Blooded

by Christopher Golden

  Cordelia whistled, eyes searching the blank, white-washed walls for something to look at. Lips puckered, she stopped whistling mid-note and rolled her eyes.

  “All right!” she said. “I’ll try, too.”

  “That’s my Cordy,” Xander said with pride. “Always thinking about others.”

  But none of them saw Willow again that day, and Buffy was so caught up in the Math Test from Hell that she didn’t even think about trying to talk to her until she was on the way home.

  * * *

  Sometimes Buffy had company when she was on patrol, scouring Sunnydale for something unnatural that she could return to nature. Giles might come along to lecture her on becoming a better Slayer, hang on to her big bag o’ tricks, and hand her a stake when she needed one. Other times, when she didn’t think it would be too much of a distraction—who was she kidding?—whenever he wanted to come along, Angel prowled the night with her.

  Also, there would be big smoochies during Angel-prowling nights, as Xander so quaintly put it on occasion. Very big smoochies.

  “I could use a little distraction, right about now,” she muttered to herself.

  It was quiet, and a little chilly, and Buffy thought it would have been nice to have Angel around, or Giles. For different reasons, of course. She wondered if she ought to bring homework with her sometimes. She could sit under a streetlight and study if it got slow, just sit and wait for something inhuman and vile to attack her. Kind of like sitting in front of Greg “the Octopus” Rucka in bio.

  “Deep sigh,” Buffy whispered.

  She slung her bag over her shoulder and started for home. On the way, she got kind of sidetracked and wandered over to the Bronze. Once she got there, though, she only stood on the curb outside looking at the door. It was possible Angel was there, inside. But if she went in, and he was in there, she wouldn’t be in any kind of rush to get home.

  Home. That place they named homework after. Where that work intended for home was usually done. And Buffy was way behind.

  Tomorrow night, she thought. She’d see Angel tomorrow night.

  She spun on her heel, started for home, and then stopped short. A weird feeling very like the graveyard sensation from the night before ran through her, and she turned to peer into the darkness of the alley next to the Bronze.

  Three of them, two guys and one very innocent looking girl with short, dark hair. Buffy was the wariest of her. It was like high school: sometimes the ones you expected the least of really surprised you. If only her teachers’ expectations of her would sink a little more, she’d be the pride of Sunnydale High.

  “See, that’s what happens to my grades,” she said aloud, letting her bag drop to her side. “I have the best of intentions about my homework, but something always comes up.”

  Their faces were hideous, feral, and they snorted like animals as they stepped out of the alley and began to spread out to surround her. Buffy slid a stake from the bag, then dropped the bag to the sidewalk.

  “Hello, procrastination,” she said, and smiled.

  “And a good evening to you, Slayer,” the girl growled. “I hope you’ve enjoyed it, ‘cause it’s going to be your last.”

  “Thanks for caring,” Buffy retorted. “You’re so sweet.”

  “Oh, not at all,” said the second, a balding-type guy, moving around behind her.

  Buffy turned, switching the stake from hand to hand, trying to keep them in her field of vision. They made a semicircle and they moved in unison, creeping right, then left. Very drill team. Very weird.

  “We’ve been waiting for you for hours,” said the third, dark-skinned and heavyset. “We’d almost given up hope of killing you tonight.”

  For a moment, Buffy felt that sensation again, and an additional chill at the realization that they’d been waiting for her. Not out hunting for fresh blood. Just hanging out behind the Bronze, waiting for the Slayer to come by.

  Vampires weren’t generally known for their patience.

  Buffy shook it off, slapped the stake into her right hand, and smiled. “You’d almost given up hope,” she said with mock sympathy. “Now here I am, what you’ve been waiting for, and all I’m going to do is break your hearts.”

  Her face changed, then. A sneer—almost cruel—twisted her mouth.

  “Oops, my bad. I meant stake your hearts, of course.”

  Baldy leaped at her, and Buffy acted. She threw her leg out toward him, lifted her left hand to grab him by the shirt front and toss him at the heavyset one on her right.

  That was her intention, anyway.

