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  Buffy sniffed the snow cone. “Smells like raspberries and apples.”

  “All the blood cones we serve do,” Ernie said.

  Pointing at the guy near the arcade, Buffy said, “Not his.”

  Ernie reached under the counter and brought out a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun. He leveled it at Buffy. “Maybe you need to breeze, little sister.”

  Buffy felt Angel move at her side but checked him with an open hand. “Or what?” Buffy challenged. “You’ll ventilate me? Let some daylight through me? Come on, let me hear the clichÈ.”

  “Sayonara, sweet cheeks.” Ernie’s finger tightened on the trigger.

  Buffy moved like lightning, kicking the shotgun up and back. Both barrels went off, filling the convenience store with thunder. The double-ought buckshot took out the television in a spray of electronic fireworks.

  The bikers erupted from the video game machines, surging toward Buffy and Angel. As they charged, the bikers’ faces morphed, revealing their vampire natures.

  Vaulting the counter, Buffy kicked Ernie in the face, knocking him out from the counter and into the aisle. The shotgun twirled up end over end. The Slayer caught the shotgun on the way up, broke it open and popped the spent, smoking casings out, then glanced under the counter. There, in a half-empty carton of cigarettes, was a scattered handful of shotgun shells. She grabbed two of them and shoved them into her captured weapon.

  “Duck,” Angel advised, grabbing the lead vampire by the shirtfront and hip-tossing him over the counter.

  The vampire sailed through the air and hit the entry door on the other side of the counter, upside down. He crashed through, taking out the glass, advertisement, and iron bar rack.

  Angel couldn’t avoid the next vampire and got swept up in the biker’s open grab. Holding Angel’s feet off the ground, the vampire charged back toward the refrigerated cases and rammed Angel through the glass and into the stockroom behind.

  “Grab the bitch!” one of the bikers yelled.

  Buffy leaped up and rolled backward across the counter, landing on her feet on the other side. Ernie was just trying to get to his feet when she kicked him in the face. He crashed into the potato chip racks, taking them all down.

  Still on the move, the biker vampires just behind her, Buffy skidded down the paper goods aisle. A cardboard cup held a fistful of pencils. She upended the shotgun and dropped pencils down both barrels. Whirling, she brought the shotgun around, pointed directly at the lead vampire’s chest. She slid her finger into the trigger guard, feeling both triggers of the double-barreled weapon. Each trigger fired one of the barrels and it didn’t matter to Buffy which one went first. Both of them took out whatever was directly ahead of the weapon.

  The vampire held his hands up in mock surrender, smiling hugely. “Might hurt me some, little darling,” he said in a heavy Texas accent, “but it ain’t nothing gonna be permanent.”

  “Wrong,” Buffy said, pulling the hammers back.

  “With pencils? And the erasers pointed out at me to boot?” The vampire couldn’t believe it. “What are you gonna do?”

  Buffy smiled coldly. Only this morning she’d been told about the convenience store and the blood cones it was selling. Willow had checked the police records and found out several persons had gone mysteriously missing in the area.

  “I’m going to close this place down,” the Slayer promised, “and I’m going to rub you out.” She pulled the first trigger.

  Constructed without rifling, totally smoothbore, the shotgun was designed to push out everything in the barrel when it fired. The pencils, broken by the heated rush of gunpowder and buckshot, turned into splinter confetti that ripped through the vampire’s chest, taking the heart out along the way.

  Incredulous, not believing what had been done to him, the vampire glanced down at the huge hole in his chest where his dead heart had been. Then he turned to dust.

  The next vampire held up, looking like he was considering other options. He started to run.

  “Don’t go,” Buffy said. “I think I can pencil you in— or, out, rather.” She pulled the trigger, sending pencil debris ripping through the vampire’s chest and turning him to dust.

  “She’s out of rounds!” one of the vampires squalled. “Rush her!”

  Buffy blocked with the shotgun, using it like a bo stick, then as a club. One of the vampires tried to sneak up on her but she heard the scuff of his shoe on the floor as he closed in from behind. The Slayer whirled, superhumanly fast, and rammed the shotgun’s hot, smoking barrels through the vampire’s chest. She didn’t stop pushing until the shotgun went completely through the creature, including the wooden stock. The vampire turned to dust as well.

