Transitions - Ch. 31

The others--Sebastian and Celeste, and the aunts--would be waiting just over the road, in the house where Giles had left childhood behind. He could not force himself yet to join them, could not, at this moment, maintain the charade for so many.

He knew beyond any doubt that the words Mr. Stanley had said to him were true: the hammer would fall. Most likely not at once, perhaps not even soon--yet it would come. In the baser part of himself, he wished he could rail at Buffy, "Do you know what you have done with your thoughtlessness? Do you know what you have brought upon us? I gave you a tether longer than that any Slayer was ever given in the past. I suffered and paid for you to have your own way."

Giles could not say those words to her. They were not just. They were not fair. They would only wound her, and would solve nothing. Deeds done, decisions made and acted upon, could not be undone.

He'd no right to judge, or accuse, anyone.

Giles found himself stumbling to the little stone structure in the northeast corner of the cemetery. It was here his mother's body ought to have lain, along with the nearly empty urn and marker of his father's passing, along the bones of generations of Gileses. They were not a rich family, but they were a fixture in these parts, and theirs was one of two mausoleums in the old churchyard. They were not spoken of, but they were known, and even in Cromwell's time, or in the reigns of the Tudors, they had not been persecuted for being dissenters.

They were known. They were different. They were special. They were, ultimately, cursed.

Giles lowered himself heavily to the mausoleum steps. He felt Stanley's words with unreasonable acuteness. The threat ought to matter to him, yes, and be taken seriously. But why should the rest of it? With every phrase he'd felt a surge of that anger that guided his hand in the instant he drove a foil through Mayor Wilkins's chest--had the Mayor not been invulnerable, he'd have been a murderer.

Had a weapon lain close to hand, Giles would have killed Mr. Stanley there, in the churchyard, at his mother's burial, with hardly a second thought. He hated the man, hated him with a violent, stomach-twisting loathing.

He leaned his cheek against the cool stone of the lintel post. Only once, in his mother's hearing, had he referred to this place as his sisters' house--for so it seemed to him. He hadn't realized, at first, that they were dead.

Perhaps it was denial, a child's denial, but in some part of himself young Rupert had believed that the girls had moved across the street to this structure, which although rather cold, and unusually elaborate, was in its size and shape something akin to a child's playhouse.

When he'd called the mausoleum by that name, Clara, with unexpected strength, had slapped him--the only time he'd ever been struck by one of his parents. For gentle Clara to do so had been unthinkable. Quite taken by surprise, he'd gone flying, and that was the second time he'd broken his nose, falling hard against the stone fireplace. The third had been Ripper's fault, a random blow in a street fight, in Brixton, a place he oughtn't to have been in the first place.

Giles knew that the afternoon sun fell upon his face, but he couldn't feel it. His faithful Buffy came over to him, leaning her head upon his lap. He stroked her soft hair and fought to keep from weeping. They ought to have done what he'd said--found Seb and Celeste and gone for a ride over the hills. Avoided all this unpleasantness. The joy of the morning seemed never to have been.

He felt a cool touch on his back and craned his neck to see who'd come up behind him. Clarice, of course, the comforter, with Marianna a little farther behind, in the shadows--and, did his eyes deceive him? No, there was Laurence, most distant of all, looking rather damp, as usual.

"I hate him," Laurence said, with venom. Unlike Clarice, who generally seemed happy, if at times a little wistful, or Marianna, who behaved exactly as she had in life--Giles's half-brother was eternally angry. He'd have been another Ripper, had he lived. "I try to haunt him, but he doesn't notice."

"Most of them don't," Giles answered. "One must expect that."

"I want him to suffer." Laurence came forward all in a rush. "I want him to hurt worse than he ever hurt us."

"Larry," Clarice told him, "You know he never will. Some people aren't made that way."

The boy clenched his insubstantial fists into balls. A chill wind whipped across the churchyard.

On Giles's lap, Buffy shivered. "Giles, who are you talking to?"

