The unbearable dryness in Buffy’s throat compelled her to drag herself forward. Every muscle trembled and shook, rebelling against the movement. But she forced herself. The crying and suffering soldiers took no notice of her as she pulled herself to the edge of the pond, leaving a trail of blood in her wake.
The water tantalizingly close, but out of reach, her body ached for a drink. A Confederate soldier fell over next to her, his sightless eyes staring up at the gray, roiling sky.
She forced herself to focus on the grand trees and shadowed valleys, golden fields in which the deer gathered at dusk. She tried to imagine what this place must have been like before humans arrived, before scores of soldiers died for causes like securing advantageous locations to fire cannon. She imagined the fields and groves of trees without the thousands of bleeding and broken soldiers, but instead full of foraging deer and black bear.
She pushed past the fallen soldier, trying to reach the water. She thought of Giles, of how he’d looked out for her, of her mother telling her to do her homework. How she longed to be back there. How welcome doing her homework sounded right now. As her vision swam, Buffy tried hard to hold on to consciousness. She would get a drink and then somehow make it to the field hospital. She had to. If she didn’t, she would die and the assassins would kill the other Slayer. The Master would reign, and everything she held dear would perish.
Another soldier fell by her side, then another and another. She became just another body piled before Bloody Pond, fighting for a drink, fighting to stay alive just one more precious moment.
Her vision darkened and tunneled, and Buffy cried out in dismay, flailing in her efforts to force herself to stand. Tears streamed down her face. Then her body stopped shaking, and the world went dark.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Buffy’s eyes fluttered open, feeling impossibly heavy. She lifted her eyelids, and with considerable effort stared up at the night sky above her. Stars filled the skies, more brilliant than she’d ever seen them before. The Milky Way stretched across the heavens. The sky twinkled with a billion distant suns.
An elbow jarred her shoulder. In her right ear, she heard a slurping noise. Slowly she tilted her heavy head to look in that direction. A dark shape bent over the soldier next to her, dipping its head and licking. Then a horrific face leaped into view, a leering face staring down at her, running a pointed tongue over fangs grown long and sharp.
Her mind fought through a haze of pain as the face loomed closer. It was something she knew, something familiar. And somehow she’d always been able to stop it in the past. But now she couldn’t remember. She felt so tired. She tried to lift one arm, but it lay at her side, pinned down by the weight of a fallen Confederate soldier.
Buffy blinked, her worldview filling with the terrifying face, the protruding brow ridges, the yellow, feverish eyes. It bore down on her, grinning, and she felt the cold lips against her neck.
Just as the mouth opened against her flesh and she felt the wet fangs meet her skin, the entire creature erupted into dust. Flecks rained down over her face and eyes, and she squeezed them shut.
When she opened them again, mere moments later, the hideous slurping sound had stopped. Above her swam the face of a young woman. Curls of blond hair escaped from a black riding hat. “You don’t look like a typical soldier,” she said.
Buffy opened her mouth to answer, but found it so dry that her tongue was rough and her lips cracked open painfully.
“Don’t try to talk. I’ve alerted the field hospital to a number of dying here. They should be here shortly.” She gripped Buffy’s hand. “I can stay with you for a little while, but then I need to get out there again.”
Buffy ran her tongue over chapped lips. “Slayer …,” she whispered.
The woman’s eyebrows rose in surprise.
“Me … too …,” Buffy managed, her voice gone. “Danger.”
“Don’t try to talk.” She glanced around, scanning the shadows. “Are you telling me you’re a Slayer?” she whispered.
Buffy managed a nod.
“Then I think we need to get you out of here.”
She grabbed Buffy’s arm to pull her up. When the weight hit her leg, a primal shriek of pain erupted from Buffy’s lips. The woman looked down at the gunshot. “You’re gravely wounded. I can help you back at my farmhouse. It’s not too far from here.”
She lifted Buffy up carefully under her knees and shoulders and carried her for an interminable distance. Buffy lost consciousness.
