Nightingale lament

He got his revenge, but nothing had ever been said in the deal he made about being able to lie down again afterwards. He really should have read the small print. And so he goes on, a soul trapped in a dead body. Es­ sentially, he's possessing himself. He does good deeds because he has to. It's the only chance he has of break­ing the compact he made. He's a useful sort to have on your side - he doesn't feel pain, he can take a hell of a lot of damage, and he isn't afraid of anything in this world.

He's spent a lot of time researching his condition. He knows more about death in all its forms than any­one else in the Nightside. Supposedly.

He got up out of his car to greet me, all long gangling legs and arms, then leaned languidly against the side of the car. He was tall and adolescent thin, wearing a long, deep purple greatcoat over black leather trousers and shining calfskin boots. He wore a black rose in one lapel. The coat hung open, revealing his bare scarred torso. Being the revived dead, his body doesn't decay, but neither does it heal, so when he gets damaged on a case, as he often does, having no sense of self-preservation, Dead Boy stitches, staples, and super-glues his corpse-pale flesh back together again. Occasionally, he has to resort to duct tape. It's not a pretty sight. There were recent bullet holes in his great­coat, but neither of us mentioned them.

His long pale face had a weary, debauched, pre-Raphaelite look, with burning fever-bright eyes and a sulky pouting mouth with no colour to it. He wore a large floppy black hat over long dark curly hair. He drank whiskey straight from the bottle and munched chocolate biscuits. He offered me both, but I declined.

'I don't need to eat or drink,' Dead Boy said casu­ally. 'I don't feel hunger or thirst, or even drunkenness any more. I just do it for the sensations. And since it's hard for me to feel much of anything, only the most ex­treme sensations will do.' He produced a silver pill­box from inside his coat, spilled half a dozen assorted pills out onto his palm, and knocked them back with more whiskey.  'Marvelous stuff.  Little old Obeah woman makes them for me. It's not easy getting drugs strong enough to affect the dead. Please don't look at me like that, John. You always were an overly sensitive soul. What brings you to this charmless spot?'

'Julien Advent said you were working a case here. If I help you out, would you be willing to work with me on something?'

He considered the matter, eating another biscuit and absently brushing the crumbs off his lapels. 'Maybe. Does your case involve danger, gratuitous violence, and kicking the crap out of the ungodly?'

'Almost certainly.'

Dead Boy smiled. 'Then consider us partners. As­suming we survive my current assignment, of course.'

I nodded at the silent, brooding Necropolis. 'What's happened here?'

'A good question. It seems the Necropolis suffered an unexpected power cut, and all hell broke loose. I've been telling them for years they should get their own generator and hang the expense, but... Anyway, the cryonics section was very badly hit. I warned them about setting that up, too, but oh no, they had to be up to date, up to the moment, ready to meet any demand their customers might come up with.' He paused. 'I did try it out myself, once, wondering whether I could sleep it out in the ice until someone found an answer to my predicament, but it didn't work. I didn't even feel the cold. Just lay there, bored . . . Took me ages to get the icicles out of my hair afterwards, as well.'

I nodded like I was listening, but inside I was curs­ing silently. Another consequence of my actions at Prometheus Inc. No good deed goes unpunished . . .

If the cryonics section was the problem here, we were in for a really rough ride. Bodies have to be dead before they can be frozen and preserved, which means the soul has already departed. However, since some people have a firm suspicion of where their souls might be headed, they see cryonics as their last hope. Get a necromancer in after the body dies, and have him per­form the necessary rituals to tie the soul to the body. Then freeze it, and there they are, all safe and sound till Judgement Day. Or until the power cuts out. There were supposed to be all kinds of safe-guards, but. . . Once the power failed, all the frozen bodies would start defrosting, and the spell holding the souls to them would be short-circuited. So you'd end up with a whole bunch of untenanted thawing bodies, every one of them a ripe target for possession by outside forces.

'So,' I said, trying hard to sound calm and casual and not all worried. 'Do we know what's got into them?'

