Willow walked over to Kukoff and Isimo. She was tempted to hit the men herself now. Anger overwhelmed her so that she was barely able to speak.
“Where is the boy now?” she demanded.
“Is he still alive?” Oz asked, coming up behind her.
“I . . . I don’t know,” Kukoff confessed.
“But you can be sure that Il Maestro will kill him when the time comes,” Isimo added, proudly.
Willow felt the urge to strike him again, but then she saw the blood in his right eye and the welt on his forehead, and she just felt sick. She moved away from them, wanting only to be gone, now.
“No,” Kukoff said, looking confused. “He will try to bend Jacques Regnier to his will. To our beliefs.”
Willow looked at Angel, who shrugged and grimaced at her. They were both confused by this disagreement. Apparently, the man who led the Sons of Entropy really did keep his real plans to himself, if his men couldn’t even agree on what those plans were.
Isimo’s eyes shone. “You can’t stop us. You may kill me, but our cause lives on.”
“You still haven’t told us why you’re in Sunnydale,” Angel warned.
Kukoff actually shrugged. “But I have. Our duty is less important, though still vital to Il Maestro’s plan.”
Angel stared at Kukoff. Willow watched the man’s eyes, watched the sly smile that crept over his features. Finally, Kukoff opened his mouth again. “It is simple, really. We are to bring the Slayer back to Il Maestro, where he will cut out her heart and, like as not, eat it. There’s power in the girl, and he wants it. Needs it.”
“Well,” Willow said, flustered and horrified, “Buffy’s still using her heart, so, just forget it!”
“Tell ’em, Will,” Oz said with a nod.
“You’re such a fool,” Isimo sneered at Kukoff. “Such a coward. I would have died before I told them so much as my name.”
“It can still be arranged,” Angel drawled, coming close to the man. He cowered, flinching as Angel raised a hand, then combed it through his dark hair.
A wind suddenly picked up outside, whistling along the vast corridors of Angel’s mansion. Outside, branches battered against shuttered windows as if they were alive and demanding entrance. Thunder rumbled overhead.
In an instant, the lights flickered out and the room was plunged into darkness.
“Willow,” Angel said.
Willow gathered her wits and said, “To the Old Gods I give all supplication, and deference, and honor.”
There was a huge flapping of wings and an awful, distorted screech of a bird.
“No!” Kukoff shrieked. “Save me!”
The flapping grew louder. There was the sense of a presence above her, something deathly cold and evil. The vibrations of its flapping wings made her stumble to the right, away from the prisoners. Oz caught her in his arms and pulled her against the wall, where they sank together to the carpet.
“I call upon you to protect all within these walls,” she intoned.
“No! It has me! It is taking me!” Kukoff screamed. “Stop it!”
The creature screeched again. The wings flapped.
The lights went on.
Kukoff was gone.
Brother Isimo had been left behind.
With his eyes pecked out, and his tongue ripped away.
That he was dead was a blessing, in his case.
Willow swallowed hard. Oz slowly got to his feet and helped her to stand beside him. He looked at Angel.
“This is all information they’re going to need,” Oz said. “Especially that part about, y’know, chaos reigning? That would suck. And the fact that this guy wants to eat Buffy’s heart?”
Angel glanced at Willow. “You’d better call Cordelia on her cell phone.”
* * *
The Gatehouse was screaming.
A hellish mix of shrieks rose and fell in a mad, frenzied chorus, and it all came from the house. The splintering of wood and the grinding of stone, the shrieking of nails being torn from centuries-old timber: the house was in agony.
A little shakily, Xander got out of the car and came up beside Buffy. He shivered unconsciously, cocked his head, and said, “Maybe we should have called ahead. I’m not sure they’re up for company.”
“They don’t seem to be,” Buffy agreed.
Xander went on. “Y’know, not that I would have wanted them to go to any trouble. But maybe they could have, I dunno, maybe exorcised the place first.” He looked hard at Giles as the Watcher joined them in the street. “Okay, A: how come nobody else notices this, and B: are we still going in there?”
