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Part Five
Had Oz wanted proof that Xander’s feelings for Cordelia had lain more deeply than Xander had imagined, he would have gotten more than enough on the trip to the mansion. It was like he was sitting next to a ticking bomb one second away from detonation, and Oz was sorely tempted to slap Xander to get him to just CALM DOWN.
Though some of the invective he hurled at Wesley was rather inventive, Oz had to admit, the entire litany made a ten-minute ride seem more like ten hours. They finally got to the mansion, and as they walked inside Xander screamed out, “Angel! Hey, deadboy, get your lazy blood-drinking ass out of bed. We got something to talk to you about!”
They came into the main room and found Angel just getting up from the couch. The vampire had an irritated look on his face, which quickly vanished we saw Oz as well as Xander. “What’s going on?” he asked.
Xander said, “Let’s put it this way, deadboy — it’s a big ol’ party in Sunnydale, Ethan Rayne is throwing it, and all of Buffy’s worst enemies have an engraved invitation.”
Angel looked bewildered. Oz could hardly blame him, as the Xanderspeak was in rare form tonight. The guitarist said, “Would you like me to translate from the Xander?” Xander shot him a viciously dirty look as Angel gestured a go-ahead. “That means Ethan Rayne, Lyle Gorch, Catherine the Great, Marcie Ross and Drusilla — at the very least. And maybe more …” He trailed off when he saw Angel’s face frozen in a mask of horror. He didn’t need to guess why.
“Drusilla’s come back too?” he finally said. “Damn. She won’t be happy with Buffy — tell me everything.”
Oz gave Angel a terse account of everything from Spike’s phone call up to Cordelia’s disappearance. At the end, Angel thought for a second. “Marcie certainly could have done more than that. She could have picked you off one by one, but she didn’t. Why?”
Xander almost spat out a response, stopped, thought, and then said, “That’s a good question. It’s like we’ve been divvied up — Marcie gets Cordelia and no one else. I wonder who got me?”
“And …” Oz said, “if it happens like this it’ll keep Buffy running all over town — and you pinned down too. Easy to slip in an atrocity or two unnoticed that way. “
“Someone must want Buffy out of the way very badly to bring in that many old enemies.” Angel slammed his fist into the wall, making a new hole in the plaster. “Damn! We’ve got our work cut out for us. And if you’re right, Xander, almost certainly Drusilla will be coming after Buffy. Maybe I should —”
“And maybe you shouldn’t,” Xander answered. “Buffy and Giles don’t need you to take care of them. Willow and Amy do.” A pause. “Oh, right. And Wesley. If I can hold back from chasing people down, so can you, deadboy.”
Shaking his head yes, Angel said, “Deal. But if we see Dru —”
“She’s all yours.”
Xander and Oz walked out to the car, Angel hanging back to put out the fire. One of these days Oz had to ask the vampire why he kept a fire going when it was one of the few things that could kill him. It wasn’t as though Oz had a big collection of wolfsbane stored in the basement …
Oz got into his van — and immediately felt an arm grab him from behind, starting to choke him. “Do I have good luck or what?” he dimly heard a gruff Texan voice say. “I was just walking along looking for some food, when boom! The two of you fall right into my laps!”
Xander looked through the passenger window. As he gasped for breath Oz heard, “Get on in the van, boy, unless you want me to break your little friend’s neck.”
“Way I see it,” Xander said, calmer than Oz had ever heard him, “I’m dead either way. So no thanks.” The vampire behind Oz shot out an arm and caught Xander by the neck. “On the other hand —”
The van’s side door slid open — neat trick, it was locked — and Angel jumped into the van and slugged whoever was behind him. Finally Oz could breathe again when the vampire’s grip released. Then Angel shoved the vampire out of the van, where Oz lost sight of the struggle.
The erstwhile werewolf took a couple of deep breaths and then half-stumbled from the van. He edged around the front and nearly slammed into Xander, who was standing there watching Angel pummel a vampire who could only have been Lyle Gorch.
It wasn’t even close to an even fight. If Gorch landed one blow, Angel countered with several more. The battle was only broken once when Angel was about to toss the cowboy into the side of Oz’s van. Oz called out, “Hey — new paint job.” Angel stopped inches short from mashing Gorch’s face into the side door and instead threw him to the ground. The vampire quickly rolled to his feet, tipped his hat — how had he not lost it during the fight? — and ran off into the night.
“We won’t be seeing him again,” Angel said as he watched Lyle Gorch vanish into the night.
“Not that I’m ungrateful or anything,” Xander said, “but we’d know that for sure if you’d killed him.”
