Kult: Broken Walls, postscript: Broken Dreams

Sometimes I find after a particularly memorable game that my character won't shut up until I write a piece of short fiction about what happened next. So here's a follow-up piece to the Broken Walls campaign. I wrote this with assistance from Nathan's player, as he features heavily here and I wanted to get the characterisation right. Content warnings for self harm and suicide.

“Izzy, give me the knife.”

It hadn’t been easy, looking after Izzy these last few weeks. There was a time when Beatrice had thought a ‘bad day’ for Izzy just meant one where she couldn’t work, until a plea for help had shown her how much worse it could be. It had been Raven who’d kept her going through the really bad days, when even getting out of bed was a challenge.

Beatrice was doing her best, but her best clearly wasn’t good enough, or Izzy wouldn’t now be slumped against the wall of the shower cubicle, holding a kitchen knife in her hand, with blood dripping from her stump.

“I killed him, Beatrice.”

And that was the problem, wasn’t it? Izzy hadn’t only lost her main source of support. The bastard had gone and nobly sacrificed himself without even thinking what it was going to do to the people he left behind. Let alone the one who had to actually hold the knife.

“Izzy, please. You’re scaring me.”

Was that the right thing to say? Beatrice didn’t know, but it was the truth. Izzy might be hard work, but she was also the only person who really understood what Beatrice was going through right now. Raven’s death was part of it, but who else could she talk to about going to hell, or having a Roman soldier in your head? Especially when said Roman soldier was making her heart beat faster at the sight of a bleeding wound.

“All that shit he went through because of me and I couldn’t save him. It should have been me who died down there. I can’t let the same happen to you.”

Izzy’s voice was shaking, and she held the knife in a white knuckle grip. The next cut was deeper, drawing a gasp of pain along with the sudden flow of blood which dripped onto the cubicle floor.

“Oh for…Izzy, no!” Anger was rising in her now; a burning rage at a world that had brought them to this point. At the demons who’d caused it all. At Raven, for leaving her in this situation. At Izzy, for making her feel this way. Izzy, for trying to pull the same stupid shit as Raven. Izzy, with a head full of powerful magic she was too scared to use. Izzy, still the same pathetic creature, unworthy of Huldra, expecting other people to solve her problems for her. Why hadn’t she stabbed the little coward in that cathedral when she had the chance?

The fight was brief and one sided. Izzy wasn’t even looking when the attack came. She was still struggling with her missing hand, and Manius knew how to fight dirty. By the time Beatrice came back to her senses she was sitting in the shower cubicle with one arm pinning Izzy’s arms to her sides and the other holding the knife at her throat. Horrified, she flung it away from herself, watching it skitter across the tiled floor and ricochet behind the toilet. Then she was crying, embracing Izzy as both of them poured out apologies, tears and snot mixing with the blood on the floor.

Half an hour later, Izzy was curled up on the sofa with her arm bandaged, drugged on fuck knows what from the remains of Raven’s stash, while Beatrice tried to figure out what to do. She needed to sleep. There was the shop to open in the morning, and she couldn’t afford a day off, especially with Izzy still incapable of work. But she couldn’t leave Izzy alone, and she wasn’t even sure she could trust herself to take care of her right now. What the fuck was she going to do?

*****

Nathan was no stranger to awkward silences, but this one was going to take some beating. His sister was pretending to read some romance novel, but he could feel her glaring at him across the table. Words were entirely unnecessary at this point. He was in her house for one reason and one reason alone. Zack wanted him there. And when it came down to it, she loved her son more than she hated her brother. But that didn’t mean she had to speak to him.

Nathan, for his part, was pretending to be absorbed in his phone, but was really contemplating how badly he was failing his nephew. He was stronger than he’d ever been, pretty much unkillable now, and he would have kicked the shit out of any number of monsters for Zack. But the monsters were all in the kid’s head.

The nameless priestess from his past life had power. Power that could have been his, if only he’d thought to take it. Power that he could be using now to help his nephew. Instead of just being here. Doing nothing.

Both of them jumped when his phone broke the silence. Still his sister said nothing, although her expression spoke louder than words. Take that shit outside. You don’t do business in my house. He got up and walked to the front door, pulling out his phone as he went and answering without thinking, but almost stopped in his tracks when he saw the name on the caller ID. Isabella May.

“Nathan!” Except that definitely wasn’t Izzy’s voice.

“Beatrice? Why are you calling on Izzy’s phone?”

“Because she has your number in her contacts and I don’t, and I didn’t want to...fuck, don’t distract me. She needs help. And don’t fucking hang up. You know what she did for us. You owe her.”

Nathan had been on the point of hanging up when Beatrice’s voice had suddenly raised in volume. Instead he sighed and put the phone back to his ear.

“What do you want?”

“A babysitter. She’s suicidal, I need to sleep, and I’ll sleep better if I’m not worrying about whether I’m going to wake up with blood all over the bathroom. So if you don’t want another trip to fucking Highgate in the next couple of weeks, get your arse over here now.”

Fuck. This was not what he needed. He’d promised Zack he’d be there for him, any time, and right now that often meant the middle of the night when the kid woke up screaming. Beatrice did have a point. Without Izzy, Zack wouldn’t be here to have nightmares. But here and now, Zack had to come first.

And then the answer came to him.

*****

“Do you really have to take her?”

“That’s the deal. I’ll watch her, but I can’t stay here.”

Beatrice had answered the door dressed in pyjamas and with a joint dangling from her fingers. Nathan braced himself for the inevitable coughing fit as the stench of skunk filled his lungs, but of course it never came. That little problem had been dealt with.

Beatrice’s flat reminded Nathan of her. There was something loud and in-your-face about the brightly coloured decor that suited her well. It didn’t suit Izzy, who was huddled under a garishly patterned blanket looking about as happy as she had when Mary had summoned the ghost of Lily-Rose into her flat. All the same, it was a shock when Beatrice pulled back the blanket and he saw the bloodstains on her clothes and the bandages on her stump of an arm. He’d hoped ‘suicidal’ was an exaggeration, meant to get his attention and cooperation. Those bandages said otherwise.

Suddenly he began to doubt his plan. Izzy was further gone than he expected. Was she even capable of doing what he wanted? Not that he could back out now, with Beatrice already pushing a stumbling Izzy towards him.

She offered no resistance as he half-walked, half-carried her down the stairs and into his car. She barely seemed to acknowledge his presence. They were halfway back to his sister’s house when she finally spoke, in a voice just on the edge of slurring.

“You don’t have to do this. Let me out somewhere. I’ll save everyone the trouble.”

This was bad. Nathan hit the central locking on the car, as a sudden vision of her jumping out of the moving vehicle came into his head. Even if she was going to be no use to him, he’d taken responsibility for her now.

“No. I’ve got a job for you.”

Her exhale was audible. “I don’t do the PI shit any more. If you think she’s cheating, she probably is.” This was better. Her voice was still slurred and lethargic, but at least he’d got her to think about something else..

“Not that kind of job.” He was starting to get her attention now, that was clear. “It’s my nephew. The one Piper got to. He’s having nightmares. You’re going to help him.”

And now the change was clearly visible. Hardly the same upright confident Izzy who’d found him at the base of the tower, but still, an Izzy who might actually be of some use after all.

*****

Nathan’s sister had a way of whispering that somehow managed to convey all the same emotions as screaming in your face, and she was making full use of it now. Failing to resist a smile when she started insulting his parentage hadn’t helped.

“Do you even give a shit about him? He’s calling your name in his sleep and you’re out picking up some…”

Whatever word she’d been about to use died in her throat when her eyes finally focused on Izzy. Nathan took the opportunity to get a few words in.

“Shut the fuck up and listen. You know the therapy isn’t working. Zack needs help. Real help, from experts, and that’s what she is.” He could read the obvious scepticism in his sister’s eyes. “I know, she looks like shit and stinks of weed, but right now she’s our best shot at getting him some sleep.”

He could see she was softening. Izzy’s appearance might even be helping. Someone that small and pathetic was probably triggering her maternal instincts.

“Fine.” His sister sat back down at the table, reaching for her book with one hand and resting her head on the other. “Do it, whatever it is. I just want my boy back.”

Nathan hustled Izzy up the narrow staircase towards Zack’s room before his sister could change her mind. He could hear his nephew before he saw him, restless in his sleep and mumbling words of distress. There wasn’t much that could hurt Nathan these days, but this did it every time.

“We tried waking him up. Didn’t help.” Izzy was nodding. “You can help him, right?”

“I can find him.” Nathan didn’t find that very reassuring. “But I’ll need you with me. He won’t recognise me, and it’s going to be dangerous.”

“How does that work then? Are you going to need another memory?” He hoped not; the pain of having a spear pulled out of his chest had been inconsequential compared to that of having a memory ripped out of his head. But she was shaking her head.

“No need. I’ll find you first. It’ll be easier if we sleep together.”

That was a surprise, and not as welcome as it might have been under other circumstances. Sure, it wouldn’t be his first time engaging in that kind of intimate ritual, but after all they’d been through it felt weird to think of Izzy that way. And was it even right when she was still visibly drugged?

“Shit. No. I meant actual sleep. Close together. Sorry.”

Well that did make sense, now he came to think about it. Not having to weigh Zack’s plight against Izzy’s altered state of mind was a relief, and from the colour in her cheeks she was clearly embarrassed enough for the both of them.

The box room next to Zack’s bedroom had enough room for a single bed and not a lot else. Nathan was about to suggest Izzy get changed in the bathroom until he remembered she was also on suicide watch. At least the cramped conditions played in his favour there. Wedged in between him and the wall, Izzy was going to have to work pretty hard to get out without waking him up, if that was her plan.

She fell asleep before him though, succumbing quickly to whatever drugs she was on once she had the chance. Sleep suited her, smoothing away all the pains of the waking world. For a few minutes Nathan lay awake, listening to the rhythmic sound of her breathing, a stark contrast with Zack’s cries of distress from next door. Then he closed his own eyes.

*****

Izzy faced Nathan across what appeared to be a perfect replica of the dining room they’d recently left, feeling self conscious. The robe wasn’t exactly her normal style of dress, but it felt right. Nathan didn’t seem to have noticed though.

“Have you found him yet?”

“Yes. But you know where he’s going to be, right? And who’s with him?”

“The cathedral.” Nathan nodded. “And Piper.”

“I’ll handle her.” Izzy tried to sound confident. “You get Zack. It’ll be better for him to see a familiar face.”

She knew this part of Limbo well. She’d spent a lot of her own nightmares here, after all. Getting to Zack wasn’t the problem. Getting there safely was another matter. The hulking presence of Nathan helped though, and when things started to get too much for her she had him put his hands over her eyes and guide her.

“Just walk in a straight line. It’s best if I don’t see this.”

So he did, and the two of them made it to the cathedral with mind and body still intact. Which just left one problem. Well, several problems. The monstrous figure of Piper Phillips bending over Zack, and a hoard of flayed corpses standing in their way.

