Hex and the City

by Simon R. Green

  “Call Merlin! We need Merlin back!”

  “I can’t,” said Alex. “I’m sorry, John. He only comes when he wants. And if he wanted to be here, he’d be here by now.”

  “Hell with him,” Sinner said cheerfully. “We don’t need him. You’ve got us, John. So, these are the dreaded Harrowing. Nasty-looking things, but I’ve seen worse. Pretty Poison, if you wouldn’t mind…”

  “Of course, Sidney. Anything for you.”

  The demon succubus smiled a happy, terrible smile, and suddenly she didn’t look pretty any more. Her teeth all had points, and her eyes glowed bloodred. She held up her hands, and they had claws. She surged forward, inhumanly fast, and tore the two nearest Harrowing apart. They didn’t even have time to turn before she’d ripped off both their heads, torn away their arms, slammed their bodies to the floor, and stamped on them. There was no blood, but the scattered body parts still trembled with something like life. Pretty Poison had already moved on, tearing her savage way through the circle of Harrowing. Their resilient, yielding flesh was no match for her demonic fury.

  Others of the Harrowing were turning now, responding to the unexpected threat. One advanced on Sinner, only to stop suddenly, as though it had encountered a barrier it couldn’t cross. Sinner looked at it sadly, and reached out to lay a hand on its blank brow. The Harrowing crumpled up like an old leaf, and fell shuddering at his feet. Madman lurched forward to confront another of the creatures, and it melted and ran away under his fierce gaze, collapsing into a pool of bubbling protoplasm.

  They’re weaker here, I thought slowly. This bar has powerful protections. Getting past Merlin’s defences weakened them. For the first time, I have a chance…

  A new confidence flared up in me. I’d never seen the Harrowing fall so fast, except when Razor Eddie hit them. But here, now, they could be stopped. They could be destroyed. I could destroy them. There were six left, hovering uncertainly. I stepped forward, and they all turned together to orient on me.

  “Let’s do it,” I said.

  “Let’s,” said Alex, unexpectedly. “No-one gets to come into my bar and mess with my customers. It’s bad for business. Betty, Lucy, time to earn your pay.”

  He came out from behind the bar hefting his enchanted baseball bat, while Betty and Lucy advanced on the Harrowing, cracking their knuckles noisily. I grinned. It’s good to have friends. I turned my gaze on the Harrowing, and it seemed to me that they actually hesitated.

  “You’re going down,” I said. “All the way down.”

  The four of us waded into the remaining Harrowing, and together we beat the crap out of them. It wasn’t easy. Even weakened by Merlin’s defences, their bodies were still unnaturally soft, soaking up punishment while they struggled to stab me with their needle fingers. I punched one in the face, and my fist sank almost to the back of its skull before I tugged it free again. Alex hit one with his bat, and the enchanted wood sank down through the head and on into the chest before it stopped. But soon we learned to attack their weak spots, their joints, sweeping the legs out from under them, then battering them to a pulp as they struggled to get to their feet again. Lucy and Betty grabbed an arm each and pulled one apart like a wishbone. I don’t know if they made a wish. Alex slammed one to the floor, and I hit it with a table. We kicked the bodies back and forth across the floor, laughing breathlessly. It felt good for all of us, to have something to take out our various frustrations on. We carved them up and trampled the pieces underfoot, and it felt good, so good. I’d never beaten them before. Never.

  It wasn’t until later that I figured out all the implications. My enemies knew Strangefellows was protected by Merlin’s magic. That’s why they’d never sent the Harrowing here after me before, even though they had to know I was a regular visitor. Something had made them desperate enough to try anyway; and it wasn’t difficult to guess what.

  In the end, we all leaned back against the bar, breathing hard, looking contentedly at the horrid mess we’d made. Twelve of the most dangerous and feared creatures in the Nightside now lay scattered across the floor of the bar in so many small, quivering body parts. We grinned at each other. I was feeling ecstatic. I’d defeated my oldest nightmares. The scattered pieces were suddenly still, then they vanished silently away, back to whatever hell produced them. We all whooped loudly, even Sinner.

