UNSEEN: THE BURNING

by Nancy Holder

  Buffy watched him fiddling with his cassette recorder. She had known him for years and loved him like a father—or at least, like a Watcher, which was what he had originally been to her. The Watchers Council had kicked him out, because he sided with her, against them. So she still thought of him that way, as a kind and wise older man who cared for her and had her best interests at heart. She would do anything for him.

  But boy, she thought. Since the high school came down, Giles has sure become desperate to be needed.

  Finally he had the tape cued to where he wanted it. “Here,” he said. “Listen to this.”

  Staticky audio came from his speakers. There seemed to be a lot of that “one Adam twelve” stuff she’d heard on TV a million times. But after a few moments, as she got used to listening, she heard a young officer’s voice quivering with horror.

  “. . . horrible,” the voice said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. A pack of wild dogs, maybe . . . more like a shark attack, though. Except in the middle of Weatherly Park. There are . . . there are pieces everywhere. Pieces . . .” His voice broke off then.

  Giles clicked the tape off. “I wanted you to hear the emotion in the young policeman’s voice,” he said. “The abject terror.”

  There were nods all around.

  “Very abject,” Willow said helpfully.

  “This is definitely not wild dogs.”

  “It never is,” Anya said, stretching. She yawned. “Maybe it was sharks.”

  Giles blinked. “Anya, there are no sharks cruising through a city park, miles from the ocean.”

  Anya scowled.

  “And then, there was another call, several hours earlier. I didn’t play it for you first, because the dispatcher who relayed the call to a squad car didn’t take it seriously. But in light of the discovery made this morning—” He consulted a note he had jotted down. “—at seven-thirteen, the call from last night certainly seems like something that ought to have been taken very seriously indeed.”

  He rewound the tape and pressed another button. Again, the static came through the speakers, followed by a voice.

  “Dispatch, this is Peters. I checked out that squeal you caught over on the south side.”

  “The monster?” another voice asked. The dispatcher, presumably.

  Peters barked out a laugh. “That’s the one. Seems Mr. and Mrs. LaVeaux were taking a walk, around midnight. The old man doesn’t sleep so well, unless he gets a late walk. So they were out, and they felt like they were being watched.”

  “Never heard that one before.”

  “Right. So they’re walking, they’re getting nervous, and then Mrs. LaVeaux, she says that there’s a shadow following them down the street. That she can see it when it passes underneath the streetlights. It’s big, hunched over-looking, like a big cat following them down the sidewalk, only it’s twice the size of the biggest lion in Africa.”

  “Ain’t they all,” Dispatch drawled.

  “Ten feet tall, twenty feet long. She can only see it when it slips through the patches of light. Like it’s there, but not there, she says. Mr. LaVeaux, he sees it, too. It’s behind them, but it’s getting closer, catching up. Only they get home before it reaches them, turn on all the lights, and call us.”

  “You see anything in the neighborhood?” Dispatch queried.

  “Plenty of shadows. It’s one in the morning. But none of them chased me. I’m heading back in.”

  “See you soon,” Dispatch said. “Over and out.”

  Giles stopped the tape again. “So you see—”

  “I have a question,” Anya interrupted, raising her hand like an elementary school student. Beside her, Xander visibly cringed.

  “Yes, Anya?”

  “If you taped that call at one in the morning, and the other one at seven-thirteen, does that mean you’re totally insane, or just obsessive-compulsive?”

  Xander elbowed her in the ribs. “You are the soul of discretion, Anya.”

  “Like you weren’t wondering it, too.”

  Giles reddened a bit, but continued. “So you see. A report of a big catlike presence, a shadow monster of some kind. And elsewhere the same night, two lovers are torn apart by something with giant claws.”

  Buffy saw Willow nervously twirling her hair around one finger. “It couldn’t be . . .”

  “It’s not Oz,” Buffy assured her, even though she wasn’t so sure herself.

  Willow’s eyes grew huge. “But it might be. What if he’s back, and he’s gone evil somehow? That happens, right?”

