Revenant

by Mel Odom

Xander watched helplessly as the Black Wind gang members opened fire on the swordswoman. But she spun to her right and sprinted at the wall as bullets slammed into the stone floor behind her. She raked her hood back, exposing her calm features, and slid free one of the swords sheathed down her back. The gun blasts were so loud Xander couldn’t even hear himself shouting.

  Never slowing, the swordswoman ran up onto the wall a few steps, actually defying gravity. Then she arced back, tucking her knees into her chest to flip completely over. She landed on her feet on one of the parked sports cars and swept a flintlock pistol free. She fired, striking one of the Black Wind gang members in the head with the bullet.

  Green smoke pooled around the gang member’s head for a moment, then he dissolved.

  Before her opponents could target her, she was in motion again, dropping out of sight behind the car. One of the gang members yelled out an order and four men ran forward, two to either side of the car. They almost shot each other as they rounded the vehicle.

  The swordswoman slid from under the car, streaking out from the front. In one lithe motion, she pushed herself up and charged the line of gang members. She carried her sword pointed down for close-quarters fighting. Before the gang members could fire, she was among them, a hawk among pigeons. By that time, they couldn’t fire without hitting each other.

  Xander struggled against the chains that held him, shimmying and twisting, gaining a half-inch here and there.

  The swordswoman struck and a head left a gang member’s shoulders. She continued with her forward motion, breaking through the line. Lashing out with the empty flintlock, she caved in another gang member’s skull.

  On the other side of the line, she holstered her pistol and took her sword in both hands. Before her opponents could turn or run, she was back among them, slashing mercilessly.

  The gang members at the sports car opened fire, shooting into their own ranks. The human members went down, torn and bloodied, but the demons among them only staggered back.

  The swordswoman grabbed one of the demons to use as a shield, stepping close in behind him, then shoving him toward them. Even though the bullets couldn’t kill him, they must have hurt a lot judging from the way he screamed. She ran her captive at the car, tripping him at the last moment and throwing him into two of the shooters.

  She spun left, bullets cutting the flying wedges of material floating from her right arm. She shook her left hand, then came to a spot and threw twice quickly. The throwing knives she carried thudded into the skulls of her targets, dropping them both. Before the demon she’d used to get close to her other attackers could get up, she chopped his head off, leaving him sprawled across the sports car.

  She drew her second flintlock pistol and wheeled toward Xander.

  Xander turned cold for a moment as he looked down the weapon’s large-bore barrel. Then he saw the pistol muzzle move up, saw the powder smoke puff from the frizzen and barrel, and felt the vibration along the chains that held him. He dropped unexpectedly, hitting his head hard. But the chain was loose enough that he could free himself.

  “Get out of here, Xander!”

  A smile spread across Xander’s face. She remembers my name! He grabbed the loose chain and began slipping loops from his head and shoulders.

  The swordswoman disappeared again, ducking behind some of the crates in the storage area in the cave. The Black Wind gang members, their numbers already down considerably, weren’t as anxious to pursue.

  Finally free again, Xander slipped over to Oz and reeled him down. His fingers manipulated the knotted chain easily.

  “So this is the girl?” Oz asked.

  “Isn’t she great?” Xander asked.

  A gang member creeping around the corner of the crates suddenly stopped, then turned around, trying to hold himself together because he’d been nearly eviscerated. Only in the glance he got, Xander knew the guy wasn’t human. Nothing human had internal organs like the ones Xander saw.

  In seconds, Oz was free as well, both of them staying low beside a nearby sports car for shelter. Bullets ripped the car body and starred the windshield and windows.

  The swordswoman reappeared behind another stack of concrete. She held both flintlock pistols again, both at full-cock. She fired them one at a time with deliberate aim. Two more gang members dropped, their heads wreathed in green smoke.

  “Hey,” Oz said, crouched down with his back to the side of the sports car, “I think the key’s in the ignition.”

  Xander pulled himself up briefly and checked. A key ring dangled beside the steering wheel. Then a stray bullet took the side mirror off only inches away from his head. He dropped down again. “Okay. I’m thinking now is a good time to leave. You’re driving.”

