by Mel Odom
“I guess,” Buffy said, “that they must appreciate you always keeping them in mind.”
Treena scowled into the mirror behind the bar. “A smart mouth on a beautiful girl is such an unlovely accessory.” She sipped her drink, revealing her forked tongue striped in orange and black.
Willy placed another dish of beetles in front of Treena. The Medusa scooped them up irritably and dropped them into her mouth. Satisfied that none escaped, she crunched enthusiastically.
Okay, Buffy thought, feeling sick, not even a Slayer’s stomach is prepared for everything. She turned her attention to Willy. The mirror behind the bar didn’t show Angel or a couple dozen other vampires in the tavern.
“Willy,” Buffy said, “we want to talk.”
“I’m trying to run a business here,” Willy protested. “Got some unexpected holiday traffic and I’m shorthanded.” He pulled two more draft beers and slid them across the counter to a truck driver who caught them in massive hands that each had seven fingers.
“I’m checking,” Buffy said, paused for just a heartbeat, then added, “Nope. I don’t feel any differently this time than the last. I guess we’re down to the easy or hard option. Boy, we didn’t waste any time there, did we?”
Willy looked at Angel, then back at Buffy. “I really hate you guys.”
“I know,” Buffy replied. “It’s one of those security things in our world we’ve come to rely on.” She tapped her watch. “Tick-tock, tick-tock.”
Willy sighed, bringing the heartfelt disappointment up from his shoe soles. “Come on down here.” He walked to the opposite end of the bar from Treena.
Buffy and Angel followed, staying alert to the hostile gazes around them. No one in Willy’s liked them, and it wasn’t hard to remember that.
“Look,” Willy said in a low voice, darting his eyes around the small storage room off the main bar, “I got nothing for you. And I’d have told you about Ernie if I’d remembered.”
“Okay, Willy,” Buffy said. “Thanks.” She turned to go.
“ ‘Okay, Willy, thanks’? That’s all you’re going to do?” Willy looked incredulous. “You’re not going to threaten me, bust up the bar, or rough me up a little?”
Buffy exchanged glances with Angel and found it hard to keep from busting out laughing. “Nope. We believe you.”
“Why?” Willy demanded.
“Because you seem so sincere.”
“I’ve given you sincere before. Buckets of sincere. You and Angel have never bought that before.”
“We don’t think you’re lying to us now,” Angel said.
Anger showed in Willy’s shriveled little face. “Well, I’m not lying to you. So there!”
“Good,” Angel said. “Then maybe the next time we drop by you’ll remember that.”
“You’re not going to get information out of me easily,” Willy threatened. “I’ve got a reputation to consider.”
“See ya,” Buffy called, walking back toward the door past Treena.
Willy ran behind the bar, following them. “I mean, you can get information out of me, but it’s just not going to be easy.”
Before Buffy could make a reply, the front door to Willy’s tavern swung open. A dozen young Asian men wearing sullen expressions, khaki cargo pants, and colorful tee shirts strode into the room. Their short, spiky hair was colored in green and white stripes that ran from front to back.
“What the hell do you want?” Willy called belligerently from behind the counter.
One of the young men stepped toward the counter. The men behind him fanned out. Before he reached the bar, he reached under his jacket and brought out an Uzi hanging from a shoulder strap. “Hand over the money and you won’t get hurt.” He pulled a black bag from his pocket and flipped it open.
“A robbery?” Willy asked. “You can’t rob this place. You don’t know who you’re messing with.”
“We’re the Black Wind,” the guy with the Uzi said. “We are death. Give me the money or I’ll take it off your corpse.”
Willy looked at the bar’s patrons. “You aren’t going to let him do this, are you?”
The question hung over the quiet that filled the room. The young men filled their hands with handguns, machine pistols, stakes, cut-down shotguns, and wrist-mounted devices that Buffy couldn’t identify locked down into place on the backs of their forearms.
Then the patrons started laughing. “Looks like you’re on your own, Willy!” someone yelled. “They’ve got us covered.”
