Wild Magic

This is a summoning of Eyghon story, which includes Ethan/Ripper/Rupert/Randall sex (though not all at once, which would be physically impossible). If you think this is likely to offend you, or if you are under seventeen years of age, please turn back. Warning: darkness abounds.

The origin of the name "Giles" is actually true, though probably not with the spin I gave it.

Giles: The guilt...is pretty hard to bear. It won't go away soon.
Cordelia: I guess you should know since you helped raise that demon that killed that guy that time.
- from Ted

Part 1

He never loved Ethan. Never. Even now, as they two lay together, entwined and sated on sweat-damp sheets, Rupert felt not so much as a glimmer of affection, or even a warm, post-coital afterglow. Instead he lay frozen still, watching Ethan's closed eyes, the cat-like grin that lingered on the older man's face even in repose, the cruel, silken hands that teased his nipples, stroked his belly, ran--now and then--an idle finger up and down the underside of his shaft, causing a stirring that no longer even felt as if it belonged to him. All this, while alone in the next room the true object of Rupert's affection wept in the dark.

Randall, thought the part of him that wasn't Ripper. I'm sorry.

Both Ripper and Rupert knew that apologies were only words, and not, at any rate, words of particular power. Proof is in action, Rupert's old tutor at Caius College always said. Proof was in action, and the damage long since done, he could give Randall no proof whatsoever.

For he had brought Randall to this. Loving him, he had lured the boy away from family and friends, away from what might well have been a good and ordinary life, into this...

Hell, his inner voice replied. Hell, that was eternal, and unchanging.

Ripper had decided to be still for once--the better, Rupert supposed, to let him enjoy the torment of his guilt, of which Ripper himself felt none. Ripper lay sleeping peacefully: the sleep one might say, of the unjust and entirely unrepentant--or maybe merely the well-earned sleep of the fiercest creature in the deep, dark wood.

A clock ticked somewhere, or perhaps that was only the noise of the old house settling into itself. Often one heard footsteps, or the stairs creaking, sounds that excited Ethan, and frightened the others, but left both Rupert and Ripper feeling numb--they had been aware of enough ghosts in their shared life, and generally found them nothing but pathetic: unable to act, unable to cause much in the way of either good or harm. Ghosts were locked in a place, or drawn to the warmth of the living. In a way, they two were ghosts to each other, one impotent while the other was ascendant.

Undoubtedly either Rupert or Ripper--possibly both, after all their old blood, and their heritage, were the same--made the ghosts of this house manifest. Rupert could see one just then, the eldest of the murder victims, in the shadows over by the wardrobe, watching him. When he turned upon her Ripper's baleful, green-eyed stare, she faded into nothingness.

The air smelt musty, but then it always did--none of their little group had proved to be particularly avid cleaners, and the dust often went untouched for weeks at a time. The constant haze of hashish smoke and patchouli incense only added to the odor, as did the lingering fumes from their acts in the cellar. Even here, two floors above, Rupert could feel the throb of the lines Ripper and Ethan, with Rupert captive and the other four watching, had painted in black and red upon the floor. It was meant to be a ritual like any other, but with Ripper's hand in the setting, anything that could happen, might well--he'd Wild Magic in his blood, an aching, powerful, chaotic thing over which both he and Rupert had little enough control, the only difference being that Rupert tried to bring order back into their spells, while Ripper only watched and laughed. They'd great trouble, at times, attempting to steer the demon Eyghon into any body but theirs.

It had been Ethan who discovered the reference to their family, laid down in a book so old its pages crumbled to powder at the slightest crush. Was that only two weeks before? Time seemed stretched out into an endless chain of unconnected events, only the moments of Eyghon's summoning standing out in sharp, bright peaks from the grim monotony. Except for Randall, all of them fought for their turns, that chance to feel like gods, drunk on the liquor of the demon's unholy power.

While Ethan read, Rupert had sat sideways in the uncushioned windowseat, gazing down into the wilderness of the garden while he wondered if the season might be autumn or winter or spring. It seemed he ought to know, but for the life of him, he could not remember. "What month is it?" he'd asked. For some reason, none of them knew.

Phillip found a calendar, and started trying to count days, until Randall pointed out to him that the year on the top page read 1955, the year of his birth.

"Yes, but there are very pretty pictures of owls," Philip replied, as if that made sense. "And owls are terribly wise."

"That's a myth," Robert muttered, his eyes like circles of tar spilled in a field of snow. "Owls are every bit as stupid as the rest of us."

Suddenly, bent over his book, Ethan had begun to sputter, and choke, and guffaw, until Rupert gave him a look that shut him up again.

"What is it now, Ethan?" he'd asked wearily.

"I've been reading about you, my dear," Ethan answered.

"In that dusty old thing?" Deirdre got to her feet, and unsteadily drifted away. She'd a candle to light somewhere, in privacy, and dreams to dream.

Rupert wondered idly where Deirdre got the funds for her habit--perhaps her parents still sent her money out of guilt and misplaced love, as Ethan's grandmum sent him largish checques to encourage him to stay away. The rest of them no longer needed money, although Rupert had a small bit set aside, not to be touched. They'd no expenses. The house was a squat, its reputation too evil for anyone else to want to live there. They'd stolen the electric and the water--Robert's particular talent, that: he'd once meant to be an engineer. They no longer ate much--or at all--and with Ripper's own special gifts, liquor was easy enough to steal. All their more lucrative endeavors had long since been let slip, along with whatever aspirations they'd had when they first came into the city.

"And now, my darling Mr. Giles," Ethan said, wandering over to the windowseat, to bestow one of his wet, greedy kisses upon Rupert in the sight of them all, "I know why all our spells go wonky in such an amazingly spectacular way. You interest me, love. You do so interest me." He leaned closer, as close as he could possibly get, his lips tickling Rupert's ear, "And I'm not talking about the Watchers, now, am I, my sweetness?"

Rupert had shook his head, and Ethan, for once, declined to say anything more.

That day, exactly as the bells of the church down the street tolled noon, they'd touched up the lines, Ripper caged this time, Robert, Phillip and Deirdre once more in attendance. And Randall, sitting alone on the unreliable cellar steps, where one must always walk to the right-hand side

He must never forget Randall.

"But what's it for?" Deirdre had asked, in the slurred remains of her finishing-school accent, forgetting the question nearly as soon as the words left her mouth. She'd begun to inject heroin on the mainline a month past, the day after they finished her tattoo, and already her arm was knotted with little scars, like constellations around the inky swirl. "My turn? My turn?"

"Randall's turn," Ethan replied, smiling.

Suddenly revolted, Rupert extricated himself from the spiderweb of Ethan's embrace, watching the older boy--older man, really, for nothing about Ethan could be considered either fresh or young--spread out to occupy the entire bed, leaving not one inch of space for a partner to lie in. Ethan's limbs stretched to the four corners; he lay face down, his smooth, taut, bare arse in the air. Rupert fought the urge to deliver a stinging slap--Ethan might actually enjoy that, though as a general rule he preferred the giving to the receipt of pain. Their encounters left Rupert continually tense, never knowing when to expect a pinch or a bruising prod or a slash from Ethan's overly-long fingernails. Ethan fucked like a schoolyard bully, and the tension he could not let go of only added to the pain--Ethan loved that, the physical tightness of him, loved even more the fury that Rupert could not express.

Ripper didn't care. Ripper felt no pain whatsoever: he was loose, his appetites voracious. Among Ethan's greatest talents were, perhaps, along with his genius for seduction, his ability to easily tell when one became the other--and that he could summon Ripper forth like a genie from a bottle, even when Rupert was most adamant that Ripper should not appear. Ethan had the power to lock Rupert away where he could only watch, and grieve.

Wearing a tattered dressing gown he could not even recognize as his own, Rupert left the sleeping man. He entered the bathroom at the end of the hall, the last one in which the plumbing had not entirely decayed--at least the loo worked there, and the cold water tap in the basin, though the faucet for the tub only spat out some noxious semi-liquid substance like the effluvia of an intestinal disorder. Ethan's theory was that, during one of their rituals, the plumbing had somehow got itself possessed, but Rupert knew better--the house was only old, uncared-for, and coming down about their ears.

