Fragmented
Just like in fairy stories, sunrise and snow chased most of the monsters away. They knew it was temporary, but were glad
for any kind of reprieve. Rita had phoned to say she and the remaining twelve Slayers returned to the school to regroup.
They were planning an offensive based on the Council’s recent analysis of the situation. Once everyone was patched up and
fed their breakfast, they’d head out again into the fray. No one ever encouraged slaying on an empty stomach.
In the meantime, they had patching up of their own to do. Connor had passed from the realm of screaming wakefulness to a
Willow-induced coma. Faith guarded him, watchful as a mother hawk, and Willow knew why. Thellian said they’d need to
destroy Connor; Faith wasn’t about to let that happen.
Willow bent over the first aid kit spread across her knees, dabbing iodine into the split flesh of Xander’s nose. He was much
with the grumbling, and said, finally, “Wil, could you just magick it up? It hurts like…”
“Like a punch to the nose?” Willow finished.
“Like an ice pick to the frontal lobes,” Xander countered. He winced as she wiped the knuckle-shaped indentation with
cotton gauze.
“Much as I would like to, I won’t,” Willow said, her brows drawn in puppy-dog sympathy. “Magic works best versus magic.
This wound was inflicted mano a mano, which means no go on the mojo.”
“Yeah, well,” Xander muttered. “He still hits like a demon.”
Willow withdrew her swab and leveled her eyes on his. “You shouldn’t have said what you said, Xander.”
His shoulders sagged, as if he’d expected a lecture. “I know, Willow,” he said. “That’s me, Inappropriate Retort Guy. I
should have been Mr. Sensitive. You know me – Always breaking tension with attempts at levity. Sometimes I strike out. My
bad.”
Willow sighed and returned to dabbing, a little harder than was necessary, he thought.
He decided a subject change was in order. “What are we gonna do, Willow?” he asked.
Willow folded a gauze pad into a prim square and placed it over the bridge of his nose. “Hold this,” she said. She guided his
hand to the spot and he pressed it into place while she rummaged in her kit for tape.
While she searched, she said, “We wait until Giles feels better, then we ask him what he learned about Buffy.”
“Obviously he learned nothing,” Xander said, his tone plaintively nasal. “Otherwise he’d have told us. He’d be lauding
praises to the rooftops of Britain.”
Willow found the tape and applied strips of it to the bridge of Xander’s nose. When he was nice and bandaged up, she rapped
her knuckles on his forehead and said, “No news is good news, right?”
“Keeps the gut-rending disappointment at bay,” Xander said.
Willow gave him a pouty look. She squeezed his hand and gathered her kit.
“Where ya goin’?” he asked.
She stood and looked surreptitiously over her shoulder. “I, um, thought I’d go to the kitchen, check on Maya and Rachel,
then maybe talk with Dawn,” she said.
Xander stared at her. She colored dark crimson, but she raised her chin in a defiant, challenge-me way. They both knew
that Willow was going to see Thellian, who had “retired” to the basement.
“Willow,” he said. She paused under the archway into the entry hall, and the light turned her hair to autumn-apple-gold. It
amazed him that she still managed to take his breath away.
Under his scrutiny, she fidgeted with impatience. “What?”
He gave a half-smile. “Don’t make me go yellow crayon on you. Okay?”
Willow rolled her eyes. “Okay, Xander,” she said, blushing again. Then she left him.
Xander watched her weave around the kitchen table. He heard her exchange a brief greeting with Rachel and Maya. Then
he heard the tell-tale groan of the basement door, where Thellian awaited downstairs.
Xander had to wonder, was Willow his puppet-y pet? Was she part of his newest world-domination plot? Even worse, were
they lovers? Like Buffy and Spike, and Buffy and Angel before them?
A commotion in the seldom-used parlor disrupted his thoughts. Xander watched from the hallway as Connor writhed in
agony. He clasped Faith’s arm like a blind man searching for something to guide him. Faith knelt beside him, smoothing his
matted hair from his forehead.
