Chapter Five - Sunset
He woke to find himself in nearly complete darkness, bound in chains and gagged. His vampiric eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness, and he glanced around. The other three were there, still unconcious, and a fourth, also bound - with a start, he realized that it was Jenny Calendar. She was staring at him.
"I was wondering when you'd wake up," she said crossly.
He could only look at her.
She glanced down. "Yeah, I know what you're wondering. What's a pretty girl like me doing strapped to a concrete wall? The answer is I don't know. I guess I couldn't read the Master any better than any of you saps could."
"Jenny," Giles muttered, hearing her voice in his dreams.
"King Sap of them all," she whispered sarcastically, shaking her head.
Angel looked around the room. For all intents and purposes, it seemed to be a jail cell. He strained against the chains, and sensed that even at full strength he wouldn't be able to break them.
Jenny watched him struggle, and started to giggle. It was a nervous and ugly sound in the darkness. He wished she would stop, but the laughter seemed to echo longer and longer, stretching to infinity.
"Rise and...well, just rise. Me and shine are having a lover's quarrel at present."
Angel looked up at the sound of Jenny's taunting voice to find that the humans were coming around.
Giles glanced around, squinting his eyes, and Angel realized that the humans probably couldn't see a thing. "Who's there? Where are we?"
"It's me, lover," Jenny answered, and Giles' face fell.
"Get away from us," the librarian said huskily.
"Might pose a problem," she replied, "Seeing as how I'm just as captive as you are."
"I don't believe it."
"And I don't care," she said blandly, "but Angel can tell you."
Giles looked around, futily, in the darkness. "Angel, are you there?"
"He's gagged, for whatever reason. Maybe he can moan at you."
"I'm here," Angel said, and though it came out muffled by the cloth in his mouth, Giles nodded.
"Where are we being held?"
"The house on haunted hill," Jenny snickered.
"I think we're in the warehouse district," Xander said groggily from the other side of the small room. "Smells like sea water."
"Why would the Master set up base here?" Willow asked.
"Oh, think about it, Red," Jenny replied, grinning when she saw Willow grimace at the nickname, "Nice and deserted. Plenty of big, hot- blooded sailors to feed on, with no ties to the world at large. Perfect for evil goings-on."
Giles struggled with the ropes for a moment. Jenny Calendar watched him without much emotion.
"No use, Rupert," she intoned, "If these things can hold me, they can sure as hell hold you."
He ignored her, but realized soon that he couldn't escape. "Why didn't he kill us?" He said it quietly, as if the question was rhetorical, but Jenny answered it anyway.
"He's got all the time in the world. Why shouldn't he have his cake and eat it too?"
"It's not cake we're worried about him eating," Xander said, but the quip was met with a resounding silence.
For her part, Jenny ignored him. "I'm surprised Angel didn't tell you. He and the Master were bosom buddies back in the day."
"Yes, he told us," Giles said darkly. "He said that the Master will try to drive us all mad before he...kills us."
"Exactly," Jenny replied, sounding almost satisfied with herself. "Maybe he'll test you," Angel looked at her sharply, fear in his eyes. She smiled toothily at him. "That's what he does. He's holding all the cards - he can afford to offer you your pathetic lives. For. A. Price," she was staring off into space - Angel wondered sickly if she was speaking from personal experience. "He'll tell you...he's testing your mettle. Just to see how inhuman you can be."
Her eyes found his again, and she grinned. "Angel knows all about that. Just ask Drusilla."
The floodlights came up then, bright, pointed almost directly into their faces, so that whoever was outside could see them, but they could not see out.
"I trust you find yourselves not too uncomfortable," the Master's disembodied voice floated smoothly into the light. "My apologies if the surroundings are less then hospitable - this housing is only temporary. I have just heeded the advice of my dear Ms. Calendar and have begun the process of acquiring that lovely establishement known to you children as the Bronze."
Horror blossomed on the faces of the humans.
The Master's voice smiled. "Perhaps, with the right...persuasion, you will find it more to your liking. The previous owners were surprisingly congenial, and, if I may say, quite delicious company."
