IT WAS SHORTLY BEFORE ELEVEN o’clock that night as they sped along on the road to London. Buffy sat next to Angel in the front seat and winced as he burst past another car and screamed back into their lane as an oncoming car approached.
“That was pretty close,” she gritted.
“Buffy, don’t backseat drive,” he chided, suppressing a sad chuckle. For all the world, they sounded like an old married couple. But for all the world, they never would be.
“Everybody’s on the wrong side of the road,” she said peevishly. “Why don’t they drive the same way as us?”
“Just to be contrary.” With a slight smile, Angel put his foot on the gas. He supposed he was allowed to be perverse at times. After all, a demon did live inside him.
She folded her arms and squinted through narrowed lids. “Your driving’s terrible.”
“You want Oz to take over?” he suggested, making as if to pull over.
“No.” She looked over shoulder at Oz in the back seat. “No offense. It’s just that if we crash, Angel has a better shot at surviving it than you do.”
Oz shrugged. “None taken.”
“And I’m touched,” Angel teased her.
“What’s the rush, anyway?” she demanded.
“Buffy, you can stay up for twenty-four hours,” he said. “So can Oz. So can I. But I can’t stay out for twenty-four hours. So we need to be efficient.”
“Efficient, not dead.”
She scowled and squinted.
He put the pedal to the metal.
Oz said, “Um, now may not be a good time for this, but I have to go to the bathroom.”
“Maybe we should eat again, too,” Buffy said. “Fuel up.” She narrowed her eyes at Angel. “How are you holding up? We haven’t exactly seen any O-positive Stop-N-Go’s.”
He shrugged. “Maybe on this trip we should institute a ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ policy about my feeding—I mean eating—habits.” He raised a hand. “I’m not going to feed on humans, Buffy. Which means my choices may be rather limited.” He decided not to tell her that their quaint little inn in the Cotswolds had a rat problem. Granted, it was slightly smaller than it had been when they’d arrived.
When Whistler had found Angel in Manhattan, he had been surviving—barely—on rats. With any luck, they might run into a butcher shop. And he was currently weighing the possibility of that British delicacy, blood pudding.
“Oz,” Angel said, “when do I make that right?”
“Should be in about five miles or so, I think.” He tapped the map that was spread over his knees. “Cool. There’s Hampstead Heath. Sting has a house there.”
“Byron, Keats, and Shelley used to walk there,” Angel said, vividly recalling the three wild-eyed poets. Though they had written poems about vampires, they had never realized they had walked with one.
“Also cool.” Oz sounded impressed.
“Look, there’s a restaurant,” Buffy said, happy to see through the windows that there were actually people inside. “I can check on my mom, too.”
The restaurant resembled a gray cinderblock. It was definitely lacking in old-world charm, which, Angel hoped, did not mean they were lacking in rodents. He turned off the road and pulled into a gravel parking lot.
“You two go ahead,” he said, dawdling over pulling the keys from the ignition.
Buffy pushed open her door. “Okay.”
She led the way; Oz brought up the rear.
Angel got out and slipped into the alley, vamp face morphing at the sound of rustling in the restaurant’s brimming trash cans.
Slightly disgusted with himself, he moved into the darkness.
* * *
Buffy sounded so far away that Joyce wanted to burst into tears. But she kept her cool, determined not to upset her daughter.
“I’m fine,” she insisted, flushing, as though Buffy would instantly know she was lying.
She was not fine. She was exhausted. According to Willow and Giles, the breach in their house might be on the verge of reopening at any time. Knowing that a monster might be disgorged in your living room without warning did not make for restful nights.
Neither did constantly worrying about your daughter.
“You don’t sound fine,” Buffy insisted.
“Well, I’m worried about you.”
Joyce glanced at Giles, who had raised his brows slightly, obviously wishing he were speaking to Buffy himself. He’d come by as soon as school had let out, and Joyce had been glad of the company. Even more so, now that Buffy had called.
“Look, Buffy, Mr. Giles is here,” she said, knowing full well she was choosing the coward’s way out of a confrontation with Buffy. “I think he wants to talk to you.”