“Nathan?” She’d told him to leave Piper to her, but from the way he was looking at her, Izzy could see that wasn’t going to happen. Then he was off and running, screaming with rage as he charged through the corpses, ignoring the claws raking his skin in his desperation to get to Piper.

Izzy could feel it again. The sense of doom, the crushing weight, the spiral starting to drag her down. She couldn’t do it. There were too many of them. Nathan was getting mobbed and they were advancing on her too. Why had she ever come back to this place?

Except this wasn’t the cathedral in Inferno, was it? This was Limbo, and in Limbo she was strong. The obsidian knife was in her hand the moment she desired it,slicing cleanly through flesh to draw the blood she needed. As the first of the flayed corpses reached out for her she dropped the knife and stretched out her arm to leave a bloody handprint on the creature’s chest.

“Meus,” she whispered in a trembling voice, and at once it turned to do her bidding. The magic spread like a virus, passed on by touch, and while she could barely make out her mark on the dark red bodies, their behaviour told her which were hers.

They weren’t here for a fight. They were here to find Zack. Except Nathan, free of flayed corpses, had thrown himself at the monstrous Piper. She in turn was laughing, a mocking laugh as she ignored his fists. Even over Nathan’s shouts, Izzy could hear her quiet words.

“You should have heard him beg.”

“Nathan. She’s not real.” The nightmares Izzy had claimed for herself formed a path to let her approach, but he wasn’t listening to her. He was never going to listen to sense, she realised as she watched him, not when Piper was involved. Or Zack.

“Nathan, Zack needs you!” As if on cue, the young man let out a cry of pain. “We don’t have much time. You have to free him!”

She didn’t know if it was her words or Zack’s cries or the two together, but Nathan did draw back from Piper. Izzy sent in her nightmares. They wouldn’t hold Piper back for long, but they didn’t need long. Her knife was in her hand again, but it was hardly needed. Nathan was ripping Zack’s restraints apart with his bare hands. Then, even as Piper was fighting her way towards them, Zack was free. Izzy wrapped an arm around each of them, closed her eyes, and walked.

*****

“Are we safe here?” Nathan was staring at her with an urgent expression while a terrified Zack clung to his arm.

“We’re safe. This is my place. Nothing gets in without my permission.” Izzy wasn’t entirely sure that was true. She didn’t have quite as much control over this place as she would have liked. She’d managed to get rid of the maggot-filled whiteboard, but in its place the wall had started growing flowers. White lilies, red roses. Not very subtle on the symbolism. But it was her place, and if it wasn’t completely safe, it was certainly defensible.

Zack had noticed her now, and pride was forcing him to pretend he wasn’t a blubbering mess and attempt to talk like an adult.

“Uncle Nate? Where are we? What’s going on? Who’s that?”

“This is Izzy. She’s a…an old friend.” And he shot her a look clearly intended to convey that she should handle the more metaphysical questions.

“You were having a nightmare,” she told Zack as he attempted to surreptitiously scrub the tears from his face. “Your uncle asked me to find you and I brought you here. This is my sanctuary.”

“So…she can’t find me here?”

“No. You’re safe.”

The mask was already starting to slip, and at those last words, Zack’s pride failed him. Izzy looked desperately at Nathan, but he looked even more nonplussed than her. He’d never exactly been the touchy feely type after all.

Helplessly she looked around the room, at the wall of shining golden writing, and the wall of flowers, where a few red rose petals had fallen onto the bed, looking like splashes of blood on the dark bedclothes. Raven would have known what to do. He always knew what to do when she had a nightmare.

That memory hurt. It hurt so much that even dwelling on it for a few moments meant she could hardly breathe. But Zack needed her to remember.

He would hold her hands in his, to let her feel that he was there. Then, if she wanted to talk, there would be the left hand on her back, a move carefully calculated to leave his right hand free for note taking. Those ridiculous frilly shirts he used to wear would soak up any tears while she poured out the details of her nightmares into his shoulder.

She didn’t have a right hand, or a frilly shirt, but Izzy cautiously reached out to take Zack’s hand. He glanced at Nathan, apparently for approval, and then much to Izzy’s surprise, flung both arms around her and buried his face in the folds of her robe.

*****

Nathan woke up with his arms full of soft, warm flesh, and remembered whose flesh it was just in time to stop him investigating any further. Izzy was also stirring, her own reaction one of momentary panic before recognition dawned.

“That…went well?” Izzy spoke in a whisper, and then they both fell silent, listening. Zack was stirring on the other side of the wall, and Nathan could hear his sister’s footsteps and gentle knock at her son’s door.

“Morning, Mum. Thanks for the tea.”

“How did you sleep?” His sister sounded hesitant and worried.

“Pretty good, actually. Is Uncle Nate still here?”

“Yes, love.”

“I’d like to see him.”

Nathan was already flinging the bedclothes aside when he heard that final sentence, and narrowly avoided being hit in the face when his sister opened the door to the tiny box room.

“He wants to…” But his sister’s words died on her lips as she looked past Nathan into the tiny room. He turned round instinctively to look at Izzy, now lying uncovered on bare sheets. Sheets now stained a vivid scarlet.

Blood. Her bandaged arm was soaked through and it had spread across her and the bedsheet in a gory mess that he had no idea how he was going to explain. He could hardly tell his sister that she’d bled herself in a dream to do magic and…

“I’m so sorry. I’ve come on early.”

And then his sister was all sympathy, and Izzy was dispatched to the bathroom with a variety of mysterious packages, and Nathan was ushered into Zack’s room in what was certainly the friendliest interaction he’d had with his sister in years.

“Morning, Uncle Nate.” Zack looked at his mum. “Um. I’d like to talk to Uncle Nate in private, if that’s OK?”

It clearly wasn’t OK, but she did leave the room and shut the door behind her. All the same, Zack glanced towards the door and lowered his voice to speak.

“I had the nightmare again,” he said. “But this time it was different. You came and got me away from…from…”

“Her,” Nathan interjected. Zack hadn’t been able to hear the name Therese without obvious distress, let alone say it himself.

“Her. And then we were sitting in a flat, and there was a woman with a missing hand, and somehow it felt different to all the other nightmares, and it’s the best night’s sleep I’ve had since…you know. But what does it all mean?”

The sound of a running shower was audible from the bathroom. Nathan remembered belatedly that he was supposed to be keeping an eye on Izzy. But he couldn’t exactly walk in on her showering, could he? Well he could…but Zack needed him. Nathan took a deep breath.

“The woman with one hand is a magician. I’ve seen her summon things right out of dreams - she calls it Limbo. So I asked her to help you. She found you in the nightmare and we took you out of there to a safe place.”

This was not having the effect he had hoped for. It was a lot to take in, sure, but Zack was getting more and more agitated.

“No, that can’t be right. I thought I was getting better. I thought I imagined you in my dream so that you’d come and help me.” He started to tremble. “That can’t be right, because that would mean I’m still broken and I’m never going to get better.”

Fuck, this was even worse than he imagined. The look on Zack’s face was one he’d seen before. Last night, when he’d picked up Izzy.

“Get out!”

He went back to the box room, for want of anywhere else to go. The bed had been stripped, so he sat down on the bare mattress and started packing up the few belongings he’d brought with him. His sister would throw him out the moment she got a look at Zack, so he might as well be ready.

He was zipping up the bag when Izzy rejoined him, clean, damp, and with fresh bandages on her arm. She looked at him, then at the bag.

“Did it work?”

“It worked.” Nathan got to his feet. “It didn’t fucking help!”

Izzy stumbled back against the door, seemingly propelled by the force of his voice alone. Which didn’t make him feel any better. This wasn’t her fault. He sat down again.

“He thought the dream meant that he was getting control back. When I told him it was us who did it…that broke him.”

After a few moments Izzy came and sat down beside him. He ignored her. This was his fuck up to deal with. Not that he had any ideas. Life had been so much simpler when looking out for Zack just meant handing him a few tenners and roughing up the odd troublemaker.

“It helped me.” Nathan almost jumped as Izzy’s voice broke the silence. “Last night, when you asked for my help. I felt like there might be some point to my existence. At least for a few more hours. You can tell Beatrice that.”

He’d broken her too, he realised. Pulled her away from the edge and then pushed her straight back again. Well, he had to get out of this house anyway. He just had to keep her alive long enough to get her home and she could go back to being Beatrice’s problem. He got to his feet and pulled her up after him. At least he could use her as an excuse for rushing off so soon.

Except when he passed Zack’s bedroom door he could hear the boy crying.

*****

Izzy found herself shoved unceremoniously into Zack’s bedroom. She’d been trying to think of a way to get herself away from Beatrice after the previous night’s events. But then Nathan had stopped in his tracks, and spoken to her in an angry, desperate whisper.

“The job’s not finished yet.”

So now she was in a room with Zack, with no idea what to do. She’d tried to help him sleep. She should have known that would backfire. Raven had tried to help her sleep, and it had got him dragged into Inferno, tortured by Mildred, and ultimately killed. By her.

She sank to the floor, overwhelmed by the agony of the memory that was slowly killing her. Time was supposed to ease the pain, but how could time make it any easier to bear? She had to get out of here. The kid had his own problems. He shouldn’t have to see this.

“You’re the dream lady, aren’t you?”

She hadn’t even seen Zack get out of bed. It was pride again, making him attempt to hold it together now he had an audience. She managed a nod.

“Why are you crying?”

She couldn’t answer that one. It hurt too much to think about, let alone get the words out.

“Sorry. Rude to ask.” A few moments of silence, and then a sudden flood of words poured out. “I was crying because Mum wants me to get better, and she’s sending me to this therapist but I can’t tell him about it because he’ll think I’m nuts, and I’m scared to go to sleep because I keep ending up back there and none of this would have happened if I’d just listened to Uncle Nate, and I thought after last night I was getting better but I’m not.” He put a hand over hers, an echo of the gesture she’d made to him in Limbo. “Thanks for doing it though.”

She managed to meet his eyes at last, but shook her head. “It didn’t help.”

He gripped her hand tighter. “But I’d really like it if you did it again. I really needed the sleep, and I do feel better. Even if it wasn’t me doing it, at least I didn’t have to…”

Pride was abandoned. Izzy could see the desperation in his eyes and feel the trembling in his hands. “Please don’t make me go back to her. Please come back. You’re amazing, and incredible, and I wish I could do what you can do but I can’t. Please.”

A few more tears rolled down Izzy’s face as she thought of a future that she’d once dared to hope for for a few precious hours until it had been snatched away. But Raven was gone, and no matter how much it hurt, she was still here.

Izzy wiped away the tears, took a deep breath, and looked Zack in the eye.

“I’ll teach you.”

