The Bride Wore Black Leather

SEVEN All Kinds of Miracles

When we finally stepped out of the alcove in the Garden wall and back into the Land of Down and Outs, I was surprised to see a long black limousine already there, waiting for us. It looked more than a little out of place in the kind of area where the words appalling and disgusting take on whole new and very extreme meanings. I took a quiet look around, but the locals had all disappeared, presumably to sleep off their recent feast. Julien Advent was already opening the back door of the limousine. I stayed right where I was and gave him my very best meaningful cough. Julien looked back and gave me his best urbane smile.

“I called for the car. My stomach has had more than enough of travelling by Portable Timeslip, while many of my nerves are currently on strike for better working conditions. You represent the Authorities now, John, and are fully entitled to all the little perks that go with your new position.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “But this goes on your expense account, not mine.”

Julien smiled briefly. “You’re learning. Now get in, so I can shut the door. We’re letting all the ambience in.”

I slid into the back seat, and Julien followed me in quickly. The door shut itself after him, hardly making a sound. I leaned back in the richly padded seat and let loose a great sigh of pleasure as my muscles were finally able to relax. Julien picked up the interior phone and told the driver where to go. A uniformed chauffeur, of course, though I quickly realised that chauffeuse was more correct. A tall and elegant young lady in a white leather uniform, complete with a peaked white leather cap, over a platinum blonde buzz cut. She nodded briefly to Julien, without looking back.

“Sure thing, chief. Buckle up; it’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

A glass partition slid up, separating us from the driver. Presumably because Julien knew there were all sorts of questions I wanted to ask about how she and Julien knew each other. You can never have too much gossip. Julien had already opened up the interior bar, revealing a sparkling area full of crystal decanters. He helped himself to a glass of very good brandy, and I helped myself to a decanter. Julien gave me a reproving look. I grinned at him, and toasted him with the decanter.

“Any snacks in there? Chief?”

“No,” said Julien, very firmly, and he shut the bar quickly before I could go rooting around in it. “But the limousine does come equipped with an ejector seat for those passengers who’ve outstayed their welcome. Don’t say you weren’t warned.”

I drank some really good brandy, straight from the decanter, and Julien winced. I think sometimes I’m a bit too much for his delicate sensibilities. Probably because I don’t possess any. He made a point of not looking in my direction as he picked up the interior phone again and contacted the news desk at the Night Times, to catch up with what had been happening in his absence. He listened for a while, then frowned and put the phone on speaker, so I could hear what he was hearing. It appeared that Brilliant Chang had already turned in his piece on what had gone down at the Ball of Forever, and I had come out of it surprisingly well. The voice at the other end of the phone read out some of the choicer bits, managing to sound both shocked and scandalised while enjoying himself immensely. Julien nodded.

“I’m going to have to write a special editorial on the passing of King of Skin when I get back. Doing him justice will be a challenge.”

“Will you be mentioning in passing that one of the co-founders of the new Authorities was actually a major serial killer, who wrapped himself in the living skins of his victims?” I said innocently.

“The Night Times stands for the truth,” Julien said stiffly. “Just not all the truth, all the time. In cases like this, it can be better to let the truth come out a bit at a time, so as not to . . . overwhelm people. On the other hand, we can’t hold some things back for fear of being scooped. You did say Bettie Divine was there . . . Damn. I’m going to have to try and balance the good with the bad. King of Skin did do admirable things, in his time. He did help found the new Authorities, and you might remember that he fought alongside us during the Lilith War. A lot of innocent people are only alive today because he put his life on the line to protect them.”

“Innocent?” I said, raising an eyebrow. “In the Nightside?”

“You know what I mean.”

“King of Skin only took on Lilith’s armies because they were destroying his own personal playground,” I said, letting the empty decanter drop onto the floor at my feet. Somebody should have refilled it; I’d only got a few drinks out of the damned thing. I sighed, feeling suddenly tired. Contemplating the endless ambiguities of the Nightside can take a lot out of you. “Just because the enemy of your enemy is your ally, it doesn’t necessarily follow that he’s your friend,” I said.

The voice at the other end of the speaker-phone asked, rather nervously, if he should continue, and Julien told him to get on with it. Possibly I wasn’t the only one who was feeling tired. We listened silently as the voice did its best to hit the high spots of what was happening in the Nightside. Apparently someone had dumped a whole bunch of piranha into a private swimming pool because someone had blackballed their membership bid. No-one had ever seen so many people leave a pool so quickly. They then turned the heating all the way up, broiled the piranha, and ate the lot. There was a metaphor for the Nightside in there somewhere, but I was too tired to work it out. Someone else had opened the wrong kind of book in the H. P. Lovecraft Memorial Library, and now there was a whole new building standing in the same place, the Linda Lovecraft Library of Spiritual Erotica. Explorers in protective suits were currently investigating the new contents. And something really unpleasant had possessed the lady news-reader of the local television station, on air, right in the middle of a broadcast. It had her saying really nasty and untruthful things for some time before anyone noticed. She had to be wrestled out of her seat and dragged off air, all the time speaking in tongues and swivelling her head round and round. Which is a really bad thing to do when you’re projectile vomiting something very like pea green soup. I had to smile. You’d think a Nightside television station would have enough sense to keep an exorcist on staff for emergencies like this. Some savings really are false economies.

On the other hand, apparently that particular news show boasted the highest ratings the station had ever known, and had already been nominated for several awards.

The black limousine moved smoothly out of the bad lands and into the mainstream traffic lanes. The roar of never-ending traffic embraced us immediately though hardly any of it got past the limo’s soundproofing. The usual mixture of unusual vehicles passed by on either side. Ambulances that ran on distilled suffering. Huge articulated trucks with no-one visible in the driver’s seat, carrying unknown goods to unknowable destinations. One of them had a big sign on the back, saying COMPLAIN ABOUT MY DRIVING. GO ON. I DARE YOU. And all kinds of cars, from a shocking pink souped-up Model T Ford, to an Edsel with tall, shiny fins and a radioactive back burner, to a 2020 Velociraptor Special, with a motor so powerful it rattled the fillings in my teeth as it shot past.

Most of the traffic had enough sense to give the black limousine plenty of room on the grounds that anything so obviously expensive was bound to have top-of-the-line armaments and protections; but something that only looked like a car moved quickly through the adjoining lanes to ease in alongside us. Up close, it quickly became apparent there was something seriously wrong with the car’s shape and details. All the windows were pure black, including the windscreen, the wheels didn’t turn, and the thing moved in sudden darts and rushes that would have had its passengers ricocheting around the interior. I drew Julien’s attention to whatever it was that was coming our way, but he didn’t seem particularly worried. The car thing lurched in close beside us, our two sides almost touching. The all-black window nearest us disappeared, and dozens of dark green arms ending in hooked and clawed hands shot out to attack our windows. They slammed to a halt against the glass and skittered angrily over it, unable to break or even scratch it.

“Bullet-proof, shatter-proof, waterproof,” said Julien, a bit complacently.

“Make a good watch,” I said, deliberately unimpressed.

The claws and hooks clattered in vain against the heavy glass, then all the arms snapped back into the car thing. The black window reappeared. The car thing cut its power and fell back behind us, taking up a position right on our bumper. Long machine-gun barrels protruded from its dully gleaming grill-work, and the car thing opened fire. Luckily, our rear windows were equally bullet-proof. The limousine hardly rocked at all under the impact. The blonde chauffeuse made an adjustment to something on her dash-board, and flame-throwers opened up from the back of the limousine. The car thing shrieked shrilly as terrible flames washed over it. The featureless exterior scorched and bubbled, charring and blackening like roasted flesh under the extreme heat. The car thing burned fiercely, then exploded. Bits of burning car flesh flew through the air, tumbling end over end, bouncing and splattering off the surrounding traffic.

“James Bond, eat your heart out,” said Julien Advent.

I couldn’t find it in my heart to feel sorry for the car thing. Some predators are too damned nasty for sympathy. The black limousine moved smoothly on through the night traffic, which treated us with a little more respect than before.