There was a chuckling noise from several sources in the darkness, and then the Master walked into the edge of the light, the gracious host. "Ms. Calendar may have told you - I despise rudeness. Humanity seems to excell at it, even cultivate it. The one advantage I enjoyed while trapped underneath Sunnydale was the fact that the only contact I had to have with them was that of consumer and consumed. Now that I am aboveground, to stay, I suppose I'll just have to adjust."
He gazed over them, like a farmer clinically surveying five head of cattle. He stared each of them in the eye, daring them to stare back, until they bowed their heads in supplication. Finally his dark eyes fell on Jenny Calendar.
"I believe an explanation is in order," he said, almost embarassed, as if he had just spilled a drink on her new cocktail dress.
"I'll say," she hissed at him, morphing to the demon's face.
"Oh, now, no need for dramatics," he said good-naturedly. "You might be young and excused by a certain...naivette, but don't believe for a moment that I will let such insolent behavior go unpunished for long."
"Then why did you lock me up like this?" she said, more cautiously, switching back slowly to her human face. "After the way you treated me -"
"A test," he smiled, "And you passed."
Jenny couldn't hide her relief at his words, slumping against the wall. "And I thought I was the teacher. Well, if the pop quiz is over, then how about helping me out of -"
"Not...just yet, my dear."
She froze in place, staring at him, a mixture of anger and confusion on her face.
He turned slowly on his heel, and moved silently to Willow's side. She slunk as far away from him as she could, but eventually the chain ran out, and he stood in front of her, nearly touching her.
"Willow, isn't it?" he purred. She didn't answer. He reached out with one cold hand to caress her face. "You...you were the one that helped Ms. Calendar with the spell at the Bronze," he turned his head slightly back toward Jenny. "What did you call it, the "Nightlight"? How apropos."
She shuddered underneath his touch.
"You're quite the powerful young witch. You probably don't even know it. Not to worry - your skills will manifest themselves with age, my dear. Perhaps...with the right tutelage -"
"You stay the hell away from her," Xander said, low and dangerous. "If you want somebody, take me."
"Oh, don't think I don't appreciate the offer, Mr. Harris," the Master replied, not taking his eyes off of the trembling young girl. "And I will keep it in mind. But now is not the time for heroics."
Abruptly he stepped away from her. "But look at me. Just a few days removed from exile underground, a few days into the modern world, and already I'm forgetting my place as host. I won't keep you away from home any longer if you don't want me to. I'm sure your parents must be very worried," he waved two of his minions forward. "Forgive me, Willow, and come again when you think I've served my sentence in your Purgatory. Release her."
She stared at him stupidly, as did the rest of the group, and didn't move when the vampires unlocked her chains. She glanced at the other humans, but found no answers, no comfort.
"Xander..."
"Oh, I suppose you can have him, too," the Master said graciously, motioning for the vampires to release the boy. "Consider it a parting gift."
Xander scrambled to her side, drawing her up into a tight embrace. They stood that way for a long moment, and again Willow found herself wishing that it would just stay this way, that they would all be gone when she opened her eyes again.
Xander turned back to Giles and Angel. From their eyes he could see they wanted nothing more than for the two of them to leave, now, while they still could. Somehow that made the leaving worse.
But he wrenched his gaze away, and started to lead the shivering Willow out of the grated cell -
"There is...one small favor I must ask," the Master said.
Willow froze in absolute horror.
"To have your freedom, you must kill the librarian."
She moaned almost inaudibly as the vampires moved to stand between them and the door. She turned slowly to look at the ancient vampire.
"What?" she whispered, terrified.
"A simple matter," the Master said to her cooly. "Housekeeping, you understand. He will die, in any case. If it is left up to me, it will be in the most slow and agonizing way I can devise. I thought perhaps it might comfort you to do it yourself," his tone turned sarcastic, " So that you can rest easier at night, knowing he died quickly and painlessly."
"But..." she started, and had to force herself to swallow, "But I d- don't... I d-don't -"
"Don't want to?" he sounded almost disappointed. "Ah, well. So goes the noble human spirit. Such a shame. Alright, lock them back up. Alfred, would you be good enough to bring me the number four handsaw, oh, and a bunch of newspapers -"
"Wait!" Giles' voice boomed through the warehouse. "Wait."
