Chapter the Next to Last: I Can Feel the Devil Walking Next to Me...
"I will funnel some of my ill-gotten gains into urban renewal projects. Although slums add a quaint and picturesque quality to any city, they too often contain unexpected allies for heroes." ― The Evil Overlord List
Hah. Good gods. He looked like Tom Selleck from that Quigley movie, only not as tall, and without the mustache. Long rifle slung over his back, chaps, boots and hat, and a gradually broadening grin. She cocked her head slightly, trying to picture him with Selleck's mustache.
Nah. Just... no.
Xander was standing there like a dope, with Heidi to one side and Vin to the other, looking at her like it was August at the beach and he was drinking her up with his eyes. Not a worry.
She felt like she could drink him up with hers forever...
Those chocolate eyes flashed suddenly, turned green, and he swung that big Model '86 up to his shoulder and fired it at something behind and upward from them. Somehow without ever taking those eyes off of hers... Damn.
She managed to wrench hers away long enough to look back. There was a body slumping off of a roof, to fall limply away, leaving a rifle balanced precariously at the edge. And again, damn.
Cordelia huffed and blew straggles of hair out of her eyes, and gave him the full wattage Cordelia Chase smile, with watts to burn.
"Hi honey," she said brightly.
"Well, hey." Xander was still looking at her like he was seeing sunrise over the ocean for the first time. That slow half grin spreading across his lips went all lopsided on her. "I'm here to rescue you," he said.
"So I see." Her own smile got broader and went all lopsided, too. "Hope you don't mind my meeting you halfway."
Xander shook his head slowly. "Nah. Saves on explosives this way. We'll have some left for New Year's."
Cordelia bit her lower lip. "Good plan. And, oh God, I'm so very glad to see you, Doofus."
"And me, you."
"Let's get out of here. Dewell's bleeding to death, Ianara's sick and exhausted, and I'm tired, hungry, and filthy," Cordelia said. She didn't care if she still appeared to be drinking in the sight of him like she'd been dying of thirst. She had been. "Did you, Heidi, Dude, John T., and Vin, and those two horsepokes do all of this yourselves?"
"Naw," Vince said, smiling a bit broader than usual his own self. "Brought company with party favors."
Xander nodded. "Could say we got by with a little help from our friends." That smile kept getting broader as he looked over Cordelia, Ianara, and McKay. "Collecting desperadoes again?"
She tossed her hair. "He followed me home, dear. We may need to keep him."
Xander nodded slowly. "Hey. Whatever Lola wants... Let's do get the hell out of here, first though. Once I put paid to Wilkins."
Heidi drawled. "You take your girl and McKay and Ianara out. I'll do for him."
Vince nodded. "And me."
"We can do both," Cordelia said. "Wilkins ran screaming like a little girl and fled down a tunnel to his offices."
There came a sudden, unexpected shot and Vince staggered and dropped his rifle. A harsh voice came from back toward the Mission rear gates. She turned in shock, as did several others... A disheveled and bloody faced Dillon Marsh staggered out from some cover she'd have sworn couldn't have hid one of those antelope jacks her Afghan hound used to chase...
Marsh: "I don't think so young – "
Four nearly simultaneous shots rang out and Marsh staggered, grimacing horribly.
Xander worked the lever, aimed deliberately and shot him through the head. "Schmuck."
Heidi shook her head. "Talk when it's time to talk, shoot when you should be shooting. Idiot."
Vince winced, one hand clasped on his leg, and a pistol in the other. "Well, he got it half right," he said, sliding Deke Matthews' former prize revolver back into his belt holster.
Cordelia blinked. "Crap."
"Well put, honey."
Cordelia sighed, rolling her eyes. She swung down from her saddle, still holding that scoped Winchester '95, and was followed over by Xander. "Oh, shut up, and help me get a bandage around his leg. Dumbass."
Xander winked and said, "I love you too," getting another full wattage Cordelia Chase smile.
Heidi rolled her eyes, smiling. "I'll go get the horses. You two try not to hump each other even sillier until after we get out of here."
"Guess she told us," Cordelia said.
