Neptune, CA - Mars

Not to my surprise, Weezil was less than thrilled to hear from me. To my slightly startled puzzlement, it was for other than the usual reasons.

"What the hell are you doin' draggin' around a nice kid like Lucy Sinclair?" Weezil demanded. "You know what, Mars? Don't tell me. Give her her money back, walk away, and never speak to her again."

I held the phone away from my face and stared at it for a moment. My usual storage for the "things which do not compute" category was a metaphorical drawer in the shabby kitchen of my unconscious mind's abode. and I can never get it open, because that one ladle is turned the wrong way and keeps catching. Now I found myself digging through my unconscious mind's attic (why is there always a dressmaker's dummy? No one I know has ever actually held the kind of needle that could pull a thread), tossing the contents of a large box labeled 'ambiguous childhood memories', crossing out the original wording, and writing over it in red Sharpie "What is this I don't even".

"Okay, so, I'm going to want one of those ten second long synopsis of the last half of the season where you actually explain why you're getting all Mama Bear about an 09er kid, but it can wait. Right now, we're on the side of the PCH, I've got a blowout and no spare. Lucy's in serious danger, I left three guys in a slightly dismembered heap back at her condo entrance, and we've got to get to Sunnydale."

I realized my voice had risen nearly an octave and cut myself off. Dial it back, Mars. The last time you got this operatic, Aaron Echolls was trying to kill you and your dad.

There was a long pause.

"Where are you?"

"Three quarters of a mile north of the Neptune Boulevard, on the pullout just south of the lookout point," I answered.

"I'll be there in ten."

He was as good as his word, clocking in at just under nine minutes. There must have been some interesting phone calls to insurance companies that evening. Instead of his usual motorcycle, he was in car. What I know about cars can probably fit into something the size of a shoebox, but without going into mind numbing details of year, make, and model, it was land yacht of distinguished pedigree, lovingly restored to former glory by a mad scientist's lab full of interesting experimental equipment. Primo sound system and the ability to bounce its front end more than three feet in the air with hydraulics, because why the hell not?

"That's not your car," I noted as he actually used the driver side door instead of vaulting over it.

"Never said it was," he replied, coming around the end of the car.

"Eli!" Little Lucy squealed with delight.

"Hey, m'ija," he said.

He grabbed her in a big, over the shoulder bear hug, and she hugged right back. I stood off to the side, feeling superfluous. When he let her go, he held her out a bit and looked her over.

"You ain't grown any," he commented. "You need some food."

"Mom's been living off of takeout and kale smoothies for the last six months," she said, shrugging.

"Uh huh." Weevil nodded. "We got some tamales frozen from Christmas. I'll drop some off in your locker."

Her face lit up.

Weevil frowned, looking over the serious set of scratches Lucy had picked up on her scalp and just past her hairline from where Gazpacho's buddy had tried to grab her. His head snapped toward me, and I pulled back the collar of my shirt to show off the brand new seatbelt bruise I had coming up over my collarbone. Then I nodded to my car.

He looked over, caught the hole punched out of my windshield, and lost whatever humor he had left.

"How many?" he asked, taking a slow walk towards the front of the car.

"Three," I answered. "One of them isn't getting up again. The other two are on foot, but they looked like the kind that might hurry."

He examined the bumper closely, squatting close to it. When he stood, he lashed out with a foot, kicking the bumper in the same spot I'd hit Gazpacho over and over.

"What's h-" Lucy started.

I held up a hand to stop her, not wanting to throw Weevil off his groove. When he was satisfied with the damage, he got up, went to the trunk of his car, and opened it with a single key on a fob.

"You understand," he said, reaching into the cavernous trunk, "I did not plan this out. I happened to be picking up groceries when I got your call."

He pulled out a bottle of bleach, went back to my car, and poured it straight over bumper, then the windshield, and then the passenger window and frame. That's when I got a little scared. Bleach destroys DNA, voids luminol results, and washes off gunpowder residue. He wasn't just taking this seriously. He was treating it as if it were one of his own gang members.

