by Nancy Holder
Then, as the other figures caught up to them, he threw her into their arms. They began to drag her away. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she struggled for her life.
Richard looked around to make sure they had not been seen. Then he put on his hood and slowly followed the others as they returned their prey to her prison.
CHAPTER 1
The night of Hindi telephone wailing was over.
The day of Sunnydale High wailing had just begun.
“Ha-ha ha-ha, oh, mmm. See?” Cordelia demonstrated for one of her Cordettes. Cordelia was holding a magazine folded open to a particular section. She explained to her faithful follower, “Doctor Debbi says when a man is speaking, you make serious eye contact and you really, really listen. And you laugh at everything he says.” Again, she demonstrated: “Ha-ha ha-ha ha-ha.”
Eager for details, Willow asked Buffy as the two headed downstairs, “You dreamed about Angel again?”
“Third night in a row,” Buffy said, somewhere between embarrassed and eager to share.
“What did he do in the dream?” Willow prodded.
Buffy grinned dreamily—some might say goofily. “Stuff.”
“Ooh, stuff,” Willow said excitedly. “Was it one of those vivid dreams where you could feel his lips and smell his hair?”
Buffy nodded. “It had surround-sound.” She sighed. “I’m just thinking about him so much lately.”
When she returned from summer vacation in L.A. with her father, she had told Angel she had moved on “to the living.” It had been a lie, of course. She was afraid of her future. If she couldn’t protect herself, how could she ever protect her friends? She had been cruel to him, pushing him—and Willow, Xander, and even Giles—away because she had finally managed to kill the Master, but in doing so had died at his hands herself. “Technically,” as Giles would put it. The Master had bitten her, and then she had drowned. But she had died.
Xander had revived her, and she’d gone on to battle the Master again, to the death. But it wasn’t an experience one could easily get over.
And she had been so afraid to come back to Sunnydale—to come back to the life of danger for her friends—that she had even baited Angel to take her on, vampire against Slayer. He would have none of it. And when she finally broke, it was to Angel she turned. He had wrapped his arms around her and let her sob out all her anger and terror.
More recently, he had even admitted his jealousy of Xander, who could walk in the daylight with her.
So why didn’t they have a thing going? He kept showing up, they’d have some kind of fight or intense encounter, and then he was gone again.
“You two are so right for each other,” Willow gushed, “except for the, uh—”
“Vampire thing.” Buffy said it. Someone had to.
“That doesn’t make him a bad person,” Willow said loyally. Apparently she was not about to give up on this grand romance. “Necessarily.” But she was willing to give a little ground on whether or not it was a good idea.
“I’m brainsick!” Buffy cried. “I can’t have a relationship with him.”
“Not during the day, but you could ask him for coffee some night.” Buffy looked at her. Willow persisted. “It’s the non-relationship drink of choice. It’s not a date, it’s a caffeinated beverage. Okay, sure, it’s hot and bitter, like a relationship that way, but—”
Xander slid into step with them.
“What’s like a relationship?” he asked cheerily.
“Nothing I have.” Buffy gave Willow another look, this one more speculative. “Coffee?”
As they neared that wacky reality field where Cordelia and her gal pals reigned supreme, Buffy and Willow peeled off. Xander, however, slowed to catch something he could riff off. He was not disappointed, as Cordelia said to her little clone wannabe, “There’s really no comparison between college men and high school boys.” She gave Xander a disdainful once-over. “I mean, look at that.”
All right. The gauntlet had been thrown. Xander said pleasantly, “So, Cor, you dating college guys now?”
She preened like a little peacock hen, styling her sculpted bangs as she bragged, “Well, not that it’s any of your business, but I happen to be dating a Delta Zeta Kappa.”
“Oh, an extraterrestrial,” he quipped. “So that’s how you get a date after you’ve exhausted all the human guys.”
At the water fountain, Buffy and Willow listened.
“You’ll go to college someday, Xander,” Cordelia said sincerely. Then she shot home the zinger: “I just know your pizza delivery career will take you so many exciting places.”
