...And Darkness Will Follow
By Shuvcat C 1999
Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all characters, names, ect. are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, and the WB. No copyright infringement is intended by this work of fiction.
Begun in fall of 1999, finished spring 2001. And it shows, doesn't it?
This one is dedicated with special thanks to everyone who wrote in telling me they enjoyed my other stories. :) Thanks much!
SUNNYDALE GENERAL HOSPITAL
JUNE 1, 1999
2:37 A.M.
The young valley girl intern working the night shift at the desk was doing a crossword puzzle, bobbing along to the tiny boombox over in the corner playing at a hospital-friendly level. So enthralled in the music was she that she didn't notice the revolving door moving; indeed, didn't realize she had a visitor until he was standing at the desk. "Supplies go in the back," she greeted automatically before looking up.
Her pen dropped on the floor with a clatter.
The stranger was a wreck. He was scratched, burned, and his suit was a shameful mess. It was a vast improvement over the state he'd been in, though the girl had no way of knowing that. She did recognize him, though. "Sorry to intrude," the disheveled Mayor Wilkins greeted with a grin, sinking to the floor spite of himself.
The poor girl grabbed the intercom. "I need some help up front, stat!" she exclaimed. She ran around to the front to help the Mayor up from the floor. "Mister...I mean, Mayor...where did you come from?!"
The intern was well aware of the tragic boiler explosion at Sunnydale High the week before. It had caused her to miss an Orgy show in Santa Barbara; the hospital had called her in to help with the huge number of victims. It was all over town that the Mayor and quite a few school officials had died in the blaze, so she was damn surprised to see him alive, much less walking around. The girl got him under the arm, holding him up, and made a face at the huge, weirdly colored gash in his chest...the blood there was so thickly clotted it looked almost black. "Gross," she muttered, whipping out some gauze and stuffing it over the wound nonetheless.
The Mayor afforded her a cold smile. "There's a girl," he applauded weakly. "Thanks ever so much. It's funny, you know...I think I'd be right as rain if I just had something to eat." He looked down at the girl who was holding him up. She was so young. Her skin was as golden as a baked chicken.
The intern nodded. "Just hold still, sir. Randy, Dr. E, over here! It's the Mayor!"
Two doctors came running...and stopped dead in the middle of the hallway like they'd run into a glass wall. "Mayor Wilkins!" the elder doctor exclaimed.
Dr. Effield was the same doctor who had one week earlier told the Mayor that Faith's coma was permanent. Now he stood frozen, startled, not too pleased to be confronted with the politician they'd all believed long dead. The Mayor grinned at them all -- in particular, at Effield. "Well hey there, Ernst! How's tricks?"
The older doctor forced himself to move. "Randy, help me here," he ordered, mouth dry. He and the younger intern helped Wilkins to a gurney. The Mayor didn't seem to be as badly hurt as he'd looked coming in; he sat up by himself.
Effield sent the two young interns to get supplies, and when they were quite alone the Mayor fixed the doctor with a look. "I get the feeling you have news for me," he said pointedly.
Effield nodded. He knew from experience that it would be best for him to tell every single thing that had happened -- good and bad. "There's... been a development. The girl--"
"Yes?" The Mayor's gaze was as sharp as ice.
"She -- died, sir." Effield's deep voice was shaking as he hurried on. "We did all we could for her, but she began bottoming out and...there was no help for her. But then -- we had put her in the morgue, you must understand, we had to, we thought she was dead, anyway, and...I don't know how to say this--"
"Try quickly."
Effield shuddered. "She came back to life," he blurted out. All his training told him it was impossible, and yet that was precisely what had happened. He had examined the corpse -- the girl -- himself. She was sitting upstairs alive right now. She had risen from the dead.
The doctor felt an unprecedented chill creep up his spine as a triumphant leer broke over Mayor Wilkins' face, even through the pain. "Wonderful," he cheered. "That's absolutely wonderful! Oh, don't look so glum, Ernst! The dead are rising. It's only the end of the world." He burst out giggling.
Effield looked extremely uncomfortable. The Mayor suddenly winced, covering his bleeding midsection. Smiling grimly, he drew himself up, gathering. "Here's what you do, Ernst. The watch is on the room now?"
"Yes, sir. We put it on right after....all week." The doctor cleared his throat. "Do you want me to...tell her..."
Mayor Wilkins considered carefully. "No," he decided. "No, my girl already has her hands full. Let her rest, for now." He dropped his voice as the interns came back. "I'll need you to call my secretary, plus a few of my associates. I'll need the chief of police as well. And Ernst..." He grabbed the man's arm.
"Yes, sir."
The Mayor leaned forward. "Lose any record that says I'm here. You know how to do that. I don't think I need to remind you the favors you owe me, do I?"
"N-n-no, sir," whispered Effield. The old doctor looked scared to death, retreating gratefully as the Mayor let him go.
The Mayor leered, pleased, as the interns came to patch him up. He reflected on all the things that needed doing now. It was a full plate, to be sure, but he was already filing them into order, ticking them off on a mental to-do list. First things first. Faith was awake -- that was Important Thing One down. Get himself patched up, then put the house in order. From his aching midsection came a rumbling growl. And eat something, he added. He was famished.
Julie, the chatty intern, had been talking to her patient the whole time. "...wow, first that little girl up on the third floor and now you. Things like this make you wanna believe in higher powers, don't they?" She must have relocated to California from some Southern state, her accent gave her away. "I can't even imagine laying in that wrecked school for a week, you know, anybody else would be dead now! You got an angel on your shoulder, for sure. Are you feeling any better, sir?"
He had only half-heard the girl's babbling. He was staring down at his left wrist, which bore a nasty-looking black gash starting from the center of his palm and extending a few inches under his shredded cuff. The gash was closing. Not as quickly as his skull had the night he'd performed the Dedication -- but the flesh was indeed knitting slowly back together of its own accord. As a demon, he had been vulnerable...but perhaps now that he was back to human......
This was just too neat. The Mayor beamed up at the girl. "Oh, just peachy, thank you! Yep, I was in that explosion, all right. Some kind of fun. Got the stuffins knocked out of me. No, no--" he peeked at her clipboard, where she'd misspelled his name "--it's spelled Wilkins, my dear. Two Is. Two in my head and a store in the pantry." He chuckled. "And you say it's been a week? My, my, how time flies. It was only just now that I was able to pull myself together." The Mayor couldn't stop smiling. The good news about Faith, and now his apparently restored invincibility, had him feeling quite chipper indeed. "My, you're a good nurse! I guess all that funding went to the right place, didn't it? I believe I'll have to give this place a commendation. And you -- Julie, is it? You ought to have something very special. A medal, perhaps. Or maybe even a statue." His stomach grumbled, the effort of healing himself was wreaking havoc on his appetite.
Julie giggled. "Wow, thanks!" she said, taking his blood pressure. "Y'know, I only took this job for the college credit!"
"Well, perhaps you should look into it as a career," he told her pleasantly. "You're very, very good at it." He looked down at the warm, sun-dappled hand that was taking his pulse. "That's a marvelous tan. You don't go to one of those tanning places, do you?" His wrist slipped out of her fingers and his hand closed over hers.
Julie rolled her eyes shyly. Somewhat nervously. "Uh, no...no, I go to the beach," she answered. She glanced down the hall, which was suddenly deserted. Randy and Dr. Effield had taken off, were nowhere in sight.
"That's good." The Mayor had turned the girl's hand upward and was massaging her palm like he was reading her fortune. "Real sunlight is very good for the skin, contrary to what you may hear." He wouldn't let go of her hand.
Julie was getting the creeps. "Sir," she said, trying to pull away. "Um, sir....oh, my God--"
Wilkins smiled at the intern's brown skin. "Very good indeed," he said. And he brought the girl's hand up and took a rather large bite out of the fleshy part of her palm.
Julie's scream caught in her throat for a moment -- she couldn't quite believe what had just happened -- but she screamed again as the Mayor took another and then another bite of her hand and then her arm, teeth gnashing and tearing, drinking deeply of the young energy in her flesh; stripping muscle and sinew to the bone.
.
*********************************
.
"Have some meatloaf?" asked Joyce.
Buffy sat miserably at the breakfast table. Since the episode with Faith yesterday, Buffy hadn't felt like eating, sleeping or doing anything, for that matter. "No thanks Mom," she answered wearily.
Joyce looked worriedly at her daughter. She had returned from her sister Arlene's in Illinois the day before, where Buffy had sent her to be safe during the Ascension, and though her daughter was happy to see her there was a gloominess hanging over the house that not even the bright sunshine seemed to be able to dispel. Joyce sighed. "Come on, Buffy! You defeated a snake demon, you saved the whole senior class from getting eaten! You got into UC Sunnydale! There's a whole huge summer in front of you, your last hurrah before college! Don't you wanna do....well...something?"
Buffy was not consoled. In the first place, all she could think of was how she had failed. Save the world? She couldn't even save one person. I didn't save Faith, she thought. I couldn't keep Angel from leaving. Last time I saw him....
She shuddered. The last time she'd seen him, or something that resembled him, was in the surreal nightmare of hell last week. Buffy wasn't sure if what she had faced in hell had really been Angelus. Perhaps that was where Angel's evil nature was forced to reside as long as the vampire had a soul. It was kind of a comforting thought -- he's there, we're here. But it was a false comfort, for Buffy knew that the barrier could be broken so easily, that Angelus could be summoned by something as simple as Angel's happiness. It was one reason why he had to go away. And deep down Buffy knew what she'd killed in hell was not the actual Angelus, it couldn't be that easy. It had just been an illusion. But it didn't make beheading something that wore your lover's face any easier.
Buffy shuddered. For another thing, in the week she'd spent tiptoeing around the inevitable hospital visit, some seriously weird things had been happening in Sunnydale. Entire city blocks were blowing up. She and Giles had been checking it out all week. One looked just like the gas explosion that the cops were tagging it as, but the other one...it was weird. It had occured near the Carnegie Street Plaza Mall...or where the plaza used to be. Where big large buildings had once stood, there was nothing. Literally nothing. The entire block was swept as flat as a board, everything on it gone -- telephone poles, trees, leaving nothing but light scatterings of black ash left behind. Like a Godzilla- sized Slayer had staked an entire city block. The police were writing this one off as a gas explosion too, but anyone could see the two weren't the same. As Giles noted, this last one was an implosion. Nothing had been destroyed....it had all been sucked away somewhere.
With a shiver, Buffy shook these thoughts away. "You're right, Mom," she decided. "What did you have in mind? Let's see....picnic at the school park's out, can't really hang at the plaza since it's been sucked off the face of the earth, and the police have pretty much cordoned off the street leading to the mall so...."
The phone rang. Buffy jumped off the stool, picking it up for lack of something better to do. "Hello?"
"Buffy, I'm so sorry--" Giles again.
Buffy blinked. "Please don't tell me it was a dream."
"What?" The librarian sounded confused for a moment, then got it. "Oh....no, nothing of the sort. You did indeed bring Faith back to life last week. "
"What a relief."
"I just thought I should bring to your attention....well, have you been watching the news, by chance?"
"No." Buffy went into the living room and clicked on the remote. "Right now?"
The KOUS midday report was on. "....another explosion, the fourth in a series of incidents which the beleaguered city is blaming on the faulty sewer system. This fourth explosion--"
"Fourth?" Buffy was stumped. "What'd I miss?"
