Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth Part 15

"I promise," I lied.

The train left the Nightside, gathering speed.

The badlands were very bad, now. In the places that lay between places the train was attacked over and over again, in defiance of all old pacts, customs and protections. At first it was only loud noises, and the occasional buffet as the train hit something on the tracks that shouldn't have been there, but then something hit the outside of the carriage I was travelling in, something big enough and heavy enough that the impact made a sizeable dent in the reinforced steel wall. I sat up straight, jerked out of the half doze I'd fallen into in spite of myself. Something hit the carriage again, and again; first from this side, then from that, and it even stomped about on the roof for a while, leaving deep dimples in the steel. The blows grew harder, and the indentations grew deeper, the steel forced inwards by the impact. I stood up, feeling my muscles creak, and moved to the aisle between the rows of seats, just in case.

The carriage wall on my left cracked open, splitting apart, a long, jagged rent stretching from floor to ceiling. For the first time I heard voices from outside, saying Let us in! Let us in! There was nothing human in those voices, nothing so small. They sounded like mountains cras.h.i.+ng together, like old G.o.ds grown senile and vicious. The rent in the steel wall slowly widened, as something forced it open from outside. And through the rent, filling the gap from top to bottom, I saw a single huge monstrous eye, somehow keeping pace with the speeding train, staring in at me. And there was nothing in its fixed gaze but an awful, malicious madness.

I made myself walk towards the terrible eye, staring right back into that monstrous gaze, and when I was close enough I punched the eye as hard as I could. There was a scream like an insane steam whistle, and the eye was suddenly gone. Outside the rent in the wall there was only darkness, and an air so cold just a moment's exposure left h.o.a.rfrost on my face. There were no more voices, and no more pounding on the carriage walls.

The train kept going, and we left that place behind. The new silence had a weight all its own, as though it was but a precursor for something even worse. I didn't feel like sitting down, so I paced up and down the narrow aisle, peering out of the long rent now and again. A strange unearthly light streamed suddenly into the carriage as we entered another phase, another dimension. The light grew increasingly harsh and bright, until it burned my exposed skin where it touched, and I was forced to retreat from it. Thin shafts of the fierce light stabbed through unsuspected smaller rents in the walls and ceiling, and I was hard put to avoid them all.

From outside came sounds of a kind I couldn't place or recognise. They reminded me most of birds made of machinery, and the sound grated on my nerves like fingernails on the blackboard of my soul. The exterior atmosphere began seeping in through the jagged steel rent, driven by the greater pressure outside. It smelled like crushed nettles, thick and choking. It burned inside my mouth and nose, and I backed away from the crack in the wall, fighting an urge to vomit. I yelled for the train to go faster and curled up in a ball on the floor.

We left that place for somewhere else, and slowly the poison in the air diminished, left behind with the awful trip-hammer songs of mechanical birds. New air built up, flat and stale, from the carriage's reserves. I gulped it down anyway and slowly uncurled from my protective ball. My hands and face were still smarting from their brief exposure to the fierce light. I sank down onto the nearest seat, slumped and almost boneless. Too much was happening too quickly, even for me, with never a chance to rest. So tired... I think I'd have sold my soul for a good night's sleep.

Luckily, no-one was listening.

I looked up sharply as the quality of air in the carriage suddenly improved. Light from a bright summer's day came flooding in through the jagged rent in the wall, bringing with it new sweet air, rich in oxygen. It was hot and humid, thick with perfume, like the crushed petals of a thousand different flowers. The extra oxygen made me feel light-headed, and I grinned stupidly as I took in one deep breath after another. I got up and wandered over to the rent in the carriage wall, and that was when a hundred heavy vines with barbed thorns thrust their way into the carriage from outside. Decorated here and there with thick pulpy flowers like sucking mouths, they lashed around, thras.h.i.+ng and coiling with dreadful energy.

More and more of the vines forced their way in, twisting around each other, flailing back and forth in the confined s.p.a.ce, taking up more and more of the carriage while I backed cautiously away. My feet made a scuffing sound on the grilled floor, and immediately every vine reached out in my direction. The flowered mouths screamed shrilly, a vile hungry sound. I cut at the nearest vine with the Kandarian sacrificial dagger Cathy gave me for my last birthday, and the slender blade sheared right through the vine, thorns and all. All the flowered mouths howled with rage and pain. The severed vine bled a clear oozing sap, and the stumpy end just kept coming after me. Half the carriage was full of the roiling, thras.h.i.+ng vines now, and more were forcing their way in, widening the steel rent in the process.

