Chapter 47
Donny's Dawn
Deep down, Donny was a coward. He knew it, and hated himself for it. Tara had stood upon the porch, and let her father's fist come toward her. She didn't flinch. She always flinched! Willow's invisible hands on her waist, and she didn't flinch.
Where did she get this courage? This was not the same girl who had nearly killed herself by taking the pain of her patients in nursing school. This was not even the same girl who prepared a bloody steak for him, just the way he liked it, the day he forced a rabbit on her. This girl was brand new, birthed in the bloody chaos of Willow's world, and better for it.
After her abrupt disappearance, Donny's mind was made up. If such a cowardly and self-righteous one as his sister can be born anew, so could he. What was her birth price? Was it the demon grooves down her chest, or the tumour in her brain? He had no such wounds to pay, but he could buy his freedom in the blood of another.
His father had much to answer for. Even if one drop could be the price of each of their pains, Donny could feel free to spill it all. For his mother's years of being locked in the attic, for the abuses heaped upon his sister, and for his own unseemly tutelage in the gravedigger's world.
That Sunday afternoon, Donny stood upon the precipice of two colliding worlds. An automaton in preparing dinner, in engaging in small talk with his father, Donny could feel the tide rising in his soul. The remembered voice of the goddess warred with Donny's own desire to feel power, feel strong. The tide rose, and Donny became convinced. This one act would absolve him of everything, because he would not do it just for Tara, who was dying, not just for Anna, who was dead, but also for himself.
For was there some small portion of Donny's own beleaguered soul that deserved deliverance?
Yet since coming up with his plan, he had nearly abandoned it a dozen times. He was always wary of bringing it to the forefront of his mind, scared that his father would somehow find it there, the dark little secret that it was. His father had weird powers of late. If Donny had not known better, he would have called it magic.
He does not have our dirty blood.
After dinner he nearly abandoned it again – his father had eaten so carefully, and they rested by the fire, and he engaged Donny in small conversation, listened to his son's replies. Being fatherly, warm, and Donny felt himself sink under the spell.
Little girl baking in the tin shed.
Tara was dying. She would not benefit at all from Mr. Maclay's death. Was it really worth all this trouble to kill this man, his only surviving parent, as a gesture to his practically dead sister?
I will save her, Donny.
Who was Willow anyway, but a malingerer and a menace? What power had she to disrupt the course of the future? Tara would die, and the world was perilous, and a boy needed his father.
A tug of war in his mind, darkness combating the light, the remembered voice of the child-goddess within him somehow as strong as his father's afternoon screams. What will you choose, Donny?
What will you choose?
He could have used the influence of the child-goddess at this most crucial moment. But it was just like the guttersnipe goddess to abandon him the moment he needed her most. Everyone abandoned him in the end. Because Donny was weak. Donny was a coward. Basically, Donny sucked.
Terror is strong. It seeps into the bones with thin tendrils of menace until you are shaking with fear and cold. It freezes your hands; leaves you thin-skinned and hopeless. It whispers of every naughty deed, every secret act of maliciousness. Terror is the spawn of The First Evil, and it held Donny in its maw.
In the afternoon, Donny had formulated a simple plan. There were drugs in the shed, powerful veterinary medicines that would kill his father in his sleep, an easy murder for his tormented son to accomplish. There would be no need for rifles or shells or knives – just powder in the nightly glass of milk. Cowardly, yes, but Donny feared the power of the man's voice, feared facing him one on one. There would be no way to come off the conqueror, not without chemical assistance.
But Donny could not even drug his father, even though he meant to. The powder remained unused, and his father tooled off to bed, not knowing he was just saved by cowardice.
Donny's choice.
The night was restless, full of threatening dreams. He dreamt that his father discovered the powder, and locked Donny in the little tin shed, and Donny was left to scratch rivets in the walls as he baked in afternoon sunlight, his tongue parched and thick, his fingernails embedded in dirt, the long stink of the dead ones in his nostrils. Donny woke as he scratched himself, gasping for air.
Dawn was coming, in enough blood to birth the new world. Donny's dawn.
Donny found himself galvanized. All indecision was gone. It was no longer about Tara at all. This was between father and son.
Two sides of the same coin.
He pulled on a pair of jeans; distantly noticing they were the same as yesterday, the same rip in the crotch. He didn't care. The t-shirt smelled of oil and sweat. The rifle felt natural in his hands. How often had he dreamed of the day his father would let him load it on his own? How many hours had he spent cleaning it, polishing the stock of wood?
