John Taylor's powers (The Bride Wore Black Leather)

John used his eye to "study the reality" of a specific object:

“There’s magic hovering all about that piece of mirror,” said Bettie. “Old, bad magic. I can See it, but . . . You’ve got better Sight than me, sweetie. What do you See?”

I concentrated, raising my gift again, using it to study the reality of the thing before me, opening up my inner eye, my private eye, to See the world as it really is. And then I almost dropped the shard as I realised what it was I was holding.

“What?” Bettie said excitedly. “What did you See?”

“Temporal energies,” I said. “This mirror shard is soaked in Time, in Time magic. I can actually see inverted tachyons, shooting up and down the broken edges.”

Bettie gave me a hard look, only slightly spoiled by her pouting mouth. “Yes, very nice, darling, very dramatic. But what does that mean?”

“It means, I know what mirror this came from,” I said, pulling a handkerchief from my pocket and carefully wrapping up the vicious-edged shard before tucking it very carefully into my coat pocket. -The Bride Wore Black Leather

Another example of John's postcognition:

“Are you sure it’s him?” said Bettie anxiously. “To accuse an immortal, among a gathering of his fellow immortals, you need to be really sure.”

“Good point,” I said. “But now I’ve got the weapon, I can use it to focus my gift and get it to show me exactly what happened. Make sure no-one interrupts me.”

“You got it, sweetie.”

I concentrated hard, and my gift manifested again. My head ached, resenting the strain. Time fled backwards before me, right back to the moment of the murder. I could See King of Skin standing before me, a thin and wispy artefact of Time Past, pawing through the snacks with grubby fingers and a disdainful sneer. I Saw the Lord Orlando approach King of Skin, with his usual simpering smile. King of Skin growled at him and deliberately turned his back on Orlando. And that was when the Lord Orlando’s face slipped and changed as he became the Rogue Immortal. He took the mirror shard out of the wine jug and stabbed King of Skin in the back. King tried to cry out and couldn’t. I could See the temporal energies swirling and spiralling around him as the shard sucked his future right out of him—all the years, all the life he would have had. And then King of Skin collapsed, measuring his length on the floor. Rogue tugged the weapon out of his back, flicked a few drops of blood away, and slipped the shard neatly back into the wine jug. The whole thing had only taken a few moments. Rogue became Orlando again and wandered off.

And no-one noticed his movements because no-one cared where he went. He was the only person the immortals would turn their backs on because no-one ever wanted to talk to him.

I followed him until he turned back into Rogue, unnoticed in the crush of bodies. His face was calm and unconcerned, untouched by what he’d done. No trace of anger or regret. Only the hint of someone who’d performed a distasteful but necessary task—a small smile, typical of a teenager who has got away with something. I shut down my gift and looked at the expectant Bettie Divine, all but dancing with impatience before me.

“Well?” she said squeakily. “Well?”

“Got him,” I said. “Rogue killed King of Skin.” -The Bride Wore Black Leather

John can find the "switch" in a person's head that controls their powers and "push it all the way back", nullifying those abilities:

I wiped blood from my face with the back of my hand, and raised my gift one last time. My head was throbbing sickly now, but I have always been in control of my gift and never the other way round. I concentrated, reaching out, and found the switch inside Rogue’s head, the one he used every time he decided to make a change. And then it was the easiest thing in the world for me to push the switch all the way back. The brute disappeared, replaced by a very surprised-looking Rogue. He opened his mouth to say something, and I stepped forward and kneed him briskly in the nuts. -The Bride Wore Black Leather

John's postcognition is so good, he can use it to find an exact moment in time, call up the temporal ghost of an entire location and walk through it, seeing everything that happened in that exact location, in that exact period of time:

“We’re not done yet,” said Julien. “We need to go further back, deeper into the Past, to see what happened inside the Bar before it disappeared. Can you do that, John?”

“I can try,” I said. “But you should brace yourself; there’s a reason why we choose to forget the past and leave it behind.”

I raised my gift and focused my Sight through it, to find exactly the section of Time Past I needed; and once again, the Hawk’s Wind Bar & Grille rose before me, faded and even more indistinct, the ghostly image of a ghost. I felt Julien’s hand drop onto my shoulder, the fingers closing tightly as the image filled his eyes again. I walked us towards the Hindu-latticed door, then right through it, and we walked into the memory of the Hawk’s Wind.

