“Well?” The Ferret focused his cold gaze on Ethan.
“It’s not going well, dear chap,” Ethan admitted. “I’ve managed to immunise myself against the spell but that’s about all.” He uttered a nervous little laugh. “It seems that a substantial degree of magical talent is necessary to resist it even with assistance from another sorcerer. Or insanity, of course, but that’s not really a lot of help.”
The Ferret’s brows lowered. “Insanity? Elaborate.”
“Well, I’ve discovered that the insane can see and recognise the Key, old chap, but I can’t see how that could be any use to you. We can hardly traipse around Central Europe with a madman in tow.”
A grin spread across The Ferret’s face. “Perhaps you might be onto something. Could an insane mind hold onto the memories?”
“I suppose so,” Ethan said. His forehead furrowed. “I don’t follow. How could this possibly help?”
“They say that Alaattin Berberoglu is crazy,” The Ferret said. “He’s known as the Mad Turk. I’ve done business with him before and I’d say that the name is well deserved. And he runs one of the biggest of the Turkish Mafia gangs. He could get me all the muscle I’d need.”
Ethan swallowed. “Is that wise? Going into partnership with an insane gangster?”
“I’m not going to take on the Watchers’ Council without plenty of back-up,” The Ferret said. “To deal with Slayers we need gunmen. Berberoglu can provide them. We won’t need to tell them reasons. If he tells them to obey me they will, even if they don’t know what’s going on, and so the spell won’t matter.” His eyes narrowed but his mouth remained fixed in a mirthless grin. “And if he’s crazy enough to try double-crossing me then we’ll just have to teach him the error of his ways. But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. First we have to locate the Key.”
“Prague,” Ethan said. “That’s where we should start.”
“Indeed,” The Ferret agreed. “You go on ahead. I’ll meet you there after a little side trip to Istanbul.”
It was surprising, Dawn mused, lying still drowsy beside a sleeping Spike, how quickly one adjusted to a non-breathing bed-mate and requesting hotel rooms based on which ones were most likely to be in shadow for much of the day. She moved a little, preparing to get out of the warm bed, and immediately Spike was awake, reaching out and catching her by the wrist. Dawn stuck out her tongue but kept moving, saying “I’m going to the bathroom, but I guess we don’t need to go down to breakfast just yet…” Spike grinned, released her, and answered “Don’t take too long or I’ll start without you.” He threw back the duvet and revealed a cock already fully erect.
Dawn paused on the edge of the bed and asked “How come, as you really do sleep the sleep of the dead, your cock wakes up before you do?”
“Dunno, pet,” Spike answered, and then grinned, “You’re the bloody Watcher – you’re supposed to know all the theory, I’m just a thicko vampire! Tell you what – you can spend the next couple of weeks researching it, and write a report when we get back.”
“I just might!” Dawn retorted, and headed to the bathroom.
An hour and a couple of orgasms later they headed downstairs to breakfast. The hotel website had shown the dining-room as being some sort of a cellar, and therefore totally devoid of windows, and a quick check when they had booked in the previous evening showed that the way through the lobby would be sunlight free as well, and so Spike was able to stroll down nonchalantly with Dawn.
Before they left their room, Spike had asked Dawn what she would do if they saw their ‘audience’ of the previous night at breakfast.
“Blush, probably,” Dawn had answered. Her body remaining permanently as it had been at twenty did have its up-side, now that she was used to it, but her tendency to still blush annoyed her greatly. “Then smile innocently, and bat my eye-lashes at him!” she had finished with a grin.
She was still quite relieved not to see the man in question as she followed the good-looking young waiter who led them across the room to an empty table.
Suddenly, as they neared the table, Dawn felt very odd. She felt as if she was totally detached from her surroundings, the people and tables all seemed out of focus, and the sounds of breakfast seemed as muffled as if she was underwater. Then, quite clearly, she heard a male voice calling out urgently in a language she did not know “Soustředit! Soustředit!”
Her skin tingled and she stopped, unable to move, for what could have been seconds or hours; and then she felt the cool touch of Spike’s fingers on her wrist and heard him call her name from a long way away. Concentrating on his fingers, as if there was nothing else in the world, Dawn slowly lifted first one foot and then the other until she had taken a couple of steps and then everything swung back into focus.
She realized that Spike was looking at her with concern, and she shook herself slightly, gave him a lop-sided smile, and continued to follow the waiter to a table. As the young man explained the intricacies of the breakfast buffet to them, Dawn tried to concentrate. Spike, on the other hand, clearly wasn’t listening at all, and chased the waiter away with a very hard look, and a demand for good strong coffee ‘Now!’
“You OK? What happened?” Spike asked Dawn as soon as the waiter left them.
“I’m fine… I think,” Dawn answered. “But everything went a bit strange there – as if all this,” she waved vaguely around her, “was a long way away, and not quite real.”
Spike cocked his head slightly, looked back to the place where Dawn had stopped, and then his gaze swept the whole room. “Was the dead centre of the place,” he said, after a few moments thought, and then he continued “’S not an old wine cellar at all, is it? It’s the bloody undercroft – the crypts – it’s under where the chapel must have been. If I had something precious I wanted to keep safely out of sight, I think this would be the place, eh?”
Dawn still felt a little shaky but she looked around her; no longer looking at her fellow guests, to spot their voyeur of the previous night, but looking at their surroundings. Rather than the rough plaster that she might have expected from a cellar, the walls were well finished and smooth. Around the room was a faded frieze, showing that the plaster was not new, but had obviously been left to add an ‘authentic’ atmosphere.
