Giles’s flashlight beam bounced on the stone pathway ahead of them; everything else fell away to darkness. Giles paused to check the wood-bound tome. He shone the light on the book, illuminating the diagrams burned in reddish-brown lines on the page.
“What is it the Dungeon Guide is supposed to show us, anyway?” William asked.
Giles glanced up the path. “Apparently there are three interlocking chambers ahead, the center of which houses a sarcophagus.”
“Ancient dead things,” Buffy said. “Should have known.”
“Anyone special?” William asked. “Demon? Nephillim? Little green men?”
“Boadicea,” Giles said.
Buffy grinned. “Best known for his grinding medieval street beats. ‘Shake yo Boadicea,’” she said.
Giles sighed heavily. “She, Buffy. Boadicea was a fierce warrior who became Queen of Iceni around 48 A. D. She led the bloodiest attack against Roman forces in English history. Her forces razed London to the ground. Legend holds that the fire burned so hot it melted the remains of the city into a layer of red clay 10 inches thick in places.”
“Hell hath no fury like a warrior queen scorned,” Buffy said, impressed. “Was she killed?”
Continuing with the narrative, Giles went along the trail, holding his book aloft. Buffy and William fell in behind him.
“Of course, no one is quite sure,” Giles said. “Historians debate the cause of her death. Some say she fell in a final battle against Suetonius Paulinus. Others maintain that she drank a powerful poison that killed her in seconds before the Romans could capture her.”
“How very Shakespearean of her,” William said.
“Indeed,” Giles said. He stopped again, pointing with the flashlight beam into the inky murk. “It’s right ahead.”
“Too bad we don’t have Dawn’s exploding disco ball illumination in here,” William said, peering into the vast shadowy shape of a cave mouth.
Buffy wove between them. “I’m not afraid,” she said.
William looked at Giles. “Neither am I,” he said.
Buffy slipped ahead, beyond reach of the light. The vast gloom seemed to whisper to her, compelling her forth. She knew that, in general, it was best practice to avoid voices in the dark. Even with that knowledge, Buffy crossed into the tomb.
The air felt cooler inside. Somehow drier, too. It felt to her as though she passed beyond a hidden barrier upon entering the chamber. One of Giles’ favorite phrases popped into her head: hermetically sealed.
Buffy moved forward, feeling blindly along, until her toes bumped against a stone ledge. She took the step up, inching her way ahead, hands outstretched. The light swept across the object in front of her just before her palms brushed against it.
Buffy stepped suddenly back, colliding with William. She jumped.
“Easy, Slayer,” he whispered. “It’s the sarcophagus.”
From behind them, Giles trained the beam on the shape of an intricately carved likeness of the resplendent Celtic warrior queen. The statue lay on its tomb, arms crossed in Pharaoh fashion.
“That was simple,” William said. He stepped onto the ledge beside Buffy. “It was right here for us to find it. No traps or trick doors. Just a fancy funeral box under several hundred meters of solid rock.”
“We found it,” Giles said, ecstatic. “It really is here. Andrew and Dawn, well, they’ll be thrilled as canaries.”
Giles swept the room with the flashlight, revealing carved niches into which sconces had been set. Beneath the niches in shallow stone shelves were rows and rows of scrolls in white leather cases. He went straight away to the scroll repository. He knelt down, taking most of the scant light with him.
Buffy placed both of her hands on the unweathered surface of the sarcophagus. “Why did she?” Buffy pondered, mostly to herself.
“Do herself in?” William asked.
“Yeah,” she said, tracing lines in cold stone. Buffy’s fingers crept along the knotwork that bordered Boadicea’s likeness. The tips of her fingers brushed against something strangely silky. Buffy laced it around her fingers.
“Giles,” she said. “Take a look at this.”
Giles came to stand on the other side of her, brandishing the light across the sarcophagus. Her fingers wrapped around a braid of shining black hair interspersed with runic beads. Attached to several such braids was a silver funerary mask forged to the shape of Queen Boadicea’s face.
“It’s...” Giles said.
