Buffy the Vampire Slayer 1

by John Vorholt;Arthur Byron Cover;Alice Henderson

  Xander staggered to his feet, his eyes haunted and yellow, jaundiced. He rasped at Buffy through blistered lips ruptured with sores. “Help …,” he whispered.

  On the ground, Giles writhed in pain, crawling to his knees to vomit again, and then collapsing. Buffy backed up, Willow at her side. The god slammed another foot down, knocking them apart. Willow stumbled and crawled to safety next to a pillar.

  “What are we going to do?” she called to Buffy.

  Buffy jumped into the air, dodging another blow from the god, who smashed his fist down onto the floor beside her. “Where was that spell book Giles had?”

  “He still has it,” Willow shouted back, diving out of the way as the other fist screamed down next to her head. It shattered the floor beneath, a spiderweb of cracks spiraling outward from the epicenter.

  “We need to get it!” Buffy yelled, leaping over an incoming kick. Namtar’s tremendous foot crashed into a pillar, eliciting a yelp of pain from the god. “That was hopeful! At least he can get hurt!”

  “Though we aren’t doing any of the hurting,” Willow pointed out.

  Buffy looked to where Giles lay, roiling with flies. She didn’t want to fester with boils. If all of them got the plague, there’d be no stopping Namtar, no stopping the assassins, and then the Master would rise. But there was no other option. And she’d need Willow to cast any spells to send this thing back to god oblivion, or god Palm Springs, or whatever hell dimension it had come from.

  Sprinting between the god’s feet, Ejuk joined Buffy. She made the universal gesture for “What in the world are we going to do?” by raising her hands up next to her head and looking utterly bewildered.

  Buffy pointed to Giles, to his satchel, which looked more like a swelling mound of flies than a pouch full of books. Then she pointed to herself, gesturing that she was going to retrieve the satchel. Then she pointed at Ejuk and then to the god, hoping the Sumerian Slayer would distract him while she got the book. Ejuk nodded and headed off in that direction. A sandaled foot landed where she had been crouching.

  With Ejuk distracting Namtar by leaping and jumping around his feet like an espresso-jittered rabbit, Buffy made a break for the book. As soon as she knelt beside Giles and grabbed the satchel, the flies swarmed over her. Darkness filled her vision, and hundreds of squirming insect bodies crawled over her face and into her eyes. She swatted them, trying to shake them off, then rolled as if on fire. Enough buzzed away from her that she was able to get her bearings. Spotting Willow a few yards away, she grabbed the satchel, staggered to her feet, spun around and around, and then let go, launching the bag through the air.

  It thumped solidly on the floor next to Willow, and she grabbed it.

  Then the flies moved in again. Buffy felt a million points of agony erupt over her body as boils and sores wept open. Bile rose in her throat and she turned to vomit, feeling the aching weight and pain of a high fever sweeping over her body. As she staggered to rise and then fell, coughing and gagging on the roiling mass of flies, she saw that Giles was now insect free.

  But seeing his unrecognizable face was almost worse. Infected sores covered his swollen face, spreading painfully down his neck and chest. Maggots crawled on his arms and in his ears. He scraped them away, flinging them to the ground.

  Xander looked even worse, his skin yellow and gray, mottled and riddled with lesions.

  And then the pain took over her mind. She screamed, squeezing her eyes shut, as her body erupted in sickness, every plague known to humanity sweeping through her simultaneously. She doubled over in agony, then rolled into a fetal position. She could feel her body shutting down, dying.

  She couldn’t fight like this.

  The Master had won.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Willow grabbed the satchel. As her Slayer friend fell into unconsciousness, Willow rummaged through its contents. Her fingers found the familiar rough binding of Lord Echinal’s Compendium of Sumerian Oaths, Spells, and Summonses. It was the most current, comprehensive work on Sumerian magick out there. Of course, it was copyrighted in 1857, but you couldn’t have everything. She pulled it out. Giles had placed a worn bookmark near the center denoting the area of special interest to this particular time jump. The bookmark had fallen out.

  Willow turned to the table of contents and scanned entries. To her left, Ejuk dodged a blow from a mighty fist, then rolled to the side and kicked Namtar in the little toe. He didn’t notice.

