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In Ev’ry Angle Greet
Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel: the Series are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.
Part IV
In some ways, Giles reflected as he sorted quickly through the weapons in the cabinet, the most unsettling aspect of this situation was how right it felt. Familiar, comfortable, as if the world finally had turned straight again for a few moments. At the main desk, Willow’s fingers chattered across the computer keyboard with a rapidity and sureness that could scarcely be credited as within human capacity. Buffy paced, keyed-up and impatient, in front of the main doors, absently swinging the sword he had given her (the same one that had brought an end to the malevolent Angelus, though she appeared not to have noticed); Oz held his folding crossbow at port-arms, seeming totally relaxed but never removing his eyes from the single window inside the ‘rare books’ cage. Behind him, at one of the broad tables, Anya droned through the words of the protective chant; she would never possess the immense natural talent and inborn power that Amy had shown, but given the proper materials and instructions she could competently carry out the technical requirements of basic spellcasting.
For his own part, he chose or rejected assorted tools of combat with encouragingly steady hands, making his decisions on the basis of their suitability for various persons. Some were standard (stakes and holy water vials he had in abundance, and these would be parceled out to almost everyone), others were specially related to individual capabilities. Faith was doing quite well these days with the sharpened staff, and it would serve her ably against multiple opponents. One of the crossbows he set aside for himself, the other for Willow; after the Slayers, she was the most reliable shot with such an implement. The double-bladed axe, he would probably add that to his own armament (though he, too, might elect to go with a sword). Wesley also favored an axe, but there were several of those from which to choose. The speargun … hmm. That was an idea that hadn’t quite worked out. It had never been as accurate or powerful as a crossbow, and replacing the thin metal harpoons with wooden arrows, to make the weapon effective against vampires, had rendered its aim even more chancy; still, further modifications had made it possible to loose three such missiles before needing to reload, a pronounced tactical advantage, and Xander had shown an aptitude for selecting the most important targets …
Anya finished the chant, and a moment later the thick candle hissed out, the accompanying odor telling him that she had, as dictated by the ritual, snuffed it with fingers moistened by her own blood. “Do you need a bandage?” he called back to her.
“I set it out on the table before I started, along with the razor blade,” she answered, then gave an ostentatious sniff of annoyance. “Why did this one have to involve self-mutilation instead of a sacrifice? I’m good at sacrifices.”
“I don’t doubt it.” He turned to her. “At the moment a more pressing question would be, did it work?”
Anya closed her eyes, opened them three seconds later. “Yes. No spell or magic-charged entity can breach these walls between now and sunrise.” She frowned. “Unless we’re dealing with a mage-class sorcerer. Or unless the spell has already been cast. Or unless someone’s spent a day working up a major ritual and is about to slam us with a ton of dammed-up energy. Or unless …”
“Incoming!” Willow called from the computer monitor. “No alarms from doors or windows, warm-blooded, heading this way fast. And only one, I think.” She looked up to them, eyes as haunted as her voice had been clipped. “Xander … or Faith.”
“Probably,” Giles agreed. “All the same, we’d best prepare.” He tossed one crossbow to Willow, caught up and steadied the other. Anya lunged for the weapons cabinet (she’d select twin daggers, Giles thought automatically, she liked to get in close and make it hurt), and Buffy took a ready stance, holding the sword raised to strike. Oz never moved from his own position.
Xander burst through the double doors, checked as he saw the assemblage of lethal hardware arrayed in his direction, then did an instant inventory of the room’s occupants. “Well, that’s most of us, anyway,” he observed. “Any word from Faith, or Wes and Harmony?”
“I spoke to Wesley, um —” Giles glanced at his watch. “— four minutes ago. He and Harmony should be with us directly. Faith hasn’t answered the pager alert, but we all know she’s more inclined to action than verbiage, so I see no clear cause for anxiety just yet.” Giles looked to Xander. “It was you who initiated this emergency gathering, claiming imminent danger to us all. I took you at your word and began phoning the others, but now I would appreciate an explanation.”
“We all would,” Buffy said in a dangerous tone. “I had to ditch my mom right in the middle of promising I’d never just take off again. This had better be five-alarm important, or you’re going to spend the next two weeks in the doghouse.” She paused. “Literally.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Xander took the proffered speargun from Giles, then went to the book cage and picked up a couple of stakes, which he thrust into his belt. “Okay, look, I was out for a drive, trying to get my head clear, and out of nowhere I saw Ichabod and three other vamps hustling some guy into a municipal van.” He turned back to Giles, one eyebrow arched. “This ‘colleague’ of yours, would he by any chance have been staying at, say, the Sunnydale Motor Inn?”
