Bad Bargain

by Diana G. Gallagher

  “How could you?” Willow glowered at Xander. Cutie trembled in her arms, sensing the danger.

  “Willow, I’m so glad you’re all right.” Ms. Calendar tried to embrace her.

  “Don’t touch me.” Willow shrugged out of reach. “I trusted you! All of you! I thought you were my friends, but you’re not. You want to kill Cutie!”

  “No, we don’t, Willow,” Giles said. “You didn’t hear every—”

  “I heard him!” Eyes flashing, Willow pointed at Xander. She was so angry, her chest heaved and she had to speak through clenched teeth to stay in control. “He said ‘kill the kur.’ ”

  “Kur? You thought I said ‘kill the kur’? No, I said ‘her.’ Kill her. The, uh, Cordelia!” Xander smashed his fist into his hand. “She makes me so mad sometimes, I just want to . . . kill her. But I wouldn’t.”

  “And you expect me to believe that?” Willow didn’t hide her disdain.

  “Well, yeah.” Xander shoved his hands into his pockets and smiled his lopsided smile. “You know me. Speak first, think too late, and then regret.”

  Xander fumbled for words that could make it right, but nothing could fix it this time. She didn’t need friends that wanted her pet to die. She didn’t need friends that betrayed her. She didn’t need anyone now that she had Cutie.

  Willow calmed down when she realized that it didn’t matter what Xander thought should happen to the kur. He’d have to kill her first to get to Cutie, and he wouldn’t do that, not in a million years.

  “Were you going somewhere, Willow?” Giles asked.

  “Cutie wants to take a walk, so we’re leaving.” Nudged by the kur’s intense desire to move, Willow marched out the door. She heard her ex-friends talking behind her back again.

  “Is she—” Xander stuttered. “Should I—”

  “Just tell Buffy.” Giles coughed. “And that Ms. Calendar and I will be there shortly with the spell and accoutrement.”

  “Huh?” Xander sounded puzzled.

  “Spell stuff,” Ms. Calendar explained. “Candles, incense, charcoal—”

  Willow smiled as she ambled down the corridor. Cutie was serene and all was well. She wasn’t even upset when Xander caught up with her, still pretending that everything was fine between them. The kur wanted her to take him home.

  * * *

  Buffy stood against the wall on the perimeter of the Hellmouth varmint herd. Unwilling to leave her mother’s side until the green sores began clearing up, she had fallen out of the disaster loop. With the exception of Pragoh, she didn’t know where everyone was or what they were doing. She had to trust that Giles would find a way to fill in the gaps. The demon didn’t know anything.

  “Where’s the fire dragon?” Buffy asked, worried.

  It bothered her that she cared about the lizard’s welfare. She didn’t feel an overwhelming desire to protect it like Willow did the kur, nor was she compelled to commit violent acts as Jonathan had been with the eel. She just liked the little guy. It was adorable in an orange-and-black, has-a-coffee-habit, and can-turn-people-into-human-torches kind of way. She also wanted to make sure it went home to the Hell-mouth before Giles sealed the leaks.

  “Dragon never hurry.” Pragoh threw up his hands.

  “He’s dawdling?” Buffy asked, amused. She had a pretty good idea why the lizard wasn’t in a rush to leave. “Maybe I can get it.”

  “Should have stomped it. Easier.” Pragoh continued to complain as he waddled down the hall toward the basement access door. “Everybody else ready to go!”

  Following the demonic pied piper’s lead, the huge assortment of Hellmouth critters started to move. The purple armadillo-porcupine animal trundled by, flanked by a winged caterpillar and the puddle of gray slime. The faint outlines of the letters Z, O, R, B, and A from the Razorback baseball cap were visible in the slime.

  Buffy moved in the opposite direction, staying close to the wall until she was past the migration. Then she ran for the teacher’s lounge. The pot sitting on the coffeemaker burner was empty, but several teachers hadn’t taken the time to clean their mugs when the emergency had been declared.

  After collecting a full mug of cold coffee to use as bait, Buffy walked back to the cafeteria so she wouldn’t spill it. She felt terrible about the eight people who had died. She would never know how many students and residents of Sunnydale were still alive because of her efforts, but she bore the burden of every death by demonic evil that occurred in the town. Still, the casualties could have been a lot worse today, and she couldn’t help but feel a little jubilant. The evil zoo was en route back to the Hellmouth, her mother would recover with no permanent scars, and Xander had survived.

