by Various
His mother heard.
At once the earth beneath Angel began to tremble. Wind came out of nowhere and lashed the waves to dangerous heights. The demons above him cried out in alarm. Kansa bellowed a challenge, but it was drowned out by the shriek of the wind. Angel had been afraid they’d awaken something that might destroy them as easily as it destroyed the child’s true enemies, but that was a risk he’d had to take. He only hoped he’d gambled wisely.
“Let’s go!” he cried, holding the screaming baby close and sprinting along the slim stretch of beach toward safety. Wesley sprang up from his semblance of unconsciousness and extended a hand to haul an alert Fred to her feet. Lorne helped Cordelia up and assisted Gunn in untangling the not-very-tightly-tied cord that had been casually roped around his wrist. Angel looked around, fear rising in him. “Where’s Serena? Serena!”
She was gone.
“Come on!” Cordelia shoved him hard. They splashed through water and wet sand away from the angry ocean. It was not a moment too soon. An enormous wave rose from the churning sea and to Angel, who looked back at that instant, it looked like a human hand. A woman’s hand, with slim, tapered fingers.
The tidal wave crashed down upon the cliff, sweeping dozens of demons into its dark depths. Heads and flailing limbs emerged, in all shapes and sizes. The cries of fear were almost—almost—enough to rouse pity. Again the earth shuddered and Angel fell, taking the impact with his shoulder and preventing the baby from being injured. The infant still screamed lustily. Lying on the vibrating earth, Angel saw the cliff beneath which he and his friends had been standing a moment ago crumble and slide into the ocean. Again the waves came, and when they receded there was not a single figure to be seen.
“Angel!” screamed Cordelia. The waves were rising again, and this time, the deadly ocean force was directed against them.
No! thought Angel. I’m holding the baby…we saved Him! Serena…where is Serena? Frantically he clutched the baby close and shut his eyes.
“Blessed Lady, stay thy wrath!” The voice belonged to Serena, but it was stronger and louder than any human voice could possibly be. Angel felt light beating against his closed lids and when he opened them, he thought he must be hallucinating.
Serena was glowing. And flying. She hovered in the air above the angry ocean, white wings beating steadily, arms reached out in an imploring gesture.
“These are friends to You and Yours. They saved Your Son, Great Lady. They called You to help them save Your Son.”
Angel sat up on the wet sand and held the little God out at arm’s length. The baby’s sobs had ceased and he stared at the ocean with fascination. He began to kick excitedly and coo.
Slowly, the waves subsided. The earth again grew stable. Angel closed, then opened his eyes in relief. He got to his feet as Serena floated toward him, landing silently on dainty feet in the sand before him.
“Serena, I’m glad you’re okay. I thought for a minute I had…” She smiled ethereally, and he went cold inside. “I did, didn’t I? I drowned you. I thought you knew the plan—that you understood, you were pretending. I’m so sorry.”
She smiled. Light poured from her, a soft, blue, clean light that didn’t hurt Angel’s eyes at all. “I did what I had to do,” she said, “just as you did. I was incapable of standing by and watching Him be harmed, even a little, even by one who was trying to protect Him. Do not be distressed, Angel. As you see, what I really am is unharmed. I have merely returned to my true form. Death and life are not quite what you think. Are you not dead, vampire? Yet you seem to live. You yourself are a paradox.”
Angel was not comforted. “I was supposed to help you…and I—I killed—”
“What I am cannot be truly killed. Surely you see that now. But at that moment, His life was vulnerable. And it is He whom your actions have saved.”
She extended her arms, and reluctantly Angel gave the now happily gurgling baby to her. He felt a deep ache in his chest; why, he didn’t know.
Serena looked up at him with deep compassion. Gently she reached to brush his face with her fingers. Angel made a soft sound; only once before, with another beautiful, fair-haired woman, had he felt such a loving touch. She rose on tiptoe and gently kissed his cheek. Her scent was of jasmine and honeysuckle, of sunlight and laughter and joy, if such things had a fragrance.
A single feather, small and downy, fluttered from her wings. She knelt and picked it up, pressing it into Angel’s hands. “It will not last,” she said, “but for a time, this is His gift. To say thank you.”
