Through gaps in the boarded-up windows at the front of the Gatton house, light spilled out onto the overgrown lawn, yet the house remained a mystery. Angel had not reappeared since slipping around back, and Oz was beginning to wonder if something had happened to him. “This is taking too long,” Oz remarked, his hands tight on a crowbar he’d removed from the long toolbox in the back of the van. “Where’s Angel?”
Balancing a loaded crossbow on the dashboard, Giles was about to respond when he felt the van dip slightly under added weight. Worried they had been caught unawares, Giles spun around in his seat, sighting along the crossbow, finger about to squeeze on the trigger.
“Whoa!” Angel called, palms up, facing the Watcher. “On your side, remember?”
“Quite right,” Giles said calmly, but his heart was racing. He’d nearly staked their best chance of rescuing Willow and Xander.
“Willow’s in there,” Oz said, more statement than question. “She’s in there, right?”
Angel nodded. “They’re both in there. But something’s going down. Some ceremony. We don’t have much time.”
Giles was relieved—incredibly relieved—yet worried at the same time. Willow and Xander were still alive, but far from safe at the moment. “Tell us,” Giles said.
“On the side of the house, I found a set of double doors leading down into the basement. Padlocked, but the wood was so rotted I just ripped the lock plate off. Giles, you and Oz enter that way. They might have somebody watching the back door, but they probably won’t be expecting an attack from within the house. I’ll give you a couple minutes to get into position.”
“What about you?” Oz asked.
“I’m immune to their power, so I’ll go in loud, right through the front door. A direct assault to distract them. Then you two make your move. We’ll outflank them. Take them out before they know what hit them.”
“Wait a minute,” Giles said. “Will you be able to enter the house—uninvited, that is?”
“Humans abandoned that house long ago,” Angel said. “I won’t have a problem.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Oz said.
“Earplugs, everyone,” Giles cautioned. All three of them put in their earplugs. “One other thing.” Ignoring the odd quality of his own voice, Giles reached into a burlap bag, removed a long gleaming blade and handed it to Angel.
“A scimitar?” Angel asked. He tested the weight and balance in his hands.
Giles nodded. “Ghouls have their roots in Arabic folklore. It’s possible an Arabian blade will prove more effective against them than traditional weapons.”
“Let’s move,” Oz said.
Giles could not fault the young man’s urgency. Each carrying a weapon, they exited the van, abandoned the concealment of the trees and crept along the wide expanse of tall grass. Angel tapped Giles on the shoulder and pointed toward the front of the house and held up two fingers. Giles nodded, took Oz’s arm and pointed toward the side of the house. Angel would give them two minutes to get inside the house. The next time Giles glanced back, Angel had already slipped away in the tall grass, getting into position for a frontal assault. Giles hurried to catch up to Oz.
They found the aboveground doors leading down into the basement, a wedge-shape pressed against the side of the house. Oz lifted the outer door up in a slow, steady motion to avoid any creaking that might give away their position. He started down the concrete flight of stairs and made a hand motion of turning a doorknob, indicating another door at the base of the stairs. Then he lifted the crowbar, signaling his intent to break and enter. Oz took another step down, then paused, his eyes wide. Even as he pointed with the crowbar, Giles was turning toward the front of the house.
In the distance, a fleeting glimpse of red moving low through the grass, but closer still, running low toward him in black cargo pants and a spaghetti strap top, with a flash of blond hair . . .
“Buffy . . .” he whispered, relieved. He tugged out one earplug. “I thought you’d never get here.”
“Better late than dead,” Buffy said. She made no mention of her bloody ear or the cuts and scratches on her arms. Giles noticed she had stopped at the van long enough to grab another crossbow from their supply of weapons.
“So . . . Solitaire—?”
“Lost his head,” she replied. “But my mom’s fine.”
Cordelia burst out of the grass and weeds, stumbling slightly on the gravel before recovering her balance. Still slightly out of breath, she whispered, “Yuck—the lawn that time forgot.”
Buffy caught Giles’s good arm, the one clutching his own crossbow. “Giles, what’s the sitch? And where’s Angel?”
