Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth Read online

  “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 shields in place, I still shuddered and almost collapsed. Because her little time bomb was set inside my shields…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 bloody 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 hardship 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 Julien Advent. Lilith’s surviving offspring, seeing which way the wind was blowing, quietly slunk back to the Street of the Gods. 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.