Chapter Seven
"That's it," Angel said, indicating the small church, nestled in the bayou, flanked by huge hanging, buttressed trees. The sun was just peaking through the swamp underbrush on the horizon, and Angel's coat collar was up around his face. "There's a staircase leading to the basement."
"Wait," she turned, but he was already getting into the limo.
"Someone will be waiting here when you get out to take you to your next destination."
"You mean I won't be done?" She asked downheartedly.
There was almost the hint of a smile on his face. "They don't give them out like lollipops," he answered and the door closed. Dawn watched the limo rumble off down the gravel road, around a bend in the swamp and out of sight.
Dawn turned back to the chapel in the early morning light. It looked decrepit and neglected, moss and rot encroaching up its wooden sides, the grass of the front terrace overgrown and ratty, even the silhouette of the bell hanging in its modest tower was askew.
Nevertheless she started forward, her new, now slightly worn shoes crunching across the gravel path leading to its front door. The door was old and opened with a minimum of forcing.
Once she was inside, her world was lit only by the dim colors of the mildewed stained glass windows. She made her way across the creaking floorboards to the nearest doorway, which, as luck would have it, opened to reveal a damp, musty staircase.
She started down, pausing only to notice the guano filling every corner of the steps themselves. She carefully found her footing and avoided touching the walls or looking to the ceiling.
Once she was down, the universe was completely black. There was only the sound of her own breathing and the moaning of the distant wind to fill the enclosed space. Her heart skipped a beat as the door at the top of the stairs was caught in a draft and slammed closed with the sound of soft rotting wood to wood.
Dawn shivered. With one toe testing the floor in front of her, and a hand tentatively outstretched, her fingers trembling, she started forwards.
"Hello," she whispered. She had appreciated the light from the oracle of Mornsae, as it had come just in time to prevent her from making a rather nasty discovery. Now, with the record of having obliterated that oracle, she was relatively certain no oracle would willingly cooperate with her again.
"Hello?" She said again, louder.
Before any words emerged from the darkness, there was a rasping, like metal against stone. "Stop." It said.
Dawn did so immediately. "A- are you the oracle of-" she began, stuttering.
"I am." It croaked simply. There was a long pause, during which Dawn felt sure something was watching her. "You have come to me, destroyer of oracles," the voice was like that of a very, very old woman, one who had smoked too much in life and who now did so through a hole in her throat.
"I d- didn't destroy th- the other oracle," she stammered, "i-it was an accident."
There was a long pause. A rustling, accompanied by a tiny squeak made Dawn look up. In the utter darkness, she could see nothing.
"You speak the truth," the oracle croaked. "I will neither look at you, nor examine you in any way, soulless one," D'Orsine continued. "I have the answers you seek."
"Tell me," Dawn asked, some of the fear leaving her voice, "is there a soul for me?"
To her surprise and slight disgust, the oracle of D'Orsine began to laugh. It was a scratchy, throaty laugh. One which threatened to disgorge a lung with the hacking which accompanied it. "A soul for you?" She mused. "Silly, wicked one. There is no power in all the universe to grant a soul to one of your kind."
Dawn made a tight fist of the hem of her shirt. "That's what the oracle of Mornsae said," she observed. "He thought I was a demon," she continued. "He looked at me and saw that I was human."
"True," came the croak. "But I am an altogether more powerful oracle. I see not only what you see, and refuse to see, but what you cannot see. What you did not see." There was the sound of rasping breath. "I see the pain of millions of tortured souls. I see the misery of countless lives. I see the unleashing of hell onto this... pathetic planet. And all" she rasped, "because of you." There was again the agitated scraping of metal against stone.
A strength and confidence shattered the fear and uncertainty of Dawn's mind. Finally, one prevailing thought forced its way to the forefront of her consciousness. "I am the Key," she said, impressed by the power conveyed in her own voice.
The clink of metal on rock grew louder and more agitated. "I know," the oracle hissed. "A cruel and evil thing devised to undo the segregation of one evil from another."
Now Dawn could hear the individual sounds of chain links as they strained against some force, clinking against stone. She retreated a step or two, unsure of what form this oracle took. Something told her it wasn't a pious monk.
Her actions elicited a croaked laugh from the thing before her. "The Key, you say, proudly," she scorned, "and you retreat in terror from an oracle." She laughed again. The squeaking above Dawn's head intensified. "Perhaps you are uncertain of exactly what you're dealing with," the oracle added angrily, and immediately a dim orange glow pierced the darkness.
It started slow, but flashed to brilliance so quickly that Dawn didn't have time to focus on its source. All in one heartbeat, however, the flash erupted into the rushing frenzy of woken bats, dashing this way and that, squealing and clawing at the air and Dawn's face. Dawn screamed and fell to her knees, her arms covering her head as the bats retreated from the light, up the staircase. When the squeaking was gone, she opened her eyes and nearly screamed again at the sight of the oracle of D'Orsine.
