Transitions - Ch. 40

"Faster, faster," Buffy kept urging, even though she knew that was not only irrational--it was impossible. Aunt Flora had already floored the gas on the Land Rover to the point that the vehicle would've only needed wings to achieve takeoff. Her maneuvers through the traffic would have made stunt drivers for a big-budget action flick shriek with terror. Willow had her eyes shut and was saying either some sort of prayer to prevent them from crashing and burning, or else a spell to make them invisible to the British equivalent of the highway patrol. Maybe both.

Xander just huddled in the corner, held tightly onto the doorhandle, and looked carsick.

When they hit London, the stream of cars slowed to a crawl, and Buffy had to fight the urge to throw herself out the door and take off running. London was a HUGE city. She could take forever to get where she was going on foot, not to mention the getting-lost potential. Not to mention, too, how suspicious it would look to go running down the street lugging the big, clanking bag of weapons she'd put together. Like true Gileses, the aunts, weirdly enough, had been well supplied with hardware--and she didn't mean hammers and screwdrivers.

Something bad was happening, though. Buffy just knew it. Something so bad she couldn't even begin to imagine.

Buffy had seen way too many scary Jack the Ripper movies to be in any way comfortable with this situation. She remembered getting sucked into one late at night because the tweedy English guy, Herbert, who was the hero, reminded her so much of Giles. In the movie, Herbert had built a time machine that got stolen by The Ripper (who was played by that tall English guy who always played bad guys in the movies) and they'd ended up fighting each other in 1980's San Francisco. Herbert's girlfriend, Amy, had reminded her a little of Jenny Calendar, though Ms. Calendar was way prettier. For a while, in the movie, it looked as if Amy had gotten killed, and the way Herbert reacted to the thought of her being dead was a little too Giles for comfort, a kind of desperate, soft-spoken anguish that made Buffy uncomfortable to watch, almost too uncomfortable to be back on board again for the happy ending.

"What are you thinking?" Willow asked, looking scared.

Buffy shook her head. "Nothing," she said, and started biting her nails, which she never did. She just couldn't stand the suspense. The traffic crept on, and while it did so Buffy realized that she'd begun to call poor Giles every name in the book, muttering the bad words under her breath, and that Willow and Xander were staring at her wide-eyed.

"Sorry, guys," she mumbled, and made herself sit back in her seat, though she couldn't stop from clenching her hands clenched into fists in her lap.

"We're worried too, Buff," Willow said in a quiet little voice, and Xander nodded.

Gradually they made their way over to what was obviously the poorer part of the city, and then there they were, sitting in the parked Land Rover, staring at each other.

Somewhere in the distance, smoke rose into the clear summer sky.

"Smoke?" Willow said.

"Fire!" answered Xander.

Buffy grabbed the bag of weapons, and all three of them took off running, rushing toward the place Willow had marked as most likely on her map. She didn't know what she'd expected--a creepy haunted mansion or something, but what she got was the world's drabbest, ugliest apartment building. Drab, that was, except for the creepy streaks and blisters that marked the outside--the place looked diseased.

"I expected--" Xander began.

"Expected what?" Buffy shot him a look. She tried to tell herself this was the wrong place, had to be the wrong place, but she knew that was a lie. Her Spidey-sense had started jumping like crazy, driven nuts by the concentrated essence of evil.

Staring up at the building, though, she still didn't want to believe.

Smoke poured out all the windows, all the way to the top, and fire all the way to the third floor. Broken glass littered the ground for yards around. There were police cars--what Giles had told her were called panda cars, a name that had struck her as funny--and firetrucks, that weren't making any effort to put out the fire, the firefighters just making sure it didn't spread.

And there was a taxi, with a tall, pretty woman getting out. The tall woman grabbed the nearest policeman hard, looking as if she wanted to shake him.

"Giles told me a story once, about how time stopped here, and everything fell apart. Time stopped." Suddenly, Xander was crying, and Buffy couldn't figure out why--until she realized that they couldn't get in, that Giles and Sebastian must be inside, and she couldn't get to them. Couldn't get to Giles. Her Giles. Who was... Oh, God, who was...

There was a man in gray tweed, sipping tea with a blanket around his shoulders, over by one of the aid cars. Feeling like someone or something else had taken over her body, Buffy rushed over to him, slapping the cup out of his hand as she glared up into his face. Travers. Quentin Travers.

She grabbed his lapels and threw him to the ground, then grabbed him again, shaking and shaking him, screaming in someone else's voice, "You bastard, I am gonna fuckin' kill you! You are a dead, dead, dead man!"

