Giles had been driving in his hired car for some ten minutes when Wesley appeared in the passenger seat beside him. It came as something of a surprise to the Watcher, who jumped violently, and almost swerved the car into the oncoming traffic. He swore, colourfully.
"Sorry." Wesley didn't sound terribly apologetic. "I thought you'd be expecting me."
"I never really expect a ghost to suddenly appear beside me. And where the bloody hell have you been? I expected you at the airport."
"Sorry. Something came up."
"So?"
"So what?"
"Oh for goodness sakes..." He slowed the car to a halt. "Wesley, I'm driving this car around mainly because I didn't want to look a complete prat at the rental place sitting there waiting for you. I'd like to know which direction to drive in now please. If it's not too much to ask."
"Oh. Right. Head south east, for the mountains. It's an out of the way place, obviously, a little north of La Mancha. There are three entrances to the vault; presumably to allow Corbio access from several different locations; or to provide him with escape routes as he grew more paranoid. We're heading for the one that was probably beneath his main place of residence."
"And the archaeologist who discovered the parchments? What does he think of us turning up, looking to steal his thunder?"
"I have no idea. Supposedly he went looking for the vault, in which case he's probably dead. So unless he's become a ghost too, I doubt we'll be seeing all that much of him." Wesley leaned back in the car seat, staring out at the surrounding countryside. "This really isn't half as much fun as it used to be. I always loved travelling in Angel's convertible. Roof down, cruising through LA. We used to turn a lot of heads you know, me and him, in that."
"Really." Giles wasn't particularly impressed. Wesley nodded.
"Oh yes. And only a very few of the people we encountered got the wrong end of the stick and assumed we were gay. Of course we didn't do much driving about in the sunshine like this, but still... It just not the same when you can't feel the wind in your hair. I can't feel the sun, either. It's like being a vampire, but without the super-strength and handy martial arts skills."
"Or the soulless, evil intentions and habit of torturing and killing the innocent?"
"That too." The ghost of the man who had first entered Giles's life apparently just in order to disintegrate it, smiled softly, and Giles felt several years worth of dislike fade slightly. "I think I've had too many vampires as friends."
"Yes. It can give one a rather different perspective. When you find yourself sitting at home of an evening with a vampire on the sofa beside you, going through your record collection and sharing your beer... it rather overturns all those years of Watcher training."
"Tell me about it. The last few years I've numbered a demon amongst my closest friends, as well a vampire - two vampires of late. I even spent the last moments of my life cradled in the arms of a demon. Or a demon of sorts."
"I have quite a few happy memories of being cradled in the arms of a demon." Giles smiled. "Sorry. Too much information?"
"Not necessarily. The famous Rupert Giles Chequered Past, I suppose. When I was a child I used to hear people speaking of you in hushed voices. My father used to swear quite eloquently on the subject. He was furious when you were given the post of Watcher to Buffy. Mind you, he wasn't much happier when I replaced you, so I wouldn't take it personally."
"Does he know?" It had only just occurred to Giles to ask. "That you're dead, I mean? I haven't seen him since just after the Council was destroyed."
"I doubt he knows. I'd imagine he has his contacts here and there, like any of the older Watchers, but I haven't been to visit him. I have no idea if he'd be able to see me, anyway. And I don't have anything to say to him. He'd only see my death as one more failure."
"It's hardly an easy subject to broach, is it. 'Hi dad, I'm dead'."
"Potentially easier than 'Hello father, I've gone to work for a vampire'. Not our best conversation ever, that one."
"It's not what any of us expected of you."
"Yes, well I know exactly what you expected of me. If I hadn't guessed anyway, your friend Andrew's little clues would have filled me in nicely." He sighed. "But that's all another lifetime. Literally."
"True. A very different lifetime." One of screams and fumbling, and a useless twit who couldn't be of any use to anybody. He didn't say it. It wouldn't accomplish anything; and at the end of the day, Wesley had been no different to any of the other inexperienced Watchers that the Council seemed to like to produce. Giles had his own murky past, and years spent immersed in black magic, to thank for the fact that he was different. It was why some far seeing, high ranking member of the Council had insisted that he be given the post of Watcher to Buffy all those years ago; because he could think differently. Work differently. And didn't just see in terms of theory. His perceived failure in the post must have been why the Council had decided to return to form, and send out as a replacement one of their more usual types; somebody with the book learning and academic skills of a genius, and the practical abilities of a moron. Wesley, as a for instance. Maybe it had been Angel who had battered that hopeless idiot into the man who had gone willingly to his death just to strike a blow for light and glory. Or maybe the rumours about Wesley's death were wrong, and he had merely been killed in a road accident. He might bring the subject up eventually, he decided. But not now. Just at the moment his companion looked decidedly mournful, and it was perhaps time to steer the conversation onto rather more cheerful topics. For the time being.
