THE BROTHERS WERE UPSTAIRS IN their cloisters, singing their unholy chants. Their voices filtered into the darkness below, as did the screams of the sacrifice. But II Maestro barely noticed. His gaze was on the corpse of the traitor, Brother Albert, as it hung in the sulfurous, boiling air above the pentagram.
In the shadows, his dark lord watched as II Maestro waved a hand over the dead mouth and flicked open the dead eyes with a snap of his fingers. From the mouth crawled a spider and a worm, both wilting in the heat. The eyes of the dead man were milky, but something moved beneath their filmy domes.
Sweating and blistered, II Maestro began the questioning.
“Wretched betrayer, before you suffer the eternal torments of hell, tell me what I wish to know.”
“Maestro,” the dead man said, “forgive me.”
“Forgiveness is beyond me,” II Maestro retorted. “Had you need for that, you should have looked elsewhere.”
“Maestro, spare me.”
II Maestro only chuckled. He pointed to the dead mouth. “You met the Slayer.”
“I met her.”
“You told her where I am.”
“She did not believe me.”
“Oh?”
The shadows shifted. II Maestro’s dark master was listening hard.
“She believes you are in Vienna.”
“Why on earth would she believe that?”
“Maestro, I burn,” said the corpse. “I am in agony.”
“It’s only the beginning, my friend.” II Maestro smiled to himself in anticipation. “Tell me why she believes I’m in Vienna.”
“I do not know.”
“Liar!”
From a table laden with instruments of torture, II Maestro picked up a whip which glowed with a purplish light. He struck the corpse across the face. The corpse writhed.
Again, across the milky eyes, which burst. The fluid began to steam as it cascaded over the temples.
The body gasped and said, “Maestro, I don’t know.”
II Maestro brought the whip down again.
The corpse groaned dully.
He raised the whip—
“Enough,” said the demon in the shadows. “This is accomplishing nothing.”
II Maestro was disappointed, but obeyed. “Name your confederates,” he said, trying a new direction.
The corpse was silent for a moment. Then it said, “None.”
“No one?” II Maestro shook his head. “Not for one moment do I believe you.”
The eyeless corpse said, “No one helped me.”
“But surely, there were those who supported you. Who wished you well.”
“Ahhh.” Brother Albert twisted in the air. “Alone.”
The dead man burst into flame. In less than five seconds, he was nothing but a pile of cinders. II Maestro raised his brows and stared into the shadows.
“I didn’t do that. Did you?”
“No, you fool. He did.” The demon sounded disgusted. “And you allowed it.”
“No, my lord,” II Maestro protested. “I didn’t—”
“Silence! Oh, you are useless. Useless.” The shadows shifted again. The heat in the chamber rose unbearably, singeing the hair off II Maestro’s body. He was terrified that he, too, would burst into flames.
“Please, my lord,” he said.
“You promised me the Slayer,” the demon said. “And if she is not here by the full moon, your daughter takes her place. On the altar, and in Hell.”
II Maestro bowed his head. But in the folds of his robe, his hands were clenched. That would never happen.
Never.
* * *
Angel had just awakened. He was in a pension in a small town near Geneva, nowhere on a map. There was an 8:30 P.M. express to Milan. That was the expected rendezvous point with Buffy and Oz. If they weren’t there, he was supposed to call Giles. For all the good that would do. If they weren’t there, Angel would be on his own in his search for the heir to the Gatehouse.
He wandered across a square, admiring the gargoyle fountain, and saw warm lights through green and yellow bottle-bottom windows.
He pushed open the door and quickly, covertly scanned the bar, but came up with nothing out of the ordinary. Still, he was a stranger, and there was a large mirror over the bar itself. He moved to a table out of range and sat, so that no one would notice that he cast no reflection. It was a form of self-awareness that had been instinctive over the years.
After a few minutes a young woman sauntered over to him. She had short red hair and a large emerald-colored stud in her nose. She eyed him appreciatively, then spoke to him in Italian. He was able to decipher that she was asking for his order, so he told her he wanted a Campari. Then she shook her head and pointed to a short, wiry man seated at the bar, who turned slowly and faced Angel.
