Chapter 46
Too Late
The sun hat was woven of straw; Cassandra bought it at the farmers market earlier this week. It cast pleasant shadows across her face. She wandered barefoot through her garden, delighting in the warm dirt between her toes, the familiar blush of heat on her back from the giggling sun. With a small pair of snips she gathered fresh blossoms for her kitchen table: a fat peony, stately delphiniums, shy pansies and regal roses. She stopped at the blue lobelia with her snips in hand, just shy of cutting the thin stems. After a moments hesitation she left the flowers alone, a small tingling growing in her upper spine signalling either a vision or just a shiver from looking at the flower that meant malevolence and ill will. Normally she wasn’t superstitious – the flowers were beautiful, and meant to be enjoyed, but there was something wrong about the day already, and she didn’t want to tempt the oft-capricious gods.
Her cottage was appropriately just that – a small building built decades earlier with actual thatch on the roof and water from a hand pump. To be sure, she wasn’t some country bumpkin who raised sheep and composed bad poetry. She had a house in Exeter, a husband who was a podiatrist, and a small brood of children scattered about the county of Devon.
Yet she was grateful for these moments at her cottage, in her garden, with the dirt of Gaia between her toes. She felt close to her goddess, with whom she shared her name, and to the elements of existence. Yet try as she might, she could not entirely erase the sense of evil that pervaded the earth, sending tendrils of menace around the globe, a malevolent force that had been growing stronger and stronger all year long. An evil that yearned to swallow the entire world in its hellmouth.
Evil was not new to her, nor to her coven. They have all had their share of evil, of death.
Of failure.
Maggie had been too young. So had Cassandra. It was a small pittance of comfort to lay her worst failure on her own youth, her inexperience.
The itch between her shoulders grew stronger. She hooked the basket of flowers in her elbow and reached in her apron for her crystal. The minute she touched its smooth cool façade, a striking image smashed into her brain.
Her dear friend Althanea, slumped against a wall, a knife making its slow, deliberate way inside her, seeking her organs, her blood, her power.
Cassandra closed her eyes to focus more fully on the vision, her heart quailing as the onslaught of visions continued. The blood pooling outward, conquering the complacent linoleum. And Althanea’s killer?
Tara.
Dear god.
Cassandra had known this was a possibility, had known since they scried on Tara the day she decided to fish Caleb out of Willow’s brain. But to see it happen, her worst fears realized, was nearly more than she could bear.
She had to contact the others. Now. Before it was too late.
Before she opened her eyes, another vision flashed before her. Blue eyes, Tara’s perfect hands, and the knife piercing her own chest.
It seemed the fate of Kassandra of old was about to be hers.
She opened her eyes and was not surprised to see Tara standing right in front of her, the bloodied knife in her hands, smudges of dirt on her cheeks and clothes, her eyes as malevolent a blue as the lobelia flowers in her garden.
Tara was not in them. For that small favour, Cassandra was glad.
“Good will prevail,” Cassandra whispered, scared but trying not to be.
The basket of flowers tumbled from her elbow as the knife found her heart. They would wilt in the relentless heat of the summer afternoon, discarded forever. The nearest neighbour would discover her body in the garden when she came for their customary afternoon tea. That evening she would scald her hands trying to get Cassandra’s blood out of the hem of her flowery skirt, weeping all the while. Only the coven would realize what was happening, why select members of their sect were dying so violently, so fast, but they wouldn’t realize in time. Meanwhile, Cassandra was dead, and her knowledge of the other chief supplicants of the gods was stolen.
*****
Aristotle may have said that all men by nature desire knowledge, but Oz knew differently. Men desired money, power, toys, and women. Oz knew that knowledge itself was just a chamber pot for the gods, a receptacle for all sorts of mental effluvium and just as meaningless. Those intellectually gifted people he was forced to associate with would spout about knowledge and wisdom and the mysteries of the universe, pontificating endlessly with rapacious wit to the detriment of the entire human species, perspicacious in their dealings with man and shunned because of it.
All Oz wanted was a tiny corner of his brain to call his own. He just wanted to be normal, but he should have known from the start it would be impossible. If Maia was so convinced on making him a human filing cabinet for her mysteries, she should have made him a bit more courageous as well.
He came to believe that this entire world was a great farce. God, the big man, the man upstairs, he was just the proprietor of the great joke-shop of the sky. How often did one rejoice in some blessing from the gods, only to find the rubber chicken within?
