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Author's Chapter Notes:
The identity of The Priestess is revealed in this chapter... I'm hoping it's a surprise.
That evening, everyone seemed to appear at once.

Andrew came in first, waving a wedge of rained-on printed pages.

“Does Giles ever check his email?” he called from the entry hall. He shook out his umbrella.

Willow stepped backward from her work into the hall, beaming.

“Andrew. Come look at this,” she said, her voice warm with enthusiastic confidence.

Andrew continued to talk while he removed his sodden London Fog trench coat. “One hundred and eight email messages from Watchers and Slayers the world over. Giles sent out this mass email requesting information, you know, about the deadly Super Vampyres. Well, they responded,” Andrew walked toward Willow, still ranting. “Worldwide confirmation of the Super Bads, plus, more aggression directed at urbanites. Important...”

Andrew froze. “Great Jupiter’s spot,” he muttered.

“I know,” she said. “Who’s the woman?”

“You are so the woman,” Andrew said. He marveled over the scroll puzzle laid out across the table. “What does it say?”

“That’s a whole other can of bookworms,” Willow said. “But Tara mentioned the completion of a Circle.” Willow gestured in a manner befitting a showroom floor girl. “Tada: Circle.”

Andrew bent over the scrawled and wavy lines of text, squinting. “Dawn is Language Girl,” he said. “She read The Lord of the Rings just because Tolkien was language-obsessed. She can speak Elf,” he said. He grinned to himself. “That is so hot.”

“I was thinking that too,” Willow said. “The Language Girl part, not the hot Elf tongues. Which just sounds disturbing.”

Dawn burst through the front door, red raincoat fluttering.

“What’s going on? Besides torrential rain?” Dawn asked.

“Hey, it’s Language Girl,” Willow said.

“I prefer Language Lady. Or Language Woman,” Dawn said. She sidled up between Andrew and Willow. Her reaction was much like Andrew’s, only without random astronomical references.

“The key to whole thing was on the back of each scroll,” Willow explained. “And we have you guys to thank for that part. The symbols are arranged according to this.” Willow picked up the gloss green notebook to show them Dawn’s scribbled Nephillim script.

“The Sisters?” Andrew said.

“The Sisters,” Dawn said. She moved in. She took off her raincoat, passed it to Andrew. “Take this. I’m drippy.”

“Do you know the language?” Willow asked.

Dawn smoothed her fingers almost lovingly over the winding text. “No,” she said. “But I can find out. I need my copy of the Habbalissa Codex.”

Behind them, the front door opened and closed again. This time, it was Buffy and Anjelica. Both were thoroughly doused.

“Buffy!” Willow said brightly, getting ready to share their great big discovery with the premier member of the gang. But Willow’s enthusiasm quickly faded.

Buffy swayed on her feet. Her skin appeared worn to near translucent. Dark smudges underscored her eyes.

Anjelica said, “Kennedy said I should bring Buffy home. She needs rest.”

“Kennedy said...” Willow began.

“And you let her?” Dawn growled. She rushed to Buffy’s side.

“She needs a smoothie. STAT,” Andrew said.

“No,” Buffy said. “I’m not hungry anymore. I need... where’s William?”

Willow shrugged, looking doubly concerned. “I don’t know. He left just after you did.”

“I’ll get you upstairs. You haven’t slept since...” Dawn trailed off. She laid her hand across Buffy’s forehead. “She’s clammy. That’s not good, right?”

“Clamminess sounds so clammy,” Andrew said, grimacing.

Willow, Dawn, and Andrew crowded close to Anjelica.

“How long has she been this way?” Willow asked.

“Pretty much all day,” Anjelica said, fidgeting with the hem of her T-shirt. “She gave us a non-peppy pep talk about this Thellian guy. We were all fairly unclear on it, so Kennedy cut to the fight scenes.”

“We should never have let her out of the house this morning,” Willow said.

“Yeah right,” Andrew recanted. “She’s Buffy. All down with the destiny. Besides, since when
does she listen to us?”

“She listens to me,” Dawn said, firmly. “You’re my sister. You’re sick. Should we – I don’t know – call for a doctor?”

“No,” Buffy said, urgently. “No doctors. I need sleep. That’s all.”

“Fine then. I’m putting you to bed,” Dawn said.

Buffy said, “I think...” she said. Her eyelids fluttered unevenly.