She was a hideous skeletal creature, with the face of an emaciated boar and the hulking body of a demon. Twisting horns protruded from the stone carved cloak she was wearing and her unnaturally wide mouth bore tusks and fangs of all different kinds. Her knees bent backwards in a grotesque way and her arms, inside the foreshortened sleeves of her cloak were hair and spine covered. The statue was chained with thick iron chains against the stone foundation wall of the church, one length across her stomach, and a length with a manacle for each limb.
The figure was motionless as it stood, glowing dimly orange under Dawn's terrified gaze, its eyes wide with the rage of a captive animal. Dawn realized that the statue could not move from its frozen position, but the sounds of the clinking chains against stone could not be resolved in her mind.
"I am D'Orsine," the frozen pig-like lips of the oracle croaked.
"C- can you s- see me?" Dawn asked almost inaudibly.
The oracle laughed. "Look at you? And be destroyed?" She paused. "I see the evil you do, the evil done for you and the evil you allow to be done."
"I am not evil," Dawn protested. "If you looked at me, you would see that."
"I am not so foolish as your last victim," D'Orsine hissed. "I tell you, you are a soulless nothing and never will you be more than a shadow of that darkness which haunts the world."
Dawn managed to ignore the hate in the oracle's voice. "You would see how wrong you are if you were brave enough to look at me."
"I will look," D'Orsine rasped.
That took Dawn by surprise. She had not expected the hideous boar-thing to agree to its own death just to satisfy its curiosity.
"And as you die, knowing your evil is gone from the world," D'Orsine croaked, "know that the oracle of D'Orsine looked into your soul..." she hissed with pure hatred "and saw nothing."
With that, a crackling orange light stabbed out from the wide eyes of the boar-demon. Dawn closed her own, knowing the light might blind her. The warmth of the gaze held Dawn for several seconds before the oracle hissed again. "You must burn in my sight!"
A slight tingling enveloped her body as the oracle redoubled its efforts. There was a blazing afterimage behind Dawn's eyelids as the light must have been terrifically bright.
"I am no demon," Dawn said at last, finding her throat dry.
There was a quiet hiss of acknowledgment from the oracle as the gaze died down, concentrating now, only on her torso. "You are some kind of mockery of human," the oracle said, emotionlessly. "A conjured one, housing the Key."
"If you look at it, it will destroy you," Dawn warned, the same confidence filling her as she peeked out to look at the narrowed orange gaze. "Now tell me again. Is there a soul for me?"
There was a hiss as the oracle took offence at having been assumed wrong. "I do not make mistakes of that kind." D'Orsine said, less hatred in her voice. She seemed distracted by what she was looking at.
Dawn felt the same tightening behind her sternum. "Don't look at it," she ordered. "It's what killed the other one," she sounded, to herself, a little concerned for this thing which hated her so much. She pulled in a labored breath. "Tell me if there's a soul," she almost begged.
"No soul," D'Orsine clipped. "Something else. Some kind of... not here." D'Orsine stopped and there was a moment of complete silence. Not even a bat squeaked.
Then D'Orsine shrieked with an ear splitting voice. "Burning!" she howled, her gaze retreating back to her eyes, the glow brightening and filling the room again.
Dawn looked down to her chest and saw the crackling green energy again. "No!" She begged. She looked back to the monstrosity chained before her. The hatred in its eyes seeming now more like terror. "Tell me!" She shouted over the crackling sound in her ears.
"Get... away!" D'Orsine raged, the orange glow flaring.
"Where is my soul!" Dawn screamed as the statue physically tumbled backward against the stone wall, the chains clinking loose, falling away. "Where is it?" She lunged forward, ready to grab the ugly thing by the chains. As her hand reached out, however, the crackling green energy sizzled across the gap between them and found the stone of the oracle, heating it until it shattered.
In the explosion, Dawn was thrown backwards into the darkness, her head striking the stone of the far wall. Bits of stone and links of chain rained down on top of her. She lay silent as the shriek of the oracle died away.
Dawn's eyes fluttered open. The first thing she noticed, before she recognized what she was looking at, was that she was not laying on the cold stone floor. Sky. That's what she saw. She blinked. Where was the church?
She sat up with a groan. She opened her eyes again and froze. The ocean churned before her, two hundred feet below her. She fell back onto her back in the thick grass at the top of the cliff, a hand to her head. For several seconds she tried to find consciousness again, then let out another groan.
"Wake up, sleeping beauty," an amused voice said. "Cause I'm sure as hell not going to kiss you."
Dawn frowned and rolled onto her side before sitting up again. The owner of the voice sat beside her, staring out at the darkening horizon as the sun bloodied the sky behind them. The wind whipped through his blond hair and ruffled his white silk shirt.
