Disclaimer/Summery: See Part 1
SUPPLICATIONS
The altar room was built entirely of granite, sunk deep beneath the earth like a stone coffin. The torches that hung from the walls couldn't cut through the darkness; the darkness in that room was thick, and cold, and it had weight. It squatted there like a predator that had run its prey to ground. The torches on the walls were small, flaccid things, flickering pinpoints of light that gave no warmth and served merely to describe the darkness, to lend it shape.
Willow lay pale and naked and dreaming on the altar, a massive, rectangular slab of black stone that weighed more than six tons and had been cut from a meteor that fell from the sky in some older, darker age. The altar was set atop a granite dais at the far end of the room, and it was decorated with strange symbols, and inscribed with words in a language that had never been spoken in human voice, all painted in blood on the black stone. The blood was fresh; it shone bright red in the torchlight. There was an ouroboros symbol painted in blood on Willow's abdomen, and a long silver dagger laying vertically across her body, bisecting her, beginning at her belly and reaching up between her breasts. There were goosebumps on Willow's arms and legs, and her eyes moved back and forth behind their lids.
"She's cold," Buffy said, standing above her, staring down at her from the shadows. Buffy's eyes caught the torchlight; it was the only light in them. "Can someone find her like a blanket or something?"
A vampire wearing a long, red hooded robe with an ouroboros symbol painted in black on the front emerged from the darkness, and knelt before her. He pulled back his hood. He had red eyes, and pointed ears, and a snout nose; it made him look like a wolf.
He didn't look up at Buffy; didn't dare to meet her eyes. Instead he looked down at the stone floor.
"Most revered one," he said, "Forgive me. But the ceremony requires the sacrifice to be naked before your pitiless gaze."
"Yeah," Buffy said, and sighed. "Everything's gotta be just so when you're dealing with magic. Gotta dot all the 'i's' and cross all the 't's'. Okay, how much longer?"
"Minutes, your grace. My brothers' supplications reach to the heavens, and shake the very thrones of the Powers. Soon the hold of the Powers will be broken, and then we can kill this little cunt, and finally take our rightful--"
Buffy looked at him, her eyes two daggers.
"What did you just call her?" Buffy said.
The vampire looked up at Buffy, for a second; then he caught himself and looked away again.
"I...don't understand," the vampire muttered.
"She's not a cunt," Buffy said. "She's not...I don't want her...referred to that way."
"Is there...some way you would prefer me to...?"
"You've offended me. Take one of those torches off the wall and burn yourself to death."
The vampire hesitated a moment, still looking down at the floor.
"Yes...yes, your grace," he whispered. He stood up and walked away, straight for the nearest torch. He took it down from the wall, and turned back to Buffy. She was ignoring him; she was looking down at Willow again.
"My life for you," the vampire said, and set himself on fire.
"Whatever," Buffy said.
The vampire began screaming, as the fire devoured him; Buffy sighed again, and rolled her eyes.
"Could you like, die quicker?" Buffy said. "Trying to have a quiet moment here."
A few seconds later, the vampire exploded into dust. The room was dark again, and silent. Buffy looked down at Willow.
"I'm sorry I can't get you a blanket or anything," Buffy said. "I'm sorry... you have to be cold, before you die. I wish..."
Buffy shook her head, and turned away.
"What the fuck is wrong with me?" she muttered. "Oldest living thing in the universe and I'm getting all weepy-waily over some...some girl. Some human animal."
She turned back to Willow again.
"She loves you, y'know," Buffy said. "Buffy does, I mean. She loves you with all her heart. When she talked to Faith about you, she lied a little bit. She loves you more than she was willing to admit...even more than she's willing to admit to herself. Yeah, Buffy loves Faith too, and wants to stay with her? But... I've got her memories and even I don't know which one of you she loves more. And the problem is, I can feel all this, y'know? When I'm Buffy, I can feel it...I can feel her love. It's what Buffy does...what she always does. She loves. And yeah, I hate you, hate all your kind, can't wait for you all to just fucking die? But...the longer I take Buffy's form...the more I think...I think I love you, too. Love's a bitch, huh?"
Buffy moved her hand, to caress Willow's cheek. Her hand went through her; it couldn't touch her.
Buffy smiled.
"I wonder, if I could touch you?" Buffy said. "Would I caress you, would I hold you in my arms and keep you warm? Or would I break your neck?"
Buffy watched Willow breathing; watched her breasts rise and fall, pale in the cold.
"You're beautiful, Willow," Buffy whispered. "I always thought you were beautiful. You're my strawberry girl."
A tear rolled down Buffy's cheek.
Buffy shook her head, and turned away again. She giggled.
"What is wrong with me?!" Buffy shouted, still giggling, but starting to cry now. Her voice echoed along the cold stone as she began pacing back and forth beside the altar. "I mean, hello? I'm evil! I'm not supposed to...supposed to get all...I'm not supposed to even care about you! You don't matter!" Buffy whirled around, and pointed at Willow, her hand shaking. "You're a stupid, disgusting animal! You're an insignificant fucking speck! You're nothing compared to me! Nothing! NOTHING!"
Buffy's breathing was coming in big, heaving gasps. Tears were rolling down her cheeks. Her hands were shaking.
She giggled again, and wiped her tears away.
"Humans," Buffy said. "Way to go, Mother. Way to fuck up the universe. You couldn't have just stopped with the dinosaurs? I liked dinosaurs. They were fun. Stegosaurus was neat. But no, you had to go and create these monkeys, didn't you? I mean, it's not like they almost blew up the whole fucking planet fourteen years ago when the Russians thought a flock of birds was an incoming American nuclear strike or anything. Yup, these monkeys of yours sure are something. And what the hell do you get out of it anyway, Mother? What do you see in them, that I can't? What am I missing here? At least half of them have always been mine, a whole bunch more believe the universe was a random accident, and nearly all the rest have no idea you even exist, they still believe the lies and fairy tales their holy books tell them. So what are you even doing? Why bother? What's the plan here? Is there even a plan? Why won't you TALK TO ME?!"
Buffy looked up, as if she expected an answer.
"You never talk to me," Buffy said.
All she heard was her own voice, echoing among the stones, and dying away.
"Yeah, that's what I figured, Mother," Buffy said. "Well if you're gonna be asleep at the switch I guess it's up to me, huh? I guess we're just gonna have to go with my plan. Step one: no more monkeys."
Buffy looked down at Willow again.
"And as for you, I don't have to feel this way, you know," Buffy said. "If I change? Like, change back to Darla? I'll fucking instantly cease to give a shit about you. I should just...just change back to Darla. I always liked Darla."
Buffy sat on the edge of the altar, and looked down at the floor.
"I can't...I can't do this," Buffy whispered, and held her head in her hands, and cried. "I can't, baby. I love you, I love you so much and I..."
Buffy changed; like a snake shedding its skin, she melted, transformed.
She became Darla.
Darla stood up, and looked down at Willow again.
"That's better," Darla said. "Buffy always did let her heart get the better of her judgment. But you know that more than anyone, after what my darling boy did to you, because of her."
Darla frowned.
"But...there's still something about you, Willow," Darla said. "I can't put my finger on it, but it's there..."
She bent down close to Willow, and felt the gentle exhalation of her breath, and took in her scent, and watched her breasts slowly rise and fall.
"I think there's more to you than there seems on the surface," Darla said. "I've always thought that; it's why, of all the monkeys in the world, you've always been my favorite. There's a light in you, but there's a darkness too..."
Darla bared her fangs.
"But is it merely your darkness which fascinates me so? Or is it something more, something deeper? The darkness in Angelus drew me to him, too, but I think there's something else in you, something much more interesting than mere darkness and light. Sometimes, just for a moment, I think I've found it...I have it in my clutches...but then it slips away again."
A procession of nine vampires marched toward her, coalescing out of the darkness, their heads bowed; they all wore long red robes with ouroboros symbols painted in black on the front. Eight took positions around the altar, and knelt. One knelt at Darla's feet. All of them looked at the floor, and waited, silent and still.
"Time?" Darla said.
"Yes, most high," the vampire kneeling at Darla's feet said. He didn't meet her eyes.
Darla nodded. She looked down at Willow.
"Well, whatever the mystery was, I suppose I won't be deciphering it," Darla said. "Pity. It's like leaving a good book unfinished. I do so hate leaving a good book unfinished...but I'm afraid this is where your story ends. I'll miss you, darling. That's not a lie. You were my favorite monkey."
Darla looked down at the vampire kneeling in front of her.
"Cut the little cunt open," Darla said, and smiled.
"You're not gonna die on me," Buffy snarled, with tears in her eyes.
She drove, too fast, careening the SUV through the dark, rain-soaked streets, past houses locked tight, shades drawn, all the lights turned off; but she knew there were people inside. She could smell their fear. The bolted doors and locked windows couldn't keep their fear inside. It slipped through the cracks.
Faith laid curled up in Buffy's lap. Her skin was white, and cold to the touch, and her breathing was shallow. Her heartbeat was faint. The wound on her neck hadn't healed; Faith was so weak that her body couldn't heal itself anymore. The two puncture wounds were ugly; they went deep. They marred her. Blood wasn't coming from the wounds anymore, but only because Faith didn't have enough blood to give.
Drusilla bit Faith in the exact spot Buffy had bitten her, when Faith had asked her to take some of her blood, during their lovemaking. But the scars Buffy had left were gone now. Buffy knew the scars Drusilla left would be permanent. When Buffy bit Faith's neck, she did it to give Faith something; a sign of her love, physical proof, for everyone to see, of her claim on her. When Drusilla bit her, she took something from Faith...maybe she had taken everything.
Buffy knew that if she didn't reach a hospital soon, Faith would be dead. She felt it; she felt Faith, slipping away from her. Becoming cold.
Buffy had been to Glendale once before, with her mother, and she was sure they had passed by a hospital. She thought she remembered how to get to it, and as she tore through the town, barreling along as fast as she dared in the pouring rain, every street in Glendale seemed like part of a different world now. Some streets were deserted, and silent. Some were burning, despite the rain that still came down in sheets. Police cars and fire engines raced here and there, their sirens providing a counterpoint to the screams that still came to Buffy's ears, echoing through the night from every direction now. Buffy smelled smoke, and blood, and vampires...and most of all, fear. It hung in the night air like an invisible cloud, obscuring everything else.
Buffy ignored it all, as best she could.
As she barreled around a corner she passed a mound of beheaded bodies. They smelled like excrement. She looked away from them. She looked at Faith.
"I can't fucking believe you're doing this to me again," Buffy said. "You almost died on me three days ago! And you're putting me through this again?!"
Buffy stroked Faith's hair as she drove. Buffy's hand was shaking.
"You're not dying on me when I'm this pissed at you," Buffy said. "You hear me?! You're not just gonna, gonna die on me after you fucking sucker-punched me so I couldn't go out and help people! You could've tried to talk to me! Maybe I would've listened! But instead you had to prove how tough you are and knock me out so that when you got to the house I couldn't help you! And then you had to go and fight Drusilla alone?! Yeah, great fucking plan!"
Buffy banged her fist on the steering wheel, and nearly broke the wheel off. She ran a red light and nearly collided with another car.
"Why can't you ever just talk to me?!" Buffy screamed. "Why do you always have to do everything alone?! Why do you always think you have to keep stuff inside, and not let me in?! We almost broke up once because you wouldn't talk to me! I LOVE YOU! DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I FUCKING LOVE YOU?! Why did you have to go in there alone?! Of all the stupid, STUPID things you could have done! Why did you go in there without me?! WHY?!"
"Faith, you're not fucking dying on me when I'm pissed at you like this!" Buffy screamed. "You fucking hear me?!"
Buffy screeched around a corner. She passed a softball field. There were long wooden poles, like spears, stuck into the ground, spaced a few yards apart. Naked bodies were impaled on top of them.
Buffy tried to ignore them.
She drove past the softball field, and kept all her senses focused on Faith. Faith was her anchor. Faith's scent was the only smell. Faith's heartbeat, and her breathing, and the sound of the windshield wipers thumping back and forth in their vain attempt to clear the rain away, were the only sounds. The car was a refuge from the world, a little cocoon just for her and Faith.
Buffy was hungry; she'd been hungry since they crashed Angel's car. She thought Faith was right, and she probably did have a concussion, and her body had used a lot of energy to heal her, and her body was telling her she needed to eat now.
She had been trying not to think about her mother, because she had to stay sharp; because Faith needed her now. But she kept seeing her mother...lying pale and cold and dead on the bed, her throat torn open...
Buffy was hungry; she was ravenously hungry. In a way she was grateful for it; it helped take her mind off her mother.
She found herself remembering the cocktail party her mother had hosted for the opening of her new art gallery in Sunnydale. The food had been delicious...
Buffy hadn't wanted to go, but her mother had insisted. Luckily the party was catered by people who really knew how to cook and the hors d'oeuvres made it all worthwhile. They were wonderful. There were Swedish meatballs, and mini stuffed peppers, and caviar, and mango chicken salad canapés, and ginger soy scallops, wrapped in bacon. But Buffy's favorite was the teriyaki-style pork, served on skewers. She'd probably eaten a hundred of the things; they were scrumptious.
One of the people at the party, an annoying woman with a shaved head named Susan who did something called "outsider art" which Buffy didn't quite understand but which seemed to involve going to a lot of junkyards and welding odd things together spent ten minutes trying to convince Buffy that eating meat was wrong because the animals suffered, living their lives in pens waiting to be slaughtered, and although Buffy sympathized, she was the Slayer and she certainly wasn't ever going to stop eating meat, and besides that the woman was just annoying. Susan wore overalls to a cocktail party and talked about how being a vegan was great and being a mere vegetarian was a moral compromise and Buffy was deathly afraid to tell her that she didn't know what the difference between a vegan and a vegetarian was, because Susan would probably explain it to her, for a long time. Susan talked too loud and interrupted people's conversations and kept saying that all the art in all the museums should be burned and society should just start over. When ignoring her didn't work Buffy ate the teriyaki-style pork at her and made a big show of how great it tasted.
Buffy didn't know why she thought of that just now; why, of all the memories of her mother she could go back to, she had chosen that one. She'd hardly spent any time at all with her mother that night; Joyce had to be the hostess and do the networking thing to drum up business for the gallery.
But she was hungry...she assumed she was just reminiscing about the food. Unfortunately there was no time to eat now.
Buffy came back to Faith; she took in her scent, and listened to her breathing, and her heartbeat.
She knew Faith would be dead soon.
"Oh God, baby, I love you, I love you so much," Buffy whispered, and kissed Faith's hair, and began sobbing. "Please don't die on me? Please...?"
Willow lay pale and naked and dreaming on the black stone altar...
A dagger hovered above her heart.
"We beseech the First, the one true God," a vampire murmured, as he held the dagger inches above Willow's bare breast. Darla stood in the shadows behind him, smiling. Eight other vampires knelt around the altar, their hands clasped together in supplication, and more could be glimpsed in the shadowy recesses of the cold granite room, all on their knees; the vampires were hidden by their long robes, but their red eyes shone in the torchlight.
"Light-bringer, stretch out your hand, and take this offering--" the vampire continued, until his head was suddenly cut off by a battle axe. The axe was a silver blur as it streaked through the air and sliced straight through the vampire's neck without even slowing down.
The vampire exploded into dust, and the dagger he was holding clattered to the floor. The battle axe lodged itself deep into the stone wall behind the altar with a thunk.
All around the room, vampires leapt to their feet, snarling.
Angel stepped forward from the darkness, disguised by a long red robe. He removed his hood, and glanced around the room. He could see in the dark, better than any human; the torches provided all the light he needed. Counting the vampires around the altar, he saw twenty-one all together.
He smiled.
"So here's how we're gonna play this," Angel said. "You give me the girl, and I walk out of here, and I'm real happy. Or you can go for option two, and you guys are all real dead."
He pulled the katana from under his robe.
"Hey, whichever," Angel said. "I'm flexible."
Darla appeared from the shadows behind the altar, frowning.
"Oh, good," Angel said. "Because it's been a whole three hours since you made a speech at me."
Darla was going with the flapper look today; Angel knew it was her favorite. Straight, loose black velvet dress with lots of beads and fringe that hung down just below the knee and was cut to flare up when she moved, showing off her legs; heels and silk stockings. A few layers of long, beaded necklaces showing off her neckline, lots of gaudy rings on her fingers, and earrings that looked like peacock feathers, and might have been. Makeup, artfully applied, and heavy on the rouge. Darla's blonde hair was cut in a short crop, and she wore one of those bell-shaped hats Angel could never remember the name of.
She looked beautiful. Angel found it annoying. Especially since she wasn't actually Darla.
"Rescuing the damsel in the nick of time, I see," Darla said, putting her hands on her hips and striking a pose. Angel knew she loved to pose in her 1920's outfits. "How dashing! But on this particular occasion I have to admit I'm finding it rather trying, Angelus."
"What's that hat called again?" Angel said. "I can never remember the name of it."
"It's a cloche hat, dear," Darla said. "'Cloche' means 'bell' in French. Remember the twenties? We made quite the couple in those days...speakeasies, Hot Jazz, the Charleston...Chicago was fun." Darla smiled, showing Angel her fangs. "You and me? We were the bee's knees."
"Yes, you and your tedious soul. You tried, I'll give you credit for that. Killing lowlifes, rapists and murderers. But the babies would have been tastier." Darla licked her lips. "Mmmmm, you don't know what you missed."
"Those days are gone, Darla."
"Are they, Angelus? Maybe we can bring them back."
"Kinda hard to party when all the human beings in the world are dead."
"There's always the deal I offered you. Maybe I'll give you a chance to change your mind. We can have Chicago again. We can bring it all back, baby. Jazz, parties, fun, getting dressed up, dancing every night...and you can even bring Buffy along. She'd love it, given time. She'd love dancing with you. When you pick who's going to live, make sure you include some musicians and some good cocktail waitresses. Oh, and clothing designers. Better hurry though. Once the human race is extinct--and it will be, very soon--there won't be any chance of a deal."
"Why do you keep offering me this? Why do you care?"
"Maybe because I like you. Maybe...I don't want every human being to die. Don't you understand I'm going to win? That I've already won? If you take the deal some people will be saved, the human race will survive. If you don't..."
"Not taking the deal."
Darla frowned again. She even stopped posing.
"You always could be a stubborn boy," she said.
All the vampires in the room had taken up positions around Angel, surrounding him. He let his senses focus on Willow. She was alive...but something wasn't right. Her breathing and her heartbeat were slow, sluggish. And her scent was wrong...there was a new smell, on top of it...it was sour, medicinal.
"We drugged her," Darla said. "Wouldn't want the little dear to wake up and start throwing fireballs. So is that a sword in your hand or are you just happy to see me?"
"It's a sword in my hand," Angel said. "You still can't touch stuff, right?"
Darla sighed. "No, unfortunately not. But I like to watch, my love, especially now that you're here."
"Guess I better put on a show then," Angel said, and ran for the altar...
Buffy was sure she knew where the hospital was.
She drove back up the street, the way she had come. It was a big street, lined with stores and gas stations and restaurants on either side, and Buffy was certain the hospital was here...she was certain she'd passed by it, with her mother, when they both came down to the Valley two years before to visit her mother's friend from college...Buffy remembered her mother was seriously considering buying a house in Glendale, and they spent some time exploring the town...
But the principal at the local private school didn't want to let Buffy in. So they settled on Sunnydale.
Buffy floored it and rocketed back up the street, looking frantically out the windows, straining to see through the rain that made looking through the windows feel like looking up at the surface of the water from the bottom of a lake, trying to remember where exactly the hospital was, trying to remember...
...What those people reminded her of. The people impaled on the wooden poles...
They reminded her of something...
The poles looked like they went in through the people's anuses, and came out their mouths.
Buffy shook her head, and kept scanning the street. In-N-Out Burger. Mexican restaurant that made the awesome quesadillas. (The people impaled on the wooden poles.) Sporting goods place that sold the cool archery equipment she had wanted to buy, but her mother said no. Gas station. Most of the stores' signs were dark.
She looked at the other side of the street again. Italian restaurant with the lame little (people impaled on wooden poles) imitation Leaning Tower of Pisa coming out the roof. Another gas station. Furniture store with the huge American flag in the parking lot. Pizza place. Used car place. The hospital was supposed to be here. Where was it? Buffy started shaking; she couldn't (people were impaled) stop herself. She tried concentrating on Faith. She couldn't find the hospital...she knew (they were naked and the poles went through their anuses and came out their mouths) it was right around here...
She was hungry (the people impaled on poles reminded her of something.) She'd been hungry for awhile, ever since the accident. She thought Faith was right; she probably did have a concussion (they were dead they were stripped naked and then impaled on poles and Buffy suddenly realized she had seen some of them twitch whoever they were they were still alive up there and she just kept on driving by and they were impaled alive impaled alive impaled alive and she just kept going--)
Buffy was shaking all over.
