Buffy jumped to her feet, tossing off the coyote like a smelly fur pelt. She didn’t even wait to see what became of it, because she knew that its buds could be nearby, ready to pounce. Buffy scurried to the passenger door, yanked it open, and dove in.
“Drive!” she said breathlessly.
Still shuddering, Giles started the car engine. “Where?”
“The cemetery.”
“I was afraid you were going to say that.” Looking around carefully, Giles backed the car out of the parking lot. He drove as if he were afraid he was going to run over a coyote wherever he went.
Buffy didn’t relax until they were on Main Street, headed back into town. The carnival was far behind them, and it was tempting just to forget about it and hide under the bed. But she couldn’t do that, even though she felt out of her element fighting these four-legged Lon Chaneys.
“Why the cemetery?” Giles asked.
“Here’s the short version,” she began. “I was captured, but I got lucky and got turned over to Hopscotch. Have you seen him? He’s the gnarly one. He’s also the one who shot Spurs Hardaway.”
“Really?” Giles remarked. “So he doesn’t want to see Spurs come back. How much help will he be to us?”
“None. He turned himself into a coyote and took to the hills.” Buffy frowned worriedly. “I can’t say I blame him. I’m not sure how to stop them, but I know there’s one thing we’ve got to do—get the bear skin.”
“A rug?” Giles asked in confusion.
“No, the bear skin that was buried with Spurs Hardaway. We’ve got to open his coffin and get it out. The last thing Sunnydale needs is an evil sorcerer who can turn himself into a giant supernatural grizzly bear!”
“No, I suppose you’re right,” Giles said glumly. “And Willow and Xander?”
“I haven’t seen them. Have you?”
The Watcher shook his head. “No. But perhaps they stayed home.”
“You got a peep at Rose. Do you think Xander would stay home?”
“No, and Willow would stick close to him, if she could.”
“She’s got her hands full too,” Buffy muttered.
With a grave expression on his face, Giles steered the car onto another quiet suburban street. “We’re getting close to the cemetery. What’s the plan?”
“We’ve got to check here first,” the Slayer answered, “to make sure they haven’t started the masquerade party yet. You stay in the car, while I go scope things out. If it looks clear, we’ll get some shovels at my house and steal Spurs’s bear skin. To be on the safe side, maybe we can dismember his corpse.”
“Silver!” Giles said worriedly. “We’ve got to get some silver bullets.”
“Only as a last resort. I think we can stop them without killing anybody.” She opened the car door and slipped out. “You wait in the car—no more rogue warrior stuff. Honk if there’s trouble.”
“Will do,” Giles answered, nervously surveying the quiet street and moonlit cemetery. He quickly locked the car door behind her.
Buffy jogged toward the fence, preparing to leap over the iron spears that surrounded the cemetery. As she was about to go airborne, a horn honked frantically behind her. Buffy pulled up at the last second and crashed noisily into the fence. She turned to yell at Giles, when she saw him pointing frantically down the street.
The Slayer whirled around to see a beautiful Irish setter come charging down the street with three coyotes yapping at its heels. When the frightened dog zigged to either side to escape, the coyotes deftly cut it off and kept it running down the middle. The setter was bigger than the coyotes, and just as fast, but it was obvious from its shiny red coat that it was a house pet, no match for the snarling predators, which would run her down sooner or later.
Buffy saw Giles get out of his car and start waving at the oncoming coyotes and their prey. “Shoo! Shoo!” he yelled.
Once again, it was coyotes behaving badly but normally. As soon as they saw Giles, they broke off the chase and loped into the shadows, where they watched from a respectful distance. The poor setter ran breathlessly toward Giles, and Buffy moved to head it off.
“Come here, girl,” Buffy said, holding her arms out to the frightened animal. The dog lunged gratefully into her embrace, and Buffy rubbed its silky coat. The animal was shivering and panting so badly that it was hyperventilating.
“Oh, you poor girl,” Buffy said sympathetically as she kept the three rotten coyotes in view.