He put the bleach back in the trunk of the car and pulled out a bag and filled it with some other things.

"Watch the seats and the floormats when you get in," he said, going back to his car's driver side. "Every scratch comes out of my hide."

He handed me a beach towel for Backup to lie on.

"You and Bowser ride in the back, Mars," he said. "Loose, you're shotgun."

"Can we stop somewhere?" Lucy asked. "I'm kind of hungry."

"Get used to it," Weevil answered. "We'll stop at my abuela's house in LA and do some figuring before we head to Sunnydale. No pitstops."

"But, Weevil," I said, "what if I'm experiencing . . . feminine issues?"

Lucy's head poked up over the shoulder of the front seat. "Are you? I always have backup supplies, just in case."

"Really?" I asked, putting on my best gratified and amazed face. "Do you like pads or tampons better?"

"Oh, I rea-"

"NO!" Weevil yelled, wild-eyed. "Hell, no. Under no circumstances are the women in this car going to run their mouths about any time of the month, let alone that one. I swear to God, Mars, you get her started on that topic, and I will strip you, put a bone through your nose, and leave you in a grass hut on a pile of straw so you can live like the rest of the prehistoric savages."

He started the car.

"Actually, that's more Biblical than paleolithic," I said.

"Was that every month or just for menarche?" Lucy asked, curious.

"Madre de Dios." Weevil pointed a stern finger at me. "Make her stop, Mars, or I will leave both of you on the side of the road."

I cleared my throat. "Hey, Sinclair, you should probably hold off on the whole shooting fish in a barrel thing for a while longer."

"I thought we were talking about menstruation," she said, looking confused.

Weevil pulled into northbound traffic, grinding his teeth the whole way.

_

Los Angeles, CA - Reese

Detective Dani Reese stood next to the door into the waiting room where Arizay napped, leaning against the window which looked into the room. The teenage girl, for all her bravado, had been shattered with shock and exhaustion. Dani gave her the coat she'd been wearing, folded up. Arizay had half-muttered a thank you, put her head down, and gone out like a light.

Now she stood outside of the room her charge slept in, trying to figure out what was going to happen next. Her partner stood next to her, munching on . . . she glanced over and up at him. Some sort of dried fruit. Figs? Dates?

"I don't like it," she said, turning her eyes back to the officers staffing the substation.

"Did you know that some scholars think the fig was actually the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil," he said. "I guess apples were too boring."

"What?" She looked back at him. "Crews, have you heard a word I said? I shot three different suspects this evening. I killed two of them. That kid in there is talking Saturday matinee horror stuff, there's been no update on her family, and not one officer in this place has taken a statement from me. I have no idea what's going on."

"I heard you," Crews said, regarding his shrivelled fruit. "You know what's going on. You just don't want to face up to it. Not yet. Start paying attention to what's in front of you, Reese. It's the only way you're going to keep the kid alive."

She woke with a start.

She'd nodded off sitting in the broken down chair of the old living room set crowding the family waiting room. Arizay was still sleeping on the couch. It was late evening and much too early for a staffed substation to be so empty. Wary, she got up, checking that her gun was still in its holster. She'd expected a delay of a few minutes before the captain came out, collected her and her gun, notified her union rep and the IAB, called Crews and her captain, and then stuck her in a room. She wasn't sure how long she'd been asleep, but it was much longer than that.

The station was quiet. There should have been officers walking back and forth. There should have been people in and out of the front door and at the counter. There should have been a congenial but slightly harassed desk sergeant at the counter, dealing with the people. Some of the lights were off. Somewhere outside her line of sight, people were moving back and forth, but it wasn't the purposeful stride of someone working.

All of the office greenery- and there was a lot of it - was dead.