Something was coming out of her...
She slammed on the brakes, and skidded to a stop in the middle of the street. The street was (the people impaled alive on the wooden poles that went in through their anuses and came out through their mouths reminded her of something and she knew what it was now) deserted.
The hospital...it wasn't there. The place where the hospital had been...it was a construction site now. The hospital building was partially torn down.
She was hungry. She'd been hungry since the accident...she knew her body had used a lot of energy to heal itself after the car crashed so that's why she was hungry...
She got out of the car. The rain drenched her, instantly soaking through her clothes and plastering her hair to her head. The rain was ice cold. The street was deserted. The air was cold too, and it smelled like smoke. Buffy held herself, and shivered. She knew that she knew what the people reminded her of but she hadn't let herself think the thought yet and as long as she didn't think it she could keep it from...
Some of them had been twitching; she was certain of it.
The rain and the cold air got in under her clothes and chilled her but something was coming out too, something was coming out of her...
The impaled people had been twitching...they weren't dead yet...they would be dead eventually but first they would suffer cruelly...and nothing could be done...
Buffy heard a scream. She whirled around, trying to determine where the scream was coming from...it was getting louder...
She looked back at the car, at Faith. Buffy felt shaky and off-balance and everything was sped up now, like when she was a little girl and she would spin around in the yard over and over again as fast as she could and make herself so dizzy she'd fall. Faith wasn't screaming. She was unconscious on the seat...Buffy couldn't figure out who was screaming...
"They suffered cruelly before they were slaughtered," Buffy whispered. "It's not...not what nature intended."
Buffy saw her mother, lying dead on the bed, her throat ripped open...she saw the people impaled on the wooden poles...
The hospital wasn't here anymore. The hospital in Sunnydale would take her a couple of hours to reach and Faith would be dead by then and the naked people impaled on the poles reminded her of something and she knew that she knew what it was but as long as she didn't let herself think about it she could keep it away...there was another scream, louder now. Buffy turned around and around, looking in every direction, but there was nothing, nothing, no one was there, she had no idea who could be screaming now and she had no idea what those people reminded her of because even though she knew that she knew she wasn't going to let herself think about it and she had to concentrate on finding a hospital for Faith anyway. But when she didn't think about the people on the poles she thought about her mother...
Buffy fell to her knees in the street, and started to cry.
She heard the scream again; it was a horrible ear-splitting shriek, a terrible, mournful keening, the cry of some wretched creature who was lost, abandoned...someone who was absolutely alone...grieving for a love that was gone. And Buffy knew where the scream was coming from now...
It was coming from her...
Buffy knelt in the street, in the rain, and held her head in her hands, and squeezed her eyes shut tight, and shook all over, and screamed, and screamed, and screamed, as her tears fell down her cheeks, and she remembered the cocktail party her mother had hosted for the opening of her art gallery in Sunnydale.
Buffy hadn't wanted to go, but the whole thing was catered and it turned out that the hors d'oeuvres were delicious...Buffy's favorite was the teriyaki-style pork, served on skewers.
An annoying woman named Susan tried to convince her that eating meat was wrong because the animals suffered. When ignoring her didn't work Buffy ate the teriyaki-style pork at her and made a big show of how great it tasted.
"They suffered cruelly before they were slaughtered, you know," Susan had said. "It's not what nature intended."
"Poor little piggies," Buffy had replied. "But nature made them tasty, and so they must go in my belly now." Susan went away after that.
The impaled people reminded Buffy of teriyaki-style pork, served on skewers.
Some of them had been twitching...
Buffy held her head in her hands, and screamed.
Angel moved like a dancer, slicing through the vampires coming at him from all sides with a savage grace, making his way toward the altar as best he could; his progress was slow but steady. Willow was unconscious on the big black slab of rock and Angel was sure the First hadn't lied when it said Willow had been drugged, but he needed to find some way to wake Willow up; he'd killed five of the vampires now and he thought he could hold the rest off for awhile, but he wasn't sure he could take all of them out himself, especially if reinforcements arrived, and he was pretty sure they would, very soon. A fireball would come in handy right now.
For some reason, the vampires weren't trying to kill Willow. It didn't make sense; they had been about to kill her before when he interrupted them, they were going to stab her through the heart with a dagger. But all the vampires were concentrating on him now, and ignoring Willow.
Angel parried a dagger, elbowed a vampire behind him in the face, and kicked another vampire in the chest. He was a magnificent swordsman, but he was slowly being overwhelmed. Sixteen vampires still circled around him, snapping and growling, searching for an opening. Angel looked toward Willow again. Some of the vampires could reach her if they tried; he was still too far away from the altar and he probably wouldn't be able to stop them. But they weren't trying. Did they want to concentrate on eliminating him first? Or was it something else? They had been performing an elaborate ceremony when he entered the chamber; he hadn't caught all of it but it sounded like a prayer to the First, and it invoked the Powers That Be. But they hadn't finished the ceremony; he had beheaded the vampire who was chanting the incantation...
Three vampires sprang at him. He beheaded one, and ducked under another's outstretched claws. He leaped up, and head-butted that one in the chin. It staggered away. The third vampire raked a dagger across Angel's chest, drawing blood. Angel elbowed the vampire in the face, grabbed its hand at the wrist and broke it, and snatched the dagger away.
Angel considered things. If these vampires just wanted to kill Willow, why go to all the trouble to kidnap her? They definitely wanted to kill her now; they had been about to stab her in the heart when he stopped them. But they were performing a ceremony first...they needed her for something. They wouldn't kill her--maybe couldn't kill her--until they finished the ceremony, whatever it was...
"Willow!" Angel shouted. "Wake up!"
His voice echoed through the chamber, and died away. Willow didn't move, didn't stir. Darla stood leaning against the altar, watching Angel fight, with a little smile on her face. Angel knew that smile. It was the smile Darla always gave him when he had annoyed her somehow, but she couldn't bring herself to stay angry with him.
"I told you she's drugged, Angelus," Darla murmured. "Do pay attention."
Darla spoke softly, but he could hear her perfectly above the din; her voice cut through everything. The room seemed to rearrange itself around her.
"Can you stop posing in that frigging outfit for like one second?" Angel said, and spun and kicked a vampire in the face and stabbed another in the throat with his katana. "It's distracting."
"Pot calling the kettle black?" Darla said, and giggled. "You were quite the clotheshorse yourself, back in the day. Don't even try to pretend you don't know how absolutely scrumptious you look. I miss capes. You looked adorable in a cape. Though you were no slouch in a tuxedo either."
The vampire Angel had head-butted sprang at him again. Angel sliced its head off with his sword. "Wore a tuxedo when I took Buffy to one of her high school dances," Angel said, and backflipped over two more vampires coming up behind him, and dashed for the altar.
"Did you say that just to hurt me?" Darla said, and frowned again.
"No," Angel said. "I never wanted to hurt you."
A vampire swung at Angel with his own battle axe. Angel thought that was rude. He leapt above the swing and somersaulted backward on to the black stone slab, carefully avoiding Willow, and threw the dagger straight through the vampire's eye with so much force it knocked the vampire off his feet and to the floor. The vampire screamed and dropped the battle axe.
"Willow!" Angel shouted. "C'mon, wakey-wakey..."
Angel wished he could go get the battle axe. He was really very fond of that battle axe. Unfortunately all the vampires surrounded the altar now and there were still more than a dozen left; Angel was a man on a raft in a sea full of sharks. He leaned forward and beheaded a vampire who came too close. One more down, but Angel had a bad feeling they might bring in reinforcements soon...
"Willow, really need you to wake up now..." Angel said, as he stood above her, looking around at the sea of enemies surrounding him, and then saw at least fifty more vampires running through the entrance at the far end of the room.
"Can't wait to see how you get out of this," Darla said, and smiled.
Eventually, Buffy stopped screaming.
It wasn't something that she did; she didn't will herself to stop. The screams had come out of her on their own and they stopped on their own.
The last of the screams faded away now, and Buffy was left there, alone in the rain, kneeling in the middle of the dark, deserted street, shivering. The tears on her cheeks mingled with the rain, and felt cold.
She thought about her mother.
"I love you, Mom," she whispered, her teeth chattering now. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry...I wasn't...the daughter you wanted. I'm sorry I wasn't the daughter Dad wanted either. I'm sorry...you guys got divorced because of me. I'm sorry...I let Drusilla kill you."
She knelt there awhile longer. She was hungry. She found herself thinking about her mother's meat loaf. It hadn't tasted that bad...
She smiled.
"I'm sorry, Mom," Buffy whispered. "But...I gotta go to work now. I gotta try to save the world."
Buffy got herself up.
She stood there, and looked around. It was strange, how quiet this part of the town was...no sounds came to her other than the steady sweep of the rain. Faith's scent came to her; Buffy kept part of herself locked on it.
The hospital wasn't here anymore. She needed to find one...
She looked around again.
She saw a payphone across the street, at the gas station. She ran to it.
The street was quiet. No cars passed, and there were no people. There were no vampires either. But the air still smelled like smoke. The smell of the rain cut it a little but Buffy could smell blood too. She wondered how many people were dead in the stores; stores were public places, and the vampires could have walked right in. She concentrated on Faith's scent. She reached the phone, and pulled it off the hook with a shaking hand. She dialed "0". She doubted they'd be able to spare an ambulance but at least she could find out where the nearest hospital was...
Nothing happened. There was no dial tone. She jiggled the switchhook. Still nothing. The phone wasn't working.
"FUCK!" Buffy screamed, and slammed the phone back on to the receiver so hard she broke the case in two, right down the middle. Change came flying out; she took a few dollars worth. She would have to call the house at some point to make sure everyone else was okay and she'd need change for payphones, assuming she could find one that was working. She silently vowed to buy a cell phone if she somehow found a way to get the world out of this.
She scanned the street again. She didn't see any other payphones. There were no houses. But there had to be phones; the stores would have offices inside, and phones in the offices...
She ran to the gas station. It was one of those gas stations with a little variety store attached. The door to the variety store had been kicked in and was hanging off its hinges. Buffy smelled vampires. The scent was faint; the vampires weren't there now. But they had been there.
She walked in and looked around. There were two dead bodies on the floor, a fat old woman and a teenage boy; both had their throats torn open and their dead eyes stared up at the ceiling. There was a back room. There was a counter with a cash register. Buffy vaulted over the counter; there was a phone, and another dead body; a Latino man lying face-down in a pool of blood. She ignored the dead body and picked up the phone.
There was no dial tone.
She jiggled the switchhook. Still nothing.
She ran back out of the store, ran back to Faith.
She got back in the car. Buffy was drenched and her clothes were soaked through, so she moved Faith over a little instead of resting her head in her lap again. She started the car, and thought about things.
She didn't know where to find a hospital. There was no time to drive all the way back to Sunnydale. She couldn't call an ambulance, or the emergency line, to find out where the nearest hospital was; the phones were all down.
There was nothing to do but drive, and hope she found a hospital somewhere through sheer luck. The hospital she remembered was gone now but there had to be another one; a town as big as Glendale couldn't go without a hospital, could it? Or she could get back on the highway, drive to Burbank...there had to be a hospital somewhere in Burbank...
Buffy tried to remember how to get back to the highway.
She couldn't. She realized that she had no idea where she was or how to get back to the highway. She'd only been to Glendale twice. If she drove around long enough she knew she'd find a sign eventually that would lead her to the highway, but that would be even more wasted time...
Buffy grabbed Faith's wrist, feeling for her heartbeat. For a long moment, she couldn't feel it.
Then she felt it, barely; it was a murmur, more of a soft hiccup than a beat. It was there. But it was weaker than before...it was fading...
Buffy was pretty sure Faith had only minutes left to live now.
She realized she was crying again. She started the car up and peeled out of there, looking for the highway.
She was quiet for awhile. She decided she would kill herself, if Faith died in the car, without even reaching a hospital first. She thought about how to do it, and decided she would stay outside, fighting every vampire she could find on the street until they finally killed her. It might take awhile, but she knew they would kill her, eventually. They were everywhere now, the world belonged to them now. Buffy would die, taking as many of them as she could with her. It was a good way to die; it's how she always thought she'd die anyway.
But first, there was someone she wanted to talk to.
"Yeah, so...hey," Buffy said, as she strained to see through the rain, looking for signs. "Hey, God? Jesus, Allah, Yahweh, Thor, whatever you're calling yourself these days? I need some help here. Because...because it looks like you've given up on us and...and I'm trying to save the world here. You know, this world you created? If you even exist. To tell the truth...even with all the magic and crazy stuff I've seen...I'm not sure you do. Actually, to be like, completely honest here? I'm pretty sure you don't."
Buffy reached out, and held Faith's hand. It was cold.
"Yeah so...I like save the world, right?" Buffy said. "I save the world, your world, when you sure as hell never lift a fucking finger, and so far I haven't asked for one fucking thing from you in return. Well I'm asking now. I'm fucking asking now! I'm fucking asking now and you're gonna listen to me! Maybe you never listen to people, maybe you don't give a shit about us, maybe with all the murders and rapes and little kids getting abused in the world and starving people in Africa and every other fucking thing going on it's stupid to believe in you, to believe you give two shits about any of us, that you ever cared at all but you created this piece of shit world and I'm the one holding it together! I'm the one holding it together and you're gonna listen to me! You're gonna give me this one fucking thing, because I've never asked for anything else! Because you owe me! BECAUSE YOU FUCKING OWE ME THIS!"
Buffy looked down at Faith, as her tears rolled down her cheeks.
"You're gonna save Faith," Buffy said. "You're gonna, gonna do this for me because of all the people I've saved. Because I've saved your whole fucking world for you while you were, what? Off taking a nap somewhere? Well fucking wake up! WAKE UP!"
"Glad you could join us," Angel said.
Willow looked up at him. Her eyes were black.
"Angel?" she whispered. "Is that you? What's...happening? Can't...see anything." She felt dazed, and queasy. Something wasn't right...something in her body wasn't right. She turned her focus inward, trying to find it...
"Well, we're kinda in like these catacombs surrounded by about sixty vampires right now," Angel said. "Please tell me that fireball thing wasn't a one-time deal."
Willow looked around the room. She heard the horde of vampires surrounding her more than she saw them, but their red eyes blazed like rubies whenever they caught the light from the torches on the walls. She heard Angel desperately swinging his sword, trying to hold the snapping, slashing horde of vampires at bay. But there were far too many; Willow knew Angel would be overwhelmed in seconds...
"How did you wake up?" Willow heard someone saying. She looked around again. Darla was suddenly sitting beside her; Willow recognized her voice, and she could just barely make her out by the light of the torches.
Willow felt cold, suddenly. She was aware of how cold the room was, how cold the black slab was. Darla made her feel the cold.
"You do look pretty in black, darling," Darla said, as she looked into Willow's black eyes, and smiled, showing Willow her fangs.
"You drugged me," Willow said. Above her Angel punched a vampire out of the air as it tried to spring over him, spun and kicked another in the chest as it tried to climb on to the altar, and beheaded a third with his katana. But he was fighting a losing battle, and Willow knew it.
"Yes, I did, and I'm rather peeved that you somehow managed to wake up despite it," Darla said. "You really are a precocious girl. Annoyingly so."
Willow couldn't concentrate with the drug flowing through her system, so she stopped it. She wasn't sure how she managed it, but it was easy now; she felt like she knew things now that she hadn't known before....like her awareness had expanded somehow. She found the drug in her system, and reversed its course, sent it flowing back outward...
"What are you doing?" Darla said, looking suspiciously at her, peering deep into Willow's black eyes, trying to decipher what she saw there.
Willow held out her hand. The drug they had used on her--a foul-smelling, viscous dark liquid--suddenly poured out of her, rushing back out from all the places it had filled inside her, and formed a little puddle in the palm of her hand. She flicked it away, and felt better.
Darla frowned. "How did you do that?"
"Go fuck yourself, bitch," Willow said. Darla bristled, but Willow wasn't paying attention. She took another look around the room. Angel wasn't exaggerating; she couldn't count them in the dark, but it sure sounded like there were about sixty vampires surrounding them.
But there were torches on the walls, too...
Willow raised her hand. Angel leaned forward and swung at a vampire with his katana; the sword suddenly bounced back, and sparks flashed through the air in front of him, lighting up the room.
"What the hell?" Angel said.
"Energy shield," Willow said, and stood up. "It's surrounding us, so you can relax for a minute. What's going on? Gimme the cliff notes version; I need to concentrate."
"You were kidnapped. I'm rescuing you."
"Uh-huh," Willow said. "Well that qualifies as ironic. And how's the rescue going?"
Darla got up and walked away from the altar. The energy shield didn't spark; she passed straight through it.
"Well, things were sorta looking up until fifty more of these guys ran in here a minute ago. Now, not so good."
Willow looked at the torches on the walls, noting their exact position, fixing on them. Not just the torches in this room. She realized that she could feel the fire; she could lock on to it...she could feel every source of fire in the catacombs, every torch on every wall in all the tunnels and in all the little hidden rooms, no matter how far away they were, regardless of the fact that she couldn't see them. She felt them.
She knew she could bend the fire...shape it. She felt the fire, waiting for her...like stone waits for a sculptor.
But it was tricky, because the energy shield was interfering a little...she had to push through it. It was like moving through quicksand.
"And how did I get naked, exactly?" Willow said. It annoyed her that she felt so at ease being naked around Angel. But the memories Drusilla gave her were a part of her and there was no way around that; for better or worse, for the rest of her life she would remember being with Angel...she would remember him taking her, every day.
For a second her mind wandered back to those days, to the closet.
Angelus never hurt her. He was always gentle. But his touch was cold.
"Uh, that was these guys," Angel said, and took off his robe, and handed it to her. She slipped it over her head. It trailed down to the floor like a dress with a long train. "They were doing like a sacrifice thing. They were gonna kill you with a dagger. This big rock we're standing on is some sort of sacrificial altar."
"This isn't that dream where I'm naked and then there's a chemistry quiz I haven't studied for, right?" Willow said. "Because you're not usually in that one."
Willow weakened the shield, just a little; it was still strong enough to hold firm against the vampires' attacks for awhile. Some of the vampires were slashing and clawing at it now, but they were at a loss; they had no idea how to bring it down, and a lot of them were just standing there perplexed, and snarling. Willow knew a concentrated physical attack would bring the shield down eventually; the stronger the attack, the quicker the shield would drop. But the vampires didn't seem to know that and Willow sure wasn't going to tell them.
"Well, a lot of my dreams have me surrounded by like sixty vampires in some weird crypt-looking room somewhere, actually, but you're not usually in those," Angel said. "So unfortunately I'm thinking this is real."
The shield was weak enough now; Willow's spell would get through.
"That's too bad for these assholes," Willow said, and raised her arms. By the light of the shield she noticed Darla standing in the shadows, watching her like a hawk.
Willow smiled, and looked right back.
"Hey bitch," Willow said. "Check this out."
Fire leapt from every torch in the room, streaked into the air over the vampires' heads, and formed a giant ball of red flame; it lit up that dark place like the sun.
The vampires stared up at the ball of fire, frozen, bewildered, their mouths agape; they couldn't even manage one snarl between them. They looked back at Darla, plaintively.
Darla ignored them; she was watching Willow.
"I'll be damned," Angel whispered, as he stared up at the giant fireball, transfixed. The fire was beautiful; it distorted the air around it in pulsing waves, and threw off shafts of light in all the colors of the rainbow.
"Maybe," Willow said. "But first these guys."
And Willow lowered her arms, and all the vampires shrieked, as the giant ball of fire crashed down among them like a comet and exploded, incinerating them. The energy shield flashed and sparked as the heat slammed against it, but it held, and in seconds all that was left of the vampires were mounds of dust. The vampires' shrieks outlived them; they echoed through the room, and then fled out into the catacombs, and gradually died away.
Willow dropped her shield, and the room became pitch-black again. She was tired, suddenly; nearly exhausted. She hoped they wouldn't be needing any more magic for awhile because what she needed right now was a hot bath and about two days' worth of sleep. She missed Xander. She wanted to be with him. She wanted his arms around her.
"Well. I guess...that's that," Angel said.
"Thanks for the rescue," Willow said.
"Sure," Angel said. He pointed toward the passage on the far side of the room. "Exit's that way. Is it...okay if I...?"
He touched her hand.
"Yeah," Willow said, and took his hand. "I can't see in here. Thanks."
"Sure," Angel said.
They stepped off the altar, and walked slowly back toward the passage, Angel carefully guiding Willow's steps. Darla watched them go.
"There's something about you, Willow," Darla said. "I'll find out what it is eventually, I promise you that. I'll get you yet."
"And my little dog too, right?" Willow said, and kept walking. "Look me up when you can touch people. Until then? Please, pretty please, fuck off?"
"Oh, but I can touch you," Darla said...
