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One of the girls, a small bruised child of maybe five or six, impulsively hugged Suzie, who was kneeling before her. I moved forward to take the child away, but Suzie stopped me with a look. She slowly closed her arms around the girl and hugged her back. The child nestled against Suzie’s breast, safe at last. Suzie looked up at me.
“It’s all right, John,” she said. “I can do this. I can hold her. It’s like holding me.”
I guess one abuse survivor can always recognise another.
The doctors and the nurses and the shrinks did what they could. I got the feeling they’d seen this kind of thing before. They seemed to know what to say. One by one, the children began to emerge from their cages. Some could even say their names. Walker finally showed up and looked the scene over. His expression never changed, but his eyes were colder than I’d ever seen them.
“We don’t have social services, as such, in the Nightside,” he said finally. “Not much call for them. But I’ve got people coming in from all over, including a few telepaths and empaths. They’ll get the children stabilised, then I’ll arrange for them to be taken back into London proper. Back to their homes, eventually. Hopefully. The children will get everything they need, John. You have my word on that.”
“Search the computers here,” I said. “There has to be a complete list of Precious Memories’ customers, distributors, everyone involved in this filthy business who weren’t here when the Walking Man came calling. Find them all, Walker, and punish them. No exceptions, no excuses, no mercy. No matter how well co
“He’s been sighted again,” said Walker. “At the Boys Club. Do you know it?”
“Of course I know it,” I said. “It’s back in Clubland. Send us there.”
“I’m not going,” said Suzie. I looked at her, and she met my gaze steadily, still holding the small child in her arms. “I need to be here, John. To see they all get the help they need. I can help. I understand.”
“Of course you do,” I said. “Stay. Do what you can. I’ll take care of things.”
“I will go with you,” said Chandra Singh. “I need to talk to this Walking Man. What kind of a man is he? What kind of man can go into places like this and kill everyone he finds? What must that do to a man, to his state of mind? To his soul?”
“He wants us to know,” I said. “That’s why he showed us everything. He’s teaching us to see the world as he does. Black and white, right and wrong, and no shades of grey. A world where the guilty will be punished.”
“He still has to be stopped,” said Walker. “All cats are grey in the Nightside. And not all of them deserve to be judged so harshly.”
“Are there other places like this, in the Nightside?” I asked him. “Did you know about this place?”
“No,” said Walker. “But I can’t say it surprises me. The Nightside exists to serve si
FIVE
Bad Boys and Wayward Girls
Walker’s Portable Timeslip delivered Chandra Singh and me right into the middle of Clubland, and we took a moment to lean on each other while our heads and stomachs settled. Passing through that u
“That . . . was most unpleasant,” Chandra said finally.
“Yeah,” I said. “And Walker’s been doing that every day for years. Explains a lot about the man.”
I led the way through the relatively sophisticated streets of Clubland (where you could still get mugged but at least the fellow would have the decency to wear a di
“The law knows of this place, and does nothing?” said Chandra.
“This is the Nightside,” I said patiently. “There is no law here, and less justice, unless you make some for yourself. Walker and his people only ever step in when things are really getting out of hand, and then only to restore the status quo. This is a place where people come to do the things they’re not supposed to, and pursue the pleasures they’re not supposed to want. Forbidden knowledge, forsaken gods, and all the fouler kinds of sex. And where there’s business, you can be sure there’s always someone taking a cut. By force if need be.”
“And these...people belong to the Boys Club,” said Chandra.
“The nastiest, vilest, and most unpleasant representatives of their kind,” I said.
Chandra Singh considered this. “Why not just kick in the door and toss in half a dozen incendiaries?” He smiled briefly. “Being a monster hunter teaches you to be practical, above all else.”
“You could kill everyone in there,” I said. “And most of us have thought about it, at one time or another, but they’d all be replaced within the hour. There’s never any shortage of people on the way up, eager for a chance to prove they can be even nastier and more unpleasant than the scumbags they’re replacing.”
Chandra looked at me seriously. “Why do you stay in this terrible place, John Taylor? I have heard stories about you . . . but you do not seem such a bad man. What keeps you in the Nightside?”
“Because I belong here,” I said. “With all the other monsters.”
I increased my pace. Part of me was worried that we’d get there too late and find another massacre. And part of me wondered if that might be such a bad thing . . . But not everyone in the Boys Club deserved to die. Just most of them.
The Club finally loomed up before us, flashy, gaudy, and weighed down with a really over-the-top Technicolor neon sign. Nothing to indicate what the Club was for, of course; either you already knew, or you had no business being there. Membership was strictly by invitation only, an acknowledgment by your peers that you’d made it, that you were finally big enough and important enough to be one of the Boys.
And there, waiting outside the front door for us, was the Walking Man. He was leaning casually against a lamp-post in his long duster, with his hands in his pockets, smiling easily, one foot planted on the neck of the Club’s unconscious Doorman. Chandra and I came to a halt, maintaining a respectful distance. The Doorman was big enough to be part troll, but there he was lying facedown in the gutter, without an obvious wound on him. The Walking Man nodded to us, then we all stood there for a while, taking the measure of each other.
The Walking Man looked just as I remembered him to, but in person there was so much . . . more to him. He had an air, a presence, an almost overwhelming intensity to him, as though he was the only real man in a world of fakes and posers. His eyes were bright and merry, his smile was full of mischief and bravado, and everything about him exuded an almost spiritual insolence. I am here to do absolutely appalling things in the name of the Good, his stance positively shouted. And what are you going to do about it? He had the look of a man who would do anything he felt like doing, and do it with a laugh on his lips and a song in his heart. This was no sombre driven warrior of God come to do his duty, no cold and dour executioner. This man enjoyed what he did.