chapter 13: god shiva – part II

Giles lay motionless on the sofa with his eyes clasped shut. His pajama bottoms, soaked with perspiration, were sticking to the inside of his thighs and calves. The moist cloth draped across his forehead felt cold and useless. His body ached from head to toe and the pain in his skull felt like a thousand daggers were slicing his brain into perfect squares.

How long had he been knocked out? Might bloody well have been a week. He couldn't hazard a semi decent guess. All he knew was that his eyelids felt glued together.

Then suddenly, he was choking and coughing uncontrollably. And in his head, he was seeing the face of the portal jumper leering at him. The panic grew in his gut and a bitter taste coated the back of his throat...and he couldn't stop coughing. Or was he dreaming? What if the portal jumper had defeated him and he was trapped in a dream dimension?

No, please God. That can't be it.

Giles willed his eyelids apart slowly. It was time to see what there was to see. A thin line of daylight pierced his corneas and he blinked rapidly, adjusting his vision to the brightness. Then another wave of pain traveled up his spine and into his eyes and he slammed his eyelids shut.

Sod it all to hell. He lifted his hand to this face and wiped the perspiration from his upper lip.

He had to open his eyes. Get up. Make a phone call. Say something. Tell someone what he'd seen in his dream and what he'd learned from the portal jumper and from his precious books. He had to be able to explain how to save Dawn and Willow. Except to do this, he had to...Wake. The. Bloody. Hell. Up!

“Giles?” A familiar voice broke through the din in his head. It was Xander.

“Close the shades,” Giles breathed. “Sunlight. Hurts my eyes.”

He heard Xander stand up, walk to the window and rustle the blinds. Only then did Giles peak through the slits he'd made with his freshly parted eyelids.

“How long?” he asked, trusting Xander understood his question.

“Nearly twenty-four hours,” said Xander. “You've been in and out of consciousness since yesterday morning.”

No more shirking, Giles decided and opened his eyes.

Xander was sitting on the edge of the coffee table next to the sofa. He disliked Xander's lack of respect for furniture. Always had. The boy treated property as if it had no value. He wasn't accustomed to taking care of things. Xander was an architect of basement décor. Giles couldn't understand why a thousand year-old woman could have loved such an elemental being. Even if she was a chattering loon at times, Anya still had traversed more lifetimes than Xander could comprehend. Giles stared at the ceiling as his mind filled with random thoughts about Xander and Anya. It helped him deal with the pain in his head.

Giles then heard water splashing and he looked at Xander as he placed the wet cool cloth on his forehead. Giles nodded thank you and then he suddenly remembered what he needed. “Where's my Bible?”

Xander reached behind his back and held the book for Giles to see. A jolting pain ripped through Giles' head at the sight of it and he bit down hard on his lower lip.

Xander dropped the book on the table and grabbed Giles' hand, giving him an anchor.

“Open it,” said Giles, grinding out the words.


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Xander had marked the pages of the Bible after prying the book out of Giles' grip when he'd found the Watcher sprawled unconscious on the floor. Now he let go of Giles' hand and picked the book up from the table. He opened it to a chapter in the Old Testament. Not exactly a Bible buff, Xander did know two things about Bibles. The Old Testament was in the front of the book. The New Testament was in the back.

“First verse, last chapter of Leviticus.” Giles' voice was barely a whisper. Xander leaned closer to the Watcher to hear. “Last verse, first chapter of Ecclesiastes.”

With one hand, Xander thumbed through the pages, found the passages and curled the corners of the pages to keep his place. He looked at the Watcher and waited for instructions.

“Be ready,” began Giles. “To recite the verses when I pass out.”

“Okay,” said Xander, not knowing why Giles expected to pass out, but he wasn't going to ask him now.

“Anya is with the portal jumper, right?” Giles' words came out in a rush as Xander watched him turn a sickly shade of gray.

“What's he want with Anya?”

“Don't worry about her.”

“But I don't understand." said Xander.

“The portal jumper was cursed by a higher power,” said Giles. “Anya is a refuge for him. I don't believe he'll hurt her. But I'm not certain she'll be able to help us."

"Is the portal jumper a vengeance demon?" Xander asked.

“No, he's an immortal," replied Giles. "He's also a man and a vampire of sorts...and his name's Lucretius.”

“He's a vamp?” said Xander and then he gasped. Giles was squeezing his hand so hard it felt as if it was being ripped from his arm.

“Listen, Xander,” Giles' voice was urgent. “His vampire lineage is the least of our concerns. L—Lucretius was cursed centuries ago by an angel banished from heaven. He travels through dimensions blindly collecting gifts—killing for reasons he can't even comprehend. He just knows it's what he must do.”

Giles' face appeared stricken with pain as he let out a dry crackling cough. Xander winced at the sound and removed the cloth from the Watcher's forehead and used it to mop the moisture from his face and throat.

“What's he want with us?” Xander whispered, talking more to himself than to Giles.

"He wants Dawn.” Sweat rolled from the Watcher's brow. “I'm a stupid git, Xander. I saw him in the Zy Qasdor, imbedded in an image of Glorificus, but still didn't understand that his intentions were no different from hers.”

Giles took a deep slow breath.

“Dawn is the key and we bloody fools missed the obvious," he said. "I planned to take away the memory of him so he couldn't find her. Couldn't find any of us. But I was wrong. Dawn's headaches protected her from the portal jumper. But then Willow, she—.” Giles stopped abruptly as his body shook with convulsions. Xander pried his fingers away from the Watcher's hand and pressed down on his shoulders, holding him in place as he thrashed from side to side.

