“You didn’t find Michael’s charm,” Giles stated flatly.
“No, but it’s got to be in here somewhere.” Buffy quickly scanned the room. “Cheryl gave it back to Brad.”
Giles cast a glance at the boy who was being transformed into a tree. The small roots sprouting from Brad’s lower torso and legs had intertwined into a network of larger roots that had grown into the floor. Small limbs were shooting out from his shoulders and arms.
“How is she?” Buffy’s eyes locked on her mother.
“As comfortable as she can be,” Giles replied. “Finding that medallion is critical, for her and everyone else.”
“I know.” Buffy shifted her gaze to Brad. “Have you talked to him?”
“No.” Giles shook his head. “He’s too catatonic to talk or notice that he’s turning into a tree. A mercy for him, I suppose.”
“But it won’t help us.” Buffy sighed then moved on. “Maybe Donnie Appleton can.”
“Who?” Giles frowned as Buffy breezed by him. He jotted a quick note to Jenny, asking her to take more water to Joyce, then followed Buffy.
The boy sitting next to Brad had blue fuzz growing on his arms, but he was awake.
“Can you talk, Donnie?” Buffy asked.
“Yeah, why?” The boy’s speech was slurred.
Buffy was blunt. “Did Brad have a gold necklace when he came in here?”
“Think so.” The boy squinted, as trying to keep Buffy in focus. “He was mad because Cheryl broke up with him.”
“What became of the necklace?” Giles pressed.
“He threw it away. No—” Donnie’s brow furrowed and he scratched his head, trying to remember. “He was going to toss it, but he didn’t. He gave it to”—Donnie waved his arm then snapped off a point—“Juan.”
Giles’s spirits sank lower as he walked behind Buffy between desks. None of the boys in the aisle appeared cognizant, but his stomach didn’t rebel until she stopped in front of a boy with dark curly hair. Black gel oozed out of Juan’s nose, mouth, and ears.
“Juan, where’s the necklace Brad gave you?”
“He can’t answer, Buffy,” Giles said, feeling nauseous. “He’s dead.”
“He can’t be dead. We have to find that amulet!” Buffy’s temper simmered below the surface, nearing an explosive tipping point. “I’m not going to let my mother die.”
“Don’t touch him!” Giles barked and jerked Buffy back. The black sludge would be looking for a new host, but it would not be the Slayer.
“Thanks, but I wasn’t going to touch him.” Buffy’s intemperate tone softened as she explained. “I was looking for the medallion, but I don’t see it. It’s not in his hand, and there’re no bulges in his pockets—”
“Boy fall!” Pragoh yelled excitedly.
Giles snapped his head toward the corner. The short demon was desperately trying to keep Xander upright. Jenny had been on her way to Joyce, but she abruptly turned back to assist Pragoh. They couldn’t hold Xander up, so they broke his fall. Giles’s throat went dry when the teacher put her ear to Xander’s chest. She looked up suddenly, caught his eye, and shook her head.
Xander wasn’t breathing.
Jenny started mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but she could only buy him a minute or two at best.
Buffy remained intent on the one thing that could save him. “That necklace has to be here—right here, close by.”
Giles agreed. When the amulet moved from Brad to Juan, it had drawn closer to Michael. He had no doubt it was nearby, but twenty teenagers surrounded the boy lying on the floor. They would find his protection charm, but would they find it in time to save Xander?
“Lucy Lopez found a necklace.” A girl in the next aisle sat with her arms wrapped around her knees. “She picked it up when Juan dropped it.”
“Lucy Lopez?” Giles wasn’t familiar with the name.
“Over there.” When the girl raised her arm, something undulated under her skin.
“I know her.” Buffy rushed over to a girl with long dark hair. A crusty substance had grown over her eyes. She sat perfectly still with one hand resting in her lap, clutching the medallion. Buffy pried her fingers open. “Sorry, Lucy, but I need this.”
“Amazing,” Giles mumbled as Buffy vaulted over a desk into the next aisle, where Michael lay crumpled on the floor. Lucy was sitting less than five feet away from him. His spell had worked with crude but impressive precision.
