by Mel Odom
The two girls turned on them with catlike grace and savagery.
Chris and Dave seemed frozen.
“Okay, guys,” Xander said, pulling on their elbows. “That would be our cue to exit. Stage left, even.” But before Chris or Dave could get it together, one of the girls rushed forward with superhuman speed.
Xander lifted his hand and pressed it palm forward into the girl’s forehead. The grin didn’t leave her face for an instant; she obviously thought he couldn’t stop her. Then smoke curled up from her burning flesh where the palmed cross touched her.
“Shit!” the girl yelped as her bangs and forehead caught on fire. She pulled back, but Xander stayed with her for a few more seconds, burning her as deeply as he could before she broke free. She screamed in agony and fury, looking up into the sky as the top of her head blazed and blistered.
“Now!” Xander yelled, shoving Chris and Dave in front of him, trying desperately to figure out where they could safely go.
The gate swung open suddenly and a half-dozen figures stepped inside the court, creating a solid wall that blocked the exit. Their green and white hair stood out starkly against the dark colors they wore.
Xander came to a quick halt, knowing from the hard set of the faces of the new arrivals that rescue wasn’t imminent.
“More meat!” one of the vampires screamed.
The leader of the Asian group drew a pistol from behind his back. Xander threw himself against Chris and Dave and knocked them out of the way. A line of bullets smashed into the basketball court and quickly stuttered up one of the male vampires.
The bullets wouldn’t kill the vampire, Xander knew, but it definitely wasn’t a painless operation.
The vampire jerked and stumbled back, finally knocked off his feet by the vicious impacts. The first Asian gunman ejected the spent clip and took a fresh one from his jacket pocket.
The other vampires watched in stunned surprise. Before they could react, another of the new guys wordlessly stepped forward and unstoppered a large bottle. He poured fluid on the vampire struggling to get up from the basketball court. The downed vampire screamed and cursed as smoke curled up from his drenched body. In the next heartbeat, the liquid ignited a burning pyre out of the vampire’s body. In seconds only ash remained.
“Your days are over,” the gang leader said in a harsh voice. “The shadows in this city belong to us now.” He swung the pistol toward Xander, Chris, and Dave. “The spoils belong to the victor. We are the victors.”
“The hell you are!” Loomis snarled. “There’s a lot more going on in this town than you—”
The gunman blasted Loomis in the chest with three shots. Loomis dropped to his knees in pained surprise.
Another man started forward with a bottle, but Loomis jerked to his feet and retreated. The Asian youth glanced at the leader. “What do you want to do with the humans?”
“Kill them,” the man answered.
“Wait!” Xander yelled. “Hold it! I was just getting to like you guys! Now it’s, ‘Kill them!’? That doesn’t work for me!”
The Asian leader signaled his troops toward the vampires, assigning one man to Xander, Chris, and Dave. Xander glanced up at the Asian youth’s face and saw no trace of mercy or compassion. He raised a pistol, casually gazing down the barrel. His knuckle whitened on the trigger.
Xander knew at that range the man wasn’t going to miss.
Then, incredibly, the Asian youth’s head leaped up from his shoulders. For a moment, the decapitated body remained standing. The gun barrel dropped first, without firing, followed swiftly by the body as it fell across Xander.
Reaching nearly max gross-out potential, because it was one thing for vampires to dust after they were dead and another for a still-warm and bleeding body to be so up close and personal, Xander shoved the dead man from him. Who? Then he saw the swordswoman standing there, the dead man’s head still wobbling at her feet.
“Go!” she ordered.
Chris and Dave wasted no time, moving with all the athletic ability they had. The chain link fence shivered and rattled as they hit the gate and went through.
But Xander Harris got to his feet in open-mouthed shock and instant lust.
