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“There’s always a war going on somewhere in the Nightside,” said Sandra. “You should know—you’ve started your fair share of them. My associates and I have decided that we don’t care. We want the reward on your head. It’s a really big reward; one of the biggest bounties ever posted in the Nightside. The very well connected families of the thirteen Reasonable Men you slaughtered want you dead, John, and they don’t care how much it costs them. There’s enough money on the table to buy all of us a way out of the Nightside and into some distant dimension where even Lilith can’t reach. And still leave enough cold cash for all of us to live like royalty, in our new home. So, revenge, escape, and all our dreams come true. In return for your head, preferably no longer connected to your body. See how neatly it all works out?”
“I thought you said you owed me,” I said carefully. “For saving your life in the Necropolis graveyard?”
“Whatever small debt I may have owed you, I more than paid it off being a good soldier for Walker and defending the Nightside during your absence. I want you dead, John. I can’t even breathe easily while you’re still among the living. You murdered my sweet Saint of Suffering, my beloved Lamentation. You have to pay for that. I put together this little band of bounty hunters, some of the very best in the business, just so I could be sure you wouldn’t dodge your death this time. Try your little bag of tricks against professionals, Taylor, and see where it gets you.”
She had a point. I considered the dozen or so bounty hunters fanned out in a wide semicircle before me, covering all the possible escape routes. Most were vaguely familiar faces, and three of them were actually famous, almost in a class with Suzie Shooter herself. At least she wasn’t here. Then I really would have been in trouble. The tall scarecrow figure in Sally Army cast-offs was Dominic Flipside, a short-range teleporter. Frighteningly quick and sneaky, you never knew from which direction he’d come at you next. Whispering Ivy was a rogue anima from Wales, made up entirely from flowers and thorns, an ever-shifting montage of natural forms in the vague shape of a woman. When she moved, it sounded like the whispering of owls. And Cold Harald, dressed as always in the starkest black and white, with a mind like a calculating machine. He always worked the odds, his logic unclouded by any trace of emotion or humanity. He held a machine pistol in each hand and looked like he knew how to use them. Any one of these three would have worried me, but all of them together… and Sandra Chance… I thought about running back into the church and screaming for sanctuary, but I knew I’d never make the second step.
“Don’t even think about the church,” said Sandra. “Or we’ll shoot your friend.”
Tommy looked at her, hurt. “After we worked together, such a short time ago? Have you no shame? You wound me, madam.”
“If you don’t shut up, I’ll wound you somewhere really painful,” said Sandra. “It’s up to you, Taylor. Surrender, and we’ll make it quick. You can go out with some dignity, at least. Make us work for your head, and we’ll all take turns expressing our displeasure on your helpless body.”
“Come and take it,” I said. “If you can.”
“I was hoping you’d say that,” said Sandra Chance. “Remember, people, do what you like to the body but don’t damage the head. Our patrons won’t pay up unless the face is unquestionably his. I think they want to take turns pissing on it. Otherwise, anything goes.”
Tommy Oblivion stepped forwards. He’d always been a lot braver than people gave him credit for. His gift manifested very subtly on the air, making his words seem the very epitome of reasonableness and good sense.
“Come,” he said warmly, his arms reaching out to embrace everyone. “Let us reason together…”
“Let’s not,” said Cold Harald, in his flat, clipped voice, and he shot Tommy half a dozen times in the stomach. Tommy staggered back under the impact, slamming up against the church wall, then slid slowly down it until he was sitting on the ground. The whole bottom half of his ruffled shirt was slick with blood.
“Oh dear,” he said quietly. “Oh dear.” He bit his lip against the pain, and I could see him trying to concentrate, trying to raise his gift, so he could find a possibility where the bullets hadn’t hit him. But his face was already white and beaded with sweat, his breathing hurried and shallow. I could feel his gift sparking on and off, but pain and stress were getting in the way of his concentration.
I couldn’t expect any help from him. I was on my own.
I palmed an incendiary from out of my sleeve and tossed it into the midst of the advancing bounty hunters. Fire and smoke exploded noisily, and two of the bounty hunters fell broken and bleeding to the ground. The rest scattered. Dominic Flipside giggled, a long knife suddenly in each hand, then he disappeared, air rushing in to fill the space where he’d been. I felt as much as heard him reappear almost immediately behind me, and spun round, one arm raised. He cut me open from wrist to elbow, and disappeared again. Blood soaked the length of my coat sleeve.
Cold Harald stepped forward, raising both machine pistols to target me. Dominic Flipside was already gone. I fired up my gift, used it to find where he’d reappear, and stepped forward to meet Cold Harald. He hesitated, expecting some trick, some magic. Dominic Flipside appeared behind me, and lunged silently forward with his long knife. I stepped aside at the last moment, and Dominic plunged on to stab Cold Harald through the heart. His fingers tightened on the triggers of his machine pistols, and blew a dozen holes through Dominic Flipside. Both of them were dead before they hit the ground.
There was a rustling of plants, and the murmuring of dreaming owls, as Whispering Ivy stretched out a hand made of petals and thorns. She sprouted fierce tendrils of barbed greenery, her shifting shape rising up and towering over me, then she stopped abruptly. There was the sound of crackling flames, the smell of smoke. She looked back, turning her flowery head impossibly far round. While she was fixed on me, Tommy had crawled around behind her and set fire to her with his monogrammed gold lighter. Whispering Ivy shrieked as the flames shot up incredibly fast, consuming her construct body, and she ran off across the open ashy plain, howling shrilly, a shrinking flickering light in the gloom.
I looked at the remaining bounty hunters. They were all frozen in place, horrified at how quickly I’d taken out their star players. They all looked at Sandra Chance, to see what she would do. To her credit, she’d already thrown off any surprise or shock she might have felt, and had drawn the old-fashioned pistol from its holster. It was an ugly, mean gun, built with function in mind, not aesthetics. The metal was blue-black, the barrel unfashionably long. It looked like what it was—a killing tool.
“This is an enchanted pistol,” Sandra Chance said steadily. “It never misses. It belonged originally to the famed Western duellist, Dead Eye Dick, renowned hero of dime novels and at least one song. I dug up his grave and broke open his coffin to get this gun. I had to break his fingers to make him let go of it. I’d been saving it for a special occasion. You should feel honoured, John.”
“People keep telling me that,” I said.
She pulled the trigger while I was still speaking, and shot me three times in the chest. It was like being kicked by a horse, an impact so great it knocked all the breath out of my lungs and sent me stumbling backwards. The pain was remarkably focused; I could feel each separate bullet hole. There was a roaring in my head, and I still couldn’t breathe. I bent forward over the pain, as though bowing to my killer, to the inevitable, and then, suddenly, I could breathe again. I sucked in a great lungful of air, and it had never tasted so good. My head cleared, and the pains faded away to nothing. I straightened up slowly, not quite trusting what I was feeling, and pulled open my bullet-holed trench coat to look underneath. There were three more holes in my shirt, but only a little blood. I put my fingers through the holes in my shirt, and found only unbroken skin. I felt great. I looked at Sandra Chance, and she stared blankly back at me, open-mouthed.
“Honest,” I said. “I’m just as surprised as you are. But I think I know what’s happened. I once put werewolf blood into Suzie Shooter, to save her from a mortal wound. And later she put her blood into me, for the same reason. So it seems I have acquired a werewolf’s healing abilities. The blood’s probably too diluted to do anything else to me, but…”
“It’s not fair,” said Sandra. “You bastard, Taylor! You always have a way out.”
I had a feeling silver bullets might still get the job done, but I didn’t think I’d mention that to Sandra. I turned to the other bounty hunters, who were still as statues, watching with gaping mouths, and gave them my best nasty smile. Five seconds later all I could see was their backs, heading for the nearest horizon. They knew when they were outclassed. I turned back to Sandra Chance, and she shot me in the head. The impact whipped my head round, and for a moment it seemed like all the bells in the world were ringing inside my skull. I then felt the weirdest sensation, as the bullet crept slowly back out of my brain, the hole healing behind it, until it popped out my forehead and dropped to the ground. The bone healed with only the faintest of cracking sounds, and that was that.
I smiled at Sandra. “Ouch,” I said, just to be sporting.
She stamped her foot. “Don’t you ever play by the rules?”
“Not if I can help it,” I said.
We stood and looked at each other for a long moment. Sandra lowered her gun but didn’t put it away. I knew she was considering the possibilities of a bullet to a soft target, like an eye or my groin.
“We don’t have to do this,” I said. “All this kill or be killed bullshit. I don’t want to kill you, Sandra. There’s been enough death in the Nightside.”
“I have to kill you, John,” said Sandra, almost tiredly. “You murdered the only thing I ever loved.”
“The Lamentation isn’t actually dead,” I said. “I only returned it to its original human components.”
“They weren’t the Lamentation,” said Sandra. “They weren’t what I loved. So I killed them. And now I have to kill you.”
“I never understood what you saw in it,” I said carefully. “Even allowing for your well-known death fetish, and your preference for… cold meat. You must know the Lamentation didn’t love you. It couldn’t, by its nature.”
“I knew that! Of course I knew that! It was enough… that I loved it. The only creature something like me could ever love. It made me happy. I’d never been happy before. I’ll kill you for taking that away from me.”
