And he would, too, because very soon . . .
Another skyquake rumbled above, and Willow felt as though she were standing right in front of the amps at the Bronze. The thunderous noise cut through her, and a spike of pain shot through her head. A ball of fire blazed past her face, and though she ducked in time, Willow felt her eyebrows and found them singed.
“Stop it!” she screamed hysterically, panicking now, barely able to keep her feet under her as she ran. “Stopitstopitstopitstopit!”
Willow fled toward the crumbled part of the house, the only place monsters were not coming from. Oz shifted direction, and now he was only a few paces away from dragging her down, ripping out her throat and then her belly and innards with his powerful, grinding jaws . . .
Willow was headed across the courtyard when, suddenly, something occurred to her. She’d thought, only a moment before, that the courtyard was the center of the Gatehouse. Up ahead, nearly hidden in overgrowth, was a marble fountain. It was where the paths from the four doors from the four sides of the house met. The center of the courtyard.
The middle of it all.
Then she got it. Willow ran the few extra steps toward the fountain, putting every ounce of strength into that sprint. She barely made it. When she reached it, she hopped over the low wall and into the icy, stagnant water. Her mind had put it all together almost too quickly; so fast that she didn’t have time to examine, only to go by instinct and half-remembered theories.
She turned to face Oz. He leaped for her. Willow dropped down in the stagnant water and he overshot. It would take him two, perhaps three seconds to right himself, and then he would be on her. She didn’t even bother to stand from the greenish fountain water.
Willow raised her hands and screamed, “Masters of Order, I bid thee come, and see thy greatest creation! The center must hold!”
Oz roared and leaped for her, and was instantly repelled by a crackling sphere of energy that formed around her.
“The center must hold!” she repeated. And then she began to chant, as best she could, a binding spell she had read in old Latin from Giles’s notes on the Gatekeeper.
On his paws again, Oz began to circle, growling dangerously at Willow where she stood in the vile fountain water. But she ignored him. She was safe from him now. He was safe, at least for the moment.
Instead, she closed her eyes. Closed her eyes to the horrors that swept across the courtyard. Closed her eyes to the sight of her dearest friends swarmed by monsters, the sight of Angel going down beneath the pummeling fists of a family of angry trolls.
Willow closed her eyes.
She stretched out her hands. In her mind she visualized the skeins of power that had been woven together to create the intricate web of magick that was the Gatehouse. That was the magick of this fountain. It was the center. She could feel it.
Willow Rosenberg was no sorceress, no magician. She wasn’t even a witch, not really. What she was, she admitted most readily, was little more than a dabbler, a spellcaster who had attempted some things that ought to have been beyond her, and succeeded with pure strength of will and a little bit of luck.
But she didn’t need skill right now. What she needed, more than anything, was that will and focus and intensity that she revealed to others so very infrequently. But it was there. It had always been there. In the moment when she was needed, Willow would always come through.
Like now.
She reached out for the skeins of magick, the strands of spells and rituals and charms and glamours that had been built into this house in the course of centuries—reached out for them, grabbed hold, and pulled.
A skyquake shattered the air. Ball lightning burned in abacus rows across the courtyard. Monsters screamed.
And were pulled, physically, metaphysically, psychically, ectoplasmically . . . whatever it took, they were pulled back toward the house. By a little spell-caster with a knack for magick and a strength of will that even she would never underestimate again.
“Willow!” she heard Xander shout. “You did it!”
She opened her eyes. Angel and Cordelia and Xander were running across the overgrown courtyard toward the fountain, where she stood, her feet numb with cold from the chill of the water.
“I don’t know how you did it,” Cordelia said as she approached. “I’m not even one hundred percent sure it was you who did it, but Xander thinks so. So . . .”
Cordelia smiled. “Thanks.”
Willow shrugged. Looked around nervously. “It isn’t much. It won’t save the world or anything. And it won’t last very long.”
