Nightside bit feats (Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth)

Razor Eddie appears in the Necropolis after John and Suzie travel there.

"Enough travelling," said Suzie Shooter. "I feel the need to kill someone."

"Questions first," I said. "But if anyone doesn't feel like talking, feel free to encourage them in violent and distressing ways."

"You know how to show a girl a good time, Taylor."

"Except, your secretary isn't in there," said a calm, quiet, and very familiar voice.

We both looked round sharply and there he was, Razor Eddie, the Punk God of the Straight Razor, standing unnaturally still in the pool of light from a nearby street-lamp. Even though he very definitely hadn't been there a moment before. Razor Eddie, a painfully thin presence wrapped up in an oversized grey coat held together by accumulated filth and grime. His hollowed face was deathly pale and streaked with grime, dominated by fever-bright eyes and a smile that had absolutely no humour in it. We walked over to him, and the smell hit us. Razor Eddie lived on the streets, slept in doorways, and existed on hand-outs, and he always smelled bad enough to make a sewer rat's eyes water. I half expected the street-lights to start wilting. -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Apparently he got an "upgrade" for his straight razor. In addition to its ability to slice through any material, it can now cut through dimensions.

"You can't just crash into the Necropolis and intimidate the staff into giving you access," said Eddie.

"Want to bet?" said Suzie.

"They know you're here," Eddie said patiently. "And they're already on the phone to Walker, screaming for reinforcements. By the time you've smashed your way through that building's defences, you'll be hip deep in Walker's people. And your only real hope for rescuing Cathy is a surprise attack. Fortunately, I can offer an alternative way in."

His right hand, thin and grey, came out of his pocket, holding a pearl-handled straight razor. He flipped the blade open, and the steel shone supernaturally bright. I could feel Suzie tensing beside me, but she had enough sense not to go for any of her weapons. Eddie flashed her a meaningless smile, turned away, and cut savagely at the empty air. The whole night seemed to shudder as the air split apart, widening and opening up like a wound in the world. And through the opening Razor Eddie had made, I could see another world, another dimension. It was a darker night than ours, and bitter cold air rushed out into our world. I shuddered, and so did Suzie, but I don't think it was from the cold. Razor Eddie, unaffected, stared calmly through the gap he'd made.

"I didn't know you could do that," I said.

"I went back to the Street of the Gods," said Eddie, putting away his razor. "Got an upgrade. Did you know, John, there's a new church there, worshipping your image. Unauthorised, I take it? Good. I took care of it for you. Knew you'd want me to. Follow me."

Poor bastards, I thought, as the Punk God of the Straight Razor stepped through the wide opening, and Suzie and I followed him through, into another world. -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Someone under Walker's employ is capable of strengthening dimensional barriers, preventing them from being opened or bypassed.

"Walker didn't know you'd be here. And I'm reasonably sure he doesn't know about your new ability to cut doors into dimensions with that nasty little blade of yours. Take us home, Eddie, so we can express our extreme displeasure to him in person."

He nodded slightly, and the pearl-handled straight razor gleamed viciously in the starlight as he cut at the air before him, in a movement so fast none of us could follow it. We all braced ourselves, but nothing happened. Eddie frowned and tried again, still to no effect. He slowly lowered his blade and considered the air before him.

"Ah," he said finally.

"Ah?" I said. "What do you mean, ah? Is there something wrong with your razor, Eddie?"

"No, there's something wrong with the dimensional barriers."

"I don't like the sound of that, Eddie."

"I'm not too keen on it myself. Someone has strengthened the dimensional barriers, from the outside. No prizes for guessing who."

Cathy hugged my arm tightly. "How does he know things like that?" -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

...

I heard muttering beside me. Tommy Oblivion was using his gift to try to convince himself he was somewhere else, but it seemed Walker's dimensional barriers were too strong even for him. -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

When Lilith appears in the Street of the Gods, she makes an entrance by killing countless angels, causing them to literally rain from the sky.

Just another day on the Street of the Gods, then—until dead angels began dropping out of the night sky. They fell gracelessly and landed hard, with broken wings and stupid, startled faces, like birds who have flown into the windows of high-rise buildings. They lay on the ground, not moving, creatures of light and darkness, like a child's discarded toys. Everyone regarded the dead angels with awe and some timidity. And then they looked up, the worshippers and the worshipped, to see a greater dark miracle in the starry night sky.

A moonbeam extended lazily down into the Street of the Gods, shimmering silver starstuff, splendid and coldly beautiful, just like the great and awful personage who sailed slowly down it like an ethereal moving stairway, smiling and waving to the crowds below. Lilith had been planning her return for some time, and she did so love to make an entrance.

Inhumanly tall, perfectly formed, and supernaturally feminine, with a skin so pale it was the very antithesis of colour, and hair and eyes and lips blacker than the night, she looked like some screen goddess from the days of silent film. Her face was sharp and pointed, with a prominent bone structure and a hawk nose. Her mouth was thin-lipped and far too wide, and her eyes held a fire that could burn through anything. She was not pretty, but she was beautiful almost beyond bearing. She was naked, but there was nothing vulnerable about her.

Her presence filled the air, like the roar of massed cannon announcing the start of war, or a choir singing obscenities in a cathedral, like the first scream of being bom or the last scream of the dying. No-one could look away. And many a lesser god or goddess knelt and bowed, recognising the real thing when they saw it, come at last to the Street of the Gods. There was a halo round Lilith's head, though it was more a presence than a light. Lilith could be very traditional, when she chose. She stepped down off the moonbeam into the Street of the Gods, and smiled about her.

"Hello, everyone," she said, in a voice rich and sweet as poisoned honey. "I'm Lilith, and I'm back. Did you miss me?"

She walked openly in glory through the night, and everyone fell back before her. The great and small alike bowed their heads, unable to meet her gaze. The ground shook and cracked apart beneath the thunder of her tread. 'Even the biggest and most ornate cathedral seemed suddenly shabby, next to her. She kicked dead angels out of her way with a perfect pale foot, not even looking down, and her dark mouth made a small moue of annoyance.

"Such simple, stupid things," she said. "Neither Heaven nor Hell can stand against me here, in the place I made to be free of both." -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

She also completely vaporizes some tourists just for getting too close to her, with nothing but a glance.

Some tourists made the mistake of pressing forward, with their cameras and camcorders. Lilith just looked at them, and they died screaming, with nothing left to mark their presence save agonised shadows, blasted into the brickwork of the buildings behind them. -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

And then she does it again to a group of doomsayers.

The prophesiers of doom, those persistent grey creatures with their hand-made signs saying the end is nigh seemed most put out. They hadn't seen this coming. Lilith smiled at them.

"You are all redundant now. I am the End you have been waiting for."

More shadows, blasted into crumbling brickwork, more fading echoes of startled screams. -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Transient Beings can "walk sideways" out of reality, disappearing down a direction incomprehensible to normal three-dimensional beings.

"You," she said, pointing to a single figure at the front of the pack. "I don't know you. You're not one of mine. What are you?"

The Engineer stared calmly back at her, while everyone else edged away from him. He was squat and broad and only vaguely humanoid, with blue steel shapes piercing blue flesh, and long strips of bare muscle tissue held together with bolts and springs. Steam hissed from his naked joints, his eyes glowed like coals, and if you got close enough you could hear his heart ticking. He was surrounded and protected by a group of gangling metal constructions, of intricate design and baroque sensibilities, though whether they were the engineer's worshippers or his creations was unclear.

"I am a Transient Being," said the Engineer, in a voice like metal scraping against metal. "A physical incarnation of an abstract idea. I am immortal because I am a concept, not because I have your unnatural blood in my ancestry. The world has become so much more complex since your time, Lilith. All of this… is none of my business. So I'll leave you to get on with it."

He turned and walked sideways from the world, disappearing down a direction most of those present couldn't even comprehend, let alone identify, and in a moment he was gone. The steel-and-brass constructions he left behind collapsed emptily, so much scrap metal littering the ground. Lilith stood silent for a moment, nonplussed. That hadn't been in the script. -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Lilith demonstrates her ability to absorb the life energy of her offspring, sucking a powerful being dry in a moment.

The Splendid opened his perfect mouth to protest further, and Lilith reached out and touched him lightly on the forehead. He cried out in shock and horror as his life energy was ripped right out of him, to feed Lilith's endless hunger. She sucked him dry in a moment, watching calmly as he crumpled and shrivelled up before her, all his power nothing more to her than a drop in her ocean. The Splendid blinked out and was gone, as though he had never been. Lilith smiled about her.

"Just a little illustration of my mood, so everyone knows where they stand. I may be your mother, but I won't abide over-familiarity. Now, where are those who banded together to betray me, so very long ago? To banish me from my own creation? Step forward, that I might look upon your faces once again." -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

She does this a second time, too:

"You! This is all your fault! See what has become of me! Look at what driving you out did to me!"

