Fist smashed a window in an abandoned garage and forced open the back door. The interior had been burned out some time before but the roof was intact over the back room. A mouldy sleeping bag and a floor covered with condoms suggested that others had sheltered here before.

    Maggie could barely squeeze through the trash-blocked doorway to get out of the wind. At a full nine months gone her belly stuck out from her emaciated frame like a beach ball. She staggered over to the sleeping bag and dropped onto it. When she got her strength back she shook the needles off it.

    “This’ll do,” said Fist. “You can pop the kid here, Mag.”

    “The hospital…?” the pregnant girl suggested.

    “Not an option,” he boyfriend said. “You turn up there they’ll want your name. And then they’ll do a check-up on you.” He tore Maggie’s sleeve back to reveal the track lines on her forearm. “And then they’ll take your baby away and send you back to the home.”

    “I’m not going back there,” Maggie snarled. That was where she’d got pregnant, after all.

    “Well then, this is where we stay,” insisted Fist. “I got a knife. When you squeeze the kid out I can cut the cord.”

    “I’m scared.”

    Fist shrugged.

    “Don’t you care?” the girl asked him. “I thought you did, once. But you stopped caring when you stopped being able to sell me at truck stops, didn’t you?”

    “I’m here, aren’t I,” Fist said. “And I’ve got a knife.”

    Maggie laid back and clutched her belly. The pains were coming regularly now and she thought that meant the baby might be coming; at fifteen she wasn’t entirely sure.

    Fist squatted down by the door and cleaned his blade.

    He’d need that to kill the baby when it came.

    On Christmas Eve 2010 the light snow had created traffic chaos in Paradopolis and Gothmetropolis York. It was the wrong kind of snow, apparently, so the monorail was shut down stranding passengers trying to get home to spend the holidays with their loved one at terminals and bus depots. An accident on the Englehart bridge and road repairs around Off-Central park didn’t help either.

    Liu Xi Xian was surprised to find Alto Tumour’s bookshop still open as night fell. “Don’t you close for Christmas?” she asked the fat slobby man who was reading a magazine behind his cash till. Whatever magazine it was required the book to be held sideways.

    “For a corporate-sponsored media-manipulated marketing event?” Alto asked with a pitying gaze at the naïf who’d wandered in from the cold. “Are you kidding? Besides, Christmas always brings in the weird overnight customers, you know.”

    Alto’s bookshop specialised in occult volumes, although the general condition of his stock tended to provoke the words “second-hand” rather than “pre-owned”.

    “Your boyfriend’s in the back carrying out pagan fertility customs,” Alto told the Chinese elementalist.

    “He’s what?” Liu Xi blinked. She rushed back to the little nook under the stairs that Vinnie rented as his office. The cupboard behind it doubled as his bedroom. She found Vinnie putting up a two-foot high Christmas tree.

    “Hi,” the acting sorcerer supreme of the planet called, waving. “I was worried you wouldn’t get here.”

    “Traffic was awful,” Liu Xi admitted. “I was so tempted to just fold void to get here.” Vinnie’s girlfriend was an elementalist, controlling the traditional elements and the void behind them, but recently the void had become a very dangerous place.

    “Don’t,” Vinnie warned her. He tried to cover his worry by showing her the tree. “Look,” he said, “our first tree. Treelet. Collection of branches.”

    Liu Xi examined the sad specimen. Already it was shedding needles across Vinnie’s desk. “Do sorcerers celebrate Christmas, then?” she asked curiously.

    “Depends on the sorcerer,” the young occultist answered. “And how much they like a good party. And how many spells they know with a sprig of mistletoe.”

    Liu Xi pressed closer to her boyfriend. “And how many do you know, Vinnie de Soth?”

    “We’d better count as we go along,” he grinned back.

    Liu Xi noticed something else about the tree. “Oh! You’ve already set a present out under it! Is that for me?”

    Vinnie looked down at the tiny silver package. “I didn’t put that there,” he frowned.

    Liu Xi checked the label. “To Vinnie,” she read, “season’s compliments from Xander the Improbable.”

    “Oh crap,” shuddered the acting sorcerer supreme. Xander was the actual sorcerer supreme, albeit a sorcerer supreme-in-absentia. He tore open the parcel and studied the contents, then swore.

    “Something wrong?” Liu Xi frowned.

    Vinnie nodded his head. “I have to go out,” he told her. “Will you wait?”

    “Can’t I come?”

    “Best not.”

    “Where are you going?”

    “To church.”

    Reverend Mac Fleetwood shook hands with the last of his midnight service parishioners and closed the reinforced doors of the Zero Street Mission. He doused the main lights of the scruffy little chapel, leaving one advent candle burning on the altar.

    “You can come out now,” he called.

    The homeless man shuffled from behind the row of chairs where he’d been hiding. “You knew I was here?”

    “I’ve been pastor at this mission for eight years now. I’ve developed survival instincts.

    The homeless man shuffled forward. He wore an old army coat and a knitted cap. He could have been anywhere between twenty-five and fifty years old.

    “What did you want?” Mac asked him, gathering up hymn books and carrying them back to his vestry. “Do you need to talk about something in private? Do you need a meal?”

    The homeless man shuffled into the office behind the pastor. He drew the switchknife from his pocket.

    Mac saw the weapon. “Bad idea,” he warned the intruder. “Put it down and we’ll talk through your problem.”

    “My problem,” the homeless man said, “is that you’re not bleeding yet.”

    Mac backed away, but the office was small. “No,” he said calmly. “Your problem is that I served seven years as a Marine chaplain before I came here.”

    The homeless man didn’t even see the pastor move until the baseball bat cracked into his knuckles. The knife dropped from his shattered hand.

    Mac prodded him in the chest with the end of the baseball bat, sending him tumbling backwards on the step by the door to the church hall. “You might want to stay down while I call the police,” Mac advised.

    The homeless man’s mouth began to froth. His eyes changed, becoming red and luminous. “Fine,” he rasped in an entirely different voice, “let’s do this the old-fashioned way, then.”

    Mac paused. “ A demon? Really?” he asked.

    “Call us Legion…” began the creature inside the homeless man.

    “I’ll call you idiot,” snapped the pastor. “Listen, I’m not an expert – well, I’m a minister so I guess I am a bit, but you know what I mean – but from what I’ve picked up fighting vampires and all the other weird things that wander round this town, and a really really nasty Doomwraith once, if one of you guys starts acting this blatantly then my side gets to make a blatant response too.”

    The demon rose up, dragging the flesh it was wearing with it. It moved more like an insect than a man.

    “And if you read to the end of the book,” Mac confided, “you’ll find out that my side wins.”

    “I’m not going to kill you tonight,” the demon promised the pastor. “Only cripple you. Long, lonely years unable to move or see or speak.”

    “And when my side acts… well, have you ever heard of someone called Messenger?”

    The demon realised that Mac was looking behind him. A nasty prickling feeling ran up its borrowed spine.

    When the demon turned round Mac hit him again with the baseball bat. It hurt a lot.

    “Well Messenger isn’t here,” Mac admitted, “but I do polish my bat with holy oil.”

    When the screaming stopped and the homeless man passed out, battered but unpossessed, Mac dropped to his knees panting.

    He grabbed the bat again as he heard someone else at the door.

    “Um, hi,” called his new visitor. “I’m Vinnie de Soth. Please don’t bat me.”

    Mac rose to his feet. “This is a bad time to call, I’m afraid. I need to get this man to hospital.”

    “I only call at bad times,” the acting sorcerer supreme admitted. “It’s in my job description. Anyhow, I was hoping you’d come down to ER with me anyhow.”

    “Why? Is there somebody needs a minister?”

    “Yep,” agreed Vinnie. “From my information she’d been needing one since 1974.”

    Maggie shivered in-between the contractions. The grubby sleeping bag was damp where her waters had broken. She wasn’t sure that there should be blood on the blanket too.

    “It hurts,” she told Fist.

    “Yeah,” he replied.

    “Have you got any stuff? Anything at all, just to make the pain go away?”

    Fist shook his head. “That junk’s not good for the kid anyhow. If you start shooting up while you’re dropping him then you’re not gonna get that mother of the year award.”

    “Bastard.”

    “No, that’s your kid,” Fist snarled. “Just shut up and get on with it. I’ll be back soon.”

    “Don’t leave me!” Maggie cried. “Fist!”

