Appearances Deceiving
Los Angeles sunlight sifted through the greasy windows of the Hyperion Hotel, stretching gritty gold parallelograms across
the floor of the lobby. It was morning, just a smidge over 24 hours since Buffy and Dawn had entered and made chaos of
Team Angel’s already messed lives.
The whole huge lot of them assembled in the War Room around an impressive board room table – secondhand, by the looks of
the scuffed mahogany surface – but still, quite dramatic. Angel sat at the table’s head, of course, with Cordy and Wes
flanking him. Xander and Anya sat together, opposite Tara and Willow, while Buffy and Dawn occupied the seats way at the
further end. An electric tension surged through the room, stringing them together like high voltage wire. Connor alone
enjoyed the privilege of mobility; he toddled beneath the table, crawling into random empty chairs and laps as the mood
struck him.
Once, when he strayed close to Buffy’s feet, she muttered, “Let’s see you hit on my sister now.”
He gazed up at her, his eyes luminous and deeply knowing. Buffy, in spite of herself, reached down to ruffle his honey-blond
curls. The response she felt to that touch was one of pure joy, and she pressed a hand to the swell of her belly under the
concealment of the board room table. It was hers and Connor’s secret.
Fred entered in a flurry of nerves, dressed in a dowdy hounds-tooth suit. She had prepared information packets for
everyone and passed them around, apologizing for the haste and sloppiness of the margins. Buffy took one look at the inside
page, saw words like differential equation, Lagrangian formalism and postulatory unification and promised herself that she
would never do it again.
Dawn, however, opened to the middle of her binder and became immersed in a diagram that looked like a Victrola funnel with
wavy lines springing out of it.
Fred stepped behind the podium, pushed her glasses up her nose and tapped her stack of pages into order.
“Ahem,” she said. She stared across the room like a stage-frightened actress in a high school play. “I’d like to thank you all
for coming. I have been working for many months on a dimensional gaps theory, and literally years before with the Quantum
Physics Department at the University of…”
“Fred, dispense with the lecture format,” Angel said in a too-harsh tone which drew offended glares from Cordy, Anya,
Willow and Tara. He glowered. “We’re not the Watcher’s Council, okay. Just, cut to the String Theories for Dummies
portion of the presentation.”
Fred looked to Wesley for support; he nodded encouragingly.
“Well, all right,” she said. She stepped away from the podium. “The equation behind me represents something called a
dimensional gap. The official definition is on page three of your packet. In layman’s terms, it’s a point at which the barriers
between dimensions have broken down. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.”
Fred walked to a section of white board and erased a broad swath. When she heard Wes’s sharp gasp, she turned and
explained, “Honey, I’ve got it all up here,” she said, tapping her forehead. “The white board is for your benefit.”
She drew several lines that looked like waves in a child’s drawing of the sea. Dawn pointed eagerly at the diagram in her
binder.
“So,” Fred said. “These are strings. Well, obviously, they’re strings.”
“Fred,” Angel cautioned.
She cringed. “Sorry. I’m nervous,” she said, sending a thin smile Buffy’s way before continuing. “Um, strings are like
dimensions. We’re one dimension, but there are thousands of other dimensions. Millions. Infinite, really. There’s the
dimension of only prawns, another with no prawns at all.”
“The Land of Trolls,” Xander pitched in.
“Or the land without shrimp,” said Willow.
“Exactly,” Fred said, drawing more squiggly lines between her strings. “The strings resonate. And sometimes, they vibrate
into each other, creating a nexus point at which…” she drew an X between two of the strings “…with the proper exertion
of energy, a kind of portal can form.”
“How much energy?” Anya asked. “Are we talking a megaton of C4, or the radiation of a thousand suns?”
“More the latter,” Fred said, brushing wisps of hair from her face. “Theorists have guessed that it would take the
equivalent of five-hundred-thousand nuclear bombs to create even the smallest dimensional portal, and that’s only if the
conditions line up exactly. The odds against it are-are astronomical!”
“So, why’s it happening?” Xander asked. “Someone knitting an inter-dimensional afghan?”
Everyone gave him an obligatory scowl as Fred moved to explain. Except for Buffy, who felt a tinge of nostalgia.
“Um, well, what Angel and Wes believe, based on information from TriadCorp, is that The Coven is using The Hellmouth to
channel a force great enough to collapse the strings in on each other,” she said. “To create a quantum singularity.”
Tara scribbled on her pad, and passed it to Willow.
“Collapse them?” Willow read. “Why would they want to do that?”
Fred smiled as if Tara had just asked the big money question. “Fewer dimensions means that they have greater control over
the Universe,” she said.
