|
|
Part ElevenSiobhan and Spike stood under a tree, obscured from the view of the upper windows of Regan Leary’s bookstore.
“Look,” the redheaded vampire said. “The lights on in the upper floor? Five’ll get you ten she’s got a little apartment up there. Entire building becomes a house, then. Smart move, really.”
“And there’s no way we’re going to get any one of them to invite us in, especially not tonight. Not even Cordelia Harris is stupid enough for that. That’s why I asked you to bring along your tools of ignition.”
Siobhan pointed to the firestarting equipment. “Just give me the word, Spike, and that building will be burning and burning hot.”
“Not exactly what I have in mind, luv,” Spike answered. “We don’t want the Slayer dead quite yet, we just want her out of that house. And I don’t think the Guardian Familiar can protect her from smoke.”
Slowly Siobhan began nodding her head. “I get what you mean, boyo. If all Brits were as smart as you, you never would have lost control of Eire.”
“Likely true,” Spike said, refusing to be baited. “But then, were all the Irish as tough as you, it would’ve never taken you so long to throw off the yoke.”
“Anyway, Spike, take no offense at this, but would you mind if I tried a backup plan? I think your plan a fine one, but at this juncture I’d soonest be taking no chances.”
“No offense taken, Siobhan. What did you have in mind?” So she told him, and Spike smiled in grim agreement. “You certainly live up to your reputation for directness.” He raised his voice slightly and called to the two nearest vampires, lounging out of sight with the rest of them in a small grove of trees. “You mopes go grab some of the locals and drag them back here.” The two vampires bounded up excitedly. “No feeding, now; we need them alive.”
Grumpily, the two strode off. Siobhan then turned to Spike and said. “You realize all of our work isn’t going to mean a damn thing if the Unforgiven shows up.”
Spike laughed, to Siobhan’s intense annoyance. “If he shows up? Siobhan m’luv, I’m counting on it … you see, they’ve met him, too.”
* * *
“It amazes me how they think they’re hidden out there,” Regan said. “As though there were a chance we’d conveniently miss thirteen vampires camped out on the front lawn.” The four of them were rooting around inside the apartment for weaponry. What they needed most at the moment was a good missile weapon. So far, they’d found two crossbows and one slingshot. Xander was unhappy that he’d forgotten to bring his pistol along, not so much because of the temporary damage it would do the vampires as for the noise it would create. Even these days, even as semi-suburbanized as New Glenbury had gotten (the New-York-to-Baltimore corridor was closer and closer to becoming one solid mass of small towns broken by strip malls), gunshots galvanized people to action. And not, like in New York City, the action of running in the other direction.
“Well, no one else seems to see them,” Xander answered. Despite their frailties at the beginning of the night, now that the battle had essentially been joined they were both responding admirably.
“It’s one of the hazards of having the store on a back road, partially out of sight of the road,” Regan said. “Privacy is a two-way street, it seems.”
“Can that cat of yours do us any good?” Cordelia asked.
A good question. “Not unless we can lure them into the shop.”
Buffy — who’d been quiet for a while — said, “Why not do that, then? It should save you some trouble, later, after —” She didn’t complete the sentence, but she didn’t need to. Buffy’s fate was already known.
And Regan knew very well that it didn’t matter who was controlling the body, Buffy Summers or Buffy Harris; both souls inside would die along with the body, barring some miracle. And Regan Leary had been alive too long and seen too much to believe in deus ex machinae. Possibly that was helping the Harrises cope.
She turned to Buffy. “How good are you with a crossbow?”
“Pretty good.”
“How many of them do you think we can hit?”
Xander looked out the window again. “Not too many of them, would be my guess. No denigration of your skill there, Buff, but I doubt you can shoot around corners. You can probably get one or two, though …”
“Why don’t we wait until they try to start the fire?” Cordelia asked. “If we start shooting now, they’ll know we’ve spotted them.”
