The Gatekeeper Trilogy, Book One - OUT of the MADHOUSE

by Christopher Golden

  Still, though Angel had spent the previous night doing little more than fighting and killing things that shouldn’t be walking the earth, he agreed with Willow that the wards seemed to be having an effect. Very few new creatures were appearing.

  Giles’s ancient radio was tuned to an old-time jazz station, and Willow didn’t dare move the dial. It was so distant, she was afraid that she might never be able to find it again, and Giles would be crushed. Instead, she had found that the music delighted her. Rather than impeding her ability to focus, it calmed her considerably and allowed her mind to rely on intuition she might never otherwise have paid any attention to.

  She wouldn’t be giving away her CD collection just yet, but this ancient jazz music had promise.

  Oz felt as though he had been walking for eons. Though he was not sleepy, and his legs were not tired, his mind was exhausted. So tempting, the urge to simply lie down and close his eyes. The ground was hard, but if he strayed from the road to that gray nothing, perhaps he might find a comfortable place to rest.

  What? Oz shook his head. That was not the voice of his heart, the inner mind speaking to him. Those thoughts had come from elsewhere. Outside his mind. Outside of him.

  Leave him be, the lost one.

  “Who’s there?” he shouted, head whipping about as he searched the void for life. Just the dread nothing around him, lulling him into surrender. Gray and endless.

  Lost. The voice had said he was lost.

  “Please!” he cried. “I can’t be lost. Maybe you don’t care what happens in the . . . other world now. Maybe it doesn’t matter to you. But I think that if my friends fail, your world may be destroyed as well. Whatever it is you have here, it’s ordered. It’s all arranged by . . . by someone.

  “If I don’t make it, all that order could be destroyed. There’d be nothing left but . . .”

  All around him, the gray dissolved into white, blinding light. The road beneath his feet shifted like the sand, and that too was white and burning. Oz shielded his eyes, blinked several times, but already the light was beginning to fade. He blinked, a rainbow on his retinas the first real color he’d seen since he had come to the ghost road . . . when? Hours ago. At least. Maybe days.

  “Don’t say it!” The voices were one voice, yet millions. The echo was inside his mind, slipping from cell to cell in his brain. Informing him on the most primitive level.

  His eyes began to focus. Oz looked around, and he saw them. There in the afterburn, in the flash, as it faded. As it faded. So did they. Faces and bodies, whispering and wandering, some staring at him and some hiding their eyes. Some of them crying and some laughing. At first he thought there were but a few, but as those closer faded, he saw the others behind them. Behind them. And behind them. And behind them.

  “It’ll be chaos,” he whispered.

  Then he clapped his hands to his ears as the ghosts began to hiss angrily. It lasted only moments, though it seemed eternal. Oz found himself hissing as well, though he didn’t even know if what came from his lungs was air, or if he’d somehow been . . . translated, into this world. More than ever, at this thought, he knew he had to stay on the path.

  The blaze of light was still fading, his vision still not completely clear, when he looked up again, into the spectral faces of the multitude of dead souls.

  He had their attention now.

  Somewhere, a great distance from the path that he was on, and seemingly walking a trail of her own, he saw a familiar figure turn to regard him. Even so far away, he recognized her. Her skin and hair, so dark in life, now fading along with the rest of the world around him. Fading into whispers and shushing and wide eyes, curious and sad.

  Impossible at such a distance, but when her lips moved, mouthing words, he could see them very clearly. Could see the smile that played across her features and the light in her eyes. But when the words reached him, it was the whisper of the multitude, like a wave crashing upon the shore.

  I am free from my curse. Her lips moved. The multitude gave her voice. His curse is until the end of forever. Even though it would free him, he keeps chaos from coming. Light his way.

  Oz whispered her name, the Slayer who had lived because Buffy had died, and who had died that Buffy might live. “Kendra.”

  The dead were gone. The gray had consumed the light, and the road was solid beneath his feet once more.