“Thank you,” Giles said, taking the phone without looking at Buffy’s mother. And in that moment, she realized he was going to tell Buffy what was going on. She flared and shook her head.
“Yes, hello, Buffy,” he said, pushing up his glasses. “You’re all right, then? And Williams gave you . . . yes, well, good. Please keep me informed on your progress. Now listen.”
He looked up at Joyce as if to ask for her forgiveness. “There’s a breach in your house. We’ve bound it for the moment, but nevertheless, it’s here, and your mother is determined to stay here.”
He listened, nodding. “Yes, yes, I quite agree.” He looked hard at Joyce. “Yes. With a friend, for the time being.”
His mouth formed a perfect O. Curious, Joyce leaned slightly forward.
“It’s a thought, yes. I do suppose it may the best thing,” he said. His face was a brilliant shade of scarlet.
He handed the phone back to Joyce.
“Buffy?” Joyce said.
“Mom, start packing. You’re moving in with Giles,” Buffy said sternly.
* * *
Buffy joined Angel and Oz in the restaurant. Oz smiled at her and said, “Tonight we’re having ploughman’s lunch. Which has nothing to do with plows. Or lunch. It’s the only thing they’ll serve us this late, because the kitchen is technically closed.”
“This is a very strange country,” Buffy muttered.
“Everything all right?” Angel asked her.
She huffed. “Oh, just that my mom’s been living in our house, which has a breach in it that Willow bound, but now it looks shaky, so I told her to go live with Giles. And don’t even start with me.”
Angel held out his hands. “I didn’t say a word. But . . . Giles? And your mom?”
“No, not Giles and my mom. Sheesh. You slept in my bedroom and didn’t do anything.” She looked away, very much regretting having said that. Because it was true that he had slept beside her bed with her full knowledge before she had known he was a vampire. And he had also sneaked into her room many times when he had been Angelus, taunting her in the morning with drawings he had made of her sleeping, letting her know he could have tried to break her neck and was only biding his time.
She looked down and said, “We should hit the road. I’m not hungry after all.”
She pushed back her chair and dashed for the exit.
Angel grabbed her elbow.
“Hey,” he said.
She caught her breath. “I’m sorry. I hope I didn’t make you uncomfortable back there. It was a stupid thing to say.”
“No, it wasn’t.” He slid his hand down to her wrist, and then to her fingers. “Buffy, I know this hasn’t worked out the way we hoped. Neither one of us. But I’d like to know that we still mean something to each other. As friends, if nothing else.”
She looked down. “As friends,” she said dully. “Nothing else. That’s all it can be.” She looked back up to him. “And the world may be ending, and we may die, or I might—it’ll probably be me first.” She shrugged. “Your track record’s better—”
She waved her hand awkwardly. An ID bracelet she’d been wearing on her wrist beneath her sweater somehow came undone and clattered to the floor.
Angel bent to retrieve it. Straightening, he held it out to her.
“Keep it,” she said. “I got it for you anyway.”
She walked on, not wanting to be there when he read the inscription: For Angel. Always. Buffy.
They got in the car. Oz came soon after, carrying a brown paper sack.
“You got me a doggy bag,” Buffy said, touched.
“A hungry Slayer is a cranky Slayer,” he riposted.
“And a sluggish Slayer,” Angel added.
“All right.” She reached for the sack. “Feed me, Seymour.”
* * *
They followed the map to a place called Hain Mews, which was not inside London proper. They sped down one narrow alley after another, past row houses of red and white brick and buildings of painted wood and darker brick. Oz liked England. He promised himself he’d come back someday with Willow.
“217 Redcliff. It should be here,” Buffy was saying to Angel. “Right here.”
“Maybe it’s magickally invisible,” Angel replied.
“Or indescribably delicious,” Oz offered, then shrugged. “Sorry. I’m getting a little punchy.”
“Maybe we should find someplace to stay,” Buffy suggested.