  Glass shattered in the back again as Angel pushed his way out. He carried a plumber’s helper with a huge rubber suction end. One of the vampires turned toward Angel only to catch a faceful of plumber’s helper. The suction cup latched onto the vampire’s face, but Angel’s strength shot the wooden handle on through the rubber suction cup, down through the vampire’s head, and into the creature’s heart.

  Slipping Mr. Pointy from her jacket, Buffy leaped high into the air, put a hand down on the head of the next vampire who charged at her, and landed on her feet. She struck with the stake as the vampire pulled up short, penetrating its heart from behind, hearing the sudden rush of dust falling to the floor as she whipped the stake back.

  Angel attacked the last vampire in the room with the broken stick left over from the plumber’s helper, ducking under the lock-back knife the creature swung. He was dust by the time Angel stood again.

  The store was a wreck. Overturned racks and shelving littered the floor with bags, cans, and boxes. Ernie was trying to crawl away on hands and knees.

  Angel caught the man by the shirt collar and yanked him to his feet. Ernie only made token resistance, stopping entirely when Buffy pressed her stake against his chest.

  “Where?” Buffy asked.

  Ernie pointed, fingers trembling. “Back in the freezer section.”

  Buffy led the way, trusting Angel to control their prisoner. The door to the freezer was padlocked. The Slayer gripped the lock and yanked. The padlock and the locking mechanism tore from the door with a loud shriek.

  Darkness filled the freezer room, but the salt-copper scent of blood lingered in the air.

  Buffy kept her stake tight in her fist as she searched for the light switch.

  Dim refrigerator lighting filled the small freezer section. A young woman in a light green windsuit hung suspended from a meat hook in the ceiling in the center of the room. A straitjacket bound her arms and a gag fitted her mouth. IV tubing ran from both sides of her neck, tapping the two carotid arteries that would be full of adrenaline freshly pumped from the heart. Surgical steel cut-off valves glittered at the other end of the tubing. Glazed fever dulled the woman’s eyes and they tracked Buffy slowly. No hope lived there, and she’d obviously been there for a few days.

  Buffy’s eyes blurred with tears. If only I’d come sooner, she couldn’t help thinking. But she hadn’t known, and even when she had, she hadn’t believed. She’d expected to raid the convenience store only to find that the blood cones were from hospital blood bags, not a hostage.

  “Buffy . . .” Angel said gently.

  “I’m okay,” she insisted.

  “I can take care of this.”

  “No,” Buffy said. “I’m the Slayer. This is my job.” She turned to the vampire Angel held. “Bye, Ernie. Hope they burn you for a long time.” She stabbed Mr. Pointy through his heart, moving at normal, human speed so he’d see it coming.

  His dying scream broke off midway through as he turned to dust.

  Buffy put the stake away and turned her attention to the hostage. The woman’s dulled eyes didn’t even show fear.

  “It’s okay,” Buffy told her. “We’re here to help.” Gently, she started loosening the straitjacket from the meat hook. The vampires had wanted their prey to last for a while so the
y had slid the meat hook through the straitjacket and not into her flesh.

  Angel took the woman in his arms when they had her free. “She’s in shock,” he said, “but if we get help for her quickly enough, she’ll be okay.”

  Buffy shook her head. “She’ll never be okay again, Angel. She might live, but she’ll never be okay.”

  Buffy stood in the shadows across the street from the convenience store. She watched the paramedics load the woman onto a gurney, an IV already feeding lost fluids back into her body.

  The Sunnydale police had cordoned off the area and tentatively poked around in the building. Only a handful of neighbors had turned out for the excitement. Most residents didn’t venture out to rubberneck atrocities that took place after dark. By morning, it would be like none of this had ever happened.

  “We’re done here,” Angel said quietly.

  “I know.” Buffy watched the scene a little longer. “I can’t help thinking about how she must have felt while she was hanging there, having them siphon blood off her like she was nothing.”

