Blooded

by Christopher Golden

  “Well, sure, Will,” he said slowly. “Um, have you been forgetting to eat again? Because I know the computer can be all fun and everything, but you’re kind of grouchy and perhaps the blood sugar has plummeted? So—”

  “Silence!” Willow ordered.

  “Willow?” He gave her the Nicholson eyebrow. “Are you trying out for a play or something? Because otherwise, I think this is an act you should drop. You are not exactly making friends and influencing people. We want to help you, if you’ll just let us.”

  Willow’s face seemed to change. For a moment she looked very sad and little-girl-lost. He went to her with open arms, fully expecting her to slide into them and finish that cry she’d begun last Monday morning.

  “Xander,” she said miserably, coming toward him. She was limping. Her hands went up to her head as if she had a monster hangover. Which she would not, she being Willow.

  “Xander, something’s very wro—”

  And then she shouted, “No!”

  She flew at him, kicking him in the face before he had time to react. Then she landed on top of him and pushed him back, grabbing his hair and slamming his skull against the porch. She made a fist and rammed it into his face. Hit him again. And again. She pummeled him with both fists as he fought to throw her off.

  “Wi . . . Wi . . .” Blood streamed down into his throat. He began to choke on it, until the only sound he could make was a desperate gurgle.

  “Ah, the scent of life is upon you,” Willow said. She threw back her head and laughed. Then, just as he thought she was going to let him up, she hit him again, very hard.

  Fade to black.

  Very black.

  * * *

  The familiar squeal of tires. Chirayoju looked up from the boy and listened. The mother of Weeping Willow was about to drive down the street. She would see the form of her daughter crouched over her young friend and she would ask far too many questions.

  Chirayoju stood and picked up the body. Hoisting the boy over its head, Chirayoju walked to the side of the porch and unceremoniously dumped him in the bushes. Chirayoju was furious at having been interrupted: the youth was not yet dead. His spirit would be delicious. With its sorcery, Chirayoju fed not on mere blood, but on the essence of life itself.

  But not this night.

  The car pulled up.

  “Honey?” Mrs. Rosenberg said as she got out of the car. “What are you doing here? I thought you had a tutoring session with Buffy.”

  “It ended early,” Chirayoju answered. “I wasn’t feeling all that hot and Buffy said she was coming down with something, too. Xander gave me a ride,” it assured Willow’s mother, who was looking concerned.

  “I’ve been kind of nervous ever since you were attacked,” the woman admitted.

  Yes, ever since your daughter was attacked, you have allowed me to take her over and use her. You will allow me to kill her. You Western mothers and fathers, with your blindness and self-interest, allowing your children to wander the streets like orphans. Is it a wonder that they are all so weak and foolish? That I have pickings here the like of which I never saw in ancient China and Japan, where the parents were more careful?

  It took every ounce of Chirayoju’s strength not to burst into laughter and crack the woman’s spine in two, then drink the life, the spirit, from her paralyzed and dying body. But it needed shelter from the coming dawn, and the sanctuary it had found elsewhere was a distance away. More importantly, it had become apparent that all the girl’s friends were vampire hunters—and the lovely blond maiden was their leader—and it saw no point in revealing itself to them at this moment. Or perhaps at any moment.

  So when the woman came up to it, put her hand on the forehead of its host, and said, “You feel hot. Come on inside, sweetie,” it meekly obeyed.

  As soon as the door is shut, it promised itself, she dies.

  Such a puny body could be easily hidden.

  * * *

  “Okay. One more time,” Buffy said to Giles. Angel, glancing through a book that featured various incantations against “vampyres and other creatures most abhorrent,” set it down and listened.

  She held out her hand. “Vampires.” Held out her other hand. “Demons.” Juggled. “Demonic possession.”

  “Yes. Quite right,” Giles said. He looked proud of Buffy. Angel knew the feeling. Buffy was the one thing in his life he could point to with unmitigated pride.

  Then Buffy made a face and juggled again. “But vampiric possession? Oh, Giles, I don’t know.”

