Avenger
Connor opened his eyes to find himself imbedded in solid pavement. Fissures in the concrete fanned out in all directions,
foretelling the force with which he had been thrown from the explosion that destroyed… everything.
Cinders and sparks drifted through the watery green canopy like wayward fire sprites. He tried to sit up, but found that
the bones in his arms, his shoulders, his spine – they were shattered, ground to pulp. The back of his skull felt sticky like a
bowl of stewed cherries, and his hair stuck in bloody knots to his face. He tried to call for help, but heard only a pathetic
foamy gurgling in the back of his throat.
Pathetic. The demon had taunted Connor with that word. Pathetic. Worthless. Ineffectual. Then the demon proved it by
crushing Connor to mash in front of the one he most hoped to protect.
She had been in the house when it exploded. Connor might survive it, but she… No. His mind rejected the image. The idea
caused his stomach to violently revolt, and in his wretched state, Connor could only choke and writhe as the surges of
molten hatred wracked him.
While he lay there, gagging on his own bloody vomit, a pair of glossy black shoes appeared in his line of sight. A figure knelt
down and a familiar hand brushed a crusted lock from Connor’s face.
“Connor,” a voice whispered. There was palpable tenderness in that voice, and a note of shared regret. “You have to get
up. It’s not over.”
Connor felt himself drowning in his liquefying lungs. The blood that rose in his gorge poured from dozens of internal wounds,
and yet this disembodied voice somehow thought Connor could stand? He couldn’t even breathe, and it would be over, soon.
“It’s not finished,” the voice said, levelly. “You have to get up, son. You must avenge her. You must stand.”
Connor made a strangled sound. His vision blurred and he rolled his head to one side in a last-ditch effort at refusal.
He felt a hand on his arm like a white-hot vise, and Connor cried out in agony. But the hand remained firm, and the heat
spread over Connor’s skin in a nullifying whiteness. In the next second, his father’s face loomed close to Connor’s. Angel’s
black hair framed a white face and shockingly green eyes.
“You must go on, Connor,” Angel said, pulling Connor painfully upright. “Nearby, there’s a weapon. With it, we may be
avenged.”
William found the glass outer door of Summers School locked, so he broke it. The lock, not the door. Breaking glass would call
too much attention, and he sought to arrive unannounced.
Inside, twenty girls (whom he had never seen before) gathered in knots of four or five, each engaged in some kind of
training: hand-to-hand combat training, weapons training, send-your-enemy-to-Hell-in-bloody-screaming-pain training, etc.
In the back of the training studio near Buffy’s office, the tallest, sveltest of the crew stood at the head of a table ringed
with four other Slayers, busily strategizing.
One tow-headed lass spied William’s reflection in the mirror and moved to intercept him.
“Sir! Sir, you can’t be here,” she said in the prim, clipped accent of a high-money Londoner. She caught up to him as he
made his way toward the strategy table, and latched onto his arm with a her deft Slayer-strong grip, not guessing that he
had experience with her kind and could not be stymied by the strength in the deceptively skinny arms of a west London
school girl.
William felt the old stir in his blood despite his non-vampness. He twisted the girl’s arm behind her, barred her throat with
his forearm, and pinned her wrist between her shoulder blades.
“Can, and am, pet,” he purred into her ear. William smiled when he noted that the action had earned an appropriate
reaction: Every Slayer in the room turned to confront him.
William recognized two familiar faces. The svelte girl at the head of the table was Rita, returned from Paris. Beside her and
grown a half-foot was MK. The girl’s features had taken on a lean ferocity since he’d seen her last, and he felt an
inexplicable swell of sadness over that.
MK said, “Spike, what the heck?”
“Right,” Spike said, releasing his pale captive with a push into the crowd of Slayers. “So, Tiny… Miss me?”
MK left the table. Rita, he noticed, closed around the table’s edge, blocking his view of whatever lay on its surface. Her
lieutenants – a compact young woman with short cropped black hair and a blond with a wicked scrawling scar on her neck –
took up positions alongside her.
“Mr. Wells didn’t say you were coming,” MK said.
William snickered. “Mr. Wells now, is it?”
She folded her arms and glowered. “As a matter of fact…”
Rita interrupted. “Why are you here?” she asked.
“Came to lend a hand. Heard there were demons in need of killing. I’ve an illustrious career doing precisely that,” he said.
Rita leveled icy grey eyes on his. She said, briskly, “We don’t need your help.”
“That right?” he said, smirking. “Got the drop on your girl.” He tipped his head to the pale girl, who blushed deep scarlet.
MK rushed in to say, “She means we know you have your hands full, finding Buffy.”
Rita shot her a scathing glare, and William understood that the younger girl had spoken out of turn. His fondness for MK rose
a notch. He always did have a soft spot for her.
William nodded, slightly. “Buffy’d want me here,” he said. He settled his eyes on Rita’s; she was the first to glance away.
To the other’s she ordered, “Resume your drills.” Turning to her lieutenants, she said, “Keep trying to figure those
coordinates. MK, take Susan into the weapon’s room and run her through the exercise for breaking holds.”