No day was that truth more evident than when his cousin Jordy bit him on the finger.
Damn. Brilliant and cursed at the same time. Not exactly a winning combination by anyone’s standards.
It became easy for Oz to become disinterested in life; what good had living ever done him? Rare moments of interest came with his music, and if no one really understood the name of his band he could forgive them, right?
Then one day a girl in an Eskimo suit walked into his life. At first she understood so much about him, being similarly cursed with brains, with witchcraft, falling into the cracks of this most unusual underworld.
And one day he walked out. A coward, like always.
She couldn’t understand, even with all she knew. She couldn’t understand, because she couldn’t be in his skin. The wolf was always hungry. It would have swallowed her whole, and without pity.
So he left, to tame the wolf, trying for the first time to step up and be a man. Be worthy of his knowledge from Maia, to finally help the Scooby Gang in their unnoticed fight to save the world.
They never knew his greatest secret of all. It wasn’t only trivialities that Maia shared with him. Occasionally he would wake up knowing the enemy’s plans. It didn’t happen every time, indeed, not often enough for it to make a difference, or so he believed. He always had a hard time speaking his mind, sharing his secrets. To open his mouth, to accept his responsibility, was often more than he could bear. Besides, the Scooby Gang did well enough with Willow on their team. And if he could interject here and there with the most appropriate thing, that was enough.
The wolf was consuming him. He left after killing Veruca, and returned later in the year, thinking he had it conquered, ready to step up for Willow and the Scoobies. It didn’t take long to learn that life would never be the same. The wolf wasn’t content with the full moon – all moments of extreme peril would unleash the beast, and after two agonizing years Oz left again, knowing he was breaking Willow’s heart. Knowing, at last, that there would be no future with her, not with the beast inside him, devouring him.
But this entire year seemed different. The apocalypse actually seemed determined this time, and Maia had given Oz just enough information. His conscience grew weary. He returned to Sunnydale too late. They died because of him. He could have warned them, he could have saved them.
Everlastingly too late.
It was devastating to be caught by an Extraction team, removed to the devastated remains of the Watcher’s Council. He stewed in his grief, remembering the red-haired girl who lit up his life, brought soul to his music, and said the words that he could never quite say. He believed her dead, and mourned her loss with solemn melancholy.
Even that enraged him. Could he suffer no greater emotion than mere melancholy?
Then. Willow alive. Willow gravely injured, but Willow alive.
More. Willow the last Scooby. Willow the last hope. Willow the last, the only one to stop the apocalypse. Would Oz still stand aside?
Not this time. He made arrangements for his departure, but just before he could leave he received a blistering ultimatum from Maia. Willow was hurt, but she was recovering. If he blundered in there right now, he could ruin everything. Besides, they told him she would come to him. They said she would return to the Council when she was well, take up the mantle of a Watcher, help teach and train other Watchers because the world was suddenly awash in Slayers.
There was a void in Maia’s communications, something she failed to mention. He obsessed upon it, even as he sat in his dismal room. His accommodations here were hardly better than the ones at the Initiative, but at least he was here by choice. They had the same grey walls, same dull floor, and same shatterproof glass in front. Yet it held some trappings of a home, posters hung on the walls
(Dingoes ate my baby)a small television set and VCR, and photographs in unadorned frames. As nightfall approached the TV would be removed and electricity would be piped through near invisible wires in the glass. He had no guardian here in this subterranean holding. He needed no guardian other than his own beleaguered conscience.
Willow would come. Oz was surprised by how he held on to this slim hope, the opportunity of seeing Willow again. He tried to tell himself it was just business, that he just had information vital to her mission to share
(I know where Stone Mountain is, I know what the knife does, I know what Caleb plans on doing with the knife, I know how much you need this information, Willow, and I know my heart aches to see you again…)but it didn’t really work. He was simply too smart to pull the wool over his own eyes.
He could lie about everything else but this.
So he waited, because they assured him that she was coming. There was an oddly menacing silence in his head – Maia had retreated unexpectedly from his mind. A faint tang of worry and fear stretched through the ether and he shivered, wondering what his goddess had to be scared of. What could have caused her to flee?
If Maia had stayed, she could have saved him. One warning.
But do gods ever understand the singleness of a human life? Or is a human merely another piece on the game-board, a toy on the shelf, easily broken and discarded?
There was a faint popping sound, and the room was suddenly filled with Willow’s scent. Oz closed his eyes for a small moment, relieved beyond measure that Willow came to him this time. He would say her name, and turn around, and everything would be forgiven.
