"Where the hell are the lookouts?" Buffy asked as she squinted her eyes against glare the afternoon sun and scanned the rooftop of Sunnydale High School. "Why are we bothering to write up schedules if nobody is going to follow them?"
We're supposed to have at least two people up there no matter what time of day it is … I'm definitely going to have Xander do some yelling.
"You wanted everyone in the gymnasium for Giles's experiment, or demonstration, or whatever," Angel reminded her. "They're probably there."
"I didn't mean the lookouts," she said with a scowl.
He shrugged. "I mean, I'm not sure that's where they are … also, we're getting off topic." His calm, even voice did nothing to quell her irritation that the conversation she'd tried to end a few times now was continuing. "I'm not trying to tell you how to run things, all I'm saying is that you can go a little easier on Faith."
Buffy snorted, folded her arms, and stared at Angel. Everyone was waiting for her in the gymnasium, she very much wanted to test Giles's Mohra concoction before sunset, and the last time she had checked, she decided how hard and how far to push the White Hats, not Angel.
"Don't you get it?" she asked him with a shake of her head. "Faith … the Faith that I knew and fought with for months, she sacrificed herself so that the Faith in this world could have her own life. Instead, she's here … she's here instead of finding a different path. I wouldn't be doing this Faith any favors if I encouraged her to stay in Sunnydale. In fact, lately I've been thinking that I should have hauled her by the ear to a bus out of town and strapped her to a seat."
Angel held out his hands in a placating gesture. The sleeves of his coat bunched closer to his elbows and his sinuous, red-tinged tattoos twisted black beneath the afternoon sunlight. "She isn't leaving. You gave Faith the tough love treatment, she stuck around, and now it's getting …"
"Just a bit mean?" Spike asked as he ducked around a car and joined them.
"You, too?" Buffy asked with a sigh.
Spike scratched at his chin and gazed westward at the setting sun. "Faith definitely needs a dose of reality now and then, but you've kind of made her your personal whipping boy … or bitch … or whatever."
"Even Spike agrees with me!" Angel muttered.
Buffy tilted her head at Spike and pursed her lips in annoyance. "I thought you and Angel never agreed on anything?"
Spike shrugged, and replied, "I told you weeks ago, when she first bloody arrived, that she wasn't going anywhere. She's as stubborn as you are."
"Fine," she finally muttered to Angel. "I'll back off. Are you happy?"
Angel smiled at her, she felt her heart flutter for a moment, and she started to smile back until she saw Spike frowning at her.
"You guys do know there's a vampire tied up in the gymnasium, right?" Spike asked as he gestured with his thumb towards the school.
She nodded and stared at the front doors to the school. "Shall we?"
As the three of them proceeded across the parking lot, Spike asked, "Do you really think this anti-vampire perfume is going to work?"
"It had better," Buffy replied as she stepped off the asphalt and onto the sidewalk in front of the school. "Because the alternative is that we have to spend the rest of our lives slaying vampires in this town one by one."
Angel rubbed at the back of his neck, Spike studiously kept his eyes fixed on the doors in front of them as they climbed the steps, and neither of them replied to her comment.
The sky had already begun to turn red-orange by the time they swung the doors open. Buffy took a moment to glance at her watch … they had, at most, another hour of daylight left.
"It'll work," she said with a confidence she didn't entirely feel.
. . . . . . . . .
Buffy eyed the howling, yellow-eyed, fanged creature writhing and thrashing on the rolling gurney they had borrowed from the nurse's office. Thick, wide canvas straps stretched across the vampire's body were buckled beneath the cot, padded manacles fastened at wrists and ankles kept the creature's limbs pinned to the solid metal frame of the gurney, and a wide, thick collar locked around its neck kept it from lifting its head by means of belts buckled to the railings on either side.
As Buffy stared at the snarling, snapping vamp, which had once been a young woman not much older than herself, one thought fixed itself at the forefront of her mind.
She turned to Giles, pointed at the restrained vampire, and in a low, angry voice, asked, "That's what you were planning on doing to me that day in the library? When you thought I had lost it because I wanted to look for Spike?" She again eyed the complicated, Silence-of-the-Lambs-esque bindings securing the vampire to the gurney and said, "Holy shit, Giles … really?"
Giles removed his glasses, rubbed at his forehead, and replied in a similarly low volume, "I have apologized so many times, Buffy, and I will take the regret to my grave."
Buffy ignored the vampire screaming curses and shook her head. "Seriously though … what the hell? This is nightmare fuel."
Giles slipped his glasses back over his nose, sighed, and put his arm around her shoulder. For a moment she thought about brushing it off, then she patted his hand and decided … for roughly the three hundredth time … to let the events of that day go.
"Giles," Oz asked as he eyed the vampire with a wary eye, "I've been thinking about your plan, and I kind of suspect I've detected a fatal flaw."
After removing his arm from Buffy's shoulders, Giles stepped over to a small table set next to the pinioned vampire and picked up a clear, corked beaker made of thick glass and a spray bottle made of the same material. The beaker was filled with glowing, green blood while the spray bottle contained a yellowish, bubbling fluid. "And what flaw might that be?" Giles asked Oz as he uncorked the beaker, poured the glowing green contents into the spray bottle, then sealed both containers.
