Not Her Own
Giles had suffered greater falls. He’d weathered worse traumas to the head. In Sunnydale alone, he’d sustained
almost weekly head wounds, but none of them – not one! – bruised his ego like this last, most humiliating tumble.
He lay there, staring up at the world through the screen of motes stirred by his rather spectacular misstep. Dimly,
he hoped that she would simply overlook him and leave him there in the pit, because death, surely, would be better
than to have her sneering at him over his obvious infirmity.
She had met him at the San Diego International Airport. She wore a sleek, dusky pantsuit that served to
androgynize her lithe, American figure. He knew her immediately upon sight, for her spare features and beige hair,
which she folded into an austere knot at the nape of her neck, perfectly matched her brisk East Coast monotone.
As she crossed from baggage claim, her slick travel bag slung over her shoulder, she extended a slim, icy hand to him
(ignoring all gentlemanly protocol, thank you very much!) and introduced herself:
“I’m Rachel Greenspan,” she said, “Of the Boston Greenspans.”
And he hated her. It was loath at first sight.
She was a Watcher, of course. Hand-selected by her great-uncle Piers Greenspan, whom Giles had known briefly and
regarded as one of the most frightening creatures he had ever beheld. That meant that the young Miss Greenspan
had been under his tutelage since quite probably the age of three.
Giles thought she had to be but a few years older than Buffy; five at the most. Even so, a life time of Watcher
training had given her the gloss of the hyper-educated. To put it plainly: she was a know-it-all of the highest order.
When she appeared on the ledge above him, hands on hips, her lips curved into a feline smile.
“I’m certain the guide said the markings are best viewed from the upper chamber, Mr. Giles,” she said.
“Quite sure,” Giles muttered.
“Do you need help?” she asked.
“No.” He did. Quite obviously. But not from her.
Rachel Greenspan of the Boston Greenspans purred with laughter. “Here,” she said, kneeling to again offer him a
hand.
Giles rolled onto his side, suppressing the chorus of groans that accompany advancing age. He secured a handhold in
the stone and managed, after some effort, to heft himself vertically to the upper chamber to join Miss Greenspan,
without her assistance.
She had easily skirted the pitfall that he had generously pointed out to her by dropping himself into it, and had
continued down the path without him. With a wince and grimace, Giles followed her into the deeper recesses of the
cave.
He knew they were off to a bad beginning on the single-engine Cessna they’d taken from Tahiti to Easter Island.
Rachel, dressed then in a plum-colored sleeveless vest and khakis, took the seat beside him and leaned in,
conspiratorially.
“So, you’re the head of the Watcher’s Council?” she’d said, her hazel eyes sparkling behind silver-rimmed
spectacles. She looked like a stick insect with those great, glittering lenses.
“Um. Yes. Yes, I suppose that I am,” he’d answered. It was not something he had really considered. The burden had
fallen rather squarely on his shoulders, and he had taken it on with full gravity that was his duty. He made a mental
note to delegate that role to someone else the moment he again set foot on British soil.
Rachel had leaned away from him, her bare shoulder to the window. “Hmmm,” she said. And then she sat, watching
him, as if she expected him to answer for something.
“D-do you have a question, Miss Greenspan?” he had pressed.
“Not a question, as such. An observation,” she said. She linked her hands and looped them over one knee, so that
she appeared casual, conversational.
“Oh?”
“In light of everything the Council has lost, do you think it wise to have you toddling half across the globe in search
of one missing Slayer? I mean, is that really the best use of your resources?” she asked.
Giles had been beside himself. “My resources…” he stammered. It was a cold, inhuman, corporate word - one he
would that he would never associate with Buffy. He felt the heat of his anger creeping under the starched band of
his collar. “I beg your pardon.”
Rachel interrupted him. “I understand your regard for the girl. Your devotion to her is well-documented. It’s the
timing, you see. I would think the global needs of the Watcher’s Council would outweigh…”
“Miss Greenspan,” Giles said, leveling his tone in a precise, practiced manner it had taken him decades to perfect.
