Jean-Marc cried out in pain and reached for his abdomen, where his stomach seized and revolted. Doubled over, he fell down the rest of the stairs to sprawl, only semiconscious, at the bottom.
The knowledge.
His father, Henri Regnier, the second Gatekeeper, had died. Jean-Marc now understood, for the first time, exactly what horrors he faced, what chaos he held back from the world.
As his mother slowly began to move down the steps toward him, Jean-Marc Regnier, the third Gatekeeper, buried his face in his hands and wept bitter tears of surrender.
The year was 1999, and the third Gatekeeper, Jean-Marc Regnier, lay submerged in the warm water collected within the Cauldron of Bran the Blessed. The ancient iron cauldron held magickal properties, life-giving ones, which were helping to keep him alive.
Immediately after he had risen from the Cauldron, Jean-Marc was robust once more, as robust as when he’d only half a century of life behind him. He had a secondary source of magickal life support in the legendary Spear of Longinus, which he was now forced to carry about with him whenever he was not in the Cauldron. But even with the Spear, as the hours went by, the strain of keeping the Gatehouse bound to his will, keeping all his charges in check, made the Gatekeeper age and wither and his magick weaken. Twice a day now he was forced to immerse himself in the warm waters of the Cauldron. Soon he would have to increase the frequency, and he wondered how long it would be before the Cauldron ceased to revive him.
It will not be long, thought the Gatekeeper, as the sun began to warm his home. It was morning, and he relished it. For he knew that each passing morning might be his last.
Dawn had come to Boston only minutes earlier. The Gatehouse had gone relatively unmolested in the time since the Sons of Entropy were defeated within it by the combined might of Gatekeeper and Slayer. But now, outside, a figure in a long, heavy coat stood in front of a brownstone apartment building on Beacon Hill and tried very hard to pretend that, like other passersby, he was not aware of the Gatehouse’s existence. Ancient magicks had hidden it from view. Those who walked right by the building did not see it.
Brother Antonio did.
He had flown that very night from New York City, arriving too late to be of any assistance to his brethren, the other acolytes of the Sons of Entropy, who had been vanquished in the great battle. But he served the interests of Il Maestro, and Brother Antonio knew there would be other ways in which he could do precisely that—serve.
Turning away from the house so as to avoid the temptation of allowing his eyes to stray to it, Brother Antonio removed a tiny cellular phone from inside his long coat. He flipped it open and quickly dialed a familiar number, which connected him to a villa on the outskirts of Florence, Italy. The city of his birth. Firenze.
“Antonio,” a voice said after the ringing had ceased.
The voice of Il Maestro. He always knew who was calling.
“My lord,” Antonio said. “The spell was difficult to construct without drawing the attention of the Gatekeeper, but I have done so. Only Regnier himself remains in the house. Excluding, of course, those things which do not belong to our reality. It was simple to scan them out.”
Silence on the other end. Antonio had never liked the long silences that were common to Il Maestro at times.
“The Slayer is gone, then?” Il Maestro asked at length.
“I don’t know how, Maestro, since I did not see her leave. Some sorcerous means, perhaps. But yes, she is gone indeed.”
Il Maestro laughed dryly. Brother Antonio shivered. It was a horrible sound.
“You may go and refresh yourself. Return to that place this evening at dusk,” Il Maestro said. “The Gatehouse is nearly defenseless. I will send more acolytes to follow your instructions. Take that house, Antonio. Otherwise, it will be your blood that fills the cup of my sacrifice.”
“Well, that was not so fun,” Buffy said softly, as she reseated herself across from Oz at the tiny English pub not far from the bed and breakfast where they’d managed to find a room.
“Your mom’s okay?” Oz asked, as their steaming plates of shepherd’s pie were brought to the table by a young man with an outdated bob and a scraggly goatee.
“I don’t know. She sounded defensive about something, but she wouldn’t say what. She kept telling me over and over how fine she was. Which she did not sound. She sounded scared.” Buffy looked down at her food, a heap of mashed potatoes and peas on top of something that looked like Sloppy Joes. “I thought this stuff was a pie.”
