“Anything else happen tonight?”
“I dunno.” Her daughter shrugged again. “I met a guy. Is there anything to eat?”
“There’s some leftover chicken in the fridge.” Joyce couldn’t help but smile. Buffy had met a boy? That was like a real-world sort of thing; the sort of thing other mothers worried about.
“So, tell me about this young man.”
For a moment, Buffy was too busy feeding her face to speak.
Joyce did her best not to frown. “You know, you could get a plate.”
Buffy swallowed. “Sorry, Mom. I think I ate all of the chicken already. I could go for a glass of milk.”
Joyce reached into a cupboard at her side and pulled out a clean glass. Buffy accepted it with a nod and turned back to the refrigerator.
“Now,” Joyce tried again. “About this—”
“This guy?” Buffy pulled out the milk carton and quickly filled the glass to the rim. “I don’t know much about him. He seems nice. He hunts vampires too.”
“Oh,” Joyce replied. She didn’t know what else to say. She still didn’t want to sound upset, but something like “That’s nice,” simply didn’t feel appropriate. It was her own fault, looking for some normalcy in her daughter’s life. With Buffy, nothing was ever quite normal.
Buffy sighed as if she hadn’t noticed her mother’s silence. She finished the glass of milk in three long gulps.
“Not that it matters,” she said as she took the glass from her lips. “I doubt that I’ll see him again. He’s more of a man of mystery.”
Like that last boyfriend you had, Joyce thought, that Angel? She still wasn’t quite sure what had happened there. Trying to talk to her daughter about that was absolutely hopeless!
“’Night Mom.” Buffy put the glass in the sink and turned to leave the room.
“Goodnight, dear,” Joyce said, more by reflex than anything. At least they’d spoken to one another, but it didn’t really feel like a serious talk. Joyce realized she really wanted something out of these mother/daughter moments. If her daughter was destined to be the Chosen One, Joyce wanted to be included, too—well, at least in the nice, positive, non-bloody parts of being the Chosen One.
She heard Buffy climb the stairs. It was Joyce’s turn to sigh. Perhaps she was rushing things. It hadn’t been all that long since Buffy had tried to run away from it all. Maybe things would get better after they calmed down a bit.
Joyce turned on the water to wash out the glass. Things had to calm down, didn’t they?
Rupert Giles had once thought this was a good idea. Unfortunately, the printout before him was useless—twenty pages of gibberish, really. They had worked on this for weeks, but for every solution they found, two new problems had taken their place.
He had meant well. He supposed he always meant well.
It had all come about after Buffy’s disappearance. Only then had Giles realized how shortsighted he had been. He hadn’t a clue about how desperately unhappy Buffy had become. He supposed he hadn’t really wanted to see. He could think of no other explanation.
Perhaps I was blinded by my own pain over the loss of Jenny. Giles sighed. A Watcher was not allowed those sort of excuses. He had simply not watched Buffy well enough.
Anyone struggling through their teenage years went through enormous pressures, both physical changes and emotional upheaval. Just because she was the Slayer, why would Buffy be any different? Yet it was a part of his charge that Giles had never considered.
There were other problems in Sunnydale as well. Principal Snyder considered Buffy a troublemaker. Giles had taken care of that. But it wasn’t going to be easy for the girl.
The Hellmouth seemed to attract all sorts of supernatural activity. So far, whatever they had confronted, they had triumphed over. But it was all done facing one crisis after another, reacting at the last minute. Some day, Giles feared that something would come along that they couldn’t pull together information about in the eleventh hour, something that would destroy them all.
The Slayer, while powerful, was not immortal. Kendra, the Slayer destined to follow in Buffy’s footsteps, was now dead. Buffy, and all of them, could easily follow.
Giles couldn’t do much to resolve the issues in Buffy’s personal life, but maybe he could ease some of the cares of being the Slayer. So he had proposed what he had thought a simple solution to Willow Rosenberg, their resident computer guru and one of Buffy’s best friends.
