Chapter 11

The Following Takes Place Between 10 am and 11 am on the day of the autumnal equinox.

When a big thing happens a life altering, mind shattering thingit can take a long time before you really process what you have just seen. And, as is often the case in the world of the Scoobies, you have to adjust fast or the shock will kill you.

When Connor saw the fake Detective Hodges change his forehead slanting, his eyes turning yellow, fangs appearinghis perception of reality was permanently, massively shifted. Had the two vampires been alone when they tried to snatch him, they could easily have killed him. He would later learn that that wasn't part of their plan, but that wouldn't comfort him much. As it was he stood there for a good ten-count before someone shoved him to the side. He fell in a heap, more from surprise than the force of the push.

Now he was watching Buffy he still couldn't believe that nameand the black man fight these two things. He was still having trouble accepting that they were vampires (how could they be fighting in the middle of a sunny day?) but it was very clear that at least some of what they had told him was true. Vampires and demons were real. Buffy was a vampire slayer. Did that make him

Connor suddenly snapped back to reality. Four very strong hands were grabbing him by the arms and pulling him to his feet. He looked to his left and right and saw two nightmares from a Clive Barker film on either side of him. He didn't know what these creatures were but he was pretty sure they belonged to the same crew.

"Start walking, kid," said the creature on his left. Connor looked to Buffy and the black man. Both were occupied by the two other creatures. Buffy tried to break away but the creature had somehow gotten her hands in a vise-like grip. He was on his own.

Well, at least part of what they said is true, Connor thought to himself. Time to test the other part.

He pulled as hard as he could. The creatures were so surprised that the grip of one loosened a little. Connor took this opportunity to punch him in the face.

The demon fell back against the building. Which was nearly ten feet away. The only one more shocked than the demon was Connor. He hadn't even thought he'd hit it that hard.

The other monster tried to grab his arm. Without even knowing he was going to do it, Connor whirled around and kicked it in the chest. The demon was seven feet tall but the kick nearly doubled it over.

Maybe there's something to this superhuman stuff, Connor thought to himself. Then the demons recovered and began running towards him.

Connor hadn't been in a fight since sixth grade. The most experience he had with martial arts had occurred when he had seen a twin bill of The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. But now facing what was definitely a life or death situation, he knew exactly what he had to do.

As the two, very large, demons attempted to bring him down, his senses and reflexes were at a hundred per cent—maybe higher. He knew it even before he started dodging their blows and started dealing out punishment. The demons were bigger than he was but he was stronger and faster, and they knew it. And somehow, even though he had only learned this less than an hour ago, he knew it too.

The first monster fell after a series of hard punches to the head and chest. The last punch that he threwand it was a hard oneknocked whatever it was into the wall hard enough to crack the plaster. Connor barely had a second to consider what he had done before the second demon was on him. He was about to fight it when something occurred to him.

"Why are you trying to kill me?" he shouted at the demon.

The demon didn't stop moving but it responded: "You're the one trying to kill us. Our orders are to take you alive."

Connor was about to argue the point when he realized the demons could have killed him while he was still out of it. If that were true

"Take me to who?" he asked.

"Oh no," it said, "I'm not going to help you help them."

"I think that's exactly what you're going to do." Before he could even acknowledge the voice, the demon was knocked backwards into the trunk of the tree.

Connor turned around to see Buffy. "I could have handled this myself," he said.

"We need to know what he knows," Buffy replied. "He needs to stay alive, at least for now. Robin?'

The black manwhose name appeared to be Robinwalked over to them. "Yeah?"

"You okay?"

Connor then noticed that, unlike Buffy whose hair barely seemed mussed, Robin was breathing very hard.

"I'll be fine."

Buffy looked at Robin for a second. "Call home base." she finally said. "Tell them what happened to us and ask them if they have any frigging clue where Ethan and Harmony are."

"Right." He walked off.

"Before you talk to him, you'd better talk with me," Connor said with a confidence he did not feel.

Buffy looked exasperated but she summoned her patience. "What do you want to know?" she asked

Connor took a deep breath and crossed the last bridge. "What were you talking about when you mentioned the end of the world?"

