Everyone in the house seemed able to sleep except for Dawn. Not that she didn’t try. She did. She tried every insomnia remedy Buffy ever shared with her, from having a glass of warm milk to toasting socks in the microwave. She wound up with stomach pains and scalded feet.
And still no word from Andrew. Bad as she felt about slapping him before, she wanted even worse to smack him again. Until he turned up, they were stuck on the Circle’s translation. Even Willow was LD in demon languages.
Dawn remained diligent, though. She curled up in Giles’ swivel chair with her speckled composition pad on her knees. She studied Damas’ paired references until all of the sentences ran together, like prophecy soup.
She was dozing thus when the telephone rang. It was past 3 a.m., and the sound seemed to split the silence. Dawn darted from the dining room. She pounced on the phone before the third ring.
“Andrew?” she asked.
“Sorry, no.” The voice sounded familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it.
“Who is this?”
“It’s Connor. I don’t know if you remember me...”
“Yes. Your Dad once tried to kill my sister,” she said.
Connor was quiet on the other end. When he answered, his voice came slowly, “That’s right,” he said.
“What do you want? It’s, like, 3 a.m.” Dawn said.
Again, quiet. Connor seemed unsure how to proceed. Finally he asked, “Have you heard from my Dad?”
“Not since he helped Giles try to have Spike disintegrated,” Dawn snapped. Lack of sleep had eroded all of her manners. It was the only excuse she could give herself for being so short with an almost stranger.
“Look,” Connor said. “I am sorry to call so late. I wouldn’t except that I have a feeling bad things are about to start happening...”
“Bad things already have,” Dawn said. “We haven’t heard from Angel. We don’t exactly keep tabs on sometimes evil arch nemeses, and if you would like to leave a message, you are welcome to. But I can pretty much guarantee it will never reach him.”
Dawn got the feeling that Connor was holding his breath.
“Hello?” she said.
“I’m right outside the door,” Connor admitted. “Can I...? Could you just let me in?”
Dawn felt a surge of adrenaline. She cast a glance over her shoulder at the front door. “Why did you call? Why didn’t you just knock?”
“Didn’t know anyone was awake,” Connor said. He paused. “I think my Dad’s in trouble. I think he’s in over his head, and he’s going to do something stupid. Like really soon. And I need help if I’m going to stop him. So can you let me in?”
Dawn tiptoed across the entry hall, phone still in hand. At the door, she drew a steadying breath before turning the knob.
Connor had a straightforwardness to him, a kind of All-American wide-eyed-ness that made Dawn feel less uncertain the moment she opened the door.
“Hey,” he said, still speaking into his cell phone.
“Hi,” Dawn answered. She stepped back, and Connor walked in.
~*~
William felt like a colossal prat, following Angel back into the Royal London Hotel.
Angel’s excuse for going back in was flimsy as wet newsprint. Had to have a drink. William knew Angel didn’t need a drink.
Yet he followed. A bizarre tingling tension filled him foot to forehead, but he wasn’t yet alarmed. He wasn’t scared, even knowing what Lorne had shared with him. All the same, William skirted the heavy and no doubt painfully pointed chandelier that dominated the remodeled ballroom ceiling.
He was as impressed as Buffy had been upon seeing the ballroom’s transformation. More so, given that William had known the place in its previous incarnation. He had to hand it to Angel. William was sure the man had missed a calling as an architect, or something more suitably poofter. Interior decorator, perhaps.
Angel kept things brisk, professional. Their last meeting included punches for punctuation. Angel didn’t seem to want a repeat. He crossed the open lobby area to the wrap-around bar. The roses in their crystal bowls had withered to papery husks. That was when William began to sense...
“Why are you here, Spike?” Angel asked, without turning.
“Oh, you know Angel,” he said slowly. “Powerful play goes on... all that rot.”
“Cribbing lines from Shakespeare now?” Angel asked. He leaned with his elbows on the glossy lacquered bar. It was falsely casual. Both men knew it.
William felt strangely like a man on trial. In the mirror above the stairs, he glimpsed himself - a small man in a grand room, seemingly alone. He smirked at himself.
“It’s Walt Whitman,” William said. “But, great minds...”
Angel folded his arms, studying William with lawyerly speculation. Attempted intimidation. Vampires were all alike.
