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dragonyphoenix) wrote2018-07-22 05:22 pm
Oldest WiP
In this scene, Giles and Ethan are merging their minds to locate the Aurelian Amulet which can weaken any vampire of the Aurelian line.
As they turned up the long driveway, up to Ripper's hidden home, the one Ethan wasn't supposed to know about, Ripper turned off the headlights. He seemed to act automatically, as if this were a habit. Ethan, in the passenger seat, kept his grin bland and his hands from clenching the door handle. In the darkness, nothing distinguished the driveway from the rest of the property and he could only hope Ripper wasn't about to crash them into, say, some unexpected tree.
Even though Ethan couldn't properly see the building, he could tell by its silhouette, more of a solid denseness than the surrounding trees, that it was huge, more mansion than house which was hardly surprising. Ripper had never settled for the mundane. Ripper, his gaze straight on the road, seemed to hum with an unexpressed tension, and Ethan's thoughts turned to how Ripper had paled, shocked into speechlessness, when he'd suggested the perform the enjoinment ritual at Ripper's hidden home. “Ethan Randall Page?” Ethan had said, referring to the name used to purchase the mansion. “Really, Ripper, if your going to be so lazy as to use pseudonyms based on the names of your old chums, you have to expect someone will work it out.”
Ripper pulled to a stop. From inside Ripper's Volante, even with the top up, Ethan could feel the barrier spell that protected the building. That much power could never have come from Ripper alone. Ethan couldn't detect the coppery tastesmell of a binding ritual based on human sacrifice. Perhaps Ripper'd worked with that bird he'd mentioned, the one he couldn't trust to have his back? No, there was no sense of sex magic in the binding. Ripper looked upset, as if already regretting allowing Ethan into this space. “Home, sweet home?” Ethan asked to wipe that look off of Ripper's face.
He sighed. “Come on, then.” Ethan watched carefully as Ripper opened a gate but didn't sense Ripper calling on any external power, not that he'd need to merely to create an opening in the barrier spell. Inside, the mansion was more dilapidated than Ethan had expected. Oh, the bare bones of the building were solid enough and the mansion must have once held a certain elegant charm, but the years of disuse had covered it in a patina of neglect.
Ripper led him to a garden, one open to the sky but surrounded on all four sides by the mansion. Ethan noted that the lights, magical and powered by the same source as the barrier spell, directed their light downward to maintain the illusion of an empty and abandoned building. The garden suffered from the same neglect as the interior of the building although someone had cleared debris and vegetation from the pathways and from the open space at the center where they would perform their ritual.
The ritual required little in the way of setup, nothing more than a sacred circle to sanctify the space. Ripper's circle hadn't been dedicated to Chaos, but it would serve. The spell itself, being an enjoinment, a merging of all that they were, required only their willingness and, of course, Chaos magic. Ethan, a dedicant of Chaos, would provide that himself.
Ripper and Ethan stood in the center of the circle, facing each other. Ethan raised his left hand. Ripper, unmoving, kept his hands at his side. “If you don't want the amulet, Ripper, all you have to do is say so. I'm sure there are other ways to destroy this vampire. You could call on your infatuated Slayer perhaps?”
Ripper raised his right hand and placed it, palm-to-palm, against Ethan's left. There was no formal invocation to call on Chaos. Ethan reached out and felt the power bubble up within him. Directing that power, he brought that power to his palm and pressed, piercing the skin between them and merging their blood. Ethan raised his left hand, the bloodied one, and pressed it to Ripper's forehead. Ripper, following suit, raised his right hand, the bloodied one, to Ethan's forehead. “The mind that denies thee,” Ethan chanted, “thou subsume. The thoughts closed against thee, thou encompass.”
As one their hands moved lower until bloodied palms pressed against hearts. For a moment, Ethan regretted not changing out of his clothes. The Giza 45 cotton would be impossible to replace in Sunnydale. “The spirit closed against thee, thou embrace. The soul barred against thee, thou lay open.”
Their hands moved lower again. Normally, laying palm to Ripper's groin would give him a sexual thrill but even Ethan couldn't fight the power of the spell. “The body held from thee, thou subsume.”
Ripper's mind … No, Ethan sensed little trace of Ripper in Rupert's thoughts. He felt a loss, saddened by how much Rupert had allowed himself to forget, by how small Rupert had become. That flash of angerpride must have come from Rupert. Ethan mourned. Where had the boy he'd loved gone?
Loved? Yes, he'd loved Ethan. Still did. He felt a stab of regret that Ethan now knew how much Rupert loved him. Ethan could take an inch of advantage and turn it into a mile. A stab of pride, that must have come from Ethan, shot through him.
Ripper had been his wild child, well, not child exactly. Where had that wildness gone? There were holes, no, not holes, walls in Rupert's mind hiding … Eyghon? That last time they'd invoked the demon? Randall's death?
Ethan's memories held a darkness, thoughts of a ritual gone wrong, of Eyghon loose in human form, of Randall … Turn away, turn away, Giles whispered. There's nothing to see. You know how Ethan loves to exaggerate. The amulet. We're here for the amulet. “Shouldn't we find that amulet?”
