Nightside - Paths Not Taken

      She was too tall and almost supernaturally slender, the lines of her bare body so smooth they looked like they'd been streamlined, for greater efficiency. Her hair and her eyes and her lips were jet-black, and together with her pale, colourless skin, she looked very much like a black and white photograph. Her face was sharp and pointed, with a prominent bone structure and a hawk nose. Her dark mouth was thin-lipped and far too wide, and her eyes were full of a dark fire that could burn through anything. The expressions that came and went on her face were in no way human. She looked ... wild, elemental, unfinished. She wore no clothes. She had no navel.
      I remembered the man called Madman, who Saw the world and everything in it more clearly than most, saying that the Lilith we saw and experienced was only a limited projection into our reality of something much greater and more complex. We only saw what we could stand to see. He also said that the human Lilith was really just a glorified glove puppet that she manipulated from afar.
      Lilith. Mother. Monster.
      I said as much to Suzie, and she nodded. "It doesn't matter. If she's real, I can kill her."
      We both kept our voices low, but I don't think even a thunderclap could have interrupted Lilith's concentration. Whatever she saw in the clearing wasn't there yet. She spoke a Word aloud, and it hit the air like a hammer. The sound of it filled the world, its echoes reaching out to touch everything. It was a word from no language I knew or could ever hope to understand, even with the assistance of Old Father Time's magic; it was an old word out of an old language, perhaps the basic language from which all others evolved. I could understand enough of its meaning to be glad I didn't understand any more.
      Summoned by that terrible Word, the world opened up to birth monsters. Awful creatures came stomping and hopping and slithering out of the trees behind Lilith. They towered over her and oozed past her feet, huge and dreadful and utterly appalling, even by Nightside standards. In them was found every forbidden combination of animal and lizard and insect, vicious and ugly beyond belief. Bulging muscles swelled like cancers under suppurating flesh. Dark carapaced things scuttled on broken legs, with complicated mouth parts working furiously under too many eyes. Tall and spindly things lurched out of the trees on tripod legs, flailing long tentacles like barbed whips. And still they came, bursting up out of the dark earth of the clearing. Great white worms with rows of human arms and hands, rotting hulks large as whales, chattering heads with long toothy spines. Bat-winged shapes dropped out of the night with a predator's grace, and terrible shapes swept across the sky, blocking out the stars and darting across the face of the full moon.
      The air was full of the stench of blood and offal and brimstone. And Lilith looked upon them all, and smiled.
      I suddenly realised Suzie was training her shotgun on the group and preparing to open fire. I quickly pushed the barrels down, then actually had to wrestle with her to keep the barrels pointing at the ground. I knew better than to try and take the gun away from her. She finally stopped fighting and glared at me, breathing hard.
      "Let me shoot them! They need shooting, on general principles!"
      "I feel the same way," I said, glaring right back at her. "But we can't afford to be noticed yet. And I'm pretty sure most of those things would shrug off a shotgun blast anyway."
      She nodded reluctantly, and I cautiously let go of the gun. "I loaded up with cursed and blessed ammunition," she said, a little sulkily.
      "Even so. I know what those creatures are, Suzie. After being thrown out of Eden, Lilith went down into Hell and lay down with all the demons there, and in time gave birth to all the monsters that have plagued Mankind. Those things out there ... are her children."
      "How can you be so sure of that?" said Suzie.
      "I feel it," I said. "I know it like I know my own name. Those things will become the Powers and Dominations of our time, and their many descendants will become vampires and werewolves and ghouls and all the other predators of the Nightside."
      "I've got some really powerful grenades ..."
      "No, Suzie."
      She sniffed, then glared out at the monstrous creatures rising and falling around Lilith. "So," she said finally. "Lilith's children. Your half-brothers and -sisters. They are the audience she was waiting for."
      Lilith looked out across the writhing, pulsating crowd before her, and her wide smile was as cold and unreadable as the rest of her. She could have been thinking anything, anything at all. Finally, she gestured briefly, brutally, and the crowd split in two, falling back on both sides as Lilith frowned, concentrating, and spoke another Word. Even her monstrous children cringed back from the sound of it, and I could feel reality itself shake and shudder as Lilith enforced her awful will upon it. The whole of the dark forest stirred and groaned, a living thing in pain, then, all in one terrible moment, Lilith gave birth to the Nightside through a single effort of will and determination.
