Connor ran through the corridor, raced down the stairs, leapt over the rail on the landing, stumbled through the lobby, tripped over his shoelaces and hit the floor, a cuss word on his lips.
"Shi- ow!" he protested as he received a smack on the head.
"Language," his mother said by way of explanation.
"Also, that was for your umpteenth attempt to check out if you still bounce off the ground, like back in the days when your Uncle Lorne let you drop from the diaper changing table. What did I tell you about walking downstairs as any normal person would? Not that anybody in this freakazoid hotel is normal…"
Struggling to his feet, barely hiding his disappointment, Connor found himself pulled into a hug.
"Happy birthday, sweetie," his mom whispered. "You didn’t think I’d forgotten, did you?"
"Aw, Mom," he muttered into her shirt, taking in that familiar scent of fabric softener, perfume and sweat. "What did I tell you about calling me names?"
"Don’t get too saucy, champ. But I’ll make sure to remember you’re grown-up and manly, what with reaching a double-digit age."
Connor disentangled himself, looking around.
"Where’s everybody?"
"Oh, ho- Connor, I’m sorry."
In his opinion, she didn’t sound apologetic enough, but he knew better than to point this out.
"Your dad and the gang are out, hunting down some gross something-or-other demon from my visions. They send you their love, and you’ll get your presents tomorrow, before you’re off to party with the guys from school."
He probably shouldn’t complain about being a miracle child, with a green lounge-singer as baby-sitter, a maths genius as godmother, an ex-rogue demon hunter and an ex-gang member as godfathers, and more rooms of his own than he had toys to store in them; in moments like these, though, he wished his life was more ordinary.
"I’m going shopping until they’re back. Wanna come with?"
"Walmart or Magic Shop?"
Carrying groceries for his mom wasn’t exactly his idea of the perfect birthday, but dried monkey paws in jars might make that trip more exciting.
"Both. You can help me with the bags. Supernatural strength gotta be of some use."
In the car, he did his best to show her cool disdain, but she seemed far too used to ignoring broody silence. His eyes were resolutely fixed on the dashboard, and it took Connor pretty long to figure out that this wasn’t the way to the supermarket after all.
"But that’s the alley behind Caritas. That’s where I was – "
His mom rolled her eyes dramatically. She had to practise that in secret.
"And that’s what I call preternatural powers of observation," she said, ushering him in through the back door. "You must’ve inherited them from your old man. Certainly not from me."
Everybody was waving at him, laughing, and he kind of shrieked like a girl, he was ashamed to note, as his dad swooped him up and threw him over his shoulder.
"Happy birthday, son."
***
Every principal’s office looked the same: a desk covered in piles of paper and the smelly chalk dust that tickled his nose, a sun-bleached flag dangling from the wall opposite the dirty windows, an uncomfortable chair where he would fidget under some dead president’s eyes. This time, it was Theodore Roosevelt peering down at him, bespectacled and statesman-like, not toting a gun over the carcass of a lion or grizzly bear.
"Charles Roger," the principal said ponderously, as if it was a brilliant achievement to read out his name from the files.
"This has to be some sort of new record. You’ve been around for less than a week, and you’re already here for an eye-to-eye chat about discipline. Is there anything you’d like to say?"
Shit. I’ll be grounded for the next few weeks, and my father won’t take me out for a birthday dinner at the pizza place tonight.
Nope, not a good idea to blurt this out. Charles avoided meeting the principal’s gaze and engaged in a staring match with Teddy Roosevelt instead. He blinked first, of course, but that was beside the point. It helped him not to think about his father’s weary face, his graying hair, his perpetual frown behind the wire-rimmed glasses.
"Dunno," he mumbled.
"Look, I know that your situation at home must be rather difficult," Principal Daly said. The boy winced, recognizing the phoney sympathy from other conversations.
No, you don’t. Not at all.
Closing his eyes, he could see his parents very clearly: a beautiful, dark-haired woman with the brightest of smiles; a broad-shouldered, somber-looking man; and the younger version of his foster father, squeezed in between the two of them; all facing the camera with laughing eyes. ‘Delia, Liam and me, L.A., March 2000,’ his father had scribbled on the back, in neat, precise letters. That the serious guy he knew had managed to come up with a dorky grin for the autotimer snapshot really weirded Charles out.
There was also a baby picture of himself, a blanketed bundle in his mom’s arms, his dad beaming down at him. Their best friend – the man who was to raise him – was missing from this photo. He’d taken it, his father had explained to him, his voice not wavering, not even for a second, a few days before their car accident.
"I cannot imagine what it must be like, growing up without any blood kin and with a stepfather whose job apparently requires him to move town fairly often," the principal continued, "but that’s no excuse for your behaviour. Don’t you feel sorry for what you did?"
Charles remembered the noise of crunching bone.
"Ryan was teasing me all the time. He called me a fucking freak."
Principal Daly sighed, looking as disapproving as President Roosevelt. "Well, yes, but you broke his nose. At my school, I don’t want to see any twelve-year-old involved in a case of bodily harm."
