Buffy the Vampire Slayer 1

by John Vorholt;Arthur Byron Cover;Alice Henderson

  “Will?” Buffy breathed. “I can’t get up.”

  “I know,” Willow said, fighting back tears. Even if she banished the god and the snake-dragon, how would she heal Buffy and the others? She looked to where Xander lay, now unconscious, viscous drool spilling down his chin. Giles lay some distance away, not moving at all. She studied his back for any sign of movement, a hint of a breath. None came.

  While she clutched her friend tightly, the tiles striking her in the back and legs, Willow peered out at the fight. Namtar struggled on all fours, shrugging and swaying, attempting to throw off the mushussu. But the creature would not relent. It clung tightly to his back, digging the vicious claws in deeper and deeper.

  In a minute he would succeed in throwing off the snake-dragon and would crush Buffy and Willow both if she stayed there. Loath to leave her friend, Willow stood up as the rain of masonry slowed. Still clutching the book, she sprinted away. Namtar struggled to his knees, grasping the snake-dragon around the neck and throwing it violently to one side.

  The mohawked assassin took advantage of the distraction and moved again toward Ejuk. Willow selected another insult from the page and shouted, “You have all the intelligence of festering pig stool!” in her best Sumerian yet.

  Namtar’s head snapped down to meet her gaze, fire raging in his eyes. She was so dead.

  She ran to where the assassin vamp crouched over Ejuk. Namtar leaped up to stomp on Willow with both feet. She dove to the side. The god landed solidly, crushing one of the vamp’s legs, pulverizing the bone instantly. He cried out in agony, and then the snake-dragon lunged for Namtar. It grabbed him around the throat with both forelegs, digging claws into his flesh. The tail swept around to stabilize its balance and connected with the vampire’s head.

  In one clean swipe, the head was knocked right off. Dust erupted from where the assassin stood. Ejuk glanced over her shoulder at Willow.

  With Namtar once again distracted by the snake-dragon, Willow rushed to Ejuk’s side, pointing to the inscription. Ejuk read it over once, then spoke it, loudly and clearly. In an instant Namtar vanished and the snake-dragon crashed to the floor, looking rather surprised and confused.

  Willow flipped through the book again, found a creature-banishing spell, and pointed it out to Ejuk. She spoke this one aloud. The shimmering air returned, and Willow gave a short little bow to the mushussu as it disappeared into the glimmering haze.

  Ejuk collapsed, and Willow stood up in the ruined space. A low moan snapped her attention to where Buffy lay. Where moments before the Slayer lay dying, wasted away to nothing but bones, she now knelt, healthy, pink, and boil free. Xander came to, standing up groggily. Giles rolled over, hoisted himself up, and glanced around, confused.

  And to Willow’s left, Victor groaned and blinked, propping himself up on one elbow. She walked to him, standing over him. Giles joined her, then Xander. Buffy stood and approached purposefully. She placed a boot on Victor’s chest and pulled out a stake.

  Lightning fast, Victor produced his knife and slashed Buffy across the ankle, biting through her boot. She cried out and staggered backward.

  He leaped up, shouting out an incantation and sprinting away from them. Full of adrenaline, Willow gave chase. The portal winked into view, dazzling her, forcing her to shield her eyes. Victor jumped into it and vanished.

  Willow had half a mind to leap in, then decided just to curse. But she didn’t. Instead she turned, taking in the Sumerian Slayer, now lying unconscious on the ziggurat floor. The plague had been healed miraculously, but her wounds were not supernatural.

  She had no Watcher and no family to look after her.

  As Willow glanced around the ruins of the ziggurat’s great hall, movement caught her eyes. Three temple priestesses and then Gilgamesh himself appeared. He looked sleepy, rubbing his eyes and yawning. Instead of regal robes, he wore a simple sleeping shirt. He’d slept through the battle. She couldn’t believe it.

  When the priestesses saw Ejuk, they rushed to her side, examining the wound.

  Gilgamesh stepped forward, exchanging words with Giles, who also studied the wound closely. While Willow and the others stood by helplessly, the priestesses fetched a stretcher and carefully placed the Slayer on top.