When she awoke, jostling around in the back of a horse-drawn carriage, she reached up and gripped the woman’s skirts.
“My friends … need to save them.”
The woman slowed the horse and pivoted in the driver’s seat. “Where are they?”
Buffy frowned, trying to fight the haze in her mind to recall the map. “Shiloh Branch … or Rhea Spring … by the Corinth Road.” Pain bloomed suddenly in her leg, and she gritted her teeth, sucking in air.
The woman thought a moment, then wheeled the cart around, riding swiftly back in the direction they’d come. All the jostling hurt Buffy’s leg more, but she bit down on the pain, concentrating on the others. At least now they’d found the Slayer, or rather she had found Buffy. All they had to do was wait for the assassin vamps to strike. Of course, Buffy wouldn’t be much help when they did.
The carriage bounced along over rolling hills. They forded the two streams Buffy remembered crossing earlier that day. That day? she wondered suddenly. How long had she been out? What if days had passed and Giles and the others had moved on, or worse, been killed?
Soon the burble of a larger body of water met her ears. She tried to sit up in the wagon, tried even to lift her head above the side rails, but couldn’t. She just lay. “Giles …,” she whispered to the other Slayer.
“Giles!” the woman called softly. They rode on. “Giles!” Bouncing along the shores of the Shiloh Branch, she called his name over and over again, careful not to alert any passing scouts.
“Here!” came Xander’s voice.
Buffy had never heard such a welcome sound. She tugged on the Slayer’s skirts. The wagon slowed, and Xander emerged from the dense foliage near the riverbank, the blood on his head now dried.
He looked first at the woman, then at Buffy lying in the back of the wagon. “Oh my God.”
She reached for him, and he took her hand. “Will?” she whispered.
“She’s here,” he told her. “She just went to get us some water. Giles left hours ago, though, trying to find you.”
“I found her at the edge of a pond, among a group of wounded soldiers,” the Slayer told them. “Who are you all? Is she really a Slayer?”
Xander smiled down at her and squeezed her hand. “The best.”
“I need to get you to safety, then you can explain. Who is Giles?”
“Her Watcher.”
The woman nodded, her mouth suddenly tight. “Then it’s vital we find him. But first, she needs medical attention. We must get to my farmhouse.”
Xander nodded, releasing Buffy’s hand. He jogged back to the river and returned with Willow. “Oh, Buffy,” she cried, “am I glad to see you!” As she neared the wagon, her voice trailed off. She stopped in horror, staring at her fallen friend. Then, biting her lower lip, she climbed into the back. When she saw the tourniquet and the blood, she whispered, “Oh, please no.” She gripped Buffy’s hand.
The crack of a rifle sounded just a few hundred yards away.
“Get in!” the other Slayer ordered Xander. “We need to go now!”
He climbed up hastily, nearly toppling over, and the woman cracked the reins. Whinnying, the horse took off at a solid clip, tearing them away from the gunfire.
Buffy looked at her two friends, thrown around in the small wagon. She felt her eyes sting and swell. So heavy. She had to shut them, just for a little while. As she faded off, she felt Willow checking the tourniquet. And then the blackness swallowed her.
CHA
PTER THIRTY-SIX
A violent jostle jarred Buffy awake. Night pressed close. Willow gripped her hand in the back of the wagon, her skin warm. Buffy shook, her body trembling uncontrollably. The wagon tossed them together in the back of the carriage. Xander nearly toppled over, then Willow. Buffy felt sick.
Above them the stars still gleamed, a million jewels in the blackness of the sky. She no longer heard the trickling of the river. Now other sounds filled the night. Moans, sobbing, crying. She tried to lift her head to see over the wagon’s edge. Willow pressed a hand to her chest, kept her from rising. “Don’t,” she whispered. “You don’t want this image.”
Tears streamed down Willow’s dirty face. She pivoted her head to look over her shoulder, breathing shallowly.
