The Xander Years, Vol.2

by Jeff Mariotte

  “Why is it,” Xander asked, glancing at Jack, “that I’ve come face-to-face with vampires, demons, the most hideous creatures Hell ever spit out, and I’m still afraid of a little bully like Jack O’Toole?”

  “Because unlike all those other creatures that you’ve come face-to-face with,” Cordelia explained, “Jack actually noticed you were there.”

  This was, Xander reflected, one of those times when it was easy to remember why he and Willow had formed the I Hate Cordelia Club when they were kids. “Why am I surprised by how comforting you’re not?”

  “It must be hard when all your friends have, like, superpowers,” Cordy went on. “Slayer, werewolves, witches, vampires. And you’re like this little nothing. You must feel like Jimmy Olsen.”

  Remarkably astute, he thought, considering the who that it was coming from. “I was just talking to —” he began with a chuckle. But he cut himself off. “Hey! Mind your own business.”

  “Ooh, I struck a nerve. The Boy That Had No Cool.” Xander couldn’t have said why, after all these years, he still felt the need to defend himself against Cordy’s verbal attacks. Some deep-rooted insecurity, maybe? Whatever the reason, he did, even though it was always hopeless.

  “I happen to be an integral part of that group and I happen to have a lot to offer.”

  “Oh, please.” She started to walk away from him.

  “I do!”

  She spun around on him. “Integral part of the group? Xander. You’re the . . . the useless part of the group. You’re the Zeppo.”

  He got that reference, unfortunately. The Marx Brother no one remembered. Gummo had better lines. Even Groucho, Harpo, and Chico forgot he existed half the time.

  “‘Cool,’” Cordelia continued, throwing a look toward where Jack O’Toole still worked on what remained of his lunch. “Look it up. It’s something that a subliterate that’s repeated twelfth grade three times has and you don’t.”

  She turned away again, leaving Xander to his verbal defeat. As she went, he heard her say to herself, “There was no part of that that wasn’t fun.”

  Xander ignored the lunch on his cafeteria tray. Spaghetti with some kind of mystery meat sauce, a roll, an apple. He could smell it, but that didn’t make him especially want to eat it.

  He sat with Oz, who listened with infinite patience to his rant.

  “But, it’s just that it’s buggin’ me,” Xander was saying. “This cool thing. I mean, what is it? How do you get it? Who doesn’t have it? And who decides who doesn’t have it? What is the essence of cool?”

  “Not sure.” Oz said. Succinct, as usual. Guy even got to change his name to something cool, Xander thought. Almost no one even remembered that he was really Danny Osbourne. Oz. Succinct. And cool.

  “I mean, you yourself, Oz, are considered more or less cool. Why is that?”

  “Am I?” Oz popped a potato chip into his mouth.

  “Is it about the talking?” Xander asked. “You know, the way you tend to express yourself in short, noncommittal phrases?”

  “Could be.”

  “No,” Xander said, suddenly seeing the light. “You’re in a band. That’s like a business-class ticket to cool with complimentary mojo after takeoff. I gotta learn an instrument. Is it hard to play guitar?”

  “Not the way I play it.”

  “Okay,” Xander continued. “But on the other hand, eighth grade I’m taking flugelhorn and getting zero trim, so the instrument thing could be a mislead. But you need a thing. One thing nobody else has. What do I have?”

  “An exciting new obsession,” Oz replied. “Which I feel makes you very special.”

  Xander didn’t miss the implied sarcastic quote marks. “Now with the mocking, which I can handle because I know I’m right about this. I’m on the track. Just need to find my thing.”

  “It seems like you’re overthinking it,” Oz offered with a shrug. “I mean, you’ve got some identity issues, it’s not — ”

  “— the end of the world,” Giles said.

  Buffy looked at him, amazed that he had even raised the idea. He wouldn’t have said it if he didn’t mean it, though. The council may have fired him, but only because he was trying to save her skin when her Cruciamentum went all kerflooey. As far as she was concerned, he was still her Watcher, and she trusted him completely.

  “Can they do that?” she asked.

