Paths Not Taken (18 page)

And then Suzie reared up from the floor, with a terrible cry. Half her face was a mask of blood, with only an empty socket where her left eye had been, but still she came roaring up off that bloody floor like the fighter she was. She ripped the knife out of Kae's side, and he stopped in his tracks, halted for a moment by the sudden blaze of pain. And while he hesitated, Suzie jammed her long knife all the way into his unprotected groin. Her triumphant laughter drowned out his cry of pain. She yanked the knife out,

and thick dark blood coursed down both his legs. He staggered, and almost fell. She lashed out with the knife, and almost effortlessly cut open the wrist of the hand holding the mace. It fell to the floor as the feeling left his fingers, and he looked stupidly after it for a moment.

Suzie rose up onto her feet to give him the last, killing blow, and he roared like a bear and grabbed her to him, crushing her against his chain-mail breast with huge, muscular arms. She cried out as her ribs cracked audibly, then savagely head-butted Kae in the face. He roared again and dropped her. Suzie grinned fiercely at him through the bloody mask of her face, and went for him with her knife. And Kae grabbed a flaring torch from its iron wall holder and thrust it right into her ravaged face.

There was smoke, and spitting fat, and the stench of burning meat, but she didn't scream. She fell, but she didn't scream.

I screamed. And while they were both distracted, I surged forward, grabbed up the steel mace from the floor, and hit Kae across the head with all the strength I had. The force of the blow whipped his head round, and blood flew across the air, but he didn't fall. I hit him again, and again, and again, putting all my rage and horror and guilt into every blow, and finally he fell, measuring his length on the bloody floor like a slaughtered sacrificial beast. I dropped the mace, and went over to kneel beside Suzie, and take her in my arms.

She clung to me like she was drowning, burying her ruined bloody face in my shoulder. I held on to her, and all I could say was I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, over and over again. After a while she pushed me away, and I let go of her immediately. It was hard for Suzie to let anyone touch her, even a friend. Even then. Poor little broken bird. I made myself look at what remained of her face. The whole left side was gone, a ragged torn-up mess only held together by charred and blackened flesh. And then, as I watched, the terrible wounds began to heal. The torn flesh crawled together, slowly closing over and drawing itself together into old scar tissue. Even the empty eye-socket closed, the lids sealed together. Until at the end it was the awful, familiar, disfigured face I'd seen once before-on the Suzie Shooter from the future.

I had brought Suzie here, to this place and time, and made that face, that Suzie possible.

She smiled at me, but only half her mouth moved. She gingerly touched at the scarred half of her face with her fingertips, then took her hand away again. "Don't look so shocked, Taylor. You put werewolf blood into me to save my life, remember, back during the angel war? The blood wasn't strong enough or pure enough to make me into a were, but it did give me one hell of a healing factor. Very useful, in the bounty-hunting business. My face... will never be the same again, I know that. My healing factor has very definite limits. But I can live with this. It's not like I ever cared about looking pretty ... John? What's the matter, John?"

I couldn't tell her. I lurched to my feet and looked around for the mace I'd discarded. Kae ... It was all Kae's fault. He had barged in and ruined everything ... everything. Suzie knew me well enough to see which way my thoughts were going, and she hauled herself to her feet to stand before me.

"No, John. You can't kill him."

"Watch me."

"You can't, John. Because Arthur wouldn't want you to. And because you're not a killer. Like me."

And because in the end I still hoped she was right about that, I turned away from Kae's unconscious body, and together Suzie and I moved slowly and carefully back across the bar to Merlin's table. Tommy was still there, holding the witch Nimue in his arms, his face set and cold. It was obvious Nimue wasn't breathing. Dead, her face looked more like a child's than ever.

"She died keeping Merlin alive with her own life energy," said Tommy. He looked only at me, his gaze openly accusing. "She gave her life for him, her present and all her future; and it still wasn't enough. He's dead, too, if you care. And all because of us."

"We never meant for any of this to happen," said Suzie.

Tommy looked at her briefly, taking in her scarred face, but his cold gaze returned almost immediately to me. "And that makes it all right, does it?"