"So does death always come with a change of image?" he asked conversationally, choosing the first thing to say that he could think of which didn't involve fathers or Wesley's unfortunate personal history. The other man frowned.
"Image change?"
"Yes. Do all dead Watchers lose their love for tweed, and do all ghosts have perfect eyesight?"
"Not that I'm aware of, no." The ghost looked down at himself rather self-consciously. "A suit and tie wasn't exactly good fighting attire, and the glasses were always at risk of falling off at a vital moment. Besides, LA tends to rub off on one, in the end. This is all pre-death. Sorry to disappoint you."
"Willow did mention that there had been a few changes. A certain surliness. And stubbliness. And something to do with a woman in a closet, but that might just have been me mishearing."
"Things were complicated." But that at least was impossible to explain. That Wesley's life had been forever changed by the existence of Angel's son was something that remained between Angel and Wesley. The wider world knew nothing of such things. "Giles, are we going to make it past your obsession with my appearance some time soon? If I'd known it would be so disturbing to you, I'd have turned up looking the way I did when I first arrived in Sunnydale. Although quite frankly that would have been going back to somewhere I have no desire to revisit."
"I'm sorry." Giles couldn't help smirking, nonetheless. It was tantamount to meeting Ethan somewhere, and finding him in a priest's black coat and dog collar, claiming to have left his old ways behind him and taken up the cloth. "So tell me about this vault. There are three entrances, you say. We enter through one - and do I take it that somebody else will be making an attempt on one of the others? Or will your Wolfram & Hart friends come the same way as us, just to make life really difficult?"
"I don't know. I'd imagine they'd use a different route, rather than risk a direct confrontation. They wouldn't want to take the chance of their man coming off worst. But certainly they're making an attempt right now. I got confirmation of it just as your plane was landing, so we'll find out soon enough, one way or the other. Anyway, yes. Three entrances. Three tunnels. Probably all the same length, and probably all secured in the same way. One in the mountains, one at the coast, and one that seems to have had a town built over it, so we can count that one as unreachable."
"And this confirmation that Wolfram & Hart are going to be making a move? It's a certainty? Because if there's no proof that there's even anything in this box..."
"They're making a move. I have it from the horse's mouth, so to speak. A source I have no reason to disbelieve. Besides, just because nobody knows what's in the box is no reason for Wolfram & Hart not to want to get hold of it. Just the possibility of it containing something interesting is enough for them. I suppose the fact that it survived the fire is a pretty strong indication that it's not just a money box."
"Hmm." Giles pushed down the accelerator a little more, thinking of the journey still ahead. He still hadn't decided quite how much of all this he believed, but the threat of an organisation like Wolfram & Hart getting to anything before he did was enough for him to risk a bit more speed. It wasn't as though he had seen any sign of traffic police so far, and the roads were not too busy. "We have a long way still to go, I take it?"
"Two hundred miles, perhaps."
"Two hundred miles." It didn't have to be too long a trip. For most of it he could probably keep the speed up nicely, and they could make it in three hours; but that was still three hours in a car with Wesley. Three minutes together in the past had been enough to make Giles want to resort to physical violence. It wasn't that the conversational possibilities were limited exactly, although it did seem unfair to grill the other man on ghosthood. Was it impolite to talk of death to a ghost? On the one hand it was a remarkable opportunity for research; on the other, it was probably crassly insensitive. He decided to play safe, for the time being at least.
"Do you like music?" he asked in the end, punching the power button of the car radio. Static blasted out of the speakers at a particularly unfriendly volume, and he let the car wobble from side to side of his lane as he fumbled with the tuning control. Spanish folk music faded into being for a second, followed by some kind of modern bouncy Euro-pop. He winced. "Apparently the Spanish don't."
"Giles, if you're going to kill yourself in a car wreck, we don't have any chance of finding the box first." Wesley fixed his eyes upon the radio. "Let me try."
"Ghostly powers?"
"If we're lucky." There was a powerful crackle, a quick blast of awe-inspiringly loud opera, then another rush of static that managed to be even louder still. Giles winced.
"Wesley, if this is an example of your powers, we're both in trouble!"
"Bear with me. I haven't had much cause to fiddle with radios so far." He frowned, half closing his eyes and redoubling his concentration. Again the static rose in volume, and behind it rose a wall of classical music. Verdi, thought Giles, who had been raised on long dead composers.
"Not great driving music," he commented. Wesley glared at him.
"I suppose you could do better?"
"Yes. I'd use the tuning knob and do it properly."
"That's not what I meant!" He scowled. "Sod it. Spike can keep the psychic powers. At least he knows what to do with them." He raised a hand and held it out towards the radio, watching in satisfaction as his fingers began to glow.