“Steady, Giles. No need to talk if it's going to kill you," said Xander.

“Willow—.” Giles stared at Xander. “She changed the spell. Don't know why she did it, but she did.”

“How?”

“M—My spell was specific. Would only take away our fear of Lucretius.” He looked apologetically at Xander. “I thought the portal jumper needed fear to cast his thrall upon us. Didn’t know it’s a game to him. That’s all, just a game. But Willow—.” The Watcher paused as his features distorted in pain. “...she took away our thoughts of joy. She believed the portal jumper used joy to find its prey and lied to me and said she’d taken fear.” He collapsed back into the cushions of the sofa.

“But if she took away joy, why did losing a thought about joy give me the ability to see things?” Xander shook his head. "I don't understand."

Giles struggled to sit up. “Joy is different for all of us. For you, a thought taken gave you more than you had. For me, it stripped away my intellect. My ability to reason, to learn, to decipher was eradicated. I'm not certain what effect it had on Tara or on Anya. And I have no idea how it affected Buffy. But Willow?" Giles paused. "I'm afraid, like you, it gave her something unexpected."

“Why does Lucretius want Dawn, Giles?”

“He needs Dawn to open the door to a dimension where he can be a man. Just a man," mumbled Giles. "I saw in the Zy Qasdor that Glory had promised to return him to his home. But when we destroyed her, we took away his chances of returning home. So he's decided to get the Key for himself.”

"Why didn't he just take her? Why the headaches and the leaving town and the thought-spell?" Things had gotten so complicated thought Xander. He liked it simple. Kill bad guys. Good guys always win. No thought spells. No sick Watchers. No Buffy living in New York City.

"Xander...Xander." Giles' voice sounded desperate. "Listen, Luke's an immortal, not a God. The Key must willingly give him what he wants. He can't force her. "

"But Dawn wouldn't do that. She'd let him kill her first and Buffy would never allow that."

"I don't know if he'd want to kill her," said Giles. "He needs the Key to get to this dimension where he can live as a man again."

"Well, if he doesn't want to kill her, then maybe Dawn should send him to that dimension. Won't that stop him from killing any more people?" said Xander.

"That won't work. We can't let him become a man again."

"Why?"

"Apocalypse and all sorts of other madness."

"Oh, of course. I forgot about Apocalypses," Xander sighed. "Then we'll have to kill him."

“We can't bloody kill him. He's an immortal."

“Well, we can't just let him force Dawn to open his damn dimension.”

“He won't force her,” said Giles. “There will be no chains. No small cuts. She will choose freely to become his Key.”

Xander stood up abruptly and marched into the foyer and began pacing.

“Dawn wouldn't do that—,” Xander dragged his fingers through his hair. “Not unless she thought she had to save Buffy.”

“Yes, or someone else she loved very much." Giles rolled onto his side and pushed himself into an upright position on the sofa. The sweat poured from his face and his shirt was drenched. Shaking his head, Xander walked back to the coffee table and picked up the damp cloth. He pushed Giles into a prone position on the sofa and wiped his face and neck.

“Can Willow stop the portal jumper?” Xander asked.

“Y-yes, s-she can.”

“How?”

Giles lurched forward and pressed his hands to his temples. “Oh God!" he cried out.

“Giles!” Xander wrapped his arms around the Watcher and hugged his head to his chest. “Come on, Giles. Hang on.”

“In t—the first volume of the Zy Qasdor, study the image of Lucretius. Look into his heart and you'll find—.”

Giles' body shook violently as Xander held him as tightly as he could. “Stop talking!” He begged. “It’s killing you.”

Giles' head lolled to one side as he whispered. "Willow is a whore!"

"What the hell are you talking about!"

"Vampires beware of Shemhazi!." shouted Giles, and then he suddenly fell back onto the sofa's armrest, eyes closed shut and breathing shallow.

Xander took the cloth from his brow and dropped it into the pot of cold water. Then he grabbed the book from the tabletop and opened it to the first of the marked passages. Quickly, he recited the verse from Leviticus. After completing the verse, he immediately flipped to the last chapter of Ecclesiastes. Then to make certain he'd gotten it right, he started from the beginning and repeated each verse three times in sequence.

By the end of the third chant, Xander was panting. He placed the book on the table and looked at Giles. He wasn't dead. That was of the good, thought Xander as he stood up slowly and walked to Giles' weapons chest. It was open. He pushed aside an axe, a small sword and a half-dozen wooden stakes before unearthing the volume of the Zy Qasdor he was looking for. He then dropped to the floor and crossed his legs beneath him as he flipped open the book. He skimmed the pages as quickly as he could, knowing that he didn't have time to absorb the entire history of the portal jumper. He had to figure out why Dawn was the only way the portal jumper could get to his special dimension. He also had to find out why Giles had called Willow a whore. Willow had more power than anything on Earth. He'd seen that when he'd looked into her heart. But that didn't make her a whore.

Xander rocked back and forth. The soothing motion quieted his thoughts. He wanted to rest, but he had to keep thinking. Giles had sprung the word Shemhazi on him and he had no idea who or what that was. And what did vampires have to do with any of it? Damn, he thought. No matter what, the biggest danger to his friends always seemed to involve a goddamned vampire.

He opened the volume of the Zy Qasdor to the illustration of Glorificus and the portal jumper and carefully examined their eyes. Maybe he'd be able to see what Giles had seen if he concentrated really hard.

to be continued…