Buffy went rigid in Camazotz’s grasp, as suddenly a dark, writhing, oily thing began to slip from her open lips, dragged out of her by the bat-god’s probing tongue. It was an ephemeral thing, a dark ghost of boiling tar, a twitching, roiling cloud of blackness.
Willow had seen it before. The Prophet.
Somehow, Camazotz was tearing the entity right out of Buffy.
A pair of arms surged through the passenger window, grabbed Anya by the shoulder and by the hair, and began to pull her out. Her shoulder was slashed with broken glass and she cried out. Suddenly Xander thrust a hand up from the back of the van and slapped a crucifix down on the vampire’s arm. It smoked and burned and the van was filled with the smell of rotten meat cooking. The vampire withdrew, but there were others waiting.
Buffy hung limply in Camazotz’s grasp as his tongue dragged the black thing from within her.
“We can’t win this,” Anya snapped. “We’ve got to go!”
“Not without her,” Willow insisted. “Oz, run them both down. Camazotz and Buffy!”
“But Willow—” Xander began.
“She’ll survive it. She has to. But it’s the only way to buy us a few seconds to drag her in here.”
“What if she doesn’t survive it?” Oz asked calmly. Willow didn’t answer.
In the backseat of the sedan, Buffy shifted painfully on the seat, her blood sticky on the leather upholstery. Willow, beautiful and confident, watched her with great curiosity from the front seat. Xander drove and said nothing, never even turned his head.
“You ran me over?” Buffy asked, stunned. A great deal of the story Willow was telling—of the night five years ago when they had tried to save her from Camazotz—stunned her. “I don’t remember any of that.”
Willow offered a brief smile. “You weren’t yourself, Buffy. First you were possessed by Zotziloha, and then you were unconscious.”
“Zotzil-who?” Buffy asked.
The sedan knifed through the darkness. But it was a darkness lit with streetlights and businesses and homes, a place where real people lived out from under the control of the vampires. Through the windshield, Buffy saw a large, ornate church ahead, its stained-glass windows gleaming in the night. It heartened her to know that there were still people who had faith in something.
“Zotziloha was Camazotz’s wife. You knew her as The Prophet. She was a noncorporeal goddess entity, a demon yes, but not as evil as her mate. She fled him, but knew he would eventually catch up to her. Which was why she possessed you.”
“Then he drove her out?” Buffy asked.
“That’s one way to put it.”
And then they captured me, and kept me locked up all this time, Buffy thought. But the other Buffy inside her had more questions, and other priorities. Throughout the trek she had made to get away from the vampires, the two personas’ priorities had been the same, and it had been simple for them to coexist. Now, though, they were split again.
“I remember coming around while they were bringing me to my cell,” Buffy said, her voice a low rasp. “But nothing before that.”
Even as she said it, the younger Buffy within her knew that it was no longer as simple as returning to her own time. Given what Willow had told her, she knew that her spirit—the spirit of Buffy at nineteen—
would eventually be drawn back to the time and the body it was supposed to inhabit. But she did not know when. Any day, any hour, any minute, she could not know when. This Zotziloha entity had been driven out of her that night five years earlier, and her spirit returned. But now, in this dark future, she could not simply wait for that to happen. Unless she could find a way for her displaced spirit to return to her correct time earlier, before The Prophet, Zotziloha, possessed her body, then this future could not be avoided.
“God, my head hurts,” Buffy whispered. Then she looked at Willow. There was a hesitation between them, an awkwardness that five years apart had created. But Willow was still her friend, and Buffy knew that she had all the help she needed, the greatest ally she could ask for. “You and I have a lot of things to talk about, Will.”
“Yeah,” Willow agreed. “And soon. You have a lot of catching up to do, a lot for me to tell you. A lot of it bad. But at the moment…” she turned around to look out the windshield again. “Here we are.” The sky had been lightening as they drove, and now the eastern horizon was bright and blue. The sedan pulled into an unmarked street. A line of trees had been planted along the road. They drove along until they came to a building that looked like a hospital or office complex, the other vehicles close behind. The troop transport went past them, into a large lot beside the building, but the two sedans parked right up in front among some other cars.
“This is home base,” Willow said.