    “I said I’ll be back,” her boyfriend repeated, tossing his knife. “I’m just gonna go make some collections from some carol singers.”

    Marjorie Wilton looked up from her book as the doorbell rang at Wendel’s Hallow. “Who on earth could that be at this time of night?” she wondered.

    Her husband put aside the cricketing almanac he’d been studying with his feet up to the fire and got up. “I’ll go and find out,” he promised. “Don’t disturb yourself, m’dear.”

    Sir Mumphrey Wilton left the library and padded on slippered feet towards the entrance hall. He could hear a raised voice.

    “Ah don’t care what time it is here in Eng-ah-land, Jeeves. Just go get your *%$^$ boss and tell him ah got to speak with him, you dig?”

    Sir Mumphrey didn’t like his retainers being spoken to with disrespect. “What is the meaning of this, sirrah?” he demanded. “Well, speak up, man!”

    The visitors at the door were a tall black man in a leather duster and a brown-skinned girl in a short white fur coat. The girl smacked the man on the back of his head. “See what you gone and done now?” she scolded him. “We didn’t come here to piss off this dude. We came here to get his help. So you just mind yo’ mouth and talk to him nicely.”

    Sir Mumphrey grumphed in mild approval.

    The young woman flashed a brilliant beaming smile at him. “Sir Mumphrey Wilton, we sure come a long ways to find you’all. I’m Venus, and this here is Mahogany Coffy, the MachoMochaDemonicDetective! Can we come in?”

    “Of course, m’dear,” the eccentric Englishman answered. “Can’t be havin’ you staying out in the cold on an awful night like this, what? Come and get warm by the fire. Madge, company!”

    “Amateur,” grumbled Coffy as he stepped over the threshold. “If we’d have been vampires or the like, just inviting us over the threshold would’ve been a death sentence!”

    “My dear sir,” Mumphrey addressed him, “had you been vampires and you crossed my threshold you would have been destroyed immediately. This is an old house and there are… precautions. Enough said.” He smiled back at Venus. “Now come in and tell me what’s brought you so very far on Christmas Eve.”

    At 12.40am on Christmas Day, Phantomhawk Memorial Hospital ER was crowded and noisy; and yet despite all the crisis and pain there was an underlying order.

    The Night Nurse moved along the line of people waiting, assessing, triaging, reassuring. She had a knack for spotting those people who needed the most urgent attention and getting them in front of a doctor in time to help them. The junior doctors who’d pulled the short straw of night shift were generally happy to do whatever the attractive brunette RN asked.

    Nurse Dubois looked up from the domestic violence burn case she was bandaging and nudged Grace O’Mercy as she passed with a pile of X-rays. “Say, what’s your boyfriend doing here?”

    The Night Nurse followed her friend’s gaze and saw Mac Fleetwood out at reception. “We’re just good friends,” she said automatically. “If you think about his job and my condition you’ll work out why.”

    Francine Dubois snorted. “See me throwing a handsome ex-Marine out of my bed on account of him being a good kind strong man who takes his religion seriously.”

    “I don’t see you throwing anyone out of your bed, Francine. But really I don’t want to get him in trouble with his boss, and I kind of have an allergy to a lot of the stuff in his house.”

    “Crosses, holy water, that kind of thing?” Nurse Dubois guessed. She was one of only two hospital staff who knew that the Night Nurse was a vampire; a vampire who saved lives in ER every night and survived on plasma from the blood bank, but a vampire nevertheless.

    “Look, even the Christmas carols they’re looping in the foyer set my teeth on edge,” Grace admitted. “And I quite like the Muppets.”

    Francine shrugged. “Well, your not-boyfriend’s coming over. If you don’t want him any more you can introduce me.”

    Mac strode across the waiting room. If Grace had reflected in mirrors she’d have checked that her hair was in place. She didn’t need to examine her make-up; with naturally red lips and dark eyes she didn’t need any.

    “Hey, Grace,” Mac called. “Listen, there’s a problem.”

    “Isn’t there always? What’s wrong this time?”

    The pastor looked apologetic. “Apparently it’s something Xander the Improbable set in motion. You evidently need to come with me. I’m sorry, but it’s urgent. We need to make a house call.”

    “Now? Have you seen this place?”

    “I’ll talk to Dr Whitwell, get it cleared.”

    Grace caught Francine’s thumbs-up sign behind Mac’s back and sighed. “Where do we have to go?”

    Mac tugged at his dog collar. “Yes, um… apparently we have to go to Birmingham, England. In 1974.”

    A little flicker of light woke Visionary. He opened his eyes and saw Hallie laying on the bed beside him.

    “Um…” said the possibly fake man.

    “Relax,” said the Lair Legion’s holographic A.I. “To anticipate your question: no, we did not have sex and you forgot about it.”

    “Oh, right. Good?”

    “I know you have issues with women creeping into your bed. I didn’t mean to give you flashbacks.”

    “No, that’s fine. As problems go, that’s not one of my worst ones.”

    “It’s just that I’ve had an unusual request from a team-member our in the field so I thought I’d better run it past you if you.”

    The leader of the Lair Legion shuddered. “It’s not from the Shoggoth is it? Because if so I’ll need to hide under the bedding before you tell me.”

    “No, it’s from Vinnie. He wants to know if he can claim something on expenses.”

    Vizh looked suspicious. “What?”

    Hallie smiled bravely at him. “A flock of sheep.”

    “Ah yes,” said Sir Mumphrey Wilton. “1974, eh? Recall it well. Back in the days when I’d put aside the Chronometer of Infinity and was growing old gracefully with Madge. Then suddenly there was… well, can’t say. Temporal paradox and all that, what?”

    “What?” asked Mac Fleetwood uncertainly.

    “Does any of this make any sense at all?” asked Grace O’Mercy plaintively. “Only I was following the plot right up to the point we collected the sheep.”

    Goldeneyed was crossing the Lair Hangar at the moment, back from a late-night Christmas party. He paused to stare at the Brecknock Hill Cheviots grazing amongst the LairJets. “Has Yo decided that rabbits aren’t enough?” he asked worriedly.

    “The sheep are important,” Vinnie assured her. “Although we’ll only need to take three with us.”

    “To 1974,” said Mac.

    “Yep,” Vinnie answered. “Sir Mumphrey will use his temporal pocketwatch to charge up a suitable vehicle that we can use to traverse the timestream. We’ll be there until the charge wears off.”

    Grace looked up at the LairJets.

    “Too large and too anachronistic,” Vinnie warned her. “Mumph needs something from that time period. So I asked…”

    The hangar doors boomed open and a Yule-cheerful hemigod of thunder strode into the bay. “Ho, fellow revellers! Rejoice and make merry for the nonce! I hath found thee suitable transport!” Donar paused as he spotted the sheep. “Tis a good job I found thee something sporty. Yon ovines do not look up to pulling a very large cart.”

    “I mean, everyone else can see the sheep, right?” G-Eyed checked.

    “Lending young De Soth your goat chariot, are you?” Mumphrey asked Donar. “Good chap.”

    “Er, actually mine chariot is in the shop,” admitted the hemigod. “The dwarves did suck in their breath and say unto me that getting yon ding out wilt not be cheap. But I hast found a suitable replacement that wilt easily accept yon time-zappeth and convey heroes to yesteryear.”

    “Nobody’s actually explained why it has to be us,” Grace pointed out, “or what we’re supposed to do. Or why.”

    “That sounds like a Xander plot,” Vinnie admitted. “So what have you got for us, Donar?”

    The hemigod proudly pulled aside the hangar door. An old carved runner sled stood there, harnessed to eight reindeer.

    “Why is there a sack of toys in the back of that?” wondered Goldeneyed.

    At 1.45am on Christmas morning 1974, the ringing of a telephone woke an old woman from her sleep. She reached out and dragged the received under her duvet. “This had better be good,” she answered the call.

    “Hello, Penny,” said Marjorie Wilton on the other end of the line. “Listen, I know this sounds like an infernal cheek, but it seems that Mumphrey needs your help. There’s something rather ungodly afoot according to a loud American Negro in the billiards room and apparently you’re needed to help sort it all out.”

    “I’m retired, Madge. I thought Mumphrey was too. What’s so terrible that I have to get out of bed on a freezing cold Christmas night?”

    Marjorie Wilton told her.