“Oh, dear Lord.” Giles sat down, feeling the evening suddenly grow even less cheerful. ‘Ichabod’, so nicknamed by the Slayer’s entourage because he was six and a half feet tall and weighed barely nine stone, was a conveyor of orders rather than a leader or aggressive predator; if he was supervising a hands-on operation, something serious indeed was in motion. And from the burr of sarcasm in Xander’s voice, he had seen — and recognized — the face of the man at the motel.
“Two more,” Willow announced, bending over the monitor. “No, three: two warm, one room-temperature. And they’re moving really fast.” From her expression, she was afraid to let herself hope. “Still no intrusion alarms. These could be ours, too.”
They were, Faith and Harmony all but carrying a gasping Wesley through the library doors twenty seconds later. Willow started for them, questions spilling from her lips, but Faith cut her off with a savage gesture. “All the guards up?” she demanded of Giles as the others lowered their weapons.
“Yes, the various security measures have been made active. Wesley found you?”
“I saw their car two-three blocks back, I was about to phone you when your pager call came in to me so I just headed straight here, snagged a ride when we ran into each other.” She looked around at the assembled group. “Looks like something hit the fan somewhere, that’s for sure.”
“We were responding to a priority scramble from Xander,” Giles agreed. “But it would appear that you’ve already had an eventful evening.”
Her hair was wild, blood crusting in long scratches down the side of her face, and the left sleeve of the biker jacket was torn almost completely free. Faith emitted one of those berserker laughs, and said, “Hizzonner sent six of his vamp-soldiers to pick me up, with everybody’s favorite S&M leatherslut leading the pack. Ain’t I got fun?”
At the Slayer’s words, Willow’s complexion had gone the color of dirty milk, and she stared at Faith with disbelieving eyes. “Her? No, it can’t be, she’s in San Francisco, it can’t be —!” She collapsed into the nearest chair, her face in her hands, and began keening, “Nononononononono …”
Faith crossed to her in two quick strides, seizing the smaller girl by the shoulders and yanking her upright. “Get a grip, Wil!” Despite its gentleness, her tone held a harsh insistence. “You’re not seein’ the larger picture: if she’s back, it means we can finally kill the bitch.”
“Excuse me,” Buffy said. “Translation for those of us who were Hellmouth-free for the last couple of years?”
“Willow’s vampire doppelgänger,” Giles explained. Bloody hell, this night just kept getting better by the moment. “You’ll have heard of some of her activities in the reports we sent through Wesley. She’s a formidable adversary: cunning, resourceful, unpredictable, and far more capable in direct combat than one would expect.”
“Yeah, well, break out the shop-vac,” Xander said tightly. “She may have ridden into town as the Dominatrix from Hell, but she’s leaving as dust.”
Even in the midst of crisis, Giles couldn’t stop his mind from turning to speculation. During Faith’s and Xander’s week-long imprisonment, Vwilla (almost certainly a take-off on ‘Vampirella’, the name had been coined by Xander because ‘Vampire Willow’ had proven cumbersome) had shuttled between their separated cells, using pilfered clothing and the dreadful summer heat and their own ignorance of her existence to make them believe she was a similarly captive Willow. Thanks to Veruca, they had been found and liberated before the demonic female’s ultimate purpose had been realized or even revealed — if in fact she had ever possessed one that went beyond her own sadistic amusement — but, given that Amy’s spell was still operating full-strength in Xander at the time, and given Vwilla’s rather indiscriminate appetites, and given the venomous hatred the two of them had evinced for her ever since, Giles had long uneasily suspected that in her successful impersonation she might have seduced both Xander and Faith before their rescue.
Of course, none of that would explain the desperate terror she could invoke in Willow even now …
“Please don’t think I’m questioning your abilities,” Wesley put in, still wheezing slightly, “but you never did explain how you escaped this, er, arresting party.”
“No offense.” Faith shrugged angrily. “I coulda taken her, you all know that, and I coulda taken her buddies in a running fight, but I’m not too proud to admit the whole crew was more odds than I could handle. Nah, we were tearin’ up Willy’s and I was getting the rough end of the process, and then bam-bam-bam!” She smacked a fist into her palm to punctuate each sound. “Somebody starts squeezing off shots, the bloodsuckers start falling off me screaming, and Miss Leather-and-lace takes a dive over the bar and splits through the back.” She shrugged again, this time in obvious bewilderment. “I look over and there’s this woman in a long skirt and corduroy vest, she has bleached hair in long braids and the kinda lipstick I used to wear, and she’s got on sunglasses, indoors, at night. She looks down her nose at me and says, ‘This makes us even,’ and then just walks out.”
