DUSK HAD FALLEN, TAKING WITH it the brilliance of the sunset and draining the town of Sunnydale to shades of gray. The cool, still twilight hung like the calm before the storm, a breath held before the plunge. Panthers and leopards growled and paced in the Sunnydale Zoo. Swings in the park swayed ever so slightly. An owl hooted plaintively.
Gravestones shifted as the restless dead waited for night to fall.
For most of the citizens of Sunnydale, it was a twilight like any other.
For Joyce Summers, it seemed as though it might be the beginning of her last night on earth.
“Now, remember, Mrs. Summers,” the one named Brother Claude said pleasantly over his shoulder, raising his brows like a college professor reminding a student about homework. As he stood beside the ratty couch where she sat in the basement, the dim lightbulb suspended from a chain cast demonic shadows over his features. “Make a sound, and you are dead.”
Surrounded by hooded figures, Joyce nodded numbly. Although the music from the band upstairs was making the walls throb, the beating of her heart was so loud in her ears that she was half prepared for Claude to kill her for it. She had never known that it was possible to be this afraid and still function. That she could nod her head. And that her heart would continue to beat.
Since learning that Buffy was the Slayer, Joyce had known fear many times. Seated on Buffy’s bed, clutching a pillow or some prized possession of her daughter’s, she had stared for hours into the darkness. Soundlessly she would stroke the fur of a stuffed animal—that silly, fat pig, Mr. Gordo—her forehead beaded with clammy perspiration, willing her child to come home safely from patrol. She’d practically worn tracks in the kitchen floor, pacing, reaching for the phone, with no one to call. It would do no good to alert the police if Buffy was overdue. And it would be little comfort to speak to Giles, who had no way of telling if that night would be the night Buffy wouldn’t be coming home at all.
It was a mother’s job to keep her daughter from harm, but in the case of the Summers women, the roles were reversed. No matter how much Joyce wanted it otherwise, Buffy, and not she, was the Chosen One. Buffy and Buffy alone stood against the forces of darkness.
Joyce prayed to any god who would listen that Buffy would stay away from this place tonight.
As the figures parted and Brother Lupo, the one with the milky white eye surrounded by scars, approached her, Joyce Summers was shaking from head to toe. She was afraid to die. It was only with supreme effort that she did not cry out. But she was more afraid of Buffy’s death than her own. If, as they planned, she were to be the bait in the trap that caused her daughter’s death, she might as well be dead herself.
Without realizing it, she moaned deep in her throat as Brother Lupo came over to the couch.
“Be quiet!” someone snapped.
Joyce closed her eyes.
* * *
“Okay, so where are they?” Cordelia said to Xander, straining to be heard over the latest thrash offering from You Killed My Brother.
“They must be inside already,” Xander said unhappily. “They’re in there sneaking around, those sneaky SOE’s. How’d they do that? I hate magick guys.”
He, Cordy, Willow, and Giles had shown up hours before dusk, waiting at their hiding places, fully expecting to have beaten the Sons of Entropy to the Bronze. Together, Xander and Giles had worked out a strategy for guarding the “entrance and egress” to the Bronze, although Xander had no idea what any of that had to do with baby eagles. He figured they should just call it “securing the perimeter” and be done with it.
But apparently they’d been tricked, and Xander was monumentally frustrated. With a few more soldiers, they could take down any number of Sons of Entropy and rescue Joyce. Provided their side knew a little something about magick. That had not been on the roster of military knowledge he’d acquired when he’d been transformed into a soldier a couple Halloweens ago.
But he and the others did have a little magick on their side. Willow, who was currently on patrol with Giles on the opposite side of the building, had provided everybody with scapulas, which were protective talismans with all kinds of stinky herbs in them. Giles had muttered a few words in Latin over them, and that was supposed to keep the four of them relatively camouflaged from the creeps who were holding Buffy’s mom hostage. Off the magick radar, as it were. But it didn’t make them invisible. Just less detectable.
Before they’d left for the mission, Giles had tried to phone the Gatekeeper for some words of wisdom, but the connection had not gone through. Not a good sign. They should have left someone there to help the old guy, no matter how much he protested that they’d just be in the way.
As the shadows lengthened and the crowd grew, Xander and Cordelia crouched behind a row of overflowing trash cans, facing the entrance to the Bronze. Xander had moved the trash cans there himself from their regular location in the alley. He figured the Sons of Entropy wouldn’t realize that the cans were not normally here. He hoped like crazy they wouldn’t think to look behind them, but just in case, he planned to move Cordelia and himself to a new hiding spot behind the Dumpsters flush with the exterior of the Bronze itself once true darkness fell.