      A great city suddenly filled the clearing from boundary to boundary, shining bright as the sun, massive and ornate, a singular creation of wonder and beauty. It was a vision of great sparkling towers and massive shimmering domes, delicate elemental walkways and insanely elegant palaces-a glorious ideal city, a thing of dreams made real in stone and wood, marble and metal. It was magnificent, like the cities we see in our minds when we dream of distant places. All its shapes were curved, smooth and rounded, almost organic, the buildings rising and falling like waves in an artificial sea, and none of them were in proportion to each other. The city Lilith had created was inhumanly beautiful, and flawed, just like her.
      "That... is not at all what I expected," said Suzie. "It's stunning. A city of light, and splendor. How could something as marvelous as that become the corrupt city of our time?"
      "Because that thing before us isn't a city," I said. "It's an ideal. No-one lives in it. No-one ever could. That's simply a construct, a sterile unchanging place, designed to be looked at and admired, not lived in; even if Lilith doesn't realize that yet. Most of it's out of proportion, none of it belongs together, and from the look of those towers they only stay up because Lilith believes they will. The streets probably don't go anywhere, and I doubt she's left any room for the practicalities of city life, like clear entrances and exits, sewers and throughways. No ... this is a dead end, like a beautiful cemetery. Can't you feel the coldness of it? This is only Lilith's idea of a city, a fantasy impressed on reality. No wonder Mankind eventually knocks it all down and builds a new one."
      "An ideal," Suzie said slowly. "Like the human body she's made for herself?"
      "Good point," I said.
      "But... what is this city based on?" said Suzie, scowling fiercely. "There aren't any human cities around yet to inspire her."
      "Another good point. I didn't know you had it in you, Suzie. I suppose ... this could be a material reflection of places she's known. Heaven, Hell, Eden. A wordly version of a spiritual ideal. The ur-city, which only exists in our imaginations, a glimpse of a better place waiting ... You know, we are getting into some pretty deep philosophical waters here, Suzie."
      "Yeah," said Suzie. "You could drown in waters like these."
      "Look at the stars," I said suddenly. "And the moon, shining down on the new Nightside. They're still the same, the ordinary unaffected night sky we saw before Lilith even arrived. Nothing up there's changed. And that's not the stars and moon we're used to seeing over our Nightside."
      "So?" said Suzie.
      "So, I don't think our Nightside is necessarily where and when we always assumed it was."
      I would have gone further with that thought, but Lilith turned suddenly and addressed her assembled offspring. Her voice rose on the unnatural quiet, strong and hard and vibrant, and only partly human. Or feminine. She spoke in that old, ancient, language that predated Humanity. And I understood every word of it.
      "Denied the comfort of Eden, I have made myself a new home, here in the material world. A place where everyone can be free from the tyrannical authority of Heaven or Hell. My gift to you all, and to those who will come after you."
      The monsters cried out in various unpleasant voices, praising her, and bowing and fawning before her. I smiled slowly. They hadn't been listening. The city had never been intended for them alone. And the more I thought about what she said, the more things finally became clear to me.
      "You're scowling again," said-Suzie. "Now what?"
      "Freedom from Heaven and Hell," I said slowly. "Freedom from reward or punishment, or the consequences of your own actions. If there is no Good or Evil, then actions have no meaning. If you no longer have to choose between Good and Evil, if nothing you do matters, then what meaning or purpose can your life have?"
      "You've lost me," said Suzie. "I don't think that much about Good and Evil."
      "I had noticed," I said. "But even you make a distinction between friend and enemy. Those you approve of and those you don't. You understand that what you do has consequences. Look, think it through. Why is virtue its own reward? Because if it weren't, it wouldn't be virtue. If you only did the right thing because you knew you'd get to Heaven, or avoided doing the wrong thing because you knew you'd end up in Hell, then Good and Evil wouldn't exist any more. You have to do the right thing because you believe it's the right thing, not because you'll be rewarded or punished for doing it. That's why there's never been any concrete proof of the true nature of Heaven or Hell, even in the Nightside. We were given free will, so we could choose between Good and Evil. You have to choose which one to embrace, for your own reasons, to give your life meaning and purpose. Otherwise, it would all be for nothing. Existence would be meaningless."
