CHAPTER 4
"This is a stupid, stupid book," Sarah Reynolds said, dropping the book a bit harder than she meant to on Giles' coffee table. "There's no logic to the ordering of chapters, no chronology, and the genuinely useful bits are so scattered that they almost aren't worth looking for."
"I can see why you might think so, at first glance," Giles responded as he walked down the stairs. "But Dave Barry is really quite entertaining once you get used to his style."
Sarah looked up at Giles and the stack of old books cradled in his arms. He set these down on the coffee table next to DAVE BARRY'S BOOK OF BAD SONGS.
"I prefer to keep some of the more vampire-intensive volumes here at home," Giles explained. "You can imagine the calls I ge- used to get, sometimes, in the dead of night, when Buffy needed some bit of information. I'd keep these at my bedside, next to my glasses."
Sarah looked up at Giles sympathetically, then looked back down at the pile of books. Amid the well-aged brown and black covers, she saw a bit of fresh white paper sticking out.
She moved a few books aside to reveal a catalogue, the cover of which read, "UC Sunnydale Summer Enrichment Courses For Junior High and High School Students". The catalogue was open to a page of course descriptions with the heading "Grades 7-9" at the top. Several selections which described classes in writing, theater, music, and art were circled.
"Oh!" said Giles. "I'm so sorry. I was...looking that not long ago. I must have tossed it in with the books by mistake."
"Who were these for?" Sarah asked, holding up the page with the circled items.
"Oh, ah, Buffy's younger sister, Dawn. She stayed with me for a while after Buffy died. Her father came to take custody of her yesterday."
"Yesterday? Didn't Buffy die nearly a month ago?"
"Mr. Summers had been out of contact for some time. More than a year, actually. I wasn't entirely certain we would ever hear from him again."
"And then he just swept in and took Dawn away?"
"Well...he did call first."
"That must have made you angry."
"No," Giles said a little too quickly. "No, I just...got used to having her here."
"I can imagine," Sarah said. "Young people do have a way of filling up a place."
"Yes," Giles said, nodding absently.
A moment passed. Giles stared at the floor.
"You were hoping you could keep her," Sarah said.
Giles took a deep breath. "Yes," he said, not looking up.
"You hoped her father wouldn't come back."
"Yes," Giles repeated dully.
There were another few seconds of silence.
"How- how could I have wished for such a thing?" Giles said suddenly. "What kind of man desires to keep a child apart from her father? It was selfish and stupid of me to-"
"No," Sarah broke in. "It wasn't."
Giles looked up at her.
"You were willing," Sarah went on, "to devote years of your life to taking care of someone to whom you had no legal relationship or responsibility. That is the very opposite of selfishness, Mr. Giles."
Giles was about to deny what Sarah had said, when he realized that the urge to do so only came from a perverse desire to punish himself. Instead, he allowed himself to say, "Thank you. And...please, call me Rupert."
"Then you may call me Sarah," she replied, and though the words themselves were formal, there was unmistakable warmth beneath them.
They looked at each other for a moment.
"Well," Giles said, taking a half-step back to shake off the awkward intimacy of the moment, "perhaps we should get cracking on these books. If there is any more to be learned about Walpurgis, it might be best to find it now."
"Of course," Sarah said. She took a seat on Giles' couch and opened a heavy volume. Then she sighed. "Though I doubt these books will explain how Walpurgis returned from her journey to the bottom of the ocean."
"The bottom of the ocean..." Giles repeated with a faraway look in his eyes. Then he snapped his fingers and looked at Sarah. "I am so bloody stupid."
"What?" Sarah said.
"If Walpurgis survived the explosion aboard her ship, she would have sunk with vessel to the ocean floor. If that happened in a place where the ocean is particularly deep-"
"-where there is no sunlight," Sarah added, catching on, "and no living things to disturb her-"
"-and where the ocean temperature is cold enough to preserve a corpse, or a vampire, indefinitely," Giles finished, "she would be unconscious and unmoving, but also safe from every threat to her unlife."
"Of course," Sarah said, nodding. "But SOMETHING must have disturbed her, or she would still be down there. What could do that?"
"A hurricane?" Giles suggested.
"I don't think a even hurricane could stir the ocean at that depth," Sarah answered. "Some sort of geological activity, perhaps?"
"Yes!" Giles agreed. "A volcanic eruption, or the opening of a - what do you call them - an undersea vent. The sudden heating of the water could lift her from the bottom."
"And the heat would awaken her," Sarah added. "The U.S. Geological Survey might have that sort of information. Perhaps they have a website."
"I'll call Anya and put her on it immediately. In the meantime, you and I had best continue our search in these books. If our hypothesis is correct, then whatever useful information exists about Walpurgis comes from the distant past."
Sarah sat back down to her research as Giles dialed Anya, tearing the resentful ex-demon away from watching MONEYLINE and putting her to work.
-----
The two Watchers had been buried in text for almost an hour when the phone rang.
"Hello?" Giles answered, expecting news from Anya.
"I hear fighting...down the hall," a feeble voice said.
Giles recognized the speaker despite the low volume of her voice. "Willow?"
"Someone's screaming...I think- Oh no!"
Through the phone line, Giles heard a clattering sound. Willow had dropped the receiver.
Giles didn't wait to hear any more. He hung up and looked at Sarah long enough to say, "We've an emergency." Then Giles dashed upstairs and returned in mere seconds with two crossbows, a case of bolts, and a pair of stakes. By that time, Sarah had thrown on her coat and checked the inside pocket for the cross and vial of holy water she generally kept there.
"What's going on?" Sarah cried.
"I think we've just discovered what Walpurgis wants," Giles said darkly, and then they were out the door.
-----
Willow blinked to clear the blear of illness from her eyes as she looked at the three figures in the doorway of her hospital room. The woman who stood at the front of the group looked fairly ordinary, except for the odd suit jacket she had on. The two men behind her, on the other hand, had yellow eyes and crinkly foreheads. Not good.
The witch held up her hand and, in the loudest voice she could manage, hissed, "Thicken."
Walpurgis reached out and touched the wall of distorted air between herself and the red-haired woman. The vampire pushed hard, and her arm forced its way through the barrier, dissipating it.
"You are too weak for such magics now," Walpurgis said, stepping forward unimpeded. "But soon you will be strong again." She looked at her two followers. "Gag her and bring her, please," she said.
"You're not gonna do her here?" Jake asked.
"No. We must not take the chance that she will be killed the moment she rises, as the architect was. I will turn her where we can watch over her."
Jake grabbed a rag from his back pocket and shoved it into Willow's mouth, then lifted the witch's skinny body and slung it over his shoulder.
Walpurgis stepped back out into the hallway and looked towards the elevators. The Slayer and the boy from the stairwell were still on the floor. A doctor hung over them, shouting at nurses for gurneys, morphine, and a call down to Radiology for x-rays.
Just then, one of the elevator doors opened. A uniformed police officer stepped out into the corridor, gun drawn, just as Jake and Bobby emerged into the hallway with Willow.
"Freeze!" The cop yelled. "Hands in the air! Now!"
The doctor kneeling over Faith and Xander fell down on top of them, trying to protect them and get out of the line of fire himself.
Walpurgis began to raise her hands slowly. When they were halfway up, she suddenly reached back and drew her short sword from behind her right shoulder. Lunging to the side, she hurled the sword end-over-end at the cop.
