He had no idea. As he searched inside himself, he found that he had no concrete opinions about his own death. Had he lived so long it was simply an abstraction? How far apart from other people did that set him?
I am not a person, he reminded himself. I’m a vampire.
He had faced death many times. Time and again, he would have willingly sacrificed himself for Buffy. Or Willow. Or any of them. Or is that just talk, because I truly can’t imagine death anymore?
If you die and come back, were you ever really dead?
Does it matter?
He watched silently as Leah pulled open the door to the Sunnydale Suites Inn and carefully crossed the transom.
Yes, he thought. It matters a lot.
Chapter Eight
“This sucks.”
They stood on the minuscule rise that made up the “hill” part of Shady Hill Cemetery, and for a moment no one spoke. The Slayer and those closest to her. The ones who backed her play, time and time again. Who were always there for her, even if it wasn’t for her, exactly. Like Cordelia, for instance. Buffy often marveled at Cordelia’s willingness to fight the good fight. Whatever else they might say about her — most of it unkind but true — there was no denying that she just wasn’t made the same way as other beautiful, shallow, popular, bitchy girls. There was a bit of steel in her, the courage to face what lurked in the shadows instead of turning away. Despite the massive inconvenience to her quest for social supremacy.
Then there was Oz. True, he was a werewolf and all. But he’d been willing to help out even before he was in love with Willow, even before he knew the score in Sunnydale was Evil, several million; Slayer, one.
Willow and Xander were another story. They just loved her. Buffy knew that, and it meant more to her than she could ever explain to them in her fractured version of English. They were always there to watch her back, to play cavalry when the evil was too much even for a Slayer to handle. This time, though, there just wasn’t much they could do. There was nothing for them to help Buffy fight. It was a battle she had to wage on her own.
No. That’s not even true. It’s a battle Mom has to wage on her own. And I have to just stand by and watch and hate myself for not being able to do anything to help.
Buffy looked around at her friends and realized that maybe they were all in the same position after all.
“Man, this totally sucks,” she said, even more gravely.
“Which part?” Oz asked.
“My thought, too,” Xander said. “The vampires-and-grave-robbings-have-us-mightily-confused-and-we-have-to-find-this-immortal-vampire part, or the Mom’s-not-healthy part, or the it’s-ten-past-eight-and-Angel’s-late-again part?”
“I’ve never been Optimist Girl, but you’re depressing even me,” Cordelia said.
Buffy smiled thinly, unsuccessfully. Her eyes met Willow’s, and she realized her best friend had said nothing. They looked at each other a moment longer, and when Buffy spoke, it was Willow she was speaking to.
“She has a spot on her X ray,” the Slayer whispered. “Some kind of mass. They don’t know if it’s . . . cancerous, so they’re going to do a CAT scan.”
Willow held Buffy’s hand tightly, sharing her strength.
“Hey, Buffy,” Xander said gently. “I know you’re scared, but don’t freak. People have tumors and turn out fine. My Uncle Roary’s had two tumors removed from his lungs, and both have turned out to be harmless if disgusting growths. And the doctors aren’t even sure if what he’s got a little lower can even be called a liver anymore, but he’s fit as a drunken fiddle.”
Buffy rolled her eyes. “Thanks, Xand. That’s a comfort. Truly.”
Xander puffed up proudly. “Score,” he said in a hush.
Shaking her head, Buffy looked at Cordelia, who would not meet her gaze. Buffy was stupefied. For once, Cordelia Chase had absolutely nothing to say. Or, more accurately, Buffy figured she had no idea what she should say.
“I’d like to suggest, dwelling, bad,” Oz observed.
“Right,” Buffy said, nodding. “Been doing way too much bad dwelling. Unhealthy stuff. As of now, we’re moving on to that place where I internalize my anger and fear and sadness and express my feelings by kicking the crap out of anything that gets in my way.”
Willow smiled. “That’s my girl,” she said gently.
