by Various
The siren of a fire truck screamed in the distance. As Giles listened, it drew nearer.
It was coming to his condo.
There were shouts and cries in the courtyard. A woman screamed, “These poor boys! They’ve been horribly burned!” He recognized it as Mrs. Potter, the property manager.
“Ma’am, me and my friend here are trying to save the guy who lives there,” said a vaguely familiar voice. “Is it okay if we go in there?”
“No, Mrs. Potter,” Giles croaked.
“Mr. Giles is in there? Oh, my gracious. Yes, go on in!”
The invitation had been made.
“Angel!” Jenny shouted.
Before Giles knew what was happening, two vampires burst through the door, dashed through the smoke and the heat, and brutally knocked Jenny out of the way. With a grunt she fell to the floor.
Xander and Willow turned on the pair at once. Willow punched at one while Xander took on the other. They were both about to be assaulted when the vampires simultaneously exploded into dust, revealing Angel behind them. He had staked them both with hand-carved stakes Giles had put on his coffee table when loading the trunk with the Master’s bones.
There was no time to thank the vampire as he whirled around and took on another vampire, slamming it hard with a brutal roundhouse, then keeping it off-balance with a whipping side-kick. The creature wobbled, and Angel seized the moment to plunge a stake into its unbeating heart. It, too, became dust, which was whipped into the maelstrom of Giles’s home.
“Get the bones!” Jenny shouted to Xander.
“Ick,” Xander muttered. Then he did as she asked, Willow assisting, gathering up all the little joints and fingers as if they were the playing pieces of an elaborate board game.
Then the two grabbed up the bones in the blanket they had been secured in, and fled through the front door — or rather, where the door once had been. Now it was a gaping maw of fire and burning wood.
“Xander,” Giles shouted. “Willow, run.”
Through the burning window, he saw the pair fleeing across the yard, only to catch the attention of a pair of vampires who both looked somewhat familiar. He worked on my car once, Giles thought, his mind becoming confused with the haze of pain. Unusual name. Corbel, Cor . . . Corvelle.
Willow turned and brandished a cross. Xander kicked at the other vampire and disappeared inside a hedge of bushes. The vampire ran in after him. Willow held the other at bay, glancing anxiously over her shoulder.
They’re going to die. My fault . . .
“Get out of here,” Angel said to Jenny. He was battling yet another vampire.
“No,” Jenny whispered. She put both her arms around Giles’s chest. “I’m going to move you,” she said.
“No,” Giles bit off. “Go —”
“Not without you.”
Her dark eyes were all he saw as thick smoke swirled around them both.
I love her, he thought. I cannot let her die.
Summoning all his strength, he got to his feet. She helped him, and put her arm around him. They half-ran, half-stumbled to the doorway.
Giles turned and saw that Angel was outnumbered. He was surrounded by vampires. Their battle in the orange flames was like a strange shadow-play, the dance of death.
Buffy will be desolate if anything happens to him, Giles thought mournfully.
“Angel,” he shouted, reaching out a hand.
Then firefighters in dark rubber suits burst into the room.
Giles was hoisted over a man’s shoulder and carried out of his condo. Another firefighter carried Jenny.
Giles was bundled onto a stretcher, half-rising and muttering, “No. Stop.” No one listened to him. A paramedic slipped an oxygen mask over his face.
Then he was carried to an ambulance and carted inside. The door slammed shut, and the ambulance spirited him away.
“I’m all right,” Jenny assured the firefighter as he set her on the grass.
Just then, Angel appeared. His face was human, and covered with bruises. He shook his head.
She slumped.
Across the street, Willow and Xander emerged from behind a thick hedgerow. As they crept beneath a streetlight, they looked like watery apparitions.
When they saw Jenny looking toward them, they ran across the street to her.
“Miss Calendar?” Willow looked terribly frightened. “They got them. We tried to fight them off, but . . .”
Jenny nodded, defeated. Xander glared at Angel.
“And you were where?”