Angel’s lips parted in shock. He had seen that man before.
In Sunnydale.
The man slid off the stool and walked to Angel’s table. He held a glass in his hand, which he raised in Angel’s direction. He said a few words to the waitress. She answered, “Campari,” then scooted away.
“Signor Angel,” the man said, touching his chest. “Small world. I’m stunned.”
Angel shrugged. This man had been one of the Sons of Entropy in the car that had tried to follow Buffy to the airport. They had shot their compatriot rather than allow him to spill any of their secrets to Angel.
“Stunned.” Angel looked at him hard. “How long have you been following me?”
The man looked offended. “Truly, I was not.”
The waitress came with Angel’s Campari. His new companion made a great show of paying for it, but Angel said nothing.
“No, truly, I was not,” the man repeated, “but let me take this opportunity to reason with you.”
Angel looked at him askance.
“Listen.” The man scooted forward on his chair, clearly eager to continue. “As you have no doubt realized, my master is an extremely powerful man with superior knowledge of the arcane.”
“Superior knowledge,” Angel said dryly.
“Yes, indeed.” The man smiled. “He knows of a way to turn you—and only you, because of your soul—into a fully human man who will live out his days in peace, then die the true death.” He clapped his hands together. “No more vampire lifestyle. No more bloodlust.”
“And in return?”
“Well, of course you must serve him,” the man replied. “But it’s a small matter, really.” He looked thoughtful, then smiled brightly. “For example, as a token of your gratitude, you might explain to us where the Slayer is.”
“I’m not with her anymore,” Angel said dully.
“Oh?” The man’s voice had that quizzical singsong rhythm Angel had always despised.
“She’s in Austria, I think,” Angel went on. “Vienna. I don’t know.” He looked away.
“Ah. Lover’s quarrel.”
As the man feigned sympathy, Angel became aware of movements in the bar. The patrons were shifting their positions, focusing more intently on him. He heard a click at the front door. Locked from the outside, he guessed.
The faces on some of the other customers seemed to blur, reshape. A few looked away.
Angel raised his eyes to the mirror. Seated in a booth to his far right, the scaly, homed face of a demon stared back at him.
“He sees,” the demon said.
Angel’s companion jumped up from his chair and raised his hands. At once, everyone else in the bar followed suit. Human faces melted away, revealing the truth: Angel was surrounded by monsters and demons, faces covered with scales and bony ridges and sores and hideous distortions. Bodies stooped, grew, cleft, became long, wormlike forms. They hissed, they seethed, they gazed at Angel with hunger and hatred.
The man clapped his hands together once. His voice was calm and soft.
“Accept my master’s most gracious offer, or be destroyed,” he said.
With demons and monsters making an impenetrable circle around him, Angel remained in his seat. Calm. Bold. He did not stand. Did not raise his hands to defend himself.
Instead, he smiled thinly.
“I’ve told you where the Slayer’s gone, or at least as much as I know,” he said, staring at the man before him, one of the Sons of Entropy who had now, to Angel’s mind, become just a little too numerous.
Angel laughed a bit, and shook his head. “But you don’t believe me, do you?” he asked.
“On the contrary, vampire,” the acolyte said. “You have only confirmed what we already knew. The Slayer is expected in Vienna, and she will be greeted there. But there are ways you could help II Maestro, ways in which you could be useful in deceiving her. Entrapping her.”
With a small grunt, Angel narrowed his eyes. The flesh of his face seemed to quiver, and then it changed. His brow grew heavier, jutting out, and the skin around his eyes and nose became rough and callused. His eyes blinked and when they opened again, they glowed a fierce, predatory yellow. He looked around at the monsters and demons. He watched as they snarled at him, moved into a tighter circle, their chests rising and falling as though all that held them back was this acolyte’s . . . this human’s command.
Several of them were absolutely terrifying to behold, even for Angel.
So fast the acolyte barely flinched, Angel launched himself from the chair, grabbed the man by his thick, graying hair, and slammed his face down on the table in front of him. His nose shattered and blood jetted from one nostril.
