Ghost Roads

by Christopher Golden

  He kept sipping. Either it was something that tasted good or he was as thirsty as she was.

  She looked around cautiously, the room tilting as she did so. Her stomach lurched, but she fought down the urge to vomit. They were back in the sulfur pit, the altar only a few feet away. And beyond that, the pulsing oval that looked like a festering, decomposing wound. And inside that . . .

  Someone was watching her. She could feel it. Something that was hungry for her, would devour her, consume her soul and spit out her bones.

  Unnerved, she said to Fulcanelli, “What did you hit me with?”

  “Magick. And that’s what I’ll kill you with.”

  “Promise, promises,” she snapped.

  He smiled at her. His eyes were unnaturally blue and his features very sharp. If he really was the original Fulcanelli, he was around five hundred years old. Twice as old as Angel.

  Angel.

  Oz.

  She said in a deadly dangerous voice, “Where are my friends?”

  “Soon they won’t matter any more. You’ll be alone. Briefly.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “They will always matter. When you’re in Hell and I’m in living in a Slayer’s paradise, they will matter.”

  “Hell.” He chuckled again. “How interesting that you should mention it.”

  “It was a nice place to visit,” she said, “but I wouldn’t want to live there.”

  He chuckled again. Sipped again. Buffy wanted to rip the goblet right out of his grasp, wrap her hands around his neck, and squeeze the very life out of him. But she stayed where she was, scanning her prison, noting the size of the padlock that secured the door, weighing her options. Trying to decide the best course of action.

  Then, from the shadows came the clanking of chains and uneven footfalls. A hooded man in a torch led the way, followed by two more acolytes, and then, led by a chain around his neck, Angel. He was naked to the waist, and his chest and back were striped with lash marks. Oz was behind him, also stripped to the waist, also beaten. His hands were tied in front of him, and a chain extended from around his neck to join with Angel’s. His face was bruised, and he could barely lift his head.

  Buffy bit her lip to keep from crying out. But she let her hatred show as Fulcanelli watched her over the lip of his goblet, clearly enjoying her distress.

  The group reached the door of the cell. Fulcanelli casually waved a hand. The padlock clicked open and fell to the floor. The door opened.

  Torch flames flickered over Angel’s features as he gazed at Buffy. Then he and Oz were pushed into the cell by the two acolytes, who appeared to be very reluctant to enter the cell with Buffy. So she still had a rep, anyway. She guessed she could be grateful for small favors.

  Tiny ones, at that.

  Oz stumbled and fell to his knees, groaning. Angel bent over to help him up.

  “Thanks, man,” Oz muttered.

  “A man? You think of him as a man?” Fulcanelli asked in an amused tone of voice. “Interesting. I would wager ten thousand ducats that in another few days, he would rip open your throat and drink you dry. But we don’t have the time.”

  “And I’m fresh out of ducats,” Buffy sneered.

  One of the acolytes took a step forward, as if to come into the cell and strike her. But one look from Buffy and he backed off.

  “Yes,” Fulcanelli hissed. “The power of the Slayer. You do well to fear it, Brother Andrew.”

  Buffy exhaled loudly. “Who writes your stuff? Because this kind of dialogue went out, oh, two or three centuries ago.”

  Fulcanelli snapped his fingers. Immediately, all the lights were extinguished. Then a glow rose from beneath his chin, purple and sickly, lighting only his mouth as he spoke. Behind him, the circle of pulsing gore began to throb.

  He said, “I don’t care.”

  Buffy swallowed down her fear.

  “Lucky thing.”

  She walked over to Angel and touched his arm, then to Oz, so sorry for their pain. Angel shook his head and said, “We didn’t tell them anything.”

  “Because they didn’t ask us anything,” Oz finished. He coughed. “Man, it reeks in here.” His skin was blue and he was shivering.

  “We already know what we need to know,” Fulcanelli said.

  “Then we all leave happy,” Buffy shot back.

  “No.” Fulcanelli made a jaunty sort of gesture. “You three don’t leave at all. As for the rest of us . . .” He smiled at his acolytes. “ . . . we enter a wondrous new world.”

