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janedavitt Mar. 25th, 2005 04:46 pm)
janedavitt Mar. 25th, 2005 04:46 pm)This is the penultimate chapter of the fic; hope you enjoy!
Previous parts here
The Power of Persuasion
by Jane Davitt and Wesleysgirl
Part Ten
Waking was a transition from nothing to an awareness of self. That much was done for Giles; opening his eyes he had to do himself, and it was astonishingly difficult. He could feel the darkness waiting to claim him again, and even as tired as he was, he fought it. The softness under his head told him that he was in bed as did the light weight of a cover, but this bed was hard and cold. Wood. He was lying on wood.
For a horrifying moment, he decided he was dead, coffined, and underground, but the jolt of panic was worth it because his eyes opened and with the first sight of his surroundings, lamp-lit and if not familiar, known, he remembered.
Ethan.
Standing there, wrapped in magic, glorious and deadly and dying, his hand extended. Giles relived the shock of touching that hand, feeling the power – God, so much power! – flow through him. Once they'd touched, the power had shut off. He'd felt it, light-switch sudden, but there was still the matter of the power already suffusing Ethan's body, shaking it, searing it, killing it. He'd taken it from Ethan, sent it away and Ethan had stopped –
"Ethan?"
It came out as a hoarse croak and he tried again, struggling to sit, his head swimming. "Ethan!"
His gaze fell on the three bodies and he shuddered with reaction, his skin crawling. Empty, indifferent eyes – the guns – he saw the rope still clutched in a dead hand and frowned. Capture, not kill? And himself the target? The added confusion was more than he could deal with right now, but he had to think...
Dragging himself up, he sat down at the table, propping his head on his hand and taking deep breaths. The glass of water he'd been drinking as he worked earlier was a few inches away and he reached for it, gulping it down thirstily and feeling the fatigue slip back just a little.
The table was messy, papers strewn across it, books left open, and he frowned because he was sure he'd started to tidy them up just before the men arrived. One sheet of paper caught his eye because it wasn't his handwriting.
He knew whose it was though.
Still trying to absorb this, Giles looked at the bottom of the page, where Ethan had underlined the final section heavily, scrawling, 'I believe this would be you?' in the margin.
Deliver unto me, whole, the one who speaks these words. Mine is to rend him asunder and claim his soul; yours, his quartered body buried deep, becomes the cornerstones of your dwelling and its protection.
It didn't make sense at first until he saw the book beside it, open at a page showing an illustration of a man with a knife in one hand and a small dog in the other. The spell as he'd determined, was a variant of a Babylonian one, designed to keep a house, and the owner, safe from harm. It was common for a small blood sacrifice to be made to the gods in exchange for the protection. Giles had wondered if Mr. Carlton would take authenticity that far, or settle for sprinkling some blood, purchased from a butcher's shop, on the doorstep.
Of course, when you were getting your protection from Eshkath, it might be a case of accept no substitutes.
Giles felt like an idiot, and absurdly, rather hurt. He'd thought Mr. Carlton a little odd, but they'd got on with each other well enough. Finding out that the man had been waiting to have him torn into four pieces as soon as he'd finished the translation was a little disconcerting to say the least.
Standing up, he went to the window. The rental car was still there, but the car the men had come in was missing.
He didn't know how much of a head start Ethan had, but a glance at his watch, still ticking despite what had happened, which he put down to it being an old-fashioned, wound-by-hand one, showed he'd been unconscious for almost two hours. Carlton's house wasn't easy to find; deep in the country and an hour's drive at least. He could hope that it would take Ethan a while to find him and that reading the spell had slowed Ethan down, but it wasn't much reassurance; not when he was picturing Ethan, weakened and angry, unleashing his power and then going through the inevitable backlash with no one to help him.
Giles realised that he was shaking, caught between anger and fear. Not all of the anger was directed at Carlton, either. If Ethan died doing this, he'd bloody well bring him back just to tell him what he thought of people who played the lone hero –
Rubbing a hand over his blurred, stinging eyes and bringing it away wet, he picked up one of the guns and shoved it into his pocket. The other two weapons he left, although he wished Ethan had had the sense to take one of them himself. He bent to pick up his car keys from the floor, avoiding looking at the blankly staring eyes of one of the corpses, whose out-flung hand was inches from the key ring. Then something stirred in his memory and he knelt and looked more closely at the man.
