Nightside 07 - Hell to Pay

do. Because one of your guests isn’t who you think they are.”
    That got everyone’s attention. They all started looking around them, some actually backing away from each other. Where once they might have united against Walker, now they were all looking out for themselves. Walker strode past Jeremiah, nodding to me in an affable, urbane, and totally dismissive way, and walked into the crowd as though he was a favourite uncle come to bestow gifts. The thoroughly unnerved guests scattered before him, but he only had eyes for one very well known personage. He came to a halt before her and shook his head, seemingly more in sorrow than in anger.
    “But…that’s the Lady Orlando!” protested Jeremiah.
    “Not as such,” said Walker, studying the Lady Orlando thoughtfully while she stared coldly back at him. “Actually, this is the Charnel Chimera—shapeshifter, soul eater, identity thief. Not the Lady Orlando at all. So, show yourself. Show us your true face. ”
    His Voice beat upon the air, as unrelenting as fate, as unavoidable as death. The Lady Orlando opened her mouth, then kept on opening it, stretching her features unnaturally, and the sound that came out of the ugly gaping maw was in no way human. Impelled by Walker’s Voice, the creature before us dropped the shape it had adapted and showed us what it really was. The Lady Orlando melted away, revealing a horrid patchwork thing, like pieces of raw meat slapped together in a roughly human shape. It was all red-and-purple flesh, wet and glistening, marked with dark traceries of pulsing veins. The lumpy head was featureless, save for a circular mouth filled with needle teeth. The thing stank of filth and decay, sulphur and ammonia like all the bodies in a charnel house far gone in rot and suppuration. All around the thing people were stumbling backwards, coughing and choking at the smell, horrified at the awful creature that had walked unsuspected among them. Nightmares like this belonged in the streets of the Nightside, not in the safer and protected houses of the rich. The Charnel Chimera stood its ground, brought to bay, and turned its terribly unfinished face on Walker, who stared calmly back at it. When the creature finally spoke, its voice sounded more like an insect’s buzz than anything else.
    “Even your Voice can’t hold me for long, Walker. It was never designed to work on such as me. There are far too many people in me for you to control us all.”
    “What the hell is that thing?” I said. I’d come forward to join Walker, thinking he might need some kind of backup.
    “The Charnel Chimera collects DNA through casual contact,” said Walker, not taking his eyes off the creature. “Handshakes, and the like. And then it stores the epithelial cells in its internal database. It’s always adding new people to its collection. It only needs a few cells to be able to duplicate anyone, right down to the last hair on their head. But to hold on to a single shape for long, it needs to kidnap the victim, imprison them somewhere safe, and…feed off them. Some kind of psychic transference…Until the original is all used up and rots away to nothing. And then the Charnel Chimera has to move on to a new form.
    “One of my agents tracked down the creature’s lair and found the real Lady Orlando chained to a wall in a rather nasty little oubliette under an abandoned warehouse out on Desolation Row. Along with the rotting remains of over a dozen previous victims.” Walker shook his head sadly at the creature before him. “You really shouldn’t have taken such a well-known personage. You’re not that good an actor. But it got you in here, didn’t it? Among all the rich, important people. You must have been spoilt for choice for your next identity. How many hands did you shake? How many cheeks did you kiss?”
    Shocked and disgusted noises came from all across the ballroom, as people remembered greeting or being greeted by the Lady Orlando, who was always so very popular, and so very touchy-feely…A few actually vomited. I remembered being backed into a corner, and the Lady saying to me, I want your body…I really must add you to my collection. And how badly I had misunderstood.
    Jimmy Thunder, his face bright crimson with outrage, came roaring up behind the Charnel Chimera and hit it over the head with his hammer. The blunt meaty head collapsed under the impact and crashed down between its shoulder-blades, scattering bits of flesh like shrapnel,