I pulled my Strangefellows Membership Card from my pocket, activated it, and called for Walker. After making me wait a little while, to keep me respectful, Walker’s face looked out of the Card at me. He looked calm and poised and completely confident. He might have got away with it, if he hadn’t also looked like hell.
“Taylor!” he said brightly. “Back at last, after your extended vacation? I should have known you’d turn up for the main event. I didn’t know these Cards could be used for communication.”
So Alex didn’t tell you everything, I thought, a little smugly. “I’m back,” I said. “We need to talk.”
“Couldn’t agree more, old chap,” said Walker. “I need to know everything you know.”
“We don’t have that much time,” I said. I never could resist a good cheap shot. “Right now, we need to talk to the Authorities. Get their resources behind us. They need to hear what I have to tell them. I need you to set up a meeting.”
“I’ve been trying to contact them ever since this whole mess started,” said Walker, just a little tartly. “No-one’s returning my calls.”
“Call them again,” I said. “Drop my name, and set up a meet. We need to do this in person. They’ll talk to Lilith’s son.”
“Yes,” said Walker. “Yes, they just might. Very well, I’ll arrange a face-to-face, at the Londinium Club.”
“Of course,” I said. “Where else?”
Nine - Thrown to the Wolves
I found an undead Harley Davidson lurking in an alleyway, and persuaded it to give me a lift to the Londinium Club, in return for squeezing the essential juices out of several nearby corpses into the undead machine’s fuel tank. I swear other people don’t have days like this. The motorcycle carried me smoothly through the Nightside, weaving in and out of crashed and overturned vehicles littering the abandoned road. The air rushing into my face was hot and dry, thick with drifting smoke and ashes. It stank of burned meat. Even above the roar of the bike, I could still hear distant screams. Riding through the deserted streets, lit by the intermittent glow of burning buildings rather than the sleazy flush of hot neon, reminded me uncomfortably of the devastated future Nightside that was coming. A future coming true in front of my eyes, despite everything I did to try and stop it.
You’re trying to steer again, said the Harley. Don’t. I know what I’m doing.
“Then I envy you,” I said. “Really. You have no idea.”
That’s right; condescend to me, just because I’m undead. You wait until the mystical Vampire Lords of the Twenty-seventh Dimension descend in their crimson flying saucers to make me Grand High Overlord of the Nightside… Oh. Damn. I said that out loud, didn’t I? Sorry. I’ve not been taking my medication, lately.
“It’s all right,” I said. “We’ve all got a lot on our minds at the moment.”
The Harley mournfully sang Meatloaf’s “Bat out of Hell” as we cruised through the deserted streets. There were hardly any people around now. They were either hiding, or evacuated, or dead. There were bodies everywhere, and sometimes only parts of bodies. I saw piled-up severed heads, and dozens of severed hands laid out in strange patterns. Something had strung a web of knotted human entrails between a series of lamp-posts. I didn’t raise my Sight. I didn’t want to understand. I didn’t want to see all the new ghosts.
The motorcycle dropped me off outside the Londinium Club, then disappeared into the night at speed. It thought there was still somewhere safe to go, and I didn’t have the heart to disillusion it. I wasn’t blessed with the same delusion. I knew better. Walker was already waiting for me, of course. He stood at the foot of the Club’s steps, looking sadly down at the dead body of the Doorman. The Londinium’s most faithful servant lay sprawled across the steps, before the entrance he’d guarded for so many centuries. Something had ripped the Doorman’s head off and impaled it on the spiked railings. The expression on the face was more surprised than anything.
“He was supposed to be immortal,” observed Walker. “I didn’t think anything could kill him.”
“Now that Lilith’s back, all bets are off,” I said. “It is a pity.”
Walker gave me a hard look. “You know very well you couldn’t stand the man, Taylor.”
“I gave him a rose once,” I said.
Walker sniffed, unconvinced, and led the way up the steps to what was left of the Londinium. The oldest Gentleman’s Club in the Nightside had seen better days. The magnificent façade was cracked and holed, smoke-blackened and fire-damaged. It looked like the outer wall of a city that had finally fallen to its besiegers. The huge single door had been burst inwards, forced off its hinges. The great slab of ancient wood lay toppled on the floor of the lobby, torn and gouged with deep claw marks. The once-elegant lobby had been thoroughly trashed and befouled. The statues had been shattered and the paintings defaced. The delicately veined marble pillars were cracked and broken, and the unknown Michelangelo painting that covered the entire ceiling was now half-hidden behind smoke stains and sprayed arterial blood.
Bodies littered the wide floor, left to lie where they had fallen. Many were mutilated, or half-eaten. Most of them looked to have been unarmed. Important men and servants lay together, probably killed fighting back-to-back, equal at last in death.
“Something got here before us,” I said, because I had to say something. “You think any of the bastards are still around?”
“No,” said Walker, kneeling beside one of the bodies. “The flesh is cold, the blood-stains are dry. Whatever happened here, we missed it.” He looked at the dead man’s face for a long moment, frowning slightly.
“Did you know him?” I asked.
“I knew all of them,” he said, rising to his feet again. “Some were very good, some were very bad, and none of them deserved to die like this.”
He stalked across the lobby, his back very straight, stepping carefully round the scattered bodies. I followed him, my shoulders tense with the anticipation of unseen watching eyes. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to trash the Nightside’s most visible symbol of power and authority. Walker finally came to a halt facing the right-hand wall, and solemnly considered a part of it that looked no different from any other part. I stood beside him, looking hard for any sign of a concealed door or panel, but I couldn’t see anything. And I’m usually really good at spotting things like that. Walker fished in his waistcoat pocket for a long moment, but when he finally brought his hand out, it was empty. He held the empty hand up before me, the fingers pinched together as though holding something.
“This,” he said, “is a key that isn’t a key, that will open a door that isn’t a door, to a room that isn’t always there.”
I considered his empty hand. “Either the strain is finally getting to you, or you’re being cryptic again. This secret room… it’s not by any chance going to try to eat me, is it?”
He smiled briefly. “It’s a real key. But invisible. Feel it.”
He put something I couldn’t see into my hand. It felt cold and metallic. “Okay,” I said. “That’s creepy. If the door is as invisible as the key, how are we going to find it?”
“Because it isn’t invisible to me,” Walker said airily, taking the key back again. “I serve the Authorities, so I get to see everything I need to see.”
“Show-off,” I said, and he smiled briefly again.
He thrust the key only he could see into the lock only he could see, and part of the wall before us disappeared. I was staring so hard by now that my eyes were beginning to hurt. Walker strolled into the newly revealed room before us with just a hint of smugness, and I sighed and followed him in. It figured that the Authorities would have their very own special room to hold their meetings in, exclusive even from other members of the Nightside’s most exclusive Gentleman’s Club.