With cold water and a face flannel, Rupert scrubbed himself as best he could, trying to wash the scent of Ethan from his skin, but even with the addition of a strong lye-based soap that Robert had brought home to fight whatever his infestation of the week might be, Rupert could not get rid of the smell. Maybe it was all in his head; maybe Randall would not be able to tell.

He looked in the half-shattered mirror over the basin, trying to make out his own face. He wouldn't have known himself--like everyone but Ethan, he'd dropped more than a stone of weight in the past month, and the sharp bones of his face stood out beneath his skin. His hair no longer seemed to have any colour, and his eyes had gone red, or at least the white part of them had. The green remained green, clear and cold as the Northern Sea.

He'd broken the mirror with his hand, a week past, looking into the glass and seeing Ripper's face instead of his own. The cuts across his knuckles still itched and stung, though not as much as the tattoo on his arm: that provided a whole array of sensation, sting and itch being the least of it. The burning he could tolerate, and the deep ache that ran all the way through to the bone--the humming was what truly disturbed him, the way he heard and felt Eyghon's unclean voice in his skin. It was meant to be fun. A lark. A bit of a laugh. And so it had been.

Rupert feared that all of them would die, that he would die. Or worse yet, that he would not. He feared that Ethan would one day summon Ripper--whom Rupert feared worse than any demon, knowing Ripper lived twenty-four hours of every day inside his own skin--and that he would not be able to force his other self away again, even for a moment. He feared living 'til the end of his days in a cage of Ethan's making.

"Timor mortis morte pejor," he murmured. "The fear of death is worse than death itself."

Rupert wet what he thought might be a clean cloth at the tap, and carried it with him down the hall. Behind his closed door, Randall still wept. Rupert rapped lightly at the panel, turned the knob and went through, watching Randall heave himself over to face the wall.

In his younger days, Rupert had gone on a school trip to London, and inside the National Gallery saw a painting of the Annunciation, in which the Virgin appeared no older than fourteen, and the announcing angel that same age. He wasn't a religious boy, by any means, but long after his classmates had been shepherded away, Rupert had stood before that picture, drawn to the mixture of deep secrets and overpowering gladness in the angel's face. When he'd seen Randall on their shared staircase, that first day at Oxford, he'd thought, Ah, there you are!

Though they were the same age and had, in fact, the same birthday, Randall always seemed younger: golden-haired and fragile, with great, soulful sapphire eyes. Many times, in his college rooms, Randall had lain upon the hearthrug with his head on Rupert's thigh, gazing into the fire whilst Rupert, in turn, gazed into those eyes. Though there had been earlier encounters at school, of course, he'd never expected to fall in love with another boy--but perhaps it was just Randall. He found it impossible not to love Randall.

Eventually, always, Rupert would lie down behind his friend, pulling Randall back into the shelter of his body, undoing the buttons of the smaller boy's waistcoat and shirt, stroking Randall's satin skin, and whispering into the perfect pink whorl of the other boy's ear words he'd never spoken to another soul: "I love you, and will love you forever." Randall had turned to him then, always, and they had kissed, strongly, with lips and teeth and tongues. Randall's skin tasted lightly of salt, vanilla and honey, and his mouth most often of Earl Grey tea. He would whisper in return: "Rupert, wherever you go, I shall go with you. Wherever you are, I shall be," as if it were a sort of marriage vow.

Rupert walked softly across the dark filthy room where his love slept, a room that smelt faintly of fever and tears. His footsteps, as always, made no sound. With a gesture, he lighted the two cabbage-headed candles that stood on the mantel of the unusable fireplace.

"Randall," he said quietly, "Randall, love."

The other boy only sobbed.

Rupert perched on the edge of the narrow bed, using a bit of his strength to pull Randall back toward him, for though the smaller boy fought, he could not succeed. "Look at you, love," he said tenderly. "Look at you." Gently as he could, he used the damp cloth to stroke away Randall's tears. "Keep on like this, you'll make yourself ill."

The sapphire eyes gazed up at him, full of shadows. "I don't care," Randall said at last. "How can you, Rupert? How can you, with him?"

"I don't know," Rupert replied, honestly. "I don't know what Ethan does to me."

"If...if the other one knows you've been with me, he'll hurt me later."

"Ripper shan't know." Rupert stroked Randall's golden hair, but what once had been silk felt lifeless and dry. Randall's mouth, when he kissed him, tasted like fire instead of tea. Now, when his fingers worked the buttons of Randall's shirt and folded back the fabric, Randall's chest no longer looked like a slightly fragile twenty-year-old's, but like the chest of a starved little boy. He ran his fingers down Randall's prominent ribs, into the concavity of his belly.

Randall began to cry again, this time without sound. Rupert bent down to him, tracing the tears with his tongue, tracing the shape of Randall's lips, that opened with a little gasp, down his throat, into the small hollow at the meeting of his collar bones. He raised Randall's body a little with his left arm, cradling the other boy's head as his teeth grazed over Randall's nipples, one, then the other brought to hardness with his tongue. His right hand unclasped Randall's belt, worked the zip of his trousers, eased the fabric over Randall's hips.

"You smell of Ethan," Randall said.

"Shall I stop?" Rupert asked, green eyes meeting blue.

In answer, Randall raised himself from the pillow, taking Rupert's hand in his own and kissing the palm.

"Come lie with me as you used to, and touch me in that way."

Rupert smiled a little at the words. Randall had always talked so, as if he came from another place, and a far-off time. He rose quickly, letting his robe slide to the floor.

"You've got very thin, Rupert," Randall said, watching him.

"This, from you, my baby bird," Rupert answered, still smiling. "Scoot over, give me room."

Randall moved a bit, though there still wasn't much space, and Rupert eeled his way between his love's warm body and the clammy wallpaper.

"Lord, the wall feels like week-old calves' liver."

Randall gave a small laugh.

"Come here," Rupert said, cupping the other boy's bum in his hand, slipping one leg between his thighs. Randall tucked his head against Rupert's shoulder; his breath warmed Rupert's chest, stirring the dark hair.

"You needn't go through with it, love," Rupert whispered like a secret. "I've a bit of money, from...well, never mind that. I've a bit of money, anyway, enough to see you home to Scotland. I could put you on a train tonight."

"And you?" Randall asked.

Rupert's hand moved softly, memorizing the feel of Randall's back, the sweet round shape of his arse, the length of his hairless thigh. At last, he said. "You know what I am."

"I made you a promise, love," Randall said quietly.

But not for this! Rupert wanted to scream. Not to live like this, as we do. Not to become tangled in these dreadful things I've done.

"Wouldn't you like to see them, though?" he asked instead. "To see your mum, and the little girls? Wouldn't you like to go home?" He was suddenly angry, desperate with it, but he kept his voice low, fearful that if he spoke sharply he'd lose Randall into the great, paralyzing terror that at times afflicted him. "God, love, do you think I'm the only one? There are a million, a billion, besides me in the world, better men than I'd ever even want to be. Can't you see I'm nothing but one great, bloody cock-up, and I'll get you killed. Do you hear me, Ran? I'll get you killed."

Rupert realized that he'd gripped Randall's arm tightly enough to bruise. He forced his hand to relax. "I've betrayed you with bloody Ethan," he continued in a quieter voice. "Half the time I can't even be myself."

"But half the time you are," Randall answered. "Half the time, Rupert, you are love, and amazement, and mystery."

"Oh, God!" Rupert groaned--as if with the humming, aching, evil voice rooted in his arm he could still be allowed to pray. He wanted more than anything in the world to bundle Randall into his clothes, carry him screaming to his Scottish train and knock him senseless so that he would not wake until day. So that he would not wake until he stood upon a platform in some godforsaken place where mountains rose up to the sky and steep heather-clad hills, red, pink and purple, spread away from one as far as the eye could see.

But instead, he let the other boy turn him onto his back, trail kisses down his belly and up the inside of his thigh, stroke him first with his clever little tongue that could find every tiny spot that caused him pleasure, then with the entire warmth of his mouth. What was Ethan to this, with his games of pain, deceit and domination? What was Ethan's greedy sensualism compared to this deep, accepting devotion?

