Rating: R
Author: Trekker
Pairing: Ethan/OMC, mostly gen
Fandom: Buffy
Ethan pulled his trenchcoat a little closer around himself and edged just a bit closer to the wall, getting deeper into the shadows. It wasn't difficult to do given that this bar, if it could even be called that, was almost exclusively shadows... which was a plus, since what he could see of the place--sagging furniture, crumbling walls, all occupied by a host of creatures that nearly defied categorization--he'd rather he couldn't. He breathed shallowly through his mouth, trying not to smell the stench. He risked a glance towards the door, then ducked his head again. Behind him, in the next booth, a Sluggoth demon recounted his latest mass murder, in detail.
"Man," it said, loud with enthusiasm, "If I saw a human right now, I'd eat his head off, and floss with his spine."
Ethan cringed. The Sluggoth's companions roared approval. Ethan leaned back, just enough to glance down at his watch. His contact was late. He pressed his hands together between his knees to stop their unseemly shaking. As soon as he walked in and seen the mounted human skull holding pride of place over the bar like a stuffed moose head in a human establishment, he'd known that it would probably be best not to meet this contact at all, but Jackie the Red had one hell of a reputation--rather literally--and lately Ethan's own reputation needed all the help it could get.
Still, he was plotting how to best leave the room without drawing any attention when, finally, the table rattled and he looked up to find himself sitting across from a slim, well-dressed man. Or, rather, a slim, well-dressed vampire. Ethan blinked. Armani suits had not been quite what he'd been expecting. Though the bracelet around the vampire's left wrist, which at first seemed to be ivory but on closer inspection seemed to instead be human teeth, seemed more in character.
"Mr. Rayne, I assume?"
"Ah, yes, that's me," Ethan said. He flicked his gaze to the side and saw a large Fyarl demon had parked itself beside their table, with its arms folded across its massive, scaly chest. Ethan put on a smile. "Friend of yours?" he asked the Red.
The Red's smile seemed equally fake. "In a place like this, a man can't be too careful."
"Ever so true," Ethan said, with perhaps more feeling than he should have let show.
The Red's smile relaxed into something a little more natural. "Not frightened, are you?"
"Oh. No, no. Of course not. I, er, enjoy a good adrenaline rush now and then."
The Red leaned back, and shifted his right hand over to trail his fingers once along the band of molars around his left wrist. "Ah, yes. Adrenaline. I do love it as well. Makes the blood taste... spicier."
Ethan drew in a careful breath, then decided it was past time to move this conversation over the subject of business. "So, what do you need done?"
The Red said, "I'd like to take a walk in the sunlight. Just for a few hours."
Ethan raised his brow, leaned in closer. "That's a very difficult thing to do," he said.
"I realize, Mr. Rayne. I was told, however, that you were quite talented. I'd be terribly sorry to hear that I've been misled."
Ethan's heart beat a bit faster and his palms, still pressed together, dampened with sweat. Outwardly, he only narrowed his eyes and said, "I'm a powerful man, Mr. Red. I'm not sure it's in your best interests to threaten me."
"Oh, I know, I know," the vampire said, placidly. "I have no doubt that you are. And that's why I'm here, isn't it? I need someone to do the impossible for me. So, will you?"
"It'll cost you," Ethan said.
"I can pay. And," the Red pushed in close, resting his elbows on the table, "If you do well by me, I believe I have some information that will be worth a great deal more to you than any fee."
"What kind of--"
"Ah!" the Red said, smiling wide again, and settling back. "If I told you, any value it had would be lost, wouldn't it?" He paused. "I'll pay your sum, Rayne, and I'll tell you something you didn't even know you needed to know. Do this, and it will be worth your while."
Ethan nodded, once, tightly. "When, and how long?"
***
He came home to find the house occupied. He shrugged off his coat and hung it on the rack, wondering why the boy wasn't out with his mates as he usually was this time of night. Ethan headed to the living room and stopped just inside the archway. The room was in a state of complete disorder, and while Ethan may have worshipped Chaos, he did not appreciate finding a pizza box, the entire evening paper plus an assortment of tabloids, dishes, a glass, and various other bits of flotsam strewn about his home. The can of Coke, balanced on the arm of his white designer couch, in particular, made him cringe.
The boy sat placidly in the midst of this atrocity, with the metal rubbish bin tucked between his feet. Its contents smoldered, sharpening the air with an acrid tinge. The boy struck another match, watched it burn, then dropped it in.
