Agents of Light and Darkness

Three - Meetings in Dark Place

The long and narrow alleyway outside Strangefellows was as dark, gloomy, and filthy dirty as always. The heavy blue light from the huge moon hanging overhead gave the cobbled alley a bleak, sinister air, like the uneasy streets we walk in our dreams, and never to anywhere good. Business as usual, in the Nightside. I headed for the bright city lights at the end of the alley, picking my way carefully through the rubbish littering the way. There were severed hands everywhere, and not a few feet, all hard as ice and dusted with hoarfrost. The Little Sisters of the Immaculate Chainsaw had been busy tonight. The Christmas season must be starting early this year.

A figure appeared suddenly at the far end of the alley, standing silhouetted against the glaring neon, and I stopped dead in my tracks. For a moment my heart slammed painfully against my chest, and I forgot how to breathe. The last time I'd walked down this alley, I'd been ambushed by my enemies. The faceless horrors of the Harrowing had come for me, and I'd only escaped with the help of my old friend Razor Eddie. Of course, he'd been the one who set me up for the ambush; but that's friends for you, in the Nightside.

But this time there was only the one figure, with a distinctly female silhouette, and as she started down the dark alleyway towards me, a soft golden glow appeared around her, lighting her way. She was exceedingly blonde and pretty, and almost overpoweringly voluptuous, moving with easy grace in her own pool of light. Marilyn Monroe, in her glorious prime, in her iconic white halter dress. Not a look-alike or a double, but indisputably the real thing, wrapped in glamour, bursting with life and laughter, just like in her films. Sweet and sexy Marilyn, walking in her own spotlight.

She came to a halt before me, and smiled dazzlingly. She smelted of sex and sweat and sandal-wood, of roses and rot, and though her smile was a inviting as ever, there was no matching warmth in her eyes.

"Hello, sugar," she said, in a voice like a caress. "I'm so glad I found you. I've got a message for you."

"That's nice," I said, carefully non-committal.

She laughed her famous laugh, wrinkled her nose at me, and handed me a long white envelope with the tips of her fingers. "This is for you, sweetie. Inside the envelope, there's a blank check! Signed by Mr. Hughes himself. He wants the Unholy Grail for his collection. All you have to do is find it for him, and you can fill in the check for whatever amount you like. Isn't that generous of him?"

"Pardon me for asking?" I said. "But aren't you dead?"

She laughed huskily and tossed her head. Her wavy hair moved in slow sensuous waves. Being bathed in the glow of her open sexuality was like staring into a blast furnace.

"Oh, that wasn't me. Howard looks after his friends."

"I rather thought he was dead too."

"Men that rich don't die, sugar. Not if they don't want to. They just move to another plane, for tax reasons. He's mixing with some really powerful people these days."

"People?"

"Loosely speaking."

I weighed the envelope in my hands thoughtfully. I'd never been offered a blank check before. I was tempted. But... I smiled regretfully at Marilyn.

"Sorry, dear. I already have a client. I'm spoken for."

"I'm sure Mr. Hughes can match any offer..."

"It isn't the money. I gave my word."

"Oh. Are you sure ... I couldn't do anything to persuade you?"

She took a deep breath, and her breasts seemed to surge towards me. I was finding it hard to breath "I'm probably going to hate myself in the morning," I said finally, "but I have to say no. My services are for sale, but I'm not."

She pouted at me with her luscious mouth. "Everyone has their price, darling. We just haven't found yours yet."

"I'm always loyal to my client," I said. "It's all the honor I have left."

"Honor," said Marilyn, wrinkling her nose again. "See how far that gets you, in the Nightside. See you again, sugar. Boop boop de boop."

She blew me a kiss, turned elegantly on her left high heel, and strode off down the alley. Her shoes made no sound on the cobbles. She walked in glamour, still in her own spotlight, like the star she was. I watched her disappear back into the neon noir of the city streets, and only then looked down at the envelope in my hand. My first impulse was to tear it up, but wiser thoughts prevailed, and I put it carefully in my inside coat pocket. You never knew when a check with Howard Hughes's signature on it might come in handy.

