Lydia (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} watchergrrl) wrote,@ 1997-08-26 23:14:00 |
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Prague explained
We think we've figured out what was going on in Prague.
An interesting piece of information: Watcher Kundera's body was not identified as belonging to "Lydia Chalmers." It was identified as belonging to Gwendolyn Post. Someone calling herself Watcher Kundera, with the appropriate ID, did the identification. So as you can imagine Travers was very interested to hear that I had seen Post at least 8 hours after the identification was made. No one knew this until a couple of days after I got back, when the Czech police released the name of the victim. Had Rudi heard earlier it would have saved him a horrible twenty-four hours, of believing me dead.
Here is my theory, or my and Rudi's theory, about what Post was up to. He knows more about magic than I do (yet), and more about demon-summoning. I should have paid more attention in that class but I was focussing on werewolves at the time.
We think that Spike and Drusilla didn't actually kill that little girl. They were keeping her and feeding on her slowly - which is horrible enough - but very likely she was still alive when the vampires were driven out of Prague by the mob; driven out by an anonymous voice shouting "child-killers! get them!" or whatever it called. The girl wasn't found until the next day, recently dead, and practically bloodless, as one would expect of a vampire kill.
Only what was used, then, to paint the diagram in blood on the bathroom wall? And why wasn't it finished two months after the vampires left town, so that Miss Post had to come back to finish it the day I happened to be there, looking around, and standing in the bathtub?
Rudi - and Travers, to be fair; a stodgy and hierarchical ass, but a smart and well-read Watcher - have located a particular demon-summoning spell that requires the blood of a vampire's victim. Obviously this is a commodity difficult to find since vampires usually drink their victim's blood. One needs to find a vampire pretty much in the act of feeding and scare him off his prey.
The demon that responds to this particular spell is called "The Worst" ("Kakistos", in Greek). He, or it, gives its summoner a great deal of power, if properly controlled. But all the pieces have to be in place, and the diagram must be completed at the correct phase of the moon, when certain planets are properly aligned, in addition to having the appropriate materials, i.e. vampire victim's blood.
We believe that Miss Post had William the Bloody and Drusilla under observation. She will have known about the kidnapped girl - everyone in Prague knew about her - and tracked her down to their lair. (I have had a horrible thought that she may have delivered the girl to their lair in the first place - we don't know much about the lady who abducted her from the bus stop.) In any event, she must have known about the pair's habit of feeding slowly from their victims, when opportunity arose.
In any event, once she was sure she knew where the girl was, and that she wasn't dead yet, she raised the alarm to drive William the Bloody and Drusilla out of town. Then she went back to the flat they had inhabited, and found the girl in the wardrobe where they were keeping her. I'm trying not to think of the girl's last moments here - how she must have felt, on seeing the door open and find her rescuer, as she thought, standing outside.
Miss Post must have killed the girl herself, drained her, and used the blood to sketch the diagram on the wall. But she was a young girl, and small for her age, and perhaps she hadn't enough blood for the task.
It took Miss Post nearly two months to find another vampire's victim and get enough blood to finish the job. That, at least, is our theory. The appropriate planetary alignment ended this week - how furious she must have been when I smeared her diagram for her and undid all her work, for which she had murdered at least once! Twice, including Kundera.
Once her plans fell apart she murdered Kundera, who was, perhaps, growing suspicious of her presence in Prague. Then she identified the body as her own, to further cover her tracks. I suppose if she had managed to kill me she would simply have left the body somewhere looking like a random mugging.
We don't need to worry that she will try to raise this particular demon again because the next useful planetary alignment will be in 2057. Apparently it can also be raised through the use of some magically-charged gauntlet, but no one knows where that is - it disappeared somewhere in the New World in the 17th century, during the Spanish occupation of Mexico, and she's unlikely to be able to find it. But she's likely to be up to some sort of mischief, certainly.
So far as Miss Post knows, I believe that she is Janna Kundera, so I should be safe from further pursuit by her. And so far as she knows, everyone believes that Gwendolyn Post is dead. The Watcher's Council has agreed to let her continue to think so, but has issued a memo to all field watchers to keep an eye out for her.
