It was even worse than I remembered. A night dark as despair, cold as a lover’s rejection, silent as the grave. Everywhere I looked, there were buildings fallen into ruin and rubble, whole areas stamped flat or burned down. As though a mighty storm had passed through the Nightside, levelling everything it touched. Only this storm had a name. I looked up into the night sky, and there was no moon and only a sprinkling of scattered stars. The end of the world, the end of life, the end of hope. And all because of me.
      It was bitter cold, the harsh air burning in my lungs, so cold it even numbed my thoughts. All around me for as far as I could see, there were only the stumps and shells of what had once been proud, tall buildings. Shattered brickwork, cracked and broken stone stained from the smoke of old fires, windows with no glass and empty doorways like gaping mouths or wounds. The streets held only abandoned, crushed and burned-out cars, along with piled-up rubbish and refuse. And shadows, shadows everywhere. I’d never known the Nightside so dark, without its bright neon, its gaudy glare of bustle and commerce. What light there was had a deep purple hue, as though the night itself was bruised.
      And yet I wasn’t alone. I could hear something, vague sounds off in the distance. Something large, crashing through an empty street. I thrust my hands deep into my coat pockets, hunched my shoulders against the cold, and went to investigate. That’s what I do. Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back. I made my way cautiously through the dark streets, stepped around and over all kinds of debris. I peered into the trashed vehicles I passed, but there was never anyone in them. Thick dust puffed up around my feet with every step, only to fall straight back again. There wasn’t even a puff of wind. The cold air was still, lifeless. The sounds grew louder as I drew nearer. They were coming from more than one direction. I remembered the giant, mutated insects from my last visit and moved more slowly, more quietly. Until finally I came to the edge of a great open square, and when I saw what walked there, I shrank back into the darkest, deepest shadow I could find, holding my breath so as not to give away even the slightest sign of my presence.
      It lurched across the open square, its weight cracking the ground with every step, huge and bulging like a living cancer growth, all red-and-purple striations, with rows of swollen eyes and mouths dripping pus. It stalked unsteadily forward on tall stilt legs that might have been leg-bones, once upon a time. It stopped abruptly as something else entered the square from the other side. Something tall and vague, made up of shifting unnatural lights. It surged forward in sudden spurts and jerks, spitting and sparking vivid energies, discharging lightning bolts at everything metal it passed. The two monsters howled and squalled at each other, terrible sounds, like two great Beasts disputing territory.
      The hideous racket called others. They burst out of side streets and the shells of broken buildings, huge monstrosities that could never have survived and prospered in a sane and rational world. They snapped and snarled at each other, stamping and coiling and rearing up jagged heads full of teeth. Something big and brutal with too many clawed arms circled warily around something with a long scarred carapace that leaked slime. It waved long, serrated claws in the air, while something else like a massive squashed over-ripe fruit, big as a bus, humped its way across the square, leaving a trail of steaming acid that ate into the bare stone ground.
      All their movements were sudden, erratic, disturbing. Their raised cries were awful, actually painful to the human ear. They struck at each other, or at nothing, or charged each other head-on, like rutting stags. They did not move or act like sane things. You only had to watch them to know that their minds had gone bad, their spirits broken by this terrible place, this end of all things. They looked as though they were sick inside, everything gone to rot and corruption, dying by inches.
      I knew what they were. What they had to be. These hideous, distorted things were all that was left of Lilith’s children, the last of the Powers and Beings she’d recruited from the Street of the Gods to follow her. Stripped of their might and glory, mutated and driven mad. I backed slowly away from the square, away from them, away from the world I’d made. But one of them found me anyway.
      At first, I thought it was just another deep shadow, cast against the unusually high wall of a jagged building, but then it moved, lurching out into the street to block my way. It rose before me like a massive black slug, big as a building, wide as a lobby, made up of living darkness. It didn’t gleam or glisten, and it had no discernible details; what light there was seemed to just fall away into it like a bottomless pit. It had no eyes, but it saw me. It knew I was there, and it hated me. I could feel its hatred, like a pressure on the air. Hatred without cause, or character, or even consciousness.
