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Into the Abyss
Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.
Part V
As if to banish even the memory of his brief loss of control, Giles became a brisk, focused whirlwind. Maybe his subconscious mind had already sorted through the main issues and likelihoods while he slept, because once begun he proceeded quickly, decisively, with set purpose, listing factors and characteristics on a sheet of note paper while he searched through his books and a few of mine, even making a brief phone call (long distance, but he reversed the charges) to clarify some no-doubt-significant point. He and I had worked together well enough yesterday, but he was on another plane now and moving in a higher gear, and my presence seemed irrelevant if not quite a distraction. Except for the phone call and some occasional mutterings, he barely spoke, and never to me: not even shutting me out, but narrowing in on the task before him with intense, exclusive concentration. It was disconcerting, even intimidating, and again I got the sense of a combat leader operating on a field unknown to most of humanity, and carrying out his role with pitiless, implacable practicality.
At last he looked up to me with eyes that seemed to fully register my existence for the first time in over an hour. “I shall need certain supplies,” he told me, in a peremptory tone that softened with the next words as he finished coming back from the place where his mind had been. “The establishments where you acquired your specialized collection, might offer some possibilities, and I suppose your, er, your telephone directory may also be of aid in this.”
I drove him, since I knew the city and still wanted to be involved in his activities here as much as possible (and I wasn’t about to ride in his car). Only one of the bookstores I had used in building my ‘specialized collection’ had any of the materials he wanted, but he found the rest — or workable substitutes — at three small shops he had selected from the Yellow Pages, recognizing the most promising ones by way of some form of insider’s knowledge I couldn’t have hoped to duplicate. Once satisfied, he ordered me to proceed to the main offices of Howsten Publishing, having pulled that address also from the phone book.
“The office does have morning hours,” I confirmed for him while we took the elevator up from the lobby, “but according to what I could see in the background files, Clarissa Howsten herself rarely comes in on a Saturday. And, with everything that’s going on and the warning you sent her, she’s sure to be fortressed in at home today.”
“Very probably,” he agreed. “However, if indeed she is part of the demonic compact which rebounded upon the others — and the legal change of name certainly tends to group her with them — then the forces which have operated to her benefit will have left the strongest traces in the location in which her success has manifested itself. Certain details in the reference texts are less than fully, er, detailed, but of the known contractual demons, only three have collection practises that even remotely resemble what we have seen in the coroner’s reports.” His focus wasn’t as all-consuming as before, but it was still powerful and daunting. “The most probable would be one of the Tlak-mengu species, and I can use a minor incantation on the Gortot granules to test for indications of Tlak-mengii influence.”
“All right,” I said, working to keep everything straight in my head: what he was saying, what I had learned before his appearance, what we had unearthed together, and the implications threading through it all. “And will identifying it tell you how to deal with it?” Somehow I was sure that this man would have solid ideas on how to fight the thing we were facing …
He shook his head. “More than that. If we’re on the wrong track, I’ll want to know it as quickly as possible. But, yes, which type of demon is involved will tell me the proper counter-measures to begin.” He flashed a grim smile. “Also, I believe I may be able to buy some time if our supernatural perpetrator has indeed accelerated his schedule.”
I could definitely see that timing would be an important issue in all this; with four gone, it was hurtling toward an endpoint. What effect our efforts here might have, that was yet to be decided. “So what do we need to do?” I asked.
Howsten Publishing, for all its rising prestige, occupied less than an entire floor of the downtown office complex where we now were. Giles found an empty conference room that another business sometimes shared with Howsten, and locked us in for privacy. “We should be done before we’re likely to be interrupted,” he told me as he pulled arcane materials from the overstuffed satchel, “but still we must be as quick as we can. There, if you’ll light those candles —” I followed his directions, listened at the door, watched as he proceeded swiftly. After a soft chant in a language I didn’t recognize, Giles grunted satisfaction when the diagram he had laid out in coarse, gritty powder shimmered and sparkled. “Tlak-mengu, very good. Now, a decoy glamour to keep the creature occupied …”
“Wait, wait,” I interrupted. “What do you mean? What are you about to do?”
“The reaction of the granules confirms the residue of Tlak-mengii energies here,” he said, barely glancing at me while he continued to extract and arrange the items he would next be using. “I mean to artificially augment those energies, turn them into a, a beacon which will draw the demon’s attention. Even once it knows the beacon is false, that will still serve to obscure the senses by which it would normally home in on its final target.”
