The ancient sorcerer glanced left, right, did not see them. He chose to think of them with rancor for deserting him. Loyal followers would have insisted upon remaining with their leader, no matter that he had dismissed them as useless.
There! He spied one of the Sons of Entropy hiding in a lush stand of rosebushes. His dark hooded robe was like a black shadow on the dark red blossoms, so unusual for this time of year. The Regniers always did love roses. Giuliana Regnier had died in delirious pain, muttering nonsense about them.
With a careless wave of Fulcanelli’s hand, the bush burst into flame. The crouching man shouted with surprise and threw his arms over his head. The fragrance of the burning flowers was overpowered by the more delectable odor of charring flesh as the man went up, a pillar of flame.
In this very way had Richard Regnier thought he had killed Fulcanelli, during the Great Fire of London in 1666. What incredible hubris, what monumental pride, to assume one had rid himself of Giacomo Fulcanelli in that ineffectual manner.
As you thought you had rid yourself of Hadrius, came the unbidden thought. He tamped down his anger and focused on the boy, who watched impassively as Il Maestro’s acolyte burned to death.
Boy no longer, Fulcanelli reminded himself. Give him no quarter. Show him no mercy. He is the Regnier. The Gatekeeper.
Nevertheless, he could not help himself as he called out, “Child, give me the house and you may return to your school days. I’ll allow you to live.” He smiled, relishing the freedom of movement of his mouth, now that his false face was gone.
“Of course, you will become my devoted servant,” he added.
The Gatekeeper said nothing, only stared at him.
Beneath Fulcanelli’s feet, the earth shook, and he was slightly taken aback. Only slightly, however.
For the shaking was not of his doing, but what did it signify? He was Il Maestro, and the victory would ultimately be his.
He bent low, sending something of himself into the dark places where the blackest magick was born. Shuddering, his projected persona gathered fresh hatreds and more weapons from the cache where Il Maestro kept them.
Alerted to its presence, a swarm of red demons rushed it, talons flashing in the black light. The presence departed, and returned to its master.
Fulcanelli opened his eyes and flexed his hands meaningfully. The pitifully small figure observing him never changed his expression.
Fulcanelli made two fists, pressed them together, and whispered an incantation in a language that was already dead in another realm before this realm bore thinking creatures.
The night went completely and utterly black as, one by one, the stars winked out and the moon was choked beneath a blanket of living, breathing evil.
Inside the Gatehouse, Willow said to Angel, “Um, I can run now.”
It was a very weird experience being carried around by Angel, who was in full vamp face, as he kept her safe from her boyfriend. Angel was quite muscular and his chest was very broad. It was neat, in a girl-responding-to-boy way. And that was very weird, all around, and she felt vaguely guilty, like she shouldn’t tell Buffy about it. Oz either. On the other hand, she was not so good in the secret-keeping department.
So, after graduation, no X-Files for me, she thought giddily.
“Um, Angel?”
“Hey,” said a voice, and it was Oz’s voice.
She and Angel both turned their heads at the same time. There was Oz, her guy, Oz, only sometimes when he de-wolfed, he didn’t have on a lot of clothes. Luckily, he was standing behind a chair draped with a white sheet. As Oz took in his appearance, he began to pull the sheet off the chair.
Willow practically leaped from Angel’s arms, nearly falling as she landed on her swollen and rapidly numbing ankle.
“What gives?” Cordelia said, glancing at Xander.
Xander shrugged. They had been running through a small, hexagonal room, which Xander and Cordelia got all excited about, and Angel had said to Willow, “It’s a twin of the room we did the Ritual of Endowment in.” That was the ritual they had performed to make Buffy stronger, Willow doing her own part by remote control in Sunnydale.
“Did someone put out the moon?” Oz asked.
Then, just as abruptly as he had become Oz, he threw back his head and howled. Coarse black hair spurted over his face and body, and his face began to elongate.
“I’m thinking yes, and now it’s not out,” Xander announced. “As the former Gatekeeper, may I suggest that we all run away!”
