Chapter 35
Found her.
One by one the knots in Travers's gut unraveled. Yes. He scarcely heard
the conciliatory words falling from his own lips as he smoothed the paper across
the mess of photos on the blotter and traced that glorious word found
with loving attention. He took a deep breath and sank back into his chair,
hanging up the phone without the slightest idea what he'd agreed to-none of that
mattered now. Disaster had been averted for the moment.
The Summers girl thought she'd won-it was true; he couldn't afford to unloose
the serpent in the garden now. Not now, and not until the Council's new
instrument had been contacted, indoctrinated, and properly trained. It might
take years, but the Council, unlike any of the mere mortals who made it up, had
time.
All the time in the world.
Buffy stepped back and squinted at the precarious Jenga-tower of bags and boxes
with the aplomb of a veteran, rose up on tiptoe, and made a minute adjustment to
the position of the Gap bag. Spike's eye, blue and sardonic, appeared in the
arrow-slit between it and the Imaginarium box. "You know, love, if I were the
uncharitable sort, at some point I'd remind you that you're stronger than I am."
"I am the girl," Buffy replied with serene aplomb, beckoning him onwards with an
imperious quirk of one finger. "You are the guy. I shop, you transport. It's the
circle of life."
"We're fast getting to the part of the circle where I collapse and they find my
cold dead body buried under a pile of Lion King memorabilia," Spike grumbled,
but there was a grin tugging at his lips even as he spoke. He'd spent most of
the afternoon setting his crypt to rights again, and after a good stiff workout
with Buffy at the Magic Box, he'd expected they'd do an early patrol. Instead
(after a shared shower during which a few other things got good and stiff) she'd
promptly dragged him off to do what Slayers did third-best. Or perhaps second
best; Buffy Summers was as keen at spotting a half-off rack of Donna Karan as
she was at taking out a vamp with a thrown stake at twenty paces. He hadn't been
on a serious feminine shopping expedition since San Francisco, the first week
after meeting Harmony, during that brief moment of whiskey-fueled insanity when
he'd decided that a clingy, brainlessly adoring chit was exactly what his ego
needed in order to recover from the bruises inflicted by Drusilla dropping him
like a hot crucifix for the second or third time in as many years. Of course,
the current occasion was a bit lacking in the trail of screaming and eviscerated
clerks department, but it was surprising how little that detracted from the
experience.
This close to Christmas, Sunnydale Mall was still crowded at eight o'clock on a
Monday night. The stores were packed and both levels of the promenade were
a-swirl with people-old, young, pale faces and dark ones, talking, laughing,
cursing, children jostling in line to see Santa. The fact that she wasn't one of
the salesgirls swimming against the human tide seemed to cheer Buffy no end.
Spike followed blindly in her wake as she plotted her lines of attack from
storefront to storefront, and did his best to ignore the hopeful hints his
stomach was sending brain-wards while the blood, sweat, and tears of
multifarious humanity assailed his nose. Should have grabbed some pig
earlier. I can be good. I can. Oooh, that one looks tasty...
Funny, though, how many of the faces in the crowd were ones he recognized.
There, the pimply kid with his britches hanging off his arse, hanging out in the
doorway to the Virgin Megastore and pretending to be cool for the benefit of a
pair of giggly eighth-grade girls. Dawn's friend's Lisa's brother, that
one-couldn't rightly eat him. There were a couple of the birds he'd caught a
glimpse of at Anya's party, lost among the shoe racks in Ross Dress For Less.
The wrinkly old bint berating a mall security guard was the elder Mrs.
Kohlermann, and there in the Kay-Bee Toys was that bloke from Xander's work,
staring with hopeless bewilderment at the ranks of Buzz Lightyears. You couldn't
really eat someone you'd been introduced to. Pudding, Alice. Alice, pudding.
Well, you could-not like he hadn't before, but how far would he have to go,
these days, to find a victim he could kill without a second thought? "Oi, Dawn'd
look smashing in that one, eh pet?" He jerked his chin in the general direction
of a display window, that being the only part of his body free at the moment.
Buffy gave the mannequins the once-over, her uncanny retail powers divining the
precise sweater he'd indicated, despite his invisibility behind the wall of
purchases. "It'll be marked down another twenty percent by Saturday. We'll come
back."
"Someone else might get paws on it first, love, and then Bit'd be disappointed
and I'd have to kill them, so buying it now's a step towards keeping me on the
straight and narrow, innit? Come on, the bank book can handle it." Never mind
the world might be ending Friday; it was coming on Christmas, and if that wasn't
a reason for indulging...
Buffy hesitated for a second, her eyes on the blue and silver beadwork spangling
the sweater's yoke, obviously wavering between maintaining her hard-won
frugality and the yearning to splurge for the first time in almost a year.
Another second and she plunged into the holiday melee, cutting out a saleswoman
with the finesse of a border collie corralling a recalcitrant sheep. Spike
leaned against the nearest counter and watched Buffy at work with a smile that
wouldn't have been entirely out of place on the face of the man he'd once been.
Times like this, he could almost appreciate what Anya saw in money. It wasn't
the same kick as strolling into a store, taking what you liked and killing
anyone who objected and a few who didn't, but purchasing power had its allure,
especially when you'd gone for a while without it.
Buffy emerged from the fray with the bright eyes and triumphant grin of victory,
clutching yet another bag which she managed somehow to hang off a corner of his
existing load. "I think that's it for tonight." Unable to put an arm round him
with the bags in the way, Buffy tucked one hand into the rear pocket of his
jeans, branding a nice toasty palmprint on his arse. "I don't want to blow the
whole bankbook on presents, now that there's actually a bankbook to blow." She
grinned, nose wrinkling adorably. "Besides, I can't get your presents while
you're hanging around watching me like a hawk."
Presents, plural? He'd lined up a few things for her, of course, but he hadn't
really expected... Spike juggled a few boxes, attempting innocence and ending up
in the general vicinity of bouncy anticipation. "Not as if I can see anything
right now but the backside of a sales receipt, pet."
"Unh uh. Don't work your sinister attraction on me, mister. It's gonna be a
secret." She gave him a playful smack on the rump. "Let's stow the loot and get
dinner before you start drooling on the mezzanine."