'Afraid not. Facts are a bit spotty. About two hours ago, everyone who worked here came running out screaming and refused to go back. Most just kept run­ning. And given the appalling things they deal with here every day as a matter of course, I think we can safely assume the oh shit factor is way off the scale. According to the one member of the Necropolis man­agement I talked to who wasn't entirely hysterical, we have five newly thawed bodies to deal with, all of them taken over by Something From Outside. Doesn't ex­actly narrow the field down, does it? The only good news is that the magical wards surrounding the Necropolis are still intact and holding. So whatever's in there is still in there.'

'Can't we just turn the power back on?' I said hope­fully.

Dead Boy gave me a pitying smile. 'Try and keep up with the rest of us, John. Power was reconnected some time back, but the damage had been done. The corpsicles' new tenants have made themselves at home, and their influence now extends over the whole building. The Necropolis's own tame spellslingers have tried all the usual techniques for putting down unwanted visi­tors from Beyond, from a safe distance, of course, but it seems the possessors are no ordinary imps or demons. We're talking extradimensional creatures, elder gods, many-angled ones - the right bastards of the Outer Dark. Not the sort to be bothered by your everyday expulsions or exorcisms. No, something re­ally nasty has taken advantage of the situation to wedge open a door into our reality, and if we don't figure out a way to slam it shut soon, there's no telling what might come howling through. So we get to go in there and serve the extradition papers in person. Aren't we the lucky ones?'

'Luck isn't quite the word I was going to use,' I said, and he laughed, entirely unconcerned.

I looked down at the ground before me. A narrow white line crossed the gravel, marking the boundary of the protective wards surrounding the Necropolis. It had been laid down in salt and silver and semen centuries before, to keep things in and keep things out. It re­mained unbroken, which was a good sign. Those old-time necromancers knew their business. I crouched clown and touched the white line with a tentative fin­gertip. Immediately I could feel the presence of the force wall, like an endless roll of thunder shaking the air. I could also feel a great pressure, pushing con­stantly from the other side. Something wanted out bad. It was raging at the wall that held it imprisoned, and it was getting stronger all the time. I snatched my hand back and straightened up again.

'Oh yes,' said Dead Boy, draining the last of his whiskey and throwing the bottle aside. 'Nasty, isn't it?' The bottle smashed on the gravel, but the sound seemed very small. Dead Boy fixed the front door of the Necropolis with a speculative look. 'Any ward will go down, if you hit it hard enough and long enough. So it's up to thee and me to go in there and clean their extradimensional clocks, while there's still time. Ah me, I do so love a challenge! Stop looking at me like that, it's going to be fun! Stick close to me, John. The charm the management gave me will get us past the wards, but it won't let you out again if we get sepa­rated.'

'Don't worry,' I said. 'I'll be right behind you. Hid­ing.'

Dead Boy laughed, and we crossed the barrier to­gether.

It hit us both at the same time, a psychic assault so powerful and so vile we both staggered and almost fell. Something was watching us, from behind the blind, windowless walls of the Necropolis. A presence per­meated the atmosphere, hanging on the air like an al­most palpable fog, something dark and awful and utterly alien to human ways of thinking. It felt like cry­ing and vomiting and the smell of your own blood, and it throbbed with hate. Approaching the Necropolis was likewading through an ocean of shit while someone you loved thrust knives into your face. Dead Boy just straightened his shoulders and took it in his stride, heading directly for the front door. I suppose there's nothing like having already died to put everything else in perspective. I gritted my teeth, hugged myself tightly to keep from falling apart, and stumbled forward into the teeth of the psychic assault.

We got to the door without anything nasty actually turning up to rip chunks off us, and Dead Boy rattled thedoor handle. From his expression, I gathered it wasn't supposed to be locked. He pushed at it with one hand, andit didn't budge. Dead Boy pulled back his hand and looked at it thoughtfully. I put my hand against the solid steel door, and it gave spongily, as though the substance, the reality of it, was being slowly leached out of it. My skin crawled at the contact, and I snatched my hand back and rubbed it thoroughly against my jacket. Dead Boy raised one booted foot and kicked the door in. The great slab of steel and silver flew inwards as though it were weightless, torn away from its hinges. It fell forward and slapped against the floor inside, making a soft, flat sound. Dead Boy strode over it into the entrance hall beyond. 1 hurried in after him as he struck a defiant pose,