Buffy turned slowly, looking for a way out that didn’t involve getting past the Asian youths.
The Black Wind gang leader shook the bag. “Fill it and live.”
Cursing, hands shaking, Willy opened the cash register and started shoveling bills into the bag.
“All of it,” the gang leader ordered. “Including the floor safe behind the bar.”
Once the cash register was emptied, Willy knelt and opened the floor safe. The money that came from there was rubber-banded into neat stacks. The man walked behind the bar and checked the safe. He turned back to address the bar.
“All right,” he said calmly. “Now the rest of you.” Five other men opened cloth bags and started shoving them at the tavern patrons. “Jewelry, wallets, plastic.”
“Hey,” a horned demon protested, “now that’s something you’re not going to get away with. Robbing Willy’s one thing, kind of fun to watch, but you’re not robbing the rest of us without getting bloody.”
Emotionlessly, the gang leader shot a dozen bullets into the demon’s face, knocking him backward and shattering one of his horns. The demon’s body landed on the table behind him, smashing it to the floor.
“Okay,” the gang leader said, “he’s bloody. Does anyone else want to be bloody?”
One of the men called for the leader’s attention, then pointed Buffy out. The leader pushed his sleeve back and glanced at something on his wrist. When he glanced back at Buffy, his dark eyes were filled with conviction.
“Kill her,” he ordered, raising the Uzi again.
“You’re sure you don’t want to come in and clean up?”
Xander glanced at Giles as they sat inside the Watcher’s car. “Yeah. I’m sure. I’m good. After you get through picking up the bandages and stuff, we’re probably going to call it a night, right?”
“You’re in a hurry to get home?”
Xander shifted his gaze past Giles to the drugstore on the other side of the street. “Not especially, but I could watch a little Discovery channel, shower, and hit the hay early for a change.” And try to avoid being depressed that Cordelia won’t have called.
After the Sunnydale paramedics and police had arrived, their statements had been quickly taken and they’d been released. The woman was going to be fine and would be sent home after a quick trip to the ER.
“Well, I must say your ebullient mood after rescuing that woman and her son seems to have worn off quite quickly,” Giles said.
“Must you?” Xander asked.
Giles shrugged. “Perhaps not, but I thought it worth mentioning as a bridge to anything else you might have on your mind that you might wish to talk about.”
“Cordelia,” Xander sighed.
“Must we?”
“No,” Xander said, “that’s why I suggested me staying here while you went in for the gauze and antiseptic.”
“Right.” Giles opened the door, waiting for a car to pass. He cleared his throat. “At your age, Xander, breaking up is hard to do.”
“Yeah, I think I’ve sung that one a few times.”
“It doesn’t get any easier as you get older.”
Xander suddenly understood. “You’ve been there a few times yourself.”
Giles nodded. “A Watcher’s life, unfortunately, is usually a solitary one.”
“Solitary on a crossword puzzle fills exactly six spaces. L-O-N-E-L-Y.”
“Yes, I’m afraid it does.” Giles paused. “Buffy’s relationship with all of you has
made my life as a Watcher appear even more devoid of human companionship. She’s shown me that it is possible to bring people into this calling, but they have to be the right people. And even then they are at risk.”
Xander felt guilty as he realized that Giles was talking about Jenny Calendar. It was one thing to lose Cordelia and see her walking through the halls at Sunnydale High, but it would have been another to lose her forever.
“Hey,” Xander said, “there’s no use in both of us getting maudlin. You get the Band-Aids and I’ll spring for tacos later.”
“Okay. I’ll only be a moment.” Giles got out of the car and crossed the street to the drugstore.
Xander glanced at the comic he’d bought and just didn’t have the heart to open it yet. Maybe in the morning or between classes, at some point when I start thinking superpowers really will fix everything.
