Buffy grabbed his wrist, kicked him hard in the face, and Lear dropped her, howling in pain and humiliation. She scrambled to her feet, trying to stay between Xander and Cordelia and the raging vampire. Problem was, she had no stake.
“Buffy!”
Angel’s voice. Behind her.
Lear dove for her, Buffy sidestepped, brought a knee up into his ample belly, and spun around behind him. She chanced a look up. Angel had smashed Xander and Cordelia free, and they were already moving to help Willow hold off three other vamps who’d come from backstage. Then she saw what Angel held in his hands. A long wooden sword. He threw it to her just as Lear barreled at her again, all pretense at sanity gone. Buffy had to jump to grab the sword’s hilt in the air. When she came down, she dropped to her knees, and turned the point of the sword straight for Lear’s oncoming girth.
The sword slid into him, and Lear staggered, a step forward, a step backward. She hadn’t pierced his heart, at least not completely.
“Giles!” Buffy shouted. “Stake!”
“ ‘Fortune, good night,’ ” Lear croaked. “ ‘Smile once more. Turn thy wheel.’ ”
The vampire collapsed forward onto the stage, wrenching the sword upward in his chest. He burst into a huge cloud of ash, a spray of dust that flittered to the stage and then was still.
In the front row, Giles tsk-tsked. “King Lear,” he said. “King of melodrama is more like it. Had to overplay it, right to the end.”
“Oh, wonderful,” Xander said with his usual sarcasm. “I hope I gave my performance just the right note of terror for you, Giles.”
“Okay,” Buffy interrupted. “Enough with the dramatic metaphors, now. It’s getting a little tired.”
“So am I,” Willow agreed. “Good thing it’s not a school night.” Cordelia and Xander exchanged a glance.
“Think the Bronze is still open?” Cordelia asked.
“Perchance,” Xander replied, feigning a bad Shakespearean accent. “Prithee escort me, thou fairest maiden.”
“Whatever that means!” Cordelia snapped. She rolled her eyes and strutted up the aisle and out the door. Xander followed.
“You’re welcome!” Buffy called.
“Come on,” Angel said, sidling up next to her and putting his arm around her waist. “I’ll walk you home. The streets of Sunnydale aren’t safe after dark.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later, Willow was almost home. Giles had offered her a ride, but she’d sort of halflied and told him she had a way home. Which was true. Walking was a way.
She wanted to walk and think and come down off the adrenaline rush of playing Slayerette, which was, like, one of the Slayer’s backup singers. Or whatever.
It was intense and cool and all of those things. It was also necessary. Since Willow knew that Sunnydale was built on top of the mouth of Hell—which made it kind of a hot spot for things that went bump in the night—she kind of felt like she had to do something about it. Like Spider-Man always said, “with great power comes great responsibility.”
And Willow knew better than anyone that knowledge was power.
At the end of the day—or night, as it were—Willow didn’t really mind being backup. She could sometimes be effective backup, like tonight. Which was fine. At least she wasn’t the Slayer. Willow couldn’t even imagine the pressure of being the Chosen One, whose job it was to save the world from the forces of darkness.
The spectre of SATs was enough to give her nightmares, and those weren’t until next year.
If the pressure of being the Slayer wasn’t enough, there was that whole staying-alive thing, too. Trying not to get as dead as the guys you were killing. Who were already dead. Or undead. So staying alive was sort of important.
“I need sleep,” Willow said to herself.
Which was when powerful hands grabbed her from behind and swung her sideways into the brick side of Mona Lisa’s Pizza. With a gasp, she whirled around, facing her attackers. They were two guys, their faces shadowed. Both were tall and muscular, one in a jeans jacket, the other wearing a dark blue sweatshirt.
Attack, she told herself, but she just stared at them helplessly. She couldn’t even make herself scream. She was frozen on the spot and she just stared at them.
With a low, mean laugh, the one in the jeans jacket laughed and took a step toward her. It was then that Willow collected her wits and started to run.
“Oh, no, you don’t!” he said.
