by Nancy Holder
“Hey, man,” the hood protested. “We were here first.”
“No, the Indians were here first,” Buffy said, “as my friend in the car will be happy to explain to you.” She threw back her fist, ready to punch him out. “Excuse me, the Native Americans.”
Gunfire blatted above their heads. The guy shouted something in Spanish; Riley spoke a smattering of various languages but he couldn’t make out the words in all the percussion. Bullets hailed all around them; he forced himself into that cool, quick alert space he had learned to find in Special Ops and almost calmly headed for the stairs. He ascended, taking them two at a time.
Buffy picked up their new friend and shouted, “Hey! You wanna take your own guy out?”
There was more Spanish, the gist of which Riley got this time, and it was not something one would read in a college textbook. Grimly, Riley sprinted across the bridge, the sun just beginning to peer over the horizon. A guy in a black sweatshirt and jeans was crouching on the other side of the bridge, zeroing in on a target below.
Riley dove, landing on top of him; the two rolled to the right, into the stairwell, and tumbled down the concrete stairs. Riley felt each bruise; no Slayer superpowers for me. Using the momentum of his fall, he managed to end up on top of the guy at the bottom of the stairs. He slugged him a good one, knocking him out.
Riley retraced their path and found the jerk’s semiautomatic. Assuming a shooting position, he scanned the area for more shooters. There was no more gunfire. The air was filled instead with the grunts and groans of someone being rabbit-punched; it did not sound like Buffy.
Sure enough, she was pummeling the other bad guy in the stomach, who had given up trying to talk to her.
“Honey,” Riley said. “We’re good.”
She gave the guy one more punch and said, “If we have scars, you are dead.”
Blood streamed from the guy’s nose. “Hey, hey,” he protested, as she backed off. Her face was covered with blood.
Bad guy number one dropped to his knees. “Hey, man.” His whine was little-boy pathetic.
“Think you’re a big man as long as you can throw a brick at someone?” Riley said dangerously. “As long as you’ve got a gun in your hands?”
Buffy said, “I’m checking on Willow,” and dashed to the car.
The guy fell forward onto his palms. He was groaning. He looked up at Riley and said, “But this is our turf, man,” as if that justified his actions.
Riley shook his head in disgust and walked away.
Sunnydale
It was still dark out, and the magick shop was far from officially open. But the current proprietor knew bad vibes when he felt them, and he had eagerly let Giles, Tara, and Anya into the store to purchase warding supplies. He was a tall, heavyset man with balding strawberry blond hair and so many folds of skin around his eyes he vaguely resembled a pig. He himself had already taken care of the shop and his home, setting protective wards in place, but admitted that that had tested the limits of his own magick abilities. “I got a plate in my head,” he explained, tapping his skull. “From the war. Screws me up, spell-wise.”
“I’m so frightfully sorry,” Giles told him, as he and Tara gathered up plain brown paper shopping bags and moved toward the door.
“It’s hell going through metal detectors,” the man continued. “Airports.” He shrugged. “Whatcha gonna do?”
“You might try replacing your brain with one of a freshly murdered psychopath,” Anya suggested helpfully. Then, seeing the expressions of horror on the faces of Tara and Giles, she said, “That was a movie, right? Not a documentary.” She shrugged and flashed the other man a little moue of apology. “I occasionally confuse the two.”
“Let’s go, shall we?” Giles suggested. He nodded at the man. “Thanks for opening up the shop.”
“No problem.” The man waved a beefy hand at them. “Glad to see we got some concerned citizens ready and willing to take action. It’s hell out there.” He sighed. “I keep thinking I should move, but, hey, I own a house, ya know?”
“Try not to get killed,” Anya said in reply. “So many of the people who have owned this store have died horribly.”
The man frowned at her. Giles said, “Please, girls, come along.”
The bell on the door tinkled merrily as the trio left the shop. The air outside was cool and crisp.
Half a block away, something bobbled from an alleyway and blocked their path. The thing resembled a dimensional portal, about half an inch thick, hanging in the air as it glowed and pulsated. Heat emanated from it, so intense that Tara could feel it standing a good five feet away from it.
