The floor beneath Buffy made a strange singing sound as she ran across it. It startled her, making her falter.
Willow’s head jerked up. With a whiplike motion, she turned the spear around and pointed it at Buffy. Then she said, “Oh. It’s only you.” She wiped her face and stared with brutal hostility at the person who was supposed to be her best friend. The spear remained pointed at Buffy.
“Oh? It’s only me?” Buffy echoed in astonishment.
“I thought you might be someone else.” Her tears were gone. She was a different person.
Oh, yes, a very different person.
“Who were you expecting?” Buffy demanded, sliding her hand into her Slayer’s bag as discreetly as she could. “Pizza delivery? Cable guy?”
Willow pursed her lips. Then she smiled a cruel, knowing smile and patted a cushion across from her own. “I have within me a memory that in the past your childish humor amused me. Sit while I await the setting of the sun.”
Buffy didn’t move. Now that she had found Willow, with the sun at its last gasp, she didn’t know what to do. Eerily, Willow continued to pat the cushion. Her smile broadened.
She gestured to the floor. “This is a ‘Nightingale Floor.’ A very ancient tradition, which I learned in Japan,” she said. “The emperors installed them so that no one could sneak up on them. But of course I knew you were coming.” She chuckled. “I could smell your blood. I cannot wait to taste of it.”
“Willow,” Buffy tried again. “Something very bad has happened to you. Let me take you to Giles so he can fix you.”
“No one can ‘fix’ me.” Willow raised her chin. “It is too late.”
And then, for one awful moment, Willow’s chin quivered and she reached toward Buffy with both her hands. She was trembling. “Stop it,” she begged. “Buffy, stop me.” Then she fell forward as if someone had shot her.
The sun had gone down. The night had fallen upon them all.
Buffy acted. She darted toward Willow over the strangely singing floor and grabbed away her spear. In one motion she cracked it over her knee and tossed the two pieces across the room.
“And what has that accomplished?” Willow asked, in a lower, deeper voice. “That was not the weapon you should fear.”
“Okay,” Buffy said slowly, glancing at the sword on the ground not far away, trying to buy time. Angel should be catching up to her any second. “And the weapon to be feared would be?”
“I am that weapon,” Willow said.
Slowly she sat back up. The floor clinged and clanged. Buffy blinked. She could almost see another set of features superimposed over Willow’s. A luminous green face with blood-red lips. Almond-shaped black eyes that bored into her. The face seemed covered with some kind of glowing growth, like mold or rotted wood. It was horrible.
Laughter boomed across the room even though Willow did not laugh.
The floor sang, though Buffy stood frozen.
“I am,” Willow repeated.
She clapped her hands. Like arrows, vampires leaped into the room from every window and rushed Buffy. She realized they must have buried themselves in the garden the night before, to be so close so fast.
Instantly Buffy jumped to her feet and assumed a fighting stance. She kicked the first vamp to reach her in the face and scrambled to get a stake out of her bag, cursing herself for being caught off guard as another vampire grabbed her from behind. She thrust her body forward and down, flipping the vamp to the floor with a satisfying crack. She grabbed a stake and dispatched them both quickly, in twin clouds of dust.
The floor’s song became a long screech of fury. The vampires descended upon her, a small army, and she punched and kicked, fully realizing for the first time that the other night at the Bronze, the vampires who had lain in wait for her had been sent by Willow. They had preferred death over her wrath.
But it wasn’t her, that’s what Buffy kept telling herself. It wasn’t really Willow.
A girl vampire with bright red hair and an over sized St. Andrew’s sweatshirt vaulted toward her with a savage snarl even as another fang-girl in a large sweater dove at her legs. For a moment, they had her.
Then Buffy moved. Her fists came up and she shattered the grip of the redhead. With the heels of her hands, she thrust the St. Andrew’s girl’s head back, then slammed the by-now-well-used stake deep into her chest.
As soon as the redhead had exploded, Buffy took care of the other one around her knees.
But there were more. There seemed to be no end to them. And even though she was holding her own so far, Buffy was growing tired.