Thick arms trapped her and drove her to the pavement. Willow’s head hit the ground too hard, and her wrist was trapped beneath her.
She felt something in her wrist give way, just before the darkness claimed her.
CHAPTER 1
Monday morning. The words alone were enough to send tremors of fear shuddering through even the most stalwart of students. And the adults thought they had it hard!
Still, despite the awful Mondayness of it all, it was a gorgeous morning. Bird song filled the air. The scent of flowers floated in from a nearby garden. The sun shone brightly down, sparkling on the windows of Sunnydale High. It was almost enough to make you forget you lived in the Hellmouth.
Almost, but not quite.
Fortunately for them, most of Sunnydale High’s students didn’t know they lived in the Hellmouth. In blissful ignorance, they went on wasting their lives—a full-time job for a teenager, especially if you wanted to be really good at it. Kids were boarding down the sidewalks—which was illegal even if skateboarding had never been, was not now, and would never be a crime—and palavering about their weekends and their homework and doing all those fun teen-things that most high school students got to do on a much more regular basis than the Chosen One.
As for that Chosen One, Buffy was quaking with fear. A little. As much as the Slayer ever quaked. But it wasn’t vampires or demons that had her sweating the day ahead. Uh-uh. This was much worse.
Math test. Today. No studying. Bad equation. And it wasn’t like she could show up with a note from the vampire community. “Please excuse Buffy from her test today. She was busy out on Slayer-patrol last night, keeping the world safe from dead folks.” Yeah, that’d go over big.
No. She was doomed.
“And how would you like your stake?” she grumbled.
“Buffaleeta!” Xander cried, screaming up beside her on his board. He braked and hopped off, then brought his foot down onto the front and flipped it into his grasp in exactly the same way Buffy stomped crossbows into battle position. Despite her math tremors, Buffy grinned. Her buds had most definitely picked up a few tricks from watching her. Which was good, given the fact that being her friend put them in danger on a regular basis.
“Heya,” she said. “Where’s Willow?”
He inclined his head, arched an eyebrow. “Fine, and you?”
“My bad.” She made a little I’m-sorry face. “It’s just that you two usually show up on school days as a matched set, like Salt-N-Pepa or something.”
Xander smiled, looked aghast. “I hope you mean the condiments, my MTV-challenged friend, because there are three bodacious ladies in Salt-N-Pepa.”
Buffy narrowed her eyes. “So sue me, I’m a little too busy to videe the big weekly countdown. You know what I mean, anyway. You guys always come to school together.”
“Joined at the hip, like Siamese twins. That’s me and Will. Sadly, I had an errand to run this morning, thus causing my solo-ness.”
“An errand?” she pressed, intrigued. Who did errands before sunrise? Besides vampire minions, that is? “Like what, Boy Wonder? You had to drop your bat cape off at the cleaners?”
“That would be my Robin cape.” He looked at her sternly and wagged his finger at her. “Tsk-tsk, Slayer. How are you going to get invited to all the cool parties if you can’t keep your pop culture minutiae straight?
“Actually,” Xander drawled, “the blame for my lateness rests firmly on the shapely shoulders of the conniving Catwoman!”
“Not Catwoman?” Buffy g
asped. “That cheap hussy!” She arched an eyebrow as he had done. “We done with the Batman shtick now?”
He pointed slightly to the left of the swarm, at that familiar figure with the trendoid clothes, accent on upscale, and every single brunette hair exactly where it had been ordered to be.
“And speaking of cheap hussies,” he said, “there’s mine.”
Cordelia Chase turned, registered their approach, and launched herself in their direction. It was clear she had something that she considered important to discuss.
“Now my morning is complete,” Buffy said, sighing. “A Xander spouting nonsense, a math test, and a chance to be insulted by the why-are-you-dating-her-again girl, all in one day. How can one simple girl have so much?”
As Cordelia drew near, Buffy saw the concern on the girl’s face and rolled her eyes. “It’s probably my fault that she broke a nail or something.”
“It’s just that crazy life you lead,” Xander drawled.
“I need to talk to you guys!” Cordelia said hurriedly, glancing around, obviously hoping she wouldn’t be spotted talking to them by any of her friends.
