It was past one, though the way the sky was overcast, it was hard to tell the sun was even out to begin with. The days seemed to be sliding by much too quickly. There was no way to tell how long before the Gatekeeper finally expired, but the old man seemed convinced his son was still alive.
For now.
So the world was still in one piece.
For now.
* * *
“Um, okay,” Buffy said, after they had sauntered down three blocks without incident. “Is it my breath?”
“Buffy, remember,” Oz suggested, “in self-defense class, we learned that the person who walks and talks like a victim becomes a victim.”
“No, Oz.” Angel exhaled in frustration. “I mean, they know she’s the Slayer. They’re not going to buy it if she breaks a shoe heel.”
“But how about if . . .” He stumbled and fell forward, landing on his hands and knees. “Whoops.”
“Oz.” Buffy reached for him. “You okay?”
“I think I scraped my knees,” he said. “No big.”
From out of the shadows, men in dark clothes raced at them full tilt, ramming into Buffy and Angel and flattening Oz to the ground.
Oz grunted and said, “Go, Sharks,” which made no sense to Buffy whatsoever. Nevertheless, she took on the first two attackers at once—an older man with a circlet of hair and a younger man with a scar that ran over his nose from one temple to the other—and punched each of them hard, dead center in their faces. As their heads whipped back in pain, she fitted the tips of her fingers just under their sternums, cracking their ribcages. With silent gasps, the pair went down.
Angel was pummeling his attacker into a bloody pulp, and yet the man was able to conjure some kind of invisble force that threw Angel back against a chain-link fence and pinioned him there. The metallic links electrified; Angel began to quiver as if he were being electrocuted. His flesh smoked.
“Hey, le dirtbag!” Buffy shouted. She launched herself at the man, sending him flying against the fence himself. He screamed and began to convulse uncontrollably. Buffy felt the zing of the electricity and threw herself off him, yanking Angel away and flinging him to the ground.
The acolyte was horribly burned by the time he died.
Meanwhile, Oz had taken a few hits but returned a few more. But he was powerless as two of the Sons of Entropy murmured something at him and he clutched his eyes, moaning in agony.
“Angel!” Buffy shouted, and the two of them rushed Oz’s assailants, Angel matching each of Buffy’s kicks and punches until it was like some strange, violent ballet performed to the pulsing of adrenaline through Buffy’s body. They were in such perfect synch that it took her breath away.
Soon the two brethren lay unconscious at their feet, and Oz whispered, “My eyes. Can you see them?”
He looked blankly at Buffy, who touched his shoulder. “Yes. They look fine. It’s probably temporary,” she assured him, but in her heart she was very frightened for him. This was a rough crowd. There was no telling what they could do.
Livid, she renewed her attack on their attackers, ripping into the nearest acolyte, a guy who was actually pretty cute, when Angel shouted into her ear, “We should save a couple.”
“Just this one,” she said. “I’ll just ruin his life and—”
“Buffy.” Angel stayed her hand. “One more punch, and he’s dead.”
She looked down at the ruined man on the floor. “Guess I got a little carried away,” she said softly, and then thought about Oz again.
She looked around. There were no other remaining Sons of Entropy. This was the last one, and the others had abandoned him.
She knelt beside him. “How much do you want to live?”
He opened his swollen eyes and stared at her.
“That’s not the right question, Buffy,” Angel said. “His boss is going to kill him anyway. And soon, if what we’ve seen before is any indication. The real question is . . .” He joined her at the man’s side. “How much can you take?” he asked, pressed down on a wound in the man’s chest.
The man writhed, silently gasping.
“Hey,” Oz protested, coming up beside them.
“Hey!” Buffy said back. “You can see.”
“Oz, this isn’t time for Amnesty International,” Angel said. He hurt the man again, and Buffy steeled herself to go with it, go with the torture. Angel was right.
“Where is II Maestro?” Angel demanded. “Tell me, and the pain stops.”
“My life stops,” the man rasped.
