Tribulations - Chapter 41

One moment the others were there--Giles was there--then Buffy could have sworn she did no more than blink and they were gone. The gray, dusty walls and floor hadn't changed. The jagged pillars still just hung there, looking neither supportive nor steady. The Hellmouth continued to throb menacingly, letting her know how much it hated her.

Her arms and legs were still raw and scraped where the vines had held her, but now the vines themselves hung loose and limp, as if they knew their job was done and they were taking a well-deserved break. Buffy still even felt the warmth and weight of Giles's body in her arms. Only she had no Giles. She hadn't let him loose, not even for a second, but he'd been taken from her anyway.

She sank down on a big chunk of concrete. "Giles?" she called, her voice sounding small and weak in that echoey place. Strangely enough, he didn't answer. Her brain tried to tell her that this was no big thing, that it would all come out right in the end, but at the moment she wanted some real proof. Optimism got you only so far--and in Sunnydale, that wasn't far at all.

"Giles?" she called again, and wasn't surprised at all by how desperate she sounded.

Dully, Buffy realized that a pair of doors stood over to her right, looking strangely identical to the way they'd looked before, in what she couldn't help but think of as real life. The left-hand door even sported the construction paper black cat Willow had taped over its glass on that fun-filled Halloween-of-the-living-costumes.

Buffy couldn't help herself: she got up and crossed to those innocent-looking library doors, the doors she'd bombed through a million times, demanding that Giles do something, fix something, explain something until it made sense.

The glass, when she touched it, felt completely ordinary. The paper cat felt just like paper--only the two-dimensional animal winked one yellow eye at her and said in a dry little papery voice, "Look at you hiding, Slayer. Don't you want to know what's out there?"

Buffy had a feeling that she didn't, not at all, but she pushed the door open a little anyway. Instantly, the heat of the summer night pushed in at her. The air filled with grunts, hisses, dull, hard blows--then Xander came flying in, bowling Buffy over so hard that they skidded halfway across the floor and fetched up against a particularly crumbly pillar. About thirty pounds of gravel and grit dumped onto their heads.

"Huh?" Buffy said. Her Slayer wit deserted her entirely, and Xander, out cold on top of her, seemed unnaturally heavy. She started trying to wriggle her way out from beneath him. Celeste was fighting vamps in the doorway, and even without counting, Buffy knew there were way too many for one--or even two people to handle.

"We--" Celeste blocked a blow with her forearm, kicked her opponent in a very tender area and with Perfect Hostesslike efficiency, slipped a sharp stake between his ribs. "Could use a little help, Buffy."

Buffy glanced quickly around the room, automatically casing the area for weapons. Good--Giles's sword had gotten left behind. Or maybe not so good, if he needed it and didn't have it. Not that, at the moment, she could do too much about his situation when she pretty much had her hands full here.

"This bites," she muttered, finally freeing herself from the tangle with Xander, who didn't look like he'd be waking up any time soon. With a big sense of, Oh no, not again, she jumped to her feet and grabbed sword's hilt, feeling the weapon's balance and weight with the ease of long practice. Sure, the blade was a little long for her, but she knew the edge would be sharp--Giles always kept his weapons in good repair.

God, but she missed him. Buffy could have sworn there had to be some cosmic force that took great pleasure in separating them just when she wanted him most. Maybe life wasn't meant to be fair, but this was ridiculous.

Still, duty called. And kept calling, like someone who got off on making prank phonecalls.

"Got your back!" Buffy yelled to Celeste.

"Appreciated," Celeste answered, all cool and Britishy. Buffy couldn't help but notice that Celeste was good. Actually, for a person without Slayer strength, she was amazing. Still, it scared her a little to have Celeste as her only backup, whatever her friend's training--regular people got hurt, they got tired, and when Celeste went down, she herself would be all on her lonesome. Now there was a fun thought.

