtly. “He’s inhaled the ghost girl, every last smoky bit of her, and now he’s containing her inside himself, hoping to smuggle her out. Let’s go.”

  We headed purposefully across the floor, and the punters hurried to get out of our way. The fat man saw Dead Boy coming, pulled an intricate glass charm out of his pocket, and threw it on the floor. The glass shattered, releasing the pre-prepared spell, and Dead Boy stopped as though he’d run into an invisible wall, his colourless face twisted in a pained grimace.

  “It’s an antipossession spell,” he grunted. “Trying to force me out of my body. Stop the bastard, John. Don’t let him get away with the girl.”

  I hurried forward to block the fat man’s way. He stopped, studied me cautiously, and reached into his pocket again. I fired up my gift just long enough to locate the spell he was using to contain the ghost within him and ripped it away. I shut down my gift as the fat man convulsed, staggering back and forth as his imposing stomach bulged and rippled like a sheet in the wind. I got behind him, grabbed him in a bear hug, and squeezed with all my strength. Thick streams of smoke came pouring out of his mouth and nostrils, quickly forming into the ghost girl. The bulging stomach flattened under my grip, and the ghost girl stood fuming before us. She solidified one leg just long enough to kick the soul thief really hard in the nuts, then she stalked away. I let go of the soul thief, and he collapsed to the floor, looking very much as though he wished he was dead.

  I left him there and went back to Dead Boy, who was looking much better.

  “Cheap piece of rubbish spell,” he said cheerfully. “Almost an insult, expecting something like that to take me out. My soul was put back by an expert. Leave the soul thief to me, John. I’ll arrange for something suitably humiliating and nasty to happen to him.”

  We strolled back to the bar, where the barmaid had a fresh bottle of whiskey waiting for Dead Boy. He reached for it, then hesitated, and gave me a long, considering look.

  “You didn’t come here just to inquire after my nonexistent health, Taylor. What do you want with me?”

  “I need your help. My mother is finally back, and the shit is hitting the fan in no uncertain manner.”

  “Why is it people only ever come to me when they want something?” Dead Boy said wistfully. “And usually only after everything’s already gone to Hell and worse?”

  “I think you just answered your own question,” I said. “That’s what you get, for being such a great back-stop.”

  “Give me the details,” said Dead Boy.

  I gave him the edited version, but even so he winced several times, and by the end he was shaking his head firmly.

  “No. No way. I do not get involved with Old Testament forces. They are too hard-core, even for me.”

  “I need your help.”

  “Tough.”

  “You have to help me, Dead Boy.”

  “No I bloody don’t. I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to. Being dead is very liberating that way.”

  “My mother is leading an army of Beings from the Street of the Gods. She has to be stopped.”

  “Good luck with that, John. Do send me a postcard as to how you got on. I’ll be in the Arctic. Hiding under a polar bear.”

  “I have a plan…”

  “You always do! The answer’s still no. I do not go up against gods. I know my limitations.”

  I fixed him with my best cold stare. “If you’re not
with us, you’re against us. Against me.”

  “You’d really threaten an old friend, John?”

  “If you were really a friend, I wouldn’t have to threaten you.”

  “Dammit, John,” he said quietly. “Don’t do this to me. I can’t afford to have my body destroyed, and lose my grip on this world. Not with what’s waiting for me…”

  “If Lilith isn’t stopped, the Hell she’ll make of the Nightside will be just as bad.”

  “You’re a real piece of work, Taylor, you know that? All right, I’m in. But I know I’m going to regret this.”

  “That’s the spirit,” I said.

  “You’re not even safe being dead, these days,” Dead Boy said mournfully.

  FIVE

  Down in Dingley Dell

  “So,” said Dead Boy, “you’ve definitely got a plan?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “But you’re not going to tell me what it is?”

  “It would only upset you.”

  “Can you at least tell me where we’re going?”

  “If you like, but…”

  “I won’t like that either?”

  “Probably not.”

  “If I wasn’t already dead, I think I’d probably be very depressed.”

