The pair of them weren’t much to look at. She knew it. They had been crawling through rain-soaked ditches for days. Her jeans and T-shirt were tattered to a rough Lita Ford look. The cast on his arm was ruined and had begun to smell like week-old belly button lint. It would do him no good at all, monkey crawling through muck with his arm all torn to hell. But he was not the listening type and she was not the nagging type. She told him not to come along. He did, and injury or not, he had yet to slow her down.
Faith glanced at him. “How you holdin’ up? You look pale, and for you that’s...”
“I’m fine,” Wood said. He coughed into his good hand. “Any sign of them?”
Faith peeked between the slats of the whitewash fence. She saw concrete, slick with rain, steaming wetly with the acrid scent of broiling motor oil. The parking lot and the dingy buildings beyond appeared abandoned. A lone sky blue church bus was parked askew in the lot, looking forlorn against the bad weather backdrop.
“Man, Haiti’s not what it used to be,” Faith said.
“You been here before?” Wood said. He flopped against the grimy wall, grateful for the overhang. Even a few seconds abatement from the constant seasonal rains made him feel almost good.
Faith continued to stare out from the gaps in the fence. “No,” she said, distracted. “It was, you know, an observation. As in off hand.”
Wood uttered a forced laugh. He closed his eyes. Faith looked back at him.
She couldn’t believe Wood survived the whole salt dome implosion. Turned out, Slayer strength did get passed down in families. She had done the pulling to shore, but Wood kept up his end of the bargain by continuing to breath.
And yeah, Berithi had gills. Didn’t matter once she snapped his neck.
They lost a little ground with his convalescing in a New Orleans hospital, but regained what they could. The Priestess made stops in villages along the Southern coast of the Dominican Republic before moving on to Port-au-Prince. Signs said she was damage bound for the coastal villages, but here they were in Jeremie and zip. No evil Priestess. No vampire acolytes. No burned out huts or bombed out cars. Just denuded hillsides and buckets of piss-warm rain.
“She’s moved on,” Wood said, quietly. “Moved on, or called back. Either way, I think we lost her.”
“Nuh-uh,” Faith said. “No way. We have come this far. We are not losing her this time.”
“Faith, look at us. Even if we caught..” he coughed. Began again. “Even if we caught up to her, all we could really do is effectively glare her to fits of gleeful laughter.”
Faith pressed her face to the fence, as if looking harder with her whole head might make something appear.
“Give up,” she said. “Do it. What do I care? Not my style, but hey...”
“Faith,” he said.
She held up a hand to silence him. She heard a pitter-pattering of lots of feet.
“Hey,” she said again. “Hey, look at this.”
Wood got up with a painful groan. He came over to look out with her. Four boys, elementary school age, ran up the sidewalk together. All four were soaked. Their bare feet slapped the wet pavement.
“They’re kids,” Wood said.
“Ya think?”
“They don’t look so good,” he observed.
“Poverty’s a real bitch, 90210.”
“No, look at the knees. Scrapes. Holes in the clothes. They’re running. Like us,” he said.
As they watched, one of the boys dragged a panel of wood back from the boarded up windows. The other three darted in like a row of little ducks. The first boy did a double take on street level, then ducked in himself.
“Hide-out in Haiti-town,” Faith said, clamping her hand over Wood’s wrist. “Let’s go.”
Faith was halfway up the fence when Wood hauled her back down.
“Hey, watch it,” she yelled.
Wood looked very, very concerned. “Listen,” he said.
Faith directed her attention at the lack of sound. “I don’t hear anything.”
“My point exactly,” he said. “Fits her MO.”
“No,” Faith said. She strained to hear any kind of noise. Bird, cricket, frog, surf... She looked back at Wood, alarmed. “She can’t. It’s daylight.”
“Shh...” He pointed. Across the street, a black shadow stretched. From their place behind the fence, they watched it grow longer, then somehow more dense like a cloud of ink. Tendrils of it whipped forth, twisting and dragging forward. And then, she appeared.
Faith started up the fence again.
Wood pulled at her legs. “Stop. Are you crazy?”
“She’s gonna find them,” she called down.
