“Buffy,” Giles said quietly.
He pointed.
Down the hall, one of the many doors stood open, and a pale lavender light shone out onto the walls and the carpet.
“We should check it out,” she said with certainty. “We’re not getting anywhere, Giles. We have to.”
“Agreed,” he said.
Then they heard Cordelia scream again. Upstairs.
“Damn!” Giles snapped.
Buffy spun and strode back out onto the landing, starting up the stairs. Giles started to follow, then took one last glance down the corridor at the open door before turning once more toward the stairs.
The stairs were gone. At the threshold that had once opened onto the landing there was nothing but wallpaper, and a beautiful painting of a schooner crashing on some rocks in a storm, despite the presence of a comforting lighthouse close by.
Buffy was gone.
“Dammit, no!” Giles snapped. “There must be some way to . . .”
He thought again of the theory he’d proposed only moments ago. They were somehow imposing order on this house, but they would not be the only forces present to do so. There were so many wills contending in the Gatehouse, usually reined in by the will of the Gatekeeper himself. If he had any hope of finding Buffy again, he would have to find the Gatekeeper first.
Cursing under his breath, Giles turned and strode down the corridor with new purpose. At the door that emanated purple light he turned in, opened his mouth to demand information on the whereabouts of the Gatekeeper, and then froze where he stood.
They were beautiful, and there were so many of them. Inside that door was a pleasant glade at dusk, a purplish light glittering from the wings of the things that flitted from flower to flower, from water to tree branch. They cavorted across large stones and danced on the gleaming surface of the pond.
Sprites, he thought. Or something very like them. Tiny, winged women, naked but for the sparkling butterfly wings that fluttered on their backs. Giles stood, almost hypnotized, almost as though they were the sirens of Greek mythology.
It was such a picturesque moment, it made him think of standing on that balcony in New York with Micaela, the way her honey hair tumbled over her shoulders. But that was the horrid city, and this was . . . this was paradise. He would have loved to have shared even a single moment like this with her, to have followed the path that their first meeting had set out for them . . . to learn if he could love again.
Giles felt despair rising within him as he thought of Micaela, and knew that in all likelihood she was dead.
As if it could sense the change in his emotion, one of the sprites noticed him. There came a high giggle and it flitted close to him. Giles smiled until its tiny little claws raked his cheek, laying the flesh open. Blood ran down his chin, and Giles snarled at the sudden pain and slapped a hand to his face.
The glamour was gone. He saw them for what they were. And what they were was horrible.
* * *
Buffy couldn’t go back. The corridor where Giles had been was now gone. The only thing she could do was head in the direction of Cordelia’s screams and hope that she would be able to reach all of them eventually. Giles was the Watcher: he ought to be able to take care of himself. At least, better than Cordy. Who was, after all, Cordy.
Besides, the guy they really needed to find was the Gatekeeper. Once she’d reached Cordelia, that would be her first priority. If they wanted to get out of this place in one piece, they had to find the guy who was supposed to be in charge.
“Off to see the Wizard,” she muttered.
Yeah, she thought. Now we know what Oz was like after the Wizard blew them off to take Dorothy back to Kansas.
This landing was different from the two she’d seen. Rather than the corridor running sort of parallel with the stairwell, there was a single step up and then the corridor ran directly off the stairs, straight ahead. The hall was wide and there were portraits all along the walls. It looked like a fancy hotel, but at the turn of the century or something. It was beautiful. At the far, far end of the hallway, there was a window.
Outside the window, it was bright and sunny. The sky was perfectly blue. Buffy knew that in the real world, it was probably nine or ten o’clock at night. She decided to ignore the window. Nothing inside this house was real, not the reality she knew, anyway.
That didn’t mean it couldn’t kill her.
At the end of the hall, there was another stairwell. This one an incredibly wide, curving set of stairs that led down into what looked like an enormous foyer, the size of a small ballroom. Crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling, and the floors were polished marble.
