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Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.

Part III

An apartment is a trickier target than a house. Closer neighbors, fewer access points, less interior space (usually), so that the occupants are that much more likely to hear the sound of entry or the movements of the intruder. It really would have been better to wait until Monday … but Cordelia was here now, and she didn’t intend to leave until she either had what she’d come for, or satisfied herself that it wasn’t to be found.

Giles was not a naturally reckless man, and now had even more reason to be extra-cautious. She had to assume that he would have some alarms in place, maybe magical as well as electronic. Getting inside meant listening to her instincts, exercising compulsive care, being ready to abandon the whole thing and flee in an instant … and accepting that she wouldn’t be able to hide the fact that someone had broken in. Couldn’t avoid it, so plan around it, make sure all the angles are covered, and keep driving.

Cordelia removed the heavy backpack, and withdrew several items from the main compartment before hiding it in the shrubs next to Giles’ door. She laid out her materials, and set to work.

She pulled the rubber stopper from a glass bottle, and poured some of the contents into a plain glass bowl, then used a turkey baster (also glass, with a rubber bulb) to draw up the liquid. The bowl was necessary because she couldn’t have fit the baster (the only size she could find on short notice) inside the neck of the bottle. The bottle — and then the bowl, and now the baster — held sulfuric acid; she could have gotten the acid from any of several dozen chemical/ industrial supply warehouses (Sunnydale was rotten with them), but it had seemed simpler to just extract it from the battery cells of the four cars she and her mother together owned.

Willow would have been astonished at the knowledge underlying these preparations. Please: high-school royalty, nailing down all the popular arts while scorning the ‘nerd’ subjects? that was an image, crafted for a purpose, and part of the purpose had been to conceal some capabilities while spotlighting others. Once she had chosen to follow Angel into the secret war in Sunnydale (before she had ascended to Slayerhood, and long before he had descended into gleeful soulless serial killing), Cordelia had quietly begun schooling herself in whatever might help her in her new life. She could hot-wire a car, if the occasion demanded; she could pick locks, or set snares, or make some extremely nasty pepper-spray out of kitchen ingredients. She didn’t broadcast these talents, not even to her friends, having learned the value of being underestimated by potential adversaries (and she had seen just how quickly someone could go from trusted confidant to brutal enemy); all the same, it rankled occasionally that she was still widely regarded as a ditz even though she’d left the cheerleader lifestyle well behind her.

Glass and rubber would safely contain sulfuric acid. So would lead. Most anything else, it would eat clear through, sooner or later. Cordelia used the baster to apply the acid to the lower part of Giles’ front door, drawing a line of liquid to form a square across the lower panels.

The door was wood; metal would have taken a lot longer (too long, probably), and necessitated a different approach. Cordelia gave the acid half a minute to begin penetrating, then used a dagger to break the weakened wood fibers and open a deeper channel. She worked her way around the square, then applied more acid, then repeated the process. The dagger would have to be thrown away afterward (probably), but its use augmented the effectiveness of the acid, which in turn worked more quietly than the dagger alone would have done.

Yes, she could have picked the lock, but the door might be alarmed. So, she wouldn’t open the door at all … but that didn’t mean she couldn’t go through it.

She worked patiently, no hurry, holding her breath and using a swimmer’s goggles to protect her eyes from any fumes the process might be emitting. When she felt the dagger-point penetrate to the other side, she didn’t get overeager; she continued going over the remainder of the square until every part of it had been worked through, and then removed the detached square with rubber gloves, setting it behind the shrubs on the side opposite where she had stowed the backpack.

Details. All in the details. She put away her other supplies, pulled a ski mask over her head, replaced the rubber gloves with a thinner surgical pair, and waited, listening. Nothing from inside. From the backpack she pulled out three balls of crumpled paper (also done while wearing gloves, this was not a time for fingerprints), and tossed them through the opening and into the apartment, one at a time, twenty seconds between them, alert for any response from within. Two full minutes after the last one, still nothing. So, apparently no motion detectors.

Okay. Time for the plunge.

A rubber doormat over the acid-permeated lower edge of the opening, a quick crawl (being sure nothing touched the equally saturated sides and top), and Cordelia was inside. She removed the mat and secured it over the open gap in the door, using pre-cut strips of duct tape; now, any passersby would be less likely to notice the breach. Not that many people would be strolling past at this hour, or she wouldn’t have spent so much time on the stoop creating an entryway, but even that minor eventuality was now covered.

Having completed the last small measure of protective concealment, Cordelia stood inside the darkened apartment, attuning herself to the interior, letting the atmosphere settle into her senses. This also left her in a position to dive back outside at any moment … but by now Cordelia was fairly sure that any magical warning systems that might be active hadn’t been set to register the presence of the Slayer.

