The Unnatural Inquirer (22 page)

They say he broke men’s bones with his bare hands. They say he ate the flesh of men, breaking open the bones to get at the marrow. They said there was something growing within him, or perhaps through him, from Outside. And right then, I believed every word they said.

“Hey, KC,” I said cheerfully. “Where’s the Sunshine Band?”

He studied me coldly with his flat black eyes. “John Taylor…Your name is bile and ashes in my mouth. Your presence here is an affront to me. Your continued existence an unbearable insult. You killed my combat sorcerers. My boys. My lovely boys.”

“You have changed,” I said. “You never should have gone on that deep-sea voyage. Or at the very least, you should have thrown back what you caught.”

“You defy me,” said Kid Cthulhu. “No-one does that any more. I shall enjoy killing you.”

His voice was harsh and laboured, forced out word by word, with a distinct gurgle in it, as though he were speaking underwater. He sounding like a drowning man, venting his spite on the man who’d pushed him in.

“I thought we were here to do business,” I said. “I have the Afterlife Recording right here with me.”

“I don’t care about that any more,” said Kid Cthulhu. “Money doesn’t matter to me. I have money. All that matters now is the satisfying of my various appetites and the destruction of my enemies. I will see you broken, suffering, and dead, John Taylor. And your pretty little companion. Perhaps I’ll make you watch as I tear her guts out, and eat them as she dies, screaming.”

“Oh, ick,” said Bettie. “Nasty man…”

Kid Cthulhu rose suddenly up from his throne, a man twice the size a man should be, forcing his great bulk up onto its feet through sheer strength of will. His joints were buried deep under swollen flesh, and unnaturally distended genitals showed under the great swell of his belly.

“Double ick,” said Bettie. “With a side order of not even for a million pounds.”

Kid Cthulhu strode toward us, slowly and deliberately, each step shaking the floor, his deep-set eyes fixed on me. His purple pouting mouth parted to reveal jagged sharp teeth. His huge puffy hands opened to reveal claws. Someone that size shouldn’t have been able to move unaided, let alone have such an air of strength and deadly purpose. I was still thinking what to do when Bettie stepped smartly forward, opened her purse, took out her Mace spray, and let Kid Cthulhu have it, right in the face.

“Nasty fat man,” she said calmly. “And you smell.”

Kid Cthulhu stopped before her, surprised, but showing no hurt at all from a faceful of Mace laced with holy water. His all-black eyes barely blinked as the Mace ran down his distended cheeks like so many viscous tears. He lashed out suddenly, one huge arm swinging round impossibly quickly, and the impact knocked Bettie off her feet and sent her flying. She crashed through a table, hit the floor hard, rolled over a few times, and lay still; and it was all over before I could even move a muscle. I called out to her, but she didn’t answer. And then Kid Cthulhu turned his head and looked at me.

He was between me and Bettie, so I couldn’t get to her. I backed away slowly, thinking fast. I hadn’t planned for this. I’d heard he was going through changes, but I still thought of him as just another gang boss. Someone I could make a deal with. The Nightside runs on deals. But all this Kid Cthulhu wanted was me, preferably in large meaty chunks. I don’t normally care to get involved with hand-to-hand combat, partly because it’s coarse and vulgar and beneath my dignity, but mostly because I’ve never been that good at it. I’ve always preferred to talk or threaten or bluff my way out of trouble. But I didn’t think that was going to work here.

I stopped, stood my ground, and stared him right in the eye. Sometimes the oldest tricks are the best. But for the second time that day, I found myself faced with someone I couldn’t stare down. His flat black eyes stared right back at me, untouched and unmoved. I couldn’t reach him. I wasn’t even sure there was anything human left in him to reach. So I grabbed the nearest chair and threw it at him. It bounced off, without leaving a single mark on his veiny, distended skin.

Then he was coming right at me, a huge mass of colourless flesh like something you’d find at the bottom of the sea, driven on by some unnatural energy. I’d beaten so many threats in my time, faced down and defeated so many Major Players, gods, and monsters…It had never occurred to me that I might be killed by some oversized, implacable gang boss.

