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Harrogate, Part Thirteen
5: Brimham Rocks
A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same.
Elbert Hubbard
Giles drove much too fast along roads he didn’t know, chasing the sinking sun. He had tried Willow’s cell phone but she had evidently switched it off. Rosemary called as they were a mile along the road to let him know what he already knew – that Willow wasn’t with any of the wicca group and none of them had seen her.
“Talk to me, Wesley,” he demanded. “What do you know?”
It seemed to be a relief for Wesley to go into researcher mode. He certainly made a lot more sense when in that state of mind than any other. “Twelve spells in this book that I’ve translated so far involve the blood of a witch or witches. I’ve been focusing my attention on spells that involve the blood of three witches – there are seven of those – and was trying to eliminate those through the positions of the planets when the spells must take place, but if there are now four witches dead, I need to look at the other spells I’ve translated.”
Wesley went back to his notes, crossing through things while Gunn tried to help. Bizarrely, once set a difficult task that needed to be carried out urgently in the back of a somewhat erratically-driven car, Wesley seemed to be far more in charge of his faculties. “Not the summoning of Anerethon, that only needs to bathe the sacrificial dagger in the blood of a mole, a gosling and the juice of the scarlet pimpernel before cutting a single witch’s throat and summoning him as her life blood ebbs… The seeking of the seven lost talismans of Garinos involves an invocation which involves witch sacrifice, but I think the blood of one witch or at the most two would be sufficient.”
“It has to need the blood of four witches. Stands to reason.” Gunn shrugged. “They’d have done their summoning by now if they had the ingredients, and a spell as nasty as this I’d say we’d know all about what it was they’d summoned. They must need all that blood.”
“And the ash of one,” Giles put in from the front. “The last one’s body was burned and a quantity of her ash and bone was taken away.”
“Well, this one uses ash and blood but…” There was a deathly hush as Giles watched Wesley paling in the rearview mirror.
“What?” he demanded.
“What’s the date?” Wesley asked abruptly. “Today? The date today?”
“June 10th, Wes,” Gunn supplied.
“‘Eleven nights before the summer solstice.’ And is the moon in Aries?”
Giles and Gunn exchanged a look and Giles reached for his cellphone. “I’ll find out.” He dialled the number for the Watchers’ Council office in London, hoping to find someone intelligent working there at this time of night. His heart sank when the voice on the other end of the phone was the self-important one of Andrew.
“You have reached the office of the Watchers’ Council of Great Britain. Andrew Wells speaking. Please state your password so that I may I assist you with your supernatural phenomenon…?”
“Andrew it’s Giles. I need to know where the moon is right now in relation to the other planets.”
“Wait…” There was the clatter of something being dropped and something else falling over and then a girlish scream which Giles surmised was caused either by the appearance of a spider or Andrew’s realization that the books in question were extremely heavy and somewhat precariously balanced on their shelves.
“Hurry, man,” he snapped.
Wesley looked up to say: “Yes, because being shouted at when one is flustered and under pressure always makes one feel so much calmer.”
Remembering in time that he needed Wesley to read the spell, Giles swallowed his retort.
There was the sound of pages being rapidly turned, Andrew snatching up the phone to gasp breathlessly: “I’m looking. Wait…” And then another frantic rustle of pages before Andrew said: “The moon’s in Aries. Entered it today.”
“Ask him if Uranus is stationary,” Wesley demanded. “And if Mercury is waxing and Mars sesquiquadrate.”
“I doubt Andrew can even spell ‘sesquiquadrate’ let alone comprehend its meaning,” Giles muttered, but he passed on the questions tersely, and listened to Andrew frantically turning more pages before snatching up the phone once more.
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“All of those planets are doing all of those things today. Yesterday the moon was in Pisces and on Sunday it will be in Taurus, but today it’s in Aries. And do you need me to look up anything else? Because I can if you like?”
“It’s this spell.” Wesley met Giles’ eyes in the mirror. “And there’s a problem.”
“Yes, thank you, Andrew.” Giles put down the phone while the man was still burbling at him, and returned Wesley’s gaze. “What kind of a problem?”
“End of the world problem?” Gunn demanded.
