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There were no more questions. Some of the returned even stuck their hands deep into their pockets so there wouldn’t be any unfortunate misunderstandings. Lilith smiled coldly and led her new army back into the Nightside. The newly revived dead didn’t object, being ready to do whatever was required of them, as long as they could go back to the comfort of their graves afterwards. Anything for a little quiet resting in peace. Still, some of them did feel the need to discuss their new condition, in guarded whispers and mutters.
“She said kill everyone,” said one voice. “Does that mean we’re supposed to eat their brains?”
“No, I think that’s only in the movies, darling.”
“Oh. I think I’d quite like to try eating some brains, actually.”
“Now that’s just gross,” said a third voice.
“Do we have to eat them raw, sweetie; or are we allowed to add condiments?”
“I think it’s probably a matter of personal taste, dear.”
The ranks of the returned dead streamed through the streets of the Nightside, falling upon every living thing they encountered. Some of them with more enthusiasm than others, but all of them bound to Lilith’s will. They couldn’t be hurt or stopped, and their sheer numbers overwhelmed any and all defences. A hell of a lot of people had died in the Nightside, down the centuries. Walker sent a small army, under Sandra Chance, of his best people to try and contain the returned dead, but they couldn’t be everywhere at once.
Many people were distressed to find themselves fighting off deceased friends and relatives, now intent on killing those who had once been closest to them. There were tears and screams, sometimes on both sides, but the reanimated dead did what they had to, and so, eventually, did the living. The risen dead were burned, blasted, and dismembered, but still they pressed forward. Walker’s barricades were soon overrun, and the defenders forced to run for their lives. Walker was forced to order a general retreat, just so he could control it. He ordered the demolition of whole areas, to seal off the better defended sections from those already fallen. There was fighting everywhere now, and fires wide as city blocks raged fiercely, unconfined.
There were those who still had the guts to fight. The Demonz street gang, minor demons who claimed to be political refugees from Hell, poured up out of their nightclub the Pit to defend their territory. Eight feet tall, with curling horns on their brows and cloven hoofs, scarlet as sin and twice as nasty. The reanimated dead stopped in their tracks. They knew real demons when they saw them. Lilith just laughed at the Demonz, said Children shouldn’t stray so far from home, snapped her pale fingers, and sent all the Demonz back to Hell again.
After that, she went to Time Tower Square, deserted but almost untouched by the chaos all around. Lilith struck a mocking pose before the blocky stone structure that was the Tower, and called loudly for Old Father Time to come out and face her. She had work for him. Minutes passed, and Lilith snarled and stamped her feet as she realised Old Father Time wasn’t coming out. She ordered her offspring to tear the Tower apart, and drag Old Father Time from the ruins to face her displeasure. But, as I knew to my cost, the Tower was seriously defended. The first few Beings to touch the Tower with bad intent just disappeared, blown out of existence like the flame of a candle. Other, greater Powers advanced on the Tower. A terrible stone Eye opened in the wall facing them, and the Powers froze in the glare of that awful regard. The life seeped out of them, and left behind only a handful of ugly stone statues, in awkward poses. The great stone Eye slowly closed again.
Lilith cried out a single angry Word, and the whole stone structure blew apart, until there was nothing left of the Time Tower save a pile of smoking rubble. Lilith glared at what she’d achieved, shaking with effort and reaction, while her army watched carefully to see what would happen next. In the end, it was clear that Old Father Time was either dead or trapped. Either way, he wouldn’t be coming out to obey Lilith’s wishes, so she spat and cursed, turned on her heel and led her army on to other ventures.
And that brought me up to date. The scrying pool had gone cloudy with shock and trauma, and I left it sobbing quietly to itself. The shop’s owner trailed behind me as I left his emporium, complaining bitterly and wringing his hands over what I’d done to his best merchandise. I told him again to send the bill to Walker.
Outside the shop, it was relatively quiet. The fires had run out of things to burn, and the survivors were keeping their heads down and quietly licking their wounds. I walked slowly through deserted streets, and no-one bothered me. Just as well. I had some thinking to do. Why had Lilith been so determined to control Old Father Time? Could there be something about Time travel, or perhaps Time itself, that would be a danger to Lilith’s plans? I smiled mirthlessly. It beat the hell out of me. I needed advice and information, which meant… I needed to talk to Walker.
I pulled my Strangefellows Membership Card from my pocket, activated it, and called for Walker. After making me wait a little while, to keep me respectful, Walker’s face looked out of the Card at me. He looked calm and poised and completely confident. He might have got away with it, if he hadn’t also looked like hell.
“Taylor!” he said brightly. “Back at last, after your extended vacation? I should have known you’d turn up for the main event. I didn’t know these Cards could be used for communication.”
So Alex didn’t tell you everything, I thought, a little smugly. “I’m back,” I said. “We need to talk.”
“Couldn’t agree more, old chap,” said Walker. “I need to know everything you know.”
“We don’t have that much time,” I said. I never could resist a good cheap shot. “Right now, we need to talk to the Authorities. Get their resources behind us. They need to hear what I have to tell them. I need you to set up a meeting.”
“I’ve been trying to contact them ever since this whole mess started,” said Walker, just a little tartly. “No-one’s returning my calls.”
“Call them again,” I said. “Drop my name, and set up a meet. We need to do this in person. They’ll talk to Lilith’s son.”
“Yes,” said Walker. “Yes, they just might. Very well, I’ll arrange a face-to-face, at the Londinium Club.”
“Of course,” I said. “Where else?”
Nine -
Thrown to the Wolves
Ten -
A Chance for Revenge
“She said kill everyone,” said one voice. “Does that mean we’re supposed to eat their brains?”
“No, I think that’s only in the movies, darling.”
“Oh. I think I’d quite like to try eating some brains, actually.”
“Now that’s just gross,” said a third voice.
“Do we have to eat them raw, sweetie; or are we allowed to add condiments?”
“I think it’s probably a matter of personal taste, dear.”
The ranks of the returned dead streamed through the streets of the Nightside, falling upon every living thing they encountered. Some of them with more enthusiasm than others, but all of them bound to Lilith’s will. They couldn’t be hurt or stopped, and their sheer numbers overwhelmed any and all defences. A hell of a lot of people had died in the Nightside, down the centuries. Walker sent a small army, under Sandra Chance, of his best people to try and contain the returned dead, but they couldn’t be everywhere at once.
Many people were distressed to find themselves fighting off deceased friends and relatives, now intent on killing those who had once been closest to them. There were tears and screams, sometimes on both sides, but the reanimated dead did what they had to, and so, eventually, did the living. The risen dead were burned, blasted, and dismembered, but still they pressed forward. Walker’s barricades were soon overrun, and the defenders forced to run for their lives. Walker was forced to order a general retreat, just so he could control it. He ordered the demolition of whole areas, to seal off the better defended sections from those already fallen. There was fighting everywhere now, and fires wide as city blocks raged fiercely, unconfined.
There were those who still had the guts to fight. The Demonz street gang, minor demons who claimed to be political refugees from Hell, poured up out of their nightclub the Pit to defend their territory. Eight feet tall, with curling horns on their brows and cloven hoofs, scarlet as sin and twice as nasty. The reanimated dead stopped in their tracks. They knew real demons when they saw them. Lilith just laughed at the Demonz, said Children shouldn’t stray so far from home, snapped her pale fingers, and sent all the Demonz back to Hell again.
After that, she went to Time Tower Square, deserted but almost untouched by the chaos all around. Lilith struck a mocking pose before the blocky stone structure that was the Tower, and called loudly for Old Father Time to come out and face her. She had work for him. Minutes passed, and Lilith snarled and stamped her feet as she realised Old Father Time wasn’t coming out. She ordered her offspring to tear the Tower apart, and drag Old Father Time from the ruins to face her displeasure. But, as I knew to my cost, the Tower was seriously defended. The first few Beings to touch the Tower with bad intent just disappeared, blown out of existence like the flame of a candle. Other, greater Powers advanced on the Tower. A terrible stone Eye opened in the wall facing them, and the Powers froze in the glare of that awful regard. The life seeped out of them, and left behind only a handful of ugly stone statues, in awkward poses. The great stone Eye slowly closed again.
Lilith cried out a single angry Word, and the whole stone structure blew apart, until there was nothing left of the Time Tower save a pile of smoking rubble. Lilith glared at what she’d achieved, shaking with effort and reaction, while her army watched carefully to see what would happen next. In the end, it was clear that Old Father Time was either dead or trapped. Either way, he wouldn’t be coming out to obey Lilith’s wishes, so she spat and cursed, turned on her heel and led her army on to other ventures.
And that brought me up to date. The scrying pool had gone cloudy with shock and trauma, and I left it sobbing quietly to itself. The shop’s owner trailed behind me as I left his emporium, complaining bitterly and wringing his hands over what I’d done to his best merchandise. I told him again to send the bill to Walker.