  “Willow, there’s no reason to think it was him. It doesn’t even really sound like a werewolf attack. And even as a wolf, who would think that Oz was ten feet tall?” She turned to Giles with a plaintive expression. “But when we can rule it out for certain, I’m sure Will . . . we’ll be happier.”

  “I agree with Buffy,” Giles said. “For one thing, last night was a half-moon. Not werewolf time at all.

  “Nonetheless, we must investigate every possibility. I’d like a couple of you to go to the park. Check for paw prints. See if there’s any reason that we need to think werewolves are involved. I’m sure it’s not Oz, but we should rule it out one hundred percent.”

  “Yeah,” Willow agreed.

  “And maybe we should find Spike, see if he’s heard anything,” Buffy added.

  “Good idea, Buffy,” Giles said.

  “Any thoughts as to how the victims were chosen?” Riley asked. “Buffy and I were in Weatherly Park last night, probably around the time of the attack—we saw a couple there, before we left. It looked like they wanted some privacy.”

  “Were they naked?” Anya asked.

  “Not yet,” Riley replied. “Matter of moments after we left, I’m sure.”

  “I don’t think we have enough information yet to . . . to speculate on that,” Giles said, still a bit red-cheeked. “All we know is that one couple saw a creature, and another couple had a more unfortunate encounter with something that may or may not have been the same creature.”

  “I have a suggestion,” Xander volunteered.

  “Yes, Xander?” Giles asked him.

  Everyone looked at him expectantly.

  He did not disappoint.

  “If we all stay inside for the next few nights, maybe none of us will run into this, this shadow monster. Then, maybe you can keep listening to your junior G-man radio set, and you can figure out how it picks its victims.

  “And once we know that, then we can just not do whatever it is that its victims all have in common.” He smiled brightly and raised his eyebrows.

  “That’s incredibly helpful, Xander,” Giles said.

  “I think what Xander means is that he’s offering himself up as bait,” Riley joked. “We’ll tie him to a tree and watch from a distance to see what happens.”

  “Yes. With our special X-Men field glasses, so it can be a very faraway distance,” Buffy added, all lilting innocence.

  Anya put her arms protectively around Xander. “If anyone’s going to be tying Xander up, it’s going to be me,” she announced. “And he likes it best if you—”

  Xander shot up and clapped a hand down over Anya’s mouth. “Discretion again,” he said, blushing furiously. “I can see we need to make another trip to the big dictionary.”

  “Obviously, I need to patrol again tonight,” Buffy said, changing the subject for Xander’s benefit.

  “We both do,” Riley agreed.

  Buffy turned to him. “But not together. We can cover more ground if we split up.”

  Riley reluctantly nodded.

  “And also, we still have Salma’s brother to think about,” Willow reminded her. “We promised her we’d work on that.”

  “Unless Salma’s brother is in pieces in the park, I think this has to take a higher priority,” Buffy argued.

  “Buffy, from what you told me of the books Willow’s friend says her brother was delving into, I think you had better make him a high priority as well,” Giles sugge
sted.

  Buffy frowned. He took off his glasses as he regarded her, then set to cleaning them with his T-shirt.

  “Those are not beginning readers. He’s playing with some deadly serious toys. I hate to suggest it, but the timing of his disappearance, with the sudden presence of these shadow beasts, suggests that there may even be some connection between the two cases.”

  Willow nodded at the Slayer. Capitulating, Buffy sighed. “Okay. We’ll put some effort into trying to locate Nicky today. Giles, how about if you and Xander and Anya do some research, try to see if you can turn up anything about ‘shadow monsters.’ ”

  Giles looked at Anya and Xander. Buffy could see his shoulders slump a bit as he did. But he was a trooper.

  “Very well.”

  “I’ll go out on patrol and you can deal with Willow’s friend,” Riley said. “If I need backup, Buffy, I’ll be in touch.”

  “Be sure you are,” Buffy insisted. “This thing sounds pretty nasty.”

  “I’m tough,” Riley reminded her, with a little wink.

