In their search for Giles, Buffy and Angel ranged all over Sunnydale. So did crazy people. About a quarter of the business district was in flames. A group of men started shooting at the firefighters, so they drove away in their big red fire truck. They were halfway to the fire station when some kind of road rage overtook their driver, and he rammed a city bus.
“Where’s the rest of the Justice League when you need them?” Buffy said as she and Angel raced through a flaming alley.
“The Bahamas, working on their tans.”
“Thank God you have no interest in that,” she said sincerely.
“No, but I find this interesting,” Angel said, pointing straight ahead.
“Whoa.” Buffy skidded to a stop and ducked behind a row of trash cans. Angel joined her.
At the opposite end of the alley, a trio of vampires stood in the firelight, pointing and laughing. And chomping down hard on Xander’s nemesis, Ms. Broadman, as she struggled and screamed in their grasp.
The vampires wore Roman togas, just like she, Willow, and Xander had cooked up for their drama presentation for the talent show. Only, Buffy and the others had worn black leotards under theirs. These guys were half-naked, and fairly cut. And their togas looked a lot older, dirtier, and bloodier.
“No rest for the weary,” Buffy said, pulling a stake out of her bag.
“Or the wicked.” Angel took the stake, and she got out another for herself. She fitted another one into her belt.
Together, they darted in the shadows toward the vampires and their victim. Police sirens and ambulances screamed. Though Buffy kept her gaze firmly trained on her targets, her peripheral vision caught a man staggering down the street with a huge gash in his forehead. Across the street, a tree lining the sidewalk blazed, and the power line above it sparked like fireworks.
She gestured to Angel to take out the one on the left. He was the tallest. She would take on the two shorter ones.
He nodded.
As they crept nearer, her heartbeat picked up. One of her quarry was a dark-haired female. Helen?
No. Too short, Buffy thought, disappointed. Her grip tightened around the stake.
“Help me,” Ms. Broadman moaned.
Buffy took that as their cue to move into attack mode. She pumped her legs and thrust her stake straight out from her chest. As she knew they would, the vampires heard the clatter of her and Angel’s boots and turned, the shorter male still holding tight to Ms. Broadman.
“Stop, or she dies,” he growled.
Buffy said, “So, she dies. She accused my friend of cheating and got him expelled.”
Ms. Broadman’s eyes widened. The vampire looked momentarily confused, and Buffy seized the moment: she rushed the female before she knew what was happening, and took her out. In two seconds, the vampire was dust.
“You will pay for that.” The vampire holding Ms. Broadman flung her aside — mission accomplished, Buffy thought triumphantly — and came for Buffy.
Meanwhile, the taller vampire and Angel were circling one another, speaking in a foreign language that Buffy was fairly certain was not French. Or else I’m doing worse in it than I thought.
“Run, Ms. Broadman,” Buffy said. “And let Xander back in school, okay?”
Without another word, the woman took off.
The vampire bared its fangs at Buffy, and hunkered down for a good long fight.
“Could it be that I have engaged the Slayer?” he asked, sounding really happy about it.
She hunkered back. Fight he wanted, fight he got. But she wasn’t about to go more than a couple rounds with him.
“You want to get engaged? But I hardly know you. And, to my everlasting joy, I’m not going to get to know you.”
She thrust the stake at him like a sword — Giles had had a fencing thing lately — he blocked it with his wrist and tried to loop it to the left, but she stepped back quickly and double-thrust.
“You fight in an alien manner,” the vampire said.
“Alien? You can say that with a straight face, the way you’re dressed?” Buffy asked.
Then she really went for him, hacking and slashing, never mind all the fancy footwork. He gave as good as he got, using his powerful arms and fists. He was made of steel; okay, not literally, but he had bulging muscles all over the place. And he knew how to use them, and she was not talking posing for Mr. Vampire America. Blood trickled down her face after he smacked her nose; she winced but kept up her momentum. With an opponent like this, she couldn’t let down her guard, not even for a moment.
