by Mel Odom
Then the guy holding Xander slammed him down on the ground. Xander croaked painfully as air rushed back into his lungs. He tried to get up, but he was kicked in the ribs, which ignited a blast furnace of pain.
One of the gang members placed a foot between Xander’s shoulder blades and kept him pinned to the floor. Another gang member wrapped Xander’s ankles and wrists with tape. When they were finished, they rolled Xander over on his back.
“Xander,” Oz said in a muffled, pain-filled voice, “they want the necklace.”
Chapter 17
STUBBORNLY, GLARING UP AT THE BLACK WIND GANG members standing over him, Xander said, “What necklace?” One of the gang members kicked Xander again.
“Being the tough guy in a situation like this,” Oz gasped, “is way overrated in my opinion.”
Xander struggled for his breath. The gang member grabbed his hair and yanked his head up so they were face-to-face.
The gang member grinned cruelly. “We want the necklace.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Xander gritted.
The man slapped Xander.
Xander’s head whipped around, feeling like angry bees had crawled under the skin. He tasted blood inside his mouth. Demons, he reminded himself. Some of these guys are demons. They’re not looking for her to make nice. They’ll use the necklace some way, track her down, chew her head off. The usual demon stuff. And he was the only force preventing that. It made him feel special. In a pain-filled kind of way.
“Give it up,” Oz said.
Xander remained silent. It got a little easier when he was convinced that his jaw had been broken and would probably fall off if he opened his mouth. Why don’t they just search me? he wondered. They gotta know it’s on me.
The gang member gestured to one of the others. He spoke briefly in Chinese.
The second gang member pulled out a butterfly knife and flicked it open in a practiced maneuver. He ran a hand over Xander’s shirt, then found the necklace in Xander’s pants pocket. He raked the knife over Xander’s thigh.
“Oh, man,” Xander cried out, “be careful down there.” He watched as his pants split open to reveal his pocket. A slice in the pocket showed the silvery gleam of the necklace.
Grinning, the gang member reached for the necklace. A blue lightning flash exploded against the gang member’s hand, throwing him back a dozen feet to land in the seats.
“How did you do that?” one of them demanded.
Xander shook his head painfully. “Wasn’t me.”
The gang members drew back hesitantly. The one who’d taken charge held his hand out. Even after he’d heard Giles’s story, Xander still wasn’t prepared to see the eyelid blink open in the man’s palm. He held his eyepalm close to the necklace but didn’t touch it.
The gang member’s head mushroomed as the top half fell back to unleash a thick, black tongue. The tongue’s forked ends fluttered against Xander’s face, feeling like burning coals.
Oh, man, Xander thought, now here’s a Gene Simmons nightmare come to life.
The doors to the concession stand area opened suddenly and a man stepped into the theater. “I thought I heard somebody down here. What the hell is going on?”
The gang member leaning over Xander turned his head. The lizard tongue shot out like an arrow. It speared through the man’s left eye, popping the orb out, then splintered the back of the man’s head with a liquid crunch. When the tongue withdrew, chunks of bloody flesh tore loose with it. The gang member swallowed them whole.
The dead man dropped, a crater where his face had once been.
The gang member turned his attention back to Xander. The forked ends of his tongue fluttered over his lips. He chewed and swallowed. “The necklace has powers. It cannot be taken from the one who has it. It must be freely given.”
“Threatening to kill me is freely giving it?” Xander asked.
The gang member smiled coldly. The forked tongue caressed Xander’s face, licking around his eye sockets, reminding him how vulnerable he was. “I don’t make up these rules. Give it to me.”
Xander struggled not to throw up. “It’s kind of hard to give the necklace to you when I’m tied up.”
“Just tell me I can take it. That’s all that’s required.”
“And if I say no?”
The gang member rolled his tongue out again. “I could kill you.”
“That wouldn’t get you the necklace, would it?”
The gang member cocked his head sinuously. “No, but I could kill you and leave it here.”
Okay, Xander thought desperately, not too thrilled with that possibility.
“Or,” the gang member said, “I can kill your friend while you watch.” His tongue snapped out, ripping a cut along Oz’s jaw.
“Xander!” Oz yelled, bowing up as he tried to escape his bonds. “Really time to assess the new girlfriend campaign!”
“They could kill us anyway. If I give them the necklace, maybe they’ll kill her, too.”
“She held her own the other night,” Oz pointed out. “Give them the necklace and maybe they’ll be sorry they ever went looking for her.”
“Decide,” the gang member ordered.
Xander hesitated, feeling like a real weenie. Why do I always have the hard decision?
The gang member’s tongue flicked out.
“Wait!” Xander said. We’re tied up here, she’s not, he told himself. But it still didn’t make him feel a hell of a lot better.
Abruptly the theater doors opened again and a middleaged woman came through. “Roger?” She stumbled over the corpse at her feet, saw the gang members, then turned and ran. The gang member’s tongue snapped a hole through one of the swinging doors, missing the woman by inches. Her screams reverberated throughout the theater.
Still, Xander knew, it would take a little time before help arrived.
“Decide,” the gang member ordered again. “There is no time.”
