The scream brought Buffy to her feet. Surrounded by hunger and evil and cruelty, she had been tensed for a fight and her nerves had been jangling with alarm. But the terrible, mournful cry of pain and anger that came from behind the door tucked away to the far right side of the meeting chamber still startled and unsettled her.
Though she had seen Trajabo come through that door, it still took her a moment to realize whose voice now echoed from the marble and the wooden seats, whose scream now brought nearly the entire assemblage to its feet.
Trajabo exploded into a flurry of whirling sand like a vampire bursting into a cloud of dust. The little sandstorm flowed in a funnel of wind toward the door, tearing it from its hinges as the demon of the desert crashed into the room. It seemed the storm itself cried out then, the sound like the whining of a drill deep inside Buffy’s skull.
The echoes of the scream were still resounding from the walls of the chamber as the sandstorm blew back through the door. This time there lurked a figure at its center, a dark silhouette whose arms and legs hung akimbo like a marionette whose strings had been cut.
Buffy held her breath, knowing what had happened, understanding immediately that something had to be done. She moved to the podium on the dais, right beside the Speaker of the Dark Congress, and she watched as the whirlwind of sand began to slow and coalesce as the demon of the desert drew it back into himself.
Trajabo stood at the center of the Congress chamber, holding the corpse of Kandida in his arms. The river demon hung there, and at first she almost seemed asleep or unconscious. But as Trajabo knelt and laid her out on the marble, Buffy saw the enormous hole in the center of her chest. She saw that the turquoise fluid that spilled down Trajabo’s chest and spattered the floor was not water, but the blood of a demon.
Murder, Buffy thought. But not just murder—magick, too. Someone had torn out Kandida’s heart. Buffy had paid attention when Giles and Micaela told the story of the river demon. The last time the Dark Congress had wanted to get rid of her, they’d had to get her as close to dead as they could, then bury her in the riverbank with a talisman to keep her from being resurrected. But Buffy also knew dead when she saw it, and this time Kandida was dead. This had been no ordinary murder. Whoever had done it had some powerful magick to burn, and knew exactly how to take Kandida down.
Not murder, then—assassination.
“Hogboon!” Trajabo shouted, his voice like the scrape of stone upon stone.
It took Buffy a second to realize that this nonsense word was a name, and by then Trajabo was in motion. The demon of the desert raised his hands and seemed almost to blow across the chamber. He rose up and over the first few rows, moving diagonally and landing in one of the aisles.
The creature whose name he had invoked stepped forward from a cluster of allies—stone demons and trolls and something made of earth—and stood defiant in front of Trajabo. The thing called Hogboon was a little gray-fleshed man with eyes like flat rocks and bits of dirt that clung to his clothing.
“At last she’s dead!” Trajabo said. “You stole my love away for so long that none remain who worshipped her, and now you’ve murdered her. Are you content at last?”
Hogboon did not so much as shake his head in denial. He simply stared at Trajabo.
“I did nothing,” said the little gray man.
“Savor the moment. Perhaps it will sustain you in death!” the demon of the desert shouted.
Someone lunged from the aisles, holding up long-fingered hands to halt Trajabo’s rage. Some kind of water demon perhaps, but astonishingly beautiful—or she would have been, if not for the rubbery white flesh that made her look as though she had drowned and spent weeks under water.
“You must stop!” the water demon shouted. “Kandida wished for nothing but this Congress. Would you destroy it now, making her death meaningless?”
Trajabo hurled her away from him. “Traitorous whore! Her death is meaningless, Rusalka! the Congress means nothing without her. You conspired with them again, and now you’ve all gotten what you wanted. The threat of peace is gone! You can have your war and hatred for eternity, and it begins now!”
He stalked toward Hogboon. The two troll ambassadors pulled the gray man backward and moved to stop Trajabo. The demon of the desert lunged at them, his body transforming into a blinding sandstorm, a whirling funnel of gray that swallowed the trolls up in its midst. From within the churning sand there came shouts of surprise and pain and then the sand released them.
All that remained of the trolls were there bones, which fell to the marble floor with a clatter.
Trajabo went for Hogboon.
Buffy reached him first.