"I see it," Lilith said calmly. "Fair punishment, I'd have said, for a traitor and a fool."

"It was necessary," said the Carrion in Tears, but it sounded tired, as though repeating an old, worn-out argument. "And now you're back, and it was all for nothing. I told them, but they wouldn't listen… Kill me if you want. I don't care. I was beautiful once, and adored… I don't recognise this Nightside. You won't either. It's all changed. It's moved on and left us behind."

"Killing you would be a mercy, in your current state," said Lilith. "But what the hell. Don't say I never did anything for you."

She absorbed all its living energies in a moment, then made a moue of distaste with her night-dark mouth as the Carrion in Tears vanished into her. "Nasty," she said to the silent crowd. "But I promised myself that I'd kill all of my old enemies who survived, and I always keep my word. Now, step forward, my children. The original productions of my young and lusty flesh." -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

And then a third time, to multiple at once:

She called for them by their original names, and again there was a long pause. Finally, a mere handful of Beings made their way to the front of the crowd to face their long-forgotten mother. First was the Harlequin, who knelt before her in his chequered finery and bowed his masked head to her.

"I am here, mother dear, though much-changed by time and circumstance. I allowed myself to be shaped by fashion and fad, but still I survive, and still I dance. I would like to think that you could still see something in me that you would recognise."

"I change, too, when I must," said the Incarnate, bowing elegantly to Lilith. He was young and pretty, dressed in an immaculate white suit of impeccable cut, his noble face attractively androgynous under a white panama hat. "The details change, but I go on, worshipped and adored. At present I am a pop sensation, singing for my supper, and teenage girls worship my image on their bedroom walls. I am the Thin White Prince, and they love my music and they love me. Don't you, my little doves?"

A pack of fierce young girls surrounded him, dressed just like him, their overly made-up faces sullen and aggressive. You could see in their faces that he was more than life itself to them, and they would die for him in a moment. Some actually spat and hissed at Lilith, sensing a threat to their beloved idol. The oldest of them couldn't have been more than fifteen.

"I know," said the Thin White Prince. "But one takes one's adoration where one can find it."

And finally, there was Bloody Blades. He crouched uncertainly before Lilith, snorting and quivering, held in place by ancient instinct. He was huge and hairy, with hooves and horns and terrible clawed hands. He stank of sweat and musk and uncontrolled appetites. He glowered at Lilith with stupid, crafty eyes, attracted by her femininity but cowed by the sheer power he sensed in her.

"There's not much left of Bloody Bones," said Harlequin. "He's been reduced to a purely animal nature, a god of wild actions and transgression without conscience. There are always men and women ready to worship the beast within. There are those who say he did this to himself, quite deliberately, to free his needs and appetites from the tyranny of reason."

"How very depressing," said Lilith. "From all the thousands who spilled from my fecund loins, only three remain? And all of you so much less than I made you to be."

She killed them all, contemptuously, sucking in their life energies, then murdered all of the Incarnate's child followers with a casual wave of her hand, just to be thorough. Her power beat on the air like a storm that sweeps all before it, and the assembled crowd quailed under her cold gaze. -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Walker tries to use his Voice of the Authorities on Lilith. She no-sells it easily.

"Stand where you are," said Walker, and his words thundered on the air. He was using the Voice the Authorities had given him, that could not be denied by the living or the dead. "Surrender yourself to me, Lilith, and do no more harm."

Lilith laughed at him, and the Voice's power shattered on the air like cheap glass. "Don't be silly, Henry. Your Voice was only ever designed to work on the things of this world, and I am so much more than that. Run away, dear Henry, and hide until I come for you. I have a special reward in mind for you. You will worship me, and love me, and I will make you immortal in some more pleasing shape, so that you can sing my praises for all eternity. Won't that be fun?" -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Dead Boy can resist attacks designed to forcibly remove his soul from his body:

We headed purposefully across the floor, and the punters hurried to get out of our way. The fat man saw Dead Boy coming, pulled an intricate glass charm out of his pocket, and threw it on the floor. The glass shattered, releasing the pre-prepared spell, and Dead Boy stopped as though he’d run into an invisible wall, his colourless face twisted in a pained grimace.

“It’s an antipossession spell,” he grunted. “Trying to force me out of my body. Stop the bastard, John. Don’t let him get away with the girl.”

[...]

“Cheap piece of rubbish spell,” he said cheerfully. “Almost an insult, expecting something like that to take me out. My soul was put back by an expert. Leave the soul thief to me, John. I’ll arrange for something suitably humiliating and nasty to happen to him.” -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Dead Boy is fast enough to time bullets.

“Hell with this shit,” snarled the young punk, sounding actually outraged. “We’re supposed to be hard men! Spreading fear with a glance and crushing all opposition! We don’t turn and run when a couple of serious faces turn up!”

“He’s young,” said a voice from the shadows of a very dark alley. “Doesn’t know anything. Please don’t kill him. His mother would give me hell.”

The young enforcer went for the gun on his hip, but Dead Boy was already moving. Being dead, his body wasn’t limited to normal human reaction times. He darted forward impossibly quickly, closing the distance between himself and the young enforcer in a moment. The punk actually got off two shots, and Dead Boy dodged both of them. He crashed into the young enforcer, ripped the gun out of his hand, and head-butted him in the face. He then examined the gun while the young man crumpled to the floor, before finally throwing it aside. -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

The duality of Dead Boy's state of being can "confuse" magical traps and alarms, causing them to fail:

We made our way down a narrow side alley almost choked with garbage and general filth, and a couple of sleeping forms who didn’t even stir when we stepped over them. I found the back door without having to raise my gift again because it was exactly where I would have put it. (Having had occasion to dodge a few creditors myself, in my time.) Dead Boy checked the door out for magical alarms and booby-traps, which didn’t take long. He only had to look at them, and they malfunctioned.

“My being dead and alive at the same time confuses them,” he said happily.

“It’s always confused me,” I agreed. -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Another example of the above.

We moved quietly down the gloomy corridor, alert for any sign that we’d been noticed, but the whole building seemed silent as a tomb. The stairway was so narrow we had to go up in single file, so I let Dead Boy go first, on the grounds that he could take a lot more damage than I. There were any number of magical alarms and booby-traps, but they all blew up in silent puffs of fluorescent smoke, rather than try to deal with Dead Boy’s presence. -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Dead Boy is unfazed by getting his arm run through with a giant metal spike, his only concern being the fact that said spike ruined the sleeve of his coat:

The next stairway was wide enough for us to walk side by side. I was starting to relax when a wooden step sank just a little too far under Dead Boy’s weight, followed by a slight but definite click, and I threw myself flat. A metal shaft shot out of a concealed hole in the wall, passed right over me, and speared Dead Boy through the left arm. He looked down at the spike transfixing his arm, sighed heavily, and carefully pulled his arm free. I got to my feet again, and we studied the metal spike.

“Why did this work when the others didn’t?” said Dead Boy.

“Purely mechanical,” I said. “Least there’s no harm done.”

“No harm? This is my good coat! Look at these two holes in the sleeve. Going to cost a small fortune to put those right. I’ve got this little fellow in Greek Street who does all my repairs (you’d be surprised how many outfits I go through), but they’re never the same afterwards. He calls it invisible mending, but I can always see it…”

“Do you think you could perhaps lower your voice a tad?” I said, quietly but urgently. “We are supposed to be sneaking in, remember?” -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Dead Boy easily kills a man whose size is so great that his fists are larger than human heads.

Dead Boy and Julien Advent and I turned our full attention to the Beadle. He eyed the only door, but could tell it was too far away. He flexed his great muscles, showing off his size and strength. His fists were bigger than our heads. He sneered at us.

“This changes nothing! You’re not big enough to bring me down. Not even together. I will eat your flesh, and crack your bones for the marrow, then I’ll stick your severed heads on the railings outside, to show everyone what happens when you mess with the Beadle. And don’t think your magics will help you against me. The owners made me proof against all magical attacks.”

“Good thing I’m not magic then,” said Dead Boy. “Just dead.”

He went to meet the Beadle, daggers in hand, and the Beadle turned to run. He’d barely made two steps before Dead Boy was upon him, plunging both his daggers deep into the Beadle’s kidneys. The giant cried out horribly and fell to his knees. And Dead Boy cut the Beadle up into his respective original pieces, undoing the work that had first put the huge construct together. The Beadle kicked and screamed for a long time. John and I watched in silence, while the two feral children grinned and stamped their feet approvingly, and the wee winged faeries clapped their tiny hands together in joy and relief.

Dead Boy went about his business as methodically as any butcher, until nothing was left of the Beadle but blood and gore and piles of separated pieces, some of them still twitching. -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

As a reiteration of something that was learned in Book 5, Lilith's mere presence is enough to steadily narrow numerous timelines down to one future:

“There are any number of potential time-lines, possible futures,” said Julien, a little condescendingly. “None of them more certain than any other.”