“Willow,” he breathed, his eyes closed, drinking in her scent.
So he turned, but the woman in front of him was not Willow.
Why did he smell Willow on this woman’s skin?
It was maddening. Willow was all over this girl, her scent deeply embedded in clothing, in hair, in skin. Oz’s eyes widened with equal parts surprise and pain. The woman had no scruples, and there was a knife in her hand. A knife that was a cool edge in his chest, parting his ribs with calm efficiency, thrusting with surety for his frantically beating heart.
The wolf would not come, even as he called for it.
Statistics said it was rare to be killed by a complete stranger. Killing was usually such an intimate act. He knew nothing of this girl, except that she was not foreign to Willow’s touch, that she also had access to the closely guarded vistas of Willow’s heart. If Maia were there, he would have known.
He would have prayed for his killer.
Blood dribbled from the corner of his mouth, and the room was impossibly bright.
His killer had blue eyes, the disinterested blue of cobalt mines. Her blue eyes swiftly looked to the side of the room, but he couldn’t command his body well enough to turn as well, to see what she was seeing, and then she disappeared with a faint void of air.
Red was a far more glorious colour. Willow’s hair was the fire of dawn cracking over the rim of the world, the heat of frenzied summer-love.
Willow’s eyes were awash in tears even as she splayed her pale fingers over the dreadful holes in Oz’s chest. He tried not to cough but blood tickled the back of his throat as it flooded his lungs. He coughed then, and a fine mist of blood struck Willow’s cheek. Would he have time to tell her everything?
Blood occluded his throat, bricked his voice. Hungry darkness clambered at the edges of his vision.
Willow was trying a spell, but the muscles just wouldn’t knit correctly. She sobbed as she worked, and Oz couldn’t tell if it was for him or for the woman who had murdered him. Darkness ate more of his vision; pain was a dull anvil on his chest.
Oz wished he had could have lived. There was still so much to see, so much to do. So many apologies to make.
The skin wouldn’t close; the edges were angry, resentful. Oz desperately called to his goddess, realizing only then that his mind was slipping away, his most important information about to be lost in the grave. What to tell her, in the mere moments that remained?
The girl had killed him with p’achi. The moment he died she would have all his knowledge, all his power. He had to stay alive, even if only to spite her, to keep her from it. Good must prevail.
Death beckoned, heaven anticipated his arrival.
He opened his mouth as if to tell Willow everything. There was just so much to tell. How to say words he could never say in life?
I’m sorry for betraying you, Willow. I’m sorry for putting my music, the band before you. I’m sorry for lying to you about what I did during the wolf moon. I did love you, Willow. I’ll always love you.
The others, Willow. You have to save the others like me. There is this evil man, who lives at a farmhouse in California, and they’re going to use him to open the seal. Guard him, Willow, until the First evil comes for him. And the seal, Willow. It’s at Piatra Neamt. It’s in…Maia never told him that heaven was so exquisite.
Yet he merely glimpsed its vistas before being rudely stuffed back into his own body. He could feel Willow’s arms around him, feel her chest shake as she sobbed and sobbed. Those hideous wounds in his chest had finally closed, but they would never entirely heal. The red welts would remain forever.
With that one moment in heaven, a new understanding came to him. He would never be with Willow again. For that it was too late.
The woman, his killer and Willow’s lover, had to be saved. Oz hoped he could tell her exactly how to do it.
*****
Iana cursed her laboured breathing and the fact that there were remarkably few places to hide in the tundra. The exhausted sun was a weak mirage in the cool blue sky; it had not set in over a month. It circled the northern Russian horizon in endless hoops, yearning for the day it could rest.
Her cloaking spell would not last long, not with that terrible gash in her ribs. Her attacker, a sunny, brown-haired girl, had come out of nowhere, but Iana was not exactly unprepared. There wasn’t much to do in her little town of Pevek, so to wile away the endless midnight sun hours in the summer, and the equally endless polar night of the winter, Iana boxed.
She would never compete internationally or even nationally. Or even out of her own district, in fact. But boxing kept her tight, kept her strong, kept her prepared. If there was one thing her goddess always stressed, it was to be prepared.
Nyx didn’t talk much, so when she did, Iana listened.
When she was silent, Iana didn’t notice.
But she should have been paying closer attention. The awful void in her skull should have let her in on the secret: that the gods were hiding from their supplicants; that or they were also engaged in the fight for their lives.