“Beautiful,” Buffy finished. She felt drawn to it, compelled to take the mask into her hands, to press the cool contour of it to her face.
William and Giles weren’t swift enough to stop her. Buffy slipped the mask over her head. Instantly, the cavern vanished.
~*~
Angel retrieved the phone from the floor.
“Connor?” he asked. He dabbed blood from his lips, tasted it on his tongue.
“Dad? What was that? Are you all right?”
“Fine, son,” he said, his voice calm. “It must have been something I ate.”
Connor was quiet on the other end of the line. “Yeah,” he said, a long moment later. “Must have been.”
“Look, Connor. I don’t want to... keep you, or worry you. I just wanted to check in,” Angel said.
“You sure you’re all right?” Connor asked. He sounded doubtful.
“I’ve got to go now,” Angel said. “Call me if you need anything, all right?”
Connor hesitated, then said, “I will, Dad. Take care.”
Angel hung up. He straightened his shirt, then headed for the door. He had work to do.
~*~
Connor’s hands felt slick and sweaty. He dug through stacks of schoolbooks and papers on his catchall shelf to find the index card Willow had made with all of their numbers and addresses. He found it stuck between his copies of Burchat’s Theory of Dark Matter and Holder’s Demonic Anthropology of the Villages of Anatolia and the Middle East. He turned the card over to find Lorne's information scratched in the back left corner
Connor leaned against the wall to dial the number.
Lorne answered with a bright, “Helloooo.”
“Lorne? It’s Connor.”
“Well, land’s end, kid. How are ya?”
“I need you to check on my Dad,” Connor said.
Lorne sat down, hard. “Already?” he asked.
“What do you mean, already?”
Lorne closed his eyes tightly. He envisioned many bottles of bourbon in his future. “It’s nothing, kiddo. I have been meaning to pay a visit to old Angel Face,” he said.
“Thanks, Lorne,” Connor said. He got off the line knowing one thing for certain: Lorne couldn’t lie to save his life.
~*~
Buffy stood on bare ground strewn with carpets. Immediately, she struck a defensive posture, circling to take in her surroundings. Great hall, walls made of thick timbers, squat brazier blazing behind her. Wind howled in the rafters high above. Low stone table strewn with a menagerie of maps, prisms and various archaic tools.
And, vampires. Three of them.
She reacted without thought. Buffy seized the first by the arm and thigh, throwing him into the brazier. The vampire shrieked, then cindered. Burning oil splashed across the carpets, setting them alight.
The remaining vamps took the en garde stance. Buffy aerial-kicked the nearest vampire in the face, spun, elbowed to throat then fist to nose. His face crunched.
The second caught her arms from behind. She butted him with the back of her head. He held firm. Buffy dropped to her knees and hauled him over her shoulder. She rolled. The fire spread behind her, hemming her in between the table and the vampires.
The first vampire, the one with a bloody nose, cursed her in an unknown guttural language.
She said, “Sorry, I don’t speak freak.” At least, that’s what she planned to say, but her response came out in the same tongue the vampire had spoken.
Her moment of confusion gave the vampires a window to attack. Buffy parried the first attack, feinted, ducked and rammed her fist under the second’s rib cage. The other kicked low, grazing her hipbone. She rolled sideways, popped up, fell back to the table. They advanced. The fire whipped in behind them.
Buffy leapt to the table. She waited two seconds, then scissor-kicked each one to the head. She dropped to her knees. Without warning, her hands shot out, snaring the one weapon on the table. She swung it to pointe, the blade singing in the air.
Disbelieving, she stared first at the weapon, and then at her skin. Blue tattoos swirled down the backs of thin, olive-skinned hands. But the blade was her Slayer’s blood right. It was the Scythe.
“Buffy. Stop it!” It was William.
She ripped the mask from her face. William knelt on the floor a few feet away. She’d bloodied his mouth and his nose. Giles lay in the doorway where she had thrown him. He was trying unsuccessfully to roll onto his side.
Buffy stared, mouth ajar. She held her hands up before her eyes. Plain, white hands – weaponless.
