by Nancy Holder
This house.
“I’ll blow ’em away.”
“Mark, the good guys don’t always win,” she ventured gently. “Sometimes they get killed.”
For a moment he wavered. She saw his uncertainty and crossed her fingers behind her back. “So let’s go back and get Giles and Xander,” she said. “We’ll hide you. We’ll keep you safe.”
It was the very most wrong thing she could have said. His face hardened and he waved her on ahead of himself without a word.
They went around to the back. The sky was washed with the rosy glow of dawn. Someone will see us, Willow thought hopefully. But there were very few houses in this part of town. Sunnydale Estates was a dream that had died.
Like so much did in Sunnydale.
Mark tried the back door. Willow fully expected it to be locked; when it opened at his touch, he looked as surprised as she did.
He murmured to her, “I don’t want to make you go first, but you might leave me.”
“What do you want me for?” she whispered back.
“I don’t want you to tell them where I am.”
She wouldn’t insult his intelligence by promising that she wouldn’t tell; instead she nodded and minced into the house.
It stank of rotting things; an odor so foul it was like something solid in her mouth. She recoiled, lumbering backward, and accidentally ran into Mark’s gun. The metal jabbed into her lower back and she almost screamed. At the last second, she caught herself.
“No funny stuff,” he muttered, “okay?”
“Okay, okay.” Willow could hear the rising panic in her voice. Something is dead in here, and no one knows where we are.
Not even Buffy.
She thought of her friend and realized how truly unfair she’d been about Buffy looking for Oz. Buffy was the Chosen One, but she wasn’t exactly psychic. Okay, dreams and premonitions, but they happened to her. She couldn’t call them into being. She had searched all over Sunnydale for Oz and Cordy. And if she and Angel stole a kiss or two while she ran herself ragged, that should be okay, too. After all, it was all they got, all they could have.
She knew she and Oz would have something more, one day. Except, not on werewolf days.
Unless Mark freaks out and kills me, she thought, choking back a sob.Or unless Oz is already —
“Dead,” Mark said aloud as they moved from the kitchen through an archway into the living room.
Willow jumped. “What?”
“There’s a dead squirrel to our right,” Mark cautioned her. “Don’t look at it.”
Despite the fact that he had a loaded gun pointed at her spine, she was touched by his thoughtfulness.
“Thanks.”
“Someone’s been living here,” he said.
Willow studiously avoided the place where the squirrel must be. About five feet ahead of them was a mattress with some incredibly grimy sheets, an opened but untouched can of Spam and a loaf of white bread on top of a cardboard box, and a stack of magazines.
Mark picked up a couple of the magazines. “Jordan read this kind of junk,” he said with disgust. “That’s who it was. Jordan Smyth.”
“Who it was,” Willow echoed. “Living here, you mean?”
“He sold it to my brother.” He picked up the Spam, examined it, and set it down. “The drug.”
Willow stared at him.
“The drug that made him do it,” he finished.
Willow gaped at him. “Some drug made him go crazy? You knew this all along? Why didn’t you say anything?”
Mark’s face turned bright red. “Because I wasn’t sure.”
And he’s not sure now. Just like anyone who had been touched — or pummeled — by tragedy, Mark was looking for a reason why.
“Was it PCP?” she asked him.
“Angel dust?” He sighed. “I don’t know. I’m not into drugs. I hate them. I tried to get it away from him. I — I —”
“It’s okay.” Willow swallowed hard. This kid was on the edge. She had no idea how to keep him from going over it. And only a vague idea of how not to push him over it herself.
Willow took a step forward; her shoe landing on something small and hard. Without moving her head, she moved her foot and stared down.
It was a cell phone.
She caught her breath and covered it with her foot again.
It was dawn, and Helen slept.
She did not sleep well. For hundreds of years, she had not slept well.
Neither had Julian.
He remembered her now, in her despair.