Clutching the shopping bag of warding supplies, she stared at the shimmering crimson form and said, “What is it?”
Anya’s eyes gleamed. “Wow. I’d forgotten about these. It’s a . . .” She paused. “I don’t really know what they’re called. I just know what they are.”
“And that would be?” Giles queried, as the shape drifted toward them. He took a step to the left, off the curb. “Let’s keep moving, shall we?”
“It’s the residue of a spell of some kind. In this case, I’d say something cast in anger.” Anya observed it with keen interest, a wistful smile on her face. “You should have seen the residue that came off Nostradamus after he had sex.”
“Come off,” Giles repeated, as he continued to skirt the object. “A-are you saying that this is some sort of artifact? That someone—or something—shed this, as it were?”
“Sort of. It’s like sweat. Or something.” Anya cocked her head, regarding the shimmering. “Maybe an afterglow.”
Following Giles’s lead, Tara cautiously minced sideways. She held the bag more tightly and said, “You had sex with Nostradamus?”
Anya sighed. “He wasn’t as good as Xander, of course. No one is as good as Xander.” As she came abreast of Tara, she peered into her sack. “There’s not much of anything in these bags that can help us with this.”
Suddenly the shape rushed over to Giles, who dodged it; the glowing circle wafted past him, then bobbled toward him once more.
“So our best defense is . . . ?” he prodded.
“Running,” Anya said calmly. “Otherwise, it may scald us to death.”
“Running now?” Tara suggested.
“Yes. Now is good,” Giles replied.
They ran, clattering down the street, only to be confronted on the other end of the block by a flash of something green and lizardy; it ran past so quickly that Tara didn’t have time to really see it. But it wigged her mightily; she took the lead toward Giles’s place, listening as Anya said, “Now that was a Vordulac. I’ve never seen one in this dimension before.”
“Dangerous?” Giles asked as he jogged up to Anya.
“Only if it’s hungry.” Anya juggled a small, beaded purse and her shopping bags, looped her currently blond, curly hair around her ears. “Then, watch out.”
“Is that one hungry?” Giles asked, glancing over his shoulder.
“Hard to say. If it devours one of us in a single gulp, I’d say yes.” Her voice rang with calm authority. She knit her brows and said to Tara, “What? You’re looking at me very strangely.”
“I-I was just thinking what a great t-tour guide you’d make,” Tara fibbed as she worked to keep up with Giles. He was much taller than she, and his legs were longer.
“Tour guide.” Anya considered. “That might be an interesting occupation. But what would I be a tour guide of?”
“Hell, maybe?” Tara blurted.
Anya’s face fell. “Their union’s really tight. It’s hard to get in.”
The green lizardy thing flashed past them again, coming from the other direction.
“Running faster?” Giles suggested.
“Running faster,” Anya agreed.
“I thought you were going to sleep,” Wesley said. He was stretched out on her living room sofa, his feet up on the armrest, a cushion under his head.
“Aah!” Cordeli
a shrieked, startled. “I thought you were going to leave.” She had passed through on her way to the kitchen for a cup of tea, dressed in sweats and looking decidedly unglamorous. “You are still paying rent on a place, right? Not living here? Because I have to inform my landlord if anyone moves in with me.”
The lights flashed once.
“Anyone but you, Dennis,” she amended.
“Of course I still have my own place,” Wesley said. “But that meeting . . . I thought it would be easier if I just stayed here, so that when we woke up we could get to work on that research.”
“My one joy in life,” she said, sinking into a chair. “Researching demons.”
“Not this time,” he reminded her. “Researching disappearances in Los Angeles.”
“Right,” she said. “In case there’s a history dating back to primeval times, or something like that.” She yawned.
“Have you slept at all?” he asked.
“I’ve been in bed. Does that count? Look at my hair.” She ran her fingers through it, tugging at knots. “I guess more tossing than sleeping. What about you?”
