“Buffy, get the old guy!” Xander shouted down to her. “He’s the leader.”
Buffy parried the blows of another assailant and sent him unconscious to the floor as she sized up the white-haired man. The hood of his robe was thrown back, and he smiled grimly at her as he pulled up his sleeves.
“Surrender, Slayer,” he urged. “I’ll let your friends live.”
“Promises, promises,” she retorted, dodging yet another attacker. “For some strange reason, I’m having a little trouble trusting you. Possibly because nobody in your little group has shown much interest in letting my friends live before.”
He shrugged. “Then have it your way.”
He lifted his hands. A sphere of magickal blue began to form between his palms. His voice rose in a singsong chant.
The burning sphere flew from between his hands. Buffy flinched.
It hurtled upward.
Overhead, Cordelia let out a wild shriek.
The white-haired man glanced up. Buffy took advantage of the momentary distraction to charge him. He jumped backward and gestured with his hands.
Just as she was about to grab him, she slammed into an invisible barrier. A violent shock ran from her skull through her spinal cord and down to her toes. It hurt. A lot.
She was jarred, and might have collapsed, except for the smug smirk on the white-haired man’s face. Anger boiled inside her, and she gathered up her strength to try to get at him again.
There was an explosion above and behind her. Her instinct for survival screamed at her not to look away from the white-haired sorcerer, but she couldn’t stop herself: Giles, Cordelia, and Xander were up there.
The Gatekeeper, propped up by Giles, stood on a re-created landing, hovering in midair. Green energy crackled from his hands as remnants of the blue fireball sputtered and sparked like a burned-out Roman candle. Then he pointed at the invisible barrier and closed his eyes.
“Try now, Slayer,” he said in a shaking voice.
Buffy ran toward the barrier.
It held fast, sending jolts of energy through her body. This time she fell to her knees as two of the Sons of Entropy grabbed her arms.
“No, Buffy!” Angel called, as a hooded acolyte grabbed him around the knees and another raced at Angel with a long, sharp knife.
“Angel!” Buffy cried out, straining to free herself and help him.
One of her captors slammed his fist into her face, and for a moment everything went black.
When her eyes flickered open, she saw something impossible. Angel was flying.
“What are you doing?” Xander demanded of the Gatekeeper as he drew Angel toward them. “The whole reason we needed him here was because the son of a bitch is so hard to kill! Buffy can’t win this thing on her own. You’re leaving her defenseless down there!”
“It’s all I can do,” the Gatekeeper said with great effort. Xander could barely hear his voice over the sounds of fighting. The man looked terrible. His face was the color of concrete and he could barely stand up. Giles caught hold of him and slung the man’s arm over his shoulder. “We must perform the Ritual of Endowment if we are to save her.”
“You don’t care about her at all,” Cordelia flung at him, pounding his shoulder and pointing as Buffy freed herself, only to be grabbed by three more hooded men. She fought them off and looked anxiously up at the landing. “Or you’d help her now!”
They watched as Angel was drawn up and onto the landing by the Gatekeeper’s magick. The old man coughed and wheezed.
“My strength is fading,” the man said, wheezing. His forehead was beaded with sweat. “There are too many of them. She is the Slayer, but she’s not a magick-user. Left to this battle, they will defeat her.”
“Then let me go back and fight with her!” Angel shouted at him as he was unwillingly deposited beside the Gatekeeper. Still in vamp face, he grabbed the man by the shoulders and gave him a hard shake. “Or have you lost your mind along with your strength?”
“Angel,” Giles remonstrated sternly. “The Gatekeeper’s right. Buffy will be defeated and the Gatehouse plunged into madness. Unless, that is, we perform the ritual as soon as possible.”
The Gatekeeper doubled over in a fit of coughing. When he straightened back up, Xander saw blood on his fist. He began to panic. The man was dying where he stood.
Regnier said to Angel, “You have cried tears of blood. That’s excellent.” He looked to Giles. “Follow me, all of you. We will need to concentrate.”
“I’m not leaving Buffy,” Angel announced.