Angel glowered at Xander. “I was outside, tracking. I smelled them. I went down the road. I was trying to head them off.”
“You should have stayed inside. Giles and Miss Calendar almost died,” Xander flung at him accusingly.
“No, Xander, he did the right thing,” Jenny assured the young man. “If they succeed in resurrecting the Master . . .” She trailed off. The vampires have the Master’s bones. What are we going to do now?
Then she swallowed hard. “I want to go to the hospital. I need to see if Rupert’s all right.”
“I’ll get you there,” Angel said.
“What about the mission?” Xander demanded. “Are we all gonna give up?”
“What do you want to do?” Angel shot back. “Go back down to the lair?”
“At least I’m man enough to,” Xander flung at him. “Accent on man, as in human being.”
“We can’t afford to argue,” Jenny said. “I covered the bones with mugwort and I was able to recite an incantation. It might hold for a little while.” She took a breath. “If it was the right thing to do in the first place.”
“It makes sense to check on Giles,” Willow offered. “Maybe he can think of some book or something.” She made a moue of apology. “Thanks for trying to stop them, Angel.”
“It’s his job, as one of the good guys,” Xander said. “Right, Dead Boy?”
Angel said nothing. Miss Calendar said, “I have the keys to Rupert’s car. You two go home for now.”
“Let’s go,” Angel said. He turned away without another word.
Jenny walked beside him. As they moved toward the curb, where Giles’s car was parked, Willow’s voice trailed back at them. “You are so rude to him, Xander.”
“He can take it.” Xander’s voice was hard and cold.
Jenny said, “I can go by myself, Angel. I’m feeling a lot better.”
“It’s all right.” He opened the passenger-side door for her. It squealed on its hinges. “Although I’d rather fight a few more vampires than drive this thing.”
She managed a smile. “It’s a really terrible car, isn’t it.”
“It really is.”
* * *
Xander’s eyes narrowed as he and Willow watched the car disappear into the darkness. “I swear, he planned this,” Xander said. He turned on his heel.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m finding me some vampire bones,” he told her. “Or die trying. Metaphorically speaking, of course.”
She sighed and caught up with him. He smiled at her. “Ready, Girl Wonder?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” she said glumly.
“Me neither.”
Grimly, the two walked the walk.
As they ran down the street across from the burning condo, Jay looked at the bundle in his arms with astonishment.
“We did it,” he murmured. “We bagged the bones.”
Corvelle spit tobacco juice. “ ’Course we did.”
Jay slowed down and stopped running. Corvelle joined him.
They both made a protective circle around the bundle.
“Hey,” Jay said, “where’s everybody else?”
They were alone. It looked as if none of the other vampires Absalom had sent on the raiding party had survived.
It took Jay a moment to believe it. Corvelle spit another stream of tobacco, and Jay blurted anxiously, “How long does that crap last, for crying out loud?”
&n
bsp; “Huh?”
“Nothing. Nothing.” Jay ran his hand through his hair. “What are we going to do, Corvelle?”
“Huh?”
“We’ve got the bones,” Jay said, as if Corvelle was as blind as he was gross. “Everybody else got dusted. What if we let Absalom think we got dusted, too?” He glanced down at the Master’s bones. “Dump these things and head out of town? You can hotwire a car. Hell, you can build a car, if it comes to that.”
Corvelle considered. Then he shrugged. “Absalom’s too smart. They’re all too smart.” Then he frowned. “How come you told Kevin our secret signal?”
“I didn’t. But how come Kevin told us he was the only one who watched the Slayer take out the Master? The only one who knew he wasn’t total dust? Because Absalom sure knew.”
The bones moved inside the blanket. Jay cried out and dropped the bundle. They landed in the road, beside the storm drain.
“They’re alive!” he shouted.
Corvelle shrieked. He turned tail and ran.
Jay had a mind to follow him, until a voice said from the storm drain, “Push them down here.”