"Oh, hell, son," a way too familiar voice called out, saying, "Will you just shut up and kiss my niece so we can wrap this up and get these people to a doctor?"
Cordelia turned, her eyes going wide. She put a hand to her mouth as it fell open. "Daddy?"
William Randolph Chase – that's who it had to be – blinked from the back of his horse next to Rory, Linc, Rand, and some little short guy. "Grand uncle, actually. And let me say, hearing a girl young enough to be my daughter call me that is awfully disturbing."
"A lot of men your age seem to like it," Cordelia said, reflexively, and closed her mouth with a snap, horrified.
Rory had swung down by this point and hurried over to her and Vin, and was whipping the sash off from around his waist to use as a bandage. "Ran," he called out, "Check on McKay, he looks bloody too."
"He is, sir," Ianara said. "He was shot twice, killing all those men for us. Maybe more than twice," she added.
"'Zata fact," Rory said. "Well, now."
William Randolph didn't seem nearly as horrified by what had come out of her mouth as she was. He seemed almost as amused as Xander.
"Swear to God, Rory, I don't know how we're ever going to get the next generation going," he said. "Half these young people seem to want to do nothing but be wandering gunslingers and ride off into the sunset until they end up old, shot up saddle tramps. And the real young'uns can't even seem to figure out what to do with a pretty girl," he shook his head, adding, "It's like they don't have the sense that God gave, well, you."
"I know," Rory said. He finished tying off the sash around Vince's leg. "'Spect we're gonna have to just lock 'em in a bedroom out at the Lazy-H with nothing to do but figure it out."
Cordelia got over her shock in a hurry. "Oh, shut up, you two."
There came a deep, rolling attenuated boom that sounded like it came from a long way off, and Xander along with Heidi and several others snapped around in that direction.
She couldn't see anything... and the shot hadn't appeared to have hit anyone...
Cordelia's eyes widened and she gasped suddenly, whipping back in the other direction with Sheridan's scoped '95 coming up, her eyes searching. Where – there. Her gaze fixed on something and the rifle's butt settled into her shoulder as it came level and crashed out a shot.
Xander whirled that way himself, his eyes searching frantically even as Cordelia worked the lever and her rifle crashed back into her shoulder again.
Up on the railing around the big mill windmill tower, the one that she'd figured Xander or Vin would have cleared already, a figure jerked and staggered as her second shot went home. It jerked again, not from any shot of hers or any of theirs, and what looked like a long barreled scoped rifle fell from its hand as it tumbled over the railing and fell down and away...
Long moments later that deep attenuated boom came rolling in again.
Damn. Reflexively, the little calculator in the back of Cordelia's head added up one Mississippi's since that final jerk, came up with a range figure and... well, just day-um. If the range estimation that Mr. Info Dump Guy came up with was right...
'Jumping Janus and all of his two faced children,' Still Quiet said, her mental voice awed, 'A gods be damned Billy Dixon shot. Twice. In a row.'
Fuck. She heard Xander swallow hard, exchanging sidelong glances with her.
"I'm thinking you didn't anchor Mr. Sharp as well as you thought, Boss," Heidi said, her voice sounding hushed and a bit awed.
"Thinking maybe you're right, Barrie," Vin said, and then groaned.
"He gonna be all right?" Xander asked, looking over with concern.
"Oh yeah," Rory said. "Just went through the meaty part of the upper thigh. No bone or nothing."
"Good," Xander said, glancing over at Mr. Chase, "Well, then, if there aren't going to be any more interruptions, and if it's all the same to you, sir, I'm going to kiss your niece now, so we can get on with this."
He did.
Wow, did he ever. It couldn't possibly have lasted as long as it felt like. Because Dewell would have been long bled out by then... Xander pulled back finally, reluctantly, and she looked up at him with half lidded eyes to find herself molded against him, one foot hooked behind his leg, and with both arms around his neck.
"Hi there," Xander said. "Can I have you?"
She suspected that she'd said 'yes'. Or maybe 'oh God yes'. Again.