“Do you think there’s a ghost road into the Bronze?” Cordelia said directly into his ear. The music was very loud. “Is that how they got in without us seeing them?”
He shrugged. “Who can say? Maybe they’ve been in there for a while. Maybe they were already there when Brother Claude stopped by for tea at Giles’s place. Y’know, maybe they’re using the element of surprise. The way we aren’t,” he added bitterly.
They sat without speaking for a while. Cordelia had on some new perfume. It smelled great, and it masked the odor of the garbage fairly well. He inhaled it, savoring the spicy scent, and let his mind wander back to happier times, happier places. Happier activities.
“Are you nervous?” Xander asked. He looked at her. “You’re holding your breath.”
“Only a moron wouldn’t be nervous,” she said. After a few moments, she said, “Can you imagine having to save your mother from religious fanatics?”
He pondered a moment. “No. Avon ladies, maybe.”
She sighed. “Our lives are so weird.”
“True.” He shrugged. “But at least we live in interesting times.”
“Give me boredom any day.”
“It’s my constant desire.” He patted her arm. “What I wouldn’t give for an Uzi right now.”
She rolled her eyes and frowned at him. “All guys ever want to do is shoot things.”
“Wrong.”
“And that.”
“Sums it up.” He gave her a wink. “And that would be a problem why?”
“Oh, Xander.” Cordelia shook her head like a weary older relative. “There is more to life.”
“Yes,” he replied earnestly. “In your case, shoes.”
They heard a noise and ducked.
Xander peered around the side of the trash can. In the crush by the entrance, this guy stood out by the mere fact that he was trying not to stand out. He wore a hooded sweatshirt, and he was obviously looking for something. Not a date, however, unless she had told him to meet her behind the Dumpster: he wandered over there and dum-da-dum looked behind it. His face was hidden by his hood, and at the moment, he was looking downward.
But if he snooped on over to the trash cans, they were dead meat.
Here he came. In the dim light, Xander saw a face striped with scars.
“Oh, my God,” Cordelia whispered. “I don’t think he goes to Sunnydale.”
“Me, either.”
Sweatshirt guy was halfway to the row of cans.
“Looks like we’re going to have to do something, aren’t we?”
“Looks that way, sugar,” Xander said. He licked his lips as he watched the potential SOE. “Somehow I doubt he’d fall for the old distracto routine. You know, where you wander over and ask him if he has a light, preferably in an exotic foreign accent. I’ll bet he’d set you on fire just for spite.”
Cordelia shivered. “No way am I trying it.”
He nodded. “Okay, too bad. Then let’s think of something else.”
He watched the guy walking nearer and nearer. Then he realized he was watching the guy through a colored filter. On top of his garbage pile, an empty green beer bottle stood at an angle.
Xander smiled and fished it out of the garbage, showing it to Cordelia. He hefted the bottle in his hand. He would have only one chance. If he missed, they were in big trouble.
If he missed and they’d made a mistake, they were in bigger trouble.
For a few seconds, Xander waited. Maybe the guy wouldn’t come too close. Maybe some of his buddies would call out to him—his plastic surgeon, maybe—and they’d go into the Bronze and have a cappuccino and talk about anesthesia options.
The guy made a right and sauntered away, whistling the love theme from Armageddon.
Xander put the bottle back. He cocked his head and looked at Cordelia. “You don’t think they have protecto fields or whatever, do you?”
She grimaced. “Good point. Then what good are we?”
He wagged a finger at her. “That’s not a good question for Slayerettes to ask, Cordy. I think we’ve all proven by now that we’re effective members of a team. Well, except maybe you.”
“Hey!” She stiffened. “Uh-oh. Here comes another one.”
This time, the sweatshirt hood was thrown back. This time, the guy was not whistling and staring at the ground. A tall, dark man, he was smoking a cigarette.
Then he was tossing his match into the trash can.
And he was looking straight at Xander.
“Hey,” the acolyte blurted, more surprised than anything.
Xander shot up from behind the trash can, grabbed the man by the front of his sweatshirt, and shattered the green bottle across his forehead.
The guy collapsed face first into the trash can. No one appeared to notice yet.
“Ouch,” Xander groaned. “That had to hurt.”
“Good,” Cordelia said firmly. “C’mon, we’ve got to hide him.”