I had nothing to say to that, contented myself with watching. He moved with confident certainty, placing crystals and staging ingredients and opening one of his books to the proper passage. Would this accomplish what he said? distract the demon, save the fifth woman until he could … do something further? I couldn’t know, despite my urgent recent study this was his area, not mine. It would all depend on the accuracy of his information, the relevance and skill of his spellcasting, and perhaps other factors that hadn’t yet been brought out into the daylight.
This chant was longer and more involved, with what sounded very much like invocations (to entities, I hoped, that were kindly disposed toward us or at least not hostile). Something, incense or another substance that operated with the same general results, made my skin prickle in a way that I didn’t like at all. I found myself wishing earnestly that I could be elsewhere, but couldn’t see any graceful means of extricating myself at this point. A breeze stirred in the closed room, and I instinctively reached out to flip open the lock on the doors —
— but Giles’s voice brought the chant to an emphatic close, he snuffed out the candles with moistened fingertips, and it was done. I still felt that faint, crawly itch, but insisted to myself that it was all imagination. “So that’s it?” I asked. “Clarissa Howsten is … shielded?”
“For several days, at least,” he said, nodding. “The offices will close here within a few hours and won’t open till Monday. I should be able to take, er, terminal action by that time, and if not we can send a further warning message for her to avoid this location.” His eyes were preoccupied while he repacked the various items he had used. “Now that we know with certainty that this is a Tlak-mengu, the next step will be to gather what I shall need to summon the demon myself, keep it properly warded and bound, and kill or permanently banish it. That should involve … hmm …” He frowned to himself. “Some of that might be difficult to locate here, I’m not familiar with the local magical community. Better, probably, to make a call to Sunnydale and arrange for an overnight express delivery.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I said. “You can call from my place.” He glanced up, and I went on. “We got done quick enough that we can grab some lunch now; after that, well, as I mentioned I don’t have company very often, but I wouldn’t mind picking up enough supplies to make us a nice dinner at home.”
He considered it, his eyes on mine. Whether he saw it as an overture, a peace offering, or just general comradely hospitality, I had no way of knowing, but after a moment he nodded assent. “That is most agreeable. I can continue to research, and plan, and by the time my necessary materials arrive we may have more useful information upon which to formulate our final course of action.” A faint ghost of smile appeared. “I hope you’re not too, um, too enthusiastic with spices. You’ll have heard of the British predilection for foods that others find bland.”
“Don’t worry,” I assured him. “I’m not particularly daring.” A beat, then, “Not with cooking.”
No, this was me being daring.
He took it with neither avid response nor obvious withdrawal, which I decided to count as a win. We had a polite, noncommittal lunch (less reason for encouragement), and I left him at my house while I did the necessary shopping. I came back with pork chops, ingredients for a modest salad, a sauce that — if prepared properly — would have a decent depth of flavor without risk of extravagance, and a bottle of wine that cost maybe five times as much as the rest together. In for a penny, as they say.
When I arrived back home, Giles was already at work; he looked up long enough to acknowledge me, then returned to his books. Remembering the restaurant last night, I had also picked up some tea for him in my shopping trip, though I seldom drink it myself; I looked through the cabinets until I found a teakettle, which I washed out, filled, and put on the gas ring at the lowest setting to begin gradually heating up. I spent another few minutes preparing a marinade for the chops, and then went into the bathroom for a fast, cool shower; the afternoon had warmed up and I’d broken just enough of a sweat while I was out to make me crave feeling fresh again. Once I finished and toweled off, I was in no hurry to go back out. Giles would still be immersed in research, due either to personal dedication or as a shield against a repetition of that moment … I didn’t know which, and I wasn’t in a mood to try and figure it out. I stood under the vent, letting the air from the A/C blow across my still-damp skin to cool me further, and studied my body in the mirror.
I had no reason to be ashamed of what I was seeing, even if FHM would never use me for a pictorial spread. I’d put on a bit of weight, of course, as I moved out of my thirties, but I had a fairly active metabolism and no rampant appetites, and so the overall result was a general softening of lean lines, still well short of anything that would come across as flab. My hair wasn’t as dark as it had once been, but there was no obvious gray yet, just a mild ‘dustiness’ that would, at most, appear to be a skillful frosting job. My complexion remained relatively smooth, and the lines that showed could plausibly be counted in the ‘character’ column rather than as explicit marks of age. The only clear imperfection — small, but noticeable — was at my belly … and, as my mother might once have said, “Anybody who’s looking at you that close, he already likes what he sees.”