He looked at Willow, who could not bring herself to look him directly in the eye.
"Willow, I want you to do it -"
"- no -"
"- Willow, my life is over. You have to know that -"
"I can't!" she screamed shrilly at him. "Don't you realize what you're asking me to do? You...you treated me like an adult, l-like I mattered, like my parents never treated me. You made me realize w-what it means to really be important, outside of school, outside of Sunnydale, and I just...I can't -" her voice finally broke, and she seemed on the verge of collapsing to the concrete floor. Xander held her up silently.
The Master pulled a long knife out of his pocket. It was ornately carved, vaguely Oriental in style, a hundred or a thousand or a hundred thousand years old - staring at it in the bright light, Willow could almost believe she saw the blood of its past victims stained onto the blade.
"A flick of the wrist will end his pain, here and now," the Master said solemnly, walking slowly up to her again. "Do it, and walk out of here, alive and with my promise that neither you nor Xander nor you family or friends or children or children's children will be harmed. Don't, and watch your friends and your lover taken apart, bit by bloody bit."
She reached out to take the blade in her hand dreamily, turned back to Giles, and put the point at his throat.
"The carotid artery," he whispered, closing his eyes and turning his head. "Just under the left ear. It will be almost instantaneous."
She didn't hear him. She stared, utterly fascinated, at his neck, watched the blood pulse through his vein, beat...beat...beat. She imagined it slowing...slowing......slowing. She pictured all that lovely blood, red, red, flowing over his face, his clothes, her hands. Would the vampires come to lap it up like cats drawn to spilt milk? She nearly laughed at the image, and then leaned over to retch. Giles stared down at her in horrified pity. Her knees buckled, and she fell to the ground with a soft grunt.
"I...can't do it," she said, her voice dead.
"No matter," the Master said briskly, drawing a wooden stake out of his seemingly bottomless pocket. "I was looking forward to torturing him myself. Alright, a new deal is struck. You and Xander can leave, if you kill Angel. He's just another vampire, a demon, like the dozens you've all had a hand in killing during the last few months, so it shouldn't present any problems."
She didn't even look up. "I can't kill him, either."
"Well..." he said, affecting surprise. "This is...quite unfortunate. Still, I'm nothing if not willing to barter. You and the boy can leave, if you kill Ms. Calendar. Vampire, demon, et cetera, and she doesn't even have a soul."
He handed her the stake, and she contemplated it for a moment, before rising to walk to her former teacher. Jenny Calendar growled at her.
"Ms. C-Calendar..." Willow said, staring into the other woman's hypnotic yellow eyes, "Ms. Calendar...I'm s-sorry..."
She looked at the stake for a moment, then whipped around to charge the Master. His face registered surprise, real surprise, for the barest hint of a second, but he caught himself in time enough to draw her, struggling, into his arms, turn her around, and sink his fangs into her tender neck.
"No!" Xander screamed, and ran at the vampire, but the minions caught him just before he could reach them. They forced him to the ground, three of them, and still he struggled furiously.
Willow felt the Master's teeth, his cold mouth, seeping the life from her body, and yet was strangely detached from it all. She could hear Xander, and Giles, shouting her name, as if just that simple action could save her. She felt numb, and tingly, like when she had her teeth removed, and the dentist had given her his "funny gas" (trademark pending). She remembered the gas had made her feel sick. It had seemed as if the dentist had only put her under for a few seconds, but when she came back to herself, the operation had been over, her teeth in a little bottle that she still had tucked away in her desk drawer. She had asked her mother whether the missing teeth had bled much. Her mother had said no. But why not? Willow-the-child had asked. I don't know, her mother had replied crossly, distracted by the article she had been reading in Redbook.
