With a final glance at Giles and a burning in her eyes that might have been tears if she dared allow herself to feel the pain in her heart, Buffy turned away from both of them and ran at the harbormaster's desk.

Camazotz screamed behind her, but Buffy did not slow. She leaped up onto the desk and dropped her shoulder as she crashed through the window and onto the street beyond, around the side of the building from the main road. She hit the pavement in a shower of shattered gla.s.s, sharp edges slicing her skin.

Hating herself, filled with fear for Giles, she rolled and then jumped to her feet. It had been her only choice. Now she had to get to Willow and the guys and get - Buffy rounded the front of the building and froze, mouth open in horror. The Kakchiquels were there, arrayed in the street like an army. Perhaps two dozen, maybe even more, and each of them wore Camazotz's brand tattooed across his face. Or her face. Lots of hers.

But they did not even notice Buffy. Their attention was on the van.

Oz's van was parked in the midst of this sea of monsters, this swarm of silent vampires. Through the windshield, Buffy could see Oz and Willow, frozen as though they were afraid that any motion would set off the vampires. They dared not attack as long as they were not attacked, so pitiful were the odds.

Then the Kakchiquels began their chant. It rose in volume but lowered in pitch, until it shook the ground beneath her feet and thundered against her like the distant thump of fireworks on the Fourth of July.

It was a moment. A single moment.

Camazotz emerged from the harbormaster's office, blazing orange eyes upon her. The demon-G.o.d dragged Giles along by the throat as though he were a rag doll. For a moment, Buffy worried that he was already dead. His gla.s.ses were long gone and the blood on his face had begun to dry. His eyes were glazed and dull. A corpse. That's what came into her mind. He was a corpse.

But he still breathed.

That was enough to break her paralysis, to splinter the frozen moment like a thin layer of ice across a pond.

"Oz!" she screamed. "Drive!"

Camazotz screamed something in a language Buffy did not recognize. It was as though a switch had been thrown, for the Kakchiquels surged to horrible, vicious life. They shattered the windshield of the van before Oz could even put it in gear. A startlingly tall female with rings piercing her face in painful adornment used both fists to smash the pa.s.senger window just as the van's engine roared and it shot forward a few yards, battering four vampires back and off their feet, and crushing one beneath the tires.

The broken leech shrieked his pain, but he would not die. Could not die. It would be in agony for ages.

Good,Buffy thought.

She waded into the swarm with no grace or elegance at all.Odds like this, she thought,it's all or nothing. Vampires were all around her, cl.u.s.tering like insects as they tried to find an opening in her defenses. Buffy cracked a backhand across the bridge of a nose, snapped a high kick off that shattered a ribcage, stamped hard enough to break a leg . . . too many to focus on killing them. She had to cripple them instead.

But after the first few seconds, a rhythm did work its way into her bones, into her muscles. As if it were merely a closed-fisted blow, she punched the stake through one heart, then a second, parried a fist, dodged a kick, then dusted a third. Ash and cinder blew in a cloud around her, stealing the salt smell of the ocean from the air and replacing it with the smell of moldering tombs and unfiltered cigarettes.

Someone shouted, grunted, barked a war cry, and she knew it was her own voice. Sweat ran down her face and she knew she had descended inside herself, to a place where only the warrior remained. In the heat of battle, Buffy went away, leaving only the hunter. The Slayer.

Bat-faces lunged at her but she didn't even see them anymore. All she saw was that spot on their chests where the stake should go, and the tender places on their bodies she could break.

Then, lost in that place of blood and perfect fury, she heard her name tear the night, slicing through her battle fever. Buffy glanced up at the sound and saw the same bat-face woman, tall as an Amazon, pierced all over, dragging Willow out through the windshield even as Oz tried to gun the engine and run her over. But half a dozen Kakchiquels had lifted the rear of the van so it could not move. The rear window shattered, and Xander popped the crossbow out the window, shot one through the heart. He dusted, but another was there to take his place instantly.

"d.a.m.n it, no!" Buffy screamed.

