Disclaimer: see prologue.
Chapter 3
The flat smelled musty as Mike followed the trainee Watcher in. The Watcher, a young man named Steven, had said very little during the drive from Headquarters, and Mike found himself grateful for that. Over the past few days it had seemed as if the whole Council was watching him. Only his fellow active agents had treated him semi-normally; everyone else watched as he went by, or stopped him to ask a question or to commiserate over his injuries.
Now he followed Steven into his silent flat and waited as the young Watcher switched on the hall lights. There was a pile of post on the floor, and Steven picked it up. "D'you want to sort this?"
"I suppose I should." Mike led the way into his small sitting room and once the curtains had been opened, sat next to Steven on the sofa and they went through the post. It proved to be mostly bills, with a smattering of junk mail and a couple of letters from friends. "The bills can wait," Mike said, and got Steven to put them away.
They checked the fridge and threw away some dried-up cheese and out-of-date pasta sauce before going through to the bedroom. Mike sat on his bed and directed Steven in packing some more clothes and then weapons, such as his favourite sword which had been left behind when he went to Sunnydale. Nobody could think of a way of getting it through Customs.
Before leaving, Mike checked the flat one last time for things he might need, and then watched Steven close and lock the door again.
The Council doctor gave him a thorough check-up that afternoon, and examined the x-rays from America. "You'll have to go and see an orthopaedic surgeon in a week or so. But those fingers shouldn't take too long to mend. Couple of months and you'll be as fit as ever, though you may have to stick to a crossbow for a while."
Mike grinned ruefully. "Thanks. Can I, er, can I have some more sleeping pills?"
"Having problems getting to sleep?"
"I just can't get comfortable," Mike said easily. The doctor gave him a knowing look.
"Of course not. I'll send some up. More painkillers too?"
"Why not?"
He spent most of the rest of the day listlessly watching bad television in his room, the monotony broken only by the arrival of yet another trainee Watcher with his good. Shortly afterwards he fell asleep into a confused and bloody nightmare which involved being shut in a coffin. Someone was hammering nails into the lid, and Mike screamed.
"Mr Fletcher!" Lights came on, and someone was shaking him. "Mr Fletcher!"
"Get off me!" Mike shouted. "Get off me!"
"Mr Fletcher, it's Steven." Mike opened his eyes and saw the trainee bending over him. "Are you all right?"
He sat up. "God. Sorry. What's the matter? What time is it?"
Steven's face was pale. "Nearly two. You'd better come."
Mike followed Steven downstairs and into one of the meeting rooms, where a circle of people round a table parted to let him in. Mike gulped back a wave of nausea and moved closer.
The body was that of a girl on the cusp of womanhood, her blonde hair loose to the shoulders. Someone had closed her eyes, but this could not disguise the terror on her face. As he came up to the table Mike saw three sets of bite-marks around the girl's neck, a livid cross etched into her right cheek, and something driven through her stomach.
Quentin Travers turned from contemplating the sight. "It's a railway spike," he said. "Did we wake you, Mr Fletcher?"
Mike nodded. "It doesn't matter." He regarded the body a moment longer. "We killed them," he said, softly. "I was there. It was broad daylight, and the place went up like a fireball."
"Could it be a copycat killing?" Travers asked.
Mike tried to shrug, but failed. "I don't know, sir. I don't know if other vampires know about . them. Possibly." He paused. "I'm just an agent, sir, not a Watcher. I know what I've seen, and that's all."
One of the Watchers looked up from measuring the bite-marks, a magnifying glass in one hand and a tape measure in the other. "I'll have to cross- reference," he said, "but I'd hazard male, female, and that one," he pointed, "could go either way."
Travers nodded. "Go and check them." He looked hard at Mike. "Call Sunnydale," he ordered. "I want to know if they could have survived."
Mike took Steven with him to dial the number for him, but the young Watcher left as the dial tone sounded, leaving the speaker turned on. As he waited, Mike calculated the time in California and realised it would be dusk.
