Chapter Sixteen
Changing the Rules
And Tara dreamt.
Evening had fallen; softly, like the wisp of satin on skin, yet no stars could be seen through the opalescent glow of San Francisco's nightlife. Lamps lit up the wide-open plaza of the nursing campus, and the place teemed with students dressed for Halloween, going to one party or another, with plans on drinking gallons of alcohol and passing out before dawn. Tara's Halloween celebration would be far more subdued; she had, at Sue's endless whining, made a cascade of colours and sparks emerge within her doll's-eye crystal earlier that evening, and the two of them now made their way to the fraternity for the cursory Haunted House. They walked arm in arm, Sue swaying a little on her feet, laughing too easily and talking too much.
Attending the Haunted House had been Sue's idea, and she had begged and pleaded for Tara to join her. Sue seemed to need that endless college interaction, the energy of a thousand students; a need so different from introvert Tara. She sometimes wondered that they were together at all, but she did have her moments of happiness with Sue, though lately they were short and low in intensity. And as they walked arm in arm, Tara wished she could be happier. She also wished she could be anywhere but here.
The door to the frat house loomed, wreathed in fake spider silk, surrounded by caskets with grinning skeletons and lopsided jack o'lanterns. An inexplicable feeling of dread came over Tara then, especially as the wide door was opened by a tall man dressed as a preacher. Tara felt a chill run down her spine at the sight of him; his eyes were as dead and black as his hair, and though he wore a charming smile on his face, she could see an echo of cruelty within. "Welcome, ladies, welcome!" he beamed, practically pulling them through the door and into a strange looking house. There was a foyer, decorated as one would expect on Halloween, but the foyer led only onto a single long hallway, marked by dozens of doors, dimly lit by bulbs and also festooned with spider webbing.
As the costumed-preacher man touched her arm, Tara shivered away, sensing a dark and dangerous man behind the snake oil facade. The door shut behind her, and suddenly she was alone; Sue had been spirited away beyond her consciousness. "I will be your guide through this house of horror," the man continued, beckoning her to join him, though he did not touch her again. "You may see things that will shock and abhor you," he continued in a maddening calm, "but seeing as you're only dreaming, that only makes sense."
(I'm dreaming?)
"You can only look, you can't touch," he said, reaching for the first doorknob. "Are you ready?"
Before Tara could answer, he swung open the door, and as she stood in the doorway, she saw into a memory.
Tara had pigtails in her hair, and she was proud of the looseness of her last baby tooth. It was summer, and scorching heat had led to the formation of furious thunderheads on the horizon; but the sun ran before the storm, lighting her and Donny as they played on their bikes in the farmyard. She sat astride her bike with the blue banana seat, staring at the low ramp in front of her like it was a coyote. Donny sat astride his own bike next to her, gripping his handlebars and getting ready for the jump. "Are you ready, Tara? Watch me!" he cried, then furiously pumped his legs and shot over the low jump, landing with a whoop and a scuff of dirt on the other side. "Now you do it!" he called.
Tara was scared, but she'd do almost anything for Donny, even brave this strange ramp. So she grit her teeth and biked as fast as she could for the ramp, pulling up a little as he had instructed when she hit it, and then whooped in joy as she landed safely. "High five, Tara!" her brother called, lifting up his hand to slap hers, and her heart swelled in pride.
Until his hand balled into a fist, and the sunlit field was gone, and gone too was the feeling of safety around him, for she was in the hospital in Los Angeles
(demon killer)
and she had just fed off him and his offered life-force, and he was angry. And though she had three hideous wounds running down her one cheek, his fist came straight for that eye, and there was nothing she could do about it.
And Tara watched all this from the doorway, watched her younger selves as one may spy on the neighbours, watched with the hideously charming form of the preacher next to her. "You can't trust Donny," the costumed-preacher said. "He's always been jealous of your power. And when the time comes for him to finally choose between you and your father, who do you think he will choose?"
