Paleo

by Yvonne Navarro

  Angel peered cautiously above the counter. “Helluva shot,” he said with admiration.

  Buffy edged toward the downed dinosaur, automatically loading another arrow into the crossbow, just in case. Xander and Willow also inched in, their faces washed in fear. When Buffy was about three feet away, the dinosaur opened its mouth and gave a terrible, unearthly squeal. She tensed and brought up the crossbow once more—

  But the dinosaur exploded into a cloud of glowing brick-colored dust.

  “Well,” Angel said, staring. “No matter where we come from, it seems like we all look like that in the end, doesn’t it?”

  Buffy started to answer, but Willow cut her off, her face suddenly shock-white beneath her red hair. “Buffy— where’s Oz?”

  “Right here,” he said from a few feet away. He stalked into the room, then stopped and studied the glittering reddish-gold powder that had settled over a good portion of it.

  “I’m thinking Hoover,” Xander said.

  Buffy ignored him. “The T. Rex?”

  Oz shrugged. “I gave it three minutes to make sure it stayed dead.”

  Willow looked nervous. “Three minutes isn’t very long. Maybe a few more—”

  “Nah,” Buffy said with a grin. “That’s really all a dead demon is worth.”

  Buffy the Vampire Slayer

  Epilogue

  “MAN,” XANDER SAID, “YOU SHOULD’VE SEEN THE look on Coach Lannes’s face when he saw all that red crap in the pool. If people had rations of being pissed, he’s used up his until the year 2020.” They’d spent the night cleaning up the library as best they could, and now, while Angel carefully stayed in the library’s deeper shadows, Buffy and the rest of the Slayerettes were lounging here and there around the room during a free midmorning period. Buffy nodded, considering Xander’s description. “So it was just like in here,” she said. “Lots of red—”

  “Dust,” Willow finished for her. “It got into everything. Coach Lannes said the entire pool has to be drained and the motor on the pool filter has to be replaced. If he catches who did it . . .” She shrugged.

  Xander leaned forward. “I distinctly heard him mention something about giving the perpetrator blue pool hose as intestines. They’re blaming the whole thing— the pool, the library, the broken doors here and there— on vandals.”

  Buffy couldn’t help grinning. “So I think it’s safe to assume that the T. Rex bodies we left in the alley by the Bronze and in the museum are also dustized?”

  Angel crossed his arms. “Yeah. No one ever mentioned finding anything in the alley, but there was a piece in the paper this morning about ‘evidence’ vanishing in the murder investigation at the museum. I’m thinking it’s a dead dinosaur disappearance.”

  “The guards and Kevin are being tied into Daniel Addison’s death,” Xander told them. “According to the news, the cops are blaming them all on an animal attack, a continuation of the pet disappearances last week.”

  Buffy nodded, trying to stay focused despite noticing that, always on the quiet side, Oz seemed even more so today. “What do you think, Oz?” Buffy asked.

  He blinked. “About?”

  She shrugged. “About why this whole thing started, or how. I mean, there has to be some motivation behind it, doesn’t there? Kevin Sanderson and Daniel Addison were just normal guys interested in guylike stuff—”

  “Beg to differ,” Xander interrupted with a wave. “Cars, girls, baseball. That’s guylike stuff. Lizards? Not.”

  “Depends on the guy,” Willow said.

  “Maybe,” Xander allowed. “But dinosaurs shouldn’t be obsession-worthy. Girls and cars, on the other hand—”

  “Not necessarily,” Willow cut in. She leaned over and looked at something in front of Oz and he pushed it toward her. Buffy recognized the notebook Oz had picked up in the museum, and when Willow curiously flipped it open, it was filled with tight, neat handwriting.

  “Kevin Sanderson’s,” Oz explained for the benefit of the others.

  “Did you read it?” asked Buffy.

  He nodded, his eyes hooded. “As far as I could make out, Kevin was following Daniel’s lead, and Daniel was following the demon’s. I never got my hands on the original notebook described in here, the one Daniel found somewhere in the museum, so I don’t know what went on sixty years ago. But going from what Kevin wrote, I’m guessing the demon promises fame and fortune or something like that to whomever he can get his hooks into. It’s either an outright liar or likes to do the nasty irony thing.”

