I looked at Jessica. “I see you still have your teddy.”
“Yes,” she said. “You found him for me. I remember. He brought me back to life, and sanity.”
“I’m glad I could help,” I said.
She shook her head slowly. “I’m not. This world would be so much easier to bear if I was still crazy. Still safely mad.”
“Ah well,” I said. “No good deed goes unpunished.”
“Especially in the Nightside,” she said.
And we both managed a small smile, just between the two of us.
“So,” I said, looking around me, “this is the end of the world, and it’s all my fault. Now tell me why. Tell me what happened.”
“You started it.” said Larry Oblivion. “When you came back to the Nightside after five years away. That wasn’t supposed to happen. We went to a lot of trouble to orchestrate the events that drove you out—working behind the scenes, always through agents who never knew whom they were serving. It took a lot of our strength and power, but since we’d had so little success in trying to kill you… we were ready to try anything else. You were supposed to be so traumatised by events that you would flee to London, and the normal world, and never return. We were so sure we’d succeeded, at last. But nothing changed here, and when Annie investigated why, she got a vision of you returning anyway. So we used the creature that pretended to be a house on Blaiston Street, and set a trap for you. If you were going to come back to the Nightside, we wanted it to be on our terms.”
“But if it hadn’t been for the house, I never would have come back,” I said.
“Maybe,” said Jessica. “Meddling with Time is an uncertain business. Sometimes I think the whole universe runs on irony. By interfering, we created a rod for our own backs and the seed of our own destruction. Doesn’t it make you want to spit?”
“And once you returned, events proceeded with predictable inevitability,” said Annie Abattoir. “By insisting on searching for the truth about your mother, though everyone warned you against it, you set in place the chain of events that led to the War between your forces and hers. The two of you destroyed the Nightside by fighting over it, like two dogs with a single bone, because neither of you would allow the other to control it. Between you, you sucked all the life out of the world, draining it dry to power greater and greater magics, for your precious War.”
“You squandered your own people,” said Larry. “Throwing them into the fray, again and again. Nothing mattered to either of you, except winning. And so the War went on, until you both ran out of people to throw at each other, and there was no-one left but you and Lilith.”
“You killed each other,” said Count Video, still staring into the fire. “Using the Speaking Gun. But by then it was far too late. The damage had been done.”
“That’s why we retrieved the Gun and bonded it to Suzie,” said Jessica. “Even though the process nearly destroyed us. Because it was the only weapon we were sure would destroy you. She screamed like the damned when we fitted it to her, but she never once flinched away. Poor Suzie. Brave Suzie.”
And then all our heads whipped round, and we fell silent, as we heard something impossibly huge and heavy dragging itself by, outside. We all stood very still, listening. Even King of Skin stopped whimpering in his corner. The whole house shook with each dragging movement, then the sounds moved on, fading away into the night. We all slowly relaxed. No wonder my Enemies were so diminished. To have to live like this, all the time, never free from fear, never knowing when they might be discovered and killed… Not unlike the life they made for me, really. But it was hard for me to feel any real sense of revenge, or satisfaction. No-one should have to live like this.
“All that remains of Humanity now,” said Jessica, “is small groups like us. Those who survived the War by hiding, like frightened mice in their holes. We’re still hiding, hanging on, surviving, doing what we can. Hoping against hope… for a miracle. But we haven’t heard anything from the other groups for months now, and when we call out, no-one answers. So perhaps… we’re all that’s left. The last Redoubt of Humanity, pinning all our hopes on the death of one man.”
“Who would have thought it would come down to the likes of us, to be Humanity’s last hope,” said King of Skin sadly, from his corner.
We all looked at him, waiting, but he had nothing else to say. He still wouldn’t look at me. But at least he’d stopped crying.
“Outside, all that lives now are the last few remnants of Lilith’s children,” said Larry Oblivion. “Mutated and monstrous, and quite mad. Roaming the ruins, killing everything they find, including each other. I sometimes wonder if they even know the War is over. They won’t last much longer. The energies loosed during the War, by you and your mother, are still abroad in the night, changing everything, mutating everything. Soon enough they’ll all be gone… and so will we, and what’s left of the world will belong to the insects.”
“But now I’m here,” I said forcefully. “And we’ve talked, and that changes everything.”
“Does it?” said Jessica.
“Yes,” I said. “I have to believe that. And so do you. It’s our only hope. Humanity’s only hope. Use your power. Send me back into the Past, back to the time I came from. And I promise you I’ll find a way to stop Lilith that doesn’t involve raising an army. There won’t be any War, to cause all this.”
“You want us to trust you?” said Count Video. “Trust the man who damned us all?”
“Why should we believe in you?” said Larry. “Why should we trust in you, John Taylor, Lilith’s son?”
“Because your brother Tommy did,” I said. “Even though he had good reason not to.”
Count Video rose abruptly to his feet, turning to face me. “We could kill you,” he said. “Now you’re here, finally, in our grasp. We could kill you, even if it meant all our deaths. It might be worth it, to know you were dead. And then maybe we could all rest peacefully.”
“Do you want revenge, or do you want to stop the War?” I said. “If I die, here and now, who’s going to stop Lilith? You must know she plans to remake the Nightside in her own image, kill everyone who stands against her, and remake Humanity into something more pliable, to serve her all her days. I think I’d rather be dead, than that. I’m the only chance you’ve got of stopping Lilith. Of stopping this. If I can find a way to bring her down, without fighting a War… that has to be more important than revenge. Doesn’t it?”
In the end, they only argued for about ten minutes before reluctantly agreeing. Annie Abattoir opened a vein in her arm, and used the blood to draw a pentacle on the floor, while the others worked together to raise what power remained to them. Jessica Sorrow used her teddy bear as a focus for the right place and time. Count Video swept his hands back and forth, leaving sparkling energy traces on the air, weaving description theory and binary magics, while his neurotech sparked and sputtered on his wrinkled flesh. King of Skin stood tall and proud, doing what he was born to do, evoking powerful magics with ancient Words of Power. And Larry Oblivion took it all in, his undead body the conduit for the terrible energies they were raising, absorbing all the punishment so the others could concentrate on the Working.
Annie Abattoir gestured sharply with her bloody arm, and I stepped inside the pentacle. She closed the pattern with a final flourish, and the spell ignited. The crimson lines of the pentacle blazed with power, and the world outside it began to grow dim and insubstantial to me.
And then King of Skin lifted his head, his eyes huge. “They’re here!” he cried. “They followed Taylor here! They broke through our defences, and we were so preoccupied with Taylor we didn’t even notice! They’re here!”
Monsters came crashing through all the walls at once. Huge brutish forms with eager eyes and dripping mouths. Long claws and taloned hands ripped through stone and brick and plaster, while something dark and leathery smashed a hole through the ceiling. The floor jarred upwards and split apart, as a great eye looked up through the widening chasm. My Enemies ignored them all, concentrating on the Working that would send me back through Time. A barbed tentacle shot down from the ceiling and wrapped itself around Count Video. Blood spurted from his mouth as his ribs collapsed, but he still fought to pronounce the last few Words of Power. A bone spike transfixed Annie Abattoir, gutting her, but still she stood and would not fall.
I faded away, falling back through Time, and that was the last I saw of them. Had the Beasts really followed me to their hiding place? Had I brought their deaths about, after all?
No. I could still save them. Save everyone. I would find a way. That was what I did.