William sighed, affecting ennuyé. “You’re thinking All the world’s a stage,” he said.
“Right,” Angel said, tersely. He pushed away from the bar, treading in quick steps toward William. “Why are you here again?”
“The dagger, Angel. The DeGriffindor Blade. You mentioned it to the boy. Remember?” William said.
“Ah, the boy,” Angel said. He walked a slow ring around William. “And why was he here?”
“I dunno,” William said. “I was fetching him from a scuffle. You know how I love to help out.”
“You’re a real hero,” Angel said, bitterness dripping.
William understood. In a flash, he knew: This was it. His heart bumped against his breastbone, threatening to choke him.
Lorne’s words came back to haunt him. That’s not the worst of it, Lorne had said. When it happens. When he does it. You have to let him.
Like Hell, William thought to himself. He dead-bolted his anger. In his pocket, his fist closed around the hilt of his own sacred secret weapon.
Angel had moved to the other side of the room, to the curtained stage with its ivory piano. William tracked him by the sound of his voice.
“You know, Spike. You are a little dim, so you just don’t get it,” Angel said.
“That’s where you’re wrong, mate,” William said. “I understand now. About Buffy.”
Angel turned on his heel. “Do enlighten us,” he said, laughing.
“You’re bent ’cause she chose me instead of you. You said yourself I haven't a chance in this world. But I get it. See, she may have loved you more,” William said. “But I’m a better match.”
“You poor, sad fool,” Angel said. “It isn’t about her.”
William whispered, knowing that Angel could hear
him, “It’s always about her.”
Angel began his deliberate circling again. “No, Spike,” Angel said, in a patronizing tone. “This time it’s someone else. It’s time for the final act. Time for the key players to take their places. It’s a big game we have all been playing...”
“You already have the dagger,” William said. “Of course you do,” he scoffed. “You’ve got the most powerful law firm in the world at your command. Can find anything from missing car keys to unholy artifacts.” He clutched the Nephillim dagger, feeling its carved wedge handle chew into his sweating palm.
“It’s a big game, Spike,” Angel continued. “And you’re
not the leading role. You are important, don’t get me wrong. You’ve been a real thorn in my side. But it’s time now for the lead characters to take the stage,” Angel said. “Too bad for you. You’re not one of them.”
William could not see Angel’s reflection in the mirror above the double staircase. He couldn’t see it, but he knew Angel was there, right behind him.
William fought every impulse in every shredded tangle of nerves in his body. Instinct screamed at him to lash out, to fight back, to do what it was in his nature to do. He could take Angel in a fight. He could pound him to dust, then pound his dust, then go home and curl up beside Buffy and wait for the end of the world to come...
You have to let him, Lorne had said.
I can’t let him, William thought. He closed his eyes.
He knew what he had to do.
William released his weapon and let go.
“Angel,” William said. His voice was rusty. “You’re an ass,” he said.
Angel sank the dagger to its hilt under William’s ribs. He twisted it, ripped it along the path of his spine. It was a dull blade; Angel had to put his considerable force behind it to snap the ribs.
William swallowed his screams. The pain was blinding, but he held his own. Angel turned him roughly by the shoulders so that they stood eye to eye.
“Let’s see you come back from this one,” Angel said.
He calmly sliced William’s throat.
The blood spilled down William’s shirtfront. It was peculiar, he realized, that he could no longer breathe or speak. William stared unblinking at Angel.
Blood flowed down his arms to his fingertips. It dripped to the sea grass carpets. His heartbeat slowed and was at rest.
Before he died, Angel tossed William’s body backward to the floor, where it lay with arms outstretched, eyes open to the ceiling where the skylight had been all those years ago.
Angel left the clean up for later. He had more important matters to attend to.
~*~
Willow decided to just walk the distance from Southwark Station. The clear air would defoggy her head, which was just what she needed after her trip to Westbury.
The coven had nothing for her. Nothing. The most powerful group of Wicca north of the Equator, and they hadn’t sensed even one second’s disturbance since Thellian’s ordering of the Supervamp spell. For that matter, neither had she. She thought about it on the train ride down from Westbury, but all she got was a circular Circle argument.