  When she stepped through the cafeteria doors, Buffy realized her premature happy thoughts might have jinxed the mostly happy ending. Not everyone was out of danger yet. Jonathan had several action figure blister packs tucked under his arm, and he was poking through the gallery donations—less than twelve inches from the fire dragon.

  The lizard had four feet perched on the rim of Ms. Calendar’s mug. Its head, long neck, and upper body were inside the mug so it could get that ever-so-good last drop.

  Jonathan and the lizard both seemed oblivious to or unconcerned about the other’s presence. She had to get the lizard’s attention without startling Jonathan. Since he was in the cafeteria helping himself to collectible goodies, his nerves were probably hair trigger. If he jumped, ran, or shrieked in surprise, he might inadvertently scare the creature into a false-alarm smoking.

  She was fairly certain that Jonathan never rocked the boat, avoided trouble at all costs, and unquestioningly obeyed authority. Trusting her instincts, Buffy issued an order. “Don’t move, Jonathan. Your life depends on it.”

  Jonathan didn’t move.

  “Now, back away from the table—slowly,” Buffy instructed. Holding her breath, she shifted her gaze between Jonathan and the fire dragon. The lizard had all six feet clamped on the rim of the cup, and it was watching Jonathan. “Turn around, Jonathan. Slowly. No sudden moves.”

  Jonathan turned his back to Buffy and the animal. “I was going to pay for—”

  “Quiet.” Buffy held out the cup when the dragon snapped its head around to stare at her. She didn’t care if it was her voice or the coffee that snared its rapt attention. Jonathan was forgotten as it leaped off the table and scampered toward her.

  Buffy didn’t have time to give Jonathan an all-clear. Coffee sloshed and spilled as she hurried to the door. She smiled when the lizard stopped to lick the drops off the floor with its black tongue. It would follow a spilled coffee trail all the way to the basement.

  “Still a little shaky, huh?” Xander stopped to watch as Buffy flipped the stopper to prop the door open.

  “Just baiting a Hellmouth delinquent,” Buffy said, pouring more coffee on the floor. She noticed that Willow was still carrying the kur bundled in the blue scarf. “And looks like it’s not the only one.”

  Xander shifted his weight, suddenly nervous. “Willow and I were just taking Cutie for a walk.”

  Willow laughed. “When he wants to go somewhere, I just don’t have the heart to say no.”

  Or the mind, Buffy thought as Willow murmured sweetly to the vile little beast.

  “I think it’s safe to say that Willow would follow Cutie anywhere,” Xander said, holding Buffy with a fervent stare.

  It wasn’t hard to interpret Xander’s words, emphasis, and look, and the message made Buffy’s stomach hurt. Giles had been quite clear that Cutie’s mental hold on Willow wouldn’t end until it was back in the Hellmouth. Apparently Giles also thought Willow might hand deliver the kur.

  Buffy’s first solution was to snatch the creature out of Willow’s arms and kill it, but she realized that taking such drastic action would backfire. The psychic connection would be severed, but Willow’s affection for the creature could be genuine. Her mom wouldn’t let her have a pet she could cuddle, and Willow might never forgive her best friend for wring
ing Cutie’s neck.

  “Can we please get moving?” Willow asked.

  Bad, bad idea, Buffy thought. They had to keep Willow as far away from the basement as possible for as long as possible to minimize the chances of losing her. Unlike the fire dragon, the kur obviously couldn’t resist Pragoh’s call. And Willow couldn’t resist the kur’s psychic imperative to return to the Hellmouth.

  “Shouldn’t we wait for Giles?” Buffy didn’t honestly believe reason would work with Willow, but posing the question bought a few more seconds. She caught Xander’s eye and nodded vigorously, hoping he’d catch a clue.

  Xander was quick on the uptake. “We should wait. Absolutely. Giles and Ms. Calendar might need help carrying . . . stuff.”

  Willow was only half listening. The kur was the center of her shrinking world. “You guys can wait. We’re leaving.”

  Buffy cast another frantic glance at Xander. He shook his head, at a loss. If they tried to physically restrain Willow, the kur would have a fit. Willow would react violently, pulling out all the stops to do the beast’s bidding. She could get hurt, but that was a chance Buffy had to take.