I looked around for a dark doorway. They tended to come and go, but you could always rely on a few, this close to Strangefellows. I walked over to the nearest, kicked a few hands aside, and sat down cross-legged. No-one would disturb me here, and I had work to do. If one major player already knew I was on the trail of the Unholy Grail, then it was a safe bet everyone knew. Or at least, everyone that mattered. They'd all be looking for me, and the people they'd send wouldn't all be as pleasant and polite as Marilyn. This was the kind of treasure hunt that started serious turf wars. And the last thing I needed was the Authorities getting involved. No, I needed to get my hands on the Unholy Grail as quickly as possible, and that meant using my gift. I'm always reluctant to do that, because when I use my special talent, my mind blazes like a beacon in the darkness of the Nightside, signaling to all my enemies exactly where I am. But it's my gift that makes me what I am, that enables me to be so very good at what I do.

My gift. I can find anything, or anyone. No matter how well hidden they are.

So I sat there in the deep dark shadows, my back pressed against the wall, breathed deeply, and close my eyes, concentrating. And opened the eye deep in my mind; my third eye, my private eye. Energies swirled within me, rough and roaring, then flowed out of me, rushing off in all directions, lighting up the night so I could See everything. The thunder of a million voices descended upon me, not all of them in any way human, and I had to struggle to focus, to narrow my vision to the one thing I was searching for. The bedlam died away, and already I could begin to sense a direction, and the beginnings of distance. And then Something reached down out of the over-world, snatched my mind right out of my body, and bore it away. There was a sensation that might have been flying or falling, as the alley and the material world disappeared. And I was somewhere else.

This time, it was my turn to stand in the spotlight. A light stabbed down from somewhere above me, brilliant and blinding, holding me in place like a bug transfixed on a pin. I felt horribly naked and exposed, as though the light showed up everything inside me, the good and the bad. All around me there was only darkness, a deep concealing darkness, and somehow I could tell it was there to protect me, because I was not worthy or strong enough to see what lay beyond my small pool of light. But I could sense that I was not alone, that to either side of me there were vast and powerful presences, two great armies assembled on an endless unseen plain. There was a feeling of restless movement, and what might have been the fluttering and flapping of wings. My mind, or more likely my soul, had been hijacked. Brought into the over-world, the boundaries of the immaterial. The over-world wasn't Heaven or Hell, but it was said you could see them both from there.

A voice spoke to me from one side, and it was a harmony of many voices, like a crowd chanting in syncopation, a choir that sang only in descants. My skin crawled at the sound of it. I'd heard such a voice before, in St. Jude's. It was a powerful, imperious voice, steeped in ancient, unanswerable authority.

"The dark chalice is loose once more, traveling in the world of mortal men. This cannot be permitted. It is too powerful a thing to be abandoned to merely human hands, and so it has been decided that we shall descend from the glory plains and walk in the material world again."

A second harmonied voice spoke from the other side, rich and complex and full of discords. 'Too long has the Unholy Grail wandered at random in the world of mortal men. The somber chalice, the great corrupter. It must be placed in the right hands and allowed to fulfill its purpose. Its time has come round at last. And so it has been decided that we shall ascend from the infernal plains and walk in the material world again."

All I could think was Oh shit...

'Tell us what you know of the Unholy Grail," said the first voice, and the second echoed, 'Tell us, tell us..."

"I don't really know anything yet," I said. It didn't even occur to me to lie. "I've only just started looking."

"Find it for us," said the first voice, implacable as fate, as an iceberg seeking out a ship.

"Find it for us," said the second voice, relentless as cancer, as torture.

Both their voices were very loud now, beating about me in the darkness, but I refused to allow myself to flinch or quail. Show weakness before overbearing bastards like these, and they'd walk all over me. I was scared, but I couldn't afford to show it. Both sides could destroy me in a moment, for any reason or none. But they wouldn't, as long as they thought I could be of use to them. I glared out into the dark, showing impartial contempt. Angels or devils, they both spoke with the arrogance of anyone who speaks from a position of strength. But I felt pretty sure I had a question that would reveal their true position.