Three days earlier they'd stood side-by-side at a bar and listened to an old man babble.
Giles didn't know for how long he'd been watched by Carlton's men but the realisation that they'd been spying on him made him wish he hadn't dismissed his feeling that he was being followed so quickly.
Scooping up the translation papers and the letter from Ethan with an instinctive caution, he left the cottage.
He had a moment's fear as he turned the key in the ignition and wondered if the car would start, but it thrummed to life immediately. Giles had no care for the tyres or the underside of the vehicle as he pulled out of the rough parking spot and onto the rocky drive at a far greater speed than was wise or legal, the steering column giving a violent shudder when he hit a particularly large stone.
Once he was out on the proper road again he was able to calm down a bit, concentrating on relaxing by taking deep breaths. He knew that getting himself into an accident wouldn't do Ethan any good, and he had to be reasonable if he wanted to get to Carlton's in one piece.
He didn't think about what Ethan's chances were at surviving an encounter with Eshkath. If he had, he wouldn't have been able to stay in the proper frame of mind to drive.
He'd driven to Carlton's house once before, to collect the papers that needed translating. The man had welcomed him, ushering him over the threshold with a greeting in a demonic language as archaic as it was poorly pronounced, and Giles had allowed himself to feel a little superior, a little scornful. Now he was wondering if that had been deliberate. He was certain that the essence of the spell was well known to the man who had professed no knowledge of it.
To save himself from picturing Ethan's all-too-probable fate, he concentrated on remembering the spell. The portion Ethan had underlined he'd read, of course, giving it a cursory glance and God forgive him, translating it roughly as the equivalent of a thank you note, the typical afterthought so many spells had to round them off. He'd been more occupied with that tricky section in the middle, where it'd taken him two days to establish that there was a line missing from the top of one of the photocopied sheets he'd been given to work from. A corrected version had been supplied within the hour, accompanied by fulsome apologies... and now he suspected that had been in the nature of a test of his abilities.
What Giles couldn't quite understand was why it had to be him who died. All he had to do was refuse to speak the words aloud and then – He slammed his hand against the steering wheel, jarring it painfully as something snapped into place.
"It isn't 'speaks these words'," he said aloud. "That would be 'targ'thin', not 'tarrish'thin'." He frowned, accelerating around a lorry. "Bringing? Creating? Crossing over?" Or at a stretch, translating from a demonic language to a human one? The trap he'd fallen into was only too clear now; by the time you found out the danger, it was too late; by the very act of translating the words, you'd sealed your fate.
Which meant as the sacrifice had to be made at the place that needed protecting, heading towards it at all the speed he could coax out of the rental car wasn't very sensible.
It wasn't as if he had a choice, though.
By the time he'd got off the main road and onto the long, twisting one that led out to Carlton's house in the middle of nowhere, Giles had managed to force himself into a state where he was, outwardly, at least, tranquil. Prepared to deal with whatever needed to be dealt with, but determined to do it with minimal affect.
It was best for all concerned. Get through the situation, and worry about one's reaction on the other side.
Giles turned the car into the drive and started up the hill toward the house. There were lights on in the house, but as he stopped next to the car Ethan had borrowed, they went out suddenly, plunging everything into darkness.
Damn. That wasn't good.
Picking the gun up off the seat beside him, Giles got out of the car, leaving the keys in the ignition in case they needed to make a quick getaway.
He eyed the front door and then shrugged. Why not? Easing it open, he stepped into a hall lit by nothing but the moon, currently playing hide-and-seek with the clouds. The shifting shadows and his own imperfect memory of the layout had him colliding with a chair within four steps, and he cursed as the clatter broke the silence.
Then he heard a voice raised in supplication and he ran forward, heedless of anything but the need to get to Ethan because the voice had been Carlton's and he was damned if his well-deserved death was going to be what took Ethan from him.
At the far end of the hall, Giles' foot hit something on the floor, something that was suspiciously soft and solid at the same time, and he lost his balance, landing hard on the cold marble and feeling the jolt of the impact in all his joints. Twice in one day, he thought, was really unfair for a man of his years, even as he scrambled to his feet again, turning as the moon came out from behind the clouds just in time to reveal that what he'd tripped on was another body, this one lying in a growing pool of blood. Another of Carlton's men by the look of it.
