by Nancy Holder
Reach for the Sky—and Die! the screen read again, and Xander grinned. Less than an hour into the festival, and he felt he’d already gotten an admission price’s worth of entertainment—and he hadn’t even had to pay.
Buffy and the others didn’t know what they were missing.
Six against one had become four against two, now that Angel had joined the fray and stood at Buffy’s back. The odds weren’t great, she thought, but they were improving. Aside from inexplicably vanishing when their heads were torn off, their attackers hadn’t manifested any other paranormal attributes to speak of. The biker-gang members seemed to be pretty close to baseline human—rambunctious and antisocial human, but human all the same, at least in terms of strength and durability.
Not to mention smarts, she realized as one of the bikes broke formation. Its rider had forfeited the advantage to try to strike at her with a length of chain doubled up like a club. The move was a mistake on the rider’s part, and Buffy was more than willing to show him why.
“Watch this,” Buffy said over her shoulder. There were moments when she liked showing off; besides, it was her turn. Angel had taken the last one.
The rider’s spiraling track brought him close, then closer still. The chain lashed out as the biker swung his weapon in her direction. Buffy swung too, slashing the battle-axe in a short, perfectly timed arc. The steel head’s razor-sharp edge intersected with the biker’s arm just above the bend of his elbow. It passed through the arm as easily as it would have through flesh and bone. Forearm and chain spun away into the night.
The biker screamed a bad word. With his remaining hand, he twisted his handlebars hard and gunned the bike directly at her. The bike reared up. The rider screamed something at her, barely audible over the engine’s roar but clearly very, very impolite. His eyes gleamed in the streetlight’s yellow glow, and the chrome of his motorized steed flashed. Every muscle in Buffy’s body tensed. Her mind was moving so quickly that the world around her seemed to have shifted into low gear.
She had to time things perfectly. Drop again into the barest beginnings of a crouch. Grip the battle-axe and get ready to swing. When the biker’s close enough—too close to change course—spring to one side and chop at him again. The moves were simple stuff, things she’d practiced with Giles countless times, but the moment had to be just right.
The moment never came. As the motorcycle’s front wheel raised and the big bike poised like a snake to strike, it began to fade. Adrenaline still pushed her senses into high-speed overdrive and slowed the world around her. For the first time Buffy saw what happened next not as an event but as a process. The outlines of both bike and biker wavered and softened. Their colors faded and what had been solid and real became misty and translucent, like a fading photographic image.
“Buffy, look out!” Angel shouted, from what seemed like a world away.
The bike’s front wheel came down. The biker was trying to pin her between knobby tire and dirty pavement. She still had time to dodge, but she already knew that the need to do so was gone.
The biker’s mouth was open, but no sound came out. He was fog now, and then less than fog. Looking up, she found that she could look through him and see the waxing moon beyond. Then he was gone completely.
“Wow,” she said softly. “Wicked cool!”
The remaining bikers peeled off and beat a hasty retreat. As the last went, Angel hurled the blade she’d given him, aiming squarely at the last rider’s leather-jacketed back. By the time it should have struck, the target had vanished.
“In the back?” she asked Angel, one eyebrow raised, as her world shifted back into normal gear. This wasn’t the first time she’d experienced the time-dilation effect.
Her vampire paramour shrugged. The battle had come to an end, and as if to commemorate that fact, his features reverted to human-normal. As they softened and shifted, he said, “Seemed like a good idea at the time. I knew he wasn’t human.”
“I’m wondering if he was even alive,” Buffy said.
“Ghost?”
It was Buffy’s turn to shrug. “Dunno,” she said. “Giles has a bug up his nose about spook stuff, though.” With a few quick sentences she summarized the library briefing. By the time she finished, her breath and pulse were normal again.
