He came striding straight across the bar towards us, kicking tables and chairs effortlessly out of his way. Suzie turned her shotgun on him, and Tommy and I moved quickly to stand on either side of her, but the newcomer didn’t stop until he could see past us to Merlin. He took in the blood soaking the front of Merlin’s robes and actually started to smile, only to stop as he realised the sorcerer was still breathing.
“He’s not dead,” he said, and his voice was like stone grating against stone.
“He’s not dead,” I agreed. “Who might you be?”
“I am Kae,” he said. “Arthur’s brother. Stepbrother only by blood, but he always called me brother. We fought great battles, shoulder to shoulder and back to back. Struck down evil wherever we found it. Bled for each other and saved each other’s lives a dozen times. He was King, and carried the responsibilities of the whole land on his shoulders, but he always had time for me, and I knew there wasn’t a day that passed where he didn’t think of me.
“I never trusted Merlin. Never trusted magic. I tried to warn Arthur, but he was always blind to the sorcerer’s faults. And when Arthur needed him most, where was Merlin? Gone. Nowhere to be found. I saw the bravest knights in the land fall, brought down by jackals. I saw good men dragged down by overwhelming forces. We fought for hours, stamping back and forth through the blood-soaked mud, and in the end … nobody won. Arthur and the bastard Mordred died, at each other’s hands. The proud knights of Camelot are fallen or scattered. The land is torn apart by civil war as scavengers fight over the spoils, and Merlin … still lives. How can that be right? How can there be any justice, while the traitor still lives? I am Kae, Arthur’s brother, and I will avenge his death.”
“Because Mordred is dead,” I said. “And you don’t have anyone else.”
“Stand aside,” said Kae.
“Not one step closer,” said Suzie, aiming the shotgun at his face.
Kae sneered at her. “I am protected against all magics, and unnatural weapons,” he said coldly. “The charm that brought me here will protect me from anything that might keep me from my rightful prey.”
“Thought you didn’t believe in magic,” I said, trying to buy some time while I thought what to do.
Kae smiled briefly. “Needs must, when the devil drives. I will damn my soul, if that’s what it takes to buy me justice. Now stand aside or die with him.”
He stalked forward, raising his spiked mace, and Suzie gave him both barrels right in the face. Or at least, she tried to. The shotgun wouldn’t work. She tried again, uselessly, and threw the gun aside as Kae loomed up before her. She whipped a long knife from her other boot top, and slashed at his bare throat. Kae flinched back instinctively, and I hit him from the side with my shoulder, hoping my speed and impact would knock him off balance. Instead, he hardly moved an inch, and threw me aside with one sweep of his mailed arm. I crashed into a bunch of chairs and hit the ground hard. The impact knocked all the breath out of me and hurt my head. I fought to get back onto my knees, while Suzie and Kae went head to head with knife and mace, grunting and snarling at each other. He was bigger, but she was faster.
Tommy had grabbed up the cloth-wrapped heart, and was clutching it protectively to his chest, watching the fight with wide, shocked eyes. The witch Nimue had left her chalk circle and was bending over Merlin.
“Something’s wrong!” she shouted. “Whatever charm Kae brought into this room, it’s interfering with the magic keeping him alive! You have to get Kae out of here, or Merlin will die!”
“I’m doing my best,” Suzie snarled.
She bobbed and weaved as Kae swung his mace. The weapon must have weighed a ton, but Kae wielded it like a toy, the wind whistling through the vicious spikes on its head. Suzie ducked and jabbed at him with her long knife, but mostly the blade jarred harmlessly off his chain mail. Kae had spent most of his life on one battlefield or another, and it showed in his every economical, murderous move.
But Suzie Shooter was a child of the Nightside, and her rage was every bit a match for his. She went for his face and his throat, his elbows and his groin, but always his mace was there just in time to block her. Suzie was a bounty hunter, a fighter, and a practised killer; but Kae was one of Arthur’s knights, bloodied in a thousand wars and border skirmishes. He pressed her back, step by step, his arm rising and falling with terrible force, remorseless as a machine.