It took us a while to reach the Hospice of the Blessed Saint Margaret. The Nightside’s one and only hospital is located right on the outskirts, not far from the Necropolis. So that when things go wrong, they don’t have far to move the body. It also allows the rest of the Nightside population to feel that little bit more secure in case anything should escape. Or anyone. Julien made a series of important phone calls to the editorial desk of the Night Times, and I passed the time dozing on the back seat with my mouth open. Eventually, the black limousine eased to a halt, and I opened my eyes to find we were right in the middle of the Hospice car-park. The chauffeuse turned to address Julien, and he lowered the intervening glass panel.

“You want me to wait, chief?”

“No thank you, Gloria,” said Julien. “Hospital car-parks charge a fortune. You take some time off. I’ll call you if I need you.”

“Suits me, chief. Try not to pick up anything nasty in there. I’d hate to have to fumigate the car again.”

“Again?” I said, but Julien already had the back door open and was climbing out. I got out after him, and the moment I was clear, the back door slammed shut, and the limousine pulled quickly away. I hunched my shoulders inside my trench coat against the chill of the night air, and stood beside Julien while we looked the Hospice over from a safe distance. Despite having lived most of my very dangerous life in the Nightside, I’d never actually seen the Hospice before. Julien saw me frowning.

“Something wrong?”

“Don’t like hospitals,” I said bluntly. “They get on my nerves. And don’t even get me started on dentists. On bad days, I need a local anæsthetic, even to make an appointment.”

“Back in my old days, the hospital was where you went to die,” said Julien, reflectively. “In Victorian times, surgeons were butchers, survival rates were frankly terrifying, and we had none of today’s wonder drugs. You had to be tough to survive a Victorian hospital. And don’t even get me started on the Elephant Man.”

The Hospice itself was a huge, bright, white-walled building, sweeping up into the night sky. Searchlights blazed from the roof, to guide in air ambulances, flying carpets and the occasional winged unicorn. They’d had a dragon drop in on the roof once, many years ago, and they’re still talking about it. Still trying to get the last bits of dragon dung out of the guttering, by all accounts. That was one sick dragon. All the windows were mirrored one-way glass, to ensure privacy and keep passers-by from seeing things that might upset them. The Hospice was named after the original Saint Margaret, who founded the place when she passed through the Nightside, many centuries ago.

“She didn’t stay long,” said Julien, when I tried to impress him with my limited knowledge. “We don’t get many saints in the Nightside, as a rule.”

“Gosh,” I said. “Imagine my surprise.”

“But she did hang around long enough to found a much-needed leper Hospice. She ran it herself, tending the lepers with her own hands, until she could find someone brave enough to take over; and then she couldn’t get out of the Nightside fast enough. The lepers didn’t bother her, but she felt contaminated by the general moral ambience. Which is fair enough. The Hospice evolved, through various fits and starts, into the Hospice you see before you, the most impressive and experienced of its kind. It deals with supernatural and super-science medical problems, and all the extreme and unnatural cases that inevitably occur in a free-thinking community like ours. It was either this, or fire-bombing whole areas of the Nightside on a regular basis. And don’t think that wasn’t discussed. The Hospice is supported by many good friends and grateful ex-patients, and even more people with a thoughtful eye to the future.”

“You still wouldn’t catch me dead in there,” I said solemnly.

“That joke was old when I was young,” Julien said crushingly.

We walked through the car-park and headed for the main front doors. We’d barely got half-way there before a whole bunch of heavily armed security people emerged suddenly from all sides to cover us. Some wore old military outfits, some wore specially adapted battle armour, and every single one of them kept their weapons trained very seriously on Julien and me. I looked casually around, careful to appear conspicuously unimpressed. All the security people had the same cold, focused, dangerous look. I knew who they were immediately. Who they had to be. A lot of them recognised me, and there was a lot of glancing around to find someone ready to make the first move. I could all but see the buck shifting in mid air. After a certain amount of glancing and muttering, they all carefully chose to point their weapons between me and Julien rather than directly at us.

Just so I wouldn’t feel too threatened.

They were all of them graduates of the Fortress, that heavily fortified refuge for people who had been abducted by aliens and were determined never to let that happen again. The Fortress contained more big guns, high explosives, and really nasty booby-traps than anywhere else in the Nightside. They have security cameras in every room and corridor, heavy-duty gun emplacements on the roof, and you’re never more than ten feet from a panic button. They have a stuffed and mounted Grey on display in their lobby, and you don’t even want to think about what they’ve done to the reptiloid on display.

(No relation to the Royal Family. None at all. Trust me on this.)

Of course, it turned out that Julien knew many of them by name, and they all relaxed a bit as he stopped to chat with them. I had heard the Fortress supplied security for the Hospice, but I hadn’t expected there to be quite so many of them. Or that they’d be so well-armed. A lot of them had attended the Hospice as patients—for psychiatric help, removal of implants, and the occasional bit of exploration to make sure no alien had left anything where the sun doesn’t shine. They’d been so impressed by the help and sympathy they’d received, they set up a rota for people to volunteer to help. They made very loyal, very dangerous guards. Exactly what the Hospice needed.

Julien asked a few vague questions about how the shift was going, and if they’d seen anything or anyone . . . unusual. He didn’t mention the Sun King by name, on the grounds of not wanting to start a panic if he didn’t have to. None of them had seen anything out-of-the-ordinary unusual. It was a quiet night, for once. The officer in charge turned up, an ex–sergeant major in the paratroops, with silver-grey hair and a thousand-light-year stare. He wore a battered flak jacket topped off with a bandolier of incendiary grenades. Any alien who tried to take him again was in for a really nasty surprise. He also wore a pair of specially tinted sunglasses, which he assured us allowed him to detect aliens trying to pass as human. I didn’t argue the point. This was the Nightside, after all, and he was holding the biggest gun I’d ever seen. In one hand.

“Why are there so many of you here?” I asked, to make it clear I was part of the conversation.

The ex-SM shrugged briefly. “Always some scumbag trying to break in, sir. Looking for drugs, equipment, magical shit. We show them no mercy. The good doctors keep telling us we’re allowed to bring them in alive; but we don’t believe in taking chances. Besides, the staff here have enough work on their hands without us adding to it with wounded scumbags. So we shoot their legs out from under them, double-tap them in the head, and everybody’s happy.”

“Keep up the good work,” I said, for want of anything else to say.

“Thank you, sir. Would you like an escort to the front doors?”

“We don’t want to draw attention,” Julien said smoothly.

“Then you shouldn’t have brought John bloody Taylor,” said a voice from the back. There was a certain amount of laughter in the ranks, until the ex-SM glared them all into silence. Julien and I made our way carefully through the security people and headed for the front doors. Some of them bowed to Julien, and some of them nodded to me, and they all kept a careful eye on us right up to the point where we reached the doors, in case we might get lost, on the way. I also heard the name Suzie Shooter mentioned, in quiet mutterings, followed by a lot of nervous looking about. The Fortress had bad memories of Shotgun Suzie’s occasional forced entrances into their building, on the trail of some runaway bounty. Nowhere was off limits to Suzie.

I slowed down as we approached the doors, and Julien looked at me questioningly. “I used to know someone who used to work here,” I explained. “Sister Morphine . . .”

“Ah yes,” said Julien. “I remember her. I wrote a few pieces about her, back in the day. She worked here for several years as a nurse before she had her crisis of faith, and decided it was more important to heal wounded souls than wounded bodies. You knew Sister Morphine, John? I didn’t know that.”

I nodded slowly. “She was there, in Rats’ Alley, when I was there. When I was down and out, just another of the homeless she tried to protect.”

“You don’t talk much about that part of your life,” said Julien.

“Would you?” I said. “Sister Morphine . . . was the kindest woman I ever knew. She looked after us all when we couldn’t look after ourselves, when no-one else gave a damn. She never preached, never held the Bible over us; but she was a great one for stories and parables. She lived with us, amongst us, as one of us. Sometimes we had to force her to eat, when what we could salvage from the Dumpsters and the back doors of restaurants wasn’t enough to go round. She always thought our needs were more important than hers.”