"Wesley, is that really going to work? You're non-corporeal, man. Any magical energy you generate is going to be just as unreal."
"Magical energy is always unreal, at least by the laws of physics." He clicked his fingers, and the radio squawked in protest, crackled, and began blaring All You Need Is Love in perfect stereo. Wesley grinned. Giles nodded in gracious acknowledgement. Seconds later the radio exploded.
"Sorry." Wesley shrugged. "It's breaking through into the real world that causes the problem. I think I need to practice."
"Not near me." Giles sighed, and turned his attention back to the road. Some things apparently never changed; just as in their Sunnydale days, after three minutes with Wesley he was thinking about physical violence. Not that he could act on the desire; punching his non-corporeal passenger would get him nowhere at all. Still, it remained a fairly satisfying image, and he had to entertain himself somehow. Without the radio the next three hours were likely to go very slowly indeed.
"It's a door." It was, too; a big one. A really, really big door. Standing there, looking... doorlike. Wesley nodded.
"It certainly is."
"I was expecting... I don't know. Something a little more secretive. Something hidden, for example. A-a-a trapdoor perhaps. Buried beneath several hundred years worth of undergrowth."
"Yes. That was much the kind of thing I had in mind, too. But at least this was easy to find."
"Easy to find?" Giles stared up at the door. It was close to eight feet tall, and made from highly polished oak with bands of steel. "Everybody must know about this. You don't need an archaeologist to find a set of parchments about it."
"It doesn't look as though it leads anywhere though, does it." Wesley walked around and through the door, appearing in the middle of it as though it were some holographic projection. "Or maybe not everybody can see it."
"It's eight feet of solid wooden door, Wesley." Giles knocked on it. "Even if you can't see it, you're going to notice it's here once you walk into it." He looked Wesley up and down, half in and half out of the door. "Well, most people would, anyway."
"Well whether everybody can see it or not, it's what we're looking for." Wesley tried tapping on the door, but unsurprisingly his hand passed straight through it. "We have to open it and go through."
"Which we do how?"
"I don't know. Perhaps there's an incantation."
"Perhaps. Try an opening spell. I'll have a look around." Giles turned away, then glanced back. "Oh, and Wesley? Do try not to blow anything up this time."
"I'll also try not to strain something when I laugh hysterically at your jokes." Wesley threw a few spells at the door, whilst Giles began searching the ground around it. "I think it's impervious to magic."
"Or possibly just to your magic?"
"There's nothing wrong with my spells." Wesley didn't appreciate having his magical abilities mocked, at least in part because the man who had killed him had done just that, right before striking his fatal blow. "Are you having any luck?"
"Looks to me as though the ground around here has been disturbed lately." Giles knelt down, scraping at the grass with his hands. Some of it came away in neat and even squares, as though recently cut away with a sharp spade. "Ah ha."
"What?"
"A slab of stone." It was large, with roots firmly attached to it in places, and large sections worn away from years growth of grass and plants. It had been engraved deeply; words in some ancient script that to Giles's eyes looked more like beautifully scripted patterns than true writing. "Sumerian. And yet not."
"The alphabet is Sumerian." Wesley crouched down beside him, studying the twisting shapes. "The words aren't though."
"No. It's familiar, but..." Giles shrugged. "But at the same time it's not. What do you make of it?"
"Cantonese. Clever. Since most spells call for you to have to understand what you're reading, you'd need to be able to read both Sumerian and Cantonese. That must have made this very secure in Corbio's day, especially in this part of the world."
"Not that secure. By the sounds of it, our friend Corbio was a typical Watcher. Too arrogant by half."
"Maybe." Wesley gestured to the stone, expecting Giles to begin reading the spell, but the older Watcher shook his head.
"Don't look at me, I'm not the languages prodigy. I speak a good half dozen of them with what I like to think is impressive fluency, but my Cantonese is... rusty."
"Then maybe you should oil it." Glad to be doing something that he knew he could accomplish with ease, Wesley leant over to get a better look at the words. They made perfect sense to him; other languages always had; and it was a matter of moments to read the script aloud. He sat back on his haunches then, and gazed expectantly at the door. Giles frowned.
"Is something supposed to happen?"
"Being dead doesn't make me a leading authority on every subject, you know."
"Maybe not. But you're the one with the direct line to certain higher powers. Can't they tell you anything? Don't they know everything?"
Wesley raised an eyebrow. "Er... Cordelia?!"
"Yeah. Fair point." He threw the grass back down over the writing, then went back to the door. It hadn't moved; hadn't opened. It still stood there, as big and as solid as ever before. Once again he knocked on it; and this time he fancied that the sound carried an echo; just as though there were an empty room on the other side. "Well that's different."