“It’s a spell for the summoning of Narcoriel, a demon king of one of the darkest hell dimensions. That’s why the spell needs to be so powerful, because he won’t come easily. Once he’s here, he’ll want to combine this realm with his own by opening a doorway between the two. The members of the cult who worship him believe that his coming – and the destruction of mankind – is inevitable, but that they will be guaranteed a certain amount of protection from his wrath and that of his demon hordes by being his summoners.”
“Yep, that sounds like a problem,” Gunn admitted.
“Oh, that wasn’t the problem I was referring to,” Wesley glanced up briefly. “But I’m sure this is the spell. It’s the right date and the right time, and it will only work with the blood and ash of witches. But not just any witches. One must be ‘unknown by any man’ and one a seer, and one a novice, and one who ‘hides her powers beneath a cloak of shadow’.”
“According to Willow, Karin was a lesbian, which would presumably do as well as a virgin for the purpose of this spell, and Dora was supposed to be a seer, and Alicia would count as a novice, and the last woman who was murdered was not a practising witch as far as anyone knew, yet clearly possessed of power enough to attract the attention of these people.”
“So, they have everything they need for the spell and it’s the right day?” Gunn demanded in disbelief.
“No, it’s actually worse than that.” Wesley was still reading rapidly. “It doesn’t require the blood of four witches. It requires the blood of five. And the fifth must be ‘the murderer of a first born son’. It says ‘as her blood is steeped in blood so tenfold shall its powers be, and her ash shall open the gateway’. That’s what they need for the summoning. The rest is just ritual, sanctifying the place of summoning and making preparation for the casting of the spell. What they really need is…”
“Willow.” Giles’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “They need Willow.”
Wesley glanced up at him and Giles saw that he was sane, after all. As sane as any man would be who wasn’t sure if he was in the midst of a nightmare in which time and space and logic had no meaning and yet was required to interact with his surroundings as if they did. “I think they always did. I think that’s why they killed your god-daughter. I imagine that what Willow did – the power she possesses and how close she came to ending the world – would have attracted considerable attention from all manner of undesirable cults and sects. I very much fear that your god-daughter was…”
“Bait.” Giles knew that if he gripped the wheel any tighter it was going to shatter in his fingers. “They did it to bring me here, because they knew Willow would accompany me.”
“It’s not going to happen, man,” Gunn assured him. “We’re gonna find her and stop them.”
“No,” said Giles clearly. “We’re going to find them and kill them.”
“They could be human,” Wesley said quietly. “This demon, Narcoriel, is worshipped by both humans and demons.”
“I don’t care,” Giles assured him.
“But one day you will,” Wesley said, as if he had personal knowledge. “Ask Willow.”
Giles realized that Wesley was not at his most annoying when adjacent to reality; he was at his most annoying when he was right. He slammed his foot even further down on the accelerator and said: “Find a counterspell, Wesley. Find a way that we are impervious to their spells and can hurt them with our own.” As an afterthought he added: “Please.”
Wesley nodded and went back to his notes, Gunn holding the book open for him as they jolted over bumps in the road and took corners much too fast. All the time he was driving, Giles was trying not to think about Willow drawing people to her in what she believed to be a trap only to discover that she was unable to use her magic and had always been their intended prey…
***
Willow felt the power surge through her once again and shouted the binding spell. “Redimio lemma!” Bind them! The power was in her, she could feel it, and yet, as she pointed to the oncoming enemies and let the force of the spell fly, it dispersed as if it had hit a forcefield. They were now very close and this was her sixth attempt. She gathered her strength once again and this time called upon Hecate to assist her with one of her most powerful spells. “Hecate, habitum lemma in vestri queritor quod permissum lemma adveho haud propinquus!” Hecate, hold them in your grip and let them come no closer! Her Latin was always going to suck, but nevertheless she felt the power of the spell flow through her, exactly as it always did, felt it crackle from her fingertips, a flow of energy that should coil around them and freeze them where they stood and –
Still they kept on coming. It was dark now, the sun sunk beneath the shoulder of the moor, and the only light came from their flaming torches and the red glow of their eyes. They wore the hooded habits of monks, and, like monks, one of them played the role of thurifer, swinging the censer back and forward to fill the air with incense.
