"Cordelia, I don't want to do it this way," Buffy whispered to the corner of her bedroom. "You, or the Powers, or whoever, have to give me another option."
A bright white light flashed and Cordelia's voice rang out. "Buffy, what you're planning, the Powers are incapable of helping. Not unwilling, incapable. We have a purpose, and you're asking them to act contrary to that purpose. Basically, you're fighting fire with fire, and the Powers-That-Be can't help with something like that."
"I can win without their help," Buffy said with a confidence she didn't quite feel, "but I don't want to win this way. You understand why, right?"
"Buffy, I totally get it," Cordelia blinked. "But like I said … it isn't a matter of choice, the Powers can't help."
"Can you at least tell me if Spike and the other-me are doing okay?"
Cordelia blinked again, "Buffy, they're in another universe, this isn't on-point for defeating the First, but yes … they're fine."
The conversation became even less productive after that.
"Any luck?" Angel asked as he stepped out of the bathroom and leaned against the door frame. He had a white towel wrapped around his waist and his shaved chest glistened with water that he hadn't bothered to dry off after showering. He had, however, found time to run a comb through his hair, which amused Buffy to no end.
I remember all those years when Angel would take a scalding hot shower so that he'd feel warm when I touched him … I'm so happy that isn't our lives anymore.
She shook her head. "Cordelia can't help. Not with this."
Angel crossed his arms while he continued to lean against the frame. "Are you ready to tell me this secret you've been hiding since you came up with this plan?"
She hung her head and put her face in her hands. She didn't want to keep secrets from Angel, or anyone for that matter … but it wasn't just her secret, it was also Dawn's.
"Everything is fine," she told him, which wasn't true and merely served to avoid his question. "Let's grab some breakfast and head over to Xander's. This Saturday is the big day, so let's make sure all our ducks are in a row."
"Willow managed to fudge the records and ensure the stadium is cleared out," Angel informed her while he stared at her with a level, neutral gaze that she knew hid his disappointment that she was withholding information from him. "So that's one less thing to worry about."
"We don't know if any of those folks we tried to wrangle into helping will show," she reminded him. "We could be all alone out there on the fifty yard line."
"They'll come," Angel said as he leaned away from the doorframe, uncrossed his arms, and headed back into the bathroom. "After all, it's the end of the world."
. . . . . . . . .
"Where's Dawn?" Buffy asked Xander once they'd all assembled in his living room. Bagels, donuts, and sausage and egg burritos had been provided, along with multiple trays of Starbucks coffee.
Xander's idea of breakfast isn't easy on the waistline.
Xander glanced at the stairs leading to the second floor of his house, then replied, "Dawn wasn't feeling well."
"Not feeling well?" Willow asked. "Gotta be pretty bad to miss one of these let's-stop-the-end-of-the-world meetings."
"Yeah, I guess so," Xander replied as he reached for another donut.
I haven't been able to get a hold of Dawn since she called me yesterday. What is going on with her?
"I'll check on her later," Buffy announced. "For now, let's go around the horn and make sure we're all on track. How are we coming on making the stadium look convincing as a spot for some sort of epic, final battle?"
Xander raised a hand. "Connor and Colleen said they'll help me spread weapons around and make it look believable that there's going to be a fight."
"Thankfully Xander has weapons to spare," Connor said with a chuckle. Colleen nodded in agreement.
"That's good," Buffy announced as she turned to Giles and Willow. "Is the spell ready to go?"
"We're as ready as we're ever going to be," Willow replied. "Giles and I have been practicing splitting the flow of the incantation so that neither of us has to handle too much energy … we should be fine."
Giles removed his glasses and set them on Xander's new coffee table. "I feel I must remind you, Buffy, that the spell will only work if everyone who assembles using the portals provided by the Powers actually read the gibberish printed out for them."
"Klingon is not gibberish!" Andrew protested, arms folded over his chest and a white smear of cream cheese on his upper lip.
"Forgive me," Giles said in a voice dripping with acid-laced sarcasm. "Made-up television language might be a more accurate term."
"The print-outs are ready to go," Buffy assured him, "but the question is, who is going to hand them out at the stadium?" She turned her gaze upwards and affected a thoughtful expression.
"Somehow, I suspect you already have an answer, Buff," Willow announced.
