by L. Inman
"We have some time to kill," Giles said when they'd reached the court of his apartment house.
"Yeah," Elisabeth said lightly. "I was thinking of curling up with a good illustrated copy of the Kama Sutra. Know where I can find one?"
He smiled at the joke, but answered her thought rather than her words. "I have an idea that even the charms of the Kama Sutra will not be enough to combat cabin fever. I was thinking we could go driving."
"Yes," Elisabeth said, "except I thought we established that I can't leave town."
"That's the nice thing about small towns. They have many miles of back road that are not precisely outside city limits."
"Heh," Elisabeth said. "You don't know the half of it. I come from small-town America, Mr. Severn-and-Thames."
Giles snorted.
*
Some fifteen minutes later they were on the road, cruising Sunnydale with the top down.
"Hungry?" Giles asked.
Elisabeth wasn't, but it was now quite some time since breakfast, so she agreed to stop for something. They found a bakery franchise, specializing in coffee, tea, and sandwiches besides their signature breads, where Elisabeth ordered a Caesar salad and a bowl of soup. She found to her surprise that she could eat after all, and in fact she cleaned her plate, which was unusual with her.
Giles was staring idly out the window, pausing between forkfuls of salad. Elisabeth followed his eyes to the serene blue of the sky, a chameleon abstraction which for her currently embodied the broad expanse of waiting, as in airports, or gas stations on the highway. She hummed the first few bars of "Wild Blue Yonder," and reached for a stray sourdough crouton that had fallen from Giles's plate to the tray beneath.
He looked at her, his expression humorous, only to catch her in the act of popping it into her mouth. "Hey. I was going to eat that."
Elisabeth could only answer, chewing, with a little wicked smile and shrug, a non-apology apology.
He smirked back and bent to eat more attentively.
For a while there was a companionable silence between them as he finished his plate.
"Do you swim?" she asked him, when he had settled back on his bench seat with his cup of lemonade.
He blinked at her, then said equably, "Tolerably well. Do you?"
"Tolerably badly," she said. She opened her mouth to say more, but closed it again and took a pull at her own drinking straw.
He waited, and after a few minutes she said, casually: "My mom signed me up for swimming lessons at the Y when I was seven or eight. They had to give up on me because I wouldn't let go of the instructor long enough to paddle in the water. They didn't make too big a deal out of it. They just said some kids were just like that."
Giles toyed with his drink, making condensation rings on the table, and looked up at her mildly.
"I took longer to learn to ride a bike than any other kid on the block. I walked around with a bike between my legs for two years before I rode anything." Elisabeth drew in the water left behind by her cold lemonade with a forefinger. "And my toys? They're packed away somewhere at my parents' house, still looking like they just came out of the box."
"On the other hand," Giles said, a half-smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, "you jumped into things admirably well last night."
She raised her eyes to his with a small, sad smile. "I had something to look forward to," she said.
"Not necessarily," he said. "You didn't know it would turn out well."
"You know what I mean," she said. "I had the appetite. I had it in me."
"It was made easier by wanting."
"Yes."
"Then why hadn't you done it long ago?"
She looked up at him, mute.
"...You wanted to do it right," he said for her, after a moment.
She took in a hard breath and let in out in a heavy sigh.
"Don't do this to yourself," he said. "You've already shown me that you can rise to the occasion. Don't torture yourself with worrying."
"Worry is my stock-in-trade," Elisabeth said, attempting a smile.
"Yes, well," he said, lifting his cup for a last drink, "I know a little something about that too."
They were silent for a while; Giles used his extra napkin to wipe up the condensation water on the table, folding it into smaller squares as he went.
"I don't know what's going to happen if I get back," she said, watching his hands as he folded the wet napkin one last time and dropped it onto his tray.
He looked up, but she didn't meet his eye.
"I'll probably think I was having a really crazy dream," she said, using the corner of her napkin to draw lines through her own condensation rings.
"Probably," he said, equably.
"Maybe," she said, even more softly, "I won't remember at all."
"Maybe not," he said.
His voice had suffered no change; she looked up at him at last, trying to divine his expression. "I think," he said, when he had her eyes, "regardless of memory, all this won't have been for nothing."
Her eyes stung for a moment. "You think so?"
