Buffy the Vampire Slayer 1

by John Vorholt;Arthur Byron Cover;Alice Henderson

  Any normal person would have found the heat outrageous, yet those here thought it rather comfortable. The crowd focused their attention on the stage, which featured a podium, a microphone, and a picture of the Master that took up the entire rear curtain.

  Equally spontaneous was the deafening roar the crowd made at the behest of a few minions when the Master walked onto the stage. Bathed in a spotlight, the Master took a few bows, waved at a few demons he had a professional relationship with, and then basked in the general adulation.

  The entire affair was climaxed by the unexpected appearance of the biggest, baddest fallen angel in the hierarchy of evil—Old Scratch himself! He presented to the stunned, humble Master a plaque inscribed TO THE MASTER OF EVIL, EXCEPTIN’ OLD SCRATCH HIMSELF.

  “Sire! Does this mean you’re setting me free?”

  “Not a chance, skull-face,” Old Scratch said, drawing a big laugh from the crowd. “Now go away, boy, you bother me!”

  The crowd roared, seeing the Master wallowing in his own hotheaded despair.

  The Master reached out for the hooves at the end of Old Scratch’s legs. Don’t do it! I beg you! Just tell me what you want to do to me and I’ll inflict the same unspeakable punishment on somebody else! Please!”

  Old Scratch did not respond. He did not even use that hideous gurgle of boiling hot blood reserved for any cowering servant who had committed the most serious transgression. In fact, come to think of it, there weren’t even those great, rock-hard hooves about. The Master could not find them to grab.

  The Master took a chance and looked up. Old Scratch was nowhere to be seen. The crowd, the lights, and the stage were gone. The Master was back in his underground prison, wallowing on one of the tunnel floors. He had been asleep. Dreaming. A nightmare.

  The Master chuckled as he stood up. The cheap irony did not escape him. He too had been using dreams to serve his ends. He thought it excellent that his own subconscious had reminded him what powerful, unpredictable forces dreams could be.

  The others, however, wouldn’t be so lucky. They didn’t have his unique insight into the unnatural order of things. And because they lacked this knowledge, the Slayer, her Watcher, and her chattering lackeys would be dust, and he would rule his rightful realm once more.

  The Master laughed until the echoes rang up and down the tunnels like a scream from an infinite abyss. Even his minions, who had thought they were immune to most effects of complete, abject fear, quivered in their three-toed boots.

  Xander and Willow caught up with Buffy on her way to school. Childhood friends, their conversation often revolved around matters Buffy couldn’t possibly relate to.

  Today, their preoccupation with their kindergarten days left her free to brood over her dreams. Given all that Giles had said, the dreams had to be regarded with suspicion.

  What she’d revealed to Willow about her knowledge of the period was only the beginning. Buffy found she knew things about the people of Salem and North Salem that couldn’t have been learned from any history book.

  Including the inner joy that had surged through Samantha Kane when she’d slain her first vampire.

  They were only a few blocks away from the Sunnydale High rear entrance when Buffy became vaguely aware of someone trying to get their attention.

  He was a late-middle-aged man in a baggy old suit, with a bow tie and a battered old hat. He carried a large, old-fashioned flash camera.

  “You’re that newspaper reporter I saw on TV last week,” said Xander before the man could open his mouth. “The one who believes mad cow disease was caused by the ghosts of buffalo who’d been forced to cross the Atlantic for Buffalo Bill’s traveling Wild West Show in the 1890s!”

  “No, no, it’s more complicated than that,” the man replied defensively. “My words were taken out of context.”

  “This gentleman shows up a lot on the Channel Three News ‘Conspiracy Theory of the Week’ slot,” Xander explained to the girls. “I forget his name—”

  “Darryl MacGovern,” said the reporter.

  “He also broke the story to the supermarket rags about the outbreak of three-legged frogs in Spokane, Washington,” continued Xander. “And he claims the animated TV show Teenage Mutant Two-Fisted Possums is actually propaganda created by aliens to prepare us for what they look like when they invade the planet.”

