The Bride Wore Black Leather

by Simon R. Green

  “Here we all are again! I knew you two couldn’t keep away! Not when I have such wonders to show you . . .”

  “Leave her alone,” Julien said harshly. “I won’t let you hurt her any more.”

  “Ah, Julien, you always did have a soft spot for the ladies. And you always made such bad choices in women . . .”

  “I remember your healing the sick in Haight-Ashbury,” Julien said steadily. “You never made any distinctions, then. And to heal a whole hospital full of patients, in a moment? You’ve come a long way, Harry. Where did you get such power?”

  “From all those years in the White Tower,” said the Sun King. “Sitting at the feet of my masters, learning the truths of the universe.”

  “Yes,” I said. “We get that. But who are these Entities from Beyond, exactly? Why can’t you tell us their name?”

  “You want a name?” said the Sun King. “Is it really so important to you? Oh very well, then; call them the Aquarians. Yes, call them that. Because through the power they have bestowed on me, I shall finally bring about the long delayed Age of Aquarius.”

  I looked at Julien. “Never heard of them. You?”

  “The Age of Aquarius was another name for the Big Dream of the sixties,” Julien said slowly. “He’s playing with us.” He met the Sun King’s gaze squarely. “No more games, Harry. Not among such old friends. All those long evenings we spent talking together . . . You always believed in the truth above everything. So tell me—all this power that matters so much to you. Where does it really come from?”

  The Sun King stared steadily back, smiling. “You’ll find out.”

  I opened my mouth to say something, and the Sun King stopped me with a glance. I was so surprised, I let him get away with it. No-one had ever been able to do that to me before.

  “You don’t get to question me,” said the Sun King. “Little man. Annoy me again, and I’ll turn you into something more amusing. I will do what I will do; and no-one will stand in my way.” He dismissed me with another look and concentrated on Julien. His words were suddenly playful, teasing. “You remember what we used to say, Julien. If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. And I’m really not in the mood to put up with any more problems.”

  “So what are you going to do?” said Julien. “Kill me, like everyone else who opposes you? Like all the poor people here who weren’t pretty enough for you?”

  “Killing is easy,” said the Sun King. “I can do better than that. I think I’ll start here, with you and Taylor and the woman. All such a disappointment to me. I think I’ll do something really impressive to you, to send a message. Start as you mean to go on, that’s what I always say.”

  He moved towards Benway, and Julien immediately stepped forward to block his way. “I told you, Harry; I won’t let you hurt her again.”

  “Oh please,” said the Sun King. “Always the perfect En-glish Gentleman. Or did you feel something for sweet little Emily, back in the day; when I was too busy to notice? I think I’ll make you watch what I’m going to do to her, so I can enjoy listening to you scream . . .”

  He walked forward, smiling easily, with all the confidence in the world; and I stepped forward to meet him and threw a handful of coarse-ground black pepper right into his eyes. He cried out in shock, then again in agony, as the pepper ate into his eyes. He staggered backwards, clawing at his streaming eyes with both hands, unable to think of anything but the horrible thing I’d done to him. I grinned at Julien.

  “Some shit I don’t put up with. And the old jokes are always the best. Living god, my arse. For all his admittedly impressive power, he’s still a man. Let this be a lesson to you, Julien. Never leave home without condiments. Condiments are our friends.”

  “I’ll kill you!” screamed the Sun King, staggering blindly back and forth. “I’ll kill you all!”

  “So much for peace and love,” said Julien. “It’s always sad, to see an old dream die.”

  He stepped forward and booted the Sun King square in the groin. He put all his strength and weight into it, and the force of the kick actually lifted the Sun King right off the ground for a moment. He tried to scream, but the pain blocked his throat. He fell to his knees, all the strength and all of his breath knocked right out of him. He bent forward over his pain, air rattling in his constricted throat, tears streaming down his face from puffy, squeezed-shut eyes. He didn’t look like a living god any more. I looked at Julien with something very like shock. You don’t expect the Great Victorian Adventurer to fight dirty. But he was looking down at the Sun King, genuinely more in sorrow than anger, and when he spoke, his voice was tired, and soul-deep weary.