While still only a high school senior, Willow was a genius at looking at that morass known as the World Wide Web and pulling out just the right information. Giles had found her an immense help in his fight with the supernatural. Between Willow’s electronic connections and Giles’s extensive library of the occult, they could cover almost every situation.
Willow had caught on to what he had wanted right away. “A probability program, right? We get all the icky things that happened in Sunnydale ranked by how likely they are to happen again. Sort of a giant pyramid of ick. That way, we can help Buffy be ready for anything. I can do that.”
And perhaps she could, eventually. She had combined her case studies, her research, and all of Giles’s historical notes. But rather than an easy solution, all that access caused another problem. There was simply too much information available to them. All of it had potential use, but which of it was really important?
Giles reread the most recent printout—dense pages of words, some in complete sentences, some not. Giles picked a page at random:
“Ten thousand demons await an army of the undead. Uzgrabel, who drinks human tears; Nicoteses, who cracks human skulls; Lianectes, the eater of eyes . . .”
It was all vague and sinister—icky, as Willow liked to put it. More importantly, Giles couldn’t find a context for it to make a great deal of sense.
“Willow—” he began.
She snatched the printout from his hand. “All over the place, right? I can fix that.”
Ah, Giles thought, the optimism of youth. They would soldier on. And perhaps find a way to tame the Hellmouth for good.
Chapter 3
HE STOOD ON A HILL.
It was the most peaceful and beautiful of hills. The sun was warm, the breezes cool, and the lush grass cushioned his bare feet.
Why was he not wearing shoes?
He looked down and saw that he was naked. For a moment he found this alarming. Not only was he without clothes, but he lacked all of those tools he kept on or near his person, things to protect him both on the physical and mystical planes. Surely, this was a quiet and beautiful day in the least threatening of locations, but why would he venture out without those things he had come to rely on?
He felt a rumbling beneath his feet. The ground, he realized, was not warmed by the sun above them. Rather, it was heated by something below. The grass between his toes became sharp and brittle. The hill below him shook with such force that he nearly lost his footing. He saw a crack open before him in the earth, a fissure from which poured a light so bright it might overwhelm the sun.
This was no peaceful hill. This was no day without care. This was the Last Day—that time when the order that his kind had brought to the world thousands of years ago would unravel at last.
He stood upon that spot where the ending would begin. He recognized the fissures snaking about his feet, knew the horrible light.
For he stood upon the mouth of Hell itself. . . .
He awoke then, his bedclothes bathed in sweat. But his waking gave him no release. He knew the exact meaning of the recent dream.
Quite likely, it was mankind’s future.
There is nothing, Buffy thought, that can’t be cured by a good night at the Bronze. Well, if not cured, at least forgotten for a few hours of good music and good company.
This particular club was the best thing about Sunnydale. Well, the town was in sunny southern California with its fabulous weather, but after a while, even fabulous weather could get pretty boring. As for everything but the weather
—please! One even had to go to the next town to find a decent mall! But the Bronze, an “all-ages” club that would let you in when you were old enough to have a high school ID; a huge, dark warehouse of a place with live bands three or four nights a week—the Bronze was the perfect place to unwind after a hectic day of the supernatural torment that was high school—a place to get out there and socialize. Or at least what passed for socializing in Sunnydale.
The band was jamming, but she could still hear her friends’ voices from twenty feet away.
“Xander!” Cordelia Chase shouted over the music as she marched toward Buffy’s table, not to mention purposefully away from Xander. “After what you said back there, I don’t even know if we’re talking!”
Xander jogged after the statuesque brunette, like a court jester following his queen. Cordelia was dressed tonight in a skintight red number that was halfway between a dress and a pantsuit. But did it really matter what Cordelia was wearing? She looked good in everything. When Cordelia wasn’t busy talking, she was into making fashion statements.
“Of course we’re talking,” Xander called after his retreating girlfriend. “Look. Your mouth opens, your lips move, sounds come out. That’s called talking.”
Buffy recognized the look on Xander’s face—the smart-aleck grin that wanted to say something cutting; lucky for Xander that grin was below those puppy-dog eyes of his that just wanted to be loved. There was part of Xander that never lost that puppy-dog quality.