Clarice bent down and gently kissed her. "I wish she could speak to us, Rupert. She looks so soft and pretty. I wish I could really feel her. Does she smell nice?"

Giles smiled a little. "Yes, dearest, she does."

"Giles?" Buffy said, "You're wigging me."

"You'd best go home now, Rupert," Marianna stated. She brooked no argument.

"Yes." He sighed. "I suppose that I ought to."

Buffy sat up, but made no attempt to stand. She seemed to him unusually subdued, drained, perhaps by the emotional rigors of the day--as was he. Giles knew he ought to plan, to make safeguards, but he couldn't find the energy. It seemed to require all this strength simply to keep from sliding into bleak despair.

"Ought to what?" Buffy asked, shifting against him uncomfortably. "Was it my imagination, or were those, like, the hardest pews on the planet?"

"I believe there might be harder pews in a certain Methodist church in northern Wales, but those at St. Elizabeth's are, in fact, the hardest in England." Giles tried to smile at her, but simply could not manage.

Buffy climbed slowly to her feet, giving a small groan that reminded him, painfully, of the days in which he'd drugged her to steal away her strength. "If you had two good hands, I'd ask you to give me a backrub."

"Aren't you well, Buffy?" he asked her.

"'m okay," she answered, then rubbed her forehead. "I'm just...I don't know. Kinda yucky. How 'bout you?"

He shrugged, glancing back only once into the moonlit faces and the mirrored eyes of the three ghost-children. Clarice took the others' hands.

"Where are we going, by the way?" Buffy asked. "And what was that place where we were sitting?--'cause it looked an awful lot like a mausoleum."

"Bye, Rupert," Clarice called after him. "Do be careful."

"That's where the girls live," Giles answered, almost inaudibly.

Celeste was cross, and had been fussing at Sebastian for the past quarter-hour, whilst the aunts tried discretely to stay out of their way. When Celeste got out of sorts she paced, and somehow managed to produce, with her high heels, a sharp click with every footstep, despite the rather nice Turkish carpet that covered the sitting-room floor.

She was suffering her noon-time morning sickness, Sebastian knew, and unlike other women, who might be inclined to get their heads right down, and perhaps regale themselves with water-biscuits and seltzer, Celeste stormed like a Valkyrie choosing the slain on a field of battle.

God forgive him, but he'd far less than his usual patience with her.

"Celeste, please," he pleaded, controlling his voice only with the ragged remains of his patience. "What did you want me to do about it?"

"For a start, I'd rather like to murder those wankers from the Watchers' Council, and then I would like you to fetch your poor father back from the graveyard, and perhaps then you might find me something decent to eat, because I am bloody starving."

"You'd only be sick," Sebastian told her wearily.

"That, I believe, should be my decision." Celeste stopped pacing, drawing herself up to her full, not inconsiderable, height. All she needed was a spear and a scaled breastplate to be complete in her new role. "If I choose to be sick, then you ought to allow me--what am I, your goods and chattels?"

"Not at all," Sebastian murmured.

"What about Rupert? God, Bastian, what do you think that pillock Stanley said to him?"

"Something unpleasant, no doubt." Sebastian twitched aside a curtain, peering out the window. "Here they come, at any rate."

Celeste joined him by the glass, her shoulder brushing his. "Poor lambs, they look done in."

Sebastian gave a soft laugh. "I believe dad would rather balk at being called a lamb."

"But he is. A perfect lamb. If it weren't for you, I'd have snapped him up myself--he's not so very much older."

"Is it hormones?" Sebastian asked, "That cause you to bedevil me?"

Celeste sang a line or so from "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered," in her smoky chanteuse's voice. Sebastian couldn't help himself; he had to kiss her.

"He looks as if he's carrying the world," she said, with a second glance through the pane. "The entire world on his shoulders. Poor Rupert. At least he's not alone in this."

Sebastian shot her a sharp glance. "She's eighteen, Celeste--how much help can she be?"