10:09:36 /10:09:37 /10:09:38/ 10:09:39

Earlier Gunn had found himself feeling nostalgic for the times when breaking into Wolfram & Hart had been a regular occurrence. Now, in an even more bizarre twist, he found that he was yearning for the days that they had spent fighting the Beast. Then there had been shocking event after shocking event, but at least you had a few hours to adjust to each big thing. Now they were getting them right on top of each other. Gunn was having a hard time keeping track of all their problems. In the past hour alone he had had to deal with Dawn letting herself be kidnapped, Connor being targeted for some reason, and that Jasmine was still around and probably the goal of the raising in less than two hours. And now, apparently just to make things fun, Dawn's tracker had just gone dead.

"All right, explain to me why you're not worried about losing Dawn?" Xander asked, sounding agitated, which Gunn had come to learn meant that he was very worried.

"Because we haven't lost Dawn," said Fred.

Gunn wasn't sure he could take much more off this. "Fred, if you're being metaphysical" he started

"I mean that the homing device isn't the only way I can track Dawn." Fred walked over to one of the other computers in the tech room. "The minute Justine took Dawn I began to coordinate the same traffic camera system that I used to track Ethan and Harmony."

Gunn didn't think that, considering how effectively Harmony and Ethan had managed to give them the slip, using that as an example helped her case. Nevertheless, he decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. It was Fred after all.

"However, this time I had something I didn't have before: an idea where she's going." Fred began typing. An image of the LA streets appeared. "Knowing what streets Dawn was on from the homing devices, I was able to track her movements visually as well as on the computer." She pointed to the silver Volvo on the screen. "That's the car that Justine put Dawn in forty minutes ago." She punched the keyboard again. "We keep following her using both methods until"

"she smiles for the camera," said Lorne, looking at a picture of the Volvo with Justine outside, stomping on something. Probably the transmitter.

"The cameras keep following this car until…"Fred punched up one last image. It showed Justine, a man in a suit and two vamps standing together heading east.

"Where is that?" Wesley asked.

"The outskirts of Little Tokyo. "

"That's where they are?"

Fred looked at her watch. "As of three minutes ago." She turned to the second computer with the digitized map of LA. She pressed a button and magnified a section. "They've gotta be around there."

"That's a half-hour from here," Gunn said

"We have to move now." Everyone turned to Angel, walking towards them. "Gunn, get Faith and Giles. Tell them to meet us in the garage in five minutes. "

"Are we going in full force?" Xander asked.

Angel shook his head. "They see us coming, they'll kill Willow and Dawn. We need a small but strong offense. Ten, maybe twelve people."

"In that case we'd better call Buffy and Robin," Gunn said. "They're strong fighters and they're closer than we are."

"But Connor" Fred started.

"is part of this." Wesley interrupted. "Besides, we can't spend time securing him."

Angel considered it for a good twenty seconds.. "He's right. Call them, tell them to hurry but not to attack until we get there. We don't know how many henchmen they've got in their corner. They could get overrun." He turned around. "Let's move."

As he started to go Angel spoke softly. So soft only Gunn, who was standing right beside him, could hear."God forgive me."

10:15:59/ 10:16:00 /10:16:01

The warehouse had very good acoustics so that when the knock came, everybody in the building heard it. Including Willow and Spike.

Harmony's reaction was a measure of how much she had improved. She didn't run to the door and yell "Who is it?" She didn't even walk to the door. Instead, she made a gesture with her hand and a minion went.

The vampire looked through a crack in the door. "It's them," he said.

"Any sign of the do-gooders?" asked Ethan. The vamp shook his head.

"Let them in," said Harmony.

In came a group of strangers: a strong-looking red-haired woman, a man in a suit and two vamps. Willow only noticed that later because her attention was drawn to the girl the vampires were holding.

"Well here we are," Harmony said as she walked to Dawn. She smiled broadly. "I'll bet you never thought you'd be my prisoner again."

Dawn looked at the female vampire defiantly. "You didn't have crap to do with this, Harmony. You just let a bunch of vamps do all the dirty work, and she—" she gestured towards the redhead "carried me the rest of the way. I don't know what your plan is, but I can't wait for my sister and my friends to get here and dust your ass."

The smile on Harmony's face disappeared. She looked at the vamps. "Are you absolutely certain that she has to be pure?" she asked Ethan.

"You know that." said Ethan.

Before Ethan had finished, she struck Dawn in the face hard. "Listen up, mini-Slayer, if it weren't for the fact we need you for this ritual I'd cut your throat right here. We need you to be warm for it, so you'll live. But listen up: the second that we no longer need you alive, I intend to bleed you, drain you and turn you." Harmony's face changed and Willow didn't think she had ever looked more evil. "I may end up dust before the day is out, but I'll be able to take the fact that your sister will have seen the one thing she cares about most turned into the thing she hates the most with me." She leaned in. "Got it, bitch?"

