DR2: The Cross of Changes, book III

by Nick Midian

Broderick Egoyan has carefully chosen the right moment to strike, when friends are against friends and all trust seems about to vanish between Slayerettes and Archangels. It’s right when you think things couldn’t get worse that they get worse.

5. Part 5 of 10

DR2 - The Cross of Changes by Nick Midian, Book III, part 5 of 10
Written by Nick Midian

Content beta-reading and storyline suggestions by Duncan

English grammar, spelling, slang, Highlander continuity and general
corrections by Theo

French slang, content beta-reading and storyline suggestions by Mash

French slang by Alan


EMAIL: jcaballero@euskalnet.net

SPOILERS: For Buffy the Vampire Slayer: 3rd season, BUT no Xander/Willow
kissing and no Lover's Walk (welcome to the wonderful State of Denial,
Land of 'Shippiness). Hmmm, I've messed with the third season's timeline
to accommodate it to my necessities. Let's just say that 'Band Candy'
happened a lot later than it did, around the first days of February, OK?

For Highlander: None really, the characters of the TV series and films are
only tangentially mentioned. You just need to know the basics of
Highlander-style immortality, BUT I've always thought that whole
'Immortals have no parents and are found in a little basket' is a... um,
the Spanish word for it is 'chorrada', so let's just ignore it, OK?

KEYWORDS: Romance, Angst, Action-adventure, Violence, Alternate Universe,
Crossover.

RATING: PG-13 with some mild R parts for violence and sexual innuendo.

DISCLAIMER: This story has been written with no intention of profit,
merely for the pleasure of writing and sharing it.

The concept and characters of BTVS (Buffy, Angel, Cordelia, Xander,
Willow, Oz, Giles, Joyce, Spike, Drusilla, Snyder, Faith, Harmony, Lyle
Gorch, Quentin Travers and the rest) are intellectual and legal property
of Joss Whedon, Warner Brothers, Mutant Enemy, etc. Also, the concept of
Highlander and the characters mentioned here (Duncan MacLeod, Amanda
Darieux, Richie Ryan, Joe Dawson and the Society of Watchers) are the
property of Panzer-Davis and Rysher Entertainment.

Michael Deveraux, Rachel Curran, Crystal Parker, Kyle White Owl, Robert
Coltrane, Elvis the Dog, Broderick Egoyan, Damon Frost, Mr. Smith, the
World Committee for Civil Defense and the rest are my own creation.

All the songs and lyrics here are used without permission, they are
copyright of their respective rights owners.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Please, understand that English is not my native language,
so any grammatical or spelling errors are my fault, not of any one of my
wonderful beta-readers. If you're thinking of sending any flames, please
be kind with me. I'm a grown man, but I still can cry like a child,
believe me.

SUMMARY: Broderick Egoyan has carefully chosen the right moment to strike,
when friends are against friends and all trust seems about to vanish
between Slayerettes and Archangels. It's right when you think things
couldn't get worse that they get worse.

And now, on with the show. Fasten your seat belts ladies and gentlemen,
because it's going to be a long, hard and jumpy ride...

~~~~~~

The cast for Book III

Nicholas Brendon as Xander Harris
Charisma Carpenter as Cordelia Chase

Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Summers
David Boreanaz as Angel
Alyson Hannigan as Willow Rosenberg
Seth Green as Daniel 'Oz' Osborne
Anthony Stewart Head as Rupert Giles
Kristine Sutherland as Joyce Summers

Matthew Perry as Michael Deveraux
Paula Trickey as Rachel Curran
James Marsters as Spike
Nikki Cox as Crystal Parker
David James Elliott as Kyle White Owl
Elvis the Dog as Himself

Eliza Dushku as Faith Adams
Donald Sutherland as The Old Chess Player, Broderick Egoyan
Sebastian Spence as Damon Frost
Avery Brooks as Mr. Smith

Amy Chance as Aphrodesia
Persia White as Aura

Alan Rickman as Conrad Swann
Wesley Snipes as Talon Pantera
Dennis Rodman as Rush Pantera
Tom Berenger as Colonel Cabbot Ashe
Michael Ironside as The Sergeant
Benjamin Bratt as Santero
Trevor Goddar as Backlash
Dolph Lundgren as Havoc
Rob Rowland as Chopper
Jake Busey as Sniper
Shaquille O'Neal as Beast
Matthew Ferguson as Chip

Bill Paxton as Major Stephen Marsden, USAF
Tom Sizemore as Master Sergeant Ricky Perkins, USAF
John Leguizamo as Airman First Class Charlie Martinelli, USAF
Mario Lopez as Airman First Class Alonso 'Bear' Vasquez, USAF
Patrick Labyorteaux as Sergeant Edwin Walters, USAF

Richard Dean Anderson as Col. Jack O'Neill, USAF
Michael Shanks as Dr. Daniel Jackson
Amanda Tapping as Maj. Samantha Carter, USAF
Christopher Judge as Teal'c
Don S. Davis as Gen. George Hammond, USAF
Teryl Rothery as Dr. Janet Fraiser
Tom McBeath as Col. Harry Mayborne, USAF
Peter Deluise as Airman Shepard, USAF

with

Kevin Spacey as Robert Coltrane
Nicholas Lea as Jonah Whalls

and

Catherine Zeta-Jones as the Lady in Red


~~~~~~


CHAPTER NINE: Hold me, thrill me, kiss me, kill me
Sunnydale, California. December 4, 2002. 5:03 p.m.



We played king of the mountain out on the end
The world come charging up the hill, and we were women and men
Now there's so much that time, time and memory fade away
We got our own roads to ride and chances we gotta take
We stood side by side each one fighting for the other
We said until we died we'd always be blood brothers

"Blood Brothers", Bruce Springsteen


Xander took a deep breath, and his nostrils were filled with the salty
scent of sea water and the thick, almost sticky smell of gasoline and fuel
for boats.

"Why is it that we always get places near the docks?" he asked out loud,
without turning around as he knelt down at the edge of the roof. He looked
at the distant sun, hiding behind the fake horizon created by the line of
warehouses' roofs.

Behind him, Rachel shook her head in wonder and stepped out of the shadows
produced by the small structure that held the roof-access of the
warehouse. Not wanting to disturb her friend, she had been silent,
extremely silent in her approach, but it seemed that very few things could
escape his sharp vampire hearing.

"I guess it comes with the territory," she whispered, walking closer and
sitting down beside him, on the edge of the roof. "And it's always good to
have a route of escape."

Xander let out a sigh and nodded slowly, taking a handful of loose gravel
from the roof, playing with the small stones and using them as an excuse
not to look straight at her. "So, they've chosen you to be the rescue
party."

The brunette Immortal smiled softly and shook her head, her soulful brown
eyes sending a short look at him before getting captivated by the
spectacular show offered by the setting sun.

"No, I'm here on a strictly personal basis. I just thought you'd like some
company and someone to speak to. Angel was searching for you with the same
idea in mind, but I had the impression that you didn't really want to talk
with him."

The young vampire snorted softly, nodding with his head. "I've been
avoiding him for the last couple of hours, and I've ended up here, using
the sun to keep him away. Pathetic, huh?"

"No, I know that it has to be hard for you." There was a moment in silence
in which they just looked at the horizon, feeling comfortable in their
mutual company and the friendship they shared until the brunette looked at
him again with a soft smile. "Well, do you want to talk or... just stay
here for awhile?"

"Staying here sounds good," the young vampire said with a sigh, sitting
down like she was doing, with his legs hanging from the edge of the roof.
"But I guess I can't hide out for the rest of my life, it didn't work in
the past and it wouldn't work now. Can I ask you a question?"

Rachel smiled warmly at him. "Sure."

"Do you believe in what we do?" At Rachel's soft arching of her brow,
Xander shook his head and bit his lower lip. "I mean, do you think we're
doing the right thing?"

The brunette Immortal took a deep breath and looked at the setting sun, a
strange smile coming to her beautiful lips. "I'm 100 years old, Xand," she
whispered almost reverently, still smiling.

She continued, "And in all that time, there's few things I can say I've
learnt to be absolutely true. But one of them is that when you live as
long as we do, you always end up seeing more evil than good, more misery
than joy. And when that happens, you only have two choices; either you
turn into a cynic that cares only about himself, or you try to do
something to change things, to make them better."

Turning around her head to look at him, she surrounded his broad shoulders
with her arm and brought him closer to plant a soft kiss on his cheek.
"I'm proud that you chose the right path so soon, little brother."

Xander chuckled and leaned his head on her shoulder, letting her rock the
two of them. "If Michael catches us this way, we're gonna be in trouble."

"Nah, he has an open mind," she told him with a smile, "the guy's French,
after all."

Before they could say anything more, and while Xander was still laughing
at her commentary, the door behind them burst open and, when they turned
around in surprise, a bewildered Crystal came out, almost breathless and
with her jade-green eyes wide open with a mix of tension and alarm.

"I've found you at last!!" she exclaimed, turning around and going back to
the door before they could ask questions. "We have an emergency!!"

The brunette Immortal and the young vampire looked at each other with
surprise and, standing up, quickly followed the red-haired witch into the
bowels of the warehouse. As they crossed the lintel of the floor and
started to descend the metallic stairs, the wailing sound of an alarm
filled their ears, rumbling against the inner walls of the warehouse.