“I won’t kill you, Sandra,” I said. “And you can’t kill me. Forget this shit. We’ve got a War to fight.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “Let it all burn. Let them all die. That’s the world I live in anyway. I’ll find you, and I’ll kill you, John. There’s always a way. Wherever you go, I’ll be there in the shadows, hunting you. And one day I’ll step out of a door or an alleyway and kill you dead, when you’re least expecting it. I’ll watch you choke on your own blood and laugh in your face as you die.”
“No you won’t,” said Suzie Shooter.
We both spun round, startled, and the roar of the shotgun was like thunder. Sandra Chance took both barrels in the chest, at close range. The blast tore half her upper torso away, and she was dead long before she hit the ground. Suzie nodded calmly, lowered the double-barrelled shotgun, and reloaded it from her bandoliers, and only then looked at me.
“Blessed and cursed ammo. If one barrel doesn’t get you, the other will. Hello, John.”
“Thank you, Suzie,” I said. There was nothing else I could say. She wouldn’t have understood. “How did you know to find me here?”
Suzie nodded at Sandra’s sprawled body. “She was dumb enough to approach me when she was putting her little army together. She thought the sheer size of the bounty would sway me. I won’t say I wasn’t tempted, but I like to think I’ve moved beyond that, where you’re concerned. So I came here. I thought you might need some backup.”
“I had the situation under control,” I said. “You didn’t have to kill her.”
“Yes I did,” said Suzie. “You heard her. She’d never give up. That’s why you’ll always need me around, John. To do the necessary things you’re too soft to do.”
“That’s not why I keep you around,” I said.
“I know,” said Suzie Shooter. “My love.”
She extended a leather-gloved hand to me, and I held it lightly in mine, for a moment.
“Excuse me for butting in on such a tender scene,” said Tommy Oblivion, “But I do happen to by dying here. I would appreciate a helping hand.”
He was lying on his side on the ground, both hands at his stomach, as though trying to hold it together. Suzie knelt beside him, pushed his hands aside, and checked the extent of the damage with experienced eyes.
“Gut shot. Nasty. If the bullets don’t kill him, infection will. We need to get him out of here, John.”
“I can’t use my gift,” said Tommy. His voice was clear enough, but his eyes were vague. “Can’t concentrate through the pain. But I absolutely refuse to die in such a drab and depressing location as this.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll take us back to Strangefellows through my Membership Card, and Alex will fix you up. You can put it on my tab.”
“Oh good,” said Tommy. “For a minute there, I was almost worried.”
I took out my Membership Card, activated it, then almost dropped the bloody thing as Lilith’s face looked out of the Card at me.
“Hello, John,” she said. “My sweet boy. My own dear flesh and blood. I haven’t forgotten you. I’ll come for you soon, then you’ll be mine, body and soul, forever and ever and ever.”
I shut down the Card, and her face disappeared. I was breathing hard, as though I’d just been hit. Suzie and Tommy were looking at me, and I realised they hadn’t heard a thing.
“Bad news,” I said. “We’re going to have to do this the hard way.”
Eleven -
Truth and Consequences
“I thought you said you owed me,” I said carefully. “For saving your life in the Necropolis graveyard?”
“Whatever small debt I may have owed you, I more than paid it off being a good soldier for Walker and defending the Nightside during your absence. I want you dead, John. I can’t even breathe easily while you’re still among the living. You murdered my sweet Saint of Suffering, my beloved Lamentation. You have to pay for that. I put together this little band of bounty hunters, some of the very best in the business, just so I could be sure you wouldn’t dodge your death this time. Try your little bag of tricks against professionals, Taylor, and see where it gets you.”
She had a point. I considered the dozen or so bounty hunters fanned out in a wide semicircle before me, covering all the possible escape routes. Most were vaguely familiar faces, and three of them were actually famous, almost in a class with Suzie Shooter herself. At least she wasn’t here. Then I really would have been in trouble. The tall scarecrow figure in Sally Army cast-offs was Dominic Flipside, a short-range teleporter. Frighteningly quick and sneaky, you never knew from which direction he’d come at you next. Whispering Ivy was a rogue anima from Wales, made up entirely from flowers and thorns, an ever-shifting montage of natural forms in the vague shape of a woman. When she moved, it sounded like the whispering of owls. And Cold Harald, dressed as always in the starkest black and white, with a mind like a calculating machine. He always worked the odds, his logic unclouded by any trace of emotion or humanity. He held a machine pistol in each hand and looked like he knew how to use them. Any one of these three would have worried me, but all of them together… and Sandra Chance… I thought about running back into the church and screaming for sanctuary, but I knew I’d never make the second step.
“Don’t even think about the church,” said Sandra. “Or we’ll shoot your friend.”
Tommy looked at her, hurt. “After we worked together, such a short time ago? Have you no shame? You wound me, madam.”
“If you don’t shut up, I’ll wound you somewhere really painful,” said Sandra. “It’s up to you, Taylor. Surrender, and we’ll make it quick. You can go out with some dignity, at least. Make us work for your head, and we’ll all take turns expressing our displeasure on your helpless body.”
“Come and take it,” I said. “If you can.”
“I was hoping you’d say that,” said Sandra Chance. “Remember, people, do what you like to the body but don’t damage the head. Our patrons won’t pay up unless the face is unquestionably his. I think they want to take turns pissing on it. Otherwise, anything goes.”
Tommy Oblivion stepped forwards. He’d always been a lot braver than people gave him credit for. His gift manifested very subtly on the air, making his words seem the very epitome of reasonableness and good sense.
“Come,” he said warmly, his arms reaching out to embrace everyone. “Let us reason together…”
“Let’s not,” said Cold Harald, in his flat, clipped voice, and he shot Tommy half a dozen times in the stomach. Tommy staggered back under the impact, slamming up against the church wall, then slid slowly down it until he was sitting on the ground. The whole bottom half of his ruffled shirt was slick with blood.
“Oh dear,” he said quietly. “Oh dear.” He bit his lip against the pain, and I could see him trying to concentrate, trying to raise his gift, so he could find a possibility where the bullets hadn’t hit him. But his face was already white and beaded with sweat, his breathing hurried and shallow. I could feel his gift sparking on and off, but pain and stress were getting in the way of his concentration.
I couldn’t expect any help from him. I was on my own.
I palmed an incendiary from out of my sleeve and tossed it into the midst of the advancing bounty hunters. Fire and smoke exploded noisily, and two of the bounty hunters fell broken and bleeding to the ground. The rest scattered. Dominic Flipside giggled, a long knife suddenly in each hand, then he disappeared, air rushing in to fill the space where he’d been. I felt as much as heard him reappear almost immediately behind me, and spun round, one arm raised. He cut me open from wrist to elbow, and disappeared again. Blood soaked the length of my coat sleeve.
Cold Harald stepped forward, raising both machine pistols to target me. Dominic Flipside was already gone. I fired up my gift, used it to find where he’d reappear, and stepped forward to meet Cold Harald. He hesitated, expecting some trick, some magic. Dominic Flipside appeared behind me, and lunged silently forward with his long knife. I stepped aside at the last moment, and Dominic plunged on to stab Cold Harald through the heart. His fingers tightened on the triggers of his machine pistols, and blew a dozen holes through Dominic Flipside. Both of them were dead before they hit the ground.
There was a rustling of plants, and the murmuring of dreaming owls, as Whispering Ivy stretched out a hand made of petals and thorns. She sprouted fierce tendrils of barbed greenery, her shifting shape rising up and towering over me, then she stopped abruptly. There was the sound of crackling flames, the smell of smoke. She looked back, turning her flowery head impossibly far round. While she was fixed on me, Tommy had crawled around behind her and set fire to her with his monogrammed gold lighter. Whispering Ivy shrieked as the flames shot up incredibly fast, consuming her construct body, and she ran off across the open ashy plain, howling shrilly, a shrinking flickering light in the gloom.
I looked at the remaining bounty hunters. They were all frozen in place, horrified at how quickly I’d taken out their star players. They all looked at Sandra Chance, to see what she would do. To her credit, she’d already thrown off any surprise or shock she might have felt, and had drawn the old-fashioned pistol from its holster. It was an ugly, mean gun, built with function in mind, not aesthetics. The metal was blue-black, the barrel unfashionably long. It looked like what it was—a killing tool.
“This is an enchanted pistol,” Sandra Chance said steadily. “It never misses. It belonged originally to the famed Western duellist, Dead Eye Dick, renowned hero of dime novels and at least one song. I dug up his grave and broke open his coffin to get this gun. I had to break his fingers to make him let go of it. I’d been saving it for a special occasion. You should feel honoured, John.”
“People keep telling me that,” I said.
She pulled the trigger while I was still speaking, and shot me three times in the chest. It was like being kicked by a horse, an impact so great it knocked all the breath out of my lungs and sent me stumbling backwards. The pain was remarkably focused; I could feel each separate bullet hole. There was a roaring in my head, and I still couldn’t breathe. I bent forward over the pain, as though bowing to my killer, to the inevitable, and then, suddenly, I could breathe again. I sucked in a great lungful of air, and it had never tasted so good. My head cleared, and the pains faded away to nothing. I straightened up slowly, not quite trusting what I was feeling, and pulled open my bullet-holed trench coat to look underneath. There were three more holes in my shirt, but only a little blood. I put my fingers through the holes in my shirt, and found only unbroken skin. I felt great. I looked at Sandra Chance, and she stared blankly back at me, open-mouthed.