Mind-to-mind, thought-to-thought, that didn't allow one to hide, but one could hide behind words. Rupert thought the amulet might be useful but he wasn't obsessed enough to allow Ethan into his mind to find it. Hope flared. Was it love? No barriers between them? But no, Rupert didn't know why he'd allowed this.
“Ethan. Please.” Let it go. Don't look for answers. He gave way to Rupert's need, or they gave way, the they that was him, that was both of them together as one.
Order could search, plodding from one step to the next, but Chaos used chance and intuition, picking not quite randomly, the better path. When it failed, it bombed, but when it succeeded … “We have received an amulet, Padre, from our most holy Mother Church.” They spoke as one, repeating the words of others, words first spoken centuries ago. They had some vague notion they were speaking in Spanish and that one of them didn't know the language, but that seemed of little concern. “According to the missive, it is …”
“Demonic. Yes, I can feel its power.”
“It must be hidden. No one must ever suspect we have it here.”
“We will place it in the Tomb of the Juniper.”
Rage flashed through them. The Tomb of the Juniper had been searched. It had held no amulet.
“Padre Ferrer or the other?”
A flash of understanding. An infant, a boy child, taken in, had been named Junipero in honor of the Padre. He'd joined the church, as orphans raised by the brothers often did, and had grown old in its service. The amulet had come into their possession as he lay on his deathbed. It was his tomb, not Padre Junipero Ferrer's, that the amulet lay buried in.
To grab the amulet from the tomb required phenomenal amounts of power but they could draw on the girl's power. What girl one of them thought and the answer came from neither. Willow's power, bound to Giles' service. One of them thought to ask, Why Giles and not Rupert?, but the other, anxious, pressed them forward. Not now. Not when we're so close. The power bent to their will. The amulet dropped, heavy, into their hands.
With the amulet found, they could draw apart, end the ritual, but there was that niggling question: holes and walls. Why were there holes and walls in …
No! Don't look. Please, just … don't.
A doorway. All their questions answered behind one small doorway, and a part of them was a devote of Chaos, of Janus, guardian of doorways. They pulled it open and it all came flooding in: Eyghon's rampage, the car, choosing to press on the accelerator, driving straight into Randall, beating him afterward to make sure Eyghon couldn't rise, but Eyghon, trickier, chained himself to Ripper's mind, connecting itself to the world through Rupert's very soul. Ah, that explained Rupert's visions, the walking nightmares, rivers of blood, walking corpses, all bound to one purpose, to drive Rupert to obey Eyghon's will. The breaking, the sundering of Rupert's soul into, not two but three, the two guardians, Giles and Ripper, protecting as best they could. And the cost of that protection, arranging a Slayer's death and that failure, the death of her Watcher instead. And the payoff, death, finally a chance to rest, hopefully in peace. And the unexpected bonus, a witch, a young woman, little more than a girl, of incredible power and the binding of that power to Giles' will.
The shock of it drove them apart. Ethan found himself standing, facing Rupert. No, not Rupert and not Ripper either. That look of calculation belonged to Giles. A flash of green told Ethan, not that he needed reminding, that Eyghon was there as well, at least connected if not inside to Rupert. Ethan slammed a hand into Giles' cheek and held if fast, pouring power through, power enough to fray that bond, to drive the demon off if only for a short while. It might kill the girl, Willow, but what did that matter?
Giles staggered under the weight of that power. “You can't be stupid enough to think you've stopped him. You may have weakened the bond, but there's no severing it. The demon will return.”
“Yes, well, Giles.” The man winced. Had he honestly believed he could hide two of his personalities during an enjoinment spell? Ethan reviewed Giles' thoughts. No, but he'd been desperate enough to try. “We need to talk without him listening in.” Just as Giles had, Ethan didn't use the demon's name. No need to risk invoking it. “How dare you keep this from me! I could have been working, all these years, to free Rupert from the demon.”
“There's no freedom …”
“Outside of death,” Ethan interrupted. “I've seen your longing for that little coda, for a chance to rest with your ancestors.”
“After all I've done,” Giles protested, “I hardly think they'd accept me.”
“Sleeping in the dust, then, to awake to disgrace and everlasting contempt, piling the guilt higher and higher, believing that you deserve such a punishment and keeping me at bay when I could have …”
“You know why I kept you out of it,” Giles interrupted. “Rupert loves you.” He's not the only one, Ethan thought. Ripper and Giles shared Rupert's feelings. Ethan knew the whole man loved him. “I couldn't risk you getting hurt,” Giles continued. “It would have killed him.”
Better than the demon killing you, all three of you. “Will the demon kill me now that I know your little secret?”
“Not immediately. He'll keep you in check, waiting until he needs leverage to use against me.”
“He must know I'll try to break the bond.”
“He knows you'll fail.”
“Then I can stay?”
After carefully placing the amulet on a bench, Giles turned to Ethan. “I can't keep you away even if I wanted to. Besides, now that Rupert knows all, he'll need you.”
Giles' face grew pale and his breath hitched. Was this an attack? Had Eyghon … No, this wasn't Giles. It was Rupert. He fell and Ethan winced as he caught him, the pain of his beating flaring up with the extra weight. “Oh, Gods, Ethan. I didn't know. How could I not know? What have I done?”
Thinking of Giles and Ripper, at their efforts to keep Rupert safe, Ethan brushed a hand over Rupert's head and thought you weren't meant to suspect.