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thedeadlyhookAnd here comes Chapter Two...
ACT TWO: VISITATION
The streets of Santa Cruz were warm, even in the pale minutes before dawn, but the ragged and unshaven man shivered helplessly as he staggered down the sidewalks towards the ocean. Soon it would be daylight, and it would be safe to sleep. No, not safe--how could he ever be safe?--but the dread would lessen once the sun was out, when the beaches filled with noisy, sunburned tourists.
"Santa Cruz is for Lovers," proclaimed the stained sweatshirt he'd fished out the Salvation Army drop box. A stray thought flitted through his mind, tinged with the helpless amusement that precedes panic. You can keep your lovers, the man thought. Just bring out the people already.
Something moved on the shadowed doorstep of an overpriced antique shop, and his mouth was suddenly dry. Not now, he thought desperately, not when I'm so close. I'm almost at the water. Can't the surfers see me? Can't they please see me?
A figure stepped forward. It was wearing a brown cowl, thank Jesus and Mary and the love of Our Father Who Art In Heaven, not one of the black cloaks he'd seen in his dreams and glimpsed in the alleyways of town after town since he'd fled the Gilroy mission. But his knees were buckling, and when the figure threw back its hood, he stumbled back in horror.
"Brother Stanley? But I--"
"Saw me die, yes." The cloaked monk's full, plum-colored lips widened in a smile of reassurance, but his eyes remained pale and cold. "And so unpleasantly, at that. To think a man, let alone a self-styled man of God, could be capable of such cruelties. But then, we led sheltered lives, didn't we? How little we knew of the true scope of human potential."
The ragged man staggered back, clutching at a newspaper stand, at a mailbox, at the window sill of the ice cream parlor. An early morning jogger plodded by on the other side of the street, casting a brief, incurious glance at the reeling derelict. Perhaps his gaze also took in the robed figure that advanced inexorably towards the stumbling man. In this world, all things are possible.
"Cloistered, celibate, constipated little man. You and your prudish, paste-eating brethren." The monk's face blurred, its colors running like water and reforming in the semblance of a diminutive blonde woman, eyes blazing, lip raised in a contemptuous sneer. "For thousands of years you and your kind have been bringing me the drab scraps you call your lives and souls. A whole world of sensation dangling before you, and you can't even find the courage to take a bite. A ripe fruit, begging to be sucked, to burst between your jaws and flood your wretched mouths until you choke on it."
The woman--or rather, the thing that wore a woman's appearance--paused for a moment, chest heaving, then melted, swelled, loomed upward to the height of an all too familiar figure. The ragged man gasped and fell sprawling into the gutter. Beaming a lunatic grin, the towering preacher leaned over him and raised his arms in exultation.
"But we always gotta blame the snake, don't we? Put all our sins off onto the whisperin' voice of Satan. No, we never woulda wanted a taste if that ol' devil hadn't put the notion in our sweet little heads." The preacher bent over to offer the man a conspiratorial wink. "Trust me, my brother, as one who knows whereof he speaks. That dirty, sneaky little Eve didn't need no snake to talk her into gettin' up to any kinda mischief."
The features of the crouching figure melted again, and the sad, solemn face of Brother Stanley reappeared. "Where was the devil when Cain slew his kinsman, Brother Jeremy? Was he perched on Cain's shoulder, twisting his love into jealousy, his jealousy into hatred? Or was he waiting in the dust of the earth, waiting for the warm sweet blood of Adam's child to sate a thirst older than time? And waiting for Cain in his turn to join his brother, and Cain's children in theirs..."
The monk--not really a monk, not a monk at all--rose to his feet, and again assumed the form of the preacher who had torn Brother Stanley's tongue from his mouth and laughed as his blood spattered onto Brother Jeremy's head like baptismal water. "And now, my friend, I am your brother's keeper!" The preacher, or the thing which looked like a preacher, gave a dismissive shake of his head. "Not that he had much worth keeping. No more'n any of your kind, with your computers and your newspapers, your cities and your science and your dull, frightened little lives. The blood that flows in your veins is sheep's blood, my brother. It's gotten so it ain't hardly worth the spillin.'"
At last the fallen man had gathered his wits enough to drag himself up into a sitting posture, and a numb tongue stirred in his parched mouth. "This-- this is just a dream. You aren't real."
"You sure know how to hurt a girl, Brother Jeremy." The blonde woman pouted back at him. "But you know what? I think you'll find that she's pretty damn real." The man craned his head to follow the woman's pointing finger, and saw a teenage girl--thirteen, maybe fourteen, perhaps twelve the way they're growing up nowadays--trotting across the street towards him. A baseball cap on her head, rubber sandals on her feet, and Oh God, my sweet Jesus a curved metal knife in her hand. The girl's eyes swiveled onto him, and her vacant expression became a beatific smile.
"I must say that the quality of my helpers has dramatically improved, Brother Jeremy," the girl said. The figure on the sidewalk had disappeared; only the fallen man and the smiling girl remained. Her knife gleamed in the first rays of the morning sun. "Now let's tie up a little loose end."
............
