Just Another Judgement Day

FIVE Bad Boys and Wayward Girls

Walker’s Portable Timeslip delivered Chandra Singh and me right into the middle of Clubland, and we took a moment to lean on each other while our heads and stomachs settled. Passing through that unnatural darkness was getting worse. The latest one had felt like being trapped in a plummeting lift, while it was on fire, and something really bad was gnawing its way through the lift floor to get at me. Only more so.

“That . . . was most unpleasant,” Chandra said finally.

“Yeah,” I said. “And Walker’s been doing that every day for years. Explains a lot about the man.”

I led the way through the relatively sophisticated streets of Clubland (where you could still get mugged but at least the fellow would have the decency to wear a dinner jacket) and headed for the Boys Club. Chandra was inexperienced in the ways of the Nightside, so it fell to me to explain to him just what kind of a place the Boys Club was. Basically, it was a particularly nasty and wholly corrupt establishment where all the Nightside’s most pre-eminent gangsters, crime lords, Mr. Bigs, and general scumbags went to be with their own kind. To spend their money ostentatiously, practise very basic one-upmanship, usually involving guns, and boast of their latest successes and ill-gotten gains. Taste, restraint, and charm are notable by their absence, at the Boys Club.

“The law knows of this place, and does nothing?” said Chandra.

“This is the Nightside,” I said patiently. “There is no law here, and less justice, unless you make some for yourself. Walker and his people only ever step in when things are really getting out of hand, and then only to restore the status quo. This is a place where people come to do the things they’re not supposed to, and pursue the pleasures they’re not supposed to want. Forbidden knowledge, forsaken gods, and all the fouler kinds of sex. And where there’s business, you can be sure there’s always someone taking a cut. By force if need be.”

“And these...people belong to the Boys Club,” said Chandra.

“The nastiest, vilest, and most unpleasant representatives of their kind,” I said.

Chandra Singh considered this. “Why not just kick in the door and toss in half a dozen incendiaries?” He smiled briefly. “Being a monster hunter teaches you to be practical, above all else.”

“You could kill everyone in there,” I said. “And most of us have thought about it, at one time or another, but they’d all be replaced within the hour. There’s never any shortage of people on the way up, eager for a chance to prove they can be even nastier and more unpleasant than the scumbags they’re replacing.”

Chandra looked at me seriously. “Why do you stay in this terrible place, John Taylor? I have heard stories about you . . . but you do not seem such a bad man. What keeps you in the Nightside?”

“Because I belong here,” I said. “With all the other monsters.”

I increased my pace. Part of me was worried that we’d get there too late and find another massacre. And part of me wondered if that might be such a bad thing . . . But not everyone in the Boys Club deserved to die. Just most of them.

The Club finally loomed up before us, flashy, gaudy, and weighed down with a really over-the-top Technicolor neon sign. Nothing to indicate what the Club was for, of course; either you already knew, or you had no business being there. Membership was strictly by invitation only, an acknowledgment by your peers that you’d made it, that you were finally big enough and important enough to be one of the Boys.

And there, waiting outside the front door for us, was the Walking Man. He was leaning casually against a lamp-post in his long duster, with his hands in his pockets, smiling easily, one foot planted on the neck of the Club’s unconscious Doorman. Chandra and I came to a halt, maintaining a respectful distance. The Doorman was big enough to be part troll, but there he was lying facedown in the gutter, without an obvious wound on him. The Walking Man nodded to us, then we all stood there for a while, taking the measure of each other.

The Walking Man looked just as I remembered him to, but in person there was so much . . . more to him. He had an air, a presence, an almost overwhelming intensity to him, as though he was the only real man in a world of fakes and posers. His eyes were bright and merry, his smile was full of mischief and bravado, and everything about him exuded an almost spiritual insolence. I am here to do absolutely appalling things in the name of the Good, his stance positively shouted. And what are you going to do about it? He had the look of a man who would do anything he felt like doing, and do it with a laugh on his lips and a song in his heart. This was no sombre driven warrior of God come to do his duty, no cold and dour executioner. This man enjoyed what he did.

Dead men and women, and dogs. And children in cages.

“John Taylor,” the Walking Man said finally, in a happy, cheerful voice. “Thought you’d be taller.”

“I get that a lot,” I said.

“Who’s your friend?”

“I am Chandra Singh, monster hunter!” Chandra said proudly.

“Good for you,” said the Walking Man.

Chandra bristled just a bit, as he realised his name and cherished reputation meant nothing to the Walking Man. He drew himself up to his full height, the better to show off his magnificent Raj silks and the diamond flashing in his turban.

“I, too, am a holy warrior,” he said hotly. “I also do God’s work, striking down those who would threaten the innocent!”

“How nice,” said the Walking Man. “Try not to get in the way.”

Chandra suddenly realised he was being teased and gave a great bark of laughter.

I was concentrating on the Walking Man’s face. There was something of the impish, the almost devilish, about his mocking gaze and easy smile. He wasn’t at all what I’d expected. He was far more complicated, and therefore far more dangerous.

“I can’t just let you walk in there and kill everyone,” I said bluntly. “This isn’t like Precious Memories, where everyone was guilty. There are bad people in the Boys Club, but not everyone is bad enough to be worth killing.”

“That’s my decision to make, not yours,” said the Walking Man. “This is what I do. You’re just along for the ride.”

“I know the Nightside better than you ever will,” I said.

