straight for me. So, Tommy, you’re up.”
“What?” said Tommy. “What?”
“Use your gift to hide us. Or at least hide our identities. Such a small use of your gift should slide past Lilith unnoticed.”
“Yes,” said Tommy, after a moment. “I think I could do that…”
He frowned, concentrating. It took him a while, to force his mind to deal with only one thing and ignore the madness and horror around him, but finally I could sense his gift firing up, as he imposed his existential will upon the world. Slowly and carefully, moment by moment, we became as uncertain as he thought we were, until the world couldn’t decide whether we really were there or not, and even if we were, it couldn’t make up its mind about who we were. I could feel Tommy’s gift all around us, like a fog of possibilities. Everywhere I looked, it was like seeing through a heat haze, as though we were out of synch with our surroundings. I took that as a good sign and made myself concentrate on the only thing that really mattered—getting to Cheyne Walk Station.
I took a deep breath and led the way out onto the main street, walking openly, taking my time, doing nothing to attract attention. The others came with me, sticking close but not crowding. No-one even looked at us. Crazed mobs rioted up and down the street, and swept right past us without even slowing. I led the way down the street, through chaos and murder and foulness of all kinds, and no-one touched us. Sometimes they’d step out of our way, without even realising they were doing it. Suzie stayed at my side, the others spread out behind us. I tried to keep track of where they were without looking at them directly, but Tommy’s gift made that difficult. It was hard to be sure of anything under the concentrated field of uncertainty he was generating. Terrible things happened, but none of them seemed real, or close, or threatening. Until a familiar face came running frantically out of a side alley.
Sister Morphine cared for the homeless and down-and-outs of Rats’ Alley, trying to keep them fed and warm and alive, and save a few souls where she could. A good woman in a bad place, watching over those the world had abandoned. And now she came running out of the night, her nun’s robes torn and tattered and soaked in her own blood. Her tear-stained face was dull with exhaustion and shock and the sight of too much horror. A mob was coming right behind her, screaming for her head. She burst out of the side alley and looked right at me. And even Tommy’s gift was no match for her honest gaze.
“John! John Taylor! Help me! For God’s sake, help me!”
The mob fell upon her and dragged her down, and she disappeared under a mass of flailing bodies. Knives flashed brightly in the night. She kept on screaming long after she should have stopped. And I let it happen, torn between the need to help her and the greater need to get to Cheyne Walk. I let a good woman die because I had somewhere more important to be. I walked on down the street, staring straight ahead, not even allowing myself to hurry in case that called attention to me. The screaming finally stopped, but I knew I’d be hearing it for the rest of my life. Suzie and the others stuck a little closer to me, but none of them said anything. They’d made the same choice I had. I could see the sign for the Cheyne Walk Underground Station up ahead, right at the end of the street. On a normal day, I could have walked it in a few minutes.
But the damage had already been done. Sister Morphine had called me by name, undermining Tommy’s uncertainty. All around us, heads were slowly turning in our direction, not all of them human, not all of them sane. Perhaps that helped them see us, see me, more clearly. Someone pointed. Something said my name. The word flashed up and down the packed street, and men and monsters stopped the awful things they were doing to look for me. For Lilith’s son.
“What do we do?” said Suzie.
“Run,” I said.
And so we ran, pushing ourselves hard, ploughing through the crowds and slamming people out of our way if they didn’t move fast enough. The press of bodies grew thicker as people came surging down the street towards us. My people formed a protective ring around me, without my asking. Suzie blasted a bloody hole in the crowd ahead, using both barrels, and bodies fell this way and that. Razor Eddie moved forward to take the lead while Suzie reloaded, gliding along like an angry ghost, his pearl-handled straight razor blazing fiercely in the twilight, as though it had come home. Eddie cut about him without even looking, and no-one could stand against him.
