The Gatekeeper Trilogy, Book One - OUT of the MADHOUSE

by Christopher Golden

  Fulcanelli dropped his head, shook it sadly, and smoothed imaginary ruffles in the crimson and black cloak that he wore.

  “Dear, demented Richard,” Fulcanelli sighed. “You seek to thrust your guilt upon another, but it is plain for all of us to see. Madame has already decreed your fate, and believe me, it is far kinder than another might have been.”

  For a moment, Regnier could only stare, open-mouthed, at the sorcerer. Then, slowly, he began to turn back to face Catherine. But even as he turned, Fulcanelli’s acolytes fell upon him. Regnier’s right hand began to glow with eldritch flame, but too late. A heavy cudgel struck his temple, and he fell to the ground as though he were dead.

  This was, in fact, Catherine de’ Medici’s first impression.

  “I commanded that he not be killed!” the Dauphine protested immediately.

  “Please, lady,” Fulcanelli said gently, gliding across the clearing toward her. “These faithful friends have been about such unfortunate work in the past. They would never take a life in error.”

  Catherine knelt at Regnier’s side and laid her hands on his chest. She seemed relieved to feel the rise and fall of his chest beneath her fingers, and Fulcanelli frowned at her concern.

  “You will see him safely to a merchant vessel, and deliver the purse I have provided to the captain for his passage to wherever that ship next sails,” the Dauphine ordered.

  Fulcanelli merely bowed his head obediently. “So you have commanded and so shall it be done, Your Grace,” he agreed. “Though I know not why you would spare one so evil, so duplicitous.”

  The princess glanced up sharply at her advisor. Her eyes roved quickly over the acolytes as they began to lift Regnier from the hard earth of the clearing. Together they stood in silence, Dauphine and sorcerer, until the two men had passed beneath the rosy arch and out of the clearing. At last, when the two were alone, Catherine narrowed her eyes and glared at Fulcanelli with a distrust she had never before allowed.

  “I have had my fill of killing, Giacomo,” she said evenly. “With Regnier gone, you have your wish. If I chose correctly in believing you, perhaps I will also have my wish. But I will not buy my future and my child with more blood. If God does not see fit to give me a babe, I refuse to seek my solace elsewhere. Whatever comes, I am through with death and blood.”

  “We are, none of us, through with such things until we breathe our last, Catherine,” Fulcanelli said darkly. “But I will respect your wishes, and not trouble you with such suggestions any futher. I only pray that you will bear the heir that your husband so desires.”

  With her predicament stated so baldly, Catherine flushed deeply, angrily, and said nothing. She pushed past Fulcanelli and followed the winding path that led from the garden labyrinth. The sorcerer stared after her for some time, his upper lip curled back in distaste. Slowly, however, his expression changed, and a smile began to bloom on his face.

  “You will give your prince a son, my dear,” Fulcanelli whispered to the night. “But not yet. Not until it pleases me, and nurtures the seeds of chaos.”

  Several hours after he departed the gardens, Fulcanelli strode across the moonlit grounds toward an antiquated stable where the Dauphin’s pasture horses were kept. When they had aged too greatly for display, Henri ought to have sold them or fed them to the army, as far as Fulcanelli was concerned. That he was soft enough to put the creatures to pasture only reinforced the sorcerer’s belief that he was unfit to rule. But Henri’s father, Francis, still sat on the thrown.

  Fulcanelli had time to alter the course of French history.

  The pasture stable was remote enough that it had become a sort of staging area for some of Fulcanelli’s more questionable practices. There was often a stable boy about, even that late at night, particularly when it rained and the stable offered the only shelter around. A bottle of wine and a loaf of bread were usually all that were necessary to pay the lad to keep away for a time. That and the implicit threat that Fulcanelli represented. He was a sorcerer, after all, and the boy was rightly terrified of him.

  This night, the boy was nowhere to be seen as Fulcanelli approached the massive side door to the stable. He slipped the latch and passed through in utter silence. Upon his entrance, the horses stamped and whinnied in their stalls, but the sorcerer ignored them. What he sought was at the back of the stable, where the structure was wide enough for the horses to be bathed and brushed, several at a time.