Outside the shop, it was relatively quiet. The fires had run out of things to burn, and the survivors were keeping their heads down and quietly licking their wounds. I walked slowly through deserted streets, and no-one bothered me. Just as well. I had some thinking to do. Why had Lilith been so determined to control Old Father Time? Could there be something about Time travel, or perhaps Time itself, that would be a danger to Lilith’s plans? I smiled mirthlessly. It beat the hell out of me. I needed advice and information, which meant… I needed to talk to Walker.
I pulled my Strangefellows Membership Card from my pocket, activated it, and called for Walker. After making me wait a little while, to keep me respectful, Walker’s face looked out of the Card at me. He looked calm and poised and completely confident. He might have got away with it, if he hadn’t also looked like hell.
“Taylor!” he said brightly. “Back at last, after your extended vacation? I should have known you’d turn up for the main event. I didn’t know these Cards could be used for communication.”
So Alex didn’t tell you everything, I thought, a little smugly. “I’m back,” I said. “We need to talk.”
“Couldn’t agree more, old chap,” said Walker. “I need to know everything you know.”
“We don’t have that much time,” I said. I never could resist a good cheap shot. “Right now, we need to talk to the Authorities. Get their resources behind us. They need to hear what I have to tell them. I need you to set up a meeting.”
“I’ve been trying to contact them ever since this whole mess started,” said Walker, just a little tartly. “No-one’s returning my calls.”
“Call them again,” I said. “Drop my name, and set up a meet. We need to do this in person. They’ll talk to Lilith’s son.”
“Yes,” said Walker. “Yes, they just might. Very well, I’ll arrange a face-to-face, at the Londinium Club.”
“Of course,” I said. “Where else?”
Nine -
Thrown to the Wolves
I found an undead Harley Davidson lurking in an alleyway, and persuaded it to give me a lift to the Londinium Club, in return for squeezing the essential juices out of several nearby corpses into the undead machine’s fuel tank. I swear other people don’t have days like this. The motorcycle carried me smoothly through the Nightside, weaving in and out of crashed and overturned vehicles littering the abandoned road. The air rushing into my face was hot and dry, thick with drifting smoke and ashes. It stank of burned meat. Even above the roar of the bike, I could still hear distant screams. Riding through the deserted streets, lit by the intermittent glow of burning buildings rather than the sleazy flush of hot neon, reminded me uncomfortably of the devastated future Nightside that was coming. A future coming true in front of my eyes, despite everything I did to try and stop it.
You’re trying to steer again, said the Harley. Don’t. I know what I’m doing.
“Then I envy you,” I said. “Really. You have no idea.”
That’s right; condescend to me, just because I’m undead. You wait until the mystical Vampire Lords of the Twenty-seventh Dimension descend in their crimson flying saucers to make me Grand High Overlord of the Nightside… Oh. Damn. I said that out loud, didn’t I? Sorry. I’ve not been taking my medication, lately.
“It’s all right,” I said. “We’ve all got a lot on our minds at the moment.”
The Harley mournfully sang Meatloaf’s “Bat out of Hell” as we cruised through the deserted streets. There were hardly any people around now. They were either hiding, or evacuated, or dead. There were bodies everywhere, and sometimes only parts of bodies. I saw piled-up severed heads, and dozens of severed hands laid out in strange patterns. Something had strung a web of knotted human entrails between a series of lamp-posts. I didn’t raise my Sight. I didn’t want to understand. I didn’t want to see all the new ghosts.
The motorcycle dropped me off outside the Londinium Club, then disappeared into the night at speed. It thought there was still somewhere safe to go, and I didn’t have the heart to disillusion it. I wasn’t blessed with the same delusion. I knew better. Walker was already waiting for me, of course. He stood at the foot of the Club’s steps, looking sadly down at the dead body of the Doorman. The Londinium’s most faithful servant lay sprawled across the steps, before the entrance he’d guarded for so many centuries. Something had ripped the Doorman’s head off and impaled it on the spiked railings. The expression on the face was more surprised than anything.
“He was supposed to be immortal,” observed Walker. “I didn’t think anything could kill him.”
“Now that Lilith’s back, all bets are off,” I said. “It is a pity.”
Walker gave me a hard look. “You know very well you couldn’t stand the man, Taylor.”
“I gave him a rose once,” I said.
Walker sniffed, unconvinced, and led the way up the steps to what was left of the Londinium. The oldest Gentleman’s Club in the Nightside had seen better days. The magnificent faзade was cracked and holed, smoke-blackened and fire-damaged. It looked like the outer wall of a city that had finally fallen to its besiegers. The huge single door had been burst inwards, forced off its hinges. The great slab of ancient wood lay toppled on the floor of the lobby, torn and gouged with deep claw marks. The once-elegant lobby had been thoroughly trashed and befouled. The statues had been shattered and the paintings defaced. The delicately veined marble pillars were cracked and broken, and the unknown Michelangelo painting that covered the entire ceiling was now half-hidden behind smoke stains and sprayed arterial blood.
Bodies littered the wide floor, left to lie where they had fallen. Many were mutilated, or half-eaten. Most of them looked to have been unarmed. Important men and servants lay together, probably killed fighting back-to-back, equal at last in death.
“Something got here before us,” I said, because I had to say something. “You think any of the bastards are still around?”
“No,” said Walker, kneeling beside one of the bodies. “The flesh is cold, the blood-stains are dry. Whatever happened here, we missed it.” He looked at the dead man’s face for a long moment, frowning slightly.
“Did you know him?” I asked.
“I knew all of them,” he said, rising to his feet again. “Some were very good, some were very bad, and none of them deserved to die like this.”
He stalked across the lobby, his back very straight, stepping carefully round the scattered bodies. I followed him, my shoulders tense with the anticipation of unseen watching eyes. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to trash the Nightside’s most visible symbol of power and authority. Walker finally came to a halt facing the right-hand wall, and solemnly considered a part of it that looked no different from any other part. I stood beside him, looking hard for any sign of a concealed door or panel, but I couldn’t see anything. And I’m usually really good at spotting things like that. Walker fished in his waistcoat pocket for a long moment, but when he finally brought his hand out, it was empty. He held the empty hand up before me, the fingers pinched together as though holding something.
“This,” he said, “is a key that isn’t a key, that will open a door that isn’t a door, to a room that isn’t always there.”
I considered his empty hand. “Either the strain is finally getting to you, or you’re being cryptic again. This secret room… it’s not by any chance going to try to eat me, is it?”
He smiled briefly. “It’s a real key. But invisible. Feel it.”
He put something I couldn’t see into my hand. It felt cold and metallic. “Okay,” I said. “That’s creepy. If the door is as invisible as the key, how are we going to find it?”
“Because it isn’t invisible to me,” Walker said airily, taking the key back again. “I serve the Authorities, so I get to see everything I need to see.”
“Show-off,” I said, and he smiled briefly again.
He thrust the key only he could see into the lock only he could see, and part of the wall before us disappeared. I was staring so hard by now that my eyes were beginning to hurt. Walker strolled into the newly revealed room before us with just a hint of smugness, and I sighed and followed him in. It figured that the Authorities would have their very own special room to hold their meetings in, exclusive even from other members of the Nightside’s most exclusive Gentleman’s Club.
“The Authorities don’t agree to meet with just anyone,” Walker murmured. “You should feel honoured.”
“Oh, I do,” I said. “Really. You have no idea.”
Walker actually winced. “Somehow, I know this isn’t going to go well.”
The wall reappeared behind us, sealing us in, and the room abruptly snapped into focus. It was protected by very powerful magics. I could feel them, crawling on my skin like living static. The room itself was something of a clichй, the very essence of a private room in a Gentleman’s Club. Oversized but no doubt extremely comfortable chairs, rich furnishings, and splendid decorations. Far more splendid, indeed, than the expensively tanned, personally trained but still sloppy, overdressed men sitting slumped in their big chairs, with their big drinks and their big cigars. I took my time looking them over, the ten powerful men who ran the Nightside, inasmuch as anyone did. You wouldn’t know their names. You’ve never seen their faces in the glossies. These men were above that. They all had the same casual arrogance of people used to getting what they wanted when they wanted it. Somehow, I just knew we weren’t going to get along.
Walker introduced me to the Authorities, then moved aside to stand leaning against the William Morris wallpaper, his arms folded, as though to indicate he’d done all that could reasonably be expected of him. Maybe he simply wanted to be out of the line of fire, for when everything inevitably went wrong. And though he must have had many questions of his own for his absentee masters, he seemed content to leave the lead to me. For the moment, at least.
“So,” I said finally, “you’re the grey men, the businessmen, the faceless men who only ever operate behind the scenes. Somehow, I always thought you’d be… bigger. Talk to me, Authorities. Tell me what I need to know. While there’s still time.”