Around a corner, behind a rank of filing cabinets, and through another window, this one reinforced with steel wire, she could see a member of the staff moving. A lot of cops shaved their head, she told herself. She half-wished Tidwell would shave his so he wouldn't look like a perpetual greaseball. But the cops who did shave their heads all had one trait in common: they were male. The female officer who moved back and forth in the little room almost out of Reese's sight was bald, and her eyes were closed and sunken.

There was a shuffle of feet, and Dani looked over at the door back into processing, on the other side of the main area behind the counter. Two men, both bald. They moved like they were sleepwalking, but that didn't make her feel any better. Their jackets looked like they'd been through a shredder. Their mouths were wrong, and so, she realized, were their eyes.

She stepped back into the waiting room, moving very smoothly and as silently as she could. Then she crouched down beside Arizay, put an arm across her shoulders so she wouldn't bolt upright, and then put her other hand over the girl's mouth and clamped down. Arizay woke instantly, eyes wide. She grabbed at Reese's shirt and hair, her nails breaking the skin in a couple of spots, and when she realized who it was, she relaxed.

"We're leaving," Dani said in a soft voice.

Arizay nodded without making a sound and handed Reese her coat. Smart girl. Dani led her out of the room, keeping to a low crouch, and around to the swinging half-door that marked the start of non-public space at the end of the counter. There were two Bringers, waiting for them. How those things could see, she would never figure out, but they could see, and they did. Both of them spotted Dani and Arizay, and came toward them.

It wasn't a rush, but it was a purposeful stride. Reese grabbed the rotating stock shelf of brochures and pamphlets and pulled it down across the entryway and pushed Arizay back. The next exit would be straight back, out to the police vehicle lot. Arizay grabbed a baseball bat from behind one of the desks. Movement off to the sides coalesced into five new Bringers for a total of seven. They were closing in on the two women.

"Arizay, I know some of them," Dani hissed. "What's changing them?"

Arizay had gone pale and wide-eyed. "It's got something nearby that pulls on everything around it. Plants die, people go crazy or they just leave."

"It?" Dani demanded, trying to keep an eye on all the different movement around them. It was impossible. "What is 'it'?"

"Evil," Arizay answered. "Just . . . evil. The First Evil. It's always been outside. Outside people. Outside the world. Outside life. Now it's trying to get in. I dreamt about it."

They were in the short hallway that went past interview rooms and offices to the back area which branched off into a break room on one side and a weapons locker on the other. There were four more Bringers in there. They were surrounded.

"Still think it's just one bad apple?" Arizay asked, a ghost of a laugh in her voice.

"I'm willing to consider that there may be an endemic problem with the culture at this specific location, and that a change in leadership is appropriate," Dani managed.

Crews would have laughed. Arizay just stared at her.

She pulled her gun out of her holster and looked over at the racks of weapons twenty-five feet away. They might as well have been on the moon. She had seven shots left in her magazine, and if she had enough time to get her backup magazine in, she'd have seventeen more. It wasn't going to work. She started looking for a way to get Arizay out of there on her own.

The Bringer closest to them pulled out a long, ornate dagger, dragging the edge along the scabbard so it made a terrible rasping sound as it came free.

"Yeah, pendejo," Arizay growled, "you bring a knife to a fight with me, you see where it gets you."

There was movement on the other side of the back windows, looking onto the lot where the police vehicles were kept, but it was too dark to see what it might be. More Bringers?

"Ari," Dani said with a calm she didn't feel. "I start shooting, I want you to grab that chair and send it through the back window, okay? As soon as it's clear and you won't cut yourself to pieces, I want you out through there, you understand?"

"You're coming with me, right?" Arizay demanded.

"I'll be right behind you." she agreed. "Just run for the hills and don't look back, okay?"

Arizay nodded.

The other Bringers started pulling out knives. Some of them were the same ornate ritual blade the first Bringer had, but most were a collection of Bowie knives, hunting knives, and kitchen knives. She took a deep breath, bracing herself. No question about it, this was going to suck.