“First, without this girl, you and I would not be present to have this conversation. Second, Buffy is not simply
missing. She was ripped from this dimension by a presence unknown to us, which indicates that we are dealing with
something far more formidable than one absent Slayer. And third, while I have noted and will remember this
insubordination, I can assure you that I have left the Watcher’s Council in quite capable hands.”
Rachel responded with an enigmatic smile. She said nothing. The silence lengthened, elongated, filled the compact
cabin until it was all Giles could feel. It was without doubt the longest plane trip of his life.
Nor did things improve once they landed. She had done the research into the petroglyphs within the Tombs of Satu,
in the caves of Rapa Nui. She had maps, annotated texts, illustrations, detailed rituals and first-hand testimonials
about the significance of the glyphs, and kept all of it within a hand-held device she affectionately referred to as
Gary.
When Giles finally caught up to Rachel after climbing from the pit, he found her waiting in a place where the path
forked. She held Gary aloft, tapping its LCD screen with a nimble stylus. The light from the screen cast a sheer glow
over her trim face, and for a moment her appearance bordered on human. Giles chided himself, inwardly. Perhaps he
had been too harsh in his appraisal of her. They’d set off at wrong feet. She was a young, ambitious girl, brought up
with an overbearing American business sense that made her a hardnose, but surely she wasn’t all that bad.
“Climbed out of your hole, did you?” Rachel asked without looking up.
Then again, perhaps she was.
“Are you asking that thing for directions?” Giles asked tartly.
“Gary is programmed to update our location via satellite every three minutes,” she replied.
Giles took off his glasses. “I say,” he mumbled. “Is that truly necessary?”
Rachel glanced at him. “It is, if we don’t wish to be lost. Here,” she gestured ahead using Gary as a pointer. “This is
the path we take.”
After a few moments of trekking with only Gary for illumination, Rachel paused long enough to pull an electric torch
from her pack. Surprisingly, she passed it to Giles. He was so unprepared for such a move, he nearly dropped it. In
the moment’s flicker of light, he caught a sneer of disdain.
She turned abruptly, leaving him to mull his rancor from five paces behind.
“Do you know of the legends of Satu?” she called back.
Giles made no effort to quicken his pace. “Quite a lot, actually,” he said. “The Satu were nomadic priests who
formed a shamanistic council pre-dating the Stone Age and were the closest thing in that era to organized religion.
They were the keepers of the Sacred Truth, the um, Kali, which as the legend holds, was originally invoked to call
forth the First Slayer. Of course, a century after the birth of Christ, the Satu were hunted down as heretics and,
much like the Templar Knights, they were tortured and ultimately destroyed. Those who escaped the scourge went
into hiding. Their ways passed into myth and legend, thought to be lost forever…”
Giles finally came up for air to find Rachel staring at him. “Wow. That was, um… long-winded. A simple yes would have
sufficed.”
Giles took off his glasses and gave them a coarse scrub.
“Their ways weren’t all lost, Mr. Giles,” Rachel told him. “Turn around.”
He turned, sweeping the beam of the flashlight across… a blank stone wall.
“That’s not right,” Rachel said, bringing Gary to her nose. “It’s supposed to be here. Right here!”
Giles felt his smirk all the way to the base of his spine. “I guess Gary doesn’t know everything,” he said.
Rachel crossed the narrow, sandy path to the wall. “It’s impossible. All of my research says that this is the place.”
“Yes, well. Perhaps your research is flawed.” Giles found himself terribly delighted.
“It’s not,” she snipped. She clipped Gary to her belt and pressed her palms to the rough stone. “The Maoi guide said
that the petroglyphs were here.”
“Unless an ancient Maoi tribesman came along with a sandblaster, I would say they definitely are not,” Giles said. He
replaced his glasses and joined Rachel to have a closer inspection of the wall. It was a smooth sheet of white
limestone, unblemished and without the slightest trace of weathering. His sandblaster theory didn’t seem too far
from the mark.
