‘This isn’t going to be good,’ muttered Jack.
He grabbed Ianto and Idris and bustled them into number 6 Coburg Street.
In the room, the outside still cut off by the olive drapes, Bilis and the shimmering form of Greg waited.
Jack crossed to the window. ‘Let’s shed a little light, shall we?’ He threw open the drapes and turned to Bilis.
‘Well?’ said the old man.
‘All right, so maybe there’s some truth in what you told me, Bilis. What do we need to do?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said simply.
‘What?’ shouted Ianto.
Bilis sighed. ‘This is your fault. All of you. I protected the Light. Abaddon protected the Light. The diary please, Mr Hopper.’
Idris looked to Jack, who nodded. He passed the book to the old man.
‘You read it I assume. Any clues?’
‘To what?’
‘Idris, what did it say?’ asked Jack quietly.
And Idris told them what Gideon ap Tarri had seen, how Bilis had given him the diary and pen and instructed him to have it buried with him. ‘The last thing he said was he was going to try and escape from the Scottish Torchwood guy. That was it.’
Bilis was running his hands over the diary. ‘Yes, this is it. The protection is still here.’ He looked at Greg Bishop’s ghostly form. ‘Thank you.’
Before Jack could say anything, Bilis had opened the book, and Greg’s form immediately dissipated. A blur of light shot into the pages of the book, briefly forming written words that soon faded.
Bilis looked at Jack, an expression of pity on his otherwise serene face. ‘He died in 1941, Jack. They just kept his essence alive. If it makes you feel any better, you chose the right man to love. He was, in every way, a good man.’
Ianto was looking at Jack, but the older man was ignoring him.
‘What has happened to Tosh?’
Holding the book to his chest, Bilis closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he looked almost sympathetic. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘She is lost to the Dark.’
‘Not on my watch she isn’t,’ Jack said.
Outside, the assembled crowds, both white-eyed and dark-eyed, took a step in unison towards the house.
‘OK – that’s creepy,’ Ianto said.
‘Saw that in a Michael Jackson video once,’ said Idris. ‘They were zombies, too.’
‘Bilis?’
‘It’s the age-old fight, Jack. Evil versus… Well, there’s such a grey area between good and evil really isn’t there? One man’s demon is another man’s god.’
‘Jack,’ Ianto grabbed his sleeve. ‘I had a dream.’
‘Oh God, it’s Martin Luther King,’ Idris muttered.
‘Is this the time, Ianto?’ Jack wondered.
‘Yes, Jack, it is. Light versus Dark. The lights. There were lights in the Rift storm.’
Jack recalled what he’d seen on top of Ty Stadiwm the night before. He was getting cross, because it kind of tied in with what Bilis had been saying, and Jack’s biggest fear right now was that Bilis was right and this was all a consequence of what he’d done months ago.
He looked Bilis in the eye. ‘To hell with consequences, Bilis. If I stopped every time I opted to save human lives, stopped to think about who I was saving or what I was saving them from, I’d never move. Never decide. Be caught with an endless stream of possibilities, probabilities and maybes ahead of me.’
‘Welcome to my life, Jack,’ Bilis said.
‘I will not apologise for destroying Abaddon. I will not apologise for the fact that by destroying him we closed the Rift and brought everyone back to life. Some of those people are probably standing out there today. I did not fail them then, and I’m damned if I will do it now.’
Bilis took a breath. ‘The Light and the Dark, Jack. We don’t need to imprison them both! We can split them up, trap the Dark in the box I showed you, and release the Light into the Rift. From there, they will return down below where they belong, keeping Pwccm imprisoned for eternity. Because, however evil you believe my Lord to have been, you do not want Pwccm released in his stead. And that’s what you disturbed, Jack. In destroying Abaddon, the other Beast and his Dark warriors were able to imprison the Light. I saved some of them, kept them in the box. We can do a swap, because Pwccm has been foolish enough to send his soldiers into this dimension to fight the Light.’
‘You mean, we’re just caught up in a battle between alien light creatures from another dimension? That this has nothing to do with us?’ Ianto shook his head. ‘Just another day at Torchwood then. So… where does this Revenge for the Future thing come in?’
Bilis shrugged. ‘I’m not sure – it was what the Light said. It’s why Greg Bishop said it when possessed by them. It’s why it’s in the diary, which is what can keep the Light alive – the ink it made from their life essences.’
‘OK.’ Jack took a deep breath. ‘Light: they need to be back in your diary for safekeeping. Dark, they need to go into the prison box. Neither actually live naturally in the Rift energy, but both have used it as a mode of crossing the dimensions. On the mark so far?’
Bilis nodded.
‘So what actually released them. Here and now?’
‘I doubt they are from the here and now,’ said Bilis.
‘Revenge. For the Future. Something we did – I did? – in the future will release them? I release the Dark light, and the Light light want revenge on me for that?’
‘Hence the trap, Jack,’ Bilis stepped towards him. ‘You had to be old enough, wise enough to be prepared. I can’t tell you what the journey you are going to embark upon will show you. I only see possible futures and none I’ve seen explains the Dark’s release. But the Light wanted you here for a reason.’
‘He could be lying,’ Ianto said.
‘Ya think?’ Jack sighed. ‘But whatever it is, I need to know. Ianto, Idris, if this goes wrong, I want Bilis, bullet, back of the head before he can vanish.’ He looked at Bilis. ‘Got that?’
‘Kill him?’ Idris was horrified.
‘Um, problem Jack. I don’t have a gun any more.’ Ianto smiled sheepishly. ‘Sorry.’
Bilis produced Ianto’s pistol out of thin air and placed it in Ianto’s palm. He smiled and put his hands round Jack’s clenched fists. ‘A show of faith. I need the Light saved and the Dark imprisoned. Or I will have failed. And I never fail.’
‘Well, except with Abaddon,’ Ianto said.
‘Not helping, Ianto,’ Jack said.
‘Sorry.’
‘Look at me, Jack.’ Bilis’s face filled Jack Harkness’s field of vision.
Jack gasped as the old man’s eyes flared with the halogen brilliance of the Light.
And it poured into Jack’s own eyes.
TWENTY-ONE
Jack Harkness knew every nook and cranny of the Torchwood Hub in Cardiff. At least, that’s what he’d always thought, but clearly there were bits he wasn’t that good on because somehow he was lost.
The corridors had been hollowed out of the solid rock beneath Cardiff Bay a century or so earlier, but had fallen into disrepair between the wars. Only a few direct routes to the basement rooms were regularly kept up to date. Recently, his team had opened a few more up – some of which had been done while he’d been away all those