  Two of his acolytes, Giovanni and Francesco, stepped from the darkness of the stable and bowed in silence.

  “Regnier?” he asked.

  “Aboard ship, and thus your vow to the Dauphine is fulfilled,” Francesco reported. “The captain was quite pleased to have the passenger aboard, and just as pleased to promise his death as soon as they are in open seas.”

  Fulcanelli steepled his fingers beneath his chin and nodded slowly. “Very good.” He dropped his hands, cocked his head, and glanced past them into the darkness. “And the other matter we discussed?”

  The two men exchanged a dark look, and it was Giovanni who spoke. “Luciano is dead,” he said bluntly. “She took his head before I could spill the ashes you supplied into the air.”

  “The spell worked, though?” Fulcanelli confirmed. “The ashes put her to sleep?”

  “She sleeps even still,” Francesco said, and then stepped aside to allow Fulcanelli to pass.

  The sorcerer moved deeper into the stable. On one wall a lantern hung. Fulcanelli passed his hand across it, and the candle within ignited with flame, blazing brightly and throwing its illumination across the stalls, startling the horses. And ahead, where the structure opened wide, a body lay flat, arms and legs jutting out to form a star. A pentagram.

  The girl was beautiful, her hair a dark red that was uncommon in France and even rarer in the sorcerer’s native Florence. She was naked, and perfect, but Fulcanelli’s eyes did not stray to the glow of her flesh. Such idle pursuits held no fascination for him. Instead, he gazed upon her face, at the troubled expression that had surfaced there, though her mind was deeply submerged.

  His withered left hand tingled and itched, and he held it tight against his body. With his right, he withdrew a blade he had chanted spells over each night for twenty-seven years, awaiting this very opportunity. In his heart, he had never imagined it might actually come to pass, but here she was. Fulcanelli’s heart raced.

  “You will both be well rewarded, my sons,” Fulcanelli said quietly, without taking his eyes away from the naked girl on the cold ground.

  He crossed the half dozen steps toward her, a man entranced, and fell to his knees on the hard-packed earth. Gingerly, almost lovingly, he placed the razor edge of the blade against her breastbone, nestling the tip between the ridges formed by two of her upper ribs. Then he began to chant. The ritual took several minutes, during which time the girl did not move, save for the gentle rise and fall of her breathing. When Fulcanelli was through, he lowered his head in supplication.

  “For chaos,” he whispered, tears beginning to stream down his cheeks. “For entropy.”

  With all the considerable power in his right arm, the sorcerer and alchemist Fulcanelli forced the dagger through skin and muscle. Blood spurted from the wound and splashed his robe, adding more crimson on the ebony field of his sorcerer’s garb. Her eyes flashed open, but she did not scream.

  Then it hit him, the power flowing up through the blade. His flesh sang with it, crackling as though he’d been struck by lightning. Fulcanelli threw back his head, and began to scream, not in pain but in triumph. With the ritual his research had provided, the lifeblood of the Chosen One, of the Slayer, lent him a power even he had barely dreamed of. Power that would allow him to continue to build the foundations of a scheme that would one day bring chaos back to Earth, chaos unending.

  “Delicious,” Fulcanelli hissed.

  Lightly, he brushed the red hair away from the dead Slayer’s pretty face.

  * * * * *

  Oz scratched his stub
bly chin idly as he sat on a stool in Starbucks. Iced cappuccino wasn’t much of a breakfast, but after a night like last night it was a necessary evil. He rubbed his hands over his face, wishing he felt more awake. Instead, it only reminded him how tired he was. When a guy spent three nights a month as a werewolf, and a lot of others helping his girlfriend and her buds hunt monsters, it could get pretty tiring.

  When the phone had rung at just after nine, he’d thought for sure it would be Willow. That would have been okay.

  Instead, the voice on the other end belonged to Devon.

  “Dude, are you asleep?” Devon asked.

  “You mean at the moment?” Oz answered.