Randall's hands drifted over his thighs and abdomen, his hair brushed Rupert's skin with a feather touch. Randall would stay out of love and misplaced loyalty. He would die because he saw something in Rupert that wasn't there now, if it ever had been. Randall was a tender, delicate untamed creature--but he'd been caught in Rupert's Wild Magic just as so many evil things had been, and he would never, never be dislodged again.

Rupert came crying out in agony, his seed shooting in hot spasms into his lover's throat. Randall took Rupert's hands, using the leverage to slide up along his body, until once more they kissed. The taste of himself on his lover's mouth was the flavour of the Wild Magic: salt, smoke, lightning, and a strange, dark green tang, the flavour of the air in the deepest heart of the wood.

Lying over Rupert's body like a blanket, Randall gazed down into his eyes. "You see why I can't leave you," he said.

Part 2

Rupert had first seen Ethan at the Bodleian Library at Oxford, in the jeweled light that fell from one of the Burne-Jones stained glass windows. Oddly the blues and the greens did not touch Ethan's body, only the red jewels, and the oranges and yellows, until he appeared to stand at the heart of a fire. Ethan had glanced up from the enormous tome open in his hands and grinned, looking very much like a visitor from hell, or perhaps one of those creatures in fairy tales that murmur, in velvet tones, "I'm going to eat you up, little boy."

Which proved to be, more or less, what happened.

Next Rupert knew, he was lying in his own bed, academic gown slung over the lamp, trousers halfway across the floor. Ethan looked up from between his knees, still smiling as, catlike, he wiped his chin with the back of his hand.

"I--" Rupert began, feeling dizzy, and a bit sick. His head throbbed.

"Tasty," Ethan said, rubbing his hands over the muscles of Rupert's thighs--Rupert had still played rugby in those days, thrilling to the sudden violence of the game, and his body, from the training, was fit and hard.

Laying one hand over his eyes, Rupert began to cry. Why, he could not say, only that he felt drained and confused, as if Ethan had drunk up more from him than his seed.

"Come now," Ethan purred. "It's not as if you haven't done this before." Quickly, he divested Rupert of his shirt, sitting beside him on the narrow bed, the long, elegant fingers of his right hand raking through the hair on Rupert's chest. "You are, you know, even more interesting than I'd originally guessed. I think that we shall become great friends, you and I."

Then, so suddenly it seemed impossible, he'd been over by the fireplace, leaning insouciantly on the mantel, as the knob turned and the door opened. Rupert's strewn clothes had vanished, as if by magic.

"Rup--" Halfway into the room, Randall paused.

"Hello--Randall, isn't it?" Ethan said, exuding charm.

"Er...yes." Randall edged inside, shutting the door gently behind him. "Ah.. Hullo."

Once more Ethan performed that act of moving without seeming to move--an action Rupert had always associated only with vampires. He stood over Randall, looking down into the younger boy's eyes. "Rupert wasn't feeling well," he murmured, hypnotically, "and so I brought him home."

"Oh, you do look pale." Randall took the place that Ethan had lately vacated, laying his palm across Rupert's brow. "And you're very warm."

"Very warm," Ethan echoed.

"Perhaps you ought not to be here, Randall," Rupert told him, with unusual formality, then seeing sadness ripple over Randall's face, added, "In case it's catching."

"Oh, that doesn't bother me," Randall assured him. "Let me just drop my things, then I'll be right back. Would you care for some tea?"

"You're a love," Rupert answered. "Ta."

Once Randall had gone, Ethan regarded Rupert with cruel amusement. "And how long has Christopher Robin been gone from the Hundred Acre Wood?"

"I think you should bloody well leave." Ignoring the dizziness, Rupert swung his feet to the floor. "What have you done with my clothes?"

Not bothering to wait for a response, he began to search through his bureau drawers, struggling, in his anger, with a t-shirt and the trousers of his tracksuit. God, what had he done? What had he allowed to be done to him?

Ethan spread one of those elegant hands flat on Rupert's chest, the heat of his touch searing through the thin cotton knit. They were much of a height, and Ethan could lean in easily for a kiss, the fire of his tongue probing deep into Rupert's mouth, his sharp teeth stabbing hard enough into Rupert's lower lip to draw blood.

Rupert tore away, unbelieving, touching his wounded mouth.

"Take this as you will," Ethan told him, pausing with one hand on the door. "But I don't see the two of you as a matched set. You and I however--" He smiled as, in one instant, a flurry of small, loose objects hit the wall all around him, one or two even thudding hard against his shoulders and his chest. The grin grew even broader. "What is it the Americans say, 'Look, Ma, no hands?' Thank you, Ripper. With that little flurry, you've make my point for me."

"Don't ever call me that," Rupert snarled. "Not ever."

"You're a love," Ethan mocked, stepping out onto the landing. "Ta."

Randall returned moments later with the steaming tea, which Rupert could not force himself to drink, even to please his friend. Shaking, he lay upon the bed, Randall gazing down on him with confusion, until at last he gave up trying to make sense of it all, and lay beside him, taking Rupert in his arms. If he noticed the litter on the floor, he never mentioned the fact.

"Time, gents," Ethan called, flinging open the door without knocking. He tossed in their black robes. "Just wait, Randall--you'll like this. Do whatever you like, with no consequences. Make our Rupert beg for mercy, or Robert, or Phillip--even sweet Deirdre if you'd like a change.

Randall picked himself up off the bed, his pale skin glowing in the moonlight, luminescent as one of the ghosts. "Why not you, Ethan?" he asked softly.

"I'm saving myself for marriage," Ethan laughed. "Come now, Rupert, you've missed your cue--time to tell our little Randall he can still run away. Tell him there's still time to back down. Tell him he can cower up here alone, or take the pretty choo-choo train home to mummy in Scotland. He needn't do what all the rest if us do. He needn't play with the big boys and girls."

"Don't listen to him, Ran." Rupert rose too, quite prepared to shove Ethan's teeth down his throat with or without Ripper's help. "You do what you want."

"I'm not afraid," Randall answered. "I'm no weaker than the rest of you, and I shan't back down."

"Well, bully for you, my brave little soldier." Ethan raised the smaller robe from the floor, arranging it over Randall's body. He took the boy's face between his hands, kissing him deeper and deeper, until Randall cried out into his mouth and jerked away. "Oh, I think he likes me. Truly he does." Ethan winked at Rupert over Randall's head. "Only, he may be just the tiniest bit shy."

A chill, sick feeling passed over Rupert's body, the sensation his aunts had always referred to as "a goose walking over one's grave." Turning his back to Ethan, he managed to locate a t-shirt and jeans no more filthy than the rest, and to drag them onto his body, sans underwear. He was no longer sure that he owned any underwear--and he knew for certain he hadn't a pair of socks fit to be worn, and so he tugged on his boots without them.

Beneath his robe, Rupert knew, Ethan would be cleanly and fashionably attired, a few buttons of his shirt open to reveal his narrow but well-shaped chest. The filth that encrusted the rest of them merely seemed to slide off Ethan, as if it could find no purchase on his smooth exterior.

"The others have gone down already," he informed them. "We didn't wish to disturb you."

Rupert gave him a look, and Randall drew closer, slipping his hand into Rupert's, as Ethan laughed. The passed through the dark house, the only light, to Rupert's eyes coming from the luminous manifestations of the ghosts, a dozen or more, all of whom watched accusingly.

"My God," Randall whispered. "Is...is that what makes the sounds at night?"

"The ghosts are nothing," Rupert said, with sudden violence. "They're nothing at all."

They took the cellar stair carefully, walking to the right, mindful as ever of the precariousness of the steps. The cellar itself glowed, candles in the niches, red and black candles set out at the appropriate points of the red-and-black design painted round the altar.

"See," Ethan murmured to Randall as they gained the cellar floor. "All's prepared."

"Does it hurt?" the boy asked Rupert, who shook his head.

"It doesn't hurt. It feels glorious," but even as he spoke, he wanted to cry. How could he do this to Randall? How could he allow the boy to defile himself in this way?