It was while they were cramming the last of the bags into the rear of the
Cherokee that Buffy noticed it. "Hey." She nudged him in the ribs. "Spike, was
that tree like that when we got here?"
Spike glanced up from the Rubik's Cube of packages inhabiting the back half of
the Jeep and frowned. The parking lot was a vast expanse of asphalt broken up by
random islands of cement-enclosed greenery, spindly, sad-looking acacia trees
and scraggly dwarf oleander. Several of them were dead or dying, victims of the
water crunch, but he was moderately certain that the ones nearest the car hadn't
been among them. "Doesn't mean they're still down there, love-how long does it
take the weedkilling mojo to set in?"
"I'm not sure." Buffy walked over to the island and fingered the sere thorny
branches of the acacia. A shower of tiny brown leaves fluttered to the ground as
she let the branch go. "But it's more than we found last night, right?"
True; Sunday's patrol had been a repeat of Saturday's; complete bust, redeemed
only by the unaccountable absence of further Willow-machinations. Which probably
meant only that Red was up to something on the sly, now. "Where's the nearest
sewer access, over on Ballantine? I don't fancy burrowing through a foot of
macadam with my fingernails."
"We could go home and get a shovel-wait, is that-?"
Spike slammed the Cherokee's tailgate shut and followed Buffy over to the small,
unassuming grid of dull gray steel set in one of the low spots in the
pavement-part of the parking lot's drainage system. He dropped to his haunches
beside her and eyed it dubiously; it was less than half the size of the one
they'd crawled down chasing Tanner's lot. Buffy met his eyes, hooked her fingers
into the slots and heaved; the grate came up with a clang. "Here goes nothing,"
she murmured, and shimmied down into the darkness.
Spike waited for a second, ears cocked, until he heard a splash and an 'oof!' He
swung both legs into the drain, raised both arms over his head and pushed
himself off. For a second he fell free; then the shaft narrowed further and he
came to a jolting halt, shoulders wedged tight against the damp gritty walls of
the drain. Bloody hell. This was what came of living healthy; a few months ago
he'd have scraped through. A hand groped his calf, then wrapped firmly around
his ankle and tugged. He forced all the air out of his lungs, and fell another
five or six feet to the bottom of the shaft. As his eyes adjusted to the
darkness he realized that they were in a natural cave rather than a sewer
tunnel-apparently the construction crew building the parking lot had decided to
shave a little off their costs. The floor of the tunnel was still inches deep in
oily water, runoff from the recent rains.
Buffy was crouching motionless beside him, shoulders rigid. Spike tuned out her
heartbeat and listened: echoes of lapping water, underground creaks and gurgles,
and-there. He touched her shoulder and pointed; the sound of multiple sloshing
footsteps. As one, they faded back against the tunnel walls and slipped closer
to the noise, dark water purling about their ankles like liquid silk.
The cavern was long and low-ceilinged, patchily illuminated by phosphorescent
lichen. A knot of dark-robed figures made their surefooted way through the
water, never pausing, never stumbling, guided by eldritch senses surer in the
dark than any vampire's. Each of them sported a short, curved blade at his
hip-that was new; apparently the previous dust-ups had taught them a thing or
two. They were carrying some sort of contraption, a pole decorated with a
flayed, bloody hide-human, Spike could tell from the smell of the congealing
blood-stitched back together and stuffed with something foul. The stink of black
magic almost drowned out the stench of uncured skin.
Buffy's body jerked against his, and her fingers dug hard into his
shoulder-bloody hell, this would be hard on her, wouldn't it? She'd feel for the
bastard, whoever he was. Spike was grateful to be unburdened by compassion; just
the physical stink of the thing was enough to make him want to heave. Buffy
looked up at him, pale green fire glinting in her eyes, and behind it a question
clear as speaking: six of them, armed, two of us, not. Except it wasn't really a
question at all, was it, seeing that his answer was writ just as plain in his
sharklike grin, and she knew it before she'd asked.
They shot out of the darkness in utter silence, Buffy going low, Spike going
high, striking their targets in perfect, deadly synchrony. Spike blocked a slash
from the Bringer's wicked little knife with his right forearm and drove his left
fist into his target's ribcage with his whole weight behind the blow, feeling
bones crunch and shatter and lungs collapse. Beside him Buffy'd ripped her
opponent's knife from his belt before he could draw it; the blade flashed up and
down again, eerie half-light bleeding along the cresent edge. The Harbinger went
down with a scream, hamstrung; the heady metallic scent of not-quite-human blood
flooded the cavern. Then they were back to back, just him and Buffy surrounded
by the remaining four Bringers, the advantage of surprise gone, and it was sheer
brutal punch and kick and bash heads into walls till Buffy took another one down
and he snapped the neck of a fourth.
The last two Harbingers dropped the scarecrow thing they carried and ran,
splashing awkwardly through the water with their sodden robes tangling about
their knees. Spike sprinted after, leaping clear of the water and landing on his
fleeing target's back, arms flung in a chokehold round its neck. His fangs tore
deep into the juncture of neck and shoulder, ripping through muscle and tendon
and rendering its knife arm useless. The Harbinger wailed and staggered as Spike
gagged on inhuman ichor; the thing's blood tasted like motor oil tinged with
battery acid. His prey collapsed beneath him, shock and blood loss glazing its
eyeless face as the hood fell away and it bubbled out its last breath. Spike
rolled off and watched with interest; you could drown in two inches of water,
all those child safety ads claimed, but he'd never seen it happen before. Bloody
brilliant.
Buffy drove her purloined blade into the gut of the last Bringer and yanked it
out, the curved tip drawing a glistening loop of intestine with it, delivered a
straight-legged kick to its jaw and danced back, ready to pounce if it wasn't
dead yet. For a long tense minute they stood back to back, watching, listening,
and in Spike's case sniffing for clues, but the only sounds were the gradually
diminishing slap of the waves the fight had stirred up and their own breathing.
"What is that... thing?" Revulsion thickened Buffy's voice as she edged over to
the abandoned... whatever it was. Spike sloshed over and knelt to examine it;
this close, he could see that the skin hadn't belonged to a Bringer; except for
the cuts made during the clumsy flensing, the eyelids were intact. "Is it for
some kind of spell?"