It looked as it always had: big Day-Glo Pop-Art posters, with colours so rich and powerful they by-passed your retinas and seared themselves directly onto your brain. Stylised plastic tables and chairs, flaring lights, great swirls of primary colours splashed across the walls and ceiling and floor. But all of it somehow smaller and diminished. Another remainder of Time Past. Like an old photograph of an old friend. A juke-box the size of a Tardis jumped and shuddered happily in a corner, pumping out an endless stream of hits from the sixties. There was no sound in my vision. I could see people talking animatedly at their tables, but not one word of what they were saying came to me. But from far and far-away, it seemed to me that I could hear Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” . . . In the centre of the great open floor, two gorgeous go-go dancers dressed mostly in bunches of white feathers danced energetically in two huge golden cages. Birds of paradise, indeed. I looked around the packed tables, and a number of familiar faces presented themselves, famous and important people from the Past, Present, and futures. The English Assassin was there, with his beautiful twin sister, Margaret, comparing ornate sonic pistols and arguing cheerfully over a roll of microfilm. Sebastian Stargave, the Fractured Protagonist, was taking tea with a golden-eyed cyborg. Zodiac the Mystical arranged his cloak fussily about him as he gave his order to the mini-skirted, gum-chewing waitress. And Pierrot and Columbine only had eyes for each other. A typical enough gathering for the Hawk’s Wind Bar & Grille.

Julien and I walked among them, the faded figures like so many ghosts and phantoms. Or perhaps we were the ghosts, moving unseen and unsuspected. I led the way, being careful not to walk through anything or anyone. The vision was fragile enough as it was, without my doing anything to damage it. And besides, it always pays to be careful when moving through the Past; you never know what might make waves . . . -The Bride Wore Black Leather

John teleports food from a nearby restaurant to his location. He also confirms that the teleportation he uses to "bring things to him" is the same as his trick for teleporting bullets out of guns:

I thought for a moment, considering my options, and I reached out with my gift and found the nearest over-priced restaurant. (Which you are also never very far from, wherever you go in the Nightside.) I gathered up all the food in the restaurant, made a connection with where I was, and it was the easiest thing in the world to bring all the food to me. (Simply a reverse variation on the magic I use to make things disappear.) (I’d been working on it.) Food rained down out of the night sky, hot and steaming and succulent. It hit the ground with a series of soft slaps, and lay there temptingly, while more and more of it fell from nowhere. For a moment the scavengers just stood where they were, watching with wide and unbelieving eyes. It had been a long time since they’d been anywhere near proper food. And then they rushed forward, forgetting all about Julien and me, and fell on the growing piles of food. They didn’t even have to fight over it; there was more than enough for everyone.

Julien looked at me. “All right . . . First, how the hell did you do that? And second, since when did you become altruistic?” -The Bride Wore Black Leather

John finds the center of a maze, as well as the exact directions needed in order to get there:

I shrugged uncomfortably. I did feel something, but it wasn’t anything I could put my finger on. “It’s only a maze. First rule of the Nightside: when you’re playing a game, and the rules say you’re losing, change the rules.

“You’re going to cheat, aren’t you?” said Julien resignedly.

“Of course,” I said. “It’s what I do best.”

I raised my gift, enough to add strength and power to my Sight, and immediately I could sense the exact location of Green Henge. And, more importantly, how to get to it. I plunged forward, darting through one row to another with complete confidence. Julien had to hurry to keep up with me. It was invigorating, racing through the hedgerows with defiant ease, while Green Henge called to me like a great voice in the night. It wasn’t just a Circle of Stones, it was a place of power, and Destiny. It was a place where things happened, things that mattered. And the moment I realised that, I slammed the brakes on and came to a sudden halt. -The Bride Wore Black Leather

(For reference, this was a maze that caused anyone without the correct intentions to be lost in it)

A door has become "less real" as a result of higher-dimensional beings forcing their reality into the room on the other side of it:

“We’re at Ground Zero, people; this isn’t just an invading army. A whole other reality is trying to break through and overwrite us, replace this world with their own. This door is less real than it should be because something else is becoming more real. The patient inside Ward 12A is being physically and spiritually remade into a doorway. But that takes a lot of power, which means it isn’t up to speed yet. We’ve still got some time.” -The Bride Wore Black Leather

Using his gift, John forces the handle of this door to become real again:

“How the hell do we get in?” said Julien, through gritted teeth. “Blow a hole in the wall?”

“Amateur,” I said, not unkindly.

