Chapter 23: Housecalls

The storm came on, roaring down from a black square of sky like gunfire. At the far end of the alley, the shadows bobbed and bucked and throated their war wails. Nestled deep in their ranks, a thing the size and shape of ten men shambled forth. The horde parted like a river around the monster, but not before it tramped a smaller fiend underfoot. Spike looked on balefully as the poor wanker’s bones crunched, a slick red jam squeezing out from the fingers of his ribcage.

“Let’s go to work.”

He could hardly mouth the words “bugger that” before the lunatic was off, coat and saber flashing like some Poor Man's Errol Flynn. One hundred grim bastards howled their approval, and a savage wave immediately swelled over the hapless old git. Through their tangle of arms and claws Spike could barely make out his grandsire’s blood-streaked face, grinning eerily as he lopped an ogre in half at the waist. In the next instant, legions more were streaming past the melee, casting their crude gazes on the trio of stragglers in the rear.

Spike shrugged a farewell at Betty Blue, tipped a wink to Charley.  Had his bloody go.

The beasties fell in twos and fours around him, their death rattles drowned out in the teeming downpour. They were a Tolkien lot; roughhewn but slow, and plump in all the wrong ways. At one point, Illyria appeared beside him, popping the head from one hobgoblin’s shoulders like a champagne cork. Even poor Charles seemed to be doing well enough, depriving a snarling axeman of his weapon, his legs and his life in a single, savage sweep.

Things were going so well that, for one mad moment, he thought they might even stand a chance. But in the corner of one eye, the behemoth was inching nearer, bellowing his metabolic song. And somewhere in the void above, he could make out the piercing cries of the Great Wyrm circling. Even if they managed to escape the giant’s lower intestine, the dragon would bathe the alley in her flames, assuring that Spike and The Grand Forehead wouldn’t be the only ones to meet a dusty end tonight.

Gunn and Illyria beat a hasty retreat to his side, the three of them grafting a defensive wedge. Like clockwork, a new wave of warriors moved to surround them, but closing more cautiously then before.

“These creatures fall too easily,” noted a chill voice beside him. “They toy with us. I do not like it.”

“Yeah, man,” groaned Gunn. “We should be dead meat by now. It’s like they're stallin’ or somethin’.”

“Right” Spike growled. “Let’s be on our way, then.”

“Suppose you got a plan?!”

He blinked despairingly at the grim tableau. The place where he’d last seen Angel was still newsworthy, a jumble of hacked heads and gizzards tossing away from the center of an unseen butcher’s block. “Well, no, not exactly. But I know a bloke who might.”

With that he was moving, dashing through a gauntlet of hell-hardened muscle, every nerve banging on full melt. At the edge of Angel’s scrum, a rancid ape popped up and ran him through with a javelin. Spike dashed the fiend’s rotted brains with a stroke, then, screaming, drove the spear out the other end to shish-kabob a monster behind. In the same moment, it seemed, his grandsire poked his head up from the fray. “What are you doing?!” he cried.

“Saving your irritable hide!  Bloody cavalry, an’ all!”

Just then, the dragon swept low, strafing the crowd with a pillar of the hot stuff. The vampires dove to safety a few yards out, leaving a dozen of their antagonists to boil and bubble in the serpent’s wake. Angel slammed hard up against a wall, clutching a bright wound at his side. Spike grabbed the big boy around the shoulder, straining to lift them both to their feet. In the distance, he saw the damned thing pivot round a radio tower, gear down for another run.

Meanwhile, the other damned thing beside him was talking again. “I was doin’ okay,” the old vampire whinged.

“Rot! ‘Nother moment and you’d’ve been well-done! Ol’ Puff the Maj’ up there has us figured for a couple of sirloins.”

“Fair enough,” Angel noted sullenly. “We gotta get out of here.”

“Oh, d’ya think?!”

Before he could answer, another band of horrors carried forth, seizing upon the tender moment. The front ranks fell upon them like wolves, growing ever more savage as the battle raged on. In silent concord, two game faces snapped sharply into focus as if they, too, were abandoning some last morsel of humanity. The pair drove resolutely forward, the field vanishing out before them in clouds of red confetti. Through the haze, Illyria and Gunn were fanning feebly at another mob of freaks. Spike instantly thought of her, missing out on all this glorious, empty-headed, suicidal carnage, and it broke what was left of his heart.

