The Bride Wore Black Leather

Untouched and unscathed, like the murderous force he was. I kept backing away, and he kept coming after me; and the ground between us erupted, as a rock golem, a clumsy, misshapen thing, twelve feet tall and more, with a featureless face and huge fists like mauls, rose out of the dark earth between us to confront him. It went for Razor Eddie, and he moved so quickly he was only a blur. His razor flashed like lightning, sparking on the air, everywhere at once. And when Razor Eddie stopped moving, the rock golem was gone, leaving only piles of scattered rock pieces to show where it had been. Very small, finely cut rock pieces. Razor Eddie smiled at me, and a cold hand clutched my heart.
    I retreated further into the cemetery, being very careful where I put my feet, hiding among the looming mausoleums and family crypts. Razor Eddie came after me, cutting his way through a forest of tombstones and carving the sad faces off sculpted angels because they got in his way. I was still thinking furiously. I could have killed him. I’m pretty sure I could have found a way to kill him. Eddie had his razor, but I had all kinds of weapons, and a lifetime’s supply of dirty tricks. But he was still my friend, in his own strange, cold way, and I didn’t want to kill him. So I did what I always do, when I’m backed into a corner—improvise with extreme prejudice.
    I goaded him into rushing me. “Getting old, Eddie! Getting soft and slow. Getting past it!”
    He rushed forward as I finally stood my ground. And at the last moment I whipped off my white trench coat and threw it over Razor Eddie. It wrapped itself around him as he crashed to a halt, blinded and confused, fighting the coat’s enveloping folds and getting nowhere. Now, my coat has enough nasty magics and awful protections built into it that it could probably have won the fight on its own; but to be on the safe side, I picked up a chunk of stone that Eddie had sliced off a tombstone, and hit him over the head with it.
    Eddie slumped to his knees, but he didn’t stop struggling, so I hit him again, putting all my strength and weight into it. The impact jarred my hand and arm painfully, and Eddie fell forward onto the ground between the graves and lay still. I took my coat back off him, and put it back on again.
    “Don’t try and kid me you’re dead,” I said finally. “I might have rattled your brains a bit, Mr. high-and-mighty Punk God of the knife with attachment for getting stones out of horses’ hooves, but you don’t get taken out of the game that easily.”
    I kicked his straight razor away from him, and his head came up immediately, to fix me with a cold dark glare. Blood ran thickly down the side of his face.
    “Leave that alone!” he said. “Damn you, John. You only won by cheating, and you know it!”
    “You always were a bad loser, Eddie,” I said. “The operative word is
won
. So I suggest you take a nice little rest until you’ve got all your marbles together again. Don’t try and follow me. Or I might have to do something more permanent to you.”
    “I will find you!”
    “No you won’t,” I said. “Good-bye, Eddie.”
    I used my gift to find the tear he’d made in Space and Time with his razor, to let himself into the cemetery dimension. It was still there. I could See it clearly, hanging on the air over the gravel path. The wounds Razor Eddie makes in the world take time to heal. I moved quickly back between the graves and onto the path, pushed the sides of the gap apart, and squeezed up my eyes against the bright flare of light that fell through into the grey cemetery world. I looked back, just in time to see Razor Eddie stretch out one hand and the straight razor fly through the air to slap into his palm. Definitely time to be going. I stepped through the gap and back into the Nightside, letting the tear close behind me. I used my gift to find a way to close and seal it permanently, so he couldn’t come straight after me, and only then looked around to see where I’d ended up. I was pretty much where I’d expected, in the street outside the Necropolis itself. Ugly great building; a hulking brick monument to our continuing fascination with death.
    I didn’t hear the car coming, but long years of experience surviving in the Nightside made me look round suddenly. And there, coming straight at me at speed, was the great shining silver bullet of Dead Boy’s futuristic car. I didn’t hear it approach because it had no wheels,