"Who pushed the panic button?" Xander asked, covering his sensitive ears
with his hands as Rachel and him followed Crystal into the lab, where Kyle
was already trying to placate a nervous Elvis, who was howling at the top
his lungs and at the rhythm of the siren.

In the room, all the screens of all the computers were blasting with red
and black flashes of color, similar messages of warning appearing on their
surfaces. "And could someone make it stop, please?"

"It was me!" Spike exclaimed, coming into the area with a fast step and
followed by a confused Angel. "We 'ave a bloody situation 'ere, mate!"

"This is supposed to be for class-one emergencies, Blondie," the tall
Texan said, introducing the de-activation code into the computer. "It's
not a toy for when you get bored."

The bleached-hair vampire looked at him with hostility, but just turned
around to face Xander. When the young vampire saw the wild look in his
usually cold blue eyes and the thin layer of perspiration on his pale
forehead, he knew that Spike wasn't playing, not at all.

"What's going on?" Xander asked, quickly getting into his commanding mode.

"I just got a call from Willow," Spike told his younger blood-brother
fighting with a feeling of nervousness and anxiety that was totally alien
to him, "she sounded weak and was speakin' incoherently, I dunno... she
just didn't sound right."

"What?" Angel asked with a frown of worry. "What does that mean?"

"Read my lips, Peaches, I – don't – know," the bleached-hair vampire
growled at his sire with annoyance, before turning back to Xander. "She
told me somethin' about armed guys that shot the Slayer and took the
Watcher, I-"

This time, Angel's yell thundered even over the sharp whine of the siren.
"What!?!"

The souled vampire grabbed Spike by the shoulder and spun him around,
making his childe face him. "Buffy was shot? Why didn't you say that
before?"

"I'm tellin' ya now, OK!?!" Spike shouted back, slapping his hands away in
rage.

"Stop it, the both of you!" Xander exclaimed, walking between sire and
childe and lifting his hands to separate them. "Now, Spike, tell me
exactly what Willow said. And shut off that damn siren, Kyle!!"

The tall Texan finally succeeded in silencing the alarm. All the computer
screens returned to their usual scroll of seemingly random data and
images, as Angel started to nervously pace back and front beside his
bleached-hair childe, his dark brown eyes fixed on him.

Spike sighed and closed his eyes, making an effort to center himself. "It
was all very fast, and she was almost soundin' as if she was ranting... I
don't know, she mentioned men with guns, that the Slayer had been shot and
the Watcher taken, then somethin' about Cordelia and Oz and then the
communication was lost."

At hearing his own lover's name, Xander's stomach did a flip-flop and then
he remembered that he had been observing, almost spying, from the roof as
Cordelia had gotten in with Buffy and Giles into the British man's old
car.

It was logical to think that if the Slayer had suffered some kind of
attack, she had probably been near and gotten herself involved in the
whole situation.

Maybe she was also hurt, maybe even...

No, he would have known that. He would have felt it. And he didn't dare go
there, all his friends needed him centered and stable now.

Xander shook his head and came out of his momentary trance, in time to see
Angel crossing the whole length of the area to the exit with long and
decided steps. "Where are you going?"

"Where do you think?" the souled vampire growled, retrieving his coat from
the rack. "I'm going to Giles' store, that's where they were heading."

"You can't know if they made it," Spike told him succinctly, "or if Willow
called from there."

"Did she call to your cell phone, or to your private line?" Kyle asked,
clicking on the keyboard.

"My private line," the bleached-hair vampire said, crossing his arms over
his chest.

"Then the system will have searched for the origin of the call
automatically, and it'll be all registered."

"And the conversation?" Xander asked him. "Did the system also record it?"

Kyle shook his head without looking at him, his whole attention centered
on the data appearing on the screen. "Nope, it only does that with the
calls to the main line, the ones directed to our private extensions are
considered personal and private. Oh, shit," he growled.

"What?" Angel asked, his anxiety and confusion growing up with each
passing second.

"The call was made from a cell phone, the number is..."

"It's Cordelia's," Xander said with a sigh, reading the number on the
screen.

"Do you have any other ideas?" Angel asked them, passing a tired hand
through his hair.

Spike and Xander shared a short and meaningful look and then the younger
vampire looked at Angel with a strange smile, before turning around to
face Kyle. "Yeah, we have. Kyle, please, give me a general location."

He did not pause giving orders for a second. "Rachel," he called the
brunette's attention as the Texan jumped from one computer to the other
with his fingers flying over the keyboards and their respective mice, "I
don't like how this is looking, get the weapons ready and try to find
Michael, we may need everybody's help on this."

"Do you know the code for the armory's lock?" Kyle asked her, without
taking his eyes from the screen.

Rachel nodded, already walking out of the area. "You still use the
measures of the month's playmate, don't you?"

The tall Texan grunted something intelligible and managed a nervous smile.
"Well, I..."

"Come on," Xander told him with a no-nonsense tone, "we don't have time
for that."

"It's done," Kyle said, pushing a final key on the computer.

Immediately, a two-dimensional display of Sunnydale appeared on the main
and widest screen with a series of colored dots distributed all along its
surface, some of them moving and some of them remaining still.

"What is this?" Angel asked with a frown, getting closer to the computer.

Each one of the small dots had a number inscribed in the middle and when
Angel found the corresponding and explaining legend in one of the corners
of the screen, he couldn't help but do a double take at it.

1 - Harris, Alexander L.
2 - Deveraux, Jean-Michel E.
3 - Curran, Rachel R. ...

All the Archangels.

7 - Summers, Buffy A.
8 - Chase, Cordelia E.
9 - Rosenberg, Willow J. ...

All the Slayerettes.

Their names. All of their names, with a number assigned to each one of
them. And all of them localized in that map on the computer. Angel didn't
have to make a great effort to put two and two together.

"You have us all bugged!?" he exclaimed with a mix of incredulity, anger
and surprise. "But how... ?"

"Miniaturized location chips strategically placed where we could be sure
you would always carry them," Xander explained him matter-of-factly, his
intense eyes never leaving the computer's screen. "The back of Buffy's
cross, Giles' pocket watch, one of your rings..."

The souled vampire looked at the silver rings on his left hand, as if they
were suddenly offensive. "Why?" he asked simply.

"It's just for safety, for something like this, not because we wanted to
violate your privacy," the younger vampire said, leaning over Kyle's
shoulder to have a better look. "I knew you wouldn't feel comfortable with
the idea, so that's why we didn't tell you anything about it."

Kyle snorted, and shook his head. "Yeah, and that's why I needed two whole
weeks to place all those little fellas without you noticing it." The Texan
sent a twisted smile and a look towards the souled vampire, out of the
corner of his eye. "You wouldn't believe what I had to do to..."

"Cowboy..." Spike growled at him. "Do you wanna get to the bloody 'eart o'
the matter once and for all, or are you gonna make me rip your lungs out?"

"OK, OK..." the tall Texan did a quick review of the data and then began
to separate the different groups of dots, zooming in on them and placing
them on different screens.

"OK, we're here, that's correct, Buffy and Willow are at the store, Giles
is moving along Lafayette Street, and he's doing it pretty fast so I guess
he's in a car. Cordy and Oz are together, moving along Bowmount Avenue
and... wow! They're going almost at 80 mph!! What's going on here?!?"

"Buffy and Willow aren't moving," Angel said, "what does that mean?"

"Not much," Kyle explained, "the zoom is still pretty low, they could be
moving inside the room and it wouldn't be reflected on the screen."

"Do we have any sat online?" Xander asked him.

Kyle nodded, rolling on his chair to another computer and getting
comfortable in front of it before starting to click on its keyboard.
"Yeah, the ESS-1 and 2 are over Europe and the north of Africa right now,
but the ESS-3 is free and over the continent. We can use it in a minute,
but I need your authorization code to request its use."

Angel shook his head with a thick mist of confusion covering his brain, it
was just too much in too little time. "Surveillance satellites? What are
you doing? How…? What are we waiting for?"

"We're not going out blindly and without knowing what's going on, Angel,
no matter how much we want to do so," Xander told him sharply as he leaned
over the computer, and quickly typed the eight-digit alphanumeric code on
the keyboard.

"Alright, when the sat is online I want you to focus it on the store and
take thermal and infra-red images of the place ASAP. Cris!"

"Yes?" the red-haired witch asked, raising a cool eyebrow.

"Start calling the store's phone and Cordy's cell, see if you can
communicate with them. Spike," he called the bleached-hair vampire, "we'll
move out as soon as we have all the data, get the vehicles ready."

Spike nodded sharply and without uttering a word quickly went away,
leaving an astounded Angel behind him.

The souled vampire wasn't very sure of what was really going on and, in
spite of his previous analysis of Xander's team for Buffy, he hadn't
imagined to what point their abilities could reach.

=Surveillance satellites, for God's sake!!= That implied money and a power
he hadn't even thought about. That meant that Xander's explanations had
been, at least, deceptive.

"We have to talk about all this," he said to his younger blood-brother
quietly, "and very seriously."

The young vampire just looked at him over his shoulder, and nodded slowly.
"We will, but not now. Now, we have more important things to take care
of."

"Sat online!! We have images," Kyle announced, as he grabbed a joystick
near the computer he was working on and began to handle it carefully.

The tall Texan zoomed in and those present had a clear, almost freakishly
defined image of the roof of the building in which Giles' store was
placed.