Willow turned. She couldn't see anything. But she felt something... something cold.
The First melted, twisted and changed...shed Darla's skin, and put on someone else's.
"I can reach all the way down to your heart, cowgirl," Willow heard the First say...
...But it was Xander's voice.
"And then I can rip it out," Xander said, and smiled in the dark.
Faith was fading...dying. Buffy looked around desperately; she still hadn't even found the highway.
"Please, God," Buffy whispered. "If you're out there? Don't...don't let my baby die."
Buffy drove through the unceasing rain, crying. The constant beat of the rain on the windshield drowned out the sounds of the world outside, made the world seem an illusion. The world outside the car was a cold, gray, fluid place, where everything was muted and shifting, and things only appeared in flashes, before fading down to darkness again. The car felt like a coffin now; a coffin at the bottom of the ocean...
And then there was a light.
It was a red light. It flashed through the car like a beacon, reflecting off the rear-view mirror...and both side mirrors, too, as if the car was caught up in light, surrounded by light.
Buffy heard a siren...it cut through the dreary, monotonous tapping of the rain like a doorbell ringing in her head. Like the world was inviting itself in.
Buffy turned around in her seat, and smiled, as she saw an ambulance coming up fast behind her.
GODS AND MONSTERS
Thor's hammer streaked through the air like a torpedo and crashed against the closest Fyarl demon in a deafening explosion that created a shockwave: the shockwave shattered every single window in every single house and car for blocks in both directions and sent Willow hurtling backwards like a dandelion in the wind. She landed flat on her butt in the middle of the street five yards away. The Fyarl demon the hammer had struck fell down dead with a hammer-shaped dent in his torso. The hammer flew on for a few seconds, then sailed up into the sky and changed direction, reversing course like a boomerang, and headed straight back to Thor.
Thor turned. The Fyarls shrieked at him, but they didn't move; they seemed uncertain how to proceed against him. Thor paid them no heed; his eyes were locked on Willow.
"Willow!" the god shouted, and caught his hammer without looking as it returned to his hand. "Art thou injured?"
"Oh, aye?" Thor said, and glared at the Fyarls. They growled back at him, showing him their teeth. But Willow knew they were a pack of dogs suddenly confronted with an elephant and they showed their teeth more to bolster their own courage than to scare Thor, and besides, scaring Thor wasn't actually physically possible anyway as far as Willow knew.
"Aye," Willow said, and rubbed the back of her neck. It ached. It had been a long few days; she needed sleep. "Um, thanks for the save by the way. You're a sight for sore eyes, handsome. In fact I'm just gonna go on the record right now? You're like, completely the best god ever."
"Have a care, witch," Thor said, and looked back at her, and smiled. He pointed with his hammer, first at Heather, and then at the police at the other end of the street. "Remember thy shield, and see to those innocents, while the Odinson deals with these dregs."
Thor referred to himself in the third person a lot; a fair number of the bad guys Willow had fought over the years did that too and she usually found it annoying. But with Thor it seemed somehow appropriate. And Willow knew Thor wasn't arrogant; if anything, he could be shy, especially when people fawned all over him. She had actually seen him blush once at a banquet in Asgard when a rather sluttily-dressed Elf queen named Alfvigdis ran her fingers over his biceps and told him how ruggedly handsome and heroic he was. Thor might have referred to himself in the third person, but he was the least pretentious person Willow had ever met. He liked nothing better than to relax with a jug of mead and a group of warriors by a campfire in some god-forsaken war-torn desolate wilderness, exchanging blood-soaked tales of victory and honor and glory after they had just given battle.
Thor was the most beautiful man Willow had ever seen, and the strongest, and also the most naive. Most of the times he had needed Willow's help, it was because someone had tricked him, taken advantage of his trusting nature. Thor had a half-brother named Loki he didn't get along with--partly because Loki was evil and partly because Loki was just annoying--who was constantly scheming to put Thor out of the way so he could eventually have the throne of Asgard for himself when their father, Odin, eventually died, and Loki accounted for at least half of Thor's--and the world's--troubles. Loki was the God of Lies, and the most powerful magic-user in existence, anywhere, in all the dimensions; Willow was at best a far-distant second and Loki had almost managed to kill her a few times now. Loki was a ruthlessly clever manipulator, and his lies and machinations were so subtle they could ensnare almost anyone with ease. But Thor never told lies, and he didn't understand people who did, and it made him vulnerable sometimes, and Willow had saved him. She always did, whenever he needed her; she always came when he called. Loki had nearly killed her for it, but she kept coming anyway.
"Um, hokeley-dokeley," Willow said, and smiled, and turned her attention to the fight. She conjured a weak shield around herself, and then threw a barrier up around Heather and another one that blocked off the other end of the street in front of the police, who were standing by their cars in the pouring rain and the howling wind without the slightest idea how to proceed. The barriers were weak and wouldn't stand up to any sort of concentrated attack, but they wouldn't need to; Willow knew Thor could handle the Fyarls, and she could take out any that managed to slip by him with fireballs now that she had some distance from them. The barriers would be enough to protect Heather and the police from flying debris, and that was the only threat to them now: when Thor got into a fight, stuff tended to fly around. Willow noticed the Fyarls had finally decided to rush Thor; somewhere in their animal brains they had come to a decision that attacking him as a group was their only chance for survival.
"HAVE AT THEE!" Thor screamed, his voice booming through the air like a volley of trumpets, as he ran straight at the demons, relishing the battle; the street thundered to his every footfall.
Willow knew the Fyarls were wrong, as she watched Thor run to meet their onslaught, fearless, laughing in the face of his enemies; Thor was an unstoppable force and the Fyarls had no chance for survival against him. They would have better luck trying to turn back the sea. There were a lot of Fyarls and it would take awhile, but Willow knew Thor would utterly destroy them. She watched him wade right into the pack of snarling, shrieking demons, swinging his giant war hammer back and forth like a quarter-ton baseball bat; the Earth trembled beneath Willow's feet with the hammer's every impact. A sound like a sonic boom exploded through the air and Willow saw one Fyarl rocket straight up into the thundering, lightning-streaked sky as Mjolnir smashed into him; the demon sailed through the clouds, and didn't fall back to Earth. Willow wondered idly if the Fyarl was in orbit now, as she prepared a fireball; she'd seen Thor knock things into orbit before.
She lined up her shot carefully; Thor was moving around a lot and she didn't want to risk hitting him. She knew her fireballs couldn't do any permanent damage to Thor--he was a god--but she also knew her fireballs sure could hurt him a lot; she had found that out the hard way a few years before when they were fighting off an invasion of frost giants in Norway together and one of her shots had gone off-course and hit him. Willow's fireballs weren't technically made of fire; they were plasma, the stuff that made up the stars, and when she was at full strength she could make them burn as hot as the sun. It had taken a few days for the burn to heal after she hit Thor with one, but he had been good-natured about it. Resentment was as alien a thing to him as lying. And besides, he had Alfvigdis the Elf queen to tend his wounds; he had saved her entire kingdom from being overrun by trolls the week before and she was happy for the opportunity to show her gratitude.
Willow frowned. Alfvigdis was annoying.
She shook her head, made herself stop thinking about that shameless, trampy slut of an Elf Queen getting her hooks into Thor and sent a fireball streaking toward a Fyarl demon who was trying to sneak up on Thor from behind. Alfvigdis wasn't even that pretty, Willow thought. Her boobs looked fake, and her shoes were dumb. The fireball turned the rain to hissing gas as it cleaved a path through the air and then collided with the Fyarl, incinerating him. Willow's fireballs weren't burning as hot as they could right now because Willow was tired, but they were more than hot enough to do the job.
Another Fyarl down...but Willow knew the Fyarls weren't their only enemy here: time was against them too. Every second the Fyarls delayed them brought Rebecca closer to death.
And then the rest of the world would die too...
Rebecca woke up in the dark.
The room was cold, and it smelled like a butcher shop. It smelled like old, dead meat.
She looked around. There was a light on in an adjoining room; the door was open a crack and a thin shaft of light cut through the darkness. Rebecca couldn't see much by it, but it made the darkness around her a little less absolute.
Rebecca tried to move, and then she gasped, as she discovered her wrists and ankles were tied with some sort of thick rope that bit into her skin. She was lying on her side on a long, thin metal table of some kind, her hands tied behind her back.
She felt shaky and weak and nauseous; she tried to figure out why, tried to remember where she had been. It was hard to concentrate.
She looked around again. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness she was able to get a general sense of the room she was in: concrete floor, bare concrete walls. There were other tables scattered around; they might have been workbenches. She didn't notice any windows at all when she looked at the walls, and the air was dusty and stale. She thought she might be in some kind of workshop, in a garage or a cellar. There were things hanging from the ceiling in the far corner, but she couldn't tell what they were.
The table was cold, against her skin.
Rebecca suddenly realized she was in her underwear. She was in her bra and panties; the rest of her clothes were gone.
She wanted to scream, to scream as loud as she could and hope it brought help.
She didn't let herself. Whoever had tied her up wasn't here for the moment and she didn't want them to know she was awake. She needed to free herself, somehow, before he came back...
She tried to remember how she had gotten there. There had been a party... she had been with Heather...
A spasm of fear roiled through her; it was like suddenly being dunked in ice water. She didn't know where Heather was. If she was tied up, what had happened to Heather?
Rebecca closed her eyes, and fought back her fear. If she was going to find Heather she needed to be strong. She needed to be smart, and not panic. She tried to move her wrists, with all her strength. The ropes were thick, and too tight...she couldn't break them and she couldn't work any slack into them no matter how hard she tried to move her hands.
There was a soft creak.
The shaft of light grew larger.
A man appeared in the doorway of the adjoining room. Rebecca could just discern what was in there now. She saw a long wooden desk, and a straight-backed wooden chair. There was an assortment of knives on the desk, and some sort of stone grinding device. The light kept the man in silhouette, so Rebecca couldn't see his face. She thought he was wearing glasses.
He stood there, looking at her, silently. He held something down by his side; Rebecca couldn't see what it was. She noticed out of the corner of her eye that the things hanging from the ceiling at the other end of the room were a little clearer now; she still couldn't make them out but she could tell they were hanging from chains, and they had weight; the hanging things were long and heavy, solid.
"What the fuck did you do to me, you piece of shit?" Rebecca snarled. "Where's Heather?"
He raised his hand. There was a long knife in his hand; it glinted silver in the light.
The man held the knife up, and showed it to Rebecca. It was a butcher knife. He didn't say anything. He didn't move.
"You can...can cut me up," Rebecca said, trying to keep her voice from quavering. "But, but you won't... won't get what you want from me, you sick, twisted prick. I won't be afraid of you. I won't be some helpless girl."
The man's face changed, in the darkness; Rebecca wasn't sure exactly, but it seemed as if his mouth moved. He might have been smiling.
"Where's Heather?!" Rebecca screamed.
The man turned around, walked back into the room and shut the door.
Rebecca was in absolute darkness now. After a moment she heard the grinding machine start up, and she heard the screeching, scraping sound of a knife being sharpened.
A whimper escaped her lips, when she heard that sound, and knew what it meant. Rebecca was determined that would be the only whimper, the only weak moment. She couldn't allow herself to be weak; if she was weak she knew she would die here. And Heather needed her.
Rebecca felt herself shaking, and her eyes filled up with tears.
"Stop," Rebecca whispered to herself. "Stop."
She considered her situation. Her hands were tied behind her back, and her ankles were tied too. And she felt weak, and sick. She knew she had been drugged. She felt like she had no strength left in her. But she wasn't tied to anything; she could move. She assumed the man who had tied her up was confident that she wouldn't be able to escape from the room no matter how much she hopped around, especially since she wouldn't be able to use her hands.
That was his first mistake, Rebecca decided.
Because she had no intention of leaving that room. She had no intention of trying to run.
She brought her legs up as high as she could against her chest, curling herself up into a ball. She had been made to take ballet lessons when she was a girl, and she hated them, but they did give her body flexibility. Rebecca could do a perfect center split and she could raise her legs up perfectly parallel to her torso. And she could also curl herself into such a tight ball that she was able to bring her arms around underneath her legs from behind her back, so that her hands were now in front of her.
The machine was still grinding. Her hands were tied too tightly together for her to free them in the short time she probably had left, but she might be able to untie her legs...
She had dated a boy once who knew martial arts; the boy had turned out to be an arrogant idiot but Rebecca had sat in on a few of his aikido classes and found them interesting. She had always meant to look into aikido, maybe even try it out for awhile, to see how she liked it. But she had never gotten around to it.
She vowed to herself that if she made it out of this alive, she would learn how to fight.
She scrabbled at the ropes tying her ankles; they were thick and tight and with her hands bound together it was difficult to pull at them. At the same time she considered her strategy. Assuming she could free her legs before the man came back into the room, what should she do? She was breathing quickly now, gasping, and she felt her heart in her chest; it was beating so loud she thought the man might hear it. She dismissed the thought; it was ridiculous and she needed to be logical. She was sweating, even though the room was cold. Part of her was scared, and on the verge of panicking; she kept that part to one side and ignored it. She cursed herself as she heard another whimper escape her lips, and cursed herself for her shaking hands too, then stopped thinking about how afraid she was and focused on strategy again instead. She hadn't noticed any weapons or tools in the room, and trying for an exit would almost certainly be a waste of time. The exit probably wasn't even in this room. It was probably in the room the man was in now. And she was sure the door would be locked securely and she wouldn't be able to break it down. The man who had tied her up couldn't possibly be so stupid as to leave her an open door to walk out of, and she had no idea where she was anyway. The best plan was to fight him, take him by surprise somehow. There were no weapons here, but with her legs free she might manage it. She didn't know how to fight but years of ballet and gymnastics had given her powerful legs and she certainly knew how to kick.
She felt nauseous again, suddenly. The drug, whatever it was, was still in her system. She ignored it. She worked at the ropes.
If she freed herself before he came back into the room, she could wait by the door and attack him when he came out...
She worked at the rope holding her legs. It was thick and it was taking awhile...
She suddenly realized she hadn't heard the grinding machine for a couple of seconds.
There was a soft creak, as the door to the adjoining room opened.
Rebecca looked up, and froze, as she saw the man standing in the doorway, watching her.
He flicked a light switch on the wall to his left.
When the lights went on, Rebecca saw that the man had red hair and freckles, and he wore glasses, and stood very still, as still as a statue, and he was smiling. He had cold, flat blue eyes that didn't seem to blink. He had the butcher knife again, along with a scalpel, a pair of scissors, and a meat cleaver.
The man smiled at Rebecca, and then glanced up at the ceiling behind her.
When Rebecca followed his eyes, she saw that the things hanging from the ceiling on chains in the far corner were dead bodies. They were girls' bodies, beheaded, their hands and feet cut off. The bodies were abnormally pale; they had been drained of their blood.
Rebecca noticed four large basins lining the far wall beneath them.
One was full of heads. One was full of hands. One was full of feet. One was filled nearly to the top with blood.
The man smiled, and came toward her, as she started to scream...
With a thunderous swing of his war hammer, Thor disposed of the last of the Fyarls, knocking its head off its neck like a golf ball from a tee. Blood spurted from the demon's neck in a little geyser of green, and the head flew up into the sky, and didn't come back down. The headless body collapsed to the ground, joining dozens of others.
Willow caught her breath, and surveyed the carnage. The street looked like a battlefield. Buildings had collapsed, or were partially melted from her fireballs, cars were destroyed, there were massive holes punched in the street and Fyarl bodies were scattered everywhere. She heard helicopters in the sky; when she looked up, she saw them, distant specks far above. Military, she assumed; they had been smart and stayed away from the fight. At the other end of the street another half dozen police cars had arrived, joining the first four; their lights flashed blue, but their sirens were silent. More than a dozen police officers stood by the cars now, watching and talking quietly amongst themselves behind the barrier Willow had erected, and holding back a crowd of gawking people behind them. She assumed the police had tried to get through, realized they couldn't manage it, and then had simply given up and concentrated on crowd control. Or perhaps the police had been smart and not even bothered trying to get through; there wasn't anything they could have done against sixty Fyarl demons anyway. At least they were alive.
Willow bent over at the waist, and held on to her knees, and took a few deep breaths. It had been a long time since she had felt this tired, and most of her body ached. But they had won...for the moment. The thunder and lightning and rain had stopped. Willow knew the weather responded to Thor's moods, and the battle was over now.
The sight of the Fyarl demons' mangled carcasses nearly made Willow feel sorry for the creatures. Many of them were headless, some were missing limbs, and some had hammer-shaped holes going through them.
Thor had a scratch on his forearm.
The god turned, and looked at Willow.
"Willow," he said, softly. "Midgard is gone."
Willow knew "Midgard" was Thor's way of referring to Earth. Normally he lived in Asgard, the glorious, golden realm of the gods that existed in the sky, but he always kept a watchful eye on the Earth, arriving whenever he thought he was needed, or whenever Willow or her friends were in trouble. The strange thing was that this Thor wasn't from the past; he wasn't the Thor who existed in 1972. He knew Willow, which meant he was from her time; he had somehow traveled back to the past. She wasn't sure how he had found her here, in the past, but she was thankful he did.
Upon reflection, Willow decided it wasn't really surprising. He was Thor. Of course he could travel through time. He was a god.
"Saw that, huh?" Willow said. "Yeah, like, total drag."
Willow didn't know why she said that. She felt shaky all of a sudden... almost panicky.
Thor gave her a curious look, and then walked back toward her.
"Where are your comrades?" he said. "Rebecca, and Faith and Buffy, and Tara. Why are they not at your side?"
Willow felt her lip beginning to tremble. She felt tears filling up her eyes.
"They...they're..." she whispered.
Thor was standing close to her now. She turned away from him. She didn't want him to see her like this...to see her being weak.
He gently turned her toward him, and looked down into her eyes.
Willow's tears came. She couldn't stop them...she didn't have the energy anymore.
"They're...they're dead," Willow whispered. "We were fighting like...this big apocalypsey battle and...and he...he killed them all."
Thor hugged her. Willow fell into his arms, and held on to him as tight as she could, and leaned her head against his chest, and cried. She felt his strength around her.
After a moment, Thor caressed her cheek, and wiped her tears away.
"I grieve with you, Willow," Thor said. "But do not cry overmuch. Those worthies died in battle. Brave hearts, warriors born, verily they sit in Valhalla even now, in places of honor, regaling the All-Father with tales of their glorious deeds. We mourn their passing, aye, but we must also celebrate their lives in our hearts."
"No!" Willow screamed, and pulled away from him, as her tears came even faster, and she started to tremble all over. She was exhausted, and it was catching up with her now; she felt like there were flood waters inside her, and she couldn't hold them back anymore. "No they don't sit in Valhalla! They, they just...they were just wiped away! Wiped out of existence! They didn't, didn't even...didn't even have a chance to fight! I'm the only one left now! I'm THE ONLY ONE! THE ONLY ONE! And we have to find her! Oh Goddess, if we don't find her he destroys the world! We have to find her, we have to find Becca before he kills her! Before--"
Thor put his hands on her shoulders. He anchored her. Willow stopped shaking.
"Rebecca?" Thor said. "Who is trying to kill her? And what happened to the world? One moment, all was well; the next, Midgard was ravaged, and overrun by demons, verily in the blink of an eye; I know not how, and for all his cunning and wisdom even Odin himself cannot fathom it. But it is wicked sorcery of some kind, that is certain, and even now Asgard readies for war. The great host stands waiting 'pon the Rainbow Bridge, ready to invade Midgard and take our rightful vengeance; they only await my word. Indeed, the word was nearly given; I was about to lead the host forth to battle when you summoned that lightning bolt, and caught my eye. But how did you escape, and come to be here? Tell me the tale, and mayhap together we can stop this disaster from ever coming to pass."
Willow came back to herself, made herself calm down. Being with Thor always helped to center her; she always felt safe with him. And she knew she needed to be calm if she was going to get Rebecca out of this...if she was going to get the world out of this. Willow was still alive, which meant that Rebecca was still alive too. But the fight against the Fyarls had lasted a good twenty minutes and Willow didn't know how much time Rebecca had left. She considered the situation. She would need to cast another locator spell to find Rebecca...
"Okay, um, cliff notes," Willow said. "In 2009 my friends and I were fighting this guy named Warren who was trying to open a gate that would allow these like, alien creatures to invade our dimension? Warren built a time machine, and all of a sudden all my friends just disappeared. Tara, Becca, Faith, Buffy... everyone, they disappeared in front of my eyes, they were just...just ripped away. And the whole world was disappearing with them. I managed to escape into the past, and I figured out that Warren went back in time and killed Becca, and that's what destroyed the world in 2009. Warren kills her here, now, tonight. I came back to this point in time to stop him, but then he sicced sixty of those Fyarl demons on me and opened another time portal and got away to who knows where or when. But not before he made sure that Becca was taken by this serial killer guy, and when that guy kills her? That's it. I disappear from existence and the world ends and there's nothing anyone can do about it, not even you."
