Summary: Willow has to face a tough choice concerning her future. The Order of Turaca is closing in on Marcus, much to Larcinda’s satisfaction ...

There were three.

They had been paid, and so there were three.

* * *

Fishborn, England’s South Coast, August

Marcus knew he would sound sententious, but knew just as fervently he had to say it.

“Wil, you’re going to have to go back.”

The flicker of the campfire was transacting the evening’s dark hues intermittently, its warm glow randomly illuminating his and Willow’s faces.

“I know,” she accepted resignedly. “I just,” she paused, her hands fumbling with a stray blade of grass. “I just wanted something nice beforehand.”

She had coped with the news of her Father’s death with a worrying apathy. The reports had stated the bandits had taken half his head away, leaving only his dental records to identify him by. Shelia was long assumed dead, with no ransom demands delivered. So Willow was now an orphan.

A tear began to slide reticently down Marcus’s cheek, which he made no effort to check. He had finally discussed the matter with an American legal expert, who had sadly informed him that there was nothing further he could do. Willow would have to be placed into care, unless Marcus wished for an “unorthodox” solution.

He had contemplated it. Marcus knew the relative ease with which a new identity could be established. But looking at Willow, he knew such a life was not for her. She did not have the aptitude to care for herself, and neither did he think she could cope with the upheaval. Thus, Marcus had accepted one single, unassailable fact.

Her gifts must be squandered. He shuddered to think what the last few years of High School would do to her, cut off from all the others present. He guessed a breakdown, or suicide. He had considered attempting to set her up in a college, but dismissed the idea. She would not be ready for that lifestyle for several years to come.

“You never know,” she breathed wistfully. “The new school could be better.”

“Yeah,” Marcus said, “could well be.” He doubted it. The usual clientele of an American School would place her at the bottom of their pecking order irrespective of location.

It was getting cold, but the fire was negating the temperature. For all except them, both so alone in different ways.

Willow suddenly let out a low sob, and fell into his arms. He hugged her gently, in lieu of any other paternal figure. The world was a hopeless, brutal place. Marcus knew that. But the added injustice of Willow’s experience assailed him, unmercifully filling him with a cold anger. Here he was, the great and prolific warrior, unable to aid one lonely girl.

Azrael watched, and knew it had done well.

* * *

The screams played like a seraphic melody in Larcinda’s mind. She reached forward with the poker, and elicited another agonized cry.

“It hurts my beauty,” she said coldly. “Well it should do, considering the irreconcilable mess you made of last night’s errand.”

The vampire was whimpering helplessly on the floor, the blood congealing in crimson rivulets on the ground beneath him.

“You want me to end it poppet?” she purred softly. “Want all the pain to end?”

“Bitch!” screamed her wretched victim, in one final, pained breath.

“In heat,” she responded, and jabbed the poker into the nape of his neck. It pierced bone, muscle, and spinal cord, finally ending its passage in his brain. The vampire ceased to move, his final, piercing cries sounding a horrible requiem in the cold night.

She finished the vampire with a single crossbow bolt to the heart, and thought of her clan. One thousand immortal beings, hers to command. Azrael had informed her things were close to fruition, and she smiled with feral satisfaction at that which awaited her.

For now, they were away, at the designated site for the imminent ritual. She was alone in the base, save for a few of her most adroit aides. Tonight, she would join those she had sired, but first, the appropriate “equipment” had to be prepared.

“Bring me the prisoners,” she rapped curtly to an aide, who rushed to do her mistress’s bidding.

There was a commotion, the sound of curt imprecations, and suddenly two masked figures were being hauled towards her. One moved passively, the other put up the fight of an eternal lifetime. He twisted, kicked, butted, eventually having to be subdued with a blast from a taser stun-gun carried by one of the guards. They were both dropped unceremoniously at her feet, and their hoods were removed.

“Un-gag him,” Larcinda indicated to the blond man before her. It took three of her undead minions to complete the task, two holding him in a vice like brace, the third wrenching the gag from his mouth. He spat into their hands, snarled, and looked upwards, the demonic visage sliding onto his face as he did so.

“Who in a buggering bender’s name are you?” he growled coldly. “Please tell me, so I can have the pleasure of your acquaintance before ripping your head from your shoulders.”

“I am you mistress,” she stated grandly. “You will serve my every command unquestionably, and without hesitation. You are nothing, your purpose is –”

“Alight missy, enough with the high and mighty bollocks,” interjected the vampire suddenly. “I want to know who the bloody hell you are, why the bloody hell you brought me here, and some sodding good reasons why your life should span beyond the next five seconds.”