“You son of a bitch,” Angel whispered into his ear as the demons and monsters screeched a horrid chorus but did not move any closer. “Your boss should have told you to do your homework. I’m a dead man. You can dress that up however you like, magick can do a lot of things, but it can’t make me alive again! And even if it could, I’m not a man who can be bought. You should have known that coming in.”
With a roar of terrible rage, Angel hefted the whimpering acolyte by collar and belt, lifted the man over his head, and ran at the circle of horrors that surrounded them. They parted for him, staring mutely, and Angel used all his strength to hurl the man over the bar. The acolyte’s shout of fear was cut off as he slammed into the mirror, which shattered into a thousand silver fragments, destroying the monstrous image of the room around it.
The shards fell like deadly rain, many of them slicing into the fallen acolyte’s body where he lay behind the bar.
A black wave seemed to sweep across the room, invisible but tangible. Angel’s hair ruffled with a sickly breeze. He turned, his entire body cold and silent as stone, without even the illusion of life, of breathing and warmth, that vampires so often used to camouflage themselves. He turned to face the monsters.
The monsters. Which were now nothing more than common street thugs and local rowdies. There were several Sons of Entropy among them, he saw, but even they only stared at Angel in horror, stared at the flaring yellow eyes and the lips curled back to reveal gleaming fangs. Angel seethed, furious not only that they would think him a likely traitor but that the idiot spellcaster the Sons of Entropy had put on his tail had actually believed Angel had lived nearly two and a half centuries without being able to tell a real demon from an illusory one.
Demons stank. The only odor coming off these goons was that of stale whiskey and old beer.
Still, they stared.
Angel was stooped slightly, almost like an animal. Now he stood straight and glared at them all.
“You’ve been led to your deaths,” he said grimly, his voice thick with anger and the lust for blood. “The first man I catch dies the fastest. The last is my supper.”
He took a single step and they broke and ran, crashing through the windows of the place and battering down the door from within. Only the few Sons of Entropy tried to stay behind, and even they were swept back by the tide of fear. One of the acolytes broke free and brought a long, wicked-looking blade out of his jacket, then swung it around toward Angel’s face.
Angel took the blade away, and then gave it back to him. As decoration. It adorned the man’s chest amid gouts of spurting blood.
The vampire walked on. Already most of the thugs had fled. Two acolytes remained, shoving aside the others now, the freelance talent they’d hired for aid.
They looked terrified.
A moment later, Angel gave them reason to be.
By the time he relaxed and his face returned to normal, he was alone in the bar.
* * *
“Milano,” Oz said. Buffy half-expected him to pull a guidebook from his pack and begin rattling off all the things to do and see in the city. But Oz was quiet, and she was grateful.
They were sitting inside a cafe in a huge park. The cafe was very old-world, crowded with plaster statues and cupids and lots of oil paintings on the walls. It was pricey, too, and Buffy felt out of place in her traveling clothes. It was called Angelina, and it was where Angel had promised to try to rendezvous with them. How he knew of a cafe in Milan, Italy, with an in-joke for a name, Buffy did not know. Maybe he had a lot of guidebooks, too.
The thing was, he’d been due almost an hour and a half ago. And he hadn’t shown.
Oz sipped his coffee and said, “He’s taking a train. Maybe it was late.”
“Don’t they all run on time over here?” she asked, toying with her silverware.
“Maybe not.” He smiled at her gently. “He’ll show.”
She flashed him a lopsided smile. “I have a strange feeling of déjà vu here, Oz, only you would be one of my girlfriends back in L.A. and we would possibly be discussing a boy named Tyler. Or maybe Jeff. And we would be at the Cineplex, me officially not caring if he showed.”
He smiled back. “You’re okay,” he said, then shrugged. “I don’t mean I think you’re okay. Which I do. And you are. What I’m trying to say is that you’re strong. Slayer strong and person strong.”
She blushed, pleased by the compliment. She’d never really talked to Oz much. It was nice.
“Sometimes I feel pretty not-strong,” she confessed.
“So did Superman,” Oz replied.