The swordswoman stood almost as tall as he did, but the curves screamed all woman. Her delicate, almondshaped eyes reflected a beautiful golden hazel in the lights of the basketball court. The raven’s wing black hair was piled atop her head, held in place by long ivory needles with tiny green stones in the ends. Her mouth was generous, curved, and full-lipped, darkly red. A round badge Xander couldn’t identify hung around her throat on a black leather cord, holding it tightly up against her flesh. She looked like she might have been twenty years old.
She wore a black silk outfit that barely clung to her. Thin straps ran behind her slender neck and held the bodice in place. Despite the bare shoulders, sleeves covered her arms from mid-biceps to her wrists, a runner of wispy material flaring out into a triangle shape on each arm. The bottom of the outfit was a long skirt with generous pleats that dropped to soft boots. A short, shapeless cape with a high collar draped from her shoulders to the backs of her knees, fluttering gently in the breeze.
The sword hanging down in her right hand was over three feet long and dripped blood. The blade tapered, growing slightly wider as it reached the point. Deeply etched grooves marked the top of the heavy blade. Brass fittings and red lacquered wood made up the handle. A dark red sash attached to the end of the handle wrapped around her wrist.
Another sword hilt stuck up over her left shoulder, evidently sheathed down her back. She held a longbarreled flintlock pistol in her left hand. The heavy barrel gleamed dully in the light.
Without a word, the young woman raised the pistol and pointed it at Xander’s face, dragging the hammer back with her thumb.
Chapter 9
“DO YOU WORK HERE?” Rupert Giles looked at the Asian youth with the green and white striped hair standing before him. His voice was tight when he answered. “No. No, I’m afraid I don’t.”
The youth turned his attention to Barbara Styles, the woman behind the counter. “Do you work here?”
She hesitated. “Yes.”
The youth looked around carefully. “Do you own this place?”
“No,” Barbara said. “I only work here.”
“Then you have a master.” The youth settled his unwavering gaze on her.
“I have an employer.”
The youth stepped closer and shoved the telephone on the counter over to the woman. “Call your employer.”
“Mr. Torrie doesn’t like to be bothered,” Barbara said quietly and not very confidently.
Without changing expression, the youth pulled a machine pistol from under his long jacket. He fired without seeming to aim, raking a withering hailstorm of bullets across the aisle Giles had taken his purchases from.
Giles jumped, dropping his small basket and starting for the woman’s side.
One of the youths moved inhumanly fast, seizing Giles’s tie in one hand. “No. Down on your knees. Place your hands behind your head.” He shoved his pistol barrel roughly against the side of the Watcher’s neck.
Moving slowly so there would be no misinterpretation of his actions, Giles did as he was told.
The gang leader pointed to the phone as he spoke calmly to Barbara, who was shaking and crying soundlessly. “Call your employer,” he ordered. “You can give him a message by speaking with him or I can pin it to your dead body.”
Barbara froze, her mouth open as she continued to cry noiselessly.
“Barbara,” Giles said quietly. When she didn’t respond to his gentleness, he put more authority in his voice. “Barbara.” The man beside him kept the pistol pointed at his head. That, the Watcher decided, can be somewhat disconcerting. “Barbara, listen to me.”
The woman shifted her gaze to Giles.
“Good. Now I want you to pick up the phone.” After she did, Giles let out a tense breath and went on. “
Dial your employer’s number.”
“What . . . what if he’s not there?” she asked fearfully.
“Then we’ll leave a message on his damned machine,” Giles said. “I’m quite sure that will be sufficient.” He glanced at the gang leader.
The young man nodded slowly. “That will be acceptable.”
Barbara shook so badly she had to make the attempt four times before she got the right number. “Mr. Torrie, this is Barbara Styles, from the drugstore. Yes, I know I’m not supposed to call you there.”
The conversation at the other end of the phone came across as angry, unintelligible gibberish.
“Dammit, Paul!” Barbara screamed. “I don’t give a rat’s ass what your wife suspects, thinks or even worries about! I’ve got a man here with a pistol pointed in my face! Of course I haven’t called the police! I don’t think he would—” She yelped when the Asian youth effortlessly snatched the phone from her hand.
