She headed back toward her temporary home, to get some rest and dream of revenge—and Paris.
If there was one thing Giles dreaded more than patrolling Sunnydale and finding demons or monsters, it was patrolling with Xander and Anya, and not finding demons or monsters. Without the constant possibility of danger, their interminable prattle got on his nerves more quickly than he cared to think about. Either one alone was fine, in small doses, but together, they wore him down.
And, since Anya had become mortal and, more and more, the effective Mrs. Harris, they had been almost inseparable.
But sometimes there was nothing for it. Buffy, Riley, and Spike were patrolling the west side of town. Tara was working with Willow, on the astral plane, trying to find out what had become of Salma, Nicky, or the other disappeared young people. In such a dangerous period, Giles was loath to patrol alone. So Anya and Xander it was.
At least, he comforted himself, it was no longer Xander and Cordelia. Now that had been a trial.
At Xander’s suggestion, they had been checking Sunnydale’s few motels, still looking for Cheryce as they kept their eyes open for further monster attacks. They had just come from the Sleepy-Bye Inn, a seedy construction of equal parts stucco and lost hope, when Anya grabbed Giles’s sleeve.
“Look,” she directed him. “Isn’t that Spike’s honey?”
“Cheryce? It’s either her or there’s a Frederick’s catalogue shoot going on in the neighborhood,” Xander said.
The six-foot blonde wore what was, for her, a reasonably conservative outfit—a leopard-print dress with a plunging neckline that barely contained her décolletage, the skirt of which actually concealed her entire rear end instead of just the upper reaches of it. It was gathered at the waist by a black patent leather belt, and set off by five-inch spike heels in a contrasting furry gold tiger pattern. Various bracelets and piercings completed the ensemble.
Cheryce sashayed their way, digging a room key out of a pocket. Relatively fresh blood painted her lips. She passed through the light from a street lamp, but hadn’t seen them yet.
“I guess she’s staying here, after all,” Xander whispered.
“I didn’t like that desk clerk from the moment I laid eyes on him,” Giles said. “Seemed remarkably haughty for someone working in a place like that.”
“Well, he knows all the classy people,” Anya offered.
“Now what?” Xander asked. “Do we dust her? Or take her back to Spike?”
“We promised Spike!” Anya insisted.
“Yes, we did,” Giles agreed. “But-but look at her. Clearly, she’s been feeding on human blood.”
“Could be lipstick,” Anya said.
“Only if it’s also chinstick,” Xander said. “She looks like she’s been dunking in it.”
“No, I’m afraid we have no choice,” Giles said. “She’s a threat to all humanity.”
Anya gripped his arm. “Spike will be furious,” she declared. “We told him we’d look for her, not that we’d kill her.”
“Already dead, remember?” Xander suggested with a smile.
Anya didn’t return the good cheer. “I can’t believe we’d betray him like this.”
Xander took her shoulders in his hands. “Anya,” he said. “Do I have to remind you? You, human. Giles, human. Me, human. Cheryce, vampire. Spike, vampire.”
“Just because someone’s a vampire doesn’t mean they’re all bad,” Anya argued. “Well, okay, usually it does, with a few well-known exceptions. And I grant you, she does come under the ‘bad’ category. But a promise is a promise, no matter who you make it to.”
“The question may be moot,” Giles said. “She’s seen us.”
Cheryce stopped a dozen feet away and stood, hands on her cocked hips, watching them. She snapped her gum. “Aren’t you guys the Slayer’s little friends?”
“Yes,” Xander said. “I mean, not so little. But yes, we are friends of the Slayer.”
“And of Spike,” Anya added. “Remember him? The vampire who loves you?”
“Spike doesn’t love me,” Cheryce said. “Spike loves himself. Anyone else just gets his leftovers.”
“That isn’t true, completely,” Anya huffed. “He’s very sensitive.”
“Anya, you may be spending a little too much time with Spike,” Xander pointed out. “I think he’s hypnotized you.”
