Agents of Light and Darkness

Nine - For the Remission of Sin

Strangefellows sprang into being around us again, and Suzie braced herself for the thick black smoke, but there wasn't any this time. She looked suspiciously about her, and mere was Merlin, no longer sprawled on his dark iron throne but leaning casually against the long wooden bar, a bottle of the good whiskey in one tattooed hand. He smiled unpleasantly and took a long drink from the bottle. I glanced at the gaping hole in Merlin's chest, where his heart used to be, half-expecting to see the swallowed whiskey come running out of it. "Welcome back, far travelers," said Merlin. "I deference to your delicate feelings, I dispensed with the smoke this time. Typical of youngsters today. No respect for tradition. Probably wouldn't know what to do with a newt's eye if I slapped it in your hand."

I stepped forward, and he stopped talking. "Send us back!" I said, my hands clenched into fists, so angry it was all I could do to get the words out. "Send us back, right now. Better still, grab the Collector again and haul his nasty ass back down here, so I can beat the truth out of him with my bare hands."

"Easy, tiger," said Suzie, moving in close beside me. Her voice was surprisingly gentle. "I'm the violent one in this partnership, remember?"

"Things change," I said, not taking my eyes off Merlin. "I want the Collector here, right now. He knows things. Things about my mother, and my father. And I will break his bones one by one, and make him eat every last piece, until he tells me what I need to know."

"Wow," said Suzie. "Hard-core, Taylor."

"I'm sorry," said Merlin, still leaning against the bar, entirely unmoved by the raw fury in my voice and eyes. "The Collector has disappeared from his lair under the Moon's surface, taking his collection with him. I can't see him anywhere. Which ought to be impossible, but that's the modern age for you. No doubt I'll track him down eventually, but that will take time. For a mere mortal, he's surprisingly elusive."

I was so angry and frustrated I could hardly breathe, ready to lash out at anyone, even Merlin. Suzie moved as close to me as she could without actually touching me, calming me with her presence, and slowly the red haze began to lift from my thoughts. It's always thoughts of family that drive me crazy, and it's always my friends who bring me back.

"Let it go, John," Suzie said calmly, reasonably. "There'll be other times. He can't hide from us forever. Not from us."

"And now it's time for me to go," said Merlin. "You have the somber chalice in that bag. I can feel its awful presence from here. I can't be this close to it. Too many bad memories . . . and far too much temptation. I may be dead, but I'm not stupid."

"Thanks for your help," I made myself say, in an almost normal tone. "We'll meet again, I'm sure."

"Oh yes," said Merlin. "We have unfinished business, your mother and I."

And before I could pursue that any further he was gone, disappearing back into his ancient grave somewhere deep under the wine cellar. The arrogant bastard always had to have the last word. Reality flexed and shuddered, and Alex Morrisey was suddenly back among us again, sitting slumped in the middle of the pentacle. He groaned loudly and shook his head slowly. He realized he had a bottle of whiskey in his hand and took a stiff drink. He almost choked getting the stuff down, but he was determined.

"I should have known he'd get into the good stock," he said bitterly. "Damn. I hate it when he manifests through me. My head will be full of corrupt Latin and Druidic chants for days." He shuddered suddenly, unable to continue with his usual facade. He looked at me, and I knew that behind his ubiquitous shades, his eyes were full of betrayal. "You bastard, Taylor. How could you do that to me? I thought we were friends."

"We are friends," I said. "I know that can be difficult, sometimes. I'm sorry."

"You're always sorry, John. But it never stops you screwing up people's lives."

I didn't say anything, because I couldn't. He was right. He struggled to his feet. I offered him a hand, but he slapped it aside. Lucy and Betty Coltrane moved quickly in and got him on his feet again, supporting him between them until his legs were firm again. He looked at the airline bag slung over my shoulder and gestured jerkily at it with his whiskey bottle.

"Is that it? Is that what you risked my sanity and soul for? Get the damned thing out and let me take a look at it. Haven't I earned the right? I want to see it."

"No you don't," I said. "It's vile. Poisonous. Your eyes could rot in your head just from looking at it for too long. It's dark and it's evil and it corrupts all who come into contact with it. Just like its original owner."

Alex sneered at me. "You always were a frustrate drama queen, Taylor. Show me. I've a right to see what I suffered for."

I opened the airline bag and took out the copper bowl, holding it carefully by the edges. It was feverishly hot to the touch, and my skin crawled at the contact. It felt as though someone new had entered the bar, someone terribly old and horribly familiar. Part of me wanted to throw the thing away, and part of me wanted to clutch it to my breast and never give it up. Alex leaned forward for a better look, but didn't try to touch it. Just as well. I wouldn't have let him.

"That's it?" said Alex. "I wouldn't serve a cheap claret in that."

