“What?” Xander asked, concerned.
“He’s getting up,” Angel replied.
Sure enough, when Xander looked down, the troll was pulling itself to its feet. Unsteadily, it glanced up, glaring at them from one hundred and fifty feet below. It opened its mouth and began to roar . . . and the roar was cut off as the troll was silhouetted in the oncoming lights of an enormous tractor-trailer.
Xander and Angel both turned away, wincing, but Xander didn’t think to cover his ears. The truck’s air horn bellowed as it passed beneath them, and the wet crunch as it collided with the troll, pulping the monster against its grillwork, was audible all the way up on the Dorado Road bridge.
In his mind, Xander could almost hear Cordelia say, “Eeee-uw!”
When they glanced back down for the final time, there was nothing left of the troll but a bit of blood. Farther up Route 17, the truck was beginning to pull off to the side. Xander didn’t envy the guy who’d have to clean off the front of that grill.
He picked up the pieces of the broken bat and examined them carefully. After a minute, he let them fall with a clatter to the pavement.
“Damn,” he said softly.
“What is it?” Angel asked.
“Just another piece of my childhood shot to hell,” Xander said lightly. “I guess some day I’ll look back nostalgically on the slaughter of demons and blood-suckers and stinky trolls, but somehow, I thought riding bikes and camping out in the backyard and playing ball with Dad were supposed to be the things that stay with you.”
For a long while, as they walked back toward the school, neither of them said anything. About halfway there, Angel broke the silence.
“Nice swing,” the vampire said.
“All in the follow-through,” Xander explained.
“Just can’t summon up that Willow magick tonight, huh?” Buffy asked.
Willow shrugged and stared at the computer screen. “My wand’s all magicked out, I guess.”
Oz raised his eyebrows in sympathy. “Sucks, huh?”
“Okay,” Cordelia said, her voice quaking. “You guys have been avoiding this subject long enough. How does my hair look? Really?”
Buffy studied her face, looked at her hair, which, now that she’d had it cut and styled, really didn’t look at all bad. It was shorter than usual by several inches, but it would grow back quickly. She thought about teasing Cordelia, patronizing her, but realized that the girl’s hair was sacred territory.
“It looks fine, Cordy, really,” Buffy said sincerely. “It’s a good look for you. More mature.”
Cordelia only stared at her, near tears, and tried to see her reflection once again in the glass set into Giles’s office door. “Oh, you’re just saying that to be nice. It’s horrible, isn’t it?”
“Just saying that to be nice?” Willow asked. “Buffy? To you?” She blinked, reconsidered her words. “Um, what I mean is . . .”
But Cordelia wasn’t listening.
“Let’s move on, shall we?” Buffy asked. “We’ve found references to most of the weird things that have happened, but nothing to link them in any way.”
“We might have more luck if you told Giles about Springheel Jack,” Willow pointed out.
“Not until I have to,” Buffy said.
“I’m thinking ‘have to’ is just around the corner from ‘we got nothin’,’ what about you guys?” Oz asked, his face expressionless.
“Well, there’s nothing we can do tonight,” Buffy said, a shade of surrender in her voice. She massaged the back of her neck. “We’re not getting anywhere. I vote we just bag it for tonight, and I’ll go out and do some patrolling.”
“With all the stuff that’s going on, you shouldn’t go alone,” Willow noted. “We’ll all go, but maybe we should wait for Angel and Xander.”
“Wait no more, fair maidens,” Xander announced from the upper level, where he and Angel stood, having come through the back door. “Or, should I say, fair maidens and lycanthrope-in-need-of-a-shave.”
Oz ran a hand along his stubbly chin. “Out of blades,” he said.
“Whee, doggies. You must go through ’em like a hog through flapjacks,” Xander replied happily, as he and Angel walked down into the reading area where the others were gathered.
They all stared at him.
“He watched that Beverly Hillbillies marathon on Nick at Nite,” Willow explained.
“God help us all,” Buffy said dryly.