“Honest,” I said. “I’m just as surprised as you are. But I think I know what’s happened. I once put werewolf blood into Suzie Shooter, to save her from a mortal wound. And later she put her blood into me, for the same reason. So it seems I have acquired a werewolf’s healing abilities. The blood’s probably too diluted to do anything else to me, but…”
“It’s not fair,” said Sandra. “You bastard, Taylor! You always have a way out.”
I had a feeling silver bullets might still get the job done, but I didn’t think I’d mention that to Sandra. I turned to the other bounty hunters, who were still as statues, watching with gaping mouths, and gave them my best nasty smile. Five seconds later all I could see was their backs, heading for the nearest horizon. They knew when they were outclassed. I turned back to Sandra Chance, and she shot me in the head. The impact whipped my head round, and for a moment it seemed like all the bells in the world were ringing inside my skull. I then felt the weirdest sensation, as the bullet crept slowly back out of my brain, the hole healing behind it, until it popped out my forehead and dropped to the ground. The bone healed with only the faintest of cracking sounds, and that was that.
I smiled at Sandra. “Ouch,” I said, just to be sporting.
She stamped her foot. “Don’t you ever play by the rules?”
“Not if I can help it,” I said.
We stood and looked at each other for a long moment. Sandra lowered her gun but didn’t put it away. I knew she was considering the possibilities of a bullet to a soft target, like an eye or my groin.
“We don’t have to do this,” I said. “All this kill or be killed bullshit. I don’t want to kill you, Sandra. There’s been enough death in the Nightside.”
“I have to kill you, John,” said Sandra, almost tiredly. “You murdered the only thing I ever loved.”
“The Lamentation isn’t actually dead,” I said. “I only returned it to its original human components.”
“They weren’t the Lamentation,” said Sandra. “They weren’t what I loved. So I killed them. And now I have to kill you.”
“I never understood what you saw in it,” I said carefully. “Even allowing for your well-known death fetish, and your preference for… cold meat. You must know the Lamentation didn’t love you. It couldn’t, by its nature.”
“I knew that! Of course I knew that! It was enough… that I loved it. The only creature something like me could ever love. It made me happy. I’d never been happy before. I’ll kill you for taking that away from me.”
“I won’t kill you, Sandra,” I said. “And you can’t kill me. Forget this shit. We’ve got a War to fight.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “Let it all burn. Let them all die. That’s the world I live in anyway. I’ll find you, and I’ll kill you, John. There’s always a way. Wherever you go, I’ll be there in the shadows, hunting you. And one day I’ll step out of a door or an alleyway and kill you dead, when you’re least expecting it. I’ll watch you choke on your own blood and laugh in your face as you die.”
“No you won’t,” said Suzie Shooter.
We both spun round, startled, and the roar of the shotgun was like thunder. Sandra Chance took both barrels in the chest, at close range. The blast tore half her upper torso away, and she was dead long before she hit the ground. Suzie nodded calmly, lowered the double-barrelled shotgun, and reloaded it from her bandoliers, and only then looked at me.
“Blessed and cursed ammo. If one barrel doesn’t get you, the other will. Hello, John.”
“Thank you, Suzie,” I said. There was nothing else I could say. She wouldn’t have understood. “How did you know to find me here?”
Suzie nodded at Sandra’s sprawled body. “She was dumb enough to approach me when she was putting her little army together. She thought the sheer size of the bounty would sway me. I won’t say I wasn’t tempted, but I like to think I’ve moved beyond that, where you’re concerned. So I came here. I thought you might need some backup.”
“I had the situation under control,” I said. “You didn’t have to kill her.”
“Yes I did,” said Suzie. “You heard her. She’d never give up. That’s why you’ll always need me around, John. To do the necessary things you’re too soft to do.”
“That’s not why I keep you around,” I said.
“I know,” said Suzie Shooter. “My love.”
She extended a leather-gloved hand to me, and I held it lightly in mine, for a moment.
“Excuse me for butting in on such a tender scene,” said Tommy Oblivion, “But I do happen to by dying here. I would appreciate a helping hand.”
He was lying on his side on the ground, both hands at his stomach, as though trying to hold it together. Suzie knelt beside him, pushed his hands aside, and checked the extent of the damage with experienced eyes.
“Gut shot. Nasty. If the bullets don’t kill him, infection will. We need to get him out of here, John.”
“I can’t use my gift,” said Tommy. His voice was clear enough, but his eyes were vague. “Can’t concentrate through the pain. But I absolutely refuse to die in such a drab and depressing location as this.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll take us back to Strangefellows through my Membership Card, and Alex will fix you up. You can put it on my tab.”
“Oh good,” said Tommy. “For a minute there, I was almost worried.”
I took out my Membership Card, activated it, then almost dropped the bloody thing as Lilith’s face looked out of the Card at me.
“Hello, John,” she said. “My sweet boy. My own dear flesh and blood. I haven’t forgotten you. I’ll come for you soon, then you’ll be mine, body and soul, forever and ever and ever.”
I shut down the Card, and her face disappeared. I was breathing hard, as though I’d just been hit. Suzie and Tommy were looking at me, and I realised they hadn’t heard a thing.
“Bad news,” I said. “We’re going to have to do this the hard way.”
Eleven -
Truth and Consequences
I stripped off my trench coat and gingerly inspected my injured arm. Dominic Flipside really had sliced it open from wrist to elbow, and blood was coursing down my arm. It hurt a lot more once I saw how bad it was. It also showed absolutely no signs of healing on its own. Suzie bandaged my arm with practised skill, brisk efficiency, and a bedside manner that bordered on distressing. She kept her gloves on the whole time. I would have liked to make a lot of noise, or at least indulged in some impassioned cursing, but somehow I couldn’t when Tommy Oblivion’s wounds were so much worse, and he wasn’t making a sound. Suzie tied off both ends of my bandaged arm, and I flexed it carefully.
“You’ll need stitches later,” said Suzie.
“That’s right, cheer me up.” I glanced at Dominic’s body. “Trust a sneak assassin like him to use a blade with a silver edge. It’s lucky you were carrying bandages, Suzie.”
“Lucky, hell. I always carry a full med kit. Tools of the trade, when you’re in the bounty-hunting business. Even though the powers that be won’t let me claim them as a business expense, the bastards.”
I put my trench coat back on. The slit sleeve flapped loosely around my injured arm. “I suppose,” I said thoughtfully, “they won’t let you claim because the med kit could be used by you, or your victims.”
“Don’t be silly, John. You know I always bring them in dead. Less paperwork that way.”
We looked over at Tommy Oblivion, who was still sitting with his back propped against the wall of St. Jude’s. Suzie had pushed his guts back into place, then wrapped his stomach with half a mile of bandages, but they were already soaked through with fresh blood. Tommy’s face was grey and beaded with sweat. His eyes were wide and staring, and his mouth trembled. There was no way in Hell he was going to be able to concentrate hard enough or long enough to heal himself.
“We have to get him back to Strangefellows,” Suzie said quietly. “And fast.”
“I can’t use my Membership Card, or his,” I said, just as quietly. “Lilith has found a way to hack into it. She’s closing in on me, Suzie, and I can’t afford to be found.”
Suzie looked out over the wasteland of ash and dust. Strange lights flared briefly on the horizon. “We’re a long way from the bar, John. A long way from anywhere civilised. Tommy won’t make it if we have to travel through the war zones on foot. Hell, I’m not even that sure we’ll make it. Things are bad out there… How about if we go into St. Jude’s, and pray for a miracle?”
“How about you go in?” I said. “Tommy and I will watch. From a safe distance. St. Jude’s has a famously zero-tolerance policy when it comes to sinners.”
“Could you two please keep the noise down?” Tommy said hoarsely. “I’m dying here, and I have a headache.”
“He’s delirious,” said Suzie.
“I wish,” said Tommy.
Suzie leaned in close to me, her mouth right next to my ear. “It might be kinder to kill him here, John. Rather than let him die by inches, dragging him through the war zones. His screaming would be bound to attract attention. I could do it. I’d be very humane. He wouldn’t feel a thing.”
“No,” I said. “I won’t let him down. I won’t let him die. He saved my life. He crawled twenty feet in the dirt with half a dozen bullets in his gut to set fire to that rogue anima. Bravest thing I’ve ever seen. I wasn’t the hero he wanted me to be, on our trip into the Past. But he was a hero for me.”
I remembered Larry Oblivion’s words, from the pitiful last redoubt of my Enemies in the future. He trusted you, even though he had good reason not to. And when they struck him down you just stood there, and watched him die, and did nothing to help.
I looked at Suzie. “How did you get here?”
“Razor Eddie cut a door in the air with his razor, opening up a breach between there and here. All I had to do was step through.”
Suzie fixed me with her cold, unwavering gaze. “You want to save him, there’s only one thing left. Use your gift, John. Find us a way back to the bar.”
