Transitions - Ch. 17

The Reverend Mr. Sebastian Delacoeur and Father Fergus Padraig stood alone together on a Whitechapel pavement, across the street from the deserted tower-block of council flats. Both of them shivered in their dark, priestly suits.

"Bless me, but it's frigid," Father Padraig said in his soft Galway accent. Like Sebastian, he was a young man, barely thirty years old. With his wide bright-blue eyes and dark, untidy, curling hair, Father Padraig looked like an angel in a Renaissance painting. He rubbed his hands briskly up and down his arms. "One has to wonder at the insensitive clods who'd build such a place in this spot. Do you know what stood here previously?"

"Some mouldering Victorian pile that burned down in the seventies. Do you ever worry that only we can feel it, Pat? Perhaps the builders couldn't." Sebastian felt his eyes drawn to a window on the third floor, where a face looked down upon him, all the hatred and despair in the world contained in its silvery eyes.

"What's that you're seeing?" the Father asked, following Sebastian's gaze. "Bless me," he repeated.

Sebastian reached into the breast-pocket of his jacket, drawing out a small, leather-bound notebook. "Only a ghost. Susannah Perkins, at a guess." He extracted a turn-of-the-century photograph from between the book's pages and passed it to his colleague. "One of the 1907 murder victims."

"Wasn't it near here...?" Father Padraig began.

"Yes," Sebastian answered, quietly, thinking of the year 1888, all the unfortunate women murdered--that year's killings had been, by far, the most notorious, the ones that lived in legend. Jack the Ripper, who signed his letters, "From Hell," had plied his cruel trade all within five miles of this spot. There had been others, though. Many, many others.

"From Hell," Pat murmured, as if echoing his thoughts.

"Indeed," Sebastian answered drily, trying to stifle his apprehension. The fact remained, he felt afraid, as never before. He'd faced evil--a great deal of it really, for a man his age--yet this felt oddly personal, as if he'd come here to meet his Nemesis.

Shivering more violently than ever, he followed Father Padraig across the street.

As they stood in the tower-block's shadow, the darkness spread a prickling numbness over Sebastian's skin.

"Watch your step, Bastian," Father Padraig said. "These pavements are no better than rubble."

"It may be best that you've called me," Sebastian told his friend and colleague, in the same voice of studied nonchalance--though in his heart he didn't believe it. In his heart he felt like a small boy, wanting to run to his father for protection.

What would Rupert make of this? He'd no doubt, living where he did, faced places equally foul, equally unnatural.

Slowly, Sebastian walked a circuit of the foundations, checking his thermometers as he went. This time, Father Padraig followed him. "Rather more than a fifty degree temperature differential here, Pat."

"And you need your gadgets to tell you this?" Pat smiled at Sebastian affectionately--although his lips had begun to turn blue with the cold, and the normally brilliant blue of his eyes had darkened--perhaps, Sebastian thought, with fear. Through all the times they'd worked together, he'd never seen Fergus Padraig frightened.

A chill crept up Sebastian's spine. In the five years since his ordination, and his calling to this most unusual position within the Church of England, Sebastian had never been afraid, either. One couldn't be nervy and do this job. He'd been apprehensive, yes. Revolted, even. Filled with pity often--but not afraid.

"Have you ventured inside, Pat?" he asked the Catholic priest, unable to excise the image of Susannah Perkins' hateful mirror-like eyes from his mind.

Father Padraig shook his head. "I was waiting for you, boyo, to hold my hand--and don't think I'm joking when I say it."

"Good you can still laugh." Sebastian climbed the eight broad, shallow steps to the front stoop, where dark mysterious streaks stained the concrete, just as the did the whole of the building's exterior. Unwillingly, he touched the door-handle, the brass greasy under his fingers, and bone-chillingly icy. "Have you the keys, Pat?"

Father Padraig extracted a ring from his pocket, and as Sebastian struggled with the lock, took the rosary from his pocket, kissed the crucifix and began, softly, to pray.

Sebastian used the quiet Irish voice as a focus for his own intentions. His Grace the Archbishop, he knew, would not have approved of his current methods, and the thought of his guv'nor's disapproval saddened Sebastian: he hated like poison to live a lie.

He had begun well, five years before, combating the evils he'd been sent to fight only with prayer and the time-honored rituals of the Church.