Dawn's face barely changed but Willow could see that a lot of fight had gone out of her.

Ethan looked at the redhead. "Do you think they've been trailing you?" he asked.

She thought for a second. "We didn't see anyone but that doesn't mean that they're not out there," she finally answered.

"We'll have to chance it." Ethan turned towards Willow and Spike. "Get them up and ready to move."

Dawn appeared to wilt still further. "This isn't the hideout?"
"It was," Harmony said smugly. "But it's not where we're performing the eutrasia. By the time your Shaggy friends find out where we are, it'll be too late for everyone." She grinned. "How do you like them apples, pumpkin?"

10:21:14/ 10:21:15 /10:21:16 /10:21:17

Buffy's second talk with Connor went a lot better than her first, mainly because the young man knew he could no longer dismiss her as a madwoman. She had hoped that Connor would understand the magnitude of the problem without asking for more details. He seemed to be accepting things—so far.

"All right, Connor, we don't have much time so if there's anything else you need to know, now's the time to ask."

"I only have two questions." Connor said.

That was two more than Buffy wanted to answer, but she knew that he might never get another chance. "All right, what are they?"

"You said that Angel created a new set of memories for me and my parents and everyone else about me, except for himself. " Connor looked at her. "So how come you and Robin know my life story?"

That, at least, she could explain. "After Angel agreed to the deal, some of the people who worked with him began having trouble remembering what had happened over the past two yearsand how they had ended up working for the enemy." Buffy took a deep breath because the next part confused her. "So he had a spell cast that would allow only the people who worked at Wolfram & Hart would be able to remember the circumstance of your birth—and life. When me and my friends came to work here in LA, we kind of got" she gestured with her hands "swept in. So that's how I know." She waited to see if he was going to ask for more details.

"All right, I think I get that," Connor finally said.

"What's your other question?"

"You said that when Angel took this deal it was conditional on me not being a part of any more of this…whole thing, right?"

Buffy nodded.

"If that's the case, and I'm not mentioned in the prophecy that you're trying to stop, why are these vampires coming after me?"

Buffy had hoped he wouldn't ask that. "I can't say for certain, Connor. What I do know is that before he made this deal, you were specifically mentioned in a lot of prophecies as someone who would be a major force on the side of either good or evil. My guess is that someone on the dark side wants to make sure that you don't interfere if you're on the good side, or in their corner if you're on the bad side."

He took that in. "But the deal—"

"Connor, and I'm speaking from personal experience, sometimes as much as we want to and no matter how hard people try we can't escape our fate."

He didn't appear to like her answer but before he could follow up Robin walked towards them. He looked about as happy as Connor did. "What's happening at Angel-Slayer?" Buffy asked.

"Cliff notes version?" Robin took a deep breath. "While we were tracking down Ethan and Harmony, another contingent of the bad guys attacked the office. While they were defending themselves Justine got loose and abducted Dawn."

The fear that came whenever her sister was in danger kicked in. For a split second, she was afraid that she was going to mentally overload. Very quietly she said: "Do they have any idea where she is?"

"Yes. Apparently Fred placed a tracking signal on Dawn in case of just this kind of occasion. They know where she is, and they're pretty sure that Willow and Spike are there too."

Suddenly Buffy could breathe again. "Where do they think she is?"

"Less than ten minutes away from us in Little Tokyo. They're getting ready to launch a rescue mission, and since we're closer to it than they are"

Buffy had started moving when Robin said 'rescue.' She had gotten forty feet before she heard Robin speak again. "What are we going to do about Connor?"

"Easy," said Connor. "I'm coming with you."

Focused as she was, Buffy still spun around when she heard him. "Uh-uh!" she said as Connor closed the distance between them. "Angel will be royally pissed when he finds out that I've put you at risk."

Connor kept moving. "According to you, I'm already at risk. Besides I can't just sit still if the world's in this much trouble."

Despite the impending doom, Buffy found herself smiling at Connor.

"What?" he said.

"You really are your father's son." Buffy turned around. "Come on, we've got to hurry.'

