Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Cult - Printer Friendly Version
New Order - A Buffy the Vampire Slayer novella
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Prologue
Sunnydale, California - 1937
The Master gently ran his pale, clawed hand across the wall that surrounded the altar of the abandoned church. A thick accumulation of dust, mould and dirt fell away to reveal the faded, painted image of a golden cross with a beautiful white dove in flight above it.
The vampire lord averted his eyes from the holy symbol. "I wonder if the devoted will still retain their faith when their pathetic reality is torn asunder and the Great Old Ones return to reclaim that which once belonged to them?"
Across the broad, circular chamber, Lorimer - one of those in the upper hierarchy of the Order of Aurelius who had been gifted with the title of Deacon - looked to his master briefly and then returned to his task. He was busy making certain that the body of the dead eight-year-old girl with the curly blonde hair and pink lace party dress was sitting up straight.
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"Who's to say?" he grumbled as he tried unsuccessfully to keep the child's head from lolling to one side. "The humans often prove themselves to be anything but predictable."
With a disgusted sigh, Lorimer turned his attention to two other dead children propped in wooden chairs beside the first: another girl perhaps a few years older and a cherubic, dark-haired boy no older than six.
The Master moved gracefully across the altar toward his Deacon. Others in the Order busily working within the chamber scuttled from his path and averted their eyes.
"Lorimer, do I hear the taint of displeasure in your tone?" He stopped beside the vampire who continued to fuss with the children's corpses. "Is there something you wish to share with me?"
The general stood and brushed dirt from his knees, made eye contact, then quickly looked away. "It is nothing, my lord."
The Master reached out and gently stroked his servant's chin with long, spidery fingers. "Come now, Lorimer," he urged. "We've been through far too much together to keep secrets now."
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Lorimer slowly gazed into his master's eyes. The Master could sense the others watching, listening, waiting for the general to speak his mind.
"It is nothing, my master - only that... " Lorimer shook his head and again looked away. "Perhaps now is not the time."
The Master chuckled, a low rumbling sound that came from somewhere deep in his throat. "Faithful Lorimer, now is as good a time as any. Please, share with me the cause of your grief," he cajoled. "What upsets you also upsets me."
Lorimer pointed to the three dead children sitting in the chairs upon the altar. "This, this is what displeases me - the waste of it." Lorimer's stomach gurgled. He clutched at his belly and looked to his master with embarrassment. "We are starving, and here sit three delicious morsels whose lives were snuffed out not with fang but with a feather pillow as they slept. I know they are an important facet of the ceremony but surely the Old Ones would not deny us sustenance as we prepare to restore them to power."
The Master shook his head and clucked with disappointment. "The youth of today have no appreciation for ritual." He placed his hands behind his back and began to pace. "The fast that I imposed upon the Order is to purify and cleanse your spirit, for you are soon to be in the presence of gods."
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His voice echoed throughout the chamber and his followers shuddered and flinched to hear it. "Imagine my embarrassment if the Old Ones were to be greeted by an Order of the Aurelius stinking of human cattle." The Master touched his chest with a clawed hand. "How do you think that would reflect upon me?"
Lorimer bowed his head in respect. "Then why do you tempt us so with the likes of these?"
The Master stopped pacing and glared at him. "Must I explain everything? The ritual to sunder the Hellmouth is a complex one and special guidance is required if we are to be successful." He approached the children. "These three shall be the instruments for this counsel." The Master patted each upon the head. "Three untainted vessels are needed to communicate with those who wait beyond the veil."
Lorimer fell to his knees in front of him. "It was not my intention to question your greatness, Master. It is just that we are so hungry... "
The others upon the altar quickly looked away, suddenly concerned with their individual tasks.
The vampire lord raised his hand for silence then motioned for the Deacon to rise. "That will be enough, Lorimer. There will be no grovelling on this extraordinary day."
Lorimer climbed to his feet as his master came to him. "You are most merciful, my lord."
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The Master smiled, sidling closer. "It's quite all right."
