But I was already slowing. Using the gift had taken a lot out of me, at the end of a long, hard day. I'd used my gift too often, pushed it too hard, and I
was paying the price now. My head was throbbing so hard I could barely see anything outside of the path, and blood ran steadily from both my nostrils and dripped from my chin. My legs felt very far away. Joanna was having to drag me along now, keeping me moving through sheer determination. I could feel the boundary drawing closer, but it still seemed a hell of a way off. Like in those dreams where you run as hard as you can, and still never get anywhere. Joanna was yelling at me now, but I could hardly hear her. And the insects were all around us, a scuttling carpet of dark intent.
I was tired and hurting, but even so I was surprised when my legs just suddenly gave out, and I fell. I hit the glory path hard, and small shocks ran through me, none of them enough to get me back on my feet again. So close, the magic was almost painful. The insects surged right up to the edge of the light, staring at me with expressionless compound eyes. Joanna leaned over me, and tried to raise me up, but I was too heavy. I rolled over onto my side and looked up at her.
"Get the hell out of here," I said. "I've taken you as far as I can. There's nothing more I can do for you. Boundary's straight ahead. I've already cracked an opening that will take you back to the Nightside. Go find your daughter, Joanna. And be kind to her. In memory of me."
She let go of my arm, and it dropped limply to the bright track. I couldn't even feel it.
"I won't leave you," said Joanna. "I can't just leave you."
"Of course you can. If we both die here, who'll help your daughter? Don't worry; I'll be dead before the insects get to me. I'll see to that. Maybe ... by dying here, now, I can prevent this ever happening. Time's funny that way, sometimes. Now go. Please."
She stood looking down at me, and suddenly her face was utterly blank. All the emotion had gone out of it. Shell-shocked, again, perhaps. Or just considering the matter. She turned away from me, staring down the glowing path towards a boundary whose existence she could only take on faith. She was going to leave me behind, to die. I could feel it. Part of me cursed her, and part of me urged her on. I'd always known something in the Nightside would kill me, and I hated the thought that I might drag someone else down with me. And then she turned back, all the blankness gone from her face, and she grabbed me by the arm again with both hands.
"Get up!" she said fiercely. "Damn you, get up on your feet, you bastard! We haven't come this far together for you to give up now! I'm not leaving without you, so if you don't get up, you're killing me along with you. So move, damn you!"
"Well," I said, or thought I said. "If you put it that way..."
Between the two of us, we got me back on my feet again, and we staggered down the shimmering path. I kept thinking that the next step would be my last, that there just wasn't anything left in me, but Joanna kept me going. Half-supporting, half-carrying me, urging me on with comforting words and shouted obscenities. She dragged me down the path, all the way to the boundary, the insects screaming shrilly all the way, until suddenly we crashed through the crack I'd opened and back into our own Time.
We collapsed together on a rain-slick street, fighting for breath, and the wonderful roar of the living city was all around us. Bright neon and thundering traffic, and people, people everywhere. The night sky was full of the blaze of stars, and the great and glorious moon. It was good to be home. We lay side by side on the pavement, and people walked around us, ignoring the blood that soaked my clothes. The Nightside is a great place for minding your own business. I looked at the moon in its bright unblinking eye, and said sorry. Not everyone gets to see the possible results of their own future actions. The world that could be, if they really screw up. I wondered whether I should tell the present-day Razor Eddie of what I'd seen in the possible future. I thought not. There are some horrors no man should have to contemplate, not even the Punk God of the Straight Razor.
Not every future is etched in stone. I should know.
I'd seen enough, before now. But I still felt guilty, even if I didn't know what for.
You should never have gone looking for your mother. That's what the future Eddie had said. I'd always been curious about the mother who abandoned me. The woman who wasn't actually human after all. In the early hours of the morning, when a man just can't sleep, I'd often wondered if I help other people find things that matter to them because I can't find the one thing that really matters to me. Well, now I'd have something else to think about at three o'clock in the morning.
I looked at Joanna. "You know, I really thought you were going to leave me there, for a moment."
"For a moment," she said slowly, "I was. I surprised myself. I didn't know I had that kind of determination in me." She frowned. "But it was ... strange. Something in me didn't want to help you. Don't ask me to explain, because I can't. It's like there's something on the tip of my tongue, a word or a memory I can't quite grasp ... Oh hell, it doesn't matter. We both got out. Now let's get up off this freezing-wet pavement and go find Blaiston Street. After all we've been through to get there, I'm curious to see what it looks like. It had better be worth it."
"Cathy will be there," I said.
"And we will find her, and save her from whatever damn fool mess she's got herself into this time. Anything else can wait. Right?"
"Right," I said, not entirely sure just what it was I was agreeing to.
When I did find out it was, of course, far too late.
EIGHT - Time Out At the Hawk's Wind Bar & Grill
I'd just seen the end of the world, murdered one of my oldest friends, and discovered that the one quest I'd always intended to give my life to was now forever barred to me; so I decided I was owed a break. Luckily there was a really good cafe close by, so I took Joanna firmly by the hand and led her there, so that we could both get our mental breath back. The Nightside will grind down the toughest of spirits, if you don't learn to take the occasional pit stop, when you can. Joanna didn't want to go, with Blaiston Street and the answer to her daughter's fate now so close at hand, hopefully, but I insisted. And she must
have been tired and shaky too, because she'd actually stopped arguing before we reached our destination.
The Hawk's Wind Bar & Grill is a sight to see, something special even among the Nightside's many dark wonders, and I stopped outside a moment, so Joanna could appreciate it. Unfortunately, she wasn't in the mood. Which was a pity. It's not every day you get to see such a perfect monument to the psychedelic glories of the sixties, complete with rococo Day-Glo neon and Pop Art posters with colours so bright they practically seared themselves onto your retinas. The Hindu latticed doors swung politely open before us as I urged Joanna in, and I breathed deeply of the familiar air of the sixties as we entered the cafe; joss sticks and patchouli oils, a dozen kinds of smoke, all kinds of freshly brewing coffee, and a few brands of hair oil best forgotten.