I sincerely hope that Giles isn't planning on sending us out to convert vampires back to the living armed with spritzers that look best suited to misting indoor plants.
"Vampires don't breathe," Oz pointed out.
The roughly twenty-five White Hats assembled in the gymnasium widened their eyes at Oz's comment, Buffy found herself holding her own breath as she pondered the question, and Giles and Wesley exchanged glances.
"The little man has a good point," Kendra said as she folded her arms and stared at Buffy.
Oz frowned at the nickname Kendra had given him, but voiced no protest.
Why is Kendra staring at me? This wasn't my research project.
"I'm sure Jeeves … sorry, Giles …" Faith started to reply. Giles fixed with her a wounded look, Spike bit back a laugh, then Faith winced and continued, "Giles has that all figured out. Right?"
"Who told you vampires don't breathe?" Spike asked. "Haven't you ever seen me smoke?"
"I remember breathing when I was a vamp," Xander said as he raised his hand and turned to stare at Angel. "Didn't we?"
Angel nodded. "We did." He frowned, then added, "Sort of."
"Air moves in and out of vampire lungs just as it moves in and out of human lungs," Wesley said, "but it is not true breath."
"But it will serve for our purposes," Giles said as he held up the spray bottle and shook it for a time. When he had finished, a satisfied grin appeared on his face as he eyed the bubbling green substance within. "Wesley is correct, it is not true breath, for it neither imparts life to the vampire nor is it exhaled as breathable air. Vampires mimic the habits and behaviors of the living … and that includes inhalation and exhalation. Some vampires, I suppose, might eventually break the habit, but even so, the Mohra blood has been mixed with a variety of commonly available aerosol chemicals that can be absorbed by the lips, the inner nose, ear canals … it does not necessarily have to be inhaled to be effective."
When Giles turned towards the vampire, the creature lay still, blinked a few times, and her features transformed into those of a human with a rapidity that always startled Buffy no matter how times she witnessed the metamorphosis. The protruding jaw and fangs retracted back into place, the yellow eyes and raised brow softened into a semblance of humanity, and within the blink of an eye a young woman, no older than her early twenties, stared up at them. She had soft amber curls that glowed against the white of the cot, large golden-brown eyes, pale skin, high cheekbones, and a delicate chin and mouth set with rosebud lips.
Spike let out a low, appreciative whistle, walked over to Xander and Oz, and patted them both on the back. "Good choice," he announced as he eyed the vampire and smiled.
She's beautiful … and Spike can be a real asshole sometimes. I'm standing right here!
"What's in that bottle?" the vamp asked with a surprisingly light, musical voice as it twisted its hands and tried to wriggle its wrists free of the restraints. Buffy visualized herself doing the same thing while in a sedative-induced haze and she had to fight down her anger at Giles all over again. "When I get free of this I will kill all of you!"
Faith turned towards Xander and Oz, raised an eyebrow, and gestured towards the gorgeous vampire. "I don't suppose there's any particular reason your gang of vamp-snatchers chose a test subject that looks like she could double as a Victoria's Secret model?" Faith glanced at the figure strapped to the gurney and shook her head. "Could you be any more stereotypical?"
"Hey!" Xander protested. "Giles said one vampire's just as good as another."
"Oh, she's better than most," Spike added.
Buffy raised her leg so that she could slam her boot onto his foot, but Spike anticipated the move and scampered away.
"Guys, she's still a vampire," Angel admonished them in a stern, serious manner. "One who, after she turns back into a person, I should probably spend some time with in order to help her adjust."
Wesley cleared his throat and straightened the cuffs of his shirt. He still hadn't ditched the tie, Buffy noticed, but at least the the grey suit seemed to fit him a little better than it had in the months prior. "Angel, while your offer is generous, I do not think you have the training for this sort of matter. It would be best if I monitored her re-adapting to the world of the living."
A number of clamoring voices rang out as White Hats raised their hands and volunteered for the job of keeping an eye on the soon-to-be-cured young woman lying in front of them.
Guys, this is pathetic!
"Oh, good lord," Giles exclaimed as he turned his eyes towards the roof of the gymnasium.
"Stay away from me, you weirdos!" the vampire cried out as it twisted its body and tried to leverage its weight against the straps.
"I mean, Faith does have a point about choosing this particular vampire to heal," Larry interrupted with a frown. "There was this one vamp Kendra dusted that kind of looked like that guy from One Tree Hill … we could have definitely saved him instead."
"Dat one was going to stab the little man with a knife!" Kendra protested as she gestured at Oz. "I had to stake 'im!"
Oz frowned and said, "Kendra, I've let it slide for a while now, but could you maybe find another nickname for me?"
Kendra winked at him and smiled. "I think it is cute."
Oz did a double-take and then stared at Kendra with an open mouth.
"Could we focus?" Buffy snapped. "You guys can work through your creepy white knight tendencies on your own time."
The comely vamp twisted and pulled at the straps and stared with a combination of fury and fear at the White Hats. "Fucking let me loose you sick fucks!"
"Not till we help you," Buffy said. "Giles, see if it works."
"Let's try dis glowing goop already," Kendra said in an impatient tone. "It will work or it won't … either way I see no reason to be waitin'."