He sighed, knowing he would check his answering machine again as soon as he got home and—again— there wouldn’t be a message from Cordelia. And it was all his fault. When he and Willow had thought they were going to be killed by Spike while he’d been pining over Drusilla dumping him, they’d given in to their own attraction for each other. Of course, that had been the exact moment Cordy and Oz had come to the rescue.
Xander glanced at the comic book. And you thought clones were hard to deal with. Man, if you only knew what teenage life was really like.
He pushed out of the car, needing a breath of fresh air. Oz and Willow had gotten over the stumbling time, realizing their feelings for each other were very real. But he and Cordelia Chase hadn’t made it. In a way, he didn’t blame her. Weird has always been a part of my life, but Cordy was new to it.
“Hey, Harris,” a booming male voice called.
Drawn out of his funk momentarily, Xander gazed at the dark park in front of him. A tall, chain link fence enclosed a basketball court lit by halogen lights. Five guys stood at one end of the court. Xander knew two of them. Chris Tyler and Dave Sawyer had been varsity basketball players at Sunnydale the year before. They’d barely known him well enough to ignore him in the hallways.
“Xander,” Dave called again. He was nearly seven feet tall, with a shaved head, and sweat gleaming like diamonds against his dark skin. “Yo, Xander, we need a third man.”
“Me?” Xander couldn’t believe it. “You want me to play basketball with you?”
Dave threw up his hands as he and Chris jogged over to the car. “Got nobody else, man, and these fools say we gotta be three or they ain’t gonna play us.”
Dave Sawyer had been one of the strongest forwards Sunnydale High had ever turned out. Not good enough for USC, maybe, but good enough for college somewhere. Only Dave hadn’t gone, choosing to stay in town and help take care of his family.
Chris Tyler was a six-three point guard who had an outside three-point conversion percentage that had been staggering. He had gone to college, then gotten kicked out, though the details hadn’t yet filtered back to Sunnydale as to why. His blond hair stood out starkly against Dave and the three guys ready to play them.
“Nah, really,” Xander said, conscious of the injuries he’d already picked up during the night, “you guys go on ahead without me. I appreciate the offer, though.”
“Xander, man, you ain’t listening,” Dave said. “We need you or they ain’t gonna play us. Me and Chris, we got some money up on this. I’m willing to pay you twenty bucks to come out here and stand.”
“Twenty bucks?” Xander asked, suddenly interested. Twenty bucks didn’t just magically appear in his pockets. “How long are you going to need me?”
“Five, ten minutes,” Dave replied. “Going to fifteen by ones, two for the three-pointers. Make-it, take-it. These guys got no game. Be an easy twenty for you for coming out here, standing around.”
Xander glanced back at the drugstore. It looked like Giles was going to be a few minutes. Maybe playing basketball was a good idea. And twenty bucks was twenty bucks. He trotted over to the basketball court, stepping through the gate Chris held open for him.
“Who are we playing?” Xander asked.
“Street guys,” Chris said. “Make their money hustling B-ball. They stung Dave’s little brother last night for fifty bucks. Me and the D-man thought we’d come back here tonight for a little payback, get Anthony’s money back, maybe some beer money. Didn’t know they were going to try to stick us because there wasn’t three of us.”
The three guys on the other team were pure street, their skin blazed with blue gang-member tattoos and scars looking like pink and white weals. One of them had what looked like a scar from a gunshot wound on his upper right shoulder.
“We got three now,” Dave declared. “You chumps gonna play, or are you gonna walk?”
The other team member holding the ball fired it at Dave. “Shoot the die, man.”
At the top of the key, hardly pausing to look, Dave shot the ball, putting it high into the air so that it arced up, then plummeted back down through the chain net. “Looks like it’s our ball.”
Xander set up with Dave and Chris, then sprinted for the basketball goal when Chris broke and drove for the bucket. Holding his hand up, Xander cut across the lane. Chris fired the ball at him. Just as Xander reached for the ball, one of the opposing team members stepped in front of him and elbowed him in the mouth. He tasted coppery blood as his head exploded with pain.
“Come on, Xander!” Dave called. “Shake the lead out, buddy. Basketball’s a full contact sport.”