Tara at the doorway blinked, and watched Donny hit Tara in the bed, and then he ran away. "He will choose me," Tara said without much conviction.
The preacher openly laughed. "Oh, no," he chuckled. "Only truth here. The deepest truth. He will choose your father, Tara. He will gladly let you die." The preacher closed the door to that memory, and headed down the hallway. Tara stood still, not willing to go forward another step, beginning to realise that this was just a dream. She was only dreaming this. He had no real power here.
He made a curious beckoning gesture with his finger, and she felt herself irresistibly pulled down the hall toward him, her head brushing against the fake spider webbing. He opened another door and bade her look; and she was pulled, and she was forced, and she looked.
It was yet another summer day, and Tara's body had just begun to bloom into womanhood. She felt awkward and moody and curious; a dozen emotions raging through her young body and her mother wanted her to concentrate on learning magic. They were sitting together under the willow tree by the dugout, with Anna resting against the tree trunk, tired and sick-looking. Tara watching from the doorway knew this was before the dreaded 'C' word that would change the path of their lives forever, a path that led to dirt clods on a coffin.
Little Tara sat facing her mother, and extended her hand to her. They interlocked their fingers, then pressed their palms together. With a jolt, Tara realised she could see into her mother's mind, could see a shadow of the dreaded secret that would tear her life apart. And just as she could see into her mother, so her mother could see into her, and even as the two witches combined their magics to levitate an old discarded wagon wheel, Tara could feel her mother come upon her most intimate secret. Not what happened with her father
(hush, little Tara)
for that was buried deep, but the other. Her first crush, and it wasn't with a guy.
The wagon wheel came crashing to the ground, and her mother's face was a portrait of shock and dismay. And it wasn't just shock, it was shame, and Tara abased herself to the dust, ripping her hand away from her mother's hand; she was crushed beneath her mother's stone of humiliation.
And the sky changed, and the years passed, and before Tara's eyes she watched her mother hollow and sicken with disease. Tara from the doorway beheld it, a morbid fast-forwarding, an echo of the goddess-Willow dream, and Tara wondered if all her life she would behold her mother's accelerated illness in the bowels of her mind, harbouring it like a parasite, never passing it through.
Until it was clods of dirt on a coffin, and whatever scant safety there had been in that hideous farmhouse was gone. And the knowledge that Aranaea had orchestrated this, had allowed this, burned in Tara's mind.
Next to her, the preacher seemed to seethe with an unholy fire, with raving delight at Tara's mental agony. "You can't trust your mother," he said softly, urbanely. "She never protected you. She allowed that filthy little goddess to ruin your life, allowed your brother to beat on you, and your classmates to pick on you, and your father to... Well, we won't mention that just now, will we?"
In the doorway that led to the rain-filled cemetery with too few mourners and too many vanished hopes, Tara hung her head. He was right. She couldn't trust her mother. She never could. Her mother should have protected her, should have fought for her, should have known
(Hush, little Tara)
Without laying a hand on her, the preacher pulled Tara down the hallway to yet another door. As he opened it she saw her dining room table, scantily laid with food, and she was standing in the corner of the room, ready to serve her father more water, waiting for him to finish his meal so she could eat what was left. And then, after night had fallen, he would
(NO!)
Tara slammed the door shut, feeling the thud reverberate through the house. The costumed preacher only looked at her maliciously, as if he already knew what lay beyond, what dread memory he was about to coax out of her and force her to eat, swallowing the poison again and again. "You could never trust your father," the man said. "You were a possession. A toy. A thing."
And Tara felt the words coat her like viscous tar, sadistic words that fed on her skin and invaded her, until yes, she was a possession, a plaything, a toy. It was all true, these words that came from this costumed man's mouth. Only truth. The deepest truth.
(Liar!)
(You're dreaming, Tara! Wake up!)
