Buffy the Vampire Slayer 1

by John Vorholt;Arthur Byron Cover;Alice Henderson

  Anything could happen to Willow out there in her delirious state.

  Another root tripped her, and she pitched forward, barely keeping her balance. When she stood up, a branch tangled painfully in her hair, stopping her progress. She reached up, pulling strands free of the tree’s hold. Then she continued on. Behind her the forest creaked and shuffled. Twigs snapped. Leaves rustled.

  She spun around only to find an empty, shadowed forest behind her.

  As she watched, the shadows shifted, moving from tree to tree. She whirled around. Dark forms beneath the trees darted away, out of sight, sliding along the forest floor and winding up the trunks of trees like shadow snakes.

  Buffy steeled herself. This place was not going to spook her out. She was going to find Willow and the others. Then she was going to kick some vampire butt and be home before the Sunnydale Mall closed.

  She pushed forward, moving tree limbs out of the way, shifting her eyes between the ground and the distance, searching for Willow. The wind in the boughs sighed more loudly, whispering over her head. Just as she looked up again to scan for Willow, she ran into a low tree limb, which struck her in the thigh. The branches caught in the wool of her cloak. She paused to yank the cloak free, and watched as shadows spilled down the sides of the trees around her, then advanced alarmingly fast, spreading over her.

  Coldness hit her skin, and she backed away in a moment of unthinking fear. Then she wrenched the cloak free and started running. The trees bent and swayed, branches swinging down on top of her, catching under her arms, in her hair, snagging at her back. Root after root tripped her, and finally she went down hard, in a mossy patch. Darkness swept up over her and she flipped over, ready to kick her attackers.

  Hands emerged from the ferns, arms from the undergrowth, lifting her up, up, until she stood, spitting dirt out of her mouth. And then the shadows stepped closer, dissolving into human form. Eight cloaked figures stood in a circle around her. They all wore medallions with the symbol of a tree.

  “Look,” she said. “I don’t mean to hurt you. Unless you’re evil,” she added. “Then I probably do.” She thought they might be Druids, though. Where was Giles?

  They whispered to one another in a language she could not understand, pointing at her clothes.

  Some decision made, they drew in closer, taking her arms, and pulled her toward the firelit section of the island.

  “Wait!” she said, wondering if she should beat all of them up to escape. But then she decided that wouldn’t go over well later, especially not while Giles tried to convince them she was there to help. “I had three friends with me! One of them is sick.”

  They regarded her with unmoving faces, clearly members of the Stoic-Villains-of-the-Month Club. Why did cloaked people always have to look so grim? Would it kill them to smile, or laugh at a good pun once in a while? Of course, Buffy herself rarely laughed at a pun, usually preferring to groan, especially if Xander was the perpetrator. Where was he?

  As they dragged her toward the bonfires, Buffy craned her neck around, searching the woods for any sign of her friends. “Too bad I don’t speak Druid!” she shouted for Giles’s benefit, in case he lurked nearby. “Having a translator sure would be helpful in the land of cloaks over here!” When there was no response, not even a rustling of shrubbery, she added, “Well, off I go to the ritual sacrifice!”

  Images of a wicker man on fire and her inside it flickered into her head. She forced them out and let the strangers lead her onward.

  They meandered through the trees, which were quite well behaved compared to earlier. No branches snagging her clothes, no limbs in her hair. She imagined an eerie picture—the obfuscating Druids standing alongside her path, lowering twigs and branches into her way. Had they been there all along, hidden in shadow?

  The flickering of a fire grew brighter and brighter, casting light on the trees around it. As they drew closer, the fire dissolved into four separate bonfires. Figures surrounded the fires, at least fifty people in robes, tunics, and cloaks.

  And in front of the fire, with new dry clothes, sat Willow. She shivered now, a good sign, Buffy knew. It meant her body was warming up.

  Standing up behind her were Giles and Xander, listening to the woman who appeared to be in charge of the group. Giles nodded, and then Buffy was within earshot. Everyone looked up as she and the Druids approached.

  “Ah, Buffy,” Giles said, walking over to her. “Are you all right?”

