Assuring himself that Willow was, for the most part, safe, Angel tried to contain Jacques’s seizure by grabbing him, yelling, “Someone get something to keep him from swallowing his tongue.”
“No!” Willow cried, as the ceiling rained plaster down on them. “The same thing happened to Xander when he became the Gatekeeper.”
His fall cushioned by Angel, Jacques was spread-eagled on the floor. His legs kicked and his arms flailed wildly.
Oz got back up and charged at Cordelia, who went crazy, grabbed the frying pan from Willow and really pounded on him. “Why don’t they make these things out of silver?” she cried.
“Hey!” Willow shouted. “Don’t forget who you’re whaling on!”
An ear-splitting whistle like a teakettle added its counterpoint to the cacophony. Oz threw his head back and clutched his ears, and Cordelia shouted and accidentally dropped the frying pan.
The door to the room slammed open and a high, wild wind blasted in, blowing everyone, including Oz, to the floor. Willow grabbed Cordelia’s hand, and Cordelia hung on to Angel’s boot. Angel felt for purchase, and wrapped his hands around a marble column, holding on for all he was worth.
It was like being in a hurricane. The walls of the room buckled and cracked. Statuary crashed to the floor, and the floor split open in a series of fissures.
“Oh, my God!” Cordelia cried shrilly. “It’s got to be Il Maestro!”
“Hold on,” Angel bellowed. “Nobody let go.”
“Oz, where’s Oz?” Willow asked, terrified. “What’s going on?”
Then Jacques let out a long, shuddering moan.
“Look,” Willow said, staring at a point beyond Angel’s shoulder.
Angel fought the fierce wind as he turned his head, but the column he was holding on to blocked his view, and he could see nothing.
Then two figures glided through a nearby red-velvet couch and stood beside Angel. One was the ghost of Antoinette Regnier. The other was a young, handsome man as transparent as she. He had jet-black hair and dark eyes, and he was crying. Angel stared, amazed. It had to be Jean-Marc Regnier, more youthful than they had ever seen him in life.
Tendrils of blue light undulated like electric currents all over the room, from the corners to the ceiling to the floor, and bathed the inert boy in an aura of magickal energy. Jacques was raised up, floating at the waist level of the two ghosts, and the man touched the boy’s cheek lovingly.
“My son,” whispered the male ghost. “Thank you, vampire, for bringing him to me.”
The wind stopped at once. Jean-Marc stretched out his hands and placed them on his son’s forehead. He closed his eyes and murmured something in a slow, even tone. He was chanting.
Jacques opened his eyes. He saw Jean-Marc and cried out, “Father!” But in that moment, both Jean-Marc and Antoinette disappeared.
“No,” Jacques whispered, lowering his head. For a few seconds, there was no sound in the room. The proverbial pin could have dropped.
Then he raised his head. He regarded them all with the face of a child and the eyes of a very old soul.
“Your friend is released,” he said, “and I must hurry to take his place. Fulcanelli will know his power is gone, and kill him with the black burn.”
Without another word, he strode out of the room.
“Oh, um, Mr. Gatekeeper,” Cordelia called.
“Don’t bother him, Cordelia,” Willow said. “He’s got important business to conduct.”
Beneath a pile of rubble, Oz growled muzzily.
Cordelia let go of Angel’s boot and shook Willow’s hand away. “Okay,” she said sourly, getting to her feet “I’m looking for silver.”
“Hey,” Willow said sharply. “Oz doesn’t mean to be, um, lethal.”
“Yeah, well, nobody ever cuts me any slack for being honest,” Cordelia went on, then turned on her heel and started out of the room.
She collided with Xander, who was on his way in.
“Xander!” she shrieked, throwing her arms around him. “Thank God!”
“To coin a phrase, ‘Yeah, well.’ ” He sat down on the couch and dangled his arms between his legs.
“What’s going on?” Angel demanded. “What’s Jacques doing?”
“He sent me in here. He told me we’d be in the way.” Xander looked at Angel. “But I think we should figure out a way to be useful.” He groaned. “I’m one tired ex-superhero.”