The officer got one shot off, but the bullet missed Walpurgis and hit the wall at the end of the hallway. Then the cop screamed and fell when the sword pierced his chest. A pool of bright-red arterial blood began to expand rapidly over the white hospital floor.
The vampire swordswoman turned to her two followers. "Let us go quickly. The police cannot harm us, but they could kill the girl by accident."
The trio strode towards the elevators, trying not to step in the policeman's blood.
-----
The world was bouncing. And upside-down. And it tasted bad.
Willow watched the pavement go by as her captors carried her through the hospital parking garage. She began to realize how completely helpless she was. Her arms were pinned by the vampire carrying her, and she couldn't speak or incant because of the waxy-tasting rag in her mouth. Not that it mattered much anyway; her air-condensing spell had held Walpurgis back about as effectively as a shower curtain.
Soon, Willow was placed in the back seat of a turquoise SUV with a large roof rack. The two male vamps got in the front, while the female slid into the seat next to Willow.
"I am Walpurgis," the woman said. "I have taken you to make you part of my family."
She wants to make me a vampire, Willow thought, her mind still hazy. With the evil and the skankiness and the deep, tasteless cleavage. Oh, not good.
Walpurgis leaned closer. "I admire witches. You take the power of the universe and bend it to your will. That is a great achievement."
Yeah, feeling real powerful right now, Willow thought. If I concentrate really hard, I might be able to make your nose itch.
"I have only cast one spell in my lifetime, and though it was successful, great sacrifice was necessary," Walpurgis went on. "But that was a time of many fewer choices. Today, you can decide if you want to be a witch or lawyer or a seller of track lighting. Back then, you did what you were born into."
What is it with villains and speeches? Willow thought. Of course, talking is better than giving me a fatal hickey, so I'm not complaining.
"Most of us were born to be slaves," Walpurgis continued. "The nobles never called us that, of course, but they owned us nonetheless. We farmed their land and gave them the fruit of our sweat and blood, though we ourselves were nearly starving.
"Most infuriating of all were the knights. They were supposed to be our protectors, but instead they spent their many idle hours riding through our fields during their fox hunts and other ridiculous games. They trampled the vegetables that we had struggled to nurture in overused soil, they broke our fences, and they killed our animals or frightened them away.
"One day, my husband heard them coming and went outside to ask them to stop. It was an incredibly bold thing to do; to the knights, we were little more than earthworms. Looking back on it now, I suppose I should not have been surprised when one of the knights cut off my husband's head without even slowing his horse.
"But I was surprised. And angry. I saw which knight had done it, and I vowed to seek justice. But the judges in the courts answered to the nobles; I had no hope of a fair hearing there. The only other option was a judicial duel, which I could not hope to win.
"That night, I went into the woods to see the one we called Die Alte - The Old One. A witch. I gave her all the money I had, which was very little, but she still told me what I needed to know: that Satan himself would help me if I gave him my most precious possessions. I had only two. I pledged him the first - my soul - then and there. And then I went home and gave him the other half of his price, with as much skill as I had. It was enough. Not one of my children awoke before my knife was in their hearts."
Willow's eyes widened with horror. Walpurgis looked at her.
"They would have died anyway. We all would have. I had no relatives alive to help us, and no neighbors who could afford to do so. Without my husband to work the fields with us, we would have starved.
"The next day, I challenged my husband's murderer to a duel. He accepted, of course. A peasant woman against a man trained from birth to kill? Hardly a contest, though I am sure he thought it would be an interesting diversion.
"The judge gave me a worn sword and shield and sent me off to what he must have thought was my death. I even saw a hint of pity in his eyes.
"On the field, the knight played with me. He let me attack, never countering, only laughing at the feebleness of my blows as he turned them away. I knew that he would kill me the moment the game ceased to amuse him.
"That knowledge filled me with rage, and that was when Lucifer's gift arose in me. My next cut went beneath the knight's shield and wounded his leg, faster than even I could see. Before I knew it, I had sliced open his stomach and dropped him to the ground. But I kept attacking, wildly, blindly, losing all sense of time and place. The last moment of the fight I remember was being pulled off the dead knight as I stabbed at his eyes, over and over.
"I fled into the forest. I knew the other knights would want revenge, since they cared only about their comrades and never about what was just. Furthermore, I did not know if my gift would last.
"But it did. I was faster than anyone alive. That, along with the sword I had kept from the duel, was all I needed. I stayed in the forest and became a robber, stealing from merchants and travelers. Those who resisted, I killed. Those who did not, I simply robbed and allowed to depart. This proved to be a wise policy, because the survivors spread word of me throughout the land. Even our local lord heard about me, and was so incensed at my boldness that he sent half a dozen knights to kill me. But they were not at home in the forest. I circled through the woods and separated them, then dispatched them one by one.
"My legend grew even more after that. People romanticized me, calling me Walpurgis, the Knight-Killer, the Bandit Queen. I even attracted followers. They were mostly other serfs whom I had inspired to leave their dreary lives and seize their freedom. It was perhaps the best time of my life.
"But I knew it would have to end. Lord Satan always keeps his word, but only to the letter. An early death awaited me, I was sure of that. Lucifer would not wait for me to die of old age before he took my soul.
"One night, it happened. I woke up to the screams of my men as someone - something - killed them in their bedrolls. I had only just stood up when the vampires were on me. I fought, of course, but there were more than ten of them, I had only human strength, and all my followers were dead. The vampires overwhelmed me with their numbers and held me down as their leader came to drink my life's blood.
"That was the night that I learned of the true greatness of the Dark One. Because He did, indeed, take my soul, but instead of taking my existence with it, He made me stronger and even faster than I had been."
Walpurgis looked into Willow's eyes. "You must be wondering why I am telling you all of this."
Willow nodded. Oh yes, I'm fascinated, she thought. Please, keep telling me your very interesting story while I wait for...somebody...to come rescue me.
"Tonight," Walpurgis said, "you will become my daughter, the child of my blood. But your body will die, and your little wisp of a soul will drift off to Heaven. When it gets there, I want it to find its Creator, and give Him this message:
"You did this. You, and your spawn - humanity - made me become this. If You want to know evil, look no further than Your own hands, for they are stained with the blood of your creation. Humanity is a disease that ever infects itself, turns on itself, enslaves and degrades and destroys itself. What is a vampire or a demon compared to that? What evil exists that can possibly be worse than what You Yourself have made? The Kingdom of Heaven may be Yours forever, but know that the kingdom of Earth shall be mine. And I will ensure that human beings are put in their proper place. I will change them back into the stupid, ignorant cattle you made them to be, and they will know nothing but service and death for all eternity. For I know now that that is all they can ever be, for that is the way You made them."
A moment passed. The only sounds were those of the car and the road.
"Uh, Val?" Bobby called from the passenger's seat, clearly hesitant to interrupt. "You wanna grab anybody else before we go home? I've got the whole list right here." He held up a few sheets of paper that were stapled together.
"No," Walpurgis replied. "This one is important. We will take her back and turn her, then let the others watch over her while we collect the others."
"That might be a problem," Jake said from behind the wheel. "I think Smokey wants a word with us."
Willow could hear the sound of a siren somewhere behind the truck, growing closer. Soon she saw the flicker of red and blue lights.
"Can you evade them?" Walpurgis asked. "It might be inconvenient if the police follow us to the studio."
"No prob," said Jake, stamping on the gas.
