Blooded

by Christopher Golden

  And then Buffy had come and fought for her. Had been hurt. For her. Then she had done the thing that made Willow feel like throwing up. The thing that was even now gnawing a guilty little hole in her gut. Buffy had offered herself up to Chirayoju in Willow’s place.

  “Oh, God, Buffy, I’m so sorry,” Willow whispered.

  Incredibly, though Willow was already at her top speed, she began to run even faster. The little disk clutched in her palm felt warm there, and she prayed that Giles would know what to do with it.

  They were a team. She understood that now, more than ever. Each did his or her part, whatever they were called upon to do. Right now her job was to get this thing to Giles as quickly as possible. After that, it would be in Giles’s hands.

  “Please, please, please, please,” she chanted under her breath as she ran. But Willow had no idea whom she was pleading with: her body, or Giles, or someone else who could make all this right. Maybe all of them.

  Maybe anyone who’d listen.

  Willow ran.

  Her heart pumped so fast and hard that her chest constricted and she wondered if this was what a heart attack felt like. But when she glanced up again, she saw the school. She had never been happier to get to Sunnydale High.

  Willow stumbled going up the front steps, catching her foot on the long Chinese robe in which she found herself dressed. She skinned her knee on the concrete. But she picked herself up and kept moving. The front door was locked, of course. Giles hadn’t expected anyone to be following on his heels.

  She pounded on the door and began to scream his name. Barely able to hear the sound of her own voice, Willow shrieked her throat raw. The side of her hand hurt, and she started to slap the door instead. Anything. Whatever it took.

  The door opened. Cordelia stared at her.

  “Oh my God, Willow, what’s . . .”

  Willow fell into Cordelia’s stunned embrace, barely noticing the other girl’s astonishment. Then Cordy hugged her a little, which surprised Cordy as much as it did Willow.

  “What is it?” Cordelia asked, staring at her. “Your clothes. Is that armor? If you’re here . . . oh, my God, what’s happened to Xander? And Buffy?”

  “Still alive, I think,” Willow panted, then moved past Cordelia and started down the hallway toward the library. “But not for long if Giles can’t do something.”

  Cordelia hurried up next to her and helped her along, gripping Willow’s forearm and putting her other arm around her shoulders. “I think we may have something,” Cordelia said simply.

  “For all our sakes,” Willow rasped, “you’d better.”

  * * *

  In the library Cordelia looked up worriedly and said, “What was that? Are we having an earthquake?”

  “Hmm, not a welcome thought, that. Seeing as the garden has a bit of a bad history with earthquakes,” Giles muttered.

  “Take a look at this,” he added, showing her the fax. “Can you find this for us? On the, um, computer?”

  Willow shrugged. “If it’s on there, I can find it.”

  Giles picked up the sword disk and scrutinized it. It gleamed in his hand and he murmured, “It’s a shame that simply replacing this disk wouldn’t bind them once again. Of course, we would also have to manage to get that sword from Sanno . . . Xander . . . somehow.”

  He must have felt both Cordelia’s and Willow’s eyes on him, for he looked up from the disk and cleared his throat.

  “So, to the Net.”

  “To the Net.” Willow cracked her knuckles.

  While she was working, Giles received another fax:

  Giles-sensei,

  My deepest apologies for my earlier behavior. It was very rude of me to criticize your methods of working with your Slayer. I feel a great bitterness in my soul that I failed in my own duty to Mariko-chan. It is difficult for me to accept responsibility for her death. My sense of powerlessness now colors my life, and I felt great jealousy when I spoke to you because your Slayer is alive. I am very ashamed.

  As a token of my regret, I offer this: intrigued by your studies, I have found the Legend of the Lost Slayer, as detailed on a scroll which was discovered late last year in Osaka. I am sending you the complete story, but the short version is this:

  In 1612, there was a Watcher who was a samurai. Because he failed in his duty, he was ordered by his lord to commit seppuku. Where did his duty lie, to his Slayer or his lord? He chose his lord, and his Slayer was left without help. She was killed three months later.

