Sons of Entropy

by Christopher Golden

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  In the crypt, Buffy froze. Her blood turned to ice in her veins. Belphegor was in Sunnydale.

  “My dear?”

  She didn’t know what to say. A hundred smart-ass remarks died on her lips. From the part in her hair to her toenails, she was terrified.

  “All will soon be lost, Slayer, and you will die,” it said. “But if you come to me willingly, I will be merciful.”

  “That’s what they always say, and then they pull the trapdoor lever,” she said, fighting to stay calm.

  “Mark it well, my dear,” Belphegor told her. “This day is your last.”

  There was a terrible ripping noise far beyond the door. Maybe that was the sound of the demon lord ripping free of the breach . . .

  And maybe it was the sound that the fissure made as it separated the floor beneath her feet, revealing sulfurous flames.

  “Hell is opening,” Belphegor thundered. “Welcome us.”

  This one is for my mother.

  —C.G.

  For my sisters, Elise and Leslie Jones.

  —N.H.

  Acknowledgments

  Christopher and Nancy would like to thank Joss Whedon, Caroline Kallas, and the cast and crew of Buffy; our editor, Lisa Clancy, her assistant, Elizabeth Shiflett, the Pocket team, Debbie Olshan, and each other. Christopher would also like to thank Connie and the boys; his agent, Lori Perkins; Tom Sniegoski, Jose Nieto, Stefan Nathanson, and Jeff Mariotte. Nancy would like to thank Wayne and Belle; her agent, Howard Morhaim, and his assistant, Lindsay Sagnette; the Babysitter Battalion; Stinne Lighthart, Brenda Van De Ven, Lydia Marano, Maryelizabeth Hart and Jeff Mariotte, David Hinchberger, Charlie and Kathy Grant, Yvonne Navarro, and many other dear friends who have been so good to me.

  Prologue

  WILLOW SHOUTED TO THE GHOSTS she knew were lingering in the ether around them. “Come back! We need a little help here!”

  “You guys!” Cordelia screamed, looking wildly around at the numbingly gray landscape. “You dead guys, where are you guys?”

  They were alone on the ghost roads, a place filled with nothingness. Xander’s still form dangled between them, and a demon raced toward them from an open breach.

  So there was nothing to do but fight it.

  Willow tried to lower Xander gently to the ground, but his ankles slipped through her fingers and his feet hit pretty hard. She sucked in her breath and said, “Oh, Xander, I’m sorry.”

  The demon lunged. “Cordelia, look out!” Willow cried.

  “Oh, my God!” Cordelia shrieked. She let go of Xander’s wrists and his head whapped the ground very hard. Then she arced around in a circle like a shotput thrower with her hand in a fist, and smacked the end of the nearest tentacle.

  To Willow’s complete amazement, the piece broke off and whirled away like a Frisbee.

  “Willow,” Cordelia said, with a look of shock, “Willow, this thing is like, defective!”

  Cordelia hit it again, and another tentacle broke off and shattered as it fell to the ground.

  “Wow!” Willow said excitedly. She raised her fists and ran up to the demon. “Come on, monster thingie! We’re ready for you!”

  They both shouted with disappointment as it whirled around and hastily retreated.

  “Willow!” Cordelia’s eyes shone. “That was incredible!”

  “Yeah,” Willow said, shaking a little. Now that the battle was over, she couldn’t believe how brave Cordelia had been. “It was.”

  Cordelia picked up Xander’s hands. Willow looked down at him. He looked terrible. The blood on his chest from the gunshot wound had dried, but there was so much of it. They had to get him to Boston, to the Gatehouse and the Cauldron of Bran the Blessed, as soon as possible. Which was why they were on the ghost roads.

  Giles had not been positive that regular humans—those not touched by the supernatural—could walk the ghost roads and live. Was simply being here killing Xander? Was that why the ghosts had already tried to lay claim to him?

  Were she and Cordelia going to die here as well?