For the hundredth time since the boy had moved in, Ethan asked himself why he hadn't simply adopted a dog. Or a nice house plant. Of course, he knew the answer to this was that neither a plant nor a dog would be as willing to provide sex on a regular basis.
The pressure that had been building behind his eyes and in his temples chose that moment to bloom into a full-fledged headache. "Why are you here?" Ethan said, "Why aren't you out with your little friends?"
"I hate those motherfuckers," the boy said, lighting another match.
*Ah, of course,* Ethan thought, *that would be why you spend so much time with them.*
In this light, the boy looker skinnier than ever. His cheekbones cast deep shadows beneath his hair that hung in limp strands around his face. He sat hunched forward, with his elbows on his knees, and his hands, one holding a new match, the other holding the matchbox, hung down. His knobby spine showed through his dark T-shirt.
"You smell like arse," the boy said, slashing the match against the strike surface.
"Appropriate," Ethan snapped, "Given that my house appears to have turned into a shithole. How did you manage to make such a mess in just three hours?"
"Our house," the boy said, watching the fire.
"Two months does not an 'our house' make," Ethan said. The boy was right, he could still smell the bar on himself. "I'm going to take a shower. You, clean up this unholy mess."
The boy hurled the matches down. "You're not the boss of me," he said.
"Yes, actually, I am. Clean."
Ethan didn't bother to wait around to continue the pointless argument. He turned and headed back down the hall. Just as he was about to start up the stairs, something heavy and glass hit the door about three inches from his head and exploded into shards. Without breaking stride, Ethan called back, "You're paying for that."
In the living room, something else crashed.
"That too," Ethan added.
Next to Sluggoth demons and sadistic vampires, the boy's temper hardly registered.
The shower washed away the headache and the tension along with the smell of demon slime and his own nervous sweat. Ethan lingered under the spray, letting the warm steam seep into his lungs.
The Red's request would be difficult, if not actually impossible, to fulfill, but he needed this job, and there was a chance that whatever information the Red had would actually prove useful, and information could be far more valuable than gold. Still, it would take a trip to London at the very least. If Jameson was still around, he might have a few texts on vampires and sorcery, or he might know of someone who would have them, but if a spell to make vampires immune to sunlight were easy to find or easy to perform, there would be vampires sunbathing every day.
If all that failed, there was always Jerry. He hoped it wouldn't come to that.
Ethan sighed and turned in the spray. Then he gasped as the water sluiced over his left arm and suddenly stung. His damned tattoo. The thing had been itching and irritated on and off for the past month. It could be mystical, but Ethan had heard of this sort of thing happening to others before, so he thouhght it was more likely something mundane but far more obnoxious. A new allergy or some such. Heaven only knew what kind of horrible chemicals may have been lurking in that ink they concocted all those years ago.
The mellowing effect of the shower ruined now, he shut off the water, dried off and slung a towel around his waist, then headed back downstairs to lock up and make sure the boy hadn't completely destroyed the place.
As it turned out, he hadn't, and Ethan found him on the couch again, gazing listlessly at some music show. The room was straightened, the couch was unstained. At a glance, Ethan couldn't even discern any lasting damage from the boy's tantrum. He walked away without a word, checked all the doors and windows, reset the wards, then returned to the living room once more before heading upstairs.
"It's late," he said, "You should get to bed."
The boy's only response was a slight narrowing of his eyes, but by the time Ethan settled into his own bed, he heard the TV turn off, and a few minutes later, the boy's bedroom door shut.
***
He half-dozed on the train to London, surrounded by commuters in business suits reading papers or chattering on mobiles. It was all so mundane, so unmystical, it seemed almost hard to believe that the world Ethan knew, with magic and demons, really did exist. He could almost understand how these people could be so blind. He couldn't understand how they lived this way, though. Day in, day out, business suits and eight-hour days and the high point of their week being the night their wife deigned to let them get their leg over. It seemed ridiculous, even horrifying. Just watching them, Ethan felt as though the walls were pulling in closer, pressing in around him.
He hung back and let the others get off ahead of him, unwilling to mingle with them any more than he had to.
From the station, he took the Underground halfway to Jameson's shop, then walked the rest of the way. It wasn't a particularly pleasant day, but the dreary weather made the place more familiar. These had been his old haunts back in his youth, before he'd gained enough recognition to start getting real contracts and making real money. These had been the streets he'd prowled with Ripper, before he'd turned back into Giles and crept off to become one of those business-suited zombies.