Kult: Broken Walls, episode 12: The End

Some time spent reassuring Raven about the pact and I'm feeling a little better.  We've got a plan, and maybe it's not a great plan, but for once I'm feeling something like hope.  As Beatrice and Raven start bickering over cocktail recipes I step away into one of the bedrooms.  I need to get Huldra's spear back, and I'm going to dream my way to it.

It feels strange to be falling asleep without the usual sense of dread.  But when the familiar feeling of being dragged back into Paradise Gardens starts I find I can stop myself and choose my own path.  My flat.  My sanctuary.  But of course there's no spear.  DCI Hunt must have known what it was.  That won't stop me though.  I reach out for it, and find myself outside my own body, watching my eyes turn white.

And then I'm in an alleyway.  Stars are shining above me, and dark skyscrapers tower over me, which should block out the stars and yet there they are.  The spear is there, sticking out of what looks like a pile of broken meat, sticky with blood.  As I reach for the spear, I realise a few things.  The blood isn't blood but black ichor, and it isn't running out of the flesh, it's running back in.  This pile of meat is a body.  It's still alive.  And it has a face.

"Jesus Christ, Nathan!"

I have a lot of questions, all of which are going to have to wait.  I carefully pull the spear out of what remains of Nathan's body and as I do so we both hear the sound of something predatory.  We're being hunted.  I need to get us out of there.  Which means I need a happy memory, and right now I'm running on empty.  I can see Nathan has questions of his own about what I'm doing, but he comes through on the memory.  A photo of him with a woman and a child.  Based on the resemblance between them she must be family.  Maybe a sister.  Somehow I never really pictured Nathan having a family.  Although given how young he looks in this photo, this is probably from before any of us ended up at Paradise Gardens.

As Nathan's face contorts from the pain of having a memory torn out of him, I grab hold of as much of him as possible and drag him through the door I've created.  For once, everything works as intended.  We're back in the penthouse, in the bathroom.  I dump the pile of meat into the tub and go and find Mary.

"I don't go on poorly planned rescue missions to other dimensions for just anyone, you know," I tell her, and find myself breaking down into hysterical laughter when I tell her that Nathan's reassembling himself in the bath.  Then I have to convince Nathan that this blonde bombshell I've just brought into the bathroom really is Mary.  He immediately starts flirting.  At least I'm in no doubt that he really is who he says he is.

Since we're all here, time to discus the plan.  Which of them are we going to sacrifice?  Lilith is out.  I'm still bound to Abaddon.  Nathan rules out Piper, or whatever she's calling herself these days.  He thinks she's bound someone, and based on that photo he gave me I can take a guess at who.  Which leaves Behemoth.

Raven's book has the ritual to summon him by name.  We shouldn't do it here though.  We don't want to have to move him, and the ritual to summon the book has to be done in some barrow on Hampstead Heath.  How Nathan knows that I have no idea, but I'm not going to argue with the pile of ichor covered knitting flesh.  Which just leaves the question of what we're going to do with Raven and Beatrice while all this is happening.  I've dragged them both through so much already.

Not that they're giving me the choice, as a drunken Raven comes stumbling into the room, takes one look at Nathan, and turns even whiter than usual.  As he drags himself off to find an unoccupied bathroom to throw up in, Beatrice joins us.  She's got no intention of being left out of this, and my protestations that I need her to look after Raven are getting me nowhere.  Mary chimes in, explaining that the three of us are far more powerful now, and can't afford to waste effort protecting her.  And while I'm pretty sure that's the truth, at least for Mary, Beatrice is having none of it.

So it's going to be all five of us.  We need to prepare.  Nathan still isn't in a fit state to go anywhere, Raven and Beatrice are drunk, and I haven't had a coffee in several hours.  Beatrice also want some weapons, and I can see her stance periodically change to that of Manius.  I think I can help with that.

There's a fancy metal dish in a pretend fireplace that will do.  Raven pricks his finger and uses his quill to draw a gladius and spear onto some paper.  That goes into the bowl, along with some other stuff that will burn.  There's supposed to be sweet herbs to make an odour.  A pinch of Raven's skunk will have to do.  I breathe in the smoke, reach into Limbo for a dream of Romans, and when I open my eyes the weapons are lying beside me.  I hand them to Beatrice.  They won't last forever, but they'll last long enough.

I can see the envy in Raven's eyes.  I tell him that if we both get out of this OK, we need to have a very long talk.  He agrees, but for now he tells me to rest.  One last - first - good night's sleep before whatever happens, happens.

When I wake up, Raven has already ordered room service and is deep in conversation with whatever staff member delivered it.  I don't normally eat much breakfast, but the way I've been missing meals lately, the idea of a freshly made omelette is quite appealing.  But while I'm eating, I suddenly become aware of a presence in my mind.  I instinctively push it away - but then I realise it's Mary, pulling the knowledge of where to find Lily's skin out of my mind.  She doesn't want to bring up Lily in front of Nathan.  And she leaves me a memory.  A conversation with Lily in the churchyard where Mary used to sleep.  Not the spiteful ghost, or the cruel fake, but Lily as I remember her.  It's enough to move me to tears.

We have to get her skin back.  Nathan isn't happy with the idea that we've got an errand to run on this of all days, and also wants to know what's got me so emotional, so we have to tell him.  After all this time, I have to do this one last thing for Lily.  So he's coming with us.

A short ride in Mary's limo later, we're outside a Georgian terrace in Holborn.  While Nathan and Mary argue over whether to take the direct or indirect approach to getting the door open, I'm already bumping the lock, and as the door swings open I'm confronted with a stench of acrid smoke.  Something is badly wrong here.  Nathan takes the lead.  We make our way up the stairs to the top floor, and then suddenly the others turn a corner and when I follow them they're gone.

Alone.  Again.  Trying not to panic.  I can't do this.  I can't do any of this without them.  But I have to do this, for Lily.  Twenty years I've spent searching for her.  I can't stop now.  I grip tightly onto Huldra's spear and push forward.  The door to the flat swings open with the lightest touch.  And there on the floor is Raven.  Bleeding.  Imploring.  Choking to death.

No, I won't believe it.  This is another trick, using his face to hurt me again.  Then I hear a voice.  Nathan's voice, telling me to wake up, and then I'm lying on the floor, next to Mary, with Nathan's face looking down at me.

Back on our feet.  We're at the real flat this time, together.  The door opens.  It all looks pretty normal, except for the dish of keys and other pocket detritus, that contains several severed fingers.  I remember that purple nail varnish.  Poor Rachel.

I remember that the skin is in a suitcase under a bed, so I follow Mary to the bedroom.  No problem finding the suitcase, but it's empty.  It doesn't take long to find out where the skin is though, when Nathan calls us into the kitchen.  Lillian is sitting there, acting like she doesn't know us and we're just some random people who are harassing her.  I'm still angry over Raven's stolen face.  Enough.  Which one is she?  She asks if I remember that conversation on the rooftop.  Abaddon.

He gives up the pretence and starts taunting us, but one way or another we're getting that skin off him.  I remember seeing him in the room in the brothel, emerging from the mouth of Damian's skin.  I tell that to Nathan, who immediately shoves a fist into his mouth and rips the spider demon right out of there.

Mary grabs the skin.  I try to draw a portal for Nathan to drop him through, but he kicks me and the spear flies right out of my hands.  His jaws snap at Nathan, dripping venom, and Nathan's too fast for him but now he's free again and blocking the door.  But Mary's back, with the suitcase, and a sudden blue wave of force comes out of her and smashes into him.  I grab the spear again.  We can't kill him yet, not while I'm still bound to him, but we can disable him.  I drive the spear into his leg.  He starts the turning to smoke trick Mildred's so fond of, but Nathan manages to break off a couple more legs before he dissipates.  By throwing a fridge at him.  A fridge.

This is it then.  Time to pick up Beatrice and Raven and summon a demon.

Nathan leads us to the barrow on Hampstead Heath.  He says there should be a staircase, but it's being hidden.  He asks us to stab him.  I understand what he's doing.  The same thing I was doing when I decided to drop acid in Raven's flat.  But there's an easier way.  I talk him through the ritual from Raven's book.  He says the words, a cloud passes across the sun for a moment, and then we're looking at a spiral staircase leading down into the barrow.

Dirt floors.  A hanging leather hide curtain.  It's all familiar.  I've been here before - or Huldra has.  Raven starts setting the place up.  We haven't discussed this, but all the knowledge is in my head.  I know what to do.  Soon the braziers are all lit.  I take my place and speak the words to summon Behemoth.

It doesn't work.

It's the same feeling I had when I tried to open the wrong door out of Limbo.  Something's not right.  Did I get the wrong name?  Should I be calling on his human name instead of Behemoth?  Raven doesn't think so.  What if the reason it didn't work is because he's not there to call on?  We've seen the other three, but none of us have seen Behemoth.

The sinking feeling in my stomach tells me he's right.  Which means we need a replacement.  A different unwilling servant.  My mind races, debating the merits of summoning Piper and risking the wrath of Nathan, sacrificing myself alongside Abaddon or trying to find someone else.  But Raven's way ahead of me.  He's no more willing to sacrifice an innocent than I am.  And I want to reassure him that we can find another way, but it's too late.  The bastard uses his bond to summon Lilith.

For a moment the room is plunged into darkness.  And then she's there, in her twinset and perfect bobbed hair, with her black eyes and cracking makeup and longer fingers with too many joints.  Raven is obviously terrified, but he's still strong enough to make one request of her.  Our safety.

We came here to sacrifice a demon, and that's what we're going to do.  Raven's given me a gift and I have to accept it.  Even though it's going to cost me everything.  I give the signal to the others.  Nathan is on her at once.  Mary pushes the two of them into the binding circle and I close it up.  She's strong, and pulls herself free of Nathan's grip, but Raven reminds her they have a pact and she can't fight it.  As Nathan ties her down I look at Raven one last time.

"You'd better come back to haunt me," I tell him.  He nods, and hands me the ritual knife.  How else would he continue to share his poetry with me?  And I step into the circle and get to work, carving symbols into Lilith's flesh.  No words.  Because if I so much as think about what I'm doing here I won't be able to do it.  The final cut is across her throat.

I've done my job.  The book is there.  The thing that was supposed to get Raven out of this mess.  Time to take a look.  It tells me the history of the Dreori people.  What use is this?  I keep turning pages.  It tells me of a sacrifice that went wrong.  Huldra's story.  Keep turning.  Then it tells me of how the book was found by some pathetic wretch in London, who read stories of himself performing powerful magic, and went on to bring more people under his influence, including the four lieutenants, and how each of them used the book but with the fourth one it all went wrong.  Lily's story.

I turn more pages, and it tells me of a magician sitting in a barrow reading a book with her friends, and then their inevitable defeat at the hands of Saklas.  Something makes me turn back, and I read again, and the story's changed.  Now I break the binding by cutting off the hand that signed the contract, but it's no good and we're defeated by Saklas.  Again, and I sacrifice myself to save the others, but it's not enough and we're still defeated.