After a time, he said, “It’s been bugging me that I don’t have a guitar. I keep thinking I should be practicing. It’s a mundane thought, but it keeps occurring to me.”
She nodded. “Dealing with an end-of-the-world scenario can really make you schizo if you think about it too much. It’s like being the Slayer, only more so. But this is me on a daily basis: on the one hand, I’m wondering if that pair of suede boots I want have gone on sale, and on the other I’m wondering if I’ll be able to run through the graveyard with them on. Plus if I can get blood out of them. And I’m wondering all this while I’m kickboxing with some demon.”
“Hmm. Doubtful.”
She leaned forward. “The problem being, of course, that I want the suede boots, just like all the other girls. And none of them are worrying about getting blood out of them.
“And sometimes I wonder if I’ll have time to do my homework while I’m staking some vamp.” She wrinkled her nose. “But usually not. Usually I’m thinking about suede boots.”
“Guitar chords,” Oz rejoined. “And Willow.”
“You’re worried about her,” Buffy said gently.
“Full circle.” He picked up his coffee. “Angel. Willow. Worrying.”
“Giles,” she murmured, and picked up her coffee. “Don’t you love these word association games?”
They sat together in silence for a moment. Then Oz suggested, “Walk in the park?” They had been sitting in the cafe for over two hours. Which was actually okay—everyone else had been sitting in the cafe for at least that long. It would make Buffy nervous to live in Europe. They did an awful lot of chitchatting and smoking. No one seemed to get much done.
On the other hand, it would be cool to go to school here and not get much done. If you spoke the lingo.
Buffy rose gratefully. Oz looked at the bill and raised his brows. “This lire thing. It makes you feel like you’re spending your life savings on two coffees and one strangely shaped piece of bread.”
Buffy peered at the bill and saw what he meant: enormous amounts of 000’s. “Are they trying to rip us off?”
He frowned. “Not sure. But let’s see . . . if you divide . . . well, it’s actually fairly reasonable. For an expensive place.”
He pulled out a wad of Italian money and counted it out. “Remind me. Tip is good?”
“I think it’s included,” she said uncertainly. Then she grinned at him. “Listen to us. We’re waiting for a vampire to show up so we can kick some major butt and try to save the world from chaos, and we’re worried about the tip.”
He grinned back at her. “Like you said. A bit schizo.” He counted out the money and left it on the table.
They picked up their backpacks and strolled outside. They’d opted to bring them with. If someone felt the need to break into their van, it would be very bad not to have their stuff with them.
It was nippy, but Buffy didn’t want to bother with getting out her new English sweater. Maybe she’d give it to her mom.
There were tons of trees and the grass was lush and green. The air smelled fresh, despite the fact that Milan was a bustling metropolis with a lot of traffic. L.A. was like that on a good night. The surf on the beach, the traffic surf from the highway, a relatively smogless sky.
Nowhere better.
Beneath a streetlight, a fountain shaped like a wood nymph holding an urn trickled water into a circular pool. It was beautiful. There was so much in the world that was. Sometimes Buffy couldn’t comprehend why there was so much evil in the world. What compelled the various forces she battled to destroy everything in their path? For her, her worst fury always sprang from her greatest pain. Was that how it was for them?
“How long do we wait?” Oz asked gently.
She sighed. “We’ll have to go soon.”
“We have a few minutes, then.” Oz meandered along, then pointed to a small building beyond the fountain shaped like a miniature Grecian temple. “I wonder what that is.”
“Let’s check it out,” Buffy said.
They crossed the park and reached the building. It was locked tight, but there was a small sign on it that Buffy thought might have something to do with puppets. Maybe it was a puppet theater.
She glanced at Oz, about to tell him her deduction, when she caught a flicker of blue light among a stand of trees about fifty feet away. Tugging on Oz’s shoulder, she began to run. After a second or two, he followed her.
There was another flicker, and then, as Buffy crashed through the trees, a large black circle appeared. It hovered about five feet in the air and pulsed dark purple and blue. A figure appeared in the center, and two more sprang up behind it.
