“Very well, I’ll do it,” Giles said, “but if we get separated, then listen for my voice.”
“Hey, where’s Ethan?” Angel said.
Buffy whirled around, tackled the retreating magician, and threw him to the ground.
“Oof,” Ethan wheezed. “Please, this isn’t a rugby match.”
“Get up.” Buffy was disgusted with him. She got to her feet and yanked him to a standing position.
“All right. Good Lord, who died and made you Xena?”
“Same people who made you Dr. Smith.”
“Sorry, I don’t follow,” Ethan told her.
“Lost in Space?” Buffy prompted. “The cowardly bad guy?”
“We’re from Britain, Buffy,” Giles informed her. “We had Dr. Who.”
“Whatever.” Buffy flung Ethan forward. “One more time, and you won’t be watching any TV ever again.”
“I love it when you’re angry.”
Buffy gritted her teeth and walked behind him. She wished she had a flashlight.
Or not.
The clouds shifted. The mist cleared away, and the full moon shone down upon the labyrinth. The walls were lit up, the ground, littered with bones, was cast in long, jagged shadows.
Everyone froze. Directly before them stood a creature Buffy dimly recalled from her mythology class: a muscular, filthy man wrapped in a piece of cowhide, his head that of a huge bull. Massive horns glinted in the waxy light.
Something trickled down the side of its face.
“No,” Buffy moaned.
With a bellow, the creature charged.
“Oh, yes,” Fulcanelli rejoiced, as he heard the roar of the Minotaur. His face quivered with delight; he rose from his chair in the projection booth and flung open the door. Instantly, a small throng of hooded acolytes froze in their places, awaiting his bidding.
“The Slayer has arrived,” he said, certain of it with every fiber of his being. “Go into the maze and retrieve her.”
“Go—go into the maze, Maestro?” piped one of them, a very young Australian with a goatee and an earring. “With the . . . beast?”
“I’ll follow in less than a minute,” Fulcanelli assured him. “I have a quick spell to cast, and then we’ll take her down.” He rubbed his hands together. “With any luck, the heir will be with her.” Too much to hope for, surely, but then, Fulcanelli was such an optimist.
The brothers looked at one another. Fulcanelli flared with anger. He threw back his arm and flung a blue net of energy over the Australian. The man screamed. Fulcanelli pulled back his hand and the man collapsed, dead.
The others trampled over his corpse in their eagerness to obey.
Suddenly, the corridor exploded with gunfire. A hail of bullets riddled the bodies of the acolytes, dismembering them and spraying the walls with blood and gore. Shrieks of pain and terror rent the air as Fulcanelli dove back into the projection room and slammed the door.
He crawled beneath a desk that had been pushed into a corner and caught his breath.
Who dares? he wondered, livid. He closed his eyes and murmured a few syllables in ancient Sumerian.
At once the faces of Lupo and Claude glowed across his eyelids. Then Claude’s face dissolved and in its place, the face of the Ancient, one of the Lords of Chaos, glared at him with contempt.
“Foolish man!” it thundered. “To align yourself with Belphegor. No matter. Now you shall die.”
Fulcanelli shook his head. “Hardly,” he whispered, and, falling deep within himself, he pulled forth the strongest of his magick and mentally hurled it at the demon face. It melted in an instant, leaving the demon’s image writhing in a silent scream of pain.
Alerted now, he created a field of energy around himself and rose to his feet. Dozens of bullets slammed into the energy, and were absorbed. Fulcanelli felt nothing as he crossed the room and went back into the corridor. Many of his followers lay dead in pools of blood and organs. Others cowered behind one another.
But there were those brave few who were defending their positions with magick, and one new brother who was manfully thrashing at the empty air with a chair.
At the same moment, the door at the opposite end blew off its hinges and the corridor began to fill with men dressed identically to Fulcanelli’s own. They were armed with machine guns, and they began to fire upon Fulcanelli’s remaining acolytes.
“Not while I live!” Fulcanelli shouted.
He began the black burn.