On TV a helicopter shot of what looked like San Francisco Bay after an atom bomb attack flashed on screen. "-- was the scene at the warehouse on Dock 29 today. Fourteen loaders lost their lives when what is believed to be a gas leak triggered an explosion that leveled the warehouse and burned everything to the ground. As you can see, nearly nothing remains of the once thriving dock. This comes the same week after the mystery explosions that wiped out almost the entire block between Orange and Cannell streets, the Carnegie Street Plaza, and of course the tragic boiler explosion at Sunnydale's high school graduation ceremony. That explosion claimed the lives of several students and faculty, including the city's mayor, Richard Wilkins III. Candlelight vigils will be held--"
"Good Morning Denialand," commented Buffy dryly. "I get it, they're counting the school, too. Okay, so another place got sucked. Clue me in, Giles, what's the drama?"
"Hopefully nothing," Giles said. "However, I was moved to reread the test last evening regarding the Ascension. There is a passage--" Sound of pages shuffling. "--here, it will be familiar, I'm sure....'The beast will walk upon the earth'--"
"--'And darkness will follow'," finished Buffy. "Mayor Maynot's book of the week. So?"
"The text continues," Giles told all of the gang as they sat listening in his apartment. "'The several races of man will be as one in their terror and destruction. The Darkness in Distaff Manifest shall cause the Earth to tremble in the wake of the Cleansing. The Destroyer of Shadows shall open the Portal and the End shall come to pass.'" He adjusted his glasses.
Everyone just sat there staring. "Well, guess the Days-Since-Our-Last-Last-Day billboard goes back to zero," Xander spoke for all of them.
"The End?" Buffy couldn't believe this. "As in, the End? Isn't that what we just knocked ourselves out stopping for eleventieth time?!"
Giles couldn't give them a definite answer. "Well, the Mayor has not made an appearance," he pointed out, "so we may assume he is indeed out of the picture."
"Knock on wood," murmured Willow, looking worried. She was alternating between kicking her feet as she sat on Giles' desk and trying to read the arcane text over his shoulder.
"But the thing that worries me," Giles said, trying to keep Willow's nose out of the book, "are the references to the Cleansing and the Portal. Does anyone remember the town of Sharpsville?"
"Nobody does," said Oz. "I thought that was the point."
"Indeed." Giles walked over to his desk and traded one ancient volume for another. "An Ascension happened there, and the town was destroyed. Rather, completely obliterated. If we go back to the Marenschadt Text--" He flipped a few onionskin pages. "Ah, here it is. A pair of farmers, bringing their cattle to the market, came to find the town had entirely vanished."
"Right, Lohesh destroyed it," piped up Willow.
"Yes, but apparently, the demon himself vanished directly afterward," said Giles. "Either that or it was destroyed, but considering the great measures needed to kill one I don't see how that's likely."
"But he must have vanished into Never Never Land," Xander deduced, "'cause the world's still here, right?"
"Right." Giles nodded, flipping a page. "The author suggests Lohesh may have induced some rip in the continuum, pulling itself and the town in. The farmers who were there said there was not a stick, a stone, animal or house to prove a town had ever been there at all. According to this there was no wreckage, nothing to suggest any kind of battle. There was just....nothing."
"So... what?" asked Buffy. "The town got vacuum-sucked off the face of the earth?"
"For lack of a better term, yes. Apparently the Mayor's transformation was only the first step of a larger process. He may not have been planning to destroy the town, he might have been planning to carry it off into another dimension -- probably using the Hellmouth as a focal point. The point being, it may not matter that the Mayor himself is now dead. In the light of these explosions -- or more precisely, implosions... "
"It's trying to suck us in even with the Mayor gone?" Willow moaned.
"Auto-pilot voodoo," agreed Oz, getting it.
Everyone was dead silent, faced once again with imminent destruction. "There goes summer vacation," said Xander.
No one laughed. It was one thing to try keeping a lid on a volcano of evil; but when the volcano itself took on a mind of its own.....
"Wait, what's this mean?" Willow pointed at the spidery text. "'The Destroyer of Shadows'?"
Giles shook his head. "It's pure redundancy. Reference to the Mayor. I don't suppose it means anything."
"It must mean something, it's written with capitals. See? Um...." Willow backed off at Giles' pointed look. ".....So, okay, what do we do to keep the world from sucking?"
"There's always Greenpeace," observed Oz.
"There's reference made to a key," said Giles, paging through the book. "The ascended conjurer normally has a maxim of two days to complete feeding and gather strength for the Opening. Obviously there's been some anomaly resulting from the Mayor's death, otherwise we'd all be dead now. In any case, the keeper must then use the key.....oh..." Giles suddenly looked like someone who has walked into a glass door. "Oh...dear God..."
"Boy, that doesn't sound good," said Xander.
Willow had seen it too. "It's the amulet!" she exclaimed.
"The Gleaves amulet," Giles couldn't believe it. "The one that Balthazar was after. It's right here...there's even a sketch of it." He leaned against the desk, stunned at his own thickheadedness. "No wonder he wanted it. The amulet is the key. It was here the whole time."
"Whatever happened to that amulet anyway?" asked Xander.
"Angel had it last," said Buffy, trying to remember. "I gave it to him.... for safekeeping." Her heart jumped, she had an excuse to --
"He gave it back to us," Giles interrupted. "To Wesley, rather. There's a discouraging thought....he's still in the hospital."
"Oh." Buffy was disappointed. "Well....I guess we go to the hospital and ask him."
Giles was glum. "Pendleton Hospital. In London."
Buffy blinked. "Oh," she said again. That was bad.
"I will ring them," Giles added. "This is of utmost urgency. The amulet is the key to whatever portal the Mayor hoped to open. As long as the amulet is unaccounted for, this entire town is a ticking time bomb."
"I'll check out the reserves," volunteered Xander. "Maybe ol' Wes left it in a box of party favors." He got up to go root through the library boxes.
"I'll hit the streets," sighed Buffy, getting up. "See if anyone knows why the town's sucking.....you know...more than usual, I mean."
"Lack of industry?" offered Willow brightly.
Oz shook his head. "Tourists," he said laconically. "They're wrecking the place."
.
*******************
.
The group of men walking down the street looked very out of place wearing full-body rain gear on a hot sunny California afternoon. They hiked purposefully along in hip boots, raincoats, gloves and huge umbrella hats. "This is degrading!" snarled one of them in the back as they stomped down the sidewalk.
The leader peered through his sunglasses, yellow eyes regarding the large City Hall building with cool resentment. "If this is who he says he is," he answered the lower vampire, "you're gonna have mucho more to worry about than degradation." On that hopeful note they entered the cool, dark building.
Inside they could shed the rain gear, respectable vampires once again. They walked toward the office, and the leader banged on the hardwood door. "C'mon in!" called out a cheery voice.
The vampires, invited, opened the door. They piled into the room -- and froze at seeing none other than Mayor Wilkins sitting in his old chair. "Mayor!!" gasped the leader.
The Mayor beamed at them. He was a fearful sight. He'd dressed in a nice clean suit and was paler than usual, which in turn made his hair redder than usual, but for all that plus a few small scratches he looked more or less human. His beam widened into a toothy grin. "Hey, hey, the gang's all here! Now, you didn't think I was going to let a little thing like fiery incineration keep me down, did ya?"
The vamps were struck speechless at the sight of their thought-to-be-dead boss. They were among the many indebted demons who had been relieved to hear of the Mayor's demise, so seeing him up and breathing was an unpleasant shock.
Mayor Wilkins got up out of his chair, and more than one of them backed off a step. "Here's the thing," he said matter-of-factly, as though the past few days had never happened and he was picking up right where he'd left off, "I don't have my pet project anymore. Now, I was depressed about this at first, of course who wouldn't be. Gosh, you prepare for something for two centuries, you hope for the best and to have it all go up in flames like that....well, that's a bitter pill to swallow, I don't mind telling you."
The vamps said nothing. They just stared.
The Mayor burst out giggling. "For pete's sake, where are my manners?! Do you fellas want something to drink?" He strode over to his voodoo liquor cabinet.
"Mr. Mayor." The gang leader stepped forward. "Not that we aren't glad to see you...." he glanced back at his gang, which he had taken control of and which he sure as hell wasn't going to give up without a fight, "....but from what I heard, the Slayer took you down pretty hard. Sure, you look solid enough--" his lips pulled back over his fangs "--but who's to say you're not as weak and powerless as all the other meat out there?"
The Mayor had been rooting around in his cabinet, seemingly not paying much attention to the vamp's words. He made a noise like a cough. "Well.....George, isn't it? That sounds uneasily like a challenge. I know you boys have a certain pecking order you like to go by." He straightened, turning from the cabinet with a large, tarnished and bejewelled sword in his hand. He handled the weapon gingerly, it looked to be antique steel. "You're not challenging me, are you?"
George sneered. He had come to Sunnydale only a few days before the disaster at the high school, and had heard all about the so-called terrifying Mayor of the city. If this dude couldn't even figure out that steel couldn't kill vampires -- beheading would, but George happened to be wearing a large, decorative and very thick steel neck brace for just such maneuvers -- then Mr. Mayor wasn't long for this world. Snarling, George jumped forward to kill the man, bored already.
Splunch. George came to a sudden, violent stop, inches before the Mayor's impassive face. The vampire looked down at his chest, in which the ornate sword was sticking. His clothes were crumbling.
The Mayor watched with some amusement as George fell apart just like Yosemite Sam in the cartoons -- feet, body, then face, the eyeballs remaining then crumbling last. Wilkins frowned down at the collapsing pile -- right on the rug. Rats. He looked up at the remaining, gap-jawed vampires. "Somebody wanna clean that up?" he asked.
The vamps fell over themselves doing just that. The Mayor whipped out a handkerchief and wiped the dust off his dusty sword. "Good ol' Bessie," he smiled. "Corinthian steel.....'cause if you can't kill the demons as well as the humans, why even bother?" He chuckled, realizing how much like a commercial it sounded.
He set about telling the vamps the new game plan. "The thing is," he added, "since my, uh, accident, I've become very much like you gentlemen. I've developed quite a taste for human flesh, of all things. I need it to survive now, in fact. It's a holdover from the transformation. I'll need some of you to hunt for me."
"Absolutely, sir," spoke up one vamp. He seemed to have been appointed the new leader.
"Fan-tasic." The Mayor leaned back against his desk, hands folded primly on the hilt of his sword. "Thanks for wiping up that mess for me. Oh, and if you see the chief of police out in the hallway, send him in, would you?" He looked down at the floor. "The janitor too, if you can grab him. If the chief behaves anything like George, he'll be a heck of a lot harder to clean out of the rug."
The vampires filed dutifully out of the office. The Mayor snapped his fingers at one of them. "Hey, Milo! Hang on a sec. How'd that recon go? Able to find her, were you?"
The teenaged vampire hung back, grinning. "Kinda hard to miss." He shut the door on his departing comrades. "She's sitting in a little place called the Bronze. Been on a bender all week."
The Mayor raised an eyebrow, musing over this. "She always did like the gin a little too much," he muttered. "Brilliant work, Holmes." He walked over to his cabinet again. Sitting among the voodoo charms and shrunken heads was a new object -- a dresden china plate of what might have been chicken legs, were it not for their uncooked red color. Without any hesitation he picked up a piece and took a big bite out of it. "Who says red meat is bad for you?" he enthused. "No wonder you fellows are so partial to it. Forget needing it to survive -- it's absolutely delicious." He finished up with the bone and set it down next to several other bones of unusual shape and size. "Not to mention it promotes good muscle knitting. You're quite sure it's her, are you Milo?"
The boy nodded. "Not that many eighty year old ladies at the Bronze, sir," he assured him. "Ain't really Senior Night at the Bingo Barn, if you know what I mean."
The Mayor had eased down into his plush chair, wincing slightly. For all the front he was putting up, he still wasn't up to snuff yet. A rather large leather bound volume was lying open on his desk, and he began paging though it after wiping his hands thoroughly with a moist towellete. "And this incident last week -- that was her? You're absolutely sure about that? Because with these, ah, gas main problems--"
"It was her." The boy was sure. "The one vamp that got out alive said she turned half his gang to dust before she did the block. The other incidents....they're different. Imploding, self-cleaning. This was a fire, a total mess."