“I think you’ve done enough thinking,” Dawn said. “Up you go.” She linked arms with Buffy and led her up the stairs.

By Dawn’s estimation, Buffy was already asleep. She took the stairs like a convalescent patient pumped full of muscle relaxants. It was a strange sensation for Dawn. An uncomfortable bit of deja vu struck her, especially in the context of what Spike had said at breakfast about Buffy returning from a grave, this time in a metaphorical sense.

Buffy didn’t resist when Dawn peeled back the duvet and top sheet on her bed. She obediently slipped under the covers, actually allowing Dawn to tuck her in. That had not happened in ever.

Before Dawn left the room, she smoothed Buffy’s hair back from her forehead. It was a motion half intended to check for fever, and half to do the maternal instinct thing.

“Who better to look after you than me?” Dawn soothed. “I’m your family.”

~*~

“So, what now?” Xander said. “Are we supposed to fight?”

The bulgy headed guy bunched his legs up under his body in the chair. “No,” he said. “No point. You’re stuck here.”

Xander giggled. “Stuck? Whaddya mean, stuck?”

The guy flashed a smile so big his face seemed positively made of teeth. “You fell for Maya’s trap. What did she use for bait?”

“Bait?” Xander parroted.

“Yeah. Was it the wounded little flower routine?” he asked.

Realization was dawning in Xander’s eyes. “Trap,” he said. He chuckled softly to himself. “She told me that. She said as much. Foolish me, acting the big hero.”

The guy chewed the edge of his thumb. “Well, be gleeful. At least you’re not dead,” he said.

“Dead. Don’t say dead. Dead bad,” Xander said.

The guy squatted forward in the seat. “You don’t say?” he mocked. His orangey eyes blinked rapidly like a frog’s. “I don’t get it, though. She must be getting better at it. You got to keep your skin sack. See: bitch killed me when she pulled her little rabbit-out-of-the-hat-trick. She must have plans for you.”

Xander glanced about the sparse waiting room. There were no exits. It was just a 7’ by 7’ cube with uncomfortable chairs, a laminate coffee table, out-dated magazines featuring golf and civil engineering, and scratchy green Astroturf.

“No,” Xander said, shaking his head. “No. I have to get out of here.”

~*~

William came in from the increasingly bitter rain, out of breath and bearing a single, partly wilted red rose.

“Oh,” Willow whimpered, making puppy eyes.

He started to say something flip or snide, but Anjelica’s presence drew his immediate attention.

“Hey, Head Wound,” he said. “What’s up?”

Anjelica’s face flushed. “It’s, um,” she fumbled.

Willow said, “She brought Buffy home.”

William started up the stairs. Willow snagged his arm.

“No. It’s okay. Dawn’s got her,” Willow said.

William lingered on the step, uncertain of what he should do. If he stayed out of it, maybe Buffy would share with Dawn their bit of news. And maybe that would be the best thing for Buffy. Maybe then, she would get some rest.

“Here. Let’s get this into water,” Willow said, simplifying things. She slid the long stem of the rose from his hand.

“Yeah,” he said, following her into the kitchen. “Except that it’s been in too much water. That’s its problem.”

Andrew and Anjelica loitered in the entry hall. Andrew tucked his hands in his pockets. He said, “I heard about the head lumps.”

“I was concussed,” Anjelica said.

Andrew sucked his teeth. His eyes sparkled. “Ooh. I’m kinda jealous,” he said.

She shrugged. “Don’t be. It’s in the hairline. No visible scar,” she said.

“I have one,” Andrew said. He yanked the collar of his turtleneck down. She leaned in close to have a look. “It’s where Spike bit me.”

“Ow,” she said, touching the same spot on her own neck. “Did it hurt?”

Willow and William came back in.

Andrew narrowed his eyes. “Pain? Watchers laugh at pain,” he said. Then he dropped the act. “It hurt really bad. And it almost got infected.”

Willow turned to rescue Anjelica from Andrew’s treatise on vampire bite wound care. She said, “Would you like some tea? You going back out into that storm – bad idea.”

The door upstairs opened then softly closed. Dawn came back stairs to join them.

“She’s...” William said.

“Sleeping,” Dawn finished. “Yes. I’ll go check on her again in a...”

They heard a timid rapping on the door. Willow felt a faint stirring of chills on the backs of her arms.

“Who’d be out in this gale?” William said.

Not following the general sense of trepidation, Andrew stepped forward and opened the door. Then slammed it again.

