Transitions - Ch. 39

There was the dark, and the chill, and there was Fergus Padraig, his old friend and colleague, so still and so cold he might have been a dead man--though he was not. The Roman priest breathed, in shallow terrified gasps, and his heart raced. Sebastian could see the pulse beat in Pat's temple. His hair had turned to the colour of dirty snow, as it might have fallen upon the February streets of Whitechapel.

There were those things, and there was the voice, that shouted and whispered and badgered Sebastian until he could hardly think any more--the most horrid voice he'd ever heard, and yet he could not ignore its words. It wanted blood, Pat's blood, as a pledge, an initiation. As the cost of his freedom from this place.

"No one will ever know," the voice told him. Sebastian rather suspected that was true--but he would know and, knowing, how could he return to his sweet, fiery Celeste? How could he be a fit father to their child?

But if he refused to do what the voice commanded, he would, perhaps, never see Celeste again, and the baby would be born to a world he'd long since left behind.

"Oh, Lord," Sebastian whispered, "Out of the darkness I call to thee."

They ought to have remained in Salisbury, with his dad and his great-aunts. True enough, that saying: hindsight always did seem to be 20/20. Even on the train, Celeste had been snappish, feverish, unwell, and during her attempted filming the next day, had been so unable to tolerate the odours of the food she'd been meant to smilingly prepare, that her entire staff, and the programme's producer, had insisted she return home again.

Sebastian himself had been asleep when she came in, and had not even roused to the sound of her being wretchedly ill, which usually woke him instantly. Even the normal illness that accompanied her pregnancy filled him with unreasoning concern.

He'd heard her calling out to him, and had barely managed to force his body to carry him to her side. He'd been incapable of lifting her from the floor.

"Bastian. Bastian." Had that been Celeste's voice? He thought that it had--the last time, perhaps, he'd hear her call his name.

"Love?" he'd answered blearily.

"You'll need to call my doctor, I think."

Sebastian had touched her cheek, as she lay on the cold tile of the bathroom floor, touched that beloved face, skin like satin beneath this fingers, but hotter than he'd ever felt it, burning against his own icy skin. He'd staggered back into their bedroom--about whose secondary telephone line he'd been meaning to ring up a repairman for days. Lord, why had he so badly neglected his husbandly duties? That task not having been accomplished, he fumbled through the large bag which, upon entering, Celeste had dropped beside the bed. Amongst the half-spilt items within he found her digital telephone, but the device had been left switched on, and its battery was quite flat.

With a muttered curse, Sebastian had dropped the telephone back into the jumble and made his way below, seeking by instinct the one in his study.

Had the lead jar lain in its way by accident or design? He could not remember placing it there--last he remembered, the container rested on a bookshelf, between an annotated volume of Milton and a small bronze statue of a horse. Unthinking, he'd grasped hold of it by its narrow neck, meaning only to move the jar to another place. A secondary spell caught him, affixing his hand to the lead as if he could never get it free again.

That spell, the spell that trapped him, was recent. Sebastian knew that, as surely as he lived and breathed. Someone had been in his house. He felt the stranger there, lurking, waiting, patient and malign.

Rupert had sealed the jar, turning its metal literally molten, but now the cap rested loosely upon its lip, waiting only for Sebastian to lift it, and spill all the evil of the world into his home.

"Please," he'd said, even as he felt his fingers, compelled, reach to complete the deed. "Please, my wife..." He looked up into eyes as cold and blue as a northern sky reflected off ice. An old man, with white hair. An old man.

Sebastian recognized him at once, although they'd never met, only eyed one another across the aisle at St. Elizabeth's: Horace Stanley, Watcher. The man who'd made poor Rupert's boyhood such a living hell.

"No," Sebastian had snapped. "I will not submit to you!"

But in the end he had, without ever meaning to, and now...

Now, the oppressive darkness engulfed him, as did the dank musty cellar-smell, and the accompanying odours of blood and urine. The voice of the demon wore at his will, seeking to find a gap in the defense of his father's protective spell, searching to find a way inside him, determined to break both spell and will, and to force its invasion.

Sebastian had wondered, at first, why the demon didn't merely take the body of Fergus Padraig, then use Pat to break him--but that was neither what the old man had wanted, nor what the demon desired for its ends. The demon wanted death, yes, and pain--but most of all, it desired vengeance. The unclean spirit would kill, it would kill, it would make Sebastian defile his own priesthood but, more than anything, it wished to make Rupert suffer. It wanted to hurt and to break him--and then, when Rupert could be injured no more, it wanted him to die.

His father, Sebastian knew, had defeated the monster not once, but twice now, and it would exact its harsh revenge only in the dear coin of blood.

Of the many angry, vengeful creatures Sebastian faced in the course of his career, this was the most venomous, and the most vile. He could not have borne its invasion a second time.

Sebastian shivered, and hugged his arms more tightly round his chest. He feared he'd be unable to last much longer. Even now, when he tried to pray, the words flew away from him, and the evil voice took their place, until he found he spoke abominations.

At last he shut his eyes on the darkness, and removed himself to another place.