As he manipulated the joystick with his left hand, Kyle moved his right
one over the keyboard, his bright blue eyes never leaving the screen.
"Changing to thermograph-enhanced camera," he said, pushing the
corresponding keys.

As he zoomed in even more, the image on the screen changed to a thermal
representation of the interior of the store, with a scale of colors that
went from black for cold to red for hot.

Two human forms were discernible in the seemingly chaotic distribution of
color; one of them in what was an unmistakable fetal position, and the
other in a most shapeless way, but both of them obviously lying on the
floor.

The last figure, instead of the expected red and orange, appeared in more
colder yellow tones. Angel had to make an effort not to moan in physical
pain, when the legend of the localization chips appeared on glowing green
letters on the screen, identifying the cooling body as Buffy's one.

"We have two bodies," Kyle whispered unnecessarily, the tension on his
voice betraying his apparent professional coldness. "Willow's and Buffy's,
if the localization chips aren't wrong."

"She's..." Angel almost couldn't voice the words, so constricted was his
throat. "Buffy is cold..."

"The store's phone gives no response," Crystal announced, "and Cordelia's
cell gives a busy signal. Maybe Willow didn't have the chance to switch it
off."

Xander nodded with a grunt but, before he could say anything, Rachel came
back into the lab with a fast step and a worried expression. "I can't get
in contact with Michael," she said as he handed the young vampire his
sheathed sword, "his cell doesn't seem to work."

"He doesn't appear on the location screen, either," Kyle commented
off-hand.

"What do you mean by that, he doesn't appear?" Rachel asked with wide-open
and shocked eyes.

"Exactly that," the tall Texan tried to said calm. "He doesn't appear on
it. Maybe he's out of range or the chip has been damaged somehow, I don't
know."

Xander closed his eyes and cursed under his breath. "God! Can't we have
just one crisis at a time?" The young vampire felt a sting of worry for
his friend and mentor's current state, but he knew that the French
Immortal could take care of himself.

And, as he had told Angel barely moments ago, they had more important
things to worry about. "Kyle, focus now on Giles, this time I want thermal
and real time images."

Kyle nodded sharply and did as he was told, changing the image on the
screen to show a dark vehicle moving along a street at the maximum speed
allowed by law, driving inside the ongoing traffic as if it was a much
smaller car.

"Isn't that a Humvee?" the tall Texan asked with a frown of puzzlement.

"Seems like it," Xander said, pointing with his finger on the screen with
the thermal version of the image. "Giles is in that car with four other
people. What about Cordy and Oz?"

Kyle handled the joystick once more, making the image move to show a white
car speeding a couple of blocks behind the Humvee. The young vampire
frowned when he saw it on the screen.

"They're alone," he whispered almost to himself, biting his lower lips as
his brain worked overtime. "Can we follow Giles' signal from a car?"

Kyle nodded in affirmation, already getting up from his chair. "I can
receive the signal in the Pathfinder's driving computer."

"Alright then," Xander exclaimed, turning around to look at each one of
those present. "I want communication systems delivered to everybody, we
have to assume that these people are armed and that they're dangerous. So
I also want bulletproof vests for all the humans, and that goes for you
too, Cris," he told the red-haired witch, seeing that she was opening her
mouth to protest.

He continued, "OK people, we're moving out! Rachel, take Angel and Spike
and get to the store. The rest of us will follow that Humvee to wherever
it's going, and get Giles back. Come on, we're in a hurry!!"

"It's still daylight out there, and the sun won't set completely for
another twenty minutes," Angel told Xander as he accompanied him to take
his jacket and the rest of his equipment while the group dissolved around
them and started to follow Xander's commands quick and efficiently. "How
are Spike and I supposed to make it to the store?"

"Through the sewers," Xander said succinctly as he adjusted a tiny
headphone around his right ear. The thin strap held the double microphones
around his throat, and the wires coming from both pieces of hardware
joined them to the radio on his waist.

He then went about checking his personal weapons, and starting to hide
them underneath his plain leather jacket.

"That'll take longer than waiting for the sun to go down," Angel
protested, barely controlling his nervousness. "We can't go walking."

As he secured his new H&K USP Sport Stainless on a side holster under his
left arm and locked the safety strap, Xander just gave him a twisted, evil
smile that made the souled vampire arc his brow questioningly. "Don't
worry about that, Angie, you won't go walking."

Angel arched his brow even more, but said nothing.

Turning his back on him, Xander walked out of the lab with a decided step,
his eyes hard and his spirit heavy but resolute. Almost carelessly holding
his sheathed katana in his left hand, the young vampire pushed the hilt
with his thumb and looked at the few exposed inches of dark gray metal,
seeing the reflection of his own dark eyes on it.

A ray of light ran into the sharp edge, making it shine, and the look of
his eyes flashed gold for a brief moment.

Xander fully sheathed the Akani-Kawa with decision and kept on walking,
getting into the rusty elevator. "And now," he whispered to himself as he
pushed the button to the garage level, "it's time to pay the rent."



~~~~~~



It was barely three minutes later that Spike and Angel climbed down the
stairs leading to the sewers, the bleached-hair vampire taking a hold of
the side-bars and sliding down them in a very Hollywood-like style.

"What did Xander mean by 'not go walking'?" the older vampire asked his
childe, following him in a more orthodox way and just jumping down the
last ten steps.

Smiling sideways in much the same way that Xander had done, Spike walked
to one of the piles of garbage that seemed to grow up spontaneously in the
ancient bowels of the sewer system. Quickly removing the cardboard boxes
that hid it, he uncovered a more shapely bulk covered by an ample and
greasy blanket.
"I think he meant this," Spike said, taking the cloth away like a magician
revealing a trick. Under the blanket there was a green and white
cross-country bike, a Kawasaki KX250, equipped with thick off-road tires.

The bleached-hair vampire jumped on the seat and kicked the kickstarter
lever, starting the engine and filling the relatively small space of the
sewer with the rattling sound of the engine.

Plus a thick cloud of poisoning and awful-smelling smoke, as he revved the
engine a couple of times. "What are ya waitin' for, mate?" he asked Angel
over his shoulder. "We don't 'ave all day."

Eyeing his childe suspiciously, the souled vampire got onto the seat
behind him, carefully holding onto his waist. "Are you sure you know how
to ride this thing?"

Spike snorted with a new, twisted smile. "You just watch me, Angelus. Oh!"
he added as an afterthought, as the bike started to gain speed along the
narrow tunnel, "and watch out where you put those hands, ya hear me,
mate?"



~~~~~~



The steel roller-door of the warehouse curled up around its slightly rusty
axis, but the noise produced by that action was covered by the roar of the
powerful engines, as Xander and Rachel came out of the garage on their
respective bikes.

They were followed by Kyle and Crystal in the tall Texan's cherry-red
Pathfinder, and departed from the building in a cloud of burnt rubber and
smoke, quickly gaining speed along the street and leaving the steel
roller-door slowly moving down behind them.

So fast did they leave, and such was the state they were in, that none of
them noticed the two men that quickly came out of the shadows of one of
the nearby alleys and walked to the entrance of the warehouse. Their dark
clothes made them practically invisible in the dim twilight.

One of them, a black man tall and big enough to be mistaken for a brick
house, surveyed their surroundings with a hand under his jacket. His
companion, a way shorter man with brown hair and tiny round spectacles,
took out an electric screwdriver from one of the interior pockets of his
own jacket.

He then unscrewed the control panel of the door, exposing its electronic
insides.

"Hmm, fifty seconds and counting," the mercenary called Beast told his
companion, checking his watch. "You're getting old, Chip."

The shorter man sent him a sideways look full of hostility, and used a
tiny Swiss-army pocket knife to cut two wires of the system and then
attached them to a small electronic device the took out from the seemingly
bottomless interior of his jacket.

Activating the device, a series of tiny red lights began to switch on one
by one, forming a small row on the black plastic surface of the device as
it went over all the possible combinations of the door's lock. The last of
the lights, a green one, lighted up and immediately, the door by the steel
roller-door opened by itself.

"Aaand here we go-oh!" Chip announced with a singsong voice.

