The three lurking vampires were now lurking down the stairs. Their eyes were bright and unfocused as they peered down into basement. Probably something to do with the vibes of random aggression bouncing about the emerging free-for-all and food fight in the snack bar. More importantly, they didn't seem to recognize him as more than just another pretty neck.
Giles backed rapidly down the steps and ducked back into the melee.
Emergency Exit beckoned to him from across the room. If ever there was an emergency . . . He bent low to keep out of the way of flying fists and the line of sight of certain vampirical presences, and made a wavering beeline towards the sign.
The door didn't agree with his notion of what constituted a proper emergency, and gave off an ear-piercing buzz the moment he opened it.
"Damn!" He ducked through it anyway, hoping the fracas behind him would slow any pursuer down enough to give him a good head start.
Not much of a start. He was no more than halfway up the first set of stairs when that hideous buzzing started up again, punctuated by the bang of the door slamming shut. He quashed the urge to look back, and ran faster.
Almost to the top, he cracked his ankle on a step, lost his footing, and skidded hard back into her hands.
"You're not getting away that easily." The girl was hitting him again with that damned book bag. Tenacious creature, Giles thought. Almost Slayer material. She relied too much on her books, though. He grabbed the bag away from her.
"Whatever I did, I apologize profusely," he said, pulling his bruised foot gingerly under him. He held the bag well away from her.
"You go back and apologize to that poor girl you threw in the fountain," she bristled. "And give me my bag."
The door below shrilled and slammed.
"I promise, I'll write her a lovely note of apology." Giles backed up the stairs, holding her bag behind him.
"Hey!" She lunged at him, and he turned to stumble the rest of the way up and out the stairwell door. She followed hard on his heels. "Give me my bag, you creep."
They'd ended up in a long maintenance corridor. Giles hefted the book bag up over her head, tossed it hard down towards one end of the corridor, and ran for the opposite end.
He paused at the corner to check back on her. Damn and double damn. She'd gone for the bait, but was stopping to paw through her belongings. When the next climber came out of the basement, she'd be the first thing he saw. "Run, you idiot," he hissed at her, as the door to the basement opened.
She whirled to glare at him, but that vision was promptly blocked out by the wonderful aspect of a very wet Spike emerging from the stairwell in full game face.
"Did Drusilla enjoy her bath?" Giles yelled at Spike, the bravado rather diminished by his voice breaking on the last word. It was a weak taunt in any case, but it seemed to do the trick. With a wordless snarl, Spike hurled himself in the Watcher's direction.
Giles ducked around the corner, made it down the short length of hallway to the next corner and rounded that. No doubt in his mind, as he ran, that the predator could very quickly run down this prey.
Another stairwell presented itself on his left. He pushed the door open, hesitated, let it bang shut again, and slipped around the next corner where he flattened himself against the wall.
Heavy footsteps pounded down the hall, halted by the door. The door squealed open and slammed shut.
Giles couldn't really believe that the vampire had fallen for that.
A true victim, of course, would wait, then hesitantly inch his way to the corner and check around it -- only to be seized by the throat by the waiting monster. He began to sidle away from the corner, down the hall, only stopping at the next corner to look back. Distant footfalls, but all seemed silence in the immediate vicinity.
Panic grabbed him, and he ran fast through the remainder of the service way.
The last door led outside somewhere behind the Library, onto a loading platform. Giles stood on the concrete slab for a moment, disoriented. His car was tucked away in the parking lot, not far away; all he had to do was determine the direction, aim for it, avoid any biting obstacles in between, and he would soon be on his way to home and a stiff drink.
Waxing gibbous moon over the horizon, straight ahead. 7:45 PM, according to his watch. That meant that he was on the east side of the building. The parking lot, then, should be that dark area to his left and slightly ahead.
Spike would undoubtedly be back on track by now. Giles jumped from the loading dock and walked swiftly along the building, trying to make as little noise as possible. Maybe Spike had just brought the three henchmen. It hadn't seemed as if they had expected him, after all. They'd probably come looking for the same book of prophecies that he'd been reading.