Connor stared at her with a wildish, fever-poached look in his eyes. He pulled her toward him, so that his face was inches
from hers, and Xander heard him moan, pitifully, “I want this to be real. Faith, please. Please let this be real.”
She said, “You hold onto me, Connor. You hear me? Don’t you let go.”
With that, Connor’s eyelids fluttered to half-mast and he sank back into the cushions. Xander let go of the breath he hadn’t
realized he was holding.
“Damn,” Xander muttered, shaking tension from his shoulders. It was nice to know someone was in worse shape than him.
With careful fingers, he probed the tender area around his Spike-inflicted wound. He cringed and cursed at the stab of pain
under his bruised eye.
Everything was so screwed up. Everyone had fragmented, and the world felt like an over-ripe melon ready to burst. Xander
meant what he said, about needing Buffy to guide them through this. Without her, they were as good as dead.
“There’s a cheery thought,” Xander said to himself, shuddering even though he wasn’t cold. He went into the entry hall to
do what he did best: clean-up. He bent to pick up the splintered shards of Connor’s packing crate. Hazarding a glance at
the third crate, still so inert and strange in the hall’s half-light, Xander could just guess what was inside.
On that thought, he hefted a stake-sized shard in his hand, testing its weight against his palm, and he smiled. It would
splinter something fierce, but would serve its purpose, if the need arose.
Never hurt to have wood in your pants, Xander thought with a chuckle. He tucked it into the back waistband of his jeans,
grateful this once that he wasn’t going commando, and went back to work picking up the pieces.
Downstairs, the tension felt like walking tight-rope on razor wire. William knew he should feel guilty about denting Harris’s
face, but it felt so good, he was considering adopting it as a new habit.
However, he had no time for play-fights. Rupert was back, and William wanted to speak with him about the dream he’d
shared with Buffy before waking from Succubus-sleep.
William opened Rupert’s door to find the Watcher pulling his bedroom down around his ears. He ran his arm behind a row of
books, spilling them floorward. He wore a tan jacket over one shoulder, like he was getting dressed in a hurry but hadn’t
finished.
William held his breath and watched. Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 Adagio played on the CD player, but its somber tone didn’t
match Rupert’s careless destruction. At the same time, Rupert appeared more casual than urgent. Casual ransacking. That
was a new one on him.
William stepped into the room. “Aren’t you supposed to be resting?” he said.
Rupert glanced in his direction but acknowledged with a grunt while he continued to turn out his room. He pulled open the
doors of his cabinet and chucked random knick-knacks onto the bed.
“You looking for something?”
Giles answered, one question behind, “How one can rest in days like these…” He trailed off.
“Right,” William said. “Rupert?”
Giles reached on tiptoe to the top shelf of the cabinet and apparently found what he’d sought. Through the glass door of the
cabinet, William saw a corked decanter filled with amber liquid. Rupert pried out the cork with his teeth and took a deep pull
from the bottle.
He rounded on William.
“Can you lead them?”
William snorted, “Come again?”
Rupert shouldered the cabinet closed and passed the bottle to William, who shrugged but took it.
“Spike, can you lead them?” Rupert asked again.
William drank, wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Figured that task would fall to you,” he said.
Rupert put the bottle on the desk between them, then sat wearily in his chair.
“You saw the stray Willow brought home,” Rupert said, by way of evading yet again.
“Yeah,” William said. “When did Willow become the Mouthpiece of Thellian?”
“We need him,” Giles said.
William scoffed. “Oh, not you too.”
“Did he mention the Dragon’s Eye and its connection to Luxe?” Rupert asked.
“Uh, no?”
Rupert filled him in, making his version of the vampire’s story shorter than the usual Watcher’s report, but he touched on all
the key points – about Luxe taking the Dragon’s Eye from Wolfram & Hart, about him giving it to a gypsy woman who handed
it down to Maya’s Freddy, and then to Maya by default, who passed it to Connor, who proceeded to do Luxe’s bidding via
the Glass, and for which Thellian said the boy must be destroyed.