He forced himself to smile a bit, glancing from one to another of their circle. There was Phillip, sweating with nervousness as he always did, still a bit plump and round beneath his robe--he'd meant to be a dentist, Rupert recalled. Deirdre swayed gently in a purple-and-gold frock of Indian cotton, humming along to music only she could hear--she'd an amazing voice, once, back when they were in the band. Almost a female Robert Plant, she'd been, the blues pouring out of her, quite in defiance of her posh upbringing and finishing school education. She'd come to London, she once told him, to find something real--and then she'd fallen into this instead. Robert, the failed engineer, glowered back at Rupert's look. Like Randall, he was a Scot, raised in some particularly dour form of Presbyterianism, and he'd taken to his life of evil in much the same fervent, humourless way his father had once denounced that life. Only Ripper was not afraid of Robert.

Ethan had bent to light the herbs, but when he felt Rupert's stare he straightened, smiling. Ethan had once compared himself to the Serpent in the Garden of Eden. "It's no use blaming me," he'd said, "I only ever give people what they want."

"I never wanted you," Rupert had told him.

"Ah, yes--but your twin brother does. And after all, my dear, it's his body too."

That left Randall, making his gingerly way through the circle of candles and lines, until he stood with his fingertips on the edge of the red-clothed altar. He'd read English Literature at Oxford, and meant to do his life's work on the poetry of John Keats. He'd a widowed mum in some far-off part of Scotland, who'd come down once to visit, bringing with her Randall's two little sisters, who adored him, and whom he'd equally adored. Lady Mary Sinclair had seemed to know her son well, and to understand how things stood between him and Rupert. She'd been very kind, Rupert remembered. Far kinder to him than he deserved.

Shivering a little inside the folds of his robe, Randall climbed onto the altar, where he lay on his back, gazing up at the cobweb-festooned ceiling. Rupert came to him, laying one hand on his brow, the other on the smaller boy's chest.

"You promise it won't hurt," Randall whispered.

"It never has," Rupert replied. "It feels...as if one can do anything, as if one has all the power in the world. Listen to the sound of my voice, now, and I'll take you down."

He spoke the words quietly, until Randall's eyes drifted shut, until he was entranced, all the while feeling Ethan's stare upon him, an oddly physical sensation, like two holes being slowly burned through his skin.

"Nicely done, Rupert," the older man murmured. "Now, wouldn't you like a rest?"

"Ethan, no!" Rupert called, horrified, but Ethan spoke the magic words:

"Tu invitato, geminus crepusculum, ad hunc locum et hoc tempore et ad hanc vocem."--I invite you, twilight twin, at this place and at this time and at this word.

"Ethan!" Rupert barely had time to shout again, before Ripper surged forward, knocking him, dizzy, out of control.

"So," Ripper said. "What're we buggering about for? We gonna begin, or not?"

Ethan leaned across Randall's entranced body, and his hard fingers bit into Ripper's shoulders. He'd leaned in for a kiss, meaning to take control, but Ripper knocked his hands away,

"What is it?" Ethan asked, smiling--he knew the games were about to begin.

Ripper grabbed Ethan's head between his powerful hands, invading that smiling mouth with a kiss of his own--no love in it, not even desire, only a contest of domination to which Ethan, gasping, eventually submitted.

"Cocky bastard." Ripper broke the kiss, regarding Ethan with narrowed eyes. The older man returned his gaze boldly, until Ripper's hand lashed out, catching him in a hard but open-handed slap. "Next time I see that look," Ripper informed him. "You get a taste of my fist."

"Oh, yes, please," Ethan answered, but he touched the bit of blood on his split lip tenderly, and his own eyes looked wary. "You know that I love you best, Ripper."

"Now?" Deirdre asked in a plaintive tone.

"'s not your turn," Robert snarled at her.

Ripper watched them, thinking, Fuck, what a load of tossers. He'd not cry a single tear if this bit o' fun killed every one. Wankers, the whole lot of them--playing with their baby spells. He ought to give them a taste of the real business, the stuff even poor little Rupie could do. Ethan, especially, should see the Wild Magic. Ethan, who thought he was such a clever boy, would probably piss himself.

Damn good shag he was, though--long as he did what he was told.

"Why're you pulling that particular face, pet?" Ethan laughed. "Looks like you're biting lemons."

Ripper could feel Rupert scream in the back of his skull, knocking against the bones until the row made his head ache.

"Why don't you just shut the fuck up?" he said to the both of them, his sometime-lover and hated other self, deciding all of a sudden not to play along, to let everything loose and see what in hell followed.

Gleefully, the Wild Magic uncoiled.

Part 3

The blood in Ripper's ears beat in time with Rupert's din, and a thin stream of it began to drip from his nose. One more twist, one more window opened, nothing held back, and the candleflames leaped up floor to ceiling like the bars of a cage. The bowls with their herbs threw off hard violet light. The skin between hell and earth had got thin here in this place, where back in Roman times a Hellmouth yawned.

The hollow of that scar still lay beneath the cellar, crusted over with a mass of stuff like the tissue that knots up to cover a wound.

"Damn me," Ripper breathed. This, he liked: danger, and the chance for danger, all he lived for--though he never much cared for the aftermath. Leave Rupie to handle those bits.

And damn Rupert, anyway, what made him knock about like that? Usually, when he lost his turn he'd sit back quietly, all sulky-like, waiting for Ripper to get bored, or to drink a bit too much, so that he could come out again. Ripper always liked to leave Rupert with the hangovers, or whatever the consequences of this latest adventure might be--leave Rupert to face the bloke with the flick knife, leave Rupert to eel out of it when Ripper'd brought the coppers down on their tail, leave Rupert suddenly stranded in Ethan's bed. Fuck him, but that was a laugh.

The magic was going to go bad this time, worse than he'd ever imagined it in all his wildest, most wonderful dreams. The currents whipped around him, tightening this, loosening that, just like tuning up a guitar before you cranked the amp to full blast and blew out the back windows to granny's house.

Ripper lobbed his intentions into eye of the storm, stroking the membrane that held the Demon Dimension separate from the normal, understandable world. The mundus intelligibilis, stuffy Rupert might say. He petted the unseeable wall, playing gentle--the way sometimes, feeling generous--he'd stroke Ethan's tender bits before throwing him down for a good hard shag. At his best he could make Ethan cry, and that made him proud--Ethan, who had no heart and no soul that he could discover, and Ripper could make him wail like a baby.

Ripper had learnt the words to summon Eyghon from a book, one he'd pilfered out of a dusty little shop up in Camden Town--but he felt them deep down in what passed for his own soul, or maybe in just the great, inky-dark, shared unconsciousness that, along with the magic and the strange green eyes, had got passed generation to generation down the Giles family line.

That was Ethan's little secret, the one he'd found but not shared--Ripper knew it already, and so did Rupert, too. They'd been told the secret as a caution. Ripper didn't like to be cautioned, and he'd thought the whole thing funny as hell.

Their family name, Giles, was the buggered-up version of an Old French word, but they were older, really, than any words at all: as old as the fear of the dark, and of the things that hid in the dark.

The French words meant "Of the Goat"--Yeah, Ripper thought, One way of putting it--but their dozens-of-times-great-grandfathers had never been sodding goatherds traipsing about the hills making smelly French cheese. The "Goat" meant by their name wasn't an animal at all: he was one of those Old Gods that bloody Rupert could list in the same way that a smart priest could rattle off the names of his saints. The "Goat" in question was the Great God Pan, the guy some people had got confused with the devil a long time ago.

And Pan wasn't just a some curly-headed bastard tootling on his pipes in the sunny green wood. Pan, Rupert could tell you if you managed to stay awake long enough to listen, was the root of "panic" and his pipes were hollowed out from the bones of dead men's thighs. His music played loud at the heart of the Wild Wood: the music of terror, violence, ruin, loveless fire. A thousand generations wouldn't be enough to breed the last of the magic out of them, no matter what that wanker Rupert thought.

