Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth Part 3

"That wasn't the deal!" said Tommy. "I wasn't told about any of this!"

"You didn't need to know."

There was a pleasant chiming sound, a brief s.h.i.+mmering on the air, and there was Walker, standing before us in his neat city suit and old-school tie. He smiled vaguely about him. "This... is a recording. I'm afraid I can't be here with you, on the grounds it might prove injurious to my health. By now you should have realised that the magics of this place have not been shut down, as promised, Sandra Chance. My apologies for the deception; but it was necessary. You see, this isn't just a trap for John Taylor; it's a trap for all of you. Taylor, Shooter, Oblivion, and Chance. I'm afraid you've all become far more trouble than you're worth. And I need to be free to concentrate on the Really Bad Thing that all my best precogs insist is coming. So the decision has been made to dispense with all of you. I have at least extracted a promise from the Authorities that after you've all killed each other, or the cemetery has killed you, your bodies will be buried here, free of charge. It's the least I could do. Good-bye, John. I am sorry it had to come to this. I protected you for as long as I could... but I've always known my duty."

The image of Walker raised his bowler hat in our general direction, then snapped off. There was a long moment of silence.

"We are so screwed," said Suzie.

I looked at Eddie. "He didn't know you'd be here. You're our wild card in this situation."

"It's what I do best," said Eddie.

"Walker, you supercilious son of a b.i.t.c.h!" said Sandra Chance, actually stamping one bare foot in her outrage.

"I wouldn't argue with that," I said. "Ladies and gentlemen, it would appear we have all been declared redundant. Might I suggest it would be in all our best interests to work together, putting aside old quarrels until we're all safely out of here?"

"Agreed," said Sandra, two bright red spots burning on her pale cheeks. "But Walker is mine to kill."

"First things first," I said. "Where is Cathy?"

"Oh, we put her in the mausoleum right behind us," said Tommy. "Sleeping peacefully. You didn't really think I'd stand for her being buried alive, did you? What kind of a person do you think I am?"

"I ought to shoot you both right now, on general principles," said Suzie.

"Later," I said firmly.

The mausoleum was a huge stone Victorian edifice, with all the usual Gothic tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, plus a whole bunch of decidedly portly cherubs in mourning. The Victorians could get really sentimental about death. Tommy heaved open the door, and when I looked in there was Cathy, lying curled up on the bare stone floor like a sleeping child. She was wearing something fas.h.i.+onable, under a thick fur coat someone had wrapped around her like a blanket. She was actually snoring slightly. Tommy edged nervously past me, leaned over Cathy, and muttered a few Words under his breath. Cathy came awake immediately and sat up, yawning and knuckling at her sleepy eyes. I moved forward into the mausoleum, and Cathy jumped up and ran forward into my arms. I held her very tightly.

"I knew you'd come and find me," she said, into my shoulder.

"Of course," I said. "How would I ever run my office without you?"

She finally let go, and I did, too. We went out of the mausoleum and into the night, where Tommy Oblivion and Sandra Chance were standing stiffly a little to one side. Cathy stepped briskly forward, got a good hold on Sandra's b.r.e.a.s.t.s with both hands, then head-b.u.t.ted her in the face. Sandra fell backwards onto her bare a.r.s.e, blood spurting from her broken nose. Tommy opened his mouth, either to object or explain, and Cathy kicked him square in the nuts. He went down on his knees, tears streaming past his squeezed-shut eyes, with both hands wedged between his thighs. Perhaps to rea.s.sure himself that his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es were actually still attached.

"Messing with the wrong secretary," said Cathy.

"Nicely done," I said, and Cathy grinned at me.

"You are a bad influence on the child," Suzie said solemnly.

Sometime later we all a.s.sembled around the earth barrow. Tommy moved around slowly and carefully, packing up the picnic things, while Sandra stood with her back to all of us, sniffing gingerly through the nose she'd reset herself. Suzie glared suspiciously about her, shotgun at the ready. She was convinced Walker wouldn't have abandoned us here unless he knew there was Something in the cemetery strong and nasty enough to see us all off. She had a point. I turned to Razor Eddie.

"Walker didn't know you'd be here. And I'm reasonably sure he doesn't know about your new ability to cut doors into dimensions with that nasty little blade of yours. Take us home, Eddie, so we can express our extreme displeasure to him in person."

He nodded slightly, and the pearl-handled straight razor gleamed viciously in the starlight as he cut at the air before him, in a movement so fast none of us could follow it. We all braced ourselves, but nothing happened. Eddie frowned and tried again, still to no effect. He slowly lowered his blade and considered the air before him.

