A large map of the world was spread on a large table in one of the offices. Angel and Gunn leaned over it.
“These are the positions we’ve been able to figure for Buffy Summer’s and her people,” Gunn said. He pointed at the map. “Buffy and Dawn Summers are in Rome. They own some small, private digs just outside of the city proper. Dawn goes to a private school with some good accreditation, and Buffy drives a really nice car.”
Two pins with little flags on them stuck out of Italy on the map.
“Rupert Giles and Andrew Wells were in London as of yesterday, but they both had tickets for and should have boarded a British Airways flight in Heathrow say . . . a half hour ago. They should be landing in Rome in another two hours.”
Two more tiny flags flew for the moment on the island of Britain.
“Our old pal Willow the witch is curling her toes in Sao Paulo, down in Brazil.”
Gunn pointed out another tiny flag.
“We think this guy Xander Harris is somewhere in Mozambique at the moment, though given the realities of that particular place in the world we’re having trouble pinning him down exactly.”
Another flag positioned vaguely somewhere in eastern Africa.
Two flags in Italy. Two in Britain. One in Africa. Another in South America.
Angel frowned slightly, “What about Faith?”
“That girl seems to be another case altogether. Being a fugitive an’ all since Wesley sprung her from Stockton for us she seems to be doing a hell of a job keeping her head down and her flashy self off the radar. Our best guess given the pattern is that she’s either in Asia or Australia, Asia being the more likely candidate. The truth is we really don’t know for sure. Keep in mind that we don’t know a whole lot about your girl’s operations. She keeps her circle pretty tight. I remember what that’s like. So far as we’ve heard they don’t discuss it all that much with outsiders. But we can ascertain certain things from what we do know. We know Andrew had several Slayers with him when he visited Los Angeles that he held in reserve.”
Angel nodded, “More than a dozen.”
“Right. So my guess it that each of these people, Giles, Harris, Willow and Faith, run a division covering the geographic area they’re in, with the new Slayers and others that they’ve chosen doing the actual scut work of contact and recruitment. Each of these divisions probably answer to Buffy in Rome, who makes the big decisions. Given the area they’re trying to cover and number of people involved it’s the only way I can see it working.”
A smooth beach. Small waves lapping up against the white sand that stretched along the winding coast as far as the eye could see. A tropical forest, wrapping out and around the resorts, pressed up against the beach.
The sun hung just over the clean, bright blue water in the east, illuminating hints of the landscape in the shallower depths of the ocean beneath the water along the coast.
Willow, dressed in a revealing blue bikini, her normally pale skin healthily darkened by the sun, sat in the sand. She was typing on the laptop balanced in her lap.
Kennedy was sitting behind her, carelessly and distractingly wrapped around the young witch. Kennedy leaned her head down and playfully sucked at the place where Willow’s shoulder joined with her neck. Willow stopped, her chin tipping up fractionally, her eyes drifting closed, and her mouth opening silently to suck in an erotic breath.
Standing, watching her reflection in the mirror, Buffy brushed her teeth. Setting her toothbrush aside she picked up a glass of water, took a sip and spit it back into the sink. Next she picked up a wide brush and ran it quickly through her long, blonde hair.
Smiling faintly, she left the bathroom. She almost seemed to dance across the living room to the computer desk in the corner, humming softly beneath her breath. There were books on shelves atop the desk. There were pictures of her sister and friends scattered among them.
Sitting in the chair and awkwardly scooting herself closer to the desk she signed in.
Gently adjusting the position of the mouse Buffy clicked on something on the desktop.
The computer made an electronic chime a few moments later as the new collection of email came in.
“Now, our mystics have managed to locate several Slayers already,” Gunn said. “We’ll have no way of knowing for certain whether Buffy’s people have already contacted them until we contact them ourselves. They may have already been found by your girl’s team and been put to work. There’s a certain element of risk to this.” Gunn looked at Angel seriously. “I know what Wolfram & Hart policy used to be for others who tried to lure their people away to supposedly better pastures. We don’t know what your girl’s will be.”