He reached up and again stroked Lorimer's chin, gently at first, but then grabbed it firmly in his clawed grasp and turned it to face him. Viciously he wrenched the vampire's jaw to one side and then the other. Lorimer shrieked as the flesh tore and the bone cracked and his lower jaw was ripped from his face.
"Just don't let it become a habit."
The Master tossed the bleeding mandible into the Deacon's waiting arms. As Lorimer attempted to reattach the section of his damaged face, his tongue flapped about, gruesomely exposed. Blood spurted from the terrible wound and sprayed across the altar - and the pale faces of the three dead children. The Master was just about to reprimand the Deacon for making a mess when he noticed the slightest bit of movement behind one of the corpse's closed eyes.
As if awakened from sleep by the falling of a gentle rain, each of the dead children opened its eyes to reveal sockets filled with darkest ebony.
The Master smiled beneath their bottomless gaze. "Ah. From the mouths of babes. I see that we are now in the presence of greatness."
Although her mouth did not move, the little girl in the party dress was the first to address him. "Heinrich Joseph Nest," she said in a guttural language older than recorded history, "we have come to help you pave the way for our return."
"The ritual must be performed precisely," said the second child. "Only then will the barrier between worlds be torn away so we might again walk the earth."
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The Master was nearly overwhelmed with a wave of nostalgia. He bowed his head in obeisance to his ancient deities. "It has always been my most fervent desire to serve the true masters of the world. May I be so bold as to ask with whom among the great Old Ones I now speak?"
The eye sockets of the child in the party dress glimmered as if filled with jet-black ink. "I am Laibach, him who brought the blood rains to Markatha-Vol, him who crushed the armies of Gaorg the Usurper and fed upon the virgins of -"
"No dancing this day," a screeching voice interrupted, issuing from the little boy seated at the end. "A time for rejoicing it will not be."
"Silence, Ereshkigal!" Laibach bellowed. "Your words of disparagement are not welcome here!"
"Gigim-Kutu will hear no more of this loathsome prattling," the third demon snarled through the lips of the eldest child. "Now is the time for readiness, now is the time for ritual, now is the time to make it all ours once more."
The Master sidestepped Lorimer, who still stumbled about trying to correct his face, and calmly walked to the centre of the altar. He positioned himself within an intricate circle upon the wooden floor. It had been laid there earlier, constructed of a fine white powder derived from the pulverized bones of a demon prince who had once succeeded in opening the Hellmouth - if only for an instant.
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The vampire lord faced the three dead children, vessels for the ancient gods. "I couldn't agree more. The time for ritual is now. Who of the three will guide me?" he asked as he spread his arms wide in invitation.
Laibach was the first to respond. "It will be I, vampire. Laibach shall lead the way to our unholy supremacy."
"Splendid," the Master said, rubbing his hands slowly together in relish. He turned within the circle to see if his servants were ready. The Order of Aurelius stood prepared, many holding ancient texts that would be required as the Master slowly peeled away the bothersome obstacles of reality to unlock the door that was the Hellmouth.
"All is in readiness," he said with a razor sharp grin filled with confidence, "let us begin."
A vampire wearing scarlet robes embroidered with gold brocade approached the Master with an enormous text bound in the flesh of a great, scaled beast. The lackey bowed in reverence, handed the book to him and stepped away. Holding the book in both hands, the Master lifted the cover. He listened to the binding crack as an aroma of ages long gone wafted up to entice his heightened senses. It was the smell of knowledge lost for countless millennia that excited him, the scent of the forbidden.
The Master began to read aloud from the ancient text, his voice booming in the cavernous, dilapidated house of God. As he recited the lines written in a language not spoken in thousands of years, he looked out over the church to see his followers sitting in the pews, their eyes locked on him in rapt attention.
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This is what the Order has been waiting for, he thought, ancient words spilling from his lips. This was his moment to fulfil his promise to them. In a matter of minutes, the Order of Aurelius would walk beside gods of old and the world would tremble in their shadow. They would be king of this fleshy realm, not merely over humans, but over demons and other vampires as well.
"Enunciate," Laibach ordered angrily from its vessel of tender flesh, curly blonde hair and pink lace. "If the words are not properly spoken it will all be for naught!"
