Nightside 02 - Agents of Light and Darkness by Simon R. Green

Author:Simon R. Green [Green, Simon R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Published: 2013-10-12T16:00:00+00:00

It took a while, but eventually we turned up a single embossed business card, proclaiming a performance by Nasty Jack Starlight at the old Styx Theatre, dated that very day. Or, more properly, night.

“So Starlight’s back in town,” I said. “Wouldn’t have thought he was the Boys’ cup of tea.”

“Has to be a connection,” said Suzie. “I know for a fact that Starlight’s supposed to have supplied certain items to the Collector in the past.”

“Let’s go talk to the man,” I said. “See what he knows.”

“Let’s,” said Suzie. “I’m in the mood to talk forcibly to someone. Possibly even violently.”

“Never knew a time when you weren’t,” I said generously.

We walked through the streets of the Nightside, through a city under siege. There were angels everywhere now, soaring across the night sky, plunging down to snatch victims right out of the street, spreading terror and destruction. There were screams and cries, fires and explosions. Dark plumes of smoke rose from burning buildings on all sides. People had been driven out into the streets, as homes and businesses and hiding places collapsed into rubble behind them. Everywhere I looked there were salt statues, and bodies impaled on lamp-posts. Burned and blackened corpses lay piled up in the gutters, and once I saw someone turned inside out, still horribly alive and suffering. Suzie put him out of his misery. Judgement Day had come to the Nightside, and it wasn’t pretty. There was gun-fire all over the place, and fiery explosions, and now and again I felt the fabric of the world shake as some poor desperate fool leveled heavy-duty magics against the invading angels. Nothing stopped them, or even slowed them down. Grey men in grey suits stood unnaturally still in doorways, or looked out of alleyways, or walked untouched out of fire-gutted buildings. They were everywhere, and people ran howling before them, driven like cattle to the slaughter.

Suzie and I hadn’t been out in the street five minutes before an angel came swooping down out of the night sky, brilliant as a falling star, fierce and irrevocable, blazing wings spread wide, heading straight for me. I gave it my best significant glare, but it kept coming. Suzie pulled the Speaking Gun’s case out of her jacket, and the angel changed course immediately, sweeping over our heads and flashing down the street behind us like a snow-white comet. Suzie and I stopped and looked at each other. Suzie weighed the case in her hand.

“Guess word about the Speaking Gun has got around.”

“So much for the element of surprise,” I said.

She sniffed. “I’d rather have the element of naked threat any day.”

We started off down the street again, walking unhurriedly while everyone else ran, and blood an chaos flowed around us. Suzie put the Gun’s case away again, then unconsciously rubbed that hand against her jacket, over and over, as though trying to clean it.

The Styx was an old, abandoned theatre, set well back from the main drag, in one of the quieter backwaters of the Nightside.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.