Then, suddenly, he did know. He knew exactly what to do. Cocking his head as though he were listening to something nobody else could hear, he held up one hand and twirled his fingers.
“Try it now,” he said, as surprised by his behavior as the girls were.
When Cordelia dialed the number for the school library, it began to ring on the other side.
Giles placed the phone back in its cradle. He started slightly when Oz growled in his cage. Then he turned to face Micaela and Jacques again.
“Rupert, what is it?” Micaela asked. “You look so pale.”
He smiled thinly. “Not to worry,” he replied. “It’s my natural color.”
Then his smile disappeared. He’d made a joke, and Buffy was not there to remark upon the amazing infrequency of such an event. He wished desperately that she and Angel had not already gone out to search for Joyce. He needed her there, needed her to work with him to formulate a plan. As much as she sold herself short, Buffy was actually a passable strategist, and improving with time.
“What’s happened?” Micaela asked.
“My father is dead, isn’t he?” Jacques asked.
Giles went to the boy and crouched down, nodding slowly and sadly. “Yes, Jacques, I’m afraid he is,” Giles told him. “But his death has, somehow, through some accident of magick, granted us a kind of reprieve.”
Micaela shook her head. “But how can that be? If he’s died, the Gatehouse must be in the hands of . . .”
“The new Gatekeeper,” Giles replied.
Boy and woman stared at him in utter incomprehension.
“Somehow, the house itself has decided that Xander—a friend of Buffy’s whom neither of you has met—is actually a Regnier. It has made him the Gatekeeper.”
“With the full power of the Regnier line?” Micaela asked, astounded.
“Indeed,” Giles replied.
“That’s extraordinary,” she said. “That means we can concentrate on the situation here. On finding Buffy’s mother and dealing with my fath—with Fulcanelli.”
Jacques did not seem quite convinced. “Eventually,” he said, “the house will realize its error. I must return before that moment arrives.”
Giles cocked his head thoughtfully. “On the contrary,” he said. “I believe the house will continue to recognize Xander as the Gatekeeper—now that it has done so—until the true heir arrives. Not to worry, Jacques. We will get you home as soon as we are able.”
The boy’s lip quivered a moment, and then his face changed, hiding his pain. “No hurry, Mr. Giles,” he said. “There isn’t anyone there for me to go back to, now.”
Giles thought about mentioning the boy’s grandmother, the ghost of Antoinette Regnier, but refrained from doing so. He did not know if her spirit would move on now, and he didn’t want to give the lad false hope.
He heard the soft shush of the library doors swinging open, and turned to see Ethan Rayne enter. Giles had hoped it would be Buffy. But Ethan was more than a disappointment. He was a constant threat, close enough to sabotage any hope for the future. Unless he was actually telling the truth, which Giles simply could not bring himself to believe.
“Hello, Ripper!” Ethan said happily.
“I’ve told you never to call me that,” Giles replied angrily.
“Ah, of course,” the other man replied, feigning regret. “But I think you’ll forgive me.”
Giles lifted his chin, looked at Ethan more closely. He’d known the man a long time. Too long.
“You know something, Ethan. What is it?”
Micaela and Jacques were staring at him as well, now. Ethan winked at Micaela, and Giles felt his ire rising even more.
“Don’t suppose you want to get us a cup of coffee, do you, lad?” Ethan asked young Jacques.
The heir to the Gatehouse only glared at him.
“Ah, well, I thought not.” He turned back to Giles. “In any case, I’ve got the name of the demon behind all this, the one the old magician’s been worshiping all this time. A right bastard he is, too.”
How would you know? Giles thought to ask, though it was certainly possible Ethan could have just done the research.
“Well?” Micaela asked. “Fulcanelli was always very circumspect. I never heard him call his sponsor by name. Are you going to share it with us, or shall we wait for the world to end?”
Ethan looked at her wistfully. “Ah, Ripper,” he said, “you always seem to gravitate towards the ones with that dry, cutting wit.” His upper lip curled. “It’s really not very becoming, actually.”