He heard Carlton's voice again and followed blindly, stepping into a large, primarily empty room as something big enough to be a person was flung against the wall with a sickening crack before sliding down into the shadows. It didn't merit more attention, though because all of that was riveted on the demon standing in the centre of the room, its misshapen, powerful body over seven-foot high, and on Ethan, looking small in comparison.
There was light here; from a fire kindled in a large fireplace, from candles scattered around the room. And from the circle around the demon, glowing faintly green. Too faintly. With alarm, Giles realised that whatever power had sealed the circle wasn't enough to keep the demon inside. He spared the body against the wall a glance. Carlton. Dead, and with his death the demon had gained power and lost... well, never its master. Its summoner, perhaps.
Ethan was watching the demon, his head tilted to the side, his body taut, energy sparking from him, magic, and strong enough that Giles could taste it in the air. Blood was smeared across Ethan's face, dripping from his nose, a dark trickle of it coming from his ear. He was swaying slightly, smiling in a way Giles remembered from a dozen brawls.
Moving carefully, quickly, Giles walked over to him. "Can you banish it?" he asked urgently. "Before the circle fails?"
"One or the other, old chum," Ethan said as if this made perfect sense. The demon snarled and the house shook around them, a fine rain of plaster dust sifting down into their hair. "I can hold the circle or banish the demon. Not both."
It was then that Giles realised Ethan was feeding energy into the circle as quickly as the demon was taking it back out; that the two of them were trapped in a cycle that had to end either when Ethan ran out of magic or when the backlash of having used it destroyed him. Or both. And Giles realised Ethan had to have entered into this cycle knowing that to do so meant his almost certain death. He couldn't have known that Giles would come after him in time to ground him. Of course, the difficulty was that if they didn't destroy the demon now, before Ethan's power ran too low to be effective, it would certainly kill them before Giles had even had the chance to ground Ethan. "You see, don't you?" Ethan asked tightly.
"Oh God, yes," Giles whispered. "Ethan, you bloody idiot." He took a step closer and very carefully not touching Ethan – not yet – said, "When I ground you, all you'll have to work with won't be enough to banish it. We're going to have to try something else."
The demon threw back its head and howled. It sounded like laughter, not fear. The light in the circle flickered and dimmed and Giles spoke quickly. "I'll try to set up a barrier. So the power stays in me. Linked, both of us filled with all that we can hold, we can do it. Then I'll release the barrier, let what's left drain away and –"
"And if we haven't managed it, we're both dead anyway," Ethan finished for him, eyes never leaving the demon. He held out his hand toward Giles without hesitation, but said, "Not yet. Wait."
Poised, Giles waited, readying his system for what was to come. The blast of magic would very possibly be greater than anything he'd ever channeled before, and he just had to hope that he could do it. The demon shrieked again, the sound filled with anger as it realised they had something planned but was unable to do anything but drain the power from the circle around it as quickly as Ethan fed into it.
"I'm going to hit it with everything I've got," Ethan said. "Don't touch me until... well. You'll know."
"Yes," Giles said. "I'll know."
Ethan smiled without looking at him. "Clever Ripper."
The circle flared and shrank away and Ethan struck, a raw blast of energy that drove Eshkath back away from them both, sending it crashing into the wall, plaster and bricks crumbling, in some places turning to little more than dust. Ethan staggered, dropping to one knee as the last of his own power left him, and then threw back his head and screamed as the emptiness within him reached out greedily and drew on the world for energy, filling him with more than he could control, overloading him
Giles had begun to move as soon as Ethan stumbled, dropping to his knees with him as the surge of power hit. He took Ethan's hand and wrapped his other arm around him, holding him close as Eshkath roared and freed itself, shaking its head angrily, red eyes blazing with hunger and rage.
It hurt. Giles had expected it to and thought he could handle it, but coming so close to the last time, with his body still weak, it began automatically to shunt the influx of power away and ease the agony.
Ethan's hand twisted and tightened in his. "No!"
Giles squeezed his eyes shut and regained control, feeling the power fill him until he was nothing but power, pain dizzying and bright, robbing him of self.
"Now," he whispered when he could hold no more. His voice strengthened and steadied as Eshkath lumbered towards them. "Now, Ethan!"
He felt it when Ethan wrenched control away from him, opening a channel through which the power could flow, offering it no other avenue of escape. The magic blasted into the demon, knocking it backward and searing through its tough-skinned torso. It screamed in pain, both rough hands scrabbling at its chest as the magic continued to burn and be absorbed.