It ought to have been the fourth or fifth story. It was obviously the first floor, and the long rows of glass doors and windows revealed that outside, the ground was covered with snow. A winter wonderland.
Nothing was impossible in the Gatehouse.
Behind her, a set of door hinges creaked loudly. Buffy spun to see several people emerging from a room behind her. Two men and a woman, all three of them completely naked. The men were opposites, one tall and thin, the other short and very, very muscular. Ripped, Xander would have said. And the woman was lithe, her body full and feminine. All three of them had thick black hair and eyes that were dark and shone at the same time, almost like an eclipse.
“Hello, little girl,” the woman said. “I thought you might want to play.”
“Or not,” Buffy said to her, glaring at all three of them. “Now why don’t you three head back to the Garden of Eden and grab some fig leaves to cover up, hmm?”
The tall man snarled at her, baring fangs. The burly, short guy hissed like a cat. The woman only laughed.
All three of them began to change, hissing as black fur sprouted all over their bodies. Buffy didn’t even turn. She set her feet apart in a fighting stance, and held her ground.
* * *
It was a beautiful home, something he had never truly recognized while he was a captive here. And once he had torn the beating heart from the chest of its owner, the house would be his. Its many rooms would provides centuries of diversion.
But first, what was a home without a wife? Or at least a mistress. This girl, Cordelia Chase, was the first of his intended victims to have ever escaped his grasp. Once he had marked a target, they were never allowed to escape. This hunt had taken longer than any other, but he would still have her. Yet, something had changed. Originally he had planned to kill her. He might still. But there was something . . . arousing about a woman who could elude him.
A small rivulet of fetid drool ran down Springheel Jack’s chin, and he grinned to himself. From somewhere upstairs he could hear his beloved screaming, and he vaulted the stairs nine or ten at a time, not discouraged by the knowledge that the house could not possibly have as many stories as he had climbed. There must be seven floors or more. Impossible.
It wasn’t important. The only thing that mattered was the beautiful aroma that drifted down to him. He had caught Cordelia’s scent the moment he returned to the Gatehouse, and now his entire body sizzled with a frisson of arousal unlike anything he had ever felt. Her scent, yes. The smell of her, and the dark odor of her terror.
That was what he loved best.
* * *
“Xander!” Cordelia screamed.
“Move!” Xander shouted, and then he shoved her aside as the wheelchair barreled toward him. Xander backpedaled as fast as he could, looking around the attic for something, anything with which to defend himself. There were heavy, dusty trunks and metal racks upon which hung ancient clothes that made the place look like a costume shop. An old spinning wheel sat in one corner, and next to it, a full length mirror on a wooden stand.
In the mirror, Xander could see an elderly woman sitting in the wheelchair. She seemed frightened as well, reaching out to him with one hand as she propelled the chair with the other. For a moment, he paused, but there was something else about the image in the mirror—the old woman w
as obviously dead. What little he could see of her, he could see through. The image was transparent, a specter.
“Gaaah!” Xander cried, and reached out for something, anything, to defend himself even as he backed farther away from the wheelchair.
Far to his right, Cordelia rose to her feet.
His fingers wrapped around something thick and cold, a metal pole. He pulled with all his strength, and only when it crashed to the floor between him and the wheelchair did Xander realize it was an old-fashioned birdcage on a metal stand.
He expected the wheelchair to stop.
It came ahead, slamming into the metal pole. Xander jumped back, his right heel caught on something, and he stumbled backward, arms flailing.
Cordelia screamed.
Xander felt a moment’s resistance just before he crashed through the leaded glass window. The jagged, shattered glass tumbled all around him. His mind raced wildly, even as his hands whipped out once again, hoping for something to hold on to, anything to stop him from plummeting three or four stories to the hard ground below.
He tumbled onto the canted roof, rolling twice backward. His legs swept over and out into nothing but air, and his hands scrabbled at the edge of the roof.