Angel leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “Wes thinks that adepts of Chaos are compressing the dimensions into one, so
that they can effectively control everything.”
“But that would be bad,” Willow said. “Really bad. Really, really bad for other dimensions, right? Like, for instance, Buffy’s
dimension…”
“And the Land of Trolls,” Anya added.
Buffy felt a flutter in her stomach. “That’s what Margot and Ariadne said. They said the fates of countless worlds rested on
taking out The Coven.”
“Ariadne? Margot?” Cordelia asked.
“A pair of Witches in Sunnydale,” Willow said. “You missed that part on count of Angel breaking stuff. They brought Buffy
here.”
Cordy frowned at Angel. He said, “We’re getting off topic.”
“We have been working on an angle for taking out The Coven,” Wesley said. “But it’s still too risky. We’ll need far more
firepower…”
“Plus, so much more with the spell ability,” Willow said.
Then everyone did that talking-at-once thing that Team Angel seemed so good at doing. Dawn had taken a pen from the
center of the table and was drawing intricate lattices on the back of her handout. Connor appeared once more at Buffy’s
side, reaching up to her with his plump little hands.
He was so unbelievably beautiful, and sweet, and he smelled like apple sauce. Buffy couldn’t help herself; she pulled him into
her lap. Then she got all transfixed by the lined pattern on his denim overalls, and the way the sunlight and shadow played
along the folds of his clothes, in his hair, on his darling puffy baby cheeks, in the irises of his stunning baby blues.
Something about what they were saying didn’t click. While Buffy stared at the adorable child in her lap, her brain was busy
figuring it out.
“That’s what Spike was supposed to be doing,” Angel said gruffly. “Now we have no idea, because Dawn is here and all
contact with Jonathan and that other guy…”
Dawn leaned to Buffy. “I’d like to see Spike now,” she said.
“Why Chaos?” Buffy blurted.
Angel cleared his throat, and everyone stopped talking. “What?” he asked.
Buffy pressed her lips together, and then spoke. “It seems that Chaos would want less control. I mean, Ethan Rayne, when
he wrought destruction upon Sunnydale wasn’t going around saying ‘Bring all things under my power.’ He loved the chaos for
the lack of control. And then, with the band candy: more of same.”
Angel looked annoyed. It was a brow thing. He said, “What is your point?”
Buffy sighed. “Merely suggesting that Chaos isn’t the right angle. They would want more dimensions, not less.”
Fred positively beamed. She looked from Buffy to Angel and back to Buffy. “That’s what I’ve been saying all along. Angel, she
is not a ditz!” Fred returned to her white board. “And, hey! What a perfect segue to my dimensional gaps theory.”
While Fred scribbled a new illustration, she missed everyone’s reactions. Buffy would have laughed, but from where she sat,
it was devoid of funny.
Fred replaced her strings with the Victrola vortex diagram. “This,” she explained, “is a dimensional gap, like I mentioned
earlier. Somehow The Coven has enough primal power to create these gaps, and when the vortices form, they create more
gaps. The ripple effect is very controlled, very ordered. Like it’s for a specific purpose.”
“Collapsing to a something singularity,” Cordelia said. “You said that already.” She gestured down the table at Buffy and
Connor. “You want me to take him?”
Buffy waved her off. “Doesn’t sound very Chaos-like,” Buffy said.
“It’s not,” Fred agreed.
“Now wait a minute,” Angel said. “The information from TriadCorp…”
“They never said Chaos,” Fred said. “That was…”
“My idea,” Wes interrupted, his syllables neatly snipped with indignation. “But it is based on solid fact. Ethan Rayne has had
dealings with The Coven in the recent past, and who but a group Chaos adepts could muster that kind of power?”
“Adepts of Order?” Willow asked.
“Is there such a thing?” Cordy asked.
“It would stand to reason,” Anya said, levelly. “The one wouldn’t exist without the other.”
Tara was scribbling. Willow read it. “Who?” she asked, nodding at Tara. “Who would do this? These gaps, they’re destroying
millions of dimensions…”
“Billions,” Fred corrected. “Infinite.”
In the silence that followed, Dawn spoke, her voice faltering and small. “Why would they want to destroy so much?” She
turned her deploring eyes to Buffy’s. “Why, Buffy?”
Buffy covered her sister’s hands with her own. “I don’t know, Dawnie. But we’re going to find out. It’s why I have to go
back.”
“Uh, like Hell,” Angel said.
“I made a promise,” Buffy said.
“Unmake it,” Angel said.