I didn’t tell Julien that when I thought of Sister Morphine now, mostly I thought about her death. A mob killed her, during the Lilith War. I saw it happen. I could have saved her, but I had other people to protect that I thought needed saving more. Because their lives were more important than hers. War does things like that to you. I’m sure she would forgive me, but that didn’t matter. I didn’t forgive me.

As we entered the Hospice lobby, it quickly became apparent that this was yet another of those places that was bigger on the inside than the outside. It comes as standard in most of the Nightside, these days. The lobby was huge, breathtakingly so, stretching away before us. Julien and I stopped inside the doors to take a good look around. Everyone else ignored us, intent on their own problems.

“I am moved to wonder,” said Julien. “Given all the pocket-dimension buildings we have these days, whether there is in fact an upper limit to how much Time and Space can be contained within the Nightside, without something . . . giving.”

“We’d better hope not,” I said. “If all the containment spells were to let go at once, and all the space within the Nightside broke its barriers and rolled out into the standard three dimensions . . . the end result would probably cover most of London Proper. Always assuming, of course, that we’re actually contained within present-day London.”

“You don’t think we are?” said Julien.

“Look at the size of the moon,” I said.

“I’ve got something more immediately worrying for you to think about,” said Julien. “Before we can get to see Dr. Benway, we have to get past the receptionist.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I have a way with receptionists.”

“You can’t kill her!” Julien said immediately. “It would make a very bad first impression.”

“Oh ye of little faith,” I said.

I took a little more time to look around while I considered the situation. The lobby was white-walled, brightly lit, and spotlessly clean. And actually quite peaceful. Probably the only place in the Nightside that was. Marble pillars broke up the open space, and there were rows of comfortable chairs and couches for patients and visitors to sit on. Food and drink dispensers seemed to be providing food and drink of a kind that people were actually happy to consume, and pleasant classical music issued from concealed speakers. The air smelled of freshly cut grass and the scent of new-mown hay, all the sweet scents of a summer’s day. A nice change from most hospitals’ use of heavy disinfectant. Though, of course, both sets of smells were only there to cover up the same things: namely, the underlying, ever-present smells of blood and sickness, misery and mortality. Large notice-boards contained a great many overlapping messages, pleas and demands, and stern reminders that anyone who overstayed their welcome in the car-park could end up with several of their more important inner organs clamped.

The rows and rows of chairs were packed with people waiting to be seen. Men and women and children, and here and there some individuals who were none of the above and never would be. All of them troubled with wounds and fevers, exotic STDs and partial transmogrifications. A man with his hand stuck somewhere very embarrassing, a hunchback whose hump had slipped, a cyborg with Tourette’s who kept shouting out long strings of binary numbers, and someone whose grip on reality was so weak he kept fading in and out. Half a dozen winged monkeys dressed as cleaners pushed mops and buckets around, labouring to deal with the usual spills of blood, urine, and vomit, and one small but worrying pool of molecular acid.

Typical night, in the Nightside A&E. I even overheard the traditional interplay between a nurse and a patient.

Patient: Nurse, it hurts when I do this.

Nurse: Then don’t do that.

Patient: I am going to have to kill you now.

Nurse: I quite understand.

It’s good to know some people are still ready to keep up the old traditions.

Right over to one side was a miraculous spring, a large pool of murky water contained within a low stone wall. It was supposed to have amazing curative properties, but only as long as you had faith, real faith, enough to make it work. And real faith has always been hard to come by in the Nightside. One very determined mother was holding her son by the ankle and dunking him in the pool, over and over again. Between a lot of sputtering, the boy could be heard saying; I feel much better! Honest! Look will you please stop this I think I’m developing gills!

Interesting and entertaining as all this was, Julien and I finally had no choice but to give our full attention to the receptionist at the desk. It was a really pleasant-looking reception desk, with vases of fresh flowers, neat and tidy in and out trays, and an absolute minimum of clutter . . . but I wasn’t fooled. I could See the industrial-strength magical protections hanging on the air, and the built-in weapons systems.

The receptionist herself was a large matronly figure in a spotless white uniform (that reminded me immediately of the Very Righteous Sisters). She had a pleasant face, cold and unsympathetic eyes, and a mouth like a steel trap. You know the sort; mother was a pit bull, father was a velociraptor. Don’t ask me what they ever saw in each other; but it can get very foggy on the moors. She waited to the very last moment to look up from her form-filling and stop Julien and me in our tracks with a stern warning gaze. She recognised Julien Advent immediately and favoured him with a brief nod. And then she looked at me, recognised me, and one hand moved quickly to a large red emergency button. She gave me a brief, meaningless smile.

“Tell me where it hurts, don’t bleed on the floor, fill in these forms, and take a number.”

“You don’t understand,” said Julien. “Neither of us is in need of medical attention. We are here to speak with Dr. Benway.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” the receptionist said immediately. “Not without an advance appointment. Dr. Benway is very busy, and I won’t have her bothered. I can book you in for an appointment, but I should warn you there’s a three-week waiting gap. Minimum. If that’s not acceptable, take a number and get to the back of the queue, like everyone else.”

“I am Julien Advent, representing the Authorities. This is John Taylor, the new Walker. It is vital that we see Dr. Benway immediately!”

The receptionist indulged herself with a harsh sniff, to show how unimpressed she was. “No queue-jumping. We don’t care who you are, here.”

“But this is urgent!” said Julien. “Vital, I tell you! The safety of the entire Nightside itself is at risk!”

“Save your breath,” said the receptionist. “I’ve heard it all before. Are you actually dying? Bleeding out? Missing a major organ?”

“We’re not,” I said. “But you could be. You know me; you know what I can do. So stop pissing me off, or I’ll send your spleen to Mars.”

I gave her my most cheerful smile. The receptionist opened her mouth to say something, looked me in the eye, then thought better of it. Her hand hovered over the red button, then moved away. She sighed, in her best put-upon way, and reached for the phone.

“If you two gentlemen will give me a moment, I’ll ask Dr. Benway if she can make time to see you. But I’m not promising anything!”

“Of course not,” I said. “Why break the habit of a lifetime?”

“Stop it . . .” murmured Julien. “She’ll turn nasty in a moment.”

The receptionist got through to Dr. Benway, spoke quietly for a moment, and listened. She nodded, put the phone down, and gave Julien and me a wintry smile.

“Dr. Benway will see you; but she is very busy right now. So you’ll have to wait. With everyone else.”

Julien grabbed me forcefully by the arm and hauled me away from the reception desk. It took a while to find a couple of seats together, in the very crowded waiting area, and as far away from the more obviously infectious and messy people, but when we finally sank down into the chairs, they really were very comfortable.

“I think we won that encounter on points,” I said. “All right, we still have to wait, but we didn’t have to take a number.”

“Would you really have . . . ?” said Julien.

“Almost certainly,” I said. “I have deep-seated problems with authority figures.”

“But you are one!”

“I know! I can only assume the universe has a really mean sense of humour.”

We sat, and waited. People came and went, many sobbed and whimpered and read out-of-date magazines, but the size of the waiting crowd never seemed to change much. Julien stared patiently off into the distance, tapping one foot in a thoughtful manner. I recognised the signs. He’d already decided exactly how much time he was going to allow Dr. Benway; and then he was going to go and look for her himself. And God help anyone who got in his way. I’d never seen Julien walk right over a receptionist before. I was quite looking forward to it. Reassured at the prospect of loud and nasty unpleasantness in the near future, I killed time by studying the long list of wards, and their particular areas of expertise, laid out on an old-fashioned wooden wall plaque. They were all carefully numbered, but a lot of the descriptions were in Greek and Latin. I nudged Julien in the ribs and drew his attention to the dead languages. He gave me a long-suffering look.

“In my young days, we were all taught Latin and Greek at school.”

“Was that before or after they shoved you up chimneys or down the mines?” I said.

