Book 1 - The Man With the Golden Torc Read Online Free PDF Page B

world, but no one ever said
we were popular. I ordered a chilled bottle of Beck’s from the bar and looked
around me. To my left, Charlatan Joe was holding forth to a select group, and I
wandered over to listen. Joe was a city slicker and confidence trickster; a
shark on legs in an Armani suit. Listening more or less patiently to his
boasting and preening was another familiar face: Janissary Jane. She nodded
briskly to me as I joined the group. Her army fatigues were stiff with black
blood, and up close she smelled of smoke and brimstone.
    "Just back from the battlefield?" I said, raising my voice to be
heard above the din. "Where did you end up this time?"
    Jane shrugged, gulping her whiskey straight from the bottle. She
wore her black hair cropped short so no one could grab it during a fight, and if
her scarred face had ever been pretty, that was a long time ago. She was a good
drinking companion, as long as you kept her off the gin. Gin made her maudlin,
and then she tended to shoot people.
    "Some demon war, in another dimension," she said finally. "Some
damned fool necromancer opened up a hellgate, and the call went out for all good
mercenaries to rally to the flag. Pay was good, but I’d have gone anyway, for
the fight. Hate bloody demons."
    "Who doesn’t?" said the Indigo Spirit, splendid as always in his
midnight blue leathers, cape, and mask, sipping his Manhattan cocktail with his
little finger carefully extended. "Damned things are worse than cockroaches."
    I raised my bottle to him briefly. "Good to see you again,
Indigo. How goes the war on crime? Killed any interesting supervillains
recently?"
    "Just the usual scum, dear boy. Nothing wrong with them that two
bullets in the head won’t cure. I have to say the current breed of diabolical
masterminds and deadly fiends is really very disappointing…No style, do you see;
no sense of occasion. Sometimes it’s hardly worth dressing up in the outfit. I
mean, is it really too much trouble for a villain to at least wear a domino mask
in his secret lair?"
    Charlatan Joe had given up on his story now, since no one was
listening, and sipped sulkily at his port and lemon. Beside him, the Blue Fairy
was pissed as a fart, bemoaning the approaches of middle age and complaining
that his wand didn’t work as well as it used to.
    "So," I said, loud enough to drown out the Blue Fairy, "what’s
the latest gossip, people?"
    There’s always someone trying to take over the world, or blow it
up, or make it A Better Place; all equally dangerous and disturbed.
    "Dr. Delirium is up to something nasty again," said the Indigo
Spirit.
    "Swanning around in the depths of the Amazon jungle. Thinks he’s
so big, just because he has his own private army. The only reason he’s got an
army is because his uncle left it to him."
    "Right," said Janissary Jane, gesturing a little too wildly with
her whiskey bottle. "Never trust private soldiers. Nice uniforms, but no real
guts. No fire in their bellies. If they can’t outnumber you ten to one, they
don’t want to know. Delirium tried to get me to sign up a few years back, but of
course I said no. The pay offer was really lousy."
    "Delirium," said Charlatan Joe. "Isn’t he the one who collects
new plagues, and then threatens to turn them loose on the civilised world,
unless he’s paid off?"
    "That’s the one," I said. "Always wants to be paid off in rare
postage stamps. I guess once a collector, always a collector."
    "There’s a rumour going around that one of the Old Ones is
slowly waking from its long sleep under the Arctic Circle," said Charlatan Joe.
"And that’s why the polar ice pack is melting so much faster than it should be."
    Janissary Jane sniffed loudly. "Every time there’s a blip in the
weather, someone thinks the Old Ones are coming back. Not gonna happen. They’ve
been asleep so long now you couldn’t wake one up if you stuffed a nuke up its
backside and detonated it."
    "I did