“Are you nervous?” Xander asked. He looked at her. “You’re holding your breath.”
“Only a moron wouldn’t be nervous,” she said. After a few moments, she said, “Can you imagine having to save your mother from religious fanatics?”
He pondered a moment. “No. Avon ladies, maybe.”
She sighed. “Our lives are so weird.”
“True.” He shrugged. “But at least we live in interesting times.”
“Give me boredom any day.”
“It’s my constant desire.” He patted her arm. “What I wouldn’t give for an Uzi right now.”
She rolled her eyes and frowned at him. “All guys ever want to do is shoot things.”
“Wrong.”
“And that.”
“Sums it up.” He gave her a wink. “And that would be a problem why?”
“Oh, Xander.” Cordelia shook her head like a weary older relative. “There is more to life.”
“Yes,” he replied earnestly. “In your case, shoes.”
They heard a noise and ducked.
Xander peered around the side of the trash can. In the crush by the entrance, this guy stood out by the mere fact that he was trying not to stand out. He wore a hooded sweatshirt, and he was obviously looking for something. Not a date, however, unless she had told him to meet her behind the Dumpster: he wandered over there and dum-da-dum looked behind it. His face was hidden by his hood, and at the moment, he was looking downward.
But if he snooped on over to the trash cans, they were dead meat.
Here he came. In the dim light, Xander saw a face striped with scars.
“Oh, my God,” Cordelia whispered. “I don’t think he goes to Sunnydale.”
“Me, either.”
Sweatshirt guy was halfway to the row of cans.
“Looks like we’re going to have to do something, aren’t we?”
“Looks that way, sugar,” Xander said. He licked his lips as he watched the potential SOE. “Somehow I doubt he’d fall for the old distracto routine. You know, where you wander over and ask him if he has a light, preferably in an exotic foreign accent. I’ll bet he’d set you on fire just for spite.”
Cordelia shivered. “No way am I trying it.”
He nodded. “Okay, too bad. Then let’s think of something else.”
He watched the guy walking nearer and nearer. Then he realized he was watching the guy through a colored filter. On top of his garbage pile, an empty green beer bottle stood at an angle.
Xander smiled and fished it out of the garbage, showing it to Cordelia. He hefted the bottle in his hand. He would have only one chance. If he missed, they were in big trouble.
If he missed and they’d made a mistake, they were in bigger trouble.
For a few seconds, Xander waited. Maybe the guy wouldn’t come too close. Maybe some of his buddies would call out to him—his plastic surgeon, maybe— and they’d go into the Bronze and have a cappuccino and talk about anesthesia options.
The guy made a right and sauntered away, whistling the love theme from Armageddon.
Xander put the bottle back. He cocked his head and looked at Cordelia. “You don’t think they have protecto fields or whatever, do you?”
She grimaced. “Good point. Then what good are we?”
He wagged a finger at her. “That’s not a good question for Slayerettes to ask, Cordy. I think we’ve all proven by now that we’re effective members of a team. Well, except maybe you.”
“Hey!” She stiffened. “Uh-oh. Here comes another one.”
This time, the sweatshirt hood was thrown back. This time, the guy was not whistling and staring at the ground. A tall, dark man, he was smoking a cigarette.
Then he was tossing his match into the trash can.
And he was looking straight at Xander.
“Hey,” the acolyte blurted, more surprised than anything.
Xander shot up from behind the trash can, grabbed the man by the front of his sweatshirt, and shattered the green bottle across his forehead.
The guy collapsed face first into the trash can. No one appeared to notice yet.
“Ouch,” Xander groaned. “That had to hurt.”
“Good,” Cordelia said firmly. “C’mon, we’ve got to hide him.”
She ran around to the opposite side of the cans and grabbed the acolyte around the waist.
“How do they do it in the movies?” she asked. “You put one arm around your shoulders and I’ll put the other one around my shoulders. Like he’s drunk.”
Xander did as she said. Then they staggered back behind the trash cans with their burden.