She was in the motion of bringing her gun up to fire at the closest Bringer when something came through the far window, breaking it. Dani caught the object's bounce out of the corner of her eye, grabbed Arizay, threw her to the ground, and then threw herself on top.

"DOWN! STAY DOW-"

The flashbang went off, annihilating the world with screaming white. Arizay tried to get up, but Dani shoved her back down, feeling the thudding impact of feet landing through the floor and wall, and sensing more than hearing the gunshots that followed. A lot of gunshots. Then, in the midst of chaos, a bubble of calm descended upon them.

_

Los Angeles, CA - Mars

"So, why the big brother act?"

After a non-negotiable pitstop - just call me baby bladder - little Lucy had asked if she could sit in the backseat with Backup and an assortment of heavy melee weapons - baseball bat, five iron, tire iron, crowbar, and a couple of other things. That left me riding shotgun with Weevil. He scowled at me.

"No, I'm serious." I persisted.

"She's family," he said in a tone which suggested I drop it.

I am, however, constitutionally incapable of dropping things.

"Oh? Did her mom have a wild motorcycle gang period about fifteen and a half years ago?"

He raised his lip in a snarl, but his heart wasn't really in it.

"No. Her mom's a complete flake," he answered. "Loose has totally got that child of an alcoholic thing down pat. Takes care of anything and everything that holds still long enough and thinks she's to blame for everything from a stain on her mom's blouse to continental drift. Worried. Constantly worried. Most worried little kid I ever saw when my Tia Rocio started bringing her with during the summer. Tia sends her out to play with us, and my sisters kind of take her over, and she starts relaxing, right?"

"Yeah, so, what happened?"

Weevil shrugged, keeping his eyes on the road, taking turns one after the other with rote familiarity. "Lot of stuff happened. She starts teaching my grandmother how to read, for one thing, by asking her help with 'homework'. None of the rest of us could do it. Abuela's too proud, you know? Then, one day, my brother, Nacio, he starts choking on something. No one knows what to do. Little Loose over there, picks him up-"

"Picked him up?" I interrupted. Nacio Navarro was the tallest and scariest member of the Navarro family. He was probably twice Lucy's weight.

"He was fourteen at the time," Weevil pointed out, "but she was eight, so it was still pretty wild. She got up on a stool, got her arms around him, picked him up, and bounced him. Bounced the burrito right out of him."

"You know there's actual medical terminology to be used here," I said.

"Yeah, I heard that," he agreed. "In my family, we like to call it 'Lucy's got a home with us forever, no questions asked.'."

He took us into a quiet residential neighborhood, not far from the Los Angeles river. It was all stucco houses with little yards. Most of them had converted their garages to third or fourth bedrooms years ago, and the driveways were all filled with cars - everything from beaters to the latest SUV. It was a mixed neighborhood, both in age and ethnicity, and there were way, way too many cars parked along the street in front of one of the homes. Several of them were police cars.

"What the hell?" Weevil muttered, peering over the windshield at the hubbub.

I looked as well, and from my vantage point, I could see something in the street, about forty yards down, draped in a white sheet, and surrounded in police tape.

"Oh, this is not good," he said.

He put the car in park and cut the lights.

"V, get behind the wheel," he ordered. "Be ready to move. I'm going to find out what's going down."

The slam of the door woke Lucy, who lifted a tousled head.

"What happened?" she asked.

"Something's going on at his grandmother's," I said. "Cops are here. He's checking it out, and we're sitting tight.'

From the rearview mirror, I could see her eyes widen and look all around while she kept still.

"I don't think . . . Veronica, can we leave?" she asked in a small voice. "It's not safe here."

My first reaction was to tell her to calm down and that we'd wait for Weevil to get back. Then I told my first reaction to shut up. Lucy wasn't the type to abandon someone just because she was nervous. Backup sat up and woofed. Bad news.