It wasn't exactly the same, of course. The block of flats, one of which they'd holed up in for years, was gone now, the victim of some urban revitalization project that had failed and left behind an equally shabby, though slightly newer, housing estate.
He crossed one final street and reached Jameson's little shop. The front of the shop was modest, labeled only with a printed cardboard sign saying "Used Books." Ethan pushed through the door and a bell jingled. A grey tabby cat blinked at him from a patch of morning sunlight on the floor. The place smelled of dust and books, and all-in-all, gave no hint as to the dark tomes kept tucked away in the locked back room.
There was no one behind the desk, so Ethan, in a brief fit of whimsy, actually rang the little bell on the counter.
A moment later, a short, balding man brushed out of the curtained-off office, his head still bent to a book.
"Good morning," he said, "Sorry I'm--" then he actually looked up. "Ethan."
"Jameson," Ethan said. "How have you been?"
"Not bad. Can't complain," the other man said, setting aside the book he'd been nosing through. "You?"
"Same. I'm not here to chat, though. Need a book. Or several. Maybe everything you've got on vampires and sorcery, if you don't mind me taking over your backroom for a bit."
"No, no. No problem. You, er, planning to ensorcell a vampire?"
"Well, it's the job," Ethan said, shrugging.
"Ain't that the truth," Jameson said, as though he knew what he was talking about. He got all of his occult books from his brother in Nairobi or somewhere. Jameson himself was nothing more than a middleman. "Look, here's the key. Knock yourself out. Everything I've got is on the back shelves somewhere, probably. You may want to look under necromancy, too."
Ethan managed to resist making any sarcastic remarks. Just barely.
***
Untold hours later, he staggered back out onto the street, to find it dark outside. Under his arm, he held two books, dusty, old leather bound things that reeked with age and a faint tinge of blood. They contained not an answer, as such, but perhaps a roadmap to an answer. He found references to a ring forged millennia ago in Mesopotamia, rumored to render a vampire invulnerable, and a diary of a sorcerer in Africa somewhere who specialized in vampiric magics. The sorcerer was nonspecific about his methods, and the stories of the creation of the ring and its powers were clearly exaggeration and half-myth, but with any luck, he'd be able to reverse engineer something that would do the job for the six hours the Red needed.
One thing was plainly clear: the human deities he was accustomed to working with would be of no help for this. As a group, they viewed vampires as an abomination, and convincing them to grant a boon such as this to one was out of the question.
The fact that most of the major demons who might have normally been willing to lend power to a spell *also* viewed vampires as atrocities compounded the problem.
He would continue to pursue his leads, but it was beginning to look like he may have to resort to Jerry.
***
Two days and what felt like hundreds of dead-ends later, he knew he had to. Time was running out, and a spell like this would take preparation. Still, he sat in the Underground station and watched three trains pass before he finally got on one.
The moment he stepped out of the station at his destination, his mobile rang. He grabbed it off the passenger seat and before he could even say hello, the Brooklyn-accented voice on the other end said, "Bring me a bottle of aspirin and a bottle of scotch, or I ain't even opening the door. Fifteen-year-old Glenmorangie's on sale at the liquor store on the corner."
Then, the dial tone.
Ethan scowled and shoved the phone back in his pocket, but walked into the off-license anyhow, and then a chemist's a bit further on. Ten minutes later, he stopped in front of a rundown building. The door opened just as he reached it and Jerry peered out, eyes squinted as though he hadn't seen the sun in days.
Ethan opened his mouth to speak, but Jerry cut him off, "Just come in already."
So he did. Jerry shut the door behind him, and it felt like the clank of a jail-cell locking. All the drapes were shut and the flat was littered with a labyrinth of clutter. Bookshelves, with very few actual books, sagged under the weight of ugly knickknacks like McDonald's toys still in their bags and strange plastic figurines of leering clowns, with chipped paint and cracks running through their faces and baggy trousers and balloons. A sad-faced, velvet-covered, bobble-headed dog wearing a tiny Yankees hat hunched at the edge of the shelf, like a gargoyle contemplating suicide. The place smelled of old take-out and unwashed body. Ethan stayed close to the door.