"Good news, guys!" Xander announced as he flipped the phone back into its plastic cradle. Graciela and Bet, who had been bouncing on the unmade bed as they waited for their turns in the shower, turned to regard him with interest.
Xander ran his towel over his hair one last time, then tossed it into the corner of the motel room next to a wadded pile of shopping bags. "That was one of Angel's people," he explained. "Turns out they're moving into new digs, and they only just had someone stop back at the old place to check the phone messages."
"So, is Angel coming to meet us, or what?" Lo glanced over from the dresser mirror, where she'd been engaged in artfully tousling her hair. She was doing her best to feign mature disinterest, but the young Slayers had already spent many hours speculating about the world's only other vampire with a soul and how he might compare to Spike, especially after Bet informed them that Angel had been Buffy's first boyfriend. Whatever their feelings about their erstwhile leader, a fascination with Buffy's dramatic past and the lurid details of her private life was something that all the girls shared in common, and Angel was surely a large piece of the puzzle.
"Sounds like they've got their hands full with the move, and they don't think they can do a lot to help us right now." A momentary frown creased Xander's forehead, then his expression brightened again. "But they're sending someone over. They say he's the best guy they have for this kind of thing."
Xander stooped to grab a couple of the tote bags they'd packed earlier that morning. "I'd better head downstairs to give Will and Kennedy a heads-up. Don't want 'em taking off without us!" Directing a quick grin over his shoulder, he stepped out the door onto the balcony, and bounded off in the direction of the external stairs.
............
In room 211, Willow's and Kennedy's departure preparations were almost complete. Kennedy greeted Xander with a friendly nod, and Willow mustered a wan but sincere smile from her perch at the head of the bed. Their faces brightened as Xander relayed his message.
"That's great!" Willow chirped. "Who are they sending? Is it Fred, or Wesley, or Cordy, or...?"
Xander winced for a moment at the last of the names, then shook his head with jovial puzzlement. "None of the above, Will. Looks like we'll be making a new friend." He dropped his bags next to Kennedy's duffels, then slumped into a chair and leaned forward, fingers flexing with nervous excitement. "But they say they'll all be pitching in behind the scenes--they've started a new gig at some company called Wolfington's or something, which is supposed to have a ton of resources."
Willow blinked. "Wolfram and Hart? Isn't that, like, an evil law firm?"
"Well, a law firm, anyway," Kennedy laughed. "They do my dad's taxes."
"Whatever," Xander shrugged. "I think we're all due for a little more depreciation around here." Two blank stares. "Okay, that wasn't my best work. I think they must have gouged out my funny eye..."
Willow favored him with an exasperated eye-roll. "So I guess we're gonna hang around until they get here, right?"
Xander nodded. "Shouldn't be more than an hour, they said. In the meantime, maybe we can try that direction-finding thing you were talking about..."
"Yeah, that's right." Willow sat upright, gathering her energy. "Wherever Buffy's got to, she'll be out of range for a standard locator spell, at least with the resources we've got right now.... but there's this tracer thing I was working on a while back. It might at least show us the general direction she's headed in."
Kennedy shot her a look of surprise. "Feeling better, Red? I thought you were too wasted to do any magic."
"Uh-huh," Willow responded. "But this kind of spell is pretty straightforward - once you've got the basic formula worked out, it's like following a recipe, so I should be able to walk you through it. It works off the energy of the caster, so as long as you have enough to spare..."
Kennedy cut her off with a wave of her hand. "Say no more, babe. I'll be happy just to be able to do something." She pondered for a moment. "So what do we need for this? Leg of toad, eye of newt, organic yogurt?"
"Common household ingredients," Willow assured her. "I'll make you up a list."
Leaving Xander to keep Willow company, Kennedy went to collect the spell components from the strip mall stores--or, in the case of the requisite rat's tail, from the overflowing dumpster behind the Subs-A-Go-Go. Upon her return, she and Xander arranged the spell materials as per Willow's direction, drawing a makeshift compass of cayenne pepper and ground chalk in the motel's dingy carpet, then annointing the cardinal points with melted Crayola wax (Kennedy had been unable to find any candles). Standing inside the compass circle, Kennedy recited the tongue-twisting verses that Willow had jotted down in careful cursive script, and a flickering globe of light puffed into existence roughly twenty inches in front of her nose. She flinched despite herself, while Willow and Xander raised a ragged cheer and applauded appreciatively.
Then things seemed to go awry. The ball of light lurched east, then west, hovered in place for a long second, and finally exploded like a tiny firework as Kennedy staggered back. The sparks whirled about her a few times, then began arcing off one after another in different directions. One flew straight towards her and disappeared as it touched her chest; a few shot upward, in what Kennedy was fairly certain was the direction of Xander's room. In the midst of what must have been hundreds or thousands of individual sparks, one relatively large blur of light took off on a northeasterly heading, and Kennedy made a mental note of the spot on the motel room wall where it vanished.
As the last of the lights dispersed, the three of them exchanged perplexed looks. A sheepish Willow was the first to break the silence. "I don't know what to tell you, guys. I did specify the target as Buffy, not just a generic Slayer."
"And even if the spell was set to seek out all the Potentials-turned-Slayers in the world," Xander mused, staring at the compass circle inscribed in the carpet, "there aren't that many of them left." He paused, then looked up at the two women. "Are there?"