      "That's why Lilith will destroy the Nightside in the future," said Suzie, nodding slowly almost despite herself. "Because Good and Evil and consequences have a way of creeping in, whenever people get together. She will destroy what the Nightside has become because that's the only way she can restore the purity of her original vision. By removing or destroying all the living things that corrupted her city by inhabiting it."
      "Yeah," I said. "That sounds like Mother."
      Suzie looked thoughtfully at Lilith, standing tall and proud before her awful children. "Creating the Nightside is supposed to have weakened her," Suzie said, meaningfully. "If I could get close enough to stick both barrels up her nostrils..."
      "She doesn't look that weakened," I said firmly.
      Abruptly Lilith walked forward into the glorious city she'd made, to show it off to her children. They slumped and slithered and crashed after her, filling the night with a celebration of their terrible voices. Suzie and I watched them go, and were glad to see the back of them. Just the sight of them hurt our eyes and made our stomachs churn. Human eyes were never meant to deal with such spiritual ugliness.
      And that was when the two angels suddenly appeared before us.
      It was obvious they came from Above and Below. They were suddenly standing there before us, two tall idealised humanoid figures with massive wings spreading out behind their backs. One was composed entirely of light, the other of darkness. We couldn't see their faces. There was no question but they were angels. I could feel it in my soul. Part of me wanted to kneel and bow my head to them, but I didn't. I'm John Taylor. Suzie already had her shotgun trained on them. She's never been much of a one for bowing either. I had to smile. The angels looked at each other. We weren't what they'd expected.
      "As if things aren't complicated enough," I said, "now Heaven and Hell are getting directly involved. Wonderful."
      "Bloody angels," growled Suzie. "Bullyboys from the afterlife. I ought to rip your pin-feathers out. What do you want?"
      "We want you," said the angel of light. Its words rang in my head like silver bells.
      "We want you to stop Lilith. We can help you," said the dark angel. Its words stank in my head like burning flesh.
      "I am Gabriel."
      "I am Baphomet."
      "This is not how we really are," said Gabriel. "We found these images in your heads."
      "Comfortable fictions," said Baphomet.
      "Designed to make you comfortable with our presence."
      "But not too comfortable. We are the will of Heaven and Hell made flesh, and we have been given jurisdiction in this matter."
      "You will obey us," said Gabriel.
      "Want to bet?" said Suzie.
      "We don't do the 'o' word," I said.
      The angels looked at each other. Things were clearly not going as expected. "This new city was never intended," said Gabriel. "The material world is not prepared to deal with such a thing. It will... unbalance matters. It cannot be allowed to flourish."
      "Lilith must be stopped," said Baphomet. "We are here to help you stop her."
      "Why?" I said. "I really would love to hear the official line on this."
      "We cannot tell you," said Gabriel. "We do not know. We only ever know what we need to know, when we are unleashed upon the material world. It is not for us to make decisions or have opinions. We only enforce the will of Heaven and Hell."
      "We are here to do what must be done," said Baphomet. "And we will see it done, no matter what it takes."
      I'd seen this kind of limited thinking before, back during the angel war. Angels of either House were always much diminished by being made material. They were still unutterably powerful, and their very nature made them unwavering in their purpose, but you couldn't argue or reason with them. Even when conditions had clearly changed so much that their original purpose was no longer relevant. Angels were spiritual storm-troopers. If a city had to be destroyed, or the first-born of a generation destroyed, send in the angels. Of course, that was still to come.
      "You want Lilith taken out, why don't you get on with it?" said Suzie.
      "We cannot simply walk into her city and destroy her," said Gabriel. "Lilith has designed her creation so that simply by entering it, all emissaries of Heaven and Hell would be terribly weakened."
      "And then she would destroy us," said Baphomet. "She hates all emissaries of authority, whether from Above or Below."
