Soon after the high-speed magneto train leaves Paris, bound for Geneva, Buffy falls asleep even though she is sitting in second class. She has not slept since New York, which was now more than twenty-four hours ago. Mercifully, she has no prophetic dreams. Only sweet ones in which she is sixteen again and with Angel. None of the bad that came of that liaison haunts her now. When she drifts out of her dreams she is aware of a throbbing energy in the row behind her. She does not have to be psychic to know that it comes from a young boy. His energy expresses itself in a steady output of noise. He talks loudly, squeals loudly and bounces off of the back of Buffy’s seat loudly and forcefully enough to awaken her. The boy’s father is beside himself trying to settle him down.
“Look, Rupert, a castle!" says the father in a London accent. “Do you see it?”
“Wow!” exclaims Rupert.
Buffy opens her eyes and looks out her window. The train is rushing through a deep green valley, walled by steep mountains. Fixed atop one of them is a turreted gray castle, looking like something out of a storybook. Buffy smiles, watching the sight until it disappears in the distance. She closes her eyes again and is about to drift back to sleep when young Rupert charges down the aisle past her.
“Woo-woo! Woo-woo! Woo!” he goes, rapidly patting his lips with a palm in unmistakable if clichéd imitation of a Native American brave.
“Come back and sit!” calls his exasperated father. Eventually the boy reaches the end of the car, turns around and whoops his way back. He takes his time, and when he comes even with Buffy, he turns to her.
“Woo-woo! I’m a Native American!” he declares. His accent belongs as much to London as his father’s does.
“And a fiercer warrior I’ve never met, Rupert,” Buffy says. “But I do think that the preferred term these days is ‘Indigenous American’.”
“Come sit, and stop bothering people,” says his father. The boy ignores his plea.
“How’d you know my name is Rupert?” the boy asks.
“He’s not really bothering me,” Buffy assures the man. She turns to look at him. He is casually if colorfully dressed in a pink, short-sleeved shirt and lime green Bermuda shorts. It strikes Buffy as comical that it is the reverse of Rupert’s color scheme while being exactly the same abbreviated style. The family resemblance is also obvious. Both males have full heads of soft chestnut hair above regular features and liquid brown eyes. While the boy is about seven, the man is closer to forty. Both too young for me, Buffy thinks. Even as she thinks this, though, she recognizes an unmistakable twinkle of interest in the man’s eyes. He smiles, but is almost immediately distracted by Rupert’s jumping up and down.
“See here,” says Rupert, trying to get Buffy’s attention, “How do you know my name?”
“I have my ways,” says Buffy, pretending mysteriousness but soon giving way to smile. Rupert smiles back. “Actually, I had a good friend once named Rupert. He was English like you.”
“Where is he now?” the boy asks.
“Right here,” replies Buffy, tapping the left side of her chest.
“What’d you name the other tit?” asks Rupert.
“Rupert!” cries the man. “I’m terribly sorry, Madam, I have no idea where he could have gotten such a notion.”
“But, Da,” says Rupert. “You said Aunt Meredith named one Jenny and the other one….”
“That’ll do, son!” his father cries. “Come sit down, and stop causing such a commotion.” He reaches out, grabs Rupert’s arm and hauls him back to his seat.”
Buffy turns to her window and laughs as silently as she is able. The man keeps offering apologies, but Buffy waves them off until she has herself under control.
“The boy doesn’t have a mother, you see,” he is saying. “She died when he was only two. He’s just gone through one au pair after another, so there’s really been no one to make him mind his ps and qs while I’m at work all day.”
“Look,” Buffy says when she is composed enough to face him, “I’m really not all that offended. In fact…. I’m Buffy. Tell me your name, and we’ll call it even.” She extends her hand over the back of the seat.
“Roger,” he replies sheepishly taking her hand.
“Da, I’m off to the loo!” Rupert announces to the entire car as he dashes toward the rear.
“Wonderful, son," says Roger. "Come right back when you’re finished. And don’t forget to wash.” Rupert is already gone.
“Sorry about his mother,” says Buffy. “Not that I’m not sorry about your loss, too.” That’s right, she thought. Put your foot in it.
“Thank you, on both counts, I think.” Roger smiles. “And I’m sorry that Rupert stepped on the memory of his namesake.”
“Hmm? Oh, well, I suppose that Rupert—my Rupert, that is—would have been amused. Then again, maybe not. He was the kind of Englishman who makes Americans think that all Brits are stuffy.”
“But you loved him.”
“Yes, very much.”
“Do you mind my asking?” Roger hesitates. “Was he, perhaps, your husband?” Buffy cannot keep from letting out a loud laugh.
“Sorry? Did I say something funny?”
“No, I’m sorry,” says Buffy, “but if you knew Giles, you’d laugh, too.”
“Giles?”
“His name was Rupert Giles. I met him when he was the librarian at the school I attended.”
“I see. He was an older man then. Something of a mentor, perhaps.”
“Yes, I’d say he was very much a mentor.”
“You attended a school in the U.K?”
“No. He came to America. California, to be exact.”
