Simon R Green
Agents of Light and Darkness
One
There is only the one church in the Nightside. It's called St. Jude's. I only ever go there on business. It's nowhere near the Street of the Gods, with its many and varied places of worship. It's tucked away in a quiet corner, shadowed and obscured, no part of the Nightside's usual bright and gaudy neon noir. It doesn't advertise, and it doesn't care if you habitually pass by on the other side. It's just there, for when you need it. Dedicated to the patron saint of lost causes, St. Jude's is an old, old place; a cold stone structure possibly older even than Christianity itself. The bare stone walls are grey and featureless, unmarked by time or design, with only a series of narrow slits for windows. One great slab of stone, covered with a cloth of white samite, serves as an altar, facing two rows of blocky wooden pews. A single silver cross hangs on the wall beyond the altar; and that's it. St. Jude's isn't a place for comfort, for frills and fancies and the trappings of religion. There is no priest or attendant, and there are no services. St. Jude's is, quite simply, your last chance in the Nightside for salvation, sanctuary, or one final desperate word with your God. Come to this church looking for a spiritual Band-Aid, and you could end up with a hell of a lot more than you bargained for.
Prayers are heard in St. Jude's; and sometimes answered.
I use the church occasionally as a meeting place. Neutral ground is so hard to come by in the Night-side. Only occasionally, though. All are welcome to enter St. Jude's, but not everyone comes out again. The church protects and preserves itself, and no-one wants to know how. But this time, I had a specific reason for being here. I was counting on the nature of the place to protect me from the terrible thing that was coming. From the awful creature I had very reluctantly agreed to meet.
I sat stiffly on the hard wooden seat of the front pew, huddled inside my white trench coat against the bitter chill that always permeated the place. I glared about me and tried not to fidget. Nothing to look a and nothing to do, and I wasn't about to waste my time in prayer. Ever since my enemies first tried to kill me as a child, I've learned the hard way that I can't depend on anyone but myself. I stirred restlessly, resisting the urge to get up and pace back and forth. Somewhere out there in the night, a force of destruction was heading straight for me, and all I could do was sit tight and wait for it to come. I let one hand drift down to the shoe box on the seat beside me, just to reassure myself it hadn't gone anywhere since the last time I checked. What was in the box might protect me from what was coming, or it might not. Life's like that; particularly in the Nightside. And especially when you're the famous-or infamous-John Taylor, who has been known to boast he can find anything. Even when it gets him into situations like this.
The dozen candles I'd brought and lit and placed around the church didn't do much to dispel the general gloom of the place. The air was still and cold and dank, and there were far too many shadows. Sitting there, in the quiet, listening to the dust fall, I could feel the age of the place, feel all the endless centuries pressing down on me. St. Jude's was supposed to be one of the oldest surviving buildings in the Nightside. Older than the Street of the Gods, or the Time Tower, older even than Strangefellows, the longest-running bar in the world. So old, in fact, and so long established as a place of worship that there are those who hint it might not even have been a church, originally.
Just a place where you could talk to your God, and sometimes get an answer. Whether you liked the answer you got was, of course, your problem.
It's only a short step from a burning bush to a burning heretic, after all. I try not to bother God, and hope He'll do me the same courtesy.
I don't know why there aren't any other churches in the Nightside. It's not that the people who come here aren't religious; it's more that the Nightside is where you go to do the things you know your God wouldn't approve of. Souls aren't lost here; they're sold or bartered or just plain thrown away in utter abandon. There are presences and avatars, and even Powers and Dominations, to be found on the Street of the Gods; and you can bargain with them for all the things you know your God wouldn't want you to have.
There are those who've tried to destroy St. Jude's, down the centuries. They aren't around any more, and St. Jude's still is. Though that could change this night, if I was wrong about what I had in the shoe box.
It was three o'clock in the morning, but then it always is in the Nightside. The night that never ends, and the hour that stretches. Three o'clock in the morning, the hour of the wolf, when a man's defenses are at their weakest. The time when most babies are born and most people die. That lowest of points, when a man can lie awake in his bed and wonder how his life could have turned out so very differently fro what he'd intended. And, of course, the very best time to make deals with the devil.
All the hairs on the back of my neck stood up suddenly, and my heart missed a beat, as though a cold hand had closed fleetingly around it. I lurched to my feet, an almost violent shudder running through me. She was close now. I could feel her presence, feel her gaze and cold intent turned upon me as she drew nearer. I grabbed up my shoe box and clutched it to my chest like a life preserver. I moved reluctantly out into the aisle, and turned to stand facing the only door. A single great slab of solid oak, five feet tail and five inches thick, locked and bolted. It wouldn't stop her. Nothing could. She was Jessica Sorrow the Unbeliever, and nothing in the world could stand against her. She was close now, very close. The monster, the abomination, the Unbeliever. There was a stillness to the air, like the tension that precedes the coming storm. The kind of storm that rips off roofs and drops dead birds out of the sky. Jessica Sorrow was coming to St. Jude's, because she'd been told I was there, and I had what she was looking for. And if they and I were wrong about that, she would make us all pay.
I don't carry a gun, or any other kind of weapon. I've never felt the need. And weapons wouldn't do any good against Jessica Sorrow anyway. Nothing could touch her any more. Something happened to her, long ago, and she gave up her humanity to become the Unbeliever. Now she doesn't believe in anything. And because she doesn't believe with such utter certainty, all the world and everything in it are nothing to her. None of it can affect her in the least. She can go anywhere, and do anything, and she does. She can do terrible, distressing things, and she does, and nothing touches her. She has no conscience and no morality, no pity and no restraint. The material world is like paper to her, and she rips it apart as she walks through it. Luckily for the world, she doesn't leave the Nightside much. And luckily for the rest of us here, there are long periods when she just sleeps or drops out of sight. But when she's up and walking, everyone gets the hell out of her way. Because when she concentrates her unbelief on anything or anyone, they disappear. Gone forever. Even the Street of the Gods closes up shop and goes home early when Jessica Sorrow is abroad in the night.
Her most recent rampage had been one of her worst, as she stormed through all the most sensitive parts of the Nightside, leaving a trail of chaos and destruction behind her as she searched obsessively for ... something. No one seemed too sure of exactly what that might be, and absolutely no one had any intention of getting close enough to her to ask. It had to be something special, something really powerful... but this was Jessica Sorrow, who was famous for not believing anything was special or powerful. What use could the Unbeliever have for material possessions any more? There was no shortage of objects of power in the Nightside, anything from wishing rings to description theory bombs, and every damn one of them was up for sale. But Jessica Sorrow would have none of them, and people and places vanished under her angry glare as she continued her rampage. The word was, she was looking for something so real she would
So Walker came to me, and told me to find it. Walker represents the Authorities. No-one really runs the Nightside, though many have tried, but the Authorities are the ones who step in and bang heads together