MK tipped a nod to Rita, shot a hard look at William, and then led the tow-headed girl across the wooden practice floor.
Rita motioned for William to follow her in to Buffy’s office, which he did.
As soon as she had the door closed behind them, her manner transformed from drill sergeant to actual human being. Rita, he
knew, was somewhere between 18 and 20, had been, in her life before Slaying, a college student studying marine biology,
and had an American father - Native American, if her high cheekbones and ebony hair counted for anything. Rita was, by all
accounts, a solid, capable fighter who was more than competent in brainworks as well. In Buffy’s absence, Rita would be the
logical next-in-command, even without her seniority.
She turned to him and said, “Mr. Wells mentioned you were back, but didn’t say you’d return so soon. We didn’t have time
to debrief the girls on your profile or your part in the mission. And then right off, you attack Susan.”
“Didn’t attack the girl…”
“You chicken-winged her,” Rita shot back. “What sort of reaction did you expect?”
“Not an Amazon song-and-dance,” William admitted. “And what’s with the arsenal? Looks like large-scale Apocalypse
preparation.”
“Mr. Wells didn’t inform you?”
“Oh for…” William snapped. “It’s Andrew, right? Mr. Wells is his absentee father. And no. He’s told me little on count of I’ve
been knackered on my back for two weeks, pumped full of Succubus venom.”
“It’s bad, and soon to get worse,” Rita told him. “An ancient demon clan has escaped from its exile and set up headquarters
here. Mr. Wells believes they are trying to seize what’s left of the Circle of the Black Thorn, since there is no one left to
claim it. And if that wasn’t enough, the Coven sent word yesterday that the boundary between here and Hell was breached
recently, and…”
“Hang on,” William said. He paced the small, white room. “Who could breach the gateway of Hell?”
Rita gave him a tight smile. “I’m a soldier, not a sorcerer,” she said. “Besides, that’s not the bad part.”
“Go on.”
“Anytime a boundary is breached, things spill over,” she said.
“I recall,” he said, remembering the various horrors that Hell spat forth the time Dawn’s blood opened Glory’s gateway for a
mere matter of seconds. “What manner of beasties this time?”
“Demons, imps, slithery things: The usual. We’ve already experience an increase in demon attacks, and now this,” she said,
crossing her arms over her chest as if the thought of it chilled her. “Doesn’t matter. We’ll fight it, whatever it is. It’s what
we do.”
William stopped pacing. He placed his hands on the desk and lowered his head. Under the thick, scratched glass of the
desktop, Buffy had slipped one of the pictures Andrew had taken of them at their end-of-summer barbecue. It was a blurred,
too-close-up image of them both smiling and sunblind, with a hazy Dawn making her fishy face in the background. He smiled
at the memory of that day, at the soft kiss they shared in the cool shadow of the house, with everyone watching but not
saying a word.
How bloody fantastic it felt, to love and be loved in the open! He wanted that back with every molecule of his being. Even if
Buffy wasn’t here, physically here, William knew where he belonged. And he knew what Buffy would want…
“William?” Rita asked, stirring him from his recollections.
“I want my life back,” he said. “Being here. Fighting. It’s what I do, see? Because this…” he placed his palm over the picture
and felt only the cold of the glass beneath his skin. William was afraid. Really afraid this time. They were apart for this
apocalypse. Failing might mean...
William pressed on. “If things are unraveling like Mr. W– Andrew – seems to think, it means danger on all fronts. You may not
need me, whatever. I need to be here,” He swallowed hard. “I have to be here. For Buffy.”
Rita tossed her black her hair over her shoulder. She studied him a moment before she asked, “Are you up for a fight?”
William grinned, feeling that stir in his blood once more. He said, “That is a bloody stupid question.”
Andrew did not believe Xander.
Could not. Would not. Did not. Should not believe Xander. Although, part of him did.
Andrew let his slippered feet lead him through the icy streets of London. Throngs of working folk bundled into the tube
station, which steamed like tea kettles in the frosty morning air. Andrew avoided them. He wore his jammies and corduroy
slippers, and looked, he was certain, like Crazy Homeless Guy. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and let his feet carry him
farther and farther from home.
Dawn wouldn’t use him. That he knew.
Buffy had used Spike, and didn’t love him. She did now, but not then. Oh, it was all too confusing.
Andrew crossed against traffic signals, and heeded not the posted detour notices. He crossed yellow-taped boundary lines,
disregarded orange pylons, and skirted road blocks with their blinking amber lights without paying them any mind. Just as he
ignored the scores of vigils at every street corner - the fading flowers, posters and guttered candles dedicated to those
who had vanished during The Cleansing - which had become so commonplace Andrew no longer saw them. Nor did he pay
attention to the Missing Persons posters, hundreds of them, which lined the windows of storefronts and bus depots.
