THERE WAS A LULL IN the fighting, for which Jean-Marc was most grateful. He crawled on his elbows to the Cauldron and fell in, immersing himself. He would have to stay here many hours to find a small measure of relief, and what would happen if the Sons of Entropy renewed their assault?
His agony was mental; his body was so old and aged now he could scarcely feel anything. He remembered as a young man how vigor had surged through him. The joy of living, the joy of moving. The joy of making love to his wife. But even then, he had begun to age. The Regniers married old. He did not understand why.
The joy of creating his son within her. The feeling of power that gave a man. Any man, but especially a sorcerer.
Gone now. He could barely create within himself the power to breathe, much less to procreate.
“Mother,” he whispered, his arms outstretched. “I’m so tired.”
“I know.” She leaned over the Cauldron and looked into his eyes. “Soon you will rest, my darling boy.”
“Soon, it won’t matter how long I rest in here,” he told her. “I’m losing more than I’m gaining. I can’t recapture a tenth of what I was. I could stay here for a month, and yet I’ll die within a fortnight. Sooner.”
“Death is not so terrible, my sweetling. I promise you that.”
He was exhausted from talking, and yet it was practically all he had left. “Defeat is, Mother. It is odious.”
“There are others. The Slayer, and her friends. The Watcher. Most capable. Very brave.”
“But what of my Jacques?” He coughed hard. “What of my son?”
Soon, darling. Soon all will come right.
Her tears fell into the Cauldron.
As she wept, she sang a lullaby.
It proved to be the most soothing balm of all.
* * *
For the first few moments after his daughter closed the breach behind her, Fulcanelli could not move or speak. His icy fury froze him in place.
Then, with no notion of the passage of time, he watched the scene around him as if he were not present in it, as if the rage had transported him to another plane of existence. He staggered and lost his breath, and then he whispered his daughter’s name: “Micaela.”
The flames from the burning villa flickered on the faces of his terrified acolytes as they ran like mindless bam animals through the crackling vineyards and fields. Smoke roiled like a fog above the roofs of the buildings, and as he stared up at it, he could plainly see the face of his old nemesis, Richard Regnier, father of the Regnier dynastic line of sorcerers, laughing at him.
“I killed your true love here, on this very spot,” Fulcanelli whispered to the smoke. “I made her suffer agonies you can scarcely imagine.”
But Regnier continued to laugh. The past was over. The dead were buried. He had an heir, and Fulcanelli did not. And not only had the Regniers an heir, but Fulcanelli’s chosen heiress had stolen the Slayer from beneath his very nose.
Fulcanelli swore then that when he found Micaela, he would kill her.
He was so enraged he could not breathe.
“Fulcanelli,” came the call inside his mind.
Fulcanelli roused. Belphegor was summoning him. The breach through which he communicated was in the subcellar, and the house was on fire. He didn’t think that would matter; breaches could be found underwater, and within stone. So this breach would survive fire.
“Fulcanelli,” the demon called again.
“I come,” Fulcanelli replied aloud.
He made signs and signals of protection in the air, then walked back toward the inferno. One of his acolytes, Brother Eric, ran right into him, grasped him, and gasped, “Master! Don’t go in there. It’s Hell itself.”
Fulcanelli stopped, bemused. “Oh?”
“The villa is burning, Maestro,” Eric said, sobbing. “It’s the end of everything!”
Fulcanelli’s wrath was unleashed.
“Bastardo,” he flung at the boy. He caught the idiot by the sleeve and dragged him along. “You have had no comprehension of the vastness of my power, and yet you have imagined yourself my follower.”
“Master, please,” the acolyte pleaded, his voice rising. The flames roared ten feet before them, walls of fire that skyrocketed into the night sky. “Please!”
Then Brother Eric did the unthinkable: he laid his hands on Fulcanelli’s arm and tried to make him let go.
Fulcanelli glared at him. “I, who began the Great Fire of London! I, who walked the streets of Chernobyl. You have the temerity to doubt me? You can insult me to my face?”
“Master, I am only human,” Brother Eric pleaded, tugging, not able to stop. His skin was beginning to blister. “I will burn.”
Fulcanelli narrowed his eyes and smiled evilly. “Yes,” he said. “You will.”
Then he shook the acolyte off like a bothersome insect and flung him into the conflagration. The child’s screams were short, but sincere.
Fulcanelli stepped into the fire.