I had my eyes on Weevil, who'd reached the police tape and was looking around for someone to talk to. Just as he turned back towards us and started yelling, they dropped out of the trees, knives in hand. I fired the Taser at one, dropping him for a few seconds. One of them raced up onto the hood, planted a foot on the top of the windshield and reached for me, knife held high, only to take a four foot crowbar right across his head. He dropped, and when I peeled into reverse, fell off the hood like a sack of dog food.

"Go! Just go!" Weevil yelled, waving his arms.

Lucy fell forward onto the front seat, overbalanced by her turn at bat. I pulled the fastest three point turn of my life, and gunned it.

"Where'd he go?" I demanded.

"Who?" Lucy asked, getting back onto the seat.

Backup bounded from one side of the backseat to the other, growling and woofing like I'd hidden his bunny toy someplace he couldn't get to it. I got us back onto the main artery for the neighborhood, but from there, what? Go back for Eli? I didn't know LA, and two gringas driving a competition quality low-rider were going to draw a lot of attention. None of it good.

"The third one!"

"There's a third one?" Lucy did aghast really well.

"Yeah, there was a third one," I repeated. "Did you see where he went?"

Instead of answering, she reached across me, pointing. "TURN THERE!"

I cut across traffic to make the turn and left a trail of hurt feelings and extended middle fingers. It was an industrial park, and before I could ask her where the hell that had come from, she pointed again, thankfully not screaming in my ear.

"There, turn there."

"Sit down and put your seatbelt on," I told her, taking the turn she indicated.

What I didn't do was ask her what was going on. Every single one of her nerves was firing Eureka! at the top of her lungs, and after the past several hours, I just wasn't up for arguing anymore. We went through a small industrial park and came out at another main artery. Lucy looked around, unsure, and the car gave a little hitch. Hydraulics acting up? That's all we needed.

"There," she said, pointing, aquiver with purpose.

Down the street, across a divided intersection, on the opposite side, there was a police substation.

"Uh, Lucy, I really don't think we want to involve the authorities on this one."

I mean, the LAPD couldn't be as bad as Sheriff Lamb, but they were still the joke that ended with bloodied and beat up grizzly bear yelling "I'm a rabbit! I'm a fucking rabbit!"

"It's not about the police," Lucy said. "There's something really important there. We have to go there."

I heaved a sigh, changed lanes, and pulled into the left hand turn lane at the light.

_

Los Angeles, CA - Reese

"Okay, ladies, hold still, and don't kill the nice guy."

Dani turned toward the voice, still blinded and nearly deaf, and a set of fingers touched her forehead.

"Shalaka doola mitcha kaboola," the man said.

A wave of cold passed over her and washed the blindness and deafness away, taking with it some of the tiredness and ache of anxiety she'd suffered the last few hours. She blinked, and the blur in front of her focused into a man wearing a mix of military fatigues and Native American garb. Not the Chumash and Tongva she was familiar with, but something that tickled her brain from long ago elementary school days and Thanksgiving art projects. Iroquois? Mohican?

"Up we go," he said, giving her a hand into a sitting position. "You've got twenty seconds before we run."

Then he reached down and touched Arizay's brow, closed his eyes, and exhaled. Arizay's face went from clenched to relaxed, and she looked up. The man pulled his hand back and shook it, like he'd touched a hot stove.

"Ai yi yi, pobrecita," he said. "Aren't you just the daily special? Ten seconds, ladies, be ready to scoot."

There was a melee all around, special ops soldiers in hand to hand combat with Bringers, and the Bringers were losing. One woman wielded a polearm with a long curved blade at the end, carving through Bringers like they were styrofoam. Two men, one white and one black, were tag teaming with guns and sword, cutting down Bringers like so much wheat on harvest day. She could hear battle in the other rooms and down the corridor.

"Up-si-daisy," the shuman said, taking them by an arm apiece and hauling them to their feet.

Dani, rattled as she was, stayed in a crouch and pulled Arizay back into one. Their rescuer, the only one not wielding a weapon put an arm around each, and yelled.

