Dark Reflection
Chapter Nine: Cruel Emergencies Pt. One

AN: First of all, I don’t own Buffy. Much appreciation to Spikez_tart and Slaymesoftly for their help with this chapter. It meant a lot to me.

Giles hopped into the rental car, sweat dripping from his forehead. Before he could close the door, a large fist connected to his face.

“Give me the car and I’ll let you live,” a heavyset black man with a do-rag snarled at him.

“Get away from me,” Giles replied with a kick to the man’s face as he tried to get into the car.

“Giles, look over there, at the crowd.” Lydia pointed towards the airport’s entrance.

A stampede of people headed towards the car. All flights were booked out of Sunnydale, and the rental agency had run out of cars to give out. The crowd attacked, trying to fend each other off from driving any cars out of Sunnydale.

Giles cringed as an elderly woman was tackled to the ground as she got to a new Mitsubishi Galant. Her attacker was a strung out junkie with a blond, bowl cut hair The hippie banged her head against the window. The old lady screamed and tried to push her attacker away, but he grabbed her by the legs and dragged her out of the car. He reached for her neck and snapped her spine.

The crowd surrounded the car that Giles had rented and pounded on the windows for entry.

“Get off the bloody thing,” Giles shouted, fumbling with the keys as he tried to shove one into the ignition. An obese woman wearing a yellow summer dress, climbed onto the hood and pounded on it, screaming.

Giles stared at the woman in horror. “Get off the fucking hood, you daft cow,” Giles screamed at her.

“Get out of the car,” she snarled at him.

Giles turned on the car’s cigarette lighter and pulled it out, and reached out of the sunroof of the Chevy Impala and burned the woman on the forehead with it. She screamed and fell off. Lydia turned the car on and Giles slid down on the seat and revved the Impala’s engine shoved it into drive, shooting the car forward.

The crowd chased him, but Giles accelerated the car as fast as he could, flying through the street. He turned onto I-70 and drove towards the Magic Box as fast as he could. “Put on your seatbelt, Lydia.” He pressed on the gas pedal until the car was moving at 90 miles per hour.

“Call Xander, he’s on the contact list. If he doesn’t pick up, call the Magic Box.” Giles fumbled in his pocket for a second and pulled out a silver phone and tossed it at her, keeping his eyes on the road.

The Impala was the only car heading south on I-70, towards Sunnydale; the other side was packed with cars trying to pile out of the town. Cars crashed into each other, fenders and doors were damaged as hundreds of cars tried to leave Sunnydale and head towards Nevada.

“What’s causing them to leave like this?” Lydia asked.

“I don’t know. It couldn’t be just Isaiah. Sunnydale is used to its fair share of deaths. Something else must be causing them to react like this.”

“It reminds me of Dawn of the Dead. They’ll do anything to get out of here, and we’re going in.” Lydia paged down the contact list on the phone until she found Xander’s name and pushed the green button to call him. The phone rang a couple of times, yet there was no answer. “He’s not answering.”

“Call the Magic Box. Anya should definitely be picking up. She loves to talk,” Giles insisted, throttling the car a little more, slamming it into fifth gear.

As Lydia called the Magic Box, her forehead wrinkled with worry. The phone rang once, and then the voice of an operator told her that she had dialed the wrong number and to try again.

“I think the phone’s disconnected,” Lydia stated, ending the call and placing the phone on the center console.

A blue Mazda RX-7 heading north on 70 fishtailed, crashing into the guardrail that separated the north from south lanes. The speed the RX-7 was going caused it to flip over the guardrail into the air.

“Hang on, Lydia,” Giles said, slamming on the brakes and spinning sideways, as the RX-7 crashed next to them, landing upside down on the freeway, blue gas leaking from the sides of the hood. Giles placed their car in park and stepped out, sprinting as hard as his body would let him. He reached the RX-7 and tried to pry the door open, but it was sealed shut.

Covering his mouth with his sleeve to prevent any inhalation of the blue gas, he peered into the heavily tinted windows to look for signs of life. He pulled his foot back and sent it towards the window, cracking it.

“Rupert, get away from the car! It’s leaking some blue gas! It’s going to blow up!” Lydia screamed, running towards him.

Giles kicked the window again, shattering it. He looked inside at the driver, but his efforts to save the man were useless. The driver had crushed his skull in the crash. Giles turned and ran towards Lydia. They hopped back in the rental car and Giles revved the engine, slammed it into drive, and straightened the car out.

As he was pulling away, the blue Mazda exploded in a blue-green ball of fire sending car fragments scattering everywhere. Afraid of being caught by a fragment, Giles throttled the silver Chevy hard, sending the car forward. They drove at eighty miles per hour, sitting in silence.

Lydia, tired of the awkward silence, reached forward and grabbed the black knob on the car radio and turned the radio on. The local Sunnydale station, KISS FM, blared.

“This is Megan Nicholson from KISS FM. Police are searching for a serial killer in Sunnydale. There were sixteen murders last night. All sixteen victims were found dismembered, decapitated and eviscerated. Luigi Ferranti, the owner of Luigi’s Pizzeria at the mall and a man known for his generous donations to cancer charities, was found decapitated, with his head left in a pizza oven. A spree of murders at the hospital left several people beaten to death. Warren Meers, a sophomore at MIT, was decapitated with glass. I know many people have evacuated, but please be aware if you’re still in Sunnydale. Please take care. Here’s the Sunnydale Chief of Police, Captain Damme.”

