Chapter 15

"The trick is not to fight it."

For safety's sake, Jordy and Nina had been shackled by their ankles to chains around support columns in the basement of Michael's house, out of arms' reach of each other, and a tranquilizer gun was loaded and ready. Afternoon light from the narrow windows brightened the room somewhat as the two sat crosslegged on the floor with Oz and tried to absorb his instructions.

"It'd be like fighting a rip current; you'll just panic and lose your focus. Let it come, but try to step outside yourself..."

Angel watched the training session from a discreet distance at the head of the basement stairs, while Fred perched on the top step near his feet, quietly videotaping and taking notes. He hoped that Oz knew what he was doing - it was one thing to talk about teaching Nina to morph at will, but to actually try it...

He was out of his element here. It didn't feel comfortable, this handing the reins over to someone else. He'd always been in charge before, always been the one responsible for the group's successes or failures. It was a part of atonement, to take as much as you possibly could onto your own shoulders, to assure that your people were safe.

Nina often teased him about being a control freak, but she didn't understand.

And now Oz was morphing into Partial Dog as he spoke, and his words had developed a rough, guttural tone. Nina straightened slowly and leaned toward him, her gaze intense and her nostrils flaring, responding to some scent or signal that apparently only werewolves shared. That Jordy was having the same reaction didn't lessen Angel's sudden pang of jealousy.

"Pheromones?" Fred whispered. "Look, it's causing them to behave as though there's a full moon. Amazing." Nina had risen onto her hands and knees and begun to pant. The unnatural respiration shook her ribs and shoulders, and her dangling breasts bobbed crazily in the hammock of her bra. Oz spoke again, and her breath slowed, labored but even. Long blonde hairs became visible on her arms, thickening and then receding, and moved in and out along the sides of her face. Her brow bulged. She swayed, serpent-like, almost sensually, never taking her coal-black eyes from Oz. Jordy sat motionless, his mouth slightly open, and his little chin and lower canines jutted sharply. His ears had lengthened into elf points. A lump appeared under the fabric of his stretchy Cotton/Poly warm-up pants: the beginnings of a tail.

"Still with me?" Oz grunted. His students nodded. "Okay, we're gonna go back now."

Bit by bit, they morphed again, until all that was left was human. Nina closed her eyes and sank onto her elbows in exhaustion and rested her forehead on the cold cellar floor. Jordy flopped back against his column. "I did it!" he gasped. "I stayed awake the whole time!"

Angel was unable to keep still any longer. He shot down the steps and knelt beside Nina, pulling her up in his arms and examining her worriedly. Shiny with sweat, she raised her face to his in triumph.

"So did I!"

Pray God I never have to identify my family's bodies. Ken Osbourne stood quietly behind Elsie D, his wife beside her with an arm around her shoulder, as the girl moved from table to table and gave a name to each cadaver. The morgue seemed to be composed entirely of chemicals and stainless steel, and every sound was harsh and echoing. His brother and sister-in-law had returned to Phoenix now that the danger was over, to put their homes back in order and prepare for the entire clan's eventual return, but he and Maureen had stayed behind, among other things to help this lost child bury her sibling.

Now the sad, gruesome task here was finally completed. The girl had held up well, but Ken couldn't get them out of the building fast enough, and as they climbed back into their car he felt a sudden, desperate need to take a bath.

The basement party exploded into Michael's kitchen, some of its members literally shouting with excitement. Jordy waylaid Spike as he ambled in sleepily from upstairs. Grabbing the vampire by the belt, he yanked to get his attention and shrieked, "I CAN DO IT! I can make a face just like you can, and then I can make it go away!"

Spike cocked an eyebrow at him and grinned. "Can you now? Well, that's bloody impressive. Good lad."

Jordy beamed at the praise and danced away. Nina swooped down on Fred's videocamera. "Come on, let's play it back on the TV. I want to see everything that happened!" Tugging at Angel's sleeve, she and Fred launched into exhilarated chatter, and gradually the uproar dispersed into other parts of the house, leaving the kitchen peaceful once more.

Spike watched them go for a moment, then sat down on a bar stool and lazily scratched his stomach. " 'Pears I napped through all the fun." Under his breath he added darkly, "Not real fond of experiments in basements anyway."

He regarded Michael, who continued to unhurriedly load the dishwasher. "Were you in here doin' housework with all that going on belowstairs? Would have thought you'd be right in the thick of it."