  “Stay down, Harry. I know a lot of tricks a lot worse than that one. You always liked to hear stories of my old days as an Adventurer, fighting the forces of evil. But you never understood what that meant. You were never a fighter.”

  The Sun King’s head came up slowly, and he forced his eyes open so he could sneer at Julien. His face was flushed a dark and unhealthy purple with rage, and when he forced his hands away from his aching groin, they were trembling with rage, too.

  “Don’t you laugh at me. Don’t you dare laugh at me! You wanted the power. Have it!”

  The Sun King stabbed one hand at Julien, and a fierce light erupted out of his fingertips, hitting Julien in the chest like a lightning bolt. He cried out and staggered backwards, then the same terrible light blasted out of his eyes. Julien howled horribly, clutching at his face, and the light blazed right through his hands, outlining the bones within like an X-ray. The light shone out of Julien’s face, and out of his hands, and from his chest. He fell to his knees. He seemed to catch on fire from the light, blue flames bursting out all over him without burning or consuming him. His whole body shook and shuddered, as though he might explode at any moment.

  Patients and security people scattered away from him, screaming and shouting. I had to fight my way through the press of bodies to get to Julien. There was no heat from the blue flames, only the terrible light blazing out of him. The Sun King laughed breathlessly. He was still holding himself as though something inside was broken, but his eyes had cleared, full of an awful laughter.

  “He’s too small a thing to hold the power I gave him. He can’t control it, he can’t even hold on to it. Any minute now, the power will break loose and destroy this whole building and everyone in it. And that’s what you get, for mouthing off to a living god.” He looked at me, and sniggered. “Of course, you can stop all this, John Taylor. I left you a way out; because I am a kind and considerate living god. You can stop this; save everyone in the hospital. All you have to do is kill him. Kill your friend, kill the legendary Great Victorian Adventurer, and the power will return to me. But you’d better do it quickly, while there’s still time!”

  He disappeared, still laughing.

  I looked around, and there was Dr. Benway, staring at Julien in horror. She hadn’t run, but she couldn’t bring herself to move any closer.

  “What do I do?” I screamed at her. “How do I stop this? How do I save him?”

  But she shook her head numbly. For all her experience in Ward 12A, this was beyond her. I grabbed Julien by the shoulders, holding him still against the power within him, which was shaking him like a rag doll. The blue flames burned my hands, but I wouldn’t let him go. He turned his face to me. The light blazing from his eyes was almost incandescent now. He forced words out, painfully.

  “Do it, John. Kill me. You can’t let all these people die.”

  “Julien, I can’t!”

  “You have to! It’s all right, John. I understand. Never did think I’d die in bed. At least this way, I get to die saving lives. Doing something that matters.”

  “Julien . . . please . . .”

  “Sorry I won’t be there for your wedding. Now say good-bye, and kill me. Save the Hospice. Then track down the Sun King and stop him. And don’t screw it up, or I’ll come back and haunt you.”

  “Good-bye,
Julien,” I said. And then I took his head in both hands, and snapped it all the way round, breaking his neck.

  All the light disappeared, and he was just a man again. He collapsed into my arms, and I held him tightly, ignoring the throbbing pain in my burned hands. I didn’t cry. There was so much anger in me there wasn’t room for anything else. I would find the Sun King. And I would kill him. Because he’d made me kill my good friend. The only decent man in the Nightside.

  “Stop him!” Dr. Benway yelled suddenly. I looked up to see her pointing a shaking, accusing finger at me. “Someone stop that man! He killed Julien Advent!”

  I lowered Julien’s body carefully to the floor and got to my feet again, looking at Benway, frowning. “What are you talking about? You saw what happened!”

  “You murdered him!”

  “It wasn’t like that! You know it wasn’t like that!”

  People all around were pointing at me and shouting my name, crying out to everyone that I’d killed Julien Advent. Some of the security people were pointing guns at me.