"You still speak strangely," Thor said. "What is a...serial killer?"
"A person who hunts other people like animals, and then tortures them and kills them, for fun," Willow said. "The guy who has Becca has already murdered eleven other girls." She turned, and looked at Heather. Heather was lying motionless in the street, still unconscious beneath the barrier Willow had erected around her.
She turned back to Thor. She saw the anger building in him, the magnificent rage that could lay waste to entire armies when it was unleashed; his gray eyes looked like two thunderclouds, and they flashed like lightning now.
Thor was a kind-hearted god who loved people. He enjoyed being with them, relating to them on their own terms; drinking with them, or talking about fishing, or the best way to harvest barley, or old battles their grandfathers had fought. Willow knew that Thor didn't really understand evil, and though he had taken part in countless battles and seen friends and comrades die, he certainly had never encountered anything like a serial killer before.
"And this blackguard has Rebecca in his clutches?!" Thor bellowed.
There was a deafening peal of thunder; it sounded like a bomb going off. Lightning clawed across the sky. The wind began to howl again.
"Yeah," Willow said. "He killed her before, that's why the world is gone in 2009. Killing Becca now, when she's only sixteen, changes history. I came back to stop him from killing her but I only get one shot at it. If he succeeds again I'll...I'll be wiped out of existence, Thor, I'll die in 1998. And then the world ends a couple of months later. We have to find her...I gotta, gotta cast a locator spell, and find her...and she's just sixteen now. Becca, she...she must be scared."
"Cast your bones, witch," Thor growled. "And be quick about it! The thought of her at the mercy of that dastard makes my blood burn."
Willow nodded. "Just gotta run to the car, get my bag, it's got all my magic stuff in it. Then I can--"
She turned and headed for the Aston Martin...and then she stopped.
The Aston Martin was destroyed. It had exploded, and burned...and taken her magic ingredients with it.
Without them, Willow had no way to cast a locator spell...no way to find Rebecca.
Rebecca screamed. She couldn't remember her plan now, couldn't make herself think logically, couldn't think at all; those girls' bodies hanging like sides of beef from the ceiling, those basins full of heads and hands and feet and blood on the floor, knocked all the thoughts out of her head and all that was left now was screaming...there was nothing to do, nowhere to go, no way out...the room smelled like dead bodies, like old blood. All that was left was screaming...
The man smiled, as he approached the cold metal table Rebecca was lying on, with his scissors, and his scalpel, and his butcher knife, and his meat cleaver. She shrank away from him. She screamed...and she felt herself crying now too... and she couldn't think...
Heather came into her mind. For a second she imagined Heather's head, her hands, her feet, her blood, in those basins...her body hanging from the ceiling like a piece of meat, like a butchered animal...
Rebecca was still screaming and crying...she still couldn't focus, couldn't think...
So she didn't think. Instead, she curled her legs up to her chest...
And when the man came to her table Rebecca kicked out with all her strength, and hit him square on the side of the head.
Her legs were still tied together, so she kicked him with both at once and the kick was doubly as strong as it might have been. The man staggered backwards, bounced off a workbench, and fell to the floor, and his tools clattered to the floor with him. Rebecca leaped up and off the table, and immediately felt wobbly; it wasn't just that her legs were tied together. She felt drunk, and nauseous. Whatever he drugged her with was still working through her system. She couldn't keep her balance...
She tried to hop by him, toward the knife he had dropped on the floor, reaching out to a nearby workbench to steady herself as she went. She was shaking all over, and she heard herself screaming...she looked around wildly for an exit. She didn't see one...
"Help!" Rebecca screamed. "SOMEBODY HELP ME!"
She felt his hand around her ankle. She shrieked, as she looked down and saw him staring up at her, implacable and yet expressionless; completely without feeling. He might as well have been swatting a fly. Rebecca went down, collapsing to the floor as he got up again and crouched over her. She couldn't kick at him now, but her hands were still in front of her so she punched out at him, swinging her arms around like a bludgeon. She managed to hit him once in the side of the neck, and then she desperately scrabbled around on the floor for the knife, but he punched her in the face before she could grab it, cracking her head against the concrete, and Rebecca saw stars.
She felt delirious, and only half-conscious, as he lifted her back up on to the table. When he set her back down on the table she shrank away from him, flailing out with her arms. He grabbed on to them with one hand, holding them still, and backhanded her in the face with the other.
Rebecca screamed again, and started sobbing.
The man smiled, and backhanded her again, harder. Rebecca tried to shrink away from him, but there was nowhere to go. She felt something warm on her lips...she knew it was her blood.
He backhanded her again; this time with a closed fist. Rebecca reeled, and nearly lost consciousness. Her nose started to bleed. She closed her eyes, and sobbed, and stopped struggling.
"Please..." she whispered, with her eyes closed, looking away from him. His eyes scared her. "I won't...I won't try to leave again. Just don't...hurt me...? Please...? Don't? I'll do...what you want. Just tell me what you want! Tell me what you want!"
The man caressed Rebecca's cheek. Rebecca shuddered. His hand was rough, and cold.
He began untying her hands. Rebecca gasped, and looked at him again.
"You'll...let me go?" she whispered. "I won't tell anyone. If you let me go I won't...I won't tell, I promise."
The man smiled, as he took the rope from her wrists. Rebecca was trembling. She tried sitting up.
Then she screamed, as he backhanded her in the face again, smashing her head back against the table. He moved behind the table, behind her head, and wrenched both her arms down by her sides. He tied her hands together underneath the table.
Then he picked up his tools from the floor: the scissors, the scalpel, the butcher knife, and the meat cleaver. He held them up, and showed them to her.
Rebecca began crying again; she was wailing now. She couldn't look into his eyes.
"Please don't?" she managed to whisper, between sobs. "Please?"
The man smiled again. Rebecca winced, as he cut her bra off with the scissors. She tried to move away from him, but there was nowhere to go now...
Rebecca shuddered, as he slipped the scissors beneath her panties. She screamed, as he moved the scissors between her legs. She felt the scissors, cold against her there.
"No! NO!" Rebecca screamed, and shook her head, and sobbed. "Please no, please no, please no..."
The man didn't penetrate her with the scissors. He cut her panties away instead.
He had never intended to penetrate her with the scissors, Rebecca realized. That wasn't what he was after.
Rebecca understood, now: he was going to kill her, but first he wanted her fear. That's what this was all about: fear. He wanted it from her, needed it, fed off it somehow.
And Rebecca realized she had a choice to make; a simple choice.
She could give him what he wanted...she could give him her fear...
Or not.
"No!" Willow screamed, as she ran to the burned wreck of the Aston Martin. "No, NO!"
"What is it?" Thor said, following behind.
"My magic ingredients! All the stuff I need for a locator spell, it was in this car!"
Willow tried the doors; the doors were melted shut. Thor grabbed the roof of the car where it met the windshield, tore the entire roof off like he was popping the top off of a beer can, and tossed it away. Willow looked around inside, and saw what was left of her handbag; it was burned down to ashes. Not only were her magic ingredients gone, but Willow realized that even if she could somehow find more, she couldn't cast a locator spell anyway; she didn't have anything of Rebecca's. She'd tracked her to the party through Heather; she had used Heather's hairs for her locator spell.
"Oh, Goddess..." Willow whispered, and held her head in her hands, as tears came into her eyes.
She had no way to cast a locator spell, and nothing of Rebecca's to use even if she did. And Rebecca would be killed soon...and then everyone else Willow loved would follow...
"I failed...failed everyone," Willow whispered. "I screwed it all up."
Thor gently turned her around, and looked down into her eyes.
The thunder stopped roaring in the sky. The lightning stopped flashing. The rain tapered off; the raindrops were warm on Willow's face, now, like a soft, spring shower...like tears.
"I let everyone down, Thor," Willow whispered. "I can't find her now. There's no way to find her, and she's, she's gonna die, and...and then the world's gonna die, and it's my fault! It's my fault. I let everyone down."
"You have never once let me down," Thor said, softly. "When your time comes you'll sit by my side in Valhalla, in a place of honor, but that time is far off yet. We're going to save Rebecca, and Midgard, tonight--now. You and I."
"But...but how?" Willow whispered. "I don't...I don't know how."
"My strength is here," Thor said, and pointed to his right arm. "But yours is here," he said, pointing to Willow's head. "And here," he added, holding his hand over her heart. "Use your strength, Willow."
Think tactically, Willow heard Rebecca saying. Be aware of your surroundings at all times. Note any terrain or object that can be used for offensive or defensive advantage...
"Okay, we...we have two options," Willow said. "If I can find the ingredients for a locator spell somewhere around here, I might be able to cast one if I can find something of Becca's." Willow rushed back toward Heather. Thor followed her, walking, yet still keeping pace; he was seven feet tall and he had very long legs and a very long stride. "Maybe Heather has something of Becca's. If not, we can look for the van he drove Becca away in. It's a blue van, and it hasn't been too long; they couldn't have gone too far."
"I could call down my chariot," Thor said. "We could go aloft, search from the air."
"Yeah, that's our plan B," Willow said, and waved her hand, and the barrier she had erected around Heather disappeared in a shimmering haze of yellow light. "But if he parked it in like a garage or something we'll never find it. So let's hope for the locator spell." Willow and Thor crouched down by Heather, and Willow touched Heather's forehead.
"She's been drugged," Willow said. "I'm gonna pull it out of her."
"When I find this villain, I will teach him not to hurt children," Thor growled. In the sky, thunder crashed and lightning flashed, and the rain started coming down harder. It was the only downside to teaming up with Thor, Willow thought; you really did tend to get rained on a lot. Willow erected a weak barrier over their heads to keep the rain away.
Willow took Heather's hand in hers, and concentrated.
After a moment, Willow released Heather's hand. There was a sprinkling of white powder in it now. Willow brushed it away.
"Wake up, sweetie," Willow whispered.
Heather opened her eyes.
"What...?" Heather said. She looked up at Willow, and didn't seem to recognize her at first. "Where am I...?"
When Heather saw Thor, her eyes widened. "Who...?" she said, and looked back at Willow again. "Wait...Willow?"
"Yeah, sweetie," Willow said. "Um, and this big handsome guy is Thor. Everything's really strange right now and I really don't have time to explain it all so you're just gonna have to trust me, okay?"
"Where's Rebecca?" Heather said, and sat up. "What happened? Wait... Thor?" She looked at Thor again. He smiled back at her.
"Aye, Heather," Thor said. "Well met."
"I'm dreaming," Heather said. "I'm dreaming every bit of this. Had me a wee bit too much scotch, I did."
"Believe me sweetie, I wish this was a dream," Willow said, and helped Heather to her feet. "But it isn't, and Becca's in danger, so you're just gonna have to trust that everything I tell you is true, okay?"
"In danger? How? We were...at a party..."
"And these two guys drugged you both and tried to kidnap you. I managed to stop them from taking you but now one of the guys has Becca and he's gonna kill her unless we find her right now."
"He's...gonna...kill her...?" Heather whispered, her face turning white. She started trembling.
"Heather," Willow said. "Look, sweetie, you gotta focus now, okay? I need you to--"
"Nay, child, he will not kill her," Thor said, and put his hand on Heather's shoulder, and looked down into her eyes. "For we shall find this scoundrel, and stop him. But we need your help to do it. Find your courage now."
"O...okay," Heather said. Her shaking stopped. "What...what can I do to help?"
"We need something of Becca's," Willow said. "If you have something of hers, anything, I can cast a spell that will tell us where she is."
"What do you need for this magic, Willow?" Thor said. "Mayhap I could be put to better use gathering what you need while you look for something of Rebecca's."
"I need mandrake root, newt's eyes, powdered amethyst, some holly, a mortar and pestle to grind it all up, and some candles," Willow said. "A good magic shop will have all that stuff, the problem is I have no idea where the nearest magic shop is, for all I know there might not be one for a hundred miles..."
Something was nagging at the back of Willow's mind. For some reason, she thought she was overlooking something.
She heard Rebecca's voice again.
Be aware of your surroundings at all times.
Willow took a look around. She turned her head slowly, taking in the whole street and every single thing around her...
"I think I might have something of Rebecca's...but...in my purse," Heather said, and looked around. "But I don't know where my purse is. Maybe...it's back in the house?" Heather followed Willow's eyes, as Willow scanned the street. When Heather saw the devastation all around, and the bodies of the Fyarl demons, she gasped.
"Willow," Thor said. "We must decide what to do next, and quickly."
Willow looked at everything, every single thing, around her...
And then she saw it.
In the gutter near where the blue van had been parked, she saw a pink sandal, with a rainbow-colored strap.
"There!" Willow shouted, and got up and ran to it. Thor and Heather watched, as Willow picked the sandal up out of the gutter.
"That was Rebecca's, she, she wore them today!" Heather shouted, pointing at it. "I helped her pick them out at the store."
"Yeah," Willow said. "Okay, now we just need stuff for a locator spell, and that might be a problem. You wouldn't happen to know where we can find a magic shop around here, would you?"
"A magic shop?" Heather said. "When I woke up this morning I didn't even believe in magic."
"Rebecca wore that, you say?" Thor said. "Then I've some magic of my own."
Thor raised his hammer, and looked up at the sky. Thunder roared; lightning flared. The wind howled again; Willow felt like she was on the verge of being picked up and carried away.
"Tanngrisnir!" Thor shouted, his voice exploding through the air, louder than the thunder. "Tanngnjóstr! Come! Thy master calls!"
...And saw a chariot racing down through the clouds.
Within seconds it was upon them; a rickety old wooden chariot drawn by two black goats. The chariot was little more than an upturned box with four wheels attached; every time she saw it Willow always thought it looked like a soapbox racer some kid had put together in his father's garage. It looked like it might collapse at any moment. But Willow had been in that chariot before, and she knew it could travel faster than the speed of light, and through outer space too; it could pierce the walls between dimensions, and, since it was here in 1972 now, apparently even travel back through time itself. And Willow knew it was pretty comfortable, too; it was lined with a nice cozy bed of straw and there were wool blankets in back, and usually a jug of mead.
"You're...really Thor, aren't you?" Heather whispered. "You're...you're a god."
"Aye, child," Thor said. "And the villain who took Rebecca shall learn that, to his detriment."
"Okay, it's always fun, riding in your chariot?" Willow said, and bent down next to the two goats, and scratched them behind the ears, as they licked her face. "But how does this help us find Becca?"
Thor took Rebecca's sandal from Willow's hand, crouched down beside the two goats, and held the sandal to the goats' noses.
"Once Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr have a scent, they can follow it through a blind night to the very last end of creation," Thor said. "They once chased Brokkr the dwarf all the way to Muspelheim and back when he had the unmitigated gall to pilfer a lock of the Lady Sif's golden tresses."
"Um, what did he just say?" Heather said. "I literally didn't understand a word he just said."
The goats sniffed Rebecca's sandal. Willow smiled.
"He said we have a chance," Willow said.
Rebecca turned, and looked up into the man's eyes.
He was holding up the scalpel...showing it to her. Waiting for her reaction...waiting for her fear.
Part of Rebecca quailed, when she looked into those flat, empty blue eyes. Part of her wanted to scream, when she saw the scalpel.
Rebecca knew she had a decision to make...
So she made one.
"Fuck you," Rebecca snarled, and spat in his face. "I'm not giving you what you want. You'll never get it. You'll never hear me scream, motherfucker. NEVER."
Rebecca couldn't move her arms at all and she couldn't reach the man with her legs. That left her only one way to fight him. She knew she'd only get one shot at it...and he would need to be close enough...
It wouldn't free her. It wouldn't incapacitate him. It probably wouldn't buy her any time.
But it would hurt him, and that was enough.
Rebecca waited. Part of her wanted to cry, but the part of her that was angry, the part that had decided not to give this man what he wanted no matter how much he hurt her, was stronger than that part. And it was patient, too; it could wait. The angry part of her could wait for its moment to attack.
It was like a lion, Rebecca thought. Part of her was a lion.
The lion waited, silent and still, as its prey approached.
Rebecca knew that the man thought she was still afraid; that her decision to fight him was a momentary show of strength that he could break through. He thought he could slice through it with that scalpel, Rebecca knew.
He had underestimated her. He thought she was like all those girls hanging from the ceiling, with their heads and hands and feet and blood in the basins.
Rebecca wasn't like them. Because she decided she wasn't.
She decided that she was stronger than them, that there was a lion inside her, and the lion was patient, and cunning, and she would wait for just the right moment...
Rebecca knew she was going to die. She accepted it.
All she wanted was to hurt this man first. If she could hurt him, then she could die.
The man leaned over her, holding the scalpel above her chest...
Rebecca lunged at him with her teeth, roaring like a lion, and bit into the side of his face, managing to get her teeth around his ear as the man screamed and tried to wrench himself free...
Rebecca bit down as hard as she could, and tore his ear off with her teeth.
The man screamed again, shrieking this time, and fell to the floor, as Rebecca spat his ear out. Her mouth was full of his blood.
She laughed, as the man sat on the floor, screaming, and holding his hand to his ear, trying to stop the flow of blood. After a moment he picked up his tools and ran out of the room, back to the adjoining room with the desk and the grinding machine.
"I told you, motherfucker!" Rebecca shouted, and spat his blood out. "I told you you'd never hear me scream for you again! But you screamed for me, didn't you, you piece of shit? Didn't you? DIDN'T YOU?! DIDN'T YOU?!"
"I'm in a little goat-drawn wagon sailing through the sky," Heather said. "I'm in a little goat-drawn wagon. Sailing through the sky. Also, Thor's driving."
"Yup," Willow said. "Isn't magic interesting?"
Thor's chariot traveled far above the Earth, staying just below the clouds, as Thor's keen eyes searched the countryside below them. Willow looked down too; luckily she wasn't really afraid of heights. Traveling around the world, through outer space and between dimensions with Thor was a great way of getting over a fear of heights.
Unfortunately she couldn't see the blue van anywhere below them; in fact she couldn't see much of anything at all, so she finally gave up, and leaned back in her seat--actually, it was a bench, but it was comfortable--and rested her eyes. She would just have to trust the goats to do their job.
Willow nearly giggled. She was trusting not only her own life, but the lives of all her friends and in fact the entire human race, to a couple of goats.
She had been living in fear for days now...seeing the faces of her dead friends whenever she closed her eyes. She was tired.
She realized Rebecca could die, at any moment...and when she did, Willow knew she would be next...she would simply cease to exist. She wondered what it would feel like. Would it hurt?
She remembered her friends, screaming as they were erased from existence...
She was tired.
"Hey sweetie, you got any mead?" Willow said, and touched Thor's shoulder. "I'm like, nearly unconscious here and I need a pick-me-up."
"Aye," Thor said. "There are jugs beneath the blankets in back."
"Is it black mead?" Willow said. "Tell me it's black mead."
"Aye," Thor said, and smiled.
"Best god ever," Willow said, and kissed his cheek. She fished around beneath the blankets in back and came up with a jug.
Heather sat beside her. She looked at Willow, then past her, at Thor.
"You call Thor 'sweetie'?" Heather said.
"He's a sweetie," Willow said, and pulled the stopper out of the jug and took a good, long swig of mead. "Plus he's the best god ever. Mmmm, hits the spot. Okay, waking up a little now. Next best thing to a super mocha cappuccino."
"What's black mead?" Heather said. "Actually, what's mead?"
"Mead's like a wine made with honey. And it's, officially? Awesome. Black mead has blackcurrants mixed in. Blackcurrants are like these purplish black berries and they make the best mead ever. Thor brews it himself. When he's not out, y'know, killing frost giants and goblins and stuff."
"Can I try a little?"
Willow looked at her. "How old are you?"
"You do realize I've done about a bushel of pot today, right? Is a sip of honey wine gonna make a difference?"
"Okay, good point," Willow said, and handed her the jug.
Heather took a small sip, swished it around her mouth a little, and then smiled her approval.
"This stuff is to die for," she said, and took a long swig. "See, if more gods just concentrated on making booze, the world would be a much better place. I might even take up religion."
"He fights monsters sometimes too," Willow said, and took the jug back. "With his big hammer. And don't bogart the black mead." She took another long swig.
"Don't what?"
Willow was starting to feel the black mead; Thor always brewed extremely potent mead and Willow had eaten so little and gotten so little sleep the past few days that the mead was affecting her already. Reluctantly, she stopped drinking. When she drank too much around Thor she usually ended up either flirting with him or bitching him out about Alfvigdis and there really wasn't time for that now; and besides, she had promised Tara she'd stop doing that.
"Want some mead, sweetie?" Willow said, and offered Thor the jug. "We're done bogarting it now."
"Aye," Thor said, and drained the entire jug.
"He must be fun at parties," Heather said.