Cursing, Willow followed Xander and Cordy out of the room, Angel bringing up the rear. Oz was slashing the air just behind Angel’s head by the time they reached the corridor and flew down it.
At the end of it, there was an enormous curved stairway Willow could not remember seeing before. It wasn’t the one at the front of the house.
The Gatehouse is beginning to lose its mind again, she thought anxiously. Jacques must be overloaded fighting Il Maestro. He can’t keep the Gatehouse together.
One look at Xander’s and Cordelia’s faces confirmed her thought. It didn’t make her happy.
Nor did the fact that everyone barreled down the stairway without considering that it might disappear at any moment.
Or maybe that did. Maybe falling twenty feet or getting whisked into another dimension was preferable to being dismembered by her one true love.
Who was gaining on them.
At the foot of the stairway was a large wooden door. Xander, in the lead, pushed it open. Willow blinked.
It was the way out, literally. Outside. Out of the Gatehouse.
“Is this good?” Xander asked. Then his eyes widened and he yanked on Cordelia’s hand, shouting, “Jam it, Cor!”
They ran out of the Gatehouse. Angel followed after, stopping long enough to slam the door in Oz’s face.
They stood on an expanse of lawn surrounded by trees and a small fountain. Xander and Cordelia were wheezing, staring uncertainly at the door as Oz slammed against it and started pummeling it.
“I’m thinking we need more distance,” Angel said. “He may get out.”
“Isn’t the door magic or something?”
“I can try to bind him,” Willow suggested, but she wasn’t very happy about that notion. After all, this was Oz, not some Otherworld escapee. She wasn’t sure what would happen to him in the unstable Gatehouse.
“We’ll save that as a last resort,” Angel said.
Willow relaxed, just a little.
Then the door disappeared.
“Oz!” Willow cried. “Oz!”
Just as suddenly, the lawn beneath them disappeared. Willow plunged into the murky depths of frigid, dark water, and lost sight of the others.
She broke to the surface, gasping for breath, counting heads in the weak moonlight. Xander, Cordy . . . Angel.
“Whoa,” Xander said. “What the heck is Jacques doing? Hey, kid!” he shouted. “We could use some help.”
Treading water beside him, Cordelia shook her head. Her hair was slicked back from her face and her makeup was gone. She looked very cold and very scared.
“He’s not going to help us, Xander. We mean nothing to him. He’s got to concentrate on Il Maestro.”
Xander looked perplexed and angry. “No way. I subbed for him while those guys took him to Disneyland or whatever. Besides, he’s the goodest of the good guys. So he can just part this sea!”
“He’s not gonna help us,” Cordelia snapped. She looked at the others.
“We’re on our own.”
“Okay, so swimming,” Willow said, only she was so cold she was having trouble making her arms and legs move. In the icy water, her sprained ankle really hurt.
“Swimming to where?” Cordelia shot back.
Willow looked around. All she saw was water and moonlight.
And then, about twenty feet away, the water began to churn.
“Oh, God,” Cordelia screamed. “What is it?”
“The Kraken,” Angel suggested. �
��The Gatekeeper bound it back into the house.”
“Willow,” Xander urged, treading water. “Do your thing. Now.”
“She can’t bind it by herself,” Cordelia said, splashing wildly as she tried to swim away. “Jean-Marc had to help her, remember?” She grabbed at Xander. “I can’t swim! My clothes are too heavy. I’m going to drown.”
“Here,” Xander said, putting his arm around her. “Willow, you have to try.”
She cleared her throat. She was so frightened she couldn’t think of the exact words of the incantation. “To the old gods I give all reverence and honor,” she began.
“Pan, protect me. I call upon thee to bind—”
The water roiled and bubbled. A huge wave rushed over the four, crashing down on Willow as she sputtered and fought to complete the spell.
“Pan, be my guardian!” she tried.
“Those aren’t the right words,” Cordelia shouted at her. “Say the right words.”
The water rushed and another wave smacked them. Then the sea seemed to dome upward.
“It’s coming! It’s going to eat us up!” Cordelia shouted.