  I think that your young American girl is fortunate to have such a caring Watcher as you, Giles-sensei. I thank you for this lesson, and again, I beg your pardon.

  Kobo

  Giles swallowed hard, moved by the old man’s confession. There were many kinds of demons in the world, and many ways to be bound by them. In his own way, Kobo had been blooded.

  * * *

  A short time later, they were in Giles’s ancient auto, trundling toward the site of the climax of this ancient battle. Willow only hoped that everyone was still alive.

  “Y’know, Giles, I was thinking,” she said. “I mean, if you can do this thing, put the demon into the sword, why can’t we pull the demon out of Angel the same way?”

  Giles ran a red light and Cordelia murmured, “Yay.”

  “It had crossed my mind. But we’re not sure how well the spell will work. Even if it does, it may only be because we’re using an object that’s already enchanted. Not to mention that, of course, the only result of removing the very thing that makes Angel a vampire would be that Angel would no longer be immortal.”

  “But Buffy’s not immortal,” Willow said helpfully. “That wouldn’t be too bad.”

  “What I mean, Willow, is that Angel would be dead.”

  “Okay, that would be bad.”

  “This is all so insane,” Cordelia said suddenly. “Why do I keep getting myself involved with you people? I’m going to get myself killed!”

  “You just can’t help yourself?” Willow suggested helpfully.

  Cordelia smiled weakly. “Maybe not. So, are you okay?” she asked.

  Willow blinked. Surprised and happy that Cordelia would bother to ask. “I guess so,” she answered. “Actually, I’m pretty much one big bruise, but I think I’ll be all right. If I ever get over the guilt of having started all this.”

  Cordelia frowned and Giles shot Willow an angry glance.

  “What’s happened is no more your fault, Willow, than it is Buffy’s fault that we all live in the Hellmouth,” Giles said sharply.

  Willow thought about that. “I don’t know how Buffy does it,” she replied. “I mean, she’s got to live, right? She has to have a life, but she’s constantly putting herself and everyone she loves in danger by being the Slayer. Not that she means to put us in danger,” she added loyally.

  Cordelia turned around in her seat to look at Willow. “We’re in danger just living here. I’ll never admit it if you tell her I said it, but I’d hate to think about what Sunnydale would be like if we didn’t have a Slayer in town.”

  “Willow, Buffy merely does her best. That’s all any of us can ask of her, or one another. Thus far, I think we’ve all done rather well,” Giles said.

  “Yeah.” Willow nodded. “Thus far.”

  But she was comforted by their words. And she agreed with them. Buffy did her best to protect them all, but in the end it was their job to protect themselves. They all had to deal with living in the Hellmouth in their own way. They all had their own roles to play in the fight against darkness. It was a team effort.

  “Thanks, you guys,” she said.

  Cordelia rolled her eyes and offered a little scowl in return, and Giles was already off elsewhere, deep in thought. Which was okay. They were doing what they did best.

  Willow stared out her window at the stars.

  Stared out and saw a reddish glow against the sky.

  Beneath the car, the earth trembled.

  The three looked at one another.

/>   Cordelia said, “If it’ll make this heap go faster, I’ll get out and push.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Angel landed atop a granite pagoda, which shattered beneath him, sending a good-sized shard of stone tearing through his abdomen. He groaned loudly, rolled over, and tried in vain to sit up once more. His face had long since transformed into its more feral, vampiric appearance, and it felt like ice now to him, cold and dead.

  Angel stared down at the shiny granite shard protruding from his belly, cursed under his breath, and gripped it with both hands. He yanked it out, roaring with the pain of it, and then held a hand over the hole. A ripple of pain passed through him as he forced himself to his knees, but Angel ignored it.

  His own pain meant nothing as long as Buffy was in trouble. Right now, she was in very serious trouble.

  “You think that little girl’s body can stand up to the King of the Mountain?” Sanno roared through Xander’s mouth, with a voice that didn’t sound anything at all like Xander anymore.