  Giles stepped out of the library office and moved to join them. “Then Daniel Addison was a prime target for it,” he said. “If recollection serves, I believe his records related something about his being unwilling to think for himself.”

  “‘Unwilling to work to succeed,’ ” Willow corrected, obviously quoting from memory. “And . . . no, he didn’t much think for himself.”

  “So the demon moved in to help,” Buffy said. Saddened, she shook her head.

  “Yeah,” Xander commented. “And wasn’t it just mondo disastrous when he let someone else’s brain do the thinking part for him.”

  “It wasn’t so much thinking for Daniel as making a bunch of hyped-up promises about all the great stuff that would happen to him if he did what the demon wanted,” Oz said. “Kevin’s notebook records more about what was going on with Daniel than with him, but I’m guessing Ladonithia switched its attentions over to Kevin.”

  “Who was another great victim,” Willow said. “Just moved here, no friends, trying to start everything over. It was easy for the demon to make promises that it never intended to keep. It was just using Daniel—then Kevin—to get released.”

  Giles nodded. “As an adult, I wasn’t so easily directed, so I barely heard any such fantasizing.” No one said anything for a few moments, so Buffy glanced knowingly at Angel. He gave her a tiny nod, then made a noise and straightened up on his chair.

  “Hey, Oz,” the vampire began, “you remember I was there when that band manager woman talked up to us in the Bronze?” Oz nodded. “Well, I, uh . . . did a little checking here and there, hung out a little at Willy’s and asked a few people I know who know other people.” Angel looked at his hands uncomfortably. “There’s some stuff I thought you ought to get the lowdown on.”

  For a long second Oz didn’t say anything, then he sighed. “Spill.”

  Angel shrugged, and Buffy knew he was making an effort to appear more nonchalant than he was. He really didn’t want to be involved in this, and he wasn’t at all pleased with what he was about to tell. “She’s taken over the management of a lot of bands the last two or three years,” he said finally. “Young ones, like you and Dingoes. I called in a few favors, and . . .” Angel’s voice trailed off.

  “And?” Oz prompted.

  “It’s not a very impressive record,” Angel admitted. “None of her bands seems to have gotten very far. They’re all still playing the low club circuit, and some of them have been with her for years.”

  Oz raised an eyebrow. “So you’re saying she can’t get the big-time club gigs?”

  Angel rubbed his hands together, looking quietly uncomfortable. “I don’t know if she can’t, or just won’t. Some of the band members . . . well, a lot of them . . . seem to have gotten so miserable that they’re into drugs now. Her deal is insisting that they can’t manage their finances so she takes all their earnings, claiming it’s going for expenses and that she’s investing the rest. Word is she supplies a lot of the drugs just to keep them cooperative. Most of them haven’t seen a dime in next to forever.”

  “Oh,” Xander said. “This is so not good. Sure doesn’t sound like a nominee for Band Manager of the Year award.” He looked disappointed, and Buffy remembered that Alysa Bardrick had supposedly offered him a space along with the others.

  Angel nodded. “It’s a pretty reckless lifestyle, a lot of wildness and, from what I heard, not a whole bunch of happiness. Her career guidance skills seem to be seriously l
acking, although she certainly has a lot of . . . clients.”

  Oz stared at the tabletop without saying anything for a few moments. “I guess I knew it was going sour.” He shot a glance at his girlfriend. “Willow did some virtual checking. The info wasn’t stellar.”

  Willow looked at him sympathetically. “Yeah. Alysa wasn’t lying to me in the Bronze. She doesn’t have a web page or any advertising on the net, but I found a few anonymous postings here and there, in bandrelated user groups. There was a definite fear factor thing going on. One even said signing up with her was like getting drafted into a Third World army . . . for life. You gave it all and got zip in return.”

  “They sound more like slaves,” Buffy said thoughtfully. “Or prisoners.”

  “That could very well be close to the truth.” Giles’s voice was quiet as he joined the conversation. “If she appropriates the entirety of their income, they’re probably dependent on her for the most basic necessities. Food, clothes, shelter and . . . well, who knows what else. Likely anything she can use to keep them tied to her.”