“Here’s your protection charm, Michael.” Buffy pressed the amulet into his hand and stood back. She glanced at Giles expectantly. “Now what?”
Giles exhaled. With the return of Michael’s medallion, there was nothing left but to determine whether they had succeeded.
“Let’s hope Michael’s spell is broken and Pragoh’s power works.” Giles called out to the demon as he started for the door. “Pragoh!”
Buffy hesitated. “My mother—”
“Yes, you must go to her. I’ll see to the . . . exodus.” Giles hurried up the aisle. He and the demon reached the door at the same time.
“Bad magick gone?” Pragoh asked. The demon’s squashed, pug-nosed face looked comical framed in the yellow slicker.
The next few minutes were no laughing matter, but Giles was oddly touched by the earnestness in the demon’s tiny eyes. A less complicated being than his masters, Pragoh was a pawn, blindly doing the job he was assigned without concern for the consequences—except as it affected him. He wouldn’t survive failure either.
“Let’s find out, shall we?” Giles open the door and said a silent prayer as Pragoh stepped into the corridor.
“Try now.” Pragoh slipped out of the poncho, took a deep breath, and snorted loudly. Then, cupping his hands to the sides of his face, he closed his eyes and concentrated.
Giles didn’t know what to expect. He glanced back into the classroom, targeting the corner first. Jenny was still kneeling over Xander, trying to revive him with her own life’s breath. He didn’t detect any changes in the victims until his gaze found Michael.
The boy opened his eyes slowly and inhaled sharply, obviously surprised to see the sunburst medallion in his hand.
Giles extrapolated the boy’s future endeavors based on experience. Michael would assume, correctly, that his spell had worked. As he had learned at university, no one who discovered they had magickal power ever left well enough alone. Having no concept of the Hellmouth or the role it had played in his success, Michael would continue to explore his abilities.
And if the fates are kind, his parents will move him to Kansas, Giles thought, jumping back to avoid the stampede of Hellmouth life forms that slithered, flew, oozed, and scampered out the classroom door.
* * *
Engulfed in a swirling darkness that sparkled with specs of light, Xander felt himself being carried away. He didn’t have the energy to fight the current, but it almost didn’t matter. The pain he had felt just a moment before, like someone had parked a truck on his chest, was fading. He wanted to grab the pain, to cling to it before it was gone and the last tie to his life was irrevocably severed. Yet the lure of the darkness, of the painless nothingness, was so tempting—
Being snapped back to consciousness with his lungs bursting and his ribs bound in a vise grip was brutal by comparison.
Xander gasped, and it hurt. However, he was alive, which made the trade-off worth it.
“Xander, you’re back.” Ms. Calendar knelt beside him. “I thought we had lost you.”
Xander struggled to breathe. The vague feeling of slipping into a dark void faded away as he took in more and more air. The grip of the vest loosened slightly, and he tugged on the fabric. “Off.”
“No, wait.” Ms. Calendar lifted his hand off the vest and held it.
“But—” Xander squirmed, revolted by the idea of spending one more second wrapped in the vest. Still, the teacher was far wiser than he about many things that probably included infestations of Hellmouth germs. Every muscle in his body tensed, but he
gritted his teeth and waited.
“There they go.” Ms. Calendar smiled.
Xander watched, fascinated as a transparent sheet of interconnected, paper-thin amoebalike animals rose off the surface of the camouflage material. The colony flowed off the vest like a sheet of cellophane off a cardboard roll, and continued across the floor toward the door.
“That’s it?” Xander was still hoarse, but his chest was no longer being crushed. He patted the vest. The quilted fabric was soft and resilient. “They’re gone?”
“Yes, they are.” Ms. Calendar stood up. “Will you be okay? I’ve got to check on the other students.”
“I’ll be fine.” Nodding, Xander pulled himself into a sitting position. He was anxious about Willow and Cordelia, but he needed a minute to make sure he was all systems go.
The vest unzipped easily, but as Xander started to shrug out of it, he paused. Now that the python element had vacated, the vest was just a vest that appealed to his inner military man—and that had almost killed him. He took the vest off and lobbed it into the waste-paper basket by the desk.