Giles put one palm to the surface of the stone. It was unmistakably cool to the touch. He’d had plenty of experience
with this type of stone, having logged much of his time as Watcher in the cemeteries of Sunnydale.
“Do you feel that?” he asked.
Rachel nodded.
“This is not limestone,” he said. “It’s marble.”
“But what would…?” Rachel began.
Giles felt along the wall, his fingers searching for seams or cracks in the stone. After a few moments, he abandoned
his torch to search with both hands.
“Mr. Giles!” Rachel said. “What is it?”
“A marble wall does not belong in a South Pacific island cave formation. Look for an edge to this panel. We’re going
to find a way to pry it up. Don’t you see? Your research was right. The glyphs are here, under the stone,” he said.
Working in the opposite direction, Rachel did as Giles said. They scrabbled along, fingers twitching over the chilled
white rock, until Giles’ pinky finger hooked into a crease. It was a long, straight seam running all the way to the
cave floor.
“Here!” he shouted, excitedly.
Rachel appeared at his elbow, with a pry bar at the ready.
“Good heavens. Where did you get that?”
Rachel shrugged. “Stand back.”
She practically shoved him aside. She put the pry bar into the crease, but strain as she might, she could not force
any space between the slab and the original stone wall.
“Miss Greenspan,” Giles said. “If I might just…”
“I’ve almost got it,” she snapped.
“I’m sure that if we…” he tried again.
She struggled against the pry bar, making little whimpering pants with the effort, but still got nothing. The time for
manners had passed. Giles muscled in.
“It might work better if we both try,” he said. Together, the gripped the pry bar, and wrenched and wrestled and
pushed until…
Giles felt his ears pop. He gaped at Rachel, who stuck a finger in her ear and shook her head.
“It was pressurized,” he wondered aloud. “The chamber was sealed.”
Rachel’s eyes glinted. “Chamber? Let’s open her up!”
With the pair of them working in shifts, they managed to lever a half-meter opening between the marble panel and
the cave wall. As soon as it was wide enough, Rachel, not having the foresight or experience to investigate for
demon nests, insect swarms, snakes, traps, curses, or a trio of siren-like demonesses, leapt right into the
chamber… And presently screamed.
Giles, leading with his electric torch, swung in behind her, dropping directly into a deadfall of brittle, bleached
bones.
Rachel remained where she’d fallen, her white hands gripping Gary like a remote control that could turn off the
grisly scene lain out before them. Giles stepped from the pile of bones, crunching them underfoot as he crossed to
the far wall of the chamber, where four rotted corpses had been arranged across a rough-hewn dais. Each body had
been adorned in ornate ceremonial robes with jeweled and feathered crests on their heads. An elaborate silver
dagger had been plunged to the hilt into the right eye of each skull.
Giles circled the bodies, making notes in his mind, piecing together the story of their execution.
“Those are ceremonial daggers. Spanish, by the looks of them,” Rachel called to him. He felt her watching his
movements, reassessing him and their entire situation. After a moment, she said, “This is not what I thought I’d
find.”
“Yes, well… nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition,” Giles answered.
He ignored Rachel’s moan and knelt to touch the broken staves that lay in a heap above shamans’ skulls. “These
were the Satu leaders. Clearly, they’ve been dead for centuries. They were ritualistically murdered and sealed
inside.”
“But the marble wall,” Rachel said. “It’s not been here that long. The Maoi said there were petroglyphs, not slain
holy men.”
“Yes,” Giles whispered. He wandered the darkened room, letting his torch beam drift from the skeletons to the
other ruined artifacts strewn about the room. “Bits of… furniture,” he said, thinking aloud. “An altar perhaps? No
texts or scrolls; those would have been burned. Sacrificial animals. Pottery. All of it placed here for us to find. The
Maoi, Miss Greenspan, how well do you know them?”
Rachel cleared her throat. It was her turn now to be off-balance. “Well, I… don’t know them. Precisely. I haven’t
met them, but my research team did two weeks ago.”
