It was the Speaking Gun, that old old weapon. It was plugged into the continuing echoes of the Sound at the start of Creation, when God said Let there be light. The Speaking Gun knew the secret name of everything and everyone, and by Saying it backwards, could uncreate anything. Wipe it out completely, make it never happened…An unstoppable weapon, that dreamed bloody dreams and lusted to be used.
Suzie Shooter looked slowly round the packed bar, and everyone looked back at her, not daring to move or make any sound that might attract her attention. Finally, her gaze fell on me. I wouldn’t let myself flinch, or look away.
“I’d forgotten…you used to look like this,” she said, her voice cracked and harsh, as though it pained her to speak.
“Suze?” I said.
“No. Not any more. Not for a long time.”
“Oh God, Suze; what have they done to you?”
“Nothing I didn’t ask them to. I couldn’t hope to survive in the world you made, John, so they remade me. Gave me this Gun, and stitched the two of us together, forever. The Speaking Gun is mad, and now so am I, but I’ll last long enough to put you out of everyone else’s misery. If there’s anything human left in you, John…die now, and save the world. Resist me, and I’ll blow this whole bar apart.”
One of the combat magicians panicked then and threw a killing spell at her. The others immediately all joined in, and vicious magics flared and spattered all around Shotgun Suzie, but the Gun protected her. She turned on her attackers, and her face contorted, her mouth stretching impossibly wide, as the Gun spoke through her, Saying the Words of Undoing. It was the most terrible sound I’d ever heard. Everyone in the bar cried out, sickened and horrified. Even Lilith turned her face away, as Suzie Shooter spoke the Words and all the combat magicians disappeared in a moment, made unreal, uncreated.
People were falling to their knees and vomiting. Others turned and ran, up the metal stairway and out of the bar, their eyes wild and mad. Walker didn’t try and stop them, but he wouldn’t leave. Even now, he still had his pride and his duty. Suzie turned slowly back to look at me. I was shaking, my legs hardly strong enough to hold me up; but still I made myself face her, staring right into her cold gaze. I showed her my empty, unsteady hands.
“I won’t fight you, Suze,” I said. “I can’t hurt you. I would never hurt you.”
“But you did, John. You did.”
Her mouth opened to Say the awful sounds that would uncreate me, unmake me; and then Merlin Satanspawn manifested through his descendent Alex Morrisey, and stopped Time with a gesture. Everything ground to a halt, turned to stone, unmoving, even to the flecks of dust on the air. I couldn’t move, but I could sense what was going on. Could feel the Speaking Gun straining against the magic that was holding it back from what it lived to do. And Merlin Satanspawn came walking through the petrified world, dead but not gone, untouched by Time. He walked unhurriedly over to Shotgun Suzie, studied her for a moment, then ripped the Speaking Gun away from her upper arm. Flesh stretched and tore, and bright blood flew on the air. Suzie screamed as the energies that bound her to the Gun were shattered, and the Speaking Gun screamed, too, an awful hateful sound of frustrated rage and spite. Suzie snapped out, gone in a moment, banished back to the dreadful future I’d made for her and everyone else. The Speaking Gun disappeared, too, perhaps to that future, perhaps to somewhere else, where it was needed, or desired.
Time returned in a rush. Merlin and Lilith looked at each other, and everyone else held their breath. The Devil’s only begotten son and God’s first creation. And in the end Merlin bowed to Lilith, and disappeared, leaving Alex shaking and bewildered behind his bar again.
The remaining combat magicians opened up on Sinner and Pretty Poison again. After what had been done to them they needed to strike back at someone, and they weren’t ready to take on Lilith yet. Especially after Merlin Satanspawn had bowed to her. Sinner still stood between them and Pretty Poison, his body soaking up the punishment of spells and cursed bullets. He was taking more and more damage now, being slowly chipped away; but he wouldn’t step aside from the demon succubus he protected, and he wouldn’t fight back. Everything else had been taken from him, but he still had his love and his determination to do the right thing. Behind him, Pretty Poison looked beseechingly at Walker, but he just looked back at her, his face calm and composed as always. He was here to do a distasteful, necessary thing, and he would see it through.
Sinner stood his ground, even though he knew the magics were destroying him by inches. He couldn’t let the attacks get past him, to hurt Pretty Poison. Such potent magics could destroy the succubus’s body, leave her without a human form to manifest in; she would be just another damned soul, suffering in Hell. He couldn’t allow that. And so he stood, enduring the pain and the horror as his body was slowly whittled away, because she was his love. And nothing else mattered.
