Lois jumped up and ran for the back of the bus.
Clark was gone, and the emergency door was swinging wildly back and forth as the bus swerved to avoid oncoming traffic.
Lois could only hope their driver’s depth perception problem didn’t get them all killed.
She leaned out of the bus, and she felt Faith grab her arm. She looked back gratefully. The road flying by under her seemed suddenly closer than just a few feet away. When she could, she grabbed the door on its closest swing and pulled it shut.
“Where did he go?” Buffy’s voice was a little shrill. Looking back at Willow, she said, “Did they get him?”
Willow shook her head mutely, then turned her head toward the hospital. She seemed to be concentrating on something.
“He went to help,” Lois said. “That’s what he does.”
Buffy stared at her for a moment, then nodded. She turned and headed for the front of the bus. Lois and Faith followed.
“Can you get us there any faster?” she asked the driver.
“Doing the best I can, Buff…”
It was then that Lois noticed that the lights were turning green ahead of them…all of them as far as she could see. She turned to look back at Willow, who nodded.
Luckily, the streets weren’t crowded at this time of night, and so it took only seven minutes to get back to the hospital.
Smoke was rising from several floors, and there were already three fire trucks and two police cars in the parking lot. Their lights were flashing vividly, but the sirens were not on.
The firemen were laying on the ground, their throats slashed, pools of blood almost invisible on the black tar.
“She’s making a statement,” Buffy said grimly. “Telling the demon community that she’s able to flout human law and get away with it.”
There was a sudden explosion of glass from above them, and a screaming body flew threw it.
All they could do was stare in horror at the sight of the tiny human figure falling helplessly.
“That’s Kennedy,” Faith said, sharp eyes.
Beside them now, Willow stiffened, and her hair began to turn dark. Before she could gather her will, however, another figure streaked out of the sky, catching the fallen woman and setting her gently on the ground near the bus.
He didn’t even bother looking at them, staring upwards and streaking back into the sky.
“Wow.” Buffy said.
Lois was suddenly aware of the group of girls who had crowded all around them, staring up into the sky.
“He won’t kill any of those things,” Buffy said. “So we have a job to do.”
With that, the atmosphere on the bus changed. The one eyed man pulled the door to the bus open, and while Willow rushed over to the fallen Slayer, the rest of them filed out quickly.
It was time to strike back.
****************
Without even talking about it, the slayers split up into four groups of three. There wasn’t any way of knowing whether the four other slayers in the hospital were even alive, but if they were, it was going to be their job to find them.
Kennedy, the brunette was already standing by the time Buffy had given them their marching orders.
“Twelve of them rushed us,” she said. “That wasn’t a problem, but they had that bitch Amy with them.”
“Amy Madison?” Willow asked.
Kennedy nodded grimly. “She threw me out the window of Robin’s room, and I don’t know what happened to the others. I think we weren’t the only target. We could hear explosions in the other parts of the hospital.”
Another explosion rocked an upper floor, and flames erupted from a upper window.
Almost instantly the flames disappeared and a blur went past them.
“I think fly guy has kept things from getting too bad, but there’s a whole grippe of vampires in the hospitals, and people are dying.” Kennedy grinned weakly. “Plenty for everybody.”
“You heard the woman,” Buffy said. “Let’s get moving.”
Without asking, Lois found herself in a group with Faith and another girl she didn’t know. They pushed their way through the front doors of the emergency room, only to stop at the sight of carnage inside.
Lois felt like throwing up. The blood, the battered faces….she felt a flash of memory, and suddenly instead of white and brown, the victims were black.
She took a deep breath, and they quickly moved on.
It quickly became apparent that there wasn’t much use searching for survivors. They’d found the ward with the most critically wounded, the weakest and least able to defend themselves, and they’d attacked.
With a grim look at each of them, Faith pushed her way through the blood stained doorway ahead.
Suddenly Lois heard a voice in her head. Willow.
“They are on the second floor working their way up. Watch out for guards at the elevators and stairwells.”