“It’s called that,” Oz offered. “It must be a British thing.”
The village they were in was not far south of the Cotswold Hills, east and slightly south of London. Most of the local economy seemed to be agricultural, but there were several beautiful shops in the town— likely for tourists who were just driving around Great Britain—and Buffy and Oz had peeked into every one of them while Angel slept the day away. Buffy had bought a thick wool sweater. No telling how long they’d be here. Besides, it was on sale.
Though she had called Giles even before they’d all gone to bed that morning, Buffy had had to try several times during the subsequent day to catch her mom—it was eight hours earlier there, after all—and now, all the effort had yielded one strained and very short conversation.
The proprietor of the B and B, a hugely fat man with a crooked nose and just enough hair on either side of his gleaming pate to avoid being labeled “bald,” had been none too pleased to see them at just before dawn that morning. But when they brandished their backpacks and explained that they’d been hiking cross-country and got a bit turned around, the old man softened up some. He probably could see how tired they were.
Buffy didn’t think she’d ever forget the weirdly absurd sight of Angel whipping out Giles’s American Express card. Surreality at its finest. Still, it had achieved the desired effect. A single room with two large beds, one supposedly for the guys and the other for Buffy. Actually, the grumpy but soft-hearted old innkeeper was also, in Buffy’s near expert opinion, quite the lech. He hadn’t questioned the sleeping arrangements, but he had given Buffy a look of frank appraisal that had caused Angel to squeeze his hands into fists so tight his nails cut into his palms.
It didn’t matter. What did matter was that, with the beds shifted properly, and down comforters placed just so, Angel had been able to shield himself from the sun without too much trouble. To be safe, Oz had made a homemade “do not disturb” sign and hung it from the doorknob, then asked the manager to leave their friend to sleep, as he was very exhausted.
“That was really tasty,” Oz said casually as they walked from the restaurant. “I mean, I usually like to segregate my meat from my carbs and my veggies. Not a bigotry thing at all, you know, but it makes it easier to savor each individual flavor. This was different. A glorious mélange.”
Buffy glanced sidelong at him as they walked down the village street, receiving curious but generally friendly glances from the townspeople. She smirked slightly, then reached out and gave Oz a small shove.
“Hey!” Oz protested. “In case you didn’t get the flyer, I am not Xander’s substitute on this trip.”
Buffy nodded, smiling. “Okay, but ‘glorious mélange’?”
“Glorious mélange,” Oz insisted.
“Didn’t the Dingoes go up against them in a battle of the bands once?” Buffy asked.
Oz looked slightly chagrined, but his smile told Buffy that he had expected her to catch the reference. “Okay,” Oz said, and shrugged. “And we trounced them. It was cool. Shepherd’s pie is a glorious mélange. I can’t help it if food imitates art.”
Buffy just rolled her eyes and laughed, pressing on. Now that the sun was dropping below the horizon, she wanted to get back to Angel as quickly as possible.
“You think he’s all right?” she asked, suddenly anxious.
“As long as nobody stole his sheets, I expect he’s sleeping like a baby,” Oz confirmed. “A vampire baby, actually.”
/> “Don’t even go there,” Buffy warned.
“Go where?”
“Smart lad.” Buffy laughed. She found herself understanding more and more what Willow loved about Oz. He listened. Carefully. And he pretty much let other people be who they were without judging them. Not that he didn’t take your measure. But it was more because he was interested in finding out what it was than that it mattered to him.
He wasn’t her type, of course. Not at all. She’d already been in love with one creature of the night as it was, and that hadn’t worked out very well.
“Buffy, I need to mention something,” Oz went on. “It’s about that being all right thing.”
She looked at him, waiting.
“See, there’s a full moon in twelve days.”
“Oh.” Which meant they had eleven nights before Oz turned into a werewolf. “Okay.”
“Just wanted you to know.”
“Got it,” she said, inwardly sighing. Oz’s time of the month couldn’t come at a more inconvenient time. Unless it had been earlier.