“Mr. Torrie,” the gang leader said in a quiet, firm voice, “you will listen to me.”
Giles heard the gibberish over the phone for a moment.
The gang leader raised the phone and held the pistol close to it. He fired three shots, waited for a moment, then began speaking again. “No. The woman is not dead. But if you don’t listen, she will be, and I’ll come to your home and shoot you through the head myself.”
Absolute silence reigned at the other end of the phone connection.
“Very good,” the gang leader said. “It has come to my master’s attention that you have both a profitable legitimate business in this location as well as an illegitimate one. From now on, you will pay my organization, the Black Wind, twenty percent profit of both businesses. We will examine your books. If you don’t do this, we will burn this building down, kill your employees, then track you down and execute you as well. A man will visit you next week. Have both payments ready. Cash, no bills larger than a twenty.” He pressed the disconnect number.
Giles waited tensely. Everything about the gang, from what he’d seen on television only moments ago to their actions within the drugstore had suggested nothing but professionalism. Still, there is nothing that bears out a threat like a dead body. He waited tensely.
The gang leader approached Giles curiously. “You handled that very calmly.”
“Well,” Giles responded, “it did seem to actually be the only way to handle it.”
A small smile lifted a corner of the youth’s mouth. “Yes.” He knelt slowly, lowering himself to Giles’s kneeling height, staying just out of range. His head cocked to one side. “I feel I should know you.”
“No,” Giles said. “We’ve never met. I’m sure I’d remember if we had.”
“Yes.” The gang leader’s head rotated back up as smoothly as though it was mounted on ball bearings. He held up his empty hand only inches from Giles’s face.
Giles felt unexpected heat from the hand, as if the man were feverish. He stared into the youth’s eyes and watched as they transformed from a dark muddy color to white-silver. They became unfocused, like he could no longer see.
Then a seam opened along the man’s palm. Incredibly, the seam twitched, then opened wide to reveal a bloodred eye no bigger than a dime. The eye locked onto Giles’s gaze.
The Watcher’s mind suddenly felt boiling and leaden. Clawed feet seemed to track through his skull, searching and curious.
The seam closed, covering the eye, and the Black Wind leader’s eyes changed back from silver to their original dark muddy color. “You are a shadow man, one who watches.”
Giles didn’t say anything. His curiosity was immediately aroused. Although he knew from his Watcher studies that there were thousands of demons—purebred, lesser, and hybrid—it bothered him when he found those he couldn’t immediately identify.
The Black Wind leader stood. “Beware, shadow man. Always remember that you have no special powers. You can die as any other mortal man.” He touched Giles’s face, tearing a fingernail painfully through the Watcher’s already-split lip. The Asian youth took a drop of blood on his forefinger and licked it off with a pointed tongue. The rasp of tongue against skin sounded like pieces of coarse sandpaper rubbed together. His eyes fired silver again for just an instant. He smiled again, thin-lipped and without mirth. “And now that I have the taste, there is no place that you can hide from me.”
Suddenly, the raging din of automatic weapons sounded from outside.
“The vampires across the street,” one of the gang members stated.
The Black Wind leader nodded and gestured to his men, calling them to him as he raced toward the door. They tore shelves apart, spilling goods everywhere as they went, a final reminder to those who had been threatened.
Giles waited for a moment, feeling his heart thunder in his chest, then pushed himself to his aching feet. He glanced at Barbara Styles. “Don’t just stand there. Call the police.”
She looked at him. “Call the police, hell. Like they’ve ever done any good. I’m calling the first friend I can think of who lives the farthest from this damn town, and then I’m leaving. Haven’t you noticed what’s going on here tonight? There’s some kind of gang war shaping up right here in Sunnydale.”
“I’m sure,” Giles said, “that’s not what’s really going on here.”
“If it isn’t, I’d rather read about it in the paper. From a long way away.”
