Chapter 27:  Breakthroughs

All eyes were glued to the Watcher as he picked his way into the office, still brandishing the cross like some lunatic bishop.  The geezer seemed a dozen years younger; cheeks flushed, eyes foxlike as they quickly chopped up the scene, the corners of his mouth showing just the faintest curl.   If he didn’t know any better, Spike would’ve thought the bastard was actually having fun.

Drusilla shrank in horror as Rupert closed the gap, fell shrieking to her knees.  “No! No! No!” she cried.  “Daddy don’t want us yet!”

“Hello, Spike.”  The Watcher kept his eyes fixed to Drusilla as he steered clockwise toward the bound and utterly boggled vampire.  “I see you’ve been exercising your most prodigious talent, again."  The Watcher fished a bauble from his pocket - a talisman in the shape of a skull - and waved it over the iron bands.  The bracelets sprung open like a pair of gobsmacked jaws.  “At this rate, tying you up will be declared an Olympic sport.”

Spike ignored the crack.  He was still blown sideways by the goings-on in the corner of the room.  Drusilla was kneeling (Kneeling!), hands clasped like a penitent in the sodding confession box.   Bright tears striped down from her huge, unearthly eyes, her mouth silently working a prayer. “It’s not fair,” she wept.  The voice she used now was wholly unrecognizable. 

“Had a bargain, love,” said Rupert.   It was an almost gentle reprimand, as one might correct an errant child.  “Time to hold up your end.”  The Watcher stood directly over the keening murderess, the crucifix holding her in thrall.  The shape was frightening in a subliminal way, the upshot of a very old and very powerful curse on his kind.   But it wasn’t that bland and familiar animal terror in Drusilla’s eyes.   It was a thing much larger; more akin to awe.  Spike felt it too, albeit for different bloody reasons.  He crept alongside the pair of them, peering in cautious wonder at it all.

“We can’t, Watcher,” she pled – and so softly, more of a stranger by the moment.   “We can’t wake her.   He gets so displeased.”

Giles held the holy post three searing inches from her face.  “In darkness do it” he intoned.  “Her blood sets the stone of the eternal house...”

“But.  We can’t-”

“You are her only witness, and she is yours…”

“Enough!” Spike heard himself bark, the last twig of sanity finally snapping.  “If someone doesn’t start making sense right now, I’m gonna bite every last soddin’ one of you!”

As if to answer, a pair of arms locked the old man ‘round the torso, then Doctor Nick’s jowly game face came snaking in over Rupert’s shoulder for a nibble.  Spike pounced instinctively, sending the three of them reeling across the room, furniture smashing and clattering to bits in their wake.  The doc was howling like a wounded dog when Spike finally peeled him loose from his intended supper.  He had the fledgling wrestled up against the wall when he heard the Watcher’s grim voice ring out behind him.  “Spike,” it said.  “Duck.”

Spike cocked his head just in time to see Rupert’s sword flashing out.   An old, delicately honed muscle flexed, and he heard the blade sing a few inches over the top of his skull.  A second later, the thing squirming in his grasp crumbled to dust.  “Oi!   A bit close doncha think?!”

Rupert's eyes glittered back at him for a moment, then burned with sudden alarm.  Spike followed the man’s gaze to the door, and caught a wisp of his maker’s black hair disappearing around the frame.  “Stop her!” Rupert cried out.   But Spike was already moving, bounding after her without a thought in his thoroughly bewildered brain.

Drusilla was a fleet footed wench when she wanted to be.  She flew down the stairs, her mournful wails echoing off the walls like a chamber psalm.  He could hear Giles racing after them, shouting a dozen hoarse commands that both vampires ignored.  At the second floor landing, Spike hurled himself over the rail, hoping to somehow head her off.

It turned out there was no need.   Ten feet from the entrance, a sight had stopped the woman dead in her tracks.  She stood transfixed by it.  Whatever it was, it must’ve been even more impressive than the Watcher’s damned cross.  Spike snatched her tight round the chest.  Followed her eyes across the foyer to a long dressing mirror.

And saw Drusilla in it.

***

Nancy lounged across the altar, stroking her new pet.  The beast lifted its snout to her, whinnying its approval, its scaly length coiled taut along one leg.  It was a freak, of course; the sort of beautiful and impossible mutant the Greeks conjured from Mother Nature’s spare parts box.  Like the dragon, she’d ripped it whole from the maw of the Now.  She had come to understand her dark ally’s substance.  The Now devoured whole realities, and the fallow voids it left in its wake had become like clay to her.  The familiar monsters were the easiest.  Dragons and basilisks, trolls and unicorns and all myths close to this astral plane were torn free like apples from the branch.  But the world of Choice and Accidents was dwindling like a flame in the night, the Multiverse getting smaller by the nanosecond.  Sooner or later, she would be able to pull anything at all out of that blackest of hats.  A battleship staffed by Elvis impersonators.   Earthworm fluent in Japanese.   Chocolate candy hurricanes.

