Buffy backed up, too. The hatchling was not dead yet. It still held some power, particularly over Veronique, to whom it had given so much of that power over the centuries.
“Please,” Veronique begged.
The vampire turned to face Buffy and reached out her hands, though whether she was seeking help or casting blame, Buffy would never know.
As Buffy and the others looked on, Veronique was suddenly bathed in an eerie matte nothingness that was more a lack of substance than of anything else. In a strange slow-motion progression, Veronique was stripped of everything — hair and eyebrows, then layers of skin, disappearing into the matte, until she looked like some strange creature composed of bloody muscles. Her eyes and the cartilage in her nose were stripped away. Her veins and arteries and then her unbeating heart. All her organs.
And then her bones.
For a moment, there was a strange imprint of black on black, and then Veronique was gone.
She had never even screamed.
“Ashes to ashes,” Buffy whispered, wiping her grimy hands on her grimy pants.
The fires were out. The forest around them for a quarter mile was a charred wasteland of ash and smoke that flurried across the clearing.
Angel came up beside her.
“It’s over,” he drawled.
Thunder rumbled overhead, and it began to rain.
Epilogue
The morning after the fire, Buffy slept in. She didn’t sleep very well, however. Despite her evil, Veronique had died a pitiful creature, and it had been disturbing to see. But that didn’t keep her awake. The burns did that.
It wasn’t much, all things considered. Giles had explained that the doubling of the life force in each of their bodies while they were possessed had likely speeded the healing process — though as the Slayer, Buffy naturally healed faster than everyone else. But all of them had still suffered burns. Willow had cast a healing spell for them and whipped up a salve. It was working for Buffy. But then again, Slayer.
She hoped everyone else was doing all right.
When she finally gave up and decided that despite her exhaustion, she had to face the world, she dragged herself out of bed and into the shower. She hoped her mother would be discharged that day and wanted to get to the hospital.
An hour later, when the elevator doors opened at her mother’s floor, her heart began to beat faster, and a broad smile spread across her face.
Buffy hurried into the room, to find her mother sitting up in bed and eating a turkey sandwich. When Joyce looked up and smiled weakly, Buffy grinned happily.
“You’re too late for breakfast, lazybones,” her mother said. “But you can share my lunch if you want.”
“You stay right there, lady,” Buffy chided her. “I can get my own lunch.” She walked over and kissed Joyce on the head. “How do you feel?”
Her mother looked up, and her smile started to fade a bit. “I was going to say great.”
“But?” Buffy asked with concern.
Joyce glanced away. “It was pretty scary, honey.”
Buffy put a hand on her shoulder. “You can say that again. You had me terrified. Let’s not do that again anytime soon, okay?”
“Deal,” her mother said, and then she looked at Buffy closely for the first time, studying the skin of her arms. “Hey, what happened to you?”
“I’ll be okay,” Buffy said lightly.
“Do I dare even ask about last night?”
“Probably better if you don’t,” Buffy said reluctantly.
“Oh, Buffy,” Joyce sighed, shaking her head. “You’re going to be the death of me.”
That night, when Angel walked from Dr. Coleman’s room, Buffy was waiting outside the door. When she saw him, she smiled, too brightly, and they walked down the corridor.
“How’s your mother?”
“Much better.” She laughed uncomfortably. “She’s embarrassed to have such a hokey-sounding disease. She says it’ll sound very stupid on the annual Summers Christmas card.”
“She could skip it.”
“Mom’s a stickler for the details,” Buffy replied. “You know that.”
“Yes.” He paused. “No sign of Tergazzi?”
“Figure he skipped town. Maybe went back to Vegas with Queenie. He’s gotta think his luck is changing.”
Angel smiled wanly. “What about the ghost? That Slayer?”
“Lucy? I have a feeling we’ll see her again.”
She glanced at him. “Is Dr. Coleman going to be okay?”
“She had a mild heart attack when Veronique’s bunch jumped her the other night. Unfortunately, she had another, much more severe, last night. I’m pretty sure she’s going to die soon. So is she.”
Buffy stared at the squares of linoleum, wheat-colored and very bland, very boring.
“We all are, compared to you.” Her voice was harsh. “We’re like the small towns of life expectancy. Blink, and poof! You’ve just driven past our entire downtown.”
“A lifetime is a lifetime, no matter how long it is,” he ventured.
“Please. Politically correct vampires I can do without.”
He stopped and touched her shoulders. “Buffy, if you did die, I would die.”
She raised her chin. “No. You wouldn’t.” When he opened his mouth, she raised a hand to stop him from speaking. “You would grieve. I’ll give you that.” She sighed and gazed at him levelly. “Maybe you’d even put roses on my grave for the first, oh, fifty years or so.”
Angel looked down.
Say something, she thought desperately. Come on. Deny it.
Instead, Angel took her hand in his.
Together, they walked down the hospital corridor.
Alone.
Immortal Page 32