  In the distance, the music played, reminding him only then that it had been inaudible while the light shone. Far along the path ahead of him, it grew dark, and Oz thought he could see sunlight, and a tiny swatch of green.

  He started to run.

  Moments later, he saw a hole in the world ahead. Three-dimensional life stretched out in front of him. Through the gap he could see the sky and the sun, the grass and trees, and he thought . . . no, he knew, that he had made it. It was Sunnydale.

  Though he’d slowed his pace, Oz smiled broadly as he strode toward the gap. Whispers trailed behind him, and he thought he heard the word chaos but he didn’t turn. The dead would aid him now, he was certain of it. At the opening, little more than an archway that would drop him to the ground several feet below, he paused.

  Something was wrong.

  Oz leaned to the left. He could see the front of the high school where he was now spending his fifth year. Cars in the lot. School was still in session. Maybe the same day, even, despite the time that had passed for him.

  But something was wrong.

  He moved forward, and his nose rammed painfully against an invisible barrier. Blood spurted from one nostril and he cried out, then felt his face to see that it wasn’t broken.

  Dumbfounded, Oz felt the barrier ahead of him for weaknesses, but it was solid. He could see his goal, but he could not reach it. He didn’t understand.

  Then, in a single moment, he did.

  And he whispered, “Willow.”

  Though Giles had done little to restock his kitchen after his return from New York, Willow had managed to find a single Earl Grey tea bag in the back of the cupboard. Tea was easy. Hot water. A little milk. Bag of herbs. She’d come to realize that, once you understood it, most magick wasn’t all that much more difficult.

  But there were consequences.

  Willow was trying to stay away from the consequences.

  Wards and Talismans of the Ancients lay open on the small desk on the other side of the room from Giles’s tiny kitchenette. She hadn’t dared explore the loft upstairs where Giles slept. Not only was it his bedroom area, but it was also where Angel had left Jenny Calendar’s corpse after he’d . . . Willow shivered.

  It wasn’t something she wanted to think about.

  Here in Giles’s apartment, though, it was hard not to think about it. On the desk only inches from the book she was reading was a sphere of glass called an. Orb of Thessula. It was that very sphere that she had finally been able to use to give Angel his soul back. To curse him again.

  Sometimes Willow thought that it might have been a lot simpler if Buffy had just killed him. But when she had that thought, Willow forced herself to wonder how she would feel if Buffy had let the hunter, Gib Cain, kill Oz just for being a werewolf. When the animal came out of Oz, he wasn’t any less savage than a vampire. That was why he locked himself up.

  No, Willow needed Oz. And no matter what all the horrible things of the past year had done to their relationship, their friendship or whatever, Buffy needed Angel. Even just to be there for her. So she knew that even at the heart of darkness, it was possible to create light.

  Willow let out a breath.

  “Getting a little metaphysical, aren’t we, Rosenberg?” she muttered aloud.

  So the first time, she didn’t hear her name.

  The jazz music played on the crackling radio behind her, and Willow sipped her hot tea as she settled back down at the desk.

  “Willow.”

  “Oh, God!” Willow snapped, spilled hot tea on her lap, and squeaked out an odd combination of pain and fear. Her eyes went wid
e as she stared around the room.

  There was nothing there. Not unless it was lurking in the shadows.

  “Angel?” she asked, as hopefully as she could ever ask to have him near.

  “Willow.”

  She bit her lip. Her eyes began to fall with moisture as she whispered, “Oz?”

  “Whatever you’re doing, it’s keeping me out. You’ve got to let your guard down, just for a second. I can’t come through until you do.”

  “Oh, my God,” she said, heart racing. “Are you . . . are you dead?”

  “No more than Springheel Jack. I’m traveling the same way he did. You’ve got to let me in.”

  Mind racing, Willow reached to a pile of books and knocked several to the floor as she pulled out the one she thought she would need. The clock chimed in the hall, and for the first time she realized how warm it had gotten inside. Giles didn’t have much by way of circulation from the few windows in the apartment, but she had persevered until now.

