Xander put on Giles’s James Dean denim jacket — Whoa, where had this little number come from, Carnaby Street? Certainly not the Men’s Warehouse — and walked out onto the street.
The street that was a bit noisy and crowded for this time of night. People were milling around on the sidewalks, spilling out into the road; a car came by and half-swerved toward a clump of men, who chased after it like dogs.
Xander was wigged, but he kept it to himself as he strolled on by the various groups. He had thought to calm himself down and talk himself into maybe some optimism about where Cordy was and what was happening to her. A phone call to her house had revealed that her parents had no clue as to where she was, without revealing that he was the loser formerly known as boyfriend.
Someone threw a beer bottle against the chain-link fence on Xander’s right. There was another, more distant crash of glass. Car brakes squealed.
Catty-corner on the next block, two men began shouting at each other. The taller one threw a punch at the other one and a crowd formed with the speed of a lit match.
Then he heard someone say, ”I just saw the little bastard with my own eyes. Some kids went with him into that condo complex down the street.”
Someone else said, ”I’ve got a gun.”
The first someone replied, ”Good. We’ll go door to door if we have to, but Mark Dellasandro’s dead before sunrise.”
As casually as he could, Xander hung a lazy U and began to walk back toward Giles’s house.
“That’s one of them!” the first someone yelled. ”That kid with the dark hair. Hey, kid!”
“Uh-oh,” Xander muttered.
He broke into a run.
Cordelia looked up from the floor of her cell at the dark-haired vampire and said, ”What? Are you nuts?”
The dark vampire was holding out a spear and a shield. A very dirty and crusty spear and shield, like might be found in the Sunnydale Museum, where the broken pottery and half-rotted baskets did not so much live as lie around gasping.
She shrugged and said, ”If you want to face your friend defenseless, be my guest.”
She put the spear and the shield on the floor and turned to go. Cordelia raised out a hand.
“Wait!” she cried.
The vampire turned, her brows raised.
“Please,” Cordelia huffed. ”Please wait.”
The vampire smiled. ”That’s better. See? You can be trained. We were beginning to doubt it.”
Cordelia wordlessly glanced down at the whip marks on her own shoulder and counted to ten. Now that her terrible headache was gone, she could think more clearly. Sure, she was scared, but she was also Queen C. It was taking a lot out of her not to tell this bitch exactly what she thought about her. But that was not tact. That was self-preservation.
“What do you want?” the vampire asked, leaning against the metal cage and crossing her arms and legs.
“I want to know why you’re doing this,” Cordelia said bluntly. ”’Cause it’s kind of, um, like, a little on the edge? As in, majorly insane?”
The vampire threw back her head and laughed. ”Julian!” she cried. ”Do you hear that?”
“Indeed.”
From the shadows just beyond the cage, Julian, the very scary but hunky blond vampire, took two steps forward. He was with some slimy guy. Cordelia squinted, then glared at the proprietor of Willy’s Alibi Room.
“Willy,” she said, ”you, you . . . creep.”
“Hey.” He shrugged. ”The price was right.”
“Like, your life,” Cordelia said.
He made a gesture as in Whatcha gonna do?
“We pay him rent on these lovely accommodations,” Julian said. ”This is a set of secret rooms beneath his bar, did you know that, dear girl? There was a period in your history when liquor was illegal.”
“There was?” Cordelia asked, surprised. ”I thought that was, um, marijuana.”
“Oh, God, the American education,” he said, sighing and rolling his eyes. ”It was called Prohibition, and it took place during the thirties. This was where the illegal drink of that time was funneled into Sunnydale. This little town was notorious for its moonshine.”
He laughed. ”As it is now. Moonshine. A pun. You see, your friend wears the coat of Romulus.”
Cordelia sat back on her heels. ”Y’know, I really don’t understand any of this,” she said dully. ”And I subscribe to W and I used to watch ’House of Style’ until Cindy Crawford stopped doing it. But I’ve never heard of a designer named Romulus.”