Then they turned a corner, and there it was. Behind large, elaborate wrought-iron gates, a gabled mansion was silhouetted in the moonlight against banks of night clouds. The roof line was a clutter of turrets and chimney tops, reminding Oz of something the Addams Family might winter in. All the arched windows were dark.
Angel doused their lights as well.
“I’ll get the gate,” Buffy said, hopping out of the car. She strode up to the twin gates. They were chained together, the chain secured by a giant padlock. Buffy snapped it easily and pushed the gates open.
Angel waited for her signal, got it, and quietly slipped from the car as well. Oz followed close behind.
Five seconds later, they were on the grounds of 217 Redcliff. They crept into a copse and watched the house. All was still. Buffy motioned for them to follow her.
“Keep to the shadows,” she whispered.
Oz trailed Angel, who caught up with Buffy. They started motioning in shorthand, and Oz was struck by all the history these two shared. It was dark, and he was beginning to tire, so he had a hard time following what Buffy wanted them, to do, but basically it had to do with fanning out.
Suddenly Oz had a sense that they were being watched. He cleared his throat, but neither Buffy nor Angel heard him. He tried to look over his shoulder without being obvious, but he could see nothing.
“Guys,” he whispered, but they had moved out of range.
Two years ago, Oz would have completely ignored his unease, chalking it up to paranoia. But since he had met Willow, and through her, Buffy and a lot of stuff that Buffy fought and killed, he had learned to take his instincts seriously.
Stopping, he slowly turned.
Swooping at him with lightning speed was what first appeared to be an enormous bird with black, leathery wings. But as it divebombed right for him, he saw that its head was human, with eyes like white-hot coals.
Suddenly, Oz was slammed to the ground as Angel threw him down, and Buffy landed beside them. Oz grunted and said, “I can’t breathe.”
“What is it?” Buffy cried.
“The Skree,” Angel answered, and Oz knew right off there was more to that story. “We’ve been set up.”
“Then let’s rumble,” Buffy replied.
Angel and Buffy got up fast. Oz could breathe again, and then he was right behind them. He wasn’t quite as durable as a vampire or a Slayer, but he’d been known to whale on a few monsters in his time.
The Skree emitted a chilling scream that made Oz’s eardrums clatter. And, okay, nasty-looking winged beastie. Welcome to England.
“Okay, bird,” he said. “Give me your best shot.”
“Oz, get out of there!” Buffy shouted.
At the same time, the Skree slammed Oz in the head and dug its enormous, taloned claws into his denim jacket. Before he knew what was happening, the Skree had lifted him into the air. Buffy and Angel stood below, fists raised in his direction.
“Jump, Oz!” Angel cried. “It’s your only chance.”
Oz looked up at the bird and down at the receding landscape. Jumping did not really appear to be an option.
But then again, neither did dying.
* * *
She was tall, she was lanky, and she could gut a fish in ten seconds flat.
Andy Hinchberger was in love again.
Oh, sure, his fiancée, Lindsey, had torn out his heart with her smiles and her promises, but he had finally faced facts. She was not coming back, and it was time to heal and move on.
Her blond hair pulled up into a wild tuft of a ponytail, Summer Simpson wore a pair of overalls, an olive green T-shirt, and a pair of ratty tennis shoes caked with blood and salt water. She was oblivious to Andy’s stare as she stood at the taffrail of the Lizzie S. and smoked a cigarette. The orange glow at the tip was like a running light, a tiny beacon in the night sky as the fishing boat plied the black waters. Maybe she was sending out an SOS: Mayday, Mayday. I need you, Andy Hinchberger. Right here, and right now.
It occurred to him that he should go check in with his boss and see if there was anything that needed to be attended to. The Lizzie S. was doing something illegal, which was nothing new. The Lizzie’s skipper, Dale Stagnatowski, had gone all crazy ever since the death of his son, little Timmy. Not death, exactly, but anybody with half a brain knew that when a seven-year-old goes missing for a year, he’s not coming back. Maybe Dale knew it, but his wife didn’t, and she was pretty crazy by now herself. Her way of dealing with it was to drink—she thought Dale didn’t know, but he did, and it grieved him—and help with the Sunnydale runaway shelter. She spent so much time there that Dale didn’t bother going home much anymore.