“For starters,” Buffy went on, “we’re not waiting for Angel. If he doesn’t find us here, he’ll head for the library. Let’s rendezvous with Giles and see if we can’t figure out what our next move should be.”
Nobody argued. They didn’t dare.
Buffy pushed through the library doors a little past eight-thirty, with her friends in tow. Giles poked his head out of his office a moment later. She expected his let’s-get-on-with-it face, but instead, he looked upset about something. For a moment, she was thinking demons. Then she recognized the sad look in his eyes and the way it was directed at her, and she knew.
“Ah, Buffy,” he said, rather absently but in that way that proved he wasn’t absent at all. “I’m glad you’re all here. I presume your mother told you I spoke to her earlier . . .”
“She mentioned it,” Buffy said. “But don’t worry. I’m not gonna drop the ball.”
“Yes, well, I just want you to know that whatever you need to do, whatever time you’d like to spend with her, the rest of us will persevere. Time with your mother should be your priority,” he said.
Buffy frowned, staring at him a moment.
“What is it?” Giles asked.
“She’s going to be fine, Giles,” Buffy insisted. “I appreciate the thought, and I’ll need to be with her some, but I’m on this stuff with Veronique and her annoying resurrection habits. My mom’s going to be fine.”
“Well, very good, then,” Giles agreed, nodding. Then he looked directly at Buffy, eyes narrowed. “Be that as it may, you’ll do as you must, as always. Whatever we can do to make that easier, you can rest assured it will be done.”
Buffy looked away, a bit ashamed by her initial response. Giles was only trying to be kind, to reach a comforting hand out to her.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “I really do appreciate it. Now, though, I think we have more immediate things to worry about. Did you find anything useful?”
Giles had nodded and was lifting a book up from the study table when the doors swung open again and Angel stepped in. They all looked at him, and Buffy wondered if they were all thinking the same thing. It wasn’t their mother who might have cancer, but they had to be super aware of Angel just the same. He was a vampire. Cancer would never claim him. He was immortal.
But even that was only to a point.
Veronique was a different story. If what they believed was correct, she was immortal in a much truer sense. It made her one of the most formidable enemies Buffy had ever faced. Buffy still had a very difficult time accepting it as reality. She was so used to just dusting vamps and being done with them that the idea of a vampire that was essentially invincible, unkillable . . . it simultaneously astonished her and disturbed her profoundly.
“Sorry I’m late,” Angel said, speaking to them all but looking only at Buffy.
“It adds to your mystique,” Willow told him.
“See,” Xander said. “That’s what I need. How do I get some mystique?”
“It’s like credit,” Cordelia sniped. “Can’t get it if you don’t have it.”
“Back to square one, then,” Xander said in surrender.
“You never left square one, so you can’t go back to it,” Cordelia reminded him.
“I know it’s a great deal to ask of this group, but do you think we might have the smallest bit of decorum?” Giles asked. “Night has long since fallen, and this particular pack of vampires seem to be quite a bit more industrious than their more dimwittedly hedonistic cousins.”
He glanced at Angel. “No offense, of course.”
“None taken.”
Giles opened the book that he’d
picked up from the table and bent his head slightly to glance over a few pages as he skimmed.
“Now, then,” he mumbled, and continued to skim.
“This is riveting,” Xander said. “Thank God for decorum.”
Giles shot him a withering glance, then looked back down at the book and tapped his finger on the page.
“Here we are. ‘As for the recovered pages from the journal of Peter Toscano, they seem to indicate that this Veronique received her own immortality — a kind of perpetual resurrection wherein she revives inside the next vampire born within a certain distance of the site of her previous destruction — from a demon referred to alternately as the Triumvirate or the Three-Who-Are-One. Veronique appears to prefer the female form but has also been known to inhabit male host bodies when necessary . . .’”
Buffy listened carefully. When Giles finished, she looked at him expectantly. When she realized there was nothing more, she sighed.
“I kinda hoped it would tell us how to shut her off,” she said.