"Rupert Giles." The line was crisp and clear. "Hello?"
"Giles. Hi. It's Mike Fletcher."
"Oh." Mike imagined Giles taking off his glasses as he spoke. "Is anything wrong? How are you?"
"Getting better, slowly." Mike gazed across the room at the portrait of some old Watcher. "Yes, we have a problem."
"Go on."
"They're just brought a body in." He described it for his listener, and there was a long moment of silence after he finished. "Giles? Are you still there?"
"I'm here. I take it you know what those . trademarks signify, Mike?"
"The cross is one of Angelus', the spike, Spike's," Mike said. "It was in those files they gave me."
"If it was one without the other," Giles mused, "I'd venture to guess that this would be a coincidence. Both together is more sinister."
"Are we sure the mansion explosion killed them?"
Giles sighed audibly. "No. There seemed little point in checking. What did we expect to find but dust, after all?" He paused. "All right. I - I'll ask Willow to check flights out of Sunnydale and Los Angeles for their descriptions or similar names. Tell that idiot Travers I'll call him when we have something."
"Will you tell Buffy?" Mike asked.
"I shall have to. She won't be pleased."
"Tell her I'm sorry," Mike said. "I'd better go."
"Thank you for ringing," Giles returned. "Goodnight, Mike."
"Night, Giles." He heard the phone go down, far across the Atlantic. From behind him a hand reached out to cut the connection, and he looked round. Quentin Travers was looking grave.
"Mr Giles is looking into it, sir," Mike said.
"So I gathered," Travers replied, and Mike realised he must have been standing listening for a short while. There was a long silence. "You assured me they were dead, Fletcher," Travers said eventually. "Though I did not approve of you involving the Slayer and her little group of hangers- on, nevertheless I was pleased that they were gone. And now, we have this."
"As Giles said," Mike countered, "what would we have been looking for if the ruins had been examined? Dust. I'll wager that they didn't stay around very long - well, they must have flown straight out to be here now, only days after I got back."
"Some effort at least should have been made to verify the deaths," Travers said.
"If they've survived, it's because they outwitted us. Again." Mike stared hard at his superior. "I suggest, sir, that the gates to the grounds are locked and well-guarded, and that nobody goes out unarmed. Until we have a solution."
"You do, do you?" Travers said, eyebrows raised. "What solution do you have to our problem?"
Mike pushed his chair back with his feet and managed to stand up. "We ask Miss Summers to help us out. This time, we send a group of at least ten agents after them, led by the Slayer, and we don't rest until they are dead, dusted fair and square." Travers opened his mouth to speak, but Mike pressed on. "And you let the agents deal with this. No interference from Watchers who spend all their time with their heads in books. If I hadn't disobeyed orders out in Sunnydale, sir, and had relied on those files, I'd have been brought back in a box."
Quentin Travers looked down at the floor and then back up at Mike. "Indeed. Well, it's not your decision. However, I suggest you come back and listen to what the books have to say about those bites."
He turned and began to walk out of the room. Mike gritted his teeth, and, after a moment, followed.
The books were laid out on the table by the body, and the room temperature had been turned down. Only a few Watchers were left now, bent over the girl and a few belongings spread out next to her. The Watcher with the tape measure was writing something down on a piece of paper, and Travers went straight across to him.
"Well?"
The Watcher looked up. "Mr Travers. I've dug out books and diaries from the nineteenth century, and I think the results are fairly conclusive." He glanced at his notes, and then pointed with the pencil at the largest of the three bites on the girl's neck. "That one is consistent in size with marks on bodies which we attributed definitely to Angelus. The smallest of the two seems to match Darla, although it could also belong to a certain Ingrid, a German vampire who was dusted by a Slayer in the early days of Nazi Germany."
"If she was dusted, surely that means it isn't her bite?" Mike questioned.
The Watcher frowned. "In theory, yes."
Mike shook his head, and found a chair.
"And the third one?" Travers was bending over the body with as much clinical interest as the other Watcher.