  “I never said that!” protested MacGovern. “Not exactly, anyway!”

  “So you work for Channel Three?” asked Willow, trying to be casual.

  “No, they just use me for their conspiracy segment whenever they can’t find anything else suitably outrageous.”

  “So, if you only do TV part-time, who else do you work for?” Buffy asked suspiciously.

  “The Clayton Press,” said MacGovern. “Well, to be honest, I used to work there. The publisher fired me three weeks ago. Apparently he found my frequent appearances on a show about conspiracy theories compromised my integrity as a reporter.” He snorted. “As if such a thing were possible.”

  “It’s a cruel world, but sometimes it’s a fair one,” said Xander.

  “So what brings you to Sunnydale High?” asked Buffy innocently, though she had a bad feeling about this.

  “A story!” said MacGovern enthusiastically. “One so fantastic the paper’ll beg me to come back. But I’ll have enough name-value recognition to start my own exposé show.”

  “On Channel Three?” Willow asked.

  “No! On the Occult Channel!” MacGovern exclaimed. “I’ll make cable after this!”

  “You may smell a story,” said Buffy, “but I smell a rat!”

  MacGovern leaned in to her. “Perhaps you can help me. I understand a lot of peculiar doings have been going on in Sunnydale lately.”

  “No kidding,” said Buffy dryly. “Nobody told me!”

  “Things are pretty quiet around here,” said Xander. He and Willow yawned.

  “I have this talent for stumbling across things that defy rational explanation. The frustrating part is, no matter what I do, no matter how careful I am, I can never get to the bottom of a story without losing all my tangible proof!”

  “So why are you here?” Willow asked with a smile. She couldn’t help herself; she thought this guy was funny.

  “A few weeks ago, I realized I was coming out of a cloud. Something had been nagging at my natural curiosity for months, yet I’d been unable to verbalize it. I mean, it’s my business to know whether or not something’s any of my business. Understand what I’m talking about?”

  Buffy got a sinking feeling, as if her stomach were being thrown over a ravine with the rest of her soon to follow.

  “In fact, I realized I’d heard a whole lot of unsubstantiated rumors about things that were happening in Sunnydale. So after about sixteen hours pondering the situation from the vantage point of conspiracy theory pages on the Internet, I did some research in the files of the Clayton Press and other major suburban newspapers in the vicinity. And you know what I found? Of course you don’t. I discovered nothing.”

  The three teens looked at one another in confusion.

  “Nothing?” Willow echoed.

  “Exactly! And that’s the whole point!”

  “No kidding,” said Willow sympathetically. “You look a little pale. Have you been taking all your mineral supplements?”

  “No. Listen, no town has nothing. Everybody has something. Something to hide. Something to deny—”

  “No, we don’t!” Xander tried.

  “Yeah,” Buffy echoed. “We don’t have nothing. …” She trailed off. “Where was I?”

  An awkward silence passed between the reporter and everyone else. Buffy stewed, betrayed by fate in the form of a nosy flat-footed reporter, yet she had to struggle to conceal her emotions. The tendency of most people not to believe what’s right in front of them, which had enabled her to live a semblance of a normal life, was now playing tricks with her. She could only wonder how many people might be noticing, for the first time, the
events that had recently occurred in Sunnydale thanks to the existence of the Hellmouth below.

  “So what are you trying to tell us?” asked Willow aggressively—which was unusual in itself.

  “Nothing!” MacGovern answered forcefully.

  “So you’re telling us you’re going to hunt for nothing?” Buffy spoke slowly as if to a child.

  “Exactly!” MacGovern seemed excited someone finally understood. “I’m going to find this nothing and expose it as something!”

  “Uh-oh, gotta split!” said Xander suddenly. He took MacGovern’s hand and pumped it vigorously. “Gonna be late!”

  “Can’t miss homeroom!” said Willow.

  “Nice meeting you,” said Buffy, leading the others away. “Good luck finding nothing.”

  • • •

  “So, Giles, still searching for portents of things to come?” Xander asked briskly as he entered the library with Buffy and Willow. They often stopped by right after school just to see if anything was going down.

