Chapter 24

Just when he'd thought he'd either die or go insane hanging upside down with all the blood pounding through his head, his body had apparently decided to go with the least of all evils, and make him black out instead.

When he woke up, two things had changed. No, make that three. One, he remembered his name again. Alexander. Harris. Alexander Harris. Or maybe, as far as he knew, Harris Alexander. Okay, so neither one was a bad name, as names went. He could have been named Karma or Moonshadow or Myron or something, so he probably should have found comfort in his not-too-bad name, and the fact that he remembered it.

And maybe he would have, it he hadn't also been aware of being strung up, his face sticky and crusty with drying blood, in bonds that had something of the texture and smell of well-chewed Bubblicious bubble gum. The strawberry kind.

As a kid, he'd once gotten mega-carsick after chewing a whole pack of strawberry Bubblicious, which meant the association wasn't exactly without an ick factor. In fact, just remembering that ten-plus-year-old incident still made him feel more than a little queasy.

Which he guessed should have been cause for rejoicing. That he wasn't born-out-of-a-vacuum-guy. Of the voidy kind, rather than the dirt-sucking. That he had a memory, an actual memory.

Only, why did it have to be that one?

He groaned. Out there, in the not-quite-so-dark-as-it-had-been dark, other people were groaning too. And snuffling. And crying. Which at least meant that--even though nobody seemed to be scoring high marks on the Happymeter--he wasn't completely alone in this place. Not yet, anyway. Also, for another big plus, he was now hung right-side-up instead of the opposite, a big improvement anyway you looked at it, even if he did still have the mother of all migraines.

Ugh. Bubblicious.

In the not-too-distant distance something flickered, a ripple of blue-green-violet, an iridescent shimmer. His breath caught in his throat: it was beautiful, in a way he'd never expected anything to be. Like the Northern Lights, if he'd actually ever seen the Northern Lights. Deeper, though. The colors so intense he couldn't look away, even when it started to feel like the back of his eyeballs were burning.

Next to him, a voice sighed out words he couldn't understand. The wonderful colors flickered again, shrinking until they'd pulled in close to two thin little strips, one on either side of a long, segmented body blacker than all the darkness around them. Long, skinny shadows like bent sticks waved languidly in the air, reminding him of those shadow puppet things that hung on Giles's wall.

Oh. Another memory. That one hurt, worse than anything physical ever could, a big old knife of shame and guilt and loneliness stabbing through his body. From somewhere deep in his subconscious, a calm, quiet, un-American voice spoke to him, calling him something. Calling him Xander. Calling him son.

Was that his dad? Had he let something terrible happen to his dad? Only, the image connected with that particular word brought to him only a flash of bitterness, and a taste in the back of his throat like ashes and bile.

This he knew: he'd screwed up. He'd screwed up beyond bigtime, and whatever was happening to him now was no more than he deserved.

It came to him--not his unforgivable mistake, which still had to definitely be filed under the mystery section--but the fact that the slow-moving sticks weren't sticks. They were legs. The shimmering colors that had captivated and burned him were the thing's wings, like the wings of some mammoth, exotic butterfly.

If Xander hadn't been so thoroughly wigginsed, he would have laughed. Bugs again, he thought. It just had to be bugs.

He couldn't for all the world have said why the idea struck him simultaneously as so humorous and so horrible.

The little bit of extra light shone out from those furled butterfly wings, and the man hanging beside him, in his very own giant Bubblicious cocoon, was laughing now: not in any way that said the guy found the situation remotely funny; more as if it was the only reaction hia body could come up with as an alternative to screaming his lungs out as Mothra came closer and closer, as it touched him, bathing his skin with a purple glow like the world's creepiest blacklight.

The monster's's front limbs moved delicately, precisely, until they gripped the man's skull between their pointy tips. Faceted eyes, like sapphires lit from behind by low-wattage bulbs peered down into his face, as if the world's biggest butterfly might be slightly nearsighted.

Xander realized he'd started screaming inside his own head, despite his own personal voice of reason telling him, soothingly, that he had nothing to fear. Butterflies drank nectar, right? And, sweaty and unwashed as he was after his recent adventures, he had to say he was pretty much as non-nectarlike as could be.

Okay, he could accept that. Right up to the moment the insect's head reared back and a long tube-thing unrolled neatly from between and slightly down from its eyes, just like one of those noisemakers from a kid's birthday party, only glittery black. Its end angled like the tip of a syringe.

Nectar, Xander thought desperately, choking back his screams. Nectar.

When the tip pressed against the guy's chest, his eyes bulged and his face, middle-aged at best, got all young and scared looking, his opening up around a "NO!" that he never got the chance to say.