There was so much power that it couldn't be controlled. It shot out in various directions, defying Giles and Ethan's attempts to guide it. One beam hit the wall, the effect rather like a localised earthquake as the board split upward until it hit the window frame. The glass shattered, tiny daggers flying everywhere.
Eshkath was nothing but a pile of seared flesh on the floor, and still the magic refused to yield.
"Enough!" Ethan shouted, giving Giles a violent shake, and with a massive effort, Giles re-opened the grounding channel that let the magic pour through him and into the earth below.
He was on his knees, bits of the house scattered on the floor around him, and Ethan was beside him, hands running over his arms as if searching for injuries.
"Are you all right? Rupert, answer me." Ethan sounded worried.
Giles waited for the fatigue to drag at him, but this time, for some reason, it didn't come. He felt dizzy still, but really, considering all that had happened, that was nothing. "I'm fine." He glanced around. "God, what a mess." It was pitifully inadequate as a comment on the destruction around them, but he wasn't really up to more than that. His gaze returned to Ethan, still pale, still blood-smeared, still – "You bloody fool, what the hell did you think you were doing?"
Ethan pulled back and struggled to his feet, visibly trembling, his expression guarded. "I knew exactly what I was doing," he said coldly. "Being noble and self-sacrificing. Yes, it is rather amusing a thought, isn't it? Your heroism must be catching, Rupert. Do forgive me for not living down to your expectations of me."
"I just meant that you should have waited," Giles said helplessly. "Not come alone."
"You shouldn't have come at all," Ethan pointed out. "You'd have been perfectly safe if you'd kept away."
"And left you to die?" Giles shook his head. "I couldn't," he said simply.
"And you call me a fool." Ethan brought his hand to his mouth, biting down at the skin around his finger, looking anywhere but at Giles. "Both of us willing to die for each other. How romantic." His face twisted in a mocking smile. "Or, alternatively, how maudlin. You know, this has been nice, Rupert, really, but I'm not sure it's working out." Before Giles had chance to comment, he added. "Are you well enough to drive?" There was something about the way he asked the question that seemed off.
"What? Yes, I suppose so, but – " Giles stood up, reaching out to Ethan to steady himself as the blood rushed to his head. Ethan allowed his arm to be held, but as soon as Giles straightened, he stepped back, shrugging off Giles' hand. Any thoughts of retracting what had, Giles was ready to admit, been impulsive words, born of hours of worry, left him. "Ethan, I'm not done here. What isn't working out?"
"You're a very intelligent man, Rupert. Think about it. I feel confident you can come up with an answer." Ethan backed away from him, toward the door that led to the front hall.
"None that makes any sense," Giles snapped. "And where the hell are you going now?"
Somewhere, he was telling Ethan how worried he'd been, how he'd felt when he'd seen him in danger. Somewhere, they were kissing with the frantic hunger of the living surrounded by the dead. Somewhere, he wasn't watching Ethan walk away.
He wished he were there.
"Away from you," Ethan said bluntly. "Now that I know you're all right, that is. I'll take the other car again." In the doorway, he hesitated, the look he gave Giles softening. "I'm glad you're not hurt. Don't follow me."
And he was gone before Giles could say any of the things he wanted to say, the sound of his footsteps as he walked through the front hall unnaturally loud in the now-silent house.
Giles glanced around him, absently noting that Carlton's neck had been broken, which saved him the need to walk though splintered glass to check on him. A throb of pain in his neck told him not all the glass had ended up on the floor. Wincing, he tugged the sliver out, letting it drop, stained with his blood, to join the other fragments.
The sound of a car engine and the spit of gravel as Ethan left roused him from his lethargy. Don't follow him? Was he mad?
He was at the front door when he saw a phone on a table and paused. Reaching out, he picked it up and discovered that it was dead. Two bodies here, three at the cottage... he couldn't walk away from this the way Ethan had.
He got into the car and drove away, slowing down when he reached the road and looking out for a phone box. When he found one he parked beside it and reached into his pocket for a handful of change.
"Hello? Rupert Giles here... Yes, I know I'm no longer – look, shut up and bloody well listen! You're going to need two clean-up teams... Yes." He leant against the wall of the phone box. "Yes, there are humans dead. I'll explain it when you get here, but you need to take care of something down on the coast..."