"We're calling everyone," Angel announced. "Even the folks we'd rather not think about."
Giles blanched and stared at Angel with his mouth agape. "You can't possibly mean …"
"The apocalytes," Andrew said by way of interruption. "I'm going to go recruit them."
"You?" Xander asked. He thought about the question for a moment, then nodded and stared at Willow.
"Yeah," Willow said with a rueful expression, "Andrew is the perfect choice."
"Besides," Buffy interjected, "it'll give Andrew something useful to do besides mope.
Andrew's mouth hung open as he stared at Buffy with an aggrieved expression. "Hey! I am not some depressed, sulking charity case."
Giles half-snorted, half-laughed while lifting his coffee mug. Coffee flew everywhere and he frowned as he set the mug back on the coffee table.
"It really is a clever plan," Fred announced.
The room fell silent and everyone turned to stare at her. The young, thin brunette huddled back against the couch and glanced around nervously.
"What?" Fred asked. "I'm trying to help, with the research and anything else I can do, and I wanted Buffy to know that I think she has a really good idea to beat something that literally cannot be beaten."
"Thank you, Fred," Buffy replied. "I don't know if my plan will work, but it's the best I could come up with."
"In theory, it should work," Fred assured her as she brushed a brown lock away from her face and grinned a lop-sided, cheery grin that was entirely at odds with the grim nature of the meeting. "If the First wants to take flesh, then it has to obey the laws of the form it has chosen … using that against it is brilliant."
"We'll see," Buffy replied.
. . . . . . . . .
"Dawnie," Xander said as he rapped at the door to the bathroom in his and Dawn's bedroom. "Are you feeling any better?"
When Dawn didn't reply, he rapped harder on the door.
"Dawn, I know you are in there. Is something going on?"
"Oh, something is definitely going on," Dawn replied in a low, angry growl.
Xander stared in surprise at the bathroom door, wracked his brain as he tried to imagine the reason for his fianceé's hostility, then decided that he hadn't a clue. "C'mon, sweetheart, talk to me. What the hell is happening right now?"
His phone buzzed in his pocket and he reached down and turned it off without looking at the screen.
"Is that her?" Dawn asked from behind the door. "If so, go ahead and call her back."
Xander spread his arms wide and shook his head while he stared at the solid, white-painted door in front. "What in god's name are you talking ab …" Mid-sentence, he knew.
Emmy.
With delicate, precise movements he rapped on the door with his fist. "Dawn, is this about my ex-girlfriend being in town?"
A half-strangled, hoarse sound emerged from behind the door and he couldn't decide if it was a muttered epithet or a choking sob.
"Dawn, whatever you're believing is going on between me and Emmy, it isn't true." He turned and leaned against the door jamb. "The end of everything is on its way and I'm shouting at my fianceé through a bathroom door. We're both too old to act like twenty-somethings in a rom-com … if you talked to me and had a conversation we could figure this out."
A snort sounded from behind the door. "So it isn't true that you were sneaking around behind my back and kissing Emmy?"
Oh, shit.
"Dawn," Xander said as he turned and rapped at the door again. "If you saw that, then you also saw me push her away because I wasn't okay with a surprise kiss and you also saw Emmy leave in a rather angry huff."
There was a pause for a long while, then the door opened a crack and Dawn's red-rimmed eyes appeared. "I kind of took off after the kiss began."
Xander rubbed at his forehead. "Dawn, sweetheart, that wasn't what it looked like. She kissed me, I told her I wasn't fine with that, and then she left. And she was mad at me when she left, and I don't think I'll be hearing from her again, and would you please, please, please open this door?"
The door slid open a little further and Dawn extended her hand. "Let me see your phone."
Xander thumbed the passcode into his phone and handed it over to her. "Hey, I get it, you saw what looked like a mutual kiss, but it wasn't. Take a look. Just … maybe avoid the browser history?"
Dawn stared at Xander a moment, then handed the phone back without having so much as glanced at the screen.
"Why not just tell me that Emmy was in town?" she asked as she opened the door yet a few more inches. "Why lie about who had called you?"
Xander glanced away and considered the question. Finally, he said, "At the risk of making you even madder than you are, I didn't think you'd react well, and maybe this was something I wanted to keep private. I didn't know that she wanted to get back together … honestly, I didn't."