“How do you know it’s a girl?” Giles asked.
Buffy shrugged. “I don’t know, something about her.”
“Do you suppose those three are normal coyotes?” Giles asked. “They don’t seem as aggressive as the other variety.”
“I don’t know,” Buffy admitted. “We shouldn’t take any chances. I thought I told you to stay in the car.”
Giles pouted with indignation. “It’s difficult to stand by and watch a beautiful animal like that get mauled by coyotes!”
“Yeah, I guess so.” Buffy petted the setter’s neck, which is when she realized that the dog had no collar or tags. Maybe it had lost its collar during the chase, getting it caught in a fence. A desperate dog could easily squirm out of a collar.
Then Buffy noticed something else—the dog’s smell. It was as if it hadn’t had a bath in a while. The warning hackles on Buffy’s neck were just starting to rise when the dog whirled around with a vicious snarl and chomped her forearm.
“Aaagh!” Buffy screamed, trying to get the dog’s powerful jaws to unlock from her arm.
Giles recoiled in horror at the sudden and ferocious attack, and he didn’t see the three coyotes as they wheeled on their haunches and charged across the pavement. It was a concerted attack, with two of the coyotes rushing Giles and one coming to aid the dog. Only Buffy had discovered too late that it wasn’t a real dog.
If they had the right skins, the shape-shifters could turn themselves into any animal!
Buffy watched helplessly as two swift coyotes pounced on Giles and drove him to the ground. When the third coyote lunged for her, she lashed out with her free hand and spun it around like a hairy boomerang. But the sweet Irish setter still had her arm in a death grip.
Giles’s screams rent the air as the supernatural shape-shifters mauled him!
CHAPTER NINE
With a dog that wasn’t a dog trying to gnaw her arm off, Buffy got good and mad. She leaned down and bit the setter brutally on its tender snout. With all her might, she tried to chew that weredog’s nose off.
When the creature yelped and let go of Buffy’s arm, she swung her other fist like a sledgehammer. She crunched the setter on the top of its head, and the beast went limp and slumped to the ground. The Slayer jumped up and booted the unconscious animal about ten feet.
As the setter rolled into the ditch, it took on the momentary appearance of a girl with red hair—Rose’s relief at the dunking machine! Somehow the monster shook off the blow and became a harmless-looking dog once again. There was no time to gape at this weirdness, because Giles was still getting mauled.
Two of the attackers were now dazed, but two more were wrestling with the librarian, trying to rip their way through his sweater. Buffy charged across the pavement and flew into them feet-first; the canines went careening twenty feet and landed in a heap. She caught movement from the corner of her eye, and she spun like a top and smacked the first coyote as it tried to sneak up on them.
Crouching protectively over Giles, Buffy kept the four beasts in view. They were dazed and wary, but they knew enough to snarl in anger.
“That was a nice trick you pulled on us!” she said angrily, shaking her fist at them. “I bet if you had a human skin, you could even be human again!”
The canines snapped and snarled at her, but they were cautious now that they had lost the element of surprise. Buffy glanced down at Giles, who was covered in blood but alive. He groaned, rolled over, and picked up his glasses.
“The car!” she ordered. “
Get in the car!”
“Gladly,” the bloody librarian muttered as he crawled on all fours to the door of his sedan. While the coyotes circled them, Buffy feinted phantom blows at them and Giles hauled himself behind the steering wheel. With a trembling hand, he pulled the door shut.
Glaring at the monsters, the Slayer backed slowly toward the passenger door. She gripped her wounded forearm, which was starting to throb with pain.
“I’ve had it with you hairballs! I really have!” Buffy warned. “I don’t care about the anti-fur movement—I’m going to stitch all of you together into a fur-lined trash bag!”
The coyotes growled bravely at her, but they didn’t attack as Buffy slipped into Giles’s car. Why should they attack? They had won, driving the intruders away from the cemetery and safeguarding their ceremony. They had used trickery to do it, but that was the way of coyotes.