What a way to, go, love.

He felt the Giant rising behind him, the noxious fumes of its sweat clogging his throat like wet salt.

He saw a steel ribbed door, drenched and glittering with an inky blend of rain and blood.

He heard…

Smooth jazz?

What the bloody...

***

“…hell?”

Spike awoke in a posh private office.  Mahogany furniture loomed everywhere, carrying a loving French polish and the pine-scent aroma that comes from fleeting wealth.  He himself was lying lengthwise on a smooth leather settee, his wrists and ankles bound fast with steel bands.

“Kenny G,” explained a voice somewhere behind him.  “Something off the Gravity album, I think.”

“So, it’s to be torture, is it?”

A man emerged from the shadows.  The fellow was small and doughy, dressed rather unimaginatively in a fawn turtleneck and stone-washed denim.  Wispy blonde tufts clung for dear life to his scalp over a set of large aquamarine eyes. “Well,” he whispered, “many of my patients find it relaxing.”

Spike groaned in pain.  Tiny brambles of nerves were still popping off like firecrackers.  He remembered everything, suddenly; the hen in the alley touching him with her sparkler, the world turning white and loud.  “Then, they must be as off their nut as you.”

“Actually,” the man lisped politely, “most of them are.”

Spike snickered at this, genuinely delighted.  “Right, doc,” he said.  “Let me tell you how this old song goes.  You spend the next hour or so taking the piss, and jabbering on and on about your harebrained scheme.  Then, either I break loose or someone breaks me loose.”

“Really?”

“’Fraid so, mate," he said, mocking sympathy.  "And in the end you wind up very, very sorry we ever met.  I know, it’s cliché.  But trust me.  Happens all the time…”

The man just gazed down at him, a daft little grin still playing on his lips.  Through the dizzying fog, an alarm rang off in the back of Spike’s skull, notifying him that his captor wasn’t exactly human.  “I’m not here to hurt you, William. Believe it or not, I’m actually here to help.”

“Goody,” he muttered back.  “And who the bloody hell are you?”

The man smiled warmly. “My name is Dr. Nicholas Fineman,” he said. “I’m your brother.”

***

There was a tickle, at first. Saltwater trickling up her sinuses, moths flapping behind her eyes. Dark forms the size of galaxies passed through, knowing her to her exact core. Meanwhile, four billion scrambled molecules of Nancy Stark blipped in and out of existence, frantically scouring the Big Everything for the proper strand of reality to latch themselves onto.

Never taught this in school, sugar.

When they found it, the long black brushes went to work, patiently scribbling and stenciling until she sprang fully formed from the Now's howling chasm, her army of dread angels trailing closely behind. Just like in Italy, Nancy had managed to rewrite them all into a new patch of time and space. Tonight, it was inside a vast sanctum, deep within the bowels of a place called All Hallows Staining. It was one of the few old churches that had survived the Great Fire of London, and stood as a scarred relic of a more medieval sensibility then most folks were used to. The chamber hidden beneath it was long rumored to be the final dwelling place of Esther Chalk; the powerful and luridly insane witch suspected of starting the blaze in the first place.

Once they'd all finished passed through the Now's black facade, Nancy's goddess brigade gaped in wonder at their pristine new accommodations. An old glamour had preserved the madwoman Chalk’s secret estate across the centuries. Under its thrall, worm-choked mud appeared as gleaming marble floors, and crushed quarry stone became a queen’s spoils of plush and velveteen.

“Whoa,” sighed one precious little girl. “Head rush.”

“Sorry if the ride was a little bumpy, my darlings,” Nancy drawled. At the head of the throng, Kennedy was glowering at her again, bright hatred pouring off in waves. “But that’s life, sometimes…”

“Where have you taken us, Dr. Stark,” Kennedy demanded.

“London, of course,” she replied, as sweetly as she could muster. “That was the plan. Wasn’t it, my mistress?”

The girl squinted helplessly at her, and then went back to barking her vague orders at the flock. Nancy realized that, above all else, this was what Kennedy enjoyed doing - not to mention what the poor girls expected - so she allowed it. After all, who was "Trailer Park" Stark to deny them such cold comforts in their final hours of existence?

