I would have run, but there was nowhere to run to. Nowhere Kayleigh’s Eye couldn’t reach me.
“Who are you?” I said to the woman in black, trying to buy some time while hopefully sounding cool and calm and not at all threatening.
“I am your death, John Taylor! Your name has been written in the Book of Wrath, your soul condemned and your fate confirmed by the Sacred Council! The time has come to pay for your many sins!”
I’d never heard of the Book of Wrath or the Sacred Council, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. I’ve upset pretty much everyone worth upsetting, at one time or another. That’s how I know I’m doing my job.
“The bar’s remaining protections should have kicked in by now,” Alex murmured behind me. “But since they haven’t, I think we can safely assume that you’re on your own, John. If you need me, I’ll be cowering behind the bar and wetting myself.”
“Harry?” I said, but he was already gone.
“He’s back here with me,” said Alex. “Crying.”
The woman in black advanced slowly on me, still holding Kayleigh’s Eye aloft. It blazed brightly in the bar’s comfortable gloom, like a great red eye staring right at me. Leaking energies spat and crackled on the air around it. Everyone was either gone by now or hiding behind overturned tables, like that would protect them from what the Eye could do. The woman in black ignored them. She only had Eye for me. She gestured at the tables and chairs that stood between us, and they exploded into kindling. People cried out as wooden splinters flew through the air like shrapnel. The woman in black kept coming, still fixed on me. She had cold, wide, fanatic’s eyes.
Betty and Lucy Coltrane came charging forward out of nowhere, propelled incredibly quickly by powerful leg muscles. The woman just looked at them, and an invisible hand slapped the Coltranes away, sending them both flying the length of the bar. They hit the floor hard and didn’t move again. I could have run while the woman was distracted, used one of the many secret ways out of the bar I knew about, but I couldn’t risk what the woman and the Eye might do to the bar and the people in it in my absence. Besides, I don’t run. It’s bad for my reputation. And my reputation has scared off more people than any weapon I ever had.
So I stood where I was and let her approach. She’d want to do it up close so she could look me in the face while she did it. It wasn’t enough for fanatics to win; they needed to see their enemies suffer. And fanatics will drink that cup right down to the dregs, relishing every drop. She advanced slowly on me, taking her time, savouring the moment. My mouth was dry, my hands were sweaty, and my stomach churned sickly, but I stood my ground. Kayleigh’s Eye could kill me in a thousand ways, all impossibly horrible, but I had an idea.
And as the woman in black finally came to a halt before me, smiling a smile with no humour in it at all, her wide fanatic’s eyes full of a fire more terrible than the Eye’s…I used my gift to find the hole between dimensions through which the Eye originally entered our world. It was still there, unhealed, after all these centuries. And it was the easiest thing in the world for me to show Kayleigh’s Eye its way home.
Free! Free at last! An unearthly voice roared through my mind, then the Eye was gone, vanished, back to whatever other-dimensional place it came from. The hole sealed itself behind the Eye, and that was it. The woman in black looked at her empty hand, then at me, and smiled weakly. I punched her right between the eyes, and she slid unconscious across the barroom floor for a good dozen feet before she finally came to a halt. I gritted my teeth and nursed my aching hand. I always did have a weakness for the big gesture.
“All right,” said Alex, reappearing behind the bar.
“Who have you upset this time, Taylor? And who’s going to pay for the damages?”
“Beats me,” I said cheerfully.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have punched her out,” said Harry Fabulous, rising nervously up beside Alex, his drink still in his hand. “She could have told you who sent her.”
“Not likely,” I said. “Fanatics never talk.”
Someone clearly didn’t want me investigating Melissa’s disappearance. But who, and why? Only one way to find out. I nodded good-bye to Alex and Harry and went out of the bar in search of answers.
FIVE - The People We Turn to for Comfort
Of course I’d heard of the Caligula Club. Everyone in the Nightside has, in the same way you hear about rabies, leprosy, and everything else that’s bad for you. If you’re tired of parachuting off Mount Everest blindfolded, or hang-gliding naked over exploding volcanoes, if you’ve slept with everything that’s got a pulse and a few that haven’t, if you really think you’ve done it all, seen it all, and there’s nothing left to tempt or deprave you—then the Caligula Club is ready to welcome you with open arms and shock you rigid with new possibilities. And if you should happen to die on the premises with a smile on your face or a scream on your lips, you can’t say you weren’t warned.
The Caligula Club can be found in Uptown, where all the very best clubs and bars, restaurants and shows form their wagons in a circle to repel the riffraff. Only the very wealthy, the very powerful, and the very well connected are allowed in to sample the rarefied delights on offer in Uptown. Rent-a-cops patrol the streets in gaudy uniforms to keep the likes of you and me out. But somehow the private cops always find a pressing reason to be somewhere else when I come around.
The Caligula Club is situated right on the very edge of Uptown, as though the area is embarrassed or ashamed of it. It’s the kind of place where the floor show consists of a sweet young couple setting themselves on fire, then having sex, where the house band consists of formerly dead musicians, some of whom were dug up as recently as that night, and the management have their own private exorcist on speed-dial. Do I really need to tell you that the Club is strictly members only? And that membership is by invitation only? They wouldn’t have me on a bet, so I was looking forward to taking my first look around inside.
Uptown—where the neon come-ons are bigger and brighter than anywhere else but no less sleazy. Hot music hammers on the cool night air, insistent and vaguely threatening. Club doors hang alluringly open, while their barkers work the crowded pavements with practiced dead-eyed skill. Getting in is easy; getting out again with your money, wits, and soul intact is something else. Buyer very much beware, in Uptown. Here be entertainment, red in tooth and claw.
Men and women paraded up and down the streets, in the very latest and most outrageous fashions, out and about to see and be seen. Making the scene, no matter how dangerous it might be, because if you didn’t, then you just weren’t anyone. High Society has its own obligations and penalties, and the very worst of them is to be ignored. Gods and monsters, yesterday’s dreams and tomorrow’s nightmares, bright young things and smiling Gucci sharks, were all out on the town and on the pull, come to Uptown to play their vicious games. And Devil take the hindmost.
None of them looked pleased to see me, but I’m used to that. Without quite seeming to, they all made sure to give me plenty of room. I play too rough for their refined tastes.
I stopped outside the Caligula Club and studied it thoughtfully from a safe distance. Big bold neon crawled all over the front of the high-tech edifice, glowing multicoloured graffiti on a steel-and-glass background. A lot of it depicted stylised sexual positions and possibilities, some of which would have made the Marquis de Sade lose his lunch. Cruelty and passion mixed together, to make a whole far nastier than the sum of its parts. You don’t come to the Caligula Club for fun, or even excitement. You come to satisfy the needs and tastes no-one else will tolerate.