Julien sighed, heavily, and translated the various descriptions for me. With rather more hesitations and uncertainty than you’d expect from someone who was supposed to have had a first-class private education. But after a while he got interested and started a running commentary on what each new description implied.

“Here at the Hospice, they deal with all the more unusual medical problems and conditions of the Nightside. Resulting in some very specialised care and services. There are doctors here to take off curses, put souls or identities back where they came from, reverse transformations, and undo teleport pod mishaps. They can restore kirlian fields and retune your chakras. Can’t say I really approve of all this New Age stuff, but you can’t ignore alternative medicine these days. Fortunately, I don’t see anything here about crystals or flower aromatherapy, or I would have to say something very unfortunate. There are wards here for every need and speciality, including every kind of species you can think of. The Hospice doesn’t discriminate. And then, of course, there’s Ward 12A, though most people don’t like to talk about that.”

“Why not?” I said immediately. “What goes on in Ward 12A?”

Julien pressed on, deliberately ignoring my question. “There are wards for unicorns who need reshoeing with pure silver hooves, and for werewolves with the mange. I understand Leo Morn’s a martyr to it, in the winter months. For vampires who’ve made themselves ill by drinking the wrong blood group: Rhesus intolerant. And, of course, a ward to treat all the rare and nasty diseases that will keep turning up in the Nightside through Timeslips: from the Past and any number of unfortunate futures. You really don’t want to know about the Plague Ward, John.”

He carried on, talking with increasing enthusiasm, extolling the many virtues of the Hospice, genuinely proud of all the incredible services its staff could provide. Often only because of his vigorous fund-raising though, of course, he never mentioned that bit. He talked at length of the giant spiders who lived in the basement, spinning bandages, and the ghouls who were bused in every day to eat the medical waste, and the occasional body too toxic to dispose of in a normal manner. Or too tough to burn. A ghoul’s digestion can handle anything, up to and including nuclear waste. Though you really don’t want to be around them when they fart.

And, sometimes, ghouls would be called in to deal with certain bodies that were too dangerous to be buried. Any villain who ever said I’ll be back! as he went to his death at the hands of a triumphant hero . . . never met a Nightside ghoul. But I couldn’t help noticing that Julien was saying most of this to cover up the fact that he didn’t want to talk about Ward 12A. I mused on this while noticing that all of the porters, including those pushing patients around in wheel-chairs, were actually very familiar-looking cat-faced robots. I pointed this out to Julien as a matter of urgency, but he just nodded easily.

“I know,” he said. “The Authorities bought them at auction, from one of the vaults discovered after the Collector’s death. We donated them to the Hospice. Mark always did have a fondness for this particular kind of automaton, brought back from some future iteration of China, I believe. You don’t have to worry, John; they’ve all been very thoroughly reprogrammed to serve and protect the patients.”

I decided I was still going to keep a very careful eye on them. These robots, or some very like them, had tried very hard to kill Suzie and me when they worked for the Collector. In fact, I was almost sure some of them were keeping a careful eye on me. I caught a number of cat-featured heads turning away the moment I looked at them. To take my mind off this, Julien pointed out that many of the nurses working in the Hospice were actually probationary nuns, from the Salvation Army Sisterhood. That got my attention. The SAS were the most hard core, extreme Christian Sect in the Nightside. Certainly not anyone you’d want to argue with when they said you needed an enema. Apparently probationary Sisters were sent here to put their faith to the test and to harden them up. Before they could join the Sisterhood proper and go forth to smite the ungodly where it hurt.

And then suddenly the lobby was full of sirens, bells, flashing red lights, screams and shouts and people yelling at each other. Julien was up on his feet immediately, looking quickly round for people to help and evil to fight. I was still struggling to get to my feet, and looking around for anything that might be coming my way. Everyone else was heading for the front doors, with great speed and determination. Including security people, reception staff, nurses, and robots helping patients, and absolutely everyone in the waiting area. Many of them showed a remarkable turn of speed, considering how ill they were supposed to be. I looked at Julien, to ask whether or not we should be leaving, too, but he was busy looking around to see where the fire was. Or possibly the attack. I grabbed a passing nurse by the arm, and she nearly pulled me over before I brought her to a halt. She was a big girl. Her arm muscle bulged dangerously under my hand, but then the probationary nun recognised who I was and settled for jerking her arm out of my grip.

“What’s going on?” I yelled at her, over all the sirens and alarums.

“Red Alert!” she yelled back at me. “Major Emergency and Get the Hell Out! Look, it’s Ward 12A, you idiot! If you’re not going to run, get out of the way of a nun who can!”

In an instant, she was off and running again, not even looking back. I turned to look at Julien, only to find that he was off and running, too, but heading in the opposite direction, deeper into the Hospice. I looked round the deserted lobby, sighed deeply, and went after him. Thinking, That man will be the death of me, one day. I knew he was going to Ward 12A to see if he could help anyone and put down whatever trouble had broken out there. Because he was still the Great Victorian Adventurer, and that was what he did. And if he was going, I had to go as well. Because that was the trouble with Julien Advent; he made you be a better person, in spite of yourself, if only because you couldn’t stand to let him down.

We pounded through the Hospice corridors, following the signs on the walls that pointed the way to Ward 12A. We passed a hell of a lot of people going the other way, running as though the Devil himself was hot on their heels. Many of them looked at us incredulously and yelled for us to get out while we still had a chance. Julien kept going, so I had to go on, too. And, of course, along the way we ran into Dr. Benway herself, also heading for Ward 12A. I only knew it was her because Julien actually said her name out loud and smiled with something very like relief. Dr. Benway nodded briefly to Julien and kept going, too.

We soon caught up with her. Benway was a short, stick-thin figure in the usual white doctor’s coat. She had flat grey hair, cropped short in a functional way, and a hard-set face, lined with all the marks of a long, busy life, filled with more losses than successes. Her eyes were a cool, thoughtful grey, and her mouth was set in a thin, flat line. She looked strong and capable, someone you’d be glad to have around in a crisis. If only she wasn’t leading you right into the heart of it.

“Good to see you again, Julien,” Benway said brusquely, looking straight ahead as she ran. “We can use all the help we can get.” She glanced at me. “Even him.”

“You’ve heard of me,” I said reproachfully. “And you know Julien Advent personally. What a surprise.”

“I know everyone,” said Julien. He wasn’t even breathing hard, the bastard. “How else do you think I know everything?”

“I know a lot of people, too,” I said.

“Ah yes,” said Julien. “But you know people like Dead Boy and Razor Eddie, while I know people who matter.”

“Shut up and run,” said Benway. “Save your breath and your strength. You’re going to need them.”

She actually increased her speed, racing along with her arms pumping at her sides, sprinting through the deserted Hospice corridors with a turn of speed that was frankly astonishing in a woman who had to be well into her sixties. She darted in and out of a series of short cuts, ignoring the directions on the walls, and soon I hadn’t a clue where I was. The corridors were starting to remind me uncomfortably of the hedgerow maze. But I knew when we were finally getting close to Ward 12A because I started to hear things. From up ahead of us, to every side, and, even more worryingly, behind us, I heard a series of heavy, slamming sounds.

“That’s the steel security doors dropping down into place,” said Dr. Benway. “Sealing off the corridors. No-one in, no-one out, until this mess is sorted, and the danger is over. If all the security doors are dropped, that means all the patients who can be moved have been; so we’re pretty much alone in here, with the problem.”

“What about the patients who couldn’t be moved?” said Julien. Typical of the man, to be concerned with innocents even as he raced into danger.

“They’ll have to take their chances,” Benway said curtly. “They’re under guard; God bless the Fortress. Concentrate on what’s ahead of us, Julien. If we can’t bring this under control quickly, we could lose the whole Hospice.”

“What is ahead of us?” I said, not unreasonably, I thought. “What the hell has happened in Ward 12 bloody A?”

“Something got loose,” said Benway, in a voice like the end of the world.

