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by Chris Kenworthy (scoobyhq@fcmail.com)
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters that you recognize from the Buffy television show and don't make money off of them.
"Plan?" Giles considered a moment. "I'm, I'm not sure if I have a plan. Do you have any bright ideas??"
Celia frowned. "Well, no, not really. But we should be doing something, shouldn't we?"
Giles shook his head. "Besides waiting and seeing what happens next, what can we do? Buffy and Faith will be waiting for their opening - Jonny, too."
"That's it? Wait?"
"Wait and observe," Giles said. "There's no way we'll survive blatant resistance. But we can try to figure out what their plans are, look for vulnerabilities and limitations. By the way," Giles changed the subject pretty deliberately. "Would you be able to get any empathic information out of these vampires, now that we know who they are?"
"I've been reading them already," Celia said. "Most of them are a balance between agression and restraint due to fear. I figure all those are the henchpersons - the vampires the Brotherhood made at the Dojo."
"That would make sense," Giles said. "What about the Brotherhood?"
"I haven't gotten a reading that would identify someone as one of the Brotherhood," Celia told him. "With this level of emotional interference, it's dependent on getting a clear line of sight to my target, and I haven't gotten that. I figure most or all of the Brotherhood are out of sight - maybe in one of the offices."
"Keep trying," Giles said, giving her the best encouraging smile he could manage and rubbing her shoulder affectionately.
(Over by the stairs.)
Cole tried to get to the doorway Xander had indicated, but of course as soon as he got near it, he was out of the crowd of hostages and was easily spotted by one of the guards. "Stop right there," he called out to Cole. This guard was dressed up as Rambo and carried a nasty submachine gun. Cole stood exactly where he was.
"Where are you going?" Rambo asked him threateningly.
"Uh, the bathroom?" Cole tried. He couldn't think of anything else.
"It's over there," Rambo said suspiciously, pointing over towards the other side of the stage, "Go on." He reached out a hand to push Cole in the right direction.
Cole reached out to grap the hand as it came, focussing himself desperately. He had only tried this trick twice before, but... he focussed himself on Rambo, draining energy, creating a state of temporary lethargy. It worked, even though his healer's sense told him that there was something incredibly strange about Rambo - a kind of deadness in his flesh. Oh, well, no time to worry about that. Cole let him stand there and took off for the doorway. If any of the other guards noticed, they probably figured that Rambo had given permission for some reason.
The corridor was dark, and Cole's eyes took several long seconds to adapt. He passed by the doorways to the green room, the kitchen, and two storerooms with only a cursory look inside. The narrow hallway took a narrow turn, and as Cole came around there she was!
Buffy was sprawled on the floor, a nasty-looking gash visible through her ripped jacket, wet bloodstains splotching her clothes, her arm, her neck, her hair and her face. Cole knew at once there was no time to waste - he reached out his right hand at Buffy's wound and focused all of his healing energy into it. The cut was deep, all the way into... what artery was it, there in the shoulder? Could it be the subclavian? In any event, it had been cut more than halfway open, but healed up well enough as Cole focused on the wound. Soon enough, she was healed, and Cole gave her system a general probe to make certain that she would be all right.
His jaw dropped open. She would not be all right! The amount of blood that had been lost already was too great. Buffy Summers would die!
(In the management office.)
"You almost ready in here, Tom?" Jim asked.
The overhead lights in the office had been switched off in favor of strangely scented candles, and the vampire Tom was lighting burning sticks of incence, arranging five seats around a small mystic diagram, and various other preparations. "One more minute, boss," Tom told him.
Jim turned to Harry. "Are you okay with leading the guard details?"
Harry pouted. "Not really."
Jim sighed at him. "Okay, well, let's look at this. One of us needs to be outside - these twats have all the competency of a flock of geese, and once the seance is started it can't be interrupted. If you like, I'll do it," he stared at Harry knowingly, "but that means that you'll have to take care of all the details that we're gonna learn in this ritual, that I won't know about 'cause I wasn't there."
Harry nodded ruefully. "Guard duty here I come," he sighed, hefting up his trusty submachine gun. "Take care of my cutey, though, huh?" He cast a fond look over at Willow, already sitting in one of the chairs for the ritual.
Jim sighed loudly at him. "She'll be fine, you nitwit."
"Ready here," Tom reported, and Harry slipped out the door and closed it. "Jim, you sit next to Emma Peel," he continued, seating himself right between the two girls, "and you go over there Bob," he finished, pointing to the chair on the other side of Cordelia. He put an object on the lap of each girl, an old-looking dagger with Willow, a fancy scepter with intricately sharp edges to Cordy. "Join hands."
They all did, Willow and Cordelia moving uncertainly, still in the psychic trances Tom had put them into. "We welcome the night," Tom began, nodding to Jim and Bob.
"We welcome the night," they echoed after a moment.
"She is our mother, the mother of all who hunt in the darkness, hidden from the foolish rabble of the daylight. We the vampire brethren, we take pride in our heritage as the Sons of the night!"
Tom's voice seemed to echo around the room for an instant, and then all was silence. "We gather together now, in the safety and security of the night," he continued. "We come before the night as common questors, seeking to ask audience with the spirits of two brave daughters of the night who have passed on before us. We call now upon the spirit world - let our voices carry into that other place!!"
A gust of wind blew out of nowhere, making the candles flicker.
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