“Either way,” Angel said flatly. “You know it, I know it. You’re dead. How much do you want to suffer?”
“Oh, man,” Oz murmured. “Oh, God. Angel, this is too much!”
When Angel turned on Oz, his face was contorted by vampirism.
“They just blinded you!” Angel snapped. “They’re trying to kill us, to take Buffy, who knows why? And if we don’t get that kid back, everything and everyone you love is probably doomed.
“Any questions?”
Oz shook his head slowly.
“Not a one.”
* * *
Jean-Marc, young, vibrant, and powerful again, kissed his ghostly mother’s careworn cheek and flung his arms wide. Energy crackled down the hundreds of corridors of the Gatehouse, sealing breaches, righting angles made terribly wrong. Fearsome creatures in their magickally bound pens shrieked with the knowledge that he was back; the Gatekeeper, their jailer, had resumed control. Ghouls raged; the Medusa cackled with madness. The Minotaur butted his head against the last turn in the maze in which he was imprisoned.
“How long?” Antoinette asked quietly.
“Long enough,” Jean-Marc responded.
He stood at the window of his home and sent lightning bolts down among the Sons of Entropy. At least a third of the flashing bolts hit home, burning the enemy to death.
A second volley of bolts hit their mark.
A third.
Soon, only a handful of acolytes ran madly over the lawn.
“You’ve done it, my son,” Antoinette said joyfully, clutching his hand. Only for the Gatekeeper was she formed of solid flesh.
“Mais non, Maman,” Jean-Marc replied. His voice trembled, and when he looked at her, he had aged thirty years. It had been that way for several days already, a seemingly endless stream of acolytes of the Sons of Entropy trying to invade his home. It was war on a single front, and yet he was forced to fight it on infinite levels. This was only the most obvious. Day by day, he fought on.
“There will be more,” Jean-Marc said wearily.
* * *
“I can make it stop,” the one named Angel said soothingly. “Just give us an address. Then I’ll let you go.”
Flat on his back in the dirty, abandoned lot, the acolyte looked up into Angel’s feral visage. He had been briefed; he knew the Slayer ran with a vampire and a werewolf. But he had not expected so much pain.
The master would destroy him for his failure. He only hoped it would be soon.
“My master is not forgiving,” he managed to say in English, although he was Dutch by birth. How long ago that seemed: Amsterdam, meeting the Master in such an innocent way—a beer in a tavern, a few stories about his life, a very dirty joke about blonds—and then, the sacrificing of young girls, the blood, the degradation—
How far away now, as tears slid down his cheeks.
“It was real,” he insisted. “All the magick was real.”
“Pain is real,” the vampire said, proving it.
In a corner by the fence, the other male companion of the Slayer retched. The young acolyte was grateful for his compassion.
Because he was in a lot of pain.
The vampire knew very well how to inflict it.
The one named Angel said now, “You are going to die. Tell me what I want to know, and it will be quick.”
And now, even the Slayer turned white and looked away. And a strange thing happened: the Dutchman—Brother Hans—suddenly con
nected that she had a mother, and he had a mother, and both of them would mourn the deaths of their children. In that way, she was like him. Because II Maestro would kill her eventually. It had to happen.
So he said to the vampire, in halting English because the pain was taking away his ability to think, “A villa, in Florence. Off the Court of the Roses. I don’t know it in Italian. I have never been there. But it is where my master is.”
“Thank you.” The vampire looked down on him, and his eyes were very sad. “Shall I leave you to your master?”
Young Hans blinked. “No,” he begged. “I told you what you want to know.”
A sharp turn of his head—
Peace.
* * *
Buffy and Oz waited around the corner from the alley in which Angel had caused their enemy so much pain. They both knew what was happening there now. It had to happen. Angel hadn’t had a choice, and the acolyte was freshly dead in any case.
But Buffy felt so far, far away from Angel just then.
After a time Oz said, “Why didn’t II Maestro fry him?”
Buffy shook her head.
She almost wished he had.
