Dies IraeBy Medea
Chapter Ten
In the crypt below St. Paul's, five humans discussed their survival in hushed, fearful tones.
"I say we get out of the country, leave first thing in the morning!" Andrew Barnes urged.
"And go where?" Margaret Austen snapped wearily. "By definition, they have all the time in the world. Time enough to track us down."
Charles Watson ran a tired hand over his forehead and through his thinning hair. "Not to mention the fact that they were able to discover our identities in the first place. If they had the means to do that, I highly doubt we would be successful in our efforts to elude them."
"We must destroy them," Henry Lloyd agreed.
Winston Barnes let out a sharp, incredulous laugh and was about to speak when Henry Lloyd abruptly held up his hand for silence. They listened, pulses racing and nerves tingling.
Footsteps echoed above them on the black-and-white checkered marble floor of the sanctuary.
"They can't have gotten in! It...it could be a caretaker" Margaret Austen insisted, although her voice lacked conviction.
"It isn't them..." Henry Lloyd agreed, attempting to sound more confident than he was. "But it could be hired muscle. As we know, far too many low-lifes are willing to work for demons. Two of us should investigate...Charles, do you have your revolver?"
The demonologist nodded, reached beneath his jacket, and withdrew the weapon. Henry Lloyd gripped the hunting knife he had brought for protection and said, "Watson, you come with me. The rest of you, stay here. If we fail to return in ten minutes, take the tunnels beneath the crypt."
The two elder statesmen of the Council mounted the stairs and emerged into the dimly-lit sanctuary. Detecting motion near the high altar, they moved cautiously toward the elaborate structure.
Henry Lloyd stiffened when he recognized the man who was sprinkling ashes on the floor before the altar.
"Rupert Giles..." Lloyd declared coldly.
Giles looked over his shoulder at the two Council members, turned, and rose to his feet. "Good evening, Henry...Charles..."
"What are you doing here?" Charles Watson demanded accusingly.
"He's helping them," Lloyd broke in before Giles could speak. "He is betraying his own kind and has chosen to serve soulless demons."
"You...worm! You helped those monsters kill Thomas and Fiona?!?!" Watson bellowed.
"And I'm going to help them kill you as well," Giles acknowledged coolly.
"You are a fool," Lloyd spat contemptuously, "Has your bitterness over your rogue Slayer's death so blinded you that you can't see that you've cast your lot with unprincipled killers who will think nothing of slaughtering you, once you've served your purpose?"
"I suppose you would know about unprincipled killers, wouldn't you, Henry?" Giles replied with a lifted eyebrow.
"How dare you?" Lloyd retorted, scowling indignantly at Giles. "What we did, we did for the greater good of humanity. You can hardly say the same of those vampires."
"For humanity's benefit...or for *yours*? *Your* power, *your* agenda..." Giles countered. He took a step toward Henry Lloyd.
"Stop right there!" the Head of the Council warned, seething with rage.
Giles complied, regarding his adversary with a bemused yet deadly smile. After a moment, he turned back to the materials he had been working with before the altar.
"Stop what you're doing, Giles," Henry Lloyd ordered.
Without looking back, Giles replied softly, "One more pass of the ashes, a brief incantation, and the desecration of this altar will allow Angelus, Spike and Willow to enter. Then we shall see the sorry end of your misguided scheme."
"No!" Lloyd shouted as he lunged for Giles.
Too late, Charles Watson realized the ex-Watcher's true intention, and attempted to restrain his colleague. "Henry, wait! He can't--"
But before the demonologist could grab hold of him, Lloyd swung his arm down and stabbed Giles in the back with his hunting knife. Giles groaned in pain and slumped forward. Charles Watson pulled his angry colleague away from the wounded man and exclaimed, "He was bluffing! Simple magic can't desecrate a cathedral!"
Giles rolled over weakly, coughed, and looked up at the two Council members. "No, it can't. But a mortal sin...thou shalt not kill, Henry..."
"You're not dead..." Watson countered shakily, as Henry Lloyd stared blankly in shock.
Eyes narrowing triumphantly, Giles gazed back at them and quoted Scripture. " 'You have heard that it was said to the men of old, you shall not kill; and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment. But I say to you that every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment.' "
"Intent is the same as action..." Lloyd murmured numbly. He dropped the knife, which clattered to the floor as the cold realization of what he had done hit him.