"Ah," he said finally.

"Ah?" I said. "What do you mean, ah? Is there something wrong with your razor, Eddie?"

"No, there's something wrong with the dimensional barriers."

"I don't like the sound of that, Eddie."

"I'm not too keen on it myself. Someone has strengthened the dimensional barriers, from the outside. No prizes for guessing who."

Cathy hugged my arm tightly. "How does he know things like that?"

"I find it better not to ask," I said. "Eddie, I... Eddie, why are you frowning? I really don't like it when you frown."

"Something's... changed," he said, his voice stark and flat. He looked around him, and we all did the same. The night seemed no different, cold and still and quiet, the graves unmoving and undisturbed under the gaudy starlight. But Eddie was right. Something had changed. We could all feel it, like the tension that precedes the breaking storm.

"You achieved something, with that spell of yours," Eddie said to Sandra. "It's still trying to work, undischarged in the cemetery atmosphere. It's not enough to affect the dead, but..."

"What do you mean, 'but'?" I said. "You can't stop there!"

"She's disturbed Something," said Razor Eddie. "It's been asleep a long time, but now it's waking... and it's waking angry."

We moved closer together, staring about us and straining our ears against the silence. The atmosphere in the graveyard was changing. There was a sense of potential on the air, of something about to happen, in this place where nothing was ever supposed to happen. Suzie turned her shotgun this way and that, searching in vain for a target.

"What am I looking for, Eddie?" she said calmly. "What lives in this dimension?"

"I told you. Nothing lives here. That's the point."

"Could the dead be rising up after all?" said Tommy.

"It's not the dead," Sandra said immediately. "I'd know if it was that."

"It's coming," whispered Razor Eddie.

The ground rose sharply beneath our feet, toppling us this way and that. Headstones collapsed or lurched to one side, and the great mausoleums trembled. My first thought was an earthquake, but all around us the graveyard earth was rising and falling, lifting like an ocean swell. We all scrambled onto our feet again, finding things to cling to for support.

"There were rumours," said Sandra Chance, "of a Caretaker, set to guard the graves."

"I never heard of any Caretaker," said Razor Eddie.

"Yes, well, just because you're a G.o.d doesn't mean you know everything," said Sandra.

And that was when the graveyard dirt burst up into the air from between the rows of graves, great fountains of dark wet earth shooting up, high into the chilly air. It rained down all around us, forming itself into rough shapes. Dark, earthy human shapes, with rough arms and legs, and blunt heads with no faces. Golems fas.h.i.+oned out of graveyard dirt. They started towards us, slow and clumsy with the power of earth, closing in on us from every direction at once. The ground grew still again, save for the heavy thudding of legs with no feet.

Suzie opened up with her pump-action shotgun. She hit everything she aimed at, blowing ragged chunks of earth out of the heavy lumbering figures, but it didn't slow them down. Not even when she blew their heads off. Sandra chanted Words of Power and stabbed at the advancing earth golems with an aboriginal pointing-bone, and none of it did any good at all. Razor Eddie darted forward, moving supernaturally quickly. Several of the earth figures just fell apart, sliced through again and again. But for every golem that fell, a dozen more rose out of the graveyard earth and headed our way with silent, implacable intent.

I heard muttering beside me. Tommy Oblivion was using his gift to try to convince himself he was somewhere else, but it seemed Walker's dimensional barriers were too strong even for him. Cathy pulled a Kandarian punch dagger from the top of her knee-length boot, and moved to watch my back. She knew her limitations. Sandra was reduced to throwing things from her belt pouches at the approaching golems. None of them did any good.

"I'll have Walker's b.a.l.l.s for this!" she screamed.

"Join the queue," I said.

I took out my Club Members.h.i.+p Card. Alex Morrisey gave it to me some time back, when he was in an unusually expansive mood. When properly activated, the magic stored in the Card could transport you right into Strangefellows, from wherever you happened to be at the time. I had perhaps used it more often than Alex had intended, because he was always nagging at me to return it, and yet somehow I kept forgetting on purpose to do so. But once again, the magic in the Card was no match for whatever Walker had done to the dimensional barriers. I turned to Suzie.

"Do you have any grenades?"

"Silly question," she said. "You think I'd go out half-dressed?"

"Spread some confusion," I said. "I need some time to concentrate, to raise my gift."

"You got it," said Suzie. "Blessed or cursed grenades, do you think?"

"I'd try both."

"Excellent notion."