Such a short walk to his father's room, where dawn would strike the murderer's eyes and call him to attention. Donny would be waiting.
First, answers.
Then?
There were six rounds in the rifle. There would be bloody afterbirth of Donny's dawn, but the tide crested in his soul. As much as he could succumb to despair, Donny believed he had a place in the new world, even if his sister was not in it. This gift he would give her had two parts – he would kill his father, because Tara never could, but then Donny would live, as Tara never would. He would walk in the fields, and plant his crops, and watch the seagulls alight upon the broken wagon wheel and remember the price Tara would pay.
If she was brave enough to purchase this world with her blood, then Donny would be brave enough to live in it. This world, bought at such a price - Donny would be damned before he saw it become property of the Old Ones.
Mr. Maclay woke with a suddenness that catapulted Donny's heart into a frenzy. There seemed to be no disorientation, no lolling about in the comfortable confines of bed. One moment he was asleep, the next he was awake, his cold dark eyes trained on Donny with startled fury.
For the barrel of the rifle was in his face, Donny's pale face down the sights. Even then the man barely took Donny seriously.
The black humour of it wilted Donny's soul.
"What's going on, son?" the man asked, starting to move his hands.
Donny clicked off the safety, and the hand stopped.
"Who was the girl, dad?"
"Girl? What girl?"
She had blood on her thighs, that poor girl who baked to death in the little steel shed. This was for her, too, and all the others buried next to Tara's kitten near the dugout.
The rifle fit perfectly in the little hollow of Mr. Maclay's clavicle at his throat. It looked like it belonged there, and Donny felt a thrill of power.
(the same power I felt every time I hit Tara.)
No.
The rifle drooped as Donny's face blanched. "I'm not like you," he whispered, taking a step back.
Mr. Maclay, sensing his advantage, said, "No, you're much better. You've always been a good son to me. With your mother gone, you helped me be better. Help me now, son, please. Give me the gun."
A faint whiff of fresh mown grass, and the giggle of a child. Aranaea may have been gone from his mind, but Donny felt her hands upon his soul. What was it Tara had told him that day?
(We are descendants of a goddess, Donny. And that's why I must die.)
Tara was too good for this world. His father was too evil. Donny was the nothing in between.
"Son, Donny, give me the gun."
Yet this was the father voice he remembered of the far past, the soothing tones of a man who taught Donny to ride a bike, to shoot a rifle. This was the voice of the man who asked him about his day, and told stories of the crows attacking the corn. He had a scotch of an evening with this man, the day Donny turned sixteen and his father deemed him old enough for the liquor. They toiled in the fields together, smoked cigarettes together, played gin rummy together.
Soft morning sunlight streamed through the window. His father's face was clean, strong. When his father smiled, dimples would alight upon his cheeks in his gladness. Was not this world for him? Did he not work the fields, growing corn and wheat and crops of flax, a skip in his step and a song in his heart?
He did not deserve death, especially not the death Donny would have given him.
And Donny stood upon the precipice of this world, despair and uncertainty washing over him in sheets. He could not give a name to this new evil, he could not recognize the black magic of his father, a gift given by The First Evil to its chief disciple, a weapon to use for such a time as this. The magic was too strong, and Donny was weak. Donny was a coward. Donny sucked.
Donny was a boy who peed his pants in the dark watches of the night. Donny it was who set ants ablaze with a magnifying glass. It was Donny who struck his sister as ever he willed, and cursed her for her tears. Donny's hands held the spade, as earth crept over the faces of the departed, his mouth sealed and his ears deaf to their ghostly cries of justice.
It was Donny who killed Tara's cat in a fit of rage, and laid the blame elsewhere.
So he gave his father the gun.
And Mr. Maclay lovingly stroked the barrel, caressed the stock. When his eyes returned to Donny's gaze, Donny felt assaulted and lower than low. His blood was dirty, the blood of a child-goddess who cared naught for human miseries, who would use humans as her tools and throw them away when their use was finished. Anna's blood had been cleansed by the grave, just as Tara's would be. When the new day arose, would Donny alone survive, to further taint the world?
Indeed no. Donny knew, just as Jesus of Nazareth discovered, that there was no room for gods on the earth. Especially gods as lowly and wretched as he.