* * *
Lupa flipped the knife in her hand and offered it hilt-first to Willow. “Just remember,” she said, “you’re still in chains and the four of us are much stronger than you.”
“I know,” Willow replied as meekly as she could.
Lupa touched Xander’s shoulder. “Xander,” she said in a warm, melodic voice. “You will not resist. Understood?” He nodded, his gaze again unfocused. Lupa looked down at Willow, sitting just outside Xander’s circle of blood. “Begin,” she said.
Willow gripped the knife in her hand, point down. Xander just stared straight ahead. With only one shoe on, he even looked a little comical. His foot’s probably still tender from kicking the wall. “Sorry, Xander,” she whispered.
“Go on,” Lupa urged. “Make the slice. Just a few bites and become one of us.”
Something hard struck the outer door, blasting it inward on its rusted hinges, followed by the loud, metallic TWANG! of a strong spring releasing and finally a loud grunt of pain. Oh, no! Willow thought. Buffy?!
“One Slayer surprise,” Carnie said. “Served ice cold.”
Lupa pulled the door open all the way, revealing an empty outer room. The door to die outside hung from one tortured hinge, still vibrating. Willow saw an oiled metallic contraption clamped to the table. A thin wire led up to the ceiling and down to the damaged door, but it was loose . . . the trap had been sprung. In a small voice, Willow called out, “Buffy?”
* * *
Angel waited a full two minutes, then rose from his concealment in the yard and charged the door with the scimitar in his left hand. At the last moment, he lowered his right shoulder and rammed the door, knocking it off its hinges. Even as he was switching the scimitar to his right hand, he glimpsed the quivering wire, heard the dull twang! of metal, the sound muffled by his plugged ears. A flash of steel and his side was on fire. He grunted in pain, stumbling back out the door and falling on his good side even as he examined the barbed steel spear that pierced his abdomen. He’d sprung a trap meant for Buffy. A trap that could have killed her. Since it had impaled him well below his heart, he would just hurt like hell for a while.
“Angel!” Buffy called, running toward him, crouched low, along the front of the house. Giles trailed behind her with his crossbow.
“I’m fine,” Angel replied, his voice tight with pain. “Here!” He tossed her the scimitar, which she deftly caught in her right hand. To her concerned look, he said, “Go. I’m fine.” As he was already pushing the barbed spear completely through his side, with an occasional but not unexpected grimace, she nodded and approached the front of the house. She knew he would heal. Willow and Xander had to be her first priority.
* * *
Oz had little trouble popping the basement door open with his crowbar. As it swung inward, he recoiled from the oppressive stench. Behind him, now carrying Buffy’s crossbow, Cordelia doubled over and retched.
“This—this is the Gatton house, isn’t it?” Cordelia asked.
Oz nodded.
“Please tell me we’re not going in there,” Cordelia said, her face ashen.
“Stay here if you want,” Oz said. He stepped into the darkness of the basement.
“You’re not leaving me out here,” Cordelia whispered a moment later and ran in after him.
Oz tried to wait for his eyes to adjust to the deeper darkness in the basement, but only the edges of boxes, the curve of pipes and the blocky shape of a hot-water heater were visible. Until they turned a corner in the L-shaped basement and saw them hanging there. Three dark shapes, hanging from the ceiling, heads lolling forward.
Oz’s breath caught in his throat.
Cordelia gasped, clutching his arm. “That’s them!” she whispered fiercely. “Gatton hung them down here!”
“No,” Oz said. “It can’t be them. He hung them in the attic.”
“Attic. Basement. Does it really matter?”
“They wouldn’t have left the bodies,” Oz explained.
“Haunted. Ghosts. Gatton house. Is any of this sinking in?”
He reached into his pocket and removed the flashlight he’d brought with him from the van. When he flicked it on, Cordelia punched him. “You had a flashlight all this time?”
“Didn’t want to give away our position.”