They sent Dewell and Vince off with Heidi, Linc, and Rand for an escort. Probably overkill – Heidi was freaking dangerous enough. But when Cordelia made that observation, Heidi just smirked and said something about there being no such thing: just kill and time to reload...
Xander seemed to find that outrageously funny for some reason. She thumped him once just on general principles.
They sent off Arthur Finch as well, bound for a jail cell. Would have sent off Ianara to the doctor as well, but she wouldn't have any of it once she discovered her beloved Aaron was up with the others. Cordelia just couldn't quite wrap her mind around the concept that 'her Aaron' was Jonathan freaking Levinson.
She was also having a hard time with Giles – Reginald Giles, their Giles great grandfather or something like – being the one with the earth shattering bombs. Like, wow.
And it seemed like more than half the town was out there, all carrying weapons. Like, double wow.
Not many survivors or prisoners; lots of bodies. The town undertaker was going to have to hire extra help. Somehow, Cordelia just couldn't quite seem to feel bad about that.
Xander's mouth fell open and his eyes almost bugged out when a stoic faced Oz and a grim looking Gunn came up holding a bloody, disheveled and wild haired Blake Maitland by the arm, for Dude to take custody of.
"Maitland? How the hell?" Xander said. Cordelia boggled right alongside of him...
Blake had a trickle of blood running down from one ear, and was grinning wildly, looking massively shell-shocked. He looked blankly at Xander, as her man repeated the question, then apparently a synapse closed, and he grinned wider.
"Hit the release latch and threw it to one of the guys in front of me! Stillwell's guy! And threw myself back out the gate and over and went rolling into a little ditch running along the wall past the gate, and my arms over my head!"
The Maitland kid was speaking too loudly, and enunciating too clearly. And punctuating everything with exclamation points. Cordelia gathered he'd been a bit too close to the blast zone...
Hell. She'd been upstairs and across the courtyard, and she'd been a little too close to the blast zone.
Seeing Stein and three deputies, Stein now wearing Munroe's badge, was almost as much of a shock for Cordelia.
She was kind of starting to gather that it had been an interesting evening, and an interesting couple of days before that.
Blake Maitland went off to the doc's with Deputy Scott and Deputy Smith to keep an eye on him. They took Cordelia's string of horses with them to drop off at the Livery, also. All except for Keanu, Sheridan's pretty, doe eyed buckskin, and the mount that Ianara was using. Xander kept the bloody legged and red muddy hooved Rasputin...
Cordelia raised her eyebrows looking at that, and he knew she'd pry the story out of him later. Plenty of time for that, now.
They were about to all saddle up and head into town for Wilkins – assuming he hadn't fled for parts unknown yet – when a familiar looking figure on a tall chestnut Thoroughbred came riding in through the hole where the gates – and the gatehouse – used to be. Lazenby looked around with bemusement at all the damage.
And a bit less than amusement at all the bodies. He just looked tired and kind of saddened by that.
Xander knew how he felt, now that the adrenaline and exhilaration were done. And now that he had Cordy back... He felt an odd mix of a hundred feet tall and light as a feather, and infinitely old and weary beyond his years.
His real years, not the extra four that Whomever had stuck on him.
Xander nodded to the older cowboy, a slow smile spreading across his lips. He never had figured out where the old westerner's perch was. Never had to shoot him, either. Nor get shot by him.
He was really kind of happy with both outcomes.
"Dude, John T.," Lazenby said. He had his long rifle across his saddle bow, but didn't seem particularly interested in doing anything with it.
And he had a huge, like thirty-six inch at the shoulder and a hundred fifty plus pounds huge, yellow dog with a black muzzle trotting by the feet of the chestnut horse. Anatolian Shepherd, maybe.
The yellow dog plopped down and sprawled at the feet of the horse, and looked real intent on chewing at something in the pad of one paw.
"Ned." Dude nodded to him, looking him over curiously. "Kinda surprised to see you here, now."
Lazenby shrugged. "Why? Don't recall that I've done anything to be arrested for, Marshall."
"Well," John T. drawled, "Could make a case for just on general principles and your association with Maitland, Stillwell, and Wilkins, but no – I can't recall that you have either."
