Nightside 01 - Something From the Nightside

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    J oanna and I left Suzie Shooter intimidating the entire Fortress through the sheer force of her appalling personality, and headed for Blaiston Street. Where the wild things are. Every city has at least one area where all the rules have broken down, where humanity comes and goes, and civilisation is a sometime thing. Blaiston Street is the kind of area where no-one has ever paid any rent, where even the little comforts of life go only to the strongest, and plague rats go around in pairs because they're frightened. It's mob rule, on the few occasions when the brutal inhabitants can get their act together long enough to form a mob. They live in the dark because they like
    it that way. Because that way they can't see how far they've fallen. Drink, drugs and despair are the order of the day on Blaiston Street, and no-one ends up there by accident. Which made Cathy's choice of destination all the more disturbing. What on earth, or under it, could have called a vital, mostly sensible young girl like her to such a place?
    What did she think was waiting for her there?
    It was raining, soft pitterpatters of blood temperature that made the streets glisten with the illusion of freshness. The air was heavy with the smell of restaurants, of cuisines from a hundred times and places, not all of them especially appealing. The ever-present neon seemed subtly out of focus behind the rain, and the people passing by had hungry, angry faces. The Nightside was getting into its stride.
    "This is a hell of a place," Joanna said abruptly.
    "Sometimes literally," I said. "But it has its attractions. Just as it's always the bad boy that makes the good girl's heart beat that little bit faster, so it's the darker pleasures that seduce us out of the everyday world, and into the Nightside."
    Joanna snorted. "I always thought you could find every kind of pleasure in London. I've seen the postcards in public phone kiosks, advertising perversion at reasonable rates. Every kind of sex, with and without bodily contact, performed by people of every kind of sex. And a few proudly in between. Pre-op, post-op, during the op ... I mean, what's left?"
    "Trust me," I said seriously. "You really don't want to know. Now change the subject."
    "All right. What was it like, growing up here, in the Nightside?" Joanna looked at me earnestly. "This must have been ... an unusual place, for a child."
    I shrugged. "It was all I knew. When miracles and wonders happen every day, they lose their powers to amaze. This is a magical place, in every sense of the word, and if nothing else, growing up here was never boring. Always some new trouble to get into, and what more could a curious child ask for? And it's a great place to learn self-discipline. When they tell you to behave or the bogeyman will get you, they aren't necessarily kidding here. You either learn to be a survivor early on, or you don't get to grow up. You can't trust anyone to watch your back for you ... not friends or family. But there's an honesty to that, at least.
    'This all seems normal to me, Joanna. Your world, the calm and reasonable, mostly logical, everyday London was a revelation to me. Safe, sane, reassuringly predictable ... There's a deal of comfort in being blessedly anonymous, of knowing that sometimes things can just happen, with no great significance, for you or anyone else. The Nightside is lousy with omens and prophecies, and intrusions and interventions from Above and Below. But though your world is mostly secure and protected, it's also... grey, boring, and bloody hard to earn a living in. I'll
    go back there, when I'm through with this case, but I couldn't honestly say whether that's because I prefer it, or because I've lost my touch in how to survive in a place of gods and monsters."
    "This Blaiston Street," said Joanna. "It sounds a dangerous location, even for the Nightside. Are you sure Cathy was heading there?"
    I stopped, and she stopped with me. It was a question I'd been asking myself. The voice at the Fortress might have said anything, just to get rid of us, and get Suzie off his back. I would have. But... it was my only lead. I scowled, frustrated, and the people passing by gave us a little more room. I've always been able to find anything with my gift. That was how I'd made my reputation. To be back in the Nightside, and blind in my private eye, was almost too much to bear. I ought to be able to pick up at least a glimpse of her, if she really was so close, on Blaiston