"If you're so powerful," I said, "why can't you find the Unholy Grail for yourselves? I thought nothing was hidden from you, or your bosses?"

"We cannot see it," said the first voice. "Its nature hides it."

"We cannot see it," said the second voice. "Its power hides it."

"But you can See what is hidden."

"So See for us."

"I don't work for free," I said flatly. "And if either of you could compel me, you'd have done it by now. So stop trying to bully me, and make me a proper offer."

There was a long pause, and the voices said together, "What would you want?"

"Information," I said. 'Tell me about my mother. My missing, mysterious mother. Tell me who and what and where she is."

"We cannot tell you that," said the first voice. "We only know what it is given to us to know, and some things are forbidden, even to us."

"We cannot tell you that," said the second voice. "We know only what is said in darkness, and some things are too awful, even for us."

"So essentially," I said, "you're really nothing more than glorified messenger boys, working on a need-to-know basis. Send me back. I've got work to do."

"You do not speak to us that way," said the first voice, its harmonies rising and falling. "Defy us, and there will be punishment."

I looked across at the other presences. "Are you going to let them get away with that? If I'm hurt or damaged, you risk losing the one person who can definitely find the Unholy Grail for you."

"Do not touch the mortal," the second voice said immediately.

"You do not speak to us that way!"

"We speak how we will! We always have!" There was a stirring and a disturbance in the darkness, as of two great armies readying themselves for war. There were angry voices, with vicious threats and vows, and ominous intent. And it was the easiest thing in the world for me to quietly slip away from them, and drop back into my body, which waited in the doorway in the alley outside Strangefellows. It had grown cold and stiff in my brief absence, and I groaned aloud as I made myself stretch reluctant muscles and pounded my hands together to get the circulation moving again. I closed my mind down tightly, pulling all my strongest mental shields into place. You don't last long in the Nightside if you don't learn a few useful tricks to guard your mind and soul from outside attack or influence. Walk around here with an open mind, and your head will end up more crowded than the underground during rush hour.

But it did mean I wouldn't be able to use my gift again. Anytime I let down my defenses long enough to See, you could bet agents from Above and Below would be waiting for a chance to grab me again. And make me an offer I wouldn't be allowed to refuse. So it looked like I was going to have to solve this case the hard way: lots of legwork, asking impertinent questions, and the occasional twisting of arms.

Which meant I was going to need Suzie Shooter even more than I'd thought.

Shotgun Suzie lived in one of the sleazier areas of the Nightside, up one of those narrow side streets that lurk furtively in the shadows of the more traveled ways. Lit starkly by glaring neon signs advertising nasty little shops and studios, offering access to all the viler and more suspect pleasures and goods, at extortionate prices, of course, it was the kind of place where even the air tastes foul. The neon flickered with almost stroboscopic intensity, and painted men and women and others who were both and neither smiled coldly from backlit windows. Somewhere music was playing, harsh and tempting, and somewhere else someone was screaming, and begging for the pain to never stop.

I walked down the centre of the street, avoiding the greasy rain-slick garbage-strewn pavements. I didn't want anyone tugging at my arm or whispering coaxingly in my ear. I was careful not to catch anyone's eye, or even glance at the shop windows. It was safer that way. I didn't want to have to hurt anyone this early in the case. Suzie's place was set right in the middle of it all, between a flaying parlor and a long pig franchise. From the outside, her section of the old tenement building looked broken-down, decayed, almost abandoned. The brickwork had been blackened by countless years of pollution and neglect, covered over with layers of peeling posters, and the occasional obscene graffiti. All the windows had been boarded up. But I knew that the single paint-peeling door had a thick core of solid steel, protected by state-of-the-art locks and defenses, both high-tech and magical. Suzie took her security very seriously.

I was one of the very few people she'd ever trusted with the correct entry codes. I looked around to make sure no-one was too close, or showing too much interest, then I bent over the hidden keypad and grille. (No point in knocking or shouting; she wouldn't respond. She never did.) I punched in the right numbers, and spoke my name into the grille. I waited, and a face rose slowly up out of the door, forming its details from the splintered wood. It wasn't a human face. The eyes opened, one after another after another, and studied my face, then the ugly shape sank back into the wood again and was gone. It looked disappointed that it wasn't going to get to do something nasty to me after all. The door swung open, and I walked in. I was barely out of its way before it slammed shut very firmly behind me.

