Nightside 04 - Hex and the City

things scuttling across the outer walls of our perception. Things that wanted in.
    "That's enough of that," Lilith said sharply.
    And just like that, everything was still and normal again. Madman's projected unreality was immediately suppressed, the bar snapping back into sharp focus as Lilith's super-presence stabilised the world, and him. He stopped shaking and crying, and a little colour actually seeped back into his cheeks. Lilith looked at him thoughtfully.
    "You Saw what mortal man was never supposed to See. Was not designed to cope with. Let me take the knowledge away from you, so that you can be ignorant and happy again."
    "No," Madman said firmly, surprising us all. "Even a bitter truth is better than a comfortable lie."
    "But the truth is killing you," said Lilith.
    "No," said Madman. "I'm adapting."
    Somehow, that thought was even more worrying. I cleared my throat loudly, to get everyone's attention.
    "So," I said to my mother, trying really hard to keep my voice calm and casual. "You're Lilith. I know some of your story. Pew told me, a long time ago, when he was still my teacher."
    "Blind Pew?" said Alex. "The rogue vicar? The Christian terrorist? Is he still around?"
    "Yes," I said. "And if you interrupt me again, Alex, I'll have my mother turn you into a tea cosy."
    "That's it," said Alex, snatching my empty glass off the bar top. "You're cut off. You get nasty when you've been drinking, John."
    I ignored him, concentrating on Lilith. "According to the stories, after you were expelled from Eden you went down into Hell, where you coupled with demons and gave birth to all the monsters that have plagued the world."
    "I was young," said Lilith. "You know how it is. We all do things we later regret, when we're being rebellious teenagers. Anyway, I got over that phase, and after travelling extensively through the many levels of reality, seeing the sights and working out my options, I finally ended up in the world of men. Not that men had made much of an impression on the place, in those days. Beings and Forces still walked freely, and a new legend was born every minute. I created the Nightside, a world within a world, in a place the Romans would later name Londinium. Interesting people, the Romans. A very savage form of civilisation. Some of them worshipped me, and I let them.
    "Now pay attention, John, because this is the important bit. The Nightside was created and designed to be the one place on Earth where Heaven and Hell could not interfere or intimidate. A place set apart from the ordained war between Good and Evil. An alternative way to live. The only truly free place on Earth. It didn't turn out the way I expected, but then, that's life for you.
    "Creating the Nightside, on Earth but not of it, stable but entirely separate, seriously weakened me. My power was much diminished, and the rising major players of that time, some human but mostly not, seized the opportunity to band together and thrust me back out of this reality, and into Limbo. So that they could be truly free, even from my intentions. I don't bear them any malice. Not really. I've outlived nearly all of them. And Limbo wasn't the worst place to be exiled to. Limbo is a place, or not-place, where things only exist in potential. Ideas without form."
    "Like the Primal?" I said, just to show I was paying attention.
    "Oh, please. They're just chalk-drawings, compared to me. But as an idea without shape or form, I was helpless to do anything. I was trapped in Limbo, unable to open a door into any other realm. Until someone here created an opening I could use. They were trying to incarnate a female principle into physical existence, a part of the Babalon Working, and it was easy for me to push the Transient Being aside and imprint myself upon the summoning. Someone in that group hadn't done his homework properly. He'd left all kinds of openings for a determined mind to take advantage of. And once I'd left Limbo behind, they couldn't keep me out. All the Powers and Dominations that ever were couldn't have stopped me then.
    "I came through, decanted myself into the idealised body I found waiting in their minds, then disappeared, losing myself in the Nightside. Partly because I wanted to walk incognito to see how much things had changed in my absence, and partly to conceal myself from any of my old enemies who might have survived. I was still vulnerable, then. I needed to rebuild my power in peace. After some
    time, when I was myself again, I chose