by Nancy Holder
Willow hesitated. She didn’t want to leave Xander. On the other hand, she didn’t want Nick to take his protective presence away from Xander.
Then Xander groaned and rolled over. Willow moved away from both men.
“Will,” he groaned, then inhaled sharply. “You smell really weird.”
“Gee, thanks.” She touched his forehead. “Are you okay?”
“I just need to make the Tweety Birds stop flying around my head.”
“Let me help you up.” She put her hand under his elbow.
“Ooh.” Xander cupped the back of his head. “Gee, d’you think if I sue Wiater, I’ll have enough money for college?” He looked around. “Where’s Cordelia?”
Willow blinked. “She was with you?”
“Uh-huh. Just walked in.” He looked at the other kids, some of whom were melting away from the scene now that the excitement was over. “Any of you guys see Cordelia Chase?” Others still appeared to be anxious to create even more excitement, eager to trash the place.
“She went with those people.” A girl with braces and a long, dark braid down her back pointed toward the exit.
“’Those people’?” Xander echoed, looking at the entrance.
“The blond man. And a dark-haired woman,” the girl said.
Xander looked at Willow. Her lips parted. “That English guy. He said he was a doctor.” She frowned.
“No, he didn’t say that. He said he was a trained professional.”
“We’re going,” Xander announced, taking her hand.
She chewed her lower lip as she let him lead her out the door. “And he said I’d do well.”
Together they ran out the front door, just in time to see a black van speed away like a shiny predator beneath the streetlights.
“Hey!” Xander shouted, waving at the car. He tugged the arm of the nearest bystander, a short, runty guy he’d seen before, in detention. “Was there a girl, she’s a really beauti —”
“Watch who you’re punching, jerk!” the short guy yelled, and punched Xander in the stomach.
Xander doubled over and retched. Willow held his shoulders and stared after the car. She was trying to memorize the license plate.
But there was no license plate.
“Buffy,” Xander said. “We have to get to Buffy asap.”
Cordelia smelled flowers all around her. Part of her muzzily imagined she was having a wonderful dream. Flowers, and candlelight. Lots of candlelight. And straw.
Wet, stinky straw.
That she was lying on.
She realized then that her eyes were open, and she was staring at a lovely silver candelabra flickering with long, white tapers. She lay sprawled on her stomach on lumpy, damp straw.
As she blinked, a shadow crossed into her field of vision and stared down at her. Cordelia ticked her gaze upward. It was a vampire. She was a woman, dressed in flowing black, with long, shiny black hair.
“Ah, you’re back.”
“Back,” Cordelia echoed, horribly confused. Her head was throbbing and her mouth was dry.
“Back among the living. For now,” she told Cordelia. Her laughter was rich and she smelled of a very strong, spicy perfume.
“What do you want? Where am I?” She tried to sit up, but her head hurt too badly.
“You’re in our court,” the vampire announced.
Then, with a wave of her hand, she made a sweeping gesture and took a step to the side.
Cordelia’s mouth dropped open. She and the woman vampire were in some kind of circular arena. There was a waist-high stone wall surrounding the area, all carved and elaborate. But she didn’t have time to look at that, not right now.
Because beyond the wall, in semicircles of stonebleachers, vampires and demons sat and watched her. Some were dressed like they were going to a toga party, while others wore clothes from other time periods — velvets and laces and even a few really hideous disco outfits. There was a demonic creature, mostly sores and fangs, in a brown leisure suit. Other monsters were completely naked, and while she had seen a lot of very gross creatures, most of them were even grosser.
There must have been at least fifty of them, and when they saw her looking up at them, they cheered.
“I win!” someone called out. “Two hours and twelve minutes!”
The others groaned. A couple of them fished wallets out of their clothes and began to count out bills, Money started trading hands all over the arena. Cordelia was dumbfounded.
“They bet on how long you would be unconscious,” the vampire told her. “They bet on everything. It passes the time.” She chuckled. “They get bored so easily. They require constant entertainment. But it keeps them from scheming too much.