Two down, one to go. There was still the matter of Giles himself. Cordelia had inferred from overheard comments (and her own common sense) that Giles was no longer using the upstairs bedroom; he could’ve gotten a chair lift installed, she supposed, but even so it made better sense for him to set things up so his major activities took place on the ground floor. She didn’t know if he was a light sleeper, couldn’t know if he was one of those who could just feel an intruder within his personal space, and had no desire to test the limits. Telling herself she had all the time in the world, she began to move. Very, very, very slowly.

She took almost ten minutes to cross the living room, moving in imperceptible shifts of stance rather than steps. Progressive, deliberate relaxation had her almost in a Zen state: no tension, no anxiety, no urgency … and, more to the point, no quick breathing or nervous sweat, either of which could give her away at the worst possible moment. She let herself melt into her surroundings, ease at a glacial pace through the dark interior air, with no more to mark her passage than if she were a ghost.

At the stairs, still at a rate the unaided eye could scarcely have recognized as motion, she went down on hands and knees. Stairs tended to creak, that was just one of the facts of life, but you could minimize it by sticking to the outer part of each step, spreading out your weight, never putting very much into a single area and — of course — moving slowly and cautiously.

She reached the top with no noises that didn’t blend naturally into the settling sounds any structure made at night. Passage took close to half an hour. So far, excellent.

Encouraged, but still focused on the internal serenity that contributed to (she hoped) total unnoticeable-ness, Cordelia stayed prone, traveling along the upstairs hallway at a snail’s pace low-crawl. Upper floors creaked, too, and now was when she could least afford it. All the time in the world, she repeated to herself, and proceeded with the same care that had brought her successfully this far.

Ten further minutes, she was at the door of the unused study. One minute, lubricating the hinges and door knob with a tiny oil can — just in case — and another two to give the oil time to penetrate. Three minutes, turning the knob in precise fractions of an inch, waiting for the sound that might betray her. Two minutes, once the door eased open, to make her way through and noiselessly close it.

A Slayer could see in dim light almost as well as a vampire, perhaps better than some. There was no light in the abandoned study, however, and to attempt a search in the dark would have been to risk dislodging or knocking something over and making the noise she’d so far avoided. From a small hip-pack Cordelia removed a penlight, the operating end masked in five layers of gauze. The light that leaked out was barely enough to allow her to discern shapes in the room, even with a Slayer’s eyes, which should mean it wouldn’t be visible to anyone outside.

She started in the closet: saw immediately that the sweater wasn’t hanging there, and nonetheless inspected every article of clothing with a meticulous thoroughness once reserved for the use of a mascara brush, before moving on to the boxed items in the same closet. The sweater was the topmost item in the third box she opened, even with the multiply-obscured penlight she recognized the pattern instantly. She removed the sweater with steady hands, but her probing fingers found no familiar shape in the pocket her dream had shown her. She went through the rest of the box unhurriedly, one item at a time, then the rest of the boxes, then the rest of the closet.

Nothing. Cordelia carefully inspected the remainder of the room, then returned and went through the boxes in the closet again, taking her time, making sure she had investigated every inch, every space, every possible place the diskette might have slipped. She even inspected the interior of the closet, to see if there were any cracks or openings which might have allowed a small item to slide through, with no results.

There was no disk. In the first moments of finding the sweater with empty pockets, she had known it wouldn’t be there, but still she made absolutely certain. Weeks ago, Cordelia had overlooked a single detail, taken just one thing for granted under the necessity of moving quickly. As a result, Nancy had died, Giles was crippled, and Buffy had lain in deathless sleep ever since. (Not to mention Tucker quitting, Owen gradually drifting away, Xander hating her with searing bitterness, and the rest of the former Slay Friends treating her with stiff, sharply limited tolerance.) She had screwed up, and the cost of her mistake had been awful, and others had borne that cost. She would not, would not, repeat such an error if care and attention might avoid it.

All her emotions under a tight rein, she straightened, still moving with no haste and total control, turned off the penlight, and waited. Not moving, her breath coming relaxed and even, letting the darkness settle into her again. At last, when she judged that her night vision had fully returned, she went to the door, opened it as carefully as she had done on her entry, and eased out into the hall.

With her mission a failure, she allowed herself to move more quickly now. It wasn’t impatience or carelessness or the recklessness of anger and disappointment: the situation was different now, the imperatives had shifted, and she was acting appropriately to the altered circumstances. Before, the overriding need had been to remain undetected until she could find the disk. Now, the goal was to get out without being identified. Undetected would be even better, but the important part was out. She still wore the ski mask, if necessary she could take flight in an instant, smash through the weakened door and outdistance any likely pursuit. Not ideal, but — by this point in the proceedings — eminently acceptable. Even tempting.

