by Nancy Holder
But there was no time to worry about a few minor injuries. They needed to go back to Sunnydale, and he was obviously extremely tired.
“We’ll take a nap first,” Buffy said.
Riley shook his head. “I’m good to go.”
“Nap. I’m tired.” Buffy felt a little like she was covering for him, doing the girl-thing to assuage the male ego, and that saddened her a little. Willow was watching them, and she had the feeling her best buddy had her number.
And speaking of numbers . . .
“I’d better call Angel, give him the update,” Buffy said. “Sunnydale’s in the middle of a monsterama and I am, after all, the superhero in charge there.”
She crossed to the phone, picked it up, and paused.
“What’s up?” Riley asked.
She frowned for a moment, then fished in the pocket of her pants for her handwritten list of Angel and Cordelia’s phone numbers. Scanning down, she located ANGEL and started punching in the numbers as she said to Riley, “Couldn’t remember the number.”
Riley’s face didn’t change. Neither did hers.
The connection was made; on the other end a phone rang.
Los Angeles “
Dammit,” Angel swore as his cell phone trilled, breaking the silence. The two young gangbangers behind Angel took off. He took off after them.
The boys zoomed around a corner, ducking into an alley; they knew the area and they led Angel on a wild ride down the alley and into another one, where they dodged a maze of trash cans and a clutter of wooden crates filled with wilted bok choy and celery roots. Angel leaped over the crates, keeping pace, and he had a momentary image of himself as a character in a video game. Around the trash can, ducking low for the fallen rain gutter, then pouring on the grease as the boys skidded back onto the street, narrowly missing being hit by a stretch limo with black tinted windows.
The littler one got away, but Angel tackled the taller one and brought him down. As the kid rolled over, Angel was shocked to realize he was even younger than Angel had at first thought; he couldn’t be any older than thirteen, fourteen tops.
“Hey, man,” the kid protested. “What’re you doin’, man?”
“You were gonna jump me,” Angel informed him.
“And you were gonna let me?” the kid asked warily. “You a cop?”
Angel paused and held out his hand. The kid took it, still unsure, and allowed Angel to help him to his feet.
“The streets aren’t safe.” Angel let go of him and let the kid reclaim what was left of his dignity. “People are disappearing.”
“Man, I disappeared a long time ago.” The kid gave him a crooked smile. “Streets are safest place I know.”
His accomplice peered out from behind a parked car. Angel ticked his glance to the younger one.
“That my little brother,” the kid said. “We got it together, man. We’re doing all right.”
“Jumping strangers and stealing their wallets?” Angel asked, gazing levelly at him. The kid must have seen something there, seen one one-millionth of the terrors Angel had witnessed— had caused —and took a step away from the vampire.
“Go home,” Angel said tiredly.
The kid looked like a kid for a moment. A tired, hungry, frightened kid.
“Man,” the kid whispered, “we are home.”
He turned away, gesturing for his little brother to join him. The smaller boy darted up to him and checked Angel out over his shoulder. The two walked on down the street like two wraiths. Then the little boy shouted at Angel, “This our place! This our turf!”
His brother slapped him upside the head and Angel moved back into the shadows. He tugged the phone from his pocket, hit *69 to call back whoever had just called him. Buffy’s voice answered.
“Did you call me?” he asked.
“Depends,” she said. She sounded like she was stifling a yawn. “Did you hang up on me?”
“I was following someone,” he said. “You sort of blew my cover.”
“Sorry, Angel.”
“You couldn’t have known. So, what’s up?”
“Monsters,” she said. “In Sunnydale.”
“Tell me something new.”
“No, I mean more than the usual. Above and beyond, according to Giles. Serious invasion.”
“So,” he said cautiously, “what you’re saying is . . .?” “I have to go back.”
He felt a strange numbness, and recognized it for deeply suppressed disappointment. I was hoping . . .
No, I wasn’t.
I wasn’t.
“Now?” he asked.