Wood dropped to his knees, dragging her with him. Faith scrambled back up. The Priestess hovered in the curling vines of smoke, black hair waving back like a Medusa’s mane. Thick ropy veins stood out on her face and neck and arms. Her eyes burned in her skull like the dull embers of a forest fire thought long dormant.
While they watched, The Priestess outstretched her arms. The air ahead of her shimmered. There was a sucking sound, and the boards over the windows bulged.
“Oh no she isn’t,” Faith seethed. She was on her feet and kicking the fence down before Wood could say Parcheesi.
Faith ran out into the parking lot. She screamed, “I’m the one you want, you skanky, veiny wannabe witch-bitch!”
The Priestess revolved silently, riding on the wave of her own malignant power.
“Ah, Faith,” she said. “Hi. I’m kinda busy right now, bringing the world to its knees. You’re not really in my way and I could bat you aside, but... how about a little intimidation instead? Fireball, maybe? Or, ooh. Maybe a case of suppurating sores.”
“Save the chit chat,” Faith said. “I can take all you got and then some.”
The Priestess wrinkled her nose in a way that looked almost human. “Babe, I really don’t think so,” she said. She flicked her hands open. Bursts of flame ruptured the air in front of Faith.
Priestess was fast. Faith was faster. She dived over the fire, rolled, then leapt at the Priestess. Immediately the tendrils twisted around her, binding her wrists. Faith responded with a kick to Priestess face.
The Priestess’s eyes sparked to a Chernobyl glow. “You had one freebie. You just spent it,” she said.
The Priestess cupped her hands. They filled with molten greenish fluid. Faith was at close range and had to get away fast. She flung her body backward just as the Priestess flung her demon mucus. Faith rolled, avoiding the smoking pits the green acidy stuff made in the asphalt.
Faith glimpsed a sign of movement from the corner of her eye and knew it was Wood, heading for the kids. She just had to keep the be-otch busy long enough. She leapt to her feet.
“Yeah? I hear you talking,” Faith said. “I’m more of an action over words girl.”
The Priestess sailed in, inky blackness billowing. “Silenciatus,” she said.
Faith opened her mouth, but made no sound.
“Now you really are action over words,” she said. She began to a slow circle around Faith. “Let’s see, Dark Slayer. You found me. I get to take you apart. I’m glad you’ll be my first. The other Slayers don’t have your reputation.”
Faith made a hand gesture that proved again that she didn’t need words for expression.
“Well, if you’re gonna be that way,” The Priestess said. She raised her arms, energy crackling.
Then Wood slammed into her with the church bus.
The Priestess bounced like a Living Dead Doll. She rolled, end over end, to the curb. The black curling wisps started to dissipate the moment she lost consciousness. And so did her control on Faith’s voice box.
“Wood!” she yelled, voice hoarse. “Fry me up in canola, that was hot.”
He leaned out of the open window. “Let’s get those boys and get out of here.”
“You get ’em. Gotta skewer me some varicose queen,” she said. Faith picked up a ragged shard of whitewash fence and advanced on the unconscious Priestess. She heard Wood behind her, calling to the boys in the abandoned building. Faith crossed the parking lot, muscles tensed and ready for the typical horror movie ending, where the bad guy comes back for one more good scare.
Not one to disappoint, the Priestess sat up, skin sizzling in the sun. The glamour dropped for just a sliver of a second. No eerie veins or Bride of Frankenstein hair. Just a girl...
Faith skipped to a halt.
“Hey,” she said. “I know you...”
The Priestess bent forward on broken shins. There was a sound like water sucked down a drain and the snaky hell-harpy returned. Red lightning sizzled from her fingertips.
“Five points for the girl in black,” The Priestess growled. “Wonder if the others will reach the bonus round? After all, Buffy’s next and I’ve been meaning to pay a visit to Willow.”
Faith lunged in. With the flick of a finger, The Priestess flung her into the ditch. The force of the fall knocked the breath from Faith’s lungs. Shattered bits of wood dug into the skin of her forearms.
As she struggled to her feet, the Priestess advancing like a hurricane gale, Faith remembered. She knew with whom she was dealing. She scanned the street, then found what she needed two blocks up.
It was a pay phone.
~*~
“Andrew!” Dawn screamed. “Andrew! Hello?”
Xander lay a hand on her shoulder. “Dawnie, he didn’t answer the last twenty times.”