Giles ran to the front of the drugstore. Once he reached the door, he peered out cautiously. All of the Black Wind gang members ran across the street, passing his car. My empty car, he suddenly realized. Where is Xander?
Flashes flared in the darkness surrounding the basketball court. One of the large halogen lights over the court suddenly shattered, plunging a section of the park into total darkness.
Then Giles spotted Xander Harris standing in front of a young woman who had an antique pistol pointed directly at his head. As Giles watched, the young woman’s pistol went off, discharging a cloud of rolling, gray smoke and a foot-long muzzle flash.
Xander! Before Giles knew it, he was out the door and crossing the street at a dead run.
Angel forced himself up from the windshield of the racing car, overcoming the centrifugal force that tried to pin him there. He rolled to the left on the car hood, then heard bullets cut the air beside him.
The street scene sped by dizzyingly for a moment as he recovered from the fall off the fire escape ladder. He caught the hood’s edge and peered through the spiderwebbed windshield. The Asian youth driving the car calmly pulled a pistol from his jacket.
Buffy! Her name echoed through Angel’s mind like a thunderclap. He reached for that dark part of himself that would forever be tainted by Darla’s dark desires, the part that wedded to his own human frailties and jealousies and made him the vampire.
He took on the full strength and speed of the demon that haunted him as he morphed. His senses grew sharper, and the actions of the youths in the car seemed to slow by comparison. But the ravening beast that his returned soul barely kept in check most days grew closer to the forefront of his mind as well, putting that endless fall from grace that much closer.
Growling with barely restrained rage, Angel gripped the car hood with one hand and shot his other hand through the weakened windshield. The safety glass broke around his hand and the windshield tore from its moorings, falling into the car’s interior.
Angel gripped the driver’s hand, wrapping his fingers around the pistol as well, capturing the hammer so it couldn’t go completely back on double-action and fire. Bones broke in Angel’s grip, but there was no mercy even in his human soul. They tried to kill Buffy.
The man in the passenger seat fired again. Bullets plucked at Angel’s duster, ripping one corner to shreds. Angel held onto the driver’s hand, twisted, and kicked the man hanging out the passenger side window in the chest.
The gang member flew from the window and crashed into the street. The man rolled over and over, then lay still on the pavement.
/> Angel turned his attention back to the driver. His lips pulled back, exposing his fangs.
One of the men in the backseat fired at Angel. The rapid blast of bullets punctured the car top, but they also cratered the driver’s head. Angel got a faceful of blood and brains, and one of the bullets cored into his cheekbone. Fiery pain flooded his head, almost causing him to black out. His head snapped back. His balance lost, he rolled over the side of the car and fell.
He slammed onto the pavement and the car’s rear tires rushed by only inches from his head. Dazed and hurting, his left eye filled with his blood and the driver’s, he forced himself to look up.
The sedan swerved out of control and rear-ended a parked van. The dead driver, unrestrained by a seat belt, hurtled through the broken windshield and bounced from the rear of the van. The corpse, half the head missing, flopped to the pavement like a puppet with cut strings.
Staggered by his injuries, Angel shoved himself to his feet. His cheek hurt, throbbing like it was taking hits from a sledgehammer. Blood ran down his face and dripped from his chin. He focused on the young gang member struggling in the backseat of the wrecked sedan.
Questions ran through Angel’s mind about who these men were and why things had turned so personal toward Buffy. He desperately wanted one of the gang members alone for just a few minutes, but already police sirens sounded in the distance.
The young Asian in the backseat of the sedan pointed his weapon at the back glass. Bullets blasted fist-size holes in the glass. The gang member threw an elbow into the fractured glass and punched through, uncoiling from the backseat and stepping out onto the trunk. He raised the strange device lining his forearm, his face a mask of black rage.
Angel threw himself to the right, still managing over a dozen feet with the effort despite his weakened condition. He hit the pavement and pushed off again, wrapping his arms around his head and smashing through the front glass of a diner.