“They’re not going to sit around waiting for me to come back, Angel. They’re killing people. And I’m worried—what if it’s a Hellmouth thing? Like somebody got it open again and all the bad is spewing?”
“Does Giles think it is?”
“Well, no,” she replied. “It hasn’t seemed to be. But if that becomes the problem, I need to be there pre-problem.”
“Okay,” Angel sighed. “I know.”
“You can handle stuff here, right?”
He chuckled. “Hey, it’s my town.”
“That’s what I hear.” There was an edge to her voice, and he knew she still resented that comment. He hated having to say it.
“You go, then,” he said. “We’ll be okay here.”
“All right. I’ll, uh, keep in touch when we get there.”
“We,” she had said. Riley would be going back with her, then.
“Good,” he said. “Talk to you soon, then.”
“Okay. Bye, Angel.” She clicked off. He put the phone back into his pocket. Time to get home.
Day would break soon.
He had to miss the sunrise.
Chapter 3
AFTER BUFFY AND RILEY GOT UP FROM THEIR NAPS AND left the de la Natividad home, Willow drank a cup of strong coffee laced with Mexican chocolate and ate a yummy pastry. Sugar and caffeine helped make up for some, but not all, of the lack of sleep. Her brain was fuzzy and she had sandpaper eyelids, plus, okay, residual jitteriness from enduring Buffy’s driving. Oh, yeah, and monsters.
Doña Pilar found her standing beside the kitchen sink, trying to wash her dishes, although an insistent maid really, really wanted to do it for her. The family matriarch spoke gently to the other woman in Spanish, who smiled shyly and shrugged, then said to Willow, “Con permiso.” She handed her the kitchen sponge and left the kitchen.
Doña Pilar poured herself some coffee in a large cup and leaned against the counter, watching Willow as she sipped. She was wearing a black silk dress and black low-heeled shoes, her hair in a chignon. An ornate golden crucifix dangled from a chain around her neck.
She said to Willow, “I’ve been to Mass.”
Willow took that in; as she put her cup in the dish drainer, she asked politely, “Do you know I’m Jewish?”
The bruja eyed Willow across the rim of her cup. “Of course.”
“Does it, um, concern you? Maybe about how our magick works together, or—”
The older woman looked pleasantly amused and rather touched by Willow’s confession. “Mi’ja, I honor all the souls on this plane—or on others—who align themselves with the power of good.”
Flushing, Willow rinsed off her plate, put it into the drainer, and squeezed out the sponge. “There’ve been a couple of times I’ve been pretty tempted to do something kinda black-arty.”
“As have I,” Doña Pilar said bluntly. “And not just tempted. But I’ve always paid in the end for taking a shortcut.” She wagged a finger at Willow. “Don’t forget; it all comes back—”
“Three times multiplied,” Willow finished, nodding. “Or seven, depending on which Wicca tradition you follow. I know.”
Doña Pilar inclined her head. “Let us simply say, ‘ multiplied,’ and leave it at that. Now, I think we should perform a new spell. Buffy and her novio told me about some of the things you saw around my granddaughter, back in Sunnydale. The strange creatures
. I think you and I should investigate further.”
“Oh. Well, it might get kind of violent out there,” Willow said. “With the investigating. There’s only so much a warding spell can do . . . I think.” She made a little face. “Not to imply that your magick is as weak as mine.” As she kept processing, she brightened as the realization dawned. “But you mean investigate magickally. With a spell.”
“Sí. You’re a very intelligent girl. If only Salma had been thinking straight . . . she should have come to me as soon as she began to worry about her brother.”
“She probably didn’t want to worry you,” Willow ventured. She dried her hands on the dish towel and straightened her orange mandala-symbol tee shirt. “I’m up for a spell, if you are, Doña Pilar.”
“Bueno.” The woman crooked a finger at Willow as she led the way out of the kitchen. “And as for Salma, her fear was for Nicky, not for me. She didn’t want to get him in trouble. That has been the whole problem with my grandson. No one wanted to take a stand. Be firm with him.”
She looked at Willow over her shoulder. “If you had a little puppy you loved very much, and you lived on a busy street, would you let her run loose without a leash?”