  “Don’t let him get away!” shrieked Benway, tears streaming down her face. “Murderer! Murderer!”

  “It wasn’t like that!” I cried.

  But there were too many of them, shouting my name. I turned and ran, breaking through the crowds, as they fell back before me. I ran out of the Hospice lobby and into the car-park, and the crowd spilled out after me, yelling my name. People everywhere turned to look. A great cry went up behind me, that I’d murdered the Great Victorian Adventurer. People on the street began to shout and point.

  I ran through the streets of the Nightside, with an angry mob behind me, my name a curse on their lips.

  EIGHT

  Old Friends and Enemies

  And I went running, with horror at my heels.

  • • •

  Everywhere I went, people stopped to scream abuse at me. They threw stones and worse things. Some had guns, some had spells. I ran and dodged and ducked, trying desperately to work out where best to go, to hide from the whole damned Nightside. The word was out, to this side and that and sometimes even ahead of me. I’d been on the run before, back in my younger days, for various reasons, good and bad, but never anything like this. Julien Advent was a much loved and admired figure in the Nightside, far more than I ever was. I’d always thought it more important to be feared; and now my reputation was catching up with me, big-time.

  I didn’t dare use my Portable Timeslip. Far too easy to track something that powerful. So I ran.

  Why the hell had Benway called me a murderer? She was right there, she saw what was happening, she had to know why I did it. Unless . . . the Sun King was messing with her head. Making her see what he wanted her to see. I grinned savagely as I ran, a humourless snarl that had people falling back before me and hurrying to get out of my way. Things were finally starting to make sense. The Sun King was responsible for everything that was happening to me now, to keep me occupied, too busy trying to stay alive to stop him doing what he planned. That was why everyone was so ready to abuse and attack and pursue me, when normally most of them would have kept their heads down and concentrated on their own business. I laughed briefly as I ran, the sound like the bark of some dangerous animal, and people hid in doorways or hurried down side streets, rather than confront me.

  I spent a lot of my early years running and hiding from people who wanted to kill me, from all the usual villains and scumbags, and from the Harrowing. Those faceless homunculi sent back through Time by my Enemies in the Future, to punish me for something I hadn’t even done yet. What doesn’t kill you makes you very light on your feet and very hard to find; and as I raced through the Nightside, old skills and knowledge swiftly came back to me. I raced through the busy streets, taking this turn and that, charging through the front door of a big store, slipping through the crowds, then darting out the back door. Raised voices fell away behind me, caught up in new and unexpected quarrels with people who didn’t take kindly to being shoved. I scrambled over low walls, doubled back and forth, always keeping to the darkest shadows, taking all kinds of short cuts and connections that most people didn’t even know existed.

  And, finally, I ended up in a garbage-strewn back alley, somewhere downwind of the old theatre district; leaning heavily against a wall covered with overlapping yellowing posters, advertising old shows and faded triumphs. Breathing so hard my chest ached, and trying to persuade my racing heart to return to something like normal behaviour before it burst right out of me. My head pounded, my face was wet with sweat, and my hands were shaking so bad I couldn’t even haul a handkerchief out of my pocket to mop my face. Getting far too old for this on-the-run shit.

  I comforted myself with the memory of the Sun King’s face as I threw black pepper in his eyes; and again, when Julien booted him in the ’nads. Thinking he could impress me with all that living-god crap. I’ve fought my way up and down the Street of the Gods more than once. And I looked forward to seeing his face again, when I finally tracked him down and took my own sweet time killing him. It had been a long long time since I’d felt this angry, and I hugged that cold comfort to my heart. I would see the Sun King die in agony and horror for what he’d made me do to Julien. Not that Julien would have approved or even wanted such a revenge taken, on his behalf; but then, he always was a better man than me.

  Revenge is simply justice with teeth.