-----
Sarah grasped the rally handle above the passenger's-side door as Giles' red BMW tore around the street corner far faster than the law allowed, then rocketed through two stop signs and a red light. The female Watcher was not entirely surprised to hear the sound of an approaching police siren.
Giles' eyes were locked on the road. Sarah wondered if he would even stop for the police. Given the current emergency, and the fact that she was implicated in the prison break of a multiple felon, Sarah rather hoped he wouldn't.
Then she saw that the blinking blue and red lights were somewhere up ahead, rather than behind. Sarah breathed a sigh of relief as a brightly-colored SUV sped by them in the other direction with the patrol car in pursuit.
Her relief was short lived. Giles cried "Good Lord!" and stomped on the brakes so hard that the car turned sideways in the road, stopping inches from the base of a streetlight. Sarah stifled a scream.
"Those were Walpurgis' minions!" Giles shouted. "I recognized those garish shirts of theirs. And they were coming from the direction of the hospital."
Giles shoved the gearshift up to 'R' and make a sharp 90-degree backwards turn, pointing the small convertible in the direction the SUV and the police had gone. Then he yanked the shift back to 'D' and floored the gas pedal.
-----
Willow felt seasick. Jake had just braked hard for a turn and skidded around a corner, and now he was speeding up again.
"Val!" Jake shouted. "I can't outrun the cops in this thing!"
A police car suddenly pulled out from behind a building up ahead and stopped in the middle of the intersection. Jake jerked the wheel hard to the right and clipped the cop car; the rear bumper tore off and took the SUV's left headlight with it. More sirens sounded from somewhere up ahead.
"Scheisse!" Walpurgis yelled. "Stop the car! We will have to fight."
As Jake pulled the SUV into an alley, Walpurgis grabbed a length of rope from the back of the car and bound Willow's wrists and ankles together, wrapping them in a painful hog-tie. Then she reached over the back of her seat again and snatched up a sword almost a foot longer than the Roman-style short sword she had used earlier. Walpurgis also took out a circular shield about the size of a manhole cover. It was mainly wooden, but there was a dome-shaped steel boss in the center to cover the handle. Metal studs were hammered into the surface of the wood here and there for extra protection.
Walpurgis, Jake, and Bobby got out of the car just as the black-and-white that had been behind them braked to a screaming stop. The three vamps were halfway to the police car by the time the driver could get out and point his sidearm at them. He looked wide-eyed at Walpurgis as she approached him with her sword and shield.
"Police! Drop it!" he yelled, and fired. The bullet penetrated Walpurgis' shield and struck her in the chest, slowing her charge. Before he could get off another shot, Bobby knocked him down and shattered his skull against the pavement.
Three more police cars pulled up in a line, spanning the street behind the dead officer's car. The drivers emerged from their vehicles with shotguns in hand.
The moment they saw the hideous, vampiric faces of the two men standing over their dead colleague, the cops started firing. Jake and Bobby staggered and fell as blast after blast of 12-gauge shot hit them like punches from a huge, spiked fist. Bleeding profusely, the two vampires crawled into the alley and hid under their truck.
Walpurgis, who had been behind Jake and Bobby and who had been shielded somewhat by their bodies, dove sideways as the nearest cop fired at her. He cocked his gun for another shot; she charged and knocked the shotgun from his hands with an upward cut of her sword. The subsequent downward stroke took off the man's right arm at the elbow. The officer began to scream, then a horizontal cut from Walpurgis' sword severed his vocal cords and carotid arteries. The man fell and rapidly bled out.
No longer afraid of hitting their comrade, the other two officers fired at Walpurgis. The swordswoman sprang sideways, leaping in a 10-foot-high arc over the car of the first officer who had arrived at the scene. Walpurgis landed behind the vehicle and did not emerge.
After several seconds, the two remaining police officers began to circle cautiously around the side of the car. "Come on out!" one of the officers, a short, dark-haired woman, shouted. "There's nowhere to go!"
Just then, Sarah and Giles pulled up behind the line of police cars. Both officers turned their heads at the screech of the BMW's tires as it came to a rapid stop, then saw Giles and Sarah emerge from the vehicle.
"Get out of here!" yelled the other officer, a very tall, slim white man with a crew cut. "We've got an armed suspect here!"
Giles ignored the cop and turned to Sarah. She was standing at the ready with her crossbow loaded.
"I need to get Willow out of there," Giles said. He pointed at the SUV. "Can you, uh, cover me?"
Sarah hefted her crossbow and nodded.
Giles ran to the truck and looked in the rear window. Willow lay across the back seat, arms and legs tied together in a way that looked uncomfortable at best. The male Watcher took a knife from his back pocket and cut the ropes, then pulled Willow's arm over his shoulder and helped the young witch to her feet.
"Wait," Willow murmured. Giles bent closer to hear her.
"Get that," she said. She pointed to some stapled sheets of paper that lay on the floor in front of the SUV's forward passenger's seat. Giles snatched up the papers and then began to help Willow to the BMW.
At the same time, the two police officers circled around to either side of the car where Walpurgis was hiding. Just as the tall, thin cop caught sight of the vampire's crouching form, Walpurgis popped up and hurled her round shield at him like an oversized Frisbee. It hit the officer in the gut, making him double over. Walpurgis leaped at him and cut off his head before he could even straighten up.
The other officer turned and fired her shotgun at Walpurgis' back. The cluster of shot hit the swordswoman between the shoulders and knocked her down. When Walpurgis tried to get up, the policewoman fired again, and again, keeping the vampire pinned to the ground.
Giles and Willow had nearly reached the convertible when Sarah suddenly shouted, "Down!" Watcher and witch fell clumsily to the ground, from which Giles could see Bobby towering over them in full vamp-mode. Bobby snarled with feral glee as he prepared to rip Giles' throat out.
There was a twang, and a crossbow bolt hit Bobby in the chest. The vampire looked down at the bolt as if wondering how a feathered stick had suddenly grown from his torso. Then he collapsed into dust.
The policewoman who had been blasting Walpurgis ran out of ammunition. Walpurgis began to drag herself to her feet as the cop nervously tried to reload. The policewoman hadn't even gotten the shells out when Jake blindsided her. He knocked her to the ground, grabbed her shotgun, and smashed in her temple with the butt.
Sarah drew back the string of her crossbow and loaded another bolt as Giles, with some effort, lifted Willow into the back seat of his convertible. All of the police officers were dead. Jake stood over the body of the last one killed, still holding her empty shotgun.
He turned and looked at Sarah. Rage brightened his yellow eyes when he saw the pile of vampire dust a few yards in front of the female Watcher. Jake charged, screaming with fury.
Sarah fired her crossbow. Jake very nearly took the bolt in the heart, but was jerked aside at the last moment. The bolt hit his upper arm instead.
Walpurgis had run up behind him. She was covered in her own blood, but still looked quite well for someone who had been shot almost a dozen times. She gazed coldly at Sarah and Giles.
"Watchers," she hissed. She took a step forward, then another, slowly.
"Yes, well, time to go," Giles said with anxious mock-cheer. He leaped into his car and turned the ignition as Sarah jumped over the passenger's side door into her seat.
Walpurgis charged, sword aloft. Giles hit the accelerator and drove straight at her. At the last moment, Walpurgis leaped straight up and over the BMW, landing behind it. Giles suddenly saw the flaw in his plan of vehicular attack as he smashed into the rear bumper of one of the police cars.