“Take the necklace,” Xander said.
Hesitantly, the gang member reached for the necklace. His hand was shaking when he closed his fist over it. Then he ripped it away from Xander, tearing the pocket out as well. The gang member stood, still clutching his prize. “Take them with us. Hurry.”
“Wait!” Xander protested. “What happened to, ‘Let them go, we have what we want?’ ”
“We don’t have it all,” the gang member said. “There is still the matter of your friend, the Slayer.”
Before Xander could say anything else, one of the gang members covered his face with a cloth. He smelled a foul chemical smell, then it felt like the world fell out from under him.
Night blanketed Sunnydale when Buffy and Angel left one of the dives on the north side of town. She was amazed, thinking back on it, how many places there were in the city that catered to crooks, gangs, demons and other assorted bottom feeders of society. No one had given them any concrete leads regarding Zhiyong.
“I don’t think I could have taken another hour of that,” she admitted, referring to the endless tirade of abuse they’d had to listen to. Knowing that a few demons and other lowlifes would be counting bruises in the morning didn’t really make her feel any better. Some of the talk had been embarrassing and ego-battering. “And in the end, what did we learn? Zhiyong is rich, owns a shipping company with offices in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore, and now Sunnydale. He likes golf and collects sculpture. Not even a footnote about demons.”
Angel walked beside her. “There was some mention of a possible organized crime connection.”
“It was never proven,” Buffy grumbled.
“Interesting that the reporter who broke the story disappeared and hasn’t been heard from since.”
“Okay, so we know he likes his privacy. There’s still no indication of what he’s doing in Sunnydale.”
Angel didn’t say anything, but he studied the town around them.
“Angel?” Buffy looked around, wondering what had captured his attention.
“Notice anything about the town?” Angel asked.
Buffy studied the streets as they stopped at the corner. Lights reflected from the store windows around them. “There’s not many people out tonight.”
“No,” Angel said.
A police cruiser glided to a stop at the curb in front of them. Two officers rode inside, the one in the passenger seat carrying a shotgun in plain sight. The driver turned his spotlight on Buffy and Angel.
“Hey!” Buffy complained, putting up a hand to shield her eyes.
The spotlight went out. The police officer on the passenger side stuck his head out the window. “If you don’t have any business in town, we’re advising citizens to go on home for the evening.”
“Is there some kind of curfew I haven’t heard about?” Buffy’s immediate impulse was to rebel, but she kept herself calm.
“No,” the police officer replied. “Just an advisory we’re putting out.” He motioned to the driver and they rolled on.
Angel watched them move slowly down the street. “They were making sure we weren’t Asian,” he said softly. “If we had been, I get the feeling that encounter wouldn’t have gone so easily.”
“I know.” Buffy crossed the street, keeping her senses open. Anti-Asian feelings had been another thing they’d kept running into during their talks. “Things in school have been kind of tense as well. There were four fights involving Asian students this afternoon.” And those were only the ones she learned about after her mom had dropped her back at school.
“Everybody’s scared,” Angel said.
“I know. Mom really didn’t want me out tonight, but what’s a Slayer to do? The vampires aren’t going to stay inside.” She glanced around at the sidewalks and stores as she passed them by, realizing that the attrition rate was higher than she had at first thought. “It’s always been kind of scary to be out at night in Sunnydale, but I’ve never seen it like this.”
“They have faces to fear now,” Angel stated. “And a lot of faces in their neighborhood look just like the faces they’re supposed to be afraid of.”
“I guess it’s confusing.”
“It is. I was in Europe during World War II. Just wandering. I stayed for a while in Romania, looking for answers as to what I was supposed to do.”
Buffy stuck her arm through his and matched her step to his. She knew that had been after the Romani had reunited Angel with his soul.
“I saw neighborhoods in turmoil, striving to survive in the midst of Hitler’s confusion and racial genocide,” Angel continued. “Tonight is nothing like that. Those times were worse than anything else could be.”
“There were the riots in L.A.,” Buffy said.
Angel nodded. “I saw those on television.” He paused as they crossed another street. “But neighborhoods these days don’t get to know each other the way they did sixty years ago. They were more interdependent then. They actually knew each other, watched each other’s kids play together. Then, they turned on each other, fed each other to Hitler’s armies and the concentration camps.”
“That must have been hard.” Even though she tried, even though she’d seen a number of terrible things in her own life, Buffy knew she’d never see all the horrors that Angel had lived through.
“There was nothing I could do,” Angel said. “So I left one day. And I didn’t go back for years. But if you know where to look, know what was there before in spite of all the rebuilding that has gone on since the war was over, you can still see the scars.”
They walked silently for a while, and even though Buffy knew vampires and other demonic monstrosities waited out in the night, it was easy to pretend it wasn’t so for just a little while. At least, it was until the scream echoed down the street.
Buffy sprang to action only a half-step ahead of Angel. The scream was feminine, high-pitched, thin and frail. She ran hard, staring into the shadows near the closed second-hand clothing shop. Five figures struggled in the darkness, limned against the pool of electric white light from the convenience store a half-block up the street.