“You’re too close,” the Walking Man said kindly. “You can’t see it clearly any more. You need me, to do what you’ve never been able to do.”

“I’ll stop you if I have to,” I said.

He flashed me a bright smile and shot me a merry look, one professional to another. “You’re welcome to try. Now, let the fun begin!”

We just walked in. The Doorman was currently making low, sad moaning sounds in the gutter, clearly in no shape to ask to see our Membership cards. The door swung open by itself. (At least the Walking Man hadn’t killed the Doorman outright. I told myself there was hope in that.) There were, however, a number of large and very competent-looking security guards waiting for us in the lobby, their muscular forms all but spilling out of their expensive suits. The Walking Man sauntered in like he owned the place, nodding briskly to the security guards. They nodded back, responding instinctively to his arrogant authority, before catching themselves and moving quickly forward to block our way. The Walking Man stopped, and looked them over, his smile openly mocking.

I looked around the lobby. They’d redecorated the place since I was last there, but it was still big and flashy and overstated, like most of the Club Members. Chandra and I moved in on either side of the Walking Man, and several of the security men got a bit twitchy when they recognised me. It was because of my last visit that they’d had to redecorate the lobby. But still, they were just thugs with guns, for all their nice suits, and I’d spent my whole life running rings round goons like them.

The most senior thug took a step forward, fixing me with his best intimidating stare. “You know you’re not allowed in here, Mr. Taylor. You upset the nice gentlemen and their ladies. You are banned. And that goes for your friends as well, whoever they are.”

“I am Chandra Singh, holy warrior and mighty monster hunter!” said Chandra, getting a little peeved at his lack of fame in the Nightside. “I have got to get myself a better agent . . .”

“And I am the Walking Man,” said the Walking Man cheerfully. “Come to judge your souls.”

The security men went very pale. Several started perspiring, several more began shaking, and one actually whimpered. All their attention was on the Walking Man. Chandra and I might as well have not been there. It would seem what had happened at Precious Memories had already reached the Boys Club. Nothing travels faster than bad news, especially in the Nightside. The thug in charge swallowed audibly.

“I think we’d all like to run away now, sir, if that’s all right with you.”

“Go,” said the Walking Man, gesturing grandly. “I can always find you later if I need you.”

The body-guards departed, but they didn’t just leave—they ran as if Death herself was on their trail, actually fighting each other to get through the door first. I’d never had that effect on people, on the best night I ever had. I felt distinctly jealous.

“Doesn’t the lobby seem so much bigger, without them in it?” said the Walking Man. “Shall we go in?”

“Why not?” I said. “I think you’ve done all the damage you can here.”

He laughed.

I opened the doors into the main Club area, and the Walking Man swaggered through with his hands still stuffed deep in his coat pockets. He couldn’t have looked more at ease if he’d been walking into his own front room. Chandra and I took up our positions on each side of him again. Though whether to support or restrain him, I hadn’t actually decided.

Entering the Club’s huge recreation area was like walking into the world’s sleaziest circus, all bright lights and glaring primary colours, with all kinds of beasts on display. People sat at tables, or milled around in the open central area, or propped up the massive bar. Music blasted out of concealed speakers, almost drowned out by the sheer din of so many people shouting and laughing at once, doing their best to convince themselves and everyone around them that they were having a great time. There was a lot of looking around, to see what everyone else was doing, in case it looked like more fun, and a constant checking of who was with whom.

There were gambling tables—cards, craps, roulette—as well as display boards giving the odds for every kind of bet, on anyone and anything. And there were other games, not so nice. Like the great pit in one corner, for bare-knuckle fights, knife fights, or drunks who thought they could take on creatures of varying size and nastiness. The betting action was really hot around the pit, whose sides were dark with layers of dried blood. Expensively dressed women clutched at men’s arms, and oohed and aahed and squealed delightedly at the sight of blood. Men struck poses in expensive suits, and women stalked back and forth in the very latest fashions, all of it for show. To say Look at me. I’ve arrived. I belong here. Except they wouldn’t have needed to try so hard if they’d really believed it.

Sitting at their tables, the Boys watched the circus go by with the blank, expressionless faces of those who’d seen it all before. The Boys: Big Man, Mr. Big, the Big Guy . . . the men who ran everything, owned everything, and cared for nothing but themselves. You could all but smell the testosterone in the air. They were all big, fat, ugly men, crammed sloppily into exquisitely cut suits. Men who didn’t care about their appearance any more because they didn’t have to. Women were drawn to them by money, power, status, and even the harsh glamour of what they were. There have always been such women, sometimes coming completely cold-bloodedly, sometimes drawn like moths to a flame.

The women came and went, but the Boys remained. Accompanied by women in wine-stained blouses and smeared makeup, laughing at everything they thought might be funny, clinging to their meal ticket’s arm, snuggling up against them, kidding themselves they were important because their men were important.

And, of course, every Boy had his own little court, his circle of sycophants and admirers, business partners and advisors, and whole armies of stone-faced body-guards. Men to carry out commands, or run errands, to listen while their lord and master spoke, and never ever do or say anything other than what was expected of them. And if no-one in that circle was ever entirely comfortable or at ease, because they knew they could be replaced at any minute, or dragged off and shot on a moment’s whim. Well, that was the price they paid for being so close to the Boys. For believing, hoping, that power might trickle down, just like money.

