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Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.

Part XI

“Reversed,” Giles said. “Mirror image, as perhaps implied in the final dream.” He nodded understanding. “Not ACUL. LUCA.”

“Does that mean anything to you?” Cordelia asked.

“Yes!” It was a high yelp, from Willow, and she reddened at the sudden attention the exclamation had attracted. “Brother Luca,” she explained. “He was one of Miss Calendar’s online contacts, it’s in the bookmarks I copied from her classroom computer —”

“Of course,” Giles said. “I remember now, he was the one who sent the warning J-Jenny gave me about the Anointed One being a child. Not very helpful, in retrospect; still, all the same …”

“Got you,” Willow replied. “Logging on now. Luca, Luca —”

Oz lifted an eyebrow in Cordelia’s direction. “Looks like you picked a good time to come clean,” he observed. “Even if, you know, earlier mighta been better.”

“I’m sorry,” Cordelia said. “I think maybe I was a little crazy the last few days. I felt it, I knew I was going downhill, but I had no idea how bad it had got till I woke up and it was gone.”

Amy snorted. “Tell me about it!” The scornful tone drew startled glances, and she said, “What? Didn’t anybody pay attention to what I said when I was working on her? People die from the accumulated gunk I was draining off. She may be hell on wheels when it comes to slugging it out with the undead, but your girl was running on fumes. I’m surprised she made it this far.” She shot Giles an inquiring look. “So I’m guessing this isn’t exactly normal for Slayers?”

Giles cleared his throat. “Cordelia is … a unique case.”

“Uh-oh,” Jonathan said.

“What?” Xander challenged him. “What is it from you now?”

“She, uh …” Jonathan indicated Willow. “She just went stiff, and she’s staring at the screen like … well, like something not good.”

“Wil?” Xander was at her side in an eye-blink. “Is it the screen? Are you mesmerized, paralyzed —? Answer or I’m shutting your laptop right this instant!”

Willow shook herself free of whatever had gripped her. “No, no, I’m okay. It’s no kind of Internet magic, I just …” She turned haunted eyes to Xander. “All of a sudden I’m wishing I’d kept an eye on the chat page about Brother Luca.”

“Bad news?” Oz ventured.

Willow nodded. “He’s gone. He’s been sending end-of-the-world warnings to everybody on his mailing list, starting maybe ten days ago, and then late Friday he stopped posting at all. Everybody’s really worried about him, some have tried tracking spells and they say it’s like he dropped off the face of the earth.”

“Friday,” Giles repeated. “The same night as the break-in here.”

“Whoa,” Marcie said. “You’re thinking they’re connected?”

“Only in the sense of various factors beginning to come into line at roughly the same time,” Giles replied. Then, to Willow: “Warnings, you said. Is there a record of what he was warning against?”

“Oh, totally,” Willow said. “It’s what everybody on the page is discussing. Hold on —” She hit a few keys, drew her finger along the touch-pad, and then began to read aloud: “ ‘When the unliving heart beats with the living blood of Sineya’s daughters of this day and the day gone, then will the steel fist be raised on the hand of the soulless mind.’ ”

Several seconds of silence greeted the end of the recitation. Then, “Rather cumbersome,” Giles said. “Prophecies tend to be intricate and obscure, and the wording can be … grandiose, but there’s a gaudy flavor to this one.”

“I don’t know if it exactly qualifies as a prophecy,” Willow said. “I mean, the way Miss Calendar talked, Brother Luca follows threads from all over the world, and uses them to make … forecasts, I guess you’d call them. Like he can spot storm clouds that other people miss. And from the discussion threads, he always gets a little flamboyant with his language; nobody seems to see anything unusual in the wording, they’re talking more about how they’ve never seen him this scared.”

“Scared,” Cordelia said. “Flamboyant. Storm warnings. Got it. So, is it too much to hope somebody knows what the damn thing actually means?”

“Possibly.” Giles glanced at the book he held, then looked back to Cordelia. “Sineya is reputedly the name of the First Slayer; her ‘daughters’ would be all who follow in her line. The ‘steel fist’ … I believe, from clues in several of your dreams, that the term may pertain to the Glove of Mynhegon, a mystical artifact which is supposed to confer supernatural power on whomever wears it.” He adjusted his glasses, looked again to the book in his lap. “Unfortunately, the Glove was formed for human users, of varying magical potential; the ‘hand of the soulless mind’ would seem to indicate a vampire — Spike, presumably — and there simply is no way to predict how the power would manifest through such a vessel.”

