The Bride Wore Black Leather

and he lowered the intervening glass panel.
    “You want me to wait, chief?”
    “No thank you, Gloria,” said Julien. “Hospital car-parks charge a fortune. You take some time off. I’ll call you if I need you.”
    “Suits me, chief. Try not to pick up anything nasty in there. I’d hate to have to fumigate the car again.”
    “Again?” I said, but Julien already had the back door open and was climbing out. I got out after him, and the moment I was clear, the back door slammed shut, and the limousine pulled quickly away. I hunched my shoulders inside my trench coat against the chill of the night air, and stood beside Julien while we looked the Hospice over from a safe distance. Despite having lived most of my very dangerous life in the Nightside, I’d never actually seen the Hospice before. Julien saw me frowning.
    “Something wrong?”
    “Don’t like hospitals,” I said bluntly. “They get on my nerves. And don’t even get me started on dentists. On bad days, I need a local anæsthetic, even to make an appointment.”
    “Back in my old days, the hospital was where you went to die,” said Julien, reflectively. “In Victorian times, surgeons were butchers, survival rates were frankly terrifying, and we had none of today’s wonder drugs. You had to be tough to survive a Victorian hospital. And don’t even get me started on the Elephant Man.”
    The Hospice itself was a huge, bright, white-walled building, sweeping up into the night sky. Searchlights blazed from the roof, to guide in air ambulances, flying carpets and the occasional winged unicorn. They’d had a dragon drop in on the roof once, many years ago, and they’re still talking about it. Still trying to get the last bits of dragon dung out of the guttering, by all accounts. That was one sick dragon. All the windows were mirrored one-way glass, to ensure privacy and keep passers-by from seeing things that might upset them. The Hospice was named after the original Saint Margaret, who founded the place when she passed through the Nightside, many centuries ago.
    “She didn’t stay long,” said Julien, when I tried to impress him with my limited knowledge. “We don’t get many saints in the Nightside, as a rule.”
    “Gosh,” I said. “Imagine my surprise.”
    “But she did hang around long enough to found a much-needed leper Hospice. She ran it herself, tending the lepers with her own hands, until she could find someone brave enough to take over; and then she couldn’t get out of the Nightside fast enough. The lepers didn’t bother her, but she felt contaminated by the general
moral ambience
. Which is fair enough. The Hospice evolved, through various fits and starts, into the Hospice you see before you, the most impressive and experienced of its kind. It deals with supernatural and super-science medical problems, and all the extreme and unnatural cases that inevitably occur in a free-thinking community like ours. It was either this, or fire-bombing whole areas of the Nightside on a regular basis. And don’t think that wasn’t discussed. The Hospice is supported by many good friends and grateful ex-patients, and even more people with a thoughtful eye to the future.”
    “You still wouldn’t catch me dead in there,” I said solemnly.
    “That joke was old when I was young,” Julien said crushingly.
    •  •  •
    We walked through the car-park and headed for the main front doors. We’d barely got half-way there before a whole bunch of heavily armed security people emerged suddenly from all sides to cover us. Some wore old military outfits, some wore specially adapted battle armour, and every single one of them kept their weapons trained very seriously on Julien and me. I looked casually around, careful to appear conspicuously unimpressed. All the security people had the same cold, focused, dangerous look. I knew who they were immediately. Who they had to be. A lot of them recognised me, and there was a lot of glancing around to find someone ready to make the first move. I could all but see the buck shifting in mid air. After a certain amount of glancing and muttering, they all carefully chose to point their weapons between me and Julien rather than directly at us.
    Just so I wouldn’t feel too threatened.
    They were all of them graduates of the Fortress, that heavily fortified refuge for people who had been abducted by aliens and were determined never to let that happen again. The Fortress contained more big guns, high