“Using my gift is like using the Card,” I said reluctantly. “It’s another way for Lilith to find me. If I keep pushing my luck, it’s bound to run out. But… right now, I’d have to say Tommy’s chances are much worse than mine. So.”
I fired up my gift, concentrating as hard as I knew how on finding a way out of this mess. Not for me, but for my friends. Because they both came through for me, when I needed them. I pushed hard, gritting my teeth until my jaw ached. Sweat rolled down my face. I could feel some chance, some possibility, close at hand. Something we’d all overlooked. I concentrated till my head ached, a vicious pounding beat of pain, forcing my inner eye, my private eye, to focus in on what I needed. And finally my Sight showed me a door, or at least the essence of a door, hanging before me. It was the opening Razor Eddie had made, with his godly will and his awful straight razor. The door had closed behind Suzie when Eddie stopped thinking about it, but the rift he’d made was still there, if only potentially. I felt my lips pull back in a death’s-head grin that was as much a snarl as anything else. I was back in the game again. I sensed Suzie moving in to stand very close to me, comforting me with her presence, but I couldn’t see or hear her.
I hit the potential door with every bit of willpower I had, all my muscles locked solid from the strain, my stomach clenching so painfully I almost cried out; and slowly, inch by inch and moment by moment, the door grew more real and more definite. Sweat was pouring off me now, my whole body aching from the tension, and my head felt like it would fly apart at any moment. Blood poured from my nose and ears, and even oozed up from under my eyelids. I was doing myself some serious damage, pushing my gift harder than I ever had before. My breathing came harsh and rapid, my heart hammered in my chest, and my vision narrowed till all I could see was the door, as real to me as I was, because I made it so. I couldn’t feel my hands. Couldn’t feel my wounded arm. A terrible chill spread through me. I fell to my knees, and didn’t even feel the impact. I could sense Suzie kneeling beside me, yelling my name, but even that was faint and far away.
The door swung open, and I cried out, a harsh rasping cry of victory. The door hung on the air before us, an opening, a window through space itself. I shut down my gift, and the door remained. I’d broken it to my will. Sight and sound and sensation returned in a rush. Suzie was kneeling beside me, shaking my shoulder with her gloved hand and yelling right into my ear. I slowly turned my head and grinned at her, blood spilling out over my lips, and said something indistinct. She saw I was back and stopped shouting. She produced a surprisingly clean handkerchief from inside her leather jacket and wiped the blood and sweat and tears from my face. When I was ready, she helped me up onto my feet again.
Through the gap in the air I could see right into Strangefellows. Walker and Alex Morrisey were looking back through the gap, their faces slack with almost comic expressions of surprise. I waved cheerfully at them, and they both recovered quickly. Suzie started to help me towards the door.
“No,” I made myself say. “Tommy first. I’ll heal. He won’t.”
She nodded and let go of me. I swayed a little, but stayed upright. Suzie picked Tommy up in her arms as though he was a child, and carried him towards the door. He cried out once at the sudden new pain, but that was it. Tough little guy, for an effete existentialist. Suzie took him through the opening into the bar, then came back for me. I walked through the door under my own steam, but it was a near thing. I’d pushed myself too hard this time, and I had a strong feeling I’d have to pay for it, later. I might have werewolf blood in me, but God alone knew how diluted it was, having passed through Belle and Suzie on its way to me. Suzie stuck close to my side, ready to catch me if I fell.
Is there a better definition of love?
We came home to Strangefellows, and I felt the door close very firmly behind me. Alex already had Tommy Oblivion laid out on a table-top, while Betty and Lucy Coltrane hurried to get Alex the repair spells he needed. Tommy’s breathing didn’t sound at all good. I started to go to him, but I was suddenly hot and cold at the same time, and the bar swayed around me. Suzie lowered me onto a chair, and I collapsed gratefully. I checked myself out as best I could. I didn’t seem to be bleeding from anywhere any more, and feeling was flooding back into all parts of my body. It hurt like hell. Suzie snapped her fingers imperiously for some clean water and a cloth, and set about cleaning the last of the mess off my face. The cool water felt good on my skin, and my head settled down again.
Razor Eddie stood before me, an intense grey presence in his filthy overcoat, regarding me thoughtfully with his fever-bright eyes. He was holding a bottle of Perrier water. Flies buzzed around him, and up close the smell was really bad.
“You reopened a door I made,” he said finally, in his quiet, ghostly voice. “I didn’t know you could do that. I didn’t think anyone could do that.”
“Yeah, well,” I said, as casually as I could, “nothing like having your mother around to inspire you to new heights.”
Walker brought me a glass of wormwood brandy. I’d actually have preferred a nice ice-cold Coke, but I appreciated the thought. I nodded my thanks to him, and he nodded back. Which was about as demonstrative as we were ever likely to get. It did seem we were becoming closer, whether we liked it or not. Suzie stopped dabbing at my face with her damp cloth, inspected her work critically, then nodded and tossed the bloody cloth aside. She sat down on the edge of a table facing me, and concentrated on cleaning her double-barrelled shotgun.
At another table, not too far away, Tommy Oblivion thrashed about while Alex did necessary, painful things to him. Betty and Lucy Coltrane held Tommy down, using all their considerable strength, while Tommy used the kind of language you didn’t expect to hear from effete existentialists. Alex’s remedies tended to be swift, brutal, but effective. He chanted something alliterative in Old Saxon, while pouring a thick blue gunk into Tommy’s exposed guts, while Dead Boy peered over his shoulder, watching interestedly.
“I could lend you some duct tape, if you like,” he said. “I’ve always found duct tape very useful.”
“Get the hell away from my patient, you heathen,” said Alex, not looking up from what he was doing. “Or I’ll use this superglue to seal your mouth up.”
“Superglue?” gasped Tommy. “You’re putting me back together with superglue? I demand a second opinion!”
“All right, you’re a noisy bugger, too,” said Alex. “Now shut the hell up and let me concentrate. Superglue was good enough for the grunts in Vietnam. It’s not like you needed all that lower intestine anyway… There. That’s it. Give the glue a few minutes to bond with the spells, then you can sit up. I’ve got the bullets here. Do you want to keep them for souvenirs?”
Tommy told Alex exactly where he could stick the bullets, and everyone managed some kind of smile. I looked around me, studying the small crowd gathered in the bar. My only remaining allies in the struggle to stop Lilith. It really was a very small crowd. I looked at Walker, who shrugged. He’d got his equilibrium back, but he still looked very tired.
“All my other agents are either out in the field, doing what they can, or they’re missing, presumed dead. What you see… is all that’s left.”
There was Alex Morrisey, cleaning his bloody hands on a grubby bar cloth, all in black as usual, in perpetual mourning for the way his life might have gone, if only he hadn’t been Alex Morrisey. He glowered at me, and said something about the mess I’d made of his place, but I could tell his heart wasn’t really in it. Tommy Oblivion was already sitting up on his table-top, ruefully inspecting the tattered and bloodied remains of his ruffled shirt. He nodded almost cheerfully to me and gave me a thumbs-up. Betty and Lucy Coltrane had chosen chairs from where they could keep a watchful overview of the bar, ready to deal with any and all intruders. They looked muscular as ever, but there were deep black smudges of fatigue under their eyes.
Dead Boy struck a casual pose in his flapping purple greatcoat, while Ms. Fate struck an heroic pose in his leather superhero outfit, mask, and cape. Standing proudly at his side was my teenage secretary, Cathy Barrett, in an oversized black leather jacket covered in badges. I stopped and looked at her closely.
“Cathy… why are you wearing a black domino mask?”
“Ms. Fate made me his sidekick!” Cathy said cheerfully. “I thought I’d call myself Deathfang the Avenger, or maybe…”
I shut my eyes, just for a moment. Teenagers…
Razor Eddie was standing a little off to one side, as he always did. Eddie wasn’t a people person. Julien Advent was nursing a glass of champagne and smoking a long black cheroot. As always, he was every inch the elegant Victorian, but his opera cloak was torn and tattered and even burned through in places. Of us all he looked the most like a real hero, tall and brave and unbending. Because he was. Larry Oblivion, in a soiled and battered Gucci suit, stood supportively beside his brother, and nodded briefly when my gaze landed on him.
“You saved my brother’s life,” he said. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” I said.
I hadn’t let Tommy die. The thought warmed me. I’d finally broken one clear link between my present and the devastated future, and it felt good, so good. And then I felt guilty, for caring more about that than for saving the man who’d risked his life to save mine. I do try to be a good man, but my life gets so damned complicated, sometimes…
“We’re all glad you’re back, Taylor,” said Walker, a little tartly. “But you’d better have some really good ideas, because we’re all out. We’re losing, John.”
Outside the bar, I could hear the roar of unchecked fires and the rumble of explosions, running feet, human screams, and the cries of monsters loose in the streets. Merlin’s shields were apparently still holding, but the War was edging closer. It occurred to me that this might be the last safe haven left in the Nightside. I remembered my Enemies, huddled together in their last refuge, and shuddered despite myself.