  I had to laugh. It felt good to have something to laugh about. We were walking through one of the less salubrious areas of the Nightside, where the neon signs fell away like uninvited guests at the feast, and even working street-lamps were few and far between. We had come to Rotten Row, and the people who lived there liked it dark. We’d been walking for a while, and even though Dead Boy couldn’t get tired, he could get bored, and downright cranky about it. He’d wanted to use his famous futuristic car, the gleaming silver sensation that drove itself out of a Timeslip from some possible future, and adopted Dead Boy as its driver. But I had to work on the assumption that Lilith had agents everywhere now, and they’d be bound to recognise such a distinctive car. And they might well have orders to attack it on sight, just in case Dead Boy was giving his old friend a lift. Nothing like having a Biblical myth for a mother to make you really paranoid. I wasn’t ready for a direct confrontation with Lilith’s people. Not yet. So Dead Boy and I walked together through increasingly dark and dingy back streets, in search of that great Victorian Adventurer, Julien Advent.

  I’d already phoned the main offices of the Night Times, and the deputy editor had reluctantly confirmed that Julien wasn’t there. He might be the paper’s editor and owner now, but Julien still remembered the days when he’d been the Nightside’s leading investigative journalist. So every now and again he’d disappear for a few days on a personal assignment, without telling anyone where he was going. No-one could say anything because he always came back with one hell of a story. Julien did like to keep his hand in, and assure himself he was still an Adventurer at heart.

  The deputy editor actually asked me if I knew where Julien was, because the whole paper was going crazy without him, trying to cover the huge story breaking on the Street of the Gods. Did I happen to know anything about what happened on the Street of the Gods? I admitted that I might know a thing or two, but that I would only talk to Julien. The deputy editor tried threats, insults, and bursting into tears before finally giving up on me and admitting that while Julien had turned off his mobile phone and pager, so he couldn’t be traced, he had been heard asking questions about some of the nastier sweatshops still operating in the Nightside.

  And so Dead Boy and I had walked to the extremely low-rent district that was Rotten Row. There were fewer and fewer people around, and those on view had a distinctly furtive air about them. There were the homeless and beggars, ragged men in ragged clothes, with outstretched grimy hands and ripped paper cups for small change. There were things that stayed in the shadows so you couldn’t get a good look at them—possessed animals with glowing eyes and cancerous faces, and half-breed demons offering to sell you their bodies or blood or urine. Plus any number of hard-faced working girls with dead eyes, rent boys with scarlet lips, and speed freaks in alleyways ready to sell you any drug you had ever heard of. And darker things still, offering darker services.

  Rotten Row, where dreams go to die, hope is a curse, and death is sometimes the kindest thing that can happen to you.

  Long rows of dilapidated tenement buildings crouched sullenly on either side of a rubbish-strewn street. Half the street-lamps had been smashed, and sulphurous steam drifted up out of rusted metal grilles in the pavement. The tenement walls were stained black with soot and pollution and accumulated grime. Graffiti in a dozen languages, not all of them human, sometimes daubed in dried blood. Windows boarded up or covered over with brittle paper. Doors with hidden protections that would only open to the right muttered words. And inside every dark and overcrowded room in those ancient tenements, sweatshop businesses where really low-paid piece work was performed by people who couldn’t find work anywhere else. Or had good reason to stay hidden, off the books. The sweatshop owners took advantage of these desperate people, in return for “protecting” them. The sad part was that there was never any shortage of desperate people, ready and willing to be “protected.” The Nightside can be very dark, when it chooses.

  Grim-faced enforcers sauntered casually out of alleyways and side streets to make their presence known to us. Dressed up as dandified gangsters, they wore guns and knives openly, and a few even had ideograms tattooed on their faces, marking them as low-rank combat magicians. Some had dogs with them, on reinforced steel chains. Seriously big dogs, with bad attitudes. Dead Boy and I strolled openly down the middle of the street, letting the enforcers get a good look at us. The dogs were the first to realise. They got one whiff of Dead Boy, and backed away whining and cringing. Their owners took one look at me and started backing away themselves. The enforcers huddled together in tight little groups, muttering urgently, then pushed one of their number forward to meet us.