  They were in the school library, where Giles had been doing some research into the demons they’d defeated the night before. It was 5:20, school long since over, so they knew their conversation wouldn’t be overheard.

  “They seem fairly committed,” he replied. “The Sisterhood of Jhe is an apocalypse cult; they exist solely to bring about the world’s destruction. And we’ve not seen the last of them. More will follow.”

  “And they’re in Sunnydale for what? Demon Expo?”

  Giles took off his glasses, gave her the stern look. “Buffy, this is no laughing matter.”

  “Hence my no laughing.”

  “I’m sorry,” Giles said. “I know I’m no longer your official Watcher, but —”

  The library door swung open with a squeak, interrupting him.

  “Hey,” Oz said, by way of greeting.

  “Hey,” Buffy said back. Full moon tonight; she’d almost forgotten.

  Oz walked past them, into the book cage.

  Giles glanced at his watch. Darkness came early on these late winter days, Buffy knew. “Um,” Giles said, “you’re cutting it a bit close.”

  Oz closed the cage door behind himself, started to shake off his jacket. “Well, you know me.”

  Buffy went back to the topic at hand, namely, the end of the world. “Well, do we know why they’re here?”

  “I think so,” Giles said. He reached for a book in which he’d found some bit of data or other. “Based on some artifacts I found with them, and taking into account the current astral cycle —”

  She cut him off. “Giles, I don’t need to see the math.”

  He put the book back down on his desk and said, very matter-of-factly, “They intend to open the Hellmouth.”

  So he wasn’t exaggerating with the apocalypse talk. “The Hellmouth. The one that opens —”

  “About twenty feet from where you’re standing,” Giles finished.

  She looked at an empty spot of floor. Empty, from this angle. From below — not so much.

  And in the cage, a fully transformed werewolf Oz gripped the cage’s wire with clawed paws. Almost as if sensing the fear in the room, he threw his head back and howled.

  “And if it opens?” Willow asked.

  It was the end of school, the next day. Another cold, sunny one. They walked together on the grass in front of the school building. Around them, other kids were heading home to do homework or watch TV, going to their after school jobs, planning dates and parties.

  No such luxury for the Slayer.

  “Do you remember the demon that almost got out the night I died?” Buffy asked. Spoken casually — she really had largely put it behind her.

  “Every nightmare I have that doesn’t revolve around academic failure or public nudity is about that thing,” Willow assured her. “In fact, once I dreamed that it attacked me while I was late for a test and naked.”

  “Well, it’ll be the first to come out,” Buffy said. “And Giles says it won’t be the worst by a long shot. The world will be overrun with demons unless we stop it.”

  “Do we know when this is supposed to happen?”

  “Giles is trying to narrow it down,” Buffy answered. “If you’re up for it, we’re heading into deep research mode.”

  Willow sounded positively eager. “I’d be offended if you haven’t already counted me in.”

  “Thanks, Will. There’s something about this one . . . it scares me. I need my Willow.”

  “You don’t have to be afraid —”

  At which point, both girls jumped out of their skins at the manic honking of a car horn, right behind them.


  They spun, adrenaline pumping.

  Xander.

  But, Xander in a car.

  And not just any car. One of those boats from the fifties, all chrome and fins and sheer, gas-guzzling mass. A convertible, no less. Mint green. The radio blared.

  Xander smiled behind his sunglasses. “You girls need a lift?”

  “What is this?” Buffy asked.

  “What do you mean, what is it? It’s my thing!” Xander said.

  “Your thing?” Willow repeated.

  “My thing.”

  Buffy made a face. “Is this a penis metaphor?”

  “It’s my thing that makes me cool!” Xander explained. “You know, that makes me unique. I’m car guy. Guy with a car.”

  “How can you afford it?” Willow asked him.

  “Uncle Rory, stacking up the DUIs, letting me rent this bad boy till he’s mobile again.” Xander turned the music down.

  Buffy fished for something to say about it. All she could come up with was, “Well, it’s nice.”

  “Could you sound a little less enthused?” Xander said.