  The hooded figures stood up a little straighter. Buffy rolled her eyes and shook her head. “That’s not what I heard. Word on the street is you’re using these guys. They think you’re, what, breaking down the barriers between our world and the Otherworld, right?”

  He smiled at her. “Very good, Slayer.”

  “But that’s just part of the plan, isn’t it? You’ve got something else going on.” She wasn’t sure where she was going with this; she was just piecing things together from what he’d said and what Brother Albert had told them. But it was having the desired effect; the acolytes looked uncertain and Fulcanelli looked kind of ticked.

  “I’m going to destroy your friends in front of you,” he said to her in a low, dangerous voice. “They have power, which I need to prepare my Ritual of Exordium. The lacuna will burst open at last. And my demon lord will leap forward to devour your soul as I send it down to Hell.” He spread open his right arm and threw back his head. “And chaos will reign!”

  “And you’ll be its king.”

  He shrugged and bowed. “It is a grave duty. Heavy hangs the head that wears the crown.”

  “Yeah, on my wall,” Buffy said, doubling up her fists.

  He wagged a finger at her. “Temper,” he said. “Don’t be so impetuous, young Slayer. Impetuousness got Catherine de’ Medici into the worst scrapes.”

  “Bummer for her.”

  “Indeed.” He looked off into a distance she couldn’t see. “At the end, she died defeated and friendless. I could have made her queen of the world.”

  “Yeah, well, that boat sank a long time ago.”

  He rose, revealing the withered arm that hung useless at his left side. Then he turned the goblet upside down. Blue flames cascaded to the floor and winked out.

  He laughed.

  “Enjoy your last moments together. I have arrangements to make, a bit of ritual, a bit of travel. When we return, we’ll take the vampire and the boy and flay them alive. Then we’ll chain you to the altar, and I will have your life.”

  Buffy had no retort. She watched in seething silence as he led his followers out of the room.

  “Okay,” she said, never taking her eyes off the receding figure, not even after he shut another door behind him at the opposite end of the chamber. She glanced up at the stained glass and frowned. “Hopefully this buys us just enough time to come up with a plan. First I’ll break us out of here and then we’ll . . .”

  She paused. “Fill me in. Is it day or night? ’Cause if it’s day, we’ll have to make sure Angel’s got a dark place to be. But if it’s night, we’re cool. So—”

  “It’s dusk,” Oz said behind her.

  “Oh?” She started to turn around. “How do you—”

  His answer was a savage roar.

  “Buffy!” Angel shouted, diving across the cell.

  Where Oz had stood, a slavering werewolf threw back its head and howled with feral madness.

  It bared its fangs. Drool dripped down its muzzle.

  Then it charged Buffy. Just enough time, that’s what she’d said, moments before.

  And now they were all out of time.

  * * *

  With dawning horror, Micaela Tomasi watched from the darkness of her bedchamber as her adoptive father’s acolytes set torches at intervals in a circle cleared from the old vineyard. Only moments earlier eight men had been required to move the three pieces that made up an enormous granite altar out onto the grounds.

  Above,
the moon shone full and bright, pregnant with power, dark shadows on its face grinning down at these proceedings. There were perhaps thirty acolytes out now, a greater number than she had ever known Fulcanelli to have on the grounds at one time.

  She had heard the screams earlier, and the chanting from far below. Locked into her room as she was, there had been little for her to do save cover her ears and fight back the tears. And now, all Micaela could do was thank a God she had been ignoring for most of her life that the screams had stopped.

  Micaela blinked. Fulcanelli had emerged from the house and walked around the newly erected altar, then examined the placement of the torches.

  “Excellent,” he said. “Now, who will offer his own spilled blood for the etching of the runes?”

  Two acolytes reacted instantly. Micaela recognized one of them, but the other was a stranger to her. Both offered up their wrists to be cut, and several others began to use their fresh blood to draw symbols on the altar itself.

