"Paul and Davey," said the Walking Man, moving suddenly between them so he could put an arm across both their shoulders. "Does my heart good to see such young men striving for success. You deal in insurance, or more properly protection, taking money to pay yourselves not to do nasty things to your customers. And you"re so good at making deals that profit everyone! Everyone knows that. But, do they know you murdered your loving parents to get the money that got you started? Who could ever trust you again, knowing a thing like that?"
And finally he came to Josie Prince. One of the few women to be accepted by the Boys as their equal. Slim, elegant, stiff-backed in her formal evening gown, she looked like everyone"s stern, grey-haired granny. She"d strangled her eldest son with her bare hands to take over his business because he wasn"t making enough money for her. Josie Prince was a debt-collector, the kind who sent the leg-breakers round if you were a day late paying back what you owed.
The Walking Man swept her a low, sarcastic bow. Her stern, disapproving features didn"t give an inch. He straightened up with a snap, sat in her lap, and threw an arm across her bony shoulders.
"Sweet Josie Prince, as I live and breathe! Old in years and dyed in sin, right down to the bone. I know what I need to know, when I need to know it, so I can do my job, but just knowing what you do makes me sick to my stomach. You deal in enforcement and intimidation, in torture and brutality and murder. Everyone knows that. But does everyone here know you founded and funded Precious Memories? Do they know why your youngest son killed himself?"
Everyone in the Boys Club looked at Josie Prince, as the Walking Man rose easily to his feet and strode away. Even some of her own body-guards looked at her with loathing. Josie Prince"s face didn"t change at all.
Suddenly, Big Jake Rackham was on his feet, shouting denials and abuse and threats. The other Boys quickly rose and joined in, saying that the Walking Man was a liar, spreading rumour and gossip for his own purposes. Others were on their feet, too, protesting and threatening, perhaps for fear the Walking Man would come after them next. And the Walking Man just stood there, in the middle of the Boys Club, smiling happily at the bedlam he"d caused. Dozens of guns and worse weapons were trained on him from all sides. And he didn"t give a d.a.m.n. He looked smoothly self-satisfied, a man happy in his work. Then he glanced at me, and I realised it had all been for my benefit. He could have just walked in and started shooting; but he wanted me to know why. He started speaking again, and immediately everyone fell silent again. They couldn"t help it. There was something about the Walking Man that demanded your attention.
"You"re all guilty," he said. "You all profit from the sin and suffering of others. You all know where your money comes from, and how much blood it has on it, and you"ve never done anything about it. Your sin is you didn"t care."
His hands suddenly came up full of guns, and before anyone knew what was happening the bodies were already falling. He shot Big Jake Rackham and Marty DeVore while they were still standing by their chairs. Josie Prince tried to run, and he shot her in the back of her head, blowing her face right off. He turned his guns on the h.e.l.lsreich brothers, but they were already hiding behind their overturned table. Body-guards on all sides opened up with all kinds of weapons, and I hit the ground, rolling away in search of my own cover. The Walking Man might be bullet-proof, but I sure as h.e.l.l wasn"t. Chandra Singh roared a cheerful challenge in his own tongue and waded into the nearest body-guards with his long, curved sword. Blood flew on the air as he cut them down with swift, skilful strokes, moving so fast no-one could get a bead on him.
Bullets pounded into the Walking Man from all sides, only to ricochet away harmlessly. He didn"t even feel the impact. He aimed and fired, aimed and fired, picking off his targets quite casually, smiling his terrible unforgiving smile. He was punishing the guilty, and loving every minute of it. Most of the Boys were already dead, the rest running for the exits, though I knew they would never reach them. Body-guards" bullets slammed into the overturned table I was hiding behind, and I decided I needed to find new cover. I scrambled away on all fours, head well down to avoid the bullets flying overhead, and found a female body-guard moving towards me with an energy gun in her hand. I backed away quickly. I"ve never been much of a one for physical combat, mostly because I"m no good at it. I"ve always preferred outsmarting people, or intimidating them, or being somewhere else when the s.h.i.t actually hits the fan.
Another female body-guard came running at me, firing a semi-automatic weapon. The bullets didn"t even come close. I can move really quickly when I have to. The two body-guards came together to get a clear shot at me. I rose, whipped the tablecloth off the overturned table, and threw it over both of them. They struggled with the cloth, and it was the easiest thing in the world for me to move in and bang their heads together. I may not be much of a fighter, but I"m a sneaky b.a.s.t.a.r.d.
