My Lazarus Stance

by ObliqueReference

Rating: R
Disclaimer: I own none of these characters, they are the sole property of Joss Whedon, UPN, FOX, and the rest. It is simply out of the grace of their hearts that I am allowed to even begin to write this. BUT the story is mine, so plagiarize and I will beat you to death with a halibut.
Distribution: http://mysticmuse.net, http://www.kennedyfanfic.com/fanfic/
As long as I get the street cred, toss this baby anywhere.
Spoilers: Everything in the series. This takes place after my fics " Mirror,Mirror " and " The Thrill is Gone ", so while not necessary, it would help to read these.
Feedback: I would love to hear from any adoring fans I might have.. Anybody? Hello?
Author's Notes: But just when you thought it was safe to work out your problems like adults, here comes the Mexican Pro-Wrestling Demons, the vampire mafioso, and the weapon of mass destruction that looks suspiciously like an ill-tempered squirrel. A journey into darkness against the backdrop of a farcical crime caper.
Pairing: Willow/Kennedy

Summary: Somewhere in the dark of the Louisiana Bayous, someone wants something with a very special corpse. Kennedy and Willow head to investigate.

Page 3 of 5

1 2 3 4 5

Part Five
Bone

"I put sixteen shells in my thirty-ought-six
and a black crow snuck through the hole in the sky"
-Tom Waits "Sixteen Shells"

"Civilization cultivates only a versatility of sensation in man.and decidedly nothing else."
-Fyodor Dostoevsky, "Notes from Underground"

Chapter Twenty-Four

The door exploded inwards, splinters slicing air. Far too light to stay aloft, they arced off as wind resistance sent them away. Kennedy shielded her tear-stained face, reactions stone cold dead. Tara screamed something incomprehensible, a single syllable that stank of an aborted word.

In strode two men, brothers by blood and circumstance. Big Creak stepped through the wooden wreckage, kicking the larger shards aside with the toe of his workboots. He cracked his knuckles, popping each joint individually, teeth white and wide in his dog-snarl grin. His brother followed on his heels, black suit decorated with a splash of purple, the tulip in his lapel wilted. The sharp lines of his cheekbones met at lips pressed in concentration.

Kennedy animated instantly, on her feet and driving towards her enemies with fists drawn back and clenched so hard the scabs on her knuckles oozed. She went for Mr. Creak first, the power radiating off him popping Kennedy's ears like an airplane ride. He raised an ugly black finger at her face, impossibly long and hollow at the end. She may as well have hit a wall; her face flew up to it, then pulled back, her contextual awareness screaming 'DANGER'. Mr. Creak winked at her, then squeezed the trigger.

"No!" Willow shouted, the power of her voice penetrating the barriers between worlds, drawing energy, and freezing the trigger mechanism as quickly as she thought it. Mr. Creak turned his strychnine gaze to her.

"Impedimente Vim," he spoke. A green glow, like a trail of a million fireflies, poured from his extended hand. The corpse-lights reflected in Willow's green gaze, the energies for a spell of shielding gathered before the first vanguard covered even half the distance to her. The lights came over her like a torrent, flowing past her as if she were only a single pillar in a great river, hitting Tara instead.

Tara felt the electric hum of magic through her system, and knew without looking that she was glowing a dim green. The tingling and the light faded almost instantly, leaving her scanning her arms for some change. She felt normal; none of the internal warning sirens went off. Still Tara, still here, her brain said as she stood up to help in any way she could. Not that she'd have much to do: they had a Witch, a Slayer, and a Werewolf in the room, and one little post-dead blonde wasn't going to turn the tide of any battle. She might as well just sit there and wait for Kennedy and Willow to clean the bad guys' clocks.

But Kennedy wasn't doing any clock cleaning, she wasn't even trying to adjust the time. Her hands sat frozen, mirrored by the rest of her form. A nauseous glow lit her face, empty with shock. She stared at Willow, and not at the steel barrel that drew a bead on her temple. Willow stared back, wriggling uselessly against the mystical ropes that bound her.

The bathroom door swung open, shoving Big Creak against the wall. He grunted as his shoulder caved a section of drywall in the shape of Mexico. Oz pushed the door open again, slamming it into his knees, dropping him again to the floor. Mr. Creak turned his aim from Kennedy to Oz and fired.

Kennedy tried to yell a warning, but the thunder in her head forced her blind. When she opened her eyes, Oz was gone and a red spray marked his fall against the white walls of the bathroom. Willow screamed.

In the tenets of Zen, the ultimate state of awareness is that of the no-mind, where thoughts have no grip, but flit through like phantom butterflies. The state must be reached by sanot, or sudden revelation. Kennedy just achieved sanot. It wasn't the first time such a thing happened. From time to time all the gears would align correctly, and she would cut through problems in deft strokes. She became Occam's razor with an Uzi and a three month's supply of crystal meth coursing through it's veins, slicing the dead weight off the problem with a cannibal's courtesy. The answer didn't ding, it wasn't a quiz show contestant, but she simply knew the answer. She acted, and everything fell into place.

Kennedy turned, her perceptions slowing and broadening. Tara had her hands over her mouth, screaming silently. She sensed, as if through the tiny whorls in the air, the gun whipping around to take aim at her back. She scooped Tara into her arms, the impact blowing the wind out of her lungs with the rest of the scream, then jumped onto the bed. The gunshot sent chunks of plaster into her eyes. Kennedy dropped low on the bed, her knees to her chest, Tara over her shoulder. Her mind constructed an image of the triangle-barreled pistol jerking back in Mr. Creak's hand, the nanoseconds ticking away as he pulled it back down to aim again. Another bullet whistled by her ear, an angry hummingbird that slammed into the lip of the window frame. She jumped, the bed giving too much as she brought her fist forward. The glass shattered around her hand, cutting deep furrows in her forearm. Something flipped her hair past her face, and she felt the heat of the round as it left a neat, round hole in the wooden paneling of the house before her. She landed in gravel, Tara's weight driving her legs from beneath her. They both rolled, pebbles and bits of glass embedding into their hands.

Tara's arm jerked up, her mind still a half second behind before she realized that Kennedy was pulling her to her feet.

"W-Willow," she gasped.

"No time," Kennedy yanked her after her, running through the alleyway and around a corner. Tara lost her footing every third step, only to be righted by Kennedy's iron grip.

Forward, bounce off a wall, around the corner, run, move move move. Kennedy braced herself for another volley of gunfire, expecting to have to duck and weave around bullets. She leapt a chain link fence, pulling Tara over, one of the iron wires gouging a thin red line along Tara's shin. She muffled a whimper, her lungs burning, and followed, no thought but the morbidly abrupt way Oz's body went limp as a rag doll. One second he's standing, the next, he wasn't. And the sound of Willow's scream, tearing it's way out of her chest.

Kennedy mounted the second fence, pulled Tara over, and picked a shard of glass from her forearm. I sat in almost the exact same place as the cut she inflicted upon herself to fill the mystic urn for Tara's rejuvenation. With that thought, her focus left, and she saw that she stood in a street, Tara panting behind her. How far did they run? She didn't know. The streets were narrower here, the houses sat on the edges of the road like vultures waiting for prey. Kennedy didn't quibble over direction, she just began walking. Tara planted her feet and tugged her to a stop.

"W-Wait," she said, a thin ribbon of scarlet pinned to her hairline. "W-Willow. W-we n-n-need to h-h-"

"Help Willow, yeah I get that," Kennedy ducked into an alleyway filled with trash bags as a car turned the corner before them. Tara tried to nail Kennedy to the spot with her stare, but she had all the power of a palm tree in a hurricane. Kennedy watched the thumping low-rider pass, then turned to Tara. "We can't. We need to get you somewhere safe."

"They'll kill her!" Tara shouted, making Kennedy drop into a fighting stance and watch the entryways to the alley through hooded eyes. She stepped up to Tara, her eyes hard and dark.

"No. They need her."

Tara's heart started doing the Buffalo two-step in her chest, her eyes wide with panic. Kennedy looked over her shoulder, then drug her to another alleyway, this one a long cavern of stone walls to either side, the same glass that topped the nicer homes broken off and pulverized in several places. Black garbage bags created hills and valleys, a topography of refuse. Tara pulled Kennedy to a stop again.

"Kennedy!" She growled in her ear, "We need to go and st-stop them, Kennedy, we need to-"

"No!" Kennedy swatted Tara's hands off her, turning to face the blonde again. "You need to be as far away as we can get you from her. If we can get you on a plane to Cambodia, then that's where you're going."

"I won't leave Willow," Tara crossed her arms and seriously considered just turning around and walking back to the hotel room. She didn't know the way, and the sirens in the distance told her it might be a ways back.

"You really don't get it, do you?" Kennedy squeezed the cut on her arm, thick blood oozing between her fingers. "If you go back there, then we lose. Don't you see? They used you to get to Willow."

Tara stood dumbstruck. "What?"

"They cast a spell at you, and it tagged Willow instead. They brought you back because they needed a, I dunno, some kind of back door through her defenses." She winced as the pain shot needles up her arm.

Tara felt her eyes well up, but for what reason she couldn't tell. It swam to her then, all the feelings of inadequacy, all the times she felt stupid and worthless, all the times Willow had to reassure her. It boiled down to one statement: she was a prop in Willow's life. All rational thought fled, all plans disintegrated. She turned on her heel, her hands pressed to her sides as if she worried that she might accidentally grab something and break it, just like her sheer presence destroyed good things around her.

"I should g-go." She turned and began walking down the street, her walk becoming a jog and her jog becoming a run. Kennedy stood in the alleyway for a second, not really sure what just happened. She heard Tara's footfalls increase, and went after her.

Tara didn't make it much farther than a block before Kennedy cut her off. She felt a little dizzy from blood loss, but she stood on wavering legs and pressed a hand to Tara's chest.

"If I let anything happen to you, Willow will kill me."

Kennedy wrapped an arm around Tara's shoulder, pulling her off the street. "We need to get a hold of the rest of the gang. I think that Willow has everyone's phone number in one of her notebooks. That means we have to get back to the car."

She pulled Tara to the cement, amongst the rotten fruit reek of garbage and cast off crack vials. A black and white police cruiser roamed by them, halogen searchlight sweeping the alleyway like a lighthouse beacon. Kennedy sat still, covering Tara with her body until she was sure it passed them by.

"Shit. We're never gonna get to the car if we get picked up." She tried to get up, but her foot slipped in something she didn't really want to ponder for too long. The brick wall scraped her hand as she slumped against it. "Shit," she said again.

"Kennedy, you're bleeding," Tara said as she pointed at the dark blood dripping from Kennedy's injured arm in slow pulses. "We have to get some bandages."

"You know," Kennedy said, "You don't have to pretend to like me."

"I do like you," Tara said, tearing a sleeve off her t-shirt. She sniffed it, then wadded it into a ball and pressed it to Kennedy's arm. "We need a place to stay."

Kennedy closed her eyes and nodded. With a supreme act of will, she shoved herself to her feet, offering Tara a hand up as well.

"I think I saw some boarded up houses down the street."

Tara stood up, eyes never leaving the strip of shirt that soaked up the inky stain. Kennedy set off down the street, eyes dancing along it's length. Sure enough, the blank gaze of a boarded up house sat not but fifty feet ahead of them.

The porch was falling in, and the foundation looked like it had turned to sand at the bottom, and the entire affair tilted ten degrees to the left, but it was shelter. Kennedy hazarded the staircase, her strength somewhat returned. She tried the doorknob, then just twisted it off with a casual yank. The door swung open. Kennedy held up a hand, warding Tara off. Who knows what kind of squatters were inside?

The whole building stank of rat piss and human waste, the worst of it wafting in from the mattress that slumped like a used condom against the wall, syringes littering the floor. Some enterprising artist wrote the words "Fuck You" in human excrement on the wall. Kennedy did a one-eighty, and went up the stairs instead.

The effect of the tilt became more pronounced the higher she went, until at the top of the stairs she had to hold onto the railing to keep from falling on her side. The rooms up here were lightly used, a bedroom with an old four-poster bed someone abandoned having slid against a door she easily forced open. The bed smelled of old people and peanut butter sandwiches, but seemed clean enough. It would be just like camping, she told herself.

She made her way down to Tara. The girl (she couldn't think of her as anything other than a little girl, what with her meekness and big, blue eyes) stood with her back to the door, scanning the road and flinching at every light that reflected off a window.

"It's good," Kennedy said, flinching herself when the blonde jumped. "It's the upstairs room. Be careful, the stairs are pretty wobbly." Tara nodded and followed her up.

