Kira is dead, and the town is returnting to normal. But Maggie has not recovered yet. And Chris' bitterness is growing to a dangerous point.

TRIAL BY FIRE

Chapter 1

Maggie tossed in her bed, extending her hands as if trying to catch something that eluded her.

In her dream, a mist had come between her and Barnabas. He was there, she knew. But she couldn't find him.

Somewhere, he waited for her. Her gun had been taken away, she had been thrown into a strange place with no hope of return,

But she would kill him yet.

The mist parted, a little bit. Enough to show her a figure standing over some sort of steps...

The spiral staircase and the golden eagles...she knew that the golden eagles would be there.

The eagles came alive and flew circling her head. They knew that there would be a kill and they waited for their meat.

They would feed on Barnabas' flesh...

She moved towards the figure in the stone steps.

Then the mists parted and she saw the woman's face...

"What do you mean, you cannot come tonight? Iris asked Barnabas on the phone. "I was waiting for you all week."

"I am sorry. Really am. But Amy needs me.."

"Can't you find some time for me? Or do I have to be committed to Wyncliffe before I notice that I exist?"

"Julia needs me, too."

"Julia! Always Julia!" Iris knew that she sounded hateful, but could not help herself. "what is the hold she has over you?"

"I owe her too much and I will never to pay her back. Surely I can give her a bit of my time now."

"When will Dr. Hoffman start treating her?" Roxanne asked Sabrina impatiently.

"She will tell me when she's ready."

"She'd better hurry, or before you know it, your boss will be beyond help."

"Can't you hold her for a little longer?:"

"I am losing control over her. She's beginning to hate me, now."

"Hate?"

"I can feel it here." Roxanne tapped her forehead "And it grows stronger every day. I think that I hit on some old wound of hers, and somehow she transferred the blame to me."

"For how much longer do you think you can hold her?"

"I don't care to make guesses. The sooner you get her to Dr. Hoffman, the better."

"If you want out of the deal, say so."

"I want to see this through."

"Do you?" Sabrina lifted her eyebrows. "Next thing you'll tell me you got ethics."

"Why shouldn't I have them?"

Sabrina shrugged. "A junkie and a blackmailer."

"I wasn't always like this."

"Are you going to blame your curse on it?"

"No. I got quite well for years without drugs or need to blackmail anybody for pocket money."

"As far as you remember. You admitted that you got huge gaps in your memory."

"I am getting it back. And what nothing of what I am getting is something of which I should be ashamed."

"What do you recall?"

"Working on the Underground Railroad. Harriet Tubman was one of the few people who knew what I was and she didn't care. The fugitives crossed the border and went on to new lives, It was well worth the blood I took during the trip."

"Is that how you sustained yourself?"

"Yes. There were always people who needed certain kinds of help, and couldn't pay for it in money, so I came in."

"What kind of help did you give?"

"Nothing illegal by the laws we have now. Helping distribute birth control information and devices provided by Margaret Sanger. Helping the IWW and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn... Do you know that I met Joe Hill? You know him now only for the song, but I find him most attractive... I helped out with a lot of women like Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, Ida Tarbell... and my help came with a price, which everybody seemed happy to pay."

"You were quite the humanitarian. So how come?

"How come I ended up a junkie?" Roxanne shrugged "Stalin, I guess."

"Stalin?"

"You must have heard of him. The bright hope of the future. Russia, the land of milk and honey where they were building a Paradise on Earth. I believed that, along with the other fellow travelers... I wanted to believe it. I wasn't the only one, which does not excuse anything... We lied to ourselves until we could not do it anymore...And the Beat generation was there, ready to accept the disillusioned ones, offering drugs to that se could like to ourselves a bit more...It wasn't difficult to get hooked then. And even when I stopped lying to myself as to what was going on in Russia, I still used... Then it was Sebastian, and we hit it off, and we kicked the habit together... though there are gaps there. So I got off it. I got my self-respect back, not all of it, but enough. And when this is done, I hope to get all of it back."