Willow laughed to herself - was this how she was going to spend the last few seconds of her life, fretting over the moments she had never had with her Mom? She tried to think of something more pleasant - Xander came to her mind's eye. In elementary school, that first day in the playground, sitting on the bench beside her with his gigantic glasses and thlight lithp, and his dark, soulful eyes that were the reason she had loved him in the first place. In middle school, facing off with Larry for once, not backing down, when the bully wouldn't stop picking on her, and earning a black eye for his efforts. The first day of high school, sheepishly asking around to find out where the hell the Bronze was, she following quietly behind him, ever the loyal sidekick. Why hadn't she asked him then? Why did it have to be so late in the game, for both of them, before they realized what truly bound them together? Now it was over...
And then she tasted the blood, his blood, in her mouth, and the Thing that was not her making itself at home in her head, and she realized that it was not over.
It had just begun.
Xander stared with open-mouthed horror at Willow's body as the vampires hauled
it away over their shoulders like a slaughtered doe. Giles empathized with the boy - of course he hadn't seen the moment Jenny had been killed, but this was exactly how he had imagined it. The Master motioned for them to take her body outside and upstairs, and Xander followed without a struggle or word of protest.
The Master turned to Giles, his scarred and pitted face as pleasant as he could make it. "At last, the librarian. The main course for the evening. In a purely metaphorical sense, that is."
He motioned, and the minions moved forward to unlock Giles from his chains. The librarian rubbed his wrists, trying to nurse the circulation back into his hands. "What do you want with me?"
"Just...to talk. It's been many years since I last held a meaningful conversation with another intellectual. You have no idea how long it takes for a vampire to regain his reason, his sense of refinement, after he's been turned. Assuming he survives those first few months."
"Forgive me," Giles said hollowly, "If I'm not in the mood for conversation."
"Quite understandable," the Master said congenially. He snapped, and again the minion vampires scurried to do his bidding. After a moment, a stoop of wine and two clear glasses were set on a small table in the jail cell. "Perhaps some wine, to loosen the tongue -"
"What kind of game are you playing at?" Giles interrupted.
"No games, Rupert," the Master replied evenly. "Plenty of time for games later. We have nothing but the empty playing field of endless time before us. I don't wish to waste it, any more then the next man, but...well, it is there."
He poured the wine. Giles was unsurprised to find that it was a rich red.
"Merlot. Chateau Briogne, 1957," the Master lifted up his glass, tipped it in Angel's direction, and took a delicate sip. "An excellent vintage."
Giles was struck dumb by the surrealism of the scene. He turned to look at Jenny Calendar, who appeared as confused and frustrated as he did. He looked at Angel, but the vampire's head was cast down, as if he were bowing in the face of certain defeat. Or perhaps the vampire already knew what was coming.
"Now what?" Giles said hoarsely, turning back to the Master.
"Now..." the Master contemplated his wine glass, swirling its contents around. "Now...if you really don't care to talk, then I suppose it's only fair if I offer you the same exchange I did for Willow. If you insist on refusing my refreshment, and my company, then kill Ms. Calendar, or Angel, and you are free."
Giles swallowed. The Master offered him the wooden stake.
"Unfortunately the entertainment value of these exercises wanes. The offer is on the table - make your decision."
He did. He forced himself to move before he had the time to consider what he was doing, picked up the stake and strode toward Jenny Calendar.
"Rupert," she said, her expression pleading and very human, "Rupert, I -"
He shoved the stake into her heart, and she faded away.
The Master paused, mid-sip, not bothering to hide his astonishement. "My God, man. You actually did it."
Giles ignored him, and started toward the door. One of the minions moved to stop him -
"No," the Master said, eyeing the librarian placidly. "Let him go."
This, too, Giles ignored. He walked out of the grated cell door, down the corridor, with the shambling cadence of a zombie.
"I didn't think you had it in you, librarian," the Master's voice followed him out of the warehouse, down the street, forever and forever at his shoulder.
Giles didn't stop until he was home, standing in front of the liquor cabinet, key in hand, and even then he only paused for a moment - but it was too much to ask for him to think now. Better to just surrender to oblivion. He opened the cabinet, pulled out some nameless, generic, dime- store whiskey, and ripped the wrapping off. He swallowed, and swallowed, drank until his lungs ached for oxygen and his throat seemed to be on fire.
He stumbled to the couch, and tried very hard to forget.