"You're not going to get the chance," I said, trying to keep my voice normal. I stuffed the bowl back into the bag, though the effort brought beads of sweat to my brow. "This nasty little thing is going straight to the Vatican, where hopefully they will have the good sense to lock it up somewhere extremely safe, until the End of Time."

"If only it was that simple," said Walker.

We all looked round sharply as the Authorities' chief voice in the Nightside came strolling unhurriedly down the metal stairs into the bar. He still looked every inch the city gent out on his lunch break. Calm and sophisticated, and very much the master of the moment. He glanced at the pitch-darkness filling the bar's shattered windows, but didn't seem in the least perturbed by it, as though he saw something like it every day. And perhaps he did. This was Walker, after all. Alex scowled at him.

"Perfect. What the hell are you doing here, Walker? And how did you get in?"

"I'm here because the angels want me to be here," said Walker easily, striding across the floor to join us and stopping just short of the pentacle's salt lines. He glanced at it briefly and looked away, managing to imply that he'd seen much better workmanship in his day. Walker could say a lot with a look and a raised eyebrow. He tipped his bowler hat to us and smiled pleasantly. "The angels contacted the Authorities and made a deal, and the Authorities sent me here to implement it. And while this club's defenses are more than adequate to keep out the usual riffraff, they're no barrier to me. I have been empowered by the Authorities to go wherever I have to go, to carry out their wishes. And right now, they want the Unholy Grail. They intend to hand it over to the angels, in return for... certain future considerations. And an end to all violence and destruction in the Nightside, of course."

"Which set of angels?" I asked.

Walker shrugged and smiled charmingly. "Yet to be determined, I believe. Whoever makes the better offer. I understand it could go either way. Still, that isn't really any of your business, is it? Give me the Unholy Grail, and we can all get on with our lives again."

"You know that isn't going to happen," I said. "Angels can't be trusted with the dark chalice, and neither can the Authorities. None of you have Humanity's best interests at heart. So, do you think you can take it from me, Walker? I don't see any backup, this time. Are you really ready to go head to head with me?"

Walker looked at me thoughtfully. "Perhaps. I'd really hate to have to kill you, John. But I do have my orders."

Suzie pushed past me suddenly, standing at the edge of the pentacle so she glared right into Walker's face. "You set your pet on me. Set Belle on me. I could have died."

"Even I just have to do what I'm told, sometimes," said Walker. "However much I might regret the necessity."

"Wouldn't stop you doing it again, though, would it?"

"No," said Walker. "My position doesn't allow me to play favorites."

"I ought to shoot you dead where you stand," said Suzie, in a voice that was cold as ice, cold as death.

Walker didn't even flinch. "You'd be dead before you could pull the trigger, Suzie. I told you, I'm protected in ways you can't even imagine."

I moved quickly to stand between them. "Walker," I said, and something in my voice made him turn immediately to look at me. "There are things we need to talk about. Things you should have told me long ago. The Collector had some very interesting information about the old days, when you and he and my father were such very close friends."

"Ah yes," said Walker. "The Collector. Poor Mark. So many possessions, and none of them enough to make him happy. Haven't talked to him in years. How is he?"

"Well down the road to full on crazy," I said. "But there's nothing much wrong with his memory. He still remembers finding my mother, and putting her together with my father. If the three of you were as tight as he says, you had to know all about it. So who commissioned him to go out and find my mother, and why? What part did you play in it all? And how come you never told me anything about this before, Walker? What else do you know about my parents that you've never seen fit to share with me?"

By the end I was shouting right into his face, almost spitting out the words, but he held his ground, and the calm expression on his face never once changed. "I know all kinds of things," he said finally. "Comes with the territory. I told you all you needed to know. But there are some things I can't talk about, not even with old friends."

"Don't just think of us as old friends," said Suzie. "Think of us as old friends with a pump-action shotgun. Tell him what he needs to know, Walker, or we'll see how good your precious protections really are."

He raised a single eyebrow. "The consequences could be very unfortunate."

'To hell with consequences," said Suzie. Her smile was really unpleasant. "When have I ever given a damn for consequences?"

And perhaps he saw something in her eyes, heard something in her voice. Perhaps he knew Suzie Shooter's shotgun wasn't just any shotgun. So he smiled regretfully and used one of his oldest tricks. The Authorities had given him a Voice that could not be denied, by the living or the dead or anything in between. When he spoke in that Voice, gods and monsters alike would bow down to him.

"Put down the shotgun, Suzie, and step back. Everyone else, stand still."

Suzie put down her gun immediately and stepped back from the edge of the pentacle. Nobody else moved. Walker looked at me.

"John. Give me the bag. Now."