Ripper knew better: he'd played his guitar and seen the girls--and the boys, too--practically lie down at his feet. He'd fought men twice his size and sent them running--crying, even, sometimes, the same way Ethan cried. He could frighten anyone he wanted, with just a single glance from his weird green eyes. And the magic, gods, the magic--anything he wanted he could have. Anything.

Except this body, and that he didn't understand. Rupert, who did nothing, who was always so meek, and guilt-stricken, and dull, could take it from him whenever he tried hard enough, pushing Ripper back into that stuffy little cave in the dark behind his eyes.

Someday he'd be free of Rupert. Ethan would help, thinking of the power--Ethan, who was such a tempter, seducer and liar in his own right, but was often bloody stupid about Ripper's lies.

Ripper intended to give him nothing.

He grabbed the sword from under the altar cloth and ran his hand down the blade, adding yet another cut to his collection of barely-healed scars. Didn't matter: the magic demanded blood. His own, and others.

"Me next!" that cow Deirdre begged, her hands stretched out like Ripper was going to fill them with gold, her eyes all black with drugs and that "shag me" glaze. She liked the magic better than shagging, Deirdre did, though she was no bloody use at either. Most times, at the climax of the spell, she'd come with a sound like a factory whistle and fall against the altar, letting Eyghon, whoever the demon had gone inside, take her like a sodding hors d'oeuvres.

Ripper grabbed her hard, and cut her hand deeper than he needed--one of these days he'd cut off one of her bloody fingers, if she kept it up the way she did. He cut Robert next, then Phillip--Ethan last of all, wondering all the time what kind of magic it would take to make his partner in crime lose that carnivorous smile.

Soon he'd discover that. Maybe tonight.

The candlelight made their blood go black as it dripped on Randall's body. The Wild Magic had started to taste Rupert's boy, wrapping its own fingers around Randall's little fingers and toes.

Ripper nearly dropped the sword. Rupert beat so hard inside him he could hardly see with the pain, but Ripper wasn't backing down, not this time. Not so close. The spell-words rushed through him and the others followed, picking up on his cues.

"You want to see a demon?"he yelled.

"Yes!" Deirdre moaned. She was touching herself through the gauze of her dress, head flung back, eyes rolled in her head. Hadn't bothered with the robe, he realized--but the robes were just play-acting anyway, Ethan's idea.

Ripper tore his own robe over his head, and his t-shirt too, the sweat running in ribbons down his naked chest.

"Do you want to see a demon?"

"Yes!" Phillip and Robert joined in that time.

Ethan caught Ripper's eyes, giving a shake of his head almost too small to see. "No, Ripper."

"Say no to me, will you?" Ripper leaned across the altar, grabbing hold of Ethan robe, pulling him so hard against the stone that his breath came out in a whoosh.

"Ripper, Ripper, mind the family jewels," Ethan gasped, for once not laughing. Ripper tore the robe from his body, tore open Ethan's posh shirt, mother-of-pearl buttons flying to the four corners.

"Say no to me?" Rupert wouldn't shut up, and Ripper's vision went white-blind with rage. He cracked his hand hard as he could, twice across Ethan's face, then buried his fist in the pit of his lover's stomach. As he went down, Ethan's head struck the altar.

They all wanted to be evil, they said. Wanted the dark side to take them. Well, children, evil wasn't drugs and sex and playing dress-up in bloody robes. Evil was something that got inside people you loved, and made them hurt you, or not care when you were hurt. Evil was something you waited and waited for, getting colder and colder, because it was your job to destroy it, even though you were weak, and afraid, and you didn't know how. Evil was something that came out of the dark, and called to you by your own name in a familiar voice, until you didn't think you could ever stand to hear that name again.

He hated them, hated them, hated them all. Robert, Phillip, Deirdre, bloody Ethan with his insinuating smile. Ethan who thought he knew him, but really knew not a single thing. Randall he hated most of all--because much as Ripper loathed admitting it, Rupert controlled this body, and Rupert loved Randall. Anyone you loved could be used against you. Anyone you loved could make you feel afraid.

"You want to see a demon?" Ripper screamed. "Then let me show you now!"

"Etruscan," Rupert had said, turning pages. "Interesting."

"I know it's interesting," Ethan responded. "Or Ripper wouldn't have nicked it." He'd smiled a little at Rupert's sharp look. "But what is it, do you think?"

"A journal, I should say." Rupert ran his fingers along the edge of the pages. "It's terribly old--most likely cut from a scroll. Can you feel the stasis spell? That's quite literally all that's holding the parchment together." He ran his fingertips across the top leaf. "Ethan, that's not sheepskin."

Ethan stretched out a fingertip, and laughed. "I believe you're right, clever boy."

"What?" Randall asked, leaning on Rupert's shoulder.

"Don't ask, love," Rupert told him.

"Human, love," Ethan supplied. "But what does it say?"

"It appears to have been written by a devotee of Eyghon." Rupert flipped pages, until he reached the end. "Hmn. It's not finished."

"And what," Ethan asked, "Is Eyghon when he's at home?"

"Eyghon the Sleepwalker, lord of Night, He Who Walks With Us In Dreams. So on, so forth--the usual hyperbole. He's a demon, apparently. According to this--" He turned backward through the book. "One goes into a trance, summons him--that's meant to take five to accomplish, by the way."

"Which we have, with spares." Ethan glanced into his face. "Fun or profit, Rupert?" Ethan was making an obvious attempt to get on Rupert's good side, and Rupert found himself too involved with what he was reading to bother to spar with him.

"Fun, it appears. He says it's an incredible high--like being drunk on the wine of the gods."

Randall turned a troubled face to him. "But Rupert...a demon?"

"Demons aren't the same as devils, love. They're supernatural creatures, true, but they've rules to follow, same as we do." Rupert turned to the exact center of the volume. "See? Lefthand page, the spell for summoning. Right hand page, the one for putting him back again. Dead easy. Like a recipe."

"I do so like your confidence, pet," Ethan laughed.

Shutting the book, Rupert drew Randall half onto his lap. "You worry too much, Ran. Where's your trust in me?"

"Well, of course I trust you, Rupert." Randall leaned his cheek against Rupert's chest. "If you say it's all right, I suppose it must be."

Ethan reached around Rupert's neck to ruffle Randall's hair, coincidentally pulling Rupert closer to him in the process. "There's our plucky little lad," he said. "That's what I like to hear."

"Don't do that," Randall responded, pulling sharply away from them both.

Smoke twisted up around them, dark and sweet--half of what burned in braziers couldn't actually, in the strictest sense, be referred to as herbs.

With his own blood, Ripper had sketched the sigils on Randall's face. The last hard words of the spell fell from their tongues, and the dark goo that was Eyghon's substance oozed over Randall's body. His skin soaked up every drop, like a sponge.

Randall's eyes flew open: cold yellow, not blue anymore.

"Blimey, that's new!" Phillip exclaimed.

"He's gonna do it. He's gonna do it," Deirdre moaned in ecstasy.

"Yeah, what did you think, you noisy cow?" Arms folded across his chest, heart beating fast, Ripper watched.

Randall raised himself from the altar, slow and awkward--normal enough, that. Rupert, the clumsy bastard, had run into a wall his first time through, knocked himself sprawling, his clumsiness giving Ripper a chance to come out and play. Ripper hated having to wait for Ripper to get so pissed he couldn't handle it, or for Ethan to call him out--to his thought, Rupert could be clumsy all he liked.

Rupert's boy touched his own arms, his legs, his chest, those big eyes flashing from yellow to blue and back again. "I don't--" he started to say, in his own voice still. That would change soon enough. "I don't like this. I don't like it. Get it out of me!"

Ripper grabbed hold of the boy, kissing him hard, bruising Randall's face with the force of his grip, bruising Randall's lips with his own.

Kiss of betrayal. Judas kiss. Inside his head, Rupert screamed in agony.

Little Randall struggled away from Ripper, blood starting from the corners of his eyes--that, too, was new.

"Bye-bye, baby," Ripper whispered, meeting those bleeding eyes with the full force of his stare.

"Get it out! Get it out! Get it out!" Randall wailed.

The world jolted; Ripper's vision doubled. Damn Rupert!

"Rupert...!" Randall shrieked.