"Yes." The Mayor had struck on a passage in the book. "That's what the books say, too. A deity at once young and old, the face of an angel and the power of a god." He shut the book, letting out a pleased sigh. "Of all people....sometimes fate is just nuts, y'know? Oh, I knew from the start she was coming -- I planned to meet her when she came. Destroy her, if she started getting cute ideas. For a while there, I thought I'd already met her. Now it turns out I was righter than even I guessed." He chuckled. "The power she has now....she probably doesn't even realize it."
The youthful vamp thought it might be a good idea to voice an opinion. "With all due respect, sir....she ain't lookin' so good right now. Kind of...well, kind of like--"
"Death warmed over?" The Mayor smiled, eyes lost in sights unseen. "You never saw her during her peach days. My Edna was quite a looker in her youth. As for her present condition.... well, I'd be a pretty darn superficial husband if I placed store in things like that." He was gazing very intently into the distance, only half-speaking to his visitor. "I want her, son. She's worth a thousand Ascensions. I want her so badly.... I can taste it." His eyes gleamed.
The boy mused this. "First you have to get close to her," he pointed out.
The Mayor was smiling. "I already have," he answered pointedly.
.
*******************
.
The barkeeper at the Bronze cast a disgusted glance at the ghastly-looking figure that was been sitting in the dimly lit corner booth. She'd come in for the first time a week ago, as wringing wet as if she'd been in a rainstorm, acting dizzy and weird. She had stumbled up to the bar that first night, muttering something about it not being Mr. Grainger's Sweet Shoppe anymore, and had then requested a lemon phosphate. Whatever that was. At last she'd settled for gin with a lot of lemon squeezed in it. Since then she was here every day, all day -- if the barkeeper didn't know better he'd think she'd been sitting in that booth continuously all week long. Of course that was impossible; she must just be sneaking in at open and leaving at close without anyone noticing. In any case she was a fixture in the corner, as silent and frozen as a statue. She might have croaked right there and no one would have known except for the fact that she had ordered drink after drink, and it was a nuisance not only because she wouldn't drink anything except gin but because that first night she'd tried to get away with not paying for it. "Aren't you forgetting something?" the barkeep had asked her then.
Dazedly, the woman had rummaged around in her soggy purse, which held nothing but mud and rotted leather. Light dawned....the coins they'd placed over her eyelids....She dug into her chapping leather shoe and dug out a pair of coins...dated 1899. "Thank you kindly," she'd said in a croak, turning to leave.
"Hey!" The barkeep had barked. "We don't take Canadian coins here, grandma!"
The woman had whirled around, her black eyes smoldering. The barkeep had stared for a minute at those black, bottomless eyes, feeling a weird sweat break over his body. He didn't like this old girl at all.
A hand slammed down on the bar. The gaze was broken, the barkeep felt like he'd escaped something awful, though he couldn't have guessed what. The newcomer, a blonde and handsome and apparently an apprentice barkeep, had been flopped his hand over the moldy old coins. The kid grinned at both of them. "Lady.....you're obviously had a bad day." He pulled out a dollar and put it on the bar. "Drink's on me." He smiled at the old bat.
The crone blinked, but curtseyed politely. "Some men still know how to treat a lady," she rasped, casting an unhappy smile at them. "Much obliged, son." She took her drink and shuffled into the corner.
The barkeep begrudgingly took the dollar, glaring at the young apprentice. The boy just grinned. "Dude, you know what these bring on Ebay?" He happily scooped up the cruddy old coins. "Give her whatever she wants, and put it on my bill."
"You're never in here!" the older barkeep yelled. The kid had ignored him, and decided on the spur of the moment to take a personal day, bailing out the back door in a hurry. All this had happened a week ago, and the old lady had remained in that corner ever since.
Now the older barkeep had had enough of this. His other hirees were too creeped out by the old bat, he would have to go over there and talk to her himself. He ambled over to the dark corner, which, even in the middle of summer, felt a few degrees colder than the rest of the air-conditioned club. How she could sit there in that wet dress without freezing her ass off was beyond him. That was another thing he didn't like about this gal -- she was always WET, like an invisible thundercloud was constantly dumping rain on her. The barkeep wrinkled his nose, wondering if she was going to mildew his seat. He gathered his courage. "Lady," he muttered, "I'm guessing you're down on your luck and all, but this place ain't the homeless shelter. There's a Red Cross a couple blocks away."
The old thing moved her head miserably, as if she were either too drunk or too heartbroken to listen. "My husband's burning in hell," came her voice in a faint gutteral rasp. "Worse...he despises me." She sighed, a long, shuddering, aching sigh. "I tried so hard....you cook and clean for a man, give him your best years, slaughter your family, give him your soul and after all that--"
Okay, she was clearly bonko. The barkeep heaved a disgusted sigh. "Listen, Baby Jane, happy hour's over. Come on, lady--"
"You can't throw me out, I've paid." It was clear she had no intention of going anywhere.
Well, yeah, legally he couldn't throw her out, but she was starting to give him the creeps. "Listen, lady, I can make you leave if I think you're being a nuisance, and you're getting there. If you don't clear out real quick--" He grabbed her wrist, not really hard but hard enough to scare her a little.
Her head jerked up and she stared him full in the face again. The barkeep froze. Hers was like the face on a weatherbeaten marble statue, dead-white and streaked with black tracks that must have been mascara stains...he hoped. Her eyes were tar-black and slimy like jellyfish. A grotesque smile bled over her face like a throat being cut. "Aren't you sweet," she snarled heatedly. "I can make you skin yourself alive."
The barkeep had seen enough in the Bronze to know when he'd made a fatal mistake. "Sorry...ma'am," he muttered, suddenly real nervous. "Miss ....please..."
His left hand, the one that was free, moved over the table and picked up a butter knife. He was not taking it of his own will. Edna Mae and the barkeep both watched, he in dread, she in something like amusement as he laid the dull blade against his own hairy arm, ready to peel his own flesh like an apple skin. "Lady, please!!" he pleaded.
The old bat was smiling, a chilling half-smile. Dear, this was fun. She was going to make him take the first incising cut when she stopped, suddenly. Her wrist really hurt, a great deal.
Edna Mae frowned, shocked by how much the man's meaty hand was really crushing her. It was different from the torments of hell; duller, less dramatic, but no less painful. She could not be a ghost any longer -- this pain was too real for that. She had guessed at her nature when she found she could not move through walls, or sense things from across miles, like she'd done for the near-century of her ghost state. She was human, through some unhappy miracle; she was flesh and blood again, and could be hurt, perhaps even killed. What fun.
She cast a dark, defeated glare at the barkeeper. "I've no wish to return to hell," she told him. "You may consider yourself my first act of redemption." She let him fall on the floor, uncut, unhurt. "Away with you. And bring me another of these, please. With more lemon."
The frightened barkeeper didn't know why she'd let him go. But he did just what she told him to, fully prepared to let her sit in that booth till the millenium if she wanted. Minutes later there was a refreshed glass on her table, two generous wedges of lemon on the rim.
Edna Mae gazed miserably at the drink, the umpteenth in a week of drinks. She was no Saloon Sadie, far from it, but the occasion called for alcohol if any did. Gin was a ladies' drink, at least, and what she really wanted was the lemon. She plucked a wedge from the glass with bony fingers, brought it to her nose so she could taste the light, sunny scent. There were memories associated with that scent. Spring days, trees full of flowers, a warm breeze and a warmer hand to hold....
"Why aren't you afraid of me?" he asked her once during their courtship.
They were walking in the park together, on one of those shining April days, sharing a bag of peanuts as they strolled down the path. He'd looked so strong and handsome, the sun catching his hair on fire, and she had a new swishy white dress, her curled black locks hanging near-perfectly around her neck. She swung her new frilled parasol, in a silly mood that day. "Oh, was I supposed to fear you? I hadn't realized."
Mayor Wilkins chuckled at that. "You never have to fear me," he assured her. "I'm just wondering why, out of all your wise sisters and everyone else in this town....you don't." He sounded nearly serious, for once.
She'd stopped in the path, facing him, pursing her soft lips skeptically. "Because." She stood very close to him, standing on tiptoe, staring into his odd-colored eyes. "You're hiding something," she said.
"I am."
"You are." She tilted her head, as if searching him out. "Oh, there's the facade you have for everybody, the politics and the manners....I know that. The mask for your so-called evil core." She smiled, having sneaked her arms around him. "But I think all your talk of being soulless is just that. You do have a soul, Richard Wilkins. A tiny shining spark, like a bit of glass buried beneath the ashes. I see it everytime you look at me. I can see it, glowing in there.... even if you and all the God-fearing world can't." She nearly touched noses with him, her voice becoming playfully sinister. "And if you don't watch yourself.... I may just save it for you."
He'd smiled, amused at this ridiculous statement. "You'll save my soul."
"I will." She was in a thoroughly silly mood, she had to admit, but didn't care. He brought out this side of her, that was why she loved him. "I'll reach into your breast and pluck it out and put it in a charm box, and I'll keep it under my bed. I'll not let any harm come to it. And when I'm old and grey and I know my death is near, I'll open the box and take it out and swallow it down like a lemon drop. And I'll bring you to heaven with me. And we'll be happy forever."
The Mayor, her sweetheart, was looking like he'd just seen a three-headed duck. He burst out giggling. "Really?" Sometimes his Edna was just a wonder. "Well, that'd be a neat trick. Be sure and let me know when you get ready to do that. I'd love to see you pull it off." But he was laughing, and she was laughing too. It had been the loveliest day.
Tears sprang to the old crone's eyes, so she set the lemon down on the table, and rubbed her aching wrist to get her mind off other pains. Being a ghost had had its advantages, at least she never needed worry about small things like injuries or food or sleep, and many a night she had sat invisible at her husband's side, allowed to rant and scream at him unheard for hours... or to wring some small comfort from being so near, if ever so far. Now she didn't even have those things. At least her power seemed to remain, she may still defend herself.
Against what, she wondered darkly. Was anything worse than the melancholy she felt now? She had told the bartender she didn't wish to return to hell, but she was beginning to wonder if she wasn't, truly, still in it. Nothing about this place seemed much improved over where she'd been. Even the gin wasn't any good. The lights, the noise, the shrieking people in their hideous clothes... it was worse than any nightmare.
This being the Bronze, a band was performing on the modest stage. Dingoes Ate My Baby had tagged along (without Oz) on a summer tour with a bigger, better band (which was to say they were roadies), and another group was sitting in tonight. The lead singer was a slight, angelic looking little girl with a high, haunting lilt of a voice. Even Edna Mae, who was used to sitting room recitals and couldn't bear the hideous noise that had been performed the previous nights, found herself in thrall to the quavering music, enhanced by some newfangled machine. It reminded her of a Victrola recording left warping out in the sun, which struck her as appropriate. The few words she could make out from the girl's blurry delivery broke her heart:
"But now I know that it wasn't meant to be
Cause all has been lost and all has been won
And there's nothing left for us to save
But now I know that I don't want to be alone today
So if you find that you've been feeling just the same
Call me now it's alright, it's just the end of the world
You need a friend in the world 'cause you can't hide
So call and I'll get right back
If your intentions are pure
I'm seeking a friend for the end of the world
There will be no commitment and no confessions
And no little secrets to keep.
No little children or houses with roses just the end
of the world and me."