“Cordy,” Xander greeted her brightly, “what’s the haps? Crush any young male egos yet today?”
“No.” She grimaced at him.
“Well, no need to fear, the day is young,” he said cheerily.
Cordelia rolled her eyes. “Whatever.” She turned to Buffy. “Listen, I just want to know if there are any bizarre events planned for next weekend—you know, like if it’s Curse of the Rat-People Night or anything. I have plans next Saturday, and I do not want them ruined just because some monster who’s been trying to kill the Slayer for a thousand million years decides that would be the perfect night to rise from its grave.”
“Yeah, Buffy, break out your Calendar of Dreadful Events, just make sure that night is clear for Ms. Chase, would you?” Xander snorted, and glanced at Cordelia. “Do you think Buffy plans these things?”
Cordelia squinted at Buffy with intense irritation. “You know, when you first came to Sunnydale, I tried to bring you into the elite circle. But no, you had to hang with the losers. Don’t you ever wonder what might have been?”
It amazed Buffy that after all this time, Cordelia still had the ability to hurt her feelings. But she did have that power, and she also had the skill. Because yes, Buffy did wonder what it would have been like to be popular at her new school. She missed having lots of friends and getting invited to the good parties and all the same things she had started missing once she found out back in L.A. that she was the Slayer. It was an occupational hazard, and not one any seventeen-year-old girl would cheer about.
But she knew Cordelia was specifically referring to the fact that Buffy had dared to be nice to Willow when Cordelia had, frankly, treated her like dirt, publicly humiliating her and bullying her. By being friendly to Willow and asking her for homework help, Buffy had sealed her own fate as an outcast. As for that other “loser,” Xander, he came with the package, since he and Willow had been best friends since preschool.
And if achieving popularity would have required dissing them in the least, then Buffy wasn’t missing a thing.
“Is it me, or did someone erase your short-term memory?” Buffy asked her. “Specifically, all that stuff about you dating one of those losers?”
“Hello!” Xander protested. “Isn’t there a kinder word?”
Cordelia glared at him. “No.”
“Once you regain your soul, you’ll find you regret harsh words such as these,” Xander shot at Cordelia.
Cordelia looked startled, and then she clenched her teeth and narrowed her eyes at Xander. “Ha ha. You are so completely anti-hilarious.”
“But I’m a great kisser,” he said, raising his chin and smiling proudly.
After a moment’s pause, Cordy smiled. “I’ll let you know when you’ve hit ‘great’ status.”
“And you’d know,” Xander said pleasantly. “You’ve tried them all.”
Cordelia huffed and stalked away.
“Oh great sensei, tell me how you did that,” Buffy pleaded as they watched her disappear back into the throngs. “So I can do it, too.”
Xander made a show of stretching and putting his hands behind his head. “It’s all in the timing, Ms. Summers. She lunges, you parry.” He grinned. “And then you thrust.”
“Do not even go there,” Buffy said, and shook her head as they began walking again. “It’s best I don’t hear any more. I still don’t understand what this thing is between the two of you. Somehow you get through the chinks in her armor.”
“Or the cracks in her makeup. Did you notice that she had on just too much foundation? You’re right; it does make her look like a cheap hussy. You should talk to her about it, Buffy.”
She chuckled slyly. “Maybe. The right place, the right time . . .”
“She’d stew for at least two classes,” he assured her. “Better yet, ask Giles to do it. She’ll really go nuts.”
Buffy smiled, but halfheartedly. She hadn’t failed to notice that Xander had riffed off her own life while he was teasing Cordelia. His crack about Cordelia’s regaining her soul had obviously been about Angel, and the horrible guilt he had suffered after regaining his own soul.
Xander’s wit could be just plain silly, but it could also be cutting at times. Especially with Angel. Of all of them, Xander reserved his hardest comments for Buffy’s undead boyfriend. Actually had the guts to call him Dead Boy, even though Angel despised the name. In fact, Xander called him that specifically because Angel hated it so much. Xander was jealous of Angel, no question about it. But Buffy knew that when the mouth of Hell coughed up something nasty, Xander would risk his own life for any of them, including Angel, despite all they’d suffered at Angel’s hands.