"I guess you were right that I wouldn't react well," Dawn admitted.
"I mean, she's my ex," Xander replied, "I'm not sure anyone reacts well when their significant other's ex is around."
"You should have told me," Dawn said as she opened the door entirely and stared at Xander. "If it was really nothing, then you tell me."
Xander stepped forward, put his hands on Dawn's waist, and felt heartened when she didn't brush them away. "I totally get that, and I am sorry, but also … Dawn … really, one brief heart-to-heart chat and you could have spared yourself all of this. There's no need for you to work yourself so off-kilter that no amount of shims could get you back on plumb."
"You know how much I love it when you talk contracting," she said with a rueful grin on her face.
"We good?" he asked.
She hesitated for a moment, then glanced down at her left hand.
He caught her meaning immediately.
"Let's get you a ring," he whispered. "I don't care what else we have going on, I want to see you wearing an engagement ring."
"Thank you," Dawn whispered as she leaned forward to hug him. "I will admit that I feel a bit foolish at the moment."
Xander hugged her back and tried to think of a suitable reply.
. . . . . . . . .
"Thank you all for coming on short notice," Andrew announced to the expectant, gathered faces clustered in the cavernous hall of the local bowling-alley-attached-pizza-parlor. "Whether it was the subreddit, or the chatrooms, or the discord, I put the call out, and you're here."
"Who are you?" a voice rang out.
"I remember this guy from the fight at the castle," someone else yelled. "He was pretty good with a sword."
"Thank you!" Andew shouted back.
Another voice called out, "Where's Foreman Fury? Or BatVamp?"
Andrew held up his hands. "I'm speaking on their behalf." He fished out his phone, found a photo taken earlier that day, and held it up. "Here I am with them."
A few apocalytes crept closer, glanced at the photo, then whispered at each other. Buffy and Angel hadn't seemed very happy to snap the picture, Giles even less so, but he'd convinced them he needed some proof that he was part of their close-knit coterie. He'd immediately set the photo as his phone's background.
He let the assembled group of thirty or forty people murmur for a while, then he raised his hands. "We don't have a lot of time, so let me explain what we need."
There were still disbelieving expressions, of course, along with folded arms, skeptical gazes, and in a few cases, outright hostility. Ten, twenty years ago, he'd never have been able to face a room like this … public speaking had never been his forte. Now? He'd lost everything and it was the end of the world. Giving a speech was nothing by comparison.
He started from the beginning. What the First was, the threat it posed … in layman's terms, of course … then finally, what they needed from the apocalytes.
A hand raised from the back and he pointed towards it.
"So this First, it's like, the devil or something, right?" a young man called out.
Andrew considered the question for a moment, then shook his head. "Much worse than that."
"And we're supposed to defeat it?" a young woman with dyed purple hair and an impressive assortment of rings in her ears, lips, and nose asked.
Andrew shook his head again. "We need your help, but not to fight the First."
"With what, then?"
Andrew pointed at a half dozen large boxes that he'd hauled into the restaurant and on the table of a nearby booth. "We need you to hand out fliers."
The skepticism in the room increased tenfold.
This isn't going to be as easy as I thought.
Thankfully, they were his people, so to speak, but it still took a long time to convince them. He started with what the fliers were … a spell in an ancient language long forgotten … and he crossed his fingers that there were no Star Trek super-fans in attendance. He kept vague what the spell would do, banishment seemed an effective enough pronouncement, and he explained that Saturday afternoon, that weekend, they'd have the entire University of Sunnydale stadium to themselves to amass an army.
The prospect of seeing umpteen demons, warlocks, and witches in the flesh … not to mention SuperBlondie … had the desired effect in terms of increasing enthusiasm.
As the eagerness amongst the gathering mounted, and as Andrew offered profuse apologizes for the marginalization of their efforts over the past years, the beer began to flow and the pizzas that he'd purchased with a loan from a reluctant, unhappy-appearing Giles arrived. With Buffy and her friends, he knew that he was tolerated. With the Watchers, people were polite to him because Todd was on the Council. Here, maybe for the first time, he felt at home.
