Nightside 08 - The Unnatural Inquirer

at me.
    He was between me and Bettie, so I couldn’t get to her. I backed away slowly, thinking fast. I hadn’t planned for this. I’d heard he was going through changes, but I still thought of him as just another gang boss. Someone I could make a deal with. The Nightside runs on deals. But all this Kid Cthulhu wanted was me, preferably in large meaty chunks. I don’t normally care to get involved with hand-to-hand combat, partly because it’s coarse and vulgar and beneath my dignity, but mostly because I’ve never been that good at it. I’ve always preferred to talk or threaten or bluff my way out of trouble. But I didn’t think that was going to work here.
    I stopped, stood my ground, and stared him right in the eye. Sometimes the oldest tricks are the best. But for the second time that day, I found myself faced with someone I couldn’t stare down. His flat black eyes stared right back at me, untouched and unmoved. I couldn’t reach him. I wasn’t even sure there was anything human left in him to reach. So I grabbed the nearest chair and threw it at him. It bounced off, without leaving a single mark on his veiny, distended skin.
    Then he was coming right at me, a huge mass of colourless flesh like something you’d find at the bottom of the sea, driven on by some unnatural energy. I’d beaten so many threats in my time, faced down and defeated so many Major Players, gods, and monsters…It had never occurred to me that I might be killed by some oversized, implacable gang boss.
    As he crashed forward, the floor shaking with every tread, I somehow found the time to notice that his flesh seemed to move more slowly than the rest of him, sliding across his deep-sunk bones like an afterthought, as though it wasn’t properly connected any more. What little humanity he had left in him was sliding away. I glanced behind me. I could have run. I was pretty sure I could beat him to the exit. But that would have meant leaving Bettie behind, abandoned to Kid Cthulhu’s inhuman appetites. He’d said he’d do terrible things to her, and I believed him. So I stepped forward, braced myself, and punched him right in his protruding belly. His impetus drove him forward onto my fist, and it sank deep into his gut. He didn’t even make a sound. The cold, cold flesh closed around my hand, sucking it in. I had to use all my strength to pull it free again. Just the touch of his flesh was enough to set my teeth on edge.
    A huge arm came swinging round out of nowhere and hit me like a club. I managed to get a shoulder round in time to take the worst of the impact, but the flesh seemed to just keep coming and slammed into the side of my face. The strength went out of my legs, and I hit the floor hard, driving the breath from my lungs. My left shoulder blazed with pain, and I could barely move my left arm. The whole left side of my face ached fiercely. There was blood in my mouth, and I spat it out. I sensed as much as saw Kid Cthulhu looming over me, and I rolled to one side as his great fist came slamming down like a pile-driver, cracking and splintering the floor where I’d been lying. I got my legs under me and forced myself back up onto my feet again. I didn’t feel too steady, and I was breathing hard. Kid Cthulhu wasn’t.
    I backed away. My left eye was puffing shut, and it felt like my nose might be broken. I checked my teeth with my tongue. I didn’t seem to have lost any, this time. I hate it when that happens. There was more blood in my mouth. Probably a cut on the inside of my cheek. I spat the blood in Kid Cthulhu’s direction, but his flat dark eyes never wavered.
    I couldn’t fight a man like this. I had to be smarter than that.
    I backed away some more, glancing round to make sure I was leading Kid Cthulhu away from Bettie, and then made myself concentrate past the pain. I called up my gift, and looked at Kid Cthulhu with my inner eye. If I couldn’t fight the man, maybe I could fight what was inside him. I used my gift to find the taint, the inhuman corruption deep within his flesh, the thing from Outside that was slowly suffusing his human form. And having found it, it was the easiest thing in the world to rip the taint right out of him.
    Kid Cthulhu screamed; and for the first time, he sounded human. He fell to his knees, no longer able to sustain his massive weight once the taint from Outside was gone. He fell forward onto his face, his flesh moving in great ripples of fat. And beside him stood the