Two women, both Asian and one of them at least in her sixties, struggled against three young guys. A paper sack lay on the ground, material scattered in all directions.
“Give me the purse, bitch!” one of the guys snarled. He waved a baseball bat threateningly.
“Carter!” another of the boys said, pointing at Buffy. “Watch out!”
Carter turned immediately, bringing the baseball bat back to his shoulder.
Anger filled Buffy as she reached for the guy, thinking he was a vampire or demon.
“Buffy,” Angel called anxiously behind her. “They’re human.”
Buffy checked her swing. Slayers lived on the edge of life, where there was no margin for error.
Carter swung the baseball bat without hesitation, aiming for Buffy’s head. The Slayer set herself and swung the edge of her left hand toward the bat. The weapon splintered only a few inches in front of Carter’s hands. Following her own forward momentum, Buffy kicked Carter in the chest with her right foot, lifting him clear of the ground.
The second guy came at her, punching viciously. Staying on the aggressive, Buffy went at him, blocking his punches rapidly, then punched him in the face, pulling the blow at the last minute so she wouldn’t hurt him badly. He fell backward.
Angel dodged the third guy’s punch, then caught him by the shirt back and belt and threw him onto the other two.
On the ground now, crying and frightened, the two women looked up at Buffy and Angel fearfully. They held their open hands up to defend themselves.
Hurt and anger thundered like matched horses through Buffy’s temples. Her hands shook as she glared at the three young men. She thought she recognized two of them from school.
“What the hell did you think you were doing?” Buffy demanded. Angel stood only a half-step behind her, but she wasn’t sure if it was to back her or to shut her down if she lost it. She couldn’t believe the three young men would attack two helpless women.
The three guys got up. Carter needed help from both of them. “Did you get a good look at them?” Carter asked. “They’re Chinese! Just like those bastards that attacked our town last night! It’s time for a little payback! Two of my buddies are in the hospital, and one of them is in a coma! I was there when they told his girlfriend, my sister, that he probably wasn’t going to make it!”
Buffy took a deep breath. “These people,” she said clearly, “aren’t Chinese.” She pointed at the sign over the clothing store. “Yamamoto is a Japanese name.”
Carter held an arm across his stomach, breathing in short gasps. “Chinese, Japanese, whatever. It doesn’t make any difference. This is our home.”
“This is their home, too,” Buffy said. Willow had brought her to the shop a few times while looking for make-over projects. The Yamamoto sisters had always been friendly and helpful, and they’d been in business in Sunnydale for over twenty years, according to Willow.
“Please,” one of the women said, “I think my sister needs to see a doctor.”
Angel bent and easily lifted the woman from the sidewalk. “I’ve got her.”
The other Yamamoto sister led Angel back into the shop. “Come. We can call from in here. My sister must be taken care of.”
Carter’s two friends pulled at him, urging him to leave before the police were called. Even as he was backing away, Carter pointed at Buffy. “They gotta pay. This is our town. They can’t come in here and hurt people without getting hurt back.”
Sixty-year-old sisters, Buffy thought, watching them go. Bet they really hurt a lot of people. For a moment she considered going after the three guys and holding them for the police. Only she was afraid that she wouldn’t just stop at overpowering them.
“Buffy.” Angel stood inside the shop doorway. His eyes showed his concern.
“Is she okay?” Buffy asked.
“Yeah. A little shook up. She’ll have a few bruises. Nothing a few days’ rest
won’t take care of.”
“Good.” Buffy turned to him. “After the ambulance guys get here, I’ve got an idea.”
Angel looked at her.
“One thing we did turn up during our search was the location of Zhiyong’s offices. Maybe we could drop by there and look things over.”
Angel paused. “It might not be the smartest move we could make.”
“No, but this is my town, Angel. For good or bad. And I’m not going to let someone come here and crater that little bit of security most of these people cling to. It’s not going to happen on my watch.”
Rong, Rong, Willow thought, reminding herself what she was looking for as she trekked through the old copies of the Sunnydale Post, the bi-weekly paper that had served the Sunnydale community a hundred and fifty years ago. Her eyes burned as she tapped the keyboard, manipulating the graphics so she could read the stories.
She sat in the Rong living room, listening to Jia Li serving dinner to Oi-Ling and her two younger brothers. The conversation was rapid, like a Ping-Pong game, only Willow could understand none of it because it was all in Chinese. But she didn’t mind. As long as they were talking, she knew they weren’t paying attention to her and not being able to understand the conversations kept her from being too distracted.
Turning her attention back to the latest page of the paper she was working on, Willow tapped the keyboard. All the old issues of the Sunnydale Post had been saved off in a graphic format she could read in Adobe Acrobat. Unfortunately, when viewing a whole page, none of the stories, or even the headlines, could be read.
So the process of reading each page was tedious. They had to be sectioned off, stored as separate files, then gone over in detail.
“Would you like some more hot tea?” Jia Li asked, entering the living room with a pot.
And the process was further complicated by Jia Li’s constant attempts at hospitality.
“Sure,” Willow said, tapping the mouse pad to send the window with the current story she was reading to the bottom of the screen. It left the window with the homework she was supposed to be working on.