The Boys Club—the only place to be if you were a part of every sick and dirty business in the Nightside.

The din was deafening, people laughing and shrieking and shouting above each other, all trying to convince themselves of what a great time they were having. Drinking and gambling and indulging themselves . . . but always keeping one eye on the Boys, who might or might not deign to notice them, do business with them, raise them up out of their empty little lives and into the Inner Circle . . . All the fun of the fair in the Boys Club, for nasty desperate little men and women.

Spangled girls swung on trapezes overhead, or danced long-leggedly on the raised stage. Waiters bustled back and forth, bearing the very best food and drink in the world to people the waiters knew didn’t appreciate it. There was even a heated indoor swimming pool, steam rising gently around young men and women showing off their perfect bodies in the briefest of costumes, for the enjoyment of the Boys. They, too, hoped to be noticed and made use of, in one way or another.

The scene was unrelentingly tacky and tasteless, but no expense had been spared, with every imaginable luxury laid on. The best of everything, or what these people thought of as the best. These large men, with their large appetites, indulging themselves to their limits, just because they could. And all around them, men on the way up and men on the way down, always ready to do anything that might be required of them. No matter how degrading. You left your pride behind when you went calling on the Boys.

Surprisingly, many of the body-guards were women. Beautiful women in beautiful clothes, with cold faces and colder eyes, all of them armed to the teeth. Presumably the latest fad or fashion. The Boys liked to keep up with such things. I even spotted a few combat sorceresses, with their Clan affiliations tattooed above their right eyes. Which meant they were professionally trained, and guaranteed incredibly dangerous.

The Walking Man strode right into the midst of everything, and people on every side fell back to give him room. They might not know who he was yet, but one predator can always recognise another. The Walking Man headed straight for the Boys themselves, and all the body-guards tensed, their hands suddenly full of many guns. The combat sorceresses eased gracefully into attack position. Chandra Singh and I strolled casually along beside the Walking Man, not deigning to notice any of it.

And then I stopped abruptly, as I recognised one of the body-guards. Tall and lithe, dark-skinned and elegant, Penny Dreadful dressed like a flapper from the 1920s, in a tight scarlet dress, long, swinging beads, and neat little hat. She nodded easily to me, and I nodded back. Penny and I had been friends and enemies, and about everything in between, at one time or another. Just two hard-working professionals, getting by in the Nightside. Penny Dreadful was an old-school enchantress. She could make you do anything. She could make you do awful things, to yourself, or to your friends or loved ones. She never killed anyone. Mostly, after she’d finished with them, they killed themselves.

Penny was the most amoral woman I have ever met, and I’ve met a few. She would work for anyone, good or bad, as long as she was paid in advance. Penny genuinely did not care. She was only ever in it for the money. The complete professional. She worked with me on a case once. After I paid her to do it. We got along okay.

“Hello, Penny,” I said. “Keeping busy?”

“You know how it is, John darling. A girl has to eat.”

She had a little girl’s voice, with a charming French accent. Word had it she’d danced at the Crazy Horse, in her younger days. She twirled her beads at me artlessly.

“Still,” I said. “The Boys Club? As a body-guard? A bit below you, isn’t it, Penny? You used to work for a much better class of scumbag.”

She shrugged. “The money’s good. Needs must, when your creditors bay at your heels. Please don’t start anything, John. I’d hate to have to stop you. Really I would.”

“If you’ve quite finished chatting up the staff,” said the Walking Man. “I have death and destruction to be about.”

“John Taylor,” said a slow, growling voice, and we all looked round. We’d ended up in front of Big Jake Rackham’s table. He sat sprawling in a vast overstuffed chair as though it were a throne, surrounded by the pinched, unfriendly faces of his court. He was large, rather than fat, with brute, powerful features and eyes that didn’t give a damn about anything. Big Jake Rackham ran the sex trade in the Nightside, taking his cut from every business that operated. No-one indulged in the sins of the flesh in the Nightside without putting money in Rackham’s pocket. He was middle-aged but looked older, the awful experiences of his life etched deep into his face. His hair was receding, so he wore it in a long, greasy ponytail down his back. It had been a long time since he’d beaten enemies and rivals to death with his bare hands, but no-one doubted he was still capable of it.

I knew him. He knew me. He leaned forward abruptly, fixing me with eyes as cold and dark as any shark’s.

“How did you get in here, Taylor? You’re banned. You killed Kid Cthulhu, and handed Max Maxwell over to Walker. You have interfered in my business and cost me money. You must be mad to force your way in here. You must know I’ll have you killed for such an affront.”

I looked at him, holding his gaze, and he couldn’t look away. He stiffened as he realised he wasn’t in control any more. I looked at him, and his whole body began to tremble. He cried out, as bloody tears trickled down his cheeks from his bulging eyes, and still he couldn’t move a muscle. When he started to whimper, his body-guards trained their guns on me, but didn’t dare open fire without a direct order from Rackham. In the end, Penny Dreadful stepped forward and put herself between Rackham and me, blocking my gaze. I smiled at her, and nodded slightly. Behind her, Big Jake Rackham had collapsed in his chair, struggling for breath.

“What did you just do, John?” murmured Chandra.

“I stared him down,” I said, not bothering to lower my voice. “Scumbags should know their place.”