She started lobbing grenades in all directions, and everyone else ducked and put their hands over their ears. The explosions dug great craters out of the ground, and bits of golem, coffin wood, and even body parts rained down all around us. Stone fragments from headstones and mausoleums flew on the air like shrapnel. The golems were shredded and rent, flattened and torn apart. And still more rose, forming themselves out of the torn earth.

I closed my eyes and studied the cemetery through my third eye, my private eye. Without Tommy's gift interfering, I could See clearly again. And it only took me a moment to find the source of the consciousness animating the earth golems. It was a diffused, widely spread thing, scattered throughout the whole of the cemetery, and beyond. This was the great secret of the Necropolis graveyard. The last line of defence for the helpless dead. This whole world, the earth and the soil of it, was alive and aware, and set to guard. The Caretaker. A living world, to protect a world's dead.

The Caretaker decided the golems weren't working, or perhaps it sensed my probings into its nature. All the earth in the cemetery rose before us, in a great tidal wave, and thundered forward like a horizontal avalanche. Enough earth to pulverise and drown and bury us all. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, no way to defend ourselves. But I had finally found the weak spot in Walker's plan. He'd strengthened the spells containing the cemetery dimension, made very sure that nothing could get out. But it had never occurred to him to stop anything from getting in... I reached out with my gift, and found a place in the Nightside where it was raining really heavily. And then all I had to do was bring the rain to me and let it pour down. The driving rain hit the tidal wave of earth and washed it away. Thick mud swirled around our feet, but its strength and power were gone. The rain kept hammering down, and the Caretaker couldn't get its earth to hang together long enough to form anything. And while the Caretaker was preoccupied with that, I reached out with my gift again and located the weakest spot in the dimensional barriers containing us. I showed Eddie where it was, and he cut it open with one stroke of his G.o.dly razor.

We all ran through the opening, while Eddie strained to keep it open. Then we were all back in the Nightside, and the opening slammed shut behind us. We stood together, soaking wet and smeared with mud, breathing hard. I looked around me. I'd been half-expecting a crowd of Walker's people, set to stand and watch in case we found a way out, but there was no-one. Either Walker hadn't expected any of us to get out... or his people were needed somewhere else. Sandra said he'd been called away, to deal with trouble on the Street of the G.o.ds... Could Lilith be making her move at last?

Sandra stomped wetly towards me, and I raised an eyebrow. "Relax, Taylor," she said curtly. "You saved my life, and I always pay my debts. Walker has to be shown the error of his ways. I can help. Of course, once that's over..."

Cathy fixed Sandra with a thoughtful eye, and the consulting necromancer winced despite herself. Cathy smiled sweetly. "Leave my boss alone, b.i.t.c.h."

"Play nicely, children," I said. "We have to go to the Street of the G.o.ds. I think the s.h.i.+t is finally hitting the fan. Tommy, escort Cathy back to Strangefellows, and stay there with her. And don't argue. Neither of you has the firepower for what we're going to be facing. Lock and load, people; we have a Biblical myth to take down."

Three.

Playtime's Over, Children Over, Children

I wasn't there at the time, but the survivors told me what happened. wasn't there at the time, but the survivors told me what happened.

It was just another day on the Street of the G.o.ds. That magical, mercurial, and entirely separate place where you can wors.h.i.+p whatever you want, or whatever wants you. There are Beings and Powers and Forces, things unknown and things unknowable, and it's all strictly buyer beware. Religion is big business in the Nightside, and on the Street of the G.o.ds you can find something to fit anyone's taste, no matter how bizarre or extreme. Of course, the most popular faiths have the biggest churches and the most magnificent temples, and the best positions on the Street, while everyone else fights it out in a Darwinian struggle for cash, congregations, and more commanding positions. Some G.o.ds are very old, some are very rich, and some don't even last long enough to pa.s.s around the collection plate.

G.o.ds come and go, faiths rise and fall, but the Street of the G.o.ds goes on forever.

Gargoyles crouched high up on cathedral walls, studying the wors.h.i.+ppers below with sardonic eyes, chatting and gossiping and pa.s.sing round a thick hand-rolled. Strange forms walked openly up and down the Street, going about their unguessable business. Wisps and phantoms floated here and there, troubled by every pa.s.sing breeze-old G.o.ds worn so thin they weren't even memories any more. There were paper lanterns and human candles, burning braziers and bright gaudy neon. Living lightning bolts chased each other up and down the Street. Rival gangs chanted dogma at each other from the safety of their church vestries, and here and there mad-eyed zealots practised curses and d.a.m.nations on hated enemies. Some of the more fas.h.i.+onable G.o.ds strolled up and down the Street in their most dazzling aspects, out and about to see and be seen. And Harlequin danced, in his stark chequered outfit and black domino mask, spinning and pirouetting as he always had, for as long as anyone could remember, on and on, dance without end. Under candlelight, corpselight, and flas.h.i.+ng neon, Harlequin danced.