“I know his style, though. Bully. Give him a hard time and he doesn’t bother you again.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s why this is, what? His third trip back to town?”
Angel raised an eyebrow, but said nothing as he climbed into the back of Oz’s van.
* * *
The computer was showing nothing coming from the Mayor’s office at all. Not that Willow expected tracking things down would be easy — the Mayor had in the past been better than most at keeping his doings secret — but still, she’d expected to pick up something.
But the phone records showed nothing out of the ordinary for a small-town mayor in the last few weeks; no calls to or from local hotels or pay phones, and all the long-distance calls were routine. Willow’d thought she had something when she turned up a handful of calls to and from a small city in Japan, but it turned out that was a “Sister City” exchange. This didn’t preclude either hanky or panky, but better not to speculate where no clear evidence existed.
As for her companions, Amy indulged in a furious game of rat charades that indicated that Willow would be better off spending more time in magical preparation and less time on the computer. Willow was smart enough to realize that if Catherine Madison showed up and decided to fight through witchcraft, it would be a short fight. To placate Amy, though, Willow cast a subtle long-range detection spell that would indicate if any being with spellcasting abilities came within 100 feet. Of course, this wouldn’t do much if Drusilla came charging in, but Amy wasn’t so much worried about that. It occurred to Willow that at times Amy could be extremely selfish.
Wesley, in the meantime, had been pacing around the room until about five minutes ago, having no clear task. His suggestions for Willow were well-intentioned but horribly naive, and there wasn’t much research he could do beyond studying the descriptions of the bad guys they were up against. In the last five minutes, he’d been doing something quietly in the office. Curious, Willow closed the laptop, picked up Amy, and peered inside There she saw Wesley mock-firing first the crossbow, then the tranquilizer rifle.
Willow was about to turn away when Wesley saw her standing there. He let out a yelp and his finger jerked on the crossbows’ trigger. The bolt passed by mere inches from her ear.
The Watcher put his hand to his head and said, “Oops.”
Angrily, Willow said, “Oops? OOPS?”
“I … am sorry,” Wesley answered. “But I did miss, no real harm done, right?”
Gritting her teeth, Willow said, “No. I guess not. Lucky thing your aim stinks. Why were you doing that for anyway?”
Wesley sighed. “If you must know, working on my aim — and my nerve, too, I suppose. One thing I’ve learned in the past month is that fieldwork is somewhat harder than we Watchers-in-training are led to believe.” He put the crossbow down on the desk. “Of course, now that I have a taste I am fully convinced that I shall in the future have far fewer difficulties.”
Nodding noncommittally, Willow walked back out to the table and sat down. Some people were just so hard to sympathize with! She flipped the laptop back open and began typing — then paused.
This wasn’t the web page she’d left at! This was nothing but a big … slowly rotating … spiral …
A voice penetrated her consciousness, coming from the computer’s speaker. At some level she recognized it, but that wasn’t important right now …
“Hello, Willow,” the voice said. “Here we are. Pick up your bag — you do have your bag, don’t you? Press N if you don’t … good, good. Now listen carefully. When I’m done talking, pick up the bag and go out the main library doors. Turn left and walk down the hallway and out the main entrance of the building. There will be a Geo Prizm with the engine running outside the main gates. Get in the back seat, lie down and fall asleep until you hear my voice command you to wake up. Press U if you understand my instructions.”
Willow pressed the U key.
“Good. And — leave the rat behind. Go now and do as I have told you!”
Willow stood up, closed her laptop, picked up her bag, and numbly walked through the front doors of the library.
* * *
Ultimately Wesley realized that perhaps he hadn’t actually apologized to Willow for almost severing her ear with that errant crossbow bolt, so he walked out into the main room of the library — and almost tripped over the rat, who sounded positively panicked. Willow was nowhere to be seen. He picked up the rat and took it over to the table. The rat then sat on its hind legs and made little folding and unfolding gestures with its paws. By this Wesley understood he was to open up the laptop.
Before he could, the rat shook its head angrily and then put a paw over its eyes. Confused, Wesley nonetheless shaded his eyes with one hand and flipped open the laptop with the other.
When he heard what the computer said, he quickly ran out the front doors of the library, where he could see Willow disappear around the corner. First he screamed out her name; then, when that didn’t work, he ran down the hall after her.
* * *
Catherine Madison walked into the library, noticed the frightened rat which had once been her daughter sitting on the table, cast a sleeping spell, picked it up, and walked out, muttering irritably as she did so, “If I’d known it was going to be this easy …”