  Cordy murmured, “Sorry about the bump, sweetie.” To Willow, she added, “Let’s get out of here. hate this place.”

  Then, like the chickens they were, the phantom walkers of the ghost roads reappeared. Now that the demon was gone, their translucent faces and bodies blurred and flickered as they swarmed around the three friends.

  Almost hungrily, the dead tugged at Xander’s body

  “God, Willow, stop them!” Cordelia shrieked. She turned her attention to the spirits who harried her boyfriend’s still form, pulling at his clothes, lifting his limp hands, and she screamed. “Leave him alone. He’s not dead yet! Not yet!”

  Willow felt hysteria begin to swirl up inside her, thought she might throw up, wiped away hot tears that had begun to spill down her cheeks. And then she stood her ground.

  “Back off! We have safe passage! Leave us alone!”

  Around them, all was gray light, as though it were permanent dusk. The featureless landscape of the ghost roads stretched out forever, and yet they could only see their immediate surroundings, as though some invisible fog blotted out all else.

  But their immediate surroundings were bad enough. The faces of the traveling spirits—many of whom were lost here on the ghost roads—coalesced around them, some into full-bodied form. One, who in life had been a very old man with a bushy beard, drifted close to Willow.

  “We are giving you safe passage, girl,” he said, in a voice that came from everywhere and nowhere, from all the mouths of the traveling dead. “Or shall we simply stand aside for the creatures who even now tear these walls down around us?”

  Willow swallowed. She knew what it meant. What he meant. Below her feet was solid ground, or what passed for solid ground here. She had done enough research to form a hypothesis about that, about the ghost roads existing so close to the real world, shimmering with energy an eyeblink out of reality, that oftentimes the ground beneath their feet was real. If that was so, then the farther one went into the fog on either side of the road, the farther one drifted into the limbo nothingness between the ghost roads and what waited for those traveling or lost souls at their final destination.

  Deep in the fog, Willow could see ghosts battling demons. It was surreal, a mist-enshrouded ballet between the dead and the undying that made her feel like a tiny girl again, staring into the black abyss of her closet. She tried not to look.

  The dead were protecting themselves, of course, but they were also giving Willow and Cordelia safe passage.

  “He’s one of us, now,” the old man’s ghost said, pointing at Xander. “He must stay.”

  “Dammit, I said he’s not dead!” Cordelia shouted, before Willow could respond. “What? Are all ghosts deaf, or just you?”

  Willow glanced at her. Now Cordelia was dragging Xander by his arms, as best she could. Her muscles were straining from the effort, and Willow wanted to help, but it was up to her to make sure they weren’t stopped. That was more important right now.

  “Move, Cordy,” she said in a low voice. “Get him out of here.”

  “What does it look like I’m doing?” she snapped, eyes wide, on the verge of crying or laughing or screaming, but—Willow observed—on
the verge of something.

  “He is ours,” the old man’s ghost whispered.

  * * *

  The last thing Amy Madison wanted to be doing that night was standing in an alley across the street from the entrance to the Fish Tank, which was just about the sleaziest bar in Sunnydale. But the past couple of weeks had been ones of terrible fluctuations in magickal energy in the area, with monsters of every shape and kind flooding the town.

  She’d done her part. While she didn’t really hang out with the Slayer and her friends—in fact, she kept to herself mostly—and she wasn’t about to start dedicating her life to protecting the innocent like Batgirl or something, well, it was her world, too.

  So instead of trying to link up with Buffy and the others, all of whom had plenty on their minds, she was sure, Amy decided to just back them up. To keep her mind and her power as a witch magickally attuned to Sunnydale, and step in if it seemed the Slayer and her Watcher had overlooked anything.

  With all that had been going on, how could they not?

  And there had been plenty going on. In fact, Amy was certain that she didn’t even know the half of it. Frankly, she didn’t want to. It was enough to just do what she could, and leave saving the world to the one who actually had the job. She had a hard enough time getting her homework in on time and giving her dad the kind of quality time he liked. Well, and she liked, too.