“That was something we learned in the glory that was Rome.”
Standing at the top of the rings of seats was an extremely attractive blond man. He was dressed in a black leather jacket, black pants, and a white T-shirt.
“He was at the Bronze,” Cordelia murmured.
“Yes, we both were,” the vampire told her. She leaned over Cordelia and ran a sharp fingernail down her cheek. “Pity. You’re so lovely.”
“Don’t touch me,” Cordelia shot at her, but inside she was shaking, Pity? Why is it a pity?
“Where’s Xander?” she demanded.
“He got away,” the vampire told her sorrowfully. Then she smiled. “But don’t worry. We’ll get him.” She looked up at the blond man. “Won’t we, Julian?”
“Yes, of course,” the man answered.
Cordelia looked up at him and caught her breath. He was in full vamp face. Which might mean he was planning to feed.
Which might explain why it’s such a pity that I’m so lovely.
“Listen, you guys, you’d better let me go,” Cordelia said, her voice catching. “I’m a friend of the Slayer, you know what a Slayer is?”
A creature covered with yellow scales and some kind of reddish-brown calluses covered its enormous mouth with one of its claws and guffawed. Some of the other monsters and vampires stopped handing each other money long enough to laugh. One applauded. Something that looked like two worms tied together turned and looked up at the vampire named Julian.
“Oh, we know very well what a Slayer is,” he answered. “And we’re delighted that another of her friends has joined us.”
“Another,” Cordelia said slowly. Uneasily.
Julian raised his hands and clapped them as if he were summoning a servant.
To the far right, there was a crashing sound, and then a howl. Cordelia jerked and covered her mouth, staring wide-eyed in the direction. Most of the others craned their necks, obviously eager to catch a glimpse of what was going on.
Then a metal door swung slowly open, and a towering, slathering werewolf charged into the arena.
Chapter 7
BUFFY MANAGED TO PUSH HER WAY THROUGH THE crowd at the reservoir. She was cold, filthy, wet, and in a very bad mood as she caught hold of some manzanita bushes and kept herself upright as she half-slid, half-ran to the southern side of the dam. She flicked on her flashlight, to discover a set of concrete steps angled down and around the side, barred by a padlocked gate.
With one quick upswing of her hand, Buffy snapped the padlock. She pulled open the gate and hunkered down on the other side, deftly shutting it behind her. She flicked off her flashlight. No one else seemed to have realized this quick route to the base of the dam was here. Though she was, for the moment, hidden in darkness, the next flash of lighting might reveal her or the stairs.
She had no idea if Mark Dellasandro really was down there, but she knew she had to get to Mark first, or he’d be a dead man.
A dead boy, she corrected herself. He’s just a kid.
She reached the base of the stairs. Stretching before her was a sort of catwalk that didn’t take her all the way down to the very bottom of the dam. There was only one way to go down that far, which was to jump off the catwalk.
She landed hard but she didn’t ta
ke time to see if she was injured. Instead, she crouched low and began to crabwalk along. Water was pouring on her; she held up a hand to the rain and realized it was coming from another source. She felt for her flashlight. She’d lost it in the jump.
She glanced over her left shoulder. The next lightning flash revealed leaks in the dam. She caught her breath at the size of them.
She kept moving, and finally dared to call softly, “Mark? It’s a friend. Please. Trust me. I’m here to help you.”
She thought she heard a rustle in the bushes, but with the yelling above her and the hard rain, she couldn’t be sure.
“Look over here! Stairs!” someone shouted.
Buffy sighed. Soon they’d all be down here.
“Mark,” she said desperately. “Show yourself. It’s your only chance.”
She heard a whimper, and dove directly into a stand of manzanita. The branches whipped her face and the backs of her hands.
But she touched human skin on the other side, and grabbed hard before he had a chance to change his mind and dart away.
“No,” he said, terrified.
“I’m Buffy,” she replied, crashing painfully through the bushes. “Buffy Summers. I’m going to help you.”