Anya frowned at Xander and turned back to Cheryce. “He really misses you.”
“He misses the good times we’ve had, and he misses the fact that I won’t help him get his chip out. And he thinks I’m too dumb to know that’s why he hangs around.”
“I’m sure you’re wrong,” Anya continued. “You should hear how he talks about you.”
“Whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Xander said. “What about the chip? You know something about the chip?”
“And if I do?” Cheryce said, posing. “Because why— yikes!”
All three turned, though Giles hesitated, in case it was simple misdirection. But the look of concern on Cheryce’s face looked genuine, so he followed her pointing hand. Behind them—but closing fast—was a monster that looked somewhat like a charging bull. Its head and shoulders were enormous, and lowered at them as if to ram into them. Powerful haunches drove it forward at high speed. It was all black, as if made from the very stuff of shadows. For a horrible moment Giles thought it might be the shadow monster that had plagued the town for a while, but this wasn’t how it had been described, and it hadn’t been seen for several days.
Before any of them could move, Cheryce dashed forward, putting herself between them and the onrushing form. She spread her arms. It ran straight into them, and she closed them around its substantial bulk. The thing’s speed and momentum lifted Cheryce off her feet and carried her backward a dozen yards, until she was able to plant them again and get some traction.
Once she did, though, she was able to outmuscle the beast. She flipped it onto its back, locking its neck in a death grip. She bent close to its head and said something. Giles couldn’t hear the words, or even make out the language, but the appearance, from where he stood, was that she was interrogating it in some way. Then, apparently not satisfied with its answer, she broke its neck. When she stood, she was winded but uninjured.
“What was that about?” Giles demanded.
“Nothin’.” She transformed into vamp face. “See ya.”
She turned on her heel and melted into the night.
“Bloody hell,” Giles muttered.
“Okay, that was weird,” Xander said. “What does she know about the chip? Is that why Spike’s been so hung up on her?”
“It’s a new development,” Giles agreed. “I suggest we find Spike and demand to know what’s going on.”
“Last I saw of him, he was lounging in the tub and swigging microwaved blood,” Xander said. “Slacker.”
But the road home was a crowded one; the trio collided with a few other vampires trying to take advantage of the general panic to feed on those few humans still out on the streets, plus a random assortment of monsters, though nothing quite as creepy as the insect-things they had dispatched.
“So, what’s up with the chip, Spike?” Buffy insisted, when everyone gathered back at the apartment. “What’s your scheme this time?”
“Said she knew how to get it out,” Spike said flatly. “Obviously, she lied about that to get me into bed.”
“Oh my God,” Buffy groaned dramatically. “I’m going to be sick.”
“Not in my loo, Slayer.”
“It’s not your loo.” Buffy held out her hand. “Xander,” she piped, “give me a stake. I’ve had it.”
“She saved you from that monster thing,” Spike said to Xander. He’d stood with his arms folded, listening to the three discuss the beast and wonder why Cheryce had saved them. Tara had offered that the monster sounded very like the one that had lured Doña Pilar outside the de la Natividad home.
“Yeah, well, so?” Xander threw back at Spike.
r /> Buffy left them to it. She was more exhausted than she had realized. Within minutes of her head hitting the pillow, she was out.
And a few minutes after that, she dreamed.
She knew she was dreaming, as she frequently did. She watched herself as if at a distance; there was a remove, a dissociation, between Dream-Buffy and Buffy herself, almost as if she were watching an actress playing herself on a television show.
Like that would ever happen.
Dream-Buffy walked slowly through a long corridor, lined on both sides with immense doors. She couldn’t even see the tops of the doors—they were shrouded in darkness or hidden behind clouds, she couldn’t tell which. They were miles tall, and maybe eight feet wide, and ornately carved with indistinct figures that blurred and shifted under her gaze. She gave up trying to look at them; Dream-Buffy reached for the knob of the nearest one, but there was no handle on it, no knob of any kind that she could distinguish, so she got a grip on some of the carvings and pulled.