Buffy’s wandering mind was halted when she spotted Willow sitting on the bench where the three of them often met.
“Well, if it isn’t our willowy Willow,” Buffy said, and pointed.
Willow was wearing a baggy coat thrown over her shoulders and, as usual, she was bent over a book. She used to read science books, Net guides, that kind of thing. However, since meeting Buffy, her reading material tended toward dusty, heavy, leathery encyclopedia-sized doorstops about demons and monsters. Either that or she was surfing pagan Web sites on-line. With the death of Jenny Calendar, Willow had struggled to do even more than her fair share. And her fair share was often a lot more than anybody else’s.
It’s too bad Willow isn’t the Chosen One, Buffy thought; she did a heck of a lot more research on the wonderful world of Slayage than the actual Slayer. Imagine, a girl who could kick monster butt while reciting all the legal vampire holidays from memory. Giles would love it.
Too bad nobody had a choice about who was a Slayer, who was a Watcher, or who chose the wardrobe for Seven of Nine on Star Trek: Voyager. Poor thing had to be in serious pain.
“Will, hey,” Xander called, waving. “I called you yesterday for a 911 rescue attempt on my biology report but you never picked up the pho—” Xander trailed off and he touched Buffy’s hand.
Buffy’s lips parted. She rushed to Willow and dropped down beside her. “Willow, what happened?”
Willow’s face was mottled and bruised. Her left cheek was crisscrossed with deep scratches.
And her left hand was in a cast.
Buffy’s mind raced back to their night at the theater. Willow had been fine when they’d split up.
“Willow?” Xander sat on her other side. “God. Did you have an accident?”
* * *
Willow tried to smile but it made her mouth hurt. She thought about trying to make a joke, but nothing about this was funny. So she told them the truth.
“I got mugged.”
“By vampires?” Xander cried. He grabbed at Buffy’s Slayer’s bag. “Quick. Give me something sharp, Buff.”
“Nothing supernatural,” Willow assured them. “I was walking home alone.”
“Didn’t
Giles give you a ride?” Buffy interrupted.
“Oh, well, I kind of wanted to be alone. I had some thinking to do,” she added sadly.
“You could have been alone in your bedroom,” Xander chided her. “And you can think there, too.”
Willow swallowed hard. She didn’t know why she was so embarrassed for them to see her injuries, but she was. Her first impulse after the attack had been to call them both, but something had made her put down the phone.
“Who was it?” Buffy demanded, her thinking apparently running along the same lines as Xander’s: it was payback time.
“I don’t know,” she replied meekly, and half-protested as Xander closed her demonology book and set it on his own lap. “I was just walking along and these two guys—regular ones, I think, not vampires or demons—jumped me. They took my watch and twenty bucks.”
She glanced at Xander and felt a rush of sadness. “I’m sorry, Xander. It was the Tweety Bird one you gave me for my birthday.”
“Darn. And that promo’s over at Burger King.” Tentatively he examined her cheek, cupping her chin very gently. “Oh, Will . . .” he began, and she could hear the frustration in his voice. Xander wanted to help, but it was too late for anyone to help.
“Did they break your wrist?” Buffy asked.
Willow shook her head. “It’s a bad sprain. From when I fell weird.” She realized she was near tears, and fought hard to hide them. “After all these times I’ve watched you practice falling with Giles, and seen you in action, you’d think I’d know how to do it.”
“It’s an acquired skill,” Buffy said kindly.
“Take up skateboarding. You’ll get lots of practice,” Xander added, obviously trying to lighten the moment. But he wasn’t smiling. His dark eyes were serious and his mouth was set and angry.
“Willow, why didn’t you call us? Tell us?” Buffy asked.
Now Willow did smile. She was lucky to have such great friends. Although, of course, in Xander’s case, she still wished he was more than a friend. But she’d been wishing for that longer than Buffy had been the Slayer. And, well, there was Oz now.
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