After being scored with the knife, Iana suspected the latter.
Even after being sliced, she had still managed to knock the girl out with a flying fist to her jaw. The girl’s head had snapped to the side, a trickle of blood flying from her mouth, before stumbling over the uneven mat on the floor, hitting her head with an obscene crack on the crumbling plaster wall.
Iana lived alone. Most of the time she preferred it that way.
Now, trudging through the sticky mud sloughs that were typical of an Arctic summer melt, Iana wished she had a better place to hide. This far above the Arctic Circle, high on the Kamchatka peninsula, there were no trees. It was nearly midnight, yet the sun would not set. It would peer through the air and tell the murderer where she was to be found – the ultimate tattletale.
How long would the girl be unconscious?
And could her magic last?
Weary with pain and the loss of blood, Iana crept into a hollow behind a boulder. The dirt was scraped clean by generations of reindeer using the boulder as a rubbing spot. Scattered throughout the vicinity were scores of reindeer antlers, bleached and forgotten in the midnight sun.
Her loss of breath astounded her. For a thirty year old, she was fit. Strong. And pierced by an obsidian knife whose very edge seemed honed by evil. At least she knew, now, what she was up against. Her adversary seemed so normal, so sweet, with the kind of body that Iana had always wanted to have. Surprising for her to be such a ruthless killer.
Her eyes were blue, the hard blue of an unforgiving Arctic sky and just as cold.
Even through the rush of blood in her ears, through her breathing, she could hear the girl approach, her hisses of consternation as she slipped in the mud, slapped at the flies. “C’mon now, little girl,” Iana heard. That deep voice didn’t belong with the girl, just like the knife didn’t belong.
Her heart beating fast, her breath still rasping with her frantic escape through the slough, Iana could barely hear the words.
“If I do it quick, it won’t hurt. You come on out now, and I’ll do it quick, just for you.”
She had recovered faster than Iana hoped. There was no other hiding place out here. Risking a quick glance behind her, Iana noticed that the girl was indeed striking out for the boulder, the knife in her hand. It still looked wrong in her fingers, like the girl wished she wasn’t holding it at all. Iana turned back, slumped further in to the ground, and held her slippery side.
A scream.
The shock of sound sent Iana’s heart into her teeth, and she dared to look over the boulder again. Was there someone else there to rescue her?
(Be serious, Iana, there is no one here but you. That’s the way you wanted it, remember?)The girl was on the ground, the knife cast to the ground, and she was holding her head in her hands. The girl was screaming in English, and with her considerably poor translation skills (courtesy of seven seasons worth of X-Files with Russian subtitles), Iana heard the words, in a considerably lighter voice, “Get out! Get out!”
Strange. That voice belonged to her, and was a melodic extension of her.
“You’re mine, you dirty little whore!”
Schizophrenia. The girl was insane.
For another ten minutes, the longest ten minutes of Iana’s life, she waited while the girl screamed, her voice high and then low, her body jerking about as if possessed by an evil spirit. Iana wished she could run, but was afraid of precipitating the deep-voiced apparition, revealing her location. Besides, the loss of blood was making her weak, and her magic was fading.
For her life, Iana prayed that the girl with the sweet voice would prevail.
She did not.
Iana managed to break a couple of the girl’s ribs before the knife slipped through her defences, stealing her breath with uncanny ease. As she died, she realized what a very small triumph it was, and bitterness flooded her mouth. Nyx did not save her.
*****
Blessed afternoon time and Carlo could hear the shrieking of the gulls and the lapping of the waves against the shore as he sat under the awning of his small and tidy shop. It was early for a Limoncello, but he found he could not resist the cool tang of the lemon spirits, perfect for a July day in Sicily. Besides, it was nearly two o’clock in the afternoon, and soon his whole community would be enjoying a well-deserved siesta, wakening with thick tongues and blurred vision for a perfect Italian night.
The alcohol felt clean in his mouth, washing out the dregs of last night’s hangover.
Sitting on the cool ground, his back against the wall of his shop, his drink perched on his gut, Carlo pulled his hat over his eyes and prepared to fall asleep.
Maybe he would dream of Emilio. Maybe Emilio would love him in this dream, the way Carlo believed he never would in life. For who would love a fat and poor warlock?
More likely he would dream of his god, that Cyclops would pass on messages or tasks for him – trivialities to fill his days with something so he would not drown in loneliness.
