"So," Xander began a few minutes after he'd entered Giles' apartment. "Anything new going on with the vampire population of Sunnydale?"

"None," Giles said. He sat down heavily on the couch. "Oz is having problems, however."

"He called? So where is he now?"

"Roswell, New Mexico," the Watcher replied. "He'll be coming back here in a few days to help with moving everything."

Xander glanced around the living room. It was littered with opened and unopened cardboard boxes. Without any other relatives that would take custody of her, Giles had become Dawn's legal guardian. The boxes were full of all of her things that she wanted to keep. She was moving into Giles' guest bedroom. If Dawn had wanted to stay in the Summers' house and Giles had enough money, they would have stayed in the large house on Rodello drive.

Neither man said a word for a long time as they thought about the past year. Too much had happened that year. Not only did Joyce Summers die, but her daughter, Buffy, did, too. Buffy Summers, the vampire slayer. Everyone knew she would die sometime. Ever Slayer has at a young age. They never expected it to happen that soon, though, or in that way.

Dawn was taking it the hardest. Her sister and her mother had both died in only a few months. The closest relative she had right now was his father, who was off somewhere in Spain with his secretary and out of reach.

"Has the council found the next Slayer?" Xander asked.

Giles shook his head as he took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "No. She could be anywhere and no one knows where."

The door opened again, interrupting them. Both men turned to see Willow stroll in. She didn't look too happy, either.

"I'm worried about Oz," she said. "I mean, first he says there are some vampires in Roswell that he has to take care of, then he asks me to look in the Roswell hotels for this guy, and he won't say why." She plopped down on the couch next to Giles.

"Who?" Giles asked.

"Valence Hope," the young witch answered. "I couldn't find him in the hotels, so I checked for other things-passports, airplane tickets, police and FBI records. I couldn't find him anywhere, so I think it was just an alias. I've already told Oz that."

"He wouldn't tell you why he was looking for him?"

"No!" Willow threw her hands up in frustration and frowned.

Giles got up, walked around a few boxes, and picked up a book. "What did he look like?"

Willow gave him Oz's description of Valence. "You think he could be associated with those vampires, G-man?" Xander asked.

"Doesn’t hurt to check." Holding the book open in his hands, Giles grabbed a few others and came back to the couch. He handed a few to Willow and Xander.

Xander opened the first tome up. The first page had a rather sickening mural of a Fyarl demon killing its prey. He quickly turned the page and sighed. "Another night of research and ordered-in pizza."

"Yes, get some pepperoni this time when you call them," Giles suggested, still not looking up from his book. "And call Tara and Anya over."

"What about Dawn? Where is she?" Xander asked.

"She's spending the night at a friends' house," Giles replied. "Since she is no longer in danger, I thought that she should be around friends to help…smooth everything over. And I figured it wouldn't hurt for her to get out a little."

Willow and Xander looked at him, then at each other. "Giles knows what getting out of the house means," Xander said, shocked.

"Scary," Willow agreed.

Giles gave both of them looks before returning to his book. Xander and Willow exchanged smiles before Xander picked up the phone to call Tara, Anya, and the pizza place. It would be a long night of skimming through ancient books. They needed the distraction with everything that had been going on.

*****

Oz reported what Willow told him. "Damn," Michael said. "He could be anywhere, and we wouldn't know it."

"Well, until he shows up, we've got other problems," Max said.

"I've got some weapons in my van," Oz offered. When they looked at him, he shrugged. "I do this all the time, remember?"

They went to his parked van and got an axe for Kyle and a short sword for Oz. Max and Michael would use their powers.

They went back to the alley on the right side of the Crashdown. When they got there, they saw the remains of the two hellhounds. "Woah," Kyle said, stepping around the burnt one. "You aliens can really be handy in any situation, huh?" Michael gave him a look.

Oz sniffed the air. His nose detected the usual alley smells, the dead hellhounds, the human and aliens with him in the alley, and something else. "My nose is picking up this really odd scent coming from both of the hounds. Like the smell I got when Michael used his powers on that hellhound."

"Cadmium-X?" Max asked.

"What's that?" Oz asked.

"It's…an isotope of cadmium. It's created whenever we use our powers."

Oz nodded. "Yeah, I think that's it."

"If that's true, then an alien was controlling those hounds," Kyle deduced.

"It's gotta be Valence Hope," Michael said.

"We don't know that for sure," Max countered.

"Yeah, but he's the only Skin in town right now that we know of. He's our only lead."

"Yeah, but how are we supposed to find him?" Kyle asked.

Oz looked around, sniffing again. "That may be easier than we thought."

"You smell him?" Michael asked. Hopefully, they could get this over with quickly. He hated not knowing who to trust or when not to look over his shoulder. He just wanted to kill the Skin and the vampires and hellhounds and be done with the problem.