The apocalytes loved his stories and hung on his every word. They didn't scowl or grow impatient while he spoke, and there was no flourish of embellishment too grand that they didn't savor the tales he spun. He talked until his voice grew hoarse, and then he talked some more. The apocalytes had their own stories as welll … some of them, at least. A few of the more capable looking fellows claimed to have killed vampires on occasion, and from the respectful way that the other apocalytes treated them he imagined it was true. A few dabbled in witchcraft, nothing overly dramatic, of course, but still, it was impressive considering how little guidance they had.
I feel at home.
The mid-day meeting stretched into the afternoon, in response to Buffy's repeated requests for updates he'd informed her that the apocalytes were on-board, and he'd arranged for the boxes of fliers to be divided amongst the different cliques. Not all of them would show up, perhaps, but enough would.
He excused himself to use the restroom and walked out of the pizza parlor and into the bowling alley with a light step and a rejuvenated soul. His life as he knew it was over, but life went on. Maybe he'd stick around in Moonridge, not to be a bother to Olivia, Giles or Bangel, as he sometimes thought of Buffy and Angel, but to put his experience with the Watchers to good use. The apocalytes needed to be more organized, they needed to work together beyond chatrooms and message boards, and he was the only one with the patience or the inclination to lead them. Heck, without him, some of them might end up dead … or worse.
This is a fresh start … they need me maybe as much as I need them.
Not surprisingly given that it was a weekday afternoon, the bowling alley was largely deserted. Garish, multi-hued lights swirled in the dark ceiling, white pins sprouted like teeth in orderly rows at the end of glossy wood lanes, and the entire place smelled faintly of musty old shoes and sweat. The arcade was empty, the balls sat neatly on racks, and the bathroom was really far away and he desperately needed to go.
The fluorescent lights flicked on when he pushed open the door to the little boy's room and stepped onto the white tile. Eschewing the urinals, he opened the door to the one large stall, stepped inside, and locked it behind him. He had just put his hands on his zipper when a voice he had not heard in decades rang out behind him.
"Been a long time, Andrew … have you missed me?"
He whirled around, stumbled over the toilet, and pressed him against the back wall of the bathroom. The tiles were cold against his skin but not nearly as cold as the fear that was coiling around his heart.
"You're dead," Andrew whispered. "Willow killed you. I know you're dead."
The thing that wore the face of Warren Mears clucked his tongue in an admonishing fashion and waggled his finger at Andrew. "Do I look dead to you?"
Warren was dressed in the Halloween costume that Andrew remembered in excruciating detail. He had on a torn black tanktop, fingerless leather gloves, and a black leather vest with myriad zippers and spikes running down the shoulders. The black jeans, black leather boots, and thick, metal studded belt added to the ensemble, and the fake earring and spiked collar completed the look. Dark eyeliner was smudged beneath his eyes and his hair had been teased into a wild mane.
That's the outfit that made me begin to suspect that I was about as straight as a circle.
"You're the First," Andrew gasped. "I know you."
Warren nodded and stepped closer. He loomed taller than he had in life, and his eyes and mouth were dark pits. "What was it you used to say about me? That I would eat you starting from the bottom?" The First laughed. "Amusing turn of phrase."
"What do you want?" Andrew asked. "Why me?"
"Maybe I just wanted to have some fun?" the First said as he stepped closer. "You know you always wanted this." He gestured towards himself. "Too bad for you that I didn't swing that way."
"You're not him," Andrew said as he shook his head.
The First reached out, grabbed his chin, and pulled him close. "Maybe a kiss would change your mind? I mean, you dreamed about this moment for so long … all you have to do is ask."
The First's chest moved as if it was breathing, but no air wafted from Warren's parted lips.
Andrew stiffened and tried to pull away, but the First had too strong of a grip on his jaw.
"That was a long time ago," he murmured. "Before I knew what a monster you were."
The First tilted its head and considered the comment for a moment. "Are you talking about me, or Warren being a monster?"
"Both," Andrew replied.
The First's dark eyes sparkled while it laughed. "Kiss me and maybe I won't make this horribly painful for you. I might even give you some fun, after."
"Screw you," Andrew said while he grabbed the First's wrists and tried to pry its fingers off his face.
The black eyes glittered from something besides the lights of the bathroom. "Now you're talking."
"You're not Warren Mears, and I was done listening to you a long time ago!" Andrew screamed as he redoubled his efforts.