“Well, now we know, in case it ever comes up in conversation,” Xander said, “it’s a lot harder to prop up an unconscious two-hundred-pounder than it looks.”
“Try being under—” Cordelia started to say, then shook her head. “Forget I said that.”
He grinned at her, but she wouldn’t look at him. “I don’t weigh two hundred pounds.”
“Yes, I know.”
They lowered the guy to the ground and leaned over him. Xander said, “Let’s get the sweatshirt off him. It might be useful later.”
It was also a lot harder to yank a hooded sweatshirt over the head and arms of an unconscious two-hundred-pounder than it looked. But as Cordelia crouched with the sweatshirt balled up in her lap, they surveyed the guy’s jeans and Savage Garden T-shirt with something akin to amusement.
“You always think they’re going to have a pentagram branded into their chests or something,” Xander said. “Then you find a nice, normal ensemble direct from the pages of Teen.”
“Yeah,” Cordelia said hoarsely.
“But I’ll bet they dress nicer for their ritual sacrifices,” Xander said. “Tuxes.”
Cordelia nodded. “At least.”
Cordelia started rolling up the sweatshirt. Then she gasped and held up her hand. It was streaked with blood. She held up the sweatshirt and together they examined it. In the light from the Bronze’s doorway, dark stains ran across the upper section of the back, slightly below the hood. The back of the sweatshirt was soaked with blood.
Gingerly, Xander rolled him over.
The back of the T-shirt was bloody, too.
Using his thumbs and forefingers, Xander peeled the stretchy cotton up around the guy’s armpits.
“Eew,” Cordelia said.
His back was carved between the shoulder blades, if not in the shape of a pentagram, then in the shape of something very like it.
“These hazing practices have got to stop,” Xander said tiredly. “It makes recruitment so much more difficult.”
“Which is a good thing,” Cordelia reminded him. “Difficult recruitment.”
“Hi,” said a voice behind them, and Xander whirled around, his hand in a fist.
“Hey.” It was Willow, who blinked. “It’s just me.” She gestured at the sky as she sank to her heels. “It’s dusk.”
“And they’re in,” Xander said.
“They’re in,” Willow confirmed, staring at the guy on the ground with the bloody wound and the T-shirt. “Wow. Which you can take to mean ‘gross.’ What happened to him?”
“Someone got all crazy with the Ginsu,” Xander said.
“Xander knocked him out,” Cordelia announced proudly. “With a beer bottle.”
Willow looked both impressed and concerned. “Did anyone else see it?”
“Nope,” Xander said.
“Well, they might start to wonder where he is,” Willow ventured. “And look for him.”
“My guess is they sent him outside to have his cigarette,” Xander replied. “You know how strict the management is nowadays.”
“She has a point,” Cordelia said uneasily.
“Which occurred to me.” Xander knew he sounded a little defensive, which he was not. The guy had needed to be knocked out. “But there wasn’t much choice.”
That dear old British voice said, “Oh, dear.”
Xander
looked behind Willow. Now Giles had joined the party behind the trash cans. Xander was not happy about the fact that in the last ten seconds, two separate people had sneaked up on him and Cordy and he had not had a clue.
“He’ll be missed,” Giles said.
Then, “Good Lord, he’s bleeding.” He examined the carved wound. “Perhaps they needed to perform a ritual to keep their magick strong.”
“Or for when they killed Buffy’s mom,” Cordelia filled in. She widened her eyes and glared at the three of them. “Oh, what? That didn’t occur to anyone else?”
“Actually, no,” Willow said.
“Oh.” Cordelia cleared her throat.
Giles pushed up his glasses. “I wonder if we should abort Plan B.”
“I haven’t been looking forward to Plan B,” Cordelia admitted, wiping her hand on the front of the sweatshirt. “Plan B is not my favorite plan.”
Xander had to agree, especially now that they had taken out the Illustrated Man. Plan B required them to infiltrate the Bronze and try to quietly observe where Joyce Summers might be. Could be the attic, could be the basement. Could be Mr. Plum in the conservatory or the ballroom. They wouldn’t have a lot of opportunities to guess wrong.