Bullets smacked into his side, chipping away at the exposed ribs, and he grunted at the impact, but would not cry out, for fear it would distress his love. Spells burned the flesh from his bones and the skin from his face, tore at him with whips and razors, and every moment there was less and less of him. In the end, he knew he could be left without a body—just an orphaned spirit denied a place in either Heaven or Hell, a ghost slowly dissipating into nothing at all, as though he’d never been. He knew he could still save himself, could still run and abandon Pretty Poison to her fate. But having finally found love, he would rather die than see it destroyed.
Pretty Poison knew all this. Knew that Sinner’s stubborn love for her would have him stand there for as long as his will could hold him up, and perhaps beyond. All to protect her. And in that moment, she knew she couldn’t allow that. Couldn’t allow the man who had suffered so much on her account to sacrifice everything for her. He mattered more than she. And so she stepped out from behind him, and stepped in front of him, to protect him with her body. Finally understanding the meaning of love, and self-sacrifice. Loving him as he loved her.
There was a blast of incandescent light, bright and glorious, as Pretty Poison remembered the angel she had once been, before the Fall. All her old evils were burned away, transfigured by the power of her love, and she became again the angel she had once been, fit to take her place in Heaven. She was too bright to look at, and we all turned our heads away, but we could still hear the slow, heavy beating of mighty wings.
“Come with me, to Paradise,” said the angel to the man called Sinner. “For you have been found worthy, as have I.”
The light flared up unbearably, then died away, and they were both gone.
It was very quiet in the bar then, as we all looked at each other, staggered by what we’d just witnessed. In the end, Walker recovered first. He gestured to his combat magicians, and they turned their gaze on me. Because if I could be destroyed, my mother would no longer have an anchor in this reality and could perhaps be driven out again. I straightened up as much as the knife in my back would allow and faced them all with a slow, cold smile. When there is nothing left but to die, die well.
And then Madman, perhaps inspired by the revelations he’d witnessed, came strolling out from behind the bar, and everyone turned to look at him. He laughed suddenly, and it was a rich, sane sound.
“When reality becomes unbearable,” he said calmly,
“change reality.”
All his strength and power focussed through his will, and rushed out into the bar, enforcing his vision of reality on everything. All the remaining combat magicians cried out as their magics were stripped from them, leaving them defenceless. Walker staggered back, his Voice silenced. The knife in my back disappeared, along with the damage it had done. Madman turned his uncompromising gaze on Lilith, and she put up a hand as though to defend herself.
Not all of Madman’s power, even focussed through his new-found will, could undo Lilith; but it did diminish her. She wavered, uncertain for the first time. Her power clashed with his, as he strove to drive her away, and she struggle
d to remain. For a long moment the stalemate held; and then I used the last of my power to find the door through which she’d entered Strangefellows, and pushed her back through it.
She disappeared, but her voice whispered a last message in my mind.
I’ll see you again, John. My son, in whom I am well pleased. We have such marvellous work ahead of us.
It was very quiet in the bar, after that. Lilith was gone, as were Merlin and Sinner and Pretty Poison. And poor Suzie Shooter, damned to the awful future I had made for her. Most of Walker’s people were dead or gone, or stripped of their magics. Madman lay curled up on the floor in front of the bar, sleeping soundly. Walker strolled over to look down at him.
“It’s always the ones you overlook who turn out to be the most bother,” he said mildly. “I wonder what he’ll be like, when he wakes up?”
“Sane, hopefully,” I said. “I think that last effort used up all of his power, and his madness. Maybe now he’ll be able to forget what he Saw and live in the same reality as the rest of us.”
“You always were an optimist, John,” said Walker. “I’m not allowed that luxury.” He looked at me for a long moment, his eyes very cold. “You no longer have any friends in the Nightside. You are a danger to everyone and to everything here. We are all your enemies now.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” I said.
Walker nodded slowly, then tipped his bowler hat to me, gathered up his remaining people with his eyes, and led them back up the metal stairway and out of the bar. They took Pew’s body with them. Alex came out from behind his bar to blow a rude noise after them and look mournfully round at the scattered wreckage of his chairs and tables. He sighed heavily.
“I’ll have to call the Coltranes back to clear this mess up. And I hate having to pay after-hours triple time. What are you going to do now, John?”
“I am going to the Tower of Time,” I said. “I’m going back in Time, to search through the earlier incarnations of the Nightside, and dig up people or Beings or Forces who can tell me what I need to know. How to stop my mother Lilith. Because I will use any weapon, any knowledge, to prevent the future she intends to bring about.”
Alex sniffed, unconvinced. “Do you think what we saw was really Suzie?”
“Some possible future version, perhaps. But I’ll never let that happen to her. I won’t let her be hurt by anyone. Even me.”
“At least now we know who your mother really is,” said Alex. “Lilith. Who would have thought it?”
“She’s not my mother,” I said. “She was never my mother.”
Simon R. Green, Hex and the City
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