Dru’s skirts rustled as she made staccato tacks on the floor with her crimson heels. She leered at the boy and made stabbing motions at him. “You’ll be dead soon. They’ll cut your neck muscles. Make you bleed, little calf.”
Jacques raised his chin defiantly as his eyes glittered with fear. Spike chuckled and took Dru’s hands in his. He kissed the deceptively fragile-looking little knuckles. “Now, we’ve no proof of that, have we, poodle. They’ve not said what they’ll do to him.”
Dru stood straight and made circles with her fingers over Spike’s lips. “They dart forward, you see, and stab the banderillas into all those brawny muscles.” She lunged at her man. “That’s when the bleeding starts. The bulls suffer. It’s all for art.”
“The bleeding starts when we say it does,” he drawled, nibbling on her little finger. She hissed and smiled with pleasure. “And not a moment before.”
“Here. But not in Madrid. Not at the bullfights.” Like a jag of lightning, her mood changed and she pulled away from him. Her jaw set and she blazed with anger. The temper caught hold of her, working its way from her forehead down to her temples to her huge, dark eyes. Her lower lip quivered, a frustrated waif deprived of her treat.
“Your eyes are bleeding Spain,” she accused. “You promised me Spain. Everything is bleeding there, even the sky.” She hissed at him. “You said we’d go. We’d drink sangre.”
Spike sat back on his hands and extended his legs. It was a bit warm out, too warm for his duster and his boots. The boy was dressed more reasonably, in a long-sleeved chambray shirt and dove-gray trousers. Some bit having to do with it being a casual day at the posh public school in London where he and Dru had nabbed the cub.
“Well, that was before we knew these Sons of Entropy chaps have their HQ somewhere here in Italy,” Spike said reasonably. “This place is nice, don’t you think?” He indicated the little room decorated with heavily carved furniture, bookshelves lined with dusty seashells. Sand on the floor. Nature at its most natural. “The sea air is good for you, baby. Keeps your cheeks rosy.”
In truth, her cheeks were ashen. They were in a village near Pisa, and Spike thought it rather cozy. There was lots of local wine . . . and no local vampires. Just the place for him and Dru to slake their blood thirst and dicker with the Sons of Entropy, who were proving to be a bit more difficult to deal with than Spike had anticipated. All the blackguards had to do was hand over the Spear of Longinus, and the Gatekeeper’s heir was theirs. What was the problem? Probably that they didn’t trust him any more than he trusted them. Sound business practice, he’d always thought.
“Spain,” Dru pouted.
Spike knew she would keep this up until she tired of it, and the thought wearied him. There was a slight edge to his voice as he said, “We have nice, chubby Italian mammas and Tintoretto cherubs here. Do you fancy a cherub, pet? I can go and get you one.” He began to rise, and the boy beside him tensed again. The lad was afraid of Dru.
Smart lad.
Spike turned to him and said, “And what would you like, then? Let’s get him a tattoo, love. He’d look brilliant with a big snake on his chest, something like that.”
“Don’t get too fond of him,” Dru warned. “That one’s bound for the slaughterhouse. “
Spike sighed. “I suppose you’re right.” He smiled at her adoringly. “You usually are.”
Beside him, Jacques Regnier clamped his mouth shut. Perhaps to keep himself from screaming.
Spike patted Dru’s arm. “How about getting us something to eat, then?”
“Someone plump.” She whirled away and danced toward the door. Then she whirled back around and faced them both. She was in full feeding face, her eyes a beautiful glowing gold, her fangs the sharpest and loveliest in their little Italian hideaway.
Still the boy did not scream. But he wanted to, very much. Spike could tell.
Spike knew quite a lot about human beings and screaming.
Dallas Mayhew pulled the cooler from beneath the ladder in the cabin of his father’s thirty-foot boat, the Walkabout, and grabbed three beers, one for himself, one for Spenser Ketchum, and one to grow on. Cradling the triplets in his arms, he popped his head up through the companionway just beneath the boom.
“Whoa, dude,” Spenser said, pointing. “Check it out.”
