__The Walls Have Ears__
By Exfilia
"He's beautiful."
Ethan Rayne followed his companions eyes across the crowded
airport to the tall man descending the ramp. "I wouldn't
let Ripper know you think so," he chuckled.
"Please, don't call him that."
"Sorry."
"He is, though, isn't he?"
"Need I remind you that you're preaching to the choir?"
"Please don't."
"Look, this was bloody well your idea. If I'm going to
have to listen to jealous moaning day in and day out...."
"I'm not... perhaps, I am, a bit. That doesn't mean this
is a bad idea."
"We don't have to do it."
"Yes, we do. He's seen us." Ethan looked up and met clear
green eyes across the intervening space "Come on, then."
They trudged across the concourse and stopped in front of
him. Ripper crossed his arms and waited.
"Hello, Ripper."
"Sod off, Ethan. What are you doing here?"
"I'm meant to be helping you."
"The last time you helped me we put all our friends into an
early grave."
"Hardly early! It took thirty years for most of them!"
"Even so. How did you get here?"
"Council traded a couple of soldier boys for me. I never
did find out what they did to wind up in British custody."
Giles turned to his companion. "Is that so?" he asked, and
received a mute nod in return. "You said you had something
for me, something for which you needed my particular skill
set. Is this...?" Another nod. "Why on earth would you
do anything so bloody silly?"
"We have something of a crisis on our hands," the small man
stammered.
"Yes, and the sun rises in the east. You are the Wathcer's
council, Quentin. Just what on earth do you want with
Ethan Rayne?"
Ethan bit his lip as Quentin pulled his glasses down off
his nose and furiously polished the lenses. Ethan would
have done the same, had he been wearing spectacles. Some
things Rupert Giles was just not ready to know.
"I'm to be your partner," Ethan told Giles.
"In what lifetime?"
"This one, if you expect it to last."
"Quentin, what is it that's so important that you expect me
to tolerate this... this Crowleyesque hooligan?"
"That," said Quentin, pointing out one of the airport's
immense plate-glass windows to a grassy mound that rose at
the far side of the parking area.
It was moving toward them.
"It's going to tear hell out of the runways," Giles
observed. The mound skirted the edge of a retaining wall,
scraping chunks of white concrete away from the red clay
like a hungry child ruining his birthday cake.
"It's not going to do the crowd any good, either," said
Ethan. People were scrambling around the airport like so
many crabs in a bucket destined for the boil.
"It's not bloody funny, Ethan! People could die! What is
it, Quentin? What does it want?"
"Magic. It has destroyed four establishments so far in
which there were persons in the habit of practicing magic."
Giles's look was withering. "Magicians an airport?"
"In this day and age," said Ethan, "it could be almost
anyone."
"We're not talking the Kabbalistic Cross, here," snarled
Giles.
"No," said Quentin, "it attacks groups of people who
practice powerful magics together."
"Groups?" Ethan's head snapped around. "You didn't tell me
that!"
"How long after those magics were performed...?"
"We have no idea," said Quentin. "They weren't in the
habit of checking in with the Council."
Giles's eyes met Ethan's. Each of them rubbed at a certain
spot on his respective forearm. "It's got to be," said
Giles.
"So what do we do?"
The mound had invaded the car park and was blundering along
between rows, rolling vehicles off its flanks in a bright
metallic wake to the tune of wailing car alarms.
"We have to get it away from here. Come on!" Giles
grasped Ethan's hand and led him out the glass doors.
"What shall I do?" called Quentin.
"Bring the bloody motor!"
Rupert was taller, but Ethan had always been faster. They
sprinted across the road and into an empty field adjoining
the runways. The mound pursued them, building a wavefront
of topsoil in front of it as it tore across the flat
ground. Ethan concentrated on distance until the sound of
burrowing began to fade, then glanced behind him. His pace
slowed, and Giles pulled in front again.
"Ripper?"
"Save your breath!"