They looked at Cordelia and she shrugged and shook her head. "Never saw him once I was taken, the whole time I was a prisoner. Everyone I have reason to be pissed off at, except for Wilkins, seems to be dead."
Lazenby pushed his hat back and smiled at her. "I'm real glad to see you unharmed, Miss Chase. Your young man there was a bit distraught."
"He was, was he?" Cordelia hugged Xander's arm to herself with her free one. "Fancy that."
Lazenby nodded, and looked to Xander. "Mighty fine shooting and moves there, son. Didn't see all of it, but saw most of it through the scope here."
"Why didn't you shoot?" Xander asked, curiously. "Before that last, I mean. You obviously had me dead bang at a number of points, before then."
Lazenby shrugged, pursing his lips thoughtfully. "Thought about it, I honestly did. Several times as a matter of fact... Let's just say that Wilkins taking your pretty gal there, and Maitland standing by it, didn't set well with me. I decided to let you and Victor sort it out between yourselves." He smiled lazily, and added, "Didn't seem to set well with McKay or Hedges, either, I noticed."
Cordelia nodded and smiled at the old cowboy. "It really didn't, in the end, where it mattered."
Xander nodded. Good enough. "I just gotta ask," Xander said. "Where the hell were you set up, anyway? About drove me nuts trying to spot you."
Lazenby's smile broadened and he winked at him. "Think I'll hang on to that one for now. Might need that trick again, you and I ever get crossways of each other," he said. "Besides, you didn't pay for those cards."
"Stand aside, please," Interim Sheriff Stein said. "We have business with Interim Mayor Wilkins, if he is in there."
"He is," one of the two deputies at the doorway to City Hall said. He looked nervously at the gathered crew, and gulped – but he and his partner didn't stand aside. "I'm afraid that we can't do that, Deputy Stein."
"Former Deputy," his partner said. He was holding a pump action Winchester shotgun across his chest in a white knuckled grip.
"I think that you'll find that he's the lawfully appointed Interim Sheriff now," Dude said. "Until such time as a legal County Board of Inquiry can either find different or confirm that."
"I wouldn't know anything about that, Marshall," the first one said. "Our orders are to hold this doorway. We intend to follow them."
"So be it," Dude said.
Awfully brave, Xander thought. Especially from just two guys facing off against Dude, Chollo, John T., Elena, himself, an exasperated looking Giles, and a pissed off looking Deputy Cordelia Chase. Not to mention an Aaron Levinson with that big Farquharson, and Ianara decked out like the Frito Bandito. And Rory Harris and William Randolph Chase...
"Mr. Giles? If you would be so kind, sir," John T. drawled.
Giles sighed heavily, and adjusted something on the satchel he was holding. Then he stepped back, whirling it by the straps around his head and let it fly in through the doors the Deputies were guarding.
Neither of them made any attempt to shoot him to stop him.
Xander wouldn't either, not if he was looking down the barrels of Cordelia's drilling and John T.'s Winchester.
"I were you," Chollo said, "I'd run. Very fast and very far."
They looked over their shoulder at the satchel sliding across the marble floor towards the double doors at the back of the antechamber –
– and did just that. Out their doors and down the stairs around and past the Marshall's little group.
Dude, John T., Elena, and Xander and all the rest of them backed hastily down the stairs, and all the way out to the edge of the fountain in the square.
"Well, this distance should be more than sufficient," Giles said. "This one isn't nearly as large, nor as potent a charge as the others."
The charge went off in a huge, dull clap of sound. Dust, smoke, and marble chips flew out through the double entry doors. The columns holding up the roof of the portico shattered. The columns holding up the entry way foyer's roof shattered and blew outwards. So did all of the windows on the sector.
Bits and pieces of door and marble and mahogany doorway rained down halfway between the entry way and where they stood. A large, heavy, ornate brass knocker bounced three times and came to rest at Xander's feet.
And seemingly in slow motion and with a great, massive and elegant dignity, the portico roof hit the ground and smashed, followed by the entry way roof. And then the entire front of that part of the building slid down the face and shattered into rubble.