The three hanging shapes hadn’t moved at all. Oz was sure they weren’t ghosts. He played the light across all three of them, what was left of them, then moved the beam away. A metal track had been attached to the wooden beam, with metal hooks—the kind used in slaughterhouses—to hold the bodies. There hadn’t been much meat left on the bones or organs within them. Cordelia had seen enough. She was retching again. “The one in the middle,” she gasped. “Oh, God! I think it was—it was Troy.”
“I know.”
At that moment they heard a loud crash upstairs, followed by another, metallic sound.
“Let’s go!”
“Right behind you,” Cordelia said, clutching the material of his shirt as she edged as far from the hanging corpses as she could. As Oz started up the rickety wooden staircase, Cordelia stumbled against the old railing and the wood began to split. Oz caught her, but not before the beam of his flashlight played across the last corpse in the row and the rat which was perched on its ravaged shoulder. The rat turned away from the light but Cordelia had already seen the red smear on its mouth.
* * *
Buffy ran into the house and kicked the table aside, banging against a teal refrigerator that looked like a junkyard reject. Buffy hated to think what the ghouls stored in there, especially without the benefit of electricity. The device that had injured Angel had been spring-loaded and designed to fire a single projectile. It was on the floor, completely harmless now. She took in the situation in the other room in a heartbeat, raised the scimitar before her and said, “Willow prefers kosher meals!”
Lupa seemed surprised that Buffy was uninjured. “We heard you—the spear—”
“Sorry,” Buffy replied. “I like to do my own accessorizing. But you’ve made Angel real mad. And that goes double for me.”
As if quoting from some dark scripture, Lupa said, “The ghoul who eats the still-beating heart of a Slayer will be made as strong as ten and invulnerable for a hundred years.”
Buffy sighed. “Is there a blue-plate special on Slayers today?”
“I’m not picky,” Rave said as she moved toward Willow. “I’ll eat any old still-beating heart.”
“You see, Slayer, we’ve been waiting for you. Actually hoping you’d pay us a visit,” Lupa said. “Now drop your weapon and surrender. Or your friends die.”
“Sorry,” Willow said again to Xander and jabbed the point of the dagger into his sore toes.
Xander cried out in pain, hopping on his good foot As Willow had hoped, die sudden pain was enough to wrench him out of his trance state.
Giles came through the door behind Buffy, a crossbow balanced on his cast.
“Party time,” Buffy said.
Xander lurched sideways, driving Rave into the wall.
Seeing an advantage, Lupa pointed at Giles, a toothy grin flashing across her face. “You! I command you to strike down the Slayer. Now!”
Though Giles heard her words and knew the ghoul was attempting to control his mind, his earplugs blocked whatever special intonation or inflection was required for her voice to have the compelling effect Giles’s response was equally direct “I think not” He took aim at Lupa and fired a crossbow bolt, right through Nash’s eye.
Nash clutched at the shaft, then fell backward, into the other room, dead.
“I was aiming for the other one,” Giles mumbled beside Buffy. “Her heart, actually.”
Running footfalls sounded from the hallway to the right of the room where Willow and Xander had been held captive. Oz and Cordelia appeared a moment later. Cordelia was ashen, her crossbow aimed at the ceiling, while Oz appeared quite shaken himself, his crowbar gripped in his white-knuckled fist Something in the basement spooked them, Buffy thought.
“Gang’s all here,” Buffy said. Only Angel was out of the mix.
As if on cue, Buffy heard the shriek and pop of nails being ripped from wood. Lupa backhanded Willow and yanked the ceremonial dagger out of her hands. She turned her attention to Buffy, feral yellow eyes aglow as saliva spilled down her chin, in anticipation of a still-beating Slayer heart, no doubt. Lupa charged, dagger held high. Behind her, Angel leapt into the captives’ room—having ripped the plywood free of the windows—and tackled Rave just as she was about to sink her claws into Xander’s face.
Carnie saw Oz come around the corner from the hallway and leapt like a jungle cat, claws flashing. Cordelia screamed and fired her crossbow at the redheaded ghoul. The bolt fluttered through red hair and maybe even nicked a mottled green ear as it sailed through the air. The quarrel then struck the hanging oil lamp and knocked it off its hook. The glass housing shattered on impact. From the shadows cast by the flickering light, Buffy could tell that oil had spilled out and the floor had caught on fire.