The next doorway showed her bedroom, where Tara finally lay asleep, addled with pain and the heaviness of hiding it, and Sue sat with a syringe in her arm and tears flowing down her cheeks. And as the morphine began to course through Sue's system, she reached out for Tara, with a questing hand that failed.
(bad sad Sue)
"You can't trust your girlfriend. She never really loved you, and you knew it. Here you are, actually physically dying, and she didn't even know. Even after Donny made you take the cow, she didn't notice. She couldn't trust you, either, could she? She needed you. And you were oblivious. You had no idea what was going on. You shared your bed with this woman, and allowed her to poke her way to death's door, exquisite morphine in her veins. Even then it was someone else who intervened, wasn't it?"
And the preacher continued to compel her down the hallway, and the next door opening showed Ethan, and that startling moment when she discovered his mind. He was going to sabotage the spell. He was going to doom the world. He was going to remove her reason for existence, and he said he was going to do it for love, of all things. He never really loved her. He just loved the chase, and how hard she was to catch. He would tire of her, like everyone else did, and leave her, like everyone else did. Not unless she left him first.
And the preacher smiled as if he knew her thoughts, as if their blackness showed like veins on her face, like redness in her eyes. "You can't trust him," he said, goading her along. "If he was willing to do this, to kill the one you love, what else would he do?"
(wake wake wake)
Compelled down the hall, shuddering at the spider webbing, at the boiling black aura of the preacher, Tara feared what she would see next. And as the preacher opened the door into her most precious memory, Tara balked, and would have run away but for the hooking gesture of the preacher that reeled her in like a fish.
(No, no, no, don't ruin this one for me please, don't)
Tara watched from the doorway, watched as an outsider, watched as angel-Tara wrapped her arms about a tired, bloodied, red-haired girl. The angel's limbs trembled with suppressed emotion, and their hearts heaved in unison. Tara watched as Willow touched the angel's wings, then encircled her waist, and buried her face in the angel's throat.
And then, and then.
Those lips, and the knowledge of them, that they weren't merely nice appendages to a woman's face, but a portal to another world entirely. Those lips, a key to a lock, long forgotten. And the lock, once opened, could never again be closed, for it would be the work of all the gods to suppress again those hopes and dreams, the light of the future. Those lips, a passageway to earthly delights, a pathway lined with hidden treasures. And every step down this path, this path that started with those lips, would be cherished, and revered and
(essential).
So Willow blindly offered those lips, and the fool within Tara took them, and used them for her own purposes. It had been so long, it had been (never) and even as she took them, and sighed into them, and melted into them, she knew it was wrong. Was this how she would spare Willow heartache? She was taking without permission. Stealing these kisses. Gods, she was a monster.
(Save Willow, so Willow can save the world.)
And Willow pulled violently away from the angel, and flames of rage emanated from her, and singed the angel's perfect gown, and blackened the tips of the feathers on the angel's wings, and blasted the angel's face until it was bloodied with three long scratches and a blackened eye. Willow's face distorted in clear hatred and derision, and she stepped back to the tree where the scythe was propped. She took that most dreadful weapon easily in her hands, hefted it with the precision of a born demon killer, and returned to the angel, who had fallen to her knees in despair.
"As if I could ever love you," Willow said in a low voice, and the scythe made a ringing sound as it passed through the air, and cut through the angel's neck so very easily. And as angel-Tara fell to the ground, a mist poured from her lopped head. "Finally I'm rid of that cloying, needy woman," Willow said as she set down the scythe on the grass once more, the blood drops sizzling through the grass. "She was harder to get rid of than bloodstains!" Even as she spoke, the mist effortlessly formed itself into the leering form of the costumed-preacher, who had vanished from Tara's side at the doorway to reappear here.
Wait, no, that was Caleb!