From the shadows a few paces away, a deadly voice interrupted their confrontation.
"Checkmate."
Angelus stepped forward, his cold, cruel face revealing the essence of his nature.
The Bringer of Death.
Panicked, Charles Watson swung around to fire his revolver at the murderous fiend who stood before them. However, before he could pull the trigger there was a rush of motion and Spike was upon him. With sadistic delight, the blond vampire not only wrenched the gun from his hand, but he tore Watson's hand completely off of his arm. The demonologist shrieked in agony and instinctively clutched his wounded limb toward his chest.
"Ahh, sudden, rapid blood loss," Spike sighed appreciatively. "No better way to disarm your opponent."
Angelus strode forward, grasped Henry Lloyd by the neck, and delivered a bone-crunching blow to his skull, rendering the man unconscious. He let Lloyd's form drop to the floor and then went still. Cocking his head to the side and listening for a moment, Angelus announced, "There are heartbeats below ground... in the crypt. Spike, come with me. Willow, watch these two."
The two male vampires stalked off in search of their prey, leaving Willow with the two incapacitated Council members and her wounded friend.
"Giles," she murmured, kneeling beside him and supporting his head against her shoulder, "How bad is it?"
"It's painful...thankfully, I think he missed the vital organs," Giles wheezed with considerable effort. His face looked dangerously pale.
Willow propped him up carefully and examined his back. "You're bleeding pretty heavily..." She inhaled the scent of his blood and frowned. "This smells deeply oxygenated...I'm not sure, but the knife might have punctured one of your lungs..."
"Not...good..." Giles managed to squeeze out.
"Hang on," Willow insisted as she gently lowered his shoulders to the floor. Determined to stabilize him until he could be treated in a hospital, she steeled herself for the excruciating measures she was about to take.
Ripping the hem of her shirt, she bunched the material in her fist and walked over to the baptismal font. Gritting her teeth, she dipped the wadded fabric into the water. As it seeped through the cotton and burned her fingers, she hissed in agony. Returning quickly to Giles, she propped him up again and ripped his shirt down the back. Very delicately, she pressed the soaked material against his wound and, ignoring her own pain, chanted solemnly, "De morte transire ad vitam."
As quickly as possible, Willow rid herself of the burning fabric, which had already left any patch of skin it touched raw and enflamed. She re-examined the wound and saw that the flow of blood had slowed. A sniff revealed that the blood was no longer the richly-oxygenated blood of the lungs. Satisfied that she had done what she could, Willow eased Giles down against the cold, marble floor to rest.
And then she noticed it.
A heartbeat.
Racing...frantic...terrified...
It was coming from above ground, not down where Angelus and Spike had gone to root out the other conspirators. Had one slipped by them somehow?
No matter. Deftly removing the two, unconscious Council members' belts, she tied their wrists behind their backs. Or, in the case of Watson, his left wrist and the bloody stump that was what was left of his right wrist. Using their neckties, she lashed the belts tightly to a grate in the floor at the base of a nearby pillar. Then, she went to track the human who owned that heartbeat.
*****
Margaret Austen shook with fear in the darkened recesses of the Whispering Gallery. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She was terrified past thinking clearly, and merely wrapped her arms around herself and rocked.
Cold panic gripped her and nearly caused her heart to stop when a faint voice reached her through the stillness of the dome.
"I can hear you..."
She shivered uncontrollably, but began to inch toward one of the exits. It had been panic that had driven her to flee the crypt while those *monsters* had attacked Winston and his son Andrew. She berated herself now for attempting to hide, rather than simply bolting for the door and seeking out *any* well-peopled night spot.
Years of work cataloguing newly-acquired volumes for the Watchers Library had done little to teach her how to handle being stalked by vampires.
Losing her nerve, Margaret bolted.
Only to find herself face-to-face with a comely, young-looking redhead who had appeared from nowhere.
Dear God.
The Red Minion.
"Going somewhere?" the deadly, titian-haired vampire asked her coyly.
Before Margaret could scream, she was up against the wall with fangs embedded deeply in her neck. As the blood drained away, she experienced a wave of dizziness and everything went dark.