“Me, neither. This is wrong.” Xander looked hard at Angel. “In fact, if I can get down there without breaking my legs, I’ll do my best to break some of theirs.”
“Oz is down there, too,” Angel reminded them, and looked meaningfully to Xander.
Xander tensed as if to jump.
“Excellent, excellent,” the Gatekeeper murmured. “This is what she needs. This is what she must have. Your loyalty. Your willingness to die for her.”
“Well, let’s not get carried away,” Cordelia said anxiously. “Dying wasn’t exactly on my to-do list for today.”
“Come,” the Gatekeeper urged, gesturing for them to follow him. “You can save her only if you do as I say. Otherwise, she will die. And so will all of us.”
“No,” Angel said, gripping the landing and nodding slightly at Xander. “I won’t leave them down there. I won’t leave her.”
Giles grabbed Angel by the shoulder and the vampire turned on him, snarling, yellow eyes blazing. But Giles was not deterred. He gripped both of Angel’s shoulders and met his gaze unwaveringly.
“Listen to me now! I know what your brain is telling you, but listen for a moment! They are too powerful. They are using magick as their weapon and only with magick can we hope to defeat them! The Gatekeeper is failing fast. If he does not perform the Ritual of Endowment now, he may be too weak to ever perform it.
“You want to save her? So do I! I would give my own life if it would buy her another moment to continue this fight. But there is another way! It’s our only hope, Angel!”
The Watcher spun on Xander, glared at him. “It’s the only way.”
“Yeah, right,” Xander said angrily, also placing his hand on the banister. “Who died and made you Obiwan?”
“Half the reason we sent Oz to retrieve Angel was that this ritual might be necessary. It calls for those who love Buffy to endow her with their strength, to give up part of themselves for her. I thought everybody understood what we need to do.”
“That was before the ten thousand maniacs down there crashed the party,” Xander said, his anger rising to fever pitch. “And I’m not—”
“Look out!” Cordelia shrieked.
Long tendrils of crackling blue energy whipped into the air like the tentacles of an octopus, paused, and then shot straight for them. Raising his hands, the Gatekeeper prepared a counterattack, a sword and shield of electric green springing into his hands. Blue collided with green, and showers of energy ricocheted off the ceiling and walls. Everyone but the Gatekeeper hit the floor.
The ghost of Antoinette Regnier appeared beside Xander and whispered, her eerie ghost voice somehow audible over the noise, “The house is beginning to crack, Jean-Marc. We’re running out of time.”
The air was shattered by a round of explosions. Bits of plaster rained down on Xander’s head and he yanked Cordelia into his arms as a huge chunk of wood plummeted from the ceiling, narrowly missing her face.
Behind them came a deep, low growl, and something said, in a weird half-human voice, “Gatekeeper, I hunger.”
“The binding places are breaking down,” Antoinette Regnier announced. “The monsters and demons walk.”
“Go back,” the Gatekeeper commanded in a whisper. As Xander squinted up at him, the dying sorcerer made motions in the air. “Go back, I command you!”
Xander raised his head. A large, black panther was slinking down the corridor of the east wing of the hou
se, headed directly for the landing on which they stood, overlooking a long drop down to the first floor, now that the staircase had been completely removed. The landing was a T-junction of three corridors, with the deadly drop the fourth side of the junction.
Another round of explosions shook the house. Glass shattered. The panther crept closer.
Her face pressed against his neck, Cordelia clung to Xander and said, “What’s going on? What’s happening?”
“What’s not?” Xander asked, holding her as close as he could. He could feel her heart thundering against his chest.
A low, savage growl echoed down the hall. Xander swallowed hard. He said, “Cordy, I want you to run when I tell you to, okay?”
“What?”
There was the screech of something large, something horrible. A violent flapping buffeted the air.
“What’s that?” Xander shouted. To his astonishment, the Gatekeeper paled and covered his eyes. “Hey! Super Mario! Don’t check out on us now! Talk to me!”
Jean-Marc Regnier knelt beside Xander and gripped his shoulder. He looked terrified. “It’s a demon sent to carry her away,” he said. “We must act now.”