"Slow down! We've lost it!" The mound had slowed and was
casting about like a dog who'd lost a trail. Giles jogged
to a halt. Ethan tugged at his shoulder.
"We can't lose it," said Giles, "or we'll never know what
it is."
"It's bloody deadly! Isn't that enough?"
"It'll be deadly whether we're here or not. We have to
find some way to stop it."
"You are daft. You know that, right?"
"Where did it come from, Ethan?"
"It didn't favor me with its itinerary!"
"It can't sense us at all from half a mile away, in plain
sight, yet it turned up at the airport almost as soon as we
met."
"Something summoned it."
"Indeed, and I think we should find out what." Giles
jogged back toward the thing. Ethan cursed and followed
him, but as they approached the mound shivered, reared up
and disintegrated.
"Well," said Ethan, "that was strange."
"Wasn't it?" The two men stood examining the disordered
terrain until a horn sounded and they saw Quentin's Fiat at
the nearest edge of the road. Giles shrugged, and they
headed for the car none the wiser.
"We knew you'd want to arrange your own accommodations,"
said Quentin over a black and tan in the seedy pub where
they'd finally paused. "There's a room here that you can
rent for a couple of nights, if you like."
Giles half-expected Ethan to pop in with an offer, or at
least a wisecrack, but Ethan seemed to have found something
fascinating about the foam on his pint.
"Well," Giles said, "I suppose I'd better have a bite
then." He caught the landlord's eye and pointed to the
sign advertising fish suppers. "Anyone care to join me?"
Both men shook their heads. "What, is it not edible?"
"Delicious," said Quentin, "but we have to be getting
home."
"Right," said Ethan, "I'll come round for you tommorow and
we can talk about ways to approach this... situation."
"I know Quentin is busy, Ethan, but surely you and I
could...."
"I'm... afraid not, Ripper. We'll talk in the morning,
then?"
"Right, then." A steaming plate of golden fish and crispy
chips arrived just then, and Quentin and Ethan were gone
before Giles got over his joy at the sight of real food.
"Strange," he mused.
"They are that," agreed the landlord.
"I beg your pardon?"
"I didn't like to say, them being regulars since before we
knew, but we don't usually get poufters in here."
Giles almost choked on a chip.
"Sorry, mate. Did you not know? I thought you knew them."
"Obviously not as well as I thought. They're... together?"
"Oh, torrid romance it were, a proper Coronation Street.
See, the one with hair, his boyfriend packed him off some
years back, and he was still weeping in his beer over it,
and the bald guy was pining after him something fierce.
Then a couple of weeks ago, boom! And you haven't seen
them on their own since."
"Indeed."
"But you've nothing to worry about, you know."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Those two. Don't worry about them. Neither one of them's
got eyes for anyone but the other one. Trust me, they've
not even thought about you like that."
"No. Of course not."
"Well, I'll let you get on with your chips, then. Will you
be needing anything else?"
"A bottle of whisky, please. I'll take it in my room."
Giles's head was pounding even before some wiseacre opened
the curtain.
"Get up, Ripper."
Giles couldn't have spoken if he'd wanted. Somehow the
insides of his mouth had become glued together. A spell?
No, scotch. He'd spent his first night back in England
getting thoroughly pissed, and now he
couldn't open his mouth. He probably couldn't open his
eyes, either,
but he wasn't about to try. That light was bright enough
even through
his eyelids.
Something traced across his lips, smearing them with a few
drops of water.
His eyes blinked open just in time to see Ethan dip his
finger into a cup of water.
No. Giles was not going to allow this. He reached an
unsteady hand for the cup.
"You sure?" Ethan asked.
Giles nodded, and Ethan popped a drinking straw into the
cup and held it
to Giles's lips.
"Thank you," Giles said when his mouth had unglued itself.
"Started back in with a will, have we?"
"Sod off."
"There's been another incident. A sinkhole opened near
Cardiff and swallowed a motor coach."
"A bus tour? Good riddance."
"Just the vehicle."