“I am Harper, and I speak for us all,” said the man nearest me. His face was far too old for his jet-black hair, and his waistcoat strained over a bulging stomach. It was covered with cigar ash that he couldn’t be bothered to brush away. Presumably he had someone to do that for him, in his own world. He stared coldly at me with piggy, deep-set eyes. “Our ancestors made their fortunes operating in the Nightside of Roman times, during their occupation. Our families have spent generations building on those fortunes. We own all the businesses here, at one remove or another. There’s nothing that happens that we don’t take our cut. The Nightside belongs to us.”
“Not for much longer,” I said. “If Lilith has her way. This isn’t just a corporate take-over she’d proposing, she plans to kill us all. Or hasn’t that penetrated your thick skulls yet?”
My voice must have got a little sharp, because that was when the Authorities’ bodyguards decided to make themselves known to me. They manifested abruptly, one on each side of the room, and I studied them warily. Two basically humanoid forms, large and overpowering, one made of pure light, one of pure darkness. It would be hard to say which was more unpleasant to the eye. They were presences rather than physical forms, and I could feel power radiating off them. It was like standing in front of a furnace when someone unexpectedly opened the door.
“They used to be angels,” said Harper, with more than a hint of smugness. “From Above, and Below. Now they work for us.”
“How are the mighty fallen,” I said, just to be saying something. Never let the other side know when you’ve been seriously impressed. “I suppose that’s why they don’t have wings any more. Or halos.”
“You cannot conceive how much we have lost,” said the figure of light, its voice like cracking ice floes.
“But we have also gained much,” said the figure of darkness, in a voice like a burning orphanage. “We are here because we developed… appetites. Tastes for things that can only be found in the material world. Our new masters… indulge us.”
“We take our comforts here,” said the light. “To our eternal shame.”
“To our endless satisfaction,” said the dark.
“But why serve the Authorities?” I said. “Even as diminished as you are, you must know they’re not worthy of you.”
“We have to serve someone,” said the light.
“It’s in our nature,” said the dark.
“Enough,” said Harper, and immediately both figures fell silent. Harper glared at me, and I glared right back. He raised his voice a little, to convince both of us who was really in charge here. “Normally, we run the Nightside from outside. We live in London proper, in the sane world. We’re only here now because Walker summoned us with your name. What do you want with us, John Taylor?”
“Answers, to start with,” I said, meeting his gaze unflinchingly. “Why haven’t you sent your armies to support Walker? Don’t you know how bad things are here?”
“We know,” said Harper. “But what help could we send that could hope to stand against Lilith and her followers? We’re not in the business of throwing good lives away after bad.”
Walker stirred for the first time. “Bad? Those were my people!”
Harper didn’t even look at him. “Not now, Walker. I’m talking.”
“If not now, then when?” said Walker, and his voice was colder than I’d ever heard it before. “How many years have I and my people served you here, protecting your interests in the Nightside? Is this how you reward us—by throwing us to the wolves?”
Harper finally looked at him, but only to smile condescendingly. “You mustn’t take it personally, Walker. It’s just business.”
“You look nervous,” I said suddenly. “All of you. Uncomfortable. Sweating. You don’t like being here, do you?”
“As you said, the Nightside has become a dangerous place.” Harper took a long draw on his cigar. “Before Walker contacted us with your name, we had been preparing to seal off the Nightside, closing every entrance and exit until all this… unpleasantness has run its course.”
“You’re abandoning us?” I said.
“Why not? You’re only a business interest. A cash cow, from which we squeeze every penny we can. We are aware of the powerful men and women who come to your little freak show, to indulge in the pleasures and excitements they can’t find anywhere else, but we… We have only ever cared about the profit they made us. For us, the Nightside is simply a commodity, that we exploit. Correct, Walker?”
“Don’t look at me,” said Walker, surprisingly. “I see things differently, these days.”
I looked at him for a moment. There was something in his voice… but that would have to wait. I turned back to Harper.
“If the Nightside falls to Lilith, then so does the rest of the world. You can’t hope to contain a Power like her. She will break out, then there’ll be nowhere far enough or safe enough for you to hide.”
“So we have come to believe,” said Harper, reluctantly. He glared at his cigar, as though it had failed him in some way, and stubbed it out in an ashtray with quick, angry movements. “So, it seems we have no choice but to make a deal with Lilith. Very well. We can do that. We’re good at making deals. It’s what we do, after all. That is why we agreed to meet with you here, John Taylor. Lilith’s son. You will be our agent, our representative, in these negotiations. Talk to your mother and promise her… whatever it takes, to reach an accommodation. We have already revealed our presence to her and summoned her here to talk with us.”
Walker stood up straight, pushing himself away from the wall he’d been leaning on. “What? Why didn’t you consult me first? Do you know what you’ve done, you bloody fools…”
“Not now, Walker!” Harper didn’t even look at him.
He was still doing his best to intimidate me with an imperious stare. “We are rich beyond the nightmares of avarice, Taylor. We can afford to be flexible, if we have to. Better to share the wealth of the Nightside with your mother than risk seeing it destroyed. It’s just a matter of finding out what she wants… We’re all reasonable people, after all. I’m sure we can come to an understanding with Lilith, with your help.”
“Lilith isn’t reasonable,” I said. “She isn’t even people. You have no idea what you’re dealing with. She isn’t interested in money, or even in power, as you understand it. She just wants to wipe the whole slate clean and start again. And replace Humanity with something more suited to her needs.”
One whole wall of the private room suddenly disappeared, ripped away by an outside force. We all looked round, startled, to discover that the room now looked directly out onto the Nightside. Nothing stood between us and the dark, the blazing buildings, and the streets filled with smoke and screams. And there before us stood Lilith, naked and magnificent, with all her monstrous Court ranked behind her. The Authorities rose to their feet, stumbling and awkward, staring with wide horrified eyes.
The two former angels surged forward, to stand between the Authorities and Lilith, their power shimmering on the air around them like a heat haze. Lilith smiled at them and said Go home, and the light and dark figures both disappeared in a moment, banished from the material planes by the sheer force of her will. I had a good idea where she’d sent them, and I doubted either of them could expect much of a welcome back.
“So,” said Lilith, stepping gracefully forward into the private room, her voice light and teasing, “you’re the Authorities. The Secret Masters of the Nightside, the Big Men… We meet at last. Only, I have to say, you don’t look very big to me. You look much more like little boys, way out of their depth. Come to me. Come to Mommie…”
Her presence ignited, filling the whole room, vast and overwhelming. I had to look away, retreating behind my strongest mental shields, while the ten most powerful men in the Nightside, and therefore the world, fell to their knees and went to Lilith on all fours, like swine before a goddess. Walker started forward. I grabbed him by the arm and hustled him towards the invisible door. He found the key and opened the door, his hand steady even though his face was torn with conflicting emotions. I looked back, briefly.
Lilith laughed, to see the high-and-mighty Authorities cringe and fawn at her colourless feet. “Why, you’re so cute! I could eat you up… but I think you’d probably make me sick. Fortunately, my children have far more robust appetites…”
She laughed again, as her horrid offspring surged forward. I pushed Walker through the door, following him into the relative safety of the Club’s lobby. As the door swung slowly shut behind us, I looked back one last time. And saw Lilith’s monstrous children fall upon the screaming Authorities and tear at them hungrily, like wolves let into the fold.
You’re trying to steer again, said the Harley. Don’t. I know what I’m doing.
“Then I envy you,” I said. “Really. You have no idea.”
That’s right; condescend to me, just because I’m undead. You wait until the mystical Vampire Lords of the Twenty-seventh Dimension descend in their crimson flying saucers to make me Grand High Overlord of the Nightside… Oh. Damn. I said that out loud, didn’t I? Sorry. I’ve not been taking my medication, lately.
“It’s all right,” I said. “We’ve all got a lot on our minds at the moment.”
The Harley mournfully sang Meatloaf’s “Bat out of Hell” as we cruised through the deserted streets. There were hardly any people around now. They were either hiding, or evacuated, or dead. There were bodies everywhere, and sometimes only parts of bodies. I saw piled-up severed heads, and dozens of severed hands laid out in strange patterns. Something had strung a web of knotted human entrails between a series of lamp-posts. I didn’t raise my Sight. I didn’t want to understand. I didn’t want to see all the new ghosts.
The motorcycle dropped me off outside the Londinium Club, then disappeared into the night at speed. It thought there was still somewhere safe to go, and I didn’t have the heart to disillusion it. I wasn’t blessed with the same delusion. I knew better. Walker was already waiting for me, of course. He stood at the foot of the Club’s steps, looking sadly down at the dead body of the Doorman. The Londinium’s most faithful servant lay sprawled across the steps, before the entrance he’d guarded for so many centuries. Something had ripped the Doorman’s head off and impaled it on the spiked railings. The expression on the face was more surprised than anything.
“He was supposed to be immortal,” observed Walker. “I didn’t think anything could kill him.”
“Now that Lilith’s back, all bets are off,” I said. “It is a pity.”
