CHILD of the HUNT Page 7

  If only she had prepared herself for the worst . . .

  “Oh.” Giles suddenly sat up a little straighter and half-raised a hand in greeting to someone across the arena. “Damn it.” He lowered his hand and sighed heavily.

  Buffy looked along his line of vision. Giles was intently watching a middle-aged man with sandy hair who was swigging back a paper cup of what must be beer. It was splashing the woman beside him and he didn’t even seem to notice. Behind the man, another man sat forward and tapped the first one on the shoulder. The sandy-haired man sprang to his feet and nearly toppled over.

  “Damn it,” Giles said again. He turned to Buffy. “Ah, I must . . . use the loo,” he said in a rush. “That is, the ah—”

  “Please, Giles, just go,” Buffy said. “I know what a loo is.”

  He raised his brows. “Indeed.”

  “Yeah, it’s like a guitar,” she said, feigning ignorance, and snickered at his crestfallen expression. “You really do think I’m a bimbo, don’t you? The most air-headed Slayer in all of southern California.”

  “No, not at all.” He was all earnestness, pushing up his glasses as his voice moved down to a lower gear, as if he were about to go up a very steep grade. “I know you possess a powerful mind. Although I must admit that upon occasion, I wish you’d think to activate it.”

  “Gee, thanks, Giles.” She sighed. “Just go get your beer or whatever. Hey.” She brightened. “If you’re going to stand in line, do you think you could get some popcorn?”

  “I’m not going for beer,” he said with asperity. Then he started edging down the rest of the row, murmuring his excuse-me’s and thank-you’s in a harried, rather unGiles-like way.

  Angel looked at her questioningly. Buffy shrugged. “Don’t look at me. I don’t have the slightest notion what he’s doing.” She grinned. “Something about a guy named Lou?”

  Angel grinned. “Buffy, ‘loo’ is British slang for ‘bathroom.’ Giles has to use the facilities.”

  “No kidding. My God, does everyone around here think I’m Rain Man?”

  Angel grinned again, a bit lopsided, and a little thrill ran through Buffy. Why did he have to be so charming? So unbelievably . . . unbelievable. When she’d lived in L.A., her friend Hilly used to say that she liked guys who had a certain something she could never quite put into words. She just called it ‘Grrrrr.’ Angel had lots and lots of Grrrrr. Sometimes—hell, most of the time—it made their new ‘un-relationship’ pretty difficult to bear.

  Buffy gave him a mocking pout and leaned forward to survey her row of friends. Ladies and gents, on one end of this group, you have a nice boy who turns into a werewolf. On the other you have a vampire slayer. Beside her, an actual vampire. And then we have Morticia and Gomez, only not . . .

  “Tomatoes! Rotten tomatoes!” cried a vendor. “Cabbages! Overripe fruit.”

  “Yum,” Xander said. “I feel a snack attack coming on.”

  “Guess there weren’t any hot dogs in the Renaissance.” Buffy wrinkled her nose in distaste and looked at Angel.

  But Angel himself looked puzzled.

  “Oh, wow,” Willow said. “Look, you guys.”

  “Tomatoes!” the huckster cried.

  Just then, the hooded man Buffy had tangled with earlier entered the arena, pulling the man in the cart behind him. The man was doubled over, his knees buckling, making it look as though he might well strangle if he lost his balance.

  “Make way for the prisoner!” the hooded man shouted. “Make way for one who would insult our king!”

  Taking their cue, some of the audience began to boo. Someone hurled a tomato at the man, and it smacked against the side of his head and burst like a water balloon. Another one hit. And then another.

  “I don’t like this,” Willow said to Oz. “This is too historically accurate for me.”

  Buffy set her jaw, watching a small boy two rows over clap his hands with glee.

  Angel’s body had only the remnant warmth of the day and the earth and the air, and whatever blood he’d ingested, blood that didn’t belong to him. But somehow, the sight before them now was enough to chill even him.

  “It was like this in my time,” he said quietly, without realizing he was going to speak. “Once, back in Galway, they thought an old woman had caused the Lord Mayor’s wife to give birth to a stillborn babe. They dragged poor Mistress McIntosh through the streets . . .”