Xander didn’t know what to say. He had no comeback. A bit startled, he joined up with his nicer friends as they loitered by the watering hole. He was about to say something funny to them to show that Cordelia hadn’t affected him when the bell rang.
Buffy made a face. “Ooooh, I told Giles I’d meet him in the library ten minutes ago.” She shrugged. “Oh, he won’t be upset. There hasn’t been much paranormal activity lately.”
* * *
Wrong. Giles circled her like some old English judge wearing one of those white bad-perm wigs in a movie about burning people at the stake and gave her the old one-two.
“Just because the paranormal is more normal and less … para of late, is no excuse for tardiness or letting your guard down.”
She was maybe the taddiest bit defensive. “I haven’t let my guard down.”
“Oh, really?” he drawled. He circled back the other way. “You yawned your way through weapons training last week. You skipped the hand-to-hand entirely.” Now he stood behind her. “Are you going to be prepared if a demon springs up behind you and does this?”
Without warning, he swung at her from behind. She grabbed his wrist, pivoted, and whipped his hand behind his back. One more upward yank, and she could break it without so much as breathing hard.
Giles grunted in pain. “Yes, well, I’m not a demon.” He grunted again. “Which is why you should let go now.”
Without blinking, Buffy complied. “Thank you,” he muttered. He straightened, massaging his wrist. He no longer looked annoyed with her, but he did look concerned.
Buffy sat on the table as he wound up for the pitch.
“When you live atop a mystical convergence, it’s only a matter of time before a fresh hell breaks lose,” he told her. “Now is the time to train more strictly. You should hunt and patrol more keenly. You should hone your skills day and night.”
Buffy was so tired of all this. She cut in, “And the little slice of my life that still belongs to me—from, I don’t know, seven to seven-oh-five in the morning, can I do what I want to then?”
Giles looked frustrated, yet there was a bit of compassion—the merest bit—as he said, “Buffy, you think I don’t know what it’s like to be sixteen?”
“No,” she retorted, “I think you don’t know what it’s like to be sixteen and a girl and the Slayer.”
“Fair enough,” he had to admit. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “No, I don’t.”
Her voice rose. “Or what it’s like to have to stake vampires when you’re having fuzzy feelings toward one?”
“Ahhh,” he said awkwardly.
“Digging on the undead doesn’t exactly do wonders for your social life.”
He pounced like the Bengal tiger that had gone after the Hindi Telephone Woman’s water buffalo. “That’s exactly where being different comes in handy.”
“Right,” she said, kinda sorta wishing he’d circle her again so she could almost break his arm again. “Who needs a social life when they’ve got their very own Hellmouth?”
“Yes!” Clearly he had missed her sarcastic tone. “You have a duty, a purpose! You have a commitment in life. How many people your age do you think can say that?”
How many want to? she almost shot back, but that would reactivate his lecture mode. Instead, she lifted her chin and said, “We talkin’ foreign or domestic? How about non
e. ”
* * *
Giles sighed. Sometimes he didn’t know why he tried. Flaring—just a trifle, although God knew he had his own pressures to deal with—he snapped, “Well, here’s a hard fact of life. We all have to do things we don’t like. And you have hand to hand this afternoon and patrol tonight. So I suggest you come straight here at the end of period six and get your homework done. And don’t dawdle with your friends.”
Buffy thrust out her lower lip, letting her chin quiver like a sad little girl. He hardened his heart. He said these things for her own good. “And don’t think sitting there pouting is going to get to me. Because it won’t.”
The chin quivered. The brows lifted. She was only sixteen. She did have a point.
“It’s not getting to me,” he insisted.
* * *
Free at last.
Willow and Xander moseyed with the rest of the herd out of Sunnydale High. Xander said, “Boy, was that a long day.”
Willow replied archly, “And you skipped three classes.”
“Yeah, and of course they flew by.” He looked up and cried, “Buffy!”
Before them, Buffy sat on the stair railing and dangled her shoes. She was wearing her sunglasses and she looked cool. She smiled as they approached.
