Carnival of Souls

by Nancy Holder

  Then she dropped the rest of the way. The wind nearly picked her off her feet; she stood with her face into it to keep her hair out of her face as she gazed up at her mother. Joyce was methodically inching toward the superstructure by the trail Buffy had blazed.

  Satisfied that her mother was safe…or rather, safe enough, at least for the moment, Buffy ran to rescue Xander.

  “It’s her!” the white-faced girl shouted as Buffy raced for them.

  Alerted, the clowns straightened and assumed battle stance.

  Pow! Buffy’s foot connected with the chin of Clown number one, the dude with the Rasta braids, and it staggered away from Xander.

  A well-aimed punch to Clown number two’s jaw, and he was out of commission too.

  The other two backed away.

  Then the Goth girl attacked, fingers forming claws, and Buffy smashed her fist into her face and…whoa…her skin split apart, revealing purple, leathery stuff beneath.

  Demon, Buffy translated.

  A huge roar wrent the air and a tentacle slammed down on top of the demon girl, crushing her.

  Bigger demon, Buffy thought as she threw herself out of the way.

  The retreating clowns scattered into the wild, panicking crowds.

  “Xander,” she said, falling to her knees beside him. “Are you okay?”

  “That’s a negative,” he gasped as she raised his head. His eyes were puffy and half-shut. His face was sheened with sweat. “Buffy, I’m so sick.”

  “It’ll be okay. I’ll make it all better,” she promised him.

  She hoisted Xander over her shoulder firefighter style. Last time she had done this, she was in the fun zone with the Hahns. So not having fun now, either.

  The Ferris wheel creaked and groaned but did not move. Most of the people in the remaining cars were following Joyce’s example and shimmying down the superstructure. Buffy watched a moment longer, her gaze traveling to see if anyone was badly hurt, or somehow incapable of getting down under their own steam. So far, so good.

  But there were three guys who were just sitting crammed together in one little car, smiling kind of like they weren’t all there. They weren’t lifting a finger to save themselves.

  “Hey!” Buffy shouted, gesticulating wildly with her left hand as she held on to Xander with the other. “Move it now!”

  The one in the middle—a guy wearing a UC Sunnydale baseball cap—laughed and waved at her. The other two sat rocking back and forth.

  “Hey!” she cried. “You’re in danger!”

  The one who waved seemed to sort of jerk. He looked around, then down, then shook the guy to his right. He activated too. Then number three got with the program.

  “Climb down!” Buffy bellowed.

  She didn’t know if they could hear her, but they did start evacuation procedures.

  Weirdos.

  Buffy didn’t have time to wonder what was wrong with them; her mom had maneuvered her way about ninety percent of the way down when she let go.

  “Mom!” Buffy screamed, as her mother plummeted—

  —right into the make-out bushes, which cushioned her fall.

  Still carrying Xander, Buffy ran to her. Joyce was lying flat on her back on a crisscross of leafy branches; she pushed herself off the canopy of bushes and Buffy spotted her gymnastics-style, with a firm arm absorbing some of her momentum as she landed on the ground.

  “Mom, are you okay?” Buffy demanded.

  “Buffy, are you all right?” Joyce replied, which was a mom’s way of saying yes. She looked at her daughter carrying Xander, who was not small, and said, “You must be having an adrenaline rush.” She looked around. “We need to get out of here.”

  “With you on that,” Buffy told her, checking to make sure she had a good grip on Xander as mother and daughter took off.

  “There she is!” someone shouted.

  Buffy glanced over her shoulder to see…

  …What the heck?

  Several of the freaks from the freak show were barreling after her. Also, a pack of demons that bore no resemblance to humans—gelatinous mounds—and a leathery, lizardlike thing. They all came after the Summers women as they ran toward the exit. Weirdest thing, though: The regular inhabitants of Sunnydale—the fairgoers—were running toward them—not toward the exit. Faces rigid with terror, fleeing from the enormous tentacled demon, they were flooding the carnival as if they were drowning and it was their only lifeboat.

  “People! No!” Buffy shouted, whirling around in a circle. She jabbed fingers at the bad guys closing in in hot pursuit. “Wicked evil that way too! Come with me!”