"Will it open now?"
"There's really only one way to find out, isn't there." There was no handle, but he put both hands on the door and pushed. Something creaked. The door remained closed, but he thought that he felt it move.
"Push harder!" Wesley sounded excited. Giles glared at him.
"I don't see you helping!"
"Very funny." The younger man tried anyway, with a predictable lack of success. "It can't be that hard."
"It's a very big door." He redoubled his efforts, trying to find the best anchorage for his feet, and this time was rewarded by definite movement. Using all of his weight, and all of his strength, he pushed even harder. The door eased its way open. Soon enough there was a space big enough to walk through. He stood back.
"What are you waiting for?" asked Wesley. Giles gestured at the opening.
"For somebody who can't be hurt to go first."
"Thanks."
"Don't mention it." Again he gestured at the opening, and with a mutinous glower, Wesley went through. He called back almost immediately.
"Looks like an entrance hall. I'm impressed. It must have required some remarkable spell-casting to come up with this."
"You said he made deals with various demons?" Giles pushed through the gap to stand alongside his dead colleague. Wesley nodded.
"Yes, he did. And he'd have needed to. Look at this place."
"I see it." It was remarkable; a huge room with a flagstone floor, and great arches of stone and oak that rose far above their heads. Stone gargoyles leered from their resting places on the walls and the ceiling, their bulbous eyes filled with unpleasant humour. Either an astonishing piece of camouflage had been created to hide all of this, or they were now standing in a different dimension. Whichever was the truth of it, the work was that of a master craftsman, or a man in thrall to who knew what powers. As though to press home the import of it all, behind them the door swung quietly closed. Giles tried to pull it open again, but of course it would not move.
"I don't think we're supposed to leave this way." Wesley wandered further into the room, looking about at the gargoyles and the massive stone pillars. Giles nodded grimly.
"Which means that we have to see this through to the end, I suppose. Perfect."
"Were you really planning to back out?"
"No." Giles smiled ruefully. "But it's always nice to have the option."
"Maybe that's the point." Looking around, Wesley waved his companion on. "I'm guessing it's this way. The room seems to head in this direction."
"There's no noticeable door leading anywhere. We could probably walk in any direction."
"True. But one of our predecessors certainly chose this route."
"Oh?" Giles caught up at last, and saw that Wesley was crouched over the body of a middle-aged man. "Oh. Our archaeologist friend, perhaps?"
"Could be."
"And you were thinking that taking the route that killed him would be a good plan, would you?" Giles shook his head. "I'm beginning to see how you managed to end up dead."
"Not through any lack of sensible planning."
"Wesley, I remember your plans. Don't tell me that the Lifestyle manual you got that new look from came with a free book on cunning plans and how not to die when using them." He saw a burn of anger in the eyes upturned to his, but Wesley offered no comment on the insult. Instead he merely stood up, and began to walk in the direction the dead archaeologist seemed to have chosen. Giles frowned. The changes in his young colleague apparently weren't just skin deep after all; but baiting this new improved version seemed to be much less fun. "I see," he said loudly, to the rapidly disappearing rear view of the other man. "We're going this way anyhow then are we?"
"It's the right way." The voice was clipped, calm, and only faintly simmering. "So I thought it might be a good idea, yes."
"And you know this how?"
"There was a symbol back there on the wall."
"Oh." Giles caught up, wondering if he should feel abashed, but not really inclined to try. "You should have said."
"You should try giving me the benefit of the doubt." Wesley stopped, looking left and right. "Of course, there's always the question of what killed him."
"True. There didn't look to be a mark on him."
"I know." They exchanged a glance, common knowledge uniting them where little else could. There were all manner of ways in which a man could die without any sign of physical trauma. Some were natural. Many more were not. Giles didn't want to consider some of the possibilities.
"Hex?" he suggested eventually. Wesley shook his head.
"I'd expect a hex to be location specific. You're not dead."
"That I've noticed, no."
"He might have died of fright. There could be creatures here."
"Any demons or other beasts would have died of starvation long ago. You're not telling me that enough people get in here to keep them well fed."
"True. Unless this place is timeless."
"Or in a suspended state until somebody enters." Giles nodded. "You know damn well what killed him, don't you."
"If I'd thought it was a hex I wouldn't have called you over to look. Giles, I find you just as annoying as you seem to find me, but I don't want you dead. You'd be very little use to me then."
"Fair point." The older man looked back to the body, which looked to him to be considerably further away than it should have been. Either they had been walked a hell of a lot faster than was mortally possible, or the corridor was growing as they went down it. He frowned. Just when had it become a corridor, anyway? It had been just a room before. Wesley also looked back.
"Clever, isn't it."
