Part 10
Giles considered himself pretty handy with a crossbow. Not that the Watcher's Council was any good at teaching anyone how to do battle, but his Ripper days had yielded a thing or two about good, efficient violence.
He wished that any of it were a comfort now.
Nonetheless, as he wandered through the cemetery, making no attempt to keep quiet, he clutched the weapon in his right hand so hard, he thought he might draw blood.
"Well, well," a voice said from behind a mausoleum to his left. A strawberry-blonde stepped out from behind the stone wall, smirking. "I thought I'd run all the humans out of here. Well, all the smart ones, anyhow."
Giles swallowed hard, and not without quaver said, "Ogha Dunver."
"You've done your homework then," she replied, advancing on him. With great effort, he managed not to retreat.
"Indeed," he mumbled.
"What I can't figure out is why the Slayer would send her own Watcher into a cemetery as bait. Can you answer that for me, Mr. Giles?"
"So you've done your homework as well," Giles said, still mumbling. "Good show, Miss Dunver."
"Clearly the two of you have some feeble, suicidal plan to take me down!" She said these last three words with a mocking seriousness. "You distract me by toyin' a bit with my mind, showing how much you know about me and my extremely checkered past, and then the Slayer swoops in out of nowhere and surprises me with a stake to the heart." She laughed grandly, genuinely amused.
"I thought it was genius," Giles commented dryly.
"Oh I'll say!" Ogha laughed more.
"Especially the part where is not just the two of us," Giles said, never losing eye contact with his adversary.
With these words, Xander and Anya emerged from the bushes behind Giles, each armed with crossbows. The three of them took aim, and sent three wooden arrows flying at the vicinity of Ogha Dunver's chest. She caught all three arrows in the air effortlessly, a split second before they made contact with her skin.
Undaunted, Giles barked a command, and the three of them each loaded their crossbows, and tried a second time. Two of the arrows she was able simply to bat away. The third stuck in her leg. She gave a momentary cry of pain, then promptly yanked the offending arrow out, and made a move toward her three attackers.
From behind the vampire, Willow appeared. "Reniachne!" she cried, and Ogha went spread-eagled between two trees, as though she were bound by invisible chains. For a moment, she looked startled, but then she broke free of the imaginary chains with a large snapping sound and a bolt of orange light that seemed to weaken Willow considerably.
Ogha laughed once more. "Oh yes, I'd nearly forgotten. The Slayer no longer works alone! She has friends now, each with his or her own special power that they all use in tandem to back her up against the forces of darkness."
The laughter continued, and the Slayer's friends stared helplessly at her.
"Was this your grand plan? Surprise me with the power of the Slayer's sidekicks?"
"Mmm, there's a bit more to it than that," Xander said. "But it's not a bad idea – it's worked before."
"Oh, I'll bet," she said. She made steely eye-contact with Giles once more. As she spoke, she smirked, poking fun at the lot of them. "You've trained some worthy warriors here, Mr. Giles. It's such a shame that I'll have to kill you before you've had a chance to make their education complete."
"I'm not afraid of you," he insisted, even as the super-vampire advanced on him. "You can do what you like to me, to us, but Buffy will get the better of you in the end."
She was now near enough to touch him. Ogha's human face became that of a vampire, and she grabbed Giles by the hair and wrenched his head sideways. "And I bet this will draw her out!"
With these words, she sunk her teeth into Giles' jugular.