"Buffy is a Slayer," his wife informed him. "Not merely trained to be one, but the genuine article. And Rupert has been her Watcher. Do you think all he does is command, and she obeys? They are true partners--one can see it in their eyes. Wild horses couldn't separate them."

"I think that until very recently she was head-over-heels for a vampire," Sebastian responded, "And that she caused my father untellable pain. The vampire had a soul, and then he didn't, then suddenly he had once more. Aunt Rose says that dad has horrible scars, scars this peculiar vampire put there for him--and after all this, Miss Buffy took the creature back again, into her arms and into her bed."

"Did Rupert tell you this?"

"I read, one might say, between the lines," Sebastian answered.

You don't care for her." Celeste scowled at him.

"Truthfully, I expected to hate her," Sebastian said. "And yet I like her very much--though I can't help fear that in a careless moment, she'll destroy him."

"You've a bleak view of human nature, Bastian."

Sebastian gazed at his wife: Celeste wasn't cross anymore, merely thoughtful. A faint flush had appeared high on her cheekbones.

"Men like Rupert," she informed him, after a pause. "Aren't easily destroyed. Your dad was the bravest, most decent fellow I knew, my entire time at the compound. But for him, I think I'd not have survived my training."

Sebastian put his arms around her from behind, resting his chin on her shoulder and rubbing her taut belly where their child, still unfelt, floated peacefully. He raised his hands to cup her breasts, which were fuller now than they'd been two months before.

"Bastian," Celeste chided gently, but turned her face for another kiss. "My Bastian. My dearest."

"Feeling better?" he asked her.

"Mmn." Her warm tongue delved into his mouth, and Sebastian could not help but respond, turning Celeste to him and pulling her closer, rubbing her smooth arse through the silk of her skirt, then lifting the fabric, sliding his hands up beneath the hem. As usual, she wore, not tights, but real stockings with garters to them, and the most minuscule silk knickers he'd ever encountered.

Celeste kissed him deeper, then pulled out again, and away, her dark eyes shining. "You, sir, are incorrigible. Not an hour past your grandmother's funeral!"

"She wasn't," Sebastian answered--he'd been well down the path of arousal, but now found himself unaccountably weary. "She wasn't my grandmother."

"She was Rupert's mother."

"I didn't like her." Sebastian shrugged. "From the moment we met, all she did was make excuses, in a weak little child's voice. Compared to Gemma, she wasn't half the woman."

"Gemma was a goddess," his wife agreed, "Like one of those benevolent mother-goddesses." A sparkle came into her eyes, one that Sebastian always associated with Celeste's gleaning of a bit of juicy gossip. "Oh, and Bastian, speaking of mums, did you know Moira's got herself what the Americans call a boy-toy? I actually spoke to him--he sounds the most awful prig. I was rather shocked, all things considered."

"Celeste," Sebastian said to her, his weariness increasing. Perhaps it was the world she moved in, but his wife was quite unrepentant when it came to conveying such items, and with regards to Moira, whom he never called mum, he often found it better not to ask.

"He sounds young--" Celeste continued, unrepentant. "Younger than Moira, at any rate. Though, truth be told, I'm quite convinced Moira actually is a goddess, of the fiercer sort, and as such quite entitled to all the mortal youths she can get her hands on."

Celeste seemed, for the first time, to notice his expression. "Oh, don't be prim, love. Moira's had a hard life, she deserves her fun--and you know she'll treat the poor chap decently."

"Yes, I suppose," Sebastian answered, distracted, his former depression settling over him again. He'd had the most disturbing ringing in his ears ever since the incident at the council flats. Did Pat have the same, he wondered? He ought to check on his friend at any rate, since he hadn't heard a word in the past three days. Really ought see Tompkins about the lead jar as well--wouldn't really do to leave a demon sitting about forever in one's study.

"Bastian?" Celeste said, a touch of uncertainty in her tone, "What is it, love?"