It had to be said-the Street of the G.o.ds had known better days. Just recently, Razor Eddie had lost his temper in the Street and done something extremely distressing, as a result of which some G.o.ds had been observed running out of the Street screaming and crying their eyes out. Walker's people were still coaxing them out of bars and gutters and cardboard boxes. On the Street, people were clearing up the wreckage and taking estimates for rebuilding. Churches were surrounded by scaffolding, or held together by glowing bands of pure faith, while those beyond saving were bulldozed flat by remote-controlled juggernauts. The barkers were out in force, drumming up new business, and there were more tourists about than ever. (They do so love a disaster, especially when it's somewhere picturesque.) Some wors.h.i.+ppers were still wandering around in a daze, wondering whether their deities would ever return.

Just another day on the Street of the G.o.ds, then-until dead angels began dropping out of the night sky. They fell gracelessly and landed hard, with broken wings and stupid, startled faces, like birds who have flown into the windows of high-rise buildings. They lay on the ground, not moving, creatures of light and darkness, like a child's discarded toys. Everyone regarded the dead angels with awe and some timidity. And then they looked up, the wors.h.i.+ppers and the wors.h.i.+pped, to see a greater dark miracle in the starry night sky.

A moonbeam extended lazily down into the Street of the G.o.ds, s.h.i.+mmering silver starstuff, splendid and coldly beautiful, just like the great and awful personage who sailed slowly down it like an ethereal moving stairway, smiling and waving to the crowds below. Lilith had been planning her return for some time, and she did so love to make an entrance.

Inhumanly tall, perfectly formed, and supernaturally feminine, with a skin so pale it was the very ant.i.thesis of colour, and hair and eyes and lips blacker than the night, she looked like some screen G.o.ddess from the days of silent film. Her face was sharp and pointed, with a prominent bone structure and a hawk nose. Her mouth was thin-lipped and far too wide, and her eyes held a fire that could burn through anything. She was not pretty, but she was beautiful almost beyond bearing. She was naked, but there was nothing vulnerable about her.

Her presence filled the air, like the roar of ma.s.sed cannon announcing the start of war, or a choir singing obscenities in a cathedral, like the first scream of being bom or the last scream of the dying. No-one could look away. And many a lesser G.o.d or G.o.ddess knelt and bowed, recognising the real thing when they saw it, come at last to the Street of the G.o.ds. There was a halo round Lilith's head, though it was more a presence than a light. Lilith could be very traditional, when she chose. She stepped down off the moonbeam into the Street of the G.o.ds, and smiled about her.

"h.e.l.lo, everyone," she said, in a voice rich and sweet as poisoned honey. "I'm Lilith, and I'm back. Did you miss me?"

She walked openly in glory through the night, and everyone fell back before her. The great and small alike bowed their heads, unable to meet her gaze. The ground shook and cracked apart beneath the thunder of her tread. 'Even the biggest and most ornate cathedral seemed suddenly shabby, next to her. She kicked dead angels out of her way with a perfect pale foot, not even looking down, and her dark mouth made a small moue of annoyance.

"Such simple, stupid things," she said. "Neither Heaven nor h.e.l.l can stand against me here, in the place I made to be free of both."

Some tourists made the mistake of pressing forward, with their cameras and camcorders. Lilith just looked at them, and they died screaming, with nothing left to mark their presence save agonised shadows, blasted into the brickwork of the buildings behind them.

Lilith stopped abruptly and looked about her, then called in a commanding voice for all the G.o.ds to leave their churches and present themselves before her. She called for them by name and by nature, in a language no-one spoke any more. A language so old it couldn't even be recognised as words, only sounds, concepts from an ur-language so ancient as to be beyond civilised comprehension.

And out of the churches and temples and dark hidden places they came, the Beings and Power and Forces who had called themselves G.o.ds for so long. Out came b.l.o.o.d.y Blades and Soror Marium, the Carrion in Tears and the Devil's Bride, Molly Widders.h.i.+ns, Abomination Inc, the Incarnate and the Engineer. And more and more, the human and the humanoid and the abhuman, the monsters and the magical, the scared and the profane. And some who hadn't left the dark and secret places under their churches for centuries, unseen by generations of their wors.h.i.+ppers, who, having finally seen the awful things they'd prayed to for so long, would never do so again. And last of all, Harlequin stopped dancing and came forward to kneel before Lilith.