Suzie kept up a steady fire against anyone who even looked like they were getting too close, reloading on the run, though her bandoliers were almost empty now. She tossed the odd grenade or incendiary where she thought it’d do the most good, but from the unusually sparing way she was using them, I guessed she was running low on them, too. She was still grinning broadly, like she was having the best time, and maybe she was. Dead Boy hit anything that came within reach, while Tommy tried his best to wrap the last tatters of his gift around us, frowning fiercely with concentration as he ran. It must have been working. No-one seemed able to lay a hand on us.
We were all running full out, but the station entrance didn’t seem to be getting any closer. My heart hammered in my chest, my lungs burned with the need for air, and my legs ached fiercely. It had been a long, hard day, and I was running on fumes now. It didn’t seem fair that the world should require more effort from me, after everything I’d already done. I put my head down, and sweat dripped off the end of my nose. I concentrated on running. I could do this. I’d run harder, and longer, when Herne and his Wild Hunt chased me through the primordial forest of old Britain.
Mobs and monsters descended on us from all sides, from everywhere at once, driven by hate and bloodlust and the fear of Lilith’s wrath if they let me escape. She knew I had to be stopped, before I stopped her. I ran hard, we all ran hard, sticking very close, striking out viciously at our many enemies, and Dead Boy was the first of us to fall. Hands from a faceless mob of howling savages caught hold of his flapping greatcoat and dragged him down by sheer weight and force of numbers. He was still lashing about him with his powerful dead hands as he fell, handing out death with every blow, but there were just so many of them.
We ran on, leaving him behind. We had no choice. I looked back anyway. The mob boiled around Dead Boy, stamping and kicking him and stabbing him with any number of weapons. I knew he wouldn’t feel any of it, but that didn’t make the sight any easier to bear. He was still struggling, the last time I saw him. I’m sure I heard him yell out to me, to keep going. I’m almost sure I heard him call out. I turned my head away, and kept running.
Razor Eddie fell back to cover our rear. Perhaps because there were more enemies behind than in front. Perhaps because even he was getting tired. Certainly even the most crazed individuals showed a marked reluctance to get too close to his infamous straight razor. He cut through the madness like a grim grey ghost, or a grim grey god, and no man and no monster came close to touching him. The street was full of people now, and things not at all like people, coming at us from every alley and side street, brandishing all kinds of weapons, yelling my name like a curse. Creatures loped through the crowds, or hovered above in the smoky night sky. I saw fangs and claws and membraneous wings, and shapes that made no sense at all, bursting out of the sides of crumbling buildings as though they weren’t even there.
And then I swear I heard my mother’s voice, abroad in the night, speaking Words of Power from a language so ancient it predated any human tongue or meaning. A trapdoor opened up in the pavement right in front of Razor Eddie, a hole in our world, a door to somewhere else. Long tentacles with crocodile hide and suckers like barbed mouths shot up out of that other place and wrapped themselves around Razor Eddie. He cut viciously about him with his razor, but for every tentacle he severed a dozen more burst up through the trap-door. They finally whipped around both his arms, pinioning them to his sides, then they dragged him down into the hole, out of our world and into theirs. He never cried out, not once. The trap-door slammed shut, and Razor Eddie was gone.
I kept running. We all did. The Punk God of the Straight Razor could take care of himself. He’d find his way back. I believed that. I had to believe it.
The Cheyne Walk entrance was really close now. The crowds were thickening up before us, desperate to block our way. Suzie’s shotgun fired again and again. The barrels were so hot that steam rose up from her leather gloves where she held the gun. Tommy was speaking gibberish, forcing his gift to manifest through sheer force of will. His face was very pale, his breathing laboured, his eyes dangerously wild. He wrapped the three of us in a cloud of uncertainty, and the mobs couldn’t find us. And then a whole building collapsed as we ran past it, the smoke-blackened wall bowing suddenly outwards and slamming down like a hammer. Suzie and I forced out one last burst of speed, but Tommy was so focused on his gift he didn’t realise what was happening until it was too late. The crumbling brickwork swept over him like a jagged tide, enveloping him in a moment, and we lost sight of him in a dark, billowing cloud of dust.
I stopped to look back, and through the settling dust I saw Tommy lying half-covered by rubble. He was