The Master glowered at the child's corpse and continued, paying even closer attention to the pronunciation of the ancient words that danced from his tongue.
"It will not be," Ereshkigal shrieked from within the boy child. "Can you not sense it? Can you not feel the tremble in the air? No. It is not the time, not the time at all."
The vampire lord continued to read, looking to Laibach for an explanation of Ereshkigal's lack of faith.
"Pay him no mind," Gigim-Kutu responded, the black eyes in the skull of the eldest child bulging as if to pop. "I sense the end to an infinity of waiting. The barrier - it tears beneath my claws. Read on, vampire. Read on and make us free."
The Master paused, exhausted. He closed the tome and handed it to a follower who waited at his side. Another had come up on his other side, this one adorned in robes of blue, and placed a scroll in his hands.
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"Fortify yourself, Nest," urged the demon Laibach, "we are closer now than ever before."
This is it, he thought, and carefully unwound the final piece needed to open the Hellmouth. He looked down upon the yellowed surface of the scroll, at the letters written in blood countless millennia ago. The Master cleared his parched throat and in a voice filled with renewed vigour, began to read.
"Excellent," cooed Laibach. "Only a matter of moments."
The Master read with power, looking out over his congregation, their expressions of adulation and expectation spurring him toward completion. But he had to be careful, each word had to be recited precisely or the barriers would remain strong.
The air was charged with an unearthly energy the likes of which he had never encountered before. His undead flesh tingled as he began to read the last section of verse scrawled upon the timeworn parchment. How can the demon Ereshkigal mistake this for anything but sweet victory? he thought with glee.
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"So close," Laibach gurgled contentedly. "So very close."
The floor began to vibrate. The Master looked up, cold heart thrilling at the notion that the barriers had begun to fall. He wanted to scream his joy to the heavens, to proclaim that goodness and light would soon be crushed beneath his boot, torn under his fangs.
Another tremor passed beneath the church and ancient, dust covered chandeliers began to sway. He frowned in confusion. Excitement bled to fear across his followers' faces.
Something was wrong.
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"Keep reading!" Laibach screamed as an even greater quake rocked the structure.The church began to crumble.
The floor beneath his feet shifted and the Master lost his balance, fell to his knees. The scroll dropped from his hands and slid across the uneven floor. Bits of ceiling rained down as the tremors became more sustained, growing in intensity.
Laibach grew more frantic. "Damn your soulless hide!" The Old One screamed. "Pick up the scroll and finish what you started!"
The Master scrambled to snatch at the scroll as the floor bucked and heaved beneath him.
"It is too late," muttered Ereshkigal, his voice fading as he began to depart the earthly plane. "As was foretold, our time has not yet come. Another time, perhaps. Another time."
On his knees, the Master of the Order of Aurelius again held the scroll open before him. His eyes moved over the text, trying to find the point from which he had been interrupted.
"The barrier, it bends beneath my assault - but it does not yield!" Gigim-Kutu whined.
The Master read as the church fell down around him and his followers fled into the night. Some were crushed beneath the weight of falling mortar as the earth rebelled against them.
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The Master struggled to his feet as what remained of the once holy building began to sink beneath the earth.
"What is happening?" he asked of Laibach. "How can this be?"
The body of the girl in the pink party dress had toppled from its chair and now lay limply upon the altar, her once pretty features pressed obscenely to the floor.
"The earth has delivered a most destructive blow," the elder demon said sadly. "As the barriers began to fall so did the wrath of nature."
Lorimer panicked before the altar, a macabre jester with one hand holding his bloody jaw against his face as though it might be possible to repair it. A thunderous crack split the air above him and a ceiling beam snapped in two like so much kindling, plummeting to impale the body of the Deacon, pinning him to the floor. The Master watched as his faithful servant exploded into dust, his remains mixing with the falling detritus that rained down from the crumbling ceiling.
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The town of Sunnydale was in utter chaos. Cracks appeared in roadways and buildings were torn apart, a falling smokestack crushed a car that had braked to a halt on the Shore Road. The ground bucked and shook and people ran screaming for shelter beneath tables and beds and the narrow, presumed safety of doorways.