Carnie’s momentum had bowled over Oz, who couldn’t quite bring his crowbar into play, while Cordelia was knocked backward over a ladder-back chair.
Buffy lost track of the other battles as she launched into her own, landing a flying kick against Lupa’s sternum. The impact knocked both of them off their feet. Lupa rolled into a crouch and dove at Buffy, dagger first. Buffy sidestepped and managed an awkward, backhanded swing of the scimitar. Lupa somersaulted and regained her feet, waving the dagger from side to side. The two circled each other, looking for an opening.
Giles managed to reload his crossbow with his good hand, while bracing it against his cast He turned and fired at Lupa just as she feinted. The quarrel zipped past the back of her head and thudded into the wall.
Cordelia disentangled herself from the chair, stood and raised it over her head. Oz and Carnie wrestled over the crowbar and it looked as if Carnie, in the superior position and with her greater, ghoulish strength, was about to pry it from Oz’s fingers. Cordelia took a step backward then swung the chair down, across Carnie’s back.
“Oh, great—I broke a nail!” Cordelia cried out.
The chair had done more damage to Carnie, with two of its legs shattering across Carnie’s back and shoulders. She reared up in pain, releasing the crowbar. Oz regained control of the crowbar and spun it ninety degrees to jab with it in such close quarters. At that moment, Buffy feinted with the scimitar, causing Lupa to leap backward out of the way. She slammed into Carnie, who lost her balance and fell on Oz, just as the tapered end of the crowbar was pointing straight up. It went through her throat and shattered her spine. Oz struggled out from under her, while Cordelia checked the damage to her manicure and groaned something about splinters in her palm. Oz pushed the ghoul’s corpse away, disgusted as some of its skin sloughed off. The flesh was decomposing even as he watched.
Angel grappled with Rave, who normally wouldn’t have been his equal in combat. However, he was still sporting a rather large hole through his abdomen, courtesy of a barbed spear. While the injury wouldn’t kill him, recovering from it was sapping his strength to the point that she was able to overbalance him and knock him to the floor. She straddled him, claws digging into his throat. Angel’s hand swept out and caught Xander’s former collar and chain, still dangling from die wall.
Xander saw Angel’s flailing intent and scrambled over Nash’s inert form—the crossbow bolt still jutting from her eye—and picked up the length of chain. He looped it around Rave’s neck and yanked back until she released Angel’s throat. The vampire then reached up, grabbed her head in his hands and twisted violently, breaking her neck.
Xander released the chain and the ghoul’s body slumped to the floor. “We’re even now, Dead Boy,” he said.
Angel ignored the insult, just nodded and looked to Buffy. She’d already been through a battle with Solitaire and was probably not on top of her game either. As Xander unlocked Willow’s collar and manacles with an old key ring, Angel strode through the doorway into the outer room.
Buffy was backed up against a boarded window in the outer room as Lupa charged, dagger high. On the opposite side of the room, tongues of flame climbed up the wall, lapping at the ceiling and emitting thick black clouds of smoke. The house would be consumed by flames in minutes. They had to get out.
“Buffy!” Angel shouted.
Ghoul and Slayer went through the window in a tangle of limbs, plywood splitting and sailing away behind them. In the hard fall on the gravel driveway outside the house, Buffy lost her grip on the scimitar. She struck the ghoul twice with the back of her fist, shoved her away and rolled free of the debris. While Lupa was slow getting to her feet, Buffy was already up, trying to locate her scimitar in the darkness of the new-moon night.
“Give it up, Slayer,” Lupa said, stalking toward her with the long knife. She swiped at Buffy with the blade, but Buffy easily sidestepped it.
“Look around,” Buffy said. “Your ghoul pals are all dead. You would have been smart to leave my friends out of this. You really underestimated them. Then again, I don’t look for many signs of intelligence in the demonic ranks.”
