Chapter 32: Pistols at Dawn
London, 5:16 a.m
---
Leila watched the hazy blades of light dance out from around the skeleton of London Bridge. This was probably her favorite part of the freak show she'd so recently started calling a life. As sad as it sounded, a quiet morning of guard duty was just about the only time she felt even quasi-normal these days. There was something about the way the city looked at dawn that made it easy to pretend that this was all a dream, that she’d dozed off in 9th period French again. Any minute now, Mademoiselle Richardson would savage her with a bunch of dormez-vous crap, which she would only marginally comprenez. The bell would save her, and then she’d jet out to the parking lot to hassle Amanda about the Dilemma of the Double Teds, flirt with Bobby “Hot Pickle” LoPiccolo,and raid the mall. Shoes and boys and summer vacations were all just around the corner. Guarding a secret British fortress was laughably far-fetched by comparison. This was just that extra-weird part of the dream, right before you woke up.
As if to prove this, something funny began to happen in the sky. Somewhere down in the historical district, close to Trinity Square, a plume of black smoke began to rise. She thought it was a fire, at first, but there was something hypnotic about the way it moved, worming and twisting in slow motion, slowly unfurling like an octopus leg. Instead of dissipating, the column kept rising, arching high over the Soho skyline like a toxic rainbow.
Then it turned.
Turned toward her, it seemed, snaking lazily through the early morning glow like something out of a nightmare. This struck Leila as a pretty un-smoke-like thing to do.
As the seconds passed, her bewilderment quickly hardened into something much, much worse. By the time Leila realized she was in trouble, the Thing was already there, towering before her like a monstrous black wave. Without warning, four huge tendrils of fog shot out from its base. She could make out the shapes of people inside.
Hundreds of them.
Leila closed her eyes.
“Wake up now,” she whimpered. “Wake up now…”
***
What now?
Dawn had just finished getting the runaround from Morrade over in Ecto-Land. Apparently, they’d lost contact with Polly’s search team “sometime during the night,” and Morrade was blaming it on a technical snafu. When Dawn demanded a stricter definition of the word “sometime,” another snafu conveniently managed to cut the call off mid-sentence. She'd have to remember to bring this up at the morning briefing.
But first, she made the long trek to the bathroom, bleary-eyed and staggering like a mummy. The shower would feel good. She needed to wash off Yesterday in a bad, bad way. It was still hard to figure out which was the suckiest part, so she dutifully grabbed her toothbrush, and tried to connect all the horrible dots one more time.
Dot the 1st: Rupert Giles
Played them all like a concerto. In retrospect, this wasn’t entirely shocking; the guy had gray matter to spare. But she’d never guessed how gobsmackingly devious he could really be. Snooping through the WatcherNet’s programming notes was like cracking open Watergate, Monica-gate, Travel-gate and Every-other-gate rolled into one. Dawn had seen some kooky schemes in her day, but using mind control to turn yourself into the World’s Lamest Supervillain? So you can stir up a revolution against yourself? This was newish. God only knew what he was up to right now.
Then again, maybe Giles chipped Him too...
Dot the 2nd: Spike
Was alive. Or, alive-ish: vampire and whatnot. Part of her wanted to stick this factoid in the Figure It Out Later file. Another, more distant part of her wanted to wrap her arms around the monster, filled with disorienting squee. Neither seemed likely to happen. Frank, on the other hand, was plenty interested in this development. She knew the man still kept an ear pressed to the doors of Hell-A, obsessing over each detail of the Devil’s quiet coup there. Frank Grange knew all the major players by heart, but he never once mentioned the Bleach Boy, of course. That would be in the neighborhood of Telling Dawn the Freakin’ Truth For Once, breaking one of mankind’s most cherished traditions. But now that she knew, Frank was all prophecy-this and Shanshu-that.
Well, gee whiz, thanks.
Not everyone was happy to see him. This was a familiar phenomenon, at least. Vampires seemed to have that effect on people, and Spike especially. And the only likely candidate was unreadable to Dawn now, a ghost of a ghost...
Dot the 3rd: Buffy Summers
So far, their reunion wasn’t exactly a Very Brady Christmas. That first glimpse of her on the heli-pad yesterday had been like something out of a dream. Haggard and bloodstained, she could’ve been coming home from a particularly brutal night of patrol. But something in her eyes was sparking again, and when she glimpsed it, it filled Dawn with a strange kind of hope. Hope was not necessarily a good thing, she'd learned. For one thing, Hope’s life-partner, Crushing Disappointment, was never very far behind...