Somehow I got back onto my feet again and staggered over to Merlin’s table. Suzie could look after herself. I had to see what was happening with Merlin. His breathing was ragged, and his colour wasn’t good. I’d hit my head on something, and it ached unmercifully. Blood was running thickly down my face. I couldn’t seem to think straight. Tommy was hovering helplessly at Nimue’s side as she chanted spells over Merlin. From the growing despair on her face, I gathered they weren’t helping much. Tommy grabbed my arm to get my attention, then realised the state I was in and helped hold me up. Nimue looked round frantically.
“You’ve got to do something! Merlin’s dying! I’m having to use my own life force to keep him going!”
Tommy pushed his face close to mine, to make sure I heard him. “We have to put Merlin’s defences back into place!”
“Right,” I said. “Of course. Just jam the heart back in, and his own magics should heal him. Right. Come on, give me the heart. He’s no use to me dead.”
“It wouldn’t work,” said Nimue. She’d given up on chanting and waving her hands, and was crouching beside Merlin, holding one of his hands in both of hers. “Kae’s charm will prevent his defences returning … You have to get him out of here. I’m giving Merlin … everything I’ve got; but I don’t think it’s going to enough. I’m only human … and he isn’t.”
“We have to think of something, Taylor!” said Tommy, glaring into my face. “Taylor! John! Can you hear me?”
His words came to me, but from far away, as though we were both underwater. I put a hand to my aching head, and it came away slick with blood. Whatever had hit me in that crash, it had really done a job on me. I gazed stupidly at my bloody hand for a moment, then looked back at Suzie and Kae.
Kae swung his mace around in a viciously fast sweep, but Suzie ducked under it and slammed her knife deep into his side, the blade punching right through the chain mail and the leather armour beneath. Kae roared with rage as much as pain, and his mace came sweeping back round impossibly fast. The spiked steel head slammed into Suzie’s face and ripped half of it away. She screamed, and fell backwards onto the floor. Kae grunted once, like a satisfied animal, and turned to look at Merlin, ignoring the knife hilt protruding from his side.
I moved forward to block his way. Tommy wasn’t a fighter, and Nimue was busy. It had to be me. I forced the pain and confusion out of my head for a moment, through sheer force of will, and tried to raise my gift. If I could only find the charm Kae had brought with him … but my head hurt too bad. I couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t See. Kae was still coming, headed straight for me. I jammed my hands into my coat pockets, searching for something I could use against him.
And then Suzie reared up from the floor, with a terrible cry. Half her face was a mask of blood, with only an empty socket where her left eye had been, but still she came roaring up off that bloody floor like the fighter she was. She ripped the knife out of Kae’s side, and he stopped in his tracks, halted for a moment by the sudden blaze of pain. And while he hesitated, Suzie jammed her long knife all the way into his unprotected groin. Her triumphant laughter drowned out his cry of pain. She yanked the knife out, and thick dark blood coursed down both his legs. He staggered, and almost fell. She lashed out with the knife, and almost effortlessly cut open the wrist of the hand holding the mace. It fell to the floor as the feeling left his fingers, and he looked stupidly after it for a moment.
Suzie rose up onto her feet to give him the last, killing blow, and he roared like a bear and grabbed her to him, crushing her against his chain-mail breast with huge, muscular arms. She cried
out as her ribs cracked audibly, then savagely head-butted Kae in the face. He roared again and dropped her. Suzie grinned fiercely at him through the bloody mask of her face, and went for him with her knife. And Kae grabbed a flaring torch from its iron wall holder and thrust it right into her ravaged face.
There was smoke, and spitting fat, and the stench of burning meat, but she didn’t scream. She fell, but she didn’t scream.
I screamed. And while they were both distracted, I surged forward, grabbed up the steel mace from the floor, and hit Kae across the head with all the strength I had. The force of the blow whipped his head round, and blood flew across the air, but he didn’t fall. I hit him again, and again, and again, putting all my rage and horror and guilt into every blow, and finally he fell, measuring his length on the bloody floor like a slaughtered sacrificial beast. I dropped the mace, and went over to kneel beside Suzie, and take her in my arms.
