Chapter 9

A Tale of Two Watchers

Thursday, 11:47 AM

            Ripper swallowed his surprise. "What are you?" he stammered out.

            Sir Radcliffe seemed particularly pleased. The question was insightful, true. It also was testament to Ripper's training as a watcher. But it was also asked without fear, without revulsion. Ripper judged men – to use the term loosely – by their actions, not their appearance or dimension of origin. "If you mean, am I a demon, then I can assure you I am not." Sir Radcliffe composed himself slightly, seeking a way to articulate a more complete answer. "To all appearances, and that includes medical scans, by the way, I am completely human. I was born to two human parents, both of whom died in their forties. Of course, that was a very long time ago, and healthcare wasn't what it is today."

            His father had died from a simple infection that came from a cut. He had been a peasant farmer. Living conditions were hard, almost brutal. The landowner was not particularly kind to them, taking most of what they grew as payment for their lease on the land. Of course, perpetual indentured servitude could hardly be called a lease, but never-the-less that's what the wicked Baron Kilpunt had insisted that it was. In addition to malnutrition and disease, unsanitary living conditions, vermin, and any number of farming accidents, there was the ever present risk of germs in any wound. A simple cut from an old and nearly useless knife had caused Sir Radcliffe's father to die in agony.

            Without his father to work the farm, Baron Kilpunt had put them off their land. His mother had attempted to survive with her children, but the choices for that were severely limited. Consumption had taken her the second winter following her husband's death, and Sir Radcliffe had been left with nothing but his own wits to survive.

            He had made his way to Londontown, as it was known then. From there he had gained employment on the boats that prowled the Thames. Again, they had call it 'employment', but in reality he was little more than a slave, sold from one boat captain to another over the years, until he had finally been freed.

            Sir Radcliffe shook himself from the memory. It was time to focus on the present. It was getting harder, he realized. It seemed that age was finally calling to him after all this time. He hoped he would finish this last battle before it finally claimed him.

            "However," he continued, smiling at his own frailty, "there is no doubt that I am … special. I won't say that I cannot die, but there are very few ways to kill me." What those ways were only a handful of people knew; he wasn't about to share them to anyone who didn't absolutely need to know. "There are others like me, less now than there were. Many of them seek to eliminate the others, to be some kind of sole survivor. I don't hold to that particular approach to life, but they are sometimes difficult to avoid. Arinoth was not like them, either. We were friends … at least at first.

            "We knew each other instantly, both of us special. We can sense one another, you see. We know when there is another of our kind around us. It put me on guard, of course, there was no telling whether or not he would choose to seek my destruction. But we were both quick to discover that neither of us desired bloodshed. We shared this bond, you see – that is how we became friends. He was far older than I was, but we still each remembered far too many lifetimes to have no one to share them with. Late at night we would talk of the old days, of the things we had seen, of all that had happened in our lifetimes."

            "If I may ask," Ripper said, hoping not to interrupt, "when were you born?"

            "Twelve twenty, by the current calendar." It was smack in the middle of the Middle Ages. "We talked much of the Renaissance in Italy, and the Reformation, and the great promise of Science. We talked of the world as it was before, and our hopes for the future. I think he was more at peace then, his obsessions had subsided. I realize now that they were merely in remission, but the cancer of his soul never really left him."

            Sir Radcliffe sighed, deeply. There had been so much promise, then; so much potential. The ages seemed to weigh down as he told the story. It was as if, in the telling, he was letting go of some great responsibility that had preserved him, and now all that he had held at bay through eight centuries was going to settle on him.

            "I heard tell of a vision gained by a … a demon, an acquaintance of a friend of mine. He said that Arinoth had died, many times." Ripper was trying to correlate the information he had heard from his friends in L.A. with the tale that Sir Radcliffe was telling him now.

            MacKenzie cleared his throat and spoke for the first time since the opening ritual. "Lorne, the one with the karaoke bar. I told you about that."

            "Oh, yes!" exclaimed the old man, his eyes coming alight once more with renewed vigor. "A demon with the voice of an angel, yes. And very … how do you say it? 'hip?' – yes, that's it, very hip, too."

            Ripper smiled. "That would be him."

            "Well," Sir Radcliffe said, his hand waiving in the air trying to think of how to say it. "When I say we can't be killed, that wasn't precisely what I meant. What I meant is that there are only a couple of ways to kill us so that we stay dead. We can die as easily as any other man, it's just that afterwards we … get over it."