  “The Eibon is nothing to joke about,” replied Giles sternly.

  “What else do we know about this Prince Ashton Eisenberg besides the fact he was two tamales short of a full plate?” Willow asked.

  “Reliable sources say he died as a result of spontaneous combustion,” said Giles, “that is, his body burned up of its own accord, without benefit of fuel or match.”

  “Fascinating,” said Buffy. “But we’ve got a problem.”

  “You first,” said Giles with a smile.

  “Okay.” Quickly she told Giles about their encounter with Darryl MacGovern.

  “It’s bad, isn’t it?” Xander asked.

  “It’s worse—it’s disastrous!” Giles exclaimed. “This MacGovern character is a veritable stalkerazzi, well-known in legitimate scholarly occult circles as a complete pest. He never rests until he gets his story or meets a total dead end, whichever comes first.”

  “At least we can always use Xander as a decoy until we can throw him off the scent entirely,” said Willow with a sigh.

  “Thanks a lot,” said Xander.

  “It’s a good plan,” said Giles, “but I bet MacGovern is just a pawn in some greater game. He may be only an insignificant red herring, sent to throw us off the real scent while the real pieces come into play.”

  “Maybe we should introduce him to the Master,” said Xander. “Then MacGovern will start bugging him for an exclusive.”

  “We could,” said Willow, “but that would be wrong.”

  “Giles, what did you mean by ‘You first’?” asked Buffy.

  “Last night I had a dream that disturbed me greatly,” Giles replied.

  Buffy literally bit her tongue.

  “It was so vivid, so real—it was unlike any dream I had ever experienced. After all, it had a coherent narrative—at least, as much as the events it portrayed allowed it to be.”

  “Were these actual historical events?” Buffy asked.

  “As near as I can determine, yes,” said Giles. “I was clearly dreaming about a past life. I have long suspected I might be the reincarnation of an earlier Watcher or two, but never in my wildest flights of fancy did I think I might be spiritually related to the legendary late-seventeenth-century Watcher Robert Erwin.”

  “What were you doing in the dream?” asked Willow.

  “Not very much,” said Giles. “I’m afraid I had succumbed to a raging fever and was delirious. Robert Erwin thought the fever had supernatural origins, which I tended to agree with.”

  “Oh, come on!” said Xander. “The supernatural can’t explain everything! Maybe he was just sick!”

  “That is possible, but I remember his paranoid ravings quite clearly,” said Giles. “Anyway, Erwin was under the care of an innkeeper and his wife in Boston. Of course he was worried about what the late-seventeenth-century Slayer was up to.”

  “Who was she?” asked Buffy dryly. She thought she would like to hear what Giles knew before offering collaborating evidence.

  “Her name was Samantha Kane, and she made quite a reputation for herself. She was described in letters and certain official writings as a sort of Joan of Arc type, in that she could perform with ease tasks formerly thought only the province of men.”

  “I like her already,” said Willow slyly.

  “So do I,” replied Giles. “Unfortunately it seems that poor Robert Erwin was unable to assist Samantha Kane as he so clearly desired to. He died of his fever, and she disappears entirely from the historical record around 1692, during the height of the infamous Salem witch trials.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Sure we should be doing this?” Buffy asked Giles as she deftly deflected a thrust of his kitana—a Japanese practice sword—with her staff. “Aren’t you worried that MacGovern might be spying on us?” shifting her weight, she swung her weapon sideways, taking Giles’s feet out from under him.

  He landed heavily on his back with a satisfactory thump. “Of course,” he gasped. He rolled over and coughed. “But he’ll probably attempt to verify his facts before trying to sell the story to his editors. After all, he needs to fill an entire show and be prepared to go on some cable news channel to defend his story.”

  She reached down to help him stand. “Where did you learn that move?” he asked.

  “From an old movie on TV,” said Buffy proudly. “I think it starred somebody—Flynn, or maybe what’s-his-name … Lancaster, I forget which. Are we done?”

