The Bride Wore Black Leather

and I had no choice but to go out into the streets, hunt down everyone afflicted, and kill them all. If this Jack knew, he had the grace not to mention it, so I didn’t either.
    He was tall and slim, cool and calm, with a dignified bearing. He was handsome enough, in a sinister sort of way. He wore the traditional long black cape, which swept about him like bat-wings, and an old-fashioned top hat. The look came with the incarnation. He wore it well enough. He had a pale face and ice-cold blue eyes, that were a lot older than they should have been. It was the burden of every Springheel Jack to carry all the experiences of his predecessors.
    “What brings the new Walker to the Ball of Forever?” he said, in a slightly detached voice. “Are we to take it that you’re immortal?”
    “Hardly,” I said. “My title isn’t like yours; I’m just the latest to hold the position. I’m here following a lead in a case, to see where it goes.” I looked thoughtfully at Jack, then at the Bride. “Are either of you immortal, technically speaking?”
    “I am both dead and alive!” the Bride said grandly. “Which means I outrank everyone here. Besides, I’d like to see anyone try to throw us out . . .”
    “While I am an idea that manifests itself through possessing people,” said Springheel Jack. “So I suppose I am immortal, in a serial sort of way.”
    And then everybody at the Ball of Forever stopped talking, and turned their heads to look as news of the latest arrival spread rapidly through the room. I looked around, too, impressed. Even I hadn’t made that much of an impression. A silence fell across the ballroom as King of Skin stood in the doorway, large as life and twice as nasty, swaying on his feet and sniggering to himself, wrapped in all his usual sleazy glory. King of Skin was the only immortal in the Authorities, that quiet background group who run the Nightside, inasmuch as any does or cares to. The group I supposedly now served and took my authority from. King of Skin was potent and powerful, a King in glory when he took his aspect upon him. He could disturb people he hadn’t even met yet. Rumour had it he’d spat on Heaven and Hell because he wouldn’t be bound by anything, even a philosophy. He had the power to undo possibilities and rewrite them in his favour. He could pick out your worst and most private nightmare, simply by looking at you, and make it real. King of Skin was a major-league scumbag, even by Nightside standards; but he could do things for you that no-one else could, or would. So people made a lot of allowances. Lot of that going on, in the Nightside.
    Don’t ask what he really looked like; everyone saw what he wanted them to see. Mostly he projected a sleazy glamour of constantly shifting details, real enough to make you extremely uncomfortable on a very basic level. Everyone was always very polite, wherever he turned up, if they knew what was good for them, and gave him plenty of room. I’d known him for years, usually from a distance, and I still had no idea what he was about or what he wanted. Just another lost soul, more powerful than most, walking the dark streets in search of something even he probably couldn’t name. He was hard to kill though many had tried, and none of us knew the beginning of his story. Because he liked it that way.
    He started forward into the ballroom, swaying and sniggering, grinning nastily in all directions, enjoying the effect he was having on the gathering. Even the most powerful immortals fell back, to give him plenty of room to move in. King of Skin reached out to touch the people he passed, in brusque and brutal inappropriate ways, trailing his fingertips across bare flesh, caressing a face here and a breast there, and no-one said or did anything. I had to wonder what he was doing at the Ball. Was he representing the Authorities? Had he heard about the serum? Or was he here to cause trouble because he could? There were gods here who would turn their gazes aside rather than upset King of Skin because even gods have nightmares, and King of Skin wouldn’t hesitate to use them as weapons.
    He knew I was there but ignored me completely, working the crowd in his own nasty way. He would stop here and there, for a moment, to indulge in a few neatly tailored insults, dropping quick references to things no-one else was supposed to know about. He mocked and abused people and laughed in their faces; and they stood there and let him do it because