The room was lit by the streetlight that sat just outside the window, it's harsh yellow glare casting reflections on everything. Tara went to the closet, bracing herself against the wall as she pulled a dusty set of sheets out. She tugged at one for a few seconds, straining against it's seams. It finally tore with a spray of dust clouding the air. Not hygienic, but it'd have to do.

"K-Kennedy?" she asked, approaching the Slayer. "I need to make a ban-"

Kennedy looked up to her, her eyes weary and heavy with unshed tears. Her jaw set firm, but her lips trembled. She nodded, once, the hole in her chest pushing everything to the outside.

"Oh, Kenn," Tara whispered, her own chest compressing under the weight this woman carried with her, "Oh, Kenn, I'm so sorry." She sat down next to Kennedy, pulling the floral print bandages around her wrist and forearm. Kennedy bit her lip once when the knot was tied.

"We're gonna get her back," Tara said, "I know we are, in my guts."

"I know," Kennedy closed her eyes to keep the tears in. She was done with crying, she'd been crying for a day straight, and if she kept crying she'd never have tears left for the rest of her life. "It's just," she sniffed, "It's just Oz. I liked Oz. And I fucked up, and now he's dead."

Tara let her head lean against the wall, the ninety degree angle almost a recliner due to the tilt of the house. "I don't think I can sleep tonight. I keep seeing it. You didn't screw up, Kennedy. You probably saved Willow's, mine, and your life. You were.amazing."

"Yeah," Kennedy laughed bitterly, "yeah, that's me, amazing. I get a gun put in my face and I go Popsicle. I could have taken him, Tara, I could have saved Oz."

"We can't know, Kennedy. It was just his time."

"Will that help you get to sleep tonight?" Kennedy rolled her head to look at Tara. She had the cutest little ears, like little kitten ears that poked out of her hair.

Tara shook her head. "No. But it'll help me understand it later. Everything has its time, Kennedy. Except me."

"Right. You know something I read once? 'The greatest tragedy for a warrior is not to die, but to be wasted.'" Kennedy flexed her injured wrist in a circle. "Oz was wasted. He had too much good to give the world."

"He saved your life, Kenn," Tara said, the nickname comfortable on her lips. "He saved all out lives. He did what us Scoobies do."

"I never was a Scooby," Kennedy glanced down to Tara's leg, a bloody line torn through her jeans. "Oh, shit, Tara. You're bleeding." She immediately went to the pile of discarded sheets and tore another strip off. She knelt beside Tara, Willow's burgundy jeans hiding the injury fairly well.

"I didn't even notice," Tara shrugged, as Kennedy puzzled out a way to get to the injury.

"I'm gonna need to get your pants off," she finally deduced.

Tara raised an eyebrow.

"Don't flatter yourself," Kennedy said, "Now get 'em off. I have important bandaging to do."

Kennedy handed her the other half of the sheet to cover herself with. Tara tugged and struggled under the covers, kicking off the pants which rolled right back to her across the uneven floor. Kennedy propped the leg up. A nasty cut, but not too deep. She wrapped the bandage around the woman's smooth calf, tried not to let her eyes wander up to her thigh. No, that was wrong. Willow's in trouble, Willow just dumped her, and here she was looking at the woman Willow was going to spend her life with. The levels of wrongness reached Mars.

"You're very gentle," Tara said, then backtracked. "I didn't mean that to sound like a come on. I just. I don't know, expected something more.."

"Butch?" Kennedy asked as she hastily pulled the blanket back down. She took her seat beside Tara.

"Yeah," Tara gave Kennedy a crooked grin, "sorry."

"That's okay. I get it a lot. I guess when you wear the 'brat' mask for long enough, everyone just sort of takes you at face value."

"That's why they never took to you?" Tara realized she was whispering, but didn't change her tone.

"I don't know. Dawn's cool, and Faith and I got along okay. Me and Buffy went at it about every night, and if it weren't for Willow I think I'd of been drop kicked out of the house in a New York minute."

"You know," Tara turned to face Kennedy, "I didn't really get accepted into the clique either. I mean, they didn't even know about me for about three months. Willow was.shy. She didn't even tell Buffy until O-. until he came back. Just give them time. I'm sure they'd of seen what Willow sees in you."

"Apparently it wasn't enough," Kennedy's voice shook so much it registered on the Richter scale. "You know, I always knew. I mean, everything was great when we were making love, or fighting, or solving a case. But that would stop, and I could feel the clock ticking. Sometimes we'd just sit there, all uncomfortable and no one would say anything. And I wanted to scream at her, 'tell me what you want from me, tell me what to like and I'll learn to like it.' And she'd say over and over again that she didn't want me to be you. But then some nights she'd wake up and look out the window, and she'd be so sad it'd break my heart, and I knew what she wanted more than anything in the world was for you to walk through the door. You know, I hated you for a while."

This drew Tara's eyebrows together.

"After the First got put down I thought everything would get better. It did, things got smoother, but every step of the way I had to fight. And I'd fight for her, Tara, for the rest of my life I'll fight for her. But I started to think that there was this ghost Tara sending bad mojo my way. I tried to be so fucking supportive. But now that I'm getting to know you, I don't hate you." She smelled the lilacs and cream of Tara's skin, her brain shouting out, 'no, no, do not start thinking like this you little hormonal chimp!' "I don't hate you at all." Oh, great Kennedy, go and make a pass at Saint Tara. You are such an asshat.

"I'm sorry for the way I spoke to you earlier," Tara said, very quiet and very even. This woman wasn't a rival, wasn't a challenge to Willow's affections. She was just a girl in love with a woman who had loads of baggage. "It was wrong of me not to understand how much I hurt you. I guess I haven't felt like myself lately. I don't think I should be here."

"What?" Kennedy sat up, "No, wait. I mean, what?"

"It was my time, Kennedy," Tara explained, "Willow was moving on, she had a great girlfriend, and I think I was happy for her. I came back, and everything gets screwed up."

"Oh my shit," Kennedy laughed, "Are you fuckin' kidding me? I mean, you've conquered death. That makes it like you, Buffy, and JESUS! So really, the way I see it is you've got the ultimate second chance. And besides, it's not like you had a choice."

Tara looked away as a vice squeezed her shoulders together.

"That is accurate, right? I mean, there's not like an afterlife job placement bureau or anything, right? 'Excuse me, but I'd like to complete my karmic cycle as a meercat.'"

Tara shook her head, a smile drifting by her features. "No," she said, "No, no meercats." Tara pulled her legs up to her chest. Kennedy watched the withdrawal, her heart filling with the same protective need that Willow created. She did the only thing she could think of. She scooted closer to Tara, and wrapped her arms around her soft body, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

Tara looked at the dark-haired woman in confusion. Her arms were strong, but gentle. Tara felt the woman's aura extend around her, trying to protect her from all the negative emotions. Kennedy kept her aura close to her, like a shield, and now she extended that shield to another. Tara felt warm and safe, and knew for a fact that no matter how this turned out, Kennedy would sooner die than let anything hurt her. She had a warrior's spirit, one who doesn't fight for glory or riches but to protect her loved ones. But there was darkness in there, for the same passion that fueled her could overwhelm her and drag her into reckless despair. She rested her head on Kennedy's shoulder, and began to weep.

"Hey, hey," Kennedy found her voice reaching a timbre reserved for few, but one that came easily here. Better not to think on it too much. Think about Willow. Think about the hole bored through your chest that eats up your insides. Think about Oz. Just whatever you do, don't think about Tara. She's not yours, and she never will be, and it's wrong to even think like that. "It's not that bad here. Life can be good. It's good when you've." She thought she said 'got someone to share it with', but the words never left.

"I killed her," Tara sobbed, her Fae hands wringing Kennedy's shirt, "Oh Jesus God I killed her, oh God I'm sorry."

"Tara," Kennedy felt giddy. This wasn't right, Tara didn't kill, Tara was too gentle and kind to kill. Her spine stiffened. "What do you mean?"

"Th-they k-killed that baby," she said between her spasming breaths, "they asked me to drink it's blood. Oh, Willow, Willow, please, I was so scared. I didn't know." She collapsed again, no tears this time, but a slow heaving breath that tried to fill lungs against their own will. Kennedy's eyes darted back and forth, processing this information.

"You didn't have a choice. They made you."

Tara shook her head. "No, I chose. I wanted to live. And I drank. I'm a-a monster. And let Willow cheat on you, and I was so-so *mean* to you, and I didn't try and stop Willow, or make things work out, and I've been selfish and cruel. I'm not me. I feel like I'm watching everything from outside myself, and nothing's connected."

"What? That's no choice!" Kennedy became genuinely angry. "That's not a choice. I mean, you hold some, some water to a thirsty man and then ask him to drink, no, that's no choice at all. That's just fucking wrong. It's torture." She faced Tara, so close she could feel her heat on her lips. "You didn't do anything wrong. Not in my eyes, and I know not in Willow's. She'd forgive you for anything."

Tara wiped her eyes. The words were kind, and perhaps even true, but they didn't take away the broken glass jumble of emotions that rolled around the inside of her head. Her vision cleared. Kennedy's big dark eyes smiled at her, her eyebrow quirked up in a semi-permanent smirk. 'Don't worry about anything,' the look said, 'I've got things under control.' Tara wondered if Willow got the same look when she started to hyperventilate, or when she cried in the night.

"Do you think we're really going to get her back?" Tara asked. Now there was an interesting choice of words! 'We're going to'? Kennedy flinched at the reference even as she answered.

"I know it. I know these things, Tara. You should trust me."

Tara smiled and nodded, the first real, glowing smile she gave since her resurrection. Kennedy melted. 'So that's it,' she thought, 'no wonder Willow fell so hard for this girl.' She smiled back and hoped she didn't look too toothy.

"See?" she said, "You're still Tara. I've only heard second hand accounts, but I do believe that that's a full fledged Tara-grin."

Tara blushed, tucked her chin into her chest and pulled the blooming sheet to her chest. She looked up at Kennedy through her dark lashes, knowing just how coy she must look, but the whiskey-like warmth inside after so much time covered in ice brooked no argument.

That look ended it for Kennedy. As soon as the streetlight reflected in Tara's eyes like a thousand stars in a twilight sky, her hands and lips moved of their own volition, her entire motor system co-opted by the heat of Tara's skin and the adorable ball of her nose. She closed the distance with a smoothness that an ice-skater would envy, her palm cupping Tara's cheek and drawing patterns under her eye. She pressed her lips to Tara's, her stomach folding into origami shapes. Kennedy tensed in disbelief as Tara brought her hands up to Kennedy's face, her touch so soft and accepting that all thoughts of right or wrong routed before them. Tara's lips matched hers almost perfectly, and she began to move them in small kisses, her whole world seizing up like a heart attack when Tara mirrored the action.

Tara pulled away, slowly, her hands not holding, but signaling Kennedy away. She turned her head, licked her lips, and closed her eyes. Kennedy's world power zoomed back into focus. The blue-black shadows of the askew room, the hardness of the wooden floor and the smooth heat of Tara's leg curled beside her etched into her mind's eye. Tara gathered herself, her pale eyebrows reflecting the tallow streetlight as they gathered in the center.

"Kennedy," she said, "Ummm." She straightened the folds of the blanket. "You're a beautiful woman. And that was.nice. But." She turned to address Kennedy directly, and saw that her chastisement was unnecessary. Kennedy had her head in her hands, the black river of her hair falling around her and crashing against her knees. She sat very still, her arms wrapped around her knees. Tara reached out to her, touched her shoulder.

"Kennedy?"

"I am such a fucking asshole," she replied, muffled through her cocoon.

"No," Tara soothed, "No, you're just confused is all. You just wanted-"

"To make out with the gorgeous blonde next to me," Kennedy spat rapid-fire. "That's me, a pretty face and I act like a total idiot." She looked up, pointing at herself. "Do you have any idea how much damage these lips have caused?"

Tara gave her lopsided grin. "I think I have an idea."

"You ever turned someone into a man with your lips?"

"Can't say that I have." She put an arm around Kennedy's shoulder. "I know what you're going through, Kennedy. It's okay to be a little mixed up. This isn't easy for anyone."

"It's pretty easy for you," Kennedy growled. She immediately crumbled. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. I just meant, I mean, it's over for me. You've got her back. And I know I don't seem it, but I am happy for her. Around you.something.wakes up, something that's been asleep a long time. I tried to do that. I guess I just couldn't be there for her the way she needed. 'Course," she added, fighting a grin, "None of this would be a problem if *some* people would have the decency to stay dead."

"She loves you," Tara said, yawning. "And we'll work everything out when we get her back."

Tara rolled on to her side, lodging herself in the 'v' where the wall met the floor. She lifted a corner of the sheet. "You'll protect me while I sleep?"

