Mean Streets (11 page)

I pulled back, as I realised where he was going. There are some places you just don’t go into with your spirit hanging out. Some parts of the Nightside are hungrier than others. I slowly closed my third eye, my inner eye, until I was safely back inside my own head again. And then I dropped the two pieces of the photo back onto the bar top as though they burned my fingers. I looked at Liza.

“Good news and bad news,” I said. “I’ve found him. I’ve found husband Frank.”

“Then what’s the bad news?” said Liza, meeting my gaze unflinchingly.

“He’s in the badlands,” I said. “Where the really wild things are, and hardly anyone gets out alive. You only go into the badlands in search of the pleasures too sick, too twisted, and too nasty for the rest of the Nightside.”

“If that’s where he is,” Liza said steadily, “then that’s where I have to go.”

“You can’t go there alone,” I said. “They’d eat you up and chew on the bones.”

“But I have to know!” said Liza, her chin jutting stubbornly. “I have to know what’s wrong with him, what could possibly bring him to an awful place like this. And I have to know what, if anything, this has to do with my missing memories. I have to go there.”

“Then I guess I’ll have to take you,” I said.

“I . . . don’t have much money on me, at the moment,” said Liza. “Is my credit good?”

“Put the plastic away,” I said. “No charge, this time. Razor Eddie owes me a favour, for dumping you on me, and that’s worth more than you could ever pay.”

I leaned over and nudged Dead Boy, who’d lost interest in all this long ago. His eyes snapped back into focus.

“What is it, John? I have some important existential brooding I need to be getting on with.”

“I’m taking Liza into the badlands in pursuit of her missing husband, and her missing memories,” I said briskly. “Bound to be some trouble. Interested?”

“Oh, sure,” said Dead Boy. “You can’t get too much excitement, when you’re dead. How much are you offering?”

“Tell you what,” I said. “You can have half of my fee. But only if we can use your car.”

“Done!” said Dead Boy.

“Why do we need his car?” said Liza.

“Because we have to travel all the way across town,” I said. “And the rush hour can be murder.”

TWO

S
he’d never seen the sky before. Preoccupied with so much new sin and strangeness right before her, it had never even occurred to her to stop and look up. Now, on the rain-slick pavement outside the oldest bar in the world, Liza Barclay followed my pointing finger and stood very still, held to the spot by awe and enchantment, quite unaware of all the people, and others, hurrying by on every side. In the Nightside, the sky is full of stars, thousands and thousands of them, burning bright and sharp in constellations never seen in the outside world. And the moon . . . ah, the moon is big and bright indeed in the Nightside, unnaturally luminous and a dozen times larger than it should be, hanging over us all like a great mindless eye, like an ancient guardian that has quite forgotten its duty and purpose. Seeing all, judging nothing.

I often think that it isn’t a matter of where the Nightside is, so much as when.

Meanwhile, all kinds and manner of Humanity, and many things not in any way human, pushed past with brisk impartial haste, intent on their own personal salvations and damnations. No one got too close, though. They might not give a damn about Liza, clearly just another starstruck tourist, but everyone in the Nightside knows me. Or knows enough to give me plenty of room. Liza finally tore her gaze away from the overcrowded heavens, and gave her attention to the crowds bustling around us. The street, as always, positively squirmed with life and energy and all manner of hopes, the pavements packed with desperate pilgrims come in search of sin and temptation and the kinds of love that might not have a name but most certainly have a price. Hot neon blazed and burned up and down the street, gaudy as a hooker’s smile, signposts to all the most succulent hells. If you can’t find it in the Nightside, it doesn’t exist.

Liza clung to my arm like a drowning woman, but to her credit she never flinched or looked away. She took it all in, staring grimly about her, refusing to allow the strange sights and tacky glamour to overwhelm her. She pressed a little more closely to me, as a bunch of eight-foot-tall insect things paused to bow their devilish heads before me. Bones glowed through their flesh, filmy wings fluttered uncomfortably on their long chitinous backs, and their iridescent compound eyes didn’t blink once. Their absurdly jointed legs lowered them almost to the ground as they abased themselves, speaking in unison with urgent breathy children’s voices.

“All hail to thee, sweet prince of a sundered line, and remember us when you choose to come into your kingdom.”

