I gave him my best unnerving smile. “Tell you what: you run away now, terribly quickly, and I won’t do horrible and upsetting things to your person.”
His hand was seriously trembling by then. Sweat was running down his face. I let my smile widen a little, and he made a low, whining noise.
“Boo!” I said, and he turned and ran for his life. Potentially sensible young man, I thought.
I went back into my old office. Russell made a small, horrified sound in the back of his throat as he saw me. He backed away, and I went after him. He kept retreating until he slammed up against the barred window and realised he had nowhere else to go. All the colour had gone out of his face, but his wide eyes were still sharp and mean and calculating. If I was stupid enough to turn my back on him, he’d stick a knife in it. I stopped in the middle of the room and considered him thoughtfully.
“How do you like being the big man, Russell?” I said. “Making loans to desperate people, at two thousand per cent interest, then sending round the leg-breakers when they can’t keep up with the payments? Taking your cut from all the drugs and the working girls and the protection rackets? Leeching money from all the small people, like you used to be? You were never interested in any of that, back in the day.”
“Never had any money, back in the day, Mr. Taylor.” His voice was flat and collected, wary rather than frightened. “I’m a whole new man, with a whole new life. I don’t need you to protect me any more. And you’re out of tricks.”
“You think so?” I said.
“Of course; or you wouldn’t be standing there talking to me. Talk all you like. I’ve put in a call. There’ll be more of my people here any minute.”
I took his gun out of my pocket and offered it to him. He gaped at me for a moment, then snatched it from my hand and pointed it at me. As his finger tightened on the trigger, I took all the bullets out of his gun and let them fall from my open hand onto the floor, jumping and rattling noisily. Russell made a high, whining noise, and pulled the trigger anyway. When nothing happened, he threw the gun onto the floor and looked at me haughtily.
“I know you, Mr. Taylor. You might have learned a few tricks, but you haven’t changed. You won’t kill an unarmed man.”
I looked at him thoughtfully. Russell would never stop coming after me all the time I was in London Proper. He wouldn’t stop until he was dead, or I was. Unless I did something about him. The sword on my back wanted me to kill him, to execute him. My hand rose to the invisible hilt behind my shoulder, then I pulled it back again. I was not an executioner. And all that fighting, all the action stuff, diving into danger with a smile on my face and letting the chips fall where they may—that wasn’t me. I have more sense. The sword had been influencing me. And it stopped there. I’d deal with Russell in my own way.
I strode briskly forward, grabbed him firmly by one ear, and dragged him out of my old office, down the stairs, back through the lobby, and out onto the street. I then stripped him naked, quickly and efficiently, and left him hanging upside down from the nearest lamp-post. Tied firmly by one ankle with a handy piece of cord from my coat-pocket. Russell struggled weakly, but there was no way he’d be able to work himself loose. He flopped upside down before me, his skin already grey from the cold, his mouth working weakly.
“I’ve thrown things back that looked less disgusting than you, Russell,” I said. “And you really do have a remarkably small willy. Which explains a lot. Let’s see who’ll work for you now, after this. Even the most basic thugs draw the line somewhere. Good-bye, Russell. If I should see you again ... I’ll think of something even worse to do to you.”
Enough nostalgia, I thought, walking off down the street. Time to find the London Knights.
FOUR
A Knight to Remember
The late evening was darkening into night as I hit Oxford Street, and I was starting to feel more at home. I could feel that little extra bounce in my step as I headed for a Door that was only there when it felt like it. The street was packed with people coming and going, shop lights blazed, and neon glared, but it all seemed somehow faded and subdued compared to the Nightside. The moon in the sky looked small and far away, and the stars were only stars. As though the real world couldn’t be bothered to put on a decent show.
Oxford Street had changed a lot in the years I’d been away. Lots of rebuilding and general cleaning up, tearing down the older and dodgier enterprises to replace them with safer and more comfortable brands and franchises. All the local colour was gone, and much of the character, and cold camera eyes watched every little thing you did. Though the messenger boys darting in and out of traffic and pedestrians on their stripped-down cycles were just as obnoxious.
After living so long in the Nightside, the real world seemed like a foreign place, where even the most obvious and everyday things seemed subtly different. To start with, no-one paid me any attention. I really wasn’t used to that. At first I quite liked just walking along, amongst people who didn’t have a clue as to who and what I was. Who didn’t stare or point, or turn and run. But I soon got tired of that when no-one gave way for me, or stepped aside to let me pass, and even jostled me when I didn’t get out of their way fast enough. How dare they treat me like everyone else? Didn’t they know who I was? Well, no ... That was the point. I had to smile, and even tried being polite and courteous for a while, if only to see what it felt like.
When I got to the Green Door, it wasn’t there. A bleak expanse of yellowing wall separated two perfectly respectable businesses, with no trace of any door or opening, or indeed anything to suggest there was anything special about the wall. Except, this was perhaps the only stretch of wall in London not covered with graffiti, posters, or dried streams of urine. I raised my Sight and studied the wall closely, and still couldn’t See the damned Door. I could See rough markings in dried troll blood, from some Scissorboys gang marking its territory, and a reptiloid alien hidden behind a human mask as it strode briskly past me, but the wall remained stubbornly a wall. The Green Door that provided the only entrance point to the London Knights’ headquarters remained thoroughly hidden. Which meant ... really powerful protections.
I knew the bloody thing was there because I’d once tracked a man all the way to it, back when I was being an ordinary private eye. I thought I had him run to ground and cornered until he said a Word I’d never heard outside the Nightside, and the Green Door appeared before him. He hurried through it, and the Door vanished before I could reach it. And I ... turned round and went home because I was determined not to get involved in cases of the weird and uncanny any more.
I heard later that the Knights executed the guy. Because he wasn’t worthy of their sanctuary.
But things were different now. I wasn’t afraid to use my gift any more. I reached deep inside me, concentrating, and my inner eye, my private eye, slowly opened ... and there was the Green Door, right before me. It could hide from my Sight but not from my gift. My sole inheritance from my Biblical Myth mother. The Door itself looked stubbornly real and ordinary: flat green paint over featureless wood, with no handle, no bell, not even a knocker or a keyhole. It was, in fact, a Door that suggested very firmly that either you knew how to get in, or you had no business even trying.
I tested the Green Door with my gift, searching out its secrets, and it didn’t take me long to discover the magical mechanisms that operated it. Very old, very simple, and very well protected. My gift could find them but not reach them. Which was frustrating. So I gave the Door a good kick on general principles, hurt my toe, and walked round in little circles for a while. I glared at the Green Door and seriously considered carving chunks out of it with Excalibur. However, since I’d come all this way to ask the London Knights a favour, open assault on their property probably wasn’t the best first impression I could be making. So, when everything else fails, try diplomacy. I put away my gift, dropped my Sight, and addressed the blank street wall in calm, civilised, and very polite tones. While studiously ignoring those passersby who wondered why I was talking to myself.