Plus, with all she'd experienced--even taking into account the mayor's graduation party and Giles's Wild Magic night--Buffy had never seen so many vamps before in her life. She couldn't help but wonder where in hell they'd come from. Or how long they were going to keep coming.

Not that she liked the thought of dying under any circumstances, but the last thing on earth she wanted was for Giles to come back from wherever he'd vanished to and find her body. They deserved better. Both of them deserved better.

"Cut us a break, why don't you?" she muttered to no one in particular, expecting nothing from her request.

Not six feet away, a big vamp in a leather jacket lunged at Celeste, catching her off guard. Something silver glittered and Celeste went down, clutching at her throat, her brown eyes wide with shock and pain.

Not like Kendra, Buffy thought numbly. Please, no, not like Kendra.

She fought as hard as she'd ever fought in her life, trying to break through the mob around her and make it to Celeste's side. The tide pushed against her, bearing her in the opposite direction, out of the gray place and into the warm, perfumed air of the California night.

Distinctly, maddenly, Buffy heard the Hellmouth laughing.

"Dum de dum de dum," Maria del Ciello hummed to herself, studied her perfectly-manicured nails for a minute, then grinned at Melissa. "Wanna lay some bets? How long do you think this'll take?"

Melissa regarded the tidal wave of minions and out-of-towners breaking over the dark-haired boy--one of the Slayers friends--and a cool-looking woman she didn't know, but who looked awfully familiar. "Normally, I'd say about two minutes, but these guys aren't bad. For humans."

It was driving Maria crazy that the woman looked so familiar. Judging by her fighting style, she looked Council-trained--maybe she was a Watcher? If so, Maria didn't remember seeing her around the Compound--but her Handler must have been very proud of her accomplishments.

Or maybe they'd met somewhere. At a dinner-party or something. Maria's mind insisted on associating the woman with dinner parties, so that must have been it. Only it wasn't.

"Damn," she muttered.

Melissa gave her a questioning look.

"Nothing. I swear I know that chick from someplace, but I can't figure out where."

Melissa gave her another look. This one said, pretty clearly, "You're insane."

"It just bugs me. It's in my tip of the tongue memory." She gestured. "Hey, there goes the kid."

They both watched the dark-haired boy fly through the weird door-to-nowhere.

"You know, it's just curiosity, but I'm really wondering where that leads," Maria said. She rooted for the last cigarette in her pack, lit up and took a long drag.

"To the Hellmouth, naturally," Melissa said. "Can't you feel it?"

Maria shrugged.

"I wanna go there," Lisa said--whined, more like--when she joined them at long last.

Maria gave Lisa a look of her own. "Yeah? You want to? Be my guest."

"Don't you?" Lisa gave her that big-eyed goggle that, once upon a time, Maria had found winning. Now, she felt merely indifferent. Or annoyed. That particular expression made Lisa look like one of those sappy Precious Moments kids.

"Nah." Maria inhaled again, holding the smoke in her lungs. Damn, it tasted good. She'd been pleased as punch when she found out the effects of nicotine were just as wonderful after death as before. Plus, no one ever bugged you to quit.

"Okay." Now that she'd been called on it, Lisa seemed a little uneasy. She tugged on the hem of her micro-skirt and fiddled with her long, silky hair. "I'm going."

"Go," Maria told her.

"I am!" Lisa sounded grumpy, and she kept glancing back to see if Maria and Melissa would follow. Maria waved lazily, giving her a faux-encouraging smile. At last she'd climbed the small rise, reaching a point just outside the door, where she stood looking awkward and unsure of herself, like a thirteen-year-old waiting for a boy to ask her to dance. "C'mon, c'mon," Maria snarled under her breath. "Do something. Don't be such a sorry excuse for a Creature of the Night." Still, Lisa stood there, shifting from foot to foot, until she happened to catch the human's eye. Without hesitation, and in a single motion, the familiar-looking woman turned, thrust, and staked her right through the heart. Lisa made a very tidy-looking little cloud of dust.

