The Gatekeeper Trilogy, Book Two - GHOST ROADS

by Christopher Golden

  A muscle twitched in Brother Lucius’s cheek. Spike noted it, filed it away. On its own it didn’t signify, but maybe it would fill in a blank or two later.

  “So maybe when we have a bit more proof that you’ve got the Spear, we’ll have something to discuss,” Spike said, walking toward the door. “But I’ve got to say, back Stateside we call this situation a ‘Mexican standoff.’

  “And what usually happens is that the guy who draws first, dies.” He smiled pleasantly. “And I’m already dead, theoretically.”

  His smile vanished as he opened the door. “To cut to it, gents, I don’t feature me and Dru putting up with this crap much longer.”

  Brother Lucius drew himself up. “Now, just a minute. Do you have any idea—”

  Spike stifled a yawn. “Who you are? How many Sons of Entropy badges you’ve collected?” He felt for his pack of cigs and pulled one out. He lit it, and slowly pulled the smoke into his lungs. Held it, blew it out just as slowly. “Between Dru and me, we’ve bagged three Slayers. As I understand it, your fearless leader has put one and only one out of her misery. So.”

  He gestured for them to leave.

  “Don’t let it slam on the way out, right? And have a pleasant evening.”

  Brother Lucius was livid. “You—”

  “—won’t regret this one whit,” Spike said. “In fact, it’s the most fun I’ve had in days.”

  “Brother,” Brother Enoch said softly, “perhaps we should . . .”

  Brother Lucius swept past him in a fury of indignation. Brother Enoch glanced pleadingly at Spike, who winked at him.

  “Tell the old boy not to get his knickers in a knot,” Spike said. “We’ve got the brat, and he’s alive and well. When you come through, we’ll come through.”

  “Yes. Thank you,” Brother Enoch murmured.

  “But you’d best hurry things along. We’ve been talking about changing him. We’ve always wanted a son.”

  He shut the door in Brother Enoch’s face. For perhaps five full minutes, he stood thoughtfully, smoking, playing out various scenarios. He had no idea why this was taking so bloody long. Still, he was British, and used to the slow wheels of bureaucracy. But that didn’t make him any happier about things.

  Savagely he kicked the door, then grabbed his duster and headed for home.

  “Baby, I’m home,” Spike called out, as he entered the cottage. No answer, so he went into the bedroom. What he saw there shocked him only slightly.

  Dru had gagged the boy and tied him to the bedpost. Her favorite doll, Miss Edith, sat across from him on the mattress. The dolly was blindfolded, which meant she’d been naughty. Dru sat with her mantilla all askew between the two of them, serving pretend tea from a miniature tea set Spike had stolen from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, on a dare.

  “One lump or two?” she queried the boy, making stabbing motions at his eyes.

  “Now, pet, no hitting.” He joined the party, perching on the bed and curling one leg beneath himself. “I don’t think they’ve got the bloody thing,” Spike said to Dru.

  “I don’t think they’re relaying your messages to the proper authorities,” Dru retorted, as she poured him some tea in a tiny bone china cup. “Tell Miss Edith how tasty your tea is, love. She has misbehaved and will not be taking any, and she should know what she has lost.”

  “It’s shatteringly brilliant,” he said, flashing his white teeth. “The best. Numero uno.”

  “Spain,” she said sadly.

  He set down his cup. “I think you’re right. I think we’re stuck with some minor Entropy clerk who’s trying to make a name for himself in the organization. Thinks he’ll come running into the great hall one night with the boy, bow and scrape, ‘Look, King Arthur, I’ve got the Gatekeeper’s heir. Make me a knight of the bleeding round table.’” He raised his nose in the air and spoke like an aristocrat, which sent Dru into peals of laughter.

  He was glad. He loved to make his baby laugh.

  “What do we do if they don’t have the Spear?” she asked.

  He leaned across her tiny ocean of tea things and kissed the end of her nose. “I suppose we’ll eat him.”

  “Si, matador!” She clicked her fingers. “Si, si!”