“To your first question, I would suspect the magickal properties of the Gatehouse somehow mask it from those unaware of its existence,” Giles noted, examining the house with great interest.
“Wonderful,” Buffy sighed. “So someone who didn’t know it was here would walk right on by and not even see it.”
“I suspect that is the case, yes,” Giles agreed. “Powerful magick, that. Must have taken decades to construct that kind of spell.”
“My other question, Giles,” Xander reminded. “The one about fools rushing in, placing ourselves in great physical danger, ignoring the fact that the house is, well, let’s face it . . . screaming!”
Giles pushed his glasses up and shrugged. “I’m afraid so,” he said. “In fact, it’s fairly obvious to me that we have no choice. We must enter.”
“Then let’s do it,” Buffy said.
She climbed the fence, leaped over, and came back to open the gate for the others.
Suddenly a shrill buzzing noise rose above the din. With all the other noise, it did not strike anyone as odd until it trilled a second time. Xander and Buffy both stopped and looked at Cordelia. Giles raised an eyebrow.
“What?” Cordelia asked, obviously overwrought by the house.
“Do you want me to answer it?” Xander asked.
“Oh, God,” Cordelia said, seeming relieved to have something other than the house to concentrate on. “I didn’t realize it . . . oh, never mind.” She whipped the thin cellular phone out of her small bag and flipped it open.
“Hello? Hey, Willow! Oh, God you should see this place . . .”
“What’s going on? Is anything wrong?” Buffy asked quickly.
Giles moved toward Cordelia, body language clearly stating his intention to wrest the phone from her as soon as possible. But as she spoke, Cordelia began walking. Rolling their eyes, the others followed suit.
“It’s like some carnival house of horrors,” Cordelia went on. “But the crazy thing is, it’s right at the top of Beacon Hill, in the middle of the city, but it’s got this magick thing where, if you aren’t looking for it, you don’t see it.”
Cordelia paused a moment. Buffy, Xander, and Giles had passed within the gates of the Gatekeeper’s home, into the shimmering magickal field which made the house and its grounds invisible to all those on the outside, save for those who knew what they were looking for.
Buffy glared at her. “Cor! Give me the phone!”
With a look of exasperation that said she couldn’t handle more than one conversation at a time, Cordelia huffed and said, “Willow, hold on! Someone’s having her latest tantrum and I think we both know who I mean.”
She rolled her eyes, stomped through the gates, and handed the phone to Buffy. The Slayer put the tiny cellular phone to her ear.
“Willow, what’s going—” She frowned, looked at Cordelia. “She’s gone. Not even static.”
“Maybe she didn’t want to talk to you,” Cordelia suggested.
“Or maybe some boogedy boogedy monster ate her up,” Xander added. “Just jesting, of course.”
Behind them, the house screamed.
“Did she say why she was calling?” Giles inquired.
Cordelia looked perplexed. “I didn’t ask. I think she was just checking in, y’know. It is morning back home now, right?”
Frustrated, Giles and Buffy turned toward the house.
Xander gave Cordelia a look, and she shot back one of her own. When he too had turned, she tried the phone and could not get an open line. With a shrug, she placed it back in her purse.
The four of them approached the house. As they mounted the steps, Xander paused.
“Uh, guys?” he said. “It’s open.”
“Solves one problem,” Buffy replied.
She took the lead and pushed open the door.
* * *
Willow stared at the phone. “We were disconnected,” she said, even as she began dialing again.
An hour later, they still hadn’t been able to get through. The abruptness of the cutoff, and their subsequent inability to reestablish contact, had all three of them on edge.
“They could be in trouble,” Willow said, for the twelfth time.
“And this is information they’ll need, even if there’s nothing wrong but problems with Cordy’s phone,” Angel added. “Of course, if that’s all it was, why haven’t they called back yet?
“Somebody has to warn them,” Angel added. “As fast as possible. If we can’t reach them, one of us has to go to them.”
“I’ll go,” Oz said.
Angel nodded. “I have a lot of cash stashed away. You can use it to buy a ticket. You can park your van at the airport.”