Not everyone had been as lucky, Xander realized as he looked around the room. Dark streams and colorful clouds of miniscule creatures abandoned victims and drifted toward the door, along with larger bugs and beasts. Most of the stricken people in the room showed immediate signs of recovery, including Joyce Summers. She was sitting up and talking to Buffy, but she seemed more concerned about Karl’s condition than her own.
The roots and branches Brad had grown were absorbed back into his body. A seed pod popped out of the boy’s shoe and attached itself to a hairy, mousesize, multilegged beetle. Hitching a ride and Hell-mouth bound, Xander thought as the bug skittered away and Brad keeled over dead.
Cordelia’s affliction could also be a killer, he realized. Getting to his feet too fast, Xander gripped the back of the teacher’s chair until the dizziness passed. The sickening sensation in the pit of his stomach wouldn’t go away until he knew Cordelia’s fate. He was worried about Willow, too, but the kur needed her too much to harm her.
Despite his bruised ribs and wobbly knees, Xander felt almost normal when he entered the corridor. Giles stood by the wall, watching Pragoh gather his wandering charges.
“The nightmare menagerie,” Xander said with a grimace.
“Xander! You’re all right!” The librarian’s eyes lit up, and he grabbed Xander’s shoulders. The moment of excessive exuberance passed quickly. Pressing his lips together, Giles let go and sheepishly backed off. “Did you notice Buffy or her mother?”
“Both fine, as far as I can tell,” Xander said. “I, uh, need to check on Cordelia, though. She’s just down the hall, in the utility closet. If she’s—”
“I’ll be right here if you need me. If she’s—” Giles cleared his throat. “I hope she’s not—”
“Me too.” Xander didn’t mention the enemies-with-benefits angle. “Thinking up comebacks to Cordelia’s insults keeps me sharp.”
“Do tell.” Giles raised an eyebrow.
Xander hurried to the closet, but he stood outside the closed door for a minute before he worked up the courage to knock. “Cordelia?”
“Go away!” Cordelia’s voice was weepy but strong.
“It’s alive!” Xander was so happy, the unkind quip just slipped out. “I mean—”
Cordelia screamed, emitting several short, sharp, ear-splitting blasts before she reverted to uncontrollable sobbing.
A pattering sound drew Xander’s gaze to the bottom of the door. He shivered as a hundred ultratiny spiders scurried out of the closet and down the corridor.
“You can come out now, Cordelia,” Xander said.
“No one is going to see me in this condition,” Cordelia said. “Especially you.”
“But the spiders are gone,” Xander explained. “All your symptoms will go away.”
“Do you have any idea how much damage mutant bugs can do to a manicure?”
“Apparently not,” Xander muttered. The withering tone and skewed priorities proved Cordelia had been unchanged by the ordeal. However, he really wasn’t up for being put down with sarcasm and welcomed the diversion when a shriek sounded from the restrooms.
“What are you doing in here?” Harmony’s shrill voice was full of outraged contempt. “This is the ladies room, doofus!”
The door flew open and Jonathan ran out. He wasn’t red-faced with embarrassment or armed with a whip. He was white as a sheet and terrified. “Have you seen Andrew?”
“Not since he took your bullwhip, making the halls safe for innocent bystanders,” Xander fumed, remembering the shock that had driven him to his knees. Apparently Jonathan had been hiding from Andrew in the ladies’ restroom.
“Catch it!” Andrew shouted as he raced around the corner—chasing the bullwhip.
Xander and Jonathan both stared as the bullwhip zoomed along the smooth floor. The leather thong had not suddenly come alive, Xander realized as it snapped and slid by. The snake curled around the cracker was pulling it. He stepped out in front of Andrew, stopping the boy’s pursuit.
“Let it go, Andrew.”
“But it doesn’t have enough power,” Andrew whined. He tried to pull free, but Xander was bigger than the nerd and held on.
Xander looked at Jonathan. “Is he talking about that snake?”
“Yeah.” Jonathan sighed. “It kind of takes control of your mind and makes you hit people so it can build up an electrical charge. Andrew’s still bonded to this one ’cause it isn’t dead.”