Buffy huffed. “Won’t. Can’t. Besides, you just said that you haven’t heard from Jonathan or Andrew, and that Spike could
be in danger, for which I’m partly responsible.” She stroked Connor’s cheek with the backs of her fingers. “I really can’t
believe I’m saying this, but… I have to go back to Sunnydale.”
“You can’t go back to Sunnydale…” Angel shouted.
“I am the Slayer,” Buffy said. She gathered Connor in her arms, stood up, and placed him back in the chair. He grappled her
binder and began gnawing on the plastic spine as if Fred had soaked the thing in sugar water.
Buffy backed away from the table. Just watching them, she knew they would all side with Angel. He said she couldn’t go back
to Sunnydale; they’d do the Apocalypse lock-step to keep her here. For her own good, naturally. It was Angel’s show and
Buffy was the guest star, locked in her own protective plastic bubble.
“It was a mistake to come here, to think you could help,” Buffy said. She left the table, but about four paces into what she
hoped was a forceful storming off, she felt the room go all swimmy around her. She stumbled a few steps before regaining her
balance. Her first thought: tremor. Second, much more distant thought: an actual pregnancy-induced swoon.
When she turned to find everyone watching her pull a mime-against-the-wind act, she guessed it had to be the second
thought.
Buffy rushed to explain. “I, um…”
Her eyes rolled back. She saw everyone rush forward in an attempt to catch her. She landed in the arms of a large, rather
snazzy green demon who’d just entered the War Room behind her.
Buffy turned her grateful eyes up to him. “Lorne!”
“Small… blonde girl!” he answered, as she slipped through his grasp and crumpled to the floor.
Mr. Giles, on his knees, paid Rachel no mind though he knew she was there. Ethan lay with his face to the stone floor, his
arms folded beneath his body, and Rachel thought, irrationally, that it must have been awful to have fallen in such an
awkward position. Meanwhile, Mr. Giles searched through Ethan’s pants pockets, turning up scraps of paper, several kinds
of coins – pesos, quarters, pence – a creased Polaroid, a paper clip and a pewter pin in the shape of a snake.
Only seconds had passed since the gunshot. Rachel thought she could still hear it ringing in the small room of the abandoned
chapel. Mr. Giles still held the gun tightly in one hand while he turned out the dead man’s pockets.
“We’ll have to press on,” Mr. Giles said. He collected the things he’d spilled from Ethan’s pockets. “We must put as much
distance between us and Rosal del Virrey as possible. This place is on hallowed ground, but the chances of finding another
holy place are…”
Mr. Giles looked around. He found Rachel’s pack, and began to sweep all of the items he’d dumped out of back in, along with
Ethan’s belongings.
This propelled Rachel into action. She snatched the pack from Mr. Giles’ hands.
“Don’t,” she snapped, her voice ragged. “Don’t put his things in with mine.”
Mr. Giles sat back on his haunches. He gave the gun in his hand a cursory look before shoving it into his pocket.
“We may need it,” Mr. Giles said. “For protection.”
Rachel stooped to collect the rest of her things. Once she had it all, she returned to the door to wait. She realized that the
sharp odor in the room was not just gunpowder, but also blood. Before she could be sick, she forced herself outside, into the
humid, over-bright coastal morning.
A handful of heartbeats later, Mr. Giles exited, striking out along the shell sidewalk at a steady pace, no doubt expecting her
to blindly follow. When she didn’t, he paused at the corner.
Without looking back, he said, “Once we reach the next town, we’ll put the call into London, tell Andrew about the
Parchments and secure a plane home.”
Rachel stared blankly at him.
“Really, Miss Greenspan,” he said. “We should be going.”
“Are we going to leave him there?” she asked.
Mr. Giles took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“It had to be done,” he told her.
Rachel blinked like a sleepwalker waking. “I know that,” she said.
Mr. Giles waited a small moment longer, but turned without a further word, bound again for the jungle, knowing that Rachel
would follow.
Buffy opened her eyes thinking that if this whole fainting thing was going to be a regular occurrence, it would be really
inconvenient. From where she lay on the ground, she caught a widescreen view of the Hyperion’s lobby, where Tara and
Dawn were trying to distract Connor with a striped purple bouncy ball.
The rest crowded around Buffy. Fred fanned her face with one of the presentation binders. Cordelia and Angel knelt
alongside Fred, with Anya, Xander and Willow perched somewhat comically behind them. Only Wesley hung back, but his
expression was one of concern rather than unease.
Reluctantly, very reluctantly, Buffy raised her head. She was leaning on what turned out to be Lorne, who was much cushier
than she would have guessed, and decided to remain recumbent, at least until such time as everyone backed off.
