The Longest Night Vol. 1

by Various

  People from all over the countryside made pilgrimages to speak to her, to ask her counsel, to learn from her about the mind and soul of God. They brought her offerings, usually in the form of food. Some worshiped her as a saint, which the Church did not permit, but did little to discourage. The pilgrims always gave alms to the Church, often quite generously.

  Even before the affair of the three monks who cared for her, Elizabeth’s installment as the Anchoress of Salisbury Cathedral had been fraught with problems. Brother Andreas, who had singled her out from the peasant girls of the nearby village, had been later discovered to have a secret wife and three children, and he was burned at the stake for his transgression. Then, though Elizabeth had sworn that nothing would please her more than to become the Anchoress, she had changed her mind once she had been walled into her cell. She had begged them to release her and to free her from her vow of obedience to the Church in her new vocation.

  Then the visions had begun. They were torturous, frightening images of another time and place. They concerned a charismatic demon who masqueraded as an angel. Riding with his companions in a conveyance powered by magick, he battled and murdered other demons. His counselor was a dark-headed woman much like herself, who saw visions as she did.

  She is the consort of a devil—am I one, too?

  “They are battling priests in white robes,” she told Brother Thomas, gasping as in her vision, one of the priests fell back from the others. His hand was pressed to his side; blood gushed through his splayed fingers.

  And then she saw the dark-haired woman grabbing her head. She saw into the lady’s mind, and what she saw was…herself. She is seeing me! She is having a vision of me!

  She gripped Brother Thomas’s robe. “She and the demon are at the Stone Circle!”

  “Just outside our walls?” Brother Thomas asked, astonished.

  “Yes, yes!”

  There was a sound behind Brother Thomas, the whoosh of sandals dashing through.

  Someone has been listening, he thought. Someone has heard her ravings.

  Icy fear gripped his heart as he patted her thin fingers, which were twining into his roughly woven cassock. Her small, heart-shaped face was wrenched with terror, and he feared for Elizabeth…and for himself.

  The battle had been going very well. Once engaged by Wesley and company, the Druids had given up the fight and were falling back. They’d all agreed that minimal damage was the most preferred outcome; these were human beings, and they had a code about killing folks.

  As the Druids beat feet, Gunn had a clear chance to hack through the bonds of the girl on the altar, hoist her over his shoulder fireman style, and move back toward the ravine.

  Then one of the Druids charged him, his curved knife raised. He was chanting in Druidese, and behind him all the fake stones of Stonehenge began to jitter and glow.

  Whoa, real magick, Gunn had thought. I think we underestimated these guys. They aren’t wanna-be’s. They’re already are’s.

  Gunn was about to kick the knife out of the man’s hand, but then there was a loud pop and some sort of swirling vortex thing surrounding his attacker. Startled, Gunn had stumbled backward over a rock.

  Next thing he knew, Cordelia let out a bloodcurdling shriek and fell to her knees, grabbing her head and screaming.

  Vision, Gunn thought, glancing at her. Carefully he laid the girl he was carrying on the ground and started toward Cordy.

  Then everything blurred, shifted, and glowed; his surroundings were crazy with bright lights and strange, whooshing noises, and the next thing he knew…

  Once again, we are not in Kansas anymore.

  Nor were they in Griffith Park. He lay about two feet away from Cordelia, who was whimpering softly, on a vast, windswept plain. Moonlight gleamed down on them. Lucky thing, or Angel would be toast. In the distance, shapes rose against a stony sky…very familiar shapes.

  It’s Stonehenge, Gunn realized. He glanced around, saw Wesley and Fred slowly sitting up. Then, a bit further on, Angel was silhouetted in his long coat, staring at the circle of stones. He wheeled around, saw Cordelia, and ran to her side. Gunn met him there.

  “I’m okay, I’m okay,” she murmured, although she was so obviously not. “Oh, man, that hurt. I…” She looked past Angel to take in the view. “Where are we? What…what happened?”

  “There they are!” a voice cried.

  Angel got to his feet and stood protectively in front of Cordelia as Gunn turned to see what was up.