Giles slammed the car into reverse, but too late. Walpurgis had jumped onto the trunk of the car and was climbing forward towards the two Watchers.
Out of options, Giles drove backwards as fast as he could, then slammed on the brakes. The car spun, but Walpurgis' vampire strength kept her fastened to the back of the car. When the car straightened out, she began to crawl forward toward Sarah and Giles again, grinning with homicidal eagerness.
Suddenly, Walpurgis screamed and clutched at her face, wet and smoking from Sarah's vialful of holy water.
Giles gunned the engine. As the car shot forward, Walpurgis fell off the car and rolled to a stop on the pavement.
Sarah looked over at Giles as they sped away. "That was terribly close," she said.
"Far closer for Willow, I'm afraid," Giles replied. "We had better take her to my flat, and then see to the others." Giles gave a start. "Good Lord! Willow, are Xander and Tara all right?"
But Willow had lost consciousness again.
-----
Faith was feeling no pain. Or much of anything, really. There was only a warm glow, accompanied by the slightest hint of queasiness. Faith knew the feeling from experience - it wasn't heroin, but it was something close.
Her legs were stretched out in front of her. She tried to bend them, but they wouldn't cooperate. Each one felt like a felt bag of broken china stuffed into a thick mailing tube.
Faith gave up on her legs for the moment and opened her eyes instead. She saw florescent lights and white ceiling panels.
Hey, I remember this, she thought. It's the hospital. Man, I hope it took less than nine months to wake up this time. I wonder what happened while I was gone? Maybe Sarah moved back to England and got married and has kids and one of those little dogs that aren't good for anything. Oh, and maybe Xander forgave me, and he came and read to me every day while I was in a coma, and his screaming-bitch girlfriend got jealous and left him and when I wake up I'll know the entire story of MOBY DICK even though I only ever watched half an hour of that stupid movie of it on TNT.
Faith turned her head. Xander was lying on a gurney next to her.
Okay, Faith thought, unless me and Xander are coma buddies, maybe it hasn't been nine months.
"Hey. Xander," she croaked.
"Wha...Oh. Hey," Xander said, obviously also a bit out of it, though not in the same giddy, doped-up way as Faith.
"I think...," Faith said, then looked down at her legs. Hard casts around both knees locked them straight. "...I've got two busted legs," she finished. "What you got? 'Cause I wanna trade."
She felt as if she were a hundred miles away from Xander, talking through a tin can with a string attached. The image - along with the gigantic dose of morphine - made her want to giggle.
"The usual," Xander replied. "A mild concussion. I should be out of here in a couple of hours, if nothing goes wrong."
"Sounds like you're a regular customer 'round here," Faith said.
"Yeah," Xander answered. "I think the nurses think I'm an extreme skateboarder or a street fighter or something. At least, I hope they do."
Suddenly, a man's voice said, "Oh, thank God."
Faith turned to see Giles walking rapidly towards her. Then he passed right by her and leaned over Xander. "Are you all right?" he asked.
"I'm good," Xander said. "Another day, another bruise on my brain. No big deal. I'm gonna have to hang out for a while, though."
"Faith!" another voice cried. Now it was Sarah who walked quickly towards Faith. "What happened?"
"I got stomped," Faith said, sounding pouty rather than angry in her delirium. "Literally and meta...met...the other way."
Sarah looked sternly down at Faith. "As I recall, I specifically instructed you not to engage Walpurgis. I thought you had more discipline than that."
"I...I didn't..." Faith began abortively.
"I was afraid of this," Giles added. "Impulsivity has always been one of Faith's failings. I had hoped that her time in prison and her additional training had enabled her to overcome it, but perhaps they haven't."
Even through her near-blissful mental haze, Faith was stung by the two Watchers' words. And she was afraid that no amount of explanation would make them understand.
Maybe that's just the way people are, she thought. They take their mental Polaroids of you and keep them forever. No matter how much you change, or how much you try to make things right, their idea of you stays the same.
"It wasn't her fault," Xander said.
Faith looked over at Xander, who was sitting up on his gurney and holding his head in obvious cranial discomfort.
"Walpurgis was after Willow," Xander continued. "Faith had to do something. Tara and I tried to help, but when we got up to the fourth floor, the vampire Gidget groupies got to us first."
Whoa, Faith thought, I must be really buzzed. I'm imagining that Xander is sticking up for me.
"Wait a moment," Sarah said. "The fight happened here in the hospital?"
"Yeah," Xander answered. "Faith followed the three vamps in from the street. I guess she was shadowing them."
I'm the shadow of the vampire, Faith thought. Kewl.
"Faith, is this correct?" Sarah asked.
Faith nodded.
Sarah put her hand on Faith's shoulder. "Then I owe you an apology," she said.
"S'okay," Faith replied. "Jus' do one thing for me?"
"Anything," Sarah said.
"Scratch behind my knee. It itches like a sum'bitch."
-----
Half an hour later, Faith lay on Giles' couch while Giles, Sarah, and Anya sat in conference around the coffee table. They had put Willow upstairs, in Giles' room. Xander and Tara were still at the hospital but seemed to have no lasting injuries. Giles would go and pick them up shortly.
"So," Anya said, taking the initiative, "turns out I was right. There was an underwater earthquake-eruption thingy in the middle of the Atlantic about four months ago. Must have stirred up Walpurgis. Hey, and that barrel, which SOME people thought wasn't important," she finished petulantly.
"Yes, very good, Anya," Giles said absently.
"But what else have we got?" Anya went on. "We're no better off now than we were before. Our Slayer is broken, Spike is still gone, Willow's still sick, and Walpurgis is still here. We're back at Pier One."
"Square one," Giles corrected. "And we're not, entirely. We do have this." He reached into his jacket and took out the sheets of paper that he had taken from the vampires' car. He began to unfold them, but Anya snatched them away and pored over the front page.
"Wow," the ex-demon said. "Walpurgis thinks big." She turned the page towards Giles and Sarah.
It was a drawing of what appeared to be an underground city. Someone had taken a map of the sewers and tunnels of Sunnydale and shown how the existing passages could be extended and modified to connect an even larger number of caves, cellars, parking garages, and other subterranean structures than they already did. Furthermore, many new chambers were added to provide spacious living quarters and common areas that could accommodate a large population of vampires.
Most disturbing was a large, domed chamber in the center of the complex. It was filled with tiny cages, and the few doors were drawn extra-thick. The area was labeled "Stockyards".
"I don't imagine it's for cattle," Giles said.
"No," Sarah agreed. "It's for us. For humans."
"Mus' be why they wanted an architect," Faith murmured from the couch.
Anya detached the page with the drawing and let Giles and Sarah continue examining it while she looked at the next one.
"So what do we do now?" Giles said, wondering aloud more than asking anyone in particular.
"Well," Sarah said, "even with her ability to heal rapidly, Faith won't be fully recovered for a week or so. So, until then, I suggest we-"
Anya screamed.
"Anya," Giles said with irritation, "what the devil is it?"
Anya held her sheet of paper out to Giles, who took it from her. The heading on the page read, "To be turned:" and was followed by a list of about thirty names. The second was "Rosenberg, Willow".
Twenty-third on the list was "Harris, Alexander".
Anya looked at Giles and Sarah. Very quietly, she said, "We don't have a week."