“Long enough for us to get out of here,” Xander said. “Don’t sell yourself short there, Rosenberg. That’s your parents’ job.”
Willow stepped out of the cold, filthy water, and joined her friends. She was about to say something about going out through one of the sides, trying to figure out how to avoid Fulcanelli.
Then she heard the growl.
She’d forgotten about Oz.
He howled even as she turned to face him.
Then he lunged for her throat.
* * *
For just a moment, there was peace and calm.
And order.
That was all it took.
Jacques Regnier had been badly burned by Fulcanelli’s magick, a horrible spell that caused his mind to shriek in agony even as his body burst into flame and he tumbled back onto the roof of the house that was shattering beneath him. Then he was falling, falling along with timbers.
The house and its keeper were inextricably linked now, because there was no heir. No one else to take up the reins. What happened to Jacques Regnier happened to the Gatehouse. The same pains, the same fire and explosions that wracked his body and mind caused the west wing to collapse in upon itself.
But amid the rubble, Jacques lay in a bubble of crackling green fire. Healing. Aware. Fighting, even at that time, to regain control of the house and everything around him. Fulcanelli had not had time to merge with the Gatehouse. Jacques had been able to control that, at least. The sorcerer was also weakened by the battle. The revelation of his true face, the cracked, leather, hellish face that his eons of intimacy with the black arts had transformed him into was now revealed. His shell was cracked, and his power was leaking out of it.
Somehow, Jacques had been able to tap into all of that. He could sense that Fulcanelli felt exhilarated with his true face showing, but it was a false feeling caused by the flow of power through him . . . out of him. It was a good thing, for Jacques was not entirely prepared for the job that lay before him. He had hoped, somehow, that his grandmother’s ghost would remain to aid him. But she was gone, and his father as well.
Still, all the memories, all the lessons, all the power of the entire line of Gatekeepers, the Regnier family, lived within him. It was as though he could consult any of them at any time, so he was not truly alone. But such a consultation would take concentration and focus, and he had time for neither at the moment.
So he kept Fulcanelli at bay. And he healed his body. And he tried, oh so desperately, to keep the house from falling apart completely, to keep the monsters in.
At that, he had failed. They were too powerful, all railing against his power, all struggling simultaneously to be free of their captivity in the house. It was too much, all of it at once.
Or it had been.
Then there had come that single moment of peace and calm and order. Somehow, the Gatehouse’s strength had been restored, just for a moment. All the monsters were back in their chambers, each with its own little pocket dimension, magickally bound within the house. It was an enormous puzzle, but it reverted most suddenly back to form.
For an instant.
And that was all he needed.
With a sudden burst of energy that made Jacques Regnier cry out with the pleasure of raw power, green magick spread out from him as though he had wings of flame. And then he flew.
Up, out of the rubble.
Behind him, the hous
e repaired itself as he passed. Timbers righted themselves. A wave of sorcery swept over the house, and Jacques rejoiced with the knowledge that it was not his doing. The house was repairing itself, just as he had. It was returning to the pattern, so carefully crafted, that it had become familiar with after all these years.
Jacques soared above the house, flying on wings of magick, feeling the night wind against his face and the power thrumming, burning in his every muscle.
Then he looked down, the euphoria dissipating. Fulcanelli still attacked the house, still stung it with his bleeding magicks. It pained Jacques for the house to be damaged, and he knew that it was time to put a stop to it, once and for all.
* * *
Fulcanelli was infuriated. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. The Gatekeeper was dead.
“Dead, do you hear me?” he screamed at the front doors, again and again.
But they remained closed to him.
He had been so close. He had been inside the house, in the foyer, battling the would-be Gatekeeper that the Harris boy had become. Then the Regnier heir had returned, and the battle had changed. Before Fulcanelli even realized that things had changed appreciably, and before he could prepare, the young Jacques had used magick to drive him out, to thrash him soundly, and to reconstitute heavy oaken doors that were then slammed in his face.