"Ah, the other one. Well, working on the Darla and Angelus angle, and the reports of Mr Fletcher, I looked up the Breton, and it could indeed be him." The Watcher wrote something down. "I wondered if we could start trying DNA analysis on these sorts of things in the future. It would be a much more accurate means of identification."
"How about the spike?"
"Andrei's dealing with that," the Watcher said, indicating another man examining the wound in the stomach.
Andrei nodded. "Mr Travers, sir. Yes, it seems as if this is a standard spike found on any British railway line. Used for repair work. The wound is actually post-mortem."
"She was dead when that thing was stuck in her?" Mike asked, to make sure.
"That is correct."
"Damn!" Mike said, rather too loudly, and receiving several disapprovingly glances. Travers frowned at him.
"What?"
"I did explain about that Army chip which Spike has in his head, didn't I?" Mike said. "He can't harm human beings. Why else put that thing in after she was dead? Too many things match up here."
On cue, someone came hurrying across the room with the telephone. "Mr Travers, it's for you."
Travers, still frowning, took the phone. "Hello, Travers speaking." His frown deepened. "Rupert. He's just here." He held the phone to Mike's ear.
"Giles."
"Bad news, Mike," Giles said, his voice fraught. "Willow's found a record of four large packing cases being ordered and delivered first to an address in Sunnydale and then to Los Angeles, to be put on a flight for London. Only a day after you left us. Buffy and Riley have taken a torch and gone to check the mansion."
"Bad news from this end, too," Mike said, and told him. Giles was silent for a moment.
"I'd just got used to the idea he - they - were dead," he said. "Right. Well, Buffy and I will be with you within twenty-four hours. Tell Travers for me. And for God's sake be careful."
"Thanks," Mike said, feeling relief flood over him. "See you soon, then. Bye."
He nodded at Travers, who took the phone away. "See him soon?"
"Mr Giles and Miss Summers are flying out as soon as they can," Mike explained, feeling a strange urge to grin at Travers's expression. "And, sir, with respect, you'll need them."
Chapter 3
The flat smelled musty as Mike followed the trainee Watcher in. The Watcher, a young man named Steven, had said very little during the drive from Headquarters, and Mike found himself grateful for that. Over the past few days it had seemed as if the whole Council was watching him. Only his fellow active agents had treated him semi-normally; everyone else watched as he went by, or stopped him to ask a question or to commiserate over his injuries.
Now he followed Steven into his silent flat and waited as the young Watcher switched on the hall lights. There was a pile of post on the floor, and Steven picked it up. "D'you want to sort this?"
"I suppose I should." Mike led the way into his small sitting room and once the curtains had been opened, sat next to Steven on the sofa and they went through the post. It proved to be mostly bills, with a smattering of junk mail and a couple of letters from friends. "The bills can wait," Mike said, and got Steven to put them away.
They checked the fridge and threw away some dried-up cheese and out-of-date pasta sauce before going through to the bedroom. Mike sat on his bed and directed Steven in packing some more clothes and then weapons, such as his favourite sword which had been left behind when he went to Sunnydale. Nobody could think of a way of getting it through Customs.
Before leaving, Mike checked the flat one last time for things he might need, and then watched Steven close and lock the door again.
The Council doctor gave him a thorough check-up that afternoon, and examined the x-rays from America. "You'll have to go and see an orthopaedic surgeon in a week or so. But those fingers shouldn't take too long to mend. Couple of months and you'll be as fit as ever, though you may have to stick to a crossbow for a while."
Mike grinned ruefully. "Thanks. Can I, er, can I have some more sleeping pills?"
"Having problems getting to sleep?"
"I just can't get comfortable," Mike said easily. The doctor gave him a knowing look.
"Of course not. I'll send some up. More painkillers too?"
"Why not?"
He spent most of the rest of the day listlessly watching bad television in his room, the monotony broken only by the arrival of yet another trainee Watcher with his good. Shortly afterwards he fell asleep into a confused and bloody nightmare which involved being shut in a coffin. Someone was hammering nails into the lid, and Mike screamed.