* * *
Buffy heard unearthly shrieks as she fought three hooded acolytes at once. Pieces of wood and plaster showered the battle arena.
A large shadow, almost a fog, unfurled from a place high above Buffy’s head and spread across the room.
Now what? she thought.
“Mr. Regnier?” she called. “What’s happening?”
There was no answer. She looked up.
She couldn’t see her friends. She was alone.
For a moment she panicked. Then she shook her head hard, once, and set her jaw. It didn’t matter.
She was the Slayer.
And then the sound of huge, leathery wings filled her ears, and Buffy was plunged into bone-chilling cold as blackness engulfed the room.
* * *
The Gatekeeper murmured something, and the landing and the corridor went completely black. He’d drawn the darkness around them.
“All of you, rise and walk,” Jean-Marc said. “Take the main corridor. Go toward the back of the house.”
“Gatekeeper, it doesn’t matter if I can’t see them,” growled the subhuman voice, much closer now. “I can smell them.”
A frisson of icy fear washed down Giles’s back as he sat up in the blackness and slowly got to his feet. “You’ve got to bind it,” he said. “Buffy ran into them before. She killed the female.”
“The female what?” Cordelia’s shrill voice asked. “Xander, what’s down there?”
For once, Xander was silent. Giles felt for Buffy’s two friends. He half crouched and said, “I want you to get up very slowly. No sudden moves.”
“I have energy for the ritual, but not for binding as well,” the Gatekeeper wheezed. “If I bind the panthers—”
“Panthers?” Cordelia wailed. “Now there are panthers?”
The Gatekeeper said, “If I bind the panthers, I shall die.”
“We’ll fetch the Cauldron to strengthen you,” Antoinette whispered. To Angel, she said, “You must get around the panther. It’s in a room—”
“No, Mother. It’s for the ritual,” Jean-Marc said, and then he collapsed in Giles’s arms.
“No, for you,” she pleaded. “My son, you cannot die.”
Giles was more than alarmed. He had no idea how to perform a Ritual of Endowment. Buffy was fighting for her life, and the house was destroying itself.
“Don’t argue, chère maman. I haven’t enough energy for it,” Jean-Marc wheezed, struggling to stand. “Just to keep this landing intact, I must exert myself more than I should.”
Giles blinked. He had forgotten that the landing was a magickal re-creation. He said, “I’ve an idea,” and dropped his voice as low as he could and still be heard over the tumult.
* * *
Oz opened his eyes with a groan. For a second, he thought he was at the multiplex at the Sunnydale Mall, watching a movie. Shapes strobed in a low-level blue light all around him.
But it was no movie. Slowly he got to his feet.
It was then that he saw the hideous birdlike demon soaring down toward him. Part bird, part lion, part something so very totally else he could not describe it, it caught him up in its talons and darted its huge beak toward his face.
“Yeow!” Oz shouted.
“Oz!” Buffy cried.
But she was completely surrounded by Sons of Entropy thugs, several of whom had decent holds on her. Buffy was not going to be much help at the moment. In fact, it looked like she could use Oz’s help.
So Oz began to fight back as best he could.
* * *
Cordelia and Xander inched their way into the corridor. Their backs were pressed against the wall. Xander held his breath. Cordelia couldn’t seem to catch hers.
Bathed in a soft blue glow, Giles and the Gatekeeper stood on the landing, facing the panther as it crouched mere feet from Xander and Cordelia. They were in the main corridor, which ran north to south, and it moved toward them along a side corridor. Angel stood on the other side of the junction in a fighter’s stance. As Cordelia swallowed, the panther flicked its huge head in his direction.
“Come for me, and spare the young ones,” the Gatekeeper urged, from his perch atop the magickal landing. “Come for me and this man. He is a Watcher.”
The panther cocked its head and let out a huge roar.
“A Slayer killed your mate, did she not?” Giles said. “I taught her everything she knows. If you desire revenge, come for us.”
The panther roared and lurched forward at Cordelia and Xander, swiping the air with its paw. Cordelia couldn’t stop herself from screaming, even though Giles had told her not to.