* * *
Willow, Xander, and Cordelia had gotten out of the car to walk the streets, hoping for some sign of Giles. There was none. It was almost dinnertime, and their parents would soon begin to wonder where they were.
Giles had been missing for nearly twenty-four hours.
Willow twisted her hands. “This is bad,” she said to Xander. “Really bad.”
“Can’t argue there.” He gave her shoulders a quick squeeze. “We’ll find him, Will. And we’ll put one of those little beeping tags on him like they do with whales, and we’ll never lose him again.”
“Okay.” She sniffled. “Because I hate this. I’m so worried about everybody, and the world might come to an end, pretty much, and if I can’t say good-bye to Oz before it does—”
“Willow, shut up,” Cordelia barked. “Pull yourself together.”
“Cordy,” Xander said angrily, “she’s suffering.”
Cordelia put her hands on her hips. “We’re all suffering, Xander. So what? Is that going to help anyone in any way, shape, or form? I doubt it. It’s our job to keep our cool and find Giles, okay? We can fall apart on our own time.”
She burst into tears. “Which is not now,” she said firmly, catching her breath.
“Wow.” Xander looked at her with awe. “ ’You are such a fabulous ice goddess.”
“It just takes practice.” She wiped her eyes. “So, we move on. We keep looking.”
“Okey dokey,” Xander said. He looked questioningly at Willow.
“Okey dokey,” she replied, smiling bravely.
He hugged her. “That’s my chica. That is to say, Oz’s chica.”
* * *
The phone rang a lot of times before someone answered.
Buffy said loudly, “Hello, Mr. Regnier? It’s Buffy. Summers,” she added. “Um, the Slayer?”
“Yes.” He sounded amused. She was a bit affronted. He might know more than one Buffy Summers.
Then he coughed, hard, and began to hack, and she swallowed hard and said, “You’re not feeling so great, I take it.”
“Have you found my son?”
It was weird. One minute, he sounded like a healthy, middle-aged man. Now, it was like talking to the oldest man on Earth. His voice shook, and she could barely hear him.
“Not quite yet,” she allowed, feeling terrible. “But we have an address, finally.”
“Ah.” There was a long silence. Then his voice was paper-thin as he said, “My son. Find my son. And . . . Buffy?”
“Yes?”
“Hurry.”
* * *
They had made a grand sweep from the warehouses to the docks. Now Xander, Willow, and Cordelia stood at the harbor, looking out at a black horizon and a blacker sea, coming up with nothing. Xander was truly at a loss.
It was Sunday night, and they were all late for dinner. Xander didn’t want to admit that he was giving up hope, but he was on the verge of suggesting that they all sneak back home, deal with screaming parents, and start fresh after school the next day. Grounded, they were no good to anybody.
Then they heard a man say, “Is that the police?”
Willow looked at Xander, who cleared his throat and stepped forward. He moved forward onto the latticework of docks. An elderly man in a dark blue windbreaker and a pair of jeans was standing on the deck of a really cool sailboat. The cabin light was on.
“May I help you?” Xander asked.
“You’re not the police. You’re too young for the police.” He looked irritated. “Some man was hanggliding in the fog. Very dangerous. He could hurt someone. Or get hurt. Probably drowned.”
“I saw him, too,” came another voice in the dark.
Another elderly man popped out of a long sailboat beside the first elderly man’s.
“Couldn’t sleep, so I was reading Melville. I saw him fly by. Couldn’t imagine a man like that doing such a thing.”
“A man like that,” Xander echoed.
The man nodded. “Middle-aged. Well dressed.” The man chuckled. “For a second, I thought he was your boy.”
“My son’s in Malaysia with his wife,” the man said, and looked at Xander. “She’s a tropical ecologist.”
“Kinky,” Xander offered.
“It wasn’t my boy,” he said to the other old man.
“Looked like your boy. Nice brown hair. A bit tweedy.”
Cordelia and Willow caught their breaths. Xander did, too. The three looked at each other.
“Tweedy,” Willow murmured.
Cordelia added, “Hang-gliding.”