When she worked the magics on the Scythe, Willow had been able to feel the Slayers awakening all over the world. It had been this flowing powerful force that seemed to fill every pore of her body with yummy, life-affirming energy. Now, though, she felt the absence of those magics like a cavity caused by excessive sweet tooth.
But it had to still be there, Willow reasoned to herself. On a magical level it felt a complex algebraic equation in which the positive and negative integers cancelled each other out. It was the kind of problem she loved to solve in high school, but she much preferred it when the x and y variables were abstracts and not Slayers and vampires.
Willow was busy pondering this when she turned the corner onto Meteor Street. Her feet ached, and the upholstery from the train seat made her skin itchy. She tucked the stack of mail she brought from the Westbury house under her elbow, and was thinking of fishing out her keys when she caught a movement from the corner of her eye. She faltered a bit, tripping over a crack in the sidewalk. When Willow looked up, Amy was there.
Amy – reclining against the passenger door of a parked car, feet crossed at the ankles, arms folded over the bodice of a red satin corset. She wore a plaid parochial schoolgirl skirt and a malicious grin to match. While not the fashion diva, she looked like regular Amy.
But her energy – her aura – felt extremely irregular. Willow felt the hairs on her arms stirring.
Amy’s smile broadened. “I never could resist a party,” she said. “Especially one that’s packed with Sunnydale alum.”
“Oh look. It’s the Wicked Wicca of the West,” Willow quipped. “You should leave now.”
“Or what?” Amy scoffed. She shifted her weight from one hip to the other. She looked over Willow’s head at the darkened windows of the Flat. “You know, Willow, I couldn’t find this place. Even after I got the address, I searched and nothing. Really effective protection spell you’ve got there,” Amy stuck out her lower lip, feigning a pout. “But then I realized I was going about it all wrong. No need to find the house. I just needed to find you. And here you are.”
Willow let her mail fall to the sidewalk.
“Second thought. Stay,” Willow said. “Your ass needs a solid kicking.”
Amy held out her arms. “If you think you’re up for the task...”
Willow clapped her hands together. “Halaam!” she called out. Amy slammed backward against the car. Her spine made a sickening crunch.
Amy cracked her neck. She craned her head slowly.
“First blood,” Amy said. “Nice one. My turn.”
Amy threw her head back. Her mouth elongated into a grotesque hole. She spewed torrents of red-black energy into the air around them. Whips of snaking, grasping, putrid creepers that twisted around her fingers in malformed bulges. Black veins snaked out all over her body, drawing deep score marks in her putty colored skin.
“Ew,” Willow said. She took an involuntary step back.
Amy threw her arms forth. A wave of the slithery blackness rumbled over her, shaking the sidewalk and rattling windowpanes. Willow struck the bricks so hard she saw sparks. Her breath exploded sharply from her lungs.
Now she was pissed.
Willow shook off the cloud of weirdness. She held out her hand, palm up. After a second’s concentration, a ball of silver light appeared. “Elin,” she whispered. She lobbed it at Amy.
The sphere of light merely grazed her.
“You’ll have to do better than pretty party lights,” Amy said. She tossed her sable hair from her shoulders, letting her face take its vampire form.
Willow balked. “You’re a vampire?” she asked.
Amy charged forward with such unexpected, savage force, she managed to knock Willow sprawling.
“I’ve always been kind of a hands-on girl. Figured that was more your speed, anyway,” she said, leering over Willow. “Let’s have a taste, shall we?”
“Bite my ass,” Willow said through her teeth. She drove the heel of her boot into Amy’s shin. Amy swore. She hobbled back a few steps, enough to let Willow regain ground.
Amy cackled. It was quite the convincing witch cackle. “You know,” she said. “It was something to watch your little girlfriend die. She didn’t even have a fighting chance...”
Willow reeled. Her first thought, which would pain her later, was that Amy was speaking of Tara. Then Willow got it.
“Kennedy...” Willow said. She was too stunned to say anything else.
“Yeah,” Amy said, sprightly. “Tough way to go if you’re a Slayer. Apparently, she wasn’t even the right one. Too bad for her. Such a waste of skin and blood. You really know how to pick ’em.”
“Shut up,” Willow cried.
“Oh. Clever comeback,” Amy said. She slashed out with a whiplike tendril. It gouged Willow’s cheek. “By the way, where is Buffy?” Amy growled.