"Very. And only mildly off-putting." He swallowed his pride, at least a little way, but stopped short of an actual smile. "So what did kill him?"
"A Grakh beast, at a guess. You'll have noticed that his fingernails had something caught underneath them? Scales, I think, although without a microscope I can't be entirely sure. Anyway, since the Grakh tend to kill by destroying certain internal organs without leaving any outward physical damage, and since Corbio was the Watcher who first catalogued the species, I think it's a fair assumption."
"Yes, I suppose so." Giles bit back a sharp retort. It was like spending the day with a school prefect. An extremely knowledgeable and extremely annoying school prefect. To somebody who had spent his school days doing his damnedest to ensure that nobody ever considered him remotely worthy of prefectdom, this was definitely not a good thing. Wesley was striding on again now though, his poise and easy grace of moment such a blinding contrast to the geeky image Giles still had of him - and which had just been resoundingly reinforced - that it seemed most peculiar. He followed on, making half-hearted resolutions to have a damn good growl about this to Cordelia one day. One day not very far away from now, if this little mission didn't turn out in his favour.
Up ahead, Wesley was also thinking of rude things to growl at Cordelia. Giles had always been a trial, although admittedly only in the past because he had envied the older man so much. Giles was so effortlessly talented as a Watcher, whatever the Council had thought. He didn't need to try, didn't seem to need the Council's support. He fought like an expert, whilst Wesley himself had been useless. Pitifully useless. Now that he was anything but; now that he could fight with the best of them - when he wasn't dead, anyway - and now that he had the sort of knowledge and magical skills that made him an extremely useful man to have around; he no longer had any need to be jealous of Rupert Giles. So why did being around the man bring out the head boy in him again? It was like having his father hanging over his shoulder; inspiring him to start reeling out facts like a child trying to impress his teachers. He could feel echoes of his old self, like a past image hanging over his shoulder, slowing him down and tripping him up. Giles still saw him as the hopeless inadequate he had been in Sunnydale - and for some reason that was just the way he was behaving. He hated himself for it, and he hated Giles for bringing it out. He wanted to show the older man that he wasn't that wet behind the ears imbecile anymore; and he was angry that he even cared what Giles thought. Wasn't he above such things now? Apparently not.
"Hey Wes." The voice came from just beside him, and he would have jumped, had he not been so determined to play the rôle of tough guy these days. He knew the voice of course, and knew exactly who he was going to see as he turned his head. She was leaning against the wall; languorous, lazy and lethal, just as always. Oh but she did such things to his head... and oh but he hated the pair of them for it. He came to an abrupt halt.
"What the hell are you doing here?"
"Saying hello. Checking out the opposition." She looked past him, clearly eyeing Giles up and down. "Not bad. I might just stick around."
"Lilah..." He frowned suddenly. "Can he see you?"
"I certainly hope so." She grinned at him in a way designed to make him glower; for Lilah always had liked Wesley when he was angry; then moved around him and smiled down the corridor. There was trouble to be stirred here; and trouble was her favourite business.
To Giles it seemed that she had appeared out of nowhere. One moment Wesley had been storming along, quite clearly thinking black thoughts of somebody - Giles didn't really need to wonder who - and the next there was a woman beside him. A tall, statuesque woman dressed, with an impressive lack of appropriateness, in a tight red dress and matching silk scarf. She clearly knew Wesley, for she leaned close to him with the familiarity generally reserved only for relatives and friends; and her body language spoke volumes. Giles couldn't help goggling, if only briefly. Did she and Wesley really have something going on? She and Wesley?! Only then did he stop to wonder how on earth she had suddenly come to be there, and what exactly she might want. He caught up quickly then, on the alert as well as intrigued.
"What's going on?" He used the cool tone he preferred to use when disguising concern. Wesley didn't look too bothered though. At the very least he didn't seem to think that there was any danger.
"Giles, Lilah," he said, without formality. "Lilah, Giles."
"Wes, honey, remind me to knock some points off your report card." She fluttered her lashes at him briefly, and made sure that she brushed against him as she went to greet Giles. Giles's eyes narrowed at the sight. Whoever this woman was, and whatever she wanted, she could touch Wesley. That made her either a magician or dead. Neither was a particularly inspiring option, especially in a place like this. She held out her hand to him though, and he shook it willingly enough. "Lilah Morgan," she told him. "Former head of this and that at the Los Angeles branch of Wolfram & Hart. I imagine you've heard of us."
"Oh I've picked up a little gossip here and there." His voice was cold now. Giles wanted nothing to do with anybody from Wolfram & Hart; even if they were gorgeous.
"You're Rupert Giles," she said, amusement colouring her voice in response to his sudden cold front. "The great Rupert Giles. People still argue about what side you're on. Some say if it wasn't for the Slayer you'd be back on the dark side quicker than you could say... what's that colourful little sobriquet?... Ripper."