  Now it had started to drizzle a little, and the salty smell of the ocean not far away was pungent on the breeze. It helped cover the urine and garbage smell of the alley. Pretty much the old trademark alley smell, as far as she was concerned.

  Her magickal searches had located something the others had not encountered, something lurking in disguise, keeping a low profile. Something inhuman. She didn’t know if it was a demon or a monster, but she’d used her power to track it here, to the Fish Tank. The thing was inside.

  Problem was, Amy wasn’t old enough to go in, and the bouncer sure wasn’t going to let her by.

  She was pondering what to do about that problem when the screaming started inside the bar. A woman crashed through the blacked-out windows of the bar and landed in the street. Her face had been torn off and her abdomen ripped open through the trampy dress she wore.

  The bouncer ran screaming from the bar, then turned down the street and booked it, not even looking back.

  So much for not having ID, Amy thought.

  Then she hesitated. This wasn’t her gig. She wasn’t brave. Not really. But somebody had to do something.

  As Amy was sprinting across the street toward the entrance to the Fish Tank, a dead man flew through the window and landed in a broken heap. It slowed her slightly, and she thought about turning back. Then there came a long, chilling hiss, and Amy looked up to see it standing there, inside the open door, holding another corpse behind it. Its fingers were thrust into the eye sockets of the dead man, dragging the body behind it like a little red wagon. Vitreous fluid dripped from its hand.

  The creature stopped when it saw Amy.

  Eight feet tall, it was dark green and brown, covered with scales and gills and spikes that dripped poison. A stingerlike tail swung in the air behind it. It was like nothing Amy had ever seen before, not even in her arcane texts.

  When it laughed, it sounded as though it had phlegm in its throat.

  It dropped the eyeless corpse, which hit the damp pavement with a wet slap. The rain continued to fall, ran down Amy’s forehead, flattened her hair. The monster flicked out a long, forked tongue like it was a New Year’s Eve party horn.

  Then it came for her.

  “Goddess Hecate, work thy will!” she shouted, raising her hands, contorting her fingers to form the powerful spell. Magickal energy crackled between them. “Mistress of creatures great and small, confine this beast to its—”

  With a savage backhand, spiny knuckles slicing into her cheek, the monster knocked Amy back against the Fish Tank. Her head struck the brick, and she collapsed to the pavement. She could feel something warm dripping down the back of her neck now, not like the cold rain. It was blood. She smelled it.

  So did the monster.

  Its guttural, sickening laughter increased as it strode toward her, muscles rippling, scales shining in the rain and the light of the full moon.

  Blackness closed in on her vision, and she knew she was slipping into unconsciousness. She would be defenseless then, and just as dead as all of the people inside the Fish Tank.

  “Confine this beast,” she whispered, her lips numb, mumbling. “Confine . . . to its distant lair.”

  Amy fell unconscious just as the laughter stopped.

  Her eyes flickered open several minutes later at the sound of approaching sirens and she realized she wasn’t dead.

  Where her cheek touched the pavement, it slid in something sticky. Her own pooling blood. She could taste it on her lips.

  It occurred to her that she had a calculus test in the morning. Before she fell unconscious again, Amy smiled thinly, or thought she did. She couldn’t be sure because she couldn’t feel her face.

  At least she’d have a good excuse for missing school.

  Chapter 1

  BUFFY SUMMERS, THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, Clenched her fists as she scrutinized the cars passing Oz’s van left and right. Giles had brought the more spacious van instead of his own small, half-dead car to collect Buffy and the others when they’d unexpectedly burst out of the breach into Sunnydale, but, as a driver, Giles was still Giles.

  As he chugged along, Buffy’s heartbeat jammed into high gear. They carried precious cargo, namely, the Gatekeeper’s heir, Jacques Regnier. Any of the cars whizzing past them in the night might be loaded with assassins equipped with everything from magick spells to rocket launchers.