Beast brought the small microphone inside the sleeve of his jacket to his
lips, and spoke loud and clear as he followed his companion into the
warehouse, walking backwards. "Intruder team here, we're in."



~~~~~~



"Me cago en la puta, joder!!" Santero screamed in pain at the top of his
lungs when Havoc poured a good measure of disinfectant on the wound of his
tight. "Vampires, magic, creatures of darkness... la puta, I knew all
along this was a bad idea! Hey, that hurts!!"

"Be quiet," the Scandinavian man growled at him with annoyance, his
accented voice thickened by the twang produced because of the tampons on
his nose. "And you," he added, turning around to look at Backlash, who was
driving the black Humvee, "couldn't you drive a little slower?"

"No! I want to end this ASAP!!" the Australian man hissed through his
broken teeth, spitting a new mixture of blood and saliva out of the open
window. He shook his head in incredulity and rage. "A brunette in a
miniskirt, bloody unbelievable."

Beside him, in the passenger's seat, Conrad Swann couldn't help but
chuckle softly under his breath, sending a sideways look to the mercenary
at his side. "I don't want to say 'I told you so', but..."

As he took a closed curve at top speed with the huge Humvee, making
everybody inside it take a hold onto something not to fall, Backlash eyed
the sleeping form of Giles on the back seat through the rearview mirror.

"We should wake him up and make him answer some questions," he said, "I
don't want to drag this out any longer than necessary."

Leaving Santero to bandage his wound by himself, Havoc turned around on
the back seat and grabbed Giles by the lapels of his tweed jacket,
straightening him up on the seat.

"Is there any special trick to waking him up?" he asked the warlock over
his shoulder.

Swann shrugged with disinterest. "Just the usual."

"Good, I'm going to enjoy this," the large Scandinavian man said with a
smile. Then, bringing his hand back, he slapped the sleeping British man
hard across the face, violently twisting his head to one side.

Giles came back to his senses with a moan of pain, automatically tying to
raise his hands to protect his eyes from the sudden light invading them,
only to discover that he was handcuffed with his hands retained behind his
back.

"What the hell?" he groaned, struggling to get away from the large man's
grasp on his jacket, his mind filling with the images of the fight and
with the worry for his young protégés. "Let me go, you bastard!"

Raising a cool blond eyebrow, Havoc slapped him again, this time with the
back of his hand, and then punched him in the gut, effectively rendering
the British man speechless and making him bend over as a painful wave of
nausea ran through his body.

Grabbing him by the hair at the back of his head, Havoc jerked Giles' head
up and leaned the muzzle of his gun right on the bridge of his shattered
and tattered spectacles.

"It's me who asks the questions and gives the orders here – is that clear,
old man?" he menaced him, roughly pushing the Desert Eagle against his
skin. "Now, where's the artifact?"

"Crystal clear," the Watcher said with a hard stare of hostility and a
challenging expression on his face, "and you can find it shoved up your
arsehole, you pillock."

"This one thinks he's very smart," the Scandinavian man told Santero over
Giles' shoulder, "why don't you show him who is the one ruling inside
here, compadre?"

"Será un placer." Santero grabbed the little finger of the Watcher's left
hand and twisted it violently, breaking it.

At first, Giles couldn't help but to let out a small scream at the sudden
pain that travelled throughout his whole arm – but he promptly bit his
lower lip to silence himself, turning it into a muffled moan.

"You have nine fingers more," Havoc told him, yanking at his hair once
more so the British man would be looking up at his face. "Does anyone want
to bet on the number of them we'll have to break?"

"I-I'll put five bucks on my side," Giles panted, clenching his teeth not
to shout when Santero squeezed his broken finger.

Sighing, Swann turned around on his seat. With an expression of near
boredom, he took a thin cigarette-holder made of jade and carefully
adjusted a Gauloises on its point, before bringing it to his lips and
lighting it.

"Look, Mr. Giles, we can either do this the easy way or the hard way," he
told him patiently, as if he was explaining it to a retarded child.

He continued, "The easy way, you just tell us where you keep what we're
searching for, we get it and everybody's happy. Now, the hard way implies
lots of pain for you coming from these... gentlemen, and a loss of time
for us that I'm not inclined to tolerate. What's it going to be, Mr.
Giles?"

As a response, the mature and self-centered British Watcher spat at him
full in the face, his spittle landing straight on his only blue eye.

Letting out a sigh, and pointedly ignoring the chuckles and amused stares
of the three mercenaries, Swann took a linen handkerchief from the breast
pocket of his jacket and neatly wiped the saliva running down his cheek.

"I'll take that as a no to cooperate," he said with resignation. "I guess
we'll have to resort to the hard way."

Reaching out with his arm over the back of the seat and as the two
mercenaries sat at both sides of Giles grabbed him roughly by the elbows,
pushing him forward, the warlock took off his spectacles and placed his
open hand on the Watcher's face. "Everything that is yours is mine,
everything that you know I know, there are no secrets, no barriers, no
lies..."

"No! Let me go, bastards!" Giles shouted in panic, recognizing the spell
and struggling in the mercenaries' strong grasp to get free, kicking and
shaking like a madman.

It didn't help as the skin of the warlock's hands suddenly felt like fire
against his face, hot enough to make the flesh of his face boil and melt,
allowing his long, nail-polished fingers to dig inside his head and right
into his brain.

Giles heard himself screaming and crying in the distance, but it was as if
it was coming from another man's throat, one that was very, very far away
from him.

He was blind and almost deaf, and the only sensations that he was able to
perceive was an absolute, almost overwhelming pain as if he was being
exposed to an electric current, as if every nervous ending of his body was
on fire...

And then images, scenes of his own life flashing in front of his blind
eyes in a mad and chaotic slide-show. Faster. And faster.

His father, the silent and distant Watcher when he was a child. His
college years. Ethan Rayne. Eyghon. Buffy. Jenny Calendar. Eyghon and
Ethan again. Angelus. Xander's death. Joyce. The return of Xander and the
Archangels...

He tried to block them, to make them stop, to hide his memories behind a
wall so thick that the long and viscous, tentacle-like fingers of the
warlock wouldn't be able to reach out for them, but nothing could stand
against them.

They were so hard, so strong that they made all the walls crumble down on
their way, reaching into the core of his memories, of his soul, of that
which made him what he was...

And then, after he had seen and taken what he wanted from him, Swann
released his grasp on him and Giles began to fall, and fall, and fall into
a dark and bottomless pit, screaming like a madman, crying like a child
for an eternity.

If the two bulky mercenaries hadn't been holding him, the British Watcher
would have slumped to the floor into a shapeless ball. They just allowed
him to fold over and rest with his head between his knees, as a wave of
nausea so powerful that made him taste his own bile rocked his whole body.

He panted as if he had run a marathon and was drenched in a sweat so cold
that it felt like ice on his feverish skin. "Bastards," was the only thing
he was able to say as he fought to regain his breath.

"Well?" Havoc inquired with an incredulous look on his cold blue eyes
directed to the one-eyed warlock. "Have the spirits given you any sign?"

Swann retrieved his handkerchief and slow and methodically cleaned his
palm of Giles' perspiration, a thin blue cloud coming out of his nostrils
as he exhaled the smoke of his cigarette. "Evergreen Apartments, please
Mr. Backlash," he told the Australian mercenary, making a point of
ignoring the tall Scandinavian one.

"The artifact is in Mr. Giles' home, in a vault hidden behind a copy of a
Modigliani's painting in his bedroom. The combination for the lock is
formed by the days of his birthday, his girlfriend's and his protégé's,
20-30-19."

He sent a sideways and superior look towards Havoc, the right corner of
his mouth rising in a self-satisfied smile. "The spirits have spoken."

"I said it before and I'll say it again," Backlash whispered with a deep
tone of sarcasm, "bloody unbelievable."

Shaking his head in wonder, he stepped on the gas, accelerating to a speed
over the legal limit and dodging the cars around the Humvee like a massive
football linebacker as he passed the walkie-talkie from the dashboard to
Santero.

"Daddy Goose, Daddy Goose, Receptor Team here, do you read me?" the
Hispanic mercenary said, unfolding a map and searching the location of
Giles' apartment on it.

"Daddy Goose here, Receptor Team, we read you five by five," Chopper's
voice came out of the speaker.

"We are moving to new point of destination, coordinates are 31, 12 on
point 4B on the map," he read from the map. "Do you copy that, Chopper?"

"Affirmative, Receptor Team, three-one-one-two-four-beta, is my
information correct?"

"Affirmative, Daddy Goose," Santero said, looking outside the window and
trying to locate the helicopter on the darkening sky of the evening, only
being able to see a shadowy spot high above. "It's getting dark, will you
be able to follow us?"

"Don't worry about that," Chopper informed him through the speaker as he
took a look to the different consoles and screens in front and around him,
"the beacon light is shining bright and clear on my panel. Wherever you
go, I'll be right on top of you."

"Reassuring idea," Havoc growled with a twisted smile.

Ignoring him, Santero took a short look at the handcuffed middle-aged man
beside him and then through the rear window, biting his lower lip. "We're
going to need reinforcements," he said to the walkie-talkie.

There was a moment of silence until Chopper's voice came again, this time
with a deep tone of shocked incredulity.

"Did I hear right?" he asked with a snort of laughter. "Did you say
reinforcements?"

The Hispanic mercenary just looked at the speaker with annoyance. "Yes,
you heard right and I said reinforcements. Now shut your smart mouth and
just do it, OK!?!"

"Roger that, Santero," the pilot said sternly. "Over and out, Receptor
Team."

Without bothering to answer him, the Hispanic mercenary just switched off
the walkie-talkie and put it inside his jacket. Then he saw the inquiring
stares of his partners directed at him.

"What?" Santero asked with resignation, looking straight at Havoc.

The large Scandinavian man just sighed and shook his head. "They're going
to think that we're a bunch of wussies, hermanito, and I don't want to be
the laughing stock of the group for the rest of the month. I know that
things got pretty weird back there," he conceded before his Hispanic
teammate could protest, "but that's over, OK? We won."

Santero shook his head and looked outside at the darkening urban scenery.
Then he took out his Beretta 92FS Brigadier from under his jacket and
brought back its slide, checking the chamber. "I still have a bad hunch
about this."



~~~~~~



The nose of the Honda barely eluded the back bumper of a rusty Chevy
pick-up by a narrow inch. It made Oz take a hold on his seat and dig his
claws into the carpeting, so as not to be launched outside through the
door-hole by the brunette's violent handling of the car.

She sped up even more, getting ahead of the Chevy by its right side and
receiving a loud series of honks from the annoyed driver of the pick-up.