“Oh my God,” Cordelia whispered. “You’re pregnant. She’s pregnant.”
Buffy stammered.
Xander said, “Oh, don’t be ridiculous.”
“She is,” Cordy said. “We’ve dealt with two mystical pregnancies here. All your weight shifts, your balance is off. And that
would explain those tacky, loose-fitting sweats…”
Angel said, “Cordy, ix-nay on the egnancy-pray.” He tossed a nod in Dawn’s direction.
“Right,” Cordelia whispered. “So, which is it, Buffy? Regular or mystical?”
Buffy leveled her eyes on Angel’s first, hoping to convey to him her level of distress at having this conversation in front of so
many people. He either didn’t get it, or didn’t care. Possibly both. He simply stared right back.
“Yes,” Buffy said, finally. “I am pregnant. And it’s regular. I think. It’s also why I have to get home. I made a promise to
Ariadne and Margot that if they helped Dawn get out of Sunnydale, I would return to help them roust The Coven.”
“Yeah,” Xander said. “I’d say this puts a wrap on your rousting days, Buff.”
“No,” Buffy said. “Not yet. This whole me passing out part was not supposed to happen.”
“But it did,” Wesley said. “Angel…”
“I know, Wes,” Angel said through steel-trap teeth.
No one said anything for a while. The only sound was Connor’s jubilant belly laughs as the rubber ball bounced from him to
Tara to Dawn.
“All right,” Angel said at last. “Buffy goes back to Sunnydale.”
“What?” It was Cordelia who shouted it, but everyone else clearly reflected the same sentiment.
Angel sighed. “She goes back,” he said firmly. “But she doesn’t go alone.”
Rachel Greenspan’s world narrowed to one of primal action – running. For hours uncounted, she saw only the green vines
before her just as they were chopped away by the rusted blade Mr. Giles had found before leaving Rosal del Virrey. She felt
little else beyond the pressure of his hand clamped over her forearm. She scarcely felt the uneven ground beneath their feet
as they fled, nor the insects that buzzed and bit her, nor the serrated reeds that whipped at her limbs and clawed her face.
As evening fell, Mr. Giles led them to a lush valley netted with mist and mosquitoes. He had spoken at times, earlier, but
Rachel had not heard him. She found she could not see him; as though his face had been replaced by a bright light unbearable
to look upon. Likewise, his words became a white noise, a static of nonexistence.
When they finally came to rest in a cluster of whitewashed buildings, Mr. Giles released her and she cloistered herself into a
tiny, ruined cubicle…
And sobbed.
The room was like an upright coffin with only enough space to stand. She gripped the walls with her filthy hands and wept -
great rasping sobs that rent her heart.
She closed her eyes and saw him: Ethan Rayne laying face down on the stone, his nose smashed like a tomato, his arms
pinned beneath his body. He had died before he could catch himself. He’d died gracelessly, like a drunk who died forgotten in
the snow. No one deserved to die that way.
Rachel’s tears abruptly ceased. As she wiped her eyes, she understood. She wasn’t crying for Ethan Rayne, though the
sympathy she felt was not misplaced.
She had been glad. She opened the chapel door and saw Ethan on the floor, and felt relief. Relief that it had not been… him:
Mr. Giles.
Rachel buried her face in her grimy sleeves and cried anew. The knowledge that she loved him didn’t make matters better,
only infinitely more complex.
She would have to tell him, of course. He would have to know everything. Rachel knew that. She just didn’t have a clue
where she might begin.
Giles understood the girl’s need for solitude. Seeing Ethan’s body had been traumatic for her. It had to be done, Giles knew.
Ethan, for all that he was not, had possessed an astonishing temerity. Ethan would have dogged their heels all the way to
London, had Giles not put a definite end to it.
He glanced at the collection of derelict buildings, which might have been a medical station. Night was thickening around
them. They had not made the progress for which he had hoped, but the girl was beyond breaking point. He would fend for
them as best he could. Perhaps, should they survive the night, with providence, they could reach Natal before the sun could
set again.
Giles found the bonnet and axle of a wrecked jeep. He hacked away the brush, swiped an enormous skittering centipede
away, and poured their supplies onto the metal surface. They were short on bottled water, shorter on food. They would be
pushing their rations if…
Giles’ eyes fell on the crinkled photograph he had found in Ethan’s pocket. He’d not looked at it before; there hadn’t been
time. But now, in the fading light, he stared in breathless disbelief.
The gritty image in the Polaroid – a young woman looking for all the world like Ingrid Bergman in the closing scenes of
Casablanca – was none other than Rachel Greenspan.