  Guys in helmets and armor had massed in a line behind them. As Gunn watched, stunned, about a dozen more clomped up on horseback. Their horses were enormous, and laden with armor just like their riders, as well as long drapey things that looked like horse nightgowns. They carried sharp-looking spears, lances, and swords.

  Cavalry around here don’t go in for light artillery, he thought.

  Then a man dressed in nothing but a very itchy-looking brown robe and a pair of sandals sauntered up on a donkey. He said to the most decked-out of the warriors, “It is as she confessed to me and Brother Thomas. Our Anchoress has summoned her witchly cohorts here from the pits of Hell.”

  Cordelia frowned up at them. “Excuse me?”

  “Silence!” Donkey Guy thundered.

  She swallowed hard, then looked at Angel and said under her breath, “Okay, what’s going on? I can understand them, and they’re definitely not from around here, so I’m wondering, hey, magick, or universal translators like on Star Trek?” Scowling, she added, “We’re not on Pylea again, are we? Because, you know, not loving that place. Well, loving the later version, when they started worshiping me, you know. It was kind of like high school….”

  “Cordelia, please stop chattering,” Wesley ordered her in a loud voice, as he rose. “We need to focus, all of us. Especially on the men with the very thick and heavy slicing weapons.”

  He regarded their visitors calmly and raised his chin. “We come from another place, true,” he called. “But we are not from Hell, nor are we witchly cohorts, and we mean you no harm.”

  There was a moment when no one spoke. Then Donkey Guy said simply, “Seize them.”

  The men in helmets slid off their horses, each landing with a heavy thud on the ground. They reminded Cordelia of the “spacemen” from ET, grim and faceless and determined. Despite their bulky body armor, Gunn detected severe pecs and ’ceps. Their weapons were to die for—literally.

  As they strode toward the gang, Wesley said, “Gunn, Angel, stand down.”

  “Hey, man, we can take ’em,” Gunn protested. “I’m not just gonna stand here and…” He looked down at his hands—no ax. “And say ‘uh oh’ like a guy in a badly written TV episode. Yo, our weapons are not part of this group hysteria.”

  “My crossbow’s back in Los Angeles,” Fred mourned.

  “Even more reason to try to use reason,” Wesley pointed out.

  “Wesley’s right,” Angel said firmly. “We don’t know how many of them there are. Plus we don’t know where we are and these guys might be our only clues.”

  “If we are back in Pylea, I’m resigning,” Cordelia grumbled. “I’m totally giving up on the good-guy biz. If we start running into Pylea people like some bad remake of Wizard of Oz. You know…like Groo…oooh, maybe we’ll find Groo.” She brightened and called to the intruders, “Okay, guys, chain me up.” She smiled at Gunn. “First the mistreatment, then I’ll have a vision, they’ll crown me queen, and we’ll all go home.”

  “Wherever that might be,” Gunn replied.

  “Hey, we’ve gotten back from wacky otherworldly places before,” she reminded him.

  “I think you should ask The Powers That Be about frequent flyer miles,” Fred observed, then chuckled sadly and said to herself, “Joke.”

  “Here they come,” Angel said, gazing at the phalanx of armored men and horses as they clomped a few more feet toward them. “We go quietly, as long as nobody on our side gets hurt.”

  “Agreed,” Wesley said.<
br />
  Gunn sighed. “Copy that.”

  Cordy sighed. “I wonder what’s going to happen to that girl back in L.A. The one we didn’t manage to save.”

  “Um, she was losing an awful lot of blood,” Fred said.

  “We’re no good to her dead,” Wesley reminded them.

  The five of them slowly stood, showing their hands—no weapons—and Fred started to lose her self-control. The wind whipped her hair and whistled over the blasted earth as the heavy metal footgear of the horsemen thundered with each step they took. Against the pitch sky, they advanced menacingly on their quarry, so loaded up with protective layers that they looked like walking versions of Gunn’s war wagon, with spiky collars and elbow slicers and what appeared to be oversized switchblades pointing out of their shoes.

