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Faceless, remorseless, completely silent. It was like fighting nightmares. I yelled to Joa
just lay huddled on the ground, mouth slack with shock, staring with wide, almost mindless eyes. The Harrowing were all over me by then, and I was so tired, so cold. The best I could do was fool them into working against each other, so that they stabbed each other rather than me. Even rage and terror can only keep you going for so long, and what strength I had left was fast fading away. I was working on how best to make them kill me, when the shadow came moving among them, and everything changed.
The Harrowing's heads all turned at once, as they suddenly realised they weren't alone. Something new had come into the alley, something scarier and even more dangerous than they were. They could feel it, the way predators can always sense a rival. They forgot all about me for the moment, and I collapsed gratefully onto the cobbles beside Joa
The Harrowing looked about them, all their blank faces moving as one. They were confused, disoriented. This wasn't in the plan. And then one of the faces was suddenly different from all the others. A long red line had appeared, crossing the empty face where the eyes should have been, immediately leaking blood. The creature hesitantly raised a needled hand to its bloody face, as though to examine the cut.
A shadow swept across the Harrowing, fast as a fleeting thought, and the hand toppled from the wrist and fell away, neatly severed. Blood pumped out of the stump into the chill air, steaming thickly. And I smiled, a nasty gloating smile, as I realised just who had come to my rescue. It was already over. The Harrowing were all finished. They just didn't know it yet.
Something moved among the blank-faced figures, too fast to be seen. Blood flew on the air, spurting from a hundred wounds at once. The Harrowing tried to fight, but all they struck was each other. They tried to run, but wherever they went the shadow was already there before them, cutting and slicing at them, ripping them apart, tearing them to pieces. They couldn't scream, but I like to think that in their last few moments of existence they knew something of the horror and suffering they had always brought to others.
In a matter of seconds, it was all over. The dozen Harrowing, the deadly hounds on my trail, were no more. They had been rendered into hundreds, maybe thousands, of small scattered body parts, spread the length of the alley. Some of them were still twitching. The grimy brick walls ran red with blood, and the cobbled ground was slick with it, save for a small empty circle around Joa
heads, had been nailed to the wall in neat rows beside the closed steel door leading to Strangefellows.
The bloody light snapped off, and the alley returned to its usual gloom. The bitter chill slowly began to relax its hold. I murmured comfortingly to Joa
"Thanks, Eddie."
Razor Eddie smiled faintly, his hands thrust into the pockets of his oversized grey coat. There wasn't a speck of blood on him.
"That's your favour paid off, John."
Something about the way he said that made a lot of things fall into place for me. "You knew this was going to happen!"
"Of course."
"Why didn't you wade in sooner?"
"Because I wanted to see if you still had it."
"You could at least have said something! Why couldn't you have warned me?"
"Because you wouldn't have listened. Because I wanted to send the Harrowing's bosses a warning. And because I do so hate to be indebted to anyone."
And I knew, then. "You told them I was going to be here."
"Welcome back, John. The old place hasn't been the same without you."
Something moved like a fleeting shadow, or a
passing breeze, and there was no-one standing beneath the neon sign. The alley was empty, apart from all the scattered body parts, and the blood sliding down the walls. I should have known. Everyone has their own agenda, in the Nightside. Joa
"Is it over?"
"Yes. It's over."
"I'm sorry. I know I should have run. But I was so scared. I've never been that scared before."
"It's all right," I said. "Not everyone can swim when they're thrown in the deep end. Nothing in your old life could ever have prepared you for the Harrowing."
"I always thought I could cope with anything," she said quietly. "I've always had to be hard1—to be a fighter—to protect my interests, and those of my child. I knew the game, how it was played. How to use .., what I have, to get my own way, do all the other people down. But this ... this is beyond me. I feel like a child again. Lost Helpless. Vulnerable."
"The rules aren't that different," I said, after a while. "It's still all about the powerful, getting away with murder because they can. And a few of us who won't be beaten down. Fighting our corner, helping those we can, because we must."
"My hero," said Joa
"I'm no hero," I said, very definitely. "I just find
things. I'm not here to clean up the Nightside. It's too big, and I'm too small. I'm just one man, using what gifts I have to help my clients, because everyone should have someone to turn to, in time of need."
"I never met a man I respected," said Joa
She raised her mouth to mine, and after a moment, we kissed. She was warm and comforting in my arms, pressing against my body, and for the first time in a long time, I felt alive again. For a time, I was happy. It was like waking up in a foreign country. Afterwards, we sat there on the bloody cobbles for a while, holding each other. And nothing else mattered at all.
SIX - Storming the Fortress
I hailed a horse and carnage to take us to the Fortress. It was too damned far to walk, especially after that business outside Strangefellows, and I felt in distinct need of a bit of a sit-down. And it was probably a good idea to get my face off the streets for a while. The horse came trotting over, glaring down any traffic that looked like getting in his way. He was a huge brute of a Clydesdale, white as the moon, with broad shoulders and massive silver-hoofed feet, hauling an ornate nineteenth-century hansom carriage, of dark ebony and sandalwood, with solid brass trimmings. The man sitting up top, wrapped in an old leather duster, was carrying a five-foot-long
blunderbuss, its long stock etched with offensive charms and sigils. He looked carefully about him as the horse manoeuvred the carriage in beside Joa
"What a wonderful animal," said Joa
"No thanks, lady," said the horse. "Gives me cavities. And I hate going to the dentist. Wouldn't say no to a carrot, mind, if you had such a thing about your person."
Joa