  “Sorry.”

  “Evil,” Willow offered, by way of explanation.

  “Big?” Xander asked.

  “Biggest,” Buffy said. “Maybe more than I can handle.”

  Xander pulled off the shades, suddenly serious. “Then we’ll handle it together,” he said. “You know I’m here for you. Just tell me what I can do.”

  “Take two glazed, two cinnamon, couple creme-filled, and a jelly,” Xander told the doughnut shop clerk. The air in the little store was cloyingly sweet. “No, no, let’s round that out to four jellies.”

  Maybe Cordelia was right. I am the Zeppo.

  The biggest evil Buffy had ever faced, and his job? Fetch doughnuts, Xander. Keep out of the way of the real soldiers, Xander.

  He resented it. But not so much that he wouldn’t do what he was asked. An army fights on its stomach, or something like that. If the Slayer and her Slayerettes need doughnuts, then doughnuts there shall be.

  There was, he realized, only one thing that could make this worse.

  And then she walked in the door.

  “Ooh, some evil going on?” Cordelia asked. “It must be big for them to entrust you with this daredevil mission.”

  “Cordelia,” he said in greeting. “Feel free to drop dead of a wasting disease in the next twenty seconds.”

  “Again I strike the nerve.” She sounded quite pleased with herself. Which was, after all, her usual state of being. “I am a surgeon of mean.”

  He took his box of doughnuts and walked out the door. “I’m kinda busy right now, okay?”

  Cordelia let him get all the way to his car, parked in front of the shop, before she stopped him. “Right, Buffy needs your help. Can you say ‘expendable’?”

  “You think you know everything —”

  “I think I know you,” she said.

  “That’s a laugh.”

  “Oh, what,” Cordelia said. “You got a shiny car and now you’re someone new. Like anybody cares about —”

  She was interrupted by a blond girl walking up the sidewalk toward him. And what a blond. Young and beautiful and most definitely hot, with a figure-hugging sweater that showed plenty of figure. Lucky sweater, Xander thought.

  And she was talking to him.

  “Is that your car?” she asked.

  He lowered his voice an octave. “Why yes, it is.”

  She looked at the vehicle, admiringly, and said “’57 Chevy Bel Air, 283 C.I.D, solid lifter, fuel injected v8?”

  He knew she had the name right, anyway. The rest, he wasn’t so sure about. It wasn’t like Uncle Rory had given him a crash course or anything. “Uh . . . very possibly.”

  “How does she handle?”

  “Like a dream,” he replied, still barely believing this goddess was talking to him. “About warm, sticky things. Would you like to go for a little drive?”

  “You busy?” she asked.

  Right.

  The day I’m too busy to spend time driving around town in a classic convertible with the prettiest girl who ever just walked up and started talking to me. . .

  Well, just bury me, ’cause I’ll be dead.

  “Just gotta drop this stuff off, and then I’d describe myself as ‘expendable.’” That last was for Cordy’s benefit, and he watched her to make sure she caught it. She did.

  He opened the door for the blond. She sat down, and he closed it behind her, ever the gentleman. Instead of going to his own door, he stepped off the sidewalk into the backseat, put the doughnut box down, and then climbed into the driver’s seat.

  It didn’t go quite as smoothly as he had envisioned it.

  She didn’t even seem to notice.

  Her name, it turned out, was Lysette.

  She liked cars.

  And that pretty much defined her, as far as Xander could tell.

  They were at the Bronze. It was dark out. She was talking.

  Still.

  “ . . . and then, you know, I started seeing Dave Peck. Had a Thunderbird, engine completely tricked out, but the upholstery was kinda shot, so then I started seeing his friend Mike, not the Mike with the Mercedes, the Mike with the Mustang, an ’82, v6, you know the look . . . ”

  His only salvation was remembering the expression on Cordy’s face when he’d driven off with Lysette. That, at least, was worth some amount of torture.

  Maybe not this much.

  But she is such the babe.

  Even so, when he spotted Angel coming into the crowded club, it was like seeing salvation.

