“Okay, but I had nothing to do with that, right?” Xander asked for the millionth time.
“Right,” Buffy agreed.
They started up an outside staircase. “You only ate the pig,” Willow added.
“I ate a pig? Was he cooked and called ‘bacon,’ or . . . ” Xander put his hand to his forehead, in obvious dismay. “Oh my God. I ate a pig? I mean, the whole trichinosis issue aside, yuck.”
“Well, it wasn’t really you,” Buffy assured him.
“Well, I remember going on the field trip, and then going down in the hyena house,” Xander said. “Next thing some guy’s holding Willow and he’s got a knife.”
“You saved my life,” Willow said.
“Hey.” Xander stopped at the top of the stairs. “No-body messes with my Willow.” He put his arms around her, drew her into a hug.
She wasn’t, Buffy noted, in any hurry to break it off.
“This is definitely the superior Xander,” Buffy announced. “Accept no substitutes.”
Xander touched his lips, his chest. Buffy thought he was maybe going a little overboard on the hand language, but, in comparison to the hyena bit, decided it was not worth getting worked up over. “I didn’t do anything else, did I? Around you guys? Anything embarrassing?”
“Naah,” she assured him.
“Not at all,” Willow added.
Buffy took Willow by the hand. “Come on,” she said. “We’re gonna be late.”
Willow looked at Xander. “See you at lunch.”
“Cool,” he replied. “Hey, going vegetarian, huh?” He gave them a broad smile and two thumbs-up.
He was pretty sure they were buying it.
Good.
It felt great to be himself again. He preferred that, he realized. But sometimes, you have to pretend a little, keep your own secrets. For the sake of your friends.
He turned and walked a few steps — straight toward Giles, who was coming right for him, looking crisp in a fresh suit and tie.
“I’ve been reading up on my animal possession,” Giles said, “and I cannot find anything anywhere about memory loss afterward.”
“Did you tell them that?” Xander pointed toward the girls.
Giles leaned close to his ear. “Your secret dies with me,” he said.
That should have been enough. Except Giles knew. And he knew Giles knew. It might be better to let Buffy know, than Giles. He could trust the man, he was sure of that. But still. . .
“Shoot me, stuff me, mount me,” Xander said.
Giles clapped him on the shoulder. Co-conspirators to the end. Xander walked away from him, hands on top of his head, as embarrassed as he could remember ever having been.
There was a bright side to this, he knew.
He just didn’t have the slightest idea what it was.
The closest he could get to it was that things could not possibly get worse. Not all that bright, after all. He was sure that if he could get over feeling so mortified, he’d be able to find a better one.
The “if” thing.
He went to class.
INTERLUDE
Xander continued heading out of town. The wind rushed past him, the black strip of road appeared magically beneath his headlights. He’d left the zoo far behind, and had an actual destination in mind now.
He gave the car its head, steering with the lightest touch possible on the wheel. It was almost like the car knew where they were going.
After another few minutes, he could smell salt-water in the air.
Much had changed since his little adventure as part of the canine family. He’d heard theories that the rate of change accelerated with every passing year — that the difference in the way people lived between, say, the year 500 and the year 1500 was not huge. But in recent times, things had been advancing at amazing rates. The people who were alive in 1800 would barely have recognized the world of 1900, and would have been totally dumfounded by the time 2000 came around.
Anyway, that business with the hyena spirits had been sophomore year. He’d been young and foolish then. As he matured, he knew the changes in his life, the various transformations that a man went through as he grew older, would be more subtle, but ultimately more defining.
And, he hoped, they would have less to do with canines of any kind.
When Buffy showed up in town and everything changed, Xander realized that Sunnydale — and his life — had seemed pretty constant, unchanging, before. All those years of peace and quiet, growing up in an idyllic seaside town, and then . . .
And then things got interesting. And frightening.
The worst was when Buffy died.
She had, literally, been clinically dead, he knew. If she hadn’t, then Kendra, the new Slayer, wouldn’t have been activated. But she was, and that meant that Buffy’s close call had been a little more than just close.