The flames did not touch him.
Around him, inside the lovely villa, the walls cracked. Statuary tumbled. Mirrors exploded. So much beauty. But like all things of this earth, fleeting. Better to lay one’s treasures up in the hereafter.
He stared, watching a man writhe on the floor. Watching him burn and bubble as he stepped over his body, unaffected.
It never ceased to amaze him that so many had clamored to follow him, yet so few had benefited from their proximity. Where were the ambitious, power-hungry lads who aspired to greatness? It certainly wasn’t like the days of the de’ Medici.
He shook his head, pulling a sad face as he listened to the shrieks of the barnyard animals. It occurred to him that a cat had recently adopted him, and he wondered briefly what had become of it.
But only briefly.
Then he was down in the subcellar, where the sulfur smell competed with the odor of roasted meat, and ah! he remembered that there had been a few captives down here besides the Slayer and the other two abominations. Just a few locals, to add spice to tonight’s aborted proceedings.
Remarkably—or perhaps, not remarkably, for he had expected it—the breach hovered in the smoke and contagion. He thought of the wonder that was to have occurred tonight, and tears of frustration welled at the corners of his eyes. Fulcanelli wiped them away. For Micaela, no tears. No mercy. For his own plight, only resolve. Strong men survived everything. Weak men perished at the first obstacle.
He knelt on the white-hot stone, gritting his teeth against the pain, and lowered his head.
“My Lord Belphegor,” he said, “I am here.”
“Your bastard child attempts to take them to the Gate.”
Fulcanelli closed his eyes, completely humiliated.
“We must stop them.”
“Is it possible?” Fulcanelli asked.
“How can it be that you have served me so long, and yet have not divined one small portion of that which is available to you as my follower?”
Fulcanelli flinched as his own words were hurled back at him. He murmured, “I have been remiss. It will not happen again.”
“Then cast your power with me against the ghost roads. The Gatekeeper cannot last much longer. His heir must not reach the Gatehouse.”
“So shall it be done,” Fulcanelli said.
Belphegor chuckled.
“Who writes your dialogue?”
* * *
“So, no Spear,” Spike finished as he helped Dru stack up the broken and bleeding bodies of the Sons of Entropy acolytes they’d taken out.
“Then take the lit’l bastard,” Dru said with a sneer at one of the two pretty blond girls. “He’s been nothing but trouble and proud of it, eh, you?”
She boxed the boy’s ears and he clamped down hard not to cry out. Jacques began to walk with great dignity toward the two blond girls, then ran for all he was worth and flung his arms around the nearest one. To his intense relief, she hugged him tightly.
He whispered to her, “She’s crazy.”
The girl whispered back, “I know.”
He decided to tell her everything. “She’s a vampire.”
She patted him. “No news there.”
She held him at arm’s length and smiled at him. “We haven’t been introduced, but my name’s Buffy. I’m kind of in your line of work. I’m the Slayer. And I know you’re the Gatekeeper’s heir.”
He took a deep breath and stared at the girl. He could see the fear in her eyes, and the sadness. He braced himself for the horrible news she was going to give him, bursting into heavy, wrenching sobs.
“My father,” he moaned.
“No, no,” she said. “He’s alive. We think,” she muttered. Then she patted him. “Alive, yeah. It’s okay, Jacques, we’re going to get you home.”
Spike ambled over to Jacques and gave him a mock punch. “Last chance, Jack the lad. You can stay with us. We’ll fix you right up with a big kiss and then you’ll run with us for the rest of time. What do you say?”
Jacques looked at Spike, then at Dru, and then at Buffy Summers. He was ashamed to let her know, but he was a little tempted by Spike’s offer. Just a little. He didn’t want to be the Gatekeeper quite yet. He wanted to have some fun. To live, and have friends, and play. He was only eleven years old.
“Does it hurt?” he asked, and then Buffy was laughing uncertainly and giving him a little punch.
“You’re so funny. Ha ha ha,” she said, sounding very nervous and phony.
Then, almost before he realized it, he was outside the little cottage for the first time in what seemed like years. There were bodies everywhere out here. The battle had been horrible.
Jacques looked up at Buffy and said, “You didn’t tell them that my father has the Spear, did you?”
She raised her brows. “Are you kidding? No way.”
They walked on a little way with the other blond woman. No one had introduced him to her, but he knew that she was very troubled.
He drew back when he saw another vampire, this one carrying a dead werewolf over his shoulders.