“He’s probably unconscious,” she gulped. “Maybe I can wake him. Maybe he’ll hear us...”
“And maybe you’ll bring this pit down around us. Ever heard of landslide?” Xander said.
Dawn whirled on Giles. “You! You said it was safe. You said this wouldn’t happen,” she yelled at him.
Giles was shaking his head. “I-It was. It is. And I wouldn’t. Dawn, I swear it,” he said.
Dawn pushed away from him. She stood on the lip of the chasm, straining to see beyond what the light gave them.
“I know,” Xander said, inspired. “I’ll call someone. The fire department. Send a truck, with a ladder and one of those winch pulley things.” He took out his flip phone.
“Xander we can’t,” Giles said, alarmed.
“Right. We’re under like a mile of solid rock,” Xander said. “I’ll go up.”
Giles lay a firm hand on Xander’s arm. “I mean, we can’t,” Giles said. “Others, down here. We can’t risk exposing this place.”
Xander chewed on this for a few seconds. Then said, in a quiet tone, “Giles, it’s Andrew.”
Giles’ face looked set and stern. “I know that,” he said.
“We can’t leave him down there. He...” Xander leaned in, whispering, “He just saved Dawn’s life.”
Giles closed his eyes. After a moment, he said, “Go. Phone Willow.”
Xander got ready to slide by Giles, when they heard Dawn mutter a quiet incantation. Xander turned back in time to watch her begin to take a step over the edge.
“Hey!” he shouted, catching her arms.
“What are you thinking?” Giles asked, visibly shaken. “We have no idea how deep this shaft goes.”
“But I thought Watchers scoffed at gravity,” Xander said.
“Honestly,” Giles said. “I have no idea where you get such notions...”
Dawn turned on them, her body rigid with rage. “Guys, I got this. Let me go.”
“No can do, Rapunzel,” Xander said.
“It’s a spell, Xander. I know a spell. I can get down there, see if he’s okay,” she said. She shrugged from his grip and stepped to the edge. “We have to know if he’s okay.”
“Dawn, wait,” Xander said, getting a hold on her again.
“It’s a levitation spell,” she snapped. “Kinda doesn’t work if you hold me back.”
Xander felt his heart thumping in his throat as he released her.
“Wait,” Giles said.
Dawn glanced back, perturbed.
“Um, take this,” Giles said, handing her his torch. He slid his pack from his shoulder and passed it to her. “There’s a first aid kit. Take it, too. Just in case.”
Dawn nodded. She went to the brink of the void, then, closing her eyes, took the next step.
She fell faster than she guessed, drifting like a feather buffered on a soft downdraft. But she controlled the speed of her descent by flexing her hands like wing-flaps. In another context, it could almost be stress-relief.
She counted the seconds as she dropped. 20-25-30-35. After forty seconds, her tennis shoe touched the panel on which she had scribed the Pictish symbol in her own blood. In the darkness, the corridor had a dank yet spacious feel. She switched on the flashlight and panned it around.
Dawn gasped in wonderment. She stood in the center of a vast cavern with catacombs like tenebrous holes branching off in all directions. She swept the flashlight twice more before finding Andrew crumpled at the base of an incline not far from the panel.
She went over to him, bent beside him. She listened for breathing, holding her own breath. At first she heard nothing. Then, a very faint wheeze.
Dawn swallowed hard. “Andrew?” she said. “Andrew, can you hear me?”
No response.
She shone the light on him, doing a brief Florence Nightingale. A thin stream of blood trailed from his mouth. Which made her queasy, because that couldn’t be a good sign. She prodded ribs, felt along arms, then legs. Her fingers came away sticky with blood. Dawn directed the light at his left thigh. She wasn’t sure, but in her educated opinion, bones should not stick out through skin.
“Oh... no,” she said, shaking him. “No. Andrew, wake up.”
Not even a stir.
“Fine, then,” she said. Her tone was desperate. “Star Trek sucks. James Bond is a Tory wanker. And when I know you’re not looking, I put fingerprint smudgies all over your computer screen.”
Still nothing.
She pounded his chest with her fists. “Wake up, wake up!” she yelled.
Andrew uttered a tiny exhaling sound.
“Dawn!” It was Giles. “Dawn, what the devil is going on down there?”