  And Willow hoped he didn’t notice her squeezed against the pillar, flipping through the book.

  At last she passed up “Curses Et Cetera Having to Do with Things Borne of Illness” for “Waking Up a Decidedly Unfriendly God.” She flipped to that page, glancing up just in time to see a flying chunk of masonry loosed by Namtar’s fist. She ducked, clutching the book. The stone hit the pillar above her and crumbled to dust. Ejuk was really working it now, firing arrows into Namtar’s toe and jabbing at his Achilles’ heel. Too bad he wasn’t a Greek god, or that might have worked. Namtar roared and stomped, squatting down sometimes to try to grab her in his fist. He wasn’t having any luck. Ejuk grinned, her lightning agility too fast for the god, and Willow liked her more and more.

  Balancing the heavy book on her knee, Willow thumbed to the page in question, glad that at least Lord Echinal had written in English, and not a primitive dialect of Coptic script or some other typical Gilesian language.

  She studied the spell, read over its words. Luckily, it was an incantation, something she wouldn’t need an elaborate list of ingredients to pull off—if she could pull it off.

  She pivoted on her heels, facing Namtar, where he clashed with Ejuk in the center of the grand hallway. She cleared her throat, then swallowed, getting ready to speak the incantation to banish the god. Lord Echinal had written the spells themselves out phonetically beneath the cuneiform symbols. She hoped his transcription was accurate.

  She spoke the sounds aloud, not sure where to place emphasis, the words unfamiliar to her. She’d dabbled in magick a few times, but mostly with Giles to guide her. Casting something as serious as a god-banishing terrified her. What if she said something incorrectly and sentenced herself and the others to eternal torment in a hell dimension?

  At the sound of the words, Namtar stopped fighting, and his eyes fixed on Willow. A puzzled expression swept over his face. As the incantation came to a close, a thundering boom resonated through the long hall. The air shimmered to the left of Namtar, quavering like heat rising off a desert floor, then pulsed outward, bathing Willow in a blast of heat. Ejuk dodged away, taking refuge behind a nearby pillar.

  Namtar turned to face the shimmering section of air, alarm spreading on his face. Aha! thought Willow. He knows we have him now!

  The god backed away, nearly stepping on Xander, who lay slumped against one wall, struggling to breathe.

  As Willow watched expectantly for the shimmering air to overtake the god and make him vanish, she was astonished by what actually happened.

  Instead of the disturbed air becoming a vortex to suck the god back to its regular place of dwelling, something dark appeared in its depths.

  Willow caught the flash of glittering scales, then a hint of a lashing tail. Another boom thundered around her, her chest reverberating with the cacophony. Then a red eye and a mouth full of fangs flashed into sight. The air glimmered, a thousand sparks of light, and exploded outward in a maelstrom of hot wind.

  The air pressure changed in the room, and Willow swallowed hard to make her ears pop. The wind dissipated. She peered out through watering eyes.

  And she saw a monster wink into view, licking its enormous jaws and fixing her with intelligent, gleaming eyes.

  She hadn’t gotten rid of the god. She’d summoned a creature from hell itself.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Ejuk rushed to Willow’s side as the creature advanced. She shouted “Mushussu!” and pulled Willow out of the way.

  Willow didn’t know what a mushussu was, but
with it bearing down on her, snapping its jaws, she wasn’t overly eager to find out.

  As they dove out of the way, Willow caught a glimpse of Buffy lying prone on the floor, thousands of flies crawling over her body. She had to get to her friend, but she knew that the flies would consume her, too, and then no one would be left to help Ejuk.

  Crouching behind a pillar, she showed the book to Ejuk. Pointing at the incantation, she looked questioningly at the Slayer. Ejuk glanced at the cuneiform, running fingers over the smooth page. Willow pointed to the symbols, then to her own mouth. Ejuk’s eyes widened and she nodded. She could read it aloud. Get the words right. But that still didn’t solve the problem of the mushussu, which was about to mushussu them into stains on the carpet.

  Ejuk silently read over the symbols, while Willow turned to the snake-dragon, which winnowed its way toward them through the pillars, weaving and growling as it came.

