Title: Going Towards Yes 6/7
Author: K.V. Wylie
Disclaimer: Permission to use these characters relating to BtVS & AtS, has not been given. Joss, Twentieth Century Fox, UPN, WB & Mutant Enemy own TM and copyrighted them. This is purely for fun, and no copyright infringement is intended

Morning came too early for both men.

"Why don't you sleep in?" Ira suggested, when he came out of the shower and saw Giles hadn't gotten any farther than sitting up in bed.

"No, I'll make breakfast for you and Sahrene."

"She is High Anglican. I don't believe she is supposed to eat until after mass."

"These religions are finicky," Giles said. "Besides, she is expecting, and should eat."

"I will ask Mrs. Ria if she cares to have breakfast before we go." Ira went downstairs. Almost immediately, Giles heard Ira call him.

He rushed down. Ira was standing at the front door and, as the front door was open, Giles thought Ira had shouted because of something outside. He stepped forward, but Ira caught his arm.

"Rupert, I found the door this way."

Giles knelt to check the lock. Ira ran upstairs, and returned a few moments later.

"She is all right. Did the door blow in?"

"No," Giles said, as he straightened. "Someone kicked the lock. It's half out of the wood. In the storm, we didn't hear it. And look." He pointed at dried mud in the doorway.

"Someone came in?" Ira glanced around quickly.

"They tried," Giles said. "They took one step and went back out."

"Perhaps something was thrown in," Ira said.

They checked the hallway, but found nothing. Giles glanced at the mud on the floor. "He or she started in, but left. I wonder why? What stopped him?" His gaze traveled around, and came to rest on the mezuzah on the doorframe.

"What's wrong?" asked Sahrene from the stairs behind them.

"The door blew in," Giles said as Ira stepped over to block the sight of the door lock from her.

"Do you wish to have breakfast before we go?" Ira asked.

"Ok," she said, a little curiously, but she went with him to the kitchen. When she was out of hearing, Giles called the police.

- - - - -

A constable showed up after Ira and Sahrene left for church. He wrote the report up as an attempted burglery, and suggested Giles get a security system. Giles called a locksmith and paid an objectionable amount of money for a deadbolt to be installed immediately. He was nailing crosses by every window when Ira returned.

"Rupert," Ira said in dismay.

"Ignore them," Giles said.

"How?"

"Try hard. Where's Sahrene?"

"At her great-grandmother's," Ira replied. He watched Giles hammer a cross by the front door. "Do you now admit the possibility Mr. Ria was not human?"

Giles frowned. "If he was a demon, why fake dying?"

"If he was human, why put up these crosses? And are they not ironic, coming from a man who professes no belief?"

Giles ignored that. "The busted door could have been the work of our rock-throwing friends," Giles said. "Perhaps a car went by or one of the neighbours' lights turned on, and they couldn't finish what they wanted to do." Giles handed Ira a key for the new lock. "When will Sahrene be returning?"

"Not until after dinner."

"Let's go out to the trail then."

They drove to the trail entrance nearest to the excavation, parked, and started down the path which was soggy from the storm. During the first mile, they passed quite a few people - couples idling slowly, parents with toddlers and dogs, and khaki-wearing teenagers with backpacks and water bottles. As they walked farther into the trail, the crowd thinned until they met only the occasional hiker.

At the end of the second mile, the path suddenly veered around a rocky outcropping. Giles and Ira walked the curve, and halted at their first true sight of unviolated Badlands.

Giles thought the tourist-worn Hoodoos by the town were strange-looking, but the view before him was alien and forbidding. These Hoodoos swelled into each other until they seemed an impenetrable, maroon wall rising to meet mountains. The eroded pillars with the peculiar large caps were darker here as well, the stone rich with tints that glistened like split cherries.

"I don't like them," Ira said.

"They are unsettling," Giles agreed.

"If Mr. Ria wished the right atmosphere for a sacrifice, this is the place."

"It's too near the town."

"Not at night, when people are home and think they're safe." Ira turned away, as if the Hoodoos were too much for him to look at. Until his comment about the stones, he'd been silent. Silence wasn't like him.

Giles sat down on a rock slab. "Too much keeps happening. There's never any peace."

"Such is life," Ira said, still looking away.

"And your daughter says living with me would be enough to depress Mr. Rogers." "Young women can be unknowingly unkind."

The sun, which had been behind clouds most of the morning, cleared the last grey covering and pushed down until not a shadow remained.

"What you take in, is what fills your heart," Ira said. "You have spent most of your life steeped in demons and what creeps underground. Don't let it touch your heart anymore. It is time to let it go. Come into the sun, Rupert. Stand here with me and feel the light on your face."

When Giles didn't respond, Ira looked over at him. To his surprise, Giles was smiling in a way Ira had never seen before, an unconscious expression he did not seem aware of.

