Xander and Cordelia were ready to go, waiting for the building to be shut down for the night before they got things rolling. At eight o’clock City Hall would be locked up and empty except for the front desk security guard. It was Cordelia’s job to distract him and get him away from the building so Xander could set off the bombs.

He’d had to do a little bit of breaking and entering to pilfer the necessary equipment, and a whole lot of improvising to adapt the bombs to his needs, but Xander was confident his plan would work.

“Pinch me,” he said. He still couldn’t believe he’d been trusted with this mission.

“What?” asked Cordelia. She was still a little miffed at the role he had her playing. She was always the bait, and she was sick of it. But at least this time the bait got to go home, shower and change into some seriously kick-ass clothes. She’d defy any man not to succumb to her charms with that much cleavage showing.

“Pinch me,” Xander repeated. “It’s like a dream—G.I. Joe meets Dracula—and I get to blow things up.”

Cordelia reached over and pinched his arm hard through his camouflage jacket.

“Ow! Not so hard,” he complained.

“You’re not dreaming,” she said. “Thought I’d give you a good dose of reality.”

“Point taken,” he said. “But you didn’t have to pinch me so hard, though.”

“Baby,” she retorted. Across the street the security guard had just locked the doors and was sauntering back to his desk for what he thought would be just another boring night. “Okay, here we go,” said Cordelia.

Xander battled a case of the nerves. He had to keep telling himself that Commando-Xander knew what he was doing. Commando-Xander wasn’t like the everyday, run of the mill Xander who often found his own two feet an overwhelming obstacle. He breathed in deep, put on his resolve-face and crossed the street.

The first vampire was already climbing out the basement window. It couldn’t be helped—they knew they might not be able to get them all at once. Just so long as most of them didn’t make it out alive…or undead. The fact that they were leaving through the window was a good sign, though. It meant that the vamps had no access to the sewers from the basement, and would have nowhere to run when the bombs blew.

Xander did one last sweep of the windows, careful to stay downwind and out of sight. Tiny blinking red lights marked the locations of the devices he’d planted earlier that day. As far as he could tell from that distance, they hadn’t been disabled. He’d planted two more bombs inside the building at the two doors leading to the basement, blocking their only other way out. The fire would take care of the rest. Xander checked his watch…five more minutes…

He took his time searching for the right key—just because she was hot didn’t give her the right to pull him away from his nightly duties.

“Thank God!” said the brunette, flipping her long, silky hair away from the creamy skin of her neck. “I so need your help.”

“What seems to be the problem, miss?” asked Sal, unconsciously licking his lips. She looked downright tasty.

“My car won’t start. I’ve tried everything I can think of, and if I don’t get home soon, Daddy’s gonna freak. Could you take a look at it?” She batted her sexy, long lashes at him and Sal mentally rehearsed the excuse he would give for leaving his post in the middle of his shift. When she pulled out a full-lipped pout, he didn’t stand a chance—Sal suddenly found himself locking the door behind him.

“Couldn’t hurt to take a look,” he said amiably, while blatantly drooling over her shapely figure as she walked on ahead of him.

Cordelia ignored the lascivious attention and guided the man down the street a block and a half to where her car sat waiting with its hood up. She couldn’t believe how easy it was—the man was like a walking cliché of the lazy security guard. She figured he’d seen one too many bad cop movies where the security guard would have become a cop if they’d let him join. His act was so cheesy it could be used in a mousetrap.

It was that last thought that triggered the alarms: his act was too cheesy—nobody could really be that two-dimensional and be for real. And if it was all some kind of act, then she probably had walked into some kind of trap.

As they approached her car from the rear, Cordelia looked carefully in the driver side mirror and wasn’t surprised to find that her companion hadn’t joined her in the reflection. She kept her cool and casually got into the car. In the glove compartment she kept a handy sharpened stake—far handier than a can of mace or a car alarm when you lived in Sunnydale.

Sal was checking under the hood with no clue what to look for. He figured he’d tinker around with the machine for a couple of minutes, then get the girl to come back to the building where he could have a taste of her without risking an audience. The Mayor’s orders were clear—no witnesses.

He was so caught up in his planning and fake tinkering that he didn’t hear the girl sneaking up on him. Not until she cleared her throat directly behind him. He spun around in time to see a flash of movement. Then there was a pain in his chest and the pretty young girl standing in front of him was looking all smug. The last thing he ever felt was the bizarre sensation of his body dissolving into dust.

Cordelia wiped the fine powder off her clothes in disgust; “Note to self: never kill a vampire on a windy night.” She leaned into the car window and honked the horn three times, giving Xander the ‘all clear’ signal. A minute later there was a loud, whooshing thump of a sound, followed by the clattering of glass on pavement and a chorus of alarms. Thick, black smoke was soon belching from the lower half of the municipal building, and Cordelia silently prayed that Xander hadn’t screwed up and gotten himself killed.