      I took a cautious step backwards, and it came after me. I stopped immediately, and it stopped, too. Something else slowly manifested on the air, besides the hatred. It was hungry. I turned and ran, side-stepping and lunging across the piled-up rubbish in the street, and behind me came the Beast. I ran carelessly, taking crazy risks with my footing, not caring where I was going. I chose the narrowest streets and darted down side alleys, but it came relentlessly after me, crashing through the sides of crumbling buildings, never slowing or diverting from its path. Its bulk smashed through the material world like it was made of paper, while falling masonry bounced harmlessly off its dark hide. Dust rose in thick clouds, and I coughed harshly as I ran. I was faster, more manoeuvrable, but it was inexorable. And finally, it cornered me.
      I chose the wrong turning and ended up in a side street blocked by piled-up cars. Too tall to climb and no way past. There was a door to one side. I grabbed at the brass handle and it came away in my hand, jerked right out of the rotten wood. I kicked at the door, and it absorbed my foot like spongy fungus. I pulled my foot free and turned around, and there was the great black slug, blocking the street, towering over me. I leaned forward, gasping for breath, coughing out the dust in my lungs. I had nothing on me that could deal with such a monster, no tricks or magics or last-minute escapes. I started to raise my gift, hoping it could find me a way out, then the black slug lurched forward, and my concentration shattered.
      Up close, it stank of brine, of the sea. Of something that should have remained hidden at the bottom of the deepest ocean. It hung over me, impossibly huge, then it stopped, as though… considering me. I could have reached out and touched it, but I could no more have made myself do that than plunge my bare hand into a vat of acid. And then, slowly, a reflection formed on the flat black surface of the Beast, facing me, coming into focus like an old photo, or an old memory. An image of me. The Beast remembered me. Slow ripples spread across the black surface, increasing in speed and urgency, and it lurched backwards, returning the way it had come, until finally it disappeared back into the night.
      It knew me. And it was terrified of me.
      I sat down on some rubble and concentrated on getting my breathing back under control. I could feel my heart hammering like a pile-driver, and my hands were shaking. It was times like this that I wished I smoked. Eventually my composure returned, and I looked around me. I had no idea where I was. All the landmarks were gone, beaten down into mess and ruin. Everywhere looked the same. Civilisation had come and gone, and only monsters stalked old London’s streets. I shuddered suddenly. It was very cold, here at the end of the world. But I still had work to do. No rest for the wicked. I got to my feet again, beat my numbed hands together, and raised my gift. There was nothing to See. The unseen world was as dead and gone as everything else. But when I concentrated, it only took me a moment to find the lair of my Enemies. Their light was feeble and flickering, but still it shone like a beacon in this darkest of nights. I shut down my gift and set off in the direction it had shown me. It wasn’t far.
      I kept well away from the Beasts. Or maybe they were keeping away from me. Either way, nothing crossed my path till I came to my Enemies’ hideout. Again, it looked just as I remembered it. A cracked, crumbling house in a rotted tenement, with nothing obviously different about it. No light showed at any of the shuttered windows, but I could feel light and life inside, hidden, barricaded against the monsters of the night. I advanced slowly, carefully, using just enough of my gift to See the concealed protections and magical booby-traps covering all possible approaches to the house. Most were of the Don’t see me, nothing here, move along kind, but surprisingly they were all keyed to abhuman energies. None of them would activate even if I walked right through them. Perhaps they no longer had any reason to expect human visitors. Or maybe they just needed to be able to get back inside at a moment’s notice. The outer door wasn’t even locked.