  Chapter 10

  THE BROTHERS WERE UPSTAIRS IN THEIR CLOISTERS, singing their unholy chants. Their voices filtered into the darkness below, as did the screams of the sacrifice. But Il Maestro barely noticed. His gaze was on the corpse of the traitor, Brother Albert, as it hung in the sulfurous, boiling air above the pentagram.

  In the shadows, his dark lord watched as Il Maestro waved a hand over the dead mouth and flicked open the dead eyes with a snap of his fingers. From the mouth crawled a spider and a worm, both wilting in the heat. The eyes of the dead man were milky, but something moved beneath their filmy domes.

  Sweating and blistered, Il Maestro began the questioning.

  “Wretched betrayer, before you suffer the eternal torments of hell, tell me what I wish to know.”

  “Maestro,” the dead man said, “forgive me.”

  “Forgiveness is beyond me,” Il Maestro retorted. “Had you need for that, you should have looked elsewhere.”

  “Maestro, spare me.”

  Il Maestro only chuckled. He pointed to the dead mouth. “You met the Slayer.”

  “I met her.”

  “You told her where I am.”

  “She did not believe me.”

  “Oh?”

  The shadows shifted. Il Maestro’s dark master was listening hard.

  “She believes you are in Vienna.”

  “Why on earth would she believe that?”

  “Maestro, I burn,” said the corpse. “I am in agony.”

  “It’s only the beginning, my friend.” Il Maestro smiled to himself in anticipation. “Tell me why she believes I’m in Vienna.”

  “I do not know.”

  “Liar!”

  From a table laden with instruments of torture, Il Maestro picked up a whip which glowed with a purplish light. He struck the corpse across the face. The corpse writhed.

  Again, across the milky eyes, which burst. The fluid began to steam as it cascaded over the temples.

  The body gasped and said, “Maestro, I don’t know.”

  Il Maestro brought the whip down again.

  The corpse groaned dully.

  He raised the whip—

  “Enough,” said the demon in the shadows. “This is accomplishing nothing.”

  Il Maestro was disappointed, but obeyed. “Name your confederates,” he said, trying a new direction.

  The corpse was silent for a moment. Then it said, “None.”

  “No one?” Il Maestro shook his head. “Not for one moment do I believe you.”

  The eyeless corpse said, “No one helped me.”

  “But surely, there were those who supported you. Who wished you well.”

  “Ahhh.” Brother Albert twisted in the air. “Alone.”

  The dead man burst into flame. In less than five seconds, he was nothing but a pile of cinders. Il Maestro raised his brows and stared into the shadows.

  “I didn’t do that. Did you?”

  “No, you fool. He did.” The demon sounded disgusted. “And you allowed it.”

  “No, my lord,” Il Maestro protested. “I didn’t—”

  “Silence! Oh, you are useless. Useless.” The shadows shifted again. The heat in the chamber rose unbearably, singeing the hair off Il Maestro’s body. He was terrified that he, too, would burst into flames.

  “Please, my lord,” he said.

  “You promised me the Slayer,” the demon said. “And if she is not here by the full moon, your daughter takes her place. On the altar, and in Hell.”

  Il Maestro bowed his head. But in the folds of his robe, his hands were clenched. That would never happen.

  Never.

  Angel had just awakened. He was in a pension in a small town near Geneva, nowhere on a map. There was an 8:30 P.M.
express to Milan. That was the expected rendezvous point with Buffy and Oz. If they weren’t there, he was supposed to call Giles. For all the good that would do. If they weren’t there, Angel would be on his own in his search for the heir to the Gatehouse.

  He wandered across a square, admiring the gargoyle fountain, and saw warm lights through green and yellow bottle-bottom windows.

  He pushed open the door and quickly, covertly scanned the bar, but came up with nothing out of the ordinary. Still, he was a stranger, and there was a large mirror over the bar itself. He moved to a table out of range and sat, so that no one would notice that he cast no reflection. It was a form of self-awareness that had been instinctive over the years.

  After a few minutes a young woman sauntered over to him. She had short red hair and a large emerald-colored stud in her nose. She eyed him appreciatively, then spoke to him in Italian. He was able to decipher that she was asking for his order, so he told her he wanted a Campari. Then she shook her head and pointed to a short, wiry man seated at the bar, who turned slowly and faced Angel.