I looked around, and several people winced, or tried to hide behind each other. A few actually made warding signs against the evil eye. The whole of the Club had gone quiet, like animals around a watering hole sensing the arrival of a lion. Someone had shut off the music, all the games had been stopped, and everyone’s attention was fixed on me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many unhappy faces, or had so many guns trained on me at one time. It made me feel rather better, after being ignored by the lobby’s security men. I smiled condescendingly on one and all, ostentatiously taking all the ill will and threats in my stride. Never let them see you sweat. It helped that I really had done many of the awful things they thought I’d done. Nobody wanted to be the first to start anything, because none of them were entirely sure of what I might do . . .

More of the body-guards were moving forward, putting their bodies between us and their masters. The Boys paid extremely well to be protected. I looked thoughtfully about me, and many of the heavily armed men and women actually flinched, but none of them fell back. That’s the trouble with real professionals; it takes more than a bad reputation to hold them off. Chandra moved round to protect our rear, his long, curved sword ready in his hand.

“What am I to do, John Taylor?” he murmured in my ear. “I can’t fight women! It would be . . . unseemly!”

“Then you’re going to be at a serious disadvantage in the coming unpleasantness,” I said. “Because these women will quite definitely kill you, given half a chance.”

“Really?” said Chandra, tugging at his long black beard and beginning to smile. “How very . . . exotic.”

The Walking Man stepped forward and struck a dramatic pose, and it was as though a great spotlight had fallen upon him. Everyone forgot all about me and Chandra, and turned their complete attention to the Walking Man. I don’t think they could have looked away if they’d wanted to. Suddenly he was the most important, significant, and dangerous man in the room.

“Hello boys, hello girls, anyone else see me afterwards,” he said, smiling happily about him. His hands weren’t anywhere near his guns, but his stance dared anyone to start anything. “Sorry to put such a crimp in your celebrations, but I’m afraid the party’s over. No more good times for bad little boys and girls.”

He paused, looked at the table beside him, took a firm hold on the edge of the tablecloth and whipped it off the table with a dramatic snap. Everything on the table flew through the air and crashed to the floor. The Walking Man smiled brilliantly, and dropped the table-cloth.

“I meant to do that. Now, where was I?”

He strolled between the tables, and the body-guards fell back despite themselves, giving him plenty of room to go wherever he wanted. His every movement made it clear he’d known they would. The sheer confidence in the man was unsettling, even disturbing. He stopped at every table to talk with every Boy, and he always had something to say about them.

“I am the Walking Man,” he said grandly. “Latest in a long line of utter bastards, completely dedicated to slapping down villains and scumbags and brown-trousering the ungodly. I am the wrath of God in the world of men, walking in straight lines to punish the guilty, wherever they may be found. And there are so many guilty faces here tonight! Let’s start with you, Big Jake Rackham.”

He stopped right in front of the big man and shook his head sadly, like a teacher disappointed by a determinedly under-achieving student.

“Big Jake. Self-made man and proud of it. Everyone knows you run the sex trade in the Nightside. Everyone knows you take a cut from every sordid little transaction: every blow from every pimp; every disease from every hooker; every mugged and rolled client. Every woman driven to an early grave . . . But, does everyone know what you do to your gorgeous wife, Jezebel, because you can’t do anything else with her?”

He moved on to Marty DeVore, also known as Devour, though never to his face, of course. Marty with a thin, weaselly figure with an endless appetite for acquiring new businesses. Whether the original owners wanted to sell or not. The Walking Man clapped him familiarly on the shoulder, and DeVore shrank away from the touch.

“Dear old Marty DeVore,” said the Walking Man happily. “Such an unrelenting sinner. Your sheer enthusiasm for awfulness never ceases to impress me. You made your original money in slavery, of course, selling anyone and anything to anyone and anything. Everyone knows that. But do they know what you like to do for a bit of relaxation, Marty? How you bribe mortuary staff to let you lie down with dead bodies, with the prettiest corpses, and have your wicked way with them? Especially if they’re the wives and daughters of your friends and enemies?”

He moved on to the Hellsreich brothers, the twins, Paul and Davey. Big blond blue-eyed Aryan types, young and healthy and rotten to the core. Heading right to the top, through endless alliances and very secret behind-locked-doors deals. Everyone wanted to hang on to their coat-tails.

“Paul and Davey,” said the Walking Man, moving suddenly between them so he could put an arm across both their shoulders. “Does my heart good to see such young men striving for success. You deal in insurance, or more properly protection, taking money to pay yourselves not to do nasty things to your customers. And you’re so good at making deals that profit everyone! Everyone knows that. But, do they know you murdered your loving parents to get the money that got you started? Who could ever trust you again, knowing a thing like that?”

And finally he came to Josie Prince. One of the few women to be accepted by the Boys as their equal. Slim, elegant, stiff-backed in her formal evening gown, she looked like everyone’s stern, grey-haired granny. She’d strangled her eldest son with her bare hands to take over his business because he wasn’t making enough money for her. Josie Prince was a debt-collector, the kind who sent the leg-breakers round if you were a day late paying back what you owed.

The Walking Man swept her a low, sarcastic bow. Her stern, disapproving features didn’t give an inch. He straightened up with a snap, sat in her lap, and threw an arm across her bony shoulders.

“Sweet Josie Prince, as I live and breathe! Old in years and dyed in sin, right down to the bone. I know what I need to know, when I need to know it, so I can do my job, but just knowing what you do makes me sick to my stomach. You deal in enforcement and intimidation, in torture and brutality and murder. Everyone knows that. But does everyone here know you founded and funded Precious Memories? Do they know why your youngest son killed himself?”