“Always wanted to go there,” says Roger wistfully. “Is that where you live?”
“Not anymore. Been living out of suitcases for a year now. I have an apartment in New York, but I barely get a chance to trip over the welcome mat before I have to dash off somewhere or other.”
“What do you do?” asks Roger.
“I’m a public relations and organizational consultant,” says Buffy.
“How intriguing. How did you get into that?”
“Well, it all started with a little make-work job somebody gave me as a kind of mentor-slash-guidance counselor without any kind of training at all.”
“I’ll bet you were a natural.”
“Oh no, I was easily the worst guidance counselor in history. I was like the stuff that really incompetent guidance counselors scrape off of their shoes.”
Roger laughs in spite of himself. “Oh, you couldn’t have been that bad.”
“But I was. Anyway, I stumbled onto a great book called 'Improving Therapeutic Communication.' It was really about how to actually listen to other people for a change. I was hooked. I wanted to learn more, and that led me to eventually earning a degree in organizational psychology. After a few jobs in personnel, I got into public relations and finally into consulting.” Of course, Buffy neglects to tell Roger that, in her spare time, she still fights vampires on a fairly regular basis, all the while honing her martial arts and meditation skills.
“What do you do?” Buffy asks. Roger proceeds to tell of a busy but boring life as a stockbroker in the City of London, taking a train home to a suburban cottage and his son each evening. Buffy finds herself envying him a little.
A tall and corpulent man in a tweed suit passes them just then. He is coming from the direction of the restrooms. Roger hails him. “Excuse me, sir, did you by chance see a little boy…seven years old…dressed somewhat like me?”
“But with the opposite color scheme,” adds Buffy helpfully.
“What?” asks Roger. He gives Buffy a double-take.
“Why, yes,” says the man in a heavy East European accent. “He was behind me in the queue, but when I came out, he was not there. Perhaps he became impatient and went into the next car.” He gestures in the direction from which he has just come.
“Thank you,” says Roger. His brow furrowed, he turns back to Buffy. “I had better go look for him before he gets himself into real trouble.”
Suddenly, the car plunges into the deepest darkness. For a long, still moment, there is absolutely nothing to see, nothing to hear but the low hum of the magneto train. The hum is changing, however; with this, comes the sensation of slowing down.
“We’re in the tunnel now,” says Roger nervously in the dark. "We're underneath the French Alps for the next twenty minutes. The lights, hopefully, will come back on any minute now."
"Are you worried about Rupert?" asks Buffy.
"Just a little. He's afraid of the dark." The artificial lights come up at that moment. “Here we are,” he says with a relieved exhale. Then after a pause, he adds, "I'd better go find Rupert, in any case."
A sensation in Buffy’s solar plexus suddenly spreads throughout her body. It is as if feelers generated by her mind have subconsciously gathered intelligence throughout the train ever since she boarded. Now, triggered by the shock of the sudden plunge into the tunnel beneath the French alps, these tendrils of Buffy's consciousness are reaching still further and reporting back to her with vibrations from the adjacent cars, bringing these into the center of her being--telling her that vampires have been aboard this train from the start, hiding in private compartments two cars away. Her senses also tell her that these vampires are on the move now that the sun is blocked out and the only lights on the train are artificial.
“If you don’t mind,” says Buffy, trying to suppress her alarm, “I’d like to find him. Let him know there are no hard feelings re: the tit remark.”
“Oh, I’ll wager he’s forgot all about that already,” says Roger. “I’m the one who’ll be eternally mortified.”
“Still,” says Buffy, showing a little more concern than she means to, “I think I’d better look for him.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I’m sure.” But before Roger can protest any further, she rises and quickly makes her way to the next car. There her alarm only increases: though the electric lights came on in her own car, they are not on here. Above the hum of the train, she detects voices in the car even before entering it. She doubts that the vampires have heard her come in, but she is on her guard just the same.
“So, you are the Native American brave who has tried to sneak up on us,” says a male, French-accented voice in the dark.
“Indigenous American,” Rupert corrects him. His voice is clear and only betrays the slightest fear. Brave kid, Buffy thinks.
“Wait!” commands an American-accented female voice.
After a pause, the French male voice whispers, “What is it?”
“Someone else is in the car,” says the female.
“Sure,” says the male, “but this little morsel is the only one alive.”
“No, it is a woman, and she is strong and not afraid of us.”
“That’s only because she doesn’t know what she’s up against.”
“But she does.”
“Here, take the boy,” he says. Then he calls, “Come, show yourself so we can get to know each other.”
“Not necessary,” says Buffy. “We won’t be acquainted that long.”
“Marcel! She’s no ordinary mortal!” the female calls after him.
“This will only take a moment,” replies Marcel.
Buffy realizes what is happening even if Marcel does not. The American female, now presumably holding Rupert, is extremely psychic. She probably “heard” Buffy’s thought about Rupert’s bravery. That was the first thought Buffy has allowed herself since leaving her own car. Marcel, whose vibrations scream vampire, evidently has only the basic psychic package of a vampire and no more; while the female, who seems able to cloak her identity from Buffy (her vibrations neither scream vampire nor anything else), has enough ESP for both of them. Buffy keeps getting the memory of Drusilla as the likeliest analogy to this female’s abilities. For now, what is of more concern to Buffy is her feeling that there are other male vamps on the next darkened car and that they are headed this way.