"Where am I?" She said groggily as she propped herself up on her hands. "What happened?"
"Cape Spear," he answered, "and you blew up another oracle."
It took a moment for his words to register. She shook her head. "Cape Spear? Where's that?"
"Newfoundland," he answered.
"As in Canada?" She asked, rubbing her head again. "How'd we get here? I don't have my passport."
He said nothing for a moment as she turned to look out to the Atlantic. "You don't need a passport if you don't actually cross the border," he said at last. "Think of us as Specters Without Borders."
There was a pause as Dawn's mind came to full capacity. "You're a Specter?"
"News flash," he grinned, "so are you."
She sulked, "oh, yeah."
"You don't sound very pleased," he said, with mock disappointment. "I worked hard to get to where I am."
"Sorry if the prospect of ceasing to exist upon the moment of my death doesn't appeal to me," she remarked resentfully.
The disc of the sun flattened to an ellipse on the Western horizon and the first stars peaked out above the darkening ocean.
"You'd prefer to spend an everlasting eternity in some fiery pit?" He took a breath, "you're weird."
"Not some fiery pit. In peace, with my sister and... and mom," she said distantly. "And a silk shirt with those khakis? You're weird."
"You'll get over it," he said simply.
"Get over you're shirt?" she replied, "not likely."
"Not many people go to that place," he continued. "By not many, I mean a few people in a million. Most are extremely sad or angry when they die, and I expect you know where they go."
"You believe that?" Dawn said with scorn.
"I know that," he said simply. He said nothing more for several long moments, staring out as the deep red sun stained the edges of the clouds a breathtaking magenta.
"How do you know?" Dawn asked at last.
"Do you want to know the whole story?" He asked, rasing an eyebrow.
She shrugged. "Sure. Why not."
The man in the white shirt took a deep breath. "Boy is born," he began, "boy grows up. Boy gets married and has a... beautiful daughter. Boy is introduced to a woman named Niki. She shows boy the world as it really is. Full of vampires and demons and evils of all kinds. She shows him that she alone stands against all the forces of darkness. She shows him that it can be done."
"She was a Slayer," Dawn observed.
"Boy took to fighting evil as best he could. Boy learned some magic; teleportation, to escape when things were hopeless; time alteration, to save the day, just in time; stealth, to approach and kill without being seen. Then one day, many years ago, boy killed one too many demons. He angered the Werlech demon. The Werlech demon came to the boy's home and killed his wife, killed his daughter. The Werlech demon came to the boy's parents' home and killed the boy's mother, killed the boy's father. The Werlech demon came to the homes of everyone the boy had ever known, killing them one by one. Then do you know what happened?" He asked, looking at Dawn for the first time.
She couldn't see any trace of recognizable emotion in his eyes. That alone was scary. She merely shook her head.
"The Werlech demon came to a park. He walked along the path of that park until he saw the boy sitting by the pond, crying for his daughter. The Werlech demon did not say anything. He reached out and took the boy's soul, dragging it from his heart, as the boy cried for his daughter. And what happened to the boy's soul, I never found out. But the boy soon found out why it had been stolen from him: so that all those people sent to the afterlife by the Werlech demon would never meet the boy again, because the boy, when he died, would vanish, as if he never lived. The boy never fought evil again. He learned to accept all aspects of the world, good and evil, and eventually, he learned to embrace his fate." The man stared out at the darkening horizon. "And I've decided to help you come to terms with yours."
Dawn said nothing for some time. "You looked for your soul." It was a statement.
"Yes," he answered. "I searched all the worlds I could, bartering passage here and there, paying others with souls to die in order to tell me what there was beyond." He paused, reflecting on his past. "I learned a great deal. For one thing, all those people that died were not so innocent as I had assumed when I grieved for them. A good many of them ended up in one hell dimension or another."
"Including your daughter?" Dawn asked. There was no spite in her voice, but she ensured there was no sympathy either; she had no reason to believe this stranger's story.
There was a long pause, as the man lowered his gaze to the cliff's edge. "I never found her," he said quietly, at long last.
"What do you want from me?" Dawn asked when his story telling was done.
"I don't want anything from you," he answered, no amusement left in his voice. "I expect you want me to tell you how to find your soul."
"I wouldn't mind," she admitted.
"Even if it means dying for it?" He asked, looking with all seriousness from his brown eyes to her blue ones.
"Are you asking me if I would die for my soul?" Dawn almost laughed. "Isn't that a bit..." she searched for the word "pointless?"
"Why?" He asked, "You don't feel you've lived a life worthy of having a soul to die for?"
The question hung in the air as the light vanished and the world became shades of dark blue.
"Stand up." He ordered, standing himself. Without waiting for her, he marched to the cliff's edge. He turned to wait for her.