Giles snorted.
“We conversed via email. I assure you, what my team found was legitimate,” she said. He could feel the
defensiveness in her voice. She was not accustomed to field work. Didn’t matter. She was about to get a beginner’s
course in Archeology 101.
As Giles turned to leave the tomb, the beam of his torch swept across the back wall for a half-second, long enough
for Rachel to see that something was there.
“Wait!” she shouted. “Go back.”
Giles glanced at her. “Go back? Where?”
She pointed. “I saw something. There, on the wall. Shine the light there.”
Giles lifted the torch, bathing the back wall in amber light. There had been petroglyphs. That much was true. But in
its place was something that made Rupert Giles’ skin feel like it wanted to crawl right off his limbs.
There, wrought in blood, was a Scrawling, the basest desecration known to man since the end of the Demon Age. It
was a pattern of twisted, interlocking ellipses curling in on itself like a Mobius strip, like two fanged serpents
devouring each other by the tails. Giles knew the mark. He knew with sickened certainty the person responsible for
such a symbol.
But even more curious than that was the hastily painted letters beneath the Scrawling that read, in the Queen’s
English:
Her life is not her own.
Giles backed away from the wall toward the marble panel and the entrance. His legs had gone numb and all of the
blood seemed to drain from his face. That part, Giles knew, had been left especially for him.
“I think we have all we need,” Giles said.
“Are you sure?” Rachel asked. “Shouldn’t we get pictures? I can have Gary upload…”
“I’m quite sure!” Giles barked. “Let’s get out of here. Now.”
Giles had suffered greater falls. He’d weathered worse traumas to the head. In Sunnydale alone, he’d sustained
almost weekly head wounds, but none of them – not one! – bruised his ego like this last, most humiliating tumble.
He lay there, staring up at the world through the screen of motes stirred by his rather spectacular misstep. Dimly,
he hoped that she would simply overlook him and leave him there in the pit, because death, surely, would be better
than to have her sneering at him over his obvious infirmity.
She had met him at the San Diego International Airport. She wore a sleek, dusky pantsuit that served to
androgynize her lithe, American figure. He knew her immediately upon sight, for her spare features and beige hair,
which she folded into an austere knot at the nape of her neck, perfectly matched her brisk East Coast monotone.
As she crossed from baggage claim, her slick travel bag slung over her shoulder, she extended a slim, icy hand to him
(ignoring all gentlemanly protocol, thank you very much!) and introduced herself:
“I’m Rachel Greenspan,” she said, “Of the Boston Greenspans.”
And he hated her. It was loath at first sight.
She was a Watcher, of course. Hand-selected by her great-uncle Piers Greenspan, whom Giles had known briefly and
regarded as one of the most frightening creatures he had ever beheld. That meant that the young Miss Greenspan
had been under his tutelage since quite probably the age of three.
Giles thought she had to be but a few years older than Buffy; five at the most. Even so, a life time of Watcher
training had given her the gloss of the hyper-educated. To put it plainly: she was a know-it-all of the highest order.
When she appeared on the ledge above him, hands on hips, her lips curved into a feline smile.
“I’m certain the guide said the markings are best viewed from the upper chamber, Mr. Giles,” she said.
“Quite sure,” Giles muttered.
“Do you need help?” she asked.
“No.” He did. Quite obviously. But not from her.
Rachel Greenspan of the Boston Greenspans purred with laughter. “Here,” she said, kneeling to again offer him a
hand.
Giles rolled onto his side, suppressing the chorus of groans that accompany advancing age. He secured a handhold in
the stone and managed, after some effort, to heft himself vertically to the upper chamber to join Miss Greenspan,
without her assistance.
She had easily skirted the pitfall that he had generously pointed out to her by dropping himself into it, and had
continued down the path without him. With a wince and grimace, Giles followed her into the deeper recesses of the
cave.
He knew they were off to a bad beginning on the single-engine Cessna they’d taken from Tahiti to Easter Island.
