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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 V
They were all watching her, and she basked in the effect she knew her entrance had made. Not enough fear there to suit her, but that would change soon enough; and for now she was satisfied at confirming that, even if they weren’t quite shaking in their shoes, no one took her casually.
“Hello, my yummies,” she lilted, lascivious mockery in the lazy smile she gave them. “Miss me …?” And then she was fighting for her life.
She had done an instant check as she came through the door, knowing at a glance that her softer twin would never nerve herself to face her, but that the dark Slayer and her one-time toyboy were ready to erupt at a touch. It amused and aroused her, so that she had let herself forget the other person with a long-standing grudge. There was barely time to hurl the Brit into the clutch of an obliging lackey, then she was fully occupied with shrieking blonde ex-cheerleader.
It was pathetic, this limp little rabbit didn’t stand a chance against her, but the girl’s mindless attack had snapped the two groups into reflexive combat, and she had her hands full for crucial seconds while two Slayers rampaged through the minions. She slammed the rabbit to the floor with enough force to crack the tiles, a lightning glance around and something sang toward her and she snatched the arrow from the air inches from her breast. A hand closed on her ankle, the silly little bitch wouldn’t let well enough alone so fine, she dropped astraddle of her, anchoring the squirming rabbit by the throat while she raised the arrow to plunge it into the heart of her prey —
“STOP!” and she did, it was Mayor Demon’s voice and she looked up to see that everyone else had likewise frozen, except for one minion who chose to press his attack on the smaller Slayer and was headless a moment later. “You really need to control your people,” the Mayor chided this-world’s-Giles. “This was supposed to be a friendly get-together, remember?”
Other-Giles lowered his own crossbow. “That was the intention, yes. My apologies.” He looked her way, studying her with arctic eyes.“Clearly we underestimated the animosity Harmony harbors for her progenitor. I assure you, it won’t happen again.”
She laughed, watching other-Willow cringe at the sound, and said, “Not if I kill her, it won’t. What do you say, snuggle-bunny?” She prodded Harmony with the arrow. “Living forever not agree with you?”
The blonde girl glared up at her, hissing, “You are just so dead.”
Willow laughed again, and caressed Harmony’s cheek. “And loving it,” she crooned. Other-Willow looked as if she might faint. Better and better.
“You know, my girl has a point,” Mayor Demon observed genially. “Four of my people gone in, what, five seconds? Not that they can’t be replaced easily enough, I grant you, but ‘Sorry, we’ll be more careful next time’ doesn’t really seem like a fair trade. What if I’m in an eye-for-an-eye mood?”
The third Brit — Wesley, she remembered, the twitchy one — stepped forward with his jaw set. “If you order your creature to strike,” he said, and she listened for the quaver in his voice but it wasn’t there, “or even if she does it on her own whim, you know full well that any discussion or negotiation ends in that instant. We will simply kill you all, without mercy or hesitation.”
Mayor Demon’s smile widened. “Hear that, Willow Anne? Now they’re going to kill us.” To Wesley he added, “Seems to me you haven’t been having much luck in that department. My girl’s too sharp for you, and as for me …” He spread his hands. “Invulnerable, remember?”
Wussley didn’t back down by a hair. “I remember. And you may remember that imperviousness to harm doesn’t protect you from imprisonment. Except this time it wouldn’t be merely a holding action, to immobilize you until the Hundred Days had passed; force my hand, and I’ll see you entombed at the bottom of the ocean, in accommodations designed to last centuries. Or longer.”
Harmony wriggled beneath her, and she stilled the girl with another warning jab from the arrow. “Threats,” Mayor Demon sighed. “I come in for a civil airing of matters that concern us all, and what do I get? Disrespect, violence, and threats.” He looked back to Willow. “Don’t kill her unless I give the word, but don’t let her go, either. She makes a nice, fluffy bundle of collateral, don’t you think?”
He had to be kidding. “Bor-ing,” Willow pouted. “Get somebody else to do it.”
Mayor Demon wagged a finger at her. “Ah-ah. I can’t trust anyone else to give the job the proper attention. Besides, if it comes to it, don’t you want to be the one to do the honors?”
Well, yes, there was that. Willow smiled down at the defiant girl beneath her. “Give me an excuse, little rabbit. Any little twitch will do.”
Wussley seemed ready to explode, but it was Faith who spoke, savage with hate and frustration. “Oh, sure, she’s all Mistress of Bad now, but the last time I saw her she was barreling out the back exit so fast the door never touched her bony butt.”