Dot the 4th: Me
It was also not necessarily a good thing because “Dawn Summers” was not necessarily a good thing. Much like the Watcher’s master plan, everything the world thought it knew about Dawn was a carefully constructed lie. Unlike normal people, she had played no consequential role in her own history. Memories and habits, dreams and desires; for everyone else these had built up naturally, like branches that grow from a tiny seed. But for Dawn, they were like things welded together on a factory line. She wasn’t born so much as she was designed. There was no there there.
Even before Dawn left Buffy to her dark habits and her bad kissing decisions, the truth of this gonged away in her heart. At first, it didn’t bother her so much. After all, the whole world was founded on lies. People lied constantly, to each other and to themselves. So she took every chance she could to reinvent herself, build a shiny new Lie from the ground up. While other girls her age were trying to “find themselves,” she only wanted to burn Dawn Summers to ashes, and to sculpt something utterly new to take its place. Considering what became of her family in the wake of Sunnydale – the drugginess and the despair and the disappearing acts – this was a much easier chore than expected. Going rogue was supposed to be the finishing touch of this masterpiece; the pièce de résistance that would finally set her free and make her real. After all these years, she was going beat those monks at their own twisted game…
Hey.
For one hazy second, Dawn's brain tried to comfort her. TV, it explained. Had to be the TV. A commercial for that confusing show, maybe, the one with all those jerks stuck on an island. It looked a lot like that thing, anyway – that dark, billowing cloud of special-effects-y crap those island jerks were so scared of.
But, it wasn’t the TV. There was no TV in the bathroom. That would be silly.
It was the window.
***
Nancy let the winds sweep her gently down to the courtyard. Fingers tore the cloud to black ribbons, revealing the final resting place of the dirty old world and the birthplace of a new one. The Garden stretched out before her once again, like a beautiful promise. Lines of soldiers raced out on deadly arcs, the black folds of the Now releasing them like rats from a burning barn. She spared a moment to watch them go about their silly business.
Miss Kennedy led the way in, a train of girls and monsters galloping in her wake. As she drove her savage wedge into the courtyard, the Council’s defenders began dotting to life in the windows and doorways. Across the lawn, a horde of lovely little girls erupted from a cafeteria, bleary and pajama-clad. Kennedy and her bunch struck like snakes. Nancy watched in quiet fascination as their blades sung down through soft flesh, setting the autumn air ablaze with screams.
Alarms soon joined this red chorus, bleating like slaughtered lambs from the tops of buildings. Parades of vicious little girls and their soldier boys streamed out upon the grounds to meet their visitors. Nancy saw a handsome young man in a military topcoat cleaved in half at the waist. Near the foot of gymnasium, a mob of Kennedy’s gray devils fell upon a girl in hair curlers, tearing her vicera like Christmas wrapping. Everywhere Nancy turned she saw tools digging through soil, revealing fresh horrors.
Of course, this part hardly concerned her. She left them to it, floating past the carnage, above it, held aloft on fine black string. At the foot of the cathedral, a young goddess in a warm-up suit took a potshot at her with a rifle. The girl was beautiful, with crystal blue eyes and lips as red as a valentine. Nancy fell upon her like an owl, raking her face open with a small swipe of her hand.
“God,” said the princess, blinded by blood.
Soon, Nancy thought.
***
London, 5:18 a.m
---
Andrew Wells ran for his life, lungs puffing out air faster than he could pull it back in. He kept looking for an exit sign or a ladder or a stairwell or something. But the wide hallways all looked the same, all black with slashes of red light like open wounds. He paused at one intersection, his heart pounding away at the walls of his chest. He looked back and forth and back again, but it was no use. He didn’t have a clue where he was going.
“Oh, sure you do, little buddy,” purred a familiar voice.
A smell like old food stung the air, and Andrew felt something inside his legs turn to pudding.
“You know exactly where you’re going."
The air went in, and didn’t come back out. Something was moving in a well of shadows next to a bulkhead, and cold fingers forced Andrew to look at it.
The monster took its time. It inched through the blades of scarlet light, revealing bright ropes of raw meat and sinew. Time slowed down, became a crawling nightmare of moments. Andrew began to cry.
“Shhhh,” Warren whispered, a tortured, lipless hole straining to make the sound. “Hey, don’t be like that, man. Thought you’d be happy to see me.”
The face was almost recognizable. Willow had left just enough. Wet bands of exposed muscle painted a rough sketch of what was once there.
“Please.” Andrew’s fingers scrambled to his breast pocket, working on old, weird orders. Poking and patting and smoothing.