Rachel, dressed then in a plum-colored sleeveless vest and khakis, took the seat beside him and leaned in,
conspiratorially.
“So, you’re the head of the Watcher’s Council?” she’d said, her hazel eyes sparkling behind silver-rimmed
spectacles. She looked like a stick insect with those great, glittering lenses.
“Um. Yes. Yes, I suppose that I am,” he’d answered. It was not something he had really considered. The burden had
fallen rather squarely on his shoulders, and he had taken it on with full gravity that was his duty. He made a mental
note to delegate that role to someone else the moment he again set foot on British soil.
Rachel had leaned away from him, her bare shoulder to the window. “Hmmm,” she said. And then she sat, watching
him, as if she expected him to answer for something.
“D-do you have a question, Miss Greenspan?” he had pressed.
“Not a question, as such. An observation,” she said. She linked her hands and looped them over one knee, so that
she appeared casual, conversational.
“Oh?”
“In light of everything the Council has lost, do you think it wise to have you toddling half across the globe in search
of one missing Slayer? I mean, is that really the best use of your resources?” she asked.
Giles had been beside himself. “My resources…” he stammered. It was a cold, inhuman, corporate word - one he
would that he would never associate with Buffy. He felt the heat of his anger creeping under the starched band of
his collar. “I beg your pardon.”
Rachel interrupted him. “I understand your regard for the girl. Your devotion to her is well-documented. It’s the
timing, you see. I would think the global needs of the Watcher’s Council would outweigh…”
“Miss Greenspan,” Giles said, leveling his tone in a precise, practiced manner it had taken him decades to perfect.
“First, without this girl, you and I would not be present to have this conversation. Second, Buffy is not simply
missing. She was ripped from this dimension by a presence unknown to us, which indicates that we are dealing with
something far more formidable than one absent Slayer. And third, while I have noted and will remember this
insubordination, I can assure you that I have left the Watcher’s Council in quite capable hands.”
Rachel responded with an enigmatic smile. She said nothing. The silence lengthened, elongated, filled the compact
cabin until it was all Giles could feel. It was without doubt the longest plane trip of his life.
Nor did things improve once they landed. She had done the research into the petroglyphs within the Tombs of Satu,
in the caves of Rapa Nui. She had maps, annotated texts, illustrations, detailed rituals and first-hand testimonials
about the significance of the glyphs, and kept all of it within a hand-held device she affectionately referred to as
Gary.
When Giles finally caught up to Rachel after climbing from the pit, he found her waiting in a place where the path
forked. She held Gary aloft, tapping its LCD screen with a nimble stylus. The light from the screen cast a sheer glow
over her trim face, and for a moment her appearance bordered on human. Giles chided himself, inwardly. Perhaps he
had been too harsh in his appraisal of her. They’d set off at wrong feet. She was a young, ambitious girl, brought up
with an overbearing American business sense that made her a hardnose, but surely she wasn’t all that bad.
“Climbed out of your hole, did you?” Rachel asked without looking up.
Then again, perhaps she was.
“Are you asking that thing for directions?” Giles asked tartly.
“Gary is programmed to update our location via satellite every three minutes,” she replied.
Giles took off his glasses. “I say,” he mumbled. “Is that truly necessary?”
Rachel glanced at him. “It is, if we don’t wish to be lost. Here,” she gestured ahead using Gary as a pointer. “This is
the path we take.”
After a few moments of trekking with only Gary for illumination, Rachel paused long enough to pull an electric torch
from her pack. Surprisingly, she passed it to Giles. He was so unprepared for such a move, he nearly dropped it. In
the moment’s flicker of light, he caught a sneer of disdain.
She turned abruptly, leaving him to mull his rancor from five paces behind.
“Do you know of the legends of Satu?” she called back.
Giles made no effort to quicken his pace. “Quite a lot, actually,” he said. “The Satu were nomadic priests who
formed a shamanistic council pre-dating the Stone Age and were the closest thing in that era to organized religion.
