Nightside 02 - Agents of Light and Darkness

Everyone Believes in Something

    T here is only the one church in the Nightside. It’s called St. Jude’s. I only ever go there on business. It’s nowhere near the Street of the Gods, with its many and varied places of worship. It’s tucked away in a quiet corner, shadowed and obscured, no part of the Nightside’s usual bright and gaudy neon noir. It doesn’t advertise, and it doesn’t care if you habitually pass by on the other side. It’s just there, for when you need it. Dedicated to the patron saint of lost causes, St. Jude’s is an old, old place; a cold stone structure possibly older even than Christianity itself. The bare stone walls are grey and featureless, unmarked by time or design, with only a series of narrow slits for windows. One great slab of stone, covered with a cloth of white samite, serves as an altar, facing two rows of blocky wooden pews. A single silver cross hangs on the wall beyond the altar; and that’s it. St. Jude’s isn’t a place for comfort, for frills and fancies and the trappings of religion. There is no priest or attendant, and there are no services. St. Jude’s is, quite simply, your last chance in the Nightside for salvation, sanctuary, or one final desperate word with your God. Come to this church looking for a spiritual Band-Aid, and you could end up with a hell of a lot more than you bargained for.
    Prayers are heard in St. Jude’s; and sometimes answered.
    I use the church occasionally as a meeting place. Neutral ground is so hard to come by in the Nightside. Only occasionally, though. All are welcome to enter St. Jude’s, but not everyone comes out again. The church protects and preserves itself, and no-one wants to know how. But this time, I had a specific reason for being here. I was counting on the nature of the place to protect me from the terrible thing that was coming. From the awful creature I had very reluctantly agreed to meet.
    I sat stiffly on the hard wooden seat of the front pew, huddled inside my white trench coat against the bitter chill that always permeated the place. I glared about me and tried not to fidget. Nothing to look a and nothing to do, and I wasn’t about to waste my time in prayer. Ever since my enemies first tried to kill me as a child, I’ve learned the hard way that I can’t depend on anyone but myself. I stirred restlessly, resisting the urge to get up and pace back and forth. Somewhere out there in the night, a force of destruction was heading straight for me, and all I could do was sit tight and wait for it to come. I let one hand drift down to the shoe box on the seat beside me, just to reassure myself it hadn’t gone anywhere since the last time I checked. What was in the box might protect me from what was coming, or it might not. Life’s like that; particularly in the Nightside. And especially when you’re the famous—or infamous—John Taylor, who has been known to boast he can find anything. Even when it gets him into situations like this.
    The dozen candles I’d brought and lit and placed around the church didn’t do much to dispel the general gloom of the place. The air was still and cold and dank, and there were far too many shadows. Sitting there, in the quiet, listening to the dust fall, I could feel the age of the place, feel all the endless centuries pressing down on me. St. Jude’s was supposed to be one of the oldest surviving buildings in the Nightside. Older than the Street of the Gods, or the Time Tower, older even than Strangefellows, the longest-running bar in the world. So old, in fact, and so long established as a place of worship that there are those who hint it might not even have been a church, originally.
    Just a place where you could talk to your God, and sometimes get an answer. Whether you liked the answer you got was, of course, your problem.
    It’s only a short step from a burning bush to a burning heretic, after all. I try not to bother God, and hope He’ll do me the same courtesy.
    I don’t know why there aren’t any other churches in the Nightside. It’s not that the people who come here aren’t religious; it’s more that the Nightside is where you go to do the things you know your God wouldn’t approve of. Souls aren’t lost here; they’re sold or bartered or just plain thrown away in utter abandon. There are presences and avatars, and even Powers and Dominations, to be found on the Street of the Gods; and you can bargain with them for all the things you know your God