Then all her strength was gone, all the adrenaline that had fueled her this far. She was sitting on the ground with her hands over her face, sobbing, "No no no no no," until someone picked her up and held her.

"They aren't dead," a determined voice said. "They aren't. We must find them."

Through her frantic tears, Buffy saw that the arm that held her was smooth and strong and brown. Celeste's arm. She felt suddenly ashamed of being so hysterical when Celeste was being so calm. Even though she still couldn't make herself breathe right, she pulled back, looking up into the older woman's face.

"We shall find them," Celeste insisted, and reached into her purse to offer Buffy, for once, a packet of Kleenex. "No fears, Buffy. We shall."

Somehow, Buffy believed her. She couldn't do otherwise.

The horror would not register, somehow would not take purchase within his conscious mind. Giles knew he ought to be afraid, knew in fact, that it was irrational not to experience fear at this moment, faced with two of his greatest nightmares: Horace Stanley and the Ripper-demon in one flesh, and yet the terror refused to take hold.

"I would like my son now," he said, in much the same tone he might have used to say, "I believe it may rain later." He no longer smelled the foul odours of the place, or felt the cold. The gathered ghosts filled him with pity rather than fear. Some of them had been so young, and the signs of want and misery still marked their insubstantial forms. The murdered women, dressed in only their rags and their poor, torn flesh, were none of them larger than Buffy or Willow--most of them, in fact, seemed smaller, small as children. He could scarcely imagine the sort of man who would have been willing to purchase their fragile bodies for pleasure.

"Wouldn't you like to go now?" he asked them, speaking kindly, even as he remembered some of their names. "Mary Ann, Annie, Elizabeth, wouldn't you like to leave here? Catherine, Mary Jane, Martha, wouldn't you like to go free?"

They were weeping, silver tears from mirrored eyes. Giles felt such pity that he wanted to weep too, but he did not.

"This is not the way it is meant to be!" snarled the demon inside his stepfather's body.

"No, I should not imagine you'd think so." Quietly, he pronounced the spell that would release the ghosts from whatever evil force bound them there. Moira had taught him that spell, and the way around the traditional ritual that must usually accompany it.

"The bell is your voice," she'd said, "The book is your hands. The candle is your eyes. Say so, and I don't know why, but it works."

Giles thought of Moira, alone outside with the sorcerers. He hoped that she would hold her own, and would not be harmed by the men from the Watchers' Council. His brave Moira--she would not be afraid at this moment, in this situation.

One by one, the ghosts flickered out, and the obscene graffiti began to run in red tears down the blistered walls. Giles turned his back on the demon, and began trying doors, at last finding the one that led downstairs. He shone his torch over the wet, slick steps. The plaster and concrete seemed encrusted with moulds and mildews of the most revolting kind and, as he passed throught the doorway, the stench rose to meet him: fire and smoke, urine and rot, an incredible reek that bit into the back of his throat, and that made his eyes water.

Carefully, Giles descended, the throb of the Hellmouth increasing the closer he got. Once, twenty-five years before, he'd felt that shell between worlds thin beneath him. This time it seemed thinner by far, the Demon Dimension aching to be released, a vibration Giles felt in his back teeth, his as-yet-tender skull and, most painfully of all, in the still-unknit and now recently-bruised bones of his right hand. He touched the hilt of the sword Moira had given him, assuring himself that the weapon still hung by his side.

He realized that candles burned there, and that the smoke of burning herbs wafted--and he wondered why, until he glimpsed the face of the sorcerer who'd set them alight.

"Ethan. I ought to have known," Giles said softly. "You, the Watchers' Council--strange bedfellows indeed. How much have they paid you?"

Giles had meant the questions almost rhetorically; he did not wait for Ethan's response.

Nearest to him, a young man in the suit of a priest--not Sebastian--sat bolt-upright in a hard chair. His blue eyes stretched terribly wide, and tears ran from them unceasingly, the only indication that he remained alive. His hair had gone stark white, and frost rimed his skin. Holding the torch beneath his right arm, Giles used his good hand to feel for the pulse in the priest's throat. It beat weakly, far too rapidly--he rather suspected the young man had gone so deep into shock he might never come out again.

Carefully, not hurrying, he transferred the contents of his overcoat to his trouser-pockets, then draped the heavy garment round the priest's shoulders. Seb had spoken to him of a dear friend and colleague, a Father Fergus Padraig, and Giles suspected this young man must be he. "Pat," he said quietly, "Pat, can you hear me?"