  Angel’s lips parted in shock. He had seen that man before.

  In Sunnydale.

  The man slid off the stool and walked to Angel’s table. He held a glass in his hand, which he raised in Angel’s direction. He said a few words to the waitress. She answered, “Campari,” then scooted away.

  “Signor Angel,” the man said, touching his chest. “Small world. I’m stunned.”

  Angel shrugged. This man had been one of the Sons of Entropy in the car that had tried to follow Buffy to the airport. They had shot their compatriot rather than allow him to spill any of their secrets to Angel.

  “Stunned.” Angel looked at him hard. “How long have you been following me?”

  The man looked offended. “Truly, I was not.”

  The waitress came with Angel’s Campari. His new companion made a great show of paying for it, but Angel said nothing.

  “No, truly, I was not,” the man repeated, “but let me take this opportunity to reason with you.”

  Angel looked at him askance.

  “Listen.” The man scooted forward on his chair, clearly eager to continue. “As you have no doubt realized, my master is an extremely powerful man with superior knowledge of the arcane.”

  “Superior knowledge,” Angel said dryly.

  “Yes, indeed.” The man smiled. “He knows of a way to turn you—and only you, because of your soul—into a fully human man who will live out his days in peace, then die the true death.” He clapped his hands together. “No more vampire lifestyle. No more bloodlust.”

  “And in return?”

  “Well, of course you must serve him,” the man replied. “But it’s a small matter, really.” He looked thoughtful, then smiled brightly. “For example, as a token of your gratitude, you might explain to us where the Slayer is.”

  “I’m not with her anymore,” Angel said dully.

  “Oh?” The man’s voice had that quizzical singsong rhythm Angel had always despised.

  “She’s in Austria, I think,” Angel went on. “Vienna. I don’t know.” He looked away.

  “Ah. Lover’s quarrel.”

  As the man feigned sympathy, Angel became aware of movements in the bar. The patrons were shifting their positions, focusing more intently on him. He heard a click at the front door. Locked from the outside, he guessed.

  The faces on some of the other customers seemed to blur, reshape. A few looked away.

  Angel raised his eyes to the mirror. Seated in a booth to his far right, the scaly, horned face of a demon stared back at him.

  “He sees,” the demon said.

  Angel’s companion jumped up from his chair and raised his hands. At once, everyone else in the bar followed suit. Human faces melted away, revealing the truth: Angel was surrounded by monsters and demons, faces covered with scales and bony ridges and sores and hideous distortions. Bodies stooped, grew, cleft, became long, wormlike forms. They hissed, they seethed, they gazed at Angel with hunger and hatred.

  The man clapped his hands together once. His voice was calm and soft.

  “Accept my master’s most gracious offer, or be destroyed,” he said.

  With demons and monsters making an impenetrable circle around him, Angel remained in his seat. Calm. Bold. He did not stand. Did not raise his hands to defend himself.

  Instead, he smiled thinly.

  “I’ve told you where the Slayer’s gone, or at least as much as I know,” he said, staring at the man before him, one of the Sons of Entropy who had now, to Angel’s mind, become just a little too numerous.

  Angel laughed a bit, and shook his head. “But you don’t believe me, do you?” he asked.

  “On the contrary, vampire,” the acolyte said. “You have only confirmed what we already knew. The Slayer is expected in Vienna, and she will be greeted there. But there are ways you could help Il Maestro, ways in which you could be useful in deceiving her. Entrapping her.”

  With a small grunt, Angel narrowed his eyes. The flesh of his face seemed to quiver, and then it changed. His brow grew heavier, jutting out, and the skin around his eyes and nose became rough and callused. His eyes blinked and when they opened again, they glowed a fierce, predatory yellow. He looked around at the monsters and demons. He watched as they snarled at him, moved into a tighter circle, their chests rising and falling as though all that held them back was this acolyte’s . . . this human’s command.

  Several of them were absolutely terrifying to behold, even for Angel.

