She kissed him back passionately.
Then she pulled away, keeping her arms around him. “How long were we gone?”
“An hour,” Angel told her.
An hour? She couldn’t believe it.
“I left the others back there with Lucien.”
He raised his eyebrows. “He’s the one you caught?”
“Yep.”
“I’d like to meet the guy.”
“I’d like to beat the guy,” she retorted. “This way.”
She led Angel back to the others, who now stood circled around Lucien, held firmly by Giles.
“Ah, Angel,” Giles greeted him. “How long were we gone?”
“An hour,” chorused Buffy and Angel.
“Wow, that’s all?” Willow asked, amazed.
Xander regarded her knowledgeably. “That’s the way it is with time travel. What’s an eternity in one time period is a mere blink of an eye in another.”
“Yes, Mr. Expert,” Giles said blithely as Lucien struggled in his grasp. “Let’s get our criminal mastermind here back to the library.”
Lucien sneered at them in contempt. “What are you going to do with me?”
“Torture you,” Buffy told him, narrowing her eyes at him. “But first …” She strode forward and frisked him, immediately finding the folded incantations in his jacket pocket. She opened them, then scanned the page. “Thank you,” she said.
“Ooh, may I?” asked Giles, holding his hand out for the pages. She swapped with him, a handful of pages for a stranglehold on Lucien. Together they all marched toward the library.
At the library, Buffy pushed Lucien into the cage and locked it. It mainly held file cabinets, but it doubled as a handy lockup. Over time, they’d captured quite a few people and left them in that same cage, Xander among them. Last year he’d been possessed by a hyena demon, and they’d locked him in there while they figured out how to cure him.
Now Lucien scowled on the other side of the cage door grating. “This stops nothing,” he told Buffy.
“Oh, I think it stops a great deal,” she said, waving the incantations in front of him.
His frown deepened. “If that’s all of them.”
Buffy bluffed. “Well, I have a feeling it is. Mainly because you wouldn’t reveal to me just now that there were more if there actually were. You’d just bide your time, hoping I wouldn’t figure that part out. You wouldn’t just give it away. You may not look it, but you must have a modicum of intelligence to have gotten this far.”
Lucien blanched at the insult, and Buffy knew immediately that his intellectual ego would be a good weapon to wield against him.
“I’ll watch him if you want to talk,” Angel offered. He crossed his arms, staring in at Lucien threateningly.
“Thanks.” Buffy glanced at the clock.
“You know, we have a little bit of time, and it would be worth it to do things right,” Giles told her, noticing her anxiousness. “Whenever we leave for the next jump, we’ll still arrive at the same time as the assassins. We can take a little time to eat something and prepare for the next trip.”
“Are you serious?” Xander asked, then turned to his friend. “Will. Pizza.”
“Definitely,” she agreed.
“Great,” Giles said. “You two bring us back food, pizza if it has to be,” he added distastefully. “Buffy and I will plan.”
They nodded and left the library, discussing toppings.
Buffy grew excited at the thought of food. She hadn’t eaten in more than twenty hours, and her stomach growled voraciously. She hoped they’d return soon with cheesy goodness.
“Giles,” she said, gesturing with her chin at his office.
He nodded, and they entered the office. “Okay. What do we need to do?”
Giles opened his notebook where he’d translated the three spells. “There are three time periods here. A Civil War Slayer named Agatha Primrose, a Sumerian Slayer named Ejuk, and a Slayer named Marguerite Allard, who lived during the French Revolution.”
“Civil War? French Revolution? Why do I have a feeling this is going to be even worse than Anglesey?”
“Because it probably will be,” Giles answered. He glanced out of the small window in the door at the cage. “After all, getting caught in the crossfire of a war waged with guns will be far more dangerous. Lucien can survive gunshot wounds. We can’t.”
“I’d like to give him something pointier than a bullet and see if he survives that.” Buffy glared at him.
“We need him alive for now,” Giles reminded her.
“I know,” Buffy said. “But I just want to stake that smug look off his face.” She turned back to the translations. “So which Slayer do we save first?”