Gripped. Caught the edge.
But only for a heartbeat, and then he fell fifteen feet to slam into a second level of roof that jutted out of the house, some kind of porch or patio that had been added later. His legs crumpled beneath him as he struck the slanted roof, and he tumbled once again, but forward now, and he tried desperately to stop his descent.
He saw brick. A chimney.
Then he struck it, hard, sending pain shooting up one knee and making him see stars as his right cheek bounced agonizingly off the brick.
But he stopped.
“Damn,” he whispered.
Xander was splayed against the edge of the chimney. He’d slammed one knee into the brick and scraped his cheek, but otherwise he felt all right. His tongue probed his teeth, and though he tasted blood, all the teeth seemed fairly sturdy still.
“This is great,” he muttered. “Now how do I get back inside?”
He sighed. “Not that I want to go back inside.”
A scream tore the air above him, and Xander’s eyes went wide as he remembered how he’d crashed through the window in the first place.
“Oh, God,” he said, “Cordelia!”
He whipped his head around, craned his neck to look up, lost his grip on the chimney, and slid sideways over the edge of the roof, falling away into nothing, his scream so profane it would have made Angel blush.
He crashed into some shrubbery, branches scraping his abdomen and back through his shirt. His arms had tiny scratches all over them, his knee and face hurt from hitting the chimney, but as he pulled himself from the shrubs, he was happy merely to be alive.
Now he just had to make sure his girlfriend was still alive as well. He stared up at the attic window he had crashed through. From here, it looked impossibly high. With a quick glance around, Xander realized that he was not actually outside the house, but in an internal courtyard. In truth, he was at the heart of the house. The house rose up on all four sides, but above, there was only the sky.
The gardens and trees in the darkened courtyard were overgrown, and when he followed the sound of burbling water, he discovered a vine-covered fountain at the center of the courtyard. Stone paths wound among the gardens, but they too were grown over, and it had taken Xander a minute to notice them.
Now that he did, he saw that though they meandered about, each one led to a set of French doors. Four different entrances back into the house. It seemed pretty likely that one of them would be open. If he was stupid enough to go back inside.
Stretching out his leg, testing his injured knee, he started for the French doors set into the house on the same side from which he’d fallen.
“As if I had a choice,” he muttered. “I’ll take boneheaded, suicidal boyfriends for one hundred, Alex.”
From the trees behind him he heard a groan. Something moved through the overgrowth. Or rather, some things. For now he heard sounds coming from all around him. Xander moved along the path until he was roughly at the center of the courtyard, away from the vegetation. The moon shone down like a spotlight as the things came from the darkness of the wild garden.
They looked dead, but they weren’t desiccatéd at all. Just filthy, matted people, almost like cavemen. They were stooped over and grinning madly. As they grew closer, Xander realized that their skin was a greenish brown, and he realized that they weren’t human anymore. If they ever had been. The one nearest to him was an old man whose beard was stained with blood.
“I want his eyes,” the bearded, filthy thing said in a gurgling voice. “I love the way they pop in my teeth.”
Xander sighed. “Ghouls,” he said. “Why did it have to be flesh-eating ghouls?”
* * *
The wheelchair hadn’t moved since Xander had tumbled out the window. For a time, Cordelia had been too frightened even to go to the window. When finally she mustered the courage, she could not see anything but a lower-level roof with glass scattered about and the tops of trees from some kind of courtyard.
She whispered his name, and then turned and rushed to the stairs that led down out of the attic. The door wouldn’t budge. As she pounded against it, kicked the bottom, and twisted the knob madly, Cordelia began to cry. Tears streamed down her cheeks and she sobbed silently. In her mind she imagined the worst—imagined Xander broken and bleeding on the ground in the courtyard outside, jagged pieces of glass jutting from his corpse.
“No!” she screamed. “Please, someone!”