“Forget predicting,” Xander said. “How about an old-fashioned guess? Can we still do that?”

“The situation is unprecedented,” Giles returned. “Given the supporting text, however, and hints from Cordelia’s dreams and various commentaries on the Prophecies of Aberjian, the strongest likelihoods would be —” He counted them off. “Power so intense as to shatter mountains. The ability to resurrect demons. Or, finally, a capacity to open a localized Hellmouth at any place of the wielder’s choosing.”

Oz looked from Giles to Willow, and his voice when he spoke, though steady, was gravely soft. “You know, list like that? I’ve got no idea which one would be worst.”

Cordelia stood up. “So is anybody else thinking, no matter how evil Angel is now, me working with him is still better than letting Spike follow out his plans?”

“Do Amy and I get to vote on this one?” Jonathan asked. “Because you can definitely mark me down for a YES.”

“Same here,” from Marcie’s corner. “Talking about the end of the world is one thing, but this business is starting to feel real. I don’t like that, and I’m all for anything that’ll jam a broom-handle into the spokes.”

No one else vocalized an explicit answer, but nods and grunts of assent showed a seeming unanimity. “We shall continue to research,” Giles announced. “And those of us who would do the re-ensoulment ritual must prepare ourselves to carry it out as required. But, yes, Cordelia: while watching always for treachery from him, there seems little choice but that you continue your … partnership, with Angelus.”

Xander let out a little laugh, and said, “Sorry to sound a sour note in Queen C’s grand plan — except no, I’m not — but is this whole bring-back-puppy-Angel deal really the way we want to be going here?”

Cordelia groaned inwardly, but kept her tone level. “I’ve been over that. It’s a weapon, an attack he won’t see coming and can’t dodge. Like calling in an air strike.”

“Believe it or not, I’m actually on board for that part. I mean, sure, I’d rather see him strapped down over an active volcano, but ya does what ya can with what ya gots.” He gave her the familiar ironic eyebrow-lift, but there was no smile beneath it. “What I want to know is, how do you time it?”

Huh? “Huh?” Cordelia said.

“You’ve got this ritual,” Xander explained. “Gypsy-tested, Jenny-approved, and Giles and Willow and Amy and Jonathan are all over it. Way to zap Angelus long-distance, got it. But the two of you are partners right now — you know, the way people are when they really want to kill each other but they’ve got to deal with something a leetle more pressing at the moment — and I don’t think you want to whack him in the middle of the two of you fighting your way through Spike’s brute squad. So, sure, you say you want it handy for when he pulls the double-cross that we all know is coming … but it’s a long ritual, I don’t think they can spin it up in twenty seconds. How do you go about having it hit exactly when you want it to?”

Amy and Jonathan traded startled looks, and Giles said, “Ah. Yes, indeed.”

“We have to do it,” Cordelia insisted. “We have to have it ready. Don’t ask me how I know, I just know.”

“He’s got a point, though,” Amy said. “This thing has a lot of volatile elements, we have to keep it all in balance. Timing it to hit at a specific moment … I don’t see how.”

“What about a bridge?” Oz suggested.

Amy looked at him. “Hmm?”

“I don’t know magic,” Ox said, “but timing, yeah, I deal with that a lot. When you’re doing a number and you have to stretch it to the end of a set, well, there are ways. Repeat some of the themes, do some frills, bridge in and out of other stuff for filler, things like that. What I’m hearing, it sounds like you’re talking about that kinda balance.”

Giles frowned, pursed his lips. “I really don’t think —”

“No, no, he’s right,” Amy broke in. “Sorry, Mr. Giles, you may have the book-learning, but I don’t just do this stuff, I feel it. And it feels right.” She smiled, just as she had when assessing Jonathan’s “conduit” concept. “Yes, I can see it. Lay the foundations, get the big stuff warmed up and ready to move, then start layering it with other things. Invocations, stresses and elaborations … butter up the Spirits of the Interregnum, sanctify by the blood of the people we’ve lost … Yes.” She looked to Cordelia. “The funny part is, do it that way and you make the spell even stronger and more precise. Meanwhile, though, we’re holding it back for just the right moment. You’ll still have your air strike, but we’ll be keeping the planes in a holding pattern until then.”