He’d been too busy to notice. First, there was his Council research, in which he had been tracking the geographical
frequencies of demon attacks. Then, Spike went all Han Solo-frozen-in-carbonite. And then Dawn. After that, everything
kinda blurred…
What Xander said, it hurt him. Xander punching him hurt him, too. It wasn’t why he left, though. Andrew had to leave,
because at that moment, he remembered precisely how it felt to sink a blade into Jonathan’s belly. He recalled with grim
clarity how the knife slid into Jonathan’s guts like a toothpick into Jell-O, with barely any resistance at all, and then the
almost pleasant spurt of Jonathan’s warm blood on his hand.
That was why Andrew left. He recalled killing Jonathan, and knew how easy it would be to cut-and-paste the process with
Xander. It was surprising, how effortless the thought popped into his brain. Never mind how much good Andrew had tried to
bring to the world, who he was seemed forever less than a step behind him.
Andrew did not notice the dull, dark stains that splattered the alley wall and drain. If he had, he might have dismissed it as
motor oil, except for the pulverized fragments of bone and brain that flecked the surface of the blot. He stepped in the
blood, slipped around in it a little bit, but continued on his un-merry way.
And was he naïve then to believe that Dawn could really know him and love him?
Xander was right about people doing strange things in the midst of chaos. Andrew understood that he had been kidding
himself. He could not deserve Dawn’s love.
So Andrew believed Xander after all.
With this cumbersome epiphany, Andrew came to a stop. He stood at the mouth of an alley, having passed through it, and
looked upon a familiar hulking structure. Its bricks, grimed by years of soot and slime and disuse, gleamed black with a thin
sheen of ice. Cords of dried ivy clung in lifeless clumps to its broken peaks and spires, and its windows, which must have
once possessed stained glass, looked blindly out into a dusty courtyard full of derelict playground equipment. The front door
still lay open like a dead lolling tongue from its last encounter with Spike and Angel.
Andrew never thought a place could look as forlorn and empty as The Temple of the Sisters. Feeling a kind of kinship to it,
Andrew therefore felt drawn inside.
Dawn flitted downstairs, feeling like she could take on anything. After her shower, she had sketched a preliminary outline of
The Lovers card as a gift for Andrew. She imagined it, finished and framed, on the wall of their future flat. For so long, she
thought of nothing but the end of things, of doom, destruction, loss, and finally death. The image gave her hope, and for the
first time she could envision the possibility of beginning.
At the base of the stairs, Dawn turned headlong into a confrontation ensuing between Maya and Xander. Maya stood, arms
crossed, in the archway of the seldom-used parlor, at right angles to the stairwell and Xander, who was in the hallway, his
fists and teeth clenched like a man about to launch himself from a diving board into freezing water.
Dawn paused, hesitant to pass between them lest they slice her with the lasers from their eyes.
Surprisingly, Maya turned to Dawn. She said, “Honey, Andrew’s left. Do you know where he might’ve gone?”
Dawn blinked. “Left? He didn’t say he was going...”
Maya inclined her head in Xander’s direction, but he remained implacable. In a flash, Dawn understood everything.
She turned to Xander. “What did you do?”
Xander forced an incredulous laugh. “Told him the truth. It was time for it, dontcha think?”
“The truth?” Dawn asked.
“Look, I know, all right,” Xander said. “Don’t play games or pretend.” He paused, but when they said nothing, he explained.
“You’re using him, Dawn.”
Dawn felt the blood in her entire body turn cold. Her whole brief life, she’d heard that expression; now she knew how it felt.
“W-what?” she said.
Xander shrugged. “We were gone, so who else could you turn to? You needed someone, I get that. But we’re here now. We’
re home, and you can back out of whatever it was you think you had…”
Dawn was retreating from him without realizing it. The coat rack blocked her escape. She couldn’t read the expression on
Xander’s face. Was it pity? Disgust? Both? Did he really think…?
He took a step forward. Dawn put out a hand to halt him.
He said, “It’s for the best. You know that when all of this is over, you’d both be hurt, and none of us can afford that now…”
Maya made a derisive sound, but Dawn barely heard it.
“You said I used him?” Dawn muttered.
Xander gave a slight nod. “Yes, Dawn. I did.”
Tears stung her eyes. She said, “He believed you?”
“Oh Dawn,” Maya said, moving toward her.
“Don’t!” Dawn snapped, and Maya stopped mid-step.
Xander said, “Well he left, didn’t he?”
Dawn felt her limbs fail her. She sank into the coats, and fell with the rack against the wall. Before she collapsed, she caught
the edge of the entry hall table to steady herself. Then the anger welled up inside, white and hot and obliterating.
“You!” she bit out. “You think you know. You think you have everything figured out.”
Xander made another move forward.
“I was wrong about you,” Dawn said. “You don’t see. You don’t see anything!” With that, Dawn took her coat from the
rack and raced for the door.
“Dawn, where are you…?” Xander began.
“I have to go find him,” she said, and she fled down the front steps.
To say that the Temple had seen better days: understatement. Since Andrew’s last visit, when he and Dawn had discovered
the link between The Sisters and the newly-incarnated William, things had degraded due to the temple’s lack of door. The
wind had blown in news pages, leaves, Cornetto wrappers, and other junk, which matted into the cobwebs that clogged the
corners of the chapel.
