The Coltranes fell to with a will, moving all the furniture away from in front of the bar, and opening up a large clear space. (The shapeshifted barstool yelped quietly at the rough handling, but refused to turn back.) Once the Coltranes had created a big enough space, they laid out a large pentacle, using salt cellars from behind the bar to mark the lines. They made a really professional job of it, considering they were drawing it freehand. Bouncers have to know many special skills, especially in the Nightside. We all took our places inside the pentacle, then Lucy and Betty sealed and activated the design by scrawling disturbing signs in the vales between the five points. Betty drew the last sign with a flourish, and the salt lines blazed with blue-white energies. Properly constructed pentacles drew their power from ley lines, the living nervous system of the material world. Unfortunately, angels drew their power from somewhere even more impressive.

Betty and Lucy Coltrane sat down together and held each other tightly. They'd done all they could. Suzie and I stood back-to-back, watching and waiting. Alex muttered darkly to himself while trying to look in all directions at once. At least when he wasn't shooting dark glances at me that clearly said This is all your fault. Do Something. And you 'd better have a really good plan. As it happened, I did. But I wasn't going to tell him about it just yet Because he really wasn't going to like it.

Upstairs, the front door to the club blew in. There was the sound of great wings beating, followed by the tread of heavy feet. A blindingly bright light spilled out of the foyer but stopped abruptly at the top of the stairs leading down into the bar proper. A heavy tension built on the air, oppressive and threatening like a storm about to break, as the angels pressed against Strangefellow's ancient defences. All of the windows shattered at once, vicious shards of glass flying through the air, only to fall just short of the pentacle's glowing lines. A blackness far darker than the night oozed through the windows, swallowed them up, then crept slowly across the walls.

"They're here," said Suzie. "Heaven and Hell."

"And poor Humanity caught in the middle, just like always," I said. I turned to Alex. "And now, it's up to you. We need your ancestor, Alex. We need Merlin."

"No," he said. "No way. I won't do it."

"He's the only one powerful enough to make a stand against angels, Alex."

"You don't know what you're asking, John. I can't do it."

"That's your big plan?" said Suzie. "Call up Merlin? What's he but another dead sorcerer who won't lie down?"

"According to some Arthurian legends, his full name was Merlin Satanspawn," I said. "Because his father was supposed to be the devil."