Kendra," Buffy said in a dry, acerbic manner, "let me remark again on just how glad I am that you're finally getting with the program."
The cornrow-haired slayer folded her arms and nodded towards Wesley. "It was his decision. I think dat ya'all be mad."
"Wonderful," Buffy said as she rotated back to Giles. "Here goes nothing?"
Giles nodded, approached the vampire, and from the thing's frightened, keening reaction you would have thought a twenty foot demon was approaching instead of a brown-suited, bespectacled English librarian.
"I'll tear your throat out!" the vamp screamed, and as she heaved her body in an attempt to escape, Buffy was quite certain that the male White Hats, including Spike and Angel, were leaning in closer for a better view.
Giles held the bottle aloft, the green liquid bubbled and frothed within, and he depressed the spray bottle's lever a single time from a distance of about five feet. Glowing particulate drifted through the air, settled upon the vampire's clothing and face, and everyone … Buffy included … leaned further forward to see what would happen. The vampire flinched away from the substance, looked about in curiosity as nothing seemed to happen, then it opened its mouth … most likely to scream some further vile imprecation.
The moment its lips parted the change took hold. Some of the green mist flickered onto its white teeth, some settled into its nostrils, its eyes widened in response, and then its entire body tensed and thrashed against the gurney. The creature flopped with its jaws wide in a soundless scream, with one final convulsion it arched its back as high as the restraints allowed, and then it collapsed back against the padding of the cot.
Cautiously, with Giles and Wesley flanking her, Buffy walked forward until she was hovering right over the vampire. Except it wasn't a vampire anymore, it was a young woman with wild, frightened eyes whose chest rose and fell while she gasped for air.
Giles reached out his hand, the woman tried to twist away, and his voice was calm when he spoke. "I just want to check for a pulse … nobody is going to hurt you."
The woman tensed at the words, then nodded and laid still. Giles placed two fingers against her neck, waited a moment, then glanced over at Buffy and Wesley.
"Did it work?" Buffy asked.
"It worked," Giles confirmed.
There were cheers, cries of joy, howls of triumph, and when Buffy realized that the young woman strapped to the cot had begun to weep, she raised her hand and screamed at everyone to be quiet. "Guys!" she scolded them. "There's a real, live, super-scared woman here. Let's tone it down a bit?"
Wesley and Giles began the process of unfastening the myriad buckles holding the woman to the gurney, and as they worked she turned her tear-filled, golden-brown eyes to Buffy. "Was that real?" she asked between sobs. "What I remember, did it really happen? Did … did I do those things?"
Buffy walked over and held the woman's hand. "You're better now, and that's what's important. There was a … a …" Her words trailed off as she realized she couldn't quite remember the cover story they'd agreed upon.
"A virus," Wesley interjected as he bent beneath the gurney and unfastened the belt holding the woman's collar in place. "A bio-engineered military virus that affects the brain and makes people do things that they would normally never do."
"A virus?" the woman said in a heavy with skepticism. "You were calling me a vampire just a few minutes ago … I remember thinking that I was a vampire!"
Buffy squeezed the woman's hand and interrupted her. "We call the infected vampires because this virus, it makes people do vampire-y kind of stuff." Buffy could only hope that her words didn't sound as lame to the young woman as they did to herself. "The important thing to remember is that you weren't responsible for what you did and that you have your life back now. We found a cure."
The woman's eyes darted around the gymnasium. "You found a cure? A bunch of high school students?"
"I'm a librarian, actually," Giles said with a grin as he unbuckled the last of the bindings.
The woman, with Wesley and Giles's help, sat up. "A librarian?" she asked as she looked him over.
"Part-time," Giles replied.
Xander walked over, rubbed his hands together, and with an eager expression asked, "How long until we're ready to roll out with this stuff?
"Good question," Buffy replied as she stared at Giles. "How long will it take you to make more of this stuff?"
Giles held his hand to his mouth, coughed, and an apologetic expression appeared on his face. "I will admit to possessing a certain amount of confidence that this test would work … I have everything I need to finish tonight."
"Tonight?" Angel interjected. "Really?"
"What?" Spike asked. "You have plans? Your hairdresser have something special planned to make you look like even more of a nancy-boy poof?"
Angel frowned, cross his arms, and pointedly ignored Spike's comments.
Buffy noticed that amongst the smiling, celebratory expressions, Kendra was singularly unaffected by what she had just seen.
"Told ya it would work," Buffy reminded the other slayer.
Kendra tightened her jaw, drew her lips into a thin line across her face, and said nothing.
Wesley helped the tottering, hesitant, frightened woman off the gurney and led her towards one of the small offices set in the side of the gymnasium, Giles began to discuss the most effective way to use his spray-on vampire-cure, and Buffy sought out Faith and sidled up next to her.
"Hey," she said.
Faith stared at her with a trepidatious look on her face and replied, "Hey."
"Look," Buffy began, "I had a chat with some of the guys, and I wanted to let you know that there aren't going to be any more scare-Faith-out-of-town tests, and we're going to go a bit easier on you on sparring, and … yeah … the hazing is over."
Faith eyed her for a moment, appeared on the verge of pretending that she didn't know what Buffy was referring to, then finally replied, "Honest injun'? You're actually all good now with me staying in Sunnydale?"