“What is there left for us to do?” said Walker. “We’ve tried open confrontation, manning the barricades, hit-and-run tactics, and guerrilla warfare, and none of it has ever done more than slow down Lilith’s advance. Now there’s just us… We’re all good, in our own ways, but she’s Lilith. Even her children were worshipped as gods for centuries. Lilith represents a kind of Power that’s almost beyond our comprehension. And her army of followers is growing all the time. I like to think most of them have been terrorised into joining, and would cut and run if given a chance, but…”
Everyone looked at me, and the silence stretched, because I had nothing to say. I had no plans, no schemes, no last trick up my sleeve.
“Can’t you use your gift, to find out what Lilith will do next?” said Cathy. It was hard for me to look at her. She still had faith in me. “Couldn’t your gift find us a way to defeat her?”
I shook my head slowly. “I know you’re trying to help, Cathy, but my gift doesn’t work like that. And every time I raise my gift now, it’s like running up a flag to tell Lilith exactly where I am.”
“But you’re always finding new things you can do with your gift,” said Cathy.
“Specific questions lead me to specific answers,” I said tiredly. “The vaguer the question, the harder it is to get any kind of answer that makes sense.”
“Where did you get this gift, anyway?” said Ms. Fate, in his rough, smoky voice. “I would have loved to have a gift to help me. I had to create myself through hard work and long training.”
“I won my gift in a poker game,” said Tommy Oblivion, unexpectedly.
“It’s true, he did,” said his brother Larry. “And he was bluffing, with a pair of threes. I couldn’t believe it.”
“My gift was a legacy, inherited from my inhuman mother,” I said. “My only legacy.”
“Now that’s interesting,” said Julien Advent. “Why that gift, in particular, and no other? I mean, when your mother is an ancient Power and a Biblical myth, I think you could reasonably expect to inherit at least half of that power, simply through the operations of chance. If all you got was one specific gift, it’s because that’s what your mother intended. She wasn’t prepared to risk your becoming powerful enough to challenge her, but she wanted you to have this gift for finding things. Why?”
An earthquake shook the bar. Tables rattled and chairs shimmied across the heaving floor. The walls creaked, and the long wooden bar groaned out loud. Everyone clung to each other, to keep from falling. Bottles toppled and crashed behind the bar, and the lights swung crazily. My first thought was that Lilith had found us at last, and was smashing her way through Merlin’s defences, but as quickly as it started the disturbance faded away, and everything grew still again. We were all standing, prepared to defend ourselves in our various ways.
“The cellars!” Alex said abruptly. “I can hear something moving, down in the cellars!”
We all fell silent, listening. Nothing good could come from the cellars under Strangefellows. Finally, we heard faint but definite footsteps, coming up the stairs under the bar. Slow, measured, inexorable footsteps. And then the trap-door behind the bar flew open with a crash, and that ancient sorcerer, Merlin, came up into the bar. Merlin of Camelot, the Devil’s only begotten son, risen up in his own dead body with the dirt still on him from where he’d burst up out of his own grave. I’d known that giant crucifix wouldn’t hold him down if he wanted out.
Merlin strolled out from behind the bar, taking his time, enjoying the shock and apprehension in all our faces. Alex stared, open-mouthed. He’d never seen his ancestor before, because up till now Merlin had always manifested through him. This was the real deal, Merlin’s dead body up and about again, raised from its long rest through an effort of supernatural will.
Merlin Satanspawn. A man born out of Hell who became a warrior for Heaven. And scared the crap out of both sides.
His face was long and heavy-boned, unrepentantly ugly, and two flames leapt in the empty sockets where his eyes should have been. (He has his father’s eyes, they said…) His long grey hair and beard were stiff and packed with old clay. His skin was taut and cracked and stained with grave-moss, but still he looked in pretty good shape for someone who’d been dead and buried for fifteen hundred years. He wore the magician’s robe they’d buried him in, a long scarlet gown with golden trimming round the collar. I remembered that robe. He’d been wearing it when I killed him, back in the Past. The robe hung open to reveal a bare chest covered in Druidic tattoos, interrupted by a great gaping hole, from where I’d torn the living heart out of his chest with my bare hands. For what seemed like good reasons at the time. As far as I knew, he didn’t know I’d taken it.
Merlin came striding through the bar, and the tables and chairs drew back to get out of his way. His dead body made low, creaking sounds with every movement, and gravedirt fell off him. He wasn’t breathing. He ignored Razor Eddie, standing ready with his straight razor shining impossibly bright in his filthy hand. He ignored Suzie Shooter, with her double-barrelled shotgun following his every movement. He ignored Dead Boy and Julien Advent and all the others. He came straight for me, his dead lips drawn back in a mirthless smile that showed brown teeth and grey leathery tongue.
He stopped right before me, and actually bowed slightly. “Here we are at last,” he said, in a voice like everyone’s favourite uncle. “Two sons of distinguished parents, who only ever wanted to be left alone to work out their own destinies. I was born to be the Antichrist, but I declined the honour and went my own way. And much good it did me. We’ve always had a lot in common, you and I, John Taylor.”
“What brings you up here, sorcerer?” I asked. I kept my voice calm and easy through an effort of will. (First rule of operating in the Nightside—never let them see they’ve got you scared or they’ll walk all over you.) “What brings you up out of your grave, after all these centuries?”
“To tell you things you need to know,” he said, still smiling his unnerving smile. “I know why your mother bestowed only the one gift upon you, when she could have made you one of the greatest Powers in the Nightside. I am old and wise and I know many things I’m not supposed to. Being dead didn’t stop me listening, and learning. Lilith gave you that one gift and no other because she intended to make use of you and it, on her return. Your gift will find for her the one thing that will make possible her control of the whole Nightside.
“I would have thought you’d have worked that out by now. If she could remake the Nightside by will alone, she would have done it by now, don’t you think? But her creation has grown and changed so very much during the long centuries of her absence, become something far greater and more intransigent than she ever intended… Why else would a Power like Lilith need an army to subdue the Nightside?”
“Why haven’t you manifested before?” Walker said sharply. “We could have used your help. Why wait till now, when it’s almost too late?”
“I’m here now because you finally asked the right question,” said Merlin, still looking only at me. He pulled up a chair and sat down before me, and his manner made it seem like a throne. His presence dominated the room, pulling all eyes to him. “Now I’m up and about again, Lilith will know I’m back. She’ll know where to come, to find me. She has to face me, because I’m her only real rival. She’ll never feel safe until she’s seen me utterly destroyed and cast down.”
“Can you stop her?” said Julien Advent.
Merlin ignored him, his fiery gaze fixed on me. “The protections I have set in place around this bar won’t keep her out forever. She’ll be here, very soon now. And if she finds me in my present condition, she’ll strike me down with a look and a word and laugh while she does it. And then she’ll take you over, John, make you her puppet, and use your gift as though it were her own. Just as she’s planned from the very beginning.”
I considered him for a long moment, letting the silence build. “But now you’re here, to save the day. Because you have a plan, too, don’t you, Merlin?”
He nodded. “Yes. I have a plan.”
“Of course you do. You’re Merlin Satanspawn, and you always have a plan.”
“Don’t drag my father into this,” said Merlin. “You know very well we never got on. Now, John Taylor, I need you to use your gift for me. I need you to find my missing heart and bring it here to me. I will place it back in my breast, and then… Ah then, I will show you wonders and miracles beyond your wildest dreams! I will live again, my body made new and vital, and all my old power will return! I shall be the greatest magician of this Age, and walk out of this bar, free at last… to teach Lilith the error of her ways.”
There was a long pause. I looked around, and it was clear that no-one except Merlin thought this was a good idea.
“You might win against Lilith,” I said finally. “Or you might not. But even if you did… who’s to say you might not prove as great a threat as she?”
Everyone looked at me, then at Merlin. He rose slowly up out of his chair, his dead body creaking and groaning, and I stood my ground, facing him unflinchingly.
“I could make you find my heart,” said Merlin.
“No you couldn’t,” I said.
We stared at each other, both of us very still. I looked into the flames that were his eyes, and I’d never felt colder in my life. And in the end, Merlin looked away first. He sat down heavily on his chair. I sat down quickly, too, so no-one would see how badly my legs were shaking. There were impressed murmurs all around me, but I just nodded stiffly. I was the only one there who knew for sure that I’d been bluffing.
“I’ve had enough of this,” I said harshly. “Enough of guesses and warnings and prophecies of doom. It’s time to get to the heart of the matter, time to find out the truth, once and for all. You were right all along, Cathy. The only way to find out what I need to know, is to use my gift. So, gift, Why did Lilith give you to me?”
I was ready for another fight, another concentrated effort of will that would half kill me, but in the end it was as easy as taking a deep breath. As though my gift had been waiting all my life for me to ask of it the one question that really mattered. My shadow stood up before me, separating itself, taking on form and substance until it looked exactly like me, right down to the white trench coat with the flapping sleeve. Exactly like me, in every detail—except my doppelgдnger’s eyes were full of darkness. It leaned against a table and folded its arms across its chest, smiling mockingly at me.
“Took you long enough,” it said. Its voice was smooth, assured, and only just short of openly taunting. “Well, here I am, John. Your gift personified, ready to answer all your questions.”
“All right,” I said. My mouth was very dry. “How do you work? How is it you’re always able to find the things that are hidden from everyone else?”
“Easy. I tap directly into reality itself. I see everything that is, all at once. I’m really so much more than you ever allowed me to be, John.”