    “Oh, right-o then. I’ll be there presently.”

    The old lady replaced the received and struggled into her slippers.

    “Problem?” her companion asked her from the dressing table.

    “Somewhat,” Penny Pepper replied. “We’d best go and see what can be done.”

    She picked up her faithful talking knife and shoved it in her handbag.

    “What is it this time?” Knifey asked the old lady.

    “Birth of the antichrist,” she answered as she looked for her bike-clips.

    “It’s coming!” Maggie gasped, clutching the iron radiator on the wall of the abandoned garage. “The baby’s coming.”

    “About time,” said Fist, preparing his blade. If the child didn’t die it couldn’t be reborn as the avatar of ultimate evil.

    Maggie didn’t know her boyfriend’s full name yet. Fist was only the middle syllable.

    “Where does one even buy a flock of sheep in a major metropolis on Christmas eve?” asked Visionary as he watched Santa’s sled Doppler off into the cloudy sky.

    “Gimble’s,” consdered Yuki Shiro promptly. “Their winter catalogue. Although I think Vinnie might have had to get them a different way. He’s on a budget.”

    The possibly-fake leader of the Lair Legion nodded and rolled with the punches. “Where does one find a budget sheep tonight, then?”

    “We couldst raid some,” offered Donar hopefully. “Mayhap yon Heckfire Club hath some herds for the nonce?” He cracked his knuckles. “For the nonce.”

    “One of the agencies, I’d imagine,” suggested Hallie. “Rent-a-Sheep or Fleeces-R-Us or Woolly Jumpers.”

    Vizh blinked. “Wait… there are agencies? Agencies plural?”

    Flapjack, the Legion’s hunchbacked major domo limped into the Lair Hangar. “It’s a cartel,” he complained. “You get banned from one sheep-hiring agency and they circulate your picture and DNA samples round the whole damn bunch. Apparently. Then you have to resort to dodgy black market sheep from underground ovine rings.”

    Sir Mumphrey Wilton frowned at the limping butler in his ill-fitting seasonal pixie-lederhosen. “You’re the source of the sheep young De Soth borrowed for his jaunt,” he deduced,

    “Yeah. There goes my Christmas. I took one for the team.” Flapjack leered hopefully up as Yuki. “I don’t suppose…”

    “No,” said the cyborg P.I. sharply.

    Flapjack looked at the flock now foraging around the LairJets. Vinnie had only taken three of them off on the sled. “But what am I supposed to do with half a flock of sheep?” the hunchback complained bitterly.

    Visionary shuddered.

    “Just put them somewhere safe until morning,” Yuki advised. “You wouldn’t want to incur the wrath of, um, the underground ovine rings.”

    “Point,” conceded Flapjack. “Aunt Pillikin doesn’t take well to people damaging her stock.” He herded the remaining animals away to store in Ham-Boy’s room.

    “Does anyone want to explain to me what’s happening tonight?” Visionary asked. “Because if so please restrain yourselves. I’m heading back to bed.”

    “And when shalt we begin yon raid on the Heckfire Club?” Donar asked enthusiastically.

    The Rolls Royce Silver Dawn drove through the night along the A41 towards Birmingham. An angry black man hung out of the window.

    “Damn!” he growled, “F&*%%$ sky’s too smoggy to see if’n there’s a new star anywhere. Damn Eng-uh-land weather!”

    “Oh, it’s been very mild for this time of year, Mr Coffy,” Penny Pepper assured him. The old lady was sitting back enjoying the luxury of a ride in a classic luxury car now that she’d been allowed to tune the carburettor to her satisfaction.

    “Does anyone have any idea how we are to find the specific location for this antichrist?” Lady Marjorie Wilson asked the other passengers. “Knifey? You usually knows more than you’re saying.”

    “Me?” said Granny Pepper’s talking knife innocently. “I’m just an innocent piece of cutlery along for the ride.”

    “I couldn’t sense anything more specific than Birmingham,” Ebony Venus admitted. “I was hoping that one of the three of you who were summoned might be able to work out the specifics.”

    Sir Mumphrey Wilton looked out into the grey murky night. “Not to worry, m’dear. Something’s bound to turn up.” He kept the car steady as a dark shadow loomed over it.

    Then the anti-grav beam seized the vehicle and drew it up to the floating vessel above.

    The sleigh broke through the time barrier and skidded to a halt in a slush-stained alley somewhere off the Birmingham Bullring (which, sadly, was neither a ring nor ever contained bulls). The reindeer steamed slightly as the chronal charge burned off them.

    “Okay, we’ve made the LZ,” called Mac Fleetwood, “although I think the dents on the carriagework here might put us on the naughty list.”

    “Does Santa have a no-claims bonus to protect?” wondered Grace O’Mercy. She giggled helplessly as she realised what she was asking. “How can there even be a Santa? I mean, how can I be here-wherever-I-am in a time before I was even born looking for a baby I don’t believe in to… what was the plot again, Vinnie?”

    The acting future sorcerer supreme patted Blitzen between the antlers. “Grace, you’re an ER vampire dating an ex-Marine pastor and you have trouble believing in reindeer sleds?”

    “I wouldn’t say we were actually dating,” said Mac uncomfortably. “I mean, we see each other…”

    “It’s just a friends things,” Grace added. “Mostly. Almost entirely. Often.”

    “But about this antichrist,” Mac pressed on. “I mean, what’s the deal there? I’m not even sure those fundamentalist interpretations of one book out of the whole Bible can be…”

    Vinnie interrupted him. “This is the Parodyverse. Analogies and metaphors have a habit of turning on you and having teeth. And often claws and horns and flame-breath and the rest. Just go with the flow for now, okay. There’s a child being born near here and if he’s slaughtered in the right way then he’ll be a vessel for ultimate evil and nothing good is going to come of it, okay?”

    “But we’re from the future,” protested Grace. “We know nothing bad happens tonight.”

    Vinnie snorted. “First off, the future can change. We might never exist. In which case Blitzen and his pals are realer than we are right now. Second, um, off, the kid needs to grow up before he comes into his power. That’ll be happening, oh, Christmas Day 2010. So you can see why this suddenly got to the top of our to-do list. If we blow this then there won’t be a Boxing Day 2010. Well, not a traditional one anyhow. More grand guinol.”

    “So what do we have to do here?” Mac demanded. “Just so you know, I’m not letting anyone kill a baby. I’m not a big subscriber to the go-back-and-shoot-Hitler-as-a-kid thing.”

    Grace turned round and stared at the darkness at the end of the alley. “First thing I’d guess is we fight the demon horde,” she suggested. A nasty grin crossed her face. “Ooh, they brought some scary vampires with them.”

    “Er, demon horde?” Vinnie fretted. “The non-metaphorical kind? There’s a demon horde now?”

    The demon horde rushed out of the darkness to destroy them.

    “Of course there’s a demon horde,” sighed Vinnie.

    Alto Tumour shifted his bulk off the stool behind his shop counter and came over to Liu Xi. “So, your guy dumped you and ran off leaving you all alone on Christmas Eve, huh?” he ventured.

    “He just had to step out and save the world,” the elementalist answered. “He’ll be back in time to open his presents.”

    Alto sucked in his gut as best he could. “You know, I’ve got some exclusive collectables in the back room,” he offered. “Want to see my goodies.”

    Liu Xi’s expression was not welcoming. “I think you should keep your junk to yourself,” she advised. “Don’t you have customers to bother? I thought Christmas Eve was supposed to be a busy night?”

    The bookshop owner looked slightly worried. “Yeah, I am suffering a slight lack of customerage at the moment. Maybe it’s the weather?” He leaned over Vinnie’s desk towards Liu Xi. “Feeling the cold, sweetheart?”

    “No. Being an elementalist able to control fundamental forces I tend not to get chilly. If I ever do I can cause things to catch fire easily enough. Books. Shops. People.”

    Alto swallowed hard. “I, um, I need to get on with some inventorying now.”

    “Great idea.”

    The bookseller made his way back to his stool, then cried out. “Ouch! Who the hell thought it was funny to put a hedgehog on my seat?”

    Liu Xi peered round into the shop. There were hedgehogs all over the emporium, on shelves and book stacks and filling the aisles. Or, since they were Hedgehogs of Time, the guardians and maintenance crew of the timespace continuum, perhaps they were all the same hedgehog.

