Buffy the Vampire Slayer 1

by John Vorholt;Arthur Byron Cover;Alice Henderson

  As they raced out, Buffy braced herself, ready to fight. She emerged, the heat consuming the house, causing her to turn away from the blaze.

  There, standing nearby, were not the two vampires she had expected, but nine.

  Victor had found some recruits.

  This time, he had to die.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Victor watched the Slayer emerge from the cellar doors. They’d just been rounding the house to set fire to those, too. But they’d been too slow. This team he’d assembled left a lot to be desired. All of them had drunk on the battlefield till they were bloated. They moved slowly, and were so overfed that even their coordination was sloppy.

  “Set them on fire!” he ordered two vampires closest to the Scoobies. Though they each held two torches, the vamps turned to Victor, blank expressions on their faces.

  “Who?” they asked in unison.

  “Them!” Victor shouted, pointing at Buffy and the others.

  The two moved forward with all the urgency of drunken sloths racing drowsy snails. By the time they’d reached Buffy’s position, Giles and the others had run to safety. Buffy kicked the lead vamp with her good leg, stole his torch, and staked him with it. She set the other one on fire. Both erupted into ashes. Agatha joined her side.

  Then Buffy pointed the torch at Victor. “This one’s mine,” she told Agatha.

  As three other vampires moved to attack, Victor crept back. Might as well let the other vamps die and tire out the Slayers as much as possible. He didn’t relish the thought of fighting both at the same time.

  But Buffy made a beeline for him, the torch upraised threateningly. She limped from an injury, obviously biting back pain, but it wasn’t stopping her. A cruel determination gleamed in her eyes, and Victor fought the urge to run.

  He did move, though, skirting around her, hoping to join the three more vamps who had not yet attacked.

  Behind him, Agatha dusted one, then another vampire. He heard the gasp of their bodies turning to dust. Daring a look over at the struggle, he saw her engaged with the third vampire. Another one of Lucien’s lame recruits, the third vampire had been undead for about thirty minutes when Lucien recruited him. Literally. He’d waited for the guy to crawl out of the earth in the cemetery and then gave him his first assignment.

  And while he’d been only thirty minutes old—three days and thirty minutes old by now—he had been a black belt aikido instructor while living. And while that sounded really tough, the guy’s name was Hiram Gigglesworth. Seriously. Victor had even read the tombstone name twice in disbelief. But the guy could kick some serious ass. Victor had to give that to him. Ever since they’d arrived, he’d been kicking everyone’s ass—except, that is, of the people he’d been sent there to defeat.

  By now the guy was worn out, cut in a dozen places by bayonets, shot, and even had a hatchet driven into his shoulder blade. Plus, he’d joined the vampire glut on the battlefield. He was like a junkie for the soldiers’ blood, and Victor had to pull him off them more times than he could count just so they could reach the farmhouse.

  Victor had recruited help along the way. Just telling these new vamps that he was out to dust two Slayers made them join up fast. Well, those that didn’t run away screaming joined up pretty fast. And those that did join were generally cocky jerks with something to prove, who were actually stupid enough to think they could take out a Slayer.

  But as long as it worked to Victor’s advantage, that was fine with him.

  Now Buffy moved forward, cutting off his path toward the other three vamps. Xander joined Agatha and together they held Hiram down in an attempt to stake him. They weren’t doing too well. He threw both of them off, then leaped and kicked, connecting painfully with Xander’s jaw. Agatha got the other boot in her stomach.

  Victor continued to back away, seeing out of the corner of his eye that now even the two Watchers and the young slip of a girl, Willow, were busting out the moves. The vamps were so stupid and slow that the Watchers dusted one with a mulberry tree branch.

  The Brits moved on to the next vampire. Now only two lackeys survived, in addition to him and Hiram.

  Buffy ran at Victor, favoring her injured leg and thrusting the flaming torch before her. Victor dodged to the side, but she reached his sleeve with the flame. The fire spread up to his shoulder, catching his hair on fire. As it spread over his torso, panic set in. Dammit! He hated fire. Ever since he’d nearly burned to death in the London Fire of 1666, he’d been outright paranoid about it. It was fine as a weapon wielded against his enemy, but when it pointed at him, he nearly lost all self-control. Buffy wasn’t supposed to escape from that burning house. She was supposed to die inside.