Cordelia curled around him and gave him a big kiss on the cheek. He smiled at her and kissed her back.
She said, “We’ve got to get out of here anyway. Oz is in wolf mode and he’s hungry or pissed off or something.”
Xander nodded and got to his feet, holding hands with Cordelia.
Angel bent over Willow and helped her to her feet. She was limping slightly. When he gave her a questioning look, she said, “Someone has to sprain an ankle when the group’s running away from danger. It always happens.”
Oz growled again and began to move.
“Uh-oh,” Willow murmured.
Before she could react to what was happening, Angel swept her up into his arms. He grinned at her and said, “You’re blushing.”
She got even redder. “I’m not surprised.”
Angel carried her out of the room and shut the door.
Not that that would keep Oz at bay for very long.
* * *
“No!” Fulcanelli shrieked, as the Gatekeeper rushed him.
Jacques glared hard at the evil being who had tortured and harassed his family for centuries, at the monster who had threatened the entire world’s existence, and attacked him with every bit of magick at his disposal.
Multicolored fields of energy erupted around and through him. He reveled in his power. He was guardian and protector.
He was the Gatekeeper.
“What?” Fulcanelli cried, returning blow for blow of lightning and fire. Around Jacques, pieces of the house exploded like mines. “How did you—”
“You didn’t realize I came through a breach inside the house, did you?” Jacques bellowed. “You thought the gale inside my house was your doing.”
The look of wild frustration on Fulcanelli’s face as Jacques made him retreat through the foyer, staggering backward under the assault, made up for a lot. It made up for the death of Jacques’s normal life, if not the death of his father.
“This night will end with your death,” Fulcanelli flung at him as he teetered on the threshold.
Jacques answered with another barrage, then blasted Il Maestro out the front door. As the sorcerer tumbled end over end, Jacques manifested a pair of heavy oaken doors where the former ones had once stood, and slammed them shut just as Fulcanelli got to his feet.
“And stay out,” Jacques said grimly.
* * *
Crouching low, her hands flexed, Buffy forced herself to stand her ground as Belphegor emerged from the pit. Its tentacles slithered and snapped with whiplike cracks as it toyed with her, remaining just out of reach. It was covered with sharp-tipped horns and a long, weird trunk. As it raised the trunk, she counted seven mouths, starting with two or three beneath the trunk and slashing down its neck and across its chest. From inside each mouth, a set of jaws extended about three feet beyond its lips, dripping with green slime and what had to be blood.
It had two pulsing red eyes, and there was a thick mound in the middle of its forehead. Buffy figured it for some kind of scar.
“Eew,” Buffy said. “Somehow I pictured you, y’know, all muscley and kind of, like, having good bones, a nose, that kind of thing. Maybe some nifty body armor. But you must have a terrible time getting dates. No wonder you’re cranky.”
“Still the same fire,” it said, chuckling low. “I have many forms. This is the one I choose to show you. Yet you barely respond. You are a most unusual being, Slayer.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll bet you say that to all the beings.”
“Only the ones I kill.”
While Buffy worked
on her comeback for that zinger, about half a dozen of the guys in hooded robes streamed into the crypt and herded around Buffy like stampeding buffalo. Most of them fell to their knees and held out their hands. One lay on the floor with his face in the concrete dust.
Another one got the hell back out of there, fleeing the crypt and running shrieking for cover.
The only smart one in the bunch, Buffy figured.
“Oh, Lord of Darkness!” one of the acolytes cried. “We have come to worship you. Il Maestro told us of your coming and—”
“That is a lie. He would never have told you such a thing.”
The man looked very confused. “But . . . but Brother Ermino heard of it from him. He sent us here . . .”
“Your enemies have sent you to die,” Belphegor replied. “Perhaps it was your Brother Claude. Or Brother Lupo. So that I would dispatch you for them.”
“Oh,” the acolyte said uncertainly. “But we have come to worship you. I swear on my black heart, lord. To aid you.”