Xander was dressed in one of his usual choices, a colorful shirt with pants of basic black. The basic scruffy look, the basic I-have-never-even-heard-the-word-fashion look. Buffy was still a little amazed every time she saw the two of them together: the Fashion Queen and Mr. Dressed-Down Teen. If ever there was proof that opposites attract—well, basically, Cordelia and Xander should show up in the textbooks.
Cordelia stopped her march and spun around to fix Xander with one of her patented glares. “You may be talking, but I’m not listening!”
“So, instead of shutting your mouth, you’ve learned to shut your ears?” Xander taunted.
“I didn’t realize we were going to get to see World War Three!” someone shouted next to Buffy, barely making herself heard over the music. Buffy turned to see Willow gesturing across the table at the Xander and Cordy Show. Buffy had been so busy watching the squabble that she hadn’t seen Willow sit down next to her.
Buffy nodded. “It’s an unadvertised special. ‘Come to the Bronze. See hot new bands and a nuclear meltdown’.”
Willow smiled in that perpetually perky way she had. Oz plopped himself down next to Willow and grinned, too. Besides being Willow’s boyfriend, Oz was perhaps the world’s most easygoing human being. Oz was happy. Willow was happy. When the two of them were together, they made Barney the dinosaur look like Oscar the Grouch.
Was Buffy bitter? Nah. Just lonely, and miserable, and looking for the nearest hole where she could hide. But bitter? Well—maybe.
Oz took his turn nodding up at the Xander/Cordelia fight. “And they say nothing happens in Sunnydale.”
The band finished playing with a crash of drums. Xander and Cordelia both paused mid-yell. No longer surrounded by rock and roll, they seemed to realize their ever escalating argument might draw a little attention.
Both glanced a little sheepishly at Buffy, Willow, and Oz, suddenly aware of all their friends. “Hey,” Xander said. “Everybody knows we have our little differences. Do we need to share them with everybody? I think not.” He touched Cordelia’s arm. “Maybe we should go someplace private and argue there.”
Cordelia looked down at Xander’s hand on her arm with an expression that said she had never seen a hand before. Especially that particular hand, which was worthy of a great deal of further study. “Yeah,” she agreed. “Private.”
Buffy could see the anger drain from both of them as they stared at each other. Xander and Cordelia had been together long enough for Buffy to know every twist and turn of their “opposites attract” routine. They had gone through the opposites part—that was the fight. Now it was time for the attraction. Buffy figured that was the basic rule of the Xander/Cordy relationship: There was no argument that couldn’t be solved by a good half hour of necking out by the Bronze’s back stairs.
“Cordelia!” a voice shouted from somewhere above. “Just the person I wanted to see!”
Amanda Singer came trooping down the metal staircase from the club’s upper level, trailed by three young men. Interesting, Buffy thought. Not that—attractive young thing that Amanda was—she wasn’t often trailed by various members of the opposite sex, but these particular three appeared to be different. There was something, not exactly unfriendly, but guarded, about the way they looked around, like they’d never been in a place like the Bronze before. Her Slayer sense was on red alert.
“Amanda?” Cordelia blinked, released for an instant from Xander’s spell.
Cordelia existed in two worlds. One was the cheerleader-centered, popularity-is-everything-and-you’re-excluded side of high school; when Buffy had first come to Sunnydale, that was the side where Cordelia had reigned as queen. Now, though, Cordelia had entered the somewhat stranger, definitely geekier side of things that came with Xander and his friends. To Cordelia’s credit, she decided to accept both sides of high school, and even put Amanda and her other old buds in their place when they tried to put Xander down.
“Anyway, Cordelia,” Amanda’s far-too-chipper voice brought Buffy back down to earth. “My three cousins are visiting all the way from England!”
“Wales, actually,” said the tallest of the three newcomers. Buffy decided he had a very nice smile. So they were foreigners. They weren’t dressed all that foreign. Maybe a little Goth, with black jeans and black sweaters, but nothing that didn’t fit into the Bronze. But the foreign thing—that’s why she had heard the alarm bells. Giles had told her that she had a special sense, something to do with being the Slayer, that let her know when anything new and different was going on. It was that sense that helped her scope out vampires.