  Oz nodded. “What about your friend?”

  Xander spotted her among the crates, drawing the attention of every gang member in the cave with lethal intensity. Even as he watched, though, another man stumbled back, his head split into halves. “We’re not leaving without her.” He popped the door and crawled across the bucket seats, painfully knocking his knees, elbows, and head into the steering wheel and gearshift, crowding up against the passenger window so hard that he smeared his bloody lip across it.

  Oz followed immediately, sliding easily behind the steering wheel. He cranked the ignition, and the throaty roar of the engine covered the sound of gunfire for a heartbeat. It also attracted the attention of some of the gang members.

  “Duck!” Xander yelled, pulling his own head down. Oz ducked as well, and then the windshield came apart, blowing square chunks of tinted safety glass all over them.

  Oz put the transmission in reverse and stomped the accelerator. The tires shrilled against the stone floor, then the rubber caught hold and they hurtled backward. Something slammed into the rear of the sports car, but when Xander dared to turn and look, he thought he saw a man leaping into the air.

  A heartbeat later, a gang member, legs broken from Oz’s unplanned assault, thumped heavily onto the hood.

  Xander’s head snapped around as he lifted his hands defensively. Even though his legs were broken, the gang member reached for Xander. The guy’s head seemed to stretch, then his mouth flared incredibly wide and his tongue flicked out. Xander dodged just as Oz slammed on the brakes.

  The sports car shuddered to a halt, crashing into another vehicle.

  The demon’s thick tongue penetrated the seat less than an inch from Xander’s head. His cheek burned when it brushed against the slimy, fetid tongue. Borderline freaked, Xander raised a foot and drove it into the demon’s head. “Back! Back! Back!” he yelled at Oz.

  Oz stomped the accelerator again. The sudden movement, combined with Xander’s kick, rolled the demon from the sports car’s front end.

  “Stop!” Xander ordered, watching as the demon tried to get up.

  Oz skidded to a halt. “Now forward?”

  Xander threw a forefinger forward. “Engage. Warp nine.”

  The sports car leaped forward like a rocket and slammed into the demon like a battering ram. The demon smashed into the sports car Oz had hit earlier and never made it up before Oz slammed into him again, smashing him in between the two cars as he rolled by.

  Xander watched in horrified fascination as the demon’s head swelled to three times its size, like everything in his body was being forced upward from the point of impact. The tongue shot into the air like a party-popper, followed immediately by a torrent of blood and chunky parts.

  “Plan?” Oz asked, both hands on the wheel.

  “Gotta rescue the girl.” Xander pointed to where the swordswoman was still taking cover among the crates. However, she was running out of crates.

  “Can’t finesse this,” Oz said as they shot across the cave.

  “Warn her.”

  Oz laid on the horn, adding the shrill bleat to the staccato gunfire. He headed the car straight at the swordswoman, taking out two gang members who were in the way. The sports car plunged through some of the crates,
cracking wood and scattering contents.

  The swordswoman back-flipped out of the way, landing on the first crate beyond the sports car’s impact radius.

  Xander leaned out the missing windshield area. “C’mon! We’re rescuing you! We gotta get out of here!”

  The swordswoman smiled and shook her head. “This is a rescue?”

  “Okay,” Xander admitted, “we’ve done better, but this is what you get to work with now.”

  “Weapon upgrade,” Oz said. “Rocket launcher at nine o’clock.”

  “What?” Xander asked, glancing over at his friend. Then he spotted the gang member on the other side of the cave fitting a telescoping tube to his shoulder. He turned back to the swordswoman. “C’mon!” He held out his hand.

  The smile only turned a hint more serious. “You can be very forceful.” She took his hand and stepped onto the car hood. “That has a certain charm.”

  Xander wrapped his arms around her, yanking her into the car. “Go!” he yelled at Oz. The seat brackets sheared through from his and the swordswoman’s combined weight, stuttering beneath them and suddenly flattening out, leaving the swordswoman lying on top of him. “Man, has anyone ever told you that you have the prettiest eyes?”