  Then they drew closer, and Fred was trying very hard not to freak out. Everything about them was…relentless. She could easily see one of the horsemen spearing them all like a giant shish kebob and not thinking another thing about it. These guys had not gone to empathy school.

  They were less than a foot away now, and everything about them loomed deadly. Horse sweat and man sweat mingled with just a hint of the crystal musk notes of Cordelia’s brand new Mat perfume. Fred had already bought her the matching body lotion for Christmas.

  She sent a thought balloon skyward: Hello, Fred to The Powers That Be. I’m thinking that a nice Christmas bonus for Cordelia is in order, okay?

  Two of the soldiers or guards or knights or whatever they were approached Cordy. The metal of their armor was rusty in places, and was that caked blood on the right one’s gauntlet? They clamped some chains around her wrists and dragged her toward the monk.

  The religious man pulled a cross out of his sleeve and stuck it in her face. Though Cordy snickered and tried to look like, Puh-lese, you’ve got to be kidding, both Fred and she glanced over at Angel. A cross in his face and he would probably vamp. And if he vamped, there was no telling what these people might do.

  Then thunder rumbled overhead, and the leader of the soldiers said, “A storm is coming. Brother Joseph, you can finish their examinations later. In the harbor of the dungeon.”

  Cordelia grumbled, “‘Dungeon’ and ‘harbor’ don’t belong in the same sentence.”

  “Except that they’re both nouns,” Fred offered, trying not to scream as two of the warriors grabbed her wrists and chained her as well. Gunn, Wesley, and Angel were each given the same treatment, and everyone was herded over to the man on the donkey. He did the cross thing to each one of them, but Angel was far enough away not to react to the symbolic object.

  “Stay the course,” Wesley reminded them as they were pushed between two of the warhorses and the monk gestured at the group to begin walking. “Be patient.”

  Patience…a virtue I was never good with, Gunn thought drearily.

  Each of the Angel Investigations team had been thrown into separate cells of the dungeon of what looked to be an enormous church. It was cold. Gunn’s floor was bare stone, wet and mossy, and there was no ventilation.

  No one came to check on him, feed him, or give him water. That was cool; when he was working the streets of his hood, he could be a hard-ass too. Sad fact was, putting the fear of God into your enemy paid off.

  Then he heard shuffling in the hallway and someone saying, “Be careful of her. She’s a witch.”

  “Cordelia?” he said aloud, then figured that was pretty stupid, because he didn’t want to put her name and “witch” in the same sentence around a bunch of religious fanatics.

  Then he heard bitter weeping, and a man’s voice that bellowed over it.

  “This is your last chance to confess, Elizabeth. Do it now, in my presence, and we will only burn the demon and his followers.”

  “Thomas…” moaned the person who was crying. It was a woman, maybe just a girl. Gunn got his dander up. He knew about witch trials and forced confessions, how they were all fixed ahead of time. That girl didn’t stand a chance no matter what she said. “Talk to Brother Thomas.”

  Same thing goes for us.

  “He has abandoned you. He has stolen away in this dark night of the soul to leave you to answer for your crimes. When we find him, we will deal with him.” There was a beat. “Now, confess!”

  “I am an Anchoress,” she pleaded. “I see what God shows me.”

  “The devil has beguiled you. You have abused your office to poison the souls of those who sought your aid.”

  She replied, “You’re doing this to me because…because when you came to me, I refused you…”

  There was the resounding crack of a sharp slap and a low sob of pain. Gunn clenched his fists.

  I ever get out of here, whoever’s doing that is gonna pay…

  “Don’t lie in an effort to save yourself.” The man’s voice was harsh. There was another slap.

  “Brother Joseph,” said another man. “Perhaps we should restrain ourselves. She is our Anchoress….”

  “Was. She has summoned these evil strangers into our midst. I heard her myself. And Brother Thomas helped her. He brought her the blood of a young virgin as a sacrifice to seal her unholy bond with the demon.”

  “She has not yet been proven guilty,” the other voice said reasonably.

  “That is not so, alas,” said a third male voice. “I have just come from the cell of their leader. He is indeed a demon. I saw him change before my very eyes into a fiend of Hell. His eyes glowed with hellish fire and teeth became fangs. It was hideous to behold.”