And it had.

The heavy blade sliced cleanly through his skull, halving him right down to the collarbone. But as soon as the sword was pulled free, the severed flesh and bone re-knitted themselves and the Mayor smiled a wickedly gleeful smile.

The rogue vampire gawked at his unaffected victim in shock and was completely caught off guard by the stake-wielding Mr. Trick. The disobedient vamp exploded into a rain of powdery dust. Mayor Wilkins looked down at the heap of vampiric ashes settling into the fibres of his carpet and sighed. The cleaning staff simply wasn’t equipped for this sort of contingency, and they would no doubt leave a stain behind.

The building shook suddenly, and alarms started blaring from every direction.

“Well, that’s never a good sign,” said the Mayor. “Mr. Finch, go see what all the fuss is about.”

But he didn’t have to. Smoke began to pour into the room through the air vents and even from under the door. Finch’s eyes bugged out in horror as the floor trembled violently and cracked beneath his feet as a second and third explosion rocked the building. The crack opened up, swallowing Mr. Finch, whose screams echoed up to them as he fell all the way down to the inferno in the basement.

“Alrighty, then. Mr. Trick, I think we should call it a night.”

Mr. Trick didn’t answer. A chunk of burning ceiling had pinned him to the floor and he was too preoccupied with bursting into flames to answer his boss.

“Really—frankly I expected more from you, Mr. Trick. You came to me full of grand promises, and you failed to follow through. Most disappointing.” Mayor Wilkins straightened his tie and casually picked his way through the burning office to the door, oblivious to the searing heat and choking smoke. It was a setback, losing his army, but he wasn’t too worried. He was now invincible until his ascension—the roasting vampires in the cellar were no longer an essential part of his plan.

With the baby gathered awkwardly in one arm, Willow rang the doorbell. It took a long time before she saw a shadow pass on the other side of the eyehole. From inside, she heard Joyce say; “It’s Willow.” And the door swung open.

Joyce’s smile froze on her face when she saw what Willow was holding, and she looked as if a strong breeze would knock her over. Two men appeared behind her in the foyer.

“Dear Lord—Willow!” was all Wesley could manage to say.

“How convenient,” said Ethan Rayne over Wesley’s shoulder. “It’s the wanna-be witch with the demon baby. I’ve heard of ‘special delivery’ but this is first rate. Shall I get started, then?”

If looks could kill, Ethan would have died from multiple stab wounds.

“This isn’t the demon,” Willow said, angrily, then turned to address Wesley; “They just left her…they took off and left her there to die. I had to save her.”

“It’s alright, Willow,” Wesley said. “We’ll find them. The important thing is that the baby is safe now.”

Willow stepped inside, past Joyce who was still staring mutely at the bundle in her arms.

“Oh, Mrs. Summers! I’m sorry—you want to hold her?” asked Willow, holding the baby out to her.

Joyce nodded, her eyes brimming with tears at the first real sight of her granddaughter.

“Isn’t she beautiful?” asked Willow, beaming as proudly as if the baby were hers.

“She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” she answered softly.

“Are we done with the Kodak moment yet? I have a life to get back to,” said Ethan.

“Not if you don’t shut up,” Wesley remarked. “Can you perform some kind of locator spell…find out where Giles and Buffy are right now?”

Ethan remained stubbornly silent.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake! I didn’t mean—alright, you may talk.”

“How very kind of you,” Ethan sneered.

“You haven’t answered my question,” said Wesley, quickly losing his temper.

“A locator spell? Hell—even Tabitha here could do it,” Ethan said, sizing up Willow. “On second thought…maybe I give her too much credit.”

“Hey!” said Willow. “Standing right here, remember?”

“I’ll need to get a few ingredients together,” said Ethan, ignoring Willow’s remark. “We’ll need to leave now if we don’t want them to get too much of a head start.”

“Fine, let’s go,” said Wesley. “Willow, would you mind taking Mrs. Summers and the baby to the hospital? With any luck we’ll meet you there soon.”

“Of course,” she answered. “Good luck.”

Wesley manhandled Ethan out the door, taking great pleasure in using more force than was strictly necessary.

“You can’t be serious!” Buffy said, waking their son from his fitful sleep. He started wailing again. “Please tell me were not stranded in the middle of nowhere with our brand new baby and no food or water.”

“Don’t worry, Buffy. We’re not stranded…just slightly delayed,” said Giles. “I’ll take care of it.” He popped the hood, and it coughed out a billowing cloud of smoke. “I’m sure it’s nothing serious.”