  “How else can one explain what you saw?” Giles asked. He looked to Angel as if for backup. Angel shrugged. He was just about as perplexed as Buffy.

  “None of this sounds at all familiar to me,” he had to admit, flicking the pages of the book as if the answers lay there. “I’ve never come across anything like it. As far as I know, vampires can’t possess the living.”

  “However,” Giles mused, “one could argue that vampirism is a form of demonic possession. Vampires are basically soulless human corpses with demons residing within.” He had the grace to clear his throat and say, “Present company excepted.”

  “I’ll go along with that,” Angel conceded. “But the demons who inhabit vampires can’t jump from body to body, or influence another person the way other demons can. There was that vessel thing with the Master, but that was just a vicarious way for him to feed.”

  “Well, I’m very sorry I didn’t pay closer attention to your concerns about Willow,” Giles said to Buffy. “Clearly, something quite serious is happening to her and—”

  Buffy shifted uneasily. “I don’t know what I saw. I thought it looked like Willow, but maybe it wasn’t. I only saw it for an instant. Maybe I thought I saw her because I’m so worried about her.” She gazed at the phone. “I’d like to call and check on her, but her mother would kill her. And then mine would kill me.”

  “It’s been a very long day . . . and night, for all of us. Perhaps it’s best that we wait until the morning,” Giles agreed. “I’m certain Willow will be at school, and all will come clear.” His half-smile was only half-reassuring.

  “Come on, I’ll walk you home,” Angel said, taking Buffy’s hand.

  “Okay,” she said, with her quick, eager smile that sometimes cut him to the quick.

  Once outside the school, Angel took Buffy in his arms and kissed her long and hard. He couldn’t believe that of all the mortal girls there were in this world, he had fallen in love with the Slayer. And knowing that she loved him too made his strange and lonely existence more bearable. He was an outcast among vampires, yet still one of them, and sometimes her love was all that sustained him. That, and his vow to rid the earth of his brother and sister abhorrent creatures of the night.

  He smiled down at her as she peered up at him with her huge blue eyes. She had no idea what dark thoughts were running through his mind.

  She murmured, “Angel, I’m so confused.”

  “Why?” He trailed his fingers through her hair.

  “It’s just that . . .” She shrugged and laid her head against his chest. “Well, like with Willow. She’s been acting like such a b . . . bad person, bad, and so cranky and all. So then we get attacked by vampires and I decide I see her with them.”

  “You might have.”

  “No. In my heart, I know Willow’s not possessed. She’s just scared. I can’t believe I would even think such a thing. But then, it’s like my mom and me.”

  “She thinks you’re possessed?” Angel said, amused. He suspected he knew what was coming.

  Buffy did not disappoint.

  “It seems like half my life, my mom is saying, ‘Buffy, this just isn’t like you.’ Whenever I’ve done something to disappoint her. But if it wasn’t like me, I wouldn’t have done it. I couldn’t have done it.” She tilted her head back and gazed up at him. “Do you know what I mean?”

  He let his smile fade so that she wouldn’t think he was laughing at her, but his heart went out to her. There was nothi
ng he could do to spare her from growing up.

  “I think so,” he replied.

  “Look at Xander and Cordelia,” she went on. “Talk about possessed. They can’t even explain why they do what they do.” She shuddered. “I mean, it’s just so weird.”

  Chuckling, he nodded. Xander and Cordelia had surprised him, too. But when he thought about it, the spark had always been there. The way they bantered, throwing barbs at each other. Hotheaded and passionate, both of them.

  Yes, it made sense.

  “It was a lot easier when I was your age,” he told her. “When people did the unexpected, we said they were possessed and left it at that.” He moved his shoulders. “Actually, we didn’t leave it at that. We usually burned them at the stake or hanged them. Or, on a good day, we committed them to asylums.”

  He cupped her chin. “A strong-willed girl like you would have been labeled a witch. We’d definitely have burned you.”

