Transitions - Ch. 48

"Buffy," Giles said, in that controlled voice he used when talking any other way would make him lose it completely, "Would you see that Willow gets away from the tower, please?"

"But--" Buffy knew that he wanted her out of there and safe--or as safe as she could be in that creepy place--but she had this crazy, paranoid fear that if she took even two steps further away she'd lose him again. Though she tried and tried to come up with a good argument as to why she should stay, the words just wouldn't seem to come to her.

Instead she made eye contact with Xander.

Xander mouthed "What?" and Buffy did a head-gesture, letting him know that he needed to take Willow out in her place, but Xander didn't get it.

"Take Willow," she mouthed back.

"What?" Xander was still clueless.

She pointed at Willow, then at the door. Giles would have had to be blind to miss it, but Xander at last tumbled to what she was trying to tell him. He hurried back into the tower, grabbed Will and dragged her away.

When Buffy glanced back, she realized Giles was blind--he'd lost his glasses yet again, so she and Xander would have been nothing but pinkish blurs. Without the lenses to cover them, his eyes looked bare and frightened, filled with all the emotion he so frequently hid. She could read the tension clearly in his face. He never looked away from Sebastian, but he knew she'd stayed.

"Buffy, please, I'd rather you weren't near this." He walked closer to the burning pillar that had been his son, or had his son inside, whichever it was. Buffy cringed, and nearly cried out, when he ran his fingertips over the outside, thinking he'd burn the heck out of his hand--but maybe, she told herself, it wasn't that kind of fire.

"What is it?" she whispered, not daring to speak up. "What did Sebastian do?"

"I think--" Giles started to answer. "I believe--"

With a funny expression on his face, like he was having to touch something really nasty, Giles pushed his hand in through the flaminess. Buffy could hardly stand to watch, it wigged her so badly--she expected him, any second, to pull back a burning stump.

"Rupert?" Celeste said from the foot of the stairs. She sounded tense too, and like she was right there with Buffy in the needing-to-pummel department.

"It's very curious," Giles told them. "I can feel his heartbeat. He's breathing normally. The fire isn't hot."

Buffy climbed a few steps. Obviously, Giles had to be nuts--the minute she got within ten feet, the heat made her skin feel tight and shiny. Not hot? she wondered.

"Uh, sweetie, you could roast marshmallows on him." Good, Buff, she told herself. You get to keep your Princess of Tact crown.

"Hmn?" Giles's face took on a different funny expression, like he was trying to remember something, and his brain-whatevers weren't connecting into that zone right then. He muttered a few words, stopped, then muttered a few more--the result being that the fire jumped over to cover him as well as Sebastian, until the two of them, and what had been the space inbetween, looked like a big burning wall of rainbow-colors.

"Giles!" Buffy yelled, but before the name was all the way out of her mouth, the flame went away like someone had flipped a switch to make it turn off, leaving father and son blinking at each other with a common mildly perplexed look.

"That was quite unusual," Sebastian said, in the sort of tone normal people would use for something not particularly exciting--like maybe seeing a person walk by with a rabbit on a leash instead of a dog.

"Yes, I concur," Giles answered, in the same kind of voice. Buffy wasn't sure whether she wanted to hug him or slap him. "All right, are you, Seb?"

"Quite all right, thank you. Though I must say, it was not at all the effect I expected."

"We shall have to research--" they said in unison, then smiled their identical wry smiles.

"Do you want to hit them, Buffy, or shall I?" Celeste asked drily.

"I say we take turns," Buffy answered. "Until they bleed. You guys, if you're done playing twinsies--?"

"Yes?" they asked. In unison, no less.

"We were worried about you." Buffy shook her head at the two of them. Gileses were even more exasperating when they came in pairs--though she found that the desire to hug was winning, hands down, over the desire to slap her particular member of the species.

"It was the most amazing feeling, Celeste," Sebastian told his wife. "As if I could see and feel everything. As if all the doors had opened."

"And which doors would those be, Bastian?" Celeste asked, in what it shouldn't have taken a genius to recognize as a dangerous voice. Buffy guessed that Sebastian should probably get ready to duck, cover, and run like hell.

Celeste's voice didn't get louder, but it did grow in intensity, until it probably could've drilled holes through sheet metal in under five seconds. "You bloody berk! I thought you were dead! Or dying!" She all but flew up the steps, grabbed hold of Sebastian's shoulders and shook him hard. "If you ever do such a damned foolish thing again, I swear I shall kill you myself."

