Chapter 5

"Death and Taxes"

By OldScout

Two weeks. Buffy stared at her mirror studying her pale skin and limp hair. It'd been two weeks since Sarah was murdered and they were finally getting to bury her. Things had gotten worse and she was getting ready to make changes. Somehow the cops weren't able to get a warrant to search the school but that hadn't stopped them from doing other things; the local school board now wanted a complete roster of all students, faculty and staff; Children's Services wanted a list of students and their families; and the school was under constant surveillance.

Buffy sighed and started brushing her hair again. They were all getting cabin fever and this was not the occasion she wanted for them to get out of the house. She tied her hair back, brushed on some makeup to smooth out her complexion and shrugged on her suit coat. The jacket covered a custom made shoulder holster that secured a knife under each and a long dagger down her spine. The black tailored suit fit her well and she knew she looked good. She didn't care.

Tomorrow the girls were leaving. Cleveland, Los Angeles, Sudbury it didn't matter. They were all leaving England thanks to the Cleaners. She and Willow would be the only ones left in the school. Even Dana was going to Council headquarters. Buffy wanted to go as well, just abandon the school. But she couldn't. There were still two slayers living in normal foster homes she needed to watch over and she had a Big Bad or two to take care of.

That was it. A slayer died, the first duty of the next would be to find the killer. It was instinct an instinct the Council often suppressed. If something was able to kill a slayer, it was mostly likely able to kill a green replacement. Only now there would be no replacement for Sarah. It just wasn't possible. They'd made sure of it that day in Sunnydale.

"Buffy." Willow said from the doorway. "Dawn's here." It was the first time Willow had seen Buffy smile in two weeks.

"How's she doing?" Buffy asked as she turned to her best friend.

"Dawn's fine, but Illyria's with her."

"Ah, yea, what's she going to do, leave her to torment the precious brats at that stupid school?"

Willow grinned.

"Don't answer that."

"No I mean," Willow had this strange look on her face. "Well I guess, oh never mind, you'll know what I mean soon enough."

"Will, dear, here I thought you'd given up the babble for good. It's good to see you still have a have at least one harmless hobby."

Willow grinned again and left the room followed by Buffy.

The deep toned female voice didn't speak more then above a whisper but it still resonated through the house. "....a fractured skull leaves many suitable trophies."

Buffy stopped in mid stride. "Why is she Illyria and not Fred?"

Willow touched her friend's elbow encouraging her to continue down stairs. "I tried to warn you, Slayer mine."

The second Buffy stepped off the stairs she was encased in a death grip hug from her sister. The two just stood that way several minutes, neither said a word nor made a sound. Finally Dawn stepped back. Her long brown hair was iron straight and nearly waist length.

"Buffy, what's going on?" Dawn asked in greeting. "Who are those men parked outside the house?"

"They're investigating Sarah's death." Buffy said and grabbed her sister's hand to pull her closer.

"But why are they watching us?" Dawn asked and thought for a second. "Oh. They think we're to blame. How? Why?"

"There's something I didn't tell you." Buffy replied.

"Well, duh."

"When Sarah was killed, The Ministry sent cleaners to cover up the fact it was a wizard who did it." Buffy watched the look on Dawn's face change from remorse to curiosity. "They removed all evidence of the fight and planted drugs to make it look like an overdose." To anger. "The police now think we're running some kind of drug ring out of the school. They have us under surveillance; we can't do any training outside or go on patrol."

"My God Buffy what are we going to do."

"After the funeral, you're going back to that school and finish the year. Apparently you're relatively safe there. I'm disbanding the school, sending the girls away and Dana to the Council. They're close enough for Willow to visit regularly and know how to handle her. Willow and I will stay here to take care of business and set Sarah's affairs in order."

Dawn tried to grin. She knew what Buffy meant. The death of a Slayer never went unanswered. "I don't know if I want to go back there. Not after what those people have done to us, to Sarah."

"No it's more important now then ever." Buffy took hold of both of Dawn's hands. "I need you as familiar with the Wizards and their magic as possible. We're going to have to deal with them sooner then later and I'll need you're prospective."

Dawn nodded and pulled her sister into another hug. "If you're just telling me that to get me out of the way, I'm going to kick your ass."

"I love you Dawn." Buffy pushed her back and looked over at Illyria who stood watching the whole scene with a slightly bored look on her face. The creature was wearing a black wizarding robe over her leather body armor. The robe's large hood had been pulled back to uncover her head but she'd obviously had it up. "So what's up with her?"