Apparently, it also helped her scope out guys from Wales.
Amanda flipped her long, anything-but-natural-blond hair out of her face. “So, they came over with my uncle, who told me I had to take them out and show them a good time. Can you imagine? Well, anyway, I was thinking, who could these three relate to, when I thought of your little friends.”
Cordelia frowned. “Amanda. You remember what I said about being cool. Anybody I’m with—”
“—is cool?” Amanda blinked innocently. “Well, of course Cordelia. That goes without saying.” She waved vaguely toward Buffy and the others. “Well, I guess I just don’t understand them. And I don’t understand my cousins, either. No offense, guys. So I figured—well, why don’t I just introduce you?”
The tall one in the middle had had enough of this. He stepped forward.
“Hi. My name’s Ian. My brothers here are Tom and Dave.” Even though he spoke to everyone, Buffy realized he was looking directly at her.
The three of them did look more or less like brothers. All three had pale skin and black hair. Tom and Dave both had somewhat round faces. They seemed younger than Ian, although Dave tried to hide it with a scruffy beard on his chin. Ian’s face was more of an oval, with stronger cheekbones than his brothers. That, combined with his soft accent, reminded Buffy of some kind of English lord on Masterpiece Theater.
“See?” Amanda chirped. “That wasn’t so hard. And these are Xander and Willow and Buffy and—oh, that guy who plays in a band. . . .”
“Oz,” the guy who played in the band replied with an all-too-patient grin. Buffy guessed it was all right with Oz if Amanda never knew exactly who he was.
“Good. I’m glad that’s settled.” Amanda managed to turn her back on everyone but her old friend. “Now Cordelia. Have you seen Naomi?”
Cordelia frowned. “Not for weeks. Do you have any dirt?”
Amanda fluttered her hands, as if it
were all too much. “Well, her father is away on a business trip, so maybe it’s some kind of parent thing!”
Xander sat down at Buffy’s table. “Excuse me, but maybe I could talk to some real people?”
Ian frowned. “Cordelia isn’t real?”
Buffy smiled up at the three newcomers. “I think what Xander’s trying to say is that Cordelia has her own version of reality.”
“Gossipland, USA,” Willow added.
Both of Ian’s brothers laughed at that. Ian frowned at them.
“You’ll have to forgive our brother,” Dave explained. “He’s the eldest, so he’s got to be serious enough for all of us.”
“It’s an awesome responsibility,” Tom agreed, “but Ian’s up to it.”
Ian shook his head and glanced back at his cousin, who appeared to be deep in conversation with Cordelia about Naomi’s current hair color. “They are going to go on for awhile, aren’t they?”
“Trust us,” Xander replied, “we know.”
Buffy waved the three newcomers forward. “Sit. Eat.”
“Listen,” Willow added. “Talk, maybe.”
Ian nodded, and the three of them went to search for empty chairs at nearby tables.
Xander looked mournfully at both Buffy and Willow. “Sometimes, I think, there might be some other girl for me.”
Willow made a tsking sound. “You don’t have the best track record. Mummies, bugs, every woman in Sunnydale wanting you for a love toy? Ring a bell?”
All of them had had plenty of close scrapes with the supernatural—it came with living on top of the Hellmouth. For Buffy, it had been her relationship with Angel, a vampire with a soul. She winced inside. Will thinking about Angel ever stop hurting?
And for Xander? Well, the dark and exotic stranger had seemed like a cute South American foreign exchange student, except she really was this ancient mummy whose kiss could suck the life out of a person. And Xander and the mummy had come this close to kissing. And then there was that witch’s spell that turned horribly wrong. . . .
“Inca Mummy Girls,” Xander repeated slowly. “Every woman in Sunnydale. Oh yeah.” He waved at his girlfriend. She continued to ignore him. “Cordelia and I are going to stay together forever.”
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