Nightside 09 - Just Another Judgement Day

had made complete fools of themselves over the cooked meats, and were now performing a tango up and down the middle of the room, complete with twirls and dips. King of Skin had put together a surprisingly healthy salad for himself, while drinking messily from a tall glass of snake-bite. (A terrible drink made up of vodka, brandy, cider, and cranberries. And other things. Drink enough of it and you can puke fruit and piss petrol.) Larry Oblivion, being dead, didn’t need to eat or drink, but the Club’s chef had prepared a special delicacy for him that he swore always went down well with the Club’s other mortally challenged members. I don’t know what it was, but it smelled awful , and it moved about on the plate. Larry seemed to enjoy it.
    Walker and I were there, too, probably because neither of us have ever been able to refuse an offer of free food and drink. Chandra Singh declined. He said he had a duty to return home to India, to see what could be done for his broken sword, but I think he’d simply had enough of the Nightside.
    I made a point of sampling a little bit of everything, just in the name of research and broadening my horizons. The Club’s chef had a spectacular reputation. Walker, on the other hand, didn’t touch a thing. Which was unlike him. I studied him thoughtfully as he stood alone on the other side of the room, peering out the only window, lost in his own thoughts. He was holding a folded handkerchief to his nose, which still hadn’t stopped bleeding. I found that worrying. The Walking Man hadn’t hit him that hard.
    Julien Advent wandered over to join me, biting great chunks out of a huge steak and stilton pasty with his perfect Victorian teeth. He clapped me on the shoulder with more than usual good fellowship.
    “You did well, John. I’m really quite proud of you. Imagine my surprise.”
    “You’re welcome,” I said dryly. “You will remember to put your name and address on the back of the cheque, won’t you?”
    “You’re not fooling me, John. This wasn’t only for the money.”
    I decided to change the subject and nodded at Walker. “What’s up there? Walker’s always had the constitution of an ox, and the stubbornness to go with it.”
    A lot of the good humour went out of Julian. I could actually see it slipping away. He looked at Walker, then at me.
    “He hasn’t told you, has he?”
    “What?” I said. “Told me what?”
    “It isn’t public knowledge yet,” said Julien. “And won’t be, for some time. Not until things are . . . settled.”
    “Tell me,” I said. “You know I need to know things like this.”
    “I’m sure he would have got round to telling you. When he thought the time was right.”
    “Julien!”
    “He’s dying,” said Julien.
    It was like being hit in the guts. I actually felt a chill in my heart. I looked across at Walker, still dabbing carefully at his blood-caked nostrils with his blood-stained handkerchief. He looked healthy enough. He couldn’t be dying. Not Walker. But it never once occurred to me to doubt Julien’s word. He was never wrong about things like that.
    I couldn’t imagine the Nightside without Walker. Couldn’t imagine my life without Walker. He’d always been there, for as long as I could remember. Usually in the background, pulling strings and moving people around on his own private chessboard. Sometimes my enemy and sometimes my friend...When I was young, and my father was too busy drinking himself to death to have any time for me, it was Uncle Henry and Uncle Mark who were there to take care of things. Walker and the Collector. Perhaps the greatest authority figure and the greatest rogue the Nightside ever produced.
    Walker. Who ran the Nightside, inasmuch as anyone did, or could. I’d worked for him, and against him, defied and defended him, according to which case I was working on. He’d threatened my life and saved it, for his own reasons. It seemed to me then that much of the time, I defined my life by how much it would affect his.
    What would I do, when he was gone?
    “How can he be dying?” I said. “He’s . . . protected. Everyone knows that. Did somebody finally get to him?”
    “No,” said Julien. “There’s no villain to pursue here, no crime to avenge. It isn’t a voodoo curse, or an alien weapon, or some old case come back to haunt him. Just a rare and very severe blood disorder. Runs in the family, apparently. He lost his grandfather, his father, and an uncle to it, at much the