Trust - Chapter 25

Beside Xander--close enough that he'd have been able to touch its giant bug face without even stretching, if he only been able to move his arms (provided, also, that he had any desire whatsoever to do such a crazy-assed thing)--the monster slept peacefully, pointy feet clinging to the empty pink string that was the only visible remnant of Xander's former neighbor. The sail-sized wings, spread now, and full of shimmery lights, hummed softly as the creature dreamed, a soothing sound.

Xander didn't need to remind himself not to be soothed. Or lulled. He was still too much in the grip of a full-on wiggins for that.

Inside his own strawberry-scented bonds, he could just barely feel his fingers, and then only because he kept reminding himself that he had fingers. Ten of them. On two hands. And that those ten fingers were the only things standing between life as he semi-knew it and becoming the next butterfly Big Gulp.

Carefully, painfully, Xander worked to free himself, string by sticky string, which was pretty much a case of one step forward, two steps back, because every time he managed to unwind one of the pink threads that bound him, he felt as if twice as many stuck themselves back onto his cocoon in even more crazily-tangled patterns. Every now and then, as he struggled with the mess, one of the sleeping monster's wings would brush his face, soft as a little kid's whisper, all the scarier because, every time, the touch felt so good, and Xander knew it would have been the easiest thing in the world just to give up. To accept all this as fate, karma, the inevitable, whatever.

He'd given up before, right? Giving up was easy. And all around him, Xander's fellow bus passengers seemed to have gone down exactly that route. They weren't crying anymore, or whimpering. They just hung in their bubblegum nests with their eyes glazed, their faces slack and peaceful in the purple-blue light.

The thing about giving up, though, was that it--no pun intended--kinda sucked. You give up; you die. End of story. And from what Xander could remember of his own life, it so far hadn't had the best of beginnings, and he kind of wanted to see things pick up from there. Which meant he had to live. Which meant he had to do something.

Xander wanted to yell at the others, tell them to wake up and do something too--fight, cry, even--and here was a concept--actually help them get out of this mess.

He really wanted to yell. Yelling would have felt good, as a release of tension, if nothing else. Only he was afraid, scared that his breathing alone might be enough to wake the monster that had captured them, and once it woke...

Don't go there. Just. Don't.

Xander struggled harder. Now one of his hands was free. For the moment, anyway. His hand was free and his fingers tingled and burned as the blood came back into them. He stuck his forearm through the hole, pulling up harder than he'd ever thought he could pull, trying to stretch the tear out big enough to wriggle through, the blood thudding in his head again, as his muscles screamed and dark spots swam before his eyes.

Then all at once, with a wet, rubbery sound, the cocoon tore, spilling Xander out onto the rocky floor. Or halfway out, at least--his shoulder hit the ground hard, but his feet were still tangled up inside the ball of pink goo. He lay absolutely still for nearly a minute, not even daring to breathe, hardly daring to think, in case the thing beside him woke up and decided to investigate the noise.

But the butterfly only swayed a little faster, wings vibrating a series of faint high notes, like someone playing a musical saw on a mountaintop about ten miles away.

Slowly, even though his heart raced and his breath seemed to determined to come to him only in short, shallow pants, Xander reached up, untangling the sticky bonds around his ankles enough, at least, that he could wriggle his stockinged feet out of his sneakers. The sneakers themselves he'd have to give up as a lost cause--no power in earth or hell was ever going to unstick them.

Up above him, the wings stretched out, shedding light, until the mesmerizing pulse of color was all he could see.

No! Xander yelled at himself inside his head. Don't look! Whatever you do, don't look!

But he couldn't make his eyes turn away.

The spell had worked; Willow knew that. The spell had worked, and the skull of the young, dead LeFaye witch now glowed with a soft, yet somehow scary, green light. It felt warm between the palms of her hands, warm as living flesh. Any other time she would have been proud of herself, seeing the evidence of her own magical competence so obviously displayed.

Not this time, though. This time all she really felt was confused, because she'd known, really known, the minute she'd walked out into the wood to show Morgana her handiwork and seen the two of them, Morgana and Melissa, together, their red heads bent close, their shoulders not quite touching.

She'd known in the way they'd glanced at her, and laughed behind their hands, and glanced again.

At that moment, her heart had gone small, tight and cold, and a second later had seemed to crack apart into two pieces, two slivers of ice in her chest.