  Better than taking a long walk into hell, Buffy thought, bracing to stop Willow.

  Instead of moving forward, Willow gasped and stumbled back from the door.

  Puzzled, Buffy glanced into the cafeteria just as Jonathan risked looking over his shoulder. When he spotted her watching him, he jerked his head back around and resumed his motionless stance.

  The fire dragon scurried out the door to the second coffee spill.

  “Oh, look who’s here.” Xander prudently eased back. “Hellfire on six little legs.”

  “Get it away, Buffy!” Willow pleaded.

  Xander cocked an eyebrow. “Apparently Cutie isn’t wild about going out in a blaze of glory either.”

  “Not funny, Xander,” Willow said. “That thing makes combustible fevers inside other things. One minute you’re napping by a lava flow in a cave, and the next you’re a campfire.”

  The fire dragon’s incendiary nature gave Buffy new angles to consider. If the lizard turned the kur into a fireball, Willow wouldn’t blame her—except that the dragon couldn’t smoke Cutie without smoking Willow, too. But Buffy could use the kur’s fear to delay Willow’s arrival in the basement.

  “Okay, Will.” Buffy held up a hand and explained, for Xander’s benefit more than Willow’s. “I can keep the dragon calm if we move slowly. Just stay back and you’ll be fine.”

  “Right,” Xander said. “If you went first, it could sneak up on you and wham! You’re charbroiled before you know what hit you.”

  “Okay,” Willow whispered.

  Buffy moved a few feet closer to the basement access door and spilled more coffee. When the lizard finished the second spill, it moved on to the third. Willow and Xander stayed six feet back.

  “Where’s my shirt?” Principal Snyder bellowed through the open classroom infirmary door. “And why am I wearing all these ugly ties? Is this somebody’s idea of a joke? I’m not laughing.”

  “Nobody’s laughing,” Buffy’s mom said sharply. “Now sit down and calm down, or those big holes in your head won’t heal properly.”

  “Where’s my hat?” Snyder asked. “Somebody took my hat.”

  “Oh, joy. Sounds like Principal Snyder’s back to his old self.” Xander sighed.

  “Which is oddly comforting,” Buffy muttered. The principal made her life difficult and unpleasant, but he had never tried to kill her.

  Giles and Ms. Calendar still hadn’t arrived when Buffy reached the top of the stairs. Cutie’s fear wouldn’t override Pragoh’s call indefinitely, and Willow was getting impatient with the snail’s pace. Buffy wouldn’t be able to delay much longer.

  Maybe no more than a few seconds, she thought when the fire dragon jumped over the last coffee puddle and bounded through the door.

  “Guess he reached his two-cup limit,” Xander joked.

  Once the threat was out of sight, it was also out of the kur’s mind. Willow’s cautious demeanor vanished in an outburst of hostile irritation as she tried to barge past Buffy. “Out of my way.”

  “Not so fast.” Buffy put a hand on Willow’s chest. “You wouldn’t want to run headlong into something else that could hurt Cutie, would you?”

  “No, but Cutie’s not upset, so there’s nothing to worry about.” The kur hissed at Buffy as Willow pushed by her. “Except you!”

  “Willow! Wait!” Buffy rushed down the stairs with Xander close behind. She reached out to grab Willow’s shirt, determined to stop a misguided charge through the Hellmouth barrier. But Willow didn’t fight when Buffy pulled her to a stop on the bottom stair.

  The basement teamed with Hellmouth creatures. The small openings into the underworld only allowed a limited number of beasts through at one time. The rest had to wait their turn to leave, including the kur. The presence of the fire dragon directly ahead on the floor was another plus. It negated any impulse Cutie had to push to the front of the line.

  “Slayer!” Spike had his back to the storeroom door, but he was losing the battle against Dru’s incessant battering. “Will you please tell your short, stubborn friend to do something?”

  “Is there a problem?” Giles paused behind Xander. He had a bag slung over his shoulder and his arms were laden with a book and candles. Ms. Calendar stopped on the stair above him with more magickal paraphernalia.

  “He won’t call the bats!” The door banged, and Spike leaned into it with his shoulder. “And she’s getting stronger!”

  Rolling her eyes, Buffy raised her voice to be heard over the thrum of wings and feet. “Pragoh! Why haven’t you called the bats?”