But what was in the bag burned against my side like a hot coal, fanning the anger within me, feeding the fury that blazed within me. I could feel the power of the Voice, but it couldn't get a hold on me. I stood my ground and smiled at Walker, and for the first time his certainty seemed to slip a little.

"Go to hell, Walker," I said. "Or better yet, stay right where you are while I come and beat the truth out of you. I'm in a really bad mood, and I could just use someone like you to take it out on. Can you still use the Voice when you're screaming, Walker?"

I stepped out of the pentacle, crossing the salt lines, and nothing could touch me. I could feel myself smiling, but it didn't feel like my smile at all. I was ready to do awful things, terrible things. I was going to enjoy doing them. Walker backed away from me.

"Don't do this, John. To attack me is to attack the Authorities. They won't stand for that. You don't want them on your trail, as well as your enemies."

"Hell with you," I said. "Hell with them."

"That isn't you talking, John. It's the Unholy Grail. That's why you're shielded from me. Listen to me, John. You don't know how much I've done to protect you, down the years, using my position in the Authorities."

I stopped advancing on him, though part of me didn't want to. "You protected me, Walker?"

"Of course," he said. "How else do you think you've survived, all these years?"

"Oh, you'd like me to think that, wouldn't you? But I know better. You belong to the Authorities, Walker. Body and soul. And now you're scared, because the Voice they gave you doesn't work on me. Perhaps it's the Grail, perhaps it's something I inherited from my mother or my father. You tell me. Are you ready to talk about my parents now?"

"No," said Walker. "Not now. Not ever."

I sighed, shrugged the airline bag off my shoulder, and let it fall onto the floor. Something cried out, in shock and rage, or maybe that was only in my mind. I stirred the bag with the toe of my shoe, and sneered a it. I'm my own man, now and always. I looked at Walker. "Why is it that everyone seems to know all about my parents except me?"

"The truth is, no-one really knows it all," said Walker. "We're all just guessing, and whistling in the dark."

"You're not getting the Unholy Grail," I said. "I don't trust you."

"Me, or the Authorities?"

"Is there a difference?"

"Now that was cruel, Taylor. Quite unnecessarily cruel."

"You hurt Suzie."

"I know."

"Get out of here," I said. "You've done enough damage for one day."

He looked at me, then at Suzie and the others, still standing rigidly inside the pentacle. He nodded to them, and they all relaxed as the paralysis disappeared. Walker nodded once to me, then turned and walked briskly out of the bar and back up the metal steps. Suzie dived for her shotgun, but by the time she had it leveled he'd already disappeared. She scowled at me, her lower lip pouting in disappointment.

"You let him go? After everything he did? After what he did to me?"

"I couldn't let you kill him, Suzie," I said. "We're supposed to be better than that."

"Well done," said the man called Jude. "I'm really very impressed, Mr. Taylor."

We all looked round sharply, and there was my client, the undercover priest from the Vatican, standing patiently by the bar, waiting for us to notice him. Short and stocky, dark-completed, long, expensive coat. Dark hair, dark beard, kind eyes. Alex glared at him.

"Its getting so just anyone can walk in ... All right, how did you get in here, past two sets of homicidal angels and my supposedly state-of-the-art defenses that I'm beginning to think I wasted a whole bunch of my money on?"

"No-one can prevent me from going where I must," Jude said calmly. "That was decided where all the things that matter are decided. In the Courts of the Holy."

"You aren't just an emissary for the Vatican, are you?" I said.

"No. Though the Vatican doesn't know that. I want to thank you for bringing me the Unholy Grail, Mr. Taylor. You've done me a great service."

"Hey, I helped," said Suzie.

Jude smiled at her. "Then thank you too, Suzie Shooter."

"Look," I said, a bit sharply, "this is all very civilized and pleasant, but whoever the hell you really are, how do you intend to get the Unholy Grail past the supernatural brigades surrounding this place?

They've already destroyed half the Nightside trying to get their hands on it. How can you keep it from them?"

"By making it worthless to them," Jude said simply. "May I have the cup, please?"

I hesitated, but only for a moment. Bottom line, he was the client. I never betray a client. And he had paid me a hell of a lot to find the Unholy Grail for him. I handed him the airline bag, and he reached in and took out the copper bowl. He dropped the bag on the floor and studied his prize, turning it back and forth. It was hard to read the expression on his face, but I thought it might be a kind of tired amusement.

"It's smaller than I remembered. But then, it's a long time since I last held it," he said quietly. "Almost two thousand years." He looked up and smiled at us all. "My name, in those long-ago days, was Judas Iscariot."

I think we all gasped. None of us doubted him. Alex and the Coltranes retreated to the far end of the pentacle. Suzie turned her shotgun on the client. I stood my ground, but I could feel a terrible chill creeping through my bones. Jude. Judas. Of course I should have made the connection ... but you don't expect to encounter two Biblical myths in one day, not even in the Nightside.