  What did it have against them? They hadn’t done anything except summon it into being. What, had Willow called it away from a really great snake-dragon tea party, or lured it from a poker game it was winning? Ruined a mushussu date?

  Namtar stood against one of the walls, clearly nonplussed at the appearance of the snake-dragon. Perhaps they’d tangled before in some mythological epic, Willow thought.

  She pointed again to the god and then to the incantation. Ejuk spoke the first line, and Willow realized just how wrong old Echinal had the pronunciation.

  The dragon reached them, rearing its tail up to smash them.

  They were so intent on banishing the god and avoiding the lashing tail of the tremendous beast that they didn’t see the assassins emerge from the shadows behind them. Willow spun at the last minute as a knife plunged deeply into Ejuk’s back. The Slayer slumped forward, bracing herself against a pillar. The book fell from Willow’s hand and crashed to the floor, speckled with blood.

  As Ejuk slid to the floor, Willow stood up to face the vampires, a lone would-be witch against two brutal assassins.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Victor sneered at Willow, recognizing her instantly as one of the Scoobies, Buffy’s interminably cheery, stalwart companions. Beyond her, the tremendous snake-dragon caught sight of the rampaging god and spun to confront him.

  Victor seized this moment of distraction to close in on Willow. He signaled for his latest crony, Justin, to follow him. Justin, a three-hundred-year-old mohawked vampire with as much experience killing for political reasons as for a croquet set, grinned vacantly. Justin was sloppy and impetuous—everything Jason hadn’t been. Lucien had really rounded up the worst people for him to work with. And now that Lucien was locked up, his recruits were limited. Maybe before the next jump, he’d take time to find some people himself.

  Victor didn’t know how this guy had survived for three hundred years, and he suspected that Justin traveled with a pack that did most of his kills for him. Lucien had dug him up in some vampire dive in the bad part of town, and Justin was cheap enough to hire. Most vamps were too lazy to join the fight to resurrect the Master without a little monetary incentive. Of course there were a few diehards, like Lucien, and most of them were just as crazy as the French-Canadian vampire himself. Victor had never had to work with such a motley mix of incompetence and sheer psychopathic reasoning skills since he joined in this whole venture.

  As the snake-dragon backed the angry god into a small recess, Victor gripped his favorite knife. The blade dripped with the blood of the Slayer, and he licked along the edge. Now he just had to finish the job.

  Willow watched them defiantly, balling her hands into fists. She blinked away tears, and Victor could smell her beautiful terror. Her shoulders and legs trembled, and he relished the thought of bringing her down and drinking that innocent blood.

  Ejuk started crawling away, and Victor shoved Willow out of the way, bringing up the knife again. But the young witch surprised him. A violent kick to his hand sent the knife flying. Ejuk continued to crawl, and Victor turned back to Willow. He would deal with her first, killing her where she stood.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Willow made a decision quickly. She needed the book. She needed to protect Ejuk. As the Slayer dragged herself across the carpet, moving away from the assassins, Willow brought the book up suddenly under Victor’s chin, snapping his head back painfully.

  Ejuk stood up on shaky legs, and Willow could hear her labored breathing. The Slayer coughed, spattering the marble floor with blood. She managed to stagger a short distance away, heading straight for Buffy. Victor looked from Willow to the Slayer and opted to follow Ejuk.

  Clutching the book, Willow pursued him, resolving to fight him with everything she was worth.

  Ejuk reached Buffy’s writhing form. She fell on top of her, the flies instantly swarming over her body. Victor caught up to her, saw the boils and sores on Buffy as the insects cleared away.

  Her body teeming with roiling insects, Ejuk had mere seconds. Before the plague could drop her, she ran straight for Victor, throwing her arms around him and embracing him.

  Once again the flies transferred to a new home. Nestling inside Victor’s ears and eyes, they buzzed and burrowed. The black, wriggling insects covered the assassin’s body and he screamed, falling backward. Ejuk released him and crawled away to safety.

  Willow caught a movement out of the corner of her eye. The second assassin closed in on Ejuk, producing a long knife from his jacket pocket.