    “Oh dear,” said Liu Xi; or some Cantonese equivalent that was perhaps less polite.

    “It hurts!” screamed Maggie. “Fist, do something, damn you!”

    “Too late,” grinned the thug, lighting up a cigarette and watching the show. “S’funny, cause you were saying how much it hurt just at the moment you got knocked up, too.”

    Maggie turned a pain-reddened face to him. “How’d you know that? I never told you about the Hostel Supervisor.”

    “I get around. I know plenty about you, Mag. You, your dad, your grandma, going back centuries.”

    Maggie tried to control her breathing. “What do you mean? I don’t understand. You’re frightening me.”

    “Really,” her boyfriend chuckled, testing the edge of his blade. “’Cause I really haven’t even started trying yet.”

    Ebony Coffy reached over his shoulder and pulled out his sawn-off shotgun with the salt-filled wooden bullets. He did a roll out of the passenger door of Mumphrey’s car and came up ready for combat. “Yo’ want some!” he shouted at the darkness. “Bring it on, muthas!”

    Mumphrey let himself out too, examining the hangar deck of the airship they’d just been hauled aboard. “Hmph. Vast?” he called out. “Was there something you wanted to share with the group, old boy?”

    A set of dramatic lights came on over at the far end of the cargo bay. A large man in a smoking jacket descended the doorway, flanked by serious-looking guards.

    “Who’s that cat?” asked Ebony.

    Lady Wilton looked over at their captor. “That’s the billionaire collector Hedley Vast, dear. You know, the chap from the telly. Mumphrey, you’re not to hit him this time.”

    “He gonna have hisself a new &^*hole if he don’t explain why he just pulled us up into the sky like it was 2001 a Space Odyssey, “ warned Coffy.

    “Maybe he knows where the antichrist is being born?” Penny suggested. “Marjorie, do you think it would be alright is Mumphrey hit him just a little bit?”

    Mr Vast came down to greet his visitors. “I apologise for bringing you here in so peremptory a manner,” he told Sir Mumphrey. “You understand the urgency of the situation so you will forgive the theatrics and my use of Baron Zemo’s gravity ray.”

    “He’s workin’ for Zemo?” growled Coffy.

    Madge Wilton shook her head. “No. Mr Vast is a collector, Mahogany. He likes to own the various accoutrements associated with so-called superheroes and supervillains.”

    Hedley Vast nodded proudly. “I don’t suppose you’re ready to accept my offer to add Knifey to my collection, Mrs Pepper?” he asked Penny. “I know times have been hard for you since you were widowed.”

    “You wouldn’t want me in your collection,” Knifey warned the collector. “Or in any of your body parts.”

    “I think that’s a no,” answered Knifey’s wielder.

    “So why you decide to drag us here to your skybase an’ get in our faces, Vast?” demanded Coffy.

    The collector peered at the angry black devil-hunter. “We’re not so different, you and I,” he told the MachoMochaDemonicDetective! “And tonight we both pursue the same objective. We both wish to annihilate another potential antichrist.”

    Venus frowned. There was something about Hedley Vast that didn’t ring true.

    “Come and see my collection,” invited the billionaire. “Then you can tell me everything you know and we’ll see what’s to be done.”

    The Night Nurse wrenched control of the lesser vampires from their master and turned them against the demonspawn. “Oi!” complained the vampire lord in a thick Birmingham accent, “That’s my undead!”

    Grace gestured with her fingers, a swift cutting motion. The vampire lord’s throat was gashed open from twenty feet away.

    Back to back with Grace, Vinnie staggered and would have fallen had it not been for the Night Nurse behind him. The demon hordes were pressing at his hasty wardings and he had already got a nasty headache; plus he was trying to keep hold of three frightened tethered sheep and one had bitten him “This is so not good,” the young occultist worried. “Mac, can you do some kind of exorcism thing? Preferably the short-form version?”

    “Why do people always expect clergymen to go all exorcist?” demanded the pastor as he punched a grazz’okk hellspawn on the snout. “We really don’t get taught this stuff. Emphasis is more on how to chair church councils and fill out wedding registers. And at the Zero Street Mission there’s rather more call for detox counselling than expelling evil entities.”

    Vinnie crafted a sigil of sanctuary to fend off the hell-hordes for another thirty seconds then sucked his scorched fingers. “So no waving of your holy symbol and turning the demons to destruction?”

    “Isn’t that D & D?” checked Grace.

    Mac sighed. “Right. I’m the preacher so I’m a supposed to stop the demon horde? I guess a pithy three-point sermon’s not going to do it? Okay then.” He ducked away from the slavering mass of abyssal warriors and jumped back into the sleigh.

    “Um…” said Vinnie.

    “This is Santa’s sled, right?” Mac asked. “And Santa’s Saint Nick, yeah?” He grabbed the reins and shook them to signal the pack to move. “So these demons can suck holy reindeer!” he shouted as he charged Dasher, Dancer and co. straight into the knot of demonspawn.

    There was a horrible infernal squealing.

    “I was thinking of holy water,” Vinnie admitted to Grace, “but I guess reindeer are good too.”

    “And more prongy,” approved the Night Nurse.

    As Mac was triumphing at one end of the alley, the darkness at the other end of the passage was dispelled with a bright golden light. The remaining vampire swarm were seared to ash. Even Grace had to shield her eyes and step behind Vinnie.

    “At last!” the acting sorcerer supreme gasped as he spotted the warriors in the medieval armour taking up position at the end of the passageway.

    Mac skidded to a halt. “Reinforcements?” he asked as he saw the glowing warriors with their shining swords.

    “The Holy Knights of St Invigilus the Strict,” Vinnie recognised. “They don’t like antichrists either.”

    “So they’ll help us save the baby?” Grace asked.

    The High Holy Father of the Holy Knights pointed his holy sword at the time travellers. “Destroy the vampire and the wizard,” he commanded. “In the name of God!”

    “Possibly not,” Vinnie admitted to Grace.

    Mahogany Coffy whistled softly. “This is some collection,” he admitted.

    The vast central space of the former airship of the diabolical Totenmaske had been converted into a museum. Here the spoils of twenty years of obsessive collection were displayed for the pleasure of Hedley Vast. Sandsleeper’s mask and gas gun, Johnny Yoyo’s thundertoy, a spare faceplate from the android Burning Boy, a battle standard for Sleazy Company, Plaid Bee’s wings and many other world war two ephemera filled the main rotunda. Other sections honoured wild west heroes, the League of Improbable Gentlemen, the renaissance Improbable College, and some even older legends right back to the Lair Knights and beyond.

    “Is that Terry Lucas’ rocket pack?” demanded Coffy, recognising the accessory once worn by his predecessor CrazySugarBlast-offLad!

    “Everything here’s genuine, sugah,” Venus told him. “’Cept for Mr Vast.”

    The billionaire in the smoking jacket allowed himself a small smile. “What can I say? I’ve always been a collector. Nowadays I restrict myself to artefacts.”

    Sir Mumphrey grumphed to himself. “I actually liked Hastings Vernal though. Not that there’s any connection, of course,” he added more audibly as Hedley Vast hastened to deny any connection with the Victorian polymath.

    “So what is your interest in this natal event, Mr Vast?” asked Lady Marjorie diplomatically. “Do you collect antichrists as well?”

    “Hardly.” The collector tried to hide his annoyance.

    Venus looked at him hard. “He just don’ want the competition,” she sensed.

    “Look,” said Vast, “I brought you here because you have information which is useful to me. I can assist you in finding and destroying the antichrist, which is an objective I can endorse. As you see, I have considerable resources to bring to bear on the problem.” He gestured round his collection room.

    “Is that really Historia 001’s magic girdle?” wondered Coffy. “Hot damn! How’d you get that off’a her.”

    “Um, understand it came off early in World War II,” Sir Mumphrey noted uncomfortably. “Before we met, Madge m’dear,” he promised. “Oh look, is that a Yellow Flashlight ring?”

    “What do you think is powering the Totenmaske’s airship?” Vent said smugly. “It’s hardly practicable to drain the lifeforce from Jews, inverts, and gypsies any longer to keep this thing flying.”

    Penny Pepper folded her arms. “Look, Hedley, the fact is that we don’t trust you. You weren’t called for this mission like Mr Coffy was and you weren’t on the list of people he was told to contact.”