As he crashed forward, the floor shaking with every tread, I somehow found the time to notice that his flesh seemed to move more slowly than the rest of him, sliding across his deep-sunk bones like an afterthought, as though it wasn’t properly connected any more. What little humanity he had left in him was sliding away. I glanced behind me. I could have run. I was pretty sure I could beat him to the exit. But that would have meant leaving Bettie behind, abandoned to Kid Cthulhu’s inhuman appetites. He’d said he’d do terrible things to her, and I believed him. So I stepped forward, braced myself, and punched him right in his protruding belly. His impetus drove him forward onto my fist, and it sank deep into his gut. He didn’t even make a sound. The cold, cold flesh closed around my hand, sucking it in. I had to use all my strength to pull it free again. Just the touch of his flesh was enough to set my teeth on edge.

A huge arm came swinging round out of nowhere and hit me like a club. I managed to get a shoulder round in time to take the worst of the impact, but the flesh seemed to just keep coming and slammed into the side of my face. The strength went out of my legs, and I hit the floor hard, driving the breath from my lungs. My left shoulder blazed with pain, and I could barely move my left arm. The whole left side of my face ached fiercely. There was blood in my mouth, and I spat it out. I sensed as much as saw Kid Cthulhu looming over me, and I rolled to one side as his great fist came slamming down like a pile-driver, cracking and splintering the floor where I’d been lying. I got my legs under me and forced myself back up onto my feet again. I didn’t feel too steady, and I was breathing hard. Kid Cthulhu wasn’t.

I backed away. My left eye was puffing shut, and it felt like my nose might be broken. I checked my teeth with my tongue. I didn’t seem to have lost any, this time. I hate it when that happens. There was more blood in my mouth. Probably a cut on the inside of my cheek. I spat the blood in Kid Cthulhu’s direction, but his flat dark eyes never wavered.

I couldn’t fight a man like this. I had to be smarter than that.

I backed away some more, glancing round to make sure I was leading Kid Cthulhu away from Bettie, and then made myself concentrate past the pain. I called up my gift, and looked at Kid Cthulhu with my inner eye. If I couldn’t fight the man, maybe I could fight what was inside him. I used my gift to find the taint, the inhuman corruption deep within his flesh, the thing from Outside that was slowly suffusing his human form. And having found it, it was the easiest thing in the world to rip the taint right out of him.

Kid Cthulhu screamed; and for the first time, he sounded human. He fell to his knees, no longer able to sustain his massive weight once the taint from Outside was gone. He fell forward onto his face, his flesh moving in great ripples of fat. And beside him stood the taint, a horrid twisting shape that made no sense at all in only three spatial dimensions. It howled its fury, in a voice I heard more with my mind than my ears. It didn’t belong in this world, stripped of the host it had been transforming into something suitable to birth its new form. I wondered briefly what that might have been. Nothing like Kid Cthulhu, certainly. It hurt just to look at the taint. Like a colour too vile for our spectrum, a shape like a living Rorschach blot that suggested only nightmares. Its very presence in this world was like fingernails scraping down the blackboard of my soul.

It came after me, moving in ways unknown in my comfortable, three-dimensional world. I ran for the raised stage at the back of the club, and it followed. It moved more like energy than anything physical, and that gave me an idea. Up on the stage, I backed slowly away. A bolt of vivid energy snapped out, and I had to throw myself to one side to avoid it. The taint came after me, rising and falling in the air. My back slammed up against a steel dancer’s pole. The taint fired another energy bolt. I ducked to one side, and the energy bolt hit the steel pole. The taint screamed as its energy grounded through the pole, discharging into the earth below, its howl rising and rising till it seemed to fill my head, and then the sound broke off as the taint disappeared, gone.

Now that I was out of danger, my arm and my shoulder and my face all hurt worse than ever, but I made myself get down from the stage and go over to where Bettie was still lying sprawled on the floor. As I approached, she raised her head a little, looked at me, then sat up easily.

“Is it over?” she said brightly. “I thought I’d better keep my head down, and not get in your way.” And then she saw the state of my face and scrambled to her feet. “Oh, John, sweetie, you’re hurt! What did he do to you?”

She produced a clean white handkerchief from somewhere, licked it briefly with a pointed tongue, and dabbed cautiously at my face, wiping the blood away. It hurt, but I let her do it. My left eye was puffed shut, but at least I’d stopped spitting blood.

“Looks worse than it is,” I said, trying to convince myself as much as Bettie.

“Hush,” she said. “Stand still. My hero.”

When she’d finished, she looked at the bloody handkerchief, pulled a face, and tucked it up one black leather sleeve. I looked thoughtfully at Kid Cthulhu, still lying where he’d fallen like a beached whale. I walked slowly over to him, Bettie trotting at my side. She managed to make it clear she was there to be leaned on, if necessary, but was considerate enough not to say it out loud. I stood over Kid Cthulhu, and he rolled his flat black eyes up in his stretched face to look at me.