  “Where do these things come from?” he said.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never known.”

  “Who sends them? Who are these enemies of yours?”

  “I’ve never known who they are, either. No-one knows.”

  “Powers from the Nightside? From Outside, perhaps? Maybe even from other dimensions…”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Then why,” said Sinner, calmly and reasonably, “don’t you use your gift to track them down and identify them?”

  I gaped at him blankly. The idea had honestly never occurred to me before. Unless I had considered it, but suppressed it, because it scared me so much. But now I’d seen the Harrowing defeated, now I was safe in Strangefellows, surrounded by good and powerful allies…I nodded, slowly, and opened my third eye.

  This time, it was different. My gift granted me a Vision. I seemed to be a disembodied spirit, without face or form, wandering in a strange place. I drifted across a dark and devastated landscape, a place of ruins and rubble. It didn’t take me long to recognise where and when I was. I had come again to a possible future for the Nightside, a silent and empty place I had experienced once before when I stumbled into a Timeslip. My Vision had brought me to the end of all things, the end of the Nightside and all civilisation.

  An event I helped to bring about, or so an old dying friend had told me.

  Everywhere I looked, the Nightside had been destroyed. The proud buildings had collapsed or been torn down, nothing left but cracked and broken walls, and piles of rubble. Smashed and abandoned vehicles choked the still streets. Nothing moved anywhere. The Nightside was a dead place. The light had a dark purple texture, as though bruised by what it saw and showed. In the far distance, broken buildings made stark silhouettes against the horizon. And up in the dark, dark sky there was no moon, and only a few dozen stars in all the night.

  Everything looked as though it had been dead for centuries, but I knew better. The last time I was here, in the Timeslip, this future’s Razor Eddie had told me I had brought down the Nightside, and the world, in just eighty-two years. Wiped out civilisation and Humanity. And all because I’d insisted on finding out who my mother was. I’d sworn an oath to that Eddie, before I killed him as a mercy, that I would never let this future happen.

  My Vision leapt suddenly forward, as though my gift had finally caught the scent of what it sought. I swooped across the broken landscape, shooting between the wrecked stumps of buildings, focussing in on one particular location. My final destination was a cracked crumbling house, nothing obviously different about it, but I knew that was where I had to be. It was where I would find my enemies. There was no light showing at any of the shuttered windows, but I could tell there was light and life inside. Hidden, barricaded against the dark. As I drifted towards the house, another piece of knowledge came to me. My Vision had brought me into a time some years previous to my appearance in the Timeslip. Humanity was not all dead here. Not yet. I drifted through the crumbling walls and on into a small, desperately defended inner room, lit only by flickering stumps of candles. And then, finally, I saw my enemies.

  And I knew them.

  My enemies were the last remaining major players of this future time, the last defenders of the Nightside, pooling their remaining power and working frantically together to try and destroy me in the Past, before I could do…whatever terrible thing it was that I had done. My Vision could only tell me so much. My enemies were trying to kill me in order to save the Nightside, and the world.

  They sat together around a simple iron brazier, huddling around the heat, binding the last remnants of their power together wit
h unsteady words and shaking hands, while from outside the house came horrible, threatening sounds. They paused briefly, listening. I could hear what they heard. Something large and heavy was moving, out in the dark purple night, drawing slowly closer. And from the awful sounds it made, I was glad I couldn’t see it. The handful of ragged figures in the room froze where they were, fear written clearly in their malnourished faces, not daring to speak or even move for fear of being detected; but eventually the awful thing outside moved on. Their defences still shielded them, for now.

