Chapter Eighteen

Gem of Amara.

The pickaxe Buffy swung impacted with the heavily packed soil. Soil exploded. Not as satisfyingly as concrete, but there was a puff of aerated dirt where the pickaxe bit into the soil and a few heavy chunks of earth parted from the tunnel face. She got in a couple more blows before standing aside to let Xander shovel the dirt into a waiting wheel barrow.

Two feet a day, my ass, Buffy thought. Giles had finally shared his grimly pessimistic estimate with them. Buffy was having none of it. With her bare hands and a nail file, she would do better than two miserly feet a day.

Xander stepped out of her way and she attacked the face of the tunnel that they were digging to the probable location of the underground crypt. Angel and Giles had taken the first shift. They had broken through the concrete and brick tunnel where the excavation had been started just before she and Xander arrived to relieve them. She was determined to give Giles his two feet and then some, maybe double it, before he and Angel returned. They would be bringing lumber to reinforce the tunnel they were making. It would do no one any good to have a tunnel that collapsed around them before they recovered the Gem of Amara.

The translation Giles had labored over hadn’t given them a description of the Gem of Amara, but they had a basic grasp of what it was purported to do for a vampire. Render them invulnerable was the upshot. Impervious to stakes, holy water, holy symbols, and sunlight. Not that Buffy considered that unkillable. Would Spike die if she cut off his head? She had just the sword for it, she thought. Would he be alive once his head was separated from his body?

Maybe they could take him apart piece by piece. Angel could keep his head on a book shelf. They could put him on the top of the tree at Christmas. She paused to share these ideas with Xander as he removed the fresh pile of debris. Giles might have looked disapproving at her glibly blood-thirsty notions. Xander elaborated on them. He was trying not to look as tired as he was. They had been at this for hours, and he didn’t have her advantages. She didn’t say anything about it. The last thing Xander wanted to be reminded of now was that he wasn’t up to this, and she understood that.

Admired it. Her friends had none of the Slayer attributes. This wasn’t their destiny, or their duty. They got hurt more often than she was comfortable with, and still, they kept coming back for more. It wasn’t just loyalty to her. They believed in what they were doing. This time it was personal. It was more than just fighting the bad things the Hellmouth attracted. It was about one of their own.



“I’m hungry,” Harmony whined.

Devon was driving. Dan was in the front passenger seat playing navigator, though it really wasn’t necessary. They were going home. Oz was in the back, facing Harmony with a small crossbow at the ready.

The crossbow, a couple of stakes, and a bottle of holy water had been the parting gifts of the manager at the Temple, who had been relieved to have Harmony removed from his club and skeptical about the wisdom of traveling with her in daylight. Oz had fixed a tarp up over the rear windows leaving Harmony effectively trapped in a small zone of darkness.

Harmony was the last person who had seen Willow, therefore, she was coming with them back to Sunnydale. If they got lucky, Spike might be willing to trade Willow for her. Or she might be able to tell them something useful. There had to be a good reason for bringing her back to Sunnydale. There had to be a good reason to justify eight hours in a van with Harmony Kendall.

“Want some Doritos?” Chris asked, holding up a half empty bag.

“Uh . . . no!” Harmony huffed. She rolled her eyes. “Doritos? Not even when I was alive.”

Oz felt a headache coming on. “You do get the concept? Vampire? Drinks blood?” he hinted to Chris.

“Oh . . . right,” Chris looked at the Doritos. “Ix-nay on the Doritos,” he concluded.

“You can’t just starve me. You’re violating my rights,” Harmony argued.

“You’re dead,” Oz reminded her. “You don’t have any rights to violate.”

“When my boyfriend finds out how mean you have been to me, you’re going to get it,” Harmony predicted darkly.

“Right,” Oz nodded. “And your boyfriend is?” he prompted.

“A vampire. A really powerful vampire. With minions, and stuff,” Harmony tossed her hair. “He’s going to tear you limb from limb when he finds out what you’ve done to me.”

“Who is this boyfriend of yours Harmony?” Oz asked.