Cordelia rushed toward Xander, sobbing something about her hair, and he took several quiet moments in a corner to gamely attempt to reassure her that she didn’t look like a troll.
“Trust me,” he said. “I know.”
Buffy looked at Angel, who nodded. “That’s where we’ve been,” he explained. “A troll was preying on people from under the Dorado Road bridge.”
“But you killed it, right?” Buffy asked.
Angel was quiet for a moment, eyes downcast. “Actually,” he said slowly, “Xander killed it.”
“With my spear and magic helmet!” Xander cried, in his best Elmer Fudd.
Buffy raised a hand. “Okay, conquering hero, just deflate a second. We were just trying to figure out what to do now. I vote for patrol, since research isn’t going anywhere. This troll thing only proves Willow’s right. There’s way too much for me to handle alone. I guess we should split up.”
“I’ll stick with Angel Eyes over here,” Xander said, patting Angel on the back. “We make a good team.”
Even as Cordelia moved to stand with Xander, Buffy blinked in surprise. Xander hated Angel, but he’d rather hang around with him than with her. It was a brutal revelation. Obviously, she thought, whatever issues Xander and I have aren’t completely resolved yet.
She let her hands fall with a slap to her thighs, then glanced at Oz and Willow. “Okay,” she said, “guess you guys are with me.”
After the insanity of the previous few days, the rest of the night was surprisingly uneventful. Buffy came in fairly early, for her; her mom nodded pleasantly and told her she’d made some enchiladas for dinner; and Buffy had actually gotten to watch a little TV.
Later, as she climbed into bed, she felt unnerved by the lack of activity. It ought to have comforted her. Instead, it only left her with an ominous sense of foreboding.
What’s next? she wondered as she drifted off to sleep.
Fifteen miles south, at a beautiful public beach, the remains of Mort Pingree and the Lisa C. washed up on shore.
A DEPRESSING FACET OF THE LIFE OF A WATCHER appeared to be that one spent quite a lot of time in the hospital, either as a visitor or as a patient. Even more depressing was the fact that one hospital significantly resembled another, whether it was the institution in London containing the bones of the Elephant Man or St. Bartholomew’s in Manhattan, where Giles now lay in room 327. They shared a number of common factors: shiny beige floors, dull, pastel walls, gray metal beds, and remote-controlled access to two or three truly frightful channels of daytime television.
It appeared that programs about people unwittingly marrying cousins or receiving makeovers which, frankly, made them look rather identical to one another, constituted the bulk of the average television addict’s mid-morning fix. If these were the sorts of things Xander’s mother watched, then Giles was truly sorry for the boy.
A book, a book, his kingdom for a book.
In the next bed, separated by a curtain that divided the room into two lengthwise halves, his roommate, recuperating from some intensive surgery of an undisclosed nature, stirred and moaned in his sleep. The man had done little else since he’d been brought in.
With a heavy sigh, Giles flicked the remote, then paused, interest piqued by the announcement of a news break. Various fires, car accidents . . . hmm, at noon an interview with a man who claimed he had drowned on the Lusitania and had no idea why he was now in New York City. That might be worth a look.
“Rupert?” queried a soft voice at the doorway.
He t
urned his head.
Framed in the doorway, Micaela Tomasi was a vision in a filmy crimson and black dress that tapered to calf length, her blond hair loose around her shoulders, wild and lovely.
She hovered on the threshold. “Am I disturbing you?”
“Not in the least.” He couldn’t stop himself from a quick comb-through of his hair with his fingers. And the inevitable readjustment of his glasses on the bridge of his nose. Until Buffy and the others had taken to teasing him relentlessly about the habit, he’d not realized that he did it so often. Now he was acutely aware of all his actions as Micaela entered, carrying a bouquet of red carnations.
“Oh, how lovely,” he said, smiling at her.
“Thank you.” She preened a little, even though they were both pretending he was talking about the flowers. “The nurse is looking for a vase. And here’s something else.” She opened a black bag rather like Buffy’s Slayer satchel and pulled out a book.