  His voice grew hoarse. “I was just a little boy. I like to tell myself I didn’t know better, but I . . .” He trailed off. “I was very unkind to her,” he finished.

  And for a moment he was back in Galway, a little boy who had no notion of the hellish existence he was about to embark upon, a wee lad who did not understand that you do suffer in the hereafter for each sin you commit.

  Then he looked to either side of himself, to Xander, whose mostly unstated distrust of him Angel completely understood. Part of him even appreciated it, for he knew that if . . . something . . . ever happened again, Xander would do his best to protect the others from him.

  He looked hard at Willow, marveling at the generosity of her nature. After he had changed back into Angelus, she was the first person he had tried to kill. He, or rather, the thing within him, had understood at the deepest level that her death would have hurt Buffy terribly. Remorse washed over him in waves as he remembered the glee with which he anticipated either snapping her neck or draining her of every drop of blood.

  But Willow, though perhaps a little nervous around him, seemed to be nervous mostly for Buffy’s sake. They all were. And yet, because Buffy accepted him once again, they all did their best. For Willow, it must have been awfully hard.

  For Giles, it must be almost impossible.

  “I’m going to stop this,” Buffy said, startling him out of his reverie.

  “Buffy, relax. It’s just a show.” Cordelia waved at her to sit back down. “Pretend, ya know?”

  “Just faking it?” Xander asked in a loud voice. “Well, you should know, Cor.”

  “That’s right, Xander. I should.”

  Xander looked perturbed. Then a little worried. He fell silent and sipped on his authentic lemonade.

  Buffy winced as she watched the poor man held prisoner at center stage. Something else hit the man—it looked to be a beer can—and he shouted with pain, then went limp. His head was bent back in the wooden stockade, giving every appearance that he had broken his neck.

  The audience howled with laughter.

  “Okay, that’s it,” Buffy announced, jumping to her feet.

  “Down in front,” someone bellowed at her.

  She started to climb over the legs of the person on the other side of Giles’s empty spot.

  “Long live the king!” came a booming voice over the loudspeakers. “Long live King Richard the Lion Heart!”

  With that, a dozen riders resplendent in velvet cloaks and helmets topped with plumes thundered around the cart and into the arena on enormous, chestnut-colored horses. Huge clots of dirt and dust kicked up behind them like a wake of choking fog, completely enveloping the man and the cart.

  “Make way for the king!” cried another voice, one which she recognized: it was Robin Hood’s.

  “Sit down!” someone shouted at Buffy.

  Angel tugged on Buffy’s hand. “The cart’s gone,” he pointed out. “They’re probably taking him out of his harness backstage.”

  “Sit down!”

  She took a deep breath and sat back down again. “It was a beer can. For all we know, it was full.”

  “He was probably padded. I’m sure they were prepared for something like that.”

  Trumpets blared as the riders raced to the four corners of the arena, then joined in a circle and galloped hard.

  “Now I know what the guys who work at Medieval Times do on their vacations,” Xander said. “Or maybe these knightly dudes are off-duty cowboys.”

  The riders made two rows facing inward. The trumpets sounded again, and a knight dr
essed in brilliant silver armor, a golden crown atop his helmet, trotted into the arena. He was surrounded by young boys and girls on ponies who tossed rose petals in the air.

  The trumpets pealed. Then men in blue and red shirts and leggings started walking in front of each block of arena seats, waving their arms and encouraging the audience to shout, “Long live the king!”

  “Long live the king!” Xander shouted. “Elvis, we love you!”

  On the field, the entourage led King Richard toward the stage on the other side of the arena. Then the helmeted figure made a show of turning in his saddle and looking back in the direction from which he’d come.

  From the gates, a donkey poked its nose and scrutinized the crowd. Then it minced timidly into the arena.

  Atop it sat a guy about sixteen or seventeen, dressed in a red and blue patchwork jester costume, bells jingling from the points of his hat.

  Buffy caught her breath. It was the boy who had spied on her and Cordelia. Well, not actually spied.