Rome, A.D. 40
Six months had gone by since the capture of Helen and the death of the Watcher, and the countryside raged. The demons and monsters of Caligula’s court scorched the earth, releasing dark magicks and freeing the hideous crawling things that dwelled beneath the soil.
The dead walked, and capered, and no one was safe.
In response — so Julian believed — the Empire went mad. Fathers murdered daughters; sons drove mothers to suicide. Strangers banded in wild, feral armies and marched on the villages of innocent people who had done them no wrong. They burned them to the ground, and slashed the throats of every man, woman, and child.
Livestock perished. Crops rotted.
Caligula went madder still, ordering elaborately staged mass executions, and delivering up the Vestal Virgins to the Games — an act that shocked all Rome. The Vestal Virgins were sacred acolytes of the temples, not political prisoners or slaves bred for sacrifice.
Caligula built the temple of Meter, and installed priests to pray to her statue every moment of every day. Caligula’s sudden devotion to her made Julian suspicious. It was as if the emperor were trying to find another way to live forever, save at the fangs of his vampire confidant.
Meanwhile, Helen, the friend of the Slayer, began to despair. Her beloved childhood friend was nowhere to be found, had not made even one attempt to save Helen. Caligula was convinced that the Slayer was dead, and this drove him into a deep rage, pushing him toward more brutality.
Julian knew better. He had reports of her slaying vampires in the countryside, the wild ones who took huge risks in their eagerness to slake their bloodlust.
He came to see Helen, at first once, perhaps twice a month, enjoying the effect of total terror he instilled in her. Then, as she became accustomed to him, he began to stay longer. She was actually well informed, for a woman of her time. The lessons of Roman girls were generally restricted to spinning cloth and running a villa. Helen knew a little of the world, and had opinions.
So he would sit of an evening, sipping wine, upon occasion passing her a goblet so that she, too, might partake. At first, she would refuse, thinking that he was poisoning her, but over time, she began to insist that she didn’t care if she lived or died.
Which was why he began to taunt her. At least now in Sunnydale, lying in her arms, that was what he told himself. Or perhaps it was his cruel streak which prompted him to make her cry.
At first it was easy.
“She has been seen, your Diana,” he would say, stretching out his legs. "She tried to stop one of our armies from routing a village. She killed several of my best men.”
“She is a goddess,” Helen would snap at him, sounding ever so more uncertain.
“Then why doesn’t she appear to you and save you?” Over the rim of his goblet, he watched her. He saw her fire roar to life, and he fanned it. “If you’re her best friend on earth, why does she ignore your plight?”
Helen raised her head, but her expression spoke volumes about her agony. Clearly she had been asking the same questions.
“She doesn’t even know I’m here.”
“Oh, she knows. We have made sure she knows. In letters and proclamations read all over the Empire. Why, even in Britannia, the name of Helen is known.”
She turned from him then, downhearted and mournful. The fires were banked for the night. But tomorrow, he would attempt to fan them higher.
As he p
repared to leave, he examined her in the torchlight. Even in the dreadful conditions in which he found her, she was incredibly beautiful. She stirred him.
He wanted her.
He vowed he would have her.
Now, as he lay with Helen asleep in his arms, he looked down at the way she clutched her hands together, drawing blood from her own palms, the heaving of her chest as she dreamed. Her madness had grown, along with his love for her. But he knew it was clouding her thinking.
She was capable of anything, including killing him.
He didn’t want to think of that, but he must. Julian was a survivor, first and foremost. And then, a lover.
He let his mind drift to the exquisite beauty, Cordelia. A wonderful name. An excellent fighting spirit. As with Helen, it would be such a waste if she died in the arena. Diverting, however.
And the court was restless. They were enjoying the havoc rampaging over Sunnydale, but they wanted to participate more fully in the destruction of the town. After all, Nero had fiddled while Rome burned.
And Nero had been one of their own.
He looked down at Helen, and wondered what she dreamed of.