At the bed and breakfast, she fished out the room key as they went in through the front door.
They quickly climbed the stairs to the second floor. At the back of the house, a tall window showed the last of the sunlight bleaching from the sky. Buffy used her key to open the door to their room. She slid it open quietly, not wanting to wake Angel if he was still sleeping.
“What took you so long?” he asked.
Buffy looked up to see him toweling off hair he’d apparently washed in the sink. He had his black jeans on, but no shirt, and Buffy’s breath caught slightly as she saw him looking like that. So natural. So alive. She remembered that part of him so well, the part that made her forget the vampire within him. But the vampire lurked beneath the surface, evidenced by the tattoo on his back: the mark of Angelus. She winced, felt a stab of loneliness and regret, and pushed it all away.
“Shepherd’s pie,” Oz reported, quite matter-of-factly.
“E.T. phoned home,” Buffy added. “To the mother ship.”
“Do we have a car?” Angel asked, turning to pick up his turtleneck sweater.
Then Buffy sensed the sudden arrival of a presence behind her. Felt warm breath, and the kinetic energy of another person in close proximity. Even as the new arrival said, “You do now!” Buffy spun, grabbed the British man by the throat and pinned him to the wall.
“You picked the wrong room, freakazoid,” Buffy snarled, and hauled back a fist to break his nose.
“Wait,” the man said in a choked voice. “I’m . . . from the Council. You . . . you called!”
Buffy glared at him even as her muscles relaxed and she began to draw back. Behind her, Angel slipped into his shirt and turned to look at her quizzically.
“You called who? The Council?”
“You must be the vampire,” the shaking man said, and his thin, angular, scarecrow body rattled with his nerves. Still, he was a brave one, for he stepped forward and held out his hand to Angel. “Ian Williams, sir, at your service.”
Williams turned to gaze respectfully at Buffy. “And might I say, miss, that assisting you is one of the greatest honors in my brief career thus far.”
Oz rubbed a hand across his upper lip. “I’m sorry,” he said, “this is all very nice, but did I hear . . . Ian, was it? I heard Ian mention a car, and I can’t help but have faith that the two of you heard it as well.”
Angel moved a bit closer to their new arrival. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Haven’t we already dealt with a couple of other interested parties supposedly from the Council who didn’t turn out to be what they seemed?”
The brown-haired, hawk-nosed Williams smiled gently. “Indeed you have. Which is why I will give you several other contact names you may use if you want to try to get in touch with the Council itself, or certain members. Also, I did bring along the car and supplies you requested, as well as a set of maps . . .”
Williams trailed off and stared at Angel. “But then, of course, you know Britain rather well, don’t you?”
“It’s been a long time,” Angel said simply, unfazed by the insinuating nature of Ian’s comment.
“About this car we requested,” Buffy pressed, unconvinced. It was true—they had discussed getting a rental. Oz had a fake ID that made him old enough to sign the papers. But they hadn’t gotten that far in the game plan, not here in quaint old Brigadoon.
“Well, I’m using you in the plural sense,” Williams said earnestly. “I had a call from Mr. Giles, who personally requested Council assistance. He said you were coming to England, but we assumed it would be London.”
“Well, yeah, that was the plan. But we had a bit of a detour,” Buffy said. Though they’d concentrated on London, the lost spirits who attempted to bar their way at the last moment had made them lose focus. It was also possible that what they had come through was the closest the ghost roads got to London, or, considering the unlikeliness of that, the freshest breach. That seemed more probable.
“Yes, and Mr. Giles phoned this morning to tell us where to find you. Which I did. I’m sorry I was unable to reach you. I rang you, but there was no answer.”
Angel shrugged. “I must have slept through it.”
Buffy said, “You know we can confirm all this with a phone call.”
“Absolutely. And I wouldn’t be insulted in the slightest,” the man assured her. He crossed to the nightstand, picked up the phone, and held it out to her.