  Devon didn’t get it. Nor did he apologize. Instead, he babbled on about needing to get together this morning. Since it wasn’t all that far from his house, Oz suggested Starbucks. He had the unusual need to get caffeinated, and he knew that Devon practically lived on the stuff.

  Now here he sat, twelve minutes past ten—twelve

  minutes past when Devon ought to have shown up—and no sign of the Dingoes’ front man. Probably saw some girl on the street he couldn’t resist making a play for, Oz thought, with no animosity. That was just Devon.

  Six minutes later, as Oz noisily drained the last of his iced cappuccino, Devon walked through the door. Oz watched him scan Starbucks quickly. When Devon spotted him, the singer nodded his head and sidled over to the table, pulling up a stool. Devon ordered the biggest, blackest coffee he could pronounce the name of. Neither of them mentioned Devon’s tardiness because, honestly, it didn’t really bother either one.

  “What’s up?” Oz asked.

  “Oz, man, we gotta talk about the band,” Devon said gravely, still nodding.

  “Why? Have the record labels finally seen the error of their ways and cut us a fat money deal?”

  Devon frowned, looked at Oz as though the idea were even more absurd than Oz thought it was.

  “Okay,” Oz said. “Fame and fortune isn’t our topic for the day. Spill, Dev. What inspires you to drag me to your caffeinated world at this unholy hour?”

  Devon nodded once more, and then abruptly the nodding ceased. He ran a hand through his hair, pushing it behind his ears.

  “There was a Winner Take All Battle of the Bands at Crestwood last weekend, man,” Devon said, eyes looking everywhere but at Oz. “The pot was twelve hundred bucks. I was there, man. The guys who took that pot home, they were the total definition of suck.”

  Oz raised his eyebrows, still mostly in the dark, but a bit concerned that he knew where this was going.

  “That cash should have been ours, Oz,” Devon said. “But you know why we aren’t twelve hundred bucks richer today?”

  “Can’t win it if you ain’t in it,” Oz said bluntly.

  Devon just pointed at him, to signify that, yep, that was the right answer. Oz felt the weight of that finger as if it were an outright accusation. The band were his brothers. Other than Willow, playing with Dingoes was about the most important thing in his life. But ever since the whole werewolf thing, he’d had to clear three nights out of his schedule just to make sure he didn’t kill anyone. Add that to the moral weight of protecting the town from demons and vampires . . . Oz just couldn’t look the other way when the horrors started descending on the Hellmouth. Or erupting out of it. But that didn’t sit well with the Dingoes. Mainly because they didn’t know about it.

  Resentment had been growing among the other members of the band. He’d felt it, but he’d been fool enough to believe that they would take his regular absences in stride. Whenever he could—and with the full moon, he always could—Oz gave sufficient notice, two or three weeks in advance. When that meant a Monday or Tuesday night, it wasn’t any big thing. But as time went on, and the missed opportunities began to accumulate, he had found himself growing more and more distant from the band. Now this.

  “Dude, we’re just wondering where the band falls on your priority list, y’know?” Devon asked. “I think it’s a fair question.”

  Now it was Oz’s turn to nod.

  “Very fair,” he agreed. “The answer is ‘very high.’ I’m in it for the long haul, Devon. I’ve just got some things going on that . . .”

  “Things going on for like a year,” Devon said, and for the first time, Oz sensed some hostility there. “Ever since you met Yoko.”

  Oz glared at him.

  “Oh, I mean Willow,” Devon drawled.

  With a grunt, Oz pushed his empty cup away and stood up from the stool. “This conversation is over, man. You want to find a new lead guitar player, that’s cool with me. No hards, all right? But my not being available all the time, that’s my fault. I think laying it on Willow is an insult to her, and an insult to me. And honestly, it’s beneath you.”

  As Oz turned, Devon reached out to stop him.

  “Whoa. Oz, chill,” he said. “This isn’t like you.”

  Oz sighed. “Well, it isn’t like you to be such a numbskull.” He paused a moment, then shrugged and sat back down at the table. “Listen, Dev, it’s a little personal, okay? A few nights a month I’m . . . I’m in a program. Sort of therapy, but with pretty strict ground rules.”