"I do," he said.
She propped her chin on her hand and looked out the window again, blinking into the blue until the sting had gone from her eyes. "I guess that's the point, isn't it."
"It usually is," he said softly.
*
They spent the rest of the afternoon driving the back roads of Sunnydale, as he had promised her. They didn't speak often, but it wasn't necessary. The nip in the air increased with the drag wind of the car; Elisabeth zipped up her jacket and put her cold fingers out into the stream, to catch the breeze under her palm. They drove until the sun began to sink behind the ridge; then Giles took a road that began to lead away from the semi-desert they had been exploring, and headed back toward the center of town. "All right?" he asked her, as they picked up speed toward civilization.
She nodded, wiping a strand of hair uselessly out of her mouth; the wind whipped it back into her face immediately.
Once back in the main part of town, Giles inquired, "D'you fancy a drink?"
She looked over at him, her eyes wide, whether from the wind, or his words, or just plain fright; he did not know which. "Yeah," she said after a moment. "Okay."
They stopped at a quiet little bar, and this time, whether it was because she looked a little haggard, or because of the level looks both of them gave the waiter, she did not need to impersonate a British woman to get an Irish coffee. When it came, she curled her hands around the glass mug and warmed them before delicately slurping off the whipped cream.
"They put whipped cream on everything in this country," Giles complained, observing her as he lifted his whisky for a sip.
Elisabeth said nothing; she had got to the bottom of the whipped cream and was now fortifying herself with the hot black whisky-and-coffee. She had consumed nearly a third of it before Giles said mildly:
"Don't take your Dutch courage too quickly now."
"It's an Irish coffee," Elisabeth said flatly, sipping again.
"Nevertheless," he said, and stopped. She was not looking at him, but he saw a shiver pass over her body.
"Would you like something to eat?" he asked after a moment.
She shuddered visibly. "No."
He decided not to press her.
Eventually Elisabeth came to the end of her drink; she looked up at Giles's glass to see if he had similarly finished his. He had not.
"D'you think...d'you think I could get another?" Elisabeth asked him.
He shifted in his seat. "I'm...not so sure that's a good idea."
She stared at him wide-eyed over her glass-rims, and he added: "We need you somewhat alert." He glanced at his watch. "In fact, we'd probably better be going in a few minutes." He put down the rest of his whisky and began to dig for his wallet.
"I can't do this," she said.
He paused with his hand in his inner jacket pocket and looked up at her. She was gripping the edge of the table, her nail-beds white as ivory; her glasses had slipped down her nose, and her eyes had a sharp, bright look, as if polarized between paralysis and flight.
Giles took his hand out of his jacket. "Yes," he said, "you can."
She gave her head many small shakes before he had finished getting the words out. "No," she whispered. "No, I can't do it."
"Elisabeth," he said gently, and though she was quite beyond tears, her voice caught itself in a dry sob.
"I'll have to jump," she said. "I can't do it. I can't, I tell you," she repeated, as she saw his lips move to form more reassuring words.
His hand moved to cover hers on the edge of the table. "Yes you can," he repeated, softly, steadily. His hand was warm; hers, cold. She was shaking like a forest of aspens.
Neither of them said anything more, but waited with his eyes locked in hers and his hand covering hers on the table. Slowly her hand warmed to his and the expression of her eyes backed away from the brink of panic.
"Let's go," he said quietly at last, and pulled out his wallet to pay for their drinks.
*
He unlocked her side first, and opened the door for her to get in; but she paused, looking at him, and instead went forward to bury her face in his shirtfront, glasses and all. He sighed and let the car door fall shut again, to touch her, one hand supporting her shoulder and the other stroking her hair.
She spoke, her voice muffled in his shirt. "What if I'm not worth your confidence?"
"I know you are," he said. "I've put myself in your hands, remember?"
The faintest humor crept into her muffled voice. "How could I forget?"
He smiled, stopped his hands, and bent his head to kiss the top of hers. In a bar parking lot, barren and urban, with the sound of traffic droning closer and farther away.
He held her for a few long minutes, until she sighed at last and lifted her head to look up at him. He straightened her glasses on her nose with a forefinger, and she reached up to adjust them more comfortably.
"Shall we go get your things?" he asked softly.