He woke to find himself in nearly complete darkness, bound in chains and gagged. His vampiric eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness, and he glanced around. The other three were there, still unconcious, and a fourth, also bound - with a start, he realized that it was Jenny Calendar. She was staring at him.
"I was wondering when you'd wake up," she said crossly.
He could only look at her.
She glanced down. "Yeah, I know what you're wondering. What's a pretty girl like me doing strapped to a concrete wall? The answer is I don't know. I guess I couldn't read the Master any better than any of you saps could."
"Jenny," Giles muttered, hearing her voice in his dreams.
"King Sap of them all," she whispered sarcastically, shaking her head.
Angel looked around the room. For all intents and purposes, it seemed to be a jail cell. He strained against the chains, and sensed that even at full strength he wouldn't be able to break them.
Jenny watched him struggle, and started to giggle. It was a nervous and ugly sound in the darkness. He wished she would stop, but the laughter seemed to echo longer and longer, stretching to infinity.
"Rise and...well, just rise. Me and shine are having a lover's quarrel at present."
Angel looked up at the sound of Jenny's taunting voice to find that the humans were coming around.
Giles glanced around, squinting his eyes, and Angel realized that the humans probably couldn't see a thing. "Who's there? Where are we?"
"It's me, lover," Jenny answered, and Giles' face fell.
"Get away from us," the librarian said huskily.
"Might pose a problem," she replied, "Seeing as how I'm just as captive as you are."
"I don't believe it."
"And I don't care," she said blandly, "but Angel can tell you."
Giles looked around, futily, in the darkness. "Angel, are you there?"
"He's gagged, for whatever reason. Maybe he can moan at you."
"I'm here," Angel said, and though it came out muffled by the cloth in his mouth, Giles nodded.
"Where are we being held?"
"The house on haunted hill," Jenny snickered.
"I think we're in the warehouse district," Xander said groggily from the other side of the small room. "Smells like sea water."
"Why would the Master set up base here?" Willow asked.
"Oh, think about it, Red," Jenny replied, grinning when she saw Willow grimace at the nickname, "Nice and deserted. Plenty of big, hot- blooded sailors to feed on, with no ties to the world at large. Perfect for evil goings-on."
Giles struggled with the ropes for a moment. Jenny Calendar watched him without much emotion.
"No use, Rupert," she intoned, "If these things can hold me, they can sure as hell hold you."
He ignored her, but realized soon that he couldn't escape. "Why didn't he kill us?" He said it quietly, as if the question was rhetorical, but Jenny answered it anyway.
"He's got all the time in the world. Why shouldn't he have his cake and eat it too?"
"It's not cake we're worried about him eating," Xander said, but the quip was met with a resounding silence.
For her part, Jenny ignored him. "I'm surprised Angel didn't tell you. He and the Master were bosom buddies back in the day."
"Yes, he told us," Giles said darkly. "He said that the Master will try to drive us all mad before he...kills us."
"Exactly," Jenny replied, sounding almost satisfied with herself. "Maybe he'll test you," Angel looked at her sharply, fear in his eyes. She smiled toothily at him. "That's what he does. He's holding all the cards - he can afford to offer you your pathetic lives. For. A. Price," she was staring off into space - Angel wondered sickly if she was speaking from personal experience. "He'll tell you...he's testing your mettle. Just to see how inhuman you can be."
Her eyes found his again, and she grinned. "Angel knows all about that. Just ask Drusilla."
The floodlights came up then, bright, pointed almost directly into their faces, so that whoever was outside could see them, but they could not see out.
"I trust you find yourselves not too uncomfortable," the Master's disembodied voice floated smoothly into the light. "My apologies if the surroundings are less then hospitable - this housing is only temporary. I have just heeded the advice of my dear Ms. Calendar and have begun the process of acquiring that lovely establishement known to you children as the Bronze."
Horror blossomed on the faces of the humans.
The Master's voice smiled. "Perhaps, with the right...persuasion, you will find it more to your liking. The previous owners were surprisingly congenial, and, if I may say, quite delicious company."