Previous parts here
The Power of Persuasion
by Jane Davitt and Wesleysgirl
Part Ten
Waking was a transition from nothing to an awareness of self. That much was done for Giles; opening his eyes he had to do himself, and it was astonishingly difficult. He could feel the darkness waiting to claim him again, and even as tired as he was, he fought it. The softness under his head told him that he was in bed as did the light weight of a cover, but this bed was hard and cold. Wood. He was lying on wood.
For a horrifying moment, he decided he was dead, coffined, and underground, but the jolt of panic was worth it because his eyes opened and with the first sight of his surroundings, lamp-lit and if not familiar, known, he remembered.
Ethan.
Standing there, wrapped in magic, glorious and deadly and dying, his hand extended. Giles relived the shock of touching that hand, feeling the power – God, so much power! – flow through him. Once they'd touched, the power had shut off. He'd felt it, light-switch sudden, but there was still the matter of the power already suffusing Ethan's body, shaking it, searing it, killing it. He'd taken it from Ethan, sent it away and Ethan had stopped –
"Ethan?"
It came out as a hoarse croak and he tried again, struggling to sit, his head swimming. "Ethan!"
His gaze fell on the three bodies and he shuddered with reaction, his skin crawling. Empty, indifferent eyes – the guns – he saw the rope still clutched in a dead hand and frowned. Capture, not kill? And himself the target? The added confusion was more than he could deal with right now, but he had to think...
Dragging himself up, he sat down at the table, propping his head on his hand and taking deep breaths. The glass of water he'd been drinking as he worked earlier was a few inches away and he reached for it, gulping it down thirstily and feeling the fatigue slip back just a little.
The table was messy, papers strewn across it, books left open, and he frowned because he was sure he'd started to tidy them up just before the men arrived. One sheet of paper caught his eye because it wasn't his handwriting.
He knew whose it was though.
Rupert –
I'm hoping to be back before you come to, but in case I'm not, don't worry. I know that asking you not to worry is like requesting that the sky cease to be blue, but try. I'll keep this short – it was your client Carlton who sent these men after you, and his intentions in having you translate this spell were a bit more complicated than working one language into another. You'll see what I mean when you read the last stanza of the spell with a little more attention to the details. I've gone to take care of it.
You've saved me, after all. I think it's time I return the favour.
– Ethan
Still trying to absorb this, Giles looked at the bottom of the page, where Ethan had underlined the final section heavily, scrawling, 'I believe this would be you?' in the margin.
Deliver unto me, whole, the one who speaks these words. Mine is to rend him asunder and claim his soul; yours, his quartered body buried deep, becomes the cornerstones of your dwelling and its protection.
It didn't make sense at first until he saw the book beside it, open at a page showing an illustration of a man with a knife in one hand and a small dog in the other. The spell as he'd determined, was a variant of a Babylonian one, designed to keep a house, and the owner, safe from harm. It was common for a small blood sacrifice to be made to the gods in exchange for the protection. Giles had wondered if Mr. Carlton would take authenticity that far, or settle for sprinkling some blood, purchased from a butcher's shop, on the doorstep.
Of course, when you were getting your protection from Eshkath, it might be a case of accept no substitutes.
Giles felt like an idiot, and absurdly, rather hurt. He'd thought Mr. Carlton a little odd, but they'd got on with each other well enough. Finding out that the man had been waiting to have him torn into four pieces as soon as he'd finished the translation was a little disconcerting to say the least.
Standing up, he went to the window. The rental car was still there, but the car the men had come in was missing.
He didn't know how much of a head start Ethan had, but a glance at his watch, still ticking despite what had happened, which he put down to it being an old-fashioned, wound-by-hand one, showed he'd been unconscious for almost two hours. Carlton's house wasn't easy to find; deep in the country and an hour's drive at least. He could hope that it would take Ethan a while to find him and that reading the spell had slowed Ethan down, but it wasn't much reassurance; not when he was picturing Ethan, weakened and angry, unleashing his power and then going through the inevitable backlash with no one to help him.
Giles realised that he was shaking, caught between anger and fear. Not all of the anger was directed at Carlton, either. If Ethan died doing this, he'd bloody well bring him back just to tell him what he thought of people who played the lone hero –
Rubbing a hand over his blurred, stinging eyes and bringing it away wet, he picked up one of the guns and shoved it into his pocket. The other two weapons he left, although he wished Ethan had had the sense to take one of them himself. He bent to pick up his car keys from the floor, avoiding looking at the blankly staring eyes of one of the corpses, whose out-flung hand was inches from the key ring. Then something stirred in his memory and he knelt and looked more closely at the man.