Xander shoved himself to his feet. Twenty bucks, twenty bucks. And if I back out, Dave will have to forfeit. He’d probably kill me himself. He made himself run.
At the other end of the court, Xander managed to block a pass with his face, dropping to his knees in pain. He watched through blurred vision as Dave swept the loose ball up, dribbled to the other end of the court, and slammed the ball home, clinking the net’s chain links.
“Come on, Xander. Let’s push ’em now!”
Xander waved a hand and got up slowly. He didn’t know whether staking vampires or playing basketball was harder. He trotted groggily to the other end of the court, feeling the fiery pain lancing through his ribs. Then he noticed the two shadowy figures sitting on the bench at the side of the court.
Both of them wore letter jackets from a nearby high school. They watched the basketball players with hungry eyes. Then they licked their fangs in anticipation.
Where the hell is Giles? Xander wondered.
Chapter 7
“CAN I HELP YOU FIND SOMETHING?” Startled, Giles looked up from the row of bandaging supplies and first-aid creams. “Thank you, no. I believe I can find what I’m looking for without assistance.”
The drugstore clerk standing behind the counter looked like she was in her mid-fifties, deeply tanned and proud of her cleavage. The white smock top fit her like a glove. Her hair was frosted gold and her eyes were a brilliant aquamarine color. The nametag read BARBARA STYLES.
Giles wondered briefly if the name was real, or if it was one chosen to make a statement.
A concerned look lighted the woman’s face as she looked more closely at the Watcher’s face. Some of the bruises from the encounter with the vampire were already starting to show. “What happened to you?”
“A mugging, I’m afraid. Nothing to be alarmed about. I’m quite all right.”
“For a minute there I thought you were one of the victims from Peppy’s Miniature Golf.”
“Victims?” Miniature golf? Watchers by their very nature were curious. The trait for caution had to be trained in.
“Yes,” Barbara said. “They’re covering it on the local news now.” She pointed at the small television set on the counter.
Giles threw an extra box of gauze into the small basket he carried his selections in. You can never have too much gauze. He and the counter attendant were the only ones in the small drugstore.
Barbara turned the television so he could see it better.
Joining her at the
counter, Giles watched as the news reporters showed the carnage that had taken place at the miniature golf course on the other side of Sunnydale.
“So far there have been only two fatalities confirmed.” The reporter was in her early twenties, her red hair cut short and fluttering only slightly in the breeze. Excitement burned in her eyes. “No one knows what the gunmen were doing in this amusement park tonight, but already rumors of gang warfare have hit the streets. The Sunnydale Police Department will neither confirm nor deny these allegations.”
Giles noted the LIVE legend in the bottom corner next to the reporter’s name, GAYLE KENNEDY. “When did this happen?”
“Just a few minutes ago,” Barbara answered. “Did the police come to your mugging?”
“Yes. I mean, it wasn’t exactly my mugging.”
“Well, whoever it was, you can bet it’ll never make the news now.”
“As you can see,” Gayle Kennedy said on the television screen, “the Sunnydale PD is cordoning off the area.” The television camera panned across the miniature golf course. Small fires still burned in some areas, and paramedic teams worked on people covered by blankets. An ambulance pulled to a stop near a fire truck, avoiding the firemen deploying the hose. “Emergency rescue teams are still arriving here as well.”
“Gayle,” a male voice said over the television, “how many victims are we talking about in tonight’s shooting?”
“Bob,” Gayle replied, speaking directly at the camera, building a rapport with her audience, anguish in her expressive eyes, “as of right now I’ve been given reports of between eighteen and twenty-three.”
“Were any of them gang members?” A small picturein-picture opened on the television screen, revealing Bob, the anchorman. He was thin and dark and very intense.
“None have been identified as gang members as yet,” Gayle confirmed, “but nearly a dozen of the victims’ names have now been released. We should know something in a little while.”
Barbara nodded her head approvingly. “This kid is going to go far.”