Andrew wandered in, daring more in the wan light than he did the day he first ventured here with Dawn. He came to a stop
in the place where he had twice drawn a circle in chalk, and found a remnant of its outline there.
He knelt beside it, thinking of Jonathan – the Tattoo to his Mr. Roarke, the R2 to his Threepio – and how he’d ruined
everything by betraying his best friend.
Andrew couldn’t dwell on it for long. He had research to do, and a world to save. All he needed was air and time to focus.
Much like Luke on Dagobah, he needed to get some perspective before tackling the next task. And where oh where was his
Yoda?
A swell of self-loathing rose in him. How could he think of Star Wars at a time like this? He bowed his head and felt wretched.
A moment later, lithe brown fingers touched his restored left hand, and Andrew leapt backward with a rabbit’s yelp.
She wore a gown of white, with strands of gleaming pearls twined into her tumbling black curls. She knelt on the ground, her
skirt pooled around her like a bank of fresh snow. She raised her face to him, and smiled her beguiling smile.
“Andrew, my love,” she said. “You should not be out all on your own.”
“Nighna,” he said, breathless. “Maya said you were dead.”
She rose, her immaculate white robe flowing about her like liquid moonlight. She said, “I am dead, sweet.”
Andrew felt a pang of sadness. “So you’re like my Obi-Wan?”
“I must be,” she said. She crossed to him and circled around, caressing his shoulders as she passed. “Andrew, you must be
ready for what is to come. You no longer possess my mark,” she said, taking his left hand in both of hers. “I cannot protect
you.”
Andrew twisted his hand to clasp hers. “Is it the Soolsqueekagigs? Are they here?”
“Those, I fear, are the least of your concern now,” she said.
Andrew paled. “Wait wait wait. Worse than those guys? They’re like the Galactus of demonkind. Do you mean They Who Shall
Not Be Named weren’t the ones who ripped the veil between worlds?”
“Luxe is coming, Andrew,” she said. “He brings with him all the armies of Hell. My darling, it is a matter of days hours now
before they break through the membrane that separates our worlds, if they haven’t already.”
Andrew made an ‘ew’ face. “Membrane?”
“The veil you mentioned. Someone in Hell opened a gateway. Luxe will have used it to his advantage. He was lying in wait,”
she said. “He wants a return of the Demon Age, Andrew. He has the forces to make that a reality.”
Andrew’s hand slipped from Nighna’s. His shoulders dropped, as if bearing the new weight of this news. “What can we do?”
he asked.
She circled him again, her movements slow and intoxicating as a single snowflake’s drift from the sky. She said:
“Kingdoms crumble, rumors of war
Look to the east, the rising star
And wish not for an early sting
When in the end the Angels sing.
In triskele form, we take the three
The rose shall wilt, the Son will see
And fell the final death bells ring
When in the end the Angels sing?
In heather bed, where lovers lie,
When earthen circles fall and die
The King will take his silver ring
And in the end, the Angels sing.”
He repeated, “In the end, the Angels sing. Hey, that’s…”
“It is the verse entire,” she said. “As the Nephillim wrought it, centuries ago, the key to the encrypted parchments you
hold. It was lost, along with so many things in this world. Rupert recovered it, with you and Dawn, and its message returned
to the world.”
“Can I get you to write it down for me?” he asked.
“You will recall it when it is needed most,” Nighna said, bowing her head.
Andrew stared at her form until he thought he saw her aura burning around her, the fiery pale blue of newborn stars.
He said, “You’re not really her, are you?”
Nighna raised her eyes to meet his. With a pensive smile, she said, “I wore her visage to bring comfort. Know that she
perished with her soul, and not parted from it.”
Slowly, the pearlescence of her gown faded as the woman assumed her own form. Buffy would have recognized her as Ea, one
of the seven Nephillim. She was timeless, careworn, and endlessly beautiful. Beholding her reminded Andrew of the loveliness
he knew in the presence of Dawn, and he urgently wanted only to go home and be with her, for always, or for at least as long
as they had remaining.
Andrew started to speak again, to thank her, but the woman had vanished.
He remained still for a moment more, before thoughts of a global-scale demon assault spurred him to action. He had to tell
Dawn. He had to alert the Council. Teams of Slayers had to be coordinated and mobilized. First, he had to write down that
rhyme before his ADD-addled brain pulled its flip-flop-hop on him, and he wound up with Prophecy Soup.
He searched feverishly, and found the back of a sodden concert pamphlet, but nothing with which to write. He cursed
himself for not heeding the Watcher’s Codex Rule #171: never leave home without some form of writing utensil, which you
can use for record-keeping, and as a weapon, should the occasion arise.
Andrew resolved to sing the rhyme to himself as he ran like mad through the streets toward the Flat.
He wasn’t to know that he would never again see his way safely to his home.