They spent the next several minutes looking for evidence, but there was none. The only signs that the bikers had ever been there were secondary: tracks in the street’s oil and dirt, and scrapes where the first, toppled bike had slid along the asphalt. There was no tire rubber, no metal trace or paint transfer, not even the scent of exhaust fumes. Once again it was as if their attackers had never existed.
“Busy night,” Angel observed. He’d gone to retrieve the boka and was loping back to her now.
“Yeah,” Buffy said. She almost smiled as she remembered her own complaints about the previous night, the long hours of wary tension and waiting for action. Someday, she thought, she’d need to count her blessings. “It was either that or go to the movies,” she said.
“Movies?” Angel asked.
“Xander’s thing,” she reminded him.
He nodded as he fell into step with her, clearly intending to accompany her on the rest of her patrol. “I went out there,” he said. “Did some looking around. If that place is a festering hellhole of occult evil, I can’t see it.”
But to Buffy’s practiced ears he sounded like he had his doubts.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I’ll always be a cheerleader in my heart,” said the girl on the movie screen. She had long dark hair that fell to her shoulders like a waterfall. She pulled the handsome premed student closer to her for a kiss that was long and slow. When at last they came up for air, she continued, “Always. But I’ll never be lonely again!”
The credits began to roll. Xander blinked and rubbed his eyes. He was only half awake. Eight hours of movie watching was a lot, and it seemed to him that the quadruple feature had stretched on even longer than the dashboard clock said.
Four features, uncounted coming attractions, a cartoon, and miscellaneous concession stand spots had filled their night at the drive-in. Xander had spent longer periods watching television at home, of course, but that was at home, sprawled on a well-worn couch with a remote control within easy reach. The marathon drive-in experience was something altogether different, even with the preparatory nap.
Xander’s eyelids drooped and his muscles were sore. An insect or two had bitten him. Half a sack of popcorn and nearly a gallon of supermarket soda pop had left his mouth feeling mighty funky. He rubbed his eyes some more, then stretched and yawned, making each breath a deep one. Gradually full consciousness returned. With a tight grin he turned the key and started the engine
“Wow, what a great night!” he said softly.
He meant it too. Xander had enjoyed every minute, and even with the morning-after consequences, he logged the night solidly in the plus column. The film festival had been a nightlong peek into a world he’d missed by being born too late. The broadly drawn characters, the cartoonlike action, and the goofy plots struck a nerve with him. The drive-in was like a comic book come to life, just not a very good one. Asian men executing flying kicks, elderly aristocrats with chainsaws that roared, inmates rising up to free themselves—all of those were very neat things, indeed.
Sometimes the not-very-good comics were the best ones.
The car engine coughed once or twice, then came to life. Through the windshield the drive-in screen read GOOD NIGHT, FOLKS. DRIVE CAREFULLY! And beyond the screen, the dark bowl of the night sky displayed the barest streaks of pink. The morning sun approached. It was time to go home.
“What did you think, Jonathan?” he asked.
The only answer was a soft snore from the seat beside him. Levenson had conked out sometime during the closing credits for Mysteries of Chainsaw Mansion, the second movie. Xander had prodded him awake, only to lose him again during Caged Blondes. The poor little guy didn’t get to see a single minu
te of The Lonely Cheerleader.
“So much for companionship,” he said, backing the car out of its parking slot. He was one of the late-stayers; at least three-quarters of the massed cars had left an hour or more before. Even so, the Harrismobile wasn’t the last car to roll slowly along the gravel-lined exit route. To his amusement, at least a dozen parked cars remained, their interiors dark and their occupants vague in the premorning gloom.
“Some people don’t know when they’ve had enough of a good thing,” Xander muttered, accelerating slightly. Gravel sprayed up from the roadbed and rattled against the car’s undercarriage. “Hear that?” he asked in a louder voice. “That’s the sound of horsepower, my friend!”
Jonathan snored some more.
Xander took his eyes from the road long enough to glance at his passenger. Jonathan was out like a light. He was slumped against the car door with head lolled back and mouth hanging open.