So why, you ask, is Travers so furious with me? Because I disobeyed him, of course. But the real problem is that I found out something he doesn't want anyone to know - that Watchers can go bad. Especially he doesn't want students to know it, for fear, I suppose, that we will be tempted to go the same way. That was why he didn'twant me in Prague; he knew that Gwendolyn Post was there, and the Council was already suspicious of her behaviour.
I've agreed to keep quiet about everything I know, so that the pristine perfection of the Watchers is not smirched, and because if I said what I knew there's a chance that Miss Post would find out that we know she's still alive.
Oh, one last thing. Rudi also wants me to be quiet if possible; hasn't said so but I can tell he doesn't want me to talk about it. It took him awhile to tell me why, and I finally had to ask.
Do you remember I mentioned Travers, telling me that Rudi had had his heart broken before, and hoping I would be good to him?
It turns out that he and Gwendolyn Post were in the same year at the Academy. And they were, well, "good friends". But her interest in power was always greater than her interest in service, he says. He could see her taking the wrong turning, but couldn't persuade her against it. It ended badly.
Not that badly, I can't help but think. At least he's still around to talk about it. I expect anyone she tired of now wouldn't be.
But she obviously meant a lot to him; a woman with intelligence and a good deal of promise, when he knew her, he said. But she lacked principle.
That was all he was willing to say about it ,and I certainly didn't press him further. But poor Rudi! We all have botched love affairs in our past, student flings, pairings that somehow didn't work. Think of me and Cedric. But that was a comparatively minor pain - and would have been even if I had cared much for for him than it turned out I did.
How much worse it would be to see someone you loved actually turn evil, become someone you can no longer respect!
In any event that's all for this evening. I nearly have "Appearances and Habitats" finished, a miracle given everything that's happened this week, and I need to give it to Travers tomorrow to appease him. So to bed, and up early enough tomorrow to give it a quick polish and add the conclusion.
See you this weekend.
love, Lydia
We think we've figured out what was going on in Prague.
An interesting piece of information: Watcher Kundera's body was not identified as belonging to "Lydia Chalmers." It was identified as belonging to Gwendolyn Post. Someone calling herself Watcher Kundera, with the appropriate ID, did the identification. So as you can imagine Travers was very interested to hear that I had seen Post at least 8 hours after the identification was made. No one knew this until a couple of days after I got back, when the Czech police released the name of the victim. Had Rudi heard earlier it would have saved him a horrible twenty-four hours, of believing me dead.
Here is my theory, or my and Rudi's theory, about what Post was up to. He knows more about magic than I do (yet), and more about demon-summoning. I should have paid more attention in that class but I was focussing on werewolves at the time.
We think that Spike and Drusilla didn't actually kill that little girl. They were keeping her and feeding on her slowly - which is horrible enough - but very likely she was still alive when the vampires were driven out of Prague by the mob; driven out by an anonymous voice shouting "child-killers! get them!" or whatever it called. The girl wasn't found until the next day, recently dead, and practically bloodless, as one would expect of a vampire kill.
Only what was used, then, to paint the diagram in blood on the bathroom wall? And why wasn't it finished two months after the vampires left town, so that Miss Post had to come back to finish it the day I happened to be there, looking around, and standing in the bathtub?
Rudi - and Travers, to be fair; a stodgy and hierarchical ass, but a smart and well-read Watcher - have located a particular demon-summoning spell that requires the blood of a vampire's victim. Obviously this is a commodity difficult to find since vampires usually drink their victim's blood. One needs to find a vampire pretty much in the act of feeding and scare him off his prey.
The demon that responds to this particular spell is called "The Worst" ("Kakistos", in Greek). He, or it, gives its summoner a great deal of power, if properly controlled. But all the pieces have to be in place, and the diagram must be completed at the correct phase of the moon, when certain planets are properly aligned, in addition to having the appropriate materials, i.e. vampire victim's blood.
