Oz and the others watched her head away, then Angel looked back at the table. “I was looking for Buffy. Have you guys seen her?”
“Why?” Xander demanded. “What do you—”
Willow elbowed Xander into silence. “She’s on patrol,” she quickly told the vampire. “But she might be around later.”
Angel nodded his thanks, then, in the way he often did, somehow slipped into the shadows. Oz turned his attention back to the band manager, noting the regal walk, the total self-confidence as she wound her way through the tables to the exit. And why shouldn’t she be that way? As she’d told them, she had the connections to make it happen. Oz stared after her thoughtfully, then glanced back at his friends. Devon and Xander were elated, chattering and laughing; his girlfriend sat quietly, listening to the other two but not saying anything, the way he so often did himself.
Oz looked toward the door in time to see it shut behind Alysa Bardrick. Was she really going to come back later and listen to them play, or was that just one of her standard operating lines? Nah—of course she’d be back. How could she represent a band if she hadn’t heard them play?
Yeah, she’d be back. As for Willow, he hoped she was working this out in her head, and he hoped the results would be favorable. Because as Alysa had said, all they really needed was a leader.
“So it’s like what—Baby Godzilla?”
“Hmmm,” Giles said. He walked back and forth in front of the lockup where they kept Buffy’s assortment of weapons, the same cage where Oz also waited out his wilder side three nights of every month.
“No, wait,” Buffy said from behind him. “That can’t be right. It’s obviously Peter Pan.”
“Hmmm-mmm,” Giles said agreeably. He took off his glasses and peered at the imprisoned creature, then put them back on. The strange beast on the other side of the gate regarded him in return, looking savage but uncomfortably intelligent. He didn’t like this, not at all.
“Giles!”
He whirled. “What!”
His much-irritated Slayer, muddy around the edges from her capture of the animal, was standing there with her hands on her hips. “Could you come out of Hmmmm Land long enough to answer me?”
“Yes, right,” he said. “Of course. And what . . . was the question?”
Buffy rolled her eyes. “I asked you what it is. Excuse me for being tired, but it feels like you’ve been looking at the thing for hours. You’ve at least got a theory, right?”
“A theory,” he repeated. “Yes, well, my theory is that . . . I don’t rightly know what it is.” He turned and stared at it again, thankful that he and Buffy had been able to convince Joyce they had it contained safely enough so that she could return home. Buffy had done a quick circuit of the neighborhood, looking for other creatures. In the meantime, he had skimmed through all the main books on demons that he could recall having something to do with animal shapes, but nothing had any resemblance. “It looks vaguely reptilian, but my knowledge of herpetology is rather lacking, I’m afraid. A bird’s beak, that long tail. It—” He stopped and shook his head, smiling to himself.
“What?” Buffy demanded.
“Nothing,” he said. “Utterly ridiculous. Just . . . never mind.”
“Giles,” Buffy said sternly. “Me Slayer, you Watcher. Share!”
“Well,” he looked back at the cage and hesitated. “My paleontology background is right up there with herpetology—sorely lacking—but I . . . it’s just that it rather resembles a dinosaur, don’t you think?”
Buffy’s eyes widened, but before she could respond, they heard another voice as the doors to the library were pushed open.
“That’s exactly what it is,” Oz said mildly as he strode over to the cage. Xander and Willow followed close behind him, but only Xander dared to go right up to the steel barrier with him. “It’s called a Timimus.”
“Tim who?” Xander asked. He stuck his face close to the door and the thing inside lunged at him without warning. “Yikes!” Xander jerked backward and the whole floor shook as the beast hit the door, then thumped down. It was up again instantly, filling the library with more noise than the monkey house in the zoo at feeding time.
“Good Lord,” Giles said, staring. “It certainly is aggressive.”
“Especially for something that was supposed to feed on insects and small mammals,” Oz said.
“It doesn’t look right,” Buffy said with a frown. “It’s like deformed or something. The dinosaurs in Jurassic Park had teeth.”
“It’s certainly unique,” Xander commented. “ Somehow I don’t think it came out of Bob’s Pet Supply. Where’d you get it?”