“Right,” said Dead Boy. “My own car comes from an alternate future that clearly has nothing to do with the one you described.”

“Once, that might have been true,” I said. “But our future, the future our time-line is heading towards, is getting more certain all the time. I’ve… seen things. Signs, portents, details coming true despite everything I could do to avoid them. According to Old Father Time, the number of possibilities for our time-line is narrowing down, steadily decreasing to only one inevitable future.”

“Because of your mother,” said Julien.

“Yes,” I said. “Because of Lilith. She’s such a powerful Being that her mere presence here is enough to overturn the whole apple-cart and rewrite the rules of reality itself.”

I let them consider that for a while, then pressed on. They had to understand the background of my thinking, in order to appreciate what I intended to do. -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

John, Dead Boy and Julien Advent use a ritual to summon an angel, during which we get another set of vague statements and descriptions that imply higher-dimensionality:

Julien helped me clear away the throw cushions and the rugs to reveal the bare floor-boards beneath, while Dead Boy went downstairs, and came back with a bucket full of the Beadle’s blood. He handed it over sulkily, muttering something about how he’d been saving that blood, to make blood pudding and stock later. I ignored him and had Julien prick his thumb and add a few drops of his own blood to the bucket, to purify it. (Working on the principle that some trace of the drug that brought out his best elements was still in his system.) I then used the blood to draw a really big restraining circle, surrounded by every protective symbol I knew. It took a long time and used up most of the bucket of blood.

“I don’t even recognise some of the languages you’re using,” said Julien.

“Think yourself lucky,” said Dead Boy, and I had to agree.

Finally, it was done. It looked pretty impressive, even if it did smell really rank. The three of us sat down together, inside a second smaller protective circle, holding hands; and that was it. No chanting, incense, dead chickens, or waving your hands around. In the end, most magic is really primarily a matter of will and intent. The signs I’d so carefully daubed were the spell’s address, along with a few extra things to get the recipient’s attention, and a few safeguards so the recipient couldn’t simply wipe us all out for interrupting them at a particularly inconvenient moment. You’d be surprised how many demons screen their calls these days. Everything else was down to me, Julien Advent, and Dead Boy, and our combined will and determination.

“Something’s happening,” said Dead Boy, after a while. “I can feel energies forming all around us. I can See… I can See avenues opening up, levels of reality unfolding like the petals of a flower, more levels, more and more… I can See further than I ever could before… and I don’t like it. It scares me. It’s too big…”

“Look away,” I said sharply. “Shut down your Sight and reinforce your mental barriers. Concentrate on the summoning.”

“I can feel something,” said Julien.

“Don’t,” I said.

Dead Boy and Julien both had their eyes squeezed shut now, beads of sweat standing out on their strained faces. I kept my eyes open. One of us had to, and I was more used to Seeing the unseen realms. I still kept my mental barriers firmly in place. There were things none of us could afford to see, if we wished to remain in the mortal world. The glory of the shimmering plains is not for mortals. By now we could all feel Something approaching, from a direction we all instinctively recognised but couldn’t identify. It felt like above, in all senses of the word. Something was coming into our world, Something impossibly large and powerful, downloading itself into a mortal frame that wouldn’t blow all the fuses in our merely human minds. -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

This angel proceeds to effortlessly send John to a possible future, giving us a minor glimpse of creatures that exist outside of time:

And once I was locked on to that terrible place, the angel tore me loose from the Present, and sent me rocketing forward through Time. The world speeded up around me, Time flashing by impossibly fast. Days became months became years, piling up behind me. I saw the Nightside fall, its great buildings crashing down, crumbling like sand castles in the path of an oncoming tide. I saw the great oversized moon in the night sky explode, its pieces raining down like fiery meteors. And I saw the stars start to go out, one by one by one.

There were Voices all around me, growling and muttering and howling, outside of Time. Strange Presences, all speaking at once in no human tongue, yet still I could understand the gist of it. Slowly they became aware of me, then the Voices began to cajole, to warn, and to threaten. I think they were frightened of me. I refused to listen, making myself concentrate only on my destination, until finally Time slammed to a halt again, and I was spilled out into the dark future I’d visited before. The dead end of the Nightside, and maybe all of history.

And all of it my fault. -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

The war with Lilith in this alternate future is implied to have "broken" time itself:

Larry snorted, amused despite himself. “That… is one of Lilith’s children. Pretty much all there is left to eat, these days. Apart from the bodies. There are still a lot of dead people left over from the War, but we haven’t been reduced to cannibalism. Not yet. Oh yes, they’re still lying around; decades after the War. Nothing decays any more, you see. Except the buildings. All kinds of strange energies were released during the final days of your struggle with your mother. And now all the natural processes are… out of order. Existence follows new rules now. Sometimes we don’t feel the need to eat or drink for days or even weeks at a time. And we don’t sleep. Bad dreams can take on a life of their own, these days.”

“It’s hard to keep track of time any more,” said Jessica, in a voice like a shell-shocked child’s. “There’s no way of measuring it, you see. There are no days, the night never ends, and watches don’t work even though there’s nothing wrong with them. Perhaps you and Lilith broke Time, during the War…” -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

During this war, she and John sucked the life out of the world in order to fight each other:

“And once you returned, events proceeded with predictable inevitability,” said Annie Abattoir. “By insisting on searching for the truth about your mother, though everyone warned you against it, you set in place the chain of events that led to the War between your forces and hers. The two of you destroyed the Nightside by fighting over it, like two dogs with a single bone, because neither of you would allow the other to control it. Between you, you sucked all the life out of the world, draining it dry to power greater and greater magics, for your precious War.” -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

(Given the scale of this war and the fact that it not only devastated the planet, but destroyed the Moon and wiped out numerous stars, the term "world" can be assumed to mean more than just "planet" here.)

A literal god of disease is incapable of affecting Dead Boy with his powers:

Lord Pestilence was a stringy grey figure in a tattered grey robe, his face so gaunt it was little more than brittle leather over a grinning skull. Thick pus oozed from his empty eye-sockets and dripped from his mirthless smile. His bare hands were covered in weeping pustules. He rode a primitive hobby-horse fashioned from human bones, and wherever he went he spread disease. All around him people fell back choking and bleeding, dying slowly and horribly from a hundred different plagues. Lord Pestilence rode his hobby-horse down the middle of the road, and didn’t care whether he struck down enemy or ally; it was enough that he was free at last from his prison under the Street of the Gods, free once again to spread sickness in the world and glory in the suffering he caused.

Dead Boy saw him coming, and was the only one to stand his ground, when everyone else did the sensible thing and fled. Lord Pestilence headed straight for him, giggling like a happy child, and Dead Boy considered the old god thoughtfully. Lord Pestilence lashed out with typhoid, cholera, polio, AIDS, Ebola, and green monkey fever, and everyone for half a mile around fell twitching and choking to the ground; but not Dead Boy. He just stood his ground, waiting, his pale face impassive. Enraged, Lord Pestilence urged his bony hobby-horse on, throwing increasingly obscure diseases and maladies at the single figure that stood so contemptuously in his path. Until finally the old god made the mistake of coming within arm’s reach of Dead Boy, who lashed out with a move too fast for living eyes to follow. He clubbed Lord Pestilence right off his hobby-horse and sent the old god crashing to the ground. He lay there a moment, crying out at the unthinkable indignity, and Dead Boy stamped on his chest. Old bone cracked and splintered under the force of the blow, and Lord Pestilence unleashed all his awful power in one terrible blow at the grim figure standing over him.

A hundred thousand diseases issued from the old god, every fever and blight and growth that had ever vexed mankind, and none of them could touch Dead Boy. Diseases were for the living. Thwarted, the magic recoiled and turned back upon its sender. Lord Pestilence screamed and howled horribly as the diseases took hold in him, all at once, eating him alive. Cursed to know at last all the pain and horror he’d spent lifetimes imposing on others. His leathery skin cracked and bubbled, and finally ran away like watery mud. He fell apart, bit by bit, crying out like an animal now as the diseases turned his insides to soup, and his bones cracked apart into shards and splinters, and finally dust. In the end, there was nothing left of that old god Lord Pestilence but a grinning misshapen skull. Dead Boy stamped it into pieces, just to be sure.

“It’s not easy being dead,” he said solemnly. “But sometimes it does have its advantages.” -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Larry Oblivion possesses a wand that can stop time:

Blood flew abruptly on the air, gushing from a severed throat, and one of the godlings crashed to the ground, kicking spasmodically as its life-blood flowed away. More and more of the godlings cried out as they were attacked by something none of them could see, striking impossibly quickly, killing them with contemptuous ease. One by one they fell, old gods brought down by a more recent power. The dead detective, Larry Oblivion.