"Thor's awesome at parties," Willow said, and closed her eyes, and leaned her head back on the bench. "Seriously, Asgard has the best parties. Now I just need to teach Thor to play Spin The Bottle."
The man came back into the room holding the scalpel, the butcher knife, and the meat cleaver in his hands, with a rag taped to the side of his head. The rag was nearly soaked through with blood.
Rebecca smiled at him, and looked him in the eyes.
She wasn't afraid of him anymore. She had hurt him; seen him bleed, heard him scream. She wasn't afraid of him anymore.
"Hello again," Rebecca said.
She had been trying to free her hands. She hadn't been able to make any headway.
She knew she was going to die. All that mattered now was making sure she didn't give him what he wanted. She'd bite him again if she had the chance, but she doubted he'd give her one.
He showed Rebecca the scalpel. Rebecca looked at the scalpel without expression. The man seemed to grow frustrated at that; he sneered at her, and his breathing sped up.
"I cut you first," Rebecca said, and spat in his face again.
The man made a mewling sound, a sort of squeal of frustration, and punched Rebecca in the face, and wiped her spit away. Rebecca's nose started bleeding again, and then she felt his forearm, tight against her neck, holding her down so she couldn't bite him. She could breathe, but just barely; he was giving her just enough air to get by.
He held the scalpel up, right in front of her eyes.
"Fuck...you," Rebecca hissed...and braced herself...
She felt the metal point, cold on her stomach and sharp as a needle.
She winced, and bit her lip, as she felt the blade cut into her.
The man moved the blade slowly beneath her flesh, about half an inch deep. Rebecca was biting her lip so hard now that it bled, and she was shaking. She began to sweat. Sounds were trying to come out of her, to force their way between her lips, but she wouldn't let them...
The scalpel moved beneath her skin, like some serpent with its teeth in her. It moved in slow, graceful curves.
The sounds trying to come out of her were becoming more insistent. Rebecca balled her hands into fists, and dug her fingernails into her palms, drawing blood; she kicked out with her legs, over and over again, as hard as she could, banging them against the metal table; she shifted her weight, tried to roll back and forth, and perhaps flip the table over. Her hands were tied beneath it, so she wouldn't be freed if the table flipped over, but it would stop the pain for a few moments at least...
Tears squeezed out of Rebecca's eyes, no matter how tightly she shut them. The scalpel continued on its slow, graceful path beneath her skin.
She opened her eyes, and saw the man looking down at her, smiling.
She looked into his flat, lifeless, inhuman blue eyes, and wasn't afraid, because she decided she wouldn't be. She didn't blink. She took the pain that flowed from the scalpel, the feeling like someone was holding an open flame to her stomach, and passed it up to her chest, and then through her throat, and finally behind her eyes, and then she sent it back at the man, sent it all crashing back against his eyes, like she was hammering at a door. She was going to break that door down. She felt it, beginning to yield already. The man blinked now, when he looked at her.
Tears still flowed down Rebecca's cheeks, but the pain flowed out of her eyes, and she sent it all back at him...
The sounds were still trying to get out; Rebecca knew they were screams, and she wouldn't let them out. They were trying to force her lips open. The scalpel stopped sometimes, Rebecca realized; it would stop for half a second, and then start at a new point on her stomach.
Rebecca stared up into the man's eyes, and sent the pain back at him. She hammered at the door. She would knock it down before he killed her...before he cut off her head, and her hands, and her feet, and drained all of her blood, and hung her from the ceiling like a butchered animal. She would knock the door down before he did all that.
The man was sweating profusely now; beads of it dripped from his forehead, as he tried to meet Rebecca's unblinking, unwavering gaze. Rebecca hammered at his eyes with hers. The scalpel cut her.
As she desperately looked for ways to take her mind off the pain, she found herself thinking of the witch she had met earlier that day: Willow. She liked her. She wished she hadn't been so rude to her. She wished she could see her again. But she knew she wouldn't...she wouldn't see anybody again.
She wondered if Heather's head was in one of those basins...
She stared up into the man's eyes, and sent her pain back at him, and hammered at the door...
And the man finally looked away from her. The door broke down...
The door broke down. Rebecca heard it, smashing open in the adjoining room; it sounded like someone had torn it off its hinges.
The scalpel stopped moving. The serpent took its teeth from her flesh.
The man looked up...
And then he flew through the air and slammed into the far wall, even though no one had touched him.
"Oh, Goddess," Rebecca heard someone whisper.
The voice was familiar...
Willow was suddenly standing above her, with tears running down her cheeks.
"Becca," Willow whispered, and cried, and touched Rebecca's cheek. "Stay still sweetie, I'm gonna...I'm gonna take this away. I'm gonna take it all away sweetie, I'm gonna take it away."
Rebecca started to cry.
"Willow," she whispered.
Willow looked down at the bloody trail the scalpel had cut into Rebecca's stomach. It was the beginning of a message:
REVELATION 6:12
Willow closed her eyes, and passed her hand over the cuts, and as she did, Rebecca felt a warmth suffusing her; it started in her stomach, and traveled through her entire body.
A few seconds later the pain was suddenly gone; it had vanished without a trace. Rebecca thought for a moment that perhaps she had merely imagined that the pain was gone, and she braced herself for its return, but it didn't return. There was no pain at all. Even the pain in her wrists and ankles from where the rope bit into them was gone.
"Is that...is that better, sweetie?" Willow whispered, and kissed Rebecca's cheek. Willow's voice was shaky, and she was still crying.
Rebecca nodded, and cried, and leaned her head on Willow's shoulder.
Willow passed her hand over Rebecca's ankles, and again beneath the table, over Rebecca's wrists, and then she touched Rebecca's hands. Rebecca thought she felt something in her right hand for a second...something powdery, but then it was gone, and suddenly Rebecca didn't feel nauseous anymore. Rebecca's hands didn't hurt at all now either; it felt like the wounds she had dug into her palms with her fingernails had healed. And Rebecca could move again; the ropes had been removed, somehow.
Willow caressed Rebecca's cheek. Rebecca felt the blood stop dripping from her nose. The little cut on her lip no longer hurt. She didn't feel drunk anymore...she had energy again.
"I'm sorry," Willow whispered, and hugged her.
Rebecca threw her arms around Willow, and held on to her.
And she let the sounds come out...the screams that she had held back for so long finally passed through her lips.
"I'm sorry, Becca," Willow said, her voice quavering and cracking, as she held Rebecca to her chest, and Rebecca screamed into her bosom. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't get here sooner. I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
After another moment, Rebecca stopped screaming. But she didn't let go of Willow, and Willow didn't let go of her. Willow caressed her hair.
"Where's...where's Heather?" Rebecca eventually whispered.
"She's safe, Becca, she's right outside," Willow said.
Out of the corner of her eye, Rebecca saw a man; he was the tallest man she had ever seen...and also the most handsome. She flinched, for a second.
"Who...who's that?" she said.
Willow smiled. "Um, maybe you're not gonna believe this? But that's Thor. He's a friend of mine. He helped me find you."
"Thor?" Rebecca said.
"Thor," Willow said. "Just roll with it, sweetie."
Rebecca watched Thor, out of the corner of her eye. She kept her arms around Willow, and didn't let go. But she watched Thor.
He was imposing; she could sense his power. But he didn't make her feel afraid.
Thor was looking at the bodies hanging from the ceiling...at the heads, and hands, and feet, and blood, in the basins.
Rebecca heard thunder rumbling outside.
"How did you...make the pain go away?" Rebecca whispered. "And...how do you know Thor?"
Willow smiled, and kissed Rebecca's forehead.
"Magic," Willow said.
Rebecca nodded, and smiled.
"The man," Rebecca said.
"He'll never hurt you again, Becca," Willow said. "Never again. I won't let him."
"He...cut me. Cut...words into me."
"I took them away."
"Magic?"
"Magic."
"I'm going to have to...have a talk with Aunt Jane, I think."
"That might be a good idea."
Rebecca heard someone else entering the room.
"I'm not waiting out there any longer," she heard Heather saying. "Where's...? Oh God."
Rebecca saw Heather suddenly standing above her too.
"Thor," Willow said. "I need your cape."
"Aye," Rebecca heard the giant, beautiful blonde man with the hammer say. He moved closer to the table, but not too close; he stood at a respectful distance, and Rebecca suddenly remembered that she was naked. Thor handed his cape to Willow, and Willow wrapped it around Rebecca like a blanket.
"Is that better, sweetie?" Willow said. "Were you cold?"
"I'm warm now," Rebecca said. "Thank you."
"Heather, I wanted you to wait outside," Willow said.
"Tough," Heather said, and leaned over Rebecca, and hugged her.
"Willow Rosenberg," a voice said.
Rebecca jumped. She knew it was the man's voice. She hadn't heard him speak before, but she knew it was him.
Willow smiled down at her.
"Don't worry," Willow said. "He'll never hurt you again. I won't let him. And, besides? Thor's here. Thor can punch a hole straight through a mountain and bench press a sperm whale. And I mean that literally. I've seen him do it."
"He bench-pressed a sperm whale?" Heather said.
"He does crazy stuff at parties sometimes," Willow said, and kissed Rebecca's cheek again, and walked toward Ethan. He was sitting on the floor, where he had landed after Willow sent him slamming into the wall.
Heather turned, to look at Thor...
And saw the bodies hanging from the ceiling, and the things in the basins beneath them.
She covered her mouth, and screamed. Willow looked back at her.
"I told you I wanted you outside," Willow said.
"He...he...they're...bodies," Heather whispered. "Heads...and hands and feet...he hung them up. Why did he...why did he do that?"
Thor moved beside her, and put his hand on her shoulder.
"Why...why did he do that?" Heather said, looking up at Thor, imploring him with her eyes. "Why? Why would anyone do that?"
"I don't know," Thor said.
"Well what kind of god are you, anyway?!" Heather said. "You don't know? A real lot of good that does us!"
"Good folk cannot understand such a one as that viper; and yet such as he can never understand us. Thus we keep evil at bay. Thus the stalemate continues."
"There's...there's gotta be a reason," Heather whispered.
Thor watched Willow.
"Aye. But only the Creator knows what it is," he said.
Willow looked down at Ethan.
Willow remembered her vow: never to take another human life. She wondered if she would break it now.
Rebecca was safe. If Willow broke her vow now, it would be for revenge, and no other reason. There would be no other justification for it.
It would be immoral...wrong...
"Something you wanted to say to me?" Willow said.
"Alone," Ethan said.
Willow nodded.
"Hey," she said, turning back to Thor. "I need a minute alone with this guy. Can you get them out of here?"
"I don't want you alone with that...thing," Thor said, and watched Ethan. Outside, thunder boomed again.
"You worried I can't handle myself?" Willow said.
"No," Thor said. He smiled. "Very well. But tarry not overlong."
"No tarrying, promise," Willow said. "I'll be right out, Becca."
Rebecca walked up to Willow, wrapped in Thor's cape, and hugged her. She didn't look at Ethan.
"Thank you," Rebecca said.
"You're welcome, sweetie," Willow said.
"I'm sorry I was rude before," Rebecca said. "I'm sorry."
"You're cute when you're rude," Willow said, and kissed her cheek again. "Go have some mead, sweetie. You could use some. Thor's got a couple of jugs in his chariot."
"It tastes great," Heather said, and took Rebecca's hand.
A moment later, they were gone, and Willow was alone with Ethan.
She wondered if she would kill him.
"Say what you have to say," Willow said.
Ethan stood up, and looked at her.
"Willow Rosenberg," Ethan said.
"That's my name," Willow said.
"Willow Rosenberg Antichrist," Ethan said.
Willow didn't reply, for a moment. They looked at each other.
"Been called that too," Willow said.
"The Antichrist will be a descendant of David," Ethan said. "The Antichrist will be a Jew. It's written."
Willow nodded.
"I know the numbers," Ethan said. "I know the numbers. There will be a planetary alignment on March eleventh, 1981. On that day, the Antichrist will be born into the world. Somehow you're here, but you won't be born for years yet."
"Time travel thing," Willow said.
Ethan looked down at his hands. He noticed they were shaking. It was the first time in his life that had ever happened.
"As I watched you with her a moment ago...I heard a voice in my head," Ethan said. "Voices come to me sometimes...they tell me things that come to pass eventually. They told me your name. They told me you will destroy the old institutions...burn the churches to the ground. You will change times and seasons. You will declare yourself to be God, and destroy belief in Jesus Christ. The world will kneel at your feet someday."
"I gotta admit? Not a fan of the old institutions," Willow said. "And as for Christ, he seems okay from what I've read, but he sure did inspire a lot of people to kill each other over bullshit. Oh, and, just a heads up? I used to know someone who heard voices. She was about fifty-one cards short of a full deck. I killed her. I might kill you too. If I do, it'll be painful. For what you did to Becca, I'll make sure you take days to die."
"The Antichrist will...w-will be born...s-somewhere in the Western hemisphere, at roughly the 40th parallel."
"40th parallel. I don't have a map handy, but I'd say that probably passes through Southern California."
"The Antichrist will have great power. Control over the elements."
"Sounds like magic."
"The Antichrist will have...have the mark. I know. I know the numbers. The number of the Beast will be 666. The Antichrist will have the mark, on the right hand...or on the scalp."
Willow watched him for a moment, and didn't reply.
She turned away from him, and looked around the room. At the bodies on chains. At the heads, and hands, and feet, and blood, in basins. At eleven young lives, wasted...brutally cut out of the world.
"Old institutions," she muttered.
She turned back to him again.
"So what do you want?" she said. "Just to give me a Bible lesson? I've got places to be. Times, actually, but still."
"To join you," Ethan said.
As Willow watched him, Ethan got down on his knees.
"The Antichrist is supposed to lose, according to the Bible," Willow said. "If you believe that stuff. Lake of Fire and all that. Why would you want to join a losing team?"
"There is a secret book," Ethan said. "It is treasured, and it has been protected over the centuries. It is known only to the elect. It tells of your victory over the church of Christ, and of how you will lead the world into a new age."
"You have this book?"
He pointed toward the adjoining room. "In the bottom right-hand drawer of the desk, in a small locked chest."
Willow walked away from him, into the adjoining room.
She opened the bottom right-hand drawer of the desk, and took a chest out of it. It was a wooden chest, black, and unadorned; it looked like ebony.
She came back to Ethan, and watched him again.
"Let me join you," Ethan said.
"I don't know how something as twisted as you could ever be allowed to exist," Willow said. "It's proof something's fucked up somewhere. Maybe someone should knock everything over, and start it all again. Maybe I'm the one to do it. But I sure as hell won't have someone like you with me. You're the problem, Ethan, not the solution. You're a mistake...a defective model."
"Do you have the mark?" Ethan whispered.
"The Antichrist rules in Hell, right?" Willow said. Ethan was suddenly thrown straight up into the air. He hovered there, a few feet off the floor.
Willow's eyes flashed. "Well, I've got Seven Hells for you," she said.
Willow stretched out her hand. She hesitated.
She wanted to kill him. He deserved to die.
There were eleven dead bodies, hanging from the ceiling. There were heads and hands and feet and blood in basins. He deserved to die.
Willow hesitated.
"Willow," Thor said.
She turned, and saw him striding into the room, with Rebecca and Heather by his side. Thor was wearing his cape again; Rebecca had found her shorts and her tee-shirt.
Heather still looked scared. Rebecca had her arm around her.
"Your given word should not be broken," Thor said. "You said you would not kill again."
"He deserves to die," Willow said.
"Aye. So do many others. Is it for you to decide?"
"You kill people. You've killed thousands of people."
"In war. When lives were at stake. No lives are at stake here. Rebecca is safe. You saved her. And you swore an oath; you gave your word."
"I was young. You know what I was like back then. I was naive. Scared of my power. He deserves to die."
Willow noticed Rebecca was watching Ethan.
"I care not a fig for that viper," Thor said. "If he dies, Midgard will be well rid of him, and Hel will have another black soul. But if you kill him, you allow him to strike at you before he dies; to inflict a poisonous wound that will fester and grow as the years go on. I would spare you that wound, Willow. Do not go back on your given word. Aye, you were young when you took that oath, but it was well-spoken for such a bright, innocent spirit as yours. In Asgard, oathbreakers are shunned, and with good reason: they can't be trusted. I implore you, Willow, as your friend; as one who cares for you: do not break your oath."
Willow hesitated...
Rebecca grabbed the hunting knife Thor kept in a scabbard on his belt.
"I didn't take an oath," Rebecca said, and moved forward.
She faced Willow, holding the knife at her side.
"Are you sure?" Willow said.
"When I make up my mind, it doesn't change," Rebecca said.
"Rebecca," Heather said. Rebecca ignored her.
"Thor?" Willow said.
"She claims the kill," Thor said. "It's a warrior's right."
Willow released Ethan; he fell out of the air, to the floor. He got back up, and backed up against the wall. Willow walked back to Thor.
"He needs a weapon," Rebecca said.
"What?" Willow said, and whirled around.
Thor nodded.
"Wait a minute!" Heather said. "What the hell are we doing?"
"I won't just murder him, the way he meant to murder me," Rebecca said. "Then I'd be no better than him. I'm gonna gut this motherfucker in a fair fight."
Ethan pulled a straight razor from his pocket.
Rebecca smiled.
"Rebecca!" Heather shouted, and tried to run to her. Thor held her back.
Ethan circled around Rebecca, holding his straight razor in front of him. Rebecca watched him.
Willow knew how to fight; Rebecca had taught her. But when Willow watched this Rebecca now, she saw that she didn't know how to fight yet; she wasn't moving her feet correctly, she wasn't balanced properly...
"Thor!" Willow hissed. "If she loses, if he kills her, everyone dies! The whole world dies!"
"Then the world dies," Thor said. "This is a matter of honor; we will not interfere in it."
Ethan slashed at Rebecca with the straight razor. She dodged it, barely.
"Look at her! She's not the Becca you know, not yet!" Willow hissed. "She doesn't know how to fight yet!"
"She has a warrior's heart," Thor said. "It's the most important thing. Mere knowledge cannot equal its importance."
"Thor! Please! I...I can't...I can't watch her die again."
Rebecca lunged forward, and took a swipe at Ethan's chest. He dodged it and lashed out with his razor, catching Rebecca's left arm before she could spin away. Willow gasped, and Heather whimpered; Rebecca grunted, and blood cascaded from the wound. Ethan smiled, and moved with more swagger. Rebecca backed away from him...
And then she dropped to the floor in a perfect center split, her legs spread perfectly parallel, at the exact moment that Ethan bent forward, lunging at her with the razor again. The thrust put him out of position above her; and Rebecca stabbed straight up with the hunting knife, straight into his stomach.
Ethan gurgled, and dropped his razor, and fell back against one of the workbenches, clutching his stomach. Rebecca hopped right back up to her feet.
She looked back at Willow, Heather, and Thor, and raised her eyebrow.
"Ballet," she said. "I suppose it was good for something after all."
Then she stabbed Ethan through the heart.
"Look at me, you piece of shit," Rebecca snarled, as she looked him in the eyes, and twisted the knife, and he made a gurgling noise again. "I'm the one who killed you. For all these girls in the buckets, these girls you butchered, I just killed you. Burn in Hell."
Rebecca looked straight into Ethan's eyes, watching as the light left them, and he slumped to the floor, dead.
She stood above him a moment, looking down at his corpse.
She crouched down, and pulled the knife from his heart, and wiped it on his shirt. She stood up again, and looked around the room.
"We should burn this place," Rebecca said. "Burn it to the ground."
"Aye," Thor said. "'Tis the best funeral we can give these children now."
Rebecca and Heather stood leaning against Thor's chariot, watching as Thor held his hammer aloft, and recited a Viking prayer for the spirits of the dead. When he was finished, Willow conjured a volley of fireballs, and launched them at the house. It was a small cabin in the woods a few miles from the village, with a small garage attached. Willow and Thor stood close together, and held hands, as they watched the house burn.
Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr were nibbling at the grass. Rebecca watched them, with an amused glint in her deep blue eyes.
Rebecca felt different. She felt like there was a line going through her life now; everything up to this night was on one side of the line, and everything after it would be on the other...
"You sure you're okay?" Heather said.
"Yeah," Rebecca said. "You?"
"No," Heather said.
Rebecca took her hand.
"You will be, Heather," Rebecca said. "You're strong. Give it time."
"I just...don't understand why someone would do that...how someone could do that," Heather said. "There has to be an answer."
"There's evil in the world," Rebecca said. "Rory and Jane...they tried to tell me, for years. I just wouldn't listen. Well I'm listening now."
"So are you gonna join up with these Watcher blokes Willow was on about?"
"Maybe," Rebecca said. "You think that boy will call? The one you gave my number to?"
"A double date with us? How could he resist?"
"He is rather cute. In a poncey sort of way."
"Speaking of, do you think those two are an item?" Heather whispered, and pointed at Willow and Thor.