Kennedy slid down beside her spooning her our of necessity. "I'll defend your dreams to the death, milady. Plus, I don't think your warranty is up yet." Kennedy yawned too, the herd instinct kicking in.

"Twenty-one years or two-thousand miles," Tara yawned, "whichever-" She was fast asleep before the word ever left her lips.

Kennedy stayed awake for another hour, watching Tara for nightmares. She stirred once, whimpering in her sleep, but Kennedy drove the fear away with soft words whispered in her ear and a steady hand smoothing her hair. She finally closed her eyes, and prayed she wouldn't dream.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Johnny spent five minutes smoking a Marlboro Red, rolling the tan and brown flecked filter, that he supposed represented a sandy field or something else equally macho, between his nicotine stained fingers. The sweat of the day evaporated into a comfortable balmyness, a pleasant breeze touching his cheek. He stubbed the cigarette butt out on his boot heel, and decided to go get a few beers.

He walked towards downtown, the slow trickle of people converging on the bars becoming a torrent as he neared his goal. He sat in the first open bar he found, a quaint stone cabin that catered to middle class old people, complete with karaoke machine, mercifully unmanned. The bartender was a crewcut white kid with a male model's cheekbones and a football player's neck. Johnny flashed ID and grabbed a Heineken, killing half of it in one swig. He was in way over his head. Helping people out is one thing, acting as a counselor for three screwed up lesbians and a guy who may or may not be a werewolf didn't fit into his job description.

Now, what his job exactly was was something of an enigma. Monster fighter? No, that required the actual fighting of monsters, which he had no intention of trying anytime soon. Freedom fighter? Had a nice Marxist ring to it, but he didn't listen to enough Rage Against the Machine and red armbands weren't his thing. When it came down to it, he was pretty much a groupie, offering scathing one-liners in exchange for seeing these badasses whup on everything they saw. I'm a fuckin' sell-out, he thought. He finished the beer and bought another.

Shit. The argument was probably already over by now, and they were all crying and damn if seeing a woman cry wasn't the sorriest sight ever. Besides, he had a new beer to finish now. A car backfired - pop!- somewhere out in the French Quarter. Why anyone owned a car in this town was just a show of how pretentious people could be. Pop! Pop! Pop! At the very least they could maintain the damn thing. It never occurred to him that they were anything other than backfires until her heard the sirens.

Johnny ran all the way back to the hotel. A man in a blue shirt that bulged around the middle from the Kevlar vest sweated and ran a length of yellow tape around the perimeter of the hotel. In the movies, the good guy always runs through the tape to discover the horrible scene, but just the thought of a horrible scene slowed him like an emergency brake. He tried to convince himself that it could have been any of the other rooms, but he just couldn't take himself seriously.

"Step away from the crime scene, please," the cop with the tape said.

"I-" he stammered, a thousand warnings from his father about talking to the cops flashed into his head. He chewed them away, and managed to get a full sentence out. "I know people staying here."

The cop stopped what he was doing, turning that judgmental squint cops spend years perfecting on Johnny, withering under the stare so much his father felt it. The cop set the 'DO NOT CROSS' tape on the street, where a trio of thirteen year olds eyed it mischievously.

"Did you know someone by the name of," he opened his notepad, "Daniel Osborne?"

Daniel, Dan, Danny, no, no one by that name. Danny Osborne? Dan Osb-- Oz. Oh, shit. Johnny knew the blood left his head; he felt dizzy and a little sick. That's when the paramedics brought out a black, jippered trash bag on a gurney. A body bag. He felt the world spin under his feet.

"Y-yeah. We were--he was a friend of mine."

The Detective's moustache twitched at the tips like a mouse's whiskers.

"I think you need to come down to the station with us," he said, and it wasn't a request.

They booked him. The phrase really didn't encompass the entirety of the situation. They put him in the back of a patrol car, seat so close to the dividing wall he couldn't move his legs but an inch either way, which he supposed was the point. Johnny blinked and he was being fingerprinted, his picture and height and weight and all the other various biometric measurements that were going to keep him from running were being taken. He suddenly understood why his father hated the police so much. To them, he was just a resource.

He blinked again, and he was in an interrogation room, a cup of lukewarm coffee that tasted of pondwater in his hand. A full-wall mirror reflected the cold gray cement blocks into a perfect double room. Johnny knew that on the other side of that mirror were a bunch of dour faced detectives, the same pissy coffee in their hands as they waited for some secret sign from on high to proceed. He thought about giving them the finger, but his arms were made of air and had no connection to his mind.

"Sorry to keep you waiting," said the detective as he walked in, the lock slamming shut as he closed the door. "It's been a long night."

The detective, the same bristle mustached leathery officer who put him in the patrol car, sat across from him and told Johnny his name, which he promptly forgot.

"Am I being charged with anything?" Johnny asked, not liking the tremor in his voice.

"We'd just like to ask you some questions," the detective affected a stern but open face. "If you answer them, you can go on your way."

Rebel! A voice yelled in his ears. If this were a parking ticket, or a skateboarding violation, Johnny would have listened. But this was more serious, though why it was so serious escaped him at the moment. He nodded.

The detective pulled a notebook out, the little flip top kind that every cop in every TV show since Dragnet carried. Johnny was a little surprised to see it, and found himself wondering how many other stereotypes were true. If a donut falls on the ground, do cops make a sound?

"Could you state your full name for the record?"

"Jaihunta Malcom Youngheart." The cop raised an eyebrow. "I go by Johnny."

"You knew Daniel Osborne?" he asked.

"Yeah. Oz. We called him Oz."

"Okay," the cop murmured through his broomlike facial hair. "And who else were you with?"

"I-" He stopped a lie as it formed on his lips. They'd find out, sooner or later, and when they did, he'd really be in trouble. "I was with Willow Rosenberg, and two other girls. I didn't get their last names. Tara and Kennedy."

"How long have you been in New Orleans?"

"Only a day. We just got in this morning."

"Where were you coming from?"

"Hope. South of here. Hey, listen, what's going on? Where are they?"

"That's what we're trying to find out." He cleared his throat and took a sip of his coffee with a look of resigned distaste. "I have to check something out. Could you hold on one second?" He didn't wait for a response, just pushed himself out of his chair and left Johnny alone in the room again.

If he were the meticulous type, he would have counted the minutes. There was no clock in the room, and it was lit by lingering fluorescent bulbs that barely produced enough light to read by. Not that there was anything to read. So he tried to reconstruct what happened.

Someone found them. He, or they had guns, and shot, what, four times? One gunshot, then three others right on top of each other. Maybe they walked in, shot the most dangerous one, probably Willow, and executed everyone else at their leisure. No, that didn't make sense, because there was only one body. And they kept asking about Oz. They didn't know who else was in the room. Iron bars fell down.

Oz was dead.

And all Johnny could think about was how he knew he could have beaten him in Six Degrees if he just got another chance to play. But he wouldn't. Man, what a downer.

So Willow and Tara and Kennedy got away. Or they got captured. Then why the extra shots? Maybe the first one missed Oz, and the other three killed him. Or maybe someone got away, and the other three shots were in chase. He turned both scenarios around in his head a thousand times, each one just as likely as the other, and another hundred possibilities sprung forth, like a fractal pattern that just increases in complexity without ever leaving it's bounds. The more he turned it, the more convoluted his plots, each storyline beginning with a tearstained argument and each ending with four shots, pop, poppoppop, like bookends.

He got tired of running through his thoughts and began to count the bricks. One hundred twenty four, by his reckoning. The coffee was ice cold, and when he swished it around in its cup it left black grains on the sides. Shitty coffee. Score two for stereotypes.

The detective, whatshisname, Pallus, Dallas, Mallus, something like that, entered again, took his seat and regarded Johnny with curiosity.

"You said you're from Hope, is that right?"

"Yeah," Johnny drew out, looking around the room for an ambush to drop.

"Do you know what's been going on down there?" Detective Whosisface leaned on the table, propped up by his elbows and Johnny got the impression that if he slipped he'd just topple to the ground like a demolished skyskraper.

"No-what's been going on down there?"

The cop cleared his throat (Galleaux, that was his name), lips twitching from side to side, making his moustache sweep his lower lip. "There's ah, been some murders."

Some murders? *Some* murders? As in more than one?

"What?"

"It's been all over the news. When did you leave?"

"Uh--yesterday. Early yesterday. We stopped just outside of town for the night. Do-do you know who?"

"Who did it? No, that's the FBI's job."

"No, no, who died?"

A pause.

"We can't give out those names right now."

"Wait, wait," Johnny pleaded, "My brother, was my brother on the list. His last name's the same as mine. C'mon, I have a right to know."

"No, he's not," Det. Galleaux said. Johnny visibly loosened. He flipped open his notebook again. "Were you in any kind of trouble? Any drug dealers, pimps or anything? Jealous boyfriends?"

"No," Johnny lied, "Nothing like that. I mean, not that I know of."

"Why don't you tell your side of the story?"

"Yeah. Um, we got into town about noon. Everyone was really hungry, so we stopped by Bayona, on Dauphine. We ate there for about an hour, and went to the motel after that. We got rooms, then walked around for a few more hours. I think we got back at six or seven. We sat around for another hour, and then I left to go get a drink."

"Where'd you go?" he asked, writing in the notebook in short, abrupt factoids.

"It's that place on the corner of Dauphine and Esplanade?"

"I know it. Anybody see you there? Anyone who could vouch for you?" His words were as cold and dead as Oz's corpse.

"Well, the barkeep was a big blonde guy. I bought two beers from him."

"I'll get someone to check it out," Det. Galleaux scratched his stubble. "So, why'd you leave? Why didn't anyone come with you?"

Oh boy, here is comes. The cop-brain is gonna start working overtime. "I just wanted to get out of there. Things were a little crazy, you know what I'm sayin'?"

"Crazy?" Johnny actually saw his eyes light up. "Crazy how?"

"Willow, uh," how to put his a delicately as possible, "she was havin' some relationship trouble."

"With who?" he asked, "With Daniel?"

"Oz? No, no sir, not with Oz." So it gets drug out. Pigs're gonna latch onto this like it was the Holy Grail. "She was havin' some trouble with Kennedy."

"Kennedy, Kennedy the girl?"

"Yes." He let the word fall like a portcullis.

The door opened. A black man, younger than the Detective, with the broad shoulders and skinny arms of a guy who'd fallen out of shape doing paperwork walked in. He set down a few sheets of paper, computer printed, on the table and stood there for a second. Johnny thought he spied the words Lexus/Nexus one one of the sheets.

"Hey, Bolland," Galleaux said, "Go down to The Horse and Buggy on Toulouse and see who was working tonight. See if any of them can ID Johnny here. Cool?"

"I'll send Primer," Bolland said, "I think he's down there." He turned around, shutting the door behind him.

"Mmm-hmm," Galleaux nibbled on the end of his pen as he read. "Interesting. Willow Rosenberg, no criminal record, straight A student all through college, graduated this year with honors from UC Sunnydale. Didn't Sunnydale have a big earthquake?"

"I thought it was a sinkhole," Johnny said, twirling one of his braids.

The cop flipped to the third page. "Did you know Ms. Rosenberg was involved in a shooting back in 2002?"

"Yeah," he said, "I used to talk with her online. She disappeared for a while after that."

"Right. She was never charged with anything, but one Tara Maclay was DOA when the roommate's sister found her. Roommate also got hit, but made a full recovery. Rosenberg went to England for special grief counseling. Guess she took it pretty hard. You know all this?"

Johnny nodded. He didn't like where this was going.

"So what did you say this other girl's name was? Tara? Just like the dead girlfriend."

"I guess, yeah."

"Was that what they were arguing about? Ms. Rosenberg found a replacement for her dead lover?"

Johnny shrugged. "I didn't stick around. It was personal."

"But Osborne stuck around."

"He went to take a shower when they started arguing. I just took the hint and made myself scarce."

"Right, right, they found him there. So when you say 'they', you mean this Kennedy and Tara?"

"No, Kennedy and Willow."

"So what kicked it off? Kennedy catch her girlfriend you know, gettin' some play? Maybe a lick-her license?"

Fuckin' typical. Score three for stereotypes. "Um, the other day she walked in on them making out. She was pretty broken up about it. We, uh, Oz and I had to take her to our room."

"What was she doin'? She was crying?"

"Heh, no, she was kicking the shit outta a dumpster, she-" oh, shit, that was a fuckup.

Det. Galleaux nodded sagely, a thin almost smile sent the tide in on his wrinkles. "So she's one of these, uhhh, butch dykes. Right."