William leaned a shoulder against the wall, his arms folded across his chest. “Boy’s downstairs now, Rupert. Willow’s trying
her hand at healing him. Wouldn’t do that if Thellian had his claws in her.”
Rupert raised a brow. “Perhaps there’s hope after all, but…”
“But you don’t trust it.”
“Not in the least, and there’s something else,” he said. “Andrew’s research. He discovered a link between the Taonyx
Parchments and the increase of demonic activity in certain geographic locations. Something Eathan Rayne was eager to get
his grips on.”
“Meaning?”
Rupert drew a dramatic breath. “Hellmouths.”
William’s jaw tightened as he bit down on his frustration. “Again, meaning?”
Giles reached for the bottle and sipped. “The short of it: the earth was once pocked with Hellmouths, like… like festering
boils. Over time, many were sealed…”
“Like Stonehenge.”
“Precisely,” Giles said. “And others were destroyed.”
“Ah,” William said, touching his chest where he’d worn a certain amulet. “Like Sunnydale.”
Rupert grinned. “Right. Others still lay dormant, but there are a number of active ones worldwide, like Cleveland, Meaux in
France, Guatemala City, Vidor, Texas…”
“And these parchments,” William interrupted. “What are they, an Atlas of Demonic Scenic Routes?”
“I’m afraid it’s not that simple. The Parchments are untranslated, or were. They contain a conjuration spell of some
magnitude. Andrew managed to untangle some of it, with Dawn’s assistance no doubt, but I’m afraid I’m not up to the
task,” Rupert said.
“And why is that?”
“When Andrew joined The Council, like every other applicant he submitted to a psychological profile and a series of
assessments,” Rupert explained. “He showed certain aptitudes for languages and pattern recognition that were,” he
chuckled in spite of himself, “well, they were off even our charts. Suffice to say it’s a blessing Andrew was in the midst of an
identity crisis when The Trio attempted to overtake Sunnydale…”
William swallowed the lump in his throat. “That right?” he said.
Giles nodded. “Honestly. I don’t know why everyone’s so surprised. Tucker was a genius as well.”
“Who?”
Rupert tsked. “Tucker Wells.” Pause. “Andrew’s brother?”
William shrugged and shifted his weight.
“Regardless,” Rupert went on. “What that boy could do with two weeks and a laptop computer is beyond me.”
William scrubbed his hands over his face. “Rupert,” he said. “Andrew’s hurt. Dawn’s just returned. Said they’d run afoul of
some beasties.”
Giles sat forward. “But… Dawn?”
“Bit’s fine. She said Andrew’s at Parkside, but…”
Rupert sprung from his chair and paced his threadbare rug. When he turned back, his eyes glistened behind his spectacles.
“Look, Spike,” he said, blinking rapidly but not succeeding in his attempt to conceal his tears. “If you don’t lead them,
Thellian surely will, and you know as well as I do how badly that can go for us.”
“That’s right,” William said. “All the reason I nominate you.”
Rupert drew back the sleeve of his jacket to reveal the shriveled flesh beneath. The musty scent of it filled William’s nose,
reminding him of sand and heat and the desert at night, and he knew. He’d seen this kind of damage before, and understood
its gravity.
“A wraith?” he said, and his heart thumped in his chest. After all these months as a human, that lurching heartbeat still took
him by surprise.
“Not a wraith, no,” Rupert agreed. “A Wight.”
William felt sick and numb at the same time. “Rupert, that’s worse,” he said. “How long…?”
Rupert removed his glasses and wiped his eyes with a handkerchief. “The point of contact was here,” he said, indicating the
reddish, shriveled meat that had once been his wrist. “The wound has spread to my shoulder. I could last a week.” He
uttered a bitter laugh. “Probably less. So you see I find myself facing an early retirement.”
William sat down hard in Rupert’s vacated chair. “I don’t have a soddin’ clue about what’s going on,” he said. “Doesn’t help
matters I just blacked Harris’s good eye. That’ll no doubt swing the popular vote.”