The lights flickered out, and a sound like the world's noisiest, rudest kid sucking an extra-thick shake through a slightly-too-narrow straw filled up the darkest darkness Xander had ever seen.

Wesley had no idea what time of the night--or day, for that matter; his sense of time had quite escaped him--it might be. Perhaps it was near dawn. Past dawn, even, for by his bedside he spied Em fast asleep in one of the purgatorial visitor's chairs, a nimbus of greenish-gold light aflame round her glorious auburn hair.

She looked worn, his beloved, and wearied, though not in any way aged, never less than exquisite. As usual, the beauty and strength of her features filled Wesley with something so entirely powerful he'd no ability to express it by word or gesture.

With a certain awkwardness, fighting the urge to use his missing hand, as had been his wont, to lever his body upright, Wesley shifted position in the bed, the better to gaze upon his love.

She'd be cross with him, perhaps even furious, and it might well have been that in this she was entirely right and he was wrong. After all, despite his studies, the world of magic in which Em lived must remain as foreign to him as life amongst the ancient Etruscans. Nothing could change that fact.

There were, however, degrees of wrongness. He owed a debt, and Wesley had learned, quite young--though not from his father; he couldn't actually think of a time when his father, or his uncle, or any other member of his family had instilled within him anything good, or noble, or true--that a gentleman always pays his debts. It was a simple as this: he owed Giles a life, and he could not bring himself, despite what Emmy thought, not matter what plans she'd made, to quit Sunnydale until he'd gone some direction toward repaying what he owed.

Their personal plans would have to wait. She must understand that.

"You," Moira's voice came from beside him, sending simultaneous bursts of fear and joy up Wesley's spine, "Are looking quite fierce this morning, my love."

"Am I?" Wesley replied, surprised by the blandness in his own tone. "Is it?"

"And speaking to me in a Watcher's voice." Rising with some stiffness, Em stooped down to kiss him softly, sweetly, her strong yet tender hand straying to his shoulder. She maintained that touch, even as her lips pulled away from his.

Wesley forced his eyes to meet hers: to his surprise, Moira looked neither angry, nor wary; her face displayed merely a species of rather sad amusement.

"Am I correct in assuming that you're soon to give me a rousing speech on the subject of honour and duty?" Em asked him lightly, in a tone that quite matched her expression.

"Let's go home," Wesley said to her suddenly. "To our cottage, I mean. There's no real reason for me to linger here in hospital."

Moira's green eyes narrowed, going unreadable. "I should hardly have thought that place would bring pleasant associations, love."

"There's...that is, after I'd regained my soul, all I could think of..." Wesley reached to touch Em's cheek, drawing a fingertip along the firm line of her jaw. "All I could think of was lying beneath our apple tree with my head in your lap, gazing up into your face."

"My upside-down face," Moira corrected, but she laughed softly before turning from him, planting herself before the half-lighted window with her arms crossed behind her back. It was a habit of Em's, when she was thinking, and always looked awkward to Wesley, vaguely impossible and endearing. "I'm not honourable, you know," she said at last. "Not as you are, love. I was loyal, once. In my way."

"Always," Wesley told her, not exactly sure what Em might be saying.

Moira sighed, gazing out onto the uninspiring vista of aerials, air conditioning units and tarmac that was the roof next door.

"I believe we're meant to stay," he said. "I don't believe our work's completed here. Not just yet. Soon enough, love, we'll go home to England. To stay, most likely. I rather feel I've had enough of California.

Moira laughed again, neither bitterly nor with, exactly, an excess of joy, but she answered him, "You're no longer content to allow me to Handle you, are you, Wesley?"

He smiled back at her, though Em could not see. "Not in that manner, at least," he said, then blushed--he could see Moira shaking her head. As entendres went, his would have to be called more single than double, but even a weak jest, at the moment, seemed of greater appropriateness than somber declarations. "You'd soon lose interest in me if I was," Wesley added, half-surprised by his own bluntness. "You need me to be your equal; you'd hardly be satisfied, otherwise."

"True," Moira responded, turning back to him. Wesley was sorry to see the weariness return to her face. "True enough."

"Come here, love," he said to her, softly, roughly, and when she did, pulled her close with both arms, holding her against his chest as he rubbed her strong shoulders with his remaining hand.

"It will be all right," he murmured, close to her, so close, her cheek warm against his and a little moist, as if she'd been weeping, his lips brushing softly against her ear. "It will be all right, my love. You'll see. We're together now."

He had the night, and an open-topped car and his plans. Oh, a thousand plans. A million plans, even, all of them so wonderful he couldn't help but grin. None of Angel's pathetic, tight-arsed, tentative smiles, either, but his very own grin, the one he knew made him devilish handsome, that always made the ladies look twice.