Buffy stared at the front of the building. “Big operation.” The three of them climbed out of the car. Without a word or a glance, Xander started for the building, but Buffy and Willow hung back, walking slowly side by side. After a moment, both women paused. Buffy and Willow turned to gaze at each other. The Slayer was overcome with emotion, a release of despair that she had fought against for so long. Willow bit her lip, a tiny smile twitching at her lips, and then the women embraced. Best friends, too long apart, they had built up walls around their hope that they would be together again. Buffy still felt some distance between them, knew that it would take time for them to be comfortable with each other again.
But this was a start.
After a moment, they stepped back from each other. Buffy began to walk toward the building, but paused again and glanced curiously at this woman Willow had become.
“I know we have a million things to talk about— you have no idea—but you know what’s nagging at me? If all Camazotz wanted was his wife back, then why did he capture me afterward? Why bother with me at all? He could have just killed me and gone home. All this conqueror stuff, I mean, what does that have to do with chasing his wife?”
Willow’s eyes went wide as Buffy spoke. When only silence hung between them, Willow lifted a hand to her mouth as though afraid of the words that might come out. After a moment, she shook her head.
“God, Buffy, I’m sorry. I… it never occurred to me that you didn’t know.” Icy tendrils of dread clutched at Buffy’s heart. “Didn’t know what?”
“Nobody’s seen Camazotz for years. If he’s still alive, he’s probably as much a prisoner as you were.”
Buffy frowned. “I don’t understand.”
The van rocked back and forth as the Kakchiquels tried to tip it over. Anya held up a crucifix in front of her broken window. Willow stared through the windshield and saw Camazotz retract his tongue. The black, viscous thing that had been pulled from inside Buffy’s throat undulated at the end of the bat-god’s tongue. Buffy was limp in his clutches but the thing was out of her body, at least. Camazotz sucked the twitching black thing into his mouth and swallowed it whole. The bat-god’s withered wings fluttered mightily and he threw his disgusting head back and laughed, needle teeth flashing in the starlight.
“Run him down,” Willow said, stomach roiling in disgust. “Go!” Oz put the van in drive and was about to floor it when there came a soft tap at the driver’s-side window.
They all glanced that way at once, surprised by the subtle noise amidst the violent cacophony around them.
Giles stood beside the van, just outside Oz’s window. He no longer wore his glasses, and his eyes blazed brightly with orange flame. He bore no tattoo on his face, but when he smiled at them, Willow saw the pale outline of fangs.
Something crumbled inside her then. “No,” she whispered, shaking her head in despair. “No, no, no!”
“Giles,” Anya said. “He’s a…”
“You can’t win,” Giles called amiably, loud enough to be heard through the window. “You can only die. Don’t worry, though. Buffy will live. I wouldn’t dream of killing her.” With that he turned away from the van and strode toward Camazotz. Through Anya’s shattered window they he
ard Giles shout at the bat-god.
“Careful with her! Don’t forget, if you kill her, another will rise in her place. The only way to defeat the Slayer is to cage her. If we can’t send her to Hell, bringing Hell to her here on Earth is the next best thing.”
Camazotz hesitated, but after a moment he dropped Buffy on the ground. Giles motioned to several of the others, who picked her up, and then they all retreated into the night, beyond the reach of the van’s headlights, carrying Buffy with them.
In a moment, the van idled in the parking lot, and they were alone save for the dead travelers inside the bus station.
They had been left alive, but Willow knew it was not because the monster who had once been their friend had spared them. It was because they were an afterthought. With the Slayer a prisoner, they didn’t matter to him. Not at all.
“Oh, man. Giles,” Oz said, voice hushed.
“What do we do now?” Xander asked. “We are so screwed.” Willow began to cry, there in the back of the van, great heaving sobs that seemed to be torn right out of her. She didn’t think she would ever be able to stop.
Buffy stared at Willow, eyes wide. She had never felt so cold. Of all she had seen and heard in this horrid future, this was the hardest blow of all. She bit her lip, tears slipping down her cheeks, and shook her head slowly.
“No, Willow. Oh, no,” she whispered. “Not Giles.” For Willow, that night was five years in the past. And yet the pain of it still haunted her eyes. She pulled Buffy to her again, held her for a long moment. Suddenly Buffy pulled away.
“Giles,” the Slayer said, wiping at her eyes. “Giles is a vampire.” Willow paused, then glanced away. “Not just a vampire,” she said. “The most brilliant, most evil, most dangerously organized vampire who has ever lived. He’s their leader.
“Their king.”
To Be Continued…
Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Buffy Season4 02 Page 10