It swung surprisingly smoothly, as if on well-oiled hinges or ball bearings.
A silhouette stood surrounded by a void; a person, or something in human shape. There was no detail on the person, not gender or age or even a real sense of size, because there was nothing behind the person to give scale. The door opened onto a vast plain of nothingness, not dark, not smoke, not a screen of any kind—merely the absence of anything at all.
Ghost Roads, she thought, but it was wrong for that, somehow; though she watched Dream-Buffy standing before the threshold for what could have been hours, or seconds, there was no transition to another plane, as there would be on the Ghost Roads—the void would then eventually find form and substance, revealing phantoms journeying on the pathways of the dead.
But here, there was nothingness, except for the figure, which appeared to be gazing out the door—not at Dream-Buffy in particular—just observing what was before it.
“Huh,” the figure said, in a voice that was neither male nor female. “Nobody’s home.”
It pushed the door shut in Dream-Buffy’s face.
She moved to the next door, the features of which were equally unreadable. She tugged it open. Again, she encountered a field of emptiness and a dark figure standing in the doorway.
“Hmm,” the figure said. “Nobody home here.”
And the figure closed the door in her face.
Dream-Buffy continued. Door after door, figure after figure. Each one waited in front of an impossible nothingness, and each one failed to see her as she stood there looking in. Each spoke a phrase that was very similar, if not identical, to the one before it.
None of them could see her.
She couldn’t find a voice to speak to any of them.
And, finally, she ran out of doors. The corridor dead-ended. The futility of it all overwhelmed her, and she woke up feeling like a thousand-pound weight pressed on her heart.
She shook Riley awake, told him about the dream.
They sat up in bed, and he caressed her arm as he spoke. “I don’t know if it really means anything, Buff, except that you’ve been under a lot of pressure.”
“That’s it? Pressure? You were the TA for a psych teacher, not me.”
“Okay, then.” He stroked a nonexistent goatee. “In my best Freudian interpretation, I’d say you’re feeling invisible in some way. You’re upset because people can’t seem to see you.”
“Maybe,” she admitted. “But I think there’s more to it than that.”
“Like what?”
“Something about the doors. Remember that thing you guys saw, when you fought the tree?”
He was listening. She loved that he listened, really listened to her.
“It wasn’t really a tree. It just looked like one.”
“Whatever. You said there was a shimmery gold circle behind it. Like the one in L.A. that Angel almost followed Sleepy Ramos through.”
“Pretty much just like it, yeah.”
“If they’re here, where things are coming into our world from who knows where, and they’re there, where people are vanishing from our world . . . what if they’re some kind of doors?”
“Could be,” he agreed.
“I think we need to check it out.”
Riley looked at the bedside clock. “Are you sure you want to go now? I could go out and have a look. You haven’t had much rest, Buffy, and it’s oh—”
“Don’t,” she interrupted. He would do it. He’d be perfectly willing to go out there and face who-knew-what so she could have a few more minutes of rest. It was sweet, it was ingratiating . . . but Buffy felt somehow oddly confined by the knowledge. “I know you military types use the phrase oh-dark-hundred to describe what time it is, but we civilians use actual numbers. And I don’t really want to know what number it is right now, so let’s just go without looking at a clock.”
Riley put his feet on the floor and started looking for clothes. “Okay, then,” he agreed. “Let’s check it out.”
Fifteen minutes later they stood in the little park where Riley had conquered the tree-beast.
“Nothing now,” Riley said.
“It was here,” Buffy insisted. “Maybe there’s some kind of trace energy from it that we could measure, or—” She stopped in the middle of her sentence and watched, wide-eyed, as a tiny glowing dot appeared before her, and expanded to the size of the one they’d seen in Boyle Heights. “Or it might come back.”
The golden light bathed Riley’s features as he stared into it, or through it. Buffy walked to its edge, peered around it. Just Santa Ysabel Street, on the other side of the park. From this side, she couldn’t even see the shimmering circle. “There doesn’t seem to be a side on this side.”
