When Xander stepped off the plane onto the steaming tarmac, it was just past sunrise and his head was still spinning from the things he'd seen on the Continent. Gangs of vampires walking openly through cardboard shanty towns like lions in the savannah, children with distended bellies and submachine guns, AIDS victims dying in the streets.
Xander went where he was told, and when his satellite phone rang and Dawn told him, "I'm booking you on a flight to Seychelles," he didn't ask how or why. She booked him a hotel, too, which was unusual. It was a five-star resort with a smiling concierge, which was even more unusual.
He stared around the hotel room in disbelief, rubbing his temple where the strap of his eyepatch chafed sometimes. The place had a whirlpool and a balcony. The bed was bigger than his Jeep, which he'd slept in more than a few times. This was absurd. He dropped his duffel bag and left the hotel, walking through the city to the open-air market at its center.
Over his head, the sun shone brightly in a vivid blue sky. Smiling faces beamed from every café and shop window, in shades from tan and olive through brown and into darkest black. Pale, laughing Europeans strolled hand-in-hand through the streets, speaking something that could've been English played backwards. Sounds of talking and laughing mingled with a televised soccer match and the dull rhythm of the sea. Palm fronds waved in the breeze and a soft, greenclad mountain rose in the distance behind the buildings. Fish gleamed dully in the market stands next to the biggest coconuts he'd ever seen. Behind the table, a curvy dark girl flashed him a bright smile, but he just nodded and kept walking. Around every corner and beneath every awning, he kept expecting to uncover lurking evil, but nothing happened. It was downright eerie.
This place was a city in the same way that Sunnydale was one, which was not really at all. Oddly, the comparison calmed him down. If Victoria was like Sunnydale, the creepy perfection thing couldn't possibly be real.
He walked around the market once, and then turned and walked around it again, in the opposite direction. There were some nice woven baskets, and bowls made out of those huge coconuts, but it was all too strange. Everything felt off somehow, and a weird itching had started at the base of his spine. Xander left the market and went back to the hotel, without stopping on the way to admire the white sand beaches or the turquoise ocean.
Back in the hotel room, he dug through his pack until he found the satellite phone, nestled at the bottom beneath more important things. He sat there on the lush carpeting for a moment and looked at it. He'd been in Africa for – he had to count backwards – more than eight months now, and he'd never dialed a call with it. People called him, he answered, he said he was okay, and then he hung up. If they gave him directions, he followed them. If he found something of interest, he reported it the next time someone called. That was his job, his duty.
This place was different than the other places he'd been, though. Something here was off somehow; the pattern was broken. It wasn't any run-of-the-mill demon or magickal artifact, or just normal war or famine or exploitation. In fact, this place was noticeably lacking in the usual side effects of evil. No question about it – something had to be wrong here.
He flipped open the phone and looked at his paltry list of contact numbers, all programmed in by Willow before he left. He scrolled down to Dawn's name and pressed send. After all, she'd sent him to this creepy place, she should be able to explain why.
After several long moments, he heard an odd, electronic ring, then another, and another, and another… before a breathless voice answered the phone.
"Hello?"
"I'm sorry, did I wake you up? I didn't mean—I have no idea…"
"Xander?" She cut off his babbling. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing. Did I wake you up?"
"No, but you interrupted Desperate Housewives. This better be good." He could hear the smile in her voice, and he felt his shoulders relax a little.
There was a moment of silence on the phone, and then Dawn spoke again. "So what's up? I'm guessing you didn't just call to chat."
"No," he said quickly, feeling silly. How was he supposed to explain this? "Just, I got off the plane and I didn't see any gigantic snake demons or vampires or anything, so I thought I'd better find out whatever cursed thingy you wanted me to find, or apocalypse you wanted me to stop, or, you know—"
He was babbling again, so it was a good thing Dawn didn't wait for a break in the monologue.
"There's nothing like that," she said firmly.
"There's always something, right?" he asked, not really joking.
"Not in Seychelles," she said. He could hear the muffled sound of pages turning. "Mystickal deaths, zero. Strange disappearances, zero. Vampire activity, none."
Xander just blinked. Was that even possible? He thought of the other places he'd been, where dead bodies were decapitated as a matter of course, and where mysterious disappearances had become so common that many dialects had developed new words just to describe them.
"Xander? Are you still there? Can you hear me?"
"I'm here."
"Okay, good. I guess you're wondering why I sent you there, huh?"
He nodded, forgetting that she couldn't hear it over the phone.
"We think there's a slayer there," she said. "She probably never would've been called normally, in a place like that, but…"
"Yeah," he replied, rubbing his temple. "Yeah, I know."
He heard a small sigh on the other end of the line and knew it went without saying. A lot of things were different now.
"Anyway," Dawn said, reverting back to watcher mode. "Faith and Rona both dreamed about her. They say she's chubby, dark-skinned, with kinda Don King hair." In his mind's eye, he could see the girl who'd smiled at him in the market, white teeth and pink gums in a face the color of fresh-brewed coffee. "Um, if it helps, Faith said she saw some really big—"
"Coconuts, right?" he asked.
"How'd you—"
"I saw her this morning," Xander said. "At least, I think so."
"Great, so…"
"Go back to your show," he said.
She hung up and he replaced the phone in his bag, back down at the bottom where it belonged.
It was still early. The sun was shining, and the sky was blue. If Dawn had told him there was a man-eating insect outside his hotel, he'd have already grabbed his gun and be on his way. If there was one thing Africa had taught Xander, it was the utility of a gun.