"We, ah, had some problems. Apparently it's not a good idea to channel Fred for too long."

"What happened?"

"The shell's repressed psychosis was difficult to control." Illyria stated.

Dawn forced a tired grin. "I'll tell you about it later."

"Okay, now are you ready to get going? We have to pick up Faith at the air port."

"Yea, let's go."

"Do you have Mr. Sharpie?" Buffy asked before heading for the door.

"I noticed you were carrying but I wasn't going to say anything."

"This is a Slayer funeral. We're going as our own kind of honor guard."

"Yea, I have Mr. Sharpie." Dawn admitted. "I never go anywhere without it."

"Good, we still don't know if Sarah was killed randomly or if they knew who and what she was. They may see this as a chance to take all of us out at one time." Buffy headed for the door walking between two rows of young women all dressed in black and dark blue. She grabbed a set of keys off a hook by the door and tossed them over her shoulder towards her sister. "Dawn, you and Willow are driving. Tonks is with us, everybody else split up between the two vans."

"--"

"Any luck?" Inspector Clayson asked as he climbed into the surveillance just down the block from the Summers School for Girls.

"The parabolic mikes are totally useless." One of the techs said. "We pick up absolutely no sound from the grounds of that school."

"How about the photos?" The tech shook his head again. "I've never seen anything like it. We can take a perfectly clear picture of anything on the school grounds, but the people still come out just a little blurred.

"You haven't gotten that fixed yet?" Clayson frowned. "It's been a week, what the hell have you been doing?"

"We've gotten really good, we can tell everybody in that house by their blurred photos, but there is no way the photos would stand up in court." The tech turned to the monitor. "Look, this is live." He pointed to the procession of young women coming out of the house. They were all perfectly clear they split up and climbed into matching black vans with blacked out windows.

"Now who are they?" The other tech asked pointed at two of the women. One was tall and thin with long straight hair and the other had a long cloak on with a hood pulled up covering most of her face. "Those two we've never seen coming or going before."

The first tech watched the monitor. "You're right. They're new, where'd they come from?" He frowned. "There's another." He pointed to another young woman, this one with spiked jet black hair, black slacks and a long sleeve thin black sweater.

They watched intently as the group loaded into the two vans and drove away. "Okay." The one tech said as the other headed to the front to begin tailing the vans. "You saw that right? The picture was perfectly clear. We couldn't have had better footage, right?"

"I guess." Clayson agreed.

"Now look at it in replay." The Tech reversed to the point where the women were coming out of the house. The house, vehicles, and everything else were perfectly focused, but the people were just a little blurry. Not enough that someone who knew them wouldn't know who they were, but just enough to make a positive ID impossible.

"Wow, that's some pretty sophisticated jamming equipment, I wonder why?"

"Now, look at this." The tech switched to another slightly blurred picture of Miss Summers."

"So, it's blurred, just like the others."

"That is a blow up of this." The tech switched to a photo of the monitor with the image on it. "I took a picture of the monitor with the clear live image on it. Even that one blurred the people in it.

Inspector Clayson just shook his head and put his brief case on the counter. "I've spent the last week having some contacts in the states dig up records on Miss Summers and any known associates or possible associates." He started paging through folders with photos stapled to the outside. "Let's see who you recognize."

The first folder was Buffy Summers, they passed over that one. The second was Dawn Summers. "I think she was one of the new women." He scanned the play back of blurred figures climbing into the vans and until he found the first two they hadn't seen before. "I think she's the one without the cloak, only she's older then that picture now and longer hair."

Clayson studied the slightly blurred picture of the girl getting in the van. "I think you're right." He paged Dawn's folder to the other side of the brief case to reveal a pretty red head in a high school year book photo. "Miss Rosenberg. This is her high school year book photo. They say these pictures are hard to come by. Apparently when people were fleeing Sunnydale before its collapse they were in too much of a hurry to bring those sorts of items."

The next picture was a candid picture of a man standing in a café. He was tall with dark hair a muscular build, an eye patch and a very bright smile. "Alexander Harris."

"There have been a few men come and go from the house but not him. I'd remember the patch."

Clayson nodded and revealed the next folder with another year book photo. "Anya Jenkins."

"Haven't seen her."