I raised my gift, focused on the door, and found the door-handle. My gift locked onto it, onto the basic reality of the door-handle itself, and forced it to be real and hard and solid. And then it was the easiest thing in the world for me to reach out, grasp the door-handle, and open the door. The locks and seals were as soft and weak as everything else now, and the door opened easily under my guiding will. The door started to swing inwards, then gave up its remaining ghost and fell apart into thick wisps of grey fog, already dispersing on the starkly lit air. I was left with only the door-handle in my hand. I carelessly let it drop to the floor and strode confidently into Ward 12A. -The Bride Wore Black Leather

This is what the room beyond the door had turned into:

The whole room was full of flaring bright lights, sharp and incandescent, acutely painful to the human eye. Great clouds of flailing energies boiled this way and that, discharging violently against anything they touched. One whole wall had become wet and sticky, all the shades of red, pulsing like the insides of something alien. The ceiling seemed to be miles overhead, and the floor felt untrustworthy under my feet. Walking into the Ward was like pushing against a fierce wind, an almost solid intervention of some Outside will. I could feel Space itself stretched taut by some unimaginable influence. I stopped, despite myself, struggling to get my bearings. There were too many directions, too many dimensions inside Ward 12A now, too many ways to look, too many options to deal with. Another reality had been added to ours, superimposed on it, making the world heavier and more complex than it was ever supposed to be. The red wall was full of something like maggots, writhing and twisting. There were dark holes in the floor, dropping away forever. And rising over everything, a horrible feeling, a terrible conviction, that something was coming.

Far-away, from Outside or beyond our universe, I could hear something screaming, an endless howl of rage and hate. Drawing steadily, remorselessly closer.

And right there before me, hanging in mid air, was patient John Doe X 47, or what was left of him. His Humanity had been ripped away. His body was gone. He had been subtracted from the world and made into something else, and now he was a living tear in reality. A human gap, a human shape full of something that hurt my eyes to look at. A way in for whatever wanted in. I forced myself to look away, to check on what had happened to the other patients trapped in Ward 12A. I knew Julien would want to know. I could see all the beds, and the patients in them; but they all seemed far-away, distant, on the other side of the world. Looking across the Ward, across all its hideously stretched Space, was like looking across the universe. Trying to concentrate on the patients was like trying to look in a new direction, one I could sense but not make sense of. They’d been pushed aside by what was happening, forced out of the way to make room for what was pushing in. I was pretty sure the patients were still alive. But I couldn’t tell if they were still human any more. -The Bride Wore Black Leather

John uses his gift to make the above-mentioned patient, and the entities attached to him, three-dimensional:

I concentrated, focusing my gift on the human-shaped gap in our world. I tried to reach into the gap, to find the link between the patients and the beings from Outside, so I could break it . . . but it only took me a moment to realise that the patient was the link. I couldn’t break the link without killing the patient. And I wasn’t ready to that. Not until I’d tried everything else I could think of first. I couldn’t sacrifice one life to save many. Julien wouldn’t approve. He always was a good influence on me, the bastard. So, since I couldn’t touch the alien influence, I found the man and grabbed on to him. I could feel him, held half-way between this world and the other. And the more I held on to him with my gift, the more real I found him, until finally it was the easiest thing in this world to haul him all the way back into reality. And suddenly there he was, hanging in mid air, where the gap used to be. One hundred per cent real and solid and human. I let go, and he fell to the floor. And so did the beings from Outside that had been attached to him, that I’d found and dragged into this world with him.

All of Ward 12A snapped back to normal. The light was soft and even, the awful howling was gone, and the room was room-shaped again, with only the three usual dimensions. Patient John Doe X 47 lay curled up in a ball on the floor, breathing harshly, eyes wide and staring. I’d rescued his body, but someone more experienced in these matters would have to bring his mind back after everything the poor bastard had been put through. -The Bride Wore Black Leather

(Worth noting is that, in the case of the higher-D entities, having their dimensionality lowered caused their bodies to be rewritten and restructured by the laws of 3-D reality, leaving them powerless and unable to survive in normal space.)

I looked at the aliens I’d dragged through into our world, and my lip curled. Rewritten and restructured by the laws of our reality, there were floppy bits of meat, each the size of a man’s head, with protrusions that made no sense, squirming and oozing across the floor. They whined and squealed with every movement, as if being in our world hurt them. I only had to look at them to know they were suffering and dying, unable to withstand human conditions. One by one, they fell silent and lay still, and within moments they were rotting and falling apart. -The Bride Wore Black Leather

John is strong enough to snap Julien Advent's neck:

“Julien . . . please . . .”