At first I thought he must be using some kind of invisibility, but the mirror said otherwise. It would have been able to see through that. So I got the mirror to slow the image right down, and sure enough there was Larry Oblivion, moving too quickly for the eye to follow. He was here, there, and everywhere, come and gone in a moment, appearing out of nowhere to strike down an unsuspecting godling with a shimmering silver blade and already disappearing before his victim hit the ground. He flickered on and off, only present for such small fractions of time that even the mirror had trouble keeping up with him. I’m getting such a headache, it complained, but I drove it ruthlessly on. I needed to know what was happening.

In the end all the godlings were dead, and Larry Oblivion appeared out of nowhere next to the bodies, looking as immaculate and stylish as ever, with not one hair out of place. He’d moved so quickly there wasn’t even a single drop of blood on his Gucci suit. But he was holding a Faerie wand. I smiled, satisfied. A lot of things about the mysterious Larry Oblivion and his impossible exploits made sense now. He’d been using the wand to bring Time to a halt, while he kept moving. Very useful little toy, that. Of course no-one ever suspected, because wands were so passé, these days. Everyone had just assumed he had a gift like mine, or his brother Tommy’s. -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

It allows him to destroy a building-sized mech in less than five minutes.

And then Larry looked up sharply from adjusting his silk tie, as something far worse than a pack of minor godlings came crashing down the street towards him with murder on its mind. It was thirty feet tall if it was an inch, a giant mechanical apparatus stamping down the street on giant multijointed steel legs. It was all bits and pieces pressed into use and held together by unknown forces, all kinds of metal revolving around glowing sources of power. Everything about it shouted brute force. It was roughly humanoid, with mismatched arms and legs and a bulging brass head with two huge eyes that glowed red as hellfire. It had a long jagged slit for a mouth, its rising and falling edges sharper than any teeth.

It swung down the street with long ungainly steps, swaying from side to side, stamping the living and the dead to pulp under its heavy steel feet. Its long arms ended in fists as big as wrecking balls, and it struck out casually at every building it passed, smashing through stone and brick with equal ease. The ground shook with its every step. I had no idea what it was, god or construct or some mechanical ideal run by an animating spirit. The Spirit of Crap Robots Past, perhaps.

Certainly Larry Oblivion didn’t look at all impressed by the huge clunky thing as it tramped and crashed its way down the street towards him. Everyone else hurried to get out of its path, at least partly because it didn’t look too steady on its flat steel feet, but Larry just shot his immaculate white cuffs, brushed an invisible fleck of dust from one shoulder, and stood his ground. He waited until the huge construct was practically on top of him, then he gestured almost negligently with his wand, and disappeared. The massive contraption reared back, roaring like a deep bass steam whistle, swivelling its great brass head back and forth in search of its elusive prey.

A blur of motion surrounded the metal thing, swift glimpses of something appearing and disappearing too fast to be tracked, then bits of the construct began flying off in all directions. It took Larry Oblivion less than five minutes to dismantle the metal construct and reduce it to its component parts. Larry reappeared next to the detached brass head and kicked it down the street like an oversized football. I’m pretty sure people would have cheered, if there’d been anybody left to witness it.

Larry checked his suit carefully for signs of stress, then continued down the street. -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

King of Skin possesses a glamour that detects people's worst fears and makes them real through the use of probability manipulation.

The next mirror showed me King of Skin, slouching down a wide thoroughfare in all his sleazy glory, looking proud and potent and confident. His eyes were bright with a terrible aspect as he sallied forth, undoing probabilities and spreading nightmares through the power of his awful glamour. Even through the distance of the mirror, I still couldn’t stand to look at King of Skin directly. These were his glory days, and he was still a Power to be reckoned with. Even following his progress out of the corner of my eye was almost too much to bear. Look at him for too long and I started to see… unbearable things. When King of Skin walked abroad, wrapped in his glamour, everyone saw what they feared most, and his power reworked probability to make those nightmares real, and solid. No man can stand to face his own nightmares, made flesh and blood. Hideous things manifested around King of Skin as he slouched along, the dreadful King with his dreadful Court.

He went where he would in the besieged city, surrounded by awful shapes, rich with terrible significance for those who saw them, like the monsters we see in the dark bedrooms of our childhood. They reared and roared and swaggered in the night, attacking everything within reach, broken free at last from the restraints of unreality. King of Skin went where he pleased, and all the Powers and Forces and Beings of Lilith’s court ran screaming from him. King of Skin smiled and sniggered and continued on his way. -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Another showcase of Razor Eddie's superhuman speed:

Razor Eddie, the Punk God of the Straight Razor, walked through what was left of the Street of the Gods, and if he was at all affected by the destruction around him, the burned-out churches and demolished temples, it didn’t show in his sharp, pinched face. A thin intense presence wrapped in a filthy old greatcoat, he strolled unconcerned past the bodies of dead gods and didn’t give a damn.

A crowd of spiked and pierced zealots looked up from desecrating a sacred grove as Razor Eddie approached, and they swaggered out into the Street to block his way, laughing and calling out suggestively to him. They didn’t know who he was, the fools. When he showed no fear of them, or any intention of doing something amusing, like running or begging for his life, the zealots grew sullen and angry, and sharp objects appeared in their hands. They were vultures, feeding on the carrion left behind by Lilith’s crusade, hyped up on adrenaline and bloodlust and religious fervour.

They went to meet Razor Eddie with torture and horror and murder on their minds, laughing and squealing with delight, and the Punk God of the Straight Razor walked right through them. When he came out the other side they were all dead, nothing left of them but a great pile of severed heads. None of them had any eyes. I don’t know how he did it. No-one does. Eddie might be an agent of the good these days, but even the good looks the other way sometimes. Razor Eddie is a mystery as well as a god, and he likes it that way. -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

He easily cuts his way through a millipedic god large enough to destroy several buildings with its size alone:

He looked round interestedly at a sudden loud clattering sound, and a huge creature something like a millipede came writhing and coiling up out of the ruins of an ancient temple. It was impossibly huge and seemingly without end, its vast shiny bulk propelled along by thousands of stubby little legs. Hundreds of yards of it came hammering along the Street towards Razor Eddie, easily a dozen feet wide and made up of curving segments of shimmering carborundum, gleaming dull red in the light of a hundred simmering fires. It darted forward impossibly quickly, its bulging head covered with rows of compound eyes, its complicated mouth parts clacking expectantly. It could sense the power in Razor Eddie, and it was hungry. I don’t know what it was. Some old nameless god from out of the depths, perhaps, no longer worshipped by anything but the worms of the earth.

Razor Eddie went forward to meet it, frowning slightly as though considering an unfamiliar problem. His pearl-handled straight razor was in his hand, shining bright as the sun. The creature reared up, its blunt head rising high above the surrounding buildings, then it slammed down again and snatched up Razor Eddie in its pincered mouth. Razor Eddie struggled briefly, his arms pinned helplessly to his sides, and the giant millipede swallowed him whole. He was there one moment, and gone the next. The millipede tossed back its carapaced head, and a series of slow ripples passed down the bulging throat as it gulped Razor Eddie down. The great head nodded a few times, as though satisfied, then it continued on its way down the Street of the Gods.

Only to pause, just a few yards later. Its head swayed uncertainly back and forth, its mouth parts clacking loudly, then it screamed like a steam geyser as its belly exploded outwards. The gleaming segments cracked and splintered and blew apart as Razor Eddie cut his way out from the inside. The huge millipede curled and writhed and slammed back and forth, demolishing buildings all around it, smashing stone and concrete and pounding the rubble to dust in its agonies, but still it couldn’t escape from the awful, remorseless thing that was killing it. In the end, Razor Eddie strolled unhurriedly away from the wreckage of the dead god, ignoring the last spastic twitches of the cracked and broken body. He was smiling slightly, as though considering even more disturbing things he intended to do to his fellow gods. -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Walker managed to have his people re-grow a new version of the creature-house that John killed in Book 1:

“Oh, I have a plan,” Walker said calmly. His voice tried hard to sound confident, but his face was too tired to cooperate. “You might remember a certain creature from Outside that pretended to be a house on Blaiston Street. It called people to it, then consumed them. After Taylor destroyed it, I had my people collect scrapings of the alien cell tissues and preserve them for analysis. As a result of what they discovered in their labs, I was eventually able to grow a new house, in a setting of my own choice. I had it lobotomized, of course, so it would only eat what I chose to feed it. Never know when you’ll need a secret weapon to use against your enemies.” -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Lilith stomps it.

Walker paused outside the front door of a house that looked no different from all the others around it, then he darted inside, leaving the door that wasn’t a door standing open. Lilith charged through the opening a few moments later, and it slammed shut after her. The army stumbled to a halt outside. One of the leaders tried the door, but it wouldn’t open. One of Lilith’s children pushed forward, placed an oversized hand on the door and pushed, then cried out in shock and pain as the door tried to eat his hand. The front ranks of the army looked at each other, and decided to stay where they were until Lilith emerged from the house to give them orders.