“Angel, how you doing?” she asked as she crossed her hands one over the other, then slammed the meat of them into the vampire’s nose. Eye for an eye and all that.
Angel answered back in the not-French, then said, “We’re insulting each other in Latin.”
She headbutted the vampire, who groaned and staggered backward toward the street. Headbutted him again. He was on the sidewalk.
“Your grade, then?” She pushed the vampire, who tried to catch his balance by grabbing a mailbox, and missed it as he kept going.
Angel grunted. “The word for fatality, you know it?”
“I came, I saw, I dusted,” Buffy offered. She double-kicked the vamp, finishing with a roundhouse.
The vampire fell off the curb and into the street just as a car roared down on it.
It smashed into him; he soared into the air. Buffy ran, following his trajectory like a fan at a Dodgers game. When he thudded to the blacktop, she lifted the stake up for a good downward arc.
The vampire exploded in a cloud of ash.
She looked left, right, saw that the car was gone, no one had noticed, and stood. Then she raced back to find Angel alone, a similar scattering of dust at his feet.
Buffy smoothed back her hair as Angel rearranged the tatters of the sweatshirt. She said, “Maybe we should have saved one. Made him talk.”
“He talked,” Angel assured her.
She eyed him. “Oh, like what?”
“Helen and her lover — that would be Julian —”
“ — not you,” she said, only half-teasing.
“They’ve come to Sunnydale to take over.”
She yawned. “How original.”
“They’re behind the possession thing. They’ve got some kind of drug.”
Her eyes widened. “A drug?”
He pointed to her pocket. “The vampires are drugging Sunnydale.”
“And they always blame us kids for everything,” Buffy said.
The arena was complete.
The construction workers, slaughtered.
Illuminated by torchlight, the combat field was ready. The rows of seats were cast in darkness. Standing in his spot, Julian watched Helen. She sat forward eagerly as the girl named Cordelia was dragged into the arena by two women vampires dressed in togas as Bacchae, priestesses of Bacchus, god of wine. The girl was wearing gladiatorial armor on her shapely frame and though her hands were tied, they clutched a child-sized sword. She was weak, being a daughter of the modern age, and so they made allowances.
In addition, they had picked an easy adversary for her: a hungry dog. A rather small one, actually. It was tied to a post, and as they pulled the girl along, it put back its ears and growled.
“Excuse me?” Cordelia — yelled. “You want me to hurt a dog? Have you people ever heard of the SPCA?”
The Bacchae untied Cordelia. She glared at them and glanced down at the sword. Julian’s smile grew. She had such fire. Such spirit. And she truly was ravishing.
His personal definition of which was, “worthy of being ravished.”
The Bacchae went to the post and awaited Helen’s command to release the hound.
Cordelia stared at the dog. “Nice poochy,” she ventured, coming toward it and holding out her hand.
It snapped its jaws at her. The girl screeched and backed away. The dog strained at the tether, leaping and barking.
“I am not doing this,” Cordelia shouted to the dark
ness.
“Then you will die,” Helen said.
“Now, now,” Julian murmured, pushing away from the wall.
He walked down to Helen’s throne and put his hand on her shoulder. Trailed downward. In the distant torchlight, her face transformed and she hissed at him with excitement. Then she changed into her human face and said, "If she will not fight the cur, she will die.”
“No. Save her, dearest,” he said. “She is far more valuable to us as bait for the Slayer. And as amusement in the Games we will present tomorrow night.”
She pouted. “But I want to see her die now.”
Julian maintained his expression, but irritation rose within him. Her bloodlust required ever more exotic deaths and sacrifices to be satisfied. For some, that might prove alluring, but not for one as ambitious as Julian. It was a liability.
“No!” Cordelia shouted, as the Bacchae waited for the signal. She looked up in the same direction. “Come on, this is really stupid.”