............
"Okay, so I'm all packed." Lo lobbed her backpack into the corner next to her companions' bags. "Now what?"
Bet rolled distractedly on the rumpled bedsheets, formulating a response, then started at the sound of a sharp rat-a-tat knock on the door and tumbled off the mattress with a squeal. Graciela bounded across the room and fixed her eye on the door's peephole, while Lo and Neena fumbled ineffectually at the window blinds.
"Guys?" Bet hissed as she clambered to her feet. "Who's there? Is it Angel?"
"Kind of the opposite, I think." Graciela stepped back from the door and began looking about the room for an impromptu weapon. "Looks more like El Diablo."
"Red eyes," Lo volunteered. "Great big horns."
"And his clothes!" Neena hissed. "What in the world is he wearing?!"
Exchanging quick glances, the four newborn Slayers nodded their silent agreement. As hunters of the living dead, veterans of the terrestrial hell known as Sunnydale, and energetic teenagers who'd spent the past week living on a diet of sugar and enforced idleness, they weren't about to cower in a closet while some ugly demon pounded on the wall. In seconds, they were arrayed in ambush position, improvised weapons in hand, ready to pounce the moment Graciela opened the door.
"Hey there, guys and dolls," the demon called. "I know somebody's home, 'cause I can hear you breathing. Did I catch you in the middle of something naughty?" A moment later, the door creaked open, and the horned visitor took a cautious step into the room. The girls were upon it in an instant, Lo sweeping its legs from under it with a swift kick while Bet clubbed it across the shoulders with a chrome bar from the bathroom's towel rack.
As the demon slammed to the floor, Graciela leapt onto its back and expertly pinned its hands, leaving Neena to yank the visitor's head up by its carefully coiffed hair. "Say goodbye to your evil head," she snarled, holding a letter opener to its throat.
"Not the head!" the demon yowled. "I'm on your side, kiddies!"
"So you're a good demon?" Bet replied skeptically.
"Good?" It fixed her with a red-eyed look of shock. "Honey, I'm fabulous!"
............
A couple of minutes later, Xander was still babbling apologies as he escorted the demon down the motel's external stairs. "I'm really sorry about that, Lorne. They're just kids, and they didn't know what to expect. Heck, I didn't quite, uh..."
Kennedy chimed in as she made her way along the second-floor balcony to meet them. "I guess we figured you'd just come straight to our room."
Lorne scowled, pressing the bag of ice to the spot on his back where a nasty blue bruise was appearing in the approximate shape of Graciela's knee. "Somebody neglected to give me a room number, boys and girls. I just asked for Harris at the front desk."
Xander exchanged a surprised glance with Kennedy. "So the manager didn't, well..."
Lorne waved his hand dismissively across the parking lot in the general direction of the front desk. "I think he assumed I was a singing telegram. At least he didn't try to saw off my head, unlike some overzealous teenyboppers I could..." He cut off abruptly as they reached room 211's open door, and peered in with a sunny smile. "Greetings and salutations! Willow Rosenberg, I presume?"
Momentarily taken aback by the appearance of a horned green demon in a purple velour jacket and wingtip shoes, Willow quickly recovered her equilibrium and favored her visitor with an equally bright smile. "Lorne! It's really you! I can't believe it's taken us this long to meet up in person..."
"We've always been two ships passing in the night, sugarpie." Lorne settled gracefully into a padded chair and leaned forward confidentially. "But when word came down the pipeline that our favorite Sunnydale sweetie needed a helping hand--well, could I have asked for a more perfect opportunity to make your acquaintance?"
Kennedy leaned back, arms folded, as Xander trailed her into the room and closed the door behind him. "No offense," she began, "but are you sure you can help us? I was expecting they'd send some kind of magician, or a research guy, but..."
"You've got all the brains and mojo you'll ever need right here, honey," Lorne replied, nodding in Willow's direction. "And if the slumber party upstairs is any indication, you're not exactly short of muscle either. No, what you need right now is what I've got to give you."
Lorne paused, and Xander filled in the straight line. "And what's that?"
"Soul, baby." The demon leaned back in his chair, clasping his hands behind his horned head. "I've got soul."
With a swiftness born of long practice, Lorne filled them in on the ground rules. As an empath demon, he stressed, he wasn't in a position to tell them about their past, or their present, or their future as such; it had something to do with karma, and something to do with reading auras, and he'd tell them what they needed to know and nothing more. Oh, and there was one more thing...
"We've got to sing?!" Xander recoiled in horror.
"You don't have to do anything, sweetcheeks," the demon sighed. "I can always just ease my battered buns back into my shiny new Ferrari and hotrod it back to LA in time for the afternoon soaps. But if you want what help I can give you, then it's time for a little a capella karaoke."
"I dunno," Willow pouted. "I really don't have much of a singing voice."
"How about I give it a try?" Kennedy suggested. "From here on out, my destiny is your destiny, Red."
They looked over to Lorne, who gave them a neutral shrug. "Your nickel, sugar. Let's hear what's on your mind."