The library parking lot was almost empty, and it was fairly easy to spot his car across the way. Nobody seemed to be about. He took a deep breath, fumbled his keys from his pocket, and took off at a half run.
As he approached it, his Citroen began to look odd. He stopped uncertainly, several meters off, trying to pinpoint the problem.
For one thing, he realized, it was sitting about five inches lower than usual. The tires were about as flat as tires ever got; somebody must have used a sharp knife on each of them.
He backed off carefully. A figure emerged from the shadows behind the car. Walking with the typical vampire swagger.
"Nice night, huh?" The gravelly voice was making some effort to sound friendly.
"The weather's good," Giles said, putting another vehicle between them.
"Don't do that, man," the vampire -- a long-haired, clueless sort of vampire -- said. "I'm just being friendly."
"Good. You be friendly over there." He pulled the cross from his pocket and held it up.
"Ah, man --" The vampire stopped. "You don't have to go freakin' on me, man." He appealed to a point somewhere behind Giles. "Tell the man, we're just being friendly, Spike."
Giles looked back. Spike was about five cars away, in his street face again and looking annoyed at having his silent stalk prematurely discovered. "Yeah, well, he already knows how chummy we can be," Spike said.
Giles moved to the boot end of the car. One Watcher. One cross. Two vampires; albeit one was obviously a novice at this, the other went by the historical name of William the Bloody. No weapons. No Buffy, more to the point. Now would certainly be a good time for her to show.
Spike gave a theatrical sigh. "Let's try to be a little dignified about this, shall we? I'm bloody well tired of chasing you about the campus, and you must know that you're not going to outrun us." He was moving in, but Giles moved back, maintaining the distance between them. "Your little Slayer is not coming to the rescue, so you might as well surrender to the inevitable --"
The sound of a gunning motor interrupted his speech. A car tore into the parking lot, its horn and lights blazing. It swept around and raced towards them. Cordelia, with Buffy and Company.
Giles smiled. "So much for vampiric prophecy."
The two vampires were backing off, on the verge of flight.
"SUNNY U! SUNNY U! GOOOOO PANTHERS!" several inebriated male voices howled from the car as it looped around to the perimeter of the lot.
Spike grinned ferally at him.
Giles pushed away from the parked car and ran across the last stretch of the lot, arrowing across in front of the revellers' car as it made its second loop. He heard the shrill of brakes as the vehicle came into the inevitable conflict with his pursuers.
"HEY, you fuckin' idiot punks," one of the drunken young men was shouting. "WHAT THE FUCK do you think you're DOING? HEY, I'M TALKING TO YOU."
There was a large lit building on this side of the lot. Giles rushed to the side entrance, looked back (hoping to God that the six big American quarterbacks would be enough to fend off two vampires), and let himself in.
It was a departmental building of some sort. Apparently there were night classes going on; students were loitering in the halls, checking out the bulletin boards. Giles hurried to locate the main entryway, found some stairs instead, and decided to put a floor between himself and the by-now requisite pursuit. If he could find out where he was now, get to a telephone --
There seemed to be quite a bustle on this floor. "Uh, excuse me," he approached a young man who was sitting at the door to a lecture room, handing out sheaves of paper. "What building is this?"
"Don't worry, you're at the right place," the student assured him, pushing a sheaf of papers into his hands. "Old Man Wilson is the only prof who ever gives Friday night tests."
"Test? You don't understand, I . . ." Somewhere over the heads of incoming students, he spied the peroxide head of Pursuit. "Oh, well, yes, then... uh, is there a telephone close by, where I could --"
"Sorry." The boy firmly pointed him back into the lecture hall. "Once you've got your test, you have to finish it before you leave the room. It's only an hour."
He was pushed into a large lecture hall crammed with what must have been more than a hundred students. Most of them seemed disgruntled, as he supposed he would be if he were being forced to take an essay examination on a Friday night.
Giles looked at the papers in his hand. He was being forced to take an essay exam on a Friday night. He took a second look at the test.
"Good lord." It seemed familiar; in fact he could have almost sworn that it was the same test he'd taken at mid-term his junior year in Mesopotamian Cultures at Oxford.