Dale’s way to deal was to push his luck.
Andy took a swig of root beer—he had sworn off alcohol when he had met Lindsey and found he liked the clearheadedness that came with twenty-four/ seven sobriety—and leaned his head on the rail. The deep waters off the town of Sunnydale were said to harbor a sea monster. The town wags claimed the Lisa C. had met up with it a couple of weeks before and washed up on shore in matchsticks. So had the first mate, Mort Pingree, in pieces like chicken nuggets.
The official story was that the boat got stuck out on a sandbar or a shoal, couldn’t get free, and had been torn apart by the rocking of the waves. Likewise, Mort’s body had been battered apart on the rocks, not chewed on by some big rubber monster from Atlantis. The area was declared off-limits until the shallows was located.
Funny thing was, nobody was patrolling the area for a shallows. Andy hadn’t seen a single harbor-police vessel, or any Coast Guard cutter, going anywhere near the quarantine zone. Nobody was pulling out the sonar. Nobody was looking for anything.
Dale figured it was time to make a run and grab all the fish they could while the “wusses” obeyed the rules. So here they were, maybe with a great white down there, or even a lost whale. But not a sea monster. And if the Lizzie S. got stopped and boarded by the authorities, it was Dale who would get in trouble, not his two lowly assistants.
As Andy lifted his head and watched, Summer finished her cigarette and chucked it into the water. He smiled and wondered if it would be rushing things to ask her what she was doing once they got back to port. He was curious to know what a classy woman like her was doing working a trawler. Maybe she was mending a broken heart, too. With any luck, she was ready for the rebound. He could always hope . . .
He headed toward the stern just as the fog started to roll in from the sea. It was so thick and so white, almost glowing, that it gave him pause. He stopped on his sea legs, riding the deck as the ocean suddenly got choppier.
The thick mist tumbled over itself as it approached the Lizzie S. It was mounding and spilling over like the crest of a tidal wave, and he found himself racing toward Summer as though she needed to be pulled from its path. But it was just mist.
Behind him he heard Dale shouting, “Andy, what is that ?”
Then Summer screamed, and it all went into slow motion: The fog, boiling and foaming as it flooded the deck up to their waists. Dale joining them, screaming. The three standing, frozen in shock.
The night was cut by the creak and groan of a vessel, long submerged, as it breached the surface—a ship that should be dead now. Was dead now. White water, kelp, and fish poured off the deck as the fog billowed around it. Its hull was a skeletal ribcage of briny, pickled wood encrusted with barnacles and dripping seaweed. A brigantine from the old seafaring days, with two masts and yards of what looked like winding cloth, it could not be sailing, could not be floating.
From the yards hung skeletons in rows, clattering in the glowing fog and the fierce, brittle wind that rose as the ghostly ship righted itself and made straight for the Lizzie S. Blood dripped from the lines, splashing on the deck. And from each splash rose a nightmare.
Bodies took form, but severely decayed, the flesh peeling off faces and limbs in strips. The corpses of men, some missing one or more limbs, several headless, worked the lines. A few were nothing but sun-bleached bones. Others wore watch caps with enormous holes in them, striped shirts in tatters, and sailor’s trousers that in some cases were mere strips of cloth. Most of the slack-jawed, dead sailors were missing at least one eye; the fog rolled into and out of empty sockets.
At the bow, the figurehead of a lovely woman raised her arms and shrieked, turning into a hideous crone as the trio aboard the Lizzie S. tried to take it all in.
Summer was the first to bolt. She ran along the rail as fast as she could, dashed into the wheelhouse, and slammed the door. Andy felt a warm trickle along the inside leg of his jeans and knew that he had lost control of his bladder.
Beside him, Dale stood, not making a sound, but Andy swore he heard the man’s heart thundering.
Then a low, eerie voice reverberated on the fog as the wind whistled its own language: “Vessel, dead ahead.”