“Breach,” Buffy said, assuming attack position. Oz stood beside her, bracing himself for a fight.
Suddenly Angel burst from the circle, stumbled but kept his footing, and wheeled around to face the breach. As if they were joined together, two monstrous forms flew from the center.
Buffy darted forward, taking on the one on the left while Angel rammed his fists into the face—if it could be called a face—of the other. They were hideous, oily things that resembled a human form only slightly, and when Buffy kicked hers in the chest, her foot seemed to slide into the creature for a moment before she was able to pull away from it.
Angel grabbed his opponent and threw it back into the circle, where there was a bright flash. Then the creature disappeared.
Buffy did the same, grimacing as her hands were coated with the slippery substance. There was another bright flash.
Then the breach closed. The hole disappeared.
Huffing, Angel said, “Sorry I’m late.”
“I thought there was a train,” Buffy replied.
“Missed it. So I took the ghost road, which turned out to be a bad idea.”
“I’m asking why?” Buffy said.
“Some Sons of Entropy and other assorted garbage were waiting for me in a bar.” He shrugged. “No big. They really do think you’re in Vienna.”
“Good.” She gestured to the place where the breach had hung. “So I take it there’s a bit of a traffic jam in there?”
“Ghost road rage,” Oz muttered.
Angel nodded. “The ghost roads are clogged with demons. At least the one I took was. We’ll have to stick to our plan and go overland.” He made a face. “Despite the fact that I’m fashionably late.”
“At least you’re here.” She smiled. “Oz was worried about you.”
Angel gazed at her. “You?”
She shrugged. “I know you can take care of yourself.”
“Good.” He frowned. “Damn it. My duffel didn’t make it.”
“Well, after we destroy II Maestro, we’ll go shopping,” Buffy said brightly.
“Where’d you guys park?”
“Down an alley down an alley. Lots of alleys around here,” Buffy said. Then she looked at Oz, who was looking up at the moon. “Oh, wow. You okay?”
“So far. But I don’t have much time left.”
They moved quickly after that.
* * *
In Vienna the glockenspiel performed its mad pantomime as it struck noon. Inside a coffee and pastry shop called Gerstner’s, several members of the Sons of Entropy sat and blew steam off cups of Kaffee mit Schlag. They were dressed as tourists and looked right at home. They looked, for all intents and purposes, normal.
“She’s not coming here,” one of them said angrily, rubbing his temples before replacing the thick glasses he wore.
Another, an obscenely fat man with sweat pouring down his forehead, despite the cool weather, grunted unhappily.
“How can we know?” he said. “So the seers do not feel her any longer, that could be magick, no? She could be shielded somehow.”
“If she were coming here, somehow convinced that II Maestro made his home here, we would have seen her already. We’ve been here for hours. Don’t forget Paris. They aren’t afraid of us,” said the bespectacled man in frustration.
The third and last of those gathered, a thin, quiet man called Brother Pino, clucked his tongue.
“Not afraid of us, perhaps,” he said. “But afraid of II Maestro, yes? They must be. Only a fool would not fear for his life.”
The obese man laughed gently. “A vampire, a werewolf, and the Chosen One? She is a legend herself. Why would she fear him? It is her calling to face him without fear.”
Brother Pino narrowed his gaze, his face like a crow’s, and bent forward as if he might peck. “No one is without fear,” he said bluntly.
The bespectacled man raised an eyebrow. “What is it, then,” he wondered aloud, “that II Maestro fears?”
The other two men looked horrified, and stared about the room as though they might be struck dead at any moment. As though lightning might shatter the window by which they sat, on the second floor amid the scent of chocolate and hazelnut and caramel.
When it did not, Brother Pino looked at the man with glasses and sneered. “You are an imbecile, Brother,” he said. “You might as well have presented your throat to be slit.”
“Not at all,” replied the man with glasses. “I have heard things, you see. Seen things, in the villa. And I am forced to wonder if all we have been promised will come to pass. I am forced to question a great many things of late.”
The others stared at him, but he went on.