“Ethan!” Giles snapped.
The magician rolled his eyes. “It’s Lord Belphegor.”
Giles’s eyes widened. “The wanderer of—”
“Of the wastelands, lord of vile flesh, horned master, yes, all of that.” Ethan sat down in a chair at the study desk and leaned back, his hands behind his head. “Pretty powerful, isn’t he?”
“Extremely,” Giles replied, already moving toward the stacks where he kept his books. After three steps, he paused and realized that his reference on Belphegor was in a box he had never unpacked, for fear some of the teachers might see it and realize how completely inappropriate it was.
The book was called The Lords of Hell. And it was in a box. In the library cage.
Where Oz paced back and forth in all his werewolf hunger and fury.
“Damn,” Giles whispered.
“There’s more,” Ethan said happily. “I know where the Sons of Entropy are holding the Slayer’s mother.”
Giles stared at him. “Good God, man, why didn’t you say so?”
“I did.”
It was Jacques who spoke the words Giles was thinking. “But how will we get to Buffy now?” he asked. “If only you’d come sooner. She and Angel might still be here.”
“Oh, if she’s with Angel, I can find her,” Ethan said. “I have a locator spell that will track him down, no problem.”
Micaela shook her head. “I don’t understand. After what Rupert has told me about you, I mean . . . why? Why are you doing all this? I would think you’d be trying to have as much fun as possible in the shadow of the apocalypse.”
“Perhaps I do have a . . . shall we say, mischievous nature,” Ethan admitted. “But it is my world, too, is it not?”
It was clear Micaela didn’t believe him. Not entirely. And Giles didn’t blame her. Unfortunately, they didn’t have much of a choice.
“I still don’t trust you,” he told Ethan.
“Well, bully for you,” said the magician.
“Nothing!” Buffy snapped. “This was another waste of time!”
With a shout of anger, she lashed out with a swift kick that knocked over a large metal barrel. There was a large dent in its side when it came to rest.
Angel laid a hand on her shoulder, his gentle touch soothing her just a bit.
“Buffy, we’re doing all we can,” he said. “It was only logical that we look here. It was the first place you ran across members of the Sons of Entropy.”
They were inside an old canning factory on the waterfront. It had stood empty for years. While they were looking into the rumors of a sea monster off the coast, Buffy, Xander, and Cordelia had unknowingly saved one of the Sons of Entropy from a savage creature called Springheel Jack.
It was the last place she could think to look.
“But it’s wrong, Angel!” she said, feeling as though she was crumbling inside. “She’s not here, and if I don’t find her soon, I just know they’re going to . . .”
“Shush,” he said tenderly, and pulled her into a firm embrace. She felt the cool flesh of his hand on the back of her neck, the familiar weight of his head where he rested it on top of hers. Buffy let it all go for just a moment, let herself be comforted. In all the world, Angel was the only one who could hold her like that, who could give her a safe harbor, a world in his arms.
A world she could never have.
“Let’s go,” she said, pushing away from him. �
��This is a waste of time.”
She was glad Angel didn’t ask her to clarify that last statement.
As they turned to leave, a figure filled the door through which they had entered the cannery. It was tall and lithe, its arms down to its knees. Far from human.
“Well, hello, young lovers,” said the thing, in a voice like silk tearing on thorns.
It stepped farther into the building, shafts of light from shattered windows all over the place making a kind of checkerboard pattern of illumination. It slipped in and out of the shadows.
“What is it?” Angel asked.
“Who knows?” Buffy sighed. “Let’s just kill it and get out of here.”
Suddenly it leaped from the darkness behind her—how’d it get back there?—and grabbed Buffy, in a choke hold.
She threw her head back and felt her skull strike its face with a satisfying crack. The thing released her, and Buffy turned, spun into a high kick, and shattered one of those long arms. The thing shrieked and stumbled into a shaft of light.
It was hideous. Scales and ridges and a huge, toothless maw with tiny waving tendrils inside. It didn’t seem to have eyes at all.