"Some say that the moon is made of cheese, and is inhabited by little pink knitted creatures that squeak." Giles folded his arms and looked past her, directly at Wesley. "What's going on here?"
"Lilah is heading up the opposition. I imagine she has a Watcher of her own that she's accompanying to the vault." Wesley felt a little awkward, well aware that Lilah had done nothing to reassure Giles over the whole issue of Wolfram & Hart. Everybody in the Slayer's inner circle had severed links with Angel Investigations after they had agreed to run the Los Angeles branch of the infamous evil law firm, and in many ways Wesley could sympathise. At the same time, he knew that he could still be trusted. Giles didn't. Having self-confessed employees of Wolfram & Hart appear out of nowhere and treat him like a very close old friend wasn't going to be doing anything to raise his stock in Giles's eyes. She grinned, and stroked his cheek with obvious affection.
"That's my Wes. All business. I could think of far better ways of introducing me than that."
"I should add that she's dead," he put in, shooting her an evil look. "And that that scarf is there because I beheaded her. If she annoys you, try giving her head a good push."
"Easy, lover. No need to air our dirty laundry in public, is there." Her hand still lingered, on his shoulder now, and he didn't push her away. He was far too used to her for that. "He's right. I am dead. I have little to fear from this place, and whether I win or lose this little contest, I could well be back in the Underworld by the end of the day - so what happens in here means nothing to me. But I don't intend to lose. Remember that." Still smiling teasingly she waggled her fingers in farewell, blew a kiss at Wesley, and disappeared in a warm glow of red light. Wesley let out a deep sigh.
"I'm sorry. I knew that she was here somewhere. I should probably have said something."
"I can't imagine it's terribly easy to explain that your evil dead, former lover is hanging about in the shadows somewhere, waiting to put a spanner in the works." Giles shook his head. "Wesley, I'm not going to make comments about inappropriate girlfriends. It's none of my business, and it would be something of a matter of pots and kettles, given my past. But somebody from Wolfram & Hart? There you were insisting that you hadn't been affected by the place, and all the time you were... well. Clearly up to something with one of the staff. And not one of the kindlier ones by the look of things."
"Lilah and I... Lilah and I were over long before we took over the firm." Of course strictly speaking, 'long before' was something of an exaggeration, but technically they had called an end to their relationship some while before the fateful deal had been struck with Wolfram & Hart. It just hadn't actually ever got around to ending. Completely. Not even after he had cut her head off, as it had turned out. Giles nodded.
"Fine. So instead of having a fling with her when you were workmates together at Evil International, you got together when she really was still the enemy."
"Is this anything to do with you?" Eyes flaming he turned away, then glanced back again. "Pots and kettles, Giles. Remember? Don't forget, I've committed my various indiscretions after being fired by the Council. You committed yours long before they decided to throw you out. Which means records. Detailed records, many of which I've seen. So don't go casting stones at me. Lilah is... what Lilah is. And we have work to do."
"Yes, I suppose we do." He couldn't help seeing the younger man in a new light though. Irritating he might be; but there had to be something else to him if he could attract the attention of a woman like that. She was untrustworthy; everything about her said that. She was almost certainly evil, at least to a degree. But there was plenty else going on there. Plenty else. And the affection in her eyes had been as real as the promise of foul play. He could almost have hoped that they hadn't seen the last of her; and he didn't need to look too hard at Wesley to see that he was thinking much the same thing.
They did not have to go far to encounter their first surprise; and their first indication of the playful meddling of Lilah Morgan. A Grakh beast, clearly dead, lay sprawled in the corridor ahead of them, bleeding copiously from a neck wound. The weapon that had been used against it lay nearby; a curved sword of such gigantic proportions that Giles could barely lift it. He whistled.
"Your girlfriend?" he asked. Wesley could only shrug.
"It's possible that somebody else has come this way since it killed the archaeologist."
"You don't really believe that." Giles tossed the unwieldy sword down to the ground, listening to its furious clatters. "I didn't hear a thing, did you?"
"No."
"And we can't expect direct help from Cordelia, right?"
"I wouldn't have thought so. There are rules about direct interference." He crouched beside the body, fancying that, if he had still possessed the sense of smell, he would have detected the unmistakable scent of Lilah's perfume lingering in the air above the fallen creature. It had her stamp all over it, although where the sword had come from, and how she had used it, he didn't know. Didn't want to know, especially. Giles nodded.
"Then why? We're the opposition."
"I don't know. Why come to a gloat a few moments ago? It's just Lilah. The way she is. Maybe she's trying to lull us into a false sense of security, or just make the competition more interesting."
"Meaning she doesn't want me dead."