High in the crosstrees stood a figure completely coated in green slime, a spyglass to its eye. The glass was pointed directly at Dale and Andy.
“Steady as she goes,” came the ghostly order.
“Aye, sir, steady as she goes.”
“Andy, look at the helm,” Dale gasped.
Andy made out the raised platform of the poop deck where the ship’s wheel was manned by a chalk-white man who appeared to be flesh and blood. Huge spikes had been driven through the backs of his hands, nailing them to the wooden wheel. Caked blood covered his hands. His eyes bulged as he stared straight at Andy with a look of agony.
Then, from behind him appeared a figure that towered over the others, dressed in the somber black of a long-ago Dutch sea captain. Andy could see only the shadow of it, no form. Yet when he looked at it, even from an angle, his blood ran cold. Whatever it was terrified him at a deep, primitive level. Deep inside, he knew that this was something very evil, and that he should get the hell away from it right now.
Yet he stood rooted to the spot as the figurehead threw back her head and cackled.
Then the spines of the ship rammed the Lizzie S. on her starboard side. As the vessel listed to port, Andy and Dale slid over the deck, fumbling for purchase on a line, a running light, anything. Andy caught hold of a line and held tight, bracing himself for the sound of a splash.
The fog washed over him like a huge, sodden net. Cocooned inside, he saw and heard nothing.
“Dale?” Andy whispered. “Cap’n?”
A hand touched Andy’s shoulder. Sagging with relief, he took it. He gripped his other hand around the rest and pulled himself to a half-standing position.
Then he heard the skipper scream.
From far away.
From very far away.
Standing in the fog, he shouted in surprise.
The hand closed tightly over his.
* * *
Dead hands held Summer. She was forced to stand upright beside Andy while Captain Dale stared defiantly at the lord and master of the ghost vessel, otherwise known as the Flying Dutchman. If she had not been held so tightly, she would have fallen to the deck in a crumpled heap and never gotten back up again.
“This is your last chance,” the Captain said. Nothing moved in his blank, gray face to indicate that he had spoken. He had no mouth, no eyes. He was only shadow.
And he was terrifying.
“Join us willingly. Or die.”
Captain Dale’s face was pasty. Sweat ran down his forehead. But he raised his chin and said, “No way.”
She was very sorry she had ever taken this assignment. These two losers were low-rent schemers, but they weren’t drug dealers. Any idiot in the Coast Guard could see that. She figured this assignment was payback for reporting a fellow officer for drinking on the job.
It looked like it was going to be her last.
“You’ve made your choice,” the Captain said. “You ’ll serve as an excellent example to your crew. And when you’re dead . . .” The figure gazed up meaningfully at the rows of skeletons dangling from the yards.
Summer gazed at Dale. The man trembled as lines were wound around his wrists and ankles. They meant to keelhaul him. It was a brutal way to die.
“Begin,” the Captain ordered.
Flanked by rotting dead men, Dale was walked to the bow. They made him step onto the sprit, lengthening out the line. Then, as he stood at the very front of the vessel, they jiggled the lines, making him lose his balance. He fell from view and splashed into the water.
“Walk him, boys,” the Captain said.
Suddenly an accordion began to play. It was discordant; the sour notes played along the bones of Summer’s spine and made her teeth ache.
As she watched in horror, about a dozen of the crew turned and slowly began to drag the lines that had been tied around Captain Dale’s arms and legs along either side of the ship toward the stern. They sang a hideous parody of a sea chantey as they inched along.
“Faster, faster,” Andy muttered beside her, and she realized he was holding out hope that Dale was going to make it. He didn’t know there was only one way for this to go down.
After an eternity, the crewmen reached the stern.
“Raise the lines,” the Captain commanded.
Though Summer couldn’t see what happened next, she wept bitterly at the cheer that rose among the dead men.
* * *
The Skree was a horrible creature. Its wings were leathery black and thickly veined. Its breath was fetid and its eyes blazed with a hellish glow. But to Oz, who even now was being carried aloft in its deadly talons, none of those things was half as disturbing as its most prominent feature. For the Skree had a human face, and a hideous one at that. Its teeth were sharp but canted at odd angles in its mouth. Its brow and lips protruded and its eyes were too far to the sides of its head, giving new meaning to the words peripheral vision in Oz’s personal dictionary.