Kennedy took a step forward, considered for a minute, and then launched into a spirited Michael Jackson cover. "Billie Jean is not my lover. She's just a girl, who says that I am the one..."
The demon listened politely for a few stanzas, then motioned her to wind down. "Somehow, peaches, I don't see a lot of paternity suits in your future. Not that you're going to be hard up for excitement, though..."
"So what did you see?" Kennedy asked impatiently.
"I saw that you don't need me to tell you what to do, and if I did you wouldn't listen." His hand flopped in a helpless half-wave. "I could tell you to go with your gut instinct, but you're going to do that anyway. Let's just say your heart's in the right place, for a human."
Then Lorne's brow furrowed in thought. "But I saw something else in your aura. Something I've seen before, in a Vampire Slayer... but this time it's different."
Now it was Willow's turn to press him to elaborate. "In a Vampire Slayer...?"
"That last time you came to LA, I was busy playing Florence Nightingale at Faith's bedside. She wasn't in much of a condition for singing, but I got a good look at her aura, and let me tell you a Slayer's aura is pretty unique. It's dark, and strong, and it thrives on trouble." The demon sighed. "But not like this. Whatever's going on with that Slayer part of you, it's bigger and stronger, and somehow it's more..."
"...Powerful?" Willow prompted him.
Lorne shook his head. "Awake. Awake and hungry." And that was all he was willing to say.
Meanwhile, Willow had steeled herself for her own ordeal, and with Kennedy's encouragement she launched into her own hoarse melody. "When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide... Where I stop and I turn and I go for a ride... Till I get to the bottom and I see you agay-yain..."
"Okay, okay!" Lorne pressed his hands to his ears. "You weren't lying about the singing voice." Willow's face fell, and he hastened to reassure her. "I kid because I love, sweetie. You should hear Angel sometime. Yee-owtch!"
Xander shifted back and forth expectantly. "What's the verdict, doc?"
The demon shook his head sadly and fixed a weary look on Willow. "I hate the part where you have to tell people things they already know. Look, kiddo, I love you all to bits, and so does everyone else here, and you should listen to what they're telling you. But all the advice in the world isn't going to do you any good until you're prepared to accept it, and you're just not ready to do that yet." He stood up, straightening his jacket. "Sorry, princess, but there's nothing I can do for you."
Xander and Kennedy exploded with simultaneous outrage, with Kennedy pulling herself back just short of grabbing Lorne by the collar and hauling him into the air. "What do you mean there's nothing you can do?" she barked, inches from his face. "What is this crap?!"
The demon shot her a withering glare. "I'm not her mommy, chica, and neither are you. This is something that only Willow can get herself out of, so don't hold your breath waiting for a magic solution to just drop into your lap. The problem with those," and here he turned his attention back to Willow, "is that there are always strings attached."
Lorne let out his tension with a long sigh, then leaned over to stroke Willow's suddenly pale cheek. "Don't take it too hard, sugarpie. You're falling right now, but you have the power to catch yourself, and to catch the others too. You're stronger than you think."
Tears welled in Willow's eyes, gathered at the tip of her nose. "I don't feel strong," she sniffed.
Lorne stood up again, regarding her seriously. "That's exactly backwards. But you already know that, so there's no point in my saying it." Then a thought occurred to him. "But that little road trip you've been planning? Following Buffy's trail? That's the right idea. Catch her while you can."
As Kennedy fumed silently, and Willow snorked loudly into a wad of Kleenex, Lorne made his way to the door and then paused, hand on the knob, to address Xander. "Sorry, champ. Normally I'd give you three for the price of one, but I think I'm all read out for today."
Xander shrugged indifferently. "I don't think I have much of a destiny anyway. But thanks for coming out here. And hey..." He paused for a moment, screwing up his resolve. "Tell Cordy I said hi."
Lorne froze in the middle of opening the door. "You haven't heard?" He stared hard at Xander, brow creased in concentration, then swept an arm around his shoulders and scooted him outside onto the balcony. "Excuse us a moment, ladies. Guy talk."
A chunk of ice had mysteriously appeared in Xander's stomach. "Heard what?"
The demon closed the door behind them and shot a quick look around the balcony to make sure they were alone. "Coma. It's bad. They don't think she's going to snap out of it anytime soon."
Xander gripped the metal railing, steadying himself. "What-- what happened? A car accident, some kind of demon--?"
Lorne shook his head, despondent. "I wish. No, this was some heavy-duty mystical badness. Our Cordy got herself mixed up with a higher power, and that never ends well..." The demon trailed off, gazing away into the middle distance, then collected himself with a shudder.
"Is there anything I can do?" The words sounded hollow as they left his mouth. "Flowers, or money, or..." Xander slapped his palm to his forehead, hard, then a second and a third time. "What a jackass. All she ever needed from me was for me to stay the hell away."
Lorne reached towards him, cupping his chin with a gentle hand. "You know that isn't true." He searched Xander's eyes for a long moment. "And you're wrong about your destiny. You can help these girls. There's somebody I think you ought to go and see..."
............
Four young Slayers lay stretched out on the third floor balcony, inching forward to sneak a peek between the railings at the level below.
"Is it just me," Lo whispered to her friends, "or does that demon seem kinda gay?"