Connor opened his eyes to find himself imbedded in solid pavement. Fissures in the concrete fanned out in all directions,
foretelling the force with which he had been thrown from the explosion that destroyed… everything.
Cinders and sparks drifted through the watery green canopy like wayward fire sprites. He tried to sit up, but found that
the bones in his arms, his shoulders, his spine – they were shattered, ground to pulp. The back of his skull felt sticky like a
bowl of stewed cherries, and his hair stuck in bloody knots to his face. He tried to call for help, but heard only a pathetic
foamy gurgling in the back of his throat.
Pathetic. The demon had taunted Connor with that word. Pathetic. Worthless. Ineffectual. Then the demon proved it by
crushing Connor to mash in front of the one he most hoped to protect.
She had been in the house when it exploded. Connor might survive it, but she… No. His mind rejected the image. The idea
caused his stomach to violently revolt, and in his wretched state, Connor could only choke and writhe as the surges of
molten hatred wracked him.
While he lay there, gagging on his own bloody vomit, a pair of glossy black shoes appeared in his line of sight. A figure knelt
down and a familiar hand brushed a crusted lock from Connor’s face.
“Connor,” a voice whispered. There was palpable tenderness in that voice, and a note of shared regret. “You have to get
up. It’s not over.”
Connor felt himself drowning in his liquefying lungs. The blood that rose in his gorge poured from dozens of internal wounds,
and yet this disembodied voice somehow thought Connor could stand? He couldn’t even breathe, and it would be over, soon.
“It’s not finished,” the voice said, levelly. “You have to get up, son. You must avenge her. You must stand.”
Connor made a strangled sound. His vision blurred and he rolled his head to one side in a last-ditch effort at refusal.
He felt a hand on his arm like a white-hot vise, and Connor cried out in agony. But the hand remained firm, and the heat
spread over Connor’s skin in a nullifying whiteness. In the next second, his father’s face loomed close to Connor’s. Angel’s
black hair framed a white face and shockingly green eyes.
“You must go on, Connor,” Angel said, pulling Connor painfully upright. “Nearby, there’s a weapon. With it, we may be
avenged.”
William found the glass outer door of Summers School locked, so he broke it. The lock, not the door. Breaking glass would call
too much attention, and he sought to arrive unannounced.
Inside, twenty girls (whom he had never seen before) gathered in knots of four or five, each engaged in some kind of
training: hand-to-hand combat training, weapons training, send-your-enemy-to-Hell-in-bloody-screaming-pain training, etc.
In the back of the training studio near Buffy’s office, the tallest, sveltest of the crew stood at the head of a table ringed
with four other Slayers, busily strategizing.
One tow-headed lass spied William’s reflection in the mirror and moved to intercept him.
“Sir! Sir, you can’t be here,” she said in the prim, clipped accent of a high-money Londoner. She caught up to him as he
made his way toward the strategy table, and latched onto his arm with a her deft Slayer-strong grip, not guessing that he
had experience with her kind and could not be stymied by the strength in the deceptively skinny arms of a west London
school girl.
William felt the old stir in his blood despite his non-vampness. He twisted the girl’s arm behind her, barred her throat with
his forearm, and pinned her wrist between her shoulder blades.
“Can, and am, pet,” he purred into her ear. William smiled when he noted that the action had earned an appropriate
reaction: Every Slayer in the room turned to confront him.
William recognized two familiar faces. The svelte girl at the head of the table was Rita, returned from Paris. Beside her and
grown a half-foot was MK. The girl’s features had taken on a lean ferocity since he’d seen her last, and he felt an
inexplicable swell of sadness over that.
MK said, “Spike, what the heck?”
“Right,” Spike said, releasing his pale captive with a push into the crowd of Slayers. “So, Tiny… Miss me?”
MK left the table. Rita, he noticed, closed around the table’s edge, blocking his view of whatever lay on its surface. Her
lieutenants – a compact young woman with short cropped black hair and a blond with a wicked scrawling scar on her neck –
took up positions alongside her.
“Mr. Wells didn’t say you were coming,” MK said.
William snickered. “Mr. Wells now, is it?”
She folded her arms and glowered. “As a matter of fact…”
Rita interrupted. “Why are you here?” she asked.
“Came to lend a hand. Heard there were demons in need of killing. I’ve an illustrious career doing precisely that,” he said.
Rita leveled icy grey eyes on his. She said, briskly, “We don’t need your help.”
“That right?” he said, smirking. “Got the drop on your girl.” He tipped his head to the pale girl, who blushed deep scarlet.
MK rushed in to say, “She means we know you have your hands full, finding Buffy.”
Rita shot her a scathing glare, and William understood that the younger girl had spoken out of turn. His fondness for MK rose
a notch. He always did have a soft spot for her.
William nodded, slightly. “Buffy’d want me here,” he said. He settled his eyes on Rita’s; she was the first to glance away.
To the other’s she ordered, “Resume your drills.” Turning to her lieutenants, she said, “Keep trying to figure those
coordinates. MK, take Susan into the weapon’s room and run her through the exercise for breaking holds.”