She was moving away from him now, distant and unreachable as a star. Effortlessly her wings began to beat and she rose, her face turned toward the east, and she lifted the child who wriggled with joy in her grasp.
“Serena!” Angel cried suddenly, his skin prickling with swift, certain, ancient knowledge. “This Sun Child, this…He’s been born as a human baby before, hasn’t He?”
Serena turned her calm gaze to him, and did not reply. But she smiled, softly, secretly, and Angel had his answer.
“Call the sun, bright Child!” Serena cried. “Be as You were meant to be!”
The baby god ceased to squirm and grew quiet. With a grace and composure that should have been impossible in a newborn, he spread his small arms. The darkness began to lessen. As one, Angel and his friends turned toward the east. With unnatural swiftness, the sun began to emerge over the horizon. No creeping dawn this; this sunrise came at a charge, a gallop, covering a world with light that had been so unhappily denied.
It was only when the sun was fully upon them that Angel realized that he was in no pain. His friends looked at him, shocked, and in mute explanation he extended a hand that cupped a single, small, downy feather. Already it seemed to him that its luster was fading. The God’s blessing—the gift of sunlight—was only temporary. But it was precious. Angel turned his face up to the celestial light and felt its heat caress him.
“‘Out of the shadows of night the world rolls into light; it is daybreak everywhere,’” quoted Wesley, softly.
“Longfellow,” Fred said, nodding as she recognized the quote.
Serena was gone. She and the infant divinity had returned to the place they belonged. It was time Angel and his friends did the same.
“Let’s go home,” said Angel, his voice thick with an odd combination of pain and joy commingled.
The longest night was over.
About the Contributors
“The House Where Death Stood Still” is PIERCE ASKEGREN’s (it’s Swedish!) first Angel story, but he hopes it’s not his last. As a warm-up, however, he has cowritten or written an alarming amount of material, much of it having to do with comic books. This includes five novels based on Marvel Comics characters: three Spider-Man books cowritten with famous comics guys Danny Fingeroth and Eric Fein, one about the Avengers (guest-starring the Thunderbolts), and one about the Fantastic Four (his favorites). He’s written three short stories for anthologies based on Marvel properties and cowritten a fourth with comics artist John Garcia. For a change of pace, he cranked out short stories for The Chick Is in the Mail, in Esther Friesner’s popular anthology series from Baen Books, and for Jean Rabe’s Historical Hauntings, from DAW. Most of this is since 1995, but way back when, shortly after the earth cooled but before the dinosaurs roamed, he wrote comics scripts for the long-gone Warren Publishing Company (Creepy, Vampirella). The year 2003 should see the publication of his science fiction novel, Villanueva, the first of three from Ace Books. Pierce lives in Northern Virginia, where he writes business proposals and such. If everything goes as planned, by the time you read this, you should be able to visit him at www.askegren.com.
JEFF MARIOTTE is the author of several Angel novels, including Haunted and Stranger to the Sun, as well as, with Nancy Holder, the Buffy/Angel crossover trilogy Unseen and the Angel novel Endangered Species. He’s published several other books and more comic books than he has time to count, including the multiple award-nominated horror/Weste
rn series Desperadoes. With his wife, Maryelizabeth Hart, and partner, Terry Gilman, he co-owns Mysterious Galaxy, a bookstore specializing in science fiction, fantasy, mystery, and horror. He lives in San Diego, California, with his family and pets, in a home filled with books, music, toys, and other examples of American pop culture. More about him can be gleaned from www.jeffmariotte.com.
CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN is the award-winning, Los Angeles Times best-selling author of such novels as The Ferryman, Strangewood, The Gathering Dark, and Of Saints and Shadows, and the Prowlers and Body of Evidence series of teen thrillers, several of which have been listed among the Best Books for Young Readers by the American Library Association and the New York Public Library.
Golden has also written or cowritten many books and comic books related to the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, as well as the script for the Buffy video game for Microsoft Xbox, which he cowrote with frequent collaborator Tom Sniegoski. His other comic book work includes stories featuring such characters as Batman, Wolverine, Spider-Man, The Crow, and Hellboy, among many others.