ACT TWO: VISITATION
The streets of Santa Cruz were warm, even in the pale minutes before dawn, but the ragged and unshaven man shivered helplessly as he staggered down the sidewalks towards the ocean. Soon it would be daylight, and it would be safe to sleep. No, not safe--how could he ever be safe?--but the dread would lessen once the sun was out, when the beaches filled with noisy, sunburned tourists.
"Santa Cruz is for Lovers," proclaimed the stained sweatshirt he'd fished out the Salvation Army drop box. A stray thought flitted through his mind, tinged with the helpless amusement that precedes panic. You can keep your lovers, the man thought. Just bring out the people already.
Something moved on the shadowed doorstep of an overpriced antique shop, and his mouth was suddenly dry. Not now, he thought desperately, not when I'm so close. I'm almost at the water. Can't the surfers see me? Can't they please see me?
A figure stepped forward. It was wearing a brown cowl, thank Jesus and Mary and the love of Our Father Who Art In Heaven, not one of the black cloaks he'd seen in his dreams and glimpsed in the alleyways of town after town since he'd fled the Gilroy mission. But his knees were buckling, and when the figure threw back its hood, he stumbled back in horror.
"Brother Stanley? But I--"
"Saw me die, yes." The cloaked monk's full, plum-colored lips widened in a smile of reassurance, but his eyes remained pale and cold. "And so unpleasantly, at that. To think a man, let alone a self-styled man of God, could be capable of such cruelties. But then, we led sheltered lives, didn't we? How little we knew of the true scope of human potential."
The ragged man staggered back, clutching at a newspaper stand, at a mailbox, at the window sill of the ice cream parlor. An early morning jogger plodded by on the other side of the street, casting a brief, incurious glance at the reeling derelict. Perhaps his gaze also took in the robed figure that advanced inexorably towards the stumbling man. In this world, all things are possible.
"Cloistered, celibate, constipated little man. You and your prudish, paste-eating brethren." The monk's face blurred, its colors running like water and reforming in the semblance of a diminutive blonde woman, eyes blazing, lip raised in a contemptuous sneer. "For thousands of years you and your kind have been bringing me the drab scraps you call your lives and souls. A whole world of sensation dangling before you, and you can't even find the courage to take a bite. A ripe fruit, begging to be sucked, to burst between your jaws and flood your wretched mouths until you choke on it."
The woman--or rather, the thing that wore a woman's appearance--paused for a moment, chest heaving, then melted, swelled, loomed upward to the height of an all too familiar figure. The ragged man gasped and fell sprawling into the gutter. Beaming a lunatic grin, the towering preacher leaned over him and raised his arms in exultation.
"But we always gotta blame the snake, don't we? Put all our sins off onto the whisperin' voice of Satan. No, we never woulda wanted a taste if that ol' devil hadn't put the notion in our sweet little heads." The preacher bent over to offer the man a conspiratorial wink. "Trust me, my brother, as one who knows whereof he speaks. That dirty, sneaky little Eve didn't need no snake to talk her into gettin' up to any kinda mischief."
The features of the crouching figure melted again, and the sad, solemn face of Brother Stanley reappeared. "Where was the devil when Cain slew his kinsman, Brother Jeremy? Was he perched on Cain's shoulder, twisting his love into jealousy, his jealousy into hatred? Or was he waiting in the dust of the earth, waiting for the warm sweet blood of Adam's child to sate a thirst older than time? And waiting for Cain in his turn to join his brother, and Cain's children in theirs..."
The monk--not really a monk, not a monk at all--rose to his feet, and again assumed the form of the preacher who had torn Brother Stanley's tongue from his mouth and laughed as his blood spattered onto Brother Jeremy's head like baptismal water. "And now, my friend, I am your brother's keeper!" The preacher, or the thing which looked like a preacher, gave a dismissive shake of his head. "Not that he had much worth keeping. No more'n any of your kind, with your computers and your newspapers, your cities and your science and your dull, frightened little lives. The blood that flows in your veins is sheep's blood, my brother. It's gotten so it ain't hardly worth the spillin.'"
At last the fallen man had gathered his wits enough to drag himself up into a sitting posture, and a numb tongue stirred in his parched mouth. "This-- this is just a dream. You aren't real."
"You sure know how to hurt a girl, Brother Jeremy." The blonde woman pouted back at him. "But you know what? I think you'll find that she's pretty damn real." The man craned his head to follow the woman's pointing finger, and saw a teenage girl--thirteen, maybe fourteen, perhaps twelve the way they're growing up nowadays--trotting across the street towards him. A baseball cap on her head, rubber sandals on her feet, and Oh God, my sweet Jesus a curved metal knife in her hand. The girl's eyes swiveled onto him, and her vacant expression became a beatific smile.
"I must say that the quality of my helpers has dramatically improved, Brother Jeremy," the girl said. The figure on the sidewalk had disappeared; only the fallen man and the smiling girl remained. Her knife gleamed in the first rays of the morning sun. "Now let's tie up a little loose end."
............
"Good news, guys!" Xander announced as he flipped the phone back into its plastic cradle. Graciela and Bet, who had been bouncing on the unmade bed as they waited for their turns in the shower, turned to regard him with interest.
