We were living parallel lives that summer, going about our regular chores and amusements while at the same time wondering what would come after the flooding.
--William F. Weld, 'Stillwater'
Charlie Baudel was trouble. Ask anyone in town.
Not a surprise, really, if rumors about that girl's family was true. She lived on the trailer trash side of the tracks and her parents, well, had a few more kids than they could handle. You should just see the clothes they see fit to dress those children in the good townsfolk tittered.
Although how sane parent could ever handle a monster like Charlie Baudel was a mystery, they were quick to add.
These people, like most people commenting about things they knew nothing about, took no small amount of joy in the mean-spirited, Puritan-inspired branding of a girl who didn't fit in just right.
Simply put, these people didn't know jack shit about Charlie Baudel. True, she lived in a trailer, but that trailer was kept neat and clean. Also true, there were a lot of Baudel juniors running around and while Charlie would be the first to admit it was tough being the only girl, she would also be quick to point out that her parents loved every single one of their children to death. In short, Charlie Baudel wasn't acting out against a bad home life she didn't have--she was reacting to small town minds intent on crushing her whole family under its boot heels.
There was something else the townsfolk didn't know about Charlie Baudel: she was a superhero.
Frankly, no one was more surprised than Charlie herself when she figured it out. One day she's just Charlie, next day she's lifting up the family car to rescue a cat stuck underneath.
She didn't tell anyone. Nunh-unh. Last thing her 16-year-old self needed was the townsfolk to call her a liar on top of everything else. Hell, even her parents probably wouldn't believe her and her brothers would probably make fun of her. After all, she's a Baudel, and everyone knows that the Baudels are nothing special, especially the Baudels.
At first she was elated. Then she was terrified. She pinged back and forth between the two extremes for a couple of days before she took herself to a cornfield and sat herself down, chin resting thoughtfully in her hand.
Her neighbors and teachers may have been shocked to realize this, but while Charlie was a lot of things, one thing she wasn't was stupid.
So, if she was a superhero, that meant she was important and special. That goes without saying. There were a lot of things she could do with super-strength. Rob a bank, for example, and get enough money for her family to clear out and start a new and better life far, far away.
Except super heroes don't steal. If they did that, they become super villains, and Charlie wasn't going to be a super villain. It'd break her parents' hearts for a start, and she didn't want that. Besides, they taught her better than that.
Well then, she could perform feats of magic, maybe get noticed by a Hollywood producer and earn enough money to buy her family a new house in sunny Califon-i-ay which, Charlie had to admit, would be way cool.
*'Cept it didn't work for Spiderman, did it? He got hisself so wrapped up in makin' the big time that his Uncle Ben died.* Charlie sniffed sadly while she watched dreams of saving her family from the town dwindle to a pipe dream. *'Sides, superheroes are heroes 'cause they do stuff fer free. It's like a superhero rule or somethin'.*
Well then, maybe she could teach the townsfolk a real lesson about showing respect. That idea got thrown out too since she might actually hurt someone since she was a superhero.
Her thoughts circled on this track for some time, while the crickets chirped a symphony in the heat. At some point, she reached the conclusion that only a real Baudel could reach.
If she was going to be a superhero, she was going to be the best superhero she could, just like Superman.
"You stupid, cheap, American, tin-plated, plastic-coated piece of crap!"
Even though the monstrous car had its hood propped open, the international symbol for distressed travelers everywhere, not one motorist pulled over to help the stranded couple. Probably because the male half of the pair looked decidedly dangerous as he furiously beat on the grille of a rusted, dented, and very, very dead Buick Century.
"Un-fucking-believable!" Xander aimed a solid kick at the driver's side door, leaving an impressive dent in the chrome. "We are stuck in the middle of fucking nowhere! Goddamn stupid fucking car!"
"You picked it," Faith said mildly.
"I was conned into picking it! All car salesmen are demons! Evil demons!" He prowled around the car. He stopped and whirled around to point an accusing finger at his female companion. "Why aren't you out there Slaying the minions of evil that live on used car lots? Why?"
"Hey, if they don't eat people, walk the straight and narrow, and pay their taxes, they are outta my jurisdiction," Faith said. "Finished?"
"No! I hate cars! I'm telling you, Michael Moore is totally onto something when it comes to GM. Those people are bastards. I say we head to Detroit and start kicking some auto executive ass."
"Will we be kicking down the front door in broad daylight? Or will we be scopin' out the cemeteries?" Faith asked, fighting hard to keep a straight face.
"Oooooh, no. These particular evil bastards don't live in crypts. No. They live in billion-dollar mansions and survive by sucking the life outta the workin' man…"
"…and woman," Faith added.
"Right! And woman! They feed off the sweat of a blue collar brow!"
"Any minute now you're going to start pumping your fist in the air and shout 'Power to the people,' aren'tchya?"
Xander whirled on her, a dangerous glint lighting up his eye. "Faith, we're making a stop in Detroit and we're gonna start kicking ass."
"Michael Moore's ass?"
"No! Auto executive ass! I say we bring the ashtray here," Xander favored the car with a vicious kick to the rear bumper, "and shove it sideways up the ass of the first corporate officer we find."
"Nice idea, Xan. One problem."
"No problem. I see no problem here. I like my plan. It's a good plan."
Faith held up a single finger, "One, how are we gonna get to Detroit to execute this fabulous plan of yours?"
Xander blinked. "Ahhhh. No car."
"Well, we have a car," Faith waved at the rusting hunk of metal, "it's just that it doesn't actually, you know, run."
Xander deflated. "Right, plan B. We hitchhike to the closest town and find a mechanic."
"Or, we could go with plan C."
"Plan C? There's a plan C?"
Faith held up her cell phone. "We call AAA and get a tow to the closest town."
Xander fixed her with a sour look.
"You are a member of AAA, right?" Faith prompted.
Xander mumbled.
"I didn't hear you."
"Yes," Xander grumbled.
"Good!" Faith said cheerfully. "You call. I'll be checking out the radio stations in the car."
Kennedy quietly entered Rona's room. She was worried. It was almost a month since Sunnydale disappeared off the face of the earth and Rona suffered her injuries, yet Slayer healing had not kicked in. Rona was still as hurt and in as much pain as if she had been beaten to pulp just hours before.
Truthfully, Kennedy had no idea how Rona was gong to survive the trip to Cleveland.
Vi looked up from her trashy romance novel, cast a quick glance at her roommate as Rona moaned in her sleep, put a finger to her lips, and gestured for Kennedy to join her in the bathroom.
Kennedy glanced around the tiny room crowded with every conceivable hair care product while Vi shut the door behind them and flicked on the light.
"She's still bad," Vi remarked when Kennedy turned to face her.
"This makes no sense," Kennedy bluntly stated. "She's a Slayer. We know she's a Slayer. Hell, she was as strong as any of us when the spell kicked in. She should've been all healed within a day, two tops."
"Maybe she was hurt worse than we thought," Vi said.
"Maybe," Kenned frowned as she settled down on the edge of the tub, "but even so, we should be seeing some kind of improvement, but there's nothing, nada, zip. If anything, she's just as bad as she was when we were on the bus ride out of Sunnyhell."
Vi scowled and leaned against the bathroom wall. "She needs to be in a hospital. Keeping her in the hotel room is just cruel."
Kennedy bit her lip in thought before expelling a breath. "Yeah. Yeah. I know. But Buffy's pretty adamant…"
"Since when do you do what Buffy says?" Vi demanded in a loud voice. She cringed when she heard the hollow echo of her anger, and held up a hand to keep Kennedy from replying.
Both girls could hear a soft moan from the bedroom just at the edge of their hearing. They relaxed when Rona quickly fell silent.
"What I mean is," Vi continued in a softer voice, "is that you and Rona have a history of telling Buffy when you think she's wrong. Now, don't get defensive. You know it's true and you know that Buffy is wrong in keeping Rona away from hospitals."
Kennedy took a deep breath. "Yes and no."
"Are you trying to tell me there's a grey area here?" Vi hissed in disbelief.
"Okay, think about this. We get Rona to a hospital and Slayer healing finally kicks in. Then what? There'll be a lot of questions, questions we can't answer," Kennedy said.
"It's been a month. If she hasn't started healing now, she's not going to," Vi said.
Kennedy slumped, hating to admit that Vi may have a point.
"You're in the inner circle. Talk to her," Vi pleaded.
"I may be in the 'inner circle,' but Buffy and I aren't exactly drinking buddies," Kennedy said.
"Then get your girlfriend to talk to her," Vi pushed. "Screw that. Get your girlfriend to slap some healing mojo on her if a hospital is out of the question."
"I already talked to Willow about doing a healing spell," Kennedy said.
"And?" Vi demanded.
Kennedy shrugged. "Weird as this sounds, healing spells are the trickiest and most dangerous spells to cast. Lots and lots of stuff can go really, really wrong, including death for the patient and madness for the spell caster."
"Well, that explains why she didn't even attempt to give Xander a new eye," Vi deflated. She perked up again. "She's a witch, right? What about maybe some healing herbs or poultices, something."
Kennedy winced in distaste. "Herb use is not her forte. From what I understand, the late, great, goddess Tara was the expert and queen of all things green."
Vi picked up on Kennedy's bitter tone. "Trouble in paradise?"
Kennedy's shoulders slumped. "No, nothing like that. I brought up the whole New Age crystals-and-healing-herbs bullshit after she explained about the spells and I had to listen to her talk about how if Tara were here Tara would know just what to do to help Rona."
"'Fraid you're just a rebound?" Vi asked not unkindly.
"More like afraid I'm just a wartime romance," Kennedy sadly corrected. "Beyond our mutual love of women and knowledge of the wide, weird world of Slayers, we don't have all that much in common."
Vi patted Kennedy's shoulder in a comforting manner. "Seems like everyone's fighting the post-battle blues in the past few weeks. I'm sure you're worrying over nothing."
"Maybe."
"Okay, so Willow is out. What about Giles?"
Kennedy shrugged. "Not sure she'd listen. There's still a little tension there."
"What about Dawn?"
"Dawn's fighting the flu," Kennedy replied. "She's up, she's down, she's up, she's down. She's almost as bedridden as Rona."
"Bet she gets to go to the hospital because she's not a Slayer," Vi snorted.
"Robin took her to the emergency room yesterday. They sent her home with some antibiotics that are knocking her for a loop."
"Lucky bitch," Vi commented. "Must be nice to be Miss-Normal-Girl-Can-Have-Any-Future-I-Want-Can-Go-To-The-Doctor-When-I-Need-Medical-Care."
"Yeah, but her sister's Buffy," Kennedy reminded the other Slayer with a snigger.
"Good point. I don't envy Dawn at all," Vi giggled. "Hey! What about Xander? He usually can get people motivated to do something. Betchya he'd go roaring in there and rip everyone a new one for letting Rona suffer."
Kennedy snorted. "Good luck getting him out of his room. His highness only deigns to show himself to us lowly newbies for a few minutes every few days. You have to be Buffy or Faith to get him to crawl out of his hole. He only answers to the big girls."
"A little unfair, aren't you? Of all of us, he's lost the most."
Kennedy winced. "You're right. I know you're right."
"Maybe approach Xander, then?" Vi asked with a hopeful tone. "Maybe if he thought Rona needed him…"
"Let me try to reason with Buffy," Kennedy said. "There's not too much anyone's gonna do unless herself okays it."
Charlie was in a bad temper when she cut her way through the cornrows. She had spent an entire afternoon knocking on doors about next month's detasseling jobs. Usually early June was a fine time to start looking for fieldwork and for the past two years she was usually able to land something after visiting a couple of farms.
Not this year. This year it took her four hours to land the precious backbreaking work of removing the tasseled crowns from the tops of corn. Charlie didn't mind the labor, especially since each year she was able to bring more home. Last year she earned more than $2,500 in one month. Half went to her parents to help with the finances, but she got to bank the other half.
When she hit 18 she was going to take that money and leave. She wasn't sure where, but she figured she had plenty of time to decide. Maybe it would come down to throwing a dart at a map and just heading in that direction. Or maybe she'd have a firm idea of where she'd want to go.
Her latest dream was to visit Cleveland or Boston. Why those two cities? Charlie herself couldn't explain it. It was a pull, only she felt like she was being torn in two. She knew it couldn't be both. It was one or the other and that was that.
*I'll probably change my own mind a million, million times fer sure,* Charlie thought as she picked up a rock and tossed it deeper into the dusk-darkened row. *I got time to decide. Betchya I'll wind up somewheres weird anyways, like Timbuktu or the Yukon.*
She frowned into corn before shaking off the thought and picked up her pace through the field. Four hours. It was after seven and her Momma'll will be worried for dead certain. Times were tough and it seemed everyone had already filled their roster or simply weren't hiring as many people this year.
Truth to tell, it wasn't the long hours searching that bothered her, especially since the O'Briens did take her on. Mrs. O'Brien even gave her some fresh-baked cookies and some water and asked about her family after they sealed the deal.
*Not one bit like that awful Mrs. Talnin.* Charlie kicked at the dirt on remembering the real reason for her current bad mood. *Yeah, so they're not hirin' no one this year, jus' like las' year, but she didn' have to be all nasty 'bout it. I work hard an' I got references.*
Frankly, Mrs. Talnin's curt manner took her by surprise. Sure, she and Ginny weren't exactly best friends, but Charlie and the younger Talnin got on well enough at school. Funny how inheriting money left Ginny exactly the same but seemed to go straight to her mother's head.
*She ain't worth it, not now that I have superpowers,* Charlie firmly reminded herself. *I got myself bigger fish to fry.*
The smell of rotting meat hit her nose and she froze. Somewhere around here was a dead animal and even though her sight had improved since her recent transformation into a superhero, it was still fairly dark in the corn. The last thing she needed was to step in something nasty.
A stumbling crash to her right caught her attention and she swung her face around, peering between the stalks. She gagged, since the smell seemed stronger in that direction. It was probably someone cutting through the field like she was only they got to step in dead animal instead of her.
Still, wouldn't hurt to check and see if they were all right.
"'Lo?" Charlie called. "Anyone about?"
The stumbling seemed to switch directions, moving closer to her position. The smell was also getting stronger. In response, Charlie clapped a hand over her mouth, staring hard into the corn, and slowly began to back away as every sense screamed that something was really wrong. Some part of her mind calculated that the edge of the field wasn't too far. She could be out and on the road in a less than minute if she had to make a break for it.
She jumped when a face thrust through the stalks at her, jaws opened wide in a silent scream. Charlie yelped and sped backwards, stumbling over plants, rocks, and rough-hewn soil in her haste to get away.
*'S a monster,* Charlie desperately thought as she struggled to keep her balance. *It looks like its skin's meltin' clean off its bones.*
The creature kept its shriveled eyes locked on her and lurched forward, jaws working all the while. Charlie leapt back again, this time to put more distance between herself and the monster, grateful that it wasn't exactly fast. *I gotta do somethin'. I mean, if I'm a superhero an' all, I'm prob'ly supposed to kill this thing stone dead 'fore it does damage.*
"Call me Superman," Charlie muttered as she straightened her spine, clenched her fist, screwed up her courage, and charged the evil-looking thing. She felt a surge of power electrify every nerve ending and solidify every muscle. Her attention sharpened to the point where she could notice the minutest details about the thing before her. Some part of her brain quickly catalogued that the smell was coming from it, that there was no heartbeat, and that the thing wasn't even breathing.
Monster mash managed to catch her fist, but Charlie was able to twist out of it. She smiled when she heard a snap. She not only got out of it, but she also managed to break its wrist at the same time.
Almost on instinct, she spun, lashing out her foot and hitting the thing square in the jaw. As it stumbled backwards, Charlie pounced, managing to force the creature to its knees, and work herself around so that she stood behind it. Her left arm locked around its neck in a classic sleeper hold. With her right hand she viciously twisted its head. The sound of more breaking bones was her cue to let go.
She stepped back and watched her prey, expecting it to collapse in a dead slump. No such luck. It was struggling to its feet, head still twisted to the right.
"What do I gotta do to take you down?" Charlie asked as she lunged again. This time, she grabbed the head with both hands and pulled it clean off the creature's shoulders. The main body collapsed, twisting and vibrating in the field while the neck sprayed blood and gore.
Charlie looked at the head in her hands and dropped it with a scream. Her mind simply froze as the impossible reality of the carnage and the vision of the still-moving body and still-chewing jaws burned itself into her brain. She wasn't sure how long she stood there in shock, watching head and body twist and struggle uselessly about before it occurred to her that the reason why the monster wasn't dead was probably because it was already dead.
She looked down at her clothes and sighed. Her shirt and jeans were ruined. Her Momma was gonna kill her for sure. Well, maybe not kill her, but there was a definite grounding in her near future. She dispiritedly looked at the not-quite-dead thing and swallowed hard. *A superhero's gotta do what a superhero's gotta do,* she resolved.
She walked over, put a firm foot on the torso's chest, grabbed the right arm, and yanked. She gagged as she felt the limb tear out of its home. One look at the still-wriggling arm pushed her over the edge and she lost not just Mrs. O'Brien's cookies, but lunch and breakfast with it.
When she was done, she swiped at her mouth, took a deep breath, and turned back to look at the monster and its head. She was going to have to tear the thing apart with her bare hands if she wanted to make sure it wouldn't hurt anyone.
No one ever said being a superhero was easy.
It was hours before AAA finally produced the needed tow truck. Xander was less than pleased when he was initially told he'd have to wait 45 minutes for aid and Faith was subjected to yet another rant about how his membership fees were apparently used to pay bloated executive salaries, since AAA obviously invested nothing in customer service.
Ninety minutes' worth of waiting later, Xander called again, only to discover that AAA had no record of his initial call. They were again entered into the system, but were promised a 30-minute wait. The latest incident resulted in a long-winded rant from Xander how AAA was worse than a subcontractor. He capped this particular tirade by warning they'd still be waiting for that tow next week.
*He just doesn't shut the hell up when he's on a roll,* Faith thought with rolled eyes while an oblivious Xander gave the car a frustrated kick. *Wonder how many times Buffy slapped the duct tape over his freakin' mouth.*
When 30 minutes hit 45 minutes, Xander was back on the phone. No, they weren't forgotten this time. They just had gotten bumped down the queue because a few priority tows--as in tows where the motorists had been stranded in a manner that posed a safety hazard--had jumped the line. Xander was assured he was the next, barring further emergencies.
This time Xander sighed, clicked the cell shut, and gave Faith a shrug, as if to say, "What can you do?"
Their rescuer finally showed at quarter to seven. By this time Xander had apparently exhausted himself into an emotionless state. He fell into a nearly monosyllabic speech pattern as he answered the driver's questions and calmly accepted that they were in for a 45-minute ride to the closest gas station.
While the driver switched between talking with the dispatcher and making small talk in that strange way people from the Midwest have, Xander settled into brooding silence as he stared out the passenger window into the deepening dusk.
The Slayer was about ready to go batshit after about thirty minutes of being trapped between the two extremes of Xander's eerie stillness and the driver's increasingly friendly manner. At some point, Faith's new best friend began dropping broad hints that he was willing to show her a little fun around his hometown if her one-eyed boyfriend was the corker he looked like.
Faith plastered a pleasant smile on her face and did her best to ignore come on.
As the town swung into sight, Xander let out a low groan. His body jerked violently as if he'd been hit and he began looking wildly around the cab. When Faith saw him reach for the door latch, she grabbed his knee and squeezed it just a little harder than necessary. The move succeeded on two levels: she was able to "prove" she was "taken" to the driver and stop her companion from jumping out of the moving tow truck.
The evening went downhill from there.
Xander fell back into his passivity, still not saying a word, at the town's lone gas station. Which meant it was up to Faith to talk shop with the mechanic about their dead car. Since Faith knew shit-all about the inner workings of engines, she just knew the mechanic was going to use them to pay for his in-ground pool.
"You need a new fuel pump, alternator, a tune-up, tires, and your exhaust system is about to go," the mechanic opined. "Frankly, car's not worth fixin'. Better off with a new 'un."
"And you know just who sells 'em, don'tchya?" Faith asked.
"My brother owns a used car lot. He could set you both up real nice with a solid car that'll getchyoo to where you want to go."
"We're a little short on cash," Faith commented, sneaking a glance at her partner. "Cheaper for us to fix it, probably."
The mechanic shrugged. "Your funeral, then. Take three days for me to get all the parts."
"Three days?" Ahhhh, Xander was at last showing life. "We can't stay here three days."
"Well, three days is whatchyoo get."
"This is a standard American car," Xander protested. "There isn't one part on that list that you shouldn't have on hand."
The mechanic straightened up and proceeded to show more respect in the face of an apparently knowledgeable customer. Throw in that a riled Xander with one eye-patch actually did look more threatening than her Slayer self, Faith could almost feel the mechanic revising his bill downwards.
"True 'nuff under most circumstances, but I don't have all the parts on hand for the exhaust or the fuel pump," the man said. "I sold my last rebuilt alternator today an' I haven't had a chance to order another."
"So order now," Xander said.
"Where d'you think you are, boy? Chicago? Auto parts stores 'round here close at five sharp an' it's now almost eight. Only reason I'm here is 'cause yer escort radioed ahead that you was from outta town," the mechanic chuckled. "I'll order when they open at nine sharpish and see if I can't put a rush on it."
Faith casually wandered over and patted Xander comfortingly on the arm. "There, there, sweetie. Your family will just have to understand if we can't make the reunion. I know you're upset, but that's the way it is. I was looking forward to seeing mom and dad so we could go over the wedding plans."
She was amazed that she could hold a straight face given the owlish look Xander gave her.
The mechanic sighed. "I'll beg for the rush. See if I can't setchyoo on yer way."
"Thanks," Faith said with deep sincerity, while Xander continued to watch her with a puzzled frown. "One more favor. I hate to ask, but me and my honey need a hotel."
"There's one a few miles back toward the highway. I'll call Donna, tell her to expect some guests at the Sunnydale Lodge. Hell, with all the money yer dropping, I'll give you a ride."
"Sunnydale?" Xander asked, his one eye wide. "This town isn't called…"
"No." The mechanic nervously watched his suddenly twitchy customers. "Jus' a name, ain't it?
"She's late."
Willow looked over to the dark-haired Slayer. "What's with the anxious? You usually hate these things."
Kennedy shrugged. "I got some business to bring up. Figures when I need to discuss something Buffy decides to be fashionable."
"I'm pretty sure it's not on purpose. She probably got tied up in…"
"That's right. Defend her like you always do."
The witch's forehead crinkled in confusion over Kennedy's tone. "I don't always defend…"
"Oh, right. The one time you didn't was the wrong time and we all nearly got killed."
"Kennedy? What's going on?"
"Rona."
Willow let out a breath she didn't know she was holding. "You're not actually angry with me. You're angry with Buffy. I should've realized… yeah, the Rona thing is pretty bad and…"
"So why aren't you doing something about it?"
"I told you. Healing spells are tricky and…"
"Not talking mumbo jumbo. I'm talking about telling Buffy to do something besides watching her suffer."
"Ummm, before you rudely interrupted me I was going to say I agree with you."
"When? Because what I heard was an excuse about how you can't pull off a healing spell despite the fact you can pull off a spell powerful enough to activate every Potential in the world."
"Okay, see? This is what I'm talking about. You're always interrupting me and…"
"I do not always interrupt."
"See? You just did it again." Willow shook her head and held up her hand. "Before this turns into a fight, I just want you to know that I was going to say somewhere near the beginning of this conversation that I agree with you about Rona and that we've waited long enough. I'm sure Buffy's gonna agree."
"I say screw Buffy and let's just take her to a hospital," Kennedy muttered.
"After the meeting," Willow promised, "regardless of what Buffy says."
Kennedy's shoulders relaxed and the Slayer gave Willow a relieved smile. "I'll be holding you to that."
Willow gave a tight smile back and clasped Kennedy's hand in her own. On the one hand, Willow was proud of her girlfriend. Since becoming a Slayer, she had become more protective of the other girls and their welfare. On the other, Willow felt increasingly on the outside as Kennedy became more and more involved in dealing with Slayer 'personnel issues.'