Willow smirked at the dark Slayer. “And the last time I saw you, there was a pile of sweaty guys on top of you.” She flashed a jagged grin. “Bet that brought back memories.”
Mayor Demon clucked reproachfully. “Ladies, please. We’re trying to conduct business here.” He turned to other-Giles. “Not that I’ve gotten much cooperation from you and your hooligans. I’m a believer in polite discourse, and you’ve all just been downright rude.”
“If the subject is politeness,” other-Giles said, “I might point out that we’ve been under an armistice for months, which you rescinded with this evening’s initiatives. Dual assaults, doubtless linked to others we contrived to avoid.”
“Okey-dokey,” Mayor Demon responded. “And then I point out that a minute ago we were talking about your ringing in the Apocalypse. If that isn’t copyright infringement, I don’t know what is.” He nodded toward Ethan Rayne, who had been squirming in the grip of the minion to whom Willow had flung him. “Your old school chum has been giving us an earful, believe you me.”
Other-Giles spoke very, very softly; dangerous, even. Oooh. “Ethan …?”
Rayne shrugged, or tried to. “Sorry, Ripper. I’d’ve broken under torture, we both know that, so why not save myself unnecessary discomfort?”
“I trusted you,” other-Giles answered, his expression hard. “Your past actions aside, I thought you at least had a sufficient grasp of the wider issues to recognize all that was at stake here, and to behave with some responsibility.”
Rayne gave him a rather wan smile. “Out of my hands now, I’m afraid.”
“In that, if in nothing else, we are in agreement.” Other-Giles looked to Mayor Demon with stony eyes. “As you know of my intended course of action, you must know as well the reasons behind it. While I’ve no particular interest in justifying my motives to the likes of you, surely you recognize that such an amoral and self-serving individual as my ‘old school chum’ —” (a curl of the lip) “— would hardly aid in facilitating his own destruction unless there were indisputably good cause.”
Mayor Demon chuckled. “Actually, it looks like he’s been working on a spell-sequence to trade places with his other-universe counterpart. Can’t be done, I’m afraid: etheric dissonance, irreconcilable affinities, all sorts of technical details. But at least he has the right idea, which is to find some way to survive the meltdown you’re so set on triggering. I thought it was you and yours who were into the ‘never say die’ business.”
“I’ve already investigated every acceptable alternative,” other-Giles replied. “Even if such a substitution as you say Ethan was attempting were possible, I wouldn’t trade someone else’s life for my own.” He indicated the other White Hats with a curt gesture. “None of us would.”
“Your funeral,” Mayor Demon said with a shrug. “But that doesn’t mean you have to drag the rest of us down with you. According to Ethan, here, Willow Anne and I don’t exist in this other reality, and she’s already made one crosstime jump. There’s nothing to stop us from switching over —”
“No,” other-Giles said. That fast, that flat.
Mayor Demon’s smile lost some of its congeniality. “We’re not just talking about jumping ship, Mr. Giles. I know a thing or two about sorcery; with you here and us over there, working together, it might be possible for us to stabilize and balance the two realities. Save them both.”
“No,” other-Giles repeated. “First, it can’t be done. This timeline has become more and more perilously overextended for what must have been years; any attempt to shore it up will only precipitate the destruction of its stronger parent. Second, I don’t trust you; if we did in fact transport you, I see nothing to prevent you from writing us off and going your merry way.” He regarded them with open loathing. “And third, I doubt that even the survival of our own reality would be worth loosing the two of you on a world now happily rid of you both.”
A kind of stillness settled over Mayor Demon, and Willow wondered if it was visible to the human eyes of the White Hats. She licked her lips; fun times comin’. “Well, that’s just darn ungracious,” MD was saying; and yes, she could tell by their sudden alertness that they could hear the difference in his voice. “So it’s like that, is it? I come to you with a good-faith offer of cooperation, and you reject it out of hand.”
“Are you surprised?” other-Giles said. “Did you truly believe we would even consider such a cynical and transparent proposal?”
“Not really, no,” Mayor Demon said. His chuckle was as affable and reassuring as the skirr! of a buzz-saw. “But it got us past the little spell barrier you set up. Now, Willow Anne.” And as he pulled the gold statuette from beneath his coat and began to speak the words of the incantation, Willow rammed the arrow through the heart of the girl beneath her, and shouted the command to attack.