  Devon’s eyes went wide. It was almost as though he’d been frozen in place. Then a kind of empathy began to creep across his face, an understanding that went beyond anything Oz might have expected from him. It wasn’t that Devon was stupid. But he spent most of his time in a small cocoon of Devon-ness and was rarely able to comprehend any priority or opinion that he didn’t share. Finally, and so slowly Oz didn’t notice at first, Devon began to nod.

  “We cool?” Devon asked.

  “Super cool.”

  Devon sucked back his coffee, pushed back his stool, and hopped to his feet. “See you at practice later, then, all right?” he said, as if the whole conversation had been some sort of performance that they had now completed.

  “Yeah,” Oz agreed, then glanced up at the clock. It was almost eleven o’clock. “I should be going, too. I’m a little late for school.”

  Devon laughed at that, and then boogied out the door. Out on the sidewalk, he turned and waved, smiling. With half a smile of his own, Oz shook his head in amazement at how quickly the crisis had passed. Devon and the other guys expected certain things from him, and as long as he delivered, things were pretty copacetic.

  It made him think of Willow, and all the things she was going through with her parents, and college. He figured Xander and Cordelia were probably having the same problem. The so-called grown-ups had it all figured out. They had a plan for their kids, even if the kids didn’t know what their own plan was going to be just yet. The parents had expectations, and that put a lot of pressure on their kids to fulfill those expectations.

  Buffy had it worse, in a way. She had her mom, and she had Giles, too. One telling her she couldn’t be what the other insisted she had to be. They both had expectations, and she didn’t want to disappoint either one.

  And Oz? Oz had the Dingoes.

  “I don’t know,” Xander said, and shrugged. “I mean, I don’t want to sound all Dawson’s Creek, but maybe I’m just lashing out at you when it’s other things that are bothering me.”

  Buffy laughed, shook her head. “Okay, Mr. Self-analysis, what are you buggin’ about?”

  They sat together at a small table in the Bronze. It had been dark less than an hour, but the others still hadn’t shown. Buffy was actually glad to have the time with Xander. They’d agreed to take at least a few hours off from combating the veritable minefield of weirdness that Sunnydale had become, but there were things she and Xander needed to address together that had been shoved aside for too long.

  “Maybe I’m just asserting myself,” Xander said gravely.

  Buffy tried not to laugh again. She managed to just get away with an affectionate smile.

  “Forget it,” Xander snapped.

  With much effort, she forced the smile from her lips. “No, really. I’m sorry. Seriously, thou
gh, you don’t have much trouble asserting yourself. Anymore.”

  “Well, see, that’s where the problem comes in. It’s this whole business of choosing a path for your future. I just . . . I don’t know what I want from life. Not yet. Not really.”

  Buffy looked at him more closely and saw how profoundly this was actually bothering Xander. There was always more to his thought process than rapier wit and a craving for snack food, but he was generally content to allow it to seem otherwise. For the most part, Xander seemed to enjoy being the class clown, so to speak. And he was naturally funny, no question. But there was an unspoken acknowledgment among those who cared for him that at times his wit was merely a defense mechanism to mask his insecurities, anxieties, and frustration with life.

  Pretty common, actually, for teenage boys.

  But here, in this moment, the mask was down.

  Buffy reached out and laid her hand over his on the table. “Nobody knows,” she told him, searching his eyes. “Really. I mean it. For all the horror that I have ahead of me, in one way I guess I’m lucky. I don’t feel lost. I have a purpose. Probably a very short life span, but a purpose, anyway.”

  “But everyone’s supposed to have a purpose,” Xander protested. “Well, except guys like John Bogart and Dave Rheingold. Thing is—and I guess this is it, really—my parents know I don’t have it all figured out, and they act like I’m still a kid, like they’re just going to figure it all out for me. But I am going to figure it out. At some point. Maybe I don’t have all the answers now, but it’s up to me to find them, not my parents.”

  Buffy remained silent, just letting Xander talk. She wondered if senior year was this hard on all of them. She imagined Willow, at least, knew what she was going to do with her life. But then she thought of Oz, and realized that Willow might not have it together either.