This hospital had six floors, and most of the population was on the upper floors of the building, with the exception of the administrative staff, most of whom had probably gone home for the night. Perhaps there was still time to save people.
As they turned a corner, Lois saw the two thugs waiting at the elevator, undoubtedly hoping to catch any victims mobile enough to try to escape.
Killing them was catharsis.
**********
Moving steadily through the hallways, Lois knew that the vampires had finally caught on. The first few groups had been unwary, overconfident. They’d been easy to kill.
Apparently someone had welded the doors to the upper levels shut, leaving them trapped on the second level, where apparently the victims were mysteriously vanishing, relocated to an upper level.
“I’m telling you, this isn’t right.” The vampire was speaking. “Since when did humans just vanish without a trace?”
“We’ll catch em eventually.” the second vampire sounded less intelligent. “Just hurry up. I want to get to the killing.”
Clark was doing it, Lois was sure. He was moving so fast that no one could see him.
Lois stopped by the corner and gestured toward the others. She waited by the corner, and a moment later, she felt a jarring impact, followed by the experience of dust covering her hand.
The second vampire was dressed in a surgeon’s outfit covered in blood. He stared at the three of them for a moment before turning and trying to run.
Faith and the second girl tackled him easily.
“Where is your boss?” Lois asked quickly.
“Back at the lair,” the thing said, grinning. “She’s getting the party ready.”
The thing disintegrated into dust a moment later.
“What did I tell you about interrogations?” Faith asked the other girl.
“That they can be fun?” The other girl grinned for a moment, and Lois had to remind herself that she was only fifteen or sixteen.
There was a certain amount of viciousness in teenagers that probably made the work easier. They hadn’t yet learned to see the world in shades of gray, and typically weren’t all that empathic.
They certainly weren’t likely to get so wrapped up in moral quandaries about whether it was right to kill a monster that they’d let themselves be captured and used.
Clark was moving fast now, Lois knew, hoping to avoid being caught by the witch. As long as the witch didn’t know about his hearing, she’d have to break whatever protection Willow had placed on Clark to control him.
So he had to stay as far away from her as possible.
They had to get to her before she could do any more damage.
“Let’s go,” Lois said.
***********
The death toll wasn’t as bad as Lois had feared. Although it had been several minutes before the alarm had been sent out, most of the damage had been done in the emergency rooms.
Clark had moved the patients who could be moved, and those who couldn’t, he’d somehow welded their doors shut. The only patients he left behind were the dead.
More damage had been taken by the doctors and the nursing staff as they had tried to protect the people in their charge.
Lois wondered if there were patients mysteriously appearing in Emergency rooms all across the city.
It had to be driving the others crazy.
At last they reached the elevators.
“He’s cut the elevators.” Willow’s voice in her head said. “I’m unsealing the doors to the stairwells.”
Beside Lois, a seal around the door, obviously crudely spot welded began to crack apart.
If this was Willow when she wasn’t at full power, Lois didn’t want to imagine what she would be like in all her glory.
The door opened, and Lois was immediately assaulted by the stench of death. She saw several bodies on the stairwell, apparently security guards who had tried to run. From the angles of their necks, something had landed on them and snapped them.
Lois began to move cautiously up the stairs. Clark wouldn’t have sealed the stairs if there wasn’t something moving through them. Whether they’d already moved out by the time Clark finished or were still there, there wasn’t any way of knowing.
Lois stopped as she heard a sound from up above her.
She turned, and then felt something around her throat. She gagged, choking, and tried to grab the hands that had grabbed her.
All she felt was dust.
Standing behind her, Faith grinned slightly. “It’s good having people have your back.”
Better having help than having to do it alone. Slayers had been alone throughout recorded history, and Lois had a suspicion that they’d typically died shortly after being called, leading short and brutal lives.
She’d resented these women for thrusting all this on her, but the truth was that if they hadn’t, she’d be dead somewhere in Africa, a forgotten footnote in the history of journalism. Only a few of her coworkers would have mourned her, and the few family members she had left.
She’d have never gotten the chance to meet Clark or to explore this frightening under corner of the universe.