Black tears spilled down the woman's cheeks. It truly was the end of the world her husband had been aiming for -- and there would be no children, no trellised gardens, not even a grave next to the one she loved. This had to be hell. It was just like the nature of the universe to plant that seed of hope in her head, that belief that she might actually find her beloved, and that he might actually still love her back, after everything she'd done. Now she was completely without hope. It didn't matter what this place called itself. She was in hell.
Without any warning, someone suddenly flopped down in the seat across from her.
Edna Mae's head snapped up, glaring hotly at the uninvited stranger. "Hey," the kid grinned. "Remember me? Of course you do, the charitable dude who bought you all those drinks? I gotta thank you, those coins you gave me paid for it fifty times over, lady." He grinned. "Hope they weren't family hierlooms or something."
"This table is taken," Edna growled halfheartedly. "You show your coarse upbringing by seating yourself here." When that didn't move him she added, "I don't fear you, boy. I've seen far worse and I'm willing to wager I'm more frightful than you can dream."
The boy laughed. "From what I've heard, yeah, I bet you are." He nearly sounded sincere. "Lady -- do you even know where you are? You--" His eyes widened in realization. "You don't, do you?! Crap, lady--"
Filthy little monkey. She fell back on the oldest warning she had. "My husband will be along presently, if you don't--"
"Your husband wouldn't be the Mayor, would he?" the boy interrupted.
Edna Mae stopped. Her eyes were huge. The kid nodded. "Yeah," he smiled. "I thought that'd get your attention." He leaned forward. "See, he sent me to get you."
To get you. Edna didn't know whether to take that as a miracle or a threat. She decided to take it as a lie. "My husband's dead," she bleated, not knowing whether that mattered or not.
"Yeah, and a second ago he was gonna come along and kick my ass for taking his seat." The boy was smooth, or so he seemed to think anyway. "He didn't think you'd believe me. He said to tell you hell's not half as lovely as you are."
Edna gasped. She held her shaking hand to her mouth. It was true, then. She couldn't begin to think what to make of this. Did he want to reconcile with her? She feared that was quite unlikely, considering their last conversation. It was because of Faith. He'd been so furious.... and now he was throwing down the gauntlet. This was a challenge -- an invitation to war.
Edna Mae looked up at the boy with eyes darker than pitch. If she was going back to hell, she wasn't going alone. "Well that's that, then," she answered quietly. "Take me to him." She held out her hand.
The boy very graciously took it, leading her out of her seat, out of the Bronze.
.
*******************
.
Buffy stalked down the street, the sky turning purple in the descending twilight. A thumbnail moon grinned in the sky, and even though it was late spring in southern California, her breath came in cold gasps.
"That's weird," she spoke aloud, watching her words evaporate in the air.
"Peculiar weather we're having, isn't it?" Xander was at her side, the only slaying pal she could come up with in the absence of Faith or Angel. "Nice weather for the end of the world."
"Guess hell really is going to freeze over." She gripped her stake as they headed for the docks. They had decided that if any answers were to be found they would be found at the last place that had gotten sucked, so they had come here.
Xander looked nervously over at Buffy. Not that Slaying exactly accomodated a nice long chat fest, but the gorgeous blonde girl had barely said two connecting sentences since he'd met up with her. Xander wondered what or who she was thinking of now. Was she thinking of Angel? More than likely. Deadboy was never far from Buffy's thoughts, Xander knew from experience. Did she think of Faith, laying in the hospital a couple miles from here? Buffy hadn't said much about the visit that Xander knew she'd paid on the other Slayer. He had the distinct feeling it hadn't been a curling party. Buffy's sewn-up-tight demeanor spelled out that she didn't want to talk about it.
They were approaching the scene of the last implosion. As they approached the area, they stopped dead. "Wow..." whistled Xander. For once he had nothing clever to say.
The shore was completely empty.
Buffy only knew it was the dock because of the buildings they'd passed coming here. It was the same dock where she had tried to talk sense into Faith for pretty much the last time, the same place where Mr. Trick had attacked them, and been dusted doing so. Faith had dusted him, saving Buffy's life. Buffy recoiled from the thought of Faith like she'd been stung, and focused instead on the utter devastation around her. Or rather, the lack of. The place had been wiped clean. There were no buildings, no debris, not even any litter. The waves crashed quietly against the bare gravel beach, like even they were in awe at the sight. There was a clean space about a hundred yards wide, almost a perfect circle, in the midst of which was a blackened spot of ash, like a mini-nuclear bomb had gone off. "Creepy," muttered Buffy.
"That's an understatement." Xander tried to grin and didn't make it. They walked to the center of the dustbowl and stared at the pile of ashes, about six feet wide and concaved, forming a basin.
"It got sucked under," whispered Buffy, as if someone around might still hear. "Look at the ashes. They're still caving." The pile was indeed moving downward, sucking itself in like a black hole.
Police sirens wailed somewhere in the distance. "Okay, nothing to be found here," Xander blurted cheerfully, backing off. "Let's go before it gets hungry."
"Yeah," muttered Buffy, none too eager to stay either. "Let's go to the school." They left the ashes, and the circle, alone on the darkening, eerie beach.
"Why the school?" asked Xander as they walked.
Buffy shrugged. "Process of elimination. Besides vampires, what else do you know that sucks people into oblivion?"
"The Hellmouth," Xander got it. "Back to school, then. Gee, y'know, we've spent more time at school this week than we did when we went there. Can't miss it if you don't leave, can ya?"
They hurried up the block. The school looked pretty much as it had the previous week; the grounds were deserted but still tied off with yellow police tape. Buffy and Xander stopped, looking over the demolished ruins. "What's wrong with this picture?" asked Buffy.
Xander shrugged. "Besides the desk legs shoved through tree trunks?"
"No Mayor meat." Buffy was staring at the ground. "Non habeus corpus."
Xander looked around worriedly. "Well.....that could be anything....maybe the health department scraped him off the sidewalk."
"Why am I really afraid that's unlikely?" Buffy had a real bad feeling about this. Suddenly she grabbed her stake.
Xander froze too. "What?" He was gamely armed with two stakes, but wasn't sure if he could handle even one. "Um, is it something carnivorous?"
"Stop right there!" A new voice barked out of the dark, and a blinding light flashed them. "Hands in the air!" A police officer was aiming a giant searchlight at them. "Drop what you're holding and put your hands on your head! Walk toward me!"
Buffy and Xander looked at each other. They dropped their stakes and crossbows. "Is there a problem, officer?" Xander called, trying to look innocent.
"Just keep your hands up!" The cop holding the light on them came forth. "I'm placing both of you under arrest!" He pulled out a pair of cuffs and made for Buffy.
Buffy fought an incredible urge to chop her way out of this. He was just a cop, but her feeling of dread was intensifying. "Under arrest for what?!" she burst out.
Another cop had materialized from nowhere, cuffing Xander. "We've got reason to believe you're responsible for the terrorist act here at the school last week," the cop informed them. "We have witnesses placing you here at the time of the explosion --"
"Half the school was here!" protested Buffy.
The officer continued. "-- with a plunger and detonator," he lowered the hammer.
Xander sneered. "Hey, kinda blows a hole through that faulty gas line story, doesn't it?" he nagged. "Terrorism? Have you guys been living in this town long?"
The officer looked more than happy to cuff the loudmouthed kid. "You have the right to remain silent," he began the list. "Anything you say --"
"Don't worry," whispered Buffy to Xander. "I'll call Giles. He'll get us out." She was plenty worried herself, but wouldn't admit it.
Xander had no such qualms. "Yeah, gee, they'll never nail us on this trumped-up charge," he muttered gloomily.
.
*******************
.
Midnight on the Clabbering Bridge.
A black limosine pulled up to the west landing. The headlights peered nervously into the dark, illuminating something on the other side, white like a pillar of salt. "There. There she is," said the driver -- Milo, the vamp who had sold Edna Mae's coins.
The passenger paused momentarily to gaze through the tinted glass at the apparition. "The lady materializes," he applauded, opening his own door. "Good job, Milo. Cut the engine.....stealing a woman's heart takes time, after all." With a smirk, Mayor Wilkins stepped out of the limosine, shoes crunching on the gravel.
Clabbering Bridge had been built the year they were married. It used to be shiny and quaint, covered with creeping ivy and white flowers every spring. Now it was brown and rusted and not exactly safe, much less inviting to flowers or any other sane life form. The Wilkinses stood on opposite sides of the bridge, and it was the Mayor who moved first, walking over the boards, shadowed by the car lights. He came within a safe distance of her -- and took one more step.
Edna Mae was virtually unchanged from her appearance in hell. She was dripping wet and caked with dirt from the grave; her dress was a mudbath. The atmosphere around her was so cold that there was ice on her shoes. Her eyes stared blackly out with a dangerous heated vibe that could be felt; her face somewhat repaired, smooth once again but so white and waxy that the delicate web of blue veins could be seen at her temples. Mud trickled down her neck.
"My God," he marveled. "I do believe you look lovelier every time I see you."
No comment. The grisly apparition just stood there, dripping and glaring.
The Mayor nodded. "I know, you're right," he continued, as if she'd spoken aloud. "It's a pretty foolish man who marries the greatest gal in three counties and doesn't even realize it." He took a step forward. "That's one thing I've always regretted, not telling you how wonderful I thought you were. After all you did for me." Another step. "You gave up everything....your family, your youth, your soul, and how did I thank you? I never did. Not even once." He was face to face with her now, gazing at her dilapidated form like she was the Venus de Milo. "And biting your head off like that, after everything you'd just been through, by God..." He shook his head self-deprecatingly. "I oughta be boiled in my own juices. My dear, you've every right to be cross with me. I fully encourage you to let your fury blaze to its highest."
On the shore behind him, the limo and the limo driver inside exploded in a violent fireball. Bits of burning shrapnel rained down on the bridge. A hubcap rolled past them.
A wickedly satisfied half- smile peeled Edna Mae's black lips.
The Mayor had turned around and was staring at his burning car with wide eyes. "Wow!" he exclaimed. "I'll be -- that's just -- wow!!" He burst out laughing, totally turned on by the power his wife had. He didn't seem upset in the least about his driver's gruesome demise. "Now that's impressive!! You've certainly come a long way from the child-bride I married, I'll tell you that much!" He came toward her, eyes glittering. "The power you've got--"
Edna Mae backed off, her smile gone like a blown-out candle. "If you wish to be dug out of a fossil bed in two or three centuries, by all means, come closer," she invited in a snarl.
She had more than the power to kill him. She could probably have shredded his soul, or whatever was left of it, and obliterated him from existing in even the tiniest sense. He knew this, and he stopped, sensibly. "It's because I tried to turn you into a vampire, isn't it?" he decided. "You always did love a good grudge."
"You poisoned my soul," she accused him in a deathly tone. "You ruined me, Richard. You broke my heart, crushed my spirit like a flower. You left me a scarecrow and damned me to an eternal hell."
He listened, nodding at her list of grievances. "You killed my dog!" he returned flippantly. "And my Faith. That's not been easy to get over. Don't think I haven't tried." His voice became the slightest bit more bitter. "Deprived me of the son I never even got to see, finished it all by tossing a mighty big monkeywrench into my master plan. And may I remind you, in case you've forgotten, it was you who chucked yourself out that window, my dear choirgirl." His voice took on a sarcastic, but deeply hurt tone. "Sentenced me to a lifetime of lonely hours, plotting and planning all by myself." He shook his head. "And then people call me evil. How can a man be anything but when the keeper of his better virtue flits off like a bird?" He threw an accusatory gaze at her. "This isn't the first time you've broken my heart, nor do I suppose it'll be the last. And yet here I stand, forgiving you everything --"
"And by that token I should forgive you?!" she bit back. "I've forgiven you quite enough, I think. Even when we were sitting on a hot rock in hell, in a fine predicament together, still I forgave you. You made it quite clear you didn't want anything to do with me, or my forgiveness." Her deathly voice was shaking.