Ripper's sight blacked entirely. A bomb went off in his head and he lost his footing, going down as Ethan had, striking his chin on the edge of the altar.

"Dammit!" he snarled, struggling to his feet, mouth full of blood. He spat on the floor, blurring the newly-repainted lines.

"Rupert Rupert Rupert, help me!" Randall's voice had begun to lose itself, getting thick and hoarse.

Rupert shoved again at the walls of his prison, and for a moment, Ripper was nowhere, hanging in space, not even occupying that niche in Rupert's skull where he usually watched and tormented, waiting his chance.

"Help me!" Randall screamed again, in real pain this time, Eyghon's voice clear behind his own.

Rupert gave another sharp push. Ripper went down a second time and in the middle of the spinning darkness faced his other self. Stodgy, self-conscious Rupert wore an expression on his face Ripper had never even imagined wearing on his own. "You let me out," he demanded. "You bastard, let me out now!"

"Or what?" Ripper gave him a look, playing cool. He made the motions of lighting a cigarette, which he knew Rupert loathed. Rupert hated waking up with the taste of ashes in his mouth. "Tell me what you'll do? It's just big talk. I'm part of you, Rup. You need me."

"For what? For what possible reason would I need you?" Rupert's mouth curled with contempt.

"For all the shit you won't take on yourself. Rupert doesn't get angry. Rupert doesn't want to remember the badness. Get this mate--if I'm not here, you'll have to. It's all inside you, same as it's in me. You'll have to stop pretending you had such a 'happy families' childhood. You'll have to own up to the things we did. Fuck it all, Rup--I found the book, but you read out the spell. You're the one who put your boy there on the altar, not me." Ripper took a long drag on his smoke, watching Rupert waver like heat haze over a country road in summer. Only a minute now, he'd be gone, crawled back into his safe little Rupert-cave, too scared to do a thing. Only a minute.

Somewhere beyond them Randall screamed and screamed. Ripper smiled at the noise.

The visible Rupert got solid again, and his eyes looked exactly like the dirty ice at the Thames-side in winter. "I'll bloody kill you," he said, in his soft Rupert-voice.

"Yeah, mate." Ripper turned his back. A long way beyond, he could see that little bugger Randall, shrunk small like something viewed the wrong way through a telescope. Shrunk small, but getting bigger, then bigger still.

Rupert was saying words that meant nothing to him, and all of a sudden Ripper could hear nothing, just a big echoing emptiness in his head. He felt his bones compress, his self made small, even as Randall grew. Something hit him, and he cried out at a pain worse than any he'd ever known. Blow after blow fell, each more painful than the last, as if he was being beaten to death, beaten into nothing, broken and destroyed. His vision went black for the last time, and he blinked out, ravaged lips cursing his twin.

Part 4

All Rupert could hear was screaming, Randall's voice, and not. Randall's skin had begun to split, its smooth perfection grown spotted and ulcerated. When he clutched at Randall's hand, jagged outcroppings of bone tore his palm.

Robert, Phillip, even Deirdre had started to back away, Deirdre making little mewling noises, Phillip frankly weeping, Robert reciting in a childish voice one of the harsh prayers he'd learnt as a boy.

"Rupert, I can't bear it!" Randall's brow split, horns growing from his skull faster than thought. His teeth were decaying, growing snaggled and sharp. He flung himself over the altar; his clawed hands clutched hold of Rupert's chest, lacerating the skin. They fell together, knocking out two of the candles that preserved the binding spell, Randall landing on top. His suddenly-powerful thighs squeezed Rupert's hips.

"Aren't you happy to see me, my love?" he snarled, no trace of Randall in him now, only the demon's deep, hateful voice. "You don't seem happy."

His body ground down upon Rupert's with crushing force, while his hands moved to Rupert's throat. All around them the Wild Magic twisted and stirred, and the remaining candles melted, leaving nothing whatsoever bound. Their wax pooled upon the floor

Fire leaped free from the braziers, burning so hot that the metal itself began to be consumed. The flames licked their way over the floor, lighting dust, lighting filth, gobbling everything but the flagstones themselves.

"Ethan!" Rupert managed to gasp. "Dammit, Ethan, wake up! I need you."

Ethan raised his head, blinked once, and came to, as collected as ever. "What was that?" he asked, sounding only the merest bit hoarse. "I thought I heard Rupert Giles say he needed me--but no, that could never be."

A burst of Wild Magic thrust Eyghon away. The demon still wore the rags of Randall's skin, a golden tuft of Randall's hair still perched absurdly atop his horned, massive, hideous head. The burst flung Rupert himself against the altar.

"Help me stop this," he pleaded. "I can't do it alone. Deirdre, Robert, Phillip--we must say the spell."

"Stop it?" Ethan studied his nails with seeming nonchalance. "Love, it's barely gotten interesting."

Rupert coughed with the smoke and the bruising in his throat, beginning the first lines of the incantation that would set everything right again, marshaling every bit of power he owned, or ever would own. Eyghon, in Randall's body, ebbed and surged, going from tortured boy to demon and back again.

"Do you think it's so easy?" the Sleepwalker snarled, with one blow striking Rupert all the way over the altar to fall at Ethan's feet. "Do you think it's in the likes of you to dispose of the likes of me?"

The tattoo on Rupert's arm burned like acid, the pain so profound that when he grasped hold of Ripper's sword, that had lain half-hidden beneath the flaming altar cloth, he never felt the metal sear his hands.

For a moment the demon, the human, even the fire froze, and in that moment Randall returned, bleeding from a thousand splits in his far, velvety skin, his eyes weeping blood tears down his ruined cheeks. In that moment he spoke in Randall's true voice. "I will never leave you, Rupert. Wherever you are, I will be."

Rupert knew a curse when he heard one.

Time lurched forward again. The sword balanced perfectly in Rupert's hands, but he hadn't even realized that he intended to swing the blade.

It traveled, whistling, through the air, so slow in its motion that it seemed that the demon, or boy--whichever he was--must surely step out of its path.

It--or he--didn't. The impact struck all through Rupert's body as the edge found its mark, parting head from shoulders, the darkness that was Eyghon spewing into the burning cellar. The flames leapt upon the demon's substance, devouring it as greedily as they consumed everything else.

The blade fell from Rupert's hands. He barely noticed Robert's, Phillip's, Deirdre's shocked faces, gaping at him. Ethan, he realized, so far from helping him, had already made his retreat.

"You killed Randall," Deirdre said, in a little girl's voice. "Rupert, you cut off his head."

"Get out of here," he shouted at her. "Just clear out, the lot of you!"

In panic, the girl fled, Phillip on her heels. Neither took particular care with the stairs. Robert paused a moment, watching Rupert's face, red rims around eyes that now resembled flat, round riverstones.

Seconds after Robert disappeared, the stairs tore free from their supports, crashing to the cellar floor in an explosion of sparks and splinters, a funnel of flame leaping upward to the level above.

No other way out existed, that Rupert could recall. Feeling chilled in the midst of the inferno he returned to the altar, meaning to recover Randall's body, if he could--but the flames would not let him inside, and so he stood before the stone, deliberately pressing his hands to its surface, his eyes, alone, too hot to produce anything so soothing as tears.

How had this come about? He'd truly been a sleepwalker, and the past month, even the past six months seemed like nothing more than some terrible dream, the sort from which one awakens shuddering, filled with causeless terror and undeserved shame--except that he deserved every moment of both, the guilt and the fear.

He'd let Ethan, whom he despised, lead him, and Randall, whom he loved, be destroyed. What sort of useless creature was he, to take up space beneath the sun?"

He shut his eyes, calling for the flames to come, but the Wild Magic in him refused to respond. Instead, there came men with axes and water. They'd meant to rescue him--could not even believe he was alive, much less standing--but he only walked past them, hardly registering their astounded faces. The men did not try to stop him: perhaps they'd caught a look at his face, and avoided him as any sane man would avoid one of the truly damned.

