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chapter 13: god shiva – part II

Giles lay motionless on the sofa with his eyes clasped shut. His pajama bottoms, soaked with perspiration, were sticking to the inside of his thighs and calves. The moist cloth draped across his forehead felt cold, useless. His body ached from head to toe and the pain in the back of his skull pulsed with the precision of a thousand daggers, slicing perfect squares into his brain.

How long had he been knocked out? Might bloody well have been a week. He couldn't hazard a semi-decent guess. All he knew was that his eyelids felt glued together. He started to gag. What if the portal jumper had defeated them, and he was trapped in a dream dimension? Panic rose from his stomach into his chest and the bitter taste of sour eggs lodged in the back of his throat.

No, please God. That can't be it.

Giles willed his eyelids apart slowly. It was time to see what there was to see. A thin line of daylight pierced his corneas and he blinked rapidly, attempting to adjust his vision to the brightness. Another wave of pain traveled up his spine and settled behind his eyes. He slammed them shut.

Sod it all to hell, he cursed silently. Then he lifted his arm to this face and wiped the perspiration from his upper lip.

He had to open his eyes. Get up. Make a phone call. Say something. Tell someone what he'd seen in his dream and what he'd learned from the portal jumper and his precious books. With any luck, he'd be able to explain how to save Dawn and perhaps even Willow. Except to do this, he had to wake the bloody hell up!

“Giles?” The voice broke through the din in his head. It was Xander.

“Close the shades,” he breathed. “Sunlight. Hurts my eyes.”

He heard Xander stand up, walk to the window, and rustle the blinds. Only then did Giles peak through the slits he'd made with his freshly parted eyelids.

“How long?” he asked, trusting Xander to understand his question.

“Nearly twenty-four hours,” Xander said. “You've been in and out of consciousness since yesterday morning.”

Both of Giles' eyes were open now. He could see Xander sitting on the edge of the coffee table next to the sofa. Giles had always disliked Xander's lack of respect for furniture. The boy treated property as if it had no value. He wasn't accustomed to taking care of things. Xander was an architect of basement décor. Giles balked at how a 1000 year-old woman could love such an elemental human being. Even if she was a chattering loon at times, Anya had still traversed more lifetimes than Xander could comprehend.

Giles cleared his throat, and forced his attention away from the random thoughts that helped him deal with the pain in his head.

He looked at the coffee table. A pot of water rested on the table next to Xander. Removing the lukewarm cloth from Giles' forehead, the boy dipped it into the pot and twisted it dry with his hands. He didn't flinch as the ice-cold water streamed over his fingers. When Xander placed the cool cloth on his forehead, the Watcher nodded a solemn thank you and then remembered what he needed.

“Where's my Bible?”

Xander reached behind his back and held out the book for Giles to see. Indescribable pain ripped through Giles' head at the sight of it and he bit down hard on his lower lip.

Xander dropped the book on the table and grabbed Giles' hand, giving him an anchor to hang onto while he rode out the latest wave.

“Open it,” Giles ground out the words.

Xander had marked the pages after prying the book out of Giles' grip when he'd found the Watcher sprawled unconscious on the floor. Now it fell open to a chapter in the Old Testament. Not exactly a Bible buff, Xander did know two things about it. The Old Testament was in the front of the book. The New Testament was in the back.

“First verse, last chapter of Leviticus,” Giles' voice was soft as he spoke. “Last verse, first chapter of Ecclesiastes.”

With one hand, Xander thumbed through the pages, found the passages, and curled the corners of the pages to keep his place. He looked at the Watcher and waited for instructions.

“Be ready,” began Giles. “To recite the verses when I pass out.”

“Okay,” said Xander, not knowing why Giles expected to pass out, but he wasn't going to ask him now.

“Anya is with the portal jumper, right?” Giles' words came out in a rush as Xander watched him turn a sickly shade of gray.

“What's he want with Anya?”

“Don't worry about her. She knows what she's doing.”

“But I don't understand—,” Xander began.

“The portal jumper was cursed by a higher power,” said Giles. “Anya is a refuge for him. I don't believe he'll hurt her. But I'm also not certain if she can help us."

"Is he a vengeance demons?" Xander asked.

“No, he's not a vengeance demon," replied Giles. "He's an immortal. He's also a man and a vampire, of sorts, and his name's Lucretius.”

Xander's breath caught in his throat. “He's a vamp?”

A sharp pain spread from Xander's fingers up his forearm. He looked down to see Giles hanging on to his left hand, and squeezing it tight.

“Listen, Xander,” Giles' voice was stronger, and more urgent. “His vampire lineage is the least of our concerns. L—Lucretius was cursed centuries ago by an angel, banished from heaven. He travels through dimensions blindly collecting gifts—killing for reasons he can't even comprehend. He just knows it's what he must do.”

Giles' eyes grew wide and he began coughing, a deep dry crackling sound. Xander took the cloth from the Watcher's forehead and mopped the deepening pools of moisture from his face and throat.

“What's he want with us?” Xander whispered, posing the question more to himself than to Giles.

"He wants Dawn.” Sweat rolled from the Watcher's brow. “I'm a stupid git, Xander. I saw him in the Zy Qasdor, imbedded in an image of Glorificus, but still didn't understand that his intentions were no different from hers.”

Giles took a deep breath.