The First shook his head. "Pity."
When it was over, the bathroom was empty except for the shifting, flickering form of Warren Mears. The walls of the stall flexed and the space groaned from the strain of what had happened, then reality settled back into place and the First's form solidified. Darkness rippled for a moment and then it was gone.
A few minutes later, after the bathroom had been without movement for a sufficient length of time, the lights clicked off.
. . . . . . . . .
"What do you mean you can't find him?" Buffy asked Giles via the cellphone pressed against her face. "It's been hours … how long does it take to recruit a bunch of internet dorks?"
After she finished the conversation with Giles, she and Angel began to drive to the bowling alley. On the way, they called Willow, Xander, Dawn … everyone they could think of … but nobody had heard from Andrew.
When they arrived, the few drunk apocalytes still gathered in the pizza parlor cheered their arrival, but the cheers rapidly died down when they saw their faces. She and Angel searched for Andrew, ignored the promises from the inebriated volunteers that they'd be there on Saturday to hand out fliers and fight the good fight, or whatever else was needed, and grew increasingly desperate when they found no sign of him.
"Buffy, he isn't here," Angel said after they'd checked, re-checked, and then re-re-checked the entire building.
Buffy glanced towards the parking lot. "But Olivia's car is here … so where is he?"
Angel opened his mouth to answer, but no words came out. He simply stared at her with sad eyes.
Her phone began to buzz and she retrieved it from her pocket. "It's Willow," she announced as she accepted the call.
Angel could tell from her face that the news wasn't good. He ushered the apocalytes back towards the bar, paid for their tabs … which elicited another round of cheers … then told them that they were all counting on them.
He found Buffy outside the bowling alley, sitting on the concrete with her back against the wall.
"Andrew?" he asked.
Buffy shook her head and glanced up at him with eyes wet from unshed tears. "He's gone."
. . . . . . . . .
"I'm sorry, Will," Fred said as she rubbed her shoulder. "I knew Andrew, too, and this is just awful."
Willow wiped at her eyes, blew her nose into a kleenex, and stared up at Fred. "The First can come for any of us whenever it wants … but it doesn't. It just picks some of us off at random. Why?"
Fred's eyes grew unfocused, and Willow had the unsettling notion that she was drawing upon memories that were not her own.
"As grim as this sounds," Fred said as her eyes refocused on Willow, "it probably has other plans for some of us. It doesn't fear us ... it's incapable of fear, and it does not believe it can be defeated. It probably finds our efforts amusing and considers our deaths at its hands to be inevitable."
"Fred," Willow said in a gentle, but admonishing, tone, "try not to talk that way."
Fred quivered for a moment, then her eyes softened and she fixed Willow with a look of chagrin. "That was kind of demon-y sounding, wasn't it?"
Willow nodded.
. . . . . . . . .
Giles hovered in the entryway to the kitchen, his hands folded across his chest, as he stared at Olivia and searched for the right words.
"Rupert, just tell me," she said in a soft, kind voice. "I know that look, and I know that it never means good news."
"It's Andrew," Giles replied.
Olivia nodded. "What about Andrew?"
Giles stared at her for a moment, then he removed his glasses, walked over, and hugged her.
"Oh," she said in a sad, mournful voice. "Oh, no. Andrew? Are you sure?"
Giles nodded while he cradled her close and pulled her head against his chest.
"What happened?"
"The First," Giles said in a voice thick with anger.
Olivia held onto him for a long time, then she finally pulled so she could look up at him. "Are you okay?"
He shook his head, and admitted, "No." He stepped away, sat down at the kitchen table, and stared down at the pale wood. "I am not as young as I used to be, and I fear that with age my spirit has grown fragile and brittle as opposed to tougher. These deaths … so many deaths … each one is harder to bear."
Olivia sat down at the table and held his hand. "I understand."
Her touch seemed to energize Giles towards some decision. He put his other hand on top of hers and stared at her with a determined expression. "There's something we have to talk about. I hoped it wouldn't come to this, but it has. If the worst happens, I cannot leave you to the First's devices. Neither Willow or I are sure of what happens to people … to people's souls … if the First consumes them."
"What are you saying?" Olivia asked in a confused, and worried, tone.