All he knew was that he placed the rifle in the hands of his father, fully knowing the outcome. There would be no dawn for Donny, no rebirth. Was he not his father's accomplice, his shadowy partner? His crimes were too great, and his father was the executioner.
No room for gods.
No dawn for the wicked.
Donny's every nerve trembled, yet he stood frozen. Waves of malice heaped upon him, and his father lifted the rifle to his shoulder. The night had been hot – a single sheet covered his father's lanky form, now pooled at his waist. Donny recognized every movement of the master gunman – had they not hunted coyotes just like this? His father well knew the kickback of the rifle, and he placed the stock carefully in his shoulder. The barrel lifted until Donny could see his father's eye through the sights. There was no remorse writ there. Donny could have been an errant rabbit in the fields, or a hungry coyote.
Mr. Maclay's finger would not twitch or jerk. No, he would squeeze the trigger, just as he always taught Donny to do. Once the deed was done, and Donny's blood pooled on the floor, he knew no one would mourn him. For he was weak. He was a coward. Basically, he sucked.
No dawn. The night would claim his soul, and he would be sundered from his mother and sister forever in the torments of the damned. This prison would be all he deserved, for his crimes were too great.
The bedroom door opened.
The rifle swivelled gracefully, a leonine movement born of much hunting, and Mr. Maclay squeezed the trigger. The cracking sound seemed to release Donny from the spell, but it was already too late. The shell meant for Donny's heart found Willow's instead.
So much for witchcraft. Willow looked shocked, even as redness advanced throughout her pink sweater. The second sound, that of her knees colliding with the wooden floor, brought him to his senses. She collapsed on her heels, a look of astonishment on her pale face as he wrested the gun from his father, brought it to his own shoulder, and placed the smoking hot barrel on his father's brow. The sour stench of singed flesh did not break his nerve.
Nor the sound of Tara's girlfriend falling backwards, her head making a hollow thunk on the floor.
Gravedigger indeed. Could Tara forgive him even this?
...
Romania had not been what Willow expected. Yet had anyone asked her what she had expected, she could not have elicited any more than, "Not this." The westering sun sat gently on the horizon, benignly alighting upon the gathered mass of young men and women, Slayers and the Order of the Crescent alike, too many with eagerly terrified faces. In a matter of several hours the sun would set, shying away from the inevitable battle, and the ravening wolf moon would arise.
Faith looked exactly as Willow had known she would, resplendent in tight red leather just a shade trashier than her lipstick. There was a girl behind her, dark and tall and strong, and Willow couldn't tell which of them was keener for a fight and the bloodlust there awakened. With a wry smile, Willow wondered if Faith knew what she was getting into, in battle, and in bed.
No matter her personal feelings about the dark Slayer, the work Faith had accomplished in gathering their army was formidable. There was one person there that Willow simply did not expect, and as John strode through the masses, she wished once more that she had the power to stop time, to ask what possible connection Tara's co-worker had with her dangerous underworld.
Time stopped for no one, least of all her.
John proffered his hand for her to shake, and it took everything in Willow's strength to keep from reading his mind at the touch.
I'd never look without asking, honest!
It was enough to sense that there was something strange about him, something deep and vast and good, and only a glimpse of the very great love that he had for Tara.
And for…
Willow almost jerked her hand away, but stopped at the last moment, her cheeks crimson. This man, this nurse, loved Willow as well, the same profound brotherly love he had for Tara. All the time they spent in the hospice and Willow had never known.
Did I ever touch him after getting my gifts?
"What did I ever do for you?" Willow had to ask, as John gently took his hand away. She racked her brain, trying to remember him beyond waking in the hospital, but she could find nothing. Yet there had to be some reason for his depth of feeling. His very skin seemed to cry to save both their lives. She had only to touch him to know it, and she wondered how no one else could see what was so obvious to her.
The man was blessed.
And Willow had no time. This mystery, like so many others, would have to wait.
A final kiss on Oz's cheek, a last hug, quickly whispered instructions to Faith. Then the scythe back in its scabbard on her back, a final look to the horizon and the rapidly setting sun, another quizzical look at the nurse in the ranks, and Willow left her small army to fight a battle of her own.
