THE BLUE BOY
by Lynn K. Hollander
Chapter13 - Alarums and Excursions
SUNNYDALE
Xiuling put a hand on Spike's chest, holding him off, and sat up.
He started to ask her what was wrong, when he saw she was already listening to something. He settled back on the pillows and waited, drawing a strand of ebony hair through his white hand. After a brief time she turned back to him. "What?" he asked.
"Jingwu sent Binwen home. There was an inconclusive incident out on the hill."
"Is everyone all right?" he asked, starting to sit up.
She pushed him back down. "Yes," she said, "but when Jingwu and young Dawn get back from her school, we're going to have a council."
"They went on to the open house?"
"Yes." She bent over him, hands and mouth gentle and warm on his skin.
"Sounds as if they're OK," he managed.
"Darcy was a little frightened, but Jiding is comforting him."
"All right, then," and he pulled her down beside him and kissed her.
***
Kailea ran down the hill. At Terrace Avenue she veered south and raced on. When she came to the first intersection, she turned east, onto Hillside. Panting, she slowed and walked up and over the low ridge. On the other side, Hillside T'd into Skyline Drive, which ran north and south. A strange narrow lane, very straight, paved, with occasional sets of steps, and with tall barricades on either side, continued down the ridge. She could not read the sign but went east and down into Coyote Canyon County Park.
***
At the Y-intersection immediately below St. Agonie's school, Magal took the north- bearing street. He continued down Cerro Reynaldo, always taking the north or west street whenever there was a choice.
Magic! No one had mentioned magic might be used against him. The target was too young to be a magician or warlock, he had made sure of that before accepting the contract. Two witches in a row was unnerving. He wasn't ophiophobic or acrophobic or agoraphobic or claustrophobic or hedonophobic or poinephobic but he did find facing loose magic unsettling in the extreme.
His first weapon was gone. All he had left were a couple of knives, a garrote, two kinds of poison, a local 9mm handgun--with a silencer, three boxes of bullets, $100,000, a pair of binoculars, a book on local birds, a box of ammunition for the vanished air gun, the tracking device and a change of clothes.
The street he was on angled north and leveled off, becoming narrow, with fewer houses. There were signs showing silhouettes of people walking and also of horses. Eventually, the road went over a graceful stone span, crossing a shallow, but wide river. On the other side, the elevation fell rapidly and the road turned west. Magal kept going.
***
"I must get up," Xiuling said. "Jingwu is coming home."
"What's the rush?"
"I have something to do before she gets here." She gave him a quick kiss, then disappeared.
Spike decided there was no reason to stay in bed alone and wandered off to the bathroom. The shower reinvigorated him. He felt ready for anything as he dressed and when he heard the lions roaring to announce Ann's return, he went down stairs.
***
"So it was really great, and everyone liked Ann and agreed that she is like totally respectable," Dawn said. "I just called her my trustee and everybody nodded just like they knew what I meant or had a trustee of their own, which I know for a fact none of them do, and after summer school, I get to go on to tenth grade at the new high school and I get to pick my own courses, or at least three of them, and I don't know what to take. Wow, I'm so grown up!"
"We have nearly four weeks to discuss what your class schedule will be," Ann said, leafing through a sheaf of handouts. "I'll show these to Rupert when he arrives." The papers vanished.
"And Malinda's mother found out about her sister's navel ring, and was really pissed. Where's Darcy?"
"Out in the pool, with the cubs and Binwen and Yanghao," Spike said.
Dawn rushed off to the downstairs bathroom, where Ann kept a large selection of bathing suits. Ann caught Spike's eye, and he waited with her.
"Council," she told him, and went to the dining room.
In the formal dining room, the French doors were shut and the drapes drawn. Gang Long and the other yunü were seated on two sides of the long table. Spike took a chair across from Gang Long and waited as Ann sat at the head of the table. She nodded to Jiding, who released her mirror,
The mirror, spinning slowly, rose against the interior wall and grew in size. Cerro Reynaldo appeared in it. Ann provided a flat street map of the area, on the wall to the right of the mirror. A white dot appeared on Ann's map.
Jiding gave the basic data of who, where and when. The white dot moved out from the parking lot while the view in the mirror's POV changed, rather like a hand held camera.