Everyone in the Boys Club looked at Josie Prince, as the Walking Man rose easily to his feet and strode away. Even some of her own body-guards looked at her with loathing. Josie Prince’s face didn’t change at all.

Suddenly, Big Jake Rackham was on his feet, shouting denials and abuse and threats. The other Boys quickly rose and joined in, saying that the Walking Man was a liar, spreading rumour and gossip for his own purposes. Others were on their feet, too, protesting and threatening, perhaps for fear the Walking Man would come after them next. And the Walking Man just stood there, in the middle of the Boys Club, smiling happily at the bedlam he’d caused. Dozens of guns and worse weapons were trained on him from all sides. And he didn’t give a damn. He looked smoothly self-satisfied, a man happy in his work. Then he glanced at me, and I realised it had all been for my benefit. He could have just walked in and started shooting; but he wanted me to know why. He started speaking again, and immediately everyone fell silent again. They couldn’t help it. There was something about the Walking Man that demanded your attention.

“You’re all guilty,” he said. “You all profit from the sin and suffering of others. You all know where your money comes from, and how much blood it has on it, and you’ve never done anything about it. Your sin is you didn’t care.”

His hands suddenly came up full of guns, and before anyone knew what was happening the bodies were already falling. He shot Big Jake Rackham and Marty DeVore while they were still standing by their chairs. Josie Prince tried to run, and he shot her in the back of her head, blowing her face right off. He turned his guns on the Hellsreich brothers, but they were already hiding behind their overturned table. Body-guards on all sides opened up with all kinds of weapons, and I hit the ground, rolling away in search of my own cover. The Walking Man might be bullet-proof, but I sure as hell wasn’t. Chandra Singh roared a cheerful challenge in his own tongue and waded into the nearest body-guards with his long, curved sword. Blood flew on the air as he cut them down with swift, skilful strokes, moving so fast no-one could get a bead on him.

Bullets pounded into the Walking Man from all sides, only to ricochet away harmlessly. He didn’t even feel the impact. He aimed and fired, aimed and fired, picking off his targets quite casually, smiling his terrible unforgiving smile. He was punishing the guilty, and loving every minute of it. Most of the Boys were already dead, the rest running for the exits, though I knew they would never reach them. Body-guards’ bullets slammed into the overturned table I was hiding behind, and I decided I needed to find new cover. I scrambled away on all fours, head well down to avoid the bullets flying overhead, and found a female body-guard moving towards me with an energy gun in her hand. I backed away quickly. I’ve never been much of a one for physical combat, mostly because I’m no good at it. I’ve always preferred outsmarting people, or intimidating them, or being somewhere else when the shit actually hits the fan.

Another female body-guard came running at me, firing a semi-automatic weapon. The bullets didn’t even come close. I can move really quickly when I have to. The two body-guards came together to get a clear shot at me. I rose, whipped the tablecloth off the overturned table, and threw it over both of them. They struggled with the cloth, and it was the easiest thing in the world for me to move in and bang their heads together. I may not be much of a fighter, but I’m a sneaky bastard.

I risked a quick look around. Chandra Singh was holding his own against a whole crowd of opponents, stamping and dancing amongst them, swinging his long sword with glee and gusto. He grinned broadly as enchanted blades shattered against his sword, and magics and curses exploded as he cut them out of the air. As long as he worked in close, no-one could use their guns for fear of shooting their own people, but I had to wonder how long that would last. Still, for a man who said he didn’t want to fight women, he certainly seemed to be getting the hang of it. Bodies fell to the left and to the right as he cut his way through the enemies crowding around him.

They all fell back suddenly to let a combat sorceress approach him, a short and stocky Asian woman in a black dress, with the Tiger’s Claw ideogram tattooed above her right eye. That meant serious magic, and nasty with it. She pulled a spitting and sparking magic out of nowhere and threw it at Chandra. It roared through the air, burning up half a dozen body-guards in its path on its way to Chandra Singh. He laughed aloud and sliced the magic in two in mid air with one slash of his blade. The magic exploded, its sorcerous fires spraying everywhere. People ran screaming, with their flesh on fire. The combat sorceress began a staccato incantation in a language I didn’t recognise. Chandra advanced on her, step by step, pressing against some invisible resistance. The sorceress’s voice rose with urgency as he drew nearer, then she stopped short, and looked down at the blade buried in her stomach. Chandra Singh pulled the sword back, and her guts fell out on to the floor. The sorceress tried to say something, and Chandra cut her head off with one sweep of his blade. He turned away, not bothering to watch her hit the floor.

The Walking Man hadn’t moved from his last position. He didn’t need to. He just fired his guns, his old-fashioned long-barrelled Peacemakers that never ran out of ammunition, and blood flew on the air as men and women crashed to the floor and did not rise again.

What was left of the Boys Club Membership was in full rout. Fighting each other to get to the exits, trampling the fallen underfoot, screaming and shouting and trying to use each other as human shields. The exit doors were all sealed shut, though no-one had given any such order. Most of the body-guards were dead already. The Walking Man didn’t care whether they stood and fought or turned and ran. He killed them all, starting with the worst and working his way down, choosing his targets through some hidden knowledge of his own. The remaining body-guards grouped together and hit the Walking Man with everything they had. But bullets couldn’t touch him, enchanted blades shattered against his shabby coat, and magics and curses discharged harmlessly about him. He ignored the body-guards, unless they got in his way, then he shot them dead.