Recognizing it, the first rank of attackers faltered and fell back. In that moment of hesitation, Fulcanelli’s men pursued them, wresting their weapons from them and shooting them point-blank. The next rank, caught between the defensive sweep and the rest of the raiding party, had no choice but to stay where they were, sitting ducks for Fulcanelli’s infuriated men.
Then Fulcanelli recharged the black burn, and another man blazed like a torch, screaming as he died.
Another.
Fulcanelli was a dervish, employing every magickal weapon he had, repelling the invaders in a furious storm of energy and shock. They kept falling back, and in the confusion, Fulcanelli’s troops began to give as good as they got.
Fulcanelli heard Brother Lupo shouting, “Forward, you fools!”
Il Maestro smiled grimly and kept up the attack.
* * *
“Now!” Brother Claude shouted from his vantage point on the hill. “Bring the Slayer. Wound her if you must. Hurt her by all means. But don’t kill her. Not yet. Without ritual, it would be such a waste. Go.”
The Sons of Chaos spilled into the maze, shooting everything they saw—bushes, an unlucky deer, the Minotaur’s throne of bones. They began to race down the main arteries of the labyrinth, calling to one another, maddened by the chase like hunting dogs catching the scent of the fox.
Buffy heard the pop-pop-pop of gunfire as she ran as fast as she could from the charging Minotaur, then propelled herself off the end of the stone corridor, flipped backward and slammed into its face. It roared and tried to grab her.
“Look,” she said, as she gave it a bone-cracking roundhouse for good measure, and then clipped it behind the knee, “give me my mom and we’ll get you out of here.”
“I doubt he speaks the Queen’s English,” Ethan shouted.
“That’s okay. I don’t either.” Buffy side-kicked the thing in the groin, then lunged forward and jammed her fingertips underneath its diaphragm.
Three hooded figures leaped from the top of the maze wall, one dropping on the Minotaur and two dropping on Buffy.
“Buffy!” Angel cried, brutally punching a young acolyte in the temple and throwing off another attacker as if he were a bad fur coat. The man’s AK-47 went off, spraying the sky with bullets like a water sprinkler.
By the time Angel reached Buffy, she had put some distance between herself and the monster . . . in the form of two whimpering acolytes who had somehow dropped their weapons. The Minotaur lashed out at the first one and decapitated him.
Another hooded figure dropped down on Buffy.
“What, do you guys have one of those stealth helicopters?” Buffy demanded, pummeling the new arrival. He got off a barrage, peppering the wall with bullets. He almost got her, too, but she jumped into the air and executed a spinning kick that took him out cold.
Buffy dropped to her knees and grabbed his gun. As she rose, she saw the Minotaur looming above her. It stared down at her, and she saw that it was bleeding from several bullet wounds. She almost struck out at it, or let fly with a barrage of gunfire. Instead, she held the gun up for the Minotaur to see and looked hard at the monster.
“They have guns,” she said. “It’s only a matter of time. Get my mom and we’ll all get out of here.”
The Minotaur gazed back at her. Its eyes were enormous, and very blank. She had a sinking feeling it couldn’t understand a word she said.
Then it abruptly turned its back and began to lope away.
“Chicken,” she called after it.
“Giles, where are you?” she cried.
“Right-hand rule,” he shouted back.
“Not now,” she groaned, but she plastered her hand on the right wall of the maze and began racing through it. The walls shook. Where her hand met a corner, the entire wall shimmered and disappeared, then reappeared. The breach is weakening, she thought. This baby may blow any minute.
“Ethan! Angel!” she cried.
“Buffy, I’m behind you,” Angel said. She felt his hand on her shoulder.
Then the gunfire recommenced, sending both of them diving to the earth and covering their heads. Dirt spit at them as the bullets stabbed into the ground. Something grazed Buffy’s back, and she gritted her teeth.
Finally, she dared to look up, and for one terrible moment, she wished she were dead.
Bathed in moonlight, her mother’s body lay limp in the arms of the Minotaur.
“No,” Buffy whispered. She began to get up.
“Buffy, stay down!” Angel whimpered.