"Dunno, but whoever it was died within the last couple of days. Skin's not been
salted like we did with the Sluorn hide-see here? It's starting to decay
already." Spike started to roll the thing over and stopped, hand half-way to the
puffy, distended shoulder. Three days ago this had been a walking, talking human
being. He forced himself to reach out and touch the clammy, flabby hide. There,
no different from a thousand other dead things. Buffy clapped a hand to her
mouth as the grotesquely distorted features surged up out of the oily water, and
Spike looked up at her, anxious. "You all right, love? Not winning any beauty
contests, this bloke."
Buffy swallowed and nodded, bending over to study the pale, distended face,
committing it to memory. Spike gazed down with her, plagued by a strange itchy
annoyance. He hadn't anything so human as grief or guilt or outrage to spend on
total strangers, and the fact of messy, painful death didn't bother him in the
slightest, but one of the people in the town he'd come to call home wasn't there
any longer. The idea that Willow had been involved gave him a queer turn. "Isn't
supposed to be this way, is it?" He poked at the skin-doll. Drusilla would have
loved it, wanted a whole set for tea parties. And he'd have cheerfully gotten
her one, brought her a whole family to play with, Mama, Papa, and two-point-five
children. The point-five child still struck him as funny. "Will doing...that.
She's supposed to be-dunno, better than I am, right? You all are." I count on
you being better than I am.
"Sometimes I wonder." Buffy rose with a shudder, folding her arms across her
belly. "It may be evidence, but I'm not touching it. Do you have your lighter
with you?"
Mystified, Spike felt in his back pocket and produced the Zippo. Buffy took it,
flicked it to life, and crouched down, extending one hand to set the tiny blue
flame to the skin-doll at the furthest possible remove. For all the thing was
soaking wet, the fire caught immediately, and the cavern began to fill with oily
smoke. Buffy stood and handed him the lighter, her jaw set and hard. "Come on,
let's get out of here."
The bronzed man in the quetzal-feather headdress and the cloak of flayed human
skin walked out of the wall and stared at her, his dark eyes full of contempt.
"Cíhuatl. Acattopa Achtontli?"
Willow lay on her cot and ignored him, and after a moment the apparition
snorted, twirled its obsidian-studded war club and disappeared. Willow continued
her listless inspection of the ceiling. They kept coming-the tall, grey-bearded
man with the eyepatch and his small, thin, fox-sly companion; the woman in the
blue cloak, crowned in radiance; the fat man with too many arms and an
elephant's head; and countless others, flickering in and out of existence but
always and ever spiraling inexorably towards the hell-born omphalos of
Sunnydale. Gods or spirits or demons living above their station-in the end they
were small potatoes. They were a reflection of human desires and hopes and
fears, and she was working for-no, with-something bigger than all of them, older
than all of them.
For all the good it did her.
She saw the old man's face all the time now, raw and bleeding, in the grain of
the timbers shoring up the fractured ceiling of the main cavern, in the random
scuff marks in the sand of its floor. In the faces of his comrades, whose eyes
followed her accusingly. In the darkness behind her own eyelids, where nothing
was ever still and quiet any longer.
Get up.
Willow ignored the voice. She was getting good at ignoring things.
It's been days. You have yet to secure the girl. Your Harbingers are
dying. The Slayer and her playtoy disrupted the completion of the ritual
sacrifice. Time is running out. Your work will have been for nothing.
"I don't care," she whispered. On Saturday morning, she'd had twenty-seven
Harbingers left. Every morning since, a few more were gone, shot through with
crossbow bolts if they lurked in the general vicinity of the Summers house, or
ambushed when they ventured outside the veils of illusion she'd cast about her
tiny domain. She couldn't just pull them into her sanctum sanctorum forever; she
needed them to fetch food and supplies. How was she going to ride herd on the
crazies if she ran out of Harbingers and what did it matter if the world ended
in three days?
"You can create more servitors," Jenny whispered in her ear. "Doing so
requires access to the Seal of Danzathar, which is currently buried thirty feet
beneath a bulldozer on the grounds of Sunnydale High." She pursed her
lips. "And the Hellmouth is currently so unstable that it's possible the
ritual would fail in any case."
"Well then, I guess we're just screwed, right?"
Her vampire self was sitting on the edge of her cot, sneering. "Ooh, yeah,
lie there all pouty-faced and oh so guilty, Willow. Let the world die around
you-that'll make it all better, won't it?" The familiar face went alien
as it thrust close to her own, sprouting fangs and ridges. "If you stop
now, you're nothing but a murderer, a frightened, power-hungry child so
terrified of the dark you burned down your own house to ward it off."
The voice-her voice-dropped to a cajoling purr. "But if you gather your
courage and go on, my nummy treat, the tears of gratitude from a whole planet
will wash the bloodstains from your hands."
Willow stared at the dark. "I hate you."
Young Buffy giggled. "Pronoun trouble, Wills?"
It didn't look like much, the Hellmouth, even open, as long as twenty-headed
snake demons weren't pouring out of it. At the moment, it wasn't even glowing or
giving off hallucinogenic fumes. A twenty-foot crack in the earth, like hundreds
of other earthquake faults in California, encircled by a spiderweb of yellow
CAUTION! tape and a pair of bulldozers flanking it as jealously as bison
protecting a calf. For two, almost three years now, the site of the former
Sunnydale High School had been an urban war zone, officially the casualty of a
catastrophic gas main explosion following an earthquake. It had been fenced off
and ignored for as long as possible by the Board of Education, until the rising
grumbles of parents tired of busing their children elsewhere had forced the city
into action. In the last few months, the sagging old fence had been replaced by
a shiny new one, and trucks and bulldozers had rumbled into action like giant
mechanical bumblebees, ferrying their loads of debris away.
Over half the lot was now a bare, tire-raked expanse of earth, barred with the
long black shadows of heavy machinery. Bare, but not deserted. Buffy crouched at
the lip of the pit, Dawn knelt beside her, and Spike bracketed Dawn on the other
side. Half a dozen nylon ropes trailed past them, down over the edge into the
depths of the Hellmouth. At some distance from the others, Tara and Anya sat
cross-legged on a tatami mat, facing one another, eyes closed, lips moving in a
soft, ceaseless river-run of mystic plainsong. The lone white pillar candle on
the ground between them did brave if fruitless battle with the impersonal glare
of construction floodlights.
"The all quiet on the Willow front," Buffy said, voice hushed. "Any clues yet?"