“Oh my God,” Buffy panted. “Boadicea. She was the Slayer.”
Buffy staggered backward. She collapsed onto the stone ledge and bit her tongue. The coppery taste of blood bloomed in her mouth.
“The Slayer?” Giles asked, slowly, as if he had never heard the word before.
Buffy turned the mask in her hands. The flashlight lay on the floor a few feet away. In the dim glow, Buffy saw herself mirrored in silver.
“I have to go back in,” she said.
“Fine,” William said, getting up. “When we get home, we’ll chain you to the basement wall where you can do no harm to yourself and others.”
“We are not chaining Buffy to a wall,” Giles protested.
“Oh, right. You could do it to me...”
“You were a monster,” Giles said.
“She just tossed you like a tin toy,” William shot back.
Buffy interrupted them. “I have to find out,” she said, almost desperate. “I think she wants me to know what happened. Why she... and who...”
“We can do all that another time,” William said. “I mean, look at you. You’re all run out, with the...”
Buffy locked eyes with him and he faltered.
“...Lack of proper sleep and sustenance,” he finished.
“It’ll be different this time,” Buffy said. “I know what I’m going in to. And you guys will be prepared.”
“On guard, you mean,” William said.
“This is important,” Buffy said.
William knelt in front of her. He gripped her shoulders. “I know it is, pet. But you need to take care of yourself.”
Buffy shrugged free. “I’ll be fine.”
Giles watched from across the room with growing concern. In an attempt to diffuse the tension, he said, “We’ll watch over you. Keep you safe in case...”
“In case what, it gets messy? In case she bashes in your skull with a scroll? We are not doing this. Not here,” William said. His voice echoed back at them from the cavern walls.
“This is the place where it all goes down,” Buffy said, keeping an even tone. “The mask. The archives. Even the Sisters left their mark. Do I need to connect the dots? We’re meant to be right here, right now. We were meant to find this.”
William stood up again. “And I suppose Andrew was meant to tumble down the well? Scoobies all huddled and scared in the dark. Rupert sporting a nice dent in his head. Not that I care, officially...”
“William,” Buffy said, determined. “I need to do this. We’ve been fumbling around in the dark all this time. And this Thellian guy – he’s so clearly organized and powerful. It’s connected. All of it. We need this. And I need you to help me.”
~*~
Kennedy played a helpless girl act with surprising effectiveness. She found it ironic, her being the butchy tomboy-type, that she could mimic the role so convincingly. Yet, here she was, alone in an alley, trailed by a vampire. He’d been tracking her for blocks, doing the stealthy Brandon Lee run-along-the-rooftops routine. She had him pegged, though. She would let him box her in, then she’d be in there like swimwear. Poor helpless little Slayer with a pocket full of wood.
Literal wood. Not the figurative kind.
Kennedy reached the dead end. She turned back and forth, swearing to herself, pretending to be lost.
“You can drop the guise,” the vampire said.
Kennedy was sincerely taken aback. He moved fast. She hadn’t even seen him drop down to ground level.
The vampire took three deliberate steps forward, moving from shadow to light. “I thought you girls were supposed to be hunting in packs,” he said.
Kennedy recognized the voice. She crossed her arms, displaying the stake she had hidden in her pocket. “Got my own rules to follow,” she said. “Besides, I don’t need back up.”
“Ah. But Buffy feels differently,” the vampire said.
Kennedy exhaled sharply. “If I could go one day without hearing that name,” she said.
The vampire took another careful step closer. “You know who I am,” he said.
“We’ve met. You’re Angel,” Kennedy said.
She attacked, stake aimed high. He blocked.
Sidestepped into shadow again.
“And I don’t care,” Kennedy said, circling. “I don’t need any of this ‘his is a long journey’ crap. Soul or no soul, you’re a vampire. I’m a Slayer. I’ve got zero issues with slamming this pointy piece of wood in your chest.”
Angel uttered a short laugh. “Better Slayers than you have tried,” he said.
