planned for all the Nightside immortals, and it isn’t over yet. But I hadn’t expected Hadleigh Oblivion to be here, guarding the door, preventing me from making my escape. He would have seen though any face I took on. He shouldn’t have been here. You shouldn’t have been here. What were you doing here, tonight of all nights? Well . . . It doesn’t matter. I will do what I will do, and none of you can stop me.”
He laughed in my face, then turned and plunged into the watching crowd. They shrank back with loud cries of alarm, but he was already in among them, his face changing as he flesh-danced. In the space of a moment, he was someone else, and in all the confusion no-one was able to say who he’d changed into. There was a general rush to the door, to get out of the ballroom. Hadleigh stood his ground, and raised one hand. Bolts of lightning stabbed down out of nowhere, striking again and again inside the ballroom, making a barrier between him and everyone else. The light was blinding, and the air stank of ozone. The rush to the door was over as soon as it had begun. Everyone stood very still, looking nervously around them, trying to spot the danger in their midst; but wherever they looked, only familiar faces looked back. Razor Eddie and Dead Boy forced their way through the crowd to join me. I looked at them both carefully.
“Oh come on,” said Dead Boy. “Who’d look like me if they didn’t have to?”
“Tell me something only you could know,” I said.
“All right,” said Dead Boy. “You’re a dick.”
We both laughed. Razor Eddie looked at me strangely.
“We both loved the X-Men movies,” I explained.
Razor Eddie nodded and produced his pearl-handled straight razor. The steel blade shone supernaturally bright, and everyone felt a sudden strong desire to be somewhere else. I nodded, and Eddie put his razor away again. Some things you can’t fake. We all looked out over the watching crowd.
“How do you want to do this?” Dead Boy said quietly.
“I use my gift,” I said, just as quietly. “He can’t hide from that. I’ll pick him out, and then you two help me slam him to the floor and stamp on his head until we’re sure he can’t concentrate enough to shape-change again.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” said Razor Eddie.
I raised my gift again. It was getting to be hard work now; the more I used my gift, the more it took out of me. I felt a quick runnel of blood spurt out of one nostril, and a sharp fierce pain filled my forehead. I’d pay for this later; but right now there was work to be done. I forced my way past the pain and concentrated; and immediately a single figure stood out in the crowd. I plunged forward, with Dead Boy and Razor Eddie right behind me, and the crowd scattered before us like startled pigeons. I ignored all the cries of shock and protest, fixed on the figure before me. He didn’t try to run. He stood still and regarded me with a single raised eyebrow.
“And what do you think you’re doing?” said Hadleigh Oblivion.
“Nice try,” I said. “But Hadleigh’s still at the door, where I told him to be.”
“I was standing at the door,” said Hadleigh, “until Bettie Divine came over and said you needed help, so I came forward. Whoever’s at the door now, that isn’t me.”
I didn’t even look at the door. “Nice try, Rogue,” I said. “But Hadleigh wouldn’t leave his position unless I personally put someone there to relieve him. My gift found you here. And my gift is never wrong.”
Hadleigh’s face slumped suddenly, and his shape changed in a moment. Where Hadleigh had been standing there was now an eight-foot-tall centipede, black as night with a nightmare head, striking out with dozens of clawed legs. It reared up so that its flat head banged against the ceiling, its complex mouth parts clacking loudly. The immortals climbed all over each other, trying to get away. Dead Boy waded in, slamming powerful punches into its heaving thorax, while Razor Eddie darted and whirled around it, severing one clawed leg after another with his straight razor.
The centipede disappeared, replaced by a huge, muscular man I didn’t recognise. A great brute of a man, with a flat, characterless face as though all the detail of his creation had gone into his massive muscles. He lashed out at Dead Boy, and the unstoppable blow picked Dead Boy up and set him flying a dozen feet away. He crashed to the floor hard and didn’t move. He couldn’t feel pain, but he could still take damage. Razor Eddie cut at the brute again and again, moving so fast now he was only a blur; but no matter how deep his blades cut into the brute’s flesh, it healed again immediately. (That was how he could handle the mirror shard without obviously damaging his hand, I thought.) Dead Boy lurched to his feet again and charged the brute, slamming into it from behind. The brute staggered, but didn’t go down. Dead Boy hit him hard, while Razor Eddie cut at the brute’s throat again and again, trying to keep the wound open long enough to do some damage.
I stood back and watched. I can fight if I have to, but it’s never been what I do best. I wiped blood from my face with the back of my hand, and raised my gift one last time. My head was throbbing sickly now, but I have always been in control of my gift and never the other way round. I concentrated, reaching out, and found the switch inside Rogue’s head, the one he used every time he decided to make a change. And then it was the easiest thing in the world for me to push the switch all the way back. The brute disappeared, replaced by a very surprised-looking Rogue. He opened his mouth to say something, and I stepped forward and kneed him briskly in the nuts. Rogue folded over, and Dead Boy and Razor Eddie beat him to the ground with great thoroughness. Rogue raised his head and looked up at Razor Eddie with my face as though that might slow him down. Eddie kicked him in my face, and by the time Rogue crashed unconscious to the floor, he looked like himself again.
The watching immortals applauded loudly. Razor Eddie and Dead Boy checked to make sure that Rogue wasn’t faking by kicking him a few times somewhere painful, then looked at me.
“What will you do with him now?” said Dead Boy.
“He goes to Shadow Deep,” I said. “Deep down under the Nightside, in the endless dark, nailed into his cell until he dies there. He can change shape all he wants in his cell; it’ll be company for him.” I looked at Eddie. “At the end there, when he looked like me, do you suppose that’s the fight between us that your friend saw?”
“Oh no,” said Eddie. “That’s still to come.”
“You can’t send him to Shadow Deep,” said Hadleigh Oblivion.
We all looked round sharply. None of us had heard him arrive, but then no-one ever does.
“Why not?” I said politely.
“Because he’s a flesh-dancer,” said Hadleigh. “He has control over every part of his body. He could probably ooze out of his cell through the cracks around the door. He’s far too dangerous to be allowed to run loose in the Nightside.”
He leaned over the unconscious immortal, grabbed his shirt front, and pulled Rogue’s face close to his own. Hadleigh inhaled deeply, and all the colour went out of Rogue’s face. Hadleigh continued to inhale, and the immortal’s face cracked and fell apart; and then every part of him collapsed into dust. Hadleigh straightened up, brushing dust from his hands. Several of the watching immortals were noisily sick. Dead Boy whooped loudly.
“You have got to teach me how to do that!”
Razor Eddie sighed. “Can’t take him anywhere.”
And that was my last case as a private investigator. Not a bad one to go out on. I caught the murderer, stopped a plan to take over the Nightside, and made the front pages of the
FOUR
One Last Night of Freedom
Under pressure, I agreed to hold my stag night at Strangefellows, on the grounds that whatever mess we made there, it wouldn’t show, and also that whenever the trouble inevitably broke out . . . no-one would notice. It’s that kind of bar and has been for centuries. The party was already well underway by the time I got there, thanks to my little visit to the Ball of Forever overrunning, and joy and merriment were already unconfined, not to mention pissed out of their skulls. The bar was packed wall to wall with disreputable customers as I clattered down the heavy metal stairway into the great stone pit that makes up the bar proper. I couldn’t believe I knew that many
