Flying through the air, the bolt seemed to be moving in slow motion. Lois twisted and grabbed it, and she was surprised to find Buffy’s fingers closing over hers in a tight grip, even though Buffy had been five feet further away.
“Sorry!” The voice in the darkness was rueful.
“Dawn!” Buffy yelled. “What did I tell you about crossbows?”
Lois stared at her hand, with Buffy’s tightly over it. Buffy had been faster than she was…not so fast that Lois couldn’t follow her, but fast enough that she wouldn’t have wanted to get into a fight.
“There was this thing…with a cat. Poor Ms. Kitty Fantastico.” Buffy seemed to be embarrassed.
Lois glanced up at her, with one eyebrow raised, and Buffy quickly released her hand.
“Um…we’re not in the habit of trying to kill people under a flag of truce. We’re trustworthy, I swear.”
Wondering where Clark had been, Lois decided that he must have known she’d be able to handle the arrow.
Had he seen her catch the arrow at the Cortez ranch? Or had he been so confident in his speed that he’d had time to reconsider.
Buffy waved, and the figures hiding in the shadows of the parking lot began to disperse. One approached; Lois could make out the familiar form of Faith.
“I knew there was something about you. Didn’t I tell you, B?”
“There are a few demons that could do that,” Buffy said. The sense of her being a predator was gone, however.
“So how did you get the mojo? Faith asked.
Lois hesitated. Over the last few days keeping secrets had become a habit. Admitting that she was one of them would have all sorts of unknown obligations and expectations.
If she wanted to find out about their world, about the questions that had been hounding her, she had no choice.
“I was in the Congo. I heard a voice asking “Are you ready to be strong?” Then I was.”
Buffy relaxed even further and Faith grinned.
“Welcome to the sisterhood! The more the merrier, I always say.”
“It’s not you who’s paying the grocery bill.” Buffy said. She seemed to look at Lois closely for the first time. “Wow. You’re a little long in the tooth for this gig.”
“Why does everybody keep saying that?” Lois protested. “Like I’m ready for Geritol and a retirement home in Florida? I’m twenty six! I’m only four years older than you!”
“Most Slayers never make it past the age of sixteen.” Buffy said. “Meeting an adult like us…it wasn’t something I expected.”
“Buffy was expecting to be the grandmother of the group.” Faith said. “Old granny Summers at the age of twenty two.”
“Things are different now, better,” Buffy said. “There are more of us. It’s not just one against the world.”
“So you really did this to me?” Lois asked.
“It was that or the world was going to end.” Buffy said. “Sometimes there aren’t any good choices.”
“How?”
“Magic.” Buffy said. “Don’t ask me to explain it. If we’d left things the way they were, the world was going to be overrun by demons. So we changed the rules.”
“And you left all those girls out there alone, not understanding what’s happening to them?”
“We’re getting the council back together. We’re going to start tracking everybody down, explain everything. We’ve just been a little off our game for the last few days.” Buffy’s voice was defensive. “I’ve still got to teach people the whole speech ‘The world didn’t begin as a paradise…’yadda yadda yadda…”
“So we can talk?”
Buffy glanced at her. “I guess I’m obligated. I still want to know what’s up with that thing you’re traveling with.”
“He’s not a thing!” Lois said quietly. “He’s not even a demon, according to Lorne.”
“Lorne isn’t as smart as he thinks he is,” Buffy said. “I met him once when I was tracking down…an old boyfriend.”
“I’d trust my life to him,” Lois said.
“I respect that.” Buffy said. “But I’m responsible for the lives of more than fifteen people, so forgive me if I don’t invite every incredibly dangerous being in for tea at the drop of a hat.”
“You should meet him,” Lois said. “Maybe you’d feel differently.”
Buffy glanced off in the distance at one of the few remaining figures in the lot. When it gave a thumbs up gesture, she visibly relaxed.
“You don’t have any signs of being under anyone’s thrall,” she said. “Which makes me feel a little better about your loyalty.”
“Thrall?”
“Magical compulsions. Witches and a few other creatures can control people’s minds…make them do things or even believe things. It’s a whole mind mojo thing.”
“Mojo?”
“Jedi mind tricks…’you see no droids here’, that sort of thing.” Buffy scowled. “I’ve been hanging around nerds for a little too long.”
Lois felt vaguely ill. Her mind was the only thing she had that was completely her own. The thought that there were people and creatures that could force her to do what they wanted was repugnant.
Her thoughts turned to Clark. He should have been here by now. Why wasn’t he?