In his mind, Sebastian strolled through a Sunday afternoon, navigating the grounds of The Orangery, in Kensington Gardens, with his father. Sweetness lived in memory, and safety.

On that particular day, he remembered, Celeste had been snug at home with a pot of tea and one of her Merchant-Ivory costume dramas, the films he always suspected she loved more for the opulent clothes and the pretty furniture than for the actual stories--but that didn't matter. Sebastian approved of whatever gave her pleasure--he enjoyed seeing her enjoyment, on those rare days she absented herself from work.

Rupert had been labouring nearly round the clock as well, on some special exhibition, and he'd looked tired, Sebastian recalled--but then he often did. One rarely saw him rested, though he was nearly always observant and alert. Watchful, one might say. It was winter in this memory, and Sebastian wore an anorak over his pullover and jeans, but Rupert had dressed in, as usual, one of his somber tweed suits, and with it a top-coat in some dark colour, charcoal, or navy. One would have taken him, more or less, for what he was: a scholar, perhaps a University don, something to do with a museum, or perhaps a purveyor of fine old books.

They'd come in their wanderings out of The Orangery and into the greater grounds of the park itself. The two of them began to walk a circuit of the Round Pond, where swans floated in serene formation, and small boys sailed their toy boats, as they had done for a hundred years or more.

"Did you know that the Queen has her own swankeeper?" his father had asked him suddenly.

Sebastian had smiled. Rupert often asked him quite odd questions, or came up with the most unusual facts. "No, Dad, I didn't."

"In Vedic writings, a swan represents the soul in flight. One rather wonders what the job entails. Is a keeper of swans a keeper of souls?" Rupert pushed his hands deep into the pockets of his overcoat. "No doubt, it's a far more prosaic calling than I imagine, concerned with grain and ordure, and being quite sure children aren't attacked by angry birds in parks. Still, one imagines."

A wooden boat cast itself ashore at Rupert's feet. He stooped to set the small craft upright, and back on its voyage toward its young owner. "I wish, Seb, that we might send our souls back in flight, and that I could be one of those fathers--" With a nod, he indicated the presumed sires of the boat-sailing boys. "And you might be one of those sons."

Sebastian had laid a hand on his father's shoulder, and Rupert gave one of his slight smiles, touching Sebastian's fingers briefly with his own.

They'd walked a bit further, down toward the Albert Memorial, with its animals and nymphs, a tall intricate structure like a cross between a church steeple and a wedding cake, a golden effigy of the long-dead prince enshrined within.

"Godawful thing," Rupert muttered, with a sour look.

"One supposes she meant well," Sebastian answered, meaning the late Queen Victoria--or, perhaps, in response to what Rupert had been saying earlier, his mother, Moira.

His father had given another of those brief smiles. "Yes, one does. I'm to go to California, Seb."

"What, in America?" Sebastian had felt all the warmth drawn away from his body. He'd wanted to weep, like quite a small child.

"Actually, no--the other one."

Sebastian suffered some moments of confusion, the time it took him to recognize his father's dry jest as a jest. "What will become of your work at the museum?" he asked at last, in a strained voice.

"They'll find another." Rupert shrugged. "One imagines oneself rather easily replaced."

"No," Sebastian said. "They--er--that is, you can't be replaced. You can't." He'd caught hold of Rupert's arm quite firmly, and been surprised by the hardness of the muscles under the wool.

Rupert regarded him with a mildly startled air, and a widening of those sea-green eyes, so much like his own.

Sebastian had loved Clive Delacoeur, the man who raised him, whose name he bore. No doubt of that. Clive had been a kind, affectionate, warm man. A demonstrative man, energetic--in a controlled British way, one might even have called him boisterous. He'd loved games, and holidays, and to shower one with presents. Quite the opposite to Rupert, who though kind, was so eternally quiet and controlled--that soft voice, the soundless way in which he moved--that one never knew what he thought or felt or believed. Except that one did. Sebastian had known, from the moment he'd met his father, that Rupert would fight wolves or lions to save him, that he would fight monsters, and even if frightened, he would never turn away.

Trapped in the vile cellar beneath the streets of Whitechapel, Sebastian curled up on the cold stone floor like a child, pressed his face to his knees and wrapped his arms round his head. He could not block the demon's voice, no matter how he wished to do so, but his lips formed another sort of prayer. "Please, Dad, come to me, as soon as you can."

Sometimes, until Rupert spoke, one couldn't even tell he was in the room. Sebastian pretended his father was there now, only trying to think of the words to say, the words that would set everything right.

Moira parked her hired car well away from the place, a little off Goodman's Stile, and she and Giles walked arm in arm through the darkening streets toward Gower's Walk. Moira wore a singlet shirt, a pair of Celeste's jeans and an impenetrable expression. Giles drew odd looks, bundled as he was in Sebastian's heavy pullover and winter coat. At least the coat more than adequately hid his sword--though he was still trying to ponder what Moira had meant when she'd told him he looked like someone from Highlander; both the reference and her syntax confused him, and he was failing to see any sort of Scottish connection whatsoever.

"Let it go, Rup..." She began to say, then stopped abruptly. "Dear merciful heavens."