Buffy took the phone. “Thanks. Don’t be insulted by the fact that I don’t care if you’re insulted.” Then she stared down at it. The restaurant proprietor had dialed her home phone number for her. She regretted now not insisting that he teach her to do it by herself. “Do I press one first?” she asked, embarrassed.
“Allow me,” he offered. With lightning speed, he pressed a series of buttons, then paused. “I’m ready for your number,” he informed her.
“I’ll do it.” She took the phone back and punched in Giles’s home phone number. There was a moment of dead air, then ringing. And then Giles’s phone machine.
She humphed and passed it back to the man. “Please reboot. I’m trying another number.” She looked at the guys. “The library.”
Giles answered on the first ring.
“It’s me,” Buffy said. “Did you . . . ?”
“Ah, Buffy, excellent,” Giles replied. “Did Williams find you, then?”
“Well, yeah, but . . .”
“Good, good. Have you any word on— Oh.” His tone changed. “How lovely. Of course.” Into the phone, he said, “Buffy, it appears I have the pleasure of leading a tour of the library for some remedial English students.”
“Oh, you’d better go,” Buffy said.
“Phone me when you reach London, would you?” he asked, sounding frustrated.
“Sure. Good luck with the tour.”
Buffy put the phone back in its cradle and turned to the others.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”
But by then, Oz was already picking up his backpack. Angel shoved a few things into his duffel, and they were ready.
“So there’s a car waiting, but we have no place to take it,” Buffy said softly, so that Williams wouldn’t hear her.
Ian Williams smiled. Then he reached long, slender fingers into a breast pocket and withdrew a piece of paper with spidery handwriting across it.
“I think I can remedy that,” Williams said. “On that paper is the address of a building in London we believe may actually be a safe house for the Sons of Entropy. It isn’t the headquarters, we know that. But it’s a first step.”
Buffy was sorry he hadn’t told her that sooner. Giles would have been pleased.
Oz snatched the paper from Buffy’s fingers and handed it to Angel.
“You’re a native, basically. You’re navigating,” he told the vampire.
Moments later, they all carried their bags down the stairs. Williams followed them down to show them the
car they’d be driving. In the darkened village street, it started right up. With a last round of handshakes and thank-you’s, they loaded into the car, and drove off, the man merely standing there and watching them go.
To London, Buffy thought. To the beginning of answers.
Chapter 2
IT WAS SHORTLY BEFORE ELEVEN O’CLOCK THAT NIGHT AS they sped along on the road to London. Buffy sat next to Angel in the front seat and winced as he burst past another car and screamed back into their lane as an oncoming car approached.
“That was pretty close,” she gritted.
“Buffy, don’t backseat drive,” he chided, suppressing a sad chuckle. For all the world, they sounded like an old married couple. But for all the world, they never would be.
“Everybody’s on the wrong side of the road,” she said peevishly. “Why don’t they drive the same way as us?”
“Just to be contrary.” With a slight smile, Angel put his foot on the gas. He supposed he was allowed to be perverse at times. After all, a demon did live inside him.
She folded her arms and squinted through narrowed lids. “Your driving’s terrible.”
“You want Oz to take over?” he suggested, making as if to pull over.
“No.” She looked over shoulder at Oz in the back seat. “No offense. It’s just that if we crash, Angel has a better shot at surviving it than you do.”
Oz shrugged. “None taken.”
“And I’m touched,” Angel teased her.
“What’s the rush, anyway?” she demanded.
“Buffy, you can stay up for twenty-four hours,” he said. “So can Oz. So can I. But I can’t stay out for twenty-four hours. So we need to be efficient.”
“Efficient, not dead.”
She scowled and squinted.
He put the pedal to the metal.
Oz said, “Um, now may not be a good time for this, but I have to go to the bathroom.”
“Maybe we should eat again, too,” Buffy said. “Fuel up.” She narrowed her eyes at Angel. “How are you holding up? We haven’t exactly seen any O-positive Stop-N-Go’s.”
The Gatekeeper Trilogy, Book Two - GHOST ROADS Page 4