"I was listening."

Spike smiled conspiratorially. "Bet you were. That sixth sense trick saves you quite a few steps, doesn't it? Shame it sort of flagged out on us last night, though. I guess your reception was off."

Michael rinsed his hands in the sink and began to dry them on a cup towel. "I did pick up an interesting thing now and then," he said, slowly.

"Yeah? Winning Lotto numbers? The 2005 fall TV lineup, as if anyone cares?"

"...Joyce liked her flowers."

Spike fell silent. He turned and looked wordlessly at Michael.

"The ones you brought. For her funeral."

That little bouquet that he'd pieced together in the floral shop, with a heavy heart and hands whose trembling had surprised him; the one he'd thrown to the ground in frustration when Harris wouldn't just shut the fuck up and leave him be...Joyce?

"Carnations for motherhood, tea rose for remembrance, ivy for friendship. She keeps them in a vase on her mantel, and oh, their perfume just fills the air." For a moment the seer seemed to be reciting a woman's words rather than his own.

Then he gave his head a slight shake, as if recovering himself, and quietly hung the cup towel up to dry.

In the chemical-and-chrome house of the dead, a medical examiner's assistant rolled open one of the body storage drawers and looked puzzled by its empty surface.

"Hey, did someone move this guy out already?"

"What guy?"

"The tall one; had that cut on his head...that's what I mean; he's not here."

"Huh. I don't know. I can check."

"...I haven't heard anything about moving any of them yet. No one told me anything."

"Well, don't panic; he'll turn up somewhere. It's not like he got up and pranced out by himself."

He could move in the walls now, a shadow man, hidden behind the paint and plaster and across the ceiling and now out an air duct, causing more than one employee to shudder as he passed and wonder if the morgue wasn't haunted, after all, and he slid through the dark dead grass and into an ancient crack in the pavement (Step on a crack; break your mother's back) and then the upper world fell away.

His new world was cavernous, cool to the touch, and blood-blister purple. Hell was a cave, he guessed, a nice dark cave very like a den. He dropped to all fours and began walking that way, the pads of his feet pressing against solid rock. It occurred to him that he was solid again, too. That was all right; the shadow people would show him how to become one of them again soon.

"He's come," soft, breathless voices whispered around him. "He's come, he's come, he's come."

Jeep's chest swelled with pride. Rita and the pack were forgotten; this was new hunting ground, and it might all belong to him. He paused by a stalagmite, stood up on his hind legs, and splattered the side of it with urine as high as his stream could reach. In the tunnel ahead, a skeletal creature stopped in its tracks and hissed at him. Jeep roared and was on the thing in an instant. It was stronger than it looked, and smelled vaguely familiar, somewhat like the hulking overcoat guy and the smiling smoker with whom he had done battle recently. When he closed his jaws on its throat and tore upward, the creature exploded into dust. Jeep sneezed and shook the dust from his pelt, and the little voices in the air squealed like piglets.

"I want to GO." Nina glared at her lover defiantly, her arms crossed on her chest and a stake clutched in one of her fists.

"NO, damn it! You're NOT going patrolling!"

Their debate had been raging all afternoon, and even for Thu it had passed from entertaining to annoying boredom. She lay crossways on the sofa with her legs dangled over its back and her head hanging over the seat's edge so that Angel and Nina would appear to be arguing upside down.

"People have patrolled without superpowers before; you told me that yourself! Oz used to. And so did those high school kids. And Fred; she's, she's...done stuff."

"ENOUGH!" Nina and Angel jumped simultaneously and looked toward the sofa's opposite end. Pencil and notebook were slammed to the coffee table, and where Fred had just been sitting, a cranky Illyria scowled at them.

"Your prattle is infuriating," she yelled. "Cease it before I throw you both out to the mercy of the night-feeders!"

Thu looked up at Illyria from her topsy-turvy position beside her. "Hi."

"All evening," the Old One snarled, "All evening I have listened to this pointless chatter. I will patrol, and I will take the man-dog hybrid with me. He at least knows how to hold his tongue." She stood up and impatiently yanked off her pants, shoes, and sweater, while in the wink of an eye her leathery battle armor emerged from her skin and took their places. Redressed, she stomped past Nina and Angel and exited out the front door.

Oz watched her tirade without comment. Then he shrugged and set down the Find-A-Word puzzle he'd been working, picked up a crossbow, and followed her out.