“Stop toying with us,” Giles called. “As soon as the Gatekeeper is dead, you will be free. He is all that keeps you here.” He turned his head toward Jean-Marc. “Perhaps it doesn’t understand us.”
“Oh, it does,” the sorcerer said. “It’s prolonging the moment. It’s savoring the victory.”
The panther roared again, this time in Angel’s direction. Then it burst forward in a flash of black and charged straight at Giles and the Gatekeeper. Cordelia screamed.
Angel flung himself after it, tackling it, slowing it down. It swung its head around and bit Angel’s hand, and he shouted in pain. Then it dragged Angel along as it made for the sorcerer who had imprisoned it in his house.
The Gatekeeper shouted, “Now!”
He and Giles dove past the panther, one on either side of it, so that it had a moment of indecision. Angel let go. In a flash, the landing disappeared.
With a howl of frustration, the panther sailed over the ledge.
“C’mon,” Xander shouted, pulling Cordelia back down the corridor.
Giles was clinging to the edge of carpeted floor with one hand while he strained to hold the Gatekeeper. Angel grabbed his hand and Xander reached for the Gatekeeper. Cordy pulled on Xander to give him an anchor. Below, she saw the panther land, claws out, on top of an enormous, horrible, birdlike thing that was attacking Oz.
* * *
“Take his feet,” Giles said.
Angel grabbed the Gatekeeper’s ankles while Giles took his hands. Antoinette Regnier led the way down the hall and through several passages. Then they clattered into a room.
The place was circular, with a wooden floor and dozens of gold-framed mirrors covering the walls. Shapes were draped by pieces of heavy white fabric.
In the center of the room were several objects the Gatekeeper’s ghostly mother had apparently gathered, perhaps aided by her son’s magick: the Cauldron, a spear, a dish of salt, a bowl of water, and a heap of white belts or sashes. The Gatekeeper had already fallen unconscious. Not a good thing.
Beyond the room, there was a crash, followed by a cheer. Angel almost dropped the Gatekeeper. Everything inside him told him to leave this room and help Buffy.
&nbs
p; “Lay him down,” Giles said. “Xander, make a sacred circle around him.” He pointed. “Use the salt.”
“Roger that.” That made sense to Angel. They’d used salt for sacred circles before.
Xander picked up the dish.
“No.” Regnier’s eyes flickered, opened. So he wasn’t completely out of it yet. “Blood. From each of them.”
“Excuse me?” Cordelia said, shocked.
“How must it be collected?” Giles asked quietly.
Cordelia looked fearfully at Angel. “Collected?”
“I will officiate.” Regnier’s hand shook, and then he looked at Cordelia. “Young lady, fetch the Cauldron of Bran.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, racing to a large black pot of cast-iron metal. Its three feet were the claws of a griffin. Otherwise, it was unadorned.
The suffering man clasped Giles’s hand. “You must use a sharp blade on each of them, and a true one. The Spear of Longinus.”
“What?” Cordelia said, touching her neck.
“At this very moment, the life of the Slayer is all that keeps the world from tumbling into the abyss of chaos. She cannot hope to win on her own, but neither can any of you be of physical help to her. Thus, you must share your life with her. Your life, yes, but more.
“From each of you, she will require life’s blood, and love, and fealty, and trust, and even that may not be enough. It is clear that you all care for her, but if there are any whose love for the Slayer might still be untapped, we may yet need to call on that love.”
The Gatekeeper paused, flinched, and closed his eyes a moment. When he opened them again, he seemed slightly more aware.
“Now, the blood,” Regnier said. “The vampire’s blood will be the truest. He has wept scarlet tears. Most precious.” He looked hard at Angel. “For whom did you weep, monster? Yourself, or your victims?”
Angel blinked, glanced at Giles, but kept silent. He did not know what to say. He wasn’t even certain that what he’d seen on the ghost roads had been Jenny Calendar. But now was not the time to discuss it.
“To Angel, it’s rather the same thing,” Giles said, and Angel felt a rush of gratitude. He knew that Giles could not quite forgive him for killing Jenny, the woman Giles loved. But Angel knew that he tried.
Out of the Madhouse Page 28