*****
"You wandered off," Angelus observed as Willow returned to the altar with Margaret Austen slung over her shoulder.
"Something caught my fancy," Willow smirked as she shrugged the middle-aged woman off her back and onto the floor. All five of the conspirators lay at their feet.
"Oi! You nibbled!" Spike chided her at the sight of Willow's mark on Austen's neck.
Willow looked at the familiar fang marks on Andrew Barnes's neck, then up at Spike. "So did you."
"All right, all right, *quiet*, you two..." Angelus broke in. "Let's get them ready, in case our audience actually shows up."
"How long we waitin' before we just kill this lot?" Spike asked.
"We have about three hours until dawn," Angelus noted.
"And Giles needs to get to a hospital soon," Willow added.
"That would be greatly appreciated," Giles muttered with a weak smile.
Angelus strolled over to where Giles was reclining against a pillar and considered him thoughtfully. "We could fix you up right here, Rupert."
Willow's eyes widened in shock as she realized what Angelus was suggesting. Giles picked up on the dark vampire's meaning as well, yet he maintained his composure.
"If it's all the same to you, Angelus, I prefer to remain among the living. Old habits die hard."
Angelus blinked at him and then burst out laughing. When the sound ceased echoing through the cathedral, he added, "Well said. You know...you took a gamble back there. How did you know you could get one of them to try to kill you?"
"Oh, that..." Giles confessed slowly. "Well, I'll admit that I thought any one of them might be angry enough to kill me when I revealed that I'd helped you kill Thomas and Fiona. However, murder wasn't really the sin I was after. I hoped that if I provoked Henry enough, I could elicit an even older, more primal sin."
Angelus raised his eyebrows and mulled over this for a moment. Eventually, a knowing grin stretched across his face. "Pride. Lucifer's sin, the grandfather of Cain's."
Giles nodded, too fatigued to say more.
"Got the job done," Spike muttered indifferently. "Now we just sit and wait."
"No, now we set the stage, William..." Angelus corrected, with a wicked gleam in his eye. "It's been too long, boy...you're getting rusty."
Spike stood indignantly and tossed aside the cigarette he'd been smoking. "Rusty?! I'll show you rusty..."
*****
The stage was set by the time the first Council member arrived. She was a tall, slender Jamaican woman, somewhere in her early thirties, and her eyes flared with horror at the scene she beheld near the high altar.
Five of the most senior members of the Watchers Council were stripped naked and bound helplessly. Charles Watson and Margaret Austen were lashed to wooden prayer benches, Winston and Andrew Barnes were tied, kneeling, to the base of the two forward pillars at the high altar, while the Head of the Council himself, Henry Lloyd, hung upside-down like a fly trapped in a spider's web. Strips of red fabric, most likely ripped from one of the altar cloths, were tightly lashed around his ankles and secured around the same pillars to which Watson and Austen were bound. Lloyd dangled about five feet above the floor.
"Help...us..." Winston Barnes wheezed pitifully from his captive position. The young woman recoiled at the sight of him, eyes glassy and head hanging limply to the side. He looked as though he were already dead.
Without warning, the young woman felt a cold body pressed up against her back and strong hands trapping her arms at her sides. She screamed.
"Welcome, my dear," a sinister voice whispered in her ear. "You're just in time for the show."
She was unable to see the powerful individual who held her prisoner, but she had all too clear a view at the shirtless, pallid blond man who pushed a high-backed wooden chair across the floor toward her, and the equally-pale, red-headed woman who approached with several lengths of electrical cord.
Wait...not human...vampires!
The young woman had only been with the Council for three years, so it took a few moments for her to make the connection between the unnatural chill of the body that had trapped her, and the deadly pallor of the two monsters she saw before her. But once she realized who...or *what*...held her captive, her mind worked frantically to place the faces. Not all vampires were recognized individually in the Watchers' chronicles, but there was something familiar about the blond and the redhead.
Blond...redhead...
...she'd seen a record, somewhere in the index of American vampires...
That was it. Spike, or William the Bloody. An old one. And the Red Minion. Dangerous because she was also a formidable, practicing witch.
As Spike slid the seat behind her and the Red Minion tied her wrists securely to the arms of the chair, the young woman realized with dread whom the third vampire *must* be. The companion with whom their names were so often associated in the records...