Lupa roared, swinging the dagger back and forth, ever closer to Buffy’s chest. Buffy jumped back and back again, until she banged into the passenger door of Vyxn’s van. Lupa grinned and raised the dagger high over her head for a downward thrust. Buffy sidestepped at the last minute and heard the point of the blade screech against the metal door.
“It won’t matter how many friends you have after I eat your living heart,” Lupa shouted.
“Let me save you a trip to the orthodontist,” Buffy said and leapt into a kick that smashed Lupa’s mouth, shattering a couple rows of teeth.
Buffy ran toward the house, Lupa in hot pursuit, blood, teeth and spittle spilling from her battered mouth. The fire was blazing quite impressively now, casting enough light on the driveway for Buffy to spot the scimitar behind a clump of weeds. As Lupa hurled a section of plywood at her, Buffy somersaulted toward her weapon, clutching the hilt just as the board clipped her ankle, taking a layer or two of skin with it Buffy sprang to her feet, favoring her bruised ankle, scimitar in hand, but held backward, blade down. Acrid smoke billowed from the nearby front doorway, burning her nostrils and bringing tears to her eyes. As a result, she almost failed to see Lupa charging, dagger in hand, way too fast for Buffy to adjust her own grip. Instead, Buffy lashed out with a backhand blow, slamming the hilt of the scimitar into Lupa’s forehead.
The ghoul staggered backward, disoriented.
Buffy flipped the scimitar over, raised it in a two-handed grip, stepped forward and brought it straight down through Lupa’s skull. The curved blade lodged in the ghoul’s collarbone. Buffy stepped back, releasing the blade as Lupa’s lifeless body toppled over.
Angel leapt down from the window frame, then winced as he landed, pressing a hand to the wide circle of blood staining his white shirt.
“Our side okay?”
Angel nodded. “You?”
“Just glad I don’t wear my heart on my sleeve,” Buffy said, smiled and leaned against him, offering her support “Everyone get out?”
“They went out the back door.”
At that moment, Oz and Willow appeared from die side of the house. “Never doubted you were alive,” Oz said.
“And I knew you’d come rescue me,” Willow said.
They stopped in their tracks and exchanged the most fervent of smoochies. Buffy called out, “Willow. Oz Spectators present.”
For a moment they seemed not to notice, then Willow looked over at Buffy, a little flushed. “Oops,” she said, with a mischievous grin.
Giles appeared next, followed by Cordelia, who was gamely offering her shoulder as support for Xander as he attempted to hop on his good foot, his other shoe held in his free hand. He was doing more yelping than hopping. “Oh, stop your whining,” Cordelia said. “I have no idea what I ever saw in you.”
“Just a crazy little thing called temporary insanity,” Xander replied. “At least that’s my excuse.” He sat in the driveway long enough to tug his torn shoe on over his swollen foot, but left the laces undone. He glanced at Lupa’s corpse, lying in the driveway not too far from where he was seated. “Oh, yes! Ghouls do spoil fast,” Xander said to no one in particular, wrinkling his nose.
It was true. Buffy noticed the rank smell, like rancid meat, emanating from Lupa’s bloated body, which looked as if it had been pulled from a swamp after three long weeks of decay. Ready for composting, she thought.
Willow looked at Cordelia, standing by herself in the night, arms crossed for warmth. “Cordelia, about Troy . . .”
“I know,” Cordelia said, with a quick glance at Oz. “We stumbled upon what was left of him in the basement.”
“I’m sorry,” Willow said.
“Oh, well, I suppose there will be other screen tests in my future.”
“A humbling display of compassion, Cordy,” Xander said.
Cordelia looked at him archly. “What? That was two days ago. Haven’t I mourned enough? It’s not as if we were dating or anything. Besides, you really don’t expect me to risk frown lines at my age.”
“Of course not,” Xander said.
Giles walked up to Buffy, empty crossbow dangling at his side as he looked at the burning house. “All in all, I’d say this was an unexpectedly successful outcome.”
Xander said, “Is that your British librarian’s way of saying ‘all’s well that ends well’?”