"Willow and a Norse god?" Rebecca whispered.
"Yeah. An amazingly gorgeous Norse god."
"You know...I rather think they are," Rebecca said.
A few minutes later, when the house had burned down to dust, Willow and Thor came back to the chariot.
"So do you girls believe in magic yet?" Willow said.
"I'm seriously reconsidering the Easter Bunny after today," Heather said.
"Becca...you got a minute, sweetie?" Willow said. "There's something... personal I need to talk to you about."
Willow and Rebecca walked a ways into the woods. They stopped in a little clearing, and sat together on a flat boulder. Crickets chirped. The clearing smelled like pine cones, and there was a soft breeze. Rebecca liked the rhythmic drone of the crickets, and the spicy smell of the pine cones, and the cool touch of the breeze on her skin. It was good to be alive.
"Thank you for healing my wounds, Willow," Rebecca said, and touched her hand to her shoulder, and then looked down at her stomach. The deep gash Ethan had sliced into her shoulder during their fight, and the words he had carved into her stomach, were completely gone, without a trace.
"Sure, sweetie," Willow said, and smiled. "All part of the service."
"What's that thing?" Rebecca said, pointing to the ebony chest Willow carried under her arm.
"Um...just like some magic book Ethan had in his house. So...look, I need you to do me a favor? And it's like, the weirdest favor ever. And I can't tell you why I want you to do it? All I can say is...it's important. Really, really important."
"Well you did save my life today," Rebecca said. "I owe you a favor or two. You wouldn't have a fag, would you?"
"Sorry sweetie, I don't smoke cigarettes anymore. I did for a couple of years in my early twenties, then I gave 'em up. They're, um, pretty bad for you, y'know. You should try to quit if you can."
"Everything fun is bad for you. And after today, I could sure as hell use some fun," Rebecca said. "Anyway, what's the favor?"
"It's not like, hard or anything? In fact it's the easiest thing in the world. It's just...gonna sound strange. But...I hope, after today, you know you can like, trust me, right?"
Rebecca looked up at the sky, and nodded. The stars were very bright.
"Anyway, here it is," Willow said. "Someday, someone, somewhere--and I'm not gonna tell you who, and I'm not gonna tell you where--is gonna offer you four choices. The four choices will be names. One of the names will be Faith Lehane. That's the name you have to pick."
"Faith Lehane?" Rebecca said, still looking up at the stars.
"Yeah."
"What are the other three choices?"
Willow thought about it. She hadn't planned on telling Rebecca the other three names, but she realized now that it was possible the Watchers might have given Rebecca the option of choosing Faith twice. Faith was a little old for a potential Slayer when Rebecca found her; the Watchers might have offered Faith to Rebecca first when she was younger. And if Rebecca found Faith when she was younger instead of when she was seventeen, as she was meant to, it could change the whole timeline...
"The other three choices will be Kennedy Alexopoulos, Violet Sawyer, and Dana Chandrasekar," Willow said. "But remember, you have to pick Faith Lehane."
Rebecca nodded, and looked up at the stars.
Willow looked at her.
"What?" Willow said. "What...what do you mean, no? You're not...you're not gonna do it?"
"No, I'm not," Rebecca said, still looking up at the stars.
Willow looked at her...watched her eyes, tried to decide what she saw in them. "Okay, you're kidding right? This is just like, some dry British humor thing."
"No, it isn't. I'm not gonna pick her."
"But...why? Becca, seriously, you have to, it's really important!"
"I don't doubt it. But I'm not gonna do it, unless you stop lying to me."
Rebecca turned, and looked at her. Rebecca's eyes were young; they still hadn't seen everything that they would someday see. But Willow thought Rebecca's eyes already looked older than they had at the beginning of the day, at the Reading Festival...they looked wiser.
And they looked right through Willow now. They were like celestial objects, Willow thought; she felt her own eyes getting caught up in their orbit.
"I like you, Willow," Rebecca said. "In fact I'm very fond of you. But you've been keeping something from me, from the moment we first met. And even though I like you, even though you saved my life today, I'm not lifting a finger for you until you tell me the truth. All of it. Now."
"My name is Willow Rosenberg," Willow said, softly, looking down at the ground. "I was born on March eleventh, 1981. I traveled back through time to find you...to protect you from being murdered today."
She looked up at Rebecca.
"Go on," Rebecca said.
"You...believe me?" Willow said.
"Yeah."
"I was born in Sunnydale, California. The town is built on something called a Hellmouth...it's a focal point of mystical energy, where the barriers between dimensions are weak. It attracts monsters...demons and vampires. Thousands of years ago, in Africa, a group of wizards gave a girl the power of a pure demon...strength, speed, endurance, super-senses, super-healing, psychic visions. They bonded that demon to her, made its essence part of her. That girl was the first Slayer, and she had the power to hunt the monsters...the vampires and the demons. Those wizards eventually became the Watchers Council."
"The Watchers are descended from ancient African wizards?" Rebecca said. "And here I thought they were a bunch of fat, poncey old men with pipes up their arses."
"These days they can be that, too," Willow said, and smiled. "The wizards made sure that there would always be a Slayer in the world. Whenever a Slayer dies her power is transferred to another girl. There are about two-thousand potential Slayers--girls who might become the next Slayer when the current one dies--in the world at any one time. No one knows which one will become the next Slayer, so the Watchers try to find as many potentials as they can, and train them, just in case."
"The four choices. They're potential Slayers, aren't they?"
"Yeah. And every potential is important. But you need to pick Faith because Faith is the one you picked in the normal timeline. If you don't pick Faith, history will be changed. Anyway, the Slayer was a girl named Buffy Summers when I went to high school in Sunnydale, and she moved there because of the Hellmouth. We became friends, and I helped her out, helped her fight. The more I learned about magic, the more powerful I became, the more I helped. We ran into other people who helped too...and together, we saved the world. Um, a bunch of times, actually. Someday you'll help, too. Someday you'll be part of the fight...an important part."
"You said...you came back in time to save me from being murdered. But if someone tried to murder me now, how would you have ever met me to know to come back in time to save me in the first place?"
"Because the guy who tried to kill you back there was put up to it by a man from my time...an evil man who's trying to change the future by killing everyone I love in the past. He...he succeeded once. He...killed you, Becca. Tonight, you died. Ethan...he killed you. And...and...everyone else I loved died too after that. They all died...in the future...they're all gone."
Willow's face crumpled up; tears ran down her cheeks.
Rebecca hugged her.
"In, in 2009 we were getting ready to fight him, and...he went back in time to tonight and had Ethan kill you," Willow whispered. "And then...without you...history was changed, and the world ended, we lost one of the fights we were supposed to have won, and the world ended in 1998. Everyone died, everyone in the world. Everyone I loved, I saw them disappear in front of me, and, and I just barely escaped it...and he's still out there, Warren's still out there, he's gonna keep coming, he's gonna keep trying to kill people I love and...I don't know if I can stop him. I don't know if I'm strong enough, Becca. Sometimes I feel like, like I'm shaking apart inside, falling to pieces."
"You can do this, Willow," Rebecca said. "I know you can."
"Well that makes one of us," Willow said, and smiled through her tears.
"So if you were born in 1981, and I meet you for the first time...after you start high school? I'll be quite a bit older than you. What exactly do I do in this group of Slayers and witches? If I'm one of the servants I should tell you right off that I'm a lousy cook."
"You're our Watcher," Willow said, and giggled. She didn't let go of Rebecca. She held on tight to her. "You teach us how to fight, how to be strong. You take care of us, Becca. You always take care of us."
Rebecca held Willow in her arms, and looked up at the stars.
"Okay," Rebecca said.
When they got back to the chariot, Thor and Heather were drinking mead, and Thor was telling her about the time a frost giant named Útgar bet Thor that he could drink him under the table and he rigged the contest so that Thor's drinking horn wasn't filled with mead but was actually connected to the Atlantic Ocean, and the giant had declared himself the winner and made fun of Thor when Thor could only manage to drink half the ocean.
"Wait. You drank half the Atlantic Ocean?" Heather said. "Okay, I sort of believed the one about the goblin army, but now you're just putting me on, right?"
"Nope, I was there," Willow said. "I'm the one who figured out that it was a magic drinking horn and Thor was actually drinking the ocean, and I made Útgar pay up. Never trust frost giants. Buncha giant weasels."
"But...is half the Atlantic Ocean gone now?" Heather said.
"Well, there were lots of tidal changes?" Willow said. "And we almost lost Newfoundland. But it's cool now. We, um, replaced all the water."
"But how did all that water get replaced if Thor drank--?" Heather started to say. Willow shook her head.
"Don't go there, sweetie," Willow said.
After they dropped Rebecca and Heather off at Rebecca's family's mansion in Staffordshire, Willow leaned back in the chariot, took a good long pull at the jug of mead, curled up on Thor's shoulder, and closed her eyes.
"It's been a day," Willow said, as they ascended into the air. "It's been one hell of a day."
"Aye," Thor said. "Loki himself would be proud of the mischief that scoundrel brought about."
"Yeah. And he's still out there...somewhere in time, going after another one of my friends. And I have no idea where or when he even is and I have to find a way to stop him somehow."
"We'll stop him, Willow. Together. Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr can find the villain no matter where he runs, once they have his scent."
Willow nodded, and kissed Thor's cheek. Thor put his arm around her.
"Tanngnjóstr's getting fat," Willow said.
"Aye," Thor said, and laughed. "His appetite knows no bounds. But he'll get his exercise now, racing that villain through time."
"So where...we goin' now?" Willow said, as she drifted off to sleep.
"To Asgard," Thor said. "Back to my halls, where you shall rest and recover your strength. Then we'll track down this Warren, together."
Willow opened her eyes, and frowned at him.
"Alfvigdis isn't there, is she?" Willow said.
Thor laughed again.
"Nay," he said. "Calm yourself."
"I don't know what you see in her," Willow said. "And her hair? Hello? Farrah Fawcett hair went out of style in like 1982! She's got like, total Farrah Fawcett hair."
"You still speak strangely."
"You can do better than Alfvigdis."
Thor looked at her, and smiled.
"Oh, aye?" he said.
"Aye," Willow said, and smiled, and curled up closer to him, as they climbed though the clouds.
HEAVEN SENT
"Xander," Willow whispered.
"In the flesh," Xander said. "Okay, uh...technically not."
The dark altar room slowly filled with light. It was a cold, sickly yellow light, and it emanated from Xander: he stood smiling in front of Willow, his arms held straight out at his sides, and the light flowed from his fingers, skittering and slithering through the room, pooling across the floor and climbing toward the ceiling, like a spider web being constructed. That cold light caught everything in its web, revealed everything in minute detail; nothing could hide from it. It pinned things down, laid them bare, like cadavers on a dissecting table. Willow felt the light on her skin, clinging to her. Opening her up.
"Because, y'know, I'm kinda dead," Xander said.
Willow felt a cold thing, in her stomach.
She knew what it was. She'd felt it before, in Faith's memories...when Rebecca died.
Faith hadn't really had words for it, when it happened to her...when the cold thing entered her, and she knew it would be with her, for the rest of her life. She just knew it was cold.
But Willow knew what the cold thing was; she knew exactly what it was.
It was the realization that life is ultimately hopeless...that happiness is fleeting, and wholly a matter of random luck. That, in the end, despair wins....the cold wins. It always wins.
In the end, Willow knew, every fire dies down to ashes...warmth always fades away. And we all become cold.
She thought she should cry for Xander. But no tears came. She just felt cold...and she thought she always would, now.
Willow was aware of Angel beside her...she felt his hand in hers.
She pulled herself away from him. Then she turned, and looked at him... considered him.
He was beautiful: she had always thought he was beautiful. She had always been attracted to him...his deep, dark eyes; his rough smile. It was the one thing she had never told anyone, the one secret she had always kept, closest to her heart: she had always wanted him.
It made what Angelus did to her feel even worse.
Looking at him now, tracing his beautiful features--the high curve of his cheekbones; the wide plane of his shoulders--Willow thought Angel was the most perfect man she had ever seen. But she knew he had something ugly inside him.
Sometimes, Willow felt the same way about herself. Sometimes, Willow thought she and Angel were a perfect match...
"So when were you planning on telling me?" she said.
"After I got you out of this," Angel said.
"You mean after you got me into this, and then got me out of this, right? I got captured because Xander took me away from Buffy. He took me away from Buffy because of you."
"Can we maybe have this conversation in the car? Probably more vamps on the way."
"Road trip, huh?" Xander said. "Cool! So where we headed? And hey, I'll try not to get all jealous if you two lovebirds wanna cuddle on the way."
Willow walked right up to Xander...to the thing that had stolen his form. She looked the thing in the eyes.
"You sure look pretty in black, Will," Xander said. "I think black's your color, honey."
Willow's black eyes didn't waver. She stood there, for a long moment, looking at him. He looked back at her, smiling.
With his heightened senses Angel could feel Willow's power: it was coming off her in waves now, distorting the air, raising the temperature of the room. Angel thought the feeling was familiar, somehow...
And then he remembered when he'd felt this before: when he examined Tara's crystal pendant. Standing next to Willow now was just like being near Tara's pendant...the physical effects were identical.
"You're not Xander," Willow said. "I won't cry for you. I won't feel anything for you at all. You won't affect me."
She walked away from him.
"Got Xander's memories, though," Xander called after her. "Got his feelings too. I'm not him but I'm as close as you'll ever get, cowgirl, now that he's dead. He's dead, because Buffy just couldn't stop herself from boinking Mister Hottie Mass Murderer over there."
Willow looked away from both of them, Xander and Angel; she stared at a spot on the wall.
She found herself thinking about Evan, for some reason. She thought about him, sometimes; since she had gotten Faith's memories, Evan was on her mind sometimes. She wondered where he was...she wondered if he was okay. She missed his dumb jokes...she missed his smile. She saw him, clear as day, in her memories...
Okay, so there are these three fifth grade girls, a blonde, a brunette, and a redhead, he was saying. Which one has the biggest tits?
The blonde,
Willow looked at Angel.
"Is that true?" she said.
"Yeah," Angel said. "The sun's gone, vampires are everywhere. Downtown is burning."
"Because Buffy dropped the ball," Xander said. "Oh, and your parents are dead. Something else you can thank Buffy for. A mob of vampires burned their house down about half an hour ago and then tore their throats out when they ran into the street."
Willow watched Xander without any expression on her face, without even a hint of emotion in her black eyes.
"I know you don't care?" Xander said. "I mean, they never loved you, they never wanted you, so why should you care, right? But I just thought I'd give you a heads-up."
Willow thought about her parents. She searched inside herself, looking for something, some feeling...sadness, despair, shock, outrage, anything. But she couldn't find any feelings. She searched her memories. Her father barely registered. She remembered him, as a constant in her life, the way eating breakfast or washing her hair had been a constant...something that was part of her life, because that's just how things were, but it wasn't special, or even interesting. There were no feelings associated with it. It just existed.
Her father existed. There really wasn't anything else she could say about him. He existed...and now he didn't exist anymore.
Her mother was different. With her, Willow's memories were specific. She remembered the look her mother sometimes got in her eyes: it was a sad, tired look, and for the longest time, Willow didn't know what it meant...then one day, when she was thirteen, she finally figured it out. A couple of her mother's old friends from college were over the house, her mother hadn't seen them in years, and the two women had just returned from a trip to Rome. One of them was starting her own consulting company, and the other one was a poet who had just had her first collection published. When Willow watched the two women, they seemed bright and alive; they talked animatedly, and smiled, and there was a light in their eyes. When they asked Willow's mother what she was up to these days, her mother looked at Willow, and said, "Nothing ever changes around here," and changed the subject.
Her mother didn't seem bright and alive. Her voice sounded tired, defeated. There was no light in her eyes. Her eyes were defeated too. Her eyes, her posture, her voice, everything about her just seemed tired...resigned to her fate. Willow knew then that her mother didn't want her...had never wanted her.
Willow thought about Rebecca. Rebecca wanted her...
"You really need to stop thinking about Rebecca, y'know," Xander said. "She wasn't yours, Willow. She didn't want you, she didn't even know you. She's for Faith, not you. If Buffy didn't have you do that mind-meld thing with Faith, you wouldn't even know who Rebecca was. You wouldn't know what it's like to be some whore giving out blowjobs to every random guy in Boston either, but I guess you're stuck with that now. But hey, I can say from experience?" Xander smiled, and winked. "Having Faith's memories forced into your head definitely improved your technique. Say what you want about the stupid skank, but Faith sure knows her way around the bedroom. Buffy can back me up on that one, believe me. Y'know, it's funny...first you were forced to share Drusilla's memories, then Faith's...and in both cases, it was Buffy's fault. "
"Willow, let's go," Angel said.
Willow didn't move.
"All your problems come down to Buffy in the end, don't they?" Xander said. "Your whole life, Will. Everything you are, everything you'll ever have the opportunity to be, it always comes down to Buffy...she's the one who makes the decisions for you, right? She sets your limits. What you can do, who you can be... Buffy decides all that, not you. She's been running your life--our lives--since she got here. And, yeah, can I add? Screwing them up royally."
"Willow," Angel said. Willow ignored him, and watched Xander.
She knew this wasn't Xander. But after this, she would never see him again...and she needed to say goodbye. She needed to see him, one last time...even if it wasn't him. She wished she could cry. But she couldn't.
She knew her eyes were black: she felt them now. They were cold, like the rest of her.
She knew they would never change back. She knew she would never cry again...that she would never feel warm again.
"I mean, think about it, Will," Xander said. "First, she almost got you killed like, a million times? Then she dated the big hero over there. Even though she knew he was a vampire. And hey, let's try to wrap our heads around that for a sec. A Slayer. Dating a vampire. I mean, what the fuck? And yeah, sure, okay, he had his soul? But Giles told us all the stuff Angel did, he read us those stories from the Watchers Chronicles. The women Angel raped, the children he killed. All three of us were there when Giles told us those stories, and, I don't know about you? But I kept my eye on Buffy..." Xander smiled. "Well, y'know, I always kept my eye on Buffy. But hey, you're cute too, Will. Don't ever let anyone tell you you're not a little cutie. If I couldn't have Buffy, you were a decent consolation prize. But anyway, I was watching Buffy, and whenever I was able to tear my eyes away from that smokin' body of hers long enough to look at her face? I gotta tell ya, it was like she was back in biology class, listening to one of Doctor Gregory's lectures on fruit fly reproduction. She couldn't care less about the horrible shit Angel did. She was barely even paying attention. She couldn't wait to bail and go right back to that big dick."
"Willow," Angel said. "We have to leave. He can communicate with vampires like telepathically somehow, he's probably calling a whole bunch of them back here right now."
"Maybe you should listen to him, cowgirl," Xander said. "I mean, hey, that's what you do, right? You do what people tell you? Buffy, Angel, me? If you had showed some frigging backbone for once in your useless life and refused to leave Buffy's place when I dragged you out of there this morning, things might have gone differently today...the world might not have ended."
"He's stalling," Angel said.
"So, okay, where was I?" Xander said. "Right. So Buffy gave it up for Angel, screwed a soulless monster who raped thousands of girls before her, but she didn't care, because, Angel? Fun in the sack. But then, ooops--she made him lose his soul. And then Angel found you, and violated you...made you remember him raping you. And you'll always remember, Willow. Those memories will always be a part of you. So that's another thing you have to thank Buffy for. And then of course when Angel came back Buffy went right back to him, even after all the shit he did, and she never told you. And then I found out about all this and took you out of there, took you away from Faith's protection, which led directly to me being killed and you being captured. And now, to top it all off, Buffy failed to stop the apocalypse and everyone's gonna die now. All this? All this bad stuff that's happened? It's all because you let Buffy Summers into your life."
"Willow, he's stalling!" Angel said, grabbing her by the shoulder and spinning her around.
"Then take off if you want," Willow hissed, and brushed his hand away. "I'm not afraid of vampires, if they come back I'll burn them to death like the last batch." She turned back to Xander. "Say what you have to say, bitch, then don't fucking ever take that form again."
"Uh, yeah...and you'll stop me from taking this form how?" Xander said, and chuckled.
"Being Xander won't affect me. You won't get anything out of me."
Xander smiled. "Right, sure. My little Willow's all grown up now. Please. I can see right through you. You're the same fucking pasty-faced bookworm geek you always were. You've got some magic now, you lucked into a little bit of power you don't deserve and haven't the slightest idea how to handle, and you hide behind it the way you always hid behind Buffy. And now you've got Faith's memories too, so you can pretend that you're strong when you know it's not you the strength comes from, it's Faith. Big front's not fooling anyone, Will. Buffy and Faith carried you for awhile but you know you're not strong enough for this, you know you'll fuck it up the way you fuck up everything else."
Willow watched him. She stood very still. Her black eyes focused on Xander's, and didn't look away.