“Friends,” Buffy said. “Trust me.”
And since Jacques had no one else to trust, he did.
* * *
Cordelia cradled Xander in her lap.
“Oh, God, Xander,” she whispered. “Xander, you can’t die. Because it would be so . . . stupid.” She reached out to Willow. “He’d do that, wouldn’t he? Die, because it would be so stupid and he’s so stupid oh God Willow can’t you do something?”
Willow looked down at Xander and felt her entire life draining away in the river of blood flowing out of his chest. His face was gray. His lips were white. She fought to pull herself together but she could feel pieces of herself floating off in a white haze of panic. She could vaguely hear Cordelia sobbing and babbling, and she wanted to tell her to be quiet but it didn’t matter if she was quiet. Maybe it would help. Maybe it would irritate Xander so much he would sit right up and tell Cordelia to shut up.
Giles leaned over Xander, taking off his jacket and laying it over Xander’s chest.
“Call 911!” Cordelia screamed, batting at Giles “Call an ambulance!”
Sirens wailed in the distance. Emergency vehicles coming to check on the nonexistent fire and the nonexistent live wire, Willow realized. An ambulance would come.
But Willow knew deep in her soul that it would not help.
Finally she dug down deeply enough to find the focus to speak. She looked hard at Giles. “There must be something I can do. We can do.”
He pushed up his glasses. “You may be right. We must take him to the Gatekeeper.”
“Right!” Cordelia cried. “He can heal Xander!”
Willow held up a hand. “Giles, how can we go on the ghost roads? We aren’t touched by the supernatural. I mean, I’ve cast a few spells, but I’m a long way from witchdom.”
Giles hesitated, then said, “Before our raid tonight, I tried to read up on everything I could find about the Sons of Entropy and anything connected to our situation.”
He swallowed hard and looked at each of them in turn. “I found an incantation which may allow a human being access to the roads. There was no documentation about its effectiveness, which led me to conclude that we were better off not attempting it unless we had an emergency.”
“Which this is,” Cordelia said. “Come on, say it! Say it now!”
Willow looked directly at Giles and nodded. “Say it.”
Giles said, “It may fail. None of you may make it.”
“Say it,” Willow told him. “Damn it, Giles, say it!”
“The Cauldron,” he added. “Go straight to the Cauldron.”
“Giles!” Cordelia shrieked.
“I’ll go,” he said. “You two stay here and—”
“No, Giles,” Willow said. “You have to stay here.”
He blinked at her. “No, indeed. I—”
“You are the Watcher,” she said. “You have to stay here for Buffy. And get her mother back.”
He lowered his head and nodded.
“We’ll take him to the breach immediately,” he said. “I’ll do the incantation on the way.”
* * *
They stood in the darkness across the street from the high school. Giles was still uncertain how they had managed to slip past all the fire trucks and police cars, and how Xander had survived the short ride from the Bronze to the breach in Cordelia’s car. There was blood all over her backseat. Incredibly, she hadn’t complained.
But they were here now, and Giles finished the incantation in Latin as he helped Cordelia and Willow carry Xander out of the car:
Souls who wander, free of form,
Allow these passage safe from harm.
Do not make them tarry, these three yet breathe,
Do not cause them mischief, they’ve no power to relieve.
The breach hovered in the air, shimmering and pulsing. Willow looked at Giles and said, “Angel saw Jenny.” He saw that she tried to smile, but she just couldn’t pull it off. “She’ll make sure we’re all right.”
Giles could not respond to that. It would be too easy to believe that some part of Jenny still lived, just out of reach, beyond the veil that separated the world from the ghost roads. It would only cause him pain to consider such a thing.
He was terrified. There was no other word for it. All of them knew that there was a good chance this wouldn’t work. If it were possible for humans to travel the ghost roads, someone would have done it by now. II Maestro would have sent his followers traveling that way. Surely the Gatekeeper and his mother would know of any instance where a normal human being had walked the roads and lived to tell the tale.
He hated sending these young people on this journey. Everything in his being cried out for him to go himself, but Willow was right. His first duty was to the Slayer. And for her, he had to find a way to rescue Joyce.
This was the only way.
He looked down at Xander. Willow took Xander’s ankles and Cordelia took his wrists. Just for them to lift him was an enormous effort. There was no other way for them to carry him, and no time to fashion a travois or any other sort of stretcher.