“You knew her?” Harmony squeaked.
Faith shook her head. “Nuh-uh. She knew me, or acted like she did, but I don’t have a clue. Just one more mysterious female in Sunnydale.”
All eyes turned to Xander. He opened his mouth to protest, caught himself, and simply said, “Doesn’t ring any bells with me, either. I musta missed that one while I was cutting a manly swath through all the super-babes.”
Snarls and recriminations started in several mouths, but Anya’s clear, flat voice cut through it all. “Ichabod leads a group to snatch our independent consultant, and Vwilla tries to do the same with Faith. Somebody’s moving on us, three guesses who. I just have one question.” She pointed at Harmony. “Why is she barefoot?”
The shrilling of the telephone forestalled a reply, snatching at their attention; even Oz glanced briefly away from his heretofore unblinking watch of the window. Buffy sighed heavily and said, “Ten to one that’s my mom. I told her we were headed here, and … well, you know how she is.”
Giles nodded to her. “Quite.” He moved to the phone and picked up the receiver, saying, “Sunnydale High School Lib–” He stopped, his face stiffening, and after several seconds he murmured, “Yes, yes, I know your voice.” Pause. “Do you really think this is the time for …?” Pause, this one longer. “Ah. Yes, you have a point. Very well, we shall be expecting you.” He returned the receiver to its cradle.
“Y’know, I may be taking a blind shot here,” Oz said to Buffy, “but I’m gonna guess that wasn’t your mom.”
“No,” Giles said. “It was Mayor Wilkins. He’s on his way over.”
“Uh, do we really want to do that?” Xander looked from Giles to the others. “I mean, bad guy, right? Evil soulless politician … okay, that’s redundant, but still, hundred-years-old, built-Sunnydale-as-a-demon-taco-stand, I’m-gonna-eat-the-Class-of-’99? This is who we’re inviting over to shoot the breeze?”
“That was, indeed, my own initial reaction.” Giles shook his head. “But as he pointed out, we’re better to meet him in our own stronghold, with all of us together and forewarned, than at a time and place of his choosing.”
“He’s trying to give it a positive spin,” Buffy scoffed. “I’m thinking we just reacted too quick for him to pick us off one at a time, so now he’s coming by to mess with our heads and scope our defenses.”
“She’s never actually dealt with the man,” Wesley observed to Giles, “but it would be consistent with his prior behavior.”
Giles nodded. “That’s true. But we don’t know why he chose this time to move against us, after distancing himself from any confrontation for more than a year, and perhaps we can goad him into revealing something. At any rate, as I said, he’s already on his way.”
“Do you think … she’ll be with him?” Willow quavered.
“I hope so.” Faith took up the pointed staff from the table where Giles had laid out the weapons; blocked high, swept low, then stabbed viciously at empty air. “You know what I always say: life’s a bitch, but I’m a bigger one.”
* * *
Shoes were found for Harmony, cross-trainers Buffy had left behind so long ago. (The fit was less than perfect, but for once Harmony didn’t complain; it was a necessity, and there were more important matters to be addressed, so she accepted it with welcome patience.) Additional weapons were dispensed, basic tactics discussed. Though the return of Buffy and Oz required readjustments of thought and approach, the fundamental situation was long familiar to them all, so that soon they were simply waiting.
Not for long, however. “We have motion,” Willow announced from the tracking monitor. She had recovered some of her mental balance, but only by placing herself firmly in Central Dispatch mode, so that she spoke now with crisp, dispassionate objectivity. “From the trace patterns, I’d say thirteen of them. Only one with human body temperature.”
“You notice she didn’t say ‘one human’?” Xander observed. “I’m betting that’s the Mayor.”
Willow ignored him. “They’ve stopped, a little off the main lobby,” she said. “Just sort of milling around, I can’t see any —” She broke off, and a moment later she looked up to Giles. “Now they’re headed this way, right about walking speed. All of them, no sentries or people sent off on special errands.”
“None within the scope of our sensors, at any rate,” Giles agreed. “I would imagine he’s aware he would need more than a dozen minions for a serious attack, so it appears he was earnest about wishing only to meet with us.” For now, he reminded himself. Experience had shown just how quickly such an encounter could shift from conversation to death-combat.
“They’re at the door now,” Willow said a minute later, and indeed her words were promptly followed by a brisk rapping from the other side.
“It’s not locked,” Giles called. There was no need to signal the others; they were in position, weapons at ready but — as a minimal courtesy — not actually leveled at the doors.