Dammit, it was high school all over again. It was Harmony, Aura, Cordelia and all the rest of the Bitch Brigade. Laughing at her, the way she'd sworn she'd never be laughed at again.

Between Willow's hands, the dead witch's skull began to laugh at her too, the way it probably hadn't ever laughed in life, and a series of feelings rushed up through her: fury and betrayal and a sense of just...out and out dumbness.

Willow drew hard on the power infused into the skull, centuries of LeFaye knowledge and arcane power condensed there, like an Eveready megabattery of magic. Her skin tingled, her hair writhed, and she could sense her eyes turning hard and flint-black as she flung a beam of black-gold energy toward the sorceress and the vampire.

All to the good, only Morgana just looked at her, and grinned, then batted the beam away so easily it might have been a badminton birdie served to her by a klutzy six-year-old. A nearby stand of trees exploded into red and orange sparks, but even that lasted only a minute before Morgana damped it down into a gentle snow of soft, gray ash.

Out of that gray snow walked Angelus.

"Nice fireworks, Red," he told Willow. "Can't wait to see the main show."

And the three of them laughed at her some more, along with the skull.

It was like a dream, like one of the bad dreams she'd had over and over again, ever since she was old enough to remember: failure and mockery and humiliation. Powerlessness. Uselessness.

Willow let the skull drop from her hands, pinching herself in a vain attempt to wake up. A blush rose furiously over her cheeks. She could feel her palms sweating, and tears beginning to prickle at the backs of her eyes.

"Aww..." Melissa crooned. "Who's afraid of the big, bad witch?"

Suddenly, Willow knew: she'd been tricked, conned, bamboozled. She'd betrayed her parents and her friends, all her real friends. And for what? A taste of power, a taste of sex, the chance to step out of the shadows and be the star for once, even though she knew, really, the shadows were exactly where she belonged. No bright lights for dumb little Willow.

What did she have now? Nothing, that was it. Exactly nothing.

God...Xander! What had she done to Xander? And her dad. And Giles.

Willow's mouth opened, but no sound came out. There weren't any words, any cries or shrieks or wails that could express what she felt right then. There wasn't anything.

The two vampires and the sorceress moved toward her, not laughing now. Just smiling.

Smiling the same kind of smiles the hyena kids had given her all that time ago. Hungry smiles. Predatory smiles.

Willow turned, tried to run, stumbled--proving exactly why she'd had to suffer through twelve never endingly hideous years of being picked dead last for every single team sport they'd ever played in gym class--and scrambled up again, only to be jerked back by a pair of large and powerful hands. She hated herself, but she couldn't quite hold in a whimper, and then Morgana's voice was in her ear, the sorceress's breath warm on her skin, her tone the same one that had whispered a thousand endearments.

"Now, now, my little love," Morgana told her. "What did you expect? What did you expect, really?"

Willow knew what she should have answered--or maybe just what she should have expected--nothing. Zero. Nada. Zilch. Squat.

Only, she didn't have any words left. She knew what would happen next: pain, and the life draining out of her. There was supposed to be a kind of peacefulness, wasn't there, knowing that you'd run out of road, that there just weren't any other paths but the one you were on right then?

Yeah, right. Peacefulness. What really happened wasn't peaceful at all.

Angelus's big hands bruised her arms. His groin and his big, hard, something ground against her and Willow was so breathlessly scared that it almost came as a relief when Melissa's teeth tore into her throat and her blood spurted out, making Willow's head go all swimmy.

She hoped that Angelus wouldn't bite her too, or if he did, that she'd be too far gone to be really aware.

So much for hope. He did bite her. And she was far gone, but not that far gone. Time stretched out long and slow as her heart did a weak little unsteady dance inside her chest and her ribs felt like they were made of glass. Her whole body hurt, the way Willow had never known anything could hurt.

And what made it worst of all was that she knew she'd brought it on herself, and deserved every minute of the pain.

"I have no clothes," Giles said, sounding miffed, and glancing slowly from one side of the room to the other, as if he expected some product of Tweedworld to magically appear there. The fact that he'd seemed to take both the imminent reappearance of Angelus and Moira's defection about ten times more in stride than his missing wardrobe was something that might have struck Buffy as funny under different circumstances.