There was a chuckling noise from several sources in the darkness, and then the Master walked into the edge of the light, the gracious host. "Ms. Calendar may have told you - I despise rudeness. Humanity seems to excell at it, even cultivate it. The one advantage I enjoyed while trapped underneath Sunnydale was the fact that the only contact I had to have with them was that of consumer and consumed. Now that I am aboveground, to stay, I suppose I'll just have to adjust."
He gazed over them, like a farmer clinically surveying five head of cattle. He stared each of them in the eye, daring them to stare back, until they bowed their heads in supplication. Finally his dark eyes fell on Jenny Calendar.
"I believe an explanation is in order," he said, almost embarassed, as if he had just spilled a drink on her new cocktail dress.
"I'll say," she hissed at him, morphing to the demon's face.
"Oh, now, no need for dramatics," he said good-naturedly. "You might be young and excused by a certain...naivette, but don't believe for a moment that I will let such insolent behavior go unpunished for long."
"Then why did you lock me up like this?" she said, more cautiously, switching back slowly to her human face. "After the way you treated me -"
"A test," he smiled, "And you passed."
Jenny couldn't hide her relief at his words, slumping against the wall. "And I thought I was the teacher. Well, if the pop quiz is over, then how about helping me out of -"
"Not...just yet, my dear."
She froze in place, staring at him, a mixture of anger and confusion on her face.
He turned slowly on his heel, and moved silently to Willow's side. She slunk as far away from him as she could, but eventually the chain ran out, and he stood in front of her, nearly touching her.
"Willow, isn't it?" he purred. She didn't answer. He reached out with one cold hand to caress her face. "You...you were the one that helped Ms. Calendar with the spell at the Bronze," he turned his head slightly back toward Jenny. "What did you call it, the "Nightlight"? How apropos."
She shuddered underneath his touch.
"You're quite the powerful young witch. You probably don't even know it. Not to worry - your skills will manifest themselves with age, my dear. Perhaps...with the right tutelage -"
"You stay the hell away from her," Xander said, low and dangerous. "If you want somebody, take me."
"Oh, don't think I don't appreciate the offer, Mr. Harris," the Master replied, not taking his eyes off of the trembling young girl. "And I will keep it in mind. But now is not the time for heroics."
Abruptly he stepped away from her. "But look at me. Just a few days removed from exile underground, a few days into the modern world, and already I'm forgetting my place as host. I won't keep you away from home any longer if you don't want me to. I'm sure your parents must be very worried," he waved two of his minions forward. "Forgive me, Willow, and come again when you think I've served my sentence in your Purgatory. Release her."
She stared at him stupidly, as did the rest of the group, and didn't move when the vampires unlocked her chains. She glanced at the other humans, but found no answers, no comfort.
"Xander..."
"Oh, I suppose you can have him, too," the Master said graciously, motioning for the vampires to release the boy. "Consider it a parting gift."
Xander scrambled to her side, drawing her up into a tight embrace. They stood that way for a long moment, and again Willow found herself wishing that it would just stay this way, that they would all be gone when she opened her eyes again.
Xander turned back to Giles and Angel. From their eyes he could see they wanted nothing more than for the two of them to leave, now, while they still could. Somehow that made the leaving worse.
But he wrenched his gaze away, and started to lead the shivering Willow out of the grated cell -
"There is...one small favor I must ask," the Master said.
Willow froze in absolute horror.
"To have your freedom, you must kill the librarian."
She moaned almost inaudibly as the vampires moved to stand between them and the door. She turned slowly to look at the ancient vampire.
"What?" she whispered, terrified.
"A simple matter," the Master said to her cooly. "Housekeeping, you understand. He will die, in any case. If it is left up to me, it will be in the most slow and agonizing way I can devise. I thought perhaps it might comfort you to do it yourself," his tone turned sarcastic, " So that you can rest easier at night, knowing he died quickly and painlessly."
"But..." she started, and had to force herself to swallow, "But I d- don't... I d-don't -"
"Don't want to?" he sounded almost disappointed. "Ah, well. So goes the noble human spirit. Such a shame. Alright, lock them back up. Alfred, would you be good enough to bring me the number four handsaw, oh, and a bunch of newspapers -"
"Wait!" Giles' voice boomed through the warehouse. "Wait."