Giles reached into his jacket pocket and extracted a small vial filled with a bright blue liquid. He set it on the table and pushed it towards Olivia.
"I see," she replied as her hands began to tremble.
. . . . . . . . .
The sight of Colleen sitting astride his waist wearing a halter top and white cotton briefs was an alluring one, and Connor decided that he was in absolutely no hurry to go anywhere.
"C'mon, you can take this off," Colleen said while she patted at the leather glove covering his left hand. "I know what your fingers look like … you don't have to wear this all the time."
He shook his head and held the glove aloft. "I don't wear it out of embarrassment."
"Why then?" Colleen asked. Her brow furrowed, her lips pursed, and Connor decided that she had to be the cutest sight he had ever seen in his life.
"Phantom fingers," he replied.
Colleen narrowed her eyes in thought. "Phantom fingers?"
He nodded. "Without the glove, sometimes it feels like I still have those missing fingers … and it also sometimes feels like they're being bent the wrong direction or slowly sliced off. It's painful and distracting, like an itch you can't scratch."
Colleen leaned down and kissed him. It was gentle, soft, healing, and he didn't want it to end. She sat back up, to his regret, and said, "I'm sorry. Dana was wrong about … about everything, and I shouldn't have …"
He immediately propped himself on his elbows and cut her off with a shake of his head. "This isn't your fault, and if I hadn't been there, you'd be dead."
"Still, I'm sorry," she repeated as she kissed his forehead. "Do your phantom fingers tickle?"
He considered the question. "No, I can't say that they tickle."
"Well, what about this?" she asked as she ran her fingertips beneath his armpits and began to prod and poke.
Connor erupted into howls of laughter, thrashed beneath her, and she tightened her legs to try to keep him in place. He arched his hips off the bed, grabbed one of her arms, and using some clever shift of weight spun her off his waist so that she was facedown on the bed. In a heartbeat he was straddling her and now it was her turn to writhe and howl with hysterical laughter as he mercilessly tickled her armpits.
"Stop!" she wheezed as he playfully pinned her arms above her head. "Uncle!"
He kissed the back of her neck and then rolled off her back. She caught her breath and maneuvered herself so that she was nestled along the curve of his body.
"I wanted to ask you something," Connor announced.
"Later tonight," she informed him in a stern tone. "We have a meeting in an hour."
"Not that," he replied. "Something else."
"What?"
"If we win, if all of reality doesn't get wiped out, I think we should take a vacation."
She blinked in surprise. "A vacation?"
"Yeah, it was something my dad mentioned, and I think it's a good idea."
She frowned. "I'm not so sure we should be taking relationship advice from your dad."
Connor chuckled for a moment, then cleared his throat and continued. "I mean, we may all be dead soon, but if Buffy pulls off another miracle, I think we're ready."
"Just a vacation?" she asked, and the tone of the question indicated that she was making a far deeper inquiry than the plain meaning of her words would suggest. "Not a lifestyle change?"
He rolled onto his side and stared at her. The flat lines of his stomach and bare chest bent and angled in an appealing fashion as he did so, and Colleen found herself entranced by the sight. "Just a vacation," he assured her. "This isn't a retirement, this isn't me trying to talk you out of slaying, it's just you and me having some time together. I think we're ready."
"Oh, you do, do you?" she asked with a furrowed brow and a wrinkled nose. "What else are we ready for?"
Connor settled onto his back and laced his fingers behind his head. "Oh, kids of course," he said while trying to keep from laughing, "but I can't have them, so we'll have to adopt."
She laughed and patted his arm. "Now you're getting way ahead of yourself. Let's see how the vacation goes."
He propped himself up, pulled her close, and kissed her again. This kiss was longer, hungrier, and she began to regret that they needed to be dressed and on their way to Xander's in the immediate future.
"Connie, a vacation sounds nice," she said when the kiss ended. "But just remember, I'm a slayer, and we have shelf lives. Enjoy me while you can."
He grimaced, sat up in bed, and stared at her with a hurt expression. "Don't talk like that."
"I have to," she informed him with a sad, solemn expression. "Or I think you might forget."
Connor opened his mouth to further protest but was interrupted by his phone buzzing. He reached towards the end table, grabbed his cell, and checked the screen.
"It's my dad," he replied as he accepted the call.