  But she never got hold of him. Baldy stopped short, stood up, and simply smiled at her. Buffy knew instantly what had happened. They had set her up. Big Boy was rushing in from her right, and the girlish bloodsucker was already reaching for her hair. Buffy was extended in the wrong direction, off balance.

  The girl snagged her hair, hissed, bared her fangs. Big Boy barreled in from the right.

  Buffy fell backward and the girl came with her.

  “Oh,” Buffy said. “A wiseguy. Remind me to kill you later.”

  Big Boy thundered past the spot where she’d been standing and nearly flattened Baldy with his bulk. Buffy threw a foot up into the girl’s stomach and tossed her over her head to land in the street. Cars passed by now and again on the cross street, but nothing turned down toward the Bronze.

  Fine with her. Nobody reporting back to her mom or the school that they saw her fighting in front of the club on a school night.

  The girl was quick, though. Even as Buffy was getting up, she was rushing at Buffy again.

  “Well, if you insist,” Buffy sighed, and side-stepped, kneed her in the stomach, pulled her up by the hair, and staked her.

  She exploded in a blast of ashes. Buffy didn’t have time to appreciate her demise, however. She sensed Big Boy and Baldy behind her, and took off into the darkness of the alley.

  They gave chase.

  Morons.

  A battered Chevy was parked in the alley. Buffy jumped onto the hood, then the roof. The two vamps got on either side of the car, and their smiles told her they figured they had her trapped.

  “Now we’ve got you,” Big Boy snarled.

  “Y’know, I can see where you might have a hard time getting an actual date, but this is taking things a little too far, don’t you think?” she asked. “Of course, I’ve heard the Internet is fertile territory to meet that special someone if you want them to love you just for your brains.”

  “I’ll love you for your heart, Slayer, while it’s sliding down my throat in ragged pieces!” Big Boy screamed and swiped at her legs.

  Buffy leaped again, did a somersault, and came down behind him.

  “Isn’t that an oh-so-lovely image,” she said, and staked Big Boy through the back. Harder that way, but if a girl worked at it, the end result was the same.

  Poof.

  Baldy stared at her across the roof of the Chevy.

  “You could run,” she suggested.

  “I would be killed for my cowardice if I ran,” Baldy growled. “In any case, I’m not afraid of you, little girl.”

  He leaped up onto the roof of the car, where she’d stood only seconds before. Buffy grabbed the Chevy’s door handle and pulled. It was unlocked. She opened the door and hopped in, slammed the door just as Baldy shoved a hand in after her. She heard the snap of his arm bone and the howl of pain as he withdrew the arm.

  Buffy slammed the door again. But she didn’t try getting out the other side. Just sat there behind the wheel. Well, just a little closer to the middle of the car. Baldy shattered the window with his working fist a second later and then his face appeared in the broken window.

  “Boo!” Buffy said, and punched him in the face.

  Baldy slid off the roof, scrambled to his feet and stared at her through the broken window.

  “Scared of me now?” she asked.

  “Get out of that car!” he roared at her.

  Buffy smiled shyly. “No.
”

  Baldy came at her, grabbed for the door handle, and Buffy shoved the stake through the broken window and into his chest.

  “You didn’t say please,” she told him as he exploded into dust.

  * * *

  The adrenaline pumping through Buffy as she made her way home felt good. There was a certain Rocky Balboa-ness about being the Slayer, though Buffy would never confess that exhilaration when she was bitching to Giles about her life.

  But that feeling was overshadowed tonight. Completely eclipsed by the dread that was beginning to weigh heavily on her. It was racing around her mind and she had a feeling she wasn’t going to be getting much sleep that night.

  These vampires weren’t that much harder to kill than most of the others she’d taken on. But they were more focused. They’d waited around for her. They’d set her up at the start of that fight, as if they could predict what her first move would be. Actually, they had predicted it.

  And when she’d told that last one to run, what he’d said in return had creeped her out.

  “I would be killed for my cowardice.”

  Which meant someone had sent them after Buffy. Someone organized. Someone she hadn’t already killed.

  On the night after the night of the graveyard weirdness-thing.