They were the keepers of the Sacred Truth, the um, Kali, which as the legend holds, was originally invoked to call
forth the First Slayer. Of course, a century after the birth of Christ, the Satu were hunted down as heretics and,
much like the Templar Knights, they were tortured and ultimately destroyed. Those who escaped the scourge went
into hiding. Their ways passed into myth and legend, thought to be lost forever…”
Giles finally came up for air to find Rachel staring at him. “Wow. That was, um… long-winded. A simple yes would have
sufficed.”
Giles took off his glasses and gave them a coarse scrub.
“Their ways weren’t all lost, Mr. Giles,” Rachel told him. “Turn around.”
He turned, sweeping the beam of the flashlight across… a blank stone wall.
“That’s not right,” Rachel said, bringing Gary to her nose. “It’s supposed to be here. Right here!”
Giles felt his smirk all the way to the base of his spine. “I guess Gary doesn’t know everything,” he said.
Rachel crossed the narrow, sandy path to the wall. “It’s impossible. All of my research says that this is the place.”
“Yes, well. Perhaps your research is flawed.” Giles found himself terribly delighted.
“It’s not,” she snipped. She clipped Gary to her belt and pressed her palms to the rough stone. “The Maoi guide said
that the petroglyphs were here.”
“Unless an ancient Maoi tribesman came along with a sandblaster, I would say they definitely are not,” Giles said. He
replaced his glasses and joined Rachel to have a closer inspection of the wall. It was a smooth sheet of white
limestone, unblemished and without the slightest trace of weathering. His sandblaster theory didn’t seem too far
from the mark.
Giles put one palm to the surface of the stone. It was unmistakably cool to the touch. He’d had plenty of experience
with this type of stone, having logged much of his time as Watcher in the cemeteries of Sunnydale.
“Do you feel that?” he asked.
Rachel nodded.
“This is not limestone,” he said. “It’s marble.”
“But what would…?” Rachel began.
Giles felt along the wall, his fingers searching for seams or cracks in the stone. After a few moments, he abandoned
his torch to search with both hands.
“Mr. Giles!” Rachel said. “What is it?”
“A marble wall does not belong in a South Pacific island cave formation. Look for an edge to this panel. We’re going
to find a way to pry it up. Don’t you see? Your research was right. The glyphs are here, under the stone,” he said.
Working in the opposite direction, Rachel did as Giles said. They scrabbled along, fingers twitching over the chilled
white rock, until Giles’ pinky finger hooked into a crease. It was a long, straight seam running all the way to the
cave floor.
“Here!” he shouted, excitedly.
Rachel appeared at his elbow, with a pry bar at the ready.
“Good heavens. Where did you get that?”
Rachel shrugged. “Stand back.”
She practically shoved him aside. She put the pry bar into the crease, but strain as she might, she could not force
any space between the slab and the original stone wall.
“Miss Greenspan,” Giles said. “If I might just…”
“I’ve almost got it,” she snapped.
“I’m sure that if we…” he tried again.
She struggled against the pry bar, making little whimpering pants with the effort, but still got nothing. The time for
manners had passed. Giles muscled in.
“It might work better if we both try,” he said. Together, the gripped the pry bar, and wrenched and wrestled and
pushed until…
Giles felt his ears pop. He gaped at Rachel, who stuck a finger in her ear and shook her head.
“It was pressurized,” he wondered aloud. “The chamber was sealed.”
Rachel’s eyes glinted. “Chamber? Let’s open her up!”
With the pair of them working in shifts, they managed to lever a half-meter opening between the marble panel and
the cave wall. As soon as it was wide enough, Rachel, not having the foresight or experience to investigate for
demon nests, insect swarms, snakes, traps, curses, or a trio of siren-like demonesses, leapt right into the
chamber… And presently screamed.
Giles, leading with his electric torch, swung in behind her, dropping directly into a deadfall of brittle, bleached
bones.