It was a heavy sheep and difficult to drag away. Chris pulled at it steadily, pausing only to lick the blood that continued to drip from the torn throat.

The fat felt good to chew, too and the next time he stopped, he tore off a big chunk of it and ate it.

With his mouth busy, he could not drag the sheep, so he shifted shape.

It was much better this way. He could carry the sheep on his shoulder, and eat the still warm flesh at the same time.

He wondered why he bothered to cook his meat when it tasted so good raw.

"Well, sheriff" Derek stood coldly in front of George's desk "what do you plan to do about it?"

"I told you I was sorry."

"The point is that my civil rights have been violated and that I expect an official apology."

"Are you crazy?"

"You put me under house arrest, didn't you? Without a trial. If that isn't a flagrant abuse of authority.

George sighed "Is it money you want? Or is it just that you cannot stop being a jailhouse lawyer?"

"No habeas corpus. Refusal to let me put up bail. What about the old presumed innocent until found guilty? I can be sent to prison, or house arrest for that matter, only after a proper sentence has been passed in a court of law. Not at the whim of some petty tyrant in charge of law and order."

"You are not getting any money from me."

"I want you to acknowledge, in print, that you exceeded your authority."

George narrowed his eyes. "I will make a deal with you. I'll apologize on your terms if you let me charge you with running crooked games."

"You wouldn't!"

"I would."

Derek dropped on a chair, defeated. "You cannot get away with it. You cannot go on doing these things just because you got a badge."

"How is the work doing?" Joe asked Tammy.

"Dull, dull, dull" Tammy sighed. "Some people are too dumb to be embezzlers, the way they do not cover their tracks."

"I imagine that after the excitement with Kira, everything else is a letdown.

"Excitement?" Tammy shuddered. "I don't think of it as excitement. Not when I think of Buffy..."

"It was not your fault."

"She died because of me. She was trying to protect me. In a way, I killed her."

"No. You didn't train those kids to kill. Kira did."

"I should have been more careful."

"With somebody like Kira, it is difficult to know what being careful means. You did an excellent job of stopping her."

"Not good enough." For one second she saw Buffy's face again. "You also did a good job" she changed conversation before she started crying.

"That was luck. I had been hanging around the art colony when I was courting Maggie, so I recognized Roger's contraption."

"Still, it was a good job."

They were close now, their faces approaching each other's

"Did anyone tell you that you are beautiful when you take off your glasses?" Joe said jokingly.

"The do, all the time."

Joe kissed her, tentatively.

"Do you come to collect on your favor" Frank asked Megan.

"No, not yet. I came to see how your are doing."

"Getting accustomed to my new surroundings."

"Good. Look, don't be in a hurry to pay back the favor."

"Why not?"

"Because it was not a small favor, and I tend to hoard those. I may need a big favor later on, and I don't want to have yours squandered in a lot of little favors."

Elsa got up from the bed as she saw the dark shape out of the window.

"I got your message" Barnabas said as he materialized inside the room. "so I came."

"You are not mad at me anymore?"

"You know what you did wrong, don't you?"

"Yes. I got you in trouble with everybody."

"That wasn't the problem. That was just bad luck. What you did wrong was sticking me with needles."

"But you weren't hurting."

"Elsa, never assume that other people don't feel pain. Nor animals, either. I didn't feel pain, then, but my fingers hurt when I woke up."

Elsa hung her head and Barnabas decided to cut short the lecture. "Why did you call me with such urgency?"

"Missy is going to have kittens. Mom's talking of drowning them."

"It is a regrettable necessity."

"But I don't want her to1"

"Do you think you could find homes for them?"

Elsa looked at him. "Do you want a kitten?"

"Me?"

"You must have a terrible problem with rats and mice. You need a good mouser.

Barnabas thought about it. Yes, he needed some sort of pest control.

"All right I'll tell your mother that I'll take the whole litter if she promises to spay Missy afterwards."