She reached the door unchallenged, removed the rubber mat, and prepared to crawl out as she had crawled in. At the edge of departure, some of the heartsickness she had held away finally stabbed through her forceful detachment, and she stopped for a moment to fight back the sob she could feel building. As she regained control, her gaze came to rest on something beside the door, dimly outlined in the light filtering in through the opening she had made, distant street lamps providing barely enough reflected illumination to make out the shape.

The umbrella stand. The place where Jenny’s sweater had landed, when Drusilla tossed it carelessly inside.

Moving with fanatical calm, she reached inside, carefully, being sure to shift nothing that would clack or clatter. Inward, downward, slowly, meticulously, she wouldn’t let herself hope but she had to know …

… and the square shape of the diskette was there, flat against the bottom. So thin, so hidden, it was almost excusable that the investigating police had failed to find it. Cordelia withdrew her prize with fingers that did not tremble, and unhurriedly secured it inside the hip-pack. Then, placing the rubber mat to safeguard her exit as it had done with her entrance, she eased herself outside.

It was done. In, and out, and she had what she sought, after she had relinquished any hope of finding it.

She wasn’t finished yet, though. From the backpack, undisturbed behind the hedge, she took a pair of rain boots, big enough that she had no trouble pulling them on over her running shoes. Thus shod, she stepped deliberately into the moist earth in the newly-turned flower beds that bordered the sidewalk, bearing down to simulate greater weight; then, with the backpack settled firmly into place, she ran out into the darkness, moving at a swift, easy pace. After half a mile, she stopped to remove the rain boots, stowed them away, and continued on. Another three-quarters of a mile, and she reached her car. She locked the backpack into the trunk, slid into the driver’s seat, and pulled away, aiming for a location safely on the other side of Sunnydale.

She had made it. She had made it. Some snags, result not exactly according to plan, but she had made it. Now all that remained was to establish her alibi.

*                *               *

The graveyard patrol? in all truth, she didn’t really need it. Nobody had any earthly reason to think of her in connection with the burglary, and she’d covered herself thoroughly enough to divert any suspicion that might arise. By this time of night, she could plausibly be in bed, like a sane person.

Except that bed meant sleep. And sleep meant dreams.

So, patrol. Alibi. Being able to truthfully say she’d covered a section of town well distant from Giles’ apartment, and provide corroborating detail if asked, and — who knew? — maybe do some tension-relieving exercises that just happened to include imaginative killing.

Oh, for the days when her world had revolved around social in-fighting.

She didn’t expect to have any trouble finding action, and was quickly proven right. Probably a fifth of Sunnydale’s vampire population had been wiped out in the tri-locale confrontation that had left Buffy comatose and Giles paraplegic, and Spike had killed most of his remaining followers in a blind rage at their having survived when his Dark Princess had gone to dust. Cordelia had added to the reduction while she awaited news from the hospital, scouring every imaginable habitat and destroying all she found (along with various demons unlucky enough to be caught in the same net). In the weeks that followed, however, there had been an upsurge in the undead population: not just killing, but far more turnings than had been the norm even when the Master had been preparing to exit his prison. Somebody was building an army — maybe several someones — and there had been no shortage of tan-free opponents whenever the Slayer was in a mood for mayhem.

She found a group in one of the more recent additions to the cemetery, and attacked the moment she spotted them. Here to roll out the welcome wagon for new-rising recruits? doing the get-acquainted tour? just mellowing out to the whole non-living vibe? It didn’t matter, she was among them before they were fully aware of her presence, and it was on.

She broke the arm of the one nearest, plowing him from her path while she drove for the one most likely to give her trouble: tall, blond, muscled like a pro wrestler, hair hanging shoulder-length. She automatically gave him the mental tag of Thor, ducked below his arms to hook sledgehammer punches into his floating ribs, then propelled herself away from him with a kick that smashed his knee. He went down, letting out a scream way too shrill for a guy that large, Cordelia staked Broken-Arm and felled Scar with an elbow-strike to the temple. She spun to address the remaining two, she’d deal with them and then finish up with the crippled Thor —

— only he must have rolled as he fell, come up on his good leg, because his fist was an inch from her face and this was not going to feel good —

It wasn’t a blow from the mighty Mjölnir, but it was enough to lift her from her feet and drop her tumbling eight feet away. Even through the stunning impact (and the secondary indignity of bouncing off a headstone and landing on her perfectly-toned butt), she couldn’t mistake the sound of cartilage being forcibly separated from bone.

He had broken her nose. He had broken her nose.