“Of course not,” Willow replied.
“Nicky never had a leash. His parents believed that they needed to prove that they loved him by not imposing limits. So he has never learned that there are limits. For him, all restrictions are unseen.”
Willow took that in, following Doña Pilar back into her spell-casting room. On the floor was a circle of glass jars containing what appeared to be clear water. In the center of the circle lay a single brown hen’s egg.
The older witch handed the younger one a sack the size of her fist. It was burlap, sewn shut, with small, flat silver charms sewn around the neck. Willow examined them. One was a heart, another an eye; a third, a small bird. It smelled vaguely of anise.
“There are powerful spices herbs inside that saco. You probably smell cinnamon, but there are many others. I will explain it all to you later. For now, we should do the work, eh?”
Taking up a second sack, which had been lying on her worktable, Doña Pilar walked to the center of the circle, beside the egg. She passed her sack over the egg three times, chanting. She said to Willow, “Join me in the circle, and close your eyes. Imagine yourself as either the wing or the claw.”
“I’ll be the wing,” Willow ventured, not liking so much the notion of claws. Talons, ripping, and we’re back to the monsters and the violence. “Unless you want to be the w—”
A blinding flash surrounded Willow, accompanied by a rushing sound and a whum-whum-whum like a huge electric generator. Vertigo hit her like a blow to the stomach, and flashes of glare alternated with washes of gray as she tumbled and waved her arms, trying to catch her balance.
I’m falling.
She blinked and waved her arms harder. Her rate of descent slowed, and she saw that she had been plummeting down the side of an office building constructed of concrete and glass. In one of the panes, she caught her reflection: Willow had been transformed into a medium-size bird with shiny black feathers.
I’m a crow!
Giddily, she had a moment where she pictured Xander saying, “And after the bird, you’ll become a fish, and then you’ll pull the sword out of the stone, right?”
The traffic below her was awesome. Cars, trucks, and limos vied for tiny patches of space in multiple lanes of traffic. The sidewalks, were crowded with jostling pedestrians and panhandlers. Car horns blared; music pounded; a jet flew overhead. The air was thick with exhaust fumes and the smells of coffee and deep-fryer grease.
“Pay attention, mi’jita,” Doña Pilar admonished. Willow ticked her glance left and right until she realized the witch was speaking to her in her head. “Have you not traveled in other guises before?”
“Not really,” Willow admitted. “But I have been dimension-hopping. Oh, and I have this friend named Amy who turned herself into a rat and hasn’t been able to change herself back. We haven’t been able to, either. So I’m thinking when I get back that we could work on that.”
“Pay attention,” the woman said again. “Flap your wings. Try to find an updraft.”
Willow felt a little silly as she flapped harder. “I’m doing the chicken dance,” she muttered.
Warm air pushed her upward, and she straightened out. Glancing at herself in the mirrored panes of glass of what she guessed was a different building, she watched the reflected bird fly, and quite nicely too.
Experimentally, she angled downward, nearly losing it when the ground rushed up toward her. The brilliant, blue sky wheeled overhead. She was incredibly dizzy. I’m not sure birds even have inner ears, but my sense of balance is off the charts.
“Good?” Doña Pilar asked her. “Can you control your flight?”
“I’m doing okay,” she reported to Mission Control. “Not great, but I’m maneuvering.”
“Then I’m going to perform the second part of the spell.”
“The second part?”
Suddenly, it was very dark. Colors and shapes evaporated; Willow was very cold, and heartbeats pulsed through her. Some were fast, some slow; a few were irregular. All of them were distracting.
“Doña—”
“Ssh, Willow. I’m listening,” the witch reported. “It is my hope to locate Nicky’s heartbeat.”
“Wow,” Willow breathed, then fell silent.
She kept flying through the blackness, which encompassed everything, until she was literally flying blind. She wondered if it was possible in this state to hit a building, a tree, or a power line. Or I could ram into another bird, or get sucked into a jet, or fly upside down and crash into the ground, and I am not loving this at all.