Giles pushed a pile of books aside and sat down on his bed. He lifted his eyes to the ceiling and said, “Can’t tell you how often
I’d wanted to do that. And if it helps, half the time in Sunnydale, I hadn’t the slightest clue either.”
Now William really did laugh, but it was more the borderline hysterics kind of laughter than anything resembling amusement.
Giles joined in, and they had themselves a good dose of it until Giles flinched in pain and that sobered them both right up.
After an awkward moment, Giles stared sternly at William and said, “Spike. They need a leader. They need you. Can you lead
them?”
“Lead them where, exactly?” William asked. “If it’s burrowing under the city for buried artifacts, I’ll bring a jack hammer
and fondue. Otherwise, we could be in for some messy disappointment.”
Giles exhaled shakily. “Lead them out of this,” he said at length. “You’ll have to make a plan, of course. Hopefully something
more detailed than studying sewer schematics. You’ll need to learn what Andrew’s discovered from those texts; see if
anything can be done about it. And if Luxe is in fact controlling Connor, you’ll need to deal with that. Then there’s Buffy to
consider.”
Restlessness rose up in William. He got heavily to his feet. “I’ve a feeling she’ll find us as much as we’ll find her.”
“Oh?” Giles seemed genuinely surprised.
“Dream I had,” William said, waving it off. “I’ll start with Dawn. See if I can suss out more about Andrew. Maybe she knows
what he was onto before…”
“Good,” Giles said. He pushed a stack of books onto the floor where they landed with a muffled thud. “Now, if you’ll send
Rachel up, I’d like to have a word.”
With a nod, William left him and went back downstairs. But he didn’t make it to Rachel. As he walked past the door to Buffy’s
and Dawn’s suite, he thought he heard her Dawn crying and decided to investigate.
When he opened the door expecting to find the quaint sitting room with its damp laundry smell and white wicker furniture,
he found himself staring down a ruined, dust-choked corridor of Sunnydale High School.
Just like in fairy stories, sunrise and snow chased most of the monsters away. They knew it was temporary, but were glad
for any kind of reprieve. Rita had phoned to say she and the remaining twelve Slayers returned to the school to regroup.
They were planning an offensive based on the Council’s recent analysis of the situation. Once everyone was patched up and
fed their breakfast, they’d head out again into the fray. No one ever encouraged slaying on an empty stomach.
In the meantime, they had patching up of their own to do. Connor had passed from the realm of screaming wakefulness to a
Willow-induced coma. Faith guarded him, watchful as a mother hawk, and Willow knew why. Thellian said they’d need to
destroy Connor; Faith wasn’t about to let that happen.
Willow bent over the first aid kit spread across her knees, dabbing iodine into the split flesh of Xander’s nose. He was much
with the grumbling, and said, finally, “Wil, could you just magick it up? It hurts like…”
“Like a punch to the nose?” Willow finished.
“Like an ice pick to the frontal lobes,” Xander countered. He winced as she wiped the knuckle-shaped indentation with
cotton gauze.
“Much as I would like to, I won’t,” Willow said, her brows drawn in puppy-dog sympathy. “Magic works best versus magic.
This wound was inflicted mano a mano, which means no go on the mojo.”
“Yeah, well,” Xander muttered. “He still hits like a demon.”
Willow withdrew her swab and leveled her eyes on his. “You shouldn’t have said what you said, Xander.”
His shoulders sagged, as if he’d expected a lecture. “I know, Willow,” he said. “That’s me, Inappropriate Retort Guy. I
should have been Mr. Sensitive. You know me – Always breaking tension with attempts at levity. Sometimes I strike out. My
bad.”
Willow sighed and returned to dabbing, a little harder than was necessary, he thought.
He decided a subject change was in order. “What are we gonna do, Willow?” he asked.
Willow folded a gauze pad into a prim square and placed it over the bridge of his nose. “Hold this,” she said. She guided his
hand to the spot and he pressed it into place while she rummaged in her kit for tape.
