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Part SixSpike looked around the barn in sheer disgust, both at the local talent and at his newfound ally. There were signs that a reasonably bright local had been organizing the vamps in the area as best he could, but unfortunately, in a damned power trip, Siobhan had killed him for the crime of impertinence. The Irishwoman preferred to surround herself with rookies and muscle alone, distrusting anyone smarter or more powerful than herself. And while the redhead wasn’t stupid, she wasn’t the brightest star in the sky, either.
This essentially left morons incapable of following more than simple instructions. Spike carefully examined the fifteen or so in the vicinity of the barn — another half-dozen or so rookies were yet to be spawned, or on the hunt, but none of them were worth the effort of tracking down.
He’d known this already, but still, the Judge was smarter than these goons. At his instructions, Siobhan ordered five more of them to go out and make as much noise and trouble as possible towards the edges of town. This way, the Slayer would be distracted until it was too late.
At least, that was what he hoped. For now, the important thing was to find the blasted Orb. It was buried with its creator somewhere in this quasi-rural little cesspool of a town.
He had the creator’s name — some eighteenth-century German mage named Wilhelm Gruber — and the cemetery, but not the exact location. The nearby church had burned to the ground three times over the last 240 years and the records were long lost, and he didn’t much fancy digging up the entire bloody graveyard.
Unfortunately, it didn’t look like there was much of a choice. The Orb of the Savior was supposedly obvious once you saw the damn thing, but it was undetectable to any kind of mystical sensation. You’d think an item with the power to bring back the dead would be lighting up the night sky like the aurora-bloody-borealis, but something about the device made the magic leakage diffuse. It still drew supernatural beings from hither and yon, though only with about half of the strength of that damned Hellmouth back in cheerful old Sunnyhell.
Spike couldn’t see why. It wasn’t as if he was going to abuse the power or anything.
That’s why he had the locals. By a stroke of luck, the majority of the graveyard of the church of St. Germain was well off the main pathways of the town, so they could do some heavy digging. Or, rather, the local muscle could.
He’d explained all of this to Siobhan, who had nodded vigorously. She was quite willing to sacrifice every vampire in the town for the sake of the power she’d get from the Orb. The redhead’s one condition was that she get to kill the current Watcher. Spike had no problem with this. Revenge was an emotion he well understood, but quite honestly once the Slayer was dead and the Orb’s power was his and Siobhan’s to control, he had no reason to want the rest of the ‘Slayerettes’ to join the ranks of the deceased.
Poetry had always been Angel’s purview. Still, no point in leaving a live enemy behind. Maybe he’d turn Willow. It would be nice having someone with brains around — someone he didn’t need to worry would be trying to kill him every step of the way.
And she’d be nice company for the newly resurrected and turned Buffy Summers, too … what had her name been? Elsza, that was it.
Anyway. There was a hardware store a half a mile away. Spike called on three of the less stupid to go, break in, and steal as many heavy digging tools as they could carry. Siobhan would supervise the digging. (He trusted her to know the Orb when he saw it — also to be able to figure out if the corpse in question was that of one Wilhelm Gruber, former mage.)
Spike? He had a Slayer to capture.
He looked forward to the challenge.
* * *
It was a fifteen-minute drive from the Harris estate to the New Glenbury Chalet. Willow and Emily had a thorough discussion on the way over — primarily about Galen, secondarily about Regan’s little revelation.
It was difficult for Emily to keep the sly, leering tone out of her voice. For a few minutes, she needled Willow from the passenger seat about finally meeting the Italian multimillionaire of her dreams.
Willow laughed. “Of your dreams, Emily, your dreams. Sure, he has a sexy voice and he leads the kind of life most men only dream of, but for God’s sake I barely know the man. And our conversations have never been on that level.”
“C’mon, Willsy, I see your face every time he calls. You’re excited, admit it.”
“Well, it’s a bit of excitement, and he’s an interesting person. Wouldn’t you be?”
“But I’m not the one he calls most of the time. Think about it, Willsy — two dozen living ex-Watchers and you’re the one he calls with most of his revelations. Not the Council, not the active Watcher, you. Why would he choose you? And why would he keep calling you, hmmm?”
“Okay, okay, back off. Who taught you interrogation techniques?”
Emily smirked. “You did, Watcher mine.”
“Oh. Right.” Then she sobered for a second. “Um, should we be thinking too heavily about my love life right now? We have a few little dilemmas to deal with —”
Interrupting, Emily said, “Why not? There’s nothing else we can talk about that won’t depress us or piss us off.”
“What about Regan’s little suggestion that the Buffys are the same? I don’t really see it, myself —” She maneuvered the van onto Onion Street and headed towards the far side of I-83.
“You don’t?” Emily was very confused. “I mean, I can see, well — You don’t?”
“Well, there’s an odd resemblance, but — you mean you do?”
Thoughtfully, Emily said, “Yes. It’s so obvious, the way they look alike and all — the odd thing is that I never noticed it before tonight. That none of us noticed it before tonight …” she trailed off. “You know, I wonder if we were prevented from seeing it somehow …”
“We must be,” Willow retorted a bit sharply. “Because I still can’t see it.” Emily looked over at Willow oddly. That was definitely on the harsh side, especially for Willow Rosenberg.
“How can’t you?”