Xander ran his towel over his hair one last time, then tossed it into the corner of the motel room next to a wadded pile of shopping bags. "That was one of Angel's people," he explained. "Turns out they're moving into new digs, and they only just had someone stop back at the old place to check the phone messages."
"So, is Angel coming to meet us, or what?" Lo glanced over from the dresser mirror, where she'd been engaged in artfully tousling her hair. She was doing her best to feign mature disinterest, but the young Slayers had already spent many hours speculating about the world's only other vampire with a soul and how he might compare to Spike, especially after Bet informed them that Angel had been Buffy's first boyfriend. Whatever their feelings about their erstwhile leader, a fascination with Buffy's dramatic past and the lurid details of her private life was something that all the girls shared in common, and Angel was surely a large piece of the puzzle.
"Sounds like they've got their hands full with the move, and they don't think they can do a lot to help us right now." A momentary frown creased Xander's forehead, then his expression brightened again. "But they're sending someone over. They say he's the best guy they have for this kind of thing."
Xander stooped to grab a couple of the tote bags they'd packed earlier that morning. "I'd better head downstairs to give Will and Kennedy a heads-up. Don't want 'em taking off without us!" Directing a quick grin over his shoulder, he stepped out the door onto the balcony, and bounded off in the direction of the external stairs.
............
In room 211, Willow's and Kennedy's departure preparations were almost complete. Kennedy greeted Xander with a friendly nod, and Willow mustered a wan but sincere smile from her perch at the head of the bed. Their faces brightened as Xander relayed his message.
"That's great!" Willow chirped. "Who are they sending? Is it Fred, or Wesley, or Cordy, or...?"
Xander winced for a moment at the last of the names, then shook his head with jovial puzzlement. "None of the above, Will. Looks like we'll be making a new friend." He dropped his bags next to Kennedy's duffels, then slumped into a chair and leaned forward, fingers flexing with nervous excitement. "But they say they'll all be pitching in behind the scenes--they've started a new gig at some company called Wolfington's or something, which is supposed to have a ton of resources."
Willow blinked. "Wolfram and Hart? Isn't that, like, an evil law firm?"
"Well, a law firm, anyway," Kennedy laughed. "They do my dad's taxes."
"Whatever," Xander shrugged. "I think we're all due for a little more depreciation around here." Two blank stares. "Okay, that wasn't my best work. I think they must have gouged out my funny eye..."
Willow favored him with an exasperated eye-roll. "So I guess we're gonna hang around until they get here, right?"
Xander nodded. "Shouldn't be more than an hour, they said. In the meantime, maybe we can try that direction-finding thing you were talking about..."
"Yeah, that's right." Willow sat upright, gathering her energy. "Wherever Buffy's got to, she'll be out of range for a standard locator spell, at least with the resources we've got right now.... but there's this tracer thing I was working on a while back. It might at least show us the general direction she's headed in."
Kennedy shot her a look of surprise. "Feeling better, Red? I thought you were too wasted to do any magic."
"Uh-huh," Willow responded. "But this kind of spell is pretty straightforward - once you've got the basic formula worked out, it's like following a recipe, so I should be able to walk you through it. It works off the energy of the caster, so as long as you have enough to spare..."
Kennedy cut her off with a wave of her hand. "Say no more, babe. I'll be happy just to be able to do something." She pondered for a moment. "So what do we need for this? Leg of toad, eye of newt, organic yogurt?"
"Common household ingredients," Willow assured her. "I'll make you up a list."
Leaving Xander to keep Willow company, Kennedy went to collect the spell components from the strip mall stores--or, in the case of the requisite rat's tail, from the overflowing dumpster behind the Subs-A-Go-Go. Upon her return, she and Xander arranged the spell materials as per Willow's direction, drawing a makeshift compass of cayenne pepper and ground chalk in the motel's dingy carpet, then annointing the cardinal points with melted Crayola wax (Kennedy had been unable to find any candles). Standing inside the compass circle, Kennedy recited the tongue-twisting verses that Willow had jotted down in careful cursive script, and a flickering globe of light puffed into existence roughly twenty inches in front of her nose. She flinched despite herself, while Willow and Xander raised a ragged cheer and applauded appreciatively.
Then things seemed to go awry. The ball of light lurched east, then west, hovered in place for a long second, and finally exploded like a tiny firework as Kennedy staggered back. The sparks whirled about her a few times, then began arcing off one after another in different directions. One flew straight towards her and disappeared as it touched her chest; a few shot upward, in what Kennedy was fairly certain was the direction of Xander's room. In the midst of what must have been hundreds or thousands of individual sparks, one relatively large blur of light took off on a northeasterly heading, and Kennedy made a mental note of the spot on the motel room wall where it vanished.
As the last of the lights dispersed, the three of them exchanged perplexed looks. A sheepish Willow was the first to break the silence. "I don't know what to tell you, guys. I did specify the target as Buffy, not just a generic Slayer."
"And even if the spell was set to seek out all the Potentials-turned-Slayers in the world," Xander mused, staring at the compass circle inscribed in the carpet, "there aren't that many of them left." He paused, then looked up at the two women. "Are there?"