Giles started the car engine and tromped the gas angrily, sending the coyotes scurrying. He had a lot of scratches and bloodstains on his shirt, but he didn’t appear to be badly injured.
“Can you drive?” she asked.
“I’m shaky, but I think so.” Giles frowned at the tooth marks on Buffy’s arm. “We should go to the hospital. We probably both need stitches.”
She gulped. “We’re not going to, like, turn into werecoyotes, are we?”
Slowly the car pulled away from the curb, and Giles shook his head. “No, this isn’t a curse, like the typical werewolf account. These people studied and worked hard to become shape-shifters, and they’ve had more than a hundred years of practice.”
Buffy turned to look for the werecoyotes and the were-setter, but they had disappeared into the dark landscape of the cemetery. She gazed into the sky and tried to find the moon, but it was too high overhead—the roof of the car blocked it. Just as well, Buffy thought. Exhausted, she slumped into her seat and tried to ignore the throbbing pain in her arm.
“I know a doctor who could patch us up,” Giles said. “That way, we won’t get bogged down in red tape at the hospital.”
“Good thing, because we’ve got to get back to the carnival by midnight,” Buffy said, gritting her teeth. “We need to head off Willow, Xander, and whoever else they have on a leash. Maybe you can talk some sense into them. Hopscotch said they had to come of their own free will.”
“Which they’re doing.” Giles shook his head with frustration. “Our foe is crafty and dangerous, and they know you’re the only one who can stop them.”
“So what else is new?” Buffy asked with a shrug. “What’s spooky is, when they’re animals, they act like real coyotes. When they’re in that wild state, we should be smarter than them.”
“You mean, they should have some weakness we could exploit?”
“Yeah. We need to start using trickery too, or the next mayor of Sunnydale is going to be a werebear.”
Giles nodded gravely and kept driving through the deserted streets, while the skull-colored Coyote Moon beamed down on them.
“Due to a request from the fire marshal, the carnival will be closing in five minutes!” a voice announced on the loudspeaker. Willow looked up, recognizing Lonnie’s drawl. There were groans from the paying customers all around her, who were not done partying. Although it was twenty-five after eleven, the midway still boasted a sizable crowd.
“If you have any ride tickets left, come back and use them tomorrow!” the friendly voice suggested. “The rides and games will shut down in five minutes. Good night, and thanks for coming!” With a crackle of static, his voice cut off, and the surfer music cut in.
“At last!” Xander grinned with delirious happiness, as he hugged the gigantic stuffed tiger he had won. Willow knew that it wasn’t a tiger he imagined he was hugging—it was a Rose. She tried to keep the jovial smile plastered to her face, but it was hard.
Having fun at breakneck speed, they had returned to the carnies almost sixty dollars of the poker money she had won. But it was worth it for the good time they’d had, playing the games, riding the rides, and eating too much junk. If only life could be this simple—just she and Xander out on a date, acting like a regular couple. Why did they need Lonnie and Rose?
For one brief, shining moment, Willow wondered if she could whisk Xander away before Rose showed up to turn him into Silly Putty.
“Xander,” she said hesitantly. “What if Buffy is right, and there is something wrong with these people?”
He smiled pleasantly at her. “Hey, Willow, you know what? If you’re getting cold feet and want to back out, go ahead. You’ve got enough money to call a cab.” Xander reached into his pocket, fished around, and pulled out a quarter. “Hey, I’ll even call the cab for you!”
Willow tried not to pout. “You want me to go, so you won’t have to double-date.”
“Bingo. I like Lonnie, but we don’t need him, either. Rose and I can party by ourselves, if you know what I mean.”
Willow cleared her throat. “Has it ever occurred to you that this summer romance might come with certain trade-offs? I mean, nothing else is free at this carnival.”
A momentary look of concern passed over Xander’s face, and he tried to hide it with a nervous chuckle. “Now, what could you be thinking of?”
“Come on,” she insisted, “spill it. What’s it going to cost you?”
Xander rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “Let me ask you something, and I want you to give me an honest answer. Where do you think is a good place for a guy to have a tattoo?”