“I’m worried about my friend.” Lois said, pulling out her cell phone. “He should have been here now.”
He should have been here to save her.
All she got was the sound of continual ringing.
“He was supposed to be waiting for me by the library,” Lois said. There was a growing sense of dread in the pit of her stomach. “I’ve got to go check on him.”
“We’ll come with.” Buffy said, in a voice that didn’t seem open to any other options.
Buffy gestured, and three forms that Lois had missed slipped out of dark shadows and move silently down the street.
The walk to the library was interminable, even if Lois set a quick pace. She was almost jogging by the time they reached the place, and none of them was close to being out of breath.
It shocked her a little to see how young they all were. Most were in heir mid-teens, but they had the same look she’d seen on ten year olds in the Congo. In that country, boys sometimes had to use guns to protect themselves and their families. Sometimes they fought wars.
Warfare was a thing for the young, she supposed. Older people gradually lost that sense of invulnerability that allowed the young to throw themselves into the jaws of death and do heroic things. It wasn’t that the old couldn’t be heroic; it was just that generally they knew better.
It wasn’t their age that shocked Lois. It was the level of responsibility. These girls were all that was between the world and an apocalypse? At age 15 and 16, Lois had been level headed and had been a member of the chess club.
Trusting that Lois to make decisions affecting the whole world would still have been idiotic.
That the town of Sunnydale had fallen into a hole was starting to make a little more sense.
The parking lot at the library was even darker than the hospital. Here, no one expected any traffic late at night. There was a little light around the entrances, in the hopes that anyone trying to break in would be afraid of being too exposed.
Otherwise, there was only darkness. Even with her newly enhanced night vision, Lois could barely make out anything.
She reached into her pocket and flipped open her cell phone. She’d already set Clark’s number in memory; other than Perry, Jimmy and Ralph’s Pagoda, he was the only person she bothered to put in memory.
There was a ringing sound from the bushes near the front steps of the library. Lois began to dart forward, only to feel Buffy grabbing her by the shoulder.
“We’re not alone anymore,” she said. She made a set of incomprehensible gestures to the others, and they began to spread out, cautiously approaching the row of bushes.
Knowing Angelica, there could be anything from a row of men with guns to people throwing firebombs, so Lois could understand their caution.
There was something moving around in the bushes, and Lois felt herself on edge. She heard the sounds of muttered chanting from the bushes, and she tried to dive to the side, fearing something was going to emerge.
Instead, there was a flash of light from the bushes, and then everything went calm and still.
Lois slowly rose to her feet and approached the bushes cautiously. It wasn’t until she saw the black shoe sticking out of the bushes that her heart leapt to her throat.
“Clark?” she called out cautiously. This couldn’t be his shoe; he was invulnerable. It had to be yet another of the random victims of violence around here.
She crept forward a little more, until she saw the trouser legs.
Those were definitely Clark’s trousers.
After that, everything was a blur.
************
He wasn’t dead; that much was a blessing. But no matter how hard Lois tried, she couldn’t get him to wake up. He was burning up; it was painful to touch him for more than a few moments at a time.
Clark didn’t look real like this; his face looked waxen and there was a sheen of sweat on his brow. Lois had never seen him sweat on even the hottest of days while wearing a tie and a jacket. It all seemed wrong.
Buffy was off in the background barking out orders into a cell phone, while the other girls had gathered into a circle, guarding the perimeter.
A school bus, of all things arrived a few minutes later, and Lois found herself shoved to the side as the others picked up his body, shifting often as the heat radiating from him began to hurt their hands. They carried him onto the bus.
The interior of the bus smelled like sweat and blood and death, and at Lois’s expression, Buffy shrugged. “We’ve been a little busy.”
A man with an eye patch was driving the bus, and Lois spent a moment worrying about depth perception. Of course, the girls all looked too young to have drivers’ licenses, so he may have been all they had.
They laid him in the back of the bus, in a spot where several seats had been ripped out. A young looking red-headed woman crouched over him.
“Crap,” the girl muttered to herself as she stared at Clark. “Stupid auras. Tara was always better at…”
Lois could only stand and stare, feeling helpless.
************
Lois hadn’t smoked since she’d been a rebellious teenager. She hadn’t even wanted to in years. It was a dirty habit that had killed her grandmother. There were a thousand reasons not to smoke, all of which she believed heartily.
She wanted a cigarette.
Clark was lying in the back of a dirty bus, possibly dying, and there wasn’t anything she could do. They couldn’t even take him to a hospital because doctors would have no idea how to treat him. His alien physiology would leave everything up to guesswork.