Above her, moving with the crowd, Angel faded into the shadows and started a tortuous race down into the valley by hanging on to bushes and sliding in the mud, avoiding the stairs and the deranged people who clambered down them.
Hold on, Buffy, he thought anxiously. Which she would do.
She was the Slayer.
Xander and Willow sat knee-to-knee in the semi while the trucker told them about his run from Boston to St. Louis, then out to Bishop and now down to Sunnydale. Like everybody else, they’d heard about the mob up at the reservoir. It sounded like a good place to find Buffy, so they’d hitched a ride. Both Xander and Willow had hesitated when the truck had pulled over, but beggars couldn’t be too choosy.
So far, the man had talked and talked while the two of them pretended to listen. They were trying to scan the landscape, but the rain was coming down so hard it was a futile effort.
“Weird place, Sunnydale. You ever seen marsh gas? You got your marsh gas here in Sunnydale. Also, your close encounters.” He looked hard at Xander. “You know what I’m talking about, son?”
Xander swallowed, hoping this wasn’t some kind of prison secret code for anything to do with him and Mr. Sixteen-Wheeler. He said carefully, “Like Scully and Mulder?”
“We were them for Halloween one year,” Willow told the man.
“X-Files.” The man nodded. “It’s all true.” He added a stick of gum to the enormous wad in his mouth. He had at least five sticks in there that Xander knew of. “I’ve driven from one side of America to the other. No other place as weird as Sunnydale.” He picked up his megapack of Juicyfruit. “Gum?”
“Thanks,” Willow said, taking a stick. She offered one to Xander.
“Trying to quit,” he said. He put his hand on Willow’s arm and whispered, “Are you noticing what I’m noticing? That even though we’re really in a mess, we’re not so wound up about it? Like we were in the Bronze?”
“Yeah. And other times.”
The bright lights on the truck’s instrument panel caught the red highlights in her hair just so. Will, his Will. How could he ever have been short with her? Cruel to her?
“I think it’s what Buffy said. I think we were possessed,” Xander added. “And somehow we’ve gotten depossessed.”
He put his hand on hers. “I’m sorry, Willow.”
She gave his hand a squeeze. “Me, too, Xander.”
“Okay, so friends again.” Or whatever it is we are anymore.
“And, speaking of weird stuff,” Xander said, raising his voice to include the trucker in the conversation, “what have you seen weird lately? Here, I mean. In Sunnydale?” He scratched his cheek. “Like, ah, weird black vans without license plates? Or —”
Static pffted the conversation. The trucker picked up a set of earphones complete with a curved mike — kind of a rock star look for him — and said, “Yeah, Big J, c’mon?”
He cocked his head, listening.
“That’s a big ten-four.”
After a few more sentences, the trucker hung up. He turned to Willow and Xander and said, “You guys had some murders recently?”
“We always have murders,” Willow blurted, then quickly said, “Yes. There was a guy who killed his parents and also some kids at school. And then more people were found dead, and —”
“We don’t want to bore the nice man,” Xander interrupted.
“So you’re joining the crowd at the reservoir.”
“Um, possibly,” Xander said carefully. “And you?”
The man clenched his teeth and shook his head with obvious regret. “Boy, I got me a shotgun in the back needs some use, but I’ve got a schedule to meet. I’m hauling carcasses and even though I’ve got refrigeration, they’ve got these dates stamped on them six ways to Sunday.”
“Carcasses,” Willow murmured faintly.
“Cattle.” He made a face. “I tell you what. I’m halfway to being a vegetarian after I saw them load ’em up.” He shivered. “Got all these sides of beef in there swaying like hula dancers.” Wiping his mouth, he added, “Do you want to know what they do with the heads?”
“No,” Willow and Xander said in unison.
“The reservoir,” Xander pressed, hoping, wanting, and very much needing to return to the subject at hand.
The trucker gave Xander and Willow the once-over. “Couple of kids like you, you might want to steer clear anyway. If I remember my militia days, it’s going to be pretty rough stuff up there.”