Again and again and every ending means our defeat.  Beatrice asks us if we're fucked, and what else can I say but yes?  She bends over Raven's lifeless body and closes his eyes.  And something inside me breaks.  A single word screams inside my head.  No.  No.  This book is just like everything else.  A trick.  A liar.  I did not sacrifice Raven for this.  There is no inevitable defeat.  The pages of the book turn blank.

As for breaking the binding, well what do I care if I have one less hand?  I take the dream gladius and bring it down on my wrist.  The pain is incredible as the blade smashes through flesh and bone, but it cauterises the wound as it goes.  And then I'm free, and somehow I can feel that it's not just me.  I've broken every chain those demons had on people.  Abaddon should have listened when I told him I wanted freedom.

Someone asks me how I feel.  With what I've lost, I don't even know.  Ask me later if it was worth it.  Right now Beatrice wants to get on with finding Saklas.  So either we go back to Paradise Gardens or I can try opening a portal here.  Beatrice is all for that, but Mary says to wait.  We need all the help we can get, which means there's one last thing to do.  She opens up the suitcase, takes off an ornate ring, and lays it down on the skin.

Initially the sight is revolting, as the skin bloats like a drowned corpse.  But then suddenly everything fills out properly, and lying on the floor is Lily-Rose, as perfect and beautiful as I remember her.

"Hey, Izz."

"It's been a while."  I can barely manage a smile.  "You took some finding."

"Yeah."

No need for me to open a portal.  Lily's got this.  A wall of heat hits us, and then we're back in Inferno, in that vast cathedral.  And there he is.  Saklas, flanked by Ajulutsikael and Abaddon, and for the first time I'm not afraid of any of them.  There is nothing left to break.  There is only determination.

Of course he wants to monologue at us as he raises up his army of flayed corpses.  I don't care.  Lily's got this.  I don't know what she does to them but every one falls to the ground.  Enough talk.  It's time to end this.  Mary unleashes her blue energy wave again and I see the three of them shaken.  Nathan hurls himself at Piper.  But I have my own methods.

I hand Huldra's spear to Beatrice.  I'm not much use with only one hand, and she knows what to do with it.  Instead I take the knife and draw blood from the stump of my wrist, saying the words to bring forth nightmares.  I remember Abaddon on that rooftop with his quid pro quo bullshit.  You want to play Hannibal Lector with me?  I'll show you fucking Hannibal Lector.  And I can feel a strength I didn't have before.  Why stop at one?  All those movies I wasn't allowed to watch as a kid, haunting people's dreams.  Freddy.  Jason.  Pinhead.  My blood calls them and my will sends them at Abaddon, and in moments he's nothing but a grease stain on the floor.

I turn my attention away from the remains.  Nathan is locked in some kind of dance with Piper.  Mary has the SMG and has closed in on Saklas but he moves like lightning and the spray of bullets goes past him.  His claws slash at her, but don't so much as leave a mark on her skin.  She laughs in his face, and he recoils.  About time she had some backup.  I send my nightmares to surround him.  He's no more impressed than he was with the spiders, but I don't care.  I tell him I've seen better demons than him.  Try living with depression.

Saklas calls for Ajulutsikael but Nathan has her in his arms, and I can hear the crack as he snaps her spine.  Then the ceiling starts to fall, obsidian stalactites plunging from above.  Is that all he's got?  I sidestep them effortlessly.  Obsidian breaks into the sharpest blades on earth.  I should know.  I bid my nightmares pick up the razor shards and drives them into him, pinning him down.

Then Beatrice is there behind him, Huldra's spear in her hand.  She grabs him by his bald head, raises the spear and drives it into his neck.  He screams at us, telling us Thaumiel will save him.  Beatrice has one question for him.  Is he sure about that?  And with that, Saklas is dead.

Time to go.  I need a happy memory.  Beatrice hands me the spear.  Yes, that'll do it.  And we're home.

The next time we're all together is Raven's funeral.  Highgate Cemetery of course, and there's a lot more people there than I was anticipating.  Then onto the Dev, where there's quite the party atmosphere.  Except at the table where the four of us are sitting, where things have descended into yet another awkward silence.  I've prepared for this.  I manoeuvre the paper into my new prosthetic hand and begin to read.  One of Raven's poems, some absolute dreck inspired by my nightmares.  It breaks the silence, and if I have to hurt like this, I want everyone else to hurt too.

So, Beatrice asks.  Did we win?  What now?

Mary still has to get her brother back from Vilde, but she's pretty confident she can handle that with one last favour from Lily.  And given that she seems to be some kind of goddess incarnate, I think she's going to be fine.  What Nathan is I still don't know, but it sounds like he's got a life to go back to with his job and his family.

Then Beatrice looks at me.  And I can see my own pain mirrored in her face.

I'm glad she's letting me stay with her.  It's not just that my own flat is a bullet-riddled ruin with a hell portal in the opposite flat and an angel sniffing around.  I can't be on my own.  I'm not OK.  I was barely holding on as it was and now I've lost the reason I was able to keep going.  Which, in the end, wasn't Lily.

Maybe Beatrice is what I need.  Maybe as we walk through dreams together we'll find some new reason to keep going - like making sure we don't turn into the thing I had to fight in the museum, and the thing that made me fight it.  But right now, my answer to her question is no.  We achieved everything we set out to do.  But it cost me everything.

Kult: Broken Walls, episode 11: Opening Doors

OK.  Trying not to panic.  Almost succeeding.  First time using magic and it's sent me straight to hell.  The temptation is there to just sit down and give up, but I can hear voices in the distance.  Whoever it is, they know where we've been hiding at the hotel and they're coming for us.  Which means I've got to get out of here, for Raven.  Magic got me in here.  Maybe it can get me out as well.  I don't have a museum archive to work with.  Just what's in my own head.  I have to destroy something and a happy memory should do the job.  I think back to when I was eighteen, getting my A-level results.  One of the few times I can remember my parents being proud of me.  I draw a ward around myself in the black sand, and scratch a doorway with Huldra's spear.  I hold the memory in my mind and...nothing.

It didn't work.  I failed, and I'm stuck here in hell.  I'm on the point of giving up when it dawns on me that something's wrong.  It seemed hot because I expected it to be hot.  But it's not, and the light has a blue quality to it that I've seen before.  My own flat in my dreams, my sanctuary.  This isn't hell.  It's a dream, or Limbo, as the new knowledge in my head is now telling me.  That's why it didn't work.  I was trying to open the wrong door.  Try again.  There's a sudden agonising pain as the memory is ripped out of my head, but the corridor is gone.  I'm out.  Back in my own flat in Camden.

I'm not alone.  There's a little girl sitting at the table, drawing in a book.  When she looks up at me, I recognise her face.  It's me, when I was only eight years old.  She asks me who I am.  I ignore that.  She's the one who's not meant to be here.  Not that that's stopping her talking.  And she knows everything about me.  Every detail of my fucked up life, always running away, always failing.

I can't do this right now.  The bed's right there, and all I want to do is curl up on it and wait for the pain to stop, but she's not going to let me.  She wants to show me the picture she's drawn, and I know I don't want to see it, whatever it is, but I look anyway and it's Lily.  Of course it's Lily, with her throat cut and symbols carved into her flesh.

Who the hell is she?  She doesn't answer that, but talks about Lily.  How they took her away to be killed and I did nothing.  How I must have known, given what that place was like, and I did nothing.  I would have been next, if Nathan hadn't tipped me off to get out of there.  Was I really so fucking naive back then?  I left her to die, and now I've found her and I've still done nothing.

I can feel myself starting to break, as I scrabble for tissues to scrub away the tears that are blurring my vision.  She keeps going.  How I've failed my friends.  Raven dragged to hell and tortured to near madness.  Beatrice now sharing her mind with a bloodthirsty killer.  Would that ever have happened if they hadn't known me?  No.  Everything they've been through is my fault.  Pathetic little me with my excuses about my parents never loving me, hiding away in a cult and then in this bedsit asking for help from people I don't even know.

She's looking for a response, but all she's telling me is the same things I've been telling myself since this whole mess started.  It is all my fault.  So she tells me what I have to do now.  Give up.  Take the spear, and make it all stop.  Without me, my friends will be safe, and I'll be free.

Free.  She reminds me of the spider demon on that rooftop, asking me what I wanted most, and I told him I wanted to be free, but that was my stupid naive answer and I know now there's something I want far more than that.  And I am done with people wearing faces that don't belong to them.

She changes then, melting away into some kind of dripping slime until she no longer resembles a child.  I pick up Huldra's spear and drive it into what's left of the creature, and with that it's gone and I'm ready to keep going.  Just like Abaddon said, I'm fragile, but I'm determined.

Which is no help at all when I open my front door and two of the plastic soldiers are outside, lowering their sub machine guns towards me.

Slam the door.  Hit the floor to avoid the hail of lead that immediately bursts through the cheap wooden door.  Reach under the bed for my handgun.  Still there, thank fuck.  There's enough of the door gone that I can see to aim.  Weak spot in the neck.  I know that from last time when Mary ripped one's head right off.  Shame everywhere else is covered in kevlar.  The shots land but it's not enough.  One of them closes the distance and I drop the gun in favour of the spear.  I drive it up into his neck, and he's down.

The other steps over his fallen companion and turns his weapon on me, and I try to throw myself to safety but a spray of bullets rips into me.  The pain is extraordinary, but I make one last desperate attempt to fight back before losing my grip on the spear as everything fades to black.

Waking up.  Seems to be a hospital.  That's good.  Better than dead, anyway.  Not much pain.  Bandages covering my many injuries.  Also good.  Handcuffs chaining my wrist to the bed.  That's less good.

I smell the man before I see him.  A mix of brylcream and rotting meat heralds a man who looks like he walked straight out of some old TV crime drama.  He introduces himself as DCI Hunt.  As I try to think what on earth I can tell him that won't get me either jailed or sectioned, the light catches him for a moment and I get a glimpse of a vast pair of wings.  An angel.  He's an angel.  I guess it makes sense that if demons exist, so do angels, although given my current predicament I'm pretty certain he's no more on my side than they were.  And it seems I'm not the first of our little group to run into him, assuming the 'big man' refers to Nathan.

He's got an offer for me.  All the trouble goes away if I just give him what he wants.  Service, absolute obedience.  See, there's the thing.  I've historically not been very good at that.  A complete failure, in fact.  That doesn't please him, but at least he leaves me along to think about it.

And what I'm thinking is that something about this doesn't quite feel real.  He's not a real police officer.  Maybe these aren't real handcuffs.  I just have to make myself see past it, but how am I going to do that without Raven's bottle of LSD?  Then I realise Raven's still given me the answer.  It's in his book.  A string of words and symbols that will open my eyes.  I whisper the words while picturing the symbols, and then I'm somewhere else.  A cell, open on one side, looking out at a city of vast skyscrapers.  And only two ways out.  Over the edge, to plummit to my death, or through the door.  The door that DCI Hunt just walked back through.