The empty hallway was lit by a single naked light bulb, hanging forlornly from the low ceiling. Someone had nailed a dead wolf to the wall with a rivet gun. The blood on the floor still looked sticky. A mouse was struggling feebly in a spider's web. Suzie never was much of a one for housekeeping. I strode down the hall and started up the rickety stairs to the next floor. The air was damp and fusty. The light was so dim it was like walking underwater. My feet sounded loudly on the bare wooden steps, which was, of course, the point.

The next floor held the only two furnished rooms in the house. Suzie had a room to sleep in, and a room to crash, and that was all that mattered to her. The bedroom door was open, and I looked in. There was a rumpled pile of blankets in the middle of the bare wooden floor, churned up like a nest. A filthy toilet stood in one corner, next to a battered mini-bar she'd looted from some hotel. A wardrobe and a dressing table and a shotgun rack holding a dozen different weapons. No Suzie. The room smelled ripe, heavy, female, feverish.

At least she was up. That was something.

I walked down the landing. The plastered walls were cracked, and pocked here and there with old bullet holes. Telephone numbers, hexes, and obscure mnemonic reminders had been scrawled everywhere in lipstick and eyebrow pencil, in Suzie's thick blocky handwriting. The door to the next room was closed. I pushed it open and looked in.

The blinds were drawn, as always, blocking out the lights and sounds of the street outside, and for that matter, the rest of the world as well. Suzie valued her privacy. Another naked light bulb provided the main illumination. Its pull chain was held together by a knot in the middle. Takeaway food cartons littered the bare floor, along with discarded gun magazines, empty gin bottles, and crumpled cigarette packets. Video and DVD cases were stacked in tottering piles all along one wall. Another wall held a huge, life-size poster of Diana Rigg as Mrs. Emma Peel, from the old Avengers TV show. Underneath the poster, Suzie had scrawled My Idol in what looked like dried blood. Suzie Shooter was lying sprawled across a scuffed and faded green leather couch, a bottle of gin in one hand, a cigarette in one corner of her down-turned mouth. She was watching a film on a great big fuck-off wide-screen television set. I strolled into the room, and into Suzie's line of view, giving her plenty of time to get used to my presence. There was a shotgun propped up against the couch, ready to hand, and a small pile of grenades on the floor by her feet. Suzie liked to be prepared for anyone who might just feel like dropping in unannounced. She didn't look round as I came to a halt beside the couch and looked at the film she was watching. It was a Jackie Chan fight fest; that scene towards the end of Amour Of God where four big busty black women in leather gang up on Jackie and kick the crap out of him. Good scene. The sound track seemed to consist entirely of screams and exaggerated blows. I glanced around me, but nothing had changed since my last visit. There was still no other furniture, just a bog standard computer set up on the floor. Suzie didn't even have a phone any more. She wasn't sociable. If anyone needed t contact her, there was e-mail, and that was it. Which she might not get round to reading for several days, if she didn't feel like it.

As always when she wasn't working, Suzie had let herself go. She was wearing a grubby Cleopatra Jones T-shirt, and a pair of jeans that had been laundered almost to the point of no return. No shoes, no make-up. From the look of her, it had been some time since her last gig. She was overweight, her belly bulging out over her jeans, her long blonde hair was a mess, and she smelled bad. Without taking her eyes off the mayhem on the screen, she took a long pull from her gin bottle, not bothering to take the cigarette out of her mouth first, then offered me the bottle. I took it away from her and put it on the floor, carefully out of her reach.

"Almost six years since I was last here, Suze," I said, just loud enough to be heard over the television. "Six years, and the old place hasn't changed a bit. Still utterly appalling, with a side order of downright disgusting. Garbage from all across the country probably comes here to die. I'll bet the only reason this building isn't overrun with rats is that you probably eat them."