"Is that what's bothering you?! Edna..." He reached out and took her icy, clammy hand, same as he'd done that first night so long ago. She backed right off -- but not hard enough to break his hold. At least she hadn't taken it into her head to flambe him.
It was a start, anyway. He kept her hand tightly. "We were in hell," he whispered. "Which isn't a fun trip under normal circumstances. And on top of everything, the change. I was upset. But don't you know, it was only because I love you so much that I did change." He smiled kindly at her. "You always did make me more human than I had a right to be."
Edna Mae stood very still. He hadn't told her he loved her in years, even before her sudden death. She stared at him, trying to sort this out, wanting it to be true more than anything, and very wary because of it. "You haven't come here to try and kill me?" she ventured.
The Mayor chuckled at that. "Of all things! Why do you think I sent that kid out to get you? It was because I'm petrified of you, my dear. Everyone is. You're something of a celebrity at the moment."
Edna didn't want to show it, but her heart was brimming. Her powerful, terrible husband was frightened of her? A thrill of power surged through her, almost bringing a smile to her face. But then she had a very unhappy thought, which squirmed in her belly like a mass of worms. She squeezed his hand so hard that it actually hurt. "By any chance," she uttered in an icy-cold rasp, "you wouldn't be charming me because of the fact that all your power is locked up in me now, would you?" She fixed him with her bottomless eyes.
He didn't blink. "Those powers are yours, for keeps," he murmured. "I'm no indian giver. Nothing short of a full-blown exorcism could take your power off you." He was careful not to answer her question.
Oh, power. A lot of good that had been to her. Edna Mae would have done without it happily. "I've no interest in power," she said.
The Mayor looked shocked by that. As if it were the most insane thing any person could say. Then he burst out laughing. "I will never understand you," he conceded. "I guess that's a good thing." He let out a sigh. "So the idea of crushing a world under your feet has no appeal for you, huh? You're not even open to suggestions? It certainly wouldn't be the first empire with a token king on the throne."
Same old Richard. He, on the other hand was endlessly captivated by power. She wasn't ashamed to say it was one reason she had fallen for him. "For the sake of argument," she said, playing along, "what suggestions would you make for such an empire?"
"Well." He beamed. "Thing one on my list would be to kill Buffy Summers. And her friends.....and every single man, woman and child who had anything to do with that fiasco at graduation. A point which I consider taken care of already." A smile chased away the deadly glint that had come into his eyes. "Then some spring cleaning. There's all sorts of fun ways to destroy and conquer the earth, Ascensions be darned. After that...." He shrugged, weighing the options. "...oh, after that I guess we all go get lemon phosphates or something."
She couldn't help it. She burst out giggling. Wilkins grinned at finally getting a smile from her. He brought her hand up, rubbing her death-blued nails. His hand burned like you'd expect the devil's hand to. "Let's go home, okay? I bet...you'd like to shed that skin of yours, wouldn't you?" He spoke the last bit against her fingers.
Edna Mae's ancient heart was thrilling like a schoolgirl's. Perhaps she might have hesitated if she'd known the last girl who'd offered her hand to him hadn't gotten it back.
Or perhaps not.
.
*******************
.
Buffy stood in the receiving room at the police department, desperately willing Giles to pick up his phone. It had been a war just to get them to give her her one phone call, so he'd better be there. Buffy waited through one ring, then two....then three.....
"Hello?" the librarian's voice finally came over the line.
Buffy sighed. "Thank God, Giles, you've gotta come get us out of --"
"-- not in at the moment, but if you'll please leave your name and number --" Buffy groaned as she realized she was talking to his machine. She waited for the beep and started over. "Giles, we've been arrested, Xander and me, they arrested us for blowing up the school! You've got to come bail us out, I think they're going to stick us in with the --"
There was clicking. "Buffy?!" Giles' voice, his real voice, came crackling over the line. "I'm so sorry, I was, uh, indisposed." He'd probably been in the bathroom. "Did you say you've been arrested?"
"Giles!" Buffy sighed. "Yeah, and that's not all! The, uh, Mayor remnants? They're conspicuously missing from the better half of Sunnydale High."
The cop was behind her. "That's enough," he said gruffly. "Come on, they're moving you."
Moving us where? wondered Buffy briefly, listening to what Giles was saying. "-- Buffy, but I have seemingly worse news than that. It concerns the passage in the Marenschadt text. I am quite sure --"
"Giles, they're taking me away," Buffy had to cut him off. "Tell me when you come to bail us out, ok?"
The guard grabbed the phone out of Buffy's hand and slammed it down. "Hey! --"
He was dragging her down the hall. "I said NOW, kid," he grumbled. "You're late for the trial."
Buffy didn't like this. "Hey, you know, I may not know my rights, but I watch COPS," she warned. "I'm pretty sure what you're doing constitutes police bru -- did you say trial?"
He shoved her in a room off the hallway, slamming the door. It was dim and grey, and Xander was standing over by a makeshift desk underneath a swinging bulb, where a rotund man was seated. "You may be seated," grumbled the man. "The court will now come to --"
Buffy looked around, startled. What was this? Another guard, hiding out by the door, pushed her forward to join Xander, who looked up, relieved. "Great, you're here!" He leaned forward, stage whispering. "Do something!! They're talking the death penalty!" He looked really serious, fear was showing in his eyes.
Buffy couldn't believe this. She looked around at the guards, already setting up a game plan. "Death penalty? For what?!"
"Order in the court!" The man at the desk -- the judge, his nameplate was so scuffed the name was illegible -- glared at them. "The court IS in session," he pointed out to the teens. "State of California versus Summers and....that kid," he muttered, waving his hand in Xander's direction; they hadn't even bothered to find out his name. "The defendants stand accused of capital murder; vandalism with intent to commit--"
A sick dread gripped Buffy's stomach. "Murder?!" she couldn't help bursting out. "No -- you don't understand! Xander wasn't there!!"
The judge picked up his gavel and banged it. "Order! You will come to order, young lady --"
Buffy had to fix this. "You have to let Xander go, he isn't guilty! Faith was with me! It was us, me and Faith, we killed Finch but it was an accident! Xander wasn't even--"
The judge apparently wasn't going to wait for order. "--for supplying the ingredients and detonating a bomb at Sunnydale High School on May 25th, 1999, resulting in the destruction of the school and the deaths of Richard Wilkins the third, Robert Snyder, Larry Blaisdell, Aaron Knave and Kimberlin Keebler. How do the defendants plead?!" he finished in a growing bellow.
Buffy was stunned into silence. The guard spoke for her. "Guilty, your honor."
"You can't do that!!" Xander tried to jerk away, but the cuffs held him. Buffy was startled to see they'd cuffed his feet, too. It was like they were already in prison. The guard holding him jerked him back with surprising strength.
"Xander...." Buffy looked at him meaningfully. The guards weren't in vamp face, but this was obviously no normal trial. If they got her and him into the back, God knew what would happen. With a single look she communicated to him, and thankfully, Xander understood, and nodded back.
But the judge seemed to have caught that secret look, too. "This trial is mere formality, of course," he said, voice suddenly ominous. "You two are already guilty in the state's eyes. This court sentences you to execution by --"
Buffy jerked her arms up, breaking the guard's hold. She grabbed the desk and pinioned her legs up, kicking the guard in the face. "Stake," she said.
Landing, she swung her arm around and hit the guard again, swung around, and punched the vamp holding Xander. The boy was able to jerk away now, and flailed, looking for a weapon, any weapon. He fell against the American flag in the corner, used it to pull himself up, and pulled it out of its stand. The point was brass, but maybe if he twisted it real hard after he shoved it in....
Buffy was swinging at two of them now. Xander realized with a lot a relief that the bottom of the pole was pointed, and he whipped it business end up. "God bless America," he grinned, shoving it into the back of one of Buffy's attackers. The pole punctured; the vampire snarled in rage as he collapsed to the ground, dust.
.
*******************
.
The Mayor and Edna Mae were strolling along the dark country road arm in arm, just as if it weren't one in the morning. "I have requests," she muttered.
"Of course you do."
She faced him. She was still quite frightful looking, her voice still a croak, she'd been forced to shuffle painfully along the road, even with his help. "You poisoned my soul," she repeated coldly. "For many a season I've had a great cavity right through me. You owe me a soul."
"Fair enough." He could find a willing soul anywhere.
"I want yours." Her voice was ominous.
He looked briefly surprised, but nodded. "Very well, my dear, though how you plan to wrest it away from the current owner is beyond me." He giggled.
She ignored that. "And I want to be pretty," she added, rather indulgently. "Make me pretty again. Heaven knows you can, you've done it enough." She blinked girlishly, looking quite fetching even with the veins showing through her corpselike skin.
The Mayor grinned at that. "Well, there's several easy solutions to that problem, my dear. Modern magic has come a long way since your uh, untimely death. There's always the old standbys -- bath of virgin's blood, stamping the soul of a child.....or you could just heal yourself. You've been able to, all this time. Didn't you know?" Her eyes were widening. "You mean you've been laying ruin to miles of land...wasting your time on innocent bystanders, and it never occured to you to slip into something more comfortable?"
Edna Mae could have kicked herself. Why hadn't she thought of that?! Her eyes were shining excitedly. "Go ahead, try it out," he encouraged.
Very well, then. She held his hands to brace herself, and she closed her eyes. She imagined the day of her ruination, all those years ago when that wretched boy Ruiz had tricked them both. She felt the green glow hit her in the stomach, saw the boy's ancient poison descending on her like a swarm of locusts; crawling and burrowing and devouring.......
Not this time. Edna made herself glow, the sun shining off a golden idol. The locusts melted on her white hot surface, and now she was the one devouring them, taking her energy back and absorbing theirs in the bargain. She was the mightier here, she would destroy the dark things, she was the Destroyer of Shadows.....
.
*******************
.
POOF. Buffy's vampire exploded in a rather large dustcloud as she shoved the coatrack through his heart. The judge, his guards vanquished, was quietly trying to sneak toward the door for reinforcements. Luckily for him, the door flew open before he got there. About five or six more vampires were on the other side. "Get 'em!!" shouted the judge.
The vampires apparently thought better of it. The door slammed shut on the leader's face. The judge stared, bewildered. "What on --"
Now the judge was alone with two very ticked-off victims of justice. "Gee," Buffy spoke pertly, "my reputation precedes me."
A barrage of knocking sounded on the wooden door. "Maybe not?" said Xander. This was really weird. The door was flimsy wood. It shouldn't have been that hard.....
A fierce tremor suddenly rippled the floor. Buffy and Xander toppled, going down. The judge hit the floor like a sack of potatoes. The knocking on the door was drowned out by a tremendous thundering noise.
Buffy's eardrums were humming. "An earthquake!!" she shouted, tensing. Last time there'd been an earthquake.....
The door suddenly opened again. It was built to open inward on the room. It flew out into the hall.
There was screeching pitch blackness on the other side. The hallway was gone. Buffy and Xander stared at this spectacle, then at each other. "Window," they said at once. Retreating to the back of the room, Buffy kicked the glass and shattered it, gripped the sill and hurled herself out. Xander followed post haste and they hit the ground running, as fast as they could over the lawn.
The judge, frantic to save himself from the inky black cloud that was filling the room, ran to the shattered window and clambered out awkwardly. He ran after the teens, jogging as fast as he could.