Buffy nodded. "You got the Full Metal Jacket drill sergeant tough love, you gutted it out, and we're all good."
Faith laughed for a moment, and it was the first bit of mirth Buffy had seen from her in a week. "I always saw you as more of a Lou Gossett, Jr. in Officer and a Gentleman type."
They both laughed at that.
"You know, B," Faith continued, "I'm glad we've reached this détente and all that, cause like I told you a while ago, I've got no place else to go."
Oh, Faith … anywhere would be better than here.
Not trusting herself to respond to that comment in a fashion Faith would find supportive, she instead patted her on the back. As she did so, she noticed Xander watching the two of them. Then again, as of late he always seemed to be watching Faith.
Giles strolled over to her.
"Whereto next?" she asked. "Where do we go to assemble this anti-evil superweapon?"
"The library," he replied.
Buffy rolled her eyes and sighed. "I should have guessed."
. . . . . . . . .
"I just can't do it … I'm sorry, but I can't. Not anymore," Willow said as she zipped up her coat and fixed Tara with a determined eye. Tara was twisting locks of her light-brown hair in her hands, a nervous habit that she'd never quite broken, and her blue eyes were filled with worry as she stared at Willow.
"I mean, it's almost over, Will. Why not just wait until the vampires are gone? Besides, Jenny is on her way here with one of those books we asked for, the ones that Giles doesn't want us to read, and …"
"Hide till the vamps are gone, is what you mean?" Willow interjected as she sat on the edge of the bed and pulled on her sneakers. "I'm not going to hide anymore, Tara. Giles thinks he's figured out a way to turn vamps back into people, and I know what it's like when that happens to someone … I don't want to be cowering back here at the school when I can be helping."
Tara sat down next to her and put a trembling arm around her.
"We're not hiding, Will. We're training, we're focusing on healing, we're … I'll do anything you want if you'll stay." Tara's eyes were desperate as her voice took on a wheedling, pleading tone. "I mean it, anything you'd like me to do, you've got it, including that one thing you really like, when I …"
Willow folded her legs beneath her, indian-style, turned towards Tara, and interrupted her by leaning forward, taking her face between her hands, and giving her a kiss. Tara's lips tasted faintly of mint … she must have brushed recently … and they were soft, warm, and almost inviting enough to change Willow's mind.
Almost.
"I'm going to go help," Willow said in a comforting murmur. "I know you're not ready, and I'm totally fine with that, but this is what I have to do."
She stood and tried to ignore that Tara's eyes were beginning to tear up.
"Today?" Tara said as she wiped her sleeve across her face. "Of all days, today … when Buffy is dead set on starting her rampage through town healing vamps and searching for the Master … this is the day you want to go White Hat it up? Will, we're not the only ones who aren't going, Jenny will be down here studying with me, and …"
"My mind is made up," Willow announced. "Buffy needs everyone who can help and I'm one of the every … or, at least I should be."
Tara bent down and put her face in her hands. "I don't want you to go. Is that selfish and horrible of me to say?"
"It isn't," Willow assured her. "And it's actually really sweet how important us is to you, but not everything can be about us, Tara. If we're turning people back into people, I've been through it. I may know what to say, or how to talk them down off ledges … literally. I can help. I have to help."
Tara looked up at her with rheumy, red-rimmed eyes. "Is there anything I can say to change your mind?"
"I love you, Tara," Willow said as she leaned over to kiss her on the cheek, "but I couldn't live with myself if I didn't do this."
A wide smile erupted on Tara's face. "That's the first time you've said that you loved me."
Willow reached out and tapped her shoulder. "Well, are you going to leave me hanging or are you going to say it back?"
Tara stood, put her hands on her waist, and gave her a long and … in Willow's opinion, rather thorough … kiss.
"I love you, too," Tara said when the kiss was over.
Willow hugged Tara for a time, realized that if they said even one more word to each other, she might lose her resolve, then pried herself free and retreated out the door. They'd managed to cozy-ify their cramped room to a fairly decent extent, but the moment she walked onto the concrete-floored, fluorescent lit corridors of the Sunnydale High School basement she was reminded of just how miserable their living situation was.
Buffy and Spike have a house now … maybe they have a spare room they'd like to rent to two dead-broke witches?
The corridors, predictably, were deserted as she made her way to the stairway leading upwards. Everyone besides her and Tara were gearing up for battle, preparing Giles's vamp-healing concoction, or just being generally useful … which she had not been for all these long months. When she reached the top of the stairs, she pushed the door open, stepped through, and let it swing closed behind her.
The lockers trailed on either side of her, the white linoleum was just as she remembered it, and holy shit was it depressing that she and her girlfriend were living in the basement of the high school she'd dropped out before graduating. Well, she hadn't really dropped out, not exactly, but being turned into a vampire had effectuated the same result. She'd considered studying for her GED, but the thought was beyond depressing.
She didn't notice the breeze wafting through the high school at first, but when the faint smell of fresh cut grass hit her nostrils, she paused mid-stride and glanced about. The library was further along the hallway she was treading, but the smell was coming from the direction of the cafeteria.
The breeze intensified as she followed her nose, and by the time she reached her destination there was a chill in the air strong enough that shivered inside her coat. The twin doors on the far wall were wide open and she could see the dark shapes of the high school storage sheds, portable classrooms, and football field bleachers in the distance.