“It attacked my neighbor’s Weimaraner,” Buffy told him.
“That’s what happens when you’re a weisenheimer,” Xander came right back.
“What do you know about this thing?” Giles asked Oz. “You’re sure that’s what it is—a dinosaur?”
“Definitely dino,” Oz affirmed. “From the land down under.”
Xander looked at him, surprised. “South America?”
“Australia,” Willow said, with infinite patience.
“It looks like a big bird,” Buffy said. “A turkey, or an—”
“Ostrich,” Oz finished. “It’s one of what paleontologists call ‘ostrich mimics.’” He stepped even closer to the metal door.
“Oz,” Giles said hastily. “Be careful. For something that you say hunted rather small prey, it’s quite hostile.”
Oz glanced at him from the corner of his eye. “The cage brings that out.”
Giles blinked. “Oh, I, uh . . .”
“What’s really cool about this thing is that they believe it actually hibernated during cold temperatures,” he continued. “Just like certain mammals do.”
“I thought they were supposed to be cold-blooded,” Giles said. “Like snakes.”
“Outdated info,” Oz said simply, moving over to Willow, who had backed to what she apparently thought was a still-unsafe distance.
“Ostrich mimics, huh?” Xander glared at the creature, apparently still ticked off that it had startled him a few moments earlier. “Don’t they taste like chicken?”
“Beef, actually,” Oz told him. “Really rich beef.”
“You’ve eaten ostrich?” Willow asked. She was clearly horrified. “But they’re so, so—”
“Large,” Giles said abruptly. “They’re rather large for birds, wouldn’t you say?” He frowned at the dinosaur behind the steel cage, then stepped up behind Oz. Like so many other questions that had popped into his head over the past couple of years, he didn’t really want to voice his next, yet he couldn’t not. “Oz—”
“This is still an adolescent,” Oz said quietly. He finally turned around and faced Giles and Buffy, and the rest of the Slayerettes. “Right now it’s maybe four feet long. Fully grown we’re talking four or five feet tall, maybe eleven feet from end to end.”
Buffy’s jaw dropped open. “Oh my God.”
“The zoo,” Willow said suddenly. “We have to give it to the zoo . . . or to the pound, or—”
“Hold it, kids,” Xander cut in. He pointed at the Timimus. “Can we stop and sniff the DNA here? Where the hell did it come from?”
Giles opened his mouth, but he certainly had no answer. For a moment they all simply gaped at one another as Xander’s question wormed its way home, then in unison they swung to consider the dinosaur.
“Oh, dear,” the librarian said to no one in particular as they found it watching them with eyes that had suddenly gone from a dull, vaguely reptilian glint to a hot gaze that glowed with a malevolent and unquestionably unnatural light. “I believe Oz may be only partially right about this being a dinosaur.”
Oz glanced at him questioningly. “Why is that?”
Giles took a deep breath. “Because I believe there may be a good deal of demon inside that dinosaur body!”
Chapter 7
“I’VE BEEN TRYING TO GET A HOLD OF YOU SINCE THURSDAY afte
rnoon,” Kevin said testily. However he might sound, he was still endeavoring mightily to keep outright anger from his voice, but he didn’t think he was succeeding. And you know what? As far as I’m concerned, that’s okay. I have a right to be ticked off. “The reception desk downstairs said you were in but you weren’t answering their page. Didn’t you get any of my messages?” Hunched over his desk and an even bigger pile of papers than when Kevin had been in here before, Daniel Addison only shrugged. Did that mean yes or no? Or that Daniel just didn’t give a damn? “I’ve been busy,” he said, still not answering Kevin’s question. “With—”
“—the Timimus,” Kevin finished for him. “Is it okay? Still alive?”
For a long moment, Daniel didn’t answer. “It . . . escaped, ” he admitted at last.
Kevin could only stare at him. “What?”
Daniel folded his arms and gave him a defiant look. “The cage was too flimsy,” he said with a shrug. “It couldn’t hold it.”
“Where did it go?”
“Well, if I knew that, it wouldn’t still be gone, would it?” Daniel’s voice was sarcastic.