Very softly, Angel said, “Buffy,” and Willow spared her no-doubt last thoughts for Oz. And her parents. And the fact that it didn’t matter anymore if she lost her conditional status at Bryn Mawr.
Then the Kraken rose from the depths and hovered over them. Willow realized her eyes were closed; she opened them and took a deep breath. The big, ugly lady was going to win after all.
Only it wasn’t the big, ugly lady. It was some kind of dinosaur, with a long neck and a little head, and it stared down at them almost as if it were as frightened of them as they were of it.
“Oh, my God,” Xander said, “it’s . . .” he looked at Angel. “You’re like, what, Scottish? Is it what I think it is?”
Angel nodded. “I’m Irish, and it’s the Loch Ness monster.”
“Oh.” Cordelia brightened. “That’s okay. That thing is friendly, isn’t it? It’s Nessie.” She looked very proud of herself.
“Oh, oh, right.” Xander’s tone was sarcastic and a little harsh. “The Cartoon Network says so, right?”
Cordelia scowled at him. “Hey, Xander, who died and made you—”
“Gatekeeper?” he zinged back.
The creature threw back its head and trumpeted loudly. Then its head plummeted toward Xander, but Cordelia yanked him out of the way.
“Maybe it wants to play,” Xander snapped, then managed to add, “Thanks,” to Cordelia as the monster reared back its head and tried again.
“By Pan, I bind thee,” Willow said lamely. She was drawing a blank.
Then Angel took her hand and murmured, “Think it through, Willow. You’ve done this a hundred times. You can do it.”
She was still blank, but suddenly, she began to speak. It was as if someone else were in her head, like the time she had spoken Rumanian to restore Angel’s soul.
“To the Old Gods I give all supplication, and deference, and honor.”
“Now you’re cookin’!” Xander cheered.
He was right. She was in the zone.
“I call upon thee to protect all within these waters,” she intoned.
The Loch Ness monster trumpeted again. Then it blinked at them as if in surprise.
In the flash of an instant, it disappeared, as did all the water.
“Cool,” Willow said brightly as they lay soaking wet on the lawn. “I did it!”
“Or not,” Cordelia muttered, pointing.
On the roof of the Gatehouse, Jacques was silhouetted against the full moon. Bolts of lightning shot into the area surrounding him. So far he was untouched, but from where she lay, Willow could feel the force of the energy. If one of those hit him . . .
He gave them a wave. Willow waved urgently back and said, “We’re fine! Go battle!”
She looked anxiously at Angel. “He shouldn’t be bothering with us.”
“I’m glad he did,” Xander said. He got to his feet and helped Cordy up.
Angel did the same. Willow rose easily.
“Hey,” she announced, “he fixed my ankle.” She gave Jacques another wave.
“Your full-service Gatekeeper,” Xander said. “Now, if he can also save the world, I’m for buying him a present.” He moved his shoulders. “What the heck. Let’s go crazy. We’ll get a cake, too.”
Willow flinched as a bolt landed perilously close to Jacques. He leaped to the left and fell to his knees.
“I’m not liking this,” Willow murmured.
“Me neither,” Angel said.
Then, as Jacques knelt and worked a ball of energy between his hands, a bolt arced directly for him, honing in like a cruise missile.
“No! Look out!” Willow shouted.
They all shouted.
And then Cordelia’s shriek of terror was consumed by the huge flash of light as the lightning struck home. A direct hit, right in the center of Jacques’s chest.
One minute he was there, the next . . .
“Oh, my God, Angel,” Willow said. “He’s been vaporized.”
As if in response, the Gatehouse shifted and flickered. As they watched helplessly, it began to crumble in upon itself.
Chapter
14
FOR A HEARTBEAT, WILLOW COULD ONLY STARE AS ONE entire wing of the Gatehouse began to collapse in on itself.
Then she screamed.
“Oz!”
She started to run toward the house, her mind awhirl with fear for her boyfriend, who was kind and gentle and clever—when he wasn’t a werewolf. Willow had been standing in the courtyard of the Gatehouse with Xander and Cordelia and Angel. They had been watching young Jacques Regnier, the new Gatekeeper, in sorcerous combat with the ancient Fulcanelli.