As a pop culture journalist, he was the editor of the Bram Stoker Award–winning book of criticism, CUT!: Horror Writers on Horror Film, and coauthor of both Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Watcher’s Guide and The Stephen King Universe.
Golden was born and raised in Massachusetts, where he still lives with his family. He graduated from Tufts University. There are more than six million copies of his books in print. At present he is at work on The Boys Are Back in Town, a new novel for Bantam Books. Please visit him at www.christophergolden.com.
SCOTT CIENCIN is a New York Times best-selling author of more than fifty books from Random House, Simon & Schuster, and many more. He has written Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Sweet Sixteen and cowritten Angel: Vengeance with Dan Jolley. He has worked on the Jurassic Park, Star Wars, and Dinotopia franchises, written for Marvel and DC Comics, and is the author of the critically acclaimed Vampire Odyssey and Dino-verse series. He lives in Ft. Myers, Florida, with his beloved wife, Denise.
DENISE CIENCIN has a Masters degree in community counseling and has worked with at-risk teenagers, displaced homemakers, the developmentally disabled, and many other populations in crisis. She was listed in Who’s Who in America’s 2001 edition. She has also written in the field of neurology and neurosurgery and worked with her husband on the majority of his fiction output, providing research, co-plotting, and much more. “It Could Happen to You” is her first credited work.
EMILY OZ is an editor of children’s books living and working in New York City. She loves Angel—but she misses Doyle.
Los Angeles Times best-selling author NANCY HOLDER has written many Buffy and Angel projects for Simon & Schuster, including Endangered Species (with Jeff Mariotte); The Book of Fours; the first two volumes of the Buffy Watcher’s Guide (with Christopher Golden, Jeff Mariotte, and Maryelizabeth Hart); and Angel: The Casefiles (with Jeff Mariotte and Maryelizabeth Hart.) With Debbie Viguié, she has a new series entitled Witch. Witch: Wicked was released in October 2002. She lives in San Diego with her daughter, Belle.
YVONNE NAVARRO spent her youth making up stuff in her head and drawing pictures to go along with the stories. When she grew up she started writing more and more, and now she’s had seventy-some stories and over a dozen books published, and she’s even managed to get a few cool awards (most recently the Bram Stoker award for Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Willow Files, Vol. 2). In her spare time she studies martial arts, and she recently got married. As if having the ceremony in historic Mount Moriah Cemetery wasn’t different enough, the town had to be evacuated in the middle of the reception due to a forest fire. She and her new hubby are in the process of running off to Arizona. Yvonne maintains a big old Web site at www.yvonnenavarro.com with all kinds of fun stuff on it. She’s also the owner of Dusty Stacks Bookstore (www.dustystacks.com). Come visit!
After obtaining a degree in wildlife illustration and environmental education, DORANNA DURGIN spent a number of years deep in the Appalachian Mountains, riding the trails and writing science fiction and fantasy books. She’s moved on to living in the mountains of northern Arizona, where she still writes—Changespell Legacy is the latest—and rides, focusing on classical dressage with a Lipizzan who thinks too much. Meanwhile, there’s a mountain looming outside her office window, a pack of dogs running around the house, and a laptop sitting on her desk—and that’s just the way she likes it. Next best is channeling Angel and Cordelia (with much gratitude to Ellen Cannon Reed and Lady Bridget for the use of their Solstice Carol stanzas in “Yoke of the Soul”). Please visit her at www.doranna.net.
CHRISTIE GOLDEN is the author of twenty novels and fourteen short stories in the fields of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. She won the Colorado Author’s League Top Hand Award in 1999 for her historical fantasy A.D. 999, written under the pen name of Jadrien Bell. She feels quite comfortable writing about a vampire with a soul, as she launched her career in 1991 with Vampire of the Mists, in which she created the tormented elven vampire Jander Sunstar. Readers of Tales of the Slayer may remember her contribution, “The White Doe.” Golden currently lives in Denver, Colorado, and continues not to be related to another writer of Buffy fiction, Christopher Golden. Readers are invited to visit her Web site at www.christiegolden.comfortable.