"Celeste--" Sebastian said mildly.

"Look into my eyes, you bastard--do you think I'm joking?"

Sebastian's own eyes got a chilly--almost a Ripperish look, and slowly Celeste's glare faded.

"Bastian," she said, "I didn't mean... Rupert..."

"I think we ought to leave now," Giles told them both quietly. His face just looked sad, and Buffy knew there had been a moment between the three of them, one she wasn't part of, and one that would take a lot of words to describe. Buffy also knew that none of them wanted to get into it then and there, and that Sebastian wasn't so much mad at Celeste for using that word to describe him, as he was that she'd done it in front of his dad. Not that Buffy was mad at Celeste, but it made her like Sebastian again, that protectiveness--that and how brave he'd been, to do the scary magic.

The flaminess, and the fact that the fire hadn't burned Giles, made Buffy wonder if the whole thing was that Wild Magic that went through their family, and if somehow--maybe because Moira, uber-witch, was Sebastian's mom--Seb was able to control it without going into meltdown, the way his dad had. Of course, both times Giles had actually used the Magic--the one way back in the past, and the one they'd just been through, when it almost killed him--he'd had other major issues going on. She was going to have to ask him, though--she liked the theory, and felt fairly smart for having thought of it.

"We ought to see to Willow," Giles continued. "She'd an episode, not long ago, one that concerns me." He ran a hand over his face, which was gray with tiredness as much as the dust. Buffy felt bad for him, on a bunch of different levels.

"I'm sorry, Rupert," Celeste said, really, truly meaning the words.

"It's all right, love." Giles gave her a weary smile, and gestured toward the door. "But shall we?"

Right at that moment, all Buffy wanted in the world was to get out of the tower, then Mermorgan Hall, then that part of England. She wanted them to go back to Appleyard, take bubblebaths and sleep in the big bed, curled up together. Then maybe, once they'd slept as much as they could possibly sleep, they'd come out, and eat, and ride horses. The thought of that made her sigh.

"I wish we were in Appleyard," Giles said wistfully, as they stepped through the tower door.

"That's what I was thinking," Buffy told him. "Are you doing the Aunt Flora mind-reading thing?"

"No, merely considering how lovely it might be not to have to manage all this for a bit--to lounge about in bed all day--" He lowered his voice. "To have a pleasant soak together in that mammoth tub. Perhaps, later, to go riding over the downs. I'm tired, Buffy, and I wish that wherever we went there needn't always be evil."

"That's really, exactly what I was thinking," Buffy told him.

As she'd seen before, a little tunnel-thing ran from the tower into the main part of the house. Before they'd even reached the far end, the tower itself gave a final shriek and came down, spraying a stinging shower of debris in their direction. They hit the ground fast, letting the worst of the junk go over their heads, but by the time it finally stopped, they were even more bruised and tattered and dusty--and Xander stood in the doorway, looking completely horrified.

"You GUYS," he said. "Left that one a little late, didn't you?"

"I'm afraid I let the spell slip rather suddenly," Giles apologized, climbing to his feet and giving Buffy a hand up. "I didn't expect quite such a violent reaction."

Xander popped him one on the arm. "That's for scaring me."

Giles winced, then glared, but the glare didn't really have much wattage. "Don't do that," he told Xander.

The Hall part of Mermorgan Hall looked pretty much normal--well, normal, that was, if you were an evil baron in a Robin Hood movie. There were stone walls, and tapestries, and one of those wooden balcony-thingies where the minstrels were supposed to play those funny instruments that looked like pregnant guitars--what were they called? Oh, yeah--lutes, that was right. Lots of the walls had shields and spears, swords and axes for decoration.

"My God." Celeste shuddered. "It's no wonder those LeFaye cows are so entirely graceless. Why hasn't Moira done something? This is appalling."

"We're in the House of Evil, surrounded by wicked witches," Xander said, "And you're worried about interior design? Who're they gonna call, Celeste? The guys who don't mind getting sexed to death after they put down the new carpets?"

"I don't believe it's the actual--er--coupling that kills one," Giles answered, in one of his Watcher voices. "It's--ah--afterward that one is ritually slaughtered with a particular knife, known as a..."

"Dad," Sebastian said.