But what bothered him most wasn’t just how ugly the thing was. It was just that juxtaposition: human face, monster body. It gave him what his aunt Maureen always called “the willies.” And these were major-league willies.
Oz thought about all these things in the few seconds it took him to recover from the Skree’s attack. He’d been a little disoriented, but now the thing was dragging him off into the sky. He struggled in the thing’s talons as, below, Buffy and Angel shouted for him to jump, to escape, to fight. Then he stopped struggling. It was a long, long drop to the ground. But if he got any higher, he might never get down.
Without another thought, Oz reached up and grabbed hold of the Skree’s feathers and yanked. It screamed just like a human would have, and Oz felt bile rise in his throat. He’d tried to make light of it, even in his own mind, to lessen the horror of it, but the thing was simply awful to look at—perhaps the most unnatural thing he had ever seen.
It dipped a little, in pain, and scowled at him. It screeched angrily and clutched him more tightly. Oz reached up and grabbed a wing and yanked as hard as he could. The Skree shrieked again, then rose up slightly, before dipping into a crazy, seemingly out-of-control dive at the ground.
Oz’s heart beat wildly in his chest. He held his breath without even realizing he was doing so. He’d hoped the winged beast would do something like this, but now that he’d gotten his wish, he wasn’t quite sure what to do next. It would try to kill him by shattering him on the drive below. When he was a werewolf, he was stronger than the average bear, but at the moment, an abrupt meeting with the pavement, or even the lawn in front of 217 Redcliff, would be very bad for his health.
“Let me go!” he shouted, and began beating at the Skree’s chest, then its face. When he crushed its nose, which then squirted blood, the thing’s talons released him, and Oz was in sudden freefall.
He pulled his legs around, tucked, and rolled when he landed. He’d be bruised in the morning, but at least he’d make it to morning. Above, the Skree shrieked in fury and swept up on wide, black wings to circle around for another attack. What Oz didn’t get was the lack of reinforcements. Buffy and Angel should have come running when he hit the ground.
“Guys?” Oz asked, and glanced around as he got to his feet, anxiously aware of the circling Skree.
“Oz, behind you!”
His heart trip-hammering again, Oz spun with his fists in the air to see a robed acolyte of the Sons of Entropy rushing toward him from the open door of the mansion at 217 Redcliff. Beyond him, Buffy and Angel were being attacked by several other acolytes who had obviously also come from inside the house.
“On the road with Buffy,” Oz said, ready to defend himself. “Oodles of excitement.”
Angel and Buffy were back to back in the front yard of the aging mansion. The shadows of the night enveloped them, but the Sons of Entropy had no trouble locating them in the dark. Nor did Buffy and Angel have trouble laying hands on the acolytes. The robes were dark, but white symbols glowed on them in some places. It seemed to Buffy as though these goons had two uniforms: business suits and monks’ robes.
But they all had breakable bones.
“I’m getting the idea none of this group are magick-users,” Angel said, his voice a snarl that reflected the angry yellow glow of his eyes and the feral rage she always saw in his vampire face.
Buffy slammed a high kick into the chest of the man in front of her, and heard several ribs crack. He went down hard, having difficulty breathing. The next one to come at Buffy—a slender, dangerous-looking man who moved with great swiftness and the discipline of martial arts—cried out like an infant when Buffy broke his left arm.
“Okay, whoever doesn’t think this was a setup, raise your hand,” she muttered.
“At least these guys aren’t much of a challenge,” Angel noted.
Buffy glanced over to where the Skree had dropped Oz and saw that he, too, was whupping Sons of Entropy butt. Well, okay, one butt. But he was holding his own. Angel was right. They weren’t much of a challenge. Then she caught sight of something moving up in the dark sky and realized she’d almost forgotten about the Skree.