"No," I said. "But what's done, is done. We can't help them, but we can still help ourselves. We don't need Merlin; we still have his heart." I leaned over the wrapped bundle on the table and pulled back the cloth to show that the heart was still slowly beating, even though there was no blood left in it. "Merlin put enough of his power into his heart that it still continues, still holds a large portion of his magic. We can tap into that magic and use it to send us further back into the Past."

Tommy put Nimue to one side, arranging her tenderly in a chair like a sleeping child, then he stood up to face me. "Did you know this all along, Taylor? Did you plan for this?"

"No," I said. "I Saw it with my gift, when I studied his defences."

"Why should I believe you?" said Tommy, and Suzie stirred at my side, picking up on the anger burning in the man.

"I've never lied to you, Tommy," I said carefully. "I'm sorry about Nimue, and even about Merlin, but I came into the Past to stop Lilith, and that's what I'm going to do."

"Whatever it takes? No matter who gets hurt?"

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe."

"If we take the heart with us, further back into the Past,

no wonder no-one could ever find it," said Suzie. "They were always looking in the wrong place, the wrong time."

"We'll take Nimue's body along with us," I said. "Dump it somewhere in the Past. So that when Merlin returns from the dead, he'll never have to know that Nimue died trying to save him."

"You pick the strangest ways to be thoughtful, Taylor," said Suzie.

"If you were to put the heart back," Tommy said slowly, "there's a real chance the magic stored in the heart would be enough to bring him back."

"We don't know that," I said. "And we need the magic in the heart..."

"We can't let him die!" Tommy said fiercely. "Not if there's even the smallest chance of saving him! Otherwise, we're as good as killing him ourselves."

"Think it through," I said. "If it doesn't work, we waste the magic, and we're stranded here. And if Merlin should wake up, and discover what we persuaded Nimue to do, and that she died as a result of it... he'd kill us all. Slowly and hideously painfully. This is Merlin Satanspawn we're talking about."

"So we do nothing?" said Tommy. There was a dangerous cold light in his eyes.

"Yes," I said. "He dies here, without his heart, as we know he did, and he'll be buried in the cellars under the bar. That's a part of our Past, our Present, our time-line. We just helped to bring about what we know happened anyway."

"You cold-hearted son of a bitch." Tommy was so angry his face had lost all its colour, and his hands were clenched into fists at his sides. "Just how far will you go, to get your precious revenge?"

I didn't look at Suzie. At her familiar, disfigured face. "I only do what I have to do," I said, keeping my voice as calm and reasonable as I could. "Let's get out of here, before Kae wakes up. I don't think you can stop a warrior like that for long just by hitting him over the head."

"No," said Tommy, still looking at me, and his eyes were cold, so cold. I don't think I'd ever seen him so angry. "This stops here, Taylor. You've done enough damage on your insane quest. Suzie's face. Nimue's death. Merlin ... all for your petty, vindictive vendetta. To hell with Lilith, and to hell with you, too, you lying sack of shit. You'd sacrifice anyone and anything, just to get back at your mother. I don't see why ... After all, you've made yourself into just as vicious and cold-hearted a monster as her. You're every inch your mother's son."

"Don't," I said. "Don't say that, Tommy."

"It's not true," said Suzie. "Don't do this, Tommy. Taylor knows what he's doing. He always knows what he's doing."

It was like a hand clenched around my heart then, squeezing it painfully, to hear her trust and faith in me, even after... everything that had happened. I wasn't worthy of trust like that. I would have said something, but I couldn't get my breath.

"Oh yes," said Tommy. "I think he knows what he's doing, all right. I simply don't trust his motives any more."

"I never meant for anyone to get hurt," I said finally. "I don't want anyone to get hurt. I've seen the future that's coming, if Lilith isn't stopped. I still have nightmares ... And I am ready to die, to prevent it. But... I don't have the right to ask that of anyone else. What do you think we should do, Tommy?"

"I say we put Merlin's heart back," Tommy said stubbornly. "It could work. We save his life, and I'll use my gift to talk him out of killing us. You know how persuasive I can be. With his heart back and his power restored, he'll be able to repair Suzie's face and bring Nimue back from the dead. Don't look at me like that! This is Merlin; he could do it! I know he could. And then, with the right guidance and advice, he will restore the glory that is Camelot and make a better world, a better future!"