I slashed open one of the leather seats with my dagger, pulled out a handful of stuffing, and set fire to it with a basic elemental spell I normally only use for lighting friends' cigarettes. The stuffing flared up eagerly, yellow flames leaping high in the oxygen-rich air. I tossed the blazing ma.s.s into the midst of the cras.h.i.+ng vines, and a dozen caught alight all at once. The pulpy flower mouths screamed in unison as the fire spread quickly through the vegetable ma.s.s. All the untouched vines whipped back out the rent, leaving the others to burn and die. The flowers howled like d.a.m.ned souls as they burned.

Thick black smoke filled the carriage. The vines and flowers were all dead, but they'd spread the fire to the carriage seats. The train screamed through its hidden speakers as flames took hold of the carriage. I yelled back at the train to keep going, then had to break off as a harsh coughing fit from the smoke took hold of me. I backed away from the growing inferno and crouched on the floor where the air was still clearest. Thick tears ran down my face from my smarting eyes. I couldn't see anything, but I could hear the roar of the fire drawing closer.

And then the whole carriage shook and shuddered as the train ground to a sudden halt. The carriage door cracked itself open, a few inches at a time, while I crawled towards it on my hands and knees. I forced the door open the last of the way with the last of my strength, and half fell out of the carriage, my lungs straining for air, my eyes blurred with tears. I could feel a hard floor underneath me, and I crawled forward, away from the smoke and fire. I heard the carriage door straining to close behind me, then the train sped off, heading for sanctuary. Its roar faded slowly away, along with its telepathic screams in my mind. Poor thing. Still, needs must when your mother drives. I lay there on the hard floor, shaking with reaction, waiting for my lungs and head to clear. Hoping I'd made it all the way to Shadows Fall.

I finally sat up and looked around me. I wasn't on any train platform. I got to my feet, a little unsteadily. The train had dropped me off at a huge, old-fas.h.i.+oned Hall, with towering wood-panelled walls and a raftered ceiling uncomfortably high overhead. The Hall stretched away to my left and to my right for as far as my smarting eyes could see, and it was wide enough to hold a football game in. The sheer size and scale of the Hall should have made it seem overpowering, but somehow it wasn't. If anything, it felt almost... cosy. Like coming home, after too long away from family and loved ones. The light was a cheerful golden glow, though there didn't seem to be any obvious source for it. And no shadows anywhere. No windows either, or doors, and no portraits or decorations on the walls. Only a single stone fireplace, right in front of me, with a banked and quietly crackling fire, as though it had been set just for me. It seemed to me that I could hear a great wind blowing, outside. Something about that sound made me shudder, though I couldn't say why.

I knew where it was. What it had to be. I'd done a lot of reading about Shadows Fall. Most people in the Nightside have, because Shadows Fall is the only place on this earth that's stranger, more glamorous, and more dangerous than the Nightside. The place where legends go to die, when the world stops believing in them. Or perhaps when they stop believing in themselves... And since the world has believed in some pretty strange things in its time, and because not everything that comes to Shadows Fall is ready to lie down and die just yet, this little town in the back of beyond can be scarier than anything you'll find in the Nightside. We all read everything we can find about Shadows Fall. If only because we have a sneaking suspicion we might end up here someday.

I was in the Gallery of Bone, in All Hallows' Hall. The house at the heart of the world. The place where Time lives.

On the mantelpiece over the fireplace, there was a simple clock set in the stomach of a big black bakelite cat. As the clock ticked, the cat's red tongue went in and out, and its eyes went back and forth. It looked like something you'd win at a cheap carnival. Standing on either side of the cat were stylised silver figures of a lion and a unicorn. And on either side of them, a series of small carved figures that made me think of chess pieces, though they clearly weren't. I moved forward, for a closer look.

They were carved out of a clear, almost translucent wood, and I had no difficulty in recognising who the figures were. Razor Eddie, Dead Boy, Walker, Shotgun Suzie. I wondered if I kept looking... would I find one of me? I deliberately turned my back on the figures, and found that the centre of the floor was now taken up with a huge old-fas.h.i.+oned hourgla.s.s. It was easily a foot taller than I, and two feet in diameter, with sparkling clear gla.s.s supported by more of the strange translucent wood. Most of the sand had fallen through, from the upper gla.s.s to the lower, and something about that made me feel very sad.

