DRUSILLAS REDEMPTION Chapter Eighteen She came to him in the wee small hours before sunrise and lay in his arms, contented as a cat. An underlying tension had left her body, he could tell, and Drusilla cuddled happily against him like a predator protecting its cub. But as night traded its dark mantle for the vivid colours of dawn, he felt her stiffen. Outside, a few yards from their hut, the fetisheur had gently keeled over. As he died, Drusilla’s eyes opened wide and she saw... She shot to her feet with the speed of a bird in flight. “Xander! Xander!” “Honey, it’s four o’clock in the morning…” He rolled over and looked at her as she fluttered around the room, hands flapping in the old familiar way and hair askew. “The doctor has died,” she keened. “The slayer must wake! If she doesn’t open her eyes, our bones the devil will bake!” She ran out of the doorway and across the clearing to the slayer’s hut without further ado, almost colliding with some sleepy children on their way to make their toilet. Xander wearily pulled his pants on and followed her. Life with Dru was never boring, he reflected, and when she got an idea in her head it was like trying to control a runaway cannonball. He trudged into the slayer’s monastic cell to see a scene straight out of an old etching of colonial life. The vampire sat in the pose of The Thinker, staring at the sleeping girl as the earliest hints of golden light mixed with brown blankets and white walls to evoke a study in washed-out sepia. But the tableau was not a peaceful one. Again and again, the slayer’s hand clutched at the blanket covering her body. Drusilla knew madness like a lover, and she could feel the slayer was poised to fall into the pit of insanity. After a long pause, for time does not move fast in Africa, she turned to Xander. No impish twinkle of hope or laughter sparkled in her eyes, and he knew what that meant. “I can’t wake her, my love, and the doctor is gone. I don’t have his grasp of magic. I am not powerful enough to stop it. Tonight the demon will claim us.” He stood at her side, feeling oddly calm as she took his hand. He’d tried to find himself in the African jungle, but all he was going to come face to face with was his death. He was an American. Despite everything he’d seen behind the semi-detached suburban façade of Sunnydale, despite most of the good ol’ USA seeming to be on antidepressant meds, he was virtually programmed to be optimistic, to believe there was always a solution, always some tidy answer to the problems of the world the way a TV show’s conflicts were always wrapped up cleanly at the end of an episode. He’d sometimes been irritated by British negativity, but now he realised a lot of it was just realism. Sunnydale might have looked a lot more like Peyton Place than the Congo did, but both localities were part of the real world, red in tooth and claw, and there were no easy answers to the questions they posed. “Then this is the end,” he said, “and if it really is the end, I’ll face it with you, my only friend.” “Aren’t those Jim Morrison’s lyrics?” she asked curiously. “Yeah. I think he played Woodstock.” “No. Spike and I were there. He cancelled at the last minute. Pity.” She giggled suddenly and licked her lips. “I really wanted to eat him.” Xander couldn’t help snickering. Here they were, facing certain death, and now all he could think about was Dru doing it with Jim Morrison. They both laughed and he hugged her. Then they started looking for a way to cheat their fates, but the horns of the bull were encircling them ever tighter and they could see no avenue of escape. Rain burst from the clouds like grapeshot later that morning, and Xander hustled a blanket-covered Drusilla across to the church to take morning tea with the sister. The old lady watched the falling water hitting the steaming ground as the three odd companions carried out the ritual of milk, sugar and biscuits. Then she looked directly at Drusilla. “I am tired of living a life of unquestioning faith,” she said. “If it really is all coming to an end, I would like to know how it all began.” Drusilla put her hands to her temples and managed to sway while sitting down. “Those who told the tales are long lost and far away, ma Mère. They left no writings, but every vampire knows their words. Must I tell you? They are true, but they tear the Bible’s pages.” “Truth is truth, my child. I do not want to meet my maker without it.” Drusilla sat up straight with the good posture of the well-bred Victorian girl, clasped her hands demurely and began to recite. “First there were the Old Ones, demons of power and thunder who made this earth a hell of fire and sulphur for aeons without end. Then they faded away from this transitory plane like mist on a February morn, and out of Africa came mortal Man.” “Which part of Africa?” asked Xander suspiciously. Drusilla cocked her head towards the ceiling, as if listening to the stars. “From the abyss. The rift. The great valley of the ancients, so Solomon says.” “The Great Rift Valley, you mean?” said the sister, fascinated. “Where’s that?” asked Xander, wishing he’d paid more attention in history class. “About six hundred miles east of here,” the sister replied. “Before he ascended,” Dru intoned, “the last pure demon fed upon a woman called Lilith who dwelt in the Rift Valley. He possessed her, infecting her human body with the essence of a demon.” “So this Lilith became the first vampire?” said Xander. Drusilla smiled brightly. “Yes, dear. You might say I am a daughter of Lilith.” “There is mention of a Lilith in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Talmud,” the sister mused, “and the Kabbalah says Lilith’s soul was