Seated on her pillow, Willow watched, smiling. Buffy turned to her and held out a beseeching hand, just as Willow had earlier. Panting, she said, “Will, you can stop them.”
Willow said slowly, as if the thought was just occurring to her, “Yes.”
Hopefully, Buffy went on, “Yes, yes! Just tell them to stop. They’d do what you want. They’re afraid of you.”
Willow lowered her head. Buffy felt a surge of hope that her sweet, Smurfy buddy was battling the monster that had possessed her.
Then Willow threw back her head and laughed, spreading her arms wide. The features of the other being were laid over her face like a grotesque green plastic mask.
“They should fear me,” Willow said, only it was not Willow’s voice at all. It was a demon’s, and it grated on Buffy’s nerves like fingers on a blackboard. “As should you, Slayer.”
It snapped its fingers and walked slowly toward Buffy. The other vampires released her and glided away, ringing the perimeter of the room like spectators at a wrestling match.
“You’re tired,” it said in a singsong voice, the floor echoing its hypnotic rhythm. “Very tired.”
Buffy’s eyes drooped. An ice-cold wind whipped up around her, sapping the energy from her muscles. Her legs quivered. Her knees began to buckle.
“Your heart is slowing. Your blood is congealing.”
Buffy sagged. She could barely keep her eyes open.
Then Willow rose into the air with her arms spread as the wind slapped at Buffy. Her head brushed the ceiling and her hair streamed behind her. Balls of lightning tumbled from her fingertips and crackled as they smashed into the floor around Buffy, setting the floor on fire.
The singing floor began to scream.
The other vampires backed away from the growing flames of the tinderbox wood, looking at one another as if waiting for one of them to jump out a window, so the others could see if it was better to upset Willow or burn to death.
“Know me as the vampire sorcerer Chirayoju,” Willow bellowed above the shriek of the wind as it whipped the flames into a brilliant wall of death. “I have come forth from my prison at last. And as soon as you are no longer a threat to me, Slayer, I will rule this place.”
“Sunnydale?” Buffy murmured. Now she was sweating from the heat, and suddenly she realized that the threat of the fire had distracted her long enough for Willow’s hypnotic voice to begin to lose its effect on her. Her heart was not slowing, it was revving up like she was listening to thrash metal after two particularly thick espressos. And most definitely was her blood not congealing.
“Really, with all these special effects, you could do better,” she went on, her voice stronger, her stance more assured. “Conquering Sunnydale would be nothing to brag about to the other vampire sorcerers in Vampire Sorcererland, believe me. They’d take your union card and laugh you right out of the club.”
“Silence!” Chirayoju shrieked. It fell from the ceiling, aiming directly at Buffy.
Which would require, Buffy realized, that it pass through the wall of flame.
“Willow!” she shouted. “No!”
The body of her friend continued to plummet. Buffy took a deep breath and looked for a gap in the flames. She saw one about three feet to her left—the flames were only knee-high—and Buffy bounded over to the spot, making sure she still had her Slayage equipment, and jumped over the fire. She felt the he
at through the soles of her boots.
Chirayoju landed less than five feet from her and came at her with a series of roundhouse kicks. Buffy ducked them, giving as good as she got, then wincing as the monster cried out in pain, not in its own voice, but in Willow’s.
“An interesting dilemma for you, eh?” Chirayoju said. “You must defeat me, but you do not want to kill your friend.” It sneered at her, a morphing combination of its own features and Willow’s. “You are weak.”
“Oh?” Buffy stiff-armed Willow in her changing face. The thing inside her staggered backward. “How’s that for weak?”
“You care for her,” Chirayoju taunted her, coming at her. “I care for nothing and no one.”
“You hear that, you guys? It doesn’t care about you.” Buffy called. She ticked a quick glance around the room. The other vampires had disappeared. No wonder. The entire building was engulfed in flames, the ceiling included. Any second now, the whole structure would cave in.
With a grunt of effort, Buffy launched herself at Chirayoju, forcing it back into the depths of the room. Yet Buffy’s mind registered that Willow was in mortal danger from the flames.