The young man blinked, but otherwise remained without motion.

"Try to hold on," Giles told him. "I'll have you out of here as soon as I may."

"Ripper," Ethan said in a low-voiced.

Giles straightened, and turned, his eyes narrowing, and for a moment fear flashed over Ethan's normally smug face. "I wonder that you feel yourself free to continue...interfering with me, Ethan," he said in a conversational tone. "I once told you that I would kill you if you did so. Did you think that I lied?"

"I think you haven't the bollocks anymore," Ethan sneered, though his voice trembled as he spoke the words.

"Did you?" Giles answered, still without raising his voice. Behind him, the door to freedom slammed, and a heavy tread began to come down the stairs. It would be the demon, he knew, but still he felt no fear.

Ethan moved as if to block his way. Giles backhanded him once, hard, across the mouth, and the sorcerer fell to the floor, his lower lip split and bleeding. In the darkness, beyond where he'd been, Giles spied silvery light and, more importantly, a huddled figure that he recognized in his heart as his son.

He took the five steps that separated them like a sleepwalker, knowing what the silvery light must be, whom it must be.

As he'd known it would, the ghost looked up at him. Its silver eyes ought to have been blue, Giles knew. Sapphire, in fact, like Buffy's eyes.

"Randall," he murmured, "Have you been here all this time?"

The ghost shook its head. It wasn't like the others, trapped and desperate--Giles knew that suddenly. Randall's ghost touched Sebastian's hair, then glanced up, smiling slightly.

Giles knelt upon the rank floor, the concrete that had been poured over earth that contained all the memories of his old sins, poured over the place where Randall died, and where Giles had believed that the other boy had cursed him--but that had only been his own guilt. Randall, even in the extremity of his pain, would not have done so. He had been one of the most entirely good people Giles had ever known.

"I--I--" he tried to begin, but the words seemed to hurt, just as they'd hurt him that night, a quarter-century before. He began to weep, and Randall touched the tears on his cheek, his pale, shining face full of tenderness, the way it had always been.

Giles looked into his eyes, and like the eyes of his mother, found them full of things living men weren't meant to see.

"I am so sorry, Ran," he managed at last. "I am so very sorry."

A small smile flickered again over Randall's mouth, and though no sound emerged, his lips formed the words, "I forgive you."

Giles passed a hand over his face, and when he looked again, the spirit had gone, leaving only Sebastian, supine upon the pulsing ache of the Hellmouth.

"Seb," Giles said. "Sebastian, can you hear me?" He touched his son's shoulder, then his face, feeling the coldness of his skin, the quick, panicked draw of his breath. "Sebastian, it's Rupert. It's your father." Setting the torch carefully beside his knee, he drew off the pullover, then raised Sebastian gently, dressing him in the garment as if he'd been a small boy. "I don't know how much that will help," he told his son, "But perhaps it might make you a bit warmer."

Sebastian gave a shuddering breath, and turned his face against his father's chest, whilst Giles stroked his hair gently. "There, Sebastian, it's all right," he said, with no idea whether or not that might be true. "I've found you."

"Dad," Sebastian moaned, in a dreadful, hoarse voice. "Dad."

"There, now," Giles told him, "Let's see if you can't sit up a bit, now, shall we?"

"Celeste..."

"She's in hospital, worried quite sick about you." Giles nearly hauled his son into an upright position, knowing suddenly that Ethan and the demon would wait no longer to act, that he must think of a solution, and think of it quickly.

"Celeste!" Sebastian said, in a stronger voice.

Giles felt the cold hand of fear brush down his spine. He'd no precognitive abilities whatsoever, but he felt, strongly, that something was about to happen, something he wouldn't have predicted. The cellar seemed, quite unaccountably, rather hot, and a reddish light had begun to flicker at the edges of his vision. What did it mean? Was this something of the demon's, or of Ethan's? It didn't feel like either. It felt different, and yet familiar.

It was there, on the tip of his tongue, or the edge of his brain. Something from far in his past, and frighteningly recent. Oddly, he thought that he heard the wind blow, and a strange, distant music.

God, why couldn't he place it? It felt like... It felt...

Fire exploded everywhere, and suddenly, violently, they were falling. Giles barely managed to keep hold of his son, clutching the young man tightly to his chest even through the sickening jolt and tumble of their descent.

He ought to have known, ought to have expected. Sebastian may have been called Delacoeur, but he was, after all, a Giles through-and-through.

Fire and violence, Giles thought, as something that might be ground rushed up to meet him.

Fire and violence.

All the breath left his body.

Wild Magic.