We rounded a final corner, and there at the end of the corridor before us was a heavily reinforced steel door, marked simply: 12A. Two young men in white doctor’s coats were barricading the door with everything they could get their hands on. Furniture, medical trolleys, even a Hot Drinks! Machine that they were man-handling into place. They suddenly realised they weren’t alone. Their heads snapped round, and they both let out girlish shrieks of alarm. They started to run, only to stop immediately as Dr. Benway yelled at them.

“Dr. Burke! Dr. Rabette! Stand right where you are!”

And they did. They turned immediately to look at her, ignoring Julien and me, as the three of us finally came to a halt before the door to Ward 12A. I had black spots dancing before my eyes, my ribs ached, and I had to lean against a wall while I concentrated on getting my breath back. Julien breathed deeply a few times, then strolled forward to observe the barricaded door with a keen interest. Dr. Benway put her hands on her hips and rotated her back a few times. I heard bones creak and crack. She glared at the two young doctors standing uneasily before her, then glared at me.

“These two young fools are supposed to be in charge here. On the grounds that I can’t do everything myself. Talk to me, Burke, Rabette! What’s the situation?”

The two young doctors looked at each other guiltily. The older of the two was barely into his midtwenties, and they both looked shocked as well as scared as they glanced at the barricaded door. Finally, the older one, Burke, swallowed hard.

“The door is locked and sealed. It can’t get out. But we can’t go in there! It’s too dangerous! Who are these two?”

“Julien Advent and John Taylor,” said Benway.

“I think I felt safer before they got here,” said Rabette in a high, shaky voice. He smiled quickly, to show it was meant to be a joke. “We’ll take all the help we can get, but I don’t know what you can do. I don’t know there’s anything anyone can do. All hell’s breaking loose in there.”

“We should get the hell out of here!” said Burke, actually wringing his hands together.

“Shut up, both of you!” snarled Benway. “Call yourselves doctors . . .” She turned her back on them and marched over to stand before the barricaded door. She started to push the drinks machine out of the way, then found she couldn’t. Julien and I had to help her. Burke and Rabette reluctantly shifted everything else they’d piled up against the door, revealing a portholelike window in the top third of the steel door. Benway walked right up to it, listened carefully for a moment, then peered cautiously through the porthole. I looked at Julien and gave him my best hard stare.

“I think this would be a really good time for you to fill me in on what’s so important about Ward 12A, don’t you? What do they do in there; what kind of patients do they treat?”

“Ward 12A is reserved exclusively for those unfortunate enough to have been damaged by coming in contact with forces or beings from Outside the realms we know,” Julien said quietly. “Remind you of anything?”

“The Entities from Beyond,” I said.

“Exactly,” said Julien.

I looked at the very solid steel door and hoped it was as locked and sealed as the young doctors had said. “You think . . . maybe the Sun King is in there? Could he really have got here ahead of us, that fast?”

“Who knows what he’s capable of, now?” said Julien. “But let’s not add to our problems until we have to.”

“If you two have finished muttering secrets to each other, perhaps you’d like to take a look,” Benway said acidly.

Julien and I moved forward to join her. Burke and Rabette seized the opportunity to back away. Benway had her face pressed up close against the porthole, so Julien and I moved in on either side of her, our heads pressed close together. All I could see were flaring bright lights, sharp and intense, so bright I couldn’t even be sure what colours they were. The glare didn’t simply blaze through the porthole; it outlined the steel door itself. Great, angry, roaring sounds rose and fell on the other side of the door, none of them in any way human. I glanced at Benway.

“What exactly have you got in there? What’s wrong with these patients?”

“In Ward 12A, we deal mainly with possessions and abductions. Men and women, and sometimes children, unfortunate enough to have attracted the attention of forces from Outside. We try to treat people who have been taken and changed, physically and mentally, to adapt them to live on other worlds, or in other realities. Places where merely human forms couldn’t hope to survive. Of course, after these beings have finished with their experiments, they abandon their victims and dump them back where they found them. They never bother to undo the changes they’ve made, don’t care that the poor bastards have been altered so much they can’t cope with Earth conditions any more. Some of them end up at the Fortress, but the most damaged, or dangerous, are brought here. We do what we can for them, but mostly they’re contained here, in a secure facility. Ward 12A.”

“And the others?” said Julien.

She looked at him, then looked away. “Some things you don’t want to know, Julien. Unless it’s your job and your responsibility. Doctors deal with death and worse, every day. It’s the part of the job no-one else wants to hear you talk about.”

“How dangerous can these patients be?” I said, as a particularly loud roar made the steel door tremble in its frame.

“Some patients have been here for years,” said Dr. Benway. “Some of them are more alien than others. Some contain whole worlds, other realities, inside them—living gateways to other places.”

“Think of the Trojan horse,” Julien said to me.

“We’ve spent years developing ways to help these people,” said Benway. “Of freeing them from the terrible burdens placed upon them. We use surgery to undo physical changes, telepaths to undo mental changes, and now and again we get our hands on some discarded alien tech that we can use to drag alien booby-traps out of human minds and souls. But sometimes the beings behind the changes fight back. Burke, Rabette, what have you . . . Dr. Rabette, you get your cowardly arse right back here, right now! And tell me what, exactly, is going on inside Ward 12A? Which patient is responsible for all this?”

“We don’t have a name,” muttered Rabette, not even trying to meet her gaze. “He’s John Doe X number 47.”

“Something inside him, or beyond him, is fighting to break through,” said Burke. His face was white with shock and wet with sweat. “Some other reality is using him as a gateway, to get to ours. And I really don’t think it’s any kind of reality we would want to meet.”

I looked sharply at Julien. “A hellgate. They’re talking about a hellgate, draining someone’s soul energies to create a doorway between one reality and another. Open a door and send through an army. Sneaky.”

Rabette broke and ran, and, a moment later, Burke was off and running, too. Julien shouted angrily after them but stopped when Benway put a hand on his arm.

“They’re only interns, Julien. Only been on Ward 12A a few months. This is way above their pay grade. Let them go; they wouldn’t be much use anyway.”

“Don’t you have any experienced security people to deal with situations like this?” I said.

“Of course, ex-Fortress, mostly. But the security doors are down, remember?” said Benway. “Security are trapped on the other side of the Hospice.”

“Well, why don’t you keep some here, on hand?” I said.

“Budget cuts,” said Dr. Benway, not quite looking in Julien’s direction.

“All right, the committee were wrong, and yes, you did warn us,” said Julien. “I promise I’ll bring it up at the next meeting! Can we concentrate on the problem in front of us, please?”

“So,” I said, as cheerfully as possible under the circumstances. “It’s down to us to save the day. Again. Where do we start?”

Benway looked at Julien. “Is he always this cocky?”

“Usually,” said Julien. “One of the reasons I suggested he be made Walker. He really does have a lot of experience in saving the world against impossible odds. But don’t stand too close to him while he’s doing it. Dr. Benway, question. Do we have any idea who these invading aliens are? Do we have a name, or even a species description? Any idea at all of what they are or where they’re from?”

“No,” said Benway. She looked through the porthole again, and winced. “The patient couldn’t tell us anything, including his own name. Diagnostic equipment revealed his condition but not who or what caused it. If this were a standard possession or alteration, the Ward’s own defences and protections would have kicked in; so I can only assume this is something a lot more powerful than we’re used to.”

Julien frowned, tapping his chin thoughtfully with one knuckle. “The Authorities keep a watchful eye on the various Timeslips as they come and go in the Nightside because they’re the most common launching sites for an invasion, but if these aliens have found a new way to open new doors, less obvious than Timeslips . . . we could be in real trouble. We have to stop this invasion here, slap it down hard, and send the aliens a message they won’t forget in a hurry.”

“Oh, I can do that,” I said.

Julien glared at me. “Preferably a message that will still leave the Hospice intact and standing afterwards!”

“All right, I got it!” I said. “Honestly, you blow up one lousy building, and they never let you forget it . . .”

I edged closer to the steel door. Terrible sounds rose and fell on the other side, and awful lights flared through the porthole. Whatever was happening in there was escalating. I reached out one hand to touch the door, and my fingers sank right into the steel. As though the solid metal were nothing more than soft mud. I snatched my hand back. The soft, pulsating mass that had been solid steel started to stretch after me, then fell back again.

