Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth (10 page)

"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

"S
o," 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 cafe, 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."

We walked on a while in silence. "Jamming the mental aether? " I said finally. "What the hell does that mean?"

"I don't know," said Dead Boy. "But you have to admit, it sounded really good there for a moment. Now then, Dingley Dell… Sounds almost unbearably twee. Probably makes lace doilies, or something…"

We came to a halt before the right building and studied the small cards tacked to the doorframe, beside the row of buzzers. The cards looked decidedly temporary, as though they had a tendency to change on a regular basis. The current occupiers of the three-storey building were Alf's Button Emporium, Matchstick Girls, Miss Snavely's Fashion House, Shrike Shoes, the Stuffed Fish Company, and Dingley Dell.

"Top floor," Dead Boy said disgustedly. "Why do they always have to be on the top floor? And how are we supposed to get all the way up there, past all the other businesses, without anyone noticing us?"

"Firstly, it's only three floors we're talking about," I said. "Undoubtedly because this entire shit heap would have collapsed if anyone had added a fourth floor. And secondly, while I doubt very much that a dump like this has a fire escape, you can bet good money that there's a concealed exit round the back so company executives can make a swift departure unobserved if their creditors turn up unexpectedly. So, round the back."

We made our way down a narrow side alley almost choked with garbage and general filth, and a couple of sleeping forms who didn't even stir when we stepped over them. I found the back door without having to raise my gift again because it was exactly where I would have put it. (Having had occasion to dodge a few creditors myself, in my time.) Dead Boy checked the door out for magical alarms and booby-traps, which didn't take long. He only had to look at them, and they malfunctioned.

"My being dead and alive at the same time confuses them," he said happily.

"It's always confused me," I agreed.

Dead Boy went to smash the door in, but I restrained him. There could still be purely mechanical alarms in place that we hadn't spotted, and I didn't want to risk attracting attention and perhaps blowing Julien Advent's stakeout. So I raised my gift for a moment, located the right spot on the door, directly above the lock, and hit it once with the heel of my hand. The lock disengaged, and the door swung open. Dead Boy averted his gaze so he wouldn't have to see me looking smug, and we entered the tenement, quietly closing the door behind us.

There was hardly any light, and the place stank of poverty and misery and blocked drains. Every expense had been spared in the construction of this building, and everything about it screamed fire trap. We moved quietly down the gloomy corridor, alert for any sign that we'd been noticed, but the whole building seemed silent as a tomb. The stairway was so narrow we had to go up in single file, so I let Dead Boy go first, on the grounds that he could take a lot more damage than I. There were any number of magical alarms and booby-traps, but they all blew up in silent puffs of fluorescent smoke, rather than try to deal with Dead Boy's presence. On the second-floor landing a monstrous face formed itself abruptly out of the cracks in the plaster wall, looked at us, mouthed the words Oh bugger, and disappeared again.