  Ejuk’s eyes fluttered as they lifted her. Her gaze found Willow’s, and she winked, a faint smile curling her lips. Willow smiled back.

  Giles squeezed her shoulder. “She’ll be okay. And when we get back, we can check to see how long she lived. And you,” he said to her as the others drew near. “I am stunned. We simply could not have pulled that off without you. You showed unparalleled courage and ingenuity.”

  Willow looked down, bashful. She wasn’t used to overt praise. Her mother made a hobby of ignoring her for the most part. The words meant a lot, and she blushed.

  Gilgamesh clasped arms with Giles and then left, following the others to attend to Ejuk.

  Alone in the crumbling great hall, Buffy said, “Let’s go home.”

  They all nodded. “Remind me not to laugh at any gods in the future,” Xander said.

  “Count on it,” Buffy retorted. “Or if you do, have it be the god of facials or gift cards. No more plague gods. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  The four drew close together, and Giles spoke the incantation. In a moment the portal returned and they dove into it, bracing themselves for the sickening journey home.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Sunnydale, 1998

  Buffy wasn’t centered in the portal. She spun wildly, head over hips, feet and arms flailing in the gusting wind. When the velocity slowed and the vortex spat her out, she sailed through the air, arms reaching for something to slow her fall. She opened her eyes, saw the ground rushing up beneath her at a painful angle, and then landed with a soft splush. Hesitantly, she lifted her spinning head, hearing a familiar sound sweep into her world. A gentle hush, a sigh, then the hush again. Waves. Her hands wriggled in the ground. Soft sand. For one frightening second she thought Giles had made a mistake, sending them to Anglesey instead. Then she peered out onto the beach. The Sunnydale beach. She knew it well. The sun had long since set, and the horizon over the sea sparkled with stars. Whitecaps glowed as the waves pulsed in and out.

  Struggling to sit up in the shifting sand, Buffy squinted up at the portal, which immediately dimmed out. She glanced around her. This time she was the last to arrive. Willow’s feet stuck out of a sand dune a few feet away. Giles lay on the beach, the waves washing over him. He struggled to remove an errant strand of kelp from his face. She got to her hands and knees, crawling toward Willow, searching for Xander.

  Then she spotted him, hanging from the lifeguard station a dozen yards away. His fingers slipped and he fell into the sand below, giving a soft grunt as he landed. “I hate this mode of travel!” he shouted, lying still on the beach.

  “I can’t say I disagree,” Giles said, spitting out slimy bits of green vegetation. He staggered to Buffy, and together they pulled Willow out of the sandbank. Bits of broken seashells and a dried, washed-up jellyfish clung to her hair.

  Xander reached them, unsteady on his feet. A car alarm sounded a few blocks away. They were definitely home.

  “What’s next?” Buffy asked Giles.

  “Sleep,” said Xander.

  “A bath,” chimed Willow.

  “English breakfast tea, for the love of Pete,” moaned Giles.

  Buffy shook her head at them. “You guys are no fun.”

  On the walk to the library, Buffy stopped to read the date on a newspaper. “It’s still Saturday.” A wall clock inside a cafe told them it was an hour and a half after they’d left. Buffy felt exhausted. A bath and some sleep did sound good. But she was pretty wound up. Even though she knew they’d arrive at the same time as the assassins on the next time jump, illogically she still felt terrible about taking the time to eat and sleep.

  They checked on Angel and Lucien, who cursed when he saw them enter the library. “Killed some m
ore of your boys,” Buffy told him.

  Lucien’s eyes widened. “And Victor?”

  “Next time,” she assured him, “he’ll be dust.”

  Lucien laughed. “That’s unlikely.”

  Buffy walked closer to the cage. “I seriously doubt it’ll be a problem. If he wasn’t so concerned with running away all the time, I’d have killed him by now. Where did you dig these guys up? Incompetence ‘R’ Us?” In truth, she knew at least Victor would be difficult to face down, but she kept that out of her tone and expression.

  Lucien scowled, and Buffy turned to hug Angel. Her face pressed against the cool skin of his chest. “Missed you back there,” she whispered.