  Whatever it was that had brought the Nightside down, it wasn’t over yet. Though just as clearly, Life was losing. I hung above my enemies, unseen and unsuspected, and listened while they spoke of the monsters from Outside, abroad in the night, everywhere. Apparently there were still other small enclaves of resistance, scattered among the ruins, but they were failing, one by one. Nothing had been heard from them, for months. This small group, in this small room, was quite possibly the last hope of Humanity. If they failed and died, there would be nothing left living in the Nightside but the insects, which were already changing and mutating under the terrible forces released by the War.

  It was hard to look upon the handful of pitiful forms that had once been the major players of my day. Jessica Sorrow, no longer the terrible Unbeliever, looked almost human here, though still painfully skinny. She wore a battered black leather jacket and leggings, and hugged an ancient battered teddy bear in her arms. I’d found the bear for her, to help restore her lost humanity. And now she used it as a focus to help the group locate me in the Past. Next to her was Larry Oblivion, the dead detective, wrapped in the tattered remains of what had once been a very smart suit. He said quietly that he wished he could have died fully, like his brother Tommy, rather than witness what the Nightside had come to. Jessica put an arm across his shoulders and hugged him listlessly.

  Count Video warmed his wrinkled hands at the brazier. He’d had his skin stitched back on, after the angel war, the sutures making grotesque designs around the familiar neurotech, silicon nodes, and circuitry patches soldered to his flesh. Strange energies formed a shifting halo around his head. He wore nothing but a series of leather straps, crisscrossing his skinny body, tightly buckled. Perhaps they held him together.

  King of Skin was just a man now, stripped of his terrible glamour. Objects of power hung about him on silver chains, half-hidden in the thick pelt of his fur coat. He had a crystal ball in his hands, but it was a poor thing, disfigured with cracks and scorings. He twitched and shuddered at every sudden sound, his eyes rolling pitifully in his head.

  Annie Abattoir wore the remains of a wine-dark evening dress, the cutaway back showing the mystic sigils carved into the flesh between her shoulder blades. I wasn’t surprised to see her here. Annie had always been very hard to kill, though many had tried. Six-foot-two, and mostly muscle, even now, she still looked somehow…diminished. The War had worn her down. She kept a bowl of blood beside her and used it to refresh the lines of the pentacle around the brazier. She refilled the bowl from a vein she’d opened in her arm.

  I listened to them speak, their voices just whispers, drifting to me from far away.

  “The Sending has failed,” said Jessica. “Our agents have been destroyed.”

  “All twelve?” said Count Video. “That’s never happened before. He must have gathered new allies. Powerful companions.”

  “Perhaps he grows stronger,” said Larry Oblivion. “As his time approaches. Should we try again?”

  “No,” said Annie Abattoir. “It’s too soon. We’re too weak. Wait, and gather strength. There is still time.”

  “We always knew forcing our way past Merlin’s spells was a risk,” said Jessica.

  “I miss him,” said King of Skin, his mouth trembling.

  “He gave us hope. He fought so bravely. When they finally dragged Merlin down, and ate his heart right in front of him, a part of me died with him. He was the best of us, at the end.”

  “He always believed Arthur would return, to save us,” said Jessica.

  “Well if he is coming back, he’d better get a move on,” said Count Video, and they all managed some kind of smile.

  Who could they be fighting? I thought. Who could this War be against, that could destroy a mighty Power like Merlin Satanspawn? What’s out there, in the night?

  “We must make more Harrowing,” said Annie. “We must be ready for another Sending, when the opportunity presents itself.”

  “We already have one body,” said King of Skin.

  “We can’t use him!” Jessica said immediately. “You can’t! He was one of us.”

  “He’s just a body now,” said Annie. “It’s what he would have wanted. You know that. You know how dangerous it is for any of us to go out into the night to dig bodies out of the rubble. Can’t make homunculi without bodies.”

  “But not Julien Advent,” said Jessica.

  “He was always ready to serve,” said Larry. “To be the hero. This is his last chance. You don’t have to work on the body if you don’t want to.”

