"Come on," she said, and then she started weaving through tables, past glaring, thick-necked laborers.

Xander muttered something as he followed her, but Buffy paid no attention. They had taken too much time at the door. The vampires were nowhere in sight. That meant either the rest rooms or some other room in the rear. Buffy figured they'd head for a back door, if there was one. She headed for the heavy wooden door at the far end of the bar. None of the lights reached that far, so most of the patrons wouldn't even have noticed the door.

The music kept pummeling the room, the girls started dancing again, and before Buffy and Xander had even reached the door, everyone's attention was back on the girls or their drinks. Buffy held the crossbow at the ready and set herself in a fighting stance, muscles tensed.

"Xander, get the door."

All seriousness now, no trace of amus.e.m.e.nt on his face, Xander edged up beside her, reached down to turn the k.n.o.b and shove the door open, then dropped back. Buffy surged forward into what appeared to be a dingy dressing room for the dancers. Lockers and mirrors abounded, but the room was poorly lit.

Not so dark, however, that she could not see them.

Bulldog. Clownface. Four . . . no, five others.

Buffy froze just inside the door, blocking Xander's entrance.

"What is it?" he asked anxiously.

"More math." She reached back and handed Xander a stake. He took it. Then Buffy grabbed the door and slammed it shut behind her, leaving him out in the club. Xander shouted her name and she called back to him to stay put.

If there were other vamps out in the club, she doubted they would reveal themselves. But if they did, Xander had the stake. Meanwhile, she had room to work.

The vampires moved in almost total silence across the room, seeming to uncoil from the darkness like serpents. Clownface and Bulldog hung back while the others moved closer. In the near darkness, the orange fire of their jack-o'-lantern eyes set into the black inks of the tattoos that were etched across their faces was unsettling.

They began to chant something, all at once and all together, in a language Buffy did not recognize. It was in a kind of deep undervoice almost as though they were whispering it to themselves. The chanting slipped under her skin immediately, eerie fingers trailing along her spine and raising gooseb.u.mps on her arms. Buffy felt her eyes flutter and the lids grow heavy.

With a surge of anger and adrenaline, she shook it off.

"You think I'm that easy?" she asked dismissively.

Xander called her name again and pushed open the door behind her. In a single motion, Buffy spun and slammed it shut, knocking him back out into the barroom, then turned to face the vampires, just as they swarmed her.

Her finger tightened on the trigger of the crossbow. A bolt flew, punched through the heart of the vampire closest to her, and he exploded in a blast of hot ash. Another bolt ratcheted into place but another vampire, a thin white scar slicing through the markings on his face, lunged for her throat, his long tongue slaking out over his fangs. Talons reached for her. She knew she could not let them get a grip on her. With a backhand, Buffy slammed her left fist up under his jaw and caught the vampire's tongue between his teeth.

He screamed in pain and staggered back, clearing Buffy enough room to aim at a third and fire again.

The vamp's eyes went wide as the bolt slammed into his ribcage and then through his heart. A second later he was dusted.

"Too quiet," Buffy chided the remaining bloodsuckers. "Vampire mimes, is that it? Let's have heaps of arrogant swagger. You guys love arrogant swagger."

They said nothing. There were still five of them, but Buffy saw Clownface grab Bulldog's arm and hold him back as the other three came for her again, trying to corner her. Buffy had one last bolt in the repeating crossbow. She swung the weapon up just as they all attacked. This time she was not fast enough. The crossbow was batted from her hand with a blow hard enough to make her right hand numb.

It clattered to the floor and Buffy heard the wood crack.

"Hey!" she snapped.

One of the vampires pushed the others out of the way, greedy to get at her, and wrapped his talons around her throat, choking off her words and her air. The thing slammed her into a mirror and a rain of shattered gla.s.s cascaded across the floor.

Buffy pushed her feet against the wall for leverage and then head-b.u.t.ted the vampire as hard as she could. Her aim was a little off and her skull crushed his nose with a splintering of bone and a spray of blood.

"That bow," she snarled, "was an antique. Giles is not going to be happy. He might even swear."

One of the others came at her from the left. Buffy ducked the blow, leaned back and snapped a kick at the vampire's chest that staggered him.

Another bat-face reached for her, but Buffy was too fast. She reached behind her and withdrew the stake from its sheath at the small of her back, then spun and punched it through his chest. The scarred one with the broken, mashed nose lunged at her through the cloud of his comrade's dust. Buffy swung her right fist in a blow that came up from her gut and he went down hard on the floor.

After that she moved in a single fluid motion. A spinning kick to the face of her remaining attacker was followed by a thrust of the stake, and more dust blew around the room. She dropped to the floor, stake above the scarred one's heart, nose to nose with the vampire. His breath was wretched, the stench of old blood.