For some reason, even knowing how violently the house had burned, Giles somehow expected to see it existent still, as if in its evil the evil place might somehow have rebuilt itself. Yet there, in its stead, stood a tower-block of what appeared to be flats, faces at some of the windows, watching. Faces he knew well, woman and men who'd died before he was born. The ghosts of the demon's victims.

"Good God," he breathed. "What possessed them to build flats in such a location? Had no one the least sensitivity?"

"Someone apparently had," Moira answered, her unreadable eyes searching the panes. "I don't imagine any of the flats are occupied, even by squatters. Except--" Her green eyes narrowed. "Men from the Council, Rupert. Badly hidden."

A deeper sort of cold replaced Giles's physical chill; rage nearly overwhelmed him. He felt the Councilmen too, none actually in the tower-block itself, but otherwise all around them. Pathetic, really, that they'd thought themselves concealed.

"Come out," he commanded. "Show yourselves!"

"Subtle, Rupert," Moira said, then shrugged. "Some persuasion might perhaps be called for."

"Allow me," Giles answered coldly. Moments later, a carpet of dark smoke roiled over the street, bearing on its tide handfuls of grey-clad men who coughed and gasped for unpolluted air. The moment they half-recovered themselves, the men formed a line, weapons at ready, blocking the entrance to the tower-block. Amongst them, Giles recognized his old enemy, Quentin Travers, the man who had tried to take his Buffy away--the man who was, incidentally, Wesley's uncle.

"You have your choice," Moira told the Councilors calmly. "Leave, or I'll kill you. Mr. Giles may have scruples, but I've none. Remember--" Her voice dropped to a tone dangerous and low. "I'm not wearing my bracelet now. Remember how you feared me when I served you faithfully."

They weren't cowards, his once-fellow Watchers. Giles had to give them that. Not one moved from position. The unbroken line prevented their passage into the building.

Moira made a fist, raising it to the height of her chest, her eyes dark with anger and magic. "Travers, I've a gift for you--for Rupert and Buffy and my poor boy Wesley, for being such an utter bastard to him his entire life through."

Travers made a dreadful retching noise and dropped to his knees, his chest heaving as it sought the air that could not reach his lungs. Moira ignored him, stepping closer to the waiting rank. The men closed formation above their fallen comrade.

Sebastian's inside, Giles thought. Seb, his son. These men, who'd sworn an oath to the cause of good, yet consigned themselves to the service of darkness instead, prevented his rescue. It required all Giles's strength of will to strike out at them with the flat of his sword instead of the edge.

God help him, he wanted blood! These men had set terrible events in motion. They'd skulked in the shadows and watched Sebastian enter this building, this dreadful, dreadful place. Not one of them had raised a hand to help the innocent young man.

They had broken their oaths to consort with demons and Hellmouths, and all this because his brave Buffy had dared to tell them, "No, I can't play this game by your rules anymore."

A tall man--Walker, was it?--struck a firm blow to Giles's right hand with the metal head of a heavy walking-stick. Giles was entirely defenseless there--the pain staggered him, and sent him backward against the stairs. Too late, he recognized the Watchers' strategy: he and Moira had been driven apart. They wanted him inside, his friend out with them in the street.

"Em!" he called. "Watch yourself!"

"Don't worry about me!" Moira shouted back, her eyes hard, blood trickling from a cut high on her cheek. "Find Seb! Get him out of there!"

Giles staggered again as another blow hit his shoulder, throwing him hard against the door. It worried him that what he must do was also what these men wished him to do, and yet he set his hand upon the brass doorhandle, the cold of the metal striking through to his bones. One swift tug let him through into darkness, and a cold so pervasive it was like the hopelessness of the damned.

Missing Moira badly, Giles groped to find a wall-switch of some sort, tucking the sword beneath one arm as he searched.

At length he found the row of toggles, but was rewarded with no more than a sizzle of power--the bulbs themselves had shattered. "Bloody hell," he muttered, groping in his overcoat pocket for his electric torch.

It wasn't a large torch, but it had been designed to cast a powerful beam, one that now jittered eerily over pestilent-looking walls, lighting words and pictures of utter horror: caricatures of murder bleeding scarlet paint. Ghosts stood in silent array before the drawings that depicted their deaths--and in their midst, quite alive, waited Horace Stanley, seemingly impervious to all that lay around him, his eyes shut, a slight smile playing over his mouth.

"Mr. Stanley," Giles said to him in a tight voice.

"Your son was useless, Rupert. I got tired of waiting," a voice said, in Stanley's plummy Oxbridge tones--but the voice, Giles realized with a shock, was not Stanley's at all but quite another, a voice he knew nearly as well, that had cost him even greater grief, and replayed itself nearly as often inside his head. Once it had spoken in his own adopted accent, the one he'd learned living in London's streets as a boy--but whichever accent it chose, in some part it remained essentially the same.

Stanley's eyes opened, not blue at all, but yellow as bile.

"Ripper," Giles breathed.

The possessed man smiled--that familiar, cruel, curved grin that mocked his own. That was his own, from the time when he had actually smiled in such manner. "Rupert," the demon said, "Welcome home, old son."