Sebastian put a hand to his temple. Yes, there it was, the ringing, and a low, steady throb. He seemed to want to sleep all the time, but sleep hardly seemed to leave him rested, and there were the dreams--a hazard, His Grace might say, of his particular line of work.

"Celeste," he said, "Must we really return to London tonight?"

"I've filming in the morning," his wife answered. "You, Reverend Mr. Delacoeur, may do as you like." Her expression grew serious. "Do stay with your dad if you think he'll need you--or convince him to come along with us. We can hire a service to sort out the house. It's a beastly job, and I doubt he's up to it."

"Dad's stubborn--" Sebastian began, only to be interrupted by his father's voice.

"People always say that, 'tisn't true," Rupert said mildly, in the voice that sounded so exactly like Sebastian's own it nearly disconcerted him to hear it.

"It is true, Giles, and you know it," Buffy broke in. Her voice reminded Sebastian of a bird's, sweet but without weakness. Certainly, as Celeste said, there certainly was something plucky about her--the way she stood, head back and shoulders squared, the way she boldly met one's eyes. She'd the look of a girl who'd fight for what she believed in, to the death if necessary--and if his father was stubborn, she was perhaps more so.

"Are you all right?" Sebastian asked his father.

Rupert looked aside, and gave a noncommittal shrug of his shoulders. Not for the first time, it struck Sebastian how close to the edge he appeared, and Buffy as well. Undoubtedly they'd lived in that hell-place they called home, and battled its dangers, for too long a time. They looked used up, utterly. Buffy drew closer, leaning her head against his father's chest and, as if by instinct, Rupert wrapped his arms round her, pulling her close to him.

Celeste might be right after all, he considered--no power on earth, at this point, would part them. Whatever their bond was, it went beyond want or need or even love, into the realm of necessity.

"Celeste must return to London tonight," he told them, "But I could stay, if you liked, dad."

Rupert managed a smile, one that warmed his face and lighted his eyes. "Good God, no, Seb. We shall certainly manage. Go home, with your wife." The smile spread a bit. "It's wonderful news by the way. Wonderful."

"We'd wanted to keep it to ourselves a bit," Celeste said, sounding nearly diffident. "After last time."

"I'm not offended in the least," Rupert told her kindly. "Only, I'm so very happy for you."

Celeste went to him, accepting his embrace, the way a child would from a beloved parent. "I could postpone filming, you know, my dears. Plead my belly, as they used to say."

"I believe that was a plea for mercy on the part of murderesses and pirates," he responded. "To save them from hanging. And as you're neither of the above, and don't seem to be in such imminent danger..." Rupert's eyes changed colour as he said those words. "However..." He seemed to struggle. "I--ah--spoke with Mr. Stanley, and I've no wish to alarm you, but do remember your training, love? Utmost caution whenever possible?"

Sebastian felt a coldness clutch at his stomach, as his father would not meet his eyes. "Dad--"

"It might not be unwise, Seb," Rupert continued, "To check your Wardings?"

"Dad!" Sebastian said sharply.

"I-- I--" His father sank abruptly onto the sofa, seemingly unable to look up at them again. "Go back to London, but please, please, do be careful."

They all remained silent, wordless--what was there to be said? Only that they lived in such a world and could not, no matter how they tried, escape it. Sebastian felt a leaden weight drag at his heart, and a taste came into his mouth like ashes.

"I think it'll be okay," Buffy said, raising her lovely sapphire eyes to his. "I think it'll be all right. Really. Just--like Giles says--be careful. Okay?"

Her face appeared perfectly innocent, smooth, if a little tired, and yet Sebastian thought of what lay between the lines of his father's letters, what she must have faced, and what it had cost her--what it had cost both of them. He'd no cause to judge her, this poor child, beneath whose seemingly fragile bosom beat the heart of a warrior.

He wanted to run away and hide, where no evil thing could find him--where no monsters lurked to harm Celeste, or their baby.

For the first time, he wondered about the unidentified spell that had swirled around them in the church. What had it meant? What was its purpose?

Sebastian considered the unknown, and was afraid.