The Gatekeeper Trilogy, Book Three - SONS of ENTROPY Read online

  That she had just lost part of her lifetime.

  The man laughed deep in his throat. It was a sadistic, cruel laugh, and it chilled her to her marrow.

  “A chair,” the man said, snapping his fingers.

  To her astonishment, one appeared beside him. No one carried it over; no one bowed and scraped in obeisance.

  She and he were completely alone.

  He sat on the chair. Joyce, sprawled like a broken doll on the cold cement floor, her blanket to her left, was forced to look up at him. He was wearing a black robe, like the men who had kidnapped her, but she saw a black turtleneck at the neck and black pants legs as he crossed his knees. He had on very nice loafers.

  “Do you have any idea what is happening?” he asked her. His accent was European. Italian, she guessed, and wondered what it mattered. But she knew she must take note of anything and everything in case she might use it to save her own life.

  “No,” she rasped, then cleared her throat. “No,” she said more firmly, “but it would be nice if you would fill me in.”

  “Ah.” His face broke with pleasure. “Now I see where she gets her fire. I have often wondered at the difference in temperament of Slayers. The one I killed was almost meek. Yet the power I gathered from her dying body was tremendous.”

  Joyce swallowed hard and forced herself not to react. That’s what he wants, she told herself. He’s a bully, that’s all.

  Just a bully with the power to materialize furniture out of thin air.

  He crossed his arms now, as well as his legs, and settled in.

  “Well, let’s begin at the beginning, shall we? Italy, the Middle Ages.” He shrugged. “I was just a boy. But I was ambitious. I knew I was destined for great things. Just like your daughter.”

  “My daughter,” Joyce said, “is nothing like you.”

  He touched her face. His fingertip burned like the tip of a cigarette, and she jerked her head. The spot throbbed with pain. She clenched her teeth to keep from making a sound.

  “She cannot do that, it’s true,” he said, cocking his head as if to admire his handiwork. “But there are times when she would like to.”

  “Not Buffy.”

  “Yes, Buffy.” He chuckled. “You haven’t seen her stuff a crucifix down the throat of a writhing vampire to make her talk, have you? Or stand by and allow that strange pastiche of good and evil, that one called Angel, to torture one of my young followers to death. Have you.”

  It was not a question. It was a threat.

  Joyce narrowed her eyes. “To save humanity,” she said.

  “Ah. Humanity.” He clicked his tongue against the backs of his teeth and refolded his arms. “But if we go down that road—is humanity actually worth saving?—we move into the realm of philosophy. And I find the subject profoundly boring. So.”

  He leaned toward her again. And this time she smelled his breath. It was the same odor she had smelled a day and a night before: the odor of charred human flesh.

  Joyce gagged.

  “Oh, pardon, do I offend?” He blew his breath over her face, clearly enjoying the look of revulsion that crossed her features.

  “Listen to me, Signora,” he said. “I am allied with a powerful demon, and he craves the blood of your daughter. I will give it to him. If I have to put you on the phone and make her listen to every scream I create as I slice the flesh from your bones, inch by inch, I will give it to him.

  “If I have to murder every man, woman, and tiny baby in this dismal little town, I will give it to him.”

  Joyce couldn’t bear any more. She raised her chin and spat at him. Her eyes widened in shock when she realized what she had done, but she fought hard not to let him see her surprise, and her fear.

  His gaze hardened as he wiped the spittle from his cheek.

  “I will give it to him,” he said slowly.

  “If Buffy knows this, she’ll never trade herself for me,” Joyce said.

  He put his hand over his heart. “Your honesty is touching.” Then he reached back his arm and flicked his fingers at her.

  Blue tendrils of magick flickered toward her, lapping at her features with white-hot pain. She cried out and turned her head, struggling against the wall to move out of range.

  “Don’t trifle with me, woman. You cannot imagine the agony I can inflict on you.”

  Then he threw back his hand again.

  This time he slapped her, hard enough to send her reeling back into unconsciousness.

  The last thing she heard was his quiet, pleased laughter.

  The last thought she had was, Buffy, stay away.