      I let myself in and moved silently through the gloom and tension of the broken-down house. My eyes had adjusted to the gloom of the end of the world, but it was still hard to see anything inside. I trailed the fingertips of one hand along the nearest wall, to keep my bearings, and the plaster crumbled into dust under my touch. I strained my ears against the quiet, and finally I caught the first faint traces of sound, from the end of the corridor before me. I padded forward and came to a door camouflaged in the wall. It wasn’t locked either. I slipped through the door, and for the first time there was light, real light. I stopped to let my eyes adjust. Butter yellow light leaked round the edges of another door, in the wall ahead. The light looked warm and comforting. It looked like life. I eased over to the door. It was a little ajar. I pushed it open a few more inches, and looked through. And there were my Enemies, just as I’d seen them before, in my vision.
      They had a great haunch of unidentifiable meat cooking over an open fire, turning slowly on a rough metal spit. They were all crouched around it, utterly intent, not even aware of my presence. Such familiar names and faces. Jessica Sorrow, Larry Oblivion, Count Video, King of Skin, Annie Abattoir. All of them major players and even Powers in their time, now fallen far from what they had once been. They were huddled together, as much for companionship and comfort as against the cold that seeped through even into the hidden room. All of them small ragged figures, with fear and hopelessness written deep in their bony, malnourished faces.
      Jessica Sorrow, no longer the terrible Unbeliever, looked almost unbearably human and vulnerable as she sat cross-legged before the fire, as close to the flames as she could get without burning herself. She hugged an ancient teddy bear in her skinny arms, holding it close to her shrunken chest. She wore a battered black leather jacket and leggings, that looked a lot like the ones Suzie always wore.
      Next to her sat Larry Oblivion, the dead detective. Betrayed and murdered by the only woman he ever really loved, brought back as a zombie, surviving now even when he would probably rather not, because he couldn’t die again. His dead pale flesh showed through the tatters of what had probably once been a very expensive suit. Unlike the others, he didn’t look tired, or defeated. He just looked angry.
      Count Video was a mess. He wore nothing but a collection of leather straps, and his skin was wrinkled and loose in places, from where it had been stitched back on after the angel war. Heavy black staples held him together, in places. Silicon nodules and sorcerous circuitry projected from puckered skin, soldered into place long ago to form the neurotech that powered his binary magics. Plasma lights sputtered on and off around his wasted body, and a halo of intermittent energies cast an unhealthy light on his twitching face.
      King of Skin was just a man here, stripped of his once-terrible glamour. In my time he could have killed with a word or enslaved with a look, but not here, not now. He was all skin and bone, his gaze distant and unfocused. Objects of power hung about him on tangled silver chains, half-hidden under a thick fur coat with patches torn away. He rocked back and forth on his haunches, perhaps lost in memories of better times, because memory was all he had left.
      And finally, Annie Abattoir; assassin and seductress, secret agent and confidence trickster, praised and feared and damned in a dozen countries. She wore what was left of a long crimson evening gown, the low-cut back showing off the mystic symbols carved deep into the flesh between her shoulder blades. She’d always been very hard to kill, though many had tried, often with good reason. Though she was six-foot-two and still mostly muscle, her face held little of its old striking charm. She looked… diminished. Beaten down.
      I finally announced my presence with a polite cough, and they all spun round, scrambling to their feet, ready to fight. Their eyes widened, and a few jaws dropped as they recognised me, then King of Skin cried out like a hurt child and scurried away to crouch in a corner, terrified and trembling. Count Video’s face convulsed with rage, and new energies crackled around him as his neurotech sparked into life.
      “Don’t!” I said quickly. “I’m protected! And I mean seriously protected, by major magics. Anything strong enough to break through my defences would almost certainly attract the attention of the Beasts outside. And I don’t think any of us want that, right?”
      Annie Abattoir looked uncertain, a glowing dagger in each hand, but after a tense moment Larry Oblivion stepped forward and put a hand on her arm and Count Video’s, and they both reluctantly nodded and stepped back. Larry Oblivion studied me coldly.