Lois hated looking weak. She hated feeling that way even worse.
Caring for Clark hadn’t been something that she’d anticipated. It hadn’t even been something that she’d wanted. She was at the height of her career, just getting ready to reach for the Pulitzer. The last thing she needed was romantic entanglements.
They hadn’t even kissed, not really. They’d never been on a date, hadn’t made any sort of commitment to each other. Other than that one night, they’d barely talked about their pasts or what they liked to do outside of work.
Objectively, Lois knew that was part of what made this hurt so much. Clark was an enigma still, and she was able to fill in the gaps of what she knew with the fantasy of her perfect man.
It was the same thing that allowed cheaters to think that their lover was more perfect than their spouse. It wasn’t until they woke up and discovered that their lover had the same flaws and the same morning breath that they realized that they’d made a mistake.
People were imperfect. Just because Clark wasn’t human didn’t make him any different than any other man. He probably squeezed toothpaste from the middle of the tube, left the toilet seat up and threw his underwear on the floor beside the hamper.
He couldn’t be as perfect for her as Lois was thinking.
It kept nagging at her, this feeling that she might have met the perfect person and let him slip away from her.
She’d known Angelica was after him, that she had a witch who could not only immobilize him, but who could sense exactly where he was at all times. Why had she thought it would be a god idea to leave him alone? She should have been more forceful, more assertive about bringing him with her.
It was a sign of the times that she’d just meekly gone along with the demands Buffy’s people had placed on her. She’d wanted so badly to find out about what was happening to her that she’d ignored her niggling fears for Clark.
Guilt was an ugly emotion.
She started as she heard the sounds of footsteps approaching from the other side of the bus.
Faith turned the corner and said softly, “Hey.”
“Any changes?”
“Red’s got his fever down to normal. She thinks she’ll get him awake in another half hour.”
Lois perked up. “He’d not dying?”
. “I don’t know. They start talking magic and I just sort of tune out.” Faith shrugged. “Give me something I can face with an axe and I’m your girl.”
Well, at least there was some progress. Lois felt the knot in her stomach unclench somewhat.
“I want to be there when he wakes up,” Lois said.
It was odd how protective she felt towards a man who until a week ago had thought he was invulnerable.
“You care about him a lot.” Faith said. There was a strange wistfulness in her voice.
“He’s my partner.” Lois said.
It was true. Whatever else their relationship might be destined to become, he was one person she’d ever managed to work with who actually made her work better. He was the first person who hadn’t had to be dragged along by the nose due to a lack of talent, or a lack of desire.
She’d miss that as much as the strange feelings she was beginning to get at the pit of her stomach at the thought of kissing him.
“I get that. I sort of had that with Robin…for about a day or so.” Faith stared down at the ground. “I don’t know what’s going to happen when he gets better.”
Robin…the guy in the hospital.
“We aren’t dating,” Lois said. “We haven’t even…”
She stopped herself. There was no reason to make an automatic denial. It wasn’t as though she was talking to another news professional, or someone else at the Planet.
“We haven’t had enough time.” she said.
“Isn’t that the way of it?” Faith pulled out a cigarette and offered one to Lois.
With the knowledge that Clark was going o wake up, the temporary urge had passed, and Lois shook her head.
“You finally find a guy you wouldn’t mind going back for seconds with, and he almost dies on you.” Faith sighed. “I’m not even sure that he wants to come back for more.”
“You don’t talk about this with the others?” Lois asked, trying to keep the impatience out of her own voice.
“They think I’m some sort of hard *** because I’m an ex-con.” Faith said. “Buffy just lost somebody and she’s all in denial and most of the girls are too young to really talk with anyway.”
“An ex-con?” Lois asked faintly. “Is that where you got Chosen?”
“No.” Faith said. “Me and Buffy were Slayers before all this happened. I accidentally killed a guy, and then I not-so accidentally killed another guy.”
Lois frowned. Why was Faith telling her all of this? Was she bragging?
“I went to jail because I regretted what I had done.” Faith said. “I guess I was seeking penance.”
It would be relatively easy for a Slayer to escape, at least if her captors didn’t know what she was capable of.
“In the pen, I got to see what it looked like, that kind of guilt. I saw it in the mirror every day, and I saw it in the eyes of some of the others.” Faith hesitated, then took a deep breath. “I get that sort of feeling from you.”
“What?” Lois felt frozen and flushed at the same time.
“Who did you kill?”