............
"Okay, so I'm all packed." Lo lobbed her backpack into the corner next to her companions' bags. "Now what?"
Bet rolled distractedly on the rumpled bedsheets, formulating a response, then started at the sound of a sharp rat-a-tat knock on the door and tumbled off the mattress with a squeal. Graciela bounded across the room and fixed her eye on the door's peephole, while Lo and Neena fumbled ineffectually at the window blinds.
"Guys?" Bet hissed as she clambered to her feet. "Who's there? Is it Angel?"
"Kind of the opposite, I think." Graciela stepped back from the door and began looking about the room for an impromptu weapon. "Looks more like El Diablo."
"Red eyes," Lo volunteered. "Great big horns."
"And his clothes!" Neena hissed. "What in the world is he wearing?!"
Exchanging quick glances, the four newborn Slayers nodded their silent agreement. As hunters of the living dead, veterans of the terrestrial hell known as Sunnydale, and energetic teenagers who'd spent the past week living on a diet of sugar and enforced idleness, they weren't about to cower in a closet while some ugly demon pounded on the wall. In seconds, they were arrayed in ambush position, improvised weapons in hand, ready to pounce the moment Graciela opened the door.
"Hey there, guys and dolls," the demon called. "I know somebody's home, 'cause I can hear you breathing. Did I catch you in the middle of something naughty?" A moment later, the door creaked open, and the horned visitor took a cautious step into the room. The girls were upon it in an instant, Lo sweeping its legs from under it with a swift kick while Bet clubbed it across the shoulders with a chrome bar from the bathroom's towel rack.
As the demon slammed to the floor, Graciela leapt onto its back and expertly pinned its hands, leaving Neena to yank the visitor's head up by its carefully coiffed hair. "Say goodbye to your evil head," she snarled, holding a letter opener to its throat.
"Not the head!" the demon yowled. "I'm on your side, kiddies!"
"So you're a good demon?" Bet replied skeptically.
"Good?" It fixed her with a red-eyed look of shock. "Honey, I'm fabulous!"
............
A couple of minutes later, Xander was still babbling apologies as he escorted the demon down the motel's external stairs. "I'm really sorry about that, Lorne. They're just kids, and they didn't know what to expect. Heck, I didn't quite, uh..."
Kennedy chimed in as she made her way along the second-floor balcony to meet them. "I guess we figured you'd just come straight to our room."
Lorne scowled, pressing the bag of ice to the spot on his back where a nasty blue bruise was appearing in the approximate shape of Graciela's knee. "Somebody neglected to give me a room number, boys and girls. I just asked for Harris at the front desk."
Xander exchanged a surprised glance with Kennedy. "So the manager didn't, well..."
Lorne waved his hand dismissively across the parking lot in the general direction of the front desk. "I think he assumed I was a singing telegram. At least he didn't try to saw off my head, unlike some overzealous teenyboppers I could..." He cut off abruptly as they reached room 211's open door, and peered in with a sunny smile. "Greetings and salutations! Willow Rosenberg, I presume?"
Momentarily taken aback by the appearance of a horned green demon in a purple velour jacket and wingtip shoes, Willow quickly recovered her equilibrium and favored her visitor with an equally bright smile. "Lorne! It's really you! I can't believe it's taken us this long to meet up in person..."
"We've always been two ships passing in the night, sugarpie." Lorne settled gracefully into a padded chair and leaned forward confidentially. "But when word came down the pipeline that our favorite Sunnydale sweetie needed a helping hand--well, could I have asked for a more perfect opportunity to make your acquaintance?"
Kennedy leaned back, arms folded, as Xander trailed her into the room and closed the door behind him. "No offense," she began, "but are you sure you can help us? I was expecting they'd send some kind of magician, or a research guy, but..."
"You've got all the brains and mojo you'll ever need right here, honey," Lorne replied, nodding in Willow's direction. "And if the slumber party upstairs is any indication, you're not exactly short of muscle either. No, what you need right now is what I've got to give you."
Lorne paused, and Xander filled in the straight line. "And what's that?"
"Soul, baby." The demon leaned back in his chair, clasping his hands behind his horned head. "I've got soul."
With a swiftness born of long practice, Lorne filled them in on the ground rules. As an empath demon, he stressed, he wasn't in a position to tell them about their past, or their present, or their future as such; it had something to do with karma, and something to do with reading auras, and he'd tell them what they needed to know and nothing more. Oh, and there was one more thing...
"We've got to sing?!" Xander recoiled in horror.
"You don't have to do anything, sweetcheeks," the demon sighed. "I can always just ease my battered buns back into my shiny new Ferrari and hotrod it back to LA in time for the afternoon soaps. But if you want what help I can give you, then it's time for a little a capella karaoke."
"I dunno," Willow pouted. "I really don't have much of a singing voice."
"How about I give it a try?" Kennedy suggested. "From here on out, my destiny is your destiny, Red."
They looked over to Lorne, who gave them a neutral shrug. "Your nickel, sugar. Let's hear what's on your mind."