She ran around to the opposite side of the cans and grabbed the acolyte around the waist.
“How do they do it in the movies?” she asked. “You put one arm around your shoulders and I’ll put the other one around my shoulders. Like he’s drunk.”
Xander did as she said. Then they staggered back behind the trash cans with their burden.
“Well, now we know, in case it ever comes up in conversation,” Xander said, “it’s a lot harder to prop up an unconscious two-hundred-pounder than it looks.”
“Try being under—” Cordelia started to say, then shook her head. “Forget I said that.”
He grinned at her, but she wouldn’t look at him. “I don’t weigh two hundred pounds.”
“Yes, I know.”
They lowered the guy to the ground and leaned over him. Xander said, “Let’s get the sweatshirt off him. It might be useful later.”
It was also a lot harder to yank a hooded sweatshirt over the head and arms of an unconscious two-hundred-pounder than it looked. But as Cordelia crouched with the sweatshirt balled up in her lap, they surveyed the guy’s jeans and Savage Garden T-shirt with something akin to amusement.
“You always think they’re going to have a pentagram branded into their chests or something,” Xander said. “Then you find a nice, normal ensemble direct from the pages of Teen.”
“Yeah,” Cordelia said hoarsely.
“But I’ll bet they dress nicer for their ritual sacrifices,” Xander said. “Tuxes.”
Cordelia nodded. “At least.”
Cordelia started rolling up the sweatshirt. Then she gasped and held up her hand. It was streaked with blood. She held up the sweatshirt and together they examined it. In the light from the Bronze’s doorway, dark stains ran across the upper section of the back, slightly below the hood. The back of the sweatshirt was soaked with blood.
Gingerly, Xander rolled him over.
The back of the T-shirt was bloody, too.
Using his thumbs and forefingers, Xander peeled the stretchy cotton up around the guy’s armpits.
“Eew,” Cordelia said.
His back was carved between the shoulder blades, if not in the shape of a pentagram, then in the shape of something very like it.
“These hazing practices have got to stop,” Xander said tiredly. “It makes recruitment so much more difficult.”
“Which is a good thing,” Cordelia reminded him. “Difficult recruitment.”
“Hi,” said a voice behind them, and Xander whirled around, his hand in a fist.
“Hey.” It was Willow, who blinked. “It’s just me.” She gestured at the sky as she sank to her heels. “It’s dusk.”
“And they’re in,” Xander said.
“They’re in,” Willow confirmed, staring at the guy on the ground with the bloody wound and the T-shirt. “Wow. Which you can take to mean ‘gross.’ What happened to him?”
“Someone got all crazy with the Ginsu,” Xander said.
“Xander knocked him out,” Cordelia announced proudly. “With a beer bottle.”
Willow looked both impressed and concerned. “Did anyone else see it?”
“Nope,” Xander said.
“Well, they might start to wonder where he is,” Willow ventured. “And look for him.”
“My guess is they sent him outside to have his cigarette,” Xander replied. “You know how strict the management is nowadays.”
“She has a point,” Cordelia said uneasily.
“Which occurred to me.” Xander knew he sounded a little defensive, which he was not. The guy had needed to be knocked out. “But there wasn’t much choice.”
That dear old British voice said, “Oh, dear.”
Xander looked behind Willow. Now Giles had joined the party behind the trash cans. Xander was not happy about the fact that in the last ten seconds, two separate people had sneaked up on him and Cordy and he had not had a clue.
“He’ll be missed,” Giles said.
Then, “Good Lord, he’s bleeding.” He examined the carved wound. “Perhaps they needed to perform a ritual to keep their magick strong.”
“Or for when they killed Buffy’s mom,” Cordelia filled in. She widened her eyes and glared at the three of them. “Oh, what? That didn’t occur to anyone else?”
“Actually, no,” Willow said.
“Oh.” Cordelia cleared her throat.
Giles pushed up his glasses. “I wonder if we should abort Plan B.”
“I haven’t been looking forward to Plan B,” Cordelia admitted, wiping her hand on the front of the sweatshirt. “Plan B is not my favorite plan.”
Xander had to agree, especially now that they had taken out the Illustrated Man. Plan B required them to infiltrate the Bronze and try to quietly observe where Joyce Summers might be. Could be the attic, could be the basement. Could be Mr. Plum in the conservatory or the ballroom. They wouldn’t have a lot of opportunities to guess wrong.
As the last of the light disappeared and true darkness fell, Giles’s glasses reflected the moon. Something tugged at the back of Xander’s mind, but he didn’t know precisely what.