Oz frowned. "I did for a minute, but it disappeared after that."

"Do you know what direction it came from?" Max asked.

Oz shook his head. "No. It was just there one minute and gone the next."

"Maybe Hope wants you to think that," Kyle suggested.

Max thought about that. "You mean he could have psychic powers like Tess?"

Kyle nodded. "Yeah, I think so."

"If that's true, he should do that again," Oz surmised.

"One of them attacked us from the roof," Michael said. He motioned to the fire escape. "We should check it out."

They walked up the stairs to the roof. When they passed the second story, Max glanced inside the Parker household. He was glad that they weren't at home. He wasn't sure he could have explained what they were doing. It was bad enough when he showed up with a mariachi band last year.

When they reached the roof, Max looked around. Two chimneys from the Crashdown's and the Parkers' kitchens were on the left. The air conditioning system and a satellite dish were also stuck to the roof. He couldn't see anything out of the ordinary.

"What the-?" Michael said.

"Woah," Kyle said.

Max turned in their direction and looked beyond them. "What is that?"

A swirling, purple bruise-colored portal stood in the air. Inside the portal, they could see a gray horizon and not much else.

"The Ghost Roads," Oz said.

"The what?" Max asked, looking over at the werewolf.

"It's where the dead go to after they die," Oz said. "Then they either move on to heaven or hell, or they wonder the ghost roads forever."

"Wait a minute," Kyle said. "You're saying we're gonna go there when we die?"

"Well, I know you will. Don't know if aliens or werewolves are sent there." Kyle looked pretty spooked by that idea, so Oz changed the subject. "Those hellhounds must have come through the roads from hell and landed here. But only someone practicing magic could open the portal in the first place."

"Could more come through?" Max asked.

Oz nodded. "Yeah. I should call Willow. She'd closed a bunch of these before. She can tell us how to do it." He started back over to the fire escape.

"Woah-" Kyle began, stopping him. "Willow? Your hacker friend? She casts spells, too?"

Oz nodded and smiled, thinking of her. "Yeah, she's Wiccan, too."

Max was having trouble taking all of this in. Not only werewolves and hellhounds were real, but heaven and hell were, too? He wasn't sure if he believed that, but he knew Oz knew the most about this sort of thing and that they should definitely close the portal.

"Let's go, then," he said.

*****

Anya and Tara arrived at Giles' place fifteen minutes after Xander called them. Anya sat down in the chair next to Xander and Tara sat on the couch between Giles and Willow.

"So, what's the what?" Anya asked, cheerful. She was glad they had something to do. Everyone had been down lately because of Buffy's death. Still new to the human emotions that came with mortality, Anya wasn't sure how to handle it or her own grief, so she was glad that things could be normal again.

Giles took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes, taking a break from looking through a history book written in old German. "Oz called," he answered. "He's in Roswell, New Mexico, and is taking care of some vampires. He also asked Willow to look up a Valence Hope, but wouldn't explain why."

When he said that name, she froze. "Valence Hope?" she repeated.

"Honey, do you know him?" Xander asked, concerned and surprised. His fiancé's past life as a vengeance demon came up often in conversation, but the people she met back then didn't. Concerned, he took her hand and squeezed. She was so nervous, he wasn't sure if that she noticed the gesture.

She nodded. "I met Valence thirty years ago," she said. "He was a level two mage, but he was ambitious and wanted power. I knew him for only two years, but he got up to level six in that much time and kept going. If he's still alive, he could be very powerful. Too powerful. If Oz has run into him, Valence will take him down easily."

Willow got worried. "Oh, God. We have to help him."

"Go to Roswell?" Xander asked.

"The Council can cover the cost of plane tickets," Giles offered. "This is serious, and Oz needs all the help we can give him."

Just then, the phone rang. Willow, the closest one to it, picked it up. "Hello, Giles' residence." Then she sat up straight. "Oz? Where are you? Look, you've need to know something about Valence Hope. Anya's met him before."

On the other end, Oz sat in the Crashdown's break room with the rest of the Roswell gang. "Anya? When?"

He listened as Willow told him what they found out. "Damn," Oz said. "That doesn't make sense."

Both Willow and the people in the room with him were confused. "What? What doesn’t make sense?" Liz asked at the same time Willow said, "What do you mean, Oz?"

He didn't answer either of them, because at that moment, his nose picked up a large dose of cadmium-x and hellhound.

"The hellhounds are back," he told the Roswell gang.

"What?" Michael said, standing up with the others. "Where?"

Just then, they heard a scream coming from the front room of the restaurant. More screams followed it, along with several growls.

A minute later, something banged against the closed break room door, leaving behind a dent. Max and Liz, who were closest to the door, got in position. Liz held one of Oz's battleaxes up while Max held his palm up, ready to create a shield.

