Dawn returned home after 7 p.m. Thick, chalky clouds foretold of yet another late summer storm. She was tired. Her shins were bruised from soccer practice (football, she amended. In Britain, it’s football). Her day had been perfectly wretched. Mickey spilled to everyone that Dawn roomed with a flat full of freaks who believed in vampires, demons and witches. In between classes, random idiots charged at her, yelling ‘Expelliarmus!’ So juvenile.
She entered the quiet flat to find Andrew in full-on research frenzy, with books piled all willy-nilly and his laptop open to Google.
“What’re you doing?” she asked.
Andrew jumped. “What? What am I what?”
“Doing, dorkface. As in, what, comma, are you?”
Andrew straightened. “Giles says Watchers are Called. So I’m call worthy. Always on the ready, not matter the situation. Like His Girl Friday, or,”
“Dr. Watson?” Dawn said. She came into the dining room and took the chair beside him.
“Yeah. See. I didn’t waste my day with useless games or petty diversions,” Andrew said. “Although I did learn that if you take the ‘S’ out of cosmic, you get comic.”
Dawn picked up a book. “What did you study?”
Andrew fidgeted. “Mixed bag, really. Old World conjurations. The theories of spirit manifestations and their relation to water and electromagnetic activity.”
“Neat,” Dawn said.
“Oh. And, did you know that any demon can be conjured, you just have to know the right watchwords? Also, it’s best to have the vanquishing spell on hand otherwise you have rogue demon on your hands, all dressed up and nowhere to...”
Dawn was nodding. “This is good,” she said. “Really good. This is what I should be doing. After all we’ve been through, after all we’ve seen, the real world stuff falls pretty flat.”
“Tell me about it,” Andrew said. “But, well, you’re already way ahead of the game though. You started out as a ball of energy, which means already connected to the big power source. Plus, you learned Turkish in auto-didactic Keanu mode. I’m sure Giles will call you.”
As if on cue, the telephone in the hall rang. Dawn and Andrew froze. After the second ring, Dawn sprinted into the hall to answer it.
“See!” Andrew yelled after her. “Calling. I knew it!”
“Hello?” Dawn asked. On the line, she heard only a dull humming followed by a series of clicks.
“Hello?” Dawn said again, louder this time.
The humming turned into static, and the connection broke.
Dawn replaced the receiver. She came back into the dining area.
“Nothing, huh?” Andrew said. “No ‘seven days’ or ‘don’t you watch scary movies’?”
Dawn sat down heavily in her chair, pulling a book in front of her. “Probably a wrong number,” she said. She skimmed the page, flipped to the next. “Don’t you have a date with Nighna or something?”
Andrew simpered a little. “Not till Friday. School night.”
Dawn sat back. Andrew sighed.
“So,” Dawn said. “You wanna practice invocations or something?”
“Girl, I thought you’d never ask!” he said.
~*~
William was manic. He was more animated than she had seen him since his return. They spent the morning training the Slayers, then the afternoon hours with Buffy’s regular students. The latter were bona-fide file clerks, teachers, news correspondents, housewives, moms and sisters who felt the need to get their defense on.
“It’s good, Buffy,” he told her. “Being a teacher suits you. It’s a calling, the work you’ve done.”
They walked together along the misty street toward Leicester Square and the warehouse district where Buffy planned to patrol. Autumn crept around the edges of London, tingeing the fog with a bitter chill.
“The Slayer-lings are untried, as yet. But we’ve been training for less than a month. I don’t see much point to rushing. Don’t want to miss any steps along the way,” Buffy said.
“No. No danger there. They are Slayers, though. Gave me a run, they did,” he said. He smiled at the memory.
“You did well with them. Got ’em scared. I thought Rita was gonna bolt after that sweep kick you pulled,” Buffy said.
They heard a rumbly sound in the distance. William paused mid-step, straining to hear it.
Buffy nudged him. “London: It rains here. I miss the sun part of Sunnydale. Less demony here, though.”
William listened a moment longer, but heard nothing. They resumed their walk.
“They should put that in the travel brochure,” he said. “More rain, fewer demons.”
“Yeah,” she said. They walked along a few paces more.
“There’s a thing,” he said. “About vampires. Something your girls ought to know.”
Buffy gave him a sidelong glance. “Go on.”
“It’s about creation. That’s part of the whole vamp allure, you know. To make life. To give it. For humankind, it’s only women can do it. But any bloke with fangs can sire...”
“Hang on,” Buffy said. “What you gave was unlife. It’s not the same thing.”
“No,” William said. “No, it’s not. But close. Vampires give power. Just as a mother gives power by giving life to her child. Get it?”
He looked at her, puzzled at himself.
Buffy studied him closely.
“Think I’m onto something. I think I’ve sussed it out... Something,” he said.
Buffy arched her brows. “You’ve been doing that a lot lately,” she said.
William nodded. “I know. I have.”
Buffy touched his arm. “It’s kinda scary.”
“I won’t go all Good Will Hunting on you. But, somehow, my mind is... freer,” William said. He looked up at the blank gray clouds. He could almost feel the synapses firing. His mind was waking up, but still, somehow, he slept.
They entered an alley between a warehouse and a high chain link fence. The warehouse bays were open, spilling burnt orange light in oblong stretches across the glass-strewn ground. Several towers of recyclable cardboard bales stood thirty feet high on the loading bays. To Buffy, they looked like wobbly stacks of children’s blocks. The place seemed ideal for an ambush. She reached into her pocket and closed her fist around her stake.