"The pathetic little math geek I grew up with?" Xander said. "She's still there, Will. She's there, underneath all the lies and the bullshit you've piled on top of her. Your magic lets you pretend you're strong, that you can handle this. But you know you're not strong, and you can't handle this. Faith's memories let you pretend you're desirable, that someone like me could actually want you the way I wanted Buffy. But you know you're not desirable, and I didn't want you as much as I wanted her. You were never my first choice, Buffy was. I would've dropped you in a second if she was willing to give me a shot. And okay, I gotta admit, I'm not exactly James Van Der Beek over here? So eventually I gave up on Buffy, admitted she was out of my league, set my sights a few levels down, and went after a girl I knew I could get. Plus I knew you'd put out. I mean, it was either give it up for me or become a nun, right? Guys weren't exactly lining up around the block to take you out."
Willow closed her eyes. She shook her head.
Then she smiled. Then she chuckled.
Then she laughed.
The laugh caught Angel off-guard. It was goofy, and too loud; it was Willow's laugh. It took wing and soared in that subterranean place, in that sunken tomb; it bounded around the cold, dead stones like a butterfly zig-zagging around a flower patch on a summer day. It echoed through the room, gaining power as it flitted about; a reminder of sun and sky, life and light.
Xander frowned at Willow, and waited. For her part, Willow was bent over at the waist now, holding her knees and laughing so loud and for so long that her face was red and her cheeks were starting to hurt and she was having a hard time catching her breath.
The laugh was infectious. Angel found himself smiling, despite their situation.
Willow finally caught her breath, and looked up at the thing that had taken Xander's form. It looked back at her, hatefully.
"Yeah, so, I was just thinking about this guy I used to know?" Willow said, smiling. "Okay, well, Faith knew him, but still. Total hottie. Um...though that's kinda beside the point. But anyway, he used to tell me these dumb jokes all the time. And it occurs to me that, you? Are the biggest, dumbest fucking joke in the universe."
"You won't be laughing when your monkey race is extinct," Xander said.
"Bored now," Willow said. "Your talk? Not scary. Kinda desperate and pathetic, actually. I've stopped a few apocalypses, fought a few Big Bads? Hey, standing right next to one now. And you're like, the shittiest Big Bad ever. I mean, a bad guy who can't touch anything? Whose power is to make annoying speeches? We might as well be up against Cordy here! She can out-bitch you any day of the week. Plus, bonus? She can actually touch stuff."
Angel smiled. He thought it actually was a little bit like they were going up against Cordelia. Actually, he thought Cordelia's evil speeches would have been better.
"And c'mon, how stupid do you think I am?" Willow said. "This whole undermining the good guys' confidence and turning them against each other routine? For one thing, if you're gonna try that you should at least have a clear argument, y'know? Like, a thesis statement? Maybe taking Xander's form means you're saddled with his completely unimpressive debate skills, but I mean, which one is it? Is it that Buffy fucked everything up, caused all the problems in my life and I should tell her to screw? Or is it that I'm a weak, homely nerd who's been propped up by Buffy this whole time and I should like, hang my head in shame and stop trying to fight you? You really need to go with one or the other. Oh, and by the way? Buffy and Faith both completely wanna boink me, and they're super hot? So you can make fun of my looks all you want but I think I do okay. Anyway, while you're polishing up your speech, Mister Hottie Mass Murderer and I are gonna skedaddle. But hey, once the speech is ready, feel free to run it by me. It'll be good for a laugh. You fucking tool. Let's go, Angel."
Willow turned, and walked away.
"Uh...yeah. Sure," Angel said, and followed her. "Okay."
Xander watched them, as they walked away. When they reached the entrance to the corridor, Willow turned, and regarded him.
As Xander stared into Willow's black eyes, he was certain, once again, that there was something in Willow...something unique. But he had never been able to put his finger on it...whenever he thought he was close to identifying it, it slipped away from him again. He could see everything in the world, but when it came to Willow, he felt strangely blind.
He had been watching Willow, her whole life. He was there, watching, the night she was born. She was fascinating...she was his favorite. And he never could figure out why. He could never see all of her, no matter how hard he looked...
As Willow stared back at him, he thought there was a whole universe in her black eyes...
"Word is, you're immortal, indestructible," Willow said. "But if there's a way to kill you? Then I swear to the Goddess I'll see you dead."
Sol Ziegler was having a bad day.
It hadn't started out that way. For one thing, it was supposed to be his day off; he'd informed the hospital that they shouldn't beep him unless California was falling into the ocean because it was his son's birthday and they were going to spend the day together come hell or high water, and he hadn't had a day off to spend with his son in ages, and therefore if they did beep him, and he got to the emergency room and found that California had not, in fact, fallen into the ocean, he would tear every single member of the emergency room staff a brand new asshole. He had been very clear on that point when he left the hospital at four a.m. the night before, after working yet another double-shift.
Sol had gone to his son's birthday party and there was pin-the-tail-on the-donkey and musical chairs in the big backyard, and enough cake and ice cream to give everyone type-two diabetes, and seven shrieking first-graders running around trampling the lawn like they were in the middle of the sack of Constantinople, but there was plenty of beer and a barbecue too, because Sol insisted on it, and he sat on a lawn chair happily drinking a beer and smoking a cigar and grilling burgers and talking about the Lakers with the husbands while the wives drank wine and tried to control the kids and the kids ran around in circles, sometimes playing a game that was vaguely reminiscent of soccer and sometimes apparently attempting to determine who could scream the loudest.
It was a great day, for awhile. The Lakers had beaten the Celtics the week before and they had a nice little winning streak going, and Sol was going to be taking his son to the game against Chicago that night, and until then he was passing the time grilling burgers and smoking his cigar and talking about the Lakers' playoff chances with the other husbands, and watching Joshua turn seven and stomp around laughing and screaming and kicking the soccer ball. Every time he saw Josh now, Sol would have sworn he'd grown some more. He had his whole life in front of him...
It was a bright day with a cool breeze and a big blue sky, and the burgers smelled great and the beer tasted great and Sol realized, just like he did every day, that he loved his son more than he had ever loved anything else in his life. He'd bought Josh a new Huffy bike that had made his eyes light up. It was a great day, it was a hell of a day. His ex-wife hadn't even been mean to him so far.
"You're less of a curmudgeon now than you were when you were with me," she had said, as she came up to get her burger, the usual: so well-done it was burnt, Swiss cheese instead of American, mustard and lots of pickles. "Bachelorhood seems to agree with you, Solomon."
"I'm still a curmudgeon," he had replied. "I just take it out on my staff instead of you now."
"Josh misses you a lot. This is nice...the kids, the barbecue, the two of us not fighting for once," she had said. "It's nice."
He had looked at her, then. Really looked at her: sixteen years of marriage made him take her for granted, and after they divorced he had come to realize that, somewhere along the way, he had stopped really seeing her, when he looked at her. Now he saw her. She was thirty-eight and she looked twenty-seven. Her eyes were the biggest, brownest things he had ever seen; they were ridiculously big, ridiculously brown, with long lashes. She had a slightly olive complexion, despite the fact that her summer tan was almost gone, and her long, thick brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail that reached halfway to her waist. She kept herself in shape and her body was still good and toned; she had long, shapely legs and her cut-off jeans showed them off nicely. She was doing that little half-smile, and she had that little furrow between her eyebrows, and she stood with one hand on her hip, as she looked at him with a mischievous little gleam in her brown eyes: it was her arguing pose. She stood there like she was expecting a fight. Old habits die hard, he had supposed.
"Yeah, Molly," he had said, and looked into her big brown eyes. "It is. You look great by the way."
Josh had his mother's eyes.
"I still hate that damn beard," Molly had said, and ran her fingers over his beard, and kissed his cheek, and walked away.
Sol watched her go, then went back to the burgers, and his beer, and arguing about whether or not this Kobe Bryant kid had what it takes to bring the Lakers back to the Finals, and watching Josh and his pals kick the soccer ball around. Josh couldn't use the bike yet until Sol taught him to ride; he'd promised Josh he'd teach him to ride the bike that weekend. Friday afternoon, first thing after school, he'd pick him up and they'd head out to the park and learn how to ride the bike. It was very important to Josh that he learn to ride the bike as soon as possible, because it was black and yellow with cool flame decals and besides, a girl in his class named Donna already knew how to ride hers, and that one was pink with a dumb little bell, and she kept on making fun of Josh for not knowing how to ride a bike yet.
As Sol reassured his son that he would know how to ride a bike by the end of the week, he reflected upon the fact that life was cyclical: you started off finding girls annoying, then you eventually started to like them and became obsessed with finding one to marry, then you got divorced and went back to finding them annoying again. He chuckled to himself and lit up another cigar.
It was a perfect day...
And then the sun disappeared.
The kids stopped running around after that; the wives stopped talking, the husbands stopped laughing. Everyone was quiet, as they looked up at the suddenly, inexplicably black sky; there wasn't a sound...it was as if the whole world had fallen into the ocean.
Sol turned off the grill, took everything back inside, and they hustled the kids into the house. They all sat around the living room, talking quietly, consoling the kids; the darkness scared them. One of the husbands said maybe it was just a solar eclipse and that everyone should just relax. Sol had Joshua in his lap, and his wife sat next to him, and they held hands.
Someone turned on the television; the local news was reporting riots downtown. A couple of the kids started crying, so they shut the television off.
They all knew it wasn't a solar eclipse. They weren't sure how they knew, but they knew...this darkness wasn't natural. There was something about it...a presence...or maybe an absence. They had each felt it, out in the yard; the darkness was like a weight on them, a pressure. It was cold.
No one went home just yet. Everyone, all the parents and all the kids, stayed in Sol and Molly's living room. No one said anything about it, no one put it into words, but they all wanted to be together now. They wanted to be around other people. They didn't know each other very well, most of them had just met a couple months before, when the kids were starting school together. But none of them wanted to go out into that darkness alone...
A few of the wives put the coffee on and brought out pastries. Sol and a couple of the husbands brought a bunch of chairs into the living room so they could all sit. Molly brought out paper and crayons and fingerpaints for the kids, and set them up with it in the dining room. When the kids were absorbed in their drawings, Sol turned the television back on, low, so the kids wouldn't hear.
They watched the news. The riots were getting worse, and there were riots in other cities now. No one knew what happened to the sun, but it wasn't an eclipse. There were rumors of home invasions, and murders. The National Guard had been mobilized. There were fires burning across Los Angeles. Twenty minutes after the sun turned black, the Governor came on: he told people to remain calm and stay indoors to keep the streets clear for emergency vehicles.
There was a quick, whispered conversation: Molly told everyone they were welcome to stay there and wait it out, and the couples debated it amongst themselves; they knew if they wanted to go home they would have to go now, before it got any worse out there. Already, some parts of the city were impassable because of the riots and the fires. Molly said they had plenty of food to last awhile since Sol had bought meat for the barbecue and he always bought too much when they were having a cookout; there was enough to last them all a few days at least.
In the end, three of the couples left, because they had relatives living nearby and they were worried about them. Sol and Molly hardly knew the people who were leaving, but they hugged them goodbye as if they were sending their own brothers and sisters off to war.
After that, Sol and the three husbands went around and locked down all the windows, and then they all sat glued to the television set, and they switched from coffee to booze as the news got progressively worse; there hadn't been any specific decision to do that, they just did. It seemed appropriate, somehow. There was a massive traffic accident on a highway up north in Sunnydale; sixteen people had been killed. An airplane had crashed. There were crazy stories of people disappearing. One of the kids peed his pants; when he came into the living room crying, he said he had looked out the window and the dark scared him.
Sol's beeper went off.
Sol hadn't wanted to go in to work; Josh was scared and he wanted to stay with him. But when Sol called the hospital, the emergency room was swamped. There were casualties coming in from all over the city...
He kissed Joshua goodbye, and told him he'd be back as soon as he could.
"This is why," Molly whispered to him, as he stood at the door. "Not because you were always a curmudgeon. This. This is why we're not together."
"Yeah," Sol said, and left for work.
When Sol walked into the emergency room there was bedlam all around: a couple of doctors were running here and there like chickens with their heads cut off, and patients were screaming, in at least three languages, some because they were in pain, others because no one had even looked them over yet. There were so many people waiting to be treated that every available seat, stretcher or wheelchair was taken and people with obvious trauma wounds were standing around, their eyes glazed over, propped up by whoever had brought them in. People were lying on the floor, unconscious. A little tiny Indian nurse who had just started a few weeks before and whose name Sol kept forgetting was desperately trying to hold things together, running around with a clipboard and trying to get people's information and reassuring everyone, as best she could, that they would all be seen just as soon as they could spare a doctor.
"Sure," Sol muttered, as he beheld the spectacle. "This is as good as watching the Lakers play the Bulls. I don't feel ripped off at all."
One of the people on the floor, a fat Latino man, vomited; there was blood in the vomit. A skinny old malnourished-looking black woman dressed in a nightgown and slippers with her hair up in rollers was standing against a wall and hyperventilating, and holding her hand against her right side. The detail cop who was usually there at night was nowhere to be seen and Richard, the fragrant old homeless junkie with long, dirty gray hair who showed up at least once a week like clockwork, was high again and screaming at the top of his lungs about Agent Orange. Sol knew Richard was only the first junkie; there would be more, it was still early yet. A skinny young guy in an eight-hundred dollar suit sat in a chair talking on a cell phone two feet away from the old woman who was standing against the wall hyperventilating, oblivious to her.
"Dude, it's fucking crazy in here," the guy said, into the phone.
Sol walked over to him.
"Sir?" he said, waving his arms in front of the man and smiling. The man looked up at him, annoyed.
"Hi," Sol said. "Sol Ziegler, I'm the chief of emergency medicine here. Is there anything else you need? Like, a pillow? Maybe we could get you a beer? You comfortable?"
"Uh...yeah, thanks," the man said.
"Get out of the chair, you asshole!" Sol screamed in his face. "Can't you see this poor woman standing against the wall? Can't you see she's in pain?!"
"I'm sorry," Sol said, and smiled at the man again. "Was that harsh? I'm a curmudgeon. I can be moody. My ex-wife always said so."
"Uh...that's..." the man said.
"GET UP YOU MORON!" Sol screamed, and grabbed the man by the shoulder and yanked him out of the chair. Then he took the old woman by the hand, and gently sat her down in the chair.
He held on to the woman's wrist, and took her pulse. He took a penlight from his coat pocket, and shined it in her eyes.
"Can you tell me what's wrong?" Sol said, softly.
"Hurts...when I breathe," the woman said.
"Here?" Sol said, and ran his hand along her ribs, on the right side. She nodded.
After a moment, Sol turned around. He spotted the little tiny nurse standing beside an old Asian man, trying to make sense of his responses when she took down his information. Which was difficult, because he wasn't speaking English, but the nurse was soldiering on anyway. "Hey," Sol said. "Nurse girl, whose name I can never remember."
The nurse looked up from her clipboard. "Uh...I'm Melanie?"
"Great, don't care," Sol said. "Where the hell is my staff?"
"Uh, well, we've called everyone in? But not everyone is answering and, well...this is all we've got."
"Sol, they pulled Pierce, Pendleton, Kingston and Black," one of the doctors said, as he hurried to the man who had vomited on the floor. "Said they needed surgeons upstairs. Plus some of our nurses. No idea where the orderlies got to but we better find some. We have a bunch of people on the way in but no one's showed up yet. It's crazy out there."
"Nurse girl, get on the phone," Sol said. "I need orderlies and nurses and I need them now. I don't care where you get them. Pull them out of the fucking movie star ward upstairs, just get them down here, now. Use my name, anyone gives you any lip tell them I'll have their asses. Tell them I want my doctors back too, and if I can't have them then they'd better send me doctors from somewhere or I'll march these patients upstairs. Find me some stretchers and wheelchairs for all these people. Then call the police. We need detail cops here, right now. Then put the clipboard down, stop taking people's information, and start treating injuries. You're a nurse, not a receptionist, and this place is a fucking MASH unit here and it's all hands on fucking deck! You got all that?"
"Uh...yeah," Melanie said. She stood there, watching Sol. The whole room watched him.
Sol smiled.
"Well here's an idea, how about you like, do it?" Sol said.
"Uh...right, right, okay," Melanie said, and hurried to the phone on the front desk.
"I used to have hair you know, Nurse girl," Sol said, and brushed his hands over the large bald spot in the middle of his head. "Before this job? I had hair. Rock star hair. Peter Frampton hair."
Melanie was behind the desk, with the phone in her hand.
"Uh...that's...too bad...about your hair?" Melanie said. "Uh...so I'm gonna like, dial now."
"Great," Sol said. "You do that."
"She's gone," Willow said. "Tara's gone. Just poof, up and vanished right out of her clothes. That's your story. That's what you're telling me."
"Yeah," Angel said.
Willow was holding Tara's necklace in her hands, caressing the crystal with her fingers. The crystal felt warm...and familiar.
Giles was driving them back to Buffy's house, to plan their next move. Willow had her window rolled down; she could smell smoke, and she heard sirens, and screams. It was starting to rain; it was a cold rain.
They had stopped at Giles' house first. Willow had gotten rid of the robe and put on some clothes. She thought she might need another map for her locator spell if she was going to figure out where Buffy was...she had a feeling she would need a map of Los Angeles. Los Angeles was where Buffy said her mother was...
Willow had stood for a long time, looking down at Xander's body, on the couch. Xander's neck, and half his face, had an ugly bruise, and his body smelled bad; he had pissed and shit himself. Willow had hacked into the Sunnydale morgue database for Buffy a bunch of times to steal autopsy records, so she knew what happened to Xander's body was a natural occurrence; when people died, they rarely died with dignity. And Willow realized that every time she thought of Xander now, she'd remember that smell...the smell of shit and piss. That was the worst part of this, she thought. The worst thing that had happened so far. She would have to remember Xander that way now.
She didn't cry, when she looked at him. She stood there for a long time, trying to make herself cry, but she couldn't. And then she went into Giles' study, found his California road atlas with the big fold-out maps, and they left.
Willow made Angel carry Xander's body into the little yard behind Giles' house. Then she took out a book of matches that she'd found in Giles' kitchen, and lit one. She sculpted the flame, lent it power, watched it grow until it was a white-hot fireball in the palm of her hand, a perfect sphere.
"I love you, Xander," Willow said, and knew she meant it...but she knew it as a fact only, the way she knew Columbus discovered America in 1492, or that yellow roses stood for friendship, not love; she knew it, but she didn't feel it.
Xander was laid down in the dirt, next to a little patch of azaleas, with a sheet over him.
Willow sent the fireball to him, and he burned.
She watched, with Giles and Angel standing beside her, as the sheet turned black, and Xander burned. His body smelled like cooking meat; another smell to add to her last memories of him. But it was better than shit and piss. They bowed their heads, and didn't say anything. There was nothing to say, really.
Willow didn't cry. She noticed that Giles did; a few tears fell down his cheeks. Willow felt something in her stomach, when she saw that...she felt the cold thing again. She knew it wasn't just inside of her. It was her. Willow knew she was a cold thing.
She thought about killing herself. She wondered how she might do it.
She remembered the lighthouse, at Kingman's Bluff...
She remembered Tara. And she knew she loved Tara...even though she had never met her. Because Faith loved her.
Willow remembered Tara's laugh...her warm smile. Her big blue eyes. Her scent. Ginger.
And then Xander was gone, just dust, and they got back in the car, and drove away.
"And what if I don't believe you?" Willow said, as she looked out the window at the rain, and saw the orange glow lighting up the clouds downtown. The rain would help with the fires, at least. Not that it mattered.
Angel was in the backseat. He was always a gentleman, Willow thought. Giving up his seat for a girl. Sometimes he raped girls too, locked them in closets and made them watch their families die, but he had manners. "Maybe you got hungry," Willow said, looking back at him now. "Maybe you wanted a snack. Maybe you fucked her. Raped her."
"Willow," Giles said.
Willow didn't look at him. She looked back out the window again. She was a passenger in the car...a passenger, being taken to wherever she was supposed to be next. She had always been a passenger, she realized. Her whole life, she had gone wherever people had taken her.
"I didn't," Angel said.
"Hey, good for you," Willow said, without bothering to look back at him. "That makes Tara like, what, one in five or ten-thousand? A girl meets you, doesn't get raped? Like hitting the lottery."
Sol allowed himself to take a breath.