“What the hell was that?” said Benway, clearly shaken.

“I’ve encountered this before,” I said, a little freaked-out. I held my hand up before my eyes and shook it back and forth, checking for signs of damage. My fingers tingled unpleasantly, odd and eerie sensations prickling up and down them in sudden runs. “Remember when the Springheel Jack Meme broke through from another dimension, Julien? The starting point was an old door in an abandoned warehouse, down on Damnation Row. By the time I got there, the whole wall was affected, rising and falling like a heartbeat. The physical reality there had been softened, eaten away, weakened from the other side. The far side of our reality, that we can never see. The very solidity of our world undermined from the other side, so they could break through. In that case, what came through was a supernatural meme, a curse or possession that spread like a virus, overwriting everyone it touched.

“We’re at Ground Zero, people; this isn’t just an invading army. A whole other reality is trying to break through and overwrite us, replace this world with their own. This door is less real than it should be because something else is becoming more real. The patient inside Ward 12A is being physically and spiritually remade into a doorway. But that takes a lot of power, which means it isn’t up to speed yet. We’ve still got some time.”

Dr. Benway looked at Julien. “Do you understand anything he’s saying?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” said Julien. “Are you sure about this, John?”

“Of course I’m not sure! This is all inspired guess-work! If you’ve got a better and less worrying idea, I for one would love to hear it!”

“Knew I should have kept you away from the brandy,” said Julien.

He leaned in close to study the steel door, almost but not quite pressing his nose against the metal. “The door is becoming permeable, all the strength and purpose being sucked right out of it, to help fuel the forming gateway. Which means we’re not locked outside after all.”

He pressed both of his hands against the door and pushed hard. His hands sank deep into the soft metal, disappearing up to the wrists. Julien’s face convulsed, lips skinning back from his teeth in a pained grimace. He pushed with all his strength, but the door wouldn’t budge. Julien gave up and tried to pull his hands back, then found that he couldn’t. Benway and I grabbed an arm each and threw our whole weight backwards; and Julien’s hands burst back out of the door with horrible, wet, sucking sounds. He staggered backwards, clutching his hands to his chest. Dr. Benway made him stand still while she checked them for damage, but apparently it was really bad pins and needles from returning circulation. The soft door had sucked all the living warmth right out of them.

“How the hell do we get in?” said Julien, through gritted teeth. “Blow a hole in the wall?”

“Amateur,” I said, not unkindly.

I raised my gift, focused on the door, and found the door-handle. My gift locked onto it, onto the basic reality of the door-handle itself, and forced it to be real and hard and solid. And then it was the easiest thing in the world for me to reach out, grasp the door-handle, and open the door. The locks and seals were as soft and weak as everything else now, and the door opened easily under my guiding will. The door started to swing inwards, then gave up its remaining ghost and fell apart into thick wisps of grey fog, already dispersing on the starkly lit air. I was left with only the door-handle in my hand. I carelessly let it drop to the floor and strode confidently into Ward 12A.

The whole room was full of flaring bright lights, sharp and incandescent, acutely painful to the human eye. Great clouds of flailing energies boiled this way and that, discharging violently against anything they touched. One whole wall had become wet and sticky, all the shades of red, pulsing like the insides of something alien. The ceiling seemed to be miles overhead, and the floor felt untrustworthy under my feet. Walking into the Ward was like pushing against a fierce wind, an almost solid intervention of some Outside will. I could feel Space itself stretched taut by some unimaginable influence. I stopped, despite myself, struggling to get my bearings. There were too many directions, too many dimensions inside Ward 12A now, too many ways to look, too many options to deal with. Another reality had been added to ours, superimposed on it, making the world heavier and more complex than it was ever supposed to be. The red wall was full of something like maggots, writhing and twisting. There were dark holes in the floor, dropping away forever. And rising over everything, a horrible feeling, a terrible conviction, that something was coming.

Far-away, from Outside or beyond our universe, I could hear something screaming, an endless howl of rage and hate. Drawing steadily, remorselessly closer.

And right there before me, hanging in mid air, was patient John Doe X 47, or what was left of him. His Humanity had been ripped away. His body was gone. He had been subtracted from the world and made into something else, and now he was a living tear in reality. A human gap, a human shape full of something that hurt my eyes to look at. A way in for whatever wanted in. I forced myself to look away, to check on what had happened to the other patients trapped in Ward 12A. I knew Julien would want to know. I could see all the beds, and the patients in them; but they all seemed far-away, distant, on the other side of the world. Looking across the Ward, across all its hideously stretched Space, was like looking across the universe. Trying to concentrate on the patients was like trying to look in a new direction, one I could sense but not make sense of. They’d been pushed aside by what was happening, forced out of the way to make room for what was pushing in. I was pretty sure the patients were still alive. But I couldn’t tell if they were still human any more.

I yelled back to Julien and Dr. Benway at the doorway, telling them what I was seeing, trying to make sense of it. They’d managed to get inside the Ward but couldn’t force themselves any further in. They didn’t have my gift—to find a way forward, in the face of everything.

I concentrated, focusing my gift on the human-shaped gap in our world. I tried to reach into the gap, to find the link between the patients and the beings from Outside, so I could break it . . . but it only took me a moment to realise that the patient was the link. I couldn’t break the link without killing the patient. And I wasn’t ready to that. Not until I’d tried everything else I could think of first. I couldn’t sacrifice one life to save many. Julien wouldn’t approve. He always was a good influence on me, the bastard. So, since I couldn’t touch the alien influence, I found the man and grabbed on to him. I could feel him, held half-way between this world and the other. And the more I held on to him with my gift, the more real I found him, until finally it was the easiest thing in this world to haul him all the way back into reality. And suddenly there he was, hanging in mid air, where the gap used to be. One hundred per cent real and solid and human. I let go, and he fell to the floor. And so did the beings from Outside that had been attached to him, that I’d found and dragged into this world with him.

All of Ward 12A snapped back to normal. The light was soft and even, the awful howling was gone, and the room was room-shaped again, with only the three usual dimensions. Patient John Doe X 47 lay curled up in a ball on the floor, breathing harshly, eyes wide and staring. I’d rescued his body, but someone more experienced in these matters would have to bring his mind back after everything the poor bastard had been put through. I looked at the aliens I’d dragged through into our world, and my lip curled. Rewritten and restructured by the laws of our reality, there were floppy bits of meat, each the size of a man’s head, with protrusions that made no sense, squirming and oozing across the floor. They whined and squealed with every movement, as if being in our world hurt them. I only had to look at them to know they were suffering and dying, unable to withstand human conditions. One by one, they fell silent and lay still, and within moments they were rotting and falling apart. I looked back at Julien as he came forward to join me.

“That enough of a message for you?”

“That will do nicely,” said Julien. “They’ll think twice before trying that again. You did well, John.”

“It’s a shame they died so quickly,” said Benway. “I wanted to stamp on them first.”

I had to raise an eyebrow. “Hard core, Doc.”

She surprised me with a brief, happy smile. “No-one messes with my patients and gets away with it.”

She moved over to the patient lying on the floor, knelt beside him, and spoke reassuringly to him as she checked his vital signs. He didn’t even know she was there.

“We are but flies to alien entities,” Julien said. “They use us for their sport.”

“Bastards,” Dr. Benway said succinctly, without looking up.

“You’re thinking of the Sun King, aren’t you?” I said quietly to Julien.

“Aren’t you?” said Julien.

Dr. Rabette and Dr. Burke stuck their heads through the open doorway, attracted by the reassuring quiet. Benway saw them as she stood up, beckoned them into Ward 12A, then drove them to check on the other patients with a furious glare and a fusillade of bad language. Most of the other patients seemed more confused than anything. Having been pushed so far-away, they hadn’t been affected by the released energies. Most of them were too preoccupied with their own problems anyway. And once I could see them clearly, I didn’t blame them.