Los Angeles sunlight sifted through the greasy windows of the Hyperion Hotel, stretching gritty gold parallelograms across
the floor of the lobby. It was morning, just a smidge over 24 hours since Buffy and Dawn had entered and made chaos of
Team Angel’s already messed lives.
The whole huge lot of them assembled in the War Room around an impressive board room table – secondhand, by the looks of
the scuffed mahogany surface – but still, quite dramatic. Angel sat at the table’s head, of course, with Cordy and Wes
flanking him. Xander and Anya sat together, opposite Tara and Willow, while Buffy and Dawn occupied the seats way at the
further end. An electric tension surged through the room, stringing them together like high voltage wire. Connor alone
enjoyed the privilege of mobility; he toddled beneath the table, crawling into random empty chairs and laps as the mood
struck him.
Once, when he strayed close to Buffy’s feet, she muttered, “Let’s see you hit on my sister now.”
He gazed up at her, his eyes luminous and deeply knowing. Buffy, in spite of herself, reached down to ruffle his honey-blond
curls. The response she felt to that touch was one of pure joy, and she pressed a hand to the swell of her belly under the
concealment of the board room table. It was hers and Connor’s secret.
Fred entered in a flurry of nerves, dressed in a dowdy hounds-tooth suit. She had prepared information packets for
everyone and passed them around, apologizing for the haste and sloppiness of the margins. Buffy took one look at the inside
page, saw words like differential equation, Lagrangian formalism and postulatory unification and promised herself that she
would never do it again.
Dawn, however, opened to the middle of her binder and became immersed in a diagram that looked like a Victrola funnel with
wavy lines springing out of it.
Fred stepped behind the podium, pushed her glasses up her nose and tapped her stack of pages into order.
“Ahem,” she said. She stared across the room like a stage-frightened actress in a high school play. “I’d like to thank you all
for coming. I have been working for many months on a dimensional gaps theory, and literally years before with the Quantum
Physics Department at the University of…”
“Fred, dispense with the lecture format,” Angel said in a too-harsh tone which drew offended glares from Cordy, Anya,
Willow and Tara. He glowered. “We’re not the Watcher’s Council, okay. Just, cut to the String Theories for Dummies
portion of the presentation.”
Fred looked to Wesley for support; he nodded encouragingly.
“Well, all right,” she said. She stepped away from the podium. “The equation behind me represents something called a
dimensional gap. The official definition is on page three of your packet. In layman’s terms, it’s a point at which the barriers
between dimensions have broken down. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.”
Fred walked to a section of white board and erased a broad swath. When she heard Wes’s sharp gasp, she turned and
explained, “Honey, I’ve got it all up here,” she said, tapping her forehead. “The white board is for your benefit.”
She drew several lines that looked like waves in a child’s drawing of the sea. Dawn pointed eagerly at the diagram in her
binder.
“So,” Fred said. “These are strings. Well, obviously, they’re strings.”
“Fred,” Angel cautioned.
She cringed. “Sorry. I’m nervous,” she said, sending a thin smile Buffy’s way before continuing. “Um, strings are like
dimensions. We’re one dimension, but there are thousands of other dimensions. Millions. Infinite, really. There’s the
dimension of only prawns, another with no prawns at all.”
“The Land of Trolls,” Xander pitched in.
“Or the land without shrimp,” said Willow.
“Exactly,” Fred said, drawing more squiggly lines between her strings. “The strings resonate. And sometimes, they vibrate
into each other, creating a nexus point at which…” she drew an X between two of the strings “…with the proper exertion
of energy, a kind of portal can form.”
“How much energy?” Anya asked. “Are we talking a megaton of C4, or the radiation of a thousand suns?”
“More the latter,” Fred said, brushing wisps of hair from her face. “Theorists have guessed that it would take the
equivalent of five-hundred-thousand nuclear bombs to create even the smallest dimensional portal, and that’s only if the
conditions line up exactly. The odds against it are-are astronomical!”
“So, why’s it happening?” Xander asked. “Someone knitting an inter-dimensional afghan?”
Everyone gave him an obligatory scowl as Fred moved to explain. Except for Buffy, who felt a tinge of nostalgia.
“Um, well, what Angel and Wes believe, based on information from TriadCorp, is that The Coven is using The Hellmouth to
channel a force great enough to collapse the strings in on each other,” she said. “To create a quantum singularity.”
Tara scribbled on her pad, and passed it to Willow.
“Collapse them?” Willow read. “Why would they want to do that?”
Fred smiled as if Tara had just asked the big money question. “Fewer dimensions means that they have greater control over
the Universe,” she said.