END CHAPTER 4
"This is a stupid, stupid book," Sarah Reynolds said, dropping the book a bit harder than she meant to on Giles' coffee table. "There's no logic to the ordering of chapters, no chronology, and the genuinely useful bits are so scattered that they almost aren't worth looking for."
"I can see why you might think so, at first glance," Giles responded as he walked down the stairs. "But Dave Barry is really quite entertaining once you get used to his style."
Sarah looked up at Giles and the stack of old books cradled in his arms. He set these down on the coffee table next to DAVE BARRY'S BOOK OF BAD SONGS.
"I prefer to keep some of the more vampire-intensive volumes here at home," Giles explained. "You can imagine the calls I ge- used to get, sometimes, in the dead of night, when Buffy needed some bit of information. I'd keep these at my bedside, next to my glasses."
Sarah looked up at Giles sympathetically, then looked back down at the pile of books. Amid the well-aged brown and black covers, she saw a bit of fresh white paper sticking out.
She moved a few books aside to reveal a catalogue, the cover of which read, "UC Sunnydale Summer Enrichment Courses For Junior High and High School Students". The catalogue was open to a page of course descriptions with the heading "Grades 7-9" at the top. Several selections which described classes in writing, theater, music, and art were circled.
"Oh!" said Giles. "I'm so sorry. I was...looking that not long ago. I must have tossed it in with the books by mistake."
"Who were these for?" Sarah asked, holding up the page with the circled items.
"Oh, ah, Buffy's younger sister, Dawn. She stayed with me for a while after Buffy died. Her father came to take custody of her yesterday."
"Yesterday? Didn't Buffy die nearly a month ago?"
"Mr. Summers had been out of contact for some time. More than a year, actually. I wasn't entirely certain we would ever hear from him again."
"And then he just swept in and took Dawn away?"
"Well...he did call first."
"That must have made you angry."
"No," Giles said a little too quickly. "No, I just...got used to having her here."
"I can imagine," Sarah said. "Young people do have a way of filling up a place."
"Yes," Giles said, nodding absently.
A moment passed. Giles stared at the floor.
"You were hoping you could keep her," Sarah said.
Giles took a deep breath. "Yes," he said, not looking up.
"You hoped her father wouldn't come back."
"Yes," Giles repeated dully.
There were another few seconds of silence.
"How- how could I have wished for such a thing?" Giles said suddenly. "What kind of man desires to keep a child apart from her father? It was selfish and stupid of me to-"
"No," Sarah broke in. "It wasn't."
Giles looked up at her.
"You were willing," Sarah went on, "to devote years of your life to taking care of someone to whom you had no legal relationship or responsibility. That is the very opposite of selfishness, Mr. Giles."
Giles was about to deny what Sarah had said, when he realized that the urge to do so only came from a perverse desire to punish himself. Instead, he allowed himself to say, "Thank you. And...please, call me Rupert."
"Then you may call me Sarah," she replied, and though the words themselves were formal, there was unmistakable warmth beneath them.
They looked at each other for a moment.
"Well," Giles said, taking a half-step back to shake off the awkward intimacy of the moment, "perhaps we should get cracking on these books. If there is any more to be learned about Walpurgis, it might be best to find it now."
"Of course," Sarah said. She took a seat on Giles' couch and opened a heavy volume. Then she sighed. "Though I doubt these books will explain how Walpurgis returned from her journey to the bottom of the ocean."
"The bottom of the ocean..." Giles repeated with a faraway look in his eyes. Then he snapped his fingers and looked at Sarah. "I am so bloody stupid."
"What?" Sarah said.
"If Walpurgis survived the explosion aboard her ship, she would have sunk with vessel to the ocean floor. If that happened in a place where the ocean is particularly deep-"
"-where there is no sunlight," Sarah added, catching on, "and no living things to disturb her-"
"-and where the ocean temperature is cold enough to preserve a corpse, or a vampire, indefinitely," Giles finished, "she would be unconscious and unmoving, but also safe from every threat to her unlife."
"Of course," Sarah said, nodding. "But SOMETHING must have disturbed her, or she would still be down there. What could do that?"
"A hurricane?" Giles suggested.
"I don't think a even hurricane could stir the ocean at that depth," Sarah answered. "Some sort of geological activity, perhaps?"
"Yes!" Giles agreed. "A volcanic eruption, or the opening of a - what do you call them - an undersea vent. The sudden heating of the water could lift her from the bottom."
"And the heat would awaken her," Sarah added. "The U.S. Geological Survey might have that sort of information. Perhaps they have a website."
"I'll call Anya and put her on it immediately. In the meantime, you and I had best continue our search in these books. If our hypothesis is correct, then whatever useful information exists about Walpurgis comes from the distant past."
Sarah sat back down to her research as Giles dialed Anya, tearing the resentful ex-demon away from watching MONEYLINE and putting her to work.
-----
The two Watchers had been buried in text for almost an hour when the phone rang.
"Hello?" Giles answered, expecting news from Anya.
"I hear fighting...down the hall," a feeble voice said.
Giles recognized the speaker despite the low volume of her voice. "Willow?"
"Someone's screaming...I think- Oh no!"
Through the phone line, Giles heard a clattering sound. Willow had dropped the receiver.
Giles didn't wait to hear any more. He hung up and looked at Sarah long enough to say, "We've an emergency." Then Giles dashed upstairs and returned in mere seconds with two crossbows, a case of bolts, and a pair of stakes. By that time, Sarah had thrown on her coat and checked the inside pocket for the cross and vial of holy water she generally kept there.
"What's going on?" Sarah cried.
"I think we've just discovered what Walpurgis wants," Giles said darkly, and then they were out the door.
-----
Willow blinked to clear the blear of illness from her eyes as she looked at the three figures in the doorway of her hospital room. The woman who stood at the front of the group looked fairly ordinary, except for the odd suit jacket she had on. The two men behind her, on the other hand, had yellow eyes and crinkly foreheads. Not good.
The witch held up her hand and, in the loudest voice she could manage, hissed, "Thicken."
Walpurgis reached out and touched the wall of distorted air between herself and the red-haired woman. The vampire pushed hard, and her arm forced its way through the barrier, dissipating it.
"You are too weak for such magics now," Walpurgis said, stepping forward unimpeded. "But soon you will be strong again." She looked at her two followers. "Gag her and bring her, please," she said.
"You're not gonna do her here?" Jake asked.
"No. We must not take the chance that she will be killed the moment she rises, as the architect was. I will turn her where we can watch over her."
Jake grabbed a rag from his back pocket and shoved it into Willow's mouth, then lifted the witch's skinny body and slung it over his shoulder.
Walpurgis stepped back out into the hallway and looked towards the elevators. The Slayer and the boy from the stairwell were still on the floor. A doctor hung over them, shouting at nurses for gurneys, morphine, and a call down to Radiology for x-rays.
Just then, one of the elevator doors opened. A uniformed police officer stepped out into the corridor, gun drawn, just as Jake and Bobby emerged into the hallway with Willow.
"Freeze!" The cop yelled. "Hands in the air! Now!"
The doctor kneeling over Faith and Xander fell down on top of them, trying to protect them and get out of the line of fire himself.
Walpurgis began to raise her hands slowly. When they were halfway up, she suddenly reached back and drew her short sword from behind her right shoulder. Lunging to the side, she hurled the sword end-over-end at the cop.