She examined her fingernails. “You wouldn’t know him,” she scoffed. She wasn’t about to admit to a big loser like Oz that her boyfriend was kind of a minion. She wasn’t totally clear on Pete’s position relative to the other vampires, but it was lower than a list of more than three, which didn’t sound very impressive to her.

Oz decided to try a different line of questioning. “How are you connected with Spike kidnapping Willow?”

Harmony gave the question due consideration. She rolled her eyes. “Willow. It’s always Willow. This is her fault. Everything was going great until she showed up. We were going to France, and then it all changed. And Spike was like, mean to me. Really mean. He hit me! Me!” she was outraged.

“He hit you?” Devon was outraged on her behalf. “That’s messed up!”

Oz considered another review on the nature of vampires and considered his audience. Okay, maybe not so important. He saw Harmony’s expression brighten as she realized that she had at least one sympathetic listener in Devon.

“I don’t have to take that,” Harmony asserted.

“No, you don’t,” Devon’s gaze flicked from the road to the rear view mirror. The fact that he couldn’t see Harmony in it didn’t faze him.

Oz studied her thoughtfully, wishing Angel was there. His insights on the dynamics of vampire relationships might have shed more light on what was going on. “Does he, has he hit Willow?” he asked, unable to keep the tremor out of his voice.

Harmony caught the slight tremble and cocked her head to one side, recognizing it as an appropriate response. Oz was Willow’s boyfriend, and he was obviously worried about her, which was exactly what he was supposed to be. She gave a spare shake of her head, deciding that biting Willow was definitely something she ought to keep to herself.

“No,” she said. “She’s okay.”

Oz took a deep breath, nodding. “You’re better off with us,” he told her. “Spike is going down. This is personal, you know? He took Willow.”

Eying the crossbow, Harmony nodded slowly. “I’m getting that,” she confirmed. He was kind of small and unassuming, and that hair—but, he was getting all of this right. She squinted at him and tried to imagine him in khaki trousers, tassel loafers, and a polo shirt, an outfit Pete had embraced before Spike showed up to make fun of him. If his hair was thinned out, he would almost look like a younger version of her Dad.

She set aside her own role in Willow’s abduction, which had really been incidental. She wouldn’t have kidnapped Willow. That was all Spike. He was the bad guy here. What loyalty did she owe to a vampire who wouldn’t even provide her with the most basic beauty supplies? She would have just killed her—she was awfully yummy—Harmony recalled wistfully. Spike had stolen her kill, and the way she saw it, Harmony had dibs on killing Willow. She had known her since kindergarten. Willow was almost like family, and she had the distinct impression from some of the things that Georgia and Colin had said that killing members of your family was a vampire rite of passage that she had been deprived of.

“Yeah,” she nodded, eyes glowing amber. “It is personal. He stole Willow. Our Willow. Who does he think he is?”




The van that Giles had rented to transport materials to their dig site was backed up to the covered loading dock at Home Depot. Angel stayed inside the van, accepting the banded stacks of two by fours that were guided in from the loading dock. If anyone thought this arrangement was odd, they didn’t say so. He had offered to help pay for the rental and the supplies, but Giles had simply looked at him for a long moment and then declined.

After the van was fully loaded with the supplies that had been purchased, Giles came around to the driver’s side, careful to disengage the door before opening it, giving Angel plenty of time to find a position that would not expose him to the direct sunlight coming in from the driver’s side door. He sat on the floor of the van between stacks of lumber, a relatively safe position.

Giles started the van, turning back to him to say something, and then stopping. He shook his head. “I’m so accustomed to the children, that I almost asked if you wanted to stop at a drive thru to get something to eat,” he admitted as he pulled away from the loading dock, making a minute adjustment to the side view mirror. “We should stop, to get something for Buffy and Xander, don’t you think?”

“No,” Angel said. “Send Xander. It’s his thing, getting the food, and he’ll need a break, but he won’t take one unless it’s for a good reason. Like feeding Buffy.”

Impressed by this reasoning, Giles nodded. “You’re right. Xander has been . . . he’s very concerned about Willow.”

Angel rested his arms across his knees, letting his hands dangle.