Walker gave me a hard look. “You know very well you couldn’t stand the man, Taylor.”
“I gave him a rose once,” I said.
Walker sniffed, unconvinced, and led the way up the steps to what was left of the Londinium. The oldest Gentleman’s Club in the Nightside had seen better days. The magnificent faзade was cracked and holed, smoke-blackened and fire-damaged. It looked like the outer wall of a city that had finally fallen to its besiegers. The huge single door had been burst inwards, forced off its hinges. The great slab of ancient wood lay toppled on the floor of the lobby, torn and gouged with deep claw marks. The once-elegant lobby had been thoroughly trashed and befouled. The statues had been shattered and the paintings defaced. The delicately veined marble pillars were cracked and broken, and the unknown Michelangelo painting that covered the entire ceiling was now half-hidden behind smoke stains and sprayed arterial blood.
Bodies littered the wide floor, left to lie where they had fallen. Many were mutilated, or half-eaten. Most of them looked to have been unarmed. Important men and servants lay together, probably killed fighting back-to-back, equal at last in death.
“Something got here before us,” I said, because I had to say something. “You think any of the bastards are still around?”
“No,” said Walker, kneeling beside one of the bodies. “The flesh is cold, the blood-stains are dry. Whatever happened here, we missed it.” He looked at the dead man’s face for a long moment, frowning slightly.
“Did you know him?” I asked.
“I knew all of them,” he said, rising to his feet again. “Some were very good, some were very bad, and none of them deserved to die like this.”
He stalked across the lobby, his back very straight, stepping carefully round the scattered bodies. I followed him, my shoulders tense with the anticipation of unseen watching eyes. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to trash the Nightside’s most visible symbol of power and authority. Walker finally came to a halt facing the right-hand wall, and solemnly considered a part of it that looked no different from any other part. I stood beside him, looking hard for any sign of a concealed door or panel, but I couldn’t see anything. And I’m usually really good at spotting things like that. Walker fished in his waistcoat pocket for a long moment, but when he finally brought his hand out, it was empty. He held the empty hand up before me, the fingers pinched together as though holding something.
“This,” he said, “is a key that isn’t a key, that will open a door that isn’t a door, to a room that isn’t always there.”
I considered his empty hand. “Either the strain is finally getting to you, or you’re being cryptic again. This secret room… it’s not by any chance going to try to eat me, is it?”
He smiled briefly. “It’s a real key. But invisible. Feel it.”
He put something I couldn’t see into my hand. It felt cold and metallic. “Okay,” I said. “That’s creepy. If the door is as invisible as the key, how are we going to find it?”
“Because it isn’t invisible to me,” Walker said airily, taking the key back again. “I serve the Authorities, so I get to see everything I need to see.”
“Show-off,” I said, and he smiled briefly again.
He thrust the key only he could see into the lock only he could see, and part of the wall before us disappeared. I was staring so hard by now that my eyes were beginning to hurt. Walker strolled into the newly revealed room before us with just a hint of smugness, and I sighed and followed him in. It figured that the Authorities would have their very own special room to hold their meetings in, exclusive even from other members of the Nightside’s most exclusive Gentleman’s Club.
“The Authorities don’t agree to meet with just anyone,” Walker murmured. “You should feel honoured.”
“Oh, I do,” I said. “Really. You have no idea.”
Walker actually winced. “Somehow, I know this isn’t going to go well.”
The wall reappeared behind us, sealing us in, and the room abruptly snapped into focus. It was protected by very powerful magics. I could feel them, crawling on my skin like living static. The room itself was something of a clichй, the very essence of a private room in a Gentleman’s Club. Oversized but no doubt extremely comfortable chairs, rich furnishings, and splendid decorations. Far more splendid, indeed, than the expensively tanned, personally trained but still sloppy, overdressed men sitting slumped in their big chairs, with their big drinks and their big cigars. I took my time looking them over, the ten powerful men who ran the Nightside, inasmuch as anyone did. You wouldn’t know their names. You’ve never seen their faces in the glossies. These men were above that. They all had the same casual arrogance of people used to getting what they wanted when they wanted it. Somehow, I just knew we weren’t going to get along.
Walker introduced me to the Authorities, then moved aside to stand leaning against the William Morris wallpaper, his arms folded, as though to indicate he’d done all that could reasonably be expected of him. Maybe he simply wanted to be out of the line of fire, for when everything inevitably went wrong. And though he must have had many questions of his own for his absentee masters, he seemed content to leave the lead to me. For the moment, at least.
“So,” I said finally, “you’re the grey men, the businessmen, the faceless men who only ever operate behind the scenes. Somehow, I always thought you’d be… bigger. Talk to me, Authorities. Tell me what I need to know. While there’s still time.”
“I am Harper, and I speak for us all,” said the man nearest me. His face was far too old for his jet-black hair, and his waistcoat strained over a bulging stomach. It was covered with cigar ash that he couldn’t be bothered to brush away. Presumably he had someone to do that for him, in his own world. He stared coldly at me with piggy, deep-set eyes. “Our ancestors made their fortunes operating in the Nightside of Roman times, during their occupation. Our families have spent generations building on those fortunes. We own all the businesses here, at one remove or another. There’s nothing that happens that we don’t take our cut. The Nightside belongs to us.”
“Not for much longer,” I said. “If Lilith has her way. This isn’t just a corporate take-over she’d proposing, she plans to kill us all. Or hasn’t that penetrated your thick skulls yet?”
My voice must have got a little sharp, because that was when the Authorities’ bodyguards decided to make themselves known to me. They manifested abruptly, one on each side of the room, and I studied them warily. Two basically humanoid forms, large and overpowering, one made of pure light, one of pure darkness. It would be hard to say which was more unpleasant to the eye. They were presences rather than physical forms, and I could feel power radiating off them. It was like standing in front of a furnace when someone unexpectedly opened the door.
“They used to be angels,” said Harper, with more than a hint of smugness. “From Above, and Below. Now they work for us.”
“How are the mighty fallen,” I said, just to be saying something. Never let the other side know when you’ve been seriously impressed. “I suppose that’s why they don’t have wings any more. Or halos.”
“You cannot conceive how much we have lost,” said the figure of light, its voice like cracking ice floes.
“But we have also gained much,” said the figure of darkness, in a voice like a burning orphanage. “We are here because we developed… appetites. Tastes for things that can only be found in the material world. Our new masters… indulge us.”
“We take our comforts here,” said the light. “To our eternal shame.”
“To our endless satisfaction,” said the dark.
“But why serve the Authorities?” I said. “Even as diminished as you are, you must know they’re not worthy of you.”
“We have to serve someone,” said the light.
“It’s in our nature,” said the dark.
“Enough,” said Harper, and immediately both figures fell silent. Harper glared at me, and I glared right back. He raised his voice a little, to convince both of us who was really in charge here. “Normally, we run the Nightside from outside. We live in London proper, in the sane world. We’re only here now because Walker summoned us with your name. What do you want with us, John Taylor?”
“Answers, to start with,” I said, meeting his gaze unflinchingly. “Why haven’t you sent your armies to support Walker? Don’t you know how bad things are here?”
“We know,” said Harper. “But what help could we send that could hope to stand against Lilith and her followers? We’re not in the business of throwing good lives away after bad.”
Walker stirred for the first time. “Bad? Those were my people!”
Harper didn’t even look at him. “Not now, Walker. I’m talking.”
“If not now, then when?” said Walker, and his voice was colder than I’d ever heard it before. “How many years have I and my people served you here, protecting your interests in the Nightside? Is this how you reward us—by throwing us to the wolves?”
Harper finally looked at him, but only to smile condescendingly. “You mustn’t take it personally, Walker. It’s just business.”
“You look nervous,” I said suddenly. “All of you. Uncomfortable. Sweating. You don’t like being here, do you?”
“As you said, the Nightside has become a dangerous place.” Harper took a long draw on his cigar. “Before Walker contacted us with your name, we had been preparing to seal off the Nightside, closing every entrance and exit until all this… unpleasantness has run its course.”
“You’re abandoning us?” I said.
“Why not? You’re only a business interest. A cash cow, from which we squeeze every penny we can. We are aware of the powerful men and women who come to your little freak show, to indulge in the pleasures and excitements they can’t find anywhere else, but we… We have only ever cared about the profit they made us. For us, the Nightside is simply a commodity, that we exploit. Correct, Walker?”
“Don’t look at me,” said Walker, surprisingly. “I see things differently, these days.”
I looked at him for a moment. There was something in his voice… but that would have to wait. I turned back to Harper.
“If the Nightside falls to Lilith, then so does the rest of the world. You can’t hope to contain a Power like her. She will break out, then there’ll be nowhere far enough or safe enough for you to hide.”