  “Boy,” Buffy said. She looked at Giles briefly, then let her gaze slide toward the notebook on the table, because she didn’t want him to see the gratefulness in her eyes. “You really have to choose those mentor-types carefully.”

  “Yeah,” Oz said, staring off into space. “Yeah, you do.”

  The day had gone amazingly fast—too fast, in fact. For Oz, school usually dragged; the information the teachers offered was too easily absorbed by his brain and, more often than not, very uninteresting in general. Apparently the universe was conspiring against him today; he dreaded having to deal with this afternoon’s responsibilities. It seemed the Powers That Be had decreed that the clock should move along at ten times its normal speed, solely for the purpose of tormenting him. He wasn’t looking forward to it.

  Then it was his last period, and then even that was over and done with, while around him most of the other students had at least one final hour or so of education. Not him, though. Now nothing stood between him and his future.

  Except, maybe, Alysa Bardrick.

  She was waiting in the library when he got there, looking tall, thin and impatient, her sleek black outfit not much different from the nighttime attire he’d seen her wear at the Bronze. It was completely out of place here at the school. Waiting on the library table was a thick sheaf of papers—the same pile of contracts, no doubt, for him and the other members of Dingoes, as well as for Xander and Willow. There was probably one for Angel, too, if Alysa could convince him to sign away a chunk of his existence, along with the rest of his friends.

  “Hello, Oz,” Alysa said.

  “Hi.” He came in, hiding his reluctance, pulled out one of the chairs at the library table, and dropped onto it. “How are you?”

  “I’ve brought all the contracts,” she said, ignoring his attempt to be polite. “You’ll see that everything is in order. If you’ll just sign on page eight, we can start pulling everything into place.” The older woman looked at him expectantly. “Where are the others?”

  Oz caught a glimpse of Giles on the other side of the library’s open office door. Giles knew about Alysa’s appointment with him, of course, and after the information that Angel had dropped on their heads this morning, Oz couldn’t blame the guy for wanting to hang around, just in case. This woman could no doubt spin a whole bunch of new definitions for the word “devious.”

  “Well?” Alysa said, arching one eyebrow.

  “They aren’t coming,” he said.

  For a moment she didn’t say anything, then the band manager folded her arms, looking stiff and vaguely volatile. “I see,” she said in a bristly voice. “I take it, then, that you and your friends are still unsure about my services?”

  “Actually,” Oz said, “I think we’re pretty clear on all accounts.” And it was true; he’d talked things over with Devon and the others at lunch, giving them the scoop on what it would probably mean to let her put Dingoes Ate My Baby on her client list. Ultimately everyone was totally okay with Oz’s decision. In fact, Devon had pretty much shrugged it off and said better luck next time. His parents, he’d told Oz with a lopsided grin, would be just totally frosted if he dropped out of school and took off anyway. His cautious attempt at bringing up the subject the other night had resulted in no less than his dad threatening to sell Devon’s car, and what kind of a band singer/senior could he be with no wheels? “We’ve decided to keep handling Dingoes ourselves,” Oz finished.

  He could’ve sworn Alysa Bardrick actually flinched when she heard this. “Really.” She paused, searching for her next words. When they came, there was a tinge of frost in her tone, an undercurrent of threat that she’d kept well hidden until now. “That’s most unfortunate. I saw a lot of potential in you and the others.”

  Oz looked at her blandly. “I’ll bet you did.”

  A muscle twitched lightly at the side of her jaw. “Is there some particular reason for this, or has someone else given you . . . the wrong impression?”

  A shadow disengaged itself from the side of a bookcase across the room and Angel moved to join them, his steps silent, his face brooding. “Seems to be a lot of that going around,” he said in a low voice. Alysa started when she realized he was there, then her eyes narrowed as Angel continued. “Wrong impressions, that is.”

  “Uh-huh.” Slowly building anger had drained the color from Alysa’s face and her lips pressed together tightly, creating a blood-red slash across its bottom half. “And these wrong impressions would be coming from . . . where?”