“Kill you, Taylor. Kill you for this. Kill you, and all your friends, and everyone you know. I have people. I’ll send them after you, and I’ll never stop, never. Never!”

“I believe you,” I said. And I raised my foot and stamped down hard, right on the back of his fat neck. I felt as much as heard his neck break under my foot, and as easily as that the life went out of him. I stepped back. Bettie looked at me, horrified.

“You killed him. Just like that. How could you?”

“Because it was necessary,” I said “You heard him.”

“But…I never thought of you as a cold-blooded killer…You’re supposed to be better than that!”

“Mostly I am,” I said. “But no-one threatens me and mine.”

“I don’t know you at all, do I?” Bettie said slowly, looking at me steadily.

“I’m just…who I have to be,” I said.

And then we both looked round sharply. Someone new was there in the club with us, though I hadn’t heard him come in. He was standing on the raised stage, in a spotlight of his own, waiting patiently to be noticed. A tall and slender man with dark coffee-coloured skin, wearing a smartly cut pale grey suit, with an apricot cravat at his throat. He might have been any age, but there was an air of experience and quiet authority about him. As though he had so much power he didn’t need to put on a show. His head was shaven, gleaming in the spotlight. His eyes were kind, his smile pleasant; and I didn’t trust him an inch.

“You did well, in dealing with Kid Cthulhu,” he said finally, in a rich, smooth and cultured voice. “A very unpleasant fellow, destined to become something even more unpleasant. I would have taken care of him myself, in time, but you did a good job, Mr. Taylor.”

“And you are?” I said. “Though I have a horrible suspicion I already know.”

“I am the Removal Man. An honourable calling, in a dishonourable world. And I am here for the Afterlife Recording.”

“Of course you are,” I said. “It’s been that sort of a day. How did you know I was bringing it here?”

“Mr. Taylor,” the Removal Man said reproachfully, “I know what I need to know. It’s part of my function. Now be a good chap and hand over the DVD, and we can get through this without any…unpleasantness. It must be removed; it’s far too great a temptation for all concerned.”

“The Unnatural Inquirer owns exclusive rights to the Afterlife Recording,” said Bettie automatically, though I could tell she was getting tired of having to tell people that.

“I do not recognise the Law, or its bindings,” the Removal Man said easily. “I answer to a higher calling. Just hand over the DVD, Mr. Taylor, and I’ll be on my way. This doesn’t have to end badly. You must admit that the Nightside will be better off without the Recording. Look how much trouble it’s already caused.”

“You don’t need to do anything,” I said. I was trying very hard to sound casual and reasonable, like him. It’s not easy talking to someone who can probably make you disappear off the face of the Earth just by thinking about it. I added the probably as a sop to my pride, but I really didn’t want to get into a pissing contest with the Removal Man. I had the uneasy feeling that his legend might be a little bit more real than mine. “I’ve seen what’s on the DVD, and it’s nothing you need be concerned about. It’s a fake, the psychic imprinting of a disturbed mind.”

“You’ve seen it?” said the Removal Man, raising one elegant eyebrow. “Oh, dear. How very unfortunate. Now I have to take care of you as well.”

“But…I’ve seen it, too!” said Bettie. “It’s nothing! It’s a fake!”

The Removal Man shook his shaven head sadly, still smiling his kind smile. “Yes, well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?”

“You can’t just make us disappear!” Bettie said defiantly. “I work for the Unnatural Inquirer! I have the full resources of the paper behind me. And this is John Taylor! You know who his friends are. You really want Razor Eddie or Dead Boy coming after you? And anyway, what makes you so sure you’re always right? What makes you infallible? What gives you the right to judge the whole world and everyone in it?”

“Ah,” he said, smugly. “The secret origin of the Removal Man; is that what you want, little miss demon girl reporter? Yes, I know who you are, Miss Divine. I know who everyone is. Very well, then; I sold my soul to God. In return for power over the Earth and everything in it. Not God himself, as such, one of his representatives. But the deal is just as real. I am here to pass judgement on the wicked; and I do. Because someone has to. I’m changing the Nightside for the better; one thing, one person, one soul at a time. You mustn’t worry, Miss Divine. It won’t hurt a bit. Though really, gentlemen should go first. Isn’t that right, Mr. Taylor?”