Whining, and holding onto the seat for dear life, the young werewolf took
a look through the rear window to check that they hadn't caused an
accident. Then he looked at Cordelia, with a mildly scared expression on
his face.

"I don't know what surprises me the most," he said with trembling voice,
"that we're still alive after that, or that we don't have a column of
police cars chasing us. I thought that hijacking a car was still a crime
in this part of the country."

"Hey, don't distract me while I'm driving," the brunette warned him,
speaking loud enough to be heard over the howl of the wind getting into
the Honda by the hole produced by the ripped-off door.

She kept her half-closed hazel eyes fixed on the dark spot of the Humvee,
now separated from them by a group of six cars. "And that wasn't a crime,
it was a case of extreme need."

"You say potato... don't get closer or they'll see us," Oz advised her,
"we should try to pass unnoticed."

Cordelia arched her brow with mild amusement, daring to take her eyes off
of the road for a second to look at him. "We're driving at top speed in a
stolen car that has a missing door, and you want to pass unnoticed?"

She shook her head and spun violently the steering wheel to take a closed
curve, slamming on the brakes before accelerating again, making the Honda
skid laterally like a professional driver and barely avoiding to crash
against a Volvo station-wagon before regaining a more stable cruise. "Wow,
that was close."

Oz just gave her a grim look, before double-checking the tightness of his
seat-belt.

"Hey, how were Willow and Buffy?" the brunette asked, feeling a little
uncomfortable and guilty for having left both of her friends in such a
state. She told herself that she hadn't had other option, that Buffy would
get well and Willow hadn't looked really bad.

But still, every time she dared to close her eyes, all she saw was the
Slayer lying in a pool of her own blood, and the heavy shelf falling on
the red-haired teen witch's petite body.

Oz let out a sigh, that sounded extremely painful. "Wills was alright, or
at least that was what she insisted on. Buffy still hadn't..." Shaking his
head, he fought to find a suitable word to express the idea; on account of
'resurrected' was something he just couldn't say, because it implied that
Buffy had died and he didn't want to think about that. "...woken up. Truth
is, I don't know, this is all like completely crazy."

She looked at his friend out of the corner of her eye and nodded softly in
agreement, before turning her eyes back to the road and the chase at hand.

"This'd be easier if we had some idea of where they're going," Cordelia
commented, slowing the speed to keep five cars between them and the object
of their chase.

"Giles' apartment," the young werewolf said succinctly. "They're going to
Giles' apartment, or at least there's where they'll end up eventually."

The brunette blinked repeatedly in surprise and then frowned, confused.
"How do you know that?"

Oz took out the small and folded piece of paper he had found on the floor
of Giles' store, and offered it to Cordelia. "Because if this is what
they're looking for, Giles keeps it in the safe in his apartment, like he
does with all his important things."

Cordelia took the paper and, carefully handling the car only with a hand,
took a fast look at what was written on it.

"This has got to be some kind of joke..." she whispered, a cold shiver
running along the whole length of her backbone. Oz said nothing, limiting
his actions to a cool stare and the arching of an still-red eyebrow.

Cordelia looked back at him and sighed, returning her hand to the steering
wheel and clenching it tightly. In front of them, the black Humvee started
to gain speed and the distance between them grew exponentially with each
passing second.

"Shit," she groaned, "I just can't believe it. What we do now?"

Oz took a look outside the car, and quickly placed them in the virtual map
of Sunnydale he had inside his mind. "Next street is a shortcut," he told
his taller friend, "turn the corner and we'll arrive a couple of minutes
ahead of them."

Half-closing her eyes and getting ready to turn, the brunette let out a
wicked smile. "Next exit is an one-way street," she alerted Oz.

The young werewolf sighed and nodded, before returning the smile. "We're
going one way, aren't we?"

Without losing either the smile or the wicked expression on her face,
Cordelia switched on the turn signal. Just a couple of yards before
reaching the turn, she slammed on the breaks and spun the wheel with no
indecision.

The Honda's tires protested, screeching against the road; and when she
stepped on the gas again they skidded madly over the rough asphalt,
launching the white car in the middle of a thick gray cloud of burnt
rubber. They headed practically straight for a massive Ford, that was
coming in the opposite direction.

"Watch out!" Oz shouted as the brunette dodged the upcoming vehicle,
getting out of its way just by the width of a hair. "Shit, we can't go
this way, the traffic is too intense!"

"No," she shook her head, "the traffic is just fine."

Cordelia turned again, this time avoiding a Chrysler and, stepping down on
the gas, directed the car to the left side of the road. She made it jump
over the curb, the left wheels on the sidewalk and the right ones staying
on the road.

Shaking her head, she started to honk like a madwoman, warning the
pedestrians.

"Come on!" she yelled, making herself heard even over the roar of the
engine, "Get outta my way!!"

When her action was received by loud honks from other drivers and insults
plus menacing fists from the passerby's, Cordelia shook her head and
frowned with incredulity. "Hey, this is an emergency!!"

"Uh, Cordy?" Oz called her attention.

"Yeah?" she asked, as the nose of the car slammed against a group of trash
cans and the man that had uneventfully been taking out the trash jumped
back not to be run over.

"The street..." he said, pointing with a shaken finger through the
windshield. "...it's ending. You have to turn right."

"But Giles' block is at the other side of that line of houses, isn't it?"
she asked, raising a cool eyebrow and indicating towards the line of
terrace houses in front of them, which were starting to be dangerously
close.

"Yeah," Oz nodded, digging into the dashboard with his claws, "but there's
no direct access, we have to go round the block."

Cordelia just smiled. "Oz, do you know what's the best thing about driving
a stolen car?" The young werewolf just shook his head, fearing the answer.
"That it's not yours."

The brunette slammed down the gas pedal to its limits. As she let out a
scream of exaltation and her blue-haired companion one of panic, Cordelia
made the car reach its maximum speed and crashed against the white fence
of the house in front of them, making broken pickets fly in every
direction.

She quickly drove the Honda into the garden, with the tires leaving twin
brown lines on the grass.

Spinning the wheel violently, the brunette young woman eluded a couple of
kids that were playing with a skinny greyhound on the garden and ran over
a barbecue, not hitting the man cooking on it almost by miracle.
Hamburgers and sausages flew into the air.

The cook, a bald man with a serious weight problem, looked in astonishment
as the white Honda smashed his barbecue away. Still holding the large fork
he had been using to check the state of the frying food, he just kept on
staring as the car crossed the complete length of his garden.