Willow’s breathing hitched and lurched in her chest. She fought to control her anger, to remember her connection to the earth and all that was true and good. Her love... Her family.
“I’m sorry, Kennedy,” Willow whispered, hiccuping over the words. When she squared off with Amy, her whole body was trembling. “You will never harm them,” she yelled. “Goddess of Uran, Giver of Light. Blind this malevolent creature of Night.”
It was spectacular spell, all bright and flashy fireworks with sunlight-like intensity. On most vampires it proved effective. On Amy, it simply annoyed.
“Gee, Willow,” she laughed. “I already told you. Pretty light show won’t stop me. The power I have is like an evil charge card with unlimited spending. No way you can beat that.”
Amy raised her hands high above her head. She began a slow, throaty chant. The dark energy she had conjured before erupted again, this time from her fingertips in a gushing fountain of carnage – bits of bone and brain and gouts of blood in swirling spectral blackness. It climbed to the height of the rooftops, gaining velocity. A thunderous bestial groan grew with it. Car alarms went off up and down the street.
Inside the Flat, Dawn and Connor were just getting to the part where she explained how Willow pieced together the Circle from the scrolls they found in Boadicea’s tomb, when the noise reached her ears.
“Did you hear that?” she asked.
“No,” he said.
Then came blaring car alarms.
“Yes,” he amended. “I hear that.”
Dawn dropped to the floor. “Get down, Connor,” she commanded. “It’s another earthquake.”
Willow muttered the words of her protection spell. She lingered on the last syllable, waiting for the piling wave to crash down before giving away her defense.
The column spiraled skyward, curling in on itself. Willow felt it sucking the life from the air as it grew. Amy’s face contorted into a mask of perverse pain and pleasure.
“Release,” Amy hissed. She brought her arms down in a swift arc. The twisted mass crashed down, into Willow, into the Flat. The front door splintered. Windows vaporized. But after the initial surface-y damage, the wash of evil evaporated like a cloud of smoke belched from a chimney.
And Willow stood firm, barring the doorway, completely unscathed.
Amy’s nostrils flared in an unattractive way only vampires can manage. “How?” she demanded.
“There is one thing on this earth more powerful than evil,” Willow said, quoting Buffy. “And that’s us.”
Dawn stepped onto the step behind Willow. She crossed her arms. “Didn’t count on two powerful witches...”
“Make that three.”
Willow and Dawn didn’t turn, but they knew that Maya was there with them.
Amy shook off her demon face. She clicked her tongue, chiding them. “So that’s how it is?” she asked. “Three little witches. Just... precious.”
“Think you can take us all on?” Dawn asked. “Because I’m feeling a need to go a little Salem right about now.”
Willow lay a hand on Dawn’s arm. “Wait,” she said.
The sun was turning the sky scarlet. Red sky in morning, Willow thought. Amy, sensing the coming sunrise and realizing her protection was down, decided it best to beat a hasty exit.
Dawn was dumbstruck. “We can’t let her escape, Willow. She knows where we live. She could...”
“Kennedy’s dead,” Willow heard herself say. She turned to face Dawn and Maya. “Where’s Buffy?”
Dawn glanced at Maya, then back over her shoulder at Connor. Xander, MK and Anjelica were standing in the hallway, looking equal parts scared, sleepy-eyed and confused.
“She’s at the hospital with Giles,” Dawn said. “Come inside. We’ll, um. We’ll talk.”
~*~
The dream had a shabby, fuzzed-edge feeling to it, like the shoddy silent shows he had seen long ago in nickelodeon theater houses. In it, William was searching for something but the lighting had gone all crackled and wonky. He felt like a man who had been dosed with chloroform and morphine. He wandered, half-blind, finding his way with only his benumbed feelers.
He blundered into the kitchen. He squinted to cut the glare from the high-bright pool of light over the breakfast table. Two figures huddled at the table. They seemed to be bickering over something. A puzzling blue-white light shone from the room behind them.
“It’s always the kitchen,” he muttered. “Must be some kind of spiritual tether.”
One of the figures took notice of him. “Oh, look. He’s gone all Jim Morrison,” the figure said. It was a familiar voice, feminine and distinctly annoying.