  He affected a nonchalant swagger that fooled no-one, least of all him, and finally came to a halt a more-than-respectable distance away. Dead Boy and I stopped and considered him thoughtfully. He was wearing a smart pin-striped suit, white spats, and a grey fedora. He had twin pearl-handled revolvers on his hips, and a pencil moustache on his scarred face. He gave us each a hard look, which he might have pulled off if he hadn’t been sweating so profusely.

  And on a cold night, too.

  “You here to cause trouble?” he said, in a voice so deep he must have had a third testicle tucked away somewhere.

  “Almost certainly,” I said.

  “Right, lads!” said the enforcer, glancing back over his shoulder to address the rest of the street. “Pick up your feet, we are out of here. This is Dead Boy and John bloody Taylor, and we are not being paid nearly enough to take on the likes of them. Everybody round to Greasy Joan’s café, where we will wait out whatever appalling things are about to happen.”

  “You’ve heard of us,” said Dead Boy, sounding just a little disappointed.

  “Too bloody right, squire. I signed on for security work and a little light brutality. Nothing was ever said about having to face living legends and death on two legs.”

  Behind him, the rest of the enforcers were rapidly melting away and disappearing into the distance at something only a little less than a dead run. I looked thoughtfully at the man standing before us, and his left eye developed a distinct twitch.

  “You seem to have a lot of influence over your fellow thugs,” I said. “Who are you, exactly?”

  “Union representative, squire. I look out for my boys, make sure they’ve all got health insurance, and I’d really like to run away after them, if that’s all right with you.”

  I’d barely finished nodding before he’d turned and hurried away. There’s a lot to be said for a good, or more properly bad, reputation. One young enforcer was still standing in the middle of the street, looking a bit bewildered. He yelled after his union rep, who didn’t even look back.

  “Hell with this shit
,” snarled the young punk, sounding actually outraged. “We’re supposed to be hard men! Spreading fear with a glance and crushing all opposition! We don’t turn and run when a couple of serious faces turn up!”

  “He’s young,” said a voice from the shadows of a very dark alley. “Doesn’t know anything. Please don’t kill him. His mother would give me hell.”

  The young enforcer went for the gun on his hip, but Dead Boy was already moving. Being dead, his body wasn’t limited to normal human reaction times. He darted forward impossibly quickly, closing the distance between himself and the young enforcer in a moment. The punk actually got off two shots, and Dead Boy dodged both of them. He crashed into the young enforcer, ripped the gun out of his hand, and head-butted him in the face. He then examined the gun while the young man crumpled to the floor, before finally throwing it aside.

  “I take it there won’t be any more opposition?” I said, to the general surroundings.

  “Not from us,” said the voice from the shadows. “You do whatever you feel like doing, sir.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “We will.”

  I gathered up Dead Boy, and we continued down the street. There wasn’t a single soul to be seen anywhere, but I had no doubt we were still being surreptitiously observed. I raised my gift, opening up the inner eye in my mind, my private eye, to locate exactly where Julien Advent was hiding himself in all this hostile territory. I kept my Sight narrowed down to just the task at hand. I really didn’t want to See the kind of dark forces that moved unseen in a place like Rotten Row. I was also concerned that I’d recently been using my gift too much. My Enemies were always looking, to send their horror troops after me. I found Julien almost immediately, observing a firm called Dingley Dell from a place of concealment in a tenement building only a little further down the street. I shut down my gift, checked that all my mental barriers and safeguards were securely in place, and told Dead Boy what I’d learned.

  “You are seriously spooky sometimes, you know that, John?” he said. “The way you know things. Still, I wouldn’t worry too much about these Enemies of yours. They probably won’t be able to locate you at all, what with Lilith and her pals on the rampage, jamming the mental aether.”