“Jesus, Daniel,” Kevin said. Where he’d been angry a moment ago, now he was too amazed and dismayed to remember that. “How can you be such a smart-ass about this? That thing’s a predator—it kills to eat. It’ll target dogs, cats—kids, for crying out loud!”
“They’ll catch it,” Daniel said confidently. “Some micro-brained security officer or cop will shoot it before anything bad happens, you’ll see. They won’t even know what they’re dealing with.”
Still, Kevin was gratified to see that some of the snotty self-confidence had drained from his new mentor. He slumped against the doorway. “Seeing that thing come alive—it was incredible, impossible. I can’t believe that now it’s just . . . gone.”
“Me, either.” Daniel was silent for a moment, then his rigid expression softened and he rubbed his temples as though he had a headache. “Look,” he finally said. “I’m sorry for not calling you back, and for being such a jerk just now. I was just so . . . flipped out when the thing got away, you know? I didn’t want to admit to you that it even happened. Here you’d given me your only egg and we’d done this miraculous thing with it, and what happens? I let the Timimus get away.” He sighed. “I saw all our chances for recognition and advancement here in the museum, all that potential, disappear with it. I acted like an idiot, and I apologize.”
Kevin didn’t reply for a moment. His new mentor’s earlier cold shoulder and tone of voice had stung badly, but the apology Daniel was offering now went a long way toward making him lighten up. “Forget it,” he said eventually. “But what about the Timimus?”
Daniel looked discouraged. “It’s gone. We’ll never get the thing back.” For a second he balled up one fist. “I had such hopes for what we could accomplish because of it.” After a few seconds, the dark-haired young man leaned forward and picked up his pen. “But we can’t dwell in the past, you know? So now I’m trying to find another source for some eggs to try it again. Everything here at the museum is either locked up or permanently embedded into one of the exhibits so that it’s too difficult for me to get anything out. And since I can’t give a feasible reason why I need it, these old farts are never going to give up one of their treasured fossils anyway.” He sounded disgusted and disappointed.
“You want to do it again? After the Timimus escaped? Are you crazy?” Kevin’s mouth was hanging open, but he couldn’t help it.
“Of course I’m going to try again,” Daniel came right back. “Wouldn’t you? Hell, wouldn’t anyone?” He looked around the small office and scowled. “Only this time I’ll be better prepared. Make sure it stays safely contained. No mistakes, and no . . . escapes. I just have to find an egg, that’s all.”
Kevin didn’t say anything, just watched the other man work for a few moments, his mind in turmoil. The whole thing was insane: Daniel, the spell, the undeniable fact that they had brought an extinct creature back to life. But wasn’t Daniel right? The consequences . . . the rewards, could have been enormous, beyond Kevin’s wildest dreams even at the Field Museum in Chicago. Imagine the expressions on the faces of his old friends and the museum administration back home if he and Daniel could have actually unveiled—
“I have more eggs,” he blurted.
Daniel’s head jerked up. “What?”
Kevin swallowed. “I have more. But . . .” His voice faded away.
“But what?” Daniel stood and came toward him. “What’s the catch?”
“They’re not Timimus eggs,” he said in a low voice.
Daniel’s cold fingers closed around his forearm. “Then what are they? For God’s sake, Kevin—come on! What we did with the Timimus doesn’t have to be a once in a lifetime thing, something we only dream about redoing! If I understand you right, you’re saying you’ve got the ingredients we need to make it happen all over again!”
“It’s not that simple,” Kevin protested weakly. “It’s not the same.”
“Why the hell not?” Daniel let go of him. Now he was practically waving his arms. “What’s so different?”
“They’re Tyrannosaurus Rex eggs.”
Whatever Daniel had been about to say went out the window. “Wow,” he finally managed. He stood quietly for a second, then twisted his fingers together and took a deep breath. “T. Rex.”
“Yeah,” Kevin said. “That’s why we can’t—”
“You don’t really believe that,” Daniel interrupted him. One hand snaked back out and gripped Kevin’s shoulder, digging in hard. “Sure we can do it. We have to. We’ll just be absolutely positive to take the appropriate precautions, that’s all. Make sure we have containment.”