That wouldn’t do, Xander decided. He reached across the space between them and poked the other boy’s shoulder, gently at first and then with more vigor. “Wake up, little Susie,” he said.
No response.
“JONATHAN! WAKE UP!” Xander said again. This time he’d shouted loud enough in the closed confines to make even his own ears hurt.
“Grnk?” Jonathan said, startled. “Huh? Wha—?” He looked around himself, first at Xander and then at the predawn world as it rolled by outside. “We’re going?” he asked.
“Uh-huh,” Xander said. Some idiot had come to the event in an extralong SUV, and half the oversize vehicle extended from the parking slot, blocking Xander’s path. He edged around it and tooted his horn in irritation. There was no response that he could see or hear.
What the heck were these people thinking? The show was over and it was time to go home.
“Cheerleader?” Jonathan asked.
“Very lonely,” Xander said. “A masterpiece of the motion-picture art form.”
It was only half true. Xander’s own flirtation with drowsiness had come sometime during the fourth and final film—naturally, the one he’d wanted to see most, if only so that he could needle Cordelia about it. Even so, something about the flick had gnawed at him. Half awake, half asleep, he’d had a moment of insight about the events of the film. Now an insight about the movie bubbled somewhere just below the threshold of his conscious mind. It was like the answer to a question on a history pop quiz, the stray bit of knowledge that you knew wouldn’t be available for use until long after you wanted it. The more he tried to dredge the thought up, the more it evaded him.
“Oh,” Jonathan said. He sighed, but the sigh morphed into another snore.
He was still snoring when Xander pulled up in front of the Levenson house. This time Xander couldn’t wake him. The best he could do was coax Jonathan halfway to awareness. With Xander guiding him, the kid moved like a sleepwalker as he opened his front door and tottered inside.
“Thanks for coming, J,” Xander said.
“Grphl” was all he heard Jonathan say before the door slammed shut.
“Xander! Oh, my heavens, Xander!” Hands grabbed his shoulders and shook him. “Xander, wake up! Please wake up!”
“Huh? Wha—?” Xander said, his voice fuzzy from sleep. He struggled a bit, but something wrapped itself around him. Adrenaline rushed through him. Was he under some kind of attack?
“Wake up, please!” It was a woman’s voice. It was probably a woman’s hand that slapped his right cheek, barely enough to sting but hard enough to make a loud popping noise.
“He’s probably drunk!” A man’s voice, more distant but louder, boomed in his ears. “Out all night! I warned him!”
Xander’s eyes opened. His hand came up, just in time to intercept a second slap. He blinked at the worried-looking woman leaning over his bed.
“Mom?” he said. He disentangled himself from the sheets and scooted back in his bed, partly to sit and partly in case another slap was coming. Slapping was a wake-up trick that played better in the movies than it did in real life.
“Oh, thank heavens,” Mrs. Harris said. “I was so frightened!”
“Mom, what’s wrong?” he asked.
“You were asleep and you wouldn’t wake up—”
He was bleary-eyed but could see enough to read his clock radio’s display. It was only nine a.m., he realized with a shock. “Mom,” he said. “We talked about this! I was out all night! Of course I was sleeping late!”
“I know, I know,” she said. “But I was so worried.”
“Tell the boy I warned him!” his father boomed from somewhere down the hall. “He’s lucky I don’t come in there and tell him how lucky he is!”
His mother was near tears, and even his dad seemed pretty worked up about something. Suddenly, he had a bad feeling about the situation. “Mom, I’m fine,” he said. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
“It’s Jonathan Levenson,” she said.
“Jonathan?” Xander asked. The bad feeling became a really bad feeling. “I dropped him off on the way home.”
“I know,” Mrs. Harris said. “His parents called. They found him on the living room floor.”