At this Julian doubled over. He laughed until tears welled in his eyes.
Then he turned to the vampire woman and said, ”Helen, I must turn her. She’s far too delightful simply to drink.”
“Turn her, and I’ll stake you both myself,” the dark-haired woman said.
Julian gazed at Cordelia and thrust out his lower lip.
“Pity,” he said mournfully. His face hardened and he turned into the demon she knew he really was behind the Brad-Pitt looks.
Who is so out, she thought savagely. Everybody knows that.
“Pick up the spear and the shield,” he said, eyes glowing, fangs glistening, ”or I’ll drain you now.”
“Julian, say please,” the dark-haired vampire said. ”We must set a good example.”
“Both of you can go to hell,” Cordelia muttered under her breath. If she had anything to do with it, they’d be there shortly.
She picked up the spear and shield. Sure, she’d learn how to use these things. As soon as possible.
But not for the reason they think.
She hid her face. Okay, she wasn’t the Slayer, but she was a friend of the Slayer. Okay, maybe not so much a friend as someone who put up with the Slayer. She’d seen Buffy in a battle or three hundred. She could make some moves of her own.
And then I’ll take these two down, and I’ll, like, wound Oz or something so he won’t kill me, and we’ll get out of here.
“Are you crying, lovely one?” Julian asked softly.
“Huh, me? No way,” Cordelia said, wiping her face with the hand that held the spear.
Then she turned and saw Jordan Smyth. Jordan, who she had tried to help get straight and stay in school. Jordan, who had confessed to a major crush on her.
“Cordelia,” he murmured, shocked.
Chapter 10
XANDER RACED INTO GILES’S APARTMENT AND slammed the door. Heads swiveled toward him, and Angel, in a pair of clean, tight jeans and an Oxford sweatshirt, stopped on the stairway from the loft.
“I was, recognized,” he said, gasping a bit.
Buffy, like Mark, was rolling in sweat clothes. She said, “By who? Autograph hounds?”
“They saw us come in here with Mark,” Xander explained. “I can’t give you names and astrological signs, but they’re on their way here.”
“We have to leave,” Giles said. “We can get to my car.”
Buffy took Mark’s hand. It was thin. His face was long and pinched. "We’ll take you to another place, okay? You’ll be safe.”
“They’re going to find me sooner or later,” he said tiredly.
“No. They. Are. Not.” She shook his wrist.
“C’mon, be strong for me. I want to protect you, but there’s only so much of me.”
She threw a look at Willow, another at Xander. They were depending on her to find Oz and Cordy. She felt guilty sitting here. She should be out. She should be doing something.
I have so let them down. I’ve let everybody down.
She said, “Mark, listen to me. I need your help. I really do.”
The boy did not look up to the job. Buffy put her hands on his shoulders and bent down. He was small for his age. She wondered if the other boys teased him at school.
He buried his face in his hands. Buffy was sorry. Very, very sorry. But this was no time for him to lose it. She had to get him out of there.
Firmly, she put her hands around both wrists and began to half-pull, half-drag him out of the apa
rtment as she looked at the others.
“Giles, if I were you,” she said, “I’d grab anything I really treasured. When they can’t find Mark, there’s a really good chance they’ll take their frustrations out on anything and anybody.”
Giles looked around. Nodded. “You’re quite right, of course.”
“Oh,” Willow moaned. “We’re never going to get to rescue Oz.”
“Or to eat,” Xander added, then stirred himself. “Or to save Cordy, I meant. First priority. Oz. Eating would be, let’s see, third.” He glanced guiltily at Willow. “Not that saving Oz is second in priority to saving Cordelia. No way. I mean —”
Buffy watched Giles go up the stairs to his loft bedroom. She said to Xander and Willow, “You guys ready to roll?”
“Sure,” Willow said.
Buffy looked at her best friend and wondered why she should be surprised that Willow’s eyes were swollen and her face was blotchy. It was obvious she’d been crying in the kitchen.