Three days earlier they'd stood side-by-side at a bar and listened to an old man babble.
Giles didn't know for how long he'd been watched by Carlton's men but the realisation that they'd been spying on him made him wish he hadn't dismissed his feeling that he was being followed so quickly.
Scooping up the translation papers and the letter from Ethan with an instinctive caution, he left the cottage.
He had a moment's fear as he turned the key in the ignition and wondered if the car would start, but it thrummed to life immediately. Giles had no care for the tyres or the underside of the vehicle as he pulled out of the rough parking spot and onto the rocky drive at a far greater speed than was wise or legal, the steering column giving a violent shudder when he hit a particularly large stone.
Once he was out on the proper road again he was able to calm down a bit, concentrating on relaxing by taking deep breaths. He knew that getting himself into an accident wouldn't do Ethan any good, and he had to be reasonable if he wanted to get to Carlton's in one piece.
He didn't think about what Ethan's chances were at surviving an encounter with Eshkath. If he had, he wouldn't have been able to stay in the proper frame of mind to drive.
He'd driven to Carlton's house once before, to collect the papers that needed translating. The man had welcomed him, ushering him over the threshold with a greeting in a demonic language as archaic as it was poorly pronounced, and Giles had allowed himself to feel a little superior, a little scornful. Now he was wondering if that had been deliberate. He was certain that the essence of the spell was well known to the man who had professed no knowledge of it.
To save himself from picturing Ethan's all-too-probable fate, he concentrated on remembering the spell. The portion Ethan had underlined he'd read, of course, giving it a cursory glance and God forgive him, translating it roughly as the equivalent of a thank you note, the typical afterthought so many spells had to round them off. He'd been more occupied with that tricky section in the middle, where it'd taken him two days to establish that there was a line missing from the top of one of the photocopied sheets he'd been given to work from. A corrected version had been supplied within the hour, accompanied by fulsome apologies... and now he suspected that had been in the nature of a test of his abilities.
What Giles couldn't quite understand was why it had to be him who died. All he had to do was refuse to speak the words aloud and then – He slammed his hand against the steering wheel, jarring it painfully as something snapped into place.
"It isn't 'speaks these words'," he said aloud. "That would be 'targ'thin', not 'tarrish'thin'." He frowned, accelerating around a lorry. "Bringing? Creating? Crossing over?" Or at a stretch, translating from a demonic language to a human one? The trap he'd fallen into was only too clear now; by the time you found out the danger, it was too late; by the very act of translating the words, you'd sealed your fate.
Which meant as the sacrifice had to be made at the place that needed protecting, heading towards it at all the speed he could coax out of the rental car wasn't very sensible.
It wasn't as if he had a choice, though.
By the time he'd got off the main road and onto the long, twisting one that led out to Carlton's house in the middle of nowhere, Giles had managed to force himself into a state where he was, outwardly, at least, tranquil. Prepared to deal with whatever needed to be dealt with, but determined to do it with minimal affect.
It was best for all concerned. Get through the situation, and worry about one's reaction on the other side.
Giles turned the car into the drive and started up the hill toward the house. There were lights on in the house, but as he stopped next to the car Ethan had borrowed, they went out suddenly, plunging everything into darkness.
Damn. That wasn't good.
Picking the gun up off the seat beside him, Giles got out of the car, leaving the keys in the ignition in case they needed to make a quick getaway.
He eyed the front door and then shrugged. Why not? Easing it open, he stepped into a hall lit by nothing but the moon, currently playing hide-and-seek with the clouds. The shifting shadows and his own imperfect memory of the layout had him colliding with a chair within four steps, and he cursed as the clatter broke the silence.
Then he heard a voice raised in supplication and he ran forward, heedless of anything but the need to get to Ethan because the voice had been Carlton's and he was damned if his well-deserved death was going to be what took Ethan from him.
At the far end of the hall, Giles' foot hit something on the floor, something that was suspiciously soft and solid at the same time, and he lost his balance, landing hard on the cold marble and feeling the jolt of the impact in all his joints. Twice in one day, he thought, was really unfair for a man of his years, even as he scrambled to his feet again, turning as the moon came out from behind the clouds just in time to reveal that what he'd tripped on was another body, this one lying in a growing pool of blood. Another of Carlton's men by the look of it.
