Nightside 10 - The Good the Bad and the Uncanny

Revert cage brought up the rear, carrying improvised weapons. Carnaby sneered at me.
    “Did you think I’d be grateful?” he said flatly.
    I glanced quickly about me. Mother Connell was already out from behind her table, her massive hands closing into impressive fists, but by the time she’d forced her way through the packed crowds, it would probably all be over, one way or the other. The Hyde loomed up before us, a great wedge of bone and muscle with blood on his breath and gleeful murder in his eyes. Screech took a graceful step forward, and punched the Hyde in the throat. The sheer impact of the blow sent the Hyde staggering backwards, and the crunching sound of shattering trachea was horribly loud in the sudden quiet. Screech watched interestedly as the Hyde sank to his knees, clawing desperately at his destroyed throat, dying by inches. Carnaby let out a wordless cry of rage and waved the Reverted men forward. I stepped up and stared the head Revert right in the eyes, stopping him in his tracks. Huge and brutal, only half-way human, he couldn’t meet my gaze. He backed away, swinging his low-browed head from side to side, then he turned and lumbered back to the safety of the cage. The others followed him. And Carnaby Jones was left standing all alone.
    “Shall I kill him for you?” said Screech.
    “No,” I said. “I’m not feeling merciful. Let’s get out of this shit hole. And this information of yours had better be worth it.”
    “Get me to where I need to be, and I promise I’ll tell you something to your disadvantage,” said Lord Screech.
    Some nights you just shouldn’t get out of bed.

TWO
    Hot Pursuit in a Cold Town
    Outside the Dragon’s Mouth, the air was fresh and sharp and full of familiar scents. All kinds of cooking, from all kinds of cultures; blood and sweat and musk blasting out of the dance halls; the lingering reminders of a thousand different kinds of sin. I took a deep breath to clear my head. Getting Lord Screech all the way across the Nightside to the infamous Osterman Gate would have been tricky and dangerous enough at the best of times, but with Walker and all his various people out and about, keeping under the radar was going to be more than usually difficult.
    The Osterman Gate is an ancient crystal amulet the size of an elephant, and the only dimensional gateway in the Nightside that leads directly to Shadows Fall; that remarkable little town in the back of beyond where legends go to die, when the world stops believing in them. And now, it seemed, home to the elven Court in exile. Normally, you got to Shadows Fall by the Underground rail system, but Walker’s people would have all the stations staked out by now. Along with the Street of the Gods, the World Beneath, and all the other subterranean routes and hidden paths. Walker was nothing if not thorough. So, unfortunately, all that remained was the most dangerous route of all. The roads.
    There are many roads leading in and out of the Nightside, and wise people have nothing at all to do with them. The traffic that roars up and down our streets hardly ever stops, and it’s better that way for everyone. There are cars and trucks, ambulance chasers and motorcycle messengers, horse-drawn equipages and futuristic vehicles that often don’t have wheels or windows or any regard for the rules of the road. Every single one of them in a hell of a hurry to get where it’s going, usually to somewhere even stranger and more dangerous than the Nightside.
    Ambulances that run on distilled suffering, ice wagons that carry blocks of frozen holy water, and ghost trams that stop for no man. Articulated vehicles as long as city blocks carrying hazardous and forbidden materials, silent hearses carrying the kind of cargo that has to be fought back into its coffin at regular intervals; and not everything that looks like a car is a car. There are things in the traffic that feed on slower things. Sometimes I look at the main roads, and I don’t see traffic; I see a jungle on wheels.
    Which is why no-one with any sense uses the roads unless he absolutely has to.
    I don’t own a car. I have my own ways of getting places. But when I do need one, I throw myself on the kindness of strange friends. I got out my phone and called Dead Boy. An old friend and occasional partner in crime, Dead Boy owned a truly magnificent car that had strayed into the Nightside from some future time-line. It could beat up anything on four wheels, and had never