Angel leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “Wes thinks that adepts of Chaos are compressing the dimensions into one, so
that they can effectively control everything.”
“But that would be bad,” Willow said. “Really bad. Really, really bad for other dimensions, right? Like, for instance, Buffy’s
dimension…”
“And the Land of Trolls,” Anya added.
Buffy felt a flutter in her stomach. “That’s what Margot and Ariadne said. They said the fates of countless worlds rested on
taking out The Coven.”
“Ariadne? Margot?” Cordelia asked.
“A pair of Witches in Sunnydale,” Willow said. “You missed that part on count of Angel breaking stuff. They brought Buffy
here.”
Cordy frowned at Angel. He said, “We’re getting off topic.”
“We have been working on an angle for taking out The Coven,” Wesley said. “But it’s still too risky. We’ll need far more
firepower…”
“Plus, so much more with the spell ability,” Willow said.
Then everyone did that talking-at-once thing that Team Angel seemed so good at doing. Dawn had taken a pen from the
center of the table and was drawing intricate lattices on the back of her handout. Connor appeared once more at Buffy’s
side, reaching up to her with his plump little hands.
He was so unbelievably beautiful, and sweet, and he smelled like apple sauce. Buffy couldn’t help herself; she pulled him into
her lap. Then she got all transfixed by the lined pattern on his denim overalls, and the way the sunlight and shadow played
along the folds of his clothes, in his hair, on his darling puffy baby cheeks, in the irises of his stunning baby blues.
Something about what they were saying didn’t click. While Buffy stared at the adorable child in her lap, her brain was busy
figuring it out.
“That’s what Spike was supposed to be doing,” Angel said gruffly. “Now we have no idea, because Dawn is here and all
contact with Jonathan and that other guy…”
Dawn leaned to Buffy. “I’d like to see Spike now,” she said.
“Why Chaos?” Buffy blurted.
Angel cleared his throat, and everyone stopped talking. “What?” he asked.
Buffy pressed her lips together, and then spoke. “It seems that Chaos would want less control. I mean, Ethan Rayne, when
he wrought destruction upon Sunnydale wasn’t going around saying ‘Bring all things under my power.’ He loved the chaos for
the lack of control. And then, with the band candy: more of same.”
Angel looked annoyed. It was a brow thing. He said, “What is your point?”
Buffy sighed. “Merely suggesting that Chaos isn’t the right angle. They would want more dimensions, not less.”
Fred positively beamed. She looked from Buffy to Angel and back to Buffy. “That’s what I’ve been saying all along. Angel, she
is not a ditz!” Fred returned to her white board. “And, hey! What a perfect segue to my dimensional gaps theory.”
While Fred scribbled a new illustration, she missed everyone’s reactions. Buffy would have laughed, but from where she sat,
it was devoid of funny.
Fred replaced her strings with the Victrola vortex diagram. “This,” she explained, “is a dimensional gap, like I mentioned
earlier. Somehow The Coven has enough primal power to create these gaps, and when the vortices form, they create more
gaps. The ripple effect is very controlled, very ordered. Like it’s for a specific purpose.”
“Collapsing to a something singularity,” Cordelia said. “You said that already.” She gestured down the table at Buffy and
Connor. “You want me to take him?”
Buffy waved her off. “Doesn’t sound very Chaos-like,” Buffy said.
“It’s not,” Fred agreed.
“Now wait a minute,” Angel said. “The information from TriadCorp…”
“They never said Chaos,” Fred said. “That was…”
“My idea,” Wes interrupted, his syllables neatly snipped with indignation. “But it is based on solid fact. Ethan Rayne has had
dealings with The Coven in the recent past, and who but a group Chaos adepts could muster that kind of power?”
“Adepts of Order?” Willow asked.
“Is there such a thing?” Cordy asked.
“It would stand to reason,” Anya said, levelly. “The one wouldn’t exist without the other.”
Tara was scribbling. Willow read it. “Who?” she asked, nodding at Tara. “Who would do this? These gaps, they’re destroying
millions of dimensions…”
“Billions,” Fred corrected. “Infinite.”
In the silence that followed, Dawn spoke, her voice faltering and small. “Why would they want to destroy so much?” She
turned her deploring eyes to Buffy’s. “Why, Buffy?”
Buffy covered her sister’s hands with her own. “I don’t know, Dawnie. But we’re going to find out. It’s why I have to go
back.”
“Uh, like Hell,” Angel said.
“I made a promise,” Buffy said.
“Unmake it,” Angel said.