Everyone turned and looked at Giles, who was standing there cleaning his glasses with an embarrassed expression.
Xander bent and picked up the knocker, and gave Giles a raised eyebrow and a bemused look. Askance. That's the feeling. Definitely askance.
"O-or, perhaps that e-estimation may have been just slight a bit in error... "
Once they managed to find a stairwell that wasn't collapsed, or blown to hell, getting up to the third floor and locating the Mayor's office wasn't all that hard.
Xander made a solemn resolution: never ever let Giles play with the explosives. Not unless you were absolutely, positively, one hundred percent deadly certain that you wanted something blown into gravel.
When he leaned down and whispered that into Cordelia's ear, she looked at him wide eyed and nodded, biting at her lower lip. And then collapsed against him into laughter and helpless giggles. He had to support her up a full flight of stairs.
Giles glared at them all the way up to the top.
They went past the receptionist, or personal assistant or whatever, looking like a hot, blonde, fortyish spinster librarian, without pausing. Cordelia held a finger to her lips and froze her in place with a patented icy glare.
The door to his office was locked. Chollo took care of that with a quartet of rifle rounds to the wood and door jamb around the lock, and Dude kicked it open.
They found Wilkins standing behind his desk, packing things into a leather valise. He looked up with an expression of extreme annoyance when they came in.
"Well, gosh," Wilkins said. "I had thought that I left strict instructions with those deputies that I wasn't to be disturbed for any reason." The knife slash across his face was livid and caked with dried blood, and the gaping ruin of his left eye was weeping clear, reddish fluid.
"It's just so hard to get reliable help these days," Cordelia said, her tone of voice mocking.
Wilkins gave her his best genial grin, and looked at Xander. "That's one spunky little girl you've got there. If I thought she'd still be here in a hundred years, I'd save her to eat."
"I'll be here longer than you," Cordelia said, tapping her lips with a forefinger, and examining him clinically.
"She's right about that," John T. said.
Xander ignored Wilkins, turning his back to examine the office curiously. Big office. And nicely, expensively appointed. Tastefully too.
He'd been in Cordelia's parent's house often enough by now to know how to tell. It made Cordelia's dad's study look almost tacky. Almost.
Cordelia's dad's study didn't make your skin crawl.
One entire end of the room was open and free of furnishings, and there was a large, expensive looking Persian rug there by the fireplace, with a few comfortable chairs around the edges.
"Interim Mayor Wilkins," Interim Sheriff Stein said, "You are under arrest on numerous charges. Please stand down and relinquish yourself to our custody, sir, to be bound over for trial as soon as proper charges may be laid against you."
"Or do not, and be shot down where you stand, like a rabid dog," Deputy Cobb suggested.
"Now, that's just rude," Wilkins said. "I can't believe that you would turn on me like this, Deputy Stein, after all that I've done for this town."
"Oh, just shoot him," Cordelia said, tiredly. "He's completely and utterly bug fucking insane."
The gun cabinet on one wall caught Xander's eye, and he wandered over to examine it and the contents. Something inside grabbed his attention, and finding it unlocked, he took out the longarm that had caught his interest.
The other two Deputy Sheriffs were gathering items into large leather valises; one at Wilkins' desk, working around him, and the other at a filing cabinet. Chollo confiscated the bag that Wilkins had been packing, while Dude grabbed a sheaf of papers he'd been examining from a credenza.
"Now, Young Missy, I don't find that sort of thing amusing. I'm a family man," Wilkins said, as Cobb came around the desk to jerk his hands around behind him and cuff him. "Let's watch the swearing, please."
Cordelia shook her head and crossed to a large, glass fronted, and expensive looking cabinet of some dark wood. It was standing open, and looked to be filled with all kinds of weirdness.
Skulls, shrunken heads, swords, wicked looking daggers, glass bottles...
And apparently, Cordelia's handguns and stuff. She smiled and started removing them from the cabinet, along with her purse. The gunbelt, with the pistols and Bowie knife, went looped over her shoulder.
"Thank you at least for keeping these safe for me," she said, "Like you promised."