Giles leaned back in his chair. “It shouldn’t matter, actually. Remember, we’ll arrive at the same time as the assassins in all the time periods.”
“Ack. I get it. So we just choose whichever one we want?”
“Essentially, though we may want to choose the French Revolution last.”
“Why is that?” She sat down on the edge of his desk.
“We’ll have to have proper attire for that—long pants, and specifically liberty hats and red, white, and blue cockades.”
“Why?”
“So we don’t get our heads cut off.”
“Good idea. That would put a crimp in the plans.”
“Indeed.” He stood up. “Let’s raid the drama department again.”
“Giles! You’re such a ruffian!”
He grinned. “I know.”
In the costume closet of the drama room, they found some simple shirts, pants, and dresses made of light cotton and polyester. “I’m afraid none of these will do. The styles and material are all wrong,” Giles said. He picked up a few headdresses and some earrings from a box of jewelry. “You could wear this, I suppose,” he told her, handing her a headdress. Made of cheap, bronze-colored metal, it sported three flowers sprouting from the back of it.
She eyed it dubiously. “Is this authentic?”
“Well, not authentic metal, but the style is pretty accurate. These come from that talent show act last year—the one where the students recited part of the Epic of Gilgamesh.”
“The epic of who?”
“Gilgamesh. He was a Sumerian king. He happens to be the Sumerian king in the era we’re traveling back to.”
She picked up one of the blue cotton dresses. It was made of old T-shirts, she realized. “And you don’t think they’d buy this?”
Giles set down a shirt he was holding and regarded her resolutely. “Well, I suppose they’ll more likely ‘buy’ this, as you say, than suspect we’re actually time travelers from the future there to thwart an assassination on a secret Slayer of vampires.”
Buffy held up the headdress. It was lined with tinfoil on the inside. “I’m not so sure. Isn’t there some costume shop we can go to?”
Giles looked at his watch. “That’s not a bad idea.” Returning armfuls of the clothing to the closet, Giles chattered excitedly. “This really is quite fascinating,” he told her over a mound of hastily sewn shirts. Buffy thought she spied some gold lamé peeking out coyly. That definitely wasn’t authentic.
Back in his office, they thumbed through the phone book and found a costume shop that was still open. Willow and Xander returned with the pizza, which they all devoured with abandon. Even Giles ate a few slices.
Then he left her to brief the others and departed for the costume shop. Buffy dreaded the getup he would rent. Xander stood terrified, convinced his outfit would involve tights.
“They didn’t wear tights in any of these places, Xander,” Willow assured him. “We’re not visiting an eighteenth-century court in Vienna or anything. We’re going to look like farmers. Something subtle.”
“Except that ‘liberty cap’ thing. That doesn’t sound subtle. What is it?”
Buffy shook her head. “He didn’t elaborate. It’s for the best.” She frowned.
“What is it?” Angel asked, sensing her preoccupation.
“Something Victor said back there.” She looked at them, lowering her voice so Lucien couldn’t hear. “He said he’d killed me twice before.”
“What does that mean?” Angel asked.
“That’s what I wondered.” She frowned. “Unless they’ve already been back in time and killed me.”
“But they didn’t. You’re here,” Angel pointed out.
Xander regarded her thoughtfully. “She’s only here in this point in the time line. If they’d traveled back in time and killed her, she would have ceased to exist in the future, and she never would have known the difference.”
“So what happened?” she asked Xander.
“It must have failed for some reason. They obviously didn’t kill you, because you’re here.”
“But Victor said he did kill me.”
“Well, maybe he traveled back in time afterward and unkilled you, restoring the time line,” Xander suggested.
“Why would he do that?” Angel asked.
“Maybe killing the Buffster didn’t have the effect they were going for. Maybe things got worse.”
“Of course things would be worse,” Willow agreed. “Sunnydale would be hell on earth.”
“Exactly,” Xander said. “So they obviously failed, because despite its overly balmy temperatures at times, and its not so stellar nightlife, it is decidedly not hell on earth.”