Giles, standing a few paces behind them with a stopwatch in one hand, stilled a
gesture towards his glasses with the other. "Every spot where one of the lights
touched down Friday night was a site where a dimensional portal has been opened
in the past," he said. "Kingman's Bluff was the site of a major temple to
Proserpexa once. One of those tedious sects whose chief sins lie in the
execrable prose of their sacred writings, but they did attempt to raise several
dangerous entities before the temple was destroyed in an earthquake in the early
thirties. The dimensional fold in the cavern where the Master was trapped, the
old warehouse..."
"She sealed the doors with blood," Tanner whispered. He was huddled in one of
Xander's too-large coats, watching the proceedings with large haunted eyes.
"Yes." Giles's voice sounded worn, scraped thin over inner pain. "The skin-doll
you destroyed was very likely made from the remains of the initial sacrifice.
Had you not destroyed it, it would have been brought here to the Hellmouth,
thrown in to finish the spell."
"It doesn't look so bad." Dawn was whispering too, though there was no reason
for it. She leaned forward, her hair falling over her shoulders. "It's just like
the climbing wall we did in Phys Ed, right? Except with a jillion-foot hole
underneath."
Buffy unfolded her arms from across her knees and laid a hand on her sister's
shoulder-half comforting pat, half don't-fall-in death-grip. "If it's one of the
walls with melting watches draped over the top, sure. It starts getting
seriously Billy Pilgrim down there after awhile. I fell faster than the demon I
jumped in after-just because I really needed to, I think. But you'll be staying
in one spot, and we can't be sure-"
One of the ropes jerked and went taut, interrupting, and Buffy scooted back from
the edge and pulled Dawn with her as a figure, dark but for a single glaring
cyclopean eye, emerged hand over hand from the pit. Spike reached down, took
hold, and hauled it effortlessly over the edge. Xander staggered to his feet,
gasping, and switched off the light on his hard hat. "The world is weebling. Or
is that just me?" He sat down on the tread of the nearest bulldozer and Anya
jumped to her feet and pulled his helmet off. He leaned into her side-world
endage had its points, Buffy guessed; wedding squabbles seemed to be a thing of
the past. "My brow thanks you. Not technically fevered, but who am I to turn
down a good stroke? How long did I last? I feel like the final stages of a
sleep-deprivation lab."
Giles held up the stopwatch. "Twenty-five minutes." Xander leaned back against
the Caterpillar and moaned. "And a maximum depth of sixty-five feet, if we're to
trust our measurements. Right then. The protection spell does give us another
twenty feet of penetration, at minimum." The Watcher glanced at Tara. "Are you
certain you can't increase the range?"
Tara snuffed out the candle. "Not unless I go down with her. This close to the
Hellmouth we're lucky I can get it to work at all."
"We might need to try sending you both down, then. We've got to make sure Willow
gets all the way in." Buffy peered into the abyss. If Spike made another
Nietzsche joke, she'd thump him. "As far down as we can get Dawn and not
suffocate her or turn her into a newt, anyway."
"Which is why we're using Joe Average as a guinea pig instead of the girl with
the super-powered metabolism or the guy who only inhales on special occasions."
Xander got up with a groan and gave Anya a more-than-usually fervent squeeze.
"I'm gonna need a rest and refuel before we try it again, guys. Pizza break."
"So...there are, like, ledges, right?" Dawn asked as they trooped wearily back
to the Magic Box half an hour later, laden with pizza boxes and two dozen Krispy
Kreme hots-more like tepids by now, but still fairly high on the
food-of-the-gods scale. "I'm not going to be hanging in mid-air?"
Buffy frowned. It had been so long ago, and she hadn't exactly been scouting for
scenic outlooks. "I don't remember any ledges, but I was more looking for large
icky demons."
"There are two-inch wrinkles you could call ledges." Xander laid the pizza out
on the table. "Or you could call them deathtraps waiting to happen. But I think
we can do better than that. We're gonna need more rope, and some foundation
bolts, two-by-fours, a winch, a cargo net-"
Tara scribbled another item on a list of spell components and handed it to Anya.
"We still need a reliable teleport block. And if we can get hold of some tiger's
eye-the stone, I mean-"
Spike propped an elbow against the counter in direct defiance of the 'Do not
lean on glass' sign and Buffy bent to inspect the pizza choices. Pepperoni and
pineapple, sausage and onion, and all-veggie, without... She looked up, meeting
Xander's pained dark eyes. "I got it without the bell peppers this time," he
said, waving one hand over the array of pies. "Just-I don't know, just in case
Willow walks in the door and says 'Really belated April Fools!' and we all
laugh."
Buffy grabbed a slice of pepperoni and pineapple and the nearest book in a
language she was competent to pretend to read. She opened it at random and
stared at the crabbed lines of text. She had no idea what she was looking for,
there was never an index anyway, and this was a Willow thing, darn it. Her thing
was sneaking looks at the dirty woodcuts and hiding a copy of Glamour in
the flyleaf. "It's just wrong, isn't it?" She rubbed her nose, hoping it would
relieve the prickling in her eyes. "Research party without Willow? It's like
water running uphill or white pumps after Labor Day."
"For all we know, she is here," Anya said, plunking another pile of musty tomes
down on the research table between Giles and Tara. "She could be spying on us
this very minute."
Tara's lip quivered. "I'd know. If she were w-watching us. She's been...I
haven't sensed anything since Friday night." A large fat tear slid off the end
of her nose and blotted the parchment in front of her. Spike held out a
handkerchief in wordless penitence. Tara took it without looking at him, but her
fingers lingered on his for a second longer than necessary. Spike was treating
her with the same exaggerated gentleness he'd used when she'd been brainsucked,
and Tara seemed to allow his clumsy attempts at kindness as much because it made
him feel better as because she required them. She blew her nose and shoved the
book into the center of the table. "I think this spell may help. It's for
purifying air, but I think we could adapt it to make a kind of Hellmouth
survival bubble."
As the others crowded around the book, Buffy corralled Xander. "We'd better get
going if we want this set up and tested by tomorrow night." She nibbled on a
donut. "Spike and I can truck the heavy stuff. Is your boss going to notice all
this stuff walking off the site?"
Xander shook his head. "Not if it tiptoes. Oh, and on a personal note? I'm not
only not fired, I may get a battlefield promotion, since Tony hasn't shown up
for work since Friday."