“Maybe they were expecting that thing to be enough to punch all our tickets,” she suggested, then nodded at the descending creature even as she knocked another acolyte unconscious.
“I’ll finish mopping up here,” she said, glancing around at those Sons of Entropy still standing. “Why don’t you go get pterodactyl-lad off our backs.”
Without another word, Angel turned to face the Skree as it dropped toward them. When it got close enough to reach its talons out for Angel, the vampire didn’t move. Instead, he reached out his own hands, grabbed the Skree by the head, and twisted sharply, snapping the thing’s neck instantly. Its own momentum made it tumble awkwardly along the ground for several yards before coming to a stop not far from where Oz was dusting off his pants after subduing one of the Sons of Entropy.
Buffy backhanded an acolyte and stared at Angel. She knew what she must look like, knew the horror that was etched across her face, but she couldn’t help it. The thing was a monster, but it had a human face. And the casual way that he had done it, just stepped in and snapped the thing’s neck . . . just the way the demon within him had killed Jenny Calendar during the time that his soul had been out of his body.
A tiny chill ran up Buffy’s spine. His gaze met her own, and Angel turned away. She thought he looked ashamed.
Buffy returned her attention to their attackers, but had barely resumed a battle stance before all the Sons of Entropy there on the grounds, conscious and unconscious, began to scream in unison. The scream lasted only seconds—seconds in which Buffy, Angel, and Oz could only stare at them—and then all the acolytes, as well as the corpse of the Skree, spontaneously combusted. Each body became an inferno, eyes withering in their sockets to blackened cinders, flesh cracking and peeling to drift away on the breeze like so much tapped-off cigarette ash.
Moments later, all that remained were black splotches on the slightly overgrown front lawn of the mansion at 217 Redcliff.
It was Oz who broke the silence. “Is it me?” he asked at length. “Or did those guys just burn up?”
“Yep,” Buffy concurred. “Pretty thorough job, too. I’m getting the feeling that whoever these morons report to, he doesn’t want them giving us any more information. At least, nothing he hasn’t planned for us to find out.” After a brief pause, she added, “Did I forget to say ‘gross’?”
Oz smiled, fingered a large tear in his jacket, and then glanced at the house. “I guess we should search the place,” he said, without much conviction.
“Search?” Angel repeated, then looked up at the sky. “We’ve only got a couple of hours until dawn. We’re camping here for the day.”
Buffy thought about that a moment, then agreed. “I doubt the owners are going to be back in the immediate future,” she observed.
* * *
Once they had settled in—Angel was pleased to discover a very tightly enclosed wine cellar, to which he eventually retreated with a pile of blankets from an upstairs closet—they did end up searching the house. Other than bedding and the clothing of a number of acolytes, they found nothing. No paperwork with any clues, no photographs, no hint whatsoever at where the main headquarters of the Sons of Entropy might be located. Whoever had taken Jacques Regnier was likely the top dog in the group. But there was no record of who that might be, or where he would reside.
At least, not until Buffy ran across a small leather pouch filled with runestones among one of the dead acolytes’ things. Sewn into the lining of the pouch was a Paris address. When Buffy showed it to Oz and Angel, both were more than a bit dubious.
“Y’know, far be it from me to question the motives of, well, the bad guys,” Oz began, “but, well, y’know . . . trap?”
“What choice do we have?” Angel pointed out.
“Then there’s that,” Oz replied, with a nod and a shrug.
“Fine. Paris it is,” Buffy decided. “But first things first. We go to the Watchers’ Council, tell them they’ve got worse security than Macy’s, and find the jerk who set us up for this trap.”
Angel didn’t smile. He barely even glanced at her.
“What is it?” she asked him
“You’ve got to wonder,” he said calmly. “First of all, they’re probably out of spies, or they would have sent others after you, or Giles. Plus, their security can’t be that bad. There’s got to be one person who started it all, who got the ball rolling by infiltrating the Council in some way. If we can find that person, figure out who it is, maybe we could get some of the answers we need.”
“That’d be nice,” Buffy said bluntly. “But we don’t have the time. There’s an eleven-year-old kid out there we need to find and get home to his father. We need to stay focused.”