The speaker had started to instruct her the moment that Trajabo and Hogboon had faced off against each other in the aisle. But Buffy did not need instruction. Her pulse thundered in her temples as she leaped from the dais, jumped over the corpse of Kandida—unable to avoid glancing at the gaping hole in the river demon’s chest, where her heart should have been—and ran at Trajabo.
Whether she could have any effect on the demon of the desert, she had no idea. Certainly, he had more solidity at some times than at others. But she had to try.
Buffy passed right through the churning sand and driving wind that in that moment Trajabo was composed of. She screamed as his power scoured her flesh. A moment or two later and perhaps the flesh would have been stripped from her own bones, but her timing was perfect. Instead of striking Trajabo, she went through him and struck Hogboon, dragging the little gray man down and tossing him into the midst of the various demons and nursery bogies and werecreatures that had clustered around.
She rose, blood seeping from a thousand tiny abrasions on her skin.
Trajabo had reformed, and now he glared at her. “How dare you?” he demanded.
Buffy winced in pain, but kept her gaze locked with his. “How dare I what? Throw myself in front of a speeding train? You think I want to get in the middle of this? Uh-uh. My idea of a good time involves ice cream and sappy movies. Or possibly Rice Krispies Treats.”
The demon fumed, indigo eyes wide with maddened rage. “What are you babbling about?”
She barely heard the words over the growing roar of anger and shock from the Congress. Kandida had been murdered. Trajabo had just killed the two troll ambassadors. the Congress was about to come apart completely, and with all the monsters in Providence, the entire region would soon be a smoking crater.
“Babbling. I do that. It’s my . . . thing. My babbling thing,” she managed. She shook her head, trying to clear it as she was jostled from all sides by abominations. Totally skeeved, she took a step nearer to Trajabo, not breaking eye contact with him. “What am I babbling about? Your selfishness.”
His eyes were wild, roving around as though in search of some explanation for her audacity. “My selfishness?” he screamed. “My . . . did you not see what just happened here? She is dead! After all this time, waiting, keeping my faith, keeping her in my heart, Kandida is dead and we’d only just begun to build our love again!”
“I know—”
“What do you know of love?” the demon spat. Hot desert wind flowed from him and her scrapes stung.
Buffy’s expression darkened and her heart went cold. “I know.” About love, and pain, and loss, she thought. But she did not speak those words out loud. She only repeated the phrase. “I know. But that drowned chick you just decked isn’t wrong. This isn’t what Kandida would have wanted. You’re going to destroy the Congress, if you haven’t already.”
“And what would you have me do?” Trajabo demanded.
Already others had begun to move closer to him as though they might drag him down to make him pay for his crimes. How they would attack, Buffy could not guess. But she knew it would go badly.
“I am the arbiter of the Dark Congress,” she said. “You heard the speaker!”
She said this last part so loudly that her words echoed off of the marble, so that even above their insinuations and grief and pitiful mutterings, the entire Congress could hear her.
“I’m the arbiter, and I will solve this problem. I’ll find out who murdered Kandida, and I’ll bring them before the Congress to pay for what they’ve done.”
Silence reigned in the chamber for several long seconds.
Then Cutty Dyer, the speaker of the Dark Congress, arrived at her side. The old demon moved slowly.
“The arbiter is correct. She will bring the killer to the Congress for justice, or there will be no Congress,” Dyer said, glaring at Trajabo. “Do you agree?”
At first Trajabo said nothing.
Dyer turned in a half circle to include the entire chamber in his question. “Is there anyone among us who disagrees?”
No one spoke a word, which surprised Buffy. She suspected if there were any other trolls in the room, they would have debated the decision, but both troll ambassadors were dead.
Dyer turned once more to Trajabo. “Do you agree?”
Trajabo’s expression crumbled. He glanced back down to the center of the chamber, where Kandida lay in a pool of her own turquoise blood. Slowly he turned his gaze upon Buffy.
“For her sake, in her memory, I will give you until dawn. After that I will take vengeance in my own way.”
Buffy nodded once and turned to where she’d seen Oz and the blond, shaggy werewolf ambassador.
“Oz, let’s go!” she called.
With a sheepish expression, as though his mother had shown up to excuse him early from school, Oz trotted over to her.
Buffy glanced at the Speaker. “Seal the building. No one in or out except for him or me.”