"Darcy said he didn't recognize either of these people, Jingwu," Jiding said.
"Freeze that," Ann said.
"What is she?" Spike asked.
"Look at her clothing," Ann said.
"Ah. Right," Spike said, seeing what Ann had seen.
Ann, the children and the yunü stopped. Jiding took her mirror in her hand and moved around Darcy.
The young woman in clothing like Darcy's turned around and walked up the hill. The mirror followed her, the POV becoming more and more jerky.
"Freeze that," Ann said.
"Why is it always in focus?" Spike asked, looking a small, dark man, dressed in unremarkable Earth clothes.
"It's a mirror, not a camera," Jiding said.
"What's he holding?" Gang Long asked.
"An air gun," Liangde said. "More or less, but not a very good one."
Spike noted that Ann and Gang Long accepted Liangde's statement without question. The action in the mirror resumed. "And what was that?" he asked.
"An attack," Ann said, "and a defense. See the amulet? It did that with me, too, just a little later."
The hill blinked out. "And we left," Jiding ended. She restored the man in the mirror and left him there.
"After that, what happened was this:" Ann said, and spoke for four minutes, ending with: "And then we went on to the open house."
"What is he?" Gang Long asked. "Human?"
"No," Ann said. "Not Earth human." The dragon and the vampire nodded.
"He ignored Dawn?" Spike asked.
"Totally, as far as I saw."
"Was there anyone at all on the other side of Darcy?"
"Not that I could see. We were surrounded by humans, but they were all lower down; at the time, we and the man and the woman were the only people on the hill."
"You said, way back on the first day we saw him, Darcy might be pursued by murderers. Do you think he's one?" Spike asked.
"I can't tell yet," Ann said.
"There's a gate on Cerro Reynaldo," Spike said. "Is that still one of our givens?"
"Yes."
"Did it open while you were there?"
"I'm not sure I would notice," Ann said.
"They don't ding like elevators, to announce their arrival," Roujin said.
"We're not attuned to them," Gang Long said.
"Why not?" Spike asked.
"We don't need them."
"From what I've seen, a well constructed, fully integrated gate is almost seamless with both realities, the way that arch," Ann indicated the arch between the dining room and the foyer, "is with this room and with the hallway. The one we stopped with Angel was crowded, rushed, poorly planned, very noticeable even before it was completed and probably destructive. The one on Cerro Reynaldo appears to be quite old and very smooth in its operation."
"It's sort of like a mouse hole, Spike," Roujin said. "It's there, but you may not notice it, and if you're not watching it, all of a sudden there's a mouse in the room, and you have no idea how it got here."
"So did these two--Grayman and the woman--just pop through right before you saw them?"
"They could have," Ann said. "I can't tell."
"OK. What's the air gun shoot?" the vampire asked.
Liangde tossed some balsa balls onto the table. "Fragile, hollow balls, this size."
"Like paint ball?" Spike asked.
"The one I have is filled with powder, not gel. But you wouldn't have fun with this, fighting or marksmanship, the gun is so miserable."
"What's in them?"
Liangde plucked a brocade box out of the air. "This is what we have."
"It's a single shot?" Ann asked.
Liangde nodded and gently lifted the top of the box. Inside, on a lot of padding was a small pale green glass globe, nearly full of powder.
"Cocaine, radio-active cobalt dust or cornstarch?" Spike asked.
"Not cobalt, because of the weight," Liangde said. "It could be either of the others, though."
"Neither seems likely," Ann said. "Where is it from?"
"I don't know," Xiuling admitted. "When we took it apart, we found only one maker's mark. I don't know it and I couldn't find it."
"Show us," Ann said.
Xiuling took her mirror and expanded it to about dinner plate size. One gesture of her hand left a black glyph filling the whole of the surface. It had three long lines, two parallel and joined by a shorter one at mid-length. The third long line touched the bottom of the long line on the right and angled away from the top, like a skewed V.
Ann shook her head. Spike shrugged, and turned his attention back to Jiding's mirror. "Ann," he asked after a time, "did you notice his clothes?"
"Yes. They're nothing special. You can buy them or others just like them a lot of places around here, exactly where depending on the quality you want," Ann said.
"They're not the best colors for him, but they go together," Lijin said. "And they fit local custom. Good enough choice."
