Sell you a Bridge chapter 242

June 2nd 2016 The Nightside 10:00 PM EDT

We  headed out to the cobbled street with Taylor and John accompanying us. I  half expected us to get jumped by someone when we came out, but  standing in the gas lamps under the massive moon the street was  completely empty. Taylor looked both ways, obviously considering which  way to go, before giving up and putting his fingers to his mouth,  letting out a loud cabbie whistle like you see in old shows about New  York. We all looked at him in confusion (except John) for a second  before we were interrupted by the sound of...hooves.

I  blinked. The whole horse and carriage thing definitely fit with the vibe  of this neighborhood, but seeing one in person was weird. It wasnt a  fancy stylized thing either. The horse and carriage was well worn and  beat up, and the old man in the bench seat was holding an absolutely  huge blunderbuss, and no reins at all. The carriage drew to a stop in  front of us. Despite the obvious bait, we did NOT ask about the horse  and carriage, mostly because John was obviously waiting for it and I  didnt want to give him the satisfaction. He was having far too much fun  watching us react to things and I refused to play into it.

We  climbed into the roomy carriage, Taylor stopping to say hello...to the  horse, which I also ignored, despite that fact that it responded in  English. Once we settled down Taylor called out the name of the place we  were going (The Hawks Wind) and we set off at a brisk trot. Once we  were on the way, he turned to Jim. "So, you knew Julian back in the day.  Not many people from that day and age around...well, not ones that go  out in public. The real power players are much older but they tend to  stay in the shadows. Life expectancy for minor players is much  shorter...though I suppose-"

Jim cut him off, and I could  HEAR the eye roll in his voice. "Yes I'm dead. Very clever of you to  notice." He'd dropped his glamour on the train so he was literally just a  walking suit with a monocle, and pretty obviously a ghost. Taylor just  shrugged, conceding the point. "To answer your question though yes.  Julian and I were friends when we were younger. I never spent any time  in this deathtrap aside from the night I was murdered, but he frequented  London proper quite a bit more back then. He was a good friend. A good  man. I'd wager he is still both."

Taylor gave a fond  chuckle. "A wager you would win, though not a tough one to make given  who Julian is. Though I have to ask. You knew him before right? Before  the formula? Before he became a hero? What was he like?" It was odd so  see Taylor, this hardboiled devil may care detective type, looking so  wide eyed and fascinated. But I guess we all have our idols. Jim's  friend Julian was clearly somebody special, even to someone like Taylor.

Jim's  low chuckle was wistful. "Julian was always a hero. Even when we were  boys. Not the type most people think of mind, but the quiet kind. Julian  always did what was right, even when it was hard, he was always there  for his friends, even when they didn't make it easy, and he never gave  up. When he got his heart broken he lost his way, but the formula helped  him find it, and so much more he never knew he had inside. He was the  best of us, from day one, and anyone who tells you different is selling  something."

I'd never heard Jim say anything like that. My  mentor was many things, loyal, strong, sometimes kind, when the mood  struck him. But he was never soft, not like that, never sentimental. Jim  Craddock was a walking hurricane. He did what he wanted, went where he  felt like and damned be the consequences. He was selfish and stubborn  and ruthless and so many other things. But this version of Jim  sounded...sad. Wistful. Julian had clearly been a dear friend, and I had  to wonder why he'd never tried to look him up before, aside from the  whole living in hell on earth thing.

Artemis was the one  who finally decided she'd had enough of the references to something we  knew nothing about. She raised a hand, a formality it seemed because she  proceeded to just blurt out. "Ok, what the hell is this formula you  keep talking about? You told us plenty of stories about Julian, but you  never mentioned anything like that. I feel like that was a big detail to  leave out when you mentioned all his adventures."

The  snort that Jim let out showed exactly what he thought of that. "Which is  why I didn't mention it. I told you, Julian was always a hero, the  formula didn't turn him into what he was, it just made him more...him. I  wanted you lot to know what Julian was really like. Who he was deep  down. But I suppose with everything you've already heard you've formed a  solid opinion. The truth was that Julian collapsed after his love  abandoned him. She broke something in him that none of us knew how to  fix."

He sounded distant as he spoke, like he was living  it as he told the story. "So Julian fixed it himself. He created a  formula for a drug that separated the best and worst of a man. Made him  an absolute. It was a risk, you see. If most men had taken it they would  have become monsters. It brought out the deepest, truest core of a  person. Human beings are rotten at heart, nearly all of us. But not  Julian. My friend was a hero, and taking that formula stripped away all  the doubt and fear and sadness and anger and made him...whole. Made him  who we always knew he was inside."

I couldn't even imagine  what someone like that would be like. Someone with no flaws or negative  traits, someone perfect. I was really looking forward to meeting this  guy. I paused for a second. "Hey, wait, didn't you leave the city in  like the late eighteen hundreds? That formula sounds familiar. Wasn't  that the basic premise behind Doctor Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde?" I'd heard  rumors that book was based on a true story, but I never thought they  were accurate. Though the story wasn't exactly right.