It left twin muddy tire-marks on the ruined grass before crashing against
the back fence, and disappearing with a roar and a screech of punished
tires when it got back onto the road.



~~~~~~



The huge Afro-American mercenary took a look around as his companion and
himself climbed up the stairs on the garage level of the Archangels'
warehouse, and got into the residential and operations level on the second
floor.

He couldn't help but to let out a long whistle of admiration. "These
people have a nice place here, I wouldn't mind getting something like this
myself."

"You would drive yourself crazy in two days," Chip told him over his
shoulder as he made a beeline towards the lab and computer area. "Face it,
Beast, you need the atmosphere of a military camp, the smell of wet mud
and dirty socks and spending the night in a sleeping bag to feel alive."

"That illustrates how little you know me, pal, I'm a man of select
tastes," the larger man said, taking a new and cautious look around as he
frowned and passed a hand over his bald head. As his partner sat down in
front of the main computer and booted it up, Beast would have sworn that
he had seen, almost felt, something moving out of the corner of his eye.
"Did you hear anything?"

Frowning and without taking his spectacle-covered eyes from the screen,
Chip shook his head. "Nope, but you shouldn't worry, we saw them all going
out."

Beast half-closed his eyes and shook his head as he bit his lower lip
pensively. Then, he took out his semi-automatic handgun from under his
jacket and checked that the silencer attached to its muzzle was correctly
placed, and that there was a bullet already loaded in the chamber. "Think
I'll take a good look around, anyway."

"Suit yourself," the hacker said absent-mindedly, his whole attention
concentrated on the data running down the screen and his fingers clicking
on the keyboard as he started to dodge the virtual traps and dead-ends in
the computer system.

"Hmmm," he whispered to himself with a smile of admiration,
"fascinating..."

Wielding his pistol in his right hand, Beast moved slowly out of the lab
and then trough the rest and recreation areas with a smoothness and
silence that belied his large and apparently graceless figure, checking
every nook and corner that would be suitable to hide any threat. He was
sure he had seen and heard something...

There it was again, a dark bulk moving, an obscure ghost right at the end
of his range of vision, so fast and smooth that it was practically greased
lightning. Beast turned around in a flash, his index tensed on the trigger
of his Beretta, ready to open fire.

Nothing.

"What the hell...?" he whispered, lowering the gun and frowning with
puzzlement.

And then an unnerving growl, low and menacing, was heard right behind his
back and the large mercenary turned around slowly, as he looked over his
shoulder with his eyebrows arched in surprise.

The dog, an impossibly large German shepherd with brown and black hair and
shiny brown eyes, was on his hind legs, his spongy long tongue sticking
out of the corner of his mouth as his chest rose and fell rhythmically
with his panting.

When the animal saw that the human was finally looking straight at him, he
licked his lips and snout and stood up, resuming his menacing growl as he
arched his upper lip, baring his long and sharp canines.

"Doggie, good doggie..." Beast whispered to him in what he hoped was a
non-threatening tone, as he completed his turn and moved his gun to aim at
him, trying not to make any brisk movements that the animal would consider
a menace. "You're a good doggie, aren't you? You're not going to harm to
your friend Be-"

Even before the mercenary could complete the sentence, Elvis moved with a
speed that seemed impossible in an animal so large, his powerful legs
launching him up and ahead as his snout opened with a thundering roar,
spraying foam and saliva everywhere.

Beast could only scream in pain when the German shepherd's powerful jaws
closed around his right forearm, and his sharp fangs dug through the thick
fabric of his jacket, until they reached the flesh of his arm and drew
blood.

The pain was so intense that the mercenary couldn't help but let the
pistol slip away from his hand, as he fell down under the force of the
impact and the weight of the dog's body.

He struggled with the enraged dog, grasping a handful of the large hair
and loose flesh at the back of his powerful neck. He yanked at it with all
the strength of his massive muscles, grunting with the effort, the sounds
mixed with the dog's hostile growls; but it seemed that the animal had a
deadlock on his flesh, and his teeth refused to lose their grasp on his
arm.

Far from it, as Elvis dealt with the intruder human. He was tearing at the
clothes with the hard nails of his paws, rasping and scratching his dark
skin. The pressure of his jaw seemed to grow exponentially, and his sharp
canines ripped the tender flesh of his forearm, almost reaching the bone.

"Aaaargh!!" Beast screamed, laboriously managing to roll the dog off of
his body, but never succeeding in freeing his arm from his foaming jaws.

"Chip!! Help!!" he called his partner as he patted the floor with his free
hand, trying to retrieve the lost handgun.

The shorter man came out quickly from the lab, already raising his own
weapon and aiming at the dog with it. Elvis noticed the movement near them
and his current prey. The tone of his growl changed from one of rage to
one of annoyance, as he freed the black man's arm and quickly turned away,
getting out of the second man's line of fire and hiding behind a stuffed
couch.

Barely able to follow the dog's moving figure, Chip fired twice with his
Beretta M92 against him, the sound of his gunshots extinguished by the
long silencer attached to gun's muzzle.

The bullets impacted against the corner of the couch and a little of its
stuffing rained down to the floor as the mercenary hacker started to
circle the piece of furniture, half-closing his eyes so he could see
better in the dim light of the warehouse's interior. Beside him, Beast
retrieved his pistol.

Wielding it in his good hand, he stumbled to his feet, covering his
partner.

"Be careful," he warned Chip through lips clenched in pain, "that's not a
normal dog."

"What do you mean?" the shorter man asked, licking his lips. "A stupid dog
is just a stupid dog."

Beast looked at him as if he was the stupid one. "Have you ever seen a dog
before that can recognize a gun, and know that he has to let his prey go
to take cover from it?" Chip frowned, and shook his head. "Dogs only do
that kind of thing in the movies."

"To the hell with that," the hacker growled as he got ready to surround
the couch, "in a second he'll be just a..."

"What?" Beast asked, following him behind the couch. Chip didn't answer
him, but he didn't need to. The dog had disappeared. "I'm starting to have
a bad feeling about this."

The hacker sighed and lowered his gun, as he took a short look around.
"What you're starting to do is sound like Santero, and I've had enough of
his paranoid stupidities."

Beast sighed and, after fulminating him with his eyes, checked the wound
of his arm. "Shit," he grunted as he searched again for the dog with his
eyes, "I'm going to need stitches here. How much time do you still need?"

"Well, I have to finish the last traps, I got their main channels under
control and the system's already hacked," the hacker said, leaving his
companion with a blank and clueless expression.

"Just give me five minutes and we can get out – that's if you've finished
crying like a little girl, of course," Chip added with an irritating
smile.

"Just do it and leave everything ready," the black mercenary growled at
his companion, "I'll search for that darn dog, meanwhile."

As he walked back to the lab, Chip couldn't help but give him a new
twisted smile. "Try not to let him bite your ass again, OK? I can't be
running back and forth to save you all the time."

Beast didn't answer him, he just glared at the retreating back and turned
around, his wounded arm tightly pressed against his abdomen as he wielded
the pistol with the other.

"Come on, doggie," he whispered softly, "come to Daddy and I'll give you a
nice, big kiss... come on..."

Hidden between the shadows of a corner at his back, Elvis didn't even let
out the slightest of growls. He just followed the movements of the huge
black man with his large brown eyes for a moment and, when this one
disappeared from view into the darkness of the adjacent kitchen, got out
from his hideout.

He practically crawled with his chest glued to the floor, and in a
complete silence.

As fast as his awkward way of moving allowed him to do, the large German
shepherd crossed the whole width of the warehouse. He used every nook,
corner and shadow produced by the furniture to move as stealthily as
possible, until he finally reached the twisted staircase leading to the
first level and quickly climbed it down to the garage.

Human were so stupid, that he sometimes found it utterly incredible that
the species had managed to last this long without becoming extinct. They
always saw what they wanted to see, and believed what they wanted to
believe.

'A stupid dog is just a stupid dog', the man with the spectacles had said.

Stupid dog? If they only knew...

But he couldn't complain, this way they talked in front of him, seeing
nothing more than a stupid four-legged animal, and talked and talked, and
talked... and he was always there, listening.

And they had the guts to call themselves the 'lords of creation'? Ha!
Laughable, but what else could be expected from a bunch of hairless
overevolved monkeys?

As he finally reached the end of the stairs, he thought that at least he
could be thankful for having found a group of humans to live with that
could be considered mildly intelligent beings (even Spike).

Elvis trotted quickly to the fuse box placed on one of the walls, near the
remains of what supposedly was Cordelia's Beetle. Leaning his front paws
on the wall, he stood up on his hind legs until he was tall enough to grab
the lever of the circuit breaker with his jaws.

=So, they're doing something with the guys' computers, huh?= he thought,
doggishly smiling around the lever filling his mouth. =Well then, this
should give them a run for their money.=

With a growl of satisfaction, Elvis yanked at the lever, pulling it down.
A snap was heard, followed by the unmistakable hissing sound of the energy
leaving an electric system, and all over the warehouse everything turned
pitch black and silent like a tomb.

Opening his jaws and letting the lever go, Elvis allowed himself to fall
down to his four paws. His snout broke out into a wicked, almost evil
smile, as his fat and wet tongue darted out to lick the twin rows of
ivory-white sharp canines in his mouth, a low growl escaping his lips.

He had little time before the secondary generator kicked in with the
emergency power, but he knew it would be more than enough to do what he
intended.

The hunting season was now open.



~~~~~~



Backlash parked the black military vehicle in front of Giles' apartment
complex and killed the engine, taking a look at the building through the
window as he leaned his hands on the steering wheel. "Well, are we going
to wait for those reinforcements or what?"

Taking a look at the deserted street, Santero shook his head in denial.
"No, you will wait for them. We'll go into the place and retrieve the
item."

"Hopefully without further complications," Swann observed with a lopsided
smile and a sideways look of amusement. "Although who knows, you may
stumble upon a group of heavily armed school-girls."

The Hispanic mercenary glared at him with his dark eyes, but the one-eyed
sorcerer just shook his head and took a new drag from his cigarette,
delicately holding the mouth-piece between his thumb and index finger as
he opened the door and got out of the vehicle.

He made a sign towards Havoc, and his partner took Giles by the handcuffs
binding his wrists behind his back, roughly making him get out of the
Humvee as the British man grunted and moaned in pain and protest.

"If they haven't come in 15 minutes, call Chopper and request updated
info," Santero told Backlash as he checked his wristwatch. "If we haven't
come out in twenty, send a red-signal."

The Australian mercenary snorted with barely concealed lack of amusement,
shaking his head. "If the Colonel learns about this..."

"The Colonel warned us precisely about this!" Santero roared, hating his
partners' questioning and mocking attitude.

"A brunette in a miniskirt, a skinny blonde, a petite redhead and a
tweed-clad old man – and we've barely gotten here intact! Now, if you
think that's a professional way of doing things, I would love for you to
tell me how things could be fucked up, gentlemen!"

He gave a short, yet intense look at his two comrades and neither Backlash
nor Havoc could help but to look away from him, almost in shame. "We'll do
the rest of this phase by the book – fast, clean and without any more
problems."

"And you," he added, pointing at Giles' face with his index finger,
"you're going to do exactly what we tell you to do, or I'll personally put
a bullet into your brain after blowing off each one of your fingers. Am I
understood?"

"I understand you perfectly..." The British Watcher forced a tight smile
to hide the electric pain that ran through his sore wrists, when the tall
Scandinavian man tugged at his bindings.

He looked straight at the Hispanic mercenary, with his green eyes blazing
with defiant fire. "But let me warn you about this. You don't have the
slightest idea of what kind of forces you're messing with."

Santero raised a cool eyebrow. "Is that a threat?"

Giles could only shake his head and give him a hard stare, before Havoc
started to drag him away. "It's free advice, and you'd do well to follow
it."

The Hispanic mercenary shook his head and gave a last look to his
Australian partner, who was still sitting behind the steering wheel as
ordered. "Do what I told you, and keep your eyes open."

Backlash nodded with a patent lack of amusement and, as he finally saw his
two partners, the one-eyed warlock and their tweed-clad captive
disappearing into the apartment complex, he couldn't help but to shake his
head and curse under his breath with barely suppressed rage.

"A bloody brunette in a bloody miniskirt, goddamn unbelievable," he
growled to himself as he roughly twisted the driver's side rear view
mirror so it would reflect his own image.

