by Mel Odom
“They were good stories,” Matt said.
“Yeah.”
“But the resale value sucked.”
“Right.”
Matt shook his head. “Comics are no longer a speculator’s market. They never were. Only now people are admitting it.”
“I was going broke keeping up with the alternative covers,” Xander agreed.
“Like I tell people,” Matt said, “you only need the one copy to read and enjoy. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it. And reading it for free in my shop is not a great option. At least, not for me.”
Xander glanced at the comic again, noting the action pose the red and blue clad hero struck. “I don’t know. I remember reading this guy a couple years back, before he married M. J. supermodel. His life was always screwed up, which made him my kind of guy. I always thought of myself as him, only without the cool powers.”
“His life is still screwed up.”
“He’s married to a supermodel pulling down really big bucks,” Xander argued. “How screwed up can his life be?”
“He’s not happy about it. He doesn’t feel like he’s pulling his own weight and M. J.’s gone a lot.”
“I could think of worse things to be unhappy about,” Xander said. “Like maybe living in your parents’ basement because they fight all the time and they don’t want to see you and you don’t want to see them.” Do they do autobiographical comics?
“What kind of power?”
“What?”
“Lives in the basement, can’t stand his parents,” Matt explained, “you’ve got me hooked so far. Now this guy needs a power, a thing he does.”
“Hero stuff.”
“Exactly.”
Xander thought for a moment. “He fights evil.”
“Evil’s pretty generic,” Matt pointed out. “Gimme a specific kind of evil.”
“Demons,” Xander said, thinking quickly. “Really mean, nasty demons the rest of the world denies is even there. He’s like the last bastion of hope against these mighty demon hordes.”
“Fine, so he fights demons. What does he fight them with?”
“A crystal ball,” Xander said, warming to the subject. “One that kind of floats around and follows him everywhere. It has demon-zapping powers.”
Matt shrugged. “Maybe. Needs more work.”
“You think?” Xander felt a little more excited than he had in days. High school graduation seemed right around the corner these days, and he couldn’t really stand the thought of college. And what did that leave: Would you like fries with that? Nope, that thought just made his teeth ache. But a comic book writer? Man, I could do that.
“Definitely needs more work,” Matt said. “With all the maybes in the comics industry right now, who knows?”
Xander turned his attention back to the comic. “ Remember when they introduced the clone story line a while back? Then everybody started panicking because it was like they’d never had the original hero, just this fake the writers pulled out of a hat twenty years ago.”
“I remember.” Matt pointed back to the boxes. “Still have a few copies I can sell you.”
“No way.” Xander tapped the comic. “But that’s how I feel when they roll out a new number one. Get out a new number one, squeeze out a few more bucks.”
“That was part of the deal they cut with the writer,” Matt said. “He wanted his own number one. Plus, Aunt May is back in this issue.”
“You’re kidding!” Xander opened the comic and started flipping through the pages again.
“You’re the reason comics need to come to the store in sealed bags,” Matt said pointedly.
Xander ignored the sarcasm. “The last time I read this book, Aunt May was dead.” Of course, about this same time last year, Angel was dead, too. Now look at him. “How did they bring her back?”
“No explanation.”
Xander scanned the comic panels. “Wonder if Aunt May’s the clone this time. Or maybe she was the clone last time.” He glanced up. “You can drive yourself crazy thinking about this stuff after what we’ve been through with this guy.”
“You could buy the issue and find out.”
“You already told me it didn’t reveal how Aunt May came back in this issue.”
“It’ll probably be revealed in the next issue,” Matt said. “And how can you buy issue number two without owning issue number one?”
Xander closed the comic and looked at it. His parttime jobs pulled in some cash, but he couldn’t go around spending it frivolously. The whole slayage thing with Buffy, Willow, Oz, Giles, and Angel again took up a lot of part-time job hours. Picking up a comic series at the moment was like a major responsibility. “How much?”
“Five bucks.”
“That’s more than the cover price and it just came out.”
“That’s the going price,” Matt countered. “The publishers underprinted. That’s a first edition.”
Xander dickered a little more, but he knew he wasn’t going to get anything but exercise. When Matt set a price, it wouldn’t move one bit. Xander paid for the comic and negotiated a protective bag and backer board thrown in for free.
“Enjoy the comic,” Matt said.
“I’ll let you know,” Xander threatened.
“Aunt May has a new hairdo.”
“Really?” Xander looked at the comic again. “Man, they just never leave anything alone anymore, do they?”
Matt grinned at him, then pointed through the front glass of the comics shop. “Your friend is back.”
Xander looked and saw Rupert Giles standing on the other side of the glass looking up at the air-filled Wolverine figure. The Watcher wore a dark suit with a sweater vest. The light from the MATT’S COMICS sign sparkled on his gold-rimmed glasses. He looked like he’d stepped out of an upscale coffee ad instead of being the Sunnydale High School librarian.
“Yeah. Guess I gotta roll.”
“I have to tell you,” Matt told him, “that you’re keeping different company these days.” Matt had graduated Sunnydale High before Buffy and Giles had arrived there.
“You don’t know the half of it,” Xander promised. “But he’s an okay guy.”