  He made a grab for her, hoping to set her aflame, but she ducked and rolled away. He dropped to the ground, desperate to put the flames out. He rolled in the wet grass, the flames hissing. Most of them went out.

  To his left, between rolls, he saw Hiram advancing again on Agatha. Xander lay nearby, unmoving.

  He rolled again to crush the last flame, and then Buffy was on top of him, suddenly, her weight landing solidly on his back. He heard his bones crack.

  She drove the burning end of the torch deeply into his back. He screamed as the wood connected with his heart.

  The heat spread throughout his body, and for the briefest second, he could actually feel his molecules separating as he turned to dust.

  His final thought was that he couldn’t believe Hiram Gigglesworth had lasted longer than he had.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  As Victor turned to ashes beneath her, Buffy reached inside his jacket pocket, pulling out the folded incantations. He vanished beneath her, and she landed with a thump on the ground.

  Two vampires came at her sluggishly, a gaunt female and a plump male with long, stringy brown hair. Buffy rose, wincing at the pain in her leg, and whipped the torch around to face them. Flames still licked around the end of the wood, and she rushed forward, impaling and killing the female. When the other vamp grabbed her, she twisted out of his grasp. Niles rushed forward, leaping on the vampire’s back. The vampire staggered under the weight and fell. Niles fell clumsily on top of him, so now Buffy couldn’t move in for the fatal stake. She waited for the Watcher to get to his feet, then told him to stand back.

  Slowly the bloated vampire rose. She spotted a tree behind him with a low-hanging branch, sharp and broken off at the end. With a solid kick, Buffy connected with his head, sending him reeling backward into the tree. The protruding branch pierced his heart. She landed from the kick, sweating from the agony of standing on her injured leg.

  Now only one vampire remained, a big brute of a guy fighting Agatha.

  Buffy limped to the Slayer. “This one isn’t cooperating,” said Agatha, leaping high in her skirts and delivering a wicked kick to the giant’s neck. His head snapped backward violently, and he stumbled, arms windmilling. Buffy ran up behind him, planted the torch firmly on the ground, and let the beast fall backward onto it.

  Dust billowed upward.

  Teamwork. It was the best.

  Agatha stood gasping over the ash-strewn site, catching her breath.

  “We did it!” Buffy exclaimed.

  “That was it?” the Slayer asked. “No more?”

  Buffy peered into the gloom surrounding the fire. No other vamps loomed on the periphery. Victor had been their leader, and if any had seen this display of dustage, they probably hadn’t hung around.

  Now Agatha turned toward the fire. Searing heat radiated from it, causing perspiration to spring up on Buffy’s brow. “My home,” Agatha said. “It’s gone.” The southern side of the house collapsed as she said it, fiery timbers raining down in the darkness. “I’ve lived here since I was born.”

  Niles joined her, placing an arm around her. “You can stay at my house until your father returns.”

  She stared into the flames, uncertain. “Will he return?” she asked him at last, meeting his gaze.

  “Yes,” N
iles told her emphatically.

  Buffy looked to Giles, who stood nearby, hands on his knees, listening. She raised her eyebrows, and her Watcher nodded. Yes, her father does return.

  Buffy went to her, putting an arm around her as well. “You’re safe now, at least from the assassins.” Her leg pulsed with pain, as if it were on fire, but she didn’t look at it. Blood trickled down her skin under the pants leg.

  “Thank you,” Agatha said, but her voice was tiny and hollow, small in the face of such a huge loss. Now her mother was gone, her father away, and her childhood home with everything she had was turning to ash.

  Buffy felt a hard, painful lump grow in her throat and turned away. She wanted to stay, to help her rebuild, but nothing could make up for this loss. They needed to get back. If more Slayers had been targeted, every moment counted.

  She hoped the loss of Victor would prove grave for Lucien. Victor had been clever and ruthless. But now he was just another demon destroyed.