Jim  scoffed. "Oh. Henry. He was a friend of Julian's back in the day. I  never liked him much. Smarmy little fellow. He was Julian's lab  assistant when he was working on the formula. When he saw how well it  worked he decided to try it himself. As expected the little weasel  didn't have the same success as Julian, though his bumbling caused the  drug to be half as effective in any case. Probably for the best  considering what it turned him into. If anything Hyde was even more  unpleasant. Julian trounced the brute and threw him out of town."

We  were all pretty entranced by the idea that Jim had known Doctor Jeckyll  and Mr. Hyde. I wondered if he had met any other figures from around  that time. "Was he the only famous person you met? There were a crazy  amount of novels based on that time, I know some of them were partially  true. Did you know Captain Nemo? Or Jack the Ripper?" London in the late  eighteen hundreds had been pretty nuts thinking back on it actually.  There were probably a bunch of stories I'd never even heard that were  even more insane.

My mentor, it seemed, was not as  enthralled by the old stories. "No. Though Blood met Nemo a few times,  and claimed he was a blow hard. I've yet to meet a person more pompous  than Jason Blood so that's actually something of an achievement. I left  London before the Ripper case became particularly noteworthy. I knew  several important figures, though most of them wouldn't be relevant to  you. Perhaps the most interesting man I ran across was the consulting  detective himself."

I did an actual double take. "Hold up,  you knew Sherlock fucking Holmes? How have I never heard this story  before? You've been holding out on us, boss. Usually the only time you  tell stories about your past is when we run into some crazy sorceress  you used to bang. Which admittedly happens substantially more often than  one would expect, but still, this seems like something you should tell  your apprentice."

Jim just shrugged. "It's not much of a  story. I met him at a pub. He and his Doctor friend were dragged out to  celebrate after they foiled the attempted assassination of Queen  Victoria. This must have been...oh eighteen eighty six or so? I remember  it being big news around the criminal underground because they stopped  the rapid ascent of Professor Moriarty, who was something of a rising  star at the time. Naturally I got out of there as quickly as my feet  could carry me. No rational thief would willingly spend time around  that...bloody machine."

I wanted to  ask so many more questions, but I had to stop because the carriage  pulled to a halt. Taylor hopped to his feet, pushing the door open and  letting us out onto the street. "Right, that's enough reminiscing kids,  time to get this show on the road. You can thank me later. In the  meantime lets head inside. Julian is nearly always here. When he woke up  after being betrayed he was in the sixties. He still prefers the era,  and at The Hawk's Wind, every day is the sixties." He stepped down off  the carriage, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a carrot he fed  to the horse who thanked him politely.

The  rest of us crowded out into the street, and once we were out the  carriage rolled away, leaving us all standing on the decidedly not  cobblestone road and staring up at...a place. I didn't have much of a  description for The Hawk's Wind except that. I'd never really gotten  into history, and the sixties in particular wasn't a decade that caught  my attention much. It became obvious looking at this place that the  reasons for that were never being around any sixties stuff, because  there was no possible way anyone wouldn't have their attention caught by  this place.

There  were a ton of really weird posters, day-glo and neon and so bright they  hurt to look at, all stuck up on and around the hindu latticed doors,  which swung open politely without us touching them when we approached.  When we stepped into the actual bar things got even more crazy. For one  thing the place smelled weird. Aside from what I could vaguely recognize  as patchouli (there were old people in Gotham who still used the stuff)  there was a dozen other smells I didn't know, all carried along on a  haze of multicolored smoke as music I'd never heard played through to  jumping club.

There  was lots of flashing lights and crazy neon colored furniture, and the  weirdly scattered labyrinth of tables and chairs were all brightly  colored plastic of a design that looked like it belonged in the same  decade as the rest of this stuff. Taylor stepped in, taking a deep  breath and sighing with contentment. "I love this place. Come along,  lets get a table, we can have the waitress bring a note to Julian to  tell him we're here." He headed off into the crowd, slipping easily  between all the brightly colored dancers.

I  grabbed my girls by the hands so we didn't get separated and left  Artemis to pull Wally along as Jim flitted lightly between the moving  forms, barely seeming to be effected by the heaving bodies until we  finally got to a table. When the waitress showed up Taylor had us all  order. He got a coke, while Zee, Artemis, Wally and I all got Pepsi, to  his absolute disdain. I got a weird chocolate themed Pepsi drink from  the sixties called Devil Shake, because that sounded weirdly delicious,  and Taylor passed a note to the friendly waitress with the silver bob  wig. Once she took our order she bopped off into the crowd and we all  sat back to take the place in as we waited to meet Julian Advent.