    Vent sneered. “Lucius Faust’s little protégé doesn’t like me. I imagine I’m not easy enough to manipulate.”

    “Or maybe Xander don’t like you cause you’re a horse’s ass?” suggested Coffy. “Listen, we be going now. You try and stop us, you’ll be picking holy bullets outta your hide till new year. No matter how many goons in uniform you got protecting yo’ sorry ass.”

    “Jolly good,” approved Mumphrey. “Really Vent, don’t be a tick. We’ve got limited time as it is before the child’s spawned so we’ve got to be on our way. Be a good chap and set the Rolls down somewhere in the greater Manchester area, there’s a good chap.”

    Vent moved over to another complicated apparatus from his collection, “How about this, then?” he suggested. “The Devil Doctor’s mind-draining mechanism. Tell me what you know about this antichrist or I’ll take it the hard way.”

    Coffy cocked his shotgun. “Git back to the car, everyone. Someone figure how to reverse those gravity beams.”

    Vast made a gesture to his guards to let his guests retreat. He watched them return back to the hangar then strode over to an eagle lectern and flicked open the tome resting on it. He laid a white hand across the Booke of the Law and called out, “I summons my guests!”

    Mumphrey and the others reappeared before him in a flash of light.

    “Now you can restrain them,” Vast told his henchmen.

    Alcheman touched the magical tattoos on his forearms to become sodium chloride for a moment to dry out. The snow was still falling on the rooftops of Paradopolis, which made a rooftop patrol somewhat problematic.

    Citizen Z crouched on the ledge beside him, watching the streets below, eager for trouble. The snow that fell on her didn’t seem to melt at all.

    “I know why I’m patrolling on Christmas Eve,” Alcheman ventured at last. “To avoid family parties and horrendous aunts. But why are you out here tonight?”

    “Justice never sleeps,” said the undead avenger tersely.

    “Well no, but it sometimes gets time off for egg-nog, I’d have thought. Don’t you have friends and loved ones you want to spend a few hours with at this time of year?”

    “No.”

    “Ah. Aunts. Well, I’m sure you could have gone along with Silicone Sally to that party she was going to. It sounded nice. They were having jello-o.”

    “Not orally,” growled CZ.

    Any further revelation was interrupted by the screams from below. A huge horned hellbeast had just tried to enter the Phantomhawk Memorial Hospital and had been roughly repelled before it even made it past the doorway.

    “Thank you, santa,” breathed Citizen Z as she jumped down to battle it.

    “What so you mean, not orally?” puzzled Alcheman for a moment. Then, on closer reflection, he decided it was a good idea to tackle the hellbeast that was hunting for the Night Nurse.

    “Alaric, it’s for you,” said Miss Framlicker icily.

    “Can you take a message?”

    “Do I look like a messaging service?”

    “Please? I’m kind of into something right now.”

    “Indeed,” hissed Miss F. “Sorry, Hallie, Al B. can’t come to the comm-card right now. He’d like me to take a message, given that he has such a short time to live.”

    The blonde administrator of Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises listened to the communication from the Lair Legion’s resident A.I. “Apparently there are demonic incursions. Again. Yuki wants you to try and identify the arcano-etheric frequencies and whip up a detector and locator so they can parcel the Shoggoth out to talk sternly to the intruders.”

    “Okay,” agreed Al. “I guess I can get back to this later. Do they want something hand-held or can I incorporate a full diagnostics package? I’ve got this great idea for cross-patching an array into the Ausgardian worldtree for amplification the bifurcating it through the karmic demiplanes for added resonance depth. Oh, and say Merry Christmas to Hallie and all the guys.”

    “Al says he’s not doing anything important and can geek his way over there right now,” Miss Framlicker announced into the comm-card. “Oh, and Merry Christmas.” She shut off the link and tossed the card at him.

    “I didn’t say not important,” Al B. told Miss F. “But this is an emergency.”

    “Yes. There is great peril.”

    The archscientist shuddered and asked the vital question. “Um… where did I toss my shorts?”

    “They are under my bra,” replied Miss Framlicker. “On the interwarp buffer stanchion.”

    “I’ll be back soon. I promise.”

    “I doubt I’ll notice you’re missing.”

    Al B. Harper winced.

    “Why?” sobbed Maggie, “Why is this happening to me? What did I do?”

    “It’s an unfair world,” Fist told her with a certain satisfaction. “Bad things happen to good people. But you know you’re not good people, don’t you Mags?”

    The girl in labour screamed and clutched the railing, trying to cope.

    “I mean, think about all the nasty, dirty things you’ve done, baby, with all those nasty dirty men. Then tell me you don’t deserve a little bit of pain in your brief, pointless life.”

    “You… made me… I… didn’t… want to…”

    “You had a choice. You were just weak. Weak and easy. That’s why I like you.”

    “Help me!”

    Fist chuckled. “Like I helped your dad when he topped himself in that sex offenders secure unit? Or your grandma when she got knocked up and couldn’t even name the father?”

    “What are you talking about? Fist, are you high?”

    “No, Mag. Not high. Low. Lower than you could imagine. And Fist’s just one of my nicknames.” The thug ran his blade down his thumb, drawing blood then tasting it. “In fact Nick’s another of my soubriquets. Or Mephistophiles. But these days I prefer Mefrothto.”

    “What are you saying, Fist? I don’t understand. Why are you talking different? Why does it hurt so much? Oh God!”

    “Wrong department, baby,” laughed the demon lord. “Now birth me my human shell and let’s get on. I have places go to, worlds to conquer. This is going to be one hell of a holiday season.”

    “Sorry to wake you again, Vizh,” Hallie apologised as she hologrammed in to Visionary’s bedroom.

    The possibly-fake man didn’t even remember anyone installing Hallie’s holo-system in his room. “Who’s done what to who now?” he blinked, trying to claw himself from his bedsheets. “Is it Kerry or CSFB!? Or Yuki? Or the Shoggoth? Or…”

    Hallie braced herself. “There’s a jolly fat man in the lobby who says that since we’ve commandeered his reindeer we’re responsible for a delivery job he has to finish on deadline tonight. Apparently Zebulon gave him your name.”

    The former Nazi airship with its distinctive skull-shaped frontage hovered over the smoggy midnight Birmingham skies. Hedley Vast looked through the circular viewing window at the city below. Somewhere down there a child was being birthed; a child he needed to eliminate before it could interfere with his own plans, even if it required the death of every infant in the city.

    “You’re being ridiculous now, Hedley,” Madge Wilson scolded him as the armed security guards surrounded the little party that Vast had kidnapped. “You’d better stop this nonsense right now.”

    “First one of you blighters points a weapon at my wife will be havin’ colon surgery to have it removed,” warned Sir Mumphrey Wilton.

    “What the British dude said, only with more swearin’,” echoed Mahogany Coffy. “’Cept about Venus here. You so much as breathe on mah woman…”

    The ebony beauty at his side pointed to their host. “He’s planning to put me in his mind-sucker gizmo,” she sensed. “He don’ care what it’ll do to me.”

    “Well, I think we’ve probably worn out our welcome here,” scowled Penny Pepper. “Time to go I reckon, Knifey.”

    “Control and power cables under your feet three paces to the right,” the talking knife replied. Penny obligingly sliced him through the steel decking to sever the engineering beneath it.

    The airship lurched. A delicate display of renaissance torture equipment from the Church of Conformity fell over and shattered. Vast howled.

    Sir Mumphrey gut-punched the nearest guard, took his rifle off him, then used it to club the man down. Coffy pistol-whipped the man nearest to him and hurled him headlong into a cabinet of von Zemo family deathmasks.

    “Restrain them!” screamed Hedley Vast, avoiding Penny’s Knifey-slash with a dexterity that belied his bulk.

    Coffy fired his shotgun across the museum deck, covering the floor with broken glass and shattered artefacts. A stray cartridge activated the long-defunct rocket pack of CrazySugarBlast-OffLad!, sending it careening along the decking into a cluster of guards then out through the huge circular viewing lens.

    “Should have listened, old chap,” Mumphrey warned Vast. He jabbed another guard on the nose and hurled him over the balcony onto the vehicle deck below. “Other HVs would have known better. And had better manners.”

    Vast lifted a Lucifer Glove once created by Herr Wertham using the foulest Nazi science. It made an unpleasant whining noise, much like the billionaire collector himself. “I am sufficient to myself,” he warned. “As you will see.”