Until Manchester, and the horrid old man who'd died, but would not be still

Sebastian had spent enough time with the woman who'd given him life to recognize a curse when he saw one. He'd looked into the revenant's half-burnt eyes and said the first one of Moira's spells he could remember. The unquiet corpse had fallen, crumbling to ash, and the Church won the everlasting gratitude of the man's terrified relatives. The Archbishop had clasped Sebastian's hand warmly, called him "son" and asked him to tea, where they'd discussed golf, cricket and rugby, in that order

By this time, Sebastian knew himself to be one of His Grace's favourites. He also knew himself to be false. A false priest He felt ashamed--but once begun he'd never been able to turn back again. He knew he hadn't Father Padraig's faith, or his piety. Perhaps at one time, but no longer. What he actually possessed was an inherited ability for magic of the most pagan sort.

He wasn't a good servant of God; he was a fraud. An effective fraud, but one nonetheless, and the knowledge of his own deception tore at his soul.

Sebastian had never lied to his wife Celeste about the nature of his work for the Church, but he'd never exactly revealed himself to her, either. He'd only ever been entirely candid with Rupert and Moira--and Moira, his pragmatic natural mother, hadn't understood his concerns. She herself used magic in much the same manner that others breathed.

Rupert had replied to Sebastian's confession, in his usual quiet way, "It isn't the method by which you fight evil that matters, Seb, it's that you trouble yourself to fight at all."

His Grace would most likely not have agreed, but Sebastian appreciated his father's kindness--although Rupert wasn't a man of faith in his own right, he showed nothing but respect for Sebastian's calling, which in many ways was not unlike his own.

When Rupert still lived in London, they'd walked together most Sunday afternoons through Kensington Park, a place that always seemed--strangely, for he was a man of habit and rarely wished to stroll anywhere else--to sadden his father. Sebastian had dared to ask, once, about Rupert's beliefs, or lack thereof, and the older man had replied, "Faith is a gift, Sebastian, given only to the deserving."

They'd paused by the Peter Pan statue, a place where they often halted, at least for a moment or two. The look on his father's face had contained humour, ruefulness, and deep, deep sorrow.

Rupert had refused to say more, and Sebastian had been left to wonder why his father considered himself so entirely undeserving of grace.

"Bastian," Father Padraig asked quietly, "Have you any intention of entering?"

"Hmn? Oh. Sorry. Woolgathering." Sebastian said a general binding spell to quell any malevolent influences loose in the air, and stepped across the threshold.

The electricity sizzled on, sour-coloured bulbs, placed overhead in wire baskets, lighting the corridor. There was graffiti of the foulest sort, words and pictures so obscene he could scarcely bear to look at them--and Sebastian did not consider himself a priggish man. Vast shadows, thick as treacle, oozed over walls where the paint was blistered and scrofulous.

"Bloody hell," Sebastian breathed, his own shadow leaping like a devil.

"Dear Lord, what a reek." Father Padraig laid a handkerchief over his nose and mouth.

"It smells like bad meat," Sebastian said.

"And a sick dog's shite," his colleague answered, descriptively. "I wouldn't chance the lift, Bastian."

Sebastian shook his head, fighting the urge to turn and bolt, as he'd never bolted in his entire life. Instead he unlocked the door that building plans had indicated led to the lower levels. Somehow he knew that all he sought lay underground.

He stood at the top of the steps and felt sick with fear. He could not descend. He could not--but then he found himself at the bottom of the stairs alone, his friend Father Padraig nowhere to be seen.

The air burned around him, furnace-hot, making it nearly impossible to catch a full breath. Sweat ran in runnels down Sebastian's body. A cacophony tore through the air, but when he listened closely, Sebastian almost thought he could make out individual voices, individual words.

The lights died abruptly, leaving him in the dark.

"No," Sebastian gasped, without knowing why. "My God, no." He backed toward the stairs, or what he thought was the direction in witch the steps lay. In the absolute blackness, he couldn't be sure.

They were there. He stumbled, and sat down hard. A silvery light appeared, first seeming very distant, then terribly near.

A ghost, only a ghost, he told himself, as the pale, insubstantial hands reached out for him, touched him, took his face between palms that felt like cool water and moonlight.

The ghost was beautiful, fragile in appearance. Sebastian couldn't tell if it was a young man or a girl. It bent down, closer and closer, its scent, in his nostrils, sharp and cold, like iced lemons. Its warmthless lips pressed to his, and kissed.

Inside him, something leaped into life, burning with an unquenchable flame.