“He went into Zolton’s Mystic Tomes next door, right?” Matt shook his head. “Man, I’ve never understood that. That guy sells books on how to eviscerate corpses and store the organs in canopic jars in your backyard, and he’s never once had the police invade his premises and search through his stock.”
“That’s because most of his books don’t have full-color pictures.” Plus, most of the Sunnydale cops have learned to leave the really weird stuff alone out of self-preservation.
“Interesting that you should know that.”
“It’s just that I sometimes help Giles look for stuff,” Xander explained. “I’m a—a research assistant.”
“And what do you research?”
“How to kill demons or send them back to whatever otherworld slimy pit they crawled out of to get here.”
“There it is!” Matt exclaimed.
Xander looked over his shoulder and was ready to start moving in case it was closer than he thought. “There what is?”
“Your comic idea.”
“It is?”
“Yeah,” Matt said enthusiastically. “Kind of a Caped Crusader/Boy Wonder kind of thing about a school librarian and student moonlighting as demon hunters. Hey, I’d buy it if you made it fun enough.”
“There’s no fun in demon-hunting,” Xander said. “It screws up your social life. Every girl you meet only wants one thing.” He hesitated. “Well, actually one of three things.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “Your blood, your heart, or your soul. The only lasting relationship they have in mind is some pact they made with a demon a thousand years ago or so. Trust me on that, okay?”
“Hey, I’m telling you, that’s a great idea for a comics series. You should think about it.”
I do, Xander thought. Every night. That’s why I sleep with a stak
e under my pillow.
The bell over the door rang as Giles entered the store. “Xander, we really need to be going.”
“I’m on my way.” Xander said good-bye to Matt and joined Giles outside. They walked back toward Giles’s ancient foreign car parked a couple blocks down. “You find what you were looking for?”
Giles shook his head. “Not really.” He looked at Xander more closely. “You look depressed.”
“I am,” Xander admitted. “Totally. We’re talking cryinginmy-Doritos bummed.”
“Anything I can—?”
Xander shook his head. “Nothing. It’s just that the end of everything is coming much sooner than I thought.”
“The end of everything?” Giles looked alarmed, though Xander knew it wasn’t because he thought the possibility remote.
“No, nothing to do with the Hellmouth,” Xander explained.
“Then what is it?”
“Graduation is going to tear us apart.”
Giles took his glasses off and cleaned them. “Perhaps you’re overreacting to this somewhat. I mean, a little paranoia and fear is normal at this time.”
“I don’t know if this is a little,” Xander admitted. “I think about Buffy, Willow, and Oz going off to college— and me—” He shrugged. “And me—well— not going to college. It drives me crazy.”
“I see.” Giles cleared his throat, as if preparing to say one of the profound things he was really good at.
Xander waited hopefully.
“Graduation,” Giles said finally, “can be a very traumatic thing.”
“What?” Xander demanded. “No solution? No pat words of advice? Nothing to make me feel better?”
“Any solution,” Giles said, “is going to have to come from within you, Xander.”
“And what if all that’s inside me is this scared teenager that I am now?” Xander couldn’t believe he’d just said that, but that was what he’d been thinking and couldn’t stop himself. “What if this is as good as it gets and the rest of my life is just a downward spiral?”
“It’s not,” Giles assured him.
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do. I was there once, too, you know. It’s a phase that passes, then you get on with the rest of your life.”
Xander felt totally frustrated. “I’m so frustrated right now I could scream.”
A scream echoed along the street.
Xander touched his lips and looked at Giles. “I didn’t do that, did I? I mean, that sounded kind of high-pitched and . . . well, feminine.”
“It wasn’t you.” Giles stared past Xander. “It came from that alley.” The Watcher ran toward the darkened mouth of the shadow-filled alley beside the soup-andsandwich cafÈ next to Matt’s Comics.
Xander shoved his comic down the back of his waistband and followed Giles closely.
The narrow alley held several Dumpsters, overflowing from the businesses on either side. A sour stench filled the still air in the alley. Feline shapes moved liquidly along the fire escape ladder and the Dumpsters. Their yellow and orange eyes glowed like dulled lamps.
At the end of the alley, a heavyset man stood over a woman lying prone on the ground. A small boy hunkered down beside her, pulling at her and trying to get her up. “Mommy, Mommy!” the little boy cried. “Come on! The bogeyman is going to get you! Mommy!”
Xander started forward, moving stealthily.
“We’ll want to be careful,” Giles whispered.
“Yeah,” Xander replied, “and maybe quiet should figure in there, too.” Cats hissed at them as they passed but the hulking shape towering over the fallen woman didn’t seem to notice.
The heavyset man yanked the unconscious woman up easily, then turned her head to give him easier access to her neck.
The little boy cried and pulled on his mother’s arm. “No! No! Please! Leggo, leggo!”
Moved by the little boy’s passionate cries, Xander yelled, “Hey, you repugnant chunk of ambulatory pus! Let go of that woman!”
The heavyset man swung around like he was on swivels. His face looked like a gray-blue blob in death, but the vampiric ridges stood out starkly. He held the woman by the blouse in one massive hand. He grinned, baring his fangs. “You talking to me, blood bag?”
