There was blood on her shirt. There was blood on Tara's shirt. There were tears in her eyes. The salty water dripped down her cheeks and fell onto Tara's shirt, mixing in with the blood like they were spell ingredients. Maybe they were. Maybe a spell was being cast right now, and Willow just didn't realize it. Willow held her love and cried and cried. Tara couldn't die. Tara was kind and sweet and good. People like Tara weren't supposed to die. Willow's blurry vision barely made out the bloody torn-up fabric that covered the mauled portion of Tara's flesh, but she could smell the acrid scent of gunpowder. She thought of spells. The world was full of magics. Somewhere out there was a spell that could return her love to her and set right what had gone so very wrong. Willow ran. She did not know where she was going until she reached the Magic Box. The store wasn't even open, and Willow had not thought to bring her spare key. Willow raised her hands to render the door into splinters of wood.
"Do you really think the answers you want are in there?" Willow whirled around to identify the speaker. She was a well-dressed professional with an untrustworthy smile. "I know you're smarter than that Willow. If there were any secrets in that dinky building you'd have found them by now. The power you seek is buried deep, where the weak dare not wander."
"Who are you," Willow demanded. "How do you know my name?"
"My name is Lilah, and before I answer any more questions for you, you must answer one for me. Are you weak, or do you dare? Do you dare to rip into the seams of the earth and reform reality into a construction of your design? Do you dare, or do I waste my time?"
…
Wesley was hunched over an ancient volume the Watcher's Council believed every copy of had been destroyed centuries ago. Not so long ago, but a lifetime ago as well, such a find would have filled him with wonder and amazement. Now the volume was only a means to an end, a collection of dried pulp and glue bound in the skin of some long dead animal. He would scour the pages for clues to his destination and then forget it. A knock at the door filled him with a flush of cold fury. When Lilah had offered him the resources of Wolfram & Hart to search for a way to find and retrieve Conner she had promised he would be undisturbed during his research. That being said, even if he were told he would have to conduct his research while listening to recordings of banging cymbals overlaying American pop music, her offer was still not one he could afford to turn down. Any possibility of finding Conner was one he had to explore, and this deal wouldn't even cost him the soul that at this point he would have gladly parted with. As Lilah had pointed out it was probably earmarked for hell now anyway. Still, whatever this interruption was would be a waste of precious time. He decided to simply pay no mind to it.
Lilah entered unbidden. "You ignoring me now?"
"Whenever possible," Wesley said in a dull apathetic voice.
"Well I brought you a study partner."
"As I have repeatedly told you," Wesley said with rising anger. "I have no desire to work with any of the corrupt mages under your employ. I will do my research alone if it please you."
"Everything about you pleases me," Lilah said with a cheeky grin Wesley couldn't see because he was reading, but he could just imagine. When she continued speaking she was talking to someone else. "This is Wesley. I believe you two have met, and I think you can help each other find what you are looking for." Wesley finally looked up at Lilah's evil grin and sparkling eyes, sharply juxtaposed to the dead eyes and dour expression of Willow Rosenberg, who happened to be standing behind her. Lilah spoke to Wesley again. "Is she too corrupt for you?"
Wesley jumped to his feet. "Willow?! Are you all right? Did Wolfram & Hart abduct-"
Willow cut him off. "I'm just looking for answers. Can you help me?"
…
Fred couldn't sleep. Gunn's muscular form next to her was as strong and steady as a rock and just as comforting. His body radiated heat, but that only made her feel colder. She slipped out of bed and went into the bathroom. She splashed cold water on her face and felt a shiver seize her whole body and make her toes curl. Her skin erupted into gooseflesh. Her nipples hardened and shrunk into her chest. She waited for the cold feeling to subside, but it didn't.
Fred backed out of the bathroom. She could see Gunn's body still, but now he looked cold and dead. She ran to him. She shook him as hard as she could. "Charles," she whispered, afraid to raise her voice for reasons she didn't understand. "Wake up. Something's wrong."
Gunn roused from his slumber with little joy. "What time is it?"
"Something is in the hotel." She didn't know how she knew, but she did.
"Why is it so hot in here?" That question terrified her even more. She felt so cold she was sure her blood would turn to gelatinous slush. There was a numb pit in her chest. "Baby?"
"Something is in the hotel," she repeated.
Gunn jumped out of bed, now fully awake. "Where? What is it?"