“Sorry I won’t be there for your wedding. Now say good-bye, and kill me. Save the Hospice. Then track down the Sun King and stop him. And don’t screw it up, or I’ll come back and haunt you.”

“Good-bye, Julien,” I said. And then I took his head in both hands, and snapped it all the way round, breaking his neck.

All the light disappeared, and he was just a man again. He collapsed into my arms, and I held him tightly, ignoring the throbbing pain in my burned hands. I didn’t cry. There was so much anger in me there wasn’t room for anything else. I would find the Sun King. And I would kill him. Because he’d made me kill my good friend. The only decent man in the Nightside. -The Bride Wore Black Leather

John can find places where other realms overlap, then use those spaces to create doors between said realms:

I couldn’t stay here. It was enough out of the way to give me time to consider what to do next, but with so many on my trail, someone would find me soon, if only by accident. So I raised my gift and used it to find a way into the cemetery dimension attached to the Necropolis. We bury our dead in a very separate pocket dimension, only loosely attached to the Nightside. Because when we put our dead to rest, we prefer them to stay that way and not come back and bother us. It seemed to me that the cemetery’s many protections and defensive magics might well be enough to hide my presence. And, of course, most people have enough sense to stay out of the cemetery. It’s not a good place; it’s meant for the dead, not visitors.

I focused my gift, found one of the drifting places where the cemetery dimension occasionally overlaps with the Nightside, and concentrated hard. A door that hadn’t been there before, and never would be again, appeared in the alley wall opposite me. I held the door in place with my gift and pushed it open with an effort of will. Beyond the door was only darkness. I walked gratefully forward into it, and the door closed behind me. -The Bride Wore Black Leather

Remember when it took an extensive amount of effort for John to reopen a tear Razor Eddie made in reality? Well, by the end of Bride, he's not only capable of reopening a similar tear with ease, but is also capable of permanently sealing it shut again:

I used my gift to find the tear he’d made in Space and Time with his razor, to let himself into the cemetery dimension. It was still there. I could See it clearly, hanging on the air over the gravel path. The wounds Razor Eddie makes in the world take time to heal. I moved quickly back between the graves and onto the path, pushed the sides of the gap apart, and squeezed up my eyes against the bright flare of light that fell through into the grey cemetery world. I looked back, just in time to see Razor Eddie stretch out one hand and the straight razor fly through the air to slap into his palm. Definitely time to be going. I stepped through the gap and back into the Nightside, letting the tear close behind me. I used my gift to find a way to close and seal it permanently, so he couldn’t come straight after me, and only then looked around to see where I’d ended up. -The Bride Wore Black Leather

John's healing factor allows him to recover moments after being thrown into a wall and having the living crap beaten out of him to the point that a normal man wouldn't be able to move:

He moved suddenly forward, crossing the intervening space between us in a moment. He took two good handfuls of my coat lapels and held me easily in the air with his unnatural strength. My feet kicked helplessly a good yard above the ground. I grabbed his wrists with my hands, but it was like gripping cold steel. I wrestled against his grip, but couldn’t break it. I let go, and punched him in the side of the head, with as much strength as the awkward angle would allow. I hurt my hand, but I didn’t hurt him.

He laughed at me. “Come on, John; you know better than that. I don’t feel pain. I don’t feel anything unless I take my special pills. But I think I will feel something when I kill you. I will feel something when I avenge Julien Advent.”

“He never could stand you,” I said.

He threw me against the wall behind me, on the other side of the street. I hit hard; and the world went away for a while. When it came back, I was lying in the middle of the road. My face hurt like hell, and blood was dripping from my mouth and nose. Dead Boy had been busy while I was away. I looked carefully around me, without raising my head. Dead Boy was standing over me, looking down the street towards his futuristic car. I was already recovering, but he didn’t know that. He didn’t know about the werewolf blood. He couldn’t know how quickly I could put myself back together again. -The Bride Wore Black Leather

(Also serves as a pretty major scaling feat for Dead Boy, showing that he's much stronger than John and can beat him to near-death with ease)

John finds all of the stitches, staples, etc. holding Dead Boy together and hits all of their weak spots at once, causing him to fall apart:

“Have to do better than that, you brain-dead animated corpse.”

