Even so, at Darla’s command, the newborns threw themselves at the slayer with all the intensity of starving carnivores.

Facing down a throng of vampires, the slayer just smiled.

It was the most terrifying thing Jonathan had ever seen. Even more than the first time the murder bees had landed in Demondale or the day it rained flesh-eating slime or the moment Angelus had killed Rayne without warning. People knew to be afraid of those things.

The slayer didn’t seem to be afraid at all. She was excited to fight her way to the Black Flame flag. Like she knew something they didn’t.

A hand pulled hard at Jonathan’s sleeve. He held in a scream, afraid that a fledgling had gotten turned around by the smell of his distractingly human blood. But he found Anya painfully gripping his arm.

“Are you trying to die?” she asked. “Because I could leave you to it.”

“What? No!” he said.

“Good,” Anya said. She pulled him behind the giant bed’s ornate headboard. Andrew had already taken cover and scooted over to make room for Jonathan and Anya. The vengeance demon was much stronger than she looked. Even after she let go, Jonathan could feel her fingers bruising the crook of his elbow. He tried to ignore the pain, squeezing the messenger bag close to his chest as he surreptitiously scanned the floor for a power outlet. Or, at the very least, avoided looking at the soul-sucking flames in front of him and the huge naked painting on the wall.

“The slayer still has our artifacts,” Andrew said, over the sounds of fighting on the other side of the headboard. From his pocket, he withdrew a small knife. Its wooden handle was emblazoned with the Eagle Scout logo on one side and Tucker Wells’s name on the other. Despite wanting to do everything Tucker did, Andrew himself hadn’t made it past Webelos because he’d been too scared to camp overnight away from home. He unfolded the knife with a snap, the three-inch blade reflecting the dark hellfire in front of them. “We just need to get the backpack away from her.”

Jonathan scrubbed his hands over his face in disbelief. “Yeah, that sounds exactly like something we could do. Fight a legendary vampire hunter for a bag full of weapons. You want to do any other superhuman feats while we’re at it? Send the slayer to the Phantom Zone? Wield Mjolnir? Ask Cordelia Chase to prom?”

“Sunnydale High doesn’t exist anymore!” Andrew yelped.

“I was being sarcastic, moron!” Jonathan sneered back.

“Don’t call me moron!” Andrew said, his knife dangerously close to Jonathan’s nose. “That was Warren’s nickname for me, not yours!”

Anya frowned. “Moron isn’t a nickname, Andrew. It’s an insult. He was insulting you. Right, Jonathan?”

Jonathan blinked in surprise at being addressed. “Right.”

Anya looked pleased to have been proven right. “See, Andrew? Now, we need to get the gem and get out of here!”

Jonathan leaned around the headboard. The slayer’s fight with the newborns was in full swing. Dust littered the floor. Darla was still screaming, even as Drusilla tried to pull her to her feet. Angelus and Spike had the exit blocked—not that the slayer seemed interested in turning tail. She had abandoned the crossbow and was duel-wielding stakes, flinging herself from fledgling to fledgling. The newborn vampires fought in a clumsy mass, more menacing as a throng than individually. Jonathan thought about how Darla and the Master hadn’t taught any of them to hunt. Hand-to-hand combat might have been more integral to being undead than they’d assumed. The fledglings could only slow the slayer down so much, throwing their bodies in her way and making bumbling attempts to hit her. She dusted them as fast as they approached.