An hour later Giles returned, boxes of costumes in hand. Quickly they rummaged through them, selecting outfits.
Buffy chose a light blue linen dress for the Sumerian trip. Giles said linen would make them appear upper-crusty and educated. They’d have an easier time talking to people that way, he explained. Buffy didn’t see how she’d be able to talk to anyone at all in ancient Sumerian. It wasn’t exactly a foreign language elective at Sunnydale High.
They’d have to heavily rely on Giles, except during the American Civil War, to communicate their needs. She’d keep careful watch on him during the time jumps. No more hapless knocks on the head for Giles.
He gave them all simple cloth satchels, each filled with a pencil, paper, a bottle of water, and in Buffy’s case, stakes. After putting on a brown linen dress with a fancy metalwork belt, Willow sat down at her computer. She downloaded several maps they would need: the Sumerian city of Uruk in 2700 B.C.E., Paris in 1792, and maps of 1862 Tennessee, near Pittsburg Landing, in the vicinity of that Slayer’s farmhouse.
Suddenly she grew pale. “Oh, no … April sixth, 1862, Pittsburg Landing … I thought that name sounded familiar.”
“What is it, Will?” Buffy asked.
She looked up. “The Battle of Shiloh. That’s the morning of one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War.”
Lucien laughed inside the cage. “Have fun,” he told them.
Giles scowled at him. “Be quiet,” he ordered. He placed a gentle hand on Willow’s shoulder. “Download battle maps. We need to know where the troops are, where the heavy combat occurred. We should be able to avoid the conflict.”
“If you could control exactly where you land,” Lucien sneered, “which you can’t. You’ll be instantly cut down by gunfire.”
Willow’s eyes grew wider.
“Or maybe just have your head blown off by a cannonball,” he continued.
Buffy walked over to the cage, placing her hands on her hips. “Well, that would kill off your boys, too, wouldn’t it?” she asked.
Lucien shut up.
She turned back to her friends, taking in their Sumerian costumes. Xander wore a handsome brown tunic, tied in the front with a gold thread. Giles wore a similar style, in blue linen with a silver tie.
Willow printed out copies of the maps, and they added them to their satchel contents. Giles studied the Watcher journals, then gathered the others close. “This Slayer is named Ejuk. She lives in the city of Uruk.”
Angel walked to Buffy and embraced her. “Don’t worry about this loser,” he said, hooking his thumb at Lucien. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t go anywhere.”
“Thank you, Angel,” she told him, pulling back to meet his eyes. “I wish you could come with us.”
“Me too.”
Buffy thought again of their daylight arrival in Wales and knew Angel was right to stay behind. Besides, now they needed him here to guard Lucien. She stood on her toes, kissing him softly on the mouth. He returned the kiss, and her stomach erupted in pleasant butterflies.
Then she shouldered her satchel and turned to Giles. “Let’s go kick some vampire ass.”
Giles nodded and unfolded the incantation for ancient Sumeria. He spoke the words loud and clear, though his voice trembled. As the wormhole opened in the air above them, Buffy didn’t know what to expect. She only knew her next stop would take her into the heart of the most ancient civilization on Earth.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Uruk, 2700 B.C.E.
Buffy braced herself as the wormhole spat her out into a watery trench. Her hands and legs gushed into wet soil, and her nostrils filled with the rich scent of earth and vegetation. She rolled over in time to see Xander hurtling toward her. She tried to leap up on wobbly legs and fell over again. Xander landed with a loud plop in a neighboring trench. Then Willow and Giles appeared as silhouettes in the bright vortex.
They tumbled out, crashing into a row of short green plants nearby.
They lay in an irrigated field, Buffy realized. She propped herself up on one elbow and looked out over their surroundings. Squinting, she watched the dazzling light from the portal before it winked out. With her hands sinking into the freshly tilled soil, she stared out in wonder at the scene before her.