Xander said, “We gotta get a boat.”
* * *
Joyce didn’t want to lie to Buffy, but she didn’t want to tell her the truth, either. She so wanted to protect her daughter—spare her—but she knew what she had to do. She had to tell Buffy the truth.
“Mr. Giles isn’t here, sweetheart,” Joyce said softly. “We don’t know where he is.”
Buffy was silent. Joyce closed her eyes tight.
“They’re looking for him,” she added.
“Oh, Mom, oh, no,” Buffy murmured in a frightened voice, and in that moment, Buffy was her little girl, her very little girl, and Joyce was a young mother again, amazed that this beautiful, tiny thing had actually come from her body into her life. She would do anything for this baby.
“Honey, I’m sorry. They’ll find him,” Joyce said.
“Yeah. Okay. I’ll call again soon, Mom. I’ve . . . gotta go.”
“Honey, wait! Tell me how you are. Tell me—”
The connection had been broken.
Joyce stared across the room.
The fog was so thick she could barely see the house across the street.
Chapter 8
AND THEN, WHEN WE MADE the beach in Normandy, the enemy gave us hell. Pure hell,” the elderly man in the windbreaker was telling Willow and Cordelia.
Seated on his boat as it bobbed at the Sunnydale dock, they nodded politely, holding cups of hot chocolate he had made for them on the propane stove. The boat rocked and creaked while the man droned on, oblivious to their anxiety. Meanwhile, Xander wandered around, his frustration evident to the girls.
“Why, every other boy who hit that beach was killed. The carnage was unbelievable.” He shook his head. “First time I saw a dead body, I thought I was going to upchuck.”
“Yeah, same here,” Willow blurted, then cleared her throat and stared down into her chocolate.
“In that movie last year, she means. We saw the movie,” Cordelia told him quickly. “It was intense, wasn’t it?” She touched her chest. “I had to go into the lobby for a few minutes.” Would he never shut up? She was sweating bullets. The sun was beginning to rise, and though they’d done the whole round-robin “I’m staying at so-and-so’s” thing, she was still paranoid that she’d get cau
ght. If her parents found out she’d stayed out all night . . .
Switzerland.
The man scowled. She was pretty sure he had told them his name but now she couldn’t remember. She was that tired.
The man checked his watch. “Well, I guess it’s time to start the day. Sun’ll be up soon, and I’m going fishing.” He cocked his head. “Don’t you kids have school?”
“Yeah, we sure do,” Willow said, shifting uneasily. “But we’re doing a biology project where we have to collect nocturnal sea specimens. Our boat . . .” She looked at Cordelia, clearly at a loss.
“Broke,” Cordelia cut in. She waved her hand. “Just broke, just like that. The floor part of it, um, we found a hole in it, and we need to borrow another boat so we can go collect the specimens.”
“Oh, gee, that’s too bad. Where is it?” he asked. “Maybe I can give you a hand with a patch job.”
“We left it at home,” Willow explained. “We were hoping we could borrow—”
“Hey, girls, time for school,” Xander piped up, coming over to them. He stood on the dock and put one foot on the boat. “We’ll have to look for my uncle’s boat later.”
“And the sea specimens,” Willow added, eyes wide and innocent.
“Oh, yeah, those elusive specimens. What are you going to do?” He laughed and clapped his hands together. “So. Let’s go. Now.”
They climbed off the boat and waved good-bye. As Xander hustled them toward Cordelia’s car, Cordelia hissed, “Xander, what are you doing? He was just about to lend us a boat!”
He exhaled. “Well, I didn’t know that, did I? And it comes a little late. The sun’s almost up. We’re out of time.”
“Now what?” Cordelia demanded.
“Now we go to school so we don’t get in trouble, and we come back after school and steal the little red boat that’s tied up all by itself next to that promontory over there.”
“Promontory?” Cordelia asked, raising an eyebrow.
Willow sighed. “Don’t you remember? It was the only word he got right in the fifth-grade spelling bee. I’m sure he’s been waiting to use it ever since.”
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