As the last of the light disappeared and true darkness fell, Giles’s glasses reflected the moon. Something tugged at the back of Xander’s mind, but he didn’t know precisely what.
Then he was distracted by heavy footsteps and a deep voice calling, barely loud enough to be heard over the band, “Brother Tibor?”
There were more footsteps, directly toward the line of trash cans.
“Brother Tibor?”
Well hidden by the trash cans, they all held their breath. Xander felt cold fingers of dread crawling up his spine. He glanced left to see if Giles had a Plan C he was working on, but the last of the light had fled. The moonlight was too dim, and the street lamp overhead was not working.
“Brother Tibor?”
Xander hazarded a peek and saw the guy silhouetted against the lights in the Bronze. He murmured, “Hooded sweatshirt.”
The man departed.
“Leaving,” Xander added. “Left.”
“We’re out of time,” Giles said grimly. “He’ll report back that he couldn’t find the missing acolyte.”
“Wouldn’t they assume that the Slayer would take out one or two?” Xander asked. “For form’s sake?”
“We can’t make that assumption,” Giles said. “We’ve got to go now.”
“What, after all this hiding, we just walk in?” Xander asked.
“Yes.” Giles stood and gestured for them to follow. “They don’t expect us to attack them. What are we, four against so many? They’ll think we’re fairly harmless.”
“And oh, boy, do we have them fooled,” Xander shot back.
“So, we do attack,” Giles finished. “There’s a window in the basement that looks fairly breakable. I suggest we split up. Two of us will break that window and the other two will go directly into the Bronze. That way—”
At that moment, a ball of fire struck the ground inches from Willow’s foot. She cried out and looked up.
On the roof of the Bronze, a hooded man stood silhouetted against the moon. He threw back his hand and flicked it at them. Another ball shattered two of the trash cans.
Bronze patrons milling around by the entrance began to scream and scatter. Someone shouted, “There’s a live electric wire!” and pandemonium struck.
“Attack,” Giles yelled.
He grabbed Willow’s hand and together they dashed into the Bronze.
“Looks like we get the window,” Xander told Cordy.
“Oh, my God.” Cordelia raced to keep up with him. “I can’t believe this is happening!”
Xander bobbed to his left and picked up a heavy rock. Then, as they rounded the corner of the building, he saw half a chunk of brick and handed it to Cordy.
They dashed to the little window and threw their ammo at it. It shattered as if a bomb had hit it.
Xander took a deep breath and said, “We’re going in.”
A face appeared among the jagged pieces stuck in the window. Xander pulled back his leg and gave it a good, swift kick. With a shout, it disappeared.
Xander looked at Cordelia over his shoulder. Then he dove for the window.
“No!” she shouted. “Xander, don’t!”
The Bronze was on fire. Smoke choked Willow as she and Giles pushed their way against the stream of people fighting to get out.
A guy in a Sunnydale High sweatshirt raced through the Bronze, shouting, “There’s a live electric wire outside!”
He ran up to Claire Bellamy, the manager, who had a portable phone against her shoulder and a fire extinguisher in both hands. She nodded at him and shouted back into the phone. Then she gestured to the guy to take the fire extinguisher from her.
People were running in panic all over the place. They clattered down the stairs, pushing and shoving, dervished out of the bathrooms and poured out the front door.
They were coming from everywhere except the basement.
And while there was a lot of smoke, Willow had yet to see flames anywhere in the Bronze.
As patrons swarmed around them, Willow pointed to the basement door and Giles nodded.
“My thinking exactly,” he shouted.
Together they fought their way through the terrified crowd. Someone hit Willow in the face. She cried out, reeling for a moment.
“I’m okay, I’m okay,” she assured Giles. She got her bearings as Giles grabbed her wrist and urged her behind him, acting as her shield. Her lip throbbed and her cheekbone was stinging.
