Wes rubbed tired eyes and looked up from the note. “And you got this from a hostage? Of Buffy’s? Who got it from an old high school friend?”
“Yeah, I know, not like it’s exactly reliable.”
Fred smiled nervously. “Well, it could be. I mean, it’s not like there haven’t been other weird things happen. It wouldn’t hurt to check.” She looked around. The guys were scowling at her. “What? It wouldn’t! Okay, and yeah, I’m not getting too far with this one. The Garlybrxmtl was a waste. At least this one talks about Bringers of…” She trailed off and scowled at the book in her hand. “Something.”
Gunn twitched the note out of Wes’s hand. “I’ll check it out. Looks like I’m not going to be much use around here. At least I can try to find a hotel before sunset and see what’s up. There can’t be that many hotels in this town.”
At the seventh place, a fleabag motel, after having checked all the hotels, boarding houses and bed and breakfast places in town, and ending up so far at the edge of town it might as well have been in the country, he wondered why didn’t he think of calling around and asking if they had 200 plus rooms before he went looking. This place didn’t look promising either. It was a nasty U-shaped thing from the 70’s. He catalogued the strangeness, cracked pavement, weeds growing up into the parking lot, a lot of shadows. It took him a minute to realize that it was two story and the numbers began with 103 and ended with 293. Seriously, seriously weird.
He looked at the neon sign above and gave a short bark of laughter. “UNSET,” at some point it had lost the first letter. “Whatever.” He shook his head.
So, probably not happening at sunset then, which was a good thing since it was already 9:00.
His cellphone rang.
“Yeah.”
“Gunn? Weird stuff, since about 8:45. Bringers… crazy…” Fred, on the other end, but she broke up badly and he couldn’t catch it all.
“What? Say again.”
“Bringers! Some dead…saw….gouging…eye sockets.” She paused and the line crackled. “It was really icky.”
“What’s going on? Something to do with this First Evil thing?”
“We don’t know…translated… Slayer…die… cause…imbalance… an opposite force….”
“Listen, I can’t hear you and this place is seriously giving me the creeps. I’m just going to check things out and I’ll be right back. Stay where you are!” He started to hang up but stopped and brought the phone back up. “Wait? Where’s Wesley? Is he with you?” Only static responded. He thought about calling back, but decided to get this over with and then go see what was going on.
The room was easy to spot, up the rickety metal staircase to what was almost a catwalk in front of the rooms and about 1/3 of the way from the office. The light was out above the room, but checking the numbers on either side of the door convinced him that had to be the one. The no light thing gave him the creeps, though he realized there were more rooms unlit than lit. Sure, okay, that was better. The whole place could be a monster hangout. He pulled the gun out of the back of his waistband and headed for the stairs. Damn, he would have swore every third one creaked. There was some seriously weird shit here.
He got to the top of the stairs and eased his way down the catwalk. There were no sounds, not even the normal, and slightly freaky ones to an L.A. boy, of nature at night. Nothing. When he got to the door he stopped and looked around. There was no sound from inside, at least, nothing he could hear. He looked around and wondered how to play this.
“Be discreet, my ass.” The stupid gun stuck to his fingers, despite the slick weight of it. Forget discreet and he didn’t do guns. He stuffed it back in his pants and wiped his hands on his pant legs, then took a deep breath before touching the door.
Unlocked. He pushed and the door swung open. A roil of cheap air freshener and blood made him want to gag. “Whew.”
A blond, her back to the door, sat on the floor bent over, awkwardly cradling the body of another girl, while blood seeped into cheap brown carpet, dark into darker. His head jerked reflexively. Nothing special about bodies. Too bad he’d gotten there just a little too late.
He nodded bodyward. "Who’s the stiff?” The blond twitched, but didn’t look at him.
Okay, that might not have been sensitive. “Buffy?”
She looked up. Blood smeared her chin and open mouth.
He blinked, thinking of the gun. “Shit. Shoulda brought the ax.”