Then, raising his upper lip and grimacing in pain at the soreness of his
bloodshot flesh, he traced the broken line of his teeth with his index
finger's fingertip, checking that he had lost two teeth completely and had
at least two more broken beyond repair.

He shook his head, still unable to believe it. "A bloody brunette is going
to cost me 500 bucks at the dentist, mate." He cursed again, and had to
make an effort not to smash the surface of the small mirror with his fist.

Instead, he started to straighten it, continually cursing and grunting
under his breath. "When I get my hands on her, I'm going to teach that
bloody bitch not to mess with Backlash. Oh yeah, I'm gonna get her and
show her what a real man is..."

He finished straightening the mirror and, as he did it and took a look at
its reflecting surface, he found the face of the object of his thoughts
filling it completely, a cold raven-black eyebrow risen up and a small,
self-satisfied smile tugging at the corner of her beautiful lips.

And, overlapped on her chin, the warning of the Motor Vehicle Department:
'Caution: Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.'

Astounded and with his lower jaw hanging loose, Backlash turned slowly
around, facing her. Cordelia just let her smile grow into a sweet,
understanding one.

"I'll only say it once more," she addressed him patiently, "I'm getting
really tired of being called that word. It's offensive, unkind and I don't
like it at all."

The Australian mercenary's right hand sunk into his jacket but, even
before his fingertips had the chance to touch the butt of his gun,
Cordelia raised the HK, which she had maintained hidden away from the
man's sight.

She slammed its stock against his face with all her strength, knocking the
living daylights out of him. His figure fell against the dashboard,
without him even having the chance to grunt a moan of pain.

"And just for the record," the young brunette added as she put her slender
right hand through the open window, and moved the man's jacket aside to
retrieve his pistol from the holster under his arm. "I already know what a
real man is, and you don't even reach the soles of his shoes."

Then, without giving him one second more of her attention, she crossed the
street to the secluded spot where Oz was waiting for her, crouched down
behind a row of hedges near the building's entrance.

When she reached him and knelt down beside his figure, the young werewolf
just gave her a short and almost disinterested look out of the corner of
his eye before settling his whole attention back on the stairs leading
down towards the door of Giles' duplex apartment.

"Did you have your share of fun?" he asked, with the slightest trace of
annoyance in his voice.

"I told you not to go gentleman on me, Oz," she said with a smile. "I can
take care of myself."

"Yeah, I've already noticed that," he growled, a smile finally breaking
through his serious expression. "Still, you should have let me take care
of that guy."

Cordelia just sighed with boredom. "I already have a father, Oz. And then
I have Xander... and Giles, Willow, Angel... Michael, Rachel, Kyle...
couldn't you just be the one that doesn't try to protect me?"

The young werewolf arched his brow and considered it for a second, before
shaking his head. "I'm sorry, but no. I'm your friend, and that's what
friends are supposedly for."

She shook her head and smiled, her hazel eyes turning back to the
apartment's door. "Any suggestions before we step into the lion's den?"

"Yeah," he nodded, "you go in by the front door. I'll go round the
building and climb up to one of the windows on the second floor, and get
into the house that way. Giles has his safe in his bedroom, if I remember
correctly."

Nodding her head, Cordelia checked the state of her weapons. She had lost
her own Glock 26 back at the bookstore, and her stolen submachine-gun had
barely ten rounds remaining on its clip.

=Well,= she thought, retrieving Backlash's Glock 19C from her waist and
checking that there was a bullet loaded in the chamber, =at least I have a
good backup.=

"Oh, one more thing," Oz added at seeing her antics, "just try not to
shoot me, OK? I've already tried it once, and I didn't like it all."

As both of them stood up and started to walk to the building, Cordelia
yanked at the HK's chamber and gave him a smug grin of superiority from
the advantage of her superior height. "I'll see what I can do."