Anya beamed at him. "Sometimes it's an advantage working in a town where
traumatic neck injuries are so common."
Xander looked askance at Spike. "Uh huh. You do have an alibi for all of that
night, right?"
Spike gave him a two-fingered salute. "See if I ever do you any favors."
Buffy abandoned her book to its fate and drifted to the front of the store,
peering out through the security shutters across the front windows for sign of
Harbingers. Coast clear. She leaned into the doorframe, forehead to the glass,
wondering idly what she ought to wear to Sandra's party if the world didn't end.
Maybe she could blow just a teensy bit more of the bankbook on something new for
herself. After a moment she realized that Xander had scuffed up beside her,
hands shoved into his pockets. "She's really planning on doing it, isn't she?"
he asked, voice husky. "I didn't believe she'd go through with it. It's
Willow." His shoulders slumped. "If we could talk to her, just once more..."
"We'll get another chance," Buffy said. "Phasers on stun, right?"
Xander nodded, unhappiness plain on his face. "I always thought that no matter
what happened, the four of us would always come out of it together, you know?
And then you died. Now Giles is going back to England, and..." His head dropped
and he stared down at the worn toes of his work boots.
"It's OK, Xander," she said. Keep it soft, keep it firm. It hurt her badly
enough, and he'd known Willow forever and a day longer than she had. "I know
you'll always be here."
"That's just the thing, Buff." He sounded miserable. "I won't. I mean, I'll be
here. In Sunnydale. If you ever need extra help, or contracting, or pizza, the
Xandman is your man. End of the world, holler and I'll come running. But as far
as the day-to-day slaying goes-" He took a deep breath. "After the wedding, I'm
done. Anya and I have been doing a lot of talking, and...she wants a family, and
I can't-if I have kids, I'm gonna be there for them every night. The whole idea
scares me shitless, but if I can't face my own monsters, then what the hell have
I been doing facing down other people's for the last six years? This promotion
at work-I could be making real money if I put my back into it. Enough that we
could seriously think about the white picket fence thing. And-God, say
something, Buffy, please tell me you're not mad!"
He looked so bereft standing there, all awful shaggy haircut and worried brown
eyes. Not the geeky kid she'd run into on the high school steps any longer; her
Xander-shaped friend had gotten taller and broader and God, Xander was a
grown-up. Tears welled up in her eyes, and Buffy laughed. "Xander-you love what
you do, don't you? The building stuff?"
He blinked. "Well... yeah. It's-I'm good at it. Really good. And it's maybe just
ordinary work, but I'm... The world's ending, and I'm thinking about next year."
"The world's always ending. If we don't live like it isn't, we'll never live at
all." She pulled him into an impulsive hug, and Xander hugged back, hard enough
that she almost felt it. "You've found your life, Xander. How could I be mad
about that? That's why I do this end-of-the-world stuff to begin with, so people
can have lives. And you're one of my favorite people." Buffy drew away, smiling
up at him. "And kids-not a problem. You'll be a great dad."
He snorted. "Yeah, my family photo album is itemized list of everything not to
do." He glanced back towards the research table, where Spike was arguing with
Giles over a translation. "Does it ever...I mean, kids. The concept. Do you ever
see yourself as a mom? Because me as a dad, every time I get close the brain
shorts out."
Buffy shrugged, lacing her arms beneath her breasts. "That was Angel's big deal,
not mine. My fantasies only made it as far as the big orange-blossom and Vera
Wang wedding. Two AM feedings and diaper changes, not high on the romance meter.
Kids might be something to think about if I live long enough to retire..."
Sudden, stunning thought: that might really happen, with three Slayers running
around. Her expression went mischievous. "Of course we'd have to adopt. Or see
if the sperm bank has any short blue-eyed donors with curly brown hair and
killer cheekbones." Xander was gaping at her, and Buffy giggled. "Oh, come on,
Xander! This is the twenty-first century. If Spike's tadpoles don't make the
swim team it's not the end of the world. And speaking of which..."
Back at the research table, Buffy slipped an arm around Spike's waist. He
enveloped her in one leather-clad arm, nuzzling the top of her head with that
low purring rasp of a growl. Across the table Xander was doing the same to Anya,
minus the growling. Giles was pointing out a relevant passage of the spell as
Tara and Dawn looked on, absorbed in the acquisition of knowledge and pizza. "I
love you all," Buffy said, softly enough that even Spike cocked his head as if
he weren't sure he'd heard right. She swallowed. "I-I just wanted to say that
once. Without, you know, death threats attached."
Dawn clipped her shoulder lightly and smiled. "Hey. Wouldn't be you without
death threats."
The black-robed man knelt and held out the tiny, precious object in both cupped
hands. "As you instructed, Exalted Vessel."
Willow suppressed her squick and plucked the wad of Juicyfruit from his palm,
holding the gum between thumb and forefinger in a manner calculated to minimize
surface contact. It was still gooey, crusted with dirt and, with any luck, spit.
Gross, but necessary. Tara and Anya had come up with a counterspell to her more
generic locator spell days ago. She'd picked strands of Tara's hair off her own
sweater, spirited wadded-up Kleenex from Dawn's backpack, and dispatched one of
the crazies to Spike's crypt to bring back scraps of cloth stained with things
even grosser than used gum. "Are you sure it's Xander's?" she asked. "Because if
I end up tracking one of his beer-bellied construction buddies across half of
Sunnydale again-"
The hooded head jerked down between dusty black shoulders, hoping to avoid
decapitation by the edge in her voice. "I observed him discard it myself,
Exalted Vessel."
"Fine. Dismissed." Willow watched it slink off to join its remaining brethren
around the reassembled altar. She took the gum over to a small brazier set up
before a large map of Sunnydale. The sullen vermillion light painted her face
with blood-out, damned spot. Willow crouched before the brazier, took up a
handful of incense and sprinkled the tiny beads of resin over the coals. Each
grain melted with a hiss and a crackle; fat green sparks flew up around her and
the air filled with a pungent, nose-prickling scent.
