The Bride Wore Black Leather (31 page)

“Of course not,” I lied.

Suzie looked at me, for a long moment. “It must have been very hard for you, out there on your own. All your friends turned against you. I’m glad you found Cathy.”

“More like I found him!” Cathy said cheerfully. “So you never wanted the bounty on John’s head?”

“There’s only ever been one bounty, as far as I was concerned,” said Suzie. “And that was on the Sun King. No-one messes with my man and gets away with it.”

“You are a very frightening person,” said Cathy. “Don’t know what he sees in you.”

But they were both smiling. They never doubted me for a moment. They were always better people than me.

We all stopped, and looked around, as we heard sounds of movement from behind the altar. And there was the Sun King, rising to his feet, brushing himself down in a fussy sort of way. He turned to face us and smiled, completely unharmed. His Coat of Vivid Colours had no bullet-holes in it, and no blood-stains. His gaze was very cold.

“I can’t believe he’s getting up again,” said Suzie. “I must be losing my touch.”

She stepped forward and shot him in the face with both barrels, at point-blank range. The sound was deafening, and smoke filled the air. But when it cleared, he was still standing there, untouched. He smiled at Suzie, showing his teeth, defying her. I’d always suspected that with the power of the Entities behind him, no mortal weapon could stop the Sun King. Suzie lowered her shotgun, not even bothering to rack fresh shells. Oddly, she didn’t seem that upset. She looked at me and surprised me with a quick wink.

“Good thing I brought a few friends along,” said Suzie.

Razor Eddie and Dead Boy strode into St. Jude’s as though they’d been waiting at the door all along, ready for their cue. Which they probably had been, though only Suzie could have persuaded them to go along with such a plan. (Because Razor Eddie doesn’t take orders, and Dead Boy always wants to be the first into any dangerous situation.) Razor Eddie looked uneasily about him. As far as I knew, he’d never seen the inside of St. Jude’s before. He might be the Punk God of the Straight Razor, but he was in the presence of a greater power now, and he knew it. He nodded brusquely to me.

“I would have beaten you in the cemetery if something hadn’t been messing with my head. Not my fault if my heart wasn’t really in it.” He smiled at me for a moment, then turned to glare at the Sun King. “As for you, when I decide to kill John Taylor, it will be my idea and no-one else’s.”

“Can’t take you anywhere,” said Dead Boy. He pushed in beside Eddie and smiled ruefully at me. “We would have been here sooner, but it took me a while to put myself back together again. Did you have to take me apart quite so thoroughly? You know I’ve never been any good at sewing. Still, I’m sure you’ll be relieved to know that you didn’t damage my car in the least.”

“Are you both clear in your minds towards me now?” I said, smiling despite myself. “Are we all friends again?”

“Move on,” said Razor Eddie. “I wasn’t myself.” It was as close to an apology as he could get.

“Being dead means never having to say you’re sorry,” Dead Boy said solemnly. “It was Suzie here that did it. Having her around was enough to break the influence. She is a very . . . single-minded person, and very attached to you, in her own endearing and really quite scary way.”

Razor Eddie nodded. “She intimidated the influence right out of me. Nothing like having a shotgun shoved up your nose to concentrate the mind wonderfully.”

“You have such friends, John,” said the Sun King. “You should be very proud of them.”

Larry and Tommy Oblivion came strutting in, to join the party. Tommy was grinning broadly, and Larry looked as pleasant as his dead face and dour personality would permit.

“Once the Library broke the Sun King’s influence over us, it never got a proper grip again,” said Tommy happily. “And then we joined up with Suzie and these two bad boys, and came here.” He glared at the Sun King and stuck out his tongue at him.

“And it did help,” said Larry, “When we were presented with proof that Julien Advent wasn’t dead after all.”

Footsteps approached the church from outside, and I spun round to face the door; a sudden wild pleading hope filling my heart to bursting. And through the door came Dr. Benway and Julien Advent. I staggered and almost fell as the strength went out of my legs, and I had to grab onto a nearby pew to hold myself up. Julien smiled at me; and in that smile was all the understanding and forgiveness in the world. I ran to him, and hugged him, and held on to him like a drowning man who’s finally been offered an outstretched hand. He patted me on the back as I held him to me, and I didn’t need to see his face to know he was looking extremely embarrassed. Neither of us has ever been the touchy-feely kind. But right then I didn’t care. I finally let him go and stepped back to look him over. He looked fine.