“So we have come to believe,” said Harper, reluctantly. He glared at his cigar, as though it had failed him in some way, and stubbed it out in an ashtray with quick, angry movements. “So, it seems we have no choice but to make a deal with Lilith. Very well. We can do that. We’re good at making deals. It’s what we do, after all. That is why we agreed to meet with you here, John Taylor. Lilith’s son. You will be our agent, our representative, in these negotiations. Talk to your mother and promise her… whatever it takes, to reach an accommodation. We have already revealed our presence to her and summoned her here to talk with us.”
Walker stood up straight, pushing himself away from the wall he’d been leaning on. “What? Why didn’t you consult me first? Do you know what you’ve done, you bloody fools…”
“Not now, Walker!” Harper didn’t even look at him.
He was still doing his best to intimidate me with an imperious stare. “We are rich beyond the nightmares of avarice, Taylor. We can afford to be flexible, if we have to. Better to share the wealth of the Nightside with your mother than risk seeing it destroyed. It’s just a matter of finding out what she wants… We’re all reasonable people, after all. I’m sure we can come to an understanding with Lilith, with your help.”
“Lilith isn’t reasonable,” I said. “She isn’t even people. You have no idea what you’re dealing with. She isn’t interested in money, or even in power, as you understand it. She just wants to wipe the whole slate clean and start again. And replace Humanity with something more suited to her needs.”
One whole wall of the private room suddenly disappeared, ripped away by an outside force. We all looked round, startled, to discover that the room now looked directly out onto the Nightside. Nothing stood between us and the dark, the blazing buildings, and the streets filled with smoke and screams. And there before us stood Lilith, naked and magnificent, with all her monstrous Court ranked behind her. The Authorities rose to their feet, stumbling and awkward, staring with wide horrified eyes.
The two former angels surged forward, to stand between the Authorities and Lilith, their power shimmering on the air around them like a heat haze. Lilith smiled at them and said Go home, and the light and dark figures both disappeared in a moment, banished from the material planes by the sheer force of her will. I had a good idea where she’d sent them, and I doubted either of them could expect much of a welcome back.
“So,” said Lilith, stepping gracefully forward into the private room, her voice light and teasing, “you’re the Authorities. The Secret Masters of the Nightside, the Big Men… We meet at last. Only, I have to say, you don’t look very big to me. You look much more like little boys, way out of their depth. Come to me. Come to Mommie…”
Her presence ignited, filling the whole room, vast and overwhelming. I had to look away, retreating behind my strongest mental shields, while the ten most powerful men in the Nightside, and therefore the world, fell to their knees and went to Lilith on all fours, like swine before a goddess. Walker started forward. I grabbed him by the arm and hustled him towards the invisible door. He found the key and opened the door, his hand steady even though his face was torn with conflicting emotions. I looked back, briefly.
Lilith laughed, to see the high-and-mighty Authorities cringe and fawn at her colourless feet. “Why, you’re so cute! I could eat you up… but I think you’d probably make me sick. Fortunately, my children have far more robust appetites…”
She laughed again, as her horrid offspring surged forward. I pushed Walker through the door, following him into the relative safety of the Club’s lobby. As the door swung slowly shut behind us, I looked back one last time. And saw Lilith’s monstrous children fall upon the screaming Authorities and tear at them hungrily, like wolves let into the fold.
Ten -
A Chance for Revenge
I ended up having to drag Walker back through the lobby and out onto the steps of the Londinium Club. His eyes weren’t tracking properly, and he was mumbling to himself. Once we were safely outside, I glanced quickly around to be sure we were alone, then sat down on the steps to get my composure back. With the invisible door shut again, Lilith shouldn’t be able to come after us. For a while, anyway. Walker sat down suddenly next to me, all his usual poise and confidence gone. I suppose it’s not an easy thing, to see the lords and masters you’ve followed all your life revealed as cowards and scumbags, then turned into monster food. The night seemed relatively quiet, and no-one came by to bother us. I looked at Walker. A pain in my arse for most of my life, I’d often wanted to see him brought down, but not like this. He was staring out into the night as though he’d never seen it before.
“The Authorities are dead,” he said abruptly. “What do I do now?”
“Be your own man,” I said. “You can still give the orders that need giving, kick the arses that need kicking. Get things done. Someone’s got to lead the resistance. Who’s got more experience than you? You’re needed, Walker; now more than ever.”
Walker turned his head slowly to look at me. “You’re Lilith’s son,” he said finally. “You’re the King in waiting. You’re the legendary John Taylor, who always snatches victory from the jaws of defeat. Maybe you should be in charge.”
“No,” I said. “I’ve never wanted that. I have enough trouble being responsible for myself, never mind anyone else. And I’ve got other things to do. Don’t ask what. It would only upset you. You’ve always been The Man, Walker. So suck it up and soldier on.”
He smiled briefly. “You sound very like your father sometimes, John.” He stood up, and just like that all his old poise and confidence were back again. “I suppose someone’s got to turn you rabble into a disciplined fighting force. So, I’m going back to Strangefellows. Where will you go?”
“In search of some heavy-duty backup,” I said, getting to my feet. “We need more big guns on our side.”
“And if there aren’t any?”
I grinned at him. “Then I’ll improvise. Suddenly and violently and all over the place.”
He nodded. “It’s what you do best.”
He took out his Membership Card, activated it, and stepped through into the relative safety of Strangefellows bar. The Card disappeared with a soft sucking sound and a brief flurry of sparks, and I was left standing alone on the steps of the Londinium Club. I pushed my hands deep into the pockets of my trench coat, and looked out into the night. All the buildings around me were wrecked or burned out. Bodies everywhere. Screams in the distance, strange lights flaring on the horizon. The Nightside was going down for the third time, and I was running out of ideas. There had to be someone else, some Power or major player who still owed me a favour, or could be fooled into thinking they did… but I couldn’t think who. I couldn’t do this on my own. I needed someone powerful enough, or tricky enough, to stop this War in its tracks before it got out of hand. Before it led to the terrible future that was becoming more real, more inevitable, by the minute. Unfortunately there was only one name left on my list, the one I’d been trying so hard not to think of. Because he scared the crap out of me.
The Lord of Thorns. The Overseer of the Nightside, appointed directly by God to keep an eye on things.
Mostly, he didn’t intervene personally. He was the last judge of all disputes, the Nightside’s court of last resort, the one you only went to when everything else had failed and you were tired of living anyway. I’d been half-expecting him to turn up and start smiting everything in sight for some time now. Since he hadn’t, it looked like I was going to have to give him his wake-up call. Lucky old me. The Lord of Thorns lived in the World Beneath, the miles and miles of caverns, catacombs, and stone galleries that lay deep below the Nightside. The place where you went, when the Nightside wasn’t dark enough for you. The Lord of Thorns slept his sleep of centuries in a crystal cave in the deepest, darkest part of the World Beneath, and God help anyone who disturbed him unnecessarily.
I had only met him once, and that was more than enough. I am the stone that breaks all hearts, he’d said. I am the nails that bound the Christ to his cross. I am the necessary suffering that makes us all stronger… God’s power flowed through him, the power over life and death and everything between. He could save or damn you with a word or a glance, and his every decision was binding. I was pretty sure he didn’t approve of people like me, even though he’d been friendly enough, in a distant sort of way, at our last meeting.
Why hadn’t he come forth to confront Lilith?
I wasn’t at all keen on descending into the World Beneath, to talk to him. It was a foul and dangerous place, and a hell of a long way to travel, besides. Especially if he had already surfaced somewhere, to show Lilith the error of her ways… I pushed the thought back and forth for a while, but I was only putting off what I knew I had to do, so in the end I just sighed heavily, took the risk, and raised my gift. Wherever the Lord of Thorns was, in or under the Nightside, my gift would find him.
My inner eye, my third eye, opened wide and soared up into the night sky, my Sight spreading out for miles in every direction, till the whole of the Nightside lay sprawled below me like a twisted and convoluted map. Whole areas were burning, out of control, while monsters roamed the streets and panicked mobs ran this way and that. I forced my Sight to focus in on the one individual soul I was searching for, and my mind’s eye plummeted down, narrowing in on a single speck of light in the dark. I’d found the Lord of Thorns. Just as I’d thought, he had left the World Beneath for the surface; but much to my surprise, the most powerful man in the Nightside was currently hiding out in St. Jude’s, the only real church in the Nightside.
I quickly shut down my Sight, and dropped back into my head. I took a few moments to make sure all my mental barriers were safely in place again. I really didn’t want Lilith to know where I was till I was ready to face her. I considered what to do next. St. Jude’s wasn’t anywhere near the Street of the Gods, because it was the real deal. An ancient place of worship, almost as old as the Nightside itself, older by far than the Christianity that had given it its present name. (St. Jude is the patron Saint of lost causes, in case you were wondering.) It was the one place in all the world where you could go to speak with your Maker and be sure of getting a reply. Which is why most people didn’t go there. Unless they absolutely had to.