The officer got one shot off, but the bullet missed Walpurgis and hit the wall at the end of the hallway. Then the cop screamed and fell when the sword pierced his chest. A pool of bright-red arterial blood began to expand rapidly over the white hospital floor.
The vampire swordswoman turned to her two followers. "Let us go quickly. The police cannot harm us, but they could kill the girl by accident."
The trio strode towards the elevators, trying not to step in the policeman's blood.
-----
The world was bouncing. And upside-down. And it tasted bad.
Willow watched the pavement go by as her captors carried her through the hospital parking garage. She began to realize how completely helpless she was. Her arms were pinned by the vampire carrying her, and she couldn't speak or incant because of the waxy-tasting rag in her mouth. Not that it mattered much anyway; her air-condensing spell had held Walpurgis back about as effectively as a shower curtain.
Soon, Willow was placed in the back seat of a turquoise SUV with a large roof rack. The two male vamps got in the front, while the female slid into the seat next to Willow.
"I am Walpurgis," the woman said. "I have taken you to make you part of my family."
She wants to make me a vampire, Willow thought, her mind still hazy. With the evil and the skankiness and the deep, tasteless cleavage. Oh, not good.
Walpurgis leaned closer. "I admire witches. You take the power of the universe and bend it to your will. That is a great achievement."
Yeah, feeling real powerful right now, Willow thought. If I concentrate really hard, I might be able to make your nose itch.
"I have only cast one spell in my lifetime, and though it was successful, great sacrifice was necessary," Walpurgis went on. "But that was a time of many fewer choices. Today, you can decide if you want to be a witch or lawyer or a seller of track lighting. Back then, you did what you were born into."
What is it with villains and speeches? Willow thought. Of course, talking is better than giving me a fatal hickey, so I'm not complaining.
"Most of us were born to be slaves," Walpurgis continued. "The nobles never called us that, of course, but they owned us nonetheless. We farmed their land and gave them the fruit of our sweat and blood, though we ourselves were nearly starving.
"Most infuriating of all were the knights. They were supposed to be our protectors, but instead they spent their many idle hours riding through our fields during their fox hunts and other ridiculous games. They trampled the vegetables that we had struggled to nurture in overused soil, they broke our fences, and they killed our animals or frightened them away.
"One day, my husband heard them coming and went outside to ask them to stop. It was an incredibly bold thing to do; to the knights, we were little more than earthworms. Looking back on it now, I suppose I should not have been surprised when one of the knights cut off my husband's head without even slowing his horse.
"But I was surprised. And angry. I saw which knight had done it, and I vowed to seek justice. But the judges in the courts answered to the nobles; I had no hope of a fair hearing there. The only other option was a judicial duel, which I could not hope to win.
"That night, I went into the woods to see the one we called Die Alte - The Old One. A witch. I gave her all the money I had, which was very little, but she still told me what I needed to know: that Satan himself would help me if I gave him my most precious possessions. I had only two. I pledged him the first - my soul - then and there. And then I went home and gave him the other half of his price, with as much skill as I had. It was enough. Not one of my children awoke before my knife was in their hearts."
Willow's eyes widened with horror. Walpurgis looked at her.
"They would have died anyway. We all would have. I had no relatives alive to help us, and no neighbors who could afford to do so. Without my husband to work the fields with us, we would have starved.
"The next day, I challenged my husband's murderer to a duel. He accepted, of course. A peasant woman against a man trained from birth to kill? Hardly a contest, though I am sure he thought it would be an interesting diversion.
"The judge gave me a worn sword and shield and sent me off to what he must have thought was my death. I even saw a hint of pity in his eyes.
"On the field, the knight played with me. He let me attack, never countering, only laughing at the feebleness of my blows as he turned them away. I knew that he would kill me the moment the game ceased to amuse him.
"That knowledge filled me with rage, and that was when Lucifer's gift arose in me. My next cut went beneath the knight's shield and wounded his leg, faster than even I could see. Before I knew it, I had sliced open his stomach and dropped him to the ground. But I kept attacking, wildly, blindly, losing all sense of time and place. The last moment of the fight I remember was being pulled off the dead knight as I stabbed at his eyes, over and over.
"I fled into the forest. I knew the other knights would want revenge, since they cared only about their comrades and never about what was just. Furthermore, I did not know if my gift would last.
"But it did. I was faster than anyone alive. That, along with the sword I had kept from the duel, was all I needed. I stayed in the forest and became a robber, stealing from merchants and travelers. Those who resisted, I killed. Those who did not, I simply robbed and allowed to depart. This proved to be a wise policy, because the survivors spread word of me throughout the land. Even our local lord heard about me, and was so incensed at my boldness that he sent half a dozen knights to kill me. But they were not at home in the forest. I circled through the woods and separated them, then dispatched them one by one.
"My legend grew even more after that. People romanticized me, calling me Walpurgis, the Knight-Killer, the Bandit Queen. I even attracted followers. They were mostly other serfs whom I had inspired to leave their dreary lives and seize their freedom. It was perhaps the best time of my life.
"But I knew it would have to end. Lord Satan always keeps his word, but only to the letter. An early death awaited me, I was sure of that. Lucifer would not wait for me to die of old age before he took my soul.
"One night, it happened. I woke up to the screams of my men as someone - something - killed them in their bedrolls. I had only just stood up when the vampires were on me. I fought, of course, but there were more than ten of them, I had only human strength, and all my followers were dead. The vampires overwhelmed me with their numbers and held me down as their leader came to drink my life's blood.
"That was the night that I learned of the true greatness of the Dark One. Because He did, indeed, take my soul, but instead of taking my existence with it, He made me stronger and even faster than I had been."
Walpurgis looked into Willow's eyes. "You must be wondering why I am telling you all of this."
Willow nodded. Oh yes, I'm fascinated, she thought. Please, keep telling me your very interesting story while I wait for...somebody...to come rescue me.
"Tonight," Walpurgis said, "you will become my daughter, the child of my blood. But your body will die, and your little wisp of a soul will drift off to Heaven. When it gets there, I want it to find its Creator, and give Him this message:
"You did this. You, and your spawn - humanity - made me become this. If You want to know evil, look no further than Your own hands, for they are stained with the blood of your creation. Humanity is a disease that ever infects itself, turns on itself, enslaves and degrades and destroys itself. What is a vampire or a demon compared to that? What evil exists that can possibly be worse than what You Yourself have made? The Kingdom of Heaven may be Yours forever, but know that the kingdom of Earth shall be mine. And I will ensure that human beings are put in their proper place. I will change them back into the stupid, ignorant cattle you made them to be, and they will know nothing but service and death for all eternity. For I know now that that is all they can ever be, for that is the way You made them."
A moment passed. The only sounds were those of the car and the road.
"Uh, Val?" Bobby called from the passenger's seat, clearly hesitant to interrupt. "You wanna grab anybody else before we go home? I've got the whole list right here." He held up a few sheets of paper that were stapled together.
"No," Walpurgis replied. "This one is important. We will take her back and turn her, then let the others watch over her while we collect the others."
"That might be a problem," Jake said from behind the wheel. "I think Smokey wants a word with us."
Willow could hear the sound of a siren somewhere behind the truck, growing closer. Soon she saw the flicker of red and blue lights.
"Can you evade them?" Walpurgis asked. "It might be inconvenient if the police follow us to the studio."
"No prob," said Jake, stamping on the gas.
