Agents Of Light And Darkness (15 page)

“They’re right behind us,” I said. “And in a really bad mood.”

“Tell us this place is protected,” said Suzie, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “I really need to hear this dump is seriously protected.”

“It is protected,” said Alex. “But possibly … not
that
protected.”

“Be specific,” I said. “What have you got?”

Alex sighed heavily. “I hate giving away trade secrets, but… Basically, this whole building is protected by wards, shaped curses and genetic-level booby-traps laid down by various magicians down the centuries, all of them pretty powerful and vicious as all hell. Grandfather put a really nasty curse on people who miss the urinals in the toilet. And, of course, my ancestor Merlin’s still buried somewhere under the wine cellar. More than enough to keep the flies off, even in the Nightside, but no-one ever said anything about bloody angels! I don’t suppose anyone ever thought the possibility would arise. Of course, they didn’t know about you, Taylor.”

“You could always turn me over to the angels,” I said. “I’d understand.”

“This is my bar!” Alex snapped immediately. “No-one messes with my patrons, even if it’s you. And no-one tells me what to do in my own bar, not even a bunch of celestial storm troopers. Should I lock all the doors and barricade the windows?”

“If you like,” I said.

“Won’t it help?”

“Not really, no.”

“You’re a bundle of fun to be around, Taylor, you know that?”

Suzie had her back to the bar, her shotgun in her hands, glowering warily about her. “Taylor, how long before the angels get here?”

“Not long,” I said.

“Am I at least allowed to ask why both of you are soaked in what looks revoltingly like fresh blood?” said Alex. “Not that I care if you’re hurt, of course. I ask only for information, in the interests of hygiene.”

“I met up with an old friend,” I said.

“Anyone I know?”

“Belle.”

“Oh,” said Alex. “Her. Is she…?”

“She rests in pieces.”

“Good,” said Alex. “Snooty bitch. Never liked her. Always putting on airs and looking down her nose at my bar snacks. And she always ordered the best champagne and never paid for it.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have a really, really big gun stashed away behind your bar, would you?” Suzie said hopefully.

Alex sneered in her face. “Even if I did, I’m not stupid enough to annoy an angel by pointing it at him. Anyway, last I heard, you and Taylor had the Speaking Gun … Tell me you still have the Speaking Gun.”

“We lost it,” I admitted.

Alex really looked like he was about to have a fit. His fists clenched, his teeth clenched, and he actually shuddered for a moment with frustration and outrage. He grabbed two tufts of spiky hair sticking out from under his beret and tugged at them dangerously.

“That is typical of you, Taylor! As long as I thought you had the Speaking Gun, I thought we might actually have a chance. But no! You get your hands on one of the most powerful weapons in the Nightside, and you lose it! You’re a jinx, Taylor, you know that? You are nothing but bad news, and always have been! I can feel one of my heads coming on… How are we supposed to defend ourselves now? Buy the angels a round and spike their drinks? Lucy, Betty, emergency measures! Right now!”

The Coltranes fell to with a will, moving all the furniture away from in front of the bar, and opening up a large clear space. (The shapeshifted barstool yelped quietly at the rough handling, but refused to turn back.) Once the Coltranes had created a big enough space, they laid out a large pentacle, using salt cellars from behind the bar to mark the lines. They made a really professional job of it, considering they were drawing it freehand. Bouncers have to know many special skills, especially in the Nightside. We all took our places inside the pentacle, then Lucy and Betty sealed and activated the design by scrawling disturbing signs in the vales between the five points. Betty drew the last sign with a flourish, and the salt lines blazed with blue-white energies. Properly constructed pentacles drew their power from ley lines, the living nervous system of the material world. Unfortunately, angels drew their power from somewhere even more impressive.

Betty and Lucy Coltrane sat down together and held each other tightly. They’d done all they could. Suzie and I stood back-to-back, watching and waiting. Alex muttered darkly to himself while trying to look in all directions at once. At least when he wasn’t shooting dark glances at me that clearly said
This
is all your fault. Do Something. And you’d better have a really good plan
. As it happened, I did. But I wasn’t going to tell him about it just yet. Because he really wasn’t going to like it.