The scene in the scrying pool changed to show me a rear view of the house that wasn’t a house, as Walker came running full pelt out the back door. He ran through the overgrown garden to the back gate, then leaned on it for a while, breathing heavily. He looked back at the house, shuddered once, and immediately regained his composure. The back wall of the house seemed to heave, and swell, twisting black veins standing out suddenly in sharp relief in the fake brickwork. First the wall, then the whole structure of the house began to shake and shudder. Black and purple splotches of rot and decay appeared, and the two windows ran away like pus. Holes like ragged wounds opened up all over the sloping roof, and the back door slumped, running away in streams of liquid foulness. The house hadn’t stood a chance against Lilith. She’d barely been in it a few moments, and already it was dead and rotting. -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

She easily rips through the magical defenses of the Necropolis, tearing open a hole between the Nightside and the dimension housing the Necropolis' graveyard.

Raging mad at being mocked and outmanoeuvred by Walker, Lilith transported herself and all her great army straight to the Necropolis. The main building was barricaded, boarded up, and rendered positively indistinct behind a dozen layers of magical defences, but Lilith ignored them. She tore the air apart with her bare hands, breaking all the barriers set between this world and that of the Necropolis’s private cemetery. Nothing was hidden from her, and nothing was safe. The final barrier screamed as it went down, and the cobbled street in this world split from end to end. Through the ragged tear Lilith had made in reality, the grim and grey world of the Necropolis graveyard could clearly be seen. Long streamers of fog drifted out. Lilith gestured sharply for her followers to stay put and stalked forward into the private cemetery. -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

She raises every dead body in the graveyard, ignoring the magical protections explicitly designed to prevent such a thing. She also blows one of them up with a snap of the fingers.

Lilith walked among the graves, glaring about her, and finally stopped and stamped her bare foot impatiently. When she spoke, her voice cracked like a whip on the still and silent air.

“You can all stop lying around, right now! I want every single one of you up and out of those graves, and standing here before me! Why should you lie quietly, when there is work you could be doing for me? Up, now! And the Devil help anyone who dares to keep me waiting!”

She snapped her colourless fingers, and immediately every grave and mausoleum gave up its occupant. They stood in endless rows, in the good suits and gowns they’d been buried in, looking around them in a confused sort of way. Even I was shocked, and not a little impressed. There were major spells defending the private graveyard, but to a Power like Lilith, Life and Death were very similar states.

It had to be said, the returned from the dead didn’t look at all happy about their new condition. They’d paid good money in advance, precisely to avoid being disturbed from their rest like this. But they still had enough sense not to argue with Lilith. Even those who had been major players in their day knew better than to cross the ancient and terrible Power standing before them.

“These are your orders,” she said crisply. “I want all of you out of here, and back in the Nightside. Snip, snap, no dawdling. Once back in your home territory, you are to kill every living thing you see and destroy everything in your path. No exceptions. Any questions?”

One man raised his hand. Lilith snapped her fingers again, and the reanimated man exploded into a thousand twitching pieces.

“Any more questions?” said Lilith. “I just love answering questions.” -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

For the record, we're talking about ''centuries'' worth of dead bodies, all of them now enslaved by Lilith's will:

The ranks of the returned dead streamed through the streets of the Nightside, falling upon every living thing they encountered. Some of them with more enthusiasm than others, but all of them bound to Lilith’s will. They couldn’t be hurt or stopped, and their sheer numbers overwhelmed any and all defences. A hell of a lot of people had died in the Nightside, down the centuries. -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

She sends an entire gang of demon refugees back to Hell:

There were those who still had the guts to fight. The Demonz street gang, minor demons who claimed to be political refugees from Hell, poured up out of their nightclub the Pit to defend their territory. Eight feet tall, with curling horns on their brows and cloven hoofs, scarlet as sin and twice as nasty. The reanimated dead stopped in their tracks. They knew real demons when they saw them. Lilith just laughed at the Demonz, said Children shouldn’t stray so far from home, snapped her pale fingers, and sent all the Demonz back to Hell again. -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

The Time Tower's defenses erase a few beings from existence, then suck the life out of a bunch of more powerful ones:

After that, she went to Time Tower Square, deserted but almost untouched by the chaos all around. Lilith struck a mocking pose before the blocky stone structure that was the Tower, and called loudly for Old Father Time to come out and face her. She had work for him. Minutes passed, and Lilith snarled and stamped her feet as she realised Old Father Time wasn’t coming out. She ordered her offspring to tear the Tower apart, and drag Old Father Time from the ruins to face her displeasure. But, as I knew to my cost, the Tower was seriously defended. The first few Beings to touch the Tower with bad intent just disappeared, blown out of existence like the flame of a candle. Other, greater Powers advanced on the Tower. A terrible stone Eye opened in the wall facing them, and the Powers froze in the glare of that awful regard. The life seeped out of them, and left behind only a handful of ugly stone statues, in awkward poses. The great stone Eye slowly closed again. -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Lilith nukes the entire Tower with a single word:

Lilith cried out a single angry Word, and the whole stone structure blew apart, until there was nothing left of the Time Tower save a pile of smoking rubble. Lilith glared at what she’d achieved, shaking with effort and reaction, while her army watched carefully to see what would happen next. In the end, it was clear that Old Father Time was either dead or trapped. Either way, he wouldn’t be coming out to obey Lilith’s wishes, so she spat and cursed, turned on her heel and led her army on to other ventures. -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

I don't even know what to say about this one...

I found an undead Harley Davidson lurking in an alleyway, and persuaded it to give me a lift to the Londinium Club, in return for squeezing the essential juices out of several nearby corpses into the undead machine’s fuel tank. I swear other people don’t have days like this. The motorcycle carried me smoothly through the Nightside, weaving in and out of crashed and overturned vehicles littering the abandoned road. The air rushing into my face was hot and dry, thick with drifting smoke and ashes. It stank of burned meat. Even above the roar of the bike, I could still hear distant screams. Riding through the deserted streets, lit by the intermittent glow of burning buildings rather than the sleazy flush of hot neon, reminded me uncomfortably of the devastated future Nightside that was coming. A future coming true in front of my eyes, despite everything I did to try and stop it.

You’re trying to steer again, said the Harley. Don’t. I know what I’m doing.

“Then I envy you,” I said. “Really. You have no idea.”

That’s right; condescend to me, just because I’m undead. You wait until the mystical Vampire Lords of the Twenty-seventh Dimension descend in their crimson flying saucers to make me Grand High Overlord of the Nightside… Oh. Damn. I said that out loud, didn’t I? Sorry. I’ve not been taking my medication, lately.

“It’s all right,” I said. “We’ve all got a lot on our minds at the moment.” -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

At least one (if not more) of the beings under Lilith's control had no trouble killing an immortal:

Walker was already waiting for me, of course. He stood at the foot of the Club’s steps, looking sadly down at the dead body of the Doorman. The Londinium’s most faithful servant lay sprawled across the steps, before the entrance he’d guarded for so many centuries. Something had ripped the Doorman’s head off and impaled it on the spiked railings. The expression on the face was more surprised than anything.

“He was supposed to be immortal,” observed Walker. “I didn’t think anything could kill him.”

“Now that Lilith’s back, all bets are off,” I said. “It is a pity.” -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Lilith sends two former angels of Above and Below out of the material planes and packing back to Heaven and Hell:

The two former angels surged forward, to stand between the Authorities and Lilith, their power shimmering on the air around them like a heat haze. Lilith smiled at them and said Go home, and the light and dark figures both disappeared in a moment, banished from the material planes by the sheer force of her will. I had a good idea where she’d sent them, and I doubted either of them could expect much of a welcome back. -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Some-fucking-how, John's strongest mental shields are enough to protect him from Lilith's ignited presence, which can apparently mindhax people who so much as look at her:

Her presence ignited, filling the whole room, vast and overwhelming. I had to look away, retreating behind my strongest mental shields, while the ten most powerful men in the Nightside, and therefore the world, fell to their knees and went to Lilith on all fours, like swine before a goddess. Walker started forward. I grabbed him by the arm and hustled him towards the invisible door. He found the key and opened the door, his hand steady even though his face was torn with conflicting emotions. I looked back, briefly.

