Nightside 06 - Sharper Than a Serpents Tooth

face. The cool water felt good on my skin, and my head settled down again.
    Razor Eddie stood before me, an intense grey presence in his filthy overcoat, regarding me thoughtfully with his fever-bright eyes. He was holding a bottle of Perrier water. Flies buzzed around him, and up close the smell was really bad.
    "You reopened a door I made," he said finally, in his quiet, ghostly voice. "I didn't know you could do that. I didn't think anyone could do that."
    "Yeah, well," I said, as casually as I could, "nothing like having your mother around to inspire you to new heights."
    Walker brought me a glass of wormwood brandy. I'd actually have preferred a nice ice-cold Coke, but I appreciated the thought. I nodded my thanks to him, and he nodded back. Which was about as demonstrative as we were ever likely to get. It did seem we were becoming closer, whether we liked it or not. Suzie stopped dabbing at my face with her damp cloth, inspected her work critically, then nodded and tossed the bloody cloth aside. She sat down on the edge of a table facing me, and concentrated on cleaning her double-barrelled shotgun.
    At another table, not too far away, Tommy Oblivion thrashed about while Alex did necessary, painful things to him. Betty and Lucy Coltrane held Tommy down, using all their considerable strength, while Tommy used the kind of language you didn't expect to hear from effete existentialists. Alex's remedies tended to be swift, brutal, but effective. He chanted something alliterative in Old Saxon, while pouring a thick blue gunk into Tommy's exposed guts, while Dead Boy peered over his shoulder, watching interestedly.
    "I could lend you some duct tape, if you like," he said. "I've always found duct tape very useful."
    "Get the hell away from my patient, you heathen," said Alex, not looking up from what he was doing. "Or I'll use this superglue to seal your mouth up."
    "Superglue?" gasped Tommy. "You're putting me back together with superglue? I demand a second opinion!"
    "All right, you're a noisy bugger, too," said Alex. "Now shut the hell up and let me concentrate. Superglue was good enough for the grunts in Vietnam. It's not like you needed all that lower intestine anyway… There. That's it. Give the glue a few minutes to bond with the spells, then you can sit up. I've got the bullets here. Do you want to keep them for souvenirs?"
    Tommy told Alex exactly where he could stick the bullets, and everyone managed some kind of smile. I looked around me, studying the small crowd gathered in the bar. My only remaining allies in the struggle to stop Lilith. It really was a very small crowd. I looked at Walker, who shrugged. He'd got his equilibrium back, but he still looked very tired.
    "All my other agents are either out in the field, doing what they can, or they're missing, presumed dead. What you see… is all that's left."
    There was Alex Morrisey, cleaning his bloody hands on a grubby bar cloth, all in black as usual, in perpetual mourning for the way his life might have gone, if only he hadn't been Alex Morrisey. He glowered at me, and said something about the mess I'd made of his place, but I could tell his heart wasn't really in it. Tommy Oblivion was already sitting up on his table-top, ruefully inspecting the tattered and bloodied remains of his ruffled shirt. He nodded almost cheerfully to me and gave me a thumbs-up. Betty and Lucy Coltrane had chosen chairs from where they could keep a watchful overview of the bar, ready to deal with any and all intruders. They looked muscular as ever, but there were deep black smudges of fatigue under their eyes.
    Dead Boy struck a casual pose in his flapping purple greatcoat, while Ms. Fate struck an heroic pose in his leather superhero outfit, mask, and cape. Standing proudly at his side was my teenage secretary, Cathy Barrett, in an oversized black leather jacket covered in badges. I stopped and looked at her closely.
    "Cathy… why are you wearing a black domino mask?"
    "Ms. Fate made me his sidekick!" Cathy said cheerfully. "I thought I'd call myself Deathfang the Avenger, or maybe…"
    I shut my eyes, just for a moment. Teenagers…
    Razor Eddie was standing a little off to one side, as he always did. Eddie wasn't a people person. Mien Advent was nursing a glass of champagne and smoking a long black cheroot. As always, he was every inch the elegant Victorian, but his opera cloak was torn and tattered and even burned through in places. Of us all he looked the most like a