Then the boy had appeared on the roof, attacking him from there as though it were the battlement of some mythic castle. Just like a boy of eleven might do. Which was, in the end, what he was.
Fulcanelli had laughed then. He was just a boy. And he would die. And the future would belong to Il Maestro, and to none other.
With every ounce of power he could summon, every bit of magick crackling through his transformed body, the hard, leathery folds of his face and arms and chest sparking with the sheer energy of it, Fulcanelli had reached deeply into the recesses of his memory, into the vaults of pain and agony he had mastered long ago, and he had thrust that magick at the boy.
And the boy had fallen.
The house had crumbled, at least partially, and the web of magicks that kept the monsters bound had begun to unravel. None of which he had really wanted. But if the Gatekeeper had been vanquished, he knew he would be able to handle some few small disappointments.
For victory belonged to Fulcanelli.
He had rejoiced. And then he had tried to enter the house.
And it would not open to him.
So he had struggled for several long minutes, trying to magickally batter his way in. Still the house had resisted.
And now . . . he heard his name.
“Fulcanelli!”
It was the voice of the boy, and it roared down at him from above. Il Maestro stood on the reconstituted steps in front of the Gatehouse, and he stared up in astonishment at a corner of the house that had now transformed itself into a castle battlement. Upon it stood Jacques Regnier, the boy who was now the Gatekeeper. The boy whom he had killed only minutes earlier.
Fulcanelli had been right about the boy’s imagination. The castle battlement. The house had created it to suit the boy’s needs, out of the boy’s mind. The two were joined, one and the same.
Then Il Maestro knew that somehow, in all his machinations, he had gone wrong. By depriving the boy of his father, by attacking when there was no heir, he had forced a union he could never have expected. The Gatehouse and its keeper had somehow merged in a way that no Gatekeeper before had managed . . . because never before had any Gatekeeper been pushed to it.
This boy had no other choice.
In that moment, Il Maestro knew that he had lost. He knew it, in fact, even before the torrent of green magick swept down from the battlement atop the Gatehouse and blew him off his feet and across the lawn, where he slammed against the heavy iron gate, his body shattered.
He lay on the grass, broken and bleeding.
Dying.
* * *
“Ethan!”
Buffy looked up at the sound of Giles’s voice. She had been wiping her hands on a paper towel from the roll Giles kept to work on the endless leaks of the Gilesmobile, as he began to back up.
Sure enough, Ethan Rayne was staggering toward them.
From the backseat, Micaela said, “He doesn’t look well.”
Buffy frowned. “Good.”
“No, Buffy,” Giles corrected. “Much as I hate to say it, we need Ethan.”
Buffy and Giles got out and approached the Brit. Ethan looked at them, eyes bloodshot, barely able to maintain his balance. For a moment, Buffy thought he might be drunk. Then she saw the fear in the man’s eyes and noticed how rapidly he was breathing, and she knew that alcohol had nothing to do with his current state.
“What happened?” Giles demanded. “The sphere? What happened?”
“It worked perfectly,” Ethan drawled, eyes rolling to white in his head, then coming back to focus again. “Order. Putrid, horrid, repulsive order consumed . . . everything. The . . . demons were destroyed. I left . . . walked out to see what these hands had wrought . . .”
He held up his hands weakly as they began to walk back to the car.
“The Sons of Entropy wanted to make sure I was telling the truth. Sort of like you, dear boy.”
There was a long pause, as though Ethan had fallen asleep. His eyelids drooped. Buffy was about to slap him when they opened again. He swayed. Blinked several times.
“What happened?”
“I’m just so bloody good at what I do,” Ethan sighed. “But something was wrong. What she was fighting . . . Belphegor . . . too strong . . . and when it broke through, into this world, it sent a wave of chaos across the town, through the sphere.
“It nearly killed me.”
“What a shame that would have been,” Buffy muttered.