“I’m afraid it’s nothing fancy,” she said.
He took it from her. It was an omnibus of Sherlock Holmes mysteries. “Thank you so much.” He flipped through it. “It’s been ages since I read Holmes. How thoughtful.”
He clicked off the television as she pulled a chair up to his bedside. She was wearing a deliciously spicy perfume. “And how goes the conference? If I recall the schedule correctly, you’re missing the keynote speech by someone from the Smithsonian.”
“How are you?” she asked, ignoring his question. “Do they have any leads yet?”
“Leads,” he said tentatively. He had not told her he’d been pushed, had he? Only that he had fallen. He wasn’t sure. He might have said anything while he’d been semiconscious. Including telling her she was incredibly beautiful. “Well, not as yet.”
Micaela sighed. She fanned her fingers and looked down at them, then folded them in her lap and leaned slightly forward. “We’re not alone,” she said quietly, as if guessing the cause of his reticence.
“My roommate is asleep,” he assured her. Cocking one ear, he waited for a moan and nodded when it was made. “You see? Quite unconscious.”
She took a breath. “I need to talk to you.”
He looked at her oddly, then raised his eyebrows, imploring her silently to continue.
“Rupert, I’m from the Council,” she said, as if in confession. “I was sent here to warn you.”
For an instant, his disappointment was palpable. Then a slight embarrassment took its place—she had encouraged their flirtation, even begun it—followed by anger. Jenny, too, had not been exactly what she had seemed. Fellow teacher, beautiful techno-pagan, yes. But also a Gypsy assigned to spy on Angel, to make sure he continued to suffer for the crimes he had wrought against her people.
“To warn me about what?” he asked with asperity.
“Please,” she said. She put her hand over his. “Don’t be angry with me for not telling you right away. You see . . .” She shrugged and smiled faintly. “The Council are so stodgy and peculiar that, well, I never expected to be so immediately . . . taken with you.”
Giles sniffed angrily, looked away. “You have a gift for fiction, apparently,” he huffed.
“No. I mean it. Think about it, Rupert. I work for the Watchers” Council. I’m a Watcher myself. In training,” she added, with a tinge of humility. “I don’t exactly have a lot of chances to . . . talk with interesting men on the balconies of swank hotels in cities like this one. I was . . . I just wanted to be a girl for a little while before we got down to business.”
“And the nature of that business is?” he prodded, although the wind had been blown out of his sails. He wanted to believe her. Her smile was so frank and so appealing. He, too, had enjoyed being a . . . boy for a little while.
“The nature of that business is . . .” she said, looking sad and growing distant, as if their moment were over before it had actually begun. “Watchers are being murdered. Sought out and attacked. We don’t think it’s random.”
“Good Lord. Who’s died?” he asked quickly.
She made a face. “People you know and care about. Made LaMontagne. Julian Spring.”
“Dear God.” He shook his head, mourning the passing of his colleagues—good, decent people. In their younger days, Julian and he had gone pub-crawling a few times. Marie had the best memory of any Watcher he’d ever known; she’d been able to dredge up obscure facts from the history of Slayers and the Watchers’ Council on a moment’s notice.
“As you’re the Watcher of the current Slayer, we believe you’re a prime target.”
He took that in. “I was pushed down a flight of stairs.”
She nodded. “Who knows what more might have happened if I hadn’t heard the commotion?”
“It was a lucky thing indeed that you were staying on the same floor,” he said, then caught himself. Luck obviously had nothing to do with it. The expression on her face confirmed that thought.
A middle-aged woman in a set of brightly colored scrubs bustled in, and Micaela immediately rose and faced her. As the Slayer’s Watcher, Giles knew a fighting stance when he saw one, though the nurse didn’t notice at all.
“I had to hunt around,” the nurse said, smiling pleasantly. Her accent was pure Brooklyn. “We got a celebrity on the ward. Do you know who T-Minus-Ice is? He came in last night with multiple gunshot wounds. There are so many flowers for him. We’re taking loads down to the fourth floor. That’s oncology.” She took the flowers from Micaela and plopped them unceremoniously in the vase. “Terminal cases.”