  “Oh,” Angel said as he idly inspected his fingernails. “Here and there.” He raised his eyes to meet hers without actually lifting his head. “Just . . . around.”

  Oz watched the play of emotions across the woman’s face and tried to read them, knew he wasn’t nearly as good at it as Angel was. In fact, he wasn’t as good as Angel was at a lot of things . . . like finding out information about someone before you damned near gave them everything that you were. Then again, he wasn’t a couple of centuries old, either— and I never will be —so maybe he ought to cut himself a little slack.

  “See,” Oz finally said, “I figured it was a two-way thing. Sure, we do the music part of the deal, but you were also kind of applying for the job as our manager.”

  “I don’t see what—”

  “Your references sucked,” Angel interrupted darkly. “In fact, I’d say calling them ‘muddy’ would be damned generous.”

  “Well,” she said crisply, reaching for the papers. “There’s certainly no sense in arguing. I have better things to do with my time than waste it trying to sign on a nobody high school band.”

  “Really,” Angel said. He lifted one booted foot and rested it on the edge of the table, then stared at the polished wood. “Like what? Appointments to pick up a few . . . hard to find substances for your other band members, maybe?”

  Alysa drew herself up. “Choose your words carefully, young man. In today’s society, accusations aren’t taken lightly without proof, you know.”

  Finally, the vampire looked up. His face was the epitome of innocence. “Accusations? I’m only speculating.”

  She gave Angel an icy glare, then turned back to Oz. “I’ll give you one last chance,” she said. “You and Dingoes could be on your way by next week.”

  Oz frowned at her. “On our way to what? A carefully disguised form of captivity?”

  For a fleeting moment, Alysa Bardrick looked shocked, as if no one had ever put it all together before. Then she recovered. “I’m not holding anyone. My clients can leave anytime they want.” She gathered up the stack of contracts, then stuffed them back into her bag, carefully taking all evidence away with her. “ Perhaps we’ll meet again,” she told Oz. She gifted Angel with a final glower, then stalked out.

  “No,” Oz said as the two of them watched her leave. He thought again of the dead Kevin Sanderson and the way he’d blindly followed the just as deceased Daniel Addison.


  “I sure hope not.”

  “Boy, ain’t this just the biggest mess you ever seen?” Bob Norrell complained. He and his coworker and best lunch buddy, Fred Vaughn, stood in the doorway to Daniel Addison’s tiny office, staring at the chaos inside. Papers were strewn everywhere, file drawers had been pulled out and left on the floor, everything on the shelves had been taken down, examined, then pitched back up there any which way. “I’ll tell you,” Bob continued. “This has got to have been the worst week we’ve ever had in this place, and I’ve been here for almost twenty-three years. People murdered, big old bunch of red dirt showing up right in the middle of the dinosaur exhibit—it’s gonna take days to clean that out. I don’t know what the hell’s going on around here anymore!”

  The younger Fred just nodded, having learned a long time ago that it was best to simply agree with anything Bob Norrell said or pay the consequences. The older man could argue a point, even something about which he was obviously wrong, for three days, and damned near drive him insane over it. Fred had a young, pregnant bride at home who already did that; he didn’t need it here at the museum, too. “You can say that again,” he said.

  “Well.” Bob sighed. “Here we go.” He gave the closet-size room a final, baleful look, then reached back and pulled up two flattened box forms, one for him and one for Fred. “Take this and let’s get started. Like they said, pack it all up and put it down in the second level basement.”

  Fred began dutifully molding his hunk of cardboard into a recognizable box shape, tucking flaps here and there in the appropriate places. “Don’t the cops want to look through all this stuff?”

  Bob shrugged. “They already did. I’ll give you one guess who made this mess.”

  Fred nodded again, then began scooping up papers and the little odds and ends that were thrown everywhere. There were blank spots on the dusty shelves where some of the more important fossils and bones had been removed; apparently the museum’s administration had already claimed what they thought was important enough to recatalog or pass along to other people in the department. Everything else: storage. “What’s this?” he said, and lifted a ragged, leathercovered notebook from under a stack of wrinkled computer print-outs. “Looks like it’s been burned.”