I walked slowly round the ma.s.sive hourgla.s.s, and met someone coming the other way, even though I was sure no-one else was there when I started. I stopped short, and so did she, and we regarded each other suspiciously for a while. Tall and almost painfully slender, with long cords of muscle on her bare arms, she was a teenage punk, in battered black leathers adorned with studs and chains, over a grubby white T-s.h.i.+rt and faded blue jeans. Her hair was a spiky black Mohawk, shaved high at the sides, and her face was almost hidden behind las.h.i.+ngs of black and white makeup. A safety pin pierced one ear, while a rusty razor blade dangled from the other. Her eyes were fierce, her black-lipped mouth a snarl. She glared at me, two large fists resting on her hips. She had hate tattooed on both sets of knuckles.

"I'm Mad," she announced abruptly, in a deep harsh voice.

"Of course you are," I said, keeping my voice calm and soothing.

"It's short for Madeleine, you divot!" She brought up her right hand, and suddenly there was a flick-blade in it, the blade snapping out with a nasty-sounding click. I think I was supposed to be impressed, but then, I knew Razor Eddie. And Shotgun Suzie. The punk girl snarled at me. "What are you smirking at? You think I won't use this? This is Time's house. I look after him, because, well... someone has to. Otherwise, he goes wandering... Look, we don't like unexpected, uninvited visitors, so you can just turn around and go straight back where you came from. Or there's going to be trouble."

"Actually, I'm afraid I'm stuck here," I said. "I came by train. From the Nightside."

She sniffed loudly. "That s.h.i.+t-hole? I wouldn't go there on a bet."

"Yes, well, a lot of people have been known to feel that way, but... I really do need to speak to Old Father Time."

"Well he doesn't need to see you, so p.i.s.s off, before I decide to start cutting lumps off you."

I thought for a moment. "Is there anyone else I could talk to?"

"No! I'm Mad!"

"Yes, we've already established that... Is there perhaps someone who looks after you, makes sure you don't hurt yourself, that sort of thing?"

"Right! That's it! You're going back to the Nightside inside thirty-seven chutney jars!"

I think we were both about to do something unfortunate at that point, so it's just as well Old Father Time finally decided to make himself known. He appeared out of nowhere, looking exactly the way I remembered him from our last encounter in the Time Tower. A tall gaunt man in his late fifties, dressed to the height of Victorian fas.h.i.+on. Mien Advent would have loved it. Time wore a long black frock coat of a most severe cut, over severely tailored grey trousers, and, except for the gold watch chain stretched across his waistcoat, the only splash of colour in his outfit was the apricot cravat at his throat. He was handsome enough, in an old-fas.h.i.+oned way, with a determined chin held high, a steely smile, and old old eyes. A thinning mane of long white hair had been brushed back from a n.o.ble brow, and left to lie where it fell. An air of quiet authority hung about him like an old comfortable cloak, only slightly undermined by a certain vagueness in his gaze.

"It's all right, Madeleine," he said calmly. "I know who this is. I've been expecting him. Now go and find something useful to do, there's a dear, while I tell this gentleman things he almost certainly doesn't want to hear."

Madeleine sniffed loudly again, and made her flick knife disappear. "Well, that's something, I suppose. Are you sure you can trust him?"

"Absolutely not, but it's been that sort of a day for several centuries now."

Madeleine walked around the hourgla.s.s and disappeared, leaving Time and me alone in the great Hall. He smiled briefly as he looked down at himself.

"I really should change this image for something more appropriate. I am a Transient Being, after all... but so many of you seem to find this appearance comforting, these days. I think I know why, and the Travelling Doctor has a lot to answer for..."

"Quite," I said, because you have to say something, into pauses like that. "I'm sorry to intrude, but..."

"Yes, yes, my boy, I know. Lilith has come to the Nightside at last, and it's all falling apart at the seams. But unfortunately, I can't intervene. I can't help you. No-one can."

"Ah." Not what I wanted to hear. "I came here because..."

"Oh I know why you're here, John Taylor. I know what you want from me. I've got it right here. But you won't like it."