He heard Carlton's voice again and followed blindly, stepping into a large, primarily empty room as something big enough to be a person was flung against the wall with a sickening crack before sliding down into the shadows. It didn't merit more attention, though because all of that was riveted on the demon standing in the centre of the room, its misshapen, powerful body over seven-foot high, and on Ethan, looking small in comparison.
There was light here; from a fire kindled in a large fireplace, from candles scattered around the room. And from the circle around the demon, glowing faintly green. Too faintly. With alarm, Giles realised that whatever power had sealed the circle wasn't enough to keep the demon inside. He spared the body against the wall a glance. Carlton. Dead, and with his death the demon had gained power and lost... well, never its master. Its summoner, perhaps.
Ethan was watching the demon, his head tilted to the side, his body taut, energy sparking from him, magic, and strong enough that Giles could taste it in the air. Blood was smeared across Ethan's face, dripping from his nose, a dark trickle of it coming from his ear. He was swaying slightly, smiling in a way Giles remembered from a dozen brawls.
Moving carefully, quickly, Giles walked over to him. "Can you banish it?" he asked urgently. "Before the circle fails?"
"One or the other, old chum," Ethan said as if this made perfect sense. The demon snarled and the house shook around them, a fine rain of plaster dust sifting down into their hair. "I can hold the circle or banish the demon. Not both."
It was then that Giles realised Ethan was feeding energy into the circle as quickly as the demon was taking it back out; that the two of them were trapped in a cycle that had to end either when Ethan ran out of magic or when the backlash of having used it destroyed him. Or both. And Giles realised Ethan had to have entered into this cycle knowing that to do so meant his almost certain death. He couldn't have known that Giles would come after him in time to ground him. Of course, the difficulty was that if they didn't destroy the demon now, before Ethan's power ran too low to be effective, it would certainly kill them before Giles had even had the chance to ground Ethan. "You see, don't you?" Ethan asked tightly.
"Oh God, yes," Giles whispered. "Ethan, you bloody idiot." He took a step closer and very carefully not touching Ethan – not yet – said, "When I ground you, all you'll have to work with won't be enough to banish it. We're going to have to try something else."
The demon threw back its head and howled. It sounded like laughter, not fear. The light in the circle flickered and dimmed and Giles spoke quickly. "I'll try to set up a barrier. So the power stays in me. Linked, both of us filled with all that we can hold, we can do it. Then I'll release the barrier, let what's left drain away and –"
"And if we haven't managed it, we're both dead anyway," Ethan finished for him, eyes never leaving the demon. He held out his hand toward Giles without hesitation, but said, "Not yet. Wait."
Poised, Giles waited, readying his system for what was to come. The blast of magic would very possibly be greater than anything he'd ever channeled before, and he just had to hope that he could do it. The demon shrieked again, the sound filled with anger as it realised they had something planned but was unable to do anything but drain the power from the circle around it as quickly as Ethan fed into it.
"I'm going to hit it with everything I've got," Ethan said. "Don't touch me until... well. You'll know."
"Yes," Giles said. "I'll know."
Ethan smiled without looking at him. "Clever Ripper."
The circle flared and shrank away and Ethan struck, a raw blast of energy that drove Eshkath back away from them both, sending it crashing into the wall, plaster and bricks crumbling, in some places turning to little more than dust. Ethan staggered, dropping to one knee as the last of his own power left him, and then threw back his head and screamed as the emptiness within him reached out greedily and drew on the world for energy, filling him with more than he could control, overloading him
Giles had begun to move as soon as Ethan stumbled, dropping to his knees with him as the surge of power hit. He took Ethan's hand and wrapped his other arm around him, holding him close as Eshkath roared and freed itself, shaking its head angrily, red eyes blazing with hunger and rage.
It hurt. Giles had expected it to and thought he could handle it, but coming so close to the last time, with his body still weak, it began automatically to shunt the influx of power away and ease the agony.
Ethan's hand twisted and tightened in his. "No!"
Giles squeezed his eyes shut and regained control, feeling the power fill him until he was nothing but power, pain dizzying and bright, robbing him of self.
"Now," he whispered when he could hold no more. His voice strengthened and steadied as Eshkath lumbered towards them. "Now, Ethan!"
He felt it when Ethan wrenched control away from him, opening a channel through which the power could flow, offering it no other avenue of escape. The magic blasted into the demon, knocking it backward and searing through its tough-skinned torso. It screamed in pain, both rough hands scrabbling at its chest as the magic continued to burn and be absorbed.