“Dawn is the key and we bloody fools missed the obvious," he said, as a jagged row of veins marked a path across his forehead. "I planned to take away the memory of him, so he couldn't find her. Couldn't find any of us. But I was wrong. Dawn's headaches protected her from the portal jumper, and Willow , she—.” Giles stopped abruptly as his body began to convulse violently. Xander pried his fingers away from the Watcher's hand and pressed down on his shoulders, trying to hold him in place as he thrashed from side to side.

“Steady, Giles. No need to talk if it's going to kill you,” warned Xander, but he could see the Watcher wasn't about to stop talking.

“Willow—.” He stared decisively into Xander's eyes. “She changed the spell. Don't know why she did it, but she did.”

“How?”

“M—My spell was specific. Would only take away our fear of Lucretius. But I didn't know he wasn't causing Dawn's pain.” He looked apologetically at Xander. “I thought he needed fear to cast his thrall upon us. But Willow—.” Again, the Watcher stopped as a wave of pain swept over his features, knitting his brow into a distorted pattern that cut his face into sections.

“She took away our joy. She lied to me and said it was fear, but it was joy. S—She believed the portal jumper used joy to find its prey,” he blurted, then sagged back into the cushions of the sofa.

“But if she took away joy, why did losing a thought give me the ability to see?” Xander shook his head. "I don't understand."

Giles struggled to sit up. “It's different for all of us. For you, a thought taken, gave you more than you had. For me, it stripped me of my intellect. My ability to reason, to learn, to decipher was eradicated. I'm not certain what effect it had on Tara or to Anya. I definitely don't know what happened to Buffy. But Willow." Giles paused. "I'm afraid, like you, it gave her something unexpected."

“What does Lucretius want, Giles?”

“He needs Dawn to open the door to the dimension where he was still a man. I saw in the Zy Qasdor that Glory had promised to return him to his home. But we destroyed her and his chances of returning home. So he decided to solicit the key himself.”

"No way, Buffy would never allow that. We'd all fight to the death to save Dawn,” asserted Xander. “We've done it before and would do it again.”

“We can't bloody kill him." Giles said softly.

“So we just let him force Dawn to open his damn dimension?”

“He won't force her,” said Giles. “There will be no chains. No small cuts. She will choose freely to become his key.”

Xander stood up abruptly, and stalked away from the sofa into the foyer.

“Dawn wouldn't do that unless—,” Xander dragged his fingers through his hair. “Unless she had to save Buffy.”

“Yes, or someone else she loved very much." Giles rolled onto his side and looked up at Xander.

Giles was drenched in sweat. Reaching into the pot, Xander pulled the wet cloth out of the cool water, squeezed it tightly, and dapped gently at the Watcher's face, and eyes. It then occurred to Xander that there was still a question he needed to ask.

“Can Willow stop the portal jumper?”

“Y-yes, s-she can.” Giles stammered.

“How?”

Giles lurched forward and pressed his hands to his temples. “Oh God!" he cried out.

“Giles!” Xander wrapped his arms around the Watcher's head and pulled him to his chest, cradling him in his arms. “Come on, Giles. Hang on.”

“In t—the first volume of the Zy Qasdor, study the image of Lucretius. Look into his heart and you'll find—.” Giles' body began to shake, but Xander held onto to him.

“Stop!” He begged Giles. “It's going to kill you. Please, stop.”

Giles' head lolled to one side as he whispered. "Willow is Shemhazi's whore...and the matriarch...of Aurielius."

"Giles, what the hell are you talking about!"

"Shemhazi?" Giles fell back onto the sofa's armrest and his eyes closed slowly.

Xander took the dampened cloth from the brow of the unconscious Watcher and dropped it into the pot filled with cold water. Then he grabbed the book from the tabletop, opened it to the first of the marked passages. Quickly, he recited the verse from Leviticus. As he spoke the last words, he immediately flipped to the last chapter of Ecclesiastes, and chanted the verse there. Just to make certain he'd gotten it right, he started from the beginning and repeated the verses three times.

By the end of the third chanting, Xander was panting. He placed the book back on the table and looked intently at the Watcher. He lay unconscious, but he wasn't dead. The sounds of his labored breathing and Xander's own harsh gasps filled the room.

Good, Xander thought, as he stood up slowly.

He then walked over to Giles' weapons chest, and opened it and stared down into it. He pushed aside an ax, a small sword, and a half-dozen wooden stakes before finding the volume of the Zy Qasdor. Dropping to the floor, he crossed his legs underneath him. He had to read the book quickly. He didn't have much time to contemplate the history of the portal jumper, and his relationship to Shemhazi or to Willow. And heaven help him, Xander didn't really have time to consider what the portal jumper had to with the fucking line of Aurelian vampires.

Damn, he thought. No matter what, the biggest baddest danger to his friends always centered on some goddamn vampire. And always the likes of Angel or blasted Spike led the pack.

Xander reclined his back against the wall and began to flip through the pages of the first volume of the Zy Qasdor. As he skimmed through the book and as each moment passed, he started to feel a little bit more like his old self. Somehow, knowing the thought that had been taken away from him reminded him of who he'd been. Now, he had a better chance of getting over the spell. It hadn't been that bad seeing into the hearts of his friends. It just felt better being Xander.

to be continued…





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