One bed was full of three people who’d been mashed together in an ungainly tangle of limbs, their pallid flesh stretched taut, while three faces stared from different sides of the same head. I don’t know what their staring eyes saw, but I knew it wasn’t anything I wanted to see. A man sat stiffly upright on the next bed, strapped bodily to the headboard. Where his head should have been there was only a brightly shining star. Next to him, a woman squatted on her bed, held in a tightly reinforced strait jacket chained to the wall. Her eyes were simply evil. She laughed softly, continuously, waiting for the moment when someone would be stupid enough to release her. Something that might have been a man or a woman, once, lay in a pool of its own blood, bulky pieces of alien tech protruding through its cracked and broken skin.

Many of the patients had extra organs, or added alien attributes, their bodies changed and adapted so they could survive on some other, alien world. Useless here, of course. They hadn’t asked for what had been done to them. Abducted, changed, then dumped when the experiment didn’t work out. I wanted to get my hands on the creatures that could do such things and make them suffer for their sins. I looked sharply at Julien, filling my voice with anger so he wouldn’t hear anything else.

“This isn’t right! It would be kinder to let these poor bastards die.”

Julien nodded, understanding things I couldn’t say out loud, even to him. “The doctors do help people here. Though I have to say, I didn’t know things were this bad . . .”

“But you’re the man who knows everything,” I said.

“It’s part of the job to know that places like this exist . . . but even I can’t keep up with the details.”

“You don’t have to,” said Dr. Benway, coming over to join us. “There’s a limit to the burdens anyone can be expected to carry.” She gestured sharply to Burke and Rabette to carry John Doe X 47 back to his bed. “Being sent here isn’t a death sentence, Mr. Taylor. We can help a surprising number of the people who come through our doors. But sometimes the best we can offer is to contain them, keep them comfortable, and hope that someone somewhere is working on something new. New things are discovered, or arrive, in the Nightside every day. So no, it wouldn’t be kinder to kill them all. Every day we keep them alive in spite of what’s been done to them is a victory. You can’t give up hope, Mr. Taylor. Hospitals run on hope.”

I nodded slowly. “And miracles do happen, even in the Nightside.”

“Perhaps especially in the Nightside,” said Julien Advent.

A handful of burly-looking nurses came bursting through the doorway; some of them carrying really big guns. They relaxed a little as they saw that the crisis was over, put the guns in the Ward locker, and moved immediately to see to the patients. Benway relaxed a little, too.

“The security doors must have opened. Let’s go to my office and talk.”

She gestured for Burke and Rabette, and they came back, reluctantly. Benway surprised them with a brief smile.

“Everybody runs, the first time. Not everyone comes back. Now, make sure the patients are settled and don’t be stingy with the tranqs. Stay here till everything’s back to normal, and I don’t want to hear any whining about overtime. The job is the job.”

Burke and Rabette nodded quickly and went back to work. Benway looked after them almost fondly.

“They’re young. They’ll adapt. Or they’ll leave the Hospice and move into some less nerve-racking job, like bomb disposal.”

Dr. Benway led us back through the corridors of the Hospice, her hands in her coat pockets, looking a lot more human. She smiled at Julien and actually nodded to me. Hospice personnel hurried past us, back to the wards and patients they’d been forced to abandon during the emergency. Patients were wheeled past on trolleys, or in wheel-chairs, or helped along by nurses and the cat-faced robots. They all nodded respectfully to Dr. Benway and ignored Julien and me. Benway sighed, deeply.

“I really wasn’t going to talk to you, Julien. I was going to leave you sitting around in the waiting area until you got the message and left of your own accord. But now that you, and especially Mr. Taylor here, have saved the day, the Hospice in general, and the patients of Ward 12A in particular, I can’t really say no, can I?” Julien started to say something, but she talked right over him. “We can’t talk here. Too many security cameras and far too many eyes and ears. We’ll talk in my office.”

She stopped abruptly and pushed back one sleeve to reveal a chunky bracelet of some shimmering metal, studded with read-outs and controls. She punched in a quick series of numbers, and next thing I knew we were all standing in a surprisingly comfortable-looking office. Benway gave us another of her quick smiles, sat down behind the desk, and waved for Julien and me to sit down on the visitors’ chairs.

“Teleport bracelet,” she said briskly. “Fell off the back of a Timeslip, from some future or other. It’s the only way I can be everywhere I need to be, in this place. Won’t work anywhere near Ward 12A because of the bracelet’s built-in protections. Sit! Sit!”

We sat. Her chair looked to be a lot more comfortable than ours. I made a point of looking round her office rather than waiting to be talked at. Let her wait for a bit. The office was all very neat, very business-like. All the usual comforts and luxuries. But not a single framed photo anywhere, of family or friends or loved ones. Not even a framed diploma on the wall behind the desk.

Benway caught my gaze or read my mind. “No memories of the past here, Mr. Taylor. Some of us can’t afford to look back. I don’t do nostalgia.”

“Is that why you aren’t ever pleased to see an old friend like me?” said Julien.

“I see you all the time, at Hospice committee meetings.”

“And you always choose a chair at the other end of the table, and you never say a word to me that you don’t have to.”

“You know very well why I stay away from you,” Benway said sharply. “Because I got old; and you didn’t. Look at me. I’m an old woman. Should have retired by now. Would have, if I could find anyone half-way decent to replace me. And you . . . you don’t look a day older than the day I first met you, back in 1967. How do you think that makes me feel?”

“Emily . . .”

“No, Julien. Dr. Benway; as far as you’re concerned. Now and always.” She paused, looking at him thoughtfully. “I saw Juliet, the other day.”

“Did you?” said Julien. “Did she ask after me?”

“No.”

Benway gave me her full attention, studying me with a cold, professional gaze. “I know you by reputation, Mr. Taylor. I’ve read many accounts of your various . . . adventures. I have to say I’m surprised we haven’t seen you in here before now.”

“Well, keep it to yourself,” I said. “But I have some diluted werewolf blood in me. Not nearly enough to trigger the change, but more than enough to give me a seriously souped-up healing factor.”

Julien sat up straight in his chair and looked at me accusingly. “You never told me that! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I didn’t want to see it turning up in the Night Times,” I said. “The best advantages are the ones your enemies don’t know exist.”

“You could have trusted me,” said Julien, a little put-out.

“Two men can keep a secret,” I said. “If one of them is dead. Unless he’s Dead Boy, of course, then you’re screwed.”

“But . . . when did this happen?” said Julien.

“Hell of a party,” I said solemnly. “You should have been there.”

“Why are you both here?” said Dr. Benway, loudly and forcefully. “Did you know something was going to happen in Ward 12A?”

“No,” said Julien. “Good thing we were here, though. Wasn’t it?”

“All right, I get it, hold the moral blackmail,” said Benway. “I owe you. But why did you need to talk to me so urgently?”

“It’s the Sun King,” said Julien. “He’s back. Here, in the Nightside.”

Dr. Benway sat very still in her chair. She looked like she’d been hit. All the colour dropped out of her face. She wasn’t even looking at Julien and me any more, her eyes far-away, remembering yesterday.

“Would you like a glass of water?” said Julien.

“No,” said Benway. “I’d like a glass of gin.”

She leaned over, breathing heavily, and rummaged around in a desk drawer before coming up with a bottle of Gordon’s Dry Gin and one glass. She poured herself a healthy measure, knocked it back in several quick sips, and immediately poured herself another. She didn’t offer any to us. Colour blazed in her cheeks, and her hands were very steady. She put the bottle and glass to one side though still in easy reach if she decided she wanted some more; and then she glared at Julien, ignoring me.

“You knew he was back; and you didn’t even warn me?”

“I’ve only known for a few hours,” Julien said steadily. “And John and I have only just met him, in the Garden of Green Henge. We came straight here.”

Benway considered this. “How . . . What was he like?”

“He looked the same,” said Julien. “But he was . . . different. Changed. Still immensely powerful, though.”

“Why has he come here? To the Nightside?”

“To destroy it,” I said flatly, tired of being left out of the conversation. “He thinks he can make the sun rise here and put an end to the night.”