Buffy huffed. “Won’t. Can’t. Besides, you just said that you haven’t heard from Jonathan or Andrew, and that Spike could
be in danger, for which I’m partly responsible.” She stroked Connor’s cheek with the backs of her fingers. “I really can’t
believe I’m saying this, but… I have to go back to Sunnydale.”
“You can’t go back to Sunnydale…” Angel shouted.
“I am the Slayer,” Buffy said. She gathered Connor in her arms, stood up, and placed him back in the chair. He grappled her
binder and began gnawing on the plastic spine as if Fred had soaked the thing in sugar water.
Buffy backed away from the table. Just watching them, she knew they would all side with Angel. He said she couldn’t go back
to Sunnydale; they’d do the Apocalypse lock-step to keep her here. For her own good, naturally. It was Angel’s show and
Buffy was the guest star, locked in her own protective plastic bubble.
“It was a mistake to come here, to think you could help,” Buffy said. She left the table, but about four paces into what she
hoped was a forceful storming off, she felt the room go all swimmy around her. She stumbled a few steps before regaining her
balance. Her first thought: tremor. Second, much more distant thought: an actual pregnancy-induced swoon.
When she turned to find everyone watching her pull a mime-against-the-wind act, she guessed it had to be the second
thought.
Buffy rushed to explain. “I, um…”
Her eyes rolled back. She saw everyone rush forward in an attempt to catch her. She landed in the arms of a large, rather
snazzy green demon who’d just entered the War Room behind her.
Buffy turned her grateful eyes up to him. “Lorne!”
“Small… blonde girl!” he answered, as she slipped through his grasp and crumpled to the floor.
Mr. Giles, on his knees, paid Rachel no mind though he knew she was there. Ethan lay with his face to the stone floor, his
arms folded beneath his body, and Rachel thought, irrationally, that it must have been awful to have fallen in such an
awkward position. Meanwhile, Mr. Giles searched through Ethan’s pants pockets, turning up scraps of paper, several kinds
of coins – pesos, quarters, pence – a creased Polaroid, a paper clip and a pewter pin in the shape of a snake.
Only seconds had passed since the gunshot. Rachel thought she could still hear it ringing in the small room of the abandoned
chapel. Mr. Giles still held the gun tightly in one hand while he turned out the dead man’s pockets.
“We’ll have to press on,” Mr. Giles said. He collected the things he’d spilled from Ethan’s pockets. “We must put as much
distance between us and Rosal del Virrey as possible. This place is on hallowed ground, but the chances of finding another
holy place are…”
Mr. Giles looked around. He found Rachel’s pack, and began to sweep all of the items he’d dumped out of back in, along with
Ethan’s belongings.
This propelled Rachel into action. She snatched the pack from Mr. Giles’ hands.
“Don’t,” she snapped, her voice ragged. “Don’t put his things in with mine.”
Mr. Giles sat back on his haunches. He gave the gun in his hand a cursory look before shoving it into his pocket.
“We may need it,” Mr. Giles said. “For protection.”
Rachel stooped to collect the rest of her things. Once she had it all, she returned to the door to wait. She realized that the
sharp odor in the room was not just gunpowder, but also blood. Before she could be sick, she forced herself outside, into the
humid, over-bright coastal morning.
A handful of heartbeats later, Mr. Giles exited, striking out along the shell sidewalk at a steady pace, no doubt expecting her
to blindly follow. When she didn’t, he paused at the corner.
Without looking back, he said, “Once we reach the next town, we’ll put the call into London, tell Andrew about the
Parchments and secure a plane home.”
Rachel stared blankly at him.
“Really, Miss Greenspan,” he said. “We should be going.”
“Are we going to leave him there?” she asked.
Mr. Giles took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“It had to be done,” he told her.
Rachel blinked like a sleepwalker waking. “I know that,” she said.
Mr. Giles waited a small moment longer, but turned without a further word, bound again for the jungle, knowing that Rachel
would follow.
Buffy opened her eyes thinking that if this whole fainting thing was going to be a regular occurrence, it would be really
inconvenient. From where she lay on the ground, she caught a widescreen view of the Hyperion’s lobby, where Tara and
Dawn were trying to distract Connor with a striped purple bouncy ball.
The rest crowded around Buffy. Fred fanned her face with one of the presentation binders. Cordelia and Angel knelt
alongside Fred, with Anya, Xander and Willow perched somewhat comically behind them. Only Wesley hung back, but his
expression was one of concern rather than unease.
Reluctantly, very reluctantly, Buffy raised her head. She was leaning on what turned out to be Lorne, who was much cushier
than she would have guessed, and decided to remain recumbent, at least until such time as everyone backed off.
