The Circle is drawn.
They know it somehow, even though I am upstairs unconscious and The Circle is in the lobby. It’s not even really drawn, it’s just placed and waiting for activation, but they know.
It makes them scared. This makes me happy. I have been scared for a long time and The Circle will make it quiet forever.
If it works.
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“Orbis extrahatur,” Wesley intoned in a measured voice.
The circular couch in the middle of the Hyperion lobby was surrounded by white candles, the only beacons against the California night. Wesley had just lit the last of them and retreated to stand with the others in front of the counter. Cordelia stepped forward with a jar of Holy Water. Walking clockwise, she flicked droplets of water on the floor, carefully avoiding the candles. When she reached her starting point, she faced the centre of the circle.
“Orbis extrahatur,” she declared in a firm voice, and then retreated.
Fred stepped forward next, carrying a bowl of crushed herbs mixed with white sand. She let the mixture slip through her fingers as she walked counterclockwise around the candles, her hands coated first with the sticky sweet essence of crushed herbs and then with sand. She reached the beginning and swallowed hard to find her voice.
“Orbis extrahatur.”
Finally, Gunn stepped forward. He carried a burning sage roll. The smell of it made his eyes water and he looked away. He knelt in front of the circle and set the flame next to the herbs that Fred had deposited. They ignited, and fire spread out in both directions, surrounding the circle of fire and water with fire again. He got to his feet.
“Orbis extrahatur,” he said, and returned to wait with the others.
In the basement, Angel could hear their feet upon the floor. The shaman told him that he could not be present for this. Aside from the fact that Hannah might steal his soul if things went ill, the shaman believed that the undead had no right participating in such a holy spell. Angel heard the stairs creak and knew that Lorne was entering the room and decided that there was no power on Earth that would make him risk tonight’s working. He sat down and put his head in his hands, unable to do anything but wait.
Lorne came down the stairs towards the flaming rings in the middle of the floor carrying Hannah in his arms. She was unconscious still, but she muttered and twitched in his arms, at war even now. He looked right, towards Wesley and the others, then fixed his gaze forward and set himself for what was to come.
Lorne took a deep breath and stepped through the flames. He walked to the sofa and set Hannah down on top of it, pushing her into a sitting position. He knelt behind her on the seat, supporting her, and they looked across the fire to Wes.
“Orbis extrahatur!” Lorne declared, and the power in the room started to move.
It was dark at first, so dark that looking at it was like falling into forever. It stalked through the room, searching. It circled the rings of fire, blocking then from everyone but Lorne and the still unconscious Hannah. In the darkness, Wesley reached behind him for the sword he had placed there for emergencies. His fingers tightened on the hilt.
The darkness moved in on Hannah. It passed through the fire, through the water and through the fire again, bearing down on her with a singleminded purpose. Lorne bit the side of his mouth to keep from crying out, but the shadow went through him like he was nothing.
Hannah gasped and sat up straight of her own accord. Her inhalation sucked the darkness towards her. It came fast and furious, almost whistling through the air and threw itself into her mouth. Hannah’s mouth opened wider as she swallowed the darkness whole, and then she slumped back into Lorne’s arms.
For a second, all was quiet. The sounds of traffic from the street were muted by the power they had conjured forth, and all that remained were the candles and the ring of fire, sputtering in the darkness.
It happened on the edge of their hearing, except for Lorne, who heard it howling in the night, a sound of approach, of a mad dash for freedom. The roar grew and the flames leapt higher, causing the watchers to flinch from the sudden spears of light. The noise rattled in their bones and sang in their blood. The very air hummed with it and the candlelight danced to the rhythm.
Hannah began to shake. Lorne struggled to hold her in place and her head arched backwards. Her eyes opened, shining with something supernatural in the darkness, and rolled back, revealing the whites to all in the room. Her body seized and the darkness began to pour out of her.
The sounds in the room changed. There was still an urgency of forward movement, but happy laughter and the singing voices of dozens of people in many different languages singing a myriad of different songs of rejoicing filled the air. Lorne gasped as he took it in, as he took them in, as they escaped their prison and reached outwards for the light.
The darkness grew lighter as it spun about the room. The volume of the music increased and the laughter rang throughout the decrepit hotel. Faster and faster it spun, the candles and ring of fire flaring it its wake. The four standing at the counter ducked instinctively as the whirling power careened through the room. Suddenly, with one glorious note of pure joy, the light flared up towards the ceiling and disappeared. Hannah collapsed into Lorne’s arms as the room plunged back into darkness.