"My masters and my mistresses," he said, in a calm, cold, and utterly hopeless voice. "The revels now are ended."

The watching crowd grew loudly agitated, crying out in awe and shock and wonder at the unexpected sights before them. They argued amongst themselves as to what it all meant, and zealots struck out at those nearest with fists and harsh words. No-one likes to admit they may have backed a losing horse. The quicker-thinking in the crowd were already kneeling and crying out praises to Lilith. The prophesiers of doom, those persistent grey creatures with their hand-made signs saying the end is nigh seemed most put out. They hadn't seen this coming. Lilith smiled at them.

"You are all redundant now. I am the End you have been waiting for."

More shadows, blasted into crumbling brickwork, more fading echoes of startled screams.

Lilith looked unhurriedly about her, considering the various divine forms gathered before her, in all their shapes and incarnations, and they all flinched a little under that thoughtful gaze, even if they didn't remember why. She made them feel nervous, unworthy, on some deep and primal level. As though she knew something they had tried very hard to forget, or, if never known, had somehow always suspected.

"I am Lilith," she said finally. "First wife to Adam, thrown out of Eden for refusing to acknowledge any authority but mine own. I descended into h.e.l.l and lay down with demons, and gave birth to monsters. All my marvellous children-the first to be invited to dwell in my Nightside. You are all my children, or descendants of my children. You are not G.o.ds, and never were. It takes more than wors.h.i.+p to make you divine. I made you to be splendid and free, but you have grown small and limited down the many years, seduced by wors.h.i.+p and acclaim, allowed yourselves to be shaped and enslaved by the imaginations of humanity. Well, playtime is over now, children. I am back, in the place I made for us, and it's time to go to work. I've been away too long, and there is much to be put right.

"I have been here for some time, watching and learning. I walked among you, and you knew me not. You've been playing at being G.o.ds for so long you've forgotten you were ever anything else. But you owe your existence and loyalty to me. Your lives are mine, to do with as I please."

The Beings and Forces and Powers looked at each other, stirring uneasily. It was all happening so fast. One minute they were being wors.h.i.+pped as divine, and the next... Some of them were beginning to remember. Some shook their heads in hopeless denial, even as tears ran down their faces. Some didn't take at all kindly to being reminded of their true origins and obligations, and shouted defiance. And quite a large number were distinctly resentful at finding out they weren't G.o.ds at all and never had been. The watching wors.h.i.+ppers retreated to what they hoped was a safe distance, and let the G.o.ds argue it out amongst themselves. The argument was getting quite noisy, if not actually raucous, when Lilith silenced them all with a single sharp gesture.

"You," she said, pointing to a single figure at the front of the pack. "I don't know you. You're not one of mine. What are you?"

The Engineer stared calmly back at her, while everyone else edged away from him. He was squat and broad and only vaguely humanoid, with blue steel shapes piercing blue flesh, and long strips of bare muscle tissue held together with bolts and springs. Steam hissed from his naked joints, his eyes glowed like coals, and if you got close enough you could hear his heart ticking. He was surrounded and protected by a group of gangling metal constructions, of intricate design and baroque sensibilities, though whether they were the engineer's wors.h.i.+ppers or his creations was unclear.

"I am a Transient Being," said the Engineer, in a voice like metal sc.r.a.ping against metal. "A physical incarnation of an abstract idea. I am immortal because I am a concept, not because I have your unnatural blood in my ancestry. The world has become so much more complex since your time, Lilith. All of this... is none of my business. So I'll leave you to get on with it."

He turned and walked sideways from the world, disappearing down a direction most of those present couldn't even comprehend, let alone identify, and in a moment he was gone. The steel-and-bra.s.s constructions he left behind collapsed emptily, so much sc.r.a.p metal littering the ground. Lilith stood silent for a moment, nonplussed. That hadn't been in the script. Emboldened by the Engineer's defiance, some of the Beings stepped forward to confront Lilith.

"We heard you were banished," drawled the Splendid, leaving a s.h.i.+mmering trail behind him as he moved. "Forced out of the world you made, by those you trusted and empowered."

"Thrust into Limbo," said La Belle Dame du Rocher, in her watery voice. "Until some d.a.m.ned fool let you out, let you back into the Nightside to trouble us again with bad dreams of our beginnings."

"Some say you've been here for years," said Molly Widders.h.i.+ns, showing her stained and blocky teeth in something that was only nominally a smile. "So where have you been hiding, all this time?"