Part 35: Round Two
#
Riley kept telling himself that things were not as bad as they looked. Okay, so maybe Angel had been taken over by that Huntsman thing. That did not automatically make him evil, did it? The Huntsman was supposed to be a force of good, just too strong for most people to control. Maybe Angel was strong enough. Maybe his existing relationship with Buffy would give them both the strength to keep cool heads.
He was not quite sure why he had decided to put a bug on Angel's car. To keep an eye on him, certainly, but was it because he might be a serious threat or because Buffy would be crushed if he went mental on them as well? Maybe both. Maybe neither. And right now it did not really matter anymore, did it?
He kept far enough back so that even Buffy and Angel's enhanced senses would not pick him up, following them out of sight with the help of the bug. Once the car stopped for a longer time he crept closer, using field glasses to watch what was happening.
What he saw made his blood run cold. Buffy and Angel were walking into a motel room and the guy standing in the door was none other than one of those half-demon soldiers who had killed two of his comrades. What the hell were they doing? For a moment he considered that they were trying to take them out all by themselves, trying to protect the lives of the SDO agents, but there was no fighting to be seen. They simply walked inside.
Riley was torn. Not for a moment did he believe that some kind of sinister plot was afoot here, that Buffy had lied to him and was secretly in league with these monsters. That did not mean he completely trusted her. She was his friend, but he was certain that she left him out of the loop on a lot of things. Things like what had happened to Angel. Things like what was going down right now.
Buffy was no doubt trying to resolve things, though he was not quite sure how. Talk them out of it? Riley had seen them in action, had seen them kill his friends, and doubted that it was possible. Even if it was, he could not allow these guys to get away with murder. He would not stand for it.
It was one of the hardest decisions he had ever made. It might spell the end of his friendship with Buffy. Yet Riley was first and foremost a man who had sworn to do whatever was necessary to protect his country, even if that sometimes meant doing things he was not particularly proud of.
With steady hands he took out his cell phone and dialed Burke's numbers.
#
Of the thirteen minutes that passed between Buffy and Angel's entry into the motel room occupied by the members of Team 666 and the moment all hell broke loose the first three were spent with hostile glares. Mutual hostile glares, to be exact. Buffy was not particularly fond of these former soldiers, especially the wolf woman Julia who had tried to eviscerate her twice now. Angel was leaning heavily toward angry for much the same reasons.
"You came to talk," Stone finally said. "So talk."
"Let's get one thing straight right at the start," Buffy began. "I know what happened to you here in Sunnydale twenty years ago and you do have my sympathies. That does not excuse what you did, though. Neither your unprovoked attack on me," she glared at Julia," nor your assault on SDO, which left two people dead and quite a few wounded."
"I'd have imagined you would be a bit more enlightened now," one of the other men said. "You were forced to take out one of your own because he went nuts. Doesn't that tell you something about the kind of things they have done to him? To you?"
"You have no idea what is going on here," Angel said. "Neither Buffy here nor Jackson King, the man she was forced to stop, are in any way connected to this Project Inferno you are so scared of. Neither is SDO for that matter."
Snorts of disbelief were the only reaction they got.
"You guys were intelligence operatives back in the day, weren't you?" Buffy asked with more than a hint of sarcasm in her voice. "How much intelligence did you put into this little revenge trip of yours before you started attacking and killing people?"
"We know all we need to know," Stone said.
"You know nothing," Buffy snapped back at him, her anger increasing. "You heard of some government operation here in Sunnydale, you saw a girl with superhuman powers, and you jumped to conclusions. For God's sake, people, has it never occurred to you that there might be things happening here that have nothing to do with your sad little sob story?"
Angel put a calming hand on her shoulder, seeing the growing anger in both her and their opposites. Already he could feel the hackles rising on all present, both real and metaphorical. The Slayer and the Huntsman were ready and eager for a fight but they could not afford to let this thing blow up in their faces. Not yet.
"SDO is here to kill demons," Angel said with a calm he did not really feel. "There is no new version of Project Inferno, no experiments, no demonized soldiers. Two people have already died for nothing."
"Your lies would have a bit more substance," Julia smirked at them, "if they offered an explanation for you, little girl. Don't tell me you just woke up one day and had superpowers. It doesn't work that way."