Oz just shook his head, and rolled his golden eyes. "This gets better and
better with each passing second," he growled with resignation.



~~~~~~



"Head down, Peaches!" Spike warned his sire, as he ducked down to avoid a
low pipe crossing the whole width of the sewer tunnel.

Angel followed his advice, and escaped from being beheaded just by a
couple of inches. Holding onto the bleached-hair vampire's waist for dear
life as he rode the off-road bike like a bucking bronco, the headlight
cast strange games of lights and shadows on the wet and dirty walls of the
sewer.

The thick tires splattered the corrupted waters everywhere, and the sound
of the compact but powerful engine reverberating along the narrow passage
was like a deafening thunderstorm.

At any other moment, the souled vampire thought he would have even enjoyed
the wild ride as the bike jumped and advanced, apparently out of control
under his childe's skillful hands.

But now, with his mind and heart filled only with worry and dread for his
loved one and the rest of his friends, he could only pray for it to end as
soon as possible.

=Buffy will be alright. She's a fighter, a survivor. She has to be
alright.=

Riding the white-green Kawasaki in front of his sire, Spike wasn't any
less worried than him. He saw the nooks and corners of the narrow passage
passing beside them in a flash.

He thought that if he took just a little more of his attention from the
handling of the bike to put it into the heart-breaking pain he was
feeling, Angelus and himself were going to end up in a very painful
explosion against one of the walls of the sewer.

=Willow.= He thought back to the scene of the night before, to the moment
in which he had been about to kiss her.

To how sad and confused she had looked as he stormed off out of the
bookstore, and to the tears that he had seen starting to roll down her
cheeks when she had thought that he hadn't been looking anymore.

Hell, he didn't want that image of her to be the last one he had. He
wanted to see her laughing, smiling... living. He just didn't want her to
be harmed. The mere idea of her dead was too painful even to consider.

"We're arriving!" Angel exclaimed at his ear, tightening his grasp on his
waist to call his attention. "Slow down!"

Nodding sharply, Spike freed the accelerator and slammed on the brake with
all his strength, blocking the rear wheel and making the bike slide for a
couple of yards over the wet and muddy ground of the sewer.

The off-road Kawasaki finally stopped right under the entrance below the
bookstore, and Angel lost no time in getting down off of it.

He started to climb up the ladder as his childe simply dismounted from the
bike, not bothering to kill the engine or even set the kickstand. He just
let it fall to the ground and followed Angel, his boot-clad feet splashing
in the sticky pools of water.

The soul-filled vampire reached the top of the ladder and then, holding
only with one hand, used the other to pat his different pockets, searching
for something.

"What the bloody hell are ya doin'?" Spike asked with a high-pitched tone
of annoyance, as he climbed up behind him.

"What do you think that I'm doing?" the souled vampire exclaimed in the
same nervous and hurried tone. "I'm searching for the damn keys!"

Spike growled, shaking his head with incredulity. "Forget about that and
just open the bloody door!!"

Stifling a curse, Angel decided to follow his childe's advice and punched
the metallic trapdoor with all his unnatural strength, just by the lock,
making it burst open upwards before falling down again while the broken
padlock flew madly away.

Ignoring the pain in his hand, Angel raised it to stop the fall of the
door and opened it completely, quickly climbing up the rest of stairs and
entering into the back room of the bookstore, just beside the werewolf's
empty cage.

"What the hell..." he whispered, when he finally saw the absolute state of
chaos that reigned in the room.

The fallen and broken furniture, the bullet-holes in the walls... and the
smell of the blood mixed with the burnt cordite, making the demon stir
inside him with a silent roar of savage lust. "Buffy!!!"

Following him out of the sewer, Spike thought that he had never heard so
much pain and sorrow in anyone's voice as he heard it coming out Angel's
throat at that moment. He spotted the broken form of the blonde Slayer
lying on the floor, in the middle of a sticky pool formed by her own
blood.

It was a pure, unadulterated cry of desperation as her name abandoned
Angel's lips, carrying so much emotion with it that the bleached-hair
vampire couldn't help but to stare with wide-open, sad eyes at Angel.

The souled vampire crossed the distance between him and his fallen love
with three long and smooth steps, jumping over the downed stalls and piles
of books and fell to his knees, taking her still body into his arms.

But then he spotted Willow, and it was as if something had torn him apart.

Forgetting about Angel and his Slayer, forgetting about everything that
wasn't the shapeless form of the petite redhead, he ran to her, an alien
sensation taking form inside his cold belly.

"Willow, no..." he whispered with a voice so full of worry and emotion
that sounded strange, almost unrecognizable to his own ears.

Spike fell on his knees at her side and, when he reached out for her body,
he felt a burning pain engulfing his hands as a cloud of white steam
emerged from them and he couldn't help but scream in pain.

The dying light of the sun was entering through the broken window of the
room, bathing Willow's prone form with a golden glow that seemed unreal,
as if it was coming out from her.

Biting his lower lips with his enlarged fangs, the bleached-hair vampire
steeled himself and reached again for her, the sun's rays immediately
burning his exposed skin where they touched him.

Ignoring the pain, savagely biting his lip not to scream, Spike grabbed
Willow by the fabric of her cardigan and yanked at it, dragging her away
from the arch of light and into his arms.

Panting and feeling his whole body drenched in cold sweat, the
bleached-hair vampire closed his hands into fists as he held the young
apprentice of Wicca's head in the crook of his left arm. The skin of his
hands was burnt and broken, exposing his raw flesh, which was shining a
ragging red color.

Still, that pain was nothing compared with what he felt when he looked
down at Willow's face and saw the traces of blood on her lips and the
paleness of her whole complexion.

"Oh, God, no," he growled as he searched for the pulse on her carotid and
brought her lips and nose close to his cheek. And he found it, a pulse,
weak and slow but still steady, and the faint caress of her breathing
against the cold skin of his cheek.

She was alive, thank God, she was alive. Spike felt a long smile cross his
face and traced slowly her beautiful features with his healing fingertips.
Then, as he rocked her, the bleached-hair vampire kissed her tenderly on
the forehead, not even thinking on what he was doing.

Not far away from them, completely oblivious to his childe and the young
apprentice of Wicca, Angel held Buffy's lifeless form between his arms. He
was softly rocking her, unable to hold back the blood-red tears that
started to roll down his cheeks, staining them the same way that her loved
one's blood stained his hands and the fabric of his coat.

"Buffy, no..." he moaned painfully, gently smoothing the errant locks of
golden hair away from her face and wiping the line of blood coming out the
corner of her mouth with his thumb, only succeeding in smearing it across
her cheek. "Come on, you have to come back to me, why don't you come back
to me?"

Darla had told him once, a long time ago, that love was the only thing
that could bring down a vampire – that it was a weakness that none of them
could afford, because it would mean their collective defeat in the end.

So, his beautiful sire had taught him everything about desire and lust and
wanting, but he'd had to wait to meet that petite, fragile-appearing
blonde to know what real love was. And to learn, with all its painful
thorns, how much truth had been in Darla's words.

In the end, only Buffy's love would mean his defeat because, without her,
there was no way he could keep on living.

He was a hollow man without her.

"Come on, Buffy, don't you remember what you said? That I would never get
rid of you, no matter how much I wanted it?" he asked her with ragged
voice, feeling suddenly and unreasonably angry with her for not waking up.

"You have to come back, you have to keep your word. Come on, Slayer.
Where's your hard spirit now? Where's the strong soul I fell in love
with?" Biting his lower lip not to cry, Angel tightened his grasp on her,
shaking her still body.

"I never thought you were a coward, Slayer. Not even Angelus thought it.
Never," he growled, grabbing her long blonde hair and placing a rough kiss
on her forehead. "I know you aren't, so don't you even think you can fool
me and make me believe you like to stay hidden. Just come back, Buffy.
Come back to me!"

As if on cue, Buffy's body suddenly jerked up in the souled vampire's
arms, her back arching up almost to the point of rupturing as her lungs
filled up with a ragged intake of breath. Her face distorted into a
twisted grimace, that was a mix of pain and pleasure.

"Mnrrghhh!!" she moaned incoherently, clenching her teeth together and
trying not to scream at the top of her lungs, feeling that her whole being
was being torn apart in a thousand different parts.

Nevertheless, when her back reached its maximum point of flexibility and
seemed about to break in two, the blonde Slayer couldn't help but to let
out a long, deafening and shaking scream of pure pain.

"Shit!!" she shouted, very unladylike. "That hurts!!"

Never releasing her and pressing her body even tighter to his broad chest,
Angel couldn't help but to start chuckling as he planted endless kisses on
her forehead, temples, lips and generally wherever place of her face his
mouth was able to reach.

"That's good," he said, smoothing her blonde mane, "that means you're
alive."

Buffy closed her hazel eyes and shook her head in confusion as she gulped
down with difficulty, trying to erase the foul taste of her mouth and the
soreness on her throat.

"Angel?" she called the souled vampire, gaining a nod and a soft smile
from him as he wiped his blood tears from the corners of his eyes with the
closed fist of his right hand. "Where-wha-what happened?"

"You tell me," he whispered, "we got a call from Willow and we came."

"Willow?" she asked with puzzlement, shaking her head once more as the
images of what happened less than an hour ago started to come into her
still-benumbed brain. The men. The guns. The pain.

"Oh, crap," Buffy growled with a frown as she took a short look around,
not seeing either Willow nor Spike as they were covered by Angel's form.
"I remember, those people wanted... they wanted something from Giles,
where is he?"

The souled vampire shook his dark-haired head. "I don't know. Those
people, whoever they were, kidnapped him and it seems both Cordy and Oz
are following them. Xander and the rest of the guys have gone in search
too. We came here," he added with a final mournful grimace. "You've given
me a big scare."

"We?" the Slayer asked, her confusion increasing with each passing minute
and quickly turning into dread. "Who are we?"

Sighing, Angel leaned away from her, allowing her to see Willow's
unconscious form lying on the bleached-hair vampire's arms.

"Oh my God," she whispered, quickly getting out of her boyfriend's arms
and crawling on her hands and knees to the spot where her friend and Spike
where lying.

She looked straight at his cold blue eyes and found, much to her own
surprise, that they had turned a very darker shade, covered by a thick
layer of worry. "Is she alright?"

Spike shrugged helplessly, the motion resulting strange and unusual on
him. "I-I dunno, she's breathin' and her pulse is firm, I guess that's a
good sign, don't ya think so?"

Buffy looked at him with wide eyes, surprised by the tone of utter
helplessness in his voice. It was as if the powerful, bad-ass vampire was
asking her for confirmation as a scared child asks one of his parents if
the house is strong enough during a night of storm.

And, truth be told, she didn't know what to tell him.

As the blonde Slayer soothingly caressed her friend's face, momentary
forgetting about her own state, the bleached-hair vampire holding the
petite redhead raised his face and took a look around, frowning suddenly.

In the heat of the moment, he had forgotten that Xander had told Rachel to
come to the bookstore too and that, even when they had taken a more direct
way, the brunette Immortal should already be here.

"I'll call for an ambulance," Angel said, finding Cordelia's lost cell
phone on the floor and quickly dialing the 911 as he took a look at the
broken window and the quickly fading daylight thinking that, at least,
they would have more freedom of movement in a few minutes.

Reaching out for the small walkie-talkie he carried in the back pocket of
his black jeans, Spike switched it on and handled the control panel until
he finally locked onto the chosen communications frequency.

"Rach? Do you hear me?" he called the Immortal woman. The only response he
got was the sound of static coming out the speaker, and the bleached-hair
vampire could only frown. "Come on, Archangel Three, do you read me?"

Nothing.

"They're coming," his sire said, bringing him out of his reverie.

Spike shook his head and looked dumbfounded at the mute walkie-talkie in
his hand, before putting it back in his back pocket. "What?"

"The ambulance, it's on the way," Angel explained to him with a sigh,
passing a tired hand over his handsome features. Then he reached out and
examined gently the redhead's head and face. "She has a good bump on the
back of the head, and a cut here on the temple, but none of that seems
really serious."

"Maybe she has a concussion," Buffy said, her face still pale and her
hazel eyes darkened by worry to a dark green shade, "or an internal
hemorrhage, or..."

"Don't freak out," Spike growled at her tensely, "and don't freak me out.
She's alright, OK luv? She's got to be alright."

Buffy looked straight into his blazing blue eyes and, once more caught
off-guard by their intensity, couldn't do anything more than to nod in
silent agreement.

That same intensity, and the deep emotion in his childe's voice, didn't
escape Angel's notice now that he was quickly calming down after Buffy's
resurrection. He wondered how it was that he hadn't noticed it before.

Spike was falling hard for the young redhead, and doing it pretty quickly
too. Although that wasn't surprising coming from him, he who always like
to live at the edge of the abyss, for better or worse.

He was about to say something, he wasn't very sure what, but then
something very different caught his attention, an scent, a lingering smell
coming to his sharp nostrils. And what chilled him to the bone, was that
it was coming from Willow.

Burnt flesh.

Feeling his undead heart tightened by the cold hand of pure fear, Angel
reached out for the buttons of her cardigan and started to gently pop them
apart.

"What are you doing?" Buffy asked him with a frown, that was shared by the
bleached-hair vampire.

"Sshh," the soul-filled vampire hushed her, continuing his actions with a
deep look of concentration. When he had finally unbuttoned the first five
buttons, he carefully opened the cardigan, exposing the white T-shirt she
wore beneath.

He gulped down a thick knot of nervousness, and with the greatest possible
care he separated the fabric of the T-shirt from her chest, elongating
then the nail of his right index finger into a razor-sharp claw and using
it to neatly rip the fabric.

"Buffy, one of those men that attacked you, was he some kind of...
magician?"

The blonde Slayer nodded slowly. "Yeah, he and Willow had a pretty big
fight, with lots of pyrotechnics and all," she said looking down at her
friend's expressionless face. "I didn't know Wills was so powerful, she
impressed me, but that guy... he was like... well," she finally shook her
head and closed her eyes, unable to find the right words, "he won."

Without uttering a word, Angel crossed a look with his childe and, when he
saw the expression of panic in his eyes, he understood that Spike had
noticed the same smell in the air and that he also knew what it probably
meant.

Angel slowly uncovered Willow's upper chest, and looked down. "Oh my
God..." he whispered, closing his eyes.

Buffy gasped, covering her mouth with her hands and Spike just clenched
his teeth tightly, making an effort not to yell a curse.

Willow's skin was badly burned, as if someone had thrown acid onto the
middle of her chest. Her flesh was a deep, almost bleeding red and her
usually milky-white and soft skin was torn and criss-crossed by long
scars.

They were like small folds, covering practically all of her chest. And, in
front of their very eyes, the flesh was still bubbling and getting redder
by the second.

"Oh my God..." Angel repeated, unable to take his dark eyes away from her.



~~~~~~




To be continued...