A human with a stake facing a vampire was like a man with a knife fighting a leopard: he could win, but the smart money was on the leopard. These were no ordinary humans — two were Slayers, and the others had learned to provide supporting fire from the sidelines while their supernatural cohorts carried the brunt of the action — but then, Willow was no ordinary vampire. Besides, they didn’t have to win, only to keep the breathers busy while Mayor Demon finished unwrapping their little surprise package.
Willow was on her feet even as she drove the arrow home, and Faith was coming straight for her but this wasn’t the time for it, she darted behind two of the minions and feinted at other-Willow. The girl was so pale they looked more alike than ever (except for the haircut, that was just sickening), but her fear didn’t stop her from bringing the crossbow around. Willow did a round-off to take her out of the line of fire and slammed a kick into Wussley’s hip (oh, pooh, she’d been aiming to break ribs with that one, but the Watcher went down anyhow), and behind her she heard Mayor Demon’s voice turn into a liquid choking, he’d taken an arrow in the throat from other-Xander and his damned speargun! She hurled herself at that taunting face, so familiar and once-cherished and weak now, smashed aside the flimsy weapon and drew back to take out his own throat with a sweep of her nails, and only at the last instant twisted away from a crossbow snap-shot by another of the White Hats, the short grunge-punker with the ridiculous hair.
Okay, things were getting out of hand here. She snatched up a book and winged it at him, didn’t wait to see if it struck, she was already seeking another target. There, the smaller Slayer was occupied by a minion swinging a chair, she had lost the sword but thrust between the rungs of the chair with one of those stakes she always seemed to have handy, and Willow leaped for her as the minion disintegrated. She’d been wanting a taste of this one, she struck the stake from the girl’s hand and then they were face-to-face, trading a flurry of punches, blocks, kicks — this was glorious, this was perfect, they were fighting with the same style! — and then the tiny blonde allowed a punch to slide through, took it without flinching, and nailed Willow dead solid center before she could load for a follow-up attack.
She flew backward, hitting one of the tables and flipping over it in an involuntary somersault. She came up, demon-face out and thoroughly pissed, and this time she was in no mood to dodge when she saw Faith coming for her again. She deflected a jab from the pointed staff, trapped it momentarily in the crook of her arm, and with her free hand she powered a palm-heel strike straight into the taller girl’s face. Faith staggered, swinging blindly with the staff … and then with surreal suddenness they had changed partners, another minion grabbing Faith with a roar while a charging body slammed into Willow from behind.
She went down, twisting and lashing out with a booted foot, and it was the rabbit, why the hell wasn’t she dead? The idiot girl swarmed atop her, babbling incoherent curses, and Willow cut loose with everything she had: fists, elbows, knees, head-butts, smashing at any vulnerable area with every ounce of her strength and cunning and vicious fury. It wasn’t working, Harmony shrieked and snarled and yelped at every blow but she kept on coming and her own hits, inept as they were, were beginning to exact a toll. Willow caught a wrist, jerked the girl around and cranked on a sleeper-hold, grinding it in desperately as she felt her assailant finally begin to falter …
The library wasn’t especially small, but it was still an enclosed space, and within those walls the sound was like a bomb blast. Willow actually felt the skin on her face stretched back by the concussion wave; bookshelves tumbled like dominoes at the upper level, and the single window blew out, glass spraying with a sound her ringing ears couldn’t register. She rocked back, numb, the slack body of the rabbit sprawled atop her, and struggled to collect her wits. Had the White Hats managed to sneak in some kind of detonation spell …?
No. In the space where they had fought, the minions were gone; all but one, and he was semi-conscious and tangled in the fragments of a broken table. The White Hats, too, had been slammed off their feet, so that the only ones now standing in the room were Mayor Demon — throat healed, hair unmussed, even his damned coat was straight! — and a thin, birdlike middle-aged woman with dark reddish hair and seething eyes.
“Steady there,” Mayor Demon was saying to the woman. “You’ll probably be disoriented for a few seconds, we discussed this during those facilitated telepathy sessions. Just stand for a moment and let it pass.” His smile would have done credit to a mako shark. “Then the festivities can really begin.”
The blonde Slayer was the first to recover, diving for the dark-haired woman with her Mallrat-Barbie face set in a glower of determination. Mayor Demon barked a warning, and the girl was flung back as yellow-orange light erupted from the woman’s raised hand. “There,” he said, beaming with satisfaction. “You see, Catherine? It’s just as I told you: nothing has changed, they’re still ready to attack anyone outside their little cabal who has any kind of power. They’re the ones who imprisoned you, they’re the ones who exploited and betrayed our Amy …” His pointing finger speared at the other Slayer, delectable Faith, who had been trying to stealthily gather herself for a leap of her own. “And there is the one who killed her, gutted her like a trout when she refused to let them control her any longer!”