Gunn made for the hall and Fred followed him. In the hallway they could hear a noise coming from downstairs. It was a horrible noise, although they couldn't quite place the origin of it. Fred grabbed a crossbow from her room and Gunn an ax. They both quietly made their way down the stairs. As Fred struggled to contain the spasms the cold was sending through her she watched beads of sweat roll of her lover's skin. The physics alone were impossible. She wondered what sort of creature was responsible for this. In the lobby they saw it, or rather they saw her. It was a woman. That much was certain. Little else was. The woman had black streaks running through her hair, which Fred thought was red but couldn't be sure in the darkness. The woman was holding a sleeping infant. At her feet was the source of the sound. It was a man still clinging to life against the odds. Blood formed a wide pool around him. The shadows hid his injuries, but he smelled like fire and rot. The woman turned to them, and Fred was afraid.
Gunn gasped in recognition. "I remember you."
The woman ignored him. She held Fred still with a hard gaze coming from eyes as white as the fuzzy mold you sometimes found on raspberries. Fred didn't know what made her think about that. She was colder than ever. She dropped her crossbow. With her hands free she hugged herself, trying to retain the little warmth she had left. "What do you want?"
Without a word the woman held out the baby. Fred took him and held him close, not daring to hope. Before she could ask for the baby's identity the woman was gone. The temperature returned to normal, and Fred breathed a sigh of relief as her skin loosened. Gunn turned on the lights, and they were now able to identify the body. It was Holtz. "How…" He trailed off, unable to articulate his confused thoughts. Holtz had expired while they had dealt with the woman Fred was sure she had seen somewhere, but she couldn't place where.
"Who was that," Fred asked.
"Willow, remember? She was here when we got back from Pylea."
Now Fred did remember, but she was only more confused. "Do you think this is…"
"One way to find out." Gunn stared at the baby for a moment. "Angel!"
Fred held the baby close. Even as a corpse Holtz frightened her. Though to be fair he was an intimidating corpse. His body was littered with stab wounds, burns of various natures and ugly multi-hued bruises. Someone had taken out a lot of rage on this man. Angel, Cordelia and Groo all arrived downstairs at the same time. Fred had forgotten Cordelia and her beau were staying over. Cordelia wanted to be there for Angel. Fred locked eyes with Angel and then he stared at the bundle in her arms. Wordlessly he walked up to her and picked the child up.
"Is he…" Cordelia could barely speak. She sounded like she was choking on tears.
"It's Conner," Angel said. He held the infant as though the child were made of glass and could shatter at the slightest pressure. Angel was so wrapped up in cradling Conner he didn't even seem to notice Holtz. "He's not hurt. He's okay. My son's alive and here and okay…"
Fred was amazed to see Angel cry. Cordelia put her hand on his shoulder. "He is."
Groo was the one to finally address the elephants in the room. "How did this miracle come to pass, and from where did this disfigured corpse come? It seems an ill omen to couple with an event of such joy." Angel and Cordelia didn't seem to hear him, but when Fred remembered the awful chill she knew Groo was right to be unsettled.
Gunn answered the question. "I saw Willow."
This seemed to shock Cordy out of her obliviousness. "Willow?"
"There was something wrong with her," Fred said.
"Can't have been too wrong if she saved my son," Angel retorted.
Fred felt panic clawing at her throat. "No! You don't understand!"
Fred hadn't meant to shout, but at least she now had everyone's attention. "Something was in this hotel, something evil. I don't know who or what it was, but it's dangerous."
"I must concur," Groo said to Fred's relief. "Any that could so maim a person must be of foul intent. This body was subjected while living to treatment designed to inflict agony."
Cordelia examined the body for a moment before dismissing it with a sniff. "Holtz stole Conner. He deserved what he got." Fred's feeling of disquiet was mirrored on Groo's face when Cordelia turned back to Conner. Cordelia noticed neither of them.
Gunn spoke up. "I'm right there with you, but don't you think we should at least find out what the hell is going on? Maybe we should call this Willow chick and ask how exactly it is that she pulled off the thing that everyone said was impossible?" Fred felt warmth toward her boyfriend for being the voice of reason while the rest of them were trapped in a mire of emotion.
Cordelia used her most put-upon sigh. She pulled out her phone while never taking her eyes off of Angel and the baby in his arms. Fred watched Cordelia raise the phone to her ear with a tight chest and uneasy stomach. "Dawn? I was trying to call Willow." Pause. "What do you mean she's missing? Are you sure? My friends just saw-" A slightly longer pause. "Here in LA." An even longer pause. "Shot?! Are they-" A very short pause. "Dead?! Wow, wow, slow down. What do you mean you don't know if she'll pull through?" Now it sounded like Cordelia and this Dawn person were talking over each other. Fred felt sick. She was so glad that Conner was safe in his father's arms, but she could not shake the feeling that there would be a terrible price.