“I’m going to be very brief. Whoever the criminal is, he’s no average killer. He has no feelings, no concern for the fellow man. Stay away from alleys and people who look like they don’t belong. Please stay safe, or evacuate,” Captain Damme pleaded on air.

“Thank you, Captain. We’ll be temporarily going off air due to a shortage of staff, but we’ll be back after things smooth over here in bright Sunny D.”

Giles glanced at Lydia, who had tears welling in her eyes. “We’ll be alright,” he said, grabbing her hand and holding it gently for a second. “We’re going to drive over to the Magic Box to see if we can find the rest of the gang. We’ll stop Isaiah before he can do any more damage.”

Lydia nodded.

“Are you ready for this? You haven’t had much field time,” Giles said.

Lydia nodded shakily, “I have to help. It’s the right thing to do. Even if it means dying in the process, a real Watcher doesn’t stop in the face of evil.”

Giles looked at her for a second, losing himself in the blue depths of her eyes. He let out a breath, “I love Buffy. She’s like a daughter to me. I watched her grow over the last six years. She’s the daughter I never had,” Giles said. His eyes welled up with tears and glazed over with bottled-up emotion. “I have to save her… I couldn’t forgive myself if I failed to do what was necessary. She needed me this year, and I deserted her. I have to save her from herself…”

Touched by his affection, she touched his arm, giving him the unspoken support he needed. After a few seconds she spoke, “Rupert, you’re here now. That’s what counts. You’re a good man, and a good father.” She leaned over the console … and kissed his cheek.
Giles blushed. He slowed the car down to about 35 mph and turned into I-565, the highway that led to Sunnydale. The Magic Box was about ten miles away, and Giles would make it in time, even if it was the last thing he did.

Deep lines creased his forehead. He was getting too emotionally attached to Lydia. After losing Jenny, he hadn’t wanted another woman to get close. He feared the hurt that would come of it. He avoided every woman he could have been intimate with. Yes, there had been a few friends with benefits, but never anyone serious, and there was never anything that lasted too long. The feelings he was beginning to experience for Lydia scared him.

In his Ripper days, he never allowed himself to get emotionally attached to anyone. There was lust in his youthful days, but never anything remotely close to love. He had closed himself off to the idea of it; it nauseated him. He needed to be stone hard, unbreakable, so nothing – no one - could interfere with his search for power.

A few years later, he’d become a full-fledged Watcher. He’d been in charge of Buffy, and at first, he couldn’t understand her. She had been fifteen, and materialistic. She hadn’t wanted any part of her Calling. She just wanted a normal life. Watching her grow and mature in her high school years, his relationship with her had become unorthodox. They had gone from Watcher and Slayer to father and daughter. Then, Buffy died. He couldn’t bear losing another loved one, so like a coward, he ran away, fearing the pain of losing another person he loved.

He was a middle-aged man. He had experienced the devastating losses of three of the people he cared about.

Jenny, Joyce, and Buffy.


Now, there was Lydia, a woman he had only known for a short amount of time. She had an inner strength that intrigued him. He felt entranced by her charms. She was beautiful in an old-fashioned sort of way. Her middle length hair was wrapped into a bun and she wore no make up to make herself look prettier. Her deep blue eyes hid behind plain looking glasses.

He didn’t love her, far from it, but, it sickened him to think of her dead, to think of her dying in the arms of a vampire, as the fiend fed off her and drained her blood.

It actually bothered him.

That was the scary part.

“Let me get you a hotel room where you’ll be safe,” Giles said. He turned into the parking lot of the Sunnydale Inn, slowly pressing on the brake and bringing the car to a stop.

“No, Rupert. I have my duty to the Council, and you have yours. I’m not hiding away in a hotel while you risk your neck to stop Isaiah,” she said, waving her hands about in frustration at the thought of being tucked away while Rupert did all the fieldwork.

“There is no bloody Council. They’re all dead except us and maybe a few wet-behind-the-ears juniors from the academy,” he snapped, stepping outside the car, and slamming the door angrily.

Lydia opened the passenger door and closed it, following Giles to the front of the car.

“We knew the risks before entering the Council. We could die just as easily as the Slayer, yet that doesn’t matter as long as we die for a cause… a purpose. My purpose is to help you, Rupert, and maybe a little more…” She trailed off, her lips ghosting over his.

“Don’t do this to me, Lydia,” Giles begged. Painful emotions were raw in his smoky eyes, a combination of sadness and lust in their blue depths.

“Don’t do what?” she asked. Her kisses trailed down to his jaw, then to his neck. “If I die, at least I’ll know I had this.” She nipped softly at his earlobe. It was hard for him to not take her right now on top of the car hood. She leaned in and kissed him, and he grabbed her hips, pulling her flush against him.

After a few seconds, he pulled away from her.

“Promise me this. Stay at the hotel tonight while I assess the situation with the two Slayers. I’ll be back in a couple of hours and we can finish this conversation. As much as I’d love to be with you Lydia, there is much work to be done if we’re to save Buffy from Isaiah.”

“Do you need me to do anything while I’m at the hotel?” Lydia asked, skin flushed and nipples hard against her bra, the only visible evidence of her arousal.

“I heard you are exceptional at magic. Do a locator spell on Buffy as well as Isaiah. Give me a call on my cell phone and give me the status on the situation.” Giles popped the trunk and pulled out Lydia’s suitcases.

Giles kissed Lydia’s lips chastely. Giving her a curt nod, he drew in a deep breath, and rushed over to his car, and hopped in, thrusting the keys into the ignitions and pulling out of the hotel driveway

“Let’s get on with it.”