“II Maestro has vengeance in his heart for the Regniers, this we know. He wants the boy alive to train as his own, because the Regnier line has power, and because tainting the son of that house will please him. This I understand.”
The obese man nodded, and mopped his forehead with a cloth napkin. Brother Pino only stared as the man with glasses went on.
“The Gatekeeper is failing quickly, very near death. We may not have his heir in hand as yet, but near enough. The boy will never set foot in that house again. So what is our hurry? So many have died already, when we might have just waited for the old magician to die, rather than continue to leech his life away while throwing away so many of our own.”
Brother Pino held up a finger. “I must stop you there, Brother,” he said, still glancing about warily. “You see, II Maestro has specifically said that this is a time of great weakness in the walls that hold the worlds apart. As we approach the vernal equinox, the walls thin even further. Afterward, it will be more difficult.”
“More difficult than what?” asked the man with the spectacles angrily. “The Gatekeeper would be dead. Once we had control of the Gatehouse, we could simply wait until next year’s vernal equinox if necessary.”
Brother Pino blinked. He looked thoughtful a moment, then said, warily, “Go on.”
“What is more vital,” said the other, “if the heir is at least in our control, and the Gatekeeper is dying, what need has he of the Slayer’s blood, other than to dispatch her on general principle? What’s to be gained from that? Power? When the Gatehouse is his, all the power in the world will belong to II Maestro. He will be the lord of chaos on Earth when that wall falls.”
The obese man gasped, his eyes wide.
“What, Brother Dominic?” Pino said quickly. “What is it?”
“No,” Dominic replied. “I can’t even speak it. I have no reason to believe it, only that it occurred to me. For II Maestro has never done anything without specific purpose.”
“What is it, Brother?” demanded the man with glasses.
Sweat dripped down the obese man’s face, and this time he did not mop it up.
“He plans to drop the barrier between Earth and the Otherworld,” he said. “But what if II Maestro wants to bring down another barrier as well? What then?”
The others only stared at him.
They were still staring when lightning exploded through the window and baked the three of them where they sat, eyes smoldering and open mouths filled with steam. As for the one who had first spoken his doubts, his spectacles had shattered.
There wasn’t a cloud in the sky.
* * *
In Florence, alone in his chamber, II Maestro was frustrated and enraged. His sorcery touched nearly all the Sons of Entropy, and so he could reach out and watch them, through his magick, at any time. All save his own daughter, she for whom he had broken so many of his own rules. She whose life he now wanted to spare.
It was only instinct, luck and curiosity that had allowed him to discover the traitorous conversation of Dominic and the others in Vienna. He had been curious as to the Slayer’s whereabouts, and so had looked in on them.
The ungrateful wretches.
He thought now of the occasions on which he had lost track of one or more of his followers, and wondered if that neglect would harm him in any way. However, that was becoming a moot point: his ranks were thinning dangerously after so many attacks on the Gatehouse. He had no choice but to proceed. This was the time that had been dictated by the dark lord whom he served. Belphegor had promised him eternal life or eternal damnation, an empire or the pits of Hell, in exchange for his cooperation.
And for the sacrifice of the most prized blood in all the world. The blood of the Slayer.
Now she had disappeared. She was not in Boston. Not in California. She had been in Europe, but since the traitorous Albert had aided her, II Maestro could not sense her. She had been on the road to Vienna, that much was clear, but where was she now?
Without her, Micaela would die. Without her, the Gatehouse might fall and the Otherworld be split apart like the ripest of melons, but true power would still elude II Maestro.
Worse, the demon might take him before the task could be completed. Already it was growing impatient.
Belphegor had once been warmonger of Hell. It did not like to be kept waiting. And, much like II Maestro himself, it did not suffer failure. Not at all.
No, it was clear that the Slayer must be found once more. It had been his arrogance that had prevented him from personally seeking her before. II Maestro had not thought such intimate involvement would be necessary. But the girl had proven to be far more resourceful than he’d been led to expect.
Slowly, II Maestro began to smile.
For he had thought of a way to bring the Slayer into the light where he could lay hands on her. Better than that, he had thought of a way to get her back where he needed her to be.
At the Hellmouth.