  Willow paused a moment, her finger at the top of the page she would need to drop the wards, even for a moment.

  “What is it? You’ve got to get Angel. We need him right away. He’s got to come back with me. Willow, what’s wrong? Let me in!”

  She swallowed. Bit her lip again, and this time she wondered idly if she would draw blood.

  “How do I know you’re you?” she asked at last.

  “We don’t have time, Willow. Everything hangs on this. They need me back there, but more importantly, they need Angel. Not just for his strength, but for some kind of ritual. We just don’t have—”

  “Oz, if you’re you, you know that doesn’t matter,” Willow said curtly, her heart breaking. “I can’t drop the wards. Even if you are you, things will get in. They will. If I know it’s you, I’ll do what you say, but I have to know.”

  Willow sat and stared at the radio, feeling foolish as she realized she had been talking to the old Motorola with its bent antenna. It crackled again, static returning, and a voice she recognized as belonging to Louis Armstrong was singing something about the home fire, whatever that was.

  Oz was gone.

  For a horrible eternity that lasted only seconds, Willow wondered if it really had been Oz, and if she hadn’t moved quickly enough. If they had lost, and it was all for nothing. Chaos would reign.

  Willow began to cry.

  From the radio, a blast of static. Then, four little words.

  “All monkeys are French.”

  “Oz!” Willow cried, her smile filled with love and relief and still, some fear. He was still there, and it was Oz, indeed.

  But what now?

  Quickly, she began weaving the spell. The wards would be dropped for only a few seconds.

  But there was no way to know what would come in through the breaches in that time.

  No way.

  Oz tumbled out onto the lawn in front of Sunnydale High. In a heartbeat, he was on his feet. Amazement swept over him as he realized he had done it, he had traveled more than three thousand miles in the space of an hour. Possibly less. Despite that, and despite the exhaustion he had felt while on the ghost road, Oz began to run.

  He headed for Angel’s house, wondering all the while how he was going to get Angel back to the Gatehouse without him getting burned.

  Then he remembered. That was where he’d left his van.

  Angel pulled on a clean black T-shirt. He took a long leather duster that Oz hadn’t seen before and pulled it over his head as though trying to stay dry in a rainstorm.

  “Let’s go,” said the vampire.

  “Just like that?“ Oz asked, slightly incredulous. “I mean, cool, but . . . it’s pretty sunny out there.”

  Angel paused a moment at the door, glanced back at Oz. “You said Buffy needs me, right?”

  “It’s a little more complicated than . . .”

  “It doesn’t need to be,” Angel interrupted.

  He threw the door wide, grasped the edges of the coat closed in front of his face, his hands safely tucked inside the leather. With his head bowed, he stumbled toward the open rear doors of Oz’s van and tumbled inside. Oz pulled the mansion’s doors shut behind them, then slammed the van’s back doors. He’d covered the windows as best he could, but Angel stayed covered as much as possible.

  While Oz drove, from time to time he could hear Angel growling low and dangerous. By the time they reached their destination, he realized that the sounds weren’t growls, but groans. Angel was in pain. At the school, Willow stood in the parking lot. Oz had called her at Giles’s place from Angel’s, and now here she was. If she was seen, her parents would find out eventually that she’d skipped school. It didn’t matter. In the shadows of looming chaos, nothing mattered.

  “Go to Buffy’s house,” Oz told her. “They might need you, and she’ll be able to cover for you. Just for a few hours, though. If you haven’t heard from us by then . . . it’ll be over.”

  Willow nodded grimly, and spoke the words of the spell softly. Suddenly Oz could see the breach. It would stay visible just long enough for them to enter.

  Angel moved quickly into the breach. Whatever might wait on the other side, he’d survived worse.

  Oz stepped to Willow, took her hand in both of his, and kissed her, first on the lips, then on the forehead. Their eyes met.

  “Come home,” Willow whispered.

  “Wherever you are, that’s home,” Oz replied.

  Then he was gone.