Giles had no idea what it was like to walk on the ghost roads, nor for how long they would have to actually carry him. How they would manage.
It was the best he could do.
But it was not very much at all.
“Come on, come on,” Willow said frantically. “We have to go!”
“Take care,” Giles said to Willow. “Willow, I . . . I want so badly . . .”
She nodded.
“We’ll be okay,” she said.
In case they could see him, Giles stood facing it and stared straight ahead into the void.
* * *
Okay, just for the road, one last pack of desperate dead people.
The dozen or so wraiths were so out of control that not even Micaela could calm them down. Maybe they’d heard rumors about the impending arrival of squatters from Hell, or that they might be stuck in here forever, but whatever their deal, she and Angel took them out one by one, battering at the fragile creatures, who disintegrated with each roundhouse kick or one-two punch.
Finally the way was clear; except for onlookers, who lined the rows here and there like people cheering on marathon runners. Angel had draped Oz back over his shoulder, and Micaela was holding Jacques’s hand. The complete Dorothy foursome . . .
“Drizzle, drazzle, druzzle, drome, Mister Wizard,” Buffy said cheerily, smiling over her shoulder at Jacques, who, she supposed, had grown up watching the Cartoon Network; then again, maybe not if he was raised in England. Most of the decent shows never made it there.
“Here we are, Jacques, safe and sound,” she said, running for the breach that led to a spot directly across from . . .
“Sunnydale?” she asked in complete confusion as she burst from the breach and stared across the street at her high school. It was supposed to be Boston. But it most definitely wasn’t. It was dark out; the fat, round moon shone above the silhouette of the roof.
“Buffy?” someone called to her.
She took one look at the figure by Cordelia’s car and loped toward it.
“Giles!” she cried. “What’s going on?”
He took a step backward, then grabbed her and gave her a tight hug. “Oh, thank God. You’re alive!”
“Looks that way,” she said, staring at him. In the moonlight, his face was chalk white. She wasn’t sure she had actually seen someone’s face so pale. Someone who wasn’t dead, anyway. She added slowly, gingerly touching the bruises on her face, “But looks can be deceiving.”
He frowned. “Where have you been? Are you returning from Boston? Did you see—”
“We thought we were going to Boston.” She turned back around, to see Angel with Oz draped over his shoulder. He was holding the heir’s hand, and she gestured them forward to show Giles. “Rupert Giles. This is Jacques Regnier.”
As the group approached, Giles held out his hand. “Thank heaven. I’m so glad you’re all right.” He sounded about as thrilled as a guy who’d been fired from his job.
“Thank you, sir,” the boy replied.
Angel came up behind Buffy. “What’s going on? How’d we get here?”
Buffy frowned at Giles. “You’re not exactly cheering our arrival,” she said. “Which I assume means adbay ewsnay.”
Jacques tensed. Buffy made a face and said, “And I’m guessing you speak pig Latin.”
“Buffy,” Giles said, and then he must have seen Micaela, for he hesitated a moment. He bowed his head and blinked. When he looked back up, Buffy saw tears in his eyes.
“Oh, God, what?” she cried.
“You didn’t see them, then. On the ghost road. And if you couldn’t get to Boston, how can they?”
“See who?” she asked, frantic.
“Oh, dear Lord, Buffy,” Giles said. “It’s Xander. Xander’s dying.”
“What?” Buffy shouted. “Giles, what—”
Then the sky erupted with thunder. Lightning stabbed the ground in half a dozen different places. The earth beneath them shook so hard that Giles staggered and fell to his knees. The others followed suit, crashing to the ground.
Icy rain pelted them, and then slimy, cold toads plummeted from the sky. As Buffy got to her hands and feet, she heard screams. She didn’t know where they were coming from, but they were filled with terror.
From the breach, a pair of hideous demons lurched out. They raced across the street, making for Buffy and the others.
Buffy leaped to her feet. Angel did the same.
“It’s happening!” Micaela cried. “The barriers between Hell and the ghost roads have opened. They’re tearing their way through to Earth!”
Buffy looked around wildly, then said, to Giles, “Protect the heir. Do whatever you need to do to save him.”
“He must go to Boston!” Giles shouted, above the gale winds that had erupted. “Now! There’s no time to lose!”
* * *
It was like a very bad day at the beach, only with no beach, just the slate sky above and below her. Overcast, dull, gray. It wasn’t hot, it wasn’t cold. It was nothing.