MK tipped a nod to Rita, shot a hard look at William, and then led the tow-headed girl across the wooden practice floor.
Rita motioned for William to follow her in to Buffy’s office, which he did.
As soon as she had the door closed behind them, her manner transformed from drill sergeant to actual human being. Rita, he
knew, was somewhere between 18 and 20, had been, in her life before Slaying, a college student studying marine biology,
and had an American father - Native American, if her high cheekbones and ebony hair counted for anything. Rita was, by all
accounts, a solid, capable fighter who was more than competent in brainworks as well. In Buffy’s absence, Rita would be the
logical next-in-command, even without her seniority.
She turned to him and said, “Mr. Wells mentioned you were back, but didn’t say you’d return so soon. We didn’t have time
to debrief the girls on your profile or your part in the mission. And then right off, you attack Susan.”
“Didn’t attack the girl…”
“You chicken-winged her,” Rita shot back. “What sort of reaction did you expect?”
“Not an Amazon song-and-dance,” William admitted. “And what’s with the arsenal? Looks like large-scale Apocalypse
preparation.”
“Mr. Wells didn’t inform you?”
“Oh for…” William snapped. “It’s Andrew, right? Mr. Wells is his absentee father. And no. He’s told me little on count of I’ve
been knackered on my back for two weeks, pumped full of Succubus venom.”
“It’s bad, and soon to get worse,” Rita told him. “An ancient demon clan has escaped from its exile and set up headquarters
here. Mr. Wells believes they are trying to seize what’s left of the Circle of the Black Thorn, since there is no one left to
claim it. And if that wasn’t enough, the Coven sent word yesterday that the boundary between here and Hell was breached
recently, and…”
“Hang on,” William said. He paced the small, white room. “Who could breach the gateway of Hell?”
Rita gave him a tight smile. “I’m a soldier, not a sorcerer,” she said. “Besides, that’s not the bad part.”
“Go on.”
“Anytime a boundary is breached, things spill over,” she said.
“I recall,” he said, remembering the various horrors that Hell spat forth the time Dawn’s blood opened Glory’s gateway for a
mere matter of seconds. “What manner of beasties this time?”
“Demons, imps, slithery things: The usual. We’ve already experience an increase in demon attacks, and now this,” she said,
crossing her arms over her chest as if the thought of it chilled her. “Doesn’t matter. We’ll fight it, whatever it is. It’s what
we do.”
William stopped pacing. He placed his hands on the desk and lowered his head. Under the thick, scratched glass of the
desktop, Buffy had slipped one of the pictures Andrew had taken of them at their end-of-summer barbecue. It was a blurred,
too-close-up image of them both smiling and sunblind, with a hazy Dawn making her fishy face in the background. He smiled
at the memory of that day, at the soft kiss they shared in the cool shadow of the house, with everyone watching but not
saying a word.
How bloody fantastic it felt, to love and be loved in the open! He wanted that back with every molecule of his being. Even if
Buffy wasn’t here, physically here, William knew where he belonged. And he knew what Buffy would want…
“William?” Rita asked, stirring him from his recollections.
“I want my life back,” he said. “Being here. Fighting. It’s what I do, see? Because this…” he placed his palm over the picture
and felt only the cold of the glass beneath his skin. William was afraid. Really afraid this time. They were apart for this
apocalypse. Failing might mean...
William pressed on. “If things are unraveling like Mr. W– Andrew – seems to think, it means danger on all fronts. You may not
need me, whatever. I need to be here,” He swallowed hard. “I have to be here. For Buffy.”
Rita tossed her black her hair over her shoulder. She studied him a moment before she asked, “Are you up for a fight?”
William grinned, feeling that stir in his blood once more. He said, “That is a bloody stupid question.”
Andrew did not believe Xander.
Could not. Would not. Did not. Should not believe Xander. Although, part of him did.
Andrew let his slippered feet lead him through the icy streets of London. Throngs of working folk bundled into the tube
station, which steamed like tea kettles in the frosty morning air. Andrew avoided them. He wore his jammies and corduroy
slippers, and looked, he was certain, like Crazy Homeless Guy. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and let his feet carry him
farther and farther from home.
Dawn wouldn’t use him. That he knew.
Buffy had used Spike, and didn’t love him. She did now, but not then. Oh, it was all too confusing.
Andrew crossed against traffic signals, and heeded not the posted detour notices. He crossed yellow-taped boundary lines,
disregarded orange pylons, and skirted road blocks with their blinking amber lights without paying them any mind. Just as he
ignored the scores of vigils at every street corner - the fading flowers, posters and guttered candles dedicated to those
who had vanished during The Cleansing - which had become so commonplace Andrew no longer saw them. Nor did he pay
attention to the Missing Persons posters, hundreds of them, which lined the windows of storefronts and bus depots.