She clung to me like she was drowning, burying her ruined bloody face in my shoulder. I held on to her, and all I could say was I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, over and over again. After a while she pushed me away, and I let go of her immediately. It was hard for Suzie to let anyone touch her, even a friend. Even then. Poor little broken bird. I made myself look at what remained of her face. The whole left side was gone, a ragged torn-up mess only held together by charred and blackened flesh. And then, as I watched, the terrible wounds began to heal. The torn flesh crawled together, slowly closing over and drawing itself together into old scar tissue. Even the empty eye-socket closed, the lids sealed together. Until at the end it was the awful, familiar, disfigured face I’d seen once before—on the Suzie Shooter from the future.
I had brought Suzie here, to this place and time, and made that face, that Suzie possible.
She smiled at me, but only half her mouth moved. She gingerly touched at the scarred half of her face with her fingertips, then took her hand away again. “Don’t look so shocked, Taylor. You put werewolf blood into me to save my life, remember, back during the angel war? The blood wasn’t strong enough or pure enough to make me into a were, but it did give me one hell of a healing factor. Very useful, in the bounty-hunting business. My face… will never be the same again, I know that. My healing factor has very definite limits. But I can live with this. It’s not like I ever cared about looking pretty … John? What’s the matter, John?”
I couldn’t tell her. I lurched to my feet and looked around for the mace I’d discarded. Kae … It was all Kae’s fault. He had barged in and ruined everything … everything. Suzie knew me well enough to see which way my thoughts were going, and she hauled herself to her feet to stand before me.
“No, John. You can’t kill him.”
“Watch me.”
“You can’t, John. Because Arthur wouldn’t want you to. And because you’re not a killer. Like me.”
And because in the end I still hoped she was right about that, I turned away from Kae’s unconscious body, and together Suzie and I moved slowly and carefully back across the bar to Merlin’s table. Tommy was still there, holding the witch Nimue in his arms, his face set and cold. It was obvious Nimue wasn’t breathing. Dead, her face looked more like a child’s than ever.
“She died keeping Merlin alive with her own life energy,” said Tommy. He looked only at me, his gaze openly accusing. “She gave her life for him, her present and all her future; and it still wasn’t enough. He’s dead, too, if you care. And all because of us.”
“We never meant for any of this to happen,” said Suzie.
Tommy looked at her briefly, taking in her scarred face, but his cold gaze returned almost immediately to me. “And that makes it all right, does it?”
“No,” I said. “But what’s done, is done. We can’t help them, but we can still help ourselves. We don’t need Merlin; we still have his heart.” I leaned over the wrapped bundle on the table and pulled back the cloth to show that the heart was still slowly beating, even though there was no blood left in it. “Merlin put enough of his power into his heart that it still continues, still holds a large portion of his magic. We can tap into that magic and use it to send us further back into the Past.”
Tommy put Nimue to one side, arranging her tenderly in a chair like a sleeping child, then he stood up to face me. “Did you know this all along, Taylor? Did you plan for this?”
“No,” I said. “I Saw it with my gift, when I studied his defences.”
“Why should I believe you?” said Tommy, and Suzie stirred at my side, picking up on the anger burning in the man.
“I’ve never lied to you, Tommy,” I said carefully. “I’m sorry about Nimue, and even about Merlin, but I came into the Past to stop Lilith, and that’s what I’m going to do.”
“Whatever it takes? No matter who gets hurt?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.”
“If we take the heart with us, further back into the Past, no wonder no-one could ever find it,” said Suzie. “They were always looking in the wrong place, the wrong time.”
“We’ll take Nimue’s body along with us,” I said. “Dump it somewhere in the Past. So that when Merlin returns from the dead, he’ll never have to know that Nimue died trying to save him.”
“You pick the strangest ways to be thoughtful, Taylor,” said Suzie.
“If you were to put the heart back,” Tommy said slowly, “there’s a real chance the magic stored in the heart would be enough to bring him back.”
