Chapter 10
SUNNYDALE, CALIFORNIA
MICK ST. JOHN'S P.O.V.
I drove Buffy back to the apartment of her Watcher, Rupert Giles.
"Me and my fellow Scoobies have to meet there because our old headquarters blew up" she explained: "Along with the rest of the high school!"
"Scoobies?" I echoed.
She nodded: "Because, three of us are kids? And, we meddle with the plans of all the supernatural Big Bads who want to use the Hellmouth for some kind of evil-doing?"
"Gotcha!" I replied, grinning and giving her a right-handed thumb's-up.
When we got to Giles' apartment door, she told him what had happened at the bar and why it had side-tracked her from her original plans. She then introduced me, and emphasized how I was a "vegetarian." Giles immediately took the hint and invited me in.
"Willow Rosenberg? Xander Harris? Meet Mick St. John."
I shook hands with the other two teenagers (who were understandably a little hesitant to do so), and then I kept my promise to tell Buffy why Angel was in trouble. When I had finished, her face had lost its cherubic smile. Instead, she now looked as grim as any battle-hardened American soldier I had served with in the European Theater of WWII!
"Now, then; could you return the favor?" I asked: "And, tell me a little more about Angel? Like how he was turned, and why he's so infamous?"
So, she told me about "Liam." The son of a wealthy Galway silk merchant, in eighteenth-century Ireland, who seemed to delight in being a womanizing drunkard and bully. And, how, one night, he crossed paths with Darla (a prostitute who'd been vampirized back in the 16th century). He started to have his way with her. She Embraced him. And, in the process, sired a monster far worse-far more sadistic-than Liam had ever been.
That is; till he made the mistake of killing and draining a young gypsy girl sometime during the late 19th century. The shaman of the kumpaniya led the rest of his people in putting a curse on Angel. The worst one imaginable to them; the restoration of his human soul. And, with it, the conscience he must have had during his own once-innocent childhood.
"It's been a mixed blessing for him, at best," she finished: "Because, it inspired him to try and atone for his past sins. Including turning on Darla and her sire; the Master of the Order of Aurelius."
"All very commendable," I replied: "But, if Prince Cyrus' other bloodhunters find him before I do, he's a goner. Plain and simple as that!"
Giles had been tapping on his chin, with his right index finger, all through Buffy's recitation.
"You say he might be seeking political asylum from the Camarilla of San Francisco?"
I nodded, a little surprised (not to mention, disconcerted) that he knew about one of the names for the political hierarchy of the Kindred.
"Willow! What was it you found out on your computer, just prior to Buffy's return?"
"Oh! Right! Well, according to this one website (?), there's supposedly a reproduction of Queen Bessie's Lucky Charm at the Winston Rayne Memorial Museum of Antiquities. In San Francisco!"
I shrugged: "So?"
"It was donated to the museum by a close personal friend of the last English governor of Hong Kong. A certain local philanthropist named...Julian Luna!"
I finally realized what she was getting at.
"You want me to take Buffy with me to Frisco!"
"Not just her" declared Xander: "Me and Will, too."
"It _would_ kill the proverbial two birds with one stone," added Giles: "Buffy could-to use her vernacular-watch your back, in case you're accosted by anymore rival bloodhunters. And, you could return the favor by helping her secure the unicorn bracelet! Or, at the very least, help us verify that it is, indeed, merely a reproduction."
I thought it over a few moments. Then, I nodded.
"Let's all hop in the Mystery Machine, gang!"
tbc