He’d been too busy to notice. First, there was his Council research, in which he had been tracking the geographical
frequencies of demon attacks. Then, Spike went all Han Solo-frozen-in-carbonite. And then Dawn. After that, everything
kinda blurred…
What Xander said, it hurt him. Xander punching him hurt him, too. It wasn’t why he left, though. Andrew had to leave,
because at that moment, he remembered precisely how it felt to sink a blade into Jonathan’s belly. He recalled with grim
clarity how the knife slid into Jonathan’s guts like a toothpick into Jell-O, with barely any resistance at all, and then the
almost pleasant spurt of Jonathan’s warm blood on his hand.
That was why Andrew left. He recalled killing Jonathan, and knew how easy it would be to cut-and-paste the process with
Xander. It was surprising, how effortless the thought popped into his brain. Never mind how much good Andrew had tried to
bring to the world, who he was seemed forever less than a step behind him.
Andrew did not notice the dull, dark stains that splattered the alley wall and drain. If he had, he might have dismissed it as
motor oil, except for the pulverized fragments of bone and brain that flecked the surface of the blot. He stepped in the
blood, slipped around in it a little bit, but continued on his un-merry way.
And was he naïve then to believe that Dawn could really know him and love him?
Xander was right about people doing strange things in the midst of chaos. Andrew understood that he had been kidding
himself. He could not deserve Dawn’s love.
So Andrew believed Xander after all.
With this cumbersome epiphany, Andrew came to a stop. He stood at the mouth of an alley, having passed through it, and
looked upon a familiar hulking structure. Its bricks, grimed by years of soot and slime and disuse, gleamed black with a thin
sheen of ice. Cords of dried ivy clung in lifeless clumps to its broken peaks and spires, and its windows, which must have
once possessed stained glass, looked blindly out into a dusty courtyard full of derelict playground equipment. The front door
still lay open like a dead lolling tongue from its last encounter with Spike and Angel.
Andrew never thought a place could look as forlorn and empty as The Temple of the Sisters. Feeling a kind of kinship to it,
Andrew therefore felt drawn inside.
Dawn flitted downstairs, feeling like she could take on anything. After her shower, she had sketched a preliminary outline of
The Lovers card as a gift for Andrew. She imagined it, finished and framed, on the wall of their future flat. For so long, she
thought of nothing but the end of things, of doom, destruction, loss, and finally death. The image gave her hope, and for the
first time she could envision the possibility of beginning.
At the base of the stairs, Dawn turned headlong into a confrontation ensuing between Maya and Xander. Maya stood, arms
crossed, in the archway of the seldom-used parlor, at right angles to the stairwell and Xander, who was in the hallway, his
fists and teeth clenched like a man about to launch himself from a diving board into freezing water.
Dawn paused, hesitant to pass between them lest they slice her with the lasers from their eyes.
Surprisingly, Maya turned to Dawn. She said, “Honey, Andrew’s left. Do you know where he might’ve gone?”
Dawn blinked. “Left? He didn’t say he was going...”
Maya inclined her head in Xander’s direction, but he remained implacable. In a flash, Dawn understood everything.
She turned to Xander. “What did you do?”
Xander forced an incredulous laugh. “Told him the truth. It was time for it, dontcha think?”
“The truth?” Dawn asked.
“Look, I know, all right,” Xander said. “Don’t play games or pretend.” He paused, but when they said nothing, he explained.
“You’re using him, Dawn.”
Dawn felt the blood in her entire body turn cold. Her whole brief life, she’d heard that expression; now she knew how it felt.
“W-what?” she said.
Xander shrugged. “We were gone, so who else could you turn to? You needed someone, I get that. But we’re here now. We’
re home, and you can back out of whatever it was you think you had…”
Dawn was retreating from him without realizing it. The coat rack blocked her escape. She couldn’t read the expression on
Xander’s face. Was it pity? Disgust? Both? Did he really think…?
He took a step forward. Dawn put out a hand to halt him.
He said, “It’s for the best. You know that when all of this is over, you’d both be hurt, and none of us can afford that now…”
Maya made a derisive sound, but Dawn barely heard it.
“You said I used him?” Dawn muttered.
Xander gave a slight nod. “Yes, Dawn. I did.”
Tears stung her eyes. She said, “He believed you?”
“Oh Dawn,” Maya said, moving toward her.
“Don’t!” Dawn snapped, and Maya stopped mid-step.
Xander said, “Well he left, didn’t he?”
Dawn felt her limbs fail her. She sank into the coats, and fell with the rack against the wall. Before she collapsed, she caught
the edge of the entry hall table to steady herself. Then the anger welled up inside, white and hot and obliterating.
“You!” she bit out. “You think you know. You think you have everything figured out.”
Xander made another move forward.
“I was wrong about you,” Dawn said. “You don’t see. You don’t see anything!” With that, Dawn took her coat from the
rack and raced for the door.
“Dawn, where are you…?” Xander began.
“I have to go find him,” she said, and she fled down the front steps.
To say that the Temple had seen better days: understatement. Since Andrew’s last visit, when he and Dawn had discovered
the link between The Sisters and the newly-incarnated William, things had degraded due to the temple’s lack of door. The
wind had blown in news pages, leaves, Cornetto wrappers, and other junk, which matted into the cobwebs that clogged the
corners of the chapel.