-----
Sarah grasped the rally handle above the passenger's-side door as Giles' red BMW tore around the street corner far faster than the law allowed, then rocketed through two stop signs and a red light. The female Watcher was not entirely surprised to hear the sound of an approaching police siren.
Giles' eyes were locked on the road. Sarah wondered if he would even stop for the police. Given the current emergency, and the fact that she was implicated in the prison break of a multiple felon, Sarah rather hoped he wouldn't.
Then she saw that the blinking blue and red lights were somewhere up ahead, rather than behind. Sarah breathed a sigh of relief as a brightly-colored SUV sped by them in the other direction with the patrol car in pursuit.
Her relief was short lived. Giles cried "Good Lord!" and stomped on the brakes so hard that the car turned sideways in the road, stopping inches from the base of a streetlight. Sarah stifled a scream.
"Those were Walpurgis' minions!" Giles shouted. "I recognized those garish shirts of theirs. And they were coming from the direction of the hospital."
Giles shoved the gearshift up to 'R' and make a sharp 90-degree backwards turn, pointing the small convertible in the direction the SUV and the police had gone. Then he yanked the shift back to 'D' and floored the gas pedal.
-----
Willow felt seasick. Jake had just braked hard for a turn and skidded around a corner, and now he was speeding up again.
"Val!" Jake shouted. "I can't outrun the cops in this thing!"
A police car suddenly pulled out from behind a building up ahead and stopped in the middle of the intersection. Jake jerked the wheel hard to the right and clipped the cop car; the rear bumper tore off and took the SUV's left headlight with it. More sirens sounded from somewhere up ahead.
"Scheisse!" Walpurgis yelled. "Stop the car! We will have to fight."
As Jake pulled the SUV into an alley, Walpurgis grabbed a length of rope from the back of the car and bound Willow's wrists and ankles together, wrapping them in a painful hog-tie. Then she reached over the back of her seat again and snatched up a sword almost a foot longer than the Roman-style short sword she had used earlier. Walpurgis also took out a circular shield about the size of a manhole cover. It was mainly wooden, but there was a dome-shaped steel boss in the center to cover the handle. Metal studs were hammered into the surface of the wood here and there for extra protection.
Walpurgis, Jake, and Bobby got out of the car just as the black-and-white that had been behind them braked to a screaming stop. The three vamps were halfway to the police car by the time the driver could get out and point his sidearm at them. He looked wide-eyed at Walpurgis as she approached him with her sword and shield.
"Police! Drop it!" he yelled, and fired. The bullet penetrated Walpurgis' shield and struck her in the chest, slowing her charge. Before he could get off another shot, Bobby knocked him down and shattered his skull against the pavement.
Three more police cars pulled up in a line, spanning the street behind the dead officer's car. The drivers emerged from their vehicles with shotguns in hand.
The moment they saw the hideous, vampiric faces of the two men standing over their dead colleague, the cops started firing. Jake and Bobby staggered and fell as blast after blast of 12-gauge shot hit them like punches from a huge, spiked fist. Bleeding profusely, the two vampires crawled into the alley and hid under their truck.
Walpurgis, who had been behind Jake and Bobby and who had been shielded somewhat by their bodies, dove sideways as the nearest cop fired at her. He cocked his gun for another shot; she charged and knocked the shotgun from his hands with an upward cut of her sword. The subsequent downward stroke took off the man's right arm at the elbow. The officer began to scream, then a horizontal cut from Walpurgis' sword severed his vocal cords and carotid arteries. The man fell and rapidly bled out.
No longer afraid of hitting their comrade, the other two officers fired at Walpurgis. The swordswoman sprang sideways, leaping in a 10-foot-high arc over the car of the first officer who had arrived at the scene. Walpurgis landed behind the vehicle and did not emerge.
After several seconds, the two remaining police officers began to circle cautiously around the side of the car. "Come on out!" one of the officers, a short, dark-haired woman, shouted. "There's nowhere to go!"
Just then, Sarah and Giles pulled up behind the line of police cars. Both officers turned their heads at the screech of the BMW's tires as it came to a rapid stop, then saw Giles and Sarah emerge from the vehicle.
"Get out of here!" yelled the other officer, a very tall, slim white man with a crew cut. "We've got an armed suspect here!"
Giles ignored the cop and turned to Sarah. She was standing at the ready with her crossbow loaded.
"I need to get Willow out of there," Giles said. He pointed at the SUV. "Can you, uh, cover me?"
Sarah hefted her crossbow and nodded.
Giles ran to the truck and looked in the rear window. Willow lay across the back seat, arms and legs tied together in a way that looked uncomfortable at best. The male Watcher took a knife from his back pocket and cut the ropes, then pulled Willow's arm over his shoulder and helped the young witch to her feet.
"Wait," Willow murmured. Giles bent closer to hear her.
"Get that," she said. She pointed to some stapled sheets of paper that lay on the floor in front of the SUV's forward passenger's seat. Giles snatched up the papers and then began to help Willow to the BMW.
At the same time, the two police officers circled around to either side of the car where Walpurgis was hiding. Just as the tall, thin cop caught sight of the vampire's crouching form, Walpurgis popped up and hurled her round shield at him like an oversized Frisbee. It hit the officer in the gut, making him double over. Walpurgis leaped at him and cut off his head before he could even straighten up.
The other officer turned and fired her shotgun at Walpurgis' back. The cluster of shot hit the swordswoman between the shoulders and knocked her down. When Walpurgis tried to get up, the policewoman fired again, and again, keeping the vampire pinned to the ground.
Giles and Willow had nearly reached the convertible when Sarah suddenly shouted, "Down!" Watcher and witch fell clumsily to the ground, from which Giles could see Bobby towering over them in full vamp-mode. Bobby snarled with feral glee as he prepared to rip Giles' throat out.
There was a twang, and a crossbow bolt hit Bobby in the chest. The vampire looked down at the bolt as if wondering how a feathered stick had suddenly grown from his torso. Then he collapsed into dust.
The policewoman who had been blasting Walpurgis ran out of ammunition. Walpurgis began to drag herself to her feet as the cop nervously tried to reload. The policewoman hadn't even gotten the shells out when Jake blindsided her. He knocked her to the ground, grabbed her shotgun, and smashed in her temple with the butt.
Sarah drew back the string of her crossbow and loaded another bolt as Giles, with some effort, lifted Willow into the back seat of his convertible. All of the police officers were dead. Jake stood over the body of the last one killed, still holding her empty shotgun.
He turned and looked at Sarah. Rage brightened his yellow eyes when he saw the pile of vampire dust a few yards in front of the female Watcher. Jake charged, screaming with fury.
Sarah fired her crossbow. Jake very nearly took the bolt in the heart, but was jerked aside at the last moment. The bolt hit his upper arm instead.
Walpurgis had run up behind him. She was covered in her own blood, but still looked quite well for someone who had been shot almost a dozen times. She gazed coldly at Sarah and Giles.
"Watchers," she hissed. She took a step forward, then another, slowly.
"Yes, well, time to go," Giles said with anxious mock-cheer. He leaped into his car and turned the ignition as Sarah jumped over the passenger's side door into her seat.
Walpurgis charged, sword aloft. Giles hit the accelerator and drove straight at her. At the last moment, Walpurgis leaped straight up and over the BMW, landing behind it. Giles suddenly saw the flaw in his plan of vehicular attack as he smashed into the rear bumper of one of the police cars.