“I don’t know,” Willow answered. “I just — can’t, that’s all. Maybe we’re lucky you and Regan were around. Now — could we change the subject, please?”
This was very strange. Never had Emily seen Willow try to avoid a subject so strenuously — except Oz, and Angel, whom she also almost never talked about.
But she talked about Buffy all the time! Why wouldn’t she want to know if she was still alive, somehow? She hadn’t done anything to cause her death, nothing at all.
Unless …
“Willow,” Emily said quietly, “you saw the similarity back when we got the prophecy, didn’t you?”
For just an instant Willow’s face betrayed anger. Then, defeated, she admitted, “Yes.”
“There’s nothing to feel guilty about, Willsy — at least, nothing more. We both agreed to hide the Prophecy — that you hid something else really isn’t a big deal.”
“But if I hadn’t!” Willow protested. “Maybe we would have been able to find some way to short-circuit this one. Maybe — maybe Buffy wouldn’t have to die.”
“It’s not a guarantee. Remember,” she said in the perkiest voice appropriate under the circumstances, “you’ve beaten a prophecy before. You can do it again.”
“We didn’t beat that one. We just found an escape clause.” There didn’t seem to be anything else to say.
But there HAD to be an escape clause here. One that would let Buffy not die.
Anyway, no point to more conversations now, as here they were at the New Glenbury Chalet.
Emily swung her legs around and, as Willow exited on the other side of the car, she called out, “What room did he say it was?”
“Oh!” Willow said. “He didn’t.”
“Well, I don’t suppose we can just start screaming out his name from down here, and the office is closed. So …”
Senses long dormant kicked in and Emily yelled out, “Willow! Vampires!” Then she saw them. They were a matched pair, both male, both tall, and both ugly. They were closing in from Willow’s side of the car.
Willow reached into her coat and pulled out a vial of holy water. Thirty years had made her an expert shot, so she splashed one of the onrushing demons in the face. It went down in agony, but that wouldn’t hold them for long.
Gritting her teeth, Emily forced her legs to flex — it had taken her five years to even be able to jump, and she hadn’t been acrobatic ever since she’d broken her back — but she didn’t have time for a quick walk around the car. She jumped upwards, flipped in midair and pushed off the roof of the car, flipping ten feet in the air …
… she landed on top of the burned vampire, only now struggling to his feet. They crashed to the ground in an awkward tangle. Emily was a bit disappointed for a second, she’d been kind of hoping to test whether she could land with her artificially controlled legs, but the feeling soon vanished as she found herself struggling for her life.
She punched the vampire once, twice in the jaw with her left hand as her right went beneath her shirt and withdrew a stake. Seconds later the little wrestling match was over and Emily, as always happened when she fell down, rose awkwardly to her feet.
Willow was struggling with the other one. Never a physically powerful woman, she was not a match for a full-fledged vampire in hand-to-hand combat. Emily drew another stake and awkwardly walked over behind them … and was caught off-balance by a backward kick. She flopped to the ground ten feet away.
Desperately, she got to her feet as fast as she could — but she was going to be too late. The vampire grinned in triumph as he bent to feed.
The grin disappeared moments later in a cloud of dust as a crossbow bolt came sailing in from somewhere above them. Emily walked as fast as she could to support Willow, but apart from a few scrapes she didn’t really seem hurt.
They both looked upwards. A shadowy figure, silhouetted against the moonlight, was standing there with a crossbow in his hand. Willow called up, “Galen? Is that you?”
“The one and only. Sorry I didn’t get out here sooner.” A pause. “So, the two of you are okay?” They both nodded. “Good. I’m in room 210, just around the corner. Come on up; we need to talk.” He vanished around the side of the building.
The two women looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders, then made their way up to the second floor.
* * *
Galen looked around to be sure the room was ready. It wasn’t more than a fifteen-minute drive from where the Harrises lived to his hotel, so he’d worked quickly. The lights were in place. They would only be able to see him in silhouette when they entered.
It was time for the forgiving process to begin.
He hoped he could eventually forgive himself.
Looking at the clock in the wall, he realized it had been nineteen minutes. Damn. He hoped they hadn’t been bluffing. Or, worse, that they hadn’t been intercepted by anyone sent out by Spike and Siobhan. They all needed to be alive at the time of the ritual, but that didn’t mean they had to be intact.
There was the sound of a car door slamming. Maybe it was them. He took a deep breath …
… and choked it out when he heard an odd thump, like something landing on a car roof, and the unmistakable sounds of a vampire’s voice.
No hesitation. He opened the suitcase and quickly put together his portable crossbow, then ran outside to see what was going on. The consequences, he’d worry about later. Rounding the corner of the walkway, he looked down and saw Emily on the ground …
… and Willow about to get bitten by a vampire. In one smooth motion he shouldered the crossbow and fired. Seconds later the vampire was dust. With her computer-chip-controlled legs, Emily walked over to see if Willow was injured.
No. Thank goodness.
“Galen? Is that you?” Willow called up, still leaning against the car.
“The one and only. Sorry I didn’t get out here sooner. So, the two of you are okay?” They shook their heads yes. “Good. I’m in room 210, just around the corner. Come on up; we need to talk.” Quickly, Galen walked around and into his room, making sure not to latch the door behind him. He walked over in front of the lights and stopped. Then he stood there and waited.
Slowly the doors opened.
Forgiveness was at hand.