"Do they not have normal sinkholes in Wales?"
"Wrong terrain. That sort of thing is odd enough that it
almost has to involve magic."
"That's not the only odd thing going on."
"Sorry?"
"Quentin Travers, Ethan? Honestly!"
"Was it that obvious?"
"No. The landlord had to tell me."
"The landlord knew?"
"He's a regular fount of gossip, in between telling me the
secrets of keeping a profitable public house, the
differences between local housecats and those that wander
in from abroad and his unique method of producing
prizewinning cabbages."
"And is that why...? Not the cabbages, but... Ripper,
I..."
"Why Quentin, of all people?"
Ethan sank down on the foot of the bed.
"He saved my life, Ripper. When I got off the plane there
was absolutely nothing for me to do, do you understand? No
job, no home, no money, nothing."
"We've got through before without selling our bodies."
"That's not what happened. He offered me a place with the
Council, showed me something I could do, something good.
He believed I could be good, Ripper. Can you understand
that?"
"Good in bed, perhaps, but at heart? I really don't think
so, Ethan."
"Perhaps you can't. Well, then, what about Cardiff?"
"Someone obviously has a fine command of earth magic. Was
there meant to
be a coven...?"
"A lodge of ceremonial magicians of a rather nasty bent.
No survivors, I'm afraid, but the police report mentioned a
letter."
"Police report?"
"Yes, aren't the Council's resources convenient? It was an
invitation to
take part in a magical network of some sort. The magicians
refused."
"Get on with it, Ethan. Who sent the letter?"
"'Doreen Valiente.'"
"What, from the grave?"
"The return address was general delivery, here."
"Eh?"
"Post office two streets over."
"And does the council know anything about this major
magical working going on in their back garden?"
"Apparently not."
"Then we're right back where we started."
"We could ask around. The landlord here seems to notice
more than is good for him."
The landlord, however, could tell them nothing. They found
him buried headfirst in a small vegetable garden, with only
his feet sticking straight up out of the dirt between two
round green cabbages.
The police took up most of the morning, what with an
earnest local officer taking down their statements and then
a hard-faced woman up from London who wanted to hear it all
again. Ethan didn't want to hear it. He didn't want to
think about it. He didn't want it to be.
He was turning into bloody Gollum.
Quentin collected them both when the police were through
and stood for steaks at the Railroad Hotel. When the
waiter had gone, all three men
sat staring at their intricately folded napkins.
"Will you not go up to Cardiff today, then?" Quentin
blurted into the silence.
"It would be dark before we accomplished a great deal,"
said Ethan. "I don't want to drive back in the dark until
we know what we're dealing with, and... well, I'd just as
soon not be up there overnight."
Quentin smiled. "You actually are good at heart, you know.
What are you going to do?"
"Find Giles some digs, first of all," said Ethan.
"And then," said Giles, "I think we'll try to track down
the source of the phenomenon. Up for a bit of communal
scrying, Ethan?"
"Are you sure that's wise?" asked Quentin.
"We'll be fine," Giles said.
"You could join us," Ethan offered, "if you like."
"I've a meeting this afternoon," said Quentin. He glanced
at his watch. "And I may be late already."
Giles stepped away to the men's long enough for the other
two to say goodbye. when he came back, he glared at Ethan.
"What?"
"You told him."
"Told him what?"
"'Good at heart?'"
"I never. Ripper, when would I have told him? You've been
with us the whole time!"
"I have, haven't I, until just now. So how did he know?"
They did not, in fact, spend the afternoon scouting
available flats. Ethan had to pop in at the Watcher's
Library for just a second. On impulse, Giles wandered into
the stacks, looking for anything on animated mounds of
earth. Some time later Ethan's hand squeezed his shoulder.
"Find anything?"
"Very little that we don't already know, but I've three
more to get through yet."
"Leave it until the morning, why don't you?"
"Might as well finish up." Giles pulled another
leather-bound tome from the pile and opened it, careful of
the crumbling yellow pages.