"Naw man," Johnny backtracked, "She was just hurt, you know. She ain't like a trucker lookin' chick."

"Yeah, that's how the dykes were back in my day," he reminisced, "I remember this one gal, lived down the street from me, had the words 'fuck you' tattooed across her knuckles. They don't make those diesel dykes anymore. All the lesbians now are just normal lookin'. It'll throw a guy off."

"Whatever, man. I'm just sayin' that she wasn't so much angry as hurt. She got her heart broken, y'hear?"

"So," he steepled his fingers and looked over them to Johnny, his eyes searching Johnny's face for any reaction. "Here's my theory. Rosenberg and this Kennedy are dating. Rosenberg meets this girl who's a lot like her dead girlfriend. She's obviously not over it totally, so she just plugs in this new chick She's perfect, same size, same hair, even the same name. This Kennedy gets upset, kicks some things over. Maybe even tries to make things better. But it's building up. She's thinkin' about all the things the Tara is gonna take away. An argument starts up. Now, I know you don't know what kicked it off, but it don't take much with women. And it gets bad, so bad you've gotta get out of there. I don't blame you, I do the same thing when my mother-in-law and my wife go at it. So at some point, someone steps over the line. Kennedy pulls a piece: .50 cal, big bastard gun. Starts waving it around. She's probably not gonna kill anyone, she just wants them to listen. But, Daniel hears all the shoutin', and opens the door to investigate. Kennedy gets surprised, and bam, shoots him dead in the face. Rosenberg and this Tara bust open the window, they dive through. Kennedy is panicked, and figures, 'fuck it, I won't let that, that cheatin' bitch get away' and starts busting caps. Two lodge in the windowframe, one goes through the house next door and blows out their TV. See, there were only four shells at the scene, so Kennedy must have come to her senses and taken off. Just decided its an accident, and is scared, so she is out lying low. How does that sound?"

"Bullshit,' Johnny's blood roared behind his eyes. "Kenn wasn't packin'."

"Oh? How do you know that?"

Because she is a weapon, he wanted to say. "Man, the chick's walking around all day in a bellyshirt and jeans. Where's she gonna hide a heater, in her ass?"

"She could have had it in the suitcase."

"Shit, I don't know. If she did then that's a lot of work to pull that shit out in the middle of an argument. And she'd get dropped when she went for it."

"Really? How so?"

"Willow's a Sunnydale kid. You ever seen the crime stats on that place? It was like a white, middle class Detroit. Yo, man, I told you everything I know, now are you chargin' me or what?"

Detective Galleaux made a show of ordering his papers, setting them down and butting the edges against the table. He took a deep breath, as if drawing in his thoughts.

"No. Whatever happened, you weren't there. I've got someone checking your story out, but I think we both know that he's gonna find out that you were where you said you were. You're free to go."

Johnny stood up, turned to the door. "'Bout fuckin' time," he said under his breath.

"One more thing," the cop said, "If any of them should get in touch with you, it'd be best for everyone if they came in. Give me a call if you find anything."

Johnny took the offered card, waited for someone to unlock the door, and went out into the night. He had to find Willow, Tara and Kennedy. So he started walking south.

"So what do you think?" Captain Ebenhart watched the grainy tape of the interrogation in the cramped TV room provided for such events. Roland Mathias Ebenhart was a sprightly man of fifty, his silver crew cut and hollow cheeks cutting a figure of considerable height. His rigid spine and cold gaze marked him as a military man, and one who had seen combat on more than one occasion. Indeed, on his desk sat two Purple Hearts, one for a piece of shrapnel he caught in the leg during the Tet Offensive, and the other for a bullet in the lung at Firebase Valley Forge. A penny size chunk of steel still floated around his knee joint, telling him the barometric pressure with dull moans of pain.

"He knows something else," Det. Galleaux said, filling out the outprocessing paperwork. He looked the same age as the Capt., but he just wore his years more heavily. He first tried to fight his ever-increasing waistline, but after ten years as a Detective, he just stopped caring. Tina, his wife, stopped caring as well, and he had to go to whores for a good blowjob these days. "He didn't have anything to do with the murder, though. He didn't know anything about the forced entry. You should have seen it, sir. Whole door was just fucking matchsticks. Takes a helluva kick to do that."

Ebenhart shook his head. "It'd take more than a kick. I saw the scene photos. That'd take some det-cord."

"I talked to the neighbors," Galleaux poured another cup of coffee from the white machine that no one ever bothered to dust, "They only heard the four shots. The kid at the front desk doesn't remember anything, must've gotten knocked out. The docs can't find any head trauma, so it might have been asphyxiation. Other than that, forensics are getting the barrel pattern from the slug they dug out of the doorframe. They can't lift any prints off of the shells, so I'm betting that the gun's a cold lead. Unless we can pick up one of the girls, this one's gonna be in the red for a while."

"That's not the can-do attitude I like to hear from my detectives," Capt. Ebenhart joked, or as much as he ever did joke. "You make sure you get this one wrapped up quickly and quietly. Last thing we want are those vultures putting out stories about mob enforcers."

"Yeah, we're lucky. Every channel's been nothing but this spree killer down south. They even got a name for him, you want to hear it?"

"I've heard it. They call him The Ghost. These fucking reporters." The Captain popped the tape out of the VCR. The machinery whined and groaned for a few seconds, making up its mind. The tape slid halfway out, then back in, then back out again. "I read one of the reports. Twenty-three dead in under two days. One guy they found in his room, the doors and windows still locked, bloody handprints all over the walls where he'd been flayed alive and died of shock." He snatched the tape away and handed it to Galleaux.

"That's gotta be bullshit. You know how long it'd take to skin a --" The tinkling tones of Jingle Bells played on his cellphone. He flipped open the black face, putting it to his ear.

"Detective Galleaux here," he answered. His hand went to his forehead with a slap. "You're shitting me. Jesus Christ. Well, run the tapes. Okay. Keep me posted." He snapped the cellphone closed.

"You'll never believe this, sir."

Captain Ebenhart raised an eyebrow that said : I doubt that.

"The victim's body is missing."

Chapter Twenty-Six

Mr. Creak's pistol breathed smoke, glowing embers a dragon's gullet. The heat of the barrel warmed his hand, and he imagined that this was how God must feel, pointing his finger and removing the eye that offends him. The bloodstain on the wall described a crimson butterfly, or a diseased lung exploded in a patient's chest. Mr. Creak flexed the fingers around Granny's charm, the one that masked their approach, and eased his focus back to the Witch, their prize. He walked, as calmly as a man picking up the morning newspaper, and knelt beside Oz. Filaments of white smoke drifted from the hole above Oz's left eye, a clean, round maw snarling with lamprey's teeth. His eye looked out at an oblique angle, white now shifting to crimson. Mr. Creak leaned in close, sniffing the air as cranial fluids escaped through the exit wound, listening for the sigh as his spirit left. He snatched a thread of smoke from the air, shoving it into his mouth and swallowing. He stood again, and grinned at the witch.

Willow Rosenberg screamed vehemence through her tears, the veins on her forehead pulsing and purple, like yarn run under her flesh. Her eyes went rabid-beast wide, so wide that Big Creak screwed up his face in worry, fearing she may rupture something vital and thereby making life difficult for both he and his brothers. Given, her screams seemed impotent; irritating, true, but impotent. Mr. Creak, through the haze of decades of isolation, as well as the sociopath's general apathy, understood only the vaguest motives behind her rage. Whether she screamed out of her friend's death or her mystical gelding at the hands of Granny's magicks, Mr. Creak neither knew nor cared.

"Mister Creak," he called over the violent drone, "silence Ms. Rosenberg. And for fuck's sake, do it before she gives us all a headache." He snickered at his unintentional jest, considering adding some jibe at the expense of the late Mr. Osborne, but his wit failed him and left him laughing at the concept.

Big Creak dropped the blow like an executioner's axe, his tiny hands absurdly clutched in tiny fists, pounding down to crush Willow's skull. She jerked her head to the side at precisely the right instant, her shoulder taking the blow, her whole body listing like a corrupt merchant's scales. She bellowed, voice hollow and rumbling like crushed granite as she fought for breath. Her fear and self-doubt fled before the twin legions of hate and rage, funneled and focused through the Thermopylae of discipline, and focused like a laser on Mr. Creak. He swallowed, the corners of his mouth drooping like a basset hound, battery acid filling his chest cavity. He lifted the heavy iron cannon, the frail and atrophied remnants of his mortal self-preservation demanding her death, anything just to escape her elemental gaze.

The punch came again, and this time it found its mark unerringly. Willow's copper tresses flung over her face as her chin touched her chest, then lolled back in slow motion. She rolled her eyes once, then dropped limp against the bonds that smoked green stress. Big Creak rested his hands on his knees, heavy beads of sweat draining down his smooth pate. He raised his eyes to stare down the abyssal pit of the Desert Eagle barrel. Mr. Creak slowly pointed the pistol to the ceiling.

"God damn," Mr. Creak sighed, thumping his chest and belching out a black wad of phlegm that sizzled the carpet. "I mean goddamn. I am never-" he jabbed a finger at the fallen witch "-ever getting that close to her again."

"Granny said she'd be all bound up," Big Creak hefted Willow to his shoulder, her arms and hair swaying like her namesake tree in a gentle breeze. "She said that girl wouldn't be no trouble at all. All snug as a bug in a rug."

"Yeah, well, Granny also thinks Lee Van Cleef makes a better gunslinger than Clint Eastwood, so I'm working under the assumption that her opinion is fallible."

The banshee wail of police sirens cut through the humidity like a surgeon's scalpel. Mr. Creak checked his watch, holding it to his ear in a gesture cribbed entirely from the studio pictures of the fifties. His action had no practical reason, mostly because digital watches, as a whole, do not tick.

"From 'shots fired' to 'en route' in under three minutes," he mused, "Must be a slow night."

"We shoulda waited 'til Mardi Gras started," Big Creak said, ducking through the ruins of the motel room door, turning the corner and heading towards the front door. "Police'd be too busy dealin' with the reg'lar folk, they'd a done forgot about us. We could be a holy terror, jus' like the old days, eh Mr. Creak?"

"And how would we convince Ms. Rosenberg and crew to hang around the fair city of New Orleans for the few months until Fat Tuesday? Maybe we'd woo them into a false sense of complacency with our prodigious mime population."

"I know that," his oversized brother replied, crossing the threshold with his unconscious bride, slinging her into the back seat of the Lincoln Continental that awaited them at the entrance. The red runes Granny painted not-so gingerly on the inside of the back seat glowed briefly, then faded like sand blown off a glass sheet. "Why you always gotta be takin' shit out of context like that? All I was sayin' is it'd be nice is all. Make things easier, you know?"

"Oh, I hear you," Mr. Creak twisted the ignition, the collection of two dozen murderer's hearts that replaced the engine (which went tits up back in '96) beating in an approximation of an idle. "Mardi Gras's a blast. I don't know what I love more: the hordes of frat boys who turn puking on your Gucci's into an Olympic event, ten-dollar martinis that taste like crap, or the dumb-ass vampire tourists who try to call dibs on any Girls Gone Wild reject you try to gut for fun." Two blaring black and whites flew past them, the red and blue klaxons painting the interior in the primary colors of 3-D glasses. Mr. Creak sneered.

"I just love Mardi Gras."

"You're just a party-pooper," Big Creak said, stroking the dashboard. The remnants of personality from the twenty-four murders that made up the engine revved in fear at the cacophonous noise of the sirens. Big Creak could be quite the creative little builder when he got his head around an idea, and the Lincoln was the direct result of too many hours spent at the dastardly clutches of David Hasselhoff and Kit. Mr. Creak counted his blessings, maleficent though they may be, that his brother never took a liking to Baywatch: his current experiments were disturbing enough.

Willow shifted, rustling like settling leaves on a wind blown plain. The brothers bristled, their predatory instincts sensing the arrival of a newer, fiercer predator, one that could turn their depredations to shame. They looked at each other cautiously, their breath stopping as a unit. Neither moved until Willow settled, her fight with unconsciousness lost for the moment.

"Can't wait 'til we get this shit over with," Big Creak wiped the sweat from his bald pate.

The organic box of the car coasted to a stop off of Toulouse, the row of diminutive trees that lined either side of the street waved their slight fingers, warding off the vehicle and its occupants. Big Creak turned his head to bask in the cooling breeze, regarding the gently whipping diamond-shaped leaves with unfettered pleasure. A wide grin broke across his face, splitting it into a field of white, even headstones. A thought, uniquely lucid in the moment, coalesced in the squinting of his rusted eyes before if found its way to his mouth.

"Why'd we stop?"