I risked a quick look around. Chandra Singh was holding his own against a whole crowd of opponents, stamping and dancing amongst them, swinging his long sword with glee and gusto. He grinned broadly as enchanted blades shattered against his sword, and magics and curses exploded as he cut them out of the air. As long as he worked in close, no-one could use their guns for fear of shooting their own people, but I had to wonder how long that would last. Still, for a man who said he didn"t want to fight women, he certainly seemed to be getting the hang of it. Bodies fell to the left and to the right as he cut his way through the enemies crowding around him.
They all fell back suddenly to let a combat sorceress approach him, a short and stocky Asian woman in a black dress, with the Tiger"s Claw ideogram tattooed above her right eye. That meant serious magic, and nasty with it. She pulled a spitting and sparking magic out of nowhere and threw it at Chandra. It roared through the air, burning up half a dozen body-guards in its path on its way to Chandra Singh. He laughed aloud and sliced the magic in two in mid air with one slash of his blade. The magic exploded, its sorcerous fires spraying everywhere. People ran screaming, with their flesh on fire. The combat sorceress began a staccato incantation in a language I didn"t recognise. Chandra advanced on her, step by step, pressing against some invisible resistance. The sorceress"s voice rose with urgency as he drew nearer, then she stopped short, and looked down at the blade buried in her stomach. Chandra Singh pulled the sword back, and her guts fell out on to the floor. The sorceress tried to say something, and Chandra cut her head off with one sweep of his blade. He turned away, not bothering to watch her hit the floor.
The Walking Man hadn"t moved from his last position. He didn"t need to. He just fired his guns, his old-fashioned long-barrelled Peacemakers that never ran out of ammunition, and blood flew on the air as men and women crashed to the floor and did not rise again.
What was left of the Boys Club Membership was in full rout. Fighting each other to get to the exits, trampling the fallen underfoot, screaming and shouting and trying to use each other as human shields. The exit doors were all sealed shut, though no-one had given any such order. Most of the body-guards were dead already. The Walking Man didn"t care whether they stood and fought or turned and ran. He killed them all, starting with the worst and working his way down, choosing his targets through some hidden knowledge of his own. The remaining body-guards grouped together and hit the Walking Man with everything they had. But bullets couldn"t touch him, enchanted blades shattered against his shabby coat, and magics and curses discharged harmlessly about him. He ignored the body-guards, unless they got in his way, then he shot them dead.
He was smiling widely, and it was not the kind of smile you expected to see on a man of G.o.d.
But as big as the Club was, and large though the Membership was, eventually he ran out of targets. The last body was thrown against a wall by the impact of the bullet and slid lifelessly to the floor, and the shooting stopped. The Walking Man lowered his guns and looked about him. The dead were piled up everywhere, men and women lying sprawled without dignity across the blood-soaked floor. The biggest heaps lay before the sealed exits, where the panicked Membership had tried to crawl over the bodies of the fallen to get to doors that would not open. A handful of the living still remained, hiding, crouched behind overturned tables and other cover, keeping silent, hoping not to be noticed. They should have known better. The Walking Man looked about him and casually picked them off, one by one, his bullets ploughing right through the cover to kill the prey concealed behind them.
The h.e.l.lsreich brothers rose abruptly from where they"d been hiding, clasped hands, and shrieked in unison a brutally simple spell of Unbinding. They"d finished it before the Walking Man could even turn his guns upon them. A great blue pentacle appeared on the floor of the Club, half-hidden under the dead bodies. The lines blazed brightly, a harsh actinic blue that seared the eye, steaming with released ectoplasm. The floor under the pentacle exploded, throwing dead bodies aside like leaves, ragged splinters flying through the air like shrapnel. And up through the great dark hole there rose a demon from the Pit, free to do its awful will in the world of men. The Boys Club"s last act of malice, a terrible revenge on anyone who dared to bring them down.
It was a traditional, old-school demon, twice the size of a man, with blood-red skin, goat"s horns and hooves, and very sharp teeth. It had the shape of a man, and the proportions of a man, but there was nothing human in its stance or in its glowing slit-pupilled eyes. Steam rose up from its scarlet skin, the air all around it heated past endurance by its very presence. It stank of s.h.i.t and blood and brimstone, because it chose to. The Walking Man looked at me and Chandra Singh.
"You deal with it," he said. "I"m busy."
And he went back to looking for hidden prey, shooting them where he found them.
