discover, it's bound to affect everyone here. Maybe we should invite some of these watchers along, as backup, for when things get... difficult.'
'No,' I said immediately. 'Walker represents the Authorities; and all they care about is maintaining the status quo. If we do get close to some real answers, I wouldn't put it past them to order us all killed. Just in case.'
Sinner looked at me. 'You don't seem unduly worried at the prospect.'
I shrugged. 'There's always been someone who wants me dead. The Authorities can just get in the queue. Besides, we've danced this dance before, Walker and I. As long as I'm leading, and he's following, I have the advantage.'
'I don't like being watched,' Madman said abruptly. 'But then, I know who's watching us. We're not alone here. We're never alone. They watch from the other side of our mirrors, and they hate us for being real. Always turn your mirrors to the wall when you sleep, so they can't come through.'
'Well,' I said, after a pause. 'Thank you for that insight ...'
'I'm not mad,' Madman said sadly. 'It would be so much easier, for me and for everyone else, if I was, but... if you could see what I have Seen ... the world isn't what we think it is, and never has been. Where are we going next?'
I blinked a few times, then decided to just answer the question. 'We need to get to the restaurant area, in Uptown. I can find Herne from there. But it's a question of distance. You can bet Walker will be able to track us on any of the usual forms of mass transport, and I hate to make things easy for him.'
'Why don't you get a car?' said Sinner.
I actually shuddered. 'Are you serious? You see the traffic on that road? That's not commuting, that's evolution in action! Half the things that charge back and forth only look like cars, and the other half run on magics so upsetting they'd give Pretty Poison palpitations. And don't even think about sticking your thumb out; someone would steal it.'
'I know a way we can get to Uptown,' Pretty Poison said unexpectedly. 'I can take us straight there. If that's what you want, Sidney.'
'Well, of course,' said Sinner. 'But I didn't know you could...'
A halo of flies sprang up around Pretty Poison's head, buzzing loudly. Vicious claws thrust out of her elegant fingers as she traced fiery sigils on the air. Her face disappeared into shadow, in which two sullen red glows burned. I actually fell back a step. Madman just looked at her sadly.
Pretty Poison said something that hurt our ears to hear it, and a circle of hell-fire sprang up around all of us. Sulphur yellow flames that stank of brimstone, though the heat couldn't reach us. The flames leapt high, then died down again, and as quickly as that we were Uptown. The flames snapped off, and Pretty Poison looked like a woman again. I shook my head, disoriented. Just then, in the moment of transition, it seemed to me that I had heard uncountable voices, crying out in torment... I looked at Pretty Poison, who smiled back demurely.
'I didn't know you could do that,' said Sinner, framing his words with what I thought was considerable calm, under the circumstances.
'Just a quick side-step through the Infernal Realms,' said Pretty Poison. 'After all, I am a demon succubus, Sidney darling. We have to be able to get absolutely anywhere; it's in the job description.'
'I saw you,' said Sinner. 'Just for a moment there, I saw you the way you really are.'
She looked at the ground. 'A girl can't help her background, Sidney.'
'It's all right,' he said. 'It doesn't matter. I've seen your true form before. It was the first thing they showed me when I arrived in Hell. It doesn't change how I feel. I love you for who you are, not what you are.'
'I've never understood that,' said Pretty Poison.
'Of course not,' Sinner said kindly. 'You're a demon from Hell.'
They laughed quietly together. I looked around me. The crowds bustling up and down the busy street had just seen four people arrive out of nowhere in a circle of hell-fire, but no-one seemed particularly interested. This was the Nightside, after all. People (and others) minded their own business here, and expected the same courtesy from everyone else. Though they did give us a little more room than most. I started off up the street, and my companions followed. I knew where we were, and I knew where to find Herne. I'd been here before. Uptown has all the best clubs and restaurants, the fashionable places where fashionable people meet, but even the gaudiest light casts a shadow, and that was where we'd find Herne.
I passed by an especially renowned bistro, the kind of place where even the finger food costs an arm and a leg, and then took a sudden turn into a dimly lit side street. The contrast between the bistro's brightly coloured :come-on and the alleyway that led to its rear couldn't have been greater. The side street was cold and wet and grimy, and it only took half a dozen steps before you knew you were in a whole different world. The street gave out onto a gloomy back square, part of the squalid maze of back alleys, garbage-strewn squares, and cul-de-sacs that gave access to the restaurants' back entrances. The side of fashionable eating that the customers never saw. The tradesmen's' entrance, the staff's entrance, and the dumping grounds for all the food the restaurants no longer wanted. Which was why the homeless and the street people and the bums of the Nightside came here, to cluster together away from the indifferent everyday world.
I looked around Rats' Alley. It hadn't changed It was darker here than anywhere else in the Nightside, and it had nothing to do with the lack of street lighting. This was a darkness of the heart and of the soul, which touched everything at the bottom of the heap. The bright flaring neon from the main streets didn't penetrate, and even the blue-white glow from the overly large moon above seemed somehow muted. The smell was appalling, a thick organic stench of rot and filth and accumulated despair. The cobbled street was sticky underfoot. People
lived here, in the shadows, a small community of the lost and the destitute. Not so much forgotten as wilfully overlooked. Sinner moved in beside me as I paused at the entrance to the square.
'It's a long way down from the top,' I said. 'But you're never so far up you can't fall. At least in Rats' Alley he has company. A lot of the homeless and destitute end up here, because this is where restaurant staff dump unwanted food at the end of their shifts. Everything from scraps to whole meals. It's cheaper to feed it to the bums than pay to have it carted away.'
'Why is it called Rats' Alley?' said Pretty Poison.
'Why do you think?' I said. 'And watch where you step.'
'I never realised there were so many homeless in the Nightside,' said Sinner. 'It's like a whole community here. A shanty town for the lost.'
'I think we're supposed to call them street people these days,' I said. 'Because if we call them homeless, it begs the question of why we're not finding homes for them. And they've always been here. The Nightside's finances are based on scamming losers, and it's never been kind to failures.'
Rats' Alley was what everyone called the square and its tributaries, packed full of cardboard boxes, lean-to shelters, plastic tenting, and clusters of people huddled shape-lessly together under blankets. Men and women of all ages and sizes, thrown together like shipwreck victims, refugees from the overthrown countries of their lives. Bright eyes showed here and there in the shadows, and glimmers of light on what might have been weapons. They might be down and out, but they didn't care for being stared at.
'Do they have dogs?' said Madman. 'I thought all homeless people had dogs.'
'Not around here,' I said. 'These people would eat a dog if it showed up. Or the rats would. They have serious rats around here. That's why the street people stick together. So the rats won't drag them off in the night.'
Sinner looked at me. 'You seem to know this place very well, John.'
'I used to live here,' I said. 'Years ago, when things had got really bad. This is probably the only place in the Nightside where my name and history mean nothing. They'll take anyone here. And this was a great place to bide from everyone, even myself. Having to concentrate on keeping warm and dry, and where the hell your next meal is coming from, is very useful when you don't want to think about other things.'
'How long were you here?' said Pretty Poison.
'I don't know. Long enough. This is where I first met Razor Eddie. He still sleeps here, sometimes.' I stepped cautiously forward into the square, looking around me for familiar faces as my eyes adjusted to the gloom. 'That's Sister Morphine over there, in what's left of her habit. A Carmelite nun who chose to come here and live among the street people, to preach and to console them. Her veins manufacture all kinds of drugs for the needy, expressed through her tears. And there's never any shortage of reasons for tears in Rats' Alley. Her tears are shed
