Nightside 06 - Sharper Than a Serpents Tooth

realised what was happening, and tried to attack the three men responsible, but Suzie and Alex and I held her where she was with the last of our strength. Dying as we were, we held her there.
    A great wind blew out of Limbo, through the open door, redolent of other realms, other places, then reversed itself, surging back in. It tugged at Lilith, and we let her go. Step by step, fighting it all the way, she was pulled towards the door. She stopped, right on the edge, and would go no further. Someone had to force her back through that door, and go with her into Limbo, to hold the door shut from the other side until the Babalon Working had been properly dismantled and shut down. And that had to be me. Because that was the only way I could be sure that never again would I ever threaten the safety of the Nightside. I swore an oath, to a dying future Razor Eddie, that I would rather die than see the Nightside destroyed because of me; and I meant every word.
    But I never got the chance. My father broke away from his friends, grabbed his ex-wife by the shoulders, and sent the two of them hurtling through the open door into Limbo. The door swung shut; and, in the very last moment, my father looked back at me, and smiled.
    "For you, John! For my son!"
    Lilith's final scream was cut short as the door to Limbo slammed shut. Without the three to maintain it, the Babalon Working collapsed, and Walker and the Collector quickly shut it down, forever. And that was that. All was still and quiet in Strangefellows. Walker and the Collector stood together exhausted, leaning on each other for support, looking older than their years. Suzie and Alex, no longer in my mind, came unsteadily forward to stand with me. I looked at the place where the door had been, and thought of my father and my mother, together again, for all eternity.
    And the things we sacrifice, for love.

Epilogue

    With Lilith gone, her army of followers soon broke up and turned on each other. They were quickly defeated and dispersed by Walker's people, commanded by Mien Advent. Lilith's surviving offspring, seeing which way the wind was blowing, quietly slunk back to the Street of the Gods. And as quickly and easily as that, the War for the Nightside was over.
    With the Authorities dead and gone, Walker is in charge of the Nightside now. Inasmuch as anyone ever is. No-one's seen the Collector since that night in the bar. He disappeared when no-one was looking, along with what was left of Merlin's heart. Alex is back behind his bar. Suzie and I are talking about becoming partners in a detective agency. And about other things, too. One step at a time.
    Many old friends and enemies are still missing, presumed dead.
    The Nightside goes on. The terrible future I first saw in the Timeslip is now only another timetrack, no more likely or inevitable than any other glimpsed future. For the first time in a long time, the Nightside is free to make its own destiny.
    And so am I.