He was smiling widely, and it was not the kind of smile you expected to see on a man of God.

But as big as the Club was, and large though the Membership was, eventually he ran out of targets. The last body was thrown against a wall by the impact of the bullet and slid lifelessly to the floor, and the shooting stopped. The Walking Man lowered his guns and looked about him. The dead were piled up everywhere, men and women lying sprawled without dignity across the blood-soaked floor. The biggest heaps lay before the sealed exits, where the panicked Membership had tried to crawl over the bodies of the fallen to get to doors that would not open. A handful of the living still remained, hiding, crouched behind overturned tables and other cover, keeping silent, hoping not to be noticed. They should have known better. The Walking Man looked about him and casually picked them off, one by one, his bullets ploughing right through the cover to kill the prey concealed behind them.

The Hellsreich brothers rose abruptly from where they’d been hiding, clasped hands, and shrieked in unison a brutally simple spell of Unbinding. They’d finished it before the Walking Man could even turn his guns upon them. A great blue pentacle appeared on the floor of the Club, half-hidden under the dead bodies. The lines blazed brightly, a harsh actinic blue that seared the eye, steaming with released ectoplasm. The floor under the pentacle exploded, throwing dead bodies aside like leaves, ragged splinters flying through the air like shrapnel. And up through the great dark hole there rose a demon from the Pit, free to do its awful will in the world of men. The Boys Club’s last act of malice, a terrible revenge on anyone who dared to bring them down.

It was a traditional, old-school demon, twice the size of a man, with blood-red skin, goat’s horns and hooves, and very sharp teeth. It had the shape of a man, and the proportions of a man, but there was nothing human in its stance or in its glowing slit-pupilled eyes. Steam rose up from its scarlet skin, the air all around it heated past endurance by its very presence. It stank of shit and blood and brimstone, because it chose to. The Walking Man looked at me and Chandra Singh.

“You deal with it,” he said. “I’m busy.”

And he went back to looking for hidden prey, shooting them where he found them.

I was giving serious thought to finding some cover of my own when Chandra Singh started forward, swinging his long blade casually before him. The demon considered the monster hunter with interest, its long spade-tipped tail swinging lazily. Chandra shouted a challenge in his own tongue and brought his sword round in a long, sweeping arc that would have sliced most things in two, only to see his blade rebound harmlessly from the demon’s scalding skin. The vibrations almost tore the sword from Chandra’s hands, but he hung on stubbornly and struck at the demon again and again, grunting with the effort of his blows. The demon stood there and laughed at him soundlessly.

I searched frantically through my coat pockets for anything that might help, but I had nothing on me that could stop a demon from the Inferno. This was no ordinary demon, this was the real deal, a Lord of Hell. Where had the Boys Club found the power to summon something like this? Unless the founder of the Club really was who some people swore he was . . . You could hurt a demon like this with holy water, or give it pause with a crucifix, provided you had the faith to back it up, but nothing short of a full-scale exorcism could banish it from this plane. I racked my brain . . . and then shouted at Chandra, as he paused in his attack, bent over and breathing harshly.

“Chandra! The pentacle! It’s a gateway between this place and the Pit! That’s how they summoned it here! Break the pentacle, and the gateway will close!”

Chandra raised his sword and brought it slamming down on the nearest pulsing blue line. His enchanted blade sheared clean through the blue line, breaking the connection and short-circuiting the summoning. The gateway began to close, and the demon sank back into the darkness below, pulled inexorably back to where it belonged. It turned its horned head unhurriedly to look at the Walking Man.

“We know you in Hell,” it said, in a voice like screaming children. “We will meet again, Walking Man. All murderers end up in Hell. Even the ones who say God told them to do it.”

The Walking Man shot the demon dispassionately between the eyes. Its horned head snapped back under the impact, then it shook its head, gargled for a moment, and spat out the bullet. It was still laughing as it disappeared back beneath the floor, a terrible, soul-destroying sound. It cut off abruptly as the last of the pentacle lines faded away, and the floor was a floor again, though with a bloody big hole in it now. The Walking Man looked at it for a while, his face unmoved. But he wasn’t smiling any more.

I went over to Chandra, and he leaned heavily on me, his sword hanging down as though it had become too heavy to lift.

“Nice call, John,” he said faintly.

“Nice cut,” I said.

The Boys Club was still and silent. There was blood and dead bodies everywhere, even in the swimming pool, where the perfect bodies of young men and women floated facedown in bloody waters. The Hellsreich brothers stood together, holding their hands high in the air in surrender. The Walking Man regarded them thoughtfully.

“You’ve killed hundreds of men and women,” I said. “Isn’t that enough?”

“No,” said the Walking Man. “It’s never enough.”

“We’re just businessmen!” protested Paul Hellsreich. “We provide a service, we protect our customers from the vicissitudes of fate!”

“We’re insurance men!” said Davey Hellreich. “We never killed anyone!”

“We’ll go legitimate!” said Paul. “We’ll pay taxes! We promise!”

“You don’t have to kill us!” said Davey. “We’re not worth it!”

“It’s always worth it,” said the Walking Man.