Faith moved past her, as did the younger Slayer, while Lois tried to catch her breath.
************
The second floor was free of damage. Apparently, those going for Robin Woods and the Slayers had ignored the second floor, while the rest had started at the bottom and started working their way up.
There were doctors and nurses here, but most of them were huddled behind counters. From what little conversation Lois could hear, there had been rumors of shootings and terrorism on lower floors.
At least some of the doctors were peripherally aware of the supernatural. Lois could see one of the administrators staring at the group of them as they joined up with Buffy’s group.
No one questioned them. A large group of grim faced girls carrying sharpened sticks wasn’t something most people wanted to face.
As the third group joined them, Lois glanced over and saw the bus driver, the man with the patch. He was with Willow’s group, and he grinned over at her.
The stairs were going to be a problem; tactically, they were a shooting gallery. Anyone with a gun could do immeasurable damage, and in tight, enclosed quarters, the Slayer speed and agility wouldn’t make as much damage.
They came to the elevator doors, and Lois noticed Willow’s hair turning black. The stairwell by the elevator began to unseal itself, and a moment later, it slammed open.
Immediately Lois felt herself flying to the floor as the sounds of gunshots echoed from the stairwell.
Willow didn’t dive to the floor the way most of the Slayers had. Instead she stood, and wind began to rise.
“Adversus Solem mori.” she said, and gestured.
Everything turned white. Lois was blinded for several long moments, and as her vision began to return, she saw that dust was floating in the stairwell.
The others were already up and moving. Apparently they’d known better than to keep their eyes open.
She blinked and hurried to follow, with Willow in the lead.
************
In the darkness of the stairwell, Lois was the last to go up. She was startled as someone grabbed her from behind, his hand over her mouth.
She struggled, but it was like fighting a statue. Ramming her elbow in the figures gut only caused her to drop her stake.
“Are you all right?”
It was Clark’s voice, and Lois relaxed.
He let her go, and Lois turned quickly.
“I’m fine. What about you?”
He looked pale, and his clothes were tattered and scorched. Nothing was left of his suit jacket, and there were burn marks on his pants and shirt.
“I’ve been flying fast,” he said. “Anything not tight against me gets scorched.”
“Are you ok, though? They haven’t…”
“I’ve been helping the victims.”
There was pain in Clark’s eyes, pain that hadn’t been there before.
“Why would they do this?” he asked. “If it was just about food, I could understand, but…”
He didn’t really understand evil. For all that he’d traveled the world, there was part of him that had kept its innocence.
It was one of the things she loved about him.
“They’re making a statement. They don’t care about human rules and have the power to do something like this. Faith says demons are a sucker for this kind of thing, and that it’ll get her recruits that aren’t vampires.”
Angelica was determined to prove that she was someone, and she was willing to do whatever it took so that everyone else believed it.
“Lois…” Clark said. “I…”
There was a look in his eye that Lois hadn’t seen before, something she hadn’t expected.
“I was afraid I was going to lose you.” He sighed. “I don’t know how it happened, but you’ve…”
Lois kissed him.
Kissing, in Lois’s experience had always been a pleasant prelude to other things. It was something that she considered herself reasonably good at, but it wasn’t something she thought much about.
This kiss was something different. It was as though something clicked inside her, and suddenly the world slipped into focus.
This was the man she was going to spend the rest of her life with.
He was the sort of man she’d always dreamed about, the good man who wasn’t afraid to be strong. He was the first person she’d ever known who was not only willing to put up with her, but who could more than keep up.
He was handsome and brave and wasn’t afraid to sacrifice himself for the common good. In a way, he’d sacrificed himself already for her.
When they finally came up for air, Lois became aware of the sounds of fighting above her.
This wasn’t the time for kissing.
“Clark, I have to…”
He stiffened, and eyes which had been filled with emotion suddenly went blank. He stared straight through her, and a moment later, he was gone, a burst of wind and the feeling of Lois’s lips the only sign he’d been there at all.
Lois felt a sudden surge of horror. They’d just found each other.
She couldn’t lose him now.
