Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth Part 17

"True," said the Collector. "And I think... I'd like a chance to be the man I used to be, one last time. Let's do it."

In the end, there was no need for any chalk circles, no chanting or invoking of spirits; the three old friends simply closed their eyes and concentrated, and a powerful presence filled the whole bar, beating on the air. There was a feeling of something caught on the edge, struggling to be free, to be finished. And after more than thirty years the three old friends stepped effortlessly back into their old roles, mes.h.i.+ng like the parts of a powerful engine that had forgotten just how much it could do. Raw magic sparked and flared on the air around them, and the Babalon Working was up and running again, as though they'd never been away.

But almost immediately another presence forced its way into the bar, slamming through Merlin's defences. A door appeared in a wall where there had never been a door before, a ragged hole in the brickwork like a mouth or a wound, and stretched out beyond it was a narrow corridor, impossibly long. It led off in a direction I couldn't identify, which had nothing to do with left and right, up and down, that my mind couldn't deal with or accept, except simply as Outside. And down that awful corridor, slowly but inexorably, a single figure came walking. It was too far off in that unacceptable distance to see clearly, but I knew who it was, who it had to be. Lilith knew what we were up to, and she was coming to stop us.

Merlin came forward to stand before the corridor, staring down it and blocking the way. He looked... smaller, diminished. He raised his dead grey hands, already spotted with decay, and traced vivid shapes on the air, living sigils that spat and s.h.i.+mmered with discharging energies. He forced old and potent Words out of his ruined mouth, summoning up ancient forces and terrible creatures with the authority of his terrible name, but nothing happened. The Princes of h.e.l.l were more afraid of Lilith than they were of him. Merlin tried to open up interspatial trapdoors under Lilith's feet, to drop her into some other, dangerous dimension, that she'd have to fight her way back from...but Lilith just walked right over them, as though they weren't there. And perhaps for her, they weren't. She was Lilith, imprinted on the material world by an effort of her own will, and he was only a dead sorcerer. Step by step she drew nearer, smiling her awful smile, despite everything Merlin could do to stop her, or even slow her down. And, finally, she stepped out into the bar, and the corridor disappeared behind her, the wall just a wall again.

"h.e.l.lo, Merlin," she said. "What a fuss you made. Anyone would think you weren't glad to see me. And after I went out of my way to find a nice present to bring you." She held up her left hand, and showed him a dark necrotic ma.s.s of muscle tissue. He knew what it was immediately, and made a sound as though he'd been hit. Lilith laughed prettily. "Yes, it's your long-lost heart, little sorcerer. That's what I've been doing all these years, since I had to give up being a wife and a mother. I knew I had to find your heart before you did, because you were the only one who might have stood a chance against me. If only you'd been whole. Merlin Satansp.a.w.n, born to be the Antichrist, but you didn't have the nerve. By the way, I spoke with your father recently, and he's still really mad at you."

"Give me my heart," said Merlin.

"It was very well hidden," said Lilith. "You wouldn't believe when and where I finally found it."

"What do you want from me?" said Merlin.

"That's more like it," said Lilith, smiling on Merlin like a teacher with a slow pupil. "You can have your heart back, Merlin. All you have to do is bow down to me, kneel at my feet, and vow on your unholy name to wors.h.i.+p me all your days."

Merlin laughed abruptly, a flat ugly sound, and Lilith reacted as though he'd spat in her face. "Kneel to you?" said Merlin, and his voice was full of amused contempt. "I only ever knelt to one person. And you're not fit to polish his armour."

Lilith's left hand convulsed, crus.h.i.+ng the decaying heart into crimson-and-purple pulp. Merlin cried out once and collapsed, the magic that had sustained him for centuries torn away in a moment. He curled up in a ball on the floor, withering and falling in on himself as the flesh fell away from his old bones. The fires in his eyes went out. Lilith took a bite out of the crushed heart and chewed thoughtfully.

"Tasty," she said. "Now die, fool, and go to the place appointed for you. Your daddy's waiting."

Merlin twitched and shuddered for a few moments more, but finally lay still, little more than a desiccated mummy. But I would swear that just before the end, I heard him say Arthur? So maybe he escaped his fate, after all. I'd like to think so.

Lilith looked unhurriedly about the bar. While I was still thinking what to do to distract her, and keep her from realising what three old acquaintances of hers were up to, Alex produced a pump-action shotgun from behind the bar, and handed it over to Suzie.

"Do something with this, Suzie. Avenge my ancestor. He might have been a pain in the a.r.s.e, but he was family. The magazine holds silver bullets rubbed with garlic, napalm incendiaries spiked with holy water, and buckshot made from the ground-up bones of saints. Something in that mix ought to upset her. I find it works very well for crowd control on nights when the trivia quiz gets out of hand."

"Why, Alex," said Suzie, training the shotgun on Lilith, "I'm seeing you in a whole new light."

She fired the shotgun at Lilith again and again, working the pump action incredibly fast, emptying the whole magazine. And Lilith just stood there and took it, entirely unaffected. Suzie lowered the gun, and Lilith shook a finger at her admonis.h.i.+ngly. She turned away to look at the three men working their magic, so wrapped up in what they were doing they hadn't even noticed her arrival. Lilith studied them for a moment, her head c.o.c.ked on one side.

"What are you doing, you naughty boys? Some last desperate spell, to wish me away? It feels... familiar." She broke off, her face suddenly blank. "Henry? And Mark, and... Charles. Well, well... Dear husband. I'd forgotten they buried you in the Necropolis graveyard. Stop this nonsense and look at me, Charles. And let me tell you what I have in mind for our special, gifted, ungrateful son."