Upstairs, the front door to the club blew in. There was the sound of great wings beating, followed by the tread of heavy feet. A blindingly bright light spilled out of the foyer but stopped abruptly at the top of the stairs leading down into the bar proper. A heavy tension built on the air, oppressive and threatening like a storm about to break, as the angels pressed against Strangefellow’s ancient defenses. All of the windows shattered at once, vicious shards of glass flying through the air, only to fall just short of the pentacle’s glowing lines. A blackness far darker than the night oozed through the windows, swallowed them up, then crept slowly across the walls.

“They’re here,” said Suzie. “Heaven and Hell.”

“And poor Humanity caught in the middle, just like always,” I said. I turned to Alex. “And now, it’s up to you. We need your ancestor, Alex. We need Merlin.”

“No,” he said. “No way. I won’t do it.”

“He’s the only one powerful enough to make a stand against angels, Alex.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking, John. I can’t do it.”

“That’s your big plan?” said Suzie. “Call up Merlin? What’s he but another dead sorcerer who won’t lie down?”

“According to some Arthurian legends, his full name was Merlin Satanspawn,” I said. “Because his father was supposed to be the devil.”

“Just when you think things can’t get any worse…” Suzie scowled unhappily. “I can see a rock and a hard place moving into position around us. If you like, I could just shoot us all now. It might be less painful.”

“Relax, Suzie,” I said. “I’m on the case. Alex…”

“Don’t make me do this, John,” he said quietly. “Please. You don’t know what it’s like, what it does to me. When I call him up, he manifests through me. He takes my place in the world. I have to cease to exist, so he can be real. It feels like dying.”

“I’m sorry, Alex,” I said. “Really. But we don’t have the time for me to be kind.”

I pushed my gift into his head, found the connection that still existed between Alex and his most ancient ancestor, and pushed it hard.

“
Merlin Satanspawn; come forth
!”

Alex cried out, in pain and shock and horror, and ran out of the pentacle before any of us could stop him. He got as far as the bar before the change hit him. The whole world seemed to shudder, as reality shifted and changed… and where Alex had been, suddenly someone new, or rather very old, came into the world. He sat in state upon a great iron throne, the heavy black metal carved and scored with crawling, unquiet runes. He was naked, his corpse-pale body decorated from throat to toes with curving Celtic and Druidic tattoos. Many were unpleasant and actually disturbing to look upon.

Between the ancient designs, his skin was blotchy and discolored and visibly decayed in places. He’d been dead a long time, and it showed. His hair was long and grey, falling past his shoulders in convoluted knots, and stiffened here and there with clay and woad. Upon his heavy brow he wore a crown of mistletoe. His face was heavy-boned and ugly, and two fires leapt and danced in the sockets where his eyes should have been. There was an ancient wound in the centre of his chest, where skin and muscle and bone had been torn apart, leaving a gaping hole. His heart was gone, torn out, long and long ago. He was Merlin, dead but not departed, powerful beyond hope or sanity. Merlin, sitting on his ancient throne and smiling horribly.

They say he has his father’s eyes
…

He only still existed through an awful act of will. Life and death and reality itself bowed down to his magics. Though there were those who said he was only still around because neither Heaven nor Hell would take him.

“Who disturbs me at this time?” Merlin’s voice was deep and dark, and grated on the ear like fingernails dragged across the soul.

“I’m John Taylor,” I said, politely. “I called you. Angels have come to the Nightside, from Above and Below, in search of the Unholy Grail. They threaten this place, and your current descendant.”

“Damn,” said Merlin. “If it isn’t one thing, it’s another.”

A voice spoke from the top of the stairs; a choir of voices speaking in a harmony so perfect it was inhuman. “We are the Will of the Most High. We are the soldiers of the shimmering plains, and the Courts of the Holy. Give us the mortal, for we have need of him.”

Another voice spoke, from out of the darkness that had enveloped the windows and was spreading slowly across the walls. Its harmonies were dissonant and disturbing, but still inhumanly perfect. “We are the Will of the Morningstar. We are the soldiers of the Pit, and the Inferno. Do not stand in our way. The mortal is ours.”