William scanned the area. He knew as well as she did the kind of creature they might encounter in a place like this.
“Hey, weren’t we supposed to keep our voices down, being that we’re on the prowl and all?” he whispered.
Buffy didn’t lower her voice when she answered. “Nope. This is part of the plan, see. We look like an ordinary couple on our way to the nearest coffee house where we can get all existential about this play or that movie, completely oblivious to the possibility of danger lurking.”
“Ordinary couple?” William said.
A crew of five vampires ran into the opposite end of the alley.
“Speaking of lurking,” Buffy said. She struck her Slaying pose, arms crossed, stake at the ready.
The vamp crew came to a crashing halt. They wore rave wear – flashy chains, baggie pants, silly caps turned sideways on their shaved heads. The tallest of them screamed something completely unintelligible.
Buffy looked over her shoulder to William. “Were they speaking in rewind?” she asked.
“Scottish,” he said, sneering. “They’re Scottish vampires.”
The tall one rushed in. Buffy dusted him before he had a chance to land a blow. The other four fell within seconds; hardly a fight by her account.
“Scottish vampires, huh?” Buffy spun on her heel. “Kilt ’em.”
William groaned. He tucked his stake into his pocket and sauntered over to her. “That was bad, Summers. I think you’ve lost your edge.”
Buffy leaned against the wall, pulling him toward her. “Care to test that theory?” she said.
She kissed him, but they were half laughing so they wound up bumping teeth. Which made them laugh even more.
Behind them, they heard footsteps slapping pavement. Outside the alleyway, a voice called out, “Dad! Over here. They went in there.”
Buffy and William parted, but remained as they were in their near-embrace.
When the young man rounded the corner, he skidded to a stop. “Hey,” he said. “I know you.”
Buffy and William exchanged looks of mutual confusion.
“I don’t know you,” William said.
“You should. We’ve met,” the man said.
William studied him: flat mop of tawny hair, wide-set green eyes, Jimmy Olsen good looks. Yeah, bells did ring, but where...?
The pieces fell jarringly into place when Angel came to stand beside his son.
“Connor,” William whispered.
“Angel?” Buffy said.
“Well, well,” Angel said, flatly. “Look who survived.”
“Survived?” William echoed.
He felt the muscles in Buffy’s arms stiffen, then go slack. “Angel?” she said again.
Angel uttered a bitter laugh. “You know, Spike, I expected to find a lot of things in England. But I gotta admit, this one’s a shock.”
Buffy stepped out of William’s embrace. She closed half the distance between them. “Angel? What are you saying? What are you doing here?”
But Angel ignored her. To Connor, he said, “I should’ve seen it all along. How long did you wait? Huh? How long before you...” Angel leaned heavily on Connor, wincing.
“Angel,” Buffy said, stepping closer. “What are you talking about?”
That’s when things turned from weird to flat-out freaky. Seven new guys – nomadic warriors, judging by their sand-colored clothes and gauzy cowls over their faces – miraged into the alley. Each wore a pair of curved triangular blades, which they drew from well-oiled scabbards the moment they emerged into on the scene. One bore an ornate silver crest on his right shoulder.
William cocked his head to one side. “Friends of yours?” he asked Angel.
Angel flinched. Connor got his arm around him for support.
The fighters closed in.
Buffy said, “Now is not really a good time, I’m afraid. But if you’d like to come back later...”
The main fighter, the one with the silver crest, skirted Buffy. She caught his arm and tried to sling the fighter into the fence. Normally, this maneuver sent the strongest man or vamp soaring. The Nomad Warrior slipped from her grasp like water through sand. He wasn’t after Buffy. He singled out William.
“Or maybe not,” William said, ready to strike.
But the fighter stopped short. He said, “N’galeck t’ll nesthul gal aconda.”
William blinked. “I don’t follow...” he said. Nomad Warrior slashed out at William’s chest.
William dodged, caught the fighter’s wrist and flung him away. That was the cue for wacky mayhem to ensue. The others six fighters jumped into the fray. One of them hefted Angel over his head and merrily tossed him out of the alley.
Not liking this, Connor threw the fighter full force into the chain link fence. The fighter shattered spectacularly into a million shimmering particles, then reformed into Nomad fighter shape once the pieces rained down on the ground.
“Oh not good,” Buffy muttered. She shot a glance to William, who was equally petrified.
The fighter thrown by Connor re-engaged. Though Connor could hold his own, he saw Angel out in the street trying to get up and not succeeding. Connor decided then to leave the fight. He fell back, drawing the fighter along with each retreating step. Connor figured Spike and the girl would have to get scrappy by themselves.
Buffy took on two of the warriors. The remaining four encircled William. The rain-swollen clouds chose to burst, turning the fight from unpleasant to really sloppy. Buffy saw Connor beyond the curtain of rain. He managed to get Angel to his feet, and the pair of them fled.
“Will!” she cried out, but he couldn’t hear her.
She continued to fight. The Nomads deflected her best roundhouse, then parried her uppercut. She was outmatched. Caleb had this kind of strength, but there was only one of him. Buffy rolled in gutter sludge, then came up to kick out some shins. Before she could strike, the attackers froze in one accord, then miraged out.
Buffy and William stood there, dumbfounded and soaked.
“What the bloody hell?” William said.
She turned slowly to face him. “Do you feel that?” she asked. Panic dawned in her eyes.
“No? What?”
The ground trembled. A wave of earth pitched beneath them. The warehouse walls came tumbling down, burying Buffy and William under tons and tons of cardboard rubble.
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