“Okay, I’d have to consult, oh, I don’t know, the dentist! But my guess would be demon,” Buffy told Angel, who came to stand next to her.
“I must have you,” it said, with that voice pushed out by the little wormlike things in its gaping throat. “I subsist off the pain of love, and there is such pain here.”
Buffy paused.
Angel laid a hand on her shoulder. “It’s all right,” he whispered. “Let’s just destroy it and go. We have more important things to worry about right now.”
He was right. She hated it. But he was right.
“How do you do that?” she asked the demon.
“Why, I eat the lovers, of course,” it replied, and lurched at her again.
“But we’re not lovers,” Buffy retorted, and kicked it again. In the midsection this time. She didn’t want her foot anywhere near that disgusting mouth.
“And, oh, the succulent pain of it . . .”
It rose again.
Angel came from behind Buffy, the oil drum over his head, and brought the huge metal barrel down on the thing’s head. It went down under his onslaught, but he struck it again, and again. And again.
Buffy watched him, feeling each blow. Understanding. There were many things they could no longer share. What they shared now was a great deal of pain. Pain that this thing had reminded them of, at the worst possible time.
Eventually, she stopped him. “Angel. It’s dead.”
He glanced at her, then dropped the barrel with a massive clang. “Yeah. I wonder where it came from?”
A voice from the doorway made them both look up.
“The barriers are dropping. Slowly, but it is happening,” said the voice. It belonged to Ethan Rayne.
There was someone else with him, just outside the door. Buffy saw the reflection of the moon on his glasses, and knew it was Giles.
“And it won’t be the last,” the Watcher said. “Not unless we put a stop to all this.”
Buffy was about to speak, but paused as Giles came toward her. Something about the look on his face. There was something there . . . something . . .
There was hope.
Buffy understood, then, and her voice was a whisper.
“You’ve found her.”
Chapter
7
SEATED IN THE DEPRESSING LITTLE STORAGE ROOM THAT had once housed the mother of the Slayer, Fulcanelli studied the sword that rotated slowly in the air. It was a very old weapon, older even than he. Hadrius had traded his soul for it, or so he claimed. Fulcanelli was inclined to believe it; Hadrius had been the cruelest and most heartless being he had ever known, himself included.
He thought back now to those days, of how his father—or rather, the man who was his father in title if not in deed—had left him bound and gagged on Hadrius’ drawbridge in the dead of night. The foolish bastard crossing himself and making the ward against the evil eye.
“God keep you,” the superstitious peasant had whispered, his breath like the smoke of the hellish bonfire that still raged in the distance, “that is to say, keep you far from me and mine, you hellspawn.”
Giacomo strained to spit at the man, but the tattered, filthy rag stuffed into his mouth prevented that satisfaction. He was so furious he was certain that his spittle would wither a flower, or burn a hole in stone. And as for this toothless half-wit who had actually dreamed that he was the father of such a boy as Giacomo, who had had the temerity to call him “son,” while all the village chuckled at the mere thought . . .
Giacomo’s spit would have sent him straight to hell.
The peasant turned and ran, his shadow trailing after like a cowardly twin beneath the smoky moon. With all his heart, Giacomo wished him ill: bad crops, a barren woman, death by hanging.
Then time passed, and while his anger smoldered, his discomfort began to rise. He shivered in the cold as the mists from the moat lapped at his body and chilled his bones to a dull, numbing ache. The tight bonds around his wrists cut off all sensation in his hands. The right one was curled around the left as if to pluck the withered fingers off his deformed hand, the miserable culmination of his useless left arm.
“Useless except in magick,” his mother had whispered to him when he was very, very little, as the two stood alone before the enormous stone fireplace in the hall of a great lord. Giacomo did not know the man’s name, only that he was versed in the greatest of the occult arts, and loved Giacomo’s mother.
“Your hand is a sign of great favor from the king of the shadows,” she continued. Whispering always. So much of their time had been spent in furtive conversation, his mother looking over her shoulder, slipping things into his hands: a poultice, a charm, a talisman.