“We don’t know that,” I said. “And we need the magic in the heart…”
“We can’t let him die!” Tommy said fiercely. “Not if there’s even the smallest chance of saving him! Otherwise, we’re as good as killing him ourselves.”
“Think it through,” I said. “If it doesn’t work, we waste the magic, and we’re stranded here. And if Merlin should wake up, and discover what we persuaded Nimue to do, and that she died as a result of it… he’d kill us all. Slowly and hideously painfully. This is Merlin Satanspawn we’re talking about.”
“So we do nothing?” said Tommy. There was a dangerous cold light in his eyes.
“Yes,” I said. “He dies here, without his heart, as we know he did, and he’ll be buried in the cellars under the bar. That’s a part of our Past, our Present, our time-line. We just helped to bring about what we know happened anyway.”
“You cold-hearted son of a bitch.” Tommy was so angry his face had lost all its colour, and his hands were clenched into fists at his sides. “Just how far will you go, to get your precious revenge?”
I didn’t look at Suzie. At her familiar, disfigured face. “I only do what I have to do,” I said, keeping my voice as calm and reasonable as I could. “Let’s get out of here, before Kae wakes up. I don’t think you can stop a warrior like that for long just by hitting him over the head.”
“No,” said Tommy, still looking at me, and his eyes were cold, so cold. I don’t think I’d ever seen him so angry. “This stops here, Taylor. You’ve done enough damage on your insane quest. Suzie’s face. Nimue’s death. Merlin … all for your petty, vindictive vendetta. To hell with Lilith, and to hell with you, too, you lying sack of shit. You’d sacrifice anyone and anything, just to get back at your mother. I don’t see why … After all, you’ve made yourself into just as vicious and cold-hearted a monster as her. You’re every inch your mother’s son.”
“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t say that, Tommy.”
“It’s not true,” said Suzie. “Don’t do this, Tommy. Taylor knows what he’s doing. He always knows what he’s doing.”
It was like a hand clenched around my heart then, squeezing it painfully, to hear her trust and faith in me, even after… everything that had happened. I wasn’t worthy of trust like that. I would have said something, but I couldn’t get my breath.
“Oh yes,” said Tommy. “I think he knows what he’s doing, all right. I simply don’t trust his motives any more.”
“I never meant for anyone to get hurt,” I said finally. “I don?
??t want anyone to get hurt. I’ve seen the future that’s coming, if Lilith isn’t stopped. I still have nightmares … And I am ready to die, to prevent it. But… I don’t have the right to ask that of anyone else. What do you think we should do, Tommy?”
“I say we put Merlin’s heart back,” Tommy said stubbornly. “It could work. We save his life, and I’ll use my gift to talk him out of killing us. You know how persuasive I can be. With his heart back and his power restored, he’ll be able to repair Suzie’s face and bring Nimue back from the dead. Don’t look at me like that! This is Merlin; he could do it! I know he could. And then, with the right guidance and advice, he will restore the glory that is Camelot and make a better world, a better future!”
“Oh Jesus, are we back to that?” said Suzie. “Tommy, we’ve been through this. We daren’t change the Past, because of what it could do to our Present. And there’s no telling what kind of a future you and a half-mad Merlin might bring about anyway.”
“Lilith still has to be stopped,” I said.
“Why?” said Tommy. “Because of what she might do? Don’t worry; Merlin will handle her.”
“Merlin Satanspawn?” I said. “The Devil’s only begotten son? For all we know, he’d help her.”
“I can use my gift…”
“Against Merlin?”
“You’re Lilith’s only son,” said Tommy. “You’d let the dream of Camelot die, just to further your own ambitions. I see right through you, Taylor. And I’ll see you die first!”
He raised his gift, but I was already raising mine, and the whole bar shook as our powers manifested and clashed head-on. I used my gift to try and find his weaknesses, and he used his to try and reinforce a reality where I never reached the sixth century. My gift dealt with certainties, his with probabilities, and neither was really strong enough to overcome the other. We both put all our strength into this clash of wills, and reality itself became hazy and uncertain around us, until it seemed the whole bar might unravel, leaving us the only fixed and real things in the world.