Buffy dusted him.

Instantly she was up, turning, body tense and ready for more, wanting combat and, with some luck, answers. She had figured to interrogate the last one alive. But she had not expected them to run away.

The last of them, the two she had come to think of as Clownface and Bulldog, were gone, a distant rear door to the club hanging open to the night.

Half a dozen wisecracks came to mind, but none made it as far as her lips. Vampires ran from her all the time, but this was different. There was no doubt in her mind that the two escapees had not run out of cowardice, but as some form of strategic retreat. The idea disturbed her profoundly. The vampire breed was a contentious one and they rarely got along well enough to form alliances, never mind packs or families. Only the most charismatic and powerful like the Master were able to gather followers in that way.

Whoever this Camazotz was, he had trained his acolytes well.

With those dark thoughts in mind, she pulled open the door to the club. Xander leaned against the wall to her left, staring at the two girls on the stage closest to them. It took him nearly ten seconds to notice Buffy standing there watching him.

"Hey. Just on the job. Making sure you're not disturbed," he said nervously.

"My hero." Buffy raised an eyebrow.

Xander balked. "You pushed me out of there. Closed the door in my face not once but twice. Kinda figured that meant I'd just be cannon fodder if I forced my way in. If you needed backup I thought you woulda yelled for me."

"I would have," Buffy agreed. Then she smirked. "Whether or not you would have heard me is another question entirely."

"What?" Xander asked. His eyes strayed to the stage. "Oh, that? Barely noticed them. Just backing you up, Buffy. You will tell Anya it was you who dragged me in here, right?"

Buffy made her way around tables and toward the front door of the Kat Skratch Club amidst clouds of cigarette smoke. None of the patrons even gave her a second glance.

Xander trailed after her. "Buffy? You'll tell her, right?"

CHAPTER 4.

The dentist's-drill buzz of the alarm clock woke Buffy at just after seven o'clock the following morning.

One eye flickered open and she glared at it with as much hatred as she had ever felt for more corporeal demons. Just looking at the thing would not make it shut off, however, so she was forced to sit up, eyes slitted open, and click it off.

"I hate Mondays," she grumbled under her breath. Of course, it wasn't Monday. But it felt like one.

With a frown, Buffy looked around the room. Willow's bed was still made, unrumpled. Her roommate had not come home the night before. It wasn't unheard of for Willow to spend the night at Oz's, but Buffy could not help but wonder if the brief argument they'd had the day before had anything to do with it. She was tempted to call Oz, but it was too early. Willow would likely be up already, but you could never tell with Oz. One day he might make all of his cla.s.ses and the next he might sleep until after lunch.

"No," she told herself sternly. "No grumpy thoughts."

Determined to make a fresh start of the day, she got up and peered out the window. The sky was gray, overcast, but it was almost guaranteed to burn off. It was fall, sure, but it was also Southern California.

Bad weather happened, but it was rare enough that n.o.body believed it until it did some damage, then afterward they pretended it had never been there. Almost exactly the same way the people of Sunnydale dealt with the supernatural.

"No grumpy thoughts," she said again.

Humming a s.n.a.t.c.h of some tune the Dingoes always played at the Bronze, she got her things together and went down the hall to take a shower.

Fifteen minutes later she was back in her room. Her mind drifted to the run-in at the Kat Skratch Club the night before. The tattoos, the vampires' eerie chanting, their eyes, and their arrogance; much as she hated to admit it, even to herself, they creeped her out.

Giles had promised to do research on Camazotz, and she knew he would get it done as soon as possible. But having Olivia around would complicate things. After the chaos of last night Buffy had been tempted to go back to his apartment and check in, but the idea of interrupting their romantic evening stopped her cold. The last thing she wanted to do was disturb Giles's love life, never mind walk in on it.

Shudder.That thought was creepier than bat-faced vampires.

Buffy glanced at her enemy, the alarm clock. It was a little after seven-thirty, still plenty of time before cla.s.s, and the desire to call Willow and square things if they needed to be squared lingered with her.

Oz answered. "Yeah?" he rasped.

"Hey, Oz. Sorry to call so early. Is Willow up?"

"Hang on."

A m.u.f.fled exchange on the other end, then Willow came on.

"Hey."

"Hey. Sorry to bother you guys."

"No bother," Willow said brightly. "At least, not me. But I'm not a cranky old bear in the morning like certain boyfriends. What's up?"

Buffy paused. It would sound silly if she brought up their argument, or just said she was checking in.

"Buffy? You okay?"

"Good," Buffy replied quickly. "No grumpy mornings over here. Listen, there's some interesting new talent in town and I was going to head over to Giles's this afternoon, see what we could dig up. Want to come with?"