I'm completely unarmed, and he's an angel carrying a huge spear, and for a moment I'm actually considering that drop until Huldra's memories start to guide me.  He knows spear fighting.  He knows a spear that big is unwieldy.  So gets low and get close and you take away their advantage.  There's a lot more to it than that, but that was enough to give me the chance to get past him and out of the door.

Time to get out of here.  Time to call on the magic again and pray I don't mess it up this time, even as I'm sprinting through yet another alternate dimension being hunted by a fucking angel.  Another happy memory, and I'm going to have to find a new way to do this because twenty years of depression haven't exactly given me a lot to work with here, but I remember getting paid for my first ever PI job and the realisation that I'd been successful at something, and I pick a doorway in the smooth black marble corridor I'm running down and as the memory is ripped out of my mind I throw myself through.

I'm back at the British Museum.  I sent myself back here because an injured Beatrice got herself into trouble to get me in there and I might have to get her back out of it again.  But first, there's a room full of security guards staring at me as I've suddenly run through their doorway covered in bandages and wearing a hospital gown.

"Sorry!  Wrong door!  Erm...temporal police.  Try not to think about it."

I leave the stunned looking security guards and go looking for some clothes.  A janitor's closet gets me a set of overalls.  They're made for someone several inches taller than me and I have to fold over the cuffs a few times, but at least they hide most of the bandages.  Now to find Beatrice.  Assuming she's only had to deal with mundane challenges she'll most likely be in the closest security post to where she kicked the door open.  So I should start at that door.

When I get there, there's just the one security guard, deep in conversation with Raven, who has somehow convinced the poor man to come to one of his poetry recitals.  Raven introduces me as his friend and the guard is curious why I'm wearing the overalls, so I tell him I'm temping.  He nod, the staff turnover is terrible.  I agree, pointing out they couldn't even get me a uniform in my size.  Wait...did I just come up with a convincing cover story?

As we leave him behind, promising to see him at the coffee shop for poetry, Raven tells me the bad news.  He came here with Mary, who was apparently somewhat changed after a visit to Maiden, Mother and Crone, but one of the four demons had shown up and taken her away for a meeting with the big guy.  Which meant it's time for the three of us to conduct a daring rescue attempt.

Beatrice is in an office looking bored, and it's so good to see her looking like herself instead of the monstrosity I had to fight.  But there's no time for emotional reunifications.  Mary's in trouble, and even if I didn't owe her for pulling me out of hell, or Inferno as I find myself wanting to call it now, there's no way I can take out all four demons by myself.  Especially not since DCI Hunt implied Nathan might no longer be in a position to help.  But no time to think about that.  Or explain to Raven why I suddenly know magic.  I ask if he can manage any of that healing magic he was talking about using on Beatrice, but it's going to take time, and I don't have time.  I just need a happy memory.  He offers one of his.  I wish I didn't have to take it, but the longer this takes, the more risk of losing Mary.

He hands me a photo of the three of us on a night out at the Dev.  I hold it in my hands, and try to ignore Raven's scream of pain as the memory is torn out of his mind.  The portal opens, and I realise I've fucked up yet again.  I'm there in that vast cathedral, but I'm alone.  Alone, that is except for Saklas standing over a dais, carving symbols into a young woman's flesh.

My first thought is to rush him and knock the knife out of his hands, but that's just going to be a fast way to get both of us killed.  I need backup.  And I know where to find it.  Twenty years of depression hasn't given me much to work with, but twenty years of nightmares is another matter entirely.  I've brought things back from Limbo before.  Weapons, blood, maggots.  And if I can bring back maggots, why not spiders?

I use my own blood to call them and give them form, using my fingers to trace out the symbols that pull them out of Limbo.  And then a swarm of monstrous spiders rips its way into Inferno, spindly black limbs clacking and venom hissing as it drips from their fangs onto the stone floor.

Saklas doesn't seem too impressed, but I don't need him to be impressed.  I need him to be distracted, and right now his attention is on me.  The knife goes flying from his hand, but I can see the woman on the dais isn't moving.  He's holding her there.  I can feel the spiders, each one linked to my own mind, and I drive them to attack. Not enough to kill him, but enough to release his grip on the woman even as the spiders swarm across her body.  He has tricks of his own, calling for his servants, and those dreadful flayed corpses rise up to join the fight.  My spiders can't hold out against them, and I can feel the pain of each one being snuffed out in the grip of those creatures.  But they don't have to win.  They just have to hold their attention long enough for the woman to get to me.

"You'd better be Mary," I tell her as we step back into the museum office and the portal closes behind us.  The old 'tell us something only you would know' routine is a bit of a cliche, but this blonde woman with blood red nails doesn't look much like the Mary I know.  I ask her what we ate after that last trip to Paradise Gardens.  Chinese food and terrible wine.  It's really her.  Beatrice is looking stunned.  I just feel like if I'm still alive at the end of all this, I'm going to want to get myself a robe.  And maybe a pointy hat.

Where now?  After the conversation I heard, I don't think the hotel room is safe any more, and Mary agrees.  She has an alternative though.  A limo pulls up outside and takes us to some fancy hotel, and as we're taken up to the penthouse suite I'm reminded it's not only the kind of sleazy places I'm familiar with that don't ask questions.

As Beatrice and Raven investigate the room service menu, Mary pulls me aside.  There's something Raven hasn't told me, and I immediately know that means bad news.  He told her that while Mildred was torturing him, she forced him to sign a contract.  That's no surprise, given what Abaddon did to me, but there's more.  The pact has bound him to her, and if she dies, so does he.  The same applies to Abaddon, of course, but that barely even registers.  I can't let Raven die.  We have to break the pact - both pacts - before we can kill them.

The thread of hope in all this is that I know how to break the pacts.  We need Saklas's book, and Mary knows how to get it.  But summoning it has a price, and the price is murder.  We have to sacrifice an unwilling servant, and it's one thing to kill monsters and plastic soldiers but the idea of cold blooded murder still revolts me.

But then I remember the word Saklas used in the cathedral.  Servants.  It's not just the flayed corpses.  The four demons are his servants, and I'm sure they'll be very unwilling indeed.  I don't know if I'm capable of murdering an innocent, but killing one of those four to get the book?  That I would enjoy.

Kult: Broken Walls, episode 10: Day at the Museum

It's late.  Beatrice and Mary are both asleep, and I can't stop myself glancing at Beatrice from time to time to reassure myself she's not bleeding again.  Raven should be sleeping too but he insists on staying up to help me, and I can't stop him when he's this excited.  It's a frustrating process, full of gaps and uncertainties, but ultimately I find I'm enjoying it.  This is detective work, after all.  I wish I had my whiteboard.  Raven's notebook will have to do.  I'm glad he talked me into taking a nap earlier.  I don't want to have to stop.

I'm in a maze of corridors.  Nowhere I recognise, but they've got an institutional feel.  I'm lost, running blindly, and I can hear a sound.  The rhythmic beating of a huge black heart.  I don't know where it is, or if I should be running towards it or away.  All I know is that I have to run.

And then I'm awake, lying on the bed in the hotel room.  That wasn't too bad, compared to some of the nightmares I've had recently.  And one memory is lingering.  A sign, reading "Archive C, British Museum".

The door opens, and before I even have time to panic I see that it's Beatrice with her arms full of takeaway coffee cups.  My usual quadruple espresso.  Lattes for everyone else.  Raven's still asleep, in his chair despite my best efforts, but Mary's awake.  And I end up having to try to explain how me and Beatrice both have ancient Romans living in our heads and one of them gave me this spear.

Beatrice is feeling the need to be up and doing something instead of staying in this hotel room, and after my nightmare I'm feeling the need to visit the British Museum.  Maybe that archive will tell us something about the Romans in our heads, or the Dreori tribe that the book talks about.  She's game.  Although first we need a shopping trip.  Beatrice managed to hide the blood on her t-shirt by closing her jacket, but she really needs something clean.  Between stabbing myself at the hospital and treating Beatrice's wound, my clothes are more blood than fabric by now, and Raven's still in a hospital gown.

Beatrice gets in the shower, and I ask Mary to help me move Raven to the bed.  No need.  He's awake, and insists on moving himself.  I explain about the museum idea.  He's sceptical, given what it says in the book about evidence of the tribe being destroyed, but I'm not so sure.  Museums keep a lot of things that aren't on display to the public, and my dream told me I need to find that archive.  That's not helping my case, as he points out I'm now talking about breaking into the museum.  He has a point.  I'm not bad at lock picking, but electronic alarm systems are a whole different ball game.

Raven suggests I should go in a dream.  That idea terrifies me, but it makes sense.  My dreams are horrifying, but lucid.  I could probably find the way.  So the plan is, we'll visit the museum during the day, to get a feel for the layout of the building - to case the joint, as Raven puts it - and then come back to the hotel to do the scary part.  Maybe I can bring Beatrice with me for that part as well?  Raven thinks he might be able to help with that.

Raven notes that the guy on the desk here is rather over familiar.  On the plus side, that means Raven's managed to talk to someone other than us.  On the minus side, that's not the kind of attitude I expect from the receptionist in a place like this.  Mary mentions that he asked her for Nathan's number when she talked to him.  Ahh.  That's OK then.

After a meal and quick shopping trip, Beatrice and me set out for the museum.  We look pretty normal, so it should just be a matter of going in like any other pair of tourists.  Except when we get there there's a bunch of TSG officers hanging around outside and here we are carrying an ancient Roman spear in a sports bag.  Even if by some miracle they're here for some reason unrelated to us, that's still not going to go well for us.

We take a walk around the perimeter.  The museum is huge, with plenty of ways in and out.  Finding one that's neither guarded nor alarmed, however, proves impossible.  But there has to be a way in!  We got into hell through Raven's bathroom mirror.  We must be able to get into a museum.  Beatrice has an idea.  I'm good at being inconspicuous.  She's good at being conspicuous.  She'll play the obnoxious tourist and create a distraction while I sneak inside.

Beatrice hands me the spear, goes over to a door and kicks it open.  Immediately alarms sound, security guards descend, and while she yells at them about looking for the toilets, I find my moment to step inside.  I'm not going to have long.  This place has cameras and at some point someone's going to notice my arrival.  I pull up my hood and scarf so at least my face is covered, and start my search.  Stairs or a lift.  The archive has to be in the basement.

Of course there's a locked cover on the freight lift.  Prizing it off takes some time, time I don't have, but the call button works.  Inside I'm faced with an array of buttons for different levels, but somehow I find I've pressed the button for one of the sub basements. I don't know how I knew which one it was, but as the doors open again I know I'm in the right place.  Back in those institutional corridors.  I've already been here too long and I start to run, desperately looking for the sign I remember, but instead I hear voices.  Two people talking in strange distorted tones.