  “You can’t think about that,” Angel whispered.

  “I can’t not think about it.” Buffy turned to Angel and she didn’t mean to let some of her anger out, but she did. “And if you’re going to tell me that you’re not going to go back to your home and not think about it, then maybe we don’t share as much as I thought we did.”

  Angel was silent.

  “Well?” Buffy demanded.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Why? Because I told you to?”

  “No.”

  “Because it sounds like now that you’re only going to think about her because I told you to.”

  “That’s not it.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “You’re angry,” Angel stated, “and I understand that.”

  A single tear slid down Buffy’s cheek before she could regain control. She made her voice hard. “Then why did you tell me I couldn’t think about it?”

  Angel remained silent.

  “Don’t tell me what to think,” Buffy said. “Don’t think you can tell me what to not think about. I feel the way I do about things, Angel, and you can’t change any of it. No matter how much you want to. Or I want to.”

  Hurt flared in his eyes, but he didn’t break contact with hers.

  “And I don’t want to,” Buffy said weakly at last. Spike’s words the last time they’d met still haunted her. And every now and again she still had nightmares about Angel trying to end his life on Christmas. Instead of the unexpected and unusual snowfall that had prevented the dawn that morning, in her nightmares she could only watch him burn.

  Angel reached for her and pulled her close. She felt the smooth strength of his chest against her cheek, and he blocked the wind from her. She tried to ignore the chill that clung to him because his body couldn’t maintain ninety-eight-point-six, but she knew she’d never feel the heat of him. She felt safe, protected.

  “I just wish,” Angel said, “that I had more to tell you than not to think about things like this. It’s frustrating to know that telling you that is the best I can do and it’s not going to work.”

  “I know.” Buffy wrapped her arms around him tightly. “But that’s not all you do, Angel. If I didn’t have you, I don’t know what I’d do.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed him.

  After a moment, he broke the kiss and stepped back. “Maybe we’d better keep moving,” he said in a thick voice.

  “Sure,” Buffy said, taking his hand, her breathing slightly elevated while her sexual frustration level had buried the needle. “Let’s go see what Willy has to say about waiting to tell us about Ernie. I’m really in the mood for him to lie to us.”

  Chapter 6

  LESS THAN AN HOUR AFTER THEIR VISIT TO THE CONVENIENCE store, Buffy and Angel took a table at the back of Willy’s Alibi. Humans and demons rubbed elbows at the tables and at the bar, laughing and joking, and watching the basketball game on the television over the bar. The stench of stale beer and cigarettes covered everything, given more lasting power by the layer of grease from the microwave Willy used to prepare nachos and other snacks for the tavern’s patrons. Canned metal music hammered from the cracked speakers, creating an undercurrent of total din. When it came to social stratification in Sunnydale, Willy’s was an armpit. It was a place where socially errant and uncivilized creatures, humans as well as demons, met to compare notes, set up jobs or marks, or to hide from the law. Everyone in Willy’s was on the run from someone, and no one ever gave his or her right names.

  Seated in the shadows around the table, Buffy scanned the crowd for new faces, or old faces showing new worries. None were in the offing. She sighed and checked her watch. It was almost eleven. Oz and Dingoes Ate My Baby would be playing the final set at the Bronze, and that sounded a lot better than vampire-hunting.

  Only the image of the woman hanging in the convenience store wouldn’t leave Buffy’s head. Even though she knew she still had human weaknesses, it was hard not to realize that every moment she was sleeping could mean someone else’s death.

  She glanced at Angel.

  “No one new,” he said.

  “Let’s ask Willy,” Buffy said, sliding up from the table. “He was so busy I bet he didn’t even see us come in.”

  “He saw us come in,” Angel responded. “He avoided us.”

  “Not nice.” Buffy crossed the crowded floor, instantly drawing attention from the men seated around the stained, tilting tables. A handful of them tried to touch her as she passed. She left three broken fingers, a fractured wrist, and a broken cloven hoof in her wake. She turned at the sound of a meaty smack behind her.