“Buffy isn’t like Wolfram & Hart,” Angel said faithfully. “Then again neither are we.” Angel furrowed his brow staring hard at the map. “Who do we have on this? Out there on the ground, I mean.”
“Units of our Retrieval teams mostly, with a few trusted free-lancers filling in the gap. Before you ask, I’ve gone through the files. Their loyalty is unquestionable. And all of the free-lancers that I signed off on had reputations that were completely clean.”
Angel said thoughtfully, “I want our teams to watch each of the girls for a few days. Tell them if they see any hint of contact with Buffy or her people to just . . . walk away, let it be.”
“And if they don’t . . . see Buffy’s people, I mean?”
“Then they can start with the whole recruitment spiel. Offer them money, adventure, a key to the world . . . whatever it is they want.”
Wesley softly held her hand.
She lay there on the hospital bed, unmoving. He just sat there in a chair beside her bed and held her hand. Quietly.
She seemed soft. Peaceful in sleep. Words that could never have been used to describe her when she was awake.
“I didn’t know you were down here,” said a soft voice.
Wes turned and looked behind him. “Fred!” He smiled a little awkwardly. He had let go of her hand. “Hi! I was just . . .”
“Visiting Cordelia,” Fred answered for him.
“I just . . . I just realized earlier how long it had been since I’d just been down here and seen her,” Wes said quietly. “I had forgotten how long it’s been.”
“Yeah,” Fred said quietly empathic as she stepped further into the room. “I get that. Working here. So many distractions. So many things to keep us busy. Sometimes . . . it’s hard to remember the cost. I come down here to remind me.” She just stood there and stared at the bed for a few moments. “Do you think . . . Do you think she’ll ever wake up?”
Wes shook his head. “I don’t know. Do you think she’d be proud of us? I was sitting alone in my office this morning. I was trying to make a decision, trying to figure whether working her was ever the best choice.” He paused quietly. “How do you do it? How do you . . . handle this place?”
“I stand by my friends,” Fred said simply. “I hope I can find it within myself to make the right choice.”
“Mombasa,” a man complained gratingly as he looked out the window at the dusty city. “I mean not even frickin’ Nairobi. We got sent to Mombasa!”
Another slightly older man sat in a chair at the table behind him. The meticulously clean black pieces of an AR15 assault rifle were spread on the table and he was snapping them back together again. His hand raised the last piece from the table and expertly snapped it into position.
He raised the AR15 to his shoulder. Settled his finger around the trigger. The rifle clicked on an empty chamber.
“You’re in Kenya anyway,” the larger man said evenly as he lowered the weapon.
“Yeah . . . great. Feels like a damn brick oven.” The whiny man slapped at the side of his neck. “And the god-damned flies are like vultures.”
“The big vampire gives the orders. We go. That’s the job you signed up for,” the older man said placidly. “Today we’re here. Soon we’ll be someplace else. And if I’ll have to listen to your prattle until the woman we’re supposed to work with shows I will take my knife and cut out your vocal cords to silence you.”
The whiny man turned and looked at him with wide eyes.
“The mission, as it is, will be a damn cake-walk,” the older man said confidently. “Nothing will get in the way. Relax. See the sights. Take a walk or something, before I do something big boss vampire will have to cut my head off for.”
The bus rolled to a stop and the door opened.
Worn black boots stepped down onto the ground, throwing up faint clouds of colorless dust. The dust clung to the blue jeans that clad the man’s legs. A pistol hung in the holster on the worn black leather belt around his waist. He wore a loose shirt and had a medium sized pack slung over his muscled shoulder.
“Welcome to Kenya,” Xander Harris said softly.
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Author's note: Still no Spuffy, but I can promise that Giles & Andrew will show up in Rome next chapter.
Big thanks to all of you who cared enough to review. The response for this has been far and beyond what I could have ever hoped. So thank you. I love you guys.
Sorry to anyone who has been waiting around for the next chapter of "Endlessly..." There are a few of you. This fic has been stealing my attention. I am working on it.