The boy shrugged.
"I guess I don’t know my own strength."
***
Steven was sitting on the porch, watching the distant peaks of the Uinta Mountains change from shades of gray to rose-colored quartz with the blaze of the dawn. He liked the hour of sun-up, its freshness and calm; he could swear that he heard or smelled the rising sun on some days, its golden rays filling his ears and lungs with the solemnity of chorals and incense, threatening to take his breath away.
"Steven? Steven!" his mother called from the house, "breakfast’s served."
She leant out of the window, beckoning him and using the opportunity to light a hasty cigarette. His father didn’t want her to smoke because he deemed it loose and ungodly in a woman, like the copper hair-dye and the cheap rouge from the drugstore. His mother, however, simply laughed in her husband’s face (something Steven would never have dared), that dry, mirthless laugh of hers, and she continued to smell of tobacco with a whiff of talcum powder.
There was a peach pie on the table, sprinkled with cinnamon and covered with a large helping of whipped cream, the same cake as last year, the same as every year. "I never had such ripe and succulent peaches in my day and age," his father would say on entering the room, "not even in the Eternal City."
Later, his mother would drive them into Roosevelt, for mass at Saint Helen’s, followed by a birthday lunch at the steakhouse. First, it was time for family prayers, though. Steven wasn’t sure whether he found the familiarity of routine reassuring or stifling.
He bent his knees, the linoleum hard and cold under the worn cloth of his jeans, fingering for the rosary in his pocket. It was supposed to be a happy day, so they recited the Glorious Mysteries together, his father’s voice full of faith and hope, his mother’s low murmurings bordering on the irreverent and the sarcastic. (On every other occasion, it would have been the Sorrowful ones, from sin to perseverance.)
They concluded by saying grace, grace for this meal, this family, this life salvaged from Hell on Earth. Steven braced himself. He know what would come next, his father’s private catechism, whose questions and answers he knew as well as the definition of the sacrament of penance or the paragraphs about the servants and messengers of God.
"Who are you?" his father asked.
"I am Steven Holtz, your beloved son."
"And who were you born to?"
"To a fallen angel and a fallen woman."
"Who sent you to me?"
"The Lord."
"And what will you do when I have raised you to manhood?"
"I will become the vessel of His wrath to avenge our family."
He couldn’t quite picture any of his murdered relatives, neither the pious woman who might have been another step-mother, nor his siblings, who’d never celebrate their fourteenth birthday, nor the pretty, vivacious girl he would have liked to have as an aunt. But he couldn’t wait to right their wrongs.
***
"Guess it never does rain in California, not even in November," Justine said, stretching in the sunlight that seeped through the filthy window-pane. "Probably a nicer place than where you grew up, huh?"
"In Quor’toth, autumn was the season of sand-storms, especially in November," Connor replied, "or what we chose to call November, Father and I. He taught me to pay heed to the months, even marked the day I was born."
"Well, I already wished you a happy birthday and gave you a special present, didn’t I?"
He stared at her naked legs, which the thin blanket didn’t cover, and his blood rushed into cheek and groin. He remembered the weight of his calves on her shoulders, her ankles hooking behind his neck, the mocking tone of her voice as he shuddered, only half-buried inside her. Fornication, his father would have thundered, sating the lusts of the body outside the sanctity of marriage, but Connor had put him to rest half a year ago. Justine had been a sullen presence at his side while he spoke a prayer over the grave.
"How old are you, anyway? I don’t suppose you manage to keep count properly in your average hell dimension."
"Seventeen or thereabouts, but I might as well be a year younger."
He blinked into the blinding light. ‘What a sleazy joint,’ Justine had snorted at the sight of their room, but there were apple orchards outside the motel, in the warm sun, the imaginary gardens of his childhood, far from the shroud of the ocean.
Justine laughed.
"Sweet sixteen. This doesn’t only explain a certain over-enthusiasm of yours, it also makes me kind of a cradle-snatcher and child-molester."
She shrugged, the blanket sliding off her bare shoulders.
"After slitting a man’s throat and making sure he bleeds to death," she said, "I must have become a bit too lenient about the rest of my sins."
Her lips parted in that peculiar, sardonic smile of hers, as she noticed Connor staring at her breasts, but her tone was quiet, almost sad, when she talked on.
"When we were sixteen, Julia and I, we thought it’d be hilarious to switch roles for a night and go to our junior prom with each other’s date. Those guys were so dumb, they didn’t even notice the difference. ‘Course we dumped them both on the day after."
Although Connor didn’t know what a prom was or why two decent girls should behave in this fashion, he did recognize grief. He bent down to plant an awkward kiss on her mouth, her taste still stinging on his bruised and bleeding lips, salt rubbed into wounds. Justine turned her head to the side, not fast enough, so that his kiss landed on the cool skin of her face.
"Will you stop with the pity-fest, for fuck’s sake?" she snarled into her pillow before rolling over to him and biting his neck with blunt teeth, to keep their ghosts, dead or undead, at bay.