Jerry, who had stepped into another room, returned with a glass and grabbed the scotch out of Ethan's hands without asking for it. He pushed the dingy glass onto one of the shelves--which shifted the contents and sent one of the bag-enclosed mini-beanie-babies plunging to the floor. Jerry ripped the wrapping off the bottle, pulled out the cork. He grabbed the glass again and poured and his shaking hand slopped scotch over the edge. He downed the glass in one swallow and poured another before he said, "This, this is one of those things They don't want me telling you. You know that. So the price is going to be high. It's going to cost you. And more importantly, you're going to owe me. You're going to owe me big this time."
Ethan's stomach clenched, but he remained impassive, though he knew it was useless to put on a front for Jerry, of all people. All he said was, "Don't overestimate me."
Jerry froze, then his left eye twitched. For a moment, nothing moved, but for the bobble-head of the dog, swaying slightly as though in a nonexistent breeze. Then Jerry exploded, "I *never* overestimate *anyone*! I *can't* overestimate anyone!" He gestured broadly with his arms, and splashed more of the scotch onto his carpet.
Ethan raised his own hand, placating. "All right. All right. Sorry. I know."
"You know. You KNOW? You don't know anything. I know *everything*. Every. Thing. Omniscient. I'd say go look it up, but you can't even understand what it means, to know everything there is to know. You are nothing but an ignorant worm. Don't tell me what you stupidly think you know."
"Right. Of course not," Ethan said, watching the vein throb in Jerry's forehead.
"Gimme the fifteen hundred you brought up front. Now," Jerry said.
Ethan set down the briefcase and nudged it towards him with his toe. Jerry didn't bother to touch it, there was no reason to. He knew what was in it, probably better than Ethan himself did.
"Good," Jerry said. "Now. Here's the thing. Kinda ironic really. You go scouting around London for days, and the answer's ten minutes from home, in Bristol."
Ethan frowned, but let Jerry continue.
"Little pawn shop there, has a ring for sale, ten pence. They figure the stone's quartz or some shit, but really, it's special. See, when they made the Gem of Amara, five chips of the stone were left over. Wolfram and Hart's got one, uses it to bless their necrotempered glass. Well, one of the other bits is in that ring, at that pawn shop. I'll draw you a map. You get that ring, then you use that protection spell book, the one that's third from the left on your bookshelf in your bedroom--I can't pronounce the damned name--anyway, there's a spell in there, page four-fifty-two, use that stone as the catalyst and that spell will do what you need to do by that vampire. Got it?"
Ethan waited a moment, committing all of this to memory, then nodded. "Got it."
"I know!" Jerry snapped. "Ever heard of a rhetorical question, you numbskull? Now I want five thousand more, after the job's done. And you owe me."
Ethan cringed inside, partly at the steep figure, which was more than his car had cost him, but more at the favor. "What do you want me to do?" he said.
"I'll let you know when I need something done. And you better be ready to jump to when I do, because you owe me big. They're gonna be pissed at me now. The Powers don't want me helping out vampires, or scumbags like you."
***
Hours later, on the train back to Bristol, Ethan still felt vaguely slimy, as though he'd been rolled in bacon grease. He scowled out the window at the passing darkness. At this point, there wasn't much of a chance of turning a profit on this spell. It wasn't that he was seriously hurting for money, and the prestige would be worth more to him than cash at this point, anyway, but losing money to Jerry was never pleasant. His mind rolled around thoughts of what Jerry's "favor" might be. Occasionally, Jerry had been known to want little more than a fixed baseball game, or a little luck at poker. Usually, however, it was something rather more extreme. Ethan had heard of his "favors" far too often from different sources. Everything from bank heists to art theft to supermodels coerced or enspelled into his bed. Given that most of the major banks and museums had magical safeguards in place and magically-induced sex was just tacky even to Ethan's taste...
He shook his head. No use thinking of it, now. What would come would come, and he'd never have found what he needed to know without what he'd done. It was too late now for regrets.
As soon as he got off the train in Bristol, Ethan drove to the pawn shop, and managed to get in just before closing. The place was as unassuming as possible, no one would expect it to contain a powerful magical artifact. Hell, this place didn't even boast anything that could pretend to be fashionable "vintage" clothing.
The glass case set into the counter didn't seem to have been cleaned since the seventies at least, and there was no rhyme or reason to the scatter of junk that littered the inside. There were cracked watches and stained scarves and trashy costume jewelry, all covered in a rich, mostly undisturbed layer of dust, and in the middle of all that mess, a small ring, that looked like it may have come out of a vending machine.