Then she ran up the aisle, Oz trucking along beside her. The guards on the doors stepped aside. She banged them open and raced into the corridor and past the locked offices toward the rotunda, already thinking two steps ahead. She had very little time and thousands of suspects.
“Penny for your maelstrom of confusion,” Oz offered.
“There was magick, for sure,” she said. “Willow’s new buddy, Catherine Cadiere, she’s a freakin’ powerful witch. A wicked witch, if you want to get all Faithy about it. And she wasn’t one of the witch ambassadors, so she could have been in there. But that’s only me being suspicious and paranoid.
“Could’ve been vampires. Could’ve been any of those demons, the ones who wanted to break Kandida and Trajabo up way back in Flintstone times. Could be that Malik guy. Could be Hogboy—”
“Hogboon?”
“Yeah. Him. Trajabo sure seemed to think so.”
Buffy ran with Oz down the stairs to the rotunda. She stopped with him in front of the main doors, where the guards watched them with concern. Then the two demon guards glanced past her, and Buffy turned to see Cutty Dyer at the top of the stairs behind her, gesturing to the guards to let them go.
The doors were opened for them.
Buffy moved in close to Oz to make sure he was the only one who heard her. “Get Giles and Micaela to dig up anything they can get on Malik and his hunting party. You, Xander, and Faith go track down de Tournefort and the other vamps. Find out if they’re involved in this. If they are, bring me back at least one to admit it in front of the Congress, and dust the rest. And tell Willow and Tara my fears about Catherine. I want to know if the wicked witch had a hand in it.”
Oz frowned. “You want Willow to interrogate her new mentor?”
“You have a better idea? Mojo versus mojo.”
Oz gave a small shrug and a nod.
“You heard them. We have until dawn. I’m staying here. Gonna see who had the most to gain by this. But on the outside, you’ve all got to make sure none of the factions out there uses this as a reason to start a war.”
“You don’t ask for the small favors, do you?” Oz said.
Buffy smiled. “I’ll buy you Pop-Tarts.”
“That’s not fair, considering my passion for the Pop-Tart and all.”
“Everyone has their Scooby Snacks. Pop-Tarts are yours.”
Oz cocked an eyebrow. “On my way.”
She watched him go out the doors, into the milling, mumbling crowds that swarmed around the State House in the night. Then the guards closed the doors behind him, and Buffy was alone in the midst of the Dark Congress, tasked to find a murderer amid a gathering of monsters.
Without hesitation, she raced back to the steps.
Night had only just fallen, but already the morning seemed far too near.
* * *
Oz stood in front of Dunphy’s Irish Pub with Faith on his left and Xander on his right. The car was parked across the street and Oz had been reluctant to leave the air-conditioning. Danger was in the air, and blood, and the wolf inside him was very close to the surface now. Most times he could control it almost completely. He had spent months learning to accept the bestial heart as part of himself. But sometimes the wolf felt separate from him, still, and stronger.
The heat made it worse.
“This place is getting to be a habit for us,” Faith said. She and Oz had been to Dunphy’s just the night before.
Oz nodded. “A bad habit.”
Music floated from the open door of the pub like a ghost, a slow, lovely dirge by the Perishers. The smells of food and human bodies and stale beer emanated from the place, swirled around by the lazy ceiling fans. It was the sort of pub Oz would’ve loved to play, if it weren’t a watering hole for demons and night beasts. Dunphy’s was a dive, sure, but a much better class of dive than Willy’s back in Sunnydale, or any of the other places Oz had found monsters congregating to get drunk and hook up over the past few years.
“You guys bring me to the fanciest places,” Xander said. He scratched at his cheek, right below his eye patch. Oz wondered if the patch irritated his skin. “So, what’s the plan?”
They had originally been heading to the school where they and the Miquot, Ryvak, had found the vampire nest. But they’d cleared that nest out, and Oz had thought all along that the plan made no sense. Vampires could be real numbskulls, but from what Faith had said of Christabel de Tournefort, that didn’t seem to be the case here.
Xander had been the one to suggest they try Dunphy’s. Back in Sunnydale, Willy had always had the skinny on what was going down in monster town. It stood to reason that the bartender at the pub might have an inkling of where the vampires were hanging out in Providence. When the Congress wasn’t in session, he probably had vampire clientele. He’d have heard things.
That was the logic, at least.
Time to find out if Xander was right.