"We don't want to be out after dark." Ethan reminded him.
"It's past five already."
"Never!" Giles looked at his watch. "Oh. Sorry, I got
caught up. I can read these the way you used to read
Tolkein."
"Well, I think we can rule out Sauron as a suspect."
"Be thankful for small favors. All we need is dwarves at
the door. Ethan, we never found me a room!"
"I've booked you into the bed and breakfast by the gate.
Come on, Ripper, let's get a bite and get you tucked in.
What did you find out?"
"A general refresher on earth magic," said Giles as he
followed Ethan across the tiled rotunda and out the ancient
wooden doors.
"Money," mused Ethan, "death, sex, healing...."
"Virgo, Taurus, Capricorn, a square, the number four, all
the things we've known since we were boys."
"Did they teach elemental magic at your school, then?"
"You'd be surprised what they teach at the proper sort of
school. Ethan, about Quentin... it's okay."
"Sorry?"
"That you're together." Giles removed his glasses and
polished furiously at some imaginary speck on one lens.
"It's all right. I hope you're very happy."
"You are? I mean, of course, that's grand. That's
really... grand."
"Good."
"Do you want to get on with the scrying then?"
"I think we'd better, don't you, before someone else is
killed? If it's not a problem."
"No, no, of course it's no problem. It would be... it
would be grand."
Bed and breakfast accomodations were not the best place to
scry. Ethan lost his concentration when Giles put 50p in
the electric meter so as to run the heater.
"Are you sure you want to do this tonight?" he asked.
"We need to get on with it, Ethan." He pulled a black
velvet bundle from his overnight bag. Ethan took a step
back before he could stop himself.
"Are you going to be all right?" Giles asked.
"That's... that's still...."
Gile pulled the wrapping away from a three inch ball of a
perfect sphere of polished crystal, its center a mass of
milky inclusions dusted with tiny specks of gold.
"Yes," he said, "it's still the same one. You're already
attuned to it... we don't have to do this, you know."
"You sound like Quentin. No, come on, let's get it over
with." Never mind that the ball carried the imprint of the
circle that had raised Eyghon. If Ripper could deal with
the ghosts peering over their shoulder, Ethan would manage.
He sank down crosslegged on the carpet, and Rupert sat
opposite him.
"It'll be all right," Rupert said, his voice a little
softer. One finger reached out and touched Ethan's face.
"That much magic should be pretty obvious." He set the
ball on the floor between them and held out his hands,
strong, square hands with surprisingly smooth skin. Ethan
hooked his tapered fingers over Giles's straight one and
forced himself to peer into the ball.
It was there, it was... it was huge, and dark, and
dangerous, and striding toward them out of an ancient land,
its footfalls like the beating of a huge drum made of human
bone, like the beat of a giant pulse, and it was bearing
down on them....
No, not on them. It was stooping like a hawk toward a tiny
candle flame, toward a magician reaching out, striving to
reach it and draw on its power, a magician somehow
familiar.
"Who?" Ethan whispered. All the circle were dead.
"You know him?"
The penny dropped, and Ethan jerked his hands free.
"Ethan!"
"I'm sorry, I... I lost concentration."
"You know him, don't you?"
"Of course not."
"It's him. It's Quentin, isn't it?"
"Quentin doesn't know anything about magic. That's why we
needed you."
"Oh, that's bloody brilliant!"
"Ripper, that thing is coming!"
"Yes, but after whom? If not Quentin, whom?"
"I... I don't know."
"You know, Ethan. You're protecting him. You've done it
again, haven't you?"
"Done what?"
"Got in over your head with some dangerous magic and
screamed for me to bail you out! Well, it's not on, Ethan!
I'm going back to Sunnydale tomorrow morning!"
"To what? Your Slayer is dead!"
"The vampires aren't. There's work for me there."
"Your work is here!"
"Yes, but in Sunnydale I can tell my friends from my
enemies. Out, Ethan."
"But...."