Mr. Creak reached into the center console, producing a fat black clip, the copper faces of bullets peeking out from one end. He dropped his half spent magazine into his palm, then reloaded with mathematical precision. The .50 cal slid easily into its bulky shoulder holster.

"Why'd we stop?" Big Creak repeated, watching the ritual like a perplexed child.

"Take Rosenberg back home," he commanded, thumbing into the back seat. "I have to go take care of Maclay."

"Oh no you don't," Big Creak's jowls shook, "There ain't no way you're leavin' me alone with her. She'll have my black ass flayed and fricasseed before you can say three-dog night."

"Okay," Mr. Creak shrugged, "we'll just let the Witch tag along while I go blow her little playmate's head off her shoulders. Then we'll just explain to her that it's all for her own good in the end, and wonder why she rips us apart at the molecular level. Does that sound like a plan?"

Meaty arms folded across a sweat-stained shirt. "I don't like this. Jus' so's you know."

"Noted. Listen, the sooner we get this little firecracker back to Granny, the sooner we can take care of this Surplus Slayer bullshit."

"An' the sooner we get back to business," Big Creak concluded with a respectful nod.

The lithe figure clad in his thousand dollar Armani suit slid out into the New Orleans night like an ink stain spilt across a garish painting. A Midwestern couple acknowledged Mr. Creak with a curt, albeit friendly dip of their heads, the thought that the bulge in his coat was anything other than a bottle of cheap booze the farthest thing from their minds. That's right, fat asses, Mr. Creak thought, keep walking. Just ignore that chill up your spines, the one that tells you to waddle away a little quicker. The banal collection of khaki shorts and witlessly worded t-shirts cut around a corner, leaving Mr. Creak alone with his brother and their captive.

The Lincoln whimpered to life, the twenty-four hearts filling with motor oil, steel tubes grafted to quivering muscle, black jets erupting where the seals failed. Big Creak shifted in his seat, the cabin refusing to accommodate his awkward frame. He kept his passenger in the corner of his eye at all times, carving out a Willow-shaped niche for her to inhabit in his peripheral vision. The car sidled back into traffic, the arrhythmia of the flesh-engine mimicking the idle of a mechanical engine just enough to disturb anyone caught listening to it for too long. Big Creak waved at his brother once, then headed towards the southbound 301 st , white-knuckling it all the way.

A white cloud of foul smoke gathered at Mr. Creak's feet, reeking of charnel houses and the metallic fumes of a machinist's shop. The scent grapneled onto passing memories: the look on the Mayor of Hope's face when they eviscerated his daughter back in the winter of '53, the yellow and orange flames dancing along the black walls of the Temple of Nyarlthethotep after they put the blasphemous (and marginally successful) followers to the blade, the green skin of Shagrra Khen fading to gray after he sucked the last of her magical energies from her. That was one of the penalties of age, the flotsam of memories that accumulated, getting snagged on any passing sensation, until all of like was reduced to a series of references to things long past.

He took a deep breath, letting all the memories flow through him. Tonight would be a fine night for new stories.

"Olly olly oxen free," he called into the darkness, the dense air soaking up the sound like a sponge. He shrugged, patted the pistol at his side, and strode out into the cluttered streets of New Orleans.

A fine night indeed.

It's never a good thing when your body wakes up before you do, Willow thought. A spider web of nerves throbbed along the back of her skull, her neck bones tectonic plates that ground out the three telling chords of 'Pop Goes the Weasel'. Fireworks exploded behind her eyes with each heartbeat, white and red explosions that reminded the distant thread of Willow-psyche of a powerful orgasm, the kind that left her weak kneed for hours afterwards. And she was weak kneed, and weak armed and weak stomached, the last of which twisted and turned like a deranged barnstormer. This wasn't an orgasm, distant-Willow thought, it was a paingasm.

"Mahoosafut mina!" Willow yelled, the hodgepodge collection of syllables that had been speech when she composed them glittering like glass shards in her ears. Oh, great, I have a concussion, she thought. Her speech centers churned like clouds on a windy day, nothing gaining purchase, no language coalescing from the sea of thought. Immediately, her stomach twisted and grumbled, the ulcers her stress and anxiety burnt into her stomach lining exploding like volcanoes. She felt sick. Maybe that was the concussion. She'd have to remind herself to cut back on the spicy foods: the red beans and rice were staging a coup in her guts, threatening to revolt, grits and all. Willow had woken from far too many head injuries (never nearly as many as Giles, but then again, he never was quite the same after the fifth concussion) to panic needlessly. The tingling of ten thousand ants in her limbs and the cold sweat were old companions, annoying, old companions. She probed her skull for soft spots.

None, thankfully, just a knot the size of a walnut on the back of her head. Good thing, too, because a concussion there could blind her for life or just kill her outright. She sat up, leather squeaking beneath her fingers. The scents of rusted iron and cigar smoke evoked images of her grandfather before his death, reading the Torah with one hand and nursing a brandy in the other. She almost shook her head to dislodge the memory, fearing to profane it with her current whereabouts, but stopped when her brain continued spinning inside her skull. No, no shaking of the head today, that could lead to woogyness and spewage. And if there was one thing she hated, it was the bad guys seeing her weakness.

It took her a moment of contemplation to realize that her eyes were actually open at the moment. Shapes that previously had no names and existed in an abstract limbo dripped into the material plane one at a time. The bumps and turns that sent her vertigo swimming indicated a car ride, and a fast one at that. If this was a car, then she must be in a seat. She certainly wasn't driving, and unless the newest SUV decided to put window in their trunk, she wasn't there either. Oddly enough, she couldn't precisely name what seat she was in. It existed as a schematic in her head, but the name for the thing just wouldn't settle down. Back seat, that's it. She was in the back seat of a sedan, the land yachts that old women and bankers favored.

A funny buzzing tickled her brain, the familiar feedback of her attackers, Tara's ressurrectionists, Oz's murders. Tears formed like organic icicles in her eyes, melting as the thunderclap of his end came. It was the end, she knew it, she felt it in her bones, like another little chunk of the innocent girl she once was withered and died. She ground her teeth to nubs forcing the memory into a tight box. She couldn't lose it, not now. Now was the best time to escape. If only her head didn't hurt so much and her sinuses would stop tingling with power and her eyes didn't feel so damn black. She bit her tongue, hard, hard enough to draw blood. The pain focused her, brought her back.and then shoved her right off again. Well, it was worth a shot. Pain always focused Kennedy. Heh, boy did it ever. No, no more digressions. She didn't have time to digress. She needed to piece together a plan, one step at a time.

Kennedy and Tara were gone. As in not with her. The finality of her previous statement stabbed through her. They weren't gone, they just weren't here at the moment, which in light of her predicament was a good thing. The blurred images of Kennedy's lightning fast escape with Tara came to her in like hesitant children to an over-affectionate aunt. Even as distressed as she was, she had to admit that the woman had moments of tactical brilliance. Willow didn't even have to analyze what happened with the binding spell. She and Tara shared a magical connection, their auras to tightly entwined that one spell could affect them both, bound even tighter by the forced reintegration of her sanity after Glory stole it. The sum greater than the parts. And when she died, Willow never thought to close the link. It was her last reminder of Tara's existence. Even as her scent and touch and eye color faded into indistinct abstractions, that gaping hole in her aura reminded her that there had once been a person who completed her. She learned to live with the pain, grew stronger for her burdens, and loved again, but she never forgot.and she never forgave. Vindictiveness could be forgiven in her circumstances, Althenea once said. But that link was renewed. And exploited. She was as castrated and harmless as Spike. Back when he was soulless, chipped, and all the more pathetic for his bluster Spike.

The seat cushions stuck to her hands with the midnight sweat. She didn't like that feeling, and decided to get held against her will in a car without leather interior next time. Speaking of, the entirety of the back seat was covered with thousands of symbols. They looked Egyptian in origin, almost Runic in their simplicity. Hieroglyphs really weren't Willow's strong point. She could puzzle a few symbols out, her half-assed study of the Rosetta Stone for her eight grade science project filtering a few simple words out to her. But this wasn't from the same era, indeed, it looked more like predynastic scribblings than anything from an identifiable time. Willow really wished her knowledge of ancient African cultures was a little more well rounded. Once she went back past the enslavement of the Hebrews (which, it turns out, isn't as factual as it was once thought), her understanding was limited to a few names of gods and pharaohs and a generalized sense of history.

So the writing was old, and not accidentally arranged. And experience, the callous bitch that she was, thought Willow that whenever there was a dead language and differential equations in the same place, things could get screwy on the matter of picoseconds. And not the fun, Alvin and the Chipmunks kind of screwy. More the unfun, terrifying, eldritch powers that must not be named kind of screwy. Worse still, the energetic hum of black magic was worming into her head. Old networks of want and power moaned and rolled over: not awoken, only disturbed. She felt the worn out nerves and charkas bubble and pop like old wallpaper on a hot day. She tasted blood between her teeth, and it tasted foul. With fists clenched in denial, she took three deep breaths. Not to cleanse, for her instincts old her that nothing clean could come in the company of this one, but to temper her will against the onslaught. The angry and pleading notes faded into the background. The fear came next, relapses and flayed skin and bloody shirts. This too she controlled, though it made her head throb and her stomach quiver. The noise dropped back like a shooting victim in a bad TV movie, all slow motion and overacting.

It was then that Willow became aware of another voice in the car with her, one so bass filled as to be almost subsonic. She listened, catching the middle of whatever conversation the man held.

"But like I was sayin', I ain't never been to Prague, so how the hell's I supposed to know what a god damn Yaggen demon was supposed to look like. Mr. Creak and Granny were awful sore at me for like-- a month. C'n you believe that shit? Theys was all gettin' in my face, callin' me all sortsa names. I swear to God above, I didn't know he was the, whatddya callit, the ambassador. Jus' looked like a big ol' slug to me." The man let out a jolly laugh, bellowing out the 'ha's like he had a hairball. Willow caught his eyes flick to the rearview and his startlingly pale pink tongue moisten his lips.

"Now, I'll tell you who'd make a fine, fine ambassador: Miss Tara. That girl's just the sweetest little thing you ever did meet. Pretty as the day is long, and that ain't no lie. I think y'all'll like it where you're stayin'. I mean, y' woulda liked it, afore y'went and blew the hell out of it. You know, I ain't a, a grudge holdin' man, but when you just go into someone's home, it's plain old fashioned rude to break all their possessions and not pay up to it. You know what I mean?"

Willow's head spun. Was he trying to be.ingratiating?

"Who-who the hell are you?"

Big Creak looked into the rearview again, sweat dripping down the sides of his head, tickling his thick neck. He grinned his widest, worked his thumbs across the leather steering wheel, and said in his most jovial voice: "Miss Willow, ma'am, my name's Elijah Creak, but most folks just call me Big Creak, so's I want you to call me that too, if'n you feel it."

Okay, Willow thought, something is seriously not right here. Aside from the obvious, 'knocked out and in a murderer's car heading back to the house of a bunch of evil monsters' factor, bad guys generally took these opportunities to gloat and in the process reveal their evil plan. But this guy was acting like he was transporting dangerous cargo, which, flatteringly, she sort of was. Well then, it'd be best to try to exploit it.

"Creak-" she started.

"No ma'am, Creak's my brother, I'm Big Creak."

"Bi-whatever," Willow recouped, growling out the words in a voice deeper than seemed possible. "You have exactly one chance to get out of this alive. You pull this car over now and you let me out, got it?"

He looked around, at the dashboard, at the oil gauge, at anything other than the emerald glare in the back seat. Big Creak feared a great deal before his change. He had grown larger than the other boys in his town, and they took to beating him to show him his place. As her came of age, he quickly learned that his fate would always be decided by people smarter and more powerful than he. After Granny took him under her wing all those long decades ago, he never once looked up to anyone or anything. The whims of the mighty no longer concerned him: they could be punished easily for their pretensions. He never feared Granny, and loved the old woman like a mother. The world was his to play in, the dead and the living his playthings. Now all of a sudden, that vestigial fear came to him, and he truly did nearly pull the car off the side of the road and let her out. Granny's stern, wizened face floated before him, the same look of disapproval that accompanied any of his other mistakes apparent in the stern set of her lips. No, no, Granny said he was safe, or as safe as she could make him, what with another Triumvirate mightily pissed off and in the car with him. He chuckled rolling thunder to himself.

"I'm sorry, Miss Willow, ma'am, but I can't do that. I gots a job to do and I'm gonna do it right." He pressed his lips together and ruefully shook his head. "I ain't even supposed to be talkin' with you, so I'm already gonna get into trouble with Granny when we get back."