While she searched, she said, “We wait until Giles feels better, then we ask him what he learned about Buffy.”
“Obviously he learned nothing,” Xander said, his tone plaintively nasal. “Otherwise he’d have told us. He’d be lauding
praises to the rooftops of Britain.”
Willow found the tape and applied strips of it to the bridge of Xander’s nose. When he was nice and bandaged up, she rapped
her knuckles on his forehead and said, “No news is good news, right?”
“Keeps the gut-rending disappointment at bay,” Xander said.
Willow gave him a pouty look. She squeezed his hand and gathered her kit.
“Where ya goin’?” he asked.
She stood and looked surreptitiously over her shoulder. “I, um, thought I’d go to the kitchen, check on Maya and Rachel,
then maybe talk with Dawn,” she said.
Xander stared at her. She colored dark crimson, but she raised her chin in a defiant, challenge-me way. They both knew
that Willow was going to see Thellian, who had “retired” to the basement.
“Willow,” he said. She paused under the archway into the entry hall, and the light turned her hair to autumn-apple-gold. It
amazed him that she still managed to take his breath away.
Under his scrutiny, she fidgeted with impatience. “What?”
He gave a half-smile. “Don’t make me go yellow crayon on you. Okay?”
Willow rolled her eyes. “Okay, Xander,” she said, blushing again. Then she left him.
Xander watched her weave around the kitchen table. He heard her exchange a brief greeting with Rachel and Maya. Then
he heard the tell-tale groan of the basement door, where Thellian awaited downstairs.
Xander had to wonder, was Willow his puppet-y pet? Was she part of his newest world-domination plot? Even worse, were
they lovers? Like Buffy and Spike, and Buffy and Angel before them?
A commotion in the seldom-used parlor disrupted his thoughts. Xander watched from the hallway as Connor writhed in
agony. He clasped Faith’s arm like a blind man searching for something to guide him. Faith knelt beside him, smoothing his
matted hair from his forehead.
Connor stared at her with a wildish, fever-poached look in his eyes. He pulled her toward him, so that his face was inches
from hers, and Xander heard him moan, pitifully, “I want this to be real. Faith, please. Please let this be real.”
She said, “You hold onto me, Connor. You hear me? Don’t you let go.”
With that, Connor’s eyelids fluttered to half-mast and he sank back into the cushions. Xander let go of the breath he hadn’t
realized he was holding.
“Damn,” Xander muttered, shaking tension from his shoulders. It was nice to know someone was in worse shape than him.
With careful fingers, he probed the tender area around his Spike-inflicted wound. He cringed and cursed at the stab of pain
under his bruised eye.
Everything was so screwed up. Everyone had fragmented, and the world felt like an over-ripe melon ready to burst. Xander
meant what he said, about needing Buffy to guide them through this. Without her, they were as good as dead.
“There’s a cheery thought,” Xander said to himself, shuddering even though he wasn’t cold. He went into the entry hall to
do what he did best: clean-up. He bent to pick up the splintered shards of Connor’s packing crate. Hazarding a glance at
the third crate, still so inert and strange in the hall’s half-light, Xander could just guess what was inside.
On that thought, he hefted a stake-sized shard in his hand, testing its weight against his palm, and he smiled. It would
splinter something fierce, but would serve its purpose, if the need arose.
Never hurt to have wood in your pants, Xander thought with a chuckle. He tucked it into the back waistband of his jeans,
grateful this once that he wasn’t going commando, and went back to work picking up the pieces.
Downstairs, the tension felt like walking tight-rope on razor wire. William knew he should feel guilty about denting Harris’s
face, but it felt so good, he was considering adopting it as a new habit.
However, he had no time for play-fights. Rupert was back, and William wanted to speak with him about the dream he’d
shared with Buffy before waking from Succubus-sleep.
William opened Rupert’s door to find the Watcher pulling his bedroom down around his ears. He ran his arm behind a row of
books, spilling them floorward. He wore a tan jacket over one shoulder, like he was getting dressed in a hurry but hadn’t
finished.