And then Jacques had lost. Suddenly, and unexpectedly, it was over. The Gatehouse was collapsing, the Gatekeeper destroyed. Fulcanelli had triumphed. Now the barriers between dimensions, the walls that separated their human world from Hell, and from the Otherworld—where so many monsters of myth and legend still lived—were falling.
“Oh my God,” she whimpered to herself, legs pumping, heart pounding. “This can’t be happening.”
But it was happening.
The shriek of timber was punctuated by small explosions inside the house. Fulcanelli was outside, on the other side of the front segment of the Gatehouse. They had a handful of moments, perhaps several minutes, to figure out what to do, how to survive.
But first she had to save Oz.
Heedless of the danger, Willow ran toward the house as one entire wall began to crumble, pouring down into the courtyard. Strong hands grabbed her, dragged her down to the soft earth, and she lay there, panting, as dust rose from the rubble.
“Oz,” she whispered.
Then she bucked, shouting, “Get off me!”
“Whoa, just saving your life. No applause required, but, y’know . . .”
It was Xander. She stared at him a moment—she’d thought it had been Angel, scooping her out of harm’s way once again—but no. Xander. Her oldest friend.
Heavy-hearted, consumed entirely by the question of Oz’s fate, Willow barely noticed Cordelia’s screaming. Xander, though, responded immediately.
“Cordy, relax,” he snapped, looking at Willow with concern. “I’m sure it’s not the end of the world.”
But then Willow could see past Xander. She could see what Cordelia was screaming about, what Angel was staring at in silence, and what Xander now turned to look at.
“Okay, I take it back,” Xander mumbled.
But none of them found it even remotely funny. For the world was ending. That was the undeniable truth of it. All around them, save for the wing that was nothing but debris, the Gatehouse had begun to shimmer, as though it were a reflection in a pond rather than something real and tangible.
Out of that shimmering reflection, monsters were being born. Monsters, and a great deal more. Trolls and ghouls and horrid flying things and
a woman with snakes for hair . . . all manner of creatures tore their way through that portal. All the things that the house had held captive for so long, denizens of the Otherworld who could never return to their own world, each was out now. Free.
Most of them were pretty pissed.
Willow shouted in pain and covered her ears as a sudden skyquake split the night, and the thunderous crack boomed loudly around them. Toads began to fall from the sky. Several spheres of burning ball lightning hovered about, and then moved to alight in the still tangible wooden rubble of the crumbled wing of the Gatehouse.
There was a loud clanging, as of a distant buoy, and suddenly the sky was blocked from their view by the ghostly form of the Flying Dutchman, hovering above the courtyard. Several of her corpselike pirates threw ropes overboard and were, even now, descending to the earth.
“We are so dead,” Cordelia said, with more anger than terror in her now.
Angel appeared beside Willow. He looked at her intently. “Willow,” he said. “Can you—”
Then his words were cut off as a serpent-man seven feet tall rose up on his tail and prepared to strike at him. Angel leaped first, moving in the blink of an eye, grabbing the open jaws of the snake-man and pulling them open. Willow heard the crack of its jaw from a dozen feet away, and it sickened her.
“Heh, heh, little girls. I like ’em fresh,” said a revolting voice.
Willow spun to see a hunched, green-fleshed man eyeing her with a vulgar expression. A ghoul, she thought.
Her hands gesticulating wildly, she whispered a spell and tried to bind the thing back into the house. Nothing happened. And it should have, that was the kicker. The house was falling apart, like an intricately woven pattern spinning out of control, the strands going every which way. But they were still there. She should be able to tap into that web, that matrix of magick, at least to buy them some time until it all came apart completely.
But she couldn’t.
The ghoul lunged at her. Willow brought her palm up, stiff-armed it in the face, shattering its nose and sending bone shards into its brain. The ghoul went down, dead.
The Gatekeeper Trilogy, Book Three - SONS of ENTROPY Page 21