As he moved forwards, his hands suddenly free, Larcinda made two mental notes. One was to flay the skin from the inept guards who had allowed one of the vessels to work his hands lose of their manacles, and the second was to avoid the Dr Martin boot directed towards her cranium.

Spike, in contrast, had only one thought running thorough his mind – he was seriously, seriously pissed.

* * *

Willow knew she should not be there.

The tent housed all the dig’s finds until they could be shipped away to the British Museum. Included among these was the torque she had found earlier that day. She had felt a strange, unyielding force pulling at her ever since, urging her to take the beautiful metal adornment, to slip it onto her small wrist. It lay before her now, bagged and catalogued, ready to be taken away.

Kinda like me, she thought ruefully.

It was all going to come to an end soon. Marcus had promised her another week, and then she would have to return to her native country, an orphan. Placed in care, shunted around the United States at the Social Service’s discretion. So why shouldn’t she try on the jewellery, have one last memory of her happiness here?

The plastic crinkled softly as Willow dexterously slipped the torque free. Holding it, the metal cold against her hands, she realised just how beautiful it was. No, she decided, more than beautiful. Mesmeric. That was what it was.

Her hand slid slowly forward, the torque brushing briefly against her skin until it was positioned on her wrist. She held her had up before her, turning it in a gradual centrifuge. The gemstones were glistening in the pale moonlight, the beauty indescribable.

Then the lightening struck.

* * *

Over five thousand years previously, he had been slain.

The demon was a compound of the firsts, both good and evil. He had been created to hold balance on the earth, but had demurred from the task. He chose evil, not for its philosophy, but merely as a nominal faction. He adopted its ways in his every action, riding free across the Bronze Age planes. He was death. Mothers told their children of a monster and the monster was he. He was the nightmare that had kept them awake at night, cold sweat glistening on their brows.

Azrael had slain him. No mortal hand could defeat the being, but that had proved to be no hindrance to the omnipotent proponent of good. Azrael had been light, hope, and salvation. Even for it, the battle had been hard. But the demon was slain.

Its remains had been forged into the torque, for its very essence required that it remain in the mortal world. The torque had been entrusted to Marcus’s sect a thousand generations before his birth. They had guarded the demon’s essence above all things, until the Tribune’s lover had betrayed them, removing the captivating, esoterically beautiful object from their headquarters one cold, windswept night.

Thus, it had been lost beneath the mud of Britannia, waiting to rise again.

Whoever wore it had the demonic essence at their disposal. Azrael had intended this to be a compromise, to allow humanity to hold some semblance of equality with the first evil’s creations. It had guided its wearers, ensuring the power was used for altruism, for the benefit of their kind.

But Azrael had fallen. It saw the futility of protecting humanity. It watched as Hiroshima and Nagasaki were obliterated, as millions were torn from the world in the kernel of destruction that had raged unceasingly for the majority of the period they deemed “the Twentieth Century” by their chosen calendar. It could protect them from the demons, the monsters, but not from themselves. It had conceded that they were neutral. Neither good nor evil, and would always remain so.

So it had fallen. Such was necessary for the withdrawal to be accomplished. Both first’s influence would be removed, and humanity left to fend for themselves. Consequently, the demon would be reformed, but in mankind’s image. It would be given even more power than previously, with Azrael adding itself to the compound. The vessels would provide the energy from the opposing sides, and the female, Willow, would be its instigator. She would become the guiding essence, and Azrael would then loose the thing free upon the world.

Such temptation, Azrael knew, could not be resisted. It sensed the girl’s misery, her bitterness. She would extricate revenge from those who had pained her, and then move onwards. The demons, serving both sides, would be destroyed. The first’s link to the world would be ended. Humanity would be left to fend for itself, and Azrael did not fancy its chances.

It would be the apocalypse they so feared; instigated by their own hand.

* * *

“B –”

Spike was sure Larcinda was about to utter an imprecation, but would never know. The reason for this was that he had just rammed her face into the sodden mud beneath them.

The guards, only five in number, had never stood a chance. Three had been staked with implements from Larcinda’s vast array of torture equipment, one was beheaded with an axe, and the last was lying immobile on the ground, a still simmering poker inserted through his backbone and onwards into the soil. When he awakened, the vampire faced several weeks in a wheelchair while his spine regenerated.

That fate, however, was far preferable to that which faced Larcinda. Spike wrenched her head upwards, and allowed her to spit the clumps of earth from her mouth.

“Okay missy,” he stated acidulously, “here’s the deal. You’ve had me locked beneath London in that stinkin’ hole of yours for the past month. You’ve left me with that miserable old sow that’s done nothing except wail and eat. You only had your lackeys clean out her filth once a week. Me best jacket’s covered in her crap, and I stink of her piss.”