William held his breath and watched. Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 Adagio played on the CD player, but its somber tone didn’t
match Rupert’s careless destruction. At the same time, Rupert appeared more casual than urgent. Casual ransacking. That
was a new one on him.
William stepped into the room. “Aren’t you supposed to be resting?” he said.
Rupert glanced in his direction but acknowledged with a grunt while he continued to turn out his room. He pulled open the
doors of his cabinet and chucked random knick-knacks onto the bed.
“You looking for something?”
Giles answered, one question behind, “How one can rest in days like these…” He trailed off.
“Right,” William said. “Rupert?”
Giles reached on tiptoe to the top shelf of the cabinet and apparently found what he’d sought. Through the glass door of the
cabinet, William saw a corked decanter filled with amber liquid. Rupert pried out the cork with his teeth and took a deep pull
from the bottle.
He rounded on William.
“Can you lead them?”
William snorted, “Come again?”
Rupert shouldered the cabinet closed and passed the bottle to William, who shrugged but took it.
“Spike, can you lead them?” Rupert asked again.
William drank, wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Figured that task would fall to you,” he said.
Rupert put the bottle on the desk between them, then sat wearily in his chair.
“You saw the stray Willow brought home,” Rupert said, by way of evading yet again.
“Yeah,” William said. “When did Willow become the Mouthpiece of Thellian?”
“We need him,” Giles said.
William scoffed. “Oh, not you too.”
“Did he mention the Dragon’s Eye and its connection to Luxe?” Rupert asked.
“Uh, no?”
Rupert filled him in, making his version of the vampire’s story shorter than the usual Watcher’s report, but he touched on all
the key points – about Luxe taking the Dragon’s Eye from Wolfram & Hart, about him giving it to a gypsy woman who handed
it down to Maya’s Freddy, and then to Maya by default, who passed it to Connor, who proceeded to do Luxe’s bidding via
the Glass, and for which Thellian said the boy must be destroyed.
William leaned a shoulder against the wall, his arms folded across his chest. “Boy’s downstairs now, Rupert. Willow’s trying
her hand at healing him. Wouldn’t do that if Thellian had his claws in her.”
Rupert raised a brow. “Perhaps there’s hope after all, but…”
“But you don’t trust it.”
“Not in the least, and there’s something else,” he said. “Andrew’s research. He discovered a link between the Taonyx
Parchments and the increase of demonic activity in certain geographic locations. Something Eathan Rayne was eager to get
his grips on.”
“Meaning?”
Rupert drew a dramatic breath. “Hellmouths.”
William’s jaw tightened as he bit down on his frustration. “Again, meaning?”
Giles reached for the bottle and sipped. “The short of it: the earth was once pocked with Hellmouths, like… like festering
boils. Over time, many were sealed…”
“Like Stonehenge.”
“Precisely,” Giles said. “And others were destroyed.”
“Ah,” William said, touching his chest where he’d worn a certain amulet. “Like Sunnydale.”
Rupert grinned. “Right. Others still lay dormant, but there are a number of active ones worldwide, like Cleveland, Meaux in
France, Guatemala City, Vidor, Texas…”
“And these parchments,” William interrupted. “What are they, an Atlas of Demonic Scenic Routes?”
“I’m afraid it’s not that simple. The Parchments are untranslated, or were. They contain a conjuration spell of some
magnitude. Andrew managed to untangle some of it, with Dawn’s assistance no doubt, but I’m afraid I’m not up to the
task,” Rupert said.
“And why is that?”
“When Andrew joined The Council, like every other applicant he submitted to a psychological profile and a series of
assessments,” Rupert explained. “He showed certain aptitudes for languages and pattern recognition that were,” he
chuckled in spite of himself, “well, they were off even our charts. Suffice to say it’s a blessing Andrew was in the midst of an
identity crisis when The Trio attempted to overtake Sunnydale…”
William swallowed the lump in his throat. “That right?” he said.