Xander recalled that Jonathan had snapped out of his murderous trance when Buffy cut the head off the first eel. He glanced at Pragoh. The demon picked up the bullwhip and shook a few wiggly things out of it.
Andrew kicked Xander in the shin and bolted when he let go to grab his leg. Wincing, Xander didn’t try to stop him. If Andrew wanted to aid and abet a demonic eel, there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. Unfortunately it looked like Andrew’s psychic link might get him killed.
“What’s he doing?” Jonathan asked.
Andrew charged Pragoh and tried to scoop up the handle end of the whip.
The little gray demon was still holding the cracker end. Immune to the shocks, Pragoh ripped the large, charged eel off the cracker and tore it in two.
Abruptly freed from the eel’s mental grip, Andrew came to his senses surrounded by swarms of hideous Hellmouth vermin. He ran back past Jonathan and Xander and kept running.
Jonathan waited until Andrew was out of sight around the corner. “So are all these whatever-they-are leaving with the short kid in the monster costume?”
“Yeah.” Xander nodded, hiding a smile. Jonathan rarely ran into someone older than twelve who was shorter than him.
“And there’s nothing left at the rummage sale except rummage?”
“Probably not,” Xander said. Judging by the creatures amassing around Pragoh, it certainly looked like all the Hellmouth beasts had answered his call.
“And it’s past noon, so the sale’s officially open, right?” Jonathan gave Xander a sidelong glance. “So I can officially put my money on the cash table to pay for some action figures.”
“And cheat Andrew out of them?” Xander nodded again. “Yeah, you could do that. He’ll get even someday, though.”
“I’m not going to keep them all to myself. I just want him to sweat it a little.” Jonathan paused outside the cafeteria door to make sure the way was clear, but he walked in with a definitive spring in his step. He didn’t get the upper hand very often.
Winded from the tussle, Xander leaned against the wall. When Harmony squealed again, he watched the restroom door. A cloud of pink and green mist trailing clusters of pink and green strings emerged. As the cloud drifted toward Pragoh, the strings dropped along the corridor floor, the residue of Harmony’s infection.
When Giles and Ms. Calendar approached, Xander was ready for company that didn’t freak in the face of horrifying evil. “What’s happening?”
<
br /> Giles did not react as though he had been asked a foolish question. He answered, “Buffy will need to get down there and keep track of Pragoh and his beastly entourage until Ms. Calendar and I return with a spell to seal the Hellmouth.”
“You have one of those just lying around in case of a Hellmouth emergency?” Xander asked.
“After that dreadful business with the Master, I made a point of looking one up,” Giles said. “There’s a binding spell in the Hebron Almanac that should do the trick.”
“Have you seen Willow?” Ms. Calendar asked.
Xander shook his head. “Not since we came up from the basement. Why? She’s not in danger is she?”
“We’re not sure, actually,” Giles said. “I’ve assumed the link to the kur will end once it’s back in the Hellmouth where it belongs.”
“Unless we can’t separate them,” Ms. Calendar added. “The beast’s influence is so strong, Willow might very well waltz right into the Hellmouth with it.”
Giles’s voice shook slightly, as it did whenever he was upset because Buffy had taken a particularly dangerous risk. “Where she will die quite painfully of something atrocious within moments.”
Chapter Eight
“Are you sure about that?” Willow stared into Cutie’s big, brown eyes. The library was the safest place in the whole school, quiet and mostly deserted. Nobody used it except Giles and the Scoobies, and they were all off helping the demon. Still, Cutie was pushing her to leave.
The kur twitched his button nose and purred, snuggling against her chest.
“Okay, if that’s what you want.” Willow adjusted the scarf around the precious creature as she walked toward the doors. She heard Xander talking as he approached from the other side.
“We have to kill the kur,” Xander said. “It worked for Andrew and Jonathan. This electric eel thing—”
Willow was frozen in shocked outrage when the doors opened. Xander, Ms. Calendar, and Giles smiled when they saw her, acting like nothing was wrong. Like they hadn’t been plotting to murder the one thing in the universe that made her really happy.
“Uh—” Xander’s mouth moved but nothing came out.
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