Giles slammed the car into reverse, but too late. Walpurgis had jumped onto the trunk of the car and was climbing forward towards the two Watchers.
Out of options, Giles drove backwards as fast as he could, then slammed on the brakes. The car spun, but Walpurgis' vampire strength kept her fastened to the back of the car. When the car straightened out, she began to crawl forward toward Sarah and Giles again, grinning with homicidal eagerness.
Suddenly, Walpurgis screamed and clutched at her face, wet and smoking from Sarah's vialful of holy water.
Giles gunned the engine. As the car shot forward, Walpurgis fell off the car and rolled to a stop on the pavement.
Sarah looked over at Giles as they sped away. "That was terribly close," she said.
"Far closer for Willow, I'm afraid," Giles replied. "We had better take her to my flat, and then see to the others." Giles gave a start. "Good Lord! Willow, are Xander and Tara all right?"
But Willow had lost consciousness again.
-----
Faith was feeling no pain. Or much of anything, really. There was only a warm glow, accompanied by the slightest hint of queasiness. Faith knew the feeling from experience - it wasn't heroin, but it was something close.
Her legs were stretched out in front of her. She tried to bend them, but they wouldn't cooperate. Each one felt like a felt bag of broken china stuffed into a thick mailing tube.
Faith gave up on her legs for the moment and opened her eyes instead. She saw florescent lights and white ceiling panels.
Hey, I remember this, she thought. It's the hospital. Man, I hope it took less than nine months to wake up this time. I wonder what happened while I was gone? Maybe Sarah moved back to England and got married and has kids and one of those little dogs that aren't good for anything. Oh, and maybe Xander forgave me, and he came and read to me every day while I was in a coma, and his screaming-bitch girlfriend got jealous and left him and when I wake up I'll know the entire story of MOBY DICK even though I only ever watched half an hour of that stupid movie of it on TNT.
Faith turned her head. Xander was lying on a gurney next to her.
Okay, Faith thought, unless me and Xander are coma buddies, maybe it hasn't been nine months.
"Hey. Xander," she croaked.
"Wha...Oh. Hey," Xander said, obviously also a bit out of it, though not in the same giddy, doped-up way as Faith.
"I think...," Faith said, then looked down at her legs. Hard casts around both knees locked them straight. "...I've got two busted legs," she finished. "What you got? 'Cause I wanna trade."
She felt as if she were a hundred miles away from Xander, talking through a tin can with a string attached. The image - along with the gigantic dose of morphine - made her want to giggle.
"The usual," Xander replied. "A mild concussion. I should be out of here in a couple of hours, if nothing goes wrong."
"Sounds like you're a regular customer 'round here," Faith said.
"Yeah," Xander answered. "I think the nurses think I'm an extreme skateboarder or a street fighter or something. At least, I hope they do."
Suddenly, a man's voice said, "Oh, thank God."
Faith turned to see Giles walking rapidly towards her. Then he passed right by her and leaned over Xander. "Are you all right?" he asked.
"I'm good," Xander said. "Another day, another bruise on my brain. No big deal. I'm gonna have to hang out for a while, though."
"Faith!" another voice cried. Now it was Sarah who walked quickly towards Faith. "What happened?"
"I got stomped," Faith said, sounding pouty rather than angry in her delirium. "Literally and meta...met...the other way."
Sarah looked sternly down at Faith. "As I recall, I specifically instructed you not to engage Walpurgis. I thought you had more discipline than that."
"I...I didn't..." Faith began abortively.
"I was afraid of this," Giles added. "Impulsivity has always been one of Faith's failings. I had hoped that her time in prison and her additional training had enabled her to overcome it, but perhaps they haven't."
Even through her near-blissful mental haze, Faith was stung by the two Watchers' words. And she was afraid that no amount of explanation would make them understand.
Maybe that's just the way people are, she thought. They take their mental Polaroids of you and keep them forever. No matter how much you change, or how much you try to make things right, their idea of you stays the same.
"It wasn't her fault," Xander said.
Faith looked over at Xander, who was sitting up on his gurney and holding his head in obvious cranial discomfort.
"Walpurgis was after Willow," Xander continued. "Faith had to do something. Tara and I tried to help, but when we got up to the fourth floor, the vampire Gidget groupies got to us first."
Whoa, Faith thought, I must be really buzzed. I'm imagining that Xander is sticking up for me.
"Wait a moment," Sarah said. "The fight happened here in the hospital?"
"Yeah," Xander answered. "Faith followed the three vamps in from the street. I guess she was shadowing them."
I'm the shadow of the vampire, Faith thought. Kewl.
"Faith, is this correct?" Sarah asked.
Faith nodded.
Sarah put her hand on Faith's shoulder. "Then I owe you an apology," she said.
"S'okay," Faith replied. "Jus' do one thing for me?"
"Anything," Sarah said.
"Scratch behind my knee. It itches like a sum'bitch."
-----
Half an hour later, Faith lay on Giles' couch while Giles, Sarah, and Anya sat in conference around the coffee table. They had put Willow upstairs, in Giles' room. Xander and Tara were still at the hospital but seemed to have no lasting injuries. Giles would go and pick them up shortly.
"So," Anya said, taking the initiative, "turns out I was right. There was an underwater earthquake-eruption thingy in the middle of the Atlantic about four months ago. Must have stirred up Walpurgis. Hey, and that barrel, which SOME people thought wasn't important," she finished petulantly.
"Yes, very good, Anya," Giles said absently.
"But what else have we got?" Anya went on. "We're no better off now than we were before. Our Slayer is broken, Spike is still gone, Willow's still sick, and Walpurgis is still here. We're back at Pier One."
"Square one," Giles corrected. "And we're not, entirely. We do have this." He reached into his jacket and took out the sheets of paper that he had taken from the vampires' car. He began to unfold them, but Anya snatched them away and pored over the front page.
"Wow," the ex-demon said. "Walpurgis thinks big." She turned the page towards Giles and Sarah.
It was a drawing of what appeared to be an underground city. Someone had taken a map of the sewers and tunnels of Sunnydale and shown how the existing passages could be extended and modified to connect an even larger number of caves, cellars, parking garages, and other subterranean structures than they already did. Furthermore, many new chambers were added to provide spacious living quarters and common areas that could accommodate a large population of vampires.
Most disturbing was a large, domed chamber in the center of the complex. It was filled with tiny cages, and the few doors were drawn extra-thick. The area was labeled "Stockyards".
"I don't imagine it's for cattle," Giles said.
"No," Sarah agreed. "It's for us. For humans."
"Mus' be why they wanted an architect," Faith murmured from the couch.
Anya detached the page with the drawing and let Giles and Sarah continue examining it while she looked at the next one.
"So what do we do now?" Giles said, wondering aloud more than asking anyone in particular.
"Well," Sarah said, "even with her ability to heal rapidly, Faith won't be fully recovered for a week or so. So, until then, I suggest we-"
Anya screamed.
"Anya," Giles said with irritation, "what the devil is it?"
Anya held her sheet of paper out to Giles, who took it from her. The heading on the page read, "To be turned:" and was followed by a list of about thirty names. The second was "Rosenberg, Willow".
Twenty-third on the list was "Harris, Alexander".
Anya looked at Giles and Sarah. Very quietly, she said, "We don't have a week."
END CHAPTER 4