The ground was now rumbling so violently that windows were shattering; car alarms went off up and down the block as the three ran across the street, into the park. Buffy looked back only once and was rewarded with the sight of a rapidly expanding mass of black, blacker than pitch, blacker than space; billowing out from where the police station -- and in fact the street had been, blotting out everything it touched. The cloud flashed a dull, hellish red once, twice. Before Buffy turned her head back she caught a glimpse of a string of telephone poles being sucked down one at a time like dominoes, wires snapping and sparking as they were torn free. The streetlights in front of them went out, their power cut. Now they were running across the park in near-total darkness, a darkness only briefly broken by the flashing light from the black cloud.
The judge hit the ground, tripped by a park bench. He was left screaming in panic as the blackness came to consume him. Buffy and Xander ran like hell, not knowing how long they could keep it up, or when the sucking would stop. Behind them the ground collapsed like sand in an hourglass. The noise of buildings tearing down and electricity slashing was deafening. Xander tripped once, but righted himself just in time, kicking up dirt as he scrabbled on toward the end of the block.
They couldn't run anymore. Even Buffy was reaching her limit. The black cloud was flashing like a thunderhead, with eerie red fire; chewing up the turf behind them like an animal. "There's Giles!" shouted Xander.
Mercifully, Giles' car was coming down the street. Buffy and Xander stretched their legs, racing the billowing blackness behind to the car. "Giles!!" screamed Buffy.
She could see Giles frowning, catching sight of her. He slowed down, coming to almost a stop as he opened his door. Buffy ran straight at him, crashing against the door, slamming it shut again. "GO!" she shouted at him.
"What --" The librarian was momentarily confused as Buffy and Xander clambered into the back, but he got it as soon as he saw the flashing, spreading black mass crashing down the street toward them. "Oh... all right then," he mumbled, putting it in reverse. With a squeal of tires the car backed jaggedly down the street over the curb, speeding away. The cement he peeled rubber on was torn away a second later.
A terrible screeching noise, like the scream of an angry predator, blared all around them as they sped down the street. The needle moved up to sixty, then eighty, making slightly better time than Xander and Buffy had on foot. "Faster!!" cried Xander, watching the flaming clouds gaining on them out the back window.
They were peeling down the middle of the street, regard for lanes tossed away. They were in the business district, and Buffy could think of only one plan. It wasn't a great plan....but it was all she could come up with. "Giles!" she shouted at him.
He looked as she pointed out the dash window. Hoping aginst hope, Giles jerked the wheel, and tires squealed as the car made a sharp left and drove down into the entrance of Sunnydale's one subterranean parking garage.
They covered their heads and waited. Over them the nightmare tempest crashed, flooding the entrance with blackness worse than smog, worse than dust. A sheet of fire blasted them, hot as a furnace. The pavement was torn up off the ground, clods of dirt swirled up into nothing.
.
*******************
.
Edna Mae's eyes flew open at a shout from her husband. She blinked, startled to find herself on the cool, dark road. The Mayor was sitting on the ground before her, palms upturned, staring up at her in awe.
The earth shook wildly under her feet, like it had the day of the demon's picnic back in 1901. Edna looked down at her husband as the tremors finally subsided, the earth coming to rest once more. She caught sight of her own hands.
Edna Mae stared. Her hands, for so long gnarled and veined, were now soft and smooth. The liver spots were gone, her nails strong and sharp. She flexed her fingers, marveling at the lack of arthritis, and realized in the same moment that her hair was hanging down, thick and black and shiny as a girl's. She brought her new hands to her face -- her tight skin, her pert nose. All her teeth were back, so were her long eyelashes. Her fingers traced her finely carved cheekbones, her smooth neck. She uttered a gasp.
If there was any doubt in her mind as to her restoration, it was dispelled by the way her husband was staring at her. "Well.... look at you!" he marveled. He got to his feet, took her hands again, looking totally enchanted. "The phoenix risen from the ashes! I won't lie to you, my dear, you look good enough to eat!"
Edna Mae had taken a spinning step, thrilled by the new energy coursing through her reformed body. She stopped, looking sharply at him. "Do you mean it?" she ventured, wide-eyed and yearning.
The Mayor just smiled. He pulled her close to him, dropping her hand so he could touch her soft hair, brushing it out of her eyes. He cupped her face, and kissed his pretty young wife quite tenderly on the mouth.
.
*******************
.
Buffy and Xander uncovered their heads, blinking at each other. Nothing had happened. They were still there...assuming there was where they'd left it. "Are we dead?" whispered Xander. He was going to go with the joke and say that sucked, but as he was semi-prone on the seat next to Buffy it wasn't totally true.
Buffy looked at Giles, who shrugged. Lacking a better plan, he turned the key and backed tentatively out of the entrance.
The building they'd driven under was gone.
Where the street had been was now swept flat and bare as a desert. The edge of town was now fifty yards further away than it had been. The closest remaining streetlights were dark, having been cut off, but the buildings in the distance still sent a red glow into the sky. Giles stared. "How on earth did you know that would work?" he gasped.
Buffy shook her head. "I didn't," she heaved, still winded from running. "But that's what they say to do on the Discovery Channel during a tornado, so...."
Sirens blared to life somewhere in the distance. "What do we do now?" wondered Xander.
Buffy thought. If she and Xander were wanted for the Mayor's murder then Giles was probably wanted too. They all were. Buffy had a good hunch that the Sunnydale legal system hadn't waited a week to nail her for no good reason, and that the little matter of the police headquarters being sucked off the face of the earth would only slow them down. Something had moved them to act. Buffy was pretty sure she knew who that someone was.
"We have to warn Willow!" Buffy realized. "The others, too -- he's after all of us." That was the truth of it, she realized -- they were all in deep trouble. With all the stuff they'd been doing over the years, there were any number of counts they could be brought to justice for -- justified or otherwise. Willow and Oz and Cordy -- they might be in custody at this very minute.
"Who is after us?" asked Giles, fearing he knew the answer.
Buffy looked sick. "The Mayor," she whispered. "He's back."
.
*******************
.
They had strolled happily arm in arm down the dark road to a phone booth, where the Mayor called for another car to take them home. It arrived quickly enough, and they got inside, the engine starting up. An earsplitting screech and the grungy growl of Korn pounded through the car, and Edna Mae uttered a scream, clapping her hands over her ears. "Good heavens, what IS that noise?!" she exclaimed.
Mayor Wilkins couldn't help frowning. The station and the volume had been selected by Faith the last time she'd rode in this car. He remembered riding with her that last time, the day he'd taken her shopping and bought her that pink dress. Faith had been pleased as punch and insisted on cranking the stereo. And he had indulged her, even though he despised the noise with a vengeance. Now it just made him sad.
Thing two on the list, he decided, making a mental note. "They call it music these days, my dear," he answered, resignedly leaning over and turning it off with a huffy sigh. "The whole world's gone to heck in a handbasket since Benny Goodman died."
.
*********************************
.
June 2, 1999
The destruction of the police station had bought them the slightest bit of time. It was enough. Buffy had been able to warn Willow, Oz, and Cordelia, and soon they were assembled in a cheap hotel room on the cheap side of town -- in fact, not too far from Faith's old home. It was perfect, almost the last place their enemy would think to look.
"Oh, EEW!" Cordelia rubbed her shoulders in disgust. "I just saw a cockroach the size of my hand in the kitchen sink!"
Giles heaved a long-suffering sigh. "Well, I'm very sorry," he told them all, "but a librarian's salary doesn't quite reserve a room at the Ritz."
"Look at the bright side," said Xander. "At the rate the town's vanishing, it might get sucked out from under our feet at any moment."
"Well, it's either hang here or go home and get hanged," Buffy pointed out. "Besides, we won't be here long.....one way or the other."
"Is it true?" Willow ventured. "Are we sure it's really him?"
"Unless Richard the fourth came out of hiding," answered Oz. "Think the citywide manhunt kind of spoils the surprise."
"Ahem, yes," coughed Giles, looking round at all the glum faces. "There's that, and then there's this." He picked up one of the books he'd snuck back to his apartment to retrieve.
"Oh, joy, the bad news," said Xander.
"Yes, well..." Giles flipped a page, looking very sheepish. "It's the bit about darkness. Heh... it seems capitals do count, to Willow's credit. 'And Darkness will follow'; 'The Darkness in Distaff Manifest' -- the word is capitalized twice. Well, we assumed darkness referred to the eclipse, but--"
"But eclipses don't walk." Xander got it. "Now we just have to figure out who cleans earths and we've got our man."
"Woman," corrected Giles. "Distaff denotes a female deity who is to appear on earth before the Cleansing. A being as dangerous to demons as to humans. She is here, already -- all the signs point to it."
"Lemme guess, she's here for the Gleaves amulet," Buffy sighed, feeling ill. This was really her fault. If she hadn't let Faith out of hell....
"Any luck on that?" asked Oz.
Giles shook his head. "No....I've telephoned Wesley, and he was quite willing to help, if not exactly helpful..."
"Couldn't remember where he put it?"
"He said he left it here." Giles sighed. "Now it's a matter of finding where he left it."
That was grim. Willow raised her hand. "Well, I know I'm veering into broken-recordness here, but.....Faith...I mean, she's dangerous to demons and humans. And um, she's kind of a dark deity....."
She didn't have to say another word. "And I brought her back from hell," finished Buffy.
Silence. "Well....I mean really, Buffy, you had enough sense to leave Angel where he was!....when he was....in hell! Um....." Cordelia shut her mouth under the stares from the assembled gang.
Buffy rolled her eyes, turning from Cordy's blunt nattering. "You were right, though," she said, looking straight at Willow. "It wasn't Faith... in the dream. I should have realized.... in my dream I had her going to heaven."
"Wishful thinking," said Xander.
"But she isn't it, either." Buffy was sure of this. "The Distaff Destroyer, I mean. I haven't told you guys the highlights of my field trip. Anyone remember Edna Mae?"
The gang sat at attention. "The Mayor's wife?" asked Oz, startled to speech. "Wrinkled and senile and dead?"
"Not dead enough," sighed Buffy. "I saw her....in hell, with the Mayor. Two demons making out...not something you really wanna see before breakfast."
Horrified silence. "Oh....eew!" Willow couldn't help it.
"Really!" Cordelia made a face. "Ugh, people over thirty just shouldn't do it anymore!"
Giles blinked. "Well...over a hundred, in any case," he defended himself.
"Don't go there," Buffy warned him with a rolled eye.
He didn't. He seemed very eager to stay out of there. "Uh, ahem, right," muttered Giles. "This woman....did she have any supernatural powers?"
"Big time," nodded Buffy. "When Rusty was about to make us his personal Gravy Train. She was the one who blasted us all back through the Hellmouth."
Giles looked startled. "If she's powerful enough to escape the Hellmouth by herself....she might have been a sorceress even before she died."
"What a shock." Xander said weakly. "Hey, maybe they met at the Big Scary Sorcerer's Hoedown."
Giles nodded. "Somehow we must find out everything we can about the Mayor's wife. Willow, would you--"
Willow was already out of her chair. "Birth and death certificates. Got it."
"You can't go back home," said Oz, following her. "It's dangerous."
Willow nodded. "I know. I've got connections. Wanna come protect me?" She beamed brightly at her boyfriend, who took her up on it.
Buffy had jumped up. "I'll be right back," she said.
Giles looked up sharply. "Where are you going?"
"Faith." Buffy looked nervous. "She's the first place he'll go -- if he hasn't already."
Giles got it. "Be careful," he said.
.
*********************************
.
She was in her luxury apartment. Or what was left of it.
The fire had destroyed everything. All her nice new belongings...the stereo, the punching bag, the Playstation... all were ruined. The plush couches had been reduced to charred lumps of stuffing, the expensive paintings were mere black smudges on the wall. The room was completely charred, but cool. No fire left. The wind blew calmly in though the smashed arch window, moving one dangling piece of broken sill. Faith walked noiselessly around the soot-and ash-strewn floor, looking at her shattered window, her bed -- her body.