Those doors are always locked.
Her sneakers made soft, squeaking noises as she walked across the cafeteria, and the cold intensified as she neared the open doors. With every footstep tendrils of foreboding wrapped tighter around her spine, but she dismissed them as her imagination. When she reached the doors, she extended a hand to close them, and as she did so she realized that she was standing on something that wasn't linoleum.
What's that?
She stepped back, glanced down, and squinted her eyes at the white tile of the floor. Splinters of wood were scattered about, and as Willow's eyes trailed upwards she realized that the door's metal bolts and the wooden frame surrounding them had been ripped free.
Someone forced this open.
She stepped forward to see if it might be possible to close the doors and then wedge them in place, and the moment her foot struck the pavement outside the school a hand snaked from the darkness to clamp itself over her mouth. A muffled howl barely audible a few feet away was all that was heard as she was dragged into the darkness.
. . . . . . . . .
"We ready?" Buffy asked.
"For gardening season, it looks like," Spike replied.
Giles and Wesley ignored Spike, glanced at each other, then swiveled their gazes back to her and nodded.
"We're ready," Giles confirmed.
Buffy rapped a fist on the gleaming, scuba-looking metal tank propped up on the book counter and was rewarded with a deep, thudding clunk. The tank had a rather complicated nozzle and pressurized valve at the top that Giles assured her would work, but which looked rather jury-rigged, and which was itself attached to a short length of garden hose topped by a pistol grip spray wand attachment.
"Looks heavy," she remarked as she eyed the two identical canisters sitting side by side. The tanks, just like the scuba tanks they resembled, had a webbed harness latched tightly around the metal that connected to a shoulder rig … perfect for carrying the tanks on a person's back. "And how long have you been working on this?"
"A few weeks now," Wesley replied as he stared with beaming pride at the canisters. "We're really quite proud of how they turned out."
"You really need to get laid," Spike observed.
Wesley's face flushed a bright red, he opened his mouth to retort, then appeared to think better of responding.
"Buffy, we've mixed the Mohra blood in with aerosol solutions to maximize the available volume, but what you see here …" Giles gestured at the two tanks, "is all there is."
"Except for that," Buffy noted while she pointed at the small, glowing green spritzer bottle sitting on the counter behind the scuba tanks.
"Except for the test sample," Giles agreed. "Now, I suppose we should go over how the aerosol dispersal systems work."
"How hard can it be?" Spike asked with a laugh. "You point the hose and pull the trigger."
Wesley winced and held out a hand. "It's a bit more complicated than that."
"I tink we can figure dat out," Kendra said as she stepped forward and picked up one of the tanks. "Like the blond annoying one says, they go on your back, you hold the hose, and then you point the end at the vampire and squeeze the trigger. Is dat 'bout it?"
Buffy allowed herself a grin at Spike's obvious unhappiness at being at the wrong end of an irritating nickname for once.
Kendra reached for the handle as if to test whether the spray handle worked, and in response both Giles and Wesley began pleading for her to stop.
"Kendra, we only have so much," Giles said with imploring eyes as he shooed her hands away from the hose.
"Guess dat's how it works," Kendra added as she re-positioned her fingers away from the trigger.
Buffy looked around at the assembled White Hats. "We'll pick a patrol route, hit nest after nest, and heal some folks. Remember, if we can, shepherd them back to the vans where the PTVD … post-traumatic-vampire-disorder … team will hopefully coax them into coming back to the high school where we can keep an eye on them."
"The people we heal are going to be in a bad way, Buffy," Angel reminded her.
"True," Oz said in that philosophical way he was an expert that, "but at least they won't be vampires anymore."
"Gotta warn you, not all of them are going to be as gorgeous as the one sleeping on the couch in the gymnasium office," Spike added.
Buffy shot Spike a withering glare and shrugged. "I know they're going to be out of it, and possibly suicidal, after they're healed, but we've been over this … step one is to turn them human."
"I'll carry this to the van," Kendra said as she picked up the tank and slung it over her back.
"I'll grab the other one," Larry volunteered. "I figure I'd have been asked anyway." He picked up a tank, staggered for a moment at the weight, then perched it lengthwise atop one massive shoulder.
Xander raised a cautious hand. "Anyone else think, with the canisters being fitted to those backpack contraptions, and the hose, and everything, that whoever wears them is going to kind of look like a …"
"Ghostbuster," came a chorus of cries from perhaps half of the assembled White Hats.
Xander chuckled. "Guess it wasn't just me … we always had the talent, now we've got the tools."
"Who you gonna call?" Faith asked as she smiled at Xander.
Xander smiled back, and Buffy could not help but notice a flicker of affection on both of their faces as they looked at each other.
Now's not the time, but that was cute.
"Okay then," Buffy said as she walked over to the book counter and unrolled a map of the city. "Let's pick a starting spot and roll out in force."
"Aye aye," Spike said as he held his hand up to his forehead in a mock salute.
Wesley cleared his throat and held up a hand. "Now, Buffy, as hesitant as I am to propose a delay, after seeing the efficacy of Mr. Giles's Mohra-blood-aerosol concoction I felt it prudent to place a call to the Council. They're considering sending additional manpower."