  I slowly straightened up and looked around me. I still couldn’t breathe without hurting, but my vision had cleared, and my thoughts were finally racing faster than my heart. I couldn’t stay here. It was enough out of the way to give me time to consider what to do next, but with so many on my trail, someone would find me soon, if only by accident. So I raised my gift and used it to find a way into the cemetery dimension attached to the Necropolis. We bury our dead in a very separate pocket dimension, only loosely attached to the Nightside. Because when we put our dead to rest, we prefer them to stay that way and not come back and bother us. It seemed to me that the cemetery’s many protections and defensive magics might well be enough to hide my presence. And, of course, most people have enough sense to stay out of the cemetery. It’s not a good place; it’s meant for the dead, not visitors.

  I focused my gift, found one of the drifting places where the cemetery dimension occasionally overlaps with the Nightside, and concentrated hard. A door that hadn’t been there before, and never would be again, appeared in the alley wall opposite me. I held the door in place with my gift and pushed it open with an effort of will. Beyond the door was only darkness. I walked gratefully forward into it, and the door closed behind me.

  • • •

  The cold got to me first, hitting me hard and cutting me like a knife. It rattled in my lungs like razor blades, and sucked all the warmth right out of me. I hugged myself tightly and stamped my feet hard. The graveyard stretched endlessly away before me, a whole world of the dead. The Nightside has been burying its reluctantly departed in this very private place for centuries. Row upon row, rank upon rank, graves and their headstones, for as far as the eye could see in any direction.

  It was a different kind of night from the Nightside, darker, with an almost palpable gloom. A thick pearlescent ground fog curled slowly around my ankles, almost deliberately. Like some great grey cat making itself known, not necessarily affectionately. Up in the black black sky, there was no moon, only a few long smears of multi-coloured stars, gaudy as a cheap ring on a tart’s finger.

  Headstones everywhere, of stone and marble, steel and porcelain, according to the fashion of the day, with lengthy inscriptions or none at all. Catafalques and mausoleums, simple or ornate, decadent or utilitarian. Some with cold neon, some without. Statues of weeping angels and shifty-looking cherubs, while crouching gargoyles leered down from the tops of monuments, guarding family repositories. And everywhere you looked, all kinds of religious symbols. Ancient and modern, sacred and profane; and some from religions no-one even remembers any more.

 
I moved slowly forward, careful to keep to the officially designated gravel paths, laid out for those stubborn few who insisted on visiting people who wouldn’t have been buried here if they’d wanted visitors. One of the main reasons for being interred in this very isolated location is to make sure your grave won’t be disturbed or interfered with. So outside the gravel paths, you wander at your own peril. In our cemetery, the helpless dead are defended: by land mines, booby-traps, invisible floating curses, and other less obvious but even nastier forms of security and preservation.

  The cemetery was full of shadows and a grim silence. Enforced peace and solitude hung heavily over the still scene. Even the crunching of my feet on gravel seemed strangely subdued and muffled. I stopped and sat down on a nearby headstone, so I could think. Then I thought to get up and take a look at the stone’s inscription. It read NOT DEAD ONLY SLEEPING. And since this was still the Nightside, I moved along and sat down on another stone with a less worrying inscription. Because you can’t be too careful.

  No-one had followed me; no-one had found me. I was alone.

  I got out my mobile phone and called Alex Morrisey at Strangefellows. While reflecting that it was a good thing I’d recently upgraded my service, to cover all the pocket dimensions and hidden worlds of the Nightside. Alex answered the phone immediately, as though he’d been waiting for my call. His voice came through clearly, and there didn’t seem to be any noise in the background. Which was odd, for Strangefellows.

  “John!” said Alex. “Where are you?”

  “Think I’ll keep that to myself, for the moment,” I said. “Does sound rather quiet, at your end. Would I be right in thinking my stag do is over?”

  “Are you kidding?” said Alex. “Most of the people who were here are now out on the streets looking for you, and not in a good way. Turned out a lot of them were great admirers of Julien Advent, on the quiet. And the reward money the Authorities have put up for you is the biggest anyone’s ever heard of! They want your head, John, preferably in a box.”