I can't let myself be found.  I duck into the nearest doorway.  And there I hear again the beating of that huge black heart, and a strangely familiar voice calling to me.  The people outside are still there and getting closer.  The voice is still calling.  I go towards it.  And then I see why the voice sounded so familiar.

It's me.  Or rather, it's me but taller and smartly dressed and without my slumped shoulders and dark circles under the eyes.  She's sitting on a throne.  Maybe this is meant to disturb me.  I ask her, is this supposed to be a vision of what I could have been if I'd made better life choices?  No, she says.  She's my future.

She tells me she has knowledge for me, but she isn't sure I'm ready for it.  I don't know what she's worried about.  Does she really think more knowledge is going to break me?  By now I'm not sure there's anything left to break.  But it seems she expects me to prove myself to her anyway, and something is coming for me from out of the shadows.  It's Beatrice, but huge, with muscles to match, and black eyes and clawed fingers.

I feel myself start to burn with rage.  How dare they keep using the faces of my friends to hurt me?  This monstrosity is not my beautiful brave Beatrice, and as she charges towards me I raise Huldra's spear to deflect her at the last moment, then drive it into her leg.  I know that would have taken down any normal human, but this thing is not human and she moves like lightning.  Her claws swipe across my neck and I feel hot blood starting to drip down, but now she's close, close enough that I can drive that spear up under her chin.  There's a moment of resistance before I feel it smash through bone, and when I pull it free it's dripping, not with blood but black ichor.

As the Beatrice creature crumples to the ground I do my best to stand nochalently, even though I'm gripping the spear so tightly my entire hands have turned white.  Whoever - whatever - this person who wears my face might be, it seems I've impressed her.  She comes towards me, reaching out her hand which is filling with smoke.  She pushes it into my head, and I feel her fingers reaching right through my skull as she does it.  And then my head starts to explode.

When I wake up, I'm alone, sitting on the throne.  I get up.  I don't like that image.  I can feel so much knowledge in my head I can barely make sense of it.  I fix on a few specific things.  Symbols.  The one I saw on my phone that made me stop breathing, and the one Raven used to bind Lily.  I know the names associated with them now.  Thaumiel.  Malkuth.

I have to get out of here.  Get Beatrice out of whatever trouble she's got herself into on my behalf, when she's still so injured she should never have left the hotel room, not that that would ever have stopped her.  But I can still hear those voices outside, and while they're no longer horribly distorted, they're still people capable of calling down a world of trouble on someone who's broken into the archives of the British Museum.

I hide behind the throne, and briefly think of trying to come up with some kind of story to explain why I'm here, but quickly dismiss that.  My head might be full of knowledge of what I'm realising must be magic, but I'm still the same old Izzy who can't come up with a cover story to save her life.  Magic then.  Can I do some magic that will make me inconspicuous while I get out of here?  I'm in a museum archive.  There must be something down here that can help me out.

What I find is a funeral shroud.  I know I can use it to shroud myself from human sight for a little while.  Unfortunately, to do that I'm going to have to destroy it.  A priceless museum artifact, that I'm going to destroy for my own benefit.  Maybe there's a better way, but I don't have one right now.  The shroud turns to dust in my hands.

It worked.  They don't see me, and even seem to step slightly out of my way as I pass.  I'm free.  But as I walk down the corridor I realised it's changed.  The ground beneath my feet turns to sharp black sand, and the air becomes oppressive with a horribly familiar heat.

Kult: Broken Walls, episode 9: Hotel

I drive the scooter like I'm on autopilot.  Total obedience to the rules of the road.  I can't risk being pulled over carrying a bag of drugs and an SMG.  Keep Mary safe.  Get back to Raven.  Nothing else in my head, until Mary nudges me.  A Ford Lincoln has pulled up next to us at the lights.  Big flashy car.  Car that she points out is about to ram us, until I take off down a back street and spent some time losing them in the maze of alleyways better suited to a little scooter than a big car.  At least I still remember how to do that.  And we make it back to the hotel before the battery runs out.

Raven's clearly on edge when he lets us back in and I can't blame him.  I plug in the scooter, hand over the stash, and apologise for not being able to get him any clothes.  He pulls out a blister pack, pushes out a couple of pills, then throws it to me.  Diazepam.  I swallow the pills.  Maybe when they take effect I might be able to keep going a bit longer.

There's a problem though.  I've got Raven's notes but the book itself isn't in English.  I glance at it, just on the off chance it's in one of these new languages I seem to have picked up lately but no such luck.  Raven was using the internet for translation but that's no use to us now.  We're going to have to go old school and get a book.  Maybe the hotel receptionist can give us directions?  I'm not asking.  I don't think I should be having important conversations in my current state.

Mary reports back.  There's no library around here, but she's got an address for a bookshop.  Raven goes through his notes and writes down the details of the book we need.  He gives Mary some money for the book and some extra to pick up some food.  He wants wine as well.  Not happening.  Not until the benzos wear off.  I can't handle seeing him unconscious.

It's just the two of us now.  Raven rolls the biggest joint I've ever seen, lights up, and pulls out his moleskine.  It's poetry time.  And what do you know?  Fucked up on benzos and second hand skunk turns out to be the ideal state of mind to listen to his gender-swapped retelling of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice.  I could listen to this for hours.  Or is it just that I needed so badly to hear his voice that I don't have to pretend to listen?

Part way through there's a knock at the door, and Raven insists I take the SMG while we answer it.  But it's just Nathan, coughing violently.  I guess it did get a bit smoky in here after Raven shut the window.  I don't think Nathan likes the poetry though.  He starts talking about another appointment or something, but then there's a tap at the window.  Nathan goes to look while I cover him with the SMG.  At first I don't see anything.  And then I hear Beatrice's voice.

She's in a bad way, and I really don't need to be doing first aid in my current state, but she needs that dislocated arm reset.  With a bit of help from Nathan we get it back in place, and after Raven hands over his joint she manages to talk.  She's lost Harry.  She took him back to the hospital but those plastic soldiers were there waiting for them.  She couldn't stop them taking him.  All she could do was escape herself.  She slips a hand into her jacket, then pulls it out again covered in blood.  And before I can even figure out what's happening, her face turns pale, and she falls back on the bed.

Oh god.  Beatrice.  I pull up her blood soaked t-shirt and find the massive bleeding wound.  Fuck.  I am not sober enough to be trying to deal with this.  But if I don't she's going to die.  I tell Nathan to go and get a first aid kit, and try to staunch the bleeding with a handful of tissue.  So much blood.  So much pain in her eyes.  My hands are getting slippery from the blood but I can't stop.  Cocaine stops bleeding, doesn't it?  And it's a painkiller.  Raven throws me a bag.  This is probably a terrible idea and going to leave a massive scar, but either that or the pressure I'm applying is starting to work.

Nathan is back with the first aid kit.  Everything I need to treat the wound.  Just need her to hold on a bit longer.  And now she's convulsing, but I am not losing her, not today, and while Nathan holds her down and Raven shoves some crushed up pills into her mouth, I finish dressing the wound.  She's stable.  She's going to be OK.  Although we are definitely not getting the deposit for these sheets back.

Nathan still has to go out.  I'm left with Raven and a sleeping Beatrice.  Covered in Beatrice's blood.  So tired.  Raven wants to know if I'd like to see some real magic.  Absolutely fucking not.  I've seen far too much weird shit in the last few days.  He knows some kind of incantation that will supposedly help Beatrice heal faster.  But he doesn't know where that power is coming from.  Best not to mess with dark forces after all the shit we've been through.

Raven can obviously see how tired I am, as he suggests I get some sleep.  When the hell did I last sleep?  At the hospital, when I had to stab myself to wake up.  Fuck.  OK.  I'll sleep.  But he's to wake me up if I seem bad.  And if I randomly start bleeding, that counts as bad.

I'm sitting on a bench face to face with a Roman soldier.  He asks me my name, and I tell him.  He says he knew before I said it.  How?  Probably the same way that I know his name is Huldra.  There's some link between us, spanning fifteen hundred years.  I dream of him, and he dreams of me.  He tells me how he killed Tertius, his Centurion.  Something came from the blood.  He wants to know what happened with the pagan wise woman and the Centurion and the red leather book.  I don't know enough Roman history to know about the people.  But I know about that book.

We have to destroy it, he tells me, and all the people who've used it.  How do we do that?  It's a magic book, and must be destroyed with magic.  Surely as a barbarian I have magical abilities?  I don't think so.  But I'm pretty sure I know people who do.  Then he leans forward and hands me his spear, and the next thing I know I'm waking up back in the hotel, still with the spear in my hand.

Raven has gone to sleep, but Beatrice has woken up again and is staring at me.  I remind her of the hospital and how this isn't the first time something's followed me back from my dreams.  She asks me if I know how to use it, in perfect Latin.  More to the point, I ask her how she knows how to speak Latin.

She tells me about a dark moment in the hospital while I was being treated for my leg wound.  Do I believe in past lives?  I didn't last week, but I'm rapidly reconsidering.  She remembered being a Roman soldier.  Ave Huldra, she says to me.  Ave Manius, I reply.  What the fuck is going on?  How do we know each other's Roman past life names?  Is this some kind of messed up fate thing?

We spend some time just talking, trying to get used to this whole thing.  Beatrice is a bit upset by memories of things Manius did.  I understand.  Huldra did some things that I'm finding pretty upsetting too.  We moved on to discussing Raven's poetry, taking advantage of him being asleep.  Beatrice is worried about whether it's healthy for him to be writing a poem that's basically retelling the story of him being dragged to hell and tortured.  I have no idea.  It's not like I'm a model of good coping strategies after all.

Mary gets back and Raven wakes up at the sound of the door.  She's unfazed by the state of Beatrice - or me for that matter, still covered in her blood.  Mary's got a massive burn on her hand and needs the first aid kit breaking out again.  Once that's dealt with, she hands over the book, casually mentioning that she had to deal with Mildred to get it.

I look at Raven straight away.  I can see the look in his eyes at the mention of that name, and hear the sudden silence that's more than simply not speaking.  But he's holding it together.  And we've got everything we need now to read the book.  I'm briefly distracted by Mary, who's found a letter than Nathan left for her.  I'd forgotten all about it in the panic of dealing with Beatrice.

She reads it, and then hands it around.  It's from Vilde the Viking, who I've never met, but know of by reputation.  Word on the street is, she burned a bunch of people alive.  She's terrifying.  But compared to Mildred...well, no.  Not demon scary.  Just regular human scary.  And the letter says she's rescued Mary's brother from something or other, so it sounds like she's not all bad, and maybe Mary should go and meet her like the letter says.

Shit.  Mary's brother.  I was supposed to be going with her to find him, and forgot all about it.  But there's nothing I can do about that now.  I just have to read this book.