Kennedy struck again. Again she aimed high. Angel caught her wrist, pulled her close.
Kennedy stiffened. She said, “From the way I hear it, one succeeded. Sent your sullen ass to hell.”
“Yeah, I got over that,” Angel said, releasing her. “Can I buy you a drink?”
Kennedy blinked. She rubbed her ear, as if he didn’t quite hear him right. “Let me count the ways you are not my type,” she said.
“Doesn’t matter,” Angel said. “I’m here to help.”
“Was I unclear on the pointy piece of wood part? The line between good and evil doesn’t blur for me,” Kennedy said.
“Point taken,” Angel said. He spun on his heel and started to walk away. Then he turned back. “But, see. The other night, I sensed tension. Dissention in the ranks. I may be guessing – and if I’m off base, just say so – but you think Buffy’s not leading a hard enough fight.”
Kennedy slammed her fist into Angel’s stomach. He doubled over.
“That hard enough for you?” she asked.
Angel came back up, pointies showing.
Kennedy felt a surge of adrenaline. Her night was looking up. “Buffy thinks we can win this war with an honorable fight,” she said.
Angel attacked. Kennedy batted him aside. He spun around. She taunted him.
But he shook off the demon face. “She’s wrong,” he said.
Kennedy drew up. “Come again?” she asked.
“I’ve met Thellian. The old ways won’t work...”
“You’ve met with...? What?” Kennedy asked.
“Thellian,” Angel said. “Guy responsible for giving us all the vampire equivalent to Red Bull.”
Kennedy gave a bitter laugh. “I’m so far out of their loop, I’m on the straight. And for me, that’s saying something,” she said.
“Can’t believe they didn’t tell you,” Angel said, quietly. “Seems like pretty important information.”
“Yeah, well. They’re real concerned about the not caring,” Kennedy said. She leaned back against the brick wall. Angel leaned beside her.
“Look, I didn’t mean to cause friction,” Angel said.
“It’s cool.”
“No, it isn’t,” he looked over at her. He watched her for a long moment, his face grave. Then, he said, “If you’re looking for a bright center of the universe Kennedy, they’re it.”
Kennedy kicked away from the wall in a huff.
“Wait,” Angel said. “Hear me out.”
Kennedy stopped, but didn’t turn back.
“You just have to keep pushing. Keep with them, and don’t let go. Because once you’re out...”
Kennedy faced him again. “Keep pushing? That’s all I do is push.”
Angel nodded. “You’re the bloodline. You have all that power bound up inside. You want to save them? Be part of them? You know what needs to be done,” Angel said.
Angel waited while Kennedy puzzled things out. He could almost see the scales tipping in her head.
She said, “The other night, you said there are nests in Camden.”
“Several,” Angel said. He smirked.
“I’ll go rally the girls,” Kennedy said.
“No need,” Angel told her. “We can take these on our own. Besides, I’ve been itching for a good brawl.”
Kennedy flashed him a broad smile. “So have I,” she said. “So have I.”
~*~
“The fairy lights are fading,” Xander said. “That our cue for bedtime, Tinkerbell?”
Dawn and Willow knelt facing one another, hands linked over Andrew’s body. Dawn shifted her weight, then opened her eyes. The lights were indeed dimming.
“That’s my doing,” Willow said. Her eyes remained closed. “Healing spells require energy. I don’t want to drain you or Dawn, so I’m using other sources.”
“And for that, we’re all very grateful,” Xander said.
The atmosphere in the cave seemed unnaturally calm. Xander wondered if that was the effect of the spell or delirium due to sleep deprivation. Either way, he felt like lapsing into a little dreaminess to pass the time. Trouble was, caves are made of rock – not generally conducive to comfortable sleep. Then Xander felt guilty, seeing Andrew sprawled out like a science experiment gone wrong. Sure, he slumbered. But not in the good counting-sheep, sugar-plums-dancing kind of way.
Dawn seemed equally unsettled. She adjusted from one knee to the other. Only Willow, well trained in art of meditation, remained un-fidgety.