10:29:09/ 10:29:10 /10:29:11

Dawn had realized that she wasn't going to get any more information from Justine or Thompson, and that Ethan and Harmony were even less likely to talk. So she decided, as the pick-up they were being held in started to move, that she would try and help put the pieces together with the only ones who would help her. First, though

"Spike." The vampire turned to her. " This is probably the stupidest question in the world to ask, but…um…how are you doing?"

He looked at her, bemused. "Considering that a few hours ago my chestnuts were roasting on an open fire and that I'm about to help the next Big Bad enter stage wherever, I'm doing all right."

Despite the direness of the situation, it was somehow reassuring to hear Spike talk like this. She looked past him to Willow. "How about you, Will?"

"Other than the trio of terror has managed to neuter me, I feel okay." Willow took a deep breath. "I just don't know how I'm going to feel when they perform this eutrasia."

"I don't understand how you're not kicking Harmony's ass," Dawn said.

"It's these damn ropes they've got us tied up with." Spike squirmed. "Whatever they're using has powerful mojo. They're not as painful as a chip in the head, but they get the job done."

"How the hell did they get stuff like this?" asked Dawn.

"That's a good question," said Willow. "I've got a bunch of them. Like where Ethan Rayne managed to get the kind of magic he has? Or how Harmony managed to get smart. Or who the hell that woman managed to get you out of Wolfram & Hart."

Dawn could answer that question but she knew better than to do it while she was in the back of an evil henchman's car. So she gave a half answer. "Her name is Justine Cooper and the reason she managed to grab me is because she's a slayer."

Willow processed that. "She's a…a… And she working with Ethan and Harmony?"

"Yes, because a slayer would never turn to the dark side," said Spike tiredly. "Deal with it, Red."

"Great," said Willow. "So Ethan and Harmony have this powerful magic, anti-magic gear, a shitload of help including a slayer, and now all the artifacts and people needed to somehow resurrect Jasmine."

"Wait a minute, that's what all these raisings are for?" asked Dawn, reeling. "To bring back Jasmine?"

"Yes, and it looks like we're going to have front row seats to it."

"Maybe." Suddenly Spike seemed calmer. "Maybe not."

"What? What are you thinking?'

"I'm thinking slayer or no slayer, there's no way that anyone manages to just grab a Summers woman and walk out." Spike fixed a look on Dawn. "Not unless she wants to go."

Willow considered that too. "Dawnie, is the cavalry coming?" she asked quietly.

Speaking, she hoped, without any inflection she said, "I hope so, Will. I hope so."

10:34:40 /10:34:41/ 10:34:42 /10:34:43

When Fred had told Andrew that only eleven people were going on what they hoped would be a search and rescue mission, and that he wasn't to be one of them, she had expected, given his earlier reaction, that he would raise seven shades of hell. Instead all he said was "I'm working," and to continued follow up with the computerized tracking system that he had been using to try and find Dawn.

Now as Fred continued to follow the progress of the team (the cars were equipped with superior global tracking systems) she began to wonder why Andrew was being so silent.

She knew that it was a stupid thing to get bogged down on, considering the situation, but there wasn't much more she could do. Whatever happened when good met evil she was going to be on the sidelines. It was in the hands of the champions of Angel-Slayer. So she decided to see if she could try and smooth things over with Andrew, if only to ease her conscience.

When she walked over to Andrew's computer, however, she saw that he was looking not at Little Tokyo but at what seemed to be a public library. That wasn't all that was strange. Before all their pictures had been stills, but this…

"Andrew, how did you tap into a video feed?" she asked, looking over shoulder.

Andrew didn't turn around as he said: "You know that Wolfram & Hart has a lot of government contracts."

"Yeah..." said Fred, unsure of where he was going.

"And a lot of these contracts involve satellite feeds, including some in LA?"

It had been a bone of contention among the board of Angel Slayer Inc. "Yes, but we never figured out how to use them properly," Fred said.

"Well, you have now," said Andrew.

Fred was stunned. Both she and Willow were top-notch computer hackers but neither had ever tried something of this magnitude. "Wait a minute, you know how to do this kind of hack?"

"Hey I was part of a team of supernerds. One of the prerequisites was being able to hack into four forbidden places before breakfast." Andrew paused. "That sounded better in my head."

"This is all very interesting. Why are you doing it?"

"No reason." said Andrew almost cheerfully. "I just decided to check and see if I could get a live picture of the area they were in. But funny thing, five minutes ago I see people going in this warehouse."