Giles cleared his throat. “You said yourself that we’ll be dealing with volatile forces in a delicate arrangement. Do you really believe you can hold such things in balance by means of a … free-style jam session?”

Amy gave him an arch eyebrow. “Don’t groove to the musical vibe, hmm? Okay, look at it this way: if you don’t know anything about cooking, you follow the recipe exactly. If it comes naturally to you, though, you know you can, oh, sauté the onions while you’re chopping up other ingredients, keep water boiling in the background till you actually need it, add a little corn starch for extra body … You’re still going by the recipe, but you’re working with it instead of being tied down by it.” She made a wide gesture that took in Giles, Willow and Jonathan. “If you guys had to try this by yourselves, you’d absolutely follow the directions on the box. To the letter. Me, though, I’m a natural cook, and on my way to being a chef. Magic is in my blood, and I’m telling you: I can do this.”

Giles cleared his throat. “I actually do have some understanding of music, and the ‘bridge’ analogy was in fact far more reassuring. I take your point, however.” He looked to the others. “It would seem, then, that we’ve come to an agreement. There is still the matter, of course, of assembling the proper ingredients for our … recipe.”

“Most of that shouldn’t be a problem,” Jonathan said. “I mean, me and Amy talked some with Willow, and she said the supplies we need are mainly basic stuff. There was one thing, though, the orb-something …?” He looked to Amy.

“Orb of Thesuleh,” she supplied. “Spirit vault for the retrieval of souls. That’s a new one for me. I can see how it works — kind of a way station between being called back from the Great Beyond and being restored to the proper vessel — but I know it wasn’t mentioned in any of my mother’s materials, so I have no idea how rare the things are.”

“Quite rare,” Giles told her. “But not especially valuable; the simple fact that the Kalderash rituals were lost meant that there was, effectively, no real use for a properly prepared Orb. I’ve had one myself for several years now: kept it as a curiosity, used it as a paperweight. It might take us weeks to acquire one otherwise, but as it stands, we now possess all the necessary materials, and need only make proper preparations.”

“Really? Good.” Amy looked around. “So how about we pull everything together and do a walk-through? I mean, don’t turn on the current, obviously, but get a feel for where the parts go and our rhythm for carrying it out. I’m thinking, with something as tricky as this, a few rehearsals might be a pretty good idea.”

“Very well.” Giles glanced toward Xander. “I believe the conclusions we’ve reached serve to suitably address the concerns you raised. Do you concur?”

Xander shrugged. “I’m good. Sure, I’d like it better if you could set him on fire at a distance, but this is good enough for government work.” To Cordelia he added, hard-lipped, “This is just for now, got it? We’re not settled, you and me. Not even close.”

“Right,” Cordelia said. “I figure if we can keep the world from exploding, that’s all the miracle I can ask for.”

Oz nodded. “See? Sunny side of the street.”

Giles gave instructions, and Cordelia withdrew to think her own thoughts. This was far from being an ideal situation, but it did seem that various components were starting to come together. In fact, there was a haunting sense of familiarity to the situation, and took her several moments to follow this elusive sense to recognition: even with the awful changes of the past several months, even with all the people they had lost to death or desertion or soullessness or paralysis/ coma, even with the near-universal hostility directed toward her now, this was the nearest thing in a long, long time to normal function for the Slay Friends.

Funny how much you could accomplish with just one little apocalypse …

Behind her she heard Marcie say to Giles, “There you go. Orb of Thesuleh, right where you said it was.”

“Thank you,” Giles told her. “That should be everything. Now, placing ourselves at four equidistant points around the table should help to reinforce the balance we are attempting to achieve via our respective roles —”

“Oh!” Willow exclaimed, and everyone looked at her as she continued, “That’s an Orb of Thesuleh? But, but yes, that makes sense.” She turned to Giles. “It’s so weird, it’s like destiny has been pointing this way the whole time.”