    Penny caught the first blast on Knifey’s blade-edge and reflected it into the alcove where the Improbable College collection lay in semi-darkness. A loud explosion shook the ship again. Vast upped the power so his next assault would be too wide-beam for a small Knife to deflect.

    A pair of Vast’s uniformed goons grabbed Venus. She hung on their arms and twisted her legs into a wide double-kick then hurled both men over the balcony. The NubileNubianChop-SockySista didn’t take kindly to being pawed.

    Vast set his Lucifer Glove on multiple containment. As he clenched his fist an invisible restraining field closed around Mumphrey, Penny, Coffy and Venus. Penny carved through it with Knifey but the guards dogpiled then old lady.

    “Now we shall have some order,” hissed Hedley Vast as his opponents hung in his literal grasp. “And information. Oh yes. Anything to say now, Sir Mumphrey?”

    “Need to get one point clear,” growled the eccentric Englishman. “This antichrist you’re after. You’re intendin’ to eliminate the child?”

    Vast fondled a jar of Dormaggadon cradleworms. “I shall eliminate every child in a hundred mile radius. It is a logistical necessity to save the world.”

    “That’s mass murder!” objected Penny, struggling under her guards.

    “That’s the price for saving everything,” noted Vent. He fondled the seal of the sinister black container that stood atop the marquetry-inlaid Judas Box.

    “Just one more question, then,” said Sir Mumphrey Wilton.

    “Before I extract your memory stores to help me focus my culling?” Vast replied casually. “Ask then.”

    “Ready, m’dear?” the eccentric Englishman called to his wife.

    Lady Marjorie Wilton shattered a glass case and reached inside. “Absolutely,” she answered.

    Vast turned upon her. “Stop!” he ordered. “Stop!”

    A bright glow suffused the museum deck, surrounding Madge in a golden aura. She slipped her finger into the yellow ring that hung inside the broken column, the glowing band that was powering the ship’s flight. And she smiled.

    “In secret den or evil’s lair     No villain shall escape my glare!     Let those whose malice goes unseen     Beware my light…     The Flashlight’s beam!”

    The airship lurched again as she took command of the Yellow Flashlight energy band and set its brilliant rays to seek out the wicked.

    The Holy Knights of St Invigilus the Strict were prepared to deal with undead and mages, no matter how powerful they might be. They’d brought sacred weapons and magic-tangling blesswebs for that very purpose.

    “I don’t suppose we can be reasonable and discuss this as if we weren’t frothing religious maniacs?” Vinnie asked them without much hope.

    “Back, spawn of Lucifer!” screeched the Holy Combat Chaplain, wielding a spiked sixty-pound crucifix.

    “Tell me again why I came here with you?” Grace O’Mercy asked the young man who would be temporary acting sorcerer supreme thirty-some years into the future. “I mean, I could have been in ER right now surrounded by Christmas drunks projectile vomiting and stitching up the domestic violence victims who’s fallen on festive doorknobs.”

    “End the vampire! Burn the sorcerer!” commanded the High Holy Father.

    Mac Fleetwood punched him on the nose. “Hold it right there!” the pastor warned the Knights. “The Lord gave you brains. Seems ungrateful for you not to even try and use them!”

    “Blasphemer!” screamed the Holy High Father, clutching his face and trying to contain his nosebleed. “Chastise him! Chastise him to death!”

    Mac kicked him. “’Cause if you used your brains even for a moment you’d see we’re the good guys here. Get past the labels and the hate rhetoric and look what we’re really like.”

    The Knights prepared their blessed crossbows.

    Vinnie sidled towards the cover of the reindeer sleigh.

    “Mac?” Grace asked uneasily.

    “See this girl?” Reverend Fleetwood demanded of the armoured warriors. “She’s saved lives tonight. How many have you saved?” He pointed to the nurse’s cap on the Night Nurse’s head. “See that red cross there? You’re the big experts on vampires and stuff. How do you think a creature of evil could have that on her forehead without it burning her up?”

    “Well, it does play havoc with my hairstyle,” Grace admitted.

    “He speaks the devil’s lies,” the Combat Chaplain decided. “Crucify him!”

    “And if that cross on her cap doesn’t bother her,” Mac went on insistently, “what makes you think all the ones you’re carrying will protect you from her?”

    Vinnie winced. “Good point, Mac. This is a major city, guys. How many vermin do you reckon there are in a place like this? How many rats? How many pigeons? How many roaches? And how do you think medieval armour’s going to keep them out?”

    Mac glanced at Grace. “You can control insects and stuff?”

    “We have a pest-free hospital,” the Night Nurse admitted. “And a zero incidence of MRSA.”

    “Destroy them all!” shouted the High Holy Father from under Mac’s boot.

    “Eat cockroach!” said the Night Nurse, speaking literally.

    The darkness coalesced. Insects skittered from the alleys and formed up into a shape that might possibly pass as human. The demon stepped to the doorway on Alto Tumour’s Occult Bookshop and tested its defences.

    They were better than he had expected.

    Elsewhere across the city, the crude demons sent to dispatch the vampire and the priest were being thwarted and destroyed. This being had been sent to remove a master of the mystic crafts. He was of a higher order.

    He reached out and took possession of the driver of a late-night bus. A three hundred ton passenger vehicle through the front of the shop would disrupt the defences well enough. After that there were plenty of unpleasant ways to kill everyone inside.

    In the coldest part of the night Maggie went into labour. She knelt on all fours and screamed as her unassisted birthing began.

    Her former boyfriend and current demon lord watched with growing excitement, as if he was at a superbowl and his team was pushing ahead. “This is it,” he marvelled. “After so many false starts, this is the one where he gets in.”

    “I don’t… I don’t understand!” shrieked the agonised runaway. “Why won’t anyone help me?”

    “Ah well,” said Fist, “that’s the point, isn’t it? In a world where people cared, a world of good people who look after lost little girls, a world where nobody exploits or preys on the helpless, this wouldn’t be happening. Your child couldn’t be born into that world.” He looked around him, admiring the bleak grey city. “But here we are!”

    Maggie didn’t understand what had happened to her boyfriend. She didn’t know why he was speaking differently, even moving differently. She didn’t know why his eyes were glowing a Satanic red, enough to paint the derelict garage backroom with a crimson wash. She only knew pain and despair.

    And birth.

    She didn’t know how long it was before the final contraction pushed her bastard into the world. She screamed one last time as she tore, then toppled to her side, the new-delivered baby bloody between her legs.

    “Cutting the umbilical,” Fist said, raising his knife. “That’s the start. Cutting the throat. That’s the end.”

    The leader of the Lair Legion had just managed to get back to sleep again when he was awoken again.

    “Really, really sorry about this,” apologised the team’s resident A.I. “It’s another crisis.”

    “Ack,” winced the possibly-fake man as he tumbled out of bed and bounced on the floor. “I knew it was a mistake letting the Shoggoth have the Santa suit.”

    “No, it’s not that.”

    “Then what? I knew we shouldn’t have let the Juniors drive the reindeer. Can reindeer even burn?”

    “Listen. Get a grip. This isn’t about reindeer or santa. We have a visitor. A non-red-and-fur-trimmed visitor. You have to get up.”

    “Please don’t let it be the Easter bunny again. We had to use elephant tranquillisers to calm down Yo last time.”

    “It’s definitely not the Easter bunny.”

    “Good evening,” said the Hooded Hood.

    The lights of the Number 37 bus to Hogan blazed as the vehicle drove towards Alto Tumour’s store window at fifty miles an hour. The demon possessing the driver sounded the horn for sheer delight, so the few customers browsing the store would be aware of their impending gory deaths.

    A barrier of solid rock rose up from the sidewalk, ten feet tall and five feet thick. The bus hit it literally like impacting into a wall.

    Liu Xi winced. She’d not had time to disengage her mind from the elemental manipulation before it was shattered to rubble.

    “What?” Alto Tumour gasped, his I-dated-Cthulhu coffee mug halfway to his lips as he stared at the crumpled bus six inches from his storefront. “Er, I meant to buy a ticket, honestly. I just didn’t have a token that one time. Maybe two…”

    “It’s an attack,” Liu Xi called to him, rushing to the door. “Get everyone out the back way. Or if that’s not safe get them into Vinnie’s room. Move!”

