Nightside 04 - Hex and the City

floor, squirting blood and inner liquids onto the dusty air. Other magics homed in on Pretty Poison, who snatched them out of mid air and ate them up, grinning like a naughty schoolgirl. She was a fallen angel and older than the world, and the minor magics of men were nothing to her.
    I pulled a pair of chaos dice from my coat's inner pocket and tossed them into the midst of the Reasonable Men; and suddenly everything that could go wrong for them did. Spells misfired, muscles spasmed, and they fell over each other like clowns. One of them drew a heavy handgun, its gleaming steel acid-etched with potent runes and sigils. He fired it at Sinner. The bullet punched a neat hole in Sinner's chest, but no blood flowed. He stood looking down at the hole for a moment, almost sadly, then he looked at the shocked Reasonable Man.
    "Magic guns? I have known the torments of Hell, boy. But still, you really shouldn't have done that. It wasn't respectful. Pretty Poison?"
    "Of course, darling Sidney."
    And Pretty Poison surged forward, moving almost too quickly for human eyes to follow. She raged among the Reasonable Men, tearing them, literally, limb from limb with awful, impossible strength, laughing breathily all the while. Some tried to run, but she was quicker. While they were distracted, I put my back up against a towering bookshelf, slammed my weight against it, and overturned the whole damn thing onto two of the Reasonable Men. The great weight crushed them mercilessly to the floor, and they didn't move again. And almost as quickly as that, it was over. It was quiet again in the Library, the loudest sound the slow dripping of blood from various surfaces. The Reasonable Men were all dead. It wasn't what I wanted; but this was the kind of thing that happened when you allied yourself with people like Sinner and Pretty Poison. She was looking around at all the terrible things she'd done and smiling brightly. I looked around for Madman and found that even he'd got involved, in the end. Somewhere along the way he'd decided he was in a Samurai film. He was wearing a kimono and standing over a dead Reasonable Man with a bloody katana in his hands. He'd chopped the poor bastard into bits. He looked down at the scattered bloody pieces before him and scowled balefully.
    "Well? Have you had enough? Answer me!"
    It would have been funny, if the man hadn't been so very dead.
    Pretty Poison came tripping daintily between the corpses to embrace her Sinner and make sure he was okay.
    He looked sadly at her, and at all the things she'd done, but said nothing. Pretty Poison snuggled up against him, not even breathing hard. She noticed there was blood on her hands, and sucked the blood off her fingers one by one, savouring it. She saw the disappointment in Sinner's face and pouted like a child.
    "I'm sorry, Sidney, but no-one gets to hurt you while I'm around. And after all, a girl has to follow her impulses."
    Sinner sighed and looked out over the scattered bodies. "We should have left one alive, to take a message back to Walker."
    "Oh, I think he'll get the message," I said. "Thirteen dead combat magicians makes for one hell of a powerful statement. Walker... is not going to be pleased about this."
    "Good," said Madman, back in his old clothes again. "Never liked the man. He tried to have me locked up once. Well, several times, actually."
    "Still," I said, thinking it through, "Perhaps I'd better go and have a word with him, smooth things over. Or he and his various bully boys will be haunting us every step of the way. Yes, I'll go and talk with the man. I know how to handle Walker."
    "Should we come with you?" said Sinner.
    "I think I'll do better alone," I said. "This calls for diplomacy, fast-talking, and an outrageous amount of bluffing. Not blood and guts all over the carpet. And I can't have him thinking I need other people to back me up when I talk with him. Walker notices things like that. So keep Madman here with you and try to keep him out of trouble till I get back."
    Sinner winced. "Please. Don't be long."
    I made my way out of the Library, smiling apologetically at the various members of staff I passed, and called Cathy at my office, to see if she knew where Walker might be found, just at the moment.
    "Oh sure," she said almost immediately. "No problem. I'll just check the computers. We subscribe to a service that keeps constant track on all the real movers and shakers in the Nightside, and lets us know where they are at any given