      "We do not fear destruction," said Gabriel. "Only the failure of our mission. You can help us."
      "You must help us."
      Neither angel had much of a personality, as such. Presumably that would come later, after centuries of interaction with Humanity. For the moment, they were more like machines set in motion, programmed to carry out a distasteful but necessary task. It occurred to me that both the light and the dark angel had more in common than they would probably care to admit.
      "If you can't enter the city without being destroyed, what use are you?" said Suzie, blunt as ever.
      "We cannot stop Lilith," Gabriel said calmly. "But we can make it possible for you to stop her."
      "How?" I said.
      "You could not destroy her, even with our help," said Baphomet. "She was created to be uniquely powerful, and so she is. Even here, in the material world. But together we could weaken and diminish her, so much so that the harm she could do in the future would be much lessened."
      "How?" I said.
      "We understand that this is important to you," said Gabriel. "It is not necessary for us to know why."
      "We can make you powerful," said Baphomet. "Powerful enough to deal with Lilith as she deserves to be dealt with."
      "How?" I said.
      "By possessing you," said Gabriel.
      Suzie and I looked at the angels, then at each other, then we stepped back a little way to discuss the matter in private. Neither of us felt comfortable under the implacable gaze of their blank faces. And the unblinking light and the impenetrable darkness of their forms was wearing, on both the eyes and the soul. There was something about the angels that made you want to accept everything they said, unthinkingly. But because they couldn't lie didn't mean they were privy to the whole truth.
      "We can't destroy Lilith," Suzie said reluctantly. "Whatever happens. Because if she dies here and now, you couldn't be born, John."
      "The thought had occurred to me," I said. "But if we could seriously reduce her power, while she's still vulnerable ... it might make it possible for us to deal with her, back in our own time. We know something happens to weaken her in the past, because soon enough her own creatures will band together to banish her from the Nightside. Maybe what we do here will make that possible."
      "We're back to circular thinking again," said Suzie. "Hate Time travel. Makes my head hurt."
      "But... if we can learn how to weaken her," I said, "maybe we can do it again, once we get back to our own time."
      "If we get back to our own time." Suzie considered the matter for a while, then nodded reluctantly. "You mean, we could weaken her again, and stop her destroying the Nightside in the future. Okay. Sounds like a plan to me. Except that there is no way in hell that I'm going to let an angel or anyone else possess me. One body, one vote, no exceptions."
      We went back to the angels. "Explain exactly what you mean by possession," I said. "And be really, really convincing that this is necessary."
      "We will not be controlling you," said Gabriel. "We will merely inhabit your bodies to grant you our power."
      "One of us, in each of you," said Baphomet. "Your human nature will carry our power into Lilith's city, and together we shall bring her down."
      "You will enable us to carry out our mission. And afterwards, we shall leave your bodies, and return you to where you belong."
      "How can we trust you to keep your word?" said Suzie.
      "Why would we want to stay in a human body?" said Baphomet. "We are spirit. You are meat."
      "To stay would be contrary to our orders," said Gabriel. "And in many ways, we are our orders."
      I sighed heavily. "I know I'm going to regret this, but..."
      "But?" said Suzie.
      "You want to get home, don't you?"
      She scowled. "You talk me into the damnedest things, Taylor."
      It was my turn to look at her uncertainly. "Can you cope with this, Suzie? With having an angel... inside you?"
      She shook her head. "You pick the strangest times to get sensitive. Relax, John. Even I can make a clear distinction between a spiritual and a physical invasion. I'll be fine. I think... I kind of like the idea of having an angel trapped within me, having to do what I tell it to do. I could dine out on that story for months, once we get back ..."
      "All right," I said to Gabriel and Baphomet. "You've got a deal. Baphomet; you take me."
      Even then, I was determined to spare Suzie whatever pain and trauma I could. And I didn't entirely trust the idea of an angel from Hell inside Shotgun Suzie's body. Some marriages are definitely not made in Heaven.
      "I would have taken you anyway," said the dark angel. "We are the most compatible."