William fumbled toward the light, until her outline crisped into focus.
“Anya?” he asked. She was wearing her candy-striper uniform again, open to the third button to reveal the saucy cleft of her breasts.
“Of course it is,” she said. “Who else would it be?” She turned to the other figure. William saw that she was dealing from a deck of cards. “Except look who else is here, Spike. You’re not the only one comes to visit me.”
“Wait,” the other voice said. “He comes to visit you?”
William panned right, slowly. His eyeballs ached as though he’d earned himself a strong hangover. “Buffy?” he said in a tone barely above a whisper.
Anya said, “Oh yes. Spike comes here to comfort me.”
“But I...” William objected.
Buffy’s mouth gaped comically. “You dream about Anya?”
“No,” he said. His reactions were treacherously slow.
“You dream about comforting Anya?”
“Now, hang on...”
“Because I seem to recall not liking the comfort you gave each other,” Buffy said.
“It’s not like that,” he explained. He stepped forward.
His hip bumped into the back of the chair.
“It’s really not,” Anya said, waving her hand. She scooped up her own cards. “He has total dreamnesia. Forgets everything I tell him. The moment he wakes up, he’s all blah-di-blah Buffy and blah-di-blah Dawn, and let’s have a shag before patrol, baby.”
“What the —?” Spike interrupted. “Buffy, I don’t...”
“You know what? Forget it,” Buffy said. She slid five cards across the table to him. “May as well play the game. We have a long time to go before sunrise.”
William stared down at the cherry-red lattice pattern on the backs of the cards. The lines seemed to move like the static on a busted TV screen. He heard a sound, too. A not so pleasant whirring, like white noise and humming computer equipment. And a clean, pungent scent that almost burned in his nostrils. Like Clorox mixed with... was it ozone?
“Come on, Spike,” Anya prodded. “We’re waiting on you.”
“Sure, yeah,” William answered. He pulled out the chair. He lingered, trying to suss out what he’d been searching for.
He turned to Buffy. She was busy studying her cards, setting them up between her fingers.
“Shouldn’t you be with Rupert?” he asked.
“It’s okay,” Buffy whispered. She looked over her shoulder at the blue room behind them. “I brought him along, too.”
The image grew clearer like a bubble climbing to the surface of water in a glass. It was indeed the hospital room, adjoining the kitchen where the dining room should be. Rupert rested peacefully on plumped white pillows, the sedative and transfusion tubes trailing over the bed’s edge into nowhere. Somehow, in dream-logic, this satisfied everyone. With a brisk nod, William took his seat and his cards.
He didn’t look at his hand. He sat there, floating along, trance-like. It was a maddening sensation of being there while not actually being there.
“I’m not here. Not really,” he said to himself.
Buffy reached for his hand without looking up from her cards. She squeezed it. “Of course you are. We’ve been through this. Don’t be silly,” she said. Then, to Anya, she said, “I’ll take two.” She released William’s hand, lay down two cards and picked up the ones Anya dealt to her. “Oh!” she said. “I’m going to win this round.”
Anya put down three of her cards. “Dealer takes three,” she said. “Let’s hope I get a better draw this time.” She drew from the stack, then swore under her breath.
“No such luck, huh?” Buffy asked.
“What’s the ante?” William asked.
Anya chuckled. She fanned herself with her cards. “There’s no ante. We’re just playing for fun, Spike.”
“It’s William,” he said. His brow creased. Impulsively, he slid all of his cards across the table. “Deal me a new hand,” he said.
“Kinky,” Anya said, eyes twinkling. She peeled five cards from the top of the stack and passed them his way. “Speaking of, do you think it’s wise, her being here in her condition? I mean, what with Luxe and all...”
Buffy was astonished. “My condition?” she breathed, disbelieving. “You told her? I thought we weren’t, with the telling?”
William balked. “I did not. I wouldn’t...”
Anya raised her hands, still gripping her cards. “He didn’t, I can assure you,” Anya said. “No one tells me anything. But I can tell. I can see it. You’re glowing. Don’t you think? Isn’t she just glowing?”
He looked at Buffy then. She was bathed in halogen kitchen light. It fell on her hair and skin in a way that lessened the shadows. It wasn’t just the dream. She was glowing.