Ethan caught up to him in Kensington Gardens, where Rupert had drifted for hours, slowly, along the banks of the Serpentine. This was not at all the part of London Rupert had intended to haunt--too posh, too public, too full of tourists who steered a wide berth around him. Only this avoidance let him be sure that the men with the axes had been real, and not been a fantasy of his addled mind. Seeing others turn away from him, he knew that he hadn't actually burnt to death in the cellar beneath a haunted house. So many people would not have been able to detect him had he truly been a ghost.

He ignored the looks like the lost soul he was, not even thinking about the others until he became too tired to walk further.

Night had begun to fall, filling the sky with red light, covering the earth with long shadows. Rupert sank down at the foot of the Peter Pan statue, around a little kink of the Serpentine.

After a moment's pause, Ethan showed himself. He took a seat by Rupert's side, making a great show of dusting off the already-clean concrete.

"Well," he drawled, presenting his usual cat-like grin, still so trim, stylish and, most of all, sardonic, that recent events might never have been. "If it isn't my lost boy. How did you find things in Neverland? Rupert, is it?"

Rupert raised his hands, trying to speak, but no matter how he struggled, not a word would come out, only weak, rasping sounds.

"Not well, then?" Ethan ran a hand down Rupert's bare arm, brushing away a film of ashes. "Look at that: all the nice hair's got burnt right off your arm, pet."

Rupert put his other hand over his eyes.

"You're shuddering, my sweet. Are you cold? Hungry?"

Wordlessly, Rupert shook his head. He could picture his fists pounding Ethan's face, beating and beating until no trace of that cruel smile remained.

The haunted house left behind, stripped of that protective shell that hid evil thoughts and worse deeds, one must remember that every act had its consequence. In the harsh light of the real world, violence would be observed and punished--and Rupert knew that once he started, he could not stop with the elimination of Ethan's smile. Once he started, he would not stop until Ethan lay dead.

"I've a flat nearby," Ethan told him in a wheedling voice. "If you liked you could come there with me."

Again, Rupert shook his head.

Ethan turned Rupert's hand upward. "Look, pet, you've really burnt yourself rather badly." For a moment, he sounded almost kind. "Come along with me. Do. Catch a bit of kip. Let me take care of you." He reached up to stroke Rupert's singed hair, but Rupert shook him away.

"Why?" was all he could say, his voice almost nonexistent, raw with emotion and flame.

Ethan returned a narrow-eyed gaze, and Rupert waited for him to say something glib, in his usual tone of cruel amusement. For once, though, Ethan thought a bit before answering.

"I'd have let him go, you know. If you'd had the bollocks to put him on the train." Ethan lifted his elegant, silk-clad shoulders in a shrug, then let them drop again. "I don't like sharing. Never did."

"You don't like sharing." God, it hurt to talk. Rupert coughed violently, spat red, rubbed at his throat. "You let Randall die horribly because you don't like to share?" He stared at Ethan with utter incredulity, hands clenching and unclenching into fists, heedless of the burns that he still could not feel. "Because you didn't like sharing me?"

"Well, I didn't," Ethan answered, lifting up his arms to stretch a bit, exactly like a cat concluding its nap in the sun. "Wasn't I who killed him, at any rate."

"Oh, no, you're surely not to blame." Again, Rupert could see himself pounding Ethan's face into nothing, in the way that his close, forced observation of Ripper had taught him so well. He searched for Ripper inside himself, and felt nothing, not a stir, not a hint of the other's thoughts. Neither did he feel the Wild Magic, nor had he seen a ghost since he'd descended into the cellar. The part of him that hated burned with a hard, cold fire; the part of him that loved existed only as a slowly seeping wound.

A memory surfaced, wrapped in other memory.

Randall sprawled on his bed, reading a paperback edition of Brideshead Revisited. "I don't think I like this book," he said. "It's depressing."

"Put it away, then." Rupert glanced up from the essay he'd been attempting to write. Between his regular reading and the lessons the Watchers required him to complete, he'd been going short of sleep far too long. His head ached, his eyes burned, and his brain buzzed with a cacophony of languages, half of which hadn't been spoken by human tongues for close on two millennia. "Haven't you some swotting of your own to do?"

"Done it," Randall answered, smiling. "Dead easy."

He dropped his book, coming close, insinuating his slender body between the desk and chair until he straddled Rupert's thighs, a pleasant weight on Rupert's lap. "Why have you given up rugby, Rup? I liked to watch you play--even though half the time my heart was in my throat."

"No time," Rupert answered. "Too much to do."

"But why?" Randall's fingertips made lovely circles on his temples, easing the ache behind his eyes. "I know you'll get a First, and go on to greater things. Someday when I'm a lowly schoolmaster, I shall have to call you Dr. Giles, and go in awe of your erudition, but for now--" He bent forward for a long, slow, undemanding kiss. "I should like to ride with you in a gondola through the canals of Venice, or at least drive out to the country and eat strawberries and drink champagne. I should like the chance to be charming and flighty, the Sebastian to your Charles."

"Actually, Sebastian's one of my names."

"Really? What's the other?"

"Henry. After my father."

"Rupert Henry Sebastian Giles. What a very serious name." Randall laughed brightly. "Do come with me to the country. Only for an afternoon."

"Can't," Rupert said. "Too busy."

"I worry about you." Randall stroked his hair. "Up here, you live like--I don't know, a somber old man, or a monk, or something."

"Obviously not one who's taken a vow of chastity."

Randall laughed, squirming a bit closer. "Honestly, Rupert, you don't eat right, you don't sleep, you've given up the one thing you actually did for fun--what makes all that sacrifice worthwhile?"

"It's expected." Rupert shrugged. "And besides, there are other things I do for fun." He tried to distract Randall with another kiss, but Randall refused to be turned from his track--he put his small hands on Rupert's shoulders and pushed him away.

"I'm deadly earnest, Rup. Those things you read of have been dead for hundreds of years. They'll be no less dead because you happen to catch eight hours sleep."

Rupert leaned against Randall's shoulder, wishing that he could explain, spill everything to him in one vast confession, and never have to hold secrets again.

"Has it to do with those grey men who come to you?" Randall was asking. "The ones who look like an unholy cross between Oxford dons, disapproving vicars and the spies in a LeCarre novel?"

Rupert stared at him, willing the smaller boy to stop this speculation.

"They don't like you to be with me, do they, Rupert? What are those men? Your uncles? If so, you've rather a lot of uncles."

"They're men who once...ah...worked with my dad."

Men who set up a ridiculous test that killed my father and his Slayer both, then lost sight of them, leaving me to clean up their mess. Ten bloody years old, left to face that.

"But if they're just blokes who worked with your dad, why do they have such power over you?" Randall was wondering. "Explain to me, Rupert, for I don't understand."

"It's complicated," Rupert had said.

He could remember sitting on the stoop behind his childhood home in Salisbury, cold even in his thick warm dressing-gown. He waited and waited in the frosty darkness, knowing he must not sleep, or let his attention falter. The ghosts of his two sisters sat with him, one to either side. Their eyes looked exactly like snow in moonlight.

He's nearly here, Marianna, the eldest, had told him.

He won't expect this, Clarice, the younger, said.

The cold had invaded his body and hollowed him out, making it impossible to breathe, or be sick, or anything else that might be a normal reaction to either calm or fear.

Henry Giles had approached them, treading up the garden path as soundlessly in undeath as he had in life.

"Father," Rupert said in his usual voice, rising. "I've been waiting."

Be strong, the girls told him, in chorus.

Henry Giles looked little different from his everyday self, except that his waistcoat hung open and his tie askew, which in life he never would have permitted. When he got closer, Rupert glimpsed the hard hungry light in his eyes and knew, exactly, what it meant. He let the stake slip down his sleeve into his hand.

"Rupert, Rupert, my dear son," Henry said quietly, his hand caressing Rupert's cheek, a gesture the boy had waited all his life for his father to make--a kiss, a touch, a warm embrace were all he'd ever wanted from this man, who though kindly was as distant as if he lived at all times behind a wall of glass. Now his wish would never be granted, would never, never be real. This thing before him, that spoke his name, was only a sham, an impersonation, a monster, using Rupert's deep, unfulfilled love for his father only to gain an opportunity to feed.