"Not yet, no. She won't shed a tear if you drop dead around the next corner, but she'd rather you stayed alive for the time being at least. Lilah likes things to be interesting."
"And her Watcher?"
"I don't know. I suppose I could probably find out."
"Then do so. I want to know who we're up against." It bothered him that he was being toyed with in this way; that somebody apparently saw him as the means for a little entertainment. It wasn't that he was sorry he had been spared the need to fight the Grakh, but he didn't like to think of an enemy doing it for him, just for her own amusement. "I'll keep going. Meet me further along the way."
"Okay..." He hesitated, apparently unwilling just to head off, but Giles glared at him pointedly.
"I think I can survive without you, Wesley. I've been doing it for long enough. I'm rather better placed than you to fight monsters anyway."
"I suppose so." He nodded. "But keep your eyes open. Don't forget to check for symbols if you come to a cross roads."
"Wesley, go away." Beginning to walk off down the corridor, Giles walked with as much determination as he could. When at last he looked back Wesley had disappeared, and the corridor contained only its dead Grakh, still dribbling its remarkable volume of blood. The Watcher nodded in satisfaction, and continued on his way. It was better to be alone. Better to wander along the corridor without wondering whether he should be making conversation. The going did seem lonelier now though; the empty corridor, which could conceivably have lain empty for twelve centuries, seemed quieter, the air heavier. He thought about the sword, lying back near the fallen Grakh, and wondered if he shouldn't have brought it with him. He had a stake and a cross, and a fairly sizeable dagger, but there was nothing quite like a sword to make a man feel ready to confront fearsome beasts; even if it was a sword that he very likely couldn't handle. He glanced back - and came to an abrupt halt. The Grakh had gone; the corridor had gone. Behind him was nothing but green fields. A warm sun hung overhead, and a cloudless blue sky that seemed eerily empty of the birds to which he was so accustomed in the real world. He turned back again, to face the way ahead, and found that that too had changed. All was green and blue now; he was unquestionably outside. There seemed little to do but walk on, and hoping that he was heading in the right direction he did just that. Beneath his feet the grass seemed wiry and tough; not as soft as the grass he knew. The wind that blew brought no fresh air; instead it seemed to be taking it away. Step by step, piece by piece, the illusion of familiarity faded away. This was outside, sure enough - but it was nothing like his own world. The sky was overcast now; the grass brittle and sharp. It cracked and splintered underfoot, and the shards of it rattled and rustled as Giles walked on. The air grew heavier, the going harder, the wind increasingly hot. Soon the grass was brown and sparse, and the earth beneath it cracked and dry as powder. Dust rose in choking gusts, but there seemed nothing else to do save walk on. Once he looked back; but behind him, where there should have been the open ground over which he had walked, there was nothing but a towering stone wall. He turned his back on it then, forgetting all thought of return. Clearly there could be no return. Just as the door had closed behind him on entering this strange place; just as the corridor leading back to it had disappeared; now the very ground over which he had walked had also gone.
He had been walking for some ten minutes - or so he estimated, for his watch had apparently stopped, and there was no other means by which to mark the time - when he came to a door. Just like the first it was a door standing, unsupported, in the middle of open ground, which he could walk around as though it led nowhere. When he did walk around it, however, he discovered that this door, unlike that first, was not alone. Lined up behind it, in succession, were three other doors. Clearly only one of them could be the right one, and he had no desire to make a mistake and choose wrongly. He looked for marks on the wood; on the doors and on the frames; he hunted for hidden messages, like the stone slab near to the first door; he tried a few spells designed to reveal secrets; but the four doors remained a mystery. He even tried knocking on them, and calling to see if anyone or anything on the other side might open the right one for him. Nothing did. He shouted "Open Sesame!" as loud as he possibly could, mostly because he had always wanted to try it somewhere, and see if it might work. It didn't. Finally he sat down on the hot, dusty ground, and wished that he wasn't quite so thirsty. He didn't want to admit that he might require Wesley's help to get any further. Hadn't he always managed in the past on his own? Admittedly it wasn't often that he had to get by without his books, and usually these days he had a full research team ready to lend a hand; Willow, as had been the way for years now, with her ever present computer standing by; Dawn, determined to prove that she could be useful. Even Olivia, when she happened to be around, offering to read alongside him, annotating his notes with comical illustrations of the monsters she encountered in the text. Here he had nothing but his own mind.