He screamed, “It’s the Priestess! The Priestess!”

William clamped his hand over the boy’s mouth. “Don’t wake the house, Andrew. I may not have fangs, but I can still bite you,” he said.

A gust of rain bit against the door, and again the tiny pecking sound of someone knocking.

Dawn moved forward.

“Don’t open it,” Andrew moaned, raising his fingers in a hexing guesture. “She had a crystal ball. The Priestess.”

Dawn didn’t listen. She flung the door open to give both she and Willow a clear line of sight.

There, on the stoop, cowered a drenched rat of a girl. Knees bloody, hair and rain streaming down her face, the girl took a tremulous step toward them. She held out the glass globe in her hands like an offering.

“Help,” Maya said. “I need help.”

The crystal glowed and pulsed like a living, breathing thing. It held them transfixed. Until Maya moved forward again.

“Gri-Gatay,” Willow said. Maya’s body stiffened. She tried to move, but couldn’t. Her eyes rolled desperately.

“I’m looking for Mr. Giles,” Maya gushed. “Please, I need your help. It’s Xander.”

~*~

Rupert Giles arrived in New York just after 9 a.m. His flight had given him plenty of time to think about and feel guilty over Curtis Logue’s suicide.

Logue was Andrew’s age. He had been a sober young man with a penchant for eating pistachios. Giles always knew when Curtis was in the Watcher archives. He could hear the boy cracking open the shells with his teeth. It had been a deplorable noise that set Giles’ own teeth on edge. He would deride him for making such an intolerable racket.

Giles had also known Curtis’ father, Trenton. Trenton Logue had been old style British – the stiff upper crust George Banks type. Trenton collected maps and antique cars. He played polo. At his summer home in Wales, he owned a canary yellow twin engine plane, which he had taught Curtis to fly. He guarded over his only son like a lone wolf with its cub.

Trenton had died in the explosion that destroyed the Watcher’s Council. When Giles and Robson put out their call for Watcher recruits, Curtis Logue was among the first to respond.

The more Giles thought about him, the more he was convinced that Curtis Logue was not the type for suicide. Something must have gone very wrong in New York.

Giles took a taxi from the airport straight to Faith’s training school. He hoped to catch them in action. Embry had assured him that their group of Slayers – all twenty-two of them – had continued with their training even in the absence of their leaders. But when he arrived at the studio, he found the place was empty. More disturbing, though, was the fact that the front door was unlocked.

Giles noted the prickling chills that crawled up his spine as he entered the empty school. He examined the door, but found no signs of forced entry. It was a spacious place, much larger than Summers School, but the set up much the same. Giles moved slowly across the bleached wood floor, footfalls echoing in a most hollow, unsettling way. He checked the weapons chest. Stakes, crossbow, short knives, Holy Water in clear glass vials. Nothing appeared to be missing.

But something was amiss. He heard a sound, or rather, a kind of unsound. It was New York, after all.
The street had been a jungle cacophony of car horns, machinery and four thousand cell phone conversations bleeding into one. Inside the school was dead silence. A knot wrenched in Giles’ gut.
Instinct told him to run. He glanced in the mirrored wall in time to see the door swing open on its own. Giles bent to take the cross from the weapons chest. By the time he whirled around with it, she was standing inches away.

“Hi, Mr. Giles,” she said. “Remember me?”

Giles gathered himself to full height. His outward calm belied the sickened horror in his heart. She wore elbow-length gloves of clotting blood.

“Of course I remember you,” he said. He brought the cross to bear. “Amy.”

Her veined face split open in a malicious grin. She gave a cursory glance to the cross. “Aw, you shouldn’t have. I mean, you really shouldn’t have.”

She spoke a guttural curse. The cross crumbled to dust in his hand.

“You know, I should have guessed they’d send you,” Amy said. “All you non-conformist types are just alike.”

“You are The Priestess,” he said, shaken.

Amy arched her brows, further contorting her features. “You’ve heard of me,” she said. “Good. That will make all of this so much simpler.”

Giles tried for the weapons chest, but she descended on him like a carrion bird. She sank her teeth into his neck.

“God, no,” he said, struggling weakly against her brutal grip.

The Priestess eased him to the floor, mind racing with the infusion of his unexpectedly potent blood. She crouched beside him, delighting in the futile way he strove for breath.

“Poor Watcher,” she whispered into his ear. “God doesn’t live here any more.”





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