Saturday breakfast was eggs. Joyce had whipped up what she called a “sort of omelet,” incorporating bits of ham and cheese with bits of leftover veggies from previous meals. As so often happened with such improvised dishes, the whole was more than the sum of its parts.
“This is delish,” Buffy said, raising another forkful. She and her mother were seated in the breakfast nook, and the morning sun’s rays streamed in through one of the large windows.
“Thank you, dear,” Joyce said. The praise pleased, but it frustrated, too: She knew that she’d never be able to re-create the dish exactly.
“No, really,” Buffy said, and favored her mother with a glance. “You’ve been watching PBS again, haven’t you?” she asked in mock accusation. “All those cooking shows, with those French gigolos!”
Joyce shook her head. She ate some of her own serving and realized what Buffy meant. There was something vaguely exotic about the mélange of egg and oddment. For such a humble meal, it tasted surprisingly sophisticated. “Just some spices,” she said, at a loss for any more detailed explanation.
Several textbooks sat in a tidy stack next to Buffy’s elbow. Their presence at dinner would have been unacceptable, but in the morning, on a weekend day, they were welcome indicators of rare studiousness on Buffy’s part. Joyce knew her daughter was a bright girl, and gifted in so many ways, but Buffy really hadn’t seemed to have found her path in life just yet.
“What are your plans for today, dear?” Joyce asked.
“Study,” Buffy said.
That certainly sounded like a fine idea to Joyce. “That’s good,” she said, offering up a bit of positive reinforcement before moving on to more challenging ground.
Buffy nodded. Her plate was almost clean, but one last slice of toast remained on the serving dish between them. She made a questioning glance in Joyce’s direction and, after noting a nod of permission, took the piece of bread.
“Xander, Willow, and I are getting together,” she said. “Maybe Cordelia.”
The enthusiasm in Buffy’s voice dropped a bit with the last words, but Joyce chose not to notice. When Buffy had first begun classes at Sunnydale High, she’d never wanted to talk much about her schoolmates. Cordelia Chase had been one of the exceptions, and the subject of regular grousing on Buffy’s part. That seemed to be changing. Joyce didn’t know how and she didn’t know why, but to judge from some of Buffy’s recent comments, there seemed to be the barest chance that the two girls were becoming friends, at least of a sort. As far as Joyce could tell, that pretty much had to be for the good; the Chases seemed to be a good family, and her daughter could always use a friend.
“You and Cordelia seem to be getting along well lately,” Joyce said lightly.
“Things change,” Buffy said, not quite as lightly. “But think of it as an armed truce. Or that
détente thing.”
“You’re growing up,” Joyce said hopefully.
“That’s one way to look at things,” Buffy said. Her expressive eyes took on a faraway look and she smiled, very faintly, as if at a joke that only she knew. A joke, or a kind of truth.
Buffy was hiding something, Joyce knew. Her own teenage years weren’t so long gone that she couldn’t remember the way things worked. Secrets were part and parcel of life, never more so than in the adolescent years. Whatever the secret, she could only hope that it wasn’t too serious.
She soldiered on. “Maybe you could have Cordelia over for dinner sometime . . . ,” Joyce started to say.
“Oh, yeah, like that’s going to happen,” Buffy replied with an air of absolute dismissal.
It was time to change the subject. Joyce took a breath, trying not to be obvious about it. “You were out late last night, weren’t you?” Joyce asked. She made the question a gentle one.
Bite, chew, swallow, speak, then bite again: Buffy had it down to a precise system. Unfortunately for Joyce, her question had come at the beginning of the sequence, so she had to wait for an answer. That gave her daughter a chance to think things through before responding, Joyce knew, but there was nothing to be done for it.
Buffy swallowed. For good measure she lifted her glass and swallowed again, orange juice this time. At last she said, “Yeah, later than I’d planned. It wasn’t a school night, and—”
“It’s all right, Buffy,” Joyce said. “I noticed, that’s all.” She liked to think that she noticed more than her daughter realized.