The Bride Wore Black Leather

the crowds, then darting out the back door. Raised voices fell away behind me, caught up in new and unexpected quarrels with people who didn’t take kindly to being shoved. I scrambled over low walls, doubled back and forth, always keeping to the darkest shadows, taking all kinds of short cuts and connections that most people didn’t even know existed.
    And, finally, I ended up in a garbage-strewn back alley, somewhere downwind of the old theatre district; leaning heavily against a wall covered with overlapping yellowing posters, advertising old shows and faded triumphs. Breathing so hard my chest ached, and trying to persuade my racing heart to return to something like normal behaviour before it burst right out of me. My head pounded, my face was wet with sweat, and my hands were shaking so bad I couldn’t even haul a handkerchief out of my pocket to mop my face. Getting far too old for this on-the-run shit.
    I comforted myself with the memory of the Sun King’s face as I threw black pepper in his eyes; and again, when Julien booted him in the ’nads. Thinking he could impress me with all that living-god crap. I’ve fought my way up and down the Street of the Gods more than once. And I looked forward to seeing his face again, when I finally tracked him down and took my own sweet time killing him. It had been a long long time since I’d felt this angry, and I hugged that cold comfort to my heart. I would see the Sun King die in agony and horror for what he’d made me do to Julien. Not that Julien would have approved or even wanted such a revenge taken, on his behalf; but then, he always was a better man than me.
    Revenge is simply justice with teeth.
    I slowly straightened up and looked around me. I still couldn’t breathe without hurting, but my vision had cleared, and my thoughts were finally racing faster than my heart. I couldn’t stay here. It was enough out of the way to give me time to consider what to do next, but with so many on my trail, someone would find me soon, if only by accident. So I raised my gift and used it to find a way into the cemetery dimension attached to the Necropolis. We bury our dead in a very separate pocket dimension, only loosely attached to the Nightside. Because when we put our dead to rest, we prefer them to stay that way and not come back and bother us. It seemed to me that the cemetery’s many protections and defensive magics might well be enough to hide my presence. And, of course, most people have enough sense to stay out of the cemetery. It’s not a good place; it’s meant for the dead, not visitors.
    I focused my gift, found one of the drifting places where the cemetery dimension occasionally overlaps with the Nightside, and concentrated hard. A door that hadn’t been there before, and never would be again, appeared in the alley wall opposite me. I held the door in place with my gift and pushed it open with an effort of will. Beyond the door was only darkness. I walked gratefully forward into it, and the door closed behind me.
    •  •  •
    The cold got to me first, hitting me hard and cutting me like a knife. It rattled in my lungs like razor blades, and sucked all the warmth right out of me. I hugged myself tightly and stamped my feet hard. The graveyard stretched endlessly away before me, a whole world of the dead. The Nightside has been burying its reluctantly departed in this very private place for centuries. Row upon row, rank upon rank, graves and their headstones, for as far as the eye could see in any direction.
    It was a different kind of night from the Nightside, darker, with an almost palpable gloom. A thick pearlescent ground fog curled slowly around my ankles, almost deliberately. Like some great grey cat making itself known, not necessarily affectionately. Up in the black black sky, there was no moon, only a few long smears of multi-coloured stars, gaudy as a cheap ring on a tart’s finger.
    Headstones everywhere, of stone and marble, steel and porcelain, according to the fashion of the day, with lengthy inscriptions or none at all. Catafalques and mausoleums, simple or ornate, decadent or utilitarian. Some with cold neon, some without. Statues of weeping angels and shifty-looking cherubs, while crouching gargoyles leered down from the tops of monuments, guarding family repositories. And everywhere you looked, all kinds of religious symbols. Ancient and modern, sacred and profane; and some from religions no-one even remembers any more.
    I