Then he was distracted by heavy footsteps and a deep voice calling, barely loud enough to be heard over the band, “Brother Tibor?”
There were more footsteps, directly toward the line of trash cans.
“Brother Tibor?”
Well hidden by the trash cans, they all held their breath. Xander felt cold fingers of dread crawling up his spine. He glanced left to see if Giles had a Plan C he was working on, but the last of the light had fled. The moonlight was too dim, and the street lamp overhead was not working.
“Brother Tibor?”
Xander hazarded a peek and saw the guy silhouetted against the lights in the Bronze. He murmured, “Hooded sweatshirt.”
The man departed.
“Leaving,” Xander added. “Left.”
“We’re out of time,” Giles said grimly. “He’ll report back that he couldn’t find the missing acolyte.”
“Wouldn’t they assume that the Slayer would take out one or two?” Xander asked. “For form’s sake?”
“We can’t make that assumption,” Giles said. “We’ve got to go now.”
“What, after all this hiding, we just walk in?” Xander asked.
“Yes.” Giles stood and gestured for them to follow. “They don’t expect us to attack them. What are we, four against so many? They’ll think we’re fairly harmless.”
“And oh, boy, do we have them fooled,” Xander shot back.
“So, we do attack,” Giles finished. “There’s a window in the basement that looks fairly breakable. I suggest we split up. Two of us will break that window and the other two will go directly into the Bronze. That way—”
At that moment, a ball of fire struck the ground inches from Willow’s foot. She cried out and looked up.
On the roof of the Bronze, a hooded man stood silhouetted against the moon. He threw back his hand and flicked it at them. Another ball shattered two of the trash cans.
Bronze patrons milling around by the entrance began to scream and scatter. Someone shouted, “There’s a live electric wire!” and pandemonium struck.
“Attack,” Giles yelled.
He grabbed Willow’s hand and together they dashed into the Bronze.
“Looks like we get the window,” Xander told Cordy.
“Oh, my God.” Cordelia raced to keep up with him. “I can’t believe this is happening!”
Xander bobbed to his left and picked up a heavy rock. Then, as they rounded the corner of the building, he saw half a chunk of brick and handed it to Cordy.
They dashed to the little window and threw their ammo at it. It shattered as if a bomb had hit it.
Xander took a deep breath and said, “We’re going in.”
A face appeared among the jagged pieces stuck in the window. Xander pulled back his leg and gave it a good, swift kick. With a shout, it disappeared.
Xander looked at Cordelia over his shoulder. Then he dove for the window.
“No!” she shouted. “Xander, don’t!”
* * *
The Bronze was on fire. Smoke choked Willow as she and Giles pushed their way against the stream of people fighting to get out.
A guy in a Sunnydale High sweatshirt raced through the Bronze, shouting, “There’s a live electric wire outside!”
He ran up to Claire Bellamy, the manager, who had a portable phone against her shoulder and a fire extinguisher in both hands. She nodded at him and shouted back into the phone. Then she gestured to the guy to take the fire extinguisher from her.
People were running in panic all over the place. They clattered down the stairs, pushing and shoving, dervished out of the bathrooms and poured out the front door.
They were coming from everywhere except the basement.
And while there was a lot of smoke, Willow had yet to see flames anywhere in the Bronze.
As patrons swarmed around them, Willow pointed to the basement door and Giles nodded.
“My thinking exactly,” he shouted.
Together they fought their way through the terrified crowd. Someone hit Willow in the face. She cried out, reeling for a moment.
“I’m okay, I’m okay,” she assured Giles. She got her bearings as Giles grabbed her wrist and urged her behind him, acting as her shield. Her lip throbbed and her cheekbone was stinging.
Then it was Giles’s turn to fall back slightly. Willow pushed her way through, fighting a rising tide that threatened to catch her up with it.
She bellowed, “Coming through!” and elbowed a couple of jocks from school out of her way.
At last she reached the door. Giles was behind her.
Willow wrapped her hand around the knob and yanked. Nothing happened.
“It’s locked,” she said.
* * *
The journey along the ghost roads was harrowing. The monsters were distracted by the dead acolyte’s corpse at first. But then it was up to Spike and Buffy to keep them at bay, while Angel tried to keep Oz safe.
Micaela explained that she had learned some magick as a child, and she had been skilled in talking to the dead. In fact, she had helped Albert travel the ghost roads to warn them in the catacombs. Now she aided them by speaking to the dead, to the spirits, by explaining their plight in terms the dead could understand. And when she was through, the ghosts began to aid them, to hold the monsters back and clear their way.