“Like the last time?” Kevin demanded. “That was containment, all right!”
“A misjudgment,” Daniel conceded without letting go of Kevin’s shoulder. “But harmless, I swear. You know the background of Timimus—as a baby the thing’ll only eat waterbugs and rats. If it’s still alive at all, Animal Control will destroy it before they even realize what they’re dealing with. It was just our learning curve.”
“But we’re talking about a tyrannosaur,” Kevin said. He felt oddly tangled up in his own emotions: still desperate to please Daniel despite being ignored for the last twenty-four hours; full of sudden, unforeseen terror at the notion of bringing a Tyrannosaurus Rex to life; utterly stupid for thinking that it could even happen again; desperate to find out if it would. But they weren’t considering a small insect- and rodent-eater here. They were talking about the king of the dinosaurs, perhaps the most feared creature that had ever lived on this planet.
But the idea that he might see one, perhaps hold a baby one in his hand, was just . . . indescribable.
“We’ll be completely prepared,” Daniel insisted. “I promise. A steel cage, a weapon of some kind at the ready if we need it. We’ll think it through. And this time, you’ll be involved in it every step of the way. I won’t get . . . preoccupied with stuff like I did before. I’m sorry for that, I swear. This time, it’s you and me all the way, Kev. We’ll do it together. What do you say?”
Kevin felt himself weakening, tried to save himself by telling the truth, then realized too late that was the last thing he should have done. “But it’s not just one,” he said hoarsely. “The eggs are in a set of three, embedded in a rock base. I can’t separate them.”
“That’s all right,” Daniel said gently, and Kevin felt a sense of unreality slip over him at the calmness he heard in the other man’s voice. His stomach did an unpleasant twist at Daniel’s next statement.
“We’ll just resurrect all three of them.”
“Did you find anything?”
Oz looked up and found Giles hovering behind where he sat at the computer in the library. Well, maybe hovering wasn’t the right word. Lurking might be better because it much more accurately conveyed the sense of caution and secrecy that the librarian radiated every time he had to come too clos
e to a monitor and CPU—the Watcher still seemed convinced that someday one of the things was going to rear up and bite him. Rue the day—not even his tweediness would save him then.
“Nothing that supports the idea of being able to grow a dinosaur à la Jurassic Park in the real world yet,” Oz answered. “We haven’t checked the water sponge sites yet.”
Giles looked at him blankly. “Water sponge?”
“Dehydrated animal-shaped sponges,” Willow explained from where she sat at the other end of the table and paged through a stack of past issues of Scientific American. “They’re cool. You drop them in water and poof! Instant pet.”
“Yes, well,” Giles said. “I don’t think those are the species in which we’re actually interested right now.”
Xander, positioned by the cage in self-imposed guard stance, looked over his shoulder at them. “I believe the species we’re looking for would be the I-want-to-devour-your-flesh kind.” As if on cue, the Timimus in the cage lunged forward and snapped viciously at him from the other side of the metal door. The darkhaired teenager skipped backward. “Heel, boy. I don’t think he likes me.”
No one commented, then Oz saw Buffy staring at the Timimus with a puzzled expression. “What’s the deal, Buffy?”
She didn’t say anything for a moment, then finally she tilted her head one way, then another, studying the dinosaur. “Am I shrinking or did someone feed dinobaby super-grow pills overnight?”
Giles hurried to the cage door. “Why do you—good Lord, you’re right!”
Willow sat up straight. “It’s bigger?” she asked in a small, scared voice. “Already?”
Oz abandoned his post at the computer and joined Buffy, Giles and Xander in front of the cage. It only took a glance. “Considerably.”
Xander folded his arms. “Well, I certainly didn’t feed it. Growing this fast with zero food?” He made a tsk ing sound. “I’m thinking serious weight problem.”
“I think we’re the ones who’re going to have the serious problem,” Buffy said. “I saw the damage it could do as a baby, and I’d swear Timmy here has already moved on to teenland.”
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