  “I know. I wasn’t saying that you weren’t.”

  She was abashed. She kept expecting him to not love the fact that no matter how tough he was, he would never be as strong as she was. Her defensiveness in that area was hard to let go of. Why, she wasn’t too sure. It had never bothered her that she was stronger than Xander, and it had been a point of pride in the early days that she could deck Giles within minutes of any training session. But Riley was her boyfriend, her very-much-human boyfriend, and for some reason, there was the crazy notion of the other shoe dropping, and him admitting he wanted some chick in a gauzy negligee who stood in the corner and screamed while he vanquished the evil.

  Maybe I just keep expecting him to find some reason to leave. Which, given my history with the opposite sex, is not an insane fear.

  Still, ego.

  His, or mine?

  He was staring at her intently, as if trying to speak to her in the secret code of goo-goo eyes.

  “What?”

  “I’ll call for backup if I need it,” he said gently. “Don’t worry.”

  “Not. Not worried.” She made her eyes big. “Really.”

  His smile was slow and lazy, like the Iowa River or whatever it was. Corn-fed, normal Riley.

  She thought about the magnet on his refrigerator: Things are not as they seem. They are what they are.

  Maybe only in love, she thought.

  That’s sure not true of life in the Slay lane.

  Los Angeles

  There was something bothering Cordelia Chase as she walked down Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, looking into the windows of shops that she couldn’t even afford to walk into, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was.

  No, that wasn’t quite accurate. She couldn’t isolate it, because it wasn’t just one thing, it was many. And they all added up to one big, overwhelming fact—Cordelia was having a lousy day. She had saved up enough money to buy a pair of killer pumps she’d had her eye on at Barney’s, and that still held promise of turning the day around. But so far it just pretty much stunk.

  There was the obvious fact, of course, that all these stores had been placed on the earth just to taunt her, to remind her of how much money she had once had, and how much she didn’t have now that the IRS had taken from her father what it felt it was owed for all those years in which he had not bothered to pay his income taxes.

  There was the fact that, although working in the office of a vampire private investigator had its own rewards, none of them were monetary. And it wasn’t even something she could really talk about at parties.

  Then there was the sighting, just moments ago while crossing the street at the corner, of Monique Breton, who Cordelia had once known as Monica Barnes. Monica had gone to junior high in Sunnydale, but since moving to L.A. she had scored a recurring role on a TV series. She wasn’t even a cast regular yet, but one would never know that by the way she looked right through Cordelia on the street—even though Cordelia had been working up her fake I’m-so-happy-for-you-smile and everything.

  And Monique/Monica isn’t the only one who seems to think I’m transparent, she thought. It’s like no one can see me.

  Back in Sunnydale, Cordelia had been the big fish in a small pond. She wasn’t universally loved, but she was universally known. Xander and Willow hadn’t formed a “We Hate Cordelia” club because she was some nobody. In Sunnydale, she had been the glamour queen, the beautiful one, the captain of the cheerleaders.

  In Los Angeles, though, she was just one more pretty face in a sea of pretty faces, many of which were more well-known and successful than she was.

  She wasn’t used to being one of the minnows. And she didn’t like it.

  She crossed Rodeo, intending to cut over to Beverly. There were stores there, only a block over, where a normal human could afford to shop once in a while. Places where the shopkeepers didn’t judge one by how recently a person had appeared in the trades. Cordelia could take Beverly down to Wilshire. She wouldn’t feel as invisible there as she did here in glitz central.

  She was just stepping up to the curb on the east side of the street when it hit.

  A vision. A bad one. The force of it knocked her down.

  It started with a grinding pain behind the eyes, like someone was operating on her frontal lobe with a power tool of some kind. Then it got bad. Agony that felt like hot steel rods being driven through her skull.

  In the midst of it—and she never got this part, she always thought it would be much more efficient if the visions came with some kind of pleasant, peaceful sensation so she could focus more on them and less on the pain—she saw the face of a young boy. Dark skin, black hair, big brown eyes wide with terror. Not more than ten or so, she thought. His name was Carlos Flores. He lived on South Pembroke, not far from the intersection of Figueroa and Pico.