When Willow saw her looking, she snapped, “Just leave me alone, Buffy, all right? I know you have plenty to worry about without worrying about me.”
“Will,” Buffy said, wounded. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, nothing. Just that you have plenty of time to give Angel kissage and not nearly enough to look for my boyfriend. So thanks a lot.”
Buffy was overcome with shame. Willow didn’t even know that Buffy had been at Angel’s when she had been shot. If she had, she would probably never forgive her.
Which would be right. Because it was unforgivable.
Footsteps clattered on the walk. Then the door shook with a thunderous knocking on the other side.
“Open up or we’ll break the door down!” a man yelled.
“Plan B,” Buffy said, nodding to Angel, Giles, and the others. Mark put his hands in the baggy pockets and hunched over. Willow picked up an umbrella, and Xander took up a fighter’s stance.
“Oh,” Giles groaned.
“I’ll get you out of here safely,” Buffy said.
The door shook as something was rammed against it. Buffy gestured for everyone to take up positions on either side just as it crashed open. Buffy jumped in front of everyone else and said, “Hang a U, and there won’t be any trouble.”
Six men crowded around the entrance to the apartment. Standing slightly in front of them loomed a very large, very hairy man wearing a baseball cap that read Wilkins for Re-Election. He was wearing a dark blue down jacket and a very baggy pair of khaki pants.
“Outta my way,” he bellowed at Buffy, shoving her. “All we want is the kid.”
Buffy flared, grabbed the man’s hand, and flipped him over her shoulder. It was only luck that landed him on Giles’s couch.
“Excuse me?” she demanded.
The next man to barrel through the door pulled out a gun and pointed it straight at Buffy.
“Where is the little bastard?” he demanded.
Buffy turned around. Giles and Mark were nowhere to be seen. Good.
“I’m warning you. I’ll use this,” the man said.
Buffy glanced at Angel. He could take the guy out, of that Buffy was fairly certain. Bullets couldn’t kill vampires. But they could really tear them up.
The man aimed the weapon directly at her face. His mouth pulled back into a wild, feral grimace and he held the gun with both hands.
“Killer. Killer. Killer.” His voice rose to a fever pitch, loud and out of control.
“Killer,” a red-haired guy murmured behind the man.
“Killer,” another man whispered dangerously.
“Phasers on overload,” Xander shouted over the din.
Buffy replied, “Got it.”
Then they were a blur, vampire, Slayer, Willow, and Xander, as Angel pushed the man’s hands toward the ceiling and Xander yanked him off his feet. As he went down, his gun discharged; a bullet shot into the ceiling and lodged there. He didn’t have a chance to fire a second one as Buffy pried it loose from his grip and stuck it in her belt. She didn’t like guns. She didn’t need guns.
The rest of the crowd came at them, then, not four more men, as she had expected, but more like a dozen. They streamed in from either side of the door.
“It’s showtime,” Buffy said, as at least five big, angry men rushed her. She jumped into the air and gave the first in line a hard side kick. He stumbled backward, knocking into the others at least hard enough so each one lost his balance. In the millisecond she had, she whirled around and clocked the guy on the couch, who had been showing signs of stirring.
As she turned back, she glanced in Angel’s direction. He was holding his own against another four. One of them was wielding a baseball bat, which he aimed directly at Angel’s head. As it arced downward, Angel caught it and yanked it out of the man’s grasp. He blocked the man’s angry punch with it; the assailant howled in pain and lurched out of range.
Another man executed some very slick karate moves, then whirled around in classic kick-boxing style to deliver a sharp jab to Buffy’s chin. Her head whipped back; she let herself go with it and grabbed the arm of the sofa like a pole vaulter. She slammed back into the man on the couch, who groaned and went down for the count for the third round. Another time, another place, it might have been funny.
But this was here, and now.
“Think about it!” Willow shouted, as she rammed the umbrella point into the man’s chest. “Think about what you’re doing.”
But they were beyond thinking; their faces were twisted into masks of rage. They looked like animals. Or demons, she thought. Anything but human beings.