  “With the Slayer as sacrifice, the wall to chaos, the barrier to Otherworld, will fall this very night,” Fulcanelli announced. “By dawn you will all be kings in a new world without order.”

  Micaela frowned. How can there be any kings at all in a world devoid of order? It made no sense, and yet these acolytes went along with her father’s instructions like obedient pets. Which was, after all, what they really were.

  There came a light rap on the door, and Micaela jumped, startled. Someone was there; come for her, perhaps. She glanced around the room quickly. They were spartan quarters, containing little save the bed and dresser. Not even a mirror on the wall. She’d had to make do with an ornate, antique hand mirror instead. It was little more than a disk of mirrored, silver-backed glass on an exquisite handle.

  A key rattled in the old metal mechanism.

  Micaela grabbed the mirror from her dresser and went to stand beside the door. The key turned in the lock. The door scraped the floor as it opened, with her behind it.

  She ran a finger lightly against the jagged edge of the mirror, where a quarter inch of it had cracked off when she’d set a pitcher of water down on it only days earlier.

  When the acolyte entered—a stout, brutish man with gray hair and a thick mustache—she was relieved that it wasn’t anyone she recognized. That would have made things harder.

  “Pardon me, miss, but II Maestro has asked that . . .” the man began, before grunting in surprise to find her quarters apparently abandoned.

  He was no fool, however. Not like so many of her father’s followers. He spun toward the door, already moving into a defensive posture. But he was too late. Micaela struck out with the broken edge of the hand mirror and hacked a long gash in his throat. Blood spurted into her face and across her simple, blue cotton dress.

  The man looked shocked, began to reach for his throat, and then his wide eyes lost some of their intensity and he fell to the floor.

  Micaela stared at the dying man for a long moment, tears streaming down her face as she held her hands up, half shielding her view of him. Then she looked around anxiously and fled the room, the savagely elegant weapon still clutched in her right hand.

  Without hesitation she moved to the top of the stairwell that led down into the horrible subcellar. If the Slayer was a prisoner in the villa, that’s where she would be held. Micaela knew that for certain. And thinking of Buffy made her think of Rupert Giles, whom she had betrayed. He was far from the only one, but she had to begin making amends for her betrayals somewhere. And if she could save the life of the Slayer, she might not only redeem herself a little, but—if Fulcanelli could be believed—save the world as well.

  Before she rounded the small corner at the bottom of the steps, she could hear the thumps and shouts and growling coming from below. When she turned the corner, she was confronted by two very concerned-looking acolytes. They were staring worriedly at the door.

  “What is going on here?” she demanded, though she was still supposed to be a prisoner upstairs.

  Both guards looked at her dubiously.

  “Signorina Micaela, I don’t think you’re supposed to be—”

  “No! You don’t think!” she snapped. “I have been released to participate in this ritual, and I mean to do so. Now what’s going on here?”

  They hesitated a moment, and Micaela prayed silently that her lie would work.

  “We’re not sure,” the other guard, a young man whose head was completely shaved, replied. “We thought it might be a bluff.”

  Inside the chamber, a female voice screamed, “Oz, no!”

  Micaela sighed. “Does that sound like a bluff to you? Open the door, you idiots. If the Slayer is killed, there can be no sacrifice, can there?”

  After only the slightest hesitation, the two guards obediently went to open the door. It was barred with a huge plank of wood, just as it had been when the centuries-old villa had first been built.

  The guards removed the plank and began to open the door. The moment it had opened a crack, a huge, slavering, fur-matted beast slammed against it and the door flew open the rest of the way. The beast—a werewolf, she saw—fell on one of the guards and began tearing into him with its massive claws.

  She shrieked, and then looked up as the Slayer burst through the broken door at high speed. Micaela had never seen Buffy Summers before, but she took one look at this girl, at the way she moved, and knew she could not be anyone else.

  “Oz, stop!” the Slayer screamed at the wolf, who ignored her.