Jay crept closer to the grate. A pale face stared up at him. With yellow eyes. “Man, they’re, like, possessed. They were moving.”
“Push them down, Jay,” Kevin said calmly.
And Jay was just about to do that when something started burning in the middle of his back.
“Ow!” he shouted, whirling around.
A tall, dark-haired guy was holding a cross. Beside him was Willow Rosenberg. He knew her from the computer lab.
“Jay?” she said, shocked. “You got bitten?”
“What’s going on?” Kevin hissed.
“Company,” Jay replied uneasily. His back was seared. The guy must have pressed the cross right into his flesh.
“Tell your boyfriend thanks for burning me,” he said to Willow.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” she replied.
“And you’re branded like a cow. Ha-ha, Bossy.” The guy brandished the cross at him. “Will?”
She pulled a stake from inside the bib of her over-alls.
“We’ll just take those bones,” she said.
Jay made a face. “You don’t want them. They’re alive.”
“Oh, we can probably take care of that,” Willow said smugly. “We can do spells and stuff.”
“Willow, let’s keep our secrets to ourselves,” the guy muttered.
Jay said to Willow, “Yeah? You hanging with Miss Calendar these days?”
Willow blinked. “What do you know about her?”
Jay shrugged. “Just what I see in magic shops.”
“Jay,” Kevin barked. “Come on. Throw me the bones.”
Willow firmly clutched the stake. “Do and you’re dust.”
Jay wanted to lunge at her, but the cross held him at bay. The storm drain was way too small for him to jump down into, but he figured if he ran, he might have a chance at a clean getaway. He wondered where that coward Corvelle had gone to.
“Jay, throw me the bones or else,” Kevin said ominously.
Willow set her jaw and raised her chin. “Let’s do a series of ‘and/or’ statements, shall we? We have a cross and a stake. That guy is underground and can’t get us before we get you.”
Jay stayed silent. She had a point.
“Why do you guys worhsip the Master so much anyway?” Xander asked. “He’d turn on you in a Hellmouth second.”
“We don’t like him,” Jay blurted. “We were trying to make sure he never came back. Then Absalom showed and —”
“Shut up,” Kevin demanded.
“If you don’t want him to ever come back, let us have his bones. We’ll put ’em somewhere where the sun don’t shine. Or rather, where it does.” Willow looked confused.
“What Willow is trying to say,” the guy said, “is that we appear to have a common interest. We don’t want the Master back, and you don’t want the Master back. Now, I don’t know what Thing down there wants, but what do you say we make a deal?”
“Kev? He has a point.” Jay glanced down at the bundle.
“No!” Kevin shouted, rattling the grate. “Not to humans! Don’t give the bones to humans!”
“Why not?” Jay asked.
At that moment, he bent down, grabbed up the bones, and threw them at the human guy. As Jay’d expected, he dropped the cross trying to catch them. But Willow still had her stake, and she lunged forward with a “grrr” as Jay darted out of their way.
He charged down the street, terrified out of his wits, listening as the two humans started arguing about what to do next. Kevin was screaming like a maniac. It finally dawned on Jay that Kevin had been lying about the bones all along — he’d wanted them for himself, before Absalom could locate them. Why, to raise the Master? Bargain for some power? Jay didn’t suppose it mattered now. All he knew was that everybody was mad at him, Absalom on the one hand and Kevin on the other.
He might as well start singing “Dust in the Wind,” and right now.
Then a car squealed up, and the passenger-side door opened.
“Get in, buddy,” Corvelle said.
Jay leaped in and slammed the door shut. Corvelle peeled out and nearly took a mailbox out as he screamed around a corner.
“Thanks,” Jay said.
Corvelle spat tobacco juice out the window.
“You want to go back and run ’em over?” Corvelle asked.
Jay considered. Then he shook his head. “Naw. Rosenberg was nice to me in school. Didn’t hog the equipment in the computer lab. Besides, everybody will be so busy trying to get the bones from her, they might forget about us.”
Corvelle grinned. “You’re one smart vampire.”