Colleen nodded and watched while he spoke. She couldn't make out the words, but she could tell from the tone of Angel's voice and Connor's grave expression that it wasn't good news.
When he ended the call he looked at her and said, "It was about Andrew."
"How'd it go with the apocalytes?" she asked. "They going to handle flier duty?"
Connor nodded. "They are, but Andrew … Andrew's dead, Colleen."
She gasped and sat up. "Are they sure?"
Connor nodded.
"What happened?"
"The First," Connor replied as he set the phone back on the end table. "They don't know why it picked Andrew, but he's gone."
Connor settled back onto the bed and stared at the ceiling in silence. Colleen waited for him to speak, and after the minutes had stretched on for an uncomfortably long time, she finally asked, "What are you thinking right now?"
When he hesitated, she gave him a firm tap on the shoulder.
"Tell me," she urged him.
"I don't ever want to get a call like that and have it be you," he admitted.
Not this again.
She rolled her eyes, moved away from him, and crossed her arms. "Don't do that," she said. "I already promised you that we'd stick together when it came to work, and in exchange you promised me that you wouldn't let us be a distraction."
"You asked," he replied in a defensive, reproachful manner. "I'm working through my issues, as you like to call them, but since you asked, I answered."
"Dammit, Connor, you can't constantly be worried about me or the worry is going to get us killed," she scolded him. "Maybe I should go for a bit, give you some time to process whatever you have to process."
"Don't do that!" he exclaimed as he reached out and grabbed her hand with a leather-gloved fist.
She twisted her hands free and pulled on her jeans.
"Colleen!" he exclaimed as she slipped on a pair of sandals.
"I'm not leaving," she reassured him. "I'm just grabbing my cell, I left it in the car."
"You're not upset?" he asked.
She shook her head. "No." She leaned over, kissed him briefly on the forehead, then exited the bedroom and walked towards the front door. The living room of the apartment was sparsely furnished … a couch, television, one wooden chair, and a coffee table was the only furniture … and lately she'd been fighting back a desire to nest a bit more thoroughly.
Let's first see if we survive this apocalypse.
She opened the front door, stepped out into the shadows of the second floor walkway that led down the row of apartments, and closed the door.
"I wanted to talk to you," a voice rang out from behind her.
She spun into a crouch and reached for the back of her waistband … for a stake that wasn't there. Not that it would do her much good considering who she was staring at.
Joshua.
His black coat was spattered with mud, his hair was unkempt, and his hands were filthy. Despite the ambient afternoon sunlight that lit them both, she suspected he could deal with her just as easily in the shadows of her apartment building as he could anywhere else.
He watched with a wary eye as she slowly pulled her hand from behind her back. She splayed her fingers wide to demonstrate to him that she hadn't retrieved a weapon. "You surprised me," she replied. "My reaching for a weapon was instinct."
"I get it."
"How long have you been out here?"
He considered the question. "I'm not sure … not long, I don't think."
Her door was closed and he was only a few feet away, far too close for her to think of hurrying back inside. "What did you want to talk about?"
"When you came to see me, near the hellspot," he replied, "I wanted you to know that I rushed you out of there because you were in danger from something else, not from me, and that I wasn't threatening you, or anything like that."
She blinked in surprise. "I kind of thought that's what was happening … though you do know that I'm a slayer, right? Fighting demons comes with the territory."
"It's not a demon," he muttered, and something that might have been fear flittered across his countenance. "It's something much worse."
The First.
"Then help us," she urged him. "We need all the help we can get, and like I said, the folks I work with who handle all the magic and prophecy stuff think you might be important."
He stared at her and said nothing.
"C'mon," she said. "You lurked out here for god knows how long just to make sure that I didn't think you were threatening me a few days ago but now you're going to pretend that you don't want to reach out? We don't want to fight you, and yeah, we're still mad about the things you've done … really mad … but you can still …"
Mid-sentence he reached for the railing, swung himself over the metal, and vanished.
She blinked in surprise, then opened her apartment door and hurriedly rushed inside. Once she had stepped over the vampire-proof threshold she sighed in relief, closed the door, and leaned against it.
Connor, still bare-chested, stepped out of the bedroom. "Everything okay?"
She stared at him for a moment, then replied, "Joshua just scared the shit out of me."
"What!" he howled.