Willow said gently, “Aren’t you supposed to be doing your homework in the library?”
Buffy grinned at her. “I’m dawdling. With my friends.” Playfully she caught Xander’s arm between her own and cosied up to him.
“Works for me,” Xander said happily.
Just then, Cordelia, in a mad dash to make some kind of grand exit or grand entrance, bashed into Willow and didn’t even register it. As the Scooby Gang mumbled about her bad manners, she tripped down the stairs.
A very wicked-lovely black BMW, fully loaded with a moon roof and all the other good stuff, pulled up to the curb. From where she dawdled, Buffy could see Cordelia’s reflection perfectly mirrored in the sleek black exterior as the self-proclaimed Slayer of Dating took off her sunglasses like an aspiring spokesmodel and flashed her very large smile at the tinted window.
* * *
Oh, God. He had driven his Beemer to see her and everything. The tinted window rolled down and there he was, handsome, wealthy Richard Anderson, and he spoke the magic word: her name.
“Cordelia.”
She smiled hugely at him and never blinked, just as Doctor Debbi instructed. “Hi, Richard. Nice car.”
Some guy was sitting next to him, not as cute, not as fashionable. Cordelia didn’t pay any attention to him as Richard said, “So, we’re having a little get together tomorrow night at the house.”
The house. Their fraternity house. She followed his lips, his eyes, his dimples. He glanced at his friend, then to wherever his friend was looking. But that was okay. As long as she didn’t look elsewhere she was doing what she was supposed to.
Richard was saying, “And it’s going to be a really special evening.”
Now, Cordelia told herself, and let forth with a lovely trill of laughter: “Ha-ha ha-ha.”
Richard blinked and said, “Excuse me?”
Mmm. She had laughed wrong. Recovering, she renewed her efforts to never take her eyes off his face and said, “Oh, I’d love, love to!”
Richard looked past her again. “Who’s your friend?”
Cordelia turned. Buffy was smiling and laughing at some idiotic thing that loser Xander was saying. She did a mental double-take. What? Did he actually mean Buffy the Chosen Psycho-loony?
“Her? Oh, she’s not my friend,” Cordelia announced.
Richard’s friend spoke for the first time. “She’s amazing.”
“She’s more like a sister, really,” Cordelia amended without missing a beat. “We’re that close.”
Richard smiled at her—at Cordelia, the girl he was supposed to smile at—and said, “Why don’t you introduce us?”
Fuming on the inside, gazing and smiling for all she was worth, or rather, all Richard was worth, on the outside, Cordelia gritted, “Okay.”
* * *
Xander said, “Okay. So tonight, channel fifty-nine. Indian TV—sex, lies, incomprehensible story lines. I’ll bring the betel nuts.”
Buffy was psyched. Another quiet evening with her two best friends and something weird but not fatal. Her happy little notion of heaven.
Just then Cordelia walked up, grabbed Buffy, and started to haul her away. “Come on,” she hissed. “Richard and his fraternity brother want to meet you.”
Buffy stood her ground. “Well, I don’t really want to meet any fraternity boys.”
Cordelia gave her a venomous look. “And if there was a God, don’t you think He’d keep it that way?”
Cordelia renewed her hauling.
“Hey,” Xander called after them, “I believe we were dawdling here.”
And here was Cordy’s love slave out of his rich kid’s car. He flashed a full set of bonded porcelain at Buffy and said, “Hi, sweetheart. I’m Richard. And you are?”
“So not interested,” she said with feeling. She turned to leave. She only had a few minutes of freedom left, and she most definitely did not want to waste it on this Ken doll.
Cordelia grabbed her wrist. “She’s such a little comedienne!” she chirped, digging her acrylics into Buffy’s upper arm.
“What, she likes to play hard to get?” Richard asked.
“No, Richard.” This was the other guy who had been in the Beemer. “I think you’re playing easy to resist.” With that as her getaway line, Buffy walked away.
The other guy stepped shyly in front of her and said, “Feel free to ignore him. I do all the time.”