“No plan,” Faith said. “Plans have a way of sucking.”
She went through the open door and was swallowed by the beer smell and the mournful music. Oz glanced at Xander and shrugged.
“She’s not wrong,” the wolf said.
They followed Faith into the pub. A television over the bar showed the Boston Red Sox playing a night game somewhere, but the sound was off so that the music piped through the sound system in the pub could be heard. The intense scrutiny of the patrons of Dunphy’s made Oz’s skin prickle. He felt the wolf bristling inside him.
“This place is a barrel of laughs,” Xander said.
Oz did not reply. The three of them approached the bar together. There was no sign of the Miquot they’d earlier befriended. A couple of Vahrall demons sat on stools on either side of a woman who might have been a succubus or a prostitute. Oz had to guess the former, because a prostitute who looked that good wouldn’t waste her time in a place like Dunphy’s.
Faith went up to her. “Take it into the alley out back, honey. We’ve got business.”
The succubus smiled sweetly, reached out, and touched Faith’s lips in a gesture so flirtatious that Oz heard Xander sigh.
“For you, anything,” the succubus said. She was playful rather than afraid.
Faith cocked her hip. “You’re in over your head, girl.”
The succubus raised both hands in a gesture of surrender, then slid from her stool and reached out to take the Vahralls with her, clasping each one by the hand. The demons stared at Faith as if they desperately wanted to start something, as if they would’ve given anything to tear her apart. Oz thought it was fortunate for them that the Congress had forbidden any such contact.
“Hey, reggae,” he said to the dreadlocked demons. “It’s not worth it. Go have fun.”
Xander glanced at him, that single eye so expressive. “Reggae. That’s good. I was working on a Predator joke, but not really getting anywhere.”
One of the Vahralls snarled at Xander and began to puff up, trying to intimidate them. The succubus didn’t want that kind of trouble. She tugged on her two friends and they moved away from the bar.
Once upon a time Xander would not have been able to resist the urge to volley some kind of parting shot in their direction. But time had wised them all up, and he controlled the urge.
The bartender—a fortyish guy, short but with thick arms and the puglike features of an Irish boxer—had watched the entire exchange. Back in Sunnydale, Willy would have been whimpering by now. Not this guy. He came down the bar, put both hands on the smooth wooden counter, and leaned over to fix them with a hard look.
“You guys are bad for business.”
Xander slid onto a stool. “Well, you better get us out of here fast, then.”
The little pug crossed his arms. “What do you want?”
Faith slid between two stools and leaned against the bar, getting close enough that the guy had to have her scent, human or not. Up close, Faith was hard to resist. Xander had once referred to her as “walking, talking sex,” and Oz didn’t argue.
“Kind of place you run, I’m gonna guess you get all types in here,” Faith said. “When they’re not too scared to come to town, bet you get some vampires in here.”
Oz watched the bartender’s face. His eyes narrowed, just slightly.
“They come in sometimes. Don’t mean I want ’em here, but I don’t turn ’em away.”
Faith glanced around. Oz surveyed the pub as well. The humans, demons, and other things in Dunphy’s seemed to have gone back to whatever conversations they were having before the trio walked in. But they’d be listening if they could.
“Where would they go outside the city limits? Is there a regular place, an old house or something, a nest? If there are out-of-towners around, where would they go?”
Oz expected the grim man to refuse to answer the question. Instead, he scrunched up his face.
“Don’t know of anywhere out of town. In Providence, yeah. But I don’t know a damn thing about anything else.”
“There’s gotta be something,” Faith said, smiling. But her smile held nothing friendly or humorous.
“Otherwise you’re a pretty crappy excuse for a bartender,” Xander added. “Bartenders listen. It’s the first thing you learn, before you mix a drink.”
Faith glanced curiously at him.
Xander shrugged. “What? I took a course.”
The bartender relented. “I might know a place. Used to make candy there. Mints or something. I’ve heard some things.”
Oz stepped nearer to Xander and Faith. “How do we find this place?”
With a shake of his head, the bartender gave a small chuckle. “You guys got a death wish, but if you’re that hot to get your necks sucked, just follow Ogden Street out of the city. You cross the Tillbrook Bridge, it’s right there on the hill. Hard to miss the place.”
Xander glanced at Oz and Faith, then looked back at the bartender. “Now pretend we’re from out of town.”