"As a matter of fact it does," Buffy shot back. "I'm the Slayer. I wasn't grown in a government test tube, I never went through any sort of military training, and no black ops budget paid for me. I was given my powers to keep the world safe from vampires and other demons and you people haven't exactly made that job easier for me."
"The Slayer," one of the other men snorted. "That's nothing but a fairy tale vampires tell each other."
"You mean like those fairy tales normal people tell each other?" Angel offered. "You know, the ones that feature vampires, demons, forces of darkness?"
Buffy looked at the five faces before her, saw so much hatred and suspicion looking back at her. Unthinkable things had been done to these five, things so terrible that they seemed utterly incapable of looking past them.
"The people who did this to you are dead," she said softly. "All of them. They have paid for their crimes. Why can't you just let it rest now?"
She fixed her gaze on Stone, the leader of these people. There seemed to be the tiniest crack on his poker face.
"How many more people have to die for your pain? How much blood it will take to wash away what was done to you?"
No one answered her, but neither did she see much give in the faces before her, not even Stone's. A minute or two passed with no word spoken. It was but two minutes before all hell broke loose when Stone spoke again.
"If you're telling the truth, and that's a very big 'if', we're going to need proof."
Buffy was halfway to telling him to shove his proof up a certain opening. They were the ones who had come out of the blue and started attacking and killing. They were the ones who should have worried about proof before this whole thing even started. She said none of that, though. Who said she had no self-control?
"Check your facts," she said instead. "Until four years ago I was your average teenager, a cheerleader, certainly no one who would be selected for some kind of government experiment. Jackson King was not even an American, he was a British citizen. Would the government choose a foreigner for this stuff? You saw the facilities SDO uses here in Sunnydale. Did they look like a super-secret genetic-magic-Frankenstein lab to you? There are a hundred ways for you to see the truth, Stone, you just have to start looking.
"The problem is, you don't have much time left. The government people you're so afraid of? They managed to forget you existed. Heck, the cover-up was so successful that they forgot about the existence of the supernatural in general. It was only a year or so ago when I blew up the school to take out a major demon that they came to realize something strange was going on here. Now they know, though, and they also know about you. Considering that you already killed two government operatives they have classified you as a major risk to national security. They're gonna kill you if they get half a chance. The only way to avoid more bloodshed is for you to get out of here and disappear again like you did twenty years ago."
"Right," one of the men snorted. "We're going away to let you carry on with no one the wiser. Like that's gonna happen."
"Have you been listening, you idiot?" Buffy yelled at him, just managing to restrain herself from throwing a punch. "No one here gives a damn about your stupid revenge gig. The only ones who are still adding to Project Inferno's death toll are you people."
The man, whose name she dimly remembered from the file to be Allan Rush, opened his mouth to say something back, but never got the chance. Suddenly all seven people in the room tensed as their superhuman senses kicked into high gear, noticing the shuffle of many boots outside, the clicking noises of automatic weapons.
"It's a set-up," someone yelled and seven shapes started moving with superhuman speed.
A second or two later the door was kicked open and gas grenades were fired inside, quickly filling the room with thick smoke. Gunshots followed only a heartbeat later.
#
Buffy, Angel, and the rest of the Scooby Gang had debated long and hard about what to do should it actually come down to a battle. Yes, the Slayer and the Huntsman probably had the raw power to take out the members of Team 666. Yes, Buffy and Angel had shown that they could restrain themselves even in the midst of combat. Still, after but a single test against a nest of freshly-risen vampires no one was really certain that both these facts would hold up in an infinitely more serious combat situation.
Tara and Willow, along with Giles, had used magic to probe deeply into the Slayer-Huntsman bond. More than anything else it had shown them how diminished the Slayer had been due to the absence of its counterpart. Slayer and Huntsman were meant to fight together and separately they were so much less than they could be together.
The vast power these two entities brought to their hosts was a two-sided sword, though. Buffy and Angel had, during their fight against the vampires, barely scratched the surface of what they were capable of. They could be much more powerful than that even. That increase in power was accompanied by a proportionate loss of self, though. Or, as Willow had put it, every bit of power they had at their beck and call would have to be bought with pieces of their sanity.
That was why they had prepared something before heading off to face Team 666. With the levels of power they would probably need to defeat these super-soldiers odds were against them retaining enough control to avoid killing them. They needed a balance of power and control here and neither of them was confident that they could provide it, especially with both of them still so new to this power they now possessed.