She had no idea what to do. Chirayoju represented a threat far greater than just this tiny combat in a dead garden. Buffy had to stop it. But how to do that without sacrificing her best friend . . .
Above her, two wooden beams dislodged from the ceiling and crashed to the floor behind her. The floor groaned like a dying beast, and then it cracked open. Buffy staggered backward slightly. Another beam fell. Roof tiles shot through the weakened ceiling toward her and Chirayoju like bombs.
Suddenly she rushed Chirayoju, grabbed the demon vampire around the waist, and dove with it out a window.
They rolled in the weeds and the dirt. Then Buffy flung it away from her and resumed her fighting stance.
It was then that she realized her Slayer’s bag was still inside the burning building.
Chirayoju seemed to realize the same thing at the same time.
It grinned hideously.
“It ends,” it said, advancing slowly, as if savoring the moment of triumph. Smoke rose from its body. “You will be mine.”
“Sorry, I’ve already got a Valentine.”
Her mind raced as she scanned the area for a piece of wood, a branch, anything she could use as a weapon. Finally, in desperation, she reached inside her blouse and yanked the metal chain she wore around her neck. She held the cross before Chirayoju, having no idea if it would have any effect on a Chinese vampire sorcerer.
Chirayoju hissed and stopped short. Buffy almost cheered with relief. It was the same cross Angel had given her the night they met. She would have to thank him again for it. She would have to—
“Where did you get that?” the vampire demanded, gesturing to it.
“Does it matter?” she asked, feeling better as she caught her breath.
“It’s mine! Give it back!” it shouted, balling its fists in frustration.
“Yours?” Buffy glanced at the chain. Along with the cross, the disk Willow had taken from the Sword of Sanno dangled from it.
Buffy grinned.
“Oh. Yours,” she said. “Then come and get it.”
Frenzied, screaming, Chirayoju flew at her.
For a heartbeat, Buffy froze. If Willow was really a vampire, just another hollow corpse filled with some kind of bloodsucking demon spirit—well, that’d be different. It wouldn’t be Willow anymore. But as far as she could tell, whatever this Chirayoju was, it was inside the real flesh-and-blood Willow, and she was still in there, too.
For the moment, Chirayoju seemed focused on the small disk she wore on a chain with her crucifix. Could she just give it up? Maybe . . .
Chirayoju lunged for her. The Slayer dropped her left shoulder, ducked it down and came up under Willow’s body, flipping Chirayoju over and back. Claws scrabbled for purchase on Buffy’s blouse and arm, dragging deep, bloody furrows across the flesh of her upper biceps.
Buffy spun to face the vampire demon who possessed the body of her friend. The seething sting of the scratches on her arm gave her a new clarity: staying alive was key. Part of the Slayer’s job, actually. But unless she was willing to kill Willow, she would die.
Buffy took a deep breath. Then, silently, she apologized to Giles. To her mom. To Dad, wherever he was this week.
Because she knew she was about to fail in that primary task. Buffy Summers knew she was about to die.
Then, in that same moment of clarity, she recalled something that would save her life. Willow’s hand. Or rather, her wrist. After Chirayoju had possessed her, Willow’s fractured wrist had healed instantly. Almost miraculously.
Buffy smiled. She wasn’t going to like hurting Willow, but at least now she knew that Willow would heal. She could defend herself without doing any lasting damage.
“All right, whatever the hell you are,” Buffy snapped. “Come on, then. I want my friend back. If that means I have to keep inflicting pain until you decide to forfeit the game—well, let me tell you, I can go all night.”
Chirayoju roared and rushed at her again. Willow’s red-tinted locks flew back as the vampire sorcerer came at Buffy, more cautious this time, but no less savage.
“I have had entire nations on their knees before me,” Chirayoju snarled. “The ancients whimpered in fear at the whisper of my name. So shall you.”
