The Bride Wore Black Leather

again, to thin back the numbers.”
    “You see?” said Julien. “That, right there. That is the difference between how you and I operate. I use reason, you favour brute force.”
    “It worked, didn’t it?” I said. “They’re gone, aren’t they? In fact, if you look down the street, you can still see them going, at some speed.”
    “But they will be back!” said Julien. “Probably attended by serious bodyguards, and, which is even worse, with lawyers! They do own this land, and they do have a legitimate claim to be involved with what happens here. All right, I agree; I don’t like them either, and I don’t want them preventing the return of the Hawk’s Wind. But it behooves the Authorities, and you as Walker, to walk carefully around vested business interests.”
    “Statements like that are why I never wanted to be Walker,” I said. “I will defend what is right and just, and let the law catch up when it can. That doesn’t suit you or any of the other Authorities, get yourselves another Walker.”
    “You can be a real pain in the arse sometimes, John,” said Julien. “Especially when you’re right.” He sighed. “They will be back.”
    “They’ll have to visit a dentist first,” I said. “That should buy us some time.”
    “I don’t know why I even bother to talk to you, sometimes,” said Julien.
    “Because you have such a beautiful speaking voice,” I said.
    Julien ignored me, giving all his attention to the great hole in the ground. “I knew the Hawk’s Wind Bar & Grille when it was still real,” he said finally. “It was a marvellous place, in its prime. In the sixties. Everyone who mattered made the scene at the Hawk’s Wind. It was neutral ground, you see; much like Strangefellows today. So on any given night, you could expect to encounter good guys and bad, famous heroes and infamous villains, and everyone in between. Where the Underworld could meet the elite, gods could sit down with monsters, and every night a whole new gaggle of worshipped celebrities and the briefly fashionable showed up. Some nights you could hardly breathe for all the charisma hanging on the air. The Hawk’s Wind was a celebration of the place and the time . . . And it was such an exciting time to be alive . . . “I came here many times, with my original assistant and companion. A lovely young lady of great charm and enormous energies, what was known back then as a dolly bird. Her name was Juliet; she was an exotic dancer. My first friend and advisor, when I was still coming to terms with having left Victorian England for the Technicolor sixties. Juliet . . . kept me sane, in the face of so many changes, and a whole new world that often made no sense to me. A brave new world that had so many wonders and nightmares in it. Ah yes; all the adventures we had together . . . Solving mysteries, tracking down evildoers, exposing corruption and brutality and then doing something about it. There was a lot of that going on, in the sixties.”
    “So what happened to her?” I said. “To Juliet?” I was fascinated; Julien doesn’t talk much about his early days in the Nightside.
    “She left me,” he said, not looking at me. “When I gave up free-lance adventuring to work for the
Night Times
. It seemed the most obvious thing to do, to me, the next obvious step; I thought I could do more good that way. To put pressure on the Powers That Be, to bring about real and lasting change. But she didn’t see it that way.”
    “You gave it all up to become the Man,” I said. “ Like me.”
    “Because somebody has to do it,” said Julien. “And better us than someone else.”
    “Exactly.”
    He did look at me then. “Adventuring is when you do it for yourself. Crusading is when you do it for other people.”
    “So what happened to Juliet after she left you?”
    “Oh, she runs a night-club now, the Adamant. Very fashionable, I’m told. Very selective. I stay away. Because she’s got older, and I haven’t. It wouldn’t be fair, to keep reminding her . . . I think it’s better that we keep our happy memories.”
    “Why don’t you grow old?” I said, pushing it since he was in a talkative mood. “Is it to do with the serum you created? The Anti-Hyde?”
    He looked at me then and smiled briefly. “The Anti-Hyde? I suppose that’s as good a description as any. Dr. Jekyll created a serum to bring out all the evil in a man, release the beast within. I never did understand why anyone