In the clock shop owned by Arthur Harris, all of the time pieces - new merchandise for sale and old clocks brought in for repair - had chimed in unison just before the ground began to shake. Now the walls split and the glass windows at the front of the shop shattered, clocks were shaken off shelves and crashed to the floor, exploding into pieces, and the terrified proprietor was thrown from his feet. He fell to the surging floor onto his knees and a grandfather clock tumbled over on top of him, pinning him there and breaking his right arm and three ribs.
China cabinets vomited their precious contents, now merely shards, school desks turned over, cars collided, telephone poles crashed down onto streets and homes and stores. Terror reigned.
In his quaking office inside City Hall, Mayor Richard Wilkins Sr. crouched under his desk, a deep and angry frown creasing his forehead. "I didn't authorise this," the Mayor muttered.
Back where it had all started, the Master roared in fury.
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The church moaned in protest as the earth shifted and pulled it deeper and deeper beneath the ground. The light from the stars in the night sky crept in from the shattered stained glass windows and gradually winked out as earth and rock obscured them. The church had been swallowed whole.
His plans usurped, the Master gazed frantically about him, trying to save the texts and scrolls needed to complete the ritual.
"This is not over," he muttered as he gathered the materials that he had toiled so long and killed so many to acquire. He glanced a final time at the vessel of flesh that had once housed the elder demon and took his leave of the altar. "Another place, another time, great Laibach. This I swear."
The Master struck something solid and recoiled away from it. It was as though something had been placed in his path. He snarled savagely and again attempted to leave the collapsing church. When he collided with the obstruction this time he was repelled backward. In growing rage the vampire lord dropped the multiple volumes and scrolls at his feet and with fangs bared threw himself at what halted his escape from the sinking church. He struck the invisible barrier but it did not yield.
"What magic is this?" the vampire hissed. Again he slammed against the obstacle with all his supernatural might - but to no avail.
The Master looked to the body of the little girl for guidance. "Are you still here, great Laibach? What is happening?" He continued to push at the invisible impediment.
The eyes of the child, which had closed, languidly opened to again reveal orbs of liquid black. "We were so close, Heinrich Joseph Nest," the Elder intoned, "closer than ever before."
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"What is it?" the vampire pleaded. "What keeps me in this crumbling house of worship? Tell me, damn you!"
A bubbling gurgle escaped the child's body before the demon responded. "Rein in your tongue now, for you speak to your true Master now. We have been thwarted for the moment, and badly. For a brief instant the barriers began to fall and the world that was once ours beckoned - but as Ereshkigal pronounced, it was not our time."
The Master strode over to the body of the child and lifted it from the ground by the front of the pretty party dress. He shook the limp body viciously, glaring into the eyes of shiny black.
"Why can I not leave this place?"
"You dare much, Nest."
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"I am ever your humble servant," the Master replied, forcing himself to be calm, yet still his lips curled back to reveal his fangs. "I trust you'll forgive my frustration, but if you don't... well, it appears we'll both have to be patient while awaiting your next opportunity to punish me for my cheek. Now what the Hell happened?"
"As the barriers fell, the earth quaked and the rite of passage was disrupted - but not before trapping you between worlds," the demon explained. "Fitting, perhaps. We are both denied our freedom now."
The Master again shook the child. Its head flopped about like that of a rag doll. "What do you mean, trapped? If I did not succeed how can I be trapped?"
The child's eyes gradually closed as Laibach answered. "The barrier began to open, then sealed itself again. You filled the gap like a cork stuck in a bottle." The Elder's voice trailed off as the demon discarded the vessel that had allowed it to communicate. "So close," it said, the voice barely audible.
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With the girl's body clutched beneath his arm, the Master strode toward the barrier. Bits of ceiling and wood rained down upon him but he did not notice. Again he pushed at the preternatural obstacle that blocked his way, desperate to escape.
"Great Laibach... how can I be set free? Tell me," the Master pleaded.
The voice was faint, all but a whisper as it passed over the lips of the dead child. "In time," the elder demon hissed. "In time."