Little Things Page 10

  “And they haven’t eaten,” Willow added sleepily. “I hope no one else gets hurt.”

  “That’s a lot of mouths to feed,” Spike mused.

  Chapter Twenty

  Xander woke up at five A.M. with a kink in his neck from lying on the sofa with Anya. He disentangled himself from his sleeping girlfriend, careful not to jostle her bandaged wrist, stood, and rubbed his neck. Giles was in a sleeping bag on the floor on the other side of the coffee table, and Spike was dozing in his chair. There was no sign of Buffy, Dawn, Tara, or Willow, so Xander assumed they all must have gone upstairs to sleep. It was still dark outside.

  Knowing he would never get back to sleep himself, Xander headed upstairs for a quick shower and dressed again in the clothes he had worn all night. Then he went into the kitchen to check out what breakfast supplies the Summers household held. The results of his search were not terribly encouraging. In the refrigerator he found a pair of eggs, a trickle of orange juice at the bottom of an orange plastic bottle, a cup or so of milk already a day past its sell-by date, and half a stick of butter. The pantry did not yield much more. The four cereal boxes there were almost entirely empty.

  He shook his head. “Ah, Captain Crunch, I hardly knew ye.” There was no bread at all, and he found the empty bread wrapper in the trash. So, no hope of French toast either. He set his jaw decisively and murmured, “No one’s gonna starve on my watch.” He would have to go foraging for food. Maybe there would be time to swing by home for a change of clothes, as well. He scribbled a quick message to Anya—Getting breakfast, etc. Back by seven. XOXOX, Xander—and set up a pot of coffee that he would begin brewing as soon as he returned.

  The clocks had recently been set for daylight-saving time, and it was still quite dark outside. Xander wasn’t sure exactly when the sun would rise, but it could be as much as an hour away. The microvamps would be nuts to be out so close to daybreak, but he decided to take along a cross and a few toothpicks as a precaution.

  With that, he pulled on a jacket and slipped out of the house into the cool predawn air. Holding the cross in one hand, he stayed alert for any danger. The streets of Sunnydale were quiet, and Xander enjoyed the solitude as he walked briskly to the donut shop. Once there, he slid the cross into his back pocket. He enjoyed picking out treats for his friends. Chocolate cake with sprinkles for Dawn, a bear claw for Anya, a cruller for Willow. Oddly, he couldn’t remember what kind of donuts Tara liked, so he threw in several extra raised glazed and a couple of custard-filled. They seemed like her.

  Of course there were raspberry jelly-filled for Buffy and Giles—and, he supposed, for Spike. For good measure, he added a couple of cinnamon rolls, a maple bar, some powdered sugar donuts, three glazed old-fashioned buttermilk, and two dozen assorted donut holes for variety. Enough carbs to fuel even the most strenuous of vampire hunts.

  He paid and left the donut shop with a largish pink box that held his breakfast treasures. The sun would rise soon and any Sunday-morning commuters would throw themselves into the congestion of Southern California traffic, but for now all was peaceful. Xander’s stomach growled. Deciding against going back to the apartment to change clothes, he crossed the street and headed back toward Buffy’s house. As always, there was a headiness to holding all that gooey sweetness right in his hands.

  As he walked, he eased one flap of the box open, slid his hand inside, and pulled out a donut hole. He had just popped the powdered sugar morsel into his mouth and begun to chew when a faint glimmer caught his eye behind a hedge off to his right. He turned his head to look directly at it, but saw nothing. A light flickered at the left corner of his vision. His head snapped back toward it. Again nothing.

  “Gas light treatment, huh? I getcha,” Xander said, starting to feel uneasy. Sunrise could not be more than fifteen minutes away. The fairies would never risk being out at this hour. Would they?

  Another glint, at the upper edge of his peripheral vision this time. Xander finished chewing and swallowed hard. As much as he hated to admit it, it might not have been a bad idea to have wakened Spike and brought him along. In a perverse way, the undead did occasionally make good companions. Microvamps might just be less likely to attack the Big Bad.