The man rolled his eyes. “What, you want me to draw you a map?”
“Actually,” Faith said, “that’d be good.”
While the bartender sketched on a napkin, Oz looked around at the demons gathered in the pub.
“Word’s going to reach this place at some point,” he said. “I’m thinking soon. If we were loitering around here when the news broke, we might learn a few things.”
Xander leaned back on his stool. “I’m pretty pleased not knowing what evisceration feels like, actually. I’ll pass on that.”
“We don’t know how they’ll take the news,” Faith argued.
“I’m gonna say not well.” Xander crossed his arms.
“Safe bet. But who’s going to want to be the one to go against the Congress? We’ve got till dawn before the bad stuff happens.”
“He’s right,” Faith said. “We could both benefit from someone being here.”
Xander glanced back and forth between them. “Why are you both looking at me?”
Oz and Faith kept looking. After a few seconds he huffed and reached into his pocket for the keys to the rental car. Tossing them to Oz, he turned and ordered a beer.
The bartender handed Faith the napkin on which he’d scrawled the map and asked Xander for his ID.
Less than twenty minutes later, Oz and Faith were driving out of the city on Ogden Street, looking for the former Charlotte’s Candies factory.
Just like the bartender at Dunphy’s had predicted, the place wasn’t hard to find. The factory was a darkened hulk sitting on a hill just outside the city limits, past the bridge whose name Oz had already forgotten. A long driveway led through some thick woods up to the factory. A heavy chain hung on a gate, blocking the way, but Faith broke the lock with a quick snap and they swung the gate open, then drove up the hill.
The sign for Charlotte’s Candies had been ruined by the passage of time. The loops that should have formed the double t in “Charlotte” had fallen at some point and the s hung askew. The second word had been so rotted by weather that it was unreadable, save for the first letter. Both capital Cs were twice the size of the other letters and had somehow retained the pink paint they had once been coated with. Even in the moonlight it was clearly pink.
Once upon a time Oz and some of the others who’d helped Buffy back in high school had used everything from Super Soakers filled with holy water to flashlights with a cross painted on the lens to fight vampires. But Oz didn’t need any of that stuff. The occasional stake came in handy because it was expedient. Other than that, the wolf could do his own killing. That was one of the things Oz had had to accept when he admitted to himself that he and the beast within were not two separate creatures, but one and the same—that sometimes the up-close stuff, the times he could turn himself loose, were pure bliss.
“You ready?” Faith asked after Oz killed the engine on the rental car and the headlights went out.
Oz watched the Slayer slip on her jacket and make sure there were stakes hidden in each of the sheaths she’d sewn into the lining. When she was done, she glanced up at him, her eyes asking the question again.
He nodded.
They opened the doors simultaneously, glancing around, waiting for the ambush that had to be coming. No way had they broken the lock and driven straight up to the front of the factory without alerting the vampires to the fact that they were coming. If there were any leeches here, they would have posted guards.
Still, nothing moved except the wind in the trees and the occasional flutter of wings from a night bird.
Oz and Faith walked together up to an oversized door set into the cold, featureless industrial face of the factory. She turned the knob and it opened. Unlocked. The Slayer pushed the door wide and stepped inside, but Oz paused on the threshold.
“What is it?” Faith asked.
His nostrils flared. “Charlotte made mints, apparently. The smell’s pretty strong.”
Strong enough to hide the scent of anything else that might be waiting for them inside.
Faith hesitated a second.
A vampire dropped down on her from above, just inside the door, screaming something Oz did not understand. A loud hiss, like a nest of vipers, came from deep inside the factory, and he saw golden eyes gleaming in the darkness. Many, many eyes.
The sound of running came from behind him and Oz turned to see several vamps rushing at him from the trees that lined the factory’s long drive. Their faces were ridged and pinched with the evil visage they all had when the bloodlust was upon them.
Ashes spilled on the ground by his feet, the remains of the vampire who’d fallen on Faith.
Oz turned his focus to the ones rushing at him from the woods. He opened his arms as though to embrace them, fingers lengthening into claws, and he smiled as his jaw elongated. The fur burst through his skin with a horribly itchy sensation. Their scent overpowered the minty candy smell now. With the stink of vampires in his snout, he threw back his head and howled.
Oz let the wolf off his leash.