She launched herself at him in an instant total rage, striking and tearing and mauling him with complete disregard for the others. In nearly a year as the new Chosen One, she’d taken her share of battle damage (the comment she’d made in that other universe, about being opened up with a crosscut saw? only a little exaggeration, the swipe hadn’t really penetrated her abdominal muscles), but never any visible facial injury that couldn’t be handled by a night of Slayer healing and artful use of cosmetics in the morning. This one, though, this would definitely leave a mark … as she was doing right now, on the offending Thor.

Even in full berserker mode, there was still a tiny part of her trying to sound a warning. She shut it out. Her opponent overtopped her by six inches and outweighed her by a hundred pounds, his strength and ferocity magnified by vampirism, and he never had a chance. His curses gave way to pained gasps, then moved through whimpers and into screams, the last one drowned out by her final shriek of fury as she ripped his head completely from his shoulders.

The sound was still echoing through the cemetery, and Thor’s ashes still sifting groundward, when a new voice broke the white-hot seal of her wrath. She might have missed a yell — or a gunshot — but somehow the very quietness of the words pierced her attention: “Got two. Others are running.”

Oh, damn.

Cordelia didn’t even look, she just took off, instinct carrying her after the surviving vampires before she had consciously registered the noises of their flight. Stakes, stakes … yes, there were still two in interior sheaths sewn into her jacket liner, which was good because the fugitives were separating, she dusted one with a hard-thrown stake at forty feet and ran down the last vampire. He turned to fight, hopeless but snarling defiance, and after killing him she returned without eagerness to the scene of the initial struggle.

Oz had reloaded the small crossbow, but that was just basic field tactics; he waited with characteristic tensionless imperturbability, and only a flicker of his eyes acknowledged Cordelia’s arrival. “How long were you there?” she asked him.

Shrug. “Showed up just as the big guy tagged you. Angled for a shot, but before I could aim steady you were all over him.” This time his eyebrow lifted an entire eighth of an inch. “Harsh.”

“He pissed me off.” Cordelia pressed her nose back into line, held it in place for a few seconds. Oh, yes, she was totally going to have raccoon eyes tomorrow. “I don’t like it when people mess with my face.”

Nod. “Saw that.”

Had Oz become even more terse, or was she just noticing it more lately? Cordelia didn’t know, and so she shook it away. “Okay, first question. You said you got two of them. Last time I looked, nobody was making double-barreled crossbows. How’d you manage two?”

His expression showed nothing, but she knew he had heard what she was admitting: she’d lost it a few minutes ago, completely lost it, blind to everything but the enemy directly in front of her. “They started setting up to jump you while you were busy with the big guy,” he said. “I only had a clear shot at one of them, so I dropped her. Then I charged the others before they could charge me.” Shrug. “Worked. They ran, must’ve thought I had friends with me.”

Cordelia frowned. “That still doesn’t explain —”

“One of ’em didn’t run,” Oz supplied. “I guess he figured I wasn’t strong enough to give him much of a fight.” Shrug. “He was right, so I didn’t even try to fight. I just staked him.”

There had to be more to it than that, but Cordelia had wearied of digging for details. “Okay, second question. You don’t patrol alone, but you’re here and you’re packing, which means you were looking for me. Why?”

Something lay behind those steady eyes, but there was no way of knowing what it might be. “Got a call. Somebody broke into Giles’ place. They spread the word, I was supposed to pass it to you.”

Cordelia had anticipated something like this, and already determined the appropriate response. “Broke in?” she exclaimed. “Who? Couldn’t have been vampires; demons, human minions, what? And how did Giles fight them off?”

“Not broke in liked kicked-down-the-door,” Oz corrected. “Broke in like quiet and sneaky. Never even woke him up, Giles said it could’ve been hours ago. He wanted to make sure nobody else had been hit. Their homes or, you know, selves.” Another miniscule tilt of an eyebrow. “You didn’t answer your phone, but Willow hacked the cell network to get a general location. I said I’d check.”

“I left my phone in the car,” Cordelia admitted. “I do that sometimes, it’s just so easy for it to get lost or smashed in a fight.” She considered. “So, are we all getting together to see if this is the start of something big?”

“Yeah,” Oz told her. “Not tonight, though. Tomorrow morning, ten-ish. Give us time for some sleep before we start brainstorming.” His gaze rested on her, revealing nothing. “Looks like you could really use it.”

“Oh, definitely,” Cordelia agreed. “I was about to call it a night anyhow. Sure, home and beddy-bye. I’ll get right on that.” Her voice sounded wrong, even to her own ears. Too sharp and brittle. And it wasn’t nerves doing it.

He let it pass, but she could feel his eyes on her as she made her exit. She shook it away. The laconic guitarist was getting more and more unsettling … but, right now, she had more serious problems to deal with.

Like sleep. And what came with it.
 

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