But somehow, for this particular mission, he just didn't have the energy. What was he supposed to say to this girl? 'I know you live in paradise, but how'd you like to leave and fight the most horrible things you can imagine?' Yeah, that'd go over well.
He lifted a hand to rub his temple, and his fingertips grazed over the rough stubble that covered his face. It had been six days since he'd last shaved. It had been much, much longer since he'd had the opportunity to take a real, hot shower. Maybe he would just take care of a few personal things before he went to talk to this girl—this slayer.
Ten minutes later, he was washed, cleaned, and shaven, but no more enthusiastic about his mission than he had been before.
"C'mon, Harris," he told himself. "Better get this over with." As pep talks go, it wasn't the best, but it was true, and that made it effective. He picked up his gun and tucked it into the waistband of his jeans at the small of his back, pulling his t-shirt out over it for camouflage. The metal was cold against his skin, and the weight was a reminder that although he might be without backup, he was not without protection.
He took a deep breath and left the hotel, making his way up the hill to the marketplace without stopping, without passing go, and without collecting two hundred dollars. The less time he spent getting there, the less time he had to worry about the whole thing.
The crowd in the market looked different now: instead of the locals buying meat and produce, the narrow aisles between the stalls were filled with tourists, browsing and buying snacks and souvenirs. Xander tried to move quickly, but found his way blocked by several swarming little children not much taller than his knee. He stood there for less than a minute before a woman scooped up the smallest child and shooed the others back into one of the stalls, scolding loudly in some strange combination of French and English. It wasn't a long time, but it was long enough to bring up all the worry that Xander had been trying to push away.
In his eight months on the African continent, he'd found three slayers, but he'd never had an existential crisis about it before. Two of the girls, Adowa and Omarosa, had both been in imminent danger when he'd come across them, already targeted by vampires. It had been too late for Oma, and he'd been forced to stake his first slayer, just as he'd staked his best friend so many years ago. The third, Saida, was an orphan, taking care of her younger sister. The council finagled the visas and got them both passage to the States, and Saida had actually wept with joy. So it wasn't exactly a tough decision in any case.
This was different. Was he really thinking about walking up to a girl—a safe, happy, healthy girl, a girl who was obviously employed and probably with a long life in her future—and tell her that her destiny was to fight demons and die young?
As he moved through the crowd, he found himself walking slower. He could see the table where she'd stood before, now – the one with the bowls and strange carvings made out of the huge coconuts. He stopped at another table and looked without really seeing at the earrings and necklaces on display.
"Hello there," said a friendly female voice on his left.
He whipped around, turning his whole body so he could see the speaker from his one good eye. It was her.
"Hello," he replied, unsure of what else to say.
She smiled broadly, and her eyes crinkled up at the edges. "You're here," she said simply. "I've been waiting for you."
"Is there somewhere we can—" he started to say, but she was already leading him between the stalls and through a dingy alley to a little garden, where plants seemed to be exploding out through the small space between houses in a volcano of leaves and flowers.
She turned to face him, tilting her head a little to look up at him.
"How did you know—" he started to ask, but she spoke at the same time, and he stopped, embarrassed.
"My name is Nyota," she said, holding out one hand.
"Xander," he said, reaching in to shake her hand. Why hadn't he thought of that? Introductions, a groundbreaking new step in meeting people.
There was a pause, in which she seemed to be waiting for him to speak. He felt all unsettled and thrown off, as though this girl was playing by a completely different set of rules than all the other females he'd known.
"How did you know I was coming?" he finally asked, not because it was the most important thing, but because it was in his head and not going away.
"My dreams," she said simply.
Oh. Right. The same way he'd known about her. Dumb slayers and their dumb prophetic dreams, anyway.
"I am ready to go," she said, gesturing at the house behind him. "I just need my bag, and we can—"
"No way," he said. "You should stay here." He hadn't really made up his mind yet, but he talked like he had. "This is your home, it's safe here. Out there –" he waved his arm, as if he could indicate the entire rest of the non-tropical-paradise world. "There are horrible things out there."
"In my dreams I have seen all those things," she said. "When I saw them, I was fighting them." She looked him straight in the eye. "That is the way it should be."
The next thing he knew, she had disappeared into the stuccoed house next to the garden, and he was standing there alone. He couldn't exactly argue with someone who wasn't there.
I have seen all those things, and I was fighting them, he repeated to himself.
It had been a long time since Xander saw his first vampire, but he never forgot the feel of it, the bone-tingling, stomach-churning wrongness of the whole experience. And since then, he'd hung out with Angel, and he'd fought alongside Spike. Hell, he'd even played poker with Clem, who'd been a pretty decent guy, and not just for a demon. He almost married a demon, once. He laughed dryly at that, and the sting that came along with the thought of Anya was kind of a happy one, for the first time in a long time.
But even with all that, there had never been a time when he had seen evil and not wanted to fight it.
He crossed his arms and shifted uncomfortably, rubbing his temple. The flowers around him stretched out toward the sun, and the muted sounds of people talking drifted over from the marketplace. Had he really tried to tell that girl that she should stay here in the peace and quiet and not fight evil?
Nyota stepped down the concrete steps and let the screen door shut with a bang behind her. She carried a large duffel bag slung over her shoulder. "Ready to go?" she asked.
"Yeah," he said. "Let's go."