St. Jude’s was located way over on the other side of the Nightside, a long way from anywhere, and separated from me by miles and miles of very dangerous territory. Walking was not an option. I wished I’d told the Harley to stick around. I took my Membership Card out of my pocket, fired it up, and called for Alex Morrisey in a loud and demanding voice. There was a pause, just to keep me from getting above myself, then his face appeared, glowering out of the Card at me.
“Taylor! About time you turned up again. If only so you can pay your bar bill before the world ends. And what have you done to Walker? He showed up here a few minutes ago looking like someone had put the fear of God into him. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so pissed off at the world. He’s currently charging round my bar yelling orders at everyone like Captain Kirk on crack, and organising everyone within an inch of their lives.”
“Probably just a midlife crisis,” I said. “Put Tommy Oblivion on, would you, Alex? I need to ask him something.”
Alex sniffed loudly, just to remind me he was no-one’s servant, and his face disappeared from my Card, which then played me a tinny Muzak version of Prodigy’s “Firestarter” while I was on hold. Tommy’s face finally peered out of the Card at me, frowning suspiciously.
“What do you want, Taylor?”
“You,” I said.
And I reached into the Membership Card, grabbed him by the front of his ruffled shirt, and dragged him through the Card to where I was. The Card expanded hastily to let him through, but even so it was a tight squeeze for a moment. Tommy sat down suddenly on the Club steps as his head spun from the sudden transfer, and the Card shrank back to normal size and shut itself off, possibly in protest at such rough handling. I put it away, and helped Tommy to his feet.
“Son of a bitch!” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “That just about sums me up.”
He glared at me. “I didn’t know you could do that with a Card.”
“Most people can’t,” I said. “But I’m special.”
Tommy sniffed. “I suppose that’s one way of putting it.” He brushed himself down here and there, repairing his appearance as best he could, then looked at the headless Doorman, lying on the steps beside him. He moved fastidiously a little further away from the blood. “Been busy, I see.”
“For once, not my fault.” I filled him in on what had been happening, or at least as much of it as I thought he could cope with, and explained my need to get to St. Jude’s in a hurry. He really wasn’t keen on the idea, but I can be very persuasive when I have to be. Not to mention downright threatening. I only had to mention a certain video that had come into my hands, featuring him and a very athletic exotic dancer, who happened to be married to someone exceedingly scary, and suddenly he was only too willing to help me out. (I didn’t actually have the video. I’d just heard of it and run a bluff. The guilty flee…)
Tommy Oblivion’s gift manifested subtly on the air around us, and everything became uncertain. Tommy was an existentialist, and his gift allowed him to express his uncertainty about the world in a real and very physical way. The more he thought about a thing, the more possibilities he could see, and he fixed on the reality he preferred and made it solid. By concentrating hard enough, Tommy was able to convince the world that not only were we not where it thought we were, but actually we were somewhere else entirely.
And so, in the blink of an eye we left the Londinium Club behind us and materialised outside the Church of St. Jude. A dodo wandered past, hooting mournfully, a flock of passenger pigeons flapped by overhead, and an ostrich with two heads looked confusedly at itself, but they were only a few odd possibilities generated by Tommy’s gift. He concentrated on shutting his gift down, while I looked around us. Everything but the church had been razed to the ground, for as far as the eye could see. It stood alone, an old squat stone structure in the middle of a wasteland. A wide-open plain of ash and dust, where thick curls of glowing ground fog surged this way and that under the urging of a fitful wind. It was very dark, with just the blue-white glare of the oversized moon shining off the church walls. In the distance, fires leapt up briefly, screams rang out, but it was all very far away. The War had come and gone here, and left nothing behind but the church.
“I’m trying very hard to be existential about this,” Tommy said finally, “But this really is a god-awful place. I’d like to say something like… from the ashes of the old shall arise a brave new Nightside… but my heart isn’t in it.”
“If a new Nightside does arise, I doubt it would be anything you or I would recognise, or would want to,” I said. “Not if Lilith has her way.”
“God, you’re depressing to be around, Taylor. My brother’s more cheerful than you, and he’s dead. Who are we here to see, anyway?”
“The Lord of Thorns.”
“Right,” said Tommy. “I am leaving now. Good-bye. Write if you get work. I am out of here…”
“Tommy…”
“No! No way in Hell! There is absolutely nothing you can say or do or threaten me with that would persuade me to have anything to do with Him! I would rather eat my own head! The Lord of Thorns is the only person who actually scares me more than Lilith! She only wants to kill me; he wants to judge me!”
“You could leave,” I said. “But it’s a really long walk to anywhere civilised. All on your own, in the dark. And if you try to teleport back using your gift… I’ll just have the Lord of Thorns drag you back again.”
“You know the Lord of Thorns?”
“I know everyone,” I said airily.
Tommy kicked at the dusty ground. “Bully,” he muttered, not looking at me.
“You’re my ride home, Tommy,” I said, not unkindly. “You don’t have to come into the church with me, if you don’t want to. You can guard the door.”
“It’ll all end in tears,” said Tommy.
I tried the church’s only door, and it opened easily at my touch. I left Tommy sulking outside, and went in. The bare stone walls were grey and featureless, with only a series of narrow slits for windows. Short stubby candles that never went out burned in old lead wall holders, casting a cold judgemental light. Two rows of blocky wooden pews, without a cushion in sight. The altar was just a great slab of stone, covered with a cloth of spotless white samite. A single silver cross hung on the wall over the altar. And that was it. You didn’t come to St. Jude’s for frills and fancies.
This was a place where prayers were answered, and if you didn’t like the answers you got, that was your problem.
A single ragged figure sat slumped on the cold stone floor, leaning against the altar, embracing it with desperate arms. It was the Lord of Thorns. He looked like he’d been crying. He also looked like he’d been dragged through Hell backwards. Instead of the grand Old Testament Prophet I remembered, he looked like one of the homeless, like a refugee. The Overseer of the Nightside had been reduced to a man in torn and bloodied robes. His long grey hair and beard had been half-burned away. He didn’t look up as I walked down the aisle towards him, but he flinched at the sound of my footsteps, like a dog that’s been kicked once too often. I knelt before him, took his chin in my hand, and made him look at me. He trembled at my touch.
“What are you doing here?” I said. I didn’t mean for it to come out as harshly as it did, but that’s St. Jude’s for you.
“It’s all gone,” he said, in a distant, empty voice. “So I’m hiding. Hiding out, in the one place where even Lilith’s power can’t touch me. I believe that. I have to believe that. It’s all I’ve got left.”
I let go of his chin, and made an effort to soften my voice. “What happened?”
His eyes came up to meet mine, and a Vision appeared in my mind’s eye, showing me Lilith’s descent into the World Beneath. She came in force, with all her monstrous Court, smashing through ancient defences and protections as though they weren’t even there, and set her people to destroying everything and everyone. As above, so below. Just because she could. She wiped out the Eaters of the Dead, the Solitudes in their cells, the Subterraneans in their sprawling city of catacombs. A warning went out ahead of her, echoing from gallery to gallery, and some came out to fight and some dug themselves in deeper; but none of it did any good. Lilith and her terrible offspring pushed relentlessly on, destroying whole nests of vampires and ghouls and Elder Spawn, and even the worms of the earth in their deep deep tunnels.
The Lord of Thorns came forth from his crystal cave, wrapped in power and a cold, awful anger, to set his faith and authority against Lilith. For he was the Voice of God, and she was but a name out of the past. He had his staff of power, its wood taken from a tree grown from a sliver of the original Tree of Life itself, brought to Britain long and long ago by Joseph of Arimathea. The Lord of Thorns stood in Lilith’s way, and she slapped him aside contemptuously. She took his staff and it shattered into pieces in her grasp. She walked on, leaving him lying helpless in the dirt, and not even the least of her offspring would deign to touch him. The killing continued, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He made himself watch, as a penance. And when it was all over, the Lord of Thorns made his way up from the World Beneath and came to St. Jude’s. To hide.
“You have to understand,” he said, as the Vision faded from my mind. “When Lilith appeared, I thought I’d finally discovered my true purpose, my reason for being in the Nightside. That this was my destiny—to stop Lilith when no-one else could. But I was wrong. I was nothing, next to her. After so many years of judging others, I was judged… and found unworthy.”
“But… you’re one of the greatest Powers in the Nightside!”
“Not compared to her. I forgot… in the end I’m just a man, blessed with God’s power. And my faith… was nothing compared to her certainty.”
“All right,” I said. “We need backup. Can we use St. Jude’s to call for Heavenly help? For direct divine intervention?”
“What do you think I’ve been doing?” said the Lord of Thorns. “The Nightside was expressly designed from its first conception so that neither Heaven nor Hell could intervene directly. And it was decided long ago in the Courts of the Holy that this Great Experiment would be allowed to continue, to see where it would lead. I was placed here to Oversee the Experiment, to keep it on track. But now that the Nightside’s creator has returned, it seems my time and my purpose are at an end. There will be no outside help. The Nightside must save itself. If it can.”