"They're good with fries, and a few onions," said Suzie, not looking round.

"How can you live like this, Suze?"

"Practice. And don't call me Suze. Now sit down and shut up. You're interrupting a good bit."

"God, you're a slob, Suzie." I didn't sit down on the couch. I'd just had my coat cleaned. "Don't you ever clean up in here?"

"No. That way I know where everything is. What do you want, Taylor?"

"Well, apart from world peace, and Gillian Anderson dipped in melted chocolate, I'd like to see some evidence that you've been eating sensibly. You can't live on junk food. When was the last time you had some fresh fruit? What do you do for vitamin C?"

"Pills, mostly. Isn't science wonderful? I hate fruit."

"I seem to recall you're not too keen on vegetables either. It's a wonder to me you haven't come down with scurvy."

Suzie sniggered. "My system would self-destruct if it encountered anything that healthy. I eat soup with vegetables in. Occasionally. That sneaks them past my defenses."

I kicked an empty ice cream tub out of the way and sighed heavily. "I hate to see you like this, Suzie."

"Then don't look."

"Fat and lazy and smug with it. Don't you have any ambitions?"

"To die gloriously." She took a deep drag on her cigarette and sighed luxuriously.

I sat on the arm of the couch. "I don't know why I keep coming back here, Suze."

"Because we monsters have to stick together." She finally turned her head to look at me, unsmiling. "Who else would have us?"

I met her gaze squarely. "You deserve better than this."

"Shows how much you know. What do you want, Taylor?"

"How long have you been lounging around here? Days? Weeks?"

She shrugged. "I am currently between cases. Bottom's dropped out of the bounty-hunting business lately."

"Most people have a life apart from their work."

"I'm not most people. Just as well, really, considering most people depress me unutterably. My work is my life."

"Killing people is a life?"

"Stick to what you're good at, that's what I always say. Hell! When I do it, it's an art form. I wonder if I could get a grant... Shut up and watch the film, Taylor. I hate it when people talk during the good bits."

I sat with her and watched quietly for a while. As far as I knew, I was the closest thing Shotgun Suzie had to a friend. She wasn't much of a one for getting out and meeting people, unless it involved killing them later. She only really came alive when she was working. In between cases, she shut down and vegetated, waiting for her next chance to go out and do the only thing she did well, the thing she was born to do.

"I worry about you, Suzie."

"Don't."

"You need to get out of this dump and get to know people. There are some out there worth knowing."

"Men have been known to walk into my life, from time to time."

It was my turn to sniff loudly. "They usually leave running."

"Not my fault if they can't keep up." She shifted her weight on the couch and farted unselfconsciously.

I glared at her. "They usually leave because you made them watch Girl On A Motorcycle one time too many."

"That film is a classic!" Suzie said automatically. "Marianne Faithful never looked better. That film is right up there with Easy Rider and Roger Corman's Hells Angels movies."

"Why did you shoot me, six years ago?" I didn't know I was going to ask that until I said it.

"I had paper on you," said Suzie. "Serious paper, backed by serious money."

"You knew that paper was false. The whole thing was a setup. You had to know that... but you shot me anyway. Why?"

"You were leaving," she said quietly. "How else could I stop you?"

"Oh, Suze .,."

"Why do you think you were only wounded? You know I never miss. If I'd wanted you dead, you'd be dead."

"Why was it so important for you to stop me leaving?"

She finally turned to look at me. "Because you belong here. Because . .. even monsters need to feel they're not alone. Look, what do you want here, Taylor? You're interrupting a classic."

"Bruce Lee again?" I said, just to tease her. And because I knew I'd got as much honesty out of her as both of us could stand.

"Don't show your ignorance. This is Jackie Chan."

"There's a difference?"

"Blasphemer. Jackie's got some great moves, but Bruce Lee is God."

"Speaking of whom," I said casually, "I have a case I could use some help on."

Suzie sat up and gave me her full attention for the first time. "You have a case involving Bruce Lee?"

"No. God. There are angels in the Nightside."

Suzie shrugged and gave her attention back to the television screen. "About time. Maybe they'll clean the place up."