“No,” he said, smiling. “I’m not dead. I never was.” He looked at the Sun King, and his smile was strangely understanding. “You could have let me die, but you didn’t. Because you couldn’t bring yourself to kill me. Despite everything, despite your masters’ orders, you couldn’t do something you knew was wrong.”

“No,” said the Sun King. “How could I kill my oldest friend? But I needed John Taylor distracted, and the whole Nightside outraged enough to want him dead, so I went with the thing that would have upset me most.” He looked at me. “All an illusion, John. You only thought you killed him. I put him in a coma and tucked him away in Ward 12A. Seemed appropriate. And then I convinced everyone else to see things my way. You keep thinking of me as the villain, John, but I’m really not. I only do what I have to do, for the greater good.” He looked at Julien. “You were quite definitely in a coma. How . . . ?”

“Shouldn’t have put me in Ward 12A,” said Julien. “You and your sense of humour . . . Dr. Benway spotted me the moment she made her next rounds. She woke me up, and we went out into the Nightside together and joined up with these good people.”

“Suzie broke the influence, but it kept creeping back,” said Dead Boy. “Until they came along. Hard to believe someone is dead when they’re standing right in front of you insisting that they’re not. I mean, I know dead; and he isn’t.”

“Suzie brought us here,” said Razor Eddie. “So we could make amends for being . . . mistaken.”

“And so we could kick the Sun King’s arse,” said Larry Oblivion. “The Nightside may be a spiritual cesspit, but it’s our spiritual cesspit.”

“You old romantic, you,” said Tommy.

The Sun King wasn’t paying any attention to us. He only had eyes for Dr. Benway. He studied the old woman, with her grey hair and lined face, still wearing her white doctor’s coat, and his smile was a very gentle thing indeed.

“So, after all these years . . . Princess Starshine has returned to join her Sun King,” he said. “You always were my touchstone, Emily. You were the one I wanted to make a better world for. When I finally came out of the White Tower, and you weren’t there . . . When I found out I’d lost you, and the life we should have had together . . . It was like I’d lost everything that mattered. All I had left, was the Dream. It’s all I’ve got left now. I will bring about a better world. Because I am the good guy here, and I will not be stopped.”

“I keep telling you,” I said. “In the Nightside, it’s not enough just to be the good guy. To fight the real bad guys, like your Aquarian masters, you need fighters, monsters, outcasts, like us.”

“No!” said the Sun King. “I have given my life to this! I saw the Dream, in the Summer of Love, and it was a real thing! It should have happened; it would have happened if I’d still been here! Well, I’m here now, and I will make up for my absence; and all of you together aren’t enough to stop me! I will do this! I will! You aren’t enough!”

“Just as well I’m here, then,” said the Lord of Thorns.

We all looked round again. The Lord of Thorns didn’t walk through the doorway; he was suddenly there, with us, a cold, forbidding presence in his long, grey robes, long, grey hair and beard, leaning on a heavy wooden staff. Looking like one of those Old Testament prophets who never did believe in sugar-coating God’s words. He smiled upon the Sun King, and it was not a good smile.

“Did you really think you could lure me from this sacred place with your petty stratagems?” he said, his voice as unyielding as the ancient, grey, stone walls of St. Jude’s. “I have been here all along, watching and waiting. For this moment.”

“You can’t stop me!” shouted the Sun King. His face was flushed red, his eyes puffy as though he wanted to cry tears of sheer frustration, and there was something of the thwarted, petulant child in his voice. “Even all of you together don’t have the power to stand against me! All those long years I spent in the White Tower, learning terrible wisdoms at my masters’ feet, all to gain the power I needed, to do this thing! To do this one, necessary, thing!”

“It’s not your power,” I said. “It never was. You have nothing except for what the Entities let you have. To do their work. If you could only see who and what they really are, you’d throw that power back in their faces.”

“What?” said the Sun King. “I don’t understand. What are you talking about? Why would I do such a thing?”

“Because you’re the good guy,” I said. “And they’re not.”