“After our patrol, I’ll continue my research,” Giles assured her.
“Who’s Peter Toscano?” Willow asked.
“He was a Watcher, mid-nineteenth century,” Angel explained. When Giles looked at him in surprise, he shrugged. “That was my prime. You think I didn’t keep tabs on Slayer/Watcher doings? The Slayer at the time was the Martignetti girl, right? As I recall, though, Toscano disappeared.”
Giles looked at him a moment longer. Then he nodded. “That’s one way of saying it. Actually, he was burned to death in his home, along with most of his journals and, apparently, the rest of his library.
“In any case, I’ll continue trying to find more information about Veronique and this Triumvirate. I’ve found no information as yet pertaining to precisely what sort of a demon it is, what kind of threat it represents, or what its agenda might be.
“For the moment, then, we must concentrate on Veronique. I presume her presence here serves it or them or what-have-you in some way. It seeems possible we could stop her by trapping her somewhere far from any vampire activity,” Giles suggested.
“Not forever enough for me,” Buffy said. “But it’s something to think about. Problem is, how do you catch her and keep her long enough to get her somewhere remote enough that there wouldn’t be any vampire activity. I mean ever.”
“You could try someplace smelly and dirty, like Newark or Detroit,” Cordelia suggested. “I doubt even vampires would hang out there.”
“Okay, so what’s the real plan?” Xander asked.
Giles cleared his throat slightly. “Though it would be helpful to know what Veronique and her followers are doing with the corpses they are retrieving, it would seem our first order of business is to try to prevent any more vampires from being born into her service.”
“So, saving lives,” Willow translated helpfully.
They all looked at Buffy.
“Weapon up,” the Slayer said. “Then we split into teams, and we go hunting. If they’re really going at this new membership drive as hard as they seem, we should be able to dust a few of them tonight.”
“You make them sound like Jehovah’s Witnesses,” Oz observed.
“These guys are even heavier into recruitment,” Buffy told him.
Then she paused. She looked around the room at her friends. At Giles. At Angel.
Angel. She’d needed him so desperately earlier, and he hadn’t been there. Now, she wanted badly to talk to him, to tell him what was happening with her mother. To have him hold her and tell her it was going to be all right.
Even now, he looked at her with those soulful eyes, such love there, and Buffy wanted him to explain. To make the hurt and the fear go away.
But nobody could do that. And in some ways, Angel was probably the least qualified of all. He couldn’t give her what she did need. And what he could give — a reminder that people were mortal and that her mother would die someday, even if not this time around; supportive, whispered, loving words that would ring all the more hollow because they came from lips already dead, from a soul that survived only inside a shell of evil — those things were not what Buffy needed now.
For a long moment, she looked at Angel, heart troubled with a conflict that was new to her. She loved him. But in that moment, part of her hated him as well. For being alive. For having gone on living while so many died around him.
She took a deep breath, then turned to Willow. “I’d like you to come with me.”
Willow blinked, glanced at Oz, and then moved toward Buffy. “I’m your girl,” she said. “Not in the girl sense, but in the on-the-team sense, that . . . maybe I could have a weapon and I’ll be quiet now.”
Buffy didn’t smile. She really couldn’t. Not then. Instead, she glanced over at the others.
“Guess I’ll stick with Giles,” Oz said reasonably.
Cordelia glared at Xander. “I am not wandering around dark places with Mr. Chicken.”
“Fine,” Buffy said gruffly. “You go with Giles and Oz.”
Xander nodded happily. “Good, I don’t want to be anywhere near our little scream queen. So that leaves me with . . .” Realization dawned on him, and he sighed and looked over at Angel. “Guess it’s just you and me, Dead Boy.”
Angel looked at Buffy. “This happens too often for my liking.”
“Yeah. It’s a conspiracy,” Cordelia said happily. “You spend enough time with Xander, we’re sort of hoping you’ll be aggravated enough to kill him.”
“Ha-freakin’-ha,” Xander said blithely.