But it wasn't on. Those beautiful square hands grabbed
Ethan by his shirt front, pulled the door open and shoved
him out it and down the stairs. Before he hit the bottom
he heard the door slam.
Well, that was that. Perhaps he should have been more
forthcoming. Perhaps he should go back up those stairs and
push Ripper down on the bed and... and get himself thrashed
again. But he didn't have time for any of that. The thing
from the crystal was bearing down on them, bearing down on
Quentin, who didn't know what he was doing, and Ethan had
to save him, alone.
He would deal with Ripper after that.
The Walls Have Ears (I-1 part 8)
by Exfilia
The bottle was empty. Giles turned it up, hoping a drop of
amber liquid would form at its mouth so that it could be
transferred to his. It didn't happen. Only the faintest
aroma of whisky lingered.
This was probably a good thing, since Giles wasn't truly
finished with his hangover of the morning, yet. That had
to be why he felt a bit queasy. It could have nothing to
do with Ethan.
Ethan had betrayed him. He'd fallen in love with someone
else, and he'd lured Giles into helping him protect his
apparently suicidal lover, who was probably going to get
them both killed.
Giles turned the bottle up again. It was still dry, sod
it.
And what did Quentin think he was doing, anyway? The
Watcher's Council didn't sanction magic of that sort. They
barely tolerated Giles. What could Quentin be up to, and
why had he agreed to involve Giles? He must have known
that Giles would discover his game fairly quickly.
He must have known how Giles would react, and what Ethan
would do then. He was going to get Ethan killed. He might
well get most of the local population killed into the
bargain.
This included Giles.
This was not on.
Giles tossed the bottle in the bin and took up his ball
again. The marching creature loomed over his psychic head,
blotting out a substantial number of the zodiacal
constellations.
Giles spat a curse. It was big, and related to earth
magic, and it came from the barren north. Giles was an
idiot of the first water. It was a ris, of course, a giant
right out of Norse legend.
Quentin Travers, an idiot with no magical experience, had
managed to stir up an ancient enemy of mankind. As much as
Giles would love to leave the man to his just desserts, the
giant wasn't going to go away when it was through with
Quentin. It would grind the cities of men into powder
until humanity blew away like vampire dust.
Not that humanity didn't deserve it. Perhaps it would be
fun to sit and watch people squirm for a while, watch the
kind of people who had ignored Buffy's sacrifice learn
something of what the occult could do without someone to
restrain it.
Or perhaps not. Giles pocketed his ball and considered
what he knew about giants.
"Quentin?"
"Ethan! You startled me."
"Not as much as you've surprised me."
"Eh? What did you and Giles find out?"
"That it's not us. It's you, Quentin."
"Bollocks."
"Games up, love, and a lovely game it was, too. It would
have been great fun, if you hadn't managed to plant me
right in the path of what you've raised."
"What I've raised?"
"The game's up. We saw you, when we were scrying. We know
it was you that attracted... whatever."
"I did no such thing! I may have taken up a bit of
harmless magic lately...."
"So it was you."
"I had nothing to do with raising.... whatever!"
"That, as you so charmingly put it, is bollocks, Quentin.
It's coming after you. You can bury your head in the sand
if you like, but that won't stop this thing from ripping it
off."
"A bloody gnome?"
"Somewhat bigger than a gnome."
"All I raised was a gnome!"
"Why?"
"I don't want to talk about it."
"Quentin!"
"Because of you, all right! Because of you and Rupert
Giles. Ethan, I've never been sure why you wanted... if it
was real or just something you thought... I had to know,
you see. I had to know if you still loved him."
"You thought I was using you."
"I was afraid you were, yes."
"You thought I still loved Ripper."
"Well, don't you?"
"And so you enslaved a gnome to spy on us, a servant of
Earth to creep through the floors and the walls, and you
didn't think that that servant would turn around and call
its master to set it free?"
"Its... master? Oh, dear."
"And when it got out of hand, as at the airport, you
enlisted the aid of every lodge and coven within reach."