“Move on,” I said, as kindly as I could.

They waited a while, antennae twitching hopefully, until they realised I wasn’t going to say any more, and then they moved on. Liza watched them go, and then looked at me.

“What the hell was that all about? Who . . . what were they?”

“They are all that remains of the Brittle Sisters of the Hive,” I said. “They were just being polite.”

“So you’re . . . someone special here?”

“I might have been, once,” I said. “But I abdicated.”

“So what are you now?”

“I’m a private investigator,” I said. “And a bloody good one.”

She favoured me with another of her brief smiles, and then looked out at the traffic, thundering ceaselessly through the Nightside. There was a lot of it to look at. Vehicles of all kinds and natures flashed past, never slowing, never stopping, jockeying endlessly for position and dominance. Some of them carried goods and some of them carried people, and many of them carried things best not thought about at all. Most were just passing through, on their way to somewhere more interesting; mysteries and enigmas, never to be understood.

A horse-drawn diligence from the eighteenth century clattered past, overtaken by a lipstick red Plymouth Fury with a dead man grinning at the wheel. An articulated rig bore the logo of a local long-pig franchise, while a motorcycle gang of screaming skeletons burning forever in hellfire chased something very like a tank crossed with an armadillo. The Boggart On Stilts, one of the Lesser Atrocities, strode disdainfully down the middle of the road, while smaller vehicles nipped in and out of its tall bone stilts. A great black beauty of a car cruised past, driven by an Oriental in black leathers, and the man in the back in the green face mask and snap-brimmed hat nodded respectfully to me in passing. Liza turned and looked at me speechlessly, demanding an explanation.

“In the Nightside, the traffic comes and goes, but not everything that looks like a car is a car,” I explained patiently. “Here, ambulances run on distilled suffering, motorcycle couriers snort powdered virgin’s blood for that extra kick, and sometimes the bigger vehicles sneak up behind the smaller ones and eat them. Pretty much everything passes through the Nightside, at one time or another and sometimes simultaneously, and it’s always in a hurry. Foot down, everything forward and trust in the Lord, and Devil take the hindmost. That isn’t traffic out there; that’s evolution in action. Which is why we can’t get where we’re going by just hopping on the crosstown bus. We are waiting for Dead Boy, and his marvellous car of the future.”

“The sky, the traffic, creatures and demons walking openly in the street . . .” Liza shook her head just a bit dazedly. “Where is this place, John?”

“Good question,” I said. “Of this world, but not necessarily in it. Halfway between Heaven and Hell, but beholden to neither. A place of infinite jest and appalling possibilities. But don’t let it get to you. The Nightside is just a place where people go, in search of all the things they’re not supposed to want. Forbidden knowledge, forgotten secrets, and all the nastier kinds of sex. A place where the shadows are comfortably deep, and the sun never rises because some things can only be done in the dark.

“It’s the Nightside.”

Liza looked at me. “You do like the sound of your own voice, don’t you?”

“You asked,” I said.

Perhaps fortunately, Dead Boy arrived at that moment in his fabulous futuristic car, and Liza had something else to stare at. Dead Boy’s car is always worth a good look. It glided silently to a halt before us, hovering a few feet above the ground. A car from the future, so stylish it didn’t even bother with wheels anymore. It originally arrived in the Nightside through a Timeslip, from some future time line, and adopted Dead Boy as its driver. Bright gleaming silver, long and sleek and streamlined to within an inch of its life, the car hovered arrogantly before us, looking like it ran on distilled starlight. The long curving windows were polarised so no one could see in, and the mighty engines didn’t so much as deign to murmur.

The driver’s door swung open, to reveal Dead Boy lounging languidly behind the steering wheel. He had a half-empty bottle of vodka in his hand.

“All aboard for the badlands, boys and girls! Feel free to admire my beautiful ride’s elegance and style. This is what every car would be, if they only had the ambition.”

“You’re late,” I said sternly.

“I’m always late. I’m the late Dead Boy.” He sniggered at his own joke, and took a healthy pull from his vodka bottle.

“I am not getting into that!” Liza said firmly. “It hasn’t got any wheels. It looks like something from a bad seventies sci-fi movie.”