He rolled Larcinda over, and saw she was about to speak. A quick headbutt served to assuage this, and he continued.

“Now, Spiky’s a reasonable fellow. He don’t want much out of life. A bit of torture, the odd shag, plenty of nice fresh blood, and an endless supply of minions lining up to wipe his arse. If Spiky gets those things, then Spiky’s one happy vampire.” For good measure, he butted her again. “Now, you had whatever the hell that thing was abduct yours truly, you didn’t even given me an explanation, and then you left me rolling in Mrs Rosenberg’s shit – do you see why Spiky ain’t happy?”

Larcinda managed to dissipate the darkness clouding her vision, and shook the cacophony of pain resonating throughout her head. Her face morphed back into its human guise, and her brown eyes met Spike’s.

“You …” she began hesitantly “…you … are a piece of sh –” The sudden impact of the vampire’s cranium persuaded her to change her tack. “We could do a deal.”

“Deal’s good,” Spike commented casually. “How’s about, you gives me the banking details of whatever loot you got stashed away, and I leave you with a limb to operate the wheelchair with? Sound good to you missy?”

She had met his type before. Immersed in their own self-importance, blind to the others around them. Then again, his kind did not usually succeed in slaughtering the five finest warriors in her clan.

“Power,” she suddenly said. “How would you like power beyond imagination?”

“Would you prefer the right or the left?” Spike stated lethargically. “I’d go with the right, but then, it’s the one I use to jerk-off with.”

“A God,” Larcinda insisted desperately, as Spike had begun to twist at her left arm, the limb gradually coming loose from its socket. “A demon beyond compare.”

“Am already love,” he smiled acerbically. “Now, since you’ve given me didily-squat in the way of remuneration for my ordeal, I think I’ll just take ya apart piece by stinkin’ piece.”

“Azrael,” she screamed, her bone beginning to grind.

The name acted like a magic charm. Spike released her, and rose to his feet. “Okay missy,” he said, “you’ve got yourself a minute. If I like what I hear, you stay whole.”

He did indeed like what he heard. In the span of a few hours, he was beside Larcinda, laughing boisterously as they watched the night’s torture. Spike was going to be a demon above all demons; a being all others would have to submit themselves to.

In actual fact, it would have been better if he had been staked where he stood, but thanks to Larcinda’s carefully woven lie, he was not to know that.

In just the same manner as, thanks to Azrael’s deception, Larcinda assumed she was going to be the essence behind the demon. But the torque was not meant for her.

It was meant for the girl who was now running across the English countryside, heading for her destiny. A destiny that would be decided by humanity, of humanity, and for humanity.

Azrael was contented.

* * *

“What do you mean, gone?” Marcus demanded, incensed with rage.

“What I said,” elaborated the head of the dig. “Willow Rosenberg upped and left in the night. The thieving little git took the best find we’ve had in years, Charlie’s Landrover, and was off.”

“No.” Marcus refused to accept the inevitable. “It just not like her.”

“Yeah, well, wish I could agree mate,” the archaeologist shrugged. “But she’s screwed up the entire project, so I can’t.”

Marcus could not bear to hear any more, and stormed away from the scene. The local police were already there, taking descriptions of Willow, dusting for her fingerprints, and taking statements. One young female constable approached Marcus, but his sole response was a middle finger jabbed into her face.

He knew he could not blame Willow for what she had done. Faced with what awaited her back in America, he could easily understand her actions. He was still shocked, for theft and disappearance were the last things he expected from the withdrawn girl. But now she had undertaken these actions, Marcus could only wish her well. The world was brutal, and she was surviving in the best manner she could.

Had more guts than I gave her credit for, he ruminated wryly. But goddammit, she’s not got a hope. He knew this last thought to be true. She would be stopped, and then likely returned to America. So ended another dream, another person’s potential.

He was now alone on the country path, the dew evaporating from the grass, the sun rising higher in the sky. It looked set to be a beautiful August day.

The footsteps ended his melancholy reverie.

Marcus turned, and knew he could do nothing. There were three fully armed men standing before him, one, obviously a vampire, completely covered by motorcycle leathers and a crash helmet. The others looked human. Their physiology was irrelevant however, as it was the automatic pistols levelled at his chest which decided the situation.

“Oh Christ,” he said, the imprecation only just escaping his lips before the gun cracked, the sound barely audible owing to the silencer that had been fitted. The birds perched on a nearby tree did not even take flight, instead they simply remained, warm in the Sun’s steadily increasing glow.

The single bullet tore through his heart, and exited through his spine.

Marcus was dead before he reached the ground.

© Byron, 2000