"You called the Watchers Council?" Buffy asked with a stone-faced expression and arms folded across her chest. "You can't be serious."
"Wesley …" Giles said in a low, angry murmur while shaking his head.
"They had to be made aware of what you discovered!" Wesley protested. "Whatever you may think of them, this knowledge is too important for only us to be in possession of it."
"Fine," Buffy said with a wave of her hand. "What Wesley just said makes a certain amount of sense, I guess, but we're not waiting for the Council. Not tonight, not ever. Waiting for them to get off their asses is how slayers get killed. We die, they get replacements, that's how it works."
Wesley removed his glasses and began to clean them in a nervous mirror of Giles's habit. "I am beginning to fear that you are right.
"If we want to fix this town, we have to do it ourselves," Buffy said as she eyed the map. "You know what, City Hall is as good a place as any to start."
"Really?" Angel asked. "Buffy, that's vampire central. We've been working along the edges for months."
"Sounds perfect," Xander growled.
"We're only going to surprise them with this healing slime this one time," Spike added.
"It's also our best chance of finding the Master," Buffy pointed out. "Let me tell you, if he becomes human again, it's going to be really difficult to not kick his ass all over Sunnydale."
"The Master would probably feel so guilty he'll off himself," Faith interjected. When Angel and Xander's heads swiveled at her with hurt, accusatory expressions, she hurried to add, "Not that people are responsible for what they do when they all vampired-up … they didn't have a soul, I get it."
"Nice save, Faith," Spike whispered while he winked at her. "Really well done."
Angel shook his head at Faith, then turned back to Buffy. "This is it, isn't it?"
Buffy nodded, walked over to the weapons bucket, and began handing out implements of destruction that she sorely hoped they would not need that night. She tucked a stake into the back of her belt, another into a harness she'd sewn into the interior of the red leather jacket she wore, and reminded everyone, "These are a last resort." She held aloft and waved an axe before handing it hilt first to a White Hat. "We tackle, we spray, we heal, we provide unlicensed psychological counseling back here at the school, but we don't kill unless it's necessary. Everyone got that?"
A chorus of yes resounded around her.
"Oh, and if one of us gets hurt," she added, "ask to get doused." Quite a few eyes widened and Buffy realized that most of the White Hats hadn't considered that possibility. "Unless there are any questions, let's roll."
"Damn, B," Faith said as she fixed her with an appreciative grin, "you're hard core."
B is a much better nickname than Cleveland.
"Five by five," Buffy replied, and she chuckled to herself when Faith looked at her with an expression of shock.
"Is anyone ever going to explain what that means?" Oz asked.
. . . . . . . . .
Buffy's black leather boots clicked against the empty hallways of the school, the stake tucked into the back of her dark pants pressed into the small of her back, and for roughly the fifth time in only sixty seconds of walking from the library she tried the radio again.
"Kendra, Larry, whoever is at the van, pick up," When only crackling silence answered her, she clicked the button on the handheld radio and tried a different tactic, "Becca? Anyone on the roof, come in?" She glanced over at Angel. "I thought you said the lookouts were in the gymnasium?"
Angel shook his head. "I said that's where I thought they'd be, but I didn't know."
"There were three lookouts," Oz replied. "I can see one radio running out of juice, but all three?"
"Buffy," Spike said, and for once he sounded serious, "I don't like this."
Her mind was focused on the task on hand, she was eager to get to the van, but with every step she took her concern grew.
"Nobody is answering," she mused aloud as she neared the set of four glass doors topped by a glass oval at the front of the school. The doors to the classrooms on either side were closed and locked, she could see no signs of movement outside the school, but her slayer instincts were begin to curl and bristle along the edge of her spine. "Something is wrong," she announced as she pulled the stake from the back of her belt, pushed one of the glass doors opened, and hurried outside.
She darted forward and glanced around to take in the large trees, the stone benches, and the neatly manicured lawns on either side of the paved walkway that led to the parking lot. The White Hat vans were parked just at the bottom of the steps leading to the school, and as she stared in the direction of their transportation, she realized that there were people gathered along the edge of the parking lot.
No, not people … vampires.
"Buffy, we need to get back inside, now!" Spike roared.
"Kendra and Larry are out here," Angel pointed out.
"What have I done …" she whispered to herself. She turned to urge everyone back into the school, to tell them to flee, to tell them to do something, and as she did so movement above them caught her eye. Some slithering thing was moving along the tile of the roof and sinuously weaving itself amongst the hand-railings and lookout platforms they had built. She could make out three forms on the extreme edge of the ochre tile of the roof, standing so still that it took her a moment in the dim moonlight to be sure that they were people at all.
The lookouts.
"Becca! Percy! Taylor!" She screamed. The three White Hats made no reply, nor did they even flinch in response to her words. Instead, the creature on the roof twisted forward, something snaked out from its torso, and one by one it pushed the three unmoving figures forward.
Buffy screamed a warning, the people gathered around her cried out with a mix of anger and terror, and everyone scrambled away as three stone statues that had once been their friends toppled forward, plummeted downwards, and then shattered upon the concrete walkway in front of the school. Buffy felt a wave of nausea sweep over her when she realized that she could recognize part of Becca's face on a piece of stonework.