Buffy hesitated. This guy seemed a little more normal.
“I’m Tom Warner,” he said. “I’m a senior at Crestwood College and I feel just like a complete dolt meeting you this way.” He crossed his arms. “So here I stand in all my doltishness.”
* * *
Xander, eavesdropping, said to Willow, who was also eavesdropping, “Right. Like she’s gonna fall for that.”
* * *
Okay, I won’t stake him, Buffy thought. Here was a guy who talked the nice talk. Who was actually being real. Who truly seemed interested in her.
“I’m Buffy Summers,” she told him.
“Nice to meet you. Are you a senior?”
She wasn’t fooled . . . maybe, but it was nice of him to pay her the compliment anyway. “Junior.”
“Me, too,” he said brightly, “except that I’m a senior, and I’m in college.” He grinned. “So we have that in common.” Then he added, “And I major in history.”
“Mmm. History stumps me,” Buffy admitted. “I have a hard enough time remembering what happened last week.”
“Nothing happened last week. Don’t worry. I was there,” he assured her.
Buffy smiled, making a mental list of Tom’s attributes: Witty. Friendly. Liking her. Not so bad, for a frat boy.
* * *
Xander said to Willow: “She’s going to walk away. Now.”
* * *
Tom must have sensed that Buffy was defrosting around the edges, because he said, “So my friend asked your friend to this party we’re having tomorrow night.”
As if that were a huge, entertaining notion, Cordelia’s most-fake laughter rang out across the land: “Ha-ha ha-ha ha-ha.”
He lowered his voice. “You know, actually he’s not really my friend. I only joined the fraternity because my father and grampa were in it before me. It meant a lot to them.”
* * *
Xander was still sending his masterful ESP waves to Buffy: “Okay, boots, start a-walkin’.”
* * *
“I know, I talk too much. Anyway,” Tom went on, “they’re really dull parties full of really dull people, so would you like to come and save me from a really dull fate?”
Temptworthy, she decided, but she said sincerely, “Oh, I wish I could, but I’m sort of involved.”
�
��Oh.” He was let down. “Sure. Of course you are. Well, thanks for letting me ramble.”
Buffy was sorry. She said warmly, “You know, people underestimate the value of a good ramble.”
He smiled, grateful for her attempt to take the sting out the rejection.
“Buffy!” Giles called, clearly irritated.
Buffy turned. He was standing near the front door of the school, tapping his watch.
“Oh, I gotta go,” she told Tom. “It was nice to meet you.” She meant it.
His smile was genuine, friendly, unsmarmy. “Same here.”
* * *
Willow nodded to Buffy as Buffy scurried away. The fraternity guy she’d been talking to was still looking at her, obviously intrigued. Willow sighed inwardly. Must be nice. Scary, though. Those older guys.
Beside her, Xander shook his head. He was clearly disgusted. “I hate these guys. Whatever they want just falls into their laps. Don’t you hate these guys?”
Willow nodded absently. “Yeah, with their charmed lives and their movie star good looks and more money than you can count . . .” Then she realized she was probably punching Xander in the macho plexus, so she assured him, “I’m hating.”
* * *
What was wrong with the girl? All his efforts to prepare her for her duty as a Slayer seemed to go for naught. How did the Americans so charmingly put it? She continually blew him off.
Giles couldn’t keep his irritation out of his voice as he faced her, he in arm guards, she in a thinnish shirt and sweat pants. He said, “I’m going to attack you. Word of caution: for your own good, I won’t be pulling any punches.”
She said defiantly, “Please don’t.”
He rushed her with a short sword. She kicked it out of his hand. Immediately he countered with a wooden rod, which she broke in half with her foot without so much as blinking.
He lunged. She sidestepped. He slid past her on the tabletop.
Drat it all. He was only reinforcing her belief that she didn’t need to practice. “Good,” he bit off. “So you’re on patrol and I’ll see you in the morning.”
Unless something happened to her.
Sometimes he wanted to shake her. Shake some sense into that keen mind, so muddled by the vast cultural wasteland in which she lived.