A hundred years of the Punic Curse
And Rome shall be slave to a hairy man
A hairy man that is scant of hair.
Every man's woman and each woman's man.
The steed that he rides shall have toes for hooves.
He shall die at the hand of his son, no son
And not on the field of war.
12:00 25 May 2002
The Hyperion Hotel, Los Angeles
Fred wandered into the hotel, looking for any of her Pylea friends for company.
It was now twelve months since she'd arrived back in this dimension; twelve months of insomnia, taco binges, crash diets and mild insanity. But at last she began to feel as if it was all coming right. Yesterday she'd fallen asleep at two in the afternoon and didn't wake until eight this morning. "My head," she reflected, "feels like it's really stuck on, for the first time in forever."
The people who'd saved her from the madness were now her closest friends, and she felt it only right and fair to share her good mood with them.
Voices were coming from the office. She could distinguish Angel's deep tones, and Wesley's clipped English speech, and the background sounds of pages being turned and books slapped onto wooden surfaces. A heavy research session was clearly in progress.
"Theories of vampirism among the Claudian family are rife. Caligula, Nero, even Tiberius. They've all been accused at one time or another."
"But I dreamt about Carthage, not Rome."
"You see, the Claudians were widely regarded as doomed because they gained from the destruction of Carthage. A barbaric act even by the standards of those times. With Carthage gone, Rome was without a rival for trade and empire. They occupied, or could occupy, everything worth having, and demand tribute from everyone who had anything. Rome became filthy-rich as a result, and there were immense and fundamental changes to their society. The Punic Curse."
"Still, it's the first I've heard about any Roman vampires."
"Well, we can probably discount Julius Caesar. He was murdered in broad daylight by a group of senators, including Brutus, supposedly his illegitimate child. No great mystery, if the historical accounts are true. And, he was a good leader, if a little prone to orgies. No suggestion of vampirism."
Fred walked into the office. "Hi guys."
"Fred," Wesley hugged her and pecked her cheek, "Tell Angel I'm right."
"About what?"
"Oh! I don't know. Just everything."
She smiled at Angel, who raised his eyebrows in mock derision and carried on. "Why would Darla be trying to contact vampires from the ancient world anyway?"
"Who's Darla?"
"His ex." Wesley explained, flippantly.
"Wesley!"
"Well, what would you call her?"
That was a good question and it silenced Angel for a time. He didn't want to answer it at that moment, with Fred standing there, looking openly and curiously at him. She was the only person he was close to, that wasn't aware of his descent into near-madness when Darla was last in town. He wanted to keep it that way for as long as he could. "I know I'm being selfish," he told himself, "but I can't help it. I don't want her to know about the past." At the same time, he felt instinctively that she would probably understand, and sooner forgive him his past than anyone else.
Her pragmatic reaction to seeing his demon emerge in Pylea had created a bond between them. He trusted her not to judge him. Or rather, he would trust her, one day.
Wesley shook his head and turned back to his books. Fred, sensing tension, wandered across to the desk and patted Angel on the shoulder. Then she took up a volume and started to read a random passage.
"rrp ylk frw bgl tmn..."
Angel frowned, "We've no idea what it means. The book was open at that page when I surprised her... Darla, this morning. She was stealing it."
"It's a portal recipe" said Fred, simply.
Wesley gaped, "How do you know?"
"I know a lot about portals."
"Portals to Pylea. Is that what this is? For god's sake, don't read it any more!"
Fred shook her head, "All kinds of portals. I've been studying..." Suddenly, she realised what she was saying, and tried to back-track. "..you know, you're right, it could be anything."
Wesley gave her a stern look. "Fred. Tell me the truth. Have you been studying portals?"
Her face told them all they needed to know.
"I don't believe it!" Angel groaned, "After five years in Pylea? You're looking for more trouble?"
"I just wanted to..."
"It's dangerous, Fred." Wesley wagged a finger at her. "What if you go flying off somewhere again? How would we find you? Or are you hoping to have time to leave a note?"
"...understand what happened last time. So I can stop it happening again." She tapped her finger on the book, "This is not a portal to a different dimension. It's for travelling within our world. Travelling back. In time."
"Well, that makes no difference, I still think it's a bad idea altogether for you... in time?" Wesley's eyebrows went up a full inch. "Where in time?"
Fred shrugged. "It's your standard Martini-type portal. Any time, any place, anywhere. The key is an object created in the right era. If you had a token made at a certain time and did the incantation in a certain way, you could probably travel to any date within a century either side, quite accurately."
Wesley and Angel looked at each other. "The ring..."
"You would end up close to the place where the object was at that time." Fred continued. "If it works. I've read about these time travel portals. They're rare and delicate, not to be used indefinitely. There's a theory... whoever's in charge doesn't like them"
"What do you mean?"
"They - whoever "they" are - don't approve of time travel. Some people believe that higher powers shut them down as soon as they find them. Anyway, what it boils down to is, you could only rely on it for a short period of time. Maybe a few days."
"So," Angel picked up the ring, "If this is Claudian, we could use it to go to the reign of any of the Caesars Wesley mentioned?"
"If they reigned within a hundred years of it being made, yes."
"And we'd end up close to whoever was wearing the ring?"
"That's the idea. But we might not even be able to get the portal to open more than once."
Wesley interrupted, "Why not? We have the recipe. I thought you said a few days grace?"
"It's a recipe, but it's not like baking a cake. The mystical energies involved in time travel are immense. Eventually, even if the higher powers don't shut it down, it gets exhausted, like the Pylea portals did. Then it's gone, and all the chanting in the world won't bring it back until it's recharged. According to what I've read, that takes a few millennia."
Angel turned to Wesley, "I say we go and see what she was up to."
"Angel..." Wesley shook his head, "...you're trying to pick a single moment out of two centuries and get it right. It can't be done. We have to know what... when she was aiming for. And then there's the problem of dates. Do we know the date of any event accurately enough? To the day? I don't think we do."
Fred interrupted cheerfully, "That's not a problem. The portal understands more about time than we do. We could probably say 'take me to 25 December in the year nought' or 'take me to the birth of Jesus Christ' and the portal would understand both requests equally well."
"And," Angel continued, "if she was trying to contact an ancient vampire, and your hunch about the Claudian family is right, we only need find out which Caesar, yes?"
Wesley pursed his lips. "I guess so."
"So, I turn up at the death of each one, and find out which one was turned." Angel tossed the ring to Fred and gave her a brilliant smile. "And then I kill them. And Darla's plan, whatever it was, is dead in the water."