“You should turn them over to Walker,” I said quickly, as he started to raise his guns again. “They have surrendered.”

“To Walker?” said Paul. “And end up in Shadow Deep? I think I’d rather be shot.”

“No problem,” said the Walking Man.

“To hell with that,” said a new voice. “I’ve never let a client down yet.”

We all looked round in surprise as the owner of the charming French accent came forward. God alone knew where she’d managed to hide, but Penny Dreadful had survived the massacre without a drop of blood on her. She moved carefully through the carnage, stepping daintily over dead bodies, and came to a halt facing the Walking Man.

“Penny,” I said carefully. “Get out of the way. You don’t have anything that can stop the Walking Man.”

“I took their money,” she said. “Swore to guard them against all dangers, to put my body between theirs and all harm. That’s the job.”

“She took their money,” said the Walking Man. “Even knowing where it came from. That makes her as guilty as them.”

“No it bloody doesn’t!” I said. “She’s a professional, that’s all! Just like me. And Chandra.”

“You side with the sinners, you die with the sinners,” said the Walking Man. “It really is that simple.”

“No it isn’t,” I said. “Not here. Not in the Nightside. We do things differently here.”

“I know,” said the Walking Man. “That’s the problem. Sin is sin. You’ve lived here so long you’ve forgotten that.”

“She is brave, and honourable, and trustworthy, in her way,” I said. And I moved slowly and deliberately forward, to stand between Penny and the Walking Man. “She’s done good things.”

“I’m sure God will take that into consideration,” said the Walking Man. And he shot right past my ear. I spun round, but it was already too late. Penny was falling to her knees, a dark and bloody third eye in the middle of her forehead. I caught her before she hit the floor, but she wasn’t breathing any more. I knelt before the Walking Man, holding my dead friend in my arms. I heard two more shots, but didn’t look round to watch the Hellsreich brothers fall. I didn’t want to let Penny go, even though I knew there was nothing I could do. Her body leaned heavily against me, like a sleeping child. She didn’t deserve to die like this. Even if she had been the infamous Penny Dreadful, and done all the things she’d done, she didn’t deserve to die like this.

I finally put her aside, got back on my feet, and glared at the Walking Man, who stared impassively back. I started towards him, and Chandra was quickly there to grab my arm and stop me.

“No, my friend! Not now. We’re not ready.”

“Let go of my arm,” I said, and he let go immediately.

I was breathing hard, my whole body tense with the need to do . . . something. I knew he’d kill me if I took another step forward, but right then, I wasn’t sure I cared, as long as I took him down with me.

“What about God’s mercy?” I said finally, in a harsh voice I barely recognised. “What about his compassion?”

“Not my department,” said the Walking Man. He decided I wasn’t going to do anything after all and put away his guns.

“What gives you the right to condemn anyone to Hell?”

“I don’t send anyone to Hell. I send them to judgement.”

“Who are you, to take such responsibility upon yourself?” said Chandra Singh.

The Walking Man smiled; and for the first time it was a simple, human smile. “About time you asked. Very well, just for you; the secret origin of the Walking Man. My name is, or more properly was, Adrien Saint. No-one special. Just a man with a job and a wife and two small children. Mr. Average, I suppose. No great ambitions. All I wanted was to get on with my life and look after my family.

“A teenage joy-rider in a stolen car hit my wife and my two children head-on, when he lost control taking a corner too fast. Cut my wife in half, and dragged my children under his car for almost half a mile before he finally had to stop. He ran away, with his friends. The police couldn’t identify any of them.

“I survived. You couldn’t call it living, but I survived. Lost my job, my house, my money . . . and then one of the few friends I hadn’t driven away found me a place in a monastery, in the countryside. A place for solitudes and contemplatives, and those hiding from a world that had become unbearable. It was a good place. I found a kind of peace there, if not comfort. And then one day, while helping to catalog the library, I found a very old book that told me all about the deal a man can make with God, to be his man, to be his Walking Man, and punish the guilty.

“I made the deal. Didn’t hesitate for a moment. I went back into the world transformed, with God’s will and God’s wrath burning within me. I found the teenage joy-rider, with God’s help. Sitting on a sofa, watching television, as though nothing had happened. I beat him to death with my bare hands, and his screams comforted me. I went round to his friends, and killed them all. There’s a fine line between justice and revenge, but as long as it ended up with dead joy-riders, I didn’t care.

“And then . . . I went travelling in the world, seeing it as it really was, walking up and down in it, dispensing justice. Until finally I was ready to come to the Nightside, and bring the wrath of God to the most sinful place on Earth.”

“No wonder you’re always smiling,” I said. “This has never been about justice for you. It’s always been about revenge. Every time you fire your guns, you’re killing joy-riders, over and over again.”

The Walking Man smiled briefly. “You think I don’t know that? I’m obsessed, not crazy.”

“You sure about that?” I said.

He actually laughed. “Well, I hear voices in my head telling me to kill people in God’s name, so I suppose there has to be a chance that I’m a complete loony tune; but I don’t think so. Not as long as I remain untouchable by all the evil in the world.”

“What brought you to the Nightside, at this particular time?” said Chandra.

“I know what I need to know, when I need to know it. When God was sure I was ready, he showed me the secret ways into the Nightside.”

“You talk often with your god?” said Chandra. He sounded genuinely curious. “What is that like?”

“Comforting,” said the Walking Man.