Giles nodded. “Honestly. I don’t know why everyone’s so surprised. Tucker was a genius as well.”
“Who?”
Rupert tsked. “Tucker Wells.” Pause. “Andrew’s brother?”
William shrugged and shifted his weight.
“Regardless,” Rupert went on. “What that boy could do with two weeks and a laptop computer is beyond me.”
William scrubbed his hands over his face. “Rupert,” he said. “Andrew’s hurt. Dawn’s just returned. Said they’d run afoul of
some beasties.”
Giles sat forward. “But… Dawn?”
“Bit’s fine. She said Andrew’s at Parkside, but…”
Rupert sprung from his chair and paced his threadbare rug. When he turned back, his eyes glistened behind his spectacles.
“Look, Spike,” he said, blinking rapidly but not succeeding in his attempt to conceal his tears. “If you don’t lead them,
Thellian surely will, and you know as well as I do how badly that can go for us.”
“That’s right,” William said. “All the reason I nominate you.”
Rupert drew back the sleeve of his jacket to reveal the shriveled flesh beneath. The musty scent of it filled William’s nose,
reminding him of sand and heat and the desert at night, and he knew. He’d seen this kind of damage before, and understood
its gravity.
“A wraith?” he said, and his heart thumped in his chest. After all these months as a human, that lurching heartbeat still took
him by surprise.
“Not a wraith, no,” Rupert agreed. “A Wight.”
William felt sick and numb at the same time. “Rupert, that’s worse,” he said. “How long…?”
Rupert removed his glasses and wiped his eyes with a handkerchief. “The point of contact was here,” he said, indicating the
reddish, shriveled meat that had once been his wrist. “The wound has spread to my shoulder. I could last a week.” He
uttered a bitter laugh. “Probably less. So you see I find myself facing an early retirement.”
William sat down hard in Rupert’s vacated chair. “I don’t have a soddin’ clue about what’s going on,” he said. “Doesn’t help
matters I just blacked Harris’s good eye. That’ll no doubt swing the popular vote.”
Giles pushed a pile of books aside and sat down on his bed. He lifted his eyes to the ceiling and said, “Can’t tell you how often
I’d wanted to do that. And if it helps, half the time in Sunnydale, I hadn’t the slightest clue either.”
Now William really did laugh, but it was more the borderline hysterics kind of laughter than anything resembling amusement.
Giles joined in, and they had themselves a good dose of it until Giles flinched in pain and that sobered them both right up.
After an awkward moment, Giles stared sternly at William and said, “Spike. They need a leader. They need you. Can you lead
them?”
“Lead them where, exactly?” William asked. “If it’s burrowing under the city for buried artifacts, I’ll bring a jack hammer
and fondue. Otherwise, we could be in for some messy disappointment.”
Giles exhaled shakily. “Lead them out of this,” he said at length. “You’ll have to make a plan, of course. Hopefully something
more detailed than studying sewer schematics. You’ll need to learn what Andrew’s discovered from those texts; see if
anything can be done about it. And if Luxe is in fact controlling Connor, you’ll need to deal with that. Then there’s Buffy to
consider.”
Restlessness rose up in William. He got heavily to his feet. “I’ve a feeling she’ll find us as much as we’ll find her.”
“Oh?” Giles seemed genuinely surprised.
“Dream I had,” William said, waving it off. “I’ll start with Dawn. See if I can suss out more about Andrew. Maybe she knows
what he was onto before…”
“Good,” Giles said. He pushed a stack of books onto the floor where they landed with a muffled thud. “Now, if you’ll send
Rachel up, I’d like to have a word.”
With a nod, William left him and went back downstairs. But he didn’t make it to Rachel. As he walked past the door to Buffy’s
and Dawn’s suite, he thought he heard her Dawn crying and decided to investigate.
When he opened the door expecting to find the quaint sitting room with its damp laundry smell and white wicker furniture,
he found himself staring down a ruined, dust-choked corridor of Sunnydale High School.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
.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
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