She pounded the door, bit her lip, felt the hot tears coursing down her face.
“Anyone!” she wailed.
Something thudded against the door.
Cordelia stared at it a moment before she said tentatively, “Buffy?”
With the shriek of wood and splintering hinges, the door was torn right out of its frame.
Cordelia scrambled backward up the steps toward the attic even as Springheel Jack came in after her.
He grinned, and whispered a single word.
“Darling.”
Chapter
13
XANDER EDGED AWAY FROM THE ghouls—there had to be at least six of them—as he looked around for a weapon, an escape route, maybe even your friendly neighborhood Gatekeeper. No such luck.
He said to them, “Aren’t you on, like, a special diet or something? Ghoul kibble? Gets rid of those special cravings?”
“I want his tongue,” said another old ghoul as he crept from behind a tree trunk. His long beard caught against the bark, and as he jerked his head to free it, dead insects loosened from the matted hair and fluttered to the ground. “And the fat in his cheeks.”
“Okay, winner of the gross-out competition,” Xander said.
He turned and ran from the center of the courtyard toward the opposite set of doors.
He didn’t get far. His foot caught on a thick tree root and he went sailing through the air to land in a circle of rotten leaves and gray, waterlogged mushrooms.
Footfalls thundered behind him. He said loudly, “Hey guys, hear the one about . . . about . . .”
As the first hand grabbed at him, Xander fell silent. He had nothing to say.
* * *
“Oh, my God,” Cordelia murmured, as she backed up the attic steps.
“No, not God. Simply your beloved,” Springheel Jack said, smiling crazily at her. “Now come here, my darling. I want a kiss.” He opened his mouth. His flashing, needle teeth gleamed, but something inside him was rotten, and she could smell his breath from where she stood.
Cordelia kept climbing. Then she ran into something. Half-turning, she realized it was the wheelchair.
The one with a ghost in it.
Springheel Jack came fully now through the door at the bottom of the attic steps and began to climb.
Cordelia swallowed
hard and gave the chair a firm shove with her hip, urging it out of the way. It didn’t move. She pushed again, her terror rising as Springheel Jack reached out a hand.
“Please!” Cordelia said desperately.
With a sudden jerk, the wheelchair moved backward of its own accord.
I love a polite young lady, the ghost whispered in her mind. My name is Antoinette, girl. And I think I can help you.
She glanced in the mirror. There was the old woman, her gray hair done up in a chignon.
Springheel Jack has escaped from this house too many times. This was the last. You must use his own fire against him, girl. Use your wits to ensnare and entrap him.
“Me?” Cordelia asked.
The door, the ghost said, her voice weaker now. The fire.
Cordelia turned to look back at the attic stairs. The door had already been destroyed, she thought. But then she saw what the ghostly old woman was talking about: there was a hanging door angled above Springheel Jack’s head, much like a garage door. There was a rope attached to it, which was strung along the beams of the ceiling and through several eyehooks to fall straight down behind the mirror, where it was tied off on an old padded seamstress’s dummy.
“My sweet,” Jack said. He rushed for Cordelia. She ran behind the chair, felt terrible for using the old lady as a shield, remembered she was a ghost, and figured Jack couldn’t hurt her anyway.
She still didn’t get how she could use Jack’s own fire against him. There was an incredible amount of old junk lying around, but Cordelia didn’t have time to go through it now. Old clothes couldn’t help her. They were so old they were practically nothing but rags anyway, just a lot of faded old fabric you might as well—
Burn.
Cordelia finally got it.
She just didn’t know if she had the courage to do it.
“Cordelia, come for your kiss,” Springheel Jack urged. He inhaled deeply, another smile spreading across his distorted face.
That did it. Cordy knew just how to use the monster’s fire against him. She put her hands on her hips and sneered, “Are you crazy? Have you seen yourself in a mirror? You are in serious need of cosmetic surgery.”
Out of the Madhouse Page 20