  A low humming thrummed in the air, not quite ominous. A small fairy sprang into view in full cherry-red glow just out of arm’s reach in front of Xander. A second, third, and fourth joined it, flying in a loose semicircle just above the donut box. Magenta, indigo, cherry, and apricot light glimmered in the darkness.

  Xander froze. “Now look, I’m sure last night was all a big misunderstanding.” He edged sideways and tried to go around the fairies, but they moved with him. Xander watched in uncomfortable amazement as one of the winged imps landed on the far corner of the donut box and executed a series of handsprings, cartwheels, and somersaults diagonally across the box. “And the Russian judge gives it a five point two,” he muttered.

  A second glowing sprite landed on the opposite far corner and performed its own tumbling run across the box. Now there were two fairies at each of the corners closest to Xander. “Now, guys,” Xander said, grinning nervously, “it’s not that I don’t appreciate the artistic quality of what you’re doing here—because I do—but I really need to be getting back now.”

  Suddenly a fairy was at each of the four corners of the donut box trying to lift it from his arms. Xander tightened his grasp and yanked it back. “Oh, no, you’ll have to do a little bit more than dance for your breakfast. If you guys are hungry, you’ll have to—” He stopped short. If these microvamps were hungry, they would not be satisfied with donuts.

  He quickly changed his tune. “Or maybe we could work out a compromise.” He pulled out a chocolate donut hole and thrust it at the nearest fairy. The apricot-haired tink grabbed it, although it was almost as large as she was, holding it easily as if it were a gigantic beach ball. The fairy tasted it, chittered something to her companions, and threw the donut hole to the ground.

  Now a dozen more fairies winked into view, moving to form a circle around Xander. Several of them held tangles of something Xander could not identify. All at once, the fairies surrounding him transformed into miniature flying vampires with bumpy foreheads, sharp teeth, and black-veined wings.

  “Not good,” Xander muttered. “This can never be good.” He took an uncertain step backward and bumped into two fairies who immediately began yanking at his short dark hair. He held the box with one hand and batted at the fairies with the other, trying to loosen their hold. He realized that he had made another fatal error, one that a soldier should never make: He had entered a combat zone woefully unprepared. His meager weapons seemed little better than nothing at all.

  Holding the donut box with one hand, Xander took out a toothpick and jabbed it toward the nearest flittervamp. He missed. Oddly, the creatures seemed bolder, less fearful than the evening before. Two of them flew at the toothpick from either side, grabbed it, and yanked it from his fingers. He reached for the other toothpick, fumbled, and heard it fall with a click onto the sidewalk. Not good. A fairy whisked the weapon away before he could recover it.

  Xander pulled the cross from his back pocket. He swung at a group of fairies, but only managed to hit one. Something pushed him from behind. He tried to keep his balance while juggling the cross and the donut box, but the cross flew from his hand and landed under a bush.

  In desperation, he ripped open the pink box and lobbed a raised glazed donut at a fairy at one o’clock. The fairy flew backward, clutching the hurled wheel of pastry for dear life. Xander grabbed the bear claw, put it back, and tossed a cruller instead.

  “Abandoning plan A entirely, he moves into plan B,” Xander said aloud. This was followed by a maple bar and then a powdered-sugar. He nodded as it hit and another fairy went spinning out of control, completely covered in white. “Another one bites the dust.”

  More fairies appeared, tugging at his sleeves, yanking at his hair. Xander picked up a jelly-filled donut and smashed it over the
head of one that was standing on his arm. Completely engulfed by the cake and its sweet red gooeyness, the fairy plummeted to the ground. The melodic hum changed to a menacing buzzing sound, and fairy lights winked on and off all around him as if they were trying to confuse and distract him.

  Xander blinked, trying to focus on his individual enemies. Sunrise must be no more than ten minutes from now. If he could just hold out, the fairies would be forced to flee just to escape the sunlight. Xander concentrated. He hurled another donut, then another donut, then another, hitting as often as he missed. He wished fervently that he had thought to bring the Slay-omatic along with him as a precaution. He felt a sting on his ear and knew that he had been bitten. Fortunately, none of the fairies had yet gone for the exposed portion of his neck above his dark sweater at the opening of his jacket.