    The driver was dead. Lix Xi had not had time to do anything else that might have saved him. The twenty or so other passengers were shaken up but few were badly injured. The demon spread his essence amongst them and marched them out of the bus to begin their attacks.

    Liu Xi could sense the reeking evil within them. She concentrated, trying an exercise she’d worked out in Legion training with Yuki and Hatman just days before. The possessed passengers struggled as the air left their lungs but not even demonic imperatives could prevent them from passing out from asphyxia.

    The demon tried to leap past Liu Xi into Alto Tumour, but something about the shop’s storefront bounced him away. Shumash dreamwebs hissed and steamed. He tumbled to the pavement in physical form, a tall red-skinned horned creature of teeth and fangs.

    Liu Xi seared him with fire. He laughed.

    “You’re not getting in here,” the elementalist warned. She tried ice and wind too but the demon shrugged them off. Earthly elemental forces did not bother him.

    “I don’t need to go in there,” the creature rasped. It’s voice was like insects burning. “If I hurt you enough the mage will come out to me.”

    Liu Xi tried to skewer the demon on spikes of granite. It shattered them with ease.

    “All I need to do is to hurt these brief mortals,” it boasted. It stepped on one of the unconscious passengers, popping his head.

    “No!” shouted the Chinese girl, unconsciously stepping forward from the threshold of the shop, beyond its arcane protections.

    “All I need do is take you,” the demon laughed, reaching out to possess Liu Xi Xian.

    “No!” she cried again. Then, more seriously, she said, “I mean it. No.”

    The demon’s howl of triumph strangled away as he reached into the girl’s spirit. “What? What’s this? Lord Slithis? And… a void… an awful Void! The Celestian Madonna? The Doomherald! The Destroyer of Tales! The… the… no, this is impossible! Aaaaahhhh!!”

    The demon turned to run but Liu Xi’s will pinned him.

    At the last the demon killed himself rather than have to stay there any longer.

    Grace O’ Mercy shielded her eyes and stared up into the frosty Birmingham sky. “Is that a star?” she asked, looking eastward.

    Vinnie followed her gaze. “I think that’s a Nazi airship suffused with Yellow Flashlight energies being crash-landed in the river. But that’s just a guess.”

    “Hallie, get Sir Mumphrey here. Stat,” ordered the leader of the Lair Legion. “I mean really, really stat.”

    “Who’s Hallie?” puzzled the team’s A.I. “I’m HELLIE. And who’s Sir Mumphrey Wilton?” She checked her database. “English industrialist, died 1973?”

    Vizh stared at the green-skinned hologram, then at the grey-cowled archvillain blocking his bedroom door. “What have you done, Hood? Put her back!”

    The cowled crime czar seemed amused. “This is not my retcon. My schemes are ever tinged with genius, for am I not… the Hooded Hood? This is a change in history. You world is shifting to a different timeline. I am merely shielding you from its effects for a short while.”

    “Shall I get the team, Hellionary?” demanded HELLIE. “The Archcleric and Blackhearted are on Shoggoth-tormenting duties but I can get Yuki Hei, CrazySugarFiendBastard!, the Baroness, Headcase, Alchemurderer and Hoki here soon enough. I don’t know about Meatgrinder, though. I think it was his mother’s sacrifice day today so he’ll probably be pretty busy.”

    Vizh turned back to the Hood. “Fix it,” he demanded.

    “Not my department,” answered the archvillain. “As I understand it, you are the leader of the Lair Legion… Hellionary.”

    “What’s happened? What changed?”

    “Oh, the antichrist is here, that’s all. Now IRS forms have soul-deductible items on them and there’s a firstborn tax you probably don’t want to know about.”

    “This is the thing that Vinnie took Mac and Grace to deal with?”

    “Indeed. So far it looks as though they have not succeeded.”

    “So far? This timeline’s not fixed yet then?”

    “Hellionary?” checked HELLIE. “You’re acting even weirder than normal. Shall I send for Lisa to administer another flagellation?”

    “Your main concern,” the Hood told the possibly-fake hellspawn, “is that the young people in that enchanted sled are so far immune to this and will be returning to Parody Island by dawn – to encounter your revised team.”

    Vizh shuddered. “Right then. You’ve still got that Portal of Pretentiousness, right?”

    “And I would assist you because?”

    “Because the Lair Legion as evil bastards wouldn’t put up with you the way we do. Now shut up and get me a doorway to Yo-Planet!”

    Maggie whimpered as Fist approached her with his Bowie knife. “Don’t…” she pleaded, sensing his intent. “Don’t hurt the baby…”

    Mefrothto snickered. “It’s a kindness, really. No matter how much his slow horrible dissection here hurts it will be nothing compared to what the being that suffuses him afterwards will do to the rest of creation.”

    Maggie tried to rise but she’d lost too much blood. She had no fight left in her.

    “Oh God, please…” she begged.

    Mac Fleetwood kicked the door in. “You! Away from them!” he barked at the thug with the knife.

    “We’ve got sheep,” warned Vinnie De Soth. “And we’re not afraid to use them.”

    The Demon Lord looked at the intruders in puzzlement for a moment, then realised who they were. “Of course. Ghosts From Christmas Yet To Come. Xander is tricky. I neutralised the trio of wise men he set off in this timeline, so he’s tried to pull future-wisp shepherds from a potential future where I’ve been destroyed.” He glanced at Grace. “And of course she’d be able to find the blood.”

    “Help me…” pleaded Maggie. “It hurts. And he’s going to kill my baby.”

    Grace O’ Mercy was suddenly beside her, supernaturally fast. “It’s going to be alright,” she promised. “I’m a nurse. We can stop the bleeding. We can cut the umbilical and you’ll have a beautiful, healthy baby boy.”

    Mefrothto laughed. “You’re forgetting what you are, vampire.”

    Mac stepped between the Demon Lord and the Night Nurse. “She’s remembering exactly what she is.”

    “Temptation?” Vinnie challenged Fist. “She’s been there, done that. Every night, every wounded person who comes to her for help. I didn’t bring her because she’s a vampire. I brought her because she’s a trauma nurse.”

    Mac glanced at Vinnie. “Is it my imagination or is he sprouting horns?”

    “Horns,” the young occultist agreed. “I think this is an avatar of Mefrothto, Prince of Fibs. He’s a lot nastier than his name sounds. He’s a lot nastier than anything sounds.”

    “Vincent De Soth,” the Demon Lord recognised. “Many of your family have done homage to me and become great by it.”

    “Yeah. I’m not big on the homage,” Vinnie admitted. “I’m pretty much a homage-free zone. Haven’t you worked it out yet? Xander sent exactly the people who are inoculated against your best temptations. Grace is on the wagon, I’m not fussed about being an all-powerful occultist, and Mac… well, when the girl called for help he’s what his boss sent, so you work it out.”

    Grace carefully cut and tied the birthing cord and tried to stanch the worst of Maggie’s bleeding.

    Mefrothto laughed. It wasn’t pleasant. It sounded like tortured puppies. “You think this little priest has no sins I can use against him?”

    Mac turned his back on the Prince of Fibs. “Sorry, busy,” he called out, squatting beside the child. He touched the bloody infant. “I baptise you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

    Fist stopped laughing. “What?”

    Vinnie shrugged. “He baptised him. That’s why we packed a pastor. You were doing the whole intimidate-toy-with-tempt-destroy routine and Mac just claimed the kid for the opposition. Or at least put him in play with some free will. Game over. Result.”

    Mefrothto sensed the futures shifting again. He howled.

    “You die!” he promised Fleetwood. “You, your vampire woman, this little pretend-sorcerer supreme, everyone in this city, everyone across this world…!”

    “Grace and I aren’t actually…” Mac managed before the tempest bowled him off his feet. Vinnie dived for the child and caught it up in his arms before he was jerked with Grace and Mac to dangle helplessly before the Prince of Fibs. Even the sheep hung in bewildered terror. Maggie cowered.

    “You have disturbed the planning of millennia!” Mefrothto raged. “Your torments shall be as long!”

    “I can’t break free!” Grace called to the others. “I thought I’d become powerful but this… he’s so… there’s no end to how dark he goes!”

    “Yeah, we didn’t come equipped to stop Mefrothto, only his plot,” Vinnie admitted, still cradling the baby and trying to shield it. “That’s another department.”