Lilith laughed, to see the high-and-mighty Authorities cringe and fawn at her colourless feet. “Why, you’re so cute! I could eat you up… but I think you’d probably make me sick. Fortunately, my children have far more robust appetites…”

She laughed again, as her horrid offspring surged forward. I pushed Walker through the door, following him into the relative safety of the Club’s lobby. As the door swung slowly shut behind us, I looked back one last time. And saw Lilith’s monstrous children fall upon the screaming Authorities and tear at them hungrily, like wolves let into the fold. -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Tommy Oblivion uses his powers of persuasion to convince reality that he and John are in another place:

Tommy Oblivion’s gift manifested subtly on the air around us, and everything became uncertain. Tommy was an existentialist, and his gift allowed him to express his uncertainty about the world in a real and very physical way. The more he thought about a thing, the more possibilities he could see, and he fixed on the reality he preferred and made it solid. By concentrating hard enough, Tommy was able to convince the world that not only were we not where it thought we were, but actually we were somewhere else entirely.

And so, in the blink of an eye we left the Londinium Club behind us and materialised outside the Church of St. Jude. A dodo wandered past, hooting mournfully, a flock of passenger pigeons flapped by overhead, and an ostrich with two heads looked confusedly at itself, but they were only a few odd possibilities generated by Tommy’s gift. He concentrated on shutting his gift down, while I looked around us. Everything but the church had been razed to the ground, for as far as the eye could see. It stood alone, an old squat stone structure in the middle of a wasteland. A wide-open plain of ash and dust, where thick curls of glowing ground fog surged this way and that under the urging of a fitful wind. It was very dark, with just the blue-white glare of the oversized moon shining off the church walls. In the distance, fires leapt up briefly, screams rang out, but it was all very far away. The War had come and gone here, and left nothing behind but the church. -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Lilith completely thrashes the Lord of Thorns.

A single ragged figure sat slumped on the cold stone floor, leaning against the altar, embracing it with desperate arms. It was the Lord of Thorns. He looked like he’d been crying. He also looked like he’d been dragged through Hell backwards. Instead of the grand Old Testament Prophet I remembered, he looked like one of the homeless, like a refugee. The Overseer of the Nightside had been reduced to a man in torn and bloodied robes. His long grey hair and beard had been half-burned away. He didn’t look up as I walked down the aisle towards him, but he flinched at the sound of my footsteps, like a dog that’s been kicked once too often. I knelt before him, took his chin in my hand, and made him look at me. He trembled at my touch.

“What are you doing here?” I said. I didn’t mean for it to come out as harshly as it did, but that’s St. Jude’s for you.

“It’s all gone,” he said, in a distant, empty voice. “So I’m hiding. Hiding out, in the one place where even Lilith’s power can’t touch me. I believe that. I have to believe that. It’s all I’ve got left.”

I let go of his chin, and made an effort to soften my voice. “What happened?”

His eyes came up to meet mine, and a Vision appeared in my mind’s eye, showing me Lilith’s descent into the World Beneath. She came in force, with all her monstrous Court, smashing through ancient defences and protections as though they weren’t even there, and set her people to destroying everything and everyone. As above, so below. Just because she could. She wiped out the Eaters of the Dead, the Solitudes in their cells, the Subterraneans in their sprawling city of catacombs. A warning went out ahead of her, echoing from gallery to gallery, and some came out to fight and some dug themselves in deeper; but none of it did any good. Lilith and her terrible offspring pushed relentlessly on, destroying whole nests of vampires and ghouls and Elder Spawn, and even the worms of the earth in their deep deep tunnels.

The Lord of Thorns came forth from his crystal cave, wrapped in power and a cold, awful anger, to set his faith and authority against Lilith. For he was the Voice of God, and she was but a name out of the past. He had his staff of power, its wood taken from a tree grown from a sliver of the original Tree of Life itself, brought to Britain long and long ago by Joseph of Arimathea. The Lord of Thorns stood in Lilith’s way, and she slapped him aside contemptuously. She took his staff and it shattered into pieces in her grasp. She walked on, leaving him lying helpless in the dirt, and not even the least of her offspring would deign to touch him. The killing continued, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He made himself watch, as a penance. And when it was all over, the Lord of Thorns made his way up from the World Beneath and came to St. Jude’s. To hide.

“You have to understand,” he said, as the Vision faded from my mind. “When Lilith appeared, I thought I’d finally discovered my true purpose, my reason for being in the Nightside. That this was my destiny—to stop Lilith when no-one else could. But I was wrong. I was nothing, next to her. After so many years of judging others, I was judged… and found unworthy.”

“But… you’re one of the greatest Powers in the Nightside!”

“Not compared to her. I forgot… in the end I’m just a man, blessed with God’s power. And my faith… was nothing compared to her certainty.”

“All right,” I said. “We need backup. Can we use St. Jude’s to call for Heavenly help? For direct divine intervention?”

“What do you think I’ve been doing?” said the Lord of Thorns. “The Nightside was expressly designed from its first conception so that neither Heaven nor Hell could intervene directly. And it was decided long ago in the Courts of the Holy that this Great Experiment would be allowed to continue, to see where it would lead. I was placed here to Oversee the Experiment, to keep it on track. But now that the Nightside’s creator has returned, it seems my time and my purpose are at an end. There will be no outside help. The Nightside must save itself. If it can.” -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Suzie's shotgun is stupidly powerful:

“I won’t kill you, Sandra,” I said. “And you can’t kill me. Forget this shit. We’ve got a War to fight.”

“I don’t care,” she said. “Let it all burn. Let them all die. That’s the world I live in anyway. I’ll find you, and I’ll kill you, John. There’s always a way. Wherever you go, I’ll be there in the shadows, hunting you. And one day I’ll step out of a door or an alleyway and kill you dead, when you’re least expecting it. I’ll watch you choke on your own blood and laugh in your face as you die.”

“No you won’t,” said Suzie Shooter.

We both spun round, startled, and the roar of the shotgun was like thunder. Sandra Chance took both barrels in the chest, at close range. The blast tore half her upper torso away, and she was dead long before she hit the ground. Suzie nodded calmly, lowered the double-barrelled shotgun, and reloaded it from her bandoliers, and only then looked at me.

“Blessed and cursed ammo. If one barrel doesn’t get you, the other will. Hello, John.” -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Lilith can intercept portal creation. She does so with John's Strangefellows card, which has been established by this point to be able to take him directly to said bar:

I took out my Membership Card, activated it, then almost dropped the bloody thing as Lilith’s face looked out of the Card at me.

“Hello, John,” she said. “My sweet boy. My own dear flesh and blood. I haven’t forgotten you. I’ll come for you soon, then you’ll be mine, body and soul, forever and ever and ever.”

I shut down the Card, and her face disappeared. I was breathing hard, as though I’d just been hit. Suzie and Tommy were looking at me, and I realised they hadn’t heard a thing.

“Bad news,” I said. “We’re going to have to do this the hard way.” -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Merlin states why Lilith gave John the gift he has, and confirms that his own magical defenses won't last against her for long.

He stopped right before me, and actually bowed slightly. “Here we are at last,” he said, in a voice like everyone’s favourite uncle. “Two sons of distinguished parents, who only ever wanted to be left alone to work out their own destinies. I was born to be the Antichrist, but I declined the honour and went my own way. And much good it did me. We’ve always had a lot in common, you and I, John Taylor.”

“What brings you up here, sorcerer?” I asked. I kept my voice calm and easy through an effort of will. (First rule of operating in the Nightside—never let them see they’ve got you scared or they’ll walk all over you.) “What brings you up out of your grave, after all these centuries?”

“To tell you things you need to know,” he said, still smiling his unnerving smile. “I know why your mother bestowed only the one gift upon you, when she could have made you one of the greatest Powers in the Nightside. I am old and wise and I know many things I’m not supposed to. Being dead didn’t stop me listening, and learning. Lilith gave you that one gift and no other because she intended to make use of you and it, on her return. Your gift will find for her the one thing that will make possible her control of the whole Nightside.

“I would have thought you’d have worked that out by now. If she could remake the Nightside by will alone, she would have done it by now, don’t you think? But her creation has grown and changed so very much during the long centuries of her absence, become something far greater and more intransigent than she ever intended… Why else would a Power like Lilith need an army to subdue the Nightside?”

“Why haven’t you manifested before?” Walker said sharply. “We could have used your help. Why wait till now, when it’s almost too late?”

“I’m here now because you finally asked the right question,” said Merlin, still looking only at me. He pulled up a chair and sat down before me, and his manner made it seem like a throne. His presence dominated the room, pulling all eyes to him. “Now I’m up and about again, Lilith will know I’m back. She’ll know where to come, to find me. She has to face me, because I’m her only real rival. She’ll never feel safe until she’s seen me utterly destroyed and cast down.”

“Can you stop her?” said Julien Advent.

Merlin ignored him, his fiery gaze fixed on me. “The protections I have set in place around this bar won’t keep her out forever. She’ll be here, very soon now. And if she finds me in my present condition, she’ll strike me down with a look and a word and laugh while she does it. And then she’ll take you over, John, make you her puppet, and use your gift as though it were her own. Just as she’s planned from the very beginning.” -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

The personification of John's gift elaborates on the powers of the Speaking Gun:

“Why did Lilith give you to me?” I said.