The door swung open, and Richard Wilkins III, Mayor of Sunnydale, stuck his head inside. “He-e-ere’s Johnny!” he said cheerily, then beamed at the semicircle of dour faces turned in his direction. “Okay, I know it’s not original, but you can’t go wrong if you stay with the classics.”
It had been agreed that Giles would act as their spokesman, for so long as the proceedings were limited to verbal exchange. “You wished to meet with us,” he said. “We now are meeting. May I inquire as to the subject of this discussion?”
“Give me just a second here,” Wilkins said. He stepped the rest of the way in and off to one side, lifted a cell phone to his ear, and said, “Now, Jerry.”
Faith started for him with the staff raised to strike, stopped as Giles checked her with a gesture. From the monitor, Willow said, “We just lost water pressure.”
“Oh, yes,” Wilkins said, nodding pleasantly. “This is supposed to be a friendly gathering, and I’m pretty sure I trust you more than you trust me, but I didn’t want to expose my people to whatever nasty stuff you might have added to the sprinkler system.” He raised his voice. “All clear, boys!”
They came in behind him, spreading out on either side to stand facing the Slayers and their allies. Two of them wore human faces, but in the rest the demon was clearly manifested. Eleven, Giles noted, and the Mayor made twelve, so one was still outside. For whatever reason.
“Now we can get started,” Wilkins said. He surveyed them with benign amusement, ignoring his henchmen. “My goodness gracious, does Principal Pollard know he has this many library volunteers? Nine of you here, after hours, and only one actually drawing a salary. That’s dedication. It certainly warms the heart to see there are still people willing to give back to the community.”
Giles nodded. “Indeed. Especially given the current lack of respect for local government.” It was childish to indulge himself with the rejoinder, but the man’s spurious joviality grated on him as much as ever.
“Well, all right,” Wilkins said. “If you want to get straight to business, we’ll do that.” He allowed the eternal smile to fade, but still somehow retained the air of being pleased with himself. “Tell me, why do you insist on seeing me as the villain here?”
“Oh, small things, I suppose.” Giles gave him a controlled shrug. “Selling your soul for power. Orchestrating the various demonic depredations that continue to infest this city. Trying several times to have us killed. Trivialities, perhaps, but we tend to be sensitive about such matters.”
“Little men, little minds,” Wilkins said with a sigh. “Idealists never bother themselves with the nitty-gritty of how things actually work. Oh, sure, you’re great with the flashy, obvious menaces, but do you have any idea how many things I’ve saved Sunnydale from over the years?”
“So that, at the opportune moment, you could sacrifice it to ensure immortality for yourself,” Giles replied sharply.
“Well, yes,” Wilkins said. “And now I’m doing it to keep what small power I still have, but the point is that I’m doing it, and precious little thanks I get from your personal vigilante group. It wasn’t you who stopped the plague limpets, or called out the troops to squash Maggie Walsh’s little cut-and-paste project, and it doesn’t look like you even know about Glorificus.”
“You mentioned a point,” Giles observed, “but I see scant evidence that you’re approaching one.”
“You know, you are just killing that stereotype that the British are more polite.” Wilkins shook his head. “All right, you want brass tacks, you’ll get ’em. We’ve differed in our methods the past few years, you and I, but we’ve always had the same basic goal, to keep this city protected from the more over-the-top threats. So imagine my surprise when I hear that you’re working up one of the very doomsday scenarios you’ve always been so gung-ho to prevent.” Again the bland politician’s smile. “I’ve got to say, you just don’t strike me as having the aptitude for that kind of thing.”
Giles could only hope the others were guarding their expressions as carefully as he. “That is an extraordinary statement,” he said evenly. “I feel it calls for an explanation.”
Wilkins chuckled. “I just love a straight-line like that. I can’t help it, it brings out the ham in me.” Again he raised his voice. “One explanation, please!”
She strolled through the door with a languid unconcern that was itself a kind of insolence, the lethal grace of her movements not a bit hampered by the prisoner who stumbled ahead of her. (Wait, two more made fourteen in all; had Wilkins’ permanent transition state between demon and human somehow made him invisible to Willow’s sensor system?) She no longer wore the bustier that had occasioned so many ‘dominatrix’ insults — in its place was a crimson half-tee beneath a black leather vest punctuated by metal studs — but she had retained the high boots and skin-tight trousers. She held the man with one hand, black-lacquered nails resting like talons at his throat, and though no one spoke or moved or drew an audible breath, Giles felt the tension in the library thicken and chill.
Vwilla … and her captive was Ethan Rayne.
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