  “ ‘C’mon, baby, light my fire,’ ” she quipped, but he could tell he had unnerved her.

  He knew that sometimes she forgot how old he was—242 to her 17. It was easy to forget because when he had been turned into a creature of the night, he had been near her age. The decades had not aged his physical appearance at all.

  Some of the mortal women he had known through the years had considered that a blessing . . . and begged him to change them at the height of their beauty. That he had not done, once his soul was restored to him. Not one could have fathomed the curse he would have laid upon their shoulders had he done so.

  “Your mother sees all that’s best in you,” Angel told Buffy as he traced the hollow of her cheek. She, too, was a beauty, but like many truly astonishing women, she didn’t see it. “Your face is the mirror of her love for you. When she looks at you and sees a flaw, a part of her blames herself for failing you in some way.”

  He cupped her chin and raised her face toward his. “That’s why she’s so hard on you, Buffy. Because she loves you so much.”

  “I’m her mirror?” Buffy asked tentatively. She thought that over. “Her cracked mirror,” she snorted.

  “No. Clear as glass,” he said. “Pure.”

  She shook her head. “Not me.”

  “Yes. You.”

  “But what about you, Angel?” She was changing the subject. He let her. “You don’t have a reflection.”

  “When I look at you, I do.”

  He kissed her, tentatively at first, then with more passion. She answered back, and he held her tightly. With all his heart, he wanted to be what Buffy wanted him to be. He wanted to be exactly what she needed. But he was a vampire, a half-demon, with a human soul warring against the darkness within every moment of every day.

  And he blamed himself fully for the many times he had failed her in the past. If there was any way he could undo what he had done . . .

  “Angel,” Buffy whispered, “I love you.”

  “I love you, too, Buffy.”

  “I want—” she began, but he stilled her voice with a finger across her lips.

  “Let me walk you home now,” he said gently.

  They strolled arm in arm, like a girl and a guy going home from a date.

  * * *

  In Willow’s room, Chirayoju got ready for bed and listened to the boy’s slowing heartbeat in the bushes outside the house. The youth would very likely be dead before dawn. If not, Chirayoju knew it would have another chance at the boy. Xander. He cared for Weeping Willow, and it would be the death of him.

  The vampire sorcerer glided to the high windows and looked out. In the darkness, it could see the silhouettes of its minions, the many vampires it had pressed into its service, as well as those it had caused to be created. Those that had already hunted and were sated for the night had gathered near the home of Weeping Willow, where their master resided, to pay homage to him until the dawn forced them to seek shelter.

  Chirayoju had begun to build its army. A small force, true. But growing with each passing night. Or it would have been, if not for the damnable vampire Slayer. As Chirayoju continued to gain strength, it would need more time to assemble its troops, not as in the days of old when it could command entire villages to rise up as one. But once it had reached its full strength, not even the Slayer would stop it from building a regiment of the dead large enough to enslave all the lands touched by the light of the moon.

  A cold breeze whistled through the open window. It thought of the cherry blossoms on the mountains of Japan, and the beautiful trees that had once bloomed in the garden in Sunnydale. Even now, it saw their quivering phantoms, recalling its peace as it had sat among them, plucking from the earth a withered bonsai tree to begin its shrine in the girl’s room.

  Willow’s mother knocked on the door. Chirayoju said, “Yes?”

  “Honey, I’m . . . are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” Chirayoju snapped. “Just tired.”

  There was a pause. “You don’t seem yourself.”

  Chirayoju crossed to the mirror on the wall and stared into it. Through sheer force of will, the girl’s features blurred and its own floated over them like a shimmering green diaphanous mask. It grinned at the fury it saw there. The unconquerable spirit. The vitality and strength of purpose.

  “I am myself, Mom,” Chirayoju answered. “Who else would I be?”

  Willow’s mother gave a short, awkward laugh. “I guess that’s the question most parents of teenagers ask themselves.”

  She pushed the door open, came in, and sat on Willow’s bed.