He had gotten the emergency room into some semblance of order--he still had hardly any staff and there were still at least forty people with serious injuries waiting to be seen, but it wasn't chaos out there anymore. No one was sprawled on the floor, and people were being attended to--slowly, but they were being attended to--in order of severity of their injuries. Even Richard had calmed down, and actually started helping the little nurse girl whose name Sol couldn't remember after she had found him some food. Richard sat with the people in the worst pain, and talked to them, and helped them relax. Sol made him promise not to talk to people about Area 51 or how Nixon was the mastermind behind the Kennedy assassination, and so far Richard was on his best behavior. And the little nurse girl had actually turned out to be very efficient at her work now that she had actually started doing it, and she was doing a good job treating wounds and keeping the peace out there, which freed Sol up for the big stuff. He had just finished gulping down his third cup of coffee and stitching up his fifth major trauma wound--for some reason, every other person out there was suffering from blood loss and they had done so many transfusions already that he was worried about their blood supply--and he was just about to go see if there was any more fresh coffee anywhere when it happened: he heard people screaming out in the reception area. Sol had been a doctor for a very long time and he had heard a lot of screams over the years and he knew these screams weren't screams of pain; they were screams of fear.
Sol really was a curmudgeon: he had admitted it to himself and embraced it a long time ago and it meant he was a glass half-empty kind of guy. He knew things had been going too well out there. He knew it was just a matter of time before something got it good and fucked up again...
When he ran out into the reception area he saw a blonde girl waving a sword around and screaming. That was something new; working the emergency room meant you saw a lot of crazy things but this was Sol's first girl with a sword. Not his first person with a sword; a fat guy wearing tights and a towel for a cape had come into the emergency room once a few years back, high on angel dust and waving a sword around. But this was Sol's first girl with a sword. And unlike the fat guy, she looked like she knew how to use it.
"I could be watching the Lakers right now," Sol muttered. "I could so be watching the Lakers right now."
The blonde stood next to another girl, a brunette slumped over in a wheelchair. The brunette looked bad: Sol wasn't sure if she was even alive. Doctor Pendleton--Sol had managed to wrestle him back from upstairs after screaming at some people on the phone for ten minutes--was trying to calm the blonde girl down. But the girl just kept waving her sword around, and screaming...
"NO!" the blonde girl screamed. "I'm not gonna fucking calm down! I'm not fucking waiting any longer! She's gonna die! SHE NEEDS BLOOD AND IF SHE DOESN'T GET IT SHE'S GONNA DIE!"
"Miss...we have a lot of people here and a lot of them could die tonight," Pendleton said, moving slowly around the blonde girl and talking very softly, like he was trying to calm a rabid dog. "We've got other trauma victims here and they've all lost a lot of blood too and we're getting to everyone as quick as we can. We just don't have much blood left on hand right now..."
No, Sol thought, as he watched the girl: her whole body was taut, like a coiled spring. She looked like an animal ready to pounce. No, Pendleton, you IDIOT, don't tell her THAT...
"...So we have to make sure it goes to the people it can do the most good for, first," Pendleton, who was an excellent surgeon but who had the people skills of an armadillo, said. "If you'll just be patient for a little while longer--"
And Sol watched, amazed, as the girl moved faster than his eyes could follow, grabbing Pendleton by the arm, spinning him around and holding the sword to his throat.
"Wait," Sol said. The girl ignored him; she was talking to Pendleton, snarling and spitting the words.
"You're her doctor," the blonde girl snarled in Pendleton's ear. "You're her fucking personal physician." The girl pressed the sword against the side of Pendleton's neck--thankfully, Sol noticed, nowhere near the carotid artery--a little bit of blood dripped down. "And, blood?" the girl said. "Looks to me like we got plenty."
The girl looked around and her eyes lit on the nurse whose name Sol could never remember. "You," the blonde girl said. "This guy's her doctor, you're her nurse. Get over here."
The nurse froze. Her hands trembled.
"Get the fuck over here or he FUCKING DIES BITCH!" the blonde girl shouted, and people began screaming again...
"Okay," Sol said, and walked right up to the blonde girl, and stood in front of her, and smiled. There weren't any detail cops; the nurse girl had tried the police at least ten times and they weren't picking up their phone. Even the emergency lines were jammed. Sol knew he was on his own here.
He looked back at two other doctors and the one other nurse--Naomi, he always remembered her name because it was the same name as an actress he liked--who were standing around utterly dumbstruck. "You have work to do," he said to them. "So hey, how about you like, go and do it."
The doctors and the nurse backed away from the blonde girl slowly, as if they had been confronted by a grizzly bear. Sol suddenly remembered that the name of the nurse girl whose name he could never remember was Melanie. She still looked scared, but she looked a little less scared now. He didn't tell her to get back to work. The blonde girl wanted her and Sol needed the blonde girl to understand that she was in charge and that she wouldn't have to hurt anybody.
"Who the fuck are you?" the blonde girl snarled, and pressed the sword harder against Pendleton's throat. Pendleton whimpered.
"Sol Ziegler," Sol said, still smiling, and holding his hands up in front of him now, palms forward, to show the girl he meant no harm. "I'm the chief of emergency medicine here, which means I'm in charge of all these people. You want something done around here, I'm your guy."
The blonde girl narrowed her eyes. To Sol, it looked like she was focusing in on him, somehow. Somewhere, Richard muttered, "It's because of the vampires, you know. All this shit is because of the vampires. Ronald Reagan created the vampires. I think they might be space vampires."
"Here's the thing, kid," Sol said. "The guy you have there? Pendleton? He's kind of an asshole, and I'm sorry about that." Pendleton frowned. But Sol thought Pendleton really was an asshole and this was an excellent opportunity to tell him that and calm this crazy girl down at the same time. "But he's also my best surgeon and these people need him. So, fair trade. Me for him."
"You for him?" the girl said. "You're like...a doctor? You can do doctor stuff? She..." tears fell down the girl's cheeks. "She...lost a lot of blood. You can...help with that?"
At first, Sol had thought the blonde girl was high. Now, looking at her eyes, he realized she wasn't. She was just scared.
"Yeah," he said. "And these people will all do what I tell them to do. So how's this. I'll be your girlfriend's doctor and Melanie over here will be her nurse, okay? But let Pendleton go so he can save some people's lives."
"How do I know I can trust you?"
Sol looked at the girl in the wheelchair. He still couldn't tell if she was alive. If she was alive, it was only just barely...
The girl's eyes fluttered open for just a second.
The girl's eyes were the biggest, brownest things Sol had ever seen; they were ridiculously big, ridiculously brown...
Sol moved closer to the blonde girl, took the sword by the blade, and placed it against his own neck.
"Because I have an honest face," Sol said.
"Okay," the blonde girl said.
When Giles pulled up in front of Buffy's house, Angel said, "You guys stay in the car for a minute."
"Why?" Willow said.
"Window's broken," Angel said, and got out of the car.
Willow and Giles both looked at the house. They could barely see it in the dark and they definitely couldn't see the windows.
They watched as Angel took a few steps down the concrete path that cut through the front lawn of the house. They saw him stop, and cock his head. A moment later he came back to the car.
"What is it?" Giles said.
Angel looked at Willow.
"You're not gonna like it," he said.
"Oh, good," Willow said, as Angel unlocked the front door with the spare key, and she walked into Buffy's living room. "Because the end of the world wasn't annoying enough."
Cordelia was sitting on the couch. Her eyes were red from crying, and she looked shaky.
Willow was carrying the gym bag Giles had loaded with various magic ingredients and knick-knacks in one hand, and Tara's necklace in the other. The gym bag was Xander's.
It was the only thing she had left of him now, Willow realized; now that her house had been burned down the gym bag was literally the only thing of Xander's she had. It hit her then, like someone had punched her in the stomach: he was gone, dead. She would never see him again. She wanted to cry. But she still couldn't.
"I didn't...didn't have anywhere else to go," Cordelia said. "They burned my house and...my parents...I don't know where..."
"Whatever," Willow said, cutting her off and brushing by her without a second glance. "Just, pretty please, don't start yapping at me? Giles, all my magic stuff is in here, right? Stuff for locator spells too?"
"Uh...yes," Giles said. "Hello, Cordelia. Are...are you all right? You...said something about your parents?"
"I don't know where they are," Cordelia said.
Willow sat in one of the chairs across from Cordelia and dumped the contents of the gym bag on the coffee table. There was a bottle of rum on the coffee table, and magic ingredients, too--Tara's.
Willow looked at Tara's necklace again. The crystal pendant, a perfect white sphere, was glowing now, throwing off little sparks of rainbow light. Willow put the necklace on. The crystal felt warm against her chest.
The living room was dark; only the streetlamps outside gave it any light. Giles turned on one of the tiffany lamps by the couch. Cordelia shuddered, as she noticed Willow's eyes for the first time.
"What...happened to your eyes?" Cordy said. Usually, her voice carried. Now it was soft, weak, just above a whisper.
"And here comes the yapping," Willow said.
"Willow," Giles said.
Willow went back to sorting through the magic items. There was a lot of stuff, crystals, powders, charms, trinkets, books, her map of Sunnydale, Giles' California road atlas, Barney the lucky goblin...Willow noticed the book Giles had brought to the house the day before; the one the Council had sent him, about the history of the Key. She knew Cordelia was still looking at her; she felt her eyes. She looked up at her.
"What?" Willow said.
"It's just...your eyes are...black," Cordelia said. "Are you...sure you're okay?"
"You don't care," Willow said. "You never did. You're acting like we're your friends because you need us now, because you found some trouble you couldn't handle and, just like always, you ran back to us, the losers you spent most of your time making fun of. The second you get in trouble you always run right back to us, like a pathetic little whipped dog with her tail between her legs."
"Willow!" Giles said. Willow ignored him. She noticed Cordelia was starting to cry.
"You're a fucking bitch, Cordelia," Willow said. "And yeah, maybe I was a loser? But I had friends, who actually liked me for who I was. What did you ever have? A bunch of lobotomized sluts who hung around you so they could get invited to parties and spread their legs for the football team, and now that they're all probably dead? You have us. But we're not your friends. We're people who feel bad for you, and we're willing to give you some charity because you're so fucking pathetic. That's all you have. So do me a favor. Don't ever talk to me. Don't ever pretend were friends."
Cordelia started sobbing.
"Oh, grow up," Willow said, rolling her eyes. "What, are we suddenly in fourth grade again? Did I steal your fucking lunch money?"
"Willow," Angel said. "That's enough."
Willow stood up.
"Oh, I'm sorry!" she said. "Does the mass murderer think I'm being rude? Does the serial rapist think I should apologize?"
"Okay," Angel said, and sighed. Which Willow thought was strange for someone who didn't have to breathe, but maybe he just did it for effect; Willow knew he could be vain. "Time for us to settle this."
"And how are we gonna do that, lover?" Willow said. "You gonna lock me in a closet again?"
"You wanna blame someone? Blame me," Angel said. "You wanna hurt someone? Hurt me. But don't go around taking things out on everyone else when we both know the one you're really pissed at is yourself."
"Yeah? How do ya figure that, guy? Did I lock myself in a closet and rape myself? Did I kill Jenny? Did I butcher those eighteen little kids and take pics of 'em and then throw 'em back in B's face? Did I kill thirteen-thousand people? Shit dude, you're right. Damn, I'm a bad person."
Giles folded his arms across his chest, and looked down at his shoes. Angel paused before continuing. Angel realized that Willow was talking like Faith...exactly like her. Not just her choice of words but her accent too. Even Willow's body language had suddenly changed. She was standing with her legs slightly apart, her weight on the balls of her feet. Like she was ready for a fight... like she was itching for a fight.
Angel wondered if Willow would kill him.
"You can't cry," Angel said. "You can't cry for him, and you don't know why."
Willow stopped smiling. Her face turned red. Her hands started to shake. She looked back at Angel, her black eyes smoldering.
"Don't," Willow hissed, and held up a finger, and shook her head, as her face twisted with rage; became ugly. "Don't, or you'll regret it Angel. I swear I will make you fucking regret it if you take this even one step further."
It was Willow's voice again, Angel noticed; the Boston accent was gone, and Willow's posture had changed too. She wasn't in a fighting stance anymore.
But Angel thought she still wanted a fight...
Tara's crystal flashed; it was dazzling. It was as if someone had taken a photograph with a flashbulb. Willow felt connected to the crystal, somehow...like it responded to her.
Willow knew the crystal was hers. She knew she had created it...imbued it with its power.
"You wonder if there's something wrong with you now," Angel said. "If maybe you can't love. You think you love Xander, but you can't feel it now."
Willow raised her hand. Cordelia gasped as the book of matches flew straight up into the air from the coffee table, and every match suddenly burst into flames. The fire flew directly into Willow's hand, expanding to form a ball. As Angel watched, the ball grew hotter, changing in color from red to orange to yellow, and finally, white. Angel felt its heat; it was so hot that it distorted the air around it, and it was nearly unbearable to stand this close to it. Angel backed away, because he had no choice. He knew it would begin to burn him soon.
Giles and Cordelia didn't move. Willow held the ball of white-hot flame in her hand, and Angel watched her, and wondered if he was about to die.
He didn't want to die...not yet. Not until he knew for sure that Buffy and Faith and Joyce were safe...not until he found Tara.
"Don't ever say his name, you rapist piece of shit," Willow said. "Don't... don't talk about stuff you don't know anything about."
"You're afraid your eyes won't ever change back," Angel said. "You're afraid they mean you've been changed, too."
"Shut up!" Willow shouted, and the crystal flashed again, even brighter this time; Giles and Cordelia covered their eyes. The fireball flared in Willow's hand, and instantly doubled in size. Cordelia screamed, and leaped off the couch, and ran to Giles.
"You think you've become cold, Willow," Angel said, softly. "That you can't love."
"Shut up! SHUT UP!" Willow shrieked, and released the fireball, as the crystal flashed again, lighting up the room like a sunburst...
Willow stopped the fireball just in time, with a shaking hand, inches from Angel's chest. Cordelia screamed again. Angel grunted in pain; the fireball was searing his flesh. He backed away, with burns on his chest and his neck.
Willow was breathing heavily, gasping, gulping in air. She was shaking. She felt her rage inside her, hammering at her, filling her up and threatening to explode out of her like a balloon that was ready to pop, but Willow was afraid of it. She was afraid that if she let it out, she might not be able to control it...
Strange thoughts went through your mind when you were thinking about killing someone.
Willow thought about parallel universes.
She remembered talking to Buffy, just three nights before...it was the night Willow realized that she was the witch who had appeared to Tara when she was a little girl...and the night she had nearly made love with Buffy.
Quantum probability says that for every decision we make, every event that occurs, every possible outcome happens, Willow remembered herself saying to Buffy...
Willow had realized then that somewhere, in some other universe, in some other life, she and Buffy were lovers. She knew it for a fact.
And Willow realized now that she was going to kill Angel...that it was going to happen, this very moment...
In some other universe...in some other life.
She lowered her hand, and the fireball dimmed, and shrank, until it finally faded to nothing.
Willow couldn't risk releasing the rage she held inside her...it scared her too much. If it ever got out, Willow didn't know if it would stop with Angel...she didn't know if it would ever stop...
"It's all your fault," Willow said. "Everything that's ever gone wrong for all of us can be traced right back to you."
"Yeah," Angel said.
"The things you did to Buffy, to me, Giles...Drusilla too. Xander took me out of here because he wanted me away from you, because he knew what you are, what you've done to us all. Xander died because of you."
"Yeah," Angel said.
"Xander...Xander died?" Cordelia whispered.
Willow looked at her.
"Yeah," Willow said.
Cordelia burst into tears.
Willow still couldn't cry.
"So what's your name, kid?" Sol said, as he sat in the chair beside the brunette girl's bed in the little private room in the intensive care unit that he had managed to finagle without alerting anyone else to the fact that technically, this was a hostage situation. The blonde girl with the sword had calmed down a bit and Sol didn't need some overzealous orderlies screwing everything up, especially since he was pretty sure the blonde girl could, and would, kill them.
Sol was watching the brunette girl's vitals; they weren't good. Her blood pressure was hardly there at all, her heartbeat was rapid now and her skin was cold and pale. She had lost more than half her blood somehow. There was a nasty wound on her neck; Sol had seen a bunch of people with wounds just like it tonight. It looked like an animal bite.
"Or I could just call you 'Blonde girl with the sword' if you want," Sol said. "That nurse who went out to type your blood? I call her 'Nurse girl whose name I can never remember'."
"Her name's Melanie," the blonde girl said. She sat in the other chair, on the opposite side of the brunette girl's bed, holding her hand. Sometimes she caressed the girl's hair.
The brunette girl was getting fluids but she needed plasma, soon, or Sol knew she would die...in fact it was a miracle she wasn't dead already. And the hospital was completely out of O-negative blood right now, so they had to wait for the girl's blood type to come back before they could even start giving her plasma.
"And what's your name?" Sol said.
"Buffy," the blonde girl said. She hadn't taken her eyes off the brunette girl since they came into the room and hooked her up to the monitors and the intravenous tubes. She was still looking at her now.
Sol chuckled. The blonde girl looked at him for the first time.
"No, really, what's your name?" Sol said.
The blonde girl showed a glimmer of a smile.
"Buffy," she said.
"And I thought Solomon was bad," Sol said. "Sorry, kid."
"Okay, we're typing them," Melanie said, rushing back into the room.
"What the hell's the hold up?" Sol said. Sol watched the blonde girl. Her eyes were riveted on Melanie now, like a cat watching a mouse.
"With all the people coming in with blood loss tonight the lab has a backlog," Melanie said. "A bunch of the lab people left to go home to their families and most of the nightshift crew haven't even come in. They're swamped. They say they need at least another twenty minutes to type both girls."
"She doesn't have twenty minutes!" Sol shouted, and got up. "Nurse girl, stay here and be a hostage for awhile while I kick the lab in the ass."
"Uh..." Melanie said. "Wouldn't I be more useful, like, not in here with the crazy girl?" She looked at Buffy. "Uh...no offense."
"How do I know her whole speech wasn't rehearsed just to get you out of here?" Buffy said, looking up at Sol, and narrowing her eyes...and reaching out with her senses.
"You don't, Buffy," Sol said. "Trust me or not, but decide now because she's almost out of time."
"Go," Buffy said.
Willow had her candles and her map set up; it was a map of Los Angeles this time, because she was certain Buffy would be there somewhere, looking for Joyce. She sat cross-legged on the floor in the middle of the living room, and Angel, Giles and Cordelia sat on the couch.
Willow noticed Cordy sat very close to Angel.
"Yeah, so like, how long will this take?" Cordelia said.
"Two or three hours," Willow said, and closed her eyes.
"You really do magic?" Cordelia said. "There's really magic?"
"No, Cordy," Willow said. "This is all a really elaborate prank."
"You think she's in Los Angeles, Willow?" Giles said.
"That's where Joyce is, that's where Buffy would go," Willow said. "And where Buffy goes, Faith goes. They're both there."
"Then why not just drive there now?" Cordelia said.
"Because I don't know where in Los Angeles they are and knocking on every door in the entire city might take awhile," Willow said. "And remember the part about not talking to me?"
"So, duh, just do your whatchamacallit location spell thing on the way," Cordy said. "Do I have to do all the thinking around here?"
Willow opened her eyes. She looked at Cordelia, silently. Cordelia looked back, and didn't blink.
"You know, Willow, you just don't really work as a bitch," Cordelia said. "You don't have a natural aptitude for it."
"Thanks," Willow said. "You work as a bitch. You're a really effective bitch."
"You better believe it baby," Cordy said, and smiled.
"Angel, you're like, photographic memory guy, right?" Willow said. "Did we pass any vans on the way here?"
"Blue van, parked around the corner on Chestnut Street, four blocks down on the right," Angel said. "Why?"
"A van gives me room to do my locator spell while we drive to Los Angeles," Willow said, and blew out her candles, and scooped up her supplies, and stood up. "Goddess help us all, Cordy just made herself useful. Let's go."
"Thank you, Cordelia!" Cordy said, rushing after them as they all headed for the door. "What would we do without you?"
"So like, uh, can I go to the bathroom?" Melanie said.
Buffy looked up at her, for the first time. It had been a few minutes, and neither of them had spoken.
"I'm not like, trying to escape or anything? There's a little bathroom right there," Melanie said, pointing to a brown door in the corner.
Buffy got up and opened the door. It was a bathroom, with a tiny toilet and a tiny sink and a tiny shower and no window.
"Yeah," Buffy said, and sat back down, and took Faith's hand again.
"You love her, don't you?" Melanie said.
"Yeah."
"What's her name?"
"Faith."
"Pretty name. Buffy...I hope...I hope she makes it."
Buffy nodded. Melanie got up, squeezed her shoulder, and went to the bathroom.
Buffy was alone with Faith. She looked up at the monitor. Her blood pressure had dropped again.
Buffy kissed her, as tears fell down her cheeks.
"You're my love," Buffy whispered. "And...and if you die? I'll die too, Faith. I'll die too."
Buffy rested her head on Faith's bosom, and closed her eyes, and cried...
The room seemed brighter, suddenly. Even with her eyes closed, Buffy could sense a light...
"Buffy?" someone said.
Buffy turned, and saw Tara standing naked in front of her.