The blackness shifted and moved, and she was aware of shapes trying to grab her. Darting and soaring, she managed to avoid them, but as they reached for her, they tore the sky into thick lines of an even darker blackness. Red gushed from the rips, dripping down the shadowed blackness like blood from terrible wounds.
Willow dodged the scarlet waterfalls. “Um, I’m not sure this is going right.”
“Willow, stay calm. Still your thoughts,” said Doña Pilar. “Strange creatures are entering our dimension in some way. I don’t know yet how. But I will protect you.”
Willow took a deep breath, held it in, and exhaled slowly. She tried to remind herself that Doña Pilar was a powerful witch, and she knew what she was doing. Her demeanor and her spells carried with them an air of authority Willow had yet to assume. She’s not the kind of person to send someone out on a suicide mission.
Um, I think.
“It should become better,” Doña Pilar said.
The dark lightened to a semitransparency, and the heartbeats, though still audible, became quieter. Cool air slid around Willow’s body; then she was swooping gracefully downward, to an unnaturally silent street.Everything was filtered through a strange, muted light, giving people and other objects a strange off-gray aspect, the colors odd and slightly off, as if everything had been hand-tinted.
She kept flying. And then, at the far end of the street, she saw a lone figure. It was that of a man, and more importantly, unlike everything else, he cast no shadow.
“Nicky,” Doña Pilar said. Her voice raised to a shout that echoed through Willow’s head. It was a command, a wail of anguish and a roar of anger all at the same time. It made Willow’s head ache so badly she was afraid it might split open.
“Nicky!”
This time Willow groaned, although it came out more as a strangled caw. Then she was zooming straight for the figure, diving directly at him, but she couldn’t control her speed. She cawed wildly. Her head was about to burst.
Just before impact, the figure turned around and shouted, “Abuelita!”
Immediately, Willow found herself back in Doña Pilar’s spell-casting room. The elderly lady grabbed Willow’s shoulders and eased her down onto a three-legged stool. Tears strea
med down Doña Pilar’s face.
“He’s still alive,” she said to Willow, crossing herself.
Willow’s head no longer ached, but she was extremely drained. She was so worn out that even her fingernails were tired. She asked, “What part of Los Angeles was that? ’Cause now we can go in and get him.”
The woman shook her head. “I couldn’t tell. Could you?”
“Not an Angeleno here,” Willow reminded her. “I didn’t see any street signs, either. Or buildings I recognized from movies. This being L.A. and all.” She raised a brow. “Finder’s spell?”
“Perhaps it will work this time.” Doña Pilar looked uncertain. “If it doesn’t, maybe we can figure out the location if we write down everything we saw. Get some clues.”
“Or I could go back.” Willow stifled a yawn and tried to look like she wasn’t about to keel over.
“You need to rest. You’re exhausted.” The woman looked mildly regretful. “And I’m too old to take the wing myself.”
Willow placed her hand in Doña Pilar’s and gave it a squeeze. “We’ll find them both, Salma and Nicky,” she promised the worried grandmother. “And they’ll be okay.”
Doña Pilar patted the back of Willow’s hand and smiled weakly, a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Of course, Willow. Thank you for your faith.” She bent over and kissed Willow’s forehead. “Go to your room and take a nap, little one.”
Willow felt badly leaving the woman alone, but she could barely move. She nodded and rose, her thoughts drifting as she made her way back to her room.
I flew. It was so cool. I can’t wait to tell Tara about it.
She entered her room and pulled back the bedclothes, kicking off her scuffies before she crawled into bed.
She was asleep before she pulled up the covers.
Back in her apartment, Cordelia was having a half-serious tussle with Phantom Dennis over possession of the TV. She was trying to watch a video Wesley had turned up, a history of crime, especially famous kidnappings, in Los Angeles, but Dennis was one of those people who just couldn’t stop watching the news. Each time Cordelia aimed the remote and clicked back to Robert Stack’s monotonous drone, Dennis would switch over to KTLA or CNN.