      “I don’t see any protections…”
      I grinned. “Of course not. That’s how good they are.”
      I was bluffing, but they had no way of knowing that. And they didn’t dare risk being discovered.
      “John Taylor,” Larry said slowly. “How is it that you are here? Did you bring yourself back from the dead, too?”
      “Time travel,” I said briskly. “For me, Lilith has only just happened. The War hasn’t started yet. I’m here looking for answers, and advice.”
      “Let me kill him,” said Count Video. “He has to die. For what he did, he has to die!”
      “Yes,” said Larry. “But not now. Not here.”
      Annie made the Count sit down by the fire again. King of Skin was still shivering in his corner, in a spreading pool of urine, crying childish tears. It hurt me to see him that way. I’d never liked him, but I always respected him. Annie Abattoir and Jessica Sorrow stood before me, on either side of Larry Oblivion. They looked at me like I was a ghost, some horrid spectre at the feast, some ancient evil from their worst nightmares. And maybe I was.
      “My brother Tommy fought on your side,” Larry said finally. “In the great War against Lilith. He trusted you, even though he had good reason not to. And when they struck him down you just stood there, and watched him die, and did nothing to help.”
      I spread my hands helplessly. “You’re judging me over something I haven’t even done yet. And may never do… That’s why I’m here. I need you to tell me what I have to do to prevent all this happening.” They stared back at me, unconvinced. I took a step forward. When dealing with Enemies, it’s all about confidence, or at least the appearance of it. I gestured at the great haunch of meat burning over the fire. It smelled really bad. “You seem to be preparing dinner. Do you mind if I join you? There’s nothing like struggling to avoid the Apocalypse to give you an appetite. What are we having?”
      Larry snorted, amused despite himself. “That… is one of Lilith’s children. Pretty much all there is left to eat, these days. Apart from the bodies. There are still a lot of dead people left over from the War, but we haven’t been reduced to cannibalism. Not yet. Oh yes, they’re still lying around; decades after the War. Nothing decays any more, you see. Except the buildings. All kinds of strange energies were released during the final days of your struggle with your mother. And now all the natural processes are… out of order. Existence follows new rules now. Sometimes we don’t feel the need to eat or drink for days or even weeks at a time. And we don’t sleep. Bad dreams can take on a life of their own, these days.”
      “It’s hard to keep track of time any more,” said Jessica, in a voice like a shell-shocked child’s. “There’s no way of measuring it, you see. There are no days, the night never ends, and watches don’t work even though there’s nothing wrong with them. Perhaps you and Lilith broke Time, during the War…” She cocked her head to one side, like a bird, still fixing me with her direct, unblinking gaze. “How did you know where to find us?”
      “My gift,” I said. “And a little help from an angel.”
      Her mouth twitched briefly. “You always did move in exalted circles, John.”
      “Heaven and Hell have abandoned us,” Annie Abattoir said harshly. “Nothing left to fight over, any more. Do you know who we are? Why we stay together? Why we still struggle to survive, in this worst of all possible worlds?”
      “Yes,” I said. My mouth was suddenly dry. “You’re my Enemies. You’ve been trying to kill me ever since I was born, striking back through Time, to kill me before I do… whatever it is I do that brings about the destruction of the Nightside.”
      “And the world,” Larry said flatly. “Don’t think this is just London. There’s nothing else.”
      “We had to do it,” said Jessica. “It was…”
      “Oh please!” I said. “Don’t you dare say It was nothing personal! You and your Harrowing have hounded me all my life! I’ve never been able to feel safe, feel secure, because I could never know when your bloody assassins would appear suddenly out of nowhere, killing everyone in their path for a chance to get at me! You made my life a living Hell!”
      “You made the world a living Hell,” said Count Video. “Everything we’ve done is justified by what you did.”
      “I haven’t done anything yet!”
      “But you will, John,” said Jessica. “You will.”
      I made myself control my temper. I was here for their help. And there was still one question I hadn’t asked. Something I had to know.