I was giving serious thought to finding some cover of my own when Chandra Singh started forward, swinging his long blade casually before him. The demon considered the monster hunter with interest, its long spade-tipped tail swinging lazily. Chandra shouted a challenge in his own tongue and brought his sword round in a long, sweeping arc that would have sliced most things in two, only to see his blade rebound harmlessly from the demon"s scalding skin. The vibrations almost tore the sword from Chandra"s hands, but he hung on stubbornly and struck at the demon again and again, grunting with the effort of his blows. The demon stood there and laughed at him soundlessly.
I searched frantically through my coat pockets for anything that might help, but I had nothing on me that could stop a demon from the Inferno. This was no ordinary demon, this was the real deal, a Lord of h.e.l.l. Where had the Boys Club found the power to summon something like this? Unless the founder of the Club really was who some people swore he was . . . You could hurt a demon like this with holy water, or give it pause with a crucifix, provided you had the faith to back it up, but nothing short of a full-scale exorcism could banish it from this plane. I racked my brain . . . and then shouted at Chandra, as he paused in his attack, bent over and breathing harshly.
"Chandra! The pentacle! It"s a gateway between this place and the Pit! That"s how they summoned it here! Break the pentacle, and the gateway will close!"
Chandra raised his sword and brought it slamming down on the nearest pulsing blue line. His enchanted blade sheared clean through the blue line, breaking the connection and short-circuiting the summoning. The gateway began to close, and the demon sank back into the darkness below, pulled inexorably back to where it belonged. It turned its horned head unhurriedly to look at the Walking Man.
"We know you in h.e.l.l," it said, in a voice like screaming children. "We will meet again, Walking Man. All murderers end up in h.e.l.l. Even the ones who say G.o.d told them to do it."
The Walking Man shot the demon dispa.s.sionately between the eyes. Its horned head snapped back under the impact, then it shook its head, gargled for a moment, and spat out the bullet. It was still laughing as it disappeared back beneath the floor, a terrible, soul-destroying sound. It cut off abruptly as the last of the pentacle lines faded away, and the floor was a floor again, though with a b.l.o.o.d.y big hole in it now. The Walking Man looked at it for a while, his face unmoved. But he wasn"t smiling any more.
I went over to Chandra, and he leaned heavily on me, his sword hanging down as though it had become too heavy to lift.
"Nice call, John," he said faintly.
"Nice cut," I said.
The Boys Club was still and silent. There was blood and dead bodies everywhere, even in the swimming pool, where the perfect bodies of young men and women floated facedown in b.l.o.o.d.y waters. The h.e.l.lsreich brothers stood together, holding their hands high in the air in surrender. The Walking Man regarded them thoughtfully.
"You"ve killed hundreds of men and women," I said. "Isn"t that enough?"
"No," said the Walking Man. "It"s never enough."
"We"re just businessmen!" protested Paul h.e.l.lsreich. "We provide a service, we protect our customers from the vicissitudes of fate!"
"We"re insurance men!" said Davey h.e.l.lreich. "We never killed anyone!"
"We"ll go legitimate!" said Paul. "We"ll pay taxes! We promise!"
"You don"t have to kill us!" said Davey. "We"re not worth it!"
"It"s always worth it," said the Walking Man.
"You should turn them over to Walker," I said quickly, as he started to raise his guns again. "They have surrendered."
"To Walker?" said Paul. "And end up in Shadow Deep? I think I"d rather be shot."
"No problem," said the Walking Man.
"To h.e.l.l with that," said a new voice. "I"ve never let a client down yet."
We all looked round in surprise as the owner of the charming French accent came forward. G.o.d alone knew where she"d managed to hide, but Penny Dreadful had survived the ma.s.sacre without a drop of blood on her. She moved carefully through the carnage, stepping daintily over dead bodies, and came to a halt facing the Walking Man.
"Penny," I said carefully. "Get out of the way. You don"t have anything that can stop the Walking Man."
"I took their money," she said. "Swore to guard them against all dangers, to put my body between theirs and all harm. That"s the job."
"She took their money," said the Walking Man. "Even knowing where it came from. That makes her as guilty as them."
"No it b.l.o.o.d.y doesn"t!" I said. "She"s a professional, that"s all! Just like me. And Chandra."
"You side with the sinners, you die with the sinners," said the Walking Man. "It really is that simple."
"No it isn"t," I said. "Not here. Not in the Nightside. We do things differently here."
"I know," said the Walking Man. "That"s the problem. Sin is sin. You"ve lived here so long you"ve forgotten that."
"She is brave, and honourable, and trustworthy, in her way," I said. And I moved slowly and deliberately forward, to stand between Penny and the Walking Man. "She"s done good things."