  “You were so cute and little when you were born,” she said wistfully. “I held you for hours, just staring down at you. I couldn’t believe how perfect you were. Your hands and feet. Each finger, each toe.”

  The woman picked up a pillow and held it against her chest. “The first time you had a temper tantrum, I was so shocked. My perfect little baby! But I was proud of you, too. You were becoming independent.”

  She plucked at the corner of the pillow. “As soon as a baby is born, she spends her days learning how to leave her parents’ care. First she rolls away, and then she crawls away, and then she walks away.”

  She sighed. “But I have hope that in the end, when she’s all grown up, she’ll come back. Not as my little baby, of course.” She smiled. “But maybe as my friend.”

  Chirayoju stared at her. It couldn’t believe her utter weakness. Nor that she honestly believed that the parent, who should be idolized and worshiped as a god, could be looked upon with such lack of respect that he—or she—would be treated as a friend.

  When it conquered this land, it would ensure that all such thinking was banished.

  Even by the dead.

  It smiled. “I hope that, too, Mom,” it said.

  She was alive only because as they had entered the house, it had realized that if it murdered her, there would be an investigation. Because she was an adult, there would be too many questions. Already, the authorities were looking into some of the deaths it had caused—the holy man, the old lady killed by his minions. But the boy in the bushes was only a boy, and children died in all kinds of tragic and unexplained ways, even in these modern times.

  In fact, especially in these modern times of drive-by shootings and incredible violence. And especially in this place, the Hellmouth, where evil flourished and grew.

  So it was safe to kill the boy. He was disposable. And unnecessary to the furthering of its ambition.

  Willow’s mother crossed to it and kissed it softly on her daughter’s cheek. It was very sorry that it could not kill her. Every time Weeping Willow heard her voice, she fought to regain possession of her being. Chirayoju found her struggles distracting and slightly tiring.

  With time, it would obliterate her, and she would struggle no longer.

  Outside, the boy’s heartbeat slowed even further.

  Soon, very soon, his struggles would also end.

  CHAPTER 10

  Mirror, mirror, on the wall,” Buffy said to herse
lf as she checked her visual presentation in the girls’ bathroom. Around her, girls milled and talked about guys and clothes. The pleasant aspects of teenagehood. And the not so pleasant: homework and fights with their parents.

  The pleasant stuff she couldn’t really relate to. The other stuff, sadly, she knew all too well: last night her mom had gotten a gander at her latest catch of “below averages.” And when she said, “Buffy, is this the way it’s always going to be?” Buffy tried to remember Angel’s lovely speech about how she was a mirror and her mom loved that mirror, but all it felt like was that she was in for seven years of really hard labor.

  A few girls said hi to Buffy but no one really rushed over to get her autograph or hear what she had to say about Dawson’s Creek. She had no other real girl buds except for Willow. She missed Willow—her version of Willow, not the update, Will version 6.66—more than ever.

  In fact, she sort of missed the way things had been when she’d first come to Sunnydale—the basic threesome of her, Willow, and Xander: the Three Musketeers, one for all and all for one. Now Willow and Oz were getting together, and Xander and Cordy were doing whatever it was they called it. Their friendships had changed, and that had changed their lives.

  On the other hand, she had Angel. As if that wasn’t weird enough.

  But since she was the Slayer, relationships had to take a back seat. Top priority was figuring out who the new top vamp in town was. So far, she’d had no luck beyond being haunted by the idea that the lithe figure she’d seen in the cemetery the night before had been Willow.

  She meandered out of the bathroom and was about to have a post-Starbucks, pre-first-period chat with Giles when Cordelia rushed toward her with her cell phone in hand. Buffy raised her brows and waited for whatever bombshell Cordy was about to detonate. Probably about a run in Buffy’s pantyhose, or the fact that her hair was “askew,” as Willow would put it. It was true: bad hair day was upon the Slayer. Cordelia’s revelation would not be news.

  Cordelia stopped short, looked left, right, must have decided none of the Cordettes could possibly witness her speaking to one of the untouchables, and rushed over to Buffy.