Nightside 06 - Sharper Than a Serpents Tooth

us.
    He affected a nonchalant swagger that fooled no-one, least of all him, and finally came to a halt a more-than-respectable distance away. Dead Boy and I stopped and considered him thoughtfully. He was wearing a smart pin-striped suit, white spats, and a grey fedora. He had twin pearl-handled revolvers on his hips, and a pencil moustache on his scarred face. He gave us each a hard look, which he might have pulled off if he hadn't been sweating so profusely.
    And on a cold night, too.
    "You here to cause trouble?" he said, in a voice so deep he must have had a third testicle tucked away somewhere.
    "Almost certainly," I said.
    "Right, lads!" said the enforcer, glancing back over his shoulder to address the rest of the street. "Pick up your feet, we are out of here. This is Dead Boy and John bloody Taylor, and we are not being paid nearly enough to take on the likes of them. Everybody round to Greasy Joan's cafe, where we will wait out whatever appalling things are about to happen."
    "You've heard of us," said Dead Boy, sounding just a little disappointed.
    "Too bloody right, squire. I signed on for security work and a little light brutality. Nothing was ever said about having to face living legends and death on two legs.
    Behind him, the rest of the enforcers were rapidly melting away and disappearing into the distance at something only a little less than a dead run. I looked thoughtfully at the man standing before us, and his left eye developed a distinct twitch.
    "You seem to have a lot of influence over your fellow thugs," I said. "Who are you, exactly?"
    "Union representative, squire. I look out for my boys, make sure they've all got health insurance, and I'd really like to run away after them, if that's all right with you."
    I'd barely finished nodding before he'd turned and hurried away. There's a lot to be said for a good, or more properly bad, reputation. One young enforcer was still standing in the middle of the street, looking a bit bewildered. He yelled after his union rep, who didn't even look back.
    "Hell with this shit," snarled the young punk, sounding actually outraged. "We're supposed to be hard men! Spreading fear with a glance and crushing all opposition! We don't turn and run when a couple of serious faces turn up!"
    "He's young," said a voice from the shadows of a very dark alley. "Doesn't know anything. Please don't kill him. His mother would give me hell."
    The young enforcer went for the gun on his hip, but Dead Boy was already moving. Being dead, his body wasn't limited to normal human reaction times. He darted forward impossibly quickly, closing the distance between himself and the young enforcer in a moment. The punk actually got off two shots, and Dead Boy dodged both of them. He crashed into the young enforcer, ripped the gun out of his hand, and head-butted him in the face. He then examined the gun while the young man crumpled to the floor, before finally throwing it aside.
    "I take it there won't be any more opposition?" I said, to the general surroundings.
    "Not from us," said the voice from the shadows. "You do whatever you feel like doing, sir."
    "Thank you," I said. "We will."
    I gathered up Dead Boy, and we continued down the street. There wasn't a single soul to be seen anywhere, but I had no doubt we were still being surreptitiously observed. I raised my gift, opening up the inner eye in my mind, my private eye, to locate exactly where Julien Advent was hiding himself in all this hostile territory. I kept my Sight narrowed down to just the task at hand. I really didn't want to See the kind of dark forces that moved unseen in a place like Rotten Row. I was also concerned that I'd recently been using my gift too much. My Enemies were always looking, to send their horror troops after me. I found Julien almost immediately, observing a firm called Dingley Dell from a place of concealment in a tenement building only a little further down the street. I shut down my gift, checked that all my mental barriers and safeguards were securely in place, and told Dead Boy what I'd learned.
    "You are seriously spooky sometimes, you know that, John?" he said. "The way you know things. Still, I wouldn't worry too much about these Enemies of yours. They probably won't be able to locate you at all, what with Lilith and her pals on the rampage, jamming the mental aether."
    We walked on a while in silence. "Jamming the mental aether? " I said finally. "What the hell does that mean?"
    "I don't know,"