Dallas climbed into the cockpit and plopped down the beers.
In front of the bow, a thick, white fog boiled up like thunderheads, teetering in a huge mass that threatened to tumble onto the deck of the Walkabout.
Dallas shrugged. “It’s just fog, man.”
“It’s glowing, dude,” Spenser said. “And there’s something in it.”
Dallas said, “Have a beer. You’ll feel better.”
“Dude,” Spenser said, “Look!”
Dallas looked.
The fog was running them down.
“Dude, point this sucker into the wind!” Spenser shouted at Dallas.
Moments later, the sails were loaded with wind and the motor was smoking it was going so fast. There was nothing more to be done, and Spenser knew it. He was just panicking.
Dallas knew the feeling.
Because Spenser had been so right: there was something in the fog. It was a nightmare, and it wanted them.
This could not be happening. This could not be real. After all, this was Sunnydale, where he had lived all his life, where nothing ever happened.
Only now, something was happening: skeletons aboard a rotting shipwreck were chasing him. The figurehead on the prow was cackling and shrieking, her teeth clacking as she bit the air.
The wind was screaming. In the midst of the shrieking the dead men were singing.
“Hurry up!” Spenser screamed. “Go! Go!”
Tears rolled down Dallas’s cheeks. He thought about his mother, who had multiple sclerosis, and his father, who worked an extra job so Dallas and his brother, Cort, could have all the extras. He thought about his stupid dream that one day he would leave this boring town and his sacrificing parents and go somewhere exciting. Somewhere that would change his life.
The harbor loomed ahead of them. From where he crouched behind the tiller, he could see the slip where his father moored the Walkabout. It was unbelievably near. But no way was he going to mess with docking. As soon as they hit the shallows, he was jumping out and humping it.
“As soon as we run aground, jump,” he said.
It happened almost immediately. Dallas felt the tug of the sand on the hull and leaped out, splashing wildly to shore. He hazarded one look over his shoulder. Maybe it had all been a bad dream. Bad beer. The steroids he’d been taking.
But what he saw made his knees wobble.
The fog was rushing on top of the water like a high tide. The wreck rode above it, far too high in the water. It shouldn’t be there, shouldn’t—
“Spense,” he shouted, but his friend sat frozen in the cockpit in a fetal position. Dallas wanted to go back for him, he really did.
But he didn’t.
Instead, he ran for all he was worth, scrabbling through the water and onto the stone jetty, where once upon a time his mom and he had watched the sand crabs skitter, before she got sick and he got older. He flung himself up the stones, shrieking, and when he reached the pavement of the embankment, he took another look.
That was when the ship launched itself into the sky.
He stared, speechless. Enshrouded with fog, it floated up through the sky, a nightmare riding on the wind. Then the fog thickened and it looked like nothing more sinister than a heavy bank of clouds.
He blinked, unable to believe his luck. He turned back to Spenser, who was slogging through the water.
“Thanks a lot, dude,” Spenser flung at him. “Thanks for abandoning me. Wow, you’re really a friend, you know it?”
“Spense,” Dallas began, but there was nothing he could say in his own defense. He had abandoned his friend.
He hung his head in shame.
“Dallas.�
�
“Spense, if I had it to do over, I—”
“Dallas.”
Dallas raised his head and looked at Spense. He was gazing at a point above Dallas’s head, his eyes enormous. His mouth was working but no sound came out.
Dallas whirled around.
A net dropped over his head. Dallas screamed as the icy cords wrapped around his body and tightened, cutting into his skin.
The net began to lift back into the sky.
Then, as Dallas gasped for air and struggled against the ropes, something very sharp slammed through his chest. In shock, he stared down and saw the steel point protruding from his body. Blood poured out of him like the open spigot on a keg of beer.
It doesn’t hurt, he found himself thinking.
It would a little later.
But just for a little while.
“Ah, Paris. I knew I’d make it someday,” Buffy said.
The Eiffel Tower rose dead ahead.