  “No, we must complete the session.” He rubbed his back and groaned. “As difficult as that might prove to be.”

  “Okay! But don’t say I didn’t warn you—I’ve been watching a lot of old movies lately.”

  “I was afraid of that.” Stiffly, Giles assumed a fighting position. “This is called a wombat stance—”

  “Looks more like a drunken squirrel to me,” Buffy giggled.

  He sliced sideways with the kitana. When she avoided it—easily—he grabbed her arm, twisted around, and tried to throw her over his shoulder. But she was too fast. Using their momentum, she landed on her feet, pivoted around to face him, and grabbed him by the collar. With one smooth movement she threw herself backward and, with the help of her foot on his chest, she threw him across the room.

  Buffy picked up her staff as she leapt to her feet, ready for his next move, exactly as she would do had she been facing a genuine foe. “Can I go home now?” she asked pleadingly.

  “No,” Giles groaned. He reached out for a helping hand, which pointedly did not arrive.

  “What is the point of this lesson?” she asked.

  “Perseverance,” said Giles, pulling himself to his feet. “And patience against an opponent who doesn’t know when he’s been beaten.” He tried to jab her with the kitana handle.

  She dodged the blow easily, grabbed his wrist, twisted the kitana from his hand, elbowed him against the chin just hard enough so he knew she could do it, and then sent him flying again.

  He slid across the top of the desk like a stone skipping across a lake, and then hit the floor.

  Fortunately Giles wore elbow, knee, and chest pads whenever he worked out with Buffy, but now he considered just buying a padded suit to cover every inch of his body. “I am convinced, Buffy, that if demons and other ghouls don’t do in this particular Watcher someday, his favorite Slayer will manage to do the job for him.”

  “Sorry about that. I really want to go home today. By the way, what was that stance again? The wombat?” Buffy attempted to imitate the stance Giles had taken.

  Giles blinked until he got her into better focus, then said, “Hold the right arm higher. The left leg out a little more—”

  “Walk me home?” Willow asked Xander at the gate to the school grounds.

  Xander shrugged his shoulders. “Sure. Why not? Why does Giles insist on giving Buffy combat lessons?” he asked casually. “She keeps mopping up the floor with him.”

  “Somebody has to do it, I suppose,” Willow replied. “Maybe Giles just wants her to
keep her edge.”

  “Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo!” called out a woman’s voice from a street to their left.

  Willow and Xander turned to see a man and woman getting out of a gigantic Hummer with tires that looked big and wide enough to ride the surface of Mars, if need be.

  The man was in his mid-forties an wore and ill-fitting designer suit; he was just now getting out of the driver’s side. The woman, who was about a decade younger than he, wore a stylish, modern blue power jacket and skirt. She’d been so intent upon reaching Willow and Xander she had left the passenger door open for the man to close. “Kids! You go to Sunnydale High, don’t you? May we have a word with you?” she called out insistently.

  “I bet I know what she wants to find out,” whispered Willow.

  “This is too weird,” said Xander.

  “Thank you, this will just take a few moments. My name is Lora Church,” she said, holding out her hand. Her hair was short and brown, her face round, attractive, and cheerful. “This is my husband, Rick. Your name is Willow, am I right? And you must be Xander?”

  “Yeah, how did you know?” asked Xander, who found it somewhat difficult to take his eyes off her.

  Willow nodded suspiciously. She didn’t like it when Xander noticed beautiful strangers, be they from afar or close up. But then Rick Church looked into her eyes and she found herself holding her breath.

  Managing to possess the illusion of danger while acting like a perfect gentleman, Rick Church said, “Well, Xander, we have a mutual acquaintance. She suggested you and your beautiful young friend here might be able to fill us in on the many unusual occurrences in Sunnydale.”

  “Really!” said Xander dryly. “Actually, it’s not the number of occurrences but the lack of them that I find the most interesting. Nothing ever happens in Sunnydale. People don’t even run red lights here.”

  “So who’s our mutual acquaintance?” asked Willow.

  “A ghost,” said Rick. “You don’t really know her, though she knows very well who you are.”