“Typical angels,” said Merlin, sitting utterly at ease and unmoved on his iron throne. “All bluff and bluster. Bullies, then and now. The Hereafter’s attack dogs, only with less manners. Guard your tongues, all of you. I am the Son of the Morningstar, and I will not be spoken to in such a fashion. I could have been the Anti-Christ, but I declined the honor. I was determined to be free, from both Heaven and Hell. I gave birth to Camelot, and the song that never ends. I made a Golden Age for Mankind, an Age of Reason. And then the Holy Grail came to England’s fair shores, and no-one could think of anything else. They all went riding off on their stupid quests, abandoning their duty to the people. And, of course, it all fell apart. What is Reason, in the face of dreams? I still miss Arthur. He was always the best of them. Arthur, my once and future King.”

“Did you really get to see the Holy Grail?” said Suzie, who would interrupt anybody. “What was it like?”

Merlin’s smile softened, just for a moment. “It was … wonderful. A thing of beauty, and of joy. Almost enough to be worth losing the world for. Almost beautiful enough… to shame me for the shallowness of my vision. Man cannot live by Reason alone.”

“And now the Unholy Grail’s come here,” I said. “I’ve been told it would be a really bad thing if either set of angels gets their hands on it. Judgement Day was mentioned, and not in a good way.”

“The somber chalice…” Merlin raised one rotting hand to the gaping hole in his chest. “I suppose it was inevitable the ugly thing should turn up here. The Nightside was created to be the one place where neither Heaven nor Hell could intervene directly. A place apart, free from the tyrannies of fate and destiny. In the Nightside, even the Highest and the Lowest can only work through agents. Which is why the angels are so much weaker here.”

Suzie and I exchanged a glance. If these were angels in a weaker form… “Excuse me, Sir Merlin,” I said, with all the politeness at my command, “Did you just say the Nightside was created for a specific purpose? Who created it, and why?”

Merlin looked at me with his flame-filled eyes, and smiled unpleasantly. “Ask your mother.”

Somehow, I’d known he was going to say that.

“If some of these angels are agents of Heaven,” said Suzie, in the manner of someone who had a problem bone, and was determined to worry at it until she got an answer that satisfied her, “why have they been killing people, and turning them to salt, and blowing up perfectly good buildings?”

“We only punish the guilty,” said the chorused voice in the light. “And so many here are guilty of something.”

Suzie looked at me. “They have a point.”

“Of course,” said Merlin, “here, all the angels are cut off from their Masters. Poor things, they’re not used to having to think for themselves. Which is why they’ve made such a mess. Decision-making isn’t really what you do best, is it, boys?”

“We are here for the Unholy Grail,” said the light.

“Do you dare stand against us?” said the dark.

“Why not?” said Merlin. “It wouldn’t be the first time, would it? Now back off, all of you, or I’ll fry your pinfeathers.”

The light faded back a little, and the darkness stopped spreading, but the sense of surrounding presences was as strong as ever.

“Taylor,” Suzie said urgently. “Tell me there was more to your plan than just this…”

“Not even half of it,” I murmured. “Hang in there. Sir Merlin, with your leave I think I can sort out this whole mess in a way that will please… well, nobody really, but it’ll be a solution we can all live with.
Live
being a relative term, of course. I don’t know where the Unholy Grail is, but I’m pretty sure I know someone who does. You see everywhere, Sir Merlin, so could you please grab the Collector and bring him here?”

Merlin gestured languidly with a heavily tattooed hand, and suddenly the Collector was standing right there in the pentacle with us. He looked around, startled, and his eyes all but popped out of their sockets with outrage. He started to say something, then saw Merlin sitting on his throne and shut his mouth quickly before it could get him into even more trouble. The Collector was a podgy, middle-aged man with a thick neck and a florid face, wearing a white jumpsuit and cape, as popularized by Elvis in his later days. It didn’t suit him at all.

“Wow,” said Suzie, sticking the barrel of her shotgun in the Collector’s ear. “Now that’s what I call service.”

“Oh shit,” said the Collector.

“Language!” said Suzie. “There are angels present.”

“Hello, Collector,” I said calmly. “How’s the leg?”

“Taylor! I might have known you were behind this!” The Collector started to say something else, but Suzie shoved her gun a little further into his ear, and he stopped himself again. He glowered at me. “I had to grow a new leg, thanks to your interference all those years ago. Put me right off time-traveling. Never was cost-effective. And besides, I kept bumping into myself, and I kept giggling at me, which was unnerving, to say the least. Now will someone please tell me why I have been transported here against my will!”