"So why didn't he buy the gun here?" the vampire asked.
"If he just arrived, would he have had time?" Xiuling asked.
"Guns are a little more difficult to obtain than clothes, but not that much. If he bought the clothes here, he could have also purchased the gun here," Ann said.
"Why would he buy such a lousy gun?" Liangde asked.
"And one that stands out like that?" Lijin said. "The style doesn't go with anything else he's wearing, even in California, and that's saying a lot."
"He didn't buy anything here," Spike answered his own question. "He came ready, with those clothes and that gun."
"It's a really rotten gun," Liangde insisted.
"Do you know of any other weapon that can shoot that?" Spike nodded at the glass ball.
"Not offhand," Liangde said. "I could make a better delivery system, though, both the ammunition and the weapon."
"Yeah, but you're good, I bet," the vampire said.
"Is that why the gun?" Xiuling asked, looking at the glass ball.
Ann nodded. "I think so. The ammunition is the constraint, the limitation. I can't see any other reason."
"Find out who it will poison or addict or affect or whatever," Spike said, "and we'll have a better idea of whom he's after."
"He seemed to think it would stop me," Ann said. "Or he was ready to shoot just about anyone."
"Not very professional," Jiding said severely.
Huixin was looking at the ammunition, holding one hand above the ball. "It's not a poison."
"A drug? A sleeper?" Jiding asked. "A tag?"
"I don't know. It's sort of alive. though," Huixin said.
"In what sense?" Ann asked.
"It can be alive, under the right circumstances."
Ann gazed at the yunü for a moment. Then: "That may not be so good." She gestured around the box holding the ball. A faint glimmer of crystal surrounded the box. She gripped the larger sphere and gave it a gentle shake. The powder in the smaller sphere swirled like snow in a snow globe. Ann lowered the sphere but did not remove it from around the box. "Light and fine; and potentially alive. Right," she said. "Huixin, get a blood sample from Darcy, one from each of his forms; one from yourself, and one from a human."
"Jingwu, there are no humans in the house," Roujin pointed out.
"We'll stop at Rupert's on the way, then," Ann said. Huixin left the dining room, going through the butler's pantry, the kitchen and out the back door.
"On the way where?" Spike asked.
"To a place where they are more practiced in quasi-magical bio-hazard procedures than I am. It's the lab Claire uses. While we're gone, study the man, study the woman. Just because he no longer has this weapon, doesn't mean he's harmless; and we don't know anything about her beyond the possibility that she's a gate traveler, and that she may also be a witch. We'll want to get them some place private and have a calm, reassuring, talk with them. Jiding, tell everyone about the searching yesterday. Whoever has kitchen duty, remember I've invited six more for dinner." Ann and the ammunition disappeared.
"A search?" Gang Long asked.
"Yesterday afternoon. Jingwu's wards held," Jiding said. "Which is to be expected, so whoever tried didn't find out much, but it did happen."
"And the target was?" Liangde asked.
"Here," Jiding said. "I don't know more than that."
"If we're right about when the two on the hill arrived, that means there was someone else here running the search," Spike said.
"Yes," Gang Long agreed. The yunü all nodded.
"I wonder what Jingwu did to him? If that amulet can block her, it will block us." Jiding looked worried.
"From what she said, from her words, she was trying a very mild persuasion," Gang Long said. "Minor magic."
"She wouldn't want to treat him like an enemy right off. After all," Spike said, "Darcy has caretakers and parents, and we have assumed at least some of them are looking for him. Either Grayman or the woman may work for the caretakers Darcy ran away from or for his parents. Or one of them may be one of Darcy's caretakers come in search of the boy."
"Why not even one of Darcy's parents?"
Spike shook his head: "Something he said the first night, before you arrived, about sometimes looking like his mother and sometimes looking like his father."
"His parents are also either blue or blond?" Xiuling asked.
"I don't think it works exactly that way. One of each, apparently," Spike said. "But not shades of grayish-beige and not dark haired and dark eyed."
Liangde looked over at Gang Long: "Who are invited to dinner? And when should we plan on serving?"
"Rupert Giles, Tara and her friend Willow, and Xander and Anya. And young Dawn, of course. Serve an hour after sunset, so Spike can join us on the terrace. Wear clothes, of some kind."
***