She, on the other hand, had very specific business to conduct. And if the flesh was willing, Nancy would have gotten straight down to it. But, once more, her trip through the Now had drank her body dry, and the clutch of blonde monsters writhing around inside her howled out for mercy and sleep.

So, like a wounded animal, she picked her way down a grotesquely festooned hallway, pausing once to admire the late Ms. Chalk’s tastes. In a mockery of her Catholic upbringing, a tainted twist on “Stations of the Cross” lined the way to the dead hag’s boudoir. Instead of tracking the Lord’s crucifixion, twelve exquisite reliefs detailed the journey of the sorceress Lilith, rutting and murdering her way to her blood drenched throne. One particularly vivid scene gave Nancy pause. In it, the pagan queen was shone cavorting with an assortment of beasts, each one abusing her body in ways so filthy and degrading they could’ve melted the panties off a chaste old nun.

After a moment, she was able to distinguish three animals at work on poor Lilith down in their lewd tangle. One was a large wolf. Lines of froth bled from his jaws like two boiling mountain streams. There was also a ram; a shaggy, mindless brute, hung heavy with muscle and blind lust.

But for Nancy, the third creature was the most captivating of all. Peering out from behind one of the queen’s ravished flanks, a large stag had sunk one antler deep into the woman’s ribcage. It seemed a clear allusion to the Roman legionnaire at Golgotha - the man who plunged his spear into the side of the Christ, trying to find out whether he was dead or alive.

The hart, she mused, and grinned at the dark, dark pun.

The most dangerous pleasure of all.

***

“Holla,” Faith chimed for the fifth time, followed by the perfunctory beep.  Buffy hung up, and once more resisted the urge to crush the iPhone like a ball of very expensive tinfoil.

She turned to the driver.  “So, you wanna tell me where we're going?” she asked.

“Here,” said Xander.

“Great. That’s so helpful.”

“Being helpful and helping are two very different things,” he quipped, and dragged the Cutlass to a halt over a retro patch of cobblestone.  “Figured you would’ve learned that by now.”

It sucked. She hadn’t learned much about “General” Harris’ tenure atop his very own Hellmouth, but it appeared to have given his sense of humor a corrosive tint.  She had a million questions: about Willow, about Faith and Dawn and their new B.F.F’s, about Giles, Nancy Stark. About other people.  But, rather than break open the Council's giant toy box full of magic doodads and hi-techy whoozits for the answers, Xander insisted on doing things in his own infuriatingly mysterious way.

Which, apparently, involved driving to the sketchiest neighborhood in all of England, to talk to some kind of fish.  Gritting her teeth, she slammed out of the car after him.

Figures.

Everything felt automatic, now.  She could envision the whole boring set-piece. There would be some hidden passage or phantom way or some other mystical, magical blah-blah-blah, that would transport them to a world unseen by mortal eyes, etcetera, etcetera.  There they would: SEE hideous demons, SMELL hideous smells, HEAR ancient prophesies and poorly-timed observational humor.  Maybe she would even get to KICK a little ass.

Wait.

Do fish have asses?

She followed the man in stony silence down a gas lit lane, the blind leading the blonde.  They passed by a crowd of twenty-something smokers huddled under the awning of a pub, a darkened tobacco shop, a “For Sale” storefront priced in Euros with the big glass window bricked shut. Behold! Romantic Old London, in all its glory…

Xander stopped at the foot of something called a “Haberdashery,” which sounded to her like it sold some kind of exotic foot fungus.  A set of stairs out front pointed the way down to a gloomy looking cellar apartment.  At the bottom, a crooked painting of a glowing cartoon spine hung on a doorway, the words “Happy Lucky Hello” stenciled on it in lipstick red.

“You’ll have to take them off,” he whispered, and pressed the button on a tiny metal buzzer box.

“What off?”

“Your shoes.”

Before she could protest, the buzzer box crackled to life.  The voice that came out of it was perky, with a disarming, oriental lilt.  “Good evening Mister Harris, Miss Summer. How may we help you?”

Buffy started to ask how she knew her name, but Xander quickly shushed her.  “Uh, we’ve come to see him, Madame Orso.  We have questions.”

There was a long, clicking pause. “You are mistaken.  The Dauphin is not seeing anyone tonight. The Dauphin is sleeping. You try back next millennium? Okay! Thank you!”  The speaker snapped off dead.

“Well,” Buffy murmured.  “Was that helpful or just helping?”

