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Part 9
The Dark Angels, with mutually supporting fields of fire and unnervingly accurate marksmanship, had turned the plaza into a charnel house.Three rounds of silenced ammunition from Elisa’s weapon found their mark, tearing apart the skull of yet another Guardian Demon as it bore down on them. Giles saw her smoothly remove the MP5’s magazine and insert a fresh one into the well.
Probing red shafts of light from the Dark Angels’ laser sights played through the smoke that had begun to accumulate from the steady destruction of the Cathedral, relentlessly hunting their targets through the panic and confusion that had gripped demon and damned alike. Now even the remaining Guardians had turned aside, fleeing as much from the strange force that was tearing apart their sanctuary as from the humans who had brought their own unique brand of Hell to this wretched place.
“Giles, look!”
It was Angel, pointing upward to the top of the Cathedral Fortress.
Across the plaza, standing on top of the Cathedral, were two women. One of them, even from across the large square, was clearly Buffy Summers. The other woman looked for all the world like someone it could not possibly be.
“Jenny?” he whispered, as if saying the name too loudly might shatter a fragile illusion.
“You two go get them,” snapped Hunter, bringing Giles’ attention back to the ongoing firefight. “My people will screen you. Go!”
* * *
“Can’t you magic us a way out of this?” asked Buffy.
Jenny tore her eyes from the street far below. “Who do you think I am? Samantha Stephens? It’s not that simple.”
Wait a minute, Buffy thought. Just maybe …
“Maybe it is that simple,” she said.
“Huh?”
“When I first came here, I learned the hard way that our thoughts and perceptions can alter the environment physically. I’ve since learned to suppress that because I could never control it accurately enough for the ability to be useful. But we’re both very strongly attuned to this plane. If the two of us work together …”
“We just might be able to think our way out of this,” Jenny finished.
“It’d be a change of pace for me, certainly, but I think it’s worth a shot,” said Buffy.
Jenny looked nervously back at the rogue portal. There were only about twenty yards left between it and them. “Whatever we do, it has to be fast, simple, and something we both know. A bridge to the building across the street, maybe.”
“No, not a bridge. If that vortex starts into it when we’re halfway across, we’ll end up experiencing bungee jumping without the bungee. Same for stairs and ladders, which are probably too complicated anyway,” said Buffy. Her mind raced. Then she smiled. She had it.
“The Sunnydale High pool. Put the deep end right below us,” she said.
“I like it. Very Butch and Sundance,” said Jenny. “Ready?”
“Let’s do it.”
Buffy took her friend’s hand and concentrated on envisioning the Sunndydale High School swimming pool in the middle of the street below. For a few unsettling moments, nothing at all happened. Then she felt her mind come into harmony with her surroundings, felt the mysterious power inside her grow brighter and hotter again.
The road below wavered like a mirage, and the already confused crowd headed hither and yon in its desire to escape the morphing street, the rampaging vortex, and some commotion in the plaza that fronted the Cathedral. The mirage coalesced into a shape, and the shape took on solidity and depth. Crystalline water rippled below them.
Buffy picked up a small piece of debris from near her foot and lobbed it over the edge. It struck the surface of the water with a gratifying splash, sending concentric rings of water spreading outward to lap against the concrete sides of the pool. The vortex stirred the air at their backs.
“Ready?” she asked.
Jenny nodded.
“Jump!”
* * *
Angel and Giles reached the edge of the pool in time to help the two women from the water.
For a long, wordless moment, two pairs of reunited lovers looked upon their long-lost partners, emotions and histories passing between them that were far more profound than any words could have ever conveyed.
Then Giles said, “Jenny, is it really you?”
She just looked deeply into his eyes and nodded.
Angel and Buffy said nothing at all. They merely held each other close, Buffy growing quickly chilled in the frost-bitten air. Amid the cold, Angel was a warming and comfortable presence that she never wanted to leave. But leave it she did, as he and Giles gave over their dry longcoats to the two sodden women. Buffy rested her head on Angel’s chest and fought hard to hold back tears of relief and joy and overwhelming love.
The moment was broken by the sound of the Cathedral wall starting to collapse, and Elisa Hunter’s sharp, commanding voice saying, “I hate to interrupt the love-in, but we’re pulling out.”
She looked at the Slayer and said, “I take it the Threshold is no longer an issue.”
“Let’s just say that parts and labor on this one are going to be a bitch,” said Buffy through chattering teeth.
Hunter’s expression softened and she winked at Giles. “I like her already. Now let’s go home.”
* * *
Something had gone seriously wrong in Hell, thought Willow.
That was the current analysis, anyway. It was either that or someone had opened the Mephisto Threshold within twenty miles of the op-center’s psychometrics equipment. The psychokinetic energy detectors had spiked off their graphs about fifteen minutes before, and while surges in metaphysical energy usually indicated paranormal activity in the material vicinity, that wasn’t always the case.
Hell and Earth shared a fundamental metaphysical interrelationship, and major cataclysms in one often had very noticeable effects in the other.
Right at the moment, the kinds of PKE levels the monitors were suggesting looked like nothing short of Armageddon. And with no Mephisto Threshold anywhere in sight outside the building, there was every possibility that the Dark Angels had done something more or less catastrophic to Hell itself.
She turned from the ninth-floor windows and their reassuringly normal view of a large swath of New Jersey and Manhattan Island.