  “Angel!” Xander called, practically leaping off his stool. He waved the vampire over. “Buddy. Friend buddy. You want to sit and talk?”

  “I’m looking for Buffy,” Angel said, in his usual brusque manner.

  You’d think a guy would learn some etiquette in almost two hundred and fifty years, Xander thought.

  “Library, last I saw.”

  “Something’s happening,” Angel told him. “I’ve seen portents —”

  No news there. “The apocalypse. They’re on top of it.”

  “I don’t think they know what they’re dealing with.” Angel sounded genuinely concerned.

  “Let’s go there!” Xander suggested, feeling the life-line slipping from his grasp. “And tell them that.”

  “No,” Angel said. “It’s best you stay out of harm’s way.”

  “But I could help . . .” Xander said, but Angel was already at the door. The lifeline was gone.

  As if to confirm that, Lysette asked, “Hey, you wanna go for another drive?”

  He walked her to the car, parallel-parked at the curb close to the Bronze’s front door. “You know, it’s not like I haven’t helped before,” he explained. He’d finally turned the conversation away from cars and toward himself. Although, I’m not entirely sure she’s listening any-more. But, oh well . . . it’s not like I was listening to her. “I’ve done quality violence for those people, do they even think about that?”

  His pretense at chivalry gone, he simply opened the driver’s side door. She got in, scooted over. He stepped in behind her, slamming the door.

  He cranked the ignition, threw the car into gear, and started to pull out of the parking space.

  “I mean, they act like I’m some sort of klutz —”

  He hadn’t gone two feet before the car stopped.

  But not because of anything he had done. At least, anything intentional.

  It stopped, because that’s what tends to happen when one runs into another car.

  Which is what he had done. There was a loud crunching of metal, and the tinkle of glass hitting the ground.

  “Oh God,” Xander said. “Are you all right?” A rhetorical question, since he could see that she was fine.

  He got out of the car, and Lysette followed.

  “Oh God,” he said again. “Stay calm. Little fender bender, it’s not —”

 
The driver’s door of the car he had hit opened, and the driver emerged.

  Jack O’Toole.

  Homicide in his eyes.

  “— the end of the world.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Oz stood in his cage and growled.

  “He’s cranky,” Willow said.

  “It’s a good night for it,” Buffy agreed. They sat in the darkened library, with just enough light to read by. The table before them was piled high with books they’d gone through looking for information that might help avert the coming apocalypse.

  “Can’t dogs sense when there’s an earthquake, and they bark?” Willow asked. “Or cows lie down or something?”

  Buffy ignored her, reading out loud from the text in her lap. “ ‘Sisterhood of Jhe. Race of female demons, fierce warriors.’ Eew. ‘Celebrate victory in battle by eating their foes.’ They couldn’t just pour Gatorade on each other?”

  Giles stormed into the room, mumbling half to himself. “Council wouldn’t even take my calls,” he said. He sounded furious. “Idiots!” Then, to the girls, he asked, “Anything useful in the books?”

  “Not wildly,” Buffy replied. She closed the one she’d been reading from.

  “We still have the books of Pherion to go through,” Willow pointed out.

  But Buffy didn’t want to read more. She wanted to be doing something. Anything.

  “I’m getting itchy feet, Giles,” she said. “We don’t turn up something soon, I’m gonna hit the streets. Maybe check out Willy’s.”

  “Fine,” Giles said. He was headed for the door himself.

  “Where are you going?” Willow asked him.

  Giles took his coat from a hook, began tugging it on. “Um, to try and contact the spirit guides,” he said. “They exist out of time, have knowledge of the future. I have no idea if they’ll respond to my efforts, but I have to try. All we know is that the fate of the entire world rests on it.”

  He came back to the table, looked at the open doughnut box.

  “Did you eat all the jellies?” he asked.

  “Did you want a jelly?” Buffy said.

  He sounded hurt. “I always have a jelly. I’m always the one that says, ‘Let’s have jelly in the mix.’”

  “We’re sorry,” Willow said. “Buffy had three.”

  Buffy gave her a look. Ratted out by my best friend.