… Was that what I wanted?
Rupert Giles had appeared in my life from nowhere, unexpected and unsettling and bringing with him certain issues and complications that were more than mildly unwelcome. My life had altered significantly with his arrival in it, and I was still some distance yet from coming to terms with (or even fully grasping) just how far the effects would go. He was, clearly, well experienced and even adept in a world that was still a mystery to me outside the blurred fringes and a few clear, isolated central matters; he had come here on a mission that was probably connected to that world (I hadn’t asked, but it was fairly obvious that it was the hints of demon activity, in the story I had initiated, that had first attracted his interest), and would almost certainly return to it — and leave — once our business here was finished. He had dealt with tragedy, but not let it stop him; he was an active presence, even a crusader, where in my own life I had devoted substantial effort to attracting no more notice than I could decently avoid. For all the several similarities between us, we still could hardly be more different.
Who was this man? And why did I care?
I dropped my sweaty clothes into the laundry hamper, put on my robe, and went out again. Giles either didn’t notice, or registered my presence without feeling that it called for reaction. I could have taken that as dismissal, and felt insulted, but instead it was as if he … belonged here, as if he had settled in to the point where the normal routines felt, well, normal to him. A place comfortable enough that he could take it for granted without even noticing that he was doing so.
In the kitchen, a thin plume of steam began to seep from the teakettle. I crossed over and turned up the heat; a couple of minutes of full boil, and I would be ready to steep the tea and submit it for approval. I’d left the bottle of wine standing on the counter next to the knife block; I would decant it about the time I began preparing dinner, but that was some hours ahead yet. The tiles of the kitchen floor were cool under my feet. I turned to look at Giles, still working at the writing desk. He’d unbuttoned his vest, removed his tie, even rolled his sleeves up a few turns, but he didn’t look relaxed or even casual: still a scholar, but one so fixed on the study now before him that formality of dress simply faded to unimportance. It was as if I was seeing the man distilled to his essence, and for an instant I wondered if this would be how I always remembered him.
I watched him, and he somehow felt me watching and looked up … and just like that, it was there again between us, the current, the awareness, the moment. Our eyes were locked, and I took a half-step toward him, barely a shifting of my feet, but he pushed his chair away from the desk, preparing to stand. To move to join me or to move away, I didn’t know which, but this was the chance I had sworn not to let pass again, so I pulled loose the sash at my waist and let the robe fall open. He had risen to his feet now, but merely stood where he was, his eyes moving over my body and then back up to meet mine. His expression was grave, calm, composed, and I couldn’t read what was behind it so I took another step, I might fail but I wouldn’t fail by indecision —
And then we were no longer alone, something else was in the space between kitchen and living room, coalescing into solidity and reality as smoothly as the image on a television screen coming into focus. I gasped and fell back, and ochre eyes held me in an unblinking stare. The thing stood half a head taller than I did, though the proportions were twisted and unhuman; thick spines projected from the chest and upper arms, over skin like daubed clay, and tremors of muscle movement rippled through the misshapen body. It spoke, its voice greedy and gloating and liquid like the reverberating echoes of bubbling slime at the bottom of a steel cauldron: “Jane Schoeren … I know your name.”
* * *
I snatched up the boiling teakettle and hurled it at the demon, and the thing bellowed pain and fury as scalding water splashed its upper body. I had caught a glimpse behind it of Giles leaping away, not toward us but not toward the door, either, but there was no time to think about that, my hand fell on the bottle of wine and I juggled it to catch hold of the neck, then swung with all my strength. The end of the bottle struck the demon’s forehead with a heavy, meaty chunkk! but didn’t shatter, I hadn’t broken the seal yet and so I was wielding a hard, liquid-filled club. I drew back for another swing, jumped backward as the thick-fingered hands reached for me, then another flash of motion / sound of impact / howl of rage, the demon wheeled away from me and I saw Giles swinging a light single-bladed medieval axe, had that been inside the heavy duffel he’d carried in last night? I struck again with the bottle, and this time it did break, against the back of the demon’s head, showering us both with pricey (for me) wine that I would never get to sample now. My unhuman assailant spun back to me, its roar now a solid cacophony of chitin blades scything against one another, but Giles swung again from the other side, the axe-head biting into the cartilage-corded neck.