  The demon’s upper lip curled back in a snarl. “Don’t have to do what puny vampire say.”

  “Puny?” Spike’s ability to cope was strained to the limit, and the insult pushed him too far. He vamped out and whirled to menace the demonic beast master.

  “That cannot be good for our side,” Xander said.

  “Excuse us. We have a spell to cast.” Giles squeezed past Xander, Buffy, and Willow. Taking care not to step on the fire lizard, he moved under the stairs and dropped the spell supplies.

  “Couldn’t we have used a simpler version of the binding spell?” Ms. Calendar asked as she joined him.

  “To ensure success, no.” Giles pulled a round, metal censer out of his bag and tested the chain.

  Buffy concentrated on the clash of demonic male egos. She did not want to referee a fight between Spike and Pragoh. She wanted to stop it, and barged forward as Spike charged, but she wasn’t quick enough to intercept. Arms folded and snorting defiance, Pragoh stood his ground. Just before Spike barreled into him, the storeroom door flew open.

  Spike’s face returned to human form in the spilt second it took him to stop and look back.

  A hush fell over everything as Dru’s grotesquely majestic presence emerged from the doorway. Draped in torn streamers of a white gown with long, dark hair and black velvet wings, the tall, exotic she-bat exuded primal power. A low guttural growl sounded in her throat as her golden gaze bore into Spike. There was no affection in her eyes, no trace of weakness in her bearing as she brandished winged claws. She wanted blood, beginning with the vampire.

  “Gone a bit stir-crazed in there, love?” Spike’s flippant tone was laced with fearless arrogance, but the tension in his jaw showed that he recognized the danger. “Our little friend here was just getting ready to make it all better. Weren’t you, Pragoh?”

  “Still mad,” Pragoh huffed.

  “Say please, Spike,” Buffy urged.

  The enormous energies Dru generated kept Buffy in a state of total Slayer readiness. Primed to repel an attack, she swept the room with her senses. Clouds of microbes, colonies of mites, and larger solitary beasts continued to flow through the leaks in the Hellmouth barrier. Under the stairs, Giles and Ms. Calendar furiously prepared to cast the binding spell. Xander stood above Willow, ready to grab
her.

  “ ‘Say please’?” Spike tilted his head back and laughed. “Not bloody likely.”

  Unfurling her huge wings, Dru flew toward Spike. Light glinted off her fangs, and her high-pitched screech sent chalkboard chills up Buffy’s spine. Spike tried to duck out, but Dru’s wingspan was too expansive to escape. She folded him in the membranes and threw back her head, mouth open to bite.

  The attack was a catalyst igniting all the other potential calamities in the room. Everything exploded at once.

  Willow jumped off the stairs. Xander grabbed the back of her shirt and dragged her down into a mass of yellow jelly orbs on the floor. Cutie spit and snarled as the fire dragon sprang clear. Lying on her side, Willow clutched the frenzied kur, kicked, and screamed. With one terrified eye on the lizard, Xander slipped his arms around Willow’s waist, buried his face in her back, and hung on.

  Giles crept out from under the stairs with a lump of charcoal in his hand. Shooing straggler Hellmouth creatures out of his way, he darted to the basement wall several feet to the right of the main breach. Smaller punctures were only evident because of the mists and streams of ultrasmall beasts moving through them. Giles began to draw a large semicircle on the cement floor with the charcoal. Ms. Calendar drew smaller circular patterns within the outline and positioned unlit candles.

  Vamping out again, Spike drove his fangs into the main rib on Dru’s left wing. Enraged by the pain, Dru flew into a Cutie-style fit that imperiled every creature still in the basement. She was a riot of slashing teeth and talons, striking out in all directions. Spike threw himself at her, shoving her backward and bringing her down with the momentum. He tried to catch and pin her winged arms, but she eluded his grasp and clawed his cheek.

  Willow had stopped fighting Xander, but Buffy didn’t know how long Spike could keep Dru down. She was certain that if he lost the battle, someone else would die. “Pragoh! Call the bats now!”

  The gray demon jutted his chin to refuse, then fixed Buffy with his beady haze. “What for Pragoh?”

  “A bribe?” Buffy asked, incensed. “You want a bribe to do your job?”

  “Ow!” Spike wiped a smear of blood off his neck then smacked bat-Dru with his fist. “Agree now, negotiate later!”