“What’s the matter doughboy?” the corpse teased. “Looking for your precious little pills? Yeah, like that’s gonna do any good.”
Not real. You’re not real.
“Am too!” Warren was close enough to touch now. The smell became overpowering, a butcher shop full of rotten steak. “Real pissed-off. I mean you don’t call, you don’t write. Beginning to think you were ashamed of me or something...”
When Andrew didn’t answer, the ghost tilted towards his ear, as though to tell a secret. Fresh blood pooled along its jawline, trickling off like drops from a leaking faucet. “So! You ready to go or what?”
I can’t.
Not down there. Not yet.
Warren shooed him with a bloody hand. “Oh, dude! Not there!” The corpse seemed almost giddy, its tongue licking down at his wet chin. “I mean, well, not right this second. This isn’t a porno, man! Wouldn’t be much fun if we just skipped ahead to the money shot. We got a lot of catching up to do first.”
The smell of death was everywhere, all over him. Andrew’s fingers were still moving, searching.
Please...
“Besides, John-Boy wants to give you a good head start." Warren gazed at the ceiling as though in deep thought. "How'd he put it? Oh yeah, ‘I want him to teach the walls to scream.’” He took a long, dramatic breathe, savoring the idea. “Little freak’s got a way with words, doncha think?”
Andrew forced his eyes open. He gazed into the boy’s dead, leering eyes, and saw a freezing desert there. It suddenly dawned on him that today was the last day of his life.
“Well? What’re you waiting for, Andy? On your mark. Get set…”
But the Summoner was already gone. He ran and ran into the darkness, feeling it close around his heart like a fist.
Like a promise.
***
The Slayer lay sleeping, curled like a cat on Rayne’s settee. The body, it seemed, had finally surrendered, but the writhing knots of her brow told Rupert Giles that the mind was still waging war. It occurred to him once more that the demons within were more challenging than the ones of this world. And, much as he would’ve liked to, he’d never taught her to fight the former.
Ethan was still celebrating his victory. He lurched to and fro, full of swagger and brandy, loudly declaring his unholy new credentials to whichever haggard remnants of his audience were still listening. What he said was even true, to some degree. Rupert had known many powerful sorcerers in his day, and had seen workings both majestic and terrifying. But, not more than two hours ago, Ethan Rayne tore a hole straight through the fabric of reality itself. The monstrous strength of this made the hairs rise on the Watcher's arms, and once again he was starting to question the wisdom of their alliance.
“’There wass’iz pull, Ripper,” he explained for perhaps the tenth time. “Like. Like a‘normous hand bursting from muh chest, pullin’ at the corner of the world with all s’might. Simply muh-marvelous, mate…”
Rupert gave him a harried nod, checked his watch again. Through the window, the sun was beginning to crack the sky. The vampire Drusilla was tucked safely in the shadow of a grand piano, either sleeping or pretending to. As the spell of the WatcherNet drifted further and further to sea, so too did his dealings with the vampire float further ashore.
Finding her had been a most delicate foxhunt. He’d moved the pieces subtly, employed a network of underground sources that spanned from Belfast to Ankara. It was maddeningly slow process, rife with faulty tips and false starts. When the word came that she’d finally surfaced on the streets of Prague, Rupert was only marginally convinced. Nevertheless, he’d shuttled off that very evening.
His carry-on luggage was more or less packed as one might for a very short and very bland holiday, save for two articles of interest. One was a brief manuscript pilfered from the Vatican’s vault of archives, a treasure trove of secrets never intended to see the light of day. The other a nondescript white crucifix, on loan from the private collection of one Edward Alexander Crowely, with a certain small inscription scratched into the back by a blade. A third, even more curious item would arrive via less conventional means, and would be waiting for him at a penthouse suite cattycorner to the Czech National Bank.
Rupert finally caught up with the murderess in the catacombs underneath St. Vitus, prowling the tombs of her erstwhile contemporaries. This setting was no coincidence, of course. The monster’s dark visions drove her at the lash, forcing the gradual intersection of chance and choice that would lead inevitably to their strange, shared fate.
If Rupert had his way, the events that transpired down there in the quiet hallows would be taken directly to his grave. When he’d finished his dark deed, The Plan was almost immediately born. In all honesty, he couldn’t wait to scrub the memory of his dealings with Drusilla from his brain.
But now, staring at the lost little girl chained under the piano, it washed over him again in sultry waves, both drowning him and baptizing his resolve. Since he knew he was quite likely damned to Hell, Rupert was more determined than ever that it wouldn’t be for naught. Drusilla and Ethan were, in many ways, the perfect allies to play out this bitter endgame. Who better to rend apart the mad designs of angels?