***
The Temple of the Transcendent Mother lay quiet and deserted, waiting for the gates to move, the worshippers to arrive, a thousand candles to be lit.
"Can we wait for another five minutes, please?" Connor asked, "I’d like to enjoy this moment, just you and Cordy and me."
It was an illusion (he knew that Jasmine’s followers were with them in spirit, wherever they might go), but one he wanted to keep up as long as possible.
"Of course, we can." His daughter stroked his cheek with the softness of decomposing flesh. "You two brought me forth into this world, so how could I deny a parent such a forthright wish?"
Cordelia’s chest rose and fell with every flat breath, a living saint entombed in a shrine of glass. He pressed his fingers against the barrier that separated them, wishing he could hold her hand on occasion.
"Oh, you shall do so," Jasmine spoke into his thoughts.
"On every anniversary of the opening, you will sit down by her side and warm her with your touch. Nothing could express my gratitude for my new church any better. Isn’t it splendid in here, Connor? "
"Yes," he nodded eagerly, wanting to be ravished by the sight of luminous walls and the sound of empty echoes, merely because She wanted him to. "Yes, it’s wonderful."
Jasmine smiled a beatific smile. A few fat, white maggots dropped from her half-open mouth into his open palm.
"It pleases me especially that this building was finished in time to commemorate my birth. It has been a year now, and I love this world more with every passing day."
There was peace for all at last, a bliss that had to be paradise, undefiled and undisturbed.
Fred had died first, with a clean gunshot right into her temple. She had been kind to him for an entire summer, and he’d wanted to spare her the risk of needing more than a single sword-stroke for her execution. It had taken him only one each to decapitate Gunn and Lorne, but his hands had trembled with longing for a lost childhood when he came to Wes. Angel had cried during this beheading. Connor had killed his father last.
"It’s no use dwelling on the past," Jasmine said, "you did what had to be done for my reign to begin. I shall try to make it worthwhile."
"You already have," he reassured her.
"You gave me a new life, Jasmine. They told me I was born during a rainy November night, but from now on, your birthday will be mine, too. I’m supposed to be eighteen, and yet I’m only one year old today."
Cordelia’s eye-lids seemed to flutter, and his heart-beat quickened for a moment, in the vain hope she could be reborn as well. Jasmine cupped his chin in her hand and forced him gently to face her gaze.
"Happy birthday, father," she replied before they went to open the doors and let in the adoring crowd.
***
"Chocolate cake, your favourite," his mother announced as she put down the plate and prompted Connor to blow out the twenty candles. His sister applauded with wolf-whistles and cat-calls when he succeeded in extinguishing them in one go.
"Make a wish, quick," Caitlin said, and Connor couldn’t but shrug in a rather confused manner.
What should he wish for? He’d had his fill of magic and secrets and revelations lately. Maybe he should settle for something very simple, like trying to find out whether he actually liked his mother’s chocolate cake for, well, being his mother’s chocolate cake, or because some bald, cackling warlock had decided that chocolate cake was really yummy, even from a demon’s point of view.
"Uh, yeah, of course."
Connor gave her a hasty nod.
"So, what’s your wish?"
"But, Caitlin," his father said, "you know you have to keep your birthday wishes secret, or they’ll never come true."
"It was probably some lame-ass, boring stuff anyway. Like an A in his next exam, another internship, or Tracy sending six-pack surfer guy packing and coming back to him."
Connor kicked her under the table. "Must I remind you that it was me who broke up with her, not the other way round?"
"Oh, puh-leeease. Don’t tell me you actually believe that." Caitlin poked out her tongue at him. Unfortunately, he couldn’t explain that he’d left Tracy because their relationship had been built on a lie or that he could probably kill six-pack surfer guy with his big toe.
"Kids, that’s enough." His father’s grin belied his fist thumping on the table in a mock-gesture of paternal authority. "You’re both a bit too old for this sort of bickering – yes, even you, Caitie."
"So, what would you like to do today?" his mother asked. "There seem to be an awful lot of birthday cards in the mail; it’s marvellous weather outside; we both took the day off from work, and everything promises to be perfect."
"Perfect happiness is overrated," he mumbled, and his parents exchanged The Look of Unspoken Concern ™, an expression he had become all too familiar with since the events of last spring.
"So young, and yet so world-weary," his father joked, but it sounded more nervous than humorous.
Connor stood up abruptly. "I’m going to get the mail, okay?"
And suddenly, he knew what he was wishing for. He wanted there to be a non-descript envelope, addressed to him in old-fashioned, kind of girly hand-writing, stamped at some faraway place and containing an unsigned card that said, "Happy birthday, with all my love."
Maybe this message was already waiting for him, or maybe he would be waiting for it for the rest of his life. It might never come at all; he might read it when his normal existence was falling to pieces over some everyday tragedy; it might arrive to be one more perfect moment in the course of a perfect day. Until then, however, ordinary contentment would be enough for him.
The End
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