Kult: Broken Walls, episode 8: Home

Harry Bates introduces himself.  What am I supposed to do?  I've no idea how to treat a bullet wound, and I've got the feeling any kind of interference will just add to the number of those.  Beatrice moves in front of Raven, which Harry doesn't like.  He tells her to sit down, pointing his gun at Raven.  She's refusing, so I beg her to do what he says.  We only just got Raven back.  I can't lose him again.

Lily and Harry seem to be getting along well.  Seems they both blame Nathan for dragging them to hell.  I think I'm starting to see the implications of that.

Why isn't Nathan dead already?

Now the threats are back.  Make up leave, tie us up or shoot us.  He favours the last, and aims at Beatrice.  I can't let him do that.  She meets my gaze, and says a few words in Latin.  She'll be the distraction while I take him out.  How do I even understand Latin?  I barely remember a few words from school, but I understood that like it was English.  More to the point, how does Beatrice know how to speak Latin?  But there's no time to think about that.  I've got to stop Harry.

Except my foot catches on something, something that I'm not sure is even there, and I fall flat on my face.  At least I've drawn Harry's attention.  He throws me zip ties and tells me to tie my legs and hands.  But the next thing I know, Beatrice is on him.  The gun falls from his hand as she gives him a beating I didn't know she was capable of.

What are we going to do with him now?  He did say he wanted to get his friends back from hell, and there is that portal in the basement.  Beatrice picks him up and carries him most of the way there before some vestige of normality catches up with her and she declares that she's taking him to a hospital instead.  Nathan isn't happy, and starts threatening her.

"Don't you fucking dare!"

That's the first time he's heard me swear.  Seems like it got through.  Finally we come to an agreement.  Beatrice is still going to take him, but first she's going to break his leg so he can't go chasing after us if he escapes the hospital.  She wants to talk to me later about the fact she knows exactly how to do that, and drives her spear into his leg.

Hell changed her.  It changed all of us.  Most of all Lily, who finally disappears, leaving Mary behind.  How do I explain?  She wasn't like this when I knew her.  The Lily I knew was sweet and kind and full of enthusiasm.  Now it seems like there's nothing left but spite.

Just the four of us left now.  We need a plan.  I need to get Raven's book, and I'd like to pick up a few other things for him as well.  Clothes and so on.  He asks for his stash.  Well that was a given.  If nothing else, Nathan is still with us despite the hole in his chest, and could probably use something for the pain.

Raven's not doing well though.  He says he'll slow us down, and he's right.  I was counting on being able to leave him with Beatrice but now it's going to have to be me taking care of him.  He suggests that he could just stay here.  Quiet abandoned warehouse where nobody's likely to show up.  Except that's not exactly true.  There's a portal to hell in the basement, plus some homeless friend of Mary's called Simon who spends time here.  And Simon's brother Zeke, who isn't exactly his brother any more but is definitely bad news.

That's enough to send Raven into a panic attack.  What do I do?  Raven always knew what to do when I needed him.  My first thought is that he needs the oxygen mask, but he pushes it away, so I do the only thing I can think of and hold him until he calms down again.  I'm taking him to a hotel.  I know the kinds of places where people don't ask difficult questions.  I've spent a lot of time taking photos in them.

Nathan's got some business of his own to deal with, but Mary wants to visit her brother.  I don't really want to go into a flat with a portal to hell on my own, and Mary could use company when visiting her brother.  Guess we're sticking together for now.

I can't face the thought of taking Raven on public transport in his current condition, so we call for an accessible taxi.  These hospital wheelchairs are the worst, I suppose to discourage you from stealing them, which is exactly what I've done.  Mary takes the front seat and I find myself wedged between Raven and Nathan.  Good thing I'm small.  Raven asks for his pen, and pulls out his moleskine notebook, which he's also somehow managed to hang onto through all this.  He says he feels a poem coming on.

So that's what people mean by tears of joy.

The hotel is as shitty as I remember, and wants a deposit for the sheets, but as predicted they don't ask any questions about us.  We book into the optimistically described family room and get Raven settled in.  The TV stays off.  Technology is not our friend right now.  I leave Raven attempting to think of a rhyme for 'excruciating', and take a bus back home.

Home isn't feeling as welcoming as it used to.  Looking up at that old Victorian building, all I can think about is the hell portal on the top floor.  Mary's looking at it too, and she tells me about the black shadows infesting the place.  Between that and the car that's pulled up at the end of the street, we have to move fast.  Mary drags me down an alleyway to the back of the building.  There's a fire escape here with a locked grating, but this is my home.  I know how to get in.

One problem.  The fire escape leads to my neighbour's flat.  I barely know the guy, and now I'm about to break in.  Fortunately he works nights, so at least he's unlikely to be home.  These Victorian sash windows fasten on the inside, but they open wide.  Mary doesn't hesitate, smashing a hole with her elbow, and we're in.

We've got company outside.  I go to open the front door and see one of the guys in tac gear that I saw at the hospital.  Facing away from us, so we could sneak past.  Except he's holding some kind of sub machine gun, and do we really want to take that chance?  Maybe we could distract him by throwing something down the stairs?  As we're considering that, the phone rings.  Dammit, we don't need noise right now.  Mary pulls the cord out of the wall, but the phone keeps ringing.  She answers it, and turns pale.

I don't know what the hell that was, but right now I've got other concerns.  I heard footsteps move towards the door and then stop.  No chance of a distraction.  We're going to have to go for an all-out assault and try to take him down quickly and quietly.  I've fought these guys before.  Mary grabs a baseball bat that's leaning by the door, and I pick up a kitchen knife.  We make a plan via silent gestures, and then I open the door.

There's nobody there.  I look all around, and up at the ceiling, just in case, but nothing.  Time to go for it then.  There's a window opening at the end of the corridor, but this isn't my first time picking Raven's lock and I'm in in a moment.

The place is immaculate.  Everything neat and tidy, even with a smell of pine freshness.  This was supposed to be an easy job.  Just grab a few things and go.  And now nothing's where I left it, and I can feel that downward spiral that I only dragged myself out of a few hours ago starting to take hold again.  The book's not under the mattress.  The stash isn't in the bathroom ceiling.  What now?

The tac gear guy must have heard us searching.  There's a sound of splintering wood and a smell of ammonia and I barely have time to throw myself to the floor as a spray of bullets tear through the flat.  We're done for.  Except somehow Mary's got my back, and unleashes some kind of whirlwind attack, and when I manage to get up and look round the guy is slumping to the ground and his head...his head has fallen off.

It's not a guy.  It's not human.  It's some kind of creature made of plastic.  That's what I fought at the hospital.  As I'm trying to deal with that, Mary hands me its sub machine gun.  Do I know how to use it?  Hah.  It can't be that different to a 9mm, can it?

Somehow the shock of the gunfire and hitting the floor has given me a moment of clarity.  Of course it makes no sense for Raven's apartment to be immaculate.  This place smells of patchouli, not pine.  This is an illusion, and for a moment I caught a glimpse of what's underneath.  The book and the stash are both on the bed where we left them.  I just can't see them now.

Mary is good at this kind of thing.  She saw the shadows from outside the building.  As she's stripping the body armour from that creature, I ask if she can see the things on the bed.  I don't know what she does, but she can see them now.  And she reaches out for them, but she can't pick them up.

It feels like I'm being crushed.  So close, but so far away, and the only way I know to reach them is on the other side.  Why did I ask Mary when this whole fucking mess is my fault?  I should have stuck that kitchen knife into my leg and let the pain do the job, never mind if I end up bleeding out on the floor.

My name was Huldra.  I was stolen from my homeland and taken to this rainy island.  They trained me to fight and taught me their language.  They have a different name for me, and beat me if I use my old name, but in my head, I still call myself Huldra.  The Centurion has captured a holy woman.  She has promised him something.

I'm curled up on the floor.  I don't care if I bleed.  I reach for the knife, but my hand goes right through it.  I can see the book, and the stash.  I pick them both up.  Mary is talking to me, and I'm trying to answer, but she doesn't seem to understand a word I'm saying.  Everything around me is confusing.  I'm not sure where I am.  But Mary know where she's going, and leads me out, back down the fire escape.  My scooter's parked back here, and it'll carry two.  Mary's the only thing keeping me going right now.  I'm no use to Raven like this.  I just need to get Mary to safety, and then I can let go and let the spiral take me.

Kult: Broken Walls, episode 7: Hospital

Raven needs a hospital.  He needs a lot more than that, but right now that's all I can do for him.  Nathan looks like he's been through a fire, Mary's covered in blood, and some other guy that Nathan refers to as Harry looks catatonic.  Beatrice clearly has no more intention of leaving Raven right now than I do.  So we all go.

The looks the A&E staff give us.  I feel like we should be getting loyalty points or something.  The others get whisked away, but there's no way I'm leaving Raven.  The staff want us to leave but neither me or Beatrice have any intention of being separated from him.  You don't go through hell for someone and then just walk away.  Especially when I can't shake the feeling that this is all my fault.  I don't know if it's Beatrice's stubbornness or the complete mess I must look right now, but they let us stay with him.

Then Beatrice notices the burn on her arm.  It's bad.  Really bad.  Hellfire bad, I guess.  I tell her to get it treated.  I'll stay with Raven.  And I do, up until they point where they want to put him in an MRI machine or something and I'm forced to wait on the seats outside.  I sit hunched up, hugging my legs against my body.  And that's when exhaustion catches up with me.

I'm back in hell.  Back in the cathedral with the blood soaked altar, and this time there's a person sitting on it.  Raven.  Raven, but not quite how I know him, looking better with more muscle and short hair.  And he speaks.  He tells me being tortured has uncovered some memories.  I want to ask him questions, but he insists that I should answer questions in return and I am done with this Hannibal Lector bullshit.  So he tells me the one thing that I'm most afraid of.  He holds up an arm and shows me something writhing beneath the skin, and tells me that I was too late.

Then he starts to twitch, the same way I saw Arachne do when he was wearing Damian's skin, and a moment later his mouth splits open and an arm emerges.  I can't watch this.  I have to get away.  I run, but I hear the creature mocking me with Raven's voice, telling me how worthless I am and how useless it is to run.

I have to wake up, and all I can think of is the nightmare when I was about to kill Lily and the knife in my own throat woke me up and Raven was there to hold my hands and tell me I was OK.  I only have to think it and the obsidian knife is in my hand.  I need to be careful.  I need to cause pain, not seriously injure myself.

And I wake up in the hospital with my leg spouting blood.  I guess obsidian is sharper than I thought.  Everything after that is a bit of a blur, but at least if you're going to cut an artery, a hospital is the place to do it.  The next thing I really remember is being in A&E with my leg bandaged, and an absolutely furious Beatrice.

Of course she's angry with me, and my protestations that it was an accident and I did it in my sleep don't seem to be getting through.  So I ask if Raven's awake yet.  And that does get through.  She tells me he's in a medically induced coma, and breaks down into sobs.  I want to do the same, but I've never seen her cry like this before and one of us is going to have to be strong.  She wants me to tell her that it didn't happen, that I fucked up the dosage with the LSD and we just had a bad acid trip.  I wish I could, but I know she knows it's not true.