Oz had proved forthcoming, and Willow was calmer now that she knew a little of what she was up against. It was enough to know where the final battle would be, that the seal was nearby at Piatra Neamt, and that she actually had allies again. Angel had been left behind after their encounter with Beljoxa's Eye, quite chagrined to learn he was not quite invited to this fight. He was barely appeased with the whole "second front" thing, seeing as this battle would be fought on the other side of the globe. Willow was almost amazed that the vampire was taking orders from her at all; she could not have known the set of her jaw, the cool gleam in her eye, the strong determination in her very countenance. For the first time Angel looked to Willow as a leader, and treated her orders as such.
Racked by surprise after surprise, Willow barely blinked as Oz told her what role Tara's father would play in the hours ahead. As much as Willow wanted to chase Caleb across the world until he gave Tara's body back, she knew that the dark preacher would show up at the farmhouse to pick up a very valuable game piece. Willow just had to be there first.
Then she would have to come back to Romania, keeping all their enemies, especially Tara's father, away from the seal, and Faith would dispatch Caleb with the scythe, and Willow would use all her mojo, and they would once again accomplish the impossible and save the day. With Caleb gone, the seal wouldn't be opened, so Tara wouldn't have to close it. Willow's hand would not be upon the handle of the scythe as it pressed into her love's heart, spilling her lifeblood to vanquish the seal. No, there would be a little time to be with her beloved, a little time to figure out the greatest puzzle of all – Tara's cancer was a far greater apocalypse than this little blip of circumstances. If Willow had time, she could unravel the mystery of the great black wall that kept the magic of Panacea from working; was it only Caleb, or only the amulet, or some strange permutation of them all?
Poor Oz. On that soul crushing dilemma he had nothing to say, and Willow could see how he tried to keep from being jealous of Tara and the way she had Willow's heart.
It would be nearly nine AM back in California. Just past dawn, but whose?
Time to go.
Fixing the image of the farmhouse in her mind, Willow called upon Hecate and appeared on the peeling porch, for once glad she had worn this pink sweater, because Tara was still on it, her scent was still within it, her love had kissed her in this sweater, and a small and perverse part of Willow was convinced that as long as she wore this sweater she would live to kiss and hold Tara again.
There had been so much blood, so slippery under her hands as she knit Oz back together; reeling from seeing her loved one in the grip of Caleb's murdering spree. Seeing her beloved under the thrall of that wicked one was nearly more than she could bear, even for that short moment before Caleb fled. Now Willow simply had to believe that some part of her would know if Tara was truly dead and gone; hadn't their souls become one?
Besides, it was vastly apparent that no one stays dead in Sunnydale.
It was early, and she was exhausted. She stopped just shy of knocking on the door. She knew what she would do if it were Donny who answered, but what could she possibly say to the murderous snake who was their father? Could she keep from destroying him in an instant if she saw him?
Feeling a little guilty, Willow unlocked the door with a simple spell, and stole into the farmhouse. She heard movement and voices from upstairs. Well knowing the creaking vices of old houses, and unwilling to let this unfamiliar house be another enemy, Willow levitated herself and floated up the stairs, until she severed the spell and stood just outside the closed door.
Be ready for anything, Rosenberg, and thank the goddess Enyo for 3 second precognition.
She opened the door. Two faces looked at her, one through the sights of a loaded gun pointed unerringly at her own chest.
She could see how it would happen. This was no movie. The shell would thunder into her chest and blow out her heart in a single second, and there could be no healing for the dead.
No god had gifted her with the ability to stop time.
Stupid gods.
A smell of gunpowder followed the sickening crack as a bullet streaked from the barrel of the rifle. In the movies, this kind of action always took place in slow motion, as if the audience were too dull-witted to comprehend what was really happening. In reality, there is no hope, even for one gifted by the gods. Three second precognition, and she wasted them all.
The bullet thudded into her chest, mushrooming and spiraling as it severed artery and tissue, narrowly missing her heart.
Such a small mercy did not matter much.
Pain a firestorm. Eyes dim. Knees cracking on the floor a lesser pain, starlight against the sun. Conscious thought thin, blood warm.
Arrogance in gods a necessity, when there are so few pawns to play. When the very world was at stake, and thus their livelihood.
Willow could not remember calling Panacea to her, could not recall how thin the veil became between her and heaven. Willow woke with the taste of blood in her mouth, her jaw set, a cool gleam in her eye, and even the black snake in front of her, the Tara-father man-shape cursed by evil within, even he drew back from her in fear.