  Not good.

  CHAPTER 7

  Some called it morning.

  After a refreshingly uneventful weekend—relatively uneventful—Buffy let out a vast Monday-morning yawn as she walked into the library and said, “Many vampires. Much homework. Vampires slain. Homework somewhat less than attacked.”

  She sighed. “So sign me up for remedial you-name-it, call my mom, and explain to her why I’m flunking unflunkable classes, such as P.E.”

  “Hmm?” Giles asked, looking up from one of his oh-so-dusty books. Buffy reflected that so much of her life revolved around dust. Inhaling it during research sessions, and creating it . . . out of dead vampires.

  Giles smiled, pushed up his glasses, and closed his book. “Good morning, Buffy. You were saying there was a lot of activity this weekend?”

  “Vampy only,” she answered, mentally ticking down a list of things that had not happened: homework, the Bronze, big smoochies from Angel.

  “Well, yes,” he said, as if that was the only kind that mattered. Easy for him to say. He was not flunking being a librarian. Which raised some questions: How did people know if you were doing a good job? Check to see if the books were shelved in correct alphabetical order?

  “ ‘Well, yes,’ ” she repeated. “Only these vamps were different from the vamps of yore.” She perched on the study table and swung her legs, half-admiring her heeled boots, which were new—a product of a Saturday afternoon mother-daughter bonding ritual called “hitting the mall.”

  “These were organized vamps, like there’s another leader in town,” she informed her Watcher. “Had some nasties on Friday night. Another pair last night. No trouble, but it was kind of freaky.”

  “Really?” His brow crinkled. With both hands, he set the book down on the table. Dust rose off the cover like fog off the ocean.

  “Really.” Buffy leaned backward and peered into the stacks, on the lookout for her best friend. “Speaking of demons, Willow was a big no-show all weekend. She didn’t show up at the Bronze, and hasn’t returned my phone calls. Plus, she isn’t in school today. No one’s seen her. That spooks me a trifle.”

  Giles raised an eyebrow. “Spooks you a trifle?”

  “Trifle. A little less than Poltergeist, a little more than Casper. Trifle.”

  “Ah,” Giles said, then quickly moved on. “What does Willow’s tardiness have to do with demons? Did you and she have a quarrel or something?”

  “Or nothing. Ever since she got mugged, Willow’s been getting funkier by the day.” She pursed her lips. “She’s actually acting . . . witchier . . . than Cordelia. And you know how pointed her hat is.” Buffy sat forward and crossed her arms.

  “Well, we do all have our bad days,” Giles offered, scrutinizing her. “But I should like to hear more about these—”

  Buffy frowned impatiently. “She was wearing sunglasses, and they were Gargoyles.”

  He blinked, clearly not getting it.

  “Giles, read the magazines, don’t just subscribe. Even geeks have put their Gargoyles away. And as for wearing them indoors, well, that went the way of the sequined glove and Bubbles the Chimp. It’s so over even the geeks think it’s over.”

  She reddened. “Not that I’m lumping Willow in with the geeks. Because I would never do that. She’s my friend. And that’s the point of my babblesomeness. She is not acting like herself.”

  Giles sighed. “Buffy, please, I beg of you, slow down. For someone who insists she’s not a morning person, you bring with you a certain manic exuberance to our pre-class chats that I, for one, occasionally find a bit, well, exhausting.”

  “Well, of course,” she said cheerily. “You’re old . . . er than me,” she amended, at his crestfallen expression.

  They both glanced up as Xander strolled in, already talking as he walked through the door.

  “Subject: Willow. Not even Oz the new true love werewolf boyfriend has seen her today.”

  “Subject: Willow,” Buffy agreed, rubbing her hands together.

  “Buffy, I really think we ought to concentrate on these vampires who targeted you over the weekend,” Giles insisted. Before Buffy could protest, he held up a finger. “First. After which we may discuss Willow’s change of attitude and declining fashion sense to your heart’s content.”

  “Oh, all right,” Buffy said, pouting. “Xander, come.” She patted the study table. “Sit.”