The only person ever to smile at him, ever to embrace him. When one had a mother such as she, what else did one need?
And then one night the peasant who was her husband heard them, saw them, as they bent over the great cooking pot, conjuring.
“Hide, my darling!” his mother shouted.
Beneath the bed he had scurried, able only to see the heavily shod feet of the soldiers. His mother’s bare feet.
She was screaming. She kicked and fought, and one of the soldiers laughed and said, “Struggle all you please, strega! Not even the Devil will lie with you after we’re done!”
They carried her out the front door. In a homespun nightshirt, Giacomo ran after, sobbing, delirious with terror. He knew what all this meant. He had seen other women suffer and burn.
His feet were bruised and bleeding by the time he reached the clearing where such things were done. The enormous bonfire was already lit and blazing, a huge, infernal mountain.
His mother was wild with fear, her large, dark eyes flashing, her face bruised where they had beaten her. She knew what the fire meant. And she knew who had betrayed her.
Giacomo knew it, too: it was his supposed father, who now stood beside a pine tree and almost touched—but did not quite touch—the hand of a beautiful young woman beside him. Her chin was raised in triumph and her eyes glittered as she gazed at Giacomo’s mother.
His mother reached out her hand to curse the couple and was cuffed across the back of the head by one of the soldiers. She cried out and went limp, falling to the ground in a heap of long, black hair and a flowing white nightdress far too rich and beautiful for the wife of a peasant to own. Years later, Giacomo decided that it was the nightdress that had convicted her, and had to admit that it had been foolish of her to flaunt it.
But at the time, he was only a little boy whose mother lay sprawled in the mud as one dead.
“Fool!” the local priest had shouted at the soldier. “Now she will have no chance to recant!”
“She’ll not do that, not in a million years,” called Giacomo’s supposed father in his rugged Florentine dialect. “She’s a strega puttana
and she’ll burn like a piece of tallow before she’ll confess. And you may as well throw that one in with her.”
He pointed at Giacomo. The boy trembled as his mother was lashed to a tall ladder. He opened and closed his fists and stared at her, willing her to turn into a raven or a bat and fly away. But she had fainted, and she could not save herself.
Some of the village women smiled as the ladder was raised over the bonfire that lit up the chilly night. Giacomo glared at them. Under cover of night, they had come to his mother, begging for love potions and philtres. “Make me beautiful. Make him love me. Kill my rival.” They didn’t realize that the witch’s son observed all from the dark corners of the room, while the husband, drugged, snored in the loft.
“Give me children, else I die.”
They raised the ladder high against the moon. The stars were the tears in the eyes of the king of the shadows, and it was to him Giacomo prayed to save her. The horned moon gleamed dully, and then clouds smothered it. The air smelled of rain, and Giacomo stared hard at the stars, willing a flood to put out the fire.
But it was not to be. It did not rain. The ladder teetered at its great height. The flames crept up the sides. Then they let go of it, and it crashed into the summit of the bonfire. His mother had awakened at the last as the ladder arced. She shrieked with terror and agony. The villagers were awed by the sight of such torment. The priest took the opportunity to warn them that similar fires awaited all unclean and unshriven souls.
As her body burned and crackled, Giacomo would have turned his head, but his “father” held it steady and forced him to watch. Then he vomited down the front of his nightshirt, and his father only laughed.
The deed completed, the villagers dispersed, though how many slept, Giacomo could not say. Such a frenzy would not yield a soft night of slumber. Passions must be spent. Guilt and horror must be purged.
Alone in the clearing with the peasant and his paramour, Giacomo had been bound and gagged. The heartless young woman smiled as Giacomo’s father said, “I’ll be free of you both before the cock crows.”
Now Giacomo lay on the drawbridge, shaking hot, shaking cold. Hatred burned away any softness; in that moment, evil forged all that he would become.
The Gatekeeper Trilogy, Book Three - SONS of ENTROPY Page 10