He looked at Willow, who could not bring herself to look him directly in the eye.
"Willow, I want you to do it -"
"- no -"
"- Willow, my life is over. You have to know that -"
"I can't!" she screamed shrilly at him. "Don't you realize what you're asking me to do? You...you treated me like an adult, l-like I mattered, like my parents never treated me. You made me realize w-what it means to really be important, outside of school, outside of Sunnydale, and I just...I can't -" her voice finally broke, and she seemed on the verge of collapsing to the concrete floor. Xander held her up silently.
The Master pulled a long knife out of his pocket. It was ornately carved, vaguely Oriental in style, a hundred or a thousand or a hundred thousand years old - staring at it in the bright light, Willow could almost believe she saw the blood of its past victims stained onto the blade.
"A flick of the wrist will end his pain, here and now," the Master said solemnly, walking slowly up to her again. "Do it, and walk out of here, alive and with my promise that neither you nor Xander nor you family or friends or children or children's children will be harmed. Don't, and watch your friends and your lover taken apart, bit by bloody bit."
She reached out to take the blade in her hand dreamily, turned back to Giles, and put the point at his throat.
"The carotid artery," he whispered, closing his eyes and turning his head. "Just under the left ear. It will be almost instantaneous."
She didn't hear him. She stared, utterly fascinated, at his neck, watched the blood pulse through his vein, beat...beat...beat. She imagined it slowing...slowing......slowing. She pictured all that lovely blood, red, red, flowing over his face, his clothes, her hands. Would the vampires come to lap it up like cats drawn to spilt milk? She nearly laughed at the image, and then leaned over to retch. Giles stared down at her in horrified pity. Her knees buckled, and she fell to the ground with a soft grunt.
"I...can't do it," she said, her voice dead.
"No matter," the Master said briskly, drawing a wooden stake out of his seemingly bottomless pocket. "I was looking forward to torturing him myself. Alright, a new deal is struck. You and Xander can leave, if you kill Angel. He's just another vampire, a demon, like the dozens you've all had a hand in killing during the last few months, so it shouldn't present any problems."
She didn't even look up. "I can't kill him, either."
"Well..." he said, affecting surprise. "This is...quite unfortunate. Still, I'm nothing if not willing to barter. You and the boy can leave, if you kill Ms. Calendar. Vampire, demon, et cetera, and she doesn't even have a soul."
He handed her the stake, and she contemplated it for a moment, before rising to walk to her former teacher. Jenny Calendar growled at her.
"Ms. C-Calendar..." Willow said, staring into the other woman's hypnotic yellow eyes, "Ms. Calendar...I'm s-sorry..."
She looked at the stake for a moment, then whipped around to charge the Master. His face registered surprise, real surprise, for the barest hint of a second, but he caught himself in time enough to draw her, struggling, into his arms, turn her around, and sink his fangs into her tender neck.
"No!" Xander screamed, and ran at the vampire, but the minions caught him just before he could reach them. They forced him to the ground, three of them, and still he struggled furiously.
Willow felt the Master's teeth, his cold mouth, seeping the life from her body, and yet was strangely detached from it all. She could hear Xander, and Giles, shouting her name, as if just that simple action could save her. She felt numb, and tingly, like when she had her teeth removed, and the dentist had given her his "funny gas" (trademark pending). She remembered the gas had made her feel sick. It had seemed as if the dentist had only put her under for a few seconds, but when she came back to herself, the operation had been over, her teeth in a little bottle that she still had tucked away in her desk drawer. She had asked her mother whether the missing teeth had bled much. Her mother had said no. But why not? Willow-the-child had asked. I don't know, her mother had replied crossly, distracted by the article she had been reading in Redbook.