"Tell me," I said. "If you dare."

I strode right up to her, radiating poise and confidence and arrogance. I had to hold her attention, buy some time for the three to get their Working under control again. I glared right into Lilith's face, and she smiled back at me.

"You shouldn't have come here," I said. "This is my ground, my territory, and I am so much more, here. You think you can compel me to do your will and find you the Nightside you want? Let's see you try. Mommie Dearest."

"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is, to bear a stupid child," said Lilith. "You will do whatever I want you to do, John. You don't have a choice. I saw to that long ago. So let's start with something simple. Make your mother happy, John. Kill your father."

Her words went right to the geas she'd planted deep in my mind. And braced though I was, all my mental s.h.i.+elds in place, I still shuddered and almost collapsed. Because her little time bomb was set inside my s.h.i.+elds... But still I stood my ground, refusing to move, refusing even to look at my father. I could feel her will taking hold of my body, my mind, pressing down on me like an unbearable weight. My hands knotted into fists so tight they ached, and I wouldn't, wouldn't move. Except I already was, my head turning slowly to look at my father despite everything I could do to stop it, the geas burning in my thoughts like a gleeful traitor. And then, suddenly, I wasn't alone in my head any more. Suzie was there, and Alex, adding the strength of their will to mine, holding me where I was.

Well, said Suzie. This is different. Stand your ground, John, the cavalry's just arrived.

How? I said.

I do know a little magic, Alex said smugly. I am Merlin's descendant, after all. How do you think I've been able to run this b.l.o.o.d.y place, all these years?

Shut up and concentrate, said Suzie.

So the three of us stood together, and we fought Lilith with all the strength of wills hardened by long lives of loss and hards.h.i.+p and adversity, honed by a refusal to give in to forces that should have broken us. Three old friends, closer now than ever, who cared more for each other than they'd ever been able to say. We stamped down the geas in my mind, breaking its hold over me through a concentrated effort of will, and it died screaming. Lilith's will slammed against us openly, like an ocean storm battering a single rock, but we would not yield.

Even though it was killing us, by inches. We had to tap into our life energies to power the magic that held us together, and even our combined energies were nothing compared to the resources Lilith had to draw on. We felt our lives draining away, felt the darkness closing in around us, but not one of us wavered. Suzie and Alex could have withdrawn, saved themselves, but it never even occurred to them. I was so proud of them.

We couldn't hope to hold Lilith off for long. We knew that. We were buying time, for three old friends to work their magic and open the door into Limbo. We were holding Lilith's attention, so she wouldn't understand what was happening until it was too late. She could have stopped them easily if she hadn't been so determined to break my spirit. But still we three were dying, and we knew it, and we didn't care. We were friends together, doing something that mattered, something we believed in. Perhaps for the first time in our lives we had no doubt we were doing the right thing, and that was worth dying for.

And then, finally, the Babalon Working manifested, and it was glorious indeed. Its presence saturated the whole bar, soaking into everything, making us all unbearably vivid and significant. Strange energies sleeted in from unfamiliar dimensions, as a door left ajar for so long finally swung wide open. I couldn't see it, but its presence filled my mind, as though someone had pushed back the curtains to give me a glimpse of what lay behind the scenes of the world. Lilith howled with rage and horror as she finally realised what was happening, and tried to attack the three men responsible, but Suzie and Alex and I held her where she was with the last of our strength. Dying as we were, we held her there.

A great wind blew out of Limbo, through the open door, redolent of other realms, other places, then reversed itself, surging back in. It tugged at Lilith, and we let her go. Step by step, fighting it all the way, she was pulled towards the door. She stopped, right on the edge, and would go no further. Someone had to force her back through that door, and go with her into Limbo, to hold the door shut from the other side until the Babalon Working had been properly dismantled and shut down. And that had to be me. Because that was the only way I could be sure that never again would I ever threaten the safety of the Nightside. I swore an oath, to a dying future Razor Eddie, that I would rather die than see the Nightside destroyed because of me; and I meant every word.

But I never got the chance. My father broke away from his friends, grabbed his ex-wife by the shoulders, and sent the two of them hurtling through the open door into Limbo. The door swung shut; and, in the very last moment, my father looked back at me, and smiled.

"For you, John! For my son!"

Lilith's final scream was cut short as the door to Limbo slammed shut. Without the three to maintain it, the Babalon Working collapsed, and Walker and the Collector quickly shut it down, forever. And that was that. All was still and quiet in Strangefellows. Walker and the Collector stood together exhausted, leaning on each other for support, looking older than their years. Suzie and Alex, no longer in my mind, came unsteadily forward to stand with me. I looked at the place where the door had been, and thought of my father and my mother, together again, for all eternity.

And the things we sacrifice, for love.

Epilogue.

With Lilith gone, her army of followers soon broke up and turned on each other. They were quickly defeated and dispersed by Walker's people, commanded by Mien Advent. Lilith's surviving offspring, seeing which way the wind was blowing, quietly slunk back to the Street of the G.o.ds. And as quickly and easily as that, the War for the Nightside was over.

With the Authorities dead and gone, Walker is in charge of the Nightside now. Inasmuch as anyone ever is. No-one's seen the Collector since that night in the bar. He disappeared when no-one was looking, along with what was left of Merlin's heart. Alex is back behind his bar. Suzie and I are talking about becoming partners in a detective agency. And about other things, too. One step at a time.

Many old friends and enemies are still missing, presumed dead.

The Nightside goes on. The terrible future I first saw in the Timeslip is now only another timetrack, no more likely or inevitable than any other glimpsed future. For the first time in a long time, the Nightside is free to make its own destiny.

And so am I.