“Believe it or not, Miss,” Marcel is saying in a patronizing tone, “I can almost see you, even in the dark. Do you wish to know how I do this?”
Buffy says nothing. Marcel is helping her to keep track of his position with the sound of his voice. She has no intention of returning the favor.
“Marcel, you fool,” calls the female, “she can almost see you, too! She’s the Slayer!”
“A Slayer? I have always longed for the taste of Slayer’s blood.”
“Then suck on this,” says Buffy, driving a stake into the vampire’s heart. With an anguished groan, Marcel disintegrates into ashes, which momentarily glow in the dark as they sift toward the floor; before they reach it, Buffy feels three more vampires enter the car.
“Let the boy go, and I’ll let you off this train alive,” says Buffy.
“Watch out, she’s the Slayer,” the female warns the new players. “She’s already killed Marcel.”
“That isn’t quite accurate,” says a vampire with a German accent. “I’m the only one who ever killed Marcel. It was during the war. I was in the Gestapo. He was with the Resistance. Death put us on the same side. Rather heart-warming, actually. Nicht wahr?” As the vamp speaks, he moves directly toward Buffy while his two companions stealthily, silently, crawl over the seats to her left and right, moving as rapidly as ordinary men could walk on a level surface.
Suddenly, the door behind Buffy opens, letting in a little light from Buffy’s own car.
“Goodness,” says Roger, “why aren’t the lights on in here?”
“Daddy, help!” calls Rupert from the other end of the car. Buffy is relieved to know that the boy is still alive.
“Rupert!” cries Roger. “Where are you?” He steps forward tentatively in the dark, unaware that Buffy is less than a step in front of him.
Without turning around, Buffy hits him full in the face with the back of her fist. She hears the sickly crunch of cartilage before Roger slumps into the nearest passenger seat. He lays there unconscious with his legs upon the armrest, feet sticking out into the aisle.
As two of the vampires move to flank Buffy, she swiftly places a palm against each one’s solar plexus and lifts him as easily as if her hands were glued to them, and they were ultra-light.
For all their strength and fighting skills, the two vampires can only wriggle with the futility of flies on flypaper. Holding them aloft, Buffy spreads her arms sideways, the helpless vampires fixed to her hands. This leaves her front vulnerable to the direct approach of the former Gestapo officer, but when he rushes into the space in front of her, Buffy swings the other two vampires together as if they were a pair of cymbals. The German vampire is crushed between them, and all three demons’ bones audibly shatter from the impact. Buffy spreads her arms a bit so that the vampire-cymbals no longer hold up the German. He crumples to the floor. Then Buffy uses her power to project her "cymbals" into the corners at the opposite end of the car. They speed from her hands as if they have been shot out of a pair of cannons.
“Talk to me, Rupert,” says Buffy. “How are you doing, little guy?” There is no response. Buffy takes a step forward. Suddenly, the German grabs her ankle, but Buffy draws a stake and throws it down, directly into the vampire’s heart.
In the darkness, Buffy reaches out to sense everything in the car. Roger is still unconscious behind her. The two vampires that she hurled lay broken but still animated at the other end of the car. The only other being in the car is a small human several rows in front of her, close to the floor. Unless the female is cloaking her presence, she must have dropped the boy and fled during the fight. Buffy scans the car and then as much of the entire train as she can. Somehow, the female has not only escaped but, puzzlingly, has left no trace whatsoever.
The train exits the tunnel and sunlight pours into the car. All at once, Buffy sees Rupert lying on the floor in front of her. she also sees the two vamps at the end of the car just as they burst into dust clouds. She also sees the other passengers; they are slumped in their seats, long since drained pale of all their blood.
Rupert is unconscious, but his life force is strong, and there are no wounds on his body. Buffy picks him up gently in her arms. She turns, and on the way back to their car, she easily lifts Roger without setting the boy down. Facing him toward the door, she places a palm on Roger's solar plexus and recharges his nervous system. He comes around but remains disoriented.
“What happened?” he asks. “Oh, my nose!”
“You banged yourself into a door,” she lies urging father and son through the passageway and back into their own car before either of them sees the massacre in the car behind them. “You must have run smack into the open door just as Rupert came out of the restroom.”
After a doctor has fixed Roger's nose, he falls asleep and snores loudly and--so Buffy thinks--rather endearingly.
When the conductors discover the bodies in the next car, they rush about so much that everyone becomes alarmed; the train crew puts up a sign blocking entry into the adjacent car. The official explanation is announced: there was structural damage to the car; it is not safe even to pass through.
Anything to prevent panic, Buffy observes to herself. She suggests to Rupert that he not tell his father about his adventure. "He might be even more frightened than you were."
"I wasn't frightened," protests Rupert.
"I know you weren't," says Buffy with a smile, and she caresses the boys cheek tenderly.
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