  Willow had to act fast. She ran straight for Namtar. The god stood still in one corner, hovering out of view of the mushussu in a small recess. The snake-dragon turned now, watching Willow move, its interest rekindled. It slunk low to intercept her. Behind it, the god emerged from his recess, his eyes flashing in anger. The creature moved with more subtlety than the god, who preferred smashing to sneaking. She didn’t want to deal with both adversaries at the same time, but had no choice.

  Running up to Namtar, she kicked him in the toe. He glared down at her, mouth a grim slit. The snake-dragon was nearly upon them. When she could smell its foul breath close by, she shouted, jumping up and down.

  The mushussu leaped out from behind a pillar, bringing a clawed hand down on top of her. As the nails crashed into the stone floor, pulverizing it on contact, Willow wriggled out from between two fingers.

  The snake-dragon looked up, locked eyes with Namtar.

  And then all chaos erupted.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Namtar stepped out from the recess by the wall as the snake-dragon slammed its tail into his side. He stumbled, knocking over a pillar. The temple shook. That couldn’t be good. Which columns were support pillars? Willow didn’t know, but she suspected they were all important.

  With the god and creature fighting above her, Willow dodged and leaped, avoiding their feet. This was not what she’d had in mind.

  “Hey!” she shouted at the god. “You’re pathetic! You’re the lamest excuse for a plague god I’ve ever seen!”

  Namtar didn’t even glance down. He reached out one meaty hand and gripped the snake-dragon around the throat. The creature whipped its long neck around, flinging off the god’s grip and snapping its jaws down hard on his forearm.

  Namtar cried out in fury and pounded a fist into the creature’s side. The mushussu fell over, rolling to a stop in the center of the hall.

  Willow looked to Ejuk. She stood, listing, blood pouring from her back and chest, dodging blows from the second assassin.

  On the floor, Victor screamed in agony, rolling back and forth frantically in an effort to squash the flies. It wasn’t working.

  How could Willow piss off Namtar without using words? Her English was about as useless as a wet sock in a fight.

  The book weighed heavily in her hands as she watched the supernatural beings clash. The book! Quickly she ducked out of the way, crouching again. She flipped to the table of contents. There was a section on insults! She flipped to it, then scanned through the translations and the transliterated
sounds beneath the cuneiform symbols. She hoped Echinal got some of the words right this time.

  Peering up at the god, she shouted out, “You extravagant monkey rump!” in ancient Sumerian.

  The god stopped. He held one hand out, keeping the mushussu at bay, and glared down at her. Then anger and indignation flushed through his face. Heat radiated off him like the sudden ignition of a bonfire.

  Behind her, the assassin struck Ejuk to the ground, raising a knife. The Slayer struggled to kick the blade away, but it descended fast.

  Namtar roared. Willow stepped back. It worked. Namtar all but forgot about the snake-dragon and came after her. She ran straight to the assassin, then stopped, jumping up and down and taunting the god. Man, was she destined for a hell dimension now.

  He lowered a fist hard, and she jumped away just in time. Unfortunately, so did the vampire.

  Ejuk crawled out of range, leaving an alarming trail of blood on the stone floor. She was losing life fast.

  Near her, Buffy groaned and came to, blinking open swollen eyes. One had gone white, unseeing. Her muscles had wasted away, leaving a mere skin-covered skeleton. She tried to rise, but immediately fell again, her haunted face gaunt and gray. Willow realized then that the flies had been on her for too long. Her situation was even more precarious than Ejuk’s. The Slayer who had been her dear friend for two years was about to die.

  A whoosh of wind nearly knocked Willow over. Pain erupted in her back as a massive tail crashed into her, sweeping her out of the way. The snake-dragon crawled onto Namtar’s back, digging its claws in deeply. Wounds tore open, leaking blood onto the stone below. The powerful tail wrapped around the god’s body, crushing the air from his lungs.

  Namtar staggered and swayed. Willow ran as he crashed down, the echoing thud raining plaster and tiles down from the ceiling. She covered her head, then saw Buffy lying exposed and vulnerable. Willow ran to the Slayer’s side and shielded her with her body.