Even magic brought no pleasure now. She hadn't slept more than four hours at a
stretch in days, and sometimes she could almost believe that there was nothing
more to the universe than the endless tangle of caverns and tunnels-Many fall
down to the Underworld, but few return to the sunlit lands. What she
wouldn't give for the scent of burning Marshwiggle. Willow brushed the last of
the sticky residue off her fingers and held out one hand, palm flat, and dropped
the wad of chewing gum onto the coals. "Alexander Lavelle Harris, protraho."
The magic might fail to delight, but at least it didn't fail. On the map of
Sunnydale pasted to the cavern wall, a glowing mote labeled 'Xander' appeared,
moving slowly along Main and joining the half-dozen other dots milling about the
town: Buffy, Dawn, Spike, Tara-her very own Marauder's Map. She still hadn't
been able to get anything from Anya or Giles; anyone who'd worked with magic as
long as they had grew suitably paranoid about destroying items which might be
used against them.
Willow sat back on her heels and watched the tiny golden lights. Xander was at
work. Tara was on the UCS campus, not all that far away. Buffy and Spike were...crap,
not again. She jumped to her feet, shoved the nearest Harbingers out of her
way, and raced over to the irregular row of scrying bowls set up along the
nearest cavern wall. Poured-concrete birdbaths, a big step up from pie plates.
In each shallow bowl the silvery surface of the water revealed a different set
of murky images. Willow passed a hand over the nearest one and the picture
flared to life. Buffy and Spike, squared off against four or five Harbingers.
They must have broken through the tunnel roof inside her protective ring of
illusions.
She clapped her hands together with a shouted word that left her throat raw, and
the world disintegrated around her. A queasy moment later reality snapped back
into focus and Willow was standing in the middle of the tunnel, twenty feet or
so behind the line of Harbingers. A pile of fresh rubble from the new hole in
the ceiling half-choked the passageway opposite, and Spike and Buffy stood side
by side, taking advantage of their newly-created higher ground halfway up the
treacherous slope. They'd brought weapons this time, short swords suited to
close fighting in an enclosed space, and one Harbinger was already lying
spreadeagled at the foot of the little hill, the slowly widening pool of its
blood darkening the earth below.
"Thicken!" Willow cried, thrusting both hands out, fingers crooked to
rake power from the air around her and send it lancing towards her targets-she'd
trap the Harbingers too, but that couldn't be avoided. The air grew glassy and
opaque for a second, but refused to solidify, resisting her command. Someone had
a counter-spell going. She reached out of herself, feeling for telltale traces
of power-there; gauzy veils of pale green and violet clouded the aether around
the interlopers, sending her spells awry. Tara and Anya, working in concert. A
counter-spell that powerful had to be chanted continuously to work, so if either
of them lost their concentration... She knew where Tara was; if she sent a
Harbinger to distract her, maybe even bring her here-
Buffy's cell phone rang, loud and brash against the muffled grunts of the fight,
and she fell back a step, pulling her cell from within her jacket while Spike
surged forward in a flurry of short vicious slashes and jabs. "Kind of busy
here, G-what? You're sure? Oh, God. We'll be right there." She stuffed the phone
back in her pocket and dove back down the hill of debris, stones rolling beneath
her boots. "Dawn's missing," she gasped, grabbing Spike's arm. "This can wait."
Her furious green eyes met Willow's. "I'm trying really hard to remember we're
friends, Will. If she's hurt, expect an attack of early-onset Alzheimer's."
"What?" Willow yelped, stung by the left-field accusation. The darkness drained
from her eyes. "I haven't-" But Buffy was already clambering back up the pile of
earth and stone, Spike at her back. One after the other they leaped upwards and
were gone, Buffy sending one last angry, disdainful look over her shoulder.
Willow stood there in confusion for a moment, as the remaining Harbingers
cringed against the wall, waiting for orders. What was going on? With a muttered
incantation she teleported back in the main cavern and strode over to the
locator map. Buffy's, Spike's, and Tara's lights were all closely grouped now,
and heading across town with a speed that indicated that they must be in a
car-probably Spike's, since it was still an hour or so shy of sunset. Xander's
light had left the job site and was heading in the same general direction the
others were taking.
Anya was probably still with Tara, and Giles might be with them, with Xander, or
on his own. But all of them were converging on one spot. Dawn's sigil glowed all
by itself, in the middle of the city block Willow knew better than almost any
other. The old high school. The Hellmouth. Why would Dawn go there? Dawn was
perfectly capable of haring off on some wild-eyed scheme, but why now? Was there
some third party in play here, one of the wandering godlets, maybe? Or had the
First decided to take matters into its own immaterial hands, luring Dawn away
with visions of her mother or something? Or was this some big fake-out on
Buffy's part to get her out in the open? Buffy was like an overprotective
lioness where Dawn was concerned; how likely was it that she'd willingly allow
her sister to mess around in the gateway to a hell dimension?
There was no way to tell without more information, and no way to get information
without going after it. Willow turned to the nearest Harbinger. "Any of the
crazies that aren't too many french fries short of a Happy Meal, get them
together, and bring them here. You'll be coming too, except for whoever needs to
stay behind and do the altar-chanty stuff." She snapped a finger. "Come on,
Skippy, move it. We've got work to do."
She could feel the stirring, power arising and spreading its wings within her.
There's little time left, the darkness said, no longer speaking in
the voices of her dead, but in its own-old and deep and terrible, like the
inexorable shifting of stone, like the petrified fang of some antediluvian
terror piercing her heart. Willow Rosenberg, are you strong enough to do
what must be done?
Willow tipped her head back, closing her eyes, parting her lips, spreading her
arms wide. Every light in the cavern snuffed out simultaneously, and the
darkness rolled in-an endless inky midnight which had inhabited the fastness of
the Earth since the dawn of time, the cold depths of interstellar space chilling
the molten heart of a young world. The darkness rolled in-into the cave, into
her eyes, into her heart. Willow's eyes opened, and her gaze was a night without
stars. "I will be."
"Ready?" Buffy asked.
Xander nodded, checking the safety before slinging the gun over one shoulder.
"As I'll ever be." He craned his head back, eyes tracing a path up through the
insane jungle gym of twisted girders. Two-thirds of the way up two or three
massive steel beams intersected. Yeah, he could do that. Leap from wall to
shattered wall like Spiderman on acid. He felt curiously light. Springloaded.
Buffy's hand lingered on his arm. Spike pulled the box of ammunition out of his
duster pocket and handed it over. "S'pose I should wish you luck, but I don't
want the fact I haven't got round to eating you yet get you thinking we're mates
or anything."