Kennedy took a step forward, considered for a minute, and then launched into a spirited Michael Jackson cover. "Billie Jean is not my lover. She's just a girl, who says that I am the one..."
The demon listened politely for a few stanzas, then motioned her to wind down. "Somehow, peaches, I don't see a lot of paternity suits in your future. Not that you're going to be hard up for excitement, though..."
"So what did you see?" Kennedy asked impatiently.
"I saw that you don't need me to tell you what to do, and if I did you wouldn't listen." His hand flopped in a helpless half-wave. "I could tell you to go with your gut instinct, but you're going to do that anyway. Let's just say your heart's in the right place, for a human."
Then Lorne's brow furrowed in thought. "But I saw something else in your aura. Something I've seen before, in a Vampire Slayer... but this time it's different."
Now it was Willow's turn to press him to elaborate. "In a Vampire Slayer...?"
"That last time you came to LA, I was busy playing Florence Nightingale at Faith's bedside. She wasn't in much of a condition for singing, but I got a good look at her aura, and let me tell you a Slayer's aura is pretty unique. It's dark, and strong, and it thrives on trouble." The demon sighed. "But not like this. Whatever's going on with that Slayer part of you, it's bigger and stronger, and somehow it's more..."
"...Powerful?" Willow prompted him.
Lorne shook his head. "Awake. Awake and hungry." And that was all he was willing to say.
Meanwhile, Willow had steeled herself for her own ordeal, and with Kennedy's encouragement she launched into her own hoarse melody. "When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide... Where I stop and I turn and I go for a ride... Till I get to the bottom and I see you agay-yain..."
"Okay, okay!" Lorne pressed his hands to his ears. "You weren't lying about the singing voice." Willow's face fell, and he hastened to reassure her. "I kid because I love, sweetie. You should hear Angel sometime. Yee-owtch!"
Xander shifted back and forth expectantly. "What's the verdict, doc?"
The demon shook his head sadly and fixed a weary look on Willow. "I hate the part where you have to tell people things they already know. Look, kiddo, I love you all to bits, and so does everyone else here, and you should listen to what they're telling you. But all the advice in the world isn't going to do you any good until you're prepared to accept it, and you're just not ready to do that yet." He stood up, straightening his jacket. "Sorry, princess, but there's nothing I can do for you."
Xander and Kennedy exploded with simultaneous outrage, with Kennedy pulling herself back just short of grabbing Lorne by the collar and hauling him into the air. "What do you mean there's nothing you can do?" she barked, inches from his face. "What is this crap?!"
The demon shot her a withering glare. "I'm not her mommy, chica, and neither are you. This is something that only Willow can get herself out of, so don't hold your breath waiting for a magic solution to just drop into your lap. The problem with those," and here he turned his attention back to Willow, "is that there are always strings attached."
Lorne let out his tension with a long sigh, then leaned over to stroke Willow's suddenly pale cheek. "Don't take it too hard, sugarpie. You're falling right now, but you have the power to catch yourself, and to catch the others too. You're stronger than you think."
Tears welled in Willow's eyes, gathered at the tip of her nose. "I don't feel strong," she sniffed.
Lorne stood up again, regarding her seriously. "That's exactly backwards. But you already know that, so there's no point in my saying it." Then a thought occurred to him. "But that little road trip you've been planning? Following Buffy's trail? That's the right idea. Catch her while you can."
As Kennedy fumed silently, and Willow snorked loudly into a wad of Kleenex, Lorne made his way to the door and then paused, hand on the knob, to address Xander. "Sorry, champ. Normally I'd give you three for the price of one, but I think I'm all read out for today."
Xander shrugged indifferently. "I don't think I have much of a destiny anyway. But thanks for coming out here. And hey..." He paused for a moment, screwing up his resolve. "Tell Cordy I said hi."
Lorne froze in the middle of opening the door. "You haven't heard?" He stared hard at Xander, brow creased in concentration, then swept an arm around his shoulders and scooted him outside onto the balcony. "Excuse us a moment, ladies. Guy talk."
A chunk of ice had mysteriously appeared in Xander's stomach. "Heard what?"
The demon closed the door behind them and shot a quick look around the balcony to make sure they were alone. "Coma. It's bad. They don't think she's going to snap out of it anytime soon."
Xander gripped the metal railing, steadying himself. "What-- what happened? A car accident, some kind of demon--?"
Lorne shook his head, despondent. "I wish. No, this was some heavy-duty mystical badness. Our Cordy got herself mixed up with a higher power, and that never ends well..." The demon trailed off, gazing away into the middle distance, then collected himself with a shudder.
"Is there anything I can do?" The words sounded hollow as they left his mouth. "Flowers, or money, or..." Xander slapped his palm to his forehead, hard, then a second and a third time. "What a jackass. All she ever needed from me was for me to stay the hell away."
Lorne reached towards him, cupping his chin with a gentle hand. "You know that isn't true." He searched Xander's eyes for a long moment. "And you're wrong about your destiny. You can help these girls. There's somebody I think you ought to go and see..."
............
Four young Slayers lay stretched out on the third floor balcony, inching forward to sneak a peek between the railings at the level below.
"Is it just me," Lo whispered to her friends, "or does that demon seem kinda gay?"