She made a last desperate attempt to throw out a spell but it just broke around them harmlessly; like water turned to steam as it touched a fire too hot to quench.
“Your powers are useless against us, Witch.” They said ‘witch’ as if it was the word it rhymed with.
As they grabbed her she struggled desperately, but their clawed fingers just bit into her skin and her struggles made no impression upon their grip. She noticed that although they could maintain a surface glamour that gave the impression that they were human, their nails were long, yellow, and bear-like. The censer was wafted under her nose and she choked on the clogging scent. “Hey, actually Jewish here. Not enjoying the whole Christian church experience.”
Another red-eyed monk brandished an inverted cross at her, intoning: “We care nothing for your faiths. All who do not worship Narcoriel are damned.”
“So, you’re multi-denominational demon-raising crazy people, then?” She tried to force a smile as they lifted her feet off the ground. The glamour fell away from them, and she saw that not only did their eyes glow red but they also had mouths full of painfully sharp teeth and ears that would not have looked out of place on the scalier breeds of goblin.
As they dragged her across the moors, their torches revealed flat stones and rough ground. Gritting her teeth, Willow tried to memorize another spell for repelling enemies, but although she threw out the incantation with all her power, the ones holding her didn’t so much as flinch, and one turned his glowing red eyes upon her, baring his pointed teeth in a derisive smile. “No witch can stand against us for you are nothing. You are no more than the sacrifice that fuels our spell.”
“Have you ever thought of using crystals instead?” Willow suggested. “Or maybe some nice chicken feet?”
The one holding her tightened his grip spitefully and she could barely restrain a gasp of pain. She tripped on something and, looking down, saw with horror that there was a dead policeman with his chest ripped open, eyes staring up at her sightlessly, one of his buttons still absurdly shiny despite the blood everywhere else. She screamed and then realized that actually screaming was a very good idea right now and screamed again as loud as she could.
At once the red-eyed monk-demons turned on her and snarled out an incantation that froze the scream in her throat.
“You will be silent, witch, as were your sisters in sorcery before you.”
Willow mouthed something that was very vulgar indeed; a phrase Kennedy had taught her and teased her into repeating back to her. She thought of the young woman with yearning, of how she never showed fear even when fear seemed like the logical response, and then a flame of longing licked through her that culminated strangely in one word: Faith. She had spent so many years shouting for Buffy, for Giles, for Xander, and now the person she found herself wanting the most wasn’t even Tara but Faith. She was actually glad that Tara wasn’t here to be killed by these creepy witch-hating demony monk guys, even if she was only absent because of already being dead; at least she had gone beyond fear and pain. No one could ever drag Tara across a moor towards a blaze of sacrificial flame while telling her that they were going to burn her alive, just as they’d always planned to, because she imagined herself strong enough to combat the worshippers of Narcoriel who bathed in the light of his darkness, while she was but a weak and foolish witch.
Just give me back my powers and you’ll see how weak and foolish I am, and, hey, have you ever heard of dental floss because I feel like I’m standing in Haliotosis Central here…
The rocks loomed ominously around her. There was a circle of flame and within it a pentagram with cauldrons arranged in a square within that, torches in the ground, presumably to draw the demon they were raising to the right place, the smell of blood and flame his guide. At the top of the pentagram a post had been jammed into the ground and towered over the circle like a gallows, a pile of unlit wood placed at its base in readiness. A stake. For burning witches. Just like in those horrible old woodcuts she’d never wanted to look at, always turning the page quickly so she wouldn’t have to think about what those women of the past must have suffered just for being born with some magic in their veins or being eccentric or having a pet cat. As they dragged her closer to the circle of flame, a mossy branch caught fire and spat sparks all around her, one of them stinging her cheek. She had a vivid flashback to the scent of those spellbooks burning as the fire blazed too close, her own mother one of the people feeding the flames. The scene-of-crime photo of Alicia’s murder flashed before her eyes; the dribbles of blood: Thou Shalt Not Suffer A Witch to Live.