“That’s amazing,” Buffy told her.
“No,” Micaela said, shaking her head, the gray, eternal twilight of the ghost roads surrounding them all. “It’s horrible, actually. They hate it here. While they’re walking these roads, they don’t know where they’ll end up. That’s why so many of them never move on to their final destination. They’re afraid of what that destination might be.”
Spike tossed a scaled beast toward Buffy, and the Slayer got it into a choke hold and broke its neck.
And the journey went on like that, until Micaela told them all to halt.
“Here,” she said. “We’re here.”
“How the bloody hell do you know?” Spike asked. “I didn’t even tell you where we were going.”
“The ghosts know,” she told him. “And besides, I can feel the boy. The Gatekeeper’s son. He’s here.”
Another door opened, and moonlight spilled into the gray of the ghost roads, along with the sound and smell of the ocean. Buffy was the last one out, and she heard Spike shouting even before she emerged back into the land of the living.
Ahead of them, a little cottage was already under siege by Fulcanelli’s followers.
* * *
It was a massacre.
With Buffy, Angel, and Spike outside, and Drusilla on the inside—less than pleased—the Sons of Entropy never stood a chance.
* * *
The moment Xander dove through the open window into the basement of the Bronze, colliding with an acolyte and crashing to the floor in a tumble of limbs, Brother Lupo knew that the Slayer was not coming.
Something had gone wrong.
“Chaos’ name!” he cursed. “Kill the fool!”
Immediately, several acolytes moved in on the teenager. He fought back, and he fought well. Better than Lupo would ever have expected.
“Xander!” shouted the mother of the Slayer. “God, no!” She turned to Lupo, eyes wild as she pleaded with him. “He can be useful to you. He’s one of Buffy’s best friends. Don’t kill him!”
Lupo struck her, hard, across the cheek. One of his knuckles popped with the force of the blow, and he swore. That was the cost of resorting to physical violence instead of sticking to magick, he thought. But there was something very fulfilling about the feeling of flesh on flesh, bone on bone.
The woman fell back and stared up at him in fury from the basement floor. She held a hand to her cheek where he’d struck her, and Lupo smiled at her pain.
“My daughter’s going to kill you for that,” Joyce Summers said. “Unless I get a chance to do it first.”
Lupo only laughed. Then he looked up as a girl’s scream ripped through the basement. At the shattered window, Cordelia Chase shouted at the Sons of Entropy to leave her boyfriend alone.
Two of them. And there would be more, Lupo knew. At the very least, the Watcher and the little spellcaster. They were probably upstairs already. And who knew what others had been convinced to align themselves with the Slayer.
Yet, without the Slayer, there was no benefit to this battle.
“You!” he shouted to a particularly brawny acolyte. “Take her and come with me!”
Joyce Summers screamed as the acolyte pushed her arm up behind her back and held her in that position—in great pain and inches away from a broken limb—as they hurried up the basement steps, leaving the others behind to deal with Xander and Cordelia. It wouldn’t take long, Brother Lupo knew. Four acolytes against one boy.
He was as good as dead. And the girl, too, if she continued to scream at them.
* * *
There was no fire in the Bronze. It had been nothing but smoke. Giles was uncertain whether it had been achieved through magick or technology, but either way, it was a hoax meant to empty the Bronze of all staff and clientele. And it had worked.
Save for him and Willow, of course.
With a loud curse uncharacteristic of the Watcher, Giles reared back and kicked the basement door once again.
“I hear screaming,” Willow said. For the third time.
“I know!” Giles snapped. “I’m doing my best.”
He took several steps backward, determined to put his shoulder into it this time, to try to tear the door right off its hinges.
“I wish Buffy was here,” Willow said quietly.
“No,” Giles replied. “That’s exactly what they want!”
Then he ran at the door.
A moment before he would have crashed into it, the door opened. Giles was taken off guard, and instead of throwing himself at the bald, scar-faced man with the blind white eye, he hesitated and moved to one side to avoid him.
“Giles!”
He looked up and saw Joyce Summers being forced past him by a muscular acolyte. Without another thought, Giles attacked. He reached for the man’s arms. The acolyte hauled back and snap-kicked him hard in the abdomen. It all happened so fast that Giles was unprepared for the kick. He was thrown backward where he sprawled into a table and several chairs, then lay on the ground and began to vomit up everything he’d had to eat that day.