"Got it!" Maria exclaimed. Maybe it was her total lack of a soul, but she didn't feel a bit upset about Lisa. Mostly she felt pretty happy about the sudden absence of that annoyance from her life.

"Got her, you mean? Did you intend for that to happen?" Melissa asked, sounding curious.

"Nope, I definitely meant 'it'--I just figured out how I know that woman." Maria laughed. "As for good ol' Lisa, she was wearing out her welcome." She grinned, knowing how spooky that must look, and relishing the knowledge.

"That's harsh," Melissa opined, not sounding particularly judgemental.

"It's the truth. Don't tell me you weren't feeling pretty much the same." Maria laughed again. "As for the woman, she's the Perfect Hostess. Who knew?"

Melissa gave her yet another look. She had quite a repertoire.

"The Perfect Hostess. On TV. Like Martha Stewart, only British. Everybody over there watches her."

"You don't say." Melissa didn't look particularly interested, or maybe she was hiding something. She was good at that, too. "Look, I'm feeling a little bit of an urge to get on up there myself."

"And do what?" Maria asked, but Melissa only shrugged. Somehow, it felt like a criticism, as if, by not feeling the same call, she'd failed some test of vampire street cred.

"Okay, then," she muttered. "But be careful."

Melissa glanced at her again, and this one was almost scary. Her pale green eyes caught the light strangely, sending a shiver up Maria's spine.

"Okay," she repeated. "I'll see ya."

Melissa just walked away, not hurrying, not paying any attention to the other vamps or to all the little piles of dust. Maria wondered what in hell she had in mind.

"Maria," a voice said behind her, sounding familiar but so changed it took her a minute to recognize the speaker.

Maria turned, favoring him with her most mocking smile. "Well, if it isn't poor widdle Wesley. Come back for some more abuse, sweetheart? I'm the one..." Her voice trailed off. Wesley didn't look the way she'd expected him to look, all crushed and shaking, like he'd been last time she saw him. He looked different, changed--or maybe not so changed from the way he'd been when she'd acknowledged him as her leader. She hadn't liked it, but she'd been afraid not to follow. Wesley's jaw was set, his blue eyes steely. Partly, he looked tough, but mostly he just looked as if he didn't have anything left to lose.

"Well, looky!" Maria said, putting on a brave front, even though Wesley's appearance--both the way he stared at her, as if she was something unpleasant that he'd read in one of his oldy, moldy books, and the fact that he was there at all--disturbed her in ways she couldn't entirely have put into words. "What's up, Wes? You find perfect happiness already?"

"No," Wesley answered quietly. "Far from it, Maria."

"I have to say, you don't look all soul-having." Maria wished she had another cigarette stashed somewhere: that would have bought her time, and given her something to do. She hated discovering that her hands were shaking. Shaking a lot, in fact.

"You look like us," she told him. "You look like a killer."

"Yes," Wesley answered, still not raising his voice. Listening to him was almost hypnotic. "Yes, I suppose that I do. I've you to thank for that, Maria."

Maria made a gesture of mocking dismissal. "It was nothing. Entirely my pleasure."

Wesley looked at her for a long time, and so intensely that, had Maria possessed a soul or any sort of conscience, she would have found herself squirming. Then, at least, he said, "I've something to show you, Maria."

"Do you?" Maria stepped forward: Wesley had sounded so serious, and so earnest, she couldn't help herself. And, anyway, what could he do to her? He bent down as if he meant to whisper some dire secret into her ear.

"You were a good person," he said, in that same soft, mesmerizing voice, "And I'm honestly sorry that this befell you."

Not until the stake crashed between her ribs did Maria realize she'd been had. He body went burning hot, and her last thought, before she exploded into dust, was that she'd died being the Wile E. Coyote to Wesley's Roadrunner.

She couldn't believe she'd been so stupid.