  No one listened. No one seemed to care demons and monsters were alive and among them.

  Buffy grabbed her mother’s hand as they made for the exit.

  “We’re almost there,” Buffy assured her. “You’re safe with me, Mom. Right, Xander?”

  There was no answer.

  “Xander?” Buffy tried again.

  “Oh my God,” her mother panted, as she loped beside the Slayer. “Buffy, I think Xander’s dead.”

  Running, Angel could see the bright lights of the Ferris wheel as antlike people climbed down from it. Though it appeared that they were all going to be okay, the scene reminded him of the sinking Titanic, how the lights had blazed, then winked out in succession as they hit the frigid water.

  He balled his fists and clenched his jaw. If Buffy was at the carnival…

  Angel was about to enter the other side of the forest when a figure rocketed out of the shadows. He saw Angel and headed right for him.

  He was a young guy, about eighteen, dressed in dark cargo pants and a loosely knitted sweater that reminded Angel of chain mail. Angel couldn’t place him, but there was something about him that was familiar.

  He was carrying something against his chest, and moonlight refracted off of it.

  A hundred feet above them both, the demon Astorrith roared. Flames shot from its mouth. And on the ground, the guy put on an impressive burst of speed as he ran straight toward Angel.

  Angel met him halfway. He slammed against Angel’s chest with something hard, and for a moment Angel thought he had been staked.

  Then the guy collapsed, leaving a glass sphere in Angel’s grasp.

  It looked like a crystal ball.

  From the ground the guy shot out a hand and yelled, “Sanctuary!”

  Ethan Rayne tried very hard to at least appear contrite as Professor Caligari paced the floor in front of his fantastically infernal calliope. He kept his calm and jerked on the chain of his “pet,” Le Malfaiteur, who was growling.

  The entire wagon was rocking back and forth in the rough, wild wind, and Ethan half-expected it to rise up into the sky like Dorothy’s house in The Wizard of Oz.

  “I said to terrorize Sunnydale, not destroy it!” the good professor sputtered.

  Ethan had to bite his cheek to keep from laughing.

  “I assure you, I didn’t do this,” he told the man…if man he was. Ethan sincerely doubted that Caligari had ever been human.

  True, Ethan hadn’t done it. However, he had instructed one of Caligari’s clowns to place Ripper’s grimoire out where he would find it.

  He had also investigated the break-in at the jewelry store a few short blocks away because he recognized a certain car parked at the curb from his Halloween escapade here in Sunnydale.

  As he’d strolled over, Le Malfaiteur had gotten loose and nearly killed that adorable girl, Cordelia Chase. While subduing the enchanted warlock, Ethan had realized she’d been about to rob the store because she was under the influence of the carnival.

  He still didn’t know why he had knocked her out and tied her up after he stopped Le Malfaiteur from mauling her to death. Obviously to give her a cover story that would exonerate her from her attempted robbery. But why? Because she was an attractive bird? What had caused him such an impetuous moment of Good Samaritanism, if he could be so bold as to coin a phrase?

  Ethan was nothing i
f not bold. But one could never accuse him of being a Good Samaritan.

  Then maybe I did it to mix it up, he thought. After all, I did leave her there to potentially die. Tied up and helpless, with an enormous demon stomping about the place…. And I left a note for Angel to ook for Buffy in a graveyard. Keep the lad busy and out of the way…

  He felt better about his predilection for evil. He would hate to think that he was getting soft in his old age—especially where friends of the Slayer were concerned.

  Professor Caligari, of course, was completely unaware of Ethan’s internal monologue. He was stomping about…and was that smoke rising from his skin?

  “Sunnydale is running amuck!” Professor Caligari raved.

  Then let’s break out the cigarettes, Ethan thought, watching a curl of smoke lift from the man’s scalp. But he said mildly, “At the risk of sounding accusatory, you weren’t terribly specific about what degree of terror and mayhem you wanted. Or what sort, either.”

  “On the streets, friend. The clowns marauding, causing mischief, that sort of thing,” Professor Caligari said, tapping his forehead with his finger, as if to indicate that Ethan was remarkably thick.