“There is a resistance,” I said. “Come with me. You can be a part of it.”
But the Lord of Thorns just sat where he was, shaking his grey head. “No. I am not who I thought I was. So I will stay here and pray for guidance.”
I tried to argue with him, but I don’t think he really heard me. Lilith broke him when she broke his staff. So I left what was once the most feared man in the Nightside, sitting mumbling to himself, in the one place he still felt safe.
I went outside and found myself facing a crowd of hard-faced and heavily armed individuals. Their expressions lit up at the sight of me, and not in a good way. At their head stood Sandra Chance, resplendent in her thick crimson swirls of liquid latex and not much else. Though the old-fashioned pistol holstered on her bare hip was a new addition. She grinned at me, very unpleasantly. I looked at Tommy Oblivion, who was standing very very still, with his back pressed against the wall of the church.
“Sorry, old sport,” he said miserably. “Didn’t even hear them coming. Just popped out of nowhere.”
“Have you at least asked them what they want?” I said.
“Oh, I’m pretty sure they want to speak to you, John. In fact, they were most insistent on it being a surprise.”
“It’s all right, Tommy,” I said, trying to hide the fact that internally I was hyperventilating. “I know who they are. They’re bounty hunters. How did you find me here, Sandra?”
“I can get answers from the dead, remember?” She was still smiling, not at all pleasantly. “And there are a lot of dead up and about just at the moment. The dead know many things that are hidden from the living. They have… an overview. And I can get them to tell me anything.”
“Yes,” I said. “And I know how. It’s one thing to love the dead, but you take it far too literally. You coffin chaser, you.”
“Am I understanding this correctly?” said Tommy. “You mean she actually…”
“Oh yes,” I said.
“Now that’s just tacky. I can’t believe I shared a picnic with her.”
“Shut up, Tommy,” said Sandra, not taking her eyes off me.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, there is a War going on,” I said. “This really isn’t the time…”
“The Authorities are dead,” he said abruptly. “What do I do now?”
“Be your own man,” I said. “You can still give the orders that need giving, kick the arses that need kicking. Get things done. Someone’s got to lead the resistance. Who’s got more experience than you? You’re needed, Walker; now more than ever.”
Walker turned his head slowly to look at me. “You’re Lilith’s son,” he said finally. “You’re the King in waiting. You’re the legendary John Taylor, who always snatches victory from the jaws of defeat. Maybe you should be in charge.”
“No,” I said. “I’ve never wanted that. I have enough trouble being responsible for myself, never mind anyone else. And I’ve got other things to do. Don’t ask what. It would only upset you. You’ve always been The Man, Walker. So suck it up and soldier on.”
He smiled briefly. “You sound very like your father sometimes, John.” He stood up, and just like that all his old poise and confidence were back again. “I suppose someone’s got to turn you rabble into a disciplined fighting force. So, I’m going back to Strangefellows. Where will you go?”
“In search of some heavy-duty backup,” I said, getting to my feet. “We need more big guns on our side.”
“And if there aren’t any?”
I grinned at him. “Then I’ll improvise. Suddenly and violently and all over the place.”
He nodded. “It’s what you do best.”
He took out his Membership Card, activated it, and stepped through into the relative safety of Strangefellows bar. The Card disappeared with a soft sucking sound and a brief flurry of sparks, and I was left standing alone on the steps of the Londinium Club. I pushed my hands deep into the pockets of my trench coat, and looked out into the night. All the buildings around me were wrecked or burned out. Bodies everywhere. Screams in the distance, strange lights flaring on the horizon. The Nightside was going down for the third time, and I was running out of ideas. There had to be someone else, some Power or major player who still owed me a favour, or could be fooled into thinking they did… but I couldn’t think who. I couldn’t do this on my own. I needed someone powerful enough, or tricky enough, to stop this War in its tracks before it got out of hand. Before it led to the terrible future that was becoming more real, more inevitable, by the minute. Unfortunately there was only one name left on my list, the one I’d been trying so hard not to think of. Because he scared the crap out of me.
The Lord of Thorns. The Overseer of the Nightside, appointed directly by God to keep an eye on things.
Mostly, he didn’t intervene personally. He was the last judge of all disputes, the Nightside’s court of last resort, the one you only went to when everything else had failed and you were tired of living anyway. I’d been half-expecting him to turn up and start smiting everything in sight for some time now. Since he hadn’t, it looked like I was going to have to give him his wake-up call. Lucky old me. The Lord of Thorns lived in the World Beneath, the miles and miles of caverns, catacombs, and stone galleries that lay deep below the Nightside. The place where you went, when the Nightside wasn’t dark enough for you. The Lord of Thorns slept his sleep of centuries in a crystal cave in the deepest, darkest part of the World Beneath, and God help anyone who disturbed him unnecessarily.
I had only met him once, and that was more than enough. I am the stone that breaks all hearts, he’d said. I am the nails that bound the Christ to his cross. I am the necessary suffering that makes us all stronger… God’s power flowed through him, the power over life and death and everything between. He could save or damn you with a word or a glance, and his every decision was binding. I was pretty sure he didn’t approve of people like me, even though he’d been friendly enough, in a distant sort of way, at our last meeting.
Why hadn’t he come forth to confront Lilith?
I wasn’t at all keen on descending into the World Beneath, to talk to him. It was a foul and dangerous place, and a hell of a long way to travel, besides. Especially if he had already surfaced somewhere, to show Lilith the error of her ways… I pushed the thought back and forth for a while, but I was only putting off what I knew I had to do, so in the end I just sighed heavily, took the risk, and raised my gift. Wherever the Lord of Thorns was, in or under the Nightside, my gift would find him.
My inner eye, my third eye, opened wide and soared up into the night sky, my Sight spreading out for miles in every direction, till the whole of the Nightside lay sprawled below me like a twisted and convoluted map. Whole areas were burning, out of control, while monsters roamed the streets and panicked mobs ran this way and that. I forced my Sight to focus in on the one individual soul I was searching for, and my mind’s eye plummeted down, narrowing in on a single speck of light in the dark. I’d found the Lord of Thorns. Just as I’d thought, he had left the World Beneath for the surface; but much to my surprise, the most powerful man in the Nightside was currently hiding out in St. Jude’s, the only real church in the Nightside.
I quickly shut down my Sight, and dropped back into my head. I took a few moments to make sure all my mental barriers were safely in place again. I really didn’t want Lilith to know where I was till I was ready to face her. I considered what to do next. St. Jude’s wasn’t anywhere near the Street of the Gods, because it was the real deal. An ancient place of worship, almost as old as the Nightside itself, older by far than the Christianity that had given it its present name. (St. Jude is the patron Saint of lost causes, in case you were wondering.) It was the one place in all the world where you could go to speak with your Maker and be sure of getting a reply. Which is why most people didn’t go there. Unless they absolutely had to.
St. Jude’s was located way over on the other side of the Nightside, a long way from anywhere, and separated from me by miles and miles of very dangerous territory. Walking was not an option. I wished I’d told the Harley to stick around. I took my Membership Card out of my pocket, fired it up, and called for Alex Morrisey in a loud and demanding voice. There was a pause, just to keep me from getting above myself, then his face appeared, glowering out of the Card at me.
“Taylor! About time you turned up again. If only so you can pay your bar bill before the world ends. And what have you done to Walker? He showed up here a few minutes ago looking like someone had put the fear of God into him. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so pissed off at the world. He’s currently charging round my bar yelling orders at everyone like Captain Kirk on crack, and organising everyone within an inch of their lives.”
“Probably just a midlife crisis,” I said. “Put Tommy Oblivion on, would you, Alex? I need to ask him something.”
Alex sniffed loudly, just to remind me he was no-one’s servant, and his face disappeared from my Card, which then played me a tinny Muzak version of Prodigy’s “Firestarter” while I was on hold. Tommy’s face finally peered out of the Card at me, frowning suspiciously.
“What do you want, Taylor?”
“You,” I said.
And I reached into the Membership Card, grabbed him by the front of his ruffled shirt, and dragged him through the Card to where I was. The Card expanded hastily to let him through, but even so it was a tight squeeze for a moment. Tommy sat down suddenly on the Club steps as his head spun from the sudden transfer, and the Card shrank back to normal size and shut itself off, possibly in protest at such rough handling. I put it away, and helped Tommy to his feet.
“Son of a bitch!” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “That just about sums me up.”
He glared at me. “I didn’t know you could do that with a Card.”
“Most people can’t,” I said. “But I’m special.”
Tommy sniffed. “I suppose that’s one way of putting it.” He brushed himself down here and there, repairing his appearance as best he could, then looked at the headless Doorman, lying on the steps beside him. He moved fastidiously a little further away from the blood. “Been busy, I see.”