“Not really seeing a downside there, Cor.”
“No, I see what she means,” Regan said. “We already know what they’re doing — we should wait until the right moment to spoil their fun.”
Pursing his lips, Xander blew out one long breath and slammed his fist into the wall. “I just hate waiting.”
“You always did, Xand. Still —”
Xander cut Buffy off, tiredly. “This is a lot different, Buff. I’ve grown up in the last twenty-seven years, in case you hadn’t noticed. No longer do I go casually flinging myself into the line of fire. I think about things first. But this — you’re in my daughter’s body. And my daughter is scheduled to die. I’m sorry if that causes me to be a little impatient, but you know, I think I have good cause.”
“Sorry about that, Xander. This all really confusing for me, too.”
“That’s the difference between you and us, Buffy.” Cordelia said. “We’ve done a lot of growing up in the last twenty-seven years. You haven’t. Not that you’ve had the opportunity, and don’t think we’re not glad to see you back, because we are —”
“God, how we are,” Xander interrupted.
“But you can’t assume we’re still the people you remember us being. We’re not. None of us are.”
Slowly, Buffy nodded her head. Nice to see them working out issues, but this was the Prophecy of Dark Judgment they were dealing with, hardly the time for a shrink session. It was time to end the reunion. “Are you all quite done with the angst?” Regan asked. “There’s a time and a place for reminiscing and emotional confrontations, and about to have our fuckin’ asses fried by Spike and Siobhan isn’t one of them.”
“Anyone ever tell you your timing sucks, Regan?” Buffy said.
“Many times, and I don’t care. My goal is to get us through the evening without you, or that young woman whose body you’re in, or anyone else if possible, dying unexpectedly.” She kept her tone level, as she always did. “In any event …” She gestured towards the window and they all walked over and peered through the curtains. “They look like they’re getting ready to get things started out there, so …” Xander and Cordelia presented her and Buffy with two crossbows, loaded and ready to go.
Outside, a half dozen vampires were carrying enough gasoline and flammables to burn down a dozen buildings her size. Siobhan had to have been the one to handle that, Regan reflected; overkill wasn’t really Spike’s style.
She and Buffy looked at one another and nodded. Behind them, Xander and Cordelia stood ready with bolts and holy water. “Okay, now,” Regan began. “Ready, aim …”
* * *
Spike, of course, had noticed them noticing the activity almost immediately. And then he was more than grateful for Siobhan’s plan. With the three locals terrified and out of sight behind the grove of trees, Spike motioned to Siobhan to come closer.
“Change of plan, luv,” he whispered when the redhead approached. “They’ve spotted us. Our boys lighting the fire are going to be the diversion, not the main attack. How many do we have?”
“Counting us, fourteen.” Siobhan seemed puzzled and impatient.
Inwardly, Spike worried about this. They’d have to use at least five or six to avoid giving the Slayer and the others in the house any cause to think that Spike had tumbled to being watched. And if it came down to a physical fight — and he knew there’d be a fight somewhere tonight, he could feel it in his bones — they’d be taking on at the minimum a deadly Watcher and two seriously brassed-off parents. And who knew about Angel and Willow? Spike hoped by the time any fight broke out Siobhan would have control of the Orb of the Savior, and an army of vampires would be at her command. But Spike hadn’t lived as long as he had without assuming something might go wrong. And having just six or seven unreliable vampires at his back did not fill him with confidence.
Not something he was going to pass on at this juncture. “That’s fine. Just wanted to be sure we had enough.” Then he walked over to the vampires who’d manhandled in the gasoline. “Okay, now — take the wood over there and let’s get this conflagration started, shall we?”
And just as he’d expected, a few minutes later, and well before the fire could have been started, two crossbow bolts came flying out of the upstairs window. Very cleverly, they targeted the two vampires in the back first, and both exploded into dust. Everyone in the back dove for cover — first smart thing most of them had done in their unlife, no doubt. Two of those hauling the gasoline were observant enough to drop everything and scatter, but the other two were a bit slower and only noticed when they saw the first two running.
