Nightside 05 - Paths Not Taken

forward into the glorious city she'd made, to show it off to her children. They slumped and slithered and crashed after her, filling the night with a celebration of their terrible voices. Suzie and I watched them go, and were glad to see the back of them. Just the sight of them hurt our eyes and made our stomachs churn. Human eyes were never meant to deal with such spiritual ugliness.
    And that was when the two angels suddenly appeared before us.
    It was obvious they came from Above and Below. They were suddenly standing there before us, two tall idealised humanoid figures with massive wings spreading out behind their backs. One was composed entirely of light, the other of darkness. We couldn't see their faces. There was no question but they were angels. I could feel it in my soul. Part of me wanted to kneel and bow my head to them, but I didn't. I'm John Taylor. Suzie already had her shotgun trained on them. She's never been much of a one for bowing either. I had to smile. The angels looked at each other. We weren't what they'd expected.
    "As if things aren't complicated enough," I said, "now Heaven and Hell are getting directly involved. Wonderful."
    "Bloody angels," growled Suzie. "Bullyboys from the afterlife. I ought to rip your pin-feathers out. What do you want?"
    "We want you," said the angel of light. Its words rang in my head like silver bells.
    "We want you to stop Lilith. We can help you," said the dark angel. Its words stank in my head like burning flesh.
    "I am Gabriel."
    "I am Baphomet."
    "This is not how we really are," said Gabriel. "We found these images in your heads."
    "Comfortable fictions," said Baphomet.
    "Designed to make you comfortable with our presence."
    "But not too comfortable. We are the will of Heaven and Hell made flesh, and we have been given jurisdiction in this matter."
    "You will obey us," said Gabriel.
    "Want to bet?" said Suzie.
    "We don't do the 'o' word," I said.
    The angels looked at each other. Things were clearly not going as expected. "This new city was never intended," said Gabriel. "The material world is not prepared to deal with such a thing. It will... unbalance matters. It cannot be allowed to flourish."
    "Lilith must be stopped," said Baphomet. "We are here to help you stop her."
    "Why?" I said. "I really would love to hear the official line on this."
    "We cannot tell you," said Gabriel. "We do not know. We only ever know what we need to know, when we are unleashed upon the material world. It is not for us to make decisions or have opinions. We only enforce the will of Heaven and Hell."
    "We are here to do what must be done," said Baphomet. "And we will see it done, no matter what it takes."
    I'd seen this kind of limited thinking before, back during the angel war. Angels of either House were always much diminished by being made material. They were still unutterably powerful, and their very nature made them unwavering in their purpose, but you couldn't argue or reason with them. Even when conditions had clearly changed so much that their original purpose was no longer relevant. Angels were spiritual storm-troopers. If a city had to be destroyed, or the first-born of a generation destroyed, send in the angels. Of course, that was still to come.
    "You want Lilith taken out, why don't you get on with it?" said Suzie.
    "We cannot simply walk into her city and destroy her," said Gabriel. "Lilith has designed her creation so that simply by entering it, all emissaries of Heaven and Hell would be terribly weakened."
    "And then she would destroy us," said Baphomet. "She hates all emissaries of authority, whether from Above or Below."
    "We do not fear destruction," said Gabriel. "Only the failure of our mission. You can help us."
    "You must help us."
    Neither angel had much of a personality, as such. Presumably that would come later, after centuries of interaction with Humanity. For the moment, they were more like machines set in motion, programmed to carry out a distasteful but necessary task. It occurred to me that both the light and the dark angel had more in common than they would probably care to admit.
    "If you can't enter the city without being destroyed, what use are you?" said Suzie, blunt as ever.
    "We cannot stop Lilith," Gabriel said calmly. "But we can make it possible for you to stop her."
    "How?" I said.
    "You could not destroy her, even with our help," said Baphomet. "She was created to be uniquely powerful, and so she is. Even here, in the material world. But