“Get out of here!” Buffy shouted at Willow. “Make sure they’re okay.”
Angel battered two men at the same time, then ducked as they swung at him and hit each other. Buffy found time to flash a smile, until the two realized what they had done and pretty much went berserk. They brutally clawed at each other, going for each other’s eyes, grabbing and pulling and biting like rabid dogs. Angel hefted the bat and whacked it against the back of the younger man’s head, obviously holding back, and Watched him go down in a crumpled heap. The other launched himself at Angel, but he took a giant step backward and blocked him with the bat, using it like a short quarterstaff.
Then something crashed, and something else cracked. Buffy grimaced and landed a sharp uppercut on the heavyset man who had stepped up to the plate.
“You break it, you buy it!” she shouted. “And the guy who lives here is rich!”
Something came crashing down from the loft, narrowly missing Buffy’s head as it careened to the floor. It was his lunar globe, recently purchased to help Oz with his werewolf deal. It was a shattered mess on the floor that crackled like bacon as the men stepped over it.
“Okay, that does it,” Buffy said. She took the man’s confiscated gun out of her belt, squinted, raised the gun over her head, and pulled the trigger.
“That’s enough,” she bellowed. “Stop!”
No one stopped. No one even registered the gunshot.
So, round twenty-two.
About ten minutes later, Angel and Buffy stood alone among the damage. People were lying among scattered books and an overturned chair.
“I didn’t kill anyone, did I?” she asked anxiously as she pressed her palm over the hitch in her side and took some deep breaths.
“No.” Angel tapped his boot against the side of a man sprawled facedown on the floor. “They’re all still breathing.”
“Willow?” she called. “Giles?”
There was no answer.
“They must have gotten away,” Angel said. “Good.”
She nodded in agreement. “You know what I’m wondering? Why the police never showed.”
Angel took that in. “Busy elsewhere?”
“Or wacko, also.” She smoothed back her hair. “It’s got to have something to do with your girlfriend,” she said. Her cheeks warmed at the obvious tone of jealousy jaywalking across the road of her sentence.
/> But Angel’s attention was focused elsewhere. From beneath a pile of books, he lifted up a pottery container with two curved handles. There were black demons dancing across the face, and it was stoppered with what looked like wax.
“It’s something from her time,” he said. “This is something of Helen’s.”
They looked at each other, and Buffy hefted the object in her hand.
She said, “I’m thinking answers.”
They left together.
Outside Rome, A.D. 39
Demetrius was as tall as Apollo. His dark curls tumbled to the nape of his neck. His chest was broad, his hips narrow, and as he sat sipping a goblet of new wine, Helen wanted him more than anything she knew.
More than anything, except for the friendship of Diana, who was betrothed to him.
“I don’t understand her,” he said, looking defeated. “I know Diana loves me. But there’s so much of her hidden away from me.” He half-looked at Helen, then turned away. “I’ve begun to wonder if she loves another.”
Her heart was racing and perspiration trickled down her chest. It was a glorious, sunny day, scented with wine and honey. As they sat on the boulder by the olive tree, their hips touching, Helen blazed as if any second she would burst into flames.
“Diana loves you more than life itself,” she said again.
He took her hand and toyed with it, not as a lover, but as a childhood friend. “Then why does she cloak her heart from mine?”
“She . . . has responsibilities,” Helen said awkwardly, staring at their intertwined hands. At the warm brown the sun had licked onto his flesh; the muscles and veins of his fingers and the back of his hand.
“Oh, Demetrius,” she said in a rush. She turned her head. If it meant her life, she would lift his hand to her lips, and kiss it . . .
“Helen?” he whispered, as the tears streamed down her face and her mouth found the CENTER of his palm.
He was clearly surprised, obviously shocked. Roman women were mere extensions of their households, like furniture, like cutlery. But Helen had a soul. She had a heart.
Unlike Diana, she was free to love him.
“Demetrius, I want you,” she said miserably.