Then she whispered, “Angelus.”
Buffy backhanded a monster with a human face and a human trunk, covered in red scales and with cloven hooves, and slammed her sandaled foot on its chest. With her three-pronged trident at its neck, she raised her face to the crowd.
They shouted, “Cut his throat!”
She pushed the trident straight through its neck.
It sighed and whispered, “Buffy.”
As she looked down in horror, it morphed into Angel.
The crowd screamed for his death.
And before she knew what she was doing, she upended the trident and pushed the wooden handle through his chest.
In less than a second, he was dust.
Buffy sat up and cried, “No!”
“Hey, Buffy, it’s okay. You were dreaming,” Xander said.
There was a pillow under her head and a throw over her body. She smoothed back her hair and said, “What time is it?”
“Half-past third period,” Xander replied. “Giles put out that ’Closed for Fumigation’ sign we stole from the Bronze a couple years ago to keep pesky knowledge-seekers out of their tax-funded sanctuary.”
“You shouldn’t have let me sleep.” She yawned and got to her feet. “But it was nice. Thanks.”
He bobbed his head and gestured to a huge pile of books. “Meanwhile, Giles and I press on with the info Angel gave us.”
“And?”
He showed her the spine of a large book bounded in what looked like moldy animal skin. “The Cult of Meter and the Orphic Mysteries: A Comparative Analysis.”
“Lucky you,” she drawled. “Find anything?”
“Not yet. But I’m still knee-deep in footnotes.” He looked at her. “You were kind of whimpering.”
“I had a dream,” she told him. “I dreamed I was a gladiator. And I killed a demon.” She hesitated.
“With Angel’s face.”
Xander held up his hands. “Not riffing off the obvious here, okay? I don’t play to the cheap seats. But according to Angel, Helen became a gladiator. Caligula got tired of waiting for Diana to rescue her. So he put her in the Games. She had to battle the major spookables and assorted other bad mothers. One after another. Day after day. Or rather, night after night.”
“Until she became a regular killing machine,” Buffy said tersely.
“Something like that, yes,” Giles announced, pushing up his glasses as he rushed out of his office. “We just got a fax.”
“From Rome?” Xander asked.
“Yes,” Giles continued, clearing his throat. “He believes we’re facing a psychoactive poison, that is, one that affects the mind.” He looked at them triumphantly.
“And the poison is called?”
“Well, he didn’t quite know,” Giles admitted. “Also, he believes that by opening the urn, the demonic energy of Caligula has been unleashed, and only need be called upon using the proper rites and rituals to raise Meter. She’s the real threat.”
“Will the bad guys know that the urn has been opened?”
Giles frowned. “I’m not sure. Helen was boasting of this entire enterprise to Angel.”
“Helen?” Buffy asked shakily. She didn’t know Angel had spoken to her.
“She approached him just before dawn.”
Near my house, Buffy realized. She was probably in the van when they tossed Jordan Smyth’s body out.
“And just to add to the mix —”
“We have to figure this all out before nightfall,” Buffy said without surprise. “Because the signs and portents indicate that tonight’s the night for the bad stuff to happen.”
Giles sighed and smiled grimly. “Two points for the Slayer.”
“Boy, do we need Willow,” Xander muttered.
Giles’s phone rang again.
Chapter 15
WILLOW’S HEART POUNDED AS SHE HIT “SEND” ON THE cell phone. She had managed to bend down and pick it up when Mark cautiously drew back the dusty curtains again and peeked out the grimy windows in the living room. She hadn’t quite dared to run through the kitchen and out the door. She turned the phone on without Mark’s noticing by coughing to cover the sound of the beep. But she had no idea how much juice the battery had left.
Now, with the phone hidden in the bib pocket of her corduroy overalls, she didn’t even know if the connection to the library had been made. There was no way to tell.
So she simply started talking.