    The garage door was already kicked in. Mahogany Coffy kicked it in anyway. “Yo, demon dude, eat blessed lead!” he shouted. Then he let Mefrothto have both barrels.

    The Demon Lord staggered then slashed him across the chest with a gesture from across the room.

    “No point being an unsporting loser, you bounder,” Sir Mumphrey Wilton warned Mefrothto. “You’ve been beaten fair and square. Now don’t be a tick, just go to hell and good riddance to you, what?” He leaned over the trembling Maggie. “Don’t you fret, m’dear. We’re going to find you a good place to live with your baby where nothing’ll ever bother you again. Reckon life’s been dashed unkind to you so far, but I’m givin’ you my word that it’s jolly well going to make it up to you now, alright?”

    “Then you will be foresworn, Keeper of the Chronometer of Infinity!” thundered Mefrothto. “You should have brought your weapon with you. The minor temporal protections you have woven upon you and yours cannot prevail against the Prince of Fibs!”

    Coffy staggered to his feet again, clutching his torn chest. “He don’t need no funky pocketwatch to beat you tonight, *&£%sucker!” he wheezed. “All he needs is to keep you looking that way long enough.”

    “Long enough for what?”

    Penny Pepper pressed Knifey to Mefrothto’s neck. “For me,” she said.

    “And me, of course,” said Knifey; sharply.

    Mefrothto froze.

    “Can you kill a Demon Lord?” Penny asked her talking blade, conversationally.

    “Do you mean can I in the sense of is it possible, have I done it before, or can I meaning will I slice his throat now and terminate his existence across all the planes from henceforth to the end of eternity?”

    Mefrotho swallowed. It was a bad idea.

    “You are old now, Penelope Madrigal Pepper,” he noted. “You’re going to die soon. I can change that. I can make you young again. A new life. An eternal existence.”

    “Meh,” said Penny. “Been young. Enjoyed it. Need a rest now. How about you, Mefrothto. Are you ready to die?”

    “Do it,” shouted Coffy. “Take the *&$^£%^ down!”

    Vinnie, Grace, and Mac dropped free. The sheep fell too, more confused than even baseline sheep norm.

    “This isn’t the time or place for Mefrothto to die,” Vinnie admitted. “Maybe just wound him a little bit?”

    Grace took the baby from the young occultist and checked it was okay. “He’s doing fine,” she approved as the boy protested what was going on with a screaming tantrum. “And he’s not the antichrist any more, right? He’s over that phase?”

    Mac shrugged. “Maybe until he gets to his teens?” he suggested. “I think all teenagers spend some time being the antichrist when they hit about seventeen.”

    Mumphrey clapped his hands together. “Splendid! Well then, I think we’re about done here. The oik Mefrothto’s going to swear a binding pact in front of a cosmic office holder – me – to leave this young lady and her son alone, and then he’s going to slink off back to whatever pit he crawled out of and good riddance to bad rubbish. Madge and Venus are bringing the Rolls round and we’ll make sure the young lady has a deuced sight better life now than she’s ever had before. Count on it, Maggie. Might even loan you a Nanny if you’ve got a strong constitution. As for the rest, well merry Christmas all! I think we’re into Christmas Day.”

    “Bah, Humbug!” hissed Mefrotho just before Coffy pistol-whipped him in the groin then hit him with an impossibilitium-suffused sheep as he folded over. The demon lord screamed in anguish and evaporated like a pantomime villain.

    “God bless us every one,” said Knifey.

    “So the future’s safe now?” Madge Wilton checked with her time-sensitive husband. “Whatever place these young people came from will be there for them to go back to?”

    “Absolutely,” promised the eccentric Englishman. “Might have been a bit of local disruption, invasion of Pure Thought Beings versus the forces of darkness, that kind of thing. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

    “They’re in a freakin’ reindeer sled!” objected Mahogany Coffy. “A freakin’ Santa sled!”

    “Not a freaking Santa sled, honey,” Venus warned him, snuggling close in the cold. “The freaking Santa sled.”

    “No %^£$!” beamed the MachoMochaDemonicDetective! “Now that is cool!”

    “We’ll be heading off now,” Vinnie told them. “The longer we stay here the longer we risk sprawling an epic multi-part mega-saga.”

    “Keep Maggie on the fluids,” Grace advised Penny, “and get her to a hospital if she starts bleeding again.”

    Knifey’s wielder nodded. “I’ll take care of her. It feels good to have been able to do something useful again,” she smiled. “Wait until I tell my daughter April about this.”

    “Thank you for your help,” said Maggie shyly, snuggling her sleeping infant to her breast. “I can’t… words can’t explain what it is…”

    “Words don’t have to,” Mac told her. “And this night of the year, above all night, is about second chances.” He paused. “By the way, when a baptism’s done it’s usual to name the baby. Have you given any thought to what the boy will be called?”

    Maggie hugged the child closer to her. “There is a name I like. I never told Fist.”

    “Well then,” said Sir Mumphrey with a smile, “tell us, please. Who is this little fellow?”

    “I want to call him Con,” said Maggie Johnstantine shyly.

    “Well, that was some night,” said Grace to Mac as they parted. The first smudge of a cold dawn was appearing over the Paradopolis seaboard.

    “Some night,” agreed Mac. “And I’ve got an early-morning service due in about half an hour.”

    “See you later, Mac.”

    “Sweet dreams, Grace.”

    They almost parted without kissing.

    “Do I want to know why there’s a SPUD clean-up team outside Alto’s shop?” Vinnie worried as he picked his way over the debris to join Liu Xi in his little backstore room.

    “Maybe later,” suggested the young elementalist. “For now you should unwrap your present.”

    Vinnie looked around the bare dark cupboard of a room. “I don’t see any presents,” he admitted. “Just you in a pretty silk robe.”

    Liu Xi Xian smiled at him. “And your point would be…?”

    “Probably best not to wake Visionary right now,” Hallie told Sir Mumphrey. “Much as he might need a briefing on the spacio-temporal disturbances you picked up last night, and Yuki’s threat assessment on demonic incursions across the city, and options about what to do with the Heckfire Club personnel, livestock, and Christmas dinner that seem to have appeared in the Lair Legion Living Room, and a meeting with Mr Kringle’s lawyers about punitive vehicle damages, he really needs to sleep. He’s had a really long exhausting night. I had to get him up quite a number of times.”

    Of course Dancer overheard that and drew her own conclusions. But that’s another story.

Historical Notes:

Mahogany Coffy, the MachoMochaDemonicDetective! and his Brown Sugar (Sally Hemings-Jefferson, a.k.a. Ebony Venus) the Nubile Nubian Chop-Socky Sista were part of the long line of CrazySugarHeroes! imbued in various ways by Impossibilitium. As a caffeine rather than sucrose-fuelled incarnation of the eternal champion of chaos, Coffy was perhaps more serious in outlook than many of the lineage. In 1979 Coffy and Venus vanished; their fate remains undisclosed.

Penny Pepper first appeared as girl flyer Penny Madrigal in Penny Madrigal and the Aryan Ideal, in which the adventuress with the talking knife first encounters the man she calls “Captain Basil I’m-God’s-gift-to-stranded-womenfolk Pepper”. We can perhaps deduce that matters turned out differently to how the young people expected given that Penny’s daughter has appeared in modern Parodyverse stories as Aunt April Pepper, whose nephew Joe Pepper is Knifey’s most recent wielder.

Sir Mumphrey Wilton met Marjorie Canterbury during the second world war and they eventually married. At around the time of the birth of the first of their three children Sir Mumphrey put away his Chronometer of Infinity and he and Madge began to age naturally; prior to that Mumphrey had been in his early twenties since the late 19th century. Only a few years after Madge’s death did Sir Mumphrey need to take up his office again, but now he is not aging from somewhere in his sixties.

Knifey had a rematch with Mefrothto in Untold Tales of the Lair Legion #33: True Dare Kiss Promise, which is why Mefrothto is no longer a player in the modern Parodyverse. Mefrothto’s attempt to return as one of the Dead Hell Lords sponsoring the Hellraisers was likewise thwarted on Knifey’s point.

Con Johnstantine grew up to be an occultist interferer who has appeared many times in Untold Tales and elsewhere, often in bed with Dancer.

No reindeers were harmed in the production of this episode; which is more than you can say of Vizh’s traditional Christmas Parodyverse tale, BZL Christmas Story - although that one has more heartwarming killer furbies.