“I’ve been trying to puzzle this all out,” he said seriously. “The gangs, the vanishing kids—there’s got to be a link somewhere. I just haven’t found what it is.”
“Why does there have to be one?” she asked. “Why can’t it just be a coincidence? The world is full of them. When Angel and I both came to L.A., and we ran into each other at Margo’s party? That was a coincidence, right?”
“Well, yes, I suppose,” Wesley admitted. “But I can’t shake the feeling that—”
“Now, when you came here and found us,” Cordelia continued, ignoring him, “that was anything but a coincidence. You tracked us down like some kind of . . . tracker thing, and—”
“I beg your pardon, but that was indeed a coincidence. The demon I was actually tracking came to you for help. I merely followed its course, and that led me to run into Angel.”
“Okay, see? Coincidences abound! They’re more common than . . . whatever their opposite is.”
“Point taken, Cordy,” Wesley said. It was his turn to yawn. “Perhaps we should try to get some rest before we get started on that research.”
Cordelia nodded. “I’m with you on that one,” she said. “If anybody needs me, tell them to wait.” She padded back into her bedroom and shut the door.
Left behind while the ladies went on their shopping expedition, Xander was dozing on the couch. Spike had carried his currently best-beloved vampire chick Cheryce into the bathroom, and they were curled around each other in the tub with a blanket over them both to ward off the sun when it finally rose. That was so much better than watching him sigh over what in human terms could be called a real messy corpse. Xander got that she was going to heal, and he got that vampires were immortal, but the whole thing just creeped him out.
If a monster did that to one of us, he thought, and let the thought just lie there.
The phone rang at the same time that the door burst open, a sort of a surprise in stereo, and Xander leaped straight off the couch as Giles, first in, said, “Xander, for heaven’s sake, get the phone.”
“Hey, gee, hi to you, too,” Xander replied, smoothing back his hair. When Anya threw him a look, he said, “What? I’m guarding Spike.”
Giles grabbed the phone as Tara hurried through the door and shut it behind her.
He said, “Hello?” and Tara said to Anya, “Can it go through walls or doors?”
“Nostradamus could penetrate anything,” Anya said, with the same smile on her face she got after Xander did the bed-thing she liked best. “But then, he was . . . Nostradamus.”
Xander’s head swiveled, trying to multitask all the goings-on; then a blurry voice from the bathroom bellowed, “Hey! Can’t a vampire get any sleep around here?”
“Buffy, hello.” Giles held up a hand for quiet. “ Interesting.” Xander took a couple of steps closer, trying to hear Buffy. “Disappearing,” Giles said carefully. He listened again, then interrupted. “Well, things have been a bit busy around here, Buffy. More than busy, I should say.”
“But it’s not from sex,” Anya added to Tara, “so it’s probably safe to assume it can’t, you know, burrow through and get us.” She raised her voice and half-shouted, “The residue is not from sex.”
Giles shot Anya a look and carried the phone into the kitchen, where he might, he hoped, be able to find some privacy.
“What’s going on there?” Buffy asked.
“Oh, it’s Anya, for heaven’s sake,” he replied. “You know how she is.”
“No, I mean, you said it’s busy down there,” Buffy said. “What’s happening?”
“Oh, that. I wouldn’t want to, you know, worry you. Except that, it’s just a bit worrying.” He pushed up his glasses.
“How so? Details, Giles?”
“Sorry.” He leaned against the counter, moved the phone to his other ear. In the living room, Anya and Tara were still carrying on. “Umm, monsters, I guess, would be the best way to put it.”
“There were monsters before I left.”
“Indeed. They’ve got worse, Buffy. More numerous, and I think, more vicious, as well. It’s . . . it’s bad, Buffy.” He swallowed once. “It scares me.”
“I’m coming home,” she said.
“But . . . you’re busy there, right?”
“Yes, but, hello, Hellmouth? If things get bad in Sunnydale, the rest of the world isn’t far behind. I think Angel can cope with L.A. in my absence.”
“I really don’t mean to alarm you.”