"Mr Fletcher!" Lights came on, and someone was shaking him. "Mr Fletcher!"
"Get off me!" Mike shouted. "Get off me!"
"Mr Fletcher, it's Steven." Mike opened his eyes and saw the trainee bending over him. "Are you all right?"
He sat up. "God. Sorry. What's the matter? What time is it?"
Steven's face was pale. "Nearly two. You'd better come."
Mike followed Steven downstairs and into one of the meeting rooms, where a circle of people round a table parted to let him in. Mike gulped back a wave of nausea and moved closer.
The body was that of a girl on the cusp of womanhood, her blonde hair loose to the shoulders. Someone had closed her eyes, but this could not disguise the terror on her face. As he came up to the table Mike saw three sets of bite-marks around the girl's neck, a livid cross etched into her right cheek, and something driven through her stomach.
Quentin Travers turned from contemplating the sight. "It's a railway spike," he said. "Did we wake you, Mr Fletcher?"
Mike nodded. "It doesn't matter." He regarded the body a moment longer. "We killed them," he said, softly. "I was there. It was broad daylight, and the place went up like a fireball."
"Could it be a copycat killing?" Travers asked.
Mike tried to shrug, but failed. "I don't know, sir. I don't know if other vampires know about . them. Possibly." He paused. "I'm just an agent, sir, not a Watcher. I know what I've seen, and that's all."
One of the Watchers looked up from measuring the bite-marks, a magnifying glass in one hand and a tape measure in the other. "I'll have to cross- reference," he said, "but I'd hazard male, female, and that one," he pointed, "could go either way."
Travers nodded. "Go and check them." He looked hard at Mike. "Call Sunnydale," he ordered. "I want to know if they could have survived."
Mike took Steven with him to dial the number for him, but the young Watcher left as the dial tone sounded, leaving the speaker turned on. As he waited, Mike calculated the time in California and realised it would be dusk.
"Rupert Giles." The line was crisp and clear. "Hello?"
"Giles. Hi. It's Mike Fletcher."
"Oh." Mike imagined Giles taking off his glasses as he spoke. "Is anything wrong? How are you?"
"Getting better, slowly." Mike gazed across the room at the portrait of some old Watcher. "Yes, we have a problem."
"Go on."
"They're just brought a body in." He described it for his listener, and there was a long moment of silence after he finished. "Giles? Are you still there?"
"I'm here. I take it you know what those . trademarks signify, Mike?"
"The cross is one of Angelus', the spike, Spike's," Mike said. "It was in those files they gave me."
"If it was one without the other," Giles mused, "I'd venture to guess that this would be a coincidence. Both together is more sinister."
"Are we sure the mansion explosion killed them?"
Giles sighed audibly. "No. There seemed little point in checking. What did we expect to find but dust, after all?" He paused. "All right. I - I'll ask Willow to check flights out of Sunnydale and Los Angeles for their descriptions or similar names. Tell that idiot Travers I'll call him when we have something."
"Will you tell Buffy?" Mike asked.
"I shall have to. She won't be pleased."
"Tell her I'm sorry," Mike said. "I'd better go."
"Thank you for ringing," Giles returned. "Goodnight, Mike."
"Night, Giles." He heard the phone go down, far across the Atlantic. From behind him a hand reached out to cut the connection, and he looked round. Quentin Travers was looking grave.
"Mr Giles is looking into it, sir," Mike said.
"So I gathered," Travers replied, and Mike realised he must have been standing listening for a short while. There was a long silence. "You assured me they were dead, Fletcher," Travers said eventually. "Though I did not approve of you involving the Slayer and her little group of hangers- on, nevertheless I was pleased that they were gone. And now, we have this."
"As Giles said," Mike countered, "what would we have been looking for if the ruins had been examined? Dust. I'll wager that they didn't stay around very long - well, they must have flown straight out to be here now, only days after I got back."
"Some effort at least should have been made to verify the deaths," Travers said.