  Buffy and the Scoobies saw Agatha and Niles safely to the Watcher’s house, then said their good-byes.

  Buffy felt this parting more than the others, perhaps because she had truly bonded with Agatha. Or perhaps because she knew the Slayer didn’t live far into the future. Again she questioned her own mortality, but forced those thoughts away quickly.

  After they’d all hugged good-bye, Giles ushered her, Willow, and Xander out to the back field.

  He performed the incantations. The sickening spiral of light winked into view, pulling at twigs, grass, and fallen leaves. It tugged at her hair, then her body, and all four leaped into the portal, returning once again to their home.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Sunnydale, 1998

  With a painful thump, Buffy landed in a pile of garbage behind the Sunnydale health food store. Her hand squished into a moldering pile of wheat germ, and her face plopped down into a discarded tub of garlic hummus. She spat it out, trying to lift her head. Rolling over, she watched Xander, then Willow, surge out of the vortex. Light played over the alley walls. Giles groaned somewhere nearby. Xander tumbled downward, and Buffy shifted to the side just before he crashed down next to her.

  Willow landed feetfirst on a garbage bag, which split open on impact. Couscous and part of a vegetarian burger spilled out, oozing over her boots.

  Buffy’s leg throbbed, and she hoped she didn’t get any rotting hummus in the wound. She wiped the garlic concoction off her face. Ack. She wouldn’t be kissing Angel anytime soon. Sunlight streamed down into the alley, allowing Buffy to see every bit of festering garbage clinging to her in explicit detail.

  “First kelp, now seaweed,” Giles muttered. “And we’re not even near the ocean.” He pulled a long strand of green slime off his face.

  Wincing with pain, Buffy used the alley wall to rise and steady herself. Willow rushed to her side and supported her. Xander lay still, unmoving in the heap of trash. “I think I have a banana in my ear,” he told them. Rising, Giles offered his hand and shakily helped Xander to his feet. “I can’t take much more of this,” Xander said. “This is the worst way to travel!” He gestured rudely at the vanished portal.

  “Hey, I thought you were all ‘I’m the time travel expert,’” Willow told him.

  “That was before I knew it involved throwing up, trash heaps, and hanging precariously from lifeguard towers.”

  As the others brushed themselves off, Buffy pulled out the incantations she’d stolen from Victor. They were a duplicate of the ones they’d gotten from Lucien. “No additional time periods. Do we still need to go to the French Revolution?” Buffy asked Giles as they walked out of the alley.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I killed Victor. The last recurring assassin. Now neither Lucien nor Victor will be able to get new recruits.”

  Giles looked thoughtful. “They may have a backup plan—other assassins already chosen in the event Victor doesn’t return. I think Lucien’s reaction to the news of Victor will be quite telling in this instance.” He flicked a piece of granola off his sleeve.

  Willow followed his thought. “Right. If he insists that we have no reason to go to Paris, then we can be sure he has someone waiting in the wings. If he encourages us to go, then we’ll know he has no one and is just hoping we’ll get killed by angry mobs.”

  “Angry mobs?” Xander asked. “Angry mobs?”

  “Yes, Xander,” Willow told him. “The French Revolution. Angry mobs. Guillotines.”

  He swallowed. “Guillotines?” He brought a hand to his neck. “Doesn’t this guy ever pick sunny Acapulco or a nice beach in the Bahamas?”

  “Tell me about it,” Buffy said. “He’s evil.”

  “My Little Pony evil,” Xander agreed.

  Emerging from the alley, they blinked in the sunlight, getting their bearings. Heading off in different directions, they agreed to all meet at the library in an hour.

  Buffy burst through the double doors of the library. “Hah!” she said to Lucien.

  The vampire looked up sleepily, then raised his eyebrows.

  “Hah?” Angel asked, standing up.

  “Consider your master plan officially minus one Victor.”

  Lucien struggled to hide the dismay in his face. Failed. He pursed his lips together angrily, his eyes glowering. “Well, then,” he said. “You’ve won.”

  “Not quite,” Giles said, entering the room. He held up the French Revolution incantation. “How many backup assassins do you have?”