…
Jonathan stared at the bars of his cell. He heard Andrew talking but made the conscious decision to block him out. "Did you hear me?" Jonathan sighed. It wasn't working. "Jonathan?"
"What," He snapped.
"I'm sorry I betrayed you."
Jonathan sighed. "It's okay. It sort of comes with the character archetype."
"That's true," Andrew said. "So can we still be friends?"
Before Jonathan could answer an officer entered the room. "Levinson and Wells?"
"That's us," both boys declared at once.
"You made bail."
"Warren bailed us out?!" Andrew asked eagerly.
The officer shook his head. "Your lawyer, from Wolfram & Hart right?"
Jonathan had no idea what the officer was talking about, but he did not want to spend one more moment in prison. "Yeah sure, absolutely. That's our law firm all right."
"Well come on." The officer took them through the process, and in not much time at all the boys were standing in front of a strange man. He had shocks of white in his otherwise brown hair, and his eyes… When Jonathan was a young friendless boy in elementary school the other kids used to play a game. Jonathan was never allowed to join, but no one could stop him from watching them play. Each kid would take a red solo cup and dig around in the mulch that coated the playground for roly-polies. At the end of recess whoever had the most roly-polies won. But the part of the game the kids seemed to enjoy most was after the counting, when they would each take a rock or a stick and ground their roly-polies into paste. This man's eyes looked like someone had dipped an ice cream scoop into the roly-poly paste and placed a scoop into each of his empty eye sockets. They were black as black, haunting and dead. Jonathan did not want to go anywhere with this man. Jonathan put a halting hand on Andrew's shoulder.
"Are you ready to go," the strange man asked.
Jonathan shook his head. "I think we'll stay."
The man smiled. There was no warmth in his smile. It was dead like his eyes, which reflected no expression, emotion or light of any kind. There was nothing in his eyes, except for maybe the souls of a million dead insects, whatever that amounted to. "It's too late for that."
Jonathan felt something inside of him, a terrible pain that latched onto every nerve and bloomed like a fertile spring. It paralyzed him utterly. He could not even scream, and he so desperately wanted to scream. He could not see or hear, only feel the unending pain.
…
Warren begged. He offered money. He offered his soul. He offered his body. She didn't want it, not any of it. He promised her wealth. She didn't want it. He promised her fame. She didn't want it. He promised her power. She assured him hers dwarfed his as the mighty mountain dwarfs the pebbles lying at its feet. He could not deny that, even if he would have dared. So he bled and bled. He could smell flesh rotting, and see it as well, for the skin had been flayed away to provide a clear view. He felt his blood turn to acid and burn him from the inside out. He felt his bones turn brittle and begin to snap under his weight. Blood dripped from his ears, nose and eyes, pocking his skin where the acid ate through the derma. He felt his lungs fill with broken glass, slicing with every useless breath. "Let me die," he begged. "Let me die."
Finally she seemed to consider one of his requests. "Death? Is that your desire?"
"Yes." Blood poured from his mouth in such quantities that he wondered how she could understand a word he said. But she seemed to. "Kill me please. Let me die. Please."
She leaned in close. He could smell her. Through the salt, iron, putrefaction and, shamefully enough, ammonia that was his own scent he could smell her. She smelled like dead roses, ash and the menstrual blood of the infertile. She smelled like good things gone bad and the vibrant red flickering to dead black. Beneath it all was the terrible white smell of nothing. He wanted her away from him. He feared the empty. "You took life from one I love. Return it to her and I will grant you the death you desire." He would have wept, but his eyes were full of blood.
"I can't bring Buffy-" The pain exploded. It was everywhere. The pain was him, and he was the pain. He smelled feces and felt everything in him contract, trying to force out the pain, unaware it was useless. He was the pain. His body tried to shut down, tried to die. She forbade it.
"I'm not talking about Buffy!"
"Let me die." There was nothing but the pain.
"Say her name!"
"Who," he tried to ask, but it was pointless.
"Say it or live forever!"
"Noooooo." His moan wasn't human anymore, not really.
He heard gasps and screams of horror. "Warren!"
He heard her voice of smoke and rotting leaves. "Thank you Wesley, you can put them over there." He heard movement, screaming, tears, begging and other familiar things from another life, a life before the pain that was only and always. "Yes, that will do nicely."