At least the people who used to kill us believed we were in league with Satan. At least they had conviction. They weren’t just trying to buy off some demon so they could make it through the end of the world… And hey – end of the world coming, should probably do something about stopping that…
They pulled her through the burning circumference, which she desperately tried to scuff with her boot, ignoring the pain of flames licking at her as she tried to break the circle, but they were too quick, hauling her away while the censer-carrying one paused to make sure the circle was secure. By the firelight she could see the pentagram had been marked out on the ground with a powder that had been drenched in blood. She was hauled past a cauldron arranged upon a pentagram and as she looked down into it, she saw that it was filled with red liquid. The realization that it was pints and pints of blood – Alicia’s blood, or Dora or Karin or Mary’s, almost made her vomit right there and then, but as she struggled desperately, they were dragging her across their pentagram to the stake, hoisting her up and binding her to it, the coarse rope biting into her wrists as they pulled the knots tight; one of them saying another incantation over the rope as they tightened it.
Panicking was not going to solve this and it wasn’t as if it were the first time that she had been up close and way too snuggly with death. There were spells without words, ones she’d practised in case she was ever bound and gagged and say – about to be burned alive. She concentrated hard, saying a spell ordering the rope to untie itself in her mind. Solvo vestri. She tugged at the rope but it was still fast. She tried again: Make these ropes as frail as paper, and when that didn’t work tried it in Latin: Planto illa funis ut fragilitas ut membrana! Even allowing for her bad Latin she was sure those were the correct words and she could feel the power was still within her and yet it couldn’t seem to…get out. Couldn’t touch the monks or the rope or anything. She concentrated on the circle of flame, imagining the rain falling, dousing it, leaving it charred and smoking, not a spark left to start a new fire. The rain was perfect in her mind, slanting slate-grey threads of water, the rain of wet Wednesday afternoons. All she had to do was close her eyes and the thunder would sound, lightning streak across the clouded sky. Everything was connected and she could feel the roots of all the earth in a single flower. She could do this…
But when she opened her eyes no rain was falling, not even a drop. A demon monk snarled at her exultantly, clearly enjoying her helplessness and her confusion at her spells powerlessness against them. He thrust a faggot of sticks into the burning circle, the fire smouldering and then catching. He held up the burning torch in triumph, the new flame leaving a yellow reflection in the air a beat behind itself, and she realized that this was it; no spells could save her, they had somehow warded themselves or this place, this world within the circle, against any magic of hers. Which meant she was trapped here, a prisoner, unable to scream, even as the flames licked higher and burned hotter and devoured her alive…
***
Giles heard Willow scream as he opened the car door. It was faint but unmistakable. After more than half a decade on a Hellmouth he was more than able to recognize the individual screams of his friends. He was running before he even knew his seatbelt was undone, his hair standing on end and that familiar trickle of grey sweat coating his spine. Gunn shouted: “Giles, man! The weapons!” but he ran on, trusting those two to do their part, Wesley to bring the spell, and Gunn to bring an axe or three. He just needed to get to Willow before he lost another daughter.
Her scream was cut off so abruptly that he feared it was by a blow – or a knife slashing across her throat – he stumbled on the rough ground, sick with horror, heart pounding as he found himself saying over and over: Let her be saved, please, you took Jenny and Joyce and Buffy and Tara and Anya and Alicia, please let Willow be saved.
He was afraid not only for her but for himself. He suspected he had never entirely recovered from Buffy’s death, especially as, for a long time, the girl who had come back from the dead had felt so unlike the vibrant positive one that he’d lost. Her return had been a miracle – or more accurately a dangerous piece of dark magic – but he had not dared to trust to it for a long time, afraid of the price that would be asked for such a resurrection, the price from Willow and from Buffy herself. He was so lacerated with grief for Alicia at the moment, so raw and wounded and close to breaking at every minute of every day, that he knew if he lost Willow too he would just split open, or do as Wesley had done, and retire to some twilight place where the grief could not reach him.
Of course, he thought, of course he can’t allow himself to believe in this reality, he’s lost too many people too soon.