“Thanks, Corvelle.” He leaned his head back against the seat. “Why’d you come back for me?”
“You might have ratted me out. Told ’em I was still alive. Lied and told ’em I had the bones.” He grinned at Jay. “But you didn’t, did you?”
“No. I —”
Corvelle lurched the car over to the side of the road. He reached down beneath his seat and pulled out a broken-off bit of a one-by-four. Slammed it into Jay’s chest.
“Damn you to hell,” Jay said, microseconds before he went there.
* * *
Jenny Calendar walked into the room beside a nurse, who was wheeling in a wheelchair.
“Mr. Giles, you’re officially discharged,” the nurse said cheerily.
“Thank God. At last,” Giles said.
“Are you certain you don’t want to wait until morning? Your insurance company has authorized an additional day.”
“I’m sure,” Giles said.
Jenny took his hand in hers. She smiled at him and said, “Your apartment’s almost back to livable, Rupert. You lost a few things, but I found a company that specializes in smoke damage. Not surprisingly, there are a number of them in Sunnydale.”
“Not surprisingly,” he said.
Angel was waiting for them in Giles’s Citroën at the driveway in front of the hospital. As soon as Giles was settled in, Jenny said, “If you can manage it, Willow and Xander are at the graveyard now.”
Giles nodded. “You’ve brought plenty of holy water and wafers, I trust?”
“Lots and lots,” Jenny assured him.
“I feel like I’m driving a tanker full of nitroglycerin,” Angel said, glancing at her package. Giles liked that the vampire was nervous.
“It was wrong of me to let the Slayer go,” Giles said, filled with remorse. “Her friends are going to be in constant jeopardy all summer.”
“Willow’s been looking forward to computer camp,” Jenny murmured wistfully. “And Xander was going on about how he’s going to relax and just do nothing.”
“Please explain to me how that’s different from what he does in school?” Giles asked. They shared a rueful smile.
“We have to protect them,” Jenny said. “If there’s slaying to be done, we should do it. Not
let them know.”
Giles considered. Then he nodded. “Agreed.”
Angel raised his head as if to speak, then remained silent.
“They’re children,” Jenny said.
“Children,” Giles concurred.
It was a relatively short drive to their cemetery of choice. Willow and Xander were there, shovels at the ready, the Master’s bones back in a trunk. This one was an old steamer Xander’s Uncle Rory used to hide his empties in, not realizing, of course, that the entire family knew about his drinking problem.
The moon shone down, no longer full, and Giles emerged painfully from the car. He shuffled like an old man toward the two. Willow waved happily. Giles smiled faintly and waved back.
Xander bobbed his head. Then he gestured to the newly dug grave — practically a pit — and said, “Welcome back, G-ma — Giles.”
“Thank you. It’s delightful to be back,” Giles said. He held out his hand. Willow bent down and produced a Bible.
“I shall be reading the service for the dead,” he announced, “while you two and Miss Calendar sanctify the earth.”
Angel moved a ways away.
Then he was gone, melting into the night.
“I hate it when he does that,” Xander said.
“Please, read fast,” Willow begged Giles. “I’m cold and scared and I feel like we’re not alone.”
We probably aren’t, Giles thought. Who knows what will happen next?
But he kept his thoughts to himself as he cleared his throat and began to read.
The Anointed One watched from his throne as Kevin knelt before Absalom and said, “I have failed, my brother. The two traitors disobeyed me. They gave the bones to the humans, and ran.”
Absalom’s hands were folded behind his back. He brought his left hand around and opened his fist. “Not to worry, little brother. They didn’t run far enough.” Dust trickled to the slick, wet floor of the cave. “But tell me, why did they lose faith in you? How did they know you were secretly serving the Master, rooting out his enemies among his obedient flock?”
Kevin shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m not sure they did.”
“Nor am I.” Absalom smiled gently. “You gave it your all. I know that.”
Kevin looked hopeful that he might be spared, despite his failure.