A terrible pain came into Rupert's head, as if his brain was actually tearing itself in two. He couldn't move, couldn't feel the piece of wood clutched so tightly in his fingers. He, was spiraling away into an unconsciousness in which this thing that wore his father's face would take his life.

Rupert waited for the teeth to tear into his throat.

Some instinct for self-preservation, some other rose inside him, to lift the stake and drive it home with a strength Rupert hadn't known he possessed. Rank, greasy dust exploded, and the other stood still, eyes gleaming, unafraid. The other didn't care about much, but he wanted to live.

A few years later, his first time in London, a fierce, feral girl of his acquaintance had given the other a name. "Be Ripper now," she told him, "Because you can't be Rupert here."

The Watchers would have him now, Rupert supposed--or not, as they wished. Have him or kill him, one of the two. He knew they didn't take defection lightly, and he might have been better off to savage Ethan and wind up in prison after all. If they wanted to kill him, he would die with this same blank indifference. If they kept him, he would do as he was told, try to be good, abide by their rules. He'd lost all trust in his own ability to make choices. To live as they told him, to return once more to that state of soul-numbing despair, was little enough punishment for his crimes. He was through with London, through with magic, through with Ripper and through with his life.

I killed Randall. I killed my Randall, he thought, and found that he had risen to his feet.

"What is it, then?" Ethan gazed up at him, looking less sure of himself than he ever had been before.

"I will live or I will die. Doesn't matter."

Ethan actually scowled. "Rip--"

"He's already gone, Ethan," Rupert told him quietly, in his rough, unfamiliar voice. "Say your words. Give them a try."

"Tu invitato, geminus crepusculum, ad hunc locum et hoc tempore et ad hanc vocem," Ethan said, though without his usual confidence.

"You see?" Rupert stretched out his hand to help Ethan to his feet, holding the grip a bit too tightly. "I'm done with all this, Ethan. Don't come near me again."

"And if I do?" Ethan asked, with the ghost of his old bravado.

"Then I will kill you," Rupert answered simply. "Just as I killed Randall."

He turned, walking away from Ethan along the path that bordered the Serpentine. Though he could feel the heat of Ethan's stare between his shoulders, he did not turn back again.

Part 5

Rupert found himself, somehow, in Balham, trying to free crumpled banknotes he hadn't known he possessed from the pockets of his jeans, so that he could drop them on the tiny counter by the Off License till.

A pair of small brown hands took each note and smoothed it, counting out the amount needed, returning change. Rupert had a vague impression of a man's chocolate-coloured eyes regarding him, but all he could see clearly were flames. The sound of Randall's screams filled his ears. He shook his head, trying to deny the sound, though he rather suspected the noise would never go away.

Night had fallen by the time he stumbled into the street--or perhaps it had already been night when he'd entered the shop. Rupert could not remember, neither could he remember why nighttimes should be something to fear. His hands would not work well enough to remove the wrapping or the cap from his bottle, and the truth of why that might be was lost to him as well. In the end he broke off the neck against the brick wall and drank from the jagged edge, cutting his lip. His mouth filled with blood and liquid fire.

Soon, he knew, everything would go beautifully blank again.

"Son," said a man's musical voice quite close to him.. "Son, you may not drink out here."

Rupert knew that what the voice told him was correct: one did not drink in the streets. One drank indoors, like a gentleman, or if one did not possess an indoors, one found a bridge or a tunnel, burrowing into the smelly darkness like some unclean creature.

"Dreadfully sorry," he answered, in his posh, public school, Oxford voice. "Terribly bad form, I know."

Someone took the bottle from him, and he began to cry--dry, brutal sobs born from disappointment and exhaustion. A hand, much smaller than his own yet unexpectedly strong, curled around his wrist, tugging him inside as if he'd been reduced, once more, to a small boy. A boy smaller, even, than he'd been that night in Salisbury, the night Ripper was born.

The owner of the small hand towed him to a room in which the odour of curry hung pleasantly in the air. If he had still been able to eat, the fragrance would have made him hungry.

He was made to sink into a hard kitchen chair. Across the table from him sat a woman in a sari green as new leaves. She watched the screen of a black-and-white telly, on which "God Save the Queen" played in strange, buzzing tones whilst a tall girl stood on a platform with the Union Jack behind her and a medal round her neck.

"The Olympic Games," murmured the woman, in a higher, softer musical tone than the man's.

Rupert began to laugh. "I know that girl," he said--which had once, actually, been true.

"Yes, yes," answered the woman in the sari, switching off the television. "Your mouth is bleeding, and your hands have been badly burned. Where is your family? Is there someone we might call?"

"I killed Randall," Rupert meant to tell her--the first time, since the evening he'd left Ethan, that he'd so much as thought the words. "He was screaming horribly, and I couldn't bear it. I didn't know what to do. Ethan wouldn't help me bring Eyghon back out again, and so I cut off Randall's head with a sword."

The two kind faces of the Indians did not change, and so Rupert thought that maybe he hadn't voiced the words at all--their expressions ought to have altered, he felt fairly certain, had he actually revealed such a thing. People, of whatever culture, generally reacted to the words "killed" or "screaming" or "sword"--most particularly to all three uttered together in a paragraph.

"It's very clean and warm in here," he said, no longer able, actually, to imagine living someplace that was either. "And it smells lovely."

He laid his head down on his crossed arms, too tired to go further.

He woke in a bright white room with mittens of gauze on his hands and cuffs of white canvas round his wrists and ankles. The cuffs had been lined with sheepskin and did not hurt, though the wool prickled against his skin.

He felt exceedingly calm--too calm, perhaps, as if he might have achieved that state through chemical means. Through chemical means, at any rate, more effective than the cheap Scotch he'd been guzzling.

Rupert looked about, searching for ghosts or demons, or fire, but the room was utterly plain, and had no occupant save a yellow-haired man reading at a small table by the barred window. On second thought, Rupert considered, that man might be a ghost after all--the ghost of Randall's father, come to upbraid him for the untimely death of his only son.

But the ghosts of his acquaintance did not behave in such a way, and the yellow-haired man, at any rate, seemed quite solid. No amount of staring would make him go hazy, much less fade away. He glanced up briefly, turned a page, and began to read again.

Rupert fell back, blinking up at the ceiling, where a watermark shaped rather like a brain, as seen in profile, stained the white acoustical tile.

"Young Rupert Giles," the reading man said at last. He'd appeared British, dressed in a suit of rather alarmingly hairy tweed, but his accent, though quiet and well-modulated, sounded American. "Malnutrition, alcohol poisoning, numerous lacerations, second degree burns. Been enjoying your freedom, Mr. Giles?"

"Y-you're o-one of them," Rupert managed, in a ghost of his own Oxford voice. Words seemed to stick in his throat, as if they were large, irregularly-shaped objects with sharp edges.

"I am a Watcher, yes. Merrick. Edward." He did not extend a hand--no point to it, really. "This is one of our places. You were brought here for evaluation."

"I-I think you'll find that I'm barking."

"Barking?" the other man said mildly.

"Mad. Barking mad."

"No, I don't think so." Merrick rose, shutting his book. "I think you'll return to Oxford, prepare yourself for some sort of useful work, and in time come to the Watchers' Compound to complete your training. We've spoken to the Dean of Caius and seen to your reinstatement. Your curriculum has been laid out for you."

"I've no choice in the matter, then?"

"You've had your choice, Mr. Giles. Turned out well, didn't it?" Merrick's eyes, looking down on him, were blue, hard, oddly reflective.

Rupert's breath caught in his throat along with those reluctant words. He stared very hard at the brain-shaped mark so as not to allow the older man to seem him weep, but try as he might, tears leaked from the corners of his eyes.

Randall, he thought. Randall.

"There's no use crying, really, is there?" Merrick said. "Not after the damage is already done." His voice, however, was not entirely unkind.

"Will you untie me, at least?" Rupert asked, fighting for control. He almost wished for Ripper to surface, to spare him this, but of Ripper there remained no sign. Perhaps the half of himself he hated had died along with the one he loved.

"No," Merrick answered, after a moment's thought. "Here is where you begin to learn patience."