With a leap, she spun and kicked the bat-face in front of her hard enough to break his neck. Buffy landed and ran for the van. Vampires blocked her way but she leaped up and over them and onto the roof just in time to stake the vampire who was trying to drag Willow out of the van. She exploded in a cloud of dust and Willow dropped back through the windshield, bleeding from several long sc.r.a.pes on her arms and belly.

"Get out of here!" Buffy snapped as she leaped down to the pavement.

Through the shattered windshield, she could see Xander notching another crossbow bolt in the back of the van. Oz watched Willow expectantly, revving the engine. Willow stared at Buffy.

"But Giles -" Willow began.

"We can't help him if we're dead," Buffy interrupted. Then she leaped up on top of the van again, jumped off the back and drop-kicked two of the vamps holding up the car. She dusted a third.

"Now!" she cried, turning back to see Xander firing another bolt from the crossbow through the back window.

Oz floored it. Willow stared at Buffy through the open rear window, face etched with despair. More vampires grabbed onto the van as it went, but Oz ran over several of them and in seconds was dragging two down the street.

As Buffy fought, she tried to watch as they made their way to safety. They were almost out of sight, away from the Kakchiquels, but one final leech still clung to the roof of the van. As Buffy glanced over again, Xander stuck his upper body through the broken rear window. The vampire rose up, about to lunge at him, and Xander fired a bolt into his chest.

Dusted.

The van rolled out of sight.

Safe,Buffy thought.Now Giles.

She turned to seek out Camazotz and her unconscious former Watcher. At least a dozen Kakchiquels were dead by her count, but there seemed so many more. Slayer or not, Buffy was growing tired. A spinning kick, a hard elbow, a thrust of the stake and for just a moment her path was clear. Camazotz still stood in front of the harbormaster's office. Buffy stared at him.

Their eyes met.

Gazes locked together, their contact was intimate with the knowledge that Buffy could not win.

Camazotz lifted Giles up with one hand. The man's head lolled to the side but his eyes were open and it looked as though he might be waking, finally. Then the ancient demon, the G.o.d of bats, drew one long talon along Giles's throat and blood began to flow.

Amongst the surviving vampires arrayed near their master, two came forward. Clownface and Bulldog.

"Giles, no!" Buffy cried, frozen, paralyzed by the flicker of fire in Camazotz's eyes, and the inescapable truth that she had lost.

Then she screamed his name again and rushed toward the vampires. Camazotz began to laugh.

As if awakened by her cries, Giles began to fight back. He roared his outrage as he gazed around at the vampires surrounding him, filling the street. Buffy tried desperately to reach him, staked one vampire, kicked another in the jaw so hard it nearly tore his head off. Then, through the crush of Camazotz's minions, Giles saw Buffy, and his screaming stopped.

Their eyes met.

"Get out of here!" he snapped at her. "You can't defeat him alone. Get Angel. Get -"

"Shut him up!" Camazotz snapped.

Bulldog held Giles, and Clownface struck him with a single, hard blow to the skull. The Watcher was dazed and fell limp once more, and the two vampires handed him over to the others of their brood.

"Choose, Slayer," the G.o.d of bats instructed her.

Buffy wanted to scream her hatred at him, but the words would not come. Only anguish. She released it in a shriek that seemed to tear from her lungs and sc.r.a.pe her throat raw, and she ran at Camazotz.

There were vampires in between.

Off guard, driven only by her fear for Giles, Buffy did not see the baseball bat cutting through the air, nor did she hear it split the wind. It cracked against her head and the wooden bat broke in two as she went down hard on the pavement.

Blinking back the pain, brushing away the blood in her eyes, she looked up. The ghost-white vampire woman she thought of as Clownface stood above her, grinning like an idiot. A heartbeat later, Bulldog came up beside her.

Then they started kicking Buffy.

A rib broke, maybe two.

A foot hit her in the face and a tooth rattled loose. Her mouth was bleeding.

She rolled over and took a kick in the spine that shot pain to every nerve ending. Her eyes flashed open and she saw, thirty yards away, the end of the road. The docks thrust out from the land and the ocean beyond was black as the abyss.