Scratch two more vampires.
Then the Slayer yelled out the window, “Nice try, no dice, Spike. Why don’t you step out into the clear and make it easy on yourself?” And then, gesturing to one of the other vampires as he did so, Spike did exactly as Buffy Harris had requested. He could practically hear her jaw smash into the floor. After a few seconds, she said, “Well, if I’d known it was going to be that easy,” and he could hear the sounds of a loading crossbow.
Right then, right on cue, the vampire he’d made the gesture to shoved one of the three humans they’d abducted out into the clearing. “Before you shoot me … this is a real, living, breathing human. I have six more like that out where you can’t see them. And unless you come down here within five minutes, I’ll kill them. Slowly, loudly, and painfully. Same thing happens if you sent out another arrow from those bows of yours. So? What do you say?”
* * *
Emily felt all the vampires as she was about to pull into Leary’s bookstore’s driveway, so they quietly backed out and drove about five hundred feet past. Angel followed their lead, but asked what was going on as she and Willow walked past.
“A lot of vampires — at least a dozen — are in the area surrounding Regan’s bookstore,” Willow answered, brandishing a stake. Emily, meanwhile, had unpacked a crossbow from the back of Willow’s car and was readying a couple of dozen bolts for rapid-fire use.
Quickly the three crept through the darkened fields on their way back to the bookstore. They hid in the brush off to one side, about thirty feet away from a large pile of hastily-gathered firewood, and listened to the exchange between Spike and Buffy.
There were tears on Angel’s face when Emily next looked at it. “My God,” he said. “She sounds just like Buffy. I never realized …” Then he took a deep breath — deliberate, of course — and said. “We can’t let that happen.”
“Of course not,” Emily answered. “What do we do?”
“We wait,” Willow said. “We don’t want to endanger the people. Angel — could you see if Spike really has other human hostages?”
“Of course,” he said, and disappeared into the night.
“I still don’t entirely trust him,” Willow said. “If the shit hits the fan — and it always does — keep a careful eye on him.” Unconsciously, Willow had slipped into Watcher mode, and ordering Emily around like she had when Emily was the Slayer …
Oh my God!
Angel came back. “Half-truth. Typical for Spike. Two other people, not five.”
“Thanks,” Willow answered. “So now, we resume waiting.”
Four minutes later, Buffy walked out the front door of the shop.
“That must have been some work,” Willow muttered. “Regan would let dozens die to evade the Prophecy of Dark Judgment.”
Buffy said, “Okay, Spike, here I am. Let the humans go.”
“Only promised I wouldn’t kill them, luv.”
“I can still go back inside, you know.”
“Do it and they’re dead inside a minute, and you know I will.”
“Go right ahead. I’d sooner see them dead than you with the ability to control an army of vampires.”
Spike swore to himself and said, “Fair enough, then. Step away from the house and they’re all free.”
“Done.” And Buffy stepped away from the house and towards Spike.
Spike tossed the woman he was holding to the ground and told her to get lost. Then he called out to the vampires behind him to let the people go. Angel quickly confirmed that they were indeed free.
Then Spike had two of his vampires frog-march Buffy forward until they were face-to-face. “I don’t bloody believe it!” He shouted. “I won. I actually won.”
“There’s still The Unforgiven to be dealt with,” Buffy said. Angel stiffened when he heard this.
“And us!” Xander shouted from the window somewhere.
“I don’t think so.” Spike drew a wicked looking knife and placed it at Buffy’s throat.
An almost inarticulate growl of rage escaped Angel’s throat, and he charged towards them, only to come to a halt when Spike drew the knife tighter.
“There’s your bloody Unforgiven, Xander Harris. There he is. To save your daughter’s life, all you need to do is forgive Angel. That’s all you need to do.”