“He didn’t seem afraid,” Willow said.
Dawn felt a flutter of apprehension. “Is he...?”
Willow smiled. “No, he’s fine. Will be, anyway. It’s just, he could have freaked out, which would have made things majorly worse. But he didn’t. Because of you.”
Dawn wriggled, uncomfortably. “Me? No, I...”
“You were a good friend to him,” Willow said. “You, coming down here. It was a very Scooby thing to do.”
“Hey, yeah,” Xander said. “Big with the heroics. It’s a Summers family trait.”
“But once I got down here, I couldn’t do anything,” Dawn said.
“I wouldn’t call the twinkly lights not doing anything,” Willow said.
Dawn’s concentration wavered. She said, “Wonderful. I’d be great at parties. But it’s just a trick I’ve been practicing. This – what you’re doing – this is what I want to learn. And the astral projection, and the protection spells. All of it. Can you show me?”
Willow’s mouth twitched into an enigmatic smile. “Sure, Dawnie,” she said. “But I am a harsh task-mistress. My students in Westbury call me the Blessed Be-otch when they think I’m not listening.”
“I think I can handle it,” Dawn said. “I mean, my sister is The Slayer.”
Andrew’s eyelids fluttered. He swiveled his neck carefully to look at Dawn then Willow.
“This is just like a dream I had one time,” he said, weakly. “Except Kennedy was involved.”
“Andrew,” Willow chided.
Dawn breathed a sigh of relief. “I think he’ll be okay,” she said.
Xander laughed. “Actually, I’ve had that same dream,” he said.
Andrew tried to sit up. Willow and Dawn both pushed him back down. Dawn swept his hair, which had dried to crusty curls, from his forehead.
“Just rest until Buffy gets back,” Dawn said. “They should return soon.”
“I should have some luke-warm cocoa in a thermos somewhere,” he said.
Willow sat back on her heels. She felt completely drained, yet wholly satisfied. “Yep. I think he’s gonna be just fine.”
~*~
Buffy took several deep, centering breaths.
“I’d like to say once more how against this I am,” William told her. Giles paced along the shelves like an impatient jungle cat.
“Noted,” Buffy said. She slid the funerary mask over her head.
The transformation was instantaneous, as before. But this time, it was daylight. Buffy stood in a room flooded with it. Bright sunshine spilled through windows in blinding gashes. There was an enormous bed piled with blankets the color of barley. In it lay a withered man. Three men and two women clustered on the side of the bed opposite her. Buffy heard their muffled sniffles and cries. She felt a deep, crippling grief.
Seeing through Boadicea’s eyes, she knew things and understood them, as if the memories were her own. Buffy narrated what she saw to William and Giles.
“Boadicea’s husband died.” she said. “Prasutagus was her lifelong friend, and his death – it was devastating to her.”
The scene changed, gradually bleeding from her husband’s deathbed to a kind of throne room. The throne itself remained empty. Boadicea stood rigid beside it, gripping the arm of the wooden chair. A pair of teenage girls, one redheaded, the other brunet, stood close beside her. Roman soldiers, clad in red and gold Centurion armor, marched in through the great hall’s oaken doors.
Buffy said, “Her husband gave all of his lands and titles to the Emperor, with one condition: that his wife and daughters be allowed a comfortable existence.”
Buffy watched powerless as the battalion of soldiers began ransacking Boadicea’s home. They ripped tapestries from the walls, overturned tables, and crushed pottery. Boadicea moved to guard her daughters.
“The Romans were insulted by the idea that a woman could hold property or power,” Buffy said. “Bastards. They wrecked the place and...”
A Roman captain passed an edict to Boadicea. Buffy read it through her own eyes. It was in Latin, which Buffy herself could not read, but she understood it all the same.
“They ordered her to surrender everything to Rome and leave. If she did this, her family would be spared,” Buffy said.
Boadicea spat on the Roman captain. Then she backhanded him. The captain, cheekbone fractured along with his pride, gave the order to arrest them.