  And as he bellowed and gesticulated, the strangest thing happened: The dead center of the calliope began to glow with a faint green, pulsating light. Ethan watched it out of the corner of his eye because he wasn’t certain Caligari was aware that Ethan could see it.

  It beat like a heart. Surreptitiously Ethan laid his hand over his own heart, to see if the rhythms matched. They didn’t. The one in the calliope was much, much slower.

  “Do you at least know who—or what—that demon is?” Professor Caligari demanded. Ethan figured that any second now, Caligari’s minions would be pounding on the door and demanding to be let in.

  Ah, there they were now. Sounded as if they had a battering ram.

  Caligari swore in a language Ethan didn’t know and threw open the door.

  A clown burst inside, carrying a young white-faced girl, whose human skin actually covered just the left half of her face. The other flat ovoid eye was smoking.

  Fascinating.

  “Tessa!” Professor Caligari cried. “That thing killed her!” He burst into a rage, stomping, whirling around. Little flares of flames flickered over his face and scalp.

  Le Malfaiteur rose and stretched.

  Ethan gestured. “Can’t you put her in that glass coffin thingie?”

  “It’s only for humans,” Caligari said, his voice laden with sorrow. “She’s been with me for centuries. Damn it.”

  The clown tenderly picked up Tessa and went back outside. Pushed by the wind, the door smacked back open. An uprooted oleander bush tumbled past. It was followed by several vampires.

  And I was told they couldn’t fly, Ethan thought merrily, wondering what precisely they were doing there.

  Pulling on Le Malfaiteur’s chain, he crossed to the space and peered out.

  “I’ll go see what I can do about the demon,” he said. “But that means my price will go up.”

  The professor narrowed his eyes. “You did do this,” he said. “You’re shaking me down!”

  He’s smarter than he looks, Ethan thought, for of course that had been his plan. One of several Ethan had set in motion. The clowns weren’t the only ones who could juggle several things at once.

  “You wound me, Professor Caligari,” he said mournfully. “Come, Malfaiteur.”

  Sorcerer and enchanted warlock stepped into the storm.

  “Where are you going?” Professor Caligari shouted after the pair.

  To see a man about a demon, Ethan thought silently.

  Angel stood in front of the refugee from the carnival. His name was Vaclav, and he was trembling with terror. Apparently the sight of Astorrith and the death of his girlfriend had pushed him over the edge. He told Angel that he’d been the one to eavesdrop on the Scoobies at the freak-show exit, and he had been searching for them ever since. But when Astorrith had approached, he had run as far away from the carnival as he could, with no thought of where he was going.

  “It was destiny that brought me to you,” he told Angel, in a thick Eastern European accent.

  Angel wasn’t so sure.

  Now the two surveyed the wreckage that had once been Giles’s condo complex. Fires raged; a hydrant shot water straight into the air. A woman with blood in her blond hair lurched toward them, waving her arms. Dogs barked.

  Angel headed for Giles’s condo.

  On the second story of what had been the Watcher’s home, a purple-haired clown was dancing in the firelight. It was rooting through a pile of notebooks—the Watcher Diaries, Angel realized.

  Getting information on the Slayer?

  Embers dervished around the clown, igniting its clothing until the wind extinguished it again. It looked as though it were dressed in old-fashioned flash paper, the kind Victorian magicians used to make dramatic mini-explosions during their tricks.

  “Please, we must run,” Vaclav begged. “I have Madame Lazabra’s crystal ball. I stole it. If they find it on me, my punishment will be hideous.”

  Angel patted his coat pocket. “I have her crystal ball,” he reminded him. “And they won’t find it on me.”

  As if on cue, the clown stopped dancing and stared down at the pair. Then it opened its mouth, threw back its head, and let out an ungodly shriek.

  “No,” Vaclav moaned, whipping Angel around.

  Five more clowns faced them, spreading out. Then one flickered out of sight. It reappeared. Then another.

  Then the one that had stood on the second story of the condo tapped Angel on the shoulder and said, “Boo!”