      I wasn't at all sure how to take that. Without any warning, both angels stepped forward and into us, like swimmers diving into deep water. Suzie and I both cried out, more in surprise than shock, and as quickly as that it was done. Baphomet was in my mind, like an idea out of nowhere, like a memory I'd forgotten, like an impulse from a place I normally kept heavily suppressed. And with the angel came power. It was like being plugged into the energy that runs the universe. I could see for miles, hear every sound in the night, and every movement of the air on my skin was like a caress. Suddenly I had other senses, too, and all the worlds within the world, and above and beyond it, unfolded all around me. I was drunk with knowledge, raging with power. I felt like I could tear the whole material world apart with my bare hands. That I could lay waste to any enemy, or dismiss them with a look. I knew that I could breathe life into dying suns, speed the planets in their orbits, dance the dance of life and death, redemption and damnation.
      I was still me, but I was more than me. I laughed aloud, and so did Suzie. We looked at each other. We shone so very brightly, our flesh burning with an intense light, and massive wings spread out behind our backs. Our eyes were full of glory, and halos of fizzing static sparked above our heads. The world was ours, to do with as we wished.
      Slowly, we remembered why we had done this thing and what we had to do. The slow, steady purpose of the angels beat within us, stronger than instinct, more certain than decision. Suzie and I turned as one and walked into the city Lilith had made. Once I was moving, I felt more like myself again. Action helped to focus me. Both Suzie and I blazed with a light that was brighter and more genuine than anything the city could produce, and the ground cracked and broke apart under the spiritual weight we carried. The tall towers and mighty buildings seemed somehow shabby under our light.
      It didn't take long for our presence to be noticed. We were uninvited guests, the first the city had ever known. One by one Lilith's offspring came leaping and slithering and striding through the streets to face us. Some watched from alleyways, some flew overhead, calling out warnings, but eventually a crowd of them blocked our way, and we came to a halt. The monstrous creatures cried out in shock and anger, seeing the angels we carried within us. Their voices were harsh and brutal, when they could be understood at all, and they threatened us, laughed at us, demanded we surrender or leave. Like the baying of beasts in a new kind of jungle.
      "Stand aside," I said, and my voice crashed in the air like thunder, like lightning.
      "Stand aside," said Suzie, and the buildings shook and trembled all around us.
      The creatures rushed us, attacking from every side with tooth and claw and barbed, ripping tentacle. They hated us, just for what we were. For our having dared to enter the place that Lilith had assured them was safe from outside interference. Huge and monstrous, fast and strong, they came at us, death and destruction made flesh, hate and spite and bitter evil given shape and form. They never stood a chance.
      Suzie and I looked at them with the power of angels in our eyes, and some of the creatures melted away under the pressure of that gaze, not strong or certain enough to withstand our augmented will. The flesh slipped from their bones like mud and splashed on the ground. Others simply disappeared, banished from the material world by our overwhelming determination. But most stood their ground and fought. They cut at us with claws and barbs, and mouths snapped all around us, while spiked tentacles sought to enwrap or tear us apart. We took no hurt. We were above that. We grabbed them with our strong hands and tore them limb from limb. Our fists punched through the hardest flesh and shattered the thickest carapaces. We crushed skulls and punched in chests and ripped off arms and legs and tentacles. More creatures came running, from every direction at once, spilling and bursting out of every adjoining street and alley. They outnumbered us a hundred to one, a thousand to one, living nightmares and killing machines of unnatural flesh and blood, every shape and form that darkness could conceive.
      But Suzie and I had angels within us, and we were strong, so strong.
      The street beneath our feet broke apart as awful things burst up out of the earth beneath the city. They wrapped around our legs and tried to drag us down. Bat-winged things slammed down out of the night sky, to tear and rend or snatch us up and carry us away. Suzie and I fought them all, our fingers sinking deep into yielding flesh. We picked creatures up and threw them away, and they crashed into elegant walls and brought down tall buildings. We walked steadily forward, and nothing could stand against us. The dead piled up everywhere, and the wounded crawled away, cursing and weeping and calling out for their mother. Wherever we turned our gaze or our hands, monstrous forms broke or faded away, and some splashed like bloody mud in the streets. Finally, the survivors turned and ran, disappearing back into the centre of the city, back to the dark heart of the Nightside, where Lilith waited for us to come to her. Suzie and I walked through the dead and the dying, the dismembered creatures and the splintered carapaces, ignoring the wounded and the weeping. They were not why we were there.