Clownface swung a kick at her eyes. Buffy grabbed her ankle, twisted it enough to throw her off balance. Then she whipped her own feet around and dropped Bulldog's legs out from under him.

Two more came at her but they could not stop her. Buffy cut them down with a flurry of quick blows and ran on. The chanting had stopped during the brawl but it picked up again now and Camazotz roared something unintelligible. Buffy bit her lip and prayed to whatever powers were on her side that he would keep Giles alive as a hostage. For insurance.

Then, brutalized and bleeding, clutching her chest where her cracked ribs blazed with pain, she reached the dock, ran its length, and dove into the churning waves.

At least two vampires came after her. Underwater she heard the disturbance as they dove in.

And they don't need to breathe,she thought. Hope seemed to be seeping from her along with blood.

Buffy swam deeper, farther, kicking and pulling the water past her, moving into the murky depths of the Pacific and praying that they would not find her before morning.

Yet morning was so far away.

And she was running out of air.

She had drowned before, of course. But this time, there was no one around to bring her back. Her eyes were stung by the salt water but Buffy kept them open, peering into the blackness. Her lungs burned. The darkness in her eyes was not merely the shadows under water, but an encroaching dimming of vision.

Her limbs slowed.

Her mouth opened and she choked back her first gulp of sea water.

She stopped swimming.

"Buffy."

She squeezes her eyes shut, tight against the blazing heat that beats down upon her. Copper blood tangy in her mouth, she chokes on something and hacks and spits it out, rolling her face on the ground.

"Buffy."

Eyes snap open, wincing from the sun. Chest heaving, throat ragged, too painful to speak, almost too agonizing to breathe.

"Buffy."

Moist sand beneath her bruised cheek and water washes up over her legs and lower torso. Eyes slitted, she peers up to see who speaks her name so urgently.

A ghost. And oh so appropriate, for she feels as though she must be dead. Lucy Hanover lingers in the air, a phantom through which she can see the trees swaying farther up the beach. A specter whose grim features speak of horrible things, whose eyes are like ghosts themselves, a ghost of a ghost, Lucy haunting herself with what she sees and what she knows.

She has no legs.

Instead, there is only a kind of mist, like the low fog that sometimes creeps across the ocean in the early morning. Perhaps that's what it is, after all.

She floats.

"Buffy."

"Lucy." Her own voice is little more than the rasp of a crab scuttling across sand.

"Catastrophe -"

"Is coming," Buffy chokes. "Kinda got it."

"No."

Lucy hovers closer, places her hands over Buffy's eyes. The heat of the sun that had seared them disappears, replaced by a soothing coolness that seeps through her body. Relaxing.

But . . .

"No?"

"Camazotz is not the threat I warned you of. At least, not entirely. The Prophet says there is more. A plague of vampirism is coming. A plague that will blot the sun from the sky above the h.e.l.lmouth."

"Not Camazotz?"

"Not entirely. I only communicate what little she has seen."

"My fault?"

Lucy weeps the ghosts of tears. "Yes. I'm sorry."

Buffy has no tears. "I don't care."

"What do you mean?"

"Giles," the Slayer says. "The only thing that matters. I left him."

Sad understanding illuminates Lucy's face. Blue sky and clouds behind her, through her. "You lived. Your other choice was death."

"Not dead?" Buffy feels the shock of it rushing through her, filling her up even as waves wash over her again.

"Not yet."

"Buffy?"

The dream shattered and blew away. Her eyes flickered open and she cringed from the harsh sun, tasted wet sand in her mouth and felt the damp squelch of it beneath her. The surf washed in, tiny waves almost touching her. The beach. She had made it to the beach.

A pair of familiar silhouettes made shadows across her body.

"Are you all right?"

It was Willow. Her eyes brimmed with tears. Oz stood beside her, his normally impa.s.sive face taut with concern.

"Will," Buffy rasped. The pain in her throat was excruciating. "I think I almost drowned," she whispered, and that didn't hurt quite as much. "I feel like h.e.l.l."

"Looks like you've been there," Oz told her.