Benway smiled briefly. “He always did think big; even when he was still just my Harry.”

“So you were Princess Starshine,” I said.

She winced. “Not for a long time! That . . . was somebody else.” She looked at the bottle and the empty glass. She started to reach out, then pulled her hand back again. She looked at Julien. “Did he ask after me?”

“No,” said Julien.

“But you think he’s coming here, to see me?”

“It seems likely,” said Julien. “For him, the Summer of Love is still recent history. And who else does he know here who might still remember him fondly? I have to ask, Emily; back when you were Princess Starshine, you had power of your own, briefly. Do you still . . .”

“Of course not! Do you think I’d let my patients suffer if I still had the power to help them? No . . . He took all that with him, when he went away. When he walked into the White Tower and left me behind.” She paused. “I can’t even remember what it felt like, to be . . . that other person, now. Most of my memories of that time have faded . . . More like a story that someone told to me, long ago. When I was young . . .”

Her phone rang suddenly, and we all jumped. Benway answered it quickly, listened for a while, and swore, briefly and dispassionately. She slammed the phone down, then fired up the computer screen on her desk. She looked at the scene before her and beckoned for both of us to come round the desk and join her. We were already up and moving. We peered over her shoulder, to see what she was looking at. The monitor screen showed a view of the Hospice lobby, and there he was, the Sun King, standing there in his Coat of Vivid Colours, looking happily around him at everyone else while everyone else looked at him. Patients who’d only returned from the previous crisis looked him over suspiciously while security people came hurrying forward from all sides. Because they could all feel the sheer power radiating off him. But once the security people had him surrounded, they didn’t know what to do. They stood there, helpless in the face of something so much bigger than them. They couldn’t even find the strength to point their guns at him.

The Sun King looked around him, taking his time, taking it all in, the patients and the security people and the new place he’d come to. He shook his head slowly, frowning. And then he clapped his hands, once; and every man, woman, and child in the lobby was completely cured of whatever ailed them. Illness was banished, fading organs were repaired, injuries put right. The lame walked, and the blind could see, and each and every person had an apple in their hand. The lobby was suddenly full of whoops and cheers, tears and laughter and celebration. Patients danced with each other, and the security people lowered their guns, smiling foolishly. And the Sun King stood there, in the middle of it all, enjoying every moment of it.

Dr. Benway was already up on her feet and working her teleport bracelet. Julien and I moved in close beside her, determined not to be left behind. Immediately, we were down in the lobby with everyone else. A party had broken out, with booze and glasses appearing as if by magic. Even the reception staff were dancing and giggling and hugging people. Benway headed straight for the Sun King, and everyone else took one look at her cold, determined face and got the hell out of her way. Julien and I stayed back. This was her moment. She slammed to a halt right before the Sun King, and he looked at her politely.

“Yes? Can I help you?”

It was obvious he didn’t recognise her. Hadn’t a clue who she was. Benway swayed on her feet, like he’d hit her. She made herself face him squarely.

“This is my Hospice. But then, you never did care whose toes you trod on, did you, Harry?”

The Sun King recognised her voice immediately. He looked at her closely, and his eyes widened, and for a moment he clearly didn’t know what to say.

“Yes,” she said flatly. “I got old. That’s what people do, in the real world.”

“You were so beautiful,” he said. “My Princess Starshine . . .”

“That was then, this is now.” Benway looked at him defiantly. “So here you are, back in town after all these years, and you didn’t even come to me first. I had to hear about your glorious return from someone else.”

“I had my work to be about,” said the Sun King.

“You always did,” said the woman who used to be a princess.

They looked at each other for a long moment, and both their faces softened. The Sun King put out a hand, and Benway took it, and they held on to each other like they would never let go. Everyone else watched, silently, caught up in the moment. They were in the presence of legends, and they knew it.

“Why?” Benway said finally. “Why didn’t you take me with you, into the White Tower? I tried to follow you in, but the wall closed after you . . . I called to you, pounded on the wall with my fists; but you never answered. Did your Big Cosmic Daddies order you not to let me in? Did they tell you I wasn’t worthy?”

“That’s not how it was,” said the Sun King. “I wanted to take everyone in with me. I thought I’d only be in there for a moment, and I could walk back out and invite you all in. I wanted everyone to be living gods, like me. But that wasn’t how it worked. When I did come out again, years had passed, and the world had moved on. Oh, Princess . . . all the years we’ve lost. The life we could have had together. You’ve changed, Princess.”

“You haven’t,” said Benway.

The Sun King smiled. “Some old wrongs can be put right.”

He pulled his hand out of hers. She sighed and almost fell, as though some basic strength had been taken away from her. The Sun King dropped both hands onto her thin, bony shoulders, and he shook her, once. Dr. Benway cried out, in shock rather than pain, and all the years fell away from her. The Sun King laughed, took his hands away from her, and stood back to look at what he’d done. The whole lobby looked on in silent and respectful awe, at the beautiful young woman standing where Dr. Benway had been. Long blonde hair fell down around a flawless face, and Princess Starshine held up her hands and looked at them. Young hands, without a mark on them. She brought her hands to her face, and cried out again, at the untouched skin her fingers found. Someone in the crowd stepped forward and humbly presented her with a mirror. The princess looked at her young face with something like shock, as though she was looking at someone she only vaguely remembered. Someone she hadn’t seen in a long time. Her beautiful young face was full of awe and wonder. She lowered the mirror and looked at the Sun King with clear blue eyes; and he bowed to her without a hint of mockery.

“Welcome back, my Emily. My Princess Starshine, and my one true love. Welcome . . . all the way back. I am the Miracle Man, once again. Walk with me, as we did before in that far-off land, and embrace your power again. The living god and his living goddess, come to put the world to right.”

“I can’t,” she said, in a voice rich with youth and emotion. “I have responsibilities here. My hospital, my patients . . .”

“You have no more patients,” the Sun King said gently. “I cured them all. My gift to you.”

“Even the ones in Ward 12A?” said Princess Starshine.

“The unfortunates and the untouchables? The abducted and distorted? Oh yes, my princess, those most of all. There but for the grace of the Entities from Beyond, go I.” He paused, frowning slightly. “Well, when I say I cured everyone, obviously I didn’t include the vampires. Or any of the other inhuman scum. Or any of the really ugly people. No. I killed all of those.”

“What?” The princess looked at him shocked. “You killed . . . ? Who gave you the right . . . ?”

“I did!” said the Sun King. “Only the beautiful people belong in the marvellous new world we shall make.”

The princess slapped his face, hard. The impact slammed his head round. The sound was flat and ugly on the still air. No-one said anything. The Sun King slowly brought his head back round, to stare at the princess. His face was completely empty of expression or emotion.

“You killed my patients!” screamed the princess. “How dare you? They came here for help! We’re here for everyone who needs us. We don’t make distinctions. Hospitals are for everyone! That’s the point!”

The Sun King looked down on her, his face cold and disappointed. “You always did think too small, Emily.”

He waved his hand tiredly, and Dr. Benway was old again. She cried out once, as the years weighed down on her again, then she turned away from the Sun King, bent and withered with the renewed burden of age. She started to raise the mirror to look into it again, but she couldn’t do it. She let the mirror go, and it fell to the floor, and broke. And then she straightened up as much as her old body would allow, turned back, and glared at the Sun King defiantly.

“And you always were the selfish one, Harry. Everything always had to be done your way. Well, let me tell you this; you’re not worthy of me! You never were!” She lost her voice for a moment, the angry words choking her. She clamped her mouth shut, shook her head fiercely, and quickly had control of herself again. “You won’t make me cry. I shed my last tears for you long ago, when you abandoned me in San Francisco. You’ll never make me cry again.”

“Watch me,” said the Sun King.

He started forward, and I moved quickly to stand between them, blocking his way. Julien was right there with me. The Sun King smiled on both of us.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He disappeared, still laughing.

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

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

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

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

“Julien, I can’t!”

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

“Julien . . . please . . .”

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

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

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

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

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

“You murdered him!”

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

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

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

“It wasn’t like that!” I cried.

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

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