The Bride Wore Black Leather

heaps. Rats crouched here and there, not even bothering to look away as I strode past them. Every wall was covered in obscene graffiti, rough and brutal stuff, like dogs pissing to mark their territory. Kicked-in doors, boarded-up windows, dark doorways and darker alley mouths. Only two long rows of ancient, battered tenements, neglected and despised, by those within and those without.
    Blaiston Street is where you go when nobody cares, not even you.
    Not many people about. Normally, you’d expect a street like this to be teeming with the lost and the desperate, like maggots in an open wound. But the street stretched away before me, completely deserted, still and silent. As though they’d known I was coming and wanted to be well out of the way before the trouble started. Reasonable enough. They’d emerge afterwards, to rob the bodies or eat them. There were definitely unseen eyes following me as I strolled unhurriedly down the middle of the empty road as though I didn’t have a care in the world. I could feel the watchers even if I never saw them.
    Didn’t take me long to find the right house. Years had gone by, but I’d never forget that house-front. It wasn’t the original house, of course; I’d destroyed that nasty thing long ago, for disguising itself as a house so it could prey on people. It called to the homeless and the hopeless, with a voice they couldn’t resist, lured them inside, then ate them all up. Suzie and I rescued Cathy from it. No; this . . . was a cheap copy. The previous Walker had discovered traces of damaged alien tissue left behind and had the stuff studied and cultivated, so he could make his own living house trap. I don’t know why he wanted it; to feed people he disapproved of, probably.
    The first copy was destroyed during the Lilith War; I don’t know how many generations beyond the original this one was. It sat there, squatting in place, looking like a house and stinking the place up. No-one was ever so homeless or so desperate they’d want to venture inside this house. I sat down on the cold stone steps before the front door, put my back to the house, and waited.
    It felt like sitting with my back to a giant freezer with the door left open. A cold bad enough to chill the soul as well as the body. There was a constant sense of being watched—by something that would hurt me if it could. I didn’t care. Didn’t even look back at it. I had too many bad memories of the original house. And of a woman named Joanna, who turned out not to be a woman, any more than the house was a house. Poor Joanna. I could have loved her if she’d been real.
    Some people you shouldn’t remember. If only because the Nightside can find so many ways to hurt and haunt you . . . For a moment, there, I had to wonder if maybe the Sun King might not be right about the Nightside after all . . . And then there was the roar of a mighty motor, and Cathy turned up, taking the far corner on two wheels, racing down Blaiston Street in an old MINI Cooper, complete with bright Union Jack colours. The “Self-preservation Society” song blasted out of the open windows. I should never have brought her that DVD. Cathy brought the MINI to a squealing halt right in front of me, and the passenger door jumped open of its own accord. I got up off the steps and hurried over, clambered into the passenger seat, and Cathy had the car off and away before the door could even shut itself again. I looked for a seat belt, and, of course, there wasn’t one. You can take authenticity too far. I clung to the dash-board with both hands and braced both feet against the floor, to hold myself firmly in place in my seat. Cathy drove us out of the area at great speed and headed towards the main flow of traffic like a shark scenting blood in the water. She darted a glance at me and grinned fiercely.
    “Just like old times!” she said loudly. “You were right; we owed it to ourselves to have one last adventure together, before the old firm closes down!”
    “Having to come back to Blaiston Street didn’t . . . bother you?” I said carefully.
    “Come on, boss; that was Where we met! Best thing that ever happened to me! So where are we going now?”
    “I need to see the place where the Hawk’s Wind Bar & Grille used to be,” I said. “I’ve already been there once, but I can’t help feeling I missed something.”
    It felt good to be able to relax again. I hadn’t felt safe with anyone since Julien Advent died. I