  Angel didn’t hesitate. He went into heavy action mode, hitting and kicking, leaping, smashing. He fanned in a circle and took on all comers, while Vaclav raced away, shrieking, without trying to help.

  The clowns ringed around Angel, tiptoeing, prancing, giggling, and laughing. One raised a seltzer bottle and aimed it at Angel’s face; he shielded his eyes with his hands. Acid hit his palms and he grunted from the searing pain as the skin dissolved.

  Ignoring his wounds, he rushed forward toward his attacker, catching it by surprise. He kept running, knocking it over, and took off after Vaclav.

  Down the block around the corner and across—

  —Giles?

  The half-naked, soot-drenched librarian was staggering across the street, waving a Scotch bottle at the cars squealing their brakes to avoid hitting him. He was carrying a large book, which the wind kept trying to yank away from him.

  Angel easily caught up with him, pushing him out of the way of an oncoming car and to the curb. Giles fell into the gutter on his knees. He reeked of alcohol.

  “Astorrith,” Giles slurred, “wrath upon my enemies.”

  “You summoned Astorrith?” Angel asked incredulously.

  Giles’s eyelids fluttered. “Spoiled girl.”

  Angel pulled him to his feet. “Come on,” he said. “We have to find Buffy.”

  Giles wagged his head from side to side. “Kill Buffy.” He narrowed his eyes. “Angel,” he slurred. “Kill you, too.”

  With the clumsiness of a drunk, he tried to hit Angel with his bottle. He missed, and his book tumbled from his grasp.

  Angel caught it. It was a grimoire. With his free hand, he grabbed the bottle from Giles and threw it down. It crashed against the sidewalk.

  “Come on,” he ordered Giles.

  “Not going wiz you,” Giles informed him petulantly.

  “Yes. You are.” Angel made a fist and hit Giles squarely on the jaw.

  As he anticipated, Giles’s knees buckled. Angel hoisted Giles over his shoulders and took off.

  Angel found Vaclav two blocks away, flagging down an olive green truck. “USMC” was painted in black on the passenger-side door. United States Marine Corps.

  And none other than Claire Nierman was driving.

  Angel raced toward the truck. Vaclav looked over his shoulder, and h
e brightened when he saw Angel.

  “Oh my God!” Claire cried. “This is so crazy!”

  “Yeah. It is,” Angel replied.

  “I’m sorry I deserted you,” Vaclav said.

  “It’s okay,” Angel told him. He looked back expectantly at Claire. “We need to get out of here,” Angel told her.

  “Of course,” she said. She ticked an uneasy gaze toward Vaclav and Giles. “Who are these guys?”

  Angel regarded Vaclav. “I’m not sure about him, but this one’s a friend.”

  “I am seeking sanctuary. I…I know things,” Vaclav said. He looked anxiously at Angel as though he were begging him not to say anything to betray him.

  Angel said, “Hold on.” He carried Giles around to the truck bed and carefully laid him down. Giles had cut sigils and signs into his own chest. Was he drunk and possessed?

  Angel lingered a moment, then hurried back to the passenger door while Vaclav waited for him. Angel nodded at him, then at Claire, and said, “Get inside.”

  “Perhaps I should ride in the back with…that man,” Vaclav said.

  “I’m not sure about his condition,” Angel said. “Better stay in here with us.”

  Claire frowned. “I thought you said he was a friend.”

  Angel nodded. “He is.”

  When he said nothing further, Claire shrugged and said to Vaclav, “Come in and scoot over. Make room.”

  There were only two seats, so Vaclav wedged himself between them, half-squatting and half-kneeling, as Angel got in and slammed the door.

  Claire peeled out.

  “What the hell is going on?” she said.

  “End of days,” Angel tried, “or something close.” He tried to think of where to go. Buffy’s?

  Vaclav said, “Please, I beg of you. Get us as far away from here as you can.” He glanced at the book on Angel’s lap. “A grimoire? Are you a sorcerer?”

  Angel didn’t reply.

  “I’ll take you three to headquarters,” Claire suggested. “We’ve got a detail going out after that thing. My boss has some special weapons.” She looked excited. “Real experimental stuff.”