  Before she could answer, Oz floored the accelerator, swinging around to watch through the back windshield as they broke free from the crates.

  Then the rocket collided with the crates in front of them, creating a great, snarling explosion of flames, heated air, and a concussive wave that scaled up quickly, twisting and grabbing at the stone ceiling.

  “Taking out the exit doors,” Oz warned. “Hold on.”

  “Be careful,” the swordswoman said. “There are cliffs just beyond the doors and a deep part of the ocean.”

  “Cliffs?” Xander asked. He wanted to ask more, like cliffs how high and ocean how deep, but the sports car slammed into the exit doors.

  Chapter 20

  ZHIYONG INTERNATIONAL SOUNDED MORE PRETENTIOUS than it was, Buffy discovered. The shipping magnate had his offices in a four-story downtown building with accountants, dentists, optometrists, psychiatrists, a private detective, a palm reader, and a psychic. All of that information was courtesy of the directory plaque in the foyer and Gus, the security guard who was watching George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead on a small black-and-white television at the security desk. Of course, Zhiyong’s offices took up the entire fourth floor.

  Gus was in his late sixties, a thin rake of a man with bitter blue eyes, a rounded back, and an impressive growth of nose hair. “Lemme call Mr. Sledge, make sure he’s expecting you.”

  “Sure,” Buffy said. Art Sledge was the detective on the third floor. She hoped he was in because it would make getting to the fourth floor much easier.

  Gus had a brief conversation over the phone, then turned back to Buffy. “Mr. Sledge says you don’t have an appointment.”

  Angel unfolded a hundred-dollar bill and popped it between his hands.

  “Hey, Art,” Gus said, “they got a C-note here.” He looked back at Buffy. “Yeah, Buffy Summers. High school, college maybe.”

  Buffy felt complimented to be mistaken for a college student. Of course, that evolution was just around the corner.

  “Nah, they ain’t packing, Art, and they don’t look like bill collectors,” Gus said. “Okay, I’ll send ’em up.” He cradled the phone. “Mr. Sledge says you can come on up.”

  “Great,” Buffy said.

  Gus leaned authoritatively on the counter. He puffed his chest out. “I help Mr. Sledge out on some of his tougher cases. If you got any problems, you just stop by and see ol’ Gus.” He smiled and patted the pistol on his hip. “Me and Thelma Lou, we been down a lotta hard roads together, if you know what I mean. And this ain’t a normal town.”

  And sometimes I think there aren’t very many normal citizens, either, Buffy thought. But she smiled and said thanks, then headed for the elevators. She entered the cage and pressed three. Angel got in behind her. Gus was watching them from the security desk, feet propped up. She waved at him.

  “Real watchdog,” Angel commented as the elevator doors closed and the cage jerked upward.

  “Thelma Lou,” Buffy said.

  “I heard.”

  “Guys and their guns: will the penis envy never end? I wonder if he’s got a name for—” Buffy stopped herself. “Okay, don’t want to go there.” The elevator pinged at the third floor and the doors opened. Buffy walked through.

  “They had new security cameras in the foyer downstairs,” Angel said as he walked beside her.

  “I noticed them.” Buffy walked past Madame Zaprola’s door, taking in the illustration of a lean-hipped woman dressed in a slinky black dress standing beside a cauldron. She had her hand on a wolf’s head. A tree with an owl on a limb in front of a full moon stood in the background. That would set Will’s teeth on edge.

  Judging from the offices, there were a lot of lateevening clientele in need of fortune-telling, accounting and counseling. Of course, Buffy realized, this is Sunnydale.

  She and Angel walked past SLEDGE INVESTIGATIONS to the stairwell at the end of the corridor. She went through the door into the darkened stairwell, glanced briefly up the steps, then started up.

  “I don’t think the building installed the new security cameras,” Angel whispered.

  “Didn’t need to,” Buffy agreed. “They have Gus and Thelma Lou.”

  “So we have to assume that Zhiyong knows we’re coming.”