A throng of Chakau’Ri warriors kept their needless watch all around her.  Kennedy had insisted that Nancy be given a “round the clock security detail” while she ran whichever fool’s errand she thought would give her back the upper hand.   This was more nonsense, of course.  The brat was still smarting from her spanking.  She wanted to keep tabs on Nancy, and these ogres still owed her some mysterious vestige of loyalty.  But all their rough strength would prove useless.  And the same went for Kennedy and for the girls, and for Miss Special and Hostile Billy and for all their friends, too.  Nancy was filled to the teeth with powerful demons.  The Chosen One’s essence flowed through her like a black ocean.  She knew the girl better than she knew herself, now.  Back in the castle, a thousand of her private heavens and hells were laid bare in a single instant, bonding them for whatever was left of Eternity.  Even as Nancy lay there, she could almost hear the Slayer’s thoughts, feel her bungling around London like an amateur detective, trying to solve a puzzle before the puzzle solves her.  

No matter. By this time tomorrow, Nancy would finish that meal the vampire had so rudely interrupted.  It was the only way she could be strong enough to resist the Now’s cleansing tide.  And then she could sow her Garden anew, fill the world back up with whichever glorious fruits she desired.  She would become the Alpha and the Omega; the God of Gods, ascended and made flesh. 

While she considered this, the monster in her lap suddenly peered up her and made a sound that was ripe with love and terror.  It was music to her ears.  She gently traced the animal’s brow with a finger.  Toyed with the notion of caving in its skull.

The Witch, she mused.  The Witch was the only one who could stop her.  She’d heard the echoes of the redhead’s footfalls, a blind and monstrous hound set fast on her trail.  Willow Rosenberg was her name.   The girl was small and foolish, but in her short life she’d racked up a list of allies and enemies that would make any ol’ deity quake in their holy boots.  She was on the loose - leaping between worlds, trying to hack and hotwire the system.  Like Nancy, she was racing against the Now.   But while Willow wanted to stop it, Nancy merely needed to survive it, conquer it.  They were both running out of time.

She wouldn’t stoop to chasing the Chosen One all around London Town, like some character in one of Sir Doyle’s adventure tales.   After the castle, the game had become devastatingly simple, as clear as a ringing sleigh bell.  She would seize their pitiful ‘Council,’ and capture that small piece of the Slayer’s heart that Summers left behind.  They’d named it “Dawn”, but Nancy knew what she actually was.   Yet another key to a door the Witch left so wonderfully unwatched. 

Nancy no longer needed the drug.  Nor the table, nor even the needle.  All she needed was to gaze into that little girl’s eyes. 

And feed.

***

Bazzucot reclined heavily in his chair, drawing in another fragrant plume of G’hannat leaf.  He was trying to look relaxed – and perhaps, he realized, trying a bit too hard.  His boys were fanned out around him, looking anything but.

Across the table, the girl was playing a similar game.  She was a narrow, wiry beast.  Her raven hair was pulled into a taut knot, revealing eyes like a pair of black nails tacked to stone.  Her people looked almost bored.  They were strewn in casual twosomes and threesomes, here and there, treating his hideout like a college sorority den.   One little monster dangled her leg over the arm of a chaise lounge, listlessly punching commands into an iPod.  Another leaned against a door jam, polishing her battleaxe to a sinister, mirror-gleam.

A year ago, if you’d described this scene to Bazzucot – a dozen Slayers in his lair beneath the streets of Shadwell, ironing out the details of a deal – he’d have laughed in your face, loud and long, the grey horn on his chin warming to pink.  Of course, that was a year ago.  Now, times were tough, and all the old rackets were drying up faster then a dead dog’s arse.  Ironically, the Slayers themselves were the root cause of the recession, just as they were responsible for his current living arrangements.  Gave new meaning to the phase “London Underground,” that.  The glory days of the East End Syndicate seemed like a distant memory now.  Ever since the Watcher and his army of ‘Mean Girls’ set up shop, he was sweating like a virgin at a prison rodeo.   Business had always required a certain degree of uncertainty, sure, but it was bloody hard to find partners willing to cross these birds.

There was another old rule of business, however:  Water finds its own level.   They’d grown too much, too fast.  It was only a matter of time before the bobbies, having run out of crooks to collar, would turn on one another.  That much power don’t like company.    A large portion of arms dealing, experience had taught him, is patience.   Wait around long enough in any room, and eventually someone will get the bright idea to pick a fight.

“So?” Kennedy asked.  “Do we have a deal or what?”