“Oh my God,” Cordelia whispered. “You’re pregnant. She’s pregnant.”
Buffy stammered.
Xander said, “Oh, don’t be ridiculous.”
“She is,” Cordy said. “We’ve dealt with two mystical pregnancies here. All your weight shifts, your balance is off. And that
would explain those tacky, loose-fitting sweats…”
Angel said, “Cordy, ix-nay on the egnancy-pray.” He tossed a nod in Dawn’s direction.
“Right,” Cordelia whispered. “So, which is it, Buffy? Regular or mystical?”
Buffy leveled her eyes on Angel’s first, hoping to convey to him her level of distress at having this conversation in front of so
many people. He either didn’t get it, or didn’t care. Possibly both. He simply stared right back.
“Yes,” Buffy said, finally. “I am pregnant. And it’s regular. I think. It’s also why I have to get home. I made a promise to
Ariadne and Margot that if they helped Dawn get out of Sunnydale, I would return to help them roust The Coven.”
“Yeah,” Xander said. “I’d say this puts a wrap on your rousting days, Buff.”
“No,” Buffy said. “Not yet. This whole me passing out part was not supposed to happen.”
“But it did,” Wesley said. “Angel…”
“I know, Wes,” Angel said through steel-trap teeth.
No one said anything for a while. The only sound was Connor’s jubilant belly laughs as the rubber ball bounced from him to
Tara to Dawn.
“All right,” Angel said at last. “Buffy goes back to Sunnydale.”
“What?” It was Cordelia who shouted it, but everyone else clearly reflected the same sentiment.
Angel sighed. “She goes back,” he said firmly. “But she doesn’t go alone.”
Rachel Greenspan’s world narrowed to one of primal action – running. For hours uncounted, she saw only the green vines
before her just as they were chopped away by the rusted blade Mr. Giles had found before leaving Rosal del Virrey. She felt
little else beyond the pressure of his hand clamped over her forearm. She scarcely felt the uneven ground beneath their feet
as they fled, nor the insects that buzzed and bit her, nor the serrated reeds that whipped at her limbs and clawed her face.
As evening fell, Mr. Giles led them to a lush valley netted with mist and mosquitoes. He had spoken at times, earlier, but
Rachel had not heard him. She found she could not see him; as though his face had been replaced by a bright light unbearable
to look upon. Likewise, his words became a white noise, a static of nonexistence.
When they finally came to rest in a cluster of whitewashed buildings, Mr. Giles released her and she cloistered herself into a
tiny, ruined cubicle…
And sobbed.
The room was like an upright coffin with only enough space to stand. She gripped the walls with her filthy hands and wept -
great rasping sobs that rent her heart.
She closed her eyes and saw him: Ethan Rayne laying face down on the stone, his nose smashed like a tomato, his arms
pinned beneath his body. He had died before he could catch himself. He’d died gracelessly, like a drunk who died forgotten in
the snow. No one deserved to die that way.
Rachel’s tears abruptly ceased. As she wiped her eyes, she understood. She wasn’t crying for Ethan Rayne, though the
sympathy she felt was not misplaced.
She had been glad. She opened the chapel door and saw Ethan on the floor, and felt relief. Relief that it had not been… him:
Mr. Giles.
Rachel buried her face in her grimy sleeves and cried anew. The knowledge that she loved him didn’t make matters better,
only infinitely more complex.
She would have to tell him, of course. He would have to know everything. Rachel knew that. She just didn’t have a clue
where she might begin.
Giles understood the girl’s need for solitude. Seeing Ethan’s body had been traumatic for her. It had to be done, Giles knew.
Ethan, for all that he was not, had possessed an astonishing temerity. Ethan would have dogged their heels all the way to
London, had Giles not put a definite end to it.
He glanced at the collection of derelict buildings, which might have been a medical station. Night was thickening around
them. They had not made the progress for which he had hoped, but the girl was beyond breaking point. He would fend for
them as best he could. Perhaps, should they survive the night, with providence, they could reach Natal before the sun could
set again.
Giles found the bonnet and axle of a wrecked jeep. He hacked away the brush, swiped an enormous skittering centipede
away, and poured their supplies onto the metal surface. They were short on bottled water, shorter on food. They would be
pushing their rations if…
Giles’ eyes fell on the crinkled photograph he had found in Ethan’s pocket. He’d not looked at it before; there hadn’t been
time. But now, in the fading light, he stared in breathless disbelief.
The gritty image in the Polaroid – a young woman looking for all the world like Ingrid Bergman in the closing scenes of
Casablanca – was none other than Rachel Greenspan.
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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