  Then the vision was gone, the memory of Carlos Flores’s face burned into her memory, and the pain was receding.

  But she was still sitting on the sidewalk on Rodeo Drive. Land of the beautiful people. And now—of course—they were looking at her.

  Cordelia felt her cheeks redden with the sudden attention. “Slipped,” she explained to no one in particular.

  A bronzed god with a swimmer’s build and expensively perfect teeth extended her a hand and helped her up. “You okay?” he asked.

  “Fine, thanks. Slipped,” she repeated. She thought she recognized him from a guest shot on Baywatch: Hawaii, but since she didn’t admit publicly to watching the show, she couldn’t ask him. Anyway, the humiliation was too much to bear. A little unsteady on her feet, she left Rodeo Drive, looking for a pay phone.

  She found one on Beverly, in front of Nate & Al’s. Maybe after she called she’d go in for some blintzes, or one of their justifiably famous pastrami sandwiches. But first things first. She fed the phone and dialed the number of her apartment. Wesley Wyndam-Pryce picked up on the second ring.

  “Angel Investigations,” he answered.

  “Wesley, can’t you say ‘Cordelia Chase’s apartment,’ and also ‘Angel Investigations?’What if a casting director calls or something?”

  “Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it, shall we?” Wesley replied. “No need to live our lives in a delusional state.”

  “Very funny,” she said sourly. “I need Angel.”

  “He’s rather busy at the moment. Is there, perhaps, any way in which I can be of assistance?”

  Wesley was British, a former Watcher turned “rogue demon hunter” when his charges, Faith and Buffy, turned out to be a bit more rogue than he was. He helped Angel on some of his cases, but his type of assistance tended toward the cerebral rather than the physical. She didn’t think there was anything he could do now. Besides, when the Powers That Be sent a vision, they intended it for Angel, not his subordinates.

  “No. Angel. Vision.”

  “Ahh, right. Hold on.”

  She heard footsteps fading fro
m the phone, then returning a moment later. Wesley picked up again. “Right with you, Cordelia.”

  “Thanks, Wesley.” She waited. Her head still throbbed, but the pain was going away.

  After another moment, he said, “Here he is.” Master of the obvious, Cordelia thought. Angel’s voice came over the line a second later.

  “Cord. You had a vision?”

  “Right in the middle of Rodeo Drive,” she said. “You can’t imagine how embarrassing that is. I mean, it was one thing when I was in your office, which was, to put it bluntly, not heavily trafficked, you know? But here, in Beverly Hills, I’m among my tribe. One second I run into an old, old friend who’s starring in a hit series, and the next I’m on the ground with my head in my hands.

  “Next time you talk to the Powers That Be, try to get them to work on their timing, okay?”

  “Cordelia. The vision?”

  “Sure, I understand. The pain of some stranger you’ve never met is so much more important than mine. Sorry, that’s redundant, I guess. Isn’t a stranger, by definition, someone you haven’t met?”

  “Cordelia . . .”

  “Carlos Flores,” she said. “South Pembroke, near Pico. He’s just a kid, Angel. And he’s scared.”

  “I’m on it, Cord. I’ll keep you posted.”

  “You do that,” she said. “In the meantime I think I owe myself a treat.”

  Angel hung up the phone. Cordelia stood on Beverly, debating. Nate & Al’s? Or the bakery across the street?

  Sunnydale

  “Here’s the list.”

  Salma de la Natividad slid a piece of looseleaf notebook paper across the oak table toward Buffy. Twin red candles, cinnamon-scented, burned in silver candle holders on the tabletop. They were in Salma’s condo, in a fourteen-story building a few blocks from the beach. She was no dorm kid, Buffy realized. Her place was just a two-bedroom condo, but it was light, spacious, and airy. She had furnished it in light woods and wickers, with colorful print fabrics providing splashes of color here and there.