Tentatively, she stood and joined him. The wind whipped off the Atlantic and threw her hair back away from her face. "What are we doing?" she asked, loudly, over the rushing in her ears.
"Jumping," he shouted back to her over the rising wind.
Dawn's pulse quickened. She sidestepped, out of arm's reach of him.
"Not throwing," he laughed, "jumping."
"Why would I want to jump?" She asked, staring past her feet at the vertiginous drop to the torrent of water below.
"I don't know why you'd want to jump," he answered. "But I'll tell you, as a veteran Specter, why I want to jump, right now." He held his arms out, like a diver. "Because everyday is a reminder of everything that I've lost." The wind took his words. "Because no matter how hard you fight, no matter how much you give up, evil will always win." The wind rose, whipping his silk shirt across his shoulders. "Because jumping is the easiest way to end what has been a meaningless, pointless, painful existence." He bent his knees as if he were going to dive over the edge. "And most of all, because, as a Specter, when I hit the water, I'll never know."
There was a terrifying instant when, as the wind picked up again, Dawn thought he was actually going to jump and leave her standing on a cliff in Newfoundland. But just as she was about to suggest that he get counseling, he straightened up, dropped his arms to the side and faced her.
"Now I'll tell you, as a veteran Specter, why every time I stand on a cliff, I don't jump." He stepped back from the edge and she followed. He plunked himself down in the long shivering grass and she plunked herself down beside him, relieved that his suicidal episode was over.
"So tell me," she prompted.
"I don't jump for the very same reasons I want to," he explained. "Because everyday, I see my daughter running to catch her school bus. Everyday, my wife kisses me goodbye as I leave for work. Every single day," he persisted "I wake up, and for one small moment, I forget the last twelve years of my life and I'm in heaven, laying in bed beside my still sleeping wife, our daughter is watching those early morning cartoons in the livingroom. My parents are in my childhood home, sitting down to the breakfast they enjoy ridiculously early every Sunday morning, and I'm in heaven." He smiled and Dawn thought she caught a glitter in the corner of his eye. "And only one thing can take that away from me," he looked to Dawn, "jumping."
"But what about evil?" she asked, "and your pointless life and all that?"
"Evil," he sighed, "as it turns out, really knows how to party." To her upturned eyebrow he explained. "When you no longer have to face the consequences of your actions," the details of his face were now lost in the darkness, "you learn to have a lot more fun. Death certainly becomes meaningless, since all it is's an end to the party."
"So you've just given up on humanity? 'To hell with morality and the fight for good'?" Dawn sounded a little astounded.
"On the contrary," he smiled, "I have a great pity for humanity in general; those stupid folk who destroy their planet without the help of evil, and indeed go to hell with no help from me." He sighed. "But morality was invented to safeguard your soul. To keep you on the straight and narrow. But most importantly, to keep you afraid of death." He clarified in the darkening night, lit only by the deep violet clouds. "You see, death is something that most people cannot deal with. They avoid it, dodge it, put it off and even go so far as to pretend it doesn't exist. But when you've got nothing to lose," he smiled, "'losing it all' doesn't mean very much." He stood again, looking down at the girl. "That's why you need to jump," he explained. "If you're not willing to die for the only thing in the universe worth having when you die, you might as well kill yourself right now!"
This paradox seemed please him and he let out a little chuckle. In the dusk, he walked to the edge of the cliff and turned his back to it. "Dawn!" He shouted over the wind. "There is a soul for you!" He stretched his arms out to the side, making to fall backwards into the ocean. "The question is: Do you want it?"
Dawn slowly stood. The wind tossed the grass around and it caressed her ankles. She walked slowly forward, thinking with every step what she was planning on doing when she reached the edge. Then the grass was gone and she was standing on the rock at the cliff's edge. She looked to him and turned her back to the cliff, as he did. Every muscle in her body screamed for her to stop. Her mind was a numb fuzz of confusion and uncertainty. The question arose, the dark blue world surrounding her, as to whether this was some horrible nightmare. She found her arms reaching out to either side of her as his did, her fingertips just brushing his.
She saw him close his eyes as he imagined the things his life meant, those things he was giving up. "My wife," he said into the wind, his blond hair whipping across his face, obscuring his features. His white shirt hugged his back and shoulder blades, ruffling almost violently about his stomach. "My daughter," his words overpowered the sound of the wind and the sound of the blood pumping through Dawn's veins.
Without even a heartbeat of thought, Dawn felt her heels leave the solid surface of the rock and her body plunge backwards off the cliff. There was exactly one staggeringly slow heartbeat during which she felt the most delightful sensation of floating, the wind quiet, the roar of the ocean dimming, a small point of bliss expanding to fill her mind, absorbing her terror, then her world went dark.