  “Am I all right? How long have you been here?”

  “Since we first landed. These people were kind enough to escort us over here.”

  “And the trees didn’t …” Buffy could feel the immense oaks towering over her, weighing down on her.

  “The trees didn’t what?” Giles asked.

  Buffy’s voice felt tiny in the shadow of those ancient sentinels. “Nothing.”

  “Buffy! Hey!” Xander called as she approached. He gave her a little wave, grinning. Grinning a little too much. He was stuck in perma-grin, that expression he got when terrified on the inside and pretending to be brave on the outside.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked when she drew nearer.

  “Nothing. Nothing,” Xander said through clenched teeth. “Just keep smiling. Let’s just hope that Giles here is getting through to them.” He gave a little nod in the direction of a grouping of gray stones at the edge of the firelight. Something thick and red gleamed there, pooling in a small recess in the rock and spilling down the side of the forest floor.

  Buffy did her best probably nothing shrug. “It may not be human.”

  “It’s the ‘may’ part that bothers me,” Xander said, still grinning like mad and nodding at the gathered Druids.

  Giles resumed his conversation with the woman, who nodded and pointed down to the shore, where still more bonfires gleamed in the darkness. Buffy didn’t know what they were speaking. It didn’t sound like Latin. She didn’t know what Druids spoke.

  Giles gave her a slight bow, then joined them. “Fascinating!” he said. “Just fascinating!”

  “What is?” Xander asked. “How long we’ve got before we’re gutted as a sacred sign of worship?”

  Giles shook his head. “No, Xander. Remember what I said about there being no archaeological proof whatsoever that the Druids practiced ritual human sacrifice on Anglesey.”

  “No proof? Before you said ‘scant’ proof.”

  Giles went on. “All we have supporting it is the Roman writing, and that could just be propaganda to make the Druids look even more the fearsome foes that they undoubtedly were. Besides,” he added, taking off his glasses and cleaning the left lens, “even if they did, they wouldn’t sacrifice just anyone. It would have to mean something.”

  “Oh,” Xander said, his voice momentarily cracking into a falsetto. “That’s no more reassuring now than it was the first time I heard that gem of Giles knowledge.”

  “So what else did you learn?” Buffy asked. She regarded her Watcher in the flickering light. He looked tired.

  “Well, the language is quite difficult. I tried several, wanting to avoid Latin, of course. I’m sure they speak it, but under the circumstances, I don’t think they’d react well at all to strangers showing up using the tongue of the Roman army. I spoke a bit of a Goidelic ancestor of modern Gaelic. I think they understood. They seem to be quite multilingual. Then I tried a variant of Old Welsh I know a little of, and that seemed to do the trick. At least, I think they understood me best when I used the more proto-British dialects … ancestors of Welsh, Cornish, and Breton—”

  “Giles,” Buffy said firmly. “Point.”

  “Ah, yes. I asked them about a powerful girl who lived on the island, someone who fought—”

  Xander interrupted, holding up a protesting finger. “Hey, I thought Slayers were supposed to keep their vocation secret.”

  “Well, yes. They are. If someone found out the identity of a Slayer, the vampires would hunt her tirelessly. That’s why I kept it vague.”
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  Buffy narrowed her eyes at him. “You? Vague?”

  He ignored her barb and continued. “I asked her about a girl who fought unusually strongly, perhaps with almost supernatural strength.”

  To their left, four men and a woman began chanting, holding thin branches. “And?” Buffy prompted him when he grew distracted.

  “Oh, yes. She said the girl lived farther down the shore this way, and a bit inland.”

  “Can one of them show us? We need to get to her now. Every moment we waste here …” She let her sentence trail off.

  “I could certainly ask.”

  “Tell them she’s in danger and that you need to get there quickly.”

  “I will,” Giles told her. “But they have their hands rather full with the upcoming Roman invasion.”

  “They know?” Xander asked.

  “Indeed. They have spies on the mainland watching the Romans even now.”

  Xander nodded in appreciation. “Neat. Intrigue.”