“And I knew I would be there with a werewolf driving a van and a vampire sacked out asleep in the back.”
“I’m not asleep,” Angel said fuzzily.
Buffy glanced over her shoulder. They had made a sort of tent for Angel, and all she could see was blankets. “You should be. You never know which of the many fun and exciting forces of darkness we’ll be battling tonight.”
“Or now,” Oz said, as a man dressed like someone in Casablanca raised his hands and motioned them to one side.
“Oh, great,” Buffy muttered. “I knew we should have dumped the AK-47 before we took the ferry.”
“Good weapon,” Angel said. “We pitched just about everything else. Hard to let go of something like that.”
“What are we gonna do if they want us to get out of the van?” Oz said quietly. “We forgot our tube of SPF five million and two for Angel.”
Buffy shrugged. “I guess we’ll have to make a run for it.”
“Okay,” Oz said with his infinite calmness. He had the class not to mention the fact that they were stuck in an amazing traffic jam, making running for it one Slayer’s pathetic little dream.
“Pulling over,” Oz reported. He rolled down the window as the French policeman came over. “Bonjour,” he said serenely.
The Frenchman replied in rapid-fire French that left Buffy wondering if she had actually studied French in school or if it had been some diabolical plot on the part of the administration—more specifically, Principal Snyder—to get students to raise the evil dead by chanting in a strange foreign tongue. Which would explain the cafeteria lady with the vacant stare and the extreme body odor.
“D’accord?” the cop said, giving the side of the van a little pat.
“Oui, merci,” Oz replied.
The man waded back into the traffic jam.
Oz eased onto the gas pedal and started the tortuous return to the traffic. No one wanted to let them in. After all, this was Paris.
When he said nothing, Buffy prodded, “Well?”
Oz glanced in the rearview mirror. “He was telling me there was an accident up ahead, and we should take a detour.” He waved at the car behind them and darted into the lane. Brakes squealed. A horn blared.
“Or else, Camembert cheese is on sale at the minimart. Take your pick.”
Angel said, “Detour.”
Buffy leaned toward Oz. “He was around when they invented French.”
Angel said, “I heard that.”
Buffy replied, “Go to sleep.”
“So, detour,” Oz said. He shrugged. “Which could be a good thing.”
Nightfall had descended over Paris by the time Buffy, Oz, and Angel reached the address they’d found back in London.
“It just figures,” Buffy grumbled, as she led the way, her AK-47 in hand. Oz had a keen revolver and Angel carried a pistol. They’d left the rocket launcher in the van. “Get me involved, and you wind up with spiders and human remains.”
They were down in the catacombs of Paris, where the bones of the dead were stacked like calcified Lego blocks: skulls and forearms here, femurs there, hips way, way over there.
“It’s not so bad,” Oz said, training his flashlight over the walls of bones. “I mean, most people pay money to see this.”
“Someday we’re going to run up against a monster who likes amusement parks or really good restaurants.” Buffy stumbled and caught her balance on the face of a skull. “Sorry,” she said to it.
“Speaking of restaurants,” Oz ventured, “have you ever noticed how bad guys in movies are always eating? Grapes. Or they’re slicing off big hunks of turkey and feeding it to their Persian cats. What’s that all about?”
“Gluttony,” Angel supplied. “One of the seven deadly sins.”
“Right up there with monotony.” Buffy yawned. “There’s no one here, guys. Let’s give it up and go to Disneyland Paris.”
“Slayer,” came a hushed whisper.
Immediately Buffy ticked her gaze at Angel and Oz, both of whom nodded and began to move in opposite directions, Oz to the left and Angel to the right. It made sense to cover ground as quickly as possible, try to grab the speaker before he knew what was happening. Then she flicked off her flashlight. It was impossible to tell where the voice was coming from. No sense giving him the advantage.
“Slayer.”
“That’d be me,” Buffy said, looking around as she moved forward in the darkness, listening very hard. “And you are?”
There was a pause. And then the voice said, “A friend.”