"I"m sure G.o.d will take that into consideration," said the Walking Man. And he shot right past my ear. I spun round, but it was already too late. Penny was falling to her knees, a dark and b.l.o.o.d.y third eye in the middle of her forehead. I caught her before she hit the floor, but she wasn"t breathing any more. I knelt before the Walking Man, holding my dead friend in my arms. I heard two more shots, but didn"t look round to watch the h.e.l.lsreich brothers fall. I didn"t want to let Penny go, even though I knew there was nothing I could do. Her body leaned heavily against me, like a sleeping child. She didn"t deserve to die like this. Even if she had been the infamous Penny Dreadful, and done all the things she"d done, she didn"t deserve to die like this.
I finally put her aside, got back on my feet, and glared at the Walking Man, who stared impa.s.sively back. I started towards him, and Chandra was quickly there to grab my arm and stop me.
"No, my friend! Not now. We"re not ready."
"Let go of my arm," I said, and he let go immediately.
I was breathing hard, my whole body tense with the need to do . . . something. I knew he"d kill me if I took another step forward, but right then, I wasn"t sure I cared, as long as I took him down with me.
"What about G.o.d"s mercy?" I said finally, in a harsh voice I barely recognised. "What about his compa.s.sion?"
"Not my department," said the Walking Man. He decided I wasn"t going to do anything after all and put away his guns.
"What gives you the right to condemn anyone to h.e.l.l?"
"I don"t send anyone to h.e.l.l. I send them to judgement."
"Who are you, to take such responsibility upon yourself?" said Chandra Singh.
The Walking Man smiled; and for the first time it was a simple, human smile. "About time you asked. Very well, just for you; the secret origin of the Walking Man. My name is, or more properly was, Adrien Saint. No-one special. Just a man with a job and a wife and two small children. Mr. Average, I suppose. No great ambitions. All I wanted was to get on with my life and look after my family.
"A teenage joy-rider in a stolen car hit my wife and my two children head-on, when he lost control taking a corner too fast. Cut my wife in half, and dragged my children under his car for almost half a mile before he finally had to stop. He ran away, with his friends. The police couldn"t identify any of them.
"I survived. You couldn"t call it living, but I survived. Lost my job, my house, my money . . . and then one of the few friends I hadn"t driven away found me a place in a monastery, in the countryside. A place for solitudes and contemplatives, and those hiding from a world that had become unbearable. It was a good place. I found a kind of peace there, if not comfort. And then one day, while helping to catalog the library, I found a very old book that told me all about the deal a man can make with G.o.d, to be his man, to be his Walking Man, and punish the guilty.
"I made the deal. Didn"t hesitate for a moment. I went back into the world transformed, with G.o.d"s will and G.o.d"s wrath burning within me. I found the teenage joy-rider, with G.o.d"s help. Sitting on a sofa, watching television, as though nothing had happened. I beat him to death with my bare hands, and his screams comforted me. I went round to his friends, and killed them all. There"s a fine line between justice and revenge, but as long as it ended up with dead joy-riders, I didn"t care.
"And then . . . I went travelling in the world, seeing it as it really was, walking up and down in it, dispensing justice. Until finally I was ready to come to the Nightside, and bring the wrath of G.o.d to the most sinful place on Earth."
"No wonder you"re always smiling," I said. "This has never been about justice for you. It"s always been about revenge. Every time you fire your guns, you"re killing joy-riders, over and over again."
The Walking Man smiled briefly. "You think I don"t know that? I"m obsessed, not crazy."
"You sure about that?" I said.
He actually laughed. "Well, I hear voices in my head telling me to kill people in G.o.d"s name, so I suppose there has to be a chance that I"m a complete loony tune; but I don"t think so. Not as long as I remain untouchable by all the evil in the world."
"What brought you to the Nightside, at this particular time?" said Chandra.
"I know what I need to know, when I need to know it. When G.o.d was sure I was ready, he showed me the secret ways into the Nightside."
"You talk often with your G.o.d?" said Chandra. He sounded genuinely curious. "What is that like?"
"Comforting," said the Walking Man.
"I often speak with my G.o.d," said Chandra. "He speaks to me through dreams, and prophecies and omens. And he has never once insisted I commit murder in his name."
"You kill monsters," said the Walking Man.
"Only when I have to. And then, only to protect the innocent."