She nodded, shivering a little, and he reopened the car door for her.
*
It was already black dark by the time they pulled up in front of Giles's apartment house. Elisabeth was sure now that she was not imagining this quirk of the Hellmouth. It was also preternaturally quiet all up and down the street, but Elisabeth attributed this to the shock of nerves, and thought nothing more about it. Soon, she thought, if all goes well, I will be in my own home, and my nervous worries will be only that and nothing more. A reassuring thought. Yes, very reassuring indeed.
She slipped her hand into the crook of Giles's arm as they found their way through the darkness of the court to his front door, and felt him respond by drawing his elbow closer toward his body, and her hand with it. She let go of him when they reached his door and fumbled over his keyring for the lock. Briskly he unlocked the door, without flourish, so she was taken by surprise when without preamble he stopped, leaving the keys in the door, and turned to her.
But he said nothing. His lips moved briefly, as if almost ready to tell her what he had stopped to tell her, but he remained silent. She thought, reading his face in the dim light of the door lamp, that she understood some of what he wanted to say. She was not the only one feeling the need to give—reassurance, a parting gift between friends who were briefly lovers—and receive the same in kind. He bent slightly toward her, and she lifted her face, ready to kiss him.
It was as he bent his head that she saw the demon-face behind him, and a club raised to swing.
Without thinking, she grabbed Giles's lapels and pulled him down across her, out of the reach of the vampire's swing: caught off-balance, Giles toppled forward against her, hand out to catch himself on the courtyard wall but too late to keep his feet. In the same instant, the vampire struck, and before Elisabeth could duck, the swing of his club caught her a full blow across the head, knocking her flying over Giles and against the door, which banged open at her impact. She fell in a heap halfway over the threshold, blackness roaring in her eyes and ears, and fumbled uselessly for a hold to pull herself—which way was upright, anyway?
There was scuffling and grunting overhead: that way must be upright. Elisabeth blinked—her eyes were all but useless—trying to make out the shapes struggling above her. She needed to help Giles fight.
And then the entire universe made a 180-degree lurch, and Elisabeth's Irish coffee churned horribly in her stomach. There was the sound of a heart monitor in her ears—she could not open her eyes—her arms were pinioned—dead weight—
It all spun again, and she caught a moment's clear sight of Giles, teeth bared, gripping the club and attempting to thrust it under the vampire's chin—she needed to help him—God, she needed a stake, where was a stake when you needed one?
The men's shapes blurred, the world was still spinning, and she expected any moment to be thrust back into that other place, but instead the blur increased, and Giles seemed to be standing alone. Then he was not alone. Perhaps time was cutting out on her—folding over—she felt a demon's death scream but there were two figures standing over her; one of them stooped to her, its breathing frantic. "Elisabeth—"
There were hands, gentle shaking hands gathering her up and lifting her the rest of the way over the threshold. She could not help him, she was too heavy—dead weight—
Get the doctor, said a female voice somewhere. Her BP's slipping—
"Elisabeth," Giles said urgently.
The blow had done it. The vampire's blow had done it. She had to tell him. "Rupert," she muttered, dragging her eyelids open as best she could.
He had got her propped up against the wall and was slapping her cheeks lightly in an attempt to wake her. "'m awake," she muttered. "Rupert—"
"Look at me," he said, still breathless.
She tried, and found that she could, with great effort, bring him into focus. Her face was sticky-wet, and some of it was stinging in her left eye. New bruise for the collection, she thought. This one's gonna be a doozy.
"I'm awake," she said again. "Rupert—"
"What the fuck were you playing at?" he hissed at her, mopping at her face with his handkerchief. "You should have let me take that blow, you imbecile—"
Another voice drawled in from the background, ironic and mimicking. "'Oh, Spike, thank you so much for saving my life!' No problem, Rupes, always glad to be of service. 'But Spike, I really owe you. What can I possibly do to repay—'"
Giles did not look round from his task. "Spike, either continue to help, or get out. In either case, shut up."
"Well, I like that," Spike said.
Giles ignored him, preferring to vent his ire on Elisabeth. "What the hell were you playing at," he growled again, feeling her over for broken bones.
"Wanted to save a Watcher another knock on the head," Elisabeth murmured. "Rupert—listen—"
"That's my lookout, dammit—"
"Rupert. Listen to me. It's started."