  He was almost out of donuts and switched to donut holes, though these were less accurate and had much less of an impact. Smashing them into the faces of the vamps on his arms and head seemed to be the most effective use. While he practiced precision mashing, a handful of fairy vamps formed a line at the periphery of the battle as if just waiting for him to run out of ammunition. This happened far too quickly. At last he was left with only the bear claw. He felt dizzy from the exertion. He wasn’t sure how, but now there were blinking, winking lights everywhere around him, dozens and dozens.

  “Sorry, Ahn,” he said, and he took a quick bite of the bear claw and flung it defiantly at a cluster of fairies. He was about to drop the empty box, but on inspiration scooped it through the air like a steam shovel and slapped down the top, trapping a cluster of glowing monsters. He dropped the box to the ground and stamped on it hard. Then, like a beleaguered quarterback running for the end zone, he tried to break through the cordon of fairies—only to be yanked back by countless tiny hands on his jacket, pants, and hair.

  There were enough of the fairies to hold him immobile now, and the ones that had been hovering at the edge of the battle swept in, holding something between them. Several pairs split off. One of the pairs flew behind Xander, the other in front of him. They crisscrossed and flew in opposite circles around him. Xander felt something yank tight around his arms and looked down to see that it was a string of some sort. They were tying him up!

  His arms were pinned to his sides above the elbows, and he tried to bring his hands up to pull the string away, but the fairies’ grasp on him was too tight. The second pair of fairies wrapped their makeshift string around his forearms and a third set around his ankles. The string seemed to be made up of a hodgepodge of twine, kite strings, shoestrings, yarn, rope, and fishing line, all tied together. From the smell of it, the bits and pieces had recently been salvaged from a garbage heap or the sewer.

  Panic rose inside Xander. “Ever considered picking on someone your own size?” The fairies flew in faster and faster circles around him with their string, tying him up ever more tightly. “Oh, no. Not liking the whole Gulliver thing here,” Xander said.

  When the string fairies had used up their line, they flew in intricate patterns around each other, tying the ends into knots. While they were putting on the final touches, several other fairies, buzzing with anger, flew up to Xander’s eye level and pelted him with pieces of donut. One of them smashed a donut hole into his ear. Another stuffed a piece of raised glazed up his left nostril.

  A pair of fairies, one of them covered in red slime, approached him with a mashed jelly donut and flew straight toward his mouth. Something moved on its surface, and Xander shuddered. “Oh, no. Not with the ants, now. No ants.” He pressed his lips shut and furiously blew air out through his nose. The piece of raised glazed shot from his left nostril and struck one of the jelly donut–toting fairies. Two more glowing vamps joined the effort, but Xander refused to open his mouth and the angry fairies had to content themselves with mashing the mangled donut against his lips and chin.

  Xander shook his head to dislodge it. He could feel the sticky smears of red on his mouth. An ant crawled across his upper lip and several more up his cheek. He tried again to pull his legs apart or raise his arms, hoping to break the makeshift bonds that held him, but the fairy string held tight.

  A swarm of fairies flew at him from the front and pushed. Xander fell over like a long bowling pin struck by a twenty-pound ball. His head struck the sidewalk, and the world turned a fuzzy gray. Through blurred vision, he saw the swarms of tiny lights spread out all across his body, taking hold of clothing or string. Several tiny hands grasped his hair, and then he felt himself lifted free of the sidewalk.

  “Great. You couldn’t have just picked me up without knocking me down first?” he grumbled. Then the world dissolved into blackness.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The living room of the Summers house was filled to capacity with bleary-eyed Scoobies when the telephone rang. Buffy, lying on the carpet, head on her arms, said, “Only a sadist would call at eight A.M. on a Sunday.”

  “I’ll get it,” Anya said, running to answer the phone. “Probably Xander. He must have been gone for hours by now.” She grabbed it with her uninjured hand. “The sofa was very lonely without you,” she said into the receiver. She paused. “Oh. I see. I was expecting my boyfriend Xander. Oh? Well, she doesn’t actually live here, but I can get her for you.” She held up the phone. “Willow, a strange woman is asking to speak with you.”

  Willow and Tara exchanged a knowing look.