“Hush, hush, my beauty!” Dead Boy said soothingly to his car. “She is an uneducated barbarian, and doesn’t mean it.” He appeared to listen for a moment. “All right, yes, she probably did mean it, but you mustn’t take it personally. She is a mere tourist, and knows nothing of cars. Please let her in. And please don’t activate the ejector seat, no matter how annoying she gets.”

There was a pause, and then the other doors opened, slowly enough to express a certain reluctance. Liza looked at me.

“Does he often have conversations with his car?”

“Oh, yes,” I said. “Only he can hear her, though.”

“I see. And does this car really have an ejector seat?”

“Oh, yes. More than powerful enough to blast you into a whole different dimension.”

“I’ll be more polite to the car from now on,” said Liza.

“I would,” I said.

“But I’m still not sitting next to Dead Boy.”

So we both got in the back. Liza jumped just a bit as the door shut itself behind us. The seats were bloodred leather, and very comfortable. There was a faint perfume of crushed roses on the slightly pressurised air. There were no seat belts, of course. Their very existence would have been an insult to the car’s driving skills. Liza leaned forward and stared openly at the frankly futuristic display screens where the dashboard dials should have been. In fact, there were enough screens and displays and flashing lights to suggest anything up to and including warp speed.

“Can you get warp speed on this thing?” said Liza, proving that great minds think alike.

“Only in emergencies,” said Dead Boy. He didn’t seem to be kidding.

Liza took in the whiskey, brandy, and gin bottles lined up on top of the monitor screens, all of which showed signs of extensive sampling, and sniffed loudly. Dead Boy took this as a hint, and gestured generously at the bottles, and the open dashboard compartment full of honeyed locusts, spiced potato wedges, and assorted chocolate biscuits.

“Help yourself,” he said, around a mouthful of chocolate hobnob. Liza declined. Dead Boy shrugged, finished his biscuit, knocked back a handful of glowing green pills, finished off the last of the vodka, and slung the bottle through the window, which didn’t happen to be open. The bottle passed right through the glass without stopping. They really have thought of everything, in the future.

“Where to, John?” Dead Boy said easily. “My car requires directions. She is powerful and lovely and full of surprises, but she is not actually prescient. Apparently that only came as an optional extra.”

“Head for the badlands,” I said. “I should be able to provide more specific directions once we get there.”

“I love mystery tours,” Dead Boy said happily. “Off you go, girl.”

The futuristic car moved smoothly out into the vicious traffic, and absolutely everything slammed on the brakes or changed lanes in a hurry, to give us plenty of room. Everybody knew Dead Boy’s car, and the awful things it could and would do if it got even slightly annoyed.

“I can’t help noticing you’re not even touching the steering wheel,” Liza said to Dead Boy.

“Oh, I wouldn’t dare,” he said. “My sweetie’s a much better driver than I’ll ever be. I don’t interfere.”

Liza leaned back in her seat, watched the traffic for a while, and then looked thoughtfully at me. “Why are you helping me, John? It’s not like I’m even paying you for your services.”

“I’m curious,” I said honestly. “And . . . I don’t like to see an innocent caught up and crushed under the Nightside’s wheels. There’s enough real evil here, without adding cruel and casual stuff. Good people shouldn’t end up here, but if they do, they need to be protected. Just on general principles.”

“If this is such a bad place,” she said, “what are you doing here?”

“I belong here,” I said.

She settled for that, and went back to watching the traffic. I took out the two pieces of her photo, fitted them together, and concentrated on the image of her husband. My gift barely stirred, manifesting just enough to keep a firm hold on Frank’s location. Husband Frank. He’d better be worth all this trouble. Liza clearly loved him with all her heart; but women have been known to fall for complete bastards before now. His face in the photo didn’t give anything away. The smile seemed genuine enough, but I wasn’t so sure about the eyes.

Frank hadn’t moved since I first sensed his location, and I got the feeling he hadn’t moved in some time. As I concentrated on his image, I began to get a feel for his surroundings, and the first thing I felt was the presence of technology. Advanced, future tech, not from this time and place. Frank seemed to be surrounded by it, fascinated by it . . . and the more I concentrated, the more my images of this future technology were tainted by distinctly organic touches.