Nightside 10 - The Good the Bad and the Uncanny by Simon R. Green Read Free Book Online Page A

don‘t, usually,” said the elf. “But we never miss an opportunity to put mere humans in their place.”
    And he and Ms. Fate marched purposefully forward to strike terror into the hearts of the ungodly. I stayed right where I was, considering my options. I’ve never been much of a one for brute force, mainly because I’ve never been very good at it. I had no doubt I’d have to get personally involved at some point, but I thought I’d wait and see what Ms. Fate and Lord Screech had to offer first.
    The shock-and-awe troopers clearly didn’t take a costumed super-heroine seriously, right up to the moment she hit their advancing front line like a grenade. She punched out one man, back-elbowed another in the throat, swung around and took out two more with a sweeping karate kick. Shocked cries of pain and horror filled the night as she waded right into the troopers, breaking heads and noses, beating them up and knocking them down, and making it all look easy. The troopers quickly rallied, striking out viciously with their truncheons, but somehow Ms. Fate was never where they thought she should be, and they did more damage to each other than they did to her.
    Ms. Fate had trained long and hard to be a costumed crime-fighter, and it showed.
    Lord Screech, on the other hand, was every inch the magnificent amateur; a man who never practised because he didn’t need to. He seemed simply to stroll into the mayhem, and men started dropping to the blood-stained ground. He moved languidly, gracefully, through the confused pack of armed men, and every time his hand shot out, there was the sound of breaking bone and cartilage, and blood flew everywhere. He moved so quickly none of the shock-and-awe troopers could even touch him.
    I sat on the bonnet of the Fatemobile, cheering my colleagues on but not so loudly as to draw unwelcome attention to myself. Screech and Ms. Fate didn’t seem to need my help. Until a new pack of troopers, twice the size of the original, came racing round the corner, and charged forward to join the fight. I sighed. Given that Walker was every inch a product of the old public school system, he seemed to have great difficulty in grasping the concept of playing fair.
    Screech and Ms. Fate moved quickly to stand back-to-back, surrounded by broken and bloodied figures crawling painfully about on the street. They could have run back to the safety of the Fatemobile, but that wasn’t their style. Ms. Fate was breathing hard, the leather over her fake breasts rising and falling, but her gloved hands were full of shuriken, and her cowled head was proudly erect. Screech wasn’t even breathing hard. He flicked drops of blood from the tips of his elegant fingers and glared arrogantly at the approaching troopers. But there had to be a good sixty armed men heading right for them, and the odds weren’t good.
    So I got up off the bonnet, walked casually forward to join Screech and Ms. Fate, waited till the charging troopers were almost upon us, then used a variation on my bullet-removing trick to rip all the fillings, crowns and bridgework right out of their mouths. The troopers skidded to a halt, clutching at ruined, bloody mouths, making quite distressing and pitiful sounds of pain and horror. Screech and Ms. Fate looked at me inquiringly. I explained what I’d just done, and Ms. Fate got the giggles. Screech nodded approvingly, as though I was a rather backwards pupil who’d finally done something right. I stepped forward, and cleared my throat loudly to get the troopers’ attention.
    “Yes,” I said cheerfully. “That was me. Now, be good little shock-and-awe troopers and trot off back to Walker, or I’ll show you another disappearing trick, involving your testicles and a series of buckets.”
    They looked at each other, put away their various weapons, and trudged off to tell Walker I’d been mean to them. And probably to ask if he knew a good dentist. They looked rather sullen and sulky, as though we