“How thoughtful,” Giles drawled, eyeing the lopsided arrangement in the green glass container.
“I’m not supposed to tell you about Mr. Ice,” the nurse said conspiratorially. “But you didn’t seem like the type to go autograph-hunting, you being British and all, so I figured it would be all right.”
He smiled politely, beginning to feel a bit ragged around the edges. He was tiring. He felt sore around his rib cage and more than a little concerned about Buffy’s recent secretiveness. The doctors were taking their time releasing him, and Giles had nearly reached the point of simply getting up and leaving.
“Indeed,” he replied, and the nurse smiled in return.
She brushed past Micaela and squinted at his IV bag. “How’s the pain? Need a shot?” She made as if to push him on his side. Since the removal of the morphine drip, he had been receiving his painkillers in a most undignified portion of his anatomy.
“No, thank you, Sister,” he said, then corrected himself, “I mean, Nurse.” In Britain, nurses were called “Sister,” as if they were nuns.
From the other bed came another moan. The woman shifted her attention to him and said to Giles, “Just push the call button if you need anything, honey.”
“Thank you. I shall.”
She bustled behind the curtain. “So, Mr. Russo, how are we?” she asked.
There was no sound.
“He’s still out,” the nurse announced. “Lucky for you. When he wakes up, he’s gonna be a real pain in the a— . . . a real pain.”
She emerged from the curtain, pulled it back into place, and breezed out of the room.
After a beat, Micaela said, “I’ll be acting as security for you. Can you think of what they might have been trying to find among your belongings? Any special objects?”
He thought a moment. “I purchased two books yesterday, older texts.”
“Could you tell me the titles?” she inquired, sounding very official, almost detached.
“Cursed Objects. The Covey edition. I’ve been looking for it a long time,” he allowed. “Also, a volume on haunted places in New York. Probably not too useful, a bit too Hans Holzer, if you know what I mean.”
“For general consumption,” she filled in.
“Yes, but one never knows when one will find a gem.”
She smiled at him. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”
He smiled back. “But neither was taken.”
“Well,
that’s good. It would be terrible to lose the Covey.” She checked her watch. “I need to get back. I’m expecting a fax from the Council and I need to see what the police report has to say.”
She crossed to the bouquet of flowers and fluffed them in the vase, repositioning one of the stems, then stepped back to appraise her efforts. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
“I’ll look forward to that,” he said sincerely, holding the book against his chest.
“Me, too.” She cocked her head. “You know, there’s no other way you and I would ever have met,” she told him, gazing at him with that mischievous boldness he had found so charming. “As upsetting as the circumstances are, I’m certainly glad I’ve met you. You are something of a celebrity yourself, after all.” She laughed a most delightful, soft laugh. “Maybe I should ask you for your autograph.”
He chuckled softly in return.
“Or for a date, when this blows over.” She leaned forward and brushed his lips with hers. “After all, we haven’t had our breakfast.”
“Nor our pleasant dreams,” he countered. His mouth tingled.
“Speak for yourself.” She grinned broadly at him and straightened. “I’ll be back soon. Be careful.”
“I shall. You, as well. After all, you’re a Watcher.”
“Yes, I am.”
She regarded him fondly. Then she left the room, a gentle memory of her perfume lingering behind her.
Giles smiled a moment.
Then he put the book on the nightstand, picked up the phone, and said into the mouthpiece, “I need an outside line. Long distance.”
Giles phoned Council headquarters in London and was slightly irked to find that none of the actual Council members was available to speak with him. Instead, he found himself having a somber conversation with a man named Ian Williams, apparently some kind of assistant, who had only recently been assigned to the main branch.
He did not know if the Council, or this Williams, would inform Micaela that he had called to verify her story. If she truly had his best interests at heart, she would not care. Still, he wished he could have trusted her more fully to begin with.
The Gatekeeper Trilogy, Book One - OUT of the MADHOUSE Page 7