Chapter 4
XANDER SWALLOWED HARD AS HE STARED AT THE VAMPIRE in the alley before him. Man, he’s big. Besides becoming a vampire, he must have been bitten by a radioactive rhino. “Would you mind telling me,” Giles whispered at his side, “when it was exactly that you decided the stealth approach wasn’t working?” He searched through the refuse bin beside him and found a broken mop handle.
“He was going to bite her,” Xander said defensively. “I had to do something.”
“I think we might have had time to get to him, without being seen, before then.” Giles swung the four-foot length of wooden mop handle experimentally.
The little boy continued trying to free his mother and calling out to her.
“You made a big mistake,” the vampire suggested. “Maybe it’s not too late for you to leave.”
Xander started digging through the Dumpster next to him, looking desperately for a weapon. He pulled out a slimy banana peel and threw it to the ground. Yuck! For a minute there, that felt like a severed ear. God, and am I sorry that I know for a fact what one of those feels like. “Maybe it’s not too late for you to leave.” He tried to sound convincing.
“I’m not leaving,” the vampire said.
“Neither are we,” Xander declared bravely.
The vampire grinned and tilted his head. “Good. More for me.”
“You have no idea who you’re messing with,” Xander stated. Styrofoam fast food cartons spilled out onto the ground at his feet. Wood! Wood! There’s gotta be something in here made out of wood!
“This time of night,” the vampire said, “you’d be dinner. First course or second course, that’s up to you and your friend.”
“We’re friends of the Slayer.” Oh boy, now that sounds tough.
“Never heard of him.”
Xander felt slightly shocked. “You must be new at this.”
The vampire left the unconscious woman and approached fearlessly. Giles brought the creature up short by jabbing the mop handle at him. The vampire swung a fist, but the Watcher quickly dodged backward.
“Xander,” Giles called.
“Coming, coming. Keep your shirt on.” Xander dug through the garbage faster, finally touching a wooden surface. Only when he pulled it up, it was a flimsy vegetable crate containing rotting lettuce. He started to throw it away in disgust, then noted the framing onebyones that were thick enough to be used as stakes.
Stepping to the side of the Dumpster, Xander swung the vegetable crate at the metal, smashing it. Wire bound the shattered remnants for an instant till he clawed free a piece nearly two feet long.
“Xander!”
Giles’s warning came just in time. Xander ducked, throwing himself to one side and rolling. He pushed to his feet with the wooden stick in front of him. This wasn’t working out so badly. It hadn’t been all that long ago that he’d taken on Jack O’Toole and his merry band of zombies and put them away by himself. “Now,” he crowed triumphantly, “we’re gonna see whose—”
The vampire spun and yanked the stick from Xander’s hand.
“Owwww!” Xander yelled, grabbing his hand. “ Splinters!”
“Now we’ll see who is gonna be the pincushion around here,” the vampire taunted. He stabbed the stick at Xander.
Xander stumbled backward, windmilling his arms in an attempt to keep his balance. He crashed into a couple of old galvanized trash cans blotted with rust. He went down as the vampire came for him.
Giles rushed the creature from the back, but the vampire turned quickly and backhanded the Watcher across the alley.
Taking advantage of the brief respite, Xander flailed around and snared one of the metal trash can lids. He fit his hand through the dented handle and
raised it just as the vampire stabbed at him again.
KA-LANG!
The stick punctured the rusted lid a full eight inches, coming to a stop only a couple inches from Xander’s face. Xander swept the vampire’s feet out from under him and shoved himself to his feet. By the time he stood, the vampire was on top of him again, raining blows with his massive fists. The trash can lid bent and twisted, quickly becoming misshapen. Ignoring the stinging splinters in his hand, Xander gripped the stick and pulled it free.
The vampire froze suddenly and looked down at the mop handle sticking through his chest. Then he got a really mad look on his face.
“Drat and damnation,” Giles muttered, pulling it out, “I missed his heart.”
“I won’t!” the vampire roared. He whirled, grabbing Giles’s jacket in one beefy paw before the Watcher could slip away.
“No,” Xander said, stepping forward, “we’re going to play nice.” He swung the trash can lid into the vampire’s face and was bummed when the metal only dented into a semiprofile of the creature’s face.
The vampire smiled. “Got plenty of hurt to go around, blood bag.” He reached for Xander.
Stepping behind the shield again, Xander batted the vampire’s hands away, deflecting and defending to the best of his ability. His arms and shoulders ached from the punishing blows, and his ears throbbed with the metallic thunder of the blows against the metal lid.
Putting his weight behind the blow, the vampire punched the trash can lid, knocking Xander backward. Before the creature could move in for the kill, Giles attacked again from behind, putting the broken mop handle through the vampire’s stomach from the back. The vampire pulled the mop handle on through, pulling Giles flush against his own back. The mop handle stuck out of his stomach. Before Giles could step back, the vampire seized him and spun him around in front of them. He bent the Watcher’s head back, baring his throat.
Xander got to his feet and whipped the trash can lid behind him like an oversize Frisbee. “Hey, buttface!”