“Some say you’ve been here for years,” said Molly Widdershins, showing her stained and blocky teeth in something that was only nominally a smile. “So where have you been hiding, all this time?”
“Not hiding,” said Lilith, and the chill in her voice made them all fall back a pace. “I’ve been… preparing. So much to do, and so many to do it to. And then, of course, I had to produce a new child, and see to his education. He is mine, body and soul, even if he doesn’t realise it yet. My dearest darling John Taylor.”
The name rumbled through the crowd, from worshippers and worshipped alike, and not in a good way. Many shifted uneasily, and aspects flickered on and off in the crowd like heat lightning. The Splendid opened his perfect mouth to protest further, and Lilith reached out and touched him lightly on the forehead. He cried out in shock and horror as his life energy was ripped right out of him, to feed Lilith’s endless hunger. She sucked him dry in a moment, watching calmly as he crumpled and shrivelled up before her, all his power nothing more to her than a drop in her ocean. The Splendid blinked out and was gone, as though he had never been. Lilith smiled about her.
“Just a little illustration of my mood, so everyone knows where they stand. I may be your mother, but I won’t abide over-familiarity. Now, where are those who banded together to betray me, so very long ago? To banish me from my own creation? Step forward, that I might look upon your faces once again.”
There was a long, uncomfortable pause, then the Devil’s Bride stepped forward reluctantly, the conjoined twin in the hump on her back peering over her shoulder. “They’re all gone, mistress,” said the little twin, in a sweet seductive voice. “Long and long ago. They killed each other, or were brought down, or grew irrelevant to the modern world and just faded away. There’s only one left that we know of. Its original name is lost to us. We call it the Carrion in Tears, and it is quite insane.”
She darted back into the safety of the crowd, while others pushed forward the Carrion in Tears, a huge body of rotting flesh, red and black and purple, with jagged ends of bones protruding from suppurating flesh. Forever decaying, never dying, quite mad. It snapped at the world with broken teeth, dull grey in muddy scarlet flesh, and its cloudy eyes were fixed and staring.
“It incorporates dead things into itself,” volunteered Molly Widdershins. “They keep it going. Make it strong.”
“And this… has followers?” said Lilith.
“Of a kind,” said Molly.
“Proof, if proof were needed, that some people will worship absolutely anything,” said Lilith. “As long as it has the stink of immortality about it.”
Some of the Carrion in Tears’ worshippers were thrust forward through the crowd, to face Lilith. They dressed in soiled rags and torn plastic, with grime artfully smeared across their faces. The oldest among them raised his head proudly and stood defiantly before Lilith.
“We worship it because it shows us the truth. The real world is filth and rot, pollution and corruption. Our god shows us the dirty truth behind the pretty face. When all else is fallen into ruin, our god will remain, and we will be with him.”
“No you won’t,” said Lilith. “You offend me even more than he does.” And she killed them all, with a glance.
The Carrion in Tears didn’t notice. It was too busy digesting a dead angel it had noticed lying by its foot. Inch by inch, the dead angel was sucked into the Being’s corrupt flesh and absorbed. The smell was awful, and even other Beings looked away. The Carrion in Tears straightened up abruptly, as the last lingering traces of the angel’s divine energies surged through it, and shocked the slumbering mind awake. It cried out, a thick choking sound of horrid awareness, and fixed Lilith with its staring eyes.
“You! This is all your fault! See what has become of me! Look at what driving you out did to me!”
“I see it,” Lilith said calmly. “Fair punishment, I’d have said, for a traitor and a fool.”
“It was necessary,” said the Carrion in Tears, but it sounded tired, as though repeating an old, worn-out argument. “And now you’re back, and it was all for nothing. I told them, but they wouldn’t listen… Kill me if you want. I don’t care. I was beautiful once, and adored… I don’t recognise this Nightside. You won’t either. It’s all changed. It’s moved on and left us behind.”
“Killing you would be a mercy, in your current state,” said Lilith. “But what the hell. Don’t say I never did anything for you.”
She absorbed all its living energies in a moment, then made a moue of distaste with her night-dark mouth as the Carrion in Tears vanished into her. “Nasty,” she said to the silent crowd. “But I promised myself that I’d kill all of my old enemies who survived, and I always keep my word. Now, step forward, my children. The original productions of my young and lusty flesh.”
She called for them by their original names, and again there was a long pause. Finally, a mere handful of Beings made their way to the front of the crowd to face their long-forgotten mother. First was the Harlequin, who knelt before her in his chequered finery and bowed his masked head to her.
“I am here, mother dear, though much-changed by time and circumstance. I allowed myself to be shaped by fashion and fad, but still I survive, and still I dance. I would like to think that you could still see something in me that you would recognise.”
“I change, too, when I must,” said the Incarnate, bowing elegantly to Lilith. He was young and pretty, dressed in an immaculate white suit of impeccable cut, his noble face attractively androgynous under a white panama hat. “The details change, but I go on, worshipped and adored. At present I am a pop sensation, singing for my supper, and teenage girls worship my image on their bedroom walls. I am the Thin White Prince, and they love my music and they love me. Don’t you, my little doves?”
A pack of fierce young girls surrounded him, dressed just like him, their overly made-up faces sullen and aggressive. You could see in their faces that he was more than life itself to them, and they would die for him in a moment. Some actually spat and hissed at Lilith, sensing a threat to their beloved idol. The oldest of them couldn’t have been more than fifteen.
“I know,” said the Thin White Prince. “But one takes one’s adoration where one can find it.”
And finally, there was Bloody Blades. He crouched uncertainly before Lilith, snorting and quivering, held in place by ancient instinct. He was huge and hairy, with hooves and horns and terrible clawed hands. He stank of sweat and musk and uncontrolled appetites. He glowered at Lilith with stupid, crafty eyes, attracted by her femininity but cowed by the sheer power he sensed in her.
“There’s not much left of Bloody Bones,” said Harlequin. “He’s been reduced to a purely animal nature, a god of wild actions and transgression without conscience. There are always men and women ready to worship the beast within. There are those who say he did this to himself, quite deliberately, to free his needs and appetites from the tyranny of reason.”
“How very depressing,” said Lilith. “From all the thousands who spilled from my fecund loins, only three remain? And all of you so much less than I made you to be.”
She killed them all, contemptuously, sucking in their life energies, then murdered all of the Incarnate’s child followers with a casual wave of her hand, just to be thorough. Her power beat on the air like a storm that sweeps all before it, and the assembled crowd quailed under her cold gaze.
“It’s time,” said Lilith, and all those present shuddered at the power in her voice. “Time for you to choose which side you’re on. I’m back, ready to remake the Nightside in my own image, to restore it to what I originally intended it to be. It was never meant to be this… small, shabby thing. I will make the Nightside glorious again, and you with it. Unless you choose to stand against me, in which case no-one will even remember your names.”