"There hasn't been a confirmed sighting of Miss Jenkins since before the collapse of Sunnydale. It's thought she may have been killed in the quake." The next folder was of an older man with graying hair and glasses. "Doctor Rupert Giles was the school librarian at Sunnydale High. He apparently became some sort of mentor and father figure to the Summers girls in the absence of their own father. He is currently the CEO of something called the IWC. Preliminary checks indicate some kind of financial links between this IWC and the Summers School for Girls. We are currently investigating the IWC, even got the tax chaps looking at them. Another interesting thing is that just before the collapse of Sunnydale, many of the senior members of the IWC were assassinated. Remember those explosions downtown a couple of years ago?"

"Sure, I help analyze some of the security footage."

"Well, those deaths paved the way for our man Mr. Giles here to take over."

"Interesting."

"Indeed." Clayson turned to the next folder. The next was a black man with a shaved head. "Charles Gunn, Esquire. Miss Summers' personal lawyer."

"He left the house a couple of hours ago." The tech said looking at the photo.

"He's an interesting case. Up until a couple of years ago he was a street punk living on the streets and on the edge of the law. Then seemingly overnight he becomes a high priced lawyer with a top international law firm."

"What law school did he attend?"

"It's not listed." Clayson turned to the next folder. "Now, some of Mr. Gunn's acquaintances." The next folder had the picture of a white man with short black hair and an expensive black suit, black shirt and black tie. "Mr. Angel, or just Angel depending on who you talk to. He was apparently Mr. Gunn's boss in L. A. before they were all hired by the law firm Wolfram and Hart. This Angel chap was hired as the manager of the local office, fifty floors or something."

"Whew, that's a big law firm."

"That was just one office. They have offices all over the world; even one here in London."

"Have you asked the local office what they might know about some of these people?"

Clayson frowned. "I thought about it, but right now I don't want to tip our hand that we're investigating them this thoroughly." He turned to the next folder of a pretty brunette with a wide smile. "Cordelia Chase, the only obvious link between these two groups. An aspiring actress, she worked for Angel Investigations until just before he started to work for the law firm. She was in the same graduation class a Buffy Summers."

"What happened to her?"

"Some kind of accident put her in coma. She passed away in the spring of '04." Clayson uncovered the next folder. "Wesley Wyndam-Price. Another associate of Angel's, also took a job at Wolfram and Hart. He was found murdered after those riots in the spring of '04. Not long after Miss Chase passed."

Turning to the last folder, he said. "Finally we have Winifred Burkle. She was listed in missing persons in Las Angeles for five years; showed up working at Angel Investigations without explanation of where she'd been. Took over the Wolfram and Hart research department at the same time Angel and Gunn took their positions. She's been missing since the riots and the collapse of the Wolfram and Hart buildings."

"She looks familiar." The tech started stepping through that morning's footage to the hooded woman they hadn't recognized. The blurred features were barely recognizable as female. "Do you remember what this one looked like?"

"Didn't she have blue hair and blue eyes or something?"

The tech started walking through the footage one frame at a time to watch the hooded figure. Just before she got in the car, she looked directly at the camera her eyes glowed blue and one individual frame cleared revealing her face. All other people in the frame were either turned away from the camera or still blurred but that one image showed her clearly.

"Print that!" Clayson leaned forward to look at the only clear image they'd taken during surveillance. He held up the picture if Winifred Burkle. "It could be her, it's hard to tell but it could be."

"Doesn't that give you a chill?" The tech asked.

"What?"

"It's like a reverse ghost photo."

Clayson looked at the man.

"Haven't you ever seen those ghost photos where everything is clear and off to the side is a creepy blurred image; usually a double exposure or something?"

"I guess."

"Well this is like the opposite. All the normal people are blurred and the only clear image is this." He handed the inspector a print out of a woman with glowing eyes, blue hair and what looked like blue stripes with black veins lining either side of her face.

"That's some get up."

"For a funeral?"

"--"

The vehicles made it to the airport but it wasn't the crowded commercial terminal, it was a small side terminal used by private jets and charter services. The two black vans disgorged their occupants of young women who gathered by the fence watching the small jets come and go.

"That one." Willow said quietly as one private jet approached the small customs terminal. The jet rolled to a stop its door opened and its steps lowered to the pavement. A thin, not real tall man with short dark hair and wearing a black trench coat over a black suit started down the stairs and waited for the person behind him. The next person was a woman also wearing a black trench coat over a black skirt. She walked with one leg and a crutch. Her left leg was bent at a forty five degree angle and in a bright white cast. A rod behind the knee connected the back of the thigh to the back of the shin maintaining a perfect position. Four small rods stuck out of the cast running the length of the leg.