"Yes," Giles said, and moved beside Ira.

"Yes," Ira murmured. "I like that word from you." He touched Giles, fingering the top button of Giles' shirt as if debating whether to undo it or not.

Giles pressed Ira's hand against his chest. "Perhaps...I can. Do you want to go home?"

Ira smiled, small lines crinkling around his brown eyes.

As they started back down the trail, Giles suddenly stopped.

"Rupert?"

"I think I see your dinosaur."

"My what?"

"Your eighty-foot, fibreglass Tyrannosaurus Rex. The one you were talking about when we were driving in." Giles gestured at a glossy object which looked like a giant tail sticking out from behind a solitary Hoodoo.

They followed the tail and halted. Staring down at them was a massive Tyrannosaurus.

"Lovely detail," Giles managed, looking at the rows of sharp teeth and the glint in the black, glass eyes. Both men instinctively stepped away from the front of the replica.

"This seems an odd place to set up a tourist attraction," Ira said.

"Kids," Giles offered.

"Then those young vandals took on a monumental task. This dinosaur weighs several tons." "There's more than one way to lift something," Giles said. "You should ask your daughter how she and Tara once moved a cola machine."

"I'd rather not," Ira said uncomfortably. He disliked Willow's ventures into spellcasting.

The men walked around the dinosaur, and paused at an arrangement of stones in the sand. Small boulders had been placed on the ground in the shapes of people with arms and legs splayed.

"Effigies?" Giles queried. He'd seen similar stone constructions in England, though the arrangement of the limbs there had not been so derogatory.

"Effigies have been found in southern Alberta," Ira said. "I didn't know any had been found around here. The ones I read about were ten thousand years old." He shifted one of the rocks. "Rupert, the ground is wet underneath. These were placed here after the storm."

Giles glanced at the dinosaur. "I would believe we'd found the spot Ria had picked, except the Tyrannosaurus makes me think not. It's hardly, ah, conducive to serious rituals. I think we're looking at the work of people who like to make fake tracks of Sasquatches and who claim UFO's are disturbing their chicken coops."

Ira nodded. "If you wish to keep looking for Mr. Ria's spot, I will accompany you, but I'd rather we go home."

"Yes," Giles said.

They returned to the house. As he was unlocking the door, Giles heard the phone ringing. He rushed in, but Ira remained at the steps, irritated at the interruption.

After Giles hung up, he returned to the stoop and said worriedly, "That was Linda. She said she's been trying to get hold of us all afternoon."

"What's wrong?" Ira asked.

"Mrs. Downweather with the binoculars saw people around our house last night, people she described as 'very tall'."

"Taller than you or me?"

"Must be, or I can't see that Mrs. Downweather would mention it," Giles replied. "I asked Linda if she and her husband could take Sahrene in. I'm not sure we can keep her safe here, and apparently Ria was afraid of Boris. Linda will call over to Sahrene's grandmother's place and make the arrangements."

"How dare these demons come in our house!"

The tone of Ira's voice took Giles by surprise. "They didn't come in, Ira. They tried, but they couldn't."

"They came as far as where I am," said Ira, who was just inside the door. "That's *too* far."

"I'll deal with them," Giles said. "I know we had, uh, other plans for the rest of the day, but I'd like to look around the outside of the house, and see if there are any prints. How long has Chris Steffler lived here? Would he know about local legends or any stories about the Hoodoo trail? I'd ask Linda, but she tends towards the pragmatic side."

"I will call him," Ira said, but, as he reached for the phone, it rang. "Hello? Yes." Pause. "It is a lovely day. Perhaps she and her grandmother went out."

Giles saw Ira's face change. "Rupert and I will go over there," Ira said, and hung up.

"That was Mrs. Brommel. She didn't get an answer at Mrs. Ria's grandmother's, so she called the attendant of the grandmother's nursing home. The residents there need to check out so that any medication they require can be given to them before they go. Mrs. Ria and her grandmother did not check out, there is no answer at the grandmother's apartment, and they are not in the public room."

"Perhaps they went on the front lawn, if there is one," Giles said. "Daytime presents the least risk. Most types of demons don't like the sun."

"The sun didn't come out until after lunch," Ira said.

"Daytime is daytime," Giles said. "Let me take a quick look outside. With all the mud, there must be a footprint or two. Then we'll go over."

"All right, but hurry, Rupert." Ira went back out to the van.

- - - - -

When Giles got to the van, Ira asked, "Did you find footprints?"

"Yes," Giles said. "We'd better hurry."

Ira had already started the van. At Giles' words, he slammed the accelerator.

Giles grabbed the sides of his seat. "Goddess, this is how we drove in from the airport!"

"You said to hurry," Ira said. "What sort of prints did you find?"