He gestured vaguely with his left hand, and there floating on the air between us was a small black case with a dull matte surface. The lid rose up on its own, revealing the Speaking Gun, lying nestled in bloodred velvet. It lay there quietly, for the moment, the ugliest gun ever made. Just looking at it made me feel as though a mad dog had just entered the Hall. The Gun had been fas.h.i.+oned from meat, from flesh and bone, with dark-veined gristle and shards of cartilage, all held together with strips of colourless skin. Living tissues, shaped into a killing tool. Thin slabs of bone made up the handle, held in place by tightly stretched skin with a hot sweaty look. The trigger was a long canine tooth. The red meat of the barrel gleamed wetly. I wondered just how much of my mother's body had gone into making this awful thing, this Speaking Gun. Up close, the ancient weapon smelled like an animal in heat. And I could hear it, breathing, in its case.

"I really don't care for the thought of such a powerful weapon in the hands of the infamous John Taylor," Old Father Time said sharply. "Far too much temptation for any mortal. Let alone you. But... I'm going to give it to you anyway." He looked briefly at the huge hourgla.s.s. "Partly because time is running out for the Nightside. Partly because try as I might, I can't seem to find anyone else more fitting to give it to... But mostly because a future version of myself came back in time to tell me to give it to you, and I really wish I wouldn't do things like that to myself."

The lid of the case snapped shut, and the black box dropped unceremoniously into my hands. Time sighed heavily, shook his head, and snapped his fingers. And all at once, I was somewhere else.

Thirteen.

Mother Love

I was back in the Nightside, in Time Tower Square, and my first thought was how quiet and peaceful everything was. I looked slowly around me, and no-one looked back. The mobs and monsters had all moved on, probably because there was nothing left in the Square to destroy, and no-one left to kill. The buildings were fire-blackened frameworks, collapsed inwards or outwards, cracked stone and broken bricks. There were bodies lying everywhere, men and women and others so damaged or torn apart it was impossible to tell who or what they might have been originally. They looked like so many broken toys someone had got tired of playing with. Nothing moved, anywhere. There weren't even any rats nosing among the bodies. Maybe they'd all been killed, too. Out beyond the Square, the War was still going on, in the distance. I could hear faint cries and roars and explosions, and now and again there'd be a sudden surge of light, pus.h.i.+ng back the darkness. But the Square was still, and silent. was back in the Nightside, in Time Tower Square, and my first thought was how quiet and peaceful everything was. I looked slowly around me, and no-one looked back. The mobs and monsters had all moved on, probably because there was nothing left in the Square to destroy, and no-one left to kill. The buildings were fire-blackened frameworks, collapsed inwards or outwards, cracked stone and broken bricks. There were bodies lying everywhere, men and women and others so damaged or torn apart it was impossible to tell who or what they might have been originally. They looked like so many broken toys someone had got tired of playing with. Nothing moved, anywhere. There weren't even any rats nosing among the bodies. Maybe they'd all been killed, too. Out beyond the Square, the War was still going on, in the distance. I could hear faint cries and roars and explosions, and now and again there'd be a sudden surge of light, pus.h.i.+ng back the darkness. But the Square was still, and silent.

I couldn't help thinking of the devastated future Nightside I'd seen so many times. The dead lands, the broken world, and all because of me. A future that insisted on edging nearer, no matter how hard I worked to push it away, becoming more real, more imminent, detail by detail. Maybe some futures are inevitable, after all.

I slowly became aware of a soft, repet.i.tive sound, and I looked round to see my mother, Lilith, sitting at her ease on the pile of rubble that was all she'd left of the Time Tower. In her large colourless hands she held a severed human head. Its face had been ripped away, leaving only a b.l.o.o.d.y mess, but that didn't seem to bother her. She was pulling out the teeth, one at a time and tossing them aside. And all the time her black mouth was moving silently, saying He loves me, he loves me not... She looked up abruptly and stared right into my eyes. She smiled brightly and rose to her feet, casually throwing the head to one side.

"John, darling! My most treasured son..."

"Don't move any closer," I said. "I'm armed. I have the Speaking Gun."

"Of course you have, sweetie. That's why I'm here."

She walked towards me. I held the black box up where she could see it, and she stopped just out of reach. She was calm, collected, utterly at her ease, and a slow anger burned within me. I gestured roughly at the bodies, at the wrecked buildings, at the War still going on in the distance.

"How could you do all this?"

She shrugged easily. "It's mine. I made it. I'll do what I want with it."

"Where are your children?" I said. "All your monstrous offspring? Where are your precious followers, your madmen and murderers?"

"Keeping themselves busy. I don't need them here. I thought it was time you and I had a nice little chat, in private."

I frowned, as something else occurred to me. "How did you know to find me here? Even I didn't know I was going to be here."