      “Where’s Suzie?” I said. “Where’s my Shotgun Suzie?”
      Larry looked a little surprised. “You expected her to be here?”
      “She tried to kill me,” I said. The words hurt, but I forced them out. “She told me she was one of you. That’s why I came here, through Time, for information. The future isn’t set in stone. This doesn’t have to happen. Tell me what you know. The things only you know.”
      “She volunteered, to be made into one of our assassins,” said Larry. “You do know she volunteered, to be made over into… what we made her?”
      “Yes,” I said. “She told me. We never did believe in keeping secrets from each other.”
      Jessica hugged her teddy bear tightly, resting her chin on its battered head. “She never came back. We assumed you killed her, like all our other agents. What did happen to her, John?”
      “Merlin ripped off her arm,” I said steadily. “The one with the Speaking Gun attached to it. Then she disappeared. She was still alive, the last time I saw her. I had hoped… she’d made it back here.”
      “No,” said Annie. “We haven’t seen her. We have to assume she’s lost to us. Another death on your conscience, Lilith’s son.”
      “He has no conscience,” said Count Video. “He’s not human. Not really. Why should he have human feelings?”
      “I was human enough to get past your defences,” I said.
      “Then we’ll have to tighten them up,” said Larry.
      I looked at Jessica. “I see you still have your teddy.”
      “Yes,” she said. “You found him for me. I remember. He brought me back to life, and sanity.”
      “I’m glad I could help,” I said.
      She shook her head slowly. “I’m not. This world would be so much easier to bear if I was still crazy. Still safely mad.”
      “Ah well,” I said. “No good deed goes unpunished.”
      “Especially in the Nightside,” she said.
      And we both managed a small smile, just between the two of us.
      “So,” I said, looking around me, “this is the end of the world, and it’s all my fault. Now tell me why. Tell me what happened.”
      “You started it.” said Larry Oblivion. “When you came back to the Nightside after five years away. That wasn’t supposed to happen. We went to a lot of trouble to orchestrate the events that drove you out—working behind the scenes, always through agents who never knew whom they were serving. It took a lot of our strength and power, but since we’d had so little success in trying to kill you… we were ready to try anything else. You were supposed to be so traumatised by events that you would flee to London, and the normal world, and never return. We were so sure we’d succeeded, at last. But nothing changed here, and when Annie investigated why, she got a vision of you returning anyway. So we used the creature that pretended to be a house on Blaiston Street, and set a trap for you. If you were going to come back to the Nightside, we wanted it to be on our terms.”
      “But if it hadn’t been for the house, I never would have come back,” I said.
      “Maybe,” said Jessica. “Meddling with Time is an uncertain business. Sometimes I think the whole universe runs on irony. By interfering, we created a rod for our own backs and the seed of our own destruction. Doesn’t it make you want to spit?”
      “And once you returned, events proceeded with predictable inevitability,” said Annie Abattoir. “By insisting on searching for the truth about your mother, though everyone warned you against it, you set in place the chain of events that led to the War between your forces and hers. The two of you destroyed the Nightside by fighting over it, like two dogs with a single bone, because neither of you would allow the other to control it. Between you, you sucked all the life out of the world, draining it dry to power greater and greater magics, for your precious War.”
      “You squandered your own people,” said Larry. “Throwing them into the fray, again and again. Nothing mattered to either of you, except winning. And so the War went on, until you both ran out of people to throw at each other, and there was no-one left but you and Lilith.”
      “You killed each other,” said Count Video, still staring into the fire. “Using the Speaking Gun. But by then it was far too late. The damage had been done.”
      “That’s why we retrieved the Gun and bonded it to Suzie,” said Jessica. “Even though the process nearly destroyed us. Because it was the only weapon we were sure would destroy you. She screamed like the damned when we fitted it to her, but she never once flinched away. Poor Suzie. Brave Suzie.”