Willow propped herself up on an elbow, not bothering to shove the rabbit off her. (Made a nice, lumpy blanket, actually.) Things were about to heat up, and for once she wouldn’t be doing all the fighting. Fun was fun — and it had been fun — but you had to pace your pleasures or they’d start to pall on you; besides, she might miss some of the savory details if she was jumping around in the middle of it.
Some of the White Hats had pulled themselves together while Mayor Demon was tuning up the newcomer, and as Faith sprang at her the grunge-punker loosed another bolt from his crossbow, while other-Xander looped a single-bladed battle axe at the woman with an overhand heave. The woman — Catherine — threw up both hands, and the air vibrated with a jolt of invisible force; the crossbow bolt flared and vanished in a streak of smoke, the axe veered away as if on rails, and Faith was smacked backward into the midst of her colleagues.
“Three and a half years,” Catherine said with acid intensity; her voice was scratchy, and the intonations were subtly off, but the passion and meaning were impossible to mistake. “Couldn’t move, couldn’t feel, couldn’t beg for help or release, couldn’t even look away from the endless parade of empty-headed adolescents passing by in front of me.” Her hands were glowing now, and she moved them, palms up, as if testing the heft of unseen objects. “But I was never as helpless as they believed. I could think, and I could plan. Oh, yes, I could plan.” She turned to the man beside her. “Can you even begin to imagine the kind of plans someone would make over more than three years of frozen confinement?”
Mayor Demon gave her a tut-tut expression and said, “Ahm, Catherine, I wouldn’t dream of trying to tell you what to do, but …” He gestured at the White Hats, back on their feet and readying weapons. “I’ve learned from experience that it’s never wise to give these people a chance to develop a strategy.”
“You’re right,” Catherine said. The energies she held had brightened and grown to the point where it was uncomfortable to look at them, and she stretched and shaped them with matter-of-fact adroitness. “It’s time to do what I came here to do.” And she raised her hands and loosed a silent, shattering blast of cold fire.
In the eighteen months they had worked together, off and on, Willow had never seen Mayor Richard Wilkins look surprised. She saw it now, in the timeless instant before he was torn from existence by that torrent of searing light. In the abrupt, shocked silence that followed, Catherine stared at the vacant space where he had stood, and spat, “That was for my daughter, you megalomaniacal prick.”
Willow lay unmoving, suddenly glad she hadn’t called any attention to herself, and watched the woman turn back to face the White Hats … who appeared, in fact, to be just as stunned as Willow was. “Did he think I wouldn’t know?” Catherine demanded of them. “Did he think I just stood there for three and a half years? I could see, and I could hear, and your mind gets very sharp when you have nothing to do but think.” She looked from one to another of them, not so much seeking an answer as daring them to offer one. “My mind was free,” she went on, “and I could still feel the forces running through this town, and when Amy started using my power, I was able to tap into it, and watch things happen through her eyes.”
The single surviving minion struggled to his feet, staggering, his eyes still only half-focused; once again the silent flame leapt from Catherine’s hands, and he was gone before the scream could form in his throat. She seemed hardly to have noticed; she began to pace, and as she passed the double doors Willow saw that one of them was ajar. Ethan Rayne was nowhere in sight, she realized, and knew with gut-level certainty that he had seized his chance to flee during the second clash between White Hats and Black. Catherine was talking again. “I watched my scatter-brained daughter fall in with your group, and I watched it all turn sour. There was a time when I wanted to kill her myself, but that doesn’t mean I enjoyed seeing that grinning snake seduce her with flattery and misdirection, use her own jealousy and insecurity to turn her into one of his tools …”
Without warning she turned toward where Willow lay, and the hidden vampiress truly felt her blood run cold as Catherine added ominously, “And don’t think I’ve forgotten your part in it all, you undead bitch-dyke sleazepot —!”
Willow threw Harmony off her and bolted for the door, only to bounce back as a wave of power slammed it ahead of her. She was in the open, there was nowhere to run and no weapon to use and no time left, the woman’s hands were pulsing again with that unrelenting fire. Willow looked to the watching White Hats and said in exasperation, “Oh, fu–”
And then the light took her.
Catherine the Great turned back to the little huddle of people in front of the main desk, and lowered her hands. “You used to keep a percolator back in that office there,” she said conversationally. “I hope you have a pot going right now, because after three years I would just kill for a good hot cup of coffee.”
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