Xander had been there for her that time, though. He had administered mouth to mouth — which he still thought about with a degree of enjoyment from time to time. Angel stood helplessly by, watching, while Xander breathed life-giving air into her lungs. And she had come back.
There had been so many other things, happy and sad, momentous and tiny. Buffy had fallen deeply in love with Angel, and then been terribly hurt when he turned bad again, after having been good for so many years. That whole good vampire business, it turned out, had been the result of a gypsy’s curse that restored the vampire’s soul — and therefore, his conscience — to him. Stricken with guilt over the things he’d done in the intervening years, Angel had tried to live as one of the good guys, battling vampire nasties whenever he could. That was the Angel Buffy had fallen for.
Unfortunately for that relationship, the curse was lifted. Soulless again, Angel flipflopped back into fangs and forehead guy. He killed Miss Calendar, who was Giles’s girlfriend and a member of the same gypsy tribe that had cursed him. And Buffy vowed to take him out.
Xander pulled the car to a stop in the parking lot by the beach. He jumped out, not bothering with the door. From this spot, he could hear the roar of the surf, but he could barely see the water.
He hiked down the path, to the wide stretch of beach. There it was, a vast carpet of black, spreading before him like velvet on which someone had scattered a handful of diamonds: the full moon’s shimmering reflection on the water.
Things had been quite different for him, as well. Such as, dating Cordelia Chase. That had come as a shock to both of them — a surprise that wasn’t entirely pleasant, but far from all bad. It had started with an innocent kiss — okay, not so innocent, but still. Then it grew into an illicit affair, kept secret from everyone in the school. Finally, the truth had come out, and people grew to accept it. Even Willow.
Although it was probably easier for Willow to accept now that she had Oz, rock guitarist and teen werewolf, who did the whole Michael Landon routine at every full moon.
And dating Cordelia had, at least, proven more pleasant and satisfying than his short-lived romance with Ampata, who turned out to be an ancient Incan mummy, reanimated and ravenous.
The slaying gig had become more complicated, too. Buffy had killed the Master, but the Anointed One had been around to make things difficult for her. Until Spike and Drusilla came to town, and Spike killed the Anointed One. Between Spike, Drusilla, and the newly evil Angel, the ranks of local vampires had become very dangerous indeed.
Xander kicked his shoes off, removed his socks, and pushed his toes into the cold sand. He stuffed the socks into his shoes and carried them down to where the waves scoured the sand smooth and hard, let the frigid water wash up around his feet. For a California guy, he realized, I don’t spend a lot of time in the ocean.
And that, suddenly, brought back a whole new set of memories. He backed away from the water, hurried back up to the parking lot. There he stamped his feet on the pavement to shake the sand off. Leaning against the car, he tugged his socks back on, then his shoes. He tied them and got back behind the wheel.
He felt be
tter now. From this vantage point, the ocean looked calm and safe.
And distant.
The way he liked it.
CHAPTER 6
There was nothing tropical about the beach that night. Or even subtropical, Xander thought. Downright cold is more like it.
Trouble was, he seemed to be the only one who felt that way. Everywhere he looked, kids were having fun, dancing and talking and generally carrying on.
Okay, they were dressed in sweaters and jackets and huddled around bonfires. But still, they seemed to be enjoying themselves despite the elements.
Sunnydale High’s athletes weren’t exactly on a first-name basis with victory parties, so maybe the concept of holding them in comfortable surroundings was still unfamiliar to them.
“All I’m saying is, it was a stupid idea to have a victory party at the beach,” Xander said, warming his palms over a fire. He wore a striped sweater over a T-shirt, but that wasn’t nearly enough. “It’s officially nippy. So say my nips.”
Cordelia, who was here more or less as his date, and his longtime best bud Willow stood at the fire with him.
“I think it’s festive,” Willow said. “It’s a party with nature.”
“Well, it’s the team’s choice,” Cordelia added. “It was their victory.”
“Team? Swim team.” Xander chuckled. “Hardly what I call a team. The Yankees . . . Abbott and Costello . . . the A . . . Now those were teams.”