"Yeah, I hate you too." Xander tucked the box in his pocket. The contents
rattled against the case. Death-rattle. What the hell was a death-rattle?
Something you gave baby ghouls?
Anya looked up at him with tear-stained cheeks and said, "You're coming back
down from there alive, Alexander Harris, because we're getting married in twelve
days and I refuse to let our future children be orphans. Also, I love you. I had
to wait a thousand years to find you, and I can't wait another thousand, so-so
don't die."
It was an order, not a request. Not one he had any qualms about following,
either. So he held Anya tight, and Tara patted his hand, and Giles cleaned his
glasses, and then he was climbing. He couldn't die, and that was that. Xander
hauled himself up on a rusty hunk of rebar, the heavy length of metal and
high-impact plastic at his back thumping against his spine as he climbed. The
charred remnants of Sunnydale High loomed up around him, a twisted mass of steel
beams and shattered hunks of brick and concrete.
Xander stretched full-length along the slanting rain-streaked surface of a
fallen wall-part of the gym, maybe. From his vantage point he could see almost
the whole city block. Except for the bulldozers guarding the Hellmouth, the
heavy earthmoving machinery was mostly off at the other end of the lot, but half
a dozen trucks were parked along the fence, next to the ranks of Porta-Johns,
waiting for sunrise and their next loads of debris. Down below on the cleared
portion of the lot was a chaotic mosaic of tire-track whorls, each separate
treadmark casting its own crisp black shadow in the lunar glare of the
floodlights. One small step for a man, one hell of a fall for Xander Harris.
There was movement along the fringes of the rubble pile; Tanner, Giles and Anya
had taken up stations of their own, each of them setting up the crystals and
candles and stinky herbs as necessary. Teleport block. On the bare earth next to
the Hellmouth, Tara knelt and bowed her head-not serene, but composed, the
hidden steel in her soft face very near the surface. Buffy and Spike were
helping Dawn on to the winch platform; Dawn had a small metal box clutched in
both hands. Her pale, set face disappeared as the line on the winch uncoiled,
lowering her into the depths. Spike kicked the winch's locking mechanism closed,
and he and Buffy disappeared into the shadows.
Xander felt terribly alone. No protection spells for him, nothing that might
draw Willow's attention. Buffy's big solemn eyes looking up at him. "You're
the best shot of all of us. And we can't afford a second one. It's got to be
you." Army guy training and a white-trash childhood spent potting pigeons
with BBs, and now he was taking a bead on his best friend. He pulled the
ammunition case out of his coat pocket and opened it, examining the rounds
inside-one was as good as the next, he supposed, but it was always so important
to Willow that she pick out the exact right notebook, the exact right pencil...
He chose the nearest one, unlimbered the gun, fitted the round into the chamber,
and eased the barrel through a notch in the cement, sighting through the
crosshairs-It's Colonel Harris, with a rifle, in the Book Depository!
She was right. It had to be him. Just as it had to be Buffy when it was Angel
that needed taking down. He wouldn't want it to be anyone else.
Willow gathered power in both hands as she walked, drawing in ribbons and scraps
of old spells from the air and weaving them together. Willow hoarded power from
the borrowed store the First had granted her, letting it boil and seethe in her
belly. Willow leached power from the bones of the earth with each step, drawing
it upwards to coil and flower in her heart.
Willow took power, tamed it, shaped it, and unleashed it. "Open sesame!"
The gates facing the street blew off their hinges, flying across the bare ground
in a white-hot searing fountain of molten aluminum. Willow prowled through the
gap, all sass and slink, eyes gleaming obsidian, her auburn head crowned with
silver flame. No more fear. No more doubt. Those things were luxuries she didn't
have time for any longer. A phalanx of robed Harbingers flanked her on either
side, and in their wake the sorrowful remainder of Tanner's people shuffled
along. The crazies clung to one another, their whimpers and moans lost on the
rising wind.
She could feel the opposition to her presence. The chanting grew louder as she
approached the Hellmouth, a complex interplay of voices, Anya and Giles and a
less-familiar baritone. Tara's beloved voice rose above them, solitary and pure
as a nightingale above the chirping of sparrows, and the tears burned Willow's
cheeks as they fell.
Dawn was out there, a wellspring of verdant power, a siren call to anyone with
ears to hear it-out of sight, but far from out of mind. So were the others, but
she'd deal with them later. Getting Dawn to the altar of the First and doing
what she needed to do was paramount. Teleporting more than one person was
tricky, but far from impossible. Willow reached out and grasped cords of magic,
scarlet and silver, violet and gold. "Inanitas per subvectant!" she cried, her
voice grown larger than the rest of her. Power surged out to make her will
manifest, ribbons and ropes and cables to bind time and space to her will.
The tripartite chant of her enemies (enemies now?) rose higher, each word a
knife cutting a strand in the net of her power. The aether rebounded, resisting
her efforts, and her spell twisted, unraveled, and ebbed away. Willow fell back,
her thin chest heaving, lips peeled back over white teeth. Her hair fell in wild
elflocks about her face. "OK, that's pretty impressive, guys, but I don't have
time to piddle around." She turned and waved the nearest handful of Harbingers
forward. "The girl we want is in the Hellmouth. Get her."
On the fringes of the barren lot, in the interstices of the chain-link and the
cornices of shattered walls, translucent figures were gathering,
corner-of-the-eye shimmerings, walking heat-mirages in the dead of winter. A
dragon floated by overhead, its voice the clangor of a thousand brazen gongs. A
massive red-bearded man with a hammer, a cat-headed woman in a sheer cotton
sheath, a giant coal-black raven. Dozens of them, hundreds of them, blurring in
and out. A naked youth with dark curling hair and cloven hooves sat on the edge
of the concrete slab, grinning at her. It toyed with a set of reed pipes and
said something in a language she didn't understand. Great, she was being haunted
by Zamfir. Willow sent a blast of violet lightning its way, pulverizing the
concrete. The apparition laughed and faded away.
The Harbingers spread out across the expanse of naked earth, tearing down the
sawhorses with their spiderwebbing of yellow plastic ribbon. They converged upon
the Hellmouth and fanned away again in confusion, ants who'd lost their scent
trail. Willow looked more closely and caught a familiar spell-trace-Dawn must be
holding the cookie tin with the talisman for the spellcloak in it.