"Mmm," Willow replied, sounding a bit distracted. Buffy tried not to be envious that her best friend had a guy who loved her to be distracting. "Why don't we meet you there?"

"Deal. Gotta go, though. Time to make with the book learnin'. Got my history exam this morning. Then I've got to work on that paper for Professor Blaylock. As of today, I'm starting with a ninety."

"Knock 'em dead," Willow said. "Only, y'know, not literally."

They said their good-byes and hung up, and when Buffy left the dorm room she had a broad smile on her face. Willow meant the world to her and Buffy had no idea what she would do if there ever came a day when Willow did not feel the same.

Oz sat cross-legged on the floor of Giles's apartment, excavating ancient treasures from the man's vinyl record collection. Olivia, a woman Willow had only met a time or two before, but who clearly meant a great deal to Giles, sat on a cushioned chair by Oz and exclaimed over a number of the records he pulled out, many of which spurred her to regale them with embarra.s.sing stories of Giles in his younger days.

She was certainly a beautiful woman, and her British accent gave her an added allure. Willow felt badly for having interrupted their time together.

"Are you sure this is okay?" she said, keeping her voice low.

Giles sat beside her at the dining room table as the two of them pored through a stack of arcane texts. A couple of them were even older than the most antique volumes she had previously seen in his collection, and most were in Spanish.

"Giles?" Willow prodded.

He blinked several times, then looked up at her as though he'd just been snapped awake by a hypnotist.

"I'm sorry, Willow, what was that? Have you found something?" "Not yet, no. I just . . . I know you and Olivia don't get to see each other very often. She's not in from London for very long. Are you sure you want to be doing this today?"

Giles removed his gla.s.ses and offered her a gentle smile. "It's very sweet of you to be concerned. The answer, of course, is no. I don't want to be doing this at all. But I also realize that lives may be in jeopardy from these new arrivals, and a bit of research is the least I can do to help Buffy in her effort to combat them. She may have decided that she's going to be invincible, but unless someone goes 'round and gets the rest of the world to agree, we must back her up."

He glanced over his shoulder as Olivia laughed about a particular record. Oz said something under his breath. Something ironic, Willow was sure, because he was Oz, after all.

"Oz seems to have Olivia quite well entertained at the moment," Giles rea.s.sured Willow. "Though how he manages to do that and maintain his usual twelve-word-an-hour rule is a mystery to me."

"He's a good listener," Willow said, a lopsided smile on her face as she watched her guy. When she smiled, the bruise Buffy had given her the previous morning made her wince. The glamour she'd used could hide it, but not make the pain go away.

"So anything?" she asked Giles.

"Quite a bit, actually." He separated out two of the books from his pile. "I just thought I'd hold off until Buffy arrived to avoid having to explain it more than once."

Troubled, Willow wondered where Buffy had gotten off to. That morning she had asked that they all meet at Giles's after cla.s.ses were over. Willow knew for a fact that Buffy's last cla.s.s of the day was out before three o'clock. Now it was going on four and still no Buffy.

"I expected her long before now," Giles added.

It only made Willow more concerned. "I hope she's all -"

She was interrupted by a knock at the door. Willow leaped up from the table to get it. Giles reached for a book he had set aside. Engrossed in the record collection, Oz and Olivia were about to put on an early Rolling Stones alb.u.m, but they paused to look up.

Willow opened the door to find Buffy standing on the stoop.

"Hey!" Willow said. "You're okay."

"Sorry I'm late. It's just, this paper for Professor Blaylock. I thought I had a lot of this stuff down, but I feel like I'm starting from square one. No way am I going to finish before Monday, which is when it was due in the first place. I'll be starting from a seventy. It'll have to be perfect for me to pa.s.s. Then, this afternoon, I run into Aaron Levine, who's in my history cla.s.s? We got to talking about the exam this morning, which I thought I'd done all right on. Turns out, not so much. I mixed up a couple of royal families, so one of the big essays is written in the language of gibberish. I just don't know what's wrong with me."

Willow frowned, then forced a smile. "Tell you what? You've got the stress. Maybe you'd feel better if you went back and worked on that paper. Let us deal with the mystery for a while. Then, when you feel like you've got a better handle on things -"

"I've got a handle on things now," Buffy snapped.

Surprised by her anger, Willow took a step back. She glanced around the room and saw that everyone was staring at Buffy.

"Except, perhaps, your temper," Giles chided her.

Buffy began to form some sort of retort, but then her features softened. She gazed apologetically at Willow.

"Sorry, Will. Maybe I am wound a little tight right now, with all this. Thanks for worrying about me, but I really can handle it. Iwill handle it."

"Preferably without the crankiness," Willow replied, still a bit hurt.