“I know, Giles,” she said, her voice soothing. “But if I need to be alarmed, then I need to be. That’s what I’m here for, right? And as my Watcher, you’re the guy who’s supposed to point me at the major badness and pull my trigger.”
“I suppose.”
“So it’s settled. I’m coming home.”
“Very well, then,” Giles said. “I’ll see you soon.”
“Hold on.” Buffy listened to someone else for a moment. “Is Tara there?”
“Yes, she’s-she’s in the other room.”
“Willow wants her.”
“All right, hang on,” he said. “And Buffy, be careful.” He carried the phone to Tara. “Tara, Willow would like to speak to you,” he said.
Tara’s face brightened as she took the phone and murmured softly, “Hi.” Her cheeks grew rosy; her lips curved into a sweet smile.
Giles turned away from the intimate moment, not wanting to disturb, moved from the living room and headed for the bathroom. His voice trailed off as he said, “Spike, how’s your girl . . . friend?”
From the tub, Spike sat up and pulled off the blanket. He growled, “Not bloody good. She’s all bloody. See?”
Indeed she was. It was a truly horrific sight.
If the same monster got hold of one of us, he thought. Perhaps it’s for the best that Buffy is coming home.
He liked to think of himself as capable. He had been a Watcher, after all. But since being fired from the Council—particularly, and a bit oddly, since losing his librarian’s job at the high school that no longer existed—he knew he’d been at sixes and sevens. Not really in charge of anything, not really responsible for anything. Trying to keep useful. And all the while, Buffy matured and honed her abilities, leaving him that much farther behind.
He turned and went back into the living room.
“People,” he said, almost as if calling together a class. “Everyone, we have a problem that must be dealt with.”
“It wasn’t me,” Xander said. “I put the seat down every time. I’ve been trained.”
“No, umm, thank you for sharing, Xander, but that’s not it.”
“What is it, Mr. Giles?” Tara asked.
“Well, of course, all sorts of things are wrong. But there’s still a deadly shadow monster at large in Sunnydale,” he announced. “Or at least, until we have proof that it’s gone, we have to believe there is.”
/> “You’d better believe there is,” Spike said. “And it’s stronger than Cheryce, which is going some.”
“Indeed,” Giles said. “That seems to be fairly substantive proof that we still have this problem. And we’re not, may I say, doing anything about it sitting around here.”
“So you want us to go out and fight this thing that was tough enough to beat the crap out of Spike’s sweetie?” Xander asked.
“I think we should do exactly that,” Giles said. “Buffy just called and said that she’s coming back to Sunnydale, because there are so many monsters showing up here.”
“So you think you failed her,” Anya pointed out with her typical guileless honesty.
“Failed?” Giles repeated. “I don’t know that I’d say that, but . . . well, perhaps. Perhaps there was something we should have done differently. All I really can say is that she trusted us to do the job here, and now she’s coming back. What does that tell us.”
“We suck?” Xander offered.
“Not to put too fine a point on it,” Giles said.
“So what’s the plan, Mr. G.?” Xander asked. “Go out and kill it?”
“I rather think we should put a little more preparation into it than that, Xander,” Giles suggested. “But in broad strokes, yes. Something like that.”
Xander raised his finger. “Just say the word, Giles. We’ll be here. Have Scooby snacks, will kill.”
“Thank you, Xander,” Giles said, “for your loyal support.”
As Doña Pilar and Willow finished applying a creamy healing unguent to Buffy, Riley, and Willow’s own face, Buffy sniffed the air and said, “Does this stuff come in vanilla?”
Doña Pilar smiled gently as she screwed the cap back on a beautiful alabaster jar encrusted with turquoise and silver. “It’s good for wrinkles. too. I gave Salma some to take to school with her. You should wear it every day, like sunscreen.”
“Check,” Buffy said. “Magickal Bain du Soleil.”
Buffy touched some of the cuts on her face. She had a lot of them, but the stinging sensation was already going away. Slayers healed faster than other people, and Riley and Willow were the proof of that, each with several stitched-up cuts on their cheeks and foreheads. Riley was heavily bruised, too, and he was walking with a stiff-legged gait.