"Ready, boss!"

One of the men further up yelled in response. "All right, people, form up!"

And the group around them immediately changed into a modified flying wedge, moving Dani and Arizay under their guard's wings towards the front of the building, and cutting down anything that got between them and the door. The guy with the sword took a set of claws across his shoulder, and his partner countered with three bullets to the Bringer's face, leaving behind a stump and a lot of mess. Another woman, not the one with the polearm but the one with a heavy crossbow, shot another Bringer point blank in the eye and then kicked it in the chest to knock it out of the way. One very large man with curly brown hair pulled back in a pigtail, grabbed one Bringer by the head, bent it over, and snapped its neck, like he was opening a stubborn jar.

It was the most concentrated, professional, and deadly amount of violence Reese had ever seen in one place. Then, they were out of the building, into the parking lot, and their guide was pulling them with him.

"Come on, ladies, got a minimum safe distance to reach before the fireworks," he said.

The street in front of the police station was a divided road, and the median had a nice assortment of boulders and landscaping. The sachem pushed them down behind one just as a vintage Buick convertible came around the corner.

The police substation erupted into a blinding, deafening explosion - heat and flame climbed skyward, and bits and pieces of what had once been a respectable outlet of local law enforcement rained down on them.

"My grandpa's car," Arizay moaned. "He's going to be so pissed."

"Well, you can tell him it made the ultimate sacrifice," the shuman answered. "Okay, kids, on your feet. Your ride's here."

_

Los Angeles - Mars

I think it says something about my day that when the police station blew up real good, my reaction was more of a 'huh, now there's something you don't see every day' than your standard, appropriate panic and horror.

I slammed on the brakes in reaction before I even knew what was going on, and Lucy ducked below the level of the door. Even set as far back as the police station was, even with the explosion going almost totally vertical, the heat of it baked my face and made Backup lick his nose with worry. I reached over and gave him several pats to calm him down.

While fragments of Law and Order were still raining down on us, the car lurched again, and Señor Tercero showed up, clawing his way over the grill, onto the hood, and over the windshield, grabbed Lucy by an arm, and before I or Backup could anything, stood, knife in hand, to put an end to her.

Except, in time with three very loud gunshots, gouts of blood and bone erupted from his face and chest, and then he slowly fell over. Lucy fell back against me, her arm angled funny, and when the gunsmoke cleared, we were directly across from the lady with the gun who'd just saved us. Me and my junior detective skills picked up on several things:

pissed off
tired
hard ass
oh, and she was maybe an inch taller than me

"Sweet," the girl with her said, smiling.

"I . . . really . . . hate . . . those guys," the woman said.

"Well, okay," the nearest man said, scratching his chin. "Good hook, time for some exposition, and looks like the kid needs some first aid."

Several other, much taller, folk collected nearby. Leader man kept an eye on us while he checked with his team. The guy with the blanket shepherded his two peeps over to us.

"Hi, there," he said. "I'm John Brant. I do stuff. Girl with crazy lip liner is a Potential - Vampire Slayer, that is. Not sure about the other. I think she's along for the ride."

"Arizay Reyes," the girl added. "What are you doing with my Tio Sergio's ride?"

"Weevil borrowed it," I said. "And then he got stuck at his aunt's, so we're kind of on our own."

"Ooh, I wouldn't want to be in his skin when this is done." Arizay shook her head. "Tio Sergio's all kinds of crazy about his baby."

I put the car in park but left the motor running. John Brant hopped over the door into the backseat, made a kissy noise at Backup, and bent over Lucy, who was in quiet agony over her arm.

"Who are you?" the lady and I asked simultaneously.

"Oh, well, my buddies-" and he indicated the loose crowd of really well, if strangely, equipped special ops wet dream guys across the way, "and I were a crack commando unit sent to prison by a military court for a crime we didn't commit. We escaped from a maximum-security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. We're still wanted by the government, and we make our living as soldiers of fortune. Normally, I'd do the whole 'if you have a problem,' but we've already established that you do."