Fred began to feel a chill inside. "And?"

"And five minutes later they start driving out of the warehouse heading east."

It was getting worse. "How the hellThe traffic camera photos" she sputtered.

"Are five minutes behind what's really happening." Andrew sounded pissed.

"I've got to call Angel and the others. Tell them to change direction. Fast."

"Yes, because we want to give up the element of surprise on our enemy," Andrew said sarcastically.

Suddenly Fred had had enough. She pulled Andrew's chair away from the computer. "Andrew, we are minutes away from trying to stop this raising."

"And what makes you think we can? I was there when we tried to stop the first one. Angel, Faith and Buffy were all there and they couldn't do shit!" Andrew said, standing now. "And now we're sending them into what could be an army of enemies and you think we have a chance to stop them!" He practically shouted at her.

And because Andrew had tapped into her worst fear, she did the only thing she could: "Do you have a location for them?"

Andrew was breathing hard but he answered. "They're just outside a warehouse in Chinatown."

Fred breathed. "I'm going to call Wesley. Tell me if you see anything else that looks funky." She walked away and pulled out her cell phone. Hoping that they could still pull this off.

10:41:22/10:41:23/ 10:41:24

Now that they seemed to have come to their final final destinationwhich seemed to be on the outskirts of ChinatownWillow found that her anxiety over their situation was becoming overwhelmed by her concern of what was going to happen.

As he walked over from his car, Ethan apparently noticed the look on her face. "All right, now what's on your mind?"

Since she couldn't gesture with her hands Willow turned her head to the busy street. "I'm just a little curious about how you intend to do whatever the heck you're going to do without any of them noticing."

"Oh my," Ethan said in mock alarm. "We never considered that. What are we to do?"

"We're here because there are so many people here, you big ignoramuses—ignorami—" Harmony struggled for a while, then gave up. "You idiots."

"In order to amass the life force needed to bring back Jasmine…" Willow stopped speaking as the savageness of what they were planning hit her.

"You're going to drain the life of everyone in this neighborhood?" Dawn finished. "You… You…"

"Monsters? You know that's such a cruel and villainous idea it almost makes me wish we were doing that," said Harmony.

"If we were going to do that," Ethan said smugly, "all we'd be doing is guaranteeing that we'd be dead when the ritual was finished. And we're not idiots."

"Could've fooled me," murmured Spike.

Ethan ignored him. "These rituals are like the Three Bears. Too little energy and Jasmine won't come back. Too much and the power might destroy us and everything in a ten block radius. So we have to get it just right."

"And I suppose you have a magical measuring device that's going to tell you how much magic energy you need," Dawn said sarcastically.

"As a matter of fact we do." Harmony had always sounded annoying, now she had a smug tone Willow was finding unbearable. "Thompson?" The man in the suit produced a gold bracelet with a red stone in the center.

"Behold the Bracelet of Navarre," said Ethan. "Designed by a Shaman in the pre- Assyrian Era, it was supposedly used to measure the amount of magical energy in the air. When a certain amount was around the stone, rather like a traffic light, it would change colorgreen for very little, yellow for medium, red for too much. And if the thing turned red while it was on your wrist… Well lets just say you wouldn't be collecting a pension."

"So you're going to wear that to check the magic energy," said Spike.

"No, sweetie," Harmony said, walking toward them. "You are." She pointed at Dawn.

Though she had been expecting something like this, the shock hit Willow very hard. "You bitch! This is beyond cruel even for you!"

Ethan smiled. "She isn't called 'lakuta' for nothing. And I'd worry about yourself. You and Spike are going to be neck deep in this."

"Buffy will save us!" said Dawn with a confidence that she didn't feel.

"I hope she tries," Justine said. "I'm aching to finish with her."

"In any case, time is short." Harmony turned and yelled at the henchmen: "All right people, we have less than an hour to finish setting up." She smiled maliciously. "The three of you should get ready for your big scenes."

10:47:49/10:47:50/10:47:51/10:47:52

Ever since Angel had begun the process of becoming a champion, he had become very good at being able to put his emotions aside. If he hadn't he would never have been able to fight alongside Buffy for three years, let alone survive in LA.