The battlefield. Buffy knew they crossed it now. Thousands of soldiers lay dying in all directions, their pitiful cries like the eerie ululations of ghosts long lost to the living world.
“Look,” said Xander to Willow. He pointed.
Willow gasped. “Oh, no …”
Buffy tried to swallow, but her dry throat rebelled. “What?” she rasped.
“Vampires,” Xander whispered, his voice haunted and hollow.
“Hundreds of them,” Willow added. “Feeding off the dying.”
Buffy gripped her hand, a monumental effort that took all her strength. “Stop.”
Willow shook her head. “You can’t fight right now, Buffy,” she said, the tears in her voice rising to the surface.
“You may not even—,” Xander started.
“Xander, don’t,” Willow told him forcefully.
Buffy arced her eyes toward the woman driving the wagon. “Slayer …”
Xander touched Buffy’s shoulder compassionately. “She’s stopped, Buffy. More times than we can count. She staked the vamps feeding off soldiers who still have a chance, at least once the doctors from the field hospitals get to them.” He paused, glancing in the woman’s direction. “She stopped too many times,” he said, his mouth now just a gray slit. “It may have cost you your—”
“Don’t!” Willow said again, nearly shouting.
Her shout was answered by another, crying out somewhere to the left. The cry was terrified and abandoned, something uttered when there’s nothing left to lose, and you are determined to have your last actions on this earth count for something.
It was Giles.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Willow stood up in the carriage, releasing Buffy’s hand. “Giles!” she shouted. “Stop the wagon!”
The Slayer slowed the wagon, and Willow jumped out before it came to a halt. She landed hard in the muddy earth. Before her in the dark lay thousands of wounded and dying soldiers, crying out for water, or lost wives, or children.
And somewhere out there was Giles, fighting for his life.
Xander leaped out beside her, then almost fell over with dizziness from his head wound.
“Stay here with Buffy,” she told him.
Xander stilled himself on the edge of the wagon. “I can’t. The Slayer will protect her.”
“I can do this,” she told him.
“No, you can’t, Will. If he’s wounded, it’s going to take both of us to carry him back to the wagon.”
She looked into his determined gaze and relented. As Giles cried out again, she pinpointed his location, nearly straight ahead, and ran in that direction. As she grew closer, the cries resolved into words. Giles was cursing. And quite the blue streak at that.
Dark shapes slithered and slinked between the dying men in front of them. The littered soldiers of Shiloh were one long smorgasbord for the undead.
The creatures advanced toward a center point. Some of them crawled, drinking from hapless victims along the way. Others crept stealthily forward, bodies braced for a fight. And in the center of those advancing shapes stood Giles. As one reached him, he cried out, thrusting a sharpened stick into the chest of the attacking vampire. The creature exploded into dust. Then Giles pivoted, shouting, driving the stick into the chest of another. Three more came, and he dusted them all.
As Willow drew closer, she heard the rough edges of his accent. Not the genteel Giles she was used to, but guttural, visceral. He cursed again, flipping a vampire over onto its back and driving the stake home. Now only two remained. He egged them on, taunting them, his eyes glittering with hatred. He gripped the first one around the throat, crushing the vampire’s larynx, and then drove the stake into his heart.
The last one, now afraid without its brethren, turned and bolted. Giles didn’t let it go. Leaping over wounded soldiers, he ran after it, calling it so many names Willow didn’t even recognize half of them.
This was Ripper.
This was the essence of Giles’s youth emerging in the heat of mortal battle. In his early twenties, he’d left Oxford University and moved to London. He fell in with a thrill-seeking group of friends who tinkered with the dark arts for fun. One of them died because of it. Giles had gone by the name Ripper, and he’d been violent and ruthless in his actions.
And now their gentle librarian and friend was giving them a glimpse of those days. He caught up with the vampire, swinging out a leg to trip him. The vamp fell hard, sprawling into the grass, and Giles brought the stake down, piercing the heart through the back of the rib cage.
As the vamp blossomed into dust, Giles lifted his head to the skies and gave a primal scream of rage.