  “I pant like a dog and obey like a doormat.” He sat beside her and gave her a friendly bump with his elbow.

  “We were going back through some odd occurrences of late,” Giles told Xander. “Over the weekend, Buffy met up with some vampires who were very focused, very organized.”

  Xander nodded knowingly. “All right. Teamster vamps. Filed away. Next item?”

  “She was in the graveyard with Angel the night before and felt something weird.”

  “Buffy,” Xander said, scandalized.

  “We both had this weird feeling,” Buffy said.

  “Yeah, I’ll just bet you did. It being that weird feeling popularly known as lust.” Xander looked angry. “Do you know how dangerous it is to make out when you’re on patrol?”

  Buffy frowned indignantly, even though she figured her flush was giving her away. “Not making out. We were both hunting.”

  “Hunting what?” he asked. “For rabies? Cuz if you keep kissing Dead Boy, you’ll probably get them. I warned Willow about the same thing with Oz.”

  “And I’m sure Willow appreciated it as much as I do,” Buffy said, frowning at him.

  Xander held up his hand. “Plus, what kind of message are you sending to all those impressionable young vampire girls who might be spying on you two? You know, as the Slayer, you are a role model, whether you like it or not.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” she drawled, giving him a knowing look. “Next time I find you all over Cordelia.”

  “We are not talking about my strange hobbies,” Xander said without a hint of embarrassment. “We’re talking about your taste in boyfriends.”

  Buffy slipped off the table and began to pace. “Meanwhile, Will. I think she was so shaken by the attack that she’s putting up walls so she won’t get hurt again.” She trailed off, thinking of when she had been defeated by the vampire known as the Master. How angry she’d been once she’d been brought back to life. How bitter and mean to all her friends.

  How Xander had brought her back to life with CPR.

  “At first I thought it would pass, but it’s been more than a week now since she was attacked and she’s only getting moodier. Now she’s dropped out of real life completely, or something. We have to help her,” she finished softly, giving Xander a look as she recalled how many times
he had been there for her and Willow both. For everyone.

  Xander said quietly, “And we will, Buff.”

  They smiled at each other.

  * * *

  “Okay, let me figure this out,” Cordelia said, as she drove Xander over to Willow’s house. “Whenever I inform you that we must cut short our perverse and disgusting display of mutual passion or whatever, I am then on a date with another guy. But whenever you call it quits and ask me to drive you to Willow’s house, we are checking up on a friend?”

  Xander peered through the window on the passenger side and nodded. “I swear, babe, hanging with me has increased your brain power.”

  “I am not ‘babe.’ I have never been ‘babe’ and I will never be ‘babe.’ Babe is a pig.” She stomped on the brake. “And no dumb whiplash cracks, either. And as for my brain power—”

  “I have said nothing. I have nothing to say,” Xander said, opening the door and rushing to Willow’s front door. The porch light was on, but it looked like nobody was home.

  He rang the bell. They waited.

  “I’m hungry,” Cordelia whined.

  “I’ve got a half-eaten candy bar on the floor mat on my side,” he said. “Formerly, it was in my hand, but I had to drop it when we careened on two wheels around that last curve. The chewed part is probably covered with carpet fuzz, but what the hey, we all need our fibre.”

  “That’s disgusting,” Cordelia said. She leaned past him and knocked hard on the door. “She’s not home. Come on. I have two hours until cheerleading practice.”

  Xander was tempted. Two hours in Cordelia’s arms were two hours well spent. He was certain she was dumping an extreme amount of money into lipstick these days, because she was wiping it all over his face with an extravagance matched only by his purchases of Altoids breath mints.

  But his concern for Willow was stronger than his practically overwhelming desire for big smoochies, et cetera.

  “What’s the big?” Cordelia demanded, as he stubbornly stayed on the porch. “So she’s out.”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” Xander asked. “It’s a school night.”

  “So she’s Bronzing with Oz.” Cordelia shrugged. “Maybe she’s gone shopping with Buffy.” She thought that through. “No,” she said decisively. “Those two would never actually go shopping for fun. If they put the least amount of effort into it, they’d just have to have better wardrobes.”