She nodded at the flat black case in my hands. "The Speaking Gun called to me. I always know where it is. It is flesh of my flesh, after all, and as such my child, every bit as much as you. It's your brother, John, in every way that matters. Thank you for bringing it back to me. I have a use for it. Just as I have a use for you."

I opened the black box, s.n.a.t.c.hed out the Speaking Gun, and pointed it at Lilith. She didn't flinch, or back away. I let the box fall to the ground as the Speaking Gun thrust its poisonous presence into my thoughts. It felt hot and sweaty in my hand, and burned like a fever in my mind, vicious and raging, like an attack dog tugging at its leash. It breathed wetly in my hand, wanting to be used. It needed to kill, to destroy, to tear down the whole world and everything that lived in it. The Speaking Gun hated, but it couldn't operate without someone else to pull its trigger, and it hated that most of all. Its filthy thoughts wormed through my mind, stoking the anger and outrage it found there... but I had felt its corrupting nature before, and I fought it back. I hadn't come this far to bow down to a spiteful machine.

And yet, even under its madness and its rage, I could feel the Speaking Gun yearning for my mother's touch. It wanted to go to her and nestle in her hand, and do terrible, awful things for her. I gripped the Gun so tightly my whole hand ached, and never once took my gaze off Lilith. She laughed soundlessly at me, and took a step forward. I aimed the Speaking Gun carefully, and pulled the trigger.

And nothing happened.

I tried again and again, but the long canine tooth that served as the Speaking Gun's trigger wouldn't budge. I shook the Gun, and even hit it with my other hand, but it did no good. In my mind, I could hear it laughing.

"The Speaking Gun won't work on me, John," Lilith said calmly. "It will never operate against the wishes of its creator. Just a little safeguard I had built into it, back at the Beginning. It loves me, you know. It aches to serve me, and make me happy. Such a good son... Unlike you. Give me the Gun, John. It was never meant for you. And in my hands it will respeak your most secret name and remake you into the respectful, obedient son I always intended you to be."

She held out her hand, and the Speaking Gun jerked in my grasp, as though desperate to go to the one who would let it do what it had always wanted to do.

I couldn't let her take the Gun. So I raised my gift, and forced it to find the one way in which the Speaking Gun could be destroyed. The answer was simple: by making it speak its own secret name backwards, and uncreate itself. My gift fought me, and the Gun fought me, but I had come a long way in the past few years, down a long hard road, perhaps to prepare me for moments like this. I bent all my will and all of my soul against the gift and the Gun, beating them down step by step and inch by inch, until finally the Speaking Gun choked out a single awful sound, then howled in despair as its very existence was reversed and undone. Uncreated.

My hand was suddenly empty, and I staggered and almost fell, wiped out by such a tremendous effort. I felt as though I'd just lifted a mountain with my bare hands, and turned it over on its side. Lilith grunted suddenly with surprise, and clapped one hand to her bare side. I studied her warily, but she just smiled back at me.

"Why thank you, John. For returning my flesh and bone to me. I'd forgotten how much I missed that rib till I had it back again. You always give your mother the best presents."

"The Speaking Gun is gone," I said. "You can't remake me without it, which means you can't remake the Nightside. So, it's over. Your precious scheme is dead in the water. Stand down your armies. This isn't your Nightside any more. You don't belong here. Just... go away, and leave us alone."

But she was already smiling and shaking her head. "You always did think too small, John. The Speaking Gun was never that important to me. It was just there to make things easier for you. It would have been a more... merciful method, that's all. Now I'll just have to do it the hard way. And don't you dare cry. You brought this on yourself. The Speaking Gun was never intended to be my main weapon against the Nightside, John. That was, and is, you. That is why I gave birth to you, after all."

"What?" I said. My mind was numb, from too many reverses. "I don't understand..."

"Of course you don't. I arranged for you to inherit one particular gift from me, John, so I could make use of it when the time was right. I will make you do what you were born to do. I will make you use your gift to find for me the perfect form of the Nightside, the original uncontaminated model that I always intended it to be, and when you've found that for me I will enforce that version on all the world."

"I won't do it," I said. I tried to look away from her, from her deep dark eyes, and couldn't. "I won't do that!"

"You don't have any choice, sweetie. I decided your fate before you were even born, working on you while you were still forming in my womb. All through the first few years of your childhood, I built a geas deep within your mind, so I'd be able to use it in this place, on this day. A geas to bend your will to mine. That's why you've never been able to remember your early years with me. It became necessary for me to leave the dear bosom of my family before I was quite finished with you, but there's enough there to do the job. I can see it, squirming deep in your mind, wrapped around your soul."