Willow ran forward. “Giles!” she shouted.
He spun, tensed, ready to stake her.
She stopped. “Giles!”
He paused, his shoulders relaxing. His grip loosened on the stake, and he said, “Willow.” Then, glancing around and seeing no more creeping shadows, he added, “There are so many vampires here. I couldn’t find Buffy. And I couldn’t just stand by and tolerate …” His voice trailed off, and Willow rushed to him.
“You were amazing, Giles,” Xander said, hurrying forward to join them. “And no little amount of scary.”
And even more amazing was that he had no wounds at all, save the smallest scratch on his arm. His sleeve was torn there, revealing the thin red line. Willow ushered him quickly toward the wagon. “We have Buffy and Agatha. We’re all together.” They reached the wagon, and Agatha turned around in the driver’s seat to watch their approach. “But Buffy’s wounded,” Willow finished.
She climbed into the back of the wagon, followed by Xander.
“You’re her Watcher?” the Slayer asked.
“Yes. And you’re Agatha?” he asked.
She nodded, then regarded him curiously. “I can’t imagine my Watcher doing what you just did. I didn’t even need to step in and help.”
“Well, yes,” Giles said, climbing up into the bed of the wagon. “Dark past.”
“I gathered that.” She flicked the reins and the horse moved forward again, taking them ever closer to the farmhouse.
Willow watched anxiously while Giles examined Buffy’s wound. “The tourniquet may have saved her life. But she needs a doctor,” he said at last.
“Giles,” Buffy whispered, then shut her eyes again.
Willow watched while her friend fell into unconsciousness once more. She was glad Agatha had stopped to slay opportunistic vamps on the battlefield. She only prayed that by stopping so many times the Slayer hadn’t cost Buffy her life.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Buffy awoke, groggy and disoriented, to someone moving her leg. She grunted in pain, then focused on the person. A strange man met her gaze. He was fairly young, perhaps in his late twenties or early thirties, with a full black beard and shoulder-length black hair. He wore the uniform of the Union army, complete with wide belt and tarnished buttons that had been too long in the field. But his eyes were kind, and she relaxed a little.
“I am Dr. Milton Henderson,” he told her, “a surgeon with the Thirty-second Regiment of Pennsylvania.”
She raised her head, realizing with great relief that she could. Already she felt stronger.
“I’ve sewn up your wound. Fortunately, the ball passed through cleanly. Your field tourniquet saved your life. You should heal quickly, but you must take proper precautions to ward off infection.”
Giles came into view, peering over the surgeon’s shoulder. “Buffy? How are you?”
She nodded, managing a small sigh of relief.
“Agatha convinced Dr. Henderson to come from the field hospital across the river.”
The doctor smiled. “I was supposed to be getting some sleep. But Agatha can be insistent.”
“We’re lucky he was here,” Giles added.
She didn’t need Giles to tell her how lucky. She’d nearly bled to death, and she had no illusions about that. She swallowed, finding her throat still dry. “Water?” she asked, her voice raspy. She sounded like she’d spent her life chain-smoking.
Dr. Henderson picked up a glass of water from the table and tipped it to her lips. She steadied his hand with her own and drank deeply. How sweet the water was, the finest thing she’d ever drunk. She finished the entire glass, then asked for another.
Encouraged, Giles smiled. “It’s good to have you back.”
She propped herself up on one elbow and drank the next glass on her own. “What about the”—she looked pointedly at the surgeon—“people we were looking for?”
“No sign of them yet. But with all the people we … said good-bye to on the battlefield out there, we may never meet up with them.”
Buffy nodded. She understood. The thousands of dying soldiers out there would attract hundreds of vampires looking for an easy feast. They’d slain countless numbers of them, and there was a chance that the assassins were among their numbers. She frowned then, thinking of Victor. He wasn’t stupid, and she doubted he would make himself vulnerable on the field like that, feeding carelessly. He would have stuck to the shadows, his objective to kill Agatha more important than an easy meal.
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