There had been no communication from Cyclops last night or all morning. Odd.
Carlo fell easily into that thick half alertness, his eyes mostly closed yet he believed he was awake. The brown-haired girl approaching him in his dream-like state was what a straight man would have considered lovely in a girl-next-door kind of way. Her hair was slightly damp, as if she’d just come from the shower, and a faint scent of strong soap came to him.
Odd.
Carlo opened his eyes all the way. The girl was almost to his shop. Even through the lemony scent of his bottle, he could smell the soap. It was not what a young girl would choose to put on her skin.
“Anything wrong, honey?” he asked in Italian.
The girl didn’t slow or stop or do more than cock a single eyebrow. Her blue eyes flashed, sunlight on steel.
Carlo was panicking. It would be easy for him to go invisible, but on what grounds? The girl was hardly threatening. He was as closely closeted as a warlock as he was a gay man, making his position as chief supplicant of Cyclops a little hard for some to understand.
(They don’t see what I see. They haven’t fought what I’ve fought. They haven’t looked into the blackness of hell and come out as I have.)What if someone saw him perform magic? The town proper was only a shout away.
But there it was. She smelled like Emilio. She smelled like a man.
And she walked funny, holding her ribs with one hand. Was that a bandage beneath her shirt?
He was struggling to rise, hating having to push out against the wall to raise his flab. The girl was walking faster. There were two rickety wood tables between them.
He was almost to his feet. His head swum with the movement, the liquor.
The girl blasted the wooden tables away without sound, without provocation. One moment they were there, poor defenceless little tables that had suffered through a million love-struck wooings, a million spilled coffees, tables that had stood beneath the twinkling skies of Sicily for over ten years.
And then they were gone, turned over and tumbled aside as if they were feathers, not tables. No girl, not even the body builder from the neighbouring city, could have done such a thing.
Carlo vanished, but not soon enough.
He may have been invisible, but he was still against the warm surface of the wall, and the knife still thrust into his heart. The girl didn’t pull the knife from him, she actually twisted it inside him, but the pain was no stranger. His heart had dealt with worse than this, usually on a daily basis, as he woke up alone and dreaming of Emilio.
The girl was crying, and angry at the tears, brushing them away with a bloodied fist.
Carlo slumped again, and the bottle of Limoncello which had somehow survived his earlier precipitous rising, finally tipped. The ground drank the liquor, and the scent of clean lemons was in his nostrils as he died.
*****
It was not the confident swagger that Caleb would have preferred. Instead he stumbled up the low hill, away from Carlo’s corpse, his head pounding with freakish intensity. At one point he leaned over and vomited noisily over a bush, turning from side to side to see if he was noticed.
Tara was stronger than he thought. Several times over the course of the last few hours, the nurse had begun seeping into him, controlling him. It had been a whirlwind of destruction that Caleb quite enjoyed, hunting and killing chief supplicants of the gods, and the only downside was this intruder in his head.
The witch from Pevek had proved troublesome. After killing her Caleb had to return back to vineyard, to shower and bandage himself before moving on. Keeping his hands from exploring his body was an exercise in self-control.
As soon as he had his bearings, as soon as the pounding would cease he would be off to Berlin, where Edmund lived. The gift of flight would be mighty handy in the altercation to come. Too bad it had taken so long to hunt down that Iana girl. Timing was very important, and each moment he delayed, the witch had more time to gather her defences.
Caleb thought of Willow and grimaced. Far too clever, far too quick. Teamed up with the nurse imprisoned in her own head and they were formidable.
Stick to the plan. Kill the supplicants, fetch Tara’s father, restore his body, and kill Tara. Then off to Romania, to kill Tara’s father on the seal, and watch as the portal to hell was opened anew.
Don’t forget the witch.Surprise would be his greatest advantage when dealing with Willow. And perhaps a little…leverage? He looked down at Tara’s body, ran his hands over her breasts, down her hips. Holding Tara hostage seemed a mighty fine backup plan.
Thinking of the nurse brought another explosion of pain to his head. He knelt on the ground, grasping at the gravely tussocks of thyme, when he suddenly noticed a pair of feminine boots standing in front of him. He lifted his gaze.
“You have no time for this, Caleb,” Buffy said. “Willow has discovered everything, and blondie’s dad is dead. We need to go to plan B.”
To be continued with Chapter 47 "Choices"
edited one time at end of Oz's section.
Phoenix
by LittleBit » Sat Aug 09, 2008 8:11 am 