"You do love the sound of your own voice, don't you?" I said. Never let them see they've got you rattled... "Why didn't my gift tell me any of this, when I questioned it earlier?"

"Because it's not your gift, it's mine. I gave it to you, to do my will." She pirouetted slowly, arms outstretched, mistress of all she surveyed, smiling like a cat with a small bird in its jaws. "Time to redecorate, I think. The old place has become terribly infested. I will spread my Nightside across all the Earth, freeing it from the influence of Heaven and h.e.l.l. I'll steal the world away from both those Tyrants, and make the Earth my playground, for all time. And everything that lives on it, including Humanity, that bothersome breed, will be swept aside and replaced with something more to my liking. Including you, my dearest boy. You'll be so much happier when I've remade you in my own true image. You will kneel at my feet and sing my praises through all eternity. Won't that be nice? A mother and her son, together, forever."

And I had just destroyed the Speaking Gun, the only weapon that might have stopped her.

Unless... the last time I went face-to-face with Lilith, long and long ago, back at the very creation of the Nightside, I'd found a way to hurt and weaken her. I grinned nastily, inside. I'm John Taylor. I always have one more trick up my sleeve. I fired up my gift, driving it ruthlessly with the last of my will, and used it to find the link between my mother and me. The physical, mental, and magical connections between a mother and her only son. A trick I'd used before, to drain the life energy right out of her.

But when I reached out through the link, she was right there waiting for me. Her will slammed through the link, slapping me aside, monstrously strong and utterly overpowering. I cried out and fell to my knees as she drained the life energy out of me, despite everything I could do to stop her. She smiled down at me.

"You didn't really expect to catch me with the same trick twice, did you? Not when I've had so many years to think about this day, this moment, planning it all down to the very last detail... Poor boy. This isn't your story, John; it's mine. Time to start your makeover, I think. And then what fun we'll have, tearing down everything you ever believed in. Open wide and say aaah!, John. It'll only hurt for a moment..."

Fourteen.

The Things We Sacrifice, for Love Love

Time slowed, cranking down to a crawl. The hand Lilith was extending towards me ground to a halt, inches short of my face. Her voice became a long growl and then cut off abruptly as the Collector appeared out of nowhere, in an improbable device. Trust him to bring Time itself to a stop, just so he could make an entrance. The Collector, con man, thief, and snapper up of anything collectible that wasn't actually nailed down or guarded by enraged wolverines. An old acquaintance of mine, but not what you could call a friend. I don't think the Collector had friends any more. They got in the way of his collecting. A portly middle-aged man with a florid face, the Collector was currently wearing a stylish dark blue blazer with white piping, and a large badge on his lapel bearing the number six. He was crouching inside a strange contraption that hovered uncomfortably close above my head. It looked like an overcomplicated climbing frame, made up of long quartz-and-crystal rods that sparked and s.h.i.+mmered against the night sky. The whole framework couldn't have been more than ten feet wide, but there was something more to it, as though it extended away in more than just the usual three dimensions. The air was thick with the smell of discharging ozone.

The Collector reached down out of his contraption and grabbed the collar of my trench coat. He hauled me up into the framework with him, and immediately I could move again. I grabbed at the nearest rods to steady myself, and they squirmed unpleasantly in my grasp as though they weren't fully there. I wasn't entirely sure . whether I might have been dragged out of the frying pan and into the fire. The Collector has always been famous for not being on any side but his own. Below us, Lilith was slowly turning her head to look in our direction.

"s.h.i.+t," said the Collector, "the field's collapsing. Brace yourself, Taylor, we are out of here!"

He wrapped both his plump hands around a control like a fragmented crystal flower, and the whole structure tilted sideways through s.p.a.ce. Time Tower Square disappeared abruptly as we spun round and round, dimensions of s.p.a.ce snapping in and out of focus. I tried closing my eyes, but it didn't help. I was sensing the movement on some basic spiritual level, and my stomach really hated it. I clung desperately to the crystal rods, which seemed to be deliberately trying to slip out of my grasp. I could still hear Lilith's voice, screaming No... in a howl that seemed to go on forever. The crystal contraption actually buckled under the force of her rage, and solid crystal rods cracked and shattered. The Collector fussed over his controls, swearing and blaspheming, and suddenly the whole device crashed to a halt, and I fell out of it into Strangefellows bar.