Buffy made a face and—for half a fleeting second— envied the vampire walking beside her. Breathing was definitely a hindrance down here in Sunnydale’s sewers. Even if you got used to the slimy feel of everything, and the weird lighting of the yellow safety lights, the smell still rated a severe yech.
“Why does so much of my life revolve around things that are totally disgusting?” she grumbled. “Who took a vote on this? ’Cause if I ever find out who made that rule, I’m going to get medieval on their butts.”
Angel, wisely, didn’t respond. She had been venting all night, working herself into a state of righteous indignation that didn’t bode well for anything even vaguely aggressive they found down here tonight.
Walking side by side, they turned a narrow corner and looked down the tunnel. Angel let out a silent hiss of frustration. The tunnel ran maybe another ten feet before branching off into two equally unappealing choices. He glanced at Buffy, who shrugged. They slogged forward, starting to lose a little of their alertness under the unending sameness of it all, until they came to where the tunnel forked.
“Which one?” Buffy asked. “Flip a coin? Toss a stake? I know, let’s go to the left.”
“Any particular reason?”
“Nope. Just a total whim on my part. You have a better suggestion?”
Angel sniffed the rank air, then shook his head. “No. I thought I smelled saltwater, but the air’s filled with the tang of metal from the new sewer pipes they were installing last week.”
“Great. Trust Sunnydale to have civic pride at exactly the wrong time.”
“We could cover more ground if we split up, each take one,” he suggested reasonably.
“We could,” she agreed. But neither one of them made a move to split up.
Five minutes later, Buffy was just about to suggest that they turn back and go right instead. The tunnel was starting to close in on her, and if she was beginning to feel claustrophobic, she could only imagine how the much-taller Angel was reacting.
“Nothing down here,” he said, before she could suggest going back. “That’s new.”
“Yeah.” Now that he mentioned it, it really was quieter than usual. “Not even that little scurry-squeak of rats. Not that I’m complaining, mind you.” She slipped a little in the ankle-high water, and cursed under her breath, words her mother would have been very unhappy about.
Angel stopped to lend her a hand, then froze, head raised and eyes glinting sharply in the faint light. He moved silently forward, and Buffy followed warily. They came out into a widening of the sewer tunnel, maybe ten feet wide and thirty feet long. Better, but still not the best place for a battle, which was what Angel stopping like that usually meant.
“Look.” His voice sounded funny. Not alarmed, but not “not worried,” either.
Buffy stalked forward, stake ready in her hand. The nearest body stirred at her approach, but was unable to do more than glare at her. “Vampires. Of the very damaged kind. Aw, someone took all the fun out of my job.”
There were maybe a dozen bodies, half-covered in the sludge that ran along the tunnel floor. All of them lay face-up, huge gouges on their bodies—
Like a shark took chunks out of them, Buffy thought uneasily. But unlike the humans found on the beach, these were still aware, their undead bodies unable to give up the ghost, so to speak, despite the damage inflicted.
It was a kind of Slayer’s buffet: downed vamps, no waiting. But Buffy didn’t feel the usual rush of energy that came when given the chance to take out a bunch of demons. Something didn’t feel right. It was that ookiness from her dream, all over again. Nothing from the dream was actually here, except maybe it being damp beyond belief, but the feeling was the same.
Angel walked cautiously amid the mangled bodies, stopping every now and then to lift a body part out of the sludge and study it. “They didn’t go down easily,” he noted, side-stepping one of the more active ones who tried weakly to swipe at his leg.
“Or happily.” Buffy followed his trail, staking each vamp corpse as soon as Angel nodded that his examination was done. An incapacitated vamp made for a happy Slayer, but a dusted one was even better. “But we still don’t know what attacked them. Something that came from the sea, which makes sense. I should have thought of the sewer system way before. But there aren’t any bodies other than these. No nonvamps.”
“They carried off their dead or wounded,” Angel murmured. “Whoever they are. That means some of whatever they are is still out there.”
“Out there, or in here with us?”
“Good question. Wait here.” And with that he disappeared farther down the tunnel, out of the dim light.
“Right. I’ll just stay here and clean up a little.” She went on with the dusting, a series of perfectly executed moves that would have made her Watcher’s heart proud.
She yawned, making a production of it. “Boring . . .” But the uneasy feeling remained.
Angel returned just as she was finishing up the last of the baker’s dozen corpses. “Looks like whoever—or whatever—it was has long gone. Too bad there’s so much,” and he gestured distastefully at the watery sludge at their feet. “Washed away any evidence.”
“No, not all,” Buffy said. She bent, holding her breath, and scooped up something slimy from where it had wrapped around her boot.
“Seaweed,” Angel said dismissively.
“In the sewer? This far in? I don’t think so.” She looked more closely, running it through her fingers. “Angel, this is hair.” Holding it up to what light there was, she added, “Extremely green hair.”