"Get you something, mate?" the man sitting in a cracked vinyl chair at the register asked, without looking up from his newspaper.
"Ah, yes. This ring, here."
The man leaned towards him slightly, the chair creaking a warning, and peered through the cloudy glass. "Can you be a bit more specific, then?" the man said, sitting back.
"Er, it's... the slim one. With the white stone?"
The man looked again, then dug a keychain out of his pocket and unlocked the case, ruffled one thick hand through the junk. A cloud of dust swirled in the weak display lights as his finger and thumb closed around the little ring. He pulled it out and held it up, looked at it, and then said, "Three pounds."
"Three pounds?" Ethan snapped, before he could stop himself. "That piece of crap isn't worth more than ten pence."
The guy huffed a laugh and tossed in on the counter. "Yeah, yeah. Can't blame me for trying, eh?"
Ethan narrowed his eyes, but didn't comment, handing over the change silently. The man took it, and Ethan took the ring and headed for the exit.
"Yeah, fuck you, too, arsehole," the man called after. Ethan ignored him, heading out into the damp night, with the ring tucked in his pocket, quietly pulsing power.
He finally drove home, relieved to find that the boy had actually not burned the place down in his absence. He felt a quiet sense of homecoming and relaxation as he unlocked the door and walked into the house, which was quiet and deserted. The boy must have been out, which was fine with Ethan. He took off his coat, tucked the ring away into the small box of magical items he kept on the fireplace mantel, and headed upstairs to turn in early.
***
He woke with a start. For a moment, he lay still, perfectly still, pulse pounding, listening desperately for the slightest sound that might give away a demon hiding in the darkness. Gradually, his heart rate slowed, and he pushed himself up to sit back against his headboard. His left arm ached faintly, and his sides were sticky with cold sweat.
He squeezed his eyes shut. It could still be an allergy. A reaction. Could be his mind taking the pain from the tattoo and manufacturing demons.
He opened his eyes and realized that the scent of marijuana was not, in fact, a remnant of the dream.
The covers were tacky, damp and too warm, and the adrenaline rush wouldn't let him get back to sleep anytime soon, so he shoved the covers off and got up, paused to step into a pair of boxers and then headed out into the hallway. Light came from under the boy's door, spilling soft and yellow across the carpet. Ethan hesitated at the door, wondering what the boy would think of him showing up in the middle of the night like this, then shrugged the thought off and rapped his knuckles lightly against the door.
There was a longish pause, and then the boy said, "Huh?"
Ethan pushed the door open, hesitating again, but this time only because the boy's floor was nearly impassable with discarded clothes and other detritus. The boy himself was sitting on his bed, leaning against the frame of the partly-open window with a joint dangling from his fingers. He was shirtless, wearing nothing but jeans and his ever-present bracelets. His stereo was on, but turned down low.
"Er. Sorry, I--" Ethan stopped there, then decided that no explanation was better than any explanation. "You have enough to share?"
The boy shrugged one slim, bare shoulder. The shadows cast by the single bulb of the desklamp rolled over the boy's skin, marking his collarbone, his lean muscles. Ethan's body surprised him with a flicker of lust. As unsettled as he was at the moment... Well, no, actually, perhaps it made perfect sense. Then he looked back down at the floor.
"Um, how exactly do I--"
He didn't *see* the boy rolling his eyes, but he knew it was happening as the boy slipped off the bed and kicked a path through the rubbish with one bare foot. As he climbed back onto the bed, the light caught and shone for a moment on his nipple ring. Ethan blinked, then carefully edged across the room with all the care of a tightrope walker without a net. Did the boy *ever*, in fact, do laundry?
After Ethan had finally reached the bed and settled himself on the opposite side of the window cross-legged on the creaking mattress, he looked up just in time to see the boy's tongue-tip flicker against the rolling paper, and then his slim finger neatly seal it shut. Chipped black nail polish captured Ethan's eyes for a long moment, and it took him a second to shake himself and take the joint the boy was holding towards him.
"You're fucked up tonight," the boy commented, snapping his lighter open.
Ethan leaned in to light the joint, took a breath of it and held it for a moment, before he let the smoke out in a sigh, held his hand to the boy, and said, "Yes, a bit."
