“Do you have any grenades?”
“Silly question,” she said. “You think I’d go out half-dressed?”
“Spread some confusion,” I said. “I need some time to concentrate, to raise my gift.”
“You got it,” said Suzie. “Blessed or cursed grenades, do you think?”
“I’d try both.”
“Excellent notion.”
She started lobbing grenades in all directions, and everyone else ducked and put their hands over their ears. The explosions dug great craters out of the ground, and bits of golem, coffin wood, and even body parts rained down all around us. Stone fragments from headstones and mausoleums flew on the air like shrapnel. The golems were shredded and rent, flattened and torn apart. And still more rose, forming themselves out of the torn earth.
I closed my eyes and studied the cemetery through my third eye, my private eye. Without Tommy’s gift interfering, I could See clearly again. And it only took me a moment to find the source of the consciousness animating the earth golems. It was a diffused, widely spread thing, scattered throughout the whole of the cemetery, and beyond. This was the great secret of the Necropolis graveyard. The last line of defence for the helpless dead. This whole world, the earth and the soil of it, was alive and aware, and set to guard. The Caretaker. A living world, to protect a world’s dead.
The Caretaker decided the golems weren’t working, or perhaps it sensed my probings into its nature. All the earth in the cemetery rose before us, in a great tidal wave, and thundered forward like a horizontal avalanche. Enough earth to pulverise and drown and bury us all. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, no way to defend ourselves. But I had finally found the weak spot in Walker’s plan. He’d strengthened the spells containing the cemetery dimension, made very sure that nothing could get out. But it had never occurred to him to stop anything from getting in… I reached out with my gift, and found a place in the Nightside where it was raining really heavily. And then all I had to do was bring the rain to me and let it pour down. The driving rain hit the tidal wave of earth and washed it away. Thick mud swirled around our feet, but its strength and power were gone. The rain kept hammering down, and the Caretaker couldn’t get its earth to hang together long enough to form anything. And while the Caretaker was preoccupied with that, I reached out with my gift again and located the weakest spot in the dimensional barriers containing us. I showed Eddie where it was, and he cut it open with one stroke of his godly razor.
We all ran through the opening, while Eddie strained to keep it open. Then we were all back in the Nightside, and the opening slammed shut behind us. We stood together, soaking wet and smeared with mud, breathing hard. I looked around me. I’d been half-expecting a crowd of Walker’s people, set to stand and watch in case we found a way out, but there was no-one. Either Walker hadn’t expected any of us to get out… or his people were needed somewhere else. Sandra said he’d been called away, to deal with trouble on the Street of the Gods… Could Lilith be making her move at last?
Sandra stomped wetly towards me, and I raised an eyebrow. “Relax, Taylor,” she said curtly. “You saved my life, and I always pay my debts. Walker has to be shown the error of his ways. I can help. Of course, once that’s over…”
Cathy fixed Sandra with a thoughtful eye, and the consulting necromancer winced despite herself. Cathy smiled sweetly. “Leave my boss alone, bitch.”
“Play nicely, children,” I said. “We have to go to the Street of the Gods. I think the shit is finally hitting the fan. Tommy, escort Cathy back to Strangefellows, and stay there with her. And don’t argue. Neither of you has the firepower for what we’re going to be facing. Lock and load, people; we have a Biblical myth to take down.”
Three - Playtime’s Over, Children
I wasn’t there at the time, but the survivors told me what happened.
It was just another day on the Street of the Gods. That magical, mercurial, and entirely separate place where you can worship whatever you want, or whatever wants you. There are Beings and Powers and Forces, things unknown and things unknowable, and it’s all strictly buyer beware. Religion is big business in the Nightside, and on the Street of the Gods you can find something to fit anyone’s taste, no matter how bizarre or extreme. Of course, the most popular faiths have the biggest churches and the most magnificent temples, and the best positions on the Street, while everyone else fights it out in a Darwinian struggle for cash, congregations, and more commanding positions. Some gods are very old, some are very rich, and some don’t even last long enough to pass around the collection plate.
Gods come and go, faiths rise and fall, but the Street of the Gods goes on forever.
Gargoyles crouched high up on cathedral walls, studying the worshippers below with sardonic eyes, chatting and gossiping and passing round a thick hand-rolled. Strange forms walked openly up and down the Street, going about their unguessable business. Wisps and phantoms floated here and there, troubled by every passing breeze—old gods worn so thin they weren’t even memories any more. There were paper lanterns and human candles, burning braziers and bright gaudy neon. Living lightning bolts chased each other up and down the Street. Rival gangs chanted dogma at each other from the safety of their church vestries, and here and there mad-eyed zealots practised curses and damnations on hated enemies. Some of the more fashionable gods strolled up and down the Street in their most dazzling aspects, out and about to see and be seen. And Harlequin danced, in his stark chequered outfit and black domino mask, spinning and pirouetting as he always had, for as long as anyone could remember, on and on, dance without end. Under candlelight, corpselight, and flashing neon, Harlequin danced.
It had to be said—the Street of the Gods had known better days. Just recently, Razor Eddie had lost his temper in the Street and done something extremely distressing, as a result of which some gods had been observed running out of the Street screaming and crying their eyes out. Walker’s people were still coaxing them out of bars and gutters and cardboard boxes. On the Street, people were clearing up the wreckage and taking estimates for rebuilding. Churches were surrounded by scaffolding, or held together by glowing bands of pure faith, while those beyond saving were bulldozed flat by remote-controlled juggernauts. The barkers were out in force, drumming up new business, and there were more tourists about than ever. (They do so love a disaster, especially when it’s somewhere picturesque.) Some worshippers were still wandering around in a daze, wondering whether their deities would ever return.
Just another day on the Street of the Gods, then—until dead angels began dropping out of the night sky. They fell gracelessly and landed hard, with broken wings and stupid, startled faces, like birds who have flown into the windows of high-rise buildings. They lay on the ground, not moving, creatures of light and darkness, like a child’s discarded toys. Everyone regarded the dead angels with awe and some timidity. And then they looked up, the worshippers and the worshipped, to see a greater dark miracle in the starry night sky.
A moonbeam extended lazily down into the Street of the Gods, shimmering silver starstuff, splendid and coldly beautiful, just like the great and awful personage who sailed slowly down it like an ethereal moving stairway, smiling and waving to the crowds below. Lilith had been planning her return for some time, and she did so love to make an entrance.