  “Missed you back here.”

  “This guy give you any trouble?” She pulled away.

  “No, unfortunately. It would be a real shame to have to rough him up.”

  Buffy glowered at Lucien over her shoulder. “Yeah. A real shame.”

  “Well,” Giles said, picking up a fresh set of books on the center table. “It’s time we got some rest. These next two jumps may be our most difficult yet.”

  “I guarantee it,” Lucien growled.

  They ignored him. Giles looked at his watch. “Let’s meet back here tomorrow morning at six a.m.”

  “Six a.m.!” Xander cried. “I know that’s a number on my clock, but I’ve never actually been awake to personally witness it!”

  “Well, this will be a new experience for you, then,” Giles retorted. “I want us to leave as early as possible. Every time we return, we do so an hour or more later. If we need sleep again, we draw inexorably toward the school week. And I don’t think Principal Snyder would take kindly to having a vampire locked in the library storage cage.”

  Xander crossed his arms. “Fine.”

  Giles turned to Angel. “I have some additional research to do here, if you want to go eat.”

  “Thanks,” Angel told him.

  Buffy looked up at him. “You going to be okay watching this guy for two more time jumps?”

  Angel regarded Lucien menacingly. Their eyes met. “Wouldn’t have it any other way.” He turned back and touched Buffy’s shoulder. “Want me to walk you home?”

  She smiled. “That sounds nice.” She hefted the satchel off her aching shoulder. “Would you carry my books?”

  “Of course.”

  Xander turned to Willow. “Will. Me. You. Pizza?”

  “Sounds good. But after I go home and shower. I still have dried kelp in my hair.”

  They all said good-bye and parted. Buffy couldn’t wait to lie down and shut her eyes. They burned with exhaustion. Having the plague could really tire a person out.

  The next morning everyone met in the library on time. Giles laid out plain cotton shirts, woolen pants, vests, and thick brown jackets for them to wear. “We’re jumping into the Civil War,” he told them. “We’re going as farmers. The clothes are neutral. No blue. No gray. Many of these battles were fought in fields that neighbor farms and plantations, so we should quite easily pass as civilians. I thought all of us should dress as men. Fighting in hoop skirts and a corset might prove difficult.”

  “I’ll say,” Buffy agreed, glad that her time period afforded her comfortable halter tops, jeans, and short skirts.

  “The Slayer we’re saving is Agatha Primrose, who lives in Tennessee. Unfortunately, she doesn’t live much further into the future. But if she dies even a week before her natural death, a different Slayer could be activated.”

  Buffy nodded, feeling sad. She wondered how much further into the future her own life would last.

  While they changed, Giles checked all of their satchels, making sure they had maps, paper, pencils, and water. To his own satchel, he added another spell book, and a book on the history of Civil War battles and troop movements. He hoped they wouldn’t need it.

  Buffy rummaged through the satchel contents, pulling out at least three different maps. “Will we really need all this?” she asked, glancing at a map showing the North’s and South’s battle tactics.

  “I hope not,” he told her.

  Buffy hugged Angel good-bye and gathered with the others while Giles unfolded the incantation. Inside, his stomach gurgled with nervousness. It had been bad enough to jump into the middle of a Roman confrontation. But this would be worse. Over the millennia, warfare had grown more and more efficient. Cannon, gunfire, flying shrapnel. They’d have to tread carefully.

  Holding up the incantation, he spoke the words and the portal appeared, its brilliance bathing the library in pulsing light.

  Then, holding his breath, he jumped into the vortex, pushing thoughts of errant bullets and the thunder of cannon out of his mind.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Tennessee, 1862

  The blinding light narrowed to a pinpoint, and Buffy braced herself to tumble out into unknown territory. She felt a hand brush her arm and turned, squinting, to see Willow spinning through the air next to her. The velocity ended abruptly as the portal ejected them into a frigid river, where they landed with a loud splash. Instantly her head went underwater. She struggled, trying to get her bearings as she tumbled uncontrollably through swift-moving water.