It took him a moment to register her words. "Started, what's started?"
"The—vortex," Elisabeth said. He was slipping out of focus again, and she wasn't strong enough to bring him back. "My other self—hit on the head—I was there for a moment—"
"Fuck," Giles said under his breath. "We have to get you some medical attention," he told her.
"No time," she said. "It's already happening. Have to do the spell."
"But—"
"Now."
"Damn it." Giles rose, in an impatient movement like Angelus on caffeine. "Spike, if you're still in it, get her bag from the couch."
"Are you sure that's gonna be a help?" Spike drawled.
"I don't have time for this," Giles said tensely. "I'm getting her out to the car. Help or not, but make up your bloody mind, and I mean fast." He crouched again, and Elisabeth felt his gentle hands working their way under her body, preparing to lift her. She tried to help him, but she couldn't get her limbs to work.
With several grunts and lurching, dizzying shifts, Giles managed to stand with her in his arms. He half turned when Spike said, "This it?"
"Yes, that's it." He stopped to grab his keys from the door lock—Elisabeth heard them jingle amid the roaring in her ears—and stagger with her out into the courtyard again.
Giles was awkwardly trying to situate her in the front seat of his car when Spike's voice made him let her fall the rest of the way. She grunted.
"Uh-oh," Spike said. "More of them."
"Just what we need," Giles said.
"I'll hold them off," Spike said. There was a silence tinged heavily with Giles's suspicion. "Look, do I have to explain? They're boring thugs. Watching you lot come to smash on your own is much more interesting."
"Right, fine," Giles said, just as the sound of scuffling began. Elisabeth heard him get into the car on her other side and start the engine.
"My backpack," she murmured.
"—Is in the back seat," Giles reassured her. "We're going now."
There came another demon scream. Elisabeth moaned, and Giles gunned the engine, just as she felt Spike vault into the back seat. The BMW fishtailed slightly as it peeled off down the road.
"Now this," Spike said, "is a much better engine than your last."
*
"Are they still following us?" Giles said.
"Yeah," Spike said. "Put on some speed, gramps."
"Yes, well, the vampires unfortunately don't have to obey traffic laws."
"Oh, just run the damn stop sign, there's nobody coming!"
Elisabeth felt fairly certain that Giles had been going to do that anyway, but he put on an extra burst of speed, and Spike was silent for a moment. Elisabeth was glad; everything was whirling again, and the urgent voices in her head were growing clearer and then more distant by turns.
Then she felt the vampire's face close to hers, thrust forward from the back seat of the car. "So," Spike said in a conspiratorial whisper, "tell me, what's he like?"
Giles's voice was dangerously even. "Spike, I'm giving you fair warning...."
"Oh, never mind Mister Grouchy Pants," Spike said to Elisabeth. "Go on, you can tell me. What kind of lover is he?"
"He's quite wonderful," Elisabeth drawled, and caught a glimpse of the vampire's lips bowing into a wicked smirk. "You're missing out."
The smirk dropped off Spike's face, and he disappeared from her sight. She looked up at Giles in time to catch him rolling his eyes briefly; but his attention was fixed urgently ahead of him, and he did not seem to be sparing more than a stray thought for Spike's antics.
Several lurching turns later, the car stopped in what seemed to be a dark alleyway. "Quick," Giles said. He got out and banged loudly on a door. "It's us," he said loudly. "Give us a hand." Before anyone inside could respond, he was at Elisabeth's side of the car and lifting her carefully out. She found enough strength to cling to him as he hefted her.
"What the hell happened?" Xander's voice.
"Vampires," Giles said.
"And they've followed us," Spike added.
"Xander, quickly. Grab her bag," Giles said.
"Was she bitten?"
"No, just hit. Quickly now."
Giles carried her into a faintly familiar room, lit with candles; she realized it must be the back room of the magic shop. "Five candles," she said, dreamily.
"Actually, it's ten," Anya's voice said.
"Move," Giles said. "We have to put her down in the circle."
There was a scrambling and scraping, then sounds of a fight. "Xander!" cried Willow's voice.
The slam of a door. "Take that, you wankers!" Xander cried. Then, "Got it," he said. "Where do you want it?"