“Wait. No,” Willow said urgently, then, “I’ll go.”
Angel shook his head. “I can’t fight everything that’s here alone. And you can’t explain your absence as easily as Oz can.”
“Since I’m basically a dropout already,” Oz said.
“But . . .” She looked at Angel. “Why don’t you go?”
He smiled kindly at her. “Will, we already know there’s no way to guarantee that I won’t land in Boston in sunlight. And a train or a bus would take even longer. And besides, you need to stay here and work your magick. Oz is the only one we can spare right now.”
“Hey,” Oz said mildly.
Angel led the way out of the room.
“What about him?” Willow said, gesturing toward the disfigured dead man in Angel’s living room.
“I’ll take care of him later,” Angel said. “He’s not going anywhere.”
“Unless . . . flap, flap,” Oz said.
Willow took his hand.
* * *
The Gatehouse swirled around Buffy and the others. There was no other word for it: the interior of the house bore no resemblance to any sort of reality. Walls appeared, disappeared. A huge, fanged demon dove at them, only to vanish. Flames erupted, then crystallized, sprinkling to the floor where they shattered into dried rose petals.
Above, there was no ceiling, only a free-falling canopy of comets and stars.
The moment the door had opened, they had been swallowed by the house, as if its magick had simply scooped them up. Buffy held Xander’s hand tightly in her own, and she only prayed that Cordelia and Giles were likewise holding on.
A wave of magick passed over the room. It contorted. Convulsed. Then they stood in an angled chamber surrounded by mirrors, which exploded and buoyed them into a basementlike cavern, the floor of which was strewn with straw and pieces of wood. A filthy manlike creature with matted, waist-length hair was chained to the floor, gibbering and laughing.
Through it all, the house never stopped screaming.
“This isn’t a Gatehouse, it’s a nuthouse,” Cordelia cried, holding tight to Xander.
“A madhouse,” Giles concurred.
Buffy reached for his hand, and now the four of them formed a kind of circle.
“Not the place to book for the prom,” Buffy shouted. She tugged on Giles’s sleeve. “Maybe you guys should get out of here.”
“What? And miss all the fun?” Xander bellowed.
“I want to miss it,” Cordelia wailed. She had made an attempt at levity, but Buffy saw the fear in her eyes. No, not fear. Terror. She was close to tears.
There was a thunderous boom. The floor shuddered, then shook violently, then exploded as something burst through it. Cordelia screamed as Buffy pushed her out of the way.
At least seven feet long, it skittered toward them on four legs. Its body was cylindrical, and its head was all teeth, as far as Buffy was concerned.
“How astonishing. It’s another Tatzelwurm,” Giles said. “Be careful. It can—”
It launched itself into the air with a bizarre whistling sound.
“—leap,” Giles finished.
“Duck!” Buffy cried. She jumped on Giles and pushed him to the floor. The worm sailed over him and landed with a thud. Immediately, it reversed direction and flung itself at them again.
“Cor!” Xander shouted, pushing her to the floor.
“Giles, how do we stop it?” Buffy asked, helping him to his feet.
“We could try staking it,” he answered.
Then the section of floor he was standing on tilted sharply. Flailing, he fought to keep his balance as Buffy tried to grab him.
A wall appeared directly ahead of him.
He crashed through it, and disappeared.
“Giles!” Buffy shouted. “Giles, can you hear me?”
“Buffy!” Cordelia shrieked.
Buffy turned around. The Tatzelwurm had reared on its hind legs and was menacing Cordelia while Xander cast around. The places where it had slid along the basement floor were molten, a narrow channel of cement melted and fused again in its new shape.
The Tatzelwurm had slid over the man who had been chained to the floor. He wasn’t a man anymore. He wasn’t much of anything. What was left smoked and bubbled.
Buffy swallowed hard and glanced at Xander.
“Get Giles,” he cried, eyes wide, his voice tinged with panic.