The Minotaur came closer. Her mother’s head was canted at an odd angle. Her eyes were closed, her mouth slack.
Buffy staggered toward the Minotaur. It looked down at her strangely, and then it yielded its precious cargo.
Buffy took her mother into her arms.
“Buffy, run!” Giles yelled, running up from behind the creature. He took the unconscious Joyce from Buffy and gestured with his head. “They’re after you!”
“Run?” she said, incredulous.
Then the labyrinth flickered. There was no word for it. The Minotaur reached out a hand toward Buffy.
She said, “C’mon,” but as she did so, the structure shook and flickered again.
Without another thought, she leaped over the bodies of their attackers and made a cannonball run for the end of the corridor. As she reached the wall, she closed her eyes, lowered her head, and charged.
“Buffy, no!” Angel yelled.
For an instant, she felt the impact of her skull against unyielding stone.
Oh, great, wrong guess.
Then her momentum propelled her forward, and she tumbled through the wall and onto the mistdampened night grass.
Angel rolled out after her, followed by Giles with Joyce.
The Minotaur was halfway through when the maze vanished. It screamed, sounding utterly human, as it was cut in two. Its torso and head flopped wetly on the ground. The rest disappeared with its lair.
Buffy and the others raced for the car.
“Where’s Ethan?” Angel asked.
“Who cares,” Buffy snapped. “I hope he’s in Hell.”
“Or in the Otherworld,” Giles said.
“Same diff,” Buffy answered.
The stench of dying choked Fulcanelli where he crouched in the tunnel beneath the Sunnydale Drive-In. The labyrinth was gone, and those traitors who had been in it.
“And the Slayer?” Belphegor demanded.
“We’ll have her,” Fulcanelli said. He was wounded, shot in the leg. A rosy glow enveloped the wound, and he was whole again.
“As we have the heir?”
“He’ll never leave Sunnydale alive.”
“Apparently he has,” Belphegor said in an even, very calm voice. Fulcanelli knew that tone: the demon was gripped by an ungovernable fury, which threatened to erupt at any moment.
“What?” Fulcanelli demanded, cocking his head.
“Did you not feel it? The Gatehouse has a new keeper. The energy is far too vibrant, far too young, to be that of the old man, Jean-Marc.
“Jacques Regnier has slipped through your fingers.”
“Impossible!” Fulcanelli cried. “Absolutely impossible! I have set barricades, wards—”
“He has gotten past them. And now, your life is forfeit.”
“No,” Fulcanelli said quickly, panicking. Then more calmly, as he hatched a plan, “No.”
He nodded to himself as the pieces fell into place.
“I’ll deal with this personally. I’ll go to Boston.”
“And?” Belphegor prodded.
“I’ll kill this new Gatekeeper.”
He smiled to himself.
“And when he is dead, the Slayer will have no one to turn to, and I’ll kill her as well.”
Chapter
9
IT WAS NEAR DAWN IN SUNNYDALE. INSIDE ANGEL’S mansion, Buffy and her mother sat in chairs pulled up before the warm fire, drinking tea. The room was chilly. Angel’s place might be stylish, but it was hard to heat all the stone and cement. Buffy had managed to keep track of her backpack all this time, and her English sweater was around her mother’s shoulders, where it looked at home.
Note to self: curb impulse buying, she thought, but no part of her self was listening. No part of her self cared about fashion or shopping or any of that right now.
Instead, Buffy watched her mother’s hands shake as she brought her teacup to her mouth. Not for the first time, and not for the hundredth, Buffy wanted to tell Joyce how sorry she was for everything she put her through. Although Buffy had not chosen to be the Slayer, she felt guiltier about it than all the trouble she’d purposely caused as a smart-mouthed airhead back in Los Angeles. Shoplifting a lipstick now and then and sneaking out to party had strained her parents’ marriage to the breaking point—she’d never get over that guilt—but none of that had put her mother’s life in danger. Being the Slayer did.
That knowledge would never go away. And neither would that threat. If they survived all this, it could easily happen again.