“I’m sorry,” Giles said, with practiced patience. “I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

“Well, you said you’d been using it as a paperweight, and sure, I can see where you attached it to that little base so it’d sit flat … but Jenny had one, too. Which completely makes sense, she would have gotten hold of one if she wanted to recreate the ritual that souled Angel in the first place.” She gave them the hesitant smile that said, Am I starting to babble? I’m babbling, aren’t I? “You remember, Xander — when we were putting away her stuff, the thing you said was too small for a crystal ball? So, so you had one, Giles, and Jenny had one, as if you were both moving in the same direction without you even knowing.”

“Well, that’s cool,” Jonathan offered. “Always good to have a spare, in case something goes wrong.”

Giles held up the Orb that Marcie had brought him, studying it from different angles. “A spare,” he said, his voice level and controlled, expression schooled to reveal nothing. “That could indeed prove useful … though not, of course, in the immediate moment.”

“No?” Amy asked. “Why not?” At the slightly frosty glance she got from Giles, she went on, “Look, not challenging, I just want to know. We’re breaking out the big guns here, and I want to understand it as well as I can. So why wouldn’t a second Orb be much use right now?”

Mollified, Giles explained, “Even if every part of the Kalderash ritual is done properly, even if each of us carries out his or her portion perfectly, an undertaking of this magnitude exacts a toll. We will all experience a … psychic deadness, perhaps even a backlash; in either instance, even under perfect conditions it would be impossible for us to attempt a second ritual until we had completed a long, careful period of recuperation. We still have the second Orb in case we discover some flaw in one of them, but I’m afraid we must accept that, here and now, we will have only the one chance.”

“Okay,” Amy said. “Just so I know.”

“Certainly. Now, Xander, if you recall where, where Jenny’s Orb was packed, could you retrieve it in case —? Yes, thank you.” He had continued to hold up his own Orb as he spoke, the light from the windows playing through it; now he set it down and turned his chair slightly so that he was facing Cordelia. “And, while we do our … rehearsals here, you can perhaps be making your own preparations for this evening’s rendezvous with Angelus. Always keeping in mind — … Cordelia?”

“What?” Cordelia startled. “I mean sure, yeah, right, what?”

Giles peered at her. “Are you quite all right? Amy, we must be certain her recovery is complete, too much depends on tonight’s events.”

“No, no, I’m fine,” Cordelia insisted. “Just had my head somewhere else for a second. You were saying?”

“Simply that you must always remember that Angelus, as well as Spike, will be a direct threat to you. You might wish to select weaponry, as well as the proper mindset, on that basis.”

“Way ahead of you,” Cordelia told him. “Don’t worry, I’m not about to forget that.”

She left while Amy, Giles, Jonathan and Willow were sorting out bone fetishes, candles, colored chalks, an incense bowl, and various herbs on the expanse of the dining table. Oz watched her with the non-expression that showed he had thoughts he wasn’t voicing, but he didn’t move to follow. They would have words, Cordelia knew; his advice to her about keeping secrets had been direct and pointed, and he would have some comments about how well she had (or hadn’t) followed it. Just not now.

Which was good, because there was going to be one more secret. It went against everything she had learned over the last several days, might well sabotage all she had accomplished, but she was clear now. Dreams, prophecies, clues and blind alleys and symbolism and guilt and determination and regret and a frigging parallel timeline … Against every likelihood, it had all suddenly shaken out into a complete picture, clear and solid and shot through with the weight of destiny.

She knew now. The road ahead of her … she might not be alive at the end of it, but at least she knew where it led.

There were things she had to do, arrangements she had to make, and — depending on the mood they were in when they learned of it — what the remnants of the original Slay Friends might feel was one last betrayal.

However anything else turned out, though, they were now, undeniably, moving to a conclusion.

*               *               *

In her room, Cordelia laid out clothes for the evening. Patrol wear had added another dimension to her wardrobe, one she didn’t advertise but that she nonetheless refined and implemented with the same ruthless discrimination she had once devoted to cutting-edge fashion. The purpose might be different, but the process — putting together the specific ensemble that was exactly right for a particular situation — was so familiar as to be near-automatic by now.