  With that, the Mountain King swept the great sword around once more and brought it down at an angle that would easily have decapitated Buffy. But Chirayoju was fast . . . Buffy was fast.

  Only when Sanno laughed, as he did now, could Angel hear Xander inside him. That laugh was keeping him from killing the boy. That, and the fact that without Sanno, he didn’t think he had a chance at all of defeating Chirayoju. Which was the dilemma, of course. He needed help to stop even one of them, but neither of them was interested in doing anything but killing each other.

  “I have conquered foreign lands, Mountain King,” Chirayoju thundered as it sent another ring of fire spouting at Xander. “When the bones of your host are ground into this earth, into the false garden of your homeland, I will be ruling nations!”

  Using Xander’s arms, Sanno brought up the sword and the fire was turned harmlessly away, as if it were a weapon as solid as the blade. Which, in a magical sense, Angel guessed it was.

  They moved at each other again.

  Angel tried to stand, tried to stop them, but a wave of pain overcame him, and he stumbled slightly. He needed just a few seconds to focus. To orient himself. But they were a few seconds he did not have.

  Chirayoju’s fist was aflame with a magical blaze—Buffy’s hand was on fire!—and it drove that burning fist into Xander’s face, scorching flesh and boiling blood with a smell that made Angel’s mouth water and made him want to retch all at the same time.

  “No,” Angel grunted, started stalking toward them.

  With a roar of pain and fury, Sanno drove his sword home. Its point punched through Buffy’s shoulder just below the collarbone, and Angel wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw her shirt tent out in the back, as though the blade had passed all the way through.

  “No!” Angel screamed, and picked up speed, hand still clamped over his healing belly.

  They stood that way, frozen for a second, maybe two. Then Sanno ripped the sword out, slamming his—Xander’s—upper torso into Buffy’s body and sending Chirayoju stumbling back, left arm hanging limply by her—its—side. Blood ran freely from the wound, and Angel stared at it as he approached. But already the blood was drying up. Already the wound was healing. By sorcery, or because Chirayoju was a vampire, he didn’t know. But the speed of it was amazing.

  He glanced at Sanno, saw that Xander’s face was also healing, and with that amazement running through his mind, he launched himself the last few feet toward Buffy. In her eyes, Chirayoju’s spirit burned. Her lips stretched into a disgusting laugh, and that ghostly face that the sorcerer had worn earlier returned, even as it reached out for Angel.

  Angel clasped his fists together, brought them around from waist level and up into Buffy’s face with all the strength he could summon. There was a loud crack, and Buffy’s body flew backward several feet, her head snapped back and to one side.

  “Well done, young one,” a deep voice that was not Xander’s said behind him.

  Angel turned quickly as a powerful hand clamped on his shoulder. Behind him, the King of the Mountain grinned with Xander’s face, but more and more, Sanno was taking over and Xander seemed almost to be disappearing into himself.

  But then that smile disappeared, and for the first time Angel saw the true arrogance of an ancient god, or whatever manner of being this was that had once been called a god. He saw the cruelty and the conceit there, and Angel stiffened, prepared to fight again.

  “Arigato gozaimasu,” Sanno said. “I thank you, stripling. But now, keep out of my way!”

  Then the King of the Mountain lifted Angel from the ground and threw him into the air. Angel landed hard on his back, and though his rage increased even further, a tiny spark of dread was born in his heart, a sort of hopelessness unlike anything he had ever known.

  Somehow, he had to stop them both from fighting to the death. But he had no idea how to go about it.

  “Come then, Mountain King. I will tear the throat from your host body, and drink down the boy’s blood, and your spirit with it,” Chirayoju sneered as it regained its footing, its guttural grunting twisting Buffy’s perfect, soft mouth into something horrible, something Angel could barely stand to see.

  “You will spill no more blood this night, vampire,” Sanno declared, sword held at the ready.