Cordelia caught her breath and fought like crazy to stop from going completely nuts. Something was wrapping around her like a ghost, an evil fog or a fingertip or something. Shadows crossed over her, only there were no shadows.
Ghosts, she thought. It’s a place of ghosts. Antoinette was a ghost and she was nice to us.
Then suddenly, the ground beneath her became solid, and she stumbled slightly.
“Don’t drop him!” Willow cried anxiously.
“Of course I won’t,” Cordelia retorted, although she had almost let go of Xander’s wrists.
Slung between them, his body was completely limp and his eyes were closed. If she didn’t look at the wound in his chest, she could pretend he was asleep.
No. She couldn’t.
Anxiously she glanced from his face to Willow’s, to find Willow also staring at him.
Then they gazed at each other, and if Cordelia looked like Willow, then she looked nauseous with fear.
“Cauldron,” Willow said. “It’s magickal. It’ll restore him.”
“If they let us use it,” Cordelia replied.
Willow’s face softened. “They will. They’re on our side, Cordy.”
“Yeah, well, if the Gatekeeper needs—”
A rumbling drowned out the rest of her words. It grew louder and louder, and Cordelia gasped as they were shaken from side to side.
“Willow?” she asked, her voice shrill. “What’s happening?”
Without warning, a blinding white flash burned away all the gray. The road beneath Cordelia turned to charred ash. She covered her eyes, blinking, as her eyelids glowed red.
Then suddenly, she, Willow, and Xander were surrounded by blurred bits and pieces of people. Faces. A hand. An arm. Most of the people were crying. Others looked blank, as if they had seen something they just couldn’t handle. There were a few at first, but as Cordelia focused on them, she realized there was hundreds of them, maybe thousands.
They began to take shape.
They began to close in on the three of them.
“Um, we’re just passing through,” Cordelia said, smiling brightly. “Right, Willow?”
“It is the last days,” said a young girl dressed in a sort of toga. There was a huge, gaping cut down the center of her face. “It is over.”
“Willow?” Cordelia said.
“Safe passage,” Willow said firmly. “We said the ritual of safe passage. We’re alive.”
The girl shook her head. “It is the end.”
There was another rumbling, and the girl looked terrified. A high keening filled the air, like one sad, lost person. Shivering, Cordelia remembered her uncle’s funeral. She had been nine; it was her first funeral. Now, after so many years in Sunnydale, she’d been to a lot of them.
But at nine, the crying and the grief had frightened her. Her uncle had lain in his coffin with the lid open, and all through the service she could barely see his profile.
Then everyone got up to file past him, past the dead body, and her mother had whispered to her, “What a terrible makeup job. Your aunt must be devastated.”
And Cordelia had thought, Yes, that must be it, when her aunt was led to the coffin and she began to cry so hard it was like screaming.
That was what this was like.
Only now it was worse, because deep within the foggy distance, Cordelia saw some kind of shading in the gray, and within that shading, a huge, glowing circle appeared. It pulsed and throbbed like a breach, only flames poured out of it. And inside the circle, something huge, mottled, and slimy tumbled out and flopped into the gray. It rose on its hind legs and let out a horrible roar.
The girl turned in its direction, screamed, and pointed. “It is Hell! They are coming!” she shrieked. Then she turned to Cordelia, panting with fear, and said, “You must go quickly, you who are living. You who can leave,” she added bitterly.
“Okay. Thanks. And, don’t worry. We’re going to the Gatekeeper,” she assured the girl. But as she spoke, another fiery circle appeared. “He can stop this stuff.” To Willow, she gritted, “Let’s go.”
They began to move with Xander between.
“No,” the girl said anxiously. “Only the living may leave.”
“Right.” Cordelia blinked at her.
From the second circle, a tentacled creature flopped out and rolled into the fog. A ghostly scream seared Willow’s nerves as she nervously tightened her grip around Xander’s feet.
The girl said, “These are the ghost roads. The dead travel here.” She gestured toward Xander. “He travels here.”
Together, Willow and Cordelia looked down at Xander.
His eyes were half open, as if he were looking at her, but they were vacant and unseeing. His lips were tinged with blue, and the hollows in his cheeks were dark gray.
“Willow?” The charging demon’s roar almost drowned out Cordelia’s voice. The ghost in the toga screamed again and disappeared.
The monster lunged for them.
TO BE CONTINUED