  Angel? Gunn thought. They finally tried that cross-in-the-face with him, I guess.

  “Christ Jesus preserve us,” said Brother Joseph. The other two men muttered something that was probably Latin.

  “What do you have to say about that, child?” asked the newcomer sternly. “How did he become your master? Did he come in the dark of night, when you should have been at prayers? Did he visit you in the guise of a handsome young man, who seduced you?”

  “How could anyone visit me?” she cried shrilly. “I’m watched night and day!”

  “By Brother Thomas,” Brother Joseph said cruelly. “And he has shown his true colors.”

  “I’m doomed,” she wept. “You are going to burn me alive.”

  “You, the demon, and those he holds in thrall,” Brother Joseph confirmed.

  No mistaking the glee in that man’s voice, Gunn thought, enraged. No mistaking the pleasure I’m gonna take in tearing him apart with my bare hands….

  The three monks opened the door to Cordelia’s prison cell and glared at her. The tallest, ugliest of the three—not that we are talking beauty contestants here to start with—kicked at the filthy straw she had burrowed into for warmth and said, “Rise, witch. You’ll be warm enough very soon. Before this hour is up, we will take you and your friends to the burning place.”

  “I’m guessing it’s not the same as the laughing place,” Cordelia said under her breath.

  “One of your company is sick with fever,” he added. “God is punishing him in this life by showing him what it will be like for him in the next. And for you.”

  Her eyes widened. “Who? Who’s sick? Is it Fred?”

  “He is not the blackamoor, if that is to whom you refer. The other man.”

  “Wesley?” she asked shrilly. “Can I see him?”

  The monk sneered. “So that you can cure him with Satan’s power? I think not.”

  “You guys are so twisted,” she said drearily.

  “Would you care to make a confession of your diabolical nature? He whom you serve has revealed himself to us.”

  “Serve…” She hesitated. She’d seen movies about the Salem witch trials. She knew they were really good at lying about what they had and hadn’t seen in order to get their victims to confess. “When you say serve, are you talking about serving people something to eat? Like rye bread? Because you see, some colonists of my country ate bad rye bread back in Salem. And wow, they thought a bunch of other colonists were witc
hes. But, wrong, they were just innocent—”

  “Silence,” the man said, and he struck her a blow across the face that snapped back her head. “You will speak when spoken to.”

  “But I was spoken to,” she protested. “You asked me a question!”

  The monk took a step back. He gazed at her with the weirdest look on his face and said, “In so many ways, you are her sister.”

  Then worse than the slap, he trailed his fingertips down the side of her face.

  Cordelia shuddered with fear and revulsion.

  They came for Wesley as he burned of fever. Something was very wrong with him; he was dreadfully ill, so plagued with disease that he lay unmoving on the freezing stone floor although a rat trundled by very close to his face. But his captors showed him no mercy on that account; indeed, they seemed to feel that it was his fault that he was sick.

  “You will not escape the flames by seeking pity,” said the tall ugly one. “You will not escape at all.”

  If I wasn’t so sick, I could play this game, Wesley thought, frustrated. I read nearly every medieval manuscript on demonology and witchcraft during my internship at Watchers’ Headquarters in London. But I can’t think straight. With the high fever I have, it’s a wonder I can think at all.

  “Get up,” the monk said contemptuously. “We will prepare you now for burning.”

  “There are no questions for me,” Wesley ventured. “No chance for me to confess, and to recant.”

  “We have all the proof we require.”

  “But Brother Joseph…” one of the other monks protested. He was young and still had a few of his teeth left. His pale face was chapped from the wind and he looked very frightened. “That is not how we are to do it.”

  “These are wild times, Brother Michael,” Brother Joseph said. “Think of it—of the three monks assigned to care for her, she insisted that I be released from my duty. She killed Brother Mattias with her witchcraft, and then she beguiled Brother Thomas into helping her with her black magick.”

  “That is so,” the nameless monk agreed. “I have often wondered of the things said about her. And about him, as well…”