  “You’re right,” Chirayoju crowed, then slid toward Xander—toward the Mountain King—with the grace of a dancer, despite the arm that hung limply by its side . . . by Buffy’s side.

  Buffy’s mouth contorted into a repulsive grin. “I won’t spill a drop,” it said from within her. “I wouldn’t want to waste it. No, I will taste the blood of your host, and then I will gather the small army already in my thrall, and I will walk the night of this new land and my power will swell with each risen moon.”

  “You will walk only in the spirit world, parasite. I will see to that,” Sanno proclaimed, and launched himself at the vampire again.

  Chirayoju rushed to meet him.

  * * *

  Buffy was cold. She imagined she could remember what it was like to be buried in the frozen earth. To be dead, immobile in her own flesh. It must be something like this, she thought. But of course she could not remember it. And she was grateful for that at least.

  But this wasn’t the same. Not exactly. For as she floated inside the limbo that was her own mind, she could see cracks in her prison. Glimpses of the outside. There were moments when she felt a phantom pain, the tingling of her fingers, the thudding of her heart. Moments when she saw through her own eyes and heard with her ears.

  She gathered her energy, reached into the deepest reserves of her mind, into the fabric of everything that made her herself. Buffy Summers. The Chosen One.

  The Slayer.

  And when dawn finally broke, what was Chirayoju but another vampire. More powerful than others, maybe. Older. And there was that whole magic thing, sure. But he was still a vampire.

  Buffy knew what to do with vampires.

  She focused her anger, her hatred, and her duty, concentrated on her revulsion and her thirst for vengeance until they became like some kind of mental weapon, a blade of her own. A blade that sliced from within. Then she surged up through her consciousness, and she attacked! Chirayoju screamed inside her mind.

  “I hope it hurts, you son of a . . .” she started to say.

  With her own voice. Her own lips.

  Then she was wrenched back down again, down away from the surface, away from the body that she’d successfully navigated through seventeen years of living in America.

  Buffy should have given up then. She knew that. Every ounce of strength had gone into that last effort, and it had given her only a moment of triumph. No matter how strong she was, no matter how brave, no matter how persistent, even she might have lost all hope in that moment, were it not for one thing.

  Chirayoju was afraid.

  She didn’t know quite what it feared. It had to do with the sword, and with the millennia it had spent as a captive insi
de the sword. But the King of the Mountain had already stabbed her—stabbed it—once, and there had been no reaction. But still, Chirayoju feared that sword, as if there was still some possibility that it might be trapped there again.

  Chirayoju was afraid.

  In the secret chambers of her mind, Buffy smiled.

  * * *

  As smoke from the burning Japanese farmhouse roiled toward the combatants, Chirayoju glared with hatred at the Mountain King and thought of the girl whose body it inhabited with loathing. She was fighting to reassert control of this form. For that she would pay.

  While the ancient spirits raged, the fire from the farmhouse had spread. Flames raged around the battleground as the desiccated plants of the garden fed the blaze.

  A wind whipped up, fanning the flames. Fireballs shot like arrows from Chirayoju’s fingertips and were diverted by Sanno’s sword, helping to spread the blaze ever faster.

  As Angel watched, the winds whipped up and seemed to lift Chirayoju from the oval of garden that was not aflame, the patch of earth which had become the arena for this ancient battle. Buffy seemed to fly then, with the magic of the vampire sorcerer propelling her along. She hovered above the place where the tiny farmhouse had been, where the fire burned brightly.

  Then she dropped into the flames.

  “Buffy, no!” Angel screamed.

  But it was only a moment before she reemerged, hair ablaze, skin blackened and smoking. Then the flames were out, and already Chirayoju’s magic was working to repair the damage; new pink skin began to show through.

  In Buffy’s hand, Chirayoju held a long, gleaming katana. The sword reflected the light of the fire and of the full moon above. For a moment, Buffy’s body just hung in the air.

  Then the wind swept down with pummeling force and carried Chirayoju with it. It dropped to the earth in front of Xander . . . in front of Sanno, and the two spirits clashed swords.