Riley started to reach for the circle.
“No,” Buffy warned. “I wouldn’t do that. We have no idea what’s inside.”
Riley withdrew his hand.
“It’s kind of pretty, though,” she said.
“Pretty like a shark,” Riley said.
“Sharks aren’t pretty. They’re vicious-looking and they have those little dead eyes.”
“Okay, pretty like something else that’s as deadly as a shark, but prettier.”
They fell silent, scrutinizing the circle. Then Buffy cocked her head as she heard a faint sound. “Did you hear something?”
“Yeah.”
They both stood still, and listened. After a moment it came again, soft and distant yet perfectly distinct.
A female voice calling Buffy’s name.
“It sounds . . . it sounds like Salma,” Buffy said slowly. She started toward the circle.
Riley grabbed her arm, yanked her away. “No. Research, Buffy. Never a bad idea.”
“Sometimes it slows things down,” she said, frustrated. She was a Slayer and Slayers didn’t research. Slayers acted.
“She’s in there, Riley,” Buffy said. “That much we know.”
Riley shook his head. “And Sleepy Ramos went in there, or somewhere like there, and didn’t come back out again. Think about it. It might be a one way trip.
“We find out more, Buffy. First.”
“Find out more,” Buffy echoed. “And then maybe it’s too late?”
“And maybe by waiting, we don’t die, or kill her by accident.” He had on resolve-face, and in her sinking heart, Buffy knew he was right.
“You got it. Let’s get help.”
As they walked away from the glowing circle, they heard it again, more clearly than ever.
“Buffy . . .”
* * *
Buffy . . .
Angel dreamed, but in the dream, what he dreamed was real.
He was the only vampire on Earth possessed of a soul, and he was the only being on Earth who remembered a day . . . and a night . . . that had been lost.
Buffy . . .
She had come to Los Angeles to take him to task for “spying” on her in Sunnydale. He had understood her pain, and her confusion, known exactly why she had been so
upset: she still loved him. She still wanted him.
Buffy and Angel were soul mates; no matter how many times he had lost his soul, and regained it, it was the other half of hers.
He had a beating heart, in Buffy’s chest.
He walked in the sun, when she did.
Buffy . . .
He had become mortal, after the blood of a demon had touched him. For one day, he had known Buffy as a man knows a woman; he had loved her as a man, fully, desperately. What they had had before had been nothing compared to that twenty-four hours; heat and passion, yes, but the deepest of connections, the truest intimacy he had experienced—a connection that could not be severed, ever . . .
Except by his choice. Knowing full well everything he was losing, he asked the Oracles to take that day away; he sacrificed his mortality to save Buffy from a vendetta that eventually would kill her.
Buffy . . .
The scent of her, the smoothness and velvety warmth of her; the innocence and the courage and the deep love of her. She had forgotten it all; for her, at least consciously, the connection was severed when the day disappeared. She didn’t remember it, any of it. She did not know that they had finally crossed all the bridges spanning the chasm between them.
He alone, bore the memory.
In his uneasy slumber, Angel wept.
And dreamed.
In Sunnydale, Buffy Summers felt a deep, strange tugging at her heart. For less than a heartbeat, she almost thought of something.
Then it was gone.
And the Slayer went on with her life.
Chapter 10
Sunnydale
IT HAD BEEN A WHILE SINCE GILES HAD PHONED ANGEL, and he hadn’t known about his office blowing up. He got the new number from Buffy and dialed it. The phone rang twice before a female voice answered. “Hello?”
“Cordelia?” he asked, smiling. “Is that you?”
“Well, given the Grand Central Station nature of my apartment lately, it could be me or it could be one of about a hundred other people. But I think I still know who I am, and I look like me from the neck down, which is pretty much all of me that I can see from here, so I’ll venture a guess. Yes, it’s me. And, judging by that very British stuffiness, and the fact that Wesley is sitting on my favorite part of my couch swilling all the tea in the building so it’s not him, I’ll venture another guess, and say, hello, Giles.”