He stretched his neck sideways, felt the scales there flutter soothingly as he expelled the rich red smoke from his lung.  He gestured to Darmok.  His big lieutenant lurched in stiffly from the rear of the pack, placed the heavy lead briefcase on the table face up before her and then, looking like he might in fact piss himself, scurried back into his roost in the shadows.

The Slayer’s eyes glittered at the prize inside.  “How do I know it works?”  she asked dreamily, too enraptured by the gadget to look away.

Bazzucot tittered nervously.  “Slayer,” he purred.  “Come now, love.  You an’ I both know that if the bloomin’ thing was a dud, you minxes would come back here and kill the whole lot of us.”

It took some visible effort for Kennedy to tear her attention away from the product.  But when she finally did, the look in her eyes was terrifying.  “Do you really think that?” she asked, so politely and innocently that every word hammered an icicle into the old monster’s spine.

“Yeah,” he managed to say.  “Yeah, course I do.”

She snapped the hatch shut.  Her girls suddenly writhed to life all around the room.  There was a ragged old song, the sound of metal unsheathing.

“You know what, Bazz?”  Kennedy sighed.  “I believe you.”

Ten seconds later, he was dead.

***

Feeling smarter yet, Slayer? crooned the Dauphin.

Buffy was back in the tank.  The blood warm liquid was starting to trap her, the sensation of being in the pool for so long that getting out seems just a little scary.  ‘Smarter’ wasn’t exactly the word for what she felt.  The answers were all still rolling around in her head, a bunch of marbles yet to be scooped back into the bag.

Better than losing them, she thought.

The sea monster’s tentacles unfurled in slow motion, gradually untangling themselves from her form.  She drifted free, a fetal shape tumbling end over end in the midnight lake.  Well, then, it said, sounding strangely contented.  I suppose the rest is up to you.

Rest?  What rest?

Precious little, I’m afraid.  The Gardener is here.  The turtle cannot save you from her.  It’s a very old rule.

She thought it over for second, letting the lesson sink in.  The answers were more and less than she bargained for, and for questions she would've never thought to ask. 

And what about him?

Yeah?  the Dauphin replied.  What about him?

Will he and I?  She strained mightily, tried to force the question into actual, English words.  I mean.  Will we?

What am I, psychic?  The great fish was already receding into the distance, neon organs twinkling like strings of Christmas lights.  No spoilers here.  Bake your own cookies, Chosen One.

Wait!  Don’t leave me yet.  I need to know about the van.  And the, uh, man.

Sorry, Slayer.  Not my line of country.  The lights of his body flickered in the distance, like a city skyline slowly succumbing to the night.   If everything works out, guess I’ll see you in Baffin.  I should have arms by then.  We’ll drink some beers.

As the last light blinked out, Buffy noticed a hard current swirling all around her, steadily building in force.  She pumped her arms and legs, suddenly terrified as she felt a whirlpool slurping her down into the void.  Three seconds later she was rocketing through a long metal tunnel.  A circle of light bloomed sharply at the end of it. 

She braced herself for impact…

***

“Buffy?  Buffy!”

She opened her eyes.  They were back in the waiting room.  Xander was cradling her in his arms.  The look in his eye was as familiar as it was infuriating.  Everyone was always so damn worried these days.  And, for the first time in years, that seemed to her like a pretty crazy thing to be.  

Did everyone forget how we do things around here?   Will was in trouble, Dawn was running with a wild crowd, Giles was getting in over his head and there was a Big Fat End of the World on the menu tomorrow night.  It was do or die.

Hey, I’ve died twice.

“Uh, Buff,” he said.  “Are you just gonna lay there ogling my chiseled, Adonis-like good looks, or are you gonna say something?”

“Something,” she whispered.  “I got flushed.”

“Yeah,” he laughed, and smoothed a clump of wet hair from her eyes.  “Yeah, you sure did.  ‘Bout time, too.  Thought maybe you guys ran off to find Nemo or somethi-”

She hugged him.  The move seemed to take him by surprise, but little by little she felt her friend slowly defrost and come back to life.   An old reliable muscle unwound inside him, recovering from a very long and unlucky bout of amnesia.  “How did we get here?” she whispered.

“Scenic route.  Long drive.”

“I love you, you know?”

He wrapped her closer than ever, buried his face in her neck.  She’d almost forgotten how warm he could be when the world actually let him.  “Yeah, I know,” he said.  They stayed that way for a while, brother and sister at last.  Looming Apocalypse be damned. 

“So,” he said finally.   “What’s the sits, o’ fearless leader?”

“Xander, old pal, you would not believe me if I told you.”

“Will it involve lots of bare knuckle, chop socky action?”

“Sure will.”

“You gotta plan?”

“Nope,” she said.  “But now I finally know who does."