“Damn,” Tommy said quietly. “That is… really spooky.”
“Why did Lilith give you to me?” I said.
“Because she intends to use you to find the Speaking Gun. The most powerful weapon in the world. It was originally created to kill angels and demons, but it can do so much more than that. Lilith will use the Speaking Gun to remake the Nightside in her own image. Return it to what she originally intended it to be, before Humanity infested and perverted it from its true purpose and nature. She was responsible for the Gun’s creation, long and long ago. Adam gave of his rib and his flesh to make Eve, and after Lilith came back up from Hell, having lain down with demons and given birth to monsters, she also gave of her rib and her flesh, to make the Speaking Gun. With the help of Abraxus Artificers.”
“Yeah,” Suzie said suddenly. “That was engraved on the stock of the Speaking Gun; Abraxus Artificers, the old firm, solving problems since the beginning. I’ve always been very good at remembering things, where weapons are involved.”
“Very good,” said my double. “Now shut up and listen, and you might learn something. Abraxus Artificers were the descendants of Cain, the first murderer. How else do you think they could fashion such marvellous weapons of destruction?” My double paused. “You do all realise that I’m talking in parables, representing a far more complicated reality? Good. I shall continue. The Speaking Gun was designed to speak backwards the echoes of the original Word of Creation, which resonates on in everything, giving each separate thing its own true secret name. By speaking this secret name backwards, the Speaking Gun can thus unmake or uncreate anything. But the Speaking Gun could be used, by someone with enough power, someone who gave of their own flesh to make it, to respeak those secret names, and thus change their essential nature. Lilith will use the Speaking Gun to respeak the Nightside, making it over into whatever she wants it to be. Personally, I can’t wait to see what she’s going to do…”
“That’s enough,” I said, and shut down my gift. It didn’t fight me, just collapsed back into darkness, and my shadow was nothing more than my shadow. I wondered if I’d ever look at it in the same way again. Or ever really trust my gift, knowing that it lived within me like a parasite.
“So,” Walker said finally, “who has the Speaking Gun? My people lost track of it some time back.”
“I last saw it here, in this bar, with the future Suzie Shooter,” said Alex, glancing apologetically at Suzie. “Before Merlin banished both of them.”
“Don’t look at me,” said Merlin. He sounded a lot smaller, since I’d stared him down. “I only sent them away. They could be anywhere now. Or anywhen.”
“The last time I saw it, in the Present, Eddie had it,” I said. I looked at him. We all looked at him, and he nodded slowly. “You were using it to kill angels from Above and Below, in the angel war,” I said, being careful to sound not at all challenging or confrontational. “What did you do with it, Eddie?”
“I gave it away,” said Razor Eddie, quite calmly. “To Old Father Time. The only Being I knew powerful enough to control it and not be corrupted by it.”
“I thought all you cared about was smiting the bad guys?” said Suzie.
“No,” said Razor Eddie. “I wanted to do penance. There’s a difference. All the time I had the Speaking Gun, I could feel it working on me, trying to seduce me with its endless hunger for death and destruction. But I have been there, and done that. I am something else now.”
“You’ll need stitches later,” said Suzie.
“That’s right, cheer me up.” I glanced at Dominic’s body. “Trust a sneak assassin like him to use a blade with a silver edge. It’s lucky you were carrying bandages, Suzie.”
“Lucky, hell. I always carry a full med kit. Tools of the trade, when you’re in the bounty-hunting business. Even though the powers that be won’t let me claim them as a business expense, the bastards.”
I put my trench coat back on. The slit sleeve flapped loosely around my injured arm. “I suppose,” I said thoughtfully, “they won’t let you claim because the med kit could be used by you, or your victims.”
“Don’t be silly, John. You know I always bring them in dead. Less paperwork that way.”
We looked over at Tommy Oblivion, who was still sitting with his back propped against the wall of St. Jude’s. Suzie had pushed his guts back into place, then wrapped his stomach with half a mile of bandages, but they were already soaked through with fresh blood. Tommy’s face was grey and beaded with sweat. His eyes were wide and staring, and his mouth trembled. There was no way in Hell he was going to be able to concentrate hard enough or long enough to heal himself.
“We have to get him back to Strangefellows,” Suzie said quietly. “And fast.”
“I can’t use my Membership Card, or his,” I said, just as quietly. “Lilith has found a way to hack into it. She’s closing in on me, Suzie, and I can’t afford to be found.”
Suzie looked out over the wasteland of ash and dust. Strange lights flared briefly on the horizon. “We’re a long way from the bar, John. A long way from anywhere civilised. Tommy won’t make it if we have to travel through the war zones on foot. Hell, I’m not even that sure we’ll make it. Things are bad out there… How about if we go into St. Jude’s, and pray for a miracle?”
“How about you go in?” I said. “Tommy and I will watch. From a safe distance. St. Jude’s has a famously zero-tolerance policy when it comes to sinners.”
“Could you two please keep the noise down?” Tommy said hoarsely. “I’m dying here, and I have a headache.”
“He’s delirious,” said Suzie.
“I wish,” said Tommy.
Suzie leaned in close to me, her mouth right next to my ear. “It might be kinder to kill him here, John. Rather than let him die by inches, dragging him through the war zones. His screaming would be bound to attract attention. I could do it. I’d be very humane. He wouldn’t feel a thing.”
“No,” I said. “I won’t let him down. I won’t let him die. He saved my life. He crawled twenty feet in the dirt with half a dozen bullets in his gut to set fire to that rogue anima. Bravest thing I’ve ever seen. I wasn’t the hero he wanted me to be, on our trip into the Past. But he was a hero for me.”
I remembered Larry Oblivion’s words, from the pitiful last redoubt of my Enemies in the future. He trusted you, even though he had good reason not to. And when they struck him down you just stood there, and watched him die, and did nothing to help.
I looked at Suzie. “How did you get here?”
“Razor Eddie cut a door in the air with his razor, opening up a breach between there and here. All I had to do was step through.”
Suzie fixed me with her cold, unwavering gaze. “You want to save him, there’s only one thing left. Use your gift, John. Find us a way back to the bar.”
“Using my gift is like using the Card,” I said reluctantly. “It’s another way for Lilith to find me. If I keep pushing my luck, it’s bound to run out. But… right now, I’d have to say Tommy’s chances are much worse than mine. So.”
I fired up my gift, concentrating as hard as I knew how on finding a way out of this mess. Not for me, but for my friends. Because they both came through for me, when I needed them. I pushed hard, gritting my teeth until my jaw ached. Sweat rolled down my face. I could feel some chance, some possibility, close at hand. Something we’d all overlooked. I concentrated till my head ached, a vicious pounding beat of pain, forcing my inner eye, my private eye, to focus in on what I needed. And finally my Sight showed me a door, or at least the essence of a door, hanging before me. It was the opening Razor Eddie had made, with his godly will and his awful straight razor. The door had closed behind Suzie when Eddie stopped thinking about it, but the rift he’d made was still there, if only potentially. I felt my lips pull back in a death’s-head grin that was as much a snarl as anything else. I was back in the game again. I sensed Suzie moving in to stand very close to me, comforting me with her presence, but I couldn’t see or hear her.
I hit the potential door with every bit of willpower I had, all my muscles locked solid from the strain, my stomach clenching so painfully I almost cried out; and slowly, inch by inch and moment by moment, the door grew more real and more definite. Sweat was pouring off me now, my whole body aching from the tension, and my head felt like it would fly apart at any moment. Blood poured from my nose and ears, and even oozed up from under my eyelids. I was doing myself some serious damage, pushing my gift harder than I ever had before. My breathing came harsh and rapid, my heart hammered in my chest, and my vision narrowed till all I could see was the door, as real to me as I was, because I made it so. I couldn’t feel my hands. Couldn’t feel my wounded arm. A terrible chill spread through me. I fell to my knees, and didn’t even feel the impact. I could sense Suzie kneeling beside me, yelling my name, but even that was faint and far away.
The door swung open, and I cried out, a harsh rasping cry of victory. The door hung on the air before us, an opening, a window through space itself. I shut down my gift, and the door remained. I’d broken it to my will. Sight and sound and sensation returned in a rush. Suzie was kneeling beside me, shaking my shoulder with her gloved hand and yelling right into my ear. I slowly turned my head and grinned at her, blood spilling out over my lips, and said something indistinct. She saw I was back and stopped shouting. She produced a surprisingly clean handkerchief from inside her leather jacket and wiped the blood and sweat and tears from my face. When I was ready, she helped me up onto my feet again.
Through the gap in the air I could see right into Strangefellows. Walker and Alex Morrisey were looking back through the gap, their faces slack with almost comic expressions of surprise. I waved cheerfully at them, and they both recovered quickly. Suzie started to help me towards the door.
“No,” I made myself say. “Tommy first. I’ll heal. He won’t.”
She nodded and let go of me. I swayed a little, but stayed upright. Suzie picked Tommy up in her arms as though he was a child, and carried him towards the door. He cried out once at the sudden new pain, but that was it. Tough little guy, for an effete existentialist. Suzie took him through the opening into the bar, then came back for me. I walked through the door under my own steam, but it was a near thing. I’d pushed myself too hard this time, and I had a strong feeling I’d have to pay for it, later. I might have werewolf blood in me, but God alone knew how diluted it was, having passed through Belle and Suzie on its way to me. Suzie stuck close to my side, ready to catch me if I fell.