* * *
Giles stood at the window of his hotel room, looking down on the busy shopping district below. The air conditioner rattled as it blew cold air up at him, rippling the sheer curtains that he’d opened only wide enough for a glimpse outside.
Behind him, Micaela Tomasi sat on his bed, talking on the phone to Rory Kinnear, the branch director for the Watchers Council back in London. Even just this brief period with the two of them alone in his hotel room made Giles flush with the memory of their dalliance. Ever since he had discovered her true motivations—for which she had long since redeemed herself—he had told himself that he could never overlook the past enough to engage in any future relationship with her.
With her there in his room, perched on the edge of his bed, blond hair a bit unruly, he wondered if perhaps he had previously been both hasty and unfair in his condemnation of her.
Men were simple creatures. Giles had long since discovered that awareness of his gender’s flaws did not excuse him from them. Rather than make a fool of himself with Micaela—particularly during such dire circumstances—he focused on the view outside the hotel room window and listened to her end of the conversation with Kinnear. It was clear that Micaela did not think the branch director quite as much of a buffoon as Giles did, but that higher opinion did not improve the man’s competence. Long minutes passed as he made several calls, keeping Micaela on hold all the while; Giles was grateful that she’d used a calling card provided by the Council.
At last the call ended and Micaela hung up.
Giles turned to face her. She leaned back on the bed and stretched her neck, legs crossed like a femme fatale from a Humphrey Bogart movie. The fact that this pose was unconscious made it all the more alluring. When Micaela opened her eyes and saw the way he was looking at her, she blinked in realization, blushed a bit, and then stood up. She wore a shy smile, and she had never been shy.
“Anything from Kinnear?” Giles asked.
Micaela walked past him to the window. “Yes.” She peered out, craning her neck in both directions. “No sign of the apocalypse yet?”
“Buffy appears to have things under control with the Congress, for the moment. Are you going to tell me what Kinnear said?”
She turned to face him, quite close now. The memory of other such intimate moments threatened to distract him.
“Sorry. Just a lot on my mind,” she said. And was there some small irony in her smile? He thought perhaps there was. “Kinnear phoned around. Ted Hastings says there are dozens of references to Malik in the journals of the Watchers over the years. He’s definitely a Champion for the Powers.”
“Any luck identifying the others?”
Micaela hesitated a moment, then walked away from him. She went into the bathroom for a glass and opened the four-dollar bottle of sparkling water that sat on the nightstand, filling her glass.
“That’s not as simple, apparently. From Oz and Xander’s description, the big one’s easy enough: Tai. Specializes in werewolves, but also a Champion. The dwarf is Bors, a witchfinder. The other could be one of several Champions, but Hastings said he’d wager it’s a demon hunter named Simone Beauvais.”
As Micaela drank sparkling water, Giles took a deep breath. He shook his head and leaned against the small desk near the window.
“Right. That’s them off the list, then,” he said. Aside from the demons who had allied against Kandida and Trajabo all those centuries ago, Malik had been his prime suspect. “It must be someone in the Congress.”
“Why so quick to let them off the hook?” Micaela asked.
“The Powers would never allow this. Not that they would object to the killing, even by assassination, of a demon. But they’re the Powers That Be, Micaela. They know about fate. With what’s at stake here, the kind of powder keg this whole thing has become . . . the Powers would never condone it.”
“Okay, but it still could be vampires, or that Cadiere witch. And if it isn’t Malik, maybe we can get his help. God knows we could use all the help we can find right now,” she said.
Giles nodded. “Four Champions? Their priorities might be different from ours, but they can’t turn their backs on something like this.”
He started for the door.
“Where are we going?” Micaela asked.
“The market. There are a few things we’ll need for a locator spell. Now that we know they’re legitimate, magickally tracking Malik and the others shouldn’t be at all difficult.”
He paused and looked at her. “Of course, I’ll rely on you to do the spell. You have a far greater facility for magick.”
Micaela gave a small bow. “Your wish is my command.”
Giles hurried out of the room with Micaela in tow, trying not to let his imagination make more of those words than she’d put into them. The time they’d had together—he’d thought of it as a dalliance before, and that was all it had been. Maybe one day, they’d dally again, but that was a thought for the flight home, when the crisis had passed.
When they’d survived to see the sun rise.