"Comfy?" a handsome, dark-haired vampire asked as he stepped in front of her and checked her bonds to make sure they were secure.
"Angelus..." the young woman breathed.
*****
Two more Council members arrived soon after the young Jamaican woman. Like her, they were tied to heavy wooden chairs. The chairs were then arranged in a semi-circle with an unobstructed view of the haggard senior Council members.
Angelus addressed his audience, eager to get on with the much more interesting business of torturing people to death. "You were brought here as witnesses. All five of these Watchers will die, broken as only *I* can break a human being. Admire my craftsmanship. Commit every detail to memory. You three will write the definitive account of how I scourged the highest levels of the Watchers Council. If you fail to record even a single act, I'll track you down and give you a personal demonstration to jog your memory. Have I made myself clear?"
The young woman and the two men who had arrived after her nodded mutely, their hearts throbbing frantically against their ribs.
"Willow, fill them in on the background," Angelus commanded. "I have some whipping to do. Spike, my boy...time to have *fun*..."
The blond vampire grinned sadistically and accompanied his sire to the black, leather satchel that Angelus had brought with them to the cathedral. The dark vampire withdrew a thick, deadly-looking bull whip, coiled sinuously as a viper. With a flick of the wrist, he unwound it with a resounding crack.
Meanwhile, Spike rummaged briefly in the bag before pulling out a cruel set of pliers. Then, with predatory grace, he and Angelus stalked toward their targets: Winston Barnes for Spike, Andrew Barnes for Angelus.
Spike was about to take the pliers to the elder Barnes' pectoral muscles when his sire's voice halted him.
"Face the man this way...Let him watch while I whip his son to death."
Spike complied, twisting Winston Barnes toward the other pillar before he squeezed the man's chest with the pliers and yanked.
To the macabre serenade of screams, Willow began to recount the deeds of the conspirators to her horrified, captive audience. She told them of Buffy's assassination, and of the measures that the seven conspirators took to prevent Angel from being warned about the plot through his Seer.
How they had utilized an ancient spell to deflect visions from Cordelia to another human being who, inexperienced and unprepared for the intensity of the sendings, had staggered in front of an oncoming car and died twenty-four hours later.
How the next person to whom they deflected Cordelia's visions was driven insane.
Lives of innocents whom the conspirators had deemed expendable in order to achieve their goal of murdering a Slayer who no longer answered to the Council.
"They interfered with the Powers That Be, and now they're paying the price," Willow declared solemnly. "It was the Powers who released Angelus to deliver their message..."
Leaning in close to the trembling, tear-stricken Jamaican woman, Willow smiled wickedly and said, "They're really pissed...Never forget that yours is to serve the greater good, not to think you can impose *your* vision of what the greater good is...This," Willow gestured toward her companions, who were zealously inflicting wounds on the two Barneses, "is what happens to those who fuck with the Powers."
Somehow, the young woman found the courage to speak, albeit shakily. "The Powers That Be are a force for good...Y-you expect me to believe that they would use Angelus as an agent for their work in the world?"
Willow shrugged. "The Powers tap whom they will."
"So *you* say," the woman argued fervently. "You're a vampire, just as evil and heartless as those two. Why should I trust what you have to say? You don't speak for the Powers."
"O ye of little faith," Willow chuckled. However, she grew serious when she felt a strange force gathering outside her. While it reminded her of the link to the natural world she often felt as a Wiccan, it was different...almost...sentient...a whirlwind of beings. With sudden clarity, Willow realized what was about to happen.
"Careful what you wish for," she warned the outspoken woman. "Insist that the Powers speak for themselves, and they just might do it."
A violent seizure gripped the young woman, who shrieked as the force of her first vision hit her. Within moments, she was bombarded with vivid images of every event Willow had described, the truth seared painfully into her mind. Willow looked down at her and almost felt pity. Her unwillingness to believe had earned the woman a burden she would carry for the rest of her life.
The Powers had made another Seer.
Willow glanced at the other witnesses, who were gaping in abject terror at the vile acts they were forced to observe. She turned just in time to see Angelus lick the bull whip with broad, gluttonous sweeps of his tongue, savoring the blood of Andrew Barnes. The slashed, lacerated body of the younger Barnes hung lifeless from the pillar.