Four doors. Four wasn't a common number in magic. Three, five, seven - almost always odd numbers, like the points of stars. Four was more like the points of a compass. These doors were all in a row though; not arranged around him as compass points would be, all facing in different directions. There were plenty of fours in literature though; in history and folklore; and one in particular that circled immediately around his head. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, ancient harbingers of doom, and scourge of many a Mediaeval tale. In this place of dust and almost unbreathable air, it was easy to think of the Horsemen. Death, Famine, Pestilence, War - or Disease, as it would have been in Corbio's time, for War was an invention of modern interpretation. His tired mind, affected by the heat and the lack of oxygen, couldn't help assigning a personality to each of the doors; the paler one, that was Death, who had supposedly sat astride a pale horse. The thinner one was Famine, with its struts jutting out like ribs on a too thin chest. Pestilence was the one that seemed to stand at a slight angle, and which appeared tinged faintly green in the powerful light of the unfriendly sun. He smiled at his own fancy, but the heat pressed on, and fancy became more of a reality. The doors seemed to have faces, gazing down at him with hateful eyes. Flies circled over Pestilence; Famine groaned and moaned. Disease dribbled blood down from its doorframe. He had to choose one of them; he knew that, deep inside. But everything was so hot, and there was so little air. So very little air. It was harder to breathe than ever before now, and the dust still rose around him. Death mocked him with its tall, pale height, and Pestilence's flies buzzed angrily. He swatted them away when they hovered above him, but they kept coming back. Kept circling above him, buzzing their angry messages. Why are you here? they wanted to know; wanted him to tell them why he had come to their place and disturbed them, where none was supposed to be save them. He couldn't answer. Why was he here? Why would anybody choose to come here? It was impossible to breathe. He could taste dust all of the time, and the hallucinations were becoming more real than the reality he faintly remembered having existed first. There were no longer four doors; only four men. Large men, with faces like skulls, and weapons that clashed and flashed in the sun. The impossible sun. It seemed so close to him now that he could reach out and touch it; and he knew, faintly, that it would kill him soon enough, if the Four Horsemen didn't. One of his hands reached out, brushing against the sun, and finding it not so furiously hot as he had always imagined that it would be. He couldn't touch the sun and not burst into flame himself, surely? But apparently he could, here. He reached out for it again, wondering if he could pluck it out of the sky in this reality; reach up for it, and take it away forever. He smiled at the thought, but the smile froze on his lips. Stealing the sun would make it dark; and if it was dark there would be vampires. Everybody knew that darkness meant vampires, especially on the roads he travelled. And vampires meant one thing to him, above all else. Not death, not blood, not demons. Buffy. And suddenly he could breathe again, although not easily. Suddenly he was more aware of the heat, and the dust, and of the realisation that he had to get out of both. This place had been a trap, and it was one that had come close to capturing him; of dragging him down into it, and killing him as surely as the Grakh had been intended to do. He forced himself to his feet.
Four doors. It had to be one of them. Death, Famine - no, damn it. He forced himself to concentrate. Not Four Horsemen - just four doors. He couldn't let the daydreams take him again. Not in this place, where the dust could suffocate him at any moment. When any second could potentially be his last. And then it came to him, and he smacked his forehead with the heel of his hand, berating himself for the fool he had been. Any second could be his last - time. It was one of the things for which Corbio was best remembered, amongst the Watchers at least. He had been a physicist, in as much as such a science had existed in his day, and time had been one of the things that had fascinated him the most. He had expended great energies in the desire to return to the days of his youth, spending copious amounts of time and money building a machine designed to map time. Years, months, weeks and days. The Watchers had complained that he was wasting time the could better spend studying the occult. His fellow academics had laughed at him, telling him that his machine was a waste of time. But he had persisted, month after month, year after year, until he had been close to losing himself in his obsession. Well meaning friends had burnt his machine; his great work, reduced to ash with him swearing bitterly that he had been on the verge of success. Now Giles understood. Four doors; four segments of the machine. Years, months, weeks and days. But which was he supposed to open? The heat was getting to him again, and the lack of proper oxygen made his head swim. Not long left, his subconscious warned him. Just open a damn door. Any damn door. But if one door led to where he wanted to go, the other three doors would lead nowhere, or to death. That much he knew. But if he was going to die anyway, standing here in the heat and the dust, with nothing left to breathe save the dryness of everything, why not take a chance? Years, instinct told him. Corbio had wanted to return to his youth, and that meant travelling through years. The first door then... or the last? Barely able to see any longer; as light-headed as he could be without passing out, he staggered to the last of the doors, and with all of his strength, pushed it open. Cool air hit him, oxygen flooded his lungs - and the ground disappeared. As he fell it struck him that he wouldn't know if his choice had been the right one until he ceased to fall. Until he was either killed, or thrown into some new part of this journey. Part of him wanted to worry about it, but he was too tired; far, far too tired. Grateful to be out of the sun and the dust, he closed his eyes, and waited to see what happened next. When he stopped falling, and landed, gently as could be, upon the next stage of his travels, he didn't even notice. By then he was fast asleep.