'Taylor," Suzie said tightly, "I think there is a distinct possibility that we have screwed up royally."

"Relax," said Jude. "Things aren't as bad as the may appear. Yes, I am that Judas Iscariot who betrayed the Christ to the Romans, and afterwards hanged myself in shame. But the Christ forgave me."

"He forgave you?" I said.

"Of course. That's what he does." Jude smiled down at the cup in his hands, remembering. "He was my friend, as well as my teacher. He found me and cut me down, brought me back from the dead and told me I was forgiven. I knelt at His feet, and said, You must go, but I will stay, until you return. And I've been here, doing penance, ever since. Not because He required it, but because I do. Because I do not forgive me."

"The Wandering Jew," I said softly.

"I've been with the Vatican for years," said Jude. "Under one name or another. Working quietly in the background, doing my best to keep them honest. And now, at long last, I have a chance to purge the last remaining vestige of my ancient sin. Bartender, some wine, if you please."

Outside, the voices in the dark rose in protest. Voices from the light answered them, then the two angelic armies slammed together again, two unimaginable forces continuing a conflict almost as old as Time itself. The whole bar shook, as though in the grip of an earthquake. Jagged cracks opened in the walls, and the dark pulsed at the windows while the light flared in the foyer above. Angelic voices rose, singing battle songs, as they trampled the world beneath their uncaring feet. Jude ignored it all, standing patiently by the bar with his old cup in his hands. Alex looked at me.

"He's your client; you go and get him some wine. I'm not leaving this pentacle."

"It's your bar," I said. "You serve him. I don't think the angels will bother with you now. They sound distinctly preoccupied."

Alex stepped gingerly over the salt lines, and when nothing immediately awful happened to him, he made a run for the bar. He dug at a bottle of house red, pulled the cork, and presented the bottle to Jude with only slightly shaking hands. Jude nodded and held out his cup. Alex poured a measure of wine into it, and Jude made the sign of the cross over it.

"And this... is His blood, shed for us all, for the remission of sins."

He raised the cup to his mouth, and drank. And in that moment, the war between the angels stopped. Everything grew still. The darkness slowly withdrew from the shattered windows, and the light faded away from the top of the stairs. Somewhere, a choir of perfect voices was singing something almost unbearably beautiful in perfect harmony. Jude drank the last of the wine and lowered the cup with a satisfied sigh. The song reached a ringing climax, and faded away. There was the sound of great wings beating, departing, fading away into an unimaginable distance.

"They've gone ..." said Suzie, finally lowering her shotgun.

"They have no business here any more," said Jude. "It's only a cup now. Made pure again, in His name. Blessed, like me."

"So," I said, just a little breathlessly. "What happens now?"

Jude picked up the airline bag and stuffed the cup into it. "I take it back to the Vatican with me, put it on a shelf somewhere, and let it fade into obscurity. Just another old cup, of no particular importance or significance to anyone."

He smiled on us all, like a benediction.

"No charge for the wine," said Alex. "On the house."

Suzie snorted. "Who said the age of miracles was over?"

"You have done all of Humanity a great service," said Jude, bowing slightly to me. "And enabled me to right an old wrong. Thank you. Now I really must be going."

"I hate to spoil the moment," I said. "But..."

"The Vatican will pay the rest of your fee, Mr. Taylor. With a substantial bonus."

"Pleasure doing business with you," I said. "Even if it was a little hard on the Nightside."

He smiled. "I think you'll find the angels of the light have repaired all the damage they caused, an put right as much as they can. They are the good guys, after all, if somewhat limited in their thinking."

"What about all the people who got hurt?" said Suzie.

"The injured will be healed and made whole again. The dead, however, must remain dead. Only one man could ever raise the dead to life again."

Suzie walked across the pentacle lines to approach him. Her shotgun was back in its holster. She stopped directly before him and looked him in the eye.

"Are you ever going to forgive yourself?"

"Perhaps ... When He finally returns, so I can say I am sorry to His face once again."

Suzie nodded slowly. "Sometimes, you have to forgive yourself. So you can move on."

"Yes," said Jude. "And sometimes it was never your fault in the first place."

He leaned forward and kissed her gently. On the brow, not the cheek. And Suzie didn't flinch away.

"Hey, Jude," I said. "Can you tell me the truth about my mother?"

He looked at me. "I'm afraid not. Have faith in yourself, Mr. Taylor. In the end, that's all any of us can do."

He turned and walked away, back up the metal stairs, towards the night. At the last moment, Alex called after him.

"Jude, what was He really like?"

Jude stopped, considered for a moment, and the looked back over his shoulder. "Taller than you'd think."

"God speed you on your way," I said. "But please, don't come back. You guys are just too disturbing. Even for the Nightside."