*The 'us' is coming to an end. I can feel it,* Willow thought. *I hate this. I really, really hate this. Heartbreak makes my stomach ache. Still, it's good, right? This time it's normal, old break-up stuff instead of traumatizing break-up stuff. No vampires, werewolves, or bullets involved. All good.*
Yeah, and at any moment she'll be able to convince herself that she could sing the lead in *Madam Butterfly.*
The hotel room door flung open and all the occupants' eyes turned to the entrance as Buffy strode into the room wringing her hands.
Willow shot to her feet when she saw the worried expression on her friend's face. "What is it?"
"He's gone."
Willow's stomach sank. She knew exactly who 'he' was even before she asked. "What? Who's gone?"
"Xander. He's just gone." Buffy looked around the room, her expression a little lost. "I don't know…without a word…no note…no nothing…just picked up and…"
Willow put a comforting arm around the blonde Slayer and tried not to act hurt when she was shrugged off.
"He promised he'd talk to me before…he promised." Buffy began pacing the room, looking in turn at Giles, Wood, Kennedy, and Willow. "Tell me you guys have seen in him the past day or two. Tell me."
"Buffy, calm down…" Willow began.
"Now is not the time for calm," Buffy growled. "He's out there on his own and anything could've…"
"Buffy, do take a deep breath and start from the beginning," Giles smoothly cut in. "What happened."
Buffy took a deep breath. "I was worried. I mean, sure he hasn't been Mr. Sociable, but, well, that's all understandable, right? But, you know, I'd manage to see him every couple of days. He wasn't totally locked in his room. But it's been almost a week and I was worried so I thought I'd stop by and check on him to make sure he was okay."
"He never answers his door," Willow explained. "I mean, I spent almost every day since we got to Oxnard begging him through a closed door to get out and take a walk with me and I never heard a peep from him when I did. Half the time I wondered if he was even there."
"I didn't know that," Kennedy said.
Willow shifted uncomfortably "Well…"
Buffy interrupted. "I didn't know that either, I mean, about him never answering a knock, which is kinda why I sorta kicked down the door."
"Well, that'll work," Robin dryly commented.
"Hope we have enough in petty cash to pay for the damage," Kennedy grumbled.
"I was worried," Buffy protested. "I'm even more worried now." She turned to her Watcher. "Giles, everything's gone. There's nothing in his room, not even the stuff he bought after we got here, not even the Red Cross stuff. He just ran off!"
"Buffy, I was not under the impression that Xander was under house arrest," Giles remarked.
"He should be," Robin said.
Willow whirled on the principal. "What?"
"It's clear that Xander can be dangerous," Wood said.
"Xander? Dangerous?" Kennedy asked. "Are we talking about Xander Harris? Or some other Xander?"
"He was dangerous enough save your life," Willow snarled.
Kennedy held up her hands in surrender. "Look, what I meant was that Xander's okay in a fight. He's no Slayer, but he's not exactly the best non-Slayer fighter we have."
"People, enough!" Buffy shouted. "The fact is Xander is gone. I want to know when, how, and where. When was the last time anyone saw him?"
"I saw him at breakfast two days ago." Willow frowned.
"Willow, think. Do you remember seeing him after that breakfast? Anything?" Buffy asked, her voice a mix of irritation and pleading.
"No," Willow deflated. "Truth to tell, I didn't even really talk to him when I saw him at breakfast because I was running around trying to get a handle on what awaits us in Cleveland."
"Great. Just great! You blew the perfect opportunity to talk to him because you were busy." Buffy threw her hands up in the air. "You know he's not stable. You know this."
"Actually, I don't…" Willow began.
"Listen, who in this room had anything close to a real conversation with him since we left Sunnydale?" Buffy pointed an accusing finger at Willow. "You?" She spun on Giles. "You?" She flung a dismissive arm at Robin. "How about you, tough guy?" She looked at Kennedy and snorted. "Yeah, like you'd even try."
"I don't know Xander that well," Kennedy protested.
"That's not the point! I'm the only one who's talked to him and I'm the only one here that's made even the tiniest of efforts to reach out to him," Buffy fumed.
"Buffy, I don't think you're being fair," Willow cut in. "I've tried, but he's shut me out."
"Can you blame him?" Buffy asked. "He's drowning in guilt, over…over… well over everything. Anya, Sunnydale, it's just…just…everything has caught up with him and I think some part of him holds you…" the elder Slayer snapped her mouth shut.
"Holds me what? Responsible?" Willow shot back. "Did he tell you that? Did he?"
Buffy huffed a breath, her expression showing that she was fighting to keep her temper under control. "No. Of course not. But still, outside you spending time with him in the hospital after Caleb…" she shuddered. "You two haven't been exactly what I call close. Are you sure the two of you are even friends anymore? I mean, for a while there he was relying in Faith more than you. Then he and Anya got involved again and that seemed to bring him around. Now that Anya's gone and he's started shutting everyone out. Again. Just like he did back in Sunnydale when he…" Buffy's voice trailed off, as if she realized where she was going, and she bit her lip with a wince. "I don't want…I'm afraid…what if…I just don't want blood on our hands if he…"
"Excuse me? Are you dancing around what I think you're dancing around?" Willow protested.
"Wait, hold up. 'Just like he did back in Sunnydale when he'? When he what?" Kennedy asked.
"Killed some demons," Willow said shortly.
"Okay, I admit I'm slow on the uptake about this whole Slayer deal, but isn't that what we do?" Kennedy asked, confusion clearly evident in her voice.
"It's not that he killed demons. It's that they were human at the time," Robin answered her.
Willow hissed her disapproval while Buffy blinked in shock.
"What?" Kennedy alternated her gaze between Buffy and Willow. "But how's that possible?"
"Excuse me, Robin, but just how do you know so much about Xander's activities in Sunnydale?" Giles inquired.
"Faith explained it to me before she left," Robin said.
"Faith," Buffy deadpanned.
Robin shrugged. "Look, she wasn't sticking a knife in your friend's back if that's what you're worried about. She was just trying to explain the whole situation. Frankly, I got the sense that she thought Xander was right in doing what he did."
"I wish I could be as sure about him as Faith," Buffy quietly admitted. "Then again, Faith doesn't know him and we do. So before you start throwing tickertape parades in his honor…"
"I'm not sure what I think," Robin interrupted. "She wasn't entirely clear how humans could be transformed into Turok-Hans. Plus, I'm not sure that Xander was completely right, especially since those things were boiling out of the Hellmouth before it collapsed in on itself."
"Well, they were kinda cropping up all over town even after Andrew cried all over the seal and closed it," Kennedy mused. "It would also explain why some of those creeps were easier to kill than others."
"So you believe it?" Willow fought hard to keep relief out of her voice.
Kennedy shrugged. "I dunno. Without more info, let's put me in the neutral column."
"This debate is all well and good, but we have to find Xander," Buffy insisted. "He's out there all alone and god knows what's happened to him."
Willow desperately searched her mind for an argument that would calm the very obviously upset Buffy. In all honesty, she was on the shaken side herself. She figured at some point Xander would need to take a break from the Slayage, but she never thought he'd leave without a word. Okay, sure, no one expected him to leave Anya at the altar either, but he did come back long enough to help Buffy kill a demon and tell Anya it was a no go. This disappearance was different in that there was something final about the ringing silence left in his wake. No attempt to explain, no attempt to leave a message, nothing.
*Except for Buffy,* her mind whispered. *Buffy had a feeling that Xander might pull a disappearing act and since she was the one who talked to him the most since Sunnydale, maybe we should've listened when she tried to warn us that something was up.*
"Buffy, he'll be back," Willow said as she fought to shake off her own doubts. "He's not going to stay away as long as we need him, and we do need him. If nothing else, he does have front-line experience and he could help teach…"
"That's not the issue, Willow," Buffy interrupted. "The problem is that Xander's not exactly living in Sanesville. Think about this and think of all the crap that's rained down on him since Kingman's Bluff. Hell, why stop there? Things started going bad when he left Anya at the altar. It's like she's cursed him." Buffy stopped, as if the realization had struck her in that moment. "I bet that's it! Xander's under a curse and it's messing with his brain."
"Whoa. Overreaction. Anya couldn't curse him after she redemonized, remember?" Willow asked.
"She could've gotten one of her vengeance buddies to do it or…" Buffy's eyes widened in horror. "Ohmygod, what if she got someone else to do it? Someone who didn't care about him or would want to hurt him?"
"Or maybe there's no curse involved and maybe he just needs some quality alone time," Willow pointed out. "Buffy? C'mon, think about this a little bit. He's really been going through a lot."
Buffy closed her eyes in sympathy. "I understand that. I do. But I have talked to him a few times since Sunnydale and every conversation gets a little more surreal. The last time we talked at length was a real beaut. People, I'm telling you, he was verging on out-of-control. He said he was having nightmares that…"
"What kind of nightmares?" Giles quickly inquired.
"He wouldn't say. He was being all avoid-y," Buffy's jaw tightened. "If we don't get him back…god, what if he goes all bloodthirsty because voices in his head are telling him he needs to kill again? What if his demon side takes over?"
"Demon side?" Kennedy interrupted.
"Xander's a demon," Robin said.
Willow fought the urge to scream at Robin to shut up when she saw the look of horror, coupled with a look of distaste, cross Kennedy's features.
"It's not bad enough that we had Spike…" the younger Slayer caught herself with a sidewise look at her elder sister-in-arms. "But now you're telling me we were fighting alongside another demon? One that killed?"
"Demons. He killed demons," Willow reminded her.
"They were human in all the ways that count. Xander said that himself," Buffy quietly contradicted her. The Slayer looked like she was on the verge of tears.
"Really?" Kennedy's voice had taken on a dangerous tone. "I'm liking this Xander situation less and less."
"There's no indication in the historical record that Pythias were violent," Giles said.
"What do we know about them, Giles?" Buffy pushed. "What do we really know? Rumors? Facts? Anything?"
"The record is sketchy at best," Giles reluctantly allowed.
"It's not…what are you saying?" Willow could feel her heart sinking. "Xander wouldn't. It's not him, Buffy, you know Xander. He wouldn't. He couldn't hurt…"
"Human Xander, Wills," Buffy snapped. "I knew Human Xander and that Xander is gone. This Xander? I'm not sure I even know him. He managed come up with the right justification to go out on his own and shed blood and hide it from the rest of us. You were in Sunnydale. You were as horrified as I was when you saw the bodies."
"There was a method to the madness at the time," Giles gently cut in. "There were reasons why he did what he did. Good reasons."
"He has a taste for blood, Giles, I can see it in him. Giles, I don't want to be in a position where I have to kill him because he's stepped over the line. Don't you see? If we don't find him, if we don't catch him, I won't have a choice if…" she stopped, closed her eyes and collected herself. She quietly added, "I've lost too many people I've loved over the years and I desperately don't want to add Xander to the list. I want him back with us because I want to make sure he's safe from himself and from me."
Buffy was saying all the right things and she certainly seemed legitimately worried, yet something rang just a little off to the witch. Buffy back in Sunnydale never worried that Xander would go off randomly killing humans, even after the whole business about the demon heritage came to light, so why was she all-fired worried about it now? It simply made no sense, as far as Willow could tell, unless… maybe a question needed to be asked to shed a little light on what was going on inside Buffy's head. "So, if we drag Xander back here and we go all love bomb-y on him until he's a-okay with the world, you'll let him leave if he still wants to go?"
"If he was sane, he wouldn't've left me, I mean us, in the first place," Buffy stated.
Willow breathed a sigh of relief. Buffy's world had been rocked to its foundations in the past two years as one blow followed another and Xander's swift and silent departure was just the latest in a long line of surprises. There was nothing strange about Buffy's insistence on keeping Xander close, just Buffy trying to hold on to one of the very few things she had come to count on over the years: that at the end of the day Xander would always be around.
"Are you suggesting that Xander is having a nervous breakdown?" Giles looked distressed that he even had to ask the question.
"Think about what crazy stuff Xander is capable of doing while he's sane. Now think about what an insane Xander might do and throw some innocent bystanders into the mix," Buffy said.
"That bad?" Robin asked.
Giles blinked. "It is a possibility we have to allow for. Xander's heritage could make him that much more dangerous if he's unstable."
*Okay, now that's disturbing,* Willow frowned. *I can get where Buffy is coming from, but I don't get everyone else's attitude. Why are they all so willing to believe the worst? Am I missing the subtext or something, because I really don't see anything but text here.* Looks like it was up to her to diffuse the situation. She'd have a talk with Buffy, calm down her friend, and the whole 'get Xander' mission would be conveniently shelved until at least after the move to Cleveland.
"Listen, we are still getting off the track, here," Buffy said with a clap, bringing Willow to attention. "Has anyone seen Xander since two days ago?"
The group uncomfortably eyed one another.
"I see," Buffy's voice dropped an octave. "Right. Kennedy, I want you to question every one of our people and try to find out if anyone has seen him in the past 48 hours. Willow, in the meantime, I want you to see if you can do a specialized locator spell that would pinpoint his location. Giles, I think it's time we contact Angel in L.A. and see if he has anything in his bag of private eye tricks that could help us track down Xander. Robin, I want you to go to the local police station and report that our Buick Century has been stolen. Are we clear about our assignments?"
"And what are we supposed to do if we if we find him?" Kennedy said.
Buffy smiled thinly. "A little ahead of ourselves, since we haven't found him yet. But if we do find him, we bring him back here."
"Dead or alive?" Robin asked.
Buffy blinked, as if horrified that Robin could even consider a Dead Xander as acceptable. "Alive at all costs," she said, her voice showing a hint of tremor. "We have to be prepared. We may have to hurt him to get him back. I don't want to, god knows, but if we have to, we'll do it."
Now that everyone had their assignments, there was movement to leave the room. Willow grabbed Kennedy's arm as the Slayer got up to leave. "Rona," she reminded her girlfriend.
"Later. This Xander situation can't wait and the sooner we get on this, the sooner we'll find him."
*The hell? What happened to…* "But you said that Rona is…"
"She's in pain, but she's not getting any worse, either," Kennedy assured the redhead. "I'll tackle the issue with Buffy tomorrow myself. Right now, we need to focus, not go running around in all directions like we did in Sunnydale with the First."
"You don't actually buy Xander is crazy and just might go evil, do you?"
"I don't know what conversation you heard, but I definitely heard that." Kennedy's eyes narrowed as she regarded the witch. "Look, I know you don't want to believe it, and I'm pretty sure Buffy doesn't either, but, hey, give fearless leader her props, at least she's finally willing to admit that some of her demonic friends may not be the nicest creatures on the planet."
Willow let Kennedy's arm drop. *That cuts it, me and Buffy are gonna have a talk and it can't wait.* "I, unh, gotta stay here. I'll see you later?"
Kennedy's defensive posture relaxed and she placed a kiss Willow's cheek. "Don't wait up. I got a lotta people to talk to about this sitch, so no worrying if I'm not tucked in at a reasonable hour, 'kay?"
"Yeah," Willow responded absently as she watched her girlfriend follow the rest of the party out of the room. When the door snicked shut behind the straggling Slayer, Willow took a deep, calming breath and asked, "Okay, Buffy? What's really gong on? I mean, paranoia? About Xander? You're not serious, are you?"
"We have to find him, Will, before he hurts himself or someone else," Buffy pleaded.
"Unh-hunh, way to not answer my question," Willow nodded. "I think you're suppressing."
"Suppressing," Buffy deadpanned.
"You know, the real reason you want him back. I understand that you really thought that he'd never walk away from you, I mean at least permanently, and now you're afraid he's gone for good. I think it's just hit you that you just might care about him a little more than you thought.
"How can you say that, much less believe it? How?" Buffy exploded. "Spike just died and you're accusing me of already chasing…"
"Whoa, hold up. I'm not accusing you of anything. Radical interpretation here," Willow said, more than a little surprised that Buffy was finally admitting that there was something real about her relationship with Spike. "Look, I don't get the thing you had with Spike, I really don't, but…look, I'm just trying to say that sometimes, well, sometimes you want things, I mean people, that you think you can't have."
"That's not true, Willow, and you know it," Buffy protested. "You know…"
"I've seen this with both Angel and Spike," Willow said. "Angel because of the whole curse thing and Spike because of the whole big bad thing."
"This better not be going where I think it's going."
"Look, I'm not saying it's a conscious thing or anything. I'm not. It's just, well, now Xander's in the 'untouchable' column. Not because he's all demon-y or anything like that, but because he's physically not around. Think about this: now he's the one that's hard to get and I have to wonder if some part of you doesn't find that just a little bit attractive."
Buffy raised her eyebrows in amusement. "You realize what you said makes no sense, right? I mean, I have eyes, I know he's capable of cuteness, but Xander-shaped friends and Buffy-shaped friends really don't fit together like…like…ummmm…help me out here."
"Look, okay, you and Xander, bad idea, especially right now when you're both vulnerable," Willow quickly back-pedaled since Buffy's disbelieving tone was a clear indication that she was barking up the wrong tree. "What I'm saying is that all of us had the pins knocked out from underneath us and we're maybe clinging to people we shouldn't, people who may not be ready to serve as a crutch to help us back on our feet."
"Now someone's projecting."
"No projecting here. Kennedy and I are perfectly happy," Willow stiffened.
"Reeeealllyyyy," Buffy drawled.
"This is not about me, this is about you." *How did Buffy turn this back on me?* the witch thought as she scrambled to find the right words. "Look, I'm not saying that it's wrong for you to want Xander around. You're both going through similar things what with Anya and… and…and Spike. And Xander leaving the way he did, without a word to anyone, well, that's kind of a shock to everyone and out of character for him, so maybe…well, maybe you're blowing a few isolated statements he's made all out of proportion to justify your feelings."
Buffy's eyes became sad. "Oh, Will. You haven't talked to him. It's bad. It's really bad. I wish I could say otherwise, but I can't."
"If that's true, why didn't you tell anyone? Why didn't you tell me?" Willow demanded.
"I know, I know," Buffy waved her hands as if warding off a blow. "I don't know. I think I was trying to protect you because I know you feel responsible about what happened to Xander since Kingman's Bluff." She closed her eyes and sighed. "Or maybe I was trying to protect myself by thinking he'd be alright if I just gave him time. But, you are right. I should have told someone about my concerns."
"Yes, you should have," Willow said, not entirely mollified or convinced.
"Shouldda, couldda, wouldda," Buffy said. "Doesn't change the fact that we have a ticking time bomb running around the big, bad world. Even if he isn't a demon, he's someone who's fought a lot of things stronger than he is. Can you imagine what he'd do to a normal human being?"
"You're convinced he's dangerous," Willow said.
"I'm convinced he could be dangerous," Buffy said.
Willow took a breath and aimed a shot. "But when Spike was killing…"
Buffy winced. "I'm trying to find a middle ground, here. I went after Anya with a sword without thinking. I bent over backwards to accommodate Spike, which, in the end was the right thing to do given how everything turned out. But I agree, doing that did cause a lot of headaches and heartaches. The middle ground is to find Xander and bring him home to his family without hurting him. Once we get him back, then we'll be able to help him."
Willow gave up. Buffy was clearly fixated on finding and bringing Xander back into the fold. Worse, she was willing to divert their thin resources to the hunt and justify it by painting her friend with a tar brush, something Buffy had refused to do when both Angelus and Spike were at their worst.
*That's not exactly right either,* Willow thought as she considered he friend's words. *Buffy didn't say anything bad about Xander in Sunnydale either; despite the fact she knew he was responsible for those murders. Plus, I don't think she was trying all that hard. I mean, she hunted him alone for pete's sake and kept the Potentials in the dark about the whole situation. Now she's practically announcing that we need to keep him locked up with no evidence that he's done anything wrong. Something isn't adding up.*
Then again everyone was acting brittle in the aftermath as members of the group cautiously danced around each other. No one wanted to think too hard about the sinkhole they all left behind or the big ol' scary future dead ahead. People were coping in different ways, or not coping as the case may be. *This could just be a case of nervous Buffy looking for a crisis to distract her. Xander took her by surprise and it's probably triggered a post-traumatic stress thing. I bet that's all it is.*
Right. Willow to save the day, then. A few delaying tactics on her part until Buffy calmed down enough to see reason, at least as far as Xander was concerned, and the whole mess would probably blow over. *Funny how I'm being all rational-girl about this. Probably because I don't really believe that he's gone for good. A year from now, me, Buffy, and Xander will probably look back on this and, well, maybe not laugh, but realize that there was a whole lot of overreactin' goin' on.*
Well, if she was gong to be the sane Scooby, she better start implementing Operation Keep Away, pronto-ish.
"It's a big world out there and we don't know what Xander's financial resources are. I mean, he did manage to scrape up enough money to buy a car," Willow casually said. "We might not be able to find him, especially if he doesn't want to be found. What'll you do then?"
Buffy clenched her jaw. "Then I start watching the evening news and looking for signs that a new serial killer is on the loose."
The room, to put it diplomatically, sucked. In fact, Faith was pretty sure that she'd rather sleep in a boxcar, which was saying something since she had slept in a few boxcars in her time.
Xander walked to the center of the room, gave the lone double bed a suspicious glare, and commented, "Three days. We can't stay here three days. We can't stay here for one night." He turned and began heading for the door. "Let's go. We can hitchhike."
"Whoa," Faith snagged his arm as he passed and jerked him up short. "What the fuck is up with you?"
Xander refused to look at her. "This is bad. This is very bad. We should leave town, as in, leave town right now."
"No way. I'm fuckin' exhausted. I need sleep, as in need sleep right now," Faith said, copying Xander's vocal rhythm. "You don't like it? Tough shit."
"This is bad, bad, bad, bad, bad…"
Xander's face had taken on an unfocused look while he repeated that one word in a voice that made the hair on Faith's arms stand up on end. Christ, the two of them were exhausted to the breaking point. They both needed rest and three days in the middle of nowhere sounded like just the ticket.
Besides, this town needed a frigging horse if it ever hoped to qualify as a one-horse town. The absolute worst thing that could possibly be floating around out there was a vampire, maybe two. The local population wasn't big enough to support anything heavier than that, at least as far as Faith could tell.
"Stop it," she shook him. "Listen Rain Man, I'm not going to get all squishy and girly-scared inside just because you've got a funny feeling in your big toe. So cut the crap."
That seemed to shut him up. Well, actually, it just shut off his voice. Xander's lips continued to move without sound.
Faith gave him a harder, more violent shake, which at least snapped him out of his mantra. He blinked at her, as if surprised she was still there, and glanced down his arm, his gaze resting on the point where her fingers dug into his arm. Faith quickly let go and raised her hands in a quick, angry motion, before dropping them to her sides.
"Are we all done? Think you can tell me what your issue is?"
Xander looked around the room as if he'd never seen it before. "Ummmm, there's only one bed."
"So? I won't bite ya. Hell, I even promise not to try to take off your underwear. Jesus, is that why you were freaking? Christ. If you're that bothered, I'll sleep on the floor."
"Hunh? What? No." Xander shook his head as if trying to get his bearings. "I mean, I'll take the floor, you take the bed. You're the muscle, so you should have the mattress."
"You're the primary driver, so you need the sleep."
"Oh, right." He paused. "Well, it's just for tonight, so, okay."
"What the fuck are you? Deaf? You heard the man. We're stuck here for three days. If we're lucky, we're here for two. There ain't no way we're leaving tomorrow."
"Three days?" Xander whispered. He cleared his throat. "I don't like the sound of that."
"Xander, we've gone over this already. Don't make me come over there and smack you into next week."
"At the garage. Right," Xander quickly nodded. "I remember that."
"Shit, you must really be exhausted," Faith commented. "You're not making any sense. Hell, you're not even making Xander-sense."
"I'm afraid to ask, but 'Xander-sense'?"
"One word: Detroit. Look, I get you want me outta your hair so you can go off and brood…"
"I do not brood. I think. I ponder. Angel broods," Xander protested.
"Whatever, but you getting all worked up over three freakin' days? Way to make a girl feel like she's not wanted."
"It's not you," Xander absently said as he worriedly looked around the room.
"Then what?"