(wake wake wake)
And he was made flesh. Willow's face contorted in shock. "That was supposed to work," she said. "They said all I had to do to free the world of the First Evil was cut off her head with the scythe." As he approached Willow, he spoke to Tara at the doorway. "Used to be I was afraid of this woman," he said, and there was majestic grace in his stride, and Willow was frozen in the malevolence of his gaze. It was a leonine grace; he was a black panther, effortlessly stalking his prey, walking in a circle about her paralyzed form. "The most powerful witch in the world," he continued, stopping his circling just behind Willow, yet facing Tara in the doorway. "She could have stopped me. But not now. I now have power she couldn't dream of."
Before Tara's eyes, as she stood in the doorway, tears streaming down her face, Caleb took Willow's head in his hands and swiftly performed the action that the demon in the cemetery had threatened to try; Willow's neck bones crunched, and her windpipe crushed, and she fell lifeless to the ground, her red hair trailing like streams of blood. "Your power, Tara," he concluded, dusting off his hands. "So thanks for letting me live with you."
"NO!" Tara screamed, and she charged him. But there was no enrapture here, no triumvirate of goddesses to protect her, and Caleb simply stepped back to meet her. Just as Tara was about to hit him, her fist raised as Donny had taught her so terribly, Caleb lowered his hands and levelled one single blow to her chest, so powerful she felt her rib bones break, and she fell to the ground, blood flooding from her mouth.
Tara watched as Caleb approached the scythe, which was gleaming with angel-Tara's blood. "Used to be I couldn't touch this scythe," he continued in his damning amiable fashion. "How I lusted over it, but I daren't try to wield it. I was the physical embodiment of the First Evil, you know. All their power was within me. I was their link to the world, the world I should rule by their power. But then Buffy killed me with the scythe, thinking it would finish me. Now the Slayer didn't know this, but she hadn't the power to destroy me with the scythe. The witch did. If she had been the one to kill me with it, this all would have been over. Instead, my spirit was trapped within the scythe. And that foolish witch, she used the scythe to break the rules, she used the power of this scythe to activate all the potential Slayers, and diminished the scythe's power. And as she did so, I entered her, and made a home for myself in her mind, and imprisoned her within.
"And you thought to free her, you petty little whore. I'll admit I was surprised when you sucked me in. I only discovered the fringe benefits of my new habitation later. New power, Tara. Your power.
"And she thought to destroy me again with the scythe, by the shedding of innocent blood." Caleb lifted the scythe in his hands, and ran his tongue over the blood on the blade, and shivered in ecstasy. "Your blood, Tara." His white teeth gleamed in a malicious smile. "The scythe is diminished," he said softly, gratefully, even. "It has no power over me." He turned to face Tara lying in agony on the ground. "Now you are dead, the witch is dead, and I am flesh, and I will rule the world."
No.
(do not wake)
Tara struggled to her feet. She needed no goddess, no otherworldly power. She was young, she was strong, she was love incarnate, and she would allow no such abomination. And she reached within, and found black regiments of pain throughout her body, and lined them up for the invasion. Just as she had found this power with the demon, so did Tara lurch toward the preacher, her eyes filling with bloodlust and revenge, her agony-armies screaming to be released. He stood there, oblivious of his peril, his eyes laughing, his face exulted. She made contact with the skin of his face, and through her fingers she hurled her armies of darkness.
They recoiled against her skin, hitting a vast blank wall. Confused, she attempted once more to send them through the barrier, this was easy, this was supposed to work! Yet the pain could not cross the impenetrable wall, and there was no door, no window, no key.
Caleb slowly grabbed her wrists and drew them away from his face. Locking his gaze on hers, he whispered, "The rules have changed, sweetheart." Contemptuously he shoved her to the ground, and she fell heavily, and shuddered in paroxysms of deep, deep sorrow.
And he wouldn't even kill her. As he strode away from her, Tara looked at the crumpled and blackened form of the angel on the ground, on the limp and lifeless form of her love, and on her own ruptured chest, and she sobbed. And the skies flowered flying beasts of madness, and the seas regurgitated demons, and the vampires walked under the light of the glowering sun, and they were not afraid. Caleb walked on, away from her, and all the hosts of hell followed in his wake.