  At dawn, Jacques Regnier sat up in bed and cried, “No!”

  In an instant, the man and woman were at his side. The woman took his hand and felt his forehead.

  Jacques said, “He’s here. Il Maestro is here, and he’s hurting Buffy’s mother.”

  “Oh, dear Lord, he’s here?” Micaela cried.

  The boy nodded.

  She covered her mouth. The man stood close behind her and looked over her head and down at Jacques.

  “In Sunnydale,” the man said.

  Jacques nodded again.

  Chapter

  2

  DESPITE THE SOFT GLOW OF THE MORNING LIGHT THAT shone upon her face, the lovely young girl with the golden hair was, at present, not very lovely at all. Her name was Amy Madison; she was a witch; her face was mottled with bruises and there was a cut over one eye that threatened to leave a scar.

  “A pity,” Ethan Rayne said sadly, and he meant it. He was a very bad person, it was true. He had attempted to sacrifice the Slayer’s life to the demon Eyghon to save his own skin. He had opened a Halloween shop filled with cursed costumes that allowed demons and monsters the run of Sunnydale on All Hallows Eve.

  And once upon a dark age, he had been Rupert Giles’s dear friend in forbidden magicks, a lifetime ago, when the old boy had tried to dodge his miserable do-gooder destiny as a Watcher.

  So yes, it was true that Ethan was not the best of men. But these were the worst of times. Even penny-dreadful dabblers such as himself could read the signs and portents. And once you actually got to the Hellmouth, it was obvious to all but those most deeply mired in denial—that being nearly the entire general populace of the charming town of Sunnydale—that the end of the world was at hand.

  “So, Rupert, I’m back in the saddle again,” Ethan murmured. He had planned to come here, to do minor mischief during the confusion. Once here, however, he had realized how dire the circumstances actually were. Much as it pained him, he realized that he would need to lend a hand. For the imp of the perverse that resided within him needed a world in which to play his games.

  Ethan Rayne didn’t want to die any more than anybody else did. So he decided to help . . . and there was always the chance that there might be an advantage to be gained in the process.

  From the doorway to Amy’s hospital room, he gave the poor girl a salute. Her magickal emanations were what had drawn him to the hospital in the first place. The young witch was in bad shape, but she would recover. It was more important that he find the Chosen One.

  The world had sincere need of Buffy Summers at the moment.

  Ethan turned and sauntered down the hospital corridor, smiling at a fetching lass in hospital scrubs, raising a lazy brow as she smiled back. He had on a black turtleneck and charcoal gray pants; he was a looker if he did say so. As she walked on, giving him one more appreciative gaze over her shoulder, he feigned a nonchalance that deserted him with one glance at the wide panorama windows looking out onto the bright morning.

  Next stop: Giles’s quaint little hangout.

  All roads lead to Rome, Rupert, do they not?

  Through the lobby, with a brief, pensive sigh at the closed specialty coffee cart, and then Ethan swung through the large double doors and stepped into the day. The horseshoe-shaped drive in front of the hospital was packed with cars, and out of them people lumbered and limped. Bleeding foreheads, arms at od
d angles, a weeping woman carrying a small boy who kept whimpering, “Monsters. Monsters.”

  In the distance, sirens blared. Grew closer. Ambulances were en route to the emergency room.

  He walked up to a rotund, elderly woman who was being helped from a Cadillac by an equally aged but far more agile man. The woman’s face was uncommonly white, and her eyes were wide with either fear or shock. There was a large bruise on her forehead.

  “Excuse me, but I was wondering if you could tell me if there’s been an accident or something,” Ethan said, filling his voice with deep concern. “I just came from visiting my aunt on the third floor, and I see all these new arrivals, and all at once.”

  “Damn kids,” the man said. “It was kids.”

  “No,” the woman murmured. “Not kids.”

  “Sure it was.” The man gave Ethan a look that said, Don’t listen to the old bat. “One of those damn gangs on PCP.” He shook his head. “You come for a visit, think what a nice little town it is, buy a house, this happens.”