So when Angel had learned that, despite his deal with Wolfram & Hart, Connor had been targeted and was now a part of the battle, he tried to put that information away in the part of himself that dealt with those things. Unfortunately the thirty minute drive to Little Tokyo had given him a lot of time to ruminate on what was going to happen, and at least some of it was going to deal with his son. Though he spent much of the drive going over what they were going to do when they faced Ethan and Harmony with Faith and Giles, he was still distracted by his fears. It was always hard to deal with an end-of-the-world scenario, harder when Buffy was involved, but he wasn't sure if even his reserve could hold out when the two most important people in his life were involved.

He was so wound up about it that he was grateful when Fred called Giles five minutes later and told them that the bad guys had taken Willow, Spike and Dawn to Chinatown. It gave him another five minutes to deal with what was coming. He thought that Faith and Patrice (the others had gone in another car) were also glad for the delay but for different reasons. In their case they probably needed to prepare themselves for the battle. So did he, but the situation with Connor worried him more.

Unfortunately, he thought as he pulled into an alley two blocks away from their final destination, time was almost up for all of them.

"All right," he said. "Everyone ready? Giles, how are we on that dissolving spell?"

Giles had been wrestling with that for the entire ride. He sighed. "Well, acting on the theory that the spell they used was from the Poloxa, I have adapted a sort of anti-Poloxan spell that should be able to cut through their energy barrier." Giles fumbled with his glasses. "Of course we do have to take into consideration that they may have more than one kind of barrier spell."

"Can it work on other kinds of barriers?" Patrice asked.

Giles stumbled a little, "…It might be able to, but I'm not Willow. The spells that I know are less powerful and less likely to work in a specific way. " He squeezed the bridge of his nose. "And there is the possibility that they may be able to utilize Willow's magic to make it more difficult."

"Then let's hope you're stronger than you think," said Angel.

"If they have the same spell around Willow and Dawn and we can't get through it then"

"We know, Angel," Faith said, looking at him. "It's time to do this."

Though he didn't need to, Angel took a deep breath. "All right," he put his hand on the door, "let's go."

They got out the car and started heading to the end of the alley.

10:54:03/10:54:04/ 10:54:05

With all the confusion, it took Buffy, Robin and Connor an additional ten minutes to drive to the place where they were going to meet Angel. So it wasn't until they had all gotten out of the car that Buffy had realized that she had to find out what was going on with the man she'd been working with for nearly five hours.

"Robin, are you all right?" she asked without preliminaries.

"Well I've spent the better part of today fighting evil without letup, I've been watching us fall short time after time, and I'm about to go into a major battle that could very easily result in my death. I'm doing just peachy." Robin sounded slightly amused but Buffy could sense something more. And he hadn't been looked directly at her through his spiel.

"I know things have been really intense over the past few hours," Buffy slowed her pace in order to keep walking with him, "but you've been awfully quiet."

"Well I know it's generally good not to interrupt you." Again something in his tone belied the lightness of the response.

"You've also been looking a little tired and pale."

Robin turned to her and raised an eyebrow.

"Well, as pale as I guess you can get… I didn't mean to say…your skin is very..."

Robin seemed genuinely amused. "Keep talking like that, honey."

Buffy swallowed her words and tried again. "Look, Robin, we're about to go into a major battle. Not just my life and yours but those of our friends will be at risk. If you aren't up to this I need to know now." She put her hand on Robin's shoulder. "Can you do this?"

Robin actually considered for a few seconds. Finally, he turned to her and said: "Believe me when I tell you this Buffy, I am absolutely capable of putting my life on the line." He looked her straight in the eye. "I can do this. Okay?"

Normally Buffy wouldn't have just accepted that. But they were almost out of time and needed all hands. "All right." She turned to Connor who had been lagging behind. "Connor? Light a fire under it."

The young man started walking quicker. By the time they reached the others, he was matching her stride for stride which, as the others could have testified, was no easy feat.

Angel saw them first. If he was upset or alarmed that his son was there, he gave no sign of it.

"Do you see them Willow or Dawn?" Buffy decided not to be the one to mention Spike. "Are they there?"

Angel shook his head. "No, but I'm sure we're in the right spot." He pointed straight ahead.

Buffy, Connor and Faith were the only ones in the group with enhanced vision, but even the average Scooby could have seen what was ahead. About a quarter-mile straight ahead was an empty deserted building. Painted on its side were a number of mystical looking graffiti around a giant yellow cross.

On the pavement directly next to it was a huge red pentagram. And if you squinted you could see in the star were three small black x's.

10:59:57/10:59:58/10:59:59/11:00:00