"Why are you doing this?" That voice belonged to a boy from the life before. The boy had loved him, and he had used the boy for selfish reasons. But that was another life.
"For Tara. You took my love from me, my world, my life." She was in front of him again, the giver of pain. She was a god in this world of only and always pain. Her will be done.
…
It was funny in that way people said things were funny when they weren't even remotely humorous, Cordelia thought. Angel got his son back and moments later he is told the love of his life is dying. Now they were all in a hospital waiting room. Xander was there. So was his former fiancé. Dawn was sitting next to Xander, snuggling up to him like a security blanket. He had a protective arm around her. With no Giles, Buffy or Willow present it fell to him to be the adult and look after her. Wasn't that just wacky? Fred and Gunn were watching the baby, and Groo was still in LA looking for Lorne. That left only Cordelia to give Angel any comfort, but she couldn't think of a thing to say. Then it hit her. It was a smell, awful and overpowering. She jumped to her feet, instinct taking over and ready for a fight. She could smell death all around them, and in the middle of it the smell of pennies. Lighting filled the air.
Dawn squealed in terror. "What is that?!"
Angel ran toward Buffy's room with Cordelia close behind. When they entered the room neither was prepared for what they saw. Buffy was being helped out of bed by someone who looked like, but couldn't possibly be, Willow. Willow's hair was as black and oily as dripping pitch. Her eyes were empty, colorless and blank, white as white noise and just as devoid of any meaning or purpose. Buffy got to her feet, and although she wore a mask of confusion her health seemed excellent. Strangest of all though, was that in the corner stood a man who looked like, but couldn't possibly be, Wesley. Cordelia stared at him as though he were a ghost, and with his bleached bone hair and venom black eyes he could certainly pass for one. Buffy was the first to speak, and she didn't even seem to notice Wesley. "Willow, what's going on? What happened?"
"Warren shot you. You're fine now though." She spoke with no inflection. Cordelia remembered Willow as a girl who infused emotion into every word, thought into every expressive gesture. Now she was like the computers she used to love, unfeeling, inexpressive.
"Did he get away?"
"No." Cordelia raised a brow. That wasn't what she had heard. "He's dead."
Cordelia was only half listening. She was staring at her ghost. Even as Buffy demanded to know the whole story Cordelia stared. She wondered if maybe he really was a ghost and she was the only one that could see him. "Am I the only one freaking out about Frankenstein and her bride over here?! What the hell is going on?!" As she screamed she felt pressure building in her chest, and she wondered if she might explode. Was this what heart attacks felt like?
Willow looked at her, if those white eyes even could look. "You needn't concern yourself anymore Cordelia. Go home. Feed your baby. Buy some shoes. It will all be over soon."
The pressure grew. "What will be over soon," Buffy demanded.
Willow turned to Buffy. "Rest. It's fine. We're going to save the world." As soon as Willow finished speaking both she and Wesley vanished. The pressure disappeared from Cordelia's chest, and it was as though the strangers dressed as friends had never been there.
…
Giles almost dropped his papers when he saw her standing in the hallway of the Watcher's Council Headquarters. She was black & white and red all over. She was dripping with blood from head to toe. Blood dripped from the ends of her shiny black hair. Blood hung on the lashes over her opaque white eyes. Blood stained her clothes, her hands, her boots and above all else her face. Her face was covered in blood. "Willow," he whispered like a half-recalled prayer.
"Not you," she said like a patron discarding a merchant's wares. "Ah," She pointed behind him. Giles turned and saw Travers struck dumb by the scene. "That one." A force flew through Giles, causing him mild discomfort but hurting him not a bit, before slamming into Travers and tossing him down the hall. "What's the matter?! Does it hurt?!" Willow clenched her fist, and Travers came rushing back toward them. Giles had to sidestep out of the way.
"Willow! What are you doing? What's going on?"
Willow ignored him. She spoke only to Travers. "Was it fun for you? Did you enjoy enslaving and murdering all those little girls? Time to pay the piper old man, only the children are already dead. Now it's time for the gray rats to die, and you are the king of rats."
"Who are you to judge us child," Travers demanded while he struggled to breathe.
"I am vengeance. I burn bright with cold fire and weird dark steel. A million children weep and I hear them all. Your castle was built on a foundation made of the bone dust of all the girls you enslaved and killed and the blood of all the children you tortured. I'll knock it down."
That was when the walls began to shake. Giles ran.
