Nightside 09 - Just Another Judgement Day

hospital ward in a soft, pattering, crimson rain. Behind me there was the single blast of a shotgun, and when I looked round Joan Taylor was lying flat on her back, without a head. She probably wasted time trying to find a way to stop Suzie, the fool. No-one stops Suzie Shooter.
    “They were good,” I said. “But they weren’t us. They hadn’t been hardened and refined by life in the Nightside.”
    “They weren’t us,” Suzie agreed. She came over to me and looked closely at my face. “You took a hell of a beating.”
    “So did you. Thank the good Lord for werewolf blood.”
    “But you still tried to get to me, to protect me. I saw you. I didn’t even think to do that for you. You’ve always been better than me, John.”
    “Forgive me?” I said.
    She smiled briefly. “Well, just this once.” She looked at Joan’s headless body. “I’ve never cared for cheap knock-offs.”
    “Our dark sides,” I said.
    “Well, darker,” said Suzie.
    I considered the point. “Do you suppose . . . there might be better versions of us, somewhere? In some other world? More saintly selves?”
    “You’re creeping me out now,” said Suzie. “Let’s go find the Baron and shut him down.”
    “First things first,” I said. “I’ve had enough of this place. No more suffering innocents. Not on my watch.”
    I raised my gift again, and studied the whole ward through my inner eye, until I could See the connection the Baron had forged with his science and his voodoo, between the patients in their beds and their more fortunate duplicates in the Nightside. A whole series of shimmering silver chains, rising from every patient and plunging through the ceiling. And having found them, it was the easiest thing in the world for me to break the weakest of the chains, with the slightest mental touch. Pushed out of its awful balance, the whole system collapsed, the shimmering chains snapping out of existence in a moment. The patients in their beds cried out with a single great voice, as all the traces of age and surgery and hard living disappeared; and, just like that, they were young and perfect again. They didn’t wake up, which was probably as well. Let Walker send some people down to help them, and hopefully get them home again.
    Suzie and I had other business.
    I considered what must be happening, in all the best clubs and bars and parlours in the Nightside above, as rich and powerful faces were suddenly struck down with years, and the many results of debauchery and surgical choices. I visualised them screaming in pain and shock and horror as they all finally assumed their real faces. What better revenge could there be?
    “You’re smiling that smile again,” said Suzie. “That I’ve just done something really nasty and utterly justified and no-one’s ever going to be able to pin it on me smile.”
    “How well you know me,” I said. “Now, where were we? Ah yes—the Baron.”
    “Bad man,” said Suzie Shooter. She worked the action on her shotgun. “I will make a wicker man out of his nurses and burn him alive.”
    “I love the way you think,” I said.

* * * *
    We found another door that opened on to another stairwell, leading down into hell. We crept quietly down the bare concrete steps. The Baron had to have heard the fire-fight above him; but he had no way of knowing who’d won. Suzie led the way, shotgun at the ready, and I struggled to maintain my gift, searching the descent below us with my inner eye for hidden traps or alarms. But the stairwell remained still and quiet, and there wasn’t even a glimpse of a bamboo nurse.
    The smell hit me first. A thick stench of spilled blood and spoiled meat, of foul things done in a foul place. It grew stronger as we descended the last few steps and found ourselves facing a simple wooden door. The air was hot and sweaty, almost oily on my bare skin. It was the heat of opened bodies in a cold room, the pulsing warmth of inner things exposed to the light. Frankenstein . . . I pushed quietly past Suzie, and tried the handle. It wasn’t locked. I went inside, and Suzie was right there with me, silent as an avenging ghost.
    We were in a great stone chamber, carved out of the very bedrock itself. Rough pitted walls and ceiling, and an uneven floor partly covered with blood-stained matting. Naked light bulbs hung down on long, rusting chains, filling the chamber with harsh and unforgiving illumination. There were shadows, but not nearly enough to hide what had been