Faith lay on the soot-stained bed, broken and bruised. Her face was blackened with pain and she was wrapped in the kind of death wrap they had in those old paintings, for burying people in. She looked startlingly small and weak.
That's me. I'm dead.
Faith crawled onto her bed, curling up in a fetal position beside the comatose version of herself. She lay there for a long time, watching her own face in profile. Slowly Faith reached out a black fingernail and brushed her twin's hair away from her bruised left cheek.
In the hospital, Faith jumped up, startled.
OUCH. She crashed back down, swearing as pain shockwaved through her belly. Damn knife wound.
It was two days since Buffy's visit, over a week since their return from hell. Faith had been having bizarre nightmares, partly from her horrible experience, partly because of the meds -- but that one beat them all. She put a hand to her head, which still ached like crazy, even though they'd made her pop hundreds of pills. She'd bonked her head good hitting that truck. Faith knew that her head injury was bad -- or was supposed to be, anyway. The nurses who came in everyday never talked much, just stared nervously at her like she was some freak of nature. They whispered when they thought she couldn't hear. And they gave her more Excedrins to gulp and told her she was very lucky. Faith knew better. Whatever happened to her head should have killed her. She smiled faintly -- it did kill her. She just didn't have the sense to stay dead.
She looked down at her twitching hands. There was no medicine that would take that away, and Faith hated it. It was a sign of weakness, and being weak wasn't something she wanted to be now, of all times. She couldn't make them stop though, outside of sitting on them. Sometimes the trembling lessened, looking only as if she hadn't eaten for a few days. But sometimes they shook so violently that her whole body followed suit, and she had to hold herself together till it subsided. She guessed it was left over from her little jaunt into hell, like shell-shock. Hell-shock.
Why had Buffy done it? Nobody lives forever. Now Faith had another few years to wait out, knowing what waited for her at the end. Buffy didn't even stick around to talk her through it. Just brought her back from hell and turned around and walked away. Thanks a lot, B.
Thinking about Buffy was too painful. This was when she usually hung it up and tried to go to sleep. Between the nightmares and the fact that she'd been in a coma, she wouldn't have thought she'd ever want to sleep again. But when she wasn't asleep, she had nothing else to do but lay there, remembering, and that was a hit-and-miss proposition. She didn't have a pattern to her thoughts, she just remembered, bits and pieces of things. One thing about laying here, it gave her time to sort stuff out. Time to relive every painful, stupid, rotten thing she'd ever done, or had done to her. It took a while. She wondered if she'd ever get through the pile of memories.
She tried, sometimes, to think of good things. Small pleasures. Odd memories flashed into her head -- she wondered if some wires had gotten jarred when she fell -- of nice stuff like...sunshine. Eating a hamburger. The smell of some strawberry lip gloss someone had given her to play with as a kid. A pair of really nice jeans she'd owned once. The sharp, ringing metal, brand new and shiny, of her knife when she'd first seen it in that box. That led back to the bad memories, of Buffy and betrayal and fighting and falling....scenes she'd relived so many times that they didn't really hurt that much. She was only forced to speed through them like a video in fast forward, skimming the bad parts. They were so ragged she didn't even remember them that well anymore. In their place smaller things gained clarity, she began to remember the in-between stuff. Weird things.
Her mind wandered to when she'd reported in to the Mayor, after she'd shot Angel. Faith remembered the elation she'd felt that night, how awesome it had been to see ol' Vamp-Boy go down, the looks on both their faces. The Mayor had noticed too when she'd come in, laughing at her enthusiasm. "You little firecracker!" he'd praised her, leaning forward on that box of bugs he'd been about to nosh.
Faith smiled, remembering. She had tucked back her hair, suddenly self-conscious. "My mom used to call me that," she'd told him. Even as she had said it she realized the potential connection she was making. "When I was little....I was always runnin' around...."
Her sentence trailed off, lost. The Mayor was gazing too intently at her, she could feel his eyes even though she didn't look up at him. He was waiting. He seemed very concerned to hear what she might say, or rather, ask next. Faith wondered what he would say if she did ask. "Say, boss, couple weeks ago I was chatting with your dead old lady, the one you got locked in the basement here, and she told me she shipped off your first kid to Boston about a hundred years ago, and I'm just wondering if......."
But her belief was that last chances were meant to be missed. Faith had cleared her throat, cracked her knuckles to get her mind off track. "Uh...tomorrow...at the Ascension and all that, am I going to get to fight?" she asked abruptly.
The Mayor decided not to press whatever had just not quite happened. "If everything goes smoothly, you won't have to," he assured. "But...how often do things go smoothly?"
Faith's unasked question was still nagging her. She chose her next words carefully. "So you'll still need me in there, then?"
The Mayor seemed to know it, what she was really asking. "Always," he answered without a trace of falseness. He meant it.
Good enough. Faith almost smiled, glowing inside at this silent affirmation. She didn't know what to say next. "When I was a kid," she began, for no reason, "a couple of miles outside of Boston there was this quarry, and.... all the kids used to swim there, and jump off the rocks, and there was this one rock, like forty feet up...." She flopped down in a chair, aware that she was babbling. "I was the only one that would jump off it. All the older kids were too scared."
The Mayor had beamed, his full attention on her. "Not you, though."
Faith shook her head proudly. "Nah. I could do it easy." She nodded, falling silent. It was a lame story, she knew; why she had suddenly felt the need to tell him that, she couldn't have said.
And now the Mayor had the strangest look on his face. Almost regretful. As if he too had something on his mind but didn't bring it up. "Get some rest," he finally advised, backing off. The conversation was done.
Okay. Faith was never real good at the mushy thing anyway. She'd gotten to her feet. "Good luck with your spiders, there," she'd said as she walked out the door.
If she'd known those was going to be her last words to him, she would have thought of something better to say.
Faith shifted from the umpteenth uncomfortable position on the mattress. Thinking about these things was like tossing in bed on a hot night; you kept moving, but the heat kept following, forcing you to switch and reswitch places all night long. She kept coming back to the same unanswered questions. What had been up with him, anyway? He had seemed so genuine, so real. Faith was used to reading people, and she prided herself on being able to spot bull a mile away. In the beginning she hadn't known what to make of the weird man with the impeccable manners and unnerving smile, but as time went on she'd come to find it all kind of....nice. Somebody who acted that loony all the time couldn't possibly be faking it. It was like he hadn't even realized how outdated manners and chivalry and all that stuff was. And for some reason, she'd really dug that about him. Plus it was just refreshing to have someone not knock the hell out of her for once. Faith realized, in a start, that she'd come about as close to loving him as she'd ever loved anybody. Buffy included. Sort of.
But here she was again. Buffy and Angel. There had to be more than one magic poison to use on a vampire. Why pick the one that took Slayer's blood to cure? The Mayor was the kind of guy who planned everything down to the letter, and when Buffy had dropped that bombshell -- "It's your blood" -- Faith felt like she'd found the last piece of a particularly ugly picture puzzle. It was such a perfect way to get rid of her....it was really, so much like him. And yet it wasn't. He could never do that.....could he? Faith couldn't figure it out, and what she couldn't figure, she didn't want any part of. She trusted her gut on things like this. And her gut had a big knife wound in it.
It wasn't even like it mattered now. He was dead. Maybe he'd deserved it. Probably he'd lived all those years by sucking the souls of virgins or something, draining the life out of innocents in order to prolong his own unnatural life. It was sick, and yet Faith found herself feeling almost sorry for the guy. Anyone who wanted to stay alive that badly ought to be allowed to. Life to her was a misery, for him it had almost seemed a drug. To claw and scrape and plot to survive all that time, only to get blown to smithereens at the end...it just seemed totally, unusually unfair.
She found herself wondering what he'd done when he found out she was in a coma. Had he gone gunning for Buffy? (Obviously not hard enough....) Had he changed his plans, put off the Ascension? Or had he gone ahead with it, writing Faith off as a lost cause? If not, how had he figured on taking care of her once he was a demon? Faith had a sudden absurd vision of herself, laying in a hospital bed in a wrecked hospital, her respirators and stuff the only things left standing, and a giant hundred foot demon flying around the world snatching the best doctors from Spain and Europe, like sacrificial virgins. They would be brought to her hallowed bedside in the hopes of snapping her out of it, and when each of them failed, the demonic Mayor would have a snack and flit off to Switzerland to find a doc with a better HMO. Faith couldn't help it, she had to laugh at that one.
"That feels good," said a voice.
Faith jumped a mile, sending another jolt of pain through her midsection. Her senses tightened; someone had been in the room with her all this time. "Who's there?" she snapped.
Something came out of the dark. Faith tensed. She didn't like things that came out of the dark. "I swear, if Buffy forgot to lock the door to hell on her way out..."
It wasn't a demon. It was barely human, though. Faith stared at her own eyes staring back at her from a puffy, bruised face. It was herself, from the dream, her dead self. Standing upright and coming right at her.
"Crap," Faith muttered in her bed. "They must have me on every drug known to mankind."
Her standing, dead self cracked a pained smile. "Ain't the drugs, girlfriend," it rasped.
"What are you?"
"You." The being shugged. "Sort of. Long story."
"Spare me." Faith clutched the hospital blankets around her. "What do you want?"
The being considered. "Sixteen gladiators in hot pants," she said with her wicked grin.
Faith rolled her eyes. Her battered twin limped up to the side of the bed. She was a perfect copy, Faith felt like her morning reflection had come out of the bathroom mirror to get her. She could see now there was blood on the girl's hands. "You're dead, you know," said the corpse.
"You're lying."
"I'm serious. I was part of you, and now I'm gone. Congratulations."
"Thanks." Faith scowled at her other self. "I should be happy?"
"You will be." The being sat down on the bed. The mattress didn't depress around her, she just sat atop it like it was a board. "Here's what it is. There are no accidents. Agree or disagree?"
Faith shrugged. "Disagree for the block, Wink."
"Wrong." The being shook its head. "Everything happens for a reason. Even the garbage. You're not laying here knitting for your health, you know."
Faith was disgusted. "If I hear one more person tell me I had it coming I'm gonna --"
"Die?" The dead girl smirked. "Smart move. Get yourself tossed into Dante's Inferno again. You can't deal with that."
Faith shuddered. She didn't want to deal with that. Ever again, if she could help it. "What do I have to do?" she asked quietly.
The being grinned. "I'll tell you something. Sunnydale is goin' down. For real, and not too long from now, either."
"No way." That was too good to be true. "Buffy killed....she took care of the Ascension. It's not happening."
A shake of her head. "In a town like this, the apocalypse is like a bus, every hour on the hour. Question is, how are you gonna handle it?"
Faith shrugged sullenly. "Same way I handle everything. Get on top and screw it into the springs."
"Wrong answer." The dead girl's eyes became intense, hollow. "You wanna live to fight another day? Do yourself a favor -- get out of the 'dale. You can't fight what's coming, don't even try."
"I can fight anything," whispered Faith, wondering for the first time about the truth in that statement.
Her dead twin shook her head gravely. "Not this you can't."
"Oh yeah?" Faith was unnerved, and as a result she was getting angry. "Tell me what it is, and I'll bet you I can kick its ass. You're me -- want me to think so anyway, if you're not some morphine trip. You know I can."
"Yeah." The dead girl smiled dimly. "Course you can. You're the Slayer." She leaned closer, urgently. "So fine, be a Slayer. But if you don't want to lose your green card, make damn sure you're not the one who gets slayed. You're dead if you stick around here. And don't trust anybody. No matter who comes to talk to you, no matter who they are or what they say. Don't even trust me. Don't trust anyone."
Faith frowned. "Thank you, Fox Mulder."