Andrew wandered in, daring more in the wan light than he did the day he first ventured here with Dawn. He came to a stop
in the place where he had twice drawn a circle in chalk, and found a remnant of its outline there.
He knelt beside it, thinking of Jonathan – the Tattoo to his Mr. Roarke, the R2 to his Threepio – and how he’d ruined
everything by betraying his best friend.
Andrew couldn’t dwell on it for long. He had research to do, and a world to save. All he needed was air and time to focus.
Much like Luke on Dagobah, he needed to get some perspective before tackling the next task. And where oh where was his
Yoda?
A swell of self-loathing rose in him. How could he think of Star Wars at a time like this? He bowed his head and felt wretched.
A moment later, lithe brown fingers touched his restored left hand, and Andrew leapt backward with a rabbit’s yelp.
She wore a gown of white, with strands of gleaming pearls twined into her tumbling black curls. She knelt on the ground, her
skirt pooled around her like a bank of fresh snow. She raised her face to him, and smiled her beguiling smile.
“Andrew, my love,” she said. “You should not be out all on your own.”
“Nighna,” he said, breathless. “Maya said you were dead.”
She rose, her immaculate white robe flowing about her like liquid moonlight. She said, “I am dead, sweet.”
Andrew felt a pang of sadness. “So you’re like my Obi-Wan?”
“I must be,” she said. She crossed to him and circled around, caressing his shoulders as she passed. “Andrew, you must be
ready for what is to come. You no longer possess my mark,” she said, taking his left hand in both of hers. “I cannot protect
you.”
Andrew twisted his hand to clasp hers. “Is it the Soolsqueekagigs? Are they here?”
“Those, I fear, are the least of your concern now,” she said.
Andrew paled. “Wait wait wait. Worse than those guys? They’re like the Galactus of demonkind. Do you mean They Who Shall
Not Be Named weren’t the ones who ripped the veil between worlds?”
“Luxe is coming, Andrew,” she said. “He brings with him all the armies of Hell. My darling, it is a matter of days hours now
before they break through the membrane that separates our worlds, if they haven’t already.”
Andrew made an ‘ew’ face. “Membrane?”
“The veil you mentioned. Someone in Hell opened a gateway. Luxe will have used it to his advantage. He was lying in wait,”
she said. “He wants a return of the Demon Age, Andrew. He has the forces to make that a reality.”
Andrew’s hand slipped from Nighna’s. His shoulders dropped, as if bearing the new weight of this news. “What can we do?”
he asked.
She circled him again, her movements slow and intoxicating as a single snowflake’s drift from the sky. She said:
“Kingdoms crumble, rumors of war
Look to the east, the rising star
And wish not for an early sting
When in the end the Angels sing.
In triskele form, we take the three
The rose shall wilt, the Son will see
And fell the final death bells ring
When in the end the Angels sing?
In heather bed, where lovers lie,
When earthen circles fall and die
The King will take his silver ring
And in the end, the Angels sing.”
He repeated, “In the end, the Angels sing. Hey, that’s…”
“It is the verse entire,” she said. “As the Nephillim wrought it, centuries ago, the key to the encrypted parchments you
hold. It was lost, along with so many things in this world. Rupert recovered it, with you and Dawn, and its message returned
to the world.”
“Can I get you to write it down for me?” he asked.
“You will recall it when it is needed most,” Nighna said, bowing her head.
Andrew stared at her form until he thought he saw her aura burning around her, the fiery pale blue of newborn stars.
He said, “You’re not really her, are you?”
Nighna raised her eyes to meet his. With a pensive smile, she said, “I wore her visage to bring comfort. Know that she
perished with her soul, and not parted from it.”
Slowly, the pearlescence of her gown faded as the woman assumed her own form. Buffy would have recognized her as Ea, one
of the seven Nephillim. She was timeless, careworn, and endlessly beautiful. Beholding her reminded Andrew of the loveliness
he knew in the presence of Dawn, and he urgently wanted only to go home and be with her, for always, or for at least as long
as they had remaining.
Andrew started to speak again, to thank her, but the woman had vanished.
He remained still for a moment more, before thoughts of a global-scale demon assault spurred him to action. He had to tell
Dawn. He had to alert the Council. Teams of Slayers had to be coordinated and mobilized. First, he had to write down that
rhyme before his ADD-addled brain pulled its flip-flop-hop on him, and he wound up with Prophecy Soup.
He searched feverishly, and found the back of a sodden concert pamphlet, but nothing with which to write. He cursed
himself for not heeding the Watcher’s Codex Rule #171: never leave home without some form of writing utensil, which you
can use for record-keeping, and as a weapon, should the occasion arise.
Andrew resolved to sing the rhyme to himself as he ran like mad through the streets toward the Flat.
He wasn’t to know that he would never again see his way safely to his home.
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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
Mea Culpa
Things Unsaid
Home Sweet Gone
Eleventh Hour
Last Call
Time Is Running Out
Primal
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
Time Is Running Out
Primal