"Cloven. I wish I'd listened to your idea about Ria from the beginning."

"Rupert, what did I tell you about putting yourself at the centre of events?" Ira asked in a severe tone.

"Don't nag," Giles managed before they screeched around a corner and his stomach left him.

"Cloven," Ira repeated thoughtfully. "You'd think someone working with him would have noticed something odd about his feet."

"He'd be wearing steel-toed boots when he was working," Giles said, after swallowing hard.

"What sort of footwear fits over hooves?" Ira asked. "And his wife never noticed?"

"Excuse me, but have we switched sides somehow? *You're* the believer, *I'm* the devil's advocate."

"Rupert, cloven feet makes my suspicions about Mr. Ria more difficult."

"Then forget about the footprints. Cows were outside our house last night."

"Very tall cows."

"There's no pleasing you," Giles muttered, and looked up as a roll of thunder sounded overhead.

The storm broke as they arrived at the nursing home. A young attendant at the reception desk helped them check the common areas, and showed them where Sahrene's great-grandmother's suite was.

After repeated knocking, Ira asked the attendant to unlock the door. He was told the policy of the home forbid it. Ira repeated his request, and in such an aggravated voice that the young man bolted down the hall to get the keys.

"We can't wait on him," Giles said. He dropped to one knee and extracted a small screwdriver from his pocket. "I grabbed this before we left. I thought we might have to get in this way."

"We shouldn't break in," Ira said.

"Everyone does it to us." Giles snapped the spring in the lock and pushed the door open. "Sahrene?" he called.

There were no lights on, and the storm outside had closed darkness over the apartment. Giles stepped in cautiously, unable to see anything except for an object moving back and forth at the other end of the room.

"Who's there?" he asked. "Sahrene? Mrs. Belle?"

He heard Ira fumble at the wall behind him, looking for a light switch. He moved forward.

"Answer me!" he demanded.

Ira found the switch. The sudden, yellow light blinded Giles for a few seconds.

"Rupert!" Ira cried.

Warning? Fear? Giles wondered. Then his eyes adjusted.

The movement had come from curtains blowing away from a broken window. Fragments of glass lay over a couch and on the floor before Giles. End tables were overturned, the elderly lady's possessions were on the rug, and a wet, reddish trail ran over the destroyed window sill.

"He came in the daytime," he muttered, turning towards Ira. "Damnit all toB" He stopped at the sight of Ira by the door, staring at his upturned hands.

"What is it?"

Ira looked up at the wall. "Whose blood?" he asked in horror. Both of his palms were smeared dark red.

Giles glanced around and located a small sink which would have served to wash a few dishes. By the taps was a dishcloth which he wet and brought back to Ira. "Wash it off," he said, eyeing the smudges on the wall. "It hasn't dried, which means they haven't been gone very long. That's good."

"Good?" Ira echoed numbly. "How is that good? We don't know where they went."

"We do. They've gone down the trail," Giles said. "We'll go back to the house and I'll get some weapons. You unpacked. Where did you put them?"

"I didn't," Ira said. "Those...things are still in the suitcase. Rupert, we can'tB"

"Not we. Me!" Giles threw the cloth onto the floor as he left the apartment. "This is what I do, Ira."

Ira pursued him out to the van. "RupertB"

"Give me the keys, please."

Ira did so while shaking his head. "I will not allow you to go alone."

Giles swung into the driver's side and started the vehicle, forcing Ira to sprint for the passenger side. "I *am* going alone." He pulled the van onto the street and floored it. "I can't watch out for Sahrene, her grandmother, and you. That's too much."

"He is not the same type of demon as those you killed in Sunnydale. He has cloven hooves, Rupert. He's not a hybrid."

"I've encountered that type before."

Ira studied him, then said, "I don't believe that."

"I have a better chance than you." Giles swung the van so hard as he passed a car that Ira smacked into a door. "Why take the grandmother? Why not just kill her and leave her there?"

"Perhaps he's going to murder her on the rock as well," Ira said in a terrible voice.

"Isn't his wife enough?" Giles muttered.

"Rupert, this isn't about Mrs. Ria. This is about what she is carrying, the child inside her. Abraham was told to sacrifice his son, not his wife."

"I get that, Ira, but Abraham was prepared to kill his son as a sign of obedience to his God. With Ria, it doesn't make sense. Unless he's a schizophrenic demon who has been hearing a voice in his head, telling him to kill his child, I don't understand why he would do this. There's no benefit for him."

"There must be. He planned this too well, bringing the rock here, finding a woman to impregnate. There is a benefit for which he prepared very carefully."

"Then that's what you can do. While I'm gone, you can wade through his broken Hebrew and figure it out," Giles said. He noticed Ira set his jaw, but the latter kept his comments to himself.

NEXT