            "Ah," said Ripper, thinking it through. "That's fascinating, actually."

            "Indeed," replied Sir Radcliffe. "But let me complete my story, for now we are getting to the important part. I learned of the Watchers in fourteen seventy. I met mine, quite by accident."

            "Your what?" Ripper asked, slightly confused.

            "My Watcher." Sir Radcliffe smiled. "You see, Ripper, the Watchers watch much more than you know. There are many sects, many groups, hidden from one another. There are only a handful that know of them all. There is one whole group that watches us, those who have trouble … staying dead. And I met mine. Nice lad, actually. We became friends, although it was forbidden to him. That group, you see, does not interfere. They chronicle, and keep secrets, but they do not interfere. Well, most don't."

            "How many groups of watchers are there?" Ripper asked, perplexed.

            "Enough. Yes, more than enough." The old man's cryptic reply was lightened by his smile. He wasn't going to tell.

            "But what would the others watch?" Ripper asked again, taking the question from a different track.

            "The X-Files," Mac replied, not smiling. The answer led to a flash of awareness. Aliens, government conspiracies, mad scientists, psychics – as many tales as one could think of, for each one some branch of the watchers would be tracking it.

            "I learned of the Watchers from him, and from there I learned all I could. Carefully, secretly. It was dumb luck, actually, that I came upon another of the groups. Dumb and tragic, for it cost me my friend and Watcher. But I gained another friend that day – I became friends with a Slayer."

            Ripper's eyebrows shot up at that. "Really, who?" He knew all of the Slayer histories, and none of them mentioned men who could not die – at least not humans.

            "Olivia Francesca Marie de C'Oultorino. You know of her, no doubt." There could be no doubt, for she was the most flamboyant and unconventional of the Slayer's in history, moreso than even Buffy. By the time she was called and received the powers of the Slayer, she had already made other plans, and was pursuing quite a different line of work.

            "Indeed," Ripper responded. "The Italian Courtesan."

            "Yes!" proclaimed Sir Radcliffe. "Yes, that and much more."

            "She was one of the most prolific of the Slayers. I think she killed more demons than even Buffy." Ripper shook his head, recalling the details. "She was quite beautiful, I'm told. Articulate, intelligent, and … brutal."

            "Yes, that was her. But she was in the right place at the right time, you see. Italy in the fourteen hundreds had everything a demon could want. A populace still superstitious about the old ways, but loosening their tie to the church. Not the official tie, of course – politics was everything then. But in their hearts they stopped believing – lured by the promises of the renaissance, and the money and decadence it brought. And there was power – power to be had, to be manipulated, to be bought and sold and traded.

            "People then would do anything for that power. Truth be told, they didn't give a second thought to summoning a demon if it would rid them of a political or economic rival, or even just a badly tempered neighbor. Olivia moved among them, and she had ample opportunity to do her work. It was what our Captain MacKenzie here would call a 'target rich environment', especially for vampires."

            "For vampires, really?" Ripper was fascinated. "Why is that, exactly?"

            "A vampire never really loses the nature of its former life, as you know. It only took a couple of the wealthy families to get a vampire or two in them, and suddenly they were trying to turn all of their friends. They were snobs, really – they'd feed off the common people, but they wouldn't sire them. Besides, the common people didn't know how to behave properly at parties, and what was the point of siring another vampire if they were going to turn out to be an eternal bore?

            "It didn't help that the wasted youth of the day partied all night and slept all day to begin with. Nothing's really changed, eh? Frankly, they didn't even have to hunt many of the others they sired. It became downright fashionable." He shook his head at that, the foolishness of youth. "Of course, those were exactly the circles that Olivia was used to moving in. She was always invited to all the best parties, and all the best vampires were bound to be there. Those were wild, wild days." He paused for moment and laughed quietly to himself, remembering the world as it was then.

             "Anyway, as I mentioned, they had no problem feeding on the common people, which is what Luigi and I were. Luigi was my Watcher, as I mentioned. He was a boy, really, barely eighteen. He and I were out for a late dinner one evening when we were beset upon by a band of the wastrels. Rich, young, undead, and 'out for a good time.'

            "They made short work of us, I'm afraid, and drank us both dry. I'm not sure quite what happened next, of course, because I was dead. But, as I said, we get over that. I awoke suddenly, felling my life returning, and there was Olivia. I saw her stake the last one, but there had been five who had attacked us. I found out later that she had managed to kill the other four.