She readied her stake and glanced up, but the creature on the roof had vanished from sight.
"What the hell is that?" Faith asked.
"I'm feeling like I should have paid more attention to Greek mythology," Oz muttered.
A dark coated figure stepped to the edge of the parking lot asphalt, fixed its red eyes on Buffy, and called out in a sibilant, mocking manner, "Everyone has a plan, Slayer, until they get bit in the throat." The Master smiled at her, and its red mouth and white fangs were hideous in the yellow light of the parking lot.
The vamps began to emerge from everywhere. They crept along the edges of the school to hem them in towards the front doors, their dark, yellow-eyed forms rose from within the classrooms on either side of them and made themselves visible through the windows, and the sheer number of them in the parking lot dwarfed her ability to count.
"B," Faith whispered. "Look." She pointed towards the leftmost van. Several vamps were holding the canisters of Mohra blood upside down while others were depressing the triggers and emptying the green, glowing solution into a storm drain.
"No …" Buffy whispered as her heart froze into a solid knot of rage. "No!"
"Oh, yes, Slayer," the Master said as he positioned himself at the front of the fanged, yellow-eyed horde behind him. "Your one friend here wasn't very talkative," he gestured towards Kendra, who was wrapped in chains and being held on her knees by at least half a dozen vamps, but once we started hurting her, the other one was more than happy to tell us about your secret weapon." A few of the vamps shifted to reveal Larry being pinned against the ground by another knot of vampires. Kendra's left eye was bloody and swollen shut, her face was a mass of bruises, and when she spat blood on the ground, Buffy was certain that a few teeth clicked against the asphalt. Larry sported a black eye and judging from the way a vampire was pinning him down by his right arm, that shoulder was either broken or dislocated, but at least he and Kendra were alive.
But they won't be alive for long if I don't do something.
"Look," she said in what she hoped was calm, even voice as she stared at the pallid, hairless, inhuman visage of the master. "I want my friends, you must want something from me … I'm sure we can work something out."
The master folded his arms against the ankle length, high-collared, black leather coat that he wore, and tapped long-nailed fingers thoughtfully against his elbow. "Is this when you offer yourself for them? That's so cliched … I expected better from you."
She couldn't even open her mouth to reply before Spike had grabbed her arm so hard that it hurt.
"Don't you even think about it," he whispered. "I bloody mean it, Buffy. You can't trust anything that monster says."
"Spike's right," Angel added.
"Buffy, if we do not retreat now, soon we will not be able to," Giles murmured as he glanced at the scores of vampires that formed a tightening ring around them.
"I can't leave Larry and Kendra," she said with a shake of her head.
A piercing, high-pitched yelp sounded from where the vampires were pouring out the last bits of Mohra solution, and every eye … including the Master's … rotated to the source of the sound. A vampire … a former vampire … was staring in shock at the green substance coating its fingers. It felt at its face, then at its teeth, and blinked its eyes in stunned surprise.
"I'm … healed …" it said. "I'm healed!" he yelled out triumphantly.
The Master made a curt gesture with one hand and a vampire stepped forward, grabbed its now human-brethren, and sunk its fangs into its throat. The screaming quickly became a bubbling, gurgling murmur, and when it was over the vampire threw the corpse of its former comrade to the ground.
"This is why I told you all to wear gloves!" the Master snarled. With a shake of its head it turned back to Buffy. "Where were we?"
"There has to be a way …" Buffy cried out, almost to herself.
"Buffy," Angel said as he grabbed her arm. She could feel the heat of his tattoos blazing along the edges of his wrist. "We can't stay here."
"I have an idea," the Master called out in a mocking, desultory fashion as he strolled over to where Kendra was kneeling. The slayer fought against the chains and arms holding her down, yelled a few choice oaths, and stared at the Master with an expression of defiance. The Master made another gesture and one of the vampires grabbed the dark strands of Kendra's hair and pulled her head back to expose her neck. Her eyes had no fear in them, only anger, and she fixed the Master with a murderous glare.
"Wait!" Buffy screamed. "Don't!"
The Master drew back his arm, whipped it forward, and his nails gouged a trail of neat, scarlet lines across Kendra's throat. For a moment, just a moment, Buffy thought that the blow hadn't struck home, and then she glimpsed the dull-white of Kendra's exposed trachea just before scarlet fluid erupted from the ruin of the woman's throat.
The White Hats screamed, Buffy clenched her fists in anger, and Kendra's eyes rolled back in her head while her body went limp.
This was Kendra's first night working with us.
"I'm surprised you haven't rushed me in a suicidal attempt to save this one," the Master taunted her while he simultaneously had his henchvamps yank Larry upwards into a kneeling position. "He'll be joining his friend soon."
"I'll kill you for this, you son of a bitch," Buffy informed him. There was a coldness to her voice that she wasn't sure she had ever quite managed before. "I promise that you are going to die screaming."
"You know, I feel it's incumbent upon me to point out the unfairness of you feeling entitled to be so upset that I'm taking your friends from you," the Master said as he stared at her with unblinking red eyes, "since I seem to recall that you took one of mine first." He made a gesture towards the back of the parking lot. "Bring her up here."