Giles got out of the car and poked his head under the hood, but the only parts he was familiar with were the bit where you added oil and the place where the washer fluid went. In the past, he’d always left the rest of the car for the mechanics to deal with. Books were more his speed. Now if only he’d read a book about cars…

“Damn,” he said quietly.

“You don’t know what you’re doing, do you?” asked Buffy, who’d appeared suddenly behind him. Giles jumped in surprise and then tried to make it look like he was just stretching.

“Buffy—what are you doing out with the baby? It’s chilly—you don’t want him to catch cold, do you?”

“Little Tyler’s snug as a bug and finally quiet. He seems to like it when I’m walking around,” she said.

“Tyler?” asked Giles, wrinkling his nose at the name.

“What’s wrong with Tyler?”

“Nothing…if you want our son to join a boy band,” Giles muttered.

“And I suppose you were thinking something more along the lines of Hugh or Wilbur.”

“I would never inflict a name like Wilbur on our child,” he said in mock offence. “I just thought a more traditional name like Michael or Robert would suit him better.”

“How about we compromise and go with Tyler Robert?” asked Buffy.

“I think Robert Tyler has a better ring to it,” Giles said.

“Robert Tyler Giles,” Buffy said, testing out the name. “I can live with that.” She smiled down at little Robert Tyler and stroked his soft cheek with her thumb.

“How are you feeling?” asked Giles, no longer pretending to fix the car.

“Like I could sleep forever,” she answered. “But otherwise I’m almost as good as new. Frankly, I can’t believe the human race still exists. There are women who get pregnant on purpose? More than once? I’m the Slayer, and if it hurt me that much, I can’t imagine what a normal woman goes through. How do they do it?”

“Drugs?” ventured Giles with a wry smile.

“Wouldn’t have turned them down,” Buffy admitted. “So, Mr. Plan Guy…what do we do now?”

“The only thing we can do,” he replied, and stuck his thumb out at an approaching car, which zipped past him without slowing. “I have a feeling it might take a while before I get any results. Why don’t you go back in the car and get some rest?”

“Why, does it bother you?” asked Ethan, feigning innocence.

“It didn’t at first, but an hour of ‘I Spy’ in the black of night is enough to test even my patience,” said Wesley. “And don’t play with those,” he ordered as Ethan’s fingers crept towards the power window buttons.

“It’s unbearably stuffy in here,” said Ethan. “…Can’t imagine why,” he added under his breath.

“Just keep looking for them—you said they’d stopped somewhere around here.”

“What d’you think the game of ‘I Spy’ was for?” said Ethan indignantly.

Once again, Wesley found himself taking a deep breath and counting slowly to three. He was starting to think Ethan was even less mature than Xander…no small feat…with the added bonus of being a highly skilled sorcerer in league with Chaos. Thankfully, Wesley had thought to read Giles’ journals, in which he’d discovered enough incriminating information on Mr. Rayne to blackmail him until Hell froze over.

As it turned out, it had been incredibly easy to find Ethan and coerce him into helping. As Ethan explained, he’d had a great deal of fun watching Giles dig himself into this hole, but watching him dig himself out afterwards was going to be the real fun. Wesley didn’t care much why he agreed to help, so long as he didn’t make things any worse. And that’s where the blackmail had come in. Ethan had looked hurt when Wesley confronted him with some of the seedier exploits of his past—as if he was insulted at the implication that he couldn’t be trusted. He and Giles had been friends once, after all, he’d said.

Their headlights sliced through the inky desert darkness on a long, straight highway—a flat, empty vastness that practically begged for high speeds. Wesley kept his car just below the speed limit, allowing numerous impatient drivers to whip past him in their haste to get back to civilization.

“I spy with my little eye…” said Ethan.

Wesley moaned. “Not again.”

“…Something that is silver,” finished Ethan.

Wesley squinted through his glasses until he spotted it. The distant speck of silver caught in their headlights grew larger until he could make out the shape. It was the Citroën. Closer still and Wesley was able to make out the figure of a man standing by the side of the road, waving them down.

Wesley suffered a moment of panic in which he was convinced Giles had somehow lured him into a trap. Unfortunately, trap or no, there was no turning back. If they had somehow walked into a trap, Wesley could only hope that Ethan’s involvement would still give them the edge of surprise.

Wesley steeled himself and pulled over a short distance past the Citroën. He was about to face off with the Legend of the Watcher’s Council; a man who’d earned the fear and respect of countless novices, Wesley included; a man whose bond with a demon child had likely turned him into a lethal weapon against anyone who stood in his way. And Wesley was about to seriously stand in his way.