Buffy backed slowly away. She watched the demon carefully. It was disgusting; it gave off a rank odor worse than the grave and it was leaking some kind of chunky fluid. As it loomed over the acolytes, it quivered and shifted, and Buffy thought she saw a shadow inside of a creature shaped more like a man than this thing. That creeped her out even worse.
“I don’t need any help,” the demon responded. “Not anymore.”
Then it rushed the five men, encircling them with its tentacles and gathering them up like bowling pins. The jaws catapulted forward, all seven at once, and began ripping the flesh from the panicked men as they screamed and scrambled to get away. One lost half his face to one bite; the arm and chest of the next were gone, and his remains tumbled to the floor in a disgusting heap. From beneath the strange mound, talons emerged, dissecting what was left until there were only tiny bits of flesh and viscera.
Another was decapitated in the first attack, and his body swallowed whole in the next. Blood spurted everywhere, spraying the walls, the sarcophagus, Buffy.
Buffy was almost at the open door of the crypt when the tentacles looped over and behind her like a lasso. She was only barely able to leap out of range, but as a result, she was closer to the demon’s clacking, blood-drenched jaws.
Just then, someone grabbed her arm and yanked her to the left. For no good reason, Buffy glanced at her attacker before she took him out.
It was Micaela. And Giles was right behind her.
“Hello, cavalry,” Buffy said, as Giles threw a punch at the demon.
“We need to get out of here. Immediately. Someone tried to prevent us from coming here.”
Belphegor hissed, “Guilty as charged.”
“I can’t let this thing get free,” Buffy protested.
“By the power of the old gods, I bind thee,” Micaela intoned, raising her arms toward the demon as Buffy stood guard and Giles assumed a good fighting stance—give it a ten on the Watcher bell curve. “I call upon Pan to guard me and mine.”
“A binding spell?” Belphegor hissed. “That paltry little charm is laughable.”
But Buffy realized that the spell had worked. The tentacles still traveled along the floor, but an invisible barrier barred their progress as they tried to reach for her and Micaela.
“It won’t hold,” Micaela murmured in Buffy’s ear. “It will only buy us time. Seconds. We must—”
The tentacles broke through. The nearest one curled around Buffy’s calf. Teeth and pincers dug into her flesh and she cried out, more in shock than pain. Her Slayer’s reflexes went into high gear as she curled both hands into fists and slammed down on the tentacle, stomping as hard as she could with her free foot.
Giles shouted, “Buffy!” and stomped as well, kicking the tar out of it, or maybe those were pieces of acolyte.
Micaela raised her arms and repeated the binding spell.
Belphegor laughed. “Victory!” it shouted as it began to yank Buffy toward the snapping jaws of its seven mouths. Giles grabbed her around the waist, but he was pulled along as well. “Finally, I’ll taste the power of the Slayer.”
She braced herself. She had always figured she’d die in battle. Somehow she’d always thought she would graduate first. Okay, maybe not graduate. But there was the prom—
Micaela raised her arms and shouted, “I call upon Pan to protect me and mine!”
For one, maybe two seconds, Belphegor slackened its grip. Buffy bolted free, made sure Giles was still with her, grabbed Micaela’s hand, and headed for the door.
Buffy jumped as wide as she could, feinting to the right. The tentacles whipped in her direction. Like Robin to her Batman, Giles was with the program as they both made an end run around the tentacles, Buffy dragging Micaela along.
They burst out of the crypt. Micaela stumbled behind and Giles took over the dragging duties. They ran as fast as they could, Buffy not even daring to look behind them.
She bellowed, “Okay, now what?”
“My vehicle,” Giles shouted, pointing to his car, haphazardly parked on the other side of the cemetery gates. “The influence finally reached it, and it started.”
“We need to get to the center of the sphere of order your friend created,” Micaela added.
Buffy glared at her. “Ethan Rayne is not my friend,” she and Giles said simultaneously.
Behind them, something roared. The ground shook.
The sky darkened.
“Where did he cast the spell?” Micaela asked.
Buffy said, “I don’t have a clue.”