Right at the moment, though, she knew exactly how he felt: the big things you took in stride because you had to; it was the little stuff that reached up to bite you on the butt.

"I could call Seb," she said, sympathetically. "He could bring you some. Clothes, I mean."

"No, I don't... That is..." Giles reached up to run his unsplinted hand back through his hair.

Buffy knew what he meant there, too. He didn't want Seb, or Celeste, or any of them running around after dark, not now that Angelus was coming back into their lives. Personally, her mind recoiled at getting any more tastes of Angelus's whimsy that wasn't. Whimsical, that was.

Great. Now she'd totally ceased to make sense, even to herself. Put it this way: she'd have been beyond happy to live out the rest of her days without any further vampire fun.

Giles had started rubbing the back of his neck. Never a good sign.

"We'll have to get them somewhere," Buffy said, wishing she didn't have to. "Umn...not the clothes, I mean. Seb and Celeste. And Aunt Flora. They'd better not stay at the hotel, what with the whole vampires and public places clause. And..." Her voice broke, and she wished more than anything that she could just let loose with a big old baby tantrum, kicking and screaming that it wasn't fair.

Which it wasn't--but when had life ever been fair? "And...umn...I guess we'll have to assume that Willow's working with him. Angelus. Giving him the 411."

That got her a totally perplexed Giles-look. "The--I beg your pardon, Buffy?"

"The sitch," Buffy answered. "The background info. On us."

"Ah," Giles responded, nodding as the lightbulb went off over his head, and even nearly smiling. A second later, the smile faded. "Bloody hell."

"I'll see your bloody hell and raise you a deep, dark despair," Buffy answered, meeting his eyes. After a second Giles's expression changed from one of I'm-beating-my-head-against-the-wall-here frustration to something much more Gileslike: he looked steady, calm, and at the same time, sympathetic, and even if he wasn't any of those things, really, he put up a damn good front.

"So," Buffy said, "I'm thinking that maybe the thing to do is for me to shoot over to the Holiday Inn, pack up the gang and rendevous back here. We can spring you, then move on to someplace safe. Safer. Like mom's, maybe?"

Giles muttered something under his breath.

"C'mon," Buffy told him. "You know she'll be okay with it. In a kinda put-out way. It's not like she's gonna leave us dangling out here for the undead--and at least there's more room chez mom than at your--I mean our--place."

"We'll have to perform the disinviting spell," Giles cautioned, which Buffy knew was his way of saying he agreed to her plan.

"Hey, don't worry about it," Buffy answered, trying her best to sound nonchalant. It came to her that, underneath his calm demeanor, Giles looked about as tired as she'd ever seen him, and that was saying something. Moira's (try as she might, she couldn't think of any other word) betrayal, on top of everything else, had hit him harder than he'd let on, even to himself, she guessed.

"Really, don't worry," Buffy added in a softer voice. "I'm not gonna ask you if you're okay, because I know better, but you honestly don't need to stress about this. If...uh...Willow and I could handle the spell by ourselves last year, you know any one of your family members will be perfectly up to doing it now. Besides which, the crosses are already hung by the windows with care and all that."

Giles gave her a long look, which Buffy returned as steadily as she could. He could depend on her for this. He could. And she wasn't about to let him think otherwise.

At last, to her very great relief, Giles nodded. "I needn't tell you to be careful, need I?"

"Nah." Buffy shook her head, giving him a version of her brightest grin and hoping it looked real. "Not even a smidgen." She bounced over to the bed, to give him a resounding--and, she hoped, comforting-- kiss. "See you in a few. Meanwhile, try to do the resting thing, okay?" It worried her a little that she hardly even had to push to get Giles back into bed, but maybe he was just trying to give her a break by being cooperative, instead of contrary, for a change. Or maybe he was just totally beat. She took a few seconds to tuck a cross and stake under his pillow, and to wrap the fingers of his good hand around a bottle of holy water, then breezed out the door, pretending she wasn't worried, that she didn't mind leaving him alone.

Which she did. All the way down the corridors, in the elevator and out into the night, a million scenarios of possible badness kept flashing through Buffy's head until, by the time she hit the streets, she was running flat out, afraid to waste even a second. She made the Holiday Inn in beyond record time, faster than even she would have thought possible, and fidgeted like crazy all the way up in the elevator.

When she pounded on the door to Seb and Celeste's room, her fist left a visible dent in the faux wood.