"Cornfields," Xander said quickly. "Cornfields Freak. Me. Out. Childhood trauma. Something involving cows, I think, and ears of corn. Oh, wait, I know. I got lost in a…wait, no, that was I movie I saw…hey! I know…'If you build it they will come.' I mean, c'mon, how can you hear that line and not think alien invasion? I'm telling you, *Field of Dreams* was definitely the scariest movie of all time, and not just because it helped cement Kevin Costner's movie career."
"Stop. Please. I'm beggin' ya. You're killing me."
Xander smiled, but did as requested.
"Fine. Don't want to tell me. I dig it."
"Look, it isn't that," Xander said, smile disappearing from his face. "There's something on the not right scale in this town and…" His eye twitched closed and he drew a deep breath. "I'm tired. That's all. A hot shower. A few nights' sleep. You're right. Of course you're right."
"Oh, that's just so convincing," Faith said. "Any moment now you'll be able to convince yourself."
Xander's eye snapped open with an irritated frown. "Since you're sleeping on the floor, I'll let you have first crack at the shower."
Hard floor or no, Faith was down for the count even before she heard Xander flick on the water in the bathroom. Hell, her offer to take the first night on the floor wasn't exactly made out of the goodness of her heart. In her humble opinion, the floor looked a damn sight more comfortable than the bed.
She was having a good sleep, one blessedly free of Slayer dreaming and one full of everyday weirdness that cram the sleeping minds of most humans when she felt herself yanked to full wakefulness.
She heard a low moan and a rustle of sheets.
*Christ. A little consideration, hunh? Nice of you to wait until I was asleep to jack off. Couldn't do it in the shower, could you assface?* Faith thought with irritation. Well, she was going to teach him a lesson in manners. She hopped to her feet, and said, "Gotchya. You are on Faith's Candid Camera."
The only response was a louder groan and a babble of words that didn't exactly sound like English.
*Oh, shit. Nightmare,* Faith thought. Indecision kept her in place as she watched Xander's thrashing get steadily more violent. Could be a nightmare about Sunnydale or it could be one of those nightmares. She didn't know if she should wake him up; worse, she didn't know what would happen if she didn't.
Instead, she dropped to her knees next to the bed and reached for his hand. It worked in Sunnydale to calm him down, so maybe…
He slapped her hand away and the jumbled sounds became more urgent. She realized with a start that the three parallel scratches on his right cheek were back, as angrily red as they were the first time she saw them. Her mind was still registering the now-you-see-it-now-you-don't nature of the scars when the eye patch dislodged, its protective covering riding uselessly up his forehead. Faith strangled a gasp when both eyelids opened and he sightlessly looked through her.
There was something there.
She scrambled backwards a short distance away and openly stared. *Not possible. What I just saw is not possible. He's got one eye, so where the fuck did…*
Xander violently sat up, fighting an invisible opponent. The resulting tangle of sheets managed to trip him up enough so he fell off the bed and landed on Faith's makeshift sleeping pad. The thump was quickly followed by a painful yelp.
"Xander?" Faith hated the uncertainty in her voice.
Xander started, eyes—*my god, it's something…what the hell is that,* Faith wondered—blinking quickly. The fact that the scars had disappeared without leaving a trace now barely registered on the unnerving scale.
"Oh, shit. Faith. I…just…stress. Shit," Xander verbally stumbled while he struggled out of the sheets.
"Now I get why you insisted on separate rooms last night," Faith said. "How fucking long has this been happening?"
"Look, it's just a nightmare. No big." Christ, he sounded scared.
"Just a fucking nightmare? What kind of fucking nightmare?" Faith demanded. She was getting angry. Angry was good. Well, at least angry was better than scared.
He responded to her tone by cringing on the floor. "Post-traumatic stress. From Sunnydale. I swear. I'm not dreaming anything more than that."
Judging by the tone, Faith had a pretty good idea that he was lying through his over-bleached California teeth. She also knew that she wasn't going to get anything more out of him than what she got. Besides, she had bigger fish to fry in the waking world.
Crap, right now she was willing to kill for a cigarette.
"Okay, fine. Gotchya. Nightmares after the big explosion. We've all got 'em," Faith said, fighting to keep her voice calm. "What we don't all get is the ability to grow body parts back. Shit, I'm a Slayer and I'm pretty sure that I couldn't grow a new eye if a crazed, woman-hating, homicidal, cartoon Southern preacher poked mine out."
Xander looked at her and with a start Faith realized that she might've been a little wrong to call the thing in Xander's left eye socket an "eye."
"What the hell are you talking about?" he demanded. "I don't…"
"From where I sit I sure as shit am seeing something I shouldn't," Faith said in an accusing tone.
A look of terror crossed Xander's face while a hand slowly approached the left side of his face. When he realized that the patch was not in place, he scrambled to find it, digging through his hair at first before turning to desperately search the bed.
Faith shot over to Xander's side, grabbed both his hands, and began dragging him to the bathroom. He responded by digging his heels into the carpet. The end result was a struggle of grunts where Faith had the strength and Xander had the leverage. Knowing she wasn't going to get too far without inflicting serious bodily harm, Faith suddenly let go and let Xander fall on his ass with a whump.
Faith stood over him, hands on hips, and fought once more for calm. "Look, I'm not trying to torture ya here. Xander? I don't know what the hell I'm seeing, so I'm thinking you should get a look-see."
"I don't want to," Xander responded in a petulant voice.
"Yeah, 'cause avoidance? Works so well for you," Faith threw her hands up in the air. "What the hell is it with you? All of you? Do you do this shit on purpose? Or do you just have no fucking clue?"
Faith's irritation did the trick. She was almost relieved to see a flash of anger as Xander got to his feet. He swept past her to get to the bathroom, but stopped at the threshold, hand hovering inside as if he wasn't sure he wanted to turn on the light.
Faith figured it was time for one final kick in the ass. "Go on. It's just your face, right? Nothing any more scary than the usual."
She could see his shoulders hunch. The light snapped on and he walked the one pace necessary to get to the mirror. She heard a harsh gasp and saw him stumble back a step before grabbing on to the sink to steady himself.
Faith cautiously approached the door and peeked inside. She really wasn't sure she wanted a closer look, but if they were stuck together for the long haul, one of them needed to have a clear-eyed view of reality. The fact that she was the only candidate really didn't provide her with all that much comfort.
Xander hands had already let go of his support and were already clawing at his face as he stretched the skin in a desperate attempt to get a closer look at whatever was in that socket. Faith kept her gaze trained on his reflection and swallowed down a tang of nausea.
Whatever it was, it was an opaque, milky white ball, smaller than an eyeball, but big enough that it wasn't hidden in the recesses of the socket itself.
"Can you see out of it?" Faith asked.
Her voice startled him and he leapt away, slamming into the bathroom's grubby wall before sliding down into a crouch.
"Xander?" she asked.
His answer was to throw himself into a corner, wedging his back where the tub met the wall and drawing his knees up to his chest in a hug.
"Xander? Focus. Can. You. See. Out. Of. It."
"No."
Okay, still blind on the left. They were getting somewhere. "Did you know this was happening?" Faith pushed.
"No."
Faith hunkered down on her haunches and tried to figure out if he was lying. The terrified expression on his face probably meant he wasn't. "You're supposed to be taking care of the wound. That means removing the eye patch and at the very least taking a good, long look. You were probably supposed to be doing something to keep it clean. Are you telling me that you just let it go?"
"Couldn't look," Xander admitted.
"You mean you fucking wouldn't," Faith ground out in irritation. "I don't care what you fucking say, but that thing has got to fucking hurt."
"Getting worse. It's getting worse," Xander mumbled in a distracted tone.
"Look at me. Focus. Xander, you've got to focus," Faith desperately said as she watched him mentally retreat. Oh, no. He wasn't going to do this. He was not going to go tripping off to the mental wasteland. She wasn't going to let him. This was some serious shit and it had to be dealt with yesterday.
She reached out a hand in an effort to calm him down.
Xander responded by shrinking away and sinking his face into his hands. "Don't look at me," he said in a voice just at the edge of despair. "Please…"
Well, she knew how that felt. She watched him with a worried frown trying to figure out how to make this bad situation at least bearable. A thought occurred. "Wait here," she said.
She hopped out of the bathroom and double-timed her way to the bed. After digging through sheets, blankets and pillows, she found what she was looking for, and raced back.
Xander was still backed in the corner, face hidden in his hands, where the greasy tub met the mold-infested wall. Faith was willing to bet good money that he hadn't so much as twitched out of place.
"Xander? I found your eye patch," she said gently as she crouched next to him and held it out. "You want?"
Xander responded by snaking out a hand, palm up, while he turned the left side of his face away from her. She dropped the patch in it and the hand quickly retreated. After a few moments of untangling the band, he slipped it on. The Slayer could swear she heard a sigh of relief when the patch settled into place.
"Talk to me," Faith ordered. "Does it hurt?"
Xander swallowed hard and Faith could see he was doing his best to focus on the question. "I'd get, I don't know, really bad twinges in Oxnard."
"And you didn't think to check it out? That could've been a sign of infection," Faith said.
"Afraid to look," he admitted.
"You know? At some point you've got to stop trying to avoid trouble since trouble tends to bite you in the ass," Faith stated. "Did you tell anyone?"
"No."
"Of course not," Faith muttered to herself, "you wouldn't even tell you."
"Sorry," Xander said in a small voice.
"Don't apologize to me. I'm not the one with the…whatever the hell that is," Faith said. "Okay. Fine. Pain in Oxnard. Didn't check it out. Didn't tell anyone. How about since Oxnard? Anything?"
"Just a steady ache. No big."
"'No big,' he says. Great. Just fucking marvelous," Faith growled. "You should've said something."
"And what would you have done?" Xander seemed genuinely curious, a sharp, sudden contrast from his defeatist posture just seconds before.
"We would've walked into a emergency room and had the goddamn thing checked out."
"Good thing we didn't," Xander slumped. "I can't imagine the reaction to…to…how the hell can I explain this?"
"We gotta check into it," Faith insisted. "We gotta figure out what's going on."
"After we get to Boston," Xander agreed quietly, still not looking at her.
"Fuck Boston," Faith exploded.
Xander jerked his head around and Faith could swear she saw a flicker of surprise in his expression before his face shut down into that hateful unreadable mask.
"We're a hell of a lot closer to Chicago," she pressed her point. "It's a nice big city and it's probably got a nice big library along with some nice big hospitals. Besides, getting to Boston's no rush. Let's deal with this shit right now, if only for your peace of mind."
"Or to really destroy it," he said carefully.
"Look, Chicago. Down the road. Boston's too long to wait," Faith insisted.
"But neither one of us know Chicago," Xander said in a surprisingly calm voice. He looked questioningly at the Slayer, "Unless you've been there in your travels?"
"No," Faith admitted. "But it can't be too hard to think up a lie to tell the docs at *Chicago Hope.*"
"And what kind of lie can we cook up that won't scare a doctor, or encourage one to go all Frankenstein on me and turn me into a living science experiment?" Xander asked.
"Okay, just hit the library then. I'm sure Chicago has a really big one with lots and lots of books, so I'm thinking it's a good shot that we might find…"
"But you know Boston," Xander interrupted. "We'd get lost in Chicago, but at least one of us knows Boston. I'd feel more comfortable if at least one of us was familiar with the territory."
"I'm just saying…"
"It can wait," Xander said softly. "This can wait. It's not going away, so…" He cringed. "I just can't deal right now. I need…give me time?"
Faith let out an irritated breath. "Okay. Fine. If that's what you want. But we are going to look into this. All you're doing is putting off the inevitable, got it?"
"Yeah."
"Good," Faith nodded. "Look, I know neither one of us is up for sleep, so how about we find some crappy late night movie. I need a comedy. Let's see if someone's showing a cheesy monster flick."
"Gimme a minute."
"Take your time." Faith stood. "I'll be right next door."
As she turned to leave, Xander said, "Faith? Thanks."
She looked over her shoulder in confusion. "For what?"
"Because…" Xander began and stopped, as if he thought better of stating what was on his mind. "Just thanks."
The next morning, Xander and Faith were out and about. If they were stuck for a couple of days, they may as well get the lay of the land, they reasoned. Xander seemed surprisingly chipper, especially in light of last night's events, which was all Faith needed to convince herself she was right to insist they stay put for however long they needed to get the Buick in shape.
*Of course,* the nastier part of Faith's mind figured, *a chipper Xander means he's back in Scooby-trained full-on denial. If I were him, I'd…* What? She wasn't exactly sure. Slayers were human, at least technically, so she had no idea what she'd do if she woke up one day to find out that she was a demon. Plus, Xander's volatile mood swings were sure as hell a sign that his denial days were fast coming to an end.
Right. As if whatever that was in his left eye socket wasn't enough to burn down every last ghost of a hope living in Xander's own special Denial Land address.
There wasn't much town to see. A bar, a diner, the post-office (which Xander firmly steered Faith away from in case her face was on a wanted poster), a small library that was closed until noon, the local savings and loans, a Salvation Army used clothing store, a tiny grocers stocked with the barebones essentials, a five-and-dime, and other assorted local businesses.
Xander in a joking tone noted that he felt out of place since he couldn't spy with his lone little eye anything beginning with a Wal-Mart, Gap, or even Kay-Tee Toys.
They soon looped out beyond the modest urban delights offered by the tiny Main Street, following the roads deeper into farm country. Cornfields where the crops stood taller than Xander's nearly six-foot frame quickly became the dominant view, swallowing up any notion of a world not covered in acres and acres of green. As the increasingly hot sun beat down on their unprotected heads, Faith kicked herself for not buying water before they went on their jaunt.
Xander's cheerful, distracting chatter went into a steep decline the further they got from the heart of town. Soon, he was warily eyeing the rows of corn, as if expecting that they'd be attacked at any moment. He finally stopped, glaring into the fields.
"Now what's up your ass?" Faith asked, wiping the sweat from her brow.
She only got a snarl in response while Xander fixated on the corn.
For a brief moment, Faith's heat-fueled imagination replaced the man in front of her with a hunting dog that was pointing his snout at wild game hidden just out of sight. Faith shook herself to get the image out of her head. She gave him a rough tap on the shoulder, which seemed to startle Xander out of whatever hypnotic state he fell into.
"Care to share?" Faith asked.
"What?"
"You keep giving the corn the evil eye. S'up with that?"
Xander looked around uncertainly. "Ummm, I dunno. Not used to all this empty space, I think. It's giving me the heebie-jeebies. Too much rube in the rube."
"Oh, and you're so all so fucking urbane with your white-bread suburbia roots," Faith commented without malice but with just a smidge of sarcasm.
Xander grinned. "Sunnydale ain't no big city, but at least we have, I mean had, houses. There's nothing out there. It's like looking at a desert."
"Deserts don't have corn," Faith said. "Plus, it still looks pretty green to me."
Xander glanced down at his watch. "Hey! Library's open."
"So?"
"So, hanging out there has gotta be better than aimlessly wandering around out here. Plus, I'm thinking there are some magic words that'll get you to agree."
Faith tapped her foot. "I'd think you want to avoid anything involving magic words."
"Not these two very special magic words."
"Oh?"
Xander held up two fingers. "Air and conditioning."
"My kind of magic words. Let's motor."
They turned and walked back to town in companionable silence. Just the same, Faith noticed that Xander continued to look around with traces of a worried frown on his lips.
So what do we tell her?" Wesley asked.
Angel shook his head and picked up the manila file. He hefted the thick paperwork, as if judging the weight of its contents. "Wesley, don't you find it strange that Buffy didn't try to contact me after Sunnydale disappeared, but when Xander disappears she's leaving me a voicemail message on my cell within days?"
"Don't tell me you're jealous?" Wesley asked with an amused tone.
"More like curious," Angel said. "Fred pulled all records of incoming calls to the Hyperion, our cell phones, and Wolfram & Hart. Aside from Faith's one call from Oxnard, neither Buffy or anyone else in her circle tried to contact us before yesterday."
"How do we know this?" Wesley asked.
"Fred was able to look for calls originating from Oxnard and cell numbers attached to Buffy's people," Angel explained. "Faith's call to the Hyperion and Buffy's message on my cell is the only evidence Fred was able to find that anyone in the Sunnydale group has tried to contact us."
"That was fast," Wesley frowned.
Angel shrugged. "The computers here are pretty powerful. Fred tried to explain all the technical details, but since I still have to ask you, Fred, or Gunn to help me to access my cell's voicemail, it went over my head."
"Suffice to say Fred was able to do it and did do it," Wesley said.
"Yeah." The thoughtful frown was back on Angel's face. "Something doesn't add up here."
"Because she called you about Xander and not Sunnydale?" Wesley asked.
"No, because it doesn't fit Buffy's pattern." Angel put the folder back on the desk. "She hasn't called me for help since before Faith went to jail. She faced off against a hell god that killed her and the First Evil that destroyed Sunnydale, and she didn't pick up the phone even once to ask for help. In fact, when I showed up to help in the battle against the First, she sent me away just in case things went wrong there. Yet, Xander goes missing and one of the first things she does is leave a long message asking for help."
"I see your point. But allow me to play devil's advocate: with Sunnydale gone, she may feel she doesn't have the resources…" Wesley began.
"That's not it," Angel said thoughtfully. "Something doesn't feel right. I can't explain it."
"It's Lorne, isn't it?"
"Lorne's problems with Faith's reading is a factor," Angel allowed.
"So, what do we tell her?" Wesley pressed. "She's going to expect an answer."
Angel twirled in his executive chair to face the dying sun. "Right. We tell the truth."
"The truth?" Wesley's eyebrows shot up in surprise.
"The precise truth and nothing more," Angel said. "We tell them that we haven't seen hide nor hair of Xander since he dropped off Faith and we have no idea where he is now."
"Ahhhhh, sticking close to giving just the facts," Wesley nodded sagely.
Angel twirled back around to face Wesley. "Just in case she asks about Faith, we tell her the exact truth about Faith. Faith left town and we don't know where she is."
"Should we say when she left?" Wesley asked.
"We'll keep the timing vague," Angel said. "The best thing we can do, I think, is not to give anyone any reason to suspect that Faith might've left to find Xander. And yes, that's because of Lorne's reading."
Wesley looked grim. "Should we tell them about the fact that Faith no longer is a wanted criminal?"
Angel thought a moment. "Actually, that's a good idea. If they ask about Faith, we say that Faith took off the moment she found out we removed all trace of her criminal record. Let them draw whatever conclusions they want from that."
"Why disclose that?" Wesley said. He winced and shook his head. "Willow. If she starts trying to track Faith or Xander through the computer…"
"She'll find out about the electronic whitewash," Angel finished. "Let's not give anyone any reason to distrust us, especially if this is exactly what it looks like: Buffy is worried that Xander might be dangerous and wants to bring him back into the fold before he's beyond saving."
"But you really don't believe that," Wesley deadpanned.
"Truth is I don't know what to believe," Angel said. "But my gut tells me that there's something more going on and I want to keep things close to the vest until we have a pretty good idea of where everyone stands."
Faith lost herself in the stacks while Xander busied himself on the computer. As she looked around, she felt vaguely depressed. The tiny town library didn't even come up to the level of the prison library. The books were universally old and worn, as if someone couldn't be bothered to put a little extra money into the book budget.
No point in even trying to look for medical books or books on demons. There was no help for Xander here. They needed a real library with a nice, big collection of really old, rare books. Chicago was out, so that meant Boston was going to be their best bet. Since she'd never actually been in any library outside of the one in prison and in the old Sunnydale High, she didn't have high hopes of being any help in research.
Almost on instinct, she turned into an area that indicated the location of the travel section and looked around without much hope. In prison, the library offered escape, if only for a few hours. The correctional facility in which she was staying as an honored guest boasted an impressive array of travel books. There was something perverse about it, as if someone on the outside couldn't resist dangling the world in front of a bunch of lifers and residents facing a long time behind bars.
Her fellow inmates didn't appreciate the reminder, since the books were usually left untouched. Hell, even Faith herself avoided reading them. It was sheer desperation that finally drove her to read one when every magazine and book she wanted remained stubbornly unavailable.
And that's when the magic happened.
After taking a walk through the woods with Bill Bryson as he bumbled and stumbled his way up the Appalachian Trail, she was hooked. She devoured every one of those ignored books, sometimes going back to read favorites over and over again. Even though she never left her cell, she had the privilege of touring the world's most dangerous places with Robert Young Pelton, stayed a year in Provence with Peter Mayle, had some holidays in hell with P.J. O'Rourke, and disappeared into thin air with Jon Krakauer.
The words wove such a watertight spell that Faith sometimes found herself dodging rebels in Africa, sneaking around the Arab quarter in Old Jerusalem, worrying about bears in the mountains, or shivering from the cold on Everest in her dreams. She always woke up vowing that if she ever left, she was going to visit every single place she read about.
The library here had all the old faves. Bryson was in abundance, as was Mayle and Mayes, and Jenkins. She reverently touched the spines and wondered where she was going to go for a few hours.
She froze. *I can do what I want, where I want, when I want,* she thought as a grin split her face. Angel's gift: she could finally step out into the world and see every place she ever read about with her own two eyes. She resisted the urge to yank the books off the shelves and hug them to her chest.
Then she remembered why she was even in this piss-poor library. The thought dashed a bucket of cold water on her, leaving behind a deep ache. She couldn't just up and become Miss-Around-the-World-in-Eighty-Days Nelly Bly. She had herself a Xander to protect and a world of worry nipping at her heels.
Faith suppressed a bitter chuckle. Here she was thinking that someone was going to be giving her the big speech about Slayer duty if she decided to up and do what she wanted. There was something deeply ironic about the fact that she ended up giving it to herself.
She browsed the books with significantly less enthusiasm than she did when she started. Her eye lit on an unfamiliar spine and she eased the book out of place. *Route 66 A.D.* The subtitle added: *On the Trail of Ancient Roman Tourists.* Well, if nothing else, it sounded promising.
In a move that would've shocked everyone she knew from both L.A. and Sunnydale, Faith opened the book and sunk to the floor in a cat-like curl. She began to read: *It must have been like a film premiere at Cannes. Throngs of excited spectators filed their way into the heart of Rome…*
The first thing Xander did when he got his hands on a town library computer was change the password to his email. He'd given Willow all the information she'd need to access his online account just in case something had happened to him. The last thing he wanted was to tip anyone off to when he might gain access to a computer. If Willow were electronically snooping, she'd know he managed it just the once, but hopefully wouldn't be able to go beyond that.
He suspected that Willow's computer skills had atrophied, especially since most of her online research on the First had relied on common search engines--well, common to people not named Xander, anyway--and less on breaking into databases she shouldn't. Still, at least the password change would slow her down if she decided to embrace her inner geek to track him.
He wasn't sure whether he should be relieved that there were no new messages waiting for him, since that meant no one noticed he was gone yet, or hurt, since that meant they didn't know or didn't care he was gone.
*Good grief, listen to me whine. I was desperate to get away and so busy praying they wouldn't try to stop me and now I'm wondering why I don't have angry emails demanding that I come home immediately.* Xander tightened his jaw. He knew he wasn't wrong in leaving.
He was still having nightmares and odd blackouts where he seemed to lose time. While the nightmares were just as bad, the blackouts were at least getting less severe. Judging by what happened before and after, he could guess that they weren't lasting as long and that he was capable of interacting with people.
It just bothered him that he couldn't remember anything between the time when that cold, dark tide washed over him and when it finally receded. Maybe if he were really lucky the blackouts would just stop. Now if only the nightmares would follow suit.
Then there was the constant, insistent ache in his left eye socket, although he couldn't really call it a socket anymore. *Stop thinking about it,* his mind ordered. Even though he just knew ignoring the problem was going to come back and kick him in the ass, there wasn't a whole hell of a lot he could do about it short of digging out whatever was growing there. *And I'm nowhere brave enough to go through that again,* he silently admitted.
Despite his mental wandering, a headline caught his eye. He hovered the pointer over the link, trying to decide if he should call the story up. He shrugged. Might as well. He had time to kill. Besides, it would be a blessed relief to focus on someone else's problems for a change. A new page blinked to existence and he began to read.
He had no idea how long he spent following links from that story to others before the headache kicked in. Oh, yeah. Reading a glowing computer screen with one eye was no picnic. A noise at the edge of his hearing caught his attention and he looked up to see Faith emerge from the stacks. As she got closer, Xander suppressed a smile. "Hey," he quietly said, "whatchya been up to?"