  Buffy forced herself into a sitting position and watched the red-haired wiccan cross to the telephone. “Who would be calling Willow here? Especially at this hour.” It couldn’t be Willow’s mother, or Anya wouldn’t have referred to the caller as a stranger. But why would a stranger call Willow at Buffy’s house?

  “It’s me,” Willow said into the phone. She listened for a minute. “Today? No, that’s great. Perfect. We’ll . . . we’ll take it. Half an hour? She’ll be there. Thank you.” Willow hung up the phone. She turned to the room with a triumphant smile on her face. “That was Doctor Wilson.”

  “Doctor?” Buffy said. “Is somebody sick?”

  Dawn, sitting on the floor with her back against the sofa, looked at her sister. “We know, Buffy.”

  “Know what?”

  “About your tooth.”

  Buffy’s eyes narrowed, and she slid a poisonous glance at Spike. “You sniveling, traitorous, sneaking son of a—”

  “Hold on now. I never snivel,” Spike said defensively.

  “No, no, no,” Willow said. “Not with the finger pointing.”

  Tara gave Buffy a placating smile. “Dawn was really worried. Spike was only trying to help.”

  Buffy scowled. “Worried? What was there to worry about? It’s just a little toothache.”

  “Come on, Buffy,” Willow said. “We’ve all noticed you’ve kind of been not so much with the perkiness of slayering. Well, you know what I mean.”

  Dawn sighed. “You made mistakes. And you weren’t eating. And you kept going off by yourself.”

  Buffy tried to think of an argument against this, but Spike rolled his eyes. “Face it, Blondie, you’re hardly firing on all thrusters.”

  Willow made a frustrated sound. “We don’t have time to argue. Doctor Wilson has agreed to see Buffy in half an hour at the student health center at UC Sunnydale.”

  Buffy blanched. “Uh, Willow, that’s really nice of you, but I can’t, I mean I’m not a student there any—I mean…” Her voice trailed off.

  Willow gestured with her hands. “It’s okay, Buffy. She’s going to treat you for free as a favor to me, to us. Well, maybe more as a favor in return for a favor. You see, Doctor Wilson’s a single mother.” Buffy frowned in confusion at this nonsequitur.

  “Her son David is in a class with Willow and me. He wants to be a veterinarian,” Tara said helpfully. “So last night I called David and explained the situation.”

  “You know, with your mother dying and with the trying to make ends meet and with the trying to run a household,” Willow said. “A
nyway, when we called again, David said his mom had agreed to treat you for free if one of us would help him study today for his veterinary entrance exam.”

  Tara shrugged. “I volunteered. After that, all we needed was a time for Doctor Wilson to see you. She’s making time in half an hour.”

  Buffy smiled at her friends but was still reluctant. “That’s really great of you guys, but I can’t see a dentist now. We have priorities. There are killer pixies on the loose. We have to figure out where they’re hiding and how to get rid of them, and Xander might be missing.”

  Anya looked really alarmed now.

  Dawn looked suspicious. “Buffy, are you afraid to go to the dentist? I mean, sure you fight vampires and werewolves and evil and all its forms…”

  “Dentists are not evil,” Anya said. Then her expression changed to panic. “Do you really think something happened to Xander? He’s been gone way too long.”

  “We’ll find him,” Willow assured her.

  “You know, dentists do have those pointy drills and all,” Dawn said, changing the subject back to Buffy. “Could be pretty scary.”

  “I’m not afraid of the dentist,” Buffy said. “But I can’t just think of myself at a time like this.”

  “Buffy,” Giles broke in, “you’re most valuable to us when you’re in top fighting form. Others can look for Xander and continue the research without you. But when it comes time for the final fight, we’ll need you at your best.”

  “Any rate, Love, has your tooth gotten any better?” Spike asked.

  “No,” Buffy admitted, “it’s worse.”

  “Come on,” Dawn said, her eyes pleading with Buffy. “It’s free. Free is good.”

  “Free is good,” Buffy agreed.

  “I can drive you and Tara to the university in my car,” Giles offered. “I wanted to stop by the Magic Box anyway to pick up a couple of books. I can read them while I’m waiting.”