It had actually been Xander's idea, at least in a roundabout way. His exact words had been: "So, too much power, too little mind, yes? Too bad we can't stuff some more minds inside the two of you."
The rest was a lot of research and preparation, as well as the selection of the people that would actually be part of this so-called joining spell. One person skilled in magic needed to remain on the outside to hold the spell together. Tara volunteered for this, maybe because she felt that she was still too new to the gang for the others to be comfortable with having her inside their heads. Anya also remained on the outside, bluntly stating that the only primal force with a seemingly perpetual thirst for either violence or sex she allowed near herself was Xander (though he came up short on the violence part). The boy had been unsure whether to be proud or embarrassed at hearing his girlfriend's description of him.
With Wesley and Doyle on their way to Los Angeles this left the original members of the Scooby Gang. Willow, Xander, and Giles.
The spell was set up at Giles' apartment, since distance would not really matter with magic like this. All they waited for was a signal, hopefully one that would tell them that they would not need this spell after all, that everything had gone well with the members of Team 666 and that they could stand down.
Unfortunately the signal they did receive was the other one. It was something else Willow and Tara had prepared together, the two witches being much stronger together than apart. It was actually quite a simple charm, a pair of enchanted amulets (priced $4.99 at the local magic shop). The one Willow and Tara had would glow as long as its counterpart, the one Buffy carried in her pocket, was whole. Meaning that all Buffy would have to do was break hers and the others would find out.
The amulet had barely stopped glowing when everyone took their position and Willow and Tara started the chant.
"We call upon the power of Slayer and Huntsman and all who wield it. Last to ancient first, we invoke thee. Grant us access to thy domain of primal strength. Accept us to guide the power your hosts possess."
Giles, Willow, and Xander were sitting inside a circle on the living room floor, surrounded by candles and several plates of smoking incense. Tara sat outside the circle, watched over by Anya who had assured the others that she would 'watch the strange lesbian girl who is playing with your heads'.
"Link these minds, hearts, and spirits to those you have chosen," Tara now took over the chant. "We plead that these may be found worthy of inhabiting the vessels. Daughter of Sineya, son of Cernunnos, first of the chosen."
The circle began to glow in a harsh white light, a light Tara had seen once before when looking at the two who wielded it. Just beyond her perception she could feel the glare of the primal forces they were about to tap into, the forces Buffy and Angel were mainlining even now. She knew that Xander, Willow, and Giles were aware of the risks. A human mind joined to such power and purity might not come out intact on the other side, or at all. They all knew it and accepted the danger. Still, for a second she hesitated, but then said the final line.
"I implore thee. Admit them. Bring them into the vessels. NOW!"
Simultaneously all three of them threw back their heads, their eyes were glowing silver for a moment, and the spell closed with an audible snap.
#
Soldiers were storming into the room, wearing heavy combat gear and carrying automated weapons. The orders were clear. The members of Team 666 had to be eliminated. Two civilians were also at the scene, one of them a consultant to SDO. If they offered to help, good. If they stayed neutral, also good. They were not to be harmed unless they actively sided with the targets.
The backwards wall of the room was so much shreds, torn open by super- strong muscles and limbs, opening up an escape from the tear gas and the approaching soldiers. SDO teams had surrounded the entire motel, though, and as the members of Team 666, along with Buffy and Angel, stepped out into the open behind it the battle was quickly joined.
Whatever good they might have done during their little chat, Buffy and Angel both realized that the time for talking was over now. Neither side would listen long enough to give the other a chance to kill them. A lot of people would die here unless they did something. The only thing they could do was to try and subdue both sides. Six half-demon super-soldiers. At least thirty SDO operatives. All out to kill each other.
Buffy quickly reached into her pocket and broke the amulet Willow had given her. Whatever advantage this spell could give them, they needed it right now.
Only a minute or so later the rush of power hit them both, as did the presence of three familiar minds that had not been there before. For a moment they were almost frozen with these sensations. Five joined minds awash in a sea of power that was at their disposal, but would snuff their sanity in an instant if they were found wanting.
It was but a moment in the outside world, but it was an eternity for them. An eternity to look at the forces that now inhabited Buffy and Angel, but also an eternity to look at each other. To take an inside look at the individuals they had so often trusted their lives to, the ones they loved, the ones they had hated at times.
Then the moment passed and Slayer and Huntsman sprang into action.