“Because she intends to use you to find the Speaking Gun. The most powerful weapon in the world. It was originally created to kill angels and demons, but it can do so much more than that. Lilith will use the Speaking Gun to remake the Nightside in her own image. Return it to what she originally intended it to be, before Humanity infested and perverted it from its true purpose and nature. She was responsible for the Gun’s creation, long and long ago. Adam gave of his rib and his flesh to make Eve, and after Lilith came back up from Hell, having lain down with demons and given birth to monsters, she also gave of her rib and her flesh, to make the Speaking Gun. With the help of Abraxus Artificers.”

“Yeah,” Suzie said suddenly. “That was engraved on the stock of the Speaking Gun; Abraxus Artificers, the old firm, solving problems since the beginning. I’ve always been very good at remembering things, where weapons are involved.”

“Very good,” said my double. “Now shut up and listen, and you might learn something. Abraxus Artificers were the descendants of Cain, the first murderer. How else do you think they could fashion such marvellous weapons of destruction?” My double paused. “You do all realise that I’m talking in parables, representing a far more complicated reality? Good. I shall continue. The Speaking Gun was designed to speak backwards the echoes of the original Word of Creation, which resonates on in everything, giving each separate thing its own true secret name. By speaking this secret name backwards, the Speaking Gun can thus unmake or uncreate anything. But the Speaking Gun could be used, by someone with enough power, someone who gave of their own flesh to make it, to respeak those secret names, and thus change their essential nature. Lilith will use the Speaking Gun to respeak the Nightside, making it over into whatever she wants it to be. Personally, I can’t wait to see what she’s going to do…” -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

John reminds us that the Time Tower isn't actually where Old Father Time's domain resides:

“According to my agents’ last reports, Lilith has destroyed the Time Tower,” Walker said heavily. “Reduced it to nothing but rubble. Old Father Time is dead, and the Speaking Gun buried under the rubble with him.”

“No,” I said, feeling hope rise anew within me. “Time’s domain isn’t actually in the Nightside. The Tower was just how people got to speak to him. There is another way to reach him… So, who’s up for one last suicidal charge for glory? Don’t all speak at once.” -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Tommy's gift allows him to cause reality itself to become uncertain as to whether or not he and a group of people exist, hiding them all from anything else in the material world:

“What?” said Tommy. “What?”

“Use your gift to hide us. Or at least hide our identities. Such a small use of your gift should slide past Lilith unnoticed.”

“Yes,” said Tommy, after a moment. “I think I could do that…”

He frowned, concentrating. It took him a while, to force his mind to deal with only one thing and ignore the madness and horror around him, but finally I could sense his gift firing up, as he imposed his existential will upon the world. Slowly and carefully, moment by moment, we became as uncertain as he thought we were, until the world couldn’t decide whether we really were there or not, and even if we were, it couldn’t make up its mind about who we were. I could feel Tommy’s gift all around us, like a fog of possibilities. Everywhere I looked, it was like seeing through a heat haze, as though we were out of synch with our surroundings. I took that as a good sign and made myself concentrate on the only thing that really mattered—getting to Cheyne Walk Station.

I took a deep breath and led the way out onto the main street, walking openly, taking my time, doing nothing to attract attention. The others came with me, sticking close but not crowding. No-one even looked at us. Crazed mobs rioted up and down the street, and swept right past us without even slowing. I led the way down the street, through chaos and murder and foulness of all kinds, and no-one touched us. Sometimes they’d step out of our way, without even realising they were doing it. Suzie stayed at my side, the others spread out behind us. I tried to keep track of where they were without looking at them directly, but Tommy’s gift made that difficult. It was hard to be sure of anything under the concentrated field of uncertainty he was generating. -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Lilith, from abroad, opens up a portal to another realm in front of Razor Eddie that sprouts tentacles and drags him into it by force:

And then I swear I heard my mother’s voice, abroad in the night, speaking Words of Power from a language so ancient it predated any human tongue or meaning. A trapdoor opened up in the pavement right in front of Razor Eddie, a hole in our world, a door to somewhere else. Long tentacles with crocodile hide and suckers like barbed mouths shot up out of that other place and wrapped themselves around Razor Eddie. He cut viciously about him with his razor, but for every tentacle he severed a dozen more burst up through the trap-door. They finally whipped around both his arms, pinioning them to his sides, then they dragged him down into the hole, out of our world and into theirs. He never cried out, not once. The trap-door slammed shut, and Razor Eddie was gone. -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Old Father Time can send people to other places with a snap of the fingers:

“I really don’t care for the thought of such a powerful weapon in the hands of the infamous John Taylor,” Old Father Time said sharply. “Far too much temptation for any mortal. Let alone you. But… I’m going to give it to you anyway.” He looked briefly at the huge hourglass. “Partly because time is running out for the Nightside. Partly because try as I might, I can’t seem to find anyone else more fitting to give it to… But mostly because a future version of myself came back in time to tell me to give it to you, and I really wish I wouldn’t do things like that to myself.”

The lid of the case snapped shut, and the black box dropped unceremoniously into my hands. Time sighed heavily, shook his head, and snapped his fingers. And all at once, I was somewhere else.

[...]

I was back in the Nightside, in Time Tower Square, and my first thought was how quiet and peaceful everything was. I looked slowly around me, and no-one looked back. -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Lilith instinctively knows where the Speaking Gun is at all times:

I frowned, as something else occurred to me. “How did you know to find me here? Even I didn’t know I was going to be here.”

She nodded at the flat black case in my hands. “The Speaking Gun called to me. I always know where it is. It is flesh of my flesh, after all, and as such my child, every bit as much as you. It’s your brother, John, in every way that matters. Thank you for bringing it back to me. I have a use for it. Just as I have a use for you.” -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Lilith designed the Speaking Gun so that it couldn't be used against her:

And yet, even under its madness and its rage, I could feel the Speaking Gun yearning for my mother’s touch. It wanted to go to her and nestle in her hand, and do terrible, awful things for her. I gripped the Gun so tightly my whole hand ached, and never once took my gaze off Lilith. She laughed soundlessly at me, and took a step forward. I aimed the Speaking Gun carefully, and pulled the trigger.

And nothing happened.

I tried again and again, but the long canine tooth that served as the Speaking Gun’s trigger wouldn’t budge. I shook the Gun, and even hit it with my other hand, but it did no good. In my mind, I could hear it laughing.

“The Speaking Gun won’t work on me, John,” Lilith said calmly. “It will never operate against the wishes of its creator. Just a little safeguard I had built into it, back at the Beginning. It loves me, you know. It aches to serve me, and make me happy. Such a good son… Unlike you. Give me the Gun, John. It was never meant for you. And in my hands it will respeak your most secret name and remake you into the respectful, obedient son I always intended you to be.” -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Lilith intends on finding the perfect version of the Nightside and enforcing it on the entire world, freeing it from any and all of Heaven and Hell's influence:

But she was already smiling and shaking her head. “You always did think too small, John. The Speaking Gun was never that important to me. It was just there to make things easier for you. It would have been a more… merciful method, that’s all. Now I’ll just have to do it the hard way. And don’t you dare cry. You brought this on yourself. The Speaking Gun was never intended to be my main weapon against the Nightside, John. That was, and is, you. That is why I gave birth to you, after all.”

“What?” I said. My mind was numb, from too many reverses. “I don’t understand…”

“Of course you don’t. I arranged for you to inherit one particular gift from me, John, so I could make use of it when the time was right. I will make you do what you were born to do. I will make you use your gift to find for me the perfect form of the Nightside, the original uncontaminated model that I always intended it to be, and when you’ve found that for me I will enforce that version on all the world.”

[...]

“You do love the sound of your own voice, don’t you?” I said. Never let them see they’ve got you rattled… “Why didn’t my gift tell me any of this, when I questioned it earlier?”

“Because it’s not your gift, it’s mine. I gave it to you, to do my will.” She pirouetted slowly, arms outstretched, mistress of all she surveyed, smiling like a cat with a small bird in its jaws. “Time to redecorate, I think. The old place has become terribly infested. I will spread my Nightside across all the Earth, freeing it from the influence of Heaven and Hell. I’ll steal the world away from both those Tyrants, and make the Earth my playground, for all time. And everything that lives on it, including Humanity, that bothersome breed, will be swept aside and replaced with something more to my liking. Including you, my dearest boy. You’ll be so much happier when I’ve remade you in my own true image. You will kneel at my feet and sing my praises through all eternity. Won’t that be nice? A mother and her son, together, forever.” -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Lilith can build a geas inside of someone's mind that allows her to control them at any time:

“I won’t do it,” I said. I tried to look away from her, from her deep dark eyes, and couldn’t. “I won’t do that!”

