Nightside 08 - The Unnatural Inquirer

taint, a horrid twisting shape that made no sense at all in only three spatial dimensions. It howled its fury, in a voice I heard more with my mind than my ears. It didn’t belong in this world, stripped of the host it had been transforming into something suitable to birth its new form. I wondered briefly what that might have been. Nothing like Kid Cthulhu, certainly. It hurt just to look at the taint. Like a colour too vile for our spectrum, a shape like a living Rorschach blot that suggested only nightmares. Its very presence in this world was like fingernails scraping down the blackboard of my soul.
    It came after me, moving in ways unknown in my comfortable, three-dimensional world. I ran for the raised stage at the back of the club, and it followed. It moved more like energy than anything physical, and that gave me an idea. Up on the stage, I backed slowly away. A bolt of vivid energy snapped out, and I had to throw myself to one side to avoid it. The taint came after me, rising and falling in the air. My back slammed up against a steel dancer’s pole. The taint fired another energy bolt. I ducked to one side, and the energy bolt hit the steel pole. The taint screamed as its energy grounded through the pole, discharging into the earth below, its howl rising and rising till it seemed to fill my head, and then the sound broke off as the taint disappeared, gone.
    Now that I was out of danger, my arm and my shoulder and my face all hurt worse than ever, but I made myself get down from the stage and go over to where Bettie was still lying sprawled on the floor. As I approached, she raised her head a little, looked at me, then sat up easily.
    “Is it over?” she said brightly. “I thought I’d better keep my head down, and not get in your way.” And then she saw the state of my face and scrambled to her feet. “Oh, John, sweetie, you’re hurt! What did he do to you?”
    She produced a clean white handkerchief from somewhere, licked it briefly with a pointed tongue, and dabbed cautiously at my face, wiping the blood away. It hurt, but I let her do it. My left eye was puffed shut, but at least I’d stopped spitting blood.
    “Looks worse than it is,” I said, trying to convince myself as much as Bettie.
    “Hush,” she said. “Stand still. My hero.”
    When she’d finished, she looked at the bloody handkerchief, pulled a face, and tucked it up one black leather sleeve. I looked thoughtfully at Kid Cthulhu, still lying where he’d fallen like a beached whale. I walked slowly over to him, Bettie trotting at my side. She managed to make it clear she was there to be leaned on, if necessary, but was considerate enough not to say it out loud. I stood over Kid Cthulhu, and he rolled his flat black eyes up in his stretched face to look at me.
    “Kill you, Taylor. Kill you for this. Kill you, and all your friends, and everyone you know. I have people. I’ll send them after you, and I’ll never stop, never. Never!”
    “I believe you,” I said. And I raised my foot and stamped down hard, right on the back of his fat neck. I felt as much as heard his neck break under my foot, and as easily as that the life went out of him. I stepped back. Bettie looked at me, horrified.
    “You killed him. Just like that. How could you?”
    “Because it was necessary,” I said “You heard him.”
    “But…I never thought of you as a cold-blooded killer…You’re supposed to be better than that!”
    “Mostly I am,” I said. “But no-one threatens me and mine.”
    “I don’t know you at all, do I?” Bettie said slowly, looking at me steadily.
    “I’m just…who I have to be,” I said.
    And then we both looked round sharply. Someone new was there in the club with us, though I hadn’t heard him come in. He was standing on the raised stage, in a spotlight of his own, waiting patiently to be noticed. A tall and slender man with dark coffee-coloured skin, wearing a smartly cut pale grey suit, with an apricot cravat at his throat. He might have been any age, but there was an air of experience and quiet authority about him. As though he had so much power he didn’t need to put on a show. His head was shaven, gleaming in the spotlight. His eyes were kind, his smile pleasant; and I didn’t trust him an inch.
    “You did well, in dealing with Kid Cthulhu,” he said finally, in a rich, smooth and cultured voice. “A very unpleasant fellow, destined to become something even more unpleasant. I would have taken care of him