Nightside 07 - Hell to Pay

carelessly crushed and thrown aside. I’d told him I could protect him. I should have known better. The Nightside does so love to make a man break a promise. I slowly became aware of the sound of running feet approaching fast from all sides, along with the barking of orders. With all the maddened cars finally gone, the rent-a-cops had rediscovered their courage. They’d probably come in shooting. I smiled slowly, and I could feel it was the wrong kind of smile. Let them come. Let them all come. I was in the mood to kill a whole bunch of people.
    “You can’t kill them all,” said Sister Josephine, reading my mood accurately.
    “Watch me,” I said, but it didn’t sound like me. Already my dark mood was passing. I sighed heavily, picked up Paul’s body, and stood facing Sister Josephine. “Tell me you know of a secret way out of here.”
    “I have an old Christian charm,” the nun said quickly. “Through which any door made be made over into any other door, leading anywhere. It’s how we were able to arrive here unobserved, despite all the protections. Come with me, Mr. Taylor. And I’ll take you to Melissa.”
    I looked around. “Where are the rest of your Sisters?”
    “They’re all gone,” Sister Josephine said steadily. “All dead. It seems the stories about you are true after all, that death follows you around like a dog because you feed it so well.”
    “Open the door,” I said, and something in my voice made her hurry to obey.
    Sister Josephine reached inside her habit and took out a Hand of Glory, and distracted as I was, I still felt a jolt of surprise. A Hand of Glory is pagan magic, not Christian. A mummified human hand, cut off a hanged man in the last moments of his dying, the fingers soaked in wax to make them into candles. With the candles lit and the proper Words spoken over them, a Hand of Glory can open any door, reveal any secret, show the way to hidden treasures. Simply owning one was a stain on the soul. Sister Josephine caught me looking at her.
    “This is the Hand of a Saint,” she said, not quite defiantly. “Donated with her consent, prior to her martyring. It is a blessed thing, and a Christian weapon in the fight against Evil.”
    “If you say so,” I said. “Which Saint?”
    “Saint Alicia the Unknown. As if you’d know which Saint was which, you heathen.”
    She muttered over the mummified thing, and the wicks set into the end of each bloated finger burst simultaneously into flames. The light was warm and golden, and I could feel a new presence on the air, of something or someone else joining us. It was a…comfortable feeling. Sister Josephine thrust the Hand of Glory at the rear door, and the door shuddered in its frame, as though crying out at what was being done to it. Sister Josephine gestured sharply with the Hand, and the door swung inwards, as though forced open against its will by some unimaginable pressure. Bright light spilled into the underground car-park, and with it the scent of incense. Harsh voices cried out behind us. There was the sound of gunfire, but the bullets came nowhere near us. Rent-a-cops couldn’t hit a cow on the arse with a banjo. Sister Josephine walked forward into the light, and I followed after, carrying Paul’s body in my arms.

    And found myself in the Street of the Gods. Where all the gods that ever were or are or may be are worshipped, feared, and adored. All the Forces and Powers and Beings too powerful to be allowed to run free in the Nightside. Churches and temples line both sides of the Street, up and down and for as far as anyone has ever dared to walk; though only the most popular and powerful religions hold the best territory, near the centre. All the other gods and congregations have to fight it out for position and status, competing for worshippers and collection moneys in a positively Darwinian battle for survival. You can find anything on the Street of the Gods, if it doesn’t find you first.
    Sister Josephine blew out the candles on her Hand of Glory and put it away. A door shut solidly behind us, cutting off the sound of running feet and increasing gunfire. I looked behind us and discovered the Sister and I had apparently emerged from the Temple of Saint Einstein. The credo over the door said simply: It’s all relative.
    People were calling out my name, and not in a good way. I turned to look. People had good cause to remember me after I went head to head with my mother here, during the Lilith War. A lot of