Faith shrugged. "Took a nap. Didn't get too much sleep last night."
Xander wasn't buying that for a second. "Hmmm, explains the bloodshot eyes that practically scream, 'I've spent the day reading moldy books in bad lighting.'"
Faith shot him a surprised look, and opened her mouth to protest.
"Don't bother," Xander chuckled. "I remember spending so much time researching the year Buffy first blew into town that it looked like I had a permanent case of pink-eye. Not a pretty sight, especially since my parents bitched and moaned every time they took me to the doctor and got a diagnosis for eyestrain." When he saw Faith uncomfortably shift, he casually added, "So what's your poison?"
"Poison?"
"What do you like to read?"
"Nothin'."
Xander rolled his visible eye and turned back to the screen. Faith quickly followed suit, now that discussion of what she had or had not been doing among the books was dropped. She leaned down, resting her chin on his shoulder.
"Watchya lookin' at?" she asked.
Xander squirmed uncomfortably because of her close proximity, but didn't shoo her away. The tow truck driver, the mechanic, and the matron at the hotel thought they were a couple. Since word gets around in a small town, Xander figured the last thing he should do is act like physical intimacy with Faith wasn't a regular occurrence.
"Reading a few newspapers online," he explained.
"Why?"
"In case, you know, there's an APB out for someone we know," he said quietly.
She stood up with a frown. Xander looked up at her and saw the understanding flicker in her eyes as she silently nodded.
"Good news, there's nothing," Xander continued. "Even better news, it might stay that way."
Faith's brow crinkled in confusion and she gave him the nod to go ahead.
"I was checking out your hometown newspapers, hometown as in Boston, and I stumbled across some stories about this guy named," Xander flicked to a new browser window and quickly scanned the text, "Whitey Bulger who's on the top ten FBI Most Wanted list. Anyway, he's been running around for years and no one can find this guy. I'm talking multiple airings on *America's Most Wanted,* nationwide coverage, a boatload of books, wanted posters plastered all over the world, pictures galore, a reward for his capture running in the millions. I mean everyone up to and including the intergalactic space patrol is after this guy and it's like he's ceased to exist."
"So?" Faith said, critically looking at the Web's equivalent of the *Boston Globe,* which had a story featuring the infamous Bulger, his case, and his brother--and this could only happen in Boston--the president of the University of Massachusetts.
"Sooooo, what this guy apparently has is a bottomless well of money and the ability to keep a really low profile," Xander said. "Since our friend is nowhere in this guy's league, I'd say our friend should be able to dodge the bullet, especially if our friend can stay out of trouble until our friend figures out how to get out of the country."
"No shit."
Xander smiled and ducked his head at the pleased tone in Faith's voice. "No shit," he echoed. "I know low profile isn't exactly our friend's modus operandi…"
"Small problem there, Xan," Faith was clearly happy that he'd been researching her situation, "trouble has a habit of finding our friend. Part of the package of being what our friend is."
Xander nodded. "Agreed, hence the sticking to back roads. I think if our friend and our friend's ride are really careful, they won't raise any eyebrows, especially since both of them have access to money. Plus, heading to the destination our friend has in mind might not be all that stupid. Who's gonna look for our friend there?" He eyed Faith critically. "Maybe before our friend gets there, our friend should get a haircut, maybe dye the hair, try a different clothing style."
Faith snorted what she thought of that.
Xander sighed. "Fine. It's our friend's funeral."
"What prompted this?"
Xander winced. "Habit. I was checking my email and spotted an interesting headline."
"So how is the gang?" Faith casually asked.
To Xander's ears, the tone was entirely too casual, although he was quick to admit to himself that it could be his own guilty conscience reading too much into Faith's question. "Dunno," he shrugged, careful to keep his tone light. "No messages asking me how it's going. Guess they really do agree I need the space."
Charlie was surprised that she didn't earn herself a grounding, considering the state her clothes were in when she got home yesterday evening, but her parents bought her unlikely story that she'd tripped and landed on top of a dead sheep in one of the cornfields.
In fact, both Momma and Daddy were just relieved she got home okay and sympathized with her afternoon-long struggle to land a detasseling job. They'd heard other kids in the area were getting turned away, so they were proud that Charlie managed the trick while many of her peers were left wanting. There was a definite celebratory feel to dinner, instead of the condemnation Charlie expected.
Times like this, Charlie was pretty convinced that she lucked out in the parental department.
Still, she decided not to push her luck and didn't sneak out after dinner. She felt guilty about staying in because if there was one monster running around in the corn, she could safely bet it had friends and an evil overlord. The thing was too stupid to be a mastermind and the rules of superherodom were pretty clear: stupid, evil monsters served smart, evil people interested in world domination and enslaving innocents to do their evil bidding.
She had to find the smart, evil people before they and their monsters kicked off the Master Plan. It was her job. At least she thought it was her job. She didn't exactly get a handbook on how to be a superhero, so she hoped her *Spiderman*, *Batman*, and *Superman* comics were enough to give her pointers on this score.
The night off did give her some time to plan today's adventure. This morning she told her parents that she'd be hanging out with one of her friends to watch movies and she'd be late getting home. Most of it was the truth: she was hanging out with Janine, they were going to watch movies, but she planned to go investigating right after dinner.
She felt guilty about lying, but she had a secret identity to protect. The extracted promise to make sure Janine's daddy drove her home layered on another level of lies and guilt before Charlie left.
Now it was almost eight and Charlie was standing in the exact same spot a certain displaced Californian had stood just hours before staring suspiciously into the fields. Had a certain Bostonian been there to witness the scene, she would've been struck by the fact that Charlie's and Xander's faces bore similar expressions, even though Charlie knew something was wrong and Xander didn't.
Charlie hesitantly sniffed at the breeze blowing off the fields. She fought down her disappointment and nervousness when the telltale whisper of rot swirled in the wind. She began to pace at the edge of the corn wondering about her best course of action. She could go charging in, but she wouldn't be able to see. Near as she could tell, her superhero power package didn't include X-ray vision, which meant she wouldn't be able to see through the plants to find her target or targets.
But if she stayed on the road, there was a very real threat that something or somethings would see her before she could see it or them.
She debated back and forth, before deciding on making her stand in the relatively open area on the road, if only because the flattop gave her more room to maneuver without damaging crops. She'd just have to keep a sharp eye out for any movement in her direction.
She kept pacing, looking hard into the field, and noticing where the smell was strongest. She desperately wished she had help, if only because she was so new at this superhero thing. Somewhere out there that had to be others doing what she was doing, maybe even a school like the *X-Men*, only without the whole 'normal-people-hate-us-and-are-trying-to-kill-us' subplot, to help explain the whole superhero deal.
Because in Charlie's heart of hearts, she truly doubted she was a one and only. As far as she was concerned, God wouldn't be cruel enough to do that to her or to the human race. To Charlie's mind, the fact that there were other superheroes and maybe even a whole network of non-superhero types helping out was simply a given. All she had to do was go out there and find one of them.
The sound of rustling served as a warning shot across the bow and Charlie retreated to the opposite side of the road, hunkering down among the plants, and watching intently for the first monster to make its appearance. Moments after she settled into her hiding spot, one broke out into the road and was soon followed by others. Charlie clamped her mouth against the threatening tide of nausea and studied her opponents.
Ugly didn't even begin to describe them. Skin dripped off their bones and the grinning, rotting teeth added more visual confirmation of bodily decay. The clothes were uniformly old, dirty, ripped, and worn to the point that Charlie's chore clothes looked downright fashionable by comparison. As a group they didn't walk so much as lurch, some of them upright, some of them not, a clear sign that these monsters were definitely not in the best of shape.
Right. Time to show the monsters what was what and run them out of town good and proper. Then all she'd have to do is keep her eyes peeled for anyone acting suspicious because they lost all their pets. Once she had her mastermind, Charlie could put that person out of business.
No one in town would know because of the whole secret identity rule, but she would know what she did, and for Charlie that was enough.
She steadied herself, counted to three, and charged for the closest monster. She stopped just short of her target and spun around in a kick, knocking its head clean off its shoulders. She shouted in triumph as the body hit the ground with a thud.
She turned to face the others and quickly realized that yelling was not the smartest move she ever made. She had their attention now. They slowly began walking, crawling, and limping toward her, just like those zombies from *Day of the Dead*.
If she had half-a-mind, Charlie could've outrun them easily and be safe and sound at home before they got anywhere near her. But if she ran, Charlie knew someone would die and she just couldn't abide that idea. *'Sides, superheroes don't run; they win, even when the odds are stacked all wrong,* she reminded herself.
She charged into shambling group, arms and legs windmilling in an attack so fast and violent that she looked like a blur. The results were ugly, but Charlie knew was going to win. She could feel it. These monsters were going down, and not in a fake WWF way either.
One of the monsters got in a lucky kick and Charlie tripped with a yelp of surprise. The monsters maybe looking fit to fall apart, but they were stronger than they looked. She struck out to break free from the group now congregating thickly around her. She needed to get some breathing space and consider her next step before she was overwhelmed.
Course of action decided, the young superhero moved with a speed that surprised even her.
*After I win, I'm gonna have to some practicin' in to figure out what 'zactly my powers are. Gettin' surprised by myself cain't be somethin' that's gonna help over the long run,* Charlie thought as she broke through and jogged a short distance down the road.
Once she was free and clear, she turned and hopped impatiently from one foot to the next, overwhelmed by the rush of adrenalin and the feel of power coursing in her blood. All thoughts of carefully considering her next plan of attack were forgotten as impatience with the slow-moving crowd took precedence. When the leading edge was only halfway to her position, she charged with a yell, closed the gap, swung her fist at the leading monster and…
And…
Felt all that strength drain right out of her.
Her fist landed and bounced harmlessly off the chest of the closest demon. Charlie and her opponent looked at each other a moment in pure shock before she steeled herself, screwed her face up tight, and tried again.
This time, her fist was caught and held by the monster in front of her. Charlie's eyes widened in panic while the demon began dragging her cross the tar to its buddies. She kicked, flayed and screamed as she tried to get away, but she was trapped in the surprisingly strong grip.
Next thing she knew, she was back in the thick of things, not as a conquering hero, but as a victim. She could hear a wordless murmur building to a loud hum as they began pummeling and kicking her to keep her down. She gagged on the stench and tried to crawl away, but she was always caught and dragged back to the center. Just when she thought the pain couldn't get any worse than the beating, she felt teeth sink into her shoulder. She screamed as she felt a hunk of flesh torn out of her.
In that moment, Charlie knew she had failed to accomplish her mission. That thought made her feel worse than the knowledge that she was going to die afraid and alone.
The monstrous group let out a roar and fell on their meal, greedily enjoying the feast of young flesh.
The fact that Charlie--a true Slayer with the potential to go down as one of the best and most dedicated Slayers in history--was cut down at so young an age was a tragedy and a loss for humankind.
But the fact that she fell while two of the very people she hoped she'd someday meet were staying in a cheap motel a few miles down the road, people who would never know about Charlie or her sacrifice, could only happen in a cruel and ironic universe.
They were tucked safe and snug in their hotel room right at eight on the dot. The cable TV included only basic channels and, since this was the summer of reality shows, there was literally nothing on the tube.
Xander had settled on some local station showing something from the Brat Prack oeuvre. Even though he'd seen *The Breakfast Club* a million times too many--usually for the sheer comedy that these kids only talked to one another simply because the script said they should -- it beat having to watch some chick seek true lurve while her buds bitched out every guy that crossed their path.
Faith restlessly paced the room as if she were a caged animal.
"You're making me dizzy," Xander absently commented.
"I need to kill something."
That got his attention, although for the wrong reasons. He was alone with a twitchy Slayer in a hotel room and since he was the only demon within reach he had an unreasonable fear that the "something" might turn out to be him. It was unfair thinking that way, but he couldn't help it.
"There's nothing out there to kill," Xander said, fighting to keep his voice calm. "This town is way too small for even one vampire to feed without attracting attention. I'm pretty sure that you've got nothing to worry about on the bad guy front."
"I'm bored. I need to let off some steam."
"There's nothing here Faith. You saw the town. Maybe if you do sit-ups, push-ups, or something. Work off that excess…"
"I saw a bar."
Great. Faith gyrating to the music of pain on the dance floor while the cowboys hooted and threw money was definitely not the way to stay low profile. Xander could practically see a barroom brawl in Faith's future if she decided to play with the local menfolk.
"I think you, alcohol, bars, and anyplace with a D.J. or a jukebox should stay as far away from each other as possible." He hoped he was sounding reasonable. "Low profile, remember? And you in that environment is going to attract…"
"So, come with. Make sure I behave." He could see Faith mentally climbing the walls. "I need to get out of here. This is too much like a frigging prison. Last thing I want is to be locked in all night."
"Were you like this in Oxnard? Because if you were…"
"Shit, still got in a patrol here and there, hung out with the other Slayers, and Robin knew how to keep a girl distracted."
Yikes. There was no chance in hell he was going to serve as a "distraction" for this particular Slayer. "Faith? Look, I know being shut up with me in a car or in a hotel room is hard, but…"
"C'mon! Let's go! I could use unwind time."
"Faith? You are wanted for murder. Now I'm not saying you're gonna get recognized in this shit hole town, but what if you are? The way our luck goes, some bounty hunter from California is visiting his hick cousin and you'll be running into him if you go out there."
Faith stopped, her mouth pulling down in distaste. "Fuck the warrant."
"Did I just hear you say, 'Fuck the warrant?' Did I seriously just hear that?" Xander could feel his temper flare. If that was Faith's attitude, then why the hell was he even bothering? Last he checked Faith followed him, not the other way around.
"I've spent too many years locked up. I want fresh air. I need fresh air. I am not going to be locked in after dark for the rest of my goddamn…"
"That is it!" Xander raged. "I can't believe this! Three days out of California you've already forgotten about that all-important warrant? You already don't give a flying shit? Is that it? Lest you forget Ms.-I-Am-Impervious and Ms.-It's-All-About-Me-Me-Me I had to change my goddamn plans…"
"You didn't even have a fucking plan…" Faith shouted back.
"…so that I could help you escape!" Screaming at Faith was most definitely not the smartest thing he'd ever done, but at this point he really didn't care. He was sick and tired of being the go-to guy whenever Slayers needed some lapdog to lend a hand. "Who asked who for help here? Me? I don't recall asking for you or anyone else to help!"
Xander could practically see the smoke circling Faith's head as she began, "Well, last night you…"
"Did I hear the words 'help me' come out of my mouth? Did I? No!" Xander felt the urge to pick up something heavy and fling it at Faith's head, which would be an even dumber move than losing his temper like this.
"Yo! You weren't exactly saying no to my offer to help you!"
"Well here it is: I don't want your fucking help," Xander fumed. "And if your attitude about those nasty warrants and cops chasing your ass is 'fuck it' then I suggest you find yourself another goddamn ride and leave me out of it."
"You know? You're right! My life would be so much better if you hadn't walked into it! I could be planning my future. I could be figuring out whether me and Robin were for the long goddamn haul or just some apocalyptic bump-and-grind! I could be having fun and enjoying the fact that I could reach out and get a goddamn life! I could go anywhere and be anyone! But nooooo I have to be trapped in a hotel room with you and the fucking roaches!"
"What the hell are you talking about?" Xander raged. "You were the one that got found out by the cops. You did that all by yourself! I have nothing to do with the jam you're in!"
Faith's eyes went wide and her mouth snapped shut. Xander could still see she was furious, but something else had interrupted. There was a flash of resentment stamped her features, almost as if he were the reason she was running cross-country to keep one step ahead of whatever shit she landed into.
He really should let this go. Faith had shut up, but some petulant part of his personality couldn't resist finally getting in the last word because he was right about this, goddamn it. "Got nothing to say to that, do you?"
Faith's eyes narrowed and she opened her mouth to say something. It hung like that for a bit, as her jaw worked.
Her comeback wasn't nearly as creative as Xander's perverse nature hoped.
"Fuck it. I'm going."
"Fine. You get into shit, don't expect me to bail your ass out," Xander snarled. "Do me a favor and get yourself disappeared so I don't have to fucking care any more. Not that I give a rat's ass what happens to you anyway."
Faith reeled and stomped out of the hotel room. She slammed the door so hard that everything rattled.
"Bitch!" Xander yelled after her.
Now Xander was left pacing the hotel room. He smacked the off button on the TV with irritation and began a muttering rant. "Just once, just fucking once in my life I'd like someone to put me first. Is that too much to ask? A little goddamn consideration for my feelings."
Xander swung at the air. "Take my not-a-wedding. Did anyone bother to ask me what I saw at the wedding? Anyone? Not even Anya really asked."
*Well that's unfair,* his reasonable voice piped up. *She did ask what happened after your joint interview with Andrew and you never answered the question, did you?*
"Do you want to know what sucks? What really, really sucks?" Xander asked the air. "Anya was probably my last real chance at being happy, visions or no. Who the hell is going to care about a demon, short of a Slayer gunning for my head?"
*Buffy wanted you to stay,* his mind reminded him.
"Buffy only wanted me to stick around on the off chance I joined the Superfriends Club," Xander reminded his inner voice bitterly. "Because god knows being human isn't good enough for anyone in my own circle of…"
*Friends?*
"Acquaintances," Xander admitted with a defeated slump. "Hell, the only reason why I have company is because Faith needs a warm body to drive her. The second she's got everything set, I'm in the gutter with the rest of the trash."
He looked dejectedly around the less-than-clean hotel room. This was probably what his future held for a long, long time to come. This was as good as he dared hoped it would ever get. Oh, he could say that he could start over somewhere, but how long would that last? What if he wasn't done demonizing, yet? What if he grew horns? Or turned an inhuman color like puce? What if he stopped looking like a Xander-shaped human and started looking like the soulless monster he was?
*Self-pity, they name is Xander,* his mind commented.
Xander took a deep breath. This whole Faith situation won't last long. He'll just grin and bear it, dump her in Boston, and then take off. He had to get real about this. He was essentially trapped into keeping Faith company because, much as it killed him to admit it even to himself, helping the Slayer at least gave him a problem he could focus on without bringing his own problems to the table. The cross-country trip also bought him some time to figure out his next move.
Even so, he wondered how much of his temper tantrum was justified and how much of it was sheer frustration. He hadn't had any quality alone time in months and what little he had seemed to revolve around the horrors he committed in Sunnydale and beating himself up out of guilt over what he'd done and Anya's death.
Frankly, he was beginning to feel trapped. *Know what I need? Me time, with none of the guilt. I could use a nice, long shower without anyone hammering on the door complaining that I might use all the hot water,* Xander thought. The part of his mind that he dubbed the 'dirty dawg' corner voted that while he was in that shower, he should really enjoy himself because, demon or no, he was male and the equipment still worked.
"Can I possibly be more of a loser than I am right at this very moment?" Xander asked the room. He took the ringing silence as a resounding 'no' on that score and decided that he just simply didn't care. He was too wound up to sleep and 23 years of experience as a male taught him there was one sure way to get an express ticket to the land of nod. With any luck, he'd buy himself a nightmare-free evening in the bargain
He stepped into the bathroom, fully planning to enjoy a deluxe, luxury, super-long shower since there was no way in hell Faith would be back before the bar closed. His intentions, while certainly not pure, were definitely blameless.
Which is why when the cold wave slammed him into the bathroom wall and knocked the feet out from under him, he ranked it very high on the unfairness scale.
*Shit. No. Please, no.*
Mental fingernails scrambled to hold onto consciousness while his hands pulled at his hair.
*Don't do this to me. Not now, not now. What if someone finds me like this? What if…*
The tide grabbed him and pulled him under. Xander was almost certain he screamed when the last of his vision blinkered and went out.
Faith swung at a stop sign in frustration. Christ. She was as bad as every single one of the little Scoobies. She should just come fucking clean about her now-perfect record and end the charade once and for all. She really didn't want to be spending time hiding under a bed in anonymous hotel rooms waiting for a knock that she knew would never come.
Except…
And it's a big one.
Except that if she came clean she just knew Xander would give her the hasta-la-bye-bye and shoot off for parts unknown. Their little screaming match was proof of that. She had to hand it to him: Xander had one big set of balls laying into her like that, given her whole pre-prison history.
*And if you really had the warrant hanging over your head, you know he would be one hundred percent in the right. That's what really fucking burns, doesn't it?* Faith growled at herself in irritation. *Not that I probably would've reacted any differently if Xander's rant was based on anything resembling reality.*
How could she possibly break the news that they needed to stay together if they both wanted to stay alive? That is if she really believed Lorne. The space of a few days and a few hundred miles had given her perspective. Lorne was probably reading it all wrong. The only thing that kept her quiet was the off chance he might be right. In absence of evidence that the green demon was full of shit, she had to go along with it.
Problem was Xander didn't know Lorne as well as she did--and she really didn't know Lorne at all--so he had no reason to trust the demon's word. Xander probably believed that Faith, as a Slayer, would be okay and maybe even better off on her own. Despite Lorne's reading, Faith figured Xander was probably right.
The problem was that she just couldn't shake the feeling that some part of Xander didn't care whether he lived or died.
Worse, she didn't know what he'd do if she informed him that she had to protect him from some unnamed and unknown the big nasties that may or may not exist and may or may not be looking for both of them. The choices were:
A) Go screw yourself, Faith. I'm sick and tired of this bullshit. I'll be hiding out in the Maine deep woods. Don't call me. I'll call you on the seventh of never;
B) Excuse me while I collapse in a whimpering heap and become a helpless little kitten while you protect me from all the eeeeevil things out there;
C) Well, this latest information has utterly destroyed what's left of my mental stability. I'll be tripping off into the dark side of crazy. Hey, think you and me can get a padded cell at Bridgewater State before we hit Boston?
She picked up a rock and flung it with all her might into the dark. One thing she did know about Xander Harris: If he thought she was in trouble, minus the him being in trouble too angle, he'd pull his shit together and step up to the plate. Aside from the hiccups, he had managed to crawl back into someone resembling pre-demonized Xander in the two, now three, days they'd been on the road. And, this she had to admit, he did faster than she believed possible.
Xander Harris, she decided, was one sad, sad man. He seemed incapable of saving himself; worse, he didn't even seem to want to save himself. But give him someone else to save and he'd crawl through any puddle of shit to make it happen or die trying. Made her wonder what would've happened if Buffy hadn't come along and pulled him into the world of vampires, demons, and other big bads. Either vamp chow or vampire, neither one a happy option.
As for the Slayer dream, hell, what could she tell him? Lorne couldn't even tell her anything and she sure as hell didn't know what it meant. As for Wes and Angel's work on the multiple Slayer angle, she could just picture the conversation with Xander now:
*Hey Xan, you know that plan to activate all the Potentials in the world? The one that you applauded along with the rest of us? Cure may have been worse than the disease. No fucking clue what the real deal is, but don't you worry, Angel and Wes are trying to figure it out. The upshot is that we may have been better off if we just turned Sunnydale over to the First and started a survivalist cult in Montana. So, I just wanna know if there's room for even more guilt in that head of yours because, hey! Guess what! We may have fucked the world and ourselves but good.*
Sooner or later though, she'd have to come clean about all of it. If Angel and Wes found something, if something started specifically targeting Xander, if they were in a situation where Faith's escaped con act clashed with reality…if, if, if…he was going to be pissed when the truth come out. Worse, all of her good intentions would mean absolutely shit in the face of the fact that the whole misadventure started on the basis of a lie.
Faith stopped at the edge of the parking lot and stared at the welcoming neon signs of the bar. Chasing her own fucking tail was giving her a headache. She wasn't used to worrying about someone else, hell, she wasn't even used to dealing with someone else on anything resembling a semi-permanent basis. She did her own thing her own way and now she had to think how her actions would affect another person…demon…person…whatever the hell he was.
No wonder Buffy went off the bitch end. If it's this bad worrying about one person, what must it be like to worry about an entire group? Christ. Faith was one hundred percent positive she didn't want to know. Worrying about the one was positively driving her around the bend.
She fingered the cell clipped to her waistband and a smile exploded across her face. Time to call the world's weirdest sensei and at least let him know she was still kicking.
"Angel!"
Angel nearly dropped the phone in surprise. "Faith! Is everything…"
Angel could hear Faith's throaty laugh ooze through the receiver. "Fine. Everything's fine. Calling because something's…"
"Don't tell me anything," Angel quickly said.
"Hunh? Why?" Faith's voice registered confusion. Angel wasn't sure, but he thought he could also hear a hint of hurt.
"Buffy's pulling out all the stops to look for Xander, including asking everyone here in L.A. if they've got any news," Angel quickly explained. "The less we know here the better off you are."
There was a moment of silence at the other end before Faith shared her feelings about the situation. "Shit."
"Willow's probably her big gun in the search," Angel said. "Between her magic and computer skills…"
"Shit, shit, shit," Faith interrupted. "Good thing Xander used cash to pay for the hotel."
"Must be a real fleabag. Most hotels want a credit card imprint."
"Yeah, well, let's just say I can use the cockroaches to hold a rodeo," Faith grumbled. "How much does she know?"
"Bare minimum," Angel said. "I told her that we had no idea where Xander is--which is the truth and I want to keep it that way--and that you've taken off for parts unknown."
"What? Why even bring me up?" Faith asked.
Angel shrugged. "Buffy wanted to know if you were available to help with the search and we had to tell her you left when you found out you weren't wanted by the state of California anymore."
"So she doesn't know that Xander and I hooked up on the road."
"Since no one here saw you get into Xander's car and since we only have your word that Xander's with you, I don't actually know that you two are together, do I?"
Another throaty chuckle in response. "You also don't know if Xander is making a run for it while I'm talking on the phone with you."
"That's the spirit," Angel grinned.
"This is not good. Xander won't be able to use his credit cards if Willow's tracking his movements using a computer."
"Your one week working here has done wonders for your non-Slayer tracking skills," Angel remarked.
"Nah. They used to show movies in the joint. I remember a couple where the bad guy got nailed for using credit cards," Faith cheerfully replied. In a more somber tone, she added, "I hope he'll be able to access some money without tripping off an alarm somewhere."
"You're assuming that Buffy and her people have set up a comprehensive net to find him," Angel remarked.
"Yeah, I know the odds are long, but I also know what Buffy's like when she's pissed and gunning just for you. I'd rather assume the worst than wake up and find one of the Scoobs standing on our doorstep with a big-ass knife."
"I'm sorry, Faith." Angel sighed. Then a thought struck him. "Hmmmm, I wonder…"
"What?"
"We set up a blind account for you. Maybe we can do the same for Xander."
"I have a feeling his situation's more complicated," Faith replied. "He's actually got, y'know, a credit history. Oh, I remember he mentioned something about inheriting money from Anya. Don't have details, but I got the idea that it's pretty big."
"Okay. We can at least deal with his existing finances and probably get information on Anya's accounts. Even though I'm sure Fred's people will be able to find everything, it still might be a good idea if he sent me copies of everything he has, account numbers, bank locations, things like that. I want to be sure I'm thorough. In the meantime, keep him from using anything that could be traced. I'm talking credit cards, ATM cards, I mean anything."
"Oh, he'll just love relying on my financial resources and owing your evil law firm." Angel could hear the humor in her voice.
"Impress on him that he might not have a choice," Angel insisted.
He could hear Faith sigh. "We're going to have to stop in one place long enough to get all that information back and forth."
"Is that a problem?"
"Maybe. He thinks I'm on the lam." Silence. "Don't worry about it. I'll think of something." More silence. "I think I better give that charm you gave me to Xander and make him wear it before Willow starts with the mad mojo."
Angel chuckled. "Getting him to wear it should be interesting."
There was another moment of silence and Angel could sense Faith struggling to say something.
"So, this is it then. We're incommunicado at least until we settle, hunh?" the Slayer asked.
Angel looked at his desk. "Don't cut off completely. Drop me a line and let me know how you are and don't be afraid to shout for help if something comes up, but, yeah, I think minimum communication is best."
"Will do. And Angel? Thanks."
The line went dead. The vampire looked at the receiver a long time before finally replacing the handset in its cradle. He hoped he was doing the right thing and took comfort from the fact that if Buffy was right and Xander was dangerous, at least one Slayer was close enough to rectify the problem.
Faith strolled into the bar with her patented "mess with me only if you're serious" walk. She stopped just inside the dim room, enjoying the sound of the door swinging shut behind her, the considering looks from the men who could be bothered to look up from their beers, and the envious glances of the handful of local ladies.
Her eyes swept the room, taking in the welcoming haze of cigarette smoke; sawdust on the floor; the neon screaming at her to drink Miller Lite, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Coors, or Bud; the wall-length mahogany bar; the two pool tables at the back; and the glowing jukebox in the corner wailing in Chet Atkin's voice.
Talk about your clichés.
Still, it was the first real bar she'd walked into since her great escape--babysitting a bunch of under-21 Potentials at the Bronze didn't count in her opinion--and she planned to enjoy.
She sauntered up to the bar, cat-got-the-canary grin on her face and casual body attitude worn like armor. She slid onto a stool, flashed the eye to a couple of the cowboy hats, and focused her full attention to the suddenly attentive middle-aged bartender.
"I'm homesick for a Sam," she announced. "Lay it on me."
"Sam?" the bartender asked.
"Sorry. I meant Sam Adams. In a bottle, if you got it. Go with the blue label, none of this Winter Brew crap."
The bartender looked confused.
"Sam Adams? Beer? From Boston?" Faith prompted.
"Is that one of them there microbrews?"
"You don't sell…okay, no problem. Gimme a Killian's then."
"Killian?"
With that question, Faith immediately crossed Guinness, Red Hook, Harp, Harpoon, Pete's Wicked, and Foster's off her list of potential brews. "Just tell me what you got. On tap."
"Bud, Bud Lite, Miller, Miller Lite, Coors, Coors Lite, and Pabst Blue Ribbon."
"Quite the selection you have there." Faith nodded to the neon sign. "I'm having such a hard time choosing."
"We don't sell microbrews."
"Gimme a Coors."
"Lite?"
"Fuck no. If I wanted to drink horse piss, I'd've asked for it."
This comment won her a round of appreciative chuckles from the men at the bar. One or two looked at her like she was a woman after their own hearts.
Beer plunked in front of her, Faith hunkered down to enjoy. She felt a body slide onto the stool next to her and she did her best to ignore it.
"New in town?"
"Passing through." She really wasn't in the mood for socializing and mentally willed the owner of the male voice to go away.
"Where ya headin'?"
Faith took a long sip from her glass. "Still working on it." She didn't feel comfortable over-sharing given her phone call to Angel.
"Pretty thing like you should have a goal."
Faith turned to give her insistent companion the once-over. Not bad for a cowboy hat. The first thing she noticed was the tan--*not a vampire then,* she thought--of a man who worked mostly outdoors. Blue eyes, broad shoulders, nice chest, tan line on the left ring finger indicating that a wedding band had been recently removed.
Great, he was looking to score a piece of ass. Back in the day, she would've been all over that action, but she really had too fucking much on her mind. Plus, she had one Xander-occupied hotel room and she really doubted cowboy hat had his own little private place to enjoy playtime.
"Got a goal," she said. "It's to get as much space between me and the West Coast."
"Heard 'homesick' and 'Boston' in yer order." And there it is: the introduction to, 'I just couldn't take my eyes off you, honey' line.
"Grew up there," Faith shrugged, turning back to her beer knowing that it was probably a useless move.
"So where ya bin in the West?" Shit. He just wasn't giving up.
"Around," Faith said shortly.
"Leave the girl alone," one of the other hats said. "Cain't you see she's taken?"
Faith opened her mouth to protest and then quickly shut it when she recognized the speaker was the tow truck driver. Instead, she held up her naked hand. "He missed my nonexistent wedding ring."
"Yeah, well, that boy is a fool," tow truck driver said. "Heard you two was planin' on a wedding, so's he shouldda at least sprung fer the diamond."
Great. The mechanic had been talking. She and Xander taking up temporary residence at the Bed and Breakfast for Roaches was probably the most exciting thing to happen to this town all fucking year. "Earthquake. We lost everything," she said. "Got just the clothes on the back. Going to his family's first for the reunion and then decide what to do next."
*Can I bullshit or can I bullshit,* Faith mentally clapped herself on the back as some of the hats nodded sympathetically at her bare-bones sob story. Good bet that more than a few people in town had seen their share of hard times.
The hat next door wasn't giving up. "Mus' be hard, losin' everythin' like that. Hard to hold up under the strain." He sighed. "Yer man must be right worn with worry."
"He's a rock," Faith said as she busied herself with the beer.
"Well, I figure he mus' be all distracted like if he let you wander the streets in a strange town after dark," the hat commented. "Mus' be all tired out if he let you out alone."
Nice. Faith gave him points for subtle criticism of sexual performance of 'her man' and not-so-subtle compliments for her fine self, but subtracted points for very unsubtle sexism. She was pretty sure if she stuck around, she was going to hear some variation of 'little lady' or 'fine little filly' in this conversation.
Frankly, she'd much rather be listening to Wes--as in Wes when he first came to Sunnydale--drone on about new and interesting demons in Tibet. She just didn't have the energy to put up with this crap. So much for her nice, quiet beer.
She finished her Coors with a gulp and flashed a broad grin at Romeo wanna-be. "I gotta get back. My honey is preparing a surprise. Don't know what it is. Something involving chocolate body paints, candles, and rose petals, but that's all I know." She stood up, stretched, and arched her back so that her breasts were the most prominent feature on her profile. "Gotta go. I got me a commitment." She reached out and grabbed the hat's left hand, holding it up critically in front of her eyes. "So do you I see."
Faith could hear the appreciative laughter from the patrons follow her into the parking lot.
The door swung shut behind her and she pulled out her lighter and the Camels. She lit one up, drawing the smoke deep into her lungs before releasing it with a sigh and fought a flash of resentment at herself for letting the two-bit Lothario drive her out of the bar. Still, fresh air, a short walk, and a cigarette weren't bad options, especially since she needed to expel some restless energy.
Plus, she really didn't want to enter into round two of a screaming match. Best wait until Xander was asleep before making for the hotel.
Two more puffs and she was halfway across the lot. Then the smell hit her. She looked suspiciously at the glowing ember and then looked down, figuring she'd stepped in something. Seeing nothing in the immediate area, she lifted up her left foot, to get a look at the bottom of her boot.
A noise caught her attention and she looked up, slamming the foot down onto the pavement.
*The hell?* she thought.
There, across the parking lot. Movement. And the stink was getting stronger. Smelled like--she took an experimental sniff and fought the urge to gag--rotting meat.
"My oh my, what have we here?" Faith mumbled.
Xander was called back to the real world by the sound of desperate hammering on the hotel room door. He painfully picked himself off the bathroom floor and, doing his best to ignore the ache in his jaw and joints, hobbled to see who it was. A quick glance at the clock was enough to tell him that he hadn't been out too long and that it probably wasn't Faith.
Keeping the security chain in place, he cracked opened the door.
"Xaaannnnn-deeerrrrr."
"Shit," Xander slammed the door shut, fumbled with the chain, and swung it wide open to catch one beaten-up Slayer in his arms. "Faith, what the hell happened?"
"Zom…hurts…Xan…" was about all he got out of her.
He picked her up and carried her to the bathroom, placing her on the closed toilet seat and propping her up against the wall. A quick survey of her injuries revealed an ugly picture. Cuts and bruises were catalogued and quickly dismissed. However, the injury on her upper right arm was another matter. For some obscure reason, he was relieved that the armband tribal tattoo was completely untouched.
"Looks like something tried to take a bite out of you."
"Zzzzzoooommm-beeezzzz."
"What?"
Faith rallied. "Zombies. Or…or…looked like…"
"Okay. Stop talking. Save your strength for that ol' Slayer healing. We'll deal with zombies later. I'm gonna have to remove your shirt if I'm gonna take a look at your injuries."
He got a moan in response. Great. If Faith didn't have the energy for a comeback, then she really was in very bad shape.
"This might hurt," Xander warned as he tugged Faith's shirt over her head. He got a soft hiss in response. He gently took hold of her right arm and grimaced. It already looked infected and he didn't like the fact that the veins running to and from the wound were deep black. "Now I'm going to try to clean it, so the pain's probably going to get worse." He wasn't sure if he was explaining it to the nearly insensible Faith or trying to reassure himself.
He grabbed a towel, soaked it down, and began swiping at the wound. Faith's left hand reached out and grabbed the nearby towel rack while her jaw clenched.
"We might want to think doctor," Xander muttered.
"No. No doctors," Faith gritted.
"Fine. Slayers and the healing profession don't mix," he said as he turned to the sink and began soaping up another towel. "Now this is really going to sting…"
It took an hour for Xander to deal with every injury. Since they didn't have any medical supplies on hand, one Xander-owned t-shirt was sacrificed in the name of bandaging to cover the bite and one Xander-owned flannel shirt was sacrificed to give Faith something comfortable to wear. As he tucked a moaning and nodding Faith into bed he kicked himself for not thinking to include a first aid kit when he packed. His first order of business was to rectify that situation.
"You good?" he worriedly asked.
A mumble in response.
"Right. Get some sleep." Xander settled in a nearby chair and stood watch over the wounded Slayer the rest of the night.
Faith cracked her eyes opened and snarled against the bright sun streaming through the window. She tried to move, but a body-wide thrum of pain that made even her hair hurt prevented anything more than twitch.
"How are you?"
Voice sounded like it was coming from underwater.
"Faith?"
Voice sounded worried. Must see.
Faith hiked her eyelids up a little more to see an exhausted Xander peering down at her. She tried to push herself into a sitting position, but a calloused palm easily kept her in place.
"Stay put. Rest. How are you feeling?"
"Like shit," Faith croaked.
"I'm gonna check your wound. While I do that, tell me what happened?"
She fought a groan while Xander gently pulled down the flannel shirt's neck and began unwrapping the makeshift bandage, and said, "Zombies. Bar lame, left early, ran into zombies. Parking lot."
"Sure it was zombies?"
"Fuck no. Looked like zombies. Rotting bodies. Bad smell. Trashed clothes."
"Paging George Romero."
"Hunh?"
"Movie joke," Xander quickly explained. "Sounds like zombies and I should know."
"You and zombies? No shit."
"No shit. Zombies and me happened twice. I'll tell you sometime," Xander agreed. There was a moment's pause, but the voice had an edge of cautious relief. "The bite looks better. Infection seems to have gone down. I was really worried about the black lines leading away from the bite, but they seem to have retreated, too. Yay Slayer healing."
"Everything fucking hurts."
"Which probably means this would've killed a non-Slayer-type human. I'm no expert, but I think you'll live." Another pause. "Look, Faith, I'm going to run into town for medical supplies and food. The five- and-dime should be open now. I'll come right back."
"No rush. Need sleep," Faith yawned.
"So sleep, but I'll have to wake you up to really do a good job on this bite." A hesitant pause. "I hate to go all Giles on ya, but I better get to the library when it opens."
"Won't find much. Books suck."
"Nah. I'm thinking local news coverage. If you know just where to look, you'd be surprised what you'd find."
Xander felt like a junkie. The building's lone librarian gave him the stink eye as he guiltily popped yet another aspirin into his mouth in an effort to quell his raging headache. He overdid it with the computer yesterday. That, coupled with the utter lack of sleep, meant that his one little eye was probably going to start bleeding from overuse.
*I am too goddamn young to be feeling this fucking old,* Xander thought as he forced himself to focus on the screen. *And I'm too fucking old to be this goddamn stupid.*
He spent all day yesterday looking at Boston papers to get a grip on the problems Faith might have to deal with there and got all wrapped up in the not-so-minor problem of her warrant. He didn't even bother checking the local paper for signs of trouble.
Considering that the town made him uncomfortable from the get-go, checking the local rag should've been his first priority. *Note to self: start trusting your instincts because, guess what, they're not as bad as you think,* Xander thought.
A series of grave robberies last year. A spate of missing people from surrounding towns. Jesus.
Even without throwing Faith's zombies into the mix, the articles would've been enough to set the ol' Scooby-trained antenna aquiver. Although math was never his strong suit, he damn well could add two plus two and come up with four. His first thought probably wouldn't have been zombies, but he definitely would've gotten the "as in Sunnydale weird" vibe.
This was not good, not good at all. They needed to keep a low profile and what do they do? They run smack dab into a town hosting a zombie jamboree. He wondered if the missing people were zombies or food. Gah! He really wasn't sure he wanted to know. Judging by Faith's bite, food was probably the smart bet, although he wouldn't be surprised if both were involved here.
He hoped there wasn't a mask and a super strong, scary, possessed zombie involved, although, if there was a mask he knew what to do about it. Problem was he needed a Slayer at the top of her game if there was any hope of putting the business to rest. And Faith? Definitely not at the top of her game. If he was lucky it was probably some incompetent raising the dead using magic. Since he and luck weren't on speaking terms, his hope of a Jack-like scenario hovered somewhere around nil.
Xander glanced dispiritedly around the library. He needed to learn more about zombies, including the making of, uses of, items used to control, favorite food groups, and, hell, favorite color for all he knew. If he was going to rely on the resources here, his day was going to ascend from the heights of suckitude it had already reached.
He looked back at the computer screen with a wince. He was going to have to use the World Weird Web and pray the library filters wouldn't block too much information he needed. He was no computer expert, but at least he knew what a Google was and had memorized the address for the Demons, Demons, Demons database.
*Right about now, I'd trade my left nut for Giles's brains,* he mentally berated himself as he called up Google. *'Cause right now? The only thing we got is Faith's Slayerness and my iffy computer skills.*
He stared at the cheerful multi-colored letters welcoming him to the search engine. He closed his eye with a sigh as he silently added, *We are so totally screwed.*
"…and that's all I know."
Faith had a hard time concentrating on what Xander was telling her, thanks to the off-and-on chills, persistent ache in her right arm, and the sheer weight of information he dumped in her lap. "That's 'all'? That's 'all'?" she sputtered. "You sound like a freakin' encyclopedia. What did you do? Download all things zombie into your brain?"
Xander wearily rubbed his face. "It's not nearly enough information. Giles would have a better handle on…"
"Don't give me that bullshit," Faith snapped. "I can't even begin to absorb this crap."
"Welcome to the club," Xander shrugged. "Look, all we've got is lots of questions but no answers."
Faith tapped the four inch-high pile of computer printouts with irritation. "Sounds like I've been getting nothing but fun facts and figures about zombies. If these aren't the answers, then I sure as hell don't want to know about the test."
"We still don't know who or what is controlling our dead friends," Xander ticked off his points on his fingers, "we don't know where they're hanging, we don't know who they're hanging with, we don't know if the missing people are now zombies or dead, we don't even know why they're here."
"Or how come no one noticed them," Faith snorted.
"Oh, well, actually we do know that."
"We do?"
"Denial. Beautiful thing. Considering how small the town is, I'd say folks around here can give Sunnydale a run for its money in I-sure-as- hell-didn't-see-that sweepstakes." Xander grinned. "They'll lose, though, if only because there were more people in Sunnydale pretending everything was okely dokely."
"So what are we gonna do about it?"
"Right now? We are gonna do nothing. I am going on a stakeout and see if I can't follow 'em around and find out the deal."
"Bad plan, Xan," Faith argued. "What if they attack someone?"
"I stay out of it and keep my head down," Xander said with a completely straight face.
"I believe that in the same way that I believe in flying pigs. Could happen, but I wouldn't stake my life on it." She waved a hand at him to cut off his protest. "Don't even fucking bother. I got a good sense on people and there's no way you'd watch these bastards chow down on anything more intelligent than a dog."
"Which probably leaves out half the town," Xander joked. Under Faith's stern look, he gave up. "You're probably right. But you can't run around out there, not in your condition."
"Screw it. I'm going. These assholes ripped a piece outta me so I want payback," Faith said as she hauled herself to her feet.
"Faith? Right now I can kick your…" He stopped, thought about it, and amended, "Well, actually, I probably can't kick your ass, but I could probably land a punch. Maybe even two."
"Look, you're talking, what? Recon? I'm just the back-up in case our boys get hungry."
"Faith, I really don't think…"
"Xander? You've got company. Get used to it."
Xander gripped his tire iron and fought the urge to crack it across Faith's wrist as she lit a new Camel.
Faith had actually been fairly courteous to her nonsmoking driver by refraining using the Buick's ashtray. The downside was that they weren't exactly breaking any land speed records as they crossed the country since Faith got cranky if she went longer than three hours between butt breaks. Although he knew Faith probably wouldn't rip off his head if he refused her the opportunity to "stretch her legs," he'd be lying if he didn't admit that one or two bad memories involving her was enough motivation for him to pull over whenever the Slayer got restless.
Which meant that even though he wasn't breathing in the fumes, he still had to silently put up with the smell when she came back from feeding her habit. He didn't mind, well, actually he did, but they were both compromising on the tobacco issue, so it was good.
In the here and now, however, the sour smoke now circling his head served as a red flag for his jangled nerves.
"You know, those things'll kill ya," he remarked through clenched teeth. He hated the vision of a live and puffing cigarette, especially since he associated the evil weed with the probably late and definitely not-so-great Tony Harris sailing beyond three sheets to the wind and straight into making everyone's life a living hell.
"Yeah, yeah. Seen all the dweeb videos featuring black lungs." Faith inhaled deeply and let out a tight stream of smoke. "I should live that fucking long."
"Keep up the chain smoking and you won't. Jesus. If the zombies don't see the warm glow they're going to smell us coming."
"Xander? We're outside a goddamn bar. Between the puke, the other smokers, and the overwhelming air of cow shit in the town, I doubt we'll stand out. Besides, half these bozos don't even have noses, so I'd be shocked if they could smell for shit. Once you get a wiff you're gonna wish you smoked so you'd be less sensitive to the stink."
"Yeah? Well, while you're turning your lungs into tissue paper, you're subjecting me to second-hand cancer. I'm sharing every cigarette you smoke."
Faith held the cigarette out. "If you want."
"Gah!"
She replaced the butt in her mouth. "Health nut," she muttered, causing the glowing tip to wave in the dark.
A shift in the slight breeze and Xander was soon gagging.
Faith stubbed out the Camel on the pavement. "Jesus, you're sensitive."
"Ahk, uhk, not…what the hell is that?"
"What?" Faith asked. She paused, wrinkling her face with distaste. "That's them. Shit. This crap really does affect your sense of smell."
Xander stifled a series of gags in response.
"You told me about the zombie demon and that Jack guy and his zombie gang. Didn't they stink up the town when they were wandering around?"
"Nowhere near this bad." Xander swiped ineffectually at his mouth. "The demon zombies were controlled by this mask and…well, they didn't smell like a rose garden but they didn't smell like…"
Faith clasped his forearm in warning and nodded her head into the dark. Xander panted through his open mouth in a desperate attempt to prevent drawing any air through his nose and peered straight ahead. Jesus, he could taste the atmosphere. On the plus side, although her deep, abiding relationship with Camel gods had clearly affected her sense of smell, her Slayer eyesight was spot on. Almost a minute after she gave her silent warning Xander could see vague shapes stumbling at the edge of the lot. If he didn't know better, he'd think he was watching a large party of drunks heading for their cars after tying one on.
"Ugly," Xander commented in a whisper.
Not only did these zombies smell worse than the Sunnydale crowd, they were also in worse condition. Some seemed together enough to lurch, but others crawled by pulling themselves slowly on the ground. More than a few were missing body parts.
Which meant that they had one thing in common with their California brethren: they could take a licking and keep on ticking. Great.
"Does this bar have a fucking dinner bell or what?" Faith murmured.
"We gotta stop 'em before anyone leaves the bar," Xander agreed.
Faith gave a sharp nod. "Right." She moved to get up, but was halted by a gentle touch on her leg.
"I got a better idea," Xander said, his eye fixed on the lot.
"Oh?"
"Take this," he handed her the tire iron. "See that pickup over there?"
"Which one?"
"The green one. It's halfway between us and our Evil Dead."
"Yeah."
"Think you could puncture the gas tank?"
"With this? Yeah. Won't be easy, but I could."
"Okay, you do that. I'm going into the bar."
"Hunh?"
Xander positioned himself so he could scurry into the building without attracting unwanted attention. "I gotta get some matches."
"Wait," Faith ordered as she dug into her pocket. Ten seconds later, she handed him her Bic. "I don't wanna go boom again," she added.
Xander nodded, grabbed the lighter, tossed it into the bushes with an evil grin, and hightailed it through the entrance. He stepped inside, let his overworked eye adjust just long enough to spot the bar, and lunged forward, landing with both hands on the wood countertop. "Matches! You got matches?" he shouted at the bartender.
The bartender scanned the immediate area, seeing that all the ashtrays were overflowing, reached under the counter and threw a couple of books on the bar. Xander snatched them and was out the door.
Faith was already dancing away from the truck when he ducked back outside. The heavy tang of gasoline told him all he needed to know. He ran up just short of the puddle and waited.
"What the hell are you doing?" Faith yelled. "Get away from there now!"
"Gimme a sec," Xander muttered as he waited for the group to get closer. He swiveled his head so he could get a better picture of what he faced. He counted about a dozen zombies, give or take a handful of desiccated bodies. He kept his hands steady while he ripped two matches from the book. One got tucked in amongst its clones. The other waited.
"Xander! Move your goddamn ass!"
When the lead zombie shambled up to the edge of the wet spot, Xander struck the free match and lit the crosswise match with it. When the book flared, he tossed the flaming collection into the gasoline and ran like hell, snagging Faith in a tackle as he dove for cover.
Faith went with the flow and one arm snaked around him as they hit the ground with a thud. They both covered their heads with their arms and tensed for the explosion they knew was coming. In short order, there was something that sounded like a roar, a woosh, a sonic boom, and a rain of hot metal and glass. Xander was about to get to his feet when Faith yanked him back to the ground.
Another explosion quickly followed.
"Had time to hit another tank next to the truck!" Although Faith was shouting, she sounded like she was at the bottom of a deep, metal well.
"Nice!" Xander hollered back. "Run!"
The two of them were off the ground and sprinting into the darkness, leaving a crowd of pissed off regulars to stand in front of the bar while the fire spread across the lot. Once they were safe out of sight, they scanned the fire-lit dark for any slow-moving escapees. Faith spotted a lone zombie shambling away from the conflagration. She opened her mouth to speak, only to have Xander slap a hand over her mouth. He motioned at his ears to indicate that they were still ringing.
Faith stepped back, nodded in understanding, and pointed in the direction of their pigeon.
Xander grabbed her arm and noticed that it was stiff and greasy. *Shit! She got drenched in gas! I didn't think of that,* he thought as he quickly released her and mimed holding his nose. He jerked his head back in the direction of the hotel, hoping she'd get the hint that she needed to get out of those clothes and into a shower.
She responded by grabbing him, and dragging him along as she chased the zombie down the road away from the excitement. Although the creature was way ahead of them when the chase started, they soon had to slow to a crawl to keep from overtaking their quarry. Xander never thought he'd be involved in a pursuit where he could casually stroll down a road in plain sight.
Which meant that it was not only slow, but it was also dumb as a rock. Thank god for small favors.
The zombie made a sharp right turn into a cornfield and disappeared from view. Faith and Xander gave each other a look and jogged up to the point where it left the tar. Although Xander was still dealing with some ringing in his head, he could just about hear the thing crash its way down the row.
"The hell?" Xander asked, fighting to keep his voice down. "Trap?"
"Only one way to find out." Faith's voice still sounded muffled, but at least she didn't sound like she was shouting at him from the dark side of the moon. She marched into the corn after her prey.
Xander hesitated a moment on the blacktop before taking a deep breath and stepping after her.
*Guy's not exactly what you'd call subtle,* Faith thought as she stalked their zombie through the rows. It seemed to have a clear idea of where it was going, but the thing definitely lacked coordination. That was a relief. She could probably take it down pretty easy, but if it had buddies waiting…
She could hear Xander moving behind her. While he was stumbling a little through the unfamiliar territory, he managed to keep the noise down to a minimum. No worries, though. Considering the racket their quarry was making, Xander probably could've played the drums and no one would've known ugly had company.
God knows how long the trio bumbled their way through the maze before the zombie put in a surprising burst of speed and it broke into an open space beyond the field. Faith stopped short, causing Xander to smack into her with a grunt. She signaled for him to keep quiet as she crouched low. Without a word, he followed suit.
While ugly slowed down and shambled to a nearby barn, Faith took in the lay of the land. The farmhouse looked in like it was in damn good condition, possibly a fresh coat of paint. The barn looked solid, and also seemed to sport a fresh coat of paint. The new-ish looking cars didn't exactly match Mellencamp's wailing about 'Rain on the Scarecrow,' either.
All in all, this didn't look like property that belonged to a struggling farm family trying to keep ahead of the bill collectors. It looked like it belonged to some rich folk playing at farming. Still, looks could be deceiving. For all she knew, this sweet vision could be riding on a mountain of debt.
"I think we found its nest," Xander muttered behind her.
"You know that for sure?"
"It's heading straight for the barn. My bet is that it's licking its wounds and not looking for food."
"Nice picture there, Xan. Yuck," Faith grimaced. "One problem: place doesn't exactly look abandoned. Look around. Living people live here."
"Something or someone is responsible for creating the smelly population in this town."
"You're not saying what I think you're saying, are you?"
"Hey, I was research guy today, remember? One thing that seems to track is that all zombies are slaves to something."
"But you said Jack and his gang…"
"Are kinda the exception that proves the rule," Xander finished. "Zombies could be created by a demon like I saw in Sunnydale, but ninety-nine percent of the time it's a person bent on revenge or free labor."
Faith let out a low whistle. "Fuck. Us messing with the living? This is gonna get real complicated real fast."
"Worse, if we don't deal with the zombie master, there's a good bet he'll just rebuild his little army after we wipe it out and leave town," Xander grimly added.
"People well and truly suck," Faith agreed.
Xander nodded at the barn. "I hate to say this, but we really need to take a look. Find out how many we're dealing with."
"Before we do that, I need to cut off my fucking nose."
Xander stifled a laugh while Faith cautiously got to her feet and, keeping low, scampered to the slightly ajar barn door. She waited until she felt Xander's presence behind her before peering into the pitch-black interior.
"Anything?" he whispered.
In response, Faith pulled the door wide open and stepped just over the threshold.
"Faith!" Xander warned in a harsh, low voice.
"Need a better look," she telegraphed, doing her best to ignore the overwhelming smell of rotting flesh. She cautiously stepped forward. Her presence clearly was a signal and there was movement heading for her. She waited until she was sure she could see there was no more than a half-dozen of the things making for her position before she spun out of the barn, grabbed Xander by the shoulder, and dragged him back to the relative safety of the cornfield.
"How many?" he asked as they paused to draw clean air into their lungs.
"Six, eight tops. I think we wiped out most of the army."
"It's not enough."
"Yup. We gotta finish the job."
Xander grimly looked at the barn. "Looks like we got ourselves a busy night."
"Can I have your metabolism?" Xander asked as he watched Faith dive headfirst into her massive breakfast. He stared wide-eyed at the four- egg Western omelet, double-order of hash browns, double-order of bacon, side of breakfast ham, toast, and pancakes. He felt vaguely like a pervert as he watched Faith eat with a gusto most people reserved for sex.
"Didn't eat all that much yesterday," she said between chews. As the waitress approached their table with a refill, she added with a wicked grin. "Ya kinda kept me tied to the bed all day."
He could practically feel the blush crawling up his neck while the waitress's expression signaled that she heard the comment.
"Not that I mind," Faith blithely continued for the benefit of entertaining their unwilling audience. "Rough is good, but we gotta work on safety words. My arm is still feeling it today." She nodded to indicate the clean bandage.
As the waitress gave him one of those looks out of the corner of her eye, Xander wished he could ooze underneath the table and sink through the floor. *My imaginary sex life with Faith just gets better and better, he thought. What is it with me and the TMI group? Good thing she's not in Anya's league.*
Xander winced, partially in pain, mostly out of guilt. Since fleeing Oxnard he had barely spared his dead ex-fiancé a single thought because he'd been so consumed with escaping, dealing with Faith's issues, and yet more monsters, including the one he saw in the mirror.
"Shit, someone had fun last night."
The comment from a male voice snapped Xander out of his self- recriminating thoughts and he opened his mouth to protest when another male voice interfered.
"Torched a lot full of cars and Talnin's barn. Fuckin' kids. Lookit that. Even stole some gas from the station to add fuel to the fire. No discipline these days."
He looked across the table to Faith, who was regarding him with a thoughtful look. He could see her fingers twitch and he sighed. "Go ahead," he said. "You know you want to."
She grinned, and slipped the pack of Camels on the table. "You sure?" she needlessly asked.
Xander shrugged and picked up his mug to sip at the coffee. Breakfast was nearly done and they needed the excuse to stick around and hear the end of the conversation.
"This is why we need a real fuckin' fire department. Gettin' volunteers up in the middle of the fuckin' night? No wonder everything burned to the goddamn ground." The first voice complained. Xander looked at the owner and immediately pegged him for the kind of guy who'd find something to bitch about if he was surrounded by naked Playboy bunnies 24-7.
"C'mon. Last night was a freak. Usually where there's smoke, there's a burned dinner." The owner of the second voice was better dressed. Xander decided he was the small business owner type hell-bent on keeping his taxes on what a small business type would consider the reasonable side. Since he lived with a small business type for more than two years, he knew 'reasonable' equaled 'zero.' He could hear traces of Anya in the man's voice and he buried his nose in his cup in a vain attempt to hide from the reminder.
"But when shit like this happens? Everythin' goes straight to hell," Bitter Man opined. "'Member last year? We nearly lost all the fields on the west side of town 'cause of some goddamn brushfire."
"You're just pissed because the bar is closed for a bit."
Bitter Man snorted. "Why don'chya ask Talnin? Betchya he's on my side right about now."
"Personally, I don't think there's a connection," the waitress opined. "I think Talnin was targeted special-like."
"Yer such an ol' gossip," Business Man said with a trace of affection.
Xander could see the fleeting hungry looks on the two men's faces. They were clearly salivating for whatever news the waitress had overheard in the diner. He felt a kick under the table and looked at Faith. Her eyes crinkled with amusement through the smoke as she puckered her lips to give him an air kiss.
"Look, strange ain't it how he was all hurtin' a little over a year ago. Had to let go all the day workers and the bank even started to foreclose," the waitress settled in like a goose on her golden eggs of information. "Six months later, he's flush and flash and payin' off the bank in full."
"Said his uncle in Chicago died," Business Man said with amusement.
"Yeah, where was ya, April? You remember the big story," Bitter Man said with the air of someone who didn't buy it either.
"Hey, I lived in this town all my life…" the waitress began.
Faith mouthed the word "sad" at Xander.
"…and I'm tellin' ya, he ain't never had no uncle in Chicago 'fore last year," the waitress insisted. "If he did he'da been long gone. He hates this town. Always did. My sister was in his class in high school and he was always goin' on and on 'bout how he was gonna wipe the dust from this here town an' not look back."
Xander looked down at his empty breakfast plate. That was one sentiment that sounded just a little too familiar. He wondered what happened to keep ol' Talnin tied to the homestead since one ugly stint as a stripper in Oxnard was probably not the reason their suspected zombie master stuck around.
"Shouldda kept his hand wrapped around his dick instead of stickin' it in Jules, then," Bitter Man commented.
Faith rolled her eyes as Xander tried not to laugh. Question asked and crudely answered.
"Bein' a little hard on him, aren't ya?" Business Man asked.
*Not nearly hard enough,* Xander thought with a spike of anger.
"Since he come into the money, he hasn't been shy 'bout spreading it around town," Business Man continued.
"Show off," the other man insisted.
"Look, he throws money at local business, charities, and suchlike. Don't have to do that," the suit argued. "Buys all his cars local, even. Prob'ly will spread the money 'round locally to rebuild his barn. That's your, whatchayamacallit, trickle-down effect."
"Still, don't see him hirin' day help, so's he's not helpin' people gone wantin' fer jobs. Says he's doin' all the fieldwork himself an' he ain't bought no new equipment in a dog's age. I don' see how he's managing his property," Bitter Man grumbled.
"His right if he's willin' to work hisself to death, not our lookout," Business Man countered.
"See? That's what I'm talkin' 'bout," April interjected. "People been mumblin' all jealous like and wonderin' 'bout his new lifestyle."
"You ain't sayin' someone hit his barn on purpose, are ya?" Bitter Man seemed horrified at the thought.
April shrugged. "Not sayin' nothin' an' I ain't heard nothin' 'bout that. Just sayin' someone who ain't been so lucky mighta gotten it into their heads to bring Talnin down a peg or two."
"Cain't be no one around here," Business Man insisted. "I cain't think anyone in town would do such a spiteful thing."
*You'd be shocked what people will do,* Xander thought with dark amusement.
"Yeah, I know," April said. "But ya never know with some people."
Xander fought the urge to mutter an 'amen' to that statement. Frankly, he had heard enough. The conversation seemed like it was on the verge of dissolving into some other subject. The hen party at the diner counter had given them all the information they needed: the whole zombie mess probably started because of desperation, but kept on going probably because of greed.
*Looks like luck finally decided to lend a hand,* Xander thought as he got up to pay the bill. *An incompetent with a spell. Yay us.*
While the waitress rung him up, Bitter Man asked, "So, what do they call you?"
Xander blinked. "Talking to me?"
"Nah, talking to April here." The man grinned as he said this, as if he'd uttered quite the witty joke.
"Alexander."
"So tell me, Al..."
"Alexander," Xander corrected. "No one calls me Al." He didn't dare turn around because he just knew Faith was watching the whole business through amused eyes. As it was, he had to put up with the trio's condescending smiles in response to his correction.
"Alexander," he said in a slightly mocking tone. "What I'm askin' you is, what do you think?"
"About what?" He really didn't want to get yanked into this conversation.
"'Bout volunteer fire departments?" Bitter Man insisted.
*Back to that again, are we? Fabulous,* Xander thought. His scrambling mind went for a delay, "Sorry?"
"My friend here was bitching earlier about volunteer fire departments," Business Man said. "Thinks we should go with an expensive proposition instead."
"I…I…we really weren't listening," Xander stammered.
"I'm sure." Bitter Man gave Faith an appreciative look that raised Xander's hackles. Faith didn't help the situation by giving the guy a flirty wink. "Wife like that I'd know where I'd be pointin' my undivided 'tension."
"We're not married," Xander quickly corrected.
"No shit?" Both men looked speculatively at Xander's eye patch, clearly wondering why someone like Faith would be spotted within a million miles of someone like Xander if, legally speaking, she didn't have to be. "Mus' be true love," Bitter Man added.
"That's right," Xander said through a clenched jaw. He was outnumbered here and the last thing he needed was to pick a fight with the locals.
"Leave off," April said. She smiled sweetly at Xander as she handed him change. "Don't mind Dan. He's goin' though a nasty divorce so he's what you might call bitter on the concept of twu wuv fowevah."
"I'm just sayin' if you hope to keep a piece like that, I'd find a way to keep Trojans out from between the sheets," Dan commented while Business Man looked like he was trying not to agree.
Xander glared and took his shot. "Looks like envy is a big sport in this town." As he turned to leave, he felt an arm snake around his. He looked down into an evil grin and twinkling brown eyes.
"C'mon, honey. We gotta check with the mechanic and then I have a fun afternoon planned. Hope you like strawberry-flavored message oils. Think you can repeat the six-hour performance from last night? I'm all wet just thinking about it."
Faith could see Xander's black mood get even darker as the mechanic handed them the estimate. "This is insane. Car's not worth that much," Xander said.
"Look, I spelled it out. Price parts, labor, taxes. Whatchyoo see is whatchyoo get."
"What I see are two tourists getting soaked by the locals," Xander flatly stated.
*Nice fucking diplomacy,* Faith shook her head. *Xander wouldn't say fucking shit even when his mouth was full of it back in Sunnydale. Get him into the cow pasture and he's all tell-it-like-it-is. Is he trying to piss off the locals?*
Okay, if she were being honest, she couldn't blame him. She was liking this town and its people less and less. Maybe she should've just followed Xander's lead the first night and joined him on the closest highway for a bit of hitchhiking fun. Figures the two of them would land right in the middle of a shit storm when they both desperately needed to avoid said shit storm.
Faith mentally paused and she took a fresh look at her companion while he tried to negotiate a more reasonable bill with the mechanic. *Xander knew,* she thought with wonder. *He fucking knew something wasn't on the up-and-up the second we hit town. Jesus, just like outside Wolfram & Hart.*
The big question remained: What the hell did he know? He knew there was trouble. He knew the trouble was in the cornfields. Beyond that she didn't know and apparently neither did he. Hell, he was as surprised as she was about the zombies.
*Which means some semblance of that the whole knowing thing is back, that's assuming it left in the first place.* Faith's eyes narrowed. *What am I thinking? This is nuts. He made as many screw-ups as the rest of us towards the end. If he had his mojo on, Anya would definitely be among the living, Sunnydale would still exist, and Xander wouldn't be wearing an eye patch.*
Unless--and this was a disturbing idea--things had to play out the way they did in order to defeat the First. Faith shoved the stray thought away. Slayer she may be, but she, for one, never bought into the destiny side of the equation. As far as she was concerned, she pulled the Slayer gig because someone at the mystical craps table came up snake eyes. Xander landed in his mess because of Willow's and Giles's screw-ups. Sunnydale was a hole in the ground because of bad luck, or good luck, depending on how you looked at it.
"Fine. I'll pay half upfront, then," Xander said, bringing Faith back to the business at hand.
When he took out his wallet, her eyes widened, and she rushed over, grasping his wrist in a vice-like grip.
"Ow! Hey!" Xander protested.
"Sorry, but I need to talk to my honey. Can we get back to you on the car situation? We'll be about ten minutes," she said to the mechanic as she dragged Xander away.
Once they were out of earshot, Xander ineffectually tried to yank himself from Faith's clutches. "What the hell?"
"You can't use your credit cards," Faith said.
"What? Why?"
"Fuck. Sorry about this, but with the zombies…shit…it slipped my mind."
"What slipped your mind?"
"Checked in with Angel before my big smack down and…Xander…your friends are looking for you."
Xander froze.
"Buffy's…well…they're trolling for information under the fucking rocks. Angel figures they're not too thrilled with you right now and they're ready to do anything to get you back and when I say anything, I mean anything."
Xander shivered and closed his eye.
"He thinks Willow might put her mad computer skills to use. Hate to say it, but if you want to stay out of the crosshairs, I'm gonna have to use my plastic from here on out."
"I have to depend on you then."
Faith could hear the bitter tone in his voice. Her earlier anticipatory amusement about the situation evaporated as she gave him the next bit of news. "Angel says he can use his resources to set you up on a blind account, but he needs copies of anything you got. I mean, everything financial."
"Great. Not only will I owe you, I'll owe Angel."
"Don't be like that. He wants to help." God, was she attempting to soothe his ruffled feathers? "Look, the paperwork can wait until we get to Boston. I'm sure Angel'll set you up in no time, but you might be stuck with me a little longer than you thought."
Xander heaved his shoulders. "I just love the attractive options that keep dropping in my lap. At least I know that you aren't going to go all narc on me and turn me over to Buffy. He pleadingly looked at her. "You won't, will you?"
"Nah," Faith quickly assured him. "I figure you got your own reasons for splitting, but you really should've told it to me straight instead giving me some line about taking a sabbatical. I had to hear the real deal from Angel who heard it from Buffy and I gotta admit that it didn't make me a happy camper to hear it from someplace other than the horse's mouth."
Xander looked down and shoved his hands in his pockets. "I didn't tell you because I wasn't sure what you'd do. I'm demon boy, remember? By definition I shouldn't be running around unattended."
"Hey, what did I tell you? If you don't eat humans, walk the straight and narrow, and pay your taxes, you can do whatever the fuck you want." She clapped him companionably on the arm. "'Sides, I figure you deserve a goddamn break. I just feel bad it's not workin' out the way you pictured."
His mouth twitched in an aborted smile. "Worked out better, actually."
*Well, that's a surprise, considering,* Faith thought.
"If you weren't in touch with Angel, I'd've used my credit card and some alarm somewhere probably would've gone off. At least I know I have to avoid leaving a paper trail, so that's good."
Faith slapped her forehead. "Damn. Almost forgot this, too. I'm such a 'tard."
"Tahd? What's a…"
"Short for retard," Faith absently explained while she dug into her left pocket.
"Nice word there, Faith."
"This from a guy who doesn't even flinch when I fucking swear," Faith muttered as she pulled out the delicate amulet. "Fucking PC-speak. You're so California."
"Amazing how you can make a state name sound like an insult while using the word 'retard' is no big deal for you," Xander complained.
"Shut up. Hold out your hand. Got some extra protection to give ya." When Xander hesitated, she added, "It's not like I'm handing you a condom. Stop being so touchy."
His face wrinkled disapprovingly before he held out his right hand. When Faith dropped the tiny amulet into the palm, he looked up with a questioning expression.
"Angel gave that to me as a 'just in case,' y'know? It's supposed to shield you from anyone trying to track you using magic," she explained.
He swallowed hard. "Willow. Again."
"Well, he didn't give it to me to protect me from Willow. It's kind of an all-purpose thing. You're supposed to keep it somewhere on you while you're running around and just leave it in your bedroom when you sleep." *Technically not a lie, but technically not the truth,* Faith admitted to herself with an internal wince.
"Oh. Umm. Look, maybe you shouldn't be giving this to me since you might need it."
"Willow? Remember her?" Faith asked. "Right now you need it a hell of a lot more than I do. Put it on."
"You had it in your pocket, so why can't I…"
"Because I'm a 'tard." Faith tried not to enjoy Xander's reflexive wince. "I'm always careless about this shit and then wind up kicking my own ass whenever I lose something. You can't afford to be careless."
"You're saying I should wear this?"
"Best bet if you do."
Xander began struggling with the clasp. Faith rolled her eyes, gently took the amulet out of his hands, and within seconds had the chain stretched to its length in an unnerving imitation of a garrote.
"Turn around, I'll put it on," she offered.
Xander backed up a step, drawing a deep breath. "I'll do it."
"Don't be stupid, I'll…"
"Faith, I don't like wearing chains around my neck as it is…"
Faith's brows crinkled together. "Since when?"
"Since…ummm…always," he verbally stumbled. He quickly gathered himself, "At least since high school. Too pimping for me. I'm more of a lumberjack shirt kinda guy. But, hey! If I gotta wear it, I gotta wear it. I'll deal if it clashes with my Timberland tastes. But, y'know, just the same, I'd rather put it on myself. It's a thing."
He didn't say it. Faith had to give him credit for that. Just the same she could hear the voice of experience and she felt a lead ball settle in her stomach. She swallowed hard, nodded, dropped the amulet into his open palm for a second time, and tried not to wonder if Xander would be so insistent that he wrap the amulet around his own neck if Buffy, Willow, Anya, or hell, even Spike offered to help.
After some fumbling, he managed the clasp, got the amulet on, and tucked the business underneath his tee.
"Okay. We good now?" Faith asked in a subdued voice. When he nodded, she began going for her own wallet. "It's on me. So's the gas."
Xander's face crunched in thought. "Wait."
"Look, we gotta pay for…"
"That's not it," Xander said. "God, am I stupid or what?"
"I'll go with the 'or what'," Faith said.
"Okay, just say Willow's trolling for information on my credit card use and probably will resort to magic to try and find me." Xander was shaking his head in a manner indicating that he had been hit with a disturbing thought. "How hard would it be to report the Buick stolen?"
"Shit."
"I mean, getting it fixed isn't going to raise the red flags, but, Christ, we're traveling cross-country. I've been careful about obeying traffic laws what with the one eye thing, but if we get targeted going through one of these pissant little towns…"
"They'll run plates," Faith finished for him. "Crap. We have to get another car."
"And a new registration and new plates," Xander added.
"Can't do that without something resembling a permanent address."
Xander stood in thought. "Actually, maybe we can."
"Hunh? How?"
"I bet if we get on the greed is good train and mix it up with a sob story about how our hometown is now a crater and we're heading to, I don't know, say, Florida for that family reunion until we get on our feet, how much are you willing to bet we'll mysteriously get a local address?"
Faith eyed the mechanic as he worked on a car. "I think that's asking an awful lot of these fine folk."
"I say it's worth a shot. We got nothing to lose by asking."
The car and the agreement to "test drive" it for the day was a godsend, even if Faith was forced to give up an insane $1,000 holding fee, which their dealer assured them would be applied to any vehicle they chose to buy. Still, even Faith had to admit it was a canny move--maybe even a compassionate one. If she was faced with the sob story Xander told there would've been no fucking way she'd let the two of them out of her sight with the merchandise.
After consulting a roadmap, Xander pointed the borrowed Toyota to a smallish city. Like everything else in this part of the country, some serious traveling time was required. Faith kicked back, rolled down the windows, and enjoyed the feeling of freedom, defined as the sun on her face and wind blowing through her hair.
Once they made their destination, Xander wandered into a 7-11 and managed to get his hands on a phone book. After scribbling a list of video rental places down on a scrap piece of paper, he got directions to a local bookstore where he purchased--using Faith's ATM-provided money--a screaming yellow Arrow street map. Thus armed, they began their hunt.
Although it took six tries, they found just the right mark for their scheme. While Faith filled out the membership forms using a fake local street address and plunked down her MasterCard-embossed ATM card, Xander collected five DVDs, a multi-disc DVD player capable of playing all five movies on a continuous loop, and the necessary adapters to hook it up to the crappy television in the hotel room.
They blew back into town in the late afternoon and exchanged the Toyota for a Subaru so they could have another "test drive." The sticker price on this one was a little cheaper, probably because it was older and came equipped with a standard transmission. Thankfully, Xander very quickly caught on to the rhythm of clutch-and-shift, a side effect of working construction and heavy equipment, he joked.
Faith napped while Xander spent the rest of the afternoon figuring out how to hook up the DVD player to the television set. She woke just in time for Xander to test the jury-rigged system. "Still don't see the point," Faith grumbled. "It's not like anyone listens at the door."
"I know. I'm just being cautious," Xander said. "Let's just say if things go bad, I don't want anyone looking at the two strangers in town as the source of all their problems."
"You make it sound like our new best friends might go on witch hunt."
"You'd be surprised. Trust me, I've been caught in the middle of a witch hunt and things have a habit of spiraling out of control really fast," Xander absently replied while he fiddled with the buttons.
"You've been caught in a…" Faith shook her head. "Zombies. Witch hunts. Christ, your past gets more and more colorful. Next thing you know, you're gonna tell me you matched wits with a robot."
"Oh, that's right. You missed all the fun with robot April and the Buffybot."
"You have got to be yanking my chain," Faith commented with crossed arms. Xander gave her an amused look and she added, "Shit. You're not yanking my chain, are ya? Y'know, I'm thinkin' you should give me hand by writing this stuff down. Might help me keep my ass alive in the course of Slaying."
"You are definitely overstating my ability to keep anyone alive," Xander said as the disc tray slid smoothly shut. "Stand outside and close the door. I need to get the volume just right on this. Knock once for 'no' and twice for 'yes.'"
Faith did as he asked, keeping herself about four inches away from the door. She could hear the volume of music, moans, and groans go up and down as Xander fiddled with the television. At odd moments, she'd hear his muffled voice asking, "Yes?"
It took several one-knocks before the volume was at a level where Faith felt comfortable enough to guess that the police wouldn't be busting down the door on a noise complaint. The sound issue settled, she walked into the room, and gave the snowy television screen an amused look. "If we're gonna pay for it, we should be able to enjoy it."
Xander blushed an interesting shade of scarlet. "If you want to watch, I'll make myself scarce."
"Nah. Rather be doing it than watching it." Faith grinned as Xander's temporary scarlet color turned sunburn bright. "Still don't get why you're going all covert."
"Because someone decided to inform the local gossip brigade that I'm a sex machine." Xander waved the remote at the television set. "Probably being overcautious, but after you dropped the Sunnydale-related bombshell in my lap, I'm feeling a wee bit paranoid."
"Well, I suppose it can't hurt," Faith said. She glanced out the window. "Looks like sunset is on us. Ready to go for a drive?"
"Yup." He started the player, checked the menu, and began the movie. Cheesy porn sprang to life in glorious Technicolor.
"You sure our guy is gonna try to rebuild his army tonight? I mean, I'd be thinkin' he'd lay low, especially since he's lost a place to store his pets."
"Maybe. But if he's using zombies as free labor, he needs to recruit a workforce before harvesting the corn. You heard the gossips, rebuilding that barn's gonna cost money and he's gonna have to spend it liberally and locally to keep up appearances. Last thing he probably wants to do is add to his pile of bills by actually hiring living and breathing humans."
Faith shook her head. "You've got a really dim view of humanity, you know that? I worry."
"Yeah, well, let's just say my opinion of the human race isn't exactly at an all time high right now," Xander said as he walked out of the room.
"Jules, I think we should let this go."
"Hush. Help me find a grave."
"Jules…"
"Jacob…" Jules answered her husband in a similar tone.
The man fumbled with the armload of supplies, trying to keep everything in his arms as opposed to dumping them on the ground. "Look, we should stop this. Things got out of hand before and I…"
"That's because we raised too many of 'em and couldn't keep 'em fed proper."
Jacob Talnin slowly sank to the grass and spilled his armload. Cauldron, blanket, assorted glass jars filled with unidentifiable substances, multi-colored rocks, candles, a sword, and chicken feathers jumbled together.
"Careful!" she snapped.
"Jules, we don't need to do this. Insurance got the barn an' the house is paid fer…"
"…an' we have credit cards," Jules crossed her arms. "We been rackin' up the debt, hon."
"Which we shouldn'ta done once we got the banking folk off our backs," Jacob argued. "Debt's nowhere near as bad as it twas, so we should…"
"I didn't hear you complain none when we got ourselves new cars, sent Gilly to private horseback riding lessons, refurnished everythin'…"
"Mebe I should've," Jacob grumbled.
"Look, we know where we went wrong las' time, right?" Jules said absently as she peered at the headstones. "Raised too many. Shouldda kept it to a half-dozen so's we could keep up feedin' 'em proper."
"Half-dozen is too many. They was sneakin' out even then."
"That's 'cause you got all soft, thinkin' they was like real people an' needed…"
"They are, or was…I jus' have a bad feelin'."
"Fine. We keep it to four an' see how it goes."
Jacob heaved his shoulders. "I guess."
"Now help me find one."
"What's wrong with this one here?"
Jules trotted over and studied the dates. "Too new," she scowled. "Need to be dead least ten years, to be sure they ain't human no more. Anythin' newer and yer takin' a chance their soul might be hangin' 'bout. We don' wanna repeat of the Bolander problem, do we?"
"No," Jacob shuddered. "Hated killin' that one. Good worker, but trouble. He still looked 'live in those eyes."
"Here's one," Jules interrupted. She lightly brushed the headstone. "John Evans, died 1991. Perfect."
"Not John. Knew him," Jacob protested. "Died O.D., but I still knew him. Don' wanna deal with…"
"Look, we gotta get this done an' I don' wanna be out in this here cemetery all night. We got our candidate. So?"
"Fine," Jacob grumbled as he spread out the blankets and carefully placed his tools on it. Two black candles side-by-side, cauldron in the center, colored rocks strategically placed at the four compass points, chicken feathers tucked under the cauldron, and the various jars opened and put in reach. The sword was put aside since it was protection in case the zombie rose with an idea that he or Jules might make a fine first meal.
Jules produced a package of quicklight charcoal from her pocket and a box of wooden matches. She lit the black lump and waited for the telltale sparkle before dropping it into the cauldron. She stood back. "Let 'er rip," she said cheerfully.
Jacob began the chant, at odd moments, he reached into the glass jars, drawing out whatever herb or powder it held, and tossed it on the coal. Jules let the sounds and the smells wash over her, enjoying the fresh breeze while she could because once the new zombie burst forth, it was going to be a tough to smell anything else.
The chanting got louder and she could feel the wash of power make the hairs on her arm stand up on end. Jacob tossed a fine, white powder in the air and it swirled around him and the grave, trapping them both in a circle of power.
"Shit! They've already started!"
Jules jerked around to find the source of the female voice while Jacob picked up his chant. He didn't dare stop mid-spell, especially since the book warned that there'd be bloody consequences. She scanned the dark before picking out two figures running for their position. A woman was in the lead, sprinting between the graves as if her life depended on it. A tall male, who seemed to have a more difficult time navigating the territory, was doing his best to keep up.
"I'll hold 'em off," Jules muttered to her husband, who nodded that he heard but kept going with the chant.
Jules stepped forward, directly into the path of the woman. "Now what's this all about? Cain't you see…"
"Get out of my way," the woman snarled as she shoved Jules aside and ran straight for Jacob, who had just thrown the chicken feathers in the air as he swung into the last third of the chant.
Jules felt someone bend over her. She looked up and fought a gasp when she realized she was looking into a worried male face sporting an eye patch.
"You okay?" he asked. "You hit the ground kinda hard…"
"We're not doin' nothin' wrong," Jules quickly interrupted. "We're jus' payin' our respects to the dead."
The man's face transformed into a less friendly look. "Were you?"
"It's for a friend of my husband's," Jules continued before launching into the pre-planed excuse. "It's a religious ceremony."
There was a crash and the man looked away for a few moments. "Looks like we interrupted," he commented dryly. "Real sorry about that. We misunderstood the intention. Which religion is it again?"
"Voodoo."
The man looked her up and down, dark amusement twisting his features. "You don't really match the profile."
"Racist? Just 'cause we is white…"
"Nope," the man replied. "Usually someone is wearing white in voodoo, which I know because of way too many hours spent researching your zombie work crew." There was another crash, but he didn't look back to see what was happening. "And I noticed: you and your husband? Wearing street clothes. Sloppy and very spiritually disrespectful, I might add. I should find the closest local Queen and let her kick your ass."
"Yo! We got ourselves a fuck-up!"
The man quickly straightened and stepped back a step. "Shit! What the hell…"
"I think we got ourselves one massive backfire! Fuck me he's fast!"
The fear of what was happening out of sight was now stronger than the fear that kept her pinned to the ground. Jules jumped to her feet and ran two steps forward before the scene registered. The spell set-up was in shambles and the woman was dancing around Jacob, staying out of reach of the swinging sword. Fast as he was, his movements were jerky, as if he was fighting himself as well as the woman.
"What…" she began.
"Your husband just got zombie-fied," the man said grimly.
"He's trapped in there!" the woman yelled. "I can see his eyes are still alive."
"Fuck," the man muttered as he took off for the battle scene.
The woman retreated. She grabbed her male companion as he drew level with her. "I don't just want to just chop him up," she said. "Shit, he probably deserves it, but, Christ…"
"Can you disarm him?" the man asked as he watched Jacob move in their direction with halting steps, as if the man inside was trying to regain control of his body "Maybe we can come up with a reverse spell."
"Are you sure he's alive?" Jules asked.
The pair turned and looked at her as if she were a piece of shit that got stuck to the bottom of their shoes.
"Look, if Jacob's in there, I can talk to him. Get him to put the sword down." As they continued to glare at her, she added, "Don't kill him. Please."
The man rolled his eye. "Worth a try, I guess."
"If she's wrong?"
The man coolly regarded Jules as he said to his female partner, "Do you care?"
"Personally? Not really. General principle? Thinking about it," she said in an almost bored tone.
He nodded at Jules. "Give it your best shot."
Jules swallowed hard and did her best to keep her head up as she walked between the pair. She noticed the two of them split up and go into the rows on each side of her. They kept a little ahead of her pace, as if they were an honor guard protecting her. The gesture was a surprise, given their stated lack of interest in her safety.
Jules stopped short as Jacob's body shambled to a halt. While he didn't have the dead smell, his skin already had a pallor and his lips a blue tinge. The too-alive eyes that seemed to plead with her to do something contrasted with body's jerky movements.
"Honey? Put the sword down," Jules said quietly. "We're trying to help you. We'll get you out of this. But you have to put the sword down. Do you understand?"
No movement as the eyes flickered in terror.
"They mentioned a counter-spell. They might know something that…"
Jacob lurched forward, mouth opened wide. The woman came from nowhere and knocked him to the ground. The sword fell out of his grasp and Jules scooped it up. She whipped around, holding the pommel in both hands. Luck was with her and she managed to get it pointed in the direction of the male stranger, nearly impaling him in the chest.
"Don't hurt him!" she shouted at the woman. "Or your friend here gets it!"
The man backed up a step. A lone eyebrow raised in amusement as Jules took a step forward, keeping the point firmly against his chest.
"I mean it!" Jules shouted.
The woman flipped to her feet in a move that would've won gymnastics awards and swore when she saw that Jules was armed. "You've got to be fucking joking."
"She acts like I don't know how to run," the man said.
"I don't think the two of you are goin' nowhere," Jules said. "You came here for a reason I figure, so's the two of you are gonna be stayin' put."
"Oh, I'm thinking we can walk away and still tail your ass. Just 'cause you can't see us doesn't mean we can't see you," the woman said with a sardonic smile. Her foot lashed out and caught Jacob in the face as he struggled upright, sending the body back to the ground.
"What are you gonna do, call the police?" the man asked as he backed up another step. "That should be a really interesting call. Wonder how you're gonna explain your dead-but-still-kicking husband and the mess you left in the graveyard."
Jules was furious. She had the weapon and these two strangers were treating her like she was some kind of joke.
"Now, we can do this the easy way, or the hard way," the woman said as she moved to put her right foot over Jacob's throat. She exerted just enough pressure to keep him in place and didn't seem to notice as his hands scrambled at her leg. "I'm hoping you'll go with the hard way because right now I am fucking pissed."
"You know, we've been hearing the gossip in town and it seems to us that people are more than willing to believe the worst about you two," the man said in an off-handed manner. "We've heard rumors involving the phrase 'deal with the devil' and 'going to the crossroads' and 'black magic' when news got around about your barn."
"They never," Jules protested.
"Sure. You can ask April all about it," the man said with a shrug. He nodded to his female companion. "Isn't that right?"
The woman grinned a nasty smile. "Lots of people wanna know where you get your money. The way you spend it? It's caused so much talk that we've heard about it."
"Really stupid move," the man said.
"Flashing your wad like that all over town? Man, someone's gonna start wondering," the woman agreed.
"So, in the interests of preventing the formation of a lynch mob, I suggest that you help us find a counter spell," the man said with a wolfish grin. "Then, we are taking all your spell books, including the one with the zombie raising spell, and we're going to destroy everything in your house that even looks like it might be used for magic."
"Oooh. Bonfire. Too bad I didn't bring the marshmallows," the woman added.
"You cain't do that!" Jules protested. "That's stealin'."
The man shrugged. "Okay, fair enough." He took another step back. "But if you don't, we'll drag the two of you to the center of town, tie you to the Post Office railing, and see what happens when the rush hour commuters get a good, long look."
"As for us? We'll be loooong gone. We got ourselves a car and we're not from around here, so you'd be pretty much screwed," the woman pointed out.
Jules realized they had her in a corner. "Sure you can help him?"
"Nope. But we're your best shot," the man said.
"Fine." She dropped the sword point. "But I'm keeping this."
"Let her," the woman said, "if it makes her feel better. Won't do her any good anyway."
The man fixed Jules with a smile. "Where's your car?"
Faith grabbed Jules's arm as she placed the sword against the porch wall so she could dig out her house keys. "No one else is home, right?" the Slayer asked.
"I tol' you. The one daughter an' she's a 4H camp," the woman sullenly replied.
"You better be straight with us," the Slayer growled as she watched Jules open the door, keeping a hold on her arm.
They stepped into the cheerful hallway, which looked like Martha Stewart's K-Mart selection had exploded in there. Faith grit her teeth, suspecting that the rest of the house would be decorated in much the same way. On some level, she was personally insulted that a family that raised flesh-eating zombies would have such Middle America tastes.
Faith took a deep breath to clear her head. "Right. Partner of mine? Don't touch a fucking thing. Little Miss is gonna find us some gloves and then she's gonna show us her stash of magic books."
"Gloves?" Xander questioned from the porch.
Jesus. He didn't have a felonious bone in his body, did he? "We don't want to leave fingerprints for the cops in case our new best friend decides to report a home invasion."
"Oh. Right. Which means using our names is out, right Stella? Oooops. Sorry. That slipped."
Okay, maybe not felonious, but he caught on fast. "Fan-fucking- tastic, Drew. Watchya do that for?"
"She's still got an undead husband in the trunk of her car," Xander remarked. "Still not seeing the cop angle."
"When are we lettin' him out of the trunk?" Jules asked with an edge of a terrified whine. "We cain't just leave him in there."
"If we find a cure." Faith shook Jules for emphasis. "Now march. Gloves first."
A quick climb upstairs to the bedrooms confirmed her worst suspicions: the Talnins' decorating tastes veered between Stewart, Mary Engelbreit, and a generic country townhouse flavor. Faith's working-class reverse snobbery kicked her in the gut as she fought the feeling of being personally offended by the ruffled curtains, pastel rugs, and faux quilts on the beds.
Jules chose to behave and she retrieved two pairs of gloves. Faith put hers on and flexed her fingers. They were snug and she suspected that the shiny leather gloves were going to make it difficult for her to grasp things. At least the gloves destined for Xander's hands seemed better suited for a workingman, as opposed to the pretty things Faith was forced to wear.
"Books. Now," Faith barked.
Jules sullenly turned and led the Slayer back down the stairs. When they entered the parlor, Xander was already waiting, standing stock still in the center of the room. Jules made immediately for the bookcase next to the parlor's entrance as Faith went to Xander.
"Geez, when I said don't touch anything, I didn't mean to play statue," she joked.
No response. Xander remained staring resolutely ahead, as if the flowered wallpaper itself was an evil that had to be faced down and destroyed through sheer force of will.
"Yo. Earth to…to…Drew. Earth to…hey…You okay?" Faith asked.
Xander responded by switching his focus from the wall to Jules as she rummaged through the bookcase, dropping selected volumes to the floor, and muttering under her breath. Faith followed his gaze and looked back up at his face.
An image crossed her mind, this time of an owl waiting patiently in a tree before it pounced on a hapless field mouse. *Again with the animal imagery and Xander. More to the point, animals that hunt and Xander,* Faith thought as her troubled eyes moved between the poised man next to her and the unwitting farmer's wife. *I really hope this isn't some Slayer sense screaming a warning at me.*
Jules stopped and turned around, crossing her arms in indignation. "That's all of 'em. Zombie spell's in that there funny- colored one."
"You're lying."
Xander's voice made the hair on the back of Faith's arms stand up. Shit. That could only mean one thing.
"I ain't," Jules insisted.
"There's one more. Isn't there? One more not on those shelves. One your husband didn't even know about, but you kept secret just in case." He twitched his head to an angle and Faith noticed that his visible eye was slightly unfocused. "You sold yourself. And you were willing to trade flesh of your flesh and blood of your blood to take your place. The young for the old."
Jules, who had slowly backed herself up against the wall through Xander's talk, opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. Faith was frozen, transfixed by the hypnotic tone of Xander's voice and burning curiosity about what would come out of his mouth next.
"You didn't go to the crossroads, but you are standing there just the same. Poor, poor Jules. Made a deal, but didn't seal it, did you? You made a blood oath, but you didn't provide the blood. One way or the other, you have to provide the blood. There's always blood needed to seal your fate." Xander's distant, impassive manner was the one of the most frightening things Faith had ever witnessed.
"Wh-wh-what…" Jules whispered.
"I don't know," Faith quietly admitted.
"Two choices I place before you: Destroying yourself will save you. Saving yourself will destroy you." Xander intoned as if no one spoke. He pointed at her and whispered to Faith, "Can you see it?"
"See what?" Faith really wasn't sure she wanted to know.
"It's. Right. There," Xander whispered back. "Look. Look at her. The shadow."
"Shadow?" Faith swallowed hard. "What shadow?"
"She's connected to the dark. Not completely, but she's nearly there. A push, one way or the other, makes her here or there."
"Okay. Riddles. More fucking riddles." Faith said feeling the goose bumps on her arms turn painful. "I need something…"
Xander collapsed in the middle of the floor. While Faith regarded the shapeless heap at her feet with a stunned expression, Jules took the opportunity to shoot out the living room door into the hall. Faith hesitated a fatal moment, torn between checking Xander and chasing Jules. She swore. Xander would have to keep. And then she tore after her prey.
She flew out the open front door onto the porch just in time to see Jules open the trunk. "No!" Faith screamed. She spotted a soot- covered axe resting against the porch wall and grabbed it before running off the porch.
Jacob exploded out of the trunk and immediately attacked his wife, jaws open wide. Faith dove into a flying tackle to knock him off, but in the ensuing struggle, lost her grip on the axe. She ducked and wove as he swiped at her with reflexes slightly faster than a normal human, leaving her to wonder if zombification actually enhanced a living body.
The fight would've been over very quickly if Faith were willing to kill her attacker. Tempting as it was, the vague hope of reversing the spell left Faith with the limited option of trying to subdue him without leaving a wound that would kill him when he reverted to human form.
In between landing punches and ducking her opponent, Faith kept an eye out for the axe, hoping against hope that she could grab it and use the handle to knock him for a loop that would leave him with nothing more than a nasty concussion. Not able to see it, she finally muttered, "Fuck this," and stepped up her attack in hopes of knocking him out with an Ali-like punch.
She would've managed it, but Jules let out a blood-curdling scream, which distracted the Slayer for a fraction of a second, long enough for Jacob to slam her head first into the car with a bone-shattering whump. Faith slid stunned to the ground even as a corner of her mind readied herself for the bite.
The expected follow-up never came.
Faith shook her head to clear her vision and saw Jacob closing on Jules, who was holding the axe in her hands.
"Run! Back into the house!" Faith shouted as she flipped to her feet. She took a moment to shake off the ringing headache and refocused to get her bearings.
What happened next happened just too fast to register as anything more than flashes. Jules with the axe. A swing. A howl. Jacob on the ground, axe implanted in the chest. Jules again with the axe. Jacob struggling to sit up. Another swing.
By the time Faith reached the battle scene, Jacob's head was already severed from his body and the body was on the ground. Faith danced out of the way of the gushing blood, somehow managing to keep free of blood splatter as the corpse danced its jig on the ground.
Jules fell to her knees, axe dropping from nerveless fingers, sobbing a string of muttered excuses about how she didn't mean it, she was sorry, oh Jacob, what am I going to do with you?
Faith didn't doubt for a moment that Jules was emotionally collapsing under the aftermath, but she was willing to kill her husband to save herself just the same. She froze, the warning trickle dancing across her brain in an electric buzz: *Saving yourself will destroy you.*
She regarded the still-twitching body and the head snapping its mouth open and shut. *There's always blood needed to seal your fate,* Faith thought. As hot as the night was, Faith felt frigid and she hugged herself tight. She needed to get back to the house. She needed to see…
Her mind blanked, because she wasn't sure what she needed to see. She turned away and, with a tired tread, returned to the stairs. Instincts from her not-so-upstanding past took over and she carefully checked her shoes for any sign of blood or mud that would tell any investigating cop that the incident in the front yard was more than just a domestic dispute gone way too far.
When she was satisfied that she was clean, she walked up the stairs and hesitatingly entered the house. She cautiously approaching the living room door and peeked inside. Xander was crawling to his feet, hand gently touching his jaw as if it hurt, and blinking around him as if he had no idea where he was.
"Xander?" Faith couldn't help the tentative tone.
Xander froze, a flurry of unasked questions raging across his face. Faith could see he was out-and-out terrified.
"It's okay. You're…you're okay." She cautiously approached him and suppressed the snarl of frustration when he unsteadily backed away, refusing to look at her. "We need to go. We have to get the books and go."
"Jacob?" he asked in a small voice.
"Dead. Well, not moving. Actually, not getting up any time soon. It's hard to…you'll see when we leave," Faith stuttered. "The spell is moot."
"Oh. Okay." He sounded disorientated, almost docile. Faith was pretty sure she could ask Xander to go play in traffic and he'd probably take it as an order.
"Put on your gloves and get the books."
He blinked quickly, shaking his head as if to clear it. "Ummm, okay. These them? On the floor?"
"Yeah."
Xander slipped them on. That normal action seemed to pull him more fully out of the fog. He wavered his way to the pile of books, almost as he hadn't slept for days. "Should I ask…"
Jesus. He sounded like one of the Talnin's zombies, assuming those zombies could actually talk. He was probably staying on his feet through sheer force of will. "Jules took care of it, although I think she was reacting on instinct."
"What happened?" he asked as he gathered the books in his arms.
"She saved herself and destroyed herself, just like you said she would."
"Like I…I don't…what…I mean…"
"You don't remember." Faith felt the stone cold certainty settle in her stomach. "Has this happened before?"
Xander got to his feet, the half-dozen books in arms, face settled into that unreadable mask, eyes on the floor as if he'd been stripped bare and was ashamed of what Faith saw.
"I'll take it as a yes." Faith watched him for a reaction and found none.
He waited passively for her to say something else.
"We'll talk later," Faith promised, hoping she sounded reassuring. Without knowing why, she added, "You don't have to be afraid of me."
She saw something in his expression relax, which made her feel very sorry for him. She didn't know what he expected, but clearly he wasn't expecting reassurance that she wouldn't hurt him.
"What are we gonna to do?" Jules's voice snapped both Xander and Faith out of their spell. Xander's mouth opened in shock when he saw that Jules was covered head-to-toe in blood.
"We are going to get that other book. The one you have hidden," Faith said. "Then we're leaving."
"You cain't! How'm I gonna 'splain this?"
"Not our problem," Faith said firmly. "You screwed up, you gotta fix it however you want. The only thing I care about is that your zombie farm is outta business. The book. Now."
"It's in the bedroom."
"Then you and I are going to get it."
"I'm covered in blood!"
"Once more: not our problem. Your problem." Faith marched over and grabbed the woman by the arm, grateful that she was wearing gloves. "Off we go. Xa--I mean, Drew?"
"You want me to wait outside?" he quietly asked.
"Yes. No. Actually, don't. You don't want to see what's out there. Wait here. Don't move. If you start…if you…ummm…shout or something."
"I will," Xander said in a relieved voice.
They were greeted by the sounds of moans and groans when they entered the room. Xander dropped the books on the bed and stared at them. He probably should shut off the television, but he was almost afraid to do it. Shutting off the television meant talking and talking right now could only be bad.
A blackout. Right in the middle of an already fucked-up attempt to stop the Talnins and put them out of business. If Faith wasn't there, he'd've been helpless and that meant he'd be dead or in police custody.
An image of blood-soaked Jules flashed through his mind and he shivered. His skin began to itch with a sense memory of what it felt like to have blood-soaked clothes sticking to his body. How and why the Sunnydale Police never even put him on the list of suspects remained an utter mystery. Thirteen. Sixteen if he threw in his short- lived Broadway tryout.
Christ, he needed a shower, preferably one that lasted a hundred years. He knew a hundred years wouldn't be enough. A thousand years wouldn't be enough.
Faith moved around behind him, almost as if she sensed he was incapable of doing anything more than to stare unseeing at the seven books dumped on the bed. The high-pitched panting of over-the-top acting coupled by satisfied male grunts accompanied her restless pacing.
He was afraid to turn around, instead locking his mind on the soundtrack. *Did I ever think this was at all a turn on? Anya insisted on having film fests of this shit at least every other week because she liked getting ideas. Sometimes we didn't even make it beyond the first ten minutes, so yeah, I guess…and then I did my share of self-abuse while watching the Skinnemax special selection after I left Anya at…*
He needed to shut this crap off right now.
He turned around just in time to see the money shot of some woman looking up adoringly while the bastard covered her face with whatever shot out of his dick. *God, now there is depressing image,* Xander cringed while virtual woman moaned in ecstasy. *If I pulled that on Anya, she'd've cut my dick off, fried it up, and then served it me for breakfast.*
The picture tube went blank with a snap.
"Since you're not enjoying it, we might as well save on the electricity," Faith commented.
"You're going to force me back to Oxnard or force me to go to Cleveland, aren't you?" Xander could feel the weight of his words settle in his chest.
"Should I?"
Xander slowly sat down, feeling for the edge of the bed since he didn't quite trust his perception. "I would. In your position, yeah, I would."
"Why? Do you know something I don't?" Her eyes had taken on the considering gaze of a Slayer as she asked the question.
"Because I'm a danger to myself and others," he dutifully replied. "I need to be watched in case…in case…" He dropped his eye to the floor, noticing the path of wear in the carpet's nap. "Maybe I deserve a dose of Slayer justice."
"I didn't see you do anything wrong tonight. I don't know what the hell I saw, but evil? I think we need to look to Ms. Cornbelt 2003 for that picture."
"But what if I am? Evil I mean," Xander asked. "What if Sunnydale wasn't the end of it? What if more people die because I get it in my head they deserve it?"
"Is that you or Buffy talking?"
"Did you see her? Did you?" Xander looked up. "That was me, not even a few months ago. And I did it over and over again."
"That was me, too. Four years ago. Wanna compare notes?"
"How do you…how can you…"
"Live with it? You do it because you have to."
The almost compassionate tone took Xander by complete surprise. With an even greater jolt, he realized that Faith wasn't watching him through Slayer eyes, at least not any more. She sighed and slowly picked her way to the bed. When she settled next to him, Xander fought the urge to scoot away.
As if sensing his discomfort, she held up her hands to indicate she wouldn't touch before dropping them in her lap. "Lemme ask you something. Do you want to go back to Buffy?"
"I think maybe I should."
"Didn't ask you whether you thought you should. I asked if you wanted to. Two different questions."
"No," Xander admitted.
"Okay. Fine. Can you give me a single reason why you should?"
"Well…"
"I didn't finish," Faith interrupted. "They don't know about the eye. Did they know about the nightmares?"
"No."
"Did they know about…about…what the hell did I see tonight?"
"I don't know." Xander spit out the question, the one he was afraid to ask. "What did happen? What did I do?"
"You talked."
"That's it?"
"That's it. It was the freakiest shit I've ever seen in my life, I gotta admit. Made every hair stand up on end because, well, it sounded like you but it didn't sound like you."
"What did I say?"
Faith looked like she was gathering her thoughts. "I don't remember word-for-word. What's the last thing you remember?"
Xander crinkled his brow in thought. "Standing on the porch watching you and Jules walk up the stairs."
"What next?"
"Crawling to my feet in a strange room."
"Nothing in between?"
"I call them blackouts." Xander looked away again. "Have you ever gotten so drunk that you can't remember a damn thing? It's like that, only worse. Instead of my mind just fuzzing out, I get hit with this cold, I don't know what to call it, a cold wave and everything just goes immediately black."
"How do you know to compare this to what a drunk goes through? I've never seen you drink anything stronger than coffee." Faith's voice had taken on a hard edge.
"After I left Anya at the altar, I pretty much crawled into the closest bottle and didn't get out again until after I saw Anya and Spike having sex in…in…well…there were these hidden video cameras, see? And…"
"Spike and Anya? No shit." Faith shook her head. "Forget it. Forget I asked. Christ, what is with Sunnydale women and undead dick? I don't get it."
"I thought you an Angel were friends," Xander said with wry amusement.
"Friends? Hell, yeah. But I like my bodies above room temperature." She smiled a wicked smile, "Although I gotta admit that I'm now all curious about it. I'm almost tempted to go cruising the cemeteries for my next date."
"Oh, like you didn't try to seduce Angel when…" Xander immediately snapped his mouth shut and cringed for almost speaking the unspeakable in a cheap hotel room.
"It was different then. Maybe, hell, I don't know, I was different then." Faith fixated on the blank television screen. "Plus, I had me a mission to de-Soul lover boy. The fact that I'd get to nail Buffy's one true love? Bonus."
"That was then. Forget it."
"I don't forget it," Faith countered. "But you're right. We need to deal with your problems now. When did this start? I don't remember this shit happening in Sunnydale"
"Started in Oxnard and it happened at least once a day. I'd be sitting in my room and then I'd get blindsided, go down, and then would just come to. I mean, they were really violent, more than they are now if you can believe it. I'd be out for an hour, maybe two. The last time in Oxnard I was out for four hours."
Faith let out a low whistle. "Since Oxnard?"
"Well, there was that one time when we met Lilah where I was babbling about some guy named Connor," Xander ticked off. "I don't remember any of the ride in the tow truck from our car to here, then I blacked out just before we first walked into the hotel room…"
"I know what happened there," Faith volunteered. "You told me we needed to leave right away and that we should hitchhike to Boston."
Xander felt the words like a shot to his solar plexus.
"Any more?" Faith prompted.
He nervously cleared his throat. "There was a…when we took a walk that first day. You know, when you asked my why I was staring at the corn? I don't…well, I think I was only down for the count for a minute that time. Then I got slapped down when you went out for a drink, that was almost as violent as Oxnard, but I was only down for a little over an hour. Then tonight."
Faith thoughtfully stared at him. "Did you know you get these scars on your face sometimes?"
"Scars?"
Faith formed her left hand into a claw and made a slashing motion across the right side of his cheek, causing him to flinch. "Three scratches," she explained. "Right along your cheekbone."
"Where Willow…" he snapped his mouth shut.
"First time I saw it was in Sunnydale with those nightmares. Then I saw it again when you had the nightmare the other night." Faith looked at him. "Know what it means?"
Xander swallowed hard, fighting the memory of a dream knife slicing through familiar flesh. "No clue."
"Could be a sign or something. Maybe you should really think about what you were dreaming so we can figure it out. Maybe it's part of…"
"Stop. Just, don't say what I know you're going to say."
"Why?"
"It's just too much, I don't know if…" Xander took a deep breath and tried to pull himself together. "Tonight. What happened tonight? What did I say?"
"First, you nailed our perp about hiding one book, something that she hid from everyone. You mentioned something about her trading a relative, a younger one, I think probably her daughter to save her own ass. I don't know for what or to what, but I get that it wasn't good because she got really scared."
"Yikes, that blunt?" He felt odd, talking about himself like he wasn't even there and some stranger had been standing in that room with Faith and Jules in his place. Then again he really was a stranger to himself these days.
"Used a lot of fancy language, the kind of crap you'd say to hide your meaning from people not in the know. Know what I mean?"
"Sort of, kind of like saying 'ixnay' or dropping coded hints, right?"
"Right, except Jules was reading you loud and clear on that one."
"Anything else?"
"You said something about her standing at a crossroads and that she made a deal. Then there was the blood part." Faith focused, as if she wanted to gage his reaction. "Something about her making a 'blood oath' but not, I don't know, providing the blood?"
Xander felt a tingle of fear and brutally fought it down. "Go on." His voice sounded strangled to his own ears.
"This is where it gets really freaky, you said that she'd have to cough up the blood sooner or later and it would seal her fate. Then you said she had a choice to either destroy herself to save herself or save herself to destroy herself."
Xander wanted to scream and throw things, and he was pretty sure begging and crying to make this just stop probably wouldn't be out of the question. Had he been alone, he would've done just that. But he had someone else sitting in the room and he'd learned at a very early age that you never, ever let anyone see you fall apart. Not for any reason.
"I think you handed her a prediction," Faith said. "I think you fucking knew she'd kill her husband."
"Or maybe it was a damn good guess, given the way she was going," Xander stubbornly countered. "Faith? This woman was up to her neck in raising zombies and despite everything she and her honey were willing to do it again simply because she'd rather save money. Anya may have loved money, but she sure as shit wouldn't enslave the undead to save a buck."
"Okay. Fine. Maybe it was a good guess." Faith's tone indicated she didn't buy it, but she was willing to let Xander keep his shadow of a doubt. "But there's no fucking way you could've known about the book or what she planned to do with it."
"No." He felt like he was dying all over again, just like when Giles insisted he wasn't human anymore, just like when he found out Anya was dead. *I feel like I've died so many times in the past six months that I think I should be a zombie myself,* Xander thought. *Wonder who'll kill me when I start eating the living. Will it be a Slayer I know? Or will it be one of the new ones I've never met?*
"There was one other thing," Faith intruded on his thoughts.
"More?"
"You mentioned something about a shadow. You pointed at her and asked if I could see a shadow."
"From the light? A shadow cast on the wall, right?" He couldn't explain the sudden trickle of helpless terror than zinged through his system.
Faith nervously licked her lips and Xander noticed that she'd gone pale. "No. One that connects her to…Xander? When I was in L.A., I had this dream, an honest-to-god Slayer dream about a shadow devouring new Slayers and turning them into blood."
"Shadow," Xander repeated. He couldn't move. He couldn't breathe. He really needed to get out and get some fresh air. He wanted to get away from Faith just so he wouldn't hear what she was going to say next.
"Xander? I think you were talking about that shadow. Something evil, but…" There was something desperate in her eyes, as if hoping Xander would give her the key to unlock this particular mystery. "Do you know? Do you know anything? Any dreams you remember?"
"The shadows chased me in Oxnard." The words were out before he could stop himself.
The news seemed to strike Faith like a blow and she hopped off the bed, restlessly pacing around the room.
"It was like they were moving, but, I just thought…I think I was…I think I'm going crazy. Or was. Going crazy I mean. I haven't seen anything like that since I left." He was desperate to calm Faith down since she seemed on the verge of pitching her own epic why-me-god party.
She finally stopped. "Xander? In this dream, I saw you in Oxnard and, the shadows, they…Xander? They blinded you. I watched…it was like Caleb, only they got both your eyes." She faced him then, arms crossed. "I think you did the right thing by taking off. I think things would've been worse if you stuck around."
"Worse? How the hell can this get much worse?" Xander asked in a voice barely above a whisper.
"It can. It always fucking can."
"Faith? You're not saying something."
"Nah. Life's just taught me that the worst is always just around the corner, that's all. Nothing to worry about." The cocky tone was back, the easy assurance slipping on like a well-worn coat, although Xander could almost feel it was an act put on as much for his benefit as for hers. "Besides, I have no clue about what the dream meant. Just a bunch of random images without much of a frigging plot. It was like one of those bullshit art films that always get the Oscar but make shit-all in cash."
"Faith…"
"I said forget it." Her voice signaled that the discussion was now closed. "We drag you back kicking and screaming to the land of the living first and then deal with the shit cards we've been dealt. If I get the 411 clearing up the garbled message from the land of Slayer dreams you'll be the first to know."
"Is that a promise?"
"For as long as you stick with me? Yeah. You got yourself a deal."
"So, no making me go back to Buffy?" God, he hated the fact that he was relieved about it.
"I won't make you do shit," Faith promised. "Whatever you decide, you decide. You're a free man, far as I'm concerned."
Xander decided not to correct her on the issue of him being a man. What counted was the sentiment and that was enough.
It was decided: the Subaru. Even though Faith couldn't drive a standard--hell, she could only just about fake it with an automatic thanks to her experience joyriding in boosted cars before her Slayer days--something appealed to her about having that little bit of extra control while driving. It was balm to her inner control freak.
Big plus, Xander was insisting that he'd teach her how to drive it on the way to Boston. The learning process probably would slow them down even more, not that Xander minded in the least, she suspected. The delays were worth it if teaching her how to drive stick pulled him back from the brink just a little bit more by the time they hit the East Coast.
Unfortunately, Faith had to deal with all the paperwork for buying and registering the car, which included questionable proof that they were proud residents of the formerly zombie-infested town. When Xander asked whether putting the car in her name was a wise move, Faith merely told him that Fred had made progress on her warrant and that, unless she came nose-to-nose with a cop under bad circumstances, she'd be safe. He didn't push the issue after that.
The only real worry was leaving the Buick behind. If it had been reported stolen, the mechanic was going to find out fairly quickly. While Faith was running around with the paperwork, Xander managed to subtly feel out the mechanic. Turned out that the mechanic was being honest their first night: the car wasn't worth fixing. He planned to use it for parts and, since he had no plans to put the vehicle back on the road, the mechanic merely said he'd deal with the title transfer whenever he got around to it.
It wasn't exactly legal, but then again, providing a fake address so your brother's customers could register a car wasn't exactly legal either.
Maybe it was part of the greed is good mindset, or maybe it was genuine compassion for two down-on-their luck travelers. The end result was the same. Although Faith sort of hoped that compassion was the primary reason.
The car issues ate up another day, but that was all right. They both needed the sleep an extra day afforded and, she noticed, Xander actually did sleep the night through with no interruptions. Or rather, if he had nightmares, he didn't wake her up, so she chose to believe that he'd finally got some real sleep.
The breakfast club's gossip revealed nothing during their quick morning meal before hitting the road. The talk had moved on to other small-town concerns, such as who was sleeping with whom, speculation on when the bar would re-open, and discussion about a 16-year-old girl with the improbable name of Charlie who'd gone missing a few days ago.
Faith noticed that Xander openly listened to the last gossip item, and that a play of quick expressions flickered across his face, as if he wasn't sure how he should react. When he turned back to his coffee and saw Faith's intent look, he merely shrugged and mouthed "zombies" with an expression indicating that it was a question. Faith gritted her teeth, shrugged back, and looked down at her nearly empty plate to hide her anger.
The only item of interest that came up was that Jules had claimed that Jacob had up and left her for Chicago, taking all his uncle's money with him. The group happily clucked their tongues at that bit of unfortunate news while Xander and Faith bent over their mugs and feigned non-interest.
Xander left the diner to wait by the car, leaving Faith to pay the bill. April gave her a wink as she accepted the money, "Hear you an' yer man were busy."
Faith's heart skipped a beat as Xander's in-passing remarks about witch hunts and blaming strangers replayed in her head. "I don't…"
April gave a significant look at the man who'd advised Xander to ditch the Trojans before adding, "Donna was complainin' that she'll be glad to see the back of you, what with all the racket you made."
"Did she?"
"She was sayin' that the first night sounded like you two was wraslin', then there was all the fighting followed by the moanin' the second night, but she really had words 'bout the third."
"Really," Faith deadpanned. "And you're tellin' me…"
April winked at her. "Who says I'm tellin' you?" She jerked her head in the direction of Bitter Man and Business Man, who pretended they weren't listening.
*Fucking small towns. Well, at least the Gossip Queen is on our side,* Faith mentally shrugged. She merely gave the waitress a smile and handed her a 20 percent tip before leaving the diner without a word.
She stepped onto the sidewalk and saw Xander leaning against the car, face upturned toward the sun. "Missing California already?" she asked.
"This hot? Not yet," Xander said without moving or slitting open his eye. "Ask me again in September."
"September's not so bad. Now February, that's the real bitch," Faith replied as she leaned next to him against the car.
"Maybe I'll be in Miami by then."
"Miami? Oh, you'd fit right in with the drug smugglers, alligators, poisonous snakes, and Mickey Mouse."
"Big building boom still going on there despite the economy. I could probably get a job, go back to drywalling or carpentry."
"What? And give up on all this?" She waved her hand in the air. "Tell me you don't feel better now that there are a few less zombies in the world."
His head snapped down and he fixed Faith with a look that bordered on being a glare. "The whole point of walking away from Buffy was to get away from shit like this."
"Oh?" Faith archly asked. "Which is why you were all over the problem the second it reared its ugly head. Even without all the other shit you have to deal with, you got yourself a hero complex and that doesn't go away just because you announce your retirement."
"Watch me."
Faith punched him lightly on the arm. "Wanna bet? Betchya I'd win."
Her answer earned her a half-smile. "Says the woman who hid in the hotel room the entire time we were here and pretended that everything was just hunky-dory."
"Whoa. I got bit. This was personal."
Xander snorted. "Like that would've made a difference if you found out about the zombies another way. Don't bother disagreeing. See? Two can play at this game."
"At least you're playing," Faith commented.
"What's that supposed to…"
"Are we gonna hit the road or not?" Faith interrupted. "I want to hit at least one cheesy tourist trap today and we still have to return the player and DVDs."
Xander tossed the keys one-handed in the air and caught them. "I'm up for a game of anywhere but here, the *Road Rules* edition."
Willow's head was still ringing when she walked into her hotel room. Kennedy had been forced to do all the packing, what little there was, since Buffy literally had Willow throwing dust on an atlas. There was no joy in Buffyville today. A locator to find one Xander-shaped demon somewhere on this planet was damned near impossible under the best of circumstances, but trying to make a fake spell look convincing was a feat of magic worthy of Merlin himself.
Luckily, Giles was just about the only one in the group who knew enough about magic to call Willow's bluff. The fact that he hadn't meant he was probably too distracted with finding a way to track down the new Slayers or caught up in planning the move to Cleveland. In either case, Giles was seemed to be steering clear of the whole mess. Even so, Willow figured she needed to at least get big bloody nose tomorrow in case someone was paying attention, just to be on the safe side.
She was relieved that no one had yet suggested that using more mundane means for finding and tracking Xander would be easier and probably prove more fruitful. Although Willow wasn't sure she could do it, hacking into his bank and credit card accounts seemed, to her anyway, the easiest way to get a quick bead on where he was spending money.
Not that she was going to be the one to bring up that fact. Let someone else think of it. Should the idea pop into anyone's head, she was pretty sure she could just as convincingly fake doing something computer-y. There really wasn't anyone in their group who knew enough about computers to naysay her if she said she tried her best and still came up empty. Not that she was all that confident in her computer abilities these days. Hacking was a game that belonged only to the focused, and she'd been focused on other things these past few years.
Still, she was worried and wished she could find him if only to know that he was okay. It killed her that the group's stance on Xander's decision to leave made it impossible for her to do more than wish.
Well, there was at least one thing she could do.
Willow sat at the computer, cracked her knuckles like a concert pianist, and began typing Xander's username and password into his Yahoo account. She grimaced when she landed an invalid password message.
That answered one question. Xander was probably checking his email. It also meant that he was covering his tracks by making sure that snooping redheads wouldn't be able to easily find out when he had access to a computer. Willow wasn't sure if that was a good or bad thing.
The witch sat and thought. If Xander were going to pick a new password, what would it be? She figured her encyclopedic knowledge of all things Xander would help her hit on the right word and she began methodically typing a series of passwords that she thought sure would get her in.
Nothing doing. She had tried everything from Sunnydale landmarks to science fiction terms. It seemed to her that she should have hit on something, given everything she knew about him. Which meant that Xander had probably picked a password that would be impossible for her to figure out if she tried typing random words and numbers into the field.
She drummed her fingers on the hotel desktop, furious that she had let her once-sparkling hacker skills deteriorate. Once upon a time, she would've hit the Yahoo server, bypassed the security, and retrieved what she needed. The problem was that she had so come to rely on magic in prior years that her computer skills had been reduced to using search engines. It didn't help that technology had raced by her while she continued relying on the easy route.
*You could always use magic. That would get you in and get you what you need,* DarkWillow snickered in the back of her mind.
*Go away,* Willow mentally answered. Still, can't deny the facts. If she really wanted to, she could do just that.
Except she wasn't sure she really wanted to, especially since he'd made it clear by changing his password that he wanted to be left alone. If she did what her darker instincts demanded, she'd be no different than the obsessed Buffy down the hall or the people who believed that Xander should be locked up on the off chance that he'd go evil. She'd done enough damage to him; she just couldn't bear to bang one more nail in the coffin that held their dead friendship. For once, she needed to trust Xander's instincts about what was right, instead of trying to impose her own ideas.
And she wanted him to know that at least one person in this world cared enough about him to let him go and wish him luck.
With a tiny nod, she opened her own email account to compose a message:
From: taraswtcywillow @ hotmail. com
To: xanscbyandcptr @ yahoo. com
Xander,
Wherever you are, I hope you're okay. I'm sending this on the off chance you're checking email.
This message has to be short, because I don't know who'll walk in and I'm not the only one with access to the computer, so whatever you do, DON'T RESPOND!
Right now everyone here is hunting for you. Lay low. Be careful. Whatever you do, don't draw attention to yourself. And dump the car. Buffy's reported it stolen.
I'm doing everything at my end to stall so at least you have a head start. In a few days, I'm going to 'discover' that you're somewhere in Europe, so whatever you do, don't go there.
I wish I could do more to help, especially since I still owe you one yellow crayon.
Love always,
Wills