The thing circled, looking for an opening. Buffy kept up her guard, and they faced each other down. She found it difficult to look at Willow’s face, at the slack emptiness of her features, the hollowness of her eyes. Instead, she concentrated on the gossamer flickering of the grotesquely glowing green face that seemed to cling over Willow’s like some sheer Halloween mask.
Only this wasn’t Halloween.
Buffy knew from Halloween, and this was way worse.
“The ancients, huh?” Buffy asked, smiling. “Well, then, just for you, the Slayer’s gonna have to reach way down deep inside and come up with a real old-school vampire butt-kicking.”
That ghost mask stretched itself into a sickening smile. Buffy’s stomach lurched as she saw Willow’s mouth and cheeks move beneath it, lifted into a tiny smile themselves, as though the ghost mask were touching her face, twisting her features.
“Foolish girl,” Chirayoju sneered. “You still do not grasp the truth of this conflict, do you? I have merely been testing you. This fragile shell I now wear has served me well, but it is weak and small.
“You, however, are the Slayer. Your body will be a much more suitable host for my magnificence.”
“I could take that as a compliment,” Buffy said. “But . . . no.”
She shot forward in a high kick. It would have connected well, a solid hit . . . if not for the wind. The wind that sprang up and tossed her through the air as though she were chaff in a summer breeze. Buffy landed painfully between a pair of squat pagodas. When she sat up, she had a hard time catching her breath.
Her left cheek was swollen and throbbing in pain, and she suspected the bone was bruised beneath the skin. Chirayoju wasn’t like any vampire she’d ever fought. Maybe it was because she was holding back for Willow’s sake, but she didn’t think so. There was something so profoundly evil in this creature that it made it difficult for her to concentrate. Not merely evil, but consciously so.
Most vampires were simple predators, their evil confined to their lust for blood and death and terror. This was very, very different. The average blood-sucker barely considered what its prey was, what it might be thinking, what life it might live. Buffy sensed in Chirayoju a horrible intelligence. This ancient, savage thing knew exactly what effect its butchery would have on its victims’ loved ones; it understood the questioning of reality that would come from an encounter with it.
Chirayoju was smart. The demon spirit was a vampire in more ways than one. It fed on blood, true. But Buffy realized that it fed on fear and despair as well.
And she wasn’t about to give it that.
Buffy looked up, felt the sharp pain of a torn muscle in her shoulder. She blew a strand of hair from her face with lips covered in bloody spittle. She was in rough shape, and she knew it.
She lowered her head as the vampire came for her.
She reached for the concrete roof of the little pagoda in front of her and brought it up hard, with all her strength, in a blow that tore her shoulder muscle further. The concrete shattered on the side of Chirayoju’s head with a crack. Blood sprayed, and Willow’s skull gave way.
Chirayoju dropped to the dead garden.
Buffy’s heart stopped. She couldn’t breathe. Tears sprang to her eyes.
“Oh my God, Willow!” she whispered frantically. “I’m sorry.”
She dropped to her knees in the soft, dead earth and reached for her friend. A hand whipped up from the ground and tangled in her hair, drawing her down, her face forced into the dirt and dead plants. The smell was rich and sweet and laced with rot.
“Now, Slayer,” she heard it whisper, “your body will be mine. This form was useful to me, but you are so much more powerful. You aren’t like other mortal girls.”
Buffy threw an elbow back, slammed it into Willow’s gut, then used her leverage to toss Chirayoju off her.
“I’ve been hearing that my whole life,” she grunted, still trying to catch her breath. Buffy looked up at the ghastly double-vision face of her best friend.
Chirayoju’s eyes bulged with rage. “You tempt my fury, girl.”
“Yeah,” Buffy agreed, getting to her feet. “I’m just kinda wacky like that. You and my mom should have a chat.”
Wearing Willow’s body, cloaked in an armored breastplate, the vampire began to rise again.
C’mon, Buffy wanted to say. Gimme a second to catch my breath, will ya?
Chirayoju began to charge. Buffy set her legs, trying to convince her exhausted body that she was truly ready for another round. There was nothing else she could do.
Except to die before she could be possessed . . .
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