Paleo by Navarro Yvonne

Author:Navarro, Yvonne [Navarro, Yvonne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2001-09-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

“SO,”GILES SAID.“BUFFY BRIEFLY MENTIONED OZ’S new band manager. Allison . . . Beadrack?” Willow looked up from the computer with a puzzled frown, and Giles wasn’t sure if it was because he’d interrupted her or because she didn’t know how to answer his question. Then her expression cleared. “Bardrick,” she told him, then smiled a little. “Alysa Bardrick. And . . . I’m not sure what he knows. Oz being the master of conversation that he is.”

Giles pulled a chair out across from her and sat. Sometimes it was so difficult to ask these teenagers the simplest question. Is this what parents go through? he wondered. A day-by-day effort at trying to drag information out of their children while constantly being wary of offending them? “Well, I suppose I’m curious because of Oz’s odd slip of the tongue.”

Instead of answering, Willow returned to scanning the computer monitor. “Ladonithia,” she said before Giles could pursue the topic further.

“What’s that?” Giles squinted over at her, more than happy to go back to familiar demonic, hellish, and historical territory. “Ladon? I believe that was a dragon in classical Greek mythology. If memory serves correctly, the creature supposedly had a hundred heads and guarded the golden apples of the tree given by Gaea to Zeus and Hera at their wedding.”

“Not Ladon,” Willow said as Giles stood, then came around to her side. “Ladonithia.”

Now Giles was completely puzzled. “Some kind of derivative?”

“Looks that way.” The young redhead’s hands hesitated over the keyboard, and finally she folded them on her lap. “But I can’t find anything more on it except for a reference to this one web page, and it dead-ends as a ‘not found.’ The rest of the search engines are coming up blank.”

“All right,” Giles said firmly. “Then we’ll have to do it the tried and true way: hit the books.”

She’d investigated the alley beside the Bronze hundreds of times and dusted dozens of bloodsuckers in there besides. But moving into it now, when she suspected there was something hiding in its dark length that literally wanted to eat her, gave Buffy a whole new level of creeposity. The shadows were longer and darker, as though stretched by an unseen hand to accommodate a creature so much larger than a vampire and which Buffy really didn’t have a clue how to fight. If it was like the Timimus imprisoned at the library, it would bleed and feel pain like any other living creature, but what about its size? Its weight? How would she bring down something that might have two hundred or more pounds on her?

And what about its teeth?

“There,” Xander said, making her and Oz jump. “Way in the back by the chain link fence.”

“At least it’s trapped,” Oz said. “We—oh, so not good.”

“What?” Buffy asked as she literally heard Oz swallow, then she turned her head back to the alley and saw what he saw.

Xander inhaled sharply. “Can we say run?”

“No,” Buffy said automatically. “We can’t.” Still, they didn’t move forward either, and luckily the beast hadn’t seen them yet.

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