  Buffy nodded. “If he’s here.” She reached the landing and started up the final flight of stairs. The door at the top was locked. She glared at the door. “What? No Keep Out or Beware of Dog signs?”

  “Guess not.” Angel glanced at her. “I don’t suppose you’d consider giving up and coming back later?”

  “Nope.” Buffy drew her leg back and drove it into the door. The facing tore loose as the lock shattered. The door flew inward and landed at the feet of three men standing in the ornate, picture-studded hallway.

  They were dressed in black suits. The man in the middle held a snarling, maddened animal at the end of a heavy chain leash.

  Although mostly doglike in appearance, the animal had a wedge-shaped skull and tiny greenish black scales that covered its gaunt frame instead of fur. The eyes were fiery, downturned crescents that wept flames. The fires dropped from the creature’s saliva-coated muzzle but winked out of existence only inches above the carpet. Scarring marred the scales, mapping out a history of violent abuse. Huge talons stuck out from feet the size of pie plates.

  “Liondog,” Angel said quietly. “It’s supposed to be one of the three creatures that made up the ancient Chimera.”

  The liondog bayed anxiously, sounding haunting and insane. Flames belched from its throat, lashing out nearly six feet.

  Buffy leaned back from the heat. “Boy, I bet he’s no picnic to be around when he’s got indigestion.”

  “Beware of dog,” the man holding the leash said. Then he released it and slapped the liondog on the flank, speaking in Chinese.

  The liondog ran straight for Buffy, jaws widening in anticipation.

  For a moment, Willow thought she’d lost Lok Rong. She’d followed him easily from the restaurant in Sunnydale—though at high speeds she wasn’t entirely comfortable with—and didn’t have to work at all to keep the motorcycle in sight with the headlight glaring against the night. The ocean rolled to her left, white-capped waves assaulting the beach.

  Then Lok had disappeared briefly around a curve in the highway that wound through the hills outside Sunnydale. When Willow made the curve and looked ahead, he’d vanished.

  “No,” Willow pleaded, although she was really uncertain what she was going to do if she caught up with Lok. The main thing, she supposed, was to keep him in sight so they could tell his parents—or the police. She stared desperately into the darkness.

  “Over there!” Jia Li exclaimed, pointing across Willow toward the beach.

 
; Willow barely made out the dirt road that led from the highway down the decline to the beach. She only got a brief glimpse of the overturned motorcycle lying at the bottom before she raced past it.

  “You saw the motorcycle?” Jia Li asked.

  “Yeah.” Willow checked the rearview mirror, side mirror, then looked out the back glass. Seeing no one, she braked quickly and cut the wheel. The station wagon slid sideways for a moment, then came to a stop. “Okay, sorry. Maybe I’m a little tense.”

  “Hurry,” Jia Li urged. “The motorcycle was turned over. He may have wrecked.”

  Willow put her foot on the accelerator and made the turn, zipping back up the highway in the direction they’d come from. She turned sharply onto the dirt road, oversteering for a moment and skidding through the brush beside the road. Then she recovered and sped down toward the motorcycle. When she stopped, a dust cloud coiled up around them for the moment, obscuring the motorcycle.

  Jia Li was out of the station wagon before Willow could even warn her to be careful. The crash of the surf echoed against the big, craggy hill in front of Willow. When she’d been on the highway, it hadn’t looked very big at all. The station wagon’s headlights showed the mouth of a small cave near the waterline.

  You must go, the voice whispered in Willow’s mind. The time draws near. If Lok should perish at this time, much evil will be unleashed. You can help him. You must.

  Willow wanted to disagree, but somehow she knew that the voice spoke the truth.

  “He’s not here!” Panic-stricken, Jia Li gazed out at the ocean. “Willow, he’s not here!”

  Willow took a deep breath as she went to her friend. “If he’s not here it only means that he ditched the motorcycle and walked away.”

  “Where?”

  Willow pointed at the cave ahead of them. Small curlers rolled into the mouth. “Maybe there.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe you should go call the police.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Willow pulled her hair from her face, not liking the answer she was going to have to give. “Go look for Lok, I suppose.”