"Yes!" said the Walking Man. "Exactly! I punish the guilty to avenge and protect the innocent. I kill the killers before they can kill again! The law might not be able to touch these evil men, but I can. And I do. Think of me . . . as a champion of last resort. The last person you can go to for justice, when the ways of the world have failed you. What I do is never murder, because I have a valid legal warrant for all that I have done, and will do, from the highest court of all. The Courts of the Holy."
"Penny wasn"t evil," I said.
"Get over her," said the Walking Man, not unkindly. "I will do worse before I"m done because I must. The Nightside is an abomination in the world of men, and it must be humbled and brought down. There are too many temptations here, too many evils operating openly. It gives people . . . the wrong idea. That they can sin and get away with it."
"You don"t believe in free will?" I said. "Or free choice? G.o.d gave them to us. Everyone who comes here knows the score, knows what they"re getting into. You could say the Nightside keeps all the real sin and temptation in one place, away from the rest of the world."
"Shows how little you know about the rest of the world," said the Walking Man. "You argue well, John, but none of this matters. I will do what I will do, and no-one can stop me. I am here to clean up the Nightside, scour the filth right out of it, from top to bottom. Including your presumptuous new Authorities. As soon as I"ve finished the tasks I"ve set myself, I will kill these new Authorities, to put the fear of G.o.d into the Nightside. And you, John Taylor . . . are either with me, or against me."
"That"s why you let me see what you do, and why," I said. "You want me to understand. To approve."
"I want you to stay out of my way," said the Walking Man.
"Many people whose opinion I respect tell me that the Nightside serves a purpose," I said slowly. "There are good people here. I won"t let you hurt them. This is my home."
"Not for long," said the Walking Man. He pulled his old mocking insolence about him, flashed me a smile, then turned his back on me and walked away.
"b.a.s.t.a.r.d son of a b.i.t.c.h," I said, after a moment.
"Well, yes," said Chandra. "By the way, you have blood all down the front of your trench coat."
I looked. Penny"s blood, from where I"d held her.
"Not for the first time," I said.
We stood alone in the middle of the Boys Club, surrounded by the dead. The air seemed very still, very calm, as though a thunderstorm had just pa.s.sed.
"I couldn"t stop him," I said finally, unable to keep the helplessness out of my voice. "Even though I knew what to expect, even though I thought I was prepared for what he was, and what he did . . . I still couldn"t stop him."
"Who are we, to stand against the will of G.o.d?" said Chandra Singh, reasonably. "And the men and women of this establishment were very definitely people who needed killing."
"Not all of them," I said. "The world is undoubtedly a better place with most of these people gone, but some of them were just...ordinary men and women, doing their jobs, drawing a pay-cheque to pay the bills and look after their families. Getting by, as best they could. Yes, they knew where the money came from... but whatever evil they did by working here was a small thing. Not worth dying like this."
"Like your Penny Dreadful?" he said.
"She was never mine," I said, automatically. "Penny was always her own woman. I never approved of her, but I liked her. She took no s.h.i.t from anyone. And she really did do some good things in her time, even if she had to be paid to do them." I looked around me, and a slow, steady anger burned within me. "They didn"t all need killing, Chandra. Some of them could have been saved."
"Of course! That"s why you stay, isn"t it?" said Chandra, with the enthusiasm of a sudden insight. "To try and save those you care about. Like your Suzie Shooter."
"Don"t go there," I said, and when I looked at him, he fell silent.
No telling where that conversation might have gone because that was when King of Skin suddenly materialised out of mid air before us. Chandra and I both fell back a little, startled, as King of Skin skipped and swaggered among the dead bodies, sn.i.g.g.e.ring and cackling and looking very pleased with himself. He stopped suddenly, and looked back over his shoulder at Chandra and me.
"I"ve been here all along," he said, in his hot breathy voice. "Hidden by my power and my nature, watching and listening. Know thy enemy! He does like to talk, this Walking Man, and says so much more than he realises. He has a weakness, and it"s a very old one. Pride! He cannot ever admit to being wrong . . . Destroy his faith in the righteousness of what he does, even for a moment, and he will crumble . . . Oh yes!" He was suddenly right in front of me again, wrapped in his sleazy glamour, laughing right in my face. "Because of what I was, and what I am, I see the world very clearly. I see the Nightside for what it is, and not for what people on both sides like to think it is, or should be . . . That"s why Julien Advent insisted I be a part of his precious new Authorities. Because I will always see what needs to be done, and the best way to do it, no matter how upsetting."
And just like that, he was gone again. Or at least, I presumed so. With King of Skin, you could never be sure.