  Lucien bared his teeth. “None,” he hissed. “You’ve killed them. Victor was my best.” But he averted his eyes nervously as he said it.

  Buffy looked at her Watcher. “Well, Giles?”

  “Right. I’ll get the clothes.”

  Lucien threaded his thin fingers through the cage door. “What are you doing?”

  “Getting ready for the next time jump,” Buffy told him.

  “But there’s no reason for you to make the final one,” he said. “You’ve won.” He was a little too insistent.

  “Then you won’t care if we just check on the French Slayer, right?”

  He cleared his throat nervously. “Why would I care?”

  “Exactly. Why would you care?”

  After Willow and Xander arrived, they dressed in the clothes Giles laid out—white cotton shirts, black jackets, long black pants, and strange floppy hats, each with a red, white, and blue rosette made of ribbon.

  “They’re liberty cockades,” Giles informed them, pointing to a rosette. “They signify that we support the Revolution. We’re jumping to 1792, a time when we don’t want to be confused with aristocrats.”

  Buffy picked up the shirt and pants.

  “Again, dressing as a man will give you maximum mobility.”

  She nodded, then took her outfit to the women’s restroom to change.

  When they all met back in the library, dressed in eighteenth-century garb, Giles checked their satchels for the obligatory paper and pencil, water, and maps.

  “Giles,” Buffy said, “I’ve been carrying that paper and pencil around this whole time. I haven’t used it yet.”

  “Keep it,” he told her. Then he lifted the tiny stub of a pencil. “You could use it as a stake.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Well, if I run into a vampire that’s four inches tall, I’ll be prepared.”

  “Okay,” Giles said, ready to brief them. “Let’s go to my office.” Inside, they closed the door. Angel stood close to Buffy, and she welcomed his presence. “This Slayer is Marguerite Allard. She’s an aristocrat in a time of great unrest in Paris. This will be dangerous.”

  Buffy’s leg ached, and she hoped this jump wouldn’t be worse than Shiloh.

  “I’ve marked her address on your maps. Should we get separated, let’s meet at her house.”

  They all agreed, and Giles took out the incantation for 1792. Angel wished them luck, kissing Buffy good-bye. “Be careful there,” he whispered to her. He turned then and left the tiny office.

>   Giles spoke the incantation, and Buffy braced herself to return to a world at war.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Paris, 1792

  Buffy whirled through the portal, landing painfully on one shoulder in a puddle of vile-smelling water. She struggled to her feet, groggy, the shouts from a nearby crowd filling the air.

  The darkness of night filled the city streets and dank alleyways. She turned back to the portal to await the others’ arrival and saw a second portal, spinning in the air some distance away.

  A figure sailed out of it, followed by a second. The assassins! She couldn’t believe it! They’d actually arrived in roughly the same place at the same time.

  Steadying her legs, she stumbled toward them, nauseous and dizzy from the portal travel. The cobblestones beneath her feet made the going rough. She twisted her ankles more than once in her haste. Finally the grogginess wore off and Buffy quickened her pace, limping on her wounded leg.

  One of the vampires had landed in the center of the street. With the shouts and cries of an angry crowd, still out of sight, he didn’t hear her approach.

  She reached into her jacket pocket, pulling out a fresh stake. The vampire propped himself up, shaking off the ill effects of the transport. She didn’t recognize him, but he was huge. A monster of a guy with a bald head and the physique of a school bus. So Lucien did have backups waiting.

  Almost upon him, she leaped. The second vampire lay some distance away, trying to rise to his feet. Buffy landed solidly on the bald vampire, straddling him. As he gazed up, surprised and terrified, she thrust the stake into his heart. Dust plumed upward, and she fell to the street beneath.

  Now she stood up quickly. The second vampire stood up, staring at her in horror. The shouting of the mob grew closer and closer. The vampire turned and ran. She sprinted after him. As she rounded a corner in pursuit, she ran full-on into an angry mob scene straight out of Frankenstein. Torches blazed; swarthy, dirt-clad people shouted. Spittle sprayed. Pitchforks, guns, and swords were lifted above heads angrily.