The Slayer stirred as he thought this, troubled by invisible storms. Xander and Spike were gone, swept to a far corner of the chess board to trap and eliminate the enemy Queen. Such bold gambits usually required a sacrifice, he knew. Buffy Summers knew this rule as well. She would awaken, eventually, to once again tally her losses and carry on the fight. They had chosen well, with her. Perhaps too well.
Rupert wandered to the window, drawn by the red bands on the horizon that would soon harden to blue. In one way or another, today would be the end of a world. He could only hope it would be the right one.
***
Boston, 12:07 a.m
---
This is it.
No more excuses. No gobshite from the usual suspects. No more bloody Hell-A, nor the barking mad hypocrisies of its amply forehead-ed potentate. No more mincing around in the shadows like him, either, pretending to be a fairy story hero. And no more quiet moments alone in the Hills, reflecting on the invisible claws of the Devil’s own Repo Man. On that clean and cold surgery that removed your vagabond spark.
No more dreams of her eyes, thank Bloody God. No more picturing how green they sometimes seemed to be, like stolen emeralds set in snowbanks. No lying awake for hours upon hours, haunted by echoes and wondering at the strange and fearful sensation of empty arms.
No more sodding delusions, mate. From now on, its the land of the Real for you.
And It’s right here in front of you, stretching for black miles. For eternity. Because Rayne bollixed it.
'Cause you been here before.
At the bottom is the mirror. The nightmare sun, ringed by spiders. This time you’ll stop fighting, and give yourself over to it. Fourth time.
Fourth times a charm.
This is it. This is the-
“Ow!” He thudded heavily off a stone staircase. The portal had shat him out in mid-air, about fifteen feet up. Wagging his head, dizzy from both the journey and it’s abrupt end, Spike took a moment to marvel at the fact that he was wagging anything at all. Three feet to the left or right, and he’d be embedded in the brickwork like some ghastly patch of ivy.
No time for what-ifs, love. Kittens are all on the table now, and you still got one last hand left to pla-
“OW!” The thing crashed down like a meteorite, sending both him and it tumbling down the steps in a painful knot. And when Spike looked to see what it was, he almost bloody lost it.
“Xander, you pillock!” he roared. “What in soddin’ hell did you do?!”
The boy labored slowly to his feet, his lone, barmy eye gleaming like a dagger in the torchlight. “Something I will surely regret, any second now.” He held out Rayne’s bauble. “You forgot something.”
Spike felt the old poison well up inside. “Wanker! What part of one-way ticket didn't you get? Was I speaking in bloody tongues?!” A rock concert of echoes howled all around them, the microphone in the helmet setting the bloody world on fire.
“Hey could you speak up?” Xander hissed. “I think there’s a few Himalayan sherpas who couldn’t hear you.”
Taking the bastard’s point, Spike tugged off the mask. The air that pooled in his nostrils was clammy and still, and he knew immediately that they were someplace well underground.
“Of all the sodding-” he started to say. It felt like there was no end to these jokes, and none of them were remotely funny. For a long time Spike thought he'd dearly like to meet the jester, and to bite the living fuck out of him. But for one bright moment, standing at the precipice, it all seemed so much simpler than that. One last twist of the knife and there would be an ending, of sorts; a tart coda to a very long and miserable poem.
Xander, as usual looked to be mostly oblivious. Spike knew it from the beginning, back in fair old Sunny-D. There was too much humanity in the lad for this line of work. “Just keep out of my way,” he warned. “Last thing I need is you goin’ and getting yourself hacked to bits on my watch.”
“I’m deeply moved.”
“I mean it, you tit. You’re all thumbs and elbows.”
“Hey, any other random body parts you want to throw in there?”
Spike glowered back. This was a kink in the plan, for sure. Much as he despised the boy, he didn’t want Xander to see this end bit play out. The thought occurred that he might have a few delusions left after all. “Keep your bloody trinket,” he said. “Maybe your pal Rayne’ll come through, an’ maybe he won’t. Or maybe you’ll burst into merry flames. Just keep it away from me, yeah?”
They stood there for a long moment in the chill, surveying their options. There appeared, at the moment, to be only two. “Well,” the boy sighed, “whaddya think, o' Prince of Dorkness? Up or down?”
He gave the air another sniff. There didn’t seem to be a thing at all alive in it. “Down.”
“And this is based on?”
“Experience,” Spike muttered, not missing a beat. “It’s bloody well always down…”