Dead Boy leaned slowly towards me, not allowing himself to be hurried, his dead hands clenched into fists and his dark eyes fixed on me. The car was still coming, building speed, aimed right at me. I waited till Dead Boy was bending right over me, then I used my gift to find all the stitches, staples, and yards of duct tape that held his much-abused dead body together. And once I had them, it was the easiest thing in the world to find all their weak spots. The stitches broke, the duct tape ruptured, and rusting staples flew out of him like tiny shrapnel.

It was an old weakness of Dead Boy’s. I’d seen someone else do it to him before. And I never forget a weakness I might need to make use of someday.

Dead Boy cried out as he fell helplessly to his knees, clutching at his opening wounds to stop his internal organs from falling out. -The Bride Wore Black Leather

John finds a library that's been switched with an alternate-universe variant and reverses the transfer:

I found a short cut that took me straight to the H. P. Lovecraft Memorial Library, only to find it wasn’t there. It was only then that I remembered hearing that the Library had recently vanished and been replaced by a doppelganger from some alternate dimension. The Linda Lovecraft Library of Spiritual Erotica. Takes all sorts . . . A large crowd of extremely interested observers had gathered before the front doors, at what they hoped was a safe distance, watching while men in heavy-duty protective clothing checked the place out first. Because some kinds of forbidden knowledge are more dangerous than others. Everyone there was so interested in what might be going on inside that no-one even noticed my arrival.

I stood as deep in the shadows of a side alley as I could get and frowned thoughtfully. The Linda Lovecraft Library was no use to me. I had one particular book in mind, and for that I needed the original building back again. So I raised my gift, reached out with my mind in a direction I could sense but not point at, grabbed hold of the missing Library, and brought it back again. It took up its old position quite comfortably, nudging the intruder back to its own world. No explosions, no earthquakes, not even any bright lights. It helped that I was only reversing an existing transfer; someone had taken our Library and replaced it with theirs. And later on, if I was still alive, I would have to find out why. -The Bride Wore Black Leather

Remember when John made a note to keep Larry Oblivion's elven wand in mind in case he'd have to fight him someday? Well, apparently he's taken the time to take precautions against its temporal powers:

He brought up his hand, and suddenly there was an elven wand pointing right at me. Larry Oblivion stabbed the wand at me, then frowned, when nothing happened. He stabbed the wand at me again, a little less confidently, and slowly lowered the wand as I smiled at him.

“I took precautions to protect myself against that thing the moment I discovered you had it,” I said. “I always knew you’d find a reason to turn on me, someday. And I always knew a lot more about elves than you ever did.” -The Bride Wore Black Leather

John uses his gift to teleport to across the Nightside:

I hurried out of the side alley and down the street, till I came to the nearest underpass. People were already turning to look at me as I clattered down the stone steps and into its concealing gloom. I raised my gift and used it to find one particular underpass, on the other side of the Nightside. And then it was the easiest thing in the world to move myself from one to the other. So that when I reached the bottom of the stone steps, I was walking into a completely different underpass, not far from Blaiston Street. -The Bride Wore Black Leather

John shows yet another type of flashbang in the form of salamander balls:

So I strode right on, giving every indication of being ready to walk right over anything or anyone who didn’t get out of my way fast enough. The other people in the underpass went out of their way to be polite and give me plenty of room; but a shadow of a man with no man to cast it rose suddenly up before me to block my way.

I smiled, unpleasantly. I’d been waiting for something over-confident or arrogant enough to try it on. I needed to make an example of some poor damned fool, so everyone else could see I was still dangerous, and spread the word that I should be left strictly alone. So when the dark shape rose before me, spreading out its over-long arms to fill the tunnel, I already had a salamander ball in my hand, palmed from an inside pocket when no-one was looking. I triggered the pasty white ball and threw it into the dark, featureless face; and the salamander ball exploded in a fierce vicious light that filled the underpass from end to end. Everyone cried out in pain and shock as the incandescent glare overloaded their eyes temporarily. I, of course, had my eyes squeezed tightly shut, with an arm raised over them, just in case. When the light faded enough for me to see again, the dark shape was gone, blown apart into tiny dark fragments that spiralled on the air like midnight confetti. I walked straight through them, and they swung madly on the air to get out of my way. It’s nice to be respected.

I have known people to get really snotty about salamander balls, saying they’re expensive, you don’t get much bang for your buck, and they’re a bit on the small side. But as I always point out, you only get two to a salamander. -The Bride Wore Black Leather

John, with some spiritual help from the church of St. Jude's, opens a portal to the realm of the Entities from Beyond:

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 Bride Wore Black Leather