“I want her to die,” Helen insisted.
“Oh, she will, my darling. Just not tonight.” Julian bent down and kissed her. She exhaled, a child denied its treat.
He sauntered down the steps to the arena. Unceremoniously, he stepped over the wall.
He took the sword from the girl, who looked like she wanted to use it on him, walked over to the dog, and stabbed it through the heart.
It made no sound, not even a whimper. It simply keeled over dead.
The girl started sobbing.
When he turned around, she made herself stop. As he approached, she turned her head and closed her eyes.
Cupping her cheek with his hand, he murmured, “Was that so bad?”
Her mouth worked. Her stomach contracted. She was fighting not to vomit.
He gave her time.
After a few more seconds, she whipped her head toward him.
“If I throw a stick, will you leave?” she shot at him.
He threw back his head and laughed with delight.
“You vixen.”
She straightened her shoulders despite the abject terror on her face. "I’ve been called that, and worse,” she announced.
Now Helen laughed, too.
The arena echoed with their merriment.
Outside Rome, A.D. 39
Aulus, a gray-haired man in excellent condition, wearing a breastplate over his long robe, raised his shield as Diana jabbed at him with a spear.
“Again, you’re a little off,” he remonstrated. “What is wrong with you?”
She shook her head, unwilling to say. He would be delighted to know that her betrothed was missing, for he was opposed to her marriage on all fronts. Less delighted, perhaps, that Helen was acting strangely. Distant, and guarded. Like Diana, he would want to know why.
“Let’s quit for the day.” He held out his hand for the spear. “Go and take a hot bath. Work out the kinks.” He pointed to his forehead. “In here.”
She shifted uncomfortably. For almost a year, they had worked together as Watcher and Slayer. Yet their relationship had not warmed. She had the distinct impression that he found her lacking, and that if she died, he would not grieve.
As he instructed, she went off to the women’s baths, laying aside her worries in favor of a nice long soak.
She was there when her father came to tell her that Aulus and Helen had been taken by soldiers, and that they had flung a sack containing Demetrius’s head onto the grounds of his family’s home.
Chapter 13
AS THE GILESMOBILE SPED ALONG, THE SKY SUDDENLY cracked open and rain screamed down. In ten seconds, Willow was soaked to the skin, despite the fact that she tried to cast a spell of protection against the elements. So far, no go. As she kept trying to remind everyone, she was basically getting a C when it came to spellcasting. Kind of like Buffy and chemistry last year: more of her experiments failed than succeeded.
“Oh, good Lord,” Giles said, as the rain washed over her. He flicked on his right-hand blinker. “I’ve got a tarp in the back. It’s wrapped around a spectacular seventeenth-century crossbow at the moment. We can use it to cover the hole.”
“Or she can come back here with us,” Xander invited.
“Someone will have to hold the tarp in place,” she said. The truth was, she was a little afraid of Mark. Rain or no rain, she didn’t particularly want to share the backseat with him. Even if he was on the floor.
The car stopped. Giles said, “I’ll be right back.”
He crossed around to the back and popped open the trunk. Willow took advantage of his momentary absence by scooting over to his side of the car, away from the rain. They were on Route 17, near where Oz had been kidnapped, and Willow had been growing tenser by the second. With each curve they had rounded, she half-expected someone to force the car to stop and yank them bodily out of it. As lightning flashed, each manzanita bush, each stand of deer weed and white sage, hulked at the side of a road like something waiting to leap onto the hood and dive through the broken windshield —
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Mark announced.
“It’s pouring rain, Mark,” Xander protested.
“I have to go.”
“You’ll get soaked.”
“I gotta go now.”
“Just wait, Mark, okay?” Xander sounded exasperated.
Willow glanced up at the moonlight in the hills. They were near the exit where the demon trucker had attacked them.
No wonder I feel like we’ve gone around in circles, she thought dully. Cuz we have. Time was ticking away, and she knew the stats on missing persons: the longer they were missing, the lower your chances of ever seeing them again.