We believe that Miss Post had William the Bloody and Drusilla under observation. She will have known about the kidnapped girl - everyone in Prague knew about her - and tracked her down to their lair. (I have had a horrible thought that she may have delivered the girl to their lair in the first place - we don't know much about the lady who abducted her from the bus stop.) In any event, she must have known about the pair's habit of feeding slowly from their victims, when opportunity arose.
In any event, once she was sure she knew where the girl was, and that she wasn't dead yet, she raised the alarm to drive William the Bloody and Drusilla out of town. Then she went back to the flat they had inhabited, and found the girl in the wardrobe where they were keeping her. I'm trying not to think of the girl's last moments here - how she must have felt, on seeing the door open and find her rescuer, as she thought, standing outside.
Miss Post must have killed the girl herself, drained her, and used the blood to sketch the diagram on the wall. But she was a young girl, and small for her age, and perhaps she hadn't enough blood for the task.
It took Miss Post nearly two months to find another vampire's victim and get enough blood to finish the job. That, at least, is our theory. The appropriate planetary alignment ended this week - how furious she must have been when I smeared her diagram for her and undid all her work, for which she had murdered at least once! Twice, including Kundera.
Once her plans fell apart she murdered Kundera, who was, perhaps, growing suspicious of her presence in Prague. Then she identified the body as her own, to further cover her tracks. I suppose if she had managed to kill me she would simply have left the body somewhere looking like a random mugging.
We don't need to worry that she will try to raise this particular demon again because the next useful planetary alignment will be in 2057. Apparently it can also be raised through the use of some magically-charged gauntlet, but no one knows where that is - it disappeared somewhere in the New World in the 17th century, during the Spanish occupation of Mexico, and she's unlikely to be able to find it. But she's likely to be up to some sort of mischief, certainly.
So far as Miss Post knows, I believe that she is Janna Kundera, so I should be safe from further pursuit by her. And so far as she knows, everyone believes that Gwendolyn Post is dead. The Watcher's Council has agreed to let her continue to think so, but has issued a memo to all field watchers to keep an eye out for her.
So why, you ask, is Travers so furious with me? Because I disobeyed him, of course. But the real problem is that I found out something he doesn't want anyone to know - that Watchers can go bad. Especially he doesn't want students to know it, for fear, I suppose, that we will be tempted to go the same way. That was why he didn'twant me in Prague; he knew that Gwendolyn Post was there, and the Council was already suspicious of her behaviour.
I've agreed to keep quiet about everything I know, so that the pristine perfection of the Watchers is not smirched, and because if I said what I knew there's a chance that Miss Post would find out that we know she's still alive.
Oh, one last thing. Rudi also wants me to be quiet if possible; hasn't said so but I can tell he doesn't want me to talk about it. It took him awhile to tell me why, and I finally had to ask.
Do you remember I mentioned Travers, telling me that Rudi had had his heart broken before, and hoping I would be good to him?
It turns out that he and Gwendolyn Post were in the same year at the Academy. And they were, well, "good friends". But her interest in power was always greater than her interest in service, he says. He could see her taking the wrong turning, but couldn't persuade her against it. It ended badly.
Not that badly, I can't help but think. At least he's still around to talk about it. I expect anyone she tired of now wouldn't be.
But she obviously meant a lot to him; a woman with intelligence and a good deal of promise, when he knew her, he said. But she lacked principle.
That was all he was willing to say about it ,and I certainly didn't press him further. But poor Rudi! We all have botched love affairs in our past, student flings, pairings that somehow didn't work. Think of me and Cedric. But that was a comparatively minor pain - and would have been even if I had cared much for for him than it turned out I did.
How much worse it would be to see someone you loved actually turn evil, become someone you can no longer respect!
In any event that's all for this evening. I nearly have "Appearances and Habitats" finished, a miracle given everything that's happened this week, and I need to give it to Travers tomorrow to appease him. So to bed, and up early enough tomorrow to give it a quick polish and add the conclusion.
See you this weekend.
love, Lydia