"Sucks," the boy said, taking the joint and putting it to his lips. Pink, chapped, and clean for the moment of their usual black lipstick, they looked strange, like someone else's mouth on a familiar body.
A cool breath of night air gusted through the window, cool and somehow soothing against Ethan's side. Sharp and real.
The boy edged back a bit, though, and sucked in his stomach. It made him seem all the more emaciated, highlighted the way his ribcage jutted a bit over his abdomen. Ethan's eyes moved up a bit, along the concave valley of his sternum, where a small scatter of thin curls grew. As Ethan stared, fascinated in his current fuzzy mental state, the boy swept his free hand up his chest--dark bracelets a sharp contrast against pale skin--and tugged at the ring through his right nipple with his finger and thumb. Ethan's gaze jumped up to the boy's face, and, as though shaken from a trance, he realized he'd been neglecting to take back the joint.
"Wanna fuck?" the boy said.
Ethan took a draw, then said, "Maybe later."
The boy arched the brow with the safety pin through it. "You're hard," he said.
"Yes, well. Occasionally, in my life, I have been known to actually not be in the mood to fuck."
The boy just shrugged again, then turned his back to the wall and stretched his legs out. After a moment, Ethan turned his own back to the wall, mirroring the boy's posture. They smoked together, the cool breeze brushing between them, the stereo filling up the silence.
Ethan reached across himself and wrapped his hand around his own bicep, pressed into the crook of his elbow.
***
The protection spell Jerry had referred him to was a fairly standard, though powerful spell. It needed to be focused through a crystal, with the various kinds of crystals resulting in various kinds of protection, and it required prayer and a tribute to the demon Aedrus. Also, a lock of the target's hair, which was why Ethan was now driving along a winding country road through green fields and hedgerows. A veil of mist clung along the valleys and the grasses shining with dew, but he didn't notice, too caught up in being pissed off at the Red for meeting him at that damned bar when he could have instead invited him to his sprawling country house. The bar had been nothing but a scare tactic, and that just didn't sit right with Ethan.
And besides, what sort of vampire lived in a mansion in the country? Who did this prat think he was? Dracula? Ethan snorted with derision as he pulled off the road onto a gravel drive. He stopped at an ornate, wrought-iron gate, and after a moment, it swung open silently to admit him.
He pulled up in front of the house and got out, looking up at the fancy molding and inset columns and large windows, all covered in thick drapes. He tried to take comfort in the fact that at least this probably meant he'd be well-paid.
He rang the bell at the door and stepped back to wait, and a moment later, the door opened, and the hulking demon who had accompanied the Red to the bar stepped out.
"No pass," it said.
"I need to speak with--" he paused for a second, considering what the best word would be, then went with, "your master."
"No pass," it said again.
Ethan tensed with frustration, but tried to keep his voice cordial. "Just for a moment, I promise."
"No pass," it said, a third time.
"My, aren't you a gregarious fellow," Ethan said, lightly.
The demon's eyes narrowed and it showed its teeth. "Big words make Koth crush," it said.
Ethan took a startled step back. "Ah. Ah, right. Um. Small words, then."
"What want?"
"Er. Could you tell your master I need a lock of hair? About seven or eight centimeters should do."
"Need hair," it said.
"Yes. Yes, that would be the--" He stopped himself before he risked going too polysyllabic, and just went with, "Yes."
"Hair," it said again, then turned and lumbered inside, shutting the door behind itself.
Ethan sighed. "Charming."
He stood on the porch as rain began to whisper down around him. A civilized demon would have invited him in for tea, at the least. He beginning to contemplate going back and waiting in his car, instead, when he finally heard lumbering footsteps, and the door opened again. The demon thrust a fist towards him.
"Hair," it said.
Ethan reached out, not really wanting to get within grabbing distance of the beast, and then it opened its fist and dropped the requested hair into Ethan's palm, a small coil, tied into a knot.
"Thanks," Ethan said.
The demon just grunted and went back inside.
***
That night, Ethan knelt on the floor of his bedroom, naked. It was necessary to appeal to the demon Aedrus unadorned by human artifacts. Ethan had stripped down completely, even setting aside his watch and his slim, gold necklace. The bedroom was dim but for the glow of the candles around him. He could feel their heat on his bare skin, as he chanted low in Latin, beseeching the demon to acknowledge him.
The boy sat on the bed, cross-legged, watching silently.