Willow frowned. First a mustache, then a tattoo? Can a Harley be far behind? She gestured with her hands as she tried to improvise an answer. “Someplace nobody would see it. Maybe on your … around your … on the bottom of your foot!”
“Ow!” Xander groaned at the very thought. “What we do for love.”
Willow sighed and looked around at the hubbub of excited teenagers trying to catch a last thrill before the vacation ended. Those who hadn’t come with dates were pairing up, or trying their best to pair up. Cliques of boys and girls had suddenly become smaller and tighter.
She looked at Xander, thinking that the hardest part of the evening was still ahead of them, when she would have to watch him and Rose paw each other. She would also have to be pawed by Lonnie, while Xander was nearby, which was confusing and strangely titillating. But it still seemed wrong, as if there was a scam she hadn’t figured out yet.
Willow lowered her voice, which was hardly necessary in the crush of carnival-goers. “You know, Buffy has supreme gut instincts. What if she’s right—what if there really is something wrong—”
“The only thing wrong with Rose is that she’s leaving too soon,” Xander sighed, dewy-eyed.
“I’m serious.”
Xander smirked. “Hey, I think it’s great to have Buffy jealous of us, for once. I think it’s good for her to be cut down to size. I notice that she had enough sense to stay away from the carnival tonight and not make a fool of herself anymore. If we’re in such danger, where has Buffy been all night?”
“I don’t know,” Willow admitted. “I guess there was nothing to it.”
Xander suddenly sprang to his feet and waved frantically. “Over here!”
With a corn dog revolving slowly in her stomach, Willow turned around and got even sicker. Rose came strolling toward them, wearing a tight leopard-patterned dress, fishnet hose, and spiked heels. Men’s heads swiveled, and their eyes followed her like the wake of an ocean liner. She was carrying a very large clasped purse—maybe it contained her bowling ball.
“Why don’t you get your tattoo on your forehead?” Willow suggested.
“Good idea,” Xander said, not even hearing her. He was totally oblivious to everything but Rose, who sauntered toward them in slow mention.
When she got closer, Xander slammed the stuffed tiger into Willow’s arms to make room for the stuffed carny. “You look beautiful!” he gushed.
He tried to wrap his arms around her, but she teasingly pushed him away. “My public is watchi
ng. There will be time later.”
Willow swallowed hard. “You dress is … stunning.”
“Thank you,” Rose answered. “I got this outfit in a burlesque house in Abilene.”
“Beautiful,” Xander repeated.
“They still have burlesque houses in Abilene?” Willow asked puzzledly. “I thought that burlesque houses went out of fashion in the 1950s.”
Rose gave a throaty chuckle. “It’s not really active, more like a burlesque museum.”
“You mean, some old stripper used to wear that outfit?” Xander asked, obviously impressed.
Rose smiled. “You might say that.”
“Where are we going?” Willow asked cheerfully, desperate to change the subject.
“I don’t know,” the carny replied. “Let’s wait and see what Lonnie wants to do. He’s the one who has the pickup truck. Xander, poor baby, you might have to ride in the back, in the bed of the truck.”
“No problem,” Xander said bravely. “If I get any booboos, will you kiss them and make them feel better?”
“Yes, my baby,” she cooed, patting his cheek.
The corn dog wanted to escape from Willow’s stomach, just as she wanted to escape from Rose, but neither one got the wish. It was clear that Xander would go anywhere with Rose, even if he were tied to a chain and being dragged by the truck.
“So you want to see the sights of Sunnydale?” Xander said, tapping his chin thoughtfully. “That could be a pretty short trip. There’s the Bronze, which is a cool club, even though they let everybody in. Then there’s a crummy mall, one lone coffee shop, and the slot-car races—they might still be open. And we have the usual collection of historical sights.”
“Historical sights,” Rose said, lifting a dark eyebrow mysteriously. “I’ve always gotten turned on by old places.”
“Really?” Xander said excitedly. “There are some ancient ruins on Flagpole Hill—probably cavemen left them.”
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