“He’s... he’s breathing, but unconscious. His leg’s broken. It’s too dark to see,” she called back. “But he is alive.”
She could hear the relief in Giles’ voice. He said, “Xander’s gone to get help. Just hold tight till then.”
Andrew stirred.
“Don’t move,” Dawn cautioned. “Just... lie still.”
“I’ve endangered the mission,” he said. “I shouldn’t have come.”
“Hang on, Skywalker,” she said. “It’ll be okay. Okay? You just, you know, survived a really big drop into a deep deep, dark dark, deep dark pit.”
Andrew tried to sit up. She nudged him back down.
“I think the marshmallows broke my fall,” he said, weakly.
Dawn laughed. “Scout Safety Tip number four-oh-eight: salvation by s’mores,” she said.
He lapsed again. Dawn sat back on her heels. A wave of weariness over-swept her. She wondered at how late it must be. Actually, late was wrong. They had moved past late into early.
“This, just like Rome,” Andrew said. His words slurred. “Always the one to fall.”
“Shhh. Are you in pain? I wish I’d learned soothing and healing spells,” she said.
“Um, yeah,” Andrew said. Then, “You... the one, Dawnie.”
“What?” she said. She looked at him sharply.
Andrew began to ramble incoherently. He said, “The spells. One with the spells. Open all the doors. Forgot to cancel the DVR recordings and all my Smallville reruns will bump Iron Chef. Spike hates it when...” His eyes rolled.
“Oh, stop that. We’ll be having none of that.” She slapped his face.
“Ow,” he whined. “Quit it.”
“I will not,” she said. “We may be down here a long time before someone comes to get us. So, don’t do something stupid. Like dying. Got me?”
“Man, I hate catacombs,” Andrew whispered. His whole body shuddered. Dawn knew this. Andrew was going into shock.
“Hurry, Xander,” she whispered to herself. “Please just hurry.”
~*~
Buffy had been relationship ambushed. It amounted to so much more than his toothbrush beside hers in the cup on the sink.
There were other creeping details. Exhibit A: actual photographic evidence. Digital pictures from their end-of-summer soccer bash, which Andrew had printed and Dawn trimmed with pinking shears then stuffed under the edges of the Buffy’s dressing mirror. Candid shots of them, together.
His blocky yet strangely illegible print was on the refrigerator list. He had a sock drawer. He had side of the bed that was designated ‘his’ as opposed the ‘hers’. His shoes were by the door. His plants in the garden.
They were there, too, in his garden.
It was so surprising to her how something so material could result from their inattentiveness. He had not crept under her defenses though. No, they were co-conspirators in the total lack of planning.
Sitting shoulder to shoulder at the picnic table, she and William were stunned to numb silence. Unable and unwilling to move, they watched the potato bugs trundling busily along on the flagstone patio. Eventually something would come along to change things. Something would spur them to action. Willow and Kennedy would return from Westbury. Giles and the gang would bring their noise and bustle back from the archive. Until then, she was content to not think, to not move.
On the same page, William let out a long sigh. “Look at us,” he said. “The poster couple for unplanned pregnancy.”
“Pregnancy,” she repeated, hollowly. It was a word she could never recall having said before. “It’s such a weird, clunky word, isn’t it? It sounds so... pregnant.”
“What are we gonna do?” he asked.
Buffy shrugged. After a moment, she said the only thing that came to mind. “I am so hungry.”
William looked up. “No wonder. Time has lost all meaning. We’ve been out here for hours. You’ve had nothing at all to eat.”
Buffy got to her feet, an action that seemed to take forever. She stretched.
“Andrew’s Fiesta Night tonight,” William said. “Queso enchiladas. Guacamole. Beans twice fried with lard.”
“Oh God. Don’t remind me. Not sure if I can...” she paused. “Wait. Shouldn’t we have heard from them by now?”
“It’s early yet,” William said.
Buffy’s face clouded with concern. “No,” she said. “Something’s... not right.”
In the house, the telephone rang.
“Maybe that’s them,” he said.
Buffy nodded, uneasy. “Maybe,” she said. She went inside, picked up the phone.
There was a series of loud clicks over the line, followed by scratchy static.
“Hello?” Buffy said.
“Buffy! Can you... me?”