Micaela climbed out of the car. Ethan briefly acknowledged her. She lifted his drooping chin. Buffy saw her then, saw the fear and the passion in her eyes, and she trusted the woman. She was beautiful, her honey-blond hair spilling about her shoulders, her eyes piercing, but Buffy knew now that wasn’t what had attracted Giles to her. It was this burning fire.
She was a fighter.
She would stand with them against the devil himself. Buffy was sure of that now.
But it wasn’t much of a comfort.
“Ethan, how do we stop it?” Micaela asked.
The two-bit wizard looked at her, a tiny smile played at the corners of his mouth.
“Ethan!” Giles snapped. “If you know how to kill this thing, tell us, or so help me God . . .”
Ethan looked at him blearily, raised his hands, unable to speak. Then he collapsed in Giles’s arms.
“Damn it!” the Watcher snapped. “Get him in the car!”
Micaela whipped open one of the rear doors and Buffy helped Giles load Ethan in. She was about to climb in back with him when Micaela let out a short gasp.
“Rupert,” she said anxiously.
Buffy looked across the cemetery, back the way they’d come. In the light of the full moon, she could clearly see that a long, thick, gray-mottled tentacle, lined with razor tines, jutted from the door to the sepulchre. And then the entire crypt just seemed to explode.
In the sphere of order that still existed around the town, a crack formed. A ripple that spread chaos and living evil into the control that order had taken. And tainted it. The sphere had held back so many other horrors, demons and monsters had been destroyed or captured by it.
But this was different. This was one of the Lords of Hell.
Belphegor was coming.
“Giles, get us out of here!” Buffy screamed.
Even as she hopped into the backseat, Giles and Micaela slammed the doors to his car, and Giles started it up. For once, the Citroen ran like a dream. The sphere of order was still there, but it was falling apart, cracking like a huge eggshell as Belphegor surged forth.
Giles stomped on the gas and the Citroen shot forward, reaching speeds it hadn’t seen in a decade.
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“What now?” Buffy shouted. “There isn’t a whole lot we can do while we’re running away.”
“We’re not running far,” Giles replied. “Just to the library. Now that we know exactly what we’re dealing with, I believe we’ll be able to find some way to defeat it.”
“You believe?” Buffy asked, eyebrows raised.
“We’ll find a way, Buffy,” Micaela assured her, pushing her hair away from her face. “You’ll see. No matter how powerful Belphegor is, there is always going to be something more powerful.”
“Great,” Buffy said, sighing. “Let’s just hope we don’t have to fight that, too.”
Chapter 15
OZ LUNGED FOR WILLOW. SHE screamed and fell backward into the fountain. The cold water closed over her head and she collided with something hard. For a moment, she saw a rush of red and black dots, which began to stretch into a dull haze. A hum filled her head and she started to go away somewhere. Understanding that she was about to pass out, she forced herself back up to a sitting position. As she choked on the fetid water, she made herself spit it out and scrambled not to fall over again.
Through her wet hair, she saw Angel in full vamp face, trying to pull Oz away from the fountain. Oz whirled on him and slashed a deep cut in Angel’s arm. Angel staggered backward.
Xander swung a fallen tree branch at the werewolf, striking him on the shoulder and yelling, “C’mon, man, back off!”
Oz growled and backhanded Xander across the face, sending him flying.
“Willow, do something!” Cordelia shrieked.
Willow held out her arms and began the binding spell.
“To the old gods, I give all deference and honor,” she began. Tears welled and she faltered. If this worked, she was going to bind Oz into the Gatehouse. She had no idea what that would do to him. And if the Gatehouse fell or collapsed into another dimension, what would happen to her boyfriend?
She hesitated. As Oz charged Angel again, Xander sat up on one elbow and cried, “Go, Willow, keep going!”
“Pan, hear my plea,” she said. Her voice wavered, but her resolve stayed firm. She had found the depths of her inner strength today, and she knew she could do this.
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