He thought of them, Cordelia and Angel, whom he had known, yet not as well as Wesley had done, and Fred and Lorne, who Willow had described to him, Fred sweetly eccentric and scientifically brilliant and Lorne with his anagogic powers and ever present cocktail glass, and Illyria who Gunn had tried to explain, that blue-haired, blue-skinned walking corpse of the woman Wesley had loved, being slowly infected by Fred’s humanity, as she had once infected Fred with her demonic essence. And before that, the other woman, Lilah, whose head Wesley had been forced to cut off, whom he had never seen but from Gunn’s description thought of always in monochrome, appearing in the slightly grainy filmstock of a forties femme fatale with cigarette smoke forever curling from an elegant black holder.
And here he was knowing that he would and would not survive if Willow died. That he would go on, somehow, because duty demanded it, and there was too much to do for him to simply give up, and yet how could one recover any joy of life after so many losses? How could one do more than wake every morning and simply exist?
He stumbled again, the waning crescent moon providing light enough by which to see, although not enough to avoid every tussock; the stars impossibly bright in a cloudless sky. His chest was starting to burn with the effort of running while trying not to let out a sob of sheer anxiety. He knew he should be used to this by now, imminent danger and imminent death circling the people he cared for, but it was the one thing to which he could never seem to become reconciled. It was something the Watchers’ Council had never been able to instil in any Watcher that he had ever met; however hard they tried.
He could hear Gunn behind him now, and Wesley muttering something to himself. They were a thunder of approaching feet while he hoped he was still running in the right direction. His toe caught on something solid and he was hurtling through the air to crashland onto moorland. Gasping for the breath knocked out of him, he noticed that his head was barely an inch from a jagged rock that would have undoubtedly have fractured his skull.
“Giles…?” Gunn crouched down next to him. “Are you okay, man? Damn, you nearly split your head open.”
“I’m all right.” As Giles twisted around, dazzled by the white light of Gunn’s flashlight, Wesley sprinkled some herbs and then tipped some holy water onto him before tossing a lit candle into the air which then burst into a bright flare of crimson as he began to intone in Greek:
Apollo, εγώ τιμολόγιο δικό σου βοηθάω. προστατεύω άντραs από το ακολούθησα του Narcoriel…
Giles found himself translating automatically. Too many years spent studying ancient and demonic languages for the words not to come to him at once despite Wesley’s strange and archaic usage: “Apollo, I invoke your aid. Protect this man from the followers of Narcoriel.”
“Apollo?” Gunn demanded. “We’re going all ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ now?”
“It’s a convention.” Giles shook off the Holy water that was seeping into his jacket, blinking as more herbs were tossed into the air above him and came pattering down onto his face like a fall of rain. “One invokes the power that the idea of the god possesses from being worshipped by so many for so long. The faith directed at the concept of what that god represents – even in the distant past – makes it a powerful repository of positive or negative energy that can be used to fuel a spell.”
Gunn seemed to understand that at once. “I got you. I’ve read ‘Small Gods’.”
Ignoring them both, Wesley summoned a ball of blue light and made it explode over Giles; the flame licking around him in a way that was more than a little disconcerting. “…ας δικό τουs συλλαβίζω διάλειμμα πάνω αυτόν όπως αδύναμος όπως έναs οκεανόs επάνω σε ακτή… ας αυτόν να είμαι προστάτευσα και κρατώ όλος δικός του δύναμη και κλαρινέτο του μυαλό εναντίον δικό τουs μοχθηρός συλλαβίζω…”
Let their spells break over him powerlessly as an ocean on the shore. Let him be protected and keep all his strength and clarity of mind against their evil spells.
Giles staggered to his feet, flinching as he saw that Gunn’s flashlight was now shining on the face of a dead uniformed policeman, lying on his back on the moor. His heart appeared to have been ripped out and he followed the beam of Gunn’s questing light to see it glistening wetly on the ground nearby. Apparently this policeman had been of so little consequence to his murderers that they had not even troubled to keep his heart.
“There’s no time…”
Gunn caught his arm. “You can’t save Willow if those witch-hater generals have turned you into a tadpole. Wes, finish zapping him with the anti-magic mojo.”
He struggled against Gunn’s grip as Wesley shouted a web of words around him, feeling the power of the spell sizzle on his skin and then sink in. Wesley turned to Gunn, took a sword from his hand and handed it to Giles, then said, “Let him go.”