A wicked orange flash lit the interior for a split second, blinding Big Creak and eliciting a howl of from the guts of the car. The empty scent of ozone filled the cabin, Big Creak's ears ringing in a high-pitched chime.

Willow cradled her scorched hand, fingertips comically black, like Daffy Duck after a shotgun blast to the face. Her whole arm tingled, less pins and needles and more nails and tack hammers. That confirmed her hypothesis: the runes around her were a containment spell. A powerful spell at that. If only she knew more about those damn hieroglyphics. On the other hand, the arrangement did seem to be fairly uniform, so it wouldn't be any big deal to decipher the actual equations implicit in the writing. If it was a simple cipher, then she'd have it broken in ten minutes. Most magicians get sloppy with age, not more refined. Power does that to people; it tricks them into complacency.

Yes, that funny little stork with a bowtie corresponded with an equals sign. Excellent, that let her divide the scrawl into specific equations. The pictograph for 'one' was similarly easy to pick out: a single horizontal line. Within two more minutes, Willow got the numbers one through six. There weren't any more, so it must be a base six counting system, which in all honesty was pretty weird. Base ten and base five made perfect sense, after all, people have five or ten fingers, depending on how bilateral they are feeling. But a base of six was just.unnatural. Okay, getting sidetracked.

Willow kept the wheels in her head spinning, the brief images of Oz's crumbled and smoking form, the fountain of black blood running out the corner of his eye hitting her like a speed bump on a wooden wheeled bicycle, jarring her straight to her spine. She spun her thoughts faster, letting the world drop away into that place of pure reason. Mathematics ordered her universe, and everything became symbolic equations that could be written down in alphabetical order on three-by-five cards and color coded for ease of use. The irony, of course, was that math was the language of the universe, the chaos and unpredictability she hated just the variables in the equation, and as such inseparable from her number crunching. She shook of the brief pique of existential angst, and put her nose to the proverbial grindstone.

It took her half an hour to crack the binding spell's matrix. She really wanted a piece of scrap paper to record her notes on, but her brain worked in a pinch. She went into her memory palace, the mnemonic device used by Renaissance orators and sorcerers to recall huge amounts of information. Her palace was Buffy's house, cleaner and obsessively ordered, but easily recognizable. Random objects lined the windowsills, apples and toy soldiers and pieces of chalk, iconographic more than realistic. She walked in her head through the kitchen (a collection of knickknacks on the counter described the formulas for ten different poisons and a few explosives) up the stairs (a broken chattering monkey with a bright yellow hat told her every speech Giles ever gave about demons) and into Buffy's room. She put six objects on the vanity one at a time, each one filled with associations. When she was done, Willow knew that at any time in the future, she could recall the spell. Her great secret was that her powerful memory was taught, not natural.

On the downside, it was a mighty powerful spell. The road beneath her thrummed as the seams in the cement sped up. She must be on the highway now, and going really, really fast by the feel of it. They must be in a hurry, and with good cause. The binding spell they hit her with in the motel room (dead Oz dead Oz Oz is dead) took a lot out of her. She spent up most of her energy trying to repel that, and locked in this containment field prevented her from drawing more power from Gaia. The only power source around her was dark magic, and that was strictly of limits. She'd regain her own natural store of power with time, or she could push her self a little harder than she'd like, but Willow didn't have to question the futility of that. She could unwind the spell when she was at full power, and there wouldn't be much that could stop her.

Big Creak must have known this too, hence the haste. Once she got back on her feet, she could bring these thugs down to their knees with the simplest spells. Unless Tara was near her.

"Oh, damn," Big Creak snapped his fingers. "I almost forgot! Granny told me to tell you that." He paused, arranging the phrasing in his head. "If you try to use the magicks around you, they're-armory, caramelized.harmonized to her, and you'll get y'self knocked out." He grinned in pride at his memory. He didn't have a palace so much as a shack.

Willow deflated. Not much chance of sneaking out of this one, at least not at this point. She pressed her face to the window, as near as she dared, so close that the barrier singed her eyebrows. The tinted glass only let ghosts (ghosts like Oz, Oz is dead you motherfuckers killed Oz) of the outside world in, snippets of blurring by scenery and streetlamps passing less and less frequently. The thrumming of the tires lulled her senses, muting out everything both external and internal into a wash of dull sensation. She collapsed against the seat, pressed her hands to her face and made herself stay awake.

It's funny how little regard the body has for propriety. The tugging at her lids felt like a violation, like desecrating a temple. She should be torn with grief, filled with rage or at the very least be constantly plotting her escape, but all Willow wanted to do was close her eyes and sleep. She busied herself calculating the car's speed, estimating average distance between seams in the cement, judging the delay between thumps, and doing a simple equation. Wow, they were seriously hoofing it. Willow figured, imprecisely, that they must be doing between one-thirty and one-fifty miles per hour. She took a grim satisfaction in the effort these people were taking on her account. Raising the dead was no laughing matter, and neither was murder, but these monsters didn't seem to have the slightest compunctions about doing either.

She lost count of the hours, humming bars of Elvis's 'Blue Velvet' when she could remember the lyrics, and trying very hard not to break down. Everything was numb, like walking through warm water. Maybe her overactive emotions had finally decided to take a walk, form a picket line and go on strike. Any minute now the strike breakers would roll in with their truncheons and their memories, but for now she could watch herself on TV and just not be there. The trees that became more prevalent with each minute, the slowly rising tide of power in her veins, these were just actions and states devoid of significance. Intellectually, she knew that she was too close to Hope, but the fear that should have accompanied that revelation didn't want to be a scab and stuck to the picket line.

Something did catch her attention. As they neared the town, as the roads devolved into patches of gravel, the car slowed, the roar of the engine coughing with exertion.

They passed a truck. An Army truck, more specifically, big and boxy and olive drab green. The car stopped beside the truck, burly men in combat fatigues uncoiling barbed wire along the sides of the road. A steely-eyed man stood behind the heavy machine gun, finger on the trigger, aiming into town. They've set up a quarantine zone, Willow realized. The monster they unleashed must be out of control, and the Army has come in to put a lid on it. A knock sounded on the driver's window.

Big Creak pressed the other charm Granny gave him into his smooth palm, then rolled down the window. A man, no more than twenty-seven leaned down, brown eyes narrowing around a broad forehead and features chiseled in wood. He looked into the back seat, jaw twitching as muscles flexed.

Willow almost clapped.

"Riley!" she screamed, "Riley, get me out of here! This guy's not a good guy! He's a very, very, very bad man!"

Riley nodded at her. "Could I see your ID, sir?"

Big Creak handed him the menu to Wang's Chinese Take-Out. Riley perused it carefully, then handed it back.

Willow's jaw hit the floor. "No, no, these *are* the droids you're looking for," she whined.

"Be careful, General," Riley smiled tightly. "We still have an unidentified Tango in the area. We're just setting up a perimeter right now, but we'll be sending in the first strike team in twenty mikes." He substituted a respectful nod for a salute. It wouldn't look too good if he got a General sniped on the home front. Big Creak rolled the window up, then inched the car past the roadblock.

"Wait, Riley, wait!" Willow yelled at the soldier as they passed. "Riley, you big goober, snap out of it!" He just turned around and went back to whatever it was he was doing.

"I still have that shovel, Riley!" Willow crossed her arms over he chest and huffed a strand of hair out of her face. Trained fighting machine her lily white tushy. If she got out of this alive, she was going to have a little chat about avoiding simple illusions with his cornfedness.

The streets of Hope were black at night. No one kept their lights on, so all the houses existed as blocks of gray. The streetlights were out, just poles that jutted from the earth, devoid of purpose. Nothing moved. The suburbs trailed on, dark and jumbled like the houses were spilled out of a janitor's closet.

Willow thought she saw a human head sitting on the corner of the street, black tongue rolled out, but it may have just been a bundle of newspapers.

They moved into the city proper, the two and three-story brick buildings as desolate and the residential homes. Signs that proclaimed '24 HOUR' sat unlit, the store doors locked and barred from the inside. More than once Willow saw brown stains on windows, smeared handprints. The car snaked around a corner, heading out of town and down a meandering dirt road.

Willow didn't need to ask where they were. She knew.

Over the river and through the woods.

To Granny's house we go.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

"Yo! Yo, check this shit."

"What the fuck?"

"Dog, yo, yo it's.it's J.Lo!"

"Man, that ain't no fuckin' J.Lo. What the fuck're you thinkin'?"

"Nigga, look at her! That's fuckin' Jennifer Lopez!"

"Bitch, you need you're fuckin' crackhead eyes examined. Somebody better get a doctor up in here."

Kennedy resisted alertness. The Slayer danger sense plucked at the strings in the back of her mind, but there comes a time when exhaustion must take its due. Besides, she reasoned, she was warm and someone smooth and soft had her arm around Kennedy's waist, so whatever emergency could wait just a few more minutes.

"Fuck, man, bitch look just like J.Lo."

"I know, but it ain't."

"Naw."

"Tha's right. That's fuckin' Christina Aguilera, you ig'nant punk."

Tara splayed her fingers across Kennedy's abdomen, voices dripping into her empty sleep. The cut on her shin burnt, her skin and hair felt greasy and sweat-stained, and her neck hurt from the odd angle she slept in. Kennedy shifted to the right, laying her hand atop Tara's, mumbling a few insensate phrases. The voices quieted, melting into the white noise of her dream-space.

"Get the boys, dog."

"Wh-"

"Just shut yo' bitch ass up and get them niggas 'fore I break my foot off in your skinny ass, a'ight?"

"A'ight. Damn."

The nerves at the base of Tara's spine tingled on high alert, blaring electrical claxons in a primitive alarm. She pulled her hand from Kennedy's, the tingle running up her spine and nestling at the back of her neck. The grime along her back grew heavy, and she squirmed to remove as much contact as possible from Kennedy. That must be it, her awakening mind told her, she was wrapped up in another woman, not, she noted, the woman she was in love with. She'd really have to talk to Kennedy about what happened the other night. The girl was beautiful, had a gentle, even fragile soul, and in other circumstances.maybe. But last night's kiss, although sweet, was awkward. And today would be awkward, and the remainder of their friendship (for Tara truly wanted this girl as her friend) that weirdness would float just out of grabbing distance, like a child's balloon let free. That must be the reason for her alarm, she thought. Kennedy wriggled back, her chest rising and falling a little more rapidly as she awoke.

The thud of three sets of feet against the cockeyed staircase wiped the last traces of sleep from Kennedy's system. She cursed her habit of oversleeping, the tiny voice in her head that coaxed her into letting another five minutes slip away, and rubbed her eyes. Her Slayer senses jerked to full attention, the slant of the room and the unruly form behind her filling in voids in her mental diorama of the room. They weren't alone; four other heartbeats occupied the room, rapid and shallow, like dying men. She sat up, moving before her sight fully returned, holding a hand across Tara's chest, protecting her with her own body.

"Mornin' baby," one of the dark blurs before her said, nothing gentle or kind about his welcome. Kennedy frantically wiped the sleep out of her eyes again, giving substance and form to the speaker.

The first thing she saw were his teeth, covered in a film of gold, too large for his face. He grinned, showing blue gums and twisting his narrow dark face into a dangerous mask. His breath stank of alcohol.

Around him stood three others, their ragged wealth on display. Gold rings and diamond studded chains burdened them, speaking of their wealth and power in a neighborhood where other were killed for their shoes. They were kings of shreds and patches, big fish in a tiny pond. Kennedy's heart stuttered when she saw the blued steel pistols two carried with silent bravado.

Tara grabbed Kennedy's shoulder, using her as a human shield. She recognized the warning signs that raised her hackles, the old fear welling up inside her. Kennedy stood up, slowly, bracing her self against the wall. The floor titled her back, depriving her of the balance she needed to strike suddenly. Tara rose with her, eyes locked on the pistol barrel, its narrow slide etched with roses and shell casings. She didn't notice that, though. The only thought she had was of the tiny wad of lead spiraling through her body, knocking the life from her in the time it takes to pull a trigger.

"We were just leaving," Kennedy said, the steel in her voice unmistakable.

"Why don't y'all just stay there," the leader pointed the gun at Kennedy, his finger caressing the trigger, his tone light. Kennedy jerked as the weapon swung her way.

"Yo, D," one of the subordinates said, "Told you them bitches was fine."

Another thug strolled up alongside Kennedy, one hand kneading his crotch through his baggy blue jeans. "Dayyymm, bitch," he crooned, "you all kindsa sexy. And look what we got here." He reached out to touch Tara's hair, his rings glittering. Kennedy smacked his hand away, hard enough to send him staggering back. He cradled his injured limb and mouthed the word 'ow'.