And was it his fault if that second glance invariably proved fatal?

Oh, all right, he had to admit it was. Entirely his fault. Which was, of course, exactly the way he liked it.

He sang as he drove, a little ditty from the last century, or maybe the one before. He couldn't remember exactly. Not that it mattered. Hunting and feeding, the delicious, savoury flavour of pain, those were the things that mattered. If one could mix in a little spot of revenge along the way, so much the better.

Unlike Angel, he had a fine enough voice.

I'm a rover, and seldom sober
I'm a rover of high degree
And when I'm drinking, I'm always thinking
How to gain my love's company...

Oh, he would gain her company all right, and she'd rue the day, she would, the bitch. With all her airs and graces and her big, soulful eyes, she get down on her knees and plead to him for mercy before he was done with her. Not that all the begging in the world would do her a bit of good. He just liked that part.

Oh, and her old man would beg too. It was a point of honour with him, that this time he'd see the Watcher break, and weep, and call out for mercy. Maybe he'd even get the chance to give that chainsaw a go. He had one, a nice model, compact yet powerful, in the convertible's boot.

He glanced at the freeway signs: less than an hour out of Sunnydale now. Less than an hour, and they'd know he was back. They'd know it, and their nights would be filled with terror and tears.

Angelus smiled again.

"Willow," someone called, "Oh, Wil-low."

Willow shook her head. She'd been...she'd been...

Daydreaming, that was it. Daydreaming, as she knelt in the stone circle, facing away from the star's point. Just daydreaming.

Still, she shivered, that weird feeling crawling up her spine, the one her dad always called, hokily, "a goose walking over your grave."

With a soft thwump, a pouch made of soft, pale leather landed right in front of her knees. At least, it looked like leather--and technically was, Willow guessed. Of a sort. The sort that made weird little rumblings start up in the back of her conscience. Weird little rumblings that she guessed probably should have been huge.

Morgana had made that pouch while Willow watched, and afterwards both their hands were stained and bloody.

Something stirred inside her, then blazed into life: a hard, clear moment of awareness in which Willow understood, completely, what she'd done. What she was doing. Her stomach twisted, and she lurched forward, sure, just for a second that she was going to toss cookies right on top of the magical pouch, thereby making it useless for any sort of magical purpose whatsoever.

Only for a moment, though. Then she was back to what she'd been, though Melissa--it had been the vampire's voice who'd called to her before, of course--still stood grinning down at her in more-than-evil amusement.

"Hey, I thought for a minute there you were suffering pangs of conscience," Melissa said.

Willow sat back on her heels. "Thank you for...uh...this." She gestured at the pouch. She couldn't quite bring herself to touch the thing. Not yet.

"Don't mention it." Melissa perched on a handy boulder, one of the many with which the magical forest was furnished. Each and every one of them appeared to be a person or animal or demon turned to stone in a moment of ultimate torment. The one Melissa had chosen for her seat possessed horns, which the vampire avoided carefully as she crossed her long legs. "What's a little stop by a cemetery when you're one of the evil undead, after all? And yes, before you ask, the dirt is from the witch's grave. The old witch's, that is. Not the young one you killed." She leaned forward, studying Willow's preparations--the dark red candles, the bowls of herbs and roots, the silver urn of pulverized bone--intently. "Though I guess you killed the old one too, really, so there's not that much of a distinction."

For a minute Willow wanted to cry out that she hadn't hurt--much less killed--anybody. But then she didn't know. A lot of things that had seemed clear once had now gone all hazy.

"What's the plan, anyway?" Melissa asked her. "I know y'all are up to something."

"We're making..." Willow heard her own voice trail off, and realized that she didn't know. Here she was, facing the wrong way around in a pentacle, obviously about to work some seriously dark mojo, and she didn't have the slightest idea what she was doing. As in, her head was filled up with all the right words, the right gestures, but she herself was completely clueless as to what the end result might be. Grave dirt? Why in hell would she need grave dirt?

"Oh, sweetie," Melissa said to her, shaking her head so that her neat cap of copper-colored hair swung, flashing in the eternal, autumnal light, "You're in such deep water here, I know you've gotta be goin' down for the third time."

A skull lay on the ground by Willow's right knee. She ran her hand over the curve of its dome, feeling smooth, new bone. Feeling...

Her fingers tingled. When Willow looked up, she saw Morgana watching from the shelter of the nearby pine trees, her eyes green and hard and completely, completely unreadable. For a second Willow was so scared she couldn't breathe, but then the sorceress smiled at her, and she melted once more, the familiar sense of comfort and well-being flowing gently through her body. She watched her own hands move deftly between the components of her spell, and Morgana was with her, so everything must be all right.

It had to be.