  “I’m so very sorry,” Ethan said. He clucked his tongue in sympathy at the woman. “The staff here are very good. I’m certain they’ll take excellent care of you.”

  “Hear that, Eugenia?” the man said, patting the woman’s arm.

  “It wasn’t kids,” she said peevishly to Ethan, ignoring him.

  They shuffled past. Ethan couldn’t suppress a shiver. If he ever got that old and doddering . . . well, he never would, would he? That was what magick was for.

  More cars were skidding to a halt around the horseshoe. Ethan dodged around the bumper of one and gave the driver a jaunty wave. His own rental was in the parking garage. He fished in his pocket for the ticket, thinking it awfully cheeky of hospitals to charge one for visiting the injured and infirm. It should be the other way around, one imagined—such an odious duty surely ought to warrant a reward.

  The ticket found, he hesitated a moment, then stepped into the gantrylike elevator complex. He stood for a few seconds, then allowed his intuitive sense of self-preservation to take over. The stairs were a better choice. In an elevator, it didn’t matter if someone could hear you scream. There was nothing they could do about it.

  He turned to the right and took the stairs two at a time, glancing over his shoulder as he went. Satisfied that no one was following him, he turned his attention to the top of the flight.

  And, for his pains, was caught in a white-hot matrix of sizzling blue energy that flared out and down like a net. As he cried out, the energy web bent and shaped around him like a coat of armor.

  The agony was intense.

  His reaction, more so. It was as though every hair on his body was being burned away. Hissing through his teeth, he collected himself and murmured the syllables of an ancient Babylonian destruction spell. But even as the net began to cool and fade, an olive-skinned man with scarred cheeks and savage eyes hurtled himself down the stairs toward Ethan.

  “For chaos!” his assailant shouted.

  The force of his leap slammed Ethan backwards down the stairs. Ethan’s head cracked against the first riser; then he slid down to the next step and managed to roll onto his stomach, holding himself in place while the other fellow skidded to the bottom.

  Then the scarred man turned round and got to his feet. He balled his fists and flicked his fingers out, toward Ethan. Two bright orange balls of fire rocketed toward his face, but Ethan managed to raise his own hands and stop them with a binding spell. They hung in the air while Ethan grabbed the railing and pulled himself to a half-standing position. The world was a bit topsy-turvy; he was incredibly dizzy.

  His attacker barreled up the stairs. Gripping the railing, Ethan swung both legs up to kick him in the chest, a feat which would have done the Slayer proud.

  Then, as the other man fell back down the stairs, the entire structure began to shake. Violent tremors ran through it, setting off car alarms, and within the elevator complex, an emergency bell began to scream.

  The hooded man stayed where he’d fallen. But the stairs rang with new footsteps from above, and as Ethan clung to the banister to keep from falling, half a dozen thugs, some of them wearing hats or hoods to hide their faces, charged at him.

  Ethan slammed his fist into the face of the nearest one, then leaped up two steps, to the roof of the parking complex, and threw himself to the right. The momentum of the next attacker sent the man shooting headlong down the steps, to join his fellow on the cement floor.

  Ethan flung out his leg, tripping two more hoods. Then the entire structure shook again, harder this time. The front tires of a lovely red BMW rolled over the edge of the floor and teetered just above Ethan’s head. A beat-up truck joined it. Metal slammed and ground against metal.

  The sky had grown quickly dark, and now it cracked open, and cold buckets of rain sluiced down Ethan’s black turtleneck as if someone had snaked a firehose into it. It was a hard rain, stinging, and it gave the battle between Ethan and his attackers a strange, strobe-like quality. Lightning flared overhead, impossibly close. A tree to the left of the structure burst into flame.

  Below, someone began shrieking.

  “Who are you people?” Ethan shouted as he struggled up the stairs and came upon yet more men. Some of them wore robes emblazoned with white, archaic inscriptions.

  Ethan clapped his hand to his head and cried, “The Sons of Entropy! Of course! What the devil are you doing here?”

  That seemed to startle the men so badly that they looked at one another, unsure what to do. Ethan pressed his advantage, saying, “Brother Claude, is he here? My gracious, it’s been ages.”