Giles ran. He could hear the sound of more Greek being spoken behind him, and knew Wesley was saying another spell, reading from his wind-whipped notes as Gunn directed the beam of the flashlight onto them while they both ran across the moors.
All his thoughts were for Willow. He could see the glow of firelight now, the looming shadow of rocks, and then he was over the crest of another rise of moorland, and he could see everything – the circle of flame, the swinging cauldrons, the monks walking in a circle around a pentagram, and looming up behind them on the edge of the pentagram – the struggling figure of Willow, bound fast to a stake, and coughing violently as the smoke from the burning wood at her feet began to smoulder into flame.
He ran, sword at the ready, the absolute clarity descending that sharpened the mind to a knife-point in battle. It was too easy to be merciless on such occasions, but today he hardly thought that would be a problem.
A monk swung around, eyes flame-red in its inhuman face, teeth bared in a snarl as it stretched out a clawed hand and threw a fireball straight at him. Even as he flinched in readiness, it dispersed as harmlessly against him as a handful of maize. The monk’s snarl doubled in volume, a growl of furious disappointment and frustration.
Giles jumped through the outer circle of flame, intent on getting to Willow and setting her free before the fire caught at her clothing. As a monk swung an axe at him, he parried it with his sword, kicking the demon off before driving his sword deep into its heart. It fell back, snarling with fury, and one of the others broke off from its chanting to charge at him. The last time he had felt this focused in a fight had been when he had gone after Angelus after Jenny’s death; now as then he welcomed the rage, let it carry him forward, ducking a vicious sword blow easily, snatching the axe from the dying fingers of the first demon as it fell to its knees, then used sword and axe together with focused concentration, wanting to get to Willow, and determined to kill anyone who tried to stop him.
He heard Gunn shout: “You get Willow. We’ll stop the ritual!” but he didn’t even trouble to look round, all his attention on the demon monk in front of him, its red eyes and malevolent snarling mouth.
“You stink of witchcraft,” it snapped. “You are no more than a warlock. You are a powerless against us. Kneel and beg for our mercy.”
“No, I really don’t think I will.” Thinking of this being Alicia’s last sight, these pitiless red eyes watching the blood drain from her, he thrust the sword into its heart and as it staggered backwards, swung his axe to take off its head with one clean blow.
Until this moment, he guessed the other monks had considered him no more than a nuisance, intent upon beginning the ritual that would culminate in the burning to death of a witch and the summoning of their demon lord, but as he ran to Willow, they turned as one, red eyes glaring at him. But as they started towards him, Gunn and Wesley were there, guarding the way to Willow and to Giles, Gunn armed with an axe and Wesley with his book of spells. As the demon monks rushed at them, Wesley kept reading from his book, raising a finger for emphasis here and there like some demented vicar on the field of battle, while Gunn swung his axe with such gusto it took off a demon’s head.
Willow was struggling desperately, and Giles hastily kicked the smouldering wood away from the base of the stake, finding it was already burning underneath, cinders rising up into the night like fireflies, sparks adhering to his trousers and sweater and burning tiny charred holes in the cloth before they were extinguished on his skin. He cut through the rope binding her to the stake and she fell forward into his arms. He heard a sob and realized it was his, a sound of sheer relief as he inhaled the scent of her hair and felt her trembling his arms, scared and singed, but very much alive.
Then he was shaking her angrily. “I told you not to do this! I told you to be careful!”
Willow’s green eyes looked huge in her elfin face, full of remorse and shock. He pulled her back into his arms again and held her tightly, his fingers automatically reaching for the knots around her wrists as he did so, and beginning to undo them, tugging angrily at the bonds as he continued to scold her: “I thought Xander was the most irresponsible of all of you and Dawn the most likely to get herself in trouble, but, no, now I think back it was always you. Dabbling in magic completely unsupervised after all the times I told you not to; reading books you had no business reading and… I should have stopped you. I should have known what you were doing. I should have never encouraged you. It’s my fault you ever went down that path. It’s my fault you were…” Then the last knot came loose and he realized that it was Willow he held, not Alicia, and that she understood exactly who it was that he was blaming and why as he straightened her back up again and saw the tears in her eyes; tears of sympathy for him. Then her eyes widened and she gestured frantically behind him.