Angel turned to look at him, face deadpan. “I don’t know. It could work.”
They gathered in the darkness in front of Sunnydale High, each armed with the accoutrements of vampire hunting: cross, holy water, stakes, and the courage to stand against the undead. Giles had a crossbow, as did Xander. Willow whispered a little charm and spread her hands wide to include all of them.
“Maybe it’s late to bring this up,” Xander said, “but has anyone noticed all the people with transportation are in one group?”
Oz quickly went to Willow and handed her the keys to his van. Giles glanced at Cordelia, and the two stared at each other for a long moment. Cordelia was the first to look away.
“I hate riding in that corroded death trap you call a car,” she said firmly.
“You’d rather have Oz and me as passengers in that cramped little sports thing you drive?” Giles asked, surprised.
“No,” she sneered, and pointed at Xander and Angel. “But I’d rather that than have one of those two bozos drive my car.”
Giles chuckled and tossed Angel the keys.
“This just keeps getting better,” the vampire muttered. Then he turned to walk toward the parking lot. “Come on, Boy Wonder. Let’s see if we can track down the Joker before he strikes again.”
“That’s not fair,” Xander grumbled. “I was planning to make the Batmobile joke.”
“Just losing your touch, Xand,” Willow said sympathetically.
Then they were all heading to the three vehicles parked in the school lot. Oz climbed into the backseat of Cordelia’s candy-apple-red sports coupe, and Giles dropped into the passenger seat with a look of terror on his face. Willow climbed into the van and started it up. Xander hopped into the passenger side of Giles’s car. Buffy and Angel stood together in the lot between the van and the Citroën.
“How’s your mother?”
Buffy looked away. “She’s got something on her lung.”
Angel reached out to run a hand lightly along her arm. Buffy marveled at his silence. Somehow, he must have known. He must have understood what she was feeling.
But then, he always had.
“Thanks,” she whispered, and stood on her toes to kiss him. “Be careful.”
Angel smiled. “In this car?”
Giles, Oz, and Cordelia sat in her car in front of the Bronze, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Though he tried to maintain his focus, Giles found Cordelia�
��s incessant nattering about shopping and fashion and her responsibility to less socially cogent teens to be quite a distraction. At length, he had to get out of the car, if only to clear his head. Oz followed quickly after.
Giles left his crossbow in the trunk. If they were going to be hanging around outside the Bronze, or venturing inside, he couldn’t exactly carry it with him.
“Make sure you have your keys to hand, Cordelia,” he said. “I don’t want to have to search through your purse if we’re under attack.”
“Seems quiet,” Oz noted.
They all looked at the Bronze. There was a bouncer at the door, and the low thrum of music could be heard from inside, but it was definitely not a standing-room-only night at the Bronze.
“You really think anyone’s going to get grabbed right out front?” Cordelia asked.
“No,” Giles said patiently. “Though I do expect some moronic teenager to wander off with the object of his or her affection and receive a very nasty surprise for their troubles.”
“Pretty much par for the course, then,” Oz muttered.
Neither Giles nor Cordelia responded to that, but the Watcher certainly understood it as a sad truth of youthful romance. Or romance in general, in some respects. Very rarely did people turn out to be precisely what you expected, or perhaps hoped, they would be. When it happened, though . . . sometimes that could lead to the nastiest surprises of all.
Giles knew that better than anyone.
The three of them stood in the shadows or leaned against Cordelia’s car in front of the warehouse across from the Bronze for better than an hour. More than once, Giles found his eyes drooping, his head bowing, only to snap awake again. He had spent too many nights up till all hours doing research, and it was catching up with him now. Again. He could not help but think his time would be better spent getting the information they needed, perhaps precluding them from needing to make another all-out effort tomorrow night.
“Can we go home now?” Cordelia said a while later. “Standing around like this is bad for my posture.”
They both looked at her quizzically.
“I slouch when I’m bored,” she explained.
Immortal Page 15