She studied the words around the wall and recognized them as Latin. Before she had a chance to try and read it the waiter returned with the coffee and Spike poured her a cup out saying “Drink up, pet, calm you down.”
‘Only Spike would suggest coffee to calm someone down,’ thought Dawn, suitably distracted.
She didn’t really look closely at the walls again until she had filled a plate from the buffet. Basic Latin had been part of her degree at Edinburgh – it was almost essential for a Watcher to read Latin – and quickly she began to make out words and phrases once she got used to the ornate script.
A shiver ran up her spine. “Spike,” she said, “you did Latin at school, right? Can you still read it?”
Spike did not give her a straightforward answer but looked over his shoulder slightly, focused on the script on the wall at which Dawn was looking, and read it out quietly. “Et quintus angelus tuba cecinit et vidi stellam de caelo cecidisse in terram et data est illi clavis putei abyssi… Then the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star from heaven which had fallen to the earth; and the key of the bottomless pit was given to him.” He paused. “Revelation, Chapter 9.”
Dawn looked at him but said nothing. It didn’t really surprise her that he recognized biblical quotations in Latin, she had a feeling that both Latin and Bible study had been more or less compulsory when he was at school, but his confirmation of the meaning of what she had read made her feel slightly sick.
As she looked around the words ‘clavis’ and ‘clavium’ seemed to be jumping at her from every side, and she could also see ‘ardor’ – brightness – in a couple of places. Spike seemed to be reading the frieze carefully as well.
Dawn’s mouth was too dry to speak and, just as Spike was opening his mouth to speak to her, the waiter stopped by to check if everything was alright.
“Interesting place,” Spike said to him in reply. “What do the words round the walls mean?”
The waiter looked around as if he had never really noticed them before, and then said “Something about God, I guess – it used to be a monastery, you know?”
Once the young man was out of ear-shot Spike reached over, stroked Dawn’s hand briefly, and said “See? Even if you work looking at them every day you don’t wonder what they mean. And do you see anyone else at all taking any notice of the walls?”
Dawn had to admit that no-one seemed to be in the least interested and, after a couple of deep breaths, she tackled her breakfast.
Over a second cup of coffee, she suggested that they come back down later and take photos of the walls to send back to Giles, in case there were any nuances that they might miss by just copying everything down.
“Bet if we do no-one will take any notice. Either that, or they’ll forget it later, or consider it such a normal request that you’d think people did it all the time,” Spike said, and Dawn had to agree he was probably right.
By the time they left their table Dawn felt more or less back to normal but she carefully skirted around the edge of the room, just in case, avoiding the centre. Near the door she saw a familiar face and had regained her equilibrium enough to wink at the guy from the night before as she caught his eye. She looked around at Spike just in time to see him give the guy an overly toothy grin.
The train journey had been long but at least it had been comfortable. The ‘Kopernicus’ sleeper from Cologne to Prague was modern and luxurious. Not that luxury had anything to do with his reason for taking the train; it was the two automatic pistols in his suitcase that had ruled out air travel.
Ethan couldn’t help feeling a stab of nervousness as he handed over the suitcase to the hotel’s driver. He controlled himself, forced a smile to his face, and followed the man out of Hlavni Nazdradi station towards the waiting Skoda Superb. He walked along briskly, swinging his attaché case, just another businessman visiting the city for a meeting and possibly some recreation whilst he was here. There was absolutely nothing about him that could possibly arouse suspicion.
Until the world went away.
The rumble of a train pulling out of the station suddenly went silent. There was no roar of traffic from the street. Only a faint rushing noise as of a far-off waterfall. The station suddenly seemed faint and insubstantial. Ethan stopped in mid-stride. He opened his mind, probing, searching. A distant voice, barely perceptible, cried out ‘Soustředit! Soustředit!’ and then fell silent. He felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck.
“It’s here,” Ethan exclaimed. “Back where it was created. Causing interference patterns. Ripples. ‘I have written Gandalf is here in signs that all can read from Rivendell to the mouths of Anduin.’ It’s here. In Prague.” He giggled.
“Sir? You are all right?”
The world was suddenly back as it had been. The air held the scent of coffee and the tang of exhaust fumes. The rattle of the train on the tracks was receding into the distance and the noise of traffic on the road dominated. The hotel driver had set the suitcase down and was looking at Ethan with an expression of concern upon his face.
“Ah, yes, thank you,” Ethan said. “Merely tired after an extremely long journey. I’ll be very glad to get to the hotel.”
The driver blinked several times. He looked from side to side and then stared down at the suitcase. His brows furrowed and he snatched up the case. “Your pardon, sir,” he said. “I take you to the car.”
Ethan grinned. It appeared that the driver had forgotten all about the incident. The cloaking spell appeared to be acting to Ethan’s advantage for a change. “Lead on, old chap, lead on,” he said, and he followed the man to the car.
His mind was racing as the car drove towards the hotel. The Key was in Prague. This wasn’t just going to be a preliminary investigation. The target was within reach. Should he try to snatch it for himself? The Ferret killed people who crossed him, of course, and Ethan wasn’t a young man any more. He didn’t fancy spending the rest of his life looking over his shoulder for a ruthless magician backed up by the Turkish Mafia. Also the Key would be well guarded, even in Prague, and the Watchers’ Council wouldn’t hand it over without a fight. That side of things could be left to the Turks. Then he and The Ferret would reap the rewards.
If a later opportunity arose to take the Key for his own use then all bets would be off; but for now he would play things straight. Once at the hotel he would make a telephone call to Istanbul. The game, to use a phrase long obsolete, was afoot.