  “You mean you can’t see them?” Angel asked, glancing around furtively, eyes never stopping on one face very long.

  “I see them. But it’s hard to focus on just one,” Oz replied. “Unless they want you to see them, I guess. When they come close, when they’re trying to communicate, then they’re much more solid.”

  Angel could see the multitude, the endless parade of spirits who wandered the Otherworld, finding their way, in time, along the ghost roads to whatever came after. Heaven. Hell. Nothing at all, for some, perhaps.

  He could see them all, all the dead. Just as they could see him, oh, so clearly. Oz could see them too, but perhaps not as clearly. They noticed him, but they let him pass unmolested. Angel, however, was something new to them. They reached out for him, their fingers passing through his flesh and making him shiver with a cold he had not felt since his blood was still warm.

  They thought he was one of them, of course.

  He was dead, after all.

  “Get back!” he shouted, angrily. “Back!”

  Then one of the spirits that had touched him flinched, stared at him in horror, and whispered to one of the others. Its voice echoed, as if they had all spoken.

  “Cursed.”

  Angel almost smiled. They don’t know the half of it . . .

  Then the smile disappeared as a face ahead came into focus. The white mist all around the blanched surface of the ghost road had risen up around them.

  “Angel.”

  The dead spoke his name, but it was only one of them whose lips moved. Her name was Theresa Klusmeyer. She’d died at his hands, his fangs at her throat as he made her a vampire. She was here because of him, still trying to find her way on the ghost road, trying to find her way to Heaven, or into Hell, if that was her destination.

  “I’m . . . I’m sorry,” Angel said gently, tentatively.

  Oz stopped walking, reached back, and grabbed Angel’s shoulder. “Just walk, man,” he said. “Just walk.”

  Angel walked, and soon he came to realize that word had spread along the ghost roads. Others he had killed in his recent return to soulless savagery lined their path. Some part of him knew, then, what was to come. She would be there. Of course she would be there.

  And she was.

  Her dark hair so lustrous, the others seemed insubstantial. Her eyes round and gentle, and worse, understanding. Jenny didn’t say a word as they passed, and when Angel tried to pause, Oz got behind him and pushed.

  “We’re almost there!” Oz shouted. “Just go, Angel
, please! Buffy needs you!”

  Angel took one last look at Jenny, then turned to face forward. There was a light ahead, and he walked toward it. After three more steps, he closed his eyes and simply let Oz guide him.

  Ice-cold tears of blood ran down his cheeks, but Angel did not wipe them from his skin. They were damned little penance for the grief and terror he had wrought with his own hands.

  “Almost there,” Oz vowed.

  “They’re in!” Buffy screamed. “Giles, get back!”

  Cordelia screamed as the Sons of Entropy crashed through the windows at the front of the house. The one in the lead, whose white hair and full beard gave him an almost saintly look, in spite of the bruise-purple magick that swirled in his hands, simply walked right through the front door.

  “Up the stairs!” Xander snapped. “Get to the Gatekeeper!”

  He shoved Cordelia, and she whimpered as she ran up the huge staircase toward the second floor. At the top of the stairs, the ghost of Antoinette Regnier waved her on, beckoning her to come nearer to the Gatekeeper, where he might protect them a bit better.

  Xander, Giles, and Buffy were right behind her. She could hear their feet pounding the stairs. Could hear Giles cursing and Buffy shouting taunts and jibes at their attackers.

  “Giles!” Buffy screamed.

  Cordelia turned.

  Giles hung over the edge of the second story landing, holding onto Buffy’s left hand. The Slayer herself dangled twenty feet above the marble floor in the foyer of the first floor. Below, the white-haired sorceror’s hands glowed as he formed the magickal weapon he had used before. The others screamed at Buffy, one threw a piece of the shattered door at her.

  The stairs had disappeared. The house had simply erased them. Or the Gatekeeper had.

  “Xander!” Giles bellowed. “Give me a hand, here!”

  With a curse, Xander moved. But he was too late.