His father, Winston, was not only dead, but barely recognizable after Spike's attentions. Blood coated the blond vampire's hands and forearms all the way up to his elbows. Willow walked toward him with a gleam in her eye, grasped one of his hands, and began to suck his fingers clean. Spike growled his approval and his eyes slid shut with pleasure at the feel of her tongue snaking around his digits. He was on the verge of pushing her to the floor and taking her right there when an angry exclamation burst forth from Angelus.
"Dammit! We lost one before we could kill her..."
Willow and Spike looked over to where Angelus stood scowling down at Margaret Austen's dead body.
"Heart attack?" Spike asked.
"Oh, probably," Angelus spat with contempt.
"Well, look at it this way," Willow attempted to placate him. "At least we scared her to death."
"It's not the same," the dark vampire grumbled.
"We still have two more left," Willow insisted. She walked over to him and, placing both hands on his cheeks gave him a quick peck on the mouth as one would a sulking child. A smirk twitched at the corner of his lips.
"You keep an eye on the Head Watcher," Angelus instructed, giving her a deep, sensual kiss. When he released her, he added, "Don't let him die before we've finished the other one."
Angelus went to join his childe in torturing Charles Watson, while Willow moved to stand by Henry Lloyd's head as he dangled upside-down and watched the proceedings unfold.
"The Council will hunt you down...turn every one of you to dust..." Lloyd hissed at her.
"Maybe...but not in your lifetime..." Willow retorted easily.
In short order, Angelus and Spike had eviscerated Charles Watson and drained him dry. They abandoned his corpse, no longer of any interest, and approached their final victim.
"You know, dawn isn't far away," Angelus observed. "We need to make this quick and painful."
"Burning alive is always good," Willow suggested.
"Works for me," Spike agreed.
"Auto-da-fé it is, then," Angelus declared. He strode toward his satchel of deadly instruments and pulled out a canister of kerosene.
"No....no...." Henry Lloyd protested as he struggled vainly against his restraints.
As Angelus doused the doomed man with fuel, he allowed himself the final satisfaction of taunting the conspiracy's mastermind with the *real* reason he had agreed to exact retribution for the Powers.
"Make no mistake, Watcher," Angelus growled in his ear. "This isn't just about vengeance for the Powers That Be. I couldn't care less about their higher purpose. But...Buffy was *mine* to kill...She alone stood against me. She alone defeated me. The only way I'd ever save my reputation would be to take her out. You stole that opportunity from me. So, now you get to take her place...."
"Fiends! Monsters!" Lloyd shrieked, abandoning all pretense of stoicism. Though he refrained from begging for mercy, he continued to spew obscenities at the three vampires.
Willow rolled her eyes in disgust. "Bored now..."
"Spike, have you got a light?" Angelus chuckled.
Spike grinned back. Walking over to his leather duster, abandoned on the floor before he had started working over Winston Barnes, and pulled his silver lighter and a pack of cigarettes out of the pocket. Tapping the pack, he pulled out a cigarette and put it between his lips as he walked back to Henry Lloyd's precariously-suspended form. Without a word, Spike flicked the lighter and held it beneath Lloyd's head. With a whoosh of flame, Lloyd was ignited and his curses instantly changed to screams.
Without missing a beat, Spike lit his cigarette, puffed briefly, and then quipped, "We 'bout done 'ere?"
Angelus nodded his approval. "I'd call this a good night's work."
As the male vampires went to put on the shirts they'd stripped off before they'd set themselves to task, Willow checked up on Giles, who had been reclining at a safe distance from the slaughter. He still looked pale and fragile.
"How are you, Giles?" Willow asked softly.
For a moment, the ex-Watcher said nothing. He stared at Henry Lloyd's burning body, the bright flames reflecting in his spectacles. Then, turning his eyes to Willow, he confessed in a strained voice, "A part of me...a very, very dark side of me...wishes I could have held the lighter. At the same time, I'm...relieved...that I was incapacitated. Angelus was right...I don't have the backbone for this kind of vengeance. As much as I loved Buffy..."
"Shh," Willow broke in reassuringly, "It's okay, Giles...I understand."