      But still we smiled upon our work, and knew it to be just and good. I like to think this was the angel's thoughts, my angel's satisfaction, but I'm still not sure. I wanted to kill these awful things, these monsters who shared the same mother as I. I didn't want to think I had anything in common with them, but I did, I did. Angel or no, I was as much a monster in what I did then.
      We followed the retreating creatures, all the way into the heart of the Nightside, and there was Lilith, sitting on a pale Throne, waiting for us. Her surviving offspring crouched and huddled around the Throne, and at her pale feet. She didn't look at them. All the power of her dark gaze was fixed on Suzie, and on me. The buildings were very tall, impossibly heavy and impressive, and I couldn't tell of what substance they were made. They just were, drawn out of her mind and stamped onto reality by her will, in this place that was not a place, hidden within the real world like a parasite deep in a man's guts.
      Lilith watched unwaveringly as Suzie and I stepped unhurriedly into the courtyard and approached her throne. A dozen kinds of blood and offal dripped from our hands. Lilith's gaze was steady, her dark mouth unmoved as her wounded offspring surged restlessly around her feet, crying put for vengeance. Suzie and I came to a halt a respectful distance before her, and Lilith gestured sharply with one long-fingered hand. The clamour about her fell silent. She gestured again, and the creatures slunk away, fading into the dark shadows of the surrounding streets and alleyways. Until there was only Lilith and Suzie, and me.
      "I see angels in you," Lilith said calmly. Her words came clearly to me, perhaps because they were filtered through Baphomet. "You carry Heaven's and Hell's restraints within you. I should have known they'd find a way to sneak into my perfect paradise. All I wanted was a world to play in, one world for my very own. A fresh start, I thought, but no; we have to follow the old ways, even here. So, which of you is the snake and which the apple, I wonder? Though I've never seen that much difference, between Heaven and Hell. Both so certain, so limited, so ... unimaginative. Just bullies, determined to make everyone else play their depressing little game.
      "Still, it doesn't matter. You've come too late. I have made a new realm, separate from both of yours, and what I have done here can never be undone, except by me. And you have no power to force me to do anything any more. The very nature of this city limits and diminishes you, while I... have designed this body to be very powerful indeed."
      I could feel Baphomet boiling and churning within me, enraged by her words, desperate to unleash its power and follow its programming. But I was still in charge and pushed it back. There were things I needed to ask, needed to know.
      "Why are Heaven and Hell so concerned about this place?" I said, and my voice sounded very normal to me. "Why do they see your little city as such a danger?"
      Lilith raised a perfect dark eyebrow. "That isn't the angel talking. You're ... human, aren't you? I've seen your kind, in visions. What brings you here, so many years before your time?"
      "Is it the concept of true free will they find so threatening?" I persisted. "Why are they so scared of a place where freedom is more than just a word?"
      "Your thinking is very limited," said the angel Gabriel, through Suzie's lips. Her mouth, its voice. "We do not care about Lilith or her city. It is the creatures and powers this freedom from responsibility will someday produce that are our concern. They will be more terrible and more powerful than the rightful inhabitants of this world were ever meant to have to face. Humanity must be protected from such threats if it is to have its fair chance. Unlike Lilith, we take the long view. She has only ever cared about the here and now."
      "Here and now is certain," Lilith said calmly. "Everything else is guesswork."
      "She must be destroyed," Baphomet said suddenly, forcing the words through my lips.
      "That is not what was agreed," said Gabriel, through Suzie.
      "Lilith is here and at our mercy," said Baphomet. "And we may never have a better chance."
      "Our orders... are more important than any local agreement," said Gabriel. "We must destroy the outcast while we have the opportunity."
      And just like that, the two angels changed our deal. Using all their strength and will, they pushed Suzie and me aside, forcing us into the back of our heads so they could take control of our bodies and complete their mission. They were supposed to stop her, not destroy her; but their nature would not let them miss the chance of disposing of such a notorious enemy of Heaven and Hell.