"Only the ones that were agreeable."
"Only the ones you could seduce with stolen power. And you
did all this because you were jealous of Rupert Giles?"
"I love you, Ethan."
"How nice for you."
"I beg your pardon?"
"After all this, you still claim you love me? Well let me
tell you this, Quentin Travers: I most certainly do not
love you, and when all this is over, I never want to see
you again!"
Giles jumped the gate to the park and jogged across the
lawn toward the ruined castle. It wasn't the best place to
be if the earth started moving--the children in California
would be appalled--but he needed a vantage point.
Ethan and Quentin. Well, perhaps opposites did attract.
Giles looked around, slid backwards down into the ditch
that had been the moat and jogged across. He wondered if
anyone else used this place for magic. With the Council in
town, and all the Council attracted, the castle could be a
repository for any sort of magical nastiness imaginable.
The bloody moat could be full of psychic crocodiles.
Giles suppressed that thought and examined the facing
stones on the castle side of the moat. Perhaps they were a
bit mossy, but they were steady enough. He heard a noise
in the darkness nearby, a sort of scrabbling, as if
something large and scaly were dragging itself....
Giles pulled himself up by the least mossy stone within
reach and climbed with a will.
It actually had been a fairly large castle for the area, a
curtain wall, three towers and a keep built against the
wall opposite the gate. Only the keep and the adjacent
tower were standing, and that by a considerable stretch of
the word. It took Giles a moment to identify the staircase
among the other piles of tumbled stone, and when he climbed
small bits of masonry rolled toward the ground.
Some of them weren't so small.
Some of them weren't anywhere near Giles.
He stopped and watched as a bit of battlement rolled itself
off the lawn that had been the bailey and tumbled into the
moat. Bits of a fallen arch followed, and then a stone
watering trough started to crawl toward the edge. Down in
the moat Giles could hear something scrabbling about again,
and he was sure that it wasn't psychic crocodiles.
Never mind that, though. He closed his eyes, centered
himself and opened them again. There was a flash of
movement, but when he turned there was nothing there.
Nothing, that is, except for a boulder that crashed into
the moat. Giles made himself look away, made himself focus
on the door of an Audi parked outside the park's cast iron
fence. There was more movement in the corner of his eye.
As long as he didn't look directly at it, he could see. He
didn't particularly want to, since the creature was
slightly larger than mansize, had hanging folds of dusty
gray skin quite innocent of any covering and was gnashing
an almost insectoid pair of fangs. It was also heaving at
another rock.
Well, two could play at that game. Giles chose a random
bit of rubble, found a clear patch, imagined a wicket at
the back of the creature's head and bowled for all he was
worth. The thing yowled, clutched its head and turned to
Giles, its other target forgotten.
Giles could see it straight on, now, which was definitely
not a good thing. Its eyes weren't vampire yellow, but
orangy, as if they reflected the fires of hell, and its
voice squealed like overheated metal.
"Give it back! Give back what humans stole!"
Giles looked for another likely missile.
"Give it back, or we take it! Take, like so!"
The stone landing shifted beneath Giles's feet. No, it
wasn't the landing. It was only the stone he was standing
on. The creature was pulling at it, shifting it, lifting!
He leaped to another stone, and the gnome repeated the
process. Giles could hop their way around the entire
castle like a duck in a shooting gallery, but eventually he
would run out of rocks.
Then the gnome yowled again, and spun away from Giles. He
found a safe bit of footing and sang a Ward, and, lo, from
across the bailey, from the opposite side of the gnome came
an answering song. The gnome howled, caught, as the song
built toward banishment.
"You give it back!" it screeched, pointing at Giles. "You
give it back or we come get it!" Then it disappeared with
a pop. On the lip of the moat, somewhat worse for wear,
stood Ethan Rayne. Giles jumped down from the wall and
strode across the grass to him.
"Ripper," said Ethan, "I thought it would kill you."
Giles swept his arms around Ethan and held him tightly.
* * *