In the distance stretched vast fields of crops. Nearby, about a quarter of a mile away, stood an immense wall of clay bricks, elaborately painted and inlaid with images: dragons, creatures that looked to be half goat and half fish, kings and queens before retinues of servants. She’d expected to land in a sweltering desert, but instead they’d arrived in a lush, vegetated area. To her left roared the vast waters of the Euphrates River. Palms lined the shore. Reeds grew thick in the shallows along the banks. With a clear blue sky above them, and a fragrant breeze drifting off the river, it was heavenly. Buffy felt a strange stirring inside, almost of familiarity. Maybe because the temperature and humidity are similar to Southern California? she thought.
Giles was the next to sit up. He groaned. “Perhaps we should consider building a small cushioned vehicle of some sort to travel within,” he suggested, rubbing his head.
Buffy had to admit, that sounded pretty good. Right now her knee throbbed from hitting a rock in the field.
Willow and Xander struggled up as well. “Wow,” Willow said. “This weather! The air feels …”
“Fresh,” Xander answered. “It’s unpolluted.” He breathed deeply.
Buffy herself felt a little heady from all the oxygen. She supposed breathing yellow smog every day for the first sixteen years of her life had left her somewhat ill-equipped for fresh air.
The air must have been fresh in Wales, too, but with the thick humidity and pouring rain, she hadn’t noticed it. Now, she breathed in the fragrant air and felt the warmth of sunlight on her face.
They stood up, appraising one another in the bright sun. They weren’t too muddy, just a splotch here and there. Giles checked his satchel, making sure all the books were still inside. After pulling out a map and studying it for a few minutes, he pointed to the wall and said, “That’s the north gate of Uruk. We need to pass through to the city.”
Over the wall rose a dazzling array of buildings—immense ziggurats, a tremendous bell tower, and a variety of temples and columned buildings. Nervousness bloomed in Buffy’s stomach. While they were nearly three thousand years earlier than their last time jump, this civilization towered before her, monumental and staggeringly real. Their visit to the Druids, mainly spent in forests, could almost have been in any century. With the exception of the people�
�armored Romans and woad-streaked Celts—the land itself was so untouched that Buffy imagined it might look the same today. But this was not the case with Uruk. Before her stood a vast and ancient city, vibrantly new and fresh. In her own time, this area, now lush and green, was present-day Iraq, a desert full of dust and ruins. Yet here lay the start of civilization itself, the first great cities. She’d read of them in Western Civilization, been bored into daydreaming during her teacher’s lectures. But here Uruk was, real and inviting, and Buffy found herself speechless at its gates.
“We must make our way to the city,” Giles said.
Buffy dislodged her feet from the mud of the fields and glanced around. Once again, they’d arrived in the day. It was a good thing they hadn’t brought Angel with them, though his help would have come in handy on Anglesey.
If the vamps had landed near them, they would be toast. The only way they could have survived would have been to land in the city itself and dodge into a nearby doorway or shadowed house. No heavily clouded sky to protect them now.
Briefly she looked down at the soil, wondering if the vampires would be able to bury themselves in the dirt before they exploded into ash. She didn’t know if this was possible—it didn’t seem like it would be. Nevertheless, she began to picture them writhing about in the soil beneath her feet, a hideous crop of the undead.
Giles moved forward, walking down a narrow line of growing barley. Buffy did the same, following close behind.
“Will we be able to get in through the gate?” Willow asked. “Will they have guards?” Her voice sounded small and frightened.
Xander stopped. “Guards? Like guards-with-spears guards?”
“No, Xander,” Giles told him. “More likely guards-with-arrows guards.”
When he saw Xander’s expression of horror, he relented. “Actually, during this time, Sumeria was at peace. I expect we’ll be able to walk right in through the city gates without any incident whatsoever. Uruk traded extensively with other Sumerian city states, and I imagine we will look like travelers to them.”
Buffy looked down at her blue embroidered robe. At least it was linen, and not scratchy like the wool she’d worn on Anglesey. She hoped Giles was right about their financial stature. If people saw them in linen, they might be treated with greater respect and be able to ask questions without arousing too much suspicion.
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