“Mom,” Buffy said slowly, “now that we know what’s going on, maybe you should leave Sunny—”
Her mother raised her chin, smoothed Buffy’s hair away from her forehead, and briefly cupped Buffy’s cheek. Her eyes glittered.
“You look older,” Joyce said.
Buffy tried to swallow, and couldn’t. “I am older.”
Joyce took Buffy’s hand and gave it a little shake. Her laugh was broken and sad. “I remember when you lost your two front teeth, and you tried to stuff cotton balls in your mouth before your second-grade class picture to hide the spaces.”
“Vanity, thy name is me,” Buffy said, trying for a light tone, not getting anywhere near it. She set down her teacup.
“Mom, I’m serious. It would be safer . . .” She took a breath. “. . . easier if you weren’t here. Sunnydale is on the Hellmouth, Mom. When bad stuff happens, it happens here. We’ve been putting Band-Aids on it, sure, but when everything blows—”
“Buffy, if the world ends, I want to be with you when it does,” Joyce said. “You and I are a family. We need to stay together.”
Buffy sighed hard. “I’m not getting through to you, Mom. I’m the Slayer.”
A tear slid down Joyce’s cheek. “And I’m the Slayer’s mother. And I didn’t choose it either, Buffy. But you know, I would rather be your mother than anyone else’s.”
Buffy laughed shortly. “Yeah. Except maybe Willow’s.”
“Oh, honey.” Joyce pulled Buffy into her arms and Buffy laid her head on Joyce’s shoulder. Buffy closed her eyes and listened to the strength in her mother’s voice. Drew from it. “Not even Willow.”
Buffy said quietly, “When Giles told me they’d kidnapped you, I refused to take Jacques to Boston. I think Jacques has been lying to me, telling me that he’s safer here. Because he lost his father, and he knew how it felt. He didn’t want me to lose you.” Reluctantly, Buffy pulled away and sat up. “That shouldn’t have happened. I should have gone.”
Joyce cocked her head. “But we live in a world where you stayed. And I like that world, Buffy. Very much.”
“Me, too.” From somewhere deep inside herself, she dredged up a lopsided grin. “Except we could let the school blow. That’d be okay.”
Joyce chuckled. “That’s my girl.”
“Yeah.”
Shyly, Buffy pulled away and picked up her teacup. She drank, savoring the warmth. She was very, very cold.
Giles cracked open the door to the bedroom, letting in a sliver of light. It gleamed golden on Micaela’s blond hair as she stood over Jacques, tenderly staring down at the boy with her arms crossed over her chest.
Giles moved to join her. She smiled gently at him, then gazed back down at the boy. The heir’s right hand lay outstretched on the pillow, as if he were reaching out for something. Someone.
Micaela sat down gently on the mattress and took his hand. He sighed and shifted slightly in his sleep.
Leaning over, she pressed her cheek against his. Then she rose.
Together they left the room, Giles first. Micaela shut the door and pressed her hand against it.
“He’s so young,” she said softly. “Just a little boy. He should be dreaming up pranks.”
They walked down the dimly lit corridor. “I don’t suppose you had much of a childhood,” Giles said, “being what you were.” When she flushed, he took her hand. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that to sound harsh. What I meant was, having to lead a double life as you did. Your loyalties split.”
In the gauzy light, she looked incredibly young. But there was a careworn maturity in her face that belied her appearance. For all her apparent softness and youth, Giles saw steely resolve in her expression. In peril of her entire existence, now and in the hereafter, Micaela had turned against one of the most powerful sorcerers ever born, an ancient creature capable of ending the world. And she had done it not to save someone she loved, nor even to save herself: she had done it because it was the right thing to do.
One had to respect a person like that.
“I want to tell you that I’m sorry for your loss, but of course that would be ridiculous,” Giles said, and again, he thought he sounded cruel. Upon their return, Jacques had informed them that he could not sense Fulcanelli, and that he believed the sorcerer had been killed in the battle and disappearance of the labyrinth. It was a tremendous relief, but Jacques also stated that the work of the sorcerer appeared to have remained in motion.
The Gatekeeper Trilogy, Book Three - SONS of ENTROPY Page 13