There was so much power that it couldn't be controlled. It shot out in various directions, defying Giles and Ethan's attempts to guide it. One beam hit the wall, the effect rather like a localised earthquake as the board split upward until it hit the window frame. The glass shattered, tiny daggers flying everywhere.
Eshkath was nothing but a pile of seared flesh on the floor, and still the magic refused to yield.
"Enough!" Ethan shouted, giving Giles a violent shake, and with a massive effort, Giles re-opened the grounding channel that let the magic pour through him and into the earth below.
He was on his knees, bits of the house scattered on the floor around him, and Ethan was beside him, hands running over his arms as if searching for injuries.
"Are you all right? Rupert, answer me." Ethan sounded worried.
Giles waited for the fatigue to drag at him, but this time, for some reason, it didn't come. He felt dizzy still, but really, considering all that had happened, that was nothing. "I'm fine." He glanced around. "God, what a mess." It was pitifully inadequate as a comment on the destruction around them, but he wasn't really up to more than that. His gaze returned to Ethan, still pale, still blood-smeared, still – "You bloody fool, what the hell did you think you were doing?"
Ethan pulled back and struggled to his feet, visibly trembling, his expression guarded. "I knew exactly what I was doing," he said coldly. "Being noble and self-sacrificing. Yes, it is rather amusing a thought, isn't it? Your heroism must be catching, Rupert. Do forgive me for not living down to your expectations of me."
"I just meant that you should have waited," Giles said helplessly. "Not come alone."
"You shouldn't have come at all," Ethan pointed out. "You'd have been perfectly safe if you'd kept away."
"And left you to die?" Giles shook his head. "I couldn't," he said simply.
"And you call me a fool." Ethan brought his hand to his mouth, biting down at the skin around his finger, looking anywhere but at Giles. "Both of us willing to die for each other. How romantic." His face twisted in a mocking smile. "Or, alternatively, how maudlin. You know, this has been nice, Rupert, really, but I'm not sure it's working out." Before Giles had chance to comment, he added. "Are you well enough to drive?" There was something about the way he asked the question that seemed off.
"What? Yes, I suppose so, but – " Giles stood up, reaching out to Ethan to steady himself as the blood rushed to his head. Ethan allowed his arm to be held, but as soon as Giles straightened, he stepped back, shrugging off Giles' hand. Any thoughts of retracting what had, Giles was ready to admit, been impulsive words, born of hours of worry, left him. "Ethan, I'm not done here. What isn't working out?"
"You're a very intelligent man, Rupert. Think about it. I feel confident you can come up with an answer." Ethan backed away from him, toward the door that led to the front hall.
"None that makes any sense," Giles snapped. "And where the hell are you going now?"
Somewhere, he was telling Ethan how worried he'd been, how he'd felt when he'd seen him in danger. Somewhere, they were kissing with the frantic hunger of the living surrounded by the dead. Somewhere, he wasn't watching Ethan walk away.
He wished he were there.
"Away from you," Ethan said bluntly. "Now that I know you're all right, that is. I'll take the other car again." In the doorway, he hesitated, the look he gave Giles softening. "I'm glad you're not hurt. Don't follow me."
And he was gone before Giles could say any of the things he wanted to say, the sound of his footsteps as he walked through the front hall unnaturally loud in the now-silent house.
Giles glanced around him, absently noting that Carlton's neck had been broken, which saved him the need to walk though splintered glass to check on him. A throb of pain in his neck told him not all the glass had ended up on the floor. Wincing, he tugged the sliver out, letting it drop, stained with his blood, to join the other fragments.
The sound of a car engine and the spit of gravel as Ethan left roused him from his lethargy. Don't follow him? Was he mad?
He was at the front door when he saw a phone on a table and paused. Reaching out, he picked it up and discovered that it was dead. Two bodies here, three at the cottage... he couldn't walk away from this the way Ethan had.
He got into the car and drove away, slowing down when he reached the road and looking out for a phone box. When he found one he parked beside it and reached into his pocket for a handful of change.
"Hello? Rupert Giles here... Yes, I know I'm no longer – look, shut up and bloody well listen! You're going to need two clean-up teams... Yes." He leant against the wall of the phone box. "Yes, there are humans dead. I'll explain it when you get here, but you need to take care of something down on the coast..."