  I missed what they said after that. I was in shock. Julien Advent, the legendary Victorian Adventurer, one of my enemies? He might have disapproved of me from time to time, but we had always been friends and allies. Fought the good fight side by side…How could he have become a part of this? He would never have sided with murder or betrayal…unless the stakes were so high his conscience gave him no choice. Unless all the other alternatives were so much worse. And if Julien were to become a Harrowing…I had to face the possibility that maybe other Harrowing I’d encountered in the past had been made out of the bodies of friends of mine.

  I remembered when I first discovered the name of the creatures that had been hunting me on and off since I was a child. The oracle in the mall’s wishing well had given me the name, in return for a price I still regretted paying. And years later, Julien had been the one who explained what the name meant. Harrow had been an old Victorian word, meaning to harass, to harry, to chase down. Had Julien Advent been the first to give them that name, here in the future?

  “I still say we should just kill John,” said Annie Abattoir, dripping blood from her arm into her bowl. “He’s too dangerous to take chances with.”

  “No,” Jessica said immediately. “He’s too close to becoming now. We have to bring him back here alive, and question him. We have to understand why he did…what he did. Drugged and helpless, he will tell, eventually. And maybe then we’ll be able to figure out a way to stop all this happening.”

  “And afterwards, we’ll kill him,” said King of Skin.

  “Yes,” said Count Video. “For all his sins. For the death of the world. For being his mother’s son.”

  And with that the Vision broke, and I was suddenly back in Strangefellows again. I was standing in the middle of the room, shaking and shuddering, cold sweat dripping off my face. Sinner had an arm around me, holding me up. Alex was offering me a new glass of brandy. I took it gratefully, gulping it down, the glass chattering against my teeth. I was in shock—too many truths, too fast.

  I told them some of what I’d Seen and heard, but not all. There were things they didn’t need to know. Things…I couldn’t trust them with. They were almost as shocked as I was, and they all looked at me in a new way, even Madman. The man who would destroy the Nightside. I couldn’t blame them. Could my enemies actually be the good guys, after all? Desperately trying to prevent a catastrophe, in the only way left to them?

  I had given that future’s Razor Eddie my word that I would die before I allowed that terrible future to happen; but could I have already set things in motion by taking on this case? If discovering the origins of the Nightside was tied in with the mystery of my mother’s identity, could pursuing this case be the first domino that sent all the others toppling?

  “Timeslips are only potential futures,” said Alex.

  “Everyone knows that.”

  “They’re just possibilities,” said Sinner
. “Time has more branches than a tree.”

  I shook my head. “The fact that my lifelong enemies are rooted in this particular future means it has to be more probable than most.”

  “So what are you going to do?” said Alex.

  “It’s up to you,” said Sinner. “Whether you wish to continue with this case. You don’t have to. You can turn aside. But if you’re determined to go on, Pretty Poison and I will accompany you. If only because I’m fascinated to see what will happen next.”

  “Hear, hear,” said Madman.

  “We go on,” I said. “I have a case, and I’ve never let a client down yet. The truth always comes first. No matter who it ends up hurting.”

  SIX

  The Hunter Run to Ground

  I left Strangefellows through the front door, thinking hard. I’d always known the Nightside was old, had to be really old, but if Merlin was to be believed, the Nightside had been old back when he was still young. Just how far back did the Nightside go? And if it was created for a specific purpose, who created it? I had a horrible suspicion I already knew the answer.

  My missing mother.

  I led the way up the damp, gloomy alley that led back into the bright neon and hue and cry of the main drag, my companions lagging behind as always. Sinner and Pretty Poison were strolling along arm in arm, murmuring and giggling together, close as any lovey-dovey teenagers. It might have been charming if I hadn’t known one of them was a demon from Hell, with centuries of treachery and moral corruption behind her. And Madman was ambling along in the rear, his eyes far away, for which I was grateful. It was when he started taking notice of the world that things started getting dangerous. It occurred to me, not for the first time on this case, that I might have chosen my companions more carefully.