  The little donkey picked up speed, then jerked to a halt, dipped its head, and kicked its back legs as hard as it could. The sudden movements must have caught the boy off guard, for he sailed over the donkey’s head and landed hard in the dirt.

  The crowd roared with delight. A volley of tomatoes and rotten fruit arced toward him.

  Buffy felt sick. She glanced at Willow, who shook her head and grimaced in disgust. She was not enjoying this. Neither was Oz. Cordelia was doing something with her shopping bag, but Xander slowly put his lemonade cup in his lap and grimaced.

  The jester got up and hobbled slowly toward the stage, where the riders were dismounting and climbing onto the platform. Each knight stood before one of the backless chairs. They all bowed as King Richard joined them.

  “Where is Roland, my useless fool?” Richard demanded. He was wearing a body mike.

  “Anon, my king, I come,” answered the jester, also wearing a mike.

  “See? It’s just for show,” Angel assured Buffy.

  “Thou villain. Thou slaggard!” the king flung at him.

  On foot, Roland was too short to climb onto the stage. He attempted to sling his leg onto the dais but got nowhere. As the spectators laughed, he tried again.

  “Get thee up, or I warn thee, it’s the stocks for thee!” Richard cried.

  “Socks?” Buffy asked Angel.

  “Stocks. That’s what the man on the cart was in. It’s an ancient punishment.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Painful.”

  Buffy’s eyes widened. “You?”

  “Public drunkenness,” he said sheepishly.

  “Speaking of, where’s my Watcher?” Buffy asked, looking around.

  The Faire swirled about Giles and his companion. Squealing with delight, children in Peter Pan caps and flower headdresses darted among the legs of the adults. Well-developed young women in a sort of barbarian style of dress—chain mail bikini tops, fur sarongs—that sort of thing, strutted past. Someone was playing the recorder. Someone else, a harp. In the distance came the rhythmic jingle of Morris dancers. Another time, it might have instilled a bit of homesickness in Giles.

  But not now. At the moment Giles scarcely noticed the pandemonium surrounding them. As Jamie Anderson walked hunched and weaving beside him, Giles wondered vaguely what it was like to lose a child. Worse, to have that child choose to leave, to run away, and then to live on, never knowing if the child had survived the streets, or died alone.

  Giles had no children, but he thought he had some idea of the pain Jamie was experiencing. A part of him was perversely glad he couldn’t understand it any better.

  “It’s over, Rupert,” the man was saying, as they moved gingerly away from a food stall, Anderson with a cup of coffee and Giles with some truly abominable spiced tea. Its pungent odor reminded him of the lavender bath salts his grandmother had kept in a cut-crystal jar in the bathroom. “I’m three sheets to the wind. Come Monday, they’ll fire me.”

  “All may not be lost,” Giles said. But he was not at all certain of that.

  Perhaps it was the timing of their meeting that created a sort of friendship between them. Jenny Calendar had only been dead a short while, and Giles had been lost in private, deeply hidden grief. As Giles listened to the police officer’s shaking voice, he thought of Jamie’s missing son. He considered how much worse it could have been, not to know if Jenny was dead or alive. If she had simply disappeared one day without a trace.

  And yet, even now, Giles would have preferred that to knowing for certain that she would never be back. At least, that was what he told himself. It was easy to tell oneself many things when one was certain they couldn’t come true. Except that he lived on the Hellmouth, and Jenny had died here. One could hope. Pray. Be tempted and lonely enough to contemplate casting runes and spells.

  Drink.

  But Giles had put drinking behind him. The one and only time he had gotten drunk in Sunnydale, he had so badly frightened Buffy that he had vowed never to be so self-indulgent again. A Watcher did not have the luxury of seeking escape through oblivion.

  One would assume an off-duty police officer did. In Britain, Anderson’s superiors would have looked the other way, knowing what he had endured in his personal life. At least, in the Britain that Giles knew, loved, and sorely missed.

  “Are you sure you’re up to walking about?” Giles inquired.