Rachel remained where she’d fallen, her white hands gripping Gary like a remote control that could turn off the
grisly scene lain out before them. Giles stepped from the pile of bones, crunching them underfoot as he crossed to
the far wall of the chamber, where four rotted corpses had been arranged across a rough-hewn dais. Each body had
been adorned in ornate ceremonial robes with jeweled and feathered crests on their heads. An elaborate silver
dagger had been plunged to the hilt into the right eye of each skull.
Giles circled the bodies, making notes in his mind, piecing together the story of their execution.
“Those are ceremonial daggers. Spanish, by the looks of them,” Rachel called to him. He felt her watching his
movements, reassessing him and their entire situation. After a moment, she said, “This is not what I thought I’d
find.”
“Yes, well… nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition,” Giles answered.
He ignored Rachel’s moan and knelt to touch the broken staves that lay in a heap above shamans’ skulls. “These
were the Satu leaders. Clearly, they’ve been dead for centuries. They were ritualistically murdered and sealed
inside.”
“But the marble wall,” Rachel said. “It’s not been here that long. The Maoi said there were petroglyphs, not slain
holy men.”
“Yes,” Giles whispered. He wandered the darkened room, letting his torch beam drift from the skeletons to the
other ruined artifacts strewn about the room. “Bits of… furniture,” he said, thinking aloud. “An altar perhaps? No
texts or scrolls; those would have been burned. Sacrificial animals. Pottery. All of it placed here for us to find. The
Maoi, Miss Greenspan, how well do you know them?”
Rachel cleared her throat. It was her turn now to be off-balance. “Well, I… don’t know them. Precisely. I haven’t
met them, but my research team did two weeks ago.”
Giles snorted.
“We conversed via email. I assure you, what my team found was legitimate,” she said. He could feel the
defensiveness in her voice. She was not accustomed to field work. Didn’t matter. She was about to get a beginner’s
course in Archeology 101.
As Giles turned to leave the tomb, the beam of his torch swept across the back wall for a half-second, long enough
for Rachel to see that something was there.
“Wait!” she shouted. “Go back.”
Giles glanced at her. “Go back? Where?”
She pointed. “I saw something. There, on the wall. Shine the light there.”
Giles lifted the torch, bathing the back wall in amber light. There had been petroglyphs. That much was true. But in
its place was something that made Rupert Giles’ skin feel like it wanted to crawl right off his limbs.
There, wrought in blood, was a Scrawling, the basest desecration known to man since the end of the Demon Age. It
was a pattern of twisted, interlocking ellipses curling in on itself like a Mobius strip, like two fanged serpents
devouring each other by the tails. Giles knew the mark. He knew with sickened certainty the person responsible for
such a symbol.
But even more curious than that was the hastily painted letters beneath the Scrawling that read, in the Queen’s
English:
Her life is not her own.
Giles backed away from the wall toward the marble panel and the entrance. His legs had gone numb and all of the
blood seemed to drain from his face. That part, Giles knew, had been left especially for him.
“I think we have all we need,” Giles said.
“Are you sure?” Rachel asked. “Shouldn’t we get pictures? I can have Gary upload…”
“I’m quite sure!” Giles barked. “Let’s get out of here. Now.”
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.Chapter Index.
Anywhere Out
of This World
Blood, Pressure
The Drawing Board
All's Well
Anywhere Out of
This World
Mourning Sickness
Welcome to Hell
Relative
Matters of Time
& Fishes
International Calls
Empty as Houses
Lusty Wrong Feelings
Enthralled
Thanksgiving
Seduced
Innocents Lost
Burn
Flashback
Not A Chance In Hell
Empty Rooms
Two Roads Diverged
Starfall
Blindsided
Not Her Own
Outta Here
The Valley of the
Shadow of Death
Comes the Rain
Smoke and Mirrors
Drawn to You
Team Angel
By Fire Reborn
Salvage
Ashes to Ashes
Life Is...