"If they've survived, it's because they outwitted us. Again." Mike stared hard at his superior. "I suggest, sir, that the gates to the grounds are locked and well-guarded, and that nobody goes out unarmed. Until we have a solution."
"You do, do you?" Travers said, eyebrows raised. "What solution do you have to our problem?"
Mike pushed his chair back with his feet and managed to stand up. "We ask Miss Summers to help us out. This time, we send a group of at least ten agents after them, led by the Slayer, and we don't rest until they are dead, dusted fair and square." Travers opened his mouth to speak, but Mike pressed on. "And you let the agents deal with this. No interference from Watchers who spend all their time with their heads in books. If I hadn't disobeyed orders out in Sunnydale, sir, and had relied on those files, I'd have been brought back in a box."
Quentin Travers looked down at the floor and then back up at Mike. "Indeed. Well, it's not your decision. However, I suggest you come back and listen to what the books have to say about those bites."
He turned and began to walk out of the room. Mike gritted his teeth, and, after a moment, followed.
The books were laid out on the table by the body, and the room temperature had been turned down. Only a few Watchers were left now, bent over the girl and a few belongings spread out next to her. The Watcher with the tape measure was writing something down on a piece of paper, and Travers went straight across to him.
"Well?"
The Watcher looked up. "Mr Travers. I've dug out books and diaries from the nineteenth century, and I think the results are fairly conclusive." He glanced at his notes, and then pointed with the pencil at the largest of the three bites on the girl's neck. "That one is consistent in size with marks on bodies which we attributed definitely to Angelus. The smallest of the two seems to match Darla, although it could also belong to a certain Ingrid, a German vampire who was dusted by a Slayer in the early days of Nazi Germany."
"If she was dusted, surely that means it isn't her bite?" Mike questioned.
The Watcher frowned. "In theory, yes."
Mike shook his head, and found a chair.
"And the third one?" Travers was bending over the body with as much clinical interest as the other Watcher.
"Ah, the other one. Well, working on the Darla and Angelus angle, and the reports of Mr Fletcher, I looked up the Breton, and it could indeed be him." The Watcher wrote something down. "I wondered if we could start trying DNA analysis on these sorts of things in the future. It would be a much more accurate means of identification."
"How about the spike?"
"Andrei's dealing with that," the Watcher said, indicating another man examining the wound in the stomach.
Andrei nodded. "Mr Travers, sir. Yes, it seems as if this is a standard spike found on any British railway line. Used for repair work. The wound is actually post-mortem."
"She was dead when that thing was stuck in her?" Mike asked, to make sure.
"That is correct."
"Damn!" Mike said, rather too loudly, and receiving several disapprovingly glances. Travers frowned at him.
"What?"
"I did explain about that Army chip which Spike has in his head, didn't I?" Mike said. "He can't harm human beings. Why else put that thing in after she was dead? Too many things match up here."
On cue, someone came hurrying across the room with the telephone. "Mr Travers, it's for you."
Travers, still frowning, took the phone. "Hello, Travers speaking." His frown deepened. "Rupert. He's just here." He held the phone to Mike's ear.
"Giles."
"Bad news, Mike," Giles said, his voice fraught. "Willow's found a record of four large packing cases being ordered and delivered first to an address in Sunnydale and then to Los Angeles, to be put on a flight for London. Only a day after you left us. Buffy and Riley have taken a torch and gone to check the mansion."
"Bad news from this end, too," Mike said, and told him. Giles was silent for a moment.
"I'd just got used to the idea he - they - were dead," he said. "Right. Well, Buffy and I will be with you within twenty-four hours. Tell Travers for me. And for God's sake be careful."
"Thanks," Mike said, feeling relief flood over him. "See you soon, then. Bye."
He nodded at Travers, who took the phone away. "See him soon?"
"Mr Giles and Miss Summers are flying out as soon as they can," Mike explained, feeling a strange urge to grin at Travers's expression. "And, sir, with respect, you'll need them."