"Aedrus, precoro vos. Offero meum cruor vobis. Offero meum potestar vos. Precoro vos iuvo mihi."
He dragged his knife across his palm, and the moment he felt the blood on his hand, he felt the rush of power in the room. Sensed the presence of something.
"Aedrus, precoro vos," he said, again, his eyes closed, his heart pounding. He felt a rush of something through him, a surge of power. Then a voice, in his mind, said, "Planto meum tributum, quod mos succorrovos." Make my tribute, and I will help you.
Then it was gone, and like a sail in a falling wind, Ethan's body went limp. He sucked in a breath, and trembled, feeling the remains of the power still echoing in him.
"You're such a freak," the boy said.
Ethan sat up and glared at him.
"You really believe in that shit? Even my crazy, stupid mates don't believe that shit."
There was no point to pressing the issue, so instead, Ethan wrapped a bit of gauze around his bleeding hand and then said, "I seem to be naked. And you seem to be on my bed."
The boy raised his eyebrows and the corners of his mouth drooped in a skeptical frown. Ethan twisted around, up to his knees, then got onto the bed, then over the boy, forcing him down on his back without touching him. He watched the boy's lips part, heard his breath quicken. Ethan's skin tingled with power, with desire for action, release. This was a different kind of release than he was truly craving, but it would do for now.
"Roll over," he said.
The boy did, but said, "Fucker," without any apparent irony.
Ethan pushed his hand beneath the boy, working at his button fly, feeling the boy's hard cock through the fabric against the swell of his palm. "I have a name, you know," he said, pressing down on the boy, trapping his slim body between himself and the bed.
"So do I, pervert. Never hear you use it."
He let his whole weight rest on the boy for a moment, as he used both hands to shove the boy's jeans down. The boy grunted, breath forced from his lungs. Only for a moment, of course, and then Ethan braced himself on one hand again, the boy bare from the waist down beneath him now.
Julian. Julian was the boy's name.
"You hate your name," Ethan said, working his fingers between the boy's sweat-damp cheeks. The boy's arsehole twitched as Ethan's finger brushed across it. He didn't say anything. Ethan pushed the tip of his finger against the tense depression, felt the ring of muscles tightened then relax, letting his fingertip touch a hint of softer skin. Beneath him, the boy lay still now, almost completely, but for his breathing and slight tremors in his arms. Content he had his attention, Ethan slowly circled his fingertip, feeling the texture of puckered skin, the hummingbird-flutter of muscle. Dragged his finger back and forth across the opening and felt the boy shudder. A brief thought of sliding down, replacing finger with tongue, crossed his mind, but even shifting his hips slightly, letting his cock slide against the skin of the boy's thigh, ended that line of thought. A bolt of lust--hot and sharp--stopped almost any thought. He was too impatient now for such things.
He shoved himself off the boy, knee-walked across the bed and grabbed the lube and a condom.
Back over him, it only took a moment to deal with the necessities, and then, one hand planted deep in the mattress by the boy's ribs, the other holding himself, he pressed inside. The boy hardly reacted, beyond a small, in-drawn breath. Ethan groaned, though, riding the rush of penetration.
***
Two days later at eleven in the morning, the boy sat on the couch, mouth hanging open, thumbs twiddling madly at a control pad, glassy eyes glued to the television screen. The surround-sound speakers set the air with to vibrating with a deep throb of explosions mixed with some gangster-rap theme. Ethan could feel it in his bones.
"Get out," he snapped, dropping his dufflebag of spell components beside the coffee table.
"Fuck off," the boy said, without looking up from his carnage.
Ethan dragged him up by his shirt front and shoved him towards the hall. "I said, get out of my living room."
"Our living room, fucktard," the boy said, from the hall. "Fucking loony."
Ethan yanked the various cords free of the TV and the wall with one sharp tug, and then picked the whole contraption up by them, so it dangled from his hand like a fresh kill. He thrust it in the boy's direction without really looking at him, already thinking only of the ritual.
"And take your toys with you."
"Fuck you," the boy said, further demonstrating his vast vocabulary.
"Not now, dear," Ethan said, the sarcasm rolling thickly on his tongue as he shoved the couch back against the bookshelf along the back wall.
As he pushed the coffee table the opposite direction, up against the entertainment center, he heard the stairs shaking as the boy stomped up them. This was good. Meant he was out of the way, and hopefully, he'd sulk long enough for Ethan to finish the ritual undisturbed.