Buffy's heart froze in her chest when she saw a red-haired, yellow-sweater-wearing form being vamphandled towards the front of the vampires massed in the parking lot. Unlike Kendra and Larry, Willow didn't look to have been beaten, but her eyes were filled with fear as two enormous vampires gripped her arms and frogmarched her into view.
Xander, Spike, and Angel's curses at the sight of Willow in the clutches of the Master's goons were foul enough to have peeled paint off the wall, and to her surprise Giles joined them in voicing epithets. She glanced over and watched him remove his glasses, place them in the pocket of his jacket, and hold aloft a stake.
"My Willow be with us again, soon," the Master announced. His eyes swiveled over to Angel and Spike and narrowed. "She had no choice in becoming human, so I'm going to overlook her extracurricular activities these past months, but you two … oh, Liam and William, we're way past overlooking anything. No, if you think our prior association will keep me from having the two of you torn apart limb from limb, you are very much mistaken." The Master smiled a hideous, red-rimmed, dripping smile. "I look forward to that."
"Sod off, you ugly bastard," Spike replied.
Buffy felt as though the world was closing in on them. Vampires were creeping along the edges of the school, vamps massed along the parking lot, somewhere on the roof was a horror that could turn people to stone, and more of the undead lurked in the classrooms on either side … Kendra was gone, and if she didn't do something, a whole lot of her friends would be joining her.
Buffy opened her mouth, to say what she wasn't sure what they should do, but before she could voice anything she heard the door of the school swing open. She turned and watched as the glass rotated outwards to reveal the interior of the building … the main corridor seemed free of vamps, which was a good sign, and a lone figure stood silhouetted in the fluorescent hallway lights.
Tara?
"Tara, sweetheart, you need to run!" Willow screamed. One of the vamps holding Willow's arms raised a clenched hand to silence her, but the Master shook his head, screamed an order, and the vamp lowered his fist.
They don't want to hurt Willow, they want to turn her back into a vampire … it would be kinder to kill her.
"Tara, please, run!" Willow screamed as she twisted against the hands holding her. "Tara, you can't stay here!" Willow turned her pale green, beseeching eyes towards Buffy. "Make her leave! I don't want her to see this!"
"Willow?" Tara asked as with hesitant footfalls she stepped out of the doorway and let the glass swing closed behind her. Her eyes were fearful and her gaze darting as she glanced about.
This is the first time I've seen Tara step even one foot outside the school since we brought her here.
"Tara, it's best that you go back …" Giles started to say.
"Will!" Tara screamed without taking her eyes off Willow.
The Master looked at Tara, then at Willow, then back again. His face erupted into a hideous grin as he pointed at one young woman and then the other. "You two? Really? Well, I guess my Willow has the same preferences as a human as she did as a vampire." He turned towards Willow and fixed her with a look of affection. "Don't worry, I'll make sure that my pet witch is returned to her prior cell safe and sound so that you two can resume your play sessions." He paused, looked at the assembled vamps, and raised his voice, "Did everyone hear me? I want that one," he pointed at Tara, "back home without a scratch on her."
"No," Tara said as she held a hand to her mouth and stared in horror at Willow.
"Once my Willow is back to normal," the Master continued as though he and Tara were having a casual conversation over coffee, "you can pick things right up where you left off." He turned to Buffy, his grin vanished, and he gestured without looking towards where Willow stood. "Turn her."
One of the vampires holding Willow opened his mouth to reveal twin, ivory-colored fangs, the other vamp grabbed Willow's neck to hold her still, and Tara screamed. Tara screamed, and when Buffy realized that her teeth were beginning to vibrate from the force of the scream, she realized that something decidedly not-normal was happening.
She, along with Giles, Spike, Angel, and just about everyone else, turned, pressed their hands against their ears and stared at Tara.
Energy crackled from Tara's form, the tips of her light-brown hair had gone black, and as Buffy watched the blackness spread along her neck, the fingers of her outstretched hands, and then twisted like vines upon the skin of her face. When the black tendrils reached Tara's eyes, the irises turned as dark as her pupils, and then the tendrils erupted from Tara's outstretched hands. They exploded in all directions, stretching along the walls of the school, twisting between their feet to stretch for the vampires gathered in the parking lot, and writhing in the air like living tentacles of pitch-black mist. Every vampire they touched howled in agony and tried to free itself, but the wraith-like coils tunneled into into their skin and burrowed into their throats and nostrils.
Darkness exploded from the mouths of struggling vampires, their eyes erupted into boiling pits, and everywhere Buffy looked, vamps were dying. Tara continued to scream, glass along the front of the school cracked, and when one final burst of power ripped from her frame, the school's front doors shattered, vampires were thrown off their feet, and Tara stumbled forward, collapsed, and lay in an unmoving heap. Buffy turned to the parking lot, saw that the vampires … including the Master … were lying in stunned heaps where Tara's power had flung them, and rushed forward with Angel and Spike only half a step behind. She latched onto Willow's arm while the two of them grabbed Larry.
"What the hell have you been eating?" Spike complained as he threw one of Larry's arms over his shoulder.
"Get Tara!" Buffy yelled as she yanked Willow towards the school. "Everybody, get to the basement!"
The apartments in the basement are vampire-proof … we'll be safe there … unless the Master burns the school down.
One problem at a time.