  “No, but I’ve got to sober up.” Anderson looked wretched. He reeked of beer. “I can’t believe I did this. I ordered a Coke with my food, but they accidentally gave me the beer. I figured, ‘Okay, why not?’” He threw back the coffee and grimaced. Perhaps it was as undrinkable as the tea. “Three beers later, I may be losing my badge.”

  “You asked for Coke and got beer?” Giles asked, cocking his head.

  Anderson laughed hollowly. “Yeah. Some nineteen-year-old’s idea of heaven, huh. I’ve got fifteen years on the force. I throw it away because I’m scamming a discount on a lousy paper cup of beer. And let me tell you, it wasn’t even good beer.”

  “No?” Giles gestured toward the dirt lot that served as the parking area. Anderson had already agreed that Giles would drive him home. He’d have someone help with getting Anderson’s vehicle back to his house later. Perhaps Cordelia or Oz. “That’s a pity.” He poured his tea into the dirt with a grim smile of satisfaction.

  As they passed through the exit, the ticket-taker stuck his head out of his stall and gave Giles a long, hard, silent look. It unnerved the Watcher, and made him wonder if it was a good thing leaving Buffy here alone. Well, not exactly alone. She was with her friends.

  And she was with Angel.

  Which should be all right, he told himself firmly. Perhaps he, of all of them, understood that Angel was Angel, and Angelus was the demon who had possessed him. It was to Angelus, not Angel, that Giles had lost the first love of his life. Not Angel.

  Giles reminded himself over and over that he was not there to be Buffy’s father, as she had so tartly informed him. But despite her physical strength and her, well, her spine, she nevertheless was a young girl who had lived through more tragedy than other children of her generation could ever conceive of. Giles would never forget her plaintive cry to him outside the burning warehouse where he had gone in such unreasoning fury, determined to destroy Angelus for killing Jenny:

  “Don’t leave me. I can’t do this alone.”

  So much hurt. His poor, dear Buffy. No wonder she had left Sunnydale last year.

  What a tremendous act of courage that she had returned.

  The man beside him needed some of her courage if he had any hopes of surviving his own nightmare.

  The ticket-taker never stopped his staring. There was something a little off about him. Giles wondered if he was wearing makeup, or had on some kind of mask. He didn’t look . . . right.

  Jamie sighed heavily, and Giles returned his attention to his friend. In silence, they reached the dusty lot. It was packed with automobiles of all stripes, pickup tru
cks to a really lovely Jaguar XKE he wouldn’t mind taking a spin in. The people of Sunnydale seemed almost desperate for fun . . . or perhaps they sought distraction from the obvious problems of their town. A belief in the supernatural aside, it didn’t take much to realize that Sunnydale had more than its share of problems. But most of the adults turned a blind eye.

  He thought of Joyce Summers and the Runaway Project. He wasn’t sure it was appropriate for her to get involved. She knew things she couldn’t tell the other parents. And yet, she had confessed her rather unfocused hope that some kind of “ripple effect” would extend from her efforts.

  “At the very least, these parents should be aware that the world is a dangerous place,” she’d told him at her charity benefit. “More dangerous than most people realize, but we just don’t keep tabs on our kids the way we should.”

  They reached his Citroën and Giles fished out his keys. He unlocked Anderson’s door first. The man grunted his thanks.

  Then Giles went around to the other side and climbed in.

  “You know, I find the people at this Faire rather odd,” he began, then looked up as the other man chuckled.

  “You ever been ticketed in this thing?” Anderson asked, staring out the passenger window.

  “For speeding, you mean?” Giles queried politely, although the question took him slightly aback.

  “Well, no. Because it’s a safety hazard,” Anderson replied. He turned his head and grinned at Giles. “I’m teasing you, Rupe.”

  “Indeed,” Giles bit off, somewhat miffed.

  The car ground on and jerked into drive. It lurched forward as if it, too, were drunk.

  “It’s less responsive than usual,” Giles observed, puzzled, as he glanced at his gear shift.

  Anderson guffawed. “Why do I doubt that?”

  At the joust.

  Two of the knights had hold of Roland’s arms and legs and were preparing to fling him onto the stage while the audience chanted, “Heave! Heave!”