“For once, not my fault.” I filled him in on what had been happening, or at least as much of it as I thought he could cope with, and explained my need to get to St. Jude’s in a hurry. He really wasn’t keen on the idea, but I can be very persuasive when I have to be. Not to mention downright threatening. I only had to mention a certain video that had come into my hands, featuring him and a very athletic exotic dancer, who happened to be married to someone exceedingly scary, and suddenly he was only too willing to help me out. (I didn’t actually have the video. I’d just heard of it and run a bluff. The guilty flee…)
Tommy Oblivion’s gift manifested subtly on the air around us, and everything became uncertain. Tommy was an existentialist, and his gift allowed him to express his uncertainty about the world in a real and very physical way. The more he thought about a thing, the more possibilities he could see, and he fixed on the reality he preferred and made it solid. By concentrating hard enough, Tommy was able to convince the world that not only were we not where it thought we were, but actually we were somewhere else entirely.
And so, in the blink of an eye we left the Londinium Club behind us and materialised outside the Church of St. Jude. A dodo wandered past, hooting mournfully, a flock of passenger pigeons flapped by overhead, and an ostrich with two heads looked confusedly at itself, but they were only a few odd possibilities generated by Tommy’s gift. He concentrated on shutting his gift down, while I looked around us. Everything but the church had been razed to the ground, for as far as the eye could see. It stood alone, an old squat stone structure in the middle of a wasteland. A wide-open plain of ash and dust, where thick curls of glowing ground fog surged this way and that under the urging of a fitful wind. It was very dark, with just the blue-white glare of the oversized moon shining off the church walls. In the distance, fires leapt up briefly, screams rang out, but it was all very far away. The War had come and gone here, and left nothing behind but the church.
“I’m trying very hard to be existential about this,” Tommy said finally, “But this really is a god-awful place. I’d like to say something like… from the ashes of the old shall arise a brave new Nightside… but my heart isn’t in it.”
“If a new Nightside does arise, I doubt it would be anything you or I would recognise, or would want to,” I said. “Not if Lilith has her way.”
“God, you’re depressing to be around, Taylor. My brother’s more cheerful than you, and he’s dead. Who are we here to see, anyway?”
“The Lord of Thorns.”
“Right,” said Tommy. “I am leaving now. Good-bye. Write if you get work. I am out of here…”
“Tommy…”
“No! No way in Hell! There is absolutely nothing you can say or do or threaten me with that would persuade me to have anything to do with Him! I would rather eat my own head! The Lord of Thorns is the only person who actually scares me more than Lilith! She only wants to kill me; he wants to judge me!”
“You could leave,” I said. “But it’s a really long walk to anywhere civilised. All on your own, in the dark. And if you try to teleport back using your gift… I’ll just have the Lord of Thorns drag you back again.”
“You know the Lord of Thorns?”
“I know everyone,” I said airily.
Tommy kicked at the dusty ground. “Bully,” he muttered, not looking at me.
“You’re my ride home, Tommy,” I said, not unkindly. “You don’t have to come into the church with me, if you don’t want to. You can guard the door.”
“It’ll all end in tears,” said Tommy.
I tried the church’s only door, and it opened easily at my touch. I left Tommy sulking outside, and went in. The bare stone walls were grey and featureless, with only a series of narrow slits for windows. Short stubby candles that never went out burned in old lead wall holders, casting a cold judgemental light. Two rows of blocky wooden pews, without a cushion in sight. The altar was just a great slab of stone, covered with a cloth of spotless white samite. A single silver cross hung on the wall over the altar. And that was it. You didn’t come to St. Jude’s for frills and fancies.
This was a place where prayers were answered, and if you didn’t like the answers you got, that was your problem.
A single ragged figure sat slumped on the cold stone floor, leaning against the altar, embracing it with desperate arms. It was the Lord of Thorns. He looked like he’d been crying. He also looked like he’d been dragged through Hell backwards. Instead of the grand Old Testament Prophet I remembered, he looked like one of the homeless, like a refugee. The Overseer of the Nightside had been reduced to a man in torn and bloodied robes. His long grey hair and beard had been half-burned away. He didn’t look up as I walked down the aisle towards him, but he flinched at the sound of my footsteps, like a dog that’s been kicked once too often. I knelt before him, took his chin in my hand, and made him look at me. He trembled at my touch.
“What are you doing here?” I said. I didn’t mean for it to come out as harshly as it did, but that’s St. Jude’s for you.
“It’s all gone,” he said, in a distant, empty voice. “So I’m hiding. Hiding out, in the one place where even Lilith’s power can’t touch me. I believe that. I have to believe that. It’s all I’ve got left.”
I let go of his chin, and made an effort to soften my voice. “What happened?”
His eyes came up to meet mine, and a Vision appeared in my mind’s eye, showing me Lilith’s descent into the World Beneath. She came in force, with all her monstrous Court, smashing through ancient defences and protections as though they weren’t even there, and set her people to destroying everything and everyone. As above, so below. Just because she could. She wiped out the Eaters of the Dead, the Solitudes in their cells, the Subterraneans in their sprawling city of catacombs. A warning went out ahead of her, echoing from gallery to gallery, and some came out to fight and some dug themselves in deeper; but none of it did any good. Lilith and her terrible offspring pushed relentlessly on, destroying whole nests of vampires and ghouls and Elder Spawn, and even the worms of the earth in their deep deep tunnels.
The Lord of Thorns came forth from his crystal cave, wrapped in power and a cold, awful anger, to set his faith and authority against Lilith. For he was the Voice of God, and she was but a name out of the past. He had his staff of power, its wood taken from a tree grown from a sliver of the original Tree of Life itself, brought to Britain long and long ago by Joseph of Arimathea. The Lord of Thorns stood in Lilith’s way, and she slapped him aside contemptuously. She took his staff and it shattered into pieces in her grasp. She walked on, leaving him lying helpless in the dirt, and not even the least of her offspring would deign to touch him. The killing continued, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He made himself watch, as a penance. And when it was all over, the Lord of Thorns made his way up from the World Beneath and came to St. Jude’s. To hide.
“You have to understand,” he said, as the Vision faded from my mind. “When Lilith appeared, I thought I’d finally discovered my true purpose, my reason for being in the Nightside. That this was my destiny—to stop Lilith when no-one else could. But I was wrong. I was nothing, next to her. After so many years of judging others, I was judged… and found unworthy.”
“But… you’re one of the greatest Powers in the Nightside!”
“Not compared to her. I forgot… in the end I’m just a man, blessed with God’s power. And my faith… was nothing compared to her certainty.”
“All right,” I said. “We need backup. Can we use St. Jude’s to call for Heavenly help? For direct divine intervention?”
“What do you think I’ve been doing?” said the Lord of Thorns. “The Nightside was expressly designed from its first conception so that neither Heaven nor Hell could intervene directly. And it was decided long ago in the Courts of the Holy that this Great Experiment would be allowed to continue, to see where it would lead. I was placed here to Oversee the Experiment, to keep it on track. But now that the Nightside’s creator has returned, it seems my time and my purpose are at an end. There will be no outside help. The Nightside must save itself. If it can.”
“There is a resistance,” I said. “Come with me. You can be a part of it.”
But the Lord of Thorns just sat where he was, shaking his grey head. “No. I am not who I thought I was. So I will stay here and pray for guidance.”
I tried to argue with him, but I don’t think he really heard me. Lilith broke him when she broke his staff. So I left what was once the most feared man in the Nightside, sitting mumbling to himself, in the one place he still felt safe.
I went outside and found myself facing a crowd of hard-faced and heavily armed individuals. Their expressions lit up at the sight of me, and not in a good way. At their head stood Sandra Chance, resplendent in her thick crimson swirls of liquid latex and not much else. Though the old-fashioned pistol holstered on her bare hip was a new addition. She grinned at me, very unpleasantly. I looked at Tommy Oblivion, who was standing very very still, with his back pressed against the wall of the church.
“Sorry, old sport,” he said miserably. “Didn’t even hear them coming. Just popped out of nowhere.”
“Have you at least asked them what they want?” I said.
“Oh, I’m pretty sure they want to speak to you, John. In fact, they were most insistent on it being a surprise.”
“It’s all right, Tommy,” I said, trying to hide the fact that internally I was hyperventilating. “I know who they are. They’re bounty hunters. How did you find me here, Sandra?”
“I can get answers from the dead, remember?” She was still smiling, not at all pleasantly. “And there are a lot of dead up and about just at the moment. The dead know many things that are hidden from the living. They have… an overview. And I can get them to tell me anything.”
“Yes,” I said. “And I know how. It’s one thing to love the dead, but you take it far too literally. You coffin chaser, you.”
“Am I understanding this correctly?” said Tommy. “You mean she actually…”
“Oh yes,” I said.
“Now that’s just tacky. I can’t believe I shared a picnic with her.”
“Shut up, Tommy,” said Sandra, not taking her eyes off me.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, there is a War going on,” I said. “This really isn’t the time…”