Buffy knew the voice instantly.
“Faith?” The connection rasped like a damaged vinyl 45.
“Buffy? Buffy. I don’t ... if you can hear me. The Priestess...” Faith said. The static droned overloud in Buffy’s ears.
“Faith? Faith, I can’t hear you,” Buffy said.
“Wood, get them outta here!” Faith yelled. “She’s....”
More static, more clicks.
“Faith? Who?” Buffy yelled.
“She’s coming,” Faith said. The line was dead.
~*~
Angel stepped from the elevator with Luxe one pace behind him. He took a moment to take in the surroundings. Black marble floors. Smooth blond wood accented with brushed steel and glass. Ultra modern accoutrements for all your expeditious business and killing needs. The London branch of Wolfram & Hart was an exact match to its counterpart in LA.
Luxe, dressed in charcoal gray with an azure sweater vest and silver shimmer shirt, looked more like something from a Dolce & Gabbana ad than someone from the lawyerly world of Wolfram & Hart. Could he be more pretentious?
“Ahead are your offices, Monsieur Angel,” Luxe said.
“I know the way,” Angel said. He strode across the floor with mock confidence. Luxe had to jog along to keep up with him. Angel could feel every pair of eyes mark his passage from the bank of elevators to the empty front desk.
“Do I have a secretary?” Angel asked.
Luxe drew up to his side. “She is on assignment in Amsterdam,” he said, smoothly. “I will assist you until her return.”
Angel felt little trepidation at standing in front of the doors to his office. He liked to think of them as provisional offices, anyway. His intent was to dismantle the various departments within the London branch and relocate them over long periods of time to the Royal London Hotel. Beat bureaucracy on its own terms. A move like that on a firm this size could take years. He twisted the knob and entered.
“Same desk, same chair. Same leather sofa,” Angel said, scanning the room. “Same weapons on the walls. My ready room?”
Luxe gestured to a red paneled door in the back corner of the room. “You will find it all the same, Angel. The only difference is...”
“The windows,” Angel said. The LA version held floor-to-ceiling windows made from necro-tinted glass. This wall was blank. Angel felt a small pang of disappointment.
“London has no need for such flair,” Luxe said. He stood before Angel’s desk. “You will find we’re more civilized than that.”
“Civilized demons,” Angel said blandly. He rounded the hulking behemoth of a desk, then dragged out the chair. This was it. The moment to take the helm. The wound in his side, the one that resisted treatment and his natural tendency to readily mend, twinged smartly as he sat down, as if God himself chose that moment to twist the thorn in Angel’s side.
Luxe studied Angel, not one to miss much. When Angel made no move to explain, Luxe lay a thin brown file folder on the desktop.
Angel glanced at it, then at Luxe. “That’s it?” he asked.
“A light case load, to start,” Luxe said, lightly. “Ease you in. You have one appointment today, but I am sure you will agree it is one of great importance.”
Angel placed his hands on the folder. Waited. He curled the edge of the folder under his thumb.
Luxe said. “Do you have any other questions, Monsieur Angel?”
“Only one,” Angel said. Waited again.
“Oui?” Luxe said. The model of professional decorum.
“What’s in the vault, Luxe?”
Luxe raised his brows. “I had thought you had forgotten,” he said.
“I don’t forget,” Angel said. “What’s in it?”
“There is Balm in Gilead, Angel. The vault, it holds the cure for all that ails you.”
“Yes, but, what is it? Exactly?”
“It will take away the pain,” Luxe said.
Angel flinched. “What pain?”
“All of it. The hurt. The betrayal. Loss,” Luxe said. “That pain.”
Angel looked at the file folder under his hands. “What if I don’t want it gone?” he asked.
Luxe’s eyes darkened. “You would not be asking me,” he said. He bowed curtly and left Angel alone.
Hurt, betrayal and loss. Angel thought those were his defining characteristics these days. The weight of it he felt every day, all the time. And the brand over his heart, it was getting stronger. He had to find the answer soon. He didn’t have much time left.
Angel drummed his fingers on the file folder. He opened it.
Inside, on a sticky note, was Angel’s one appointment for the day:
Thellian Ventrusca
5 p.m.
Triumvirate
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Thanks to everyone who's been reading and giving such yummy feedback. It's magic!