"Any of you motherfuckers so much as look at her," Kennedy snarled, "and I fucking end you."

The leader's face transformed form a salacious grin into a snarl of rage, he jaw flexing as he pressed the barrel of the gun against Kennedy's forehead. Kennedy heard two other guns cock, but didn't mover her eyes from the animal stare of her enemy.

"Muthafucka!" He shouted, grinding the barrel into her skull. "Bitch, I'll tell you what you 'bout to do! You and your little bitch friend are gonna spread them pussies for me and my boys, and when we done, you might wanna say thank you. Then I think about not blowing yo' fuckin' head off right here!"

Kennedy looked into his eyes. Something deep inside her broke. A last modicum of restraint, a last set of principles not spit on by the world, a last hope for a better tomorrow turned aside and let something older and more primal through. It filled her veins, succored her tired limbs, and tempered her will. She breathed ice.

"Tara?"

"Y-y-yes?"

"Lie on the floor. This will all be over in a minute."

The leader almost had time to gloat. Almost.

Kennedy crushed his wrist, the bones snapping like dry twigs wrapped in towels. The pistol went off beside her head, sending a bullet through the plaster and out the building. White clouds erupted around Kennedy. She was a demon emerging from sulphuric smoke.

She braced herself against the slanted wall, driving a fist into his neck, deep, so deep she felt his throat flatten and his neck snap. If felt like punching a pillow. She kept hold of his wrist, spinning him out like a ballroom dancer into the group of gangbangers. Kennedy liberated the man's pistol as he limply careened into the nearest subordinate, his sub machine gun spraying a line of bullets into the ceiling.

Kennedy flung the pistol at the third one, who brought his weapon to bear with all the grace of a rushing bull. The airborne weapon caught him in the mouth, absurdly poking out barrel first from a field of broken teeth. Blood bubbled around the ivory handle as he screamed and fell to his knees.

A burst of speed put her atop the fourth man, frantically fumbling for the Glock 9mm shoved down the front of his shorts. Kennedy helped him, yanking his hand out. The gun blew a hole in his thigh, thick blood pulsing out of the hole. He whimpered and fell.

The Slayer turned her attention to the pinioned enemy, her teeth bared and hair wild. He strained against the corpse of his dead leader, rolling his lanky mass off as he too slid down the incline of the floor. Tara sat huddled in the corner, knees drawn up and hands clasping her ears shut.

Kennedy leapt atop the corpse, suffocating the potential rapist even as he hissed curses. She calmly reached down, taking the top of his head and his chin in her hands.

"Kennedy, no!" Tara screamed.

His neck snapped. He died without a whisper.

Tara looked away at the last second, burying her face in her shoulder. The sound she couldn't tune out: the wet crack and hollow thud of his head hitting the floor at an unnatural angle. She heard Kennedy's breath: calm and composed.

Kennedy gathered their weapons, tucking them into the many pockets of her cargo pants. The man with the pistol grip mouthguard passed out as she yanked the .45 from his teeth, using his own shirt to wipe it down. The thug with the bullet wound in his thigh bled out quietly, eyes closed as if in deep slumber. The Slayer didn't bat an eye.

"C'mon," she said, "We're going."

"Oh my god," Tara realized she was repeating over and over. "Oh my god, Kennedy, you-"

"Killed them," Kennedy spat. She glared at the corpses. "I killed a bunch of murdering rapists."

"But," Tara stammered, her heart in free fall, "but, you, you can't just kill people, not like that!"

Kennedy slid the magazine out of the submachine gun, a boxy little weapon with a handle riveted on. She tossed the weapon away, its ammo spent. Her shadowed eyes found Tara's.

"They had it coming." She moved to Tara's side, kneeling down. Her voice softened, her eyes melted into vulnerability. "C'mon, Tara. We need to get in touch with the rest of the gang. We need to get to the car as soon as possible."

Tara wrapped her arms around her knees. She waffled for a second, then stood up, still clutching herself, both arms under her breasts. The tilted floor swayed beneath her, shifting her feet out from under her. Kennedy caught her as she fell. Tara stiffened at the contact, warding off any more assistance with raised hands. Kennedy backed of, jaw set.

"Are you waiting for me to break down or something?" she asked.

"Wh-what?"

"Are you waiting for me to have a nervous breakdown?" Kennedy turned to leave, sliding through the warped door, stepping over the lifeless body. "Like some kind of big epiphany about how all life is sacred?"

"All life *is* sacred," Tara said, stumbling after her. Her hand came a hair's breadth from the face of the exsanguinated corpse. She pulled her hand back like death was a contagious disease.

"Really?" Kennedy asked, unconvinced. They headed down the stairs, taking each step with as much haste as caution would allow. She peered around the front door into the New Orleans day. "I'm sure that'd get an interesting answer out of Willow."

Kennedy led the way. The ghetto looked almost harmless in the daytime, just a bunch of houses slightly more run down than most. Cars idled on street corners, yards sat unattended but not overgrown. Tara rushed to catch up.

"What do you mean?" She asked. Kennedy noticed her rapid pace and slowed to walk alongside her charge.

"I mean," Kennedy ignored the suspicious look the crew in the car gave her. "I mean you might want to ask Willow just how sacred the lives of murders are."

The cut across a through street, angling toward the Mississippi river, the only landmark they universally knew. Kennedy kept a wary eye on the alleyways, one hand thumbing the safety on the Colt .45 in her pocket. More than one group of drug dealers gave her a wide berth.

Tara grabbed Kennedy's arm. "I know what she did."

Kennedy stopped, nodding.

"And I know how bad she feels about it." Tara's voice held as firm as her grip. Kennedy just smiled.

"No. No, she really doesn't."

This time Tara stopped. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," Kennedy sighed, her one free hand fighting through muscles tense as steel to gesture in its usual fashion, cutting and ordering the air. "She feels terrible about hurting her friends, and she feels terrible about losing control, and most of all she feels terrible about, I dunno, betraying your memory, but Warren? She doesn't give a damn about killing Warren. He was a monster. A tiny little man who just hurt everyone around him. Just like them. And just like him, I sure as hell ain't gonna waste any tears on them."

The relentless Louisiana sun opened its ever-watchful eye, its sight falling like God's wrath on the peeling white paint of the French colonial homes and the sparse and forgotten hedges that filled the gaps in walls built to last a hundred years and not maintained for a hundred and fifty. Their skin gleamed in the light, glowing like daytime fireflies in a world without shadows. Tara wanted to wrap her arms around herself again, to hide behind her hair and disappear into the background, but the sun did not forgive them any bindings. The streets radiated waves of heat, constantly baking whatever came into contact with it. The thin soles of Tara's slippers stuck in tiny increments, her feet burning with each step. Kennedy kicked a bottle, sending it skittering and tinkling into a gutter.

"I'm sorry you had to see that," Kennedy said after a time.

"You didn't have to make me see it," the blonde replied, the bandage on her shin slipping down her leg.

"Yeah," Kennedy breathed, sniffing the air like a bloodhound. "Well. If I let them go, they'd of just gone and gotten more of their boys and chased us down and killed us."

The weight Kennedy bore slowed her pace, took away the bounce and verve she injected into each step. Her footfalls came flat, graceless and resolute. Tara sighed.

"That's not the real reason, is it?"

Kennedy sniffed again. The faintest hints of the Mississippi greeted her with stale fish and diesel fuel. She adjusted her trajectory, heading north along the sidewalks and across the black asphalt covered potholes. The French Quarter was about a mile to the east, by Kennedy's best guess. Tenements and broken homes melted into towering multihued houses, the architecture designed by short people emulating giants. Once she found the river, they'd walk along it until they found Canal Street, then get to the car lot. Her thoughts came back around to the witch next to her. She glanced up, meeting Tara's gentle yet reproachful gaze.

"Maybe," she said evenly, "maybe that's all that's left. It's all I-" She turned away again, her features setting into a morose scowl.

"Kennedy," Tara shook her head in something like bemusement, "I know it may not mean much right now, but you've got me. I mean, in a platonic, sisterly kind of way."

Kennedy's full lips worked into a smile, cracking where the sun chapped them. "You're not my sister. I don't kiss my sisters."

"You're right," Tara raised an eyebrow and smirked, "you don't."

"Can I help it if you're totally kissable?" Kennedy ran her free hand along a black iron railing, adorned with curlicues and sprouting metallic roses.

"I'm sorry Kenn," Tara followed suite, thousands of tiny barbs on the railing gnawing her hand. It didn't hurt, but the roughness was oddly fascinating, like a shark's skin. "You're a cutie, but I'm not the kind of girl who kisses just anybody."

"I'm not just any girl," she replied without conviction. "And besides, I need my Willow smoochies by proxy." Her voice fell from a skyscraper and shattered on the ground, the whimper trapped between her clenched teeth. She shoved the heartache back in its box, shoving it into the growing furnace in her gut. It warmed her, filled the hole, let her stand and look at the world without wanting to cry every moment. She was strong. And woe unto the weak.

Tara's hand on her shoulder was ice water on the hateful furnace. Her slender fingers scratched along Kennedy's powerful back, easing millimeters of tension out. Tara kissed the side of her head.

"You know I love you, right?"

"Say what?" Kennedy's demeanor broke instantly, her eyes processing the information in rapid fire blinks. "Okay, now that's not something I just say to any girl."

Tara chuckled silently, her laughter only betrayed by the shuddering of her shoulders. "You're a good person. I trust you, even though I just met you, and I know that anyone Willow fell for can't be all bad. And you make me feel safe. That's, you know, to me, that's something. So yeah, no matter how this ends up, you've still got me as your friend. Even if you are kind of a pain in the ass."

"It's part of my charm," Kennedy shrugged. "Seriously, thanks." She cocked her head to the left, chewing on her lower lip in thought. "You're pretty good at this whole 'relationships in turmoil' thing. You ever thought about becoming a shrink?"

"You know, I was actually thinking about changing my major right before I, um, sorta got shot."

"Yeah," Kennedy sighed, "Death throws all kindsa monkey wrenches into your plans."

"Limited my course selection, that's for damn sure."

"Well, there's Rigor Mortis 101."

"Introduction to Worms," Tara pointed out.

The Mississippi river slid along the embankments, languid and unstoppable, like a reptilian god in some ancient cult. It was not stirred to action often, and appeared sleeping even to the devoted. Always moving, never going anywhere, brown and slick with chemicals and silt. The summer sun warmed the top layer of water, white foam and iridescent bubbles forming as the occasional ship churned its skin. The waterfront here was a flat expanse of grass, a strip of cement hugging the borders of the river. The brown brickwork of an apartment building, black soot clinging to the burnt out innards, looked out over the river. Kennedy's shoulders drew back, her hand reaching out protectively across Tara.

A green metal bench parked beside the waterfront, its legs twisting into the earth in roots and knots. A lone figure sat on the bench, hunched over. Great black feathers sprouted from his head in a sunburst halo. Both Tara and Kennedy watched his subtle movements and the sluggish bobs of his head to a beat neither could hear.

Kennedy tightened her grip on the pistol in her pocket.

Tara struggled to remember the defensive spells she practiced with the Scoobies.

The man stood up, moving in jerks and stops, the invisible chains that ratcheted him to his feet clanking to the same beat. His torso flopped forward, his hips free hinges that slid around under him. He turned his head, the halo a Mardi Gras mask, featureless black ceramic covered with sequins and raven feathers, glinting like the midnight sky or the last thing a dying animal sees in the sun.

Kennedy knew exactly who the man was.

"Oh, Jesus," she whispered, "Oz."

He took three imperfect steps towards them, his knees twisting around on all available axis, his shoulders rolling over to that same soulful drumbeat: thump thump-thump, thump thump-thump. One of the eyes behind the mask wept. Kennedy heard a throaty gasp behind her, Tara clasping her hand over her mouth as she realized what was happening.

Kennedy took the .45 from her pocket, pulled the hammer back. Her hands shook as she stared down the sights. Oz twisted and rocked about, his bones unfamiliar in his own body. Kennedy caught his one eye, frozen open and wild. Sick desperation flowed from that cyclopean gaze, every ounce of strength the man had spent fighting the call of his flesh. Kennedy lowered the pistol, the thing in her chest clutching her heart and twisting.

"Finish it," Tara whispered behind her, her voice sour with emotion, "He's suffering, oh god, please Kennedy just end it."

She pulled the .45 back on sight, her palms sweating. The ivory grip slid around in her grasp. Oz's eye met hers. It opened wide, then rolled back in his head. He staggered back, the same marionette strings that anchored him to this plane keeping him upright. His feet remained planted in the grass, but his entire upper body folded back like a limbo contestant, the faintest hints of gore dripping around the edge of the mask.