Buffy flashed him a weary smile. “Your turn,” she said.
He turned the cards over in his hands. Three eights. Two Aces. If it hadn’t been so cliche, he might have laughed. Instead he reeled back from the table, letting the cards slip from his fingers.
William turned to Buffy. “Well, that’s it, then,” he said. “I’m done in.”
“What?” Buffy said. She patted his vacant chair. “You can’t be done. The game’s just getting started.”
William knelt beside her chair. He turned her body to face his.
“William...” she said, as if he was behaving like a ridiculous child.
At the table, Anya leaned way over to collect his cards. She flipped them face up, then said, “You folded on a full house? Bad idea.”
He shook his head, trying to clear it. “I didn’t make it, pet. I know I promised to stay, but my curtain call falls short of the final act. I don’t get to see how it ends.”
Buffy touched his face. “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s a dream. We’re dreaming.”
“That’s right,” Anya agreed. “Dreaming, remember?”
“No,” William said, putting force behind his words. “Don’t you get it? I’m dead. I’m tied here for I don’t know how long because of Willow’s magics. But I have to tell you...”
“Stop it,” Buffy said, pulling away from him. “The Sisters gave you healy powers. You can’t die. You can’t be killed.”
“Angel’s found a way,” William said.
She blinked as if he’d kicked her. “No,” she said.
He smoothed his hands down the sleeves of her sweater. Her arms trembled beneath the smooth fabric. “Listen,” he said. “There’s a dagger.”
“Shh,” she said. She lay her hands on his face. “It’s a dream.”
“Then you might want to consider waking up now,” Anya said slowly.
“It’s not a dream,” William said. He shook her gently. “It’s Angel, Buffy. He’s found a way to take me out of it for good this time. But don’t let him know you know. I don’t need to tell you what a megalomaniacal bastard he can be.”
“Yeah, he’s coming, Spike,” Anya said. “Get her out of here. Now would be good.”
William swallowed hard. “You have to go now,” he said.
“No,” Buffy said. “No. I don’t want to.”
“He’s coming,” Anya said. She got up from the table.
“Buffy, wake up now,” William said.
Her hands fluttered over his face, down his neck, to his shoulders. “We survive, remember,” she said, weakly. “We get through this.”
“Buffy, Spike,” Anya said. “Get the hell out!”
William took Buffy’s hands in his. “Keep yourselves safe. If I can find my way back to you, I will.” He pressed her fingertips to his lips.
Anya wedged herself between them. She shoved Buffy backward in her chair.
“William!” Buffy cried out. She jolted awake.
“Buffy?”
She heard his voice and froze. He hulked at the end of the bed, hands in pockets. He slouched a little, like he always did, like he was uncomfortable with how tall he was. A trace of a smile crooked one side of his mouth.
Buffy had dozed. She was in Giles’ room at Parkside Memorial. She had been dreaming. And Angel was there.
“What are you doing here?” she asked him.
“I found Thellian,” he said, simply.
Buffy drew herself up in the chair. “Where is he?”
“Here. In the city,” Angel said. “I can take you to him.”
Buffy glanced over Angel’s shoulder at the clock on the wall. “Xander will be here any minute,” she said. “I’m not leaving Giles...”
Angel shrugged. “Sunrise, Buffy. I don’t have much time. If we want to catch him today, it has to be now.”
Buffy considered for a sum of seconds. Her heart felt leaden, like winter storm clouds ready to shed themselves into snow. Somehow, she summoned the strength to stand. She followed him outside to a sleek black car that waited for them at the curb.
Her mind spun like a whirlpool, or a hypnotist’s wheel, black and white twirling and twirling - It was a dream; it wasn’t a dream – until it all blurred together into a bare ice-gray. Her body remembered better than her mind. She felt William’s hands in her own. Don’t let him know, he said. Don’t let him know.
The part of her that remembered was focused and cold.
Angel opened the door for her.
“After you,” he said.
Buffy hesitated, her heels on the curb. The sky was lighting up from underneath, turning the sky to strawberries and cream.
She looked back one last time before sliding into the cool interior of the Angel’s corporate car.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
This was the hardest chapter to write. It's the darkest hour in this story. Warning - character death. But to paraphrase Imhotep: Death is only the beginning.