Dark colors. A vampire’s night vision was almost as good as a cat’s, and more sensitive to motion than to color … but vampires weren’t the only things out there, and besides, why make it any easier for them than she had to? Durability rather than style: she had been using work boots for months, and debating whether to go even further into some with steel toes, or make a lateral move to Doc Martens. In tops, knits fit closer but didn’t last as long, and she’d progressed into cheaper and cheaper fabrics, going for ease of replacement over considerations of appearance. For pants, she alternated depending on conditions: black denim was tougher but more confining, whereas sweat pants (sweat pants!) gave her much greater ease of movement but minimal protection.

For tonight’s work, she was likely to need ruggedness and utility, and she chose accordingly. Jacket with sewn-in slots for carrying extra stakes, stone-washed black jeans so she could carry additional weapons on a belt. The sword Angel had tossed at her the other night had a good balance and fit her hands perfectly, so she installed it in the kind of back-slung sheath she thought she had heard Giles call a baldric. She attached twin daggers to the belt, in case she had to do close-in work — all too possible if she was facing a mixture of demon types — and installed holy-water flasks in handy pockets. This went beyond patrol, she was headed for battle, and she intended to be suitably kitted out.

It wasn’t until she looked over the final selection, laid out on her bed, that the realization struck her. This was the same kind of outfit she had chosen the day she and Buffy had set out to assault separate targets simultaneously. In fact, the jacket and baldric were the exact same ones she had worn then.

In one frame of mind, you could see that as fitting, symbolic. In another, you could take it as a bad omen. Cordelia shook away the question; she had picked out what she needed for what she had to do, and that was the only thing that mattered.

She had made the necessary call to Amy, and in private conversation with the young witch she had established that the new contingency she requested was indeed possible (somehow Cordelia had known it would be), and arranged the signal that would trigger it if needed. She had put together and set aside a few extras — seriously unwelcome surprises, she hoped — and put them into a backpack that, tightly cinched, she could wear without it slowing her down or compromising her flexibility. She had re-examined her dreams, and the conclusions she had drawn from them, and found nothing to alter the path on which she was set. She had written a brief letter to Giles and left it on a table in the hall to go out with the morning mail, and she would put another on his desk in the SHS library, dual paths for leaving him a last message if she should prove unable to do so by any other avenue.

She might die tonight. Always there in the background, it hovered over the only outcomes possible for the coming storm: she would live, and win; she would die, and win; she would die, and fail. She did not intend to fail.

Some things could never be made right. Some costs, once incurred, could only be borne. But sometimes, sometimes … sometimes, there was a shot at redemption.

The last several months had provided ample evidence as to how the world could change completely from one breath to the next, but even so, she found herself slightly shaken by the shift. She had been frozen for weeks in a situation she couldn’t bear but didn’t know how to change, all her determination rendered impotent by the fact that she had already lost before she began … Intolerable as it was, it had become the norm of her existence; and then, over the space of a three-day weekend, a new universe of possibility had opened out. Not without risk, and not without a price, but still, an avenue of escape had been revealed. There was simply no way she could allow this chance to pass unseized.

In a moment of bad judgment — awful, catastrophic bad judgment — she had lost, alienated or isolated herself from all the people who mattered to her. (Not the disastrous lovemaking that had loosed Angelus; that had spun from ignorance, with Jenny Calendar as its author. No, her crime had been to lock the others out of a decision cycle that affected them … and, worse, in the process to cause them casualties they couldn’t forgive her.) She had continued among them as a pariah, unwelcome but not quite dispensable, until need and inspiration had driven her to recruit an alternative set of Slay Friends; now, those had been integrated with the originals and, if the necessity arose and Amy followed through, would help her to effect a lesser betrayal. That could well be the last straw to a group who hadn’t been willing to cut her much slack to begin with. It didn’t matter. The dreams had finally come together to form a meaningful picture, and she knew her path now.

However this ended, it would end tonight.

*               *               *

She slipped out of her home fifteen minutes before sunset, left the letter for Giles in his office at the library, and began her patrol the moment the sun dropped below the horizon. Even though she was itching for action, there was no avoiding the delay; Angel would find her when he was ready, and following what passed for a normal routine was the way she would be found. If she was lucky, it wouldn’t be long before he got around to it. If she was just a little lucky, she might get to kill something while she awaited contact.