And I raised my gift one last time and reached out with my mind, to find the Entities from Beyond, the Aquarians, or whatever the hell they really were. It took everything I had left, every last bit of hoarded strength. Blood coursed down my face, from my eyes and my nose. It ran from my ears, and spilled from my slack lips. I could feel things bleeding and breaking inside me, important things. I’d pushed myself and my gift further than I ever had before. Too far. No coming back from this. But after everything I’d done, after my lack of faith in those who’d loved me most, how could I not? It needed doing, so I did it. That’s always been my job. My legs started to buckle, and Cathy and Suzie moved quickly in on either side to hold me up. They were both speaking to me, saying urgent things, but I couldn’t hear them. I pushed past all the pain, refusing to be beaten by my own weakness, and concentrated on my gift. And I found my way to the Entities from Beyond and the world where they lived.

And once I’d done that, the greater power in St. Jude’s rose and bound all of us, everyone in the church, together; and used us as a focus to open a door between the Nightside and the other place. I couldn’t have done it on my own, but I wasn’t alone. My good friends were with me. In St. Jude’s, where prayers are answered, and miracles can happen.

The gateway lay before us, a great circle cut in the air itself, through which the other reality could be seen. Don’t ask me where it was. Outside; that’s all I can tell you. Not simply another world but another reality. A harsh light blasted into the church through the gateway, thick and foul and somehow spoiled. Far worse than the few drops of light that had spilled through before, pulled through by the Sun King’s presence. This was an alien light, from an alien place, never meant for human eyes. And through that light, that gateway, I could see the other place, so alien as to be almost beyond human comprehension. Think of a whole world, a whole universe, made up of insects crawling over a ball of dung, forever and ever. That’s as close as I can some to describing what I saw there.

The Sun King cried out, in horror and disgust, as the Entities took him over and spoke through him.

“Yes. This is what we are. This is what we do. We use up worlds, consuming them entirely. And then we move on, to the next. Because we’re always hungry. This world, this reality, is all used up. We need . . . a new ball of dung. Your world. Your reality. So we made this man into a weapon, to open the door for us. To let our light shine over the Nightside and make it our feeding ground. And after we are done here . . . your world is such a fine, rich, fecund place. Who knows how long we can make it last? A population like yours will feed us for generations. We are not the Entities from Beyond. We are not Aquarians. If you must have a name for us . . . call us Shiva Rising.”

The Sun King took off his tinted glasses with a trembling hand and let them drop to the floor, so he could look at us clearly. I’d never seen such misery in a man’s eyes.

“Send them away,” I said, through numb, unfeeling lips. “You brought them in; only you can send them back.”

“But then . . . I wouldn’t be the Sun King any more,” he said, in his own voice. “Only ordinary, everyday Harry Webb.”

Dr. Benway moved forward to stand with me, holding the Sun King’s gaze with her own. “That was enough for both of us, once.”

“Harry Webb was my friend,” said Julien Advent, moving forward on my other side. “I’ve missed him. I could always depend on him, to do the right thing.”

“I was a drug addict, before I met you,” said the Sun King. “I thought . . . I’d found something better. But it was just another kind of addiction. Still, I know how to fight that.”

Shiva Rising’s voice filled the whole church, too huge a thing to be channelled through one man.

You cannot stop us! You cannot reject us, Sun King! We made you! We own you!

“Is that true, Harry?” said Dr. Benway.

The Sun King slowly turned his head to look at me. “I was wrong. I only saw what I wanted to see. But I . . . am still the good guy. So kill me, John Taylor. Do the hard but necessary thing. Break the link, and drive the Entities out of here. Save the world; because I can’t.”

“Haven’t you learned anything yet?” I said. “It’s easy to make amends by dying for a cause. Do the hard thing; live for what you believe in. Defy the Entities by deciding who you are for yourself. You invited them in; you can kick them out.”

“But I’m not strong enough!” said the Sun King.

“Good thing you’re not alone then,” said the Lord of Thorns. “And that this . . . is St. Jude’s.”

The Sun King smiled slowly. “I am the last one who remembers the Dream. The Summer of Love. The beautiful people. The love generation.” He turned and looked back into the gateway, at the Entities who had never been what he thought they were. He looked right into the terrible light, and he didn’t flinch. “I am the Sun King; and I am not what you made me, or intended me to be. In that wonderful summer of ’67, I was the most wonderful thing in it. And I still hold within me the love from that time, and the light. Take it.”