A minute later, the door burst off its hinges and slammed to the ground.

"Oz? Oz!" Willow cried into the phone. She could hear sounds of a struggle.

"What? What's going on, Willow?" Tara asked.

"He's being attacked," Willow said, worried. "We've gotta get to Roswell now."

"How? It'll take us several hours to get there." Xander said. Then he remembered something. "Unless-"

"The Ghost Roads," Willow finished.

A hellhound landed on top of the door. It growled at them and pounced. Max created a shield and it slammed into it.

Two more hellhounds appeared behind it. They snarled at Max's shield and rammed into it repeatedly.

"Max, keep them from going away so they don't hurt anyone!" Liz said.

"I can't. My powers don't work that way."

"Your shield can't stay up forever," Michael pointed out. He looked around. "Everyone ready?"

Suddenly, a large bruise-colored portal formed in the air behind Liz. "Liz, look out!" Maria called out.

Michael, Maria, Kyle, and Oz ran over to it. Maria pulled Liz over to the other end of the room.

The first thing to come out of the portal was another hellhound. Michael blasted it and it fell to the floor, dead. Then, two more figures, both vampires, appeared. They leaped out at them. One knocked Michael to the ground, while the other headed for Oz. Oz beheaded it easily.

"Michael!" Kyle said. He brought his sword down and beheaded the vampire, and it exploded into dust, making Michael cough.

The hellhounds struck Max's shield again. "I can't keep this up much longer," he warned.

"You won't have to," a voice suddenly said.

All of them turned to see another figure step out of the portal. Oz recognized him immediately. "Valence Hope."

Valence raised his hand and began to chant. Suddenly, Max collapsed in pain, loosing control of the shield.

"Max!" Liz cried. She took a step toward him, or tried; somehow, she was stuck in place. Valence had cast a spell to keep her from moving.

The hellhounds stepped into the room but didn't attack. Michael, Kyle, Oz, and Maria glanced back and forth from them to Valence. "Why aren't they attacking?" Maria asked, looking worriedly at the hellhounds. Valence spoke more words in Latin, and then she and Kyle froze like Liz. "Maria!" Michael said, shocked.

Oz was confused. Unlike the day before, this man didn't smell at all like a Skin, but like a normal human being. "What are you? You're not a Skin."

"Actually, I am," Valence answered. "This just isn't my body."

Michael's eyes widened as the pieces slid into place. "You're possessing his body," he said. "Like the Summit."

"Very good, Rath. You're smarter than Nicholas gives you credit for."

"You possessed a mage's body," Oz said. "And somehow got a hold of his knowledge of magic." That was not good.

Michael slid his gaze from Oz to Valence, eyes wide. He didn't know how to fight a mage, but he had to try. He looked at Max, who lay unconscious on the floor, and Liz, Maria, and Kyle who were as still as statues. "Let them go."

"Sorry," Valence said. "Kivar wants all of the Royal Four, not just her highness Queen Ava. And the werewolf is for an associate of mine."

The hellhounds stepped closer to them and snarled for effect, ushering them toward the portal. Michael held his palm out to the nearest hellhound and his hand started glowing. Isabel did the same.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Valence warned. He spoke more words in Latin. Maria, Liz, and Kyle cried out in pain, but still couldn't move. "I can kill them with only a few syllables. Unless you want them to die, I suggest that you get Zan over there and come with me."

Michael, Isabel, and Oz glanced at each other, helpless. Reluctantly, Michael slung Max over his shoulder. Then the hellhounds ushered them through the portal.

After they had stopped through, the portal closed behind them. The battle-axes and swords lying on the ground dissolved.

A few seconds later, Maria, Liz, and Kyle were released from the freezing spell. They gasped and glanced around. "Michael?" Maria asked.

"Max!" Liz called.

"Isabel? Oz?" Kyle called also. No one answered them. "Where'd they go?"

"I don't know," Liz said. "It felt like I couldn't move, and I wasn't aware of anything else."

"Me, too," Maria said. Kyle nodded in agreement. Maria sighed in frustration and worry. Their friends were gone and they didn't know where to look. "That Valence guy is really starting to piss me off-"

Police officers ran into the room, guns drawn. "Freeze!" one of them said.

You just missed that, Maria thought, but held her hands up anyway. Kyle and Liz did, too.

Mr. Parker appeared behind them. "Liz?"

"Dad!" she answered.

"You know them?" the deputy asked.

"It's okay, deputies," he told them. They nodded and left to search the other rooms.

Mr. Parker glanced around the room and noticed the destruction. "Liz? Maria? Kyle? What happened?"

Maria, Kyle, and Liz looked at each other, not sure how to answer him.