She's afraid.  Afraid she made a mistake coming with me and was nothing but a liability when I know damn well I would never have got him out of there without her, and I tell her so.  Afraid of the feeling of wanting to stab me.  Afraid that we were too late.  And after my dream, so am I.  I tell her about it, and explain why I had to stab myself to wake up, and how sometimes things follow me from my dreams back into the waking world.  In this case, an obsidian knife in my leg.  Normally Raven's there to help me.  He knows what to do when he hears me screaming.

But it occurs to me.  The thing in the dream told me I was too late.  But was I really?  Or was it just using my dreams to torment me?  There's been a lot of that kind of thing recently.  Why should I believe what I was told by a nightmare creature that wants me to be scared?

Beatrice stares at me.  Then she puts out a hand.  Confused, I shake hands with her, and she introduces herself to me.  Beatrice Andrews.  So I do the same.  Isabella May, ex cultist.  And I tell her what's really going on with the old cult members who've been causing me trouble.  Not harrassment or fraud or anything she was imagining.  Demons wearing the skins of people I once knew in order to torment me.  Would she have believed me if I'd told her the truth when she asked me the first time?

She laughs.  Not what I'd call healthy laughter, but it's better than the sobs.  More her.  She's brought me a coffee.  I promise to try to stay awake while she checks on Raven.

As I'm downing the coffee, which is terrible compared to what Beatrice sells, I hear a voice outside.  Someone is talking to Beatrice, telling her she has to go, and initially she's arguing, but then there's a sudden change in tone and she's agreeing to whatever she's being told.  I'm already scrambling to get out of bed when the door opens and a woman walks in.

She's familiar, but it takes me a moment to place her, because last time I saw her we were at Paradise Gardens and were running in terror from one of the flayed corpses.  Janet, Mary's friend.  Except now she's fashionably dressed and talking like a normal person.  Or at least, a lucid person.  There's nothing normal about what she's saying about healing my leg.

The pain is excruciating, and it's all I can do to keep my cries of pain suppressed to the point where I don't inadvertantly summon a bunch of nurses.  But afterwards I can feel even under the bandages that the wound is gone.  At least I don't have to convince her that we can't leave without Raven.  She seems to have got that message loud and clear from Beatrice and I've already spent more time away from him than I intended.

She does something that stops people noticing us as we move through the hospital.  We come to a locked door, and by some miracle my lockpicks are still in my pocket where I shoved them after breaking into Raven's flat.  I'm on edge, and my first fumbling attempts fail.  Janet is getting increasingly urgent, and there are some heavy footsteps heading our way.  I focus everything I have on the task, and the lock clicks open just in time for us to dive through the door before two people in masks and tac gear looking like they just wandered out of some video game pass by.  No time to think what on earth they're doing here.

Raven.  He's there, hooked up to some kind of breathing apparatus, and while he's not intubated I can see he's going to need oxygen if I'm going to take him away from here.  And I am going to take him.  Wheelchair.  Oxygen.  A set of scrubs for me, so I look like a nurse instead of a blood soaked patient.

I used to be good at this kind of thing.  Evading pursuers, moving unnoticed.  Since my trip to hell, something seems to have changed.  The skill is still there, but it's harder to focus on.  And so when the lift doors open, the two masked people are standing right outside.

My first thought is to play it cool, and tell them to step aside as they're blocking the way.  Instead one of them throws a punch at me.  I duck it, take the extendible baton that Janet's offering me, and slam it into his crotch.  Not much of a reaction.  That and the smell of hot plastic tells me these are no normal opponents.  I go for the head instead, hoping to knock him out as I drive the baton into his chin.  He goes down, but the baton is knocked from my hand as I find myself facing the second.  The urge rises, to leap, to grab his head and push.  And as his head slams against the wall I land catlike on the ground, and Janet slowly claps.

Hell really has changed me.  Time was, I didn't think I had it in me to really hurt someone.  Now I know that's not true any more.

The path is clear.  I get Raven out of the hospital, and Janet tells me to head back to the warehouse to meet the others.  It's not long before she disappears from sight.  Not much of a surprise at this point.

Mary lets us into the warehouse.  Nathan and Beatrice are already there, and Beatrice is busy sharping the end of a broom handle into a spear.  She pulls up a box for me to sit on, and parks Raven between the two of us.  His hand feels cold and clammy when I take hold of it, but it helps to be able to feel he's there.

We need to figure out what we're going to do, and finally I've got something new to share.  Mildred talked about me reminding me of her daughter.  She might not have been Mary's mother, but she did have a daughter.  So who was she?  Mary suggests I use my phone.  Of course, that's my first step in finding someone.  Complicating things is the fact that Mildred Lawson died and was buried some time in the mid 90s.  But there was more to the cult than just Mildred.  There was Saklas himself, and the other three lieutenants, and then everyone below them.  I search all the names I have.  Mildred Lawson.  Piper Philips.  Gene Patterson.  Landon Sampson.  I remember that last one best.  Nasty little shit.  Pushed me down a staircase once.  Not even a real shove.  I was just in the space he wanted to walk through and so he kept on walking.

Missing, presumed dead, all of them.  And Mildred did have a daughter, but I don't find a name.  As I'm staring at the phone, thinking about my next move, the screen changes.  Some kind of symbol appears.  A triangle.  And then a word.  Cease.

The phone falls out of my hands and cracks as it hits the floor.  Something is wrong with me.  My lungs aren't working.  I can't make myself breathe.  Terror grips me, but I can't even scream.  I feel Beatrice's fist against my back, trying to stop me choking, but there's nothing there.  I'm going to suffocate, I realise as I fall to my knees, and there's nothing anyone can do to stop it.  Mary's telling me to fight it, telling me I'm stronger than that, but I'm losing this fight.

My perception shifts, and I'm somewhere else, and now I can breathe again, but when I do my lungs fill with thick black smoke.  And then I'm back in the warehouse, coughing hard enough to break a rib but at least I'm breathing.  And for a moment I see black tendrils reaching out from my phone before they disappear.

Then I hear a familiar voice, and when I look round at Raven his eyes are open and he's pulling the oxygen mask off his face to offer it to me.

As I break down in tears, Beatrice puts her arms around me and puts the mask on my face.  As the oxygen starts to take effect, Raven talks.  He knows what happened with the phone.  Technology is just one more method they can use to get to us.  It happened to Nathan before.  Except he just forgot everything he'd just read instead of being commanded to stop breathing.  Raven heard a lot while he was being tortured by Mildred, and he remembers everything.  He tells us we're all fucked.  Yeah.  I figured that.

Four of them, and they've all named themselves after demons.  Lilith, Ajulutsikael, Behemoth, Abaddon.  And they've been bickering about an accident, and the final three, while everyone else is bound or sword.  Lilith - Mildred - was responsible for the accident.  And there's the matter of the interloper.  The return is coming, and they need everyone bound or sworn.

What does it all mean?  The final three must mean us, but how does that fit in with knowing that Mary doesn't seem to have been part of the cult?  Is Lily the interloper?  Is the accident something to do with Mary, or Mildred's daughter?

Beatrice, understandably, wants an explanation.  How do we even explain this?  She's gone from knowing absolutely nothing about this to...well, all this, in the space of a day.  Mary has a go.  I'm not sure how much it helped.

So what are we going to do?  What do we have?  Mary pulls out the contract and pen she got from Mildred and puts them on the ground.  Nathan, rather to my surprise, pulls out a severed hand made of plastic and throws that down.

What I need is my whiteboard.  Then it occurs I'm in an abandoned warehouse.  The whole damn floor is my whiteboard.  I look for a piece of charcoal or something I can write with, but Raven hands me his quill pen.  How he's managed to hang onto that all through this, I really don't know.

As I write words, draw shapes and connect them with lines, I can feel the shape of things starting to fit together.  I've fought Mildred twice now.  Twice she's dissolved into smoke, and come back again later.  I am hurting her, and she's escaping.  All this time, I've been feeling helpless, but I'm not.  I've hurt her enough to make her run away.  If we can stop them escaping, we can fight them.

I need to know more information, and I know one place I can get it.  Raven's book, with all its annotations and cross-references.  Where did he even find it?  And what was he trying to do?

The bastard.  He was trying to help me.  All that time he spent sitting with me as I screamed in my sleep.  He figured out there was more to it than regular nightmares.  He got dragged into hell by a flayed corpse because he wanted me to be able to sleep.

And I can't even take the time to think about that, because we need to know about the books.  He tells me he got the name from a web forum.  Dreor Fyrngemynd, a pre-Christian book of magic, bound in leather.  Nathan remembers that Saklas had a book bound in red leather.  We really need Raven's notes.

What else can we do?  Mary mentions Maiden, Mother and Crone, which means we have to explain to Raven that there's a bit more to the place than a gothic candle emporium.  But Janet told her to stay away from them.  So she brings up the possibility of summoning Lily again.

She promised she wouldn't do it again.  But maybe it won't be so bad this time.  If we're prepared.  Raven knows a way to help.  A symbol of protection that Mary can stand in.  And we need to have our questions ready.  We'll get three.  I know that somehow.  Mary won't be able to speak while Lily takes over her voice, so Nathan and me both need to be ready to ask.

What was the accident?  How do we stop them from escaping?  And neither of us can think of a third question, but Mary has been texting her brother repeatedly with no answer.  So I guess that's our third question.  Where is Gabriel Lawson?

I said Nathan had to be ready to speak as well as me in case I freaked out again, but as Mary draws the symbol, I realise I'm not going to.  If anything, Nathan is the one who looks stressed out.  Mary calls on Lily, and there she is, bloody and branded, and staring at Nathan with a look of pure hatred.

That's when I understand.  For two decades I've been consumed by my search for her.  Now I have my answers.  She's dead, murdered by the cult, her skin used to torment me and her ghost living on haunting Mary.  I know why Mary has memories of a cult she was never part of.  And I know who Mildred's daughter was.  Finally, I can let go.  I'll always remember her as my friend, but she's not the most important person in my life any more.  Because behind me are the man I went to hell to rescue, and the woman who walked beside me the whole way.

What was the accident?  Lily's own death, a sacrifice to be used in a ritual, but something went wrong.  Not her death, but what happened afterwards.  Guilt and shame.  She tells us how in her current form she's seen everything, and it's more terrible than we will ever know.

How do we stop them escaping?  They are bound, to one stronger than us.  Our strength must equal or exceed theirs.  So we need to find more strength.  Perhaps we could find a patron.

I prepare to ask the final question, but before I can speak, Nathan jumps in with a different question.  How to heal himself without being bound?  Lily looks at him with a smile that's scarier than the look she was giving him before.  Heal his lungs?  Or the bullet wound?

And then the sound of a rifle shot splits the air, and I can hear Harry's voice shouting as blood blossoms on Nathan's shirt.