lodged in the depths of a great abyss. The abyss could have been the Great Rift Valley. It’s also said that Lilith was created to be Adam’s first wife, but she ran away. After he slew Abel, Adam’s son Cain found her and lived with her in a land to the east of Eden” “Lilith dwelt with Cain in the Rift Valley, east of this Eden,” Dru said in agreement. “Together they sired a race of vampires. Half-breed demons. Pariahs. Welcome in neither the house of the human nor the demon,” she finished glumly. Xander’s head was spinning. Adam’s first wife had been turned, set up home with his son in Africa and created a vampire race who wandered about like a bunch of stateless refugees? He kept his mouth tightly shut, but felt a certain blasphemous relief that at least he and Dru weren’t the first human and vampire to try living together. In fact, Cain and Lilith set a pretty big precedent. Drusilla’s eyes swivelled towards his and he realised she’d read his mind. She gave him a quick, private smile and went on. “Pockets of the Old Ones’ demonic power still lingered in and around the Rift Valley. So sorcerors called Shadowmen chained a girl up in a cave near the Rift, infused her with the Old Ones’ power in order to fight the vampires, and created the first slayer.” “I get it,” said Xander. “And this particular pocket – the well of the slayers’ power - isn’t just in Africa. It’s right next door to us in Africa.” “Yes,” said Drusilla, sanely and soberly. “And it’s very easily affronted. First, it was angered by the spell the Scoobies cast to defeat Adam. Then it was infuriated by the activation of all the potential slayers. Now, the presence of this slayer and of one of the Scoobies who originally angered it has roused it to white-hot fury. It won’t show any mercy. Not to the slayer. Not to the children. And not to us.” “You have come right back to your beginnings,” the sister said quietly to Drusilla. “To your garden of Eden. And this is where it ends.” “What do we do now?” said Drusilla, quite bereft of ideas. Xander took her hand. “Fight,” he said. “How?” asked the sister. He tried to think of something, then he slowly realised he had no tidy answer, no solution. No choice but to accept their fate with dignity. “I don’t know,” he said aloud. “I don’t know.” He smiled crookedly at his Dru and knew she understood. That made it all worthwhile. He’d only had a short life, but he’d loved a good woman and she’d made of him a man. He was grateful she would be with him at the end. He tried to imagine going on without her, and couldn’t do it. To live on without seeing Dru’s gentle smile in the mornings, that would be worse than death. So they sat round the table in silence, waiting for the terrible hours of the night. The sister, somehow still serene, sipped her tea. An old clock, secure in its dark wood casement, ticked quietly in the corner, counting down towards zero like the clock in the council’s ready room had, only a few short days before. Xander and the sister were at ease, but Drusilla found her eyes drawn to the clockwork machine. She could hear every movement of the machinery and every tick seemed louder. She was the negative Briton who should accept it was really the end, but it was she who was feeling a sense of rebellion welling up inside while he, the brash American, seemed to have become the passive philosopher. Drusilla, scared of the dark… Drusilla, petrified of flying… Drusilla, clueless about machines… Drusilla, terrified of losing Xander… Tick. Tick. Tick… Ooooooooh..! She shot to her feet, boiling with power and rage, and stamped out onto the porch, inches from the edge of shadow and able to see the sky, the children and the shield. She felt her skin prickling in the heat, the rage from within equalling the burning pain from without. She knew whispers of smoke were beginning to rise from her body, and she did not care. She heard Xander walk up behind her and try to draw her back a little into the dark, and she fought him, thrashing like a squalling infant who just wasn’t gonna do what Daddy said! She saw Samuel, the little boy, detach himself from the crowd of children and walk towards her with the sombre face of a prophet or a seer. She met his eyes, and started in surprise when she saw they were older and wiser than hers. He came up onto the porch and held his arms out to her. Or rather, he held out two arms and one hand. His left arm ended in a stump halfway up the forearm. She had never noticed now carefully he concealed it. Never realised quite how much pain there was in this place. “A bunch of guerilla fighters passed through his village a couple of years ago,” said Xander. “No one even knows which side they were on. Neither did they, probably. They gang raped his mother and his twelve-year-old sister. When he raised a hand to stop them, they cut it off.” She took his remaining hand in hers, then found herself hugging Samuel with a strength even she did not know she possessed. She turned to Xander and looked at his single eye. Her lower lip was quivering and she was near to tears, but she held his gaze. “Lilith was a killer of children and so was I. I won’t let any more children be hurt. I just won’t. It has to stop sometime. I don’t know how I’ll do it and I don’t care, but he’s my child. They’re all my children, and I’ll not let them die.” She saw the pride in her kitten’s one remaining eye. “So, what’cha wanna do, Dru?” he said, almost nonchalantly. “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition,” she spat. “It’s time I speared the devil in the face!”
Posted on: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 23:18:22 +0000
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