She gathered him up against her and rose to her feet. Supporting him against one shoulder, she called to her blond companion. "Spike, help me with Giles."
"Quite the trouper, mate," Spike remarked as he slid Giles' other arm around his shoulder.
Together they followed Angelus out of St. Paul's, leaving behind three traumatized Watchers. Willow cast a spell to prevent the fire from spreading beyond the altar, so that they would live to record what they had witnessed. Helpless captives, they could only wait, surrounded by corpses, for someone to arrive in the morning and set them free.
*****
It was close enough to dawn that the vampires knew they wouldn't have time to escort Giles to the hospital and make it back to their flat before the sun rose. So Willow volunteered to look after Giles while Angelus and Spike returned to their temporary lair.
At the hospital, the physician remarked on the astounding degree to which Giles's stab wound, which should have been fatal, seemed to have begun healing. The doctor felt he should be kept twenty-four hours for observation, but did little more than dress the wound, administer a unit of plasma to replenish some of the blood Giles had lost, and prescribe antibiotics. At Willow's insistence, Giles was settled in a private room rather than the ward. Before the orderly left, Giles asked that the blinds be drawn so he could sleep. When the sun's rays were effectively blocked out, Willow was safely able to sneak in.
"So, it looks like you'll survive..." she observed with a weary smile.
"Yes...as always, I'll carry on..." Giles conceded, but with a numb emptiness that Willow found unsettling.
"Giles...I know that there are worse things than knife wounds...and some of the damage you've suffered will take a lot more than antibiotics to heal. But there are plenty of people out there who won't let you go through it alone..."
Giles stopped her.
"I am a mortal man," he began quietly. "Closer to the end of my life than the beginning. At some point, those of us with finite life-spans are forced to ask: why? What have I accomplished? Why patch myself up and start all over? I suppose the drive for self-preservation made me seek hospital care without even thinking twice. But now...now that the dust has settled, I wonder what I have to look forward to."
"Don't you dare talk like that!" Willow growled sternly, clutching his hand. "What have you accomplished? Plenty. If Buffy were here, she'd tell you that if it weren't for you, she'd have given up on several occasions. If it hadn't been for you, I might never have pursued my interest in witchcraft. In which case, I would have been dusted within twenty-four hours of having been turned. To Dawn, you've been better than her own father, and the same goes for Xander. You hold everyone together, Giles."
"But I have betrayed everything that I was, every principle I upheld," Giles muttered bitterly. "I know that what Buffy's murderers did was wrong, but the brutality of what *I* did...it made me see that I have just as much darkness inside me. I wasn't just carrying out justice...I *enjoyed* it. And now I can never claim to be the man I was before..."
Willow hung her head, letting her brow rest against clasped hands for several moments as the weight of his remorse hit her. When she finally spoke, it was in a soft, forlorn tone.
"Not a night goes by that I don't struggle with my demon, that I don't have to fight the temptation to write off all of humanity as nothing better than prey. People like you and Buffy gave me a reason to see the value in human life. Now Buffy is dead...and what those Council members did has all but destroyed my faith that there is anything redeeming about human beings. Or that I should even care if there were...Without you, I don't know how long I'll be able to care..."
Giles stared at her, aghast. His lips pursed in frustration. Finally, he released a low, rueful chuckle and said, "That's blackmail, Willow. I've never heard anything so ruthlessly manipulative in all my life."
Willow smirked, relieved that her words seemed to have hit the mark. "That's the trouble with us vampires, my friend. We're ruthless."
Giles continued to chuckle, but his melancholy laughter soon turned to sobs. The inner hardness he had maintained in order to complete their task collapsed, now that the work was done, and his emotions poured forth in a shuddering stream of tears. He cried for Buffy, for himself...for a sad, sad world. But he also allowed himself to take comfort in Willow's reassuring embrace.
When he had spent himself, Willow urged him to get some sleep and promised she would return before he was discharged. Not wanting to risk the possibility that an orderly would open the blinds while she dozed in the chair in Giles's room, she sought out an unobtrusive place below ground.
Once in the basement, she saw the door to the morgue and rolled her eyes.
<Oh, why not?> she mused inwardly. <Hope nobody tries to autopsy me...Wait'll I tell Spike about this...>