Xander watched her with amusement. He slung the firearm he'd confiscated over his shoulder, along with a leather shooting bag full of rounds and associated items.
Wilkins paused to look hard at Xander as Cobb led him around the desk. More like shoved him, actually. Cobb wasn't being very gentle.
"Young Mister Harris," Wilkins said. "I can tell you Sunnydale owes you a debt. A great debt. And it will be repaid. Yes, sir, we'll mark that invoice 'Paid in full', very soon."
No one was paying enough attention to a white faced Ianara, who was watching Wilkins and his every move from under Aaron's arm, the way a mongoose watches a cobra.
They should have been, maybe...
Xander suspected, when he thought about it later, that everyone was just too horribly fascinated by the spectacle of the absolutely insane Wilkins unraveling before their eyes.
There was a loud, flat bark of a report, and a white rimmed black hole suddenly appeared in Wilkins forehead.
"Oh, my. Gosh," Wilkins said. His knees buckled suddenly and he slid boneless to the floor out of the grasp of a startled deputy Cobb.
"You are right, Miss Cordelia," Ianara said. "It does work better if you keep your eyes open."
Cordelia nodded wordlessly, her eyes wide. They narrowed after a minute. "It does. Really. And, hey, nice shot."
Ianara nodded, her eyes wide, and Maitland's fancy, engraved single action still held out in both white knuckled hands. Aaron reached out carefully and pulled it away from her, and slid it into a pocket.
"Damn," Dude said, shaking his head.
"Well, hell," John T. said."Still, it does save the state and county the expense of a trial."
"Oh... crap," Xander said, his eyes starting to widen. He lunged for Cordelia, three long steps, and grabbed her by the arm. His other hand grabbed Aaron by a handful of jacket over the shoulder, and spun him and Ianara towards the office door. "Run! Everyone! Run now."
It was a good thing that Xander had noticed that an area of that big Persian rug had started to glow greenish white after Wilkins hit the floor. Glow in a pattern a lot similar to that evil diagram in the Mission subbasement...
Gotta love those Sunnydale reflexes and ingrained paranoia. Not even Giles had noticed that first.
They'd taken a side entrance out, not wanting to bother with slowing themselves down by picking their way across rubble. Good thing, too –
– It was made of blue white flame and crackling, coruscating energy. It swelled and shot up through the roof and towered at least a hundred feet above the top of city hall. It had bat like wings, flailing tentacles growing out of its shoulders and armpits, and tentacles for fingers. It had the face and body of an Adonis, a neat flaming goatee, and spiraling horns curling back from its brow like an ibex. And it was... err, equipped.
Oh, boy was it equipped.
Was it ever. With tentacles around its equipment.
Yikes.
Reginald Giles removed his glasses and stood there gawping, glasses dangling forgotten from his fingers. "B-bel-belfagorius the Ravisher," he stammered, in an oddly clinical tone, "Or at least his non-corporeal form."
Cordelia was so very glad now that Wilkins hadn't been able to drag or carry her into that circle and use that wicked knife on her, now. I mean, c'mon. Seriously? Guys – it's really not the size that matters if you know what you're doing.
And seriously, even if it was, that was just ridiculous.
And scary...
Speaking of scary, there was what looked like a small writhing figure clutched in the tentacles of one hand of the thing. A small, ghostly Richard Wilkins the First. And it was screaming.
Belfagorius let out a roar that sounded and felt like an earth tremor, waved its... equipment, and then dwindled and was sucked back into the ruins of the roof line of City Hall and vanished. Much of city hall collapsed and was sucked in behind it.
A tiny wailing cry trailed behind it, lingering after for what seemed a long time after the thing had vanished.
City Hall, naturally, or what was left of it, continued to burn. It would probably burn out, Cordelia was pretty sure.
She seriously doubted that anyone was going to run in there with buckets or hoses and try to fight the blaze.
Not after seeing that.
She was kind of glad now that Miss Personal Assistant was gone when they'd run out of Wilkins office. And she'd noticed there hadn't been any deputies guarding the side door.
Some things even the bad guys didn't really need to have happen to them.
Maybe.
.