“So, Mark,” she said in a loud voice, “are we going to stay here much longer? They say Mrs. Gibson haunts her house. I’m not sure I want to find out. What about you?”
He frowned at her. “Where are the ’vampires’? Your friends were sure the vampires would come here.”
“It’s daylight,” she said hopefully. “Vampires can’t walk around during the day.”
“Oh, hah.” He made a face. “That’s just TV talk.”
“No, it’s true.” She shrugged, wondering why she was arguing with him. Maybe it was good that he wanted to stay here. If Giles could hear her, help would soon be on the way.
Giles looked at Buffy. “Willow is with Mark at Mrs. Gibson’s house. I got disconnected. It was abrupt. It could simply be the cell range, or —”
Buffy was already out the swinging doors.
Xander called, “Can I come, too?”
As the doors flapped behind her, she called back, “Not this time. You’d only slow me down.”
Xander looked at Giles and shook his head. “She’s been going to the Cordelia Chase School of Charm and Tact.”
Giles shrugged. “Don’t feel too badly, Xander. She says the same thing to me.” He picked up the urn and turned his head to look at the clock. “It’s almost lunch time. The chemistry lab should be empty . . .” He glanced at Xander.
“What’s the worst thing that can happen to me?” Xander asked. “I can get expelled again?”
“We’ll keep our eyes out for Principal Snyder,” Giles said, gathering up a few books and putting them in his well-worn valise.
They left together, moving swiftly. Giles said sadly, “Willow’s spellcasting skills would be very handy right about now. Not to mention her supply of herbs and magickal effect. It’s unfortunate that her kit is in my car.”
Xander snapped his fingers. “Not to worry. She restocked her locker. And I, of course, know the combination.”
Giles flashed him a smile. “Excellent, Xander.”
“Thank you, thank you,” he said, leading the way.
Rome, A.D. 40
The sun was setting as Helen’s last adversary of the day clanked into the amphitheater. The rays hit the monster’s plates of armor and the long, curved blades at its elbows and knees. Fully seven feet tall, it was well armed.
Clad in a skimpy armor breastplate and carrying only a spear and a shield, Helen was ba
rely armed at all.
The creature came at her. She knew it was not human. In the last six months, she had encountered only one real man, and he had died so quickly that the spectators had protested their boredom. Now only the most fearsome demons and creatures of the night were pitted against her. They came from everywhere, leaving caves and underwater grottoes and icy mountain lairs for Rome, eager for the riches and honors Caligula would bestow on the one who killed Helen. If none showed, Caligula conjured them up from the foul depths of the torture chambers, raising the dead, promising a new existence on earth if they would only fight her.
Each one, he fed the Madness Potion. Each one went mad with an insatiable need to kill. There was no end to it. Night after night, Helen fought for her life against beings infected with bloodlust. The crowds adored her for surviving. They jeered at her opponents. She knew vast sums had been won and lost wagering on her. Surely this monster would be the one. Or that one. Or the next.
Now, facing the helmeted creature, Helen hurt all over. She thought some ribs might be cracked. As it came at her, she executed a roll and groaned aloud.
In the gallery, Caligula did not even watch. He was too busy amusing a beautiful girl who sat on his lap and poured wine into his mouth. Stupid cow. The girl would be dead by sunrise, a sacrifice to his lust and depravity.
“Be aggressive!” Helen’s trainer shouted from the side gate. He wore a harness of leather and a leather apron over short pants. His body was covered with scars. He was one of the lucky ones, a retired gladiator put in charge of training new victims for the Games. He had been given his freedom and a splendid villa for the results he had achieved with Helen.
Behind him loomed the vampire, Julian, the monster who claimed to love her. He wore his human face, but his eyes gleamed golden in the torchlight.
The creature in the arena slashed a spiked mace at her, and she executed another roll. Wincing with pain, she scanned the crowd, dreaming that Diana would appear and save her. It had never happened; she didn’t know why she thought it would ever happen.