  The werewolf kept attacking the guard, but now a vampire emerged from the subcellar, his face contorted into a reflection of the demon within. This was Angel, she surmised from Rupert’s talk with her while he was in the hospital. Micaela could only stand and stare as the other guard rose to his feet, took one look at the werewolf, and ran screaming up the stairs the way Micaela had come down.

  So shocked was she at what she was witnessing, it didn’t even occur to her to go after him.

  The Slayer leaped on the werewolf, trying to choke him, but the enormous beast reached around, grabbed her and threw her across the corridor to crash painfully into the stone foundation. Then the beast turned toward Micaela.

  She whipped the mirror up, realizing even as she did how ridiculous it was. There was no way a sharp-edged piece of glass was going to hold back a moon-driven wolf-man. It salivated as it approached, and then it lunged for her. Micaela lashed out with the mirror, and it cut through the werewolf s left arm.

  The beast howled in agony and stumbled backward.

  “What did you do?” the Slayer yelled, as she came up next to Micaela.

  “I don’t know, I . . .” she began, then looked down at the hand mirror. “Of course! The mirror is an antique. Its back is a thin, flattened bit of silver.”

  But then the time she’d had to appreciate her luck ran out, and the werewolf lunged for them again, wary of Micaela’s right hand. Buffy used both arms to repel an attack by the wolf, crashing her joined fists across its snout. But it would be back, seconds later. The beast was hungry.

  It reared up.

  Angel cracked it across the skull with the heavy plank that had been used to bar the door. The wolf staggered. Angel hit him again.

  The Slayer screamed, “Angel, no!”

  But the vampire hit the wolf again, and finally it went down, sinking into an unconscious heap on the stone floor.

  * * *

  Buffy stared at Angel.

  “What the hell’s the matter with you? That’s Oz!”

  Angel snarled, his vampiric features in full bloom, yellow eyes flashing.

  “No, it’s not,” he said. “That’s a werewolf that wanted to kill us both. When he’s in this form, he’s almost impossible to kill. When he wakes up, he’ll probably feel like he has a killer hangover. That’s it.”

  Angel bent down and lifted the huge werewolf and slung him over one shoulder. Buffy blinked, reminded once again how strong vampires actually were. Oz’s bulk was a burden fo
r Angel, but that he could carry the werewolf at all was amazing.

  Something shifted to her left, and Buffy turned and stared at the pretty blond woman who’d slashed Oz with the broken mirror. “What’s your deal?” she demanded. “Spill it fast. We don’t have any time to spare.”

  The woman looked around nervously, then seemed to deflate. “I’m Micaela Tomasi,” she said.

  Buffy stared at her. Of course. She was the woman Albert had shown her in the photograph.

  “You’re Micaela? Giles’s Micaela? So he was right to be suspicious.”

  “Yes,” she admitted. “But I’m afraid it’s much more complicated than that. Maybe I can explain it to you while we’re getting out of here. He was planning to sacrifice you, you know?”

  “Fulcanelli?” Angel asked, as he hefted Oz and followed them as they started up the steps.

  “Yes,” Micaela agreed. “My father.”

  “Oh, I can’t wait to hear this one,” Buffy said, sighing.

  Before they’d reached the top of the steps, Micaela had quickly told them an abbreviated version of her life story. Adopted by a sorcerer with seemingly noble intent toward Earth, and a convincing philosophy—if you’re into cults, Buffy thought—she’d infiltrated the Watchers’ Council and later realized what a huge mistake she’d made.

  “Why are you still alive if he knows you’re not on his team anymore?” Buffy asked.

  “Maybe he loves her,” Angel suggested.

  Both women looked at him oddly.

  Buffy shrugged. “Anything’s possible, even for mad wizards who want to destroy the world.”

  “Is Rupert all right?” Micaela asked, eyes wide and vulnerable.

  Buffy didn’t want to buy her shtick. Any of it. But she seemed so earnest.

  “He’s fine,” she said. “And we’ll all be a little better once we get Jacques Regnier out of here.”

  Micaela stopped her before she could charge out into the corridor. Buffy turned to look at the woman, and didn’t like the fear in her eyes.