Frustrated, Xander slapped the button again, and then twice and three times, before finally he slumped his forehead on the doorjamb.  Buffy guessed they were about to pack it in when suddenly, almost apologetically, he began to knock.

The door immediately flung open, revealing a small Chinese woman in a nylon jogging suit who peered warily at them from its threshold.  Her mouth hung open, horrified.

“Mr. Harris… you dare knock?”

“It’s very important,” he explained.  The woman shifted her gaze back and forth between them, suspiciously. Apparently not finding what she was looking for, she seemed to acquiesce, sinking backwards into the building and beckoning them to follow.

They were ushered in to a small, empty parlor.  Red, cheapo carpets ran wall to wall under bargain furniture from 1972. “Shoes,” said the woman.   They sat and quietly peeled off their footwear, Xander plunking a pair of swampy work boots off sideways, and handing them to their host, lace first.  Reluctantly, Buffy did the same with her black leather Rampages. Easy come, easy go, she mused.  The woman accepted them with a nod and vanished though the partition of lacy K-mart curtains that separated the waiting room from the rest of the building.  From a set of hidden speakers, Buffy could hear a woman chanting a foreign melody over the sound of plucked, punctuating strings.  The queasy aromas of incense scented oils stung at her nostrils.  They seemed to have seeped into every last atom of the walls.

“So, this dolphin. What is he, some mystical Yoda type?”

“It’s Dauphin”, Xander corrected her.  “And, no, not exactly.  He’s more like a Watcher.  Except he’s been watching stuff for, you know, a really, really long time.”

“So, he’s not a fish.”

“No!” Xander hissed, and glanced around anxiously.  “For goshsakes, Buffy, do not ever call him a fish.  He gets very touchy about that.”

She offered him a disinterested little grunt, and casually started flipping through a magazine on an old card table. There was a…

Say… that’s a whole lot of X’s!

Whoa! The hell is she doing with those salad tongs?!

She snapped the book shut, a horrible realization washing over her.  “Xander? Please tell me this is not a whorehouse.”

“This is not a whorehouse,” Xander replied.  “It’s just, you know.  A house… that happens to have some whores in it.”

“Okay,” she decided.  “Here’s me, leaving.”

“Wait, Buffy,” he pleaded, the note of panic in his voice freezing her mid-stride.  “You said you wanted answers.  Well trust me.  He’s got ‘em.  Boy-and-how, does he got ‘em.”

The curtains suddenly flung apart. Orso smiled cheerfully at them, looking a bit too catlike for Buffy’s taste.  “Good news, Miss Summers.  The Dauphin has agreed to see you, now.”

They followed the woman down a short hallway painted a mesmerizing shade of purple.  Ornately carved doors lined the way, each one broadcasting its own raunchy soundtrack of grunts and bumps and animal wails.  At the far end, a gold portico glittered back at them.  A large wheel was mounted on its face, like an airlock on an old submarine.

“So,” Buffy said.  “How much time do we get, with this Dauphin character.”

“Time is irrelevant,” the woman purred.  “The One Who Swims traffics in chance and causality, not time.”

“The One-Who-Swims?” Buffy whispered.  “Wait, I thought you said he wasn’t a fish?”

“Shhh! What did I just tell you?”

The woman calmly began turn the wheel counter-clockwise.  There was sound like air rushing out of a very big balloon.

“Mister Harris,” she intoned, the balloon sound getting louder and louder.  “I am afraid you must wait here with me. There is a small matter of a bill to be settled, given the inconvenience you have caused.”

Xander gazed ruefully at her, slowing nodding his head.

“Xander, what is she…?”

The door clicked and swung wide, revealing an impenetrably dark room.  A gasp of icy air breathed over her.

“Its cool,” said Xander, a little too bleakly.  “Go do what you gotta do. I can handle myself, you know.”

She took a guarded step into the chamber.  Then another. It felt a whole lot like the freezer back at Doublemeat, minus the baffling smell of their top secret “muster-naise” sauce.  She squinted into the blackness, trying to force her eyes to adjust.

“Hello,” she crooned, the sound dying out with an eerie metallic echo. “Look, I don’t know what you’re trying to pull,” she said, turning to confront the Madam.  “But I don’t see any friggin’…”

But Orso was already gone. So was Xander.

Everything was.