TO BE CONTINUED
#
Riley kept telling himself that things were not as bad as they looked. Okay, so maybe Angel had been taken over by that Huntsman thing. That did not automatically make him evil, did it? The Huntsman was supposed to be a force of good, just too strong for most people to control. Maybe Angel was strong enough. Maybe his existing relationship with Buffy would give them both the strength to keep cool heads.
He was not quite sure why he had decided to put a bug on Angel's car. To keep an eye on him, certainly, but was it because he might be a serious threat or because Buffy would be crushed if he went mental on them as well? Maybe both. Maybe neither. And right now it did not really matter anymore, did it?
He kept far enough back so that even Buffy and Angel's enhanced senses would not pick him up, following them out of sight with the help of the bug. Once the car stopped for a longer time he crept closer, using field glasses to watch what was happening.
What he saw made his blood run cold. Buffy and Angel were walking into a motel room and the guy standing in the door was none other than one of those half-demon soldiers who had killed two of his comrades. What the hell were they doing? For a moment he considered that they were trying to take them out all by themselves, trying to protect the lives of the SDO agents, but there was no fighting to be seen. They simply walked inside.
Riley was torn. Not for a moment did he believe that some kind of sinister plot was afoot here, that Buffy had lied to him and was secretly in league with these monsters. That did not mean he completely trusted her. She was his friend, but he was certain that she left him out of the loop on a lot of things. Things like what had happened to Angel. Things like what was going down right now.
Buffy was no doubt trying to resolve things, though he was not quite sure how. Talk them out of it? Riley had seen them in action, had seen them kill his friends, and doubted that it was possible. Even if it was, he could not allow these guys to get away with murder. He would not stand for it.
It was one of the hardest decisions he had ever made. It might spell the end of his friendship with Buffy. Yet Riley was first and foremost a man who had sworn to do whatever was necessary to protect his country, even if that sometimes meant doing things he was not particularly proud of.
With steady hands he took out his cell phone and dialed Burke's numbers.
#
Of the thirteen minutes that passed between Buffy and Angel's entry into the motel room occupied by the members of Team 666 and the moment all hell broke loose the first three were spent with hostile glares. Mutual hostile glares, to be exact. Buffy was not particularly fond of these former soldiers, especially the wolf woman Julia who had tried to eviscerate her twice now. Angel was leaning heavily toward angry for much the same reasons.
"You came to talk," Stone finally said. "So talk."
"Let's get one thing straight right at the start," Buffy began. "I know what happened to you here in Sunnydale twenty years ago and you do have my sympathies. That does not excuse what you did, though. Neither your unprovoked attack on me," she glared at Julia," nor your assault on SDO, which left two people dead and quite a few wounded."
"I'd have imagined you would be a bit more enlightened now," one of the other men said. "You were forced to take out one of your own because he went nuts. Doesn't that tell you something about the kind of things they have done to him? To you?"
"You have no idea what is going on here," Angel said. "Neither Buffy here nor Jackson King, the man she was forced to stop, are in any way connected to this Project Inferno you are so scared of. Neither is SDO for that matter."
Snorts of disbelief were the only reaction they got.
"You guys were intelligence operatives back in the day, weren't you?" Buffy asked with more than a hint of sarcasm in her voice. "How much intelligence did you put into this little revenge trip of yours before you started attacking and killing people?"
"We know all we need to know," Stone said.
"You know nothing," Buffy snapped back at him, her anger increasing. "You heard of some government operation here in Sunnydale, you saw a girl with superhuman powers, and you jumped to conclusions. For God's sake, people, has it never occurred to you that there might be things happening here that have nothing to do with your sad little sob story?"
Angel put a calming hand on her shoulder, seeing the growing anger in both her and their opposites. Already he could feel the hackles rising on all present, both real and metaphorical. The Slayer and the Huntsman were ready and eager for a fight but they could not afford to let this thing blow up in their faces. Not yet.
"SDO is here to kill demons," Angel said with a calm he did not really feel. "There is no new version of Project Inferno, no experiments, no demonized soldiers. Two people have already died for nothing."
"Your lies would have a bit more substance," Julia smirked at them, "if they offered an explanation for you, little girl. Don't tell me you just woke up one day and had superpowers. It doesn't work that way."