“Okay, all right. I’ll go with you,” Xander said, as Mark pushed open the rear door on the traffic side and climbed out. “To make sure you’re safe,” he added.
Willow was not fooled. She doubted Mark was, either. The boy snorted and said, “I don’t need an audience.”
“I gotta go, too,” Xander said.
Mark stayed by the car as a truck screamed past, and then another. Then he began to lope across the highway, Xander slightly behind him. There were plenty of bushes on this side. Maybe he was trying to prove a point. And maybe he wasn’t.
The heat was on. The car grew maybe one degree warmer. Willow thought about all those soup ads on TV and wished she could be in one of them, right now. Or snuggling down in her room with a cup of hot chocolate and a good website.
She sat back and closed her eyes, bone weary.
We can get possessed and not even know it, she thought. Like Oz; when he wolfs, he doesn’t realize what he’s doing. Like somebody who’s really sick. We don’t blame them if they act cranky.
But what about when you’re just afraid? Do you get to say whatever you want, then, too?
If that’s true, why do I feel so bad about snapping at Buffy?
The heater and the engine made for companionable white noise.
If I can just get warm, she thought, quaking with cold. Imagine, going to college someplace where it snows. That’s always sounded so glamorous. But maybe not so much. . . .
The heater hissed; the engine rumbled like distant thunder. She shifted, her lids heavy. Her body felt as if it weighed a million pounds.
She was in a forest. Barefoot, she wore a gauzy white dress with a pink and blue embroidered vest and a crown of matching flowers in her hair. Dandelions fluttered into the air like butterflies or snowflakes as she walked through a patch of them, cupping her hands, and softly calling: “My beast, where are you?”
Out of a thicket, rabbits bounded in terror, followed by a white-tail deer and a flurry of birds. The bushes shook.
The forest howled.
And then he leaped from the thicket, blood on his mouth and dripping from his claws.
The Beast.
He slathered and growled at her. His eyes glowed a deep blood-red crimson. She took one step back, but one step only. Then she opened her arms and stood perfectly still. r />
“Come to me, Beast,” she urged.
The creature stared at her blindly, without recognition.
“Come to me.”
Then something changed in his face. He came at her. Her lids fluttered, but she stayed where she was.
Then he knelt before her, carefully encircling her waist with his huge, hairy arms.
She sank to the forest floor and cradled his head in her lap.
In that moment, he began to transform. . . .
She stirred slightly when Giles got back into the car. She was aware of tears on her cheeks.
His door slammed.
Then he took off, tires squealing.
“Wait,” she said, slowly opening her eyes.
Mark sat beside her, driving the car.
“Wait!” she cried. “Where’s Xander?” She looked around. “And Giles?”
He fishtailed down the road.
“Hide me,” he said desperately. “Now.”
Xander groaned and rubbed the knot on the back of his head as he raised his head. He was covered with mud from his forehead to his shoe tips.
“I don’t freakin’ believe this,” he shouted. “That little . . . little creep!”
He staggered to his feet and half-ran, half-slid back to the darkened road. A flash of lightning revealed that the car was gone.
Surprise, surprise.
But sprawled on the ground was a sort of a huddle. Xander’s stomach tightened and he started across. A minivan speeding by nearly hit him, then slowed about fifty feet up and began to back up. It zoomed up alongside him and the window rolled down.
“Xander?”
By the dome light, he saw that it was Willow’s mother. Reflexively, he pushed his sopping hair out of his eyes and tried to tuck in his shirt. Then he realized what he was doing and said, “Hi, Mrs. Rosenberg. Can you hold on a minute?”
“Xander, what on earth are you doing out here?”
“Please, Mrs. Rosenberg, drive over there,” he said, pointing, and ran across the highway.
He made it to the bundle first, and rolled it over. It was Giles. Slowly he opened his eyes and sat up.