The man offered his hand to help her navigate the steps but he was glared down until he backed off and finished his walk to the tarmac. Holding the aluminum crutch in one hand she turned side ways so her broken left leg was away from the plane then commenced to hop down the steps using only her right leg and never touching the guide cable. The second she touched the tarmac she leaned on the crutch and started for customs.

"That's definitely Faith." Dawn said.

"What happened to her?" One of the girls asked.

"We'll know soon enough." Buffy said and headed for customs. She was just in time to see Faith and her companion flash ID badges at the agent and get waived through without any kind of questioning or search. "No that's convenient." She said as Willow arrived behind her.

Buffy was the first to meet Faith and only then did she realize that her left arm wasn't in her sleeve and she had a long black scarf with a hint of white gauze peeking out from under it tied around her head covering her hair. Did she even have hair? The left side of her face was also marked with healing burn scars. "Hey, Faith." Buffy said in greeting as the battered young woman approached.

"Hey, B., Red." Faith returned and looked at the gang waiting for them outside. "I see you brought the whole crew."

"Yea, the rest from the council will meet use at the funeral." As she spoke, she looked over Faith's shoulder at her approaching companion.

Faith followed her gaze. "Hey, Meyers, lets go. Even with one leg and a broken wing I'm faster then you."

Agent Meyers approached the group of young women there to meet Faith. "Hi, I'm Special Agent John Meyers, I work with Faith."

Buffy studied the fresh burns on John's face. "Looks like you two were playing with somebody who didn't want to share their toys."

"Yea, some evil Nazi demon monsters in Argentina." Faith replied.

"This I've gotta hear." Buffy smiled.

Faith lost her smile and glanced down at her injuries. "Not yet, I'll tell you later; some time."

Buffy smiled and carefully hugged her prodigal friend. "That's the second time today somebody told me that. Let's go, the service is in a couple of hours." She looked around. "Where's your luggage?"

"We can't stay." Meyers said. "We have to get Faith back to the doctors in New York. Normally they wouldn't have put her in the cast; she heals too quickly. They'll need to adjust the pins and alignments within the next twenty four hours if we want make sure the bones heal straight."

Outside the girls mobbed around Faith and Meyers; all that is except Illyria who was staring at the white van parked in the distance. "Hey, Blue, what's the fascination?" Faith asked as she approached the former God-King.

"The muck in that vehicle followed us from the hovel called a school."

"You really know how to insult just about everybody in one breath don't you, Blue."

Illyria continued to stare. "If their interest in Oriens' family threatens her, I will make them wish for mere pain."

"Okay, Blue, whatever. Don't worry about them; they're just doing their job. I'm sure somebody will set them straight before long."

Dawn came up behind the two. "Let's go, everybody else is in the vans."

As the three headed to the vans Dawn asked. "So Faith what's the story with Meyers?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well you know since you and Robin broke up you haven't mentioned anybody else. And since you tend to hook up with..." she stopped as they approached the van.

Dawn walked to the driver's seat as Faith swung into the front passenger seat. "So what were you two talking about?" Buffy asked as Illyria took the seat next to her in the second row.

"Nothing." Dawn said looking at Agent Meyers squeezed into the seat to Buffy's right directly behind her.

"She was just asking me if I was bauffing Agent Meyers yet." Both Meyers and Dawn turned beet red as the door slid shut and they drove away.

"--"

"Okay, find out who just got off that plane and walked through customs." Inspector Clayson said into his cell phone. "Those two didn't even look like they slowed down to have their passports stamped." He turned to the tech. "Get anything this time?" He'd been on the phone the whole time talking to base and the other chase van.

"Everything, loud and clear."

They didn't pick up the conversation in the terminal or much of the greetings from the girls. What they did get was the conversation between Faith, Dawn Summers and the one Faith called "Blue", which seemed to fit. There was also somebody named Meyers mentioned who they assumed was the man traveling with Faith and somebody named Oriens.

"Okay, we need to find out who Faith and Meyers are and which one is called Oriens. What kind of name is that?"

"She called us Muck." The tech said. "What does that mean? And what does she mean 'wish for mere pain'?"

"Well," Inspector Clayson said thoughtfully. "It sounds like an insult and a threat."

To be continued.............