Kennedy took a step back. The grass tickled under her pants legs. The gun smelled like cordite and death. Tara mumbled a string of Latin, her eyes shut tight and her fists filled with Kennedy's shirt.

Oz drifted back up. His eyes opened. They were yellow.

A great snap sounded from deep inside the diminutive form of Oz, like a steel chain wrenched from its moorings. More cracks followed, slowly at first, then picking up frequency like popcorn popping. His jacket and pants danced around like animals were let loose in them. His jaw worked open in a soundless scream, gnawing the air. More sounds came from him, ripping and moist explosions. Red stains grew on his clothes. The mask broke right down the middle, either half of the raven feathered disguise falling to the wayside. The flesh on his face stretched in the center, puckering like a rubber sheet, then splitting, bright red and bubbling with blood.

It came after the blood, muzzle straining into the sun, flat and powerful jaws clenched even as wicked canines poked over its lips. The shuddering stopped. Then, with a mighty tear, the Wolf rent its onetime captor asunder, sending the hollow shell of Oz sloughing off him like a discarded costume.

The Wolf stood its full height, barrel chest heaving as it huffed a wad of snot onto the yellowing grass. It towered over Kennedy and Tara, hairless and sinewed. Its ropey arms reached past its recurved knees and ended in scythe-like claws which flexed in the heat, ready for butchering. The Wolf's face bore little resemblance to a terrestrial wolf, being too squat and broad. Bony ridges ran from its eyebrows to the nape of its neck. A rat like tail curled around its leg. Spittle dripped from the corners of its mouth at it snarled at the two women. The Wolf tilted it demonic head back and howled, the warped and dissonant note of the underworld. Miles away, cats hid under beds and dogs whimpered for their masters.

"Run," Kennedy yelled, "Get cover, go!"

Tara hesitated, starting first around one side of Kennedy and then the other, the Wolf's sulfur eyes following her as she slipped in the grass. She bolted to the right, the cut on her shin screaming as she made her way to the abandoned apartments.

The Wolf sniffed fear, and spun to catch her. Its head jerked to the side and its ears rung as something leapt from the air and struck it across the face. The Wolf shook its head in confusion. A slender, knobbed finger touched a taut hole that already closed up. The thing, the offending stinging insect, stood before it, arms outstretched like it was trying to catch the wind like a flying thing.

Kennedy growled, too much in the present to not realize how ridiculous she must sound, her thin tenor reaching into her bowels for more power. She watched its yellow eyes meet hers, the predatory gaze narrow and sharpen. What I wouldn't give, that present part of her brain said, for a decent weapon. But alas, all the good toys are in the car, which is where she and Tara would be if she could walk ten feet without having to kill something.

Another part of her brain told her that this was a very, very stupid idea.

When the Wolf reached its ash gray arms out to her, she realized that running wasn't an option: its speed was a monstrous as its form. She ducked below whistling claws, driving a punch straight under its sternum. She heard ribs crack and felt them heal as she withdrew her fist. Tactics formed, angles and velocities calculated, masses and forces questioned. She desperately wished she had bought the silver rings instead of the titanium ones.

It twisted, flowing around her like a constrictor encircling its prey, giving her only one way to move. Teeth snapped inches from her face, spittle the color of afterbirth spraying her face. She jabbed her fingers in its eyes, the Wolf to quick and savvy to allow her the chance to rupture the sensitive orbs. Kennedy was rewarded with a pain-filled howl. It recovered too quickly, teeth bared as it swatted her shoulder, drawing thick red lines in a set of four. Kennedy kicked its knee into a two-way hinge, skipping backward to gain some room.

The knee swung like a pendulum for a second, the Wolf's arms flailing backwards to catch itself in an absurdly human fashion. The unstable limb snapped back into its joint with a rubber band 'thwap'. Kennedy immediately regretted her retreat, reversing it and shoving another kick into its midsection as it rolled forward to regain its balance.

The kick did no real damage, no broken bones or ruptured organs. It did, however, change the Wolf's center of balance, tipping it over, its lanky limbs splaying on the shreds of grass that mixed in equal portions with gravel. She needed the advantage, a chance to shove the battle in her favor.

Most fights are predictable. Two or more enemies face off, boast, throw preliminary punches, gauge the other's response, and fight until they win or are driven off. Few beings will fight to their deaths if they can help it; even the undead prefer to flee a fight they can't win. It's all a matter of escalation. One side pushed the intensity of the fight a notch higher, the other side compensates, and raises the bar even higher until one side gives up and curls in a fetal ball. The trick to winning the fight is to open with the hardest, meanest, most devious attack possible. Even if the opponent continues the fight, they are stuck responding, trying to match a level of violence they weren't expecting.

So Kennedy leapt in the air, following the beast down like a dancer dipping her partner. She landed straddling its sharply peaked chest, her thumbs driving deep into its throat, crushing cartilage and bone faster than it could heal, squeezing with all her strength. The Wolf bucked and yelped, but Kennedy's legs locked behind the beast and she rode out its storm.

It fought for breath in short, hiccupping gasps, popping blood vessels washing its eyes out with red. The Wolf began to frantically search the back of its skull for something, eyes rolling back, limbs going floppy and sluggish. Kennedy pincher her thighs together, forcing more air out of the abomination's lungs, ignoring the stinging claws that cut tic tac toe across her back. The Wolf whimpered, the rage that propelled it ebbing as black tides rolled across its vision.

The rise and fall of its chest slowed. The thudding of its heart between Kennedy's legs faltered. She pressed down harder, blood seeping between her fingers. Its attacks on her became ineffectual swats. The stink of blood, the soiled diaper scent of viscera and wet musk clung to her clothes, mixing with the tropical scent of grass on a humid day. The sun burnt her shoulders. A final, spasming gasp echoed from the cavernous chest of the Beast.

"Tara!" Kennedy yelled, maintaining her death grip. "Are you okay?"

Tara's trembling words swam through the heat. "Yes."

"Okay," Kennedy shouted back. One of the cuts started to seal along her thumbnail. She twisted it, a warm stream of iron-water blood washing over her hand. "I need you to come here for a minute."

Tara hurried across the empty space, pebbles crunching under her feet. She stopped many feet outside the dying animals arm's reach.

"Undo my belt," Kennedy commanded, her voice even and slow, "and make a loop with it."

Tara's deft fingers did as she was told, her hips so far away that she had to bend at a ninety degree angle to reach Kennedy's belt buckle. She guessed at the Slayer's intentions, moving around to the head of the Wolf, her heart pounding relentlessly in her breast.

Kennedy took it, and in one efficient motion, drew the makeshift noose around the beast's neck, pulling until the leather creaked and a steel eyelet popped out, wrapping it around once and hooking it.

"Can't get up if it can't heal," Kennedy explained. She stood up, her back tingling in a dozen spots as blood dripped down in coagulated droplets. One of the downsides of a Slayer physiology: blood dried faster, gluing whatever cloth touched the wound. Later in the day she'd have to literally rip the shirt off like a Band-Aid. Kennedy picked up the blue steel Colt 1911 from the grass. She peered at the inscription, her face twitching as the hot, fetid wind off the Mississippi brushed her injuries.

"Instant Karma," she read, snickering. Tara watched the pistol like it was a snake in Kennedy's hand. Kennedy caught the look, remembering her very good reason to be nervous around guns, and slipped it into her waistband. The twin pistol in her pocket got moved to her other hip.

"C'mon, Tare," she scanned the empty waterfront. "We've got to get moving."

Tara nodded dumbly, her head continuing the motion, bobbing up and down. Her eyes grew wide and wet, her throat spasmed around a bottled scream. Kennedy reached for her, partly to comfort her, partly to chide her for her emotional outbreak in the middle of a life or death situation. Then she followed her eye line.

Mr. Creak smiled his devil's grin, a severe figure in his black suit and tie, half southern gentleman and half undertaker. The glint of absolute amusement, the totality of humor and the absence of empathy shone in his eyes the color of coal. The silver plated Desert Eagle raised in a soundless arc, thundering as it reached its apex.

And Kennedy was down, shoving Tara to the ground behind the wrought iron bench, the only cover for yards. Tara hit the ground hard, tiny cubes of glass and sharp pebbles burning along her palms. Kennedy pulled the two pistols out, snapping off the safeties with imperceptible twitches of her thumbs. Another round rocked the bench, paint chips and slivers of lead cutting the back of Kennedy's neck. Time, goddamn it, she just need some time.

No. She knew how to use these weapons. There wasn't any hand held weapon in the world her Watcher neglected. She wouldn't buy time, she'd steal it, rip it out of his grasp, fight for each second.

"When I move," she hissed to Tara, "run as fast as you can for the river. Got"-- a wad of lead bit off a piece of her ear --"got it?"

"What are you g-gonna do?" Tara's whole body shook in mortal terror. The roar of the pistol sounded too much like an invitation back home.

Kennedy set her face into a snarl of defiance.

"Break the rules."

She turned and stood, the pistols bucking in her hands, finding their own violent cadence, one-two, one-two. Gun smoke blinded her, powder burns singed her fingers, and cordite stung her nostrils. Mr. Creak dropped around the apartment building wall, red dust clouding the air.

"Go!" Kennedy screamed.

Tara didn't hesitate, her senses not so dulled by her time in the grave that the old Scooby training didn't take over. She stayed low, sprinting along the Mississippi, the powerful brown tongue lapping at her heels like a hungry dog. The sounds of gunfire stopped for a second, the hollow reports of the .45s pausing. And then Kennedy was beside her, one hand waving over her shoulder, three shots and the metallic clack of the slide locking back. She twirled around, running backwards, emptying the other pistol at Mr. Creak. He took a hit, or Kennedy thought he took a hit, his purposeful gait interrupted.

Ahead another bench sat. Kennedy overtook Tara, grabbing her hand and pulling her along. She spared a glance behind her.

Mr. Creak leveled his .50 at Tara's back. Kennedy saw the trajectory, screamed "NO!" and stopped on her heels, putting her body between the bullet and Tara.

Tara felt Kennedy stop, heard the explosion and felt something wet splash her arm. She looked at her protector. Kennedy held her stomach, thick dark blood oozing from the hole in her shirt, the outhouse smell of pierced bowels gagging Tara. She was morbidly amazed that she could actually see the color drain from Kennedy's face, her normal dusky skin turning the color of parchment. Kennedy blinked once, her brain processing the damage. She smiled at Tara.

Tara smiled back, the blood and shit and death all very far away from her now.

Kennedy set her feet, her knees failing her and beads of sweat caked her brow. The pistols dangled lifelessly at her sides. A wormlike purple loop of intestine poked through the gaping hole in her gut. She sucked in a shallow breath through grit teeth, and spoke a single word. A word Oz said to her once and it cut through her defenses like a knife.

"No."

"I knew you'd do that," Mr. Creak sighed. He fired again, shrugging as he walked ever closer.

Kennedy's leg flew behind her, dropping her onto her knees. Something wet hit the ground when she fell. The sounds of the world became muted, Tara's cries filtered through gauze. She drug herself back to her feet, the hole in her thigh dully pulsing arterial blood. The word came again, not a plea or an impotent denial. It was a refusal.

"NO."

Mr. Creak fired again, and Kennedy's head snapped back. She toppled to her left, hitting the ground like a rag doll. She dropped off the river embankment.

The serpent of the Mississippi swallowed her up. Mr. Creak dashed to the blonde witch, her eyes frozen in shock. He fired another shot into the brown depths, saw a human shape bob out of the water almost sixty feet downstream, and realized her was out of ammo.

"Sonuva bitch," he muttered, sarcasm poisoning his tone, "We surely won't see from her again."

She thought the river would be warmer, but it sucked all the warmth from her body, infiltrating through holes not meant to be there. She tried to move her head to see the shore, but nothing listened to her. A snake, or something like it, slipped past her arm, and she must have caught it, because it clung to her, its greedy mouth and greedy tail looping out of her gunshot wound. 'Stupid snake,' she thought, 'that's my gut wound.' Black motes swam before her eyes, acrid river water flooding her nose. She felt too tired, and she knew she had to get up and do something, but she just couldn't remember what. She couldn't figure out if she was right side up or upside down in the river. There was water in her lungs, but she might have been part fish, because she wasn't breathing. The annoying throbbing in her leg stopped too. She tried to figure out what it was she was supposed to be doing. She was supposed to be protecting someone, yes she remembered that. She decided that she'd have to ask around as soon as she got out of the water. Yeah, just as soon as she got out of the water.

Three hundred feet down the Mississippi, Kennedy died.

Back
Next

© ObliqueReference 2003