"I'm serious. Listen to yourself." And suddenly, inches away, her twin decomposed, right before Faith's eyes. She was gone like a vampire, crumbled to dust in an instant.
The door to her room suddenly opened. Light from the hallway spilled in, and it hurt Faith's eyes for a moment. She blinked, frowning at the shadows in her doorway. "I'm doped enough, thanks," she told them.
It wasn't a doctor. "Hello, Faith," the shadow said in a familiar silky voice.
Every muscle in Faith's body turned to stone. She couldn't believe it. "Boss?!" she muttered.
.
*********************************
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Willow walked from Oz's van up to the gate of the oldest of Sunnydale's cemeteries. They had stuck to the side streets, nervous about meeting a cop car or policeman around every turn. Going out in broad daylight like this was a scary idea. But going where they was headed at night was an even scarier idea, so here they were.
Her computer research had turned up almost nothing on anyone named Edna Mae Wilkins. There were no death records for anyone by that name from 1899 up to 1920, but Willow had found one interesting thing in a newspaper dated May 31, 1910. The headline had blared: "Dual Tragedy Strikes Mayoral Mansion". Below it in slightly smaller type read, "Matriarch plummets to Death, Wife remains Unaccounted for." The article (with lots of hyphens and onrunning, flowery sentences) covered the memorial service for the Mayor's beloved 94-year-old grandmother Symphorosa, who had died after walking in her sleep and falling out the window. They had to have a closed-casket ceremony, no one had been allowed to see the body, and the Mayor couldn't be reached for comment because he was still "suffering the trial" of his young bride's sudden vanishing. Here was the only mention of Edna Mae in the whole article. She was described as "most respectable of ladies", so it was unthinkable that she could have just run off, but the Mayor did say he suspected a gang of opium-trading train robbers who had been seen in the area. Some things never changed, thought Willow derisively.
With a look back at Oz in the window of his van, Willow crossed under the stone arch at the entrance to the cemetery. She didn't really know what she was looking for, but she had a hunch that looking at the Wilkins family plot would be a good thing. She hiked up the little paved road, into the rows of elaborate stone pillars. They were kind of like altars, thought Willow, tributes to the souls of the dead. Instead of sacrifices, clutches of dead real and faded plastic flowers were laid before the stones, keeping the memory of their owners alive. Willow smiled. People in Sunnydale went all out to make their gravestones personal and special. With the death rate the town had, they kind of had to. The stones were each representative of their owner's personality. Here was a little child's grave, with Winnie the Pooh carved for eternity in the stone. Here was an old man's grave with a clever stone hat and stone gloves -- probably a rich guy. And here was --
Willow stopped dead and stared up, up. Here was, pretty obviously, what she was looking for.
The tomb was one of those above-ground mausoleums, a large gazebo-shaped, enclosed monstrosity -- the largest tomb in the park. The ancient stone was weathered, with black streaks from years of rain criscrossing the sides. On top of the structure was a brass dome, gleaming faintly in the sun. Standing guard on top of the door was a hideous, hunched weeping gargoyle, and a Latin phrase -- Willow's eyes widened -- "No good deed goes unpunished".
The doors were gone. Large broken slabs were smashed against a willow on the other side of the road.
Willow stepped nervously toward the crypt. She tried to think of a good prayer for protection, and couldn't think of one. Heck with it. She went in.
The tomb was damp and dark. Cobwebs fluttered down, having been broken when the doors were opened. They had been broken open not long ago.
The stone crypt in the middle of the room was broken too.
Willow took a trembling step forward. The coffin was a rotten mass of mud and clawed satin and splintering wood -- and oh yeah, it was EMPTY. The stone had shattered when it hit the floor, like Moses' tablets. On the broken stone was carved, peculiarly: Symphorosa EMma Wilkins ~~ 1816 ~ 1910.
"EM," whispered Willow. "e...m...Edna Mae."
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Faith couldn't believe it. There he was, tall as life, solid and in one piece. A large bouquet of some purple flower was in his hands. "Damn," she uttered. "You're dead."
He grinned at her. It was a chilling smile, Faith always thought he looked like some deranged cartoon character brought to life when he did that. Her already hurting stomach was tying in knots. Only a few minutes before she would have given anything, anything at all to see him walk in that door, cracking jokes and tossing power around. But this was reality. And the last time they'd met, Faith had stuck him with his own knife. She had seen enough street fighting to know what happened if someone survived getting cut up by their own knife. She'd imagined doing just that to Buffy....and no matter how good he'd been to her, if he was come back from hell for anything, Faith was worried sick it was to do that to her. She clutched her sheets, steeling herself for a fight. "Get the hell out of here," she warned.
He didn't. He came in the room, shutting the door behind him. He walked right up to the side of her bed and sat himself down in the chair that her dead twin had ignored, wincing slightly as he did so. He put a hand over his middle. "Pardon me," he said. "You sure gave me an unkind cut here. We're a matched set now, don't you think?" He giggled. It was a sinister sound.
"Did you hear me?" Faith snapped. "I said clear out. I'm not working for you anymore." She wondered what he was now, if she actually could take him out if he tried anything, whether he was human or demon or what.
Mayor Wilkins placed the bouquet neatly on her bedside table and shifted in his seat, getting comfy. "Well. I'm sorry to hear that." He did sound sorry, or would have if he hadn't still been smiling. "I really am, since the reason I came, Faith, other than to see how you were getting on -- and let me tell you, it's good to see those eyes open again...." He trailed off for a moment, gazing at her. "...well, anyway, the reason I came was to assure you that your job was safe." He folded his hands. "Job security is a hard thing to come by, in this day and age."
"I wouldn't cut your grass," Faith snarled. "Not after what you did to me."
The Mayor nodded slowly, taking that in. "What have I done to you, Faith?" he asked quietly.
Was he asking her, or was he asking himself? "Words Killer of the Dead mean anything to you?" she grumbled. "I'll tell you what you did -- you set me up. You used me. I was just good little assassination girl scout to you, and when you were through with me you shot up Angel with something that only took my blood to cure. And you know what the best part is? You got me to do it. That was real slick, boss." She bit the last word between her teeth, sarcastically. Damn it, her eyes were tearing up. She didn't want to cry. She wanted to be brutal and threatening, to hurt him like she'd been hurt. Her whole body had started shaking again. "So......if you think I won't pull your heart out right through your ribs, just 'cause of the daddy dearest routine, you can just -- you can --"
"I made a mistake," he said.
Faith had been about to fail in her tirade anyway, but this knocked her into nonspeech. He was no longer smiling. He looked grave, stern, but something else, which Faith had never seen on him before. He looked ashamed. It was so slight that it could have been a scam, but it was there nonetheless.
He waited until he was sure she was finished before he went on. "I dropped the ball," he said. "It was my fault, what happened to you. Not wholly....but sharing the blame doesn't make it any less heavy. I wasn't able to protect my girl. That's a heck of a thing to have in your belly, believe you me." He gave her a sad smile.
Faith tried to sort this out. He was apologizing to her? He was saying he screwed up? The Council never ever admitted to screwing up; Giles and Wesley certainly never had. Even Buffy, coming to her bedside like the good dutiful little mourner, wouldn't admit what she'd done. Everyone had insisted that it was Faith's fault she was lying here. Except him.
"I don't get it," she muttered. It was the only thing she could say.
The Mayor sat forward, elbows resting on his knees. "What would you like me to say?" he asked conversationally, as if he were really giving her a choice. "Would you like it if I told you everything's back the way it was? That everything I promised still stands? Because it does."
Faith still didn't get it. "But the Ascension.... Buffy ruined everything, I mean --"
"Doesn't matter." He smiled. "You don't live as long as I do without having a few tricks up your sleeve."
Faith blinked. "Well...then, what do you want with me... if you can ascend anyway, why haven't you--"
"What do I want with you?" The Mayor spoke incredulously, as if it were the most absurd question. "I need you, Faith! I need my right hand girl. The plan's still on. Granted, getting myself blown to kingdom come wasn't in the original draft..... but that's what plan B's are for." He grinned mischievously.
Faith fought the urge to grin back. "Sunnydale's goin' down," she whispered.
"With any luck," he beamed. "Faith....I know how things must look to you. What happened to you -- what I let happen.... it must have seemed like the last in a long line of betrayals. I'll never let myself off the hook." He was serious now. His voice was low, uncharacteristically somber. "It's a sad fact of this world that bad things seem to happen to those we care about most. There's no rhyme or reason to it. Things just happen." His eyes were paler, too, near silver, as if seeing old losses, old wounds that were probably older than this building.
Faith hadn't realized it, but somehow her hand had ended up clutched in his. It was warm and steadying.... and she clutched his hand back. "I sliced you up," she reminded him cautiously.
"I don't blame you!" He chuckled. "You saw something big and scary coming and you took action. Very responsible of you."
Faith shuddered at the memory of the giant snake demon he'd become. Stuff like that was what she saw in her nightmares, what she'd been trained to fight. Looking at him now she couldn't see any trace of snakyness to him, but she knew for sure it had been there. "Can I ask you something?"
"Anything."
Faith took a deep breath. "Why'd you wanna become a demon in the first place?"
The Mayor considered. "When you were young," he said, "did you ever want to be a superhero?"
Faith smiled. "Yeah." She actually had. "I....this sounds dumb, but I wanted to be....I wanted to be Queen Angella on the She-Ra show."
He was grinning at that, not laughing at her but with her. "Queen Angella? Really?"
"Yeah." Faith shifted in her bed, which now felt warm and cozy. " I used to watch it every day.... well, when my mom paid the power bill. I had this towel I used to wrap around my shoulders and I'd go tearin' around the house, shooting lightning bolts and flying....I wanted to fly."
"Why?"
Faith shrugged. "Because it was cool," she answered. She couldn't explain it. Flying was just a cool power to have. The exhilaration she felt Slaying was the closest thing she could think of to it.
The Mayor was nodding. "And so it is," he said. "And there you are. It's power. It's something nobody else can do. It's knowing that you are powerful and nothing can hurt you, nothing can break your stride. You're darn right it's cool." He gazed intensely at her. His eyes had changed color -- she'd have sworn they weren't green a second ago, and they were now. "You are powerful, Faith. You can have any power you want. Remember what I promised you? You can still fly. All you have to do is say you're on board."
Damn it, it was exactly what she wanted to hear. She knew he knew that. "Suppose I said no," she whispered.
The Mayor heaved a sigh. He looked disappointed, but not surprised. "Well then..... you can just walk away."
She wasn't expecting that. And she didn't believe it for a second. "Seriously."
"Seriously!" He shrugged. "No, you can just leave. I won't stop you, I won't send anyone after you. I'll even make sure you're well-provided for. You'll have a long, happy, normal life. And someday, at a high old age.... you'll die. Of natural causes, of course."
A sudden prickly sweat broke over Faith's skull. Her eyes grew wide. "I don't want to die," she croaked. No, she didn't want that. Dying, whether now or a hundred years from now, meant only one thing in her mind -- going to hell. "I don't ever want to die."
The Mayor's eyes glittered. "That can be arranged," he said quietly.
Faith stared. She weighed all that had come flooding at her in the past week. She'd been through hell and back. Sunnydale was going down. The Mayor, the only one who had ever shown any kind of warmth to her, was alive and well, in total command of everything. Her dead twin self had told her not to listen to anyone, to only listen to herself.
So Faith listened to herself.
There was only one thing she needed to know. "Did you kill Buffy?" she asked.
He looked kind of annoyed. Not with her -- with himself. "Nope," he sighed.
"Good." She watched as he gave her a questioning look. "I want her."
There was that grin. That pleased, proud grin lit up his face, and the Mayor squeezed her hand. "There's my girl," he cheered.
A smile finally relieved Faith's bruised face.
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Finally Updated!! Read on....
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