"Ah." Giles reached as if he meant to resettle his glasses, then realized they were gone. "Blast. Yes. At any rate. Willow."

Xander had put her down on a bench, and even though Willow's eyes were open, she just lay there, tears running out of the corners, and down into her hair. Giles knelt beside her, took her hand and, carefully, helped her to sit. Once she was sitting, Buffy sat next to her, and put her arm around her friend, but Will just cried harder.

"Willow," Giles said gently. "I know it's very difficult, but can you tell me what's happened?"

"I--I--felt them. The others," she sobbed. "And it was there. And how could you stand that inside you, Giles? And you didn't, did you, do that kind of thing? And--and I know they're bad and mean and evil and everything, but it's still horrible. Only, I know you didn't, because they didn't find any bodies when you were. And it always made there be bodies."

Giles shut his eyes and bowed his head, and Buffy felt cold inside. "We need to go now," she said. "C'mon. Let's get it together and leave."

"We can't," Giles answered, in a dead-sounding voice. "What Willow's saying is that the Ripper demon, which once was inside me, is loose in Mermorgan Hall. And, no, Willow, despite having done many reprehensible things during that time, I never committed any acts which would..." his voice trailed off. When Giles opened his eyes, they'd gone dark-gray with sorrow.

"And this is a bad?" Xander asked, giving Giles's shoulder a little slap. "That it's loose here? In case you hadn't noticed, those ladies looked like they could deal."

"He's killing them," Giles said, in the same low, flat voice, looking up into Will's face. "Isn't that true, Willow?"

Shiny-eyed with tears, Willow nodded. "G-Giles. I can feel it."

"I know, love," he answered, squeezing her hand. "I know."

Ripper's current host, the old man Horace Stanley, hated his choice in music, but that was just too sodding bad, wasn't it? A certain song had been Ripper's theme ever since bloody Rupert learnt the words, all the way back in--when had that been? All the way back in 1975.

Which wasn't really very long ago, all things considered. He'd been around, as his song said, for quite some time now, and he'd no desire to go back to the demon dimension, not when there were such lovely red flowers to be grown.

Pleased to meet you

Hope you've guessed my name

But what's troublin' you

Is the nature of my game...

Ripper sang merrily as he went about his work--how easy all this had been. A sleeping-spell from his old friend Rayne, in exchange for a little temporary freedom, and now each and every one of the goddamned LeFayes slept.

Not a single one of them woke until her turn came along--and then, how the witches screamed! Ripper loved to see their eyes go wide and terrified. He fancied that trait in all his women, always had, though disappointment filled him, after a time. Each LeFaye looked so much like the others, long red hair and long white nightgowns, similar faces and identical green eyes--but the disappointment wasn't enough to stop him.

The screaming and the terror were his wine, his opium--no, better than wine, better than drugs, better than music and sex and magic--better than all the things bloody Rupert let him try to distract him, back in their bad old days together. Back in the days Ripper wasn't allowed to have what he really wanted.

Ripper could remember, a long time past, spending his days outside the closed-over Hellmouth of Pompeii. He remembered, too, cutting his way to England inside one of Julius Caesar's soldiers--and, finally, starting a new life near London's dimensional scar. Ripper drew the greater part of his power from that weakening of the veil that would always exist in that place that came be known as Whitechapel. Many hosts, many lives, a great deal of his own particular brand of joy. Ripper had no regrets.

Except Rupert. In that alone, Ripper and Stanley were united: they hated Rupert, and they wanted him to suffer. Rupert who'd stopped him. Rupert who hurt him. Rupert who wouldn't let him take the young man. The priest. His son.

Soon enough, that would happen, the hurting and the taking. Soon as his work here was done.

Ripper had found a surgical kit behind the door of a locked room. The scalpels wee old, but quite sharp. He cut carefully, warmth flowing over his fingers. The flowers bloomed, and behind him, in a corner of the room, he could hear Rayne weeping.

"What did you think, Ethan?" Ripper asked, in the old man's pleasant, cultured voice. "I'd been bound for a reason, and you set me free? What did you think I was, really? A genie to grant your wishes?"

Ethan Rayne didn't answer. Ripper hadn't really expected him to. Rayne had been beyond answering for several rooms now, but Ripper found that he liked having an audience, and he made Ethan watch.

Ripper wondered, though, if Ethan would rather have died instead.

Perhaps he should ask him.