  Angel brought his leg back as one of the men at a nearby table sailed backward in his chair. The legs caught on the uneven flooring and spilled the guy onto the floor.

  The demon started to get up, growling furiously, but a big man built like a pro wrestler put a heavy boot on his shoulder. “No, mate,” the blacksmith said easily. “Yer done. I come here to have a quiet drink afore I ship again, and I mean to have it. Don’t you be starting something what’s gonna rile the whole bar up. Ye best be leaving that girl alone, or that man there’ll have yer tripes out and be showing them to ye.”

  The demon struggled only a moment more, then nodded.

  “Ye mind yer manners whilst yer in here,” the big man added, “afore I smash yer kebob meself.”

  Buffy continued to the bar, knowing every eye in the place was on her—except for the Thurik demons in the corner that grew an extra one in the back of their heads.

  “Bad pennies and Slayers,” Willy muttered. “Always showing up at the wrong time. And unwanted.” He was short and scrawny, a bar towel thrown over the shoulder of the soiled white shirt he wore. His dark hair hung in greasy locks.

  “Gee, Willy,” Buffy said brightly, “it’s a good thing I don’t rate the opinion of pond-feeding scum very highly. That could have hurt my feelings.”

  Willy’s face tightened into a scowl. “I don’t know nothing.”

  “Don’t you be worrying about old Willy,” the woman at the bar beside Buffy said in a soft, rolling Southern accent. “He never has an opinion. Unless someone gives him one, and permission to use it, of course.”

  “Thanks. I’ll remember that.” Buffy looked at the woman and tried not to stare.

  “It’s okay, sugah, I’m used to people paying me overparticular attention.” Even seated on the barstool, the woman looked statuesque. She had a Pamela Anderson Lee post-op build and scaly, obsidian skin that glittered in the dim light. Her hands were long and tapered, with beautiful silver nails. Her age was indeterminate, but her face was indescribably beautiful, high cheekbones and a generous mouth. Her hair was bone-white, seeming to flow and move effortlessly. “But I’m sure a pretty girl like you is used to getting a lot of attention of her own as well.”

  “Yeah . . .” Buffy said, staring into the woman’s hypnotic gaze. The woman’s eyes were pale la
vender and scarlet, with black irises shaped like a cat’s. White limned the outer ring of her eyes.

  “Cut it out, Treena,” Angel ordered, stepping between the woman and Buffy.

  An unfamiliar heaviness lifted from Buffy’s mind and she felt like she was just waking. “What’s going on?”

  “Treena is a Medusa,” Angel said. “Some of the stories in Greek myth were based on her. They said her gaze could turn men to stone, but it wasn’t just men. It was anything human.”

  “And they weren’t turned to stone, sugah,” Treena stated. “They were delivered unto rapture, which is the gift of my kind.”

  “Medusa,” Buffy said as thinking still clunked around in her head. “The snakey-haired woman?”

  “Yeah.” Angel put a menacing fist close to the Medusa’s face.

  Instantly, the hair strands lifted, coiled to strike, tiny mouths open to show fangs. Dozens of snakes stood revealed, hissing. The demon seated next to Treena cursed in disgust and abandoned his seat.

  “Oh dahling,” Treena said good-naturedly, “you’re such a caution.” She pushed at Angel’s shoulder playfully, then smoothed her hands through her viper-hair, calming the snakes. “I didn’t mean any harm. If you didn’t have that pesky soul of yours, you might be a lot more fun.”

  “She’s not really a she,” Angel continued, taking his hand back down. “A Medusa is a symbiotic being. The snakes are a separate entity co-joined by a single brain.”

  Ugh! “So she’s a home for those snake things?” Buffy stared at the snake hairs in sick fascination.

  “Yeah,” Angel answered.

  “Oh sugah,” Treena protested. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.” She scratched the back of her head. “Although the little boogahs do get a little rambunctious and wiggly from time to time. I assure you, the vhipurn have nothing but my well-being in mind.”

  “Except that they like to feed on human flesh,” Angel pointed out. “They give Treena and her kind powers in return for habitat space.”