The demon hadn’t been ready for two of us, apparently hadn’t even known a second person — armed, experienced, and determined — was here, and its position between us meant that it couldn’t face one without the other striking from behind. At least, that had been the situation for the first few seconds. I stabbed with the broken bottle-neck but missed by half a foot, it was too short for effective use, I dropped it and looked around frenziedly for another weapon. My brain was moving at electric speed but not peak efficiency, I was about to snatch off a paper towel and light it on the gas burner in an attempt to set the demon on fire, when in the same fraction of a second I realized 1) the wine drenching my enemy wouldn’t ignite, its alcohol content was far too low, and 2) I was reaching past the knife block for the paper-towel holder.
I pulled out a long-bladed knife and slashed at the demon, and a moment later I had a second knife and was stabbing with both hands. My intervention had come barely in time, while I was briefly weaponless the demon had caught hold of Giles and pulled him into a brutal hug, and as it turned back to me and Giles fell free, I saw that the spines had pierced the flesh of his shoulder and upper chest (yes, yes, the puncture wounds on the dead women). He hadn’t been incapacitated, though, lying on his side he brought the axe around in a double-armed ankle-level sweep, chopping the demon’s leg out from under it. The thing went down, and we just kept up the ceaseless attack, slashing and hacking and stabbing until our foe was a twitching, oozing, ruined heap on the floor. Giles wasn’t satisfied; he worked at the neck with the axe, alternating sides, until the demon’s head was completely severed … at which point, the body faded away in exact reversal of its fade-in appearance, leaving the two of us alone, gasping, in the wrecked kitchen.
Giles stumbled and went down on one knee with a groan, and I darted to his side. “You’re hurt!” I exclaimed, seeing the blood well out of the wounds on his chest and shoulder and suddenly realizing I didn’t know how deep they went.
“Only slightly, and, ah …” He made a sudden noise that was equal parts cough, wheeze, and laugh, and looked off to one side. “You’re, er, you’re … uncovered.”
Well, yes, I was. The robe gaped open, and in fact in the last moments it had fallen off my shoulders and was hanging from my forearms; I was effectively naked, but I’d been too busy to notice and, honestly, not really caring much even now. But, okay, I pulled it back up and belted it again, and then at Giles’s direction I went to get the first aid kit from his car. He wanted to be treated in the bathroom, but that was too small, I pulled him into my bedroom where he could lie down properly. The kit, once I opened it, was startlingly complex and inclusive, almost what a combat medic would be packing. I got him stripped to the waist, cleaned the wounds, and put wide adhesive bandages on top of them.
By the time I was done, Giles was frighteningly weak, and I didn’t like his color, either. “This is more than we can deal with here,” I told him, and began to try to help him sit up; from there, I’d work on getting him to his feet and out to my car. “I need to take you to a hospital.”
“No.” He pushed me away. “There’s too great a chance that a hospital would recognise my injuries as very like those sustained by the murdered women. I can’t afford any such attention.” He lay back on my bed, his strength sliding away again. “And you needn’t fear,” he went on. “These effects are … described in the literature. The thoracic spines on a Tlak-mengu carry a, a quasi-paralytic agent. To, to incapacitate its victims so they can’t effectively resist. Non-lethal in itself, and I also didn’t receive a full dose.”
I regarded him with some doubt. “So … you’re saying you’re okay?”
“Assuredly. By tomorrow I’ll be fully mobile again … and, and when I return to Sunnydale I can avail myself of follow-up care without … without drawing any of the notice I would attract here …” His voice trailed off, his eyes closed, and within a minute his breathing had slowed and steadied and fallen into a regular, even rhythm.
Could I rely on what he had said? He had no obvious reason to lie — it was his life that would be endangered if he did — and he had shown that he knew what he was talking about. And it was absolutely true that we didn’t want to chance being connected to an increasingly lurid series of local murders. There were risks no matter what I chose … In the end, though, what he had said made sense.
So, what came now? He had come investigating the possibility of a demon (hoping that his ‘Buffy’ might be following the same trail). He had found that demon, and dealt with it once and for all. Would he feel that his business here was finished, or would he decide that there was still something here worthy of further attention?
I stretched out beside him, moving up to mold my body to his; laid one arm across him and my head on his chest, listening to his breathing and the reassuring beat of his heart. I stayed there, not moving, while the light outside the bedroom curtains faded to dusk and then dark. Letting it be, because morning would bring a new reality.
And then, hours later, I rose without disturbing him, and dressed, and left my house with him still sleeping there.
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