  She found the surface, came up for air, and stretched out her hands to find something solid. Her fingers slipped over a slimy log, then grasped a rough rock. She gripped its jagged edges, pulling her upper body out of the water. Blinking cold wetness from her eyes, she stared out into a dim night. She clung to the rock in the center of the rain-swollen river. A few feet behind her, Willow flailed in the water. As she streaked by, Buffy grabbed her under the arm, hauling her over the rock and to safety. She didn’t see Giles or Xander. The rain poured down over her, though she was so thoroughly soaked she couldn’t get any wetter. She shivered in the chilly spring air.

  The water drained from her ears as she caught her breath, sucking it in deeply. Splashing and a cry of surprise snapped her attention upstream. Giles and Xander bobbed along in the current. Xander was too limp to be swimming. Giles gripped him under the chin, and blood streamed down Xander’s face.

  A strong swimmer, Giles made it to their rock, and Buffy took Xander from him. “He hit his head on a submerged rock,” Giles said. “I don’t think he’s conscious.”

  Buffy looked down at her bleeding friend. “We need to get out of the water. We don’t want a repeat of Anglesey.” She frowned. “I thought we would be arriving in the middle of a battle. I don’t hear anything.”

  “I don’t believe it’s started yet,” Giles whispered. “But when it does, we must all be exceedingly careful. These old rifles weren’t always terribly accurate. One stray ball could fell any of us.”

  While Giles and Willow pulled their unconscious friend from the river, Buffy darted quickly into the trees along the bank. A tiny fire burned in the distance. For now, this particular area looked relatively clear. Of course, skirmishers or scouts could be hiding in the trees, and she wouldn’t see them until they gunned her down. Their neutral farmer costumes might help for now, but they would still be targets for robbery or worse. Soldiers, desperate and hungry, who hadn’t seen their families in months, pushed to the limit by endlessly firing on fellow countrymen, could be driven to desperate actions.

  Buffy scanned their surroundings. Trees lined the riverbank. The countryside beyond was a patchwork of clearings and clusters of trees, with some denser sections of forest here and there. She watched silently for any sign of the assassins. This time they’d landed in the dark. The vampires wouldn’t have to waste any time hiding out until night. Even now they could be on their way to the Slayer. The farmhouse where she lived lay somewhere nearby, but Buffy needed Giles’s map to pinpoint the direction. Not seeing any sign of the vampires, she crept back to her friends.

  On the riverbank Xander groaned, his eyes fluttering open. “You okay?” Buffy asked him when she reached them. He nodded.

  Willow’s brow creased with concern as she bent over her friend. “That’s pretty
nasty. How many fingers am I holding up?” She held up two.

  “Six,” he answered, groaning and rolling over onto his side. “I feel sick.” He vomited into the sand, then wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Can’t I have a time jump where I don’t vomit? This is two times in a row.”

  “Yeah, you had it lucky in Anglesey,” Willow said.

  “Yep. Nothing to worry about but ritual sacrifice,” he muttered.

  “Sounds like you might have a concussion. We should probably stash you somewhere until we find the Slayer’s house,” Buffy said.

  Xander raised his eyebrows. “Stash me somewhere? I’m not a pile of dirty laundry over here.”

  “Yeah, but you’re about as useful with that knock on your head,” she retorted.

  “Thanks a lot,” he groaned. “At least in Sunnydale I’m good for fetching doughnuts.”

  “I don’t think you’ll be finding any jelly doughnuts around here,” Willow whispered nervously.

  “We’re okay for now,” Giles said quietly. “Most of the fighting will take place during the day. If we can make it to the Slayer’s house before dawn, we can skirt around much of the fighting.”

  “We don’t have much time,” Buffy said, looking to the sky. A dim light glowed above the eastern horizon.

  “What about stashing me?” Xander asked.

  “We’ll find a place.” Buffy stood up, scanning the shore for a good area to hide him. What seemed dark and shadowed now might not be at all come daybreak. The best place to leave him would be in the Slayer’s farmhouse, if they could get to it easily. She reached into her satchel and pulled out the maps.

  Giles flicked a match, and they studied the lines and drawings. “Here’s the Tennessee River,” Giles said, pointing to a thin blue squiggle running diagonally across.