  While Giles returned to the woman to talk, Buffy knelt down beside Willow, wondering if they should leave her by the fire. “Willow?” she asked.

  Her friend looked up sheepishly. “I’m really sorry, Buffy,” she said quietly. “I don’t know what got into me. I could hear and see myself, and it all made sense at the time.”

  Buffy stroked her back reassuringly. “Giles said it was the hypothermia.”

  She pointed at the nearest Druids with her chin. “It’s a good thing they found me. I was streaking through the trees, screaming. It was really weird.”

  “Did the trees …” Again she felt the weight of the dark forest at her back.

  Willow raised her eyebrows. “Did they what?”

  “Never mind.”

  Giles returned, and Buffy stood up. “They have a man who can lead us to the girl’s cabin. She lives there with an older woman. Perhaps it’s her Watcher.”

  Buffy turned to the woman and gave a little bow in thanks. The woman nodded. “Let’s go.”

  Xander hesitated. “But what about Will?”

  Buffy turned to her friend, deciding. “Stay here with her, Xander. I don’t like the thought of splitting up, but Willow doesn’t look good. I don’t want her getting worse.”

  Xander’s eyes filled with fear. “Are you crazy? I’m not staying here.” He grasped Willow’s shoulder. “We’re not staying here. I don’t want to be a large order of Xander Fillet with fries on the side!”

  Willow touched his hand. “They’re okay, Xander. I know it. We’ll be safe.” Then she turned her head toward Buffy. “But won’t you need us?”

  “Don’t worry. We’re going to fight vamps. I’ve done this a hundred times, and I don’t want to worry about you.”

  The guide joined them, a stately-looking man with a long face, long brown beard, and a braid that hung down to his tail-bone. On his arms he carried two dry cloaks, which he handed to Buffy and Giles. They nodded their thanks.

  As they turned to go, Xander called, “Don’t speak that thingy without me! Don’t leave us here. I miss my comic books. I miss central heat. I miss pie.”

  Buffy readied for the dark forest to swallow her. As she walked away, she turned one last time to see Xander sitting next to the fire, his arm around Willow protectively. Two Druids were staring at him, perched on nearby rocks, and Xander reached out with his free hand and patted the trunk of a nearby tree. “Trees good. Love the trees. Love Druids,” he added, pointing at them.

  Buffy hoped he didn’t get them all killed.

  For what felt like hours, Giles and Buffy followed the guide through the forest, following no visible trail from what she could see. Now and again the guide paused to consult the trees. He stopped at a huge oak, and later at a tremendous pine, staring up into their branches, as if navigating by the trees’ location. Each time, he consulted the moss on the trunk, the way the branches hung, then chose a direction.

  Buffy felt bad about leaving Xander and Willow behind. Normally, she was relieved when they weren’t with her in battle. But in this strange place, nearly two thousand years before their own time, she felt odd and out of place. Anything could happen to them back there by the fire. Though she felt she could trust the Druids, she worried that the Romans would attack now and close in on her friends’ location. They could be murdered as collateral damage of the invasion.

  As she plodded through the dark and quiet forest, moving more and more inland, her nervousness only grew. What if this whole trek through the woods was for nothing, and the girl they found was not the Slayer at all? Even if she was, what if they were too late? The vamps could have landed on the island and killed her by now. Buffy hoped the Druidic Slayer wasn’t caught unaware, or distracted by the imminent invasion of the Roman forces.

  As they crept farther and farther into the dark forest, Buffy once again felt the uncanny and eerie sensation that the trees surrounding her were alive. Of course, she knew they were alive in a plantlike kind of way, but this was more of a locomoting kind of way. They groaned and creaked, sighed and bent, their branches waving and lowering, raising and brushing against one another.

  Her back burned as if hundreds of eyes dug into it, wooden eyes, ancient eyes. Unconsciously, she moved a little closer to Giles. “You feel it too?” he asked.

  Buffy nodded, relieved that her Watcher also sensed it and that it wasn’t her overactive imagination. Usually he believed her, even if he didn’t sense anything himself. But occasionally, like the last time they had to deal with something creepy and wooden, namely a ventriloquist dummy, he hadn’t believed her at first. But that had all turned out okay.