"Okay everybody!" The student proctor had moved up front. "Ten questions, short answer. It's now 8:00 PM. You have until 9:00 PM to finish your tests. Go, man, go."
Giles looked over at the door. The clueless vampire and one of the lurking henchmen were visible through the window glass. Spike --
Spike was two rows back, charming a pen from a young female student. Shooting a glowering look in the Watcher's direction that promised Dire Consequences at 9:01 PM. Giles turned quickly back to his test. One hour to decide on a course of action from this particular dead end.
To steady his rattling nerves, he focused on the page in
front of him. Surprisingly, the answer to the first question
came readily to memory. He pulled the pen from his pocket and
began to write . . .
"TIME!" The voice intruded into the small center of calm he'd wrapped around himself. Giles supposed it was time -- he'd just finished the last question. Unfortunately, he still didn't have the faintest hint of an idea of what to do next, other than to exit with the students and hope to dodge the half dozen vampires out front. Spike was standing up, flirting with the young woman he'd borrowed the pen from, obviously aiming to leave the room at his back.
He took his test down to the lecture desk. A grey-haired man -- the redoubtable Professor Wilson, he guessed -- was writing furiously in a notebook there, pointedly ignoring the growing pile of tests at his elbow. Giles hesitated, test in hand.
"Professor Wilson?"
The man looked up at him over wire-rimmed bifocals, bushy eyebrows threatening. "Yes?"
Giles threw a nervous look at Spike, who'd stepped to the desk to add his test to the pile. The vampire had actually completed the exam. Probably would make for fascinating reading. Not that he'd ever have the opportunity to look at it --
"The test . . . I c-couldn't help but notice -- the whole premise of question number six was pretty much disproved ten years back."
Spike sighed and began to tap his foot.
Professor Wilson chortled. "You caught that, eh? Good man. I've been meaning to rewrite the test. Guess I'll have to do it now that you've found me out." He reached for the papers in Giles' hands and turned to the question at point. "Yes, and you've caught it rather neatly at that." He glared over at Spike. "The test is over, young man. You don't have to stay fidgeting around in my classroom. Go off to your 'raves' or whatever it is you punks do these days."
One had to respect that professorial glare. Spike slouched off towards the door. He didn't go far, however.
"Kids these days." Wilson shook his head. "Oxford man, are you? Unless you're looking for an easy grade, you're wasting your time taking continuing education credits here. We're mostly known for our 'Fighting Panthers'. Hello, Szell!"
Another professorial type, slightly younger with some color left to his hair, had come through the door and was heading down towards the desk. "There's a group of thugs hanging around outside," the newcomer pointed out, not sounding terribly put out by it. "Suppose we should call security?"
"No, they're just students." Wilson started cramming the papers into his briefcase. "They're always surly coming out of my exams." He chuckled. "I love torturing them. It's the only fun I get around here. Are the others ready?"
"Right behind me. We've got Anderson's Jaguar and McInerny's mini-van out front."
A hoard of older, nattily-dressed men came through the doorway. Center of attention seemed to be an elderly, silk- suited gentleman who was looking immensely pleased with himself.
"Oh, Szell, this is one of my students --" Wilson peered hard at the test in his hand. "Rudy Gill. Rudy, this is Evan Szell, pre-Romanov Russian Studies."
"Doctor Szell." The man offered his hand and a prim smile.
". . . and the fellow here who's grinning like the cat who got the canary is Dr. Tom Scopes from East European Antiquities. Said canary is soon-to-be Wife Number Six, so we're off to Bachelor Party Number Six." Wilson nudged Giles in the ribs. "Scopes is aiming to best your Henry Number Eight, I suspect.
"Rudy here caught me in a faux pas, so we're going to have to either kill him, or wine him and dine him to insure his silence," Wilson announced. He clapped Giles on the back. "You don't mind spending the evening with a bunch of rowdy old geezers, do you?"
Rowdy old geezers versus angry vampires. This, as his young friends might say, was pretty much a non-decision.
"I'd be delighted," Giles said.