The Bride Wore Black Leather

everywhere at once. A few of us grabbed some useful items from the Family Vaults, then escaped through the emergency teleport gates. Now those of us left are spread across the world, hiding behind new identities and keeping our heads down. And I came here because the Nightside is one of the few places in the world where Droods are forbidden to set foot, by ancient compact. One of the few places in this world or off it where I thought I could be safe.
    “Of course, I hadn’t been here long before I heard that the Drood family had also been destroyed, repaid in their turn. The universe has a warped sense of humour.”
    “Are you sure about this?” I said, hearing a new buzz of conversation start up behind me. “I’d heard stories, but no details . . .”
    “Oh yes, I’m sure,” said Rogue, and again there was a very old, very adult unpleasantness in his voice. “I took a quick look, through a scrying glass. Drood Hall has been destroyed, blown up and burned down. They’re all dead. Such a marvellous sight: half-melted golden figures strewn across the rubble, like broken dolls. I wish I could have seen it happen . . . but you can’t have everything.”
    “They’re all dead?” I said. “Every single Drood?”
    “One got away,” said Rogue. “Because he wasn’t there when it happened. Only one left, out of all those self-righteous, murdering bullies. Eddie, the last Drood. I really must get around to killing him when I have a moment. There’d be no fun in doing it now, you understand, while he’s still grieving. Better to wait till he’s recovered and started rebuilding his life . . . and then there I’ll be, to put an end to the last Drood.”
    “Who the hell could be powerful enough to wipe out the entire Drood family?” I said, because I felt someone should say it.
    Rogue smiled and shrugged easily. “Haven’t a clue. Don’t know anyone who does. But I will find out, eventually, if only so I can shake him by the hand.”
    “Okay,” I said. “So far, you’re everything your family was supposed to be. Where are the rest of you?”
    “Oh, here and there,” said Rogue, deliberately vague. “All over the world, hidden in plain sight, making their plans for the return of the family.”
    He grinned suddenly, the first youthful thing I’d seen him do.
    “And we will be back. You can count on it. We are the real immortals, and we have ruled this world for longer than anyone in this room has been alive.” He looked disparagingly around him. “Call yourselves immortals? My family has walked this Earth for fifteen centuries!”
    “So how old are you?” I said.
    He scowled suddenly, sticking out his lower lip in a proper teenage pout. “I was cheated out of my inheritance by the Droods. I’ve had barely eighty years of playing with Humanity! I should have had centuries as part of the most important and powerful family there’s ever been, to walk up and down in the world and change the course of human history as the whim took me. I should have had a life of wealth and influence, dispensing Life and Death, success or failure, at my pleasure! But I’d barely got started . . . It isn’t fair!”
    He broke off, startled, as I stuck my face right in close to his. I’d had enough. “That was then, Rogue, this is now. As far as I’m concerned, you’re only another refugee, on the run in the Nightside. My Nightside. So behave yourself here. You try to play with the lives of people under my protection, and I’ll drag you down to the Street of the Gods and feed you to something unknowable.”
    “Of course, Walker,” said Rogue, his voice suddenly entirely reasonable. “I’m a guest in this wonderfully gaudy, tawdry city. I wouldn’t dream of making any trouble.”
    “You’re overdoing it,” I said.
    He smiled distantly, backed carefully away, not taking his eyes off me, and moved on. A lot of people were quite keen to talk to him, to make themselves known to a living legend.
    I stood alone, thinking. I’d seen and heard a great many interesting things at the Ball of Forever, but none of it to do with what I was here for. No-one had so much as mentioned an immortality serum; either to discuss its possibilities, its price, or whether it should be destroyed. And somebody would have by now. Perhaps its owner was holding court in some hidden back room, unknown to any but the most select immortals. But I hadn’t seen anybody drifting away, or disappearing and