  So fast the acolyte barely flinched, Angel launched himself from the chair, grabbed the man by his thick, graying hair, and slammed his face down on the table in front of him. His nose shattered and blood jetted from one nostril.

  “You son of a bitch,” Angel whispered into his ear as the demons and monsters screeched a horrid chorus but did not move any closer. “Your boss should have told you to do your homework. I’m a dead man. You can dress that up however you like, magick can do a lot of things, but it can’t make me alive again! And even if it could, I’m not a man who can be bought. You should have known that coming in.”

  With a roar of terrible rage, Angel hefted the whimpering acolyte by collar and belt, lifted the man over his head, and ran at the circle of horrors that surrounded them. They parted for him, staring mutely, and Angel used all his strength to hurl the man over the bar. The acolyte’s shout of fear was cut off as he slammed into the mirror, which shattered into a thousand silver fragments, destroying the monstrous image of the room around it.

  The shards fell like deadly rain, many of them slicing into the fallen acolyte’s body where he lay behind the bar.

  A black wave seemed to sweep across the room, invisible but tangible. Angel’s hair ruffled with a sickly breeze. He turned, his entire body cold and silent as stone, without even the illusion of life, of breathing and warmth, that vampires so often used to camouflage themselves. He turned to face the monsters.

  The monsters. Which were now nothing more than common street thugs and local rowdies. There were several Sons of Entropy among them, he saw, but even they only stared at Angel in horror, stared at the flaring yellow eyes and the lips curled back to reveal gleaming fangs. Angel seethed, furious not only that they would think him a likely traitor but that the idiot spellcaster the Sons of Entropy had put on his tail had actually believed Angel had lived nearly two and a half centuries without being able to tell a real demon from an illusory one.

  Demons stank. The only odor coming off these goons was that of stale whiskey and old beer.

  Still, they stared.

  Angel was stooped slightly, almost like an animal. Now he stood straight and glared at them all.

  “You’ve been led to your deaths,” he said grimly, his voice thick with anger and the lust for blood. “The first man I catch dies the fastest. The last is my supper.”

  He took a single step and they broke and ran, crashing through the windows of the place and battering dow
n the door from within. Only the few Sons of Entropy tried to stay behind, and even they were swept back by the tide of fear. One of the acolytes broke free and brought a long, wicked-looking blade out of his jacket, then swung it around toward Angel’s face.

  Angel took the blade away, and then gave it back to him. As decoration. It adorned the man’s chest amid gouts of spurting blood.

  The vampire walked on. Already most of the thugs had fled. Two acolytes remained, shoving aside the others now, the freelance talent they’d hired for aid.

  They looked terrified.

  A moment later, Angel gave them reason to be.

  By the time he relaxed and his face returned to normal, he was alone in the bar.

  * * *

  “Milano,” Oz said. Buffy half-expected him to pull a guidebook from his pack and begin rattling off all the things to do and see in the city. But Oz was quiet, and she was grateful.

  They were sitting inside a cafe in a huge park. The cafe was very old-world, crowded with plaster statues and cupids and lots of oil paintings on the walls. It was pricey, too, and Buffy felt out of place in her traveling clothes. It was called Angelina, and it was where Angel had promised to try to rendezvous with them. How he knew of a cafe in Milan, Italy, with an in-joke for a name, Buffy did not know. Maybe he had a lot of guidebooks, too.

  The thing was, he’d been due almost an hour and a half ago. And he hadn’t shown.

  Oz sipped his coffee and said, “He’s taking a train. Maybe it was late.”

  “Don’t they all run on time over here?” she asked, toying with her silverware.

  “Maybe not.” He smiled at her gently. “He’ll show.”

  She flashed him a lopsided smile. “I have a strange feeling of déjà vu here, Oz, only you would be one of my girlfriends back in L.A. and we would possibly be discussing a boy named Tyler. Or maybe Jeff. And we would be at the Cineplex, me officially not caring if he showed.”

  He smiled back. “You’re okay,” he said, then shrugged. “I don’t mean I think you’re okay. Which I do. And you are. What I’m trying to say is that you’re strong. Slayer strong and person strong.”