“Oh, we’re into rough stuff,” Xander assured him. Then he swallowed and said, “Um, but with lots of people.” He flushed. He was sure that sounded even better than Meet me in the showers, prison boy.
They drove for about one more minute before the trucker abruptly lurched over to the side. Willow’s hip smacked into Xander’s and he grabbed her thigh to try to steady her. Wild romance-novel tingles shot up her leg and she tried to clear her throat without making any noise. After all, this was Xander, not Oz.
Oz. Tonight was the first night of his transformation.
She clenched her fists against her legs. She just knew that the people who had taken Cordelia were the same people who had taken him. At least, that was her hope. She could describe the British man to Giles — or the police, if they would do any good — and the black van was a lead, if not a very strong one. But it was something. So far, for Oz, there had been nothing.
“Sorry about that,” the trucker said, as the semi rolled to a standstill. “I almost missed that turnoff.” He hunched over his steering wheel and pointed through the windshield again. “That’s the road up to the reservoir. We can go on up.”
“Oh, thanks,” Willow breathed. “That’s really nice of you.”
The man unrolled his window and turned his head, hawked out his wad of gum.
When he turned it back, his face was a hideous, demonic mask of brilliant red. Horns sprouted from his head. His eyes were a glowing, unearthly crimson. He pulled back his lips and Willow saw the longest, sharpest teeth this side of Hell. Fire dribbled from his mouth as he cackled and reached for her.
“Think nothin’ of it,” he said.
Willow screamed. Xander grabbed her just as the demon yanked on her arm and prepared to bury his fangs in it.
“You’re the ones called Xander and Willow,” he said, running an obscenely long tongue over his fangs as they fumbled for the door handle. “You’re friends of the Slayer, who has been sighted at the reservoir. Julian told me to bring you alive, that’s all. He didn’t say intact.”
“No, no!” Xander yelled, hitting the monster as it slathered over Willow’s arm. “Stop!”
Then the driver’s-side door burst open and the monster was yanked from the cab. Willow was pulled along with him until his grip slackened and s
he hung half in, half out of the truck.
Lightning flashed, and Willow saw the demon and another figure in silhouette.
It was Buffy.
Xander was about to drag Willow back into the cab when she stopped him.
“Xander, look!”
He did. The two were racing away through the storm, Buffy in the lead, the monster in pursuit.
“Oh, thank you, thank you, Buff,” Xander whispered. Then he helped Willow up to a sitting position and said, “I’m going out there to help her, Willow. You figure out how to drive this thing. We’ll do something resourceful with it. Like drive away really fast.”
“What? But I . . .” She stared down at the gear shifts and pedals. She was inches too short. “Xander, I’ll go help her. You can drive.”
But he was already out of the cab.
She pressed on the gas. The truck vroomed and lurched. Died.
“Manual Right,” she murmured. “I can do manual.”
Then the passenger door opened again and she let out a yell. It was a mud monster. It was the creature from the black reservoir.
It was a kid.
“My name is Mark,” he said, and in another time and place, it would be comical how he blinked through the mud, kind of Three Stooges. “Buffy told me to get in here.”
“Yeah, okay,” Willow said. She took a breath and asked hopefully, “Would you happen to know anything about trucks?”
To her intense amazement, he nodded. “Me and Brian, our uncle owns a trucking business. I know all about big rigs.” He gestured to her. “Let me get behind the wheel and we can drive all the way to Mexico, if you want.”
Buffy saw Xander sneaking around the truck and motioning to her. She knew he was preparing for a surprise attack, and she also knew it would be a far, far better thing for him to keep his distance.
So she shouted, “Xander, keep back! I on handle it!”
That was enough distraction from self-survival for the demon to backhand her. She flew through the air from the force of the blow as if she’d been shot from a cannon and backslid into the mud.
“Breaker, breaker,” Xander bellowed, waving his hands and jumping up and down. He shook his butt at the demon, who turned and watched him, snorting flames. “C’mon, Big Red. Chew me up and spit me out. I double-dare you.”