"As a matter of fact it does," Buffy shot back. "I'm the Slayer. I wasn't grown in a government test tube, I never went through any sort of military training, and no black ops budget paid for me. I was given my powers to keep the world safe from vampires and other demons and you people haven't exactly made that job easier for me."
"The Slayer," one of the other men snorted. "That's nothing but a fairy tale vampires tell each other."
"You mean like those fairy tales normal people tell each other?" Angel offered. "You know, the ones that feature vampires, demons, forces of darkness?"
Buffy looked at the five faces before her, saw so much hatred and suspicion looking back at her. Unthinkable things had been done to these five, things so terrible that they seemed utterly incapable of looking past them.
"The people who did this to you are dead," she said softly. "All of them. They have paid for their crimes. Why can't you just let it rest now?"
She fixed her gaze on Stone, the leader of these people. There seemed to be the tiniest crack on his poker face.
"How many more people have to die for your pain? How much blood it will take to wash away what was done to you?"
No one answered her, but neither did she see much give in the faces before her, not even Stone's. A minute or two passed with no word spoken. It was but two minutes before all hell broke loose when Stone spoke again.
"If you're telling the truth, and that's a very big 'if', we're going to need proof."
Buffy was halfway to telling him to shove his proof up a certain opening. They were the ones who had come out of the blue and started attacking and killing. They were the ones who should have worried about proof before this whole thing even started. She said none of that, though. Who said she had no self-control?
"Check your facts," she said instead. "Until four years ago I was your average teenager, a cheerleader, certainly no one who would be selected for some kind of government experiment. Jackson King was not even an American, he was a British citizen. Would the government choose a foreigner for this stuff? You saw the facilities SDO uses here in Sunnydale. Did they look like a super-secret genetic-magic-Frankenstein lab to you? There are a hundred ways for you to see the truth, Stone, you just have to start looking.
"The problem is, you don't have much time left. The government people you're so afraid of? They managed to forget you existed. Heck, the cover-up was so successful that they forgot about the existence of the supernatural in general. It was only a year or so ago when I blew up the school to take out a major demon that they came to realize something strange was going on here. Now they know, though, and they also know about you. Considering that you already killed two government operatives they have classified you as a major risk to national security. They're gonna kill you if they get half a chance. The only way to avoid more bloodshed is for you to get out of here and disappear again like you did twenty years ago."
"Right," one of the men snorted. "We're going away to let you carry on with no one the wiser. Like that's gonna happen."
"Have you been listening, you idiot?" Buffy yelled at him, just managing to restrain herself from throwing a punch. "No one here gives a damn about your stupid revenge gig. The only ones who are still adding to Project Inferno's death toll are you people."
The man, whose name she dimly remembered from the file to be Allan Rush, opened his mouth to say something back, but never got the chance. Suddenly all seven people in the room tensed as their superhuman senses kicked into high gear, noticing the shuffle of many boots outside, the clicking noises of automatic weapons.
"It's a set-up," someone yelled and seven shapes started moving with superhuman speed.
A second or two later the door was kicked open and gas grenades were fired inside, quickly filling the room with thick smoke. Gunshots followed only a heartbeat later.
#
Buffy, Angel, and the rest of the Scooby Gang had debated long and hard about what to do should it actually come down to a battle. Yes, the Slayer and the Huntsman probably had the raw power to take out the members of Team 666. Yes, Buffy and Angel had shown that they could restrain themselves even in the midst of combat. Still, after but a single test against a nest of freshly-risen vampires no one was really certain that both these facts would hold up in an infinitely more serious combat situation.
Tara and Willow, along with Giles, had used magic to probe deeply into the Slayer-Huntsman bond. More than anything else it had shown them how diminished the Slayer had been due to the absence of its counterpart. Slayer and Huntsman were meant to fight together and separately they were so much less than they could be together.
The vast power these two entities brought to their hosts was a two-sided sword, though. Buffy and Angel had, during their fight against the vampires, barely scratched the surface of what they were capable of. They could be much more powerful than that even. That increase in power was accompanied by a proportionate loss of self, though. Or, as Willow had put it, every bit of power they had at their beck and call would have to be bought with pieces of their sanity.
That was why they had prepared something before heading off to face Team 666. With the levels of power they would probably need to defeat these super-soldiers odds were against them retaining enough control to avoid killing them. They needed a balance of power and control here and neither of them was confident that they could provide it, especially with both of them still so new to this power they now possessed.