With A Little Help
Appearances Deceiving
Familiarity
Sweetness
Not All Who Wander
That Old Black Magic
For Lorne
Drawn Together
Lost to Sand
Fall of Triumvirate
Parallel Lives
The Lovers
Avenger
Double Cross
Pursuit
Ripper's Girl
Pandemonium
Negative Space
Raveled Threads
Asunder
Human Hands
Singular
Fragmented
Symmetry
Plans
Rogue Squadron
Legends
Anywhere Out
of This World
Blood, Pressure
The Drawing Board
All's Well
Anywhere Out of
This World
Mourning Sickness
Welcome to Hell
Relative
Matters of Time
& Fishes
International Calls
Empty as Houses
Lusty Wrong Feelings
Enthralled
Thanksgiving
Seduced
Innocents Lost
Burn
Flashback
Not A Chance In Hell
Empty Rooms
Two Roads Diverged
Starfall
Blindsided
Not Her Own
Outta Here
The Valley of the
Shadow of Death
Comes the Rain
Smoke and Mirrors
Drawn to You
Team Angel
By Fire Reborn
Salvage
Ashes to Ashes
Life Is...
With A Little Help
Appearances Deceiving
Familiarity
Sweetness
Not All Who Wander
That Old Black Magic
For Lorne
Drawn Together
Lost to Sand
Fall of Triumvirate
Parallel Lives
The Lovers
Avenger
Double Cross
Pursuit
Ripper's Girl
Pandemonium
Negative Space
Raveled Threads
Asunder
Human Hands
Singular
Fragmented
Symmetry
Plans
Rogue Squadron
Legends
 |
.Chapter Index.
Anywhere Out
of This World
Blood, Pressure
The Drawing Board
All's Well
Anywhere Out of
This World
Mourning Sickness
Welcome to Hell
Relative
Matters of Time
& Fishes
International Calls
Empty as Houses
Lusty Wrong Feelings
Enthralled
Thanksgiving
Seduced
Innocents Lost
Burn
Flashback
Not A Chance In Hell
Empty Rooms
Two Roads Diverged
Starfall
Blindsided
Not Her Own
Outta Here
The Valley of the
Shadow of Death
Comes the Rain
Smoke and Mirrors
Drawn to You
Team Angel
By Fire Reborn
Salvage
Ashes to Ashes
Life Is...
With A Little Help
Appearances Deceiving
Familiarity
Sweetness
Not All Who Wander
That Old Black Magic
For Lorne
Drawn Together
Lost to Sand
Fall of Triumvirate
Parallel Lives
The Lovers
Avenger
Double Cross
Pursuit
Ripper's Girl
Pandemonium
Negative Space
Raveled Threads
Asunder
Human Hands
Singular
Fragmented
Symmetry
Plans
Rogue Squadron
Legends
Mea Culpa
Things Unsaid
Home Sweet Gone
Eleventh Hour
Last Call
Anywhere Out
of This World
Blood, Pressure
The Drawing Board
All's Well
Anywhere Out of
This World
Mourning Sickness
Welcome to Hell
Relative
Matters of Time
& Fishes
International Calls
Empty as Houses
Lusty Wrong Feelings
Enthralled
Thanksgiving
Seduced
Innocents Lost
Burn
Flashback
Not A Chance In Hell
Empty Rooms
Two Roads Diverged
Starfall
Blindsided
Not Her Own
Outta Here
The Valley of the
Shadow of Death
Comes the Rain
Smoke and Mirrors
Drawn to You
Team Angel
By Fire Reborn
Salvage
Ashes to Ashes
Life Is...
With A Little Help
Appearances Deceiving
Familiarity
Sweetness
Not All Who Wander
That Old Black Magic
For Lorne
Drawn Together
Lost to Sand
Fall of Triumvirate
Parallel Lives
The Lovers
Avenger
Double Cross
Pursuit
Ripper's Girl
Pandemonium
Negative Space
Raveled Threads
Asunder
Human Hands
Singular
Fragmented
Symmetry
Plans
Rogue Squadron
Legends
Mea Culpa
Things Unsaid
Home Sweet Gone
Eleventh Hour
Last Call