Nope. There was a stillness to the growing dusk, an absence of any of the vaguely felt supernatural activity that usually formed a kind of subliminal background hum. It was as if that other world had withdrawn, was watching and holding its breath. If true, that might at least mean no distractions tonight. At the same time, the atmosphere of hushed anticipation lent added tension at a time when she was already keyed up for violence.

At the outer edges of a mini-golf course (human activity even after dark, meaning an opportunity for a predator to thin the herd without drawing immediate notice), she stopped, listened, waited, and at last announced, “Okay, here I am. Are you ready to play, or would you rather just stay out there and play with yourself?”

“Ooh, language.” Angel emerged from the shadows, favoring her with one of his trademark smirks. “You’re really developing a mouth lately. Makes a fella wonder —” He stopped, surveying her with his head tilted to the side, then met her eyes again. “Interesting outfit,” he observed. “Familiar, even. Are you really wanting to repeat that experience?”

“Are you?” Cordelia challenged. “It wasn’t your finest hour, either. I killed every last one of your soldiers and burned your house down around your ears, and you … Oh, that’s right, you ran away, never even took a swing at me.” She shook her head. “Reminding me of that? not smart, unless you’re eager for me to finish the job. Now, do you have Spike’s location? or do I have to think of something else to do with you?”

He chuckled. “I’ll admit, you were in high form that night. If you’re anywhere near as wound-up now, we’ll deliver a fine slaughter.” The reminiscent amusement fell away, leaving his face a cold mask of malice. “Yes, I have the location. Conradt was really insistent on the accuracy of his information. Frantic that I should believe him.” A thin smile. “At least, while he could still form words.”

And there was Angel in a nutshell. It didn’t bother him in the slightest to point out how worthless were his promises, because he already knew she already knew. Cordelia shrugged. “Fine. So, where? I’m ready to get down to business.”

Angel snorted. “Where else? Spike’s world-class when it comes to stubborn, but nobody ever accused him of being big on imagination. Whatever he’s running tonight, he set it up back in the factory where Drusilla sliced up your little miss Slayer-No-More before you sent her swooshing down the big vacuum-cleaner hose to Hell. Boy definitely has a one-track mind.”

Cordelia lifted an eyebrow. “And aren’t you going to swear dire vengeance on me for perforating everybody’s favorite Nutso Queen?”

“Drusilla?” He shook it away. “Bad riddance. I kept her around in the beginning because it was fun to watch Darla have to put up with her. Once Dru brought Spike in, though, I had to put up with him. Much more interesting, but much less fun.”

“All right, then.” Cordelia started toward the parking lot. “I’ll meet you there. I won’t go in without you, because you’re right, we have a better chance tackling Spike and his crew together. But I won’t trust you in my car.”

“Riding to a showdown?” Angel said, and the smirk had returned. “A man might think you were going soft.”

“A ‘man’ might,” Cordelia returned, “but I don’t give a french-fried damn what you think. And any time you want to test me for soft? I’m right here, with a stake in either hand.”

He shook his head. “We’ll see, come the day … and the day will come, never fear. Okay, Princess, have it your way, we’ll meet at the scene. Don’t rush, though.” He gave her a grin that promised nothing good. “Wouldn’t want you getting edgy and reckless, waiting for me, or you might screw everything up. Again.”

Cordelia had already done all the verbal sparring that her mood just now would allow, so she made no reply. She backed away, not willing to turn her back on him, and he likewise kept his eyes on her as he faded into the night shadows. Once she was sure he was gone, she proceeded to her car. She waited until she was in motion, however, before pulling out her cell phone and making the call.

“Amy? Tell them it’s going down at the factory. …… Oh, they’ll know which one. Listen, for now it looks like Angel is playing it straight, so I’ll stay with the plan as it stands. If anything goes wrong, though, the rest of you need to be ready to follow up. …… With what? Well, my personal preference would be to crash gasoline tanker trucks into the place from every side, open the valves, and toss a match. But that’s just me. They’ll come up with something. …… Too soon to tell. I’ll let you know when it’s time. On that one, too, though, you’d better be set to move quick.”

She closed the phone, ending the call. The last answer had been to Amy’s murmured, And the other little thing we talked about —? Cordelia had covered every angle she could think of. Now it all came down to the doing.
 

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