Oz handed Angel a pillow, then started moving toward the living room sofa, where he intended to sleep. Before he even began to lie down, he glanced back at them. “The other option being the end of the world,” he said calmly, “I’d have to side with Buffy.”
* * *
Beneath the headquarters of the Sons of Entropy, II Maestro had built a special chamber. The bricks and mortar from which it had been constructed whispered of unholy histories: they had been gathered from the execution sites of innocent martyrs, the dungeons of the Inquisition, the famed torture chambers of the de’ Medicis and the Borgias. The walls were a deep, unending ebony. There were no windows. Candles provided insipid light, and large portions of the room remained in darkness. At the moment, the air was dank and icy. It was a chamber that celebrated misery and despair—and triumph, for II Maestro would never again know misery and despair.
So he had been promised.
In the center of the chamber, a pentagram had been inscribed with the blood of a dozen virgins who had been tortured slowly to death. Above the pentagram, a portal glowed an unholy indigo, and within it, flecks of hellfire spit and burst. On occasion, shrieks would echo through it—the cries of the damned, followed by the laughter of demons. It was three times as large as when it had first appeared, many years before.
Soon, it would be big enough.
As II Maestro sank to his knees and chanted, he closed his eyes and waited. Soon the stench of sulfur filled the room. The stones beneath his knees and shins sizzled with heat. Blisters rose on his flesh, but he endured the pain gladly.
He felt the enormous shadow cross his path. Cloaked in the black of the order of the Sons of Entropy, he lowered his forehead to the baking stone floor and murmured, “Welcome, my lord.”
II Maestro’s guest said without preamble, Where is she?
“Soon,” II Maestro promised, opening his eyes. But as always, his guest had retreated to the shadows. II Maestro had never actually seen the dark lord he served. “I will have her soon.”
She walked the ghost road. You could have taken her then.
II Maestro swallowed hard. He was waiting to hear if his followers had achieved their purpose with the help of the Skree.
“She was stronger than I anticipated,” II Maestro confessed. He quickly held up a hand. “Which means her death will bring us all that much more power when it occurs.”
There was silence. Then the demon said, True. There was glee in his voice. Pleasure.
II Maestro allowed a single sigh of relief to escape.
Our hour draws near, the Dark One told him. With the death of a Slayer, we will open all the floodgates of Hell and I shall walk the earth once more.
“And I alone shall be spared,” II Maestro said nervously. “I and my dearest daughter.”
The demon narrowed his eyes. You treasure her.
II Maestro lowered his head. “Indeed, lord, I do.”
That imbues her with great power also.
“No,” II Maestro said, thinking to explain. “Since she grew up in the world outside, I chose to limit her access to the energy that I—and you, my lord—so easily shape and dominate. She is aware of the vastness of the dark forces, of course. But in fact, she’s rather untried—”
That is an oversight that can be quickly remedied.
II Maestro shifted his weight. He wanted badly to rise, but he would not until the great demon gave him leave. “Yes, but—”
There are signs and portents we cannot ignore. Our time to act is nigh. Within this fortnight, we must have a sacrifice that will cause the walls of Hell to tumble. And if not the Slayer, then this girl you love so much.
“No!” II Maestro cried, shocked.
Yes. If you cannot procure the Chosen One, your beloved daughter will take the Slayer’s place.
II Maestro lifted his arms in supplication, oblivious to the heat and the pain. “Lord, please. Not my daughter. I beg you. All of my acolytes believe they will be kings when the barrier to Otherworld falls and all the monsters of chaos roam the Earth. They do not realize that with the death of the Gatekeeper and the sacrifice of the Slayer, the walls of Hell will crumble as well. They love me, give themselves wholly to me, and I, Master, I give them to you.
“All I ask is that you spare Micaela, that I live with her in your kingdom.”
Our bargain was for your life, not for hers.
“She had yet to come into my life when I struck that bargain,” II Maestro whispered.
As I said. The demon chuckled cruelly. She is so very powerful indeed.