“I’m heading down to the vault to check on preparations for the Crossover,” she said to one of the technicians monitoring the psychometrics equipment. “If anything bad happens, let me know, okay?”
If anything bad happened. That was a laugh, thought Willow. With friends like the Slayer and allies like the Dark Hunter, the chances of something bad happening were probably pretty damn good.
* * *
“Uh, oh. Somebody’s gonna get seriously fired for this one,” said Elisa.
They had just attained the low ridge line the team had used earlier to observe the city. Now the others moved to stand beside her as she gazed out at the valley.
Pandemonium was gone.
“The whole city?” asked Buffy, not quite believing her eyes.
“Yeah, the whole city,” said Elisa. “Nice work, Slayer. Four thousand years at this game, I never bagged an entire city. You got potential.”
Where Pandemonium had been mere hours before, there was now a miles-wide crater. Nothing remained but forlorn clouds of dust stirred up by the wind sweeping out over the valley. In the center of the crater, a speck of blue-white fire wavered uncertainly, slowly contracting into nonexistence now that it had consumed all the most readily available fuel it could find to sustain itself.
“Ma’am?”
It was Rodriguez.
“Yes, Joe?”
“Ma’am, we’ve got some serious trouble coming our way.”
Elisa raised her binoculars to her eyes and panned across the landscape. On the other side of the ridge, marching on their own course to the Crossover Zone, was a very large force of demons.
“Looks like two regiments, at least. Maybe seven hundred troops,” she said. “Give ’em credit for brains, anyway. Somebody over there figured out that if we got here, there’s another doorway somewhere. They must have gotten a read on the phase beacon, figured they might get lucky, catch an open vortex and take control of the Gate on the other side.”
“So, they still might be able to stage the invasion,” said Buffy flatly.
“That’s how I see it,” said Elisa. “I have adaptive wards set up, but that’s a hell of a lot of individual signatures to sort through over there, and it might bring the system down. And the real kicker is, the first thing these guys’ll find on the other side are my people and your friend Willow. We, friends, may have just cut our own throats if we can’t stop them from overrunning the C.Z.”
“And if we can’t hold them off?” asked Angel.
This time, it was Buffy who supplied the answer. “Then we destroy the beacon, and we get used to calling this place ‘home’.”
Elisa looked at her and smirked. “I like the way you think, Slayer.” Then she became serious. “They’ve got a lot longer march ahead of them, and they’ll be slowed by their numbers, but we’ll still have to move fast if we want to get entrenched in time. Can you keep up?”
Buffy nodded. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve had worse.”
“Good. Then we’re out of here.”
Elisa produced a small field radio from her longcoat and radioed the remaining members of the strike team, who were guarding the C.Z. “Dark Angel Base, this is Dark Angel One, over.”
“Dark Angel One, Dark Angel Base. We read you, over,” came a static-distorted voice over the speaker.
“Mission objectives have been met. We’re coming in, ETA six hours. We’ll be having some company soon after that, so you guys break out the party favors. Dark Angel One out.”
She stowed the radio and addressed the group. “Okay, people. We’ve got things to do and demons to kill, and it ain’t getting done sitting here. Let’s go.”
“Wait,” said Jenny.
Buffy felt it too, as did Elisa. The three of them turned toward the sudden surge of magical energy that had made its presence felt less than a dozen yards away. The blazing white portal flared like a sun, then subsided into a slowly rotating vortex into the unknown.
“Second chances are nice,” said Buffy. “But there’s something to be said for thirds, too.”
Buffy looked up at Jenny and saw a deep sadness in the woman’s eyes. It was a sadness she understood only too well.
“Jenny?” asked Giles.
She sighed and put a hand gently on his cheek. “It’s time for me to go. I wish we had more time. There’s so much … well, none of it really needs to be said. Inside, we both know all the words. We’ve always known them. We just never, ever seemed to get around to saying them.”
It was one of the few times Buffy had ever seen her friend and mentor entirely at a loss for words. Giles seemed to cast about for something to say.
Jenny put a finger to his lips and said, “Shh. You always did talk too much, Rupert.”
Then she kissed him hard and long. Reluctantly, she finally broke the embrace and said, “I want you to do one thing for me.”
“Anything,” Giles managed to say after a long moment. “Anything.”
Her dark, knowing eyes flashed with both tears and a deep fierceness. “Be happy. That’s all I want for you. Don’t you throw your life away for what could have been. Take it from me. Life is far too short to spend it on regrets. Promise me.”
“Jenny … I …” said Giles.
“Promise.”
Giles nodded. “I promise.”
Jenny smiled. She gave him one last, tender hug and said, “Thank you.”
She turned to Buffy. “You take good care of him, huh?”
“I will,” said Buffy, feeling far deeper emotions toward her old companion in the Eternal War than she ever expected. It had been a hard and painful thing, saying goodbye to Jenny’s spirit the first time. The second time was no easier, nor did it hurt any less.
Jenny and Angel shared a glance, and something silent and profound passed between them. Then, with one last look at Giles, the ghost of Jenny Calendar squared her shoulders and walked calmly out of their lives forever.
The portal became a brilliant point hanging like a silver ember in the air, and then it was gone.
A long while passed before Elisa Hunter broke the silence.
“Well, none of us are getting any younger or prettier. Let’s move it on out.”
From her, the words would normally have sounded abrupt and harsh. This time, though, they were as subdued and reluctant as the weary heroes who resumed their long march home.