            "She was quite shocked when I awoke. As you know, it normally takes several days of being dead for the siring process to complete. She assumed I was a vampire, of course. How else could I have been killed by them and then suddenly awaken? She acted … predictably."

            "You mean she staked you," Giles supplied. "My God, that must have hurt."

            "Indeed, it did," Sir Radcliffe replied. "And for the second time that night I died. I did not, however, turn to dust. She realized her mistake immediately, and it devastated her. At least until I got over that. When I awoke again, I found her draped across my body sobbing – covered in sweat and scrapes and vampire dust – and showing quite a bit of cleavage. We got along rather famously after that."

            Sir Radcliffe drifted into the past once more, remembering that time. The brocade dresses that cost more than a common man could make in a lifetime immediately swam into the view of his mind's eye. They were practically works of art in and of themselves. And then when placed upon a woman of Olivia's beauty – words could not describe the sight. It was an ecstasy of vision. But that was just the beginning.

            The parties of the rich were marked by the most extraordinary food – food like he had never even imagined. He had been poor for two hundred years, but Olivia had taken him in. She had turned him into a gentleman, and he had gone into that world. The sights, the sounds – oh, the music! It was all so overwhelming, like being born once more, a whole new opportunity to see the world as if it were freshly made.

            He had learned so much from Olivia, including a purpose. She had a gift, and she used it to fight evil. He had a gift, too, and up until then he had only used it to survive. But she showed him another way – a way of purpose. She had taught him more than how to dress and have manners, she had taught him that with every great gift came a great responsibility.

            He had laid his own plans, then. He had gotten a vision for what he could be – what he could be to his home, and to his fellow man. She had seen him as more than poor old man with a gift for survival. She had seen him as a warrior of light, given a great ability to make a difference in the darkness that all too often tried to envelope the world. And she saw him that way so strongly, that he began to see himself that way. And it had made all the difference in the world.

            Remembering that difference, he brought himself back with a shake. "Of course, dear Luigi was gone, but I was introduced to her watcher, and that is how I was able to put two and two together."

            Ripper was able to fill in the missing parts. Olivia would be loathe to tell anyone – especially her Watcher – that she had accidentally staked a normal human, even if this one did turn out to be immortal. The fact that it was an obvious and freakishly unavoidable mistake would have not lessened her disgrace in the least. For his part, Sir Radcliffe would be reluctant to reveal his special abilities to the Watchers. But he would use that knowledge and relationship. It would eventually lead, though the centuries, to him becoming that person whom the Watchers and the Queen would trust with powerful magic, to take and use to fight the Nazis.

            Sir Radcliffe continued, pulling Ripper from his revelry. "It was this that I revealed to Arinoth one beautiful night as we sat sipping claret. He had, I think, lost all hope of ever being able to achieve his dream – of being able to destroy or subjugate all demons. It was dream that had grown in his obsession and arrogance. He no longer believed the world would be a better place if he ridded it of all demonic influence. No, it could still revert to its old ways. It was only when he ruled it all, forever, would it be safe. And my tale of the Watchers reignited a spark of hope in him. I see now how he began planning then to take them over. It would take him three hundred years, but eventually he would have enough agents in place, enough power built up, enough people corrupted, that he could attempt to not only take control of the Slayer line, but to build an army of Slayers completely loyal to him. I didn't see it until it was almost too late, and I am grateful that both you and Captain MacKenzie were there to stop him.

            "He still has control of too much of the Watchers, though. And his mad plans are not yet done, I believe. He must be stopped, for all time. I don't know what his plan is, though; all I know is that your arrival here has made him move quickly, and he would only do that if a golden opportunity had presented itself. An opportunity that you brought, Mr. Giles.

            "Now, I have told you all. Will you tell me, within the bindings of this lodge, what is it that you brought with you?"

            Ripper realized that he could trust this man; no, more than that, he had to trust this man. This was a battle that had been going on longer than he could conceive. That a being could plot for three hundred years before taking action was mind boggling. There was simply no telling how many layers of plots Arinoth had laid. His only hope lay in finding allies and ending this quickly; Arinoth would win any battle of patience and plotting. And here, in this room, were his best allies.

            Ripper took a moment to clean his glasses, a motion meant to keep his hands busy as he collected his thoughts. If he spoke now, there would be no going back. The decision, though, seemed obvious. "I brought the most powerful witch on the planet with me – Willow Rosenberg."

            God help him if he was wrong about this.