"Maybe. But there's a distinct possibility there might not be much left of the place by the time they'd finished with it. They're looking for the Unholy Grail. I've got a client who wants me to find it first. Thought you might like to help. The money really is extremely good."

Suzie produced a remote control from somewhere underneath her and put the film on hold. Jackie froze in mid kick. Suzie looked at me. "How good?"

"I'm offering fifty thousand, out of my fee. You get twenty-five up front, and the rest when the job's done."

Suzie considered, her face impassive. "Is the job very dangerous? Will I have to kill lots of people?"

"Odds are ... yes and yes."

She smiled. "Then I'm in."

And that was it. Suzie didn't really care about the money; she never did. She just went through the motions, so people wouldn't think they could take advantage of her. With her, it was always the job that mattered, the challenge. The only feelings of self-worth she had came from testing herself against forces that could destroy her. I took the money out of the envelope Jude had given me, peeled off half, and dropped it onto the couch beside her. She nodded, but made no move to pick it up. She didn't have a safe, or even a strongbox, on the unanswerable grounds that no-one was going to be stupid enough to steal from her. There were less painful ways to commit suicide. She turned off the television, stubbed out the last half inch of her cigarette on the leather couch, flicked it away, then fixed me with a steady stare.

"You have my full attention. Angels ... and an Unholy Grail. Kinky. Bit out of our usual territory. Would silver work against angels?"

"Not even if you loaded it into a bazooka. You could probably strap an angel to a backpack nuke and set it off, and he wouldn't even blink. Angels are major hard-core."

Suzie looked at me for a long moment. It was always hard to tell what she was thinking, behind the cold mask she used for a face. "You religious, Taylor?"

I shrugged. "Hard not to be, in the Nightside. If only because there are no atheists in foxholes. I'm pretty sure there is a God, a Creator. I just don't think he cares about us. I don't think we matter to him. You?"

"I used to tell people I was a lapsed agnostic," she said easily. "Now I tell them I'm a born-again heretic. I hung out with this bunch of Kali worshippers for a while, but they said I was too hard-core, the wimps. Mostly ... I believe in guns, knives, and things that go bang. All of which we're probably going to need if we're going after the Unholy Grail. I take it there will be competition?"

"Lots and lots. So you don't have any problems, about going up against angels or devils?"

She smiled coldly. "Just give me something to aim at and leave the rest to me." She frowned thoughtfully. "There was a weapon I heard of once ... The Speaking Gun. Created specifically to kill angels. The Collector tried to bribe me with it one time, to get into my pants ..."

"I think we'll save that for a last resort," I said, diplomatically.

She shrugged. "So, where do we start?"

"Well, I thought we'd go and have a word with the Demon Lordz."

"Those gangsta wannabes? I have seen puppies in toilet paper commercials that were more threatening than that bunch of poseurs."

"There's more to them than meets the eye."

She sniffed. "There would have to be."

I stood up. Time to get the show on the road. "Grab what you need, and let's get moving, Suzie. Above and Below have already tried to lean on me. I'm pretty sure we're working against the clock on this one."

Suzie lurched ungracefully to her feet and stomped out of the room, heading for her bedroom. I waited patiently while she threw things about, looking for what she wanted. When she came back, she looked like Shotgun Suzie again. The grubby T-shirt and faded jeans were gone, replaced by gleaming black leather jacket, trousers and knee-high boots, generously adorned with steel chains and studs. She wore two bandoliers of bullets across her impressive chest, and the hilt of her favorite pump-action shotgun peered over her right shoulder from its holster on her back. A dozen assorted grenades hung from her belt. She'd even brushed her hair and slapped on some make-up. She looked sharp and deadly and very alive. Suzie Shooter was on the job, heading into deadly peril, and she couldn't have been any happier.

"Damn," I said. "Clark Kent becomes Superman."

"Big Boy Scout," she sneered. "Who's our client on this one, Taylor?"

"The Vatican. So watch your language. You ready?"

"Does the Pope shit in the woods? I was born ready."

I made a mental note to keep her well away from Jude, and led the way out. It was a good day for someone else to die.