Is there a better definition of love?
We came home to Strangefellows, and I felt the door close very firmly behind me. Alex already had Tommy Oblivion laid out on a table-top, while Betty and Lucy Coltrane hurried to get Alex the repair spells he needed. Tommy’s breathing didn’t sound at all good. I started to go to him, but I was suddenly hot and cold at the same time, and the bar swayed around me. Suzie lowered me onto a chair, and I collapsed gratefully. I checked myself out as best I could. I didn’t seem to be bleeding from anywhere any more, and feeling was flooding back into all parts of my body. It hurt like hell. Suzie snapped her fingers imperiously for some clean water and a cloth, and set about cleaning the last of the mess off my face. The cool water felt good on my skin, and my head settled down again.
Razor Eddie stood before me, an intense grey presence in his filthy overcoat, regarding me thoughtfully with his fever-bright eyes. He was holding a bottle of Perrier water. Flies buzzed around him, and up close the smell was really bad.
“You reopened a door I made,” he said finally, in his quiet, ghostly voice. “I didn’t know you could do that. I didn’t think anyone could do that.”
“Yeah, well,” I said, as casually as I could, “nothing like having your mother around to inspire you to new heights.”
Walker brought me a glass of wormwood brandy. I’d actually have preferred a nice ice-cold Coke, but I appreciated the thought. I nodded my thanks to him, and he nodded back. Which was about as demonstrative as we were ever likely to get. It did seem we were becoming closer, whether we liked it or not. Suzie stopped dabbing at my face with her damp cloth, inspected her work critically, then nodded and tossed the bloody cloth aside. She sat down on the edge of a table facing me, and concentrated on cleaning her double-barrelled shotgun.
At another table, not too far away, Tommy Oblivion thrashed about while Alex did necessary, painful things to him. Betty and Lucy Coltrane held Tommy down, using all their considerable strength, while Tommy used the kind of language you didn’t expect to hear from effete existentialists. Alex’s remedies tended to be swift, brutal, but effective. He chanted something alliterative in Old Saxon, while pouring a thick blue gunk into Tommy’s exposed guts, while Dead Boy peered over his shoulder, watching interestedly.
“I could lend you some duct tape, if you like,” he said. “I’ve always found duct tape very useful.”
“Get the hell away from my patient, you heathen,” said Alex, not looking up from what he was doing. “Or I’ll use this superglue to seal your mouth up.”
“Superglue?” gasped Tommy. “You’re putting me back together with superglue? I demand a second opinion!”
“All right, you’re a noisy bugger, too,” said Alex. “Now shut the hell up and let me concentrate. Superglue was good enough for the grunts in Vietnam. It’s not like you needed all that lower intestine anyway… There. That’s it. Give the glue a few minutes to bond with the spells, then you can sit up. I’ve got the bullets here. Do you want to keep them for souvenirs?”
Tommy told Alex exactly where he could stick the bullets, and everyone managed some kind of smile. I looked around me, studying the small crowd gathered in the bar. My only remaining allies in the struggle to stop Lilith. It really was a very small crowd. I looked at Walker, who shrugged. He’d got his equilibrium back, but he still looked very tired.
“All my other agents are either out in the field, doing what they can, or they’re missing, presumed dead. What you see… is all that’s left.”
There was Alex Morrisey, cleaning his bloody hands on a grubby bar cloth, all in black as usual, in perpetual mourning for the way his life might have gone, if only he hadn’t been Alex Morrisey. He glowered at me, and said something about the mess I’d made of his place, but I could tell his heart wasn’t really in it. Tommy Oblivion was already sitting up on his table-top, ruefully inspecting the tattered and bloodied remains of his ruffled shirt. He nodded almost cheerfully to me and gave me a thumbs-up. Betty and Lucy Coltrane had chosen chairs from where they could keep a watchful overview of the bar, ready to deal with any and all intruders. They looked muscular as ever, but there were deep black smudges of fatigue under their eyes.
Dead Boy struck a casual pose in his flapping purple greatcoat, while Ms. Fate struck an heroic pose in his leather superhero outfit, mask, and cape. Standing proudly at his side was my teenage secretary, Cathy Barrett, in an oversized black leather jacket covered in badges. I stopped and looked at her closely.
“Cathy… why are you wearing a black domino mask?”
“Ms. Fate made me his sidekick!” Cathy said cheerfully. “I thought I’d call myself Deathfang the Avenger, or maybe…”
I shut my eyes, just for a moment. Teenagers…
Razor Eddie was standing a little off to one side, as he always did. Eddie wasn’t a people person. Julien Advent was nursing a glass of champagne and smoking a long black cheroot. As always, he was every inch the elegant Victorian, but his opera cloak was torn and tattered and even burned through in places. Of us all he looked the most like a real hero, tall and brave and unbending. Because he was. Larry Oblivion, in a soiled and battered Gucci suit, stood supportively beside his brother, and nodded briefly when my gaze landed on him.
“You saved my brother’s life,” he said. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” I said.
I hadn’t let Tommy die. The thought warmed me. I’d finally broken one clear link between my present and the devastated future, and it felt good, so good. And then I felt guilty, for caring more about that than for saving the man who’d risked his life to save mine. I do try to be a good man, but my life gets so damned complicated, sometimes…
“We’re all glad you’re back, Taylor,” said Walker, a little tartly. “But you’d better have some really good ideas, because we’re all out. We’re losing, John.”
Outside the bar, I could hear the roar of unchecked fires and the rumble of explosions, running feet, human screams, and the cries of monsters loose in the streets. Merlin’s shields were apparently still holding, but the War was edging closer. It occurred to me that this might be the last safe haven left in the Nightside. I remembered my Enemies, huddled together in their last refuge, and shuddered despite myself.
“What is there left for us to do?” said Walker. “We’ve tried open confrontation, manning the barricades, hit-and-run tactics, and guerrilla warfare, and none of it has ever done more than slow down Lilith’s advance. Now there’s just us… We’re all good, in our own ways, but she’s Lilith. Even her children were worshipped as gods for centuries. Lilith represents a kind of Power that’s almost beyond our comprehension. And her army of followers is growing all the time. I like to think most of them have been terrorised into joining, and would cut and run if given a chance, but…”
Everyone looked at me, and the silence stretched, because I had nothing to say. I had no plans, no schemes, no last trick up my sleeve.
“Can’t you use your gift, to find out what Lilith will do next?” said Cathy. It was hard for me to look at her. She still had faith in me. “Couldn’t your gift find us a way to defeat her?”
I shook my head slowly. “I know you’re trying to help, Cathy, but my gift doesn’t work like that. And every time I raise my gift now, it’s like running up a flag to tell Lilith exactly where I am.”
“But you’re always finding new things you can do with your gift,” said Cathy.
“Specific questions lead me to specific answers,” I said tiredly. “The vaguer the question, the harder it is to get any kind of answer that makes sense.”
“Where did you get this gift, anyway?” said Ms. Fate, in his rough, smoky voice. “I would have loved to have a gift to help me. I had to create myself through hard work and long training.”
“I won my gift in a poker game,” said Tommy Oblivion, unexpectedly.
“It’s true, he did,” said his brother Larry. “And he was bluffing, with a pair of threes. I couldn’t believe it.”
“My gift was a legacy, inherited from my inhuman mother,” I said. “My only legacy.”
“Now that’s interesting,” said Julien Advent. “Why that gift, in particular, and no other? I mean, when your mother is an ancient Power and a Biblical myth, I think you could reasonably expect to inherit at least half of that power, simply through the operations of chance. If all you got was one specific gift, it’s because that’s what your mother intended. She wasn’t prepared to risk your becoming powerful enough to challenge her, but she wanted you to have this gift for finding things. Why?”
An earthquake shook the bar. Tables rattled and chairs shimmied across the heaving floor. The walls creaked, and the long wooden bar groaned out loud. Everyone clung to each other, to keep from falling. Bottles toppled and crashed behind the bar, and the lights swung crazily. My first thought was that Lilith had found us at last, and was smashing her way through Merlin’s defences, but as quickly as it started the disturbance faded away, and everything grew still again. We were all standing, prepared to defend ourselves in our various ways.
“The cellars!” Alex said abruptly. “I can hear something moving, down in the cellars!”
We all fell silent, listening. Nothing good could come from the cellars under Strangefellows. Finally, we heard faint but definite footsteps, coming up the stairs under the bar. Slow, measured, inexorable footsteps. And then the trap-door behind the bar flew open with a crash, and that ancient sorcerer, Merlin, came up into the bar. Merlin of Camelot, the Devil’s only begotten son, risen up in his own dead body with the dirt still on him from where he’d burst up out of his own grave. I’d known that giant crucifix wouldn’t hold him down if he wanted out.
Merlin strolled out from behind the bar, taking his time, enjoying the shock and apprehension in all our faces. Alex stared, open-mouthed. He’d never seen his ancestor before, because up till now Merlin had always manifested through him. This was the real deal, Merlin’s dead body up and about again, raised from its long rest through an effort of supernatural will.