  But that was just one creature made of wood.

  This was an entire forest, and it moved around them, shifting and moaning.

  Soon she smelled burning wood, and a small cabin came into view. Out of a narrow chimney curled a long column of smoke. She didn’t think she’d be so cavalier as to burn wood on this island.

  The guide moved forward, signaling for them to wait outside. He knocked on the door. A woman in her thirties answered, looking weary. The guide exchanged brief words with her and then nodded, waving them forward.

  Inside the small cabin, Buffy finally started to warm up. She stood next to the fireplace, reveling in its heat. Giles spoke with the woman, growing more and more excited as he did. Buffy couldn’t understand a word. Was she the Slayer?

  Finally Giles looked up to her. “She’s a Watcher,” he told her. “Her name is Eyra.”

  “Hi,” Buffy said, giving her a little wave. She was younger than Giles, looked a little less stuffy. Buffy wondered what she was like as a Watcher. “So where’s Incinii?”

  “This will probably sound quite familiar to you,” Giles said, “but she’s disobeyed her Watcher and moved to the front lines to help ward off the Roman invasion.”

  “Hey, I hardly ever ward off Roman invasions,” she countered.

  Eyra said something to Giles in what sounded like Latin.

  “She says we can catch her if we leave right away. She’ll be with the group of warriors on the northernmost part of the resistance front. She has a brother among them.” Just as Buffy was finally getting warm, Giles stood up. Eyra explained something at length to the guide, pointing out into the forest. Then the guide made a short bow to Giles. Buffy waited for Giles to explain. “He’s going to take us down to Incinii. We don’t have much time.”

  “We never do,” Buffy lamented, feeling a little sorry for herself. How many times had she passed up perfectly good shoe sales because she had to avert the apocalypse? How many school dances had she missed because some archvillain or another was ascending to power? Okay, maybe just the one, but still, her dress got totally ruined and she didn’t get to dance at all. Now it was back to the creepy forest with no time to sit by the fire. Why couldn’t this Slayer have lived in Hawaii? Or hey, maybe Fiji?

  Seeming to read her mind, Giles said, “C’mon, Buffy,” and waved her toward the door. He shook Eyra’s hand warmly. Man,
Giles was such a Watcher geek. Always wanting to swap notes with some other Watcher so he could see if Buffy was really as ill-behaved as he thought she was. But she did kick ass. And that was what was important.

  And now she had some serious assassin vamp ass to kick.

  “Can’t she come with us?” Buffy asked.

  Giles waved good-bye as he left. “She’s waiting for an important communication. Once the beach falls under attack, she must get word to a nearby encampment.”

  Buffy looked over her shoulder as the door shut. It must be hard to sit home and wait.

  They began retracing their steps back through the forest, but as they neared the shore, their guide branched off in a new direction. He turned and said something to Giles, then stooped low. Giles did the same, motioning for Buffy to follow.

  “He says that the war party is just over that rise,” Giles whispered, motioning to a small hill. “He’s going ahead to find the Slayer.”

  The guide crept stealthily forward.

  “Can’t we go with him?”

  “He says they’re using magick up there, and he’s not sure how it would react to our presence.”

  “That sounds ominous.”

  “Indeed. I suggest we wait here.”

  Buffy nodded and sat down in the wet, leaf-strewn dirt. She leaned against a tree. She peered up at the branches crowding out the sky. She played with the hem of her cloak. Time passed. The guide did not return.

  “Giles, I don’t like this.” She rose to a crouch.

  “Neither do I. Perhaps he had difficulties finding her.”

  “Or perhaps he ditched us,” she offered.

  Giles furrowed his brow. “I don’t think that’s the case. More likely the Romans have attacked, and he felt the need to stave off their advances.”

  “Or was killed.”

  Giles peered through the gloom toward the small rise. “Or that.”

  “I should check it out.” She stood up, shaking the pine needles and leaves out of her cloak.

  “Let’s not separate here,” Giles said anxiously. “I imagine getting lost would be enormously easy in this forest.”