It had actually been Xander's idea, at least in a roundabout way. His exact words had been: "So, too much power, too little mind, yes? Too bad we can't stuff some more minds inside the two of you."
The rest was a lot of research and preparation, as well as the selection of the people that would actually be part of this so-called joining spell. One person skilled in magic needed to remain on the outside to hold the spell together. Tara volunteered for this, maybe because she felt that she was still too new to the gang for the others to be comfortable with having her inside their heads. Anya also remained on the outside, bluntly stating that the only primal force with a seemingly perpetual thirst for either violence or sex she allowed near herself was Xander (though he came up short on the violence part). The boy had been unsure whether to be proud or embarrassed at hearing his girlfriend's description of him.
With Wesley and Doyle on their way to Los Angeles this left the original members of the Scooby Gang. Willow, Xander, and Giles.
The spell was set up at Giles' apartment, since distance would not really matter with magic like this. All they waited for was a signal, hopefully one that would tell them that they would not need this spell after all, that everything had gone well with the members of Team 666 and that they could stand down.
Unfortunately the signal they did receive was the other one. It was something else Willow and Tara had prepared together, the two witches being much stronger together than apart. It was actually quite a simple charm, a pair of enchanted amulets (priced $4.99 at the local magic shop). The one Willow and Tara had would glow as long as its counterpart, the one Buffy carried in her pocket, was whole. Meaning that all Buffy would have to do was break hers and the others would find out.
The amulet had barely stopped glowing when everyone took their position and Willow and Tara started the chant.
"We call upon the power of Slayer and Huntsman and all who wield it. Last to ancient first, we invoke thee. Grant us access to thy domain of primal strength. Accept us to guide the power your hosts possess."
Giles, Willow, and Xander were sitting inside a circle on the living room floor, surrounded by candles and several plates of smoking incense. Tara sat outside the circle, watched over by Anya who had assured the others that she would 'watch the strange lesbian girl who is playing with your heads'.
"Link these minds, hearts, and spirits to those you have chosen," Tara now took over the chant. "We plead that these may be found worthy of inhabiting the vessels. Daughter of Sineya, son of Cernunnos, first of the chosen."
The circle began to glow in a harsh white light, a light Tara had seen once before when looking at the two who wielded it. Just beyond her perception she could feel the glare of the primal forces they were about to tap into, the forces Buffy and Angel were mainlining even now. She knew that Xander, Willow, and Giles were aware of the risks. A human mind joined to such power and purity might not come out intact on the other side, or at all. They all knew it and accepted the danger. Still, for a second she hesitated, but then said the final line.
"I implore thee. Admit them. Bring them into the vessels. NOW!"
Simultaneously all three of them threw back their heads, their eyes were glowing silver for a moment, and the spell closed with an audible snap.
#
Soldiers were storming into the room, wearing heavy combat gear and carrying automated weapons. The orders were clear. The members of Team 666 had to be eliminated. Two civilians were also at the scene, one of them a consultant to SDO. If they offered to help, good. If they stayed neutral, also good. They were not to be harmed unless they actively sided with the targets.
The backwards wall of the room was so much shreds, torn open by super- strong muscles and limbs, opening up an escape from the tear gas and the approaching soldiers. SDO teams had surrounded the entire motel, though, and as the members of Team 666, along with Buffy and Angel, stepped out into the open behind it the battle was quickly joined.
Whatever good they might have done during their little chat, Buffy and Angel both realized that the time for talking was over now. Neither side would listen long enough to give the other a chance to kill them. A lot of people would die here unless they did something. The only thing they could do was to try and subdue both sides. Six half-demon super-soldiers. At least thirty SDO operatives. All out to kill each other.
Buffy quickly reached into her pocket and broke the amulet Willow had given her. Whatever advantage this spell could give them, they needed it right now.
Only a minute or so later the rush of power hit them both, as did the presence of three familiar minds that had not been there before. For a moment they were almost frozen with these sensations. Five joined minds awash in a sea of power that was at their disposal, but would snuff their sanity in an instant if they were found wanting.
It was but a moment in the outside world, but it was an eternity for them. An eternity to look at the forces that now inhabited Buffy and Angel, but also an eternity to look at each other. To take an inside look at the individuals they had so often trusted their lives to, the ones they loved, the ones they had hated at times.
Then the moment passed and Slayer and Huntsman sprang into action.
TO BE CONTINUED