“Oh, I see. Which is why you’re hiding from me. Some of my other friends do that, too. I think it’s got something to do with my appreciation for the films of Molly Ringwald. Or my bad taste in friends.”
“Please, I beg of you. Listen to me. I haven’t much time.”
“Are you eating grapes?” she demanded.
“I think I was followed,” he said in an underbreath.
“Well, that certainly would be a new experience for me. You aren’t by any chance with the Sons of Entropy, are you? And I don’t mean the singing group,” she added sternly.
“I am, but—”
“But you’re a good Son of Entropy,” she cut in. She scanned the area, detecting nothing but pitch black darkness. Briefly she reconsidered the wisdom of keeping her flashlight turned off. Her finger was on the trigger of the AK-47, and that was better.
There was a strange growl.
“Oh, my God,” said Buffy’s new friend. “It’s coming. Help me.”
There was a flash of blue light against the far wall. Magickal blue light. Buffy went on alert. “First, tell me why you’re here.”
“No. It’s coming. Please.”
Another flash, followed by a fireball.
Buffy kept her silence: Maybe the guy was trying to trick her. Maybe he would succeed in saving himself. And in the category Slayer’s Duty for three hundred, maybe he really did need her help.
Which he, being a bad person, would not get for free.
“It’s the ghost roads,” he said finally. “There are many of them besides the ones you’ve used. I know you’ve had trouble on them, but you mustn’t travel aboveground. You’re too obvious.”
“This is another setup, isn’t it,” Buffy said dangerously. “The address in the bag . . .”
“It was intended to be a setup, but I learned of it.” There was a pause. “I’m working with someone. Someone your Watcher knows.”
Her ears pricked up, but Buffy couldn’t imagine who this guy could be referring to.
“Just know that we are trying to stop him from within.”
“So, wait,” Buffy said. “Giles knows someone in the Sons of Entropy? And who exactly is this ‘him?’”
“Il Maestro.”
There was another growl.
A scream.
Buffy flicked on her flashlight and ran in the direction of the scream. As she came to a fork in the tunnels of the dead, Angel dashed from a side passage, saw her, and joined her as she charged to the
left.
“Oz!” she shouted.
“On my way,” Oz called back.
Then a roar shook the catacombs. Dirt and pebbles clattered from the wall as Buffy’s hand scraped another skull, nubs of teeth catching at her skin. She barely registered the sensation as she dashed on.
“Buffy!” Angel shouted. “Look out!”
From above, something crashed down on top of her. Her flashlight went flying. So did her weapon. She was pinned to the ground.
A shot rang out, but it had no effect on whatever had landed on top of her. Catching her hair in its mouth, it began to drag her beneath its body. It had four legs, and each of them ended in a pad of sharp claws.
Then suddenly, it was half-running, half-falling at a sharp angle.
Buffy reached up to yank herself free, but it was traveling too fast. Angel was shouting her name somewhere above. She heard footfalls.
Somehow, she and her attacker had slipped beneath the path she and Angel had stood on.
“Buffy? Buffy, where are you?” Angel shouted.
“Trap door, or something. Look around.”
She flailed with her legs, trying to find purchase against the walls as she was pulled along. Failing that, she pulled her legs up against her chest, struggling to rock backward against the momentum, in an effort to kick the thing in the stomach.
No luck. She straightened her legs back out and dug her heels into the pitted ground. Something stabbed her above the kneecap, and she cried out in both surprise and pain. It bored into her quadriceps and released something into her muscles that burned like a brand.
The thing roared.
Then she heard Oz say, “Hey.”
Dim light penetrated the surrounding area. Squinting through the pain, Buffy looked at her attacker. From what she could see, it was a lion.
There was a shot. It burned to the left of Buffy’s cheek, missing the lion entirely.
There was another shot.
This time the creature roared and dropped Buffy.
Her head slammed against the earthen floor. Just as the creature sailed on, she grabbed its hind leg. Her grip was bad; it yanked free of her grasp and shook her off like an inconsequential bug.
The Gatekeeper Trilogy, Book Two - GHOST ROADS Page 10