  Short and brown-haired, the boy sat beside Buffy in the first of two rows of passenger seats. That charming vampire couple, Spike and Drusilla, had held him captive for weeks. His father was on the brink of death. And a five-hundred-year-old sorcerer who hated his entire family was running him to ground like an animal. Yet he sat quietly beside her, trying to deal. Buffy figured if she was eleven and had all that weighing her down, she would have given in to the total, raw urge to go completely ballistic by now.

  She had not dealt very well when she’d found out she was the Chosen One. Some weird guy comes up to you and tells you you’re the only girl in all your generation who can battle the forces of evil, you figure he’s read a few too many comic books. Then you find out it’s true.

  A couple times, you try to quit.

  Once, you even die.

  But in the end, you get back up, you come back home, you go back to work. At sixteen, though. At seventeen. But not at eleven.

  “Damn,” Giles said, stepping on the brakes as something white skittered across the road in front of the headlights.

  “Keep going,” Buffy said to him. “It was probably just a spirit. They’re trying to escape the ghost roads. They’re desperate to get out of there before Hell breaks through.”

  As she thought of those lost and wandering, tormented souls, Buffy shivered. She had found two Slayers among them. She prayed that trudging along the ghost roads was not her final reward, not after all this struggle.

  From the seat behind Buffy, Angel said, “Oz is coming around.”

  Buffy sighed. “Do what you have to do.”

  She heard a dull smack as Angel knocked Oz out again. It was the night before the full moon, first of the three nights during which Oz was a werewolf. Back in Florence, he had attacked Buffy and Angel Micaela Tomasi, now sitting in strained silence beside Giles, had pretty much saved their butts.

  At about the same time that, here in Sunnydale, Xander had been shot.

  “When we get to the mansion, we’ll call the Gatehouse,” Giles said, as if he could read Buffy’s mind.

  “We call my mom first,” Buffy objected. “Then we’ll pick her up. We’ll move everybody up there and—”

  Giles said, “Oh, God, Buffy, you don
’t know.”

  Buffy went numb. “About a lot of things. Which one is this?” She leaned forward. “Giles? What don’t I know?”

  He looked into the rearview mirror and she saw the reflection of his eyes in the ghostly light of the dashboard. It was one of those moments that freeze-frame in your mind; it was a moment when everything stopped and she waited for him to tell her something unspeakable.

  He didn’t disappoint.

  “Buffy, I’m afraid your mother has been abducted,” he said. “The Sons of Entropy took her and—”

  For at least five seconds, she couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t even think. She couldn’t hear a word he said. She was a vast field of endless panic.

  “Buffy?” he said gently.

  She leaned forward and slammed her fist down on his backrest, very near his head.

  “Where were you?” she shouted.

  Micaela half turned, murmuring, “Buffy, I’m sorry.”

  Buffy glared at her. “Your father did this,” she hissed at her. “Your father.”

  “He isn’t really my father,” the woman replied weakly.

  Giles looked sharply at Micaela. She dropped her gaze.

  Buffy turned back to Giles. “Where is she? Where are they keeping her?”

  “Xander was shot trying to save her,” Giles said, and it occurred to Buffy in a vague blur of jumbled thoughts that she hadn’t even asked how Xander had been hurt. Everything was so bad and they had to move so fast that all she had done was register that one of her best friends might be dying—might be dead by now for all she knew—and then she had moved on to the next bad thing on a list of very bad things.

  “Where were you, Giles?” she accused him again, feeling everything slipping away from her. “Cross-indexing your stupid reference books? Making tea?”

  “Hey,” Angel said from the backseat. “Buffy, take it easy.”

  Buffy whirled on the vampire. “Don’t you defend him! I risked her life by going off to Europe to find Jacques. I left her alone. I couldn’t be here, but he was here. All he had to do was take care of her. We knew there were leaks in the Watchers’ Council security. We knew there were bad guys everywhere you looked!”