Willow laughed to herself - was this how she was going to spend the last few seconds of her life, fretting over the moments she had never had with her Mom? She tried to think of something more pleasant - Xander came to her mind's eye. In elementary school, that first day in the playground, sitting on the bench beside her with his gigantic glasses and thlight lithp, and his dark, soulful eyes that were the reason she had loved him in the first place. In middle school, facing off with Larry for once, not backing down, when the bully wouldn't stop picking on her, and earning a black eye for his efforts. The first day of high school, sheepishly asking around to find out where the hell the Bronze was, she following quietly behind him, ever the loyal sidekick. Why hadn't she asked him then? Why did it have to be so late in the game, for both of them, before they realized what truly bound them together? Now it was over...
And then she tasted the blood, his blood, in her mouth, and the Thing that was not her making itself at home in her head, and she realized that it was not over.
It had just begun.
Xander stared with open-mouthed horror at Willow's body as the vampires hauled
it away over their shoulders like a slaughtered doe. Giles empathized with the boy - of course he hadn't seen the moment Jenny had been killed, but this was exactly how he had imagined it. The Master motioned for them to take her body outside and upstairs, and Xander followed without a struggle or word of protest.
The Master turned to Giles, his scarred and pitted face as pleasant as he could make it. "At last, the librarian. The main course for the evening. In a purely metaphorical sense, that is."
He motioned, and the minions moved forward to unlock Giles from his chains. The librarian rubbed his wrists, trying to nurse the circulation back into his hands. "What do you want with me?"
"Just...to talk. It's been many years since I last held a meaningful conversation with another intellectual. You have no idea how long it takes for a vampire to regain his reason, his sense of refinement, after he's been turned. Assuming he survives those first few months."
"Forgive me," Giles said hollowly, "If I'm not in the mood for conversation."
"Quite understandable," the Master said congenially. He snapped, and again the minion vampires scurried to do his bidding. After a moment, a stoop of wine and two clear glasses were set on a small table in the jail cell. "Perhaps some wine, to loosen the tongue -"
"What kind of game are you playing at?" Giles interrupted.
"No games, Rupert," the Master replied evenly. "Plenty of time for games later. We have nothing but the empty playing field of endless time before us. I don't wish to waste it, any more then the next man, but...well, it is there."
He poured the wine. Giles was unsurprised to find that it was a rich red.
"Merlot. Chateau Briogne, 1957," the Master lifted up his glass, tipped it in Angel's direction, and took a delicate sip. "An excellent vintage."
Giles was struck dumb by the surrealism of the scene. He turned to look at Jenny Calendar, who appeared as confused and frustrated as he did. He looked at Angel, but the vampire's head was cast down, as if he were bowing in the face of certain defeat. Or perhaps the vampire already knew what was coming.
"Now what?" Giles said hoarsely, turning back to the Master.
"Now..." the Master contemplated his wine glass, swirling its contents around. "Now...if you really don't care to talk, then I suppose it's only fair if I offer you the same exchange I did for Willow. If you insist on refusing my refreshment, and my company, then kill Ms. Calendar, or Angel, and you are free."
Giles swallowed. The Master offered him the wooden stake.
"Unfortunately the entertainment value of these exercises wanes. The offer is on the table - make your decision."
He did. He forced himself to move before he had the time to consider what he was doing, picked up the stake and strode toward Jenny Calendar.
"Rupert," she said, her expression pleading and very human, "Rupert, I -"
He shoved the stake into her heart, and she faded away.
The Master paused, mid-sip, not bothering to hide his astonishement. "My God, man. You actually did it."
Giles ignored him, and started toward the door. One of the minions moved to stop him -
"No," the Master said, eyeing the librarian placidly. "Let him go."
This, too, Giles ignored. He walked out of the grated cell door, down the corridor, with the shambling cadence of a zombie.
"I didn't think you had it in you, librarian," the Master's voice followed him out of the warehouse, down the street, forever and forever at his shoulder.
Giles didn't stop until he was home, standing in front of the liquor cabinet, key in hand, and even then he only paused for a moment - but it was too much to ask for him to think now. Better to just surrender to oblivion. He opened the cabinet, pulled out some nameless, generic, dime- store whiskey, and ripped the wrapping off. He swallowed, and swallowed, drank until his lungs ached for oxygen and his throat seemed to be on fire.
He stumbled to the couch, and tried very hard to forget.