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For a full minute, no one said anything, and even breathing seemed too loud.
“Wesley?” Fred breathed softly as their eyes readjusted to the dim light of the candles and the ring of flame.
“Nobody move,” Wes said quickly, his fingers not loosening their grip upon the hilt of his sword.
“What happened?” asked Cordelia in an unusually awed tone.
“The good souls have been taken,” Wesley explained. “They’re gone.”
“So what’s left is – ” Cordy began.
“Yes,” said Wesley, “The evil ones. This battle is not over yet.”
“Bring it on, then,” said Gunn.
“It may not be our fight.”
Lorne moved carefully and craned his neck so that he could see Hannah’s face. It was pale in the candlelight, but she seemed unharmed. Her hair had fallen into her face and he pulled it behind her ears. He kissed her lightly on the temple and pressed his face into her neck. Her life force was strong; too strong, he knew. She was not the only one in there, and those left with her had no mercy. From the corner of his eyes, he saw a bright white light appear in the lobby. He braced himself and held her in place again.
The light stalked the room as the darkness had done. Everywhere it went, a sharp cold followed. Fred slipped her hand into Gunn’s and he squeezed it reassuringly, wishing for an axe. The light bore down upon them and seemed to regard them with a haughty air. Fred looked at the floor and Gunn looked elsewhere. Cordelia met its gaze and faltered, unsure of what was to come, but Wesley never flinched.
The light moved on, circling the fires and making them seem pale and wan in comparison. It drew its noose about the ring and then moved inward, parts of it reaching forward as it tightened, like jagged edges of reaching ice, grasping at what lay within.
Lorne closed his eyes, but the light burned him anyway. As it passed through him he knew pain and suffering, a thousand ways to spend eternity and each one worse than the last. He pitied the light’s prey, then remembered the woman in his arms and pushed all thoughts but those of her from his mind.
This time, Hannah screamed. The light forced its way into her, pushing her mouth open and holding it despite her attempts to make it stop. She choked and coughed, and still the light moved into her throat, relentless in its attack. Again, Hannah slumped in Lorne’s arms and again there was silence, but they all braced themselves for the shrieking they knew was to come.
And come it did.
The noise was beyond noise. Where the dark had been a comforting presence in their bones and blood, the light sought to rend them. It hunted for the evil in Hannah’s body and it cared not who it took along with them. Fred collapsed into Gunn and the two of them fell hard against the wooden paneling of the counter. Cordy, used to blinding headaches, stumbled forward until Wesley caught her and pulled her back. He lowered them both to the floor, and tried to shield them from the horrific noise.
In the basement, Angel lay upon the floor, writhing in pain as his sensitive hearing amplified the sounds from the floor above. He had been to hell once, and hell was nothing compared to this.
Within the circle, Lorne was frozen in agony. All around him, souls shrieked. They cried out of their innocence, they pleaded for mercy, but the light was relentless. Judgment had been passed upon them already and now their centuries of hiding were done. The light had come to claim them, and claim them it would.
A voice, strangely calm in all the cacophony, sounded near Lorne’s pounding head.
“What will be the cost of this body?”
“I...I don’t know.” Hannah said. The voice was her own, and she was terrified.
“They cannot last much longer.”
Hannah looked out of the circle and saw that it was true. Fred and Gun huddled together in agony and Cordy and Wes suffered alone beside one another, reaching out occasionally as though to make sure the other was still there and hoping that they were not. She couldn’t turn to see Lorne, but she knew that whatever it was doing to her friends, it was doing far worse to her lover.
“What must I do?”
“End this. End it now and all undeserved suffering will cease.”
Somehow, in his world of pain, Lorne found his voice.
“No!” he cried.
She was crying now, still unable to turn to him. His hands were locked around her, holding her in place in spite of the sound and the pain.
“There is no other way.” She sighed as though seeing something familiar and long forgotten, as though she was returning home. “I love you.”
He couldn’t answer. The noise was too great. She broke away from his grip and he howled in pain as he cast about for her. The light grew brighter and the sound increased, but the chaos of noise receded and a harmony began to appear in the void. The light flared again and the voices of a thousand damned souls screamed for one last reprieve before they were silenced in this plane for eternity.
The candles and the ring of fire flared up one last time, illuminating Lorne, as he stood alone in the centre of the Circle, and then the flames went out, plunging the room at last into an earthly darkness.
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