I met the other lady's eyes.

"That's the A-Team," she said, sighing. "Frickin' bad as Crews, just in a different direction."

He smiled at me and winked. "We're an NGO that specializes in putting down outbreaks of bad guys like Bringers. We're kind of busy right now, but we help where we can."

He looked over Lucy's arm, gently taking it in one and putting another on her shoulder.

"All right, sweetheart. Your shoulder's dislocated. I'm going to fix it."

"Uh huh."

"So, take a deep break and let it out, and then-"

He looked up and went wide-eyed.

"Hey, is that Cary Grant?"

"What?" Lucy looked up and over. "UHHHHHHGH."

He gave her arm a practiced yank while folding her in the other direction, and we all heard the click of the joint popping back into place.

"Nope, sorry, wasn't him," he said. "Now, let's get your arm into a sling."

"That's not fair," Lucy whimpered.

"Besides," I said, "Cary Grant's been dead for about twenty-five years."

Lucy burst into tears. I leaned my head down on the steering wheel. The nice, cold, non-judgemental steering wheel.

"Sheesh," Arizay said. "I guess we're out past Princess Crybaby's bedtime."

"Ari," the older lady said, "stuff it, or I'll give you something to cry about, okay?"

Ari glared at her but subsided.

"Detective Dani Reese," the woman introduced herself. "LAPD."

I almost asked her about the station and if it was hers and decided wisely not to. Points for Mars. Only down by a couple zillion at this point.

"Veronica Mars," I answered. "Junior at Neptune High."

Something flickered across Detective Reese's expression. Oh, so she'd heard of Neptune, and if she'd been a LEO long enough, she might even recognize my dad's name.

"Yeah, okay, so going to Sunnydale?" Reese asked.

"That's what the brochure said," I replied. "Starting to wonder about the advertised extras, though."

"Uh huh."

She nodded and looked around, taking a measure of the neighborhood. Off in the distance, the wail of sirens had started up. What, five minutes? A little more?

"Okay, Brant, put Lucy in the backseat. Ari, you're riding in back as well," Reese said.

Ari started to object but stopped when Reese glared at her. Wow, that was a good must have spent years perfecting that glare. Maybe I could get some pointers.

"Mars, scoot over," she told me. "I'm driving."

"I drive fine," I protested.

"Do you have federal certification in tactical driving skills?" she asked.

" . . . no."

"Then slide over," she repeated. "I'm driving."

John Brant helped Lucy over the back of the front seat and into the backseat. He got out, and Arizay got in. I scooted over, and Detective Reese took the wheel.

And off we went, like a herd of turtles.

_

"Hentzau, what are our numbers?" Agent Finn asked, turning to his lieutenant.

"Gehring and I found approximately half the original staff in the weapons locker," the man replied. "It looks like the ones who turned to the First Evil killed all the others. There were also two more bodies - girls no older than sixteen. They were . . . badly used."

Riley grimaced. "That's why they took the police station. Probably suckered more than that in with the promise of safety. Well, we managed to put a stop to it. Okay, troops, pack it in. We are out of here in two minutes."

Brant rejoined them just as their civilians' car left.

"Two Potentials and a couple of ladies with mother hen complexes on their way," he said.

"You doing okay?" Riley asked.

"Eh, three minor healing spells aren't so bad, but throwing a major invocation for Serendipity does take it out of a guy. Still, the Slayer mojo doesn't hurt. Lot of opportunity to shuffle some random, helpful images into their dreams."

Finn considered it. "Okay, next down time, see if you can push warning about the choke points out to them. Los Angeles is clear now, but we've got five other spots where the Bringers are ambushing Potentials on their way to Sunnydale."

He saw Hentzau study the direction the car had gone. Hentzau frowned in thought.

"Come on, lieutenant," Finn ordered.

Hentzau picked up his gear and followed.