Nightside 06 - Sharper Than a Serpents Tooth

think twice about going after you, if you were hiding out in Shadows Fall."
    "He may be dead, but he has a point," said Walker. "You've never been the most trustworthy soul, Taylor. Why should we risk our lives to save your selfish skin?"
    "Oh ye of little faith," I said. "We need the Gun, and I'm the only one he might give it to. Do you have any means of communicating with Shadows Fall, Walker? Any way we can talk to Time, and save me the journey?"
    "No," Walker admitted reluctantly. "All outgoing communications have been jammed. Scientific and supernatural. We're completely cut off from the rest of the world."
    "Then I have to go in person, don't I?" I said. "Is there anyone else here who thinks Old Father Time might surrender the most powerful weapon in the world to them? No, I didn't think so."
    "Why should he give it to you?" said Julien Advent. From him, it was a fair question.
    "Because I'm Lilith's son. Because he knows I'm the only one who can stop her now."
    "I say!" Tommy Oblivion said suddenly, and we all jumped a little. "I've just had a brilliant idea! Taylor, why don't you get Old Father Time to send you back into the Past again, to before all this started, so you can warn yourself about what's coming?"
    "I can't," I said patiently, "because I didn't."
    Tommy frowned, his lower lip pouting out sullenly. "I can't help feeling there should be more to the argument than that." He pulled a notepad out of his pocket and started jotting down equations and Venn diagrams, muttering about divergent timetracks, opposing probabilities, experiment's intent, and whether or not someone's pizza had anchovies on it, so we left him to get on with it. In my experience, Time travel just complicated things even more.
    "The Speaking Gun is what matters," I said forcefully. "It's the only weapon we can be sure will work on Lilith, because it's made out of her flesh and bone. I can use it to speak her name in reverse, and uncreate her."
    "Or perhaps to respeak her?" said Walker. "Remake her into some more acceptable form? She is your mother, after all."
    "No," I said. "As long as she lives, she'll always be a threat. For everything she's done, and for everything she intends to do, she has to die. She was never my mother. Not in any way that mattered."

    Alex produced a rather grubby and much-folded map of the local Underground system out from behind the bar, along with half a dozen cards from local taxi firms, a stuffed cat, and a dead beetle or two, and after a certain amount of argument and calculation (because the streets around Strangefellows aren't always there when you need them), we finally decided the nearest Underground station entrance had to be Cheyne Walk. Within walking distance from the bar, under normal circumstances, which these weren't, but still… it was reachable.
    "I don't like this," said Ms. Fate. "It's a war zone out there."
    We all stopped and listened to the chaos raging outside the bar. Even behind the shuttered windows and the locked doors, even behind Merlin's ancient defences, we could still hear screams and howls, the rage of fires and the rumble of collapsing buildings. Raw hatred ran loose in the streets, and it was hard to tell what sounds were human and which weren't, any more.
    "So," I said, trying hard to sound confident, "who's coming with me?"
    "I am," said Suzie Shooter. "But you knew that already."
    "Yes," I said. "My love."
    "I may puke," said Alex.
    "I can't go with you," said Walker. "I have responsibilities, to my people. Many of them are still out there, fighting. Someone has to stay here, to organise the resistance. In case you don't come back. I will do my best to keep Lilith distracted while you make your run to Shadows Fall."
    "I'll go with you, old thing," said Tommy Oblivion, throwing his notebook aside. "I feel fine again. Honest! And I owe you more than I can ever repay. I was so wrong about you."
    "If you're going, then I'm going, too," his brother Larry said immediately. "You'll need someone to watch your back. You always do."
    "You're not coming, and that's final!" snapped Tommy. "I don't care if you are dead, one of us has to survive this mess, to look after Mother."
    Larry subsided, muttering under his breath. Razor Eddie drank the last of his designer water, tossed the bottle carelessly over his shoulder, and nodded to me.
    "I'll go. I've always wanted to see Shadows Fall."
    "I'm not going, and you can't make me!" said Alex Morrisey. "I've got a bar to run. And no,