With a quick flick of the cord, Ethan dropped the venetian blinds over the glass doors leading out to the porch, and the room became dark and close. It was the work of well-established habit to roll back the rug to uncover the pentagram etched into the floorboards, and to set the candles in place and light them. He knelt in the center of all of this and set a bronze chalice before himself.
"Aedrus, addo vestri tributum," he said, then peeled the plastic top off a carton of goat's blood from the local butcher. He poured the blood into the chalice, and immediately, the candles flared. He sucked in a breath, feeling the surge of power. "Yes," he said, softly.
"Aedrus, offero cruor. Precoro vos iuvo mihi. Serve is creatura." He dropped the lock of hair into the blood. "Offero is calx. Serve is creatura." He dropped the stone into the chalice, and the candles flared higher, the power wrenched his gut. He felt the demon close. "Aedrus, precoro vos!"
Everything roared. The candles blew out. The final power of the spell rushed through him, a stampede, and all he could do was hang on, try to keep breathing, try to keep from tearing apart.
Then it was over, abruptly and unceremoniously. Ethan panted, smelling candle smoke. A band of sunlight, utterly pedestrian, cut across the floor beside him.
But there was still pain. His arm.
He realized he'd clamped his hand over his tattoo. Frowning, he pulled it away.
"Shit," he said. The Mark of Eyghon, reversed, smeared in red across his palm. Blood.
He shut his eyes. So much for an allergic reaction.
***
The next morning, Ethan avoided looking at the newspaper which the boy had spread out across the table. He made toast and sat down, carefully pushing the nearer sections of the paper away from himself. He'd give it a few days.
But then the boy looked up and said, "Yesterday some crazy guy came up and *bit* a bloke, in like, broad daylight. Killed the hell out of him. In the middle of the street. Fuck, it sucks to be that bloke."
Coming from the boy, that was quite the expression of sympathy.
Suddenly, Ethan's toast wasn't particularly appealing. He stood back up and dumped it in the trash, even the scent of butter and warm bread turning his stomach. He dropped his plate in the sink and said, "I'm going out."
"Freak," the boy called after him.
***
Ethan met Jackie the Red later, this time in a human pub of Ethan's choosing. The Fyarl was not present, and the Red was waiting when Ethan arrived. Ethan sat down across from him in the booth. The Red had already ordered him a pint of beer. Ethan didn't touch it.
"Mr. Rayne. I must say, I am very pleased."
Ethan only said, "Do you have the money?"
"Of course," the Red said. He shifted his foot, and Ethan heard something slide across the floor, the felt a hard corner bump his shin. He leaned back just enough to glance under the table to see the briefcase.
"How much?"
The Red smiled. "Ten thousand."
Well, that, at least, was a pleasant surprise. Ethan remained impassive. "And the information?"
The Red sipped his beer. "Quite abrupt tonight, aren't we?"
"It's been a trying week."
"Ah, of course. And I do appreciate it a great deal." The Red straightened his tie, then continued, "So, I will tell you."
Ethan waited.
"Rumor has it that the Slayer has a new Watcher. Has had, for a few months now."
Frowning, Ethan leaned forward. "Why the hell should I care about the Slayer? You said this information would be useful--"
The Red held up a hand. "I'm not finished. Her Watcher... no one expected to see him with a Slayer. On account of his past, you see? I believe he used to run with you, back in his glory days."
And suddenly, Ethan caught his breath.
"Ripper," he said.
The Red nodded. Then he slid to the edge of the bench and stood. "They're in a town called Sunnydale, on the Hellmouth." He smiled. "Again, my sincere thanks. I look forward to doing business with you again, Mr. Rayne. And I will, of course, give my heartiest recommendation to all my associates, should they need assistance."
Ethan sat back, staring unseeing across the booth, lost for a moment in the past.
***
Another dream of demons and death woke him, just as dawn was approaching. Ethan wandered downstairs and stood in front of the patio doors, watching the sky grow lighter and thinking, rubbing at the aching mark on his arm. Ripper with a Slayer. Sitting atop the mouth of Hell. And Eyghon. Eyghon out there, somewhere.
He shut his eyes as the sun suddenly broke over the next row of houses, and the light bled red through his eyelids.
He would close up the house, pack for a long absence. He'd send the boy home to his mother, as he should have two months ago.
He needed to pay a visit to an old friend.
The End