Buffy hadn't remembered falling asleep, but she woke up with her head on Giles's lap, curled across her own and the empty seat. He'd tucked one of the little airplane blankets around her, and his hand gently stroked her hair. Maybe it wasn't the most comfortable position in the world, but it felt so good, to be tucked in like that, to feel him touch her, that Buffy didn't want to move--and if she hadn't had to take a potty break, she would have stayed put.

Reluctantly, she raised her head, yawned and rubbed her eyes.

"You must have been tired, dearest," Giles said to her quietly. "You've slept for nearly the entire journey."

"Journey," Buffy echoed, liking the sound of the word. That made their trip sound like an adventure. Not like saying "trip" or "flight." Ever the perfect gentleman, Giles rose to let her by, anticipating her need.

In the teeny restroom she did what she needed to do, then washed her hands and splashed water on her face. God, she looked horrible: pale and puffy, with red rims to her eyes. She'd never been on a flight this long, and she hadn't been prepared for how yucky it made her feel, like she was all swollen up but had all the moisture sucked out of her body at the same time.

Buffy felt like she had sand under her skin. Yeah, she'd be making a great impression on Giles's son.

Giles was missing by the time she got back to his seat. Buffy reached up into the overhead bin, and dug through her bag for her two kinds of moisturizer, the one for her face and the one for her hands, shutting the door when she was done. She felt like she could sit in a vat of lotion for a month, like the demon Balthazar in his hot-tub from hell, and still wind up with iguana-skin.

"Mmn, I like that." Giles returned, folding himself into his seat. "The scent of it. Whenever I smell honey or vanilla, I think of you."

"I've been using this kind forever," Buffy answered.

"And as long as I've known you, I've been able to say, 'Buffy's been here,' merely by detecting that scent."

Buffy looked up at him, into Giles's kind eyes. She hadn't had a clue he'd felt that way, that he'd searched for little traces of her. Like Buffy's own, Giles's eyes were red--maybe even redder than hers--but that didn't change their expression. She could still read plainly how much he loved her. He took her hand in his own, and kissed the knuckles. Buffy was still tired, and all she wanted to do was go someplace quiet and just cuddle up with him.

She really hoped Sebastian wouldn't be stuffy about it.

"So, umn, your son, being a priest 'n' all...is he big on the ten commandments thing?"

"Planning to murder someone?" Giles asked. "Bear false witness? Covet something of your neighbor's?"

"I think I've lost points in the mother and father honoring department, but I'm thinking of the one that starts with 'A.'"

Giles looked perplexed--there she went with another of his big words.

"A-dultery?" Buffy prompted.

"Ah. Actually that's a common misconception. I'm not married. Are you?"

"Gi-yuls," she said, in a Cordelia voice, making him smile. "You know I'm not."

"Two people can only commit adultery if one or both are married." He bent down to her, his breath tickling Buffy's ear, making her smile. "We're much farther down the line," he said, "Not in the first ten at all, but in the realm of the much milder sin of fornication."

"Well, there's a relief. It sounds worse, though." Buffy rubbed her fingertips slowly along his jaw, loving the weathered but smooth texture of his skin. No wonder he'd been gone so long: Giles had shaved.

"And Sebastian isn't a Pharisee, Buffy."

"Which means?"

"He's not a frightful prig, or easily shocked."

"Like Wesley."

"If you like to put it that way."

They'd been looking deep into one another's eyes, and both of them jumped as the captain turned on the "fasten seatbelts" sign.

"Don't take this wrong," Buffy said, "But I am so, so nervous."

The moment she said it though, she realized how selfish that sounded. Cordelia-level selfish. Here they were, heading for his mother's funeral, and she was thinking about herself.

Nice, Buff, she thought.

"Buffy," Giles said to her, ten times more kindly than she deserved. "I'm well aware that this must be difficult for you. But, please believe me, there's not the least reason for you to be apprehensive."

"I know," Buffy whispered, wishing she could make herself really, truly believe it. Wishing she could just slay a demon, or a few vampires, or something. Anything to get through all the difficult little moments ahead that couldn't be avoided.

Their plane headed down through the thick gray clouds, making the descent toward London. Voices came over the speakers, telling them they had to do some things, and not do others.

Buffy had expected for the sky to be pouring rain, but when they got down low, the sun was shining. The airport looked big and ugly and exactly like every airport she'd ever seen. She didn't feel like she'd come to a foreign country at all.

She made herself straighten in her seat, and smile, murmuring in a voice Giles didn't seem to catch, "Here ya go, Buff--it's showtime."