"Oh Jesus, are we back to that?" said Suzie. "Tommy, we've been through this. We daren't change the Past, because of what it could do to our Present. And there's no telling what kind of a future you and a half-mad Merlin might bring about anyway."

"Lilith still has to be stopped," I said.

"Why?" said Tommy. "Because of what she might do? Don't worry; Merlin will handle her."

"Merlin Satanspawn?" I said. "The Devil's only begotten son? For all we know, he'd help her."

"I can use my gift..."

"Against Merlin?"

"You're Lilith's only son," said Tommy. "You'd let the dream of Camelot die, just to further your own ambitions. I see right through you, Taylor. And I'll see you die first!"

He raised his gift, but I was already raising mine, and the whole bar shook as our powers manifested and clashed head-on. I used my gift to try and find his weaknesses, and he used his to try and reinforce a reality where I never reached the sixth century. My gift dealt with certainties, his with probabilities, and neither was really strong enough to overcome the other. We both put all our strength into this clash of wills, and reality itself became hazy and uncertain around us, until it seemed the whole bar might unravel, leaving us the only fixed and real things in the world.

There was no telling where that insane and dangerous struggle might have gone if Suzie hadn't put a stop to it by simply hitting Tommy round the back of the head with the butt of her shotgun. He cried out and fell to his knees, his gift snapping off as the pain in his head kept him from concentrating. He still tried to come up off his knees fighting, and Suzie calmly and dispassionately beat the shit out of him. He finally collapsed into unconsciousness, and I used my gift to find Old Father Time's touch on him and remove it. Tommy disappeared immediately, swept back to our Present.

(And that was when I finally remembered when I'd seen Tommy Oblivion before. He'd appeared out of nowhere in Strangefellows, during the Nightingale case, some months previously. He'd been badly beaten, and yelled threats at me before he was thrown out. Now I knew why. He'd obviously arrived back in the Nightside before he left. Still, it did beg the question of why, if Tommy knew what was going to happen on this trip, he didn't search out his younger self, and inform him... Unless something happened to the older Tommy to prevent it... That's why I hate Time travel. Just thinking about it makes your head hurt.)

I sat down in a chair while Suzie checked my head wound, then cleaned the blood off my face. I sat looking at Merlin's heart on the table before me, planning what I was going to do next. Even after everything that had happened, I was still determined to press on. I had to succeed in my mission to justify all the suffering and damage I'd caused.

"If nothing else," said Suzie, "we have discovered the answer to one of the great mysteries of the Nightside-who stole Merlin's heart? We did. Who would have thought it... Can it really take us further back into the Past?"

She was speaking calmly and professionally, so I did the same. "I don't see why not. The power's definitely there; I have to tap into it and guide it."

"And you're not worried about your Enemies locating you here?"

"I think they would have by now if they were going to," I said.

I took the heart in my hand and made myself look at Suzie's ruined face without flinching. I'd done that to her. I had to stop Lilith, or all Suzie's pain had been for nothing. I looked slowly round the bar, taking in all the damage I'd done, without meaning to. I had to wonder if perhaps it was my own implacable stubbornness that was forging the very series of causal links that would bring about the dead future.

Who caused this ? I asked the future Razor Eddie, as he lay dying in my arms. You did, he said. How do I stop it? I asked him. Kill yourself, he said.

I'd promised him I would die rather than let that future happen. I'd promised Suzie back during the angel war that I would never let her be hurt again. I'd failed her. She didn't blame me, but I did. She would forgive me, but I never would. Perhaps ... the only way to stop the awful future was to kill myself, now, before it was too late ...

No. I could still stop Lilith. I was the only one who could stop her.

So I nodded to Suzie to pick up Nimue's body, while I raised my gift and tapped the power of Merlin's heart, and we went hurtling back through Time again.

Nine

When in Rome

W
e arrived. I looked around. I looked at Suzie. "Hold me back, Suzie, or I am going to kill absolutely everything that moves."