He spun around as Gunn yelled: “Giles, look out!”
He shoved Willow behind him and brandished his sword as two demon monks approached. Gunn was fighting like a hero. It was a shock to see him swinging that axe with such gusto, such speed and precision and extraordinary grace, as if he were only half alive unless he was doing this – fighting the good fight, making the world a better place. Wesley was ducking the sword swings of red-eyed shrieking demon monks and tossing more handfuls of herbs in their direction. They screamed when the herbs touched them, and at another quiet murmur from him one began to smoke, before bursting into a pillar of flame. The others all shrieked a non-human wail of rage and Giles wondered if this was the death they most feared, the one that Wesley was dealing out. He suspected most women feared to die by the hand of male creatures they did not know, alone on the moors with no way of screaming for help as they felt their life blood ebbing, so, even if it were these creatures’ darkest fear, he thought it served them right.
Wesley seemed completely focused on the spells he was saying, leafing through his translated notes as if reading a sermon and intoning each word very clearly, but almost absent-minded in the way he jerked his head out of the way of their swinging blades. The spells, linked as they were to lessons of the past and a time he knew to be real, evidently feeling far more important to him than the possible death offered by possible demons. Giles wasn’t in any way surprised when Gunn grabbed him by the shoulder and yanked him firmly behind him.
As the two monks approached, Giles advanced to meet them, positively eager to feel his sword cut through more bone and flesh. This wasn’t just about ridding the world of demon monks and murderers, this was about wanting someone to pay for all the grief in his heart. As he swung his sword, Wesley tossed another handful of herbs onto the demon nearest to Giles, murmuring a quiet incantation, and then Giles was having to stagger back half-blinded, as it erupted into flame. The other demon broke off to wail its rage and Wesley took the opportunity to toss another handful of herbs onto that one. As it turned into a sheet of blue fire, a demon flung itself at Wesley, snarling furiously, and looking more than happy to rip him limb from limb with its clawed fingers alone, sinking them into his shoulders as it bore him to the ground. Giles decapitated it with great pleasure as it drew back its head to snap at him, and then yanked the headless body from him. Wesley put up a hand and Gunn grasped it, the way he hauled him to his feet looking as familiar as if they had performed these battle steps a hundred times before, and then Wesley was on his feet again, none the worse, and still reading from his book. He tossed a handful of herbs onto the headless corpse, moved his fingers over it and then murmured a quiet spell. It ignited into flame and Gunn stepped back quickly.
Wesley glanced up at him. “This stops them from regenerating. Otherwise there’s a chance other members of their sect might be able to call them back.”
As Giles turned around to survey the smoking field of battle, he saw that the cauldrons of blood had been overturned in the battle and that the red liquid was now seeping into the ground, smoke still billowing from the smouldering remnants of the broken circle like mist and the bodies of dead demons scattered across the half-scuffed pentagram.
Willow tugged at his sleeve and pointed to her mouth then at the dead monks, gesturing furiously. Giles understood and caught at Wesley’s arm. “I think they’ve stolen her voice.”
“Oh.” Wesley turned the pages of his book, quite unperturbed. “This should undo any minor spells of theirs cast upon her.” More Greek. More little finger waggles. A tossing of herbs in her general direction and Willow was talking again apparently halfway through a sentence she had begun while still rendered artificially silent:
“…but I didn’t know about there being spells that only worked on witches. I thought it was me, stopping me from doing the spell-making because of the flaying and the veiny and the black eyes and I thought I could make them come to me – and I did – but then it turned out to be a trap – and it was them making me come to them all the time and I tried and tried to make the spells work but they didn’t and I tried to break the circle but that didn’t work either and there was no rain even though it was in my head all the time, but it wasn’t outside it and then there was fire and getting very hot and starting to smoke and not wanting to be dead at all in that way and then you came and – that was good – even with the yelling – it was very, very good…”
Giles pointed a finger at her. “Don’t ever do that again.”
She looked like the little girl he’d first met in the library of Sunnydale. “I won’t, I promise.”