Seb opened up in a heartbeat, a look of out-and-out alarm on his face. "Buffy, what is it...? Is my dad...?"

"Buffy?" chimed in Aunt Flora's and Celeste's voices from behind him. There was a little collection of weird-looking stuff on the table by the window which, coupled with the threesome's slightly guilty expressions, made her wonder what they'd been up to.

Later. Later for all that.

"I've come to get you," Buffy gasped, half-surprised at her own breathlessness. "You need to go to my mom's house. Like, now."

"To your mum's?" Celeste's face appeared over her husband's shoulder. "What is it, Buffy? Has...?"

"Angelus," Sebastian said softly. Buffy had no idea how he'd drawn that name out of his hat, but she nodded, watching Seb's face go pale. He knew about Miss Calender, she guessed. All about Miss Calender.

Aunt Flora didn't take any convincing, either. "My things are packed," she said. "Sebastian, perhaps you and Celeste...?"

But Celeste was already in motion, and if there'd been an Olympic medal for speed-packing, she'd definitely have been a shoo-in for the Gold.

"It was Willow, wasn't it?" Sebastian continued, as his utterly Gileslike green eyes caught and held Buffy's. "She's...what does one call it? Disensouled him?"

Buffy nodded, not trusting her voice to speak.

Celeste snapped up the locks on their suitcases, all the while muttering some choice words on the subject of their former friend, on vampires in general and Angelus in particular. As the last lock clicked, though, her eyes, too, sought Buffy's and Buffy was surprised to see that Celeste's expression looked warm and sad--she had to look away before her own eyes teared up.

"We'll take the Rover," Sebastian said, claiming the two biggest cases. They looked pretty heavy, but Buffy didn't want to hurt his guy pride by offering to take over, so she contented herself with wheeling out the next-biggest pair, while Celeste slung her deceptively trim purse over one shoulder and wrapped her other hand around Aunt Flora's arm.

Even though nothing seemed, visibly, to be chasing them, they all four found themselves moving at something fairly close to a run, glancing over their shoulders as they went--as if the powers of darkness might just pop out from the stairwells or, once they'd reached the hotel parking lot, from behind any one of the still, dark cars.

But they didn't. No demons. No vampires. No big brewing evil. Just the feeling that it was out there, it had to be out there, watching them, biding its time.

When they'd stowed the luggage and piled into Seb's shiny new forest green Land Rover, still nothing had showed. Buffy began to feel more than a little silly. Here they were, running for their lives, pursued by...well, apparently, absolutely nothing. Her heart thumped crazily, and she wondered, if she was this scared of Angelus, how was she ever going to fight him?

Only it came to her that she wasn't really scared for herself. Not this time, any more than she'd been scared last time. What really frightened her was that Angelus would find a way, somehow, to get to someone she loved--or worse yet, to someone Giles loved, one of his family. She couldn't stand to let him down like that again. She just couldn't.

Aunt Flora, buckled in beside her in the backseat while Seb and Celeste rode up front, reached across to squeeze her hand. "Don't be afraid, my dear," she said, softly and kindly. "I believe you'd be surprised at the ways we'll find to protect ourselves. Don't you ever give that monster the power to make you afraid."

Buffy shook her head, trying to smile. "I... I mean, I don't..."

She should have remembered who she was talking to. Aunt Flora gave her a look so perfectly knowing and so perfectly Gilesean--her green eyes widened and one eyebrow raised--that Buffy, terrified as she was, couldn't help but smile for real.

"Yes," Flora said, smiling in return. "That's the spirit. Remember, love--you may be one girl alone in all the world, but you're not alone in this. Rupert isn't alone in this." Aunt Flora gave Buffy's fingers another gentle squeeze with her own hardly-more-than-child-sized fingers, and weird as it was, she felt comforted.

"Hear, hear," Sebastian said softly, and Celeste, watching through the space between the seats, gave Buffy a grin and a nod.

Buffy found herself releasing a breath she hadn't even known she'd been holding. It was true: she wasn't alone in this. She had her family, and even if they weren't Slayers, at least they knew and understood. She could count on them to the end.

Only she hoped there wouldn't be an end. At least not an end in terms of hopeless and bad and final.

"Such dark thoughts." Aunt Flora sighed. "Buffy, my dear child, what are we to do with you?"