“Jealous?” Cordy asked.
“No,” Xander replied. He reflected further. “Yes. But no more than yes. I mean, look at that.” He indicated a student partway across the beach — tall and muscular, with close-shaven hair, wearing only a Hawaiian shirt in spite of temperatures that Xander considered arctic.
“Dodd McAlvy,” he went on. “Last month he’s the freak with jicama breath who waxes his back. He wins a few meets and suddenly he inherits the ‘cool’ gene?”
“Well, all I know is, my cheerleading squad’s wasted a lot of pep on losers,” Cordelia argued. “It’s about time our school excelled at something.”
“You’re forgetting our high mortality rate,” Willow offered.
“We’re number one!” Xander shouted. Leave it to Willow to find the cogent argument. Xander did a slow turn, but the students around him seemed oblivious to his sudden display of school spirit. Or, he thought morbidly, school spirits.
Perched on a rock by the water’s edge, Buffy studied the moon’s silver reflection on the dark water of the Pacific Ocean. The leather jacket Angel had given her kept most of the chill off. She still wore it, even though . . . well, even though.
The party roared around her, as oblivious to her presence as the creatures at the bottom of this sea were to the chunk of rock that orbited high above. But like those creatures and the moon, every student here had been touched in some way by Buffy. If it weren’t for her, the Hellmouth would be a far more dangerous place than it was.
And it was pretty bad, even with her around.
They never even know the danger they’re in, she thought. And that’s how she wanted to keep it. Even though it also meant that they never knew her contribution toward keeping them from harm’s way.
“Beautiful,” a voice from behind her said. “Isn’t it?”
Cameron Walker. She knew him, of course, but not at all well. He was a member of the swim team — one of the best swimmers, from what she’d heard. He’s also good looking, she thought. Tall, powerfully built, with an easy smile and curly brown hair instead of the shaved look favored by some of the swim team. No Angel, maybe. But then, who is? And besides, Angel was evil now, while Cam was just a jock. And Angel, soulless or not, was still a vampire. Maybe a normal guy is just what I need, to give me a little break from the slaying and all.
“Yeah,” she began. “It’s just so —”
He cut her off, and went on, staring out at the sparkling surface. “Eternal. Our true mother giving birth to new life, and devouring old.” He moved around and sat on the rock, next to Buffy. When he continued, he was looking at her, not at the sea. “Always adaptable and nurturing, yet constant and timeless.”
“Boy,” Buffy said, surprised at such poetic language coming from someone she had always seen as just another athlete. “I was just gonna go with ‘big’ and ‘wet.’”
Cameron gave a polite laugh. “Me and some of the other guys on the team, we come out once a week to train in it. See, we swim against the current.”
“Funny, that’s how I feel most of the time,” Buffy said. She turned to him and used her best sportscaster voice. “So, Cameron Walker. You’ve just won the state semifinals. What are you gonna do next?”
“I’m going to hang out with Buffy Summers,” he replied. “Get to know her.”
Whoa. That’s no “I’m going to Disneyland,” she thought.
“Hey, pause that tape for a second,” she said.
“No pressure,” Cameron said, clearly trying to put her at ease. “I just like being around you, that’s all.”
It almost worked. She looked at his face for a moment, his all-American good looks, and then turned away, toward the sea. Considering.
“Somebody help me!” she heard. Back from the thick of the party. The voice carried an edge of genuine panic, and the Slayer was instantly on her guard.
Up the beach, she saw Dodd McAlvy holding another student’s head into one of the big stainless-steel tubs filled with ice to keep the drinks cold. The student had a red sweatshirt on, but Buffy couldn’t make out his face until Dodd let him up for air. It was Jonathon Levenson, one of those brainy kids who were never quite smart enough to avoid becoming someone’s target. He came up gasping and choking.
“C’mon, Jonny,” Dodd shouted. He knew he was performing for an audience. “You gotta hold your breath longer than that if you ever want to make the team. Hey, somebody time him!” He shoved Jonathon back into the ice-cold water.