“How concerned about Willow are you?” Giles asked.

Angel stared at his hands. “If we don’t talk to her in the next three days, I’m going to start thinking that it is because she is dead,” he said.

“Why?” Giles asked. His eyes automatically went to the rear view mirror before he remembered that he would not be able to see his passenger.

“Controlling his temper isn’t Spike’s strong suit. He may have killed her last night,” Angel pointed out. “We don’t know otherwise. He also hinted that he was thinking about turning her,”

“And, you think he might?”

“I think he’s thinking about it, or he wouldn’t have said it,” Angel made a disgusted sound. “Jesus,” he muttered. “I forgot to ask him about Dru,” he admitted. “He had me rattled, which was half of the reason he was being coy about Willow.”

“Why three days?” Giles asked.

“Assuming that he killed her last night or sometime today, it will take that long for her to rise and get any control over her demon,” Angel explained. “Most fledges have trouble maintaining any control over their features, and talking around fangs takes some practice, and all the electronic noises that clutter a phone line? It’s too distracting. After that, with some work and a lot of feeding, he might be able to make her convincing enough to fool me.”

Normally Giles would have been fascinated by these insights, and there was the trained Watcher portion of his brain that was storing this information away to be examined later.

They left the interstate at the exit near the University. There was a hand made sign posted on the exit ramp directing students to a locally owned college bookstore. For a moment his vision blurred, as it suddenly hit him that it was quite possible that Willow would not be buying books for her first semester of college in a few short weeks.

“Damn it,” he swore softly. “She left a public place with Spike. Why? Damn it! Why would she do something so unforgivably stupid?” he demanded.

Angel frowned. “We still don’t know what happened in San Jose,” he pointed out. “It’s not her fault, Giles.”

“I bloody well know that!” Giles exclaimed. “Once he has the Gem of Amara, it’s Buffy he will come for next,” he predicted.

Angel didn’t doubt that for a moment. “Buffy, you, me, Xander if he’s anywhere around. I don’t think Spike will remember to get him if he isn’t around being . . . Xander,” Angel’s tone was unintentionally humorous. “He’ll settle scores first.”

“I can’t permit that to happen,” Giles admitted tightly. “Buffy will not listen to reason—and I’d hardly expect her to be reasonable about this,” Giles said. “God! I’m a bastard. I’m as much a cold, bloody-minded bastard as that prat Wesley was.”

Angel frowned at that. “You didn’t agree with Wesley when he veto’d the plan to trade the Box of Gavroc for Willow.”

“No, I didn’t,” Giles agreed bitterly. “I was too busy relishing the fact that my Slayer wouldn’t work with another Watcher,” he stated with self-loathing. “But, he was right. Every life we lost graduation day was a life that paid for Willow’s, and I watched them die and did not regret it even for an instant. Principal Snyder—hardly a loss there. Harmony Kendall? Spoilt, self-absorbed twit. Larry—“ his voice cracked.

Angel had an icy feeling that crawled up his spine when he realized that Giles knew the names of every person that died the day the Mayor ascended and that their names and faces and the small details of their lives lay on his conscience. “Stop it Giles,” he said quietly, forcefully. “People died, but without Willow we wouldn’t have known how to stop the ascension, or when it was going to happen,” Angel reminded him. “The pages Willow stole from the Books of Ascension were the key to taking him down.”

“Well, we didn’t know that then, did we? We just put our own concerns ahead of everything. We risked the fate of this town to save one person.”

Angel understood exactly what he was saying. Xander or Buffy would have reacted to this with an optimistic, ‘well, yeah’. He hadn’t been saved when the world was in the balance, and he hadn’t expected to be. His heart broke for Buffy, for what she had been brought to, but he was proud of her, so proud that she had found the strength to do what had to be done. He frowned. It wasn’t the same. The circumstances were not as dire. She didn’t have to sacrifice anyone this time.

She couldn’t. His eyes widened a little as it reached him. She couldn’t do that again. It was too cruel to expect it of her. He sucked in a hard breath to ease the ache in his chest, suddenly understanding why Giles sounded so angry at Willow.