There were always loopholes. Tara sat oblivious on the edge of the Abyss,
spinning the skein of words which kept Dawn safe in the mouth of Hell. Straw
into gold, just like the fairy tale. Willow gestured, and the Harbingers turned
on Tara.
Buffy catapulted over a crumpled bank of gym lockers, a sword almost as long as
she was tall raised high over her head. Her blade flashed in deadly quicksilver
arcs to the right and left, and the hands of the Harbingers nearest Tara fell
twitching to earth, the severed veins splattering chaotic arabesques of crimson
across the dirt. Spike's inhuman roar drowned out the chant for a second as he
followed her, suspended in mid-air for endless seconds on black leather wings-wow,
vampires got hang time. The descending head of his battle-axe ripped into
the black-robed figures, toppling Bringers like saplings. The two of them fought
like a single creature, striking, feinting, hazel eyes and gold blazing alike as
they painted a portrait in carnage among the Bringers. Crouching Slayer, Hidden
Vampire. You never really understood Buffy yammering on about being a force of
nature until that force was unleashed against you, backed up by Death incarnate
in black leather and peroxide.
But Willow Rosenberg was a force too, above and beyond nature or death. "Sica
flammae, aboleunt!" Willow shouted. The incantation left a trail of violet fire
in the air behind it, each word an incandescent dagger. Buffy dodged, barely,
and the spell-blade creased her cheek, leaving a livid scorched streak. Spike
whirled just in time to trade a fist-sized hole in his shoulder for a fist-sized
hole in his duster. Willow didn't wait on the results of her spellcasting; she
was already waving the crazies forwards. "Get the girl while the Bringers
distract them! Hurry!"
Spike had lost his axe, the blade half-sunk in a concrete block and no time to
pry it free. Buffy flung him the sword and went Michelle Yeoh on the nearest
crazy-wading in with kicks and punches instead of tempered steel, but she wasn't
pulling those punches, either. Spike caught the blade one-handed and drove it
into the belly of an oncoming crazy-Jim? Ronnie? Ramon?-lifting the man half off
the ground as he ripped the blade free in a fountain of blood. Willow'd seen
Buffy kill people before. Human people. Gwendolyn Post. Half a dozen Knights of
Byzantium. Maybe even a few crazies during the assault on Glory's tower. But
there was still a tiny horrified shock in seeing Spike make his first human kill
in three years, and seeing Buffy ignore it completely.
Two of the crazies had reached the winch, and together they wrenched the crank
free and started hauling Dawn up. Willow heard a shriek as the winch platform
jerked and thumped against the inner wall of the Hellmouth. Buffy hauled the men
off, sending them flying head-first into a pile of bricks, while Spike snapped a
Harbinger's spine across a fallen pillar. Vampire and Slayer stood back to back
around Tara and the abandoned winch.
She had to break through the counterspell. Willow reached out for more power and
a corona of silver and scarlet flared up around her. The world faded away and
everything was stripped to its essence: the ragged pulsing wound of the
Hellmouth, the raw unmolded power of the Key, the intertwined flames of the
Slayer and her consort. Lesser flames burned closer to hand, feeble things she
could snuff out at will. One of the fallen crazies went up in a pillar of
colorless fire, screaming as his soul was stripped from his body, and both were
dissolved into the raw stuff of magic. Willow spoke a Word that left her throat
raw and bleeding and reached out. The air around Giles went sulfurous and
cloudy; he collapsed, choking, his glasses shattering on the rubble.
Another crazy dissolved, another Word, and Anya staggered to her feet, wailing
in terror, her eyes glued to some invisible terror. A third, and Daniel Tanner
was struck dumb. Only Tara was left.
"Volo me!" Willow was hovering in mid-air now, halfway over the Hellmouth. She
outshone the stars overhead; actinic light radiated all around her, painting
jet-black shadows in every direction. The Medusa's nest of her hair crackled and
writhed in the inferno of her power and her eyes were the void itself. Buffy
stood on the winch platform below her, tiny and indomitable, Spike at her side
and her sword in her hands once more. Foolish little Slayer. In the lambent gold
of her aura were the lingering traces of the Raising spell, tiny threads of
indigo raveling and falling away as they were no longer needed. Willow reached
out with infinite delicacy and precision, to pluck the last of the threads away.
Click.
There was the Slayer, that force of nature, sword dropping from limp hands to
clatter on the dead earth below. Falling to her knees, gasping for breath...
...remembering heaven.
Willow laughed, high and wild and triumphant, and began her descent.
Xander remembered Willow when she was only the smart shy kid, the one too honest
to let him copy her math homework, but who spent hours explaining binomials in
words of one syllable till he could scrape by with a gentleman's C. He
remembered Buffy when she was carefree and curvy and one vampire was a serious
fight. They'd both traveled so far beyond the realm of Xander Harris, Ordinary
Guy, it wasn't funny. And there was Spike, the Slayer of Slayers, and Tara, who
was no slouch at the magic biz, and Giles the walking encyclopedia of the
supernatural, and Anya the ex-demon...
Right now, Xander Harris, Ordinary Guy, was the most important person in the
world.
On the field below, Buffy collapsed to her knees, and Spike, torn between her
and Dawn, was distracted for the moment it took for Willow to lash out with a
scourge of ebony lightning and swat him aside like a bug. Then she was soaring
down towards the Hellmouth, glowing like Jean Grey about to torch the planet of
the asparagus people. Xander swallowed fear and love together in one sickening
lump, cocked, aimed, and squeezed the trigger.
The dart Willow'd enchanted herself, the dart powerful enough to take down a
Krallock demon with a touch, flew straight and sure to embed itself in her
thigh. For a heartbeat Willow froze, her eyes wide and shocked, and then she
wavered, spinning, searching the darkness for him. Her lips moved-You too,
Xander?
He couldn't see the magic, but he could see what it did. An invisible tsunami
raged across the vacant lot, flinging the bulldozers aside like Tonka toys.
Beneath him the snap and scream of displaced metal and stone drowned all other
sound. The vast jackstraw pile of broken walls and twisted spires of rebar
shifted and shuddered overhead, and the last thing Xander thought before the sky
fell was, But I promised...