The last of the flare's light flickered and went out, and the old deep dark of the forest returned. I couldn't see or even sense the abstract Forces any more, and though I strained my ears, all I could hear was the natural course of bird and animal, going about their nightly business. Reluctantly, I turned and looked out at the clearing again. Suzie turned and looked, too, but she didn't put away her shotgun. Moonlight lit the vast clearing bright as day, but though the open space was still and quiet, there was a feeling of anticipation on the air, as though some curtain was about to rise on a brand-new show.
"Lilith did this," I said. "And from the feel of it, not long before we arrived. This is where she will create and place her Nightside. Not far from here is undoubtedly a river that will someday be called the Thames. And men will come here and build a city called London ... I wonder what form Lilith's creation will take, before Man invades it and rebuilds it in his own image?"
"How many living things did Lilith destroy when she made this clearing?" said Suzie, unexpectedly. "How many animals, stamped out in a moment, how many ancient trees, blasted into nothing, to serve her purpose? I don't care much, but you can bet good money she cared even less."
"Yeah," I said. "That does sound like Mommie Dearest. She never cared who she hurt, to get her own way."
"Why didn't she create the Nightside immediately?" said Suzie, suspicious as always. "Why stop at the clearing? Is she waiting for something?"
I considered the point. "It could be ... that she's waiting for an audience."
Suzie looked at me sharply. "For us?"
"Now that is a disturbing thought... No. How could she know we'd be here?"
Suzie shrugged. "She's your mother. She's Lilith. Who knows what she knows or how she knows it?" She scowled at me, as another thought struck her. "We only got here because the Lord of Thorns used his power to send us here. How are we supposed to get back to our own time, assuming we survive whatever appalling thing happens next?"
"Good question," I said. "Wish I had a good answer for you. Let's wait and see if we do survive, and worry about it then. We have more than enough to worry about as it is." Then it was my turn to look at her thoughtfully, as something new struck me. "Suzie ... I think we need to talk. About us. Right now."
Suzie looked straight back at me, not giving me an inch. "We do?"
"Yes. The odds are that we're not going to survive whatever comes next. I've always known that. It's why I didn't want you along on this case. But, here we are, and things have changed between us. So, if we're ever going to say anything, anything that matters, we need to say it now. Because we may never get another chance."
"We're friends," said Suzie, in her cold, controlled voice. "Isn't that enough?"
"I don't know," I said. "Is it?"
"You've got closer to me ... than anyone," Suzie said slowly. "I never thought I'd ever let anyone get that close. Never thought I'd want anyone to. You ... matter to me, John. But, I still couldn't... be with you. In bed. Some scars go too deep, to ever heal."
"That isn't what we're talking about," I said gently. "What matters is you, and me. It's a miracle we've made it this far, really."
She considered me for a long moment, with her scarred face and her single cold blue eye and her unyielding mouth. I didn't think she even knew she was cradling her shotgun to her chest, like a child, or a lover. When she finally spoke, her voice was as cold as ever. "My new face doesn't bother you? I never cared about being pretty, but... I know what I must look like. The outside finally matches the inside."
"You said it yourself, Suzie," I said, as lightly as I could. "We monsters have to stick together."
I leaned forward, slowly and very carefully, and Suzie watched me like an animal of the wild, that might turn and run at any moment. When our faces were so close that I could feel her breath on my mouth, and she still hadn't moved, I kissed her gently on her scarred cheek. I kept my hands by my sides. The ridged scar tissue of her cheek was hard and unyielding. I pulled back, looked into her cold blue eye, then kissed her very gently on the mouth. Her lips barely moved under mine, but she didn't back away. And finally, slowly, she put her arms around me. She held me only lightly, as though she might pull away at any moment. I moved my mouth back from hers, pressed my cheek against her scarred face, and put my arms around her, just as lightly. She sighed, just a little. Her leather jacket creaked quietly under my arms. She held me for as long as she could stand it, then let go and stepped back. I let her go. I knew better than to try and go after her. I knew she still had her shotgun in one hand, even if she didn't. She looked at me with her cold eye and her cold expression, and nodded briefly.
"You know I love you, right?" I said.
"Oh sure," she said. "And I care for you, John. As much as I can."
And then we both looked round sharply. The whole forest had gone quiet, and there was a new feeling on the air. Just for a moment everything was so still I could hear the rasp of my own breathing, feel the beating of my heart. Suzie and I looked out into the clearing, our attention drawn to the open space like beasts in the wild sensing a coming storm. There was a sound. A sound on the air, but not of it, coming from everywhere and nowhere. It filled the whole world, filled my mind, and it was not a natural sound. It was the cry of something being born, of something dying, an emotion and an experience and an ecstasy beyond human knowledge or comprehension. The sound rose and rose, growing louder and more piercing and more inhuman, until Suzie and I had to clap our hands over our ears to try and keep it out, and still the sound rose and rose, louder and louder, until it became unbearable; and still it rose. Finally, mercifully, it rose beyond our ability to hear it, and Suzie and I were left shaking and shuddering, breathing harshly and shaking our heads as though trying to clear something out. I couldn't hear anything, even when Suzie spoke to me, and we both looked out into the clearing again. Something was going to happen. We could feel it. We could still feel the sound, feel it in our bones and in our souls.
And then Lilith was suddenly there, standing in front of the trees at the edge of the clearing, perhaps as little as twenty feet from where Suzie and I stood watching. The sound was gone. Lilith had made her entrance. She stood staring intently out at the clearing she'd made, her dark eyes fixed and unblinking. Suzie and I silently stepped further back into the dark of the forest, concealing ourselves in the deepest shadows. Just to see Lilith was to be scared of her. Of the power that burned in her, like all the stars in all the galaxies. She might have been created to be Adam's wife, but she'd come a long way since then.
She hadn't simply appeared. It was as though Lilith had stamped or imprinted herself directly onto reality, by sheer force of will. She was there now because she chose to be, and somehow she seemed realer than anything else in the material world. She looked ... pretty much as I remembered her, from the last time I'd seen her. In Strangefellows bar, at the end of my last case. Just before everything went to hell.
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.