      And then all our heads whipped round, and we fell silent, as we heard something impossibly huge and heavy dragging itself by, outside. We all stood very still, listening. Even King of Skin stopped whimpering in his corner. The whole house shook with each dragging movement, then the sounds moved on, fading away into the night. We all slowly relaxed. No wonder my Enemies were so diminished. To have to live like this, all the time, never free from fear, never knowing when they might be discovered and killed… Not unlike the life they made for me, really. But it was hard for me to feel any real sense of revenge, or satisfaction. No-one should have to live like this.
      “All that remains of Humanity now,” said Jessica, “is small groups like us. Those who survived the War by hiding, like frightened mice in their holes. We’re still hiding, hanging on, surviving, doing what we can. Hoping against hope… for a miracle. But we haven’t heard anything from the other groups for months now, and when we call out, no-one answers. So perhaps… we’re all that’s left. The last Redoubt of Humanity, pinning all our hopes on the death of one man.”
      “Who would have thought it would come down to the likes of us, to be Humanity’s last hope,” said King of Skin sadly, from his corner.
      We all looked at him, waiting, but he had nothing else to say. He still wouldn’t look at me. But at least he’d stopped crying.
      “Outside, all that lives now are the last few remnants of Lilith’s children,” said Larry Oblivion. “Mutated and monstrous, and quite mad. Roaming the ruins, killing everything they find, including each other. I sometimes wonder if they even know the War is over. They won’t last much longer. The energies loosed during the War, by you and your mother, are still abroad in the night, changing everything, mutating everything. Soon enough they’ll all be gone… and so will we, and what’s left of the world will belong to the insects.”
      “But now I’m here,” I said forcefully. “And we’ve talked, and that changes everything.”
      “Does it?” said Jessica.
      “Yes,” I said. “I have to believe that. And so do you. It’s our only hope. Humanity’s only hope. Use your power. Send me back into the Past, back to the time I came from. And I promise you I’ll find a way to stop Lilith that doesn’t involve raising an army. There won’t be any War, to cause all this.”
      “You want us to trust you?” said Count Video. “Trust the man who damned us all?”
      “Why should we believe in you?” said Larry. “Why should we trust in you, John Taylor, Lilith’s son?”
      “Because your brother Tommy did,” I said. “Even though he had good reason not to.”
      Count Video rose abruptly to his feet, turning to face me. “We could kill you,” he said. “Now you’re here, finally, in our grasp. We could kill you, even if it meant all our deaths. It might be worth it, to know you were dead. And then maybe we could all rest peacefully.”
      “Do you want revenge, or do you want to stop the War?” I said. “If I die, here and now, who’s going to stop Lilith? You must know she plans to remake the Nightside in her own image, kill everyone who stands against her, and remake Humanity into something more pliable, to serve her all her days. I think I’d rather be dead, than that. I’m the only chance you’ve got of stopping Lilith. Of stopping this. If I can find a way to bring her down, without fighting a War… that has to be more important than revenge. Doesn’t it?”
      In the end, they only argued for about ten minutes before reluctantly agreeing. Annie Abattoir opened a vein in her arm, and used the blood to draw a pentacle on the floor, while the others worked together to raise what power remained to them. Jessica Sorrow used her teddy bear as a focus for the right place and time. Count Video swept his hands back and forth, leaving sparkling energy traces on the air, weaving description theory and binary magics, while his neurotech sparked and sputtered on his wrinkled flesh. King of Skin stood tall and proud, doing what he was born to do, evoking powerful magics with ancient Words of Power. And Larry Oblivion took it all in, his undead body the conduit for the terrible energies they were raising, absorbing all the punishment so the others could concentrate on the Working.
      Annie Abattoir gestured sharply with her bloody arm, and I stepped inside the pentacle. She closed the pattern with a final flourish, and the spell ignited. The crimson lines of the pentacle blazed with power, and the world outside it began to grow dim and insubstantial to me.