Through the haze of pain and nausea, he saw the white-eyed man—Brother Lupo, he surmised, from earlier descriptions—face off against a courageous but obviously terrified Willow.
* * *
“Get out of the way, little spellcaster,” Brother Lupo snarled at the redheaded girl.
“I can’t do that,” Willow replied, and reached for an aluminum folding chair that stood nearby.
“Willow, do as he says,” Joyce Summers snapped, her voice taut from the pain in her arm, where it was held almost at the breaking point.
Brother Lupo smiled. “Yes, listen to the woman, Ms. Rosenberg. She is wise. Though she will be dead if her daughter does not appear in Sunnydale soon to claim her.”
Willow stood straight, hefted the chair and stood as if to attack.
Joyce Summers dropped her voice. Her tone stern, she said, “Willow, listen to me. You can’t help Buffy if you’re dead.”
“Hmm, now that’s true,” said Brother Lupo.
He raised a hand, whispered a few words, and sickly blue energy crackled from his fingers and struck the metal chair. Willow shuddered as though she were being electrocuted, and then she and the chair were thrown back against the coffee counter.
“Oh, God, no,” Joyce Summers whispered.
Lupo left the Bronze. In moments, he knew the other acolytes would follow. But his mind was not on his men. He thought of one thing only: what II Maestro might say when he discovered that they did not have the Slayer.
Brother Lupo was afraid.
* * *
Cordelia slipped into the basement of the Bronze with a length of rusty metal chain in her hands. It was the only thing she could find in the alley outside that vaguely resembled a weapon.
“Hello, sweet one,” said a leering acolyte as he turned his attention from beating the crap out of Xander to this new intruder.
“Oh, please,” Cordelia sneered.
Then she whipped the rusty chain around and it slapped him hard in the face, breaking his jaw. The man screamed in pain.
The others looked up and stared at her wide-eyed. The guy with the broken jaw mumbled something unintelligible and pointed at Cordy.
“Xander!” she shouted. “The cavalry needs the cavalry!”
* * *
With a tremendous effort, Xander threw off one of the acolytes and got to his feet. He was bleeding from several cuts on his face, which was a mess. His clothes were tom. And he looked very pissed.
“Come on!” he yelled.
The acolytes turned to look at him again and started to laugh. Then they moved toward Cordelia. With a shriek, she swung the chain to keep them back. Xander leaped on the back of the acolyte nearest him and began to choke the man, who spun around and around trying to get him off.
Finally Xander was thrown, and he landed pain fully by Cordelia’s feet. He jumped up just as the three other acolytes were lunging at him. The fourth, with the broken jaw, stood a short distance away.
“Give me that!” Xander bellowed, grabbing the chain from Cordelia’s hands and then stepping in front of her and swinging the chain out to drive them back.
They moved back.
But only for a moment.
The closest acolyte charged Xander. The chain whipped out and wrapped around his neck, and while Xander was occupied with him, the other two moved in, surrounding the teen. They were fast. But not fast enough. He yanked the chain off the throat of the acolyte he’d been choking, and it tore skin off as well, its jagged rust ripping open veins.
“Come on!” he screamed again, and swung the chain.
The guy with the broken jaw mumbled something else. Then he reached inside his jacket and pulled out a gun.
“Whoa,” Xander said, even as he ducked a punch. “You guys are supposed to have swords and knives, right? Maybe some magick?”
The acolyte whose jaw Cordelia had broken leveled the gun at Xander and shot him in the chest.
* * *
Cordelia was shrieking at the top of her lungs as the four acolytes went up the stairs from the basement and disappeared. She crouched down by Xander, tears flowing freely, and tried to find something clean with which to staunch the wound in Xander’s chest.
A pool of blood was forming on the ground beneath his still form, and his eyes were glazed with shock.
She stopped screaming only when Giles and Willow came down into the basement, both in bad shape from whatever scrape they’d gotten into upstairs.
“They . . . they shot him,” Cordelia said, in a voice that sounded to her as though it were coming from somebody else.
Giles quickly knelt and examined the wound.
Cordelia stared up into Willow’s face and realized that the shock and the horror and the tears there, the mute despair, were just a mirror of her own face.
“There’s too much blood,” Giles said, breaking that connection.
Cordelia stared at him, but it was Willow who spoke.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
Giles glanced from one girl’s face to the other. When he spoke, his own voice sounded as hollow as theirs had.
“Xander’s going to die.”