Merlin Satanspawn. A man born out of Hell who became a warrior for Heaven. And scared the crap out of both sides.
His face was long and heavy-boned, unrepentantly ugly, and two flames leapt in the empty sockets where his eyes should have been. (He has his father’s eyes, they said…) His long grey hair and beard were stiff and packed with old clay. His skin was taut and cracked and stained with grave-moss, but still he looked in pretty good shape for someone who’d been dead and buried for fifteen hundred years. He wore the magician’s robe they’d buried him in, a long scarlet gown with golden trimming round the collar. I remembered that robe. He’d been wearing it when I killed him, back in the Past. The robe hung open to reveal a bare chest covered in Druidic tattoos, interrupted by a great gaping hole, from where I’d torn the living heart out of his chest with my bare hands. For what seemed like good reasons at the time. As far as I knew, he didn’t know I’d taken it.
Merlin came striding through the bar, and the tables and chairs drew back to get out of his way. His dead body made low, creaking sounds with every movement, and gravedirt fell off him. He wasn’t breathing. He ignored Razor Eddie, standing ready with his straight razor shining impossibly bright in his filthy hand. He ignored Suzie Shooter, with her double-barrelled shotgun following his every movement. He ignored Dead Boy and Julien Advent and all the others. He came straight for me, his dead lips drawn back in a mirthless smile that showed brown teeth and grey leathery tongue.
He stopped right before me, and actually bowed slightly. “Here we are at last,” he said, in a voice like everyone’s favourite uncle. “Two sons of distinguished parents, who only ever wanted to be left alone to work out their own destinies. I was born to be the Antichrist, but I declined the honour and went my own way. And much good it did me. We’ve always had a lot in common, you and I, John Taylor.”
“What brings you up here, sorcerer?” I asked. I kept my voice calm and easy through an effort of will. (First rule of operating in the Nightside—never let them see they’ve got you scared or they’ll walk all over you.) “What brings you up out of your grave, after all these centuries?”
“To tell you things you need to know,” he said, still smiling his unnerving smile. “I know why your mother bestowed only the one gift upon you, when she could have made you one of the greatest Powers in the Nightside. I am old and wise and I know many things I’m not supposed to. Being dead didn’t stop me listening, and learning. Lilith gave you that one gift and no other because she intended to make use of you and it, on her return. Your gift will find for her the one thing that will make possible her control of the whole Nightside.
“I would have thought you’d have worked that out by now. If she could remake the Nightside by will alone, she would have done it by now, don’t you think? But her creation has grown and changed so very much during the long centuries of her absence, become something far greater and more intransigent than she ever intended… Why else would a Power like Lilith need an army to subdue the Nightside?”
“Why haven’t you manifested before?” Walker said sharply. “We could have used your help. Why wait till now, when it’s almost too late?”
“I’m here now because you finally asked the right question,” said Merlin, still looking only at me. He pulled up a chair and sat down before me, and his manner made it seem like a throne. His presence dominated the room, pulling all eyes to him. “Now I’m up and about again, Lilith will know I’m back. She’ll know where to come, to find me. She has to face me, because I’m her only real rival. She’ll never feel safe until she’s seen me utterly destroyed and cast down.”
“Can you stop her?” said Julien Advent.
Merlin ignored him, his fiery gaze fixed on me. “The protections I have set in place around this bar won’t keep her out forever. She’ll be here, very soon now. And if she finds me in my present condition, she’ll strike me down with a look and a word and laugh while she does it. And then she’ll take you over, John, make you her puppet, and use your gift as though it were her own. Just as she’s planned from the very beginning.”
I considered him for a long moment, letting the silence build. “But now you’re here, to save the day. Because you have a plan, too, don’t you, Merlin?”
He nodded. “Yes. I have a plan.”
“Of course you do. You’re Merlin Satanspawn, and you always have a plan.”
“Don’t drag my father into this,” said Merlin. “You know very well we never got on. Now, John Taylor, I need you to use your gift for me. I need you to find my missing heart and bring it here to me. I will place it back in my breast, and then… Ah then, I will show you wonders and miracles beyond your wildest dreams! I will live again, my body made new and vital, and all my old power will return! I shall be the greatest magician of this Age, and walk out of this bar, free at last… to teach Lilith the error of her ways.”
There was a long pause. I looked around, and it was clear that no-one except Merlin thought this was a good idea.
“You might win against Lilith,” I said finally. “Or you might not. But even if you did… who’s to say you might not prove as great a threat as she?”
Everyone looked at me, then at Merlin. He rose slowly up out of his chair, his dead body creaking and groaning, and I stood my ground, facing him unflinchingly.
“I could make you find my heart,” said Merlin.
“No you couldn’t,” I said.
We stared at each other, both of us very still. I looked into the flames that were his eyes, and I’d never felt colder in my life. And in the end, Merlin looked away first. He sat down heavily on his chair. I sat down quickly, too, so no-one would see how badly my legs were shaking. There were impressed murmurs all around me, but I just nodded stiffly. I was the only one there who knew for sure that I’d been bluffing.
“I’ve had enough of this,” I said harshly. “Enough of guesses and warnings and prophecies of doom. It’s time to get to the heart of the matter, time to find out the truth, once and for all. You were right all along, Cathy. The only way to find out what I need to know, is to use my gift. So, gift, Why did Lilith give you to me?”
I was ready for another fight, another concentrated effort of will that would half kill me, but in the end it was as easy as taking a deep breath. As though my gift had been waiting all my life for me to ask of it the one question that really mattered. My shadow stood up before me, separating itself, taking on form and substance until it looked exactly like me, right down to the white trench coat with the flapping sleeve. Exactly like me, in every detail—except my doppelgдnger’s eyes were full of darkness. It leaned against a table and folded its arms across its chest, smiling mockingly at me.
“Took you long enough,” it said. Its voice was smooth, assured, and only just short of openly taunting. “Well, here I am, John. Your gift personified, ready to answer all your questions.”
“All right,” I said. My mouth was very dry. “How do you work? How is it you’re always able to find the things that are hidden from everyone else?”
“Easy. I tap directly into reality itself. I see everything that is, all at once. I’m really so much more than you ever allowed me to be, John.”
“Damn,” Tommy said quietly. “That is… really spooky.”
“Why did Lilith give you to me?” I said.
“Because she intends to use you to find the Speaking Gun. The most powerful weapon in the world. It was originally created to kill angels and demons, but it can do so much more than that. Lilith will use the Speaking Gun to remake the Nightside in her own image. Return it to what she originally intended it to be, before Humanity infested and perverted it from its true purpose and nature. She was responsible for the Gun’s creation, long and long ago. Adam gave of his rib and his flesh to make Eve, and after Lilith came back up from Hell, having lain down with demons and given birth to monsters, she also gave of her rib and her flesh, to make the Speaking Gun. With the help of Abraxus Artificers.”
“Yeah,” Suzie said suddenly. “That was engraved on the stock of the Speaking Gun; Abraxus Artificers, the old firm, solving problems since the beginning. I’ve always been very good at remembering things, where weapons are involved.”
“Very good,” said my double. “Now shut up and listen, and you might learn something. Abraxus Artificers were the descendants of Cain, the first murderer. How else do you think they could fashion such marvellous weapons of destruction?” My double paused. “You do all realise that I’m talking in parables, representing a far more complicated reality? Good. I shall continue. The Speaking Gun was designed to speak backwards the echoes of the original Word of Creation, which resonates on in everything, giving each separate thing its own true secret name. By speaking this secret name backwards, the Speaking Gun can thus unmake or uncreate anything. But the Speaking Gun could be used, by someone with enough power, someone who gave of their own flesh to make it, to respeak those secret names, and thus change their essential nature. Lilith will use the Speaking Gun to respeak the Nightside, making it over into whatever she wants it to be. Personally, I can’t wait to see what she’s going to do…”
“That’s enough,” I said, and shut down my gift. It didn’t fight me, just collapsed back into darkness, and my shadow was nothing more than my shadow. I wondered if I’d ever look at it in the same way again. Or ever really trust my gift, knowing that it lived within me like a parasite.
“So,” Walker said finally, “who has the Speaking Gun? My people lost track of it some time back.”
“I last saw it here, in this bar, with the future Suzie Shooter,” said Alex, glancing apologetically at Suzie. “Before Merlin banished both of them.”
“Don’t look at me,” said Merlin. He sounded a lot smaller, since I’d stared him down. “I only sent them away. They could be anywhere now. Or anywhen.”
“The last time I saw it, in the Present, Eddie had it,” I said. I looked at him. We all looked at him, and he nodded slowly. “You were using it to kill angels from Above and Below, in the angel war,” I said, being careful to sound not at all challenging or confrontational. “What did you do with it, Eddie?”
“I gave it away,” said Razor Eddie, quite calmly. “To Old Father Time. The only Being I knew powerful enough to control it and not be corrupted by it.”
“I thought all you cared about was smiting the bad guys?” said Suzie.
“No,” said Razor Eddie. “I wanted to do penance. There’s a difference. All the time I had the Speaking Gun, I could feel it working on me, trying to seduce me with its endless hunger for death and destruction. But I have been there, and done that. I am something else now.”