Then it was Giles’s turn to fall back slightly. Willow pushed her way through, fighting a rising tide that threatened to catch her up with it.
She bellowed, “Coming through!” and elbowed a couple of jocks from school out of her way.
At last she reached the door. Giles was behind her.
Willow wrapped her hand around the knob and yanked. Nothing happened.
“It’s locked,” she said.
The journey along the ghost roads was harrowing. The monsters were distracted by the dead acolyte’s corpse at first. But then it was up to Spike and Buffy to keep them at bay, while Angel tried to keep Oz safe.
Micaela explained that she had learned some magick as a child, and she had been skilled in talking to the dead. In fact, she had helped Albert travel the ghost roads to warn them in the catacombs. Now she aided them by speaking to the dead, to the spirits, by explaining their plight in terms the dead could understand. And when she was through, the ghosts began to aid them, to hold the monsters back and clear their way.
“That’s amazing,” Buffy told her.
“No,” Micaela said, shaking her head, the gray, eternal twilight of the ghost roads surrounding them all. “It’s horrible, actually. They hate it here. While they’re walking these roads, they don’t know where they’ll end up. That’s why so many of them never move on to their final destination. They’re afraid of what that destination might be.”
Spike tossed a scaled beast toward Buffy, and the Slayer got it into a choke hold and broke its neck.
And the journey went on like that, until Micaela told them all to halt.
“Here,” she said. “We’re here.”
“How the bloody hell do you know?” Spike asked. “I didn’t even tell you where we were going.”
“The ghosts know,” she told him. “And besides, I can feel the boy. The Gatekeeper’s son. He’s here.”
Another door opened, and moonlight spilled into the gray of the ghost roads, along with the sound and smell of the ocean. Buffy was the last one out, and she heard Spike shouting even before she emerged back into the land of the living.
Ahead of them, a little cottage was already under siege by Fulcanelli’s followers.
It was a massacre.
With Buffy, Angel, and Spike outside, and Drusilla on the inside—less than pleased—th
e Sons of Entropy never stood a chance.
The moment Xander dove through the open window into the basement of the Bronze, colliding with an acolyte and crashing to the floor in a tumble of limbs, Brother Lupo knew that the Slayer was not coming.
Something had gone wrong.
“Chaos’ name!” he cursed. “Kill the fool!”
Immediately, several acolytes moved in on the teenager. He fought back, and he fought well. Better than Lupo would ever have expected.
“Xander!” shouted the mother of the Slayer. “God, no!” She turned to Lupo, eyes wild as she pleaded with him. “He can be useful to you. He’s one of Buffy’s best friends. Don’t kill him!”
Lupo struck her, hard, across the cheek. One of his knuckles popped with the force of the blow, and he swore. That was the cost of resorting to physical violence instead of sticking to magick, he thought. But there was something very fulfilling about the feeling of flesh on flesh, bone on bone.
The woman fell back and stared up at him in fury from the basement floor. She held a hand to her cheek where he’d struck her, and Lupo smiled at her pain.
“My daughter’s going to kill you for that,” Joyce Summers said. “Unless I get a chance to do it first.”
Lupo only laughed. Then he looked up as a girl’s scream ripped through the basement. At the shattered window, Cordelia Chase shouted at the Sons of Entropy to leave her boyfriend alone.
Two of them. And there would be more, Lupo knew. At the very least, the Watcher and the little spellcaster. They were probably upstairs already. And who knew what others had been convinced to align themselves with the Slayer.
Yet, without the Slayer, there was no benefit to this battle.
“You!” he shouted to a particularly brawny acolyte. “Take her and come with me!”
Joyce Summers screamed as the acolyte pushed her arm up behind her back and held her in that position—in great pain and inches away from a broken limb—as they hurried up the basement steps, leaving the others behind to deal with Xander and Cordelia. It wouldn’t take long, Brother Lupo knew. Four acolytes against one boy.
He was as good as dead. And the girl, too, if she continued to scream at them.
The Gatekeeper Trilogy, Book Two - GHOST ROADS Page 27