As the Slayer and her companions burst through, the sidewalk ruptured. One half of it jutted upward while the other half canted into the earth. A water main buried beneath it burst, geysering water fifty feet straight up into the air. Buffy kept her footing and managed to keep Micaela from falling as well.
“He mentioned Rupert’s books,” the blond woman said, looking at Giles.
Buffy nodded. “Okay. Library.”
Giles fished out his keys and ran around to the driver’s side.
“We’ll have a chance there, if we can reach it in time,” Micaela continued, gasping for breath as they ran toward the car. As Buffy looked at her questioningly, she grimaced and pressed her hand into her side. “Not much of a chance, it’s true.”
Buffy shook her head and jumped into the front seat on the passenger’s side. “Why, on the last day of the world, do I have to go to school?”
* * *
Fulcanelli felt the night air on his true face as he sent tremors through the earth and rocked the very foundation of the Gatehouse. He watched with glee as the beveled windows in one of the turrets glowed white-hot. Then the turret disappeared completely.
He did not want to destroy the Gatehouse. Once he dispatched the brat, he would claim the incredible structure. Now that Belphegor had spurned him, Fulcanelli would need as much power as he could find. And he could find it here. If Belphegor continued to be a problem, he would release all the creatures of Otherworld—the thousands of them, bound so long that most of them were now quite crazed, if they hadn’t been at the time of capture—and herd them in a wild mob across the ghost roads and into Sunnydale.
Even the Warmonger of Hell would have its hands full.
From the balcony of the house, the new Gatekeeper stared down at him. Fulcanelli conjured up a spear of black burn and sent it his way, not expecting to harm Jacques Regnier, but one could always hope, could one not?
The child deflected the attack with apparent ease. But he had not had time to adjust to his new role, simply stepped immediately into it. Now Il Maestro was sorry he had sent the nine remaining acolytes scurrying away like the vermin they were. If all they had managed was to harass the little Regnier for a few seconds before the lad destroyed them, their lives would have had meaning in the grand scheme of things.
The ancient sorcerer glanced left, right, did not see them. He chose to think of them with rancor for deserting him. Loyal followers would have insis
ted upon remaining with their leader, no matter that he had dismissed them as useless.
There! He spied one of the Sons of Entropy hiding in a lush stand of rosebushes. His dark hooded robe was like a black shadow on the dark red blossoms, so unusual for this time of year. The Regniers always did love roses. Giuliana Regnier had died in delirious pain, muttering nonsense about them.
With a careless wave of Fulcanelli’s hand, the bush burst into flame. The crouching man shouted with surprise and threw his arms over his head. The fragrance of the burning flowers was overpowered by the more delectable odor of charring flesh as the man went up, a pillar of flame.
In this very way had Richard Regnier thought he had killed Fulcanelli, during the Great Fire of London in 1666. What incredible hubris, what monumental pride, to assume one had rid himself of Giacomo Fulcanelli in that ineffectual manner.
As you thought you had rid yourself of Hadrius, came the unbidden thought. He tamped down his anger and focused on the boy, who watched impassively as Il Maestro’s acolyte burned to death.
Boy no longer, Fulcanelli reminded himself. Give him no quarter. Show him no mercy. He is the Regnier. The Gatekeeper.
Nevertheless, he could not help himself as he called out, “Child, give me the house and you may return to your school days. I’ll allow you to live.” He smiled, relishing the freedom of movement of his mouth, now that his false face was gone.
“Of course, you will become my devoted servant,” he added.
The Gatekeeper said nothing, only stared at him.
Beneath Fulcanelli’s feet, the earth shook, and he was slightly taken aback. Only slightly, however.
For the shaking was not of his doing, but what did it signify? He was Il Maestro, and the victory would ultimately be his.
He bent low, sending something of himself into the dark places where the blackest magick was born. Shuddering, his projected persona gathered fresh hatreds and more weapons from the cache where Il Maestro kept them.
Alerted to its presence, a swarm of red demons rushed it, talons flashing in the black light. The presence departed, and returned to its master.
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