  “What do you know of Brother Claude?” one of the men demanded. He had very red hair and a slight red mustache. As he faced Ethan, his eyes ticked slightly to the right, then downward. He was watching someone sneaking up behind Ethan on the stairs.

  “Only that he can’t be trusted,” Ethan shot back, and whirled around, slamming his right fist into the solar plexus of the man behind him. The chap doubled over and clutched his stomach, lost his balance, and fell against the side railing. Ethan stooped down, grabbed his ankles, and flipped him over the side.

  The man’s screams were lost in the clatter of the downpour.

  “That was Brother Marcellus!” the redheaded man shouted, quivering with fury.

  “And who were you?” Ethan asked, as he grabbed the front of the man’s robe and ran forward, forcing the man to stumble backward.

  Ethan ran him all the way to the edge of the structure, then lifted him up and threw him over the guard wall. He wasn’t used to this kind of physical conflict: it had been a while. But he felt good.

  When he turned around, the others were scattering. With a grim smile, Ethan watched them melt into the torrential downpour.

  “Ethan Rayne comes to town,” he said, “kicking ass and taking names.” He wiped his hands on his sodden trousers as if they were contaminated, which they were, with magickal residue, and balanced himself like a tightrope walker as the entire structure shook and swayed.

  “Damn,” he said angrily.

  He had lost his parking ticket.

  However, his car looked to be intact, and he still had the key. So he let himself in and sat behind the wheel, wondering what was the best way to keep from driving off at an angle as the structure whipped and canted.

  He jammed the key into the ignition and started the engine. He was just about to put the rental into drive when something roared up behind him and grabbed him around the neck. It began to pull; Ethan had the image of his head as a champagne cork, and flailed his arms to grab at whatever had hold of him.

  The monster was enormous, with ape-sized arms covered in purple-and-ocher leathery skin, pincers flashing at the elbows. Its head slammed repeatedly against the roof of the car, but it clearly didn’t mind.

  In the rearview mirror, Ethan caught a flash of a face the color of a fish’s underbelly, with jet-black eyes and a circular mouth ringed in deep blood-red. Perhaps a suck
er. Perhaps the thing that had just attached itself squarely to the back of Ethan’s head and was drawing it into its expanding mouth.

  “You don’t want to do that. I’m not quite ripe,” Ethan managed to say, flummoxed as to how he was going to save his life.

  Then his windshield shattered, and a large, very tall, very hairy creature covered with white fur reached past the wreckage to grab Ethan around the neck. He was caught between the two monsters, one tugging forward, the other suctioning him backward. He was certain they were going to break his neck.

  He tried to whisper a binding spell, but the syllables were choked off along with his oxygen supply. Pin-points of light danced before his eyes, and then everything began to go black.

  It was then he remembered that the car was running.

  Grunting, he released the emergency brake and pushed the gear shift into drive. Then he depressed the accelerator.

  The car slammed forward and headed for the wall. Ethan couldn’t figure out what was going to happen when it crashed into it, but he shut his eyes and prayed to the god Janus that there would be something left of him when it did.

  With a resounding crash, the car rammed the concrete. The white-haired thing sailed over the hood, disappearing from Ethan’s blurred view. The sucking thing also disappeared, no longer behind Ethan.

  The engine roared and the car futilely ground against the wall. It took Ethan less than a heartbeat to realize this was the only chance he had to get out alive.

  He pushed open the door and clattered to the oily pavement, then he got the hell out of there.

  He half-ran, half-stumbled toward the stairwell, scanning for his Entropic friends. It appeared that the coast was clear, and that they had retreated into the driving rain.

  As he began his descent, lightning crackled overhead. The structure started to buckle.

  He knew Sunnydale would find a good, sensible reason for this all to have happened. It certainly wouldn’t be the correct one.

  But at least he would get a good laugh out of this.

  He lurched out of there, tattered and torn, and no gorgeous women in scrubs, jeans, or business suits gave him so much as a glance. To make matters worse, Rupert would be at his dreary job at that monstrous school. The best he could hope for would be a spot of tea, when what he needed was nourishment—and brandy.