“You don’t have any choice, sweetie. I decided your fate before you were even born, working on you while you were still forming in my womb. All through the first few years of your childhood, I built a geas deep within your mind, so I’d be able to use it in this place, on this day. A geas to bend your will to mine. That’s why you’ve never been able to remember your early years with me. It became necessary for me to leave the dear bosom of my family before I was quite finished with you, but there’s enough there to do the job. I can see it, squirming deep in your mind, wrapped around your soul.” -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Lilith directly intercepts John the moment he tries using his gift on her, overpowering him:

I fired up my gift, driving it ruthlessly with the last of my will, and used it to find the link between my mother and me. The physical, mental, and magical connections between a mother and her only son. A trick I’d used before, to drain the life energy right out of her.

But when I reached out through the link, she was right there waiting for me. Her will slammed through the link, slapping me aside, monstrously strong and utterly overpowering. I cried out and fell to my knees as she drained the life energy out of me, despite everything I could do to stop her. She smiled down at me.

“You didn’t really expect to catch me with the same trick twice, did you? Not when I’ve had so many years to think about this day, this moment, planning it all down to the very last detail… Poor boy. This isn’t your story, John; it’s mine. Time to start your makeover, I think. And then what fun we’ll have, tearing down everything you ever believed in. Open wide and say aaah!, John. It’ll only hurt for a moment…” -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

The Collector possesses a contraption which is capable of stopping time:

Time slowed, cranking down to a crawl. The hand Lilith was extending towards me ground to a halt, inches short of my face. Her voice became a long growl and then cut off abruptly as the Collector appeared out of nowhere, in an improbable device. Trust him to bring Time itself to a stop, just so he could make an entrance. The Collector, con man, thief, and snapper up of anything collectible that wasn’t actually nailed down or guarded by enraged wolverines. An old acquaintance of mine, but not what you could call a friend. I don’t think the Collector had friends any more. They got in the way of his collecting. A portly middle-aged man with a florid face, the Collector was currently wearing a stylish dark blue blazer with white piping, and a large badge on his lapel bearing the number six. He was crouching inside a strange contraption that hovered uncomfortably close above my head. It looked like an overcomplicated climbing frame, made up of long quartz-and-crystal rods that sparked and shimmered against the night sky. The whole framework couldn’t have been more than ten feet wide, but there was something more to it, as though it extended away in more than just the usual three dimensions. The air was thick with the smell of discharging ozone. -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

(This also serves as another example of John's ability to see in stopped time, just so we're clear on that.)

Anything that touches this contraption becomes immune to its time-stopping effects for as long as they're in contact with it.

The Collector reached down out of his contraption and grabbed the collar of my trench coat. He hauled me up into the framework with him, and immediately I could move again. I grabbed at the nearest rods to steady myself, and they squirmed unpleasantly in my grasp as though they weren’t fully there. I wasn’t entirely sure whether I might have been dragged out of the frying pan and into the fire. The Collector has always been famous for not being on any side but his own. Below us, Lilith was slowly turning her head to look in our direction.

“Shit,” said the Collector, “the field’s collapsing. Brace yourself, Taylor, we are out of here!” -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

It can move "sideways" through space as a means of teleporting to whatever location its user desires:

He wrapped both his plump hands around a control like a fragmented crystal flower, and the whole structure tilted sideways through space. Time Tower Square disappeared abruptly as we spun round and round, dimensions of space snapping in and out of focus. I tried closing my eyes, but it didn’t help. I was sensing the movement on some basic spiritual level, and my stomach really hated it. I clung desperately to the crystal rods, which seemed to be deliberately trying to slip out of my grasp. I could still hear Lilith’s voice, screaming No… in a howl that seemed to go on forever. The crystal contraption actually buckled under the force of her rage, and solid crystal rods cracked and shattered. The Collector fussed over his controls, swearing and blaspheming, and suddenly the whole device crashed to a halt, and I fell out of it into Strangefellows bar. -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

The Collector himself confirms this contraption to be four-dimensional.

I looked across at the Collector, who was walking round and round his crystal contraption and cursing loudly as bits fell off it. He actually chattered with rage and kicked spitefully at the pieces on the floor.

“Bloody thing! I’ll never get another one like this! Not after the extra security they’ve installed since my last visit… This trip had better have been worth it, Henry!”

Walker strolled over to pat him soothingly on the shoulder. “Leave strategy to me, Mark. You know I’ve always been the devious one. You never did explain. What is this thing, exactly?”

“Well, originally it was a four-dimensional climbing frame for really gifted children in the thirtieth century. I acquired it when no-one was looking, and adapted it for interdimensional travel. Not as accurate as some of my other Time travel mechanisms, but just basically weird enough to sneak in and catch Lilith by surprise. And now look at it! I’d better get compensation for this, Henry.” -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

It takes all of current-day Merlin's power just to keep Lilith out of Strangefellows:

“You have to do something,” said Merlin, his voice just a harsh rasp. “And you’d better do it soon. My defences are under constant attack. I don’t know how much longer I can maintain them.”

I looked round. I’d actually overlooked the ancient sorcerer, sitting slumped and alone at a table in the corner. He looked very old and very tired, even for a fifteen-hundred-year-old corpse. His grey face was slack, the crimson flames barely stirring in his empty eye-sockets.

“Keeping Lilith out, holding her off, is taking everything I’ve got,” Merlin said, not even looking at me. “It’s draining me dry, Taylor. I need my heart. There’s still time. Find my stolen heart for me, bring it here, and put it back in my chest, and I could be a Power again. I could bring myself back to life, wrap myself in glory, and go out to face Lilith head to head.” -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Merlin's defenses are apparently enough to prevent Lilith from so much as knowing what's going on inside the bar:

I looked back at Merlin. “Open a door for me, between here and there. I need to talk to my father.”

The dead sorcerer scowled at me. “If I remove my concentration from the bar’s defences, even for a moment, Lilith will know what’s happening here.”

“Let her,” I said. “All that matters now is getting these three old friends back together. So they can put right their old wrong.” -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Merlin opens a portal leading directly to the location of John's reanimated father:

Merlin gestured angrily with an unsteady hand, and the Library vision became real as an opening appeared in space, linking the bar with the Library. My father was so immersed in his books he didn’t even notice. I stepped carefully through the opening into the Library and coughed meaningfully. My father scrambled up out of his chair and backed away from me, holding a heavy paperweight like a weapon. I slowly raised my hands, to show they were empty.

“Take it easy,” I said. “I’m not here to hurt you. I need your help.” -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Lilith can travel through the "Outside", a place that is outside of the confines of normal space, to a place of her choosing:

But almost immediately another presence forced its way into the bar, slamming through Merlin’s defences. A door appeared in a wall where there had never been a door before, a ragged hole in the brickwork like a mouth or a wound, and stretched out beyond it was a narrow corridor, impossibly long. It led off in a direction I couldn’t identify, which had nothing to do with left and right, up and down, that my mind couldn’t deal with or accept, except simply as Outside. And down that awful corridor, slowly but inexorably, a single figure came walking. It was too far off in that unacceptable distance to see clearly, but I knew who it was, who it had to be. Lilith knew what we were up to, and she was coming to stop us. -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Merlin tries to stop her, only for his magic to fail:

Merlin came forward to stand before the corridor, staring down it and blocking the way. He looked… smaller, diminished. He raised his dead grey hands, already spotted with decay, and traced vivid shapes on the air, living sigils that spat and shimmered with discharging energies. He forced old and potent Words out of his ruined mouth, summoning up ancient forces and terrible creatures with the authority of his terrible name, but nothing happened. The Princes of Hell were more afraid of Lilith than they were of him. Merlin tried to open up interspatial trapdoors under Lilith’s feet, to drop her into some other, dangerous dimension, that she’d have to fight her way back from…but Lilith just walked right over them, as though they weren’t there. And perhaps for her, they weren’t. She was Lilith, imprinted on the material world by an effort of her own will, and he was only a dead sorcerer. Step by step she drew nearer, smiling her awful smile, despite everything Merlin could do to stop her, or even slow her down. And, finally, she stepped out into the bar, and the corridor disappeared behind her, the wall just a wall again. -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Lilith confirms that, had Merlin had access to his heart, he would be the only one powerful enough to stop her:

“Hello, Merlin,” she said. “What a fuss you made. Anyone would think you weren’t glad to see me. And after I went out of my way to find a nice present to bring you.” She held up her left hand, and showed him a dark necrotic mass of muscle tissue. He knew what it was immediately, and made a sound as though he’d been hit. Lilith laughed prettily. “Yes, it’s your long-lost heart, little sorcerer. That’s what I’ve been doing all these years, since I had to give up being a wife and a mother. I knew I had to find your heart before you did, because you were the only one who might have stood a chance against me. If only you’d been whole. Merlin Satanspawn, born to be the Antichrist, but you didn’t have the nerve. By the way, I spoke with your father recently, and he’s still really mad at you.” -Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth