Hello at last.
The past two months or so have been a bit... not conducive to working for me, for reasons including, but not limited to, finals, a sprained hand, and an alarming bout of unconsciousness. However, all is well with me again, and I have returned.
I want you guys to have this, and I don't want to keep you waiting any longer. Because of this, the following chapter has not been reviewed by anyone other than me. My betas are hard workers, on many things, and their generosity and skill is not currently available to me. I'm not sure about this chapter, exactly, but it's better than the nothing you've heard from me lately. I look forward to getting feedback on it.
I hope you enjoy it. There will be more to follow.
Kay
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Time Heals All: a Willow/Tara fic with a terrible title
Author: Big_Pineapple
Feedback: Yes, including title suggestions, line edits, and general comments
Spoilers: vague reference to all seasons
Setting: Pre-season six and onward, AU.
Rating: PG-13
Part XXVIII: Entropy
Willow burrowed into Tara’s side and shivered in the cold. The comforter was heaped on the floor, clinging to the bed with one last corner, but to reach for it would take her so far from Tara that the darn thing might as well have been out in the yard. She nuzzled her head against Tara’s chest, and she felt Tara sigh.
“Comfy?” The question rumbled in Willow’s ear.
“Yeah. Little chilly, but I got a hot woman here, so that makes it better.”
Tara stroked Willow’s hair and chuckled. “Bet I could warm you up.”
“I bet you could,” Willow said, wrapping her arm around Tara’s waist and pulling her closer, “but I think snuggles are good for now. I missed good snuggles.”
Tara watched her settle her limbs one by one and doze off, marveling at how quickly Willow could fall asleep. Sunlight came more strongly through the curtains as Willow twitched and muttered, and Tara ran her hands along Willow’s hair, sometimes lifting locks of it and watching it glitter. When Willow woke again, she ran her hands up Tara’s side, then squinted at the windows.
“When did morning happen?”
“After the moon went down.”
Willow sat up on her elbow and kissed Tara, then put her head down on Tara’s stomach. She ran her hand down the sheets that covered Tara’s leg and murmured, “I’d forgotten how good this could feel. Us, together. Without the magic.”
“There was plenty of magic.”
Willow gave a breathy laugh and rolled over to look at Tara. She reached up one hand and pressed it to Tara’s cheek.
“All I need,” she said.
For a moment, they lingered like this. Tara took Willow’s hand in hers and kissed up Willow’s wrist, then folded the arm back down and settled it against her chest. Willow craned her neck back and read the clock by the bed upside down.
“It’s getting late.”
Tara studied her, crinkling her brow. “Do you want to get up?”
“No!” Willow wailed, rolling over and clinging to Tara’s knees. “Oh god, no. I’m just not used to the sleeping in thing.”
“We didn’t do that much sleeping.”
Willow grinned. “That’s true.” She wriggled herself over and upright and pulled Tara into a kiss, and it was deepening when the front door shut. Tara jerked away and sat straight, trying to pick out familiar footsteps on the stairs, but there was no other sound.
“Is something wrong?” Willow asked. Tara’s alertness made her nervous.
“Faith.”
The first time Tara said it, it was barely a whisper, but then she rolled out of the bed, dragging the sheet with her and clutching it to her chest, shouting, “Faith!”
She opened the door between her room and the Slayer’s, and finding it empty, she walked through it and out the hallway door, dragging the bed sheet like a train. She called Faith’s name down the stairs. Dawn appeared at the foot, a glass of orange juice and the full color Sunday funny pages in her hands. Tara gathered the bed sheet more tightly around her.
“Did you open the door?”
Dawn nodded. “Just to get the paper.”
They stood on the stairs a while, not sure what to do, until Dawn came halfway up and touched Tara’s arm.
“She’ll come back. She always does.”
Tara nodded. Dawn held out the paper.
“You wanna read Garfield? That always makes me feel better.”
Before Tara could answer, Willow slipped around the corner wrapped in Tara’s bathrobe, calling, “Is it her, is it her? Oh. Uh, hey there, Dawnie.”
Dawn’s eyes went wide. “You, and…”
Tara started backing away, shuffling Willow behind her and saying, “Um, that’s my cue to go put some clothes on.”
“No! No no no! I’m totally not here! You guys, you do whatever you want. I’ll take the paper and go watch TV! Downstairs, really loud! In the basement, where I can’t hear… anything!”
Willow wrapped her arms around Tara’s waist and giggled while Dawn jumped up and down, squealing, and scampered down the stairs. She swung herself around the banister and disappeared, then popped her head up and squeaked, “Oh my god, I love you guys!” before stomping down the basement stairs.
When the police were finished with the body, Renee had it cremated, against her parents’ wishes, and scattered a fistful of them in the ocean. Half of what remained, she gave to her mother, and the last of it she kept in the cardboard box it came in, waiting for the day she could ride a magnetic train.
Mrs. Silber’s half was buried in a Sunnydale cemetery. The flowers already at the gravesite were frost-withered when Jonathan came with more. He settled them in their crystal vase next to the headstone, and he placed a diamond, devoid of his fingerprints, on top to mark his visit. Warren would fillet him for spending the last of their cash, but there’d be another heist soon enough. And then maybe, he could grab some green and get gone. To hell with Warren and Andrew, and crime, and Sunnydale. To hell with himself, too, but somewhere far from here.
The graveyard was spacious and open, with palm trees scattered so far apart they were like mirages in a desert of marble and sod. Exposure made Jonathan nervous, and he listened for the sound of people approaching behind him up the gravel path. But the one who hunted him made no sound.
“There was this spell once, and it made me say stuff that was cool,” Jonathan said to the headstone, so freshly cut it looked raw. “But that broke a long time ago, and I don’t really have anything to say. I guess I should just say I’m sorry, and after I get some money I’ve quitting my life of crime. I’m through with Warren.”
“So am I.”
Jonathan whirled around and stumbled back, overturning his vase of flowers. Amy smirked at him from where she stood, lounging against an obelisk.
“Hello Jonathan,” she crooned.
The terror she struck in him was so great that for a horrible while, Jonathan couldn’t pin what it was about her that was most terrible and strange. But as she continued to taunt him, praising his taste in flowers and jewels, he realized that her lips never moved.
“How are you doing that?” he asked out loud.
Amy’s smile widened. “I’ve been gathering magicks, looking for the perfect weapons. My trouble is, there isn’t really a spell for spying. Only seers can predict the future. I could read Warren’s thoughts, but then he could hear me, too. I can’t have that. So I need you.”
“For what?”
“To tell me what he’s doing next.”
“It’s too bad you have class tomorrow,” Tara said while Willow fiddled with the key to her dorm room. “Do you get any days off?”
Willow shook her head and opened the door. “Nope. All class all the time. I kinda feel better when I’m occupied.”
Tara shut the door behind her and smiled. “I can keep you occupied.”
She pulled Willow to her and pinned her against to door, kissing her lips until Willow pulled back, then moving down her neck.
“Tara? Homework, sleep, class. Gotta happen.”
“It can happen in a few minutes,” Tara mumbled around Willow’s collarbone.
Willow laughed. “Like that quick shower we took at your house?”
Tara gave way when Willow pushed against her shoulders, and she leaned against the door and watched her lover putter around the room, gathering notebooks, textbooks, and a fistful of pens.
“Room’s pretty Spartan.”
Willow grinned at her from her desk. “Why Spartan?”
Tara shrugged. “That’s just what Faith always said, about rooms like this? Spartan.”
“Are you okay?”
“Not really,” Tara whispered, but when Willow got up from her desk and reached out, Tara turned her face away, tilting it back to keep her tears from falling. She cocked her head when she noticed the smoke alarm light on Willow’s ceiling wasn’t blinking.
“Is your smoke alarm working?”
Willow didn’t look up. She held Tara’s hand and answered, “Maybe the battery’s low.”
“Has it been beeping?”
Willow shook her head and said she could call maintenance about it, but Tara insisted on checking it herself. She’d done the ones at home just last week, she told her, so it was no problem. Willow held her desk chair steady, and Tara climbed up and pulled the cover off the smoke alarm.
It didn’t look anything like the detectors at home, and Tara wasn’t sure what she was seeing until the tiny lens lurched into focus.
“It’s a camera!”
Willow processed this just in time to stop Tara from smashing the thing with the heel of her hand.
“Wait! We might be able to trace where the signal’s going to. Can I see it?”
Tara stepped down from the chair and helped Willow up.
“We know who it’s going to,” she growled.
Warren was pacing and swearing across the rich carpet of the Grand Hotel in Sunnydale, while Andrew watched Willow’s fingers flash across the feed in her dorm room, and Jonathan carefully picked through papers on the worktable, claiming to look for override codes for the cameras.
“They’ll trace the signal back here within a day or two. We only have that long to get out of here.”
“But I like it here!” Andrew whined. “There aren’t any other nice places in Sunnydale.”
Jonathan agreed. “And besides, we have a huge room service bill. We can’t leave without paying that, and we’re fresh out of money.”
“Room service?” Warren spat, “Room service? We’re in the middle of a crisis and you little orcs are grunting about room service? We don’t have to pay the damn bills! We’re supervillains!”
“Maybe,” Jonathan snapped back, “but we don’t have a criminal record yet. We bail this place now, the hotel gives the police a description of us, and we’re wanted for fraud. If they figure out who we are, they’ll connect you with Katrina, and then we’re wanted for murder.” “It doesn’t matter what we’re wanted for. We have a plan!”
Andrew squirmed and raised his hand. “Uh, what if the plan doesn’t work?” he asked. “I mean, what if we get caught before the plan works?”
“We’re out of places to run to, Warren,” Jonathan insisted. “We can defend this place from the Noobies, if they find us. We just have to think.”
The Grand Hotel had four floors of rooms, with the main block and two wings holding twenty rooms each per floor. Yves, the concierge who worked on Wednesdays, assured Willow and Tara that no one by any of the names given was renting or had recently rented a room in his hotel, then tried to book Xander and Dawn in the fourth floor bridal suite.
“So, no go at the Grand Ho? Guess we should run that signal again, huh Willster?” Xander boomed, dragging his friends away from the desk while Yves hunted for a discount coupon. Willow elbowed him and told him to keep his voice down.
“The signal was definitely coming from here. They’re probably registered under fake names.”
Tara looked skeptical. “I don’t think this place would take cash. How are they paying?”
“Someone else’s credit card, I bet. They’re pretty easy to swipe… According to the ads on tv,” Dawn added when she got suspicious looks. “But that’s not the point. What do we do now, search all the rooms?”
Willow nodded. “Divide and conquer, we could each do a floor and check in.”
“A floor each, sure,” Xander said. “How will we open the doors?”
“Well, there’s this little spell that can turn any key into a master key. It leaves a weird residue, but it works like a charm. All we need is a card key.”
Xander started to declare, too loudly, that he was not renting a room, but Willow cut him off, saying that any card with a magnetic strip would do.
“Problem with this plan is, what happens if we find the nerd herd? I don’t think any of us should be alone.”
Tara nodded. “Pairs, then. We can…”
“So, Will and me! Great plan, let’s do it.” Xander grabbed Willow’s elbow and hurried away, avoiding Dawn’s eye and announcing that he and Willow would check the first two floors and meet Tara and Dawn on the third floor.
The first room Dawn opened was empty. Its sheets were crisp and white, and the gold tassels on the throw pillows glimmered in the light from the floor to ceiling windows on the outward facing wall. From the balcony outside the windows, you could see the swimming pool, and the smell of chlorine and the splashing and shrieking of kids playing shark drifted up. Dawn nodded to the couple next door, who were smoking together and talking about how they couldn’t imagine swimming in March. Three doors down, there was a Better Homes and Gardens magazine on the balcony, and on the first balcony on the west wing a shi tzu was barking. No need to check those rooms, she noted. On her way out, she pocketed the tiny wrapped soaps and a washcloth with GH embroidered on it. In the hallway, Tara was peering in her third door. On her first try, a man watching football had shouted at her, and now, her fourth door had a Do Not Disturb tag on it.
“Sh-should we leave them alone?” Tara asked when she heard Dawn close a door on the other side of the hallway.
Dawn zipped her magical card key into the door before Tara had time to protest. “If I were an evil genius,” she said, “I wouldn’t want to be disturbed.”
The couple inside were too busy to notice Tara and Dawn staring, then slamming the door.
“And speaking of disturbed…” Dawn said. Tara laughed and watched Dawn for a moment, scanning herself into another empty room, before continuing to work down her side of the hallway.
“Some guy fell asleep with his face in the pillow and his dog on his butt,” Dawn announced, and Tara grinned. . Ear pressed to the sixth door, room thirty-one, Tara didn’t hear anything suggestive, but there was a Do Not Disturb tag on the knob, so she stood to the side as she opened the door, just in case.
Seven knives flew past her and across the hallway, burying themselves in the suite door that Dawn had been unlocking. Dawn shrieked. There was blood running over the hand she had clamped to her shoulder.
Yves brought a first aid kit to them in the lobby and accepted the story of a magician’s knife trick gone wrong, albeit with a stern glower and a few snorts at the stranger details.
“Herbert Flutie isn’t much of a stage name,” he said, “especially for a magician. Tell your friend there will be no more magic in my hotel, if he pleases.”
Tara added a layer of gauze to the cut on Dawn’s shoulder and taped it down. “Can’t promise that,” she muttered.
“I wonder if he’ll let us back in once we get back from the hospital?” Willow asked.
Dawn shrugged. “Not worth the risk. We should get what we can from this place now, go to the hospital when we’re done.”
“We’re going to the hospital now,” Tara growled.
“And what happens if we can’t get back in? Or if we split up, and whoever stays here is outnumbered?”
Xander agreed with Dawn. “They’re aiming to kill now, ladies. Best if we stay together and get this done.”
“You said the booby trapped door had a Do Not Disturb sign on it. That means they only want to hurt snoopers, not the maids,” Willow said. “So any other door that’s booby trapped will have a sign, too. That narrows it down.”
“Safe bet they’re all on the same floor. I mean, it’d get a little weird, three guys getting rooms on all different floors and coming in and out all the time,” Xander said.
Tara gathered up the gauze wrappers and bloody napkins they’d scattered on the couch, trying to balance her worry that Social Services would somehow discover that Dawn hadn’t had the stitches she needed right away with the need to focus on the puzzle at hand.
“From the knife door to the end of the hallway was clean,” Tara said. “On Dawn’s side there were three in a row: the suite and the one next to it.”
“Boy, I’m glad I didn’t open the suite door. Who knows what would’ve happened.”
Willow tapped her fingers on her knee in a nervous echo of typing. Tara took her hand and kissed it.
“The problem with this is, how do we get into the suite now? I mean, we can’t exactly waltz in, even if there are no knives,” Willow said. “They’re probably smart enough to set different traps, just in case one kind doesn’t work.”
Yves returned and snatched up the first aid kit. He studied the pile of garbage in Tara’s fist, debating whether or not he should offer to take it from her, then looked down his nose instead and asked, “Is there something else you need?”
Behind him, a short man who was sweating in a wool suit came into the hotel, pushing more suits and a large suitcase on a trolley and hangar rack half a foot taller than himself. Tara pointed and asked, “C-can we get one of those?”
Willow and Xander hung their coats on the trolley rack, and from the shelter behind the door, they nudged it into room thirty-one. No more knives flew out; the trolley rack clanged against the spring mechanism that hung from the ceiling, and when Tara watched through the crack between the hinges and the doorframe, pushing the rack deeper and deeper into the room with magic, nothing else happened.
Inside, the hotel room was ordinary. There was a suitcase on the suitcase stand, a small suit hung in the closet, and a receipt from a florist crumpled up in the trashcan. Under a pile of small men’s clothes, Willow found Jonathan’s senior yearbook, signed “Have a nice summer” by all but a few.
“Doesn’t seem like a place worth protecting with knives,” Xander said.
“We should keep looking, see if we’re missing anything,” Tara said. “Dawn, can you do that while we check the rooms across the hall?”
When the trolley rack rolled into the suite across the hall, half-moon blades, weighted so the edge stayed down and didn’t scrape the walls or ceiling of the room, swung down, through aisles made in the mounds of books, computers, and magical artifacts. Each blade clanged against the trolley when it swung down, denting the metal and shuddering to a halt, so that the array of blades hung still in the middle of the room. Xander laughed and shouted, “Foiled again!” then plunged into the room. A blade hung perpendicular to the rest released and swung toward him. Xander fell backwards onto the floor, and the blade skimmed the tip of his nose. A hook at the end of the blade reached out into the hallway, and Willow and Tara had to duck to avoid it. Xander rolled out of the way when the blade swung back into the room and crouched in a corner until it finished swinging and was still. He blotted the cut on his nose with the sleeve of Willow’s coat, which had been shaved off and lay on the floor.
“Okay, that was mean,” he said. Willow studied the miniscule cut while Tara picked through the junk piled up in the room. A stack of cd’s toppled and scattered across the floor.
“We should probably pack these up,” she said, “See what’s on them?”
Willow nodded. “Wouldn’t be a bad idea to take away some of these toys, too, like… Ooh, is that a conjuring harp?”
Tara watched Willow run a hand down the golden spine of the standing harp and took a nervous breath. Willow grasped a string between her fingers. Xander stood up from the floor and started dumping discs into a box, and Willow turned to help him.
“Might wanna take that out of here and drop it at the Magic Box,” Willow told Tara, who nodded and tried to shake the anxiety of watching Willow marvel over such a potent instrument. It could be used for perfectly good and reasonable works: conjuring animals to guide lost travelers, making stairways out of rock, and bringing plants to fruit and flower. But it could also be dangerous. So lost in thought was she that she nearly missed Willow’s fascinated stare as she lifted the heavy instrument and settled it on the trolley unassisted.
“I bet that’s how they made those three demons come after me this summer,” Willow said, sidling over to her. “Did I tell you about that? Totally freaky, they collapsed into puddles of goo when they died. I got one of them with a table saw.” Willow grinned at the memory of her victory, then ran her fingers over an engraving on the spine of the harp.
“These things are neat,” she said, “but they’re fickle. We’re lucky they didn’t conjure up anything else with this.”
Expectant, she watched Tara, who looked from her hand on the harp to her face, waiting for her to understand that she would never pluck a string. Tara smiled and put a hand over Willow’s. Xander made a show of noisily packing books and looking away while they kissed.
“The door for the suite probably isn’t as guarded as the ones leading in from the hall,” Tara said. “I’ll go check on that.”
“Be careful,” Willow told her.
Tara nodded and reached out and opened the door between the two hotel rooms.
The roaring and ruckus that boiled through the door made Willow and Xander jump, flinging gathered books. Across the room, Tara put all her strength into closing the door against the howling animal on the other side. It yelped and drew back when she crushed its snout in the door. Willow caught a horrifying glimpse of the demon before Tara shut the door and leaned against it, praying it would hold against the baying and scratching of the monster on the other side.
“So much for them not conjuring anything else,” she said ruefully, when she felt certain the door was secure.
Xander nodded. “Guess we’re not finding anything in there. Unless you’re up for fighting a giant hellhound thingy.”
“A hellhound?” Dawn asked from the door. “Can I see?”
Tara chuckled. “It’d be the last thing you see.”
“Do you think it’s their pet? Like, it sleeps with Warren or something?”
“Big no to that,” Willow said. “Hellhounds are not pets. And definitely not good for the sleeping.”
“Unless you’re planning not to wake up,” Xander added.
“Well, were they both sleeping here? Like, did you find their stuff?”
For a moment, only the slavering hellhound in the next room made a sound. Then Dawn rolled her eyes and explained, “I went through the stuff in the other room. It’s just Jonathan’s. Where were the other two staying?”
Tara blinked and glanced around her. Xander shrugged.
“No clothes in here.”
“Then there has to be at least one more room.”
Next to Jonathan’s room was another suite, with no “do not disturb” sign on either door. The battered trolley suffered no more assault when it was pushed through the entrance of the first door, and no animals growled from within. Filmy sunlight soaked into the carpet and the scattered socks and magazines. Xander kicked aside a pair of Star Wars boxer shorts and lifted the tiny Bobba Fett figure on the windowsill with reverence. Willow dug through drawers, and Dawn peered under the bed.
“Receipts for room service, under the name Herbert Flutie,” Willow announced, smoothing a paper she’d found crumpled on the dresser top. “This is definitely Nerd territory.”
“Eww. That’s what they look like?” Dawn shut the magazine she’d been flipping though and tossed it away, then called, ““Hey look, he got the same flyer about the Doublemeat Palace that you got!”
When Tara looked at the flyer Dawn held out to her, the sun was filtering through the paper, revealing dark patches and light, with coils of glue like ripples in the shadowed parts. The flyer had been made from assorted parts.
Tara took the paper and folded it gently into her pocket, muttering, “They were trying to kill me.”
She swept from Andrew’s room through the suite door and into Warren’s.
No hellhound bayed at her, but there was a metallic scent of sweat and evil wafting from the darkness. Warren’s blinds were pulled tight. His clothes, crumpled like bodies on the floor, suffocated the gentle floral sweepings of the carpet pattern. On the bathroom door hung a robe, and Tara started when she saw it out of the corner of her eye. It loomed with the broad shouldered menace of the man who wore it, even when it hung limp and empty. Warren’s essence clung in traces to everything he touched, so potent she hardly needed her second sight to feel it; the scent of lilies, of death, wafted inexplicably into her mind.
Light. She needed light. Tara stumbled across the war zone of a floor to the window, flinging the curtains open and yanking on the window lock. She almost didn’t hear the clatter of plastic.
Andrew’s curtains were stiff and starched, but these strained toward the ground. Tara grabbed fistfuls of curtain and lining and ripped. Papers, maps, cd’s, and a slim book spilled like entrails at her feet.
“Good work, Dawnie,” she called. “We just hit the jackpot.”
Andrew tripped on a rock, and for the first time, his trust in Warren wavered. The Nezzla demon towered over him now, like a mighty beetle, but with the blackened veins of corpses on crime television.
“I’m sorry!” Andrew stammered. “Please! I’ll never try to desecrate your chamber again! Just don’t hurt me!”
The Nezzla’s eyes were horrifyingly sentient. They showed a strategic form a rage, the kind that allowed it to consider and calculate the best way to punish. Andrew was grateful he’d urinated in the tunnel to draw the demon’s attention; if his bladder hadn’t been empty before, he’d be pissing himself now.
The demon raised a claw to strike. Its eyes, alone animated in the hard, insectoid face, gleamed with anticipation, before they glazed over in surprise and pain. Warren had come at last. The demon’s eyes hardened in determination, but when it stepped forward, Warren struck again. Electricity crackled and buried itself in the demon’s skin, crawling through its body and firing all muscles at once. Its arms flailed, and it lurched toward Andrew without any ability to kill.
“Hit him again! Hit him again!” Jonathan shrieked, but the demon was already falling to its knees.
“These things are tougher than I though,” Warren said, holding the cattle prod like a smoking gun and surveying the monster at his feet. “One jolt from this should have dropped an elephant.”
Andrew scrabbled to his feet, his terror giving way to rage. He grabbed the cattle prod from Warren, ignoring the heat that seared him when he wrapped his hand around the active rod, and fired.
“You want a piece of this? Oh, not so tough now, are you, Puff and Stuff!”
Warren had to shake him to stop his howling. “Hey. Hey! We need him fresh, not smoke house.”
Even in Warren’s arms, Andrew’s anger didn’t fully subside.
“I’m done being bait,” he snapped. “Next time one of you gets to wiggle on the hook!”
“If this works, next time we’ll be the thing everyone’s afraid of.”
Warren’s eyes were warm, the pressure of his grip calming. Warren was here. Warren would not fail him. Andrew relaxed, and Warren released him.
Oblivious to the scene beside him, Jonathan studied the demon on the ground.
“Okay, so… What now?”
The knife flashed when Warren snapped it open and tossed it to Jonathan. “Now it’s your turn, Sparky.”
The cutting was horrible. Warren and Andrew stood back, claiming to be on the lookout for more demons, but really, Andrew simply couldn’t stand the sound. Warren was buzzing, excitement so strong Andrew could feel it like static on his clothes. He wanted to touch it. To hell with strength and invulnerability; what he wanted was this. Their eyes met, and Warren tittered and hopped on the balls of his feet. When Jonathan said he was ready, Warren tapped Andrew’s wrist and set off down the tunnels, not looking to see if Jonathan could follow at a sufficient pace in his sickening new garb. The place was a maze, but Andrew guided them from his place at Warren’s heel, pointing out places where the paths were more worn, the trenches slightly deeper with eons of obsessive protection of the Nezzlas’ sacred prize. At last they found a shivering passage through which they could not walk. Warren strode forward, but Andrew pulled him back, into his arms, as a Nezzla marched through, crackling as it went, and passed them by.
“This is it. We found it,” Warren crowed the moment Andrew released him.
“You sure it’s in there?” Andrew asked, craning his head forward to get a better view. His heart hammered when Warren’s hand hit his chest, pushing him back.
“Careful,” Warren barked. “Only Nezzla demons can pass through the barrier.” Glancing around him, he found a rock, hefted it, and tossed it forward. It vanished in a jolt of red light.
Warren smirked. “Everything else gets curly fried.”
Jonathan sloshed in his Nezzla skin. He was comically short compared to the other demons, but this was good, Warren had promised; it would make it easier to cover himself.
“Maybe we oughtta rethink this.”
Warren bit back a laugh an ignored the idea. “Just make sure all your skin’s covered.”
“Why can’t I just use a glamour?” Jonathan whined.
“You can’t Siegfried and Roy the barrier. It’s gotta be the real deal,” Andrew snapped, and he slopped the hood of the skin over Jonathan’s head. He wondered briefly what it meant that there was no skin covering the eye sockets, but he said nothing.
From inside the skin, Jonathan’s voice growled, “It’s still wet!”
“Good! It should still be fresh enough.”
“Should be? Wait a minute, what do you mean should be?”
In answer, Warren shoved him through the barrier. Andrew thought he’d go blind from the sparks, and the memory of the open eye sockets made him shudder. Jonathan’s body slapped against the hard tunnel floor.
Warren cackled and flashed a delighted grin at Andrew. “Wasn’t sure that was gonna work.”
Jonathan heaved himself off the ground and shuffled away, muttering, “Jackass,” as he went.
“You think he knows?” Andrew whispered. He’d mentioned Jonathan’s snooping the day before, his grousing about shipments he hadn’t known about and wasn’t allowed to open for himself. Warren shrugged off Andrew’s worries now the same way he had then.
“If he did, he wouldn’t be here.”
“Why is he? Our mojo’s tight, bro. We could’ve pulled this ourselves.”
Warren jerked his head in the direction of the barrier. “Somebody had to guinea pig the meat suit. Were you gonna volunteer?”
Andrew winced and grinned, embarrassed to have failed to understand Warren’s genius. He shook his head no.
Jonathan was there because he wanted the orbs. Throwing over Warren was great, but he wasn’t yet convinced that Amy was better. She called to him constantly, day and night, and he knew he’d never escape her watch. His only protection against her was in thinking in pictures. He pictured himself with the orbs in his hands, powerful and free. That was why he had come, even after he’d found the two jet packs tucked away in the hotel room closet where the hellhound wouldn’t demolish them.
“I don’t trust that leprechaun,” Andrew muttered.
Warren reached toward him, a reassuring gesture, even though they did not touch. “Just stay frosty. This works the way we planned it, by the end of the evening Jonathan won’t be a problem.”
His voice slipped into a whisper and disappeared as Jonathan slopped through the barrier, a wooden box in his goo-slicked hands. Warren shivered in delight and grabbed it, goo and all, but Andrew eyed it with suspicion.
“That’s it?”
“It’d better be,” Jonathan said, shoving the meat hood off his face. “No way I’m going back through there. That stings like a mother.”
Seeing his eyes unharmed, Andrew looked up to Jonathan’s hair, spiked and greasy with goo.
“Dude, unholy hair gel.” He squished it, and it bent like jelly. Jonathan swiped at his arm.
“Get off.”
“Make me, skin job!”
“Shut up,” Warren told them. The markings on the box were right. He pulled the enchantment opener, the basic idea of which he’d gathered from Tara’s door unlocking charms, and slid it across the lid, gently, like smoothing lotion on a woman’s breasts. The box opened like women’s legs in his fantasies.
“Gentlemen,” he said, handing Andrew the box and removing the contents, “The orbs of Nezzla’khan. Strength, invulnerability… the deluxe package.”
The irony of gazing at the balls in Warren’s hands, Warren’s balls, was not lost on Andrew, who whispered, “They’re everything I’ve dreamed of.”
Jonathan launched his plan to steal them away. He scowled at the red carved orbs and said, “You know, those have been down here for like a zillion years. How do we know they still work?”
He was prepared to suggest that they might explode, or shock someone not protected by Nezzla power, at which point Warren would give them over, content to let Jonathan risk blowing his hands off before he claimed the power for himself. But Warren closed his hands around the orbs without imagining risk or danger. His face as the power engulfed him was one of shock and ecstasy. He gasped and whispered, “Oh, they work.”
By keeping the cd’s stolen from the Trio’s hotel rooms at the Summers house, Tara had made it impossible for Willow to resist staying the night. Moments not spent making love in the scattered heap of discs and papers were spent with Tara scouring the slim book and Willow scrambling to crack the encryption that hid precious information from their eyes. Wednesday had slipped away, and Thursday afternoon was waning. Dawn would be home from school soon, and really, she shouldn’t be allowed to order Chinese food two nights in a row, but Tara could order from bed and let Dawn answer the door.
The light from the screen made the lines of Willow’s concentration face look deeper, and her frustration face more forlorn. “It’s all a mess,” she groaned.
“These things just take time,” Tara murmured, rubbing Willow’s calf with her foot under the covers. “We’ll figure it out.”
Willow grinned faintly, relaxing at her touch. “Sure. We’ll decipher codes and foil evil schemes…”
“And finally get out of bed?”
“I was with you up until there.”
Tara smiled and watched numbers and symbols scroll across the screen. What Willow was doing was ineffable to her, and Willow had been doing it for hours on end, muttering and changing strategies, all of which looked the same to Tara, except for the differing types of error message displayed.
Then there was a new color on the screen, and Willow stiffened. “Whoa.”
“What is it?”
“This cd is full of encrypted blueprints, schematics…”
Tara leaned forward. “To what?”
“I’m not sure,” Willow said, squinting and zooming in on various parts of the screen. “Their designations have been stripped.”
“Maybe we can cross-reference them with the county clerk’s office,” Tara suggested.
Willow frowned. “Would that involve getting up?”
“Eventually.”
“Then I’m coming out firmly against it.”
“What about the Trio’s evil scheme?” Tara asked, not caring at all. She didn’t care about anything except the wicked grin Willow gave her.
“I’m kinda busy working on my own.”
“All I’m saying is, we should think about waiting. You know, until Faith comes back.”
The noise in the Bronze made it hard for Xander to think, which, while he was talking to Anya about postponing their wedding, was a blessing.
“But no one likes Faith,” Anya said. “Except Tara. But Tara has Willow now. Getting laid will make her happy, and then she can be happy for us!”
Xander gulped and took a long pull of his beer.
“What about Giles? He’ll need time to, you know, make plans, and…”
“Xander, why are you trying to postpone our wedding? I’m so excited I feel like I could vomit, and I want to run away and elope right now, except my dress isn’t ready, and I have to have my dress. Well, I guess I wouldn’t have to. We could elope now and have a nice wedding later! Is that what you want?”
Xander gaped at her. She stared at him, waiting, her smile growing wider and more hopeful. When he didn’t respond, her smile faded, and she studied his face and put her hands on his arm.
“Xander, tell me what you want.”
He wanted this to stop. He wanted her to not ask this of him. He wanted her. What he wanted didn’t add up. The longer she waited, the faster the cyclone of terror spun in him, and only the crash of a bar stool on someone’s back snapped him out of it. He lurched away from the table, from the problem, and toward the source of the commotion.
At the bar, the cash register clanged when Warren slammed his fist against it. “Don’t worry about the tab, ladies,” he told the women at the bar. “It’s on daddy tonight.”
One girl shook, holding back tears of terror, while the others stared into their drinks, uncertain how to help her, or themselves. None of them spoke, and only the one girl made a sound. The sob drew Warren’s attention away from the cash he was digging out of the register.
“Aw, don’t cry baby. Daddy’s gonna give you some, too.”
He reached to wipe her face with a twenty dollar bill, and the girl next to her stood, ready to claw him apart. But Xander swaggered up and distracted Warren, so the woman standing simply pulled the crying girl into her arms.
“See now, I think it’s the daddy thing that’s throwing her,” Xander said. “Because incest? Not that sexy. So why don’t we leave the ladies to their impending nausea and move the freak show outside?”
Warren smiled. “Is that where the Wicca bitch is waiting? Because I can’t wait to get a taste of…”
Xander slammed his fist into Warren’s jaw. Punching hurts. It always hurts, but this pain made him see fireworks.
“No wonder your pals are lesbians. Better to screw a girl than a guy who hits like one.”
“At least I know how to get one,” Xander spat.
Anya tried to catch him when he flew across the Bronze. He landed in a heap on top of her. Warren shoved aside the pool table that stood between them, and Jonathan scrambled through the crowd to reach him.
“Warren, we have to go,” he said, grabbing the arm Warren had curled back to strike with. He let it go as fast as he could and stepped away when Warren glared at him.
“We go when I’m ready.”
“Hey, your call,” Jonathan told him. He extended his watch. “But we’re gonna miss that thing you wanted to do if we don’t leave now. That’s all I’m saying.”
Warren gripped Jonathan’s arm roughly and studied the watch, then sneered at Xander and Anya.
“It’s your lucky night, shemp.”
Andrew, who had never set aside his cocktail and never left Warren’s side, poked the ice in his drink with his paper umbrella and considered the couple on the floor.
“We’re just gonna leave them? What if they sic the witches on us? We got double trouble now that they’re back with the sexy Sappho stuff.”
Warren laughed. “Bring them on.”
“Girls!” Xander called when he came into the Summers house. “I found Warren! Well, my face sort of found him.”
“And my ass!” Anya added.
Dawn appeared from the basement, and her eyes went wide at the sight of blood on Xander’s face. She shepherded him into the kitchen and wrapped frozen peas in a dish towel for him, fussing and squeaking. Anya asked if there was an ice pack for her ass, then settled on a stool at the kitchen island with a sack of Brussels sprouts down the back of her slacks.
“Willow and Tara are putting clothes on; they’ll be down in a minute. They’ve been getting a lot of work done, though, decoding and deciphering. I met them at the county clerk’s office after school, hung out there until it closed."
“What’d you find?”
“Only evidence of major crime spree plans,” Willow said from the doorway. Tara followed in her wake, trying to flatten down a particularly tousled lock of hair. “What happened to you guys?”
Xander moved the frozen peas aside so he could answer: “Warren.”
“Xander put up a very manly fight. It ended it tears, but it evidenced a very impressive amount of testosterone.”
“Gee, that’s um,” Tara glanced at Willow, then pulled the ice pack away from Xander’s face and examined it, uncertain how to respond. “Where was he?”
“At the Bronze. Doing his normal thing, showing off, harassing women. But he’s gone all Mighty Mouse on us.” Xander winced when Tara guided the frozen peas back to his face. “Emphasis on the mighty.”
Willow frowned and laid a fistful of handwritten papers out on the island. “Maybe these’ll tell us where the might comes from. They’re the only thing we couldn’t translate.”
Xander studied them a moment, then shrugged. “It’s Klingon. They’re love poems.” He looked up to see Willow and Dawn smirking at him. “Which has nothing to do with Super Warren and his impending crime spree.”
Tara glanced at the microwave clock and sighed. “No help there, then. It’s late, I need to go.”
“Go where?”
“One of the targets is an armored vehicle scheduled to hit that new amusement park tonight. I’m hoping I can catch the Trio there and nip this in the bud.”
“You going alone?” Xander said, standing. “I don’t think you should.”
Tara paused in the process of pulling on her fighting coat, considering.
“I can go with her,” Willow offered.
Xander nodded. “Me, too.”
“I don’t feel like fighting,” Anya whined, then brightened. “I can drive the getaway car!”
“And I can…” Dawn started, but Tara cut her off.
“You can stay here and do your homework. No slaying on school nights.”
Dawn rolled her eyes and stomped up the stairs. Anya tugged the frozen sprouts out of her pants and asked if she could drive the Mustang, and Tara tossed her the keys. Xander helped her hobble out the door, and Willow followed them. Tara lingered a moment in the doorway, her stomach filling with dread, before she gripped her staff and headed out into the night.
The scent of ozone lingered with the burn of candles and the musk of ancient texts. Amy was couched in velvet pillows, leaning back and drinking magic like wine. The sun was setting. She was waiting. The cobra was coiled to strike, she thought, and the smoke slithered around her ankles and nipped at her bare toes. She stretched herself long and sleek, the mongoose.
Jonathan had warned her to be ready. She drank deeply of the evil brew in her crystal glass. It ate through its container and dribbled over her hand; what didn’t soak into her skin sizzled on the pillows. Rack filled the glass again, and Amy drank. She laughed, and the pages of her books fluttered. Smiling, Rack shut them with the toe of his boot, walking a circle around her. Thump, thump, thump. Her heart closed like a book, hardening for the kill.
When Jonathan told her it was time, she was ready.
There was a time when Rufus Lozada would have trembled at the smell of hot dogs and popcorn wafting from Wild River Adventures. He would have come earlier, just as the sun began to set and the lights on the ferris wheel blinked on and glowed like stars in the California sky. The carillon like a siren song, the carneys calling just for him. When he won a prize at tossing feather-light balls at stout glass bottles, a feat only he in the whole town one summer had accomplished, he would heave the gargantuan prize over his shoulders and carry it like a friend, instead of checking the seams and rejecting every toy that showed thread, as he did now when buying toys for his daughters. Once, there had been an amusement park in town, and Sunnydale had been happy.
A man who looked like his face had been smashed in with a shovel had dragged a carney away, trapping almost twenty kids on a whirl-around ride that wouldn’t stop, and the kids wouldn’t stop screaming, and the lights had been bright and glaring, swiping like swords through a night so dark no one could hope to follow the two men where they had gone. Rufus had seen them as he was swept up to the top of the ferris wheel, and even though he hung in the night far above the chaos, he could still hear the other kids under his dangling feet. And he swore he saw the man who killed the carney loping off into the night.
The lights at Wild River Adventures were off, and the music didn’t play. A hunched old carnival man swept the last of the greasy napkins into a dust pan and walked away while Rufus and his partner loaded the armored car with the heaps of cash the park had raked in. Rufus wondered how much of this cash the old carnival man would ever see.
Unshaken by the cold, the park owner counted his bags of cash under his breath as they were loaded. His suit was tailored and showed not a speck of cotton candy sugar or hot dog grease, but he was a carney, just the same. He had an air of distant, disdainful amusement. He would not waver if a child lost his most difficult game, and he wouldn’t let you slip past and onto the ride if you hadn’t given him a ticket. You didn’t know he was a watchful man, until he was watching you. The cold and the lateness of the hour wore on Rufus’s muscles, and he grunted heaving the final bags into the truck.
“Alright, that’s the last one,” he told the suited carney, stepping closer. The smell of pickles and melted cheese wafted off him, and for an instant, Rufus warmed to him. “Quite a haul, huh?” he chuckled.
“Always the biggest gate of the year. Don’t lose any.”
The idea that he couldn’t do his job made Rufus stiffen. He signed the forms on the carney’s clipboard and climbed into the truck, blowing warmth into the bowl of his hands.
“Wanna grab a bite after?” Harold asked, just like he always did. Rufus nodded, mentally thumbing through the restaurants that would still be open this late at night. But Harold knew, and had chosen, just like he always did.
“I think Ruby’s is still…” he started, but he stopped when his shoulder slammed against the door. “What the hell?” he shouted, throwing the armored van into gear. The wheels spun helplessly, and the van groaned.
The world slumped sideways, and the lights outside blurred, like they were on the tilt-o-whirl. Rufus thought of the dead carney as the van slammed into the ground. The carney hadn’t made a sound.
The van crunched and hissed when it fell over, and Jonathan flinched from the noise. Andrew’s eyes were trained on Warren, hauling the door off the van and throwing it aside.
“Man, I can’t wait to get my hands on his orbs,” Andrew muttered.
Jonathan rolled his eyes and scanned around him, watching for Amy. “Yeah. I’m sure he’ll be giving them up any second.”
He saw the Mustang fly around the corner, Tara crouching with her feet on the passenger seat and her hand on the exposed top edge of the windshield, staff gripped and held ready. Her hair was flying back, and she looked prepared for this fight. Jonathan swallowed and watched her leap out as the car screeched up the scene of their crime. She wasn’t prepared for this.
Buffy, Tara imagined, would have had something funny to say. She would have sneaked up on them and approached with a quipping poise. By the time she swung into action, all eyes would have been on her. Tara’s best strategy was to appear suddenly, take the advantage quickly, and make them afraid. Fear added to her power, surprise shook confidence. Tara leaped from the convertible, flinging herself at Warren in the style of an animal pouncing. Warren turned to her as she dove, and when she struck, her staff was in his hand. He heaved her over his head by it. Frightened, Tara clung to the staff, and she crashed onto the ground behind him.
Willow’s spell slammed into his side and scattered in sparks. Warren ripped the staff out of Tara’s hands, rubbing the skin raw, and brought the brunt of it down toward Tara’s face. Her only salvation was that she was fast. She rolled away and onto her feet, flinging dust in his eyes with magic as she went.
Xander charged at Warren from the side and fell like he’d hit a wall. Willow grabbed the staff, Tara leapt at his knees, and Warren shrugged them off like a coat and flung them aside. The grit in his eyes barely seemed to annoy him; one swipe of his coat sleeve, and he was seeing clearly. In the chaos, it was almost impossible for Tara to make a plan; she fell, someone charged, they blocked her view. She made a choice, and before she got a steady grip, the battlefield shifted. At last, Warren swung the staff, and Tara latched on and disarmed him, bringing it in a circle and down on his head. The staff splintered, and Tara’s shoulders wrenched from the force she had put behind the blow. Warren slammed his open palm into her chest.
Tara conjured a cushion of air to catch her, but it shattered from the force of her fall and only slowed her, instead of shielding her completely. She staggered to her feet, still clutching the shattered staff, but her chest grated when she moved, and her eyes flashed with color when she breathed.
Warren flung Willow in her direction, and Tara caught her with magic and lowered her down. Willow’s eyes were strobing black and green, and she ground her teeth to fight back the rage. Tara took her hand and squeezed, and the color in Willow’s eyes stabilized. There was a current between them, that old familiar feeling. Magic, brought to a boil by adrenaline, splashed and sizzled as it melded them together. Tara nodded, firm and slow. Willow gave a tight, confident smile in answer.
They jerked their gaze to the armored van door, then back to Warren. The door hit Warren’s full length and smashed him into the stone pillar of the park entrance. When he straightened, he was smiling. It was the most horrible face Tara had ever seen.
“Is that all you got?” he demanded.
In the instant Warren wasted in gloating, the pillar gave way and crashed down onto his head.
“No!”
Andrew’s screech ripped through the deep rumbling of clattering rocks. It was the first moment that any of the Scoobies had given Andrew and Jonathan any notice. Xander dusted himself off and ambled toward them, and Willow followed. Tara released Willow’s hand and let her warrior persona waver, wincing at the pain in her chest.
“So, there’s two ways this can end,” Willow growled. “And based on all the trouble you’ve caused, I think they both better hurt.”
Andrew, terror stricken a moment before, stood straighter and sneered.
“I think you’re right.”
Tara gasped when she saw the first stones on the pile move, and the pain of the sudden breath bent her over.
“What’s the matter, baby?” he called, and she could hear him rising, hear him coming toward her. “Never fight a real man before?”
Anya leaned on the car horn and shouted, “Get out! Get out!” Tara pulled a dagger from her boot, knowing blood was coming, his or hers, and tried to stand straight. Willow and Xander were rushing to her side. Warren knocked them away, then shoved Tara to the ground with only his pointer finger.
Jonathan was scanning the sky desperately, screaming in his mind for Amy. Beside him, Andrew trembled.
“Kill her,” he was cheering. “Kill her!”
Tara couldn’t see past Warren. She took in rapid, shallow breaths, and raised her dagger as he strode toward her. The roar of thunder, the wrenching of metal, went unheard over the pounding of her heart in her ears. Only after it had mowed Warren down did Tara see the armored van hurtling toward her through the air, and barely in time to fling herself to the ground.
Rufus Lozada dangled upside down, held in by his seat belt. The blood dripping down his face was beginning to cake, and Tara could see the slate blankness of his eyes, the stillness in his chest, so close was his body to her wide and panicked gaze.
“Nice shot, bitch!” Warren shouted, and Tara scrambled away on her hands and knees toward the Mustang.
Ozone flooded Willow’s nose, and she threw an arm over her eyes as lightening flashed, incinerating the ground Warren Mears stood on. He laughed and howled, jeering as the specter in the sky began to glow again, flinging tendrils of red static. Warren hurled a boulder into the air, and Willow’s gut heaved when it slammed into a body she recognized. It scattered like dust and reappeared above the amusement park ticket booth, suddenly flooded with light.
“Amy!” Willow shouted. “Amy!”
Tara saw the light gleam in blackened eyes, the tongue of red electricity whipping out, and ran. The flash blinded her to the sight of the bolt connecting with Willow’s chest, throwing her over. When the dust settled and the afterimages cleared, she was kneeling over an unconscious body.
Behind her, a battle of Titans was raging. Aside from Willow’s shouting, the pair had lost interest in them. Warren could hardly take a step without being blasted by magic, but Amy hadn’t even scratched him, and she was drifting lower in the sky with every burst of light.
Tara charted a clear path behind the armored van, around and to the safety of the Mustang, where Anya had her foot poised to slam on the gas. Xander crouched beside her, a questioning look on his face, and Tara made her choice.
Behind Willow’s eyes there was a nightmare swirl of her mother dragging her through a house a mirrors, with too many flashes of light and shades of gray, and Amy flitted through every pane of glass, and there was a horrible noise like light bulbs smashing on a concrete floor. When at last her eyes opened, the nightmare images swung sideways, and the worried face above her swam up from under a pool of green water.
She couldn’t hear anything, or feel her hands and feet. This was the dream, this beautiful face. Only the nightmare was real.
A car door opened. Something occurred to her.
“Amy,” she said, turning her head. All she saw was dusty fabric pressed close to her. She was in someone’s arms. They were carrying her away from Amy.
“We can’t help her.”
The words were felt in her body, held against a heaving chest, more than they were heard.
“We can’t help her. We have to go.”
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