Buffy made her move. She came up behind Dodd, caught hold of his shirt, and yanked him backward, off Jonathon.
“Hey!” Dodd shouted.
Tugging on Dodd’s shirt drew his sleeve back, and revealed a tattoo Buffy hadn’t seen before on his upper arm — a shark with an insane grin, front fins drawn into tight fists, a cigar clenched between his teeth.
“Nice tat,” Buffy said. “What, they ran out of Tweety Bird?” She gave him a shove and he went face-first into the sand.
“Hey, what’s your problem?” Dodd asked.
“Had it coming to you, bro,” Cameron said, a broad smile on his face. He stood behind Buffy, backing her play.
Dodd regained his feet and started to step toward Buffy and Cameron like he wanted to continue the altercation. Before he could, though, he was intercepted by another swimmer, Gage Petronzi.
“Chill, dude,” Gage said. He was even taller than Dodd, wearing a high turtleneck sweater that accentuated his total skinhead cut. “A bunch of us are gonna take a little night dip down the beach. You in?”
“Whatever,” Dodd said. He shot Buffy a “die, freak” look, then allowed himself to be led away.
Buffy turned to Jonathon, still dripping wet and shivering in the brisk night air. “Hey,” she said. “Let’s get you a towel.”
“Why don’t you mind your own business?” Jonathon shot back. “I can handle this without your help.” He stormed off, angry — misplaced anger, Buffy thought. It should have been directed at Dodd, not at her. But there you go. People.
It was almost enough to make a girl prefer being with some other form of life. Like, say, vampires.
“See,” she said to Cameron. “It’s fun to hang out with me.”
Heading down the beach toward the surf, Gage said, “Man, I can’t believe Buffy.”
“Man, that girl gives me the creeps,” Dodd agreed. He took a few more steps toward the water’s edge, and then stopped. The waves rolled in and pulled away, and he felt something. A tugging, deep inside him. An urge to become . . .
Gage had gone o
n ahead. Suddenly, he became aware of an odor — no, call it what it was, a stench — ripping at his nostrils like poisoned fishhooks.
“Ahh, dude,” he said, making a face. “What is that foulness?”
He looked back to where Dodd had been, but his friend was no longer in sight.
“Hey, Dodd!” he called, turning a three-sixty. No sign of him. He had just been right here . . . “Dude!” No reply. He gave a shrug and jogged off toward another group of partyers, farther down the beach.
The roar of the surf, this close to the water, drowned out the screams and the wet, tearing noise. And in the dark, Gage missed entirely the pile of tattered clothing and something else, soft and glistening red in the moonlight, still steaming in the cold night air. Had he seen it, and gone close enough, he would have seen a familiar Hawaiian shirt mixed in with the other, messier bits. And closer still, he might have seen the decoration on one of the flat surfaces — a tattoo of a grinning, two-fisted shark, chomping on a stogie.
But he didn’t see any of that, nor did he see, not so far away, the shadow of a figure dashing into the opening of a large water pipe. The pipe carried water to the sea, and it led away from the beach.
Toward Sunnydale.
CHAPTER 7
“Okay, good pie charts, everyone,” Willow said. She walked up and down between the rows of desks, looking at the screens of the students’ computers. She really enjoyed this student teaching thing she’d been asked to do.
Enjoyed it almost as much as she hated the reason she’d been asked to do it. Willow was replacing Miss Calendar, who had been murdered by Angel. She thought she’d never forgive Angel for that, and remembering the teacher made Willow almost regret the teaching gig altogether.
But not completely.
“Good,” she said as she passed their desks. “All good.”
“Thanks,” one of the kids said. “Kids,” she thought. As if I’m any older than they are.
“Nice, “she said to another.
And then there was Gage.
Toward the back of the class she risked a glance at Gage Petronzi’s screen. He may be a great swimmer, she thought, but his computer skills leave a little something to be desired.Like, if he could swing a job at the super-market, he’d better plan to be a bagger rather than a checker. The concept of using technology for good instead of evil seemed to be beyond him.
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