The sounds of fighting were continuing outside the closed door.
There was a rattle and bang from the front. "Oh, shit," Xander said, helping Giles to prop Elisabeth's head and shoulders on her backpack.
"I'll take the front," Buffy's voice said.
"No, Buffy, we need you to help anchor the circle," Willow protested.
"Won't be any good with vampires crashing the party." Buffy's voice trailed away, and soon the sounds of fighting were coming from both directions.
"My backpack," Elisabeth said faintly.
"We've got it here," Giles said. She caught a glimpse of his eyes meeting hers from above.
"No—inside—my notebook—"
"Something in your notebook?" She nodded. "Here—Tara—hold her head." Tara's hands. Giles digging in the backpack under her head. She saw at last that he held the notebook.
"The last page," she said. "Last page with writing on it."
He flipped through and found it.
"Tear it out," she said, and he obeyed.
"You want this for the spell?" he asked.
"No," she said, "for you. Take it."
He glanced over it hurriedly, then folded the torn page into messy quarters and stuffed it into his jacket pocket. "Okay," he said.
She nodded and shut her eyes.
The sounds of fighting were growing fiercer.
"Everybody get around the circle," Willow said.
Elisabeth dragged her eyes open enough to see them, seated around her, hands joined, faces eerie pools of color in the candlelight. Willow began the chant, and at her encouragement they took up the chant with her. There was a brief disturbance, and Buffy took her place between Giles and Tara; the chant flowed on, and ceased to be a mere mingling of voices. It swelled to a substance and became palpable magic, the same sort of magic that must have brought her here, Elisabeth thought—it felt commonplace, as if it were its own universe.
A tendril of mist shot with blue rose and curled above her eyes, then spread to a plane, like shining, gossamer silk, delicate and yet replete with power. The plane of mist grew vertically, cutting her body in half: and Elisabeth began to see with two sets of eyes. Two scenes, two rooms, two selves; a circle of men and women chanting in one, a circle of men and women shouting to one another in the other. There was a high whine, like a stalled machine, in her ears, and then she felt it, like the beginning of turbulence on an airplane: the first insistent, black and downward tug of death.
Her first instinct was to fight it. She moved her hands, to scrabble at her chest and make room for her to breathe, but her hands would no longer obey her, and remained still where they lay. Her head fell back, and voices closed over her head like waters to drown her.
She's flatlined. Get the cart—
Over here, doctor—
Quick—
No!
Xander, don't break the connection—
Keep up the chant—
Clear—
The tug came again, harder, and one last fragment of thought struggled to life in Elisabeth's mind: All you have to do is let go—
She let go, and the blackness claimed her completely.
*
A soundless tearing, like a tree uprooted amidst a gale: then a glut of color and sound and breath hit her like a locomotive at full speed and she was thrown through the air, against a wall, and fell to the floor in a messy heap, eyes closed.
Silence.
Then, as if for the very first time, painfully—against compounded gravity—she opened her eyes. Saw in front of her six people, grouped in a circle looking over at her dumbstruck, and within the circle a fading blue mist. A voice: Call it—time of death 11:26 p.m.—, and then the mist disappeared like a soap bubble, taking the voice with it.
There was still nothing to break the silence. No one moved.
She moved on the floor, lifted her head, gathered her limbs for an effort to rise; and after two tries she was successful in getting to her feet. The others watched her, wide-eyed.
A backpack she recognized lay on the floor before her where it had skidded out of the circle, blurring the chalk lines that had been drawn to make it. Her eyes followed the chalk lines and after a moment the squiggles and shapes made sense to her in two places: a name. Elisabeth Bowen.
There was an unaccustomed weight in her jacket pocket. She slipped her hand in and drew out a slim leather wallet. Inside were a few crisp bills and a frayed sheaf of IDs, all with the same name that was written in the circle.
She looked up, as if to confirm with the others what this meant: but only the eyes of the eldest one seemed any the wiser. His eyes behind their glasses reflected back to her the sudden pain she drew in with her breath.
She let the wallet drop to the floor. It hit with a small smack, but she did not wait for the sound before she broke. Before anyone could stop her, she ran to the back door, flung it open, and fled out into the dark night.
*
Chapter 26