“I often speak with my god,” said Chandra. “He speaks to me through dreams, and prophecies and omens. And he has never once insisted I commit murder in his name.”

“You kill monsters,” said the Walking Man.

“Only when I have to. And then, only to protect the innocent.”

“Yes!” said the Walking Man. “Exactly! I punish the guilty to avenge and protect the innocent. I kill the killers before they can kill again! The law might not be able to touch these evil men, but I can. And I do. Think of me . . . as a champion of last resort. The last person you can go to for justice, when the ways of the world have failed you. What I do is never murder, because I have a valid legal warrant for all that I have done, and will do, from the highest court of all. The Courts of the Holy.”

“Penny wasn’t evil,” I said.

“Get over her,” said the Walking Man, not unkindly. “I will do worse before I’m done because I must. The Nightside is an abomination in the world of men, and it must be humbled and brought down. There are too many temptations here, too many evils operating openly. It gives people . . . the wrong idea. That they can sin and get away with it.”

“You don’t believe in free will?” I said. “Or free choice? God gave them to us. Everyone who comes here knows the score, knows what they’re getting into. You could say the Nightside keeps all the real sin and temptation in one place, away from the rest of the world.”

“Shows how little you know about the rest of the world,” said the Walking Man. “You argue well, John, but none of this matters. I will do what I will do, and no-one can stop me. I am here to clean up the Nightside, scour the filth right out of it, from top to bottom. Including your presumptuous new Authorities. As soon as I’ve finished the tasks I’ve set myself, I will kill these new Authorities, to put the fear of God into the Nightside. And you, John Taylor . . . are either with me, or against me.”

“That’s why you let me see what you do, and why,” I said. “You want me to understand. To approve.”

“I want you to stay out of my way,” said the Walking Man.

“Many people whose opinion I respect tell me that the Nightside serves a purpose,” I said slowly. “There are good people here. I won’t let you hurt them. This is my home.”

“Not for long,” said the Walking Man. He pulled his old mocking insolence about him, flashed me a smile, then turned his back on me and walked away.

“Bastard son of a bitch,” I said, after a moment.

“Well, yes,” said Chandra. “By the way, you have blood all down the front of your trench coat.”

I looked. Penny’s blood, from where I’d held her.

“Not for the first time,” I said.

We stood alone in the middle of the Boys Club, surrounded by the dead. The air seemed very still, very calm, as though a thunderstorm had just passed.

“I couldn’t stop him,” I said finally, unable to keep the helplessness out of my voice. “Even though I knew what to expect, even though I thought I was prepared for what he was, and what he did . . . I still couldn’t stop him.”

“Who are we, to stand against the will of God?” said Chandra Singh, reasonably. “And the men and women of this establishment were very definitely people who needed killing.”

“Not all of them,” I said. “The world is undoubtedly a better place with most of these people gone, but some of them were just...ordinary men and women, doing their jobs, drawing a pay-cheque to pay the bills and look after their families. Getting by, as best they could. Yes, they knew where the money came from... but whatever evil they did by working here was a small thing. Not worth dying like this.”

“Like your Penny Dreadful?” he said.

“She was never mine,” I said, automatically. “Penny was always her own woman. I never approved of her, but I liked her. She took no shit from anyone. And she really did do some good things in her time, even if she had to be paid to do them.” I looked around me, and a slow, steady anger burned within me. “They didn’t all need killing, Chandra. Some of them could have been saved.”

“Of course! That’s why you stay, isn’t it?” said Chandra, with the enthusiasm of a sudden insight. “To try and save those you care about. Like your Suzie Shooter.”

“Don’t go there,” I said, and when I looked at him, he fell silent.

No telling where that conversation might have gone because that was when King of Skin suddenly materialised out of mid air before us. Chandra and I both fell back a little, startled, as King of Skin skipped and swaggered among the dead bodies, sniggering and cackling and looking very pleased with himself. He stopped suddenly, and looked back over his shoulder at Chandra and me.

“I’ve been here all along,” he said, in his hot breathy voice. “Hidden by my power and my nature, watching and listening. Know thy enemy! He does like to talk, this Walking Man, and says so much more than he realises. He has a weakness, and it’s a very old one. Pride! He cannot ever admit to being wrong . . . Destroy his faith in the righteousness of what he does, even for a moment, and he will crumble . . . Oh yes!” He was suddenly right in front of me again, wrapped in his sleazy glamour, laughing right in my face. “Because of what I was, and what I am, I see the world very clearly. I see the Nightside for what it is, and not for what people on both sides like to think it is, or should be . . . That’s why Julien Advent insisted I be a part of his precious new Authorities. Because I will always see what needs to be done, and the best way to do it, no matter how upsetting.”

And just like that, he was gone again. Or at least, I presumed so. With King of Skin, you could never be sure.

I thought about Adrien Saint, the current Walking Man, so sure in his vocation. Could he really bring down the whole Nightside? Not by shooting the bad guys one by one . . . That would take him years, maybe centuries. So he must be planning something else. Something more . . . apocalyptic. Could he perhaps be the one to bring about the bleak dead future I’d encountered in the Timeslip? Where all the world was dead, and even the stars were going out? Could he be the real cause of that, and not me? Was that why the members of the new Authorities were the same people who had been my Enemies in that terrible future?

I had to stop the Walking Man. For many reasons. But how do you stop the will and wrath of God?

I was going to have to do some research.