“She resisted,” Buffy said. Her breathing quickened. “They dragged her out. Boadicea and her daughters. Hauled them by their hair into the road...”
Buffy tried to avert her eyes but found she could not. In the cave, she was inching away. Her heart hammered in her chest.
The Romans tied Boadicea and her daughters to chariots. They...
“Dragged them through the mud to the square, where they bound her to a post. They ordered her to profess her loyalty to the Romans. But she would not. They ordered her to surrender her home. But she would not...”
Buffy felt Boadicea’s fear and anger rise in her like a fountain of fire. She looked out over the crowd of people – her kin. They were paralyzed and useless in their terror. Dozens and dozens of Romans in gleaming armor surrounded them. The Roman captain she had struck mounted the wooden platform.
“Oh no,” Buffy said.
The captain raised a hand to hit her. She didn’t flinch. He...
“Stripped her naked, then beat her. In front of everyone.”
Buffy felt the bite of the whip as it tore away Boadicea’s flesh. Naked, horribly exposed, the soldiers leering and laughing.
“She would not give them the satisfaction of crying out. They split her kneecaps with a sledge. They beat her until she could no longer stand, but she didn’t scream. Not until...”
Boadicea’s blood dripped like candle wax to the wooden platform. Her eyes had swelled to slits, but she could see enough. The Roman soldiers thrust her daughters onto the stage.
“No,” Buffy breathed. “Not my girls.”
Boadicea only heard the sound of her shallow breathing. She strained against the chains that bound her wrists and ankles oblivious to the shrieking pain they caused her shattered bones.
“They raped her daughters,” Buffy said, choking on the words. “Raped them.”
“That’s enough,” William growled. He reached for the mask. Buffy snared his arm like a vise.
“Mé teipthe iad,” she said. William saw tears streaming down Buffy’s neck. “I failed them.”
Within the spell of the mask, the scene changed again. Not gradual this time, but with jarring force. Boadicea on horseback bore down on the walled citadel of Londinium, with thousands of her countrymen behind her.
Buffy swallowed. She could feel the heat of the fires baking her skin. She said, “Boadicea attacked London. She rode on a wave of pure fury, and she slaughtered every one she could catch. To the last Roman man, woman and child. They burned the city to the ground, to avenge her daughters’ honor. She thought them dead, but...”
They were not dead. The surroundings transformed again. Once more, it was night. Boadicea stood before a war table – the same one Buffy had seen when she first donned the mask. Her weapons were arrayed, Scythe included, all within arm’s reach. Boadicea held a letter in trembling hands.
“Her daughters weren’t dead,” Buffy said. “A Roman general wrote to her, explaining that he had spared them.”
Buffy watched as Boadicea ripped the scroll to shreds. She screamed, and Buffy’s body filled with a deadening agony.
“I don’t understand,” Buffy whispered. Her arms and legs went limp.
“Get it off her, Rupert,” William said. “That’s enough.”
“Let her finish,” Giles snapped.
Boadicea picked up a corner of the page, showing Buffy the name scratched in ink on the coarse parchment: Thellus V.
“Thellian,” Buffy said.
The giant doors of the great hall creaked open. The dark-haired daughter stepped inside, arms out-stretched as if her mother would welcome the embrace. Behind her, Thellian waited for an invitation he knew Boadicea’s daughter would give.
“Thellian turned them,” Buffy said. “He made her daughters into vampires. Then they came for her.”
Boadicea lifted the vial of poison to her lips. She died before they could touch her. Buffy felt the swirling blackness of Boadicea’s death pressing down on her. And she heard her final, dismal thoughts before the heartbeat stilled in her chest.
Mé teipthe iad. I failed them.
William pulled the mask from Buffy’s tear streaked face.
She recoiled from him.
“Don’t touch me,” she snarled. Her voice hitched uncontrollably. “Either of you.”
Buffy curled against the lifeless stone of Boadicea’s grave. She covered her head with her arms and wept.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Many thanks to Ginny Lindsey for her Latin-to-Gaelic-to-English translations, and for her insight into the legend of Boadicea.