She gave her head a tiny shake. He frowned at her, bent down, and grabbed a piece of wood. He held it like a spear and jabbed it at the Tatzelwurm, which reacted by heating up its underbelly. It glowed a brilliant orange.
“Buffy, he’s your Watcher,” Xander urged, a weird mix of fear and courage coming over him now. “I can handle this.”
“No, you can’t,” she blurted, and saw the frustration in his eyes. “I can’t leave you,” she tried again.
Then Cordelia said, “Xander and I can handle it, Buffy. You go help Giles.” She said it with tears streaming down her face, but she said it.
Buffy turned.
Cordelia shouted, “No, wait, I take it back! Don’t go!”
“Buffy, go!” Xander yelled at her.
Before she could reply, the decision was taken from her. The floor tipped even further. Buffy slipped over the edge of the canted floor and slid down until she, too, crashed through the wall.
* * *
A short time later, the world within the Gatehouse had begun to stabilize, somehow. The basement where Xander and Cordelia faced the Tatzelwurm was still the basement. Or dungeon, or whatever it was. As the floor was strewn with dry straw and one wall stacked with wooden crates, however, Xander thought the old ever-changing, barrel-o’-fun, house full of surprises might have been a better idea.
Where the Tatzelwurm crawled, it burned. Its underbelly glowed white-hot. The straw in the circle around Cordelia and Xander was on fire.
“Anyone for campfire tales and roasting marshmallows?” Xander quipped.
“Shut up, shut up!” Cordelia cried, even as she desperately tried to clear the floor immediately around them of straw before it could be set ablaze.
Xander faced off against the Tatzelwurm, which had grown quickly cautious. It seemed to understand that the sharp stick he held could harm it.
“Why hasn’t it jumped?” he asked.
“Maybe heating itself up takes a lot of energy,” she suggested.
“Must be a boy Tatzelwurm.”
The thing started for them, and Cordelia shrieked. Xander jabbed the air with the stake in his hand, and the Tatzelwurm stopped once more. Steam began to rise beneath it as the floor bubbled with heat.
“Would you just keep your eyes on that thing!” C
ordelia snapped.
Xander nodded. “Got it.” He rubbed his eyes. “Smoke’s getting to me.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
Her face felt like it was cracking, it was so hot. The smoke stung her eyes and tears ran down her cheeks. She wished Buffy would come back. With Giles. She wished the house would do something weird again so they would end up in a different room.
The worm rose up on its hind legs, twining around itself like a snake.
“It’s going to jump!” she cried.
“Get back!” Xander shouted.
It struck then, propelling itself into the air. Cordelia scrambled backward, but she knew it was too late. The are of the thing’s attack would bring it down on top of her. Flames flickered to either side. As the smoldering belly of the Tatzelwurm came down toward her face, Cordelia realized she had nowhere to run.
“Cordy!”
Xander was there, stake in his hand, his arm wrapped around her. He held the stake up, elbow locked, and Cordelia knew in that instant that even if Xander impaled the thing, the molten heat from its body would kill him.
She smelled the Tatzelwurm’s awful stench; felt the heat of its body as it plummeted toward them.
There was an explosion.
They stood pressed together in a tiny, airless room. The walls were covered with yellowed paper, an ancient floral pattern. In the corner was an old, rickety wooden wheelchair. A waltz played very faintly.
“Well, that was very nearly a disgusting way to die,” Cordelia said, wrinkling her nose in revulsion.
Xander glared at her. “I’m sure I can come up with something more pleasant for you, Cor.”
Cordelia huffed at him, as usual.
The wheelchair began to move.
* * *
At the airport, with the afternoon sun glaring through the windows, they